A Coming Saviour | AdventAI

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 28, 1856

A Coming Saviour.

OVER the Christian's engagements, habits and pursuits, whether social, professional, literary, scientific, or otherwise, the thought of a coming Saviour exercises a strong control.

If the love of gain besets him, the eternal riches which Christ at his coming will bestow, are to him an effectual counterpoise.

If the natural bent of his mind be the love of pleasure, the anticipated joys of the second advent are calculated to quench the unhallowed flame. If the love of ease, or a lethargic indolence besets him—if some favorite pursuit too much engrosses, or some master passion with galling bondage lords it over him—in either of these cases, and in any similar ones, what a motive is here presented to an energetic effort for deliverance.

Or is he naturally ambitious? In contemplating the glories of the future, how do all the objects of human esteem sink into insignificance? Or does the love of man's applause, or the dread of man's censure—those fearfully influential principles—do those too strongly appeal to the corrupt principles within? Behold in the anticipation of a coming Saviour a principle still more influential! For when a believing man has learned to realize the smile of an approving God, how little will he esteem the applause of his fellow men.

And when he has brought home to his soul a dread of that terrible denunciation, "Depart ye cursed," how little will he care that his name is now cast out as evil! The power of the world is disarmed by the vision of things invisible, and all its pomp and circumstance, its pageants and applause, its triumphs and its fame, all these have no glory to the mind imbued with heavenly faith, by reason of the glory which excelleth.