him with an irreverence and a familiarity which they dared
not use, if they really believed that this same Jesus, whose name
they take in vain, is none other than the Living God himself, their
Creator, by whom every blade of grass grows beneath their feet,
every planet and star rolls above their heads.

And next--they fancy that the Old Testament speaks of our Lord Jesus
Christ only in a few mysterious prophecies--some of which there is
reason to suspect they quite misinterpret. They are slow of heart
to believe all that the Scriptures have spoken of him of whom Moses
and the Prophets did write, not in a few scattered texts, but in
every line of the Old Testament, from the first of Genesis to the
last of Malachi.

And therefore they believe less and less, that Jesus Christ is still
the Lord in any real practical sense--not merely the Lord of a few
elect or saints, but the Lord of man and of the earth, and of the
whole universe. They think of him as a Lord who will come again to
judgment--which is true, and awfully true, in the very deepest
sense: but they do not think of him--in spite of what he himself
and his apostles declared of him--as The Living, Working Lord, to
whom all power is given in heaven and earth, and not merely over the
souls of a few regenerate; as the Alpha and Omega, the first and the
last, of whom St. Paul says, 'that the mystery of Christ has been
hid from the beginning of the world in God, who created all things
by Jesus Christ.' * * * 'That, in the dispensation of the fulness of
times, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both
which are in heaven, and which are in earth.' They fill their minds
with fancies about the book of Revelation, most of which, there is
reason to fear, are little else but fancies: while they overlook
what that book really does say, and what is the best news that the
world ever heard, that he is the Prince of the kings of the earth.

Therefore they have fears for Christ's Bible, fears for Christ's
Church, fears for the fate of the world, which they could not have
if they would recollect who Christ is, and believe that he is able
to take care of his own kingdom and power and glory, better than man
can take care of it for him. Surely, surely, faith in the living
Lord who rules the world in righteousness is fast dying out among
us; and many who call themselves Christians seem to know less of
Christ, and of the work which he is carrying on in the world,