THE LORD’S WORK AND THE LORD’S COMING.
One of our friends, (Rev. T. S. Robie, North Carver, Mass.,) who was at our annual meeting at Taunton, remembering doubtless that the Prophetic Conference was in session during the same days in New York City, puts the two things together thus:
One comes from a meeting like that, through which glimpses are caught of opportunities for work, of openings by the Unseen Hand into spheres of service which stretch out into the future beyond the range of our human vision, with the overwhelming conviction that the Lord isn’t just at present to stop the wheels of this world. It is not like the Lord to give such problems to His people, which are pressing upon this Christian nation today with such power, and which demand time for their solution, and then to cut the Gordian knot by the sword of His “coming,” as if He had met with a tangled question which He himself could not untie. The red, blue and white and black marble, which Divine Providence has brought into this land, tell of a building of God grander than any Persian palace, the foundations of which seem to be just being laid, rather than the completion thereof to be nigh at hand. The vastness of the preparation points to the magnificence of the Lord’s dominion in the hearts and over the lives of men.
The Book of God’s Providence is as much inspired as the Bible itself. And whoever studies the former as prayerfully as the latter, must labor hard to stifle the feeling that the clock of earth, instead of getting ready to stop, is being wound up to keep good time for a thousand years, as a prelude to that perfect righteousness which shall dwell forever on the new earth and beneath the new heavens.