[Footnote 5:  Luke xiv. 14, xx. 35, 36.  This is also the opinion of St. Paul:  1 Cor. xv. 23, and following; 1 Thess. iv. 12, and following.]

[Footnote 6:  Comp. 4th book of Esdras, ix. 22.]

[Footnote 7:  Matt. xxv. 32, and following.]

It will be seen that nothing in all these theories was absolutely new.  The Gospels and the writings of the apostles scarcely contain anything as regards apocalyptic doctrines but what might be found already in “Daniel,"[1] “Enoch,"[2] and the “Sibylline Oracles,"[3] of Jewish origin.  Jesus accepted the ideas, which were generally received among his contemporaries.  He made them his basis of action, or rather one of his bases; for he had too profound an idea of his true work to establish it solely upon such fragile principles—­principles so liable to be decisively refuted by facts.

[Footnote 1:  See especially chaps. ii., vi.-viii., x.-xiii.]

[Footnote 2:  Chaps. i., xiv., lii., lxii., xciii. 9, and following.]

[Footnote 3:  Book iii. 573, and following; 652, and following; 766, and following; 795, and following.]

It is evident, indeed, that such a doctrine, taken by itself in a literal manner, had no future.  The world, in continuing to exist, caused it to crumble.  One generation of man at the most was the limit of its endurance.  The faith of the first Christian generation is intelligible, but the faith of the second generation is no longer so.  After the death of John, or of the last survivor, whoever he might be, of the group which had seen the master, the word of Jesus was convicted of falsehood.[1] If the doctrine of Jesus had been simply belief in an approaching end of the world, it would certainly now be sleeping in oblivion.  What is it, then, which has saved it?  The great breadth of the Gospel conceptions, which has permitted doctrines suited to very different intellectual conditions to be found under the same creed.  The world has not ended, as Jesus announced, and as his disciples believed.  But it has been renewed, and in one sense renewed as Jesus desired.  It is because his thought was two-sided that it has been fruitful.  His chimera has not had the fate of so many others which have crossed the human mind, because it concealed a germ of life which having been introduced, thanks to a covering of fable, into the bosom of humanity, has thus brought forth eternal fruits.

[Footnote 1:  These pangs of Christian conscience are rendered with simplicity in the second epistle attributed to St. Peter, iii. 8, and following.]