With entire freedom of heart I can say, I do not desire to lead the opinions of others. Even our knowledge of truth itself is but little worth to the soul if it have not been attained by exercise of the renewed affections before God. And opinions are poor human things, the fruit of man's midnight lamp, at which he eats the bread of literary carefulness. And how can the saint value them? But if we walk together with right desires, though it may be in much remaining ignorance, we may assure ourselves, even at this still later hour of the day, that our Lord will not refuse us both His light and His company, as once to our brothers on their way to Emmaus. Do not, however, let me intimate that I find no difficulties in considering this great subject of the Lord's return and its concurrent events. Indeed I do; and besides difficulties, I am going to say this, that I think there may be some indistinctness as to it purposely left on the page of Scripture, in. order to keep the saints in health of soul, maintaining them in spirit still, ever longing for Jesus till His return, and yet being in divine strength ready to reach Him by death through flames and floods. For indeed the soul's lively, hopeful, suffering energies are far beyond well ordered and carefully digested conceptions of these things. And sure, sure I am, that our Lord has another purpose touching us as His disciples or pupils than the merely having us of one opinion by dint of the study of the Bible. For poor is the communion our souls have tasted as the fruit of that.

I will add another thought-that though I see nothing necessarily delaying our rapture into the air, nothing put as a drag upon it, yet I know and allow that many things are to be done on the earth before the full form of evil be revealed, or the reserved week of Daniel begin. The nations of the East may have either to be reproduced or organized, and all of the prophetic words about Babylon, Edom, Tyre, and the rest of these may have to be accomplished in the ancient sites of these famous cities and lands of the peoples. I do not deny this; and we know that much is to bed one with Israel and with Judah, morally and politically, and with the land that is theirs by gift of God. The West, too, is to be got ready as the platform of a serious action ere the crisis comes, or its precursors in the seventieth week. Also I grant that the present dispensation may still go on, because God's long-suffering is salvation, and He waits to be gracious. But still I add, that none of this is made necessary to our removal. We are not to be remembering days and years, though of course the longer we live the nearer is our salvation. Nor have we to ponder the ways of the nations, though of course the maturer the iniquity, the more fit for the judgment.

But "Come, Lord Jesus" is ever to be the desire of the utterance. "Hope of our hearts, O Lord, appear " is a song, I believe, most suited to the worship of our souls. Let us call each other's spiritual senses into exercise, but not seek either to frighten or to school others into our way of thinking. For on such subjects even an inspired apostle used this chastened style, "I would not, brethren, that should be ignorant;" at the same time, as he also tells us in the same place, opening these mysteries not for the filling of the mind of the disciples with opinions, but for the guiding of their hearts with right affections, saying to them, "lest ye should be wise in your own conceits." Let us then, beloved, get the apostle's taste and spirit, as well as his knowledge. A brother's spirit is more edifying than his communication. We experience that every day.

Let us take a hint from another,'' to aim to gather knowledge more from meditation than from study, and to have it dwell in us, not as opinions, but as the food of communion, the quickener of hope, the husbandman of divine love, and the blessed refreshing of the Kingdom of God within us." I esteem it holier to confess difficulties than to grapple with them in either the ingenuity or the strength of intellect. And surely it is bad when some fond thought or another is made the great object. It soon works itself into the central place, and becomes the gathering point. The order of the soul is disturbed, and the real godly edifying of the saints hindered. For we have to remember that knowledge is only a small part in the wide field of our husbandry (2 Pet. 1:5-7). An appetite for it needs to be regulated rather than gratified. And many who in their husbandry have raised far less of it than others have more abundantly prospered in bringing forth richer fruits in service, and in love, and in personal devotedness to Jesus.

May the Lord deepen in the souls of all His saints the power of His own redeeming love, and shed I more and more among us the savor of His precious and honored Name!