The Pulpit Commentary — Matthew — Volume 2 — Section 446

much louder and more awful shall be that trumpet-coll which shall wake the dead and summon quick and dead alike befo~e the throne I The angel.A, the messengers of the Bon of man, shall gather together his elect. The angels are his· the elect are his • they are Ohrist'e, bought with his precious blood; his, for the Fath;r who chose them' and by,, his oh~ice made them "elect according to the foreknowledge of God the FathM, bath _given them_ to the only begotten Son; they_ are his; none can pluck them out of his hand. Hts angels shall gather them togetner from the four winds- from one end of heaven to the other. Not one of them shall be lost-wherever they may be, in the remotest corners of the earth, or lying in long-forgotten graves-the angels shall gather them together, from the cottage and from the palace, from the crowded city and the desolate wilderness, from below the green sods of the churchyard and from the fathomless depths of the sea; the angels shall bring every one of God's elect safe to the Lord who loved them and died for them, whom they believed in, and loved and trusted even unto death. II. THE TIME, 1. The parable of the fig tree. The disciples had BBked, "When shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?" The Lord had spoken of the fall of Jerusalem and of the great day ; he had told them of the abomination of desolation which should be the warning of the one, and of the sign of the Son of man which should announce the other. He now proceeds to the question of time; again he speaks first of the nearer end, the end of the temple and the holy city; then of the end of all things. He sat on the Mount of Olives; he pointed, it may be, to a fig tree then putting forth its leaves; those buds, those tender leaflets, were the earnest of approaching summer. So, the Lord said," when ye shall see all these things [the signs which he had mentioned], know that it is near, even at the doors." They would see it, some of them; for that genera- tion would not pass till all these things were fulfilled-all these things, that is, of which the Lord had spoken but just before in the temple: " Verily I say unto you, all these things shall come upon this generation" (eh. x.x.i.ii 36); all those things of which the disciples had asked him, "Tell us, when shall these things he? "-the destruction of the temple, the ruin of Jerusalem, the scattering of the people of Israel. It was hard for J ewe to realize; Jerusalem was all the world to them; their attach- ment to Jerusalem was more than patriotism-it was a religion to them. Jerusalem was the centre of their worship; the temple was the centre of Jerusalem, the house of God, the dwelling-place, in ancient times, of his manifested glory. They regarded that glorious building with a national pride, with a deep religious interest, with a passionate love, which, perhaps, has had no parallel in the history of the world. They had watched the progress of Herod's restoration (or rather rebuilding), not without some feelings of suspicion, but yet with intense delight and enthusiasm, And now they heard that those goodly stones which they so much admired were all to be thrown down; there would not be left one stone upon another. It was like a death-blow to them-like the very end of the world-strange and almost incredible in its terrible awfulness. But it was true; it was surely coming; "Heaven and earth shall pass away," said the Lord, "but my words shall not pa.Baa.way." Mark the calm confidence of the assertion. Only a Divine Person could so speak; such words in the mouth of any human teacher would be presumptuous and intolerable; but Christ was meek and lowly in heart, for he is "King of kings, and Lord of lords." 2. The last day. The end of Jerusalem we.s soon to come, in the lifetime of some who then stood around the Lord; the end of the world was not yet. "Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, neither the Son, but the Father only." It is not for us to know the times or the Aeasons, which the Father bath put in his own power. '!'bat knowledge is hidden in the counsels of God; we may not presume to search into it. It ie not given to the blessed angels, not even to the Son in his human nature, as he himself tells us (Mark xiii. 32). The finite and the infinite met in the one Person of Christ-human limitations on the one side; on the other the power, knowledge, and wisdom of God. The relations between those two natures are wholly beyond our com- prehension; we cannot by any intellectual effort picture to ourselves the ma.oner of their union-how the one affected the other. It is enough to know that the Lord, in his great love for us, crndescended to submit to the conditions of our humanity; and ono of those coudilions was this, that on the human side of his Person he knew not. as  452 THE GOSPEL AOOORDING TO ST. MATTHEW. [oe, XXIV, 1--61.