g, the
most regenerative influence in their society was the vividness and
intensity of their Advent hope. Their expectation of the Lord's return
lifted them out of the temptations of the world and above the trials of
it. It took hold of their active powers, and made them new men.

Their Advent expectation was not the vague, half mystic, half sentimental
movement of the heart, which just touches the lives of so many Christians
during our Advent seasons, while it does not really alter any of their
earthly concerns.

Christ was very near to the Apostolic Christians. As the eastern sky
brightened every morning they felt that it might be the light of His
coming; they thought of Him as only hidden from them by the neighbouring
cloud. They looked for Him to return at midnight, or at the
cock-crowing, or in the noonday, and none could say how soon. And so it
came to pass that this expectation made those first believers, those
humble followers of Christ, those Galilean fishermen, those obscure
provincials, instinct with that great life which lifts men above the
world, and constitutes them a new power in it.

Our lives are largely influenced by the thought of slow development; but
we miss a great deal of the secret of all higher life if we forget this
wonderful exaltation of the poor and ignorant and obscure by this gift of
the Spirit and the inspiration of Divine hope. It was not by any method
which we could have forecast that those men found out this charm which
takes the heart captive and regenerates the life. In their presence we
feel the force of the prophet's words, "Not by might nor by power, but by
My spirit, saith the Lord."

But then there rises the question, How are these Divine influences to
become powerful in us also?

On the one hand, we are conscious that as we live involved or entangled
in the worldly life, or in any form of external life around us, the
spiritual part of us slumbers or is overlaid. It loses its practical
power over our thought, our feeling, and our conduct--our lamp goes out.
Whilst on the other hand we are conscious that the special form of Advent
expectation which inspired and possessed the first generation of
Christians is gone from us past recovery. We see clearly enough as we
read the New Testament what that first generation expected, and how the
expectation transformed their lives; but we see also that they were
mistaken in their hope, and that God's providential plan proved t