Christ's Second Coming: Will It Be Premillennial? (1879)

No new weapon does the Church get to fight her enemies withal. No change of dispensation does she undergo. She is already all that she needs to be. She is complete in her living and ever-present Head, having "all power i…

The kingdom shall grow, says the parable of the mustard seed, till it overspread the earth: It shall work into human society, says the parable of the leaven, till it penetrate with its blessed principles and character th…

For civil government, as such, whatever be the form of it, is a divine ordinance. The mission of the Church is not to supplant, but to impregnate and pervade it with a religious character, and to render it subservient to…

The millennium, therefore, if there be one, precedes, and does not, cannot follow the second coming of Christ.

Now, as the growing character of the kingdom, taught by the "mustard seed," and the penetrating and assimilating character, taught by the "leaven," go on till "the whole (earth) is leavened," and all the world have been…

What, then, have we found with respect to these ordained means of grace? Why, that the second advent, come when it may, will put them all out of date. The passages which teach this make no distinction between the means a…

The Lord's Supper is the symbol of that double attitude of the believer—to which we find ourselves ever recurring—the backward look of his faith and the forward look of his hope—its present crucifixion and anticipated gl…

Christ's second coming will exhaust the object of the Scriptures. His coming is the goal of all revelation, its furthest horizon, its last terminus, its Sabbath and haven. Thither are directed all the anxieties which div…

We have seen that the whole elect and ransomed Church is complete when Christ comes. If this be correct, we may expect to find the ordained means for the gathering and perfecting of the Church disappearing from the stage…

Here we have Christ's commission to establish his kingdom upon earth, the authority on which that commission is based, and a gracious encouragement to undertake and go through with it. The commission is, properly speakin…

"The field," which was to be sown both with tares and with wheat, is "the world" (ὁ κόσμος): that is to say, a world-wide kingdom is to be formed, embracing the genuine and the false-hearted subjects of Christ under one…

Now is it conceivable, that any primitive Christian should persuade himself that all nations might be thus discipled, baptized, and brought under the discipline of Christ's laws, in his own lifetime, or within the larges…

I attach no importance, in this argument, to the precise period of a thousand years. It occurs nowhere in Scripture but in one solitary passage. There are reasons for taking it definitely and literally; but, to some thes…

We have seen that Christ's second coming is the Church's "blessed hope." Its place in the Christian system, and in the Church's view, is over against his first coming, as its proper counterpart. As "once in the end of th…

All is thus made to centre in the Person of Christ—the contemplations and the affections of the believer travelling between his Abasement and his Exaltation, and finding in Jesus, under both aspects together, a completed…

Here both comings of Christ are brought together; the first in "grace"—the second in "glory"; the first "bringing salvation"—the second, to complete the salvation brought. To the first we look back by faith—to the second…

But the Redeemer's second appearing is, to the believer, an event of unmingled joyousness, whether as respects the honour of his Lord, which will then be majestically vindicated before the world which had set it at nough…

With them we affirm, that the Redeemer's second appearing is the very pole-star of the Church. That it is so held forth in the New Testament, is beyond dispute. Let any one do himself the justice to collect and arrange t…