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THE 
 
 SECOND COMING 
 OF CHRIST 
 
 AN ESSAY IN INTERPRETATION 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. S. P. T. PRIDEAUX, B.D. 
 
 M 
 
 RECTOR OF DOGMERSFIELD, AND SOMETIME 
 
 INCUMBENT OF CHELSEA OLD CHURCH, AND 
 
 DEAN OF WHITELANDS COLLEGE 
 
 TEMPORARY CHAPLAIN TO THE FORCES 
 
 like enow 
 
 They are building still, seeing the city is built 
 To music, therefore never built at all, 
 And therefore built lor ever." 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 681 FIFTH AVENUE 
 
 1918 
 

 Printed by 
 Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., London, England 
 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The difficulties of the Apocalyptic element in the 
 Gospels have long been a sore puzzle to many, and 
 much light has recently been thrown upon its inner 
 meaning and its perennial value by the world- 
 catastrophe of the war. The writer has here 
 attempted to offer a solution for the one, and an 
 interpretation of the other, hoping that both will 
 be acceptable to thinking men and women of the 
 present age who long for light and direction in its 
 mazes and perplexities. A good deal of space is 
 devoted to the Jewish element, as it is essential 
 to realise this background of Our Lord's teaching ; 
 and many references and quotations are given, in 
 the hope that readers will be induced to turn to 
 larger works and original documents, and study the 
 subject for themselves. 
 
 The writer further hopes that his words will lead 
 many to perceive that the Kingship of Christ is an 
 actual present fact and power, as well as a hope 
 yet to be realised ; and, even more, that they will 
 understand that this power is conveyed through 
 the Holy Spirit. For it is not too much to say 
 that all difficulties, whether personal, ecclesiastical, 
 national, or world-wide, can be removed by an 
 adequate appreciation of the Person of the Holy 
 Spirit ; and that their persistence and seriousness 
 has been almost entirely due to men's failure in 
 this appreciation. If men had only taken Him 
 
 ill 
 
PREFACE 
 
 more into their counsels, followed His teaching, 
 and claimed His power, in times past, Heaven 
 to-day would have been far more of a reality and 
 less of a dream. 
 
 To Him, as our Teacher, Guide, Helper, and 
 Strength, alone be glory, in the Father, through 
 the Son. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The following are the chief works alluded to or 
 quoted, to which the student may care to refer — 
 
 Abbott, E. A.— The Fourfold Gospel (1913-15). 
 
 Beet, J. Agar— The Last Things (1905). 
 
 Bruce, A. B. — The Kingdom of God (1904). 
 
 Brown, W. A.— The Christian Hope (1912). 
 
 Burkitt, F. C. — Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (1914). 
 
 Charles, R. H. — Eschatology, Jewish and Christian, or the 
 Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life (1913). 
 
 Dahle, L. N. — Life after Death, and the Future of the 
 Kingdom of God (1896). 
 
 Dalman, G. — The Words of Jesus (1902). 
 
 Davidson, S. — The Doctrine of the Last Things (1882). 
 
 Dewick, E. C. — Primitive Christian Eschatology (1912). 
 
 Dobschutz, E. von. — The Eschatology of the Gospels (1910). 
 
 Drummond, J. — The Jewish Messiah (1877). 
 
 Edersheim, A. — Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1901). 
 
 Encyclopaedia Biblica. — Arts. : " Apocalyptic Literature/' 
 " Eschatology/ ' " Eternity/ ' 
 
 Encyclopaedia Britannica. — Arts. : " Apocalyptic Litera- 
 ture," " Eschatology." 
 
 Foundations (1912). 
 
 Gayford, S. C.—The Future State (1903). 
 
 Hastings. — D B. — Arts. : " Apocalyptic Literature," 
 " Eschatology," " Parousia," " Millennium," " Devel- 
 opment of Doctrine," " Religion of Israel," Ext. 710&., 
 11 St. Matthew's Gospel," "-Son of Man." 
 
 Hastings. — D C G. Arts. : " Apocalyptic Literature," 
 " Messiah," " Eternal Life," " Eschatology," " Immor- 
 tality," " Accommodation," " Day of Judgment," 
 " St. Matthew's Gospel," " Life." 
 
 Hugel, F. von.— Eternal Life (1912). 
 
 Kennedy, H. A. A. — St. Paul's Conception of the Last 
 Things (1904). 
 
 Latimer- Jackson, W. — The Eschatology of Jesus (1913). 
 
 Loisy, A. — Les Evangiles synoptiques (1907). 
 
 MacNeile, A. H.— St. Matthew (1915). 
 
 Manchester Church Congress, Report of. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Moulton, J. H. and Milligan, G. — Vocabulary of the 
 
 Greek Testament (1914). 
 Muirhead, L. H. — The Eschatology of Jesus (1906). 
 Oesterley, W. O. E. — The Doctrine of the Last Things 
 
 (1908). 
 Porter, F. C. — Messages of the Apocalyptic Writers. (1905). 
 Pusey, E. B. — What is of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment? 
 
 (1880). 
 Riehm, A. — Messianic Prophecy (1891). 
 Robertson, A. — Regnum Dei (1901). 
 Report of Third Internal. Congress of Religions (Peabody 
 
 and Von Dobschutz). 
 Schurer, E. — The Jewish People in the Time of Christ, 
 
 II. 3, 44 ff. (1885). 
 Salmond, S. D. F. — The Christian Doctrine of Immortality 
 
 (1895). 
 Sanday, W. — The Life of Christ in Recent Research (1907); 
 
 and a helpful Art. in the Hibbert Journal for Oct., 1911. 
 Savage, H. E. — The Gospel of the Kingdom (1910). 
 Schweitzer, A. — The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1910). 
 Swete, H. B. — Some Biblical Questions of the Day. 
 Terry, M. S.— Biblical Apocalyptics (1898). 
 Toy, C. H. — Judaism and Christianity (1890). 
 Tyrrell G. — Christianity at the Cross Roads (1909). 
 Walpole, G. H. S. — This Time and its Interpretation (1915); 
 
 The Kingdom of Heaven (Paddock Lectures, 1909). 
 Winstanley, E. W. — Jesus and the Future (1913). 
 Worsley, F. W.—The Apocalypse of Jesus (1912). 
 
 And, of course, the Commentaries of W. C. Allen and A. 
 Plummer on St. Matthew; H. B. Swete on St. Mark ; A. 
 Plummer on St. Luke. 
 
 The dates of each work, and the edition referred 
 to, are given in brackets. 
 
 The chief Jewish Pseudepigrapha quoted or 
 alluded to are these, their dates being those ascribed 
 to them by Dr. Charles — 
 
 Jubilees. — A Midrash (Commentary) on Genesis and 
 Exodus, (c. 135-105 b.c.) 
 
 vi 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The Ascension of Isaiah. — Composite ; contains " The 
 Martyrdom of Isaiah." (First century, a.d.) 
 
 / Enoch. — A composite work. Ch. i.-xxxvi. (before 170 
 B.C.) ; xxxvii.-lxxi. (The Similitudes or Parables, 94-64 
 B.C.); lxxii.-lxxxii. (c. 110 B.C.); lxxxiii.-xc. (The 
 Dream- Visions, c. 166-161 B.C.); xci.-civ. (c. 95-79, 
 or 70-64 b.c). 
 
 The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. — The death-bed 
 charges of the Sons of Jacob to their children (109- 
 107 b.c). 
 
 The Sibylline Oracles. — Of the fifteen original books and 
 fragments (of which 9, 10, and 15 are lost), venerated 
 at Rome, a Jewish author or authors took books 
 3, 4, and 5, and worked them up as evidence in defence 
 of Judaism, and subsequent additions and emendations 
 were made at intervals by Jewish and Christian 
 writers. They date between c. 160 b.c and the fifth 
 century a.d. or later. 
 
 The Assumption of Moses. — The story of the taking up of 
 Moses into heaven and his farewell words. Date, 
 7-30 a.d. (i.e., the book is contemporary with Our 
 Lord). 
 
 2 Enoch. — (The book of the secrets of Enoch, or Slavonic 
 Enoch.) Date, a.d. 1-50. 
 
 2 Baruch. — (The Apocalypse of Baruch.) Composite. 
 
 Date, a.d. 50-90. 
 
 3 Baruch. — Composite Date, c. a.d. 150. 
 
 4 Ezra. — (2 Esdras in our Apocrypha.) Composite. Date, 
 
 c. a.d. 120. 
 The Psalms of Solomon. — Date 70-40 b.c 
 The " Zadokite Fragment." — Describes a reform-movement 
 
 from within the priesthood which took place about 
 
 196-176 b.c Date, 18-8 b.c 
 
 vli 
 
THE SECOND COMING 
 OF CHRIST 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 There can be few thinking men and women who 
 do not pass through a time of deep spiritual dis- 
 satisfaction and discomfort, at least once every 
 year, when the season of Advent comes round 
 Thev recognise, easily and readily enough, that 
 the "Second Coming of Our Lord is an article of 
 the Church's faith ; the recurrence of the Advent 
 Season does not allow them to forget it ; indeed, 
 they witness to it every time that they worship 
 by the congregation's repetition of one or other of 
 the three Creeds, in which they declare that He 
 shaU come again for judgment. But the singing 
 of the customary Advent Hymns brings home to 
 them, with painful emphasis, what at all events 
 has hitherto been the Church's belief as to the 
 nature of His coming ; and with her interpretation 
 of it they find themselves profoundly and uncom- 
 fortably in disagreement. They believe in, and 
 cherish, the Christian Revelation; they profess 
 themselves followers of Christ and loyal members 
 of His Church ; they find in Christianity the satis- 
 faction of their soul's need ; they recognise that 
 the world's great and only need is Christianity ; 
 they assent to its claim to be the one and only 
 
 1 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 religion. But they feel that an intolerable burden 
 is laid on them, an insult offered to their intelligence, 
 even, and to the advance made by the human race 
 in the apprehension and interpretation of reality, 
 when they are asked to voice and to assent to the 
 crude literalism and sensuous conceptions which 
 previous ages have handed down. 
 
 How can such people sing ex animo, and without 
 qualms and reservations, such words as these ? — 
 
 Lo ! He comes with clouds descending 
 Once for favoured sinners slain ; 
 
 Thousand thousand saints attending 
 Swell the triumph of His train. 1 
 
 Or these 2 — 
 
 Great God, what do I see and hear ? 
 
 The end of things created ; 
 The Judge of all men doth appear 
 
 On clouds of glory seated. 
 The trumpet sounds, the graves restore 
 The dead that they contained before ; 
 
 Prepare, my soul, to meet Him. 
 
 The dead in Christ are first to rise 
 At that last trumpet's sounding, 
 
 Caught up to meet Him in the skies, 
 With joy their Lord surrounding. 
 
 The ungodly, filled with guilty fears, 
 
 Behold His wrath prevailing; 
 In woe they rise, but all their tears 
 
 And sighs are unavailing; 
 The day of grace is past and gone; 
 Trembling they stand before His Throne, 
 
 All unprepared to meet Him. 
 
 1 By C. Wesley and J. Cennick, middle of 18th Cent. 
 
 2 By several authors, early 19th Cent. 
 
 2 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 It is clear, even to limited intelligences, that if 
 Our Lord appeared, say, in England, He would not 
 be visible in Australia, even if the angelic trump 
 be audible in both hemispheres ; no one locality 
 could contain the entire population of the world ; 
 and how long would the opening and reading of 
 the Books take ? The opened graves would only 
 surrender corruption, and what of men devoured 
 by beasts, or blown to pieces in an explosion ? 
 These conceptions of a visible, physical, return of 
 Our Lord, with the literal clouds and archangel's 
 trumpet, the gathering of nations, and the Great 
 Assize, are, to the educated mind, so much child- 
 ishness, and more reminiscent of the staging of 
 Wagnerian opera, or even pantomime, than provo- 
 cative of awe. They are not less offensive to the 
 spiritually minded, who see in them something 
 derogatory to the majesty of Christ, and require a 
 spiritual and not material interpretation of the last 
 days, which they deem more in harmony with Our 
 Lord's deepest and best teaching, and required by 
 the essentially progressive nature of all Revelation. x 
 
 It is, of course, true that the writers of these 
 and similar Hymns, and the preachers who at any 
 time echo their sentiments, are but quoting or 
 paraphrasing the words of Our Lord and His 
 Apostles, as recorded in the New Testament ; and 
 these words must command the respect of all men, 
 both Christians and non-Christians alike. Thus, 
 the Great Assize is described by St. Matthew 
 (xxv. 31, cf. xxiv. 30) ; and the literal resurrection 
 
 1 Cf. Latimer Jackson, Ch. ix. 
 
 3 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 of the physical body may be inferred from St. Paul 
 {1 Thess. iv. 15), although his words there must be 
 taken with and qualified by those in 1 Cor. xv. 50 ff . 
 But such mere transliteration will not stand ; these 
 words and passages need more study and light, and 
 more comparison with the rest of the teaching of 
 Our Lord and His Apostles, before they render up 
 their true meaning. And we shall not reach this 
 true meaning until we have compared them also 
 with the other current literature of the period, now, 
 fortunately, made available for the student by the 
 labours of Dr. Charles and other scholars ; only so 
 will husk and kernel be separated, and the per- 
 manent and essential stand out from the temporary, 
 transient, and accessory. 
 
 The clearest and fullest eschatological teaching 
 of Our Lord is, of course, to be found in Mt. xxiv., 
 and its parallels Mk. xiii., Lk. xxi., and there are a 
 number of other passages in the Gospels bearing an 
 eschatological character or phraseology, to all of 
 which abundant parallels are to be found in the 
 Jewish pseudepigraphical writings. It will be most 
 convenient to take this central passage first by 
 itself, and illustrate it from these books ; and then 
 the other Gospel writings and expressions ; and 
 then offer some comments and suggestions upon 
 the problem in question. 
 
 " And as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the 
 disciples came unto Him privately, saying, Tell 
 us, when shall these things be ? and what shall be 
 the sign of Thy coming and of the end of the world ? " 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 (rather, as margin, " of the consummation of the 
 age ? ") v. 3. 
 
 Here, at once, we meet with three technical 
 expressions, irapovala, avvTekeca, aldov, translated 
 respectively by " coming, end, world.' ' * For a 
 discussion of their meaning and use, see pp. 53 ff . 
 But for their use here by St. Matthew, we may 
 compare 1 Enoch i. 3 : " The Holy Great One 
 will come forth from His dwelling." 
 
 2 Enoch xxxii. 1 : " My second coming." 
 
 1 Enoch xvi. 1 (Cf. x. 12) : " The day of the 
 consummation, the great judgment in which the 
 age shall be consummated/ ' 
 
 T. Reub. vi. 8: "The consummation 2 of the 
 
 times." 
 
 T. Levi x. 2, xiv. 1 : " The end of the ages." 
 T. Zeb. ix. 9 : " The time of consummation." 
 T. Benj. xi. 3 : " The consummation of the age." 
 Ass. Mos. i. 18 : " The consummation of the 
 
 end of the days." 
 
 2 Baruch xxi. 8, xxx. 3 : " The consummation 
 of the times." 12: "The consummation of those 
 who have been righteous." 17 : " If a consummation 
 had not been prepared for all." 
 
 2 Enoch lxv. 8 : " The great aeon." 
 2 Baruch xliv. 15 : M The world to come " ; 
 1 Enoch lxxi. 15. 
 4 Ezra viii. 1 : " This age — the age to come." 
 Cf. Matt. xii. 32 ; Mark x. 30 ; Luke xx. 35. 
 
 1 Cf. John vi. 39, 54 : " The last day." 
 
 2 reKeiooais; see Charles's note. 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 " And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take 
 heed that no man lead you astray. For many 
 shall come in My name, saying, I am the Christ ; 
 and shall lead many astray. And ye shall hear of 
 wars and rumours of wars ; see that ye be not 
 troubled ; for these things must needs come to 
 pass : but the end is not yet. For nation shall 
 rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom : 
 and there shall be famines and earthquakes in 
 divers places. But all these things are the begin- 
 ning of travail. Then shall they deliver you up 
 unto tribulation, and shall kill you ; and ye shall 
 be hated of all the nations for My name's sake. 
 And then shall many stumble, and shall deliver 
 up one another, and shall hate one another. And 
 many false prophets shall arise, and shall lead 
 many astray. And because iniquity shall be 
 multiplied, the love of the many shall wax cold. 
 But he that endureth to the end, the same shall 
 be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall 
 be preached in the whole world for a testimony 
 unto all the nations ; and then shall the end come." 
 (vv. 4-14.) Cf. Matt. x. 21, 34, 35 : " And brother 
 shall deliver up brother to death, and the father 
 his child ; and children shall rise up against parents, 
 and cause them to be put to death. ... I came not 
 to send peace, but a sword. For I came to set a 
 man at variance against his father, and the daughter 
 against her mother ... a man's foes shall be they 
 of his own household." And Luke xii. 49 : "I 
 came to cast fire upon the earth." 
 
 Here, Our Lord declares that the end shall be 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 preceded by the appearance of false claimants to 
 the Messiahship, and their success in gathering 
 adherents ; by wars and rumours of wars, famines, 
 and earthquakes ; by the persecution of His 
 disciples, by the increase of wickedness ; by mutual 
 hatred and strife, and by the evangelisation of the 
 world. Similar predictions are found in — 
 
 1 Enoch i. 1; lv. 3 : " The day of tribulation/' 
 i. 5, 6, 7 : 
 
 " And all shall be smitten with fear, 
 And the watchers shall quake 
 And great fear and trembling shall seize them 
 unto the ends of the earth. 
 
 And the high mountains shall be shaken, 
 And the high hills shall be made low, 
 And shall melt like wax before the flame. 
 
 And the earth shall be wholly rent in sunder, 
 And all that is upon the earth shall perish. 
 And there shall be a judgment upon all men." 
 
 xci. 5 : "I know that violence must increase on 
 the earth." 
 c. 12: 
 
 " And in those days in one place the fathers 
 together with their sons shall be smitten 
 And brothers one with another shall fall in 
 
 death. 
 Till the streams flow with their blood. 
 For a man shall not withhold his hand from 
 slaying his sons and his son's sons, 
 
 7 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 And the sinner shall not withhold his hand 
 
 from his honoured brother : 
 From dawn till sunset they shall slay one 
 another/' 
 2 Bar. lxx. 3, 6 : 
 
 " And they shall hate one another, 
 And provoke one another to fight. . . ." 
 
 " Then shall confusion fall upon all men, 
 And some of them shall fall in battle, 
 And some of them shall perish in anguish, 
 And some of them shall be destroyed by 
 their own." 
 Sib. iii. 41-43 : " For no man of wealth endowed 
 with goods will give any part to another, but 
 miserable meanness shall be among all mortals, and 
 faith they shall never keep at all, . . . " 
 
 4 Ezra v. 2 : " Iniquity shall be increased above 
 that which thou thyself now seest or that thou hast 
 heard of long ago." 
 
 xiii. 31 : " Behold the days come when the 
 Most High is about to deliver them that are upon 
 the earth. And there shall come astonishment of 
 mind upon the dwellers on earth ; and they shall 
 plan to war one against another, city against city, 
 place against place, people against people, and 
 kingdom against kingdom/' 
 
 Cf. also 1 Enoch xcix. 5 ; T. Levi iv. 1 ; 
 Isa. xix. 1, 2. 
 
 Compare Matt. xxiv. 19 : " Woe to them that 
 
 8 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 are with child and to them that give suck in those 
 days ! " with 2 Bar. x. 14 : M For the barren shall 
 above all rejoice, and those who have no sons shall 
 be glad, and those who have sons shall have anguish/ ' 
 Cf. Luke xxiii. 29 : " Behold the days are coming, 
 in which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, 
 and the wombs that never bare, and the breasts 
 that never gave suck/' 
 
 Compare xxiv. 21 : " For then shall be great 
 tribulation, such as hath not been from the beginning 
 of the world until now, no, nor ever shall be," with 
 Ass. Mos. viii. 1 : " And there shall come upon 
 them a second visitation and wrath, such as hath 
 not befallen them from the beginning until that 
 time." 1 Enoch xlv. 2 (cf. xcviii. 10) : " the day 
 of suffering and tribulation." Dan. xii. 1 : " And 
 there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was 
 since there was a nation even to that same time." 
 
 Compare xxiv. 22 : " Those days shall be short- 
 ened," with 2 Bar. xx. 1 : " Therefore, behold ! 
 the days come, and the times shall hasten more 
 than the former, and the seasons shall speed on 
 more than those that are past, and the years shall 
 pass more quickly than the present (years)." For 
 the " elect," cf. 1 Enoch xciii. 2 : " The elect of the 
 world " ; 10 : " The elect righteous." 
 
 Compare xxiv. 5, 24 : " There shall arise false 
 Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great 
 signs and wonders ; so as to lead astray, if possible, 
 even the elect," with Sib. hi. 65 ff. : " He (Beliar) 
 shall perform many signs for men . . . nay, he 
 deceives mortals, and many shall he deceive. 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 Hebrews faithful and elect and lawless too " ; and 
 2 Bar. xlviii. 34. 
 
 Compare xxiv. 27 : "As the lightning cometh 
 forth from the east, and is seen even unto the 
 west : so shall be the coming {irapovaia) of the Son 
 of Man," with 2 Bar. liii. 9 : " Now that lightning 
 shone exceedingly, so as to illuminate the whole 
 earth." 
 
 xxiv. 29 ff . describes the portents which shall 
 precede the coming of the Son of Man, a passage 
 couched in current eschatological language, and 
 possessing abundant parallels : " But immediately 
 after the tribulation of those days, the sun shall 
 be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, 
 and the stars shall fall from heaven M (St. Luke adds : 
 " And upon the earth distress of nations, in per- 
 plexity for the roaring of the sea and the billows ; 
 men fainting for fear, and for expectation of the 
 things which are coming on the world "), " and the 
 powers of the heavens shall be shaken : and then 
 shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven : 
 and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, 
 and they shall see the Son of Man coming on the 
 clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 
 And He shall send forth His angels with a great 
 sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together 
 His elect from the four winds, from one end of 
 heaven to the other." Cf. Matt. xxvi. 64 : " Hence- 
 forth ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the 
 right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of 
 heaven.' ' 
 
 Here, compare 4 Ezra v. 1 ff . : 
 
 10 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 " Behold, the days come when the inhabitants 
 of earth shall be seized with great panic, 
 
 And the way of truth shall be hidden, and 
 the land be barren of faith. 
 
 And iniquity shall be increased . . . 
 
 Then shall the sun suddenly shine forth by 
 
 night and the moon by day : 
 And blood shall trickle forth from wood, and 
 
 the stone utter its voice : 
 The peoples shall be in commotion, 
 
 The outgoings of the stars shall change. 
 . . . the birds shall take to general flight, 
 
 and the sea shall cast forth its fish. 
 
 And the earth o'er wide regions shall open, 
 and the fire burst forth for a long period : 
 
 The wild beasts shall desert their haunts, and 
 women bear monsters. 
 
 And one-year old children shall speak with 
 their voices ; pregnant women shall bring 
 forth untimely births at three or four 
 months, and these shall live and dance. 
 And suddenly shall the sown places appear 
 unsown, and the full storehouses shall 
 suddenly be found empty. 
 
 Salt waters shall be found in the sweet ; 
 friends shall attack one another suddenly. 
 
 Then shall intelligence hide itself, and wisdom 
 withdraw to its chamber — by many shall 
 be sought and not found. 
 
 And unrighteousness and incontinency shall 
 11 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 be multiplied upon the earth. One land 
 shall also ask another and say : Is Right- 
 eousness — that doeth the right — passed 
 through thee ? And it shall answer, No. 
 And it shall be 
 
 In that time men shall hope and not obtain, 
 shall labour and not prosper." 
 vi. 23 : " And the trumpet shall sound aloud, 
 at which all men, when they hear it, shall be struck 
 with sudden fear." 
 
 ix. 3 : " When in the world there shall appear 
 quakings of places, tumults of peoples, schemings 
 of nations, confusion of leaders, disquietude of 
 princes, then shalt thou understand that it is of 
 these things the Most High has spoken since the 
 days that were aforetime from the beginning/ ' 
 
 Sib. iv. 56 ff. : " Darkling night shall fall at the 
 middle hour of day : the stars and the moon's disc 
 shall fail from heaven. And the earth shaken by 
 the upheaval of a mighty earthquake shall cast 
 down headlong many cities and works of men. . . . 
 Then there shall be all those evil works which men 
 pray to be spared, wars, and murders, schisms and 
 exiles." 
 Ass. Mos. x. 3 ff . : 
 
 " For the Heavenly One shall arise from His 
 royal throne, 
 And He will go forth from His holy habitation 
 With indignation and wrath on account ot 
 
 His sons. 
 And the earth shall tremble : to its confines 
 shall it be shaken : 
 12 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 And the high mountains be made low 
 And the hills shall be shaken and fall. 
 And the horns of the sun shall be broken and 
 
 he shall be turned into darkness ; 
 And the moon shall not give her light, and be 
 
 turned wholly into blood. 
 And the circle of the stars shall be disturbed. 
 And the sea shall retire into the abyss, 
 And the fountains of waters shall fail, 
 And the rivers shall dry up." 
 Isa. xiii. 10 : " For the stars of heaven and the 
 constellations thereof shall not give their light : 
 the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the 
 moon shall not cause her light to shine/ ' Ezek: 
 xxxii. 7 ; Joel ii. 10, 31 ; hi. 15 ; Amos v. 20 ; 
 viii. 9 ; Zeph. i. 15. 
 
 Dan. vii. 13 : " Behold, there came with the 
 clouds of heaven one like unto a son of man." 
 
 Zech. xii. 12 : " And the land shall mourn, every 
 family apart " ; ii. 6 : "J have spread you abroad 
 as the four winds of heaven" ; in the LXX., "from 
 the four winds will I gather you " ; Deut. xxx. 4. 
 Also T. Levi iv. 1 ; 2 Bar. xxvii. ; Jub. xxiii. 18 ff. ; 
 see Charles, Pseudep, p. 375. 
 
 The " Great Assize " is described in Matt. 
 xxv. 31 ff.— 
 
 "But when the Son of Man shall come in His 
 glory, and all the angels with Him, x then shall 
 
 1 Cf. John i. 51 : " Ye shall see the heaven opened, and 
 the angels of God ascending and descending upon the 
 Son of Man." Matt. xxvi. 53 : " Shall even now send me 
 more than twelve legions of angels." 
 
 13 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 He sit on the throne of His glory 1 and before Him 
 shall be gathered all the nations : and He shall 
 separate them one from another, as the shepherd 
 separateth the sheep from the goats : and He shall 
 set the sheep on the right hand, but the goats on 
 the left. Then shall the King say unto them on 
 His right hand, Come, ye blessed of My Father, 
 inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the 
 foundation of the world : for I was an hungred, 
 and ye gave Me meat : I was thirsty and ye gave 
 Me drink : I was a stranger, and ye took Me in : 
 naked, and ye clothed Me : I was sick, and ye 
 visited Me : I was in prison, and ye came unto 
 Me. Then shall the righteous answer Him, saying, 
 Lord, when saw we Thee an hungred, and fed Thee ? 
 or athirst, and gave Thee drink ? And when saw 
 we Thee a stranger, and took Thee in ? or naked, 
 and clothed Thee ? And when saw we Thee sick, 
 or in prison, and came unto Thee ? And the King 
 shall answer and say unto them. Verily, I say 
 unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these 
 My brethren, even these least, ye did it unto Me. 
 Then shall He say also unto them on the left hand : 
 Depart from Me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire 
 which is prepared for the devil and his angels : for 
 I was an hungred, and ye gave Me no meat ; I was 
 thirsty and ye gave Me no drink : I was a stranger, 
 and ye took Me not in ; naked, and ye clothed 
 Me not ; sick, and in prison, and ye visited Me not. 
 Then shall they also answer, saying, Lord, when 
 
 1 Rev. xx. 11. 
 
 14 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 saw we Thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, 
 or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister 
 unto Thee ? Then shall He answer them, saying, 
 Verily, I say unto you. Inasmuch as ye did it not 
 unto one of these least, ye did it not unto Me. 
 And these shall go away into eternal punishment ; 
 but the righteous into eternal life/' 1 
 
 With this familiar passage, cf. 4 Ezra vii. 33, 37, 38: 
 " And the Most High shall be revealed upon the 
 throne of judgment : 
 
 And then shall the Most High say to the 
 nations that have been raised [from the 
 dead] ; 
 Look now and consider Whom ye have denied, 
 Whom ye have not served, Whose command- 
 ments ye have despised. 
 Look, now, before you : 
 
 here delight and refreshment, 
 there fire and torments ! " 
 2 Bar. lxxii. 2 : " After the signs have come, of 
 which thou wast told before, when the nations 
 become turbulent, and the time of my Messiah is 
 come, He shall both summon all the nations, and 
 some of them He shall spare, and some of them 
 He shall slay." 
 
 Joel hi. 12 : " Let the nations bestir themselves, 
 and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat ; for 
 there will I sit to judge all the nations round 
 about/ ' 
 
 1 Cf. xvi. 27. 
 
 15 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 For the sheep and goats, cf. Ezekiel's parable of 
 the cattle and sheep and goats, xxxiv. 17. 
 
 Dan. xii. 2 : " Some to everlasting life, and 
 some to shame and everlasting contempt/ ' 
 
 A close parallel is found in 1 Enoch lxii. 1-5 : 
 so close that Mr. Burkitt argues that Our Lord 
 must have been familiar with the passage — 
 
 " And thus the Lord commanded the kings, and 
 the mighty and the exalted, and those 
 who dwell on the earth, and said : 
 ' Open your eyes and lift up your horns if 
 ye are able to recognise the Elect One/ 
 And the Lord of Spirits seated Him on the 
 
 throne of His glory, 
 And the Spirit of righteousness was poured 
 
 out upon Him, 
 And the word of His mouth slays all the 
 
 Sinners. 
 And all the unrighteous are destroyed from 
 
 before His face. 
 And there shall stand up in that day all the 
 
 kings, and the mighty. 
 And the exalted and those who hold the earth. 
 And they shall see and recognise 
 How He sits on the throne of His glory, 
 And righteousness is judged before Him, 
 And no lying word is spoken before Him. 
 
 And one portion of them shall look on the 
 
 other, 
 And they shall be terrified. 
 And they shall be downcast of countenance, 
 
 16 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 And pain shall seize them, 
 When they see that Son of Man 
 Sitting on the throne of His glory." 
 cii. 3 : " The Great Glory." 
 Cf. Luke xxi. 36 : " That ye may prevail ... to 
 stand before the Son of Man." 
 
 v. 6 speaks of " Him who rules over all " ; 
 cf. Matt, xxviii. 18 : " All authority hath been given 
 Me in heaven and on earth." 
 
 For " His right hand," cf. T. Benj. x. 6 : " Ye 
 shall see . . . rising on the right hand in 
 gladness." 
 
 A strikingly close parallel, too close to have been 
 accidental, is found in T. Jos. i. 5, 6 : "I was beset 
 with hunger, and the Lord Himself nourished 
 me " ; 
 
 " I was alone, and God comforted me ; 
 I was sick, and the Lord visited me ; 
 I was in prison, and My God showed favour 
 
 unto me ; 
 In bonds, and He released me." 
 With the same passage, cf. 2 Enoch ix. 1 : " This 
 place is reserved for the righteous, who . . . give 
 bread to the hungering, and cover the naked with 
 clothing, and raise up the fallen, and help injured 
 orphans .... and for them is prepared this place 
 for eternal inheritance." 
 
 And 4 Ezra ix. 10 : " For all who failed to 
 recognise Me in their lifetime, although I dealt 
 bountifully with them." 
 
 In 2 Enoch x. 4 is described a place of fiery 
 torments (and partly of piercing cold) which is 
 
 17 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 " prepared for " the wicked, " for eternal inherit- 
 ance/ ' And 1 Enoch liv. mentions " a deep valley 
 with burning fire M with " iron chains of immeasur- 
 able weight," which " are being prepared for the 
 hosts of Azazel." 
 
 St. Luke's version of the same utterance of Our 
 Lord is very similar, but has some variations. 
 With one of these there are two parallels : Lk. 
 xxi. 28, " But when these things begin to come to 
 pass, look up, and lift up your heads ; because 
 your redemption draweth nigh." Here, cf. 1 Enoch 
 li. 2 : " The day has drawn nigh that they should 
 be saved " ; and 2 Bar. xxiii. 7 : " For truly my 
 redemption has drawn nigh, and is not far distant 
 as aforetime." 
 
 Other passages and phrases of an eschatological 
 character are — 
 
 Matt. v. 22 : " The hell (Gehenna) of fire." This, 
 a common expression in Our Lord's mouth, is no 
 less common in the Jewish literature ; * it is, in 
 fact, one of the stock phrases and conceptions used 
 to describe the punishment and fate of the wicked, 
 whether angels or men. Gehenna is the trans- 
 literation of Ge-Hinnom, i.e., the Valley of Hinnom, 
 a ravine on the S. of Jerusalem, where the Israelites 
 had at one time offered human sacrifices to Moloch ; 2 
 and had been condemned by Josiah 3 to be kept 
 as a place for the destruction of refuse. Here were 
 
 1 Cf. Isa. lxvi. 24. 
 
 2 2 Chron. xxviii. 3, xxxiii. 6. 
 
 3 2 Kin. xxiii. 10. 
 
 18 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 fires perpetually burning, and the whole place was 
 a scene of ghastly and unpleasant corruption, and 
 it became a natural parable for Jewish teachers. 
 Cf. 1 Enoch xxvii. 2 : " This accursed valley is for 
 those who are accursed for ever " ; xc. 26, 27 : 
 " And I saw at that time how a like abyss was 
 opened in the midst of the earth, full of fire, and 
 they brought those blinded sheep (i.e., apostate 
 Jews) and they were all judged and found guilty 
 and cast into this fiery abyss and they burned ; 
 now this abyss was to the right of that house/' x 
 
 For the conception of " fire," we may compare 
 1 Enoch x. 6 : " On the day of the great judgment 
 he shall be cast into the fire " ; x. 13 : " The abyss 
 of fire " ; xcviii. 3 : " Their spirits shall be cast 
 into the furnace of fire " ; c. 9 : " In blazing flames 
 burning worse than fire shall ye burn " ; Ps. Sol. 
 xv. 6 : " The flame of fire and the wrath against 
 the unrighteous shall not touch him/' 
 
 A parallel figure is that of the " worm " ; 2 for 
 which cf. 1 Enoch xlvi. 6 : " worms shall be their 
 bed " ; Isa. lxvi. 24. 
 
 In Matt. vii. 13, Our Lord alludes to the current 
 doctrine of the " Two Ways " : 3 " Enter ye in by 
 the narrow gate : for wide is the gate, and broad is 
 the way, that leadeth to destruction ; and many 
 be they that enter in thereby. For narrow is the 
 gate, and straitened the way, that leadeth unto 
 life, and few be they that find it." 
 
 1 Hinnom was S. of Jerusalem. 
 
 2 Mark ix. 48. 
 
 3 Derived ultimately from Jer. xxi. 8. 
 
 19 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 Here, cf. 4 Ezra vii. 4, 5, 12, 13 : " There is a 
 sea lying in a wide expanse so that it is broad and 
 vast ; but the entrance thereto lies in a narrow 
 space so as to be like a river. He then, that really 
 desireth to go upon the sea to behold it or to navigate 
 it, if he pass not through the narrow part, how shall 
 he be able to come into the broad ? . . . The ways 
 of this world became narrow and sorrowful and 
 painful, and full of perils coupled with great toils. 
 But the ways of the future world are broad and safe, 
 and yield the fruit of immortality " ; 2 Enoch 
 xxx. 15 : " I . . . showed him the two ways, the 
 light and the darkness, and I told him ' This is 
 good, and that bad/ " 
 
 In Matt. viii. 11 appears another common concep- 
 tion, the Messianic banquet : " Many shall come 
 from the East and the West, and shall sit down 1 
 with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, in the kingdom 
 of heaven. " Cf. xxvi. 29 : . " I will not drink 
 henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day 
 when I drink it new with you in My Father's 
 kingdom/' Lk. xiv. 15 : " Blessed is he that shall 
 eat bread in the Kingdom of God." 
 
 Here, cf. 1 Enoch lxii. 14 : " With that Son of 
 Man shall they eat " ; 4 Ezra ix. 19 : "a world 
 made ready with both an unfailing table and an 
 inexplorable pasture/' 
 
 Isa. xxv. 6 : "In this mountain shall the Lord 
 of Hosts make unto all peoples a feast of fat things, 
 
 1 Lit. " recline at table.' ' 
 
 20 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of 
 marrow, of wines on the lees well refined." 1 
 
 For the casting of the unworthy sons of the 
 kingdom out into the " outer darkness," and " the 
 weeping and the gnashing of teeth" 2 cf. 4 Ezra 
 vii. 125: " Our faces shall be blacker than darkness." 
 
 In Matt. viii. 29, the demons beseech Our Lord 
 not to torment them " before the time " ; i.e., they 
 recognised Him as the Messiah, and He neither 
 disallowed their witness (in Lk. iv. 41, He " suffered 
 not the demons to speak, because they knew Him 
 to be the Christ "), nor their implication that there 
 was a time for judgment and torment already fixed. 
 
 For this we may cf. 1 Enoch xvi. 1 : " From the 
 days of the slaughter and destruction and death of 
 the giants, from the souls of whose flesh the spirits, 
 having gone forth, shall destroy without incurring 
 judgment . . . thus shall they destroy until the 
 day of the consummation, the great judgment in 
 which the age shall be consummated." 
 
 The " day of judgment," also called " that day," 
 " that great day," deriving ultimately from Amos 
 v. 18, cf. Joel i. 15, Isa. ii. 12, etc., is too common a 
 conception in both Gospels and Jewish literature to 
 need further quotation ; the student may care to 
 
 1 In 2 Bar. xxix. 4, 4 Ezra vi. 49 fL, it is said that 
 Behemoth and Leviathan are being kept in order to provide 
 the substance of this banquet, which throws light on the 
 obscure verse Ps. lxxiv. 14. 
 
 2 Note the articles. 
 
 21 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 refer to 1 Enoch x. 6, 1. 1, liv. 6, lx. 6, 25, lxi. 8, 
 
 lxii., lxxxiv. 4, xci. 15, xcviii. 10, ciii. 8 ; Sib. 
 
 iii. 91, 670, iv. 41, 183; 4 Ezra vii. 33; Ps. Sol. 
 ii. 37, xv. 12. 
 
 In Matt. x. 33, we read : " Whosoever shall deny 
 Me before man, him will I also deny before My 
 Father which is in Heaven/ ' 
 
 For this, cf. 1 Enoch xxxviii. 2 : " Those who have 
 denied the Lord of Spirits " ; xlviii. 10 : " They 
 have denied the Lord of Spirits and His Anointed/ ' 
 
 With Matt. xi. 25: " I thank Thee . . . that Thou 
 didst hide these things from the wise and prudent, 
 and didst reveal them unto babes " ; cf. 1 Enoch 
 xlvi. 3: " The Son of Man . . . who revealeth all the 
 treasures of that which is hidden/' 
 
 Another strongly eschatological passage is Matt, 
 xiii. 37 ff., the parable of the tares : "He that 
 sowed the good seed is the Son of Man ; and the 
 field is the world ; and the good seed, these are 
 the sons of the kingdom ; and the tares are the sons 
 of the evil one ; and the enemy that sowed them 
 is the devil ; and the harvest is the consummation 
 of the age (crvvreXeca rob al&vos) ; and the reapers 
 are angels. * As therefore the tares are gathered 
 up and burned with fire ; so shall it be in the 
 consummation of the age. The Son of Man shall 
 send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of 
 
 1 Cf. John iv. 35 : " The fields. . . are white already unto 
 harvest/' 
 
 22 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 His Kingdom all things that cause stumbling, and 
 them that do iniquity, and shall cast them into the 
 furnace of fire ; there shall be the weeping and the 
 gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine 
 forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father/' 
 And xiii. 47 ff., the parable of the net: "The 
 angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from 
 among the righteous, and shall cast them into the 
 furnace of fire ; there shall be the weeping and the 
 gnashing of teeth/ ' 
 
 With this passage, cf. 2 Bar. lxx. 2 — 
 
 " Behold ! the days come, and it shall be when 
 the time of the age has ripened, 
 And the harvest of its evil and good seeds 
 
 has come, 
 
 That the Mighty One will bring upon the 
 
 earth and its inhabitants and upon its rulers 
 
 Perturbation of spirit and stupor of heart/' 
 
 4 Ezra iv. 28 : " The evil concerning which thou 
 
 askest me is sown, but the ingathering of it is not 
 
 yet come/' 
 
 1 Enoch c. 4 — 
 " In those da3^s the angels shall descend into 
 the secret places, 
 And gather together into one place all those 
 who brought down sin, ..." 
 Joel iii. 13 : " Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest 
 is ripe/' 
 
 1 Enoch xliii. describes " other lightnings and 
 the stars of heaven," and explains these as " the 
 holy who dwell on the earth and believe in the 
 name of the Lord of Spirits for ever and ever/* 
 
 23 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 1 Enoch xxxix. 7 : " The righteous and elect 
 before Him shall be strong as fiery lights." 
 
 civ. 2 : " Now ye shall shine as the lights of 
 heaven." 
 
 Cf. Dan. xii. 3 : " They that be wise shall shine 
 as the brightness of the firmament; and they that 
 turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever 
 and ever." 
 
 cviii. 14 : " The righteous shall be resplendent." 
 Wisd. iii. 7— 
 
 " In the time of their visitation they shall 
 shine forth, 
 And as sparks among stubble they shall run 
 to and fro." 
 4 Ezra vii. 97, 123 : " Their face is destined to 
 shine as the sun . . . the faces of such as have 
 practised abstinence shall shine above the stars." 
 Cf. 2 Bar. li. 3, 10. 
 
 In Matt. xix. 28, a fresh expression appears : " In 
 the regeneration (iraXiyyeveaia, cf. Acts iii. 21) 
 when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of His 
 glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging 
 the twelve tribes of Israel." 1 
 
 For this, cf. 2 Bar. xxxii. 6 : " When the Mighty 
 One will renew His creation." 
 
 4 Ezra vii. 75 : " Until those times come in 
 which Thou shalt renew the creation." Jub. i. 29 : 
 " The day of the [new] creation when the heavens 
 and the earth shall be renewed." 
 
 1 Discussed by Dalman, p. 177. 
 
 24 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 1 Enoch cviii. 12 : "I will seat each on the 
 throne of his honour. Cf. Asc. Isa. ix. 10, 18. 
 
 The phrase " the throne of His glory " is common. 
 See 1 Enoch xlv. 3, xlvii. 3, li. 3, lv. 4, lx. 1, lxi. 8, 
 lxii., lxix. 27, xc. 20 ; Dan. vii. 9 ff. ; T. Jud. xxv. 1 : 
 11 1 and my brethren shall be chiefs of the tribes of 
 Israel/ ' 
 
 C/. Matt. xx. 21 : " Command that these my 
 two sons may sit, one on Thy right hand, and one 
 on Thy left hand, in Thy kingdom." 
 
 For the next verses, Matt. xix. 29, 30 : " Everyone 
 that hath left houses, or brethren, or sisters, or 
 father, or mother, or children, or lands, for My 
 Name's sake, shall receive a hundred fold, 1 and 
 shall inherit eternal life. But many shall be last 
 that are first ; and first that are last " ; cf. 2 Enoch 
 1. 5 : " Whoever of you spends gold or silver for 
 his brother's sake, he will receive ample treasure 
 in the world to come." 
 
 1 Enoch xl. 9 : " Those who inherit eternal life/* 
 4 Ezra v. 42 : " Just as there is no retardation of 
 
 them that are last, even so there is no hastening of 
 those that are first." 
 
 2 Bar. li. 13 : " For the first shall receive the 
 last, those whom they were expecting, and the last 
 those of whom they used to hear that they had 
 passed away." 
 
 With Matt. xxii. 14 : " Many are called, but few 
 
 1 St. Luke : " Manifold more in this time." 
 
 25 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 chosen/' cf. 4 Ezra viii. 1 : " This age the Most 
 High has made for many, but the age to come 
 for few." 
 
 With Matt. xxii. 30 : " In the resurrection they 
 neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are 
 as angels in heaven," cf. 2 Bar. li. 10 — 
 
 " For in the heights of that world shall they 
 dwell, 
 And they shall be made like unto the angels, 
 And be made equal to the stars, 
 And they shall be changed into every form 
 
 they desire, 
 From beauty into loveliness, 
 And from light into the splendour of glory." 
 1 Enoch civ. 6 : "Ye shall be companions of 
 the hosts of heaven." Cf. xv. 3 ff . 
 
 On the passage Matt. xxii. 23 ff., Dr. Charles 
 says : " The conception of the future life portrayed 
 in Our Lord's reply tallies almost exactly in thought 
 and partially in word with that described in (1 
 Enoch) xci.-civ., according to which there is to be 
 a resurrection indeed, but a resurrection of the 
 spirit." 1 
 
 With Matt, xxiii. 38 : " Your house is left unto 
 you desolate," cf. 1 Enoch lxxxix. 56 : "I saw that 
 He forsook that their house and their tower." 
 
 Jer. xii. 7 : "I have forsaken mine house, I have 
 
 1 The Book of Enoch, p. cviii. 
 
 26 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 cast off mine heritage " ; xxii. 5 : " This house 
 shall become a desolation." 
 
 With Matt. xxiv. 36 : " But of that day and hour 
 knoweth no one, not even the angels of heaven, 
 neither the Son, but the Father only," cf. 2 Enoch 
 xxiv. 3 : " For not to my angels have I told my 
 secret " ; xl. 3 : " Not even the angels see their 
 number. " 
 
 With Luke x. 18 ff. (the return of the Seventy) : 
 " I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven. 
 Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon 
 serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of 
 the enemy ; and nothing shall in any wise hurt 
 you. Howbeit, in this rejoice not, that the spirits 
 are subject unto you ; but rejoice that your names 
 are written in heaven " (cf. Matt. xii. 28 : " How 
 can one enter into the house of the strong man, 
 and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong 
 man ? " — in the passage about casting out devils 
 through Beelzebub ; Isa. xiv. 12 : " How art thou 
 fallen from heaven, O day star, son of the morning!"). 
 Cf. T. Sim. vi. 5 — 
 " For the Lord God shall appear on earth, 
 And Himself save men. 
 Then shall all the spirits of deceit be trodden 
 
 under foot, 
 And men shall rule over wicked spirits/ ' 
 T. Levi xviii. 12 — 
 
 " And Beliar shall be bound by Him, 
 And He shall give power to His children 
 to tread upon the evil spirits/ ' 
 
 27 
 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 1 Enoch xlvii. 3 : " The books of the living." 
 civ. 1 : " Your names are written before the glory 
 
 of the Great One." 
 cviii. 3, 7 : " Their names shall be blotted out 
 
 of the book of life and out of the holy books, . . . 
 
 for some of them are written and inscribed above 
 
 in the heaven." Cf. Dan. vii. 10, xii. 1 ; 4 Ezra 
 
 vi. 20. 
 
 With Luke xiv. 14 : " The resurrection of the 
 just," cf. Sib. iv. 187 : " All who are godly shall 
 live again on earth." In T. Benj. x. 6-8, three 
 stages of resurrection are noted, of the patriarchs, 
 then of Israel, then of all men, good and evil. 
 
 With John v. 29 : " They that have done good, 
 unto the resurrection of life," cf. Ps. Sol. iii. 16 : 
 " They that fear the Lord shall rise to life 
 eternal." 
 
 With Luke xvi. 8, John xii. 36 : " Sons of the 
 light," cf. 1 Enoch lxi. 12 : " Every spirit of light," 
 cviii. 11 : " The generation of light." 
 
 With Luke xvi. 9 : " The eternal tabernacles," 
 cf. 2 Ezra ii. 11 : " The eternal tabernacles." 
 
 With Luke xvi. 11: "Unrighteous mammon," 
 cf. 1 Enoch lxiii. 10 : " Unrighteous gain." 
 
 In the parable of Dives and Lazarus, Luke 
 xvi. 19 ff., Dives sees Lazarus in Abraham's bosom. 
 It was held that Heaven and Hell were in full view 
 
 28 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 of one another ; cf. the passages in the Psalms 
 where the righteous rejoice in seeing the punishment 
 of the wicked (e.g., xxxvii. 34, lii. 6, xci. 8, etc.); 
 and Isa. xiv. 9 ff. 
 
 Thus, 4 Ezra vii. 36 — 
 
 " And then shall the pit of torment appear, 
 And over against it the place of refreshment ; 
 The furnace of Gehenna shall be made 
 manifest, and over against it the Paradise 
 of delight." 
 Ass. Mos. x. 10 — 
 
 M And thou shalt look from on high and shalt 
 see thine enemies in Gehenna, 
 And thou shalt recognise them and rejoice 
 And thou shalt give thanks and confess Thy 
 Creator." 
 Dives appeals to Abraham, who is thus invested 
 with the office of " sinner's friend " ; for which 
 doctrine cf. 2 Enoch liii. 1 : u And now, my children, 
 do not say, ' Our father is standing before God, 
 and is praying for our sins/ for there is no helper 
 of any man who has sinned." (Cf. 2 Mace. xv. 14 ; 
 Jos. Ant. i. 13. 3 ; Matt, xxvii. 47, 49, iii. 9 (?) ; 
 Heb. vii. 25.) 
 
 He asks that Lazarus may quench his thirst, for 
 he is " in anguish in this flame " ; cf. A Ezra viii. 59 : 
 u As the things aforesaid abide for you, so thirst 
 and anguish await them"; 1 Enoch xxii. 11: 
 1 Their spirits shall be set apart in this great pain " ; 
 c. 7 : " The day of strong anguish." 
 
 Isa. lxvi. 24 : " Neither shall their fire be 
 quenched." 
 
 29 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 For the word " Paradise " in Luke xxiii. 43 (the 
 Word to the Penitent Thief), of. 1 Enoch xxxii. 3 : 
 " The Garden of Righteousness " ; lx. 8 : " The 
 garden where the elect and righteous dwell " ; 
 lxi. 12 : " The garden of life " ; 4 Ezra viii. 52 : 
 " For you is opened Paradise " ; T. Levi xviii. 10 : 
 " He shall open the gates of Paradise." 
 
 With John iii. 19 : x " This is the judgment, that 
 the light is come into the world," cf. 2 Enoch xlvi. 3 : 
 " When the Lord shall send a great light, then 
 there will be judgment for the just and the unjust," 
 cf. John viii. 12 : "I am the light of the world." 
 
 With John v. 22 : "He hath given all judgment 
 unto the Son," cf. 1 Enoch lxix. 27 : " The sum of 
 judgment was given unto the Son of Man." 
 
 With John x., the Allegory of the Sheepfold, cf. 
 1 Enoch lxxxiii. xc, where the Israelites are 
 described under the figure of sheep, and God is 
 called " the Lord of the sheep " ; Ezek. xxxiv. 
 
 With John viii. 12 : "I am the light of the world ; 
 he that followeth Me shall not walk in the darkness, 
 but shall have the light of life," cf. 1 Enoch xlviii. 4 : 
 " He shall be the light of the Gentiles." 2 
 
 With John xii. 31, xvi. 11 : " The prince of this 
 
 1 Probably the Evangelist's comment. 
 
 2 Deriving, of course, from Isa. xlii. 6. 
 
 30 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 world," cf. Mart. Isa. ii. 4 : " The angel of law- 
 lessness, who is the ruler of this world " (i.e., 
 Beliar) . 
 
 In St. John is very evident the dualistic concep- 
 tion of the universe, which is characteristic of 
 Jewish eschatology (as well as of the later gnostic- 
 ism). It is this thought that largely induced the 
 conception of a new heaven and earth, because 
 " this world lieth in the evil one," and therefore only 
 fit to be destroyed ; but Our Lord, while not contra- 
 dicting this dualism, regarded it as only temporary, 
 and this world as both possible and essentially good. 
 
 With John xiv. 2 : "In My Father's House are 
 many mansions" (rnarg., "abiding-places"), c/., 
 1 Enoch xxxix. 4 : "I saw another vision, the 
 dwelling-places of the holy, and the resting-places 
 of the righteous." 
 
 2 Enoch lxi. 2 : "In the great time are many 
 mansions prepared for men." 
 
 With John xvi. 8 : " And He, when He is come, 
 will convict the world in respect of sin, and of 
 righteousness, and of judgment," cf. T. Jud. xx. 5 : 
 1 The spirit of truth testifieth all things, and 
 accuseth all " ; 1 Enoch i. 9 — 
 " And to convict all flesh, 
 Of all the works of their ungodliness which 
 they have ungodly committed." 
 
 A very remarkable and interesting parallel to 
 
 31 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 the situation and effect ascribed to Our Lord's 
 Passion is found in Ass. Mos. ix. 7, x. 1, where 
 Taxo (i.e., Eleazar — 2 Mace. vi. 10) says that his 
 and his sons' deaths rather than transgress will 
 bring about the promised salvation : " Let us die 
 rather than transgress the commands of the Lord 
 of Lords, the God of our fathers. For if we do 
 this and die, our blood shall be avenged before 
 the Lord. And then His kingdom shall appear 
 throughout all His creation." 
 
 It should be sufficiently evident by this time how 
 deeply lie the roots of Our Lord's eschatological 
 teaching in the current literature and conceptions 
 of His time and nation. In word and thought, the 
 parallels are far too close and too numerous to have 
 been accidental. And it is not only in eschatology 
 that we notice this. In a number of other passages 
 dealing with other subjects we notice similar 
 parallelisms. 
 
 The description in Matt. iii. 16 of the opening of 
 the heavens, and the appearance of the Holy Spirit 
 as a dove, and the voice of God the Father, must 
 have come from Our Lord Himself (if it be genuine), 
 and with it we must at once compare T. Levi 
 xviii. 6, 7— 
 
 " The heavens shall be opened, 
 And from the temple of glory shall come upon 
 
 him sanctification, 
 With the Father's voice as from Abraham to 
 Isaac. 
 
 32 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 And the glory of the Most High shall be 
 
 uttered over him, 
 And the spirit of understanding and sancti- 
 fication shall rest upon him." 
 T. Jud. xxiv. 2 — 
 
 11 And the heavens shall be opened unto him, 
 To pour out the spirit, (even) the blessing of 
 the Holy Father. ,, 
 
 With the words "My Beloved Son" (and the 
 phrase " The Beloved ,J in Eph. i. 6, cf. Jn. iii. 35, 
 x. 17), cf. its frequent recurrence as a technical 
 title of the Messiah in the Ascension of Isaiah. 1 
 
 With Matt. iv. 17 : " Repent ye ; for the kingdom 
 of heaven is at hand," cf. Ass. Mos. i. 18 : " The day 
 of repentance in the visitation wherewith the Lord 
 will visit them in the consummation of the end of 
 the days." 
 
 Dr. Savage has drawn out in great and interesting 
 detail the Jewish character of the Sermon on the 
 Mount, in his Gospel of the Kingdom ; but we may 
 note one or two of the more striking parallels. 
 
 With Our Lord's going up on to a mountain 2 
 we may compare 1 Enoch xxv. 3 : " This high 
 mountain, which thou hast seen, whose summit is 
 like the throne of God, is His throne, where the 
 Holy Great One, the Lord of Glory, the Eternal 
 
 1 For its use, see J. A. Robinson, Ephesians, p. 229; 
 Charles, Asc. Isa., p. 3 ; cf. p. 41 below. 
 
 2 Cf. Mt. xvii. 1; Mk. iii. 13. 
 
 33 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 King, will sit, when He shall come down to visit 
 the earth with goodness.' ' 
 
 With Matt. v. 3 : " Blessed are the poor in spirit ; 
 for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," cf. T. Jud. 
 xxv. 4 : " They who were poor for the Lord's sake 
 shall be made rich." (Charles brackets as marginal 
 gloss.) 
 
 Sib. iii. 767 : " He will raise up His Kingdom 
 for all ages." 
 
 Ass. Mos. x. 1 : " His Kingdom shall appear 
 throughout all His Creation." 
 
 With v. 8 : " Blessed are the pure in heart, for 
 they shall see God," cf. 4 Ezra vii. 98 : " They are 
 hastening to behold the face of Him whom in life 
 they served, and from whom they are destined to 
 receive their reward in glory " ; Ps. xxiv. 4. 
 
 With v. 9 : " Blessed are the peace-makers, for 
 they shall be called the sons of God," cf. 2 Enoch 
 lii. 11 : " Blessed is he who implants peace and 
 love." 
 
 With v. 11 : "Blessed are ye when men shall 
 reproach ye, and persecute you, and say all manner 
 of evil against you falsely, for My sake . . . for 
 great is your reward in heaven " ; cf. 1 Enoch 
 cviii. 10 : " He hath assigned them their recom- 
 pense, because they have been found to be such as 
 loved heaven more than their life in the world, and 
 though they were trodden under foot of wicked 
 
 34 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 men, and experienced abuse and reviling from them 
 and were put to shame, yet they blessed Me." 
 
 With v. 18 : " Till heaven and earth pass away, 
 one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from 
 the law, till all things be accomplished/ ' cf. 2 Bar. 
 xix. 1, 2— 
 
 " Wherefore at that time he appointed for them 
 a covenant and said: 
 1 Behold, I have placed before you life and 
 
 death/ 
 And he called heaven and earth to witness 
 
 against them. 
 For he knew that his time was but short, 
 But that heaven and earth endure always." 
 
 With v. 19 : " Whosoever shall do and teach 
 them [the commandments], he shall be called great 
 in the kingdom of heaven," 1 cf. T. Levi xiii. 9 : 
 " Whosoever teaches noble things and does them, 
 shall be enthroned with kings." 
 
 4 Ezra viii. 29 : " Regard them that have 
 gloriously taught Thy Law." 
 
 With v. 22 : " Every one that is angry with his 
 brother [without cause] shall be in danger of the 
 judgment," cf. 2 Enoch xliv. 2 : " He who vents 
 anger on any man without injury, the Lord's great 
 anger will cut him down, he who spits on the face 
 of man reproachfully, will be cut down at the 
 Lord's great judgment." 
 
 1 Cf. vii. 24, 26. 
 
 35 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 With v. 28 : " Every one that looketh on a woman 
 
 to lust after her hath committed adultery already 
 
 with her in his heart," cf. T. Iss. vii. 2 : "I never 
 
 committed fornication by the uplifting of my eyes." 
 
 T. Reub. iii. 10— 
 
 " Pay no heed to the face of a woman, 
 Nor associate with another man's wife " ; 
 vi. 1— 
 
 " If you wish to be pure in mind, guard your 
 senses from every woman " ; 
 Prov. vi. 25 ; and T. Benj. viii. 2 — 
 
 " Lust not after her beauty in thine heart ; 
 Neither let her take thee with her eyelids." 
 
 With v. 34 : " Swear not at all, neither by the 
 heaven, for it is the throne of God ; nor by the 
 earth, for it is the footstool of His feet ; nor by 
 Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 
 Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, for thou 
 canst not make one hair white or black. But let 
 your speech be yea, yea ; nay, nay," cf. 2 Enoch 
 xlix. 1 : "I swear not by any oath, neither by 
 heaven nor by earth, nor by any other creature 
 which God created." 
 
 " The Lord said : ' There is no oath in Me, nor 
 injustice, but truth/ If there is no truth in men, 
 let them swear by the words ' yea, yea/ or else, 
 nay, nay/ " Isa. lxvi. 1. 
 
 With v. 44 : " Love your enemies, and pray for 
 them that persecute you," cf. T. Jos. xviii. 2 : " If 
 
 36 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 anyone seeketh to do evil unto you, do well unto 
 him, and pray for him." 
 
 With vi. 19 : " Lay not up for yourselves treasures 
 upon the earth," etc., cf. T. Levi xiii. 5 — 
 
 " Work righteousness, therefore, my children, 
 upon the earth, 
 That ye may have it as a treasure in heaven." 
 2 Bar. xiv. 12 : " They have with Thee a store 
 of works preserved in treasuries." 
 
 With vi. 22 : " If thine eye be single," cf. T. Iss. 
 iii. 4 : Walking as I did in singleness of eye," and 
 T. Dan. ii. 5. 
 
 With vi. 24 : "No man can serve two masters," 
 etc., cf. T. Jud. xviii. 6 — 
 
 " He is a slave to two contrary passions, 
 And cannot obey God, 
 Because they have blinded his soul, 
 And he walketh in the day as in the night." 
 
 With vii. 2 : " With what measure ye mete, it 
 shall be measured unto you," cf. T. Zeb. v. 3 : 
 " Even as a man doeth to his neighbour, even so 
 also will the Lord do to him." 
 
 With Matt. x. 28 : " Him which is able to destroy 
 both body and soul in hell," cf. 1 Enoch xxii. 13 : 
 " Their spirits shall not be slain in the day of 
 judgment." 
 
 37 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 With Matt. xi. 2ff., the question of St. John 
 Baptist through his disciples, whether Jesus were the 
 Messiah or no, and His reply, x cf. 2 Bar. xxix. 6 : 
 " Those who have hungered shall rejoice : moreover, 
 also, they shall behold marvels every day " ; and 
 4 Ezra xiii. 50 : " And then shall he show them 
 very many wonders/' 
 
 With Matt. xi. 29 : " Take My yoke upon you," 
 cf. 2 Enoch xxxiv. 1 : " They have rejected . . . 
 my yoke " ; and 2 Bar. xli. 3 : " The yoke of 
 Thy law." 
 
 With Matt. xii. 35 : " The good man out of his 
 good treasure bringeth forth good things : and the 
 evil man out of his evil treasure bringeth forth evil 
 things," cf. T. Asher i. 9 : " The treasure of the 
 inclination is filled with an evil spirit." 
 
 With Matt. xii. 36, 37 : " Every idle word that 
 men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in 
 the day of judgment. For by thy words thou 
 shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be 
 condemned," cf. 1 Enoch xcvii. 6 : " All the words 
 of your unrighteousness shall be read out before 
 the Great Holy One." 
 
 With Matt. xv. 14: "If the blind guide the 
 blind, both shall fall into a pit," cf. T. Reub. ii. 9 : 
 " Leadeth the youth as a blind man to a pit." 
 
 1 Cf. John vii. 31: " When the Christ shall come, will He 
 do more signs than those which this man hath done ? " 
 
 38 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 With the list of sins given in Matt. xv. 19, cf. 
 similar lists in Gal. v. 21 ; Rom. i. 29 ; Wisd. 
 xiv. 25 ; T. Reub. iii. 3 ; T. Judah xvi. 1 ; 2 Enoch 
 x. 4 ; 3 Bar. iv. 17, viii. 5, xiii. 4. Charles, Pseudep. 
 II., p. 528, says that such lists were part of the 
 stock-in-trade of Jewish as of all ancient writers. 
 
 With Matt. xvi. 26 : " For what shall a man be 
 profited, if he shall gain the whole world and forfeit 
 his life ? or what shall a man give in exchange for 
 his life ? '" cf. 2 Bar. li. 15— 
 
 " For what then have men lost their life, 
 And for what have those who were on the 
 earth exchanged their soul ? " 
 But the sentiment is not confined to Judaism ; 
 see Plat. Rep. 589E, 505B ; Horn. II. 9. 401 ; 
 Eurip. Orest. 1156. 
 
 In Matt. xvii. 11 ff., Our Lord accepts the dis- 
 ciples' query about the coming of Elijah, and 
 declares that St. John Baptist was " Elijah. " 
 This return of Elijah was also a current doctrine 
 among the Jews, Mai. iv. 5 ; cf. 4 Ezra vi. 26 (see 
 note) : " The men who have been taken up, who 
 have not tasted death from their birth, shall appear " 
 (i.e., Enoch, Gen. v. 24, and Elijah, 2 Kings ii. 11), 
 and vii. 28 : " My Son the Messiah shall be revealed 
 together with those who are with 11™!/' The same 
 acceptance of current doctrine underlies the appear- 
 ance of Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration ; 
 and cf. Matt. xvi. 14. 
 
 39 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 In Matt, xviii. 10, Our Lord lends countenance 
 to the doctrine of guardian angels ; cf. 1 Enoch 
 c. 5 : " Over all the righteous and holy He will 
 appoint guardians from amongst the holy angels." 
 Ps. xci. 11. 
 
 With Our Lord's answer to the Scribe about the 
 great commandment in the Law : x " Thou shalt 
 love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
 with all thy soul, and with all thy mind . . . Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbour as thyself " (quoting 
 Deut. vi. 5, Lev. xix. 18), cf. T. Dan. v. 3— 
 '" Love the Lord through all your life, 
 And one another with a true heart." 
 T. Iss. v. 2— 
 
 " Love the Lord and your neighbour." 
 vii. 6— 
 
 " I loved the Lord ; 
 Likewise also every man with all my heart." 
 T. Benj. iii. 3: "Fear ye the Lord, and love 
 your neighbour." 
 
 For the influence of the Testaments on Our 
 Lord's teaching, see Charles's edition of this work. 
 
 With Our Lord's teaching about humility in 
 Matt, xxiii. 1 ff., Lk. xiv. 7, xviii. 9, cf. 4 Ezra 
 viii. 48 ff. : "On this account thou shalt be honour- 
 able before the Most High ; because thou hast 
 humbled thyself, as it becomes thee, and hast not 
 assigned thyself a place among the righteous ; and 
 
 1 Matt. xxii. 36 ff. 
 
 40 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 so thou shalt receive the greater glory/ ' For the 
 M woes," cf. Isa. v. 8 ; Hab. ii. 6 ; 1 Enoch xciv. 6 ; 
 xcix. 11. 
 
 With Matt. xxvi. 24 : " Good were it for that 
 man if he had not been born/' cf. 1 Enoch xxxviii. 2 : 
 u It had been good for them if they had not been 
 born "; and 2 Enoch xli. 2 ; 4 Ezra iv. 12 ; 2 Bar. 
 x. 6. (A not unusual expression.) 
 
 With Mark xii. 40 : " Beware of the Scribes, 
 . . . which devour widows' houses, and for a 
 pretence make long prayers/' cf. Ass. Mos. vii. 6 : 
 " Devourers of the goods of the poor, saying that 
 they do so on the ground of their justice, but in 
 reality to destroy them, complainers, deceitful, 
 concealing themselves lest they should be recog- 
 nised/' Zad. Frag. viii. 13 : " And in respect to 
 robbing the poor of His people, so that widows 
 may be their spoil/' 
 
 The title " Chosen " given to Our Lord by the 
 heavenly voice at His Transfiguration, x is found in 
 1 Enoch xxxix. 6 : " Mine eyes saw the Elect One 
 of righteousness and faith " ; xl. 5 : " The second 
 voice I heard blessing the Elect One " ; xlv. 3, 4, 5 : 
 " Mine Elect One " ; xlix. 2, 4 ; li. 3, cf. Isa. xlii. 1 : 
 " Behold My servant, whom I uphold ; My chosen, 
 in whom My soul delighteth " ; Ps. lxxxix. 3 : 
 u I have made a covenant with my chosen." See 
 p. 33. 
 
 1 Luke ix. 35, cf. xxiii. 35. 
 
 41 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 With Luke xii. 16 ff. (the parable of the Rich 
 Fool), cf. 1 Enoch xcvii 8 ff. — 
 
 " Woe to you who acquire silver and gold in 
 
 unrighteousness and say : 
 1 We have become rich with riches and have 
 
 possessions ; 
 And have acquired everything we have 
 
 desired. 
 And now let us do what we purposed : 
 For we have gathered silver, 
 And many are the husbandmen in our houses, 
 And our granaries are full as with water/ — 
 Yea, and like water your lies shall flow away ; 
 For your riches shall not abide 
 But speedily ascend from you." 
 
 Ecclus. xi. 18 — 
 
 " There is that waxeth rich from self-denial, 
 And this is his allotted reward : 
 What time he saith : ' I have found rest, 
 
 And now I will enjoy my goods ' — 
 He knoweth not what lot shall befall ; 
 He shall leave them to others and die." 
 
 Wisd. xv. 8 : " The soul which was lent him 
 shall again be demanded." 
 
 But the sentiment is common elsewhere ; cf. 
 Job xxvii. 17 ; Ps. xxxix. 6, xlix. 16, lii. 7 ; Eccles. 
 ii. 18, 21, v. 10; Jer. xvii. 11 ; Sir. xi. 19; Wisd. 
 xv. 8 ; Hor. Od. ii. 3. 17. 
 
 With Luke xiv. 5 : " Which of you shall have 
 an ass or an ox fallen into a well, and will not 
 straightway draw him up on the Sabbath Day?" 
 
 42 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 cf. Zad. Frag. xiii. 23 : " And if it fall into a pit 
 or ditch, he shall not raise it on the Sabbath." 
 
 With Luke xv. 10 : " There is joy in the presence 
 of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth," 
 cf. 1 Enoch li. 4 : " The faces of all the angels in 
 heaven shall be lighted up with joy " ; 2 Bar. 
 lxvii. 2 : " Dost thou think that there is no anguish 
 to the angels in the presence of the Mighty One ? " 
 
 One of the most striking of all the parallels is 
 
 that between Luke xvii. 2, Our Lord's teaching on 
 
 forgiveness, 1 and T. Gad. vi. 3, 7 : " Love ye one 
 
 another from the heart ; and if a man sin against 
 
 thee, speak peaceably to him, and in thy soul 
 
 hold not guile ; and if he repent and confess, 
 
 forgive him. . . . And if he be shameless and 
 
 persist in his wrong-doing, even so forgive him 
 
 from the heart, and leave to God the avenging.' ' 
 
 Cf. Ecclus. xxviii. 2 — 
 
 " Forgive thy neighbour the injury done to thee, 
 
 And then, when thou prayest, thy sins shall 
 
 be forgiven." 
 
 With Luke xviii. 7 : " Shall not God avenge His 
 elect, which cry to him day and night, and He is 
 long-suffering over them ? I say unto you, that 
 He will avenge them speedily. Howbeit, when the 
 Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the 
 earth ? " cf. 1 Enoch xlvii. 1, 2— 
 
 1 Cf. Matt, xviii. 21. 
 
 43 
 
 i 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 " And in those days shall have ascended the 
 
 prayer of the righteous, 
 And the blood of the righteous from the 
 
 earth before the Lord of spirits. x 
 In those days the holy ones who dwell above 
 
 in the heavens 
 Shall unite with one voice 
 And supplicate and pray 
 On behalf of the blood of the righteous which 
 
 has been shed, 
 And that the prayer of the righteous may 
 
 not be in vain before the Lord of Spirits, 
 That judgment may be done unto them, 
 And that they may not have to suffer for 
 
 ever/' 
 Sir. xxxv. 12 ff. 
 4 Ezra v. 1 : " The land shall be barren of faith." 
 
 With Luke xix. 44 : " The time of thy visitation," 
 cf. Ass. Mos. i. 18 : " The day of repentance in the 
 visitation wherewith the Lord will visit them in 
 the consummation of the end of the days." 
 
 With Luke xxii. 27 : "I am among you as he 
 that serveth," cf. T. Jos. xvii. 8 : " I was among 
 them as one of the least." 
 
 With Luke xxii. 31 : " Satan asked to have you, 
 that he might sift you as wheat, but I made suppli- 
 cation for thee, that thy faith fail not," cf. T. Benj. 
 
 1 Cf. Matt, xxiii. 35 : " All the righteous blood shed 
 on the earth." 
 
 44 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 iii. 3 : " Even though the spirits of Beliar claim 
 you to afflict you with every evil, yet shall they 
 not have dominion over you." Job i. 6ff. 
 
 With John iv. 14, vii. 37 : " Whosoever drinketh 
 of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst ; 
 but the water that I shall give him shall become in 
 him a well of water springing up unto eternal 
 life. ... If any man thirst, let him come unto 
 Me, and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the 
 Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow 
 rivers of living water," cf. 1 Enoch xlii. 3, xlviii. 1, 
 where wisdom is compared to rain and dew and an 
 inexhaustible fountain, which is also a fountain of 
 righteousness ; Isa. xii. 3 : " With joy shall ye 
 draw water out of the wells of salvation " ; lv. 1 : 
 M Ho ! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the 
 waters." 
 
 With John v. 41 : "I receive not glory from 
 men," cf. T. Benj. vi. 4: "The good inclination 
 receiveth not glory nor dishonour from men." 
 
 In John viii. 58, Our Lord asserts His 
 pre-existence : cf. 1 Enoch xlviii. 3 — 
 
 1 Yea, before the sun and the signs were created, 
 Before the stars of the heaven were made, 
 His name (i.e., the Son of Man) was named 
 before the Lord of Spirits." 
 
 With John x. 12 : "He that is a hireling, and 
 not a shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, 
 
 45 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 beholdeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, 
 and fleeth," cf. 4 Ezra v. 18 : "Do not desert us 
 as a shepherd does who leaves his flock in the 
 power of noxious wolves " ; Ezek. xxxiv. 
 
 With John xiv. 23 : " We will come unto him 
 and make our abode with him " ; xvii. 22 : " That 
 they may be one, even as We are one ; I in them 
 and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected into 
 one," cf. 1 Enoch cv. 2 : "I and My Son will be 
 united with them for ever " ; Isa. vii. 14, viii. 8, 10 : 
 the name and meaning of Immanuel, " With us is 
 God." 
 
 With John xvi. 21 : "A woman when she is in 
 travail hath sorrow," cf. 1 Enoch lxii. 4 : " Then 
 shall pain come upon them as on a woman in 
 travail" (and, of course, Isa. xiii. 8, xxvi. 17; 
 Ps. xlviii. 6 ; etc.). 
 
 With John xvii. 3 : " This is life eternal, that 
 they should know Thee, the only true God," cf. 
 Wisd. xv. 3— 
 
 " To know Thee is perfect righteousness, 
 
 Yea, to know Thy dominion is the root of 
 
 immortality." 
 
 Dr. Charles has noted some interesting parallels, 
 
 also, with the Story of Ahikar, a tale found in the 
 
 Arabian Nights and elsewhere, of which a fifth 
 
 century B.C. MS. was discovered at Elephantine in 
 
 1906-8. He compares Matt. xxiv. 18, Lk. xii. 43, 
 
 with iv. 14, an account of the ill-treatment of 
 
 46 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 menservants and maidservants ; the words of the 
 Prodigal Son with viii. 34 : " Forgive me this my 
 folly ; and I will tend thy horses and feed thy pigs 
 which are in thy house " ; viii. 24 : " Father, I have 
 sinned against thee. Forgive me, and I will be 
 a slave unto thee henceforth and for ever." 
 
 Luke xiii. 6, with a similar parable of an unfruitful 
 tree in viii. 35. 
 
 47 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Considerable attention has been given to the 
 parallels to Our Lord's eschatological teaching 
 found in the Jewish Pseudepigrapha, and quotations 
 have been given fully, because these are of unusual 
 interest, and in order to emphasise, what is not 
 always realised, the essentially Jewish character of 
 Our Lord's teaching. His Personality, and the 
 impression which it has made on mankind, and 
 the growth and activities of the Christian Church, 
 have been so unique and so remarkable, that men 
 have tended to look upon His teaching as something 
 altogether new and unique. They have allowed 
 that much of it was based upon the Old Testament, 
 but ignorance of the current teaching and ideas of 
 His own times has prevented men from realising 
 how much He was a " child of His own age " ; 
 and, consequently, much of His teaching has been 
 wrongly regarded as unique and original, and has 
 thereby been invested with an authority which is 
 hardly warranted. * Not that Our Lord's teaching 
 is not unique, or that it shows no improvement 
 or advance on current Judaism ; because in various 
 ways it both differs from what was held and believed 
 by the men of His own time, and also raises and 
 spiritualises it. To take one example alone, there 
 is a saying of the Rabbis, " Do not unto others 
 
 1 Cf. Schweitzer, p. 222. 
 
 48 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 what ye would not that they should do unto you " ; * 
 and what a contrast is here between their negative 
 and Christ's positive precept : " All things what- 
 soever ye would that men should do unto you, even 
 so do ye also unto them M ! Other examples may 
 be noted in Savage, Gospel of the Kingdom, and 
 Edersheim has emphasised the same contrast at 
 some length. 2 
 
 But, after allowing for the contrast and the 
 advance made by Christ on the teaching of His 
 own age, we must acknowledge that both His 
 language and His conceptions were rooted and 
 grounded in Judaism, a fact which Dr. Sanday, 3 
 considers proved by the eschatological attitude of 
 the early Church. 4 Dr. Winstanley considers that 
 the eschatological element was original in Our 
 Lord's mouth. 5 It is not intended that His words 
 are actual quotations ; they are not, for several of 
 the books referred to above are of a later date ; 
 but His familiarity with and dependence upon 
 these writings are only too obvious, a fact which 
 Muirhead hardly seems to allow sufficiently. 6 And 
 
 1 Cf. Tobit iv. 15. 
 
 2 Life and Times, I, p. 531 ff. 
 
 3 P. 112. 
 
 4 Cf. Kennedy, p. 96; Winstanley, p. 383. 
 
 5 P. 380. 
 
 6 Cf. Burkitt: " In saying this [that the background 
 of Enoch shows the Synoptists in their true perspective] 
 I have no intention of detracting from the importance of 
 what the Gospels report to us. On the contrary, it puts 
 familiar words into their proper setting. . . . Some of 
 the best-known sayings of Jesus only appear in their true 
 light if regarded as Midrash upon words and concepts 
 
 49 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 the later date of many of the parallels does not 
 invalidate them, or imply that they are echoes of 
 Our Lord's teaching ; because literary use of any 
 terminology always presupposes previous popular 
 use, sometimes over a lengthy period. It should 
 be borne in mind, also, that questions as to the 
 literary provenance of the Gospel narratives do not 
 affect the question at issue. There is undoubtedly 
 more eschatology in St. Matthew (the Jewish 
 Gospel), but there is sufficient in all four to sub- 
 stantiate the assertion that Our Lord used both 
 the ideas and the language of His day, and no 
 theories, correct or incorrect, about the mutual 
 dependence or origin of the Gospels materially 
 affect it. And could it have been otherwise ? 
 To some minds it may seem derogatory to the 
 Son of God that so much of His teaching should be 
 shown to have been borrowed, that He should be 
 called a " child of His own age " ; but is not this a 
 necessary corollary from the Incarnation, a part of 
 the " self-humiliation " to which He submitted ? 
 If it be granted that He was Perfect Man, could He 
 have been anything else than a " child of His own 
 age " ? And if he were to share human life at a 
 definite time and in a certain place and among 
 certain men, must He not have accepted the 
 limitations and the details of current thought, as 
 well as those of current manner and custom, polity 
 
 taken from Enoch, words and concepts that were familiar 
 to those who heard the Prophet of Galilee, though now 
 they have been forgotten by Jew and Christian alike." — 
 P. 21. 
 
 50 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 and geography and civilisation ? If he were to 
 teach men, must He not use the intellectual and 
 theological counters with which they were familiar ? x 
 Had He used these and not improved on them we 
 might well have queried His uniqueness and au- 
 thority ; but the differences between the two go to 
 corroborate the other evidence that He was Perfect 
 God as well as Perfect Man. And if we are able 
 to distinguish between the husk and kernel of His 
 teaching, it will help us considerably to accept His 
 authority. We shall not feel obliged necessarily to 
 accept as matters de fide such statements as are 
 made by the writers of Advent Hymns already 
 alluded to ; and we shall feel that the progress 
 both demanded and experienced by the human 
 race is not precluded by any dogmatic dicta of His. 
 In other words, we shall be able to both thankfully 
 realise and confidently assert that while He was 
 child of His own age, He is also child of every age, 
 not only Son of Mary, but also Son of Man. 2 
 
 1 Cf. MacNeile, St. Matt., p. xxvi. 
 
 2 The fact that eschatology is so prominent in all the 
 New Testament writers, who were men of very varied 
 capacities and experience, not only goes to show that it 
 was an essential element in Our Lord's teaching, but also 
 that it contained an element of essential truth. And it 
 should be remembered that no amount of excision of texts 
 in the Synoptists, as being not original and as belonging 
 to a later recension of the original text, and no amount of 
 destructive criticism of the Fourth Gospel, can affect the 
 question at issue. These books are saturated with escha- 
 tology; and even if this be largely due to the mind of the 
 Church of the earliest days, it represents what the first 
 disciples taught; and they would not have taught anything 
 
 51 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 Yet it cannot be too confidently asserted, or the 
 caution too carefully emphasised, that Our Lord's 
 thoughts were not solely grounded in Jewish 
 Eschatology. Terry * prints references to show how 
 practically the whole of the central passage, Mk. 
 xiii. and parallels, is expressed in the phraseology 
 of the Old Testament ; and it only need a reference 
 Bible and patient working out to show how both 
 Our Lord and the Jewish writers drew from the 
 Old Testament. 2 It is this fact that goes to sub- 
 stantiate the assertion that Apocalypse is the 
 successor of Prophecy ; and in the Old Testament 
 we can trace the mingling of eschatological elements 
 in the prophetical writings, and the gradual develop- 
 ment of the one into the other. And it is most 
 significant, and a material guide in our estimate 
 of the value of the apocalyptic writings, that the 
 judgment of both the Jewish authorities and the 
 Christian Church reduced the apocalyptic element 
 in their canons of Scripture to a minimum. Nor 
 will the casual reader question this decision. The 
 apocalyptic writings, as may be seen partly from 
 quotations already given, stand on a very different 
 level to the Old Testament ; they are poor and 
 tasteless for the most part, and wander off on to 
 
 as part of Christ's teaching for which they had not His 
 authority and example. The doctrine was there in germ, 
 and it developed as their experience grew. {Cf. Foundations, 
 Essay iv; Rashdall, Conscience and Christ, Lect. V, p. 167.) 
 
 1 P. 239. 
 
 2 Dalman and Muirhead rightly call attention to this, 
 and show how much Our Lord's teaching derives from 
 Daniel; cf. Sanday, Hibbert Journal, Oct., 1911, p. 84. 
 
 52 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 side-issues and non-essentials ; the gold is mixed 
 with so much dross. Indeed, the details of them do 
 much to detract from their splendid faith and 
 courage, and the spiritual element is obscured and 
 tainted with much that is gross and unworthy, x 
 and the resemblances between them and Our Lord's 
 teaching do not necessarily imply actual dependence 
 and quotation and approval, only that He used the 
 general conceptions common to the subject. 2 
 
 It is sufficiently clear from the passages already 
 quoted, that Jewish eschatology centres round 
 certain well-defined conceptions. Born of adversity 
 and disappointment, and despair of ever seeing the 
 hope of Israel realised on this material plane, it 
 placed the scene of the consummation only too 
 devoutly wished, further and further into the 
 future. The early prophets had painted in glowing 
 colours the future of the nation, as a world-empire 
 under one of the Davidic line ; but the Captivities 
 belied them. A later generation pictured the return 
 of the Exiles to Zion, and the restoration of the 
 Davidic kingdom, with the Gentile races tributary 
 and submissive ; but only a few of the Exiles ever 
 did return, and their fortunes were anything but 
 encouraging. Contact with other peoples and with 
 world-movements widened the horizon of Jewish 
 thought and outlook ; and experience of suffering 
 deepened and purified their conceptions ; holiness 
 
 1 See pp. 87 [ff. 
 
 2 Cf. Burkitt, p. 23. 
 
 53 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 and righteousness took the place of physical descent 
 and a legal covenant-relation. So that nationalism 
 gave place to a humanism, and legal conceptions 
 to moral, and material to spiritual. All men were 
 regarded as within the sphere of God's love ; the 
 distinction between them was one of character, not 
 of blood ; and the sphere of God's operation was 
 in the things of the spirit, not of matter ; this world 
 was too gross and too evil for the realisation of 
 God's promises ; it would, therefore, be entirely 
 renewed, or superseded. 
 
 A study of Jewish Eschatology reveals a wide 
 variation and disagreement between the various 
 writers and the various periods in their notions of 
 the last times. x Thus, the present time is viewed 
 as passing and temporary ; what is to be is deter- 
 mined in the fore-knowledge and counsel of God ; 
 and this will be realised when the age is consum- 
 mated. The form that the realisation will take is 
 conceived as a kingdom, and the King is to be 
 either God's Son or special messenger, called His 
 Messiah (i.e., anointed, Christ), whose kingdom is 
 in some cases temporary, and in some permanent. 
 It will be inaugurated by a resurrection, sometimes 
 of all men, sometimes only of the righteous ; and 
 this will be followed by a judgment, presided over 
 by this Messiah, called Son of Man, assisted by 
 angels. The Israelites' and Gentiles' respective 
 fates also vary ; with some writers all Israel shall 
 be saved and all Gentiles punished ; with others, 
 
 1 Cf. Charles, Eschatology, p. 366. 
 
 54 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 the righteous only of either will be saved, and the 
 wicked of both punished. The scene varies between 
 a renewed heaven and earth, and heaven itself. x 
 
 In estimating the value of the forms of the apoca- 
 lyptic writings, due allowance must be made for 
 this variation (i.e., there was no one authoritative 
 form of teaching about the future as regarded its 
 details ; the writers were convinced that God was 
 good and that His will and the right would 
 ultimately prevail, but their notions as to how and 
 when and where the end would come varied with 
 their experiences and with their own temperaments 
 and intellectual equipments). No appeal can be 
 made to the form of any one apocalyptic writing as 
 authoritative above the rest ; we can only note the 
 principles which they endeavoured to uphold, and 
 the development which may be traced in their teach- 
 ing. And we must note, also, the dilemma that the 
 writers were placed in, by their having to treat of 
 transcendentals, with only material concepts at 
 their disposal in which to express them, and by 
 their having to be " popular " and understanded 
 of the people ; (for Apocalypse was not academic or 
 esoteric merely ; it was intensely practical, and 
 aimed at meeting a very pressing need, the support 
 of men's faith in dark days). Philosophical abstrac- 
 tions would have meant nothing and availed nothing 
 for the " men in the street " ; they could only 
 understand things with which they were already 
 familiar. 2 
 
 1 C/., the author's Cradle of Christianity, pp. 55 f£. 
 
 2 Cf. Tyrrell, op. cit., p. 137. 
 
 55 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 Hence, the triumph of right over wrong was 
 expressed in the form of earthly kingship, with 
 God or His Chosen for King ; divinity was expressed 
 by alarming portents, by a visible appearance from 
 the material heavens, and an audible trumpet 
 summons ; resurrection was in some cases of body 
 as well as of spirit (for how can the popular mind 
 conceive of existence apart from the body ?) ; 
 judgment was conceived under the form of a 
 " Great Assize, " with all the paraphernalia of a 
 legal court, the books, the attendants, the guilty 
 prisoners, the verdict, and so forth ; punishment 
 was expressed in terms of bodily suffering and 
 physical corruption, fire, frost, torment, pain, thirst, 
 darkness, chains, worms (i.e., on the analogy of 
 earthly prisons and the Valley of Hinnom), and by 
 remorse ; and the future joys expressed in terms 
 of familiar earthly bliss, gardens, sunshine, rest, 
 banquets, power, freedom, and so forth, on an 
 extended scale, and freed from the limitations at 
 present experienced by men. x 
 
 This dilemma was very real, and it has been 
 through failure to appreciate it and through unin- 
 telligent conceptions of reality, that men have gone 
 astray and landed themselves and others in diffi- 
 culties and absurdities in their interpretation of 
 eschatology. Concepts must be taken for what 
 they attempt to express, not for what they actually 
 say ; and the same principle must be followed in 
 estimating Our Lord's teaching (i.e., it must be 
 recognised and allowed for that He spoke primarily 
 
 1 Cf. Kennedy, pp. 19, 26, 36, 42. 
 
 56 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 as a first-century Jew to first-century Jews, and 
 used the words and thoughts of His own age through 
 which to convey the eternal truths that formed 
 His message and revelation to humanity ; it is not 
 His actual language and expressions that matter 
 so much, as the thoughts and truths of which they 
 are the medium. It is these latter which we need 
 to discover, and we do so by comparison with other 
 places where similar expressions are used, and not 
 least by comparison with other portions of His 
 teaching where these expressions do not occur, and 
 by noting the general characteristics of His teach- 
 ing. 1 Dr. Burkitt, in his preface to Schweitzer, 
 p. vii., has some good words about the permanent 
 value of Apocalypse : " It may well be that absolute 
 truth cannot be embodied in human thought, and 
 that its expression must be always clothed in 
 symbols. It may be that we have to translate 
 the hopes and fears of our spiritual ancestors into 
 the language of our new world. We have to learn, 
 as the Church in the Second Century had to learn, 
 that the End is not yet, that New Jerusalem, like 
 all other objects of sense, is an image of the truth 
 rather than the truth itself. But at least we are 
 beginning to see that the Apocalyptic vision, the 
 New Age which God is to bring in, is no mere 
 embroidery of Christianity, but the heart of its 
 enthusiasm. The Apocalyptic conceptions are not 
 1 regrettable accretions foisted on by superstition 
 to the pure morality of the original Gospel/ These 
 ideas are the Christian Hope, to be allegorised and 
 
 1 See below, p. 140 ; and cf. Winstanley, pp. 362 ff. 
 
 57 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 1 spiritualised ' by us for our own use whenever 
 necessary, but not to be given up so long as we 
 remain Christians at all." Or. again, cf. Porter, 
 p. 72 : " It remains true that the sense of the 
 reality of eternal things is inseparable from the 
 belief in their future manifestation and evident 
 dominion. In other words, eschatology has its 
 essential worth in religious faith. Religious history 
 supplies abundant proof how constantly eschatology 
 furnishes the motive that gives faith its victory 
 over the world, and truth and justice their kingship 
 over the heart." 1 
 
 Let us look again at some of the central passages 
 and terms of Our Lord's eschatology, and see what 
 estimate we can form of them, in the light thrown 
 on them by the Jewish writings. They are mostly 
 to be found in St. Matthew's Gospel, which is 
 natural in a book showing so many other Jewish 
 characteristics ; a book written by a Jew for Jews 
 would give a large place to Our Lord's eschatological 
 teaching. 
 
 The chief terms and phrases of an eschatological 
 character in Our Lord's mouth are these : Son of 
 Man, Kingdom, Consummation of the Age, Judg- 
 ment, Last Day, Coming, Eternal Life. Let us 
 glance at these. 2 
 
 " Son of Man." This has been the subject of 
 
 1 Cf. below, p. 140. 
 
 2 See also below, pp. 125 ff.; and Sanday, Hibbert Journal, 
 Oct., 1911, pp. 100 ff. The leading thoughts of Jewish 
 Eschatology are well summarised by Schiirer, II. 2, pp. 
 154 n\, and Oesterley, pp. 61, 124. 
 
 58 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 great and prolonged controversy, chiefly as to what 
 the phrase represented in the current Aramaic, 
 what it meant to the hearers, and what Our Lord 
 intended by it. Undoubtedly, it derives from 
 Dan. vii. and reappears in Enoch, and bears a 
 Messianic colouring. 
 
 In Daniel it is used of a supernatural personage 
 who appears " with the clouds of heaven," is 
 brought " unto the Ancient of Days," and is given 
 a kingdom which is universal, perpetual, and 
 indestructible. This kingdom is the kingdom of 
 God, and is given to " the Saints of the Most 
 High " ; so that the " Son of Man " is hardly more 
 than a symbol of the saints (i.e., Israel). The title 
 is not distinctive ; he is " one like unto a son 
 of man." 
 
 By the time of Enoch, the concept has crystallised, 
 and represents a definite individual. It is note- 
 worthy that in xlvi. 1, where he first appears, he is 
 " like one of the holy angels," as well as having 
 " appearance of a man," and bearing the title Son 
 of Man. Moreover, with him " dwelleth righteous- 
 ness," and he " revealeth all the treasures of that 
 which is hidden. Because the Lord of Spirits hath 
 chosen him, and whose lot hath the pre-eminence 
 before the Lord of Spirits in uprightness for ever." 
 He is to judge the world. That is to say, already 
 the concept is rising to the higher plane, and ethical 
 and spiritual qualities are entering it, and a stage 
 towards super-humanity is reached. 
 
 Similarly, in 4 Ezra xiii., the man flies with the 
 clouds of heaven ; all tremble at his presence, and 
 
 59 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 all who hear his voice melt away. He cuts out a 
 mountain (the "great stone " of Dan. ii. 45), but 
 no place can be seen whence it is taken. His 
 weapons with which he conquers his enemies are 
 fire and storm and the breath of his mouth (i.e., 
 semi-non-material things. Again, the concept is 
 supra-mundane, idealistic. 
 
 By the time of Our Lord it denotes a super- 
 natural being ; b»ut He, in reviving its use, brought 
 back into it the notion of humanity ; so that both 
 notions were implied side by side, humanity with 
 its attendant ills and limitations and humility, 1 
 super-humanity with its transcendence, its dignity, 
 and its power. In His day it was not a recognised 
 title of the Messiah, 2 so that His use of it " pur- 
 posely furnished them with a problem which 
 stimulated reflection about His person, and gave 
 such a tendency to this reflection that the solution 
 of the problem fully revealed the mystery of the 
 personality of Jesus." 3 
 
 1 See the refs. quoted by Oesterley, p. 158. 
 
 2 Cf. John xii. 34. 
 
 3 Dalman, p. 259; cf. Sanday, p. 126: "A great part of 
 the time when He spoke of the Son of Man, His hearers 
 probably did not understand that He was speaking of 
 Himself " ; and Dewick, p. 161. Driver, in Hastings D B, 
 iv., p. 586: |" The title . . . did not suggest to those who 
 heard it Messianic associations, until it came to be con- 
 nected with predictions of the Second Advent; it thus did 
 not reveal, but veil, His Messiahship. . . . By His adoption 
 of it, He found a means, on the one hand, of not denying 
 even in public His consciousness of His unique mission, and, 
 on the other hand, of lending no countenance to the crude 
 and illusory hopes which attached to popular ideas of the 
 Messiah." 
 
 60 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 There is little doubt that He used it of Himself, 
 and with a Messianic import ; so that all passages 
 in which it occurs may be taken as referring to Him. 
 But the point to notice here is that it bears a 
 supra-human, supra-material, idealistic colour, even 
 if He emphasised the human aspect. 
 
 In just the same way was the concept of the 
 Kingdom spiritualised. Originally, it goes back to 
 1 Sam. xii. 12, x and the quite early thought of 
 Jehovah as the King and Overlord of His people. 
 The Old Testament use naturally varies, and in 
 several of the writers (prophetical) it intends a 
 world-empire, with the Gentile races subsidiary and 
 tributary to Israel, and Jerusalem the metropolis 
 and centre of all, of which Isa. ii. 2-4 may be taken 
 as typical. Even if worship and the recognition of 
 God be its supreme aim, its sphere is this earth ; 
 and the sufferings and restrictions of the Exile 
 rather enhanced the ideal than dimmed it. 2 The 
 Maccabean age still further upheld it, and it was 
 not until the first century B.C. that Jewish writers 
 despaired of this earth, and placed the scene of the 
 kingdom in a new heaven and earth. 
 
 But it is necessary to notice that the mere fact 
 that the " kingdom " was a " Kingdom of God," 
 that God was the King (or His representative), at 
 once stamped the concept with an other-worldly 
 character ; so that the ideal of Israel as a theocracy 
 was present from the first, even if its scope was in 
 
 1 Cf. Judg. viii. 23. 
 
 2 Cf. Isa. xl.-lxvi. 
 
 61 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 this world. And the Old Testament leaves no 
 doubt that the Kingdom of God was to be of both 
 a moral and a spiritual character. The very 
 exalted and ethically beautiful descriptions of the 
 Messianic King in Isa. xi. and xxxii., with their 
 emphasis on righteousness and equity, the seven 
 gifts of the Spirit of Jehovah, and the knowledge of 
 Jehovah, show how far removed beyond and above 
 the thought of mere earthly power were the pioneers 
 of Jewish religious belief. x 
 
 No less spiritual was the teaching of the apoca- 
 lyptists. Emphasis on ethical values is a marked 
 feature of the Testaments ; the " consummation of 
 the end of the days " is to be preceded by a " day 
 of repentance"; 2 the issue of the Resurrection 
 turns more and more on the question of righteous- 
 ness ; it is the righteous who attain to it, or receive a 
 better reward, rather than the " Israelites after 
 the flesh " ; when the kingdom appears, Satan 
 shall be no more, and sorrow shall depart with 
 him. 3 
 
 And this ethical and spiritual side of the concept 
 has been allowed in our popular use to fall almost 
 entirely into the background. It is partly that the 
 current popular notion of the kingdom in the New 
 Testament was sensuous and this-worldly ; and 
 partly that the word " kingdom " with us is used 
 mainly to denote the sphere of a king's rule, the 
 territory and the people over whom he rules ; and 
 
 1 Cf. Riehm, p. 89. 
 
 2 Ass. Mos. i. 17. 
 
 3 Ass. Mos. x. 1; cf. Drummond, p. 323. 
 
 62 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 partly that we have accepted these easy interpreta- 
 tions and have not troubled ourselves to enquire 
 whether Biblical use justifies them or otherwise. 
 We are not bound to pay overmuch attention to 
 philological considerations (though they may not, 
 indeed, be neglected) ; but in this case they might 
 have saved us a bad error. For the Greek ftaaikeia 
 and the Hebrew mate are both abstract terms, 
 denoting the principle or fact of ruling rather than 
 the thing ruled ; this latter meaning is secondary. 
 Cremer gives the order of meanings as : power, 
 form, and sphere of government. So that " sov- 
 ereignty " would be a better word to use ; or, 
 better still, " kingship/' as connoting the fact that 
 God possesses the supreme authority, and exercises 
 it among men, and that they acknowledge it and 
 willingly own and serve Him as King. 1 Of this, 
 Wisd. xv. 3 is a good illustration : "To know Thee 
 is perfect righteousness, yea, to know Thy dominion 
 is the root of immortality/ ' 
 
 We must beware, then, of reading any spatial 
 or local meaning into this very deep and compre- 
 hensive concept. Such use, says Dalman, is rare 
 in the Old Testament and never occurs in the later 
 Jewish literature ; and in the teaching of Jesus it 
 means the life of the future age. (Cremer also 
 identifies it with salvation.) " We may assume 
 that He borrowed the term ... as an eschatological 
 designation from the Book of Daniel, and that He 
 
 1 See Dalman, pp. 91-94, 134; Robertson, p. 58 ; 
 MacNeile, St Matt., p. xix; Hast. D.B. ii, pp. 619, 844. 
 
 63 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 used it by preference for the reason that regard for 
 the honour of God took precedence in His view of 
 all else, and also because He considered it certain 
 that the chief end of mankind was to find their 
 salvation in the most intimate relation to God, and 
 in full obedience to His will. He was further 
 convinced that the purpose of God was directed 
 principally to the bestowal of blessing on men, and 
 not to the mere exaltation of the divine majesty 
 over the world. Hence, in His view, the completed 
 establishment of God as sovereign implied, for those 
 who experienced it, absolute happiness/ ' x 
 
 It will naturally include the " subject-matter " 
 of the kingdom — the reign must have its realm. 
 The kingdom of heaven was " essentially the com- 
 munity in which the divine will was to be realised on 
 earth as it is already in heaven. . . . " 2 " The 
 kingdom of God ... is throughout conceived by 
 Our Lord as a social organism." 3 But the original 
 and leading idea is theoretical and abstract, and 
 refers to the essence of kingship, rather than to the 
 objective means of its expression and exercise. 
 Dr. Robertson's words are here to the point : "By 
 the words ' kingdom of God/ then, Our Lord 
 denotes not so much His disciples ... as something 
 which they receive, a state upon which they enter. 
 
 1 P. 136. 
 
 2 Charles, Eschatol, p. 370, cf. 83 ff., as against Dalman's 
 purely abstract notion; cf. Dr. Abbott's preference for the 
 idea of " family relations/' Fourfold Gospel, III, pp. 177, 
 424 ff. 
 
 3 Von Hugel, p. 62. 
 
 64 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 For its ultimate fulfilment the term indicates an 
 order of things final and absolute, in which God is 
 all in all. But the kingdom of God is also spoken 
 of in another sense, descriptive of the order of 
 events, the sum total of the methods and processes 
 which, under the guidance and rule of God, go 
 to bring about that final state of Perfection." x 
 This rule is, of course, a moral and spiritual, as 
 well as physical control ; hence, " the reign of 
 Christ signifies the reign of ethical purity and true 
 religion, the establishment of moral order." 2 Dr. 
 Sanday quotes Dr. Hort as saying that " the 
 kingdom of God is : ' the world of invisible laws 
 by which God is ruling and blessing His creatures ' " 3 
 and cf. his own words : " What is the essential 
 meaning of the Kingdom of God ? Is it not the 
 asserted and realised sovereignty of God, Divine 
 influence, and Divine power felt as energising in the 
 souls of men ? " ; 4 and " The reign of Divine Love 
 exercised by God in His grace over human hearts 
 believing in His love." 5 Walpole emphasises the 
 presence of the Kingdom, but notes the incomplete- 
 ness of the Church and the distinction between 
 the two. 6 The Church is a "home in which the 
 mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven may be learned. 
 She is a school in which the children of the kingdom 
 
 1 P. 86. 
 
 2 Toy, p. 377. 
 
 3 In Hast, ii, p. 6196. 
 
 4 Recent Research, p. 115. 
 
 5 Bruce. 
 
 6 Kingdom of Heaven, Ch. II. 
 
 65 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 may be trained. She is a spiritual hospital in which 
 the healing powers of the Kingdom of Heaven may 
 be felt. She is, further, a state and kingdom in 
 which the social principles of the kingdom may 
 be manifested." 1 " Le royaume des cieux est 
 proprement le regne ou la royaute de Dieu, Tere 
 Messianique." * It should be further noted that 
 the kingdom is in all cases regarded as a gift from 
 God. 
 
 That the kingdom was taught, both by Christ 
 and His Apostles, as in a measure and sense at 
 least as already present and operative, is shown 
 below (pp. 90 ff.). 
 
 " Consummation of the Age." Much trouble 
 would have been saved if the A.V. expression " end 
 of the world " had been avoided. The latter gives 
 to nine people out of ten the thought of a catas- 
 trophic termination of the world-order, of the 
 physical universe ; a thought entirely foreign to 
 the original. It is noticeable that in Matt. xiii. 38, 
 the word /cooy^o? is rightly used to denote the sphere 
 of activity, in distinction to accov used of time. 
 There the reference is to the well-known Jewish 
 concept of " This age " or " epoch/' and " the age 
 to come/' a contrast of the present state of affairs 
 and the days of the Messiah. " Consummation *' 
 rightly translates avvrekeia as the accomplishing of 
 a process, not its sudden termination ; the end, 
 indeed, may come suddenly, but it is led up to by 
 
 1 P. 45. 
 
 2 Loisy, Evangiles Syn. t p. 229n. 
 
 66 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 many contributary causes ; and it is the develop- 
 ment and result of these that is intended by the 
 word " consummation." 1 
 
 The contrast of the two ages occurs in 4 Ezra 
 viii. 1 : " This age the Most High has made for 
 many, but the age to come for few " ; but the 
 thought is similar to the Stoic concept of the 
 " mighty aeon," which occurs in Sib. iii. 92. It is 
 a very natural contrast between the actual and 
 ideal, the unrealised hope and its fulfilment, the 
 unsatisfying present and the faith for the future. 
 
 Parallel to this use of age is its adjective, accovcos, 
 translated sometimes " everlasting," but better, 
 "eternal." It implies the qualities belonging to the 
 ideal age ; and its commonest use is the phrase 
 u eternal life," although we find " eternal sin " ; 2 
 " eternal punishment, fire " ; 3 " eternal God " 4 ; 
 "eternal judgment," 5 etc. 
 
 Whatever meaning is given by the Jewish and 
 New Testament writers to the phrase " Kingdom 
 of God " will, therefore, attach to the phrases, 
 "the age, eternal"; for the hope and ideal of 
 Judaism found its expression and description in 
 various forms and similes. We need not, in conse- 
 quence, spend further time on its content. But 
 the derivation of the word needs a few lines. This 
 is uncertain, but the lexicographers are unanimous 
 
 1 See below, p. 125. 
 
 2 Mk. iii. 29. 
 
 3 Matt, xviii. 8, xxv. 46. 
 
 4 Rom. xvi. 26. 
 
 5 Heb. vi. 13. 
 
 67 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 in connecting it with the thought of life, and the 
 span of life ; and the same meaning is given in the 
 Hebrew q^;, which is its Old Testament counter- 
 part. 1 Consequently, the thought of time is 
 wrapped up with it ; and as human life and all 
 good things familiar to man have an ending, the 
 thought of never-endingness attached itself to the 
 thought of perfection, of ideality ; so that ollcov = 
 life, first a definite space of time, and then its 
 infinite course (Cremer) ; cucbvios = " perpetuus/' 
 constant, abiding, not transitory. " In general, the 
 word depicts that of which the horizon is not in 
 view, whether the horizon be at an infinite distance 
 — or whether it lies no further than the span of a 
 Caesar's life/' 2 
 
 It is most necessary that this time-element 
 should be recognised, in order that it may receive 
 its proper valuation ; but a just estimate of both 
 Jewish and New Testament conceptions of the 
 " Kingdom " will cause us to place this time- 
 element far in the background, and regard it as 
 an unessential and misleading element in the 
 notion of perfection, due to the natural inability 
 of the writers to entirely eliminate time from their 
 thoughts, and to the equally natural claim that 
 
 1 Cf. E. Bibl. 1147. 
 
 2 Moulton & Milligan, cf. Pusey, pp. 38 ff.; Liddon, 
 Clerical Life and Work, p. 136; Dahle, p. 437; T. W. Fowle, 
 Essay on km and cliooplos," (1877); Rashdall, op. cit. t p. 297; 
 Gayford, The Future State, p. 95 ; Hastings, D C G, i, 
 pp. 787, 788. 
 
 68 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 what is ideal shall be indestructible and permanent. 
 The one writer who comes nearest to the ideal 
 conception, St. John, cannot avoid using the 
 current terms : but, as Dr. Kennedy says, for St. 
 John dicbvLos " means primarily that which belongs 
 to the Coming Aeon, the higher order of things, 
 and thus is virtually equivalent to 'supra-earthly/ ,J 
 (C/. Dalman, p. 148 : " The idea of the sovereignty 
 of God filled the place of that of the future age. 
 The correlative of ' this age ' is properly not ' that 
 aeon ' — but eternal life.") 1 
 
 So that, arguing from the use of dccov and cilcdvlos, 
 we may safely say that the time-element must be 
 abandoned, in favour of that which M time-lessness " 
 was intended to represent. The true meaning will 
 be perfection, ideality, genuineness, reality ; a 
 meaning which is enforced by the use in such 
 passages as Isa. xl. 28, Mk. iii. 29, Matt, xviii. 8, 
 xxv. 46, etc., which implies " intensity " (i.e., 
 quality rather than quantity, forcefulness rather 
 than duration) 2 . " Eternal life " is thus truly 
 described by St. Paul as "life indeed, fjovrmfari .* 
 
 The term " Last Day " need not detain us, for 
 it is clearly an offshoot of the preceding. (It is 
 
 1 And we would enter a strong plea that both our 
 Prayer Book Revisers and all teachers and preachers will 
 substitute for the misleading " everlasting " the larger and 
 far more satisfactory word " eternal." 
 
 2 Cf. Dewick, p. 188. 
 
 3 1 Tim. vi. 19; Dalman, p. 161. The phrase " eternal 
 life " is not limited to the New Testament; it occurs in 
 1 Enoch xxxvii. 4, xl. 9, lviii. 3; and Ps. Sol. iii. 16. 
 
 69 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 equivalent to the Day of the Lord, first met with 
 in Amos, Isaiah, and Joel, see p. 21.) If life is 
 conceived in terms of time and space, and life at 
 least includes these ; and if life is divided into ages, 
 periods, epochs, which are successively introduced, 
 developed, wound up, and consummated ; then 
 each of these will have a " last day " ; marking 
 the transition of one to the other. And when the 
 most important epoch of all is brought to its con- 
 clusion, this day will rightly be regarded as the 
 Last Day par excellence. 
 
 This day is in any case decisive, with whomsoever 
 the decision may rest. It is in the full sense 
 "critical" (i.e., involves a judgment, a fcpLats). 
 And if the background and essence of human life 
 include moral and spiritual elements ; if free will 
 be a faculty of man ; then judgment is essential, 
 sooner or later ; there must be a time of reckoning, 
 of giving and taking account ; this is involved in 
 the very nature of things. We find, therefore, as 
 we should expect to find, that the coming of the 
 Messiah in the Last Day is a coming to judgment ; 
 this is expressed crudely in the Jewish writings, 
 and implied in Our Lord's parables of the Pounds, 
 the Talents, the Draw Net, the Unfaithful Servant, 
 the Vineyard, etc. 
 
 This coming of the Messiah is, usually, expressed 
 by the Greek Trapowia, now transliterated into the 
 technical term " Parousia." It is instructive to 
 note the use of this word. In itself it is clearly 
 abstract, and means rather " presence " : but as 
 this involves a previous coming, it includes the 
 
 70 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 thought of coming as well as being present. Yet 
 the fact that Parousia is used, rather than a word 
 denoting mere arrival, is significant as implying 
 that it is continued presence after arrival that is 
 foremost in the conception. 2 Also the phrase is 
 quite general ; no qualifying words are used with 
 it ; the phrases " Second Coming/ ' " Second 
 Advent," are not scriptural ; the New Testament 
 gives no categorical indication as to whether the 
 Coming is single, or to be indefinitely repeated. 
 Rather, the inference is that when Our Lord has 
 come, when the Kingdom has been inaugurated, 
 this Presence will be continuous and uninterrupted. 
 If much reason can be shown for regarding the 
 kingdom as having already arrived, Our Lord 
 certainly speaks of a future coming, when the 
 present influence of the kingdom and its King will 
 be both revealed and greatly intensified and 
 extended. 
 
 Turning now from these typical words and phrases 
 of current eschatology and their interpretation, let 
 us look at Matt, xxiv., xxv. (Mark xiii., Luke xxi.), 
 the central and most difficult passages, and see 
 what meaning they have. In the first section 
 (vv. 3-14) the application seems quite general, and 
 the teaching is expressed in the usual current 
 language ; 2 the passage might have come from any 
 of the Jewish apocalyptists, with the exception of 
 
 1 Cf. Hastings, iii., p. 674; Plummer, St. Matt., p. 329. 
 
 2 Parallels have been noted above, pp. 4 ££. 
 
 71 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 v. 14 : " And this gospel of the kingdom shall be 
 preached in the whole world for a testimony unto 
 all the nations ; and then shall the end come." 
 (St. Mark xiii. 10 has : " The gospel must first be 
 preached unto all the nations " ; St. Luke omits 
 the words. Cf. Matt. x. 23 : " Ye shall not have 
 gone through the cities of Israel, till the Son of 
 Man be come.") That is to say, Our Lord teaches 
 that before the " end " comes there will be portents 
 and wars and tumults and strife and divisions and 
 suffering and cruelty and false teachers and lapses 
 and fallings away ; these things are but the begin- 
 ning, but the end is not to come until the Gospel 
 has been preached in the whole world ; when this 
 has been effected, the end will come. We notice 
 that Our Lord's details are expressed in very 
 general terms, and that He gives no appalling and 
 unnatural portents, such as are found in the Jewish 
 parallels ; this is, of course, an instance of how He 
 purified and spiritualised current conceptions. Also 
 that His words about preaching the Gospel are 
 entirely in accordance with the tenor of the Old 
 Testament, which implies the evangelisation of the 
 nations as a preliminary to the establishment of 
 the Kingdom of God, in itself a spiritual conception. * 
 But in vv. 15 ft., His words take on a definiteness 
 unmistakable, and are seen to refer to the destruction 
 of Jerusalem, which took place some forty years 
 later. The conception is so material, and the 
 
 1 Cf. Gen. xxii. 18; Ps. lxvii. 3, lxxii., ciii. 19; Isa. ii., lx. 
 Zech. ix. 10; Mai. i. 11, etc. See Dahle, p. 273. 
 
 72 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 references to Judaea and Jerusalem so obvious, 
 that one cannot avoid the conclusion of a deliberate 
 forestalling of an actual future event, and not a 
 general reference to spiritual and moral matters, or 
 words which might be applied to almost any crises 
 of history. Difficulties increase with vv. 29 ff., in 
 which He declares that " immediately, after those 
 days " (i.e., after the destruction of Jerusalem), 
 there shall be fresh portents and signs, followed 
 by His appearance on the clouds of heaven, with 
 power and great glory ; His coming is to be unex- 
 pected, and shall take men by surprise, and will be 
 followed by a judgment of the nations, the separation 
 of the good from the evil, and the allotting to them 
 of their appropriate rewards. St. Luke adds (xxi. 
 32) that all these things are to happen within the 
 present generation. (We may note here that in 
 John xvii. 2, He speaks of returning to His disciples, 
 and xxi. 22 implies that this will not be distant.) 
 
 That is to say that Our Lord's teaching, which is 
 elsewhere expressed in such general language, and 
 deals with eternal verities only, and noticeably 
 avoids the copious and precise detail of the apoca- 
 lyptists, here takes a definitely historical colouring, 
 and alludes to a definite historical event ; while at 
 the same time reference is made to His own coming, 
 and the final judgment and the " end of the 
 age." 
 
 Were His words merely general, interpretation 
 would not be so difficult ; it is the mingling of the 
 general with the particular that makes the difficulty, 
 and the fact that some of His words were literally 
 
 73 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 fulfilled, while the others seem to be still waiting 
 for their fulfilment. 1 
 
 We may take three lines of explanation. Either 
 Our Lord was only a " child of His own age/' and 
 was mistaken as to His own Messiahship, and was 
 speaking words some of which were falsified by 
 the subsequent turn of events. If this were so, it 
 implies that He was merely a man and nothing 
 more, a conclusion put forward, indeed, by some, 
 but a conclusion hard, if not impossible, to be 
 reconciled with the subsequent history of Chris- 
 tianity. If it be the case that Jesus of Nazareth 
 was a man and nothing more, it is hard to believe 
 that the Christian Church and the Christian experi- 
 ence could have been founded and flourished on 
 the basis of false claims and mistaken teaching. 
 The dilemma aut Deus aut homo non bonus still holds. 
 
 An alternative is that of textual confusion, or 
 at least fusing, i.e., the theory of the " Little 
 Apocalypse/' suggested by Colani (1864) and 
 developed by Weiffenbach and Wendt and others, 
 i.e., that with Our Lord's words on the Mount of 
 Olives has been worked in a Jewish or Jewish- 
 Christian Apocalypse, written about a.d. 40-70. 2 
 
 But the authorities show no confusion or great 
 variation in the text. If the narrative is " conflate/' 
 the process was very early ; as Dewick says : " It 
 
 1 Cf. the views of scholars are summarised in Hastings, 
 D B, i, p. 7506, iii, p. 675b ; Charles, Eschatology, pp. 379 ff. 
 
 2 Cf. Schweitzer, pp. 224 ff.; Kennedy, pp. 168 ft.; E. Bibl. 
 1857; Toy, pp. 360 ft.; Terry, pp. 213 ft.; Dewick, pp. 173 ft.; 
 Salmond, pp. 300 ff.; Plummer, St. Luke, pp. 487. 
 
 74 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 is on doctrinal, not on critical, grounds that the 
 theory of the interpolated " Little Apocalypse " is 
 really based." 1 (J. S. Russell, The Parousia, held 
 that the application was solely to the destruction of 
 Jerusalem, but his argument is forced and impos- 
 sible ; Terry, however, holds on other grounds a 
 similar position, and makes out a much better 
 case. Von Dobschutz, Lect. II, also upholds the 
 literal interpretation.) 
 
 Another alternative is that Our Lord was from 
 the first misunderstood by His hearers. 2 It would 
 be natural that their minds should be full of eschato- 
 logical thoughts, seeing how full of these was His 
 own teaching, and their question on the Mount of 
 Olives shows their eagerness. (Cf. Kennedy, p. 56 : 
 
 No doubt the eschatological utterances of Jesus 
 must have constituted a prominent element in the 
 apostolic preaching and instruct ion." ) It is at 
 least possible that they read into His words thoughts 
 that He at all events did not intend, and even that 
 allusions to actual events, such as the fall of Jerusa- 
 lem, found their way unconsciously into the narra- 
 tives which were the basis of the Gospels. That 
 they should have misunderstood Him is even 
 probable ; 3 and it is no less likely that He should 
 have actually alluded to the fall of Jerusalem ; it 
 hardly needed supernatural knowledge to see the 
 
 1 P. 176. 
 
 2 This is well brought out by Muirhead, pp. 26 ff., and by 
 Von Dobschutz, pp. 75, 79 f£.; cf. Winstanley, p. 3. 
 
 3 See p. 148, and cf. Sanday, Hibbert Journal, Oct., 
 1911, pp. 94 ff. 
 
 75 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 crisis into which the nation was drifting, and its 
 probable fate. It is not so probable that the 
 allusions to Jerusalem found their way into the 
 narratives at a later date ; the evidence for the 
 early date of the Gospels is good, and there is no 
 MS. authority to uphold this suggestion. It is 
 possible that they regarded His Resurrection as 
 fulfilling His words, at least in a measure, from the 
 portents which they record as happening at the 
 time of the Passion. * If Our Lord's words seem 
 to have been falsified by subsequent events, we 
 must remember that elsewhere He stated delib- 
 erately that He did not know the day or the hour 
 of the end, 2 and we must attribute the conflict 
 between the two statements to His interpreters, 
 who are more likely to have been in error than He. 
 The great details of the Jewish apocalyptists are in 
 marked contrast to His indefiniteness, and human 
 curiosity would prompt the insertion of details ; 
 He Himself seems to have been careful mainly to 
 warn His hearers that the crisis was impending, 
 and to counsel watchfulness and faithfulness. 
 A similar mingling, however, of the general and 
 the particular is noticeable in the Jewish writers, 
 see 4 Ezra v. 1 ff . — 
 
 " Behold, the days come when the inhabitants 
 of the earth shall be seized with great panic, 
 And the way of truth shall be hidden, and the 
 land be barren of faith. 
 
 1 Matt, xxvii. 45, 51, xxviii. 2; Lk. xxiii. 44. 
 
 2 Matt. xxiv. 36. 
 
 76 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 And iniquity shall be increased above that 
 which thou thyself now seest or that thou 
 hast heard of long ago. And the land that 
 thou seest now to bear rule shall be a path- 
 less waste ; and men shall see it forsaken : 
 if the Most High grant thee to live, thou 
 shall see it after the third (period) in 
 confusion. 
 Then shall the sun suddenly shine forth by 
 
 night, 
 And the moon by day : 
 And blood shall trickle forth from wood, and 
 
 the stone utter its voice : 
 The peoples shall be in commotion, 
 The outgoings (?) (of the stars) shall change. 
 And one whom the dwellers upon earth do not 
 look for shall wield sovereignty, and the 
 birds shall take to general flight, 
 And the sea shall cast forth its fish. 
 And one whom the many do not know will 
 make his voice heard by night ; and all 
 shall hear his voice." 
 Sib. iv. 49 ff.— 
 
 " First of all, the Assyrians shall rule over all 
 mankind, holding the world for six generations under 
 their sway, from the time when, since the heavenly 
 God was wroth with the cities themselves and all 
 mankind, the sea covered the earth with the outbreak 
 of the flood. 
 
 " Then shall the Medes subdue and vaunt them- 
 selves on their throne, yet their generations shall be 
 but two. In their time shall be these mighty works. 
 
 77 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 Darkling night shall fall at the middle hour of day : 
 the stars and the moon's disc shall fail from heaven. 
 And the earth shaken by the upheaval of a mighty 
 earthquake shall cast down headlong many cities 
 and works of men. And then islands shall peep 
 forth from the depths of the sea. 
 
 ''But when great Euphrates shall run in torrents 
 of blood, then betwixt Medes and Persians the dread 
 din of battle shall arise in war. And the Medes, 
 overthrown by the Persians' spears, shall flee over 
 the broad waters of the Tigris. And the Persians' 
 might shall be supreme in all the world ; yet they 
 shall have but one generation of prosperous kingship. 
 
 " Then there shall be all those evil works which 
 men pray to be spared, wars and murders, schisms 
 and exiles, the headlong crash of towers and the 
 overthrow of cities, when proud Hellas shall sail 
 to the broad Hellespont, bringing grievous doom 
 to Phrygians and to Asia." 
 
 Etc., etc. 
 
 By far the most likely and helpful solution 
 of this admittedly difficult problem is that the 
 disciples' minds were naturally coloured by the 
 current apocalyptics ; that Our Lord used these 
 current expressions and in a measure sanctioned 
 the ideals and hopes contained in them ; that He 
 did foresee and speak of the impending fate of 
 Jerusalem ; that the disciples remembered His 
 words faithfully and recorded them honestly, even 
 to the putting side by side the ill-agreeing statements 
 that the Coming should be before the evangelisation 
 
 78 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 of the villages was complete, and that He did not 
 know the time of the end ; * but that they did not 
 really understand what He meant, and that their 
 record was marred by both their general mystifica- 
 tion and their previous mental attitude. (It is 
 possible, also that He was designedly vague in His 
 words, in order to make them think and to avoid 
 being dogmatic, in accordance with His usual 
 practice.) Critics are able to show fairly clearly, 
 at all events in the case of St. Matthew's Gospel, 
 different strata of teaching, representing the inter- 
 pretations of different generations or groups of 
 Christians of the original Gospel ; and the accept- 
 ance of the Fourth Gospel, with its marked advance 
 on the cruder eschatology of the Synoptics, shows 
 that early Christian thought on this matter was 
 confessedly fluid ; they felt that they had not 
 properly understood Our Lord, and were working 
 out an interpretation in the light of experience 
 and with the help of the Holy Spirit. 2 
 
 But, important as it is, we may not take this 
 passage alone ; there are several other utterances 
 of an apocalyptic nature elsewhere in the Gospels, 
 so many that they must have been original to Him, 
 and not put into His mouth by His disciples ; and 
 His teaching on this matter has to be compared 
 and conditioned by the nature and general trend of 
 His teaching on other subjects. We may not 
 
 1 Mk. xiii. 30, 32. 
 
 2 See, further, Hastings, D C G , i, p. 342b, ii, pp. 149, 
 150, 322, 439. 
 
 79 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 separate His eschatological teaching from His 
 whole revelation, of which it forms part ; the part 
 must be interpreted in the light of the general 
 character of the whole. The eschatological element 
 by no means exhausts the whole content of His 
 preaching, as Schweitzer allows. And it is well to 
 remember that Our Lord's authority does not stand 
 and fall with His eschatology ; this is not the main 
 subject of His teaching, rather is it the form in which 
 it is clothed. His authority and claim upon men's 
 allegiance rest upon the exalted and satisfying 
 nature of His ethical teaching, 1 and upon His 
 living presentation of this ideal in His own Person. 
 The value of His eschatology, therefore, turns upon 
 the value of Himself, and not vice versa. 
 
 Thus it is very noticeable that, while Our Lord 
 purifies and raises the tone of the teaching which 
 He took over from Judaism, He also spiritualises it. 
 We see instances of it in the Synoptists, where the 
 writers would not have been so likely to record and 
 emphasise it ; and it is most noticeable of all in 
 St. John. And this latter is a remarkable fact ; 
 because if the tradition of Johannine authorship be 
 true, — and the evidence against it is not over- 
 whelming, when confronted with the evidence in 
 its favour (the problem is admittedly difficult) — 
 then it were only reasonable to suppose that the 
 disciple whom Jesus loved has preserved for us 
 more of the inner mind and meaning of his Master, 
 than those who had not known Him so intimately. 
 
 1 See Rashdall, Conscience and Christ, pp. 25 ff. 
 
 80 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 In any case, the date of its composition would 
 reflect the mind of the Church after several years 
 of experience, when the expectation of an immediate 
 return had been tested and found wanting. (C/. 
 Dewick, pp. 203 ff., and see further, pp. 5ln, 102 ff.) 
 For instance, in the Synoptists we find Him 
 claiming the power to forgive sin, refusing to be 
 treated as a Messianic king, as a wonder-worker, 
 as merely a healer and philanthropist. x The 
 parables of the kingdom turn on the inner analogy, 
 not the outer. He claims, and exercises, authority 
 over the spiritual world, and conveys the same to 
 His disciples 2 — to Him the spiritual world is 
 intensely real, and the spiritual confessedly trans- 
 cends the material and temporal. He calls physical 
 death " sleep ".; He says that any who do God's 
 will are His relations ; that a man is defiled by the 
 thoughts of his heart, and not by what he eats or 
 does not eat. 3 He emphasises the need of repent- 
 ance, particularly on the first announcement of 
 the nearness of the Kingdom, and as implying an 
 essential relation between the two (i.e., He qualifies 
 the current eschatological concept with an assertion 
 of the need and importance of moral values) ; 
 everywhere He condemns legalism and formalism 
 (Matt. ix. 14, xii. 1, 9, xv. 1, xviii. 2, 8, xix. 13, 16, 
 xxi. 32, xxiii. ; Mk. xii. 34 ; Lk. x. 25, xi. 28, 37, 
 xii., xiii. 1, 10, xiv. 1, 7, xv., xvi., xvii. 1-10, xviii. 9, 
 xxi. 19, xxiv. 47). He tells the disciples that they 
 
 1 Matt. ix. 6, xiii. 58; cf. Jn. vi. 26. 
 
 2 Matt. viii. 28, x. 1; Lk. x. 17. 
 
 3 Matt. ix. 24, xii. 46, xv. 11. 
 
 81 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 are to be superior to earth and to physical suffer- 
 ings ; that life is realised by spending and not by 
 saving. * In His answer to the Sadducees' question, 
 He raised the matter to an altogether higher plane. 2 
 He said that Elijah had already come in the person 
 of St. John Baptist. 3 He declares that develop- 
 ment and progress take place in man's apprehension 
 of the truth, and growth in moral and spiritual 
 things. 4 He explains the words " Thy kingdom 
 come " by " Thy will be done " ; and declares 
 that entry into the kingdom is conditioned by the 
 possession of a childlike character and attitude. 5 
 As regards His own Person, His teaching and 
 revelation is ever in the direction of the spiritual ; 
 witness the transfiguration ; the nature of His 
 Resurrection Body ; His Ascension ; His words to 
 the Magdalene, and to the disciples : " Cling not 
 to Me, for I am not yet ascended unto the Father." 
 " Where two or three are gathered together in my 
 name, there am I in the midst of them. ,, " I am 
 with you all the days, even unto the end of the age." 6 
 Passages in St. John's Gospel are too numerous 
 to quote ; it must suffice to refer to the conversation 
 with Nicodemus about the new birth of water and 
 the Spirit ; the discourses on the Bread of Life, 
 and the Water of Life ; to such pregnant and 
 
 1 Mat. x. 9, 39; xvi. 21, xvii. 12, 22, xx. 18, 28, xxiv. 3. 
 
 2 Matt. xxii. 15. 
 
 3 Matt. xi. 14; xvii. 12; of. John i. 21. 
 
 4 Matt. xi. 11, xiii. 52. 
 
 5 Mk. x. 15. 
 
 6 Matt, xvii, xviii. 20, xxviii. 20; Lk. xxiv; John xx. 17. 
 
 82 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 illuminating dicta as " He that believeth on the 
 Son hath eternal life " — " I am the Resurrection 
 and the Life " — " This is life eternal, that they 
 should know Thee " (i.e., immortality is moral and 
 spiritual, not spatial and temporal). 1 
 
 The whole tendency of Our Lord's teaching is to 
 raise and to purify and to spiritualise. This is 
 evident when speaking on other subjects ; and it 
 is as evident in those other passages and remarks, 
 not yet considered, which bear an eschatological 
 nature ; for the chapters and passages already 
 dealt with do not exhaust His eschatological 
 teaching. 
 
 For instance, when the Scribe made a wise 
 comment on His answer to the question about the 
 great commandment of the Law, He replied : 
 " Thou art not far from the Kingdom of God " ; a 
 implying thereby that the Kingdom was not some- 
 thing in the uncertain future, but a spiritual force 
 realisable in the present. 
 
 In Lk. xvi. 16, He says : " The law and the 
 prophets were until John : from that time the gospel 
 of the kingdom is preached, and every man entereth 
 violently into it." 3 The allusion here is to the 
 violent wave of feeling which swept over the land 
 and drove men to become Christ's adherents ; but 
 it implies, like the preceding passage, that the 
 
 1 Ch. iii., iv., vi., xi. 25, xvii. 3; cf. Matt. xi. 27; and see, 
 further, pp. 30, 45. 
 
 2 Mk. xii. 34. 
 
 3 Cf. Matt. xi. 12. 
 
 83 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 kingdom has at all events begun, if it be not 
 completed ; it is an influence in men's hearts, not 
 an outward organisation. 
 
 Still more clearly is this implied by Lk. xvii. 21 : 
 " The Kingdom of God is within you," whether the 
 meaning be " in your midst," or " within your 
 hearts." In either case it is an influence, and 
 already present and at work. x 
 
 In St. John, as w r e might expect, such passages 
 are more frequent, cf. iv. 35 : " The fields are white 
 already unto harvest," which implies that the 
 harvest, which is the end of the age, 2 is already 
 present, in the spiritual condition of men's hearts. 3 
 
 In v. 24, He asserts that eternal life may be had 
 here and now, on the basis of belief in Him : " He 
 that heareth my Word, and believeth Him that 
 sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into 
 judgment, but hath passed out of death into life " ; 
 cf. vi. 47 (i.e., it is according to a man's inner 
 spiritual condition that he has eternal life or not, 
 and not according to his outward status or 
 condition) . 
 
 In vi. 54, 56, eternal life is conveyed through the 
 eating and drinking of His flesh and blood, and by 
 " abiding in " Him (i.e., it is by a personal, spiritual 
 relation of the most intimate kind, and not through 
 any legal status, still less through any changes in 
 the natural world). And it is to be had here and 
 
 1 The passage is well discussed by Von Dobschiitz, 
 p. 129; and Dalman, pp. 139, 143. 
 
 2 Matt. xiii. 39. 
 
 3 Cf. Lk. x. 2. 
 
 84 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 now, even if a " last day " is mentioned in the 
 same breath. 1 
 
 In xii. 31, xvi. 11, He declares that a " judgment " 
 has already taken place (a familiar thought in St. 
 John) and of the ruler of this " age " (a clear 
 allusion to the apocalyptic Beliar). No cataclysm 
 had taken place, neither had any unusual portents 
 been noted, and the events foretold in Matt. xxiv. 
 had not occurred; the judgment that had taken 
 place was in the moral and spiritual sphere, in the 
 acceptance and denial of Him by His hearers, and 
 the moral and spiritual crisis occasioned by His 
 coming and teaching. 
 
 In xvii. 15, He prays not that they may be taken 
 out of the world (#007x09), but that they may be 
 delivered from the evil one (i.e., it is a spiritual 
 blessing which He desires for them) . (Allusion is 
 not made to the passage iii. 16 ff, as this may be a 
 comment of the evangelist's own.) 
 
 We may note also that Our Lord in His predic- 
 tions of the coming of the kingdom never foretold 
 material blessings ; His promises are conveyed in 
 symbolic language ; 2 His disciples receive " life " ; 
 the Twelve may sit on Twelve Thrones, but it is 
 to judge the twelve tribes (i.e., it is authority that 
 they are to receive, and authority is a non-sub- 
 stantial entity). The sons of the kingdom " sit at 
 endless feast" with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; 3 
 
 1 Cf. xiv. 20. 
 
 2 Cf. Muirhead, p. 51. 
 
 3 Matt. viii. 11; and cf. His words at the Last Supper, 
 xx vi. 29. 
 
 85 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 but it is not intended that these words should be 
 taken in the crude literal sense of the traditional 
 Messianic Banquet ; they are a symbol of eternal 
 bliss. The penitent thief is to be with Him in 
 " Paradise " ; but no hint is given as to the meaning 
 of this. Our Lord takes the thought and allows 
 the thief to put his own meaning into it. Those 
 who have renounced material blessings in this 
 world are to receive the same in an enhanced degree, 
 but He 'says expressly that these are to be super- 
 seded by eternal life in the age to come. x To quote 
 Muirhead, He presented the Kingdom of God as 
 " the sum of all the good things belonging to the 
 supernatural life of God's children, and that these 
 good things are, primarily, powers of holy truth 
 and love acting on the human conscience and will ; 2 
 " He preached God's reigning will in grace and 
 judgment " ; 3 His view of the Kingdom as some- 
 thing transcendent is shown by the very fact that 
 He used the apocalyptic imagery in which to 
 describe it. 4 Cf. Dalman : " The theocracy about 
 to make its entrance into the world was some- 
 thing more than a gratifying realisation of 
 the hopes entertained regarding it ; it was a 
 creative force bringing new ideas in its train." 5 
 His idea of the kingdom, says Dr. Bruce, was " a 
 kingdom of grace in order to be a kingdom of 
 holiness. ,,6 
 
 Again, we cannot help marking the contrast 
 
 1 Matt. xix. 29. 2 P. 114. 3 P. 64. 
 
 4 P. 104. 5 P. 139. 6 P. 54. 
 
 86 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 between His teaching and that of other apoca- 
 lyptists. x Whether it be in Daniel, or in Enoch, 
 or elsewhere, we notice that they give the most 
 precise details as to time and place and condition ; 
 they mention angels, good and bad, by name ; 
 they describe the visions and experiences which 
 they have been favoured with ; they describe 
 strange beasts and monsters, which symbolise 
 events or people in current history ; occasionally, 
 as in 2 Enoch, there is a great deal of information 
 given about the material universe, and the heavenly 
 spheres, a kind of primitive physical and astronom- 
 ical science. These are noticeably absent in the 
 mouth of Our Lord. He gives no periods of 
 M seventy weeks/' or days or aeons. It is true 
 that He clearly exhibits a determinism in His 
 teaching (e.g., Matt. x. 30 : " The very hairs of 
 your head are all numbered " ; Lk. xiii. 32 : "I 
 cast out devils and perform cures to-day and to- 
 morrow, and the third day I am perfected " ; 
 xxii. 22 : " The Son of Man indeed goeth, as it hath 
 been determined " ; 37 : " This which is written 
 must be fulfilled in Me " ; 53 : " This is your hour, 
 and the power of darkness " ; John vii. 6, 8 : " My 
 time is not yet come, fulfilled " ; xi. 9 : " Are there 
 not twelve hours in the day ? If a man walk in 
 the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the 
 light of this world. But if a man walk in the 
 night, he stumbleth, because the light is not in 
 
 1 Cf. Kennedy, p. 18; Dewick, p. 225; Foundations* 
 p. 112; Oesterley, p. 190. 
 
 87 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 him " ; cf. vii. 30, viii. 20, xii. 23, xiii. 1, xxiv. 
 26, 44) ; but He gives no indication of when or 
 where, excepting in Matt, xxiv., which only repre- 
 sents a partial side of His eschatology, and possibly 
 misrepresents His actual teaching, and where the 
 " general " and the " particular " are strangely 
 intertwined ; His usual attitude is that " of that 
 day and hour knoweth no man, not even the Son, 
 but the Father only," the whole future is shrouded 
 in obscurity ; " The kingdom of God cometh not 
 with observation " (i.e., cannot be calculated or 
 brought within known periods of time). Yet, as 
 regards the future, He does not dream vaguely of 
 a new heaven and earth in despair of this. For 
 Him, in contrast to others, this world is a perfectly 
 possible world, and only needs that men should 
 acknowledge His kingship ; His conception of the 
 kingdom presupposes this present earth ; and He 
 came to save sinners, not to destroy them. x 
 
 He tacitly accepts the angelology and demonology 
 of His day (as in Matt. xii. 25 ff.), neither affirming 
 nor denying its truth ; but only one spirit does He 
 ever name, and that sparingly (i.e., Satan). 2 He 
 gives no highly-coloured version of His experiences ; 
 the nearest approach to these are the Temptation, 
 the story of which must have come from His own 
 mouth ; the Transfiguration, which was shared by 
 some of the disciples ; and the passage, Lk. x. 18 : 
 
 1 Cf. Rashdall, op. tit., p. 200; Hastings, D C G, ii, p. 145a. 
 
 2 Matt. xii. 26, xvi. 23; Mk. iv. 15; Lk. x. 18, xiii. 16, 
 xxii. 31. 
 
 88 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 " I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven," 
 which may be merely a symbolic way of announcing 
 the beginning of His triumph, and is an echo of 
 Isa. xiv. 12 (in any case, it implies the actual 
 presence of the kingdom). The rarity and the 
 moderation of such expressions is very much the 
 reverse of what we find elsewhere. 
 
 He gives no allegorical versions of history, por- 
 trayed under the form of fantastic and composite 
 and transmogrified creatures, as in Daniel and 
 Enoch ; He only alludes to the " abomination of 
 desolation," a traditional conception, and part of 
 the current terminology, originating in Daniel. 
 And there is nothing in the nature of physical 
 science or astronomy ; here, as in all else, His 
 teaching studiously avoids concrete details, and 
 deals with abstract principles ; it is the eternal and 
 absolute, the spiritual and unchanging, that He 
 handles and emphasises ; the temporal and tran- 
 sient, the changing and the material, that He 
 either neglects or passes over. His teaching about 
 eschatology is parallel to that on other subjects. 
 He accepts and uses current conceptions and 
 terms (how else could He have taught ?), but does 
 not commit Himself as to their actual truth or 
 untruth, as when He accepts the Davidic authorship 
 of the Psalms and the traditional authorship of 
 " Daniel," and the Mosaic authorship of the Penta- 
 teuch, x which we in our day have seen reason to 
 modify (and we believe without either disrespect 
 
 1 C/. also John x. 35 : " The Scripture cannot be 
 broken/ ' 
 
 89 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 to His Person or detriment to His Divinity). He 
 expressly allows for growth and development in 
 man's apprehension of eternal truth, and, therefore, 
 for the discarding and changing of the forms in 
 which it is apprehended ; cf. Matt. xiii. 52 : " Every 
 scribe who hath been made a disciple of the kingdom 
 of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, 
 which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new 
 and old " ; John xvi. 12, 13 : "I have yet many 
 things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them 
 now. Howbeit, when He, the Spirit of Truth, is 
 come, He shall guide you into all the truth — and 
 He shall declare unto you the things that are to 
 come." 
 
 This is, perhaps, the best place in which to point 
 out yet another, and a perplexing feature of His 
 teaching. When speaking of the kingdom and its 
 effects, He both asserts and implies that it is already 
 present, and that its blessings may be had here and 
 now by those who comply with its conditions. 
 One or two passages already quoted have revealed 
 this, 1 and there are many others. For instance, 
 His first utterance was that the kingdom of heaven 
 was at hand, a phrase clearly implying at the least, 
 nearness, if not actual presence (the Greek is riyyi/ce 
 = " has drawn near ") ; and His application of 
 Isa. lxi. to Himself in the Synagogue of Capernaum 
 conveys the same implication, that " the time has 
 been fulfilled/' and the promised Golden Age is 
 
 1 Cf. pp. 83 ff. 
 
 90 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 already present. 1 The same message were the 
 Twelve and the Seventy commissioned to deliver ; 2 
 and the Twelve were told that the Son of Man 
 should have come before the evangelisation of the 
 cities of Israel were completed. 3 In Mk. ii. 19, 
 He describes Himself as the Bridegroom, and 
 asserts that this is not the time for fasting, implying 
 that the time for rejoicing has rather come. And 
 the following verses, about the new wine and the 
 new patch of cloth imply equally clearly that a 
 new era had commenced. When St. John Baptist 
 sent to enquire if Jesus were the Messiah or no, 
 Our Lord directed his attention to the healing of 
 the sick and the other good works which it was 
 held that the Messiah would perform, adding the 
 significant words : " Blessed is he that shall not be 
 offended in Me." 4 Just as, later on, He said: 
 " Blessed are your eyes, for they see ; and your 
 ears, for they hear. For verily I say unto you, 
 that many prophets and righteous men desired to 
 see the things which ye see, and saw them not ; 
 and to hear the things which ye hear and heard 
 them not"; 5 and He declared that St. John 
 Baptist was Elijah come again, in accordance with 
 the traditional belief. 6 In Matt. xii. 28, He makes 
 an unequivocal statement that the Kingdom has 
 
 1 Lk. iv. 18. 
 
 2 Mt. x. 7; Lk. x. 9. 
 
 3 Matt. x. 23. 
 
 4 Matt. xi. 4, cf. John vii. 31. 
 
 5 Matt. xiii. 16; cf. John viii. 56 : " Abraham rejoiced 
 to see my day." 
 
 6 Matt. xi. 14, xvii. 12. 
 
 91 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 come : " If I by the Spirit of God cast out devils, 
 then is the Kingdom of God come upon you." 
 A similar statement is found in John v. 25, prefaced 
 by His solemnest asseveration : " Verily, verily, 
 I say unto you, the hour cometh, and now is, when 
 the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God ; 
 and they that hear shall live." In Matt, xxiii. 13, 
 He rebukes the Pharisees for not entering the 
 kingdom themselves, and for keeping others out ; 
 just as in Mk. xii. 13, He hints that there is no 
 necessary antagonism between the kingdom of 
 Caesar and His own, a man may be a loyal subject 
 of both at one and the same time (exactly as St. 
 Paul teaches in Rom. xiii). Of similar import are 
 the passages in which He claims that all authority 
 has been given unto Him, words which both imply 
 His Messianic claims and His present possession of 
 Messianic prerogatives ; (see Mk. i. 22 : " He taught 
 men as one having authority " ; Mk. xi. 27 : " All 
 things have been delivered unto me of My Father " ; 
 xxviii. 18 : " All 'authority hath been given unto 
 me in heaven and on earth ") ; the entry on Palm 
 Sunday, where, even if His action had no Messianic 
 import (it is denied by some commentators), at 
 least He accepted the greetings of the people, and 
 asserted that the stones would continue them if the 
 people ceased ; 1 the use of the present tense in 
 His parables — " The Kingdom is like, ofioia io-riv." 
 The (only) categorical words claiming to be the 
 Messiah have the same import : " From henceforth 
 
 1 Lk. xix. 40. 
 
 92 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 (air' aprt) ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the 
 
 right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of 
 
 heaven." 1 The words " sitting " and " coming " 
 
 clearly imply a present and final and conclusive 
 
 act, together with a perpetual exercise of the 
 
 authority and power which that act denotes. 
 
 Cf. Gould, in Internat. Critical Commentary on 
 
 St. Mark : " The coming is not a single event, 
 
 any more than the sitting on the right hand of 
 
 power ; and it was a thing which was to begin 
 
 with the very time of Our Lord's departure from 
 
 the world. Moreover, the two things, the sitting 
 
 on the right hand of power, and the coming, are 
 
 connected in such a way as to mean that He is to 
 
 assume power in heaven and exercise it here in the 
 
 world. The period beginning with the departure 
 
 of Jesus from the world was to be marked by this 
 
 assumption of heavenly power by the Christ, and 
 
 by repeated interferences in crises of the world's 
 
 history, of which the destruction of Jerusalem was 
 
 the first." 2 
 
 And it was not only verbal teaching — He upheld 
 it in deed ; because His power over nature, over 
 disease, over evil spirits, even death itself, as well 
 as the power of His preaching and personal influ- 
 ence, showed the reality and the present possession 
 of His " kingship " ; the authority was not only 
 claimed but it was demonstrated. 
 
 St. John's Gospel is full of passages which imply 
 
 1 Mk. xxvi. 64. 
 
 2 P. 252. 
 
 93 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 the present existence of the kingdom. Some of 
 these have already been mentioned, and the whole 
 section xiv.— xvi. implies that it may be experienced 
 by men ; no hint is given that they will have to 
 wait, save the words about the Holy Spirit, and 
 " that day," where it is clearly implied that the 
 kingdom, if already present, is not yet complete ; 
 but, " He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." 
 We may note also that the satisfaction received 
 from the Water of Life and the Bread of Life is 
 both complete and permanent, and no hint is given 
 that either must be waited for. x In v. 40, it is 
 implied that life may be had now by " coming to 
 Christ. " In xviii. 36, He declares " My kingdom 
 is not of this world," clearly implying its present 
 reality. 2 
 
 In Muirhead's words : " To Jesus indeed, in His 
 filial knowledge of God, His consciousness of a 
 unique call and a corresponding endowment, and 
 the perfect repose of His Spirit upon the holy and 
 loving will of His Father in heaven, the Kingdom 
 that was His Father's gift was a present reality ; 
 but we must not overlook the fact that all through 
 His preaching — not simply in eschatological dis- 
 courses delivered towards the close of His life — 
 He presented the -Kingdom in a futuristic 
 aspect." 3 
 
 Or, to quote Von Dobschutz, whose work is clear 
 and sane and well-balanced : " The evidence 
 
 1 iv. 14; vi. 35. 
 
 2 On this point, see Von Dobschutz, pp. 125 ff. 
 
 3 P. 80, cf. Hastings, I. 750&. 
 
 94 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 collected is quite sufficient to prove that in the 
 teaching of Jesus there is a strong line of what I 
 would call transmuted eschatology. I mean escha- 
 tology transmuted in the sense that what was 
 spoken of in Jewish eschatology as to come in the 
 last days is taken here as already at hand in the 
 lifetime of Jesus ; transmuted at the same time in 
 the other sense that what was expected as an 
 external change is taken inwardly ; not all people 
 seeing it, but Jesus' disciples becoming aware of 
 
 it Now we must compare this with the 
 
 first group of sayings dealing with pure eschatology : 
 Jesus the Messiah to come on the clouds of heaven ; 
 the Messianic judgment to be held at the end of the 
 days ; the Messianic meal to take place after this 
 glorious event, and so on. Both groups are quite 
 distinct and to be kept separate. Neither of them 
 may be reduced easily to the other one without 
 violence being done to the tradition, nor can 
 we put aside one of them as a later addition or 
 transformation, both being attested by our best 
 sources/ ' x 
 
 It should be also noted how the parables relating 
 to the kingdom vary in their implication. Some 
 are of the " catastrophic " kind, such as the Draw 
 Net, the Pounds, the Talents, the Unfaithful 
 Servant, the Virgins, although even these imply 
 considerable delay before the Return and the final 
 reckoning or end. But others are evolutionary, 
 and present the kingdom not as an event or series 
 
 1 Pp. 150 ff., cf. Charles, Eschatology, pp. 371 ff. 
 
 95 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 of events, so much as a process, which may be long 
 or short in itself, but, when applied to the world 
 of which it is asserted, must be indefinitely long. 
 The parables of the Sower, the Seed growing 
 secretly, the Mustard-seed, the Leaven, the Tares, 
 the Unjust Judge, the Selfish Neighbour, when 
 viewed in the light of history and human experi- 
 ence, give no countenance to the thought of a 
 speedy consummation of all things, or of one single 
 definite event. (His teaching about the many false 
 Christs who are to appear before the end both 
 requires a long period of time in which to be realised, 
 and may equally imply that there will be many 
 " ends " and many crises, in which the same 
 phenomenon will be repeated.) 
 
 The upshot of the preceding argument, then, is 
 this : Our Lord's eschatology is based on the 
 conceptions of His own day, and can be traced 
 through the Jewish Pseudepigraphic writings back 
 to the Old Testament, of which they were the 
 legitimate and natural successors. This current 
 Judaism varied widely and materially in its ideas 
 and teaching, and it developed steadily from the 
 physical conception of the kingdom to the spiritual, 
 from the legal to the ethical, from the national 
 to the human, in exactly the same way that the Old 
 Testament prophets were concerned mainly with 
 moral considerations ; so that the details are 
 considerably less reliable than the principles which 
 they try to express. In Our Lord's teaching we 
 notice the same tendency, i.e., a development of 
 
 96 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 the preceding conceptions, a raising of them, a puri- 
 fication of their grossness, a spiritualising of them, 
 with an elimination of familar detail, and a growing 
 vagueness and generality. (Some writers, indeed, 
 trace a development in His own actual teaching, 
 but this is precarious ; as Schweitzer says [p. 7] 
 there are equally good grounds for denying as for 
 asserting it.) In one place only, the crucial dis- 
 course on the Mount of Olives, does He go into any 
 great detail : and here it is possible that His hearers 
 misunderstood Him, and have mingled His words 
 with others with which they w r ere familiar, and 
 thought appropriate, and even intended by Him. 
 The general character of His eschatological teaching 
 is similiar to that on other subjects, i.e., it tends 
 away from the particular to the general, from the 
 concrete to the abstract, from details to principles, 
 a feature which precludes a literal interpretation. 
 As His teaching was a development, so He allowed 
 for further development in man's apprehension of 
 the Truth. And the inference is that He regarded 
 the principles as perpetually expressing and re-ex- 
 pressing themselves in human history and experi- 
 ence ; the outward form and detail and grouping 
 were always varying, but the inner conflict of good 
 and evil was always present, and it was this that 
 occasioned the doings of mankind. There was to 
 be a consummation, but no one but God the Father 
 knew when it would be ; His own coming had 
 caused a crisis in human history, it was the turning- 
 point, marking the commencement of the overthrow 
 of evil ; and His call to men marked the crisis in 
 
 97 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 the lives of each, their future being determined by 
 the way in which they responded and by their 
 attitude towards Him. The kingdom was " at 
 hand/' and " eternal life " could be had here and 
 now, even if the end was not yet. 1 
 
 1 Cf. Robertson, p. 75, 99; Worsley, p. 50; Bruce, pp. 273. 
 
 98 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 This account of Our Lord's eschatological teaching 
 would not be complete without some mention of 
 the way in which it was received by His disciples, 
 and understood by them. Already we have seen 
 something of this, in the Gospels, where it is difficult, 
 not to say impossible, to distinguish between the 
 actual utterances of Our Lord, and the form or 
 colouring in which His hearers have clothed them. 
 But, at any rate, we have seen two clearly-marked 
 groups of His teaching, one dealing with temporal 
 and historical details, and one dealing with eternal 
 and spiritual truths, and showing development and 
 progress and growth in conception. It is not 
 otherwise with the rest of the New Testament ; 
 that is to say that the various writers show develop- 
 ment in their own eschatological ideas, and represent 
 the Return of Christ and the coming of the Kingdom, 
 now as yet to come, and now in a measure at least 
 as already realised ; now in material terms, now in 
 spiritual, now as static, now dynamic. 
 
 The teaching of Acts is all on one side, and looks 
 forward to a future coming. The angel tells the 
 watching disciples on the Mount of the Ascension 
 that " this Jesus . . . shall so come in like manner 
 as ye have beheld Him going into heaven." x St. 
 Peter declares 2 that Christ has been received into 
 
 1 i. 11. 2 iii. 21. 
 
 99 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 heaven " until the times of restoration of all things," 
 foretold by the age-long line of prophets ; x that 
 He has been " ordained of God to be the judge of 
 quick and dead." 2 St. Paul says that this judgment 
 is yet in the future, on a fixed day ; 3 and that 
 " through many tribulations we must enter into 
 the kingdom of God " ; 4 the rest of the ideas are 
 what we should have expected in the mouth of a 
 Jewish convert in a very early stage of the Christian 
 consciousness, before either time or experience had 
 been able to modify or illuminate the traditional 
 notions, and when persecution made it only too 
 clear that evil was not yet subdued, or the good 
 consummated. Yet it is noteworthy that the 
 present tense is used of those who are " in the way 
 of salvation." 5 
 
 The Epistle to the Hebrews takes, on the whole, 
 the same line, again as would have been expected. 
 Thus, the Jewish-Christian readers are exhorted to 
 hold their hope and profession firm unto the end. 6 
 They have, indeed, tasted the " powers of the age 
 to come," but it is clear that the latter is not fully 
 realised; 7 the Sabbath-rest " remaineth," yet to 
 be entered into, 8 the promise is yet to be received ; 9 
 all things have been subjected unto the Son, but 
 
 1 Cf. Dalman, p. 178. 
 
 2 x. 42 ; but no time is here indicated. 
 
 3 xvii. 31, cf. xxiv. 25. 
 
 4 xiv. 22 ; for St. Paul's teaching see below, pp. 102 ff. 
 
 5 ii. 47, etc. 6 iii. 6, 14. 7 vi. 5, 18-20. 
 8 iv. 9. 9 x. 36. 
 
 100 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 now we see not yet all things subjected to Him. 1 
 He is " expecting till His enemies be made the 
 footstool of His feet" ; 2 Christ is to "appear a 
 second time ... to them that wait for Him "; 3 the 
 "day" is still "drawing nigh." 4 On the other 
 hand, they have come to " Mount Zion, and unto 
 the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, 
 and to innumerable hosts of angels, to the general 
 assembly and church of the first born who are 
 enrolled in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, 
 and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to 
 Jesus " ; they have received " a kingdom that 
 cannot be shaken." 5 Clearly something has already 
 been realised, even if the next chapter states that 
 " we have not here an abiding city, but we seek 
 after the city which is to come." 6 
 
 St. James and St. Peter and St. Jude teach similar 
 views, and for the same reasons. St. James exhorts 
 his readers to be " patient until the coming of the 
 Lord," and says that this is imminent. 7 St. Peter, 
 writing at a later date, speaks of "a salvation 
 ready to be revealed in the last time," " the revela- 
 tion of Jesus Christ," 8 but declares that " the end 
 of all things is at hand," that " the time is come 
 for judgment to begin at the house of God"; 9 
 yet believers already " rejoice greatly with joy 
 unspeakable and full of glory ; receiving the end 
 
 1 ii. 8. 2 x. 13. 3 ix. 28. 4 x. 25 ff. 
 
 5 xii. 22-24, 28. 6 xiii. 14. 7 v. 7, 8. 
 
 8 i. 5, 7, 13 ; cf. v. 1, 4, Jude 21, 24. 
 
 9 iv. 7, 17. 
 
 101 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 of your faith, even the salvation of your souls/' 
 even if they do not actually see Christ. 1 2 Peter 
 (dating from c. a.d. 150, Chase; a century earlier, 
 Pullan) is characteristically Jewish ; it looks for a 
 future revelation of Christ ; the " day of judgment " 
 is yet to come, and the " day of the Lord " will 
 come without warning. 2 
 
 The teaching of the Johannine Epistles, dating 
 from the end of the first century a.d., is similar to 
 that of the Fourth Gospel ; and both strains of 
 teaching are evident. " The true light already 
 shineth," and " we have passed out of death into 
 life." 3 " The Son of God is come, and hath given 
 us an understanding, that we know Him that is 
 true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His 
 Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal 
 life." 4 Yet, in spite of the rapture and the satis- 
 faction which this consciousness and experience 
 may bring, we are to look for another manifestation 
 of the Son of God : "It is not yet made manifest 
 what we shall be. We know that if He shall be 
 manifested we shall be like Him ; for we shall 
 see Him even as He is." 5 This manifestation is 
 not far off ; for it is now " the last hour." 6 
 
 In the case of St. Paul, we notice a very marked 
 change in his conceptions, between the earliest and 
 the latest of his writings, as well as a mingling of 
 
 1 i. 8. 2 ii. 9, iii. 7, 10. 
 
 3 1 ii. 8, iii. 14 ; cf. v. 11. 4 1 v. 20. 
 5 1 iii. 2, cf. ii. 28. 6 1 ii. 18. 
 
 102 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 the material with spiritual conceptions, the mystical 
 and moral with the historic and physical. x In the 
 earliest (1 and 2 Thess.) he clearly expects a speedy 
 return of Christ, and he describes it in the sensuous 
 imagery of the popular thought of his day. The 
 coming (Parousia) is still in the future, 2 and its 
 time is unknown "asa thief in the night." 3 It will 
 be attended with the visible cloud, the audible 
 voice and trumpet of the archangel, the bodily 
 descent of Christ out of the sky, and the levitation 
 of believers " to meet the Lord in the air," 4 and a 
 flaming fire for the destruction of the ungodly. 5 
 
 In the next group of letters, as chronologically 
 accepted, we find the sensuous literal conceptions 
 still put forward. Thus, in 1 Cor. iii. 13, the 
 Judgment Day is to bring a test by fire. In xv. 52, 
 he again mentions the trumpet ; and, from the 
 popular inability to dissociate personality from the 
 physical case which clothes it, he is driven to 
 invent the self-contradictory conception of a 
 " spiritual body." 6 He holds that a definite stage 
 was reached by the Resurrection and Ascension of 
 Christ, and that the kingdom so inaugurated is 
 yet to be made complete ; and " when all things 
 have been subjected unto Him," " when He shall 
 have abolished all rule and all authority and 
 
 1 Cf. Charles, E. Bibl., p. 1381, Kennedy, pp. 158 ff. 
 
 2 1 ii. 19, iii. 13, v. 23. 
 
 3 1 v. 2. 
 
 4 1 iv. 13 ff. This he claims to have been revealed to 
 him by Christ. 
 
 5 2 i. 7, ii. 
 
 • Cf. Tyrrell, p. 147. 
 
 103 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 power/ ' Christ shall appear the second time and 
 surrender His Kingdom to the Father. x " The 
 time is shortened," " the fashion of this world 
 passeth away " ; upon us " the ends of the ages 
 are come." 2 
 
 But after this letter his ideas undergo a change. 
 He still believes in a future return of Christ, but it 
 is not so immediate, and he drops the traditional 
 view of a visible appearance with clouds of glory 
 and attendant hosts of angels. His thoughts turn 
 more into a moral and spiritual groove. Christ's 
 return is for judgment, 3 as in 1 and 2 Thess. and 
 1 Cor. iii. 13, v. 5, but nothing is said as to the how 
 or when or where. (Cf. xiv. 10 : " We shall all 
 stand before the judgment-seat of God," where the 
 words are metaphorical rather than intended 
 literally ; as in 2 Cor. v. 10.) The verdict will 
 turn on the character of those judged, 4 and he 
 exhorts his readers to grow in grace and to be 
 transformed into a new man. This new man is 
 the image of the Lord, and the glory to be finally 
 revealed has already been partially received. 5 
 
 1 xv. 20 ff. In some of the Jewish books the Kingdom 
 of the Messiah is regarded as temporary and preliminary 
 to the final age of bliss ; 2 Bar. xxx. 1 : " And it shall 
 come to pass after these things, when the time of the 
 Advent of the Messiah is fulfilled, that He shall return in 
 glory " ; xl. 3 : " His principate will stand for ever, until 
 the world of corruption is at an end, and until the times 
 aforesaid are fulfilled " ; cf. lxxiii., lxxiv., 1 Enoch xci- 
 civ. In 4 Ezra vii. 29, the Messiah dies before the final 
 age. (Cf. Schurer, II, 2, p. 176.) 
 
 2 vii. 29,31, x. 11. 3 Rom. ii. 5. 
 
 4 ii. 6 ff. 5 xii. 2, 2 Cor. iii. 18. 
 
 104 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 He is concerned more with present duties than with 
 future rewards ; these latter are dependent on the 
 former, and the development of character and life 
 in the spirit are things which take time ; so that 
 the future is not so immediately important ; indeed, 
 if the present is cared for adequately, the future 
 will take care of itself. We have the help of the 
 Holy Spirit for present needs and duties, and for 
 the transformation of character ; and for the 
 future we may leave all to God's love, in full and 
 perfect confidence. 1 Moreover, he has given up 
 the thought of a great cataclysm and the " falling 
 away " and the destruction of the wicked which is 
 found in Thess. ; instead he looks forward to the 
 gradual conversion of the Gentiles and the ingather- 
 ing of all nations into the kingdom, for God has 
 mercy upon all. 2 This is a very different thought, 
 and its consummation manifestly will be very far 
 distant ; the Return cannot be immediate. (At 
 times, however, the earlier thoughts recur ; c/. 
 xiii. 12 : " The night is far spent, the day is at 
 hand " ; and in the third group, Phil. iv. 5 : " The 
 Lord is at hand," also in 1 Cor. xvi. 22.) And the 
 passage 2 Cor. iii. 12-v. 10, manifestly reveals a 
 spiritual ideal ; things seen are temporal, but the 
 unseen are eternal ; we have a house not made 
 with hands, eternal, in the heavens ; we walk by 
 faith, not by sight ; if we have known Christ after 
 the flesh, now we know Him so no more ; if any 
 
 1 Rom. viii. 
 
 2 Rom. xi. 
 
 105 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 man be in Christ, there is a new creation ; the old 
 things are passed away and have become new ; 
 dying, we live ; we have nothing, and yet possess 
 all things. C/., too, Phil. iv. 8 ; Rom. ii. 29, vii. 6 ; 
 2 Cor. iii. 6. 
 
 In the third group of letters we notice a further 
 advance made, and on the same lines. In 1 Cor. 
 xv. 24, he said that Christ is to surrender His 
 kingdom to the Father, " that God may be all in 
 all " ; but in Eph. and Col., it is Christ Himself 
 Who is the be-all and end-all of creation, as He was 
 the prime agent in its commencement, and is that 
 in which all things cohere ; the consummation is 
 His " fulness/' (See Eph. i. 10 : " To sum up all 
 things in Christ " ; iv. 13 : " Till we all attain . . . 
 unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the 
 stature of the fulness of Christ " ; Col. i. 16 : "In 
 Him were all things created ... all things have 
 been created through Him and unto Him ; and He 
 is before all things, and in Him all things hold 
 together " ; i. 18 : That in all things He might 
 have the pre-eminence. For it was the good 
 pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the 
 fulness dwell " ; iii. 11 : " Christ is all, and in all.") 
 It follows from this that God intends the salvation 
 of all men, 1 and the tone and thoughts of these 
 letters clearly imply the reconciliation of evil spirits 
 as well as of wicked men : nothing and no one is 
 to be left out of the kingdom. It is obvious that 
 no immediate return of Christ is looked for ; but 
 
 1 1 Tim. ii. 4. 
 
 106 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 that the consummation is conceived more as a 
 raising of men to Him, a summing up and completion 
 of all things in Him, than as a return of Him to 
 them. And he repeatedly uses the expression 
 M heavenly sphere " of the medium through which 
 the development is to be realised. * 
 
 Side by side with this development of thought 
 and changing conception we notice the concurrent 
 presentation of two attitudes towards life. As 
 already stated, St. Paul regards the coming of 
 Jesus Christ as marking a turning-point in human 
 history, a crisis in the eternal conflict between good 
 and evil. The kingdom has come, but it is not yet 
 fully realised. We have received the " earnest of 
 the spirit/' 2 and this is an abiding joy, a never- 
 failing help (cf. Rom. viii. 37 : " In all these things 
 we are more than conquerors " ; viii. 1 : " There 
 is therefore now no condemnation to them that are 
 in Christ Jesus " ; 1 Cor. iv. 20 : " The kingdom of 
 God is not in word but in power ; xiv. 17 : The king- 
 dom of God is righteousness, and peace, and j oy in the 
 Holy Spirit " ; Gal. ii. 20 : "I live, and yet no 
 longer I, but Christ liveth in me " ; iii. 14 : " That 
 upon the Gentiles might come the blessing of 
 Abraham in Christ Jesus ; that we might receive 
 the promise of the Spirit through faith " ; Phil, 
 iv. 13 : "I can do all things through Him that 
 strengthened me"; Eph. i. 18 : " That ye may 
 know what is . . . the riches of the glory of His 
 inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding 
 
 1 Cf. Eph. passim., and the Dean of Wells's note. 
 
 2 2 Cor. i. 22, v. 5 ; Eph. i. 14. 
 
 107 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 greatness of His power to us-ward who believe " ; 
 iii. 16: "Strengthened with power through His 
 spirit in the inward man"). The Christian has 
 received something which has transformed him and 
 transfigured his life, so that he is proof against any- 
 thing, and is always rejoicing ; his joy is intangible, 
 "no man taketh it " away from him; he lives 
 already in a different sphere, and his life is " hid 
 with Christ in God " ; he has realised his Lord's 
 words about their mutual indwelling and abiding. * 
 What more could a man want or expect, it 
 might be asked ; but there is another side to the 
 picture. The treasure is "in earthen vessels M ; 
 St. Paul has not already attained, or been already 
 made perfect ; the prize of his calling is still before 
 him, unreached as yet ; sin is only too real a power 
 in his own life ; evil is only too prevalent in the 
 world ; he still looks for his Saviour, and longs 
 to be " clothed upon " with his " heavenly habita- 
 tion/' 2 His joy, his share in the kingdom, his 
 oneness with Christ, if real and true and indestruc- 
 tible, are at least qualified. If Christ is in us, this 
 presence is still only a " hope " of glory; 3 and the 
 Church, as is evident from the passages already 
 quoted, is neither pure nor complete. Eph. and 
 Col. clearly imply growth and progress, and not 
 until the Church is co-extensive with the whole of 
 humanity, not to say the whole of creation, will 
 
 1 Cf. Robertson, p. 54. 
 
 2 See 2 Cor. iv. 7, v. 2 ; Phil. iii. 12, 20 ; Rom. vii., 
 viii. ; Gal. v. 19 ; 1 Cor. iv. 9 ; 2 Cor. i. 8, xi. 23. 
 
 3 Col. i. 27. 
 
 108 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 the end have been reached ; Christ is still a " Christ 
 that is to be." 
 
 In the last group of letters he still looks forward 
 to " that day " ; * there is a life " to come," 2 and 
 it is " life indeed," " eternal life M ; Christ will 
 " appear " again, although he does not say how 
 or when ; 3 he desires the younger widows to 
 marry, 4 and to take their proper share in the 
 world's life and activities ; and he rebukes those 
 who say that the Resurrection has already taken 
 place. 5 
 
 In his old age, he looks forward to his release 
 from the world, and this is so close that the prospect 
 of it and the hereafter tend to obscure his conscious- 
 ness of present joy and power ; perhaps the weak- 
 ness of age and his continued sufferings have made 
 him realise more intensely the fact that the promises 
 have not yet been fulfilled. Christ is yet to come. 6 
 
 The one professedly apocalyptic book, which 
 closes the New Testament (dating from the end of 
 the first century a.d., but probably embodying 
 some earlier work), shows similar characteristics to 
 Our Lord's teaching, though in varying degrees ; 
 i.e., it uses the usual language, and if it is more 
 
 1 2 Tim. i. 12, iv. 8. 
 
 2 1 Tim. iv. 8, vi. 19 ; Tit. i. 2, iii. 7. 
 
 3 1 Tim. vi. 14 ; 2 Tim. iv. 1, 8, 18 ; Tit. ii. 13. 
 
 4 1 Tim. v. 14, in striking contrast to 1 Cor. vii. 26. 
 
 5 2 Tim. ii. 18, but contrast Eph. ii. 6 ; Col. ii. 12, 
 iii. 1, where he interprets their conversion and baptism as 
 a " raising." 
 
 6 Cf. Von Dobschutz, pp. 24, 25. 
 
 109 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 symbolic and imaginative, describes visions, defines 
 historic events and periods of time, it is also sane 
 and moderate both in conception and expression ; 
 we find the same mingling of actual event and 
 abstract principle, where it is not always easy to tell 
 which is which, i.e., whether the writer's words 
 are intended as a historical reference, or merely as 
 an illustration of eternal truth, whether by them 
 he wishes to teach history, or religion. 
 
 With regard to the Second Coming of Christ, his 
 teaching varies, like that of the Fourth Gospel ; 
 sometimes he looks for a final return on traditional 
 lines, sometimes he alludes to other comings, of a 
 periodical nature, and on spiritual and mystical 
 lines. A final return is looked for, and speedily, 1 
 and the revelation is of " things which must shortly 
 come to pass " ; 2 in xx. is described the " first 
 resurrection " of martyrs only, who live and reign 
 with Christ a thousand years. After this comes 
 the general resurrection and the final judgment, 
 followed by the consummation of all things in the 
 " new heaven and the new earth " ; it is not stated, 
 but it is implied, that this is part of the events 
 which will accompany the return of Christ. On 
 the other hand, in the Letters to the Seven Churches, 
 Christ speaks of coming under the form of visita- 
 tions, and not in terms applicable to the Second 
 Advent. (See ii. 5 : " Repent ... or else I come to 
 thee, and will move thy candlestick out of its 
 
 1 Cf. iii. 11, xxii. 12, 20 : " I come quickly." 
 
 2 i. 1, xxii. 6. 
 
 110 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 place, except thou repent " ; cf. ii. 16, iii. 3.) And 
 He comes where He is welcomed, as well as in 
 visitation ; cf. iii. 20 : u Behold, I stand at the 
 door and knock ; if any man hear My Voice and 
 open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup 
 with him, and he with Me." This is thoroughly 
 in the spirit of John xiv. 23, and the Messianic 
 Banquet may be at least anticipated by the faithful 
 soul. That is to say, the conception is spiritual 
 and ethical and mystical, and this interpretation 
 fits the two concluding chapters at least as well as 
 the historic and physical. It is hardly the replacing 
 of one material universe by another which is either 
 needed or likely to be welcomed. The disabilities 
 of this present one may well be removed, either by 
 destruction or transformation, they need to be so 
 removed before man's bliss can be assured ; but 
 it is life on a higher plane which he longs for, and 
 this is just what xxi. 1-7 implies. The symbolism 
 of xxi. 10-21 denotes perfection, not actual literal 
 detail; and xxi. 22-xxii. 5, 11-15 are couched in 
 terms of ethical and spiritual import (it is said 
 expressly that sun and moon will be no longer 
 needed ; just as in xix. 8 the Church is clad in the 
 righteous acts of the saints). 1 
 
 1 For the teaching of the Early Church on this matter, 
 see Dewick. 
 
 Ill 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 Let us again summarise the points which these 
 descriptions and quotations of the teaching of Our 
 Lord and His followers about the Second Advent 
 have brought to the fore. * Their ideas were 
 naturally those of their own day, and were taken 
 from the teaching of the apocalyptical writers of 
 the first and 2nd centuries B.C., who in turn drew 
 their inspiration from and developed the teaching 
 of the writers of the Old Testament. In the case 
 of both Our Lord and His disciples we can trace a 
 spiritualising and a refining process, and two 
 clearly defined lines of thought. One of these is 
 parallel to the current thought of the day, and 
 speaks of a physical or semi-physical return at a 
 given though unknown date, with a final judgment 
 and inauguration of a reign of bliss for the righteous 
 and of unending punishment for the wicked ; the 
 other regards the kingdom as having already, in 
 a measure at least, arrived, and describes it in 
 terms ethical, spiritual, and mystical ; one concept 
 is catastrophic, the other evolutionary. It is not 
 easy to mark development in the different periods 
 of Our Lord's teaching, 2 and the matter is com- 
 plicated by questions of criticism as to the record 
 
 1 Cf. Hastings, D B, iii, p. 679b ; Charles, Eschatology, 
 p. 366. 
 
 2 Muirhead hints at this, pp. 190 ff., 204 ff. ; cf. Sanday, 
 p. 96 ; MacNeile, pp. xxiv, xxv. 
 
 112 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 and transmission of His words ; but with the rest 
 of the New Testament this development and change 
 of thought is clearly marked, notably in the case 
 of St. Paul. In neither case can it be stated that 
 there is a definite doctrine of the Second Advent 
 in the New Testament, other than in the most 
 general terms ; it was certainly taught that Our 
 Lord would come again, but the details as to how 
 and when and where vary greatly. In this respect, 
 the teaching is parallel to that of the Jewish writers, 
 where similar variations and contradictions are 
 evident. 1 
 
 Before we come to estimate the respective values 
 of these two divergent lines of thought, it is well 
 to enquire what led to the gradual rejection by the 
 New Testament writers of the traditional material 
 view, and to the development of the spiritual and 
 mystical interpretation. 
 
 In the first place, it was due to the renewed 
 emphasis which Our Lord placed on ethical con- 
 siderations. This emphasis was evident enough in 
 earlier days, and the Old Testament prophets had 
 long given to the world their magnificent conception 
 of God as a God of Righteousness, and urged the 
 moral claim ; but the legalism of the Pharisees and 
 the scholasticism of Rabbinic lore and the new 
 Nationalism had done much to deaden it, and to 
 obscure its force. The Kingdom of Heaven, said 
 Christ, was not a national matter ; it was not the 
 exclusive privilege of the Sons of Abraham : neither 
 
 1 Cf. Davidson, p. 155 ; but most writers emphasise this. 
 
 113 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 was it to be entered and realised by the keeping of 
 the precepts of the Torah, and the fulfilling of many 
 ceremonial prescriptions : it was the pure in heart 
 who should see God, and it was by a man's response 
 to God's call, and by his service of God and his 
 neighbour that he should be judged and rewarded. 
 
 In the second place, the spiritualising process 
 was due to the increasing pressure of evil and the 
 heathen world on the consciences and lives of 
 believers. Like their predecessors among the Jewish 
 apocalyptists, they found this world so increasingly 
 evil and unsatisfying, and persecution so constant, 
 that they also were driven to conceive the kingdom 
 as supra-mundane, and to regard what was spiritual 
 as the only good. They had only sensuous and 
 material figures in which to clothe their thoughts, 
 and only earthly experience upon which to draw ; 
 so that their teaching is confusing and uncertain, 
 because the eternal cannot be comprised within the 
 limits of the temporal, and all analogies are partially 
 untrue and therefore misleading. But we can 
 see, in a general way, what they meant ; they were 
 trying to show that life was essentially ethical and 
 spiritual, that the real was not material, that the 
 ethically and spiritually good would survive all 
 efforts made to destroy it, and that the man who 
 was ethically upright and in love with what was 
 spiritual would be upheld in his choice, and rewarded 
 by being united to the source of all life and goodness, 
 with God. 
 
 It was clear, moreover, that the spiritual trans- 
 cended the material. In theory they must have 
 
 114 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 perceived this ; and in experience there was no 
 doubt. Our Lord Himself lived perpetually in the 
 spiritual sphere ; it was this, and His unfailing 
 sense of God's Presence and Power that made Him 
 proof against the attacks of sin and the opposition 
 of the world. It was this truth that He illustrated 
 by His Transfiguration, Resurrection, and Ascen- 
 sion, in which His Person showed Its superiority 
 to limitations of time, space, and physical corruption. 
 When His disciples were with Him, they were 
 doubtless conscious of a Power which they had 
 not and could not find elsewhere ; it was power 
 which He at times transmitted to them at a distance, 
 as when the Seventy performed cures ; but they 
 could not bear the thought of His leaving them, 
 and would have kept Him from risking His life 
 among the Jews, and from returning to Heaven. 
 This, their need, He realised, and expressly sent 
 the Holy Spirit, as He said, to take His place ; 
 in the Holy Spirit, He said, He would come again 
 to them. 1 
 
 His promise was soon fulfilled. Within seven 
 weeks of His Resurrection, within ten days of His 
 departure from earth in the Ascension, the Spirit 
 came and possessed them at Pentecost. This 
 experience was undeniably real and convincing to 
 them ; it was attested outwardly by the noise, 
 the tongues of fire, the " gifts of tongues " (what- 
 ever these were), and by the inception and growth 
 of the Church. It is worth while dwelling a little 
 
 1 John xiv. 18. 
 
 115 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 on this phenomenon, the coming of the Holy 
 Spirit ; because in it we shall find a good deal 
 to elucidate the problem before us. The Book of 
 Acts has been rightly named the " Gospel of the 
 Holy Spirit," and it reveals how intensely real to 
 the Early Church were His Person and Power, a 
 fact seen also from time to time in the Epistles. 
 Our Lord had spoken of His, the Spirit's, coming 
 in terms of present and actual experience, and as 
 to be realised in the immediate future, 1 and His 
 words were fully upheld by events. 
 
 The description of the Day of Pentecost in Acts 
 ii. clearly shows the reality of the experience, both 
 to the body of the disciples themselves, and also to 
 their hearers. And frequently are events and 
 actions ascribed to the Holy Spirit's influence. 
 St. Peter is " filled with the Holy Spirit " before 
 he makes his explanation to the Sanhedrim ; and 
 after their trial and release, as the disciples were 
 assembled for prayer, " the place was shaken 
 wherein they were gathered together ; and they 
 were all filled with the Holy Spirit/ ' 2 And follow- 
 ing on this experience, the writer describes how 
 great was the effect on their lives, so that they 
 instituted a voluntary communism, and the Apostles 
 gave their witness " with great power," power seen 
 most notably, to take an oft-quoted instance, in 
 the transformation of the impetuous and uncertain 
 Simon into Peter, the Rock, and in the miracles of 
 healing frequently recorded. Over and over again 
 
 1 John xiv.-xvi. 
 
 2 iv. 8, 31. 
 
 116 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 is it said " He was filled with the Holy Spirit/' 
 as of St. Stephen, 1 St. Paul, 2 the disciples, 3 or 
 that an action was commanded by the Holy Spirit ; 
 as when He tells St. Philip to join himself to the 
 Ethiopian Eunuch, and later takes him away ; 4 
 tells St. Peter to go to Cornelius, making no dis- 
 tinction between Jew and Gentile ; 5 reveals to 
 Agabus the coming of a great famine, and the 
 imprisonment of St. Paul; 6 orders St. Paul and 
 St. Barnabas to undertake a tour of missionary 
 work ; 7 guides the council at Jerusalem to their 
 decision on the thorny question of the Mosaic 
 Law ; 8 directs St. Paul on his route ; 9 testifies to 
 him that everywhere " bonds and afflictions " 
 await him ; 10 helps him in solving the current 
 difficulties of his work ; n appoints the bishops to 
 their charges. 12 
 
 Not only was the power of the Spirit revealed in 
 beneficence and changed lives and daily guiding ; 
 it was seen, also, in judgment. Ananias and 
 Sapphira are struck dead for their dishonesty, for 
 " lying to the Holy Spirit " and for " tempting the 
 Spirit of the Lord " ; 13 and Elymas is struck with 
 blindness ; 13 at Corinth one offender is formally 
 delivered " to Satan for the destruction of the 
 flesh, that the Spirit may be saved in the day of the 
 Lord Jesus," by " the power of the Lord Jesus." 15 
 
 1 vii. 55. 2 ix. 17, 21, 22, cf. ix. 31. 3 xiii. 52. 
 
 4 viii. 29, 39. 5 xi. 12. 6 xi. 28, xxi. 11. 
 
 7 xiii. 2. 8 xv. 28. 9 xvi. 6, 7, xxi. 4. 
 
 10 xx. 23. " 1 Cor. vii. 40. 12 xx. 28. 
 
 13 v. 1-11. 14 xiii. 9. 15 1 Cor. v. 4. 
 
 117 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 The same power and Presence was revealed 
 visibly, both to believers and unbelievers alike. 
 St. Peter can appeal in the Sanhedrim to the Holy 
 Spirit as evidence for the truth of the Christian 
 claim ; x at Confirmations it is evident that some 
 outward sign was given as well as the inward 
 grace, 2 doubtless the same phenomena to which 
 St. Paul alludes in Rom. xv. 19 (those things 
 " which Christ wrought through me ... in the 
 power of the Holy Spirit "), and those discussed at 
 length by him in 1 Cor. xii.-xiv. 
 
 It was this newly-found power which so trans- 
 formed the lives of Christians, and transformed 
 life for them. They proved in actual experience 
 the truth of their Master's words ; they were 
 " born again from above " ; there was " a new 
 creation " ; the " Bread of Life," and the " Water 
 of Life " were both constant and more than satisfy- 
 ing ; He gave them above all that they dared ask 
 or think. And this fresh, novel, and absolutely 
 convincing experience they ascribed solely to the 
 coming of the Holy Spirit ; He was, indeed, to 
 them an ever-present companion and guide, the 
 source of their knowledge and inspiration, but, 
 above all, the giver of that power which enabled 
 them to face, resist, and overcome the world, and 
 the mediator of a life which was " life indeed/ ' 3 
 
 Is it permissible to identify this coming of the 
 
 1 v. 32. 
 
 2 viii. 18, xix. 6, cf. x. 44. 
 
 3 Cf. Von. Dobschiitz, pp. 21, 22. 
 
 118 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 Holy Spirit with the Parousia of Christ, to see in 
 Pentecost the fulfilment of His words about the 
 coming of the Kingdom ? Evidence has already 
 been adduced 1 for giving a present instead of a 
 future meaning to those words, and if the suggestion 
 can be upheld it would provide a welcome relief 
 from weary longings and discontent, do much to 
 rebut the charge of " other-worldliness " levelled 
 against the Church by the world, and also provide 
 Christian people with, in many cases, a much 
 needed stimulus, as well as resolving the difficulties 
 connected with our Advent Hymns. 
 
 Let us again recall and emphasise what has been 
 said already about growth and development. It 
 can be traced steadily throughout the teaching of 
 the prophets in the Old Testament, in the Apoca- 
 lyptists ; and in Our Lord's case there is a remark- 
 able development and refining of the traditional 
 teaching. His tendency is from the particular to 
 the general, from the material to the ethical and 
 spiritual, from small issues to great ones, from 
 narrow to world-wide. The same tendencies are 
 clearly traceable in the rest of the New Testament, 
 side by side with the gradually weakening con- 
 ceptions of traditional Judaism. And it must be 
 remembered also, what the traditional Judaism 
 really implied. We do it great wrong if we interpret 
 it as intended au pied de la lettre. The strange 
 terms and fancies of Jewish apocalyptic were due 
 to the desire to express unworldly and non-material 
 
 1 Pp. 81 ff. 
 
 119 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 conceptions ; * they themselves imply and desire 
 a spiritual and transcendental interpretation. Such 
 thoughts like the 1,000 years, the regular cycles, the 
 pre-determined periods, the mathematical element, 
 such as are met with frequently — (cf. Ezek. iv. 6 ; 
 Dan. ix. 2, 24, xi. 29, xii. 7, 11 ; 4 Ezra iv. 36 
 (and note), vii. 30, 43, xiv. 11 (12 " periods ") ; 
 
 1 Enoch xc. 1, 5, xci. 12-17 (10 " weeks "), xciii. ; 
 
 2 Bar. xxvii. 1, liii. (12 " clouds) ; T. Levi xvii. 11 
 (7 "weeks"); Sib. iv. 47 (" generations "). In 
 1 Enoch the world lasts 10,000 years ; in 2 Enoch, 
 7,000 years) — all imply perfection, eternity : and 
 the notions of a new heaven and a new earth clearly 
 mean that of a universe fashioned on a higher 
 plane than this, above the usual limits of matter 
 and space. There is no doubt that the Kingdom 
 of Heaven, both in Jewish thought and Our Lord's 
 teaching, is something transcendental. 2 Neither 
 may we neglect the ethical element which is no less 
 prominent. A religion which could assert, at a 
 later date : "If Israel repent but for one day, 
 forthwith will the Messiah come," 3 cannot be 
 charged with the accusation of materialism or 
 legalism as its sole characteristic. Jewish thought 
 was itself growing more refined, more ethical, more 
 spiritual, when Our Lord came to crown it. The 
 contradictions and absurdities of apocalyptic proved 
 that its development was still going on ; and as 
 
 1 See pp. 55 ff. 
 
 2 Cf. Tyrrell, Christianity at the Cross Roads, p. 114. 
 
 3 Pesikta, 163b. 
 
 120 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 Dr. Charles says, x apocalyptic passed over into and 
 was superseded by Christianity, while legalism 
 developed into Rabbinism. The dryness of the 
 latter proves the existence in apocalyptic of a 
 permanent value, and its (the latter's) need of 
 further development and progress. 
 
 This development and progress were not denied 
 to either Christ's Gospel or Judaism. 
 
 At Pentecost, and in the days subsequent to it, 
 was a manifestation of divine power, unparalleled 
 and unsuspected, which influenced men and women 
 of all ages, races, grades, capacities. It conveyed 
 to them a sense of power, and of joy, which they 
 had not experienced before, and never entirely left 
 them. It was proved in the same sort of way as 
 it had been in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth : 
 they were able to work miracles of healing, in some 
 cases to raise the dead : they were able to face 
 torture and death for the sake of their Master ; 
 their preaching had marvellous results ; men's 
 lives were transformed. The presence of the 
 kingship of God was no less real now than in the 
 days of Jesus ; and it was of infinitely greater and 
 wider extent. There was no re-organisation of 
 human society, no over-throwing of human author- 
 ities, no shifting of the " balance of power " ; there 
 was no cataclysm of nature, and no visible throne 
 of judgment, with its attendant angels. But a 
 new authority was recognised, and honoured, which 
 transcended human authorities ; nature bowed her 
 
 1 Pseudep. II, p. vii. 
 
 121 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 head to this Power : there were actual outward 
 signs of His Presence, and still more of His working ; 
 and each man's heart and conscience became his 
 court of trial, and he registered his own verdict, 
 when he faced and answered the question : " Is 
 Jesus Lord, or Anathema ? " x 
 
 This was, indeed, a reality ; and entirely in 
 keeping with Our Lord's words. Not only was it 
 the direct and speedy fulfilment of His words about 
 the Holy Spirit, but it gave the answer to others, 
 that those who stood by should not taste death 
 until they had seen the kingdom of God come with 
 power, 2 and that " all these things " should happen 
 within the present generation. 3 Still more was it a 
 distinct advance, the logical and natural outcome 
 of His teaching ; it was a spiritual phenomenon, 
 which completed the process of the transference of 
 man's interest in life from the material to the 
 spiritual, of which His Resurrection Body was the 
 stepping-stone. " It is expedient for you that I 
 go away ; for if I go not away, the Comforter will 
 not come unto you," i.e., it was the life of the soul, 
 and His Presence and Rule there, that Christ 
 would teach as the one essential. Not that man 
 had neglected the spiritual ; but it was part of 
 Christ's mission to demonstrate that the spiritual 
 was the only reality, transcending if utilising the 
 
 1 1 Cor. xii. 3. 
 
 2 Mk. ix. 1 ; the variations in the other Gospels do 
 not affect the point. 
 
 3 Matt. xxiv. 34, cf. x. 23 : " Ye shall not have gone 
 through the cities of Israel, till the Son of Man be come." 
 
 122 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 material ; His Resurrection Body was, humanly 
 speaking, necessary in order to convince His dis- 
 ciples of His identity and uninterrupted existence ; x 
 His Ascension demonstrated to them (in the simple 
 obvious way which they were alone able to com- 
 prehend) that He had returned to " Heaven," the 
 spiritual sphere ; and Pentecost showed them and 
 the world that His Kingdom, which He had already 
 claimed as present, was no less present or effective, 
 even if He were not Himself visibly and bodily 
 present, rather even that it was more widely spread 
 and more effective than it had been heretofore. 
 
 It may be objected that this means a " confound- 
 ing of Persons " ; but we must bear in mind that 
 Our Lord practically identified the coming of the 
 Holy Spirit with His own coming, as reported by 
 St. John, cf. xiv. 16 ff. : " I will pray the Father, 
 and He shall give you another Helper, that He may 
 be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth ; . . . 
 
 1 It is a mistake to argue that Our Lord's Resurrection 
 Body implies that we shall have similar bodies " in heaven/ ' 
 We have not the same necessity as He, and His Body was 
 a temporary expedient, partaking of both the material 
 and the spiritual elements, designed to help the disciples 
 pass from the one to the other. That it was only a tem- 
 porary expedient is seen by His non-appearance after the 
 Ascension. The " Resurrection Body " of St. Paul in 
 1 Cor. xv. means a medium of self-expression and self- 
 manifestation in social intercourse. That life in the 
 Kingdom is social is evident from many passages ; and as 
 we cannot conceive intercourse without a " body/' he is 
 driven to use the contradictory phrase " spiritual body " 
 in order to express this truth. A purely spiritual existence 
 we cannot, of course, as yet understand. (Tyrrell, op. cit., 
 p. 150.) 
 
 123 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 He abideth with you, and shall be in you ... I will 
 not leave you fatherless {lit., orphans), I come 
 unto you." This passage and others in the same 
 section clearly bring out the unity of the Trinity, 
 so that whatever can be predicated of the Godhead 
 can be predicated of each, and the working of the 
 Spirit is as much a part of the kingship of God as 
 were Christ's miracles or His Resurrection. * 
 
 If it be objected, again, why did not the Early 
 Church, then, hold that the kingdom had already 
 come, it must be answered that they did so hold 
 (see the passages quoted above Ch. Ill) ; the fact of 
 the Church's acceptance of the Fourth Gospel 
 shows the same ; and the reason why they still 
 looked for the visible return of Christ with the 
 clouds of Heaven was that He had used those and 
 similar words, and they had not yet been able to 
 dissociate His inner thought from the language in 
 which He clothed it ; their experiences were too 
 overwhelming, their problems too urgent, for them 
 to reflect as yet deeply as to what He really meant ; 
 and the traditional views were too deeply rooted 
 in their minds to be lightly laid by (cf. the import- 
 ance given to eschatology in the Gospels, and the 
 materialist background of the question in Acts 
 i. 6). 2 And it ill becomes us to blame or despise 
 them, if it has taken us so many centuries to 
 separate husk from kernel. 3 
 
 1 Cf. Foundations, p. 159. 
 
 2 Cf. Hastings, D C G, ii., p. 438a. 
 
 3 On the question whether the fall of Jerusalem marked 
 the end of the pre-Messianic age, see Terry, p. 248. 
 
 124 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 For that is the task of every student of the 
 Gospels, to discover if he can what was the inner 
 thought in Our Lord's mind, and the permanent 
 truth which His words were meant to express. 
 Literalism has often been condemned, but its 
 opposite has not always been carried out as 
 thoroughly or as consistently as it should be. 
 
 And what is the kernel of Our Lord's teaching 
 about His Second Coming ? The husk we have 
 already seen much of (in Ch. I). Let us repeat 
 the traditional concepts ; a Day of the Lord, the 
 coming of a Son of Man who is also the Son, or at 
 least the representative, of God, a judgment, 
 rewards and punishments, the kingship of God, a 
 renewed heaven and earth, bliss and torment. 1 
 Clearly, the Day of God 2 stands for a crisis, when 
 the never-ending conflict of good and evil comes to 
 a head, and events take a definite turn, God asserting 
 and upholding His sovereignty. (The portents pre- 
 dicted in the natural world are meant as evidences 
 of God's power and presence, and as signs of the 
 importance of the times.) Normally, one would 
 not think of more than one " Day of God " ; but 
 experience shows that all human life may be divided 
 into " ages, epochs, eras," in which the tendencies 
 which reveal themselves in human nature and 
 history work and develop and grow, until matters 
 come to a head, and two conflicting ideals (not 
 always one entirely right and the other entirely 
 
 1 See above, pp. 58 ff. 
 
 2 The concept is discussed by Kennedy, p. 175 ; and 
 E. Bibl., pp. 1348 ff. 
 
 125 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 wrong) stand face to face, and in conflict the issue 
 is settled one way or the other, for good or for 
 evil. In Israelitish history there are the Patriarchal 
 Period, the time of the Sojourn in Egypt, the Exodus 
 and Wandering, the Judges, the Single and the 
 Dual Monarchies, the Captivities, the Return, the 
 Persian, Greek, and Roman rules, and so on. In 
 English history we talk of the Saxon and Norman 
 periods, the Plantagenets and the Tudors, the 
 Caroline and Jacobean periods, the Georges, the 
 Victorian Era. The termini are not always easily 
 definable, and the issues are not always clear (as 
 when the Norman period commences with the 
 Battle of Hastings in 1066, or the liberties of the 
 people with Magna Carta in 1215, or the breach 
 with Rome in 1537) ; but the tendencies are clearly 
 marked when viewed over a wide period, and it 
 may be truly said that each of these " ages " are 
 " consummated " or wound up to their conclusion, 
 by some definite act or acts on the part of the 
 leading men of the time. These acts, whether they 
 be battles, or statutes, or speeches, or books, or 
 deaths, or the inauguration of societies, are the 
 landmarks of history, and each in a sense is a Day 
 of God. Not that necessarily any moral issue is 
 involved, or to any unusual extent. Sometimes 
 there is ; the moral issue of August 4th, 1914, will 
 never be forgotten, or of June 15th, 1215. Undoubt- 
 edly, as Dr. Muirhead says, 1 the destruction of 
 Jerusalem marked the ending of a world-order, 
 
 1 Pp. 135 ff. 
 
 126 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 because then Christianity challenged and superseded 
 Judaism, and a new development supervened, 
 Judaism having its last chance, failing, and going 
 off into the barren tracts of Rabbinism. Whenever 
 eternal principles of right and wrong are at issue, 
 it is, of course, a Day of God. But in all human 
 activity God has His interest ; and whether the 
 decision be for human welfare or the reverse, He 
 is no less concerned in the " Day." The phrase is 
 most appropriate where the issue is clearest, as a 
 matter of right and wrong, and where the result is 
 to uphold the right, to the subsequent progress of 
 the world. x 
 
 We must not be too literal in our application of 
 the word " day " ; but what could have been a 
 greater Day of God than the time when His own 
 Son accepted the limitations of human life, faced 
 evil and conquered it, faced the world and its 
 persecution, faced death and triumphed, and 
 vindicated Himself by sending His Spirit, with the 
 transforming of human beings into His own likeness 
 and the transferring to them of His own power ? 
 Humanity has accepted His version of the " Day of 
 the Lord " by dating her history by the traditional 
 date of His Birth. 
 
 A Judgment. Jews and Christians are not alone 
 in this conception. All the world over, among 
 primitive peoples as well as advanced, are found 
 notions of a final judgment, when the good shall be 
 
 1 Cf. the interpretation of history given by Bp. Walpole, 
 Ch. iv; Foundations, p. 121. 
 
 127 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 rewarded and the wicked punished. In Egyptian 
 religion, Osiris is judge ; in Buddhism, Yama is 
 king of righteousness, and before him men give an 
 account of their lives ; in the Classics, we have 
 Minos and Rhadamanthus ; and the thought 
 appears in Zoroastrianism, in Borneo, among the 
 North American Indians, in Brahmanism, in the 
 Greek Mysteries, and in the teaching of Pythagoras. 
 It is implied in the conceptions of the Aeschylean 
 drama. It is involved in the fact of human free- 
 will, for there can be no responsibility without a 
 calling to account. But why should we deem 
 ourselves limited to a single final judgment ? Of 
 course, we unburden ourselves of the apocalyptic 
 details of the Great Assize ; it is the fact of the 
 judgment that the Church is committed to, not to 
 any particular mode of its administration. As a 
 matter of fact, we know from experience that there 
 are many days of judgment in human lives, both of 
 nations and of individuals. When a people commit 
 themselves definitely to a policy, then and there 
 they pass judgment on themselves as wise or 
 foolish, as right or wrong ; and on such a decision 
 may turn the whole future of the nation ; it will 
 be rewarded or punished according to its decision ; 
 what it receives may be either material or moral 
 loss or gain, or it may be both ; in any case, some- 
 thing will happen to it ; it will reap the harvest 
 which it has sown. There is more than one crisis 
 in the life of a man (and does not crisis, Kptvcs, mean 
 judgment?). He judges himself, and his verdict 
 is recorded (if not by a Dore angel in a material 
 
 128 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 book, at all events by the Power who controls 
 affairs and traceable in the working out of those 
 affairs), when he chooses his profession, his wife, 
 his home, his friends, his recreations ; and, still 
 more, when he decides on the moral issues of life, 
 and takes sides, as he is compelled to do repeatedly, 
 with right or wrong. 1 
 
 Is it permissible to assign the title of the " Last 
 Day " to the time when he, or a nation, make the 
 decision which finally decides the tone and tendency 
 of their life, when they definitely choose right or 
 wrong, when they face clearly and honestly the 
 issue : " Christ, or Self and the World " ? There 
 is such one day of decision ; there is such one 
 turning-point in life, even if there be other lesser 
 decisions which lead up to or confirm it. There is 
 a time when a man first becomes aware, clearly 
 and without any possibility of mistake, that he has 
 got to choose, and does choose, between right and 
 wrong, and by this one decision his whole life is 
 governed. Is not this the counterpart to the 
 preaching of the Gospel to all nations, and the 
 coming of the end ? {i.e., a man hears the call and 
 challenge of Christ, either in the moral law, or the 
 message of the Church [if in a Christian country], 
 and some time or other he makes the decision) . 
 
 Once to every man and nation comes the challenge 
 
 to decide. 
 In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good 
 
 or evil side ; 
 
 1 Cf. Kennedy, p. 198 ; Winstanley, p. 373. 
 
 129 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 Some great cause, God's new Messiah, off ring each 
 
 the bloom or blight, 
 Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep 
 
 upon the right, 
 And the choice goes by for ever 'twixt that darkness 
 
 and that light. 1 
 
 He may have other chances, and he generally 
 does ; but must there not be one deciding oppor- 
 tunity, to which all others are subservient ? Perhaps 
 this helps us to understand the difficult passages, 
 Heb. vi. 4f£., 1 John v. 16 ("As touching those 
 who were once enlightened and tasted of the 
 heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the 
 Holy Spirit, and tasted the good word of God, and 
 the powers of the age to come, and then fell away, 
 it is impossible to renew them again unto repen- 
 tance/ 1 — " There is a sin unto death : not concern- 
 ing this do I say that he should make request ") ; 
 and perhaps this final decision, when made against 
 the right (that is, if a man is really capable of 
 making such a decision ; its possibility is undoubted, 
 but hardly its probability), is the sin against the 
 Holy Spirit, and unforgivable. Cf. : " The ' end ' 
 whensoever it may come, means for Him the time 
 when the process of historical development is 
 complete, when characters have become fixed, and 
 men are what they will be." 2 
 
 Thus, Christ's coming is perpetual. The actual 
 Second Coming was at Pentecost (the Early Church 
 called the Holy Spirit Christ's " Vicar;" cf. Tert. 
 
 1 J. R. Lowell. 
 
 2 Bruce, p. 318. 
 
 130 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 de Praescr. xiii., following John xiv. 16, 26) ; but 
 He comes repeatedly to men in all the crises of life. 
 He comes in the moral challenge then presented ; 
 He comes when the heavens are opened to a man's 
 soul and he has visions of God ; He comes in the 
 ideals of youth, and, indeed, of all ages ; He comes 
 whenever the conditions of Pentecost are repeated, 
 when a man receives or realises the receipt of the 
 Holy Spirit, either conveyed non-Sacramentally, or 
 in Baptism and Confirmation ; He comes in the 
 Holy Communion ; He comes in answer to prayer, 
 when His presence and power are claimed by the 
 devout soul ; He comes in visitation and in oppor- 
 tunity, in vocation and in trial ; He comes when 
 He upholds, working through history and the 
 normal events of life, the man's judgments of 
 himself, and awards reward or punishment accord- 
 ingly, whether material or spiritual, leading to bliss 
 or the reverse. * Not always is the coming foreseen 
 or expected ; it is usually the reverse. " In an 
 hour when ye think not the Son of Man cometh." 
 Those who have made history have seldom been 
 aware of it at the time ; so that the warning is 
 always needed — " Be ye ready, and watch." 
 
 And in all these comings He asserts His kingship ; 
 for He could not come and operate thus unless all 
 power were given Him in heaven and earth. C/. 
 Stevens, American Journal of Theology, Oct., 1902, 
 p. 677, quoted by Dr. Kennedy, p. 187 : " As the 
 kernel of the teaching about the Parousia is the 
 
 1 Cf. Winstanley, pp. 363 ff . ; Westcott, Historic Faith, 
 pp. 9 ff. ; Encycl. Britannica, ix, p. 764. 
 
 131 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 assurance of the triumph of Christ's kingdom, and 
 that concerning the Resurrection is the certainty 
 of immortality, so the teaching concerning judgment 
 centres in the principle that human life and action 
 bring forth fruit after their kind, and that every 
 man shall receive from God his just recompense 
 of reward." (And Charles, Eschatology, pp. 387, 8.) 
 Kennedy, p. 171, aptly quotes J. Weiss : " The 
 essential point in the preaching of Jesus is not the 
 greater or lesser nearness of the crisis, but the 
 thought that the Kingdom of God now comes with 
 absolute certainty/ ' 
 
 The kingship is implied in the portents foretold 
 in the natural world, and in the concept of a new 
 heaven and earth. The human mind can hardly 
 conceive, or at least cannot express, existence 
 except in terms of the visible universe ; and the 
 notion of a renewed heaven and earth was put 
 forward to denote life on a higher plane and to a 
 fuller degree, and freed from obvious current 
 limitations ; this was life as ascribed to God, and 
 as revealed in Christ ; His coming conveys this life 
 to men ; hence the " conditions " of life are trans- 
 formed. x So that the same thought really underlies 
 the figures in which Christ's " coming " is presented ; 
 it is called a kingship, and salvation, and heaven, 
 and life ; and it means happiness for the good and 
 unhappiness for the bad ; it is necessarily expressed 
 in terms and concepts familiar to man's experience ; 
 but the central thought is the same, and perhaps the 
 
 1 Cf. Beet, p. 106. 
 
 132 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 most satisfying description is that of the Fourth 
 Gospel: "Life." 
 
 There was no doubt of Christ's supremacy at 
 Pentecost, or in the days of the Early Church ; * 
 and in every age since have men owned Him as 
 King, and His kingship has been shown in the 
 conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit, in changed 
 lives, in lives devoted to His work of healing and 
 preaching " the Gospel of the Kingdom." If the 
 Church and the Kingdom cannot be identified, if 
 they are not coterminous, at least the kingdom is 
 manifested in and is extended by the Church. 2 
 
 This perpetual coming of Christ finds illustration 
 in the well-known commonplace, that " History 
 repeats itself," and in the equally common sentiment 
 that there are no days like " the good old days." 
 Examples are superfluous ; but it is well to give 
 the reason for these two persistent thoughts. And 
 the reason is this : that human nature, and the 
 subject-matter, so to speak, of human life, never 
 vary, but are always constant. Their combinations 
 and permutations are endless in their variety ; the 
 externals of life are for ever changing and develop- 
 ing, and are for ever being mistaken by the men 
 of each generation for progress. But deep down 
 the elements of life do not vary ; there are good and 
 evil, God and man, the divine will and human free- 
 will, the divine nature and human nature, and 
 what goes to make up the material world and human 
 
 1 Cf. p. 108. 
 
 2 Cf. Robertson, p. 57. 
 
 133 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 society, through which operate the divine purpose 
 and human activities. And the eternal tussle of 
 good versus evil never slackens ; God's purpose 
 never varies, nor His Love and desire to draw man 
 into it ; and man, although in situations and under 
 conditions infinitely varying and never quite the 
 same, has to face the same temptation and hear 
 the same call. It is not strange that his responses 
 to these should resemble each other, though outward 
 conditions and times vary. * 
 
 And in every age there are those who come to 
 the fore, and distinguish themselves for their 
 excellence. And because they excel, they in many 
 cases survive, and their influence is greater and 
 more lasting ; while lesser men disappear and are 
 forgotten. At bottom, no one is better necessarily 
 than another, although some generations will 
 always be better than others ; the laudator temporis 
 acti merely remembers the good and forgets the 
 inferior ; and comparing past with present, the 
 inferior (always the more numerous) of his own day 
 force themselves upon his notice, so that he argues 
 (falsely) that in the old times the proportions were 
 not so unequal. The praise of what is " old- 
 fashioned " is based upon just the same mistake. 
 The excellent in each age are remembered, and 
 compared regretfully with the present imagined lack 
 of excellence ; and because the outward setting 
 of the two ages varies, the excellence is (falsely) 
 ascribed to the previous age. As a matter of fact, 
 
 1 C/. Bp. Walpole, p. 38. 
 
 134 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 the excellent of one age would excel in any and all ; 
 and no age is without those who excel. They are 
 always visible to those who have eyes to see, and 
 they are seen, in great contrast, when their own 
 age has passed or is passing away. 
 
 Progress, as generally understood, is sadly mis- 
 conceived. " The European talks of progress 
 because, by the aid of a few scientific discoveries, 
 he has established a society which has mistaken 
 comfort for civilisation. ,, l " The great test of 
 progress is not mechanical or scientific discovery, 
 or even social conditions improved by legislation, 
 but happiness resting on virtue." 2 
 
 In the outward things of human culture and 
 civilisation, in the organisation of human affairs 
 and the development of bodily powers and activ- 
 ities, the twentieth century cannot, of course, 
 compare with the eighteenth, let alone the first. 
 But has any advance in the spheres of religion 
 and ethics ever been made upon the dictum of 
 Samuel : " To obey is better than sacrifice, and 
 to hearken than the fat of rams ; for rebellion is 
 as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as 
 idolatry and teraphim " ; 3 upon Micah's words : 
 " What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do 
 justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
 with thy God ? " ; 4 or upon Deut. vi. 4 : " Hear, 
 
 1 Disraeli. 
 
 2 The Faith and the War, p. 69, cf. 110, 120 ; and cf. 
 Wordsworth, Sonnet 46. 
 
 3 1 Sam. xv. 22. 
 
 4 vi. 8. 
 
 135 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 O Israel : the Lord our God is one Lord : and 
 thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine 
 heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might "? 
 Such standards cannot be bettered, and any age 
 can rise to the same height, and any man, just as 
 history has recently shown it possible for even 
 nations to revert to the level of the days of the 
 Book of Judges. Progress is not a matter of age 
 or time ; it is a matter of inward attitude ; and 
 consists in the approach of men and of peoples 
 to the standards laid down for all time ; they pro- 
 gress according as they approximate to these 
 standards, and in proportion to the number of 
 those who do so individually. 
 
 This explains why the Bible maintains its force 
 and its power ; why, in spite of its obvious limita- 
 tions of time and space, of civilisation and culture, 
 it still retains its appeal and its hold on men's 
 minds ; why it is a Book for all time, as well as 
 the record of many ages. It is true of it what 
 William James said of mystical classics, that they 
 " have neither birthday nor native land ; their 
 speech antedates language, and they do not grow 
 old." This is why Jesus Christ is truly Son of 
 Man, and why Christianity is the truly Catholic 
 faith, for all men, all times, and all places ; because 
 He bears witness to and upholds eternal standards 
 and values, which find their response in the heart 
 and conscience of men. 1 
 
 1 Cf. Rashdall, Conscience and Christ, Lecture I, esp. 
 p. 30. 
 
 136 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 And the same truth explains another strange 
 phenomenon, which bears closely on our subject, 
 the fact that prophecy and apocalyptic are for 
 ever being viewed as fulfilled in the present genera- 
 tion. Human ingenuity must have gone near to 
 exhausting itself in its endeavours to show how the 
 Book of Daniel or the second chapter of 2 Thessa- 
 lonians have been fulfilled in each successive age 
 of Christian history. The desire to obtain precise 
 fulfilment first found expression in the Synoptists' 
 application of Our Lord's words to the destruction 
 of Jerusalem, and their mention of the portents at 
 His death, and the last two years have seen a large 
 recrudescence of the same endeavour. The " Man 
 of Sin " has been successively regarded as Nero, 
 Julian the Apostate, Mahomet, Luther, Calvin, the 
 Pope, Napoleon I, and, doubtless, the Kaiser of 
 to-day. The " thousand years " of Rev. xx. has 
 given rise to the wildest chilisatic speculations. 1 
 Dan. xii. 4 (" many shall run to and fro, and know- 
 ledge shall be increased ") has been interpreted in 
 terms of motor-cars and Education Bills. And, 
 indeed, it often needs no ingenuity to see the 
 application of a prophecy. Attention has been 
 called recently to 4 Ezra xi. (the vision of the 
 Eagle coming up out of the sea, and condemned 
 by the Lion speaking with a man's voice), and its 
 curious and striking appropriateness to the two 
 European nations represented in current symbolism 
 by those two animals ; cf. vv. 40 ff. — 
 
 1 See Dahle, p. 230. 
 
 137 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 " Thou hast wielded power over the world with 
 
 great terror, 
 And over all the inhabited earth with grievous 
 
 oppression ; 
 Thou hast dwelt so long in the civilised world 
 
 with fraud, 
 And hast judged the earth (but) not with 
 
 faithfulness ; 
 For thou hast afflicted the meek, 
 
 and oppressed the peaceable ; 
 Thou hast hated the upright, 
 
 and loved liars ; 
 Thou hast destroyed the strongholds of the 
 
 fruitful, and laid low the walls of such as 
 
 did thee no harm — 
 And so thine insolence hath ascended to the 
 
 Most High and thy pride to the Mighty 
 
 One. 
 Then the Most High regarded his times — 
 
 and lo ! they were ended; 
 And his ages — 
 
 (and) they were fulfilled. 
 Therefore shalt thou disappear, O Eagle, 
 
 and thy horrible wings, 
 
 and thy little wings most evil, 
 
 Thy harm-dealing heads, 
 
 Thy hurtful talons, 
 
 and all thy worthless body ! 
 And so the whole earth, freed from thy 
 
 violence, shall be refreshed again, and hope 
 
 for the judgment and mercy of Him that 
 
 made her." 
 
 138 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 Another passage, of painful fitness, is Sib. iii. 
 520 ff. : " But whensoever a numerous barbarian 
 race shall fall upon the Greeks, it shall destroy 
 many heads of picked men, and many of men's 
 fat flocks shall they ravish, and herds of horses and 
 mules and lowing oxen. And well-built houses 
 shall they lawlessly burn with fire. And many 
 miserable wights shall they carry by force as slaves 
 to another land, children and tender deep-girdled 
 women, snatched from their chambers and with 
 delicate feet falling forward. They shall see them 
 in bonds at the hand of strange-tongued foes suffering 
 every horror of outrage/ ' 
 
 And apart from passages of this character and 
 the curiosities of their historical adaptations, who 
 will deny the perennial appropriateness of the 
 words of Isaiah and Amos and others, when dealing 
 with the social and political problems and short- 
 comings of their own age ? They have supplied 
 preachers in every age and country with themes, 
 and reformers with inspiration, because they deal 
 not only with local conditions but with eternal 
 verities. 
 
 Such prophecy is easily applied in most ages, 
 because " history repeats itself," because human 
 nature is what it is, because the eternal conflict of 
 good and evil never slackens, and from time to 
 time breaks out and convulses the world, evil 
 impersonating itself in some human leader, and the 
 evil passions of men being let loose in war and all 
 its attendant horrors. The passages are always 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 applicable (in general terms), because man's con- 
 viction that right must win never fails, nor does 
 his faith in God ever desert him. And herein lies 
 the permanent value of eschatology, that it arouses 
 and fixes man's attention on these essentials of 
 life, the Supremacy of God, man's Responsibility 
 and consequent Judgment, the sole reality of the 
 transcendental and spiritual, the possibility of 
 perfection, of the realisation of ideals, of " eternal 
 life," and of the final victory of good over evil. 
 Eschatology is, therefore, a necessary part of the 
 Christian creed, as both a stimulus, a warning, a 
 hope, an encouragement, and an inspiration. x 
 (Note. — It is man's instinctive sense of this that 
 has given rise to another commonplace : " Things 
 must get worse before they are better " ; i.e., men 
 realise that " both must grow together until the 
 harvest," that evil and good must each run their 
 course, and that a crisis is necessary before the 
 issue is decided. " When these things begin to 
 come to pass, look up, and lift up your heads ; 
 because your redemption draweth nigh." " The 
 darkest hour is just before the dawn.") 
 
 1 Cf. Tyrrell, Christianity at the Cross Roads, pp. 173, 
 205-6 ; and above, p. 57. 
 
 140 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Although hinted at, 1 we have not yet reached 
 that which will solve many of the difficulties 
 connected with this question. The New Testament 
 speaks of the kingdom as both present and future ; 
 and undoubtedly at Pentecost and subsequently 
 the kingship of Christ was evident in a very marked 
 degree. It has been suggested that the Parousia 
 is a perpetual process, conditioned by moral and 
 spiritual factors more than by time and historic 
 sequence. Is not the time-element the stumbling- 
 block and the hindrance to our interpretation of 
 Christ's words ? Undoubtedly, His disciples thought 
 in terms of time ; witness their question : " When 
 shall those things be ? " and it is this that has 
 caused the seeming confusion in their writings, and 
 the concurrent presentation of the kingdom as both 
 present and future. They could not evade the 
 moral and spiritual ; neither could they divest 
 themselves of the limitations of time. But who 
 can ? At least, who can do so entirely ? All our 
 life is cut up into time-sequences ; if these periods 
 grow longer as we get older, it is no less a fact that 
 our thoughts and acts are dominated by time ; it 
 is one of the dimensions which bound our life. 
 At times there are those who, like St. Paul, are 
 rapt, and dwell for a while in a higher sphere ; 
 and St. John's teaching generally possesses the 
 
 1 P. 68. 
 
 141 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 feature of timelessness in a remarkable degree ; 
 but even they are compelled to come to earth again 
 and to submit to the limitations of time and space 
 and matter. 
 
 Yet there is no doubt that if we can eliminate 
 time from our thoughts, we get close to the heart 
 of the matter ; we a see life steadily and see it 
 whole," sub specie aeternitatis ; we approach very 
 near to the point of view of God. 1 " We think 
 too much of time and space in connection with 
 eternal life. The I aims at elevation above all 
 such conditions, so as to be more closely united 
 with the eternal. Its development is in the feeling 
 of such independence as tends to make it more 
 and more a self-conscious entity beyond the reach 
 of outward limit ations." 2 Time is a limitation, 
 undoubtedly, but we gradually pass beyond it. 
 The child's outlook is bounded by lesson-time and 
 playtime, school-time and holiday. The mature 
 man thinks of youth and maturity and old age 
 (i.e., he uses longer periods, when thinking of him- 
 self) ; and he takes a wide view of history and 
 human activity, extending even to such vague and 
 vast periods like " Ice," " Stone," and " Protozoic " 
 ages or epochs. There is no doubt that, as we get 
 
 1 Cf. Muirhead, p. 107, who says that the ethical nature 
 of Christ's teaching removes the time-element ; it is " for 
 all time " and beyond and above time, and it is this fact 
 which makes Our Lord's teaching more than an inter- 
 imsethik ; cf. Rashdall, Conscience and Christ, pp. 62 fit., 71 ; 
 Foakes-Jackson, The Faith and the War, p. 200, Essay by 
 Mr. Emmet. 
 
 2 Davidson, p. 159. 
 
 142 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 old, we become less sensible to the lapse of time ; 
 it means less to us, we are less affected by it. And 
 this because earth's joys are felt to be limited and 
 unsatisfying, because we see deeper and rise higher ; 
 we prove the truth of St. Paul's words that the 
 things seen are temporal, but the unseen eternal ; 
 we, in a sense, rise above and transcend time, 
 because we both outgrow it as well as escape from 
 its bondage. The truly devout soul, in contrast 
 to the " natural man," who only outgrows time 
 without escaping its bondage, experiences what he 
 has probably already tasted in earlier days, and on 
 a lower plane, and finds in the bliss of the divine 
 love that time is no more — 
 
 With thee conversing I forget all time, 
 All seasons and their change. 
 
 That is to say, time is no more, because we have 
 risen above it ; it is ended by being transcended ; 
 and what we call eternity has taken its place, a 
 concept which includes all the phenomena and 
 content of life, moral and spiritual and aesthetic, 
 as well as material. 
 
 The days and hours are ever glancing by, 
 And seem to flicker past thro' sun and shade 
 Or short, or long, as Pleasure leads, or Pain ; 
 But with the Nameless is nor Day nor Hour ; 
 Tho' we, thin minds, who creep from thought to 
 
 thought, 
 Break into " Thens " and " Whens " the Eternal 
 
 Now : 
 This double seeming of the single world ! x 
 
 1 Tennyson, " The Ancient Sage." 
 
 143 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 Compare, for an example of this as a practical 
 working faith as opposed to a mere theory or ideal, 
 the remarkable words written home from France 
 by Lieut. W. G. Gladstone, in his last letter before 
 his death : " It is not the length of existence that 
 counts, but what is achieved during that existence, 
 however short " ; a similar sentiment to — 
 
 A crowded hour of glorious life 
 Is worth an age without a name ; 
 
 and both implying the supremacy of what is 
 immaterial over the time-element. 
 
 " Such familiar problems as the infinity of space 
 and time, the nature of time-succession, and the 
 relation of subject and object, suggest very cogently 
 that the world as known to science must be only an 
 abstract view of reality. More especially, perhaps, 
 does our faculty for transcending time in our 
 thoughts convince us that our minds are not in 
 time, but, rather, time in them ; and so we are 
 led on to the idea of eternity. Our spiritual faculty, 
 weak and fitful as it is, strongly supports the belief 
 that the real world is an eternal, immaterial world 
 which reflects the whole counsels of the Creator, 
 while the world of space and time was created as 
 a sphere for the working out of God's finite pur- 
 poses — His thoughts shaping themselves as acts of 
 will. So our hearts' true home is in a sphere where 
 change and chance cannot hurt us." 
 
 " It is simply not the fact that, in our experience 
 of it, one hour or one day is as long as any other. 
 
 144 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 The " length " of time depends not on the clock, 
 but, once more, on the inner self. ' It seemed an 
 age/ ' It seemed no time ' — these common phrases 
 are admissions of the relative unreality of time as 
 an element in the measure of life in the true human 
 sense. . . . Life at its highest human level, which 
 is the highest reality we know, can only be measured 
 by intensity, not by what one might call ' area,' 
 nor yet by mere duration. . . . Eternity is not an 
 infinite extension of time, but, if you will, the 
 existence without limit of a state of affairs in which 
 time is forgotten. Imagine a set of circumstances 
 in which, for sheer joie de vivre, you ' forget time ' ; 
 imagine that all the factors in the situation thus 
 created, yourself among them, remain constant, or 
 constantly self-adapting to their whole environ- 
 ment, so that no change for the worse at any 
 point can remind you that you have forgotten it, 
 by ' calling you back to earth/ as the phrase is ; 
 and you get some faint idea of what is meant by 
 ' Eternity/ and ' Heaven/ and ' Eternal Life/ " * 
 
 (It is worthy of note that the apocalyptists 
 conceived of "a time when time should be no 
 more " ; 2 Enoch xxxiii. 2 speaks of " a time of 
 not-counting, endless, with neither years nor months 
 nor weeks nor days nor hours." C/. 2 Baruch 
 xvii. 1 : " With the Most High account is not 
 taken of much time nor of a few years " ; xlviii. 13 : 
 "But with Thee hours are as a time and days as 
 
 1 Foakes- Jackson, The Faith and the War, Essays by 
 Dr. Inge, p. 108, and Mr. Burroughs, p. 169 ; cf. F. R. 
 Barry, Religion and the War, pp. 58, 83. 
 
 145 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 generations "-; li. 9 : " Time shall no longer age 
 them." And there is in the attitude of the prophets 
 generally an elimination of time, a foreshortening of 
 view. So convinced are they of the ultimate 
 triumph of righteousness and the supremacy of 
 God that already they see these realised in the very 
 near future. The brightness of their vision blinds 
 them to the darker side of the picture, as when to 
 the pilgrim Christian the glory of the Heavenly 
 City hides the difficulties of the country which 
 must be traversed before it can be reached. See 
 Tyrrell, p. 172; A. E. J. Rawlinson, Dogma, Fact, 
 and Experience, pp. 150 ff .) 
 
 For life includes time, even if life be subject in a 
 measure to its limitations. The same kind of thing 
 happens here as at the Incarnation of Jesus Christ — 
 the unlimited becomes to a certain degree limited, 
 and the non-material subject to the restrictions of 
 earth ; the transcendent is also immanent. Yet 
 like the other paradox that nature is ruled only by 
 being obeyed, life triumphs over time, and slips 
 from its grasp. To God, the Supreme, even if 
 there be progress, life must be in a sense static 
 (with Him a thousand years are as one day) ; we 
 cannot get behind the belief that God Is, and that 
 His existence is one eternal Now. C/. Philo, 
 Quod Deus Sit Immut. 6 : " God is withdrawn from 
 both ends of Time. For His life is not so much 
 Time as Eternity (aloiv), the archetype and pattern 
 of Time. And in Eternity there is nothing past and 
 nothing future, but only present/' If the simile 
 may be pardoned, life and the world is like a vast 
 
 146 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 witch's cauldron, parts of which are now bubbling 
 up with tremendous energy, and parts quiescent ; 
 yet the immature and the mature, the vigorous 
 and the feeble, the active and the inactive, united 
 in a single whole, both in thought and act, which 
 is gradually reaching the desired condition intended 
 for it by its owner and controller. (See above, p. 68.) 
 Man resents strongly being told to wait for an 
 indefinite future, just as much as he resents the 
 childish and puerile conceptions of a visible return 
 on the clouds of heaven, as depicted by Jewish 
 apocalyptic and his Advent Hymns. The problems 
 of life are urgent ; they, at all events, are present, 
 and he wants immediate relief, or at least power to 
 meet and deal with them. His robuster nature 
 refuses to allow that they must all be met with a 
 quietism, and a pious hope that u in the next world M 
 things will be put right. He feels instinctively, 
 even if he does not accept St. Paul, that he is a 
 fellow-worker with God ; and he feels sure that 
 fellowship with God may be a present possession, 
 and that this will necessarily mean a present 
 possession of divine power and strength. Hence, 
 the rise and popularity, in all ages, of mystery- 
 cults ; and may we not confidently assert that the 
 present day popularity of mysticism, the growth 
 of " Christian Science/ 1 of philosophies bearing 
 such names as Pragmatism, Vitalism, of concepts 
 like " elan vital/' " evolution cr6atrice/' and the 
 writing of books like Bishop Chandler's Cult of the 
 Passing Moment, are due to this fundamental 
 demand of human nature, and to the Church's 
 
 147 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 mistaken policy of teaching people to look to the 
 future (which ever recedes), instead of helping them 
 to find the power and fellowship of God in the 
 present ? 
 
 If this suggestion, that Our Lord's Return, so 
 clearly foretold and promised by Him, be under- 
 stood as having taken place in the descent of the 
 Holy Spirit at Pentecost — and the suggestion is 
 not made solely on the writer's own authority : it 
 is supported both by Dr. Sanday (p. 115 : " What is 
 the essential meaning of the kingdom of God . . . 
 but the Apostolic doctrine of the Holy Spirit ? " ; 
 p. 122 : " I am inclined to believe — though this is 
 speculation, that I would not express otherwise 
 than very tentatively — that the real coming of the 
 Kingdom — the fact corresponding to it in the field 
 of ultimate realities — is what we are in the habit 
 of calling the work of the Holy Spirit, from the Day 
 of Pentecost onwards " *) ; and at least hinted at 
 by others ; if this suggestion be accepted, then 
 most of the difficulties connected with both the 
 interpretation of the M Second Advent " and its 
 practical issue disappear. 
 
 In the first place, it entirely solves the difficulties 
 about the non-fulfilment of Our Lord's words, that 
 His Return and the Coming of the Kingdom were 
 to be accomplished within the present generation. 2 
 We need not exercise ourselves because the disciples 
 
 1 Christologies, Ancient and Modern, p. 183. 
 
 2 Cf. p. 73. 
 
 148 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 did not realise this at the time, or fully. The 
 /3\clklk6v irados is common all through life; men hunt 
 for things long and fail to see them, though they 
 be rolling about at their feet all the time. x Virtutem 
 incolumem odimus. " He came unto His own, and 
 they that were His own received Him not." More 
 than once the Evangelists record that His disciples 
 f< understood not the saying " ; and it was some 
 time before they actually realised what and who 
 He was ; up to the very last they could not shake 
 off their prejudices and pre-suppositions. 2 We 
 have already seen that a double strand of inter- 
 pretation runs through the New Testament doctrine 
 of the Kingdom, and it is in one of the latest of the 
 New Testament writings, the Gospel of St. John, 
 that we find the most idealised and least material 
 and detailed interpretation of Our Lord's words. 
 This is all psychologically correct, and is just what 
 we need. 3 Historically, we are far removed from 
 the first disciples, and a long process of interpretation 
 and a vastly different experience lies between us. 
 If they were perplexed and mistaken at first, and 
 later came to a fuller and clearer perception of the 
 truth, it is for us to begin where they left off, not 
 where they began ; it is sheer blundering to make 
 their early mistakes and then think there is no way 
 out of the difficulty. Our modern way of thinking 
 tells us that a " Second Advent," in the literal, 
 
 1 Plat. Rep. 432^. 
 
 2 See Mark vi. 51, vii. 18, viii. 17, ix. 10, 32, x. 35 ; 
 Luke xxii. 24, xxiv. 25, 38 ; John xii. 16, xvi. 17 ; Acts i. 6. 
 
 3 Cf. Rashdall, op. cit., Lecture V, and pp. 167, 196. 
 
 149 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 sensuous, Jewish sense, is not needed, but would be 
 a reversion, something retrogressive instead of an 
 advance. a We do not want anything which would 
 resemble a second Incarnation ; neither does the 
 New Testament, when viewed and interpreted 
 rightly, tell us to expect it. The contradictions, 
 or, rather, the development, traceable in its pages, 
 are among the most noteworthy and helpful of its 
 features. The disciples who received and experi- 
 enced the power of the Holy Spirit were led by 
 Him nearer to the truth ; and if they did not in so 
 many words identify His coming with the coming 
 of the Christ in His kingdom, they did identify it 
 in thought and idea. And that they did not think 
 things out carefully and logically, and record their 
 conclusions in a Summa Theologiae, need not 
 surprise us ; a missionary Church has other, and 
 for the time being more important, work to do ; 
 and present enjoyment does not favour introspection 
 and reflection. 2 Later ages are called upon for 
 these, and the dispensation of the Spirit is not ended. 
 We cannot, alas ! claim the purity of the Apostolic 
 age, but we may claim that the number of Scribes 
 who have been made disciples to the Kingdom of 
 Heaven is not yet exhausted, or the power and 
 liberty to bring forth out of the Scriptural treasury 
 things new and old. Is not man's physiognomy 
 suggestive in this connection ? He possesses two 
 eyes and two ears, but only one mouth ; so that 
 he can see both sides of any question, and hear 
 
 1 Cf. Winstanley, p. 365. 
 
 2 Dr. Kennedy rightly emphasises this point. 
 
 150 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 two contradictory descriptions of it, but both are 
 combined in the expression of truth which he 
 utters. So often is the question raised " Which is 
 true, this ? or that ? " And the only answer which 
 will satisfy the claims of truth is " Neither, because 
 both." 1 
 
 Then, in the second place, this interpretation so 
 aptly meets the need of this, and, indeed, of every 
 age. No more practical doctrine could have been 
 invented or put forward. No teaching could more 
 attract and claim the allegiance of men, appeal to 
 their imaginations, enlist their sympathies, and 
 inspire their efforts. The coming of the Holy Spirit 
 literally worked wonders ; and the world could 
 not fail to take notice of it, or be attracted to it. 
 Even if we make allowance for the point of view 
 and the pardonable enthusiasm of the writer, we 
 cannot evade the impression given by Acts of the 
 infectious nature of Christianity ; it was a religion 
 that " worked," and worked quickly and amazingly, 
 and effectually ; lives were changed, powers were 
 conveyed, and false teaching collapsed and sur- 
 rendered. For centuries the lives of Christians and 
 the doings of the Church amazed mankind ; and 
 it is common history that the Gospel of Christ has 
 been the inspiration of all philanthropy, social 
 reform, and progressive civilisation. When the 
 Church's devotion to Christ waned, her grip of the 
 
 1 For the idea of a progressive revelation and the need 
 of experience for the interpretation of Christianity, see 
 Essay VI, by Canon J. M. Wilson, in Cambridge Theological 
 Essays (1905) ; and Rashdall, op. cit., Lect. V. 
 
 151 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 Holy Spirit weakened ; and religion became religi- 
 osity, it withdrew from the world and became a 
 thing apart, a thing either of mere speculation or 
 of monastic practice. Instead of facing life boldly, 
 and trying to leaven the world, men's devotion took 
 a wrong turn, became intensive instead of extensive ; 
 and despairing of this world, they dreamed of a 
 " sweet and blessed country " elsewhere ; and they 
 rightly incurred the just censure of being " other- 
 worldly/' Whereas in the first ages the activities 
 of Martha and Mary were rightly combined, in a 
 later time the Marys left the Marthas in the lurch, 
 so that Martha frequently now goes on her useful 
 way without regard to Jesus ; and Mary, lacking 
 the corrective of Martha's discipline, is painfully 
 worried about her own soul and the problems of 
 eternity, and not infrequently finds that the presence 
 of Jesus fails to satisfy and even irks. 
 
 For it must be carefully remembered that the 
 Kingdom is described in ethical terms, and this of 
 necessity pre-supposes human society, and, for the 
 present, this world. In the Prayer of the kingdom, 
 God's will is to be done on earth as it is in heaven ; 
 and we have no suggestion that the Prayer or the 
 efforts pre-supposed by it were to cease with Christ's 
 Return. x 
 
 In all ages, men need a religion that " works " ; 
 a religion that both bears fruit outwardly and also 
 satisfies inwardly. Life and life's problems and 
 necessities are only too urgent and real, and they 
 
 1 Cf. Von Hiigel, p. 62. 
 
 152 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 will neither wait nor be silenced. And as Martha 
 cannot really manage without Mary's way, so 
 neither will Mary's way satisfy unless conjoined 
 with Martha's. As Dr. MacNeile has so aptly 
 pointed out, 1 Martha and Mary represent not two 
 persons, but two essential sides of the same person, 
 without either of which the person is not complete. 
 And if we only realise the present and immediate 
 call of Christ in the presence of His Holy Spirit ; 
 if we only realise that every day, and every moment 
 of each day, is in varying degree, a Last Day, a 
 day of judgment, of decision, of crisis, the issue of 
 which inevitably affects both our own souls and the 
 human race for good or ill ; we shall neither find 
 life dull or unsatisfying, nor incur the charge of 
 being other-worldly. Men will tackle problems and 
 face life boldly, shoulder its burdens and respond 
 to its calls ; and, if history be any criterion, the 
 power of the Spirit will be no less real than as at 
 first ; and in the effort to " live dangerously," in 
 the full and active service and facing of the moment, 
 in the conscious power and presence of the Holy 
 Spirit, will be found a joie de vivre that has no 
 parallel. 
 
 No words can ever convince men of the reality 
 of the Holy Spirit ; only experiment and experience 
 can do this. The proof of religion, like that of 
 puddings and everything else, is in the tasting. 
 He who is convinced can only say : " O taste and 
 
 1 Self -training in Prayer, p. 37. 
 
 153 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 see that the Lord is good," knowing that if the 
 test is made honestly and faithfully the answer 
 will come : " Now we believe, not because of thy 
 speaking : for we have heard for ourselves, and 
 know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world." 
 
 Honestly and faithfully : because the Holy 
 Spirit is not perceptible except to sympathetic 
 natures, the Kingdom is not revealed except to 
 those willing and desirous to become its subjects. 
 " The natural (i.e., earthly) man receiveth not the 
 things of the Spirit of God, because they are spirit- 
 ually discerned." The temper and attitude of the 
 little child is the first requisite ; and then " He 
 that willeth to do His will shall know of the teach- 
 ing." To the nature that is severely critical, or 
 self-confident, or proud of its own attainments and 
 powers, or self-seeking, or enslaved to things of 
 earth, or impenitent, the ways of the Spirit are a 
 sealed book. There must be true harmony before 
 the responsive note is evoked. Christ's coming is 
 visible only to those who wish to see, and from 
 right motives. For " there are none so blind as 
 those who won't see " ; and all the efforts of 
 prophet and teacher will only make their heart fat 
 and their ears dull of hearing and close their eyes, 
 so that they shall not turn again and be healed. 
 
 And this perception is with us, as with the 
 disciples, progressive. We have to " follow on to 
 know the Lord." At first the vision may be 
 dazzling, and the conviction so forcible that the 
 memory of it is ineradicable ; but whether the 
 vision of the kingdom come as to St. Paul, or 
 
 154 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 whether it be but as the dawn, coming gradually 
 and fitfully, the knowledge and the experience of 
 Christ as come and coming in His Holy Spirit 
 grows with each new experience of life, and as 
 life unfolds its various possibilities, problems, and 
 activities, " It shineth more and more unto the 
 perfect day." None of us knows as yet "as he 
 ought to know " ; it is but " in part, and dimly " ; 
 but even such knowledge as we do possess warrants 
 the conviction that some day we shall know fully, 
 and " face to face." The divine lover finds that 
 to-day's love is indeed " a little more than yester- 
 day's, and a little less than to-morrow's." At all 
 events, the kingship of Christ is evident, and that 
 is the chief thing. It is evident from the pages of 
 Acts and the rest of the New Testament. It is 
 written and revealed all down the scroll of history ; 
 one stronghold of the world after another has given 
 way before Christ ; if a sufficiently broad and long 
 view be taken of human activity, there is no doubt 
 that progress in the true and right sense has been 
 and is being made. 1 It is recorded in human 
 biography, in the many " conversions " from the 
 world, the flesh, the devil, and self, to the service 
 of Christ, from giants like Saul of Tarsus, Augustine, 
 Francis of Assisi, to the humblest in the ranks of 
 the Salvation Army. It is for ever recurring in the 
 mission field, where sin and error and misery recede 
 before the armies of the Cross, as even the pages of 
 
 1 See essays by Miss Gardner and the Editor, in Foakes- 
 Jackson, The Faith and the War. 
 
 155 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 Government Blue Books show. It is as evident in 
 our own experience, the experience of those who 
 have taken God at His Word, who have long resisted 
 His voice, but have had to give in at the last, who 
 have traced His Hand weaving the web of their 
 lives — " the divinity that shapes our ends " — who 
 have had their prayers answered, who have been 
 delivered when nothing human could have availed 
 them, who have taken His yoke, and " found it 
 sweet to bear." 
 
 The " fellowship of the Holy Spirit " is not a 
 thing only for the future ; we need not wait for 
 death before we can enter heaven. (Does not our 
 catechism teach us that we are " inheritors of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven " ? and an inheritor is no 
 longer an heir, expectant ; he has received and 
 entered upon his heritage.) Wordsworth's beautiful 
 lament about heaven lying about us in our infancy, 
 and the shades of the prison-house then closing in 
 upon us, until the glory fades into the light of 
 common day, is at bottom quite wrong. There is 
 no essential need that the glory shall fade, and 
 heaven lies about us all our life ; it is only our own 
 sinfulness and the evil in the world and others 
 that drive away the glory — 
 
 Two worlds are ours ; 'tis only sin 
 
 Forbids us to descry 
 The mystic heaven and earth within, 
 
 Plain as the sea and sky. 1 
 
 1 Keble, Christian Year, Septuagesima. 
 
 156 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 Truth is many-sided ; she is free, and will not 
 be confined. And already she has asserted her 
 contraries, showing us that the kingdom is both 
 past, and present, and future. The New Testament 
 identifies the kingdom with " life," and life, in all 
 its senses and applications, involves growth and 
 progress and continuity. " The coming and king- 
 dom of Christ are in their nature a process, which 
 has definite historical beginning, but stretches on 
 indefinitely into future ages of ages." x As we 
 know it, life is subject to the time-element, even if 
 life be not a matter of length, or number of days, 
 a matter of 7r6io<; not 77-60-0?. Life is both in time 
 and above it, conditioned by it, yet transcending it. 
 "If we indulge in speculation, we may argue that 
 the static view of God in Himself is mistaken, and 
 that we ought to take a dynamic — God is not state 
 but process, not nature but purpose ; our theology 
 should be a teleology rather than an ontology." 2 
 Arist., Metaphysics xi, 10726 : " His activity, ever 
 busy with itself, constitutes His perfect and eternal 
 life. . . . God is an eternal perfect being, so that 
 life, and continuous eternal duration (alcov aovexys 
 zeal dihuos pertain to God, for God is indeed all this." 
 And life knows nothing of catastrophes ; what seem 
 to be such are but the sudden ripening of harvests 
 long sown and developing, the culmination and 
 effect of causes deep-seated and ancient. Life is 
 all of a piece ; and such " catastrophes " imme- 
 diately produce their effects, whose growth and 
 
 1 Terry, p. 250. 2 Garvie 
 
 157 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 connections are clearly traceable before and after. 
 Natura nil facit per saltum, iravra pel, are sound 
 axioms; "nature never jumps " — "all is flux, 
 nothing constant " ; and eternal life would not be 
 life were the Christ to descend from heaven on the 
 clouds, and inaugurate a new order of things, in 
 which perfection were finally and instantaneously 
 reached, irrespective of human endeavour, limita- 
 tions, failings, and aspirations. " The future life 
 is not a reward of obedience to a law now, but the 
 continuing and completion of a vital process here 
 begun, there ended." 1 "Eternal life with Jesus 
 is not an artificial reward, but rather the consumma- 
 tion of personality which is determined by faith 
 and relationship with God. ... To be saved is 
 something more than to win the blessings of an 
 acquittal at the Judgment Day of Judaism. It is, 
 rather, to possess a quality of life due to the soul's 
 relation with God through faith, which will even- 
 tuate in those blessed results which are pictured by 
 the Gospels in terms of the Apocalypse." 2 "A 
 state of completeness excluding all imperfections 
 absolutely and at once, violates the law of gradual 
 evolution which conditions created existences. It 
 is more philosophical to believe that the souls of 
 the righteous pass into another state in the degree 
 of advancement they have attained to in this ; 
 their freedom from gross bodily bonds giving them 
 
 1 A. E. Garvie, " The Christian Ideal/' Htbbert Journal, 
 July, 1916. 
 
 2 Shailer Matthews, in Hastings, D C G, i, p. 423. 
 
 158 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 a new facility in apprehending the Infinite Creator/ ' x 
 " Our posthumous life, whatever there may be in 
 it additional to our present, yet may not be entirely 
 beginning anew, but going on. Death may in 
 some sort, and in some respects, answer to our 
 birth, which is not a suspension of the faculties 
 which we had before it, or a total change of the 
 state of life in which we existed when in the womb ; 
 but a continuation of both, with such and such 
 great alterations. ,,2 
 
 If it be asked whether eternal life involves never- 
 ending growth, and whether there be growth in 
 the Godhead ; we answer that there has been 
 growth of a kind in the Godhead, in the sense of a 
 progressive manifestation, and the Incarnation and 
 Pentecost marked the stages in it, when the Second 
 and Third Persons of the Holy Trinity were revealed. 
 And the growth is still in progress in the " building 
 up of the Body of Christ, " by which man, in his 
 infinite diversity, is brought into the right relation 
 to the one Unity, and is made part of it. It is, of 
 course, true that growth can hardly be an attribute 
 of perfection, but that when perfection is reached 
 the energy previously exercised in growth is trans- 
 ferred to other forms of activity. If mathematical 
 analogies be permitted, the Holy Trinity represent 
 an equilaterial triangle, or a perfect circle ; and 
 when all the wheels of the machine are true circles, 
 when all impediments are removed, when all is 
 tightened up and in place, and the true design 
 
 1 Davidson, p. 158. 
 
 2 Butler, Anal. I, i. 
 
 159 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 and proportion reached, and all energised by the 
 One Spirit in obedience to the Supreme Will after 
 the example of the Eternal Son, then doubtless 
 there is something for it to do, which will in due 
 time be revealed. * 
 
 But we are a long way off that ; Christ may have 
 " abolished death, and brought life and incorruption 
 to light through the Gospel/' but " it doth not yet 
 appear what we shall be " ; and the New Testa- 
 ment, whether in Our Lord's teaching or in that 
 of His followers, never lets us forget that the 
 Kingdom, though present and active and powerful, 
 is not yet complete ; it is still future ; the " measure 
 of the stature of the fulness of Christ " is not yet 
 reached ; Satan may have fallen like lightning 
 from heaven, but he is not yet finally subdued ; 
 the Christian is still at war, a soldier on service ; 
 the sphere of preaching, implied in Matt. x. 23, 
 xxiv. 14, xxviii. 19, has widened vastly since those 
 words were spoken, and the evangelisation of the 
 world is not yet complete ; each day sees the advent 
 of new lives into the world, and to them, too, must 
 
 1 For the concept of Eternal Life, see the last chapter 
 in Von Hiigel's remarkable book on that subject. He 
 defines it as : " An experience, requirement, force, con- 
 ception, ideal which is, in endless degrees and ways, latent 
 or potent in every specifically human life and act; which, 
 in its fullest operativeness, and its most vivid recognition, 
 is specifically religious; and which, in proportion to such 
 fulness and recognition, is found to involve the conscious- 
 ness, or possession, of all the highest realities and goods 
 sought after or found by man, and the sense (more or 
 less) of non-succession, of a complete Present and Presence, 
 of an utterly abiding Here and Now." (Pp. 1, 2.) 
 
 160 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 the Gospel be preached. The Church, the Body 
 of Christ, is still far from comprising the whole of 
 humanity ; the wedding-robe of the Bride of the 
 Lamb is neither complete nor spotless as yet ; so 
 that Christ is still a " Christ that is to be." " The 
 Founder of Christianity came and promulgated 
 principles capable of regenerating the world ; and 
 no future coming can be expected, unless the 
 increased efficacy which those principles exert be 
 called so." * And this is why so much place is 
 given in the New Testament to the thought of 
 hope ; why so much rebuke and exhortation are 
 found in it ; so much praise and blame ; the tares 
 still disfigure the wheat-field and mar its crop. 
 We can confidently assert that Our Lord's words 
 were fulfilled at Pentecost, that His Kingdom 
 came then in a manner and degree unparalleled 
 before or since ; but all the time we know that 
 we have not uttered the whole truth, that our 
 experience tells us only too surely that His kingship 
 is not complete. His power is too sadly conditioned 
 by the weakness of our human wills ; His Presence 
 is not easily kept ; and the world is not a nice 
 place to live in, because it has not yet been won 
 to Christ. If man records his own verdicts against 
 himself, and if these are worked out in his own 
 history and experience, there are also only too many 
 wrongs and injustices, suspicions and misunder- 
 standings, which are not set right in this world. 
 Man's experiences are often the verdicts of other 
 
 1 Davidson, p. 31. 
 
 161 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 men as well as his own ; and these judgments, 
 when not malicious, are necessarily biassed and 
 based on limited knowledge. So that man must 
 needs wait for " another world " before he can 
 receive his final deserts and vindication ; and be 
 it noted that vindication is more probable than 
 condemnation ; as St. Paul says : " Judge nothing 
 before the time, until the Lord come, who will 
 both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, 
 and make manifest the counsels of the hearts ; and 
 then shall each man have his praise from God." x 
 In a sense, we may liken the Early Church at 
 its very infancy to Eden before the Fall ; for 
 a brief moment and in a small sphere everything 
 was perfect ; but perfection needed to be extended, 
 the perfection was a limited perfection ; and only 
 too soon was it made imperfect by human failure. 
 The imperfection still obtains. Even the devout- 
 est of saints, enjoying the fullest and most frequent 
 of mystic visions, cannot find therein more than 
 a temporary satisfaction ; for the words of 
 Joseph are true in another sense and on Another's 
 lips : "Ye shall not see my face, except your 
 brother be with you," i.e., the Beatific Vision is not 
 to be enjoyed to the full, or fully realised, except 
 in company with all the Saints, and the number 
 of the " blessed company of all faithful people " is 
 intended to comprise all mankind, So that until 
 all humanity is won to Christ the Kingdom is not 
 complete. 
 
 1 1 Cor. iv. 5. 
 
 162 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 Science tells us, in the twentieth century, that 
 at some far distant epoch this material earth and 
 system will lose its heat and revert to a condition of 
 cold and death ; and there is nothing more certain 
 than that the material existence of the individual 
 man is limited ; so that the spiritual, as far as we 
 can tell, is alone permanent. It is even asserted 
 that a succession of cycles is the only tenable 
 explanation of the material universe, i.e., that no 
 progress may be looked for therein. x And the 
 spiritual is alone unchangeable ; in this sense, that 
 we are for ever changing our bodies, even sharing 
 our thoughts, but our characters and our per- 
 sonalities are for ever our own. We seem inevitably 
 to look forward to an existence purely spiritual, 
 and, therefore, freed from the limitations of matter. 
 We believe that when we die we pass to a state of 
 existence far fuller and freer, and with our capacities 
 greatly enhanced ; we come closer to God and 
 realise more fully our divine destiny. We believe 
 that life will still be social, with possibilities of 
 mutual intercourse and service, with the old loving 
 relationships and memories still continued and even 
 intensified. We believe that there will be work 
 for us to do, and that we shall realise more fully 
 our ideals — 
 
 And only the Master shall praise us, and only the 
 
 Master shall blame; 
 And no one shall work for money, and no one shall 
 
 work for fame, 
 
 1 Foakes- Jackson, The Faith and the War, p. 105 ; 
 Essay by Dr. Inge. 
 
 163 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 But each for the joy of the working, and each, in 
 
 his separate star, 
 Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of 
 
 Things as they Are ! l 
 
 But, just as humanity lies still partly in the 
 power of the Evil One, so the " muddy vesture of 
 decay doth grossly clothe it in, ,, and matter is 
 still to be reckoned as an element in life. And so, 
 as Dr. Burkitt truly says, Pentecost may have 
 been indeed an early sheaf of first-fruits, the pledge 
 of what is to be ; but it was not the harvest. 2 
 
 It cannot be too greatly emphasised that the 
 kingship of Christ is dependent on the co-operation 
 of human will and effort for its realisation. It is 
 an act of grace on God's part ; the teaching of the 
 apocalyptists leaves no doubt of that ; God sends 
 His Messiah entirely of His own will, be it in pur- 
 suance of His Covenant with Israel (no less an act 
 of grace) ; or because of the eternal law of righteous- 
 ness, to judge or to save ; or out of pity ; man can 
 neither cause nor occasion it, not can he alter the 
 time or the manner determined by the Father. 
 But it is nevertheless true that when inaugurated, 
 as at Pentecost, it needs human co-operation for 
 its completion and full accomplishment. The com- 
 ing of the kingdom is the doing of God's Will by 
 men as by angels. Men must work out their own 
 Salvation. The gifts given by the Saviour unto 
 men at Pentecost were in their endless variety all 
 intended for the same end and process, " The 
 perfecting of the saints unto the work of ministering, 
 
 1 R. Kipling, V L'Envoi." 2 P. 49. 
 
 164 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 unto the building up of the Body of Christ ; till 
 we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the 
 knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown 
 man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness 
 of Christ. ,, x It is the failure to realise this essential 
 truth which has delayed and discredited the kingdom 
 so long, has made the life of the Church so ineffective, 
 and has deprived individuals of a much-needed 
 stimulus. " The purpose of God for us, in us, and 
 through us, by the working of His indwelling 
 Spirit, apprehended and interpreted by means of 
 the highest revelation that has ever been experienced 
 in humanity, is a grander thing to seek and know 
 and to make the lode-star of our earthly conduct 
 than any curious or morbid interest in the manner 
 of this world's disintegration, the end of the, to us, 
 immeasurable universe, or even the ultimate issues 
 of personal being." 2 
 
 What should be the attitude of the devout 
 Christian towards God and his present life, in view 
 of this belief, that Christ has already come, in His 
 Holy Spirit, but that the Christian hope is not yet 
 fully realised ? He can read it in 2 Cor. v. 2-9 : 3 
 " For we know that if the earthly house of our 
 tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building from 
 God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the 
 heavens. For verily in this we groan, longing to 
 be clothed upon with our habitation which is from 
 
 1 Eph. iv. 13. 2 Winstanley, p. 384. 
 
 3 For the interpre ation of which, see Charles, Escha- 
 tology, p 400, Cf. 2 Pet. iii. 11, 12; Dewick, p. 218. 
 
 165 
 
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 heaven, seeing that being clothed upon we shall not 
 be found naked. For indeed we that are in this 
 tabernacle do groan, being burdened ; not for that 
 we would be un-clothed, but that we would be 
 clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swallowed 
 up of life. Now He that wrought us for this very 
 thing is God, Who gave unto us the earnest of the 
 Spirit. Being therefore always of good courage, 
 and knowing that, whilst we are at home in the 
 body, we are absent from the Lord (for we walk 
 by faith, not by sight) ; we are of good courage, I 
 say, and choose rather to be absent from the body, 
 and to be at home with the Lord. Wherefore also 
 we make it our aim, whether at home or absent, 
 to be well-pleasing unto Him. ,, 
 
 Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, 
 And lighten with celestial fire ; 
 Thou the Anointing Spirit art, 
 Who dost Thy sevenfold gifts impart ; 
 Thy blessed unction from above 
 Is comfort, life, and fire of love. 
 
 Enable with perpetual light 
 The dulness of our blinded sight ; 
 Anoint and cheer our soiled face 
 With the abundance of Thy grace; 
 Keep far our foes; give peace at home ; 
 Where Thou art Guide no ill can come. 
 
 Teach us to know the Father, Son, 
 And Thee (of both), to be but one ; 
 That through the ages all along 
 This may be our endless song — 
 Praise to Thy eternal merit, 
 Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 
 
 166 
 
INDEX 
 
 Ahikar, Story of, 46 
 aldov, 66 
 
 " Beloved," 33, 41 
 
 " Chosen," 33, 41 
 " Consummation of the Age," 
 66, 125 
 
 Day of Judgment, 21, 69, 125, 
 
 127, 129 
 Dives and Lazarus, 28 
 
 Elijah, 39 
 
 " End of the World," 66, 125 
 
 Eschatology, value of, 57, 140 
 
 of Acts, 99 
 
 of Early Church, 49, 5ln, 
 
 78, 124, 150 
 
 of Christ, Ch. I, and pp. 
 
 71, 79, 96 
 
 of Hebrews, 100 
 
 of St. James, 101 
 
 , Jewish, 53, 76, 87, 120 
 
 of St. Jude, 101 
 
 of St. Paul, 102, 165 
 
 of St. Peter, 101 
 
 of Revelation, 109 
 
 Eternal, 67, 145, 158, 160 
 
 Fire, 19 
 
 Gehenna, 18 
 
 " Great Assize, The," 13 
 
 Guardian Angels, 40 
 
 Holy Spirit, The, Preface, 
 115, 119, 148, 153 
 
 John, St., Teaching of, 30, 45, 
 
 82, 84, 102 
 Judgment, 21, 125, 127 
 
 Kingdom, 61, 90, 120, 131, 
 152, 161, 164 
 
 11 Last Day," 69, 129 
 
 " Little Apocalypse, The," 71, 
 
 74 
 Luke, St., Teaching of, 27, 41, 
 
 71, 83 
 
 Matthew, St., Teaching of, 4, 
 32, 71 
 
 Messianic banquet, 20 
 
 Paradise, 30 
 
 Parousia, 70, 119, 131, 141, 148 
 
 Pentecost, 115, 121, 130, 148, 
 
 164 
 Progress, 135 
 Prophecy, 137 
 
 " Regeneration, The," 24 
 
 Son of Man, 58 
 Spiritualising, 80, 104, 110, 113 
 
 Tares, Parable of, 22, 84, 
 
 125 ff, 140 
 Time, 68, 141 
 " Two Ways, The," 19 
 
 Worm, 19 
 
 Printed by Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., Bath, England 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 8. P. T. PRIDE AUX, B.D. 
 
 THE 
 
 CRADLE OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 OR, SOME ACCOUNT OF THE TIMES OF CHRIST 
 
 Foreword by the Rev. Canon Vaughan, M.A. 
 Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 178 pp. 2 s. net. 
 
 FROM THE FOREWORD 
 The little volume is admirably suited to its purpose. Nowhere, in so 
 small a compass, do I know such a clear and scholarly account of the 
 religious and social conditions under which Christ was born. The chapters 
 on the Messianic Hope, on Hellenism, on Apocalyptic Literature are 
 excellent; while the treatment of the sects and parties of the Jews reveals 
 a full knowledge of the latest researches on the subject. I heartily 
 recommend the little book. 
 
 The Guardian: " In point of size, in succinctness, and in graphic and 
 accurate grouping of facts Mr. Prideaux's description of the conditions 
 of the times prior to and circumstantial with the Gospel history will fill 
 a real gap." 
 
 The Challenge: " Mr. Prideaux's book should be eagerly welcomed, 
 for here is set down in small compass the main outlines of the Hebrew 
 customs, religious sects, modes of thought, political, religious and social 
 atmosphere of the day. The Biblical references are very full and the 
 book is altogether most welcome." 
 
 The Daily Graphic: " . . . an admirable sketch of the geography and 
 social manners and customs of Palestine in the time of Christ." 
 
 The Church Monthly: " It is a scholarly production, the result of great 
 research and wide knowledge, and depicts the religious and social con- 
 ditions under which Christ was born and lived. It should be eminently 
 useful to teachers and students of training colleges." 
 
 The Churchman: " Written in a most readable manner, and specially 
 useful to theological students, Sunday School teachers and Christian 
 workers. . . . The book is marked by scholarship, lucidity and 
 compactness." 
 
 Church of Ireland Gazette: " This is a capital little book. We have 
 often felt the need of something of the kind to recommend to teachers." 
 
 International Review of Missions: " May be heartily commended to 
 those who desire a careful guide to the chief points of interest in early 
 Judaism." 
 
 Caritas: " Like his namesake of many years ago, the author has given 
 us an excellent ' connexion between the Old and New Testaments,* full, 
 lucid, well documented, and based on the best authorities. The book 
 is intended chiefly for teachers and students of training colleges, but will 
 be of much use also to the intelligent layman who wishes to understand 
 his New Testament." 
 
 The School World: " Deserves to be very widely known. It attempts, 
 with marked success, to give a clear glimpse of the Palestinian world into 
 which the Messiah was born. . . . The work is scholarly and trustworthy, 
 and at the same time clear and readable. Careful writing and painstaking 
 research are evidenced in every chapter." 
 
 Of all Booksellers 
 LONDON: SIR ISAAC PITMAN & SONS, LTD., 1 AMEN CORNER, E.C. 
 
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