CHAPTER XI.

WATER-MARKS OF AGE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HIS

TORIES.

THE Geologist points to ancient sea-beeches, now ele. vated above the reach of the tide, and to terraces on the margin of rivers, which mark the level to which the waters have risen at different epochs in the past. They are monuments which nature has left of the successive periods in her own history. In like manner do literary productions exhibit indelible traces of the time and circumstances under which they were produced. Emphatically is this true of works which deal with things in the concrete, whether it be outward occurrences, or changing institutions and phases of opinion. Hence the circumstances under which a book was composed will leave their impress upon it. The most cunning hand is scarcely equal to the task of carrying through a deception, unless criticism slumbers. Anachronisms will infallibly creep into the counterfeited work, and betray its artificial origin. Therefore, characteristics of the kind specified serve as a criterion of the genuineness of books, which is independent of external testimony, and has a convincing force for the reason that such peculiarities are plainly not the product of contrivance. They are too deeply woven into the texture of the work. They are introduced with no consciousness, on the part of writers, of their bearing on questions of date and authorship. They constitute, as it were, the atmosphere that sur

rounds a literary production. They tell a tale, like peculiarities of language and accent. "Thou art a Galilean: thy speech bewrayeth thee," was the remark of the servant to Peter. With a like certainty literary fraud will unmask itself, from the impossibility of assuming the features of verity to which I have referred.

The New Testament histories abound in references, many of them quite casual, to customs, manners, incidents, geographical and political facts-to a myriad aspects of society-which identify the time when the books were written. Besides a great variety of circumstances of this general nature, there are certain other internal peculiarities, which are less obvious, since they do not lie on the surface, but which point convincingly to one conclusion-that which affirms the genuineness, or early date, of the books to which they pertain. These considerations are not all of equal weight in their bearing on the different historical books of the New Testament; but the proper discriminations can be made as we proceed.

I. We call attention to the hopes and expectations of the Apostles respecting the Second Advent of Christ, as they are disclosed in the New Testament writings. It is clear that the Disciples, during the life-time of their Master, notwithstanding the spirituality that belonged to them, when compared with their countrymen generally, shared in the prevalent expectation of a Messianic kingdom to be inaugurated in visible might and majesty. The impression made on their hearts by the moral and religious teaching of Christ, the personal attraction which He exerted upon them, in conjunction with the miracles which left them in no doubt as to His divine mission and the resources of His power, held them in their loyalty to Him, when others, their sanguine hopes of an external demonstration being disappointed, forsook Him. But the Disciples, the chosen com

pany, were so firmly wedded to their old conception of the kingdom that they could not be made to believe that Christ was to suffer and die. His reiterated intimations and assurances on this topic fell on deaf ears. If they attracted notice at all, it was only to call forth, as in the case of Peter, a zealous protest (Matt. xvi. 22, Mark viii. 32). When they saw Him die, a victim of the power and malice of the Jewish authorities, they "mourned and wept" (Mark xvi. 10), not only for the personal bereavement which they had suffered, but from the apparent wreck of their hopes. The ambitious feeling which had prompted them, at an earlier day, to contend as rival aspirants for the principal posts of honor in the kingdom about to be ushered in, as they supposed, with imposing splendor, might dwindle, or disappear, under the Master's pure teaching and example. But the underlying idea of a Messiah who was literally to sit upon the throne of David was more slowly surrendered. After His resurrection, they put the anxious question: "Wilt Thou at this time, restore the kingdom to Israel?" That, as they imagined was the end and aim of His reappearance. It was the goal towards which their eyes were directed. With these ideas and aspirations, it was natural that they should dwell with eager interest upon His teaching relative to His second coming. Then, if not before, the glory of the Messiah would be fully displayed. This event was naturally the object of their fond anticipation. They stood gazing up into heaven. Their yearning for the absent Lord mingled itself with their conviction that the Messiah's work was incomplete until there should be a stupendous manifesta. tion of power in connection with it. Every hour's delay of His coming was a painful postponement of a wish that pined for its fulfilment. The day could not be distant

1 Acts i. 6.

when every eye would behold His glory; when they would rejoice once more in His visible presence. This expectation is expressed by all of the Apostles in terms which fairly admit of no other interpretation. It is found in Paul (Rom. xiii. 11, 12; 1 Cor. vii. 29, 31; x. 11; Phil. iv. 5 ; 1 Tim. vi. 14). It is true that in his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, Paul cautions those to whom he is writing, against the notion, which had caused no little agitation among them, that Christ was to appear immediately (ii. 2, 3); but his language, at the same time, implies that the coming of the Lord is not far off; the preliminary signs were beginning to be seen (ii. 7, 8). The same expectation is expressed in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb.x. 25, 37); in the Epistle of James (v. 3, 8); in the Epistles of Peter, (1 Peter iv. 7, 2 Peter iii. 3); in the Epistle of Jude (ver. 18), in the First Epistle of John (ii. 18), and in the Apocalypse (i. 1, iii. 11, xxii. 7, 12, 20). To put any other construction on these passages, as if the Parusia to which they refer, were anything else than the Second Advent of the Lord to Judgment, would introduce a dangerous license in interpretation, and one which might be employed to subvert the principal doctrines of the Christian system.1

Under the general expectation of the Apostles, mistaken

1 Prof. Lightfoot, on the Philippians, commenting on ch. iv. 5, says: "The nearness of the Lord's Advent is assigned as a reason for patient forbearance. So similarly in St. James, v. 8 . . . . . . The expression, ỏ кpos ¿yyùs is the Apostle's watchword. In 1 Cor. xvi an Aramaic equivalent is given, Mapàv á á, whence we may infer that it was a famil iar form of recognition and warning in the early Church. Compare Barnab. 21. . . . See also Luke xxi. 31, 1 Peter iv. 7." Meyer, on Romans xiii. 11, says: "owrnpia, das Messiasheil, that is, thought of in its perfection, as it comes in through the Parûsia, which Paul, in common with the whole Apostolic Church, conceived of as near and to come during the lifetime of that generation. Compare Phil. iv. 5; 1 Peter iv. 7."

though it might prove to be in the one particular of time, there lay a fundamental truth. The Apostle Paul, speaking of transgressions of the people of God under the old dispensation, says (1 Cor. x. 11): "They are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world"-of the ages, the last times of the world's history-"are come." On this passage, Neander remarks: "He regards the final catastrophe as near, and all the early history of the kingdom of God as having been recorded as an admonitory example for the last time. In this view, the Apostle was warranted, even though he held the Last Time to be much shorter than it was to be. Christianity is the goal and end of all earlier revelations, and no other revelation follows upon it. Herein is the right given to the Christian to consider himself as the goal to which Revelation, in the whole previous course of its development, points and ministers."

1

When we turn to the teaching of Christ, we find, in the first place, that the time of the Second Advent and consummation of the kingdom, He declares to be not a subject of Revelation. That day and hour were known neither to man nor angel, nor to the Son, but to the Father only (Matt. xxiv. 36; cf. Mark xiv. 32). It is doubtful whether this passage should be understood as relating solely to the precise point of time-the day of the month, and the hour of the day—when the event in question was to occur. The meaning may be that the time in general was known only to God. This is said in an unequivocal form, in the words of Christ to the Apostles, at a later day: "It is not for you to know the times and seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power" (Acts i. 7). That event belonged to those future things into which human curiosity might not pry. They were to be learned, in particular the date of their occurrence was to be ascertained, only as the plan of Provi

Corintherbriefe, p. 164.