At present the question has apparently reached equilibrium by the general recognition that it is impossible to excise or to explain away the passages in the gospels in which the Kingdom of Heaven is clearly regarded as future, and that it is equally impossible to ignore those in which it is regarded as a present reality. Probably, however, it has even now not been sufficiently perceived that the solution of the problem is not to be found in the literary criticism of the gospels, but in the history of the phrase, Kingdom of God. This rendered inevitable the double use of the phrase. Sometimes it was used strictly, and referred to a present reality within the grasp of all willing to reach out to it, and accept the conditions imposed on its attainment, of {25} which Jesus was so frequently speaking. But at other times, by an entirely natural extension of its meaning, it was used of the period when the recognition of the sovereignty of God would be universal. In this sense it was still future. It was at hand, but not yet present, even though that generation would not entirely pass away before it was accomplished. There is no exegetical obstacle to accepting this view, for it is the plain and simple meaning of simple phrases; but there is the theological difficulty that it represents an expectation on the part of Jesus which was falsified by history.[13] That generation has passed away, and many others after it, and the Kingdom of God has not yet come. Indeed, it is scarcely orthodox any longer to expect it in the manner in which the gospels represent Jesus to have foretold its coming.