troubles coming, not on the Church, but on the world.

These

are characterized by St. Matthew and St. Mark as "the beginning of travail" (άpxǹ ¿dívwv), and each of the three evangelists is careful to record the saying that "the end (To TéλOS) is not yet."

The passage in St. Matthew's Gospel stands as follows: "Ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled; for these things must needs come to pass; but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines and earthquakes in divers places. But all these things are the beginning of travail."

To these calamities St. Luke's report adds pestilences (Xipoì Kai λoμoí), a word which stands in St. Matthew in the Received Text and Authorized Version, but has rightly been omitted by the revisers, in accordance with the evidence of the best MSS. (It is wanting in &, B, D, etc.)

Now, although there is considerable difference of opinion concerning the reference of the latter part of this discourse, almost all commentators are agreed that the section known as "the beginning of travail" belongs to the period before the destruction of Jerusalem. Indeed, it seems to me that the only sound interpretation of the prophecy is that which, taking full account of the plain and obvious meaning of our Lord's words in vers. 34-36,' explains the whole discourse up to that point of His "coming" in that terrible catastrophe: or rather of His continuous coming during the forty years from the day of Pentecost to the destruction of the city, a coming "

1 "Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass away till all these things be accomplished. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. But of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even the angels of heaven, neither the Son, but the Father only." "This generation" can mean nothing but those who were then alive; and the careful reader can scarcely fail to be struck by the contrast drawn between "all these things" of which our Lord has just been speaking, and "that day," i.e., as in other passages, the final day of judgment (Matt. vii. 22; 2 Thess. i. 10; 2 Tim. i. 12, etc.).

T

which was twofold in character,-in mercy, in the establishment of the Christian Church, and in judgment, in the destruction of the Jewish polity.

But, leaving out of consideration for the present the interpretation of the latter part of the discourse, let us return to the earlier verses. It will be seen that the calamities mentioned in them are in the main those which are represented in the visions of the second, third, and fourth seals. "Ye shall hear of WARS and rumours of wars . . there shall be FAMINES and PESTILENCES." This of itself is striking, and suggests a connexion between the two passages, an inference which is greatly strengthened and rendered almost a certainty when we notice that the correspondence of thought and even occasionally of expression is not confined to this earlier portion, but extends throughout; so that the whole discourse in a manner runs parallel to the whole vision of the seven seals.

The fifth seal brings into view "the souls of them which were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held." So after "the beginning of travail" our Lord says: "Then shall they deliver you up unto tribulation, and shall kill you; and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake" (Matt. xxiv. 9).

When the sixth seal was opened "there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, as a fig-tree casteth her unripe figs when she is shaken of a great wind. And the heaven was removed as a scroll when it is rolled up; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places." So in ver. 29 of St. Matt. xxiv. we read: "Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken."

There follows next in the Revelation (1) the sealing of the

hundred and forty-four thousand, and (2) the vision of the great multitude which no man could number, who, according to the explanation of the angel, are "they which come out of the great tribulation” (ἐκ τῆς θλίψεως τῆς μεγάλης), an expression which at once sends us back to our Lord's words: 'Then shall be great tribulation (Oxîķis peyáλn), such as hath not been from the beginning of the world till now, no, nor ever shall be" (ver. 21); the definite article (the great tribulation) in the angel's explanation fixing the reference as intentional, so that we can scarcely avoid connecting the sealing of the servants of God with the allusions to the "elect," for whose sake the days are to be shortened (ver. 22); while the great multitude which no man could number can only represent those who are gathered together by the angels. from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other (ver. 31). This parallelism of the two passages and its results will, it is hoped, be more fully illustrated and developed in my next paper, in which I propose to deal with the last three seals. In concluding this paper I will only remark, that if the connexion which I have striven to establish be granted, it affords the clue which we have been seeking to the interpretation of the earlier seals. The wars, famines, and pestilences of our Lord's prophecy confessedly belong to the years between the day of Pentecost and the destruction of Jerusalem. Surely, then, those of the apocalyptic vision must be taken as referring to the same period.

EDGAR C. S. GIBSON.

LAW, LIBERTY, AND EXPEDIENCY.

1 COR. vi. 12-20, and x. 23-xi. 1.

THE saying, "All things are lawful for me," appears to have been a sort of watchword or party-cry adopted by a certain section of the Corinthian Church. They were the Broad Churchmen of Corinth, the men of the "advanced" or "liberal" school, to speak in modern phrase. St. Paul so far endorses their principle, and it so far accords with the views he expresses elsewhere, that we may fairly presume that the contested expression was borrowed originally from his own lips. At any rate, he is at considerable pains to explain and to guard this maxim. After commenting upon it at some length in the sixth chapter of his first Epistle, he returns to it again, approaching it from another side, in the tenth. For the perplexed moral and social questions which had arisen out of the intense ferment then taking place in the Corinthian Church-a Church so full of conflicting elements and of eager .and gifted spirits-all revolved more or less round this chief and central question, as to the nature of Christian liberty. And we find the same problem occupying the apostle's mind in writing his contemporary letters to Rome and to Galatia. These Epistles signalize, in fact, the beginning of the perennial controversy between legalism and antinomianisin, which fills so large a place in ecclesiastical history. With a watchful eye and a firm and skilful hand, St. Paul guided the Church's course betwixt the Scylla and Charybdis on either side, and marked out the track which Christian teaching ever since has needed closely and warily to follow.

The party who inscribed the motto, "All things are lawful," on their banner were doubtless the same as those who cried 2 Gal. v. 13, 14.

1 See especially Rom. vi. 12-23; vii. 3, 4.

"I am of Paul," and whose partisan zeal on his behalf the apostle so earnestly deprecates. And some of them were disposed to push their principle-indeed, had already pushed it-in a direction which called for the strongest reprobation. They were ready to sacrifice reverence and charity, and even purity itself, to an exaggerated and false notion of freedom, and to "use liberty for an occasion to the flesh." Out of love of liberty they would become libertines. Arrayed against this party were the extremists of the opposite type, the champions of authority, who, for want of a fitter name, adopted Peter for their leader, and answered the "I am of Paul" with a defiant "I of Cephas." Every innovation, in their view, was a sacrilege. The very name of Liberty they regarded with suspicion and with dread. If they could have had their way, they would have shackled Christianity for all time with the restraints and formalities of Pharisaic law, and confined its larger and manlier life within the swaddling bands of its Jewish infancy. Both parties, as proves too commonly the case, amid the dust and heat of the conflict had failed to discern the underlying principles of spiritual freedom; in view of which St. Paul seeks to enlighten and correct them both, and to bring them to a sound and brotherly practical agreement.

In verse thirteen of the sixth chapter the apostle therefore marks out by a twofold example, bearing immediately on the matters at issue in the Church of Corinth at the time, the boundary line between liberty and licence. He shows what kind of things Christian liberty includes and allows, and what

1 1 Cor. i. 12. Those critics seem to be in the right who distinguish the parties assuming the names of Paul and Peter as the two chief opposing factions in the Corinthian Church, the only parties, in the stricter use of the word, divided on questions of principle. On this view the Apolline fraction consisted of the more pronounced admirers of the eloquence and philosophical method of Apollos, adhering in their general views to the Pauline party; while others, probably a select few, holding aloof from the strife connected with the two great apostolic names, and professing to be guided only by the Divine Master, claimed on that account a peculiar right to say, "I am of Christ." But these latter groups were so far infected with the contentious spirit prevailing in the Church, that with less excuse they assumed a similar attitude of partisanship and personal rivalry.