Chapter Three1
Objection based on S. Matthew's words that the Gospel should be preached in all the world (Matt. xxiv. I4).
We must mention also that saying which Matthew gave us, in the spirit of a slave who is made to bend himself in a mill-house, when he said, "And the gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world, and then shall the end come."2 For lo, every quarter of the inhabited world has experience of the Gospel, and all the bounds and ends of the earth possess it complete,3 and nowhere is there an end, nor will it ever come. So let this saying only be spoken in a corner!
Chapter Thirteen
Answer to the objection based on S. Matthew's words that the Gospel should be preached in all the world (Matt. xxiv. 14).
[The word "end" may be used in more senses than one; for example, the end of war is peace, and the end of ignorance is knowledge. And so the end of wickedness is godliness. This is exactly the end which has come about through the preaching of the Gospel. So that they who once in their ignorance served idols' temples, now in the light of knowledge serve God as temples of the Holy Spirit. And therefore, in this sense, an "end" has come to the tragic side of the world.
But if we take the ordinary meaning of "end," we may say, first, that it is even now close at the doors; and secondly, that the Gospel has not yet been preached everywhere. Seven races of the Indians who live in the desert in the south-east have not received it;4 nor the Ethiopians who are called Macrobians,5 dwelling in the south-west, at the mouth of the ocean. These may be described as "Having laws that no one should wrong or be wronged by another, drinking milk and eating flesh, living for something like a hundred and fifty years, and never diseased or weakly until the end." Then, of course, there are in the west both the Maurusians and those who dwell beyond the great northern river Ister, which is gathered from five-and-thirty streams, and, carrying countless merchant vessels on its broad and constant stream, shuts off the country of the Scythians, where twelve tribes of nomad barbarians live, of whose savage state Herodotus tells us, and their evil customs derived from their ancestors. But the Gospel must " be preached for a witness unto all (nations)" before the end comes.
When all men have heard it, then great will be the punishment of those who reject it. And so God in His mercy delays the revolution of time which brings the end. This He does without real alteration of His will. Even the human mind can now make a triangle into a square and a square into a triangle without altering the size, and therefore God can, without changing the sum total of time, make one day to be a thousand years, and a thousand years to be one day.6 So we must find nodifficulty in this lengthening of the time. It is for us and for our benefit that the end has not yet come.]
Footnotes:
1The abbreviated form of the quotation is tacitly accepted by Macarius in his answer.
2It is very remarkable that, wherever it is possible, the attack is made on Christ's followers, and not on Himself. Here it is only the Evangelist who is blamed for words which are attributed to Christ. See Introd., p. xv.
3The previous objection has stated that only 300 years have passed, so that this cannot have been written later than the early part of the fourth century. To speak thus is therefore an exaggeration, as Macarius shows in his answer. But it is very significant that a heathen should regard Christianity as universally spread, even before it became a lawful religion.
4The way he locates these races gives some clue to the place of writing. See Introd., p. xxi.
5These are also referred to in iii. 15 (see p. 79). Their name implies that they were "long-lived."
6This is probably a reference to 2 Peter iii. 8, but not necessarily so, as it may refer only to Ps. xc. 4. It is curious that elsewhere Macarius ignores 2 Peter when its use was to be expected. See Introd., p. xxv. His very involved statement comes to this in the end, but it begins with the awkward words οὕτως ἔτη τὴν ἡμέραν ἐργάζεται χίλια καὶ την ἡμέραν οὐ πολλὰς ἀλλ' ἔχειν μίαν ἥμέραν.