POWER OF THE DOCTRINE.

The prominence of the position assigned to the doctrine of our Lord’s second coming in the Sacred Scriptures at once establishes its practical value. One verse in thirty of the New Testament, let it be remembered, points with eager gesture to His promised and expected return as the radiant object of Christian hope. As previously shown, it is constantly held forth to arm the believer for the conflicts of life, to strengthen him for its toils, to cheer him in its trials, and to comfort him amid its sorrows. It forms the foundation of the most solemn warnings, it gives point to the most earnest exhortations, and it is interwoven with the most tender encouragements addressed to us in the word of God. If we tear it away from that word by the rude hand of a violent criticism, it is like despoiling a beautiful edifice of all its adornments, and making it rather a silent memorial of the past than a furnished habitation for the future. If we even forget that it is in the word, and that it is there to attract our daily contemplation, we lose much of the joy which our Father has provided for His children while tarrying in the earthly house of this tabernacle; and we are sure to have our attention called to passing scenes and worldly prospects, that are unsuited to our peculiar character as strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

“The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort,” who has made such ample provision, not only for our present and assured salvation through the perfect and finished work of His dear Son, but for our constant refreshment by the way, knows what is best adapted to our wants along the journey; and those who have carefully read what goes before, and who maintain a posture of humble and intelligent subjection to His revealed will, can not doubt that the truth to which He continually directs our thoughts In the future is the second coming of our Saviour. This truth, however, may be perceived distantly and intellectually, as Lord Bolingbroke is said to have seen, in the darkness of his infidelity, certain doctrines clearly stated in the Bible, when he gallantly offered the services of his pen to Lady Huntingdon in defence of her assailed system of faith; and we must remember that there is an immense difference between believing with the mind and believing with the heart. Perhaps by none has “that blessed hope” been more obscured than by those who have recognized it as taught in the Bible, but have failed to receive its transforming power into their own souls. They have made it the starting-place for wild speculations, and have succeeded too often in diverting the gaze of the believer from the coming of the Lord to signs and wonders that have invariably disappointed the expectations of their dupes. It is impossible to sum up the manifold evils that have resulted from the dangerous artifice of Satan in turning so many of God’s people from the sober and sound exposition of prophecy, to loose predictions that have no other basis than the vagaries of a distempered imagination.

It should be enough to excite the suspicion of Christians who are walking in the light, to discover that the views of many writers on the second advent call them away from the calm and joyful consideration of the person and work of their Lord to the decrees of emperors, the decisions of cabinets, the discoveries of science, the exploits of warriors, and the vicissitudes of nations. That surely is a hazardous theory which projects anything, even to the thickness of the thinnest tissue-paper, between the soul and the Saviour; and precisely the same objection which can be brought with tremendous force against post-millennialists, who separate the waiting Bridegioom a thousand years from the expecting bride, may be urged against pre-millennialists who separate Him by the interval of intervening events, which they fancy must necessarily occur previous to His coming. In both cases, the attention is summoned away from the Son of God to something earthly, and this can never be done without flattening and weakening the tone of the spiritual life. The name of Jesus is the key that unlocks the mysteries of the Scriptures, and imparts light and significance to the dullest details of Old Testament history, and of Jewish ceremonies, and of genealogical tables. With that most precious and worthy name kept perpetually and prominently before the mind, we are pursuing a safe line of interpretation; but if the eye is removed from Him, although it may be to that which concerns His kingdom, we are instantly exposed to the peril of being lured, by the false fires that gleam all around us to uncertain ground.

It should also excite the suspicion of Christians when they discover that according to the views of a certain class of pre-millennial as well as post-millennial writers, who call our attention from the hope of Christ’s coming to the events which they imagine will precede His coming, one must acquire a vast amount of human learning, before he is prepared to form an intelligent opinion of the second advent. He must be familiar with the history of the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Grecian, and Roman empires, and with the changes that have occurred in Europe and Western Asia for more than eighteen hundred years. He must keep pace with the rapid march of the discoveries and revolutions of the age by a diligent perusal of the daily journals, and by plunging into the wilderness of a purely secular literature, which, however it may enhance his reputation as a man of varied information, and win the applause of the world, is almost sure to bring upon him leanness and barrenness of soul.

It is a fundamental principle of Protestantism that the Bible is God’s book intended for all His children alike; and that with the anointing which we have received of Him, and which abideth with us, we need not that any man teach us, but each may know for himself, if really subject to the authority of His word, all the duties and doctrines it reveals, and all that pertains to life and godliness. It is difficult, therefore, to determine whether there is more dangerous error in the oft-repeated statement, “Science is the handmaid of Religion,” or in the constant reference that is made to the “Teachings of the Church.” Many Christians, for example, browbeaten by the very impudence of Geology, make haste to admit in the face of God’s word that the days of creation, which were plainly days of twenty-four hours, made up of the evening and morning, and hence formed by the revolution of the earth upon its axis, were vast indefinite periods extending through millions of years; and they further admit that during these periods death held high carnival, in the face of God’s word which clearly states that “by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin” They seem to fear that without these admissions they themselves will be considered ignorant by somebody, and that men of science will become infidels; forgetting that if men of science are such fools as to become infidels, they will neither hurt God, nor His word that liveth and abideth forever, but the loss will be entirely their own, since they will certainly go to hell.

Others have their minds diverted from the teachings of the Sacred Scriptures by that vague and undefined expression, “the teachings of the Church” when it would probably puzzle them sorely to tell what they mean by the Church, whether the Pope, or the Councils, or the Bishops, or the Priests, or the Preachers, or the people. But he who is taught by the Spirit to know the things that are freely given to us of God needs neither Science nor the Church to instruct him concerning the origin and the destiny of the earth, to inform him what it was that brought all this woe upon us, and what is to be the end of it all. The humble artisan or the unpretending peasant who toils from sunrise to sunset in his shop or field, having neither capacity nor leisure for heaping together knowledge as riches, may, nevertheless, in his morning and evening hours and on the Lord’s day, learn more real truth than the most erudite scholar or the most accomplished ecclesiastic; and he may certainly receive the precious truth of Christ’s second coming, to animate him in his round of wearisome labor, without reading one line outside of the inspired writings. He is not called to rummage through human history or the decrees of religious bodies before he can understand the meaning of the language, “Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh,” (James v: 8); and before being led by it and by scores of similar declarations to turn away from every thing beside in order to watch daily for Jesus, in happy ignorance of all that is transpiring in the busy world.

The first illustration, then, of the power of the doctrine concerning our Lord’s second advent is suggested by the fact that, when believed not only with the mind but with the heart, its necessary effect is to keep the attention continually directed to the Saviour. It is for this reason, doubtless, the subject is so prominently set forth by the Holy Ghost in the word. God saw that it was good for His children, according to the mental and moral constitution with which He had endowed them, and the new nature which He had bestowed, that there should be an object of hope constantly before them, a goal upon which they might fasten their steadfast gaze, a point in the future to which they should hasten with undivided purpose; and hence, as already proved. He taught them from the beginning of the Christian dispensation' “to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come,” (1 Thess. i: 10). It did not please Him to reveal the time of His Son’s return from heaven, even to the angels, much less to men, because this would have deprived the doctrine of all power except with those living at the very close of the present dispensation, but He instructed the Apostles to lift up their eyes for it in their day, and through them He instructed each succeeding generation, and every Christian of each generation, to stand in an attitude of habitual expectancy and of ardent longing for this great event as possible, and not improbable, any hour.

He did not wish His elect, whom He chose in Christ before the foundation of the world,, to substitute in place of the truth which He set fully in their view, the progress of mankind in the arts and sciences, and in the attainment of good government, nor yet the varying triumphs of the Church along the track of its checkered career; but to have their loins girded about, and their lights burning, and to be like unto men that wait for their Lord, when He will return from the wedding, that when He cometh and knocketh, they may open unto Him immediately. The power and value of a doctrine which leads the soul to an easy and established posture of waiting and watching for Jesus Himself can hardly be overestimated. An old proverb, often heard, it is said, in many portions of Asia, declares that, “If you think of Buddha, and pray to Buddha, you will become Buddha”; and surely that which necessitates a constant thought of Christ, and fervent desire for Christ, and as a consequence, close communion with Christ, can not be otherwise than in the highest degree beneficial to the believer. Such must always be the result, to some extent at least, when the truth of our Lord's pre-millennial advent is intelligently and sincerely received, as thousands can testify from their own experience.

Dr. Chalmers says, as recorded in his Memoirs, “On Friday, among other visitors, there came to us Mr. Cunningham, of Lainshaw, whose visit has greatly interested and impressed me. He has been reading Irving’s work on ‘Prophecy’; and though he has some systematic objections to it, yet, on the whole, is highly pleased. At dinner we introduced the topic, and had during the whole of his stay, a deal of Christian conversation, which the company at large not only tolerated, but I believe enjoyed. I must say thal there appears to me something very enviable in Mr. Cunningham’s state, living, as he does, in constant spirituality; and he affirms the connection to be such between this and the study of prophecy, and that himself has profited so exceedingly as to the state of his own heart, by the attention which he has given to it, that I feel strongly inclined, and indeed promised to Mr. Cunningham that I would make more particular effort both of his books and Mr. Irving’s. He promises me a world of enlargement and enjoyment from the study, and says that I have been wasting my efforts upon political economy. I do not yet altogether agree with him; but, oh! that I had the devotedness of that man! I am sure it is the way to be happy here as well as hereafter. I trust that I have received an impulse from his conversation,” (Vol. Ill, p. 135).

That this impulse was not temporary but permanent we may judge from his clearly expressed pre-millennial sentiments in subsequent years, and from the increased fervor of his own devotedness to the close of his earthly pilgrimage. Thus we find him writing to Dr. Horace Bonar, the well-known advocate of Christ’s coming before the Millennium, in commendation of the doctrines and progress of the South Country School, and saying, “It is not of your prophetical, but of your theological views, that I now speak, though to the former, also, I approximate much nearer than I did in my younger days,” (Correspondence, p. 306). Again on Ps. l: 1-6, he writes, “This is a remarkable Psalm, and the subject of it seems to lie within the domain of unfulfilled prophecy. There has been no appearance yet from Mt. Zion at all corresponding with that made from Mt. Sinai. And I am far more inclined to the literal interpretation of this Psalm than to that which would restrict it to the mere preaching of the gospel in the days of the Apostles. It looks far more like the descent of the Son of Man on the Mount of Olives, with all the accompaniments of a Jewish conversion, and a first resurrection, and a destruction of the assembled hosts of Anti-Christ (Posth. Works, Vol. Ill, p. 51). Again on Ps? lxviii: 18-35, says, “There is every likelihood of allusions here to the great contest of the Book of Revelation. . . . But God has in reserve for His people still another restoration. He will bring them again, as of old, from Bashan and the Red Sea, to their own land. His people will ‘see Him whom they pierced,’ perhaps when His feet stand on the Mount of Olives, and Jerusalem will again become the great central sanctuary by becoming the metropolis of the Christian world,” (Vol. Ill, p. 69). Surely it is very interesting and suggestive to observe how this honored servant of the Lord, as he became more familiar with the Sacred Scriptures, and more and more consecrated to Christ, became more and more pre-millennial in his faith and hope.

Of course it is not meant that this must always be the experience of those who merely study the doctrine of the second advent; for none can receive it except it be given to them of our Father; but when cordially embraced, it works a marvellous transformation in the believer’s character and conduct, because it brings him daily, as it were, into the immediate presence of Jesus. From that time he lives under the very eye of his coming Lord. He rises in the morning with the inspiring thought stirring his soul that he may hear the shout of His descending Saviour before night; and with such a thought attending the following hours of labor and relaxation, it is impossible that he should be self-seeking in his aims, or excessively concerned about his reputation among men, or harassed with the cares of life, or adopt human expedients to achieve success, or sink into the insensibility of spiritual slumber. He has neither taste nor time for personal and inferior objects, because he has heard the sweet promise, “Surely, I come quickly”; and having entered into the meaning of it, he stands gazing through the surrounding gloom, to catch the first rays of the morning star, engrossed with the person of his expected Redeemer. Like Enoch, the seventh from Adam, of whose ministry we know nothing, save that he preached the doctrine of the second and pre- millennial advent of Christ, his walk will be with God in the energy of this precious faith, because he knows that at any time it may be said of him, “He- was not; for God took him.”

In the second place, of this faith pre-eminently it may be affirmed, “This is the victory that overcometh the world.” In nothing, probably, has the evil of the post-millennial heresy been more abundantly exhibited than in blinding the Church to the essential and unchangeable characteristics of the world, that not only eighteen hundred years ago, but that still, and that to the end, lieth in the wicked one. He is as truly the god of this world, the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, as he was at the beginning; and yet he has deluded the children of obedience to a fearful extent into the dangerous fancy that the world is growing better, that it is ceasing from its enmity to the cross of Christ, that it is rapidly attaining a higher and yet higher Christian civilization, until, under the combined influence of science and religion, it is supposed the nations will enter upon a long period of millennial blessedness. What meanwhile is the relation of the Church to Christ.? That of a bride to a bridegroom; for “we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery; but I speak concerning Christ and the Church,” (Eph. v: 30-32). What place had the Bridegroom in the world? It furnished him a manger among the beasts of the stall for his cradle, a cross on which to die, a borrowed tomb in which His mangled body was buried; and during the interval it so thoroughly rejected Him that He had not where to lay His head. What too is His own testimony concerning the emotions appropriate to the bride after His cruel rejection and brutal murder.? “Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast,” (Matt, ix: 15).

Least of all did He intimate that His Church, the elect assembly, the “little flock,” would win the approval and love of the world, and exchange pledges of mutual affection, and conform to its ways, and receive its maxims, and act on its principles, and follow its fashions, and keep even with it in the mad race for earthly gain and good. Among his parting words He said, “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love His own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you. The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also,” (John xv; 18-20). “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world,” (John xvi: 33). So in His last beautiful, intercessory prayer before His agony in the garden. He addressed His Father in behalf of His disciples to the end of the dispensation, saying, “I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil [or evil one]. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world,” (John xvii: 14-16).

After His departure, the Holy Ghost takes up the testimony, and repeats it in the most solemn and emphatic language. “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God,” (Rom. xii: 2). Christ “gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father,” (Gal. i: 4). “Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity against God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God,” (James iv: 4). “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him,” (1 John ii: 15). “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God [and we are, add all the ancient MSS.]: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not,” (1 John iii: 1); but, alas! the world does know us too well as the consequence of an intimate and unhallowed association with its aims and purposes. “Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you,” (1 John iii: 13). “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness,” [or the wicked one]. “Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you,” (Luke vi: 26). “For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ,” (Gal. i: 10). It is impossible, then, to draw the line of distinction and separation between the Church and the world more clearly and sharply than has been done by Christ and to the Holy Ghost. But what do we see? That line trampled out as the bride of the King of kings rushes across it to be caught to the embrace of His unchanging foe by arms that are lifted in defiance of His authority, and by hands yet red with His blood. We witness on every side indications of the last days when perilous times shall come; when many in the Church shall be “lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof”; and when Christendom with its proud boast that it is rich, and increased with goods, and has need of nothing, is ready to be spewed out of the mouth of our insulted Lord.

No Christian can doubt that a doctrine specially adapted to break the Circean spell which the world has cast upon the Church to her deep degradation and dishonor, must be of divine power and unspeakable value. Such a doctrine, it is obvious, is found in the statements of God’s word concerning the second coming of Christ, not as an event that can be of personal interest only to those living more than a thousand years after the present, but as an event which our own eyes may behold this very hour, in all its peerless magnificence and with all its momentous consequences. If we really believed this to be both possible and probable, and therefore turned to it with souls lightened by the beams of its approaching glory and thrilled by the solemnities of its results, worldliness would be checked, and killed, and extirpated from our hearts. We could not then make provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof. We could not then look at the things which are seen and temporal, as of chief importance in our esteem, but at the things which are not seen and eternal. We could not then fret, and plan, and scheme, and pursue the winding paths of human policy to accomplish our ends; but we would be instantly lifted by this sublime truth above the crooked ways of nature into a higher, clearer, purer region, “waiting for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ,” (1 Cor. i: 7).

History informs us that toward the close of the tenth century, the most intense excitement prevailed throughout a large part of Europe, owing to a belief which extensively prevailed, that at the end of the first thousand years of the Christian era, Christ would return to the earth. Multitudes sold their estates to unbelievers and gave away the proceeds in charities, business was neglected, the fields were left uncultivated, and for some years the wildest confusion and terror reigned. It is humiliating to discover that eminent writers, professing to know the gospel of the grace of God, can use this fact as an argument against the doctrine of our Lord’s pre-millennial advent. They do not remember that at that time darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the people. They do not reflect that the trepidation which shook the continent of Europe was the legitimate result of the views now commonly held of the relation of Christ’s second coming to His millennial reign; for in those ages of ignorance, and superstition, and legalism, it was generally believed that the thousand years commenced with the birth of the Saviour, and hence the fanatical crowds that were so alarmed Were not pre- millennialists, but post-millennialists. They do not consider the proof which their argument furnishes of the low and lamentable state of the Church, when they endeavor to show that the appropriate and unavoidable effect of teaching the doctrine of our Lord’s second coming is to produce the greatest agitation and fear.

If such is the effect, it is high time to arouse those who are made afraid; for it is exceedingly questionable whether their hope of heaven is not a horrible delusion. It was a leading characteristic of the early Christians that they loved His appearing; and if any who now profess to be Christians do not love it, they ought to be made to understand that there is no promise of a crown of righteousness for them at that day. What would you think of an exile, if he were to exhibit the deepest distress and grief at the summons to return home after years of lonely wandering in distant lands? What would you think of a citizen, if he were to turn pale on hearing that the court will soon convene, and the judge will ascend the tribunal? What would you think of a wife, if she shuddered and trembled at the announcement that she might expect her absent husband any hour? There is a conscious guilt there that makes them cowards; and when those who claim to be Christians cry out that they can not bear the doctrine of our Lord’s second advent, they give melancholy evidence of knowing that there is an unsettled controversy between them and God. They can not think without terror of Christ’s coming, because they are not prepared for it; as persons often speak of trying to be prepared for death, thereby showing their utter ignorance of the gospel. It is not by trying we are prepared, but by believing; it is not by doing, but by resting on that which is already done; it is not by baptism administered in the way of immersion, or in any other manner; it is not by confirmation, though received at the hands of all the bishops on the face of the earth; it is not by ceremonies and sacraments, but through faith in the precious blood of Christ alone, as cleansing us here, and now, and forevermore, from all sin, we are made ready either for a dying bed, or to be manifested before the judgment seat.

The doctrine of the second advent, when rightly understood, produces no terror nor disquietude, but comfort, and peace, and a joyful separation from evil. It instantly adjusts the relation between heavenly and earthly things, but it does not lead to the neglect of any present duty, nor to the abandonment of any proper employment. It only exercises the believer to be a man of the tent and the altar here below, as faithful Abraham was; to stand aloof from entangling alliance with the scene about him that will drag his spirit into the dust; and to act in the consciousness that the Lord is at hand, before whom we must all be manifested, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. It forces us to remember that “our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body,” (Phil, iii: 20, 21); and hence It bids us, as we move across the face of the earth, to be

“Like ships in seas, while in, above the world.”

The fact is the Church has become so entangled with the world by the post-millennial heresy, that the former unconsciously adopts the modes of thought and maxims, and principles of the latter. Hence so many Christian ministers delight to preach about the progress of the age, without stopping to inquire what direction the progress is taking, whether from Christ or towards Christ. Hence too, it is no uncommon thing to hear from the pulpit idle talk affirming the inalienable rights of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to trial by jury, to vote, and to other fancied privileges. Such language may sound very well from the lips of politicians, but surely the child of God ought to know that man has no inalienable rights, except the right to be damned, and that there is nothing good in him except as it is wrought by sovereign grace. Instead, therefore, of being governed by what the world thinks, and following what the world does, we should never forget that the whole world lieth in the wicked one, and that we, as strangers and pilgrims here, must beware of driving our tent pins too deeply in the earth, but sit loosely to all its interests, and stand aloof from all its purposes and plans, “waiting for the coming of Christ.” His word contains plain directions to guide His disciples in every relation which He calls them to sustain; and by keeping the eye steadily and singly fixed upon HIM the whole body will be full of light, and there will be no occasion of stumbling in us. Looking back to His finished work on the cross, and forward to the glory that is to be revealed at His appearing, we shall be peaceful amid all the confusions of the unbelieving, and happy even while listening to the voice of His rod.