“And God has given London, England, America, the world, this same extra opportunity of being prepared for the Return of the Lord, and the Translation of His Church.
“For, for some years, now, conferences, and conventions, addresses, Bible-Readings, etc., where this subject of the Second Coming of Christ has been specially taught, has been multiplied mightily. I have been present at some of these gatherings, but, smiling amusedly at what I termed the wild utterances of visionaries, I neglected my opportunity.
“Yet, of all men, I ought to have been prepared for this Coming of the Lord. I have held ministerial office in a church that taught the doctrine, plainly, in many of its prayers and collects. But I see, now, that all through my life, I have been blinded by the letter of things, and have mistaken christening, confirmation, communicating, for conversion, and for life in Christ.
“I see, to-day, that I entered the established church of this realm, and not the family of God, and the service of Christ. I have never really been God’s, by the New Birth, until last night, when my dear wife, in company with all the waiting, longing church, was suddenly called up to be with her Lord. Not by death, dear friends—she saw no death—but by that sudden translation, that has startled us all so.”
A low sobbing sound ran through all the building. The gathered thousands, almost to a man, realised that they, with the speaker, were equally lifeless, spiritually.
“I was in the room when my wife disappeared,” the Bishop went on. “She had been very ill. It became necessary to perform a critical operation on her. I insisted on being present. I see the scene now.
“The nurses standing by the antiseptic baths with the sponges and clips immersed. In the eerie silence of that room, no sound came save the voice of the great surgeon, as he cried ‘clip’—‘iodoform’—‘bandages.’ Suddenly, as he half turned to take a bandage of the nurse, the form of my precious wife disappeared from the operating table. One of the nurses at the antiseptic bowl, was gone also.
“And I, a professed servant of the Christ who had called the translated ones, was left, with the great surgeon, and others, as you, dear friends, many, most perhaps, members of some Christian church, have been left.
“‘Sister Carrie gone too!’ cried the great surgeon, ‘then you may depend, Bishop, that Christ has come for all His real church, for Nurse Carrie lived in daily, hourly expectation of some kind of translation.’ With a puzzled look upon his face, he said, suddenly:
“‘But, Bishop, how is it that you are left behind, who, of all men in our midst, one would have thought would have gone?’