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SERMON XIX.

WAITING FOR THE COMING OF THE LORD.

ISAIAH, XXV. 9.

"And it shall be said in that day, Lo! this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation."

WHEN the armies of Rome were drawing nearer and nearer to Jerusalem, and the straitness of the siege approached, the believers in Christ, which that great city contained, bethought themselves of the warning voice of the Saviour, uttered many years before, when He spake of the signs which should precede the fall of Jerusalem, and added, "When ye, therefore, shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the Prophet, stand in the holy place, then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains ;"the Christians, I say, in Jerusalem, remembered this saying of their Lord and Master. They made preparation against the terrible ruin which they perceived by the prophecy was about to befal the capital ;—they separated themselves from among their unbelieving countrymen and fellow-citizens ;-they abandoned their houses and goods within its walls; and, leaving the place while yet they had the power to do so, and before it was so closely encompassed

on every
side that none could escape, they betook themselves
in a body to a district beyond Jordan, and settled themselves
far from the sad sounds and sights of war, in a town called
Pella.

The circumstances of the siege of Jerusalem are set forth
in Scripture by our Lord Himself, in the twenty-fourth
chapter of St. Matthew, as a type or emblem of His second
coming to judge the world, and destroy this heaven and
this earth. For the ruin of Jerusalem was not the ruin of a
mere common city, but bespoke much which no like calamity
of
any other town could have spoken; since with Jerusalem
fell the Temple, the seat and scene of all the rites of the
old law, the place where God had set His name, and to
which all the tribes were to repair to worship Him,—and
accordingly with the Temple fell that law itself, which,
having served as a shadow of better things to come, gave
place to the substance, even to the Gospel and to Christ.
As then it was with Jerusalem, so will it be with the world
at large. In Jerusalem there were true believers in Christ
amidst a multitude of faithless and perverse men. Those
believers guided themselves by the words and warnings
their Master had spoken to them, while the unbelieving
multitude gave to them no heed. Those believers, by
reason of His words and warnings, were prepared against
the awful visitation of their city which was at hand, and
withdrew themselves, at the loss and abandonment of all
that they had, to a quiet and peaceful country where they
could set up their rest without molestation; whilst those
hardened and heedless people, who were left behind,
perished in the midst of distresses such as no other city
ever felt; the vials of God's wrath being fully poured out
upon them. And so discriminating was God's judgment,
that of the two men in the same field, and the two women

at the same mill, one was taken and the other left, the believer in Christ laid up in safety, the scorner of Him suffered to fall. Which things, as I have said, are an allegory; for so will it come to pass at the end of the world. As Christ came in a figure to inflict vengeance upon that guilty town, so will He come in His own apparent person, in power and great glory, to judge a guilty world at the latter day. As they who believed in Him called His sayings to mind and shaped their course according to them, came out of that condemned city and found a place of refuge provided for them, so will it be with those who shall be found to have waited for Him at His second advent. In the crash of the universe they shall be safe,-not a hair of their heads shall perish; but to a city which hath foundations, to a peaceful dwelling place with their Saviour and God, shall they be removed. And as the thoughtless and unbelieving multitude in Jerusalem, who were deaf to the Saviour's cries unto them to take heed, and cared not to flee from the wrath to come, fell in the ruin of that great city; so shall all the impenitent, unthinking, faithless sons and daughters of men fare at the last. They shall be driven away in the terrible vengeance of that hour, when the heavens shall run up like a parched scroll, and the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned.

My friends, it passes our imaginations to picture to ourselves fully that fearful scene, or to possess ourselves with what our feelings will be then; but there are images in Scripture concerning it, which may give us some faint notion of the reality, and help to open our eyes. How then will it be with us, (should we think now,—now in this our day,) when "Behold He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him; and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him?"

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How will it be with us when God shall set His angel, as He set Ezekiel in the vision, in the midst of the valley which shall be full of bones, and shall bid him prophesy upon those bones and say unto them: Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live; and I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the Lord. And so there shall be a noise and behold a shaking, and the bones shall come together, bone to his bone, and the sinews and the flesh shall come upon them, and the skin shall cover them above, but as yet there shall be no breath in them. Then shall He say, come from the four winds, O breath! and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. So the breath shall come into them, and they shall live, and stand upon their feet, an exceeding great army"? How will it be with us when we shall see the dead, thus quickened, small and great, stand before God, and the sea give up the dead which shall be in it, and death and hell deliver up the dead which shall be in them, to be judged every man according to their works? How will it be with us when the Ancient of days shall be revealed unto us, thousand thousands ministering unto Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand standing before Him, and the judgment be set, and the books be opened? when God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil; when the elements are on the point of melting with fervent heat, and all things on the point of being dissolved; when heaven is opening its strait gate, and hell enlarging herself, to receive those that shall be consigned to them according to an everlasting sentence? How will it be with us then? How, I say, shall we be likely to feel in that awful hour? To which of the two divisions of mankind, whereof we read in Scripture, shall

we find ourselves in that solemn and sad day belonging? For there will be those to whom a voice will say, "Because I have called and ye refused; I have stretched out My hand, and no man regarded: but ye have set at nought all My counsel, and would none of My reproof: I also now laugh at your calamity: I now mock when your fear is come; when your fear is come as desolation, and your destruction as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish are come upon you. Now ye call upon Me, but I will not answer; now ye seek Me, but now ye shall not find Me: for that ye hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord: ye would none of My counsel: ye despised all My reproof. Therefore shall ye eat of the fruit of your own way." And these are they that shall then say unto the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of His wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand." Such shall be one company, and such their lamentation -their fruitless lamentation! Whilst the other class shall be of those who, in the midst of those appalling scenes, shall be able to exclaim in glowing jubilee, "Lo! this is our God, we have waited for Him, and He will save us; this is the Lord, we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation." In which of these divisions do we think we shall be found? We can only make a correct estimate of ourselves, and our probable position on that day, by considering whether we are waiting for our Lord now.

It represents those, and approach, who feel that For only for a moment

The expression "waited for Him" is remarkable, and is twice repeated in the text. those only, as exulting in His they have waited for Him. imagine how panic-stricken any man must be when he sees such an array before him as I have faintly described, and at the same time knows, in his own secret self, that