Dr. Elisha Mulford. The Republic of God: An Institute of Theology 1893.
Dr. Elisha Mulford "The term, the coming of the Son of man, is used of his relations with humanity, that did not terminate with his existence on earth, but had a more perfect fulfillment. It describes the advent of the days of humanity: the night is far spent, and the dominations that crush the spirits of men are being overcome, and the might is manifest of truth and righteousness and freedom." (p. 108.) "
The advent of the Christ, the coming of the Son of man, is not thus a short and isolated event in history, to be followed by ages and crises in human experience in which he is detached from it, and then to bring history to its close with the recurrence of the same event at a more remote time. The Christ, the Son of man, has come: he may be always coming: he is yet to come. The coming may be in the passing away of that which is old ; in the doom of some inhuman system, as that of slavery, which has bound up with destruction the life of the family and the nation, and in some holy war, and in the ordination of society in the family and the nation upon enduring foundations : but it will come to men as they follow their fortunes, as they buy and sell, and build and plant, tho it may come with the confounding of their schemes, and with the disturbance of their theories, and with disaster to the plans they have framed. " The coming of the Son of man is thus always at hand : it is a constant motive to duty. It diverts the thought of men from the apathy and dread of a fatalism in which the world fares on, and from following here and there after .the signs and signals of the crises that maybe. It does not adjourn the thoughts of men to some remote date, in which one shall come in the guise of a king, in certain external relations, to judge and rule the earth. It is represented to those in that age, and in every age, as an event for which they are to be ready, which may come suddenly. . . . In such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh." (p. 112.)
The new life of which mankind partakes through its organic relationship with Christ, Dr. Mulford calls the " life of the Spirit;" and in it he finds the continuousness of the incarnation, the fulfillment of the words of the departing Christ : " Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." This going away of Christ was also " his coming again in the realization of infinite and eternal relations in the life of the spirit. It is the fact of his going away and thenceforth the coming of the Spirit in the real life, the immortal life of men, that becomes the evidence of the divine presence and the divine character, and thence transfers the evidence to history. It is here that the skepticism of men is to meet it. It will not verify itself by external pageants. It will verify itself through the life of the Spirit, in the history of the world: and as the skepticism of men must meet it there, so the faith of men shall there have its strength." ( p. 132.)
