[Matthew xxiv.; Mark xiii.; Luke xxi. ver. 5, to the end.] We come now to those memorable chapters which contain the report of our Lord’s conversation with His disciples when they showed Him the goodly stones of the temple. I shall follow St. Matthew as I have done hitherto, noticing any memorable differences in the other Evangelists by the way.
I. There is no difference about the occasion which suggested the discourse. The disciples were struck with the goodly stones of the temple. Whatever else His words may have imported, they declared directly that one stone was upon another of that building which should not be thrown down. This is too obvious a remark to have escaped any one’s notice, but its very obviousness may have hindered it from receiving all the attention which it deserves. Consider what that building meant to a Jew. Consider that the tabernacle was the sign of God’s presence in the nation, that the loss of it while it was in Shiloh was looked upon as the temporary downfall of the nation itself, that its removal to the hill over Jerusalem was connected with the Davidian covenant,—with the past and future history,—with the most rapturous and the most deep of the Psalms in which the meaning of that history is gathered up. Consider what the building and dedication of the temple itself, and the removal of the Ark into it by Solomon, implied. Consider how much of the prophecy of Isaiah turns upon that passage, where he speaks of his sitting in the temple in the year that King Uzziah died, and seeing the glory of the Lord which filled it. Consider that the whole prophecy of Jeremiah, and his Lamentations afterwards, refer to the expected or accomplished desecration of that temple; that all the visions of Ezekiel begin, are bound up with, and conclude with its desertion and its restoration; that its present downfall and the anticipation of a future abomination of desolation to be set up in the midst of it, connect themselves with the history of Daniel, and of all the Jews in the captivity; that the temple is the obvious subject of the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah; that the expectation of One who should come to purify it, and the priests within it, seems to be the central thought in Malachi; consider this, and we shall have some apprehension of the relation of this subject to all the books of the Old Testament, and so far as these books describe and interpret the purposes of God, to all His discipline and education of mankind. There was the place which signified to the Jew, and declared to the universe, that a God whom the eye could not see nor the ear hear, who might not be conceived in the likeness of any thing in Heaven, or earth, or under the earth, had yet a real substantial being, an actual connection with his creatures, was dwelling near them, might be approached by them. Of this building our Lord told His disciples not one stone should be left upon another. What could they think of such an announcement? St. Matthew says in words—the other two Evangelists intimate—what their feelings was, “Tell us,” they said privately as He sat on the Mount of Olives, “when shall these things be, and what shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the age?” Either the destruction of the temple must be the sign that God had left the world, the commencement of an absolute atheism, or it must be the sign of the commencement of a higher state of things, of the kingdom of One greater than the temple, who should bring God and man into nearer relations with each other, who should prove the God of Abraham to be indeed the Lord of the whole earth. One of these alternatives I conceive the Apostles must have taken. They had faith and courage amidst the utmost perplexity and confusion to think that their Master had spoken truly when He said that the Kingdom of God was at hand. We seem to have come to the conclusion that they were mistaken. Our Lord did not tell them so.
II. I do not propose to go into any inquiry respecting the real force of the words “Thy coming, and the end of the age,” nor even respecting the force which the Apostles at this time must have attached to such words. Their actual meaning is precisely what we have to ascertain from the subsequent history and revelation; this discourse of our Lord’s upon earth being itself one of our great guides in the inquiry. The views of the Apostles were of course confused about this subject as they were about all others, about the Christ Himself and His kingdom, about His relation to themselves, and to their nation, and to the universe. This confusion is assumed throughout the Evangelists, so that those who attach weight to their statements must acknowledge it much more readily than any modern philosopher can. But it is quite a different thing to say that the words which they used were wrong words, or that they expected too decisive a fulfilment of them, or that they were wrong in placing that fulfilment in their own time. Religious people in our day may attach to the words Heaven and Hell, and Judgment, very vague and very false notions indeed, notions at variance with Scripture, borrowed from heathenism, self-destructive. Yet those who labor to correct these dangerous perplexities, may feel that the words themselves have a tremendous reality and significance, and that the force of them is not exaggerated, but fearfully weakened, by the vulgar apprehensions of them. So we may believe also that the Apostles were not using too large words when they asked this question of our Lord, words which demand a looser and vaguer interpretation than they bore in their minds, before we can adopt them; we may hold that they had not yet learnt to give them a sufficiently rigid definition, to understand them in their actual and literal power.
III. “And Jesus answering said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you: for many shall come in my Name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many.” Few interpreters have doubted that these words were intended as warnings to the particular persons who were then looking at the buildings of the temple. And supposing that this was actually the admonition which our Lord gave them, one can see how exactly it was in accordance with all His previous instructions and warnings. The great peril of the Apostles, as of all men, was that of being led away by a false Christ—that of being led to look for a King who should come with such signs as the Pharisees demanded of a Christ, or such as the people demanded of Him—with signs altogether different in kind from those with which Jesus had come. Many such, He assures them, would show themselves, many persons claiming to be the heirs of David’s throne, to bring with them the marks and credentials of a divine mission. How was it possible, the Apostles might well ask themselves, that after they had believed Jesus to be the Christ, they should ever imagine another to have that name. But the warning was given them. They must have believed with wonder even then that they needed it; in time they would know why they needed it.
IV. “Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must needs be; but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines, and pestilence, and earthquakes, in divers places; all these things are the beginnings of sorrows.” Still every word that is spoken appears to be addressed in the most direct manner to the Apostles. “Ye shall hear; see that ye be not troubled.” If we suppose that this does not refer to actual tidings which would reach the Apostles’ ears, rumors which would prevail in Judæa, and would have first an immediate reference to insurrections in that land, to quarrels between the rulers in its immediate neighborhood, to threatenings of destruction from the imperial power, we show the most strange indifference to accuracy of language. If any one is scandalized by the words, “nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom,” and shall ask how such general language could apply to the condition and case of a city in one province of the empire, I say, Read the history of the Roman Empire generally, and see how events belonging to particular nations and places affected the position and feeling of the legions in those places—led to disputes, rivalries, military insurrections, conflicts between particular leaders—finally, spread with magnetic influence through the empire, encouraged the legions in the most distant provinces to set up their leaders, till every part of the world, and the great centre of it, was ultimately brought within the circle of the contention. Or read the records of the particular period, from the end of the reign of Nero to the overthrow of Jerusalem, not in Josephus, but in the histories of Tacitus, and see how much the most stirring events of that tremendous time of convulsions were associated with the province of Syria, and with events of which every Jew must have had the bitterest experience. So that whether or not we admit the existence of a divine purpose for the nations and mankind, which was connected with the calamities that came upon Jerusalem, we shall be compelled to admit, as a matter of fact, that the whole world must have seemed to a Jew to be sharing the convulsions which were shaking his own land to its foundations. I do not use this word convulsions, for the sake of explaining metaphorically, or morally, the words “earthquakes, pestilences, and famines in divers places;” I take these words to mean precisely what they seem to mean; I do not think that any one who reads Tacitus can doubt that they occurred just as they are here said to occur in divers places. There was not to be a general physical earthquake commensurate with the great political earthquake; but there would be enough to be signs and proofs that the physical world sympathizes with the moral, is under the same ruler, does homage to its laws. It would seem as if our Lord’s object was especially to warn His disciples that while they took notice of these signs they should not be distracted by them, or think them the great indications that God was come out of His place to judge the earth. “All these things are the beginning of sorrows.”
V. “Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my Name’s sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.” I have taken this entire paragraph because the words which wind it up, stand in such direct contrast to those which concluded the previous one. “These are the beginning of sorrows.” “Then shall the end come.” Wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, and famines, are not the signs of the end. They are but preludes to it. The preaching of the Gospel of the Kingdom is the sign that the end is coming. But I have also brought these verses together, because I think that the great difficulty which is supposed to lie in the 14th is removed by the 9th. “Ye shall be hated of all nations.” “The Gospel shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations.” Now I do not suppose that the mere words “the whole world” would hinder any one from believing that these words were fulfilled in the apostolical age. Even the most careless reader would recollect at once that Augustus Cæsar commanded all the world to be taxed, and would suppose that the expression in one case meant the same as in the other. The stumbling-block is in the other words “all nations.” But these words we see had just before been used in a sentence which must apply directly to the apostles. The preaching of this Gospel of the kingdom then as a witness to all the nations or all the Gentiles, would seem to be precisely that which a Jew would have concluded it to be. If all the different representatives of the Gentile races with which the Jews were acquainted, in whose lands they were settled, were told that Jesus was their King, that they were as much parts of the Kingdom of God as the Jews, the witness would have been borne which is here spoken of. If it is to be a contest of special pleading, I could special plead also. I could say—if the different great stems of the modern European population and of the Transatlantic population also were in Asia, non constat that all the different tribes of the earth, now known to us or to be hereafter known, were not brought within the sound of the Gospel of this kingdom, and that without adopting any loose and vague tradition respecting the missions of the apostles to the different distant regions of the earth. But there is no need of such arguments; I simply adhere to the text. The words are addressed to the Apostles that they were to be hated by all the nations. In whatever sense they understood that to be true, they must have understood that they were to be the instruments of preaching the Gospel to all the nations; consequently that after something which they had done,—at a certain time within their age,—the end was to come. Many, no doubt, may shrink from the notion that iniquity abounded, and that the love of many in the Christian world waxed cold during the apostolical age. Whether facts justify that skepticism, we shall be able to determine better when we come to consider the apostolical writings, and some remarkable testimonies of Christian antiquity, which will also bear directly upon the question of the rise of false prophets in the same period.
VI. “When therefore ye see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place, (whoso readeth let him understand,) then let them which be in Judæa flee into the mountains: let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house: neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes. And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath-day: for then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.” Without professing to determine what was the precise desecration of the Temple here indicated, I would call your attention to the fact that our Lord continues to fix the thoughts of His disciples upon that object on which their eyes were already fixed; that the Temple is really the subject of His discourse just as we should suppose from its commencement that it would be, and that all the calamities which are said to be greater than any the world had seen or would see, as well as the flight which is enjoined upon the disciples, are connected with it. If the family of Mattathias had no difficulty in determining when the abomination of desolation had been set up in their days, the disciples might hope even in this time of their half belief and ignorance, that they should be instructed wherein consisted the more complete desertion of the Divine presence which their Lord was preparing them to expect.
VII. “Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Behold, I have told you before. Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not. For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together. Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken.” That the “then” here refers to the event which has been last spoken of, that the “you” means some of those who are asking the question, we should at once conclude if we had not very decisive evidence of the contrary; until that evidence shall be clearly made out we must not assume that words are to be less strictly construed, because they refer to events of the deepest urgency and solemnity. Supposing these words then to have their obvious signification, would they have led the Apostles to think first the appearing of the Son of Man would be in their own age? I apprehend that there cannot be a doubt of it. False Christs and false prophets would appear; the true Christ would appear to confound them. The undoubted confidence in His appearing would be the only deliverance from their deceptions. But secondly, would this appearing be a visible one? Most visible I apprehend in its effects, most visible in the signs which would accompany it. But not visible in that sense in which the false Christs and false prophets would be visible. For would not their falsehood consist in this especially, that they would come to reform the world upon the opposite principle to that on which the Son of God had come, viz., to make alterations in its surface, to change the outside of things; whereas He had come to lay the axe to the root of the trees. In whatever judgment in the world He manifested Himself He must come for this end. How then would these words of our Lord act upon the disciples’ minds, supposing them really to take them in, not to pervert them according to previous notions of their own, but to use them for the correction of those notions? Must they not have said to them, did they not say to them, “all these visible appearances of men who lead you out into the desert or into the secret chamber, will be very tempting indeed to you, because it is the greatest temptation possible to human beings to seek Me in the outward world, and not to seek Me as the Lord of the hearts and reins, to change Me into a Cæsar, and not regard Me as a real, divine King, to think of Me as a judge sitting upon some exalted seat like that on which the lords of the earth sit, and not to think of Me as the Judge who looks down into the depths of every spring and principle of action, into the very inmost heart of society; before whose presence every thing must stand revealed in its inward nakedness; before whom every falsehood must fly away.” As the lightning which lighteneth from the one part of Heaven and shineth even to the other, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be. Mighty and divine words to shatter in pieces all sensual dreams which substitute an apparent for a real Christ! “Think not of the desert, think not of the chamber, but think of a light which is felt at once in all parts of Heaven, and as an illuminating yet a terrific power upon earth, when you want to have a symbol of my appearing. For do not suppose,” He seems to go on, “that it will be only in one place, just where the temple stands, that this great judgment of which I am telling you will be felt and realized. You Jews are scattered over all different parts of the earth. Everywhere you bear about the sign of a divine covenant, you are intended to be health-givers, life-givers to the world. The life has departed out of the body, it has become a carcase. Wherever any portion of it is lying there will be the birds of prey descend to feed upon it, there will God’s commissioned destroyers be found gathered together. In all these different places there will be a manifestation of the Son of Man. There will be clear tokens everywhere that He is come out of His place to judge the chosen people, and through them to judge the whole earth.”
VIII. “Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, 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 in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He shall send 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. Now learn a parable of the fig-tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: so likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” There is not the least difference here in the Evangelists except that there is perhaps something more picturesque in the words of St. Luke, “And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things that are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.” A comparison of the two passages seems to show very clearly that actual signs in the visible heavens must be intended here, as in the case of which I spoke before. Whoever has interpreted the words to signify political changes for the sake of getting rid of any physical allusions, has certainly done violence to the text. St. Luke’s language especially seems clearly to intimate that physical appearances and convulsions would be those that would startle men most, as we know they always do; which would be felt as most portentous and ominous. But ominous surely of something. They are not themselves the things which they portend. There must therefore be a justification for those who make “the powers of heaven” to mean more (not less) than mere signs in the moon and stars. When they have said they mean dynasties I cannot feel that they are to be condemned as weakening the force of the words, for surely the fall of a dynasty is a much greater event than the eruption of a volcano. But I do not think that they have reached the full force of the words, or that their interpretation is literal enough.
All the dynasties of the old world confessed something higher than themselves. The king confessed kings to whom he must do homage, dynasts to whom he must bow in the heaven above and in the earth beneath. I need not stop to remark how much astrology was connected with worship, how much powers and demons ruling in sun and stars were looked upon as the supports of earthly thrones. I apprehend then it is the simplest way of construing our Lord’s words to understand Him as saying that these powers of heaven were to be shaken, that the thrones of these demons and demi-gods were to totter. Such an interpretation I think commends itself to the conscience and understanding as one demanding no sort of strain, perfectly in accordance with the ordinary language of those to whom it was addressed, according also with the facts of heathen life and history, involving no other confusion than that which actually existed in the minds of the false worshippers between the visible and invisible, the physical and spiritual—a confusion which therefore the words, if they are true, ought to express. Whether or no the words in this sense were fulfilled, we shall have to inquire hereafter; I am now occupied only with the prophecy. The same remark applies to the next verse: “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 in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” I am not now to say what the sign of the Son of Man was, nor how the tribes of the earth mourned at that sign, nor how they saw Him coming in the clouds of heaven; I will merely say that the words, if taken in connection with those that go before, must intimate a victory of the Son of Man over those powers of heaven to which men had been doing homage, a victory which should be felt in some very striking and terrible way by the tribes of the earth, a victory which should have some obvious and visible accompaniments. It must moreover, one would say, be the victory of Christ as a living person, not of a religion or a doctrine; a victory which, whether it was understood or not at the time by the “tribes” which it caused to tremble, would be understood at once by those who had passed out of the darkness of the world and saw things in God’s light; would be understood in a measure by some on earth; would leave the deepest marks of itself in the world’s history—marks which would at last make it evident that the greatest and most memorable of all crises had taken place. Whatever this sign and this appearance of the Son of Man may have been, they must, one would think, answer to these conditions in order that they may correspond to the words which describe them. They cannot also be inconsistent with the words uttered just before, which say that the coming of the Son of Man should be as the lightning that lighteneth out of one part of heaven and shineth even to the other.
The next words, “And He shall send 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;” exactly correspond to the description in the seventh chapter of the Apocalypse. When I speak of that book I shall endeavor to consider their meaning carefully. At present I will only remark, that so far as the context can determine their meaning, they would seem to be most closely linked to the desecration and overthrow of the temple. More exact language than “immediately after the tribulation of those days,” which governs the whole of this passage, can scarcely be imagined. If we judge of them by their relation to the Gospel in which they occur, and to the other two Gospels, we shall be struck with the suitableness of such words to the tenor of John the Baptist’s first prophecy, and of all our Lord’s prophecies that have preceded them. The people who had boasted of their election, who had said, “We have Abraham to our father,” would be left without a capital or a temple, the great witnesses of its divine meaning. But the purpose of the election would stand; God would raise up children to Abraham; He would show why He had called the chosen people; a deeper society and kingdom would be found to be hidden beneath theirs.
For how does our Lord continue? “Now learn a parable of the fig-tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: so likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.” All these events, in which one sees at first only the icy hand of winter withering and destroying, are really the foretastes of a coming summer; death is the preparation for life. Instead of being cast down, you are to lift up your heads when they appear; it is of redemption, not ruin, that they speak. The regeneration of the world—the manifestation of that kingdom which your fathers died expecting, which I have told you is at hand, which I have come to reveal, will be the fruits of that judgment which will not leave one stone of this goodly building upon another.
He says this, and then He adds, “Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” He had said before, “immediately after the tribulation.” He had said just now, “when ye shall see all these things.” He says now, “Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled.” Language more awful cannot be conceived. I do not claim that any importance or solemnity shall be attached to it by those who think that the person who uttered it was only Matthew the publican, or that it is a more or less accurate report of the sayings of a good man who might be deceived. But I do claim that those who think that these are the words of the Son of God, of Him who spake as never man spake, those who dwell earnestly and passionately on the inspiration and authority of the record which contains them, should take care how they trifle with these, “Verily I say unto you,” and, “Heaven and earth shall pass away.” Let them observe that the language becomes more exact, more carefully emphatic, in those parts of the discourse which they suppose cannot have had a fulfilment at the time of the destruction of the Jewish temple, than in those which they eagerly assert, and produce passages from Josephus to show, had a fulfilment at that time. Let them mark the whole sequence of the discourse, as well as all the most minute points and phrases in it, and then ask themselves whether they can be satisfied with that explanation of the word “generation,” to which Mede gave currency, and which has been adopted in slavish deference to his authority, or in eager delight that any escape from such severe language can be discovered. Do they think that when our Lord said that the temple should be destroyed He only meant that it should be destroyed before the Jewish race ceased to exist? Do they think that he did not intend γενεά (generation) to bear its ordinary sense at all in the minds of the Apostles? Were they not to expect that the city would be compassed with Roman armies within that age? Consider, I beseech you, that it is a very different thing to maintain that a prophecy may have a double or treble sense, where by double or treble you mean that what is true of one time may be even more clearly and emphatically true of another, just as ordinary historians have remarked that the same principles swayed the conduct of Charlemagne and of Napoleon, that even the facts of the history repeat themselves, and that the laws which govern those facts are brought out more completely in the latest facts than in the earlier; and to use words in a double sense, where by “double” we mean that the signification of them in the very same narrative or discourse is changed, so that it is at the pleasure of the interpreter to make them signify one thing in reference to one part of the subject and another in reference to another. To say that a prophet not only does, but that he must transgress the limits of a single event when he lays down a great law of the Divine Mind, is to claim for him that very insight and foresight which his name implies; to say that he palters with words in a double sense, is nothing less than to call him a false prophet, to identify him with a heathen oracle. If Mede and his followers had only said, “Heaven and earth may pass away, but Christ’s words cannot pass away,” those words cannot have exhausted themselves at the time of the destruction of the temple: the law of the Divine Mind which was fulfilled in that act must be eternal because He is eternal; we are living under His government as they were, therefore what came to pass in that generation must be a guide and text-book for subsequent generations; how much one would have honored their sentence, how thankful one would have been to them for help in reading the future by the light of the past! But when they say, “Our Lord did not intend to say that all things should come to pass in that generation, though He used these very words, but only some things, leaving us at liberty to determine which belonged to that time, and which belonged, to ages hence;” all security in the reading of the Divine Word seems to be lost; no neologian more effectually undermines the authority of the Evangelists, nay, of our Lord Himself, than these honest and earnest believers
IX. “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.” Immediately after our Lord had so emphatically declared, “All these things shall come to pass in this generation,” He adds, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.” The Apostles had asked when these things should come to pass, when the end of the age should be, when the coming of the Son of Man should be. He certainly appears to answer very distinctly, in various and yet most harmonious modes of expression. “It will be within this age, within the ordinary term of a human life, within the period to which the lives of some of you will actually extend. Some of you may be brought before kings and rulers, and may be put to death before the actual critical moment arrives; but all of you will be witnesses to events which, as I have explained to you, are the forerunners and warnings of it. More than this I cannot tell you. The day and the hour of that crisis are not revealed. Men know them not, the angels know them not; only the Father knows them. Men who are so deeply interested in the event will have all the preparations for it that they can want. The inhabitants of the invisible world, who are no less interested in it, will understand more clearly that it has occurred, and what is the meaning of it. But the first must understand by watching and waiting; by maintaining an attitude of spiritual expectation, not by guessing about times and seasons; the other will not need or wish to form such guesses, they will rest in the assurance that the past, the present, and the future, are in the hands of Him who is perfect goodness and truth, and who will establish His Son’s Kingdom on the earth.” How deeply this lesson went into the hearts of the disciples, how certain they were that the coming of the Son of Man was to be in their generation, yet how careful to warn their followers against asking after the day or the hour, we shall have to consider hereafter. Here I would only beg you to observe how our Lord strengthens His disciples’ conviction that a great period or era of the world’s history was coming to an end, by leading them to compare their generation with the one which had wound up another earlier period of it. “But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.” In the words which follow it is surely intimated that there would be precisely the same security and indifference about the crisis which was approaching as about the crisis which had occurred so long before. And yet it would be just as that was, a crisis of destruction, and a crisis of restoration, one which would show what the earth is, and what men are without God, one which would show Him forth as the ruler and renewer of it. All that follows is accurately and wonderfully descriptive of a great judgment, where one is taken and another left, the spectator knows not why or how, only he feels that there is an invisible power at work, a power which he either curses because it seems to him purely arbitrary and hostile to him, or blesses because he knows it to be righteous, and believes that its purpose is to set righteousness in the earth. It is the description, I say, of a judgment; not of a sweeping, sudden destruction, but of a searching, penetrating fire, which is sent to try men’s hearts of what sort they are. All this is perfectly consistent with that belief in the revelation of an unseen Lord of the earth who should make His power and His government felt in the hearts of men and through the visible world, perfectly consistent with the appearing of the Son of Man in the glory of His Father and of the holy angels; but surely not the least consistent with the advent of a visible prince surrounded with the tinsel of ordinary outward royalty. Such an advent we might expect would be most accurately announced as to the day and the hour; the visible tokens of it would be the important and decisive ones; the secret witnesses would in comparison of them be insignificant; the command might be, “expect me, prepare for me; let some particular portion of the world be ready, for there shall I show myself.” But it would not be, “Watch; for ye know not, any more than the people about you, at what hour your Lord doth come.”
“Watch, therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh. Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season? Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods. But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to smite his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; the lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” I am anxious to press a remark I made under the last section before I conclude my notice of this chapter, because I am well aware that the moral obstacle to the literal view of it which I have taken, is really far stronger than any other. If we suppose that our Lord actually meant that all these things would come in that generation, what has the chapter to do with us? What promises, warnings does it contain which we have not a right to set aside as mere arbitrary applications or adaptations of His words, not as addressed to us by His own lips? My answer is, I conceive the promises, warnings, commands of this chapter, will be immeasurably more weighty, more binding, more awful for us, if we believe that they did meet, not one of them but all of them, a strict accomplishment in that day. For then we shall believe that the kingdom of God has actually come with power, that it has come to us, that we are living under the shadow of it. And then the question, “how have we used this gift, how have we behaved ourselves as subjects of this kingdom?” will bring before us not the vague fancy of some future judgment, but the clear distinct apprehension that we must be judged, a steady consideration of any signs which show that the Judge is at the door, a direct application of our Lord’s comparison between the first period of the world and the second, as a ground of judging of the third by the second. If there had been no manifestation of the Son of Man as a judge as well as a deliverer, we might well give ourselves up, as we are so apt to do, to mere fancies about a great assize, fancies which never really come home to the heart at all, which have the effect of making children afraid of their Father in Heaven, and keeping them from Him, which are cast aside by men with the rattles of infancy, which produce a certain impression through the lips of eloquent and terrific preachers upon weak nerves and sin-sick consciences; impressions which while they last have as much evil in them as good, and which pass away, often leaving the hollowest infidelity behind. But if He has come to judgment in the most real actual manner, if the death of a whole nation, if the birth of a whole Christendom, were the proofs and are the abiding witnesses of that judgment; if it was a judgment of the most mysterious, invisible, yet real kind, going to the roots of society, affecting all its most outward relations, meeting the individual conscience, and either raising it or leaving it in a deep abyss; if the Christian Church was a witness to the world that was passing away of what it was meant to be and what was coming out of it, and might become a feeble, forgetful, false witness; then the voice of Christ as a present King, a present Son of God, speaks to individuals, nations, churches, now; bids them watch lest their house should be broken through, lest the invisible world should be closed from them, through surfeiting and drunkenness, through party-spirit, through the worship of idols outward or inward, of self the worst of all, through the following of false prophets, through the substitution of a partial Christ for an universal one, an imaginary king for a real king; and so when He comes to His higher and more glorious temple, He should find it full of them who sell and them who buy, moneychangers in the place of priests, mammon exalted to the throne of Jehovah; and He should decree that of this better temple too, thus defiled and abominable, not one stone should be left upon another that should not be thrown down. I have anticipated something of what I shall have to say hereafter; but the subject seemed to demand even a more solemn treatment than those which have preceded it, especially as it is the introduction to the history of the Last Supper and of the Passion.
The Passover
“And it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said unto his disciples, Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of Man is betrayed to be crucified. Then assembled together the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders of the people, unto the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, and consulted that they might take Jesus by subtlety, and kill him. But they said, Not on the feast-day, lest there be an uproar among the people.” The two first of these verses belong to St. Matthew; the announcement of the consultation of the high priests is common to the three Evangelists. The great subject which is brought under our notice, both by our Lord’s words and the priest’s, is the passover. In the first three Evangelists (we may find afterwards how different the case is in the fourth,) the Jewish festivals do not occupy any prominent place in the other part of the narrative. The scene is chiefly laid in Galilee. If harmonists have attempted to arrange the history by the occurrence of passovers and pentecosts, we may be sure that they have sought help elsewhere than in the three stories which they were attempting to compare with each other. The purpose of the three Evangelists, it would seem, is to fix our minds upon this passover, to exhibit every thing as leading on towards it, and bearing upon it. He enters into Jerusalem shortly before it is to occur; the Jewish rulers have no doubt that it is His special object to present Himself at that time to the crowds of people who were gathered together from all parts of the empire, as the Son of David, their rightful king. Some decisive blow must be struck before that time, or it may be too late. And yet no time is so dangerous; it is a sacred one; it is evident that He who entered into Jerusalem with palm-branches strewed in his way, is liked by the people, has a body of devoted disciples; He must be taken by subtlety, or there may be an uproar. Such are the thoughts simply and naturally recorded of those who ruled the Sanhedrim; the Evangelists would have us notice how all these thoughts and consultations were pointing to the connection between the passover, which was the commencement of the Israelitish deliverance and commonwealth, and the kingdom which had been declared to be at hand.
The Betrayal
I omit the story of the alabaster-box of ointment, because I do not venture to assume the identity of this event with that recorded in the seventh chapter of St. Luke. In spite of the coincidence in the name of the host, the difficulties in such a supposition are very great indeed; certainly I should not dare to surmount them for the sake of bringing out another common point in the history, nor of supplying one link in the life of Judas Iscariot. One could only do that by anticipating the narrative in the fourth Gospel, a liberty which I have determined not in any case to take. I pass therefore at once to the words in the 14th verse: “Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, and said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver. And from that time he sought opportunity to betray him.” St. Mark’s narrative is even more brief, he omits the amount of the money, St. Luke’s is a little longer, he says “Then entered Satan into Judas surnamed Iscariot, being of the number of the twelve.” I need not dwell upon the absence of all starts and exclamations in this record; that, I hope, is a characteristic which we have become sufficiently aware of in the course of our study of these Gospels, so that to point it out is a kind of impertinence. I merely allude to it for the purpose of showing how entirely the thought of the personal friend was absorbed in the acknowledgment of the King and of the Son of God, even at the time when the most remarkable instance of his affection and familiarity was about to be related. How could men who are merely speaking of Jesus of Nazareth, their beloved friend, betrayed by one of their own circle, avoid the greatest expressions of indignation and horror? If they had only imputed to that friend in after times certain celestial attributes, how would that have hindered such utterances? Would it not have made them more natural and inevitable? What but the feeling that they were speaking of One who had absolutely no need of any such bursts of earthly vehemence or rapture, about whom they would be profane, whose history they were simply to bring out that men might know their King and deliverer, to the revelation of whom the chief priests and Judas were themselves mysteriously contributing, can account for the nakedness and seeming coldness of the narrative, when it touches upon an event which entered so deeply into the heart of Christ Himself, and the experience of which appears to have formed so deep and mysterious a part of His Passion?
The Feast
“Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the passover? And he said, Go into the city to such a man, and say unto him, The Master saith, My time is at hand; I will keep the passover at thy house with my disciples. And the disciples did as Jesus had appointed them; and they made ready the passover. Now when the even was come, he sat down with the twelve. And as they did eat, he said, Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me. And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began every one of them to say unto him, Lord, is it I? And he answered and said, He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me. The Son of Man goeth as it is written of Him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born. Then Judas, which betrayed him, answered and said, Master, is it I? He said unto him, Thou hast said.” When one contemplates the Passover as a great national festival, binding all Israelites together, one may easily forget how much it also bore of a family character. No one can read carefully the words of the first institution without seeing how much the command, that each man should take a lamb of the house of his father, belongs to the very essence of the institution, or how much this blending of the domestic with the civil and the national goes through the whole life and history of the chosen people. Every great painter who has ventured to take the Last Supper for his subject, has left the impression upon the mind of the spectator that he is beholding a family met together with one at the head of it who holds all its members together, with one dark form in the midst of it which has broken loose from Him and is destroying its unity. This impression has been derived from the Evangelists. Nothing can be so simply and directly human and personal as the bitter words, “One of you shall betray me,” and the questioning which the words produced, “Is it I?” Once lose the impression of the reality of this family meeting and we fail to see how much the feast in this upper chamber fulfilled the very idea of the Old Passover, and so we are not prepared for the next step in the story, for the carrying out of the idea of the Passover into its highest meaning and power.