“There are some among us at the present moment
who are waiting for the speedy coming of Christ.
They expect, before another year closes, to see Him
in the clouds, to hear His voice, to stand before His
judgment-seat. These illusions spring from
misinterpretation of Scripture language. Christ,
in the New Testament, is said to come whenever His
religion breaks out in new glory or gains new triumphs.
He came in the Holy Spirit in the day of Pentecost.
He came in the destruction of Jerusalem, which, by
subverting the old ritual law and breaking the power
of the worst enemies of His religion, insured to it
new victories. He came in the reformation of
the Church. He came on this day four years ago,
when, through His religion, eight hundred thousand
men were raised from the lowest degradation to the
rights, and dignity, and fellowship of men.
Christ’s outward appearance is of little moment
compared with the brighter manifestation of His spirit.
The Christian, whose inward eyes and ears are touched
by God, discerns the coming of Christ, hears the sound
of His chariot-wheels and the voice of His trumpet,
when no other perceives them. He discerns the
Saviour’s advent in the dawning of higher truth
on the world, in new aspirations of the Church after
perfection, in the prostration of prejudice and error,
in brighter expressions of Christian love, in more
enlightened and intense consecration of the Christian
to the cause of humanity, freedom, and religion.
Christ comes in the conversion, the regeneration,
the emancipation, of the world.”
THE HEROINE OF LONG POINT.
[1869.]
Looking at the Government Chart of Lake Erie, one
sees the outlines of a long, narrow island, stretching
along the shore of Canada West, opposite the point
where Loudon District pushes its low, wooded wedge
into the lake. This is Long Point Island, known
and dreaded by the navigators of the inland sea which
batters its yielding shores, and tosses into fantastic
shapes its sandheaps. The eastern end is some
twenty miles from the Canada shore, while on the west
it is only separated from the mainland by a narrow
strait known as “The Cut.” It is
a sandy, desolate region, broken by small ponds, with
dreary tracts of fenland, its ridges covered with
a low growth of pine, oak, beech, and birch, in the
midst of which, in its season, the dogwood puts out
its white blossoms. Wild grapes trail over the
sand-dunes and festoon the dwarf trees. Here
and there are almost impenetrable swamps, thick-set
with white cedars, intertwisted and contorted by the
lake winds, and broken by the weight of snow and ice
in winter. Swans and wild geese paddle in the
shallow, reedy bayous; raccoons and even deer traverse
the sparsely wooded ridges. The shores of its
creeks and fens are tenanted by minks and muskrats.
The tall tower of a light-house rises at the eastern
extremity of the island, the keeper of which is now
its solitary inhabitant.
