BY G. J. S. (Matthew 25:1-13.)

(Concluded from p. 83.)

He who loves them, however, will arouse them. Awake! awake! He cries. Therefore,

3. THEY AGAIN GO OUT TO MEET HIM.

God is not satisfied that He who is His Son should come and find a sleeping company, and so at midnight, when things are at their darkest, He sends forth the cry, "Behold the Bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet Him" (verse 6).

God woos again His people, as He will also Israel in a coming day. He says, "Awake, awake, stand up, O My people. Awake, awake, put on thy strength, put on thy beautiful garments! Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing, go ye out of the midst of her; be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord" (Isa. 51:17; 52:1, 11.

Again, "Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee" (Isa. 60:i).

Wherefore He saith, "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from among the dead, and Christ shall shine upon thee" (Eph. 5:14, N. Trans.)

The Midnight Cry has thus in grace been raised in Christendom. Eighty years ago God sent forth His heralds in the power of the Spirit to shake a sleeping Christendom to its very center with the astounding cry, Awake! awake! Behold, behold the Bridegroom! Go ye forth to meet Him! Some few saints were first awakened by this cry. Enquiry was raised, scriptures were opened up, proofs were forthcoming, and hundreds of preachers again heralded it, until at last there is scarcely a portion of Christendom where, with a greater or lesser degree of light and accuracy as to details, the coming of the Lord as a doctrine is not known.

So has our God in His mercy given another opportunity to that company in this stage of its history to prove its desire for, and faithfulness to, Him for whom they should wait. Infinite mercy of our God! A revival of truth in the midst of the years! "Happy the people that is in such a case, yea, happy the people whose God is the Lord."

At the first this happiness was possessed by a few, who again went forth, taking nothing but a light. They trimmed their lamps, they sold their possessions, and laid aside their honors to announce again their coming absent Lord. In unison with the Spirit and the bride they called upon Him to come, and in view of His near approach took up the cry, Behold the Bridegroom! The ironical world looked on, chagrined at this renewal of divine and living power, and asked, How long will this new freak satisfy their hearts ?

All those Virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. Trim a lamp that has oil in it and up shoots the light. But of what use is it to trim a lamp that has no oil in it? The more it is trimmed the more surely it will go out. While all slept all were alike. A spiritually dead man is as good as a live sleeping man for a moment. A mere lamp will do for this state of things. All are at ease and in quiet. But let all be aroused as God has aroused them according to His own purpose, and then the difference between the wise and foolish appears. The brightness of the light from the lamps of the wise shines out, and the failure on the part of the foolish becomes apparent even to themselves. So they turn to the wise, saying, "Give us of your oil, for our lamps are going out!"

This cry at midnight has certainly produced an awakening almost universal in Christendom. Wise and foolish are all awake and all at work. We hear very little, if at all now-a-days, of the old-fashioned card-playing and fox-hunting parsons. The dark days when all slept were more suitable to this kind of thing, and produced it. But when the thought of the Lord's coming takes possession of hearts, and all are more or less alive to it, these things will not pass muster.

The cry has set in motion a huge wheel of work, as it were, which goes round and round, and groans out work! work! ! WORK!!! The wise are really at work again for their Master now, and in His light down here while awaiting His return. The foolish are working to get that which they know they have not, and thus prepare themselves for His coming, whom they are consciously unready to meet. One set, therefore, is at work for the Lord as His servants, the other for themselves. The one with some sense of their shame is having gone to sleep, and it may be with some of the effects still hampering them; the other, with a foolish idea that they can obtain by their own efforts and means what they lack.

"Give us of your oil; for our lamps are going out." What a discovery for them to make! They seek the wise. Ah! they that are foolish know who are wise. In other words, the mere professors know who are real men. And though they may revile them and belittle them .in the eyes of others, yet when real alarm lays hold of them they know who has what they need.

But the wise virgins can not give them of their oil. If this were possible, how many are there who would at this moment impart it to some one-how many a wife to her husband, or father or mother to their children. Only Christ can impart life and the Spirit, and it is with Him they must have to do. The advice of the wise virgins is:" Go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves." They direct the foolish to the source whence this oil could be "bought," in a Scriptural sense, that is, "without money and without price." But the foolish go to "buy" by their own efforts, and this introduces us to the moral state which surrounds us at this moment. It is a day of activity; a day of Christian endeavor:with multitudes perhaps an endeavor to become Christians by that activity rather than through repentance.

Do not all the unchristian methods introduced into so-called Christian work tell of the influence of the foolish virgins in their endeavor to buy the oil ? Their bazaars and bruce auctions; their fancy and international fairs and sacred concerts, all tell of the desire to be accredited as those who are what they are conscious they are not.

But all this, though it may pass muster with some, cannot deceive Him who is coming as the Bridegroom, and, alas for them, as the Judge. All attempts to buy the oil thus come near to that which Peter so scathingly denounced, "Thy money perish with thee because thou hast thought that the gift of God can be purchased with money." My reader, of which are you ? The wise or the foolish ? Which f The wise have eternal life. Their sins are forgiven -washed away by the blood of Jesus. The Spirit of Christ is in them. They work too, but their work is the "work of faith, and labor of love," wrought in the "patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ" (i Thess. i:3). They are ready for His coming.

4. "WHILE THEY WENT TO BUY THE BRIDEGROOM CAME."

We have reached the last stage, and some are not ready. Spite of all fair appearances, and all the works,-Christian works, so-called,-in which these foolish virgins are engaged, there is underneath it all a sense that the Lord is coming; that things can not go on as they are, and that they are not ready. All the bestowal of money, goods, time, has not really satisfied the heart. There never has been a real desire for the Lord Himself in the hearts of these foolish virgins. Their activity has been but a salve to an uneasy conscience. The Lord's arrival brings everything to light, and makes manifest the essential difference between the wise and the foolish.

" They that were ready went in with Him to the marriage."-Happy moment for the ready virgins! A bliss supreme, divine! To the heart that loves Him and is ready in the spirit of expectancy for Him, to be with Him is the chief, primary satisfaction. Blessed, indeed, to be found among that company who, with girded loins and burning lamps, shall hail the coming of the Lord for whom they have waited with joy. Not in vain will have been the sorrows of the night to them when they behold His blessed face. They come into His presence, to go no more out for ever.

"And the door was shut." These are five of the most solemn words that were ever uttered. When, in their fulfilment, the horrors contained in them flash into the consciences of those who are outside that closed door, one can conceive nothing more appalling, nothing so like hell upon earth. Mercy's stream, as it now flows throughout Christendom, will be cut off from that channel for ever. The stream may flow into another channel, but no more toward a Christ-despising Christendom.

Oh, the horrors of that moment when the truth forces itself upon the heart! When the doom pronounced by the Lord shall burst upon the soul, "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still "(Rev. 22:11)! When friends and relatives whose company has comforted us are suddenly^taken from us and we left behind bereft of all hope!

"Lord, Lord, open to us!" they cry. But His only answer from behind the closed door is, '' Verily, I say unto you, I know you not." In hopeless despair they must now turn away, the wail of the lost wringing from their hearts, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved " (Jer. 8:20).

Reader, that hour is near. "Watch, therefore; for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of Man cometh."