s to the {39} last coming of Christ, whereas the
verses which immediately precede it refer to the destruction of
Jerusalem, and so do vers. 32-34. It is impossible to resist the
conclusion that the evangelist believed that the judgment upon
Jerusalem would be immediately followed by the last judgment of the
world. He knows that our Lord foretold both, and both events loom
large in his mind. As a traveller in a valley sees before him two
great mountains which appear close to one another, though really
separated by many miles, so the evangelist sees these two events
together. After the fall of Jerusalem he would almost certainly have
made a definite break between the two subjects.

[Sidenote: Literary Style.]

We have already noticed in ch. ii. the fondness for numerical
arrangement, which is a marked characteristic of the style of this
Gospel. There are other proofs of the fact that this Gospel is more
Hebrew in tone than the others. In the other Gospels we find the
expression "the kingdom of God," but here we find it called "the
kingdom of heaven," an instance of the peculiarly Jewish reverence
which shrank from uttering the name of God. There are a few Aramaic
words found in this Gospel--_raca_ (v. 22), _gehenna_ (v. 22), _mammon_
(vi. 24); and we should add the peculiar use of "righteousness" in vi.
1, where the word is used in the sense of "alms" in accordance with a
Jewish idiom. But the Greek phrases are often neat and clear-cut.
They sometimes seem to imply a play upon words, _e.g._ in vi. 16 and
xxiv. 30. This is another indication that the Gospel, as it stands,
was first written in Greek. The Greek is smoother than that of St.
Mark, though not so vivid. The evangelist writes with a joyous
interest in his work. The historical parts of it are full of beauty,
but he uses them mainly as a framework for the discourses of Jesus,
which he preserves with loving fidelity.

In St. Matthew's Gospel the Old Testament is frequently quoted, that
the reader may see that Jesus is the realization of {40} the hopes of
the Jewish prophets. With set purpose the fair picture of the Servant
of Jehovah drawn by Isaiah is placed in the middle of the Gospel (xii.
18-21), that we may recognize it as the true portrait of Christ. Close
to it on either side the blasphemies of the Pharisees are skilfully
depicted as a foil to His divine beauty. We have already noticed the
bearing of these quotations on the origin of the Gos