SERMON I.

ANTICIPATIONS OF THE LAST DAYS.1

Maria autem conservabat omnia verba hæc, conferens in corde suo. But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart. (Words taken from the 19th verse of the 2nd chapter of St. Luke's Gospel.)

1.

THE Church at this, time, my brethren in Jesus Christ, is training us to prepare ourselves more particularly to celebrate with joy and thankfulness the great feast of Christmas, the commemoration of our Lord's first coming into the world, in poverty, in suffering, in gentleness, in benignity and humility. But she is led by a heavenly instinct to do this, in great measure, by means of, considerations concerning our Blessed Lord's, future coming in glory, majesty, and power. These two thoughts seem, as it were, to require, each the other, as its own fitting and natural supplement. It seems as if from Bethlehem and Nazareth we were to be continually looking on to the end of all things, and reminding ourselves that that sweet and gentle Child, around Whose opening days are clustered so many tender thoughts of thankfulness and hopefulness and love,

1 Preached on Advent Sunday, 1868, which fell that year in the Triduum of Preparation for the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

B

is to come hereafter, terrible to His enemies, a fire going before His face, heaven and earth rolling up like a scroll before Him, "with the voice of an Archangel and the trumpet of God"1 calling on the dead to arise and come to Judgment. It seems as if, on the other hand, we were not to look forward to the great and terrible day of the manifestation of the Son of Man as our Judge, without remembering that it is our own blessed and most loving Jesus Christ, the Babe of Bethlehem, the Boy of Nazareth, He Who drew all hearts around Him in Galilee, Who is to sit on that great white throne, and call His people before Him. And again, the Mother is put before us as well as the Son. As if to carry out still further the blending of the two Advents, Providence has arranged that just at this time we should be called on to keep the great feast of our Lady's Immaculate Conception, and to be helped by the thought of that perfect sinlessness and purity, which alone in all the world was worthy to receive Jesus Christ when He came, to prepare ourselves to stand before the tribunal of her Son, the Lamb of God, the Judge of all the Earth.

And therefore, my brethren, let us begin our consideration of these awful subjects by placing ourselves under her special protection and patronage. It has been the lot of this great subject of our Lord's second coming, that it has been inquired into and thought about in very different ways. The prophecies, direct and indirect, concerning it, which are to be found from one end of Scripture to the

1 I Thess. iv. 15.

other, are very numerous, and in some cases very minute, and even intricate in detail. In consequence, they invite from those who are not animated by great reverence and diffidence in their own discernment, what must be called a presumptuous and intrusive method of treatment. We find men who are not guided by the analogy of the faith and the instincts of the Church, drawing out schemes of what is to happen before the end of the world, and fixing the precise year of that event of which our Lord said, "Of that day and hour no one knoweth, no, not the angels of God, but the Father alone." They tell us when this or that is to come about, and the end of all things is to take place. This is not either reasonable or Catholic-not reasonable, for no prophecy can be expected to be read in all its details beforehand, and, as a matter of fact, some of these interpreters are foolish enough to fix such dates as fall within their own lifetime, and thus are themselves enabled to prove their own folly. It is not Catholic, because, although the Church has always set her face steadily to the contemplation of the future, although she knows well the blessing that is to be gained by the devout study of God's warning notes, still it is her spirit to confine herself in her explanations to certain great outlines, certain prominent and distinguishing facts, which are marked unmistakeably on the pages of Scripture, and, for the times and seasons, she leaves these in the obscurity in which the same Scripture has veiled them. That is the way of the Church in the interpretation of

1 St. Matt. xxiv. 36.

all prophecy as yet unfulfilled, and pre-eminently of these prophecies of the end of the world. And, my brethren, we shall have enough to do for all practical purposes if we can define these few most prominent features of the latter days, which shall precede the coming of the Son of Man. And we shall consider them best if we pray our Blessed Lady to obtain for us a share of that humble, reverential, thoughtful, and tranquil spirit, which was her own characteristic when she studied the Holy Scriptures before the Incarnation, and when she kept on considering mystery after mystery of the Incarnation as it came about, comparing one portion and feature of God's wonderful dealings with another; that characteristic tone of mind which made the holy Evangelist, who so seldom leaves his simple narrative to speak of the qualities of persons, to write of her more than once, "Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart!"

II.

When we read in the pages of Holy Scripture the several prophecies which relate to the coming, or the comings, of our Blessed Lord, we are struck by a fact quite in harmony with what I have remarked on as to the close union between the two events in the mind of the Church. Not only is the second coming of our Lord to judge the world, the article which we profess every time we recite the Credo, spoken of from one end of Scripture to the other, so that we may almost say, that there is no one thing so constantly foretold and dwelt on as the last end of

all things; but also, when Prophets are speaking of the first coming of our Lord, of His Advent in gentleness, in love, in meekness, in humility, and in poverty —when He would not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax, when He would have nothing to do with Judgment, and would not condemn even the poor woman who had been taken in adultery-I say, when they speak of our Lord's first coming, they seem unable to restrain themselves from adding particulars which belong to His second Advent in power, majesty, and wrath. The famous passage in Malachias the Prophet,1 is a case of this kind. We know that it refers to our Lord's first coming, because it is a part of the prophecy about His precursor at that time, St. John the Baptist. And yet when the Prophet has spoken of our Lord's coming, "The Lord Whom ye seek, and the Angel of the Covenant Whom ye desire, shall come to His temple," he breaks out, "Who shall be able to think of the day of His coming, and who shall stand to see Him? for He is like a refining fire, and like the fuller's herb." And it was just the same with St. John the Baptist himself. When he spoke to the Jews about our Lord's coming so immediately after him, his words were full of the future Judgment. "The axe is laid to the root of the tree," he says; "Every tree that doth not yield good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire; ""His fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly cleanse His floor, and gather His wheat into the barn, but the chaff He will burn 1 Malach. iii. 6.