But why speak of the future and distant? A sign' - a terrible sign of it from heaven,' a vindication of Christ's rejected' claims, a vindication of the Christ, Whom they had slain, invoking His Blood on their City and Nation, a vindication, such as alone these men could understand, of the reality of His Resurrection and Ascension, was in the near future. The flames of the City and Temple would be the light in that nation's darkness, by which to read the inscription on the Cross. All this not afar off. Some of those who stood there would not taste death,' [3678] till in those judgments they would see that the Son of Man had come in His Kingdom. [3679]
Then - only then - at the burning of the City! Why not now, visibly, and immediately on their terrible sin? Because God shows not signs from heaven' such as man seeks; because His long-suffering waiteth long; because, all unnoticed, the finger moves on the dial-plate of time till the hour strikes; because there is Divine grandeur and majesty in the slow, unheard, certain nigh-march of events under His direction. God is content to wait, because He reigneth; man must be content to wait, because he believeth.
__________________________________________________________________
[3622] Jos. Jew. War iii. 10.
[3623] If it were for no other reason than the mode in which the ex-general of the Galileans, Josephus, tells this story, he would deserve our execration.
[3624] For the geographical details I must refer to the words of Stanley and Tristram, and to Bädeker's Palästina. I have not deemed it necessary to make special quotation of my authority in each case.
[3625] Ps. xiii. 6.
[3626] Josh. xi. 1-5.
[3627] Deut. xxxiii. 23.
[3628] 2 Sam. xx. 14.
[3629] Tristram, Land of Israel, p. 586.
[3630] So Dean Stanley, with his usual charm of language, though topographically not quite correctly (Sinai and Palestine, p. 395).
[3631] Nothing in the above obliges us to infer, that the words of Peter's confession were spoken in Cæsarea itself. The place might have been in view or in the memory.
[3632] 2 Pet. i. 19.
[3633] St. John vii. 1-5.
[3634] St. John vi. 60-66; comp. St. Matt. xv. 12.
[3635] St. John vi. 67.
[3636] St. Luke ix. 18.
[3637] I confess, however, to strong doubts on this point. Legends of the hiding of the tabernacle, ark, and altar of incense on Mount Nebo by Jeremiah, were, indeed, combined with an expectation that these precious possessions would be restored in Messianic times (2 Macc. ii. 1-7), but it is expressly added in ver. 8, that the Lord' Himself, and not the prophet, would show their place of concealment. Dean Plumptre's statement, that the Pharisees taught, and the Jews believed in, the doctrine of the transmigration of souls must have arisen from the misapprehension of what Josephus said, to which reference has already been made in the chapter on The Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes.' The first distinct mention of the reappearance of Jeremiah, along with Elijah, to restore the ark, &c., is in Josippon ben Gorion (lib. i. c. 21), but here also only in the Cod. Munster., not in that used by Breithaupt. The age of the work of Josippon is in dispute; probably we may date it from the tenth century of our era. The only other testimony about the reappearance of Jeremiah is in 4 Esd. (2 Esd.) ii. 18. But the book is post-Christian, and, in that section especially, evidently borrows from the Christian Scriptures.
[3638] On the vague fears of Herod, see vol. i. p. 675.
[3639] A vision of Jeremiah in a dream was supposed to betoken chastisements (Ber. 57 e, line 7 from top).
[3640] St. Mark viii. 27, 29.
[3641] St. Matt. xvi. 16.
[3642] Rom. x. 10.
[3643] Comp. Rom. i. 4.
[3644] St. Matt. xiv. 33.
[3645] St. John vi. 69.