WHERE in the Scriptures can it be shown that the gospel was ever designed to do more than to “take out” from the Gentiles “a people for his name.” (Acts xv, 14.) If more than this was designed, then the gospel has proved a failure already. But there has been no failure, and will be none in this regard. It is man who has made the failure; God can make no failure. Nor can the gospel ever fail in accomplishing all it was designed to accomplish. But has not the gospel been preached for eighteen hundred years? and yet to this day, but a few only have believed it; while men have pushed on and plunged deeper and yet deeper in crime with every successive generation, notwithstanding the pleadings of the cross and the thunderings of the law. Witness the following facts: After the gospel, with all its pentecostal influences and aggressive power has been in the world for eighteen hundred years, it is said that only four-tenths of the present population of the globe have ever heard of Jesus Christ! Again: Burke estimates that thirty-five billion men have been slain in war; although Dick estimates the number as not being more than eighteen billion. But let us think of it for one moment; at the lowest estimate, we have men enough slain by the hands of their fellow-men, to populate two solar systems, or eighteen worlds! With human blood enough shed, it has been thought, to float the navies of the world! Think of the frightful fact, and whose heart is not sickened at the appalling spectacle of human depravity? And what Christian heart does not in an agony pray for the coming of the PRINCE OF PEACE, when “nations shall learn war no more!”
WHERE THE FAILURE LIES.
No, it is not the gospel, but men who have made the failures. They have failed to apprehend the purposes of God in Christ and in the church; they have failed to rally around the blood-stained banner of the cross; to maintain the unity of the faith; and to glorify God instead of men. Failures have been met with at every step. In the church there have been apostasies and schisms.
And are these evils in the way of being remedied? Were sects ever more rapidly multiplying than at the present time? And among the kingdoms of earth, we witness an ever-increasing restlessness, which is satisfied only with revolution and war. Men easily become dissatisfied with the old regimen, and demand change. And in view of the unheard-of and unprecedented preparations for war and bloodshed, both on sea and land, throughout the civilized world, what may we expect better in the future than what has been realized in the past, until “he comes whose right it is” to reign. Who will say that now, in this day of wonders, in this age of stupendous facts, when the events of a century are crowded into a twelvemonth, when both the Jewish and Christian world acknowledge that time has nearly filled its measure of six thousand years—who can say that God is not now speedily making ready to hush into eternal silence the clamors of angry foes, and to establish the reign of his Son, and bring in the “times of the restitution of all things!” Did not the Bishop of
Oxford speak advisedly, when in a recent charge, he said, “The stream of infidelity might pass away as it had passed away before. That might be so; but, on the other hand, it might be that they were but just catching on the first approaches of that dreary winter of unbelief which should usher in the coming of the glorious spring-time when the Son of man cometh. But, however it might be, it becomes our duty to hold fast for ourselves the word of truth, and to mark, as God’s witnesses, vigilantly the signs of the times, that they might be ready.” Do any know the day or hour when the Son of Man cometh, so that they can say it will not come speedily? Look! we have with us the history of the past, the events of the present, and the prophecies of the future; and shall they teach us nothing? And can we “fold our faith-clad arms in lazy lock,” and heed not and care not if these things be so? Have we not interests of infinite moment pending the decision of that hour? And, too, have we fulfilled our duty to an unbelieving world? Are we prepared to enter into the sublime realities of the scenes which shall then open to our view? Are we the children of the light and of the day? Then let us have our lamps trimmed and burning; let our loins be girt about, and we “like unto men that wait for their Lord.” And let ours be the apocalyptic “Amen, even so come Lord Jesus.”