The vision of the Last Judgment with which St Matthew concludes so magnificently the teaching ministry of Jesus stands out from the Gospel pages with a unique and snow-capped majesty. It is a literary tour de force never quite approached elsewhere in the First Gospel, and it possesses that grandeur of simplicity which removes it toto coelo from the lurid and melodramatic scenes of the End which Jewish apocalyptic, like subsequent Christian thought, found it necessary to paint. As Professor T. W. Manson says, and Professor J. Jeremias agrees (The Parables of Jesus, p. 144), ‘It contains features of such startling originality that it is difficult to credit them to any-one but the Master himself’ (The Teaching of Jesus, p. 249); or, again, in the more recent words of Théo Preiss, it evinces ‘a sobriety of feature and colour, a reserve, a bareness which can come from hardly any other source but that of Jesus himself’ (Life in Christ, p. 47).

Les rouleaux de la Mer Morte ont ramené l'attention sur la connaissance des secrets apocalyptiques. D'aprés W. D. Davies, ces documents fourniraient le milieu littéraire dans lequel il faudrait situer Matt. xi. 25–30; on se contente plus souvent de faire le rapprochement avec la sagesse en mystére de saint Paul. Pourquoi ne pas songer ègalement au logion de Matt. xiii. II ‘A vous il est donné de connaître les secrets du Royaume des cieux’ avec ses parallèles Luc viii. 10 et Marc iv. II? On pourrait tenter l'interprétation de cette parole du Christ dans l'atmosphère des révélations apocalyptiques.

In my recent contribution to The Expository Times I acknowledged my indebtedness to Dr G. S. Duncan, whose book (St Paul's Ephesian Ministry(1929)) has convinced me that Philemon and most of Colossians, which I had always thought originated in Rome, were written, as he maintains, at Ephesus; and this has enabled me to simplify, and so to improve, my views concerning the occasions and number of genuine notes in II Timothy. But I found it impossible within the time and space at my disposal to give more than a brief summary of my reactions to Duncan's work in its bearing on the problem of the Pastoral Epistles, and said nothing at all about the bearing of those Epistles on his theory. So, pending his own contribution to the same series of articles, it seems desirable to set down in rather more detail the reasons why, having gone so far to meet him, I cannot go the rest of the way.