so it was gradually, and not without some sickness of
hope deferred, made manifest to the Church, that the coming of the
Lord should be for ages and generations delayed. Unmistakable
indications of this truth appear in the Lord's own prophetic
discourses, which we now know how to interpret.

And all this is no doubt a reason why the great subject should be less
constantly and less vividly before our minds, than it was before
theirs. But it is no reason why it should have dropped out altogether;
none, why we should almost universally neglect the revelations of
Scripture respecting the manner and details of His coming, and confuse
them altogether in a vague popular idea of the judgment day; none, why
we should forget the mention of the landmarks which He Himself has
pointed out along the wilderness journey of His Church,--and so, as
far as in us lies, provide for her being unprepared when He appears.

The end of the state of waiting of the blessed dead, the end of our
present state of waiting will be, that day of His appearing. Let us
fix this well in our minds; and do not let us be kept from doing so by
being told that there is danger in allowing the fancy to exercise
itself on the unfulfilled prophecies. No doubt there is. But I am not
exhorting you to exercise your fancy on them. Faith and fancy are two
wholly distinct things. To my mind, there can be hardly anything more
detrimental to the faith of the Church, than always to be fitting
together history and prophecy, magnifying insignificant present or
past events into fulfilments of prophetic announcements. They who do
this are for ever being refuted by the course of things; and then they
shift their ground, and come out as confidently with a new scheme, as
they did before with their old one. Nothing can more tend to throw
discredit on God's prophetic word altogether; and it is no doubt in
part owing to such speculations, that faith in the Lord's coming has
become weakened among us. He Himself has told us the great use of His
announcements of the future. "_These things have I told you, that,
when the time is come, ye may remember that I told you of them_." When
and as each prophecy comes to its time to be fulfilled, just as the
years of the captivity predicted by Jeremiah were interpreted by the
Church in Babylon, so the Lord's predictions, and the predictions of
His apostles, will fall each into its place; and the Church, if she
endure in faith and watchfulness, wil