The second coming of Christ is a subject on which one may well meditate on Easter eve. For is it not less an event to be even awaited, —in tremulous hope, or in a glad surprise of believing love,— than it is to be achieved, as the personal responsibility and the personal work of every individual? What can you — what can I, do toward advancing the second coming of Christ on earth? may well be the question of each heart to-night. Can we each do something toward this advancement by patience and sweetness of spirit under perplexity, or wrong; or —what is hardest of all— under the misunderstanding of those who should best understand? Can we contribute some aid, however infinitesimal, by being more considerate and more largely tolerant; by believing in the best motives of our neighbor, rather than the worst; by bringing to bear on daily duties more courage, more faith in the future's promise, more power to relate them to the daily needs of life? More than all, and as the unfailing spring which animates all the conduct of life, shall we not learn the lesson of absolute reliance on the power of prayer? Not in any vague sense of form, or seemly religious rite; but as the absolute, practical, unfailing force of life: a force as real and as practical as the electric motor that generates its energy for material uses.
To cite nothing from the words of Jesus, nothing from all the apostolic spirit of all the ages, nothing from the prophets and the seers — the poets alone are full of these definitely expressed convictions of the one great force in the universe that — of spiritual power which is given to us by the medium of the faith and intercession of prayer. On the eve of that day on which the sublimest event in all human history occurred, that event which made manifest the life eternal, on the eve of that day is it not a fitting time to enter into that deeper and truer communion with Jesus, through the faith of the spirit, that we may make ourselves aids to the second coming which is a spiritual coming, and which is to establish his spiritual kingdom on earth? If this thought shall vitalize itself and take outward form in love and patience and sweetness of spirit, then, indeed, shall this Lenten season be most blessed, and its power one to continue and increase until His spirit shall be shown forth "not only in our lips, but in our lives." —Selected
