By P. J. L.

II.

We devoted our first address last Lord's day, dear friends, chiefly to the fact itself that our Lord-the same blessed Man who visited our earth nearly two thousand years ago-is to come again. We saw that His return is indeed the Hope which God, in His Word, has set before us to cheer our hearts and keep us pilgrims and strangers here- to separate us from the world and link our daily life with the home above. Indeed, the return of our Lord is the universal hope according to the teaching of the word of God. It is, first of all, the hope of the Church, that is, our own hope. Then it is the hope of Israel,-the Jewish nation,-which is yet to rise, and, under the reign of Christ, occupy a high and blessed place on the earth. After that, it is the hope of the Gentile nations, which are to be blessed also under his universal reign. Then it is the hope of creation, "for we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now," and the promise is that it "shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God."

All this is to be accomplished by our Lord Jesus Christ at His return. You can therefore see, dear friends, how that, ignorantly or intelligently, every one and everything that sighs and cries for good is sighing and crying for the return of our Lord; for do what they may, the good they sigh for cannot come till the Lord comes.

Our subject to-day will be the hope of the Church, for the fulfilment of her hope is the preliminary to all the rest. Do you know what the Church is, beloved friends? Rest assured it is not Rome, though she may assume that lovely name. Nor is it the Church of England, nor the Greek Church, nor any of the many denominations which go by this name or that; nor all of them put together, are they the Church. We have a divine definition of it in the closing verses of the first chapter of Ephesians. There, our Lord Jesus Christ, exalted to the highest glory by the hand of His Father, is said to be " head over all to the Church, which is His Body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all."Mark well, she is His Body- His fulness, or complement. As Eve was the ful-ness, or complement, of Adam, so the Church is the complement of Christ. Adam said of Eve, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh:she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man" (Gen. 2:23).Correspondingly, of the Church it is said, "For no man ever hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church:for we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones" (Eph. 5:29, 30).

This is what the Church is, beloved friends. Let me ask each one of you, Are you a member of that Church ? It requires nothing less than to be born of God, washed from our sins by the blood of Christ, and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, to belong to that Church. You cannot "join" it. It is an act of God that makes you a member of it. Many confound it with the family of God. They see no difference between being a child of God and a member of the Body of Christ, and thus they lose one-half of the gospel and the blessings attached to it. Let me make it plain:There is my daughter. She is my child. She belongs to my family. But a man has won her heart and made her his wife. She is my child still, of course. She belongs to my family still. But she is more than that now. She is a man's wife, one flesh with him-a relationship far different from that of father and child. New affections are developed by it, new relations, a new path, and new responsibilities as well. They who miss this in their souls miss one-half of the gospel of God's grace; they miss the very heart and core of the present dispensation, and therefore of the present activities of the Holy Spirit; their thoughts are not in communion with the thoughts of God, and their spiritual growth is accordingly dwarfed. It is an immense loss.

But Satan works hardest where the Spirit of God is most active. Let the evangelist proclaim salvation by the blood of Jesus-God's only way of salvation-and he will have all the "Higher Critics," and Evolutionists, and Unitarians, and every other tribe of the "Scribes and Pharisees," and "Sadducees," howling at his heels.

Let him keep on and proclaim that those who are now washed from their sins are "by one Spirit all baptized into one body" (i Cor. 12:13); that they have nothing to "join," since they are already joined to Christ Himself (i Cor. 6:17), and to every member of His Body (Rom. 12:5); that they have only to confess the truth and meet together as members of His Body, and obey Him henceforth in all He has to say to them as Lord over His own house. I say, let him proclaim this second part of the gospel and he will at once have all the sectarians against him and fleeing from him. The devil hates to see Christ exalted, and occupying His rightful place.

That blessed Church of which Scripture speaks began at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came down from heaven to dwell in the children of God. Before that, He had wrought in, and upon, and by the children of God, to give them divine life, to arouse their faith, and to use them for God's purposes; but now that Christ had come and cleared away the whole question of sin and gone back to His glory, He had come to dwell in them, and thus "gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad " (John 11 :52). When that Church is completed, something wonderful will happen, i Thess. 4:14-17 tells us what it is. "The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God:and the dead in Christ shall rise first:then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air:and so shall we ever be with the Lord."

These are plain words, are they not, dear friends ? Could language be plainer or simpler ? It is so simple that it needs no explanation, no interpretation whatever. It is like the language at the beginning of Genesis-"God created." There it is for faith to receive it and get the blessing of it, or for unbelief to refuse it and grope about in darkness.

But when is this to take place ?:and are there not great signs to be fulfilled before it comes to pass? First, no one knows when this is to take place. There is absolutely no revelation as to the time; and so imminent is it, indeed, that it may take place before this meeting breaks up. But, says one, look at the signs to be fulfilled in Matt. 24. Some of them yet remain to be fulfilled, do they not ? Yes, indeed, they do; but that chapter refers to the appearing of the Lord on the clouds of heaven to bring about the hope of Israel on the earth-not to His descent from heaven part way, and our disappearing from the earth to meet Him above. We are caught up to meet Him midway between heaven and earth, to be taken by Him into His Father's house, as He promised in John 14:1-3. In Matt. 24 He comes to the earth to deal with it as in the days of Noah, and establish Israel in their promised land, us He has before established us in our own inheritance, "reserved in heaven " for us.

Beloved friends, are you each one looking thus for the Lord to come at any time to remove you from earth to heaven ? Is it the hope of your heart ? Is it what comforts you in the trials and sorrows of the way ? For there are trials and sorrows in the wilderness journey with God, which are the portion of all who are going on with Him; and this blessed hope is God's way of comforting and encouraging them. If it burns brightly in your soul, it will break the power of the world in it. It will separate you from the world. The realities there will make all the world hollow to you. It will break up the love of money, and make us lay up treasures in heaven, rather than upon earth. It will make us faithful, for we will have no time to spend on vanity. It will make us obedient to His Word, for we are so soon to be manifested before His judgment-seat. As the first coming of Christ delivers us from all fear of wrath and the terrors of the great white throne, so His second coming takes our heart clean out of the world, and makes us strangers in it. Its "society," its pleasures, its aims and purposes, are left behind forever. We may sing henceforth in sincerity and truth,

"We are but strangers here,
Heaven is our home !
Earth is a desert drear,
Heaven is our home !"

May this be the honest language of every child of God in this audience. And if some be not yet children of God, may they, while yet the Lord has tarried, seize their opportunity; for Scripture testifies that when the Lord has taken the Church away there is no further hope for those who, having known the truth, have not received the love of it, that they might be saved (2 Thess. 2 :8-12). Hasten, then, all ye who are yet unsaved, lest the Lord come and you be found in your sins.