What would it mean to you, to some of you who have so much invested
in Laurel Hill, in that white and beautiful city of the dead, by the
banks of your winding river?
When I was a boy my father took me there and I watched as the winds
rippled through the long grasses, and I could hear the wash of the
river below, I was startled and sometimes shivered as I walked under
the shadow of tall monuments, carved figures, and by stately tombs
of marble. And once I started back and broke into tears at the sight
of the sculptured form of "Old Mortality" bending above a slab with
chisel and mallet in hand--and I suppose is there still, grown older
in his stony face because more stained with the passing years.
What would it mean to you whose loved ones are lying in that
cemetery or any other of the sleeping places of the dead?
Ah! it would mean the home-coming, the greeting, the rapturous kiss
and hand-clasp of recognition, the joy of that heaven life that
shall know no end and that immortality that shall compensate for all
the weariness and the heartache of the mortal path here below.
Yes! it would mean to those of us who by faith in Christ Jesus are
children of the living God, the gathering to our arms again of those
who have left us and for whom our arms still ache to enfold them
once more. And O my soul! it would mean the seeing of Him whom our
soul loveth and who unfailingly has loved us; it would mean that
boon of boons--seeing Him face to face.
Do you wonder the Holy Spirit who is the finger of God has written
over against the word "hope," that qualification, "blessed," and
affixed to it the demonstrative, "that," so it doth read: "That
blessed hope"?
And yet! and yet! there are men who call themselves the ministers of
Christ who would blot out that hope and take away the vision of it
from our souls.
With cold, acute, metallic voices in which you may hear the sound of
the wheels of machinery and the buzz of business, they tell us that
should the Lord suddenly come it would paralyze all industry, put an
end to commerce and to trade, overthrow all progress, make worthless
every high endeavour for the betterment of man, shut the doors of
school, of college and university, render useless the architect's
and builder's plans, throw down the mechanic's tools, the artist's
brush, the sculptor's chisel, the writer's pen, still the orator's
tongue, make null and void the legislator's high emprise and draw a
line of atrophy across the unfolding processes of human life.
Oh, foolish, blind and slow to believe, do you not see that if the
Lord should come it would lift our so-called civilization out of the
slime and shame of its brazen folly and reeking, though perfumed sin
into the glory of eternal righteousness and peace?
Do you not see that it would, at last, make men immortal and give
them such beauty of form, such sanity and such culture and worth of
being as all the gymnasia and all the eugenics of the hour have
failed and will ever fail to achieve?
Do you not see that if the Lord should suddenly come it would at
once open the gates of knowledge and bring us face to face with the
secrets of the universe and make us masters under God of all natural
laws such as all the curriculae of all the institutions of learning,
of applied science and philosophy have failed to impart?
Do you not see it would be the fulfillment of the highest ideals and
aspirations and would make man what the creator of heaven and earth
originally intended man should be--not an animal working with tools
and breaking his heart in vain finally to achieve--but a very God
who should speak and it should be done, command and it should stand
fast; and who should be the incarnate revelation, the eternal
enthronement of the invisible God, in power, in character and
holiness?
Do you not see it would change this old earth from the swinging
cemetery of the dead into the home of deathless men, the home of the
eternal and worth-while life?
Oh, listen to me all who hear me!
The hope for this world of daily toil and tears, of graves and
unceasing tragedy, of pitiful woe, is not that slow creeping thing
called evolution, wallowing on its serpentine belly amid the dust of
death and the crime and sin of unchanged and unchangeable human
nature--but God Himself--God in Christ, the personal Coming of Him
who is the maker of heaven and earth, coming to bring in the new
dawn, the new day, the new earth and the new empire of God and man.
Oh, tell me those of you who have been redeemed by blood,
regenerated by the Spirit, made partakers of the divine nature,
turned heavenward by the power of God, who see cloudless daylight in
the Bible, even in the darkness of a spiritual night, hear music in
its promises and whose souls are filled with love to God and love to
man, tell me would you like Him to come, would you like to see your
Lord face to face?
Oh, you who have had the vision of His cross behold it, I beseech
you, there!
The head crowned with thorns, the nailed hands, the nailed feet, the
pierced side, the blood pouring out of those hands, gliding round
His body, weaving itself in its sinuous course over the white flesh
into a robe of crimson, and then streaming out into a fringe of
intense scarlet as it drops, drop by drop to the thirsty ground,
dripping, dripping there. Oh, I can see it and I seem to feel the
warm touch of it, the strange, the wonderful cleansing touch of it,
the only thing that can make a blackened sinner white; and as it
drops each drop seems to say till it turns to very music in the
soul:
"Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though
they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."
Listen to the dropping of that blood out of the heart of God, every
drop the price current of the merchant, the half shekel of the
sanctuary, the purchase price of your redemption and mine and the
seal of infinite love, of measureless grace.
Oh, tell me would you like Him to come, transfigure you into the
beauty of His likeness and put the benediction of His peace upon
this old sin-smitten, tear-stained earth?
Do you ever pray the last prayer recorded in Holy Scripture, the
last prayer of the Holy Apostolic Church?
Listen to it! Listen to it well!
"Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus."
Is this prayer in your heart?
Does it ever come to your lips?
Do you ever genuinely and openly offer it, wishing with all your
heart it might be so, might be answered in your time; or, have you
forgotten it like the Church at large?
Do you feel ashamed or afraid to offer it in public?
When you try to offer it in private or public does unbelief smother
it?