without his being unclothed from the earthly tabernacle. He looked at such unclothing in his own case as possible, but was confident that it would not happen so. And again, when, in the over-zeal of the Thessalonians, they imagined that the coming of the Lord was actually upon them, and he in his second Epistle checks and sets right that premature assumption, he does so in words which, as he wrote them, might very well have had all their fulfilment within the lifetime of man. Those words now appear to us in more of the true sense in which the Spirit, who spoke by Paul, intended them: we see that the apostasy there predicted, and the man of sin there set down as to be revealed, are great developments or concentrations of the unbelief of churches and nations; but there is no evidence that the men of that day saw any such meaning in the words. As it was gradually, and not without conflict of thought, revealed to Peter and his side of the apostolic band, that the Gentiles were to be fellow-heirs and partakers of the peace of Christ, so it was gradually, and not without some sickness of hope deferred, made manifest to the Church, that the coming of the Lord should be for ages and generations delayed. Unmistakable indications of this truth appear in the Lord's own prophetic discourses, which we now know how to interpret. And all this is no doubt a reason why the great subject should be less constantly and less vividly before our minds, than it was before theirs. But it is no reason why it should have dropped out altogether; none, why we should almost universally neglect the revelations of Scripture respecting the manner and details of His coming, and confuse them altogether in a vague popular idea of the judgment day; none, why we should forget the mention of the landmarks which He Himself has pointed out along the wilderness journey of His Church,--and so, as far as in us lies, provide for her being unprepared when He appears.