I confess I do not agree with Skelton's interpretation of any of these texts entirely. Because I hold the Nicene Faith, and revere the doctrine of the Trinity as the fundamental article of Christianity, I apply to Christ as the Second Person, almost all the texts which Skelton explains of his humanity. At all events 1 consider 'the first-born of every creature' as a false version of the words, which (as the argument and following verse prove) should be rendered 'begotten before', (or rather 'superlatively before'), 'all that was created or made; for by him' they were made. Ib. 'Of that day, and that hour knoweth no man, no not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.' I cannot explain myself here; but I have long thought that our Saviour meant in these words [Greek: ainíttein tàen théotaeta ahutou]--and that like the problem proposed by him to the Scribes, they were intended to prepare the minds of the disciples for this awful mystery--[Greek: ei màe ho patáer]--"unless, or if not, as the Father knows it;" while in St. Matthew the equivalent sense is given by the omission of the [Greek: oud' ho uhíos], and its inclusion in the Father. 'As the Father knoweth me, so know I the Father'. It would have been against the general rule of Scripture prophecies, and the intention of the revelation in Christ, that the first Christians should have been so influenced in their measures and particular actions, as they could not but have been by a particular foreknowledge of the express and precise time at which Jerusalem was to be destroyed. To reconcile them to this uncertainty, our Lord first teaches them to consider this destruction the close of one great epoch, or [Greek: aiôn], as the type of the final close of the whole world of time, that is, of all temporal things; and then reasons with them thus:--"Wonder not that I should leave you ignorant of the former, when even the highest order of heavenly intelligences know not the latter, [Greek: oud' ho uhíos, ei màe ho patáer]; nor should I myself, but that the Father knows it, all whose will is essentially known to me as the Eternal Son. But even to me it is not revealably communicated." Such seems to me the true sense of this controverted passage in Mark, and that it is borne out by many parallel texts in St. John, and that the correspondent text in Matthew, which omits the [Greek: oud' ho huíos], conveys the same sense in equivalent terms, the word [Greek: emou] including the Son in the [Greek: patàer mónos]. For to his only-begotten Son before all time the Father showeth all things. Ib. p. 279.