Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE III, THE SECOND COMING OF THE LORD.
Ai,U then shall they see the Son of Man coming in the clouds. ? Mark xiiL 26. I Sa in in my last lecture, that there is a pretty general perception among the enlightened and best men of our day, that
the glory has departed from Israel
? that
beauty has fled from the daughter of Zion. There is a pretty general acknowledgment that the church is not fair and comely in her aspect?
beautiful as a bride adorned for her husband. Has not Christendom, because of her unchristian deeds, and still more unchristian doctrines, become the reproach and derision of the Gentiles ? Has not religion, even in Christian countries, become, in the minds of many, almost synonymous with bigotry, narrow-mindedness, morbid melancholy, and hypocritical cant ? If it has not, then people do not think as they talk. We hear it almost everywhere confessed, that the Christian church ? the great body of those professing the religion of Christ ? is unchristian; that its heart does not throb with the love of the only Lord and Saviour, nor does the life of genuine charity and faith circulate warm through its veins. And among those who are determined to be honest, and true to their deep convictions, many in their hearts are taking up this lamentation concerning Zion:
How has the gold become dim ! How is the most fine gold changed ! How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel!
Notwithstanding all this, I am well aware, that, to most minds, the assertions, that the consummation of the Age foretold in the Evangelists has already found its fulfillment in the consummated state of the first Christian Church, and that We are really living at a time which witnesses the…