Matthew 26:64

THE ADVENTS OF CHRIST

‘Henceforth ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.’

Matthew 26:64, R.V

‘Henceforward’—you lose everything if you are content to read vaguely ‘hereafter’—nay, but from this dark hour of the scourging and the cross—‘ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.’ It is absolutely certain that He said this, for no man then alive could have devised it.

I. His coming to His enemies.—See what happened. From the very first something mars the triumph of His enemies. It is spoiled by the insulting inscription which declared that the Romans are crucifying no impostor, but the very and actual King of the Jews. Do you not understand the prediction that they should very quickly know who was the real Master of events? Do you wonder that their restless terror asked for a guard to secure the only security they had—the corpse? This was’ His coming to them ‘henceforward.’ The Church has expected, is expecting, Christ in bodily presence, but this must not blind us to her other certainties, one, that He is always present with His own; and the other, that He is continually coming into the world which denies Him.

II. His coming to the Church.—With the earliest preaching of Christianity a new force and also a new consciousness is apparent to every careful student of history. Men are now really inspired by the sense that right is secure of triumph, and wrong certain to go down. The belief that all evil is a doomed thing, and its empire an illusion, a dream of the night, has become a vital, urgent conviction, which men will stand by, to live or die. This is what Christ announced, and this, He said, would be His own work, His own constant coming, in judgments which foreshadow the last.

III. His coming to the world.—He came, when the hypocrisies of Jerusalem were smothered in her ashes. He came in the sack of imperial Rome; and with Luther, when the Church itself seemed to totter, so stern was His visitation of her sins. God is opening our eyes to discern that His war is declared against every social wrong, until youth and maidenhood shall not forfeit all the sweetness of life, and its loveliness, and its dignity, because their father labours with his hands, nor yet because their lot is cast in Africa or Indian darkness.

Bishop G. A. Chadwick.

Illustration

‘When the first Napoleon fell, Rocklitz said to Goethe, whom we cannot call even a good man, “Let us give the glory to God, and acknowledge His moral government of His world.” “Acknowledge it!” said Goethe solemnly, and stopping short in his walk. “Who can help acknowledging it? But, for my part, in silence.” “And why in silence?” said his friend. “Because, who can express it, save for himself; for others, who? And when one knows that he cannot utter it, it is not allowable.” ’