ortal path here below.

Yes! it would mean to those of us who by faith in Christ Jesus are
children of the living God, the gathering to our arms again of those
who have left us and for whom our arms still ache to enfold them
once more. And O my soul! it would mean the seeing of Him whom our
soul loveth and who unfailingly has loved us; it would mean that
boon of boons--seeing Him face to face.

Do you wonder the Holy Spirit who is the finger of God has written
over against the word "hope," that qualification, "blessed," and
affixed to it the demonstrative, "that," so it doth read: "That
blessed hope"?

And yet! and yet! there are men who call themselves the ministers of
Christ who would blot out that hope and take away the vision of it
from our souls.

With cold, acute, metallic voices in which you may hear the sound of
the wheels of machinery and the buzz of business, they tell us that
should the Lord suddenly come it would paralyze all industry, put an
end to commerce and to trade, overthrow all progress, make worthless
every high endeavour for the betterment of man, shut the doors of
school, of college and university, render useless the architect's
and builder's plans, throw down the mechanic's tools, the artist's
brush, the sculptor's chisel, the writer's pen, still the orator's
tongue, make null and void the legislator's high emprise and draw a
line of atrophy across the unfolding processes of human life.

Oh, foolish, blind and slow to believe, do you not see that if the
Lord should come it would lift our so-called civilization out of the
slime and shame of its brazen folly and reeking, though perfumed sin
into the glory of eternal righteousness and peace?

Do you not see that it would, at last, make men immortal and give
them such beauty of form, such sanity and such culture and worth of
being as all the gymnasia and all the eugenics of the hour have
failed and will ever fail to achieve?

Do you not see that if the Lord should suddenly come it would at
once open the gates of knowledge and bring us face to face with the
secrets of the universe and make us masters under God of all natural
laws such as all the curriculae of all the institutions of learning,
of applied science and philosophy have failed to impart?

Do you not see it would be the fulfillment of the highest ideals and
aspirations and would make man what the creator of heaven and earth
originally intended man should be--not an animal working w