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both in words and actions, contradicted him,—although the three other evangelists state that he avowed himself the king of the Jews, yet that, according to John, (whose testimony alone, and that only in one solitary instance, is against the other three evangelists,) Jesus should make the concession that his kingdom was not of this world. But observe how unwillingly, even under the existing aggravatingly distressing circumstances, he makes this concession. After the question has been put to him, he asks another, namely, who had instructed the Roman governor, who was then on the seat of justice, to interrogate him as to whether he was, or was not the king of the Jews. Pilate retorts, saying,-" Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and chief priests have delivered thee unto me; what hast thou done?" Jesus does not answer the question, nor has he answered it to this day; any more than he has answered another question then put to him, namely," what is truth?" Evading a direct answer, he says," My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now is my kingdom not from hence." To say nothing of the facts that one of his servants, namely Peter, actually had fought, and that he himself had ordered the rest to be provided with swords, let us observe that Pilate, upon obtaining this answer, asked Jesus,—“ Art thou a king then?" Christ replied in the affirmative,-" Thou savest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth."* This answer, in a great measure, was in accordance with the doctrine of the kingdom of heaven, which Christ had been proclaiming. He was a king, and a king of the Jews. This he did not deny; but he denied that his kingdom was of this world. Nor had he ever said that it was. He had always taught that this world was to be burned before he should establish his kingdom; and that his first appearance, for this purpose, would be in the clouds, where, probably, the new earth was to be fixed, while this world was to be eternally burning. This answer of Christ to Pilate, therefore, by no means proves that his kingdom was to be a spiritual one, or that it was not to be of a secular character; much less that it was the Gospel Dispensation.

Notwithstanding Christ's declaration, Nathaniel, as if prompted by Inspiration, calls Christ, the very first time he sees him, "the King of Israel;" and even the angel, in predicting his birth, announces that "the Lord God shall give him the throne of his father David, that he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and that of his kingdom there shall be no end;"-a description of his kingdom quite conformable to that which he himself gives of it. He calls himself a king, when speaking of himself as judge of mankind,-the office of judge§ in ancient times, and still in some countries, being discharged by the king; and he calls his dominious a kingdom, in quite as literal a sense as either of the kings and kingdoms of Judah or Israel is spoken of, without ever giving the least intimation that we should understand him otherwise than literally. If, therefore, the kings and kingdoms of Judah and Israel were literally so, Christ is literally a king, and his kingdom literally a kingdom. Nathaniel says to him,

John xviii. 33-37.

+ John i. 49. Matth. xxv. 40.

Luke i. 32, 33.

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"Thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel." Would it not be absurd to suppose that, in this instance, he is literally called the Son of God; but figuratively, the King of Israel?+

As the King of Israel, who was to establish an everlasting kingdom, after conquering all his enemies, in the destruction of this world and the creation of a new one (or perhaps a remodification of the old materials, purified by fire,-a very ancient notion,) the pious Simeon waited for him, whom he terms the consolation of Israel." And in expectation of the same event, the ever-memorable Joseph of Arimathea "waited for the kingdom of God."§ This would be a most singular expression, if by the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God were meant the Dispensation of the Gospel Here has Christ been on earth; has established his kingdom; has promulgated its doctrines through the length and breadth of Palestine; has sent apostles by twelve and by seventy to preach it to all the world; has made thousands of converts to the new religion-the Gospel Dispensation; (?) has just died on the cross to atone for the sins of the world; and is now being buried by this very Joseph of Arimathea, “an honourable counsellor," and therefore a man neither of low position, mean intellect, scanty education, nor slight acquaintance with Christ and his doctrines, but a man who still waits for the kingdom of God,-waits for this kingdom to come or be established; whereas it has long ago come, and has made considerable progress in the world, by working thousands of stupendous miracles, the fame of which has resounded throughout the whole land; pay whereas the very essence, the Alpha and Omega of this kingdom is conveyed into the tomb, perhaps between the arms of this very Joseph, who, notwithstanding, waits still for the kingdom of God. Can this mean the Gospel Dispensation? Would not Joseph of Arimathea have known, -would not Christ or some of the disciples have told him,-would not the wonderful works, and the still more wonderful words of Christ, who always drew after him great multitudes of people, have convinced him that the marvellous three years which Christ spent as a public teacher, at the close of which period rocks rent, the earth quaked, the sun darkened, the graves opened, and the dead rose and walked about, was the commencement of the Gospel Dispensation? Must not Joseph, who was a disciple of Christ and resided within a short distance of Jerusalem, have known all these things? Why then did he wait for the kingdom of God? Obviously, because he, in common with all others of his age, and many ages after, firmly believed, from the teaching of Christ and his apostles, that the kingdom of God meant the End of the World, the Final Judgment, and after these events, an eternal age of bliss in what was called the kingdom of heaven or of God. The notion that the kingdom of heaven means the Dispensation of the Gospel is a figment of the brains of men of comparatively modern times, to which the first ages of Christianity were entire strangers. Joseph of Arimathea, who it is said was a good and just man, and a disciple of Christ, waited also himself,-waited with many others for the

John i. 49.

Peter also, in his Pentecostal Sermon (Acts ii. 29, 30) makes Christ to descend from David, and claims his right to the throne of David (the fruit of whose loins he was) in as literal a sense as ever words were uttered.

Luke ii. 25, 34.

§ Mark xv. 43. Luke xxiii. 51. Matth. xxviii. 57.

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kingdom of God,-waited in daily expectation of seeing the Judge appear in the clouds of heaven, and of being "caught up into the air, so as to be for ever with the Lord."

A few more instances of the sense in which the phrase "kingdom of heaven" is employed, must suffice on this head. Christ having told Zaccheus, a little man in stature but great in riches,* that he was going to abide at his house, adding as he entered in, and after he had heard the vaunts of his host as to his liberality to the poor, that that day salvation had come to this house, because Zaccheus also was a son of Abraham, and because the Son of man was come to seek and to save that which was lost, the multitude who followed Christ, and heard these words, "thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear." The words of the Evangelist are,-" And as they heard these things, he added and spake a parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of (iod should immediately appear."+ These words clearly show that the writer meant to indicate that the kingdom of God had not appeared when Christ spoke to Zaccheus. Therefore, the appearance and preaching of Christ on earth was not the kingdom of heaven, as understood by the Evangelist, who wrote, as we are told, under Divine guidance, and than whom none, it will be admitted by all Christians, could know better. That kingdom was a thing yet to come. The people then expected it "immediately," because the supposed king of this supposed kingdom had intimated his intention to take his abode with one of the sons of Abraham, the celebrated ancestor of the Jews; and because he had said, -"this day is salvation come to this house." But it will be observed that they only expected this kingdom,-"thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear.'

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Jesus, in order to correct their mistake as to the instant appearance of this kingdom, and to show them that a few things must yet occur before it would come, spoke a parable of a certain nobleman who went into a far country to receive a kingdom. But the inhabitants of that kingdom hated him, and sent to tell him they would not have him to reign over them. Having, however, obtained the kingdom and returned, he called his servants, to whom at his departure he had entrusted a pound each, and he put one to reign over ten cities, and another over five, each according to the good use he had made of the money of his royal master. To the servant, however, who had used the money improvidently he gave no power, but took from him the money, and commanded that those enemies of his, who had said they would not have him to reign over them, should be brought before him and slain in his presence. If language has any meaning, there is certainly here depicted a secular king and a secular kingdom, de futuro. What is said of the servants is exactly in harmony with what is said of the faithful and unfaithful servants in the xxvth chapter of Matthew, where it is said that the Son of man shall come in his glory,-sit as a king upon his throne,-send one set of human characters to everlasting fire, and receive another into the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world. Those expressions in Matthew and those in the passage now under consideration from Luke, are uttered in reference to, and in immediate

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connection with the same kingdom-"the kingdom of heaven," and "the kingdom of God," which clearly mean the same thing. These circumstances furnish irrefutable evidence that the passage in Luke represents the kingdom of God not only as yet to come, but as that which was to come at the End of the World and the Last Judgment; and which, with its concomitant events, was, at the time Christ entered Zaccheus's house, earnestly and generally expected to be just at hand. That part of the parable which represents the king as putting one of his servants, who had been faithful to him before he had obtained the kingdom, to reign over ten cities, and another, who had borne a similar character, to reign over five, has clear reference to the different degrees of power and eminence which should be given to those admitted to the kingdom of heaven;-a point referred to by Christ on a great number of occasions, so as to make his hearers deeply sensible that there were positions of different degrees of dignity to be assigned to the subjects of this kingdom, and that their claims to high stations depended upon their conduct towards him. Hence the frequent quarrels among his disciples as to who should be greatest in the kingdom of heaven, which Christ as frequently endeavoured to subdue by persuading them that the humblest then should be the highest in his kingdom; and hence the applications to Christ for being allowed to sit next to him in his kingdom.*

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Additional light is thrown on the doctrine of this parable by the statement of the Evangelist that the reason why Christ spoke the parable was, not only "because they thought the kingdom of God should immediately appear," but also because he was nigh to Jerusalem." He was about entering that royal city in triumph, which the Evangelist says he did enter, immediately after he had spoken the parable, with the greatest demonstration of regal pomp, (as already noticed) riding on a wild colt of an ass, and followed by a huge multitude who strewed their clothes on the ground before him, and shouted forth acknowledgments of his kingly authority. When he was requested by some of the Pharisees to check these disloyal proceedings, he showed his approbation of them, and afterwards prophesied that Jerusalem, either in common with, or immediately before the rest of the world, should be destroyed, saying,-" If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace; but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side; and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation."†

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SECTION IV.-CHRIST'S PREDICTION THAT JERUSALEM SHOULD BE EN

COMPASSED WITH ARMIES, EVINCING THAT HE IMAGINED THE WORLD WAS TO BE DESTROYED BY ARMIES OF ANGELIC SOLDIERS.

Whatever Christians may think of the import of the foregoing prediction; however frequently it may, with that in another part of the same Gospel,* be cited to prove that Christ thereby predicted the destruction of Jerusalem, and did not predict the End of the World; the numerous, clear, and distinct passages which record his prediction of the latter, form such a ponderous mass of irrefragable evidence of the fact that, in regard to the meaning of the two passages in Luke, which speak about compassing with armies and enemies, about falling by the edge of the sword and being led away captive, the following alternative is inevitable :-These passages are predictions of what would befall Jerusalem, either immediately BEFORE the End of the World, or of what would befall it AT the End of the World, in common with the whole earth. Whether they mean the one or the other is not a question which in the least alters the character of Christ as a prophet. Because if they mean either, they prove him to be a false prophet. The real question here in regard to Christ as a prophet is not, whether he did prophesy the destruction of Jerusalem; but whether he did prophesy that, during the life-time of those contemporary with him on earth, he should come in the clouds of heaven to destroy this world, judge all mankind, establish a kingdom which he calls the kingdom of heaven, and receive into this kingdom those whom he calls "the elect," while he punished those whom he terms "the cursed" with everlasting fire. This alone is the grand question here at issue. That he positively prophesied the latter has already been proved by a greater mass of evidence, adduced from his own words, than can be found to elucidate the meaning of any other prediction ever uttered. Since, however, we have, in our pursuit of the import of the phrase "kingdom of heaven," fallen upon that passage in connection with it, wherein Christ deplores the coming do m of Jerusalem, it would not be amiss to digress for a moment, in order to ascertain what this passage and others of similar language really mean; and what relation they bear to other passages which form their contexts, and in which Christ indisputably predicts the End of the World.

It should at the onset be observed, that Christ does not seem to have had any clear and definite notion of the manner in which, or the means by which the world was to be destroyed, although he predicted its destruction. This is evident from the different, and frequently contradictory manner in which, at different times, he speaks of the circumstances connected with the event, while on the event itself he clearly and firmly insists.† Either this is

Luke xxi. 20-24.

To furnish proofs of this position, here, would be too tedious a task, and would make us deviate too far from the main subject. Any reader, at his leisure, by taking his Testament and Concordance in hand, may amply verify the assertion.

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