Sometimes too a feeble, doubting, or, it may be, inconsistent saint, asks in wonder, How are you so strong, so hardy, so able for the struggle, so successful in the battle ? She answers, "X watch." Or he asks, How do you keep up a tone so elevated, and maintain a walk so close, so consist- ent, so unearthly ? She answers, " I watch." Or he asks, How do you over- come sloth, and selfishness, and love of ease ; or check fretfulness and anxiety, or gain the victory over a delaying spirit ? She answers, " I watch." Or he asks, How do you make head against your fears, and challenge danger, and defy enemies, and keep under the flesh ? She replies, " I watch." Or he asks, How do you wrestle with your griefs, and dry up your tears, and heal your wounds, nay, glory ia tribulation ? She answers, *' I watch."
Oh what this watching can do, to one c 2
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who understands it aright ! Faith alone will not do. Love alone will not do. Ex- pectation alone will not do. Obedience alone will not do. There must be watching. And this watching takes for granted the suddenness and uncertainty of the day of the Lord. It does not say, the Lord must come in my day ; but it says, the Lord may come in my day, therefore I must be on the outlook. This may come is the secret of a watchful spirit. Without it we cannot watch. We may love, and hope, and wait ; but we cannot watch. Our lamps are to be always trimmed. Why? Not merely because the Bridegroom is to come, but because we know not how soon he may come. Our loins are to be always girt up. Why? Not simply because we know that there is to be a coming ; but because we know not when that coming is to be.*
* Thus one wrote two hundred years ago : " All is night that is here, therefore sigh and long for the dawn- ing of that morning, and the breaking of that day of the coming of the Son of man, when the shadows shall flee
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The Lord foresaw the spirit of unwatch- fulness into which his people would be apt to fall, while he tarried, and he warns us against it. He would have us always to remember that there will be a danger of our becoming easy-minded and earthly; content with his absence instead of mourn- ing because of it; content with his de- lay instead of joining in the primitive cry, " How long." He saw that the world would throw us off our guard; that few would really keep awake and watch ; that many would get tired with watching, and find out excuses for not watching ; that many would sit down and try to make themselves comfortable here without him. Hence he so often repeated the warning —
away. Persuade yourself that the King is coming. Wait with the wearied night — watch for the breaking of the eastern sky, and think that ye have not a morrow** — Samuel Rutherford. If, as the same writer says, " love is sick to hear tell of a to-morrow," how muck more of a thousand years !
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Watch! Hence he added, "lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping"
His desire is, that we should be so watching, that when he cometh and knocketh, we may open unto him immedi- ately. (Luke xii. 36.) And he pronounces a special blessing upon those servants whom he finds thus, promising that " he will gird himself, and make them sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them." To be in such an attitude of watchfulness as that we shall be ready to open to him im- mediately, is that to which he has promised so special a reward, so wondrous an honour. Ah ! who amongst us is in this condition in these last days ? Should we be ready to open to him immediately were he arriving now ? Should we not be thr.own into con- fusion at the news of his coming, like servants' unprepared for their master's re- turn, and not counting on it so soon? Should we not have to be getting ready ^
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when we should be opening the door? Should we not be running to put on our needful and proper raiment instead of go- ing forth to welcome him ? Ah, what con- fusion in the household, what amazement, what fear, what bustle, what running to and fro, would there be in our day, were the tidings to be brought us, " the Lord has come ! "
In the repeated command to watch, there is much of rebuke. The Lord could not trust us to remember it of ourselves, or obey unbidden. Had he been able to count on perfect love in us to himself — love full and deep like his own, would he have thought of such a command ? would it have been needed ? It would not. All that would have been needful would have been to tell us that he meant to return ; love would have supplied ' the rest, and, of itself, have made us watchful ; love would have made it impossible that it should be otherwise. It would have needed neither
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