stands stamped
on every line. It colours all the New Testament views of life. It is
used as a motive for every duty, and as a magnet to draw men to Jesus
Christ by salutary dread. There is no hint in my text about the time
of the Lord's coming, no disturbing of the solemnity of the thought
by non-essential details of chronology, so we may dismiss these from
our minds. The fact is the same, and has the same force as a motive
for life, whether it is to be fulfilled in the next moment or
thousands of years hence, provided only that you and I are to be
there when He comes.

There have been many comings in the past, besides the comings in the
flesh. The days of the Lord that have already appeared in the history
of the world are not few. One characteristic is stamped upon them
all, and that is the swift annihilation of what is opposed to Him.
The Bible has a set of standing metaphors by which to illustrate this
thought of the Coming of the Lord--a flood, a harvest when the ears
are ripe for the sickle, the waking of God from slumber, and the
like; all suggesting similar thoughts. _The_ day of the Lord,
_the_ coming of the Lord, will include and surpass all the
characteristics which these lesser and premonitory judgment days
presented in miniature. I do not enlarge on this theme. I would not
play the orator about it if I could; but I appeal to your
consciences, which, in the case of most of us, not only testify of
right and wrong, but of responsibility, and suggest a judge to whom
we are responsible. And I urge on each, and on myself, this simple
question: Have I allowed its due weight on my life and character to
that watchword of the ancient church--_Maran-atha_, 'our Lord
cometh'?

Now, the coming of the Lord of Love is the annihilation of the
unloving. The destruction implied in Anathema does not mean the
cessation of Being, but a death which is worse than death, because it
is a death in life. Suppose a man with all his past annihilated,
with all its effort foiled and crushed, with all its possessions
evaporated and disappeared, and with his memory and his conscience
stung into clear-sighted activity, so that he looks back upon his
former self and into his present self, and feels that it is all waste
and chaos, would not that fulfil the word of my text--'Let him be
Anathema'? And suppose that such a man, in addition to these
thoughts, and as the root and the source of them, had ever the
quivering consciousness that he w