The Church upon earth is only in the dawn of the day of its full redemption. That day will be perfect when Christ shall appear " without sin unto salvation " ; when He shall come no longer bearing the burden of His cross, but bearing the burden of His glory and of His exceeding great rewards. Then will He consummate the sanctification of His saints, rendering the warfare between flesh and spirit for ever impossible ; releasing them from the last vestige of infirmity, and uttering the final decree, "Be holy still." Now, in the dawn, we are dependent on the ceaseless ministry of that grace which still retains the basin and the towel to wash the disciples' feet ; we are encompassed about with such infirmities as make the full glory of Christian perfection a state too high for time.
3. It is true that in comparison with their former heathenism and Judaism the Eoman Christians were in the full day. The light which their Christianity was now affording them was indeed that of final truth, just as the beams of the natural dawn are truly incipient daylight. All the same, however, there is a point
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of view in which the Christianity of the Church militant here on earth is only the dawn of a fuller and brighter revelation to follow. For Christ never professed to explain to the world all the perplexing mysteries of life. He professed to reveal and did reveal all that was necessary for our salvation, but He left many an important speculative question unsolved. For example, how we long to know more of the state of the departed and to under- stand the mystery of evil and of suffering ; but, as it is not necessary for our salvation that we should know these things, Christ did not reveal them. He gave us as much light as was required, and such light as is destined to grow more and more unto the perfect day, but for the time being He withheld the noonday splendour and left us to trust in Him for the due supply of such light as should be convenient for us. And thus those Christians who had just been described by the Apostle as involved in darkness were now rightly declared by him to be, by their incorporation into Christ, not yet indeed surrounded by the full effulgence of day, but still enjoying the beams of a dawn, which would ere long increase into the noontide splendour.
Feeling the way, — and all the way uphill ; But on the open summit, calm and still, The feet of Christ are planted ; and they stand In view of all the quiet land.
Feeling the way, — and though the way is dark, The eyelids of the morning yet shall mark Against the East the shining of His face, At peace upon the lighted place.
Feeling the way, — and if the way is cold, What matter ? — since upon the fields of gold His breath is melting; and the warm winds sing While rocking summer days for Him.^
iii. The Day.
1. The First Advent answers to the "dawn," the Second answers to the " day." Here we must remember the vivid expectation of the Second Advent which prevailed in the primitive Church. After the rising from the dead, the Lord had not merely resumed His interrupted earthly existence, but
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had taken upon Him the spiritual body of the Eesurrection, and had disappeared and re-appeared according to the mysterious laws which governed that new life. And thus, just as He had re-appeared after disappearing at Emmaus, so they expected Him to return after He vanished at the Ascension. Concerning the date of the final return no revelation had been given. The Son of Man was as one who had taken His journey into a far country! But the duration of His absence does not concern us here. St. Paul believed that He would return sooner or later. And then, with His advent, the glorious noon of revela- tion would be reached. Then we should know as we are known. Then we should no longer see through a glass darkly, but face to face. Then would " the day break, and the shadows flee away ! " And so that was the glorious noon which the Apostle declared to be in store for those Eoman disciples who had so recently passed from the night of heathenism into the wondrous dawn of Christianity.
^ Nothing in nature is more beautiful or more symbolical of eager expectation than the dawn that proclaims, " The day is at hand " : the day itself that fulfils its promise cannot surpass its beauty. Here the figure is, in a certain sense, insufficient : the day that we expect will be so glorious as to cause its early splendours to be forgotten. But the brightness is a great reality : the estate of Christ's watchers is one in which an enthusiastic hope may well predominate. To the company as such there is nothing but joy in the future : its present inheritance is a hope full of immortality that knows no night ; and " in the pathway thereof there is no death." The individual Christian also is taught to enter into the common hope. To every believer in Christ the present life is the dawn of a perfect day.^