THE SLUMBER OF THE CHURCHES.
The day of Christ will be sudden and surprising. "At midnight there was a cry made." Is not this " the voice of the archangel and the trump of God," mentioned by St. Paul? "At midnight," when deep sleep falleth upon man, when the world shall be utterly sunk in careless and ungodly living, and " dead in trespasses and sins," the startling cry shall be heard, " Behold he cometh !" When also the great body of the visible church shall not be expecting Christ, but looking rather for a millenium.of her own,. Christ will come, and "the idols he will utterly abolish " It is quite possible to make an idol of'a good thing; and our great religious societies, though very excellent in* themselves, are sometimes made the objects of a kind. of. idolatry, which is much to be lamented. When they aro made to occupy a place which is not their own, and expected to fulfil a mission which Scripture assigns to another instrumentality, they become idols. It is the revealed purpose of the present dispensation to take out of the Gentiles a people for God's name ; and the gosp~ -as never done more than this in, any place, or '.any period of the church's history, lo speak of our institutions, as if they were going to convert the world; and to " fill the earth with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea," is only another way of putting the church in the place of Christ, and is a species of Gentile conceit which i& reproved by the Apostle. When Christ comes again, he will not find a converted, but an unbelieving aadcareless world; and he will find a church that will have been made unwatchful by expecting a millemum of blessedness instead of expecting him Eev. W. Brock, M.A. a
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Maori Messenger : Te Karere Maori, Volume I, Issue 9, 1 December 1855, Page 9
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310THE SLUMBER OF THE CHURCHES. Maori Messenger : Te Karere Maori, Volume I, Issue 9, 1 December 1855, Page 9
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