of his approaching presence? He desires to keep us humble as the sole path of ultimate exaltation. This very limitation upon the most awful of all points of knowledge is eminently calculated to cherish such a temper. Yet he would also habituate us to earnest inquiry and a holy curiosity as to his will and movements: to publish them is to supersede it. And he would have us revere and dread even while we trust and love him; and this he accomplishes, as in other ways, so by shrouding his march in mystery, revealing enough to win affection and guide to duty, but reserving his deeper purposes for the council-chamber of the Holy Trinity. . . . It is a purposed obscurity, a most salutary and useful obscurity, a wise and merciful denial of knowledge.

In this

matter it is his gracious will that it should be the perpetual subject of watchfulness, expectation, conjecture, fear, desire; but no more. To cherish anticipation, he has permitted gleams of light to cross the darkness; to baffle presumption, he has made them only gleams. He has harmonized with consummate skill every part of his revelation to produce this general result,-now speaking as if a few seasons more were to herald the new heavens and earth, now as if his days were thousands of years; at one moment whispering into the ear of his disciple, at another retreating into the depth of infinite ages. It is his purpose thus to live in our faith and hope; remote, yet near; pledged to no moment, possible at any; worshipped, not with the consternation of a near or the indifference of a distant certainty, but with the

anxious vigilance that awaits a contingency ever at hand. This, the deep devotion of watchfulness, humility, and awe, He who knows us best knows to be the fittest posture for our spirits: therefore does he preserve the salutary suspense that insures it, and therefore will he determine his advent to no definite

day in the calendar of eternity."* Skeptics may jeer at it as a weakness of the Scriptures; I take it as an instance of masterly strength. Cold-hearted unbelief may laugh at the expenditure of anxiety and pains to which Christians at various ages have put themselves by supposing that their Lord, in all probability, was to come in their day; but I take it rather as a thing in some respects to their praise,— an evidence of their sympathy with, if not membership in, that virgin company who took their lamps and went out to meet the Bridegroom. Many may set it down to their weak judgment and their want of skill,—skill in explaining away the words of Scripture; but I accept it rather as a thing to their credit, not, indeed, that they were so confident in broaching their prophetic arithmetic, but that they so thoroughly submitted to be brought to that vividness of expectation upon this point to which Christ would have us all come, as the most favorable to the development of those graces which alone can fit us for the kingdom to come.

I confess, my friends, that I have but little sympathy with those who are ever harping upon these

* Butler's Sermons, 1st Ser. pp. 33, 36.

chronological mistakes of the people of God in other times, and who adduce them as an argument why we should let the whole subject alone and have no expectation with reference to it. I fear that those who thus shrink from all outgoings of anxious desire and anticipation of the speedy coming of the Bridegroom, and who are so impatient with the subject, are not yet in such deep harmony with the spirit of grace and hope as to render them altogether safe if that day were to come upon them in their present condition.

Again to use the words of the eloquent preacher already quoted, "Nature,-uncorrupted nature,through all her regions, cries aloud for Him who is to rectify her unwilling disorders, to repair her shattered structures, to restore her oppressed energies, to vindicate her voice of conscience, long despised,— her sublime testimony to the Creator, so long questioned or overlooked. But what is this to the demand of grace for the coming of Him who is not only the great God, but our Savior? If the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain for the manifestation of the sons of God, what shall be the desires of the sons of God themselves! What shall be their ardor to realize that liberty of the children of God, of which such great things are spoken to behold their own lowliness glorified in the glory of the man of Nazareth, their humble labors recognized by the approval of a God once more manifest in the flesh, their persevering faith vindicated, their hope consummated, their charity bright-,

ening into a reward eternal and infinite! They know well the value of that union which identifies the triumph of the Savior and the saved. They rejoice to think that, as a humiliated Redeemer came first to point us the path of humiliation, so must a glorified Redeemer point us the path of glory; that the Captain of salvation, who bore the cross in front of his army of believers, must come to teach them also how to wear the crown. Yes all proclaims and demands the return of Christ to the world,-all, but the unsanctified heart of man! There alone no voice is heard to welcome the mighty stranger. There alone the dawn of this eternal orb is contemplated with hatred, horror, and dismay. Hearts that are inured to the world's corruptions, how shall they hail an immortality of meekness, simplicity, and love? Spirits habituated to seek unholy ends by means yet more unholy, how shall they endure the bringing in of an everlasting righteousness? Those whose whole hopes, prospects, and calculations are bound up with the fortunes of the world as it is, how shall they regard otherwise than with terror this awful revolution in the administration of the universe, when He who now rules behind a mass of permitted evil shall himself personally and visibly assume the reins of universal empire?" And those who are disposed to sport and jeer at the over-haste in the anticipations of the saints in former ages, and refer to their miscalculations by way of casting odium upon those of similar disposition in the present, have reason to suspect that there is yet

something wanting in their own souls to fit them for the solemn administrations toward which we are

all hastening.

Let each one, then, search himself with reference to this point, and see to it that there be no secret skepticism of heart and no hidden idolatry of self at the bottom of this boasted superiority of enlightenment, and this proud and sport-making indifference toward the great subject of the Lord's speedy return. If we have not learned to "love his appearing" and are not ready to welcome its speedy arrival, depend upon it, there yet remains a great revolution to be wrought in us before we are properly attuned to the spirit of the New Testament or prepared for "the inheritance of the saints in light." May God forgive the unbelief of his professed people, and change the hard-heartedness of those who verily deal with this subject as if they would rather the world should never be redeemed, than that Jesus should return to it as he has promised!