Bible Commentaries

Chapter83

Prayer

Almighty God, we are here still, even in thine house, and in the most holy place upon the earth, even the sanctuary of God, because of thy tender mercy and thy lovingkindness towards us. This is the crown and the sum thereof: thou hast no other love to show us here and now, than in the house and in the cross of thy Son Jesus Christ. This is the very sun of thy glory, the full outshining of thy grace and Matthew 24:1-41

1. And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to show him the buildings of the temple.

2. And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

3. And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming (thy presence), and of the end of the world (the age)?

4. And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.

5. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am (the) Christ; and shall deceive (seduce) many.

6. And ye shall hear (be about to hear) of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

7. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

8. All these are the beginning of sorrows.

9. 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.

10. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.

11. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.

12. And because iniquity (lawlessness) shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.

13. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

14. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world (Roman empire) for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.

15. When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place (whoso readeth, let him understand:)

16. Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:

17. Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house:

18. Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes (his cloak).

19. And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!

20. But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day:

21. For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.

22. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.

23. Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not.

24. 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.

25. Behold, I have told you before.

26. 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.

27. 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.

28. For wheresoever the carcase Matthew 24:42-51

The Two Futures

You know that he will come, you do not know at what precise hour he will appear. The future is known, yet unknown. Consider what the future is. It touches the uttermost bound of time. If one might perpetrate a contradiction in terms, it is the horizon of eternity, the furthest away point in a line which has no limits. We are obliged thus to talk in self-contradictory speech when we would represent the great and grand things of creation. Number has to be set aside or talked of in terms that appear to be confusing, as the Three are One, and the One is Three.

There are two futures. This is a fact which is so often forgotten in the reasoning of men. There is a grand future, and a little one; the great future in which Imagination holds court, the future of fancy and speculation, the unmapped land of dream and fancy and vision, where life is to be a miracle, and every day a keen surprise. That is the future which the poets have taken under their care, that is the future whose firmament they have punctuated with radiant stars; but there is a little future in which Imagination has been supplanted by Anxiety, the future that is just about to dawn, the near To-morrow, the Presently that makes weak men restless and strong men quiet in hopefulness.

With these two futures we are well acquainted. The danger is that we confuse them in our view and reasoning, and should thus be talking about two totally different things in one and the same way. We have a future which we consign to Imagination: we have another future which we hand over to Anxiety, and anxiety often beats imagination, gets a firmer grip of some men than Imagination can ever get; men who take thought for tomorrow may take no thought for eternity: anxiety bars and limits and bounds them with prison boundaries and forces. Their anxiety is greater than their imagination because their selfishness is greater than their religion. Herein it is that so many persons get wrong.

So we have two futures, the near and the distant, the future in which Anxiety plays its vexatious and harassing part, and the great future where Imagination revels and poetises and dreams; and my difficulty, as a religious teacher, is this, that my scholars or pupils will so give way to little carking mean anxiety as to leave no space or time or opportunity for the consideration of that grand future which must come and bring with it all that we mean by the sweet pure name of Heaven.

Let us see how Jesus Christ himself treated the question of the future. His action in relation to it was varied yet consistent, and, as usual, was authoritatively instructive. In the first place Jesus Christ used the future as a source of inspiration, but it was not the little future of tomorrow, it was the great future of all time unborn that he so used; he often spoke of the Grand Future. "Hereafter ye shall see heaven opened," said he. "What thou knowest not now, thou shalt know hereafter." "I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now." "Fear not, little flock: it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." "He that endureth unto the end shall be saved." "When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him." You do not wonder that a man who could project himself thus infinitely across the ages, should say, from the point of his final projection, "Take no thought for the morrow, do not be the victims of anxiety; have a future, but let it be a grand one, apocalyptic in its possibility and colour and form and tone, worthy of the mind that dreams it; and do not be the victims of anxiety and petty care and carking vexation." He provided for that particular element, so to say, of the human mind, which must take hold of the future, but as he saw that element rising and asserting itself, he put within its grasp something worthy of its capacity.

The New Testament is full of the same thought. What wonder that Jesus Christ said, "I am not come to destroy the prophets"? The world must live in its prophecies. Today is too small a boundary for the soul: one world at a time was not enough for the soldier Alexander—"tis not enough for a man in whom the divinity has come. The prophets lived in the sunny future, so did Christ set his little church under its warm rays, and bless it with the promise that the voice of the turtle should be one day heard above the roar of the storm. Our life is not to be locked up in the narrow prison of one day. Among the riches of the church are not only things present but things to come. These things to come make up the mystery of glory which burns in the apocalypse. A nation is to be born in a day, the enemy of man, the old Abaddon is to be encoiled in chains that cannot be broken, the dead are to be raised incorruptible, death itself shall die, the grave-scars are to be rubbed out of the green earth, sorrow and sighing are to flee away, the whole creation, forgetting its grievous overthrow and its sharp pain, shall stand fast on eternal pillars and be beautiful as a palace built for God.

Nor is this the poetry of speech; it is the reality of fact. The word poetry is often misunderstood: it is the blossom of reality, the uppermost phase and culminating beauty of hard history and stern fact. Tell me—does he talk mere poetry, in the sense of talking only that which is visionary and impossible, who takes a root or a seed of a flower and says, "Out of this shall come strength and shapeliness, bud and blossom and fruit: birds shall sing in its branches and men shall lie down at noon beneath its cool shade—or out of this little seed shall come a flower, an apocalypse in itself, and the bee shall draw honey from its hidden cell"? If we had never seen the outcome of root or seed we should say concerning such a man—"Visionary, poetical, romantic, dreamy, utterly without practical sagacity and arithmetical and measurable aptitude in relation to things of time and sense." But the man is no mere poet in the sense of creating universes in words only: rightly judged, the man who so speaks about root or seed is only an historian by anticipation; he is a reasoner, he is the prince of logicians.

In viewing the future, therefore, do not be drawn away by the cry of poetry or romance. He is no visionary who sees in the seed time the prose out of which will come the poetry of harvest. On the other hand he would be the loose reasoner who sees seed only in the seed, wood only in the root, and did not see in the seed waving cornfields, and food for the lives of men. There shall be a handful of corn on the top of the mountains, the fruit thereof, the poetry thereof, shall shake like Lebanon. Was he only a word-painter who so spoke? Credit him with the most penetrating vision and with that grand historical capacity which sees all possibilities in the germ and seed of things.

There is a poetry which is the highest form of fact. If a man could have said in England two hundred years ago, that communication with the ends of the earth would one day be a question of mere moments, and that according to the face of the clock men would be talking in New York about something which had happened in London actually before it had taken place, he would have been regarded as the wildest of lunatics, without practical aptitude, one of the dreaming seers that you can make nothing of, a puzzle in providence, the very mystery of Omnipotence. Yet would he not in reality have been the severest of reasoners, the most acute and penetrating of logicians? We who have no faith discount and discredit the faith of other men. The passionless man can never understand passion, the literalist cannot follow the logic of prophecy, the moral Laplander can never be made to dream of the luxuriant Christian tropics. You cannot be more than you are. But do not therefore say that other men are no more gifted than yourselves. There are men to whom there has been no future in the sense of cloud and mystery and chaos, but to whom the future has given up its secret in many a fore-blessing rain, in many a secret hint, in many a quiet night visit in many a glowing dream.

Do not let us therefore measure others by ourselves. We have to take our view of the future from Christ, and he regarded the future as an inspiration. It was his sanctuary of retreat: he lived in it, he projected himself beyond the fevered day, and lived in the calm eternity. We must do the same, or we shall be vexed and stung with details which come and go with the fickle wind. Blessed is the future which is coming upon Christ's church, a day without a threatening cloud, an infinite paradise without one thorn or noxious plant, a home from which no child has wandered, a sweet heaven unvisited by sin and untroubled by pain. Such is the flower which comes out of the Christian seed, and he who foresees and foretells its coming is not a speaker of words but a prophet of facts. Therefore comfort one another with these words. If in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable. We have reckoned this world at a cheap rate because of the power of an endless life. If there be no endless life, we have done this world an injustice. Our light affliction, therefore, is but for a moment, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which arc seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. In proportion as we live in heaven are we masters of earth: just as we hide ourselves in the sanctuary of the great future and view all things from Christ's standpoint are we at rest, and amid raging seas and rocking mountains our eyes look upon the river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God. Let us see to it that we follow Christ in this, namely, that we do not live in the little future which is mastered by anxiety, but in the great future, which yields its riches to a reverent imagination.

In the next place, Christ treated the future as unknown and yet well known. "Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of man cometh. Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." Here we have a quantity spoken of that is well known yet unknown, unknown yet well known. Have we any parallel to this in our lower courses of thinking and action? Most assuredly we have. We know that tomorrow will come: tell me what will tomorrow bring with it—a sullen face of cloud or a bright countenance of June light, blessing the lands that wait for it with all the benediction of summer? We know the great fact that to morrow will dawn; we know not what will be the incidents of the day, who shall live, who shall die, what controversies will be adjusted, what correspondence will turn our thoughts into new directions, and tax our energies with new claims. We know it—we do not know it.

So with the harvest: the harvest will surely come, but will it be good or bad, early or late, satisfying or disappointing? Will it be well gathered or ill gathered? The harvest is known, but the incidents of its quality and abundance no man can know, with certainty. And death will come. When? Thank God we cannot tell. Who could face his duty, if he knew to a moment when and how he would die? The great future is revealed, the detailed future is mercifully kept back. Watch therefore—therefore be ye also ready. That is all.

So then from the parallels or analogies which are supplied by our own life I can understand in part Christ's treatment of the future. The Lord will come: great events will transpire, the trumpet shall sound and the elect shall be gathered together from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. The long-waiting earth shall receive her Lord—when? Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. There are some secrets which can be at rest in only one heart.

And yet Jesus Christ viewed the future as having an immediate influence on the present, therefore he called for vigilance and readiness, and rebuked the men who were so miscalculating the coming of the future that they did injury to their fellow-servants. He had such a knowledge of history that he was enabled to tell his age that in the days of Noah men were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, and knew not until the flood came in great blotches of black rain upon the hot streets, and the lightning flashed and the thunder rolled and the whole heaven became a deluge and the wicked were lost. " So, said he, "it will be about this coming of my own. Men will chaffer with one another, hold wordy controversy with one another in points theological and ecclesiastical, and will speak about difficulties which a reverent heart could have subdued and dissolved, or be indulging in selfish appetite and desire until the great trumpet sound and the event transpire. Such was his grasp of the future, such his insight into its breadth and narrowness!

We cannot improve though we might enlarge his lesson, when he condensed his instruction into one word, "Watch." A great expectation warms the heart, a grand dream helps us to bear the burden of the sweltering day, and noble thought ennobles the mind which entertains it. He who has only a wall in front of him is in a prison. He who is bounded by a horizon has an infinite liberty.

Now Christ comes into the region which we term practical, and in that region he says, "Be ready: WATCH: be in the tower: be looking out: at any moment the crisis of creation may supervene." To work in this spirit is to work well.

Jesus Christ was always practical, though oftentimes he said things which seemed to be of a visionary nature. He was practical when he told his church to take care of the poor and to visit the sick and bless the unblest and give joy to him who was sad of heart. Christianity has its own secularism as well as its own theology. To hear some persons talk one would imagine that Christianity was only the latest phase of the theological imagination. Christianity has its humanities as well as its divinities. There are two commandments in its infinite law, the love of God, the love of man. There is no religion under heaven so hard-working as Christianity: it never rests. Hindooism has its At Home, Mahometanism makes no proselytes, Confucianism lets the world alone, but Christianity lets nobody alone. It is the working religion, the missionary religion, the energetic faith, the revolutionary force. Do give Christianity the credit of being the hardest working religion known amongst men. I do not mean merely hard-working in any ceremonial sense, but in the largest sense of beneficence, love, evangelisation, caring for everybody, never resting, until the last man is brought in. Not judging by majorities, but judging by individualities; counting every man one, and reckoning that its work is unfinished till the last man is homed in the very heart of Christ.

Our Christianity is nothing if it be not thus practical. He only is the visionary theologian who is so lost in theological speculation as to neglect the ignorance, the disease, the poverty which are lying round about his very house and path.

"This Gospel shall be preached for a witness to all nations, and then shall the end be. " "That is the end of Jerusalem, before the destruction whereof the Gospel was preached throughout the world. Witness Paul, saying, Their sound hath gone out into all the earth; and again, The Gospel is preached to every creature under heaven, so that ye may see it running from Jerusalem into Spain. And if one only apostle, Paul, spread the Gospel so far, what shall we think did all the rest? And this was a great miracle for the convincing of the unbelieving Jews before their destruction, for the Gospel to be preached in all parts of the world, in twenty or thirty years at the most; if this would not move them to believe, nothing could."—(Chrysostom). "This must not be understood as done by the apostles, for there are many barbarous nations of Africa amongst whom the Gospel was never yet preached, as we may gather by such as have been captives there. This therefore remaineth yet to be accomplished; and because it is a secret when the world shall be filled with the Gospel, it is a secret likewise when shall be the day of judgment, before which this must be."—(Augustine.)