some intangible, shadowy event, but that most sure and awful episode which is to be immediately ushered in by convulsions in sun and moon and stars, and which will put a period to the existence of this present world, even the coming of Christ, the Judge of the quick and dead. Just when the soul is naturally reflective and expectant, when it has been best fitted by nature to hear, the Church again sends ringing around the Earth the thrilling cry of joy and of warning: “the night is far spent, the day is at hand. Behold the Bride-groom cometh, go ye out to meet Him."

Brethren, the great future with its mysterious possibilities and stern certainties is stealing upon us like a thief in the night; with most of us, our days are like the waves that break upon the sand. One rises, advances and sinks upon the beach and even before it is lost, another is rising and advancing. No great change marks one day from another. Our life is in these days that we know. We scarcely prepare it for any other kind. When we look to the future, it is generally either to wonder what it will bring us, or to anticipate that with certain modifications which we desire, the past will be repeated. But some have committed to the morrow hopes and ambitions and dreams. They have filled it with creations of their private fancies, of their private desires and of their private needs. Yet, no matter how beautiful the fancies, how deep the desires or how real the needs, the cloud of uncertainty overshadows them all. In so far as we try to predict what is to come, the most we can say is that we know hardly anything about it. We adjust ourselves to the future by what the past has taught us. But what the advancing days may really hold for us,

what of sorrow, what of joy, what of hope denied, what of hope realized, what of gain, what of loss, what of sickness, what of health, what of good-fortune, what of ill-fortune, no man can tell.

But the call of Advent is the one great exception to uncertainty. Advent! Coming! One sure, certain event for us and for all the most important, the most momentous the mind can conceive. It is more certain than death itself.

The Lord shall come, and we shall stand before the bar of His judgment. That is the full consummation of history, that is the point to which all history tends, that is the climax of earthly life. The world does not welcome the thought. It shrinks from it. The world would prefer to cling to its dream of endless development. Man likes better to be concerned with the things that are at hand; he would rather his thoughts should stop just this side the grave. He likes to surround the subject of Christ's coming with vagueness, and then because it is vague, to bother himself but little with it.

But because the subject is unwelcome, but most important; because it is not vague, but most certain, the Church in her loyalty to her mission to man, intrudes it upon his attention. She preaches Advent, not only commemorative, but prophetic also; and that as the coming of the past is a truth of history, so the coming of the future is an expectation most sure of fulfilment. As the Christ came once, so will He come again, but with a difference. He came then to save and redeem humanity, He will come hereafter to judge it.

It is hard to imagine what thought could more completely overwhelm man with a sense of his own responsibility, what could arouse him to a sterner self-examina

tion, what could induce him to a better use of life and life's opportunities than this; that by and by he and his God will meet face to face, and that he will be required to give an account. Things that do but pertain to time and sight and sense, however absorbing and engaging they may be now, will then be put from us as soiled and useless garments, save that they will witness for or against us. For the deeds done in the flesh, every man shall be judged. Yes, that is the final change to which all other changes in life and nature point; Advent coming, the coming last change, the coming of the Bridegroom, the coming of the Master of the vineyard, the Change of Christ hidden to Christ revealed, the Rightecus Judge.

And if He be thus coming, if as surely as we expect death, so surely may we expect the resurrection to judgment after death, are we, the children of redeemed humanity, to await that great change in dumb expectancy? Have we but to go on with the affairs of this life, conscious of the catastrophe impending, but uninfluenced by it? No, assuredly not, if we be faithful to our knowledge and to our churchly privileges. The preaching of nature and the voice of the Church do not foretell only, but they also warn: "prepare to meet thy God." The world shall not be left in the blindness of a fatal delusion. It is not to be left to be paralyzed at that supreme moment by a shock it cannot endure. Well may it shrink from the picture of the last meeting between Christ and the world; well may the genius of an Angelo be taxed to depict its significance. And if we stand before such a creation of fancy with quickened breath and palpitating heart, what will be the reality of Christ come again?

But what might be such dire confusion to man may by the merciful providence of God, be converted from a shock to a gradual change; to a meeting as it were by slow stages, we may be prepared to meet Him, but that means more than to be familiar with the fact of a future meeting. Being prepared to meet thy God, is not the mere schooling of the thoughts to the event, it is the meeting Him here and now, while we live this life; and then meeting Him during the rest of Paradise. This is to accustom the soul and spirit to that which without preparation would overwhelm them. Think, how pityfully we need for that trying ordeal some other preparation than the bare announcement of what shall be? How can the mere familiarizing ourselves with the idea do it? The change from life temporal to life eternal is too serious a business to be fitted for in a mental way only. The Christian religion is more than a splendid system of ideas; it is ideas and convictions and actions, and they make life. And it is life that we need; life made a continual meeting with God, life lived here in God, in such close communion with Him that it may be extended still further in Him when the world shall have passed away. Man must one day exchange the state of his being; and to prepare for that exchanged state, so different from much that constitutes being here, is not only his bounden duty, but also his most reasonable service. That service can only consist in walking with God now. It is to habituate the soul to contact with Christ. The preparation begins with an entrance into His Church which is His Body. He already has met us and our children in the sacrament of Baptism. We fit our souls for Him when we unload it of its sins in our confessions and contritions. He fits it for His coming when He cleanses it in the

power of His precious Blood. We teach our hearts steps of approach when we lift it in prayer and praise. We anoint our eyes to look upon Him when we by faith see Him giving Himself our spiritual food at the Altar; and receiving Him there and going forth in the strength of His grace to overcome temptation and to vanquish sin, we make ready our whole being, body, soul and spirit, to exist in His visible Presence.

Let that be our aim this Advent. It is not a time for distracting preparation for a secularized Christmas; but first and foremost of all, it is a time for penitential exercise, of spiritual schooling for the coming of Christ in judgment. Let us fix, then, our thoughts on that coming day, and shape our lives to it. Let us cling to those acts of love and duty and service to God which are real advancements to meet Him. Let us cling to our prayers, our Communions; cling to and deepen our habits of devoting some time to quiet meditation on God, and the soul, and duty, and responsibility, and life, and death, and eternity. Let us make more frequent and more solemn our meetings with Christ, the Judge of the world, in the ordinances of His Church, so that when He shall appear in visible majesty, we may already have gone out to meet Him, and shall not be ashamed.