for which the
state exists, labour, wealth, power, felicity, splendour, and
learning. With Christ the natural man in him had been crucified, and
in Christ he had risen again a spiritual man, to walk the earth, as a
messenger from heaven, for a few more years. His whole life was an
experience of perpetual graces and miracles.

The prophecy about the speedy end of this wicked world was not
fulfilled as the early Christians expected; but this fact is less
disconcerting to the Christian than one would suppose. The spontaneous
or instinctive Christian--and there is such a type of mind, quite
apart from any affiliation to historic Christianity--takes a personal
and dramatic view of the world; its values and even its reality are
the values and reality which it may have for him. It would profit him
nothing to win it, if he lost his own soul. That prophecy about the
destruction of nature springs from this attitude; nature must be
subservient to the human conscience; it must satisfy the hopes of the
prophet and vindicate the saints. That the years should pass and
nothing should seem to happen need not shatter the force of this
prophecy for those whose imagination it excites. This world must
actually vanish very soon for each of us; and this is the point of
view that counts with the Christian mind. Even if we consider
posterity, the kingdoms and arts and philosophies of this world are
short lived; they shift their aims continually and shift their
substance. The prophecy of their destruction is therefore being
fulfilled continually; the need of repentance, if one would be saved,
is truly urgent; and the means of that salvation cannot be an
operation upon this world, but faith in another world that, in the
experience of each soul, is to follow upon it. Thus the summons to
repent and the prophecy about destiny which were the root of
Christianity, can fully retain their spirit when for "this wicked
world" we read "this transitory life" and for "the coming of the
Kingdom" we read "life everlasting." The change is important, but it
affects the application rather than the nature of the gospel. Morally
there is a loss, because men will never take so hotly what concerns
another life as what affects this one; speculatively, on the other
hand, there is a gain, for the expectation of total transformations
and millenniums on earth is a very crude illusion, while the relation
of the soul to nature is an open question in philosophy, and there