Oh, the agony of mind, the risk, the misery we bring upon ourselves by our vacillations and trifling with grace! Surely the remedy is to gain by prayer strength proportioned to the light God gives. It is as easy for Him to give the one as the other, for “there is none strong like our God”.[73] But I must ask, for “strength cometh from Heaven”.[74] “Ask and it shall be given to you.” “God is my strong One, in Him will I trust ... my rock, and my strength, and my Saviour.”[75] He will not leave me in my weakness. If He shows me His ways, He will give me strength to walk in them. “My God is made my strength.”[76] [69] Luke xviii. [70] Psa. cxlii. [71] _Ibid._ [72] Psa. lxxxiv. [73] 1 Kings ii. [74] 1 Mach. iii. [75] 2 Kings xxii. [76] Isa. xlix. XXIV. HIS SECOND COMING. They shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven ... and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn.--_Matt._ xxiv. 30. Dearest Lord, is there a sadder word than this in the whole of the written Word? Did a sadder ever fall from Your sacred lips? That when You come again to finish the work of redemption by the destruction of the last enemy, death; to gather to Yourself those for whose salvation You came down from heaven, and were incarnate, and suffered, and died, and founded Your Church, and gave Your sacraments; those whom You bade to watch and wait for You and lift up their heads at Your coming; that when at last You come, this shall be Your reception--“_then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn_”! What an awful testimony to the decay of truth among the children of men, to the unchristianising of the world! “_All the tribes of the earth_,” as if the elect would be but as the ears of corn left on the field after the harvesting. O Messiah, so long promised, so earnestly expected--is this the return of those to whom You were sent, among whom You have lived as one of themselves, for whom You have sacrificed everything You took from our nature? “They shall see the Son of Man coming”--not now in the midnight silence as once to Mary, not hidden under lowly accidents as through long centuries upon the altar, but “in great power and majesty,” “the King in His beauty,” revealed to every eye. “_And then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn._” * * * * * The awfulness of these words must have struck the Twelve as they sat about Your feet that day on Olivet looking down upon Josaphat, for John re-echoed them from Patmos half a century later: “Behold, He cometh with the clouds, and every eye shall see Him.... And all the tribes of the earth shall bewail themselves because of Him.”[77]