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renewal. Certainly the narrator who gave the saying the form and the place it has did not think of a new spiritual revolution in the world, but of that final palingenesia (Matt. xix. 28) by which the new heavens and the new earth were to be set up. And perhaps both, the spiritual and the cosmical renewing of the world, originally presented themselves in an emblem which suggested both to the prophetic eye of Jesus, who saw "in a glass and in riddles." But if we have rightly read the predictions of Jesus about His own parousia, the traditional form in which they lie before us in the synoptic Gospels is perfectly explained. The disciples could not possibly understand aright what was still unfulfilled, and the idea of the parousia as a point of time indefinite but near, remained the most comprehensible. The view of it as a process of development which only gradually took shape in Jesus Himself had not clearly risen on them. It was all the harder for them to grasp, as it broke up the pictorial idea of the last day as the end of the world. That second coming of Jesus which took place at Easter and Pentecost, when it was no longer for the disciples a bit of prophecy but a historical event, received other and more definite names,1 and so ceased to belong to the idea of the parousia. On the other hand, the destruction of Jerusalem and the conversion of the Gentile world remained in their eyes the great signals and symbols of the historical triumph of Jesus, and with these was connected the expectation of His speedy and complete victory in the final judgment. Their expectation was all the more impatient, as Jesus Himself had given no measure of time, and had not kept the future events distinct. The longing to see shortly the last revelation of God naturally carried the thoughts to the furthest points as though they were near, and this soaring beyond the historical development appeared to be the more justified by the fact that the Old Testament prophets had not at all distinguished between the founding and completion of the Messianic kingdom. Thus all the events of the future were crowded into the measure of one generation, and grouped around the central point formed by

1 Cf. the repeated synoptic predictions of Jesus as to His death and resurrection, which (ex eventu) sound quite unmistakable, and yet were repeatedly misunderstood by the disciples.

the catastrophe of the Jewish nation, which was to the disciples from childhood the pivot of the world's history. And yet the tradition even with such misunderstandings and confusions was faithful enough to preserve the traces of the original state of things.1

§ 8. THE FUTURE JUDGMENT

One part of the ideas contained in the pictorial representation of the last day thus resolves itself into a historical process in the sense of the poet's words, "The history of the world is the judgment of the world." Certainly only a part, Those words of the poet have, in the case of Jesus, only a relative, not an absolute truth; for that historical judgment of the world concerns only the generations that continue living on the earth, not the innumerable host of the dead who have withdrawn from the world and its history; and it does not lead up to the final aim of all prophecy, the completed and eternal kingdom of God. And therefore beyond all days of the Son of Man in the course of history, there still remains the image of a last day which comes at the close of the history of the world, and which includes the dead as well as the living. A new series of prophetic pictures on this point disclose themselves in the discourses of Jesus which naturally pass beyond the limits of history. The Son of Man sits as King on the throne of His glory, and all nations are gathered before Him in order to be separated by Him into two groups, one on His right hand and the other on His left, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats (Matt. xxv. 31 f.). Along with the contemporaries of Jesus appear those of a long past time, the people of Nineveh from the time of Jonah, the Queen of Sheba from the days of Solomom (Matt. xii. 41, 42; Luke xi. 31, 32); even the people of Sodom and Gomorrah,

1 It is worthy of note that in the prophetic discourse Luke xvii., which undoubtedly sprang from the logia of Matthew, the catastrophe of Jerusalem is not at all mentioned. The redaction of the great prophetic discourse as made up from the original sources seems first to have combined these elements of the discourse with the predictions about Jerusalem, and to have referred many things to this latter theme which did not originally belong to it (Matt. xiii., xxiv.; Luke xxi.).

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cities that perished thousands of years ago, receive their sentence along with Chorazin and Bethsaida, the contemporaries of Jesus (Matt. xi. 20, 24; Luke x. 12). The enemies of the King of Heaven, who would not that this man. should reign over them, are judged (Luke xix. 27); but His own servants, too, are judged, according as they have been faithful or unfaithful in His service (Luke xix. 22 f.; Matt. xxv. 14-30). The children of Israel are judged (Matt. xix. 28); the heathen also, who knew Jesus so little on earth that they could ask Him, "Lord, when saw we Thee an hungered or athirst or in prison and have not served Thee?" (Matt. xxv. 37 f.); and the confessors of Jesus are judged, who "prophesied in His name, and in His name cast out devils, and in His name had done many wonderful works," but yet had not observed the simple holy will of God (Matt. vii. 22, 23). Nay, believers who, as represented in the Parable of the Ten Virgins, went forth to meet Him with the lamp of faith and love burning, but neglected to nourish the holy flame and so keep it alive, are judged. Beside the manifold pictures of the heavenly reward-" enter thou into the joy of thy Lord; be thou over ten cities," etc.-appear the symbols of future penal judgments: exclusion from the heavenly festival of joy, casting out into the dark prison in which are weeping and gnashing of teeth. The fire of hell is also spoken of, and the worm that never dies, the fire that is never quenched (cf. Matt. viii. 12, 13, 42, 50, xviii. 8, 9; Mark ix. 47, 48). The traditional conception associates all that with one day of decision, and one act of decision at the close of the world's history, a day and act which will reduce the whole infinite variety of earthly life to the one alternative of eternal blessedness or eternal damnation. This view of the last day, which is not peculiar to Christianity, but was taken over from Judaism, has unquestionably points of support in the sayings of Jesus, but is it really the right key to His views of the coming judgment?

§ 9. IMPOSSIBILITY OF MAINTAINING THE USUAL CONCEPTION It is strange that when we attempt to apply seriously the idea of an actual final judgment, with absolute decisions,

to the picture of the future judgment sketched by Jesus, it melts away in our hands. That majestic delineation (Matt. xxv. 31-46), where the whole of humanity is assigned either to eternal salvation or eternal destruction, is, as a rule, taken for a picture of that final judgment; and even the evangelist, as his introduction and conclusion show, has taken it in that sense. But can that have been the original meaning of Jesus? How are we to harmonise with all the rest of His teaching the notion that some works of love done or not done to His brethren should decide the eternal destiny of all men and nations? The paragraph is not a picture of the final judgment as such, but only illustrates one particular aspect of the divine judgment. It is only a peculiarly magnificent expression of the idea more briefly expressed in Matt. x. 42, that no proof of love which is shown or refused to His disciples in their mission to the world shall be unrewarded or unpunished. There are other aspects of the divine judgment which are as little able to lead to eternal blessedness or damnation. Thus Matt. xii. 37: "By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." We might ask, is it not, according to Matt. xxv., by the doing or not doing of works of mercy? is it not, according to Matt. xvi. 27, vii. 21-24, by works, by doing or not doing the will of God in all things? is it not, according to Matt. x. 32, 33, confessing or denying Christ before men? Who does not see that it is impossible for Jesus to surrender a man to condemnation owing to an idle word of which he cannot give account at the last day? (Matt. xii. 36). In this whole saying He desires only to insist on the moral responsibility which belongs to a man's words as well as to his works,words which are often treated so lightly, although they testify to the state of a man's heart quite as much, and often more directly, than his actions do. Our traditional exposition has thus been far too hasty with its monstrous idea of eternal damnation. Who does not feel the harshness which lies in the application of it to those foolish virgins who knock too late at the door of the house where the marriage is, and cry: "Lord, Lord, open unto us"? Or who could fail to observe the distinction which the Parable of the Intrusted Pounds makes between the punishment of the slothful servant and

the mutinuous dependant? To interpret that prison where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, not as a strict judgment of God, but as eternal rejection by God, leads to strange conclusions. In Matt. v. 25, 26 it is said, " Agree with thine adversary quickly, whilst thou art in the way with him; lest he deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the last farthing." The man, so a crude interpretation concludes here, cannot pay the first, not to speak of the last farthing of his debt before God, and therefore the words here refer to eternal damnation. But it would scatter to the winds the whole gospel of Jesus to ascribe to Him the doctrine that a single offence which was not atoned for in due time on earth hands a man over to eternal destruction. What Jesus in this metaphor desires to make men feel is the great distinction which exists between expiated and unexpiated wrong to our neighbour as regards our own inner life. If the wrong is repented of, apologised for and repaired, then that saying holds good, "Where there is no accuser there is no judge." God then does not enter into judgment with us inwardly. But if it remains unatoned, and offender or offended passes over into eternity, then will God in all strictness enter into judgment with the guilty, and he will be made to taste the bitterness of the due feeling of guilt either in this world or the next. But if we are thus to understand the debtor's prison and the judgment upon idle words, and if, on the other hand, we understand in this sense the reward declared on the last day for single acts of kindness, we are surely driven to see that what Jesus calls the judgment of the last day must include a great variety of relative decisions of all degrees before men come face to face with that final and absolute decision-eternal life or eternal torment.

§ 10. PROOF OF CONTINUOUS DEVELOPMENT IN THE WORLD

TO COME

It may be said that the whole sense of Jesus' teaching forces us to this perception. If, on the one hand, only the pure in heart can see God (Matt. v. 8); and if we must be perfect as

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