THE SUDDEN COMING. THE PULPIT IN THE FAMILY. THE SUDDEN COMING. "Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith IM of Malachi. the Lord of hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth?"—Mal. iii. 1, 2. ALACHI was the last of the prophets. After a space of four hundred years, in which no prophet appeared, then came John the Baptist. He is the messenger spoken of here; the messenger, who was to be sent to prepare the way of the Lord. His coming was the next great event that was to happen after the prophecy Then after him, with hardly any interval, the Lord Himself was to come; "The Lord whom ye seek." Generation after generation, the Jews were looking for, desiring, seeking the promised Messiah. The Jews in Malachi's time were doing so. When the forerunner should have arrived and done his office, then the Lord Himself, the Messiah, should come. Though looked for continually, He should come suddenly, unexpectedly, because in an unlooked-for manner. He should suddenly come to His temple; He should appear there in person, and thus the glory of that latter house should be greater than that of the former. The temple of Solomon was far more magnificent; but Christ Himself was to be the glory of the rebuilt temple; the Son of God was to make it glorious by His presence. 66 But He too is called a messenger, the messenger of the covenant." He was to come as a far higher and greater messenger than John. The Baptist was but the messenger sent to prepare the way of Christ. But Christ was Himself "the messenger of the covenant;" He came from the Father, to bring the new covenant of grace, to proclaim the gospel. He came as the Messiah, the Saviour, the Redeemer. The new covenant was in Him, and He brought it Himself. "Whom ye delight in." The pious Jew (and there were such in the days of Malachi, as we find from v. 16), the pious Jew, by faith, delighted in the Messiah before his coming, even as Abraham, many hundreds of years before, rejoiced to see the day of Christ. The pious Jew thought of the promised coming of the Deliverer, longed for it, prayed for it, looked for it, rejoiced in it. SO And now, in the inspired words of the last of the prophets, the believing Jews of his day received a fresh assurance: "The Lord whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple. . . . behold, He behold, He shall come, saith the Lord of hosts." Let us pass over four hundred years, and turn to another scene. We find it described in the second chapter of St. Luke; the scene is in the temple at Jerusalem. An aged man has come thither to worship; he is one of those who are "waiting for the consolation of Israel," a believing Israelite, looking for the Messiah. But he has received a special assurance; he has been told by God that he shall not die till he has seen the Lord's Christ, the Messiah. Doubtless he daily frequents the temple. But time has passed, and he has grown old, and the Lord does 825 not come; yet still his faith holds out, still he believes the promise. A little child is brought into the temple, an infant. His parents, humble people, bring him in to do for him according to the law, to present him to the Lord, and to make the usual offering. No sooner does the aged Simeon see the child, than he knows that this is He! God has fulfilled his word, Simeon sees the Lord's anointed! Then he took the child in his arms, and blessed God in the words we know so well, beginning "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." The day had arrived. The Lord, so long sought for, had come; in this unexpected way He had suddenly come to His temple; not, as might have been thought, in some glorious appearance, but as a little child carried in his parent's arms. Thus the prophecy of Malachi was fulfilled. Thus the Lord did suddenly come to His temple. If the pious Jew of old rejoiced to see that day by faith, if Simeon saw in the coming of the Messiah all his hopes fulfilled, how should we rejoice! We know all that followed. We know of His life, and death, and resurrection, and ascension. We know that His blood atoned for sin, that He is our peace, that He won for us a complete salvation, and that He now ever lives for us. How should they who believe rejoice that He came to his temple, and never left this world till He had done all that He came for, and finished the great work of our salvation! But we are startled by the words that follow. Was not His coming, a coming to be glad for, to rejoice in? Did He not come to save? How is it then that we read, "But who may abide the day of His coming? and who shall stand when He appeareth?" This seems to point to something terrible, rather than joyful. Is this the coming that Simeon gave thanks for? Is it that coming, and that appearing, that are meant? No. Between these two verses, the eye of the prophet passes over a great space of time-how great, none can yet tell-and sees another coming, another appearance, very different from the first. How different! A babe was born in a manger at Bethlehem; a little child was brought to the temple by his parents: that was the first coming. What will the second be? "Behold, He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him. Even so. Amen." All must be present, all must see: "But who may abide the day of His coming? And who shall stand when He appeareth?" Not the impenitent, not the careless, not the half-hearted, the undecided, the procrastinating. procrastinating. All such will wail because of Him. Only those will stand before Him with joy, who are his by faith, sharers in the covenant of grace, delighting in Him, believing in Him, receiving Him, seeking, loving, and serving Him. There were such in Malachi's day, "they that feared the Lord," and "spake often one to another;" there were such when the Lord first came; there are such now; and some such will He find when He comes again. That also will be a sudden coming. How solemn a question is it: are we ready? We are living between the first coming and the second, in that very space which the prophetic view of Malachi passed over. We are told of the first coming, to save; we are warned of the second coming, to judge. Behold, now is the accepted time; behold now is the day of salvation." The Mystery of Life. So many years I've seen the sun, And called these hands and eyes my own, A thousand little acts have done, And childhood have, and manhood known. O what is life! and this dull round So many airy draughts and lines, And warm excursions of the mind, Have on my quivering soul had power, So at one interview displayed, And gentle ardours from above, Ere long, when sovereign Wisdom wills, This frame, and waft me to the dead: Where in their bright result shall rise "Now Consider. GAMBOLD. WOW therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts, Consider your ways" (Haggai i. 5). "In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider" (Eccles. vii. 14). "Oh that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!" (Deut. xxxii. 29). "Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the Lord He is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath there is none else" (Deut. iv. 39). : "Consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession. (hrist Jesus" (Heb. iii. 1). Pages for the young. THE WONDERFUL FLOWER-POT. CHAPTER II. LSIE had scarcely finished her last word when a very thoughtful look on her father's face suddenly cleared away, and with the exclamation, "The very thing!" the big baron jumped up from his easy-chair in a greater hurry than his little daughter had ever seen him do before. He had left the room before she or her mamma had recovered from their astonishment, or could ask any questions. A quarter of an hour had scarcely passed when the door of that bright sitting-room opened again as quickly as it had shut, and the baron re-entered, followed by a couple of men-servants, who were vainly trying to persuade their master to let them take from him a small, well-shaped fir-tree he was carrying in his arms. "No, no, no," he said, ch erfully; "this is my latest present to Miss Elsie, and I wish to give it to her myself. You may go, both of you; I do not require your help." The men withdrew and closed the door, wondering to each other what their master could want with another fir-tree, why he had been in such a hurry to dig it out of his pet home plantation in the thick of the snow, and why he chose to carry it himself. But Elsie soon knew of answers to all these wonderings. 66 There, missie," said the baron, standing the little tree, from which the roots had been chopped, on the floor, and propped up against the table. "There is your tree for the charcoalburner's house. Now dress it up as fast as ever you can, and then you yourself shall be the one good fairy of whom you spoke a few minutes since." "Oh, you good, dear, darling papa!" exclaimed the little maiden, bounding from the floor, and flinging her arms round her father's neck she kissed him even more gratefully than she had done for any of his former gifts. Two minutes later she and her mamma were holding a very important consultation as to the gift-supporting capabilities of the new Christmas-tree. It had need have been even twice as big as the first one to hold all that Elsie deemed advisable to attempt putting on it. The Castle de Beumer had certainly never been known as the abode of brigands, or the haunt of midnight robbers, and yet wayfarers, passing it about half-past eight o'clock at night on. a certain starlight twenty-third of December, might well have entertained some suspicions. A party of five, muffled in ever so many thick, dark cloaks and wraps, issued quietly from the gates, and passed out into the frost-sparkling highroad. The foremost of the party carried a lantern, whose light was carefully hidden excepting when it was absolutely needed in order to avoid some unusually deep snowdrift. The two last of the mysterious party bore between them a large burden whose tapering top gave forth a wonderful gleam of brilliancy whenever the lantern's light happened to fall upon it. The two centre figures of the group might have puzzled strangers more than all the rest, for one was evidently that of a graceful, elegant woman, while the other was a little creature clothed from head to foot in a fur-lined cloak and hood, from the latter of which peeped forth two rosy scraps of cheek, and a pair of brown eyes radiant with the deepest joy. But whatever strangers might have thought of these night THE WONDERFUL FLOWER-POT. wanderers, you, my dear readers, have doubtless guessed that three of them, at any rate, were the Baron and Baroness de Benmor and their child. The others were two of the menservants, carrying the laden Christmas-tree destined to gladden the children of the charcoal-burner. “Oli, mamma," whispered Elsie, "I do hope they will have left their stick make-believe out in the yard still, and that they will all be gone to bed and to sleep." "I expect they are sure to be gone to bed, dear," said the Baroness gently, as she pressed her little daughter's hand more closely. "They are too poor, I fear, to be able to afford much candle-light." Ten minutes later the baron made a halt. They had reached the charcoal-burner's house, The cottage was wrapped in silence and darkness. All was as Elsie had hoped. The charcoal-burner and his family were all asleep, and the old flower-pot, with the pitiful paper-trimmed stick were discovered standing beside the wood-stack. Softly and cautiously the stick was removed, and the tree planted in its stead, being further steadied in the pot by means of some earth the baron had thoughtfully brought with him in a basket on his arm. Against it on one side the baroness placed a large paper parcel containing the many articles which the tree's branches had been found incapable of holding, and on the other side Elsie deposited a package containing all the requisites for a Christmas dinner. An hour later little Elsie had been given something warm to drink, and was tucked up cosily in her soft, comfortable bed, none the worse for her expedition through the winter night air. She had a queer dream as to what Reta and Franz thought when they found the new Christmas-tree; but even her dream, wonderful as it was, did not come up to the truth of what they really did think when they ran out in the first grey dawn of Christmas Eve to look after the welfare of their stick. Yes, yes," shouted little Leopold, "the old fower-pot is a fairy fower-pot, and has drown a beauful tree, and I love the old good fower-pot. Come-come and see," he continued, pulling at his mother's gown to draw her out into the yard to look at the wonder for herself. The eyes of the good mother grew almost as round and shining as those of her children when she stood gazing in breathless astonishment and bewilderment at the beautiful, unexpected gift. She was too old and too sensible to be able to believe, with her children, that fairies, or an invisible Santa Claus, had really had anything to do with the matter, and yet she could not make even a possible guess as to how the "stick had grown into the tree," as the children put it, been "changed into a tree," as she herself more sagely remarked. Meantime, while mother and the three little ones stood lost in admiration and surprise, the poor, lame, helpless father, on the bed inside the cottage, felt his curiosity growing to the very highest pitch, and at last he called out: It was a good thing that the peasant woman was strong, and that Reta and Franz had stout pairs of arms of their own, but even as it was, it proved very hard work, and a very great tug, to get that big flower-pot and its contents, from its shelter by the wood-stack up to the cottage-door, and it as nearly as possible tumbled right over when they had to lift it a little bit to get it across the doorsill. However, all difficulties wero 827 happily safely overcome, and in no very long time the beautiful Christmas gift stood in all its brightness before the charcoalburner's couch. "See, see," cried little Leopold, stooping yet lower, as he knelt beside the fine tree, patting the rim of the pot softly with his chubby hands to make sure it was real. "See, see mother, here's eyiting eyound the fower-pot." And so there was. On a band of gold paper was written in large letters with bright blue ink: "For the happy and contented family of Fritz Halbhand, the charcoal-burner, with Christmas greeting." Tears of grateful gladness came into the eyes of patient Fritz, and his loving, brave wife, as they read the kind words, but the children's eyes were too bright with joy to think of tears just then, as they wandered hither and thither over the tree, now arrested by an unusually big bunch of raisins or basket of sugar-plums, and again pausing, equally delighted at a pretty little doll in a gilt cradle, or a box of dominoes, or a gay Punchinello. But not till night came, and the many little coloured candles were all lighted, did Fritz and his wife find the two dark red morocco purses, which had been the good baron's own especial contribution to the tree's hangings, and which proved to contain enough money to provide that frugal, humble little household with bread, sausages, and candle-light for many a long month to come. They had been purposely hidden, the one behind a nice little workcase fitted up with scissors, thimbles, needles, and cottons, and the other behind a neatly-bound, giltedged little Bible. Elsie had said that finding the purses would be such a finish up, and so it proved, you may be very sure of that. Of course long before that time came Reta and Franz found the parcels that had been placed on either side the tree, and which had been quite overlooked in the great excitement it had occasioned. Although the parcels were nothing like so pretty as the tree itself, either inside or out, they were quite as good in their way, and it must be confessed, gave a great deal more comfort if not so much merry joy. One parcel, it has been already told, contained a nice Christmas dinner, the other consisted of a number of warm little frocks and petticoats, boots, and shoes, left off by Elsie, together with a warm fur hood. There were also flannel shirts of the baron's for poor Fritz, and a fine woollen travelling shawl of the baroness's for Fritz's wife, with cloth clothes to cut up for the little boys. Altogether that proved a bright winter to the family of the charcoal-burner, who had still said with brave, patient faces"Thy will be done," even when it had seemed to be the heavenly Father's pleasure to lay the hand of trouble on them heavily. Very often trouble would be lighter than it is, if the loving heavenly Father's purpose were more quickly accomplished of teaching his children to bow meekly to the hand that does not willingly afflict, but will try all means to gather his lambs into his fold. It was several years before little Leopold could be made quite to believe that the old red flower-pot was not a fairy flower-pot that had grown that glorious Christmas-tree in it of its own good nature. But there was one that, as time passed on, both he and all his family grew to be more and more sure about, and that was that the sweet, thoughtful Elsie de Beumer richly deserved all the happiness that seemed ever to fall back in such rich showers on her own head from the happiness she spread around her. The day came when the marvelling-eyed child, Leopold Halbband, was the sculptor still more widely known than the wealthy baron's daughter, and he was called on to execute one of the emblematical figures for a splendid monument. From all countries sightseers came to look at the group when it was finished, and it was always one figure that drew all eyes. Its air was so sweet, so gracious, and so noble, that all felt instinctively that it was not the white marble only that made it seem so strongly an embodiment of some true pure spirit. |