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"Awake to your privileges and your hope": an early PECUSA sermon for Advent

During this Advent laudable Practice is sharing extracts from the sermons of Cornelius Roosevelt Duffie, Rector of Saint Thomas, New York City, 1824-27. The sermons demonstrate the vitality of the pre-1833 Old High observance of Advent.  This extract, from an Advent Sunday sermon (on the epistle of Advent I, Romans 13:8-14), offers a robust eschatological vision. There are echoes here of the Advent collect's "we may rise to the life immortal", the Nicene Creed's "And I look for ... the life of the world to come", and "heirs through hope of thy everlasting kingdom" in the second post-communion prayer. The extract, in other words, offers an example of how Advent preaching should expound the Church's eschatological hope.

what call to holiness and watchfulness more persuasive or effectual, than the words which the Church addresses to him at this season, "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." Christians, she exclaims, your state of ignorance, of sin, of sorrow, is nearly gone. Now it is high time to awake out of sleep, for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. Ye may have been overcome by temptation, ye may have been sunk in sorrow, ye may have reposed in forgetfulness, but now the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Awake to your privileges and to your hope - the day is at hand. Think of the disclosures which await you, and of that better existence upon which you are soon to enter. In a little time, the Messenger whom you have looked for, will summons you away. He who has prepared for his people mansions of glory, will come again and receive you unto himself. That blessed consummation of your faith, of your patience, of your obedience, is fast approaching ...

In that bright and endless day, the eye will forget to shed its tears of bitterness, the heart will cease to sigh over its privations and bereavements, and all that is saddening and mournful will be for ever past. Not merely shall we renew all that here we have lost, and realize all that here we have ever imagined, but in that high state of perfection and of glory, the mind will entertain new and unthought of images of delight, which here we cannot estimate nor comprehend. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." In his presence there is fullness of joy; at his right hand there are pleasures for evermore. Brethren, these are not the dreams of a slumbering hour. They are the realities of that eternal day, whose dawn is rapidly hastening upon us all. They are yours if you worthily embrace them. Cast away, therefore, the works of darkness, and put upon you the armour of light; and then when this night, which is already far spent, is past, and that day of glory breaks upon your view, ye shall be the children of the light, and in the blissful mansions of heaven shall reign with God for ever and ever.

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