se virgins
slumbered and slept. "After a long time," we read in another parable,
"the Lord of those servants cometh and maketh a reckoning with them."
What is the significance of the parable of the leaven hid in three
measures of meal, and still more, of that group of parables which depict
the growth of the kingdom--the parables of the sower, the wheat and
tares, the mustard-seed, and the seed growing gradually? Does not all
this point not to a great catastrophe nigh at hand, which should bring
to an end the existing order of things, but rather to just such a future
for the kingdom of God on earth as the actual course of history reveals?
And this, and no other, was, I believe, the impression which Christ
desired to leave on the minds of His disciples.

What, then, are we to make of those other and apparently contrary words
which I have quoted, but meanwhile have left unexplained? They
constitute, without doubt, one of the most perplexing problems which the
interpreter of the New Testament has to face,[54] and any suggestion for
meeting the difficulty must be made with becoming caution. I can but
briefly indicate the direction in which the probable solution may be
found. Our Lord, as we have already seen, spoke of His coming again, not
only at the end of the world, but in the course of it: in the power of
His Spirit, at the fall of Jerusalem, in the coming of His kingdom among
men. But the minds of the disciples were full of the thought of His
_final_ coming, which would establish for ever the glory of His
Messianic kingdom; and it would seem that this fact has determined both
the form and the setting of some of Christ's sayings which they have
preserved for us. Words which He meant to refer to Israel's coming
judgment-day they, in the ardour of their expectation, referred to the
last great day. In the first Gospel, especially, we may trace some such
influence at work. When, _e.g._, Matthew represents our Lord as saying,
"There be some of them that stand here which shall in no wise taste of
death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom," it is
evident, both from the words themselves and from the context, that he
understood them to refer to the final return. Luke, however, speaks only
of seeing "the kingdom of God," and Mark of seeing "the kingdom of God
come in power." And if these words were our only version of the prophecy
they would present no difficulty; we should feel that they had received
adequate fulfi