There have been many comings in the past, besides the comings in the flesh.  The days of the Lord that have already appeared in the history of the world are not few.  One characteristic is stamped upon them all, and that is the swift annihilation of what is opposed to Him.  The Bible has a set of standing metaphors by which to illustrate this thought of the Coming of the Lord—­a flood, a harvest when the ears are ripe for the sickle, the waking of God from slumber, and the like; all suggesting similar thoughts. The day of the Lord, the coming of the Lord, will include and surpass all the characteristics which these lesser and premonitory judgment days presented in miniature.  I do not enlarge on this theme.  I would not play the orator about it if I could; but I appeal to your consciences, which, in the case of most of us, not only testify of right and wrong, but of responsibility, and suggest a judge to whom we are responsible.  And I urge on each, and on myself, this simple question:  Have I allowed its due weight on my life and character to that watchword of the ancient church—­Maran-atha, ’our Lord cometh’?

Now, the coming of the Lord of Love is the annihilation of the unloving.  The destruction implied in Anathema does not mean the cessation of Being, but a death which is worse than death, because it is a death in life.  Suppose a man with all his past annihilated, with all its effort foiled and crushed, with all its possessions evaporated and disappeared, and with his memory and his conscience stung into clear-sighted activity, so that he looks back upon his former self and into his present self, and feels that it is all waste and chaos, would not that fulfil the word of my text—­’Let him be Anathema’?  And suppose that such a man, in addition to these thoughts, and as the root and the source of them, had ever the quivering consciousness that he was and must be in the presence of an unloved Judge; have you not there the naked bones of a very dreadful thing, which does not need any tawdry eloquence of man to make it more solemn and more real?  The unloving heart is always ill at ease in the presence of Him whom it does not love.  The unloving heart does not love, because it does not trust, nor see the love.  Therefore, the unloving heart is a heart that is only capable of apprehending the wrathful side of Christ’s character.  It is a heart devoid of the fruits of love which are likeness and righteousness, ’without which no man shall see the Lord,’ nor stand the flash of the brightness of His coming.  So there is no cruelty nor arbitrariness in the decree that the heart that loves not, when brought into contact with the infinite Lord of Love, must find in the touch death and not life, darkness and not light, terror and not hope.  Notice that Paul’s negation is a negation and not an affirmation.  He does not say ‘he that hateth,’ but ‘he that doth not love.’  The absence of the active emotion of love, which is the child of faith, the parent of righteousness, the condition of joy in His presence, is sufficient to ensure that this fate shall fall upon a man.  I durst not enlarge.  I leave the truth on your hearts.