So far I think is clear.  It is when we come to speak of the time of our Lord’s return that our difficulties begin.  It appears to me impossible to doubt that the first Christians were looking for the immediate return of our Lord to the earth.  At one time even St. Paul seems to have expected Him within his own life-time.  Nor does this fact in itself cause us any serious perplexity.  What does perplex us is to find in the Gospels language attributed to Christ which apparently makes Him a supporter of this mistaken view. E.g., we have these three separate sayings, recorded in St. Matthew’s Gospel:  “But when they persecute you in this city, flee into the next; for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone through the cities of Israel, till the Son of Man be come” (x. 23); “Verily I say unto you, There be some of them that stand here, which shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom” (xvi. 28); “Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all these things be accomplished” (xxiv. 34).  This seems plain enough; and if we are to take the words as they stand, we seem to be shut up to the conclusion that our Lord was mistaken, that He ventured on a prediction which events have falsified.  Let us see if this really be so.  I leave, for the moment, the words I have quoted in order to cite other words which point in a quite different direction.

To begin with, we have the emphatic statement:  “But of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father only.”  We remember also Christ’s words to His disciples, on the eve of the Ascension, “It is not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father hath set within His own authority.”  There is, further, a whole class of sayings, exhortations, and parables, which seem plainly to involve a prolonged Christian era, and, consequently, the postponement to a far distant time, of the day of Christ’s return.  Thus, there are the passages which speak of the preaching of the gospel to the nations beyond:  “Wheresoever the gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, that also which this woman hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her” (Mark xiv. 9); “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the nations; and then shall the end come” (Matt. xxiv. 14).  There is the parable which tells of the tarrying of the bridegroom till even the wise virgins slumbered and slept.  “After a long time,” we read in another parable, “the Lord of those servants cometh and maketh a reckoning with them.”  What is the significance of the parable of the leaven hid in three measures of meal, and still more, of that group of parables which depict the growth of the kingdom—­the parables of the sower, the wheat and tares, the mustard-seed, and the seed growing gradually?  Does not all this point not to a great catastrophe nigh at hand, which should bring to an end the existing order of things, but rather to just such a future for the kingdom of God on earth as the actual course of history reveals?  And this, and no other, was, I believe, the impression which Christ desired to leave on the minds of His disciples.