Easter Day, when it sounds on in the years that will follow, after we of this generation shall have gone to our account, let us trust that it will suggest other and higher thoughts than any which belong only to this passing scene; that its deep and solemn tones will bear in on the soul of many a listener the thought of the second coming, the thought of Eternity, the thought of the many and intricate issues which depend on each man's making the best efforts that he may to know and to spread abroad Christ's everlasting Gospel during the fleeting days and hours of time.

SERMON XXXIV.

THE GREAT ANTICIPATION.

(ADVENT SUNDAY.)

2 ST. PET. III. 12.

Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God.

S we move on in life, Advent, so it seems, becomes more and more welcome. It is in keeping with those deeper thoughts which, if we think at all, present themselves more frequently with advancing years. As the space within which any future is possible on this earthly scene steadily contracts, Advent reminds us of the illimitable life which lies beyond. And the natural year, in these first winter months, seems to lend its aid to the truths and reflections which are brought before us by the Church of Christ. These short, damp, cold, dark days, when the sun generally hides his face during the few hours of his hurried visit to us; these nights, always long, often wild and tempestuous, when the savage forces of nature seem to have broken loose and to be for the time in the ascendant; and then the sense that we are still, for some while yet, sinking lower and lower into the realm of winter gloom ;-all this tends to create and to maintain the subdued state of feeling in which man best thinks of the last things— Death and Judgment, Heaven and Hell. The natural features of the season become, in the course of years, associated with the sacred and familiar words. To-day's Gospel,1 which records the entry into Jerusalem, when, on the eve of His condemnation, our Lord really judged the Jewish people; and that more solemn Gospel of next Sunday,' which describes Him as He has ye to come in the clouds of heaven; and 2 St. Luke xxi. 25-33.

St. Matt. xxi. 1-13.

ADV. SERMS.]

2 E

then those well-known lessons from the Prophet Isaiah,1 so stern and so pathetic ;-all seem to gather force year by year, as the other world throws its shadows more and more distinctly across the path of life.

And to-day there is another consideration which will be present to the minds of many of you. This morning the shadow of death has fallen on the highest See in the English Church. It is the close of a career which already, in a very ample and distinguished sense, belongs to history; it is the end of a life which for twelve years was devoted to the pastoral care of this vast Diocese; while it also, as we cannot here and now forget, means the full measure of sorrow which death inflicts on the hearts of an affectionate family. At such times it is of great importance if we can to be definite and practical; and here St. Peter comes to our assistance in the text. He gives us a motto for the Christian life which it will be well to keep in memory, at least during Advent: "Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God."

St. Peter's language takes it for granted that man, as man, looks forward to something. Absolute satisfaction with the passing moment has been the dream of poets and philosophers. It has not often been embodied in general experience. Certainly the light-hearted poet of antiquity advised his friend to snatch joyfully the gifts of the passing hour, and leave the anxieties of life to themselves." And a very recent moralist tells us, as the last word of modern wisdom, that our life is best spent in extracting the largest amount of possible satisfaction out of each successive sensation as we experience it. It is in a very different sense that our Lord bids us take no thought for the morrow; He deprecates anxiety about the things of this world, because He would have the soul constantly given to anticipation of the next; constantly engaged, as His Apostle bids it, in "making its calling and election sure."5 And, as a matter of fact, anticipation of some future is a part of human nature. The child looks forward to what he will do when he is grown up. The young man or young woman thinks constantly of being married, and of the shape and hue that married life will take. The man who is married looks for professional success or for promotion. The loyal

1 Isa. i., ii., v., xi., xxv., xxvi., xxx., xxxii.

2 Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury, died December 3, 1882.

3 Hor.

St. Matt. vi. 34.

2 St. Pet. i. 10.

wife desires her husband's wealth or reputation as, in a true sense, her own. And then, when success or advancement has been attained, the interest of life, ever future, is transferred to a younger generation; and the aged parent, himself on the brink of a new and illimitable existence, lives over again in his children the hopes and enthusiasms and ambitions that were once his own. There are, of course, men and women who, even in early life, have put aside all lesser and poorer ends, and have resolved to set before their eyes only that vast eternity which lies beyond all earthly horizons; but we are looking for the moment at human nature of the average type, and as we see it around us and in ourselves. Average human nature is ever stretching forth towards a future; ever building castles in the air, mean or splendid as the case may be; ever showing, all unconsciously, that the present does not satisfy it perfectly; that no passing sensation, however exquisite, can quite prevent it from looking onwards to the unexplored and the unknown. And what is the event that lies beyond all else; what is the occurrence upon which, according to St. Peter, the eye of the soul must rest, whether in buoyant hope, or in wistful apprehension, or in terror-stricken despair? The answer is, "The coming of the day of God."

I.

"The day of God!" What is meant by this striking expression?

Can it be intended that God has left the present time to itself; that He has retreated into a distant future, where He will claim rights and exert a jurisdiction that do not now belong to Him? Certainly this notion cannot be entertained together with any worthy idea of the Almighty and the Everliving. All days most assuredly are His, Who, being Eternal, is the Lord of time; all days most assuredly, and in particular this very day which is now drawing to its close, not less than any which have preceded or which will follow it. Each hour, each minute, as it passes by, is passed beneath His eye; it is passed in His encompassing Presence, for Whom time, with its sequence of artificial or natural measurements, cannot exist. The idea of His not being Lord of any one day is not to be reconciled with belief that, being what He is, He exists at all. No; such a phrase must describe, not God's absolute relation to any one moment of time, but our human way of

looking at it. By the "day of God" is meant a day whicn will not merely be His, as all days are, but which will be felt to be so; a day in which His true relation to time and life, which, in the case of the majority of men, only is dimly perceived, or almost obscured during the great part of their earthly existence, will be unreservedly acknowledged; a day which will belong to Him, because, in the thoughts of every reasonable creature of His hand, whether for weal or woe, He will have no rival.

That the "day of God means, first of all, a day in which God will take the first place in the thoughts of men, seems to result from an examination of the language of the Bible.

996

and

In the Old Testament, this word "day," meaning not seldom a season or epoch, is constantly joined to some word denoting an event, or idea, or characteristic with which the particular time referred to was associated in the minds, whether of men in general, or of the sacred writer. Thus the Psalmist speaks of "the day of temptation,' "1" the day of his trouble,' 992 66 the day of God's power,' "the day of God's wrath ; Isaiah, of "the day of visitation," "the day of God's fierce anger, "the day of grief and desperate sorrow; " and Jeremiah, of "the day of evil," "the day of affliction," "the day of calamity." 10 These several periods, thus described, are sometimes present, sometimes not distantly future; while sometimes they point on to a very remote time, of which the present or the near future is a pledge or an anticipation. again, some city or nation is named, which has had a tragic history, and its day means the epoch of its suffering or ruin; and thus Isaiah speaks of "the day of Midian," "1 and Ezekiel of "the day of Egypt," 12 and Hosea of "the day of Jezreel, and one of the later Psalmists of "the day of Jerusalem."14 That which is common to all these phrases is the prominence in men's thoughts of the subject, whether it be a race, or a city, or a vicissitude, or a mode of feeling, or a particular experience at some given epoch; and thus we see how words which are at first sight so strange and embarrassing, as "the day of the Lord," might come to be used. It means a time when the Lord is to take precedence of all else in the thoughts of men.

1 Ps. xcv. 8.

• Ibid. 5.

7 Ibid. xvii. II. 10 Ibid. xviii. 17.

13 Hos. i. II.

2 Ibid. cii. 2.
5 Isa. X. 3.
8 Jer. xvii. 17.
11 Isa. ix. 4.

3 Ibid. cx. 3.
6 lbid. xiii. 13.

• Ibid. xvi. 19.

12 Ezek. xxx. 9.

14 Ps. cxxxvii. 7.

Or,