Reader! Is it even now before you such a living reality, this same Jesus—is coming again; coming to take us all into the Father’s house with its many mansions, to the place whose portals were opened with His own blood! And how soon it may be that we shall see Him and be with Him!
If an angelic message were brought to-day to all Christians, we said recently in a meeting, and that message would state in terms unmistakably, one week more and the Lord Jesus Christ comes, one week more and we shall see Him; what would be the result? We can imagine the eagerness with which all would begin to serve and reach out after the unsaved; what self-denials and boldness we would behold! How all the earthly things, the childish things, the playthings of the dust, would lose their attractiveness. Then heaven’s glory would break upon us. But such a message is not promised to us. It is nowhere said that it will take place. No angel will come to announce the time when “this same Jesus” comes to call us home. The fact is God has told us in His Word, that His ever blessed Son will come and that He will come suddenly. He may come to-day. He may call us home before another morning comes. And if we believe it we shall walk in expectation and in separation. The Lord graciously revive the blessed Hope in our hearts and through it make us holy in our lives, zealous for the Gospel, untiring in service and loving towards all the Saints.
[The Wondrous Cross.]
WHO can tell out the story of the cross! There was a time when we thought we knew much of it; but oh! the depths, the wonderful depths of the cross and the work accomplished there, which constantly break in upon the heart, as one meditates on the cross. One who knew the cross, whose eyes were filled with all its glory, because He beheld Him, who hung on the cross, in highest glory has told us “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” Crucified unto the world. Dead to the world and to sin are the blessed effects of the cross.
Some time ago while remembering the Lord on the Lord’s Day we sang a familiar hymn:
When we survey the wondrous cross
On which the Lord of glory died,
Our richest gain we count but loss,
And pour contempt on all our pride.
How true!—contempt must be poured on all our pride when one beholds that sight, the cross on which the Lord of glory died. But is it so, “and pour contempt on all our pride?”