The Engl. Vers. has " immediately" You will say, it is a great leap from the destruction of Jerusalem to the end of the world, which is represented as coming quickly after it. I reply — A prophecy resembles a landscape painting, which marks distinctly the houses, paths, and bridges in the foreground, but brings together, into a narrow space, the distant valleys and mountains, though they are really far apart. Thus should they who study a prophecy look on the future to which the prophecy refers. And the eyes of the disciples, Avho had combined in their ques tion the end of the temple and of the world, are left somewhat veiled (for it was not yet the time for knowing ; see ver. 36), from which cause, imitating our Lord's language, they with uni versal consent declared that the end was near at hand. In their progress, however, both prophecy and contemplation (pro spectus)1 more and more explain things further distant. In which manner also we ought to interpret what is obscure by what is clear, not what is clear by what is obscure, and to vene rate in its dark sayings that Divine wisdom which always sees all things, but does not reveal all things at once. Afterwards it was revealed that Antichrist should come before the end of the world ; and again Paul joined these two rather nearly together, until the Apocalypse also placed an interval of a thousand years between them. The advent of our Lord, however, actually took place (as far as its commencement was concerned ; see Gnomon on John xxi. 22) after the destruction of Jerusalem, and presently, too, inasmuch as no intermediate event was to be mentioned in the present passage ; cf. Gnomon on ch. iii. 1. The particle Ivdeu; (quickly or immediately} refers to this advent, not absolutely to the darkening of the sun and moon, for that accords with the ex tent of our Lord's meaning; so that the meaning is " soon after the tribulation of those days, it will come to pass that the sun shall be darkened" etc. A similar connection of an adverb2 with a verb
1 Looking further forward, as in the landscape already alluded to, wherein iit first sight all the parts might seem projected into the one plane. But the eye, which has gradually come to discern perspective, and to substitute, by the judgment, causes for the visible effects, learns to look further, and to separate by wide distances the foreground and background of the picture.