IS COMING TO THIS WORLD

A SECOND TIME

BY REV. I. M. HALDEMAN, D.D.

OU will find my text in Saint Paul's' Epistle to the Hebrews, ninth chapter, twenty-eighth verse:

"Unto them that look for Him shall He appear the Second time."

I desire to begin a series of sermons on the SECOND Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Many long years before I became Pastor of this Church, it was my privilege to present the truth, and at a time when my voice was almost the only one in the land that upheld it. In my extended pastorate here I have preached it in season and out of season; so that almost every sermon, exegesis and exposition has centered itself in it or proceeded forth from it. I desire to preach upon the theme again, not only in its complete and sequential order, but in relation to all dispensational and proph

etic truth. I am led to do so because although many are now bearing testimony to the return of our Lord, the ignorance concerning it is still widespread and abysmal. There are Christians who actually read their Bible and yet statement after statement which ought to gleam and scintillate with power to awaken interest passes across their vision or through the mind and leaves no trace. The average minister with an open Bible before him knows nothing about it,-ignores it,-is afraid to preach it, or when he does not pervert it, radically rejects it.

The prejudice against the doctrine is amazingly great. It is said to be non-essential (and here I desire to speak parenthetically and say to you that of all foolish, absurd and actually stupid things uttered by the tongue of Christians or written by pen, nothing is more excuseless than this attempted arraignment of "non-essentials." If the Bible be the revelation of God, as He is the great economist and never wastes or does anything that is unnecessary, it is evident He could not and would not introduce into His infallible Book anything that was not essential.

Whatever statement or doctrine therefore may be in the Bible, however apparently inconsequential and insignificant, is, nevertheless, essential. Since this doctrine of the Second Coming is very manifestly in, and a remarkable part of, the Bible it ought to be evident, to say the least, that the term "non-essential" cannot in any wise be applied to it.)

It is held by many to be sporadic, the outcome of an unsettled state of theological definition in the early centuries; that it has been handed down by ignorant, or half educated, or unequally balanced minds. The man therefore who in this hour of wheels, of machinery, of delicate mathematical constructions and the tidal sweep of materialism and sensuousness, dares to stand forth and preach the SECOND COMING of Christ is thought to be mentally uneven, the rider of a hobby, up in the air, and, at the very best-only a light and easy visionary. His sermons are supposed to have in them little that is practical, much that is sensational; and that their tendency is to disturb the Church, bring about schism and lead those Christians who accept the doctrine to go off at a

tangent. The study of it, it is said, gives birth to foolish vagaries, to grotesque schemes of interpretation, encourages many to look upon themselves as certified prophets, and gives play to hectic and irresponsible imagination, rather than the cultivation of a sane and sober application of the principles and rules of a daily and dutiful life.

And yet in the face of all this, it is a fact wholly beyond dispute that of all the wondrous things in this book written in letters of light, resplendent with the glory of God and resonant with the divine music, not one of them, not the fiat creation of the world, the stupendous fall of man, the birth of Christ, His death and resurrection, none of these immense facts occupies the space or receives such mention as the SECOND COMING.

The First Advent is without question, basic, fundamental, so much so that apart from itChristianity could not even find letters to spell its name—and yet-foundational as it is-it is almost insignificant when compared to the mention of the Second Advent.

Neither the tongue of angels, nor men can fittingly describe the measure, the marvel and the glory of the cross; even the Holy Ghost with all His measureless powers finds Himself limited by the limitations of human vocabulary when He seeks to portray it. In all the speech of men there is no word so great as this word, "Atonement." It is the revelation of the genius and the wisdom of God, of His law and His love, of His justice and mercy, His hatred of sin and His love of the sinner, His rejection of merit and His gift of grace. It is a revelation of how He has found a way in which He can be just and yet a justifier of the ungodly: and yet that word "Atonement" occurs but once in the New Testament, and there should not be translated atonementbut "reconciliation," the consequence of atonement; but the statement concerning the Second Coming of Christ occurs in the New Testament-once in every twenty verses.

It begins with the beginning.

In the first chapter of Genesis God speaks and sun and moon and stars, constellations, systems of constellations, and measureless nebulæ sweep