“And what I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch.” ALL are familiar with the occasion on which these words were spoken. Several inquiries were proposed to the Saviour. They were in the following form: “When shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” These inquiries were so direct and definite, that if a reply be given them at all, we shall naturally expect it to be equally as specific and clear. Such an expectation is well founded, as will be seen on examination. The Saviour, without repelling the inquirers for what might have been thought impertinent and inquisitive proposals, and without evading the questions in the least, proceeds to give a clear narration of certain events, which shall occur in regular order, and be followed by certain signs which shall betoken his advent. And to conclude all, he urges upon them the practical duty of watching for his coming. This he repeatedly enforces in the course of one or two short sentences. The disciples in this instance, betrayed an anxiety very common among primitive Christians. They all desired to know something about the time of Christ’s second advent. This solicitude neither the Saviour nor his apostles hesitated to gratify: had it not been a very natural and commendable anxiety, we have reason to presume that it would not have been responded to so promptly. The theme of Christ’s second coming engaged the attention and interested the soul of every inspired178writer of the Scriptures, with hardly an exception. The Bible is full of the subject. Nor less was it a frequent topic of discourse among the apostles. Paul refers to the Saviour’s second appearing more than a score of times; the other apostles several times; and John, as he looked along down the stream of time in prophetic vision, and beheld one event succeeding another, until he came to the glorious consummation, when Christ should be revealed from heaven without sin unto salvation, his soul heaving with unutterable delight in anticipation of that glorious event, bursts forth with the emphatic ejaculation—“Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly!” But neither Christ nor his apostles refer to that event, or to the time of its occurence, as matters for idle speculation, or for the purpose of satisfying a vain curiosity. Indeed, it is reasonable to suppose that inquiries on this subject were prompted by the Holy Spirit, not so much for the benefit of those who then lived as for our good who should come after them. John alludes to Christ’s second coming, for the practical purpose of quickening his brethren to vigilance and purity; Peter, to holy conversation and godliness; Paul, to temperance and sobriety, with other virtues; and the Saviour, in the way of imparting consolation, encouragement, and warning to watchfulness. We take it for granted, that all inquiries on the same subject at the present day, result from a sober and commendable desire to make a practical use of the doctrine; and that all efforts to gratify such inquiries spring from the same pure fountain. A mere intellectual sense of this event, together with the time of its occurence, cannot benefit the soul in the least; nay, it may serve to sink it deeper and deeper in final woe! From what has been observed, we deem the inquiries proposed to Christ by his disciples, very important and momentous; and the reply, together with the impressive admonitions accompanying it, of grave attention. What I say unto you I say unto all, Watch, watch, watch. The command is universal, and intended to apply to all the followers of Christ, in every successive stage of the church down to his very coming. Indeed, if it be a command more binding upon the church in one period than another, it will be conceded that it is more obligatory when these events and signs referred to shall be witnessed. If so, the instructions to watch are particularly addressed to us, and we cannot pass them by unheeded. Independent, however, of this inference, here is a command of universal application. All will allow that the Scriptures clearly teach the duty of watchfulness in respect to the Saviour’s appearing. Many of us are watching for that event to occur speedily, and are preparing ourselves accordingly. It is with heartfelt grief that we find so many of the professed disciples of Jesus indifferent and unconcerned at this hour, and so many who seem to say, that as long as the Bible is silent on the time of Christ’s coming, they may totally disregard all orders to watch and to prepare themselves for the great day of the Lord God Almighty. So long as such continue at ease in their Laodicean state, and slight such plain directions of the great Judge, we tremble for their safety, and justly fear that they will be among those who shall in vain cry, Lord, Lord, open to us. It is in the hope of stirring up to a sense of their true condition, and of arousing them to immediate duty, that we undertake to present them with the light in which the oracles of God set forth this subject; feeling assured that if they are the Lord’s genuine children, they cannot longer be indifferent, when they see the prominence which this doctrine sustains in the Scriptures, together with the responsibilities and duties resting on Christians, arising out of the great truth of the second coming of Christ. Certainly they will not shrink from yielding obedience to plain Scripture, fairly and honestly interpreted. I. We begin then by inviting your attention to some plain but impressive parables employed by our Lord himself, for the purpose of setting this subject before us in its strongest light. The first to which we refer may be found recorded in Matt. xxiv, 42–44. “Watch, therefore; for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. But know this, that if the good man of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. Therefore be ye also ready; for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of man cometh.” We learn from this parable that to those who shall be off their guard and not expecting his approach, he will come as a thief. If found watching, our best interests will be secured; but if negligent and distrustful, our loss will be certain. A thief in his coming will surely take advantage of our absence and unconcern; the only security therefore is constant vigilance. As if the Saviour had said, Be always ready for my coming; lest, being surprised, you incur a like loss. As you cannot trust the thief, by saying that he will not make his depredations at this or at that hour, so neither can you determine when I may or may not appear. No man thinks of suffering his goods to be despoiled; so no Christian dreams of having Christ come without being prepared to meet him. But as our mere thinking so never saves our possessions from the grasp of the depredator, so our merely thinking that our souls’ interests will never be desolated, is no security in itself against such a catastrophe. A second parable stands in connection with the foregoing: “Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season? Blessed is that servant, whom his lord, when he cometh, shall find so doing. Verily I say unto you, that he shall make him ruler over all his goods. But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to smite his fellow-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; the lord of that servant shall come in a day that he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Here the Saviour likens himself to a lord, and his followers to the servants of a household, in whose hands the former leaves all his domestic interests, constituting some rulers to superintend and direct the affairs of his house, and to administer to his servants proper and well-timed food—“meat in due season.” With an eye fixed on his instructions, such a servant, if wise and faithful, will neglect no part of the duties assigned179to him; he will not provide his supplies at irregular intervals, nor have them always of the same character; he will adapt his fare to the season, and to the circumstances of the household. We hence infer that the wise and faithful servant of Christ will see that his duties vary with circumstances; he is not left to reason that because the health and good of the church have thus far been promoted, that therefore the same kind of truth is always to nourish it without any variation; God has otherwise ordained. And here we find sufficient sanction for the course pursued by second-advent hearers and preachers. The hearer believes that Christ is just to come; he accordingly feels that nothing will sustain and impart life to his soul, but those scriptural truths which harmonize with his coming. We are frank to acknowledge that in comparison with this aliment nothing else is as palatable, or nourishing to him; nor is this fact strange to one who has once tasted of the delicious qualities of this soul-reviving doctrine. While at the same time the preacher feels specially called upon to proclaim, “Fear God and give glory to him; for the hour of his Judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven and earth, and the sea, and the fountain of waters.” Nothing less can be meat in due season; besides, all other great gospel truths cluster in sweet and refreshing profusions around this particular doctrine of the Lord’s coming: the latter tending naturally to enforce the former. As we read the Scriptures, he may not shrink from the discharge of this duty at the peril of his soul’s salvation. Nor may those who are subject to his care, turn away from his warnings now, at the peril of a like exposure. A minister does not conclude his services when he has proclaimed on the general doctrines of faith and repentance; his duties are more extensive and solemn; if he thinks they are not, he had better relinquish his office before he prepares others, by his inertness and sluggishness for the same fate which awaits himself. Nor does it suffice to plead an uncertainty or an ignorance as to the particular times in which we are living. These are made plain matters of prophecy, and may be understood; it is his duty to know the times. Our Lord rebuked the scribes and Pharisees for not knowing the times in which they lived; intimating that such an ordinary measure of perception as they all exercised in divining the least change in the natural world, would, if properly directed, assist them in ascertaining the character of the times on which they had fallen. If they did not understand, it was because they would not or because they were more interested in serving themselves than the Lord. Just so we say of their prototypes at the present day; had they the humble, obedient disposition of their Master, were Christ the center of their thoughts, and affections, and souls, the objects around which their hearts yearned with unutterable agony by day and by night, there would be no kind of trouble about ascertaining the truth, and of perceiving at once the dreadful danger in which the whole world lies of experiencing the last and most terrible of Jehovah’s vials of wrath. Let it now be marked, that as this parable relates to the Lord’s coming there seems to be an intimation in the clause last quoted, that the wise and faithful servant will be sure to announce that coming in its place; and thus he will administer meat in due season. By so doing he shall be blessed, and by continuing so to do until his Lord comes, he shall receive marked distinctions and honors. Such are Christ’s loyal subjects, who never flinch from duty, though despised, and mocked, and pitied for their conscientious adherence to their great King’s instructions. How reverse his treatment, however, who, neglecting his Lord’s interests, and paying little or no regard to his coming, begins secretly to cherish the conviction that the Lord defers his return. Of this crime such a one may be guilty, when he is entirely silent about that event; when he contends that it has already occurred; or that it is a mere figurative coming taught in the Bible, a coming which is to be fatal to none, but glorious to all, irrespective of characters; when he maintains that this event is far in the future; when he secretly rejects the doctrine from his heart, and unblushingly publishes that the coming of Christ shall not alter his engagements, the character and method of his preaching, his conduct; or by any other course which shall be construed by the world into a refusal to prepare himself and others for that crisis. If such infidelity as this has crept into his heart, or escaped from his lips, you may look for another step in his career of hardihood, mischief and wickedness, which will fit him, as well as all who sympathize with him, for more complete ruin. He will begin publicly to reproach and injure those who, in the honesty of their souls, believe the Lord is coming and are trying to be prepared for him; to brand them with heresy, and to thrust them out ostensibly for want of charity and for denunciatory epithets; (ah! the all-flaming eye above knows the hypocrisy of such hearts;) to sympathize with and to please those who hate the Lord’s coming, and to join with them in their sensual excesses and impious indifference to this tremendous event, with frequent cries of peace, peace! yea, more, to turn this whole subject into ridicule and jests, thereby affording merriment and sport for the wicked, blaspheming multitude. My God! who would dare to do it? Such are preparing for themselves the heaviest of Jehovah’s thunderbolts. In the midst of their railing, and scoffing, and tyranny, and bacchanalian revelries, sudden and awful destruction shall be poured out upon them; and they shall be swept away in the burning lake with hypocrites and unbelievers; “there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” With unbelievers, because they have concealed or sported with God’s word; with hypocrites, because they really are such; they have professed to love Christ’s coming, and to desire the inheritance prepared for his followers; but the mention of either has awakened within their bosoms the bitterest opposition or the most consuming hatred. Alas, how little do the deluded multitude consider, that those on whom they are bestowing their windy adulations for their successful efforts in quieting their consciences, by showing that the Judgment is a great way off, are these very evil servants so vividly portrayed by our Lord in this parable! Why are they so blinded as not to see what their teachers are? and the Devil could not have selected more specious and unsuspecting agents by which to lay his last snare for their souls? Yes, why do they not themselves perceive that “my Lord delayeth his coming” is nowhere found in his commission; and that the argument which they have so long employed against Universalism, may with like force be urged against the doctrines for which they plead? Universalism has for its sympathizers and advocates those who are reckless and hardened; consequently it is not of God. Well then, the anti-advent doctrine is subject to a like judgement for a similar reason. Would that all ministers who preach against Christ’s coming, were as rational as one, who, after having preached several discourses against our views, accidentally passed a small group of individuals who had formed a part of his audience, and over heard them damning to hell all the Millerites, and extolling himself and others for their giant vindication of the truth. It went like a barbed arrow to his heart; he dropped his head and began to reason: “What, is Satan divided against himself? then must his kingdom fall!” He at once resolved on never again preaching those discourses, went home, shut himself up in his study, and there continued for days turning over his Bible anew, and breathing out vehement prayer to God for light and knowledge; and soon, while on his knees, in his barn, was converted into the doctrine of the Lord’s immediate coming. Far more tolerable will it be for us if we keep our peace at this time, than by breaking the silence, we bless the wicked on whom God hath pronounced a “wo,” “wo,” and sadden the hearts of the righteous, to whom we have been commissioned to bear tidings of comfort and health. Mark xiii, 34–37. “For the Son of man is as a man taking a far journey, who left his house, and gave authority to his servants, and to every man his work; and commanded the porter to watch. Watch ye, therefore, for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cock-crowing, or in the morning: lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch.” Here the importance of keeping up a vigilant watch arises from the impossibility of calculating the hour of the Lord’s return. The porter in the parable evidently denotes the minister of Christ. It is his duty to look out and to announce to all within the house the return of his Lord; if he neglects doing this, he disregards his trust, and is unfaithful. But alas! how many who stand as porters at the gate, and as watchmen upon the walls, have already refused to announce their Lord’s coming! Some of the poor, anxious inmates are yearning to know whether their lovely Lord be near; but these indifferent porters and watchmen are responding, “We will have none of it here; we know nothing about the Lord’s coming;” while others of them, with a little more affected fidelity, are crying out, “We know as much about that matter as those who pretend to know more; we have heretofore done our duty; souls, by hundreds, have been converted through our instrumentality; were that event near, we know the Lord would let us see it. But let the case be as it may, we shall all be safe if we continue to pray for sinners.” Now, this is an effectual quietus, it savors so much of real piety. And again, these idle porters, who have made their office a mere sinecure, or a medium for receiving the adulations of those within, are fondled and worshiped, and applauded, by the unsuspecting objects of their unfaithfulness. They are loved and honored the more for their peace-and-safety lullabies, little supposing that such are rocking their souls to sleep for perdition; they are passing them on direct to the pit of woe, with the brand of death all burning on their brows! Friend, do you say, “That is not my minister?” And so, perhaps, every one will say; but pause, and don’t be too confident of it. Your soul is above all price; the jewels of the universe are chaff to it. Make no mortal being its exclusive guardian; suffer it never to be out of your own sight. I pray you beware, lest that very one whom you now esteem as your dearest friend, become the author of your final ruin! Thus much in the way of parables, we are taught the duty of watchfulness, with exclusive reference to Christ’s second, personal appearing. These parables include no small portion of our Lord’s teachings; they are quite as impressive as any of the parables which he ever spake. II. Let us see what is said on this subject by way of precept. Luke xxi, 34–36. “And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come upon all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.” Our Saviour here enumerates certain excesses, and vices, which, by being indulged in, will render us unmindful of that day’s approach. Undue care about our business, gross sensuality, a strife for the honors and distinctions of this world, will all have a tendency to have the Lord’s coming surprise us. Such indulgences naturally indispose the mind to consider that event; they render it unsusceptible of religious influences; they obscure the mental vision, and thereby deceive their victims by false assurance of peace, when sudden destruction cometh. Now, we cannot account for the present indifference of Christians, and their intolerable dullness as to beholding the proofs of the Lord’s speedy coming, on any other ground than this; they have not taken heed to this their Lord’s important warning; they are overwhelmed with180the world, in their cares, and business, and pleasures, and extravagant excesses. They are all after mammon; all feasting on the good things of the present life. They have all gone back from God; they have all their gilded projects to carry out before Christ comes: at present they cannot heed the call, “Come, for all things are now ready.” One has bought a piece of ground; another a yoke of oxen, another has married a wife, another has a religious society to look after, another a seminary for educating the rising ministry; and another the heathen to convert. They have all marked out more work for themselves or for God; and all, with one consent, make excuse. But the Lord of the entertainment will have his guests notwithstanding; and they are already pouring in from the streets and lanes of the city, and from the highways and hedges, and are filling up the house; while of those for whom the table was originally spread the insulted Lord has sworn, “None of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper.” How little do those think, who are now steeling and bolting their hearts against all conviction of Christ’s coming, that the parable of the supper was spoken mainly with reference to themselves! Mark, at supper time the invitation went forth. How little do they dream, who profess themselves heartily sick of hearing so much about the Lord’s coming, that they are making the above excuses, and that they are rejecting invitations which God himself has caused to be offered them! They suppose—for the Devil has told them so—that this stir about Christ’s coming is all enthusiasm and fanaticism. Ah! they do not see that the characters who have now accepted of the call render it fearfully ominous that the supper is just about to be eaten without their presence! Their heedlessness and worldliness blind them to all the startling tokens of the coming of the Lord. God is at work all around them, driving up events to the consummation of all things with lightning rapidity; prophecy is fulfilling with alarming exactness; while signs of the approaching glory are flaming out in all the broad archways of heaven. But nothing unusual is occurring: “Where is the promise of his coming?” asks whom? the scoffer? nay, the professed Christian. The most powerful arguments in proof of the Lord’s coming are no more to his mind than is a feather to the turbulent bosom of the ocean; with one dash of his pen he can sweep all the researches of men of piety and learning on this subject; or, with “of that day and hour knoweth no man,” he can meet giants on the field and vanquish them at a blow. Well, God designs that, so long as their characters continue what they are, they shall be deceived, and be involved in midnight on this subject; else as a snare that day could not overtake them. Never, perhaps, was the great mass of the world so well prepared for being surprised by this snare; they are just beginning to congratulate themselves on their stored-up treasures, or their vast facilities for wholesale possessions; with haughty self-complaisance they are now folding their arms, and saying to themselves, “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink and be merry.” They have seized upon all the mysteries of nature, and made them servants to administer to their inflamed passions and lusts; and now, with all that pride and daring for which the human heart is distinguished, they seem as with uplifted arms to challenge the very Almighty on his throne to arrest them in their profligate career, or to interfere with their concerns. But their impiety and rebellion shall not pass unnoticed; they may be driven and baited on to ruin a little while longer, like the ox for the slaughter, and then the great snare shall be drawn, and they shall not escape! O, careless sinner, backslidden professor, the storm is certainly coming! the heavens are already growing dark and lowering! the terrible thunders of Jehovah’s vengeance are just ready to dash upon your guilty head! the forked lightnings of divine justice and insulted mercy are just ready to leap upon your unshattered soul! the world stands waiting for the awful tragedy! Turn then, sinner, from thy wicked works, and secure a refuge ere it be forever too late. And, slumbering Christian, with tears I would warn you, I would entreat you, to get ready for that great day; it is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly. Nothing but ceaseless prayer and watchfulness will qualify you to escape the snare and to stand before the Son of man; if taken you will certainly be destroyed. Come, then, would you escape the snare, you must no longer be a dweller here; the ties that bind you to earth must at once be severed; you must become sober, temperate, heavenly-minded, watchful, prayerful. You can have no just sense of the crisis which is just before you, without adorning yourselves with these graces, and admonishing your souls to vigilance, humiliation and prayer. For one, I tremble, lest, with all my efforts to the contrary, I be at last left; left with a careless and God-hating world, to perish eternally.