ence; but the primary reference, looking so obviously to their final reward, must be to natural death.

This remarkable diversity in our Lord's usage, when speaking of his then future "comings," is certainly worthy of our very careful attention. We shall refer to it again. when we pass to consider what the apostles say and mean as to Christ's coming and the end of the world "near at hand." But before we pass from the teachings of Christ in regard to his final coming, some other points should be distinctly noted. 1. He rigorously refrains from giving any definite date for this final coming. He says nothing about the year of our Lord in which it shall occur. He omits all allusion to the number of centuries or ages which must first pass away. It does not appear that he gave any clew to the immediate precursors or foregoing signs of that coming. All that he says (Matt. xxiv., or elsewhere) of precursors or premonitory signs refers manifestly to the nearer coming, and not to the remote, final one. Inasmuch as those signs were certainly fulfilled in the nearer one, it is superfluous, and therefore unauthorized, to apply them to the more remote coming. Indeed, if we accept (as we must) the obvious sense of his words as recorded by Mark (xiii. 32), the precise day of his final coming was not known even to himself, but to the Father only. To this very limitation Jesus may have alluded in these words at the point of his ascension: "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power" (Acts i. 7; in the Greek, placed under his own control, reserved as his special prerogative). All the speculations of men, therefore, for fixing the precise day of the Lord's final coming, or even the age, are in the last degree unfounded and presumptuous. 2. But Jesus did give his disciples some very decisive intimations of the work of the gospel age, not as to its nature only, but its extent also the success to be achieved in the diffusion of the gospel before the end should come. (a) In two parables he signified not only the rapid growth of gospel influence, but the ultimate greatness and completeness of its achievements.

"Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God? It is like a grain of mustard-seed, which, when sown in the earth, is less than the least of all the seeds that be in the earth; but when sown it groweth up and becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great branches, so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of it" (Mark iv. 30–32). Or, again, "It is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened" (Matt. xiii. 33). Of these parables the true intent and the real wealth of their meaning may be suggested by the question: What more could the leaven do? What more could be put into the symbol of a mustard-seed? The leaven permeated the entire mass, "till the whole was leavened," just as the evangelical prophet had long before said: "For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" (Isa. xi. 9). The mustardseed, from being least of all in its seed, became in its fully developed glory the greatest of all the growths of the garden, complete, magnificent, everything you could expect a gardenseed to become. These parables are strikingly significant of the great results which Jesus saw in what was then only the tiny germ of the gospel kingdom of God. (b) Although, for good reasons, Jesus gave his ministerial life to labors for the lost sheep of Israel, and although the time had not really come to say much, in the face of Jewish prejudice, of the "other sheep not of that fold," yet he did very definitely say: "I have [such] other sheep, not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold [of both Jews and Gentiles] and one Shepherd" (John x. 16), the common Redeemer of them all. (c) But when the time came to transfer from himself to his apostles not the planning, nor the supervising care, but the execution of this gospel work, and therefore the proper time to give them the true idea of its destined range and results, what did he say? As reported by Matthew (xxviii. 19): "Go ye, disciple all the nations," nothing less -all the nations of the wide earth; or, as written by Mark

(xvi. 15): "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." If any question should arise as to timelimitations of this work of the gospel age, he answers it in the most practical and comforting way possible, saying: "Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world." Your work is before you, to last as long as the world stands. — the work of all my faithful servants, till I shall come, and the world shall end. Geographically, my plan grasps all the earth; historically, all the ages to the end of time. What more could it do? Certainly this was laying out large work work so vast and so far-reaching in both space and time that it would seem no intelligent disciple could have thought of its being finished within the life of a few generations, much less, within their own. (d) But finally, something ought to be learned from the manner in which Jesus taught his people to pray for the complete success and the absolute sway of his gospel kingdom among men. see this subject in its proper light, and this argument in its legitimate force, we may remember how much Jesus labored to impress this great truth: "Ask, and it shall be given you” (Luke xi. 9). "If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it" (John xiv. 14); and how he seems to have wrought the desired impression into the soul of at least his beloved John, who said: "This is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us" (1 John v. 14).

To

Now let the question be: how much does Jesus authorize us to pray for in regard to his gospel kingdom? It is given both by Matthew and Luke essentially thus: "Thy kingdom come; thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." Luke teaches us that these words had scarcely passed the Saviour's lips when he added, "Ask, and it shall be given you"; as if he would say: this prayer, in all its breadth and richness, asks not too much for God to give; for verily I say unto you, ask for even all this, as you would beg bread of a friend at midnight to meet the calls of hospitality; "and it shall be given you." How is the will of God done in

heaven? In filial love; with all the heart; by all the people. Shall we believe that Christ's gospel reign on earth will ever reach this standard in purity and in extent? Bearing on this point we have (a) the definiteness of the promise, "Ask, and it shall be given you," put in the closest connection with this prayer. (b) In point of largeness and fulness, these petitions in the Lord's prayer correspond precisely to the ancient prophecies: "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea" (Isa. xi. 9); "Thy people shall be all righteous" (Isa. lx. 21); "I will put my law in their inward part, and write it in their heart; I will be their God, and they shall be my people; for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," etc. (Jer. xxxi. 33, 34). These sayings are not the guesses of men, but the prophetic words of God; and hence they give us not the hopes or the calculations of the old prophets as to the geographical extension of the gospel and the sway of its moral power in the future ages of our world, but the very purpose and plan of the great God. (c) It ought to be accepted as an axiom, a ground principle in God's spiritual administration, that he never requires his people to pray for what he cannot give, and does not intend to give; for if he were to do this, and his people to know it, how could he expect to "find faith on the earth"? The things for which he requires us to pray stand therefore alongside of his prophetic words, revelations of his eternal plan in regard to the extension and success of his gospel kingdom. Jesus did authorize his disciples to grasp the conquest of the world in their faith and positive expectation, and in their sphere of Christian labor to bring it back to God. As this must be accomplished instrumentally by preaching the gospel to every creature with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, they must have seen before them and their successors onward through the ages a vast work to be achieved before the end should truly come.

THE PHRASEOLOGY OF THE APOSTLES IN SPEAKING OF

THIS SUBJECT.

From what Christ taught, we pass to what his apostles thought. It is surely reasonable to expect a definite correlation between his teachings and their creed. Of his unrecorded sayings, which were many (John xiv. 26; xx. 30; xxi. 25), we can take no account, nor do we need them for our present purpose. The sayings that are recorded are. precisely those which made most impression on the minds of the disciples. It is manifestly safe to assume that these recorded words did make a substantial impression on their minds before they were written. After they had passed into the writings recognized as inspired, they would naturally hold and even increase their power over the current thought of the apostles and of the churches. As to their means of interpreting Christ's words correctly, it must be seen that they had, at least in some respects, the advantage over us, inasmuch as they had the attendant circumstances for the most part before them; could ask all the explanations they chose; opportunities which, as they have told us, they often improved.

We come now to the main question. What were the views of the apostles, and what the true sense of their words, in regard to the time of Christ's final coming? We have before our minds this special inquiry: Did they believe that in fact this coming was then near at hand in the sense of being probably, or even possibly, to occur within their own lifetime? Were they under this great mistake as to the actual fact? Did they think that the work of the gospel age was so nearly finished that they might look for Christ's final coming and the end of the world within one year or five or fifty? Obviously if they held this view as a point of intellectual judgment and belief, they were greatly mistaken. Are we holden by the laws of interpretation to give their words a sense which convicts them of this mistake? These questions we shall have continually in view in our consideration of their words.