They do not belong only to times far off. We are not to think of them
merely as enshrined in the Bible and peculiar to it; but as living voices
that are speaking to us to-day out of the depths of the Divine life, in
which our life is sustained.

But we have always to bear this in mind, that the Divine voices speak to
men with most stirring effect in every generation when they speak to them
through the pressing needs of their own day. To the Jews the voice of
God came in the inspired language of their deliverers and prophets--in
their unceasing warnings, and their impassioned appeals, and their
revelations of new truth. To the first generation of Christians these
same voices came in the shape of strong Advent hopes. Many things
contributed to lift the Apostles and their followers nearer to God than
men of ordinary times. They had seen the Lord; they had lived in His
presence; they had gone through much tribulation; the tongue of fire had
rested on them; the Spirit had taken full possession of them; but we
cannot read the New Testament without feeling that the most stirring, the
most regenerative influence in their society was the vividness and
intensity of their Advent hope. Their expectation of the Lord's return
lifted them out of the temptations of the world and above the trials of
it. It took hold of their active powers, and made them new men.

Their Advent expectation was not the vague, half mystic, half sentimental
movement of the heart, which just touches the lives of so many Christians
during our Advent seasons, while it does not really alter any of their
earthly concerns.

Christ was very near to the Apostolic Christians. As the eastern sky
brightened every morning they felt that it might be the light of His
coming; they thought of Him as only hidden from them by the neighbouring