y; for the sky is red and
lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can
ye not discern the signs of the times?"[8] By an illusion common to
all great reformers, Jesus imagined the end to be much nearer than it
really was; he did not take into account the slowness of the movements
of humanity; he thought to realize in one day that which, eighteen
centuries later, has still to be accomplished.

[Footnote 1: Matt. xxiv. 36; Mark xiii. 32.]

[Footnote 2: Luke xvii. 20. Comp. Talmud of Babyl., _Sanhedrim_, 97
_a_.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. xxiv. 36, and following; Mark xiii. 32, and
following; Luke xii. 35, and following, xvii. 20, and following.]

[Footnote 4: Luke xii. 40; 2 Peter iii. 10.]

[Footnote 5: Luke xvii. 24.]

[Footnote 6: Matt. x. 23, xxiv., xxv. entirely, and especially xxiv.
29, 34; Mark xiii. 30; Luke xiii. 35, xxi. 28, and following.]

[Footnote 7: Matt. xvi. 28, xxiii. 36, 39, xxiv. 34; Mark viii. 39;
Luke ix. 27, xxi. 32.]

[Footnote 8: Matt. xvi. 2-4; Luke xii. 54-56.]

These formal declarations preoccupied the Christian family for nearly
seventy years. It was believed that some of the disciples would see
the day of the final revelation before dying. John, in particular, was
considered as being of this number;[1] many believed that he would
never die. Perhaps this was a later opinion suggested toward the end
of the first century, by the advanced age which John seems to have
reached; this age having given rise to the belief that God wished to
prolong his life indefinitely until the great day, in order to realize
the words of Jesus. However this may be, at his death the faith of
many was shaken, and his disciples attached to the prediction of
Christ a more subdued meaning.[2]

[Footnote 1: John xxi. 22, 23.]

[Footnote 2: John xxi. 22, 23. Chapter xxi. of the fourth Gospel is an
addition, as is proved by the final clause of the primitive
compilation, which concludes at verse 31 of chapter xx. But the
addition is almost contemporaneous with the publication of the Gospel
itself.]

At the same time that Jesus fully admitted the Apocalyptic beliefs,
such as we find them in the apocryphal Jewish books, he admitted the
doctrine, which is the complement, or rather the condition of them
all, namely, the resurrection of the dead. This doctrine, as we have
already said, was still somewhat new in Israel; a number of people
either did not know it, or did not believe it.[1] It was th