who, foreseeing the evil, takes refuge in the sin-atoning merits of Christ, how then stands the case? Whose will be the gain and whose the loss? The Christian will realize more than he had ever thought, or wished, or known;' but will the man who sneers at the idea of a personal God, and blasphemes Christ and his atoning work, share in the reward of virtue and purity? Not if God will 'render unto every man according to his deeds;' not if he will visit on them that are contentious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil.' How terrible it must be to one who has no place in his faith for God or Christ or immortality, to awake in the future life, to realize what a fearful thing it is to 'fall into the hands of the living God!' What must be the feelings of a soul that has passed into eternity, full of wrath and bitterness, when it stands before the righteous Judge, covered with moral pollution and, with the unrepented sins of a life-time resting on it, awakes to a faith without hope the faith of devils; awakes to a sense of the loss it has sustained, and to the magnitude of the ruin it has brought on itself? On the assumption that religion is only a fable, 'Our Rock is not as their rock, our enemies themselves being judges;' if it be true, the Christian gains all, and the unbeliever loses all. Wisdom, therefore, is the principal thing.' Reason, as well as religion, would admonish us that, where there is so much involved-such vast issues at stakethat the safe course is the wise course."

PERSONAL EXPRESSIONS OF BELIEF.

Victor Hugo, the great French author and novelist, whose life covered the space between A. D. 1802 and 1885, tells the story of his own faith in the following sublime language: "I feel in myself the future life. I am like a forest which has been more than once cut down. The new shoots are stronger and livelier than ever. I am rising, I know, toward the sky. The sunshine is on my head. The earth gives me its generous sap, but heaven lights me with the reflection of unknown worlds. You say the soul is nothing but the resultant of bodily powers. Why, then, is my soul the more luminous when my bodily powers begin to fail? Winter is on my head, and eternal Spring is in my heart. Then I breathe, at this hour, the fragrance of the lilacs, the violets, and the roses as at twenty years. The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is marvelous, yet simple. It is a fairy tale, and it is history. For half a century I have been

writing my thoughts in prose, verse, history, philosophy, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, song-I have tried all. But I feel that I have not said the thousandth part of what is in me. When I go down to the grave I can say, like so many others, 'I have finished my day's work;' but I can not say, 'I have finished my life.' My day's work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. It closes in the twilight to open with the dawn. I improve every hour, because I love this world as my fatherland. My work is only a beginning. My monument is hardly above its foundation. I would be glad to see it mounting and mounting forever. The thirst for the infinite proves infinity."

I can not help thinking that there is a better world, and a happier life for us all; but no one has come back to tell us. Well, we can at least hope for the best, and face the inevitable. (Thaddeus Stevens.)

For the great hereafter, I trust in the Infinite Love, as it is expressed to me in the life and death of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (Dr. J. G. Holland.)

The bird within the shell could not comprehend why wings were given for that cramped existence, but the almost unconscious flutter of the prisoned pinions was God's promise of another and a better life. (Duff Porter.)

We do not believe immortality because we have proved it, but we forever try to prove it because we believe it. (James Martineau.)

My belief in the immortality of the soul springs from the idea of activity; for when I persevere to the end in a course of restless activity I have a sort of guarantee from Nature that, when the present form of my existence proves itself inadequate for the energizing of my spirit, she will provide another form more appropriate. When a man is seventy-five years old, he can not avoid now and then thinking of death. This thought, when it comes, leaves me in a state of perfect peace; for I have the most assured conviction that our soul is of an essence absolutely indestructible-an essence that works on from eternity to eternity. It is like the sun, which to our earthly eyes sinks and sets, but in reality never sinks, but shines on unceasingly. (Goethe.)

THE SECOND ADVENT.

Several hundred passages in the Bible bear directly upon the doctrine of Christ's second coming to this our world. These are variously interpreted as to matters of minor import, according as people cherish

preconceived opinions about the things that shall accompany that

momentous event.

We do not purpose to introduce any theories here. It will be enough to show that the Word of God clearly teaches that as Christ came once into our world to effectuate man's redemption, so he will come again to receive his redeemed Church unto himself. This second coming, we believe, will be personal, visible, and glorious. Here are a few of the texts upon which our faith relies:

Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels." "And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory." "Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ." (Mark viii, 38; xiii, 26; Titus ii, 13. Also read carefully the entire twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, which some think was fulfilled at the destruction of Jerusalem.) The apostles came privately to Jesus, saying: "Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming and of the end of the world?" It is evident that they understood "these things" to include more than the destruction of the temple and of Jerusalem, for they distinctly specified "the end of the world." The answer of Jesus also contains expressions that could hardly have found fulfillment in the destruction of the holy city by Titus. For instance: "There shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be." "For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken; and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in the heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory." These things were not fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem, unless the words be so construed as to be almost without meaning.

We cite another passage: "And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?

This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." (Acts i, 9-11.) Dr. A. W. Pilzer has said of this passage that it " can not mean either death, or the outpouring of the Spirit, or the destruction of Jerusalem, or the triumph of the Gospel; it means, and can only mean, the BODILY RETURN OF JESUS, who was crucified, who was buried in Joseph's tomb, who rose again, who ascended into heaven."

That eminently solid, safe, and sound commentator, the late Dr. D. D. Whedon, utters language equally explicit. In his comment on the above passage he says: "This passage is an immovable proof-text of the actual personal second advent of Jesus. It is the same personal, visible Jesus which ascended that shall come. The coming shall be in like manner with the going. A figurative or spiritual coming would clearly not be a coming of the same Jesus, and still more clearly not a coming in like manner."

Again, in John xxi, 22, Jesus says of the apostle John: "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?" From that expression, St. John tells us, a rumor was current among the brethren that he should not die. Now, what "coming" was it here specified? We answer, it could not be the establishment of Christianity; for living until this coming specified implied perpetual exemption from death. Nor could it be Christ's coming to each man at death; for it implied that St. John, who should meet it, would not die. But it must be a second coming which introduced the eternal state; so that he who lived unto it would never die.

Richard Watson, the great theologian also affirms: "The Lord shall come and declare himself. And will he declare himself to be man or God? Will he justify the faith of his people, or refute it? He shall come; and in his time he shall show who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords.

'Yes, we shall see that day supreme,

When none his Godhead shall deny,

His sovereign majesty blaspheme,

Or count him less than the Most High.'

Faith is here looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God; is waiting for him in holy expectation, and loves his appearing; but the scoffers in all ages have said, 'Where is the promise of his coming? The day will come, the sign of the Son of man shall appear in the heavens, the veil of the heavenly temple shall be drawn aside, and he who went in there with a sin-offering as our Priest and

Intercessor shall come forth as the Judge of all, and the everlasting Savior of them who waited for him."

THE MILLENNIUM.

Most Christians have no set theories of any description concerning an earthly millennium. They do not claim to be wise respecting "the thousand-year" period, whether it will precede or follow the first resurrection, whether it will be a thousand solar years or an indefinite period, or whether sin shall absolutely cease and Satan be helplessly bound; all these things are uncertain, conjectural, and practically unimportant. What they claim is that there is a central truth in the doctrine of the millennium; Christianity will yet concentrate, as in a focus, in a flourishing period of the Church, and fulfill the unmistakable predictions of Scripture as to the universal reign of righteousness, and that somewhere, in connection with this glorious era of peace, probably at its close, the return of Jesus may be expected, to bless his Church and judge the world. When and how, in any precise detail, these things shall occur, no man knoweth; but their occurrence is certainly foretold in Scripture.

Our Lord himself has given one clear note: "And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world, for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end come." (Matt. xxiv, 14.) He does not say that all nations shall receive and obey the gospel, but that the proclamation of the gospel shall reach all the tribes of heathenism scattered over the earth. Until the world is evangelized in the New Testament sense of the word, the second advent may not occur; but when the world is thus evangelized, the Lord shall come and millennial glory shall overspread the earth. In a spiritual sense the Lord is here now, and will be "unto the end of the world;" so that in any final or proper sense his second coming can only be personal and visible at the end of time. With his coming shall be established the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Such passages as the following can only refer to this doctrine: "All nations whom thou hast made shall come and worship before thee, O Lord, and shall glorify thy name." "And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it." 66 They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."