SCIENCE, RELIGION AND SOCIALISM 



mysticism and allegorisation, which in the hands of Origen and other 

 more thorough-going neo-platonists, tended to emphasise the third 

 interpretation, i.e. that the Kingdom was a purely mystical idea, 

 existing now but elsewhere, wholly in the world of the spirit. Thirdly, 

 there was the increasing organisation of the Church, and the acceptance 

 of this by the secular power in the time of Constantine; this invited 

 men to diminish their ideals of love and justice, and to identify the 

 Kingdom with an actually existing society. This led to the first 

 interpretation. The Kingdom Vv^as "here and now," either in the form 

 of the Eastern Empire or the Latin Church, which after Augustine 

 claimed, and still claims officially to this day, to be itself the Kingdom. 

 Lastly in all the ages of Christianity there have been supporters of the 

 fourth and most utterly remote interpretation, namely that the 

 Kingdom means only the reign of God after the last judgment. 



The miilenniarist viewpoint was essentially a continuation of the 

 great strain of Hebrew prophecy, with which all the actors in the 

 drama of the Gospels, whether known or unknown to us, had cer- 

 tainly been familiar. In this the reality' of the time process was quite 

 central. Take, for example, the following passage from Amos:^ 



"Hear this, O ye that^ould swallow up the needy and cause the 

 poor of the land to fail, saying. When will the New Moon be gone 

 that we can sell com ? and the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat ? 

 making the measure small and the payment great, and dealing falsely 

 with balances of deceit; that we may buy the poor for silver and the 

 needy for a pair of shoes. . . . The Lord hath sworn by the excellency 

 of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works. ... I will 

 slay the last of them with the sword; there shall not one of them flee 

 away. Though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take them; 

 and though they climb up into heaven, thence will I bring them 

 down. . . . But in that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David that 

 is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his 

 ruins and build it as in the days of old. Behold, the days come, saith 

 the Lord, that the ploughman shall overtake the reaper, and the 

 treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop 

 sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt." It is extremely interesting 

 to contrast the Hebrew apocalyptic conviction that in the future evil 

 will be overthrown and the earth become a common and bountiful 

 treasury for a right-loving people, with the characteristically Hellenic 

 belief in a former Golden Age from which humanity has for ever 



^ Chapter viii. 9. 



51 



