Thursday, April 21, 2005

On April 21st, 1872...
Venerable John Henry Newman, C.O., preached a sermon, of which the following notes survive:

The Second Coming

1. INTROD.—'Modicum,' etc. 'A little while' —the disciples were perplexed.

2. Our Lord spoke as if He were to come again soon. And certainly many of His disciples thought He would. They thought not exactly that He would end the world, but that He would come to end the present state of it, to judge the wicked and introduce a holier world. Nay, at one time even the apostles.

3. But no one knows when, not even the angels.

4. It seems to have been our Lord's wish that His coming should always appear near.

5. He gave indeed signs of His coming, but every age of the world has those signs in a measure.

6. The signs were the falling away and the coming of some great enemy of the Truth called Antichrist, who should bind together all the powers of the world; that as there was war between the good and bad angels in heaven, so between the servants of Christ and Antichrist on earth.

7. This then is our state. In every age things are so like the last day as to remind us that perhaps it is coming; but still not so like that we know.

8. Every age is a semblance, a type in part of what then at last will be in fulness.

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