1874] NEWMAN S THEORY OF PROPHECY 279 



time when at Christ s second coming the empire of God s 

 Kingdom over the world shall become visible to all. 

 A word or two on each of these positions : 

 (i) We are told by Mr. Newman that the theocratic 

 prophecies are fulfilled in Christ because the Christian 

 Church is a theocracy, a visible temporal power. Not 

 very dissimilar in principle is the opposite extreme position 

 which maintains that no fulfilment can be regarded as 

 real which does not apply to the literal people of Israel. 

 For both of these views alike maintain that continuity of 

 political existence is the necessary criterion of the identity 

 of the people of the promise and the people of the fulfil 

 ment. 1 Now, I admit that the prophets do always 

 represent continuity of political existence as the normal 

 condition of the theocracy, so that suspension of this 

 existence is to them always associated with a state of 

 exile. I do not think that any prophet fully, or even 

 approximately, conceived that the first grand step towards 

 the final realisation of the kingdom of God would consist 

 in the substitution of an invisible for a visible Kingdom, 

 of a hidden leaven for an external conquering power. 

 None of them had fully comprehended that the Kingdom 

 of God cometh not with outward show. But then the 

 question arises : Does this constant assumption on the 

 part of the prophets that on the whole the earthly theo 

 cracy reaches on continuously or broken by captivities 

 into the latter days belong to what was revealed to them, 

 or is it simply the natural filling-up of what was left 

 dark by the circumstances actually present to them ? It 

 is expressly taught in the New Testament that the 

 prophetic revelations were partial. No prophet had a 

 full image of the time to come. So far, then as the contrary 

 was not clearly taught him, he must more or less see the 

 divine revelation against a background of present theo 

 cratic circumstances. And this was the more necessary 



1 Is not the interpretion of &quot;till Shiloh come&quot; mediaeval, having no 

 significance except on this theory of continuous political existence ? 



