He is writing to the generation that has grown up since Jesus has gone, and so to all after generations that knew of Him first by hearing of Him.  He is writing after the Jewish capital has been leveled to the ground, and the nation utterly destroyed as a nation, and to people away from Palestine.  So he explains Jewish usages and words as well as places in Palestine, to make the story plain and vivid to all.  And the one point at which he drives constantly is to make it clear to all after generations that men of every sort of Jesus’ own generation believed; questioned, doubted, examined, weighed, believed, with whole-hearted loving loyalty followed this Jesus.

This decides the order in which, with such rare wisdom, the churchmen later arranged the four gospels in grouping the New Testament books.  The order is that of the growth of the new faith of the church from the Jewish outward.  Next to the Hebrew pages lies the gap gospel, then the earliest, simplest telling, then the outsiders’ gospel, and then the gospel for after generations.

The Surprised Church.

Man proposes.  God disposes.  Man may for a time set aside God’s plan, but through any series of contrary events God holds steadily to His own plan.  Temporary defeat is only adjournment, paving the way for later and greater victory.  Another surprise is for the church, that is, the church of later generations, including our own.  The old Jew saw only a triumphant king, not a suffering king.  He saw only a kingdom.  There was no hint of any such thing as a church.  The church to-day, and since the day of Constantine, sees only a church.  The kingdom has merged into the church or slipped out of view.

There seems to be a confused mixing of church and kingdom, but always with the church the big thing, and the kingdom a sort of vague, indefinite—­folks don’t seem to know just what—­an ideal, a spiritual conception, or something like that.  The church is supposed to have taken the place of the kingdom.  Its mission seems to be supposed to be the doing for the world what the kingdom was to do, but, being set aside, failed to do.

In reading the old Book there is a handy sort of explanation largely in use that applies all that can be fitted into the theory in hand, and calmly ignores or conveniently adjusts the rest.  The Old Testament blessings for the Jewish kingdom are appropriated and applied to the church.  The curses there are handed over to the Jews or ignored.  There seems to be a plan of interpreting one part of the Bible one way and another part in a different way.  This part is to be taken literally.  This other not literally, spiritually, the only guiding principle being the man’s preconceived idea of what should be.  The air seems quite a bit foggy sometimes.  A man has to go off for a bit of fresh air and get straightened out with himself inside.