But not only was the world of Jesus a mere speck on the map, but it was also a world without a future. Jesus expected the world to come to an end in a very short time. And what was the use of trying to get acquainted with, or interested in, a world about to be abandoned? The evidence is very conclusive that Jesus believed the end of the world to be imminent. He says: "Verily I say unto you, ye shall not have gone through the cities of Israel before the son of man come." As Palestine was a small country, and its few cities could easily be visited in a short time, it follows that Jesus expected the almost immediate end of the world. In another text he tells his disciples that this great event would happen in the lifetime of those who were listening to him: "This generation," he says, "shall not pass away," before the world ends. This belief in the approaching collapse of the world was shared by his apostles. Paul, for instance, is constantly exhorting Christians to get ready for the great catastrophe, and he describes how those still living will be transformed when Jesus appears in the clouds. The earliest Christian Society was communistic, because all that they needed was enough to subsist upon before Jesus reappeared. It would have been foolish from their point of view to "lay up treasures on earth" when the earth was soon to be burnt up. Moreover, they were not commanded to labor, but to "watch and pray." The fruits of labor require time to ripen in, and there was no time. The cry was, "Behold the bridegroom is at the door." Hence, to "watch and pray" was the only reasonable occupation. We can see for ourselves how this belief in the near end of the world would create a kind of morality altogether unsuitable to people living in a world that does not come to an end. Jesus never dreamt that the world was going to last, for at least another two thousand years. If anyone had whispered such a thing in his ears, he would have gasped for breath. Could the curtain of the future have been lifted high enough for Jesus to have seen in advance some of the changes that have come upon the world during the past twenty centuries,--the fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of Mohammedanism,--carrying two continents and throwing the third into a state of panic,--wresting the very Jerusalem of Jesus from the Christians and holding it for a thousand years; had Jesus been able to foresee the Dark Ages, the Italian Renaissance, the German Reformation, the French Revolution, the American Revolution with its Declaration of Independence, and later on, its Emancipation Proclamation,--and finally, had Jesus caught even the most distant gleam of that magnificent and majestic Empire, the Empire of Science, with its peaceful reign and bloodless conquests, slowly and serenely climbing above the horizon, bringing to man such a hope as had never before entered his breast, and giving him the stars for eyes, and the wind for wings--had but a glimpse