AT MIDNIGHT | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 25, 1880

"AT MIDNIGHT."

A short time since, I was spending the night with the family of a friend, in the absence of the husband and father. On waking near midnight, all was darkness and silence. The household were wrapped in quiet slumber. Suddenly there was a noise in the street, a rap at the door, and the father's voice was heard calling a member of the family by name. What a change came over the sleeping household! The quiet of the midnight slumbers gave place to the confused murmur of voices, hurrying steps, and hasty preparations to welcome the cold and weary traveler. But there was another circumstance which added greatly to the surprise and pleasure of the midnight arrival. The father brought with him a son and his family, who were now returning for the first time after an absence of several years.

As I listened to the happy voice of parents, children, and grandchildren, gathered once more around the parental fireside, I thought of another coming of "the Master of the house," perhaps "at midnight."

How much like a sleeping household will the mass of mankind be at that time! While a few will be awake, watching, listening for the faintest sound that betokens His approach, the multitude will be asleep. Some, perhaps, once had joyous anticipations of that event, but they have listened to the delusive words, "My Lord delayeth his coming;" and now they sleep on with the world, alike forgetful of the past, and regardless of the future. Alas, with what terrible suddenness, must the waking come! The care and rush of business, the whirl of pleasure, the pomp of worldly honor, the listless dreams of indolence, the devious ways of vice and crime, will alike prove powerless to hinder the hearing of that voice which shall rise above the crash and roar of dissolving elements; which shall reach with loving energy the darkest recesses of hades; which shall startle into life the sleepers on mossy beds far down among coral rocks and ocean caverns, and shall summon to their final doom the mightiest of the living and the dead.

But while the suddenness of the coming will be fearful to the many, it will be transcendently joyous to the few who are watching. The Beloved, so long absent, comes at last! The Presence, so often yearned for, is now beheld in all his glorious majesty and beauty. The hand whose unseen leading has been so long experienced, is now grasped with the fervor of immortal love. The eyes which have watched our welfare with sleepless vigilance, are now gazing into ours with unutterable compassion and affection—a compassion and affection whose best exponents are Gethsemane and Calvary.

And this beloved Friend will not come alone. However much the soul may be filled with his divine love, there are earthly loves, pure, tender, abiding. Some, thus loved, have been taken from us, leaving our hearts rent with anguish, and our lives desolate; but we have God's own word that "they shall come again from the land of the enemy." We sorrow not as those without hope, "for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him." Yes; as the waiting ones are caught up to meet their Lord with all the host of his angelic attendants, they will also meet the loved and lost of earth.

*Loving eyes shall on me shine, Hands shall stretch to meet me, Loving arms shall round me twine, Loving voices greet me.*

But how different from the decaying bodies we laid away, upon which disease had done its work, are these radiant beings, vigorous with immortal life, beauteous with resurrection fashioning like unto Christ's glorious body—the same, but glorified. The same eyes that looked their last on us so lovingly, and then grew dim and sightless, shall then shine upon us with a new and fadeless luster. The hands which supported us in helplessness, which ministered to our wants or soothed our aching brows, and which at last we folded across the still breast, shall then be stretched to meet us with the grasp of an unchanging friendship, an undying love. The arms which twined about us in the purity of earthly affection, then loosed their hold and grew rigid in death, shall embrace us yet again. The voices so dear to us, which grew fainter and yet fainter until they were hushed forever on earth, shall greet us then, strong and melodious as those of angels, and shall join with ours in swelling the anthems of the redeemed. And this state of bliss unspeakable shall know no end. "So shall we ever be with the Lord."

Reader, will you be there? Will you share the blessedness of those servants whom their Lord when he cometh shall find watching?—The Christian.