For five or six years the idea for this present volume has been simmering and seething in my mind. The first and only real problem I had to face in the matter was that of the _principle_ involved in using the fictional form to clothe so sacred a subject (for, to me, the near Return of our Lord is the _most_ sacred of all subjects.) But the problem of the _principle_ was speedily settled, as I remembered how wondrously God had owned and blessed “Long Odds,” in which the fictional is the vehicle of the teaching. Then, too, there are, I know, myriads of people into whose hands “Long Odds,” could never, by any chance, fall—for there are multitudes who will not so much as glance at, or touch a tract, while a volume will easily win its way among all classes. There is an enormous percentage of attendants at our churches and chapels, and many otherwise very earnest Christian workers, to whom the whole subject of the Lord’s Second Coming is an absolutely unknown realm of Truth—and these I would fain reach and arouse with the message of this book. To those Christians who are looking for the Return of the Lord, to whom the subject is the most tenderly sacred of all subjects, who will at first sight condemn the use of the fictional element, the dramatic colour in this book—and many good people will, I am assured—I would say, first, that the book is not written for them, and second, that, our Lord Himself, speaking of His own Return, used two very remarkable illustrations from life’s strangest dramas. First, “_As it was in the days of Noah, even so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man. They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, until THE DAY_, etc.” Now, think what a myriad _dramas_ were being enacted when the flood came. And had the disciples asked their Lord, privately, after His utterance, to explain more fully what He meant, what thrilling stories He _could_, He _doubtless WOULD have sketched_. If any Christian cavils at the dramatic in this book, I would refer him or her to Christ’s own pointing in the picture of Noah’s time, then bid them fill out, by help of the feeblest, simplest imagination, the picture of the myriad dramas that were being enacted when that flood came, of old time. Then, if the objector is honest, and is _capable_ of the least imagination, he will say “I see! and, now that I see this fact, my wonder is _not_ that there is a certain dramatic freedom in this book, but that the writer has kept so powerful a restraint upon his pen.”