of each new age.

Brethren! the Cross is incomplete without the throne. We are told to
go back to the historical Christ. Yes, Amen, I say! But do not let
that make us lose our grasp of the living Christ who is with us to-day.
Whilst we rejoice over the 'Christ that died,' let us go on with Paul
to say, 'Yea! rather, that is risen again, and is even at the right
hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.'

For that future, discredited as the thought of the second corporeal
coming of the Lord Jesus in visible fashion and to a locality has
been by the fancies and the vagaries of so-called Apocalyptic
expositors, let us not forget that it is the hope of Christ's
Church, and that 'they who love His appearing' is, by the Apostle,
used as the description and definition of the Christian character.
We have to look forwards as well as backwards and upwards, and to
rejoice in the sure and certain confidence that the Christ who has
come is the Christ who will come.

For us the past should be full of Him, and memory and faith should
cling to His Incarnation and His Cross. The present should be full
of Him, and our hearts should commune with Him amidst the toils of
earth. The future should be full of Him, and our hopes should be
based upon no vague anticipations of a perfectibility of humanity,
nor upon any dim dreams of what may lie beyond the grave; but upon
the concrete fact that Jesus Christ has risen, and that Jesus Christ
is glorified. Does my faith grasp the Christ that was--who died for
me? Does my heart cling to the Christ who is--who lives and reigns,
and with whom my life is hid in God? Do my hopes crystallise round,
and anchor upon, the Christ that is to come, and pierce the dimness