Others, again, there are that tell us that by the "night" and "day" we are to understand the contrast existing between the Jewish and Christian dispensations. That a contrast exists between the two we cannot deny-a contrast, nevertheless, not so striking as that between the days of Pagan ignorance and Christian light. It is needless, however, to dwell upon this, for this interpretation is obviously exposed to the same objection that we have just noted as fatal to the former. Here, as in the former case, "the day" means the Christian dispensation, and St. Paul would scarcely have spoken of it as only "at hand," when it not only existed but had already established itself in many important centres of the heathen world.

What, then, are we to understand by the apostle's language-" The night is far spent; the day is at hand?"

There remains but one other alternative. Christ is "the light of the world," and if the day here spoken of, as we have seen, does not refer to His first advent, we think it as plain that it refers directly to His second advent-to that memorrable epoch in our history when Christ shall come again with power and great glory, and when, by "the brightness of His coming," He shall scatter the darkness in which the world will be till then enveloped. It is the day that the apostle speaks of in other places as "the day of Christ," and "the day of the Lord" (2 Thess. ii. 2; 1 Thess. v. 2). It is the day that Christ Himself speaks of as the day of His people's "redemption," and that St. Paul tells us not the Church of Christ only but the whole creation are anxiously waiting for (Luke xxi. 28; Rom. viii. 23).

And if this be, as we contend, the natural interpretation of the words, how is it that it has been so often overlooked? The answer, no doubt, is this. It has arisen from a well-meaning but wholly mistaken desire to vindicate the inspiration of the apostle. The apostle speaks of the day as "at hand" i.e., as rapidly approaching, and there are those who contend that he could not have written thus if he foresaw that eighteen or twenty centuries were to elapse between the periods of His First and Second Advent. Doubtless he could not; but then this foreknowlege with which they credit the apostle is exactly what we deny. Inspiration implies superhuman knowledge; but whatever limits we may assign to it, it surely does not imply omniscience; and hence we have no difficulty whatever in believing that a fact which it was not desirable should be made known to him, was hidden even from St. Paul.

able words. "Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in Heaven, not even the Son, but the Father only" (Mark xiii. 32). Surely none of us would ascribe a higher inspiration to St. Paul than to the Re deemer himself when upon earth, or imagine the former possessed of a knowledge denied to the latter! The apostles were inspired men, and gifted with power to look into the future. But the whole of that future was not revealed to them. There have ever been times and seasons" which the Father has kept in His own power (Acts i. 7). They looked and saw in the distance a bright cra awaiting the then struggling and suffering Church of Christ-an era of glory that would more than compensate them for the keenest sufferings and the acutest agonies of this present time, and their personal longings for its arrival, and their desire thus to stimulate the faith of their converts, made it seem nearer to them than it really was. Like tourists in a mountainous district bent on scaling some almost inaccessible height, confident in their own physical powers, and buoyed up with the energy of hope, they see the mountain straight before them, and fondly imagine that after a few hours' patient endurance they will reach the object of their ambition, and plant their feet proudly upon the mountain's top. They see the point at which they are aiming glistening beneath the sun, and to them it seems comparatively near, and anything but inaccessible. They do not see the valleys that lie between; and it is only after they have started on the expedition that they learn its real nature; that there are smaller mountains to be crossed first, valleys to be traversed, rivers to be forded, treacherous ice-slopes to be climbed, perpendicular steeps to be struggled with, inch by inch, before the mountain's summit is reached, and the end of the expedition attained.

And may it not be even thus with the apostles and prophets when caught up into the third heaven, and permitted to see the things that are coming upon the earth? One object rivets their attention the return of the Lord Jesus-and, dazzled with that object, and the future glory of the Church identified with it, they see not the intervening centuries of suffering, persecution, and hardship that that Church must first undergo. Themselves feeling the burden of sin, and longing for its removal, the prayer oft upon their lips, Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly," as ignorant as the humblest of their converts of "the day and hour" of their Master's return, can we wonder that they should sometimes give wings to their hopes, and, while seeking to animate the hearts of the desponding, or to stir up the sluggish to deeds of Christian zeal, should use such language as this "The night is far spent, the day is at hand?"

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We have spoken of the apostles' ignorance of the time of our Lord's second Advent. The text seems to indicate-and other passages in his Epistles might be brought forward to the same effect that St. Paul regarded it as an event that might possibly happen in his own day. Doubtless there is wisdom in the Church being kept in this uncertainty, for she has thus in successive ages in the ever-approaching return of her Lord a thrilling motive to watchfulness and holy preparation; and apostolic exhortations based upon the certain fact of His return so far from losing do but gain in force as years roll onward, and the time of His coming draws near.

We notice the fitness of the expression used by the apostle to describe the Second Advent of Christ. "The day."

1. The day is distinguished from the night by light; and the day of days, Christ's Second Advent, will be marked, we believe, by a supernatural brilliancy of light. When Christ was on the Mount of Transfiguration, and His disciples were privileged to see something of His glory, we are told that "His face did shine as the sun, and His raiment was white as the light!" (Matt. xvii. 2). When Christ appeared to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, he and his companions were startled and terrified by a light that outshone the sun in its meridian splendour (Acts xxvi. 13). There is therefore nothing unnatural in the supposition that when Christ comes in the fulness of His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, His presence will be marked by a light before which the sun's light will grow dim. His coming is compared to the lightning that dazzles, and destroys (Matt. xxiv. 27), and it is expressly said that, "The man of sin" shall be destroyed "with the brightness of His coming" (2 Thess. ii. 8). And more than this, we are assured by the prophet Isaiah that " the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of His people, and healeth the stroke of their wound" (Isa. xxx. 26). We know not what "the sign of the Son of man" shall bethe gign immediately heralding His approachthere will be some such-" Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven" (Matt. xxiv. 30). But we believe that when Christ comes He will be enveloped in a flood of light that will startle and dazzle the inhabitants of the world, and the extraordinary radiancy of which will perhaps as far outdo the sun in its splendour as that sun now in the fulness of its strength surpasses the brightest lights of mere human kindling.

2. Again, the day reveals, the night conceals. For this reason, too, Christ's Second Advent is

e 1 Cor. xv. 51; 1 Thess. iv. 17

called "the day." Christ, when He comes, "will bring to light the hidden things of darkness" (1 Cor. iv. 5). And oh, what a day of revelations will that be! Human imagination tries in vain to conceive it. We are every now and then startled at the amount of sheer wickedness that is going on beneath the surface of so-called civilised societyat the revelation of crimes that had been for months, perhaps years, undiscovered, and that would have remained undiscovered but for some trifling accident, as we call it, more correctly that retributive Providence that dogs the footsteps of the criminal, and that compels him by some act of blind fatuity to be himself the publisher of his own crime. What can be conceived more horrible than that crime that was prematurely consummated at a German port last year (December, 1875), by which the crew and passengers of a large steamer were consigned to destruction while crossing the Atlantic, and on which one of our English journals thus commented at the time:-" Anything so atrociously diabolical is unrecorded in history, and has never found its way into the pages of the most morbid sensational literature!" How much, too, is going on that we do not call crime but which touches very closely upon its borders! How many are living beyond their incomes through that passion for outward show that is one of the sins of our age, each man trying to outdo his neighbour! Men call it extravagance, and think little of it; what is it but culpable dishonesty that defrauds the honest tradesman of his legitimate earnings ? are but symptoms, outward symptoms, of that disease with which human society is afflicted. Nay, who amongst us would willingly submit to the public exposure of his whole private and domestic life?

These

How many family discords are smothered up from public observation! how many glaring inconsistencies in our daily conduct! how many secret indulgences that we feel not to be in harmony with the ideal of the Christian life! how many bitter words escape from our lips! how many illnatured judgments upon others! Nay, is there one amongst us who would allow his most intimate friend free access to the chambers of his own heart, and pour into his ear every thought that passes there? Truly, there is something appalling in the thought of the coming of that day in which the secrets of all hearts will be disclosed, and the dark deeds of centuries made known.

Now a veil is thrown over the world's iniquities. Men make excuses for each other's sins. They pass lenient and imperfect judgments, and flatter themselves that their sins will not find them out. But the times of this ignorance are fast passing away. "The night is far spent; the day is at hand," and that day will reveal things as they are-not as they seem. Christ's presence will be

marked, as we have seen, by supernatural light, and that will be an emblem of that light that will pour into the darkest corners of each man's conscience, and scatter for ever the delusions of sin. The godless and the wicked will not need to hear on that day the sentence of their judge. His very presence will condemn them, and they will try in vain to escape from that presence, and to hide themselves from Him that sitteth upon the throne (Rev. vi. 16).

But there is a cheering aspect to this solemn truth which we must not lose sight of. The day that will reveal the wickedness of the world will reveal too the good deeds of the righteous. Indeed, it is to this that the apostle chiefly directs our attention in the passage already quoted from the Epistle to the Church at Corinth. The Corinthians, it seems, were in the habit of exaggerating the merits of some of their religious teachers, and depreciating others. The apostle bids them "judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the heart; and then," he adds, assuming that each teacher was equally faithful, however much he might differ from others in attainments, "shall every man have praise of God" (1 Cor. iv. 5). Then shall the fitting praise be awarded to each teacher. And the truth is equally applicable to every faithful disciple. Surely there are some amongst us to whom the coming "day" is a day

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of brightness and not of terror. There are those who are doing their duty day by day patiently and uncomplainingly in that state of life in which it has pleased God to call them, submitting quietly to those placed over them in the Lord, bearing, it may be, with the waywardness of an imperious or incompatible temper, fulfilling the hard duties of daily self-denial and habitual self-control, doing, as opportunity offers, little acts of Christian charity so little as to escape the attention of the world, but not that of Him who searches the heart. Tried as these are in many ways, few things are more trying than to have their good deeds evil spoken of, and their Christian acts traced to unworthy motives. Is it not refreshing, then, to think that when Christ comes He will "make manifest the counsels of the heart," and that not the smallest act of love done in His name will then lose its reward!

"The night is far spent ;" and if the abounding of iniquity be regarded as one of the signs that is to herald in the Second Advent, we may say, with even more cogency and force than St. Paul, "The day is at hand!"

Make her in heart, as person, fair,
A gentle maiden, woman, wife.
So when the toilsome journey's o'er,
And all the weary voyage done,
Upon the happy, heavenly shore,
Once more the parted shall be one.
The circle broken here below

Shall broaden in the perfect day,
And never more disruption know,
When former things are passed away.
Orphans? Ah no! The nightly prayer

That hopeless word can never leaven;
On earth no parents' love they share,
But have a Father still in heaven.
CHARLES MORRIS