Mark xiii. 32 — 36. But of that day and that hour knoiveth no wan, no, not the angels ivhich are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. Take ye heed, watch and pray : for ye
know not when the time is. For the Son of Man is as a man taking a far journey, ivho left his house, and gave authority to his servants, and to every man his work, and commanded the porter to watch. Watch ye therefore : for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cock-crowing, or in the morning : lest coming sud- denly he find you sleeping.
ON different occasions, but especially at the close of his life, our Lord taught his Disciples to look for- ward to a future period, when he would assuredly come again. He specified two objects for which he would come ; the one was, to destroy Jerusalem ; and the other, to judge the world: and, inasmuch as the former of these advents was typical of the other, he blended them both together, and thereby raised in them an expectation that they should take place at the same time. The truth is, that though the one was accomplished within forty years, and the other, notwithstanding almost eighteen hundred years have already past, remains yet to be accomplished at some distant and unknown period, they are both equally present in the mind of God, " with whom a thousand years are as one day, and one day as a thousand years." And it is also true, that the day of death is to every man, in effect, as the day of judg- ment : so that the union of the two periods in their minds, notwithstanding their distance from each other, was strictly just, as it respected God, and highly sa- lutary as it respected them. Not but that our Lord did make a clear distinction between the two periods: for in ver. 30, he says, " This generation shall not pass till all these things (relative to the destruction of Jerusalem) be done ; and then, in a way of contrast, he adds, " But of that day and that hour, namely, the Day of Judgment, knoweth no man." It is in refer- ence to this latter period that he speaks in the words of our text ; in discoursing on which we shall consider,
I. The duty inculcated —
Watchfulness and prayer are often united in the Holy Scriptures as duties of the first importance. In themselves they are different ; but in their