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THE TWO ADVENTS OF CHRIST.
A Christmas Sermon.

It is more than eighteen centuries since the announcement was made to
the shepherds of Bethlehem, as good tidings of great joy to all people, that
there was born that day in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the
Lord. And how large and wide-spread the blessing was to be, we are told
in the words that follow. ¦' And suddenly there was with the angel a mul
titude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the
Highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."
We look for the fulfillment of this glorious promise, and we see the nation
of which the Saviour was born, outcasts from the land which God pledged
Himself to give them for an everlasting inheritance, and Jerusalem, the
light of which was to fill all the earth, trodden down by strangers. The
earth is not filled with peace ; good will does not reign among men. Three-
quarters of the globe are in the same darkness and misery as at the time of
the Lord's birth, and the nations which have received His Gospel, and are
called by His name, are full of antagonisms and bloody strifes, of moral and
spiritual pollutions, and of social wretchedness.
Has, then, God's promise come to nought ? Has the work of His Son
been a failure ? Have we no right to look for those glorious things, the
promise of which has gladdened so many hearts under the crushing burdens
of this life ? No ; God has not failed. We must believe that what He has
promised He will surely fulfill, and that the work of His Son will yet have
its perfect fruit in the deliverance of man and the earth .from all the evils
that oppress them. *$*•
How, then, do we solve the problem which the miseries of the world pre
sent ? How do we reconcile them with the joyful burst of praise and of prom
ise over the cradle of the infant Jesus ? I answer that the difficulty is re
moved by keeping in mind the two Advents of our Lord : one in humiliation
and weakness, to suffer and die for the blotting out of sin ; the other in
glory and majesty, to establish His kingdom, and to fill the earth with the
peace and benediction of God. At His first coming He did what was suita
ble to that time, and laid the foundations deep and strong of the future
blessedness of the creation. At His second coming He will build on that
foundation a glorious and enduring structure.
It will be instructive at this Christmas season to follow down the stream
of prophecy from its fountain-head in the garden of Eden, that we may see
in it this double element, this mingled strain of suffering and triumph.
. No sooner had Satan prevailed to bring sin and death into the world, and
-apparently to frustrate the purpose of God concernisg'man, than the first

promise of a Deliverer was given : " I will put enmity between thee and
the woman, and between thy seed and her seed ; it shall bruise thy head, and
thou shalt bruise His heel.'' Three things are contained in it : 1st, that He
should be Man of woman born ; 2d, that He should be a sufferer in the strug
gle with the serpent; and 3d, that at the last He should come off victorious.
Many centuries passed away, and the promise remained unfulfilled. The
world had become filled with violence, and all flesh had corrupted its way.
before God. He must vindicate His holiness by a terrible act of judgment,
and He sent the flood to destroy the wicked from off the face of the earth.
But in wrath He remembered mercy, and He reserved one family to Him-
. self, that His purpose concerning man might not fail. And after the flood,
when Noah had taken renewed possession of the earth, God said, " At the
hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth
man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed ; for in the image of God made
He man.''
Here was a promise that man should be the avenger of his brother's
blood. When in the garden the serpent stood alone as the enemy of man
kind, the promised victory 'was to be over him_, but when the history of the
world through sixteen centuries of violence and blood had showed man the
murderer of his bfepther, the promise took on a new form, and the Deliverer
was to be the Brother of every man, by whom all wrongs done to man by
man should be avenged. The Bruiser- of the serpent shall also be the
Avenger of blood.
Generations had come and gone, and the solitary family of Noah had multi
plied into nations, when God called Abram from his home beyond the
Euphrates, to be the head of a new family, from which the Redeemer of
mankind was to be born, saying to him, " In thy seed shall all the families
of the earth be blessed," — the first direct promise of universal blessing to
mankind. But in the story of Isaac, universally recogriized as the type of
Christ, the aspect of suffering meets us again, for his father was commanded
to lay him on the altar as a sacrifice, and the willing victim was virtually
slain by the knife in Abram's uplifted hand. This was a wonderful fore
showing of the sacrifice of the cross.
Passing over the predictions by Jacob and Balaam, which are strains of
triumph only, we come to the time of David, to whom, after the twelve
tribes had received him as their king, and while he was sitting in the throne
of his kingdom, God said by the prophet Nathan, " When thy days are ful
filled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee
which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish His kingdom.
He shall build an house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of His
kingdom forever."
Here, another feature in the character of the Deliverer comes into view.
He shall be a king ruling over the twelve tribes of Israel ; not a prophet
only, like unto Moses, revealing the mysteries of God ; not an Avenger only
of man's wrongs ; but a King also, ruling in righteousness upon His father
David's throne. And the life of David with its strange vicissitudes, and its
sharp contrasts of suffering and triumph, typified the history of His greater

Spn, and prepared him to be the organ of the Spirit for expressing in his
Psalms the sorrows and the glories of his Lord. Sometimes, he pours out
the anguish of the great sufferer in such words as these, " I am a worm,
and no man ; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that
see me laugh me to scorn ; they shoot out the lip, they shake the head,
saying, He trusted in the Lord that He would deliver Him : let Him
deliver Him, seeing He delighted in Him." At other times, we find the
song of victory, and the burst of praise : " The king shall joy in Thy strength,
O Lord, and in Thy salvation how greatly shall He rejoice. . . He asked life
of Thee, and Thou gavest it Him, even length of days forever and ever."
"Ask of Me, and I shall give theethe heathen for thine inheritance, and the
uttermost parts of the. earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them
with a rod of iron ; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel."
At one time He cries out in the bitterness of His heart, " For dogs have
compassed me ; the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me ; they pierced
my hands and my feet." At another, he breaks out into the hymn of tri
umph, " It is God that avengeth me, and subdueth the people under me . .
therefore will I give thanks unto Thee, O Lord, among the heathen, and
sing praises unto Thy name "
Three hundred years afterwards, when the nation of Israel had been
divided into two kingdoms, many wonderful things were spoken by Isaiah
of a " Child whom a virgin should conceive," and whose name should be
called Immanuel ; of a Son who should be given, on whose shoulder the
government should be, " whose name should be called Wonderful, Coun
sellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace ; and of
the increase of whose government there should be no end, upon the throne
of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judg
ment and with justxe from henceforth even forever."
But the same prophet says of Him, " He was wounded for our transgres
sions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was
upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed." And so in many other words
of deepest pathos.
¦In the days of Jeremiah, when the Ten Tribes had been carried into cap
tivity, and the kingdom of Judah was about to be broken in pieces by the
Chaldeans, the promise was given of a righteous Branch that should be
raised unto David, and of a King that should reign and prosper, and execute
judgment and justice in the earth; in whose days Judah should be saved,
and Israel dwell safely. And when the storm of vengeance had burst upon
the guilty nation, and the captives were sitting by the rivers of Babylon,
and hanging their harps upon the willows in the midst thereof, Ezekiel was
made to prophesy of a time when all the scattered tribes — the ten and the
two — should be gathered from their dispersion, and be reconstituted as one
nation upon the mountains of Israel. And Daniel spoke of the coming of
the Messiah to " finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and
to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteous
ness." At length the captivity came to its end, and a remnant of Judah and Ben-

jamin, with the priests and Levites, went back to Jerusalem to rebuild the
temple and city, and to restore the ordinances and worship of God ; and
Haggai and Zechariah were raised up to prophesy to them, and encourage
them in their work. By them the old promise was brought forth under new
forms, and the Deliverer of mankind is presented to us as " the Desire of
all nations"; as "the Priest sitting upon a throne, whose name is the
Branch, and who shall build the temple of the Lord, and bear the glory" ;
, as the pierced One on whom the house of David and the inhabitants of
Israel shall look and mourn for Him ; and as the Lord who shall go forth
and fight against the nations that shall be gathered against Jerusalem, whose
feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, and who shall be King
over all the earth.
These promises plainly point to a two-fold coming of Christ, — one in
humiliation and weakness, to be the suffering victim for sin; the other in
glory and majesty, to fill the earth with the salvation of God. And we see
in the Gospels, that the earthly life of Jesus, ending in His death, was a
most exact fulfillment of the predictions concerning Him as the Man of sor
rows, while it left unfulfilled the promises of His triumph over His enemies,
and His royal reign upon the earth redeemed. He was born in Bethlehem,
as Micah had foretold, and of a virgin of the house of David ; and the sor
rowful things written of Him in the Prophets were all accomplished with
literal exactness. He entered Jerusalem riding on an ass, as Zechariah had
predicted. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and they shot out the lip,
and wagged the head against Him ; they pierced His hands and His feet,
cast lots for His vesture, and in His thirst gave Him vinegar to drink ; and
He was "cut off out of the land of the living," and "made His soul an
nffering for sin."
But He left the earth and returned into heaven after His resurrection,
without fulfilling the promises concerning the glory of His kingdom. He
wrought no deliverance for the tribes of Israel; He removed no curse from
man, except the guilt of sin ; and He established no kingdom for the rule
of the earth in righteousness. But He promised to return in the glory of
His Father, and of the holy angels, and charged His disciples to watch
always for His coming. He predicted " days of vengeance " for the nation
which had rejected Him, saying that they should be " carried away captive
into all nations," and that "Jerusalem should be trodden down of the
Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." He forewarned His
disciples of "distress of nations with perplexity," and of "men's hearts
failing them for fear" ; and told them, "when these things began to come
to pass, to look up and lift up their heads, for their redemption was draw
ing nigh."
Between the two Advents of the Lord, the Gentile or Christian dispensa
tion has its fitting place. " The times of the Gentiles " are that period of
time during which the nation that rejected Christ their King is broken up
and cast away, and their city lies trampled down and desolate. God was
forced to turn away from the murderers of His Son, who refused to accept
the pardon which He sent from His throne, and find a Bride for Him

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amongst the nations of the uncircumcised. The gathering of the Christian
Church fills up the interval between the two Advents. But this work is to
come to an end at the time of the Lord's return, for then the Marriage of
the Lamb will come, and He will receive into the fellowship of His glory
all who have followed Him in His temptations and shared His reproach.
At that time He will remember His mercy unto the house of Israel, and
will fulfill every promise of national blessing made by all their prophets.
Though they refused and lost the highest, place in His Kingdom, He will
still bless them as a nation, and make them to be the great national channel
of His goodness and mercy unto all the families of mankind. Their deliv
erance out of captivity is often connected with the coming of their King, as
in the nth chapter of Isaiah, where the blessed fruits of His reign are thus
described : " With righteousness shall He judge the poor, and reprove with
equity for the meek of the earth. . . And the wolf shall dwell with the
lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid. . . . They shall not hurt
nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the
knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cbver the sea." Then comes the
promise of their being gathered back from their exile: "And it shall come
to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set His hand again the second time
to recover the remnant of His people which shall be left, from Assyria,
and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, . . . and from the isl
ands of the sea. And He shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall
assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah
from the four corners of the earth."
It is certain, therefore, that the second coming of the Lord is to be fol
lowed by the resurrection and translation of His saints, by the re-establish
ment of the tribes of Israel in the land promised to their fathers, and by the
blessing of the whole earth. It is indeed, as St. Paul calls it, " the blessed
hope," for which the whole creation now groans and travails in pain. The
troubled nations, wearied with vain efforts to redress their wrongs, should
rejoice that He is near at hand who will break in pieces the rod of the
oppressor. The tribes of Israel, long driven like chaff before the tempest,
outcast in every land, and a proverb and byword unto every people, should
rejoice that their King is ready to be revealed who will blot out their sins in
His blood, break all their bonds, and give to them a glorious rest. The
Church which has borne her Lord's burdens with sorrow of heartand been
made sick by hope deferred, should rejoice that the Bridegroom is about to
come, in whose presence all her trials shall be forgotten, and by whose hand
all her tears shall be wiped away. The saints that cry from beneath the
altar, "How long, O Lord?" should rejoice that they will soon be clothed
with light and immortality, and receive for their inheritance the earth out
of which the usurper and ' oppressor shall have been cast. And "let the
heavens rejoice, and the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fullness
thereof; let the field be joyful, and all that is therein ; then shall all the
trees of the wood rejoice before the Lord ; for He cometh, for He cometh to
judge the earth. He shall judge the world with righteousness, and the peo
ples with His truth."

And how can we best hasten His coming? By helping forward the prepa
ration of His Church. He wishes it to present it unto Himself holy and
unblemished, the counterpart of that blessed one who was honored to bring
Him the first time into the world. In the holy Virgin was seen the utmost
reach of holiness and spiritual grace possible to that dispensation ; in the
Church, the Wife of the Lamb, shall be seen the fruit of the far mightier
work of the Spirit whom He now sends from His throne. If He would be
the Son of a spotless mother, will He not be the Husband of an undented
spouse? Yes, the Church that shall share His glory must first have been
made partaker of His holiness. And for this she^will need every possible
help that He can supply ; every ministry and ordinance of His house, and
every gift of His Spirit :,and she must use them all with holy diligence, and
draw from each the grace it was appointed to convey. The mother of the
Lord was trained for her high honoV by means of all the revelations and
institutions which God had given up to that time. She meditated on His
law, she believed in His promises, she was a devout worshiper in His
temple, and she fulfilled in His faith and fear every duty of her lowly life.
And when God vouchsafed to her supernatural manifestations by the minis
try of the angel, and by opening her own mouth in songs of the Spirit, that she
might know His purpose and be filled with His joy, she received them thank
fully. So must it be with His Church, of whom it is written, " The marriage
of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready." She must
come behind in no gift, she must lack no fruit of the Spirit. And for this
she will specially need that highest ministry by which the Holy Ghost is
given, and which has for its own peculiar privilege and honor to present
the Church to Christ at His coming. " For I have espoused you," said St.
Paul to the Corinthians, " to one husband, to present you a chaste virgin to
Christ." Apostles were Christ's servants and the stewards of God's mysteries,
entrusted with the key to open His treasuries, and to bring forth anddistribute
His heavenly gifts. The work of the steward was shadowed out in Eliezer
of Damascus, the chief servant in Abraham's household, who was sent to
bring back a wife for his master's son and heir, and was entrusted with
costly gifts for the adorning of the hoped-for bride. And shall not that
ministry, by which the Church received the Holy Ghost in the beginning,
be restored in the time of the end, when the preparation can be deferred no
longer ?
There are many sober-minded men, who love Divine ordinances and are
jealous for the Lord's authority, who cannot believe in such a Divine act of
restoration, because it seems to them a violation of His established order in
His house. They think that whatever work is to be done to prepare the
Church for His coming, must be done by the existing ministries; and that
any direct and supernatural interposition of God to set men in holy offices,
must lead to disorder and fanaticism. There is a striking answer to this
objection in the story of our Lord's birth into the world, which to the nat
ural understanding must have seemed a violation of God's own ordinance.
For, after the first Divine act of creation, by which man was made out of
the dust of the earth, He appointed marriage for the continuance of the race.

And so it had continued for four thousand years. All the successive gener
ations of mankind had been born in accordance with this law. But when
the second Man, the Redeemer of the world, was born, God departed from
this law. Again, as in the beginning, He did a supernatural thing. He
appointed that His Son should take our human nature from a human
mother, but through the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost. In Jesus, the law
of marriage was partially set aside. For upon the Blessed Virgin rested
the power of the Highest, and her Son was made partaker of our humanity
without being involved in the guilt of the first man's fall.
There is a striking analogy to this wonderful and mysterious act of God
in the Incarnation of His Son, in the restoration of Apostles at the end of
this dispensation, to prepare the Church for the second and glorious ap
pearing of her Lord. In the beginning, they were called and commissioned
by the immediate act of Christ, without any co-operation of man, as Adam
was formed by God's creative fiat out of the dust of the earth. And as Eve
derived her life from him, so did the Church spring into existence through
the ministry of His Apostles. And during the many ages since their de
parture, the continuance of the Church through Christ's ministers has been
after a law of succession. A ministry derived from the first Apostles has
been used of God to preserve her life and promote her edification.
But now that she is to be made ready for her Lord about to return in
glory and majesty, and needs the largest channels of His grace, Apostles them
selves must be restored. No lesser ministry derived from them can be a
substitute for those to whom Christ said, " As my Father hath sent Me, even
so send I you," and in whom the fullness of His authority was represented.
But because they are restored not to be the founders of a new church, but to
repair that which had its beginning on Pentecost, and has fallen into ruin,
they are brought forth out of the Church by the supernatural energizings of
the Holy Ghost, even as Jesus Himself, who came not to create a new race,
but to redeem that which had transgressed and come under the curse, was
born of woman in the very midst of the ruin He was to restore. As a virgin
of our fallen race was made to give birth through the mighty power of God,
to Him who was to be its Deliverer, so the Church herself has brought forth
Apostles, according to no law of succession, but by the supernatural work
ing of the same Spirit who in the beginning moved upon the face of the
waters, and changed the chaos into the order and harmony of the first crea
tion. They have been called forth by the voice of the Holy Ghost, (speak
ing not of Himself, but expressing the purpose of the Father and the Son,)
out of the midst of Christendom, — sons of the Church, born unto God at
her holy font, nourished at her breasts, taught by her the Faith once
delivered to the saints, and of which she is the keeper, — but made Apos
tles by no act of hers, but by Him who is her Head, and to whom all
power has been given in heaven and on earth.
It is no more a violation of God's ordinances for Apostles to be thus
raised up through His immediate interposition, than it was for His Son to be
born into the world, and made Man in a way that transcended, but did not
violate, the course of nature. And as Jesus was proved to be the sustainer,

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not the. breaker, of his Father's laws, by his subsequent life of perfect.
obedience to every one of His ordinances; so the proof that the Church has
really recovered her Apostles is found in the honor which they give to her
as their mother in all her sin and desolateness, and in the work of recovery
which they do according to the law of her first creation. To teach the
doctrine of the first Apostles, to hold up as they did the Lord's return as
the one and only hope, to cherish the same gifts of the Holy Ghost, to
labor to recover unity as they sought^ to preserve it, and to make Christ the
fountain and model of all holiness after the example of Paul, — this is a
higher proof of the restoration of the Apostolic ministry than any splendor
of miracles. And its re-appearance in the present crisis of Christendom,
when the old systems are breaking up and passing away, is the dawn of a
new day, — the morning star which precedes and ushers in the full-orbed'
glory of the Sun.

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