1 Peter 4:7

But the end of all things is at hand The words are spoken, as are nearly all the eschatological utterances of the New Testament, within the horizon of the Apostle's knowledge, and it had not been given to him to know the "times and the seasons" (Acts 1:7). His language was the natural inference from our Lord's words, "then shall the end be" (Matthew 24:6-14). The times in which the disciples lived were to them the "last times" (1 Timothy 4:1; 1 John 2:18). They looked for the coming of the Lord as not far off (Romans 13:12; James 5:8). They expected to be among those who should be living when He came (1 Corinthians 15:51), who should be caught up to meet Him in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:17). A few years we might almost say, looking to 2 Peter 3:8, a few months sufficed to shew that the divine plan extended over a wider range than their thoughts and expectations. And yet, in one very real sense, they were not altogether mistaken. The end of all that they had known and lived in, the end of one great æon, or dispensation, was indeed nigh at hand. The old order was changing and giving place to the new. There was to be a great removal of the things that were shaken, that had decayed and waxed old, that the things that could not be shaken might remain (Hebrews 12:27).

be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer The first of the two verbs is defined by Greek ethical writers (Aristotle, Eth. Nicom. ii. 2) as implying the harmony of affections and desires with reason. Of the two English words "sober" or temperate, by which it is commonly rendered, the latter, as expressing the due control of passions, is the more adequate. The Vulgate gives "Estote prudentes," but that adjective belongs to another Greek ethical term. Mark 5:15, Rom 12:3, 2 Corinthians 5:13, may be noticed as among the other passages in which the same verb occurs. Strictly speaking, indeed, the word "sober" is wanted instead of "watch" for the second verb, which implies in the strictest sense "abstinence from wine and strong drink." The word commonly translated "watch" (Matthew 24:42-43; Matthew 26:38-41) is altogether different. It may be noticed that the tense of the two verbs in the original implies not a general precept, but a call to an immediate act. The words of St Peter present a singular contrast to the effect that has commonly been produced in later ages by the belief that the end of the world was near. Terror and alarm, the abandonment of earthly callings and social duties accompanied that belief in the tenth century, when kings left their thrones and sought the seclusion of the monastery, "appropinquante fine saeculi," and a like agitation has accompanied it since. To the Apostle's mind the approach of the end of all things is a motive for calmness and self-control. He seems almost to reproduce the thought of a poet of whom he had probably never heard,

[Si fractus illabatur orbis

Impavidum ferient ruinae.]

"Should the world's ruins round him break

His confidence it will not shake;

Unmoved he bears it all."

(Hor. Od. iii. 3. 7.)

The "calmness" of the Apostle differs, however, from that of the philosopher. It is not merely the self-command of one who has conquered. Men are to be sober with a view to prayer. Desires of all kinds, above all, those of man's lower nature, are fatal to the energy and therefore to the efficacy of prayer.