THE IMPORTUNATE WIDOW.

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of watching these things are perfectly incompatible; insomuch that, unless you can persuade yourself that, for aught you know, the kingdom of glory may "immediately appear," after no "long time," and without any "tarrying" at all, you are incapacitated for watching for it."

But I have not done with this point. As if to put the matter beyond all doubt, the parable of The Importunate Widow (Luke xviii. 1-8) proceeds expressly on the supposition, and carries on its face the warning, that Christ's return would be so long delayed as not only to embolden the scoffers to ask, "Where is the promise of his coming?" but to wear out the patience of all but "God's elect," and to try even them to the uttermost. I am at one with the pre-millennialists in applying this parable, in its primary

...

mily: Εντευθεν μανθάνομεν ότι ουδε χρονιζει αύτη γαρ (namely, the sentiment, My Lord delayeth his coming') ov του δεσποτου, αλλά της του πονηρού οικετου, ἡ ψήφος· διο και εγκαλείται. . . . Τι ουν φησι τα έξης ; ελεύσεται εν ήμερα ή ου προσδοκά και ώρα ή ου γινώσκει, και τα έσχατα αυτόν διαθήσει. Ορᾷς πως πανταχού τούτο τίθησι το της αγνοίας δεικνύς χρησιμον, και ταύτη ποιων εναγωνιους αιει ; κ. τ. λ.

"It is worthy of remark," says Dr. Urwick, "that the only errors mentioned in the New Testament respecting the time of our Lord's coming, all consist in dating it too early. I shall give several examples: 1st, The case of the servant represented as saying, 'My Lord delayeth his coming.' . . . . The servant had taken up a wrong impression of the date when his Master was to be looked for; and as his Master did not show himself according to that false date, the servant, instead of distrusting his own understanding, memory, or calculation, as the case might be, acted on the assumption that his Master would not come as had been promised, and so acted to his ruin." (Has not this case been repeatedly realized among the expectants of the pre-millennial advent?) The next case adduced by Dr. Urwick is that of the nobleman, on which we have commented above. "Besides correcting their mistake," says he, about an immediate appearing, "he intimates that both his second advent and the appearing of the kingdom of God were events then at a considerable distance; and the circumstance of his giving the parable to correct the mistake shows it not to have been his will that they should look upon those events as at har."-Second Advent, pp. 46-48.

historical reference, to the cry of the widowed Church for vengeance against her adversaries.* For this she is encouraged to "pray always, and not faint;" for this she is forewarned she will have to "cry" to her Judge "day and night;" and she is expressly taught that he will "bear long with her" ere he come to redress her wrongs. At last he will come and " avenge her speedily: Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh shall he find faith in the earth?" that is, as the connexion shows, faith that he will come at all.†

Need I ask now whether any primitive Christian of ordinary intelligence could rise from the study of such explicit and reiterated announcements with the belief that, for aught he knew, Christ might come any day, or within any such very limited period as that to which our theory restricts the possibility of watching for it?

But they did believe this (you say), and the apostle had enough to do to keep the Thessalonians calm in consequence; so lifted were they with the expectation of their Lord's immediate return. (2 Thess. ii. 1, &c.)

True; but is not this just to admit that that Jewish element that the kingdom of God should immediately appear -which the Lord himself had sought to purge out from amongst his half-taught disciples, had nevertheless found its way into the infant Church, and troubled, unhinged, and imperiled it? It took a stirring form in the Thessa lonian Church. Their inexperienced minds and warm hearts were plied with the thrilling proclamation, "that THE DAY OF CHRIST WAS AT HAND," or "IMMINENT" (ενεστηκεν). And how does the apostle mect their expecta

Xnpi, vidua, quæ facile læditur, nec facile defenditur inter homines. Talis ecclesia mundo videtur.-BENGEL.

+ Estque Sermo de Adventu ad vindictam, 2 Thess. i. 8, id est de adventu ad novissimum judicium conspicuo; ut appellatio Filii hominis infert: Conf. xvii. 24-30.-Ibid.

HOW TREATED BY THE APOSTLE.

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tion? He fearlessly crushes it; gently insinuating that it had its origin rather in impositions practised upon them by false brethren than in any spontaneous leanings to it among themselves. He "beseeches them by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ," which was dear to all alike, “and” the transporting prospect of "our gathering together unto him,” to give no heed to the insinuation, from whatever quarter it might come, "that the day of Christ was at hand."

No such entreaty, we may safely affirm, would ever come from a pre-millennialist-at, least of the modern school. He would be afraid of "destroying the possibility of watching." So much, indeed, is this warning in their way, that they take pains to show that our version conveys an erroneous impression of the apostle's meaning, and that the Thessalonian notion was not that the coming of Christ was "at hand," simply, but that it was "imminent," or momentarily to be looked for. Be it so, and what is gained? Let it be conceded that the Thessalonians thought themselves already in the thick of the events which were to usher in the second advent: the question is not what the Thessalonians thought about the day of Christ, but what the apostle says in opposition to their thought. The writers I allude to affirm that the apostle meant only to deny that the day of Christ had begun, or was actually present, while he wrote-that "the streaks of dawn" were to be then discerned-that the moment for his appearing had yet arrived. But what unbiased reader would

* "Some in Thessalonica," says Mr. A. Bonar, "thought that the day of Christ had begun : It is not so, says Paul; there are none of the streaks of dawn yet." (P. 134.) "The Thessalonians," says the Duke of Manchester, 'supposed that they were actually entered upon the tribulations of the last days; and the idea is, that they should not be alarmed as though that day had begun-was present then." (P. 279.) He quotes, in support of this view, Dr. Duffield, an American pre-millennialist. These esteemed brethren remind me that the apostle's word

so understand the passage? Does not the apostle, in the following verses, expressly intimate that a long and complicated series of events had to be developed, the very commencement of which was retarded by an obstacle then in being while he wrote? And is it conceivable that, at the very time when he was announcing this, and announcing it for the very purpose of crushing the expectation of an immediate appearing, he should nevertheless have meant them to expect it any day, or very speedily?*

So manifestly does this famous passage in Thessalonians destroy the modern theory of watching for the coming of Christ, that it has been found necessary to qualify the theory

(EVEOTηKEV) expresses a degree of imminence beyond that of the word usually rendered "at hand" (ɛyyus, ɛyyığw), and think I ought to have adverted to this in my remarks on the passage in the first edition. May I remind them, in turn, that, in Matt. xxiv. 33, this same word, usually rendered "at hand," is employed by our Lord himself to express the ulmost degree of imminence short of actual presence: "Know," says he, "that it is near, even at the doors" (ɛyyvs, επɩ Ovpais.)

* Will our recent pre-millennialists listen to two voices from their own camp, upon this point? The first is that of the prince of pre-millennialists and the most sagacious of the students of chronological prophecy. "It was not possible," says MEDE, "the apostles should expect the end of the world to be in their own time, when they knew so many things were to come to pass before it as could not be fulfilled in a short time. As, 1. The desolation of Jerusalem, and that not till the seventy weeks were expired: 2. The Jews to be carried captives over all nations, and Jerusalem to be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles should be fulfilled; 3. That in the mean time the Roman empire must be ruined, and that which hindered be taken out of the way: 4. That, after this was done, the Man of Sin should be revealed, and domineer his time in the temple and Church of God. . . . 7. That the time should be so long, that in the last days should come scoffers, saying, 'Where is the promise of his coming? How is it possible they should imagine the day of doom to be so near, when all these things must first come to pass, and not one of them was yet fulfilled? . . . . Notwithstanding all this, I make no question but, even in the apostles' times, many of the believing Gentiles, mistaking the apostles' admonitions to the Jews of the end of their state approaching, thought the end of the whole world, and the day of the Lord, had been also near;

DISTINCTION BETWEEN EVENTS AND PERIODS. 45

to some extent. Events, it is admitted, may be announced as preceding the second advent: but "the interposition of an event is very different from the interposition of a period: the latter seems to be incompatible with watchfulness, but not the former; especially when the event is said to be already in progress, as is done by the apostle when he says, 'The mystery of iniquity doth already work.' For this no time is given, and it is the absence of time that is the foundation of watchfulness: It is the presence of time as an element that destroys the possibility of watching; and it is the absence of that element that produces the watchful spirit."

This distinction, however, between events and periods whom, therefore, St. Paul (2 Thess. ii.) beseeches to be better informed, because that day should not come until the apostasy came first, and the Man of Sin were revealed." (Apostasy of the Latter Times, chap. xv. Works, Book III.)

The other voice on this subject is that of Bishop HORSLEY, also a pre-millennialist. "The apostle's expression," says he, speaking of the fourth chapter of 1st Thessalonians, "was so strong, that his meaning was mistaken, or as I rather think, misrepresented. There seems to have been a sect in the apostolic age, in which sect, however, the apostles themselves were not, as some have absurdly maintained, included; but there seems to have been a sect which looked for the resurrection in their own time. Some of these persons seem to have taken advantage of St. Paul's expressions in this passage, to represent him as favouring their opinion. This occasioned the second epistle to the Thessalonians, in which the apostle peremptorily decides against that doctrine, maintaining that the Man of Sin is to be revealed, and a long consequence of events to run out, before the day of judgment can come ; and he desires that no expression of his may be understood of its speedy arrival; which proves that whatever he had said of the day of his coming as at hand, was to be understood only of the certainty of that coming." (Serm. I.) In a previous part of the same Sermon, the Bishop more fully develops the sense in which he understands the day of Christ to have been "at hand" in the apostles' days. The reader will find this extracted in the note at the close of this chapter.

* Mr. H. Bonar, p. 91, quoted with approbation by the Duke of Manchester, p. 281.