'
I cannot deny that there is great force and an imposing verisimilitude
in this and the preceding chapter, and much that demands silent thought
and respectful attention. But still the great question presses on
me:--'coming in a cloud'! What is the true import of this phrase? Has
not God himself expounded it? To the Son of Man, the great Apostle
assures us, all power is given in heaven and on earth. He became
Providence,--that is, a Divine Power behind the cloudy veil of human
agency and worldly events and incidents, controlling, disposing, and
directing acts and events to the gradual unfolding and final
consummation of the great scheme of Redemption; the casting forth of the
evil and alien nature from man, and thus effecting the union of the
creature with the Creator, of man with God, in and through the Son of
Man, even the Son of God made manifest. Now can it be doubted by the
attentive and unprejudiced reader of St. Matthew, c. xxiv, that the Son
of Man, in fact, came in the utter destruction and devastation of the
Jewish Temple and State, during the period from Vespasian to Hadrian,
both included; and is it a sufficient reason for our rejecting the
teaching of Christ himself, of Christ glorified and in his kingly
character, that his Apostles, who disclaim all certain knowledge of the
awful event, had understood his words otherwise, and in a sense more
commensurate with their previous notions and the prejudices of their
education? They communicated their conjectures, but as conjectures, and
these too guarded by the avowal, that they had no revelation, no
revealed commentary on their Master's words, upon this occasion, the
great apocalypse of Jesus Christ while yet in the flesh.
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