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the subsequent context he assures them that he had been thus sent, as he expressly affirms, v. 26, "Unto you first, God having raised up his son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.' What ground then remains for the Millenarian application of this passage to the future paradisaical state, which is to be effected in the physical and moral universe, at the second personal coming of Christ immediately before the commencement of the blessed thousand years? Is not this, as Mr. Faber remarks, persuading the apostle to declare an entirely different fact from that which his words, fairly interpreted, convey? We have seen, if we mistake not, that the inspired apostle, in speaking of the times of refreshing

* "This cannot possibly be understood of Christ's personally and visibly coming among them; for who of this audience ever saw him after his resurrection?-but of his coming among them now in this offer and means of salvation. And in the same sense is the clause, v. 20, to be understood; and so the 22d verse interpreteth it of the sending of Christ as the great Prophet, to whom whosoever will not hearken, must be cut off:-not at the end of the world, when he shall come as a judge; but in the Gospel, which is his voice; and which to refuse to hearken to, is condemnation. Peter's exhortation, therefore, is to repentance, that their sins might be blotted out, so that refreshing times might come upon them, and Christ in the Gospel might be sent among them, according as Moses had foretold, that he should be the great Instructor of the people." Lightfoot Comment. in loc. It is proper, however, here to remark that ávarrás, having raised up, is understood by many commentators, not of the resurrection, but of the bringing into the world, of Jesus, the Son of God, and we cannot in truth refuse to acknowledge a high degree of plausibility in that construction, compared with the use of the term in other places, though still confident that Lightfoot's interpretation cannot be positively shown to be erroneous. If the other sense be admitted to be the more probable, it merely follows that the language of Peter refers to the first as well as to the second advent-to the literal as well as the spiritual-and this may be conceded without abating at all of the force of our previous reasonings in regard to the true import of the times of restitution of all things.' So long as the philological argument founded upon the current usage of xp, remains unanswered, our main conclusion must stand unassailed.

and of the restitution of all things' as having already come, does but echo the general voice of announcement sounded out by the whole succession of prophets' from the beginning of the world.' The burden of their oracles is, that the establishment of his kingdom was the ushering in of an economy of which the grand character was to be refreshment, restitution, renovation, rectification, resettling, and that the commencing epoch of this kingdom was to be his own exaltation at the Father's right hand, from which point the destinies of this spiritual empire were to begin to evolve, and to result in the final consummation shadowed forth in the descent of the New Jerusalem from heaven to earth, beyond which revelation makes no disclosures.

CHAPTER XII.

Christ's "Delivering up the Kingdom."

THE event indicated as the subject of the present chapter is related to our particular theme only as one department of the general scheme of Eschatology, with which the Resurrection naturally enters into close connexion. We have determined to make it the topic of some remarks, from the strong conviction, that the true purport of the passage, as expressed in the original, has been greatly misconceived, and a consequent error of signal moment introduced into the current anticipations of the futurities of Christ's kingdom. It is doubtless the prevalent belief, that the apostle's language warrants the expectation of some great change that is eventually to take place in our Saviour's mediatorial. relations that there is to be some important surrender of the official prerogatives with which he was previously invested, and the consequent assumption of some new posi

tion in the grand economy of which he is ever to be regarded as the great central point. Of such an anticipation we are wholly unable for ourselves to discover the grounds in any other portion of the Scriptures of truth, and this fact of itself, the lack of parallel intimations, if it be a fact, must be allowed to constitute at least a strong priori presumption against the soundness of the theory which maintains it. For although it is unquestionable that a single declaration of holy writ, when clearly and satisfactorily made out, is amply sufficient to establish any doctrine as of divine authority, yet we believe, as a matter of fact, that it will almost if not quite invariably be found, that ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses' all the important averments of Scripture are authenticated. That the intimation generally supposed to be conveyed by the passage which we now have in view is intrinsically of sufficient importance to require the usual amount of inspired testimony in its behalf, will undoubtedly, upon very slight reflection, be conceded. It must be admitted as very difficult of conception, that the Scriptures are elsewhere to be searched in vain in quest of proof of an oracle of such transcendent moment, as that which should announce the transfer of the headship of the mediatorial kingdom, at some future day, from the Son to the Father. How comes it that when such full disclosures are given in the Prophets and the Psalms of the various phases of this glorious kingdom, no intimation is to be traced in them of such an abdication as is here supposed to be announced? We are well aware that theologians have framed to themselves certain conceptions of the plan and the destinies of the scheme of redemption in which this view of the apostle's meaning plays a conspicuous part, but we have yet to learn that all such conceptions are not in fact built upon this single passage, which is thus made to confirm a doctrine which it is in fact the only one to affirm; and how far this comes short of involving a petitio principii, we commend to the consideration of all re

flecting minds. If it cannot be shown that this passage means what it is usually deemed to teach, then the prevalent tenet for the support of which it is adduced, is deprived of all solid basis, and must be considered a gratuitous assumption.

Our present purpose therefore is to submit the passage to a strict critical examination, and to endeavor to elicit from it its genuine purport. We commence by exhibiting the text.

GR.

1 COR. XV. 24-28.

Εἶτα τὸ τέλος, ὅταν παραδῷ τὴν βασιλείαν τῷ θεῷ πατρί, ὅταν καταργήσῃ πᾶσαν ἀρχὴν καὶ πᾶσαν ἐξουσίαν καὶ

δύναμιν·

ου

Δεῖ γὰρ αὐτὸν βασιλεύειν, ἄχρις οὗ ἂν θῇ πάντες τοὺς ἐχθροὺς ὑπὸ τοὺς πόδας αὑτοῦ. Ἔσχατος ἐχθρὸς καταργεῖ ται ὁ θάνατος.

Πάντα γὰρ ὑπέταξεν ὑπὸ τοὺς πόδας αὐτοῦ· ὅταν δὲ εἴπῃ, ὅτι πάντα ὑποτέτακται, δῆλον, ὅτι ἐκτὸς τοῦ ὑποτάξαν. τος αὐτῷ τὰ πάντα.

Ὅταν δὲ ὑποταγῇ αὐτῷ τά πάντα, τότε καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ υἱὸς ὑποταγήσεται τῷ ὑποτάξαντι αὐτῷ τὰ πάντα, ἵνα ᾖ ὁ Θεὸς

τὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν.

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"Then cometh the end." We have already adduced a variety of considerations going to show, that the common ideas suggested by the word 'end' in scriptural usage rest upon an entirely erroneous apprehension of the truth. The true sense of the term, as derived from τελέω, to perfect to finish, is much more nearly allied to perfection or consummation than to termination. A river that sinks away in the sands

and suddenly disappears comes to an 'end.' But a river that merges itself in the waters of the ocean comes to an 'end' in a very different sense. Yet this last is much nearer the scriptural import of the word than the former. The chain of inspired revelation conducts us to a grand consummation in the universal establishment of Christ's kingdom on earth in the New Jerusalem economy, and there leaves us. It gives us no intimation of any thing like a physical winding up of the present mundane system. The term συντέλεια in the phrase σvvtéhɛiα тov αiavos, end of the world, conveys indeed the idea of a close, but it is the close of a dispensation. Here, however, the original word is not σvvtéhɛia but τélos, properly importing ultimate issue, perfect accomplishment, consummation. The nature of this consummation is not indicated by the word itself. In the present case, where we read "Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom," &c., the 'delivery' is the end; i. e. the great order of events implied in this transfer, whatever it may be, is the ultimate scope, object, and purpose to which all the previous counsels of Heaven, as developed in the course of providence, tended, thus constituting their end. The drift of all prophecy is this perfected end of the sublime career of events pertaining to the fortunes of the kingdom and resulting in its complete triumph over all opposing influences, and its ecumenical prevalence among men on the earth. The apostle therefore is to be understood as saying, that when the process of resurrection, which he describes, reaches the point alluded to, then comes the end, the grand consummation, which God has had all along in view, and which will realize the burden of those pregnant prophetic announcements that have in all ages assured the faith of the faithful of the return of a comparatively golden age-of a paradisaic era-to the world. We may illustrate our idea by supposing the period of the Christian dispensation to constitute a great Gospel week, the preceding days of which merge at length into a glorious sabbatism of unlimited duration. It is this

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