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The thought of our Master in this passage (as I understand it) is this: "I have been asked when the kingdom of God will come: my reply is that it has come already; that you have not to look about in this and that direction; here, in the midst of you, impersonated in him that speaks, is the kingdom. It is present in the Present One. But," he says to his disciples, "he is present in a very strict sense. The time will soon be here when you will greatly long for his fellowship, and you will not be able to possess it. Do not believe those who will tell you that the Son of man is still on earth; it will not be true. His life below will be of the very briefest; it will be but as a lightning-flash which passes through the darkened heavens in a moment, and is gone again; so brief will be his stay, so soon will he be gone. But before he goes he must suffer many things; much must be done, for much must be endured, before his short day is done."

I. THE BRIEF DAY OF OUR LORD'S OPPORTUNITY. When we think of the long centuries that preceded, and of those that have already succeeded, the day of Christ, we may well regard his short visit to our world as a mere flash of light for transitoriness. What were those few months of his short stay among men compared with all those dark ages, and to all those that have been illumined by the light which his truth has shed upon them! But, transient as it was, it sufficed. It does not take long to utter or to illustrate the most Divine and the most vital truths; it did not take long to undergo the most mysterious and the most availing sorrows - it took but a few agonizing hours to die the death of atonement. Into that short day of opportunity our Divine Redeemer compressed:

1. The utterance of all needful truth - all the truth we need for our guidance into the kingdom of God, and for our passage through life and death into the kingdom of glory.

2. The illustration of every human grace; the living of a human life in all its perfect loveliness and grandeur.

3. The endurance of sorrow such as constituted him for ever the Man of sorrows, and the High Priest of human nature, touched with the feeling of our infirmities (Hebrews 4:15).

4. The dying of that death which is the all-sufficient sacrifice for sin. A few months of time sufficed to complete his work and make him the Divine Teacher, Leader, Friend, Saviour, of the whole race of man for all time to come.

II. OUR BRIEF DAY.

1. Measured by hours, our day is very brief. Human life is abort at the longest. We are "but of yesterday,' and to-morrow we shall not be. The rocks and even the trees look down on many generations. And in all the bustle and battle, in all the pursuits and pleasures of our lira, the little time we have hastens away and is gone far sooner than we thought it would go. It is not only our poetry that sings, but our experience that testifies of the swiftness of our course beneath the sun.

2. Yet it holds manifold and precious opportunities of regaining our position as the children and heirs of God; of doing "many things" that shall tell even in future years for truth and God; of "suffering many things" after Christ our Lord, and in holy and noble fellowship with him (Philippians 3:10).

3. Its transiency is an urgent reason for

(1) immediate decision, and

(2) constant and earnest action in the cause of righteousness,

Whilst we have the light that shines, let us walk and let us work in the light. - C.

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KJV: And he said unto the disciples, The days will come, when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it.

WEB: He said to the disciples, "The days will come, when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it.