Westminster Sermons / with a Preface

by Charles Kingsley

If we heard one whom we regarded as at least a person of perfect virtue, truthfulness, and earnestness, foretell that the city in which we now stand should be destroyed. If he told us, that when we saw it encompassed with armies, we were to know that its desolation was at hand. If he told us that then those who were in the surrounding country were to flee to the mountains, and those in the city to come out of it. If he pronounced woe in that day on mothers and weak women who could not escape. If he told us, nevertheless, that when these

things came to pass we were to rejoice and lift up our heads, for our redemption was drawing nigh. If he told us to look at the trees in spring; for, as surely as their budding was a sign that summer was nigh, so was the coming to pass of these terrible woes a sign that something was nigh, which he called the Kingdom of God. If he told us, with a solemn asseveration, that this generation should not pass away till all had happened. If he went on to warn us against profligacy, frivolity, worldliness, lest that day should come upon us unaware. If he bade us keep awake always, that we might be found worthy to escape all that was coming, and to stand before Him, The Son of Man. If he used throughout his address the second person, speaking to us, but never mentioning our descendants; giving the signs, the warnings, the counsels to us only, should we not, even if he had not solemnly told us that the present generation should not pass away till all was fulfilled—should we not, I say, suppose naturally that he spoke of events which in his opinion our own eyes would see; which would, in his opinion, occur during our lifetime?

Whether he were right in his expectation, or wrong, still it would be clear that such was his expectation; that he considered the danger as imminent, the warning as addressed personally to us who heard him speak.

We should leave his presence with that impression, in fear and anxiety. But if we afterwards discovered that our fear and anxiety were superfluous; that the events of which he spoke—the most awful and wonderful of them at least—were not to occur for many centuries

to come; that, even if some calamity were imminent, the immediate future and the very distant future were so intermingled in his discourse, that it would require the labours of commentator after commentator, for many hundred years, to disentangle them, and that their labours would be in vain; that the coming of the Son of Man, and of the Kingdom of God, of which he had spoken, were to be referred to a time thousands of years hence; though we were told in the same breath to look to the fig-tree and all the trees as a sign that it was coming immediately, and that our own generation would not pass away before all had taken place:—would not such a discovery raise in us thoughts and feelings neither wholesome for us nor honourable to the prophet?

I cannot think otherwise. We may be aware of the difficulties which beset this, and any other, interpretation of our Lord’s prophecies in Matthew, Mark, and Luke: we may have the deepest respect for those learned and pious divines who from time to time have tried to part the prophecies relating to the fall of Jerusalem from those relating to the end of the world and the day of Judgment. Yet, in the face of such a passage as the text, especially when we cannot agree with those who would make this “generation” mean this “race” or “nation,” we may—we have a right to—decline to separate the two sets of passages. We have a right to say,—He who spake as man never spake, and therefore knew the force of words; He who knew what was in man—and therefore what effect His words would produce on His hearers—did deliver a discourse—indeed, many discourses—

which asserted, as far as plain words could be understood by plain men, that the Kingdom of God was at hand; and that the coming of the Son of Man would take place before that generation passed away.

And that all His disciples, and St Paul as much as any, put that meaning upon His words, is a matter of fact and of history, to be seen plainly in Holy Scripture.

But, while the text compels us to believe that the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans was a coming of the Son of Man—a manifestation of the Kingdom of God—a day of Judgment, in the strictest and most awful sense; yet we are not compelled to limit the meaning of the text to the destruction of Jerusalem.

No prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation. Prophets, apostles—how much more our Lord Himself—do not merely indulge in presages; they lay down laws—laws moral, spiritual, eternal—which have been fulfilling themselves from the beginning; which are fulfilling themselves now; which will go on fulfilling themselves to the end of time.