summation on which the strongest desires of their souls were fixed, 'to which their thoughts and hopes were habitually turned. They lived with reference to this event. They labored to be prepared for it. They were constantly, in the expressive language of Peter, looking for and (in their impatience as it were) hastening the arrival of the day of God. (II Pet. iii: 12). "It is then that Christ will reveal himself in glory, will come to take vengeance on them that obey not the Gospel, and to be admired in all them who believe,' (II Thess. i: 8), will raise the dead (John v: 28, 29), invest the redeemed with an incorruptible body (Phil. iii: 21), and introduce them for the first time and forever into the state of perfect holiness and happiness prepared for them in His kingdom. The Apostles, as well as the first Christians in general, comprehended the grandeur of that occasion. It filled their circle of view, stood forth to their contemplations as the point of culminating interest in their own and the world's history, threw into comparative insignificance the present time, death, all intermediate events, and made them feel that the manifestation of Christ, with its consequences of indescribable moment to all true believers, was the grand object which they were to keep in view as the end of their toils, the commencement and perfection of their glorious immortality. "In such a state of intimate sympathy, with an event so habitually present to their thoughts, they derived and must have derived, their chief incentives to action from the prospect of that future glory. As we should expect, they hold it up to the people of God to encourage them in affliction, to awaken them to fidelity, zeal, perseverance; and, on the other hand, appeal to it to warn the wicked and impress upon them the necessity of preparation for the revelations of the final day. "For examples of this habit, the reader may see xvii: 30, 31; I. Tim. vi: 13 sq.; II. Tim. iv: 8; Tit. ii: 11 sq.; II. Pet. iii: 11 sq., etc. "Some have ascribed the frequency of such passages in the New Testament to a definite expectation on the part of the Apostles that the personal advent of Christ was nigh at hand; but such a view is not only unnecessary, in order to account for such references to the day of the Lord, but at variance with II. Thess. ii: 2. The Apostle declares there, that the expectation in question was unfounded, and that he himseif did not entertain it or teach it to others. But while he corrects the opinions of those at Thessalonica, who imagined that the return of Christ was then near, neither he nor any other inspired writer has informed us how remote that event may be or when it will take place. That is a point which has not been revealed to men; the New Testament has left it in a state of uncertainty. "The day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night;" and men are exhorted to be always prepared for it. It is to be acknowledged that most Christians at the present day do not give that prominence to the resurrection and the judgment, in their thoughts or discourse, which the New Testament writers assign to them; but this fact is owing not necessarily to a difference of opinion in regard to the time when Christ will come, but to our inadequate views and impressions concerning the grandeur of that occasion, and the too prevalent worldliness in the church, which is the cause or consequence of such deficient views. If modern Christians sympathized more fully with the sacred writers on this subject, it would bring both their conduct and their style of religious instruction into nearer correspondence with the lives and teachings of the primitive examples of our faith." Paul's counsel to one of the primitive churches was certainly wholesome: "Despise not prophesyings." I Thess. v: 20. "роonteías μn ¿έovleveîte.” The verb here used by the Apostle has for its inner term the word ỏv0év, which signifies nothing. The injunction then is Do not make nothing of prophecies. See to it that you do not reduce prophecies in your estimation to a mere cipher and blow them. away out of your sight with a whiff of disdain. Make something of prophecies. Embark in them the expectation which the promise of God should awaken. Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a draught. Launch out into the great deep of God's omnipotence, of His omniscience, of His omnipresence, of His immutability, of His fidelity, and expect results. Load down your faith even to the bulwarks with a weight of confidence in his unfrustrable foretellings. Blessed are they that keep watch for the things predicted by Him who is in one mind and changeth not. The stars may swerve from their courses sooner than the providences of Jehovah may suffer the least of his prophecies to be lifted out of the grooves along which they are borne to fulfillment. The law which holds from lower to higher was never set aside. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus looks. aloft from lower summits and steadily climbs. Let the memories of " 49" come back. Let imagination lend her help to picture hope and long waiting and final success. Do you see the mother bidding her boy "good bye?" Right well you know them both; she a widow and he her " "only son." Mark over again her heroic struggles and self denials, and weary waiting for news from the El Dorado of the West. At length the wished for letter comes to gladden sleepless expectation, and to reward enduring love. Horace has "struck it rich" in the land of gold! "Keep watch for me, mother, be patient, and when I come, you shall not want any good thing. May God spare you, 'till we meet again." Can anything crowd out this expectation? Whatever else may be admitted to companionship with this expectation must be good and glad. Horace occupies her, thought. By night she dreams of his return. By day she is busy getting ready. Do the neighbors drop in and make inquiry? Horace and his return fill and swell her bosom, and her talks of love and hope are like the warblings of a bird. The best room is waiting for him; it has been carpeted anew, newly papered and the walls hung with pictures each of which holds a story of love. She has denied herself from his remittances to buy luxuries befitting his room and to make it ready just to suit him. What a greeting is in waiting! In each stir she fancies she hears his step. I've somewhere seen a statue entitled "Sunshine." It was a graceful female form, tip-toe with expectancy, apparently half floating, in its ease of poise. So airy, it seemed ready to rise, to meet and greet some comer; meanwhile the right hand lifted above the eyes, as if shielding them from excess of light. It scarcely needed a name, so significant was the eager attitude, and at the same time, so tellingthat act of shading the eyes-just a little. Would that the bride of our Lord Jesus had ever kept such an upturned face; her radiant love look bathed in the glow of His promised coming, and yet its nearness and dearness almost more lustrous than ardent nope could bear. CHAPTER II. "WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT?,, S not the night wearing away? Must we not be nearing morning? Will not the time less or more that lingers grow steadily luminous, or will the darkness deepen? We would know about tomorrow and tomorrow. To be indifferent on this matter would make us less religious, might we not say less human? Is the dawn then soon to put aside the curtains, or is the darkness to grow more dense and dread? Is the world growing better or worse? If better, we should set ourselves to be worthier men and women, as when "Morn breaketh in the east! The clouds are putting on their gold and violet, "What dreams may come * should give us pause." One class of interpreters says, The future will be gradually and increasingly bright, until we shall have reached the perfect day; the other says, The perfect day is waiting for us, but before the race can reach it, the church must descend into the valley and walk under the rod and in the darkness. For the satisfactory settlement of an issue so penetrative and all comprehending there can be but one authority-the Word of God. To this we must bow. At the same time, let us become a corps of inspection and go around the frontiers of our misunderstanding. Let us look at the limitations of what is affirmed and denied. Is it not wise to soberly take account of what truth is held in common, eliminate it from the controversy, and give attention to what is pivotal and what at last must be the deciding factor? Do I not state the substantal difference when I say the optimist believes that the world is to witness, from now on, an ever increasing religious might, and wear a moral beauty that shall heighten and become confessedly more fair? The pessimist believes that his brother can not paint the future in colors too glowing for him to accept, or make the final redemption achievement too colossal; but between this and that he must put into his forecast a darkness to be felt. The optimist is impressed with the heavenly nature of some activities at work all about him, he sees with annointed eye their attractiveness; looking through disguises of worldliness, he sees the victorious might of certain great forces, ever busy night and day expending their energies and waking the persuasion or deepening the conviction, that results so beneficent must steadily augment; and that this ever increasing promise must be the tide wave to waft into port all the golden dreams that have been foretold. The pessimist says, the triumph you exult in I do likewise; my Savior is a Victor King, but just as His disciples who hailed Him on the third day as the Risen One, saw Him beforehand go to His cross, and bow His head in apparent helplessness, while the sun in heaven even at midday was shrouded; so in the ending of this age must the church be borne to her cross and nailed there, mid the jeers of a godless rabble. If those who believe that the world is insensibly but surely growing better mean only to affirm that good is being done without any intermission somewhere on the planet, and that this beneficently augments by so much the world's moral sum total in the sight of a holy God; then those who set themselves to deny what these affirm could readily give up any issue. If those who take the affirmative believe that however little of good may be wrought, and however poorly that little may be traceable through its veiled windings of interior and invisible and spiritual transforming efficiency, still if they hold, since it is of God, embosoming His Spirit, that it is an absolute good, and, therefore an indestructible entity, and must, in the divine estimate, transcend in value all that the devil is doing; must in a word be an overweight for all the evil done under the sun, then quite likely there would be on this position a cordial handshake all around. But the issue is elsewhere. We are students at the feet of a great Teacher, learning the lesson He would teach us concerning the end of the age. Are we strong enough to take all that He gives us on the subject and firmly hold it? Must our faith be offended if he dissappoints our pre-formed hope? Is not our receptivity expansive enough |