Bible Treasury, 2nd Edition, Volume 1, July 1857.
(1st. Edition, July [01 1857 230])
[01 1857 226]
It is thirty years ago and more since I first saw the doctrine of the second coming of the Lord. I saw it as the only solution of a thousand and one difficulties which man's mind had created, by attempting to limit the predictions about a glorified Messiah down to the range and circumstances of earth, while in man's hand and responsibility. It threw heavenly hopes and promises open, and also gave consistency to God's past and future dealings with the earth.
I took it up energetically and whole heartedly — what banner better for pilgrimage and conflict than coming glory? — I held it as a choice and chosen banner, and was ready to suffer and endure for the hope's sake, and did so.
Thirty years are past: and where am I now as to it? Well, I will speak the truth. Thirty years of wilderness and conflict have made a change, a great change. After the experience I have had of self, and circumstances, and of God, I should sum all up in these few words:– It is a very different thing to have the coming of Christ as one's choice, one's own self-welcomed tomorrow, and to find oneself where all is ruined within and around — failure upon failure — but in the presence of the God who has chosen the return of His Son as the time when He means fully to introduce us into the glory. He has prepared for us, as for those of whom He has said, I will be merciful to whom I will be merciful, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. I have less movement in the feelings of joy and hope, more calmness of repose and anticipation, less thought about the contrast between the thing hoped for and the circumstances which are present, but more sense of the wonderfulness of God's ways, who should, through the second Adam, the Lord from heaven, have prepared such an end, in which many a sinner under Adam the first, and myself among the number, will find ourselves shortly caught up to be for ever with the Lord, and in the Father's house. I trust that (in the weaning from self and circumstances in the wilderness, which I have in measure had) tastes, habits, ways, as well as affections and thoughts in accordance with those of the God of glory have been formed by Him in me. — W.