Then, 0 my Lord, prepare
My soul for that great day; 0 wash me in Thy precious blood.
And take my sins away.^
2. No truth, therefore, ought to be more frequently proclaimed, next to the first coming of the Lord, than His second coming ; and we cannot thoroughly set forth all the ends and bearings of the first advent if we forget the second. At the Lord's Supper, there is no discerning the Lord's body unless we discern His first coming; there is no drinking His cup to its fulness, unless we also hear Him say, " Until I come." We must look forward, as well as backward. We must look to Him on the cross and on the throne. We must vividly realize that He who has once come is coming yet again, or else our testimony will be marred and one- sided. The great advent may be near, or it may be far off. It may come while things remain as they are, or not till after great changes. But, come when it may, it will come surely. Of that our Lord has warned us. We know not, and we are not to know, when ; but come it will. Those who are then living will see it ; and those who are in the graves will awake to see it. We know not of which number we shall be. But this we do know, that see Him we shall, and that either to our unspeakable joy or to our shame and terror and despair.
^ W. R. Nicoll, in Memories of Dr. Horatius Bonar, 109.
22 THE SECOND ADVENT
^ These were the days of warm and even bitter discussion relative to " The Lord's Second Coming." Pre-millennialists and post-millennialists could scarcely come together for prophetical Bible study without sharp controversy on the subject. Since Dr. Pierson's views had undergone a change, through his interviews with George Mtiller and his later Bible studies, he held the de- cided and unyielding conviction that Christians must be ready and looking for the return of the Lord at any moment. He was not prepared, nor did he think it right, to prophesy as to dates, " since," he said, " the only date given for the Lord's return is * In such an hour as ye think not, the Son of man cometh.' " He believed that the world was to be " evangelized " but not neces- sarily converted before the Lord should come.^
3. The text speaks of Christ's coming " with the clouds " — an expression suggestive of glory and power. Of all natural objects that awaken the sense of awe none can rival for power, mountains, clouds, and sea. But clouds combine, in a measure, the resources of sea and mountains ; smoothed out at dawn or sunset, twisted into strange contortions by the storm, they rival the solemnity of mountains in their vast proportions, and imitate in their changeful movements the beating of the waves. Black as forces of evil, bright with the smile of opening day, floating on the surface of an azure heaven, or piled in giant waves above the mountains with a look of doom — everywhere they give the sense of thinly veiled depths of mystery yet to be revealed, and of the wrath and power of God against sin.
^ Each common cloud in this our cloudy climate may serve to remind us of the cloud of the Ascension, and of the clouds of the second Advent. Also of that great cloud of witnesses who already compass us about, who one day will hear our doom pronounced; who perhaps will then for the moment become as nothing to us when we stand face to face with Christ our Judge : " At the brightness of His presence His clouds removed." ^
^ Every one knows the history of Eaphael's " Madonna di San Sisto," at Dresden. Its background is composed of clouds. For many years the picture, begrimed with dirt, remained uncleaned, and the background of clouds looked dark and threatening ; when the picture was cleaned and carefully examined, it was discovered that the supposed clouds were not dark atmospheric clouds but
* Arthur T. PLerson : A Biography, by liis Son, 185.
* Christina G. Rossetti, The Face of the Deep, 20.
REVELATION i. 7 23
multitudes of angel faces luminously massed together. It is ever thus. His clouds are ministering spirits, angel faces ; the heavy- masses of Earth's dust, which look so dark and unangelic, are His veil ; in them He comes, seeking the heart, striving to eradicate selfishness, to quench passion, to melt obstinacy, to wean from earthly things.^
II.
"Every eye shall see him."
1. When Christ came before, He came to an obscure quarter of the world, and if all of that land had assembled to see Him, the number would have been but moderate ; but, in fact, only Mary and Joseph were present, with perhaps one or two attendants; and the shepherds came to look, and the wise men brought their gifts ; and that was all. Few were the eyes that saw Him then. But when He comes again " every eye shall see him," as every man sees the sun each day. Jesus said to the high priest, " Hereafter ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven " (Matt. xxvi. 64). Caiaphas will see Him, and the scribes and elders — those who mocked Him, and smote Him, and spit upon Him ; the people who cried " Crucify him ! . . . not this man, but Barabbas " ; Pilate, who, against his conscience, condemned Him ; the penitent thief, and the impenitent ; all the penitent and all the impenitent ; those who have crucified Him afresh by their sins, and those who have served and glorified Him ; all who have ever lived, the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the old and the young ; all shall see Him, at one and the same moment, all together ; the eyes of the blind shall be opened to see Him, all that are in the graves shall see Him, and all who lie in the depths of the sea.