g
manhood; a son who loved me, reverenced me, believed as I believe, a
member of my own Church, baptized by my own hand in early days: a
son on whom I hoped to lean in peace if the shadows should deepen
round me ere my Lord might come. And in the going of that beloved
son of mine the light of day has seemed at times to fail, the stars
of heaven have grown so dim and far away I think of them often as
tears of distant eyes that pity me. There are moments when I crave
him as a hungry man does food and as a thirsty man in desert ways
yearns for a draught of limpid waters. I have a hurt here in the
heart of me no medicine of earth can cure; but because I know when
the Lord comes this son of mine shall rise and I shall meet him and
the old glad life renew in larger, richer, fuller measure; and
because I know there is only the sound of the trump between me and
that longed-for hour; that the door of heaven is always ajar and my
Lord may come at any moment and bring us to the hand clasp and the
love embrace again, I bear my hurt, I rest in the Lord and preach
this blessed hope to other hearts that ache--the Coming of Him who
is the resurrection and the life and whose last earthward utterance
to His Church is:

"Behold, I come quickly."

IV

Not Till Our Lord Jesus Christ Comes the Second Time Will the Church
be Exalted into Her True Function of Rulership Over the World

THE Church was not sent into the world to convert or Christianize
it.

It was sent into the world to preach the Gospel to every creature.

It was not to condone the world but to condemn it.

With its twin doctrines of Incarnation and Regeneration it was to
ring the knell of evolution and deny the hope of any saving energy
in the flesh.

It was not to flatter, to paint, to gild nor endeavour in any wise
to reform or organize the world.

It was to deal with the world, with the system called the world, as
a ship pounding to pieces, and pounding helplessly, upon the rocks
of fallen human nature, the dethronement of God in the soul and the
enthronement and exaltation of self-interest in the soul.

The Church in its ministry and widely commissioned effort was to
plunge, as a well-equipped and perfectly manned life-boat may do,
into the sea and surf of natural and Satanic things and get men out
of an old system under the doom and judgment of God into Christ as
the head of a new system under grace and the coming glory of God.

The Church was not to