Yes, such a vengeance had come upon the world as had been long predicted. Once more those prophetic words glowed on the page with a living fire: “There shall be wars and rumors of war.” Terrible, ancient phrases, vibrating with emotion, came with a subliminal uprush into his mind. How miraculously had the Word been fulfilled. But one thing was needed to complete the tale, and that the far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves. But, the vicar asked, as phrases and thoughts of his own began to take shape, was this Second Coming to be regarded as a literal fact of the physical world, was it only to be regarded by the eye of faith, or was it merely the figment of a poet’s fancy? It behooved the world of men to search its heart. Let all face the question that the time-spirit was asking; let all face it fully, frankly, fearlessly. The Christ was overdue. In the opinion of many, if civilization, if humanity was to continue, there must be a divine intervention. These organized and deepening hatreds were destroying the soul of the world. Even average sensual men had come to realize this vital need. But--the vicar began to gnaw the stump of his pen furiously--an age that had ceased to believe in miracles was now crying out for a miracle to happen. “O ye of little faith,” wrote the vicar as the first subheading of his great theme. Only a miracle could now save a world that had so long derided them. The vicar wrote the word Nemesis, and then in brackets, “Terrible word--retributive justice.” Yes, the only hope remaining for a blood-soaked world was to accept the miracle of the Incarnation. And to accept that miracle was to affirm the second advent. How will He come? The vicar left a space on the slowly filling page, and then wrote his question in the form of a second subheading. How will He appear to us, this Christ of pity, and purity, and peace? Would the heavens open, as the Book of Revelation had foretold; would the King of the World emerge from the clouds to the blowing of trumpets, crowned in a chariot? Or would He come as a spirit on the face of the waters? Who should say? But come He must, because of the promise He had made. “The duty of faith in this present hour,” wrote the vicar, as a third subheading. It was a man’s duty to reject the carpings of science and the machinations of modern denial. He must believe where he could not prove. The vicar wrote in brackets, “It is very difficult to do that in an age of skepticism.” “The watchers.” The vicar drew a line under his fourth subheading. All men must stand as upon a tower, their eyes fixed on the far horizon, in the hope that they might see in the eastern sky the herald of a new heaven and a new earth. And by that portent, which was the light of sublime truth, must they learn to know the Master when He came among them. But only the faithful could hope to do that.