For this reason Christ did not tell it, because it was not expedient. How, you say, was it not expedient? He who also concealed it knows wherefore it was not expedient. For hear Him saying to His Apostles, “It is not for you to know times, or seasons, which the Father hath set within His own authority.” (Acts i. 7.) Why are you curious? Peter, the chief of the Apostles, and his fellows, heard this said, as if they were seeking things too great for them to know. True, you say; but it were possible to stop the mouths of the Greeks in this way. How? tell me. Because they say, that this world is a god; if we knew the period of its dissol- ution, we should have stopped their mouths. Why, is this what will stop their mouths, to know when it will be destroyed, or to know that it will be destroyed? Tell them this, that it will have an end. If they do not believe this, neither will they believe the other. Hear Paul saying, “For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.” Not the general day only, but that of every individual. For the one re- 361 sembles the other, is also akin to it. For what the one does collectively, that the other does partially. For the period of consummation took its beginning from Adam, and then is the end of the consummation;1026 since even now one would not err in calling it a consumma- tion. For when ten thousand die every day, and all await That Day, and no one is raised before it, is it not the work1027 of That Day? And if you would know on what account it is concealed, and why it so cometh as a thief in the night, I will tell you how I think I can well account for it. No one would have ever cultivated virtue during his whole life; but knowing his last day, and, after having committed numberless sins, then having come to the Laver, he would so have departed. For if now, when the fear arising from its uncertainty shakes the souls of all, still all,1028 having spent their whole former life in wickedness, at their last breath give themselves up to Baptism,—if they had fully persuaded themselves concerning this matter, who would ever have cultivated virtue? If many have departed without Illumination, and not even this fear has taught them, whilst living, to cultivate the things that are pleasing to God; if this fear also had been removed, who would ever have been sober, or who gentle? There is not one! And another thing again. The fear of death and the love of life restrain many. But if each one knew that to-morrow he would certainly die, there is nothing he would refuse to attempt before that day, but he would murder whomsoever he wished, and would retrieve himself by taking vengeance on his enemies, and would perpetrate ten thousand crimes. 1026 [This is obscure as to the exact purport. Does “then” mean the end of the individual life, or the time of Christ’s coming? The expanded text understood it in the former sense.—J.A.B.] 1027 τὸ ἔργον, i.e. is not what is now doing part of That Day’s work? Or it might be rendered “reality.” 1028 i.e. as we say loosely, “every one.” St. Greg. Naz. complains of this practice, Or. XL., preached at Con- stantinople, A.D. 381. 637 1 Thessalonians 5:1,2