31st Day.
“Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said”—
“Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when He cometh shall find watching.”—Luke xii. 37.
The Closing Benediction.
Child of God! is this thine attitude, as the expectant of thy Lord’s appearing? Are thy loins girded, and thy lights burning? If the cry were to break upon thine ears this day, “Behold the Bridegroom cometh,” couldst thou joyfully respond—“Lo, this is my God, I have waited for him?” When He may come, we cannot tell;—ages may elapse before then. It may be centuries before our graves are gilded with the beams of a Millennial sun; but while He may or may not come soon, He must come at some time—ay, and the day of our death is virtually to all of us the day of His coming.
Reader! put not off the solemn preparation. Be not deceived or deluded with the mocker’s presumptuous challenge, “Where is the promise of His coming?” See to it that the calls of an engrossing world without, do not foster this procrastinating spirit within. It may be now or never with thee. Put not off thy sowing time till harvest time. Leave nothing for a dying hour, but to die, and calmly to resign thy spirit into the hands of Jesus. Of all times, that is the least suitable to have the vessel plenished—to attend to the great business of life when life is ebbing—to trim the lamp when the oil is done and it is flickering in its socket—to begin to watch, when the summons is heard to leave the watch-tower to meet our God!
Were you never struck how often, amid the many gentle words of Jesus, the summons “to watch,” is over and over repeated, like a succession of alarum-bells breaking ever and anon, amid chimes of heavenly music, to rouse a sleeping Church and a slumbering world?