intended for purely practical purposes. In the second part of His Discourse121 the Lord
distinctly tells them, what they are not to know, and why; and how all that was
communicated to them was only to prepare them for that cons tant watchfulness, which
has been to the Church at all times the proper outcome of Christ's teaching on the
subject. This, then we may take as a guide in our study: that the words of Christ contain
nothing beyond what was necessary for the warning and teac hing of the disciples and of
the Church.
120. St. Matt. xxiv. 4-35, and parallels.
121. St. Matt. xxiv. 36 to end, and parallels.
The first Part of Christ's Discourse122 consists of four Sections,123 of which the first
describes 'the beginning of the birth-woes'124 125 of the new 'Age' about to appear. The
expression: 'The End is not yet'126 clearly indicates, that it marks only the earliest period
of the beginning - the farthest terminus a quo of the 'birth-woes.'127 Another general
consideration, which seems of importance, is, that the Synoptic Gospels report this part
of the Lord's Discourse in almost identical language. If the inference from this seems
that their accounts were derived from a common source - say, the report of St. Peter -
yet this close and unvarying repetition also conveys an impression, that the Evangelists
themselves may not have fully understood the meaning of what they recorded. This may
account for the rapid and unconnected transitions from subject to subject. At the same
time it imposes on us the duty of studying the language anew, and without regard to any
scheme of interpretation. This only may be said, that the obvious difficulties of negative
criticism are here equally great, whether we suppose the narratives to have been written
before or after the destruction of Jerusalem.
122. vv. 4-35.
123. vv. 4-8; 9-14; 15-28; 29 -35.
124. St. Matt. xxiv. 8; St. Mark xiii.
8.
125. αρχη ωδινων , St. Matt. xxiv. 8, and so according to the better reading also in St.
Mark.
126. St. Matt. xxiv. 6.
127. Generally, indeed, these are regarded as 'the birth-woes' of 'the end.' But this not
only implies a logical impossibility (the birth-woes of the end), but it must be remembered
that these 'travail -pains' are the judgments on Jerusalem, or else on the world, which are
to usher in the new - to precede its birth.
1. The purely practical character of the Discourse appears from its opening words.128
They contain a warning, addressed to the disciples in their individual, not in their
corporate, capacity, against being 'led astray.' This, more particularly in regard to Judaic
seductions leading them after false Christs. Though in the multitude of impostors, who,
in the troubled times between the rule of Pilate and the destruction of Jerusalem,
promised Messianic deliverance to Israel, few names and claims of this kind have been
specially recorded, yet the hints in the New Testament,129 and the references, however
guarded, by the Jewish historian,130 imply the appearance of many such seducers. And
their influence, not only upon Jews, but on Jewish Christians, might be the more
dangerous, that the latter would naturally regard 'the woes,' which were the occasion of