darkened and the mirth of the land is gone? Is it to scoff with the Infidel, saying, "Where is the promise of his coming?" Is it with the panicsmitten statesman to grow pale with looking after those things that are coming on the earth? Or is it with a careless Church to say, "My Lord delayeth his coming," why should I alarm or vex myself with such distractions? No. But to give far more earnest heed to the one guiding lamp of Scripture; and, watching the parallel progress of event and prophecy, to mark the signs of the times, that she may be able to tell each inquirer, "What of the night?" We are fallen upon evil days and perilous times. Iniquity abounds, and the love of many is chilled. And shall not this awaken us to watchfulness? Shall it not lead us to trim our lamps and gird up our loins? The storms that during the last half century have burst over the nations, wrecking the goodly fabrics of the olden time, have left us but a few remaining fragments; and as we stray along the shore in this the dull evening of time, marking their decaying remnants, we are filled with foreboding doubts of the future; and seeing the heaven still clouded, we cannot help believing that the storm is still unspent. Woe be to us, if it overtake us unawares, and encompass us in a moment with its fury, unsheltered and unprepared! ing and convulsed, reeling to and fro like a drunkard, and everything is out of course; when Infidelity, like some universal solvent, is dismembering and levelling the national and social system; when everything seems starting from its long-rooted base, as if gravitation itself had given way; when the Church is sore pressed and straitened, seeing traitors admitted within its camp, and the enemy's ranks augmented by desertions from its own; when Popery, Infidelity, and Liberalism, firm leagued together in wellpleased confederacy, are maddening against her with infuriated zeal; when the kings of the earth and the governments of the people are taking counsel against the Lord and his Anointed ;-how intense the interest which the Church ought to feel in the "sure word of prophecy," how earnestly ought she to take heed to it as to a light shining in a dark place until the day dawn and the day-star arise! What then is the duty of every saint in an hour of darkness like the present? Is it to sit idle like the worldling, saying, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die "? Is it to sigh with the sentimentalist over the disastrous blight of this world's beauty, the wrecks of its ancestral might and glory? Is it to lament like the sensualist, because the new wine mourneth and the vine languisheth; or with the merry-hearted, because all joy is darkened and the mirth of the land is gone? Is it to scoff with the Infidel, saying, "Where is the promise of his coming?" Is it with the panicsmitten statesman to grow pale with looking after those things that are coming on the earth? Or is it with a careless Church to say, "My Lord delayeth his coming," why should I alarm or vex myself with such distractions? No. But to give far more earnest heed to the one guiding lamp of Scripture; and, watching the parallel progress of event and prophecy, to mark the signs of the times, that she may be able to tell each inquirer, "What of the night?" We are fallen upon evil days and perilous times. Iniquity abounds, and the love of many is chilled. And shall not this awaken us to watchfulness? Shall it not lead us to trim our lamps and gird up our loins? The storms that during the last half century have burst over the nations, wrecking the goodly fabrics of the olden time, have left us but a few remaining fragments; and as we stray along the shore in this the dull evening of time, marking their decaying remnants, we are filled with foreboding doubts of the future; and seeing the heaven still clouded, we cannot help believing that the storm is still unspent. Woe be to us, if it overtake us unawares, and encompass us in a moment with its fury, unsheltered and unprepared! CHAPTER II. THE USE OF PROPHETIC STUDY. We believe that much of the present indifference to prophetic study has arisen from the want of unity among Christians. The "communion of saints" is neither known nor prized. It may be admired in theory, but the fellowship itself is little understood. The Churches sit apart, looking coldly, perhaps enviously on each other. The desire for union, as hitherto expressed, has in it more of the sentimental than the Scriptural. We seem to reckon ourselves merely individual possessors of a common faith, not living, sympathetic members of one body. The result of this has been that those parts of Scripture only have been studied which as individuals we could feed upon, while those portions which address the Church as a body have been neglected; and as prophecy especially addresses the Church corporately, not in fragments, its profit has been undervalued and the study of it slighted. But let us be brought back to concern ourselves about the Church as a body, to shake off this false idea or feeling of isolation, to realize the communion of the saints; then shall we begin to look about us for some inspired information respecting the character, the condition, the posture, the prospects of the Church. And so it always has come to pass that in times of trouble and persecution, when cast off by the world and drawn together by the sympathies of a common interest, a common suffering, and a common hope, the eye of the Church has been turned to the prophetic page, and from it has gathered that strength and guidance which no other part of Scripture could so fittingly supply. At present, we are too much at ease, resting securely, in league, or at least, at truce with the world; thus we forget our common interests and think solely of our individual concerns. The prophetic chart is thrown aside the prophetic lamp is allowed to burn on unheeded. But should a day arrive when the world's slumbering hostility shall awake and burn red against us, when our long dream of peace shall melt away, and darkness overcloud us,-then shall we turn with no careless eye to the " more sure word of prophecy," dwelling with deeper delight upon its glowing visions, wearying more anxiously for the day of promised rest, praying more fervently for the shortening of the time of tribulation, the coming C ; |