We have, therefore, we trust, something like a comprehensive view of inspiration, both in its broader and narrower sig nification. Mediate or indirect inspiration is both special and universal, and immediate or direct inspiration is the same. And it is universal not only on the Divine, but on the human side; and it is special not only on the human, but on the Divine side. Hence as thus viewed, it explains all the phenomena of history, furnishes a philosophical ground for revelation, and opens a truly rational way for the unfolding of God's thought to the world, and the realizing of God's life in the world. S. Crane, D.D.

ARTICLE XXI.

The Second Coming.

THE question of the Second Coming of Christ, as it is called in dogmatic literature - although the expression does not once occur in the New Testament - receives a new interest from the recent prophetic conference. The subject is one that has always possessed a strong fascination for the minds of Christians, and one that has been differently understood by different schools of thought. Some have regarded it as a spiritual advent, others have taken it in its most baldly literal sense. These latter have told us that the day was approaching when the parting sky would reveal the returning form of Jesus, and the trumpet of his herald angel would wake from their long slumbers the uncounted sleepers of the earth. The time even has frequently been fixed; sometimes placed so near at hand that devout believers have sold their possessions and purchased robes for the ascension; again so remote that the scoffer has grown bold in his mockery, and felt that there was yet ample space for repentance. When the dates have passed, and still the sun has obstinately refused to be veiled in darkness, neither would the moon turn to blood nor the

stars fall from heaven, the "millennium mathematics" have been readjusted and new dates worked out. The world, however, has gone rolling on, and "since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation."

What

The ideas of a second coming and a general judgment were originally based upon the parables of Jesus and the imagery employed in them. That imagery was drawn from various sources, and appears in the parables of the Talents, the Virgins, the Husbandmen; in the external trappings of kings and courts; in figures from the Old Testament, such as the signs in the heavens, the Son of Man coming with clouds, and the sound of the trumpet. The great fact underlying these representations, the moral taught, is that nations and men are judged and will be judged. Jesus himself does not teach a visible, material, local advent, at which the dead will be raised, and living and dead brought to trial and sentenced. ever the drapery, the truth itself is what he seeks to impress. That it may be rendered more impressive he presents it in pictures. It has come to pass, however, that men have been content with the figures of his speech instead of trying to grasp the precepts they embodied. They have taken the sheath and left the sword. They have taken the rhetoric and rejected the idea. They try to support their building upon the ornaments of the pillar, instead of the pillar itself. The metaphors of Jesus, instead of his principles, have shaped the currents of theological thought. His oriental imagery, rather than his eternal truth, dominates the minds of men.

The ideas of Jesus himself seem clear. The world is judged in righteousness. Evermore the thrones are set. Constantly are the decrees pronounced. The notable illustration of judg ment upon nations before his own mind is the coming overthrow of Jerusalem, of whose temple and palaces he declared that not one stone would be left upon another. This was to occur before the generation then living had passed away. It would, indeed, be the consummation of that age, not the "end of the world," as the old translators made it.

Indeed the expression "end of the world," we may safely say, always means the " end of the age," the completion of a period of time, not the destruction of the material globe. The downfall of Jerusalem would wind up the ancient era, the years of preparation and hope, and inaugurate the kingdom of God. Beyond this consummation the predictions of Jesus do not extend. What, in his own thought, lay beyond is not revealed. The Great Commission itself must be interpreted by its spirit and not its letter, if it is to be carried beyond the period that was to close with Jerusalem's catastrophe. "Lo! I am with you always, even unto the end of the present age!"

When we come to the writings of the apostles, our way is not so clear. There are passages which in the judgment of the essayist, and in the judgment of many more conservative than he, can only be fairly interpreted upon the supposition that the first Christians expected in their own day a personal and material re-appearance of their Master, with various attendant circumstances. "The language of our Saviour respecting his future coming," says Andrews Norton, "was, I believe, more or less misunderstood by some or all of the apostles, during a part or the whole of their ministry. They looked forward with more or less confidence to a personal and visible return of Christ to earth at no distant period. The first coming of the Messiah had been so wholly unlike what their countrymen had universally anticipated, that when he spoke of a future coming while the then existing generation was still living, they transferred to this some of the expectations which had long been entertained respecting his appearance and kingdom." This is from one of the most conservative commentators of the liberal school. It fairly states the case. While, upon the one hand we must avoid taking as literal that which was designed to be figurative, on the other hand we must avoid taking as figurative that which was just as evidently designed to be literal. There are literal passages upon this very subject that no hermeneutical legerdemain can dissipate into rhetorical mist. The early Christians read into the words of Jesus a meaning that was not there; let us not imitate their error !

There seems to have been some variety of opinion as to the events that would be connected with their Lord's return, but upon the thing itself there was general unanimity. According to the Jewish tradition that at the coming of the Messiah the dead would be raised from their graves and made to participate in the glories of his kingdom, Paul writes to the Thessalonians that "we that are alive, that are left unto the coming of the Lord, shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep." His idea is that when the Lord descends the shout of the archangel and trump of God will wake the dead, and living and dead be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and be with him forever. But all this is to take place during the lifetime of those who were yet upon the earth. Some of them would be living and remain until the coming of the Lord. In other passages the destruction of his enemies is represented as taking place at his coming. "When they shall say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction will come upon them . . and they will not escape." For that day Christians are exhorted to watch. Certainly the apostle believed that it was imminent, or the injunction was vain.

The Thessalonians are exhorted to suffer in patience the persecutions of their oppressors, since "God will recompense affliction to them that afflict you, and to you that are afflicted rest with us, at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of his power, in flaming fire, rendering vengeance to them that know not God." The force of this consolation lay in the supposition that the persecuted Christians would be alive to receive the comfort of their Lord when he came. James admonishes the laborers who have been defrauded of their dues: "Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. The coming of the Lord is at hand." Justice will soon be done. "Let the rich weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon them." Their injustice is about to be avenged. Peter says: "The end of all things is at hand." "Encourage one another," writes the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, " and so much the more because ye see the day is approaching." "Little children,'

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says John, "it is the last hour. And as ye heard that Antichrist cometh," - this was one of the signs Paul gave the Thessalonians-" even now there have arisen many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last hour." The antichrist was to be destroyed by the brightness of the Lord's coming. The hour for that destruction had even then arrived.

These passages, to the mind of the writer, clearly indicate that for awhile, at least, the apostles fully expected a return of their Lord that would be personal, visible, in material form, at which coming the dead would be raised, the living and dead judged and sentenced, the enemies of the Messiah destroyed, and all wrongs righted. The coming tempests would be survived by none but Christians, for whose home and kingdom, out of the ruins of the old heavens and earth, new heavens and a new earth would be created. In this they would reign forever with their triumphant king. "In truth," says James Martineau, speaking of Paul, "it was no common tempest that he thought to see. Rather did he sail on in the belief that the very seas of time beneath him were about to sink and flee away, bearing with them the mighty fleet of human things into nothingness and night, and leaving only that poor, frail skiff of the church, which he took to be the ark of God, suspended in the mid-heaven of God's protection, to grow into a diviner world. Paul actually looked around him with the persuasion that the stable products of history by which he was environed, the gigantic institutions, the proud traditions, the heartless slavery that lay within the grasp of Roman power, existed by a feebler tenure than the sickliest infant's life; he looked to see them all, and the mighty arm that held them crumble into sand before his eyes."

Gradually, however, the notion of this outward coming, "with pomp and circumstance," this outward coming in their own day, -lost its hold, and gave place to worthier conceptions. The writer of the Second Epistle attributed to Peter, while not wholly free from the idea of externalism, rises to a more rational time-view, when he exclaims that although the Lord is not slack concerning his promise, yet with

NEW SERIES. VOL. XXIV.

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