XXVI.

PATIENCE THROUGH THE BLESSED HOPE.

'Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. 8 Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.'-JAMES V. 7, 8.

ROM his solemn warning, by way of apostrophe, to the

solemn

bigoted and cruel oppressors of the church, the apostle comes back at this point to resume the ordinary course of his Epistle, the word 'brethren' intimating that his address is again directly to Christians. He exhorts them to bear their sufferings with patience. The connection of thought, while in a general way with the whole announcement in the preceding paragraph, seems to be more particularly with the ideas suggested by the solemn 'doth not resist you,' the last words of the paragraph. Those same objects of expectation which were calculated to fill the persecutors with dread were fitted to animate and sustain believers; for the Lord when He comes, whether personally at the great consummation of this world's history, or in those striking acts of providence which the wise recognise as His visitations-lively proofs of His presence, precursors of His final advent,-comes not to punish and crush His foes only, but to bless His people.

The Jewish Christians to whom James wrote were in sore trouble, many of them, as we have seen, through the oppression of the enemies of the truth, particularly their own unbelieving countrymen. The Saviour had given them warning that it would be so, that if the world hated and persecuted Him, it would also hate and persecute those that honoured His name and strove

to walk in His ways. Still, no doubt, times of almost faithless wonderment would come, and flashes of sinful impatience dart across their souls; and even in their hours of devoutest and most child-like feeling the cry would go up, 'How long, O Lord, how long?' In all ages when the world's hostility to vital religion was permitted by God in His providence to show itself in virulent and lengthened persecution,—when prisons were crowded with God's saints, when lips that had taught and comforted many were silenced by death on a scaffold, when smoke went curling up towards heaven from fires that were torturing and destroying the excellent of the earthand yet the heaven was silent, and no bolt of divine vengeance came forth to consume the enemies of the Lord in a moment, —this must have proved a most severe trial of that quietness and restfulness of heart in God to which believers are called.

Few things, if any, in the life of faith are more difficult than to accept cordially the divine forbearance with arrogant and oppressive sin-the sublime long-suffering which permits. great moral problems to be worked out fully by the experience of generations through centuries and millenniums, for God's glory, and the good of His angelic and human children everlastingly. We can see but a very little way into the principles of the divine administration, my brethren,- He makes darkness His secret place-His pavilion round about Him are dark waters and thick clouds of the skies ;' but we know that 'justice and judgment are the habitation of His throne,' and 'mercy and truth go before His face.' It is the way of God to move slowly. Though immediately on the commission of the first sin a promise of grace was given, yet thousands of years had to elapse before the right time came, the fulness of time, when the Son of God was manifested in flesh for our redemption. When He did come, thirty years of His life passed over before His claims to be from God were made known beyond the very narrowest circle. And since His ascension to glory, since 'all power was given to Him in heaven and in earth, to quicken whom He would,' well-nigh two thousand years have gone, and still by far the larger part of our world

is in heathen, Mohammedan, or Antichristian darkness; whilst even in lands of gospel light genuine piety seems to rule but a small proportion of the people. It accords with all this that God should be long silent while His people are oppressed. Look at the view given us of this from the side of heaven: 'And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: and they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them ; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled' (Rev. vi. 9–11). How wonderful is this divine calm above-' It was said unto them that they should rest'—in contrast with the turmoil, and weary waiting, and anxious appeals below!

The apostle exhorts his readers to be patient' under the oppression of their enemies—to seek oneness of will with God, and wait His time with child-like hearts. This is true Christian patience. It has no Stoical affectation of indifference to suffering, it acknowledges that trouble in itself is 'not joyous, but grievous;' but it recognises God's hand even in afflictions that immediately come from the selfishness and malignity of evil men; in God's hand it sees that of a Father who will never chasten longer or more severely than is really needful; and thus it waits His time for deliverance. That time cer

tainly will come. Commonly His providence enriches His people with many comforts here—periods, long periods often, of health, and peace, and prosperity; for 'godliness hath the promise of this life' as well as of the future. But however many or however gloomy the days be during which He afflicts us, and the years in which we see evil, yet assuredly one day He will make us glad. 'Weeping may endure for a night,' and the night may seem very long and very dark; ‘but joy cometh in the morning'-the morning of an endless day. To that blessed morning, as dawning on the whole church

of God, now for the first time without any sorrowing member -to the day of the Lord's personal coming, to clothe His people in the garments of everlasting glory and beauty-is undoubtedly the grand if not the exclusive reference of the apostle's words here, in speaking of the limit beyond which patience, waiting in any form or measure, will not be needed, -unto the coming of the Lord.' The paragraph before this, describing the miseries about to come on the rich oppressors of the church, probably points forward in the first instance, as we have seen, to the calamities connected with the destruction of Jerusalem, but plainly also points beyond these to the 'tribulation and anguish' of Christ's enemies at the judgment day. Now the expression used in the passage before us, 'the coming of the Lord,' is beyond question employed sometimes in the New Testament of the destruction of the wicked capital and apostate commonwealth of Israel, as similar language is employed in the Old Testament of similar providential judgments. To it, therefore, James may be supposed to have still some reference in the exhortation before us; if at all, however, only very slightly, as it appears to me. The whole tone of the passage suggests a completeness and grandeur of deliverance,—and this not from the oppression of evil men merely, but from all the troubles of every kind that necessitate patience, -such as plainly to indicate that the Saviour's personal advent was fully before the writer's mind, His advent to raise the dead and judge the world, to visit His enemies with 'everlasting destruction from His presence and from the glory of His power,' and to introduce His friends into the fulness of salvation.

This grand event, the consummation of the divine probationary dealings with this world, is always exhibited in Scripture as for every wise soul the supremely influential fact of the future, and the object of the most ardent longings of the Christian heart. The great spur to energetic service of God is the thought that 'when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then we also shall appear with Him in glory.' The great support in trouble is the consideration, that 'when His glory shall be revealed, we shall be glad also with exceeding joy.' Conversion is 'turning

to God, to serve Him, and to wait for His Son from heaven ;' and thus it seems a natural description of Christians, that they are persons who 'love the appearing of the Lord.' This loving expectation of the second coming stands in vital connection with a loving apprehension of the objects of the first coming. Enjoying now precious first-fruits from the advent to sow, we anticipate the glorious fulness of harvest at the advent to reap. We 'look' with brightness of spirit 'for that blessed hope, even His glorious appearing,' because we are filled with thankfulness and love by the remembrance that 'He gave Himself for us, to redeem us from all iniquity.' Believing as a historical fact, most clearly demonstrated, that 'Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many,' we see here ample evidence leading us to accept the sweet assurance, that 'to them that look for Him shall He appear the second time, without sin, unto salvation.' Thus we 'show forth the Lord's death till He come;' and 'the contemplations and affections of the believer, travelling between His abasement and His exaltation, find in Jesus under both aspects together a complete salvation."1

Now, by any one who considers the subject, it can hardly be doubted that the second coming of the Lord holds a far less prominent position in the thoughts of most Christians of our day than it did in those of the apostles, and, as is evident from the tone of their writings, they desired that it should do in those of their readers. Is this because we have a less lively love to the Saviour, and longing to be with Him,-because knowing about Jesus does not so fully bring us to know Jesus as our divine Friend and Brother? Whatever the reason, the fact, I think, is certain. The death of the individual has to a great extent taken in the mind of the modern church, as exhibited in the discourses of the pulpit and in religious literature, the place which in the church of the first days was occupied by the Lord's personal advent. Now, however much it may seem to us that this is practically the same thing, and however

1 Dr. David Brown, of Aberdeen, in his singularly able and satisfying work on The Second Advent.