04.05 The awakening

V. THE AWAKENING At midnight there is a cry, “Behold the Bridegroom! Come ye forth to meet Him.”

Doubtless there is the thought here of the final coming of the Lord Christ in His glory. But it is not surely the exclusive thought. As Dr. Trench says, “While there is one crowning advent of the Lord at the last He comes no less in all tfye signal crises of the Church, at each new manifestation of His Spirit.” We spoke just now of the religious slumber of our own generation. But are there not signs appearing of a spiritual revival, voices whispering, perhaps, rather than proclaiming, but still audible, “Behold the Bridegroom!” There is a growing weariness of religious controversy, a sense of the hollowness of all our pushing and striving religious organizations, and of the urgent need of a recovery of the strength and fire of the Spirit. It may be that this conviction of our need is an advance-messenger of the Lord Himself, summoning us to come forth to meet Him in some new outpouring of His Grace. To the individual soul as well as to the Church there come these heralds announcing the approach of the Bridegroom. Whatever arouses within us some new sense of our need of Christ, it may be the weariness of ineffectual living, or the conviction of some sin brought home to the conscience, or an impatience with our petty inconsistencies and miserable surrenders to evil, or a clear vision of what our life might have of joy and liberty if we only made up our minds to have done with vacillation and wholeheartedly to accept the mastery of Christ, all these are summonses to go forth and meet the Bridegroom. They may be heard also in calls to new and more strenuous acts of service in the cause of God’s Kingdom or of His poor. I do not believe that any man with any sort of religious honesty can say that such messengers have never reached him.

96 PARABLES OF JESUS TAGS: [Parables]