Thus, then, the words which I have chosen for my text will have their fulfilment. Christ has been the first-fruits of this great harvest,--already risen, the first-born from the dead, the example and pattern of that which all His shall be. This was His order, His place in the great procession from death into life; and between Him and His, the space, indefinite to our eyes, is fixed and determined in the counsels of God. The day of His coming hastens onward. While men are speculating and questioning, God's purpose remains fixed. He is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness. His dealings with the world are on too large a scale for us to be able to measure them, but in them the golden rule is kept, every one in his own order. Christ's part has been fulfilled. He was seen alive in His resurrection body; He was seen taking up that body from earth to heaven. And now we are waiting for the next great event, His coming. Wisely has the Church set apart a season in every year in which this subject may be uppermost in our thoughts. For there is nothing we are so apt--nothing, we may say, that our whole race is so determined to forget and put out of sight. It is alien from our common ideas, it ill suits our settled notions, that the personal appearing of Him in whom we believe should break in upon the natural sequence of things in which we are concerned. And the consequence is, that you will hardly find, even among believing men, more than one here and there who at all realizes to himself, or has any vivid expectation of, this personal coming of Christ. Think of the Christian Church as taking its faith and hope from the New Testament; and then compare that faith and hope, as it actually exists with reference to this point, with the New Testament,--and the discrepancy is most remarkable. In the days when it was written, eighteen hundred years ago, every eye was fixed on, every man's thought was busy about, the coming of the Lord. You will hardly find a chapter in the epistles in which it is not spoken of, or alluded to, with earnest anticipation and confidence. Whereas now, when it is brought so much nearer to us, it has almost vanished out of the consideration of the Church altogether. No doubt, something may be said by way of reason why it should occupy a less prominent place in our thoughts than it did in theirs. The Lord's own words, and those of the Divinely-commissioned messengers who announced His return, spoke of it simply as certain, without any note of time being attached. Hence, those who had seen Him depart believed that they themselves should behold Him returning. There can be no doubt in any fair-judging mind that, besides these eye-witnesses, St. Paul, when he wrote that fifth chapter of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, had a full persuasion that he himself should be of those on whom the house not made with hands that is to be brought from heaven was to be put,