to happen at the end of the world, and then returned (verse thirty-two) to the destruction of Jerusalem, and only recommenced at the thirty-sixth verse to speak of the end of the world. But this is hacking up the text in sheer desperation. It is impossible that Jesus should have spoken with so much disorder and with so little consecutiveness, the more especially as the juxta-position of the phrases gives no indication whatever of these sudden transitions.

It is for this reason that modern critics have asserted that he did not speak in this way; they attribute the error to the evangelists, who have placed one after the other, and not in the best possible order, different observations of Jesus, which have no connection with each other. It is true that Schulz considers that Matthew imagined these sayings had all been pronounced at the same time; and that, in this respect, caprice or violence alone could disjoin them; but he adds that Jesus could hardly have uttered them in this connection, and in the exact manner in which they are recorded by this evangelist. Sieffert thinks that Jesus might not formally have separated the different phases of his coming, that is to say, his invisible presence at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, and his visible presence at the consummation of all things, but that assuredly he did not unite them in any positive manner; and that what he tacitly brought together were blended into one narrative by the evangelists, because of the obscurity of the subject. In this case, again, we find between Matthew and Luke, a kind of difference which has already been noticed, namely, that the sayings which Matthew relates as having been pronounced at one time, are, by Luke, recorded as having been uttered in different places and on different occasions. Moreover, Luke does not give, or relates in a different way, many of the sayings recorded by Matthew in his gospel. On this account, Schleiermacher has considered himself justified in rectifying the compilation of Matthew by that of Luke, and in maintaining that whilst in Luke the two separate observations (xvii. 22, et seq., and xxi. 5, et seq.) are each of them in a good connection, and have each

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of them a meaning on which no doubt can be raised, in Matthew the fusion of these two sayings (xxiv. and xxv.) and the addition of heterogeneous fragments of observations, have altered the connection and obscured the meaning. According to the same theologian, the observations in the twenty-first chapter of Luke, taken in themselves, do not contain anything which is not in connection with the conquest of Jerusalem, and with the events dependent upon it. Nevertheless, there are found here also (27) these words, "And then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud, with power and great glory;" and when Schleiermaker understands this as simply figurative of the obvious manifestation and religious importance which belongs to the political and natural commotions just previously described, he commits a violence upon the text which must destroy the entire interpretation of the connection which he supposes between the compilation of Luke and that of Matthew. In effect, it is certain that Matthew is not the only one who connects the end of all things with the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem; these two events are connected with each other by Luke, and even by Mark, who has in this instance closely followed the narrative of Matthew. It is possible that many things said on different occasions and at different times may have been brought together in these discourses of Jesus, as well as in others which have been committed to writing by the evangelists; but we are in no way authorised to suppose that that which relates to two events (the fall of Jerusalem and the end of the world) so distinct, in our ideas, from each other, should not form one and the same context; and we are so much the less authorised to draw such a conclusion as the other writings of the New Testament agree in representing the first Christian community as looking forward to the early coming of Christ and the end of the present state of things. (See I. Cor. x. 11; xv. 51; Phil. iv. 5; I. Thes. iv. 15, et seq.; James v. 8; I. Peter iv. 7; I. John ii. 18; Rev. i. 1, 3; iii. 1; xxii. 7, 10, 12, 20.)

We cannot, then, escape from the necessity of con

ceding that this discourse of Jesus, unless we are resolved to disjoin its several parts at pleasure, treats, in the commencement of the destruction of Jerusalem, and further on, to its conclusion, of the destruction of the world, and that these two catastrophes are placed in immediate connection with each other. To maintain the truth of the prediction, then, there remains to us but one explanation, which is, whilst supposing the coming of Christ, of which mention is made, to be in reference to a future event, to imagine it, at the same time, a present act; in other words, to transform it into a simply future and permanent coming. It has, in consequence, been said that the entire history of the world, since the first appearance of Christ, has been an invisible return, which he unceasingly accomplishes a spiritual judgment to which mankind are subjected. The fall of Jerusalem (in our passage, up to the 28th verse) is but the first act; immediately afterwards (29, et seq.) comes the revolution effected on mankind by the preaching of the gospel, a revolution which, through a series of acts and epochs, will continue till the end of time, when the judgment accomplished by degrees in the history of the world will be manifest in a revelation which will comprehend everything and close everything. But the celebrated words of the poet, "The history of the world is the judgment of the world"-words which are the echo of modern conscience-are little calculated to form a key to a discourse which, more than any other, has its source in the ideas pertaining to the ancient world. To consider the judgment of the world and the coming of Christ as something successive, is most decidedly in contradiction with all the ideas of the New Testament. In the very commencement, the expressions which are there employed to designate this catastrophe, such as "this day," or "the last day," are evidence that the change looked for was an instantaneous one. The " mation of all things," the signs for which his disciples inquired (xxiv. 3), and which Jesus, in another place (xiii. 39), represents under the figure of the harvest,

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can only be in reference to the final conclusion of the career of this world, and cannot be in reference to anything to be successively realised during its career. When Jesus compares his coming to the lightning (xxiv. 27), his arrival to that of a thief in the night (43), he must evidently have intended to convey the idea that it would be a sudden event, and not a series of events. If we add the unheard-of metaphors to which we should be obliged to have recourse, as well in this explanation as in that which considers the twenty-fourth chapter to be in reference to the fall of Judaism, we are compelled to renounce this attempt as we have renounced the others.

[According to Kern, the phrase, "And then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven," means the visible manifestation of all that which, forming an epoch in the history of humanity, is of a sufficiently prominent character to exhibit the action of Christ which governs the history of mankind, as clearly as if we saw in heaven the sign of Christ. The phrase, "and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn," is, he says, in reference to the grief which will seize upon mankind at the time of the "crisis" which will accompany the propagation of the kingdom of Christ, that is to say, when that which is not divine shall be driven from the world, and when the old man of sin shall be destroyed. Weisse allows himself to be still further carried away in the vortex of allegory, "Christ," says he, "compassionates women with child and those who give suck, that is to say, those who will still work and produce under the influence of the ancient order of things; he grieves for those whose flight shall be in the winter, that is to say, in a rude and inhospitable epoch, which will not bear the fruits of the spirit."]

Thus falls to the ground the last attempt to introduce into the discourse in question the vast interval of time which, from the point of view in which we are at present investigating the subject, separates the fall of Jerusalem from the consummation of all things; and it is from this fact that we learn that this separation is

an idea proper to ourselves alone, and which we ought not to transfer to the original text. And if we reflect that the idea of this interval is due only to the experience of the multiplied centuries which have elapsed since the destruction of Jerusalem, it will be easy for us to imagine how the author of this discourse, who had not yet this experience to guide him, might think that soon after the destruction of the Jewish sanctuary, the then centre of the world, according to Jewish ideas, the world itself would approach its final term, and that the Messiah would appear in judgment.

§ CXIII.

Origin of the Discourse on the Coming of Christ.

The result at which we have arrived in the last place respecting the discourse submitted to our examination, contains something which it has been the object of all the futile attempts at explanation hitherto examined to avoid. If Jesus imagined and declared that the fall of the Jewish sanctuary would be immediately followed by the visible coming, and by the end of the world, as almost 1800 years have elapsed since the first catastrophe, whilst the second is not yet accomplished, he has been deceived in this respect; and some of those who, with us, have yielded to the evidence of logical induction so far as to agree with us as to the meaning of the discourse in question, have nevertheless sought, in deference to their own peculiar dogmas, to escape from the conclusion which flows from it.

It is known that Hengstenberg has put forward with respect to the visions of Hebrew prophets, a theory which has obtained the suffrage of other theologians, which is, that to the spiritual view of these individuals, future events were represented less in time than in space, almost as they would be presented in grand pictures; what happens in the perspective of great paintings would sometimes happen to them;