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CHRIST AND THE 
 
 KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 S. H. HOOKE 
 
Christ and 
 The Kingdom of God 
 
 ^ OF PHWfiffc 
 
 S. H. HOOKE 
 
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 Jesus College, Oxford, and Victoria College, 
 University of Toronto 
 
 NEW YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
Copyright, 1917, by 
 S. H. Hooke 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
To My Wife 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 The existence of so admirable a Bible study textbook as 
 Professor Hogg's "Christ's Message of the Kingdom" makes 
 it necessary that I should offer a word of explanation for the 
 raison d'etre of this book. When Professor Hogg's book 
 came out, I had been working along the lines here laid down 
 for several years, first for myself, and then in small college 
 circles at Oxford. We hailed Professor Hogg's book with 
 joy, and used it largely as a circle text-book in Oxford. But 
 I found myself that the book seemed to call for a companion 
 or supplementary study dealing more in detail with the life 
 of Christ. In this book, as in Professor Hogg's, the Kingdom 
 of God is the central thing. But this book is confined almost 
 entirely to the attempt to trace out in the life of Christ the 
 workings of the principles of the Kingdom of God. More 
 especially does it attempt to set forth Christ as man, subjected 
 to the conditions of his time, and exhibiting in his life the 
 reality of the yoke of the Kingdom of God "learning obedi- 
 ence by the things which he suffered." Hence, while Pro- 
 fessor Hogg's book deals extensively with a large range 
 of questions and problems arising out of the practical bearing 
 of the Kingdom of God upon Christian life as a whole, this 
 book deals intensively and more purely in a historical way 
 with the Christ of the Synoptic Gospels and his experience of 
 the workings of the Kingdom of God in his own life. It 
 takes up the life of Christ as the experimentum cruris of the 
 reality of "the powers of the age to come." 
 
 A sentence of Mr. Glover's, in the course of his memorable 
 address at the Liverpool Conference, 1913, on "The Death of 
 Christ," still rings in my ears — "Was he God, or was he 
 Man, you'd give anything to know!" It just represents the 
 attitude of so many students I have met. Together we have 
 wrestled over the secrets of those scanty records in the Syn- 
 optic Gospels, trying to find how men, into the very fiber of 
 whose being had been wrought the jealous monotheism of 
 Israel, should have been forced to offer to a man whom they 
 
 vii 
 
viii FOREWORD 
 
 had touched and handled, and seen hanging on the felon's 
 gibbet, the worship due to God. Over and over again I have 
 seen such students gradually coming to the realization of 
 Paul's phrase, "God was in Christ." A great deal of current 
 theology unconsciously assumes that the nature of the Incarna- 
 tion is known, that we can say with certainty what is or what 
 is not possible to God in Incarnation. The standpoint from 
 which this book is written is that we cannot define the method 
 or the manner of God's becoming man, and we cannot say of 
 any particular experience in the life of Christ that it is not 
 proper to God. "Christ died to bring us to God," "God was 
 in Christ." Those two sentences are the keynote of primitive 
 Christianity, and the point of departure for this brief study. 
 
 I should like to add, both for myself and for many students 
 whom I know, an expression of sincere gratitude to Professor 
 Hogg for his book. He will probably never know how many 
 students have been decisively helped by it. 
 
 Since the above was set up, Mr. Glover's book, "The Jesus of History," 
 has appeared, to the joy of all students of the life of Christ. 
 
FOREWORD TO THE WEEKLY STUDIES 
 
 The old proverb says that a fool may ask questions which it 
 takes a wise man to answer. My own experience is that to 
 ask the right questions is the beginning of wisdom. Further- 
 more, experience only answers slowly, and the wise man learns 
 that there is often more profit in the insistent goading of an 
 unanswered question than in the answer gained without 
 travail. The object of these weekly studies is to suggest ques- 
 tions ; the object of the weekly chapter following them is to 
 suggest, not answers, but a line of thought along which some 
 kind of answer may be found. In using the book for circle 
 study there is no need for the leader to confine himself to the 
 questions given in each week's study. Other questions are 
 sure to suggest themselves, either to him or to members of the 
 circle. The only thing needed is to draw out the right ques- 
 tions that really matter, and to extinguish the others, tactfully 
 if possible. The secret of success in Bible study circles be- 
 longs to the things not seen but eternal. Sincerity, patience, 
 real humility of mind, and prayer, together with a good deal 
 of very real preparation, are at least some of the things to 
 be found somewhere in the circle. If nobody has begun to 
 think about the subject of the week's study until an hour 
 before the circle meets, it will be a dreary business, and the 
 sooner such a circle has a millstone tied around its neck and 
 disappears into the abyss, the better. 
 
 So, while not laying down any rules or even suggestions for 
 daily study, this at least is urged — that any student using this 
 book should give a definite and if possible a regular time 
 during the week to read the passages given, to think out their 
 implications, and to make clear to himself his own position, 
 and possibly his own ignorance, on the points raised by the 
 questions. The leader, and possibly members of the circle, 
 may find of some use in preparation the list of literature given 
 in the notes to each week's study. If possible, all the New 
 Testament passages should be read in Moffatt's New Trans- 
 lation by preference, although Weymouth is good. But for 
 
 ix 
 
x FOREWORD TO WEEKLY STUDIES 
 
 those who know Greek, the systematic use of the Greek 
 Testament is the best habit to form. 
 
 The plan of the book follows the main crises of the life of 
 Christ. It falls into four divisions — I. The Preparation for 
 the Ministry, including an introductory chapter on the current 
 expectation of the Kingdom of God in the time of Christ; 
 II. The First Stage of the Ministry and the First Crisis ; III. 
 The Second Stage of the Ministry and the Second Crisis ; 
 IV. The Final Period and the Passion. If the book is used 
 to cover a period of two years, it may be divided conveniently 
 at the end of the second division. 
 
 It may be added that the book is intended to form the first 
 of a series of three, leading on to the ministry of the Spirit, 
 and thence to a sketch of the early Church up to the period 
 of the great creeds. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Foreword vii 
 
 Foreword to the Weekly Studies ix 
 
 First Division: The Preparation 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. Jewish Ideas in the Time of Christ Concern- 
 ing the Kingdom of God 3 
 
 II. The Childhood of Christ 9 
 
 III. The Baptism of Christ 15 
 
 IV. The First Temptation 21 
 
 V. The Second Temptation 27 
 
 VI. The Third Temptation 33 
 
 Second Division: The First Stage of the Ministry 
 and the First Crisis 
 
 VII. The First Period of the Ministry 41 
 
 VIII. The First Crisis. The Message from John ... 47 
 
 IX. The First Crisis. The Yoke of the Kingdom. 53 
 
 Third Division: The Second Stage of the Ministry 
 and the Second Crisis 
 
 X. The Second Period of the Ministry 61 
 
 XI. The Parables of the Kingdom 67 
 
 XII. The Second Crisis. The Confession 73 
 
 XIII. The Second Crisis. The Confirmation 79 
 
 XIV. The Transfiguration 85 
 
 XV. The Resurrection in the Mind of Christ 91 
 
 Fourth Division: The Final Crisis 
 
 XVI. The Way to Jerusalem. The Mind of the Dis- 
 ciples 97 
 
 XVII. The Way to Jerusalem. The Mind of Christ. 103 
 
 XVIII. The Triumphal Entry 109 
 
 XIX. The Withered Fig Tree 113 
 
 XX. The Last Crisis. The Supper and Afterwards 119 
 
 XXI. The Last Crisis. Gethsemane 125 
 
 XXII. The Cross 129 
 
 XXIII. The Victory of the Cross 133 
 
 xi 
 
FIRST DIVISION 
 THE PREPARATION 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 Jewish Ideas in the Time of Christ Concerning the 
 Kingdom of God 
 
STUDY I 
 
 Passages for Daily Study: 
 Luke 1:15-18, 32, 68-79; 2:25-38; 3:4-17; Matt. 20; 21; 
 Mark 10:35-37; Luke 13:23; 14:15. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 This is an introductory study, necessary for the under- 
 standing of the whole background of thought against which 
 the life of Christ stands out. The student will certainly need 
 to read something of the great literature that is rapidly 
 growing up around this new and fascinating subject. It is 
 particularly necessary to avoid reading back into the Gospels 
 and even into the sayings of Christ ideas which belong to a 
 much later and more theological period of Christian thought. 
 A little study will show two main things — first, that the 
 expectation of the actual coming of the Kingdom of God on 
 earth forms the keynote of Jewish history during the last 
 two centuries B. C. and the first century A. D. ; and second, 
 that there were many ways of thinking of the Kingdom, 
 many forms in which the hope of the Kingdom manifested 
 itself, varying from the most spiritual to the most material. 
 The following books will be helpful : 
 
 Crawford Burkitt: "Jewish and Christian Apocalypses." 
 Charles : "Eschatology, Hebrew, Jewish, and Christian." 
 Oesterley: "The Doctrine of the Last Things." 
 Oesterley : "The Evolution of the Messianic Idea." 
 Scott : "The Kingdom and the Messiah." 
 Kirsopp Lake: "The Stewardship of Faith." 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. What do you think John the Baptist meant by his mes- 
 
 sage, "the Kingdom of God is at hand"? What did 
 his hearers understand by it? 
 
 2. From what sources did the Jews in the time of Christ 
 
 draw their expectation of the coming Kingdom? 
 
 3. What was in the mind of the speakers in Luke 13:23 
 
 and 14: 15? 
 
 4. What does the word "salvation" mean in Luke 1 : 68-79? 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 Jewish Ideas in the Time of Christ 
 Concerning the Kingdom of God 
 
 Lagrange, in his very valuable book, "Le Messianisme chez 
 les Tuifs," has described the closing century of Jewish national 
 history as "Messianism in action." The phrase sums up ad- 
 mirably the intense flame of desire for the Kingdom of God 
 which was consuming that unhappy nation. It is impossible 
 to understand the keynote of Christ's life without some 
 appreciation of what was going on all the time under the 
 surface of Jewish life. The fires are extinct and cold now, 
 and many of the phrases and even the questions in the Gos- 
 pels—idle questions they seem to us now— are almost mean- 
 ingless, unless by an effort of imaginative sympathy we can 
 make them glow again with the fire of Messianic expectation. 
 It is impossible in one short chapter to go back to the roots 
 of this strange and unique impulse in Jewish national history. 
 Special reference may be made to pp. 5-10 of Prof. Kirsopp 
 Lake's brilliant book, "The Stewardship of Faith," for a very 
 clear summary of the development of the Jewish view of 
 the Kingdom of God. 
 
 We must limit ourselves here to a bird's-eye view of the 
 different forms which this expectation took in the time of 
 Christ. Several important points will come up again for 
 discussion later on in our studies. 
 
 The first circle which meets us over and over again in the 
 Gospels is that of the Pharisees who are generally coupled 
 with the Scribes, the professional students of the Torah. 
 The Pharisees have a bad name, but their part in the history 
 of Judaism is a very fine one. Paul himself is a proof of 
 what Pharisaism at its best could produce. At a time when 
 
6 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 the Jews were in danger of merging altogether into Hellenism, 
 the Pharisees carried on the work of the old Hasidim, the 
 Puritans of the bad days of Antiochus Epiphanes, and asserted 
 the central importance of the Law. While there were various 
 sects among the Pharisees, some narrower, some more liberal, 
 and various shades of belief existed among them concerning 
 the precise order of the events of the last days, all agreed on 
 the central point that the coming of the Kingdom of God 
 depended on the keeping of the Law. So much was this the 
 case that among the more liberal Jews of the Dispersion the 
 glorification of the Law had displaced the Messianic hope. 
 There was a rabbinic saying current in various forms, to the 
 effect that if all Israel could only keep the Law perfectly for 
 a single day Messiah would come. Hence, while there was 
 much bigotry and narrowness, much unreality in the strict 
 orthodoxy of the Pharisees with which Christ clashed so 
 often, yet under it there was a spirit of passionate desire for 
 the Kingdom of God which explains much that now seems 
 absurd to us in the meticulous exactness with which they 
 sought to keep the letter of the Law. 
 
 Over against them stand the Sadducees, the priestly party, 
 inheriting the prestige and power, but not the spirit, of the 
 old Maccabees. Much is still obscure about the precise reli- 
 gious beliefs of the Sadducees. They probably regarded 
 many of the Pharisaic beliefs as dangerous innovations, and 
 considered themselves as representing the old conservative 
 point of view. But as we see them in the Gospels, their 
 principal anxiety is to keep the continual, suppressed Messianic 
 expectation and tension from breaking out into a flame of 
 revolt. They certainly believed in the coming of the King- 
 dom as a pious hope; it was to come, it would come anyhow. 
 Meanwhile, it was no good to get excited. They enjoyed 
 what measure of power was left to the nation, and grew rich 
 on the sale of temple victims and the system of exchange 
 which required all sacrificial animals to be bought with the 
 temple coinage. They stood to lose these things if any ill- 
 considered outbreak of Messianism should bring down the 
 heavy hand of Rome and cause the temple worship to be 
 finally suppressed. Hence the Sadducees, who probably 
 troubled little about the precise nature of Christ's teaching, 
 grew alarmed at once when things began to look threaten- 
 ing at Jerusalem. The so-called triumphal entry, and the 
 
JEWISH IDEAS 7 
 
 cleansing of the temple, were probably the historical causes 
 which led to the death of Christ. 
 
 In addition to these two parties, there was another of which 
 we do not hear so much in the Gospels, but which is probably 
 referred to in some of Christ's most characteristic sayings. 
 They were the Zealots, of whom at least one, Simon the 
 Cananean or the Zealot (for the epithet Cananean is the 
 Aramaic equivalent of the Greek form frfr UT fc), was of the 
 company of the Twelve. They were impatient both of the 
 ineffectual methods of the Pharisees and of the masterly 
 inactivity of the Sadducees. They believed in an appeal to 
 the ordeal of battle. They wished to rise against the might 
 of Rome in one desperate splendid venture and stake all on 
 the intervention of God at the last moment. They had their 
 way at last, and the final destruction of Jerusalem in 70 
 A. D. was the result. The attention of New Testament 
 scholars has been drawn to this interesting sect of late, and 
 it is probable that many of Christ's sayings against the use 
 of force are directed against the Zealots, with whom his 
 own disciples would have much sympathy. Thus we find a 
 third view of the way the Kingdom might come. 
 
 But underneath, amongst the common people, for whom the 
 Pharisees had little use, there had grown up an intense and 
 earnest expectation of that "divine event" which seemed to 
 them anything but "far off." They had fed, not only on the 
 prophets, but on a literature of which we are only now begin- 
 ning to understand the significance. Books like first and 
 second Enoch, first and second Baruch, fourth Ezra, full of 
 visions of a glorious future in which all the past woes of 
 Israel would be a thousand times repaid, nourished their hopes 
 and strengthened their faith. Nor was this hope unethical, 
 even if it was inevitably material. A short selection of typical 
 passages from some of these books which were actually cur- 
 rent about the time of Christ, given at the end of this book, 
 will show the character of these hopes. The canticles in Luke 
 1 are thoroughly representative of the beautiful and quiet 
 piety of that unknown and humble circle that waited for 
 redemption in Israel. For them "salvation" in its technical 
 sense included two things, deliverance from their enemies, 
 and forgiveness of their sins. How these two things could 
 be brought together in one great act of divine intervention 
 was the problem facing the circle into which Christ was born 
 
8 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 and among whom he grew up. We shall see that it is impos- 
 sible to think of him as uninfluenced by all these currents of 
 thought. This was the atmosphere in which he came to 
 maturity, and unless we take the trouble to reconstruct it for 
 ourselves from the hints of the Gospels, plentiful enough 
 when we have learnt to look for them, and from the apoc- 
 alyptic literature already mentioned, we shall not have the 
 key to the meaning of the life of Christ. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 The Childhood of Christ 
 
STUDY II 
 
 Passage for Daily Study : 
 Luke 2 : 40-52. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 The passage for this week is short, and should be read as 
 often as possible and thought over carefully. Consider the 
 meaning of Christ's answer to his mother. Note the right 
 rendering of his words given in the chapter on this subject. 
 Consider the bearing of the whole incident on Christ's mental 
 and spiritual development. 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. What did Christ mean by his answer to his mother? 
 
 2. What do you understand by the statement in Luke 2 : 52, 
 
 that Jesus grew in wisdom, and in favor with God? 
 
 3. Was the thought of the Fatherhood of God a new one 
 
 in the time of Christ? (Cf. Deut. 32: 6; Isaiah 
 63:16; 64:8.) 
 
 4. W'hat does the whole story convey to you concerning 
 
 the personality of Jesus? 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 The Childhood of Christ 
 
 In our last study we tried to reconstruct the religious back- 
 ground of Christ's time, its complexity, its restlessness, its 
 mingled optimism and pessimism. We saw something of the 
 nature of the circle of choice souls, waiting for the redemption 
 of Israel, into which Christ was born. We do not think much 
 about Christ's childhood and its relation to his later life, 
 partly because we have so little information about it, and 
 partly because of the unnatural way in which, unconsciously, 
 we have come to think of the life of Christ. 
 
 Yet, if the human life of Christ was real, the impressions 
 and lessons of his childhood formed his manhood. In the 
 reading for the week occurs the passage, "and Jesus advanced 
 in wisdom and age (R. V.) and in favor with God and man." 
 This must be taken at its full face value. It means what it 
 says. Jesus learnt at home the Old Testament Scriptures, 
 and when he was old enough, heard the Law and the prophets 
 read in the synagogue in their yearly rotation. He learnt in 
 that circle, so vividly drawn by Luke, to think of the coming 
 Kingdom of God as no dream, but a glorious certainty; that 
 is, his views of the Kingdom of God and his conception of 
 his own part in it were the fruit of the natural process of 
 learning and study and maturer meditation as he grew in age. 
 
 The special object of this week's study is to read with a 
 fresh mind the one incident of Christ's childhood which has 
 been preserved. Luke took pains to collect all the informa- 
 tion possible from the best sources. He must have had access 
 to the inner circle of Christ's relatives; possibly he had talked 
 with Mary, the mother of Jesus. If he does not tell us more, 
 it is most likely because there was not much to tell. The 
 stream ran quietly but deep. The verse already quoted repre- 
 sents the uneventful childhood of obedience. 
 
 II 
 
12 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 Hence, the one story, laid up in the mother's memory, 
 puzzling her by its mystery, challenges us to gather what we 
 may from it. 
 
 It is not necessary to repeat the details. The center of in- 
 terest lies in the child's strange answer, so baffling- to his 
 parents. Perhaps a retranslation may help towards a fresh 
 reading of the incident — "why were you seeking for me? 
 Were you not aware that I should be in my Father's house?" 
 In the first place, the presence of the child among the rabbis 
 and his interest in their discussions is not so strange as it 
 may seem to us. Similar cases might be cited from the rabbin- 
 ical literature. We have to think of the child, who had al- 
 ready thought and pondered over what his parents had taught 
 him of the coming Kingdom, Elias the forerunner, and the 
 Messiah, listening to the rabbis talking over and discussing 
 these subjects; he breaks in with apt questions and quotations 
 and amazes them by the evidence of his interest in such 
 things and his knowledge of the Scriptures. Then come the 
 troubled parents, and the mother's natural rebuke — "We have 
 been looking everywhere for you." He answers, "Why, I 
 thought you would be sure to know where I was, in my 
 Father's house." 
 
 Later on, Jesus said to his disciples — "Except ye become as 
 little children, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of God." I 
 think that here lies the point of the story. In childhood 
 spiritual things are as real as material things. When we 
 grow older, the world is too much with us and the material 
 things are so much more real to us that we need the pangs 
 of re-birth to give us entrance again into the spiritual world. 
 But with Jesus it was not so, and this deep simplicity it was 
 that baffled his parents. They had taught him that the 
 Temple was God's house, their Father's house, and taught 
 him to look forward to the time when as "a son of the law" 
 he would be able to go up with them to visit and to worship 
 at that glorious place. To him all this was intensely real, 
 real with a reality of which they, pious people though they 
 were, knew nothing, a reality which, as we shall have occa- 
 sion to notice, grew and deepened for him as years went on. 
 Hence he cannot understand why they should have hesitated 
 for a moment as to where they would find him. He supposes 
 that for them, as for him, that place would be home. 
 
 This is the first glimpse into the consciousness of Christ, 
 
THE CHILDHOOD OF CHRIST 13 
 
 the only one that we have into his child-mind. It shows us 
 the divine simplicity of the child, our only door into the King- 
 dom of God, in Christ. We see Christ receiving spiritual 
 realities "as a little child," and in childlike simplicity accept- 
 ing them as real, more real than anything else, real in a way of 
 which his parents had not dreamed. 
 
 At the very outset, then, Christ's life confirms to us one of 
 the fundamental principles of the Kingdom. That is what this 
 solitary splendid story of the childhood of Jesus gives us. He 
 enters in by the "lowly door" into the spiritual heritage into 
 which as Leader and Completer of the Faith he was to bring 
 us, many sons unto glory. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The Baptism of Christ 
 
STUDY III 
 
 Passages for Daily Study: 
 Matt. 3:13-17; Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-22. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 The account given in the Gospel of Mark clearly implies 
 that the vision at the Baptism was for Christ alone. The 
 supplementary account in the fourth Gospel states that John 
 the Baptist also saw at least part of the vision. It is possible 
 that the incident of John's hesitation recorded only in 
 Matthew may throw light on the account given in the fourth 
 Gospel. It suggests that the Baptist shared to some extent 
 the experience of Christ, realizing with the prophet's sym- 
 pathy and sensitiveness the nature of his own act and of 
 Christ's decision, and entering in some measure into the 
 emotion and exaltation and inward vision of Christ. The 
 point, however, does not affect the main line of explanation 
 taken up in our chapter, but is mentioned here only because 
 the question is sure to be raised in discussion. The lines along 
 which Christ's experience are interpreted here will also throw 
 light on the Baptist's experience at the same time. 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. In comparing the three accounts of the Baptism what 
 
 points of difference strike you especially? 
 
 2. Do the experiences of the prophets throw any light on 
 
 Christ's experience at the Baptism? (Compare 
 Isaiah's call). 
 
 3. From what source do you consider the Evangelists have 
 
 drawn their account of the experience of Christ at 
 the Baptism? 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The Baptism of Christ 
 
 "He told it not; or something seal'd 
 The lips of that Evangelist." 
 
 The silences of the Gospel history are sometimes as eloquent 
 as its speech, if we try to read them. There is a silence of 
 about sixteen years between the glimpse into the mind of the 
 child Jesus which was the subject of our last study, and the 
 more prolonged and intense light which breaks for us upon his 
 mature consciousness in the story of his baptism and temp- 
 tation. Outwardly these years were probably quiet enough, 
 but we have to think of them as related to the events we are 
 dealing with now. During these years that passion for the 
 Kingdom of God which was to carry him to the bitter end was 
 being kindled and nourished. The simplicity and intensity of 
 spiritual grasp which is the keynote of the story of the finding 
 in the Temple was maturing. The Father's Kingdom was 
 growing real to him as the Father's house of the childhood 
 story. Many things in the prophet's visions of the future and 
 in the current expectations that surged all round him must 
 have been quietly turned over in his mind, and not a few ob- 
 scure sayings in his later life seem to throw us back for light 
 upon this time of slowly forming purpose. 
 
 Then the small circle of the life at Nazareth was stirred 
 and shaken by the report of a new prophet, with a message 
 that met the smouldering desires of men's hearts and drew 
 them after him to the Jordan's banks. The message that the 
 Kingdom of God was at hand must have come like a trumpet 
 call to Jesus. He left his home, laying down forever his 
 workman's tools, and mingled with the crowd that listened 
 to the Baptist's message. There he saw people of the class 
 for whom the religious leaders of the day had no room in 
 their vision of the Kingdom — the hated publican, the harlots — 
 
 17 
 
18 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 publicly proclaiming themselves as sinners. One who above all 
 things had so deep a sense of reality must have felt profoundly 
 moved by the sight of such reality shown in such a pathetic 
 way. These people, at any rate, had gone beyond pious 
 phrases and smug complacency, they were hungering and 
 thirsting for righteousness. For them at least the Kingdom 
 of God was a reality. In such a scene his patiently nourished 
 purpose and passion for the Kingdom of God found an 
 answer perhaps unexpected ; he saw his way, made the first 
 great decision of his life, and joined himself with these people 
 who sought the Kingdom of God. The greatness of the 
 decision is best measured by the attendant emotions and reac- 
 tions. Here we come upon the ground that can be rightly 
 apprehended only if we are willing to give full human value 
 to the experience recorded. It is necessary to see first that 
 the baptism as an act of vital decision, the experiences im- 
 mediately following it, and the temptations ensuing, are all 
 intimately and organically connected, just as the act of deci- 
 sion itself stands directly related to the period of formation in 
 Nazareth. 
 
 This is a point which has already been urged and will recur 
 again and again, that the more frankly and fully we admit 
 the naturalness and humanness of Christ's experiences, the 
 more we find them fall under the laws governing our own 
 spiritual life, and the deeper does their significance become. 
 
 First of all, the whole scene evidently represents the crys- 
 tallization in Christ's mind of all his previous thought about 
 the Kingdom; all he had pondered over is brought to the 
 sharp focal point of clear vision by the challenge to action. 
 The Kingdom was at hand ; here were people, not Pharisees, 
 not Sadducees, but publicans and harlots, responding with the 
 witness of deepest sincerity. Here, in stepping into Jordan, 
 he feels himself, so to speak, stepping into the swift cur- 
 rent of the divine purpose, committing himself to it in such 
 company as this for whatever issue God might have for them 
 all. It was a great, an immense act of decision. 
 
 The testimony of the lives of those called saints shows 
 clearly the law of relation between the three things we have 
 to deal with here in the experience of Christ. We see that a 
 focal point of decision is never a cold and bloodless thing, it is 
 always hot, white hot, it is always accompanied by intense 
 emotion and clearness of spiritual vision. The senses are for 
 
THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST 19 
 
 the time preternaturally sharpened, sensitive to the vibra- 
 tions of the spiritual world where we are so little at home by- 
 nature. Further, the moment of emotion and insight is so 
 intense that it can be expressed afterwards only in the lan- 
 guage of the usual channels of sensation, such as sight or 
 hearing. And lastly, the moment of exaltation is brief, it 
 passes, and is always followed by reaction and depression. 
 
 So we find here with Christ. The decision, whose great- 
 ness we often fail to grasp, especially in its relation to the gen- 
 eral attitude of the time, was accompanied by a moment of 
 intense spiritual exaltation and vision. He knew, as the saints 
 know, that he had entered the path that God meant him to 
 follow, he was profoundly conscious of the Father's approval 
 of his act of decision. He felt in a new and intenser way the 
 significance of the fact that he had grasped as a child, the 
 fact of Sonship, and he felt the sense of power. He was 
 committed, with this strange company, to the realization of 
 the Kingdom of God ; that would need power, God's power, 
 and with that power he felt himself endued. So the vision 
 passed, the heavens closed again. Mark uses the vivid word 
 that perhaps represents the personal touch of experience, 
 "he saw the heavens rending." Heaven and earth were 
 strangely near at that moment of mystic exaltation. 
 
 We do not always stop to think and ask where the informa- 
 tion came from about these things. But if this was the spe- 
 cial personal experience of Christ, perhaps dimly shared and 
 partially reflected in the mind of the Baptist alone, it must 
 have been told by Jesus himself to his disciples when he saw 
 they would need it. Decision would have to come for them 
 as for him, and he must have told them, in such symbolic 
 language as the prophets had used and they would under- 
 stand, what had come to him after the great decision had been 
 made. He must have told them, too, about the reaction, the 
 struggle that followed, but with this we shall deal in our 
 next studies. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 The First Temptation 
 
STUDY IV 
 
 Passages for Daily Study: 
 Matt 4:1-4; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-4, 22-28; Heb. 
 2: 18; 4: 15. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 The student may find help from Sanday's "Outlines of the 
 Life of Christ," Latham's "Pastor Pastorum," and Neville 
 Talbot's "The Mind of the Disciples," but the great thing is 
 to read and reread the actual passages psychologically con- 
 nected with the Baptism. 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. What is the connection, if any, between the Baptism and 
 
 the Temptation? 
 
 2. What does the passage in Hebrews 4: 15 imply? 
 
 3. What constituted the point of attack in the first temp- 
 
 tation ? 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 The First Temptation 
 
 In his book, "The Gospel History and Its Transmission," 
 Professor Crawford Burkitt remarks, "Our Gospels are very- 
 far from being a sort of psychological novel with Jesus 
 Christ for hero." The remark is just and necessary. Some 
 of the best known of the liberal Protestant lives of Christ are 
 little else. But unless we are to give up any attempt to 
 understand the significance of the life of Jesus, we must try 
 to construct from the Gospels, the first three in particular, 
 some coherent view of the reason why Christ did things; some 
 broad conception of his outlook on life, which shall be at once 
 psychologically possible, true to historical conditions, and 
 such as may help us to understand why the first great theo- 
 logian of the Church could say "God was in Christ." 
 
 Now in dealing with the Baptism and Temptation, the last 
 of these three points has been principally in view in most of 
 the interpretations of the Church. Chiefly as the result of 
 the great doctrinal controversies of the early centuries of its 
 history, the Church has emphasized only one side of Christ, 
 the divine. In Mr. Rawlinson's words, "There has been a 
 tendency to treat the Incarnation as a Theophany ; to think of 
 the historic Christ, in other words, as simply a manifestation 
 of Godhead in human flesh, and to ignore the completeness 
 and genuineness of His manhood." 1 
 
 Hence many incidents in the life of Jesus have been dealt 
 with as flashes of that inner divine consciousness which was 
 assumed to exist alongside of his human consciousness, and 
 any attempt to explain them as arising out of the laws of 
 human mentality and the historical conditions has been ex- 
 cluded as irreverent. Without assuming any particular posi- 
 
 1 Dogma, Fact, and Experience, by A. E. J. Rawlinson, p. 113. 
 
 23 
 
24 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 tion, our object is to see if, by attempting to interpret such 
 incidents in Christ's life as the Baptism and Temptation 
 entirely from the human standpoint, they do not become more 
 real, intelligible, and significant for our own spiritual life. I 
 wish to say quite frankly that there is no thought of dogma- 
 tizing here, but simply an endeavor to set out what the mean- 
 ing of the life of Christ has come to be for oneself. 
 
 Now in dealing with the Temptation of Christ it is spe- 
 cially necessary that we should seek to understand the reality 
 of the Temptation, its relation to the actual circumstances in 
 which Christ found himself, and why it was a "temptation" at 
 all. It is so necessary because here, if anywhere, the life of 
 Christ must have true human meaning. So the writer of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews felt, and he surely reflected the mind 
 of the early Church, when he said, "who was in every respect 
 tempted after the same fashion as we are, without sin." It 
 is not too much to say that if the temptations of Christ were 
 unreal, then this part of Christ's experience is both utterly 
 unintelligible and utterly valueless for our own experience. 
 Taking up then the line of interpretation begun in our last 
 chapter, we find the decision accompanied by intense exalta- 
 tion and vision and followed by reaction. It is the reaction 
 with which we have now to deal. 
 
 The sense of the tremendous issues hanging on the decision 
 just taken compels Jesus to seek retirement and solitude. In 
 this solitude, during long days of fasting and nights of vigil 
 and prayer, Christ faced the question of the future. The ac- 
 count of the Baptism and its experience, coming as it must 
 have done from Christ himself, shows that he felt the event 
 to be a crisis in his life. It is from the Temptation that we 
 gather the nature of the crisis. 
 
 The opening words of the first temptation, as we call it — 
 though really it is all one temptation passing through succes- 
 sive and related phases — show that it is the direct outcome of 
 the experience at the Baptism. "Thou art my beloved Son" 
 were the words in which Christ expressed his experience, his 
 consciousness of God. "If thou be the Son of God" directly 
 challenges and questions this experience. There is a struggle 
 in the mind of Christ. It takes this form, the natural result 
 of reaction after strain and exaltation, of a questioning of the 
 reality and value of this spiritual experience through which 
 he had just passed. It is evident that the great question 
 
THE FIRST TEMPTATION 25 
 
 before the mind of Christ was the nature of his appeal to 
 those among whom his mission lay. It is the age-long strug- 
 gle of the prophet's soul at the outset of his mission, "They 
 will say the Lord hath not appeared unto thee," "show me a 
 sign that thou talkest with me." In face of the deeply felt 
 sense of the narrowness, the hardness, the blindness of those 
 to whom he must go with the message of God, the prophet, 
 the sent one of God, will always feel first of all the pre- 
 cariousness, the apparent inadequacy of his own experience 
 of God as the ground of his mission. Christ felt what the 
 prophet had felt. In the reaction, the depression, he real- 
 izes how seemingly slight a ground of appeal he has, and the 
 whole issue is faced and fought first of all on this point, "Is 
 that experience of God, profoundly and movingly felt at the 
 Baptism, sufficient ground for me to go on, to go out and face 
 this people with?" 
 
 We saw that the experience was, so to speak, a complex one ; 
 the sense of the nearness of heaven, the approval of the 
 Father sealing his decision, was accompanied by a sense of 
 power in filling him for the work before him. Here lay the 
 psychological point of the Temptation. It is the form in which 
 to prophets and saints, the temptation has most often come. 
 It is only those who face the venture of faith who know 
 such temptations, and Christ, the leader and completer of the 
 faith, knew them to the utmost. John Bunyan in his "Grace 
 Abounding," has given a classic example of this temptation 
 in his own experience. He tells how when he was struggling 
 in the darkness, longing to know that he was a child of God, 
 but unable to find certainty, he was walking alone one day 
 in the fields, wrestling with his doubts and fears. As he 
 walked, he came to a pool of water right across his path. He 
 stopped and began to revolve such things as these in his 
 mind: "If I am a son of God then God's power is at my dis- 
 posal, He will do whatever I ask Him. I have only then to 
 command this pool to dry up to prove whether I really am 
 a child of God or not." So he stood hesitating whether to 
 put everything to the proof by this test, dreading the result 
 and yet longing to be out of his misery. At last he decided 
 to stake everything on the test, and ordered the pool to dry 
 up. Of course it remained where it was. and the wretched 
 man was plunged into the depths of despair for many months 
 before he finally found peace. 
 
26 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 So here the precise occasion lay to hand, and the point 
 was the same. The sense of power, the sense that in sealing 
 his decision with approval the Father had entrusted to him the 
 power of the Kingdom, was a part of the experience in ques- 
 tion. If the sense of endowment with power was real, then 
 the rest of the experience would be real, and what could be 
 simpler than to settle the whole issue by using the power to 
 meet the needs of the moment? Here we find the uniqueness 
 of Christ. He saw (and his use of the old passage in Deut. 
 8 : 3, shows how he read the Scriptures — not in the letter but 
 in the spirit) that spiritual experience, the soul's experience of 
 God, was the ultimate reality in human life, not to be proved 
 by any purely physical manifestations. 
 
 The word going out of God's mouth, the direct experience 
 of God, was what man must live by. So Christ fought the 
 issue there of the first great crisis of spiritual experience, and 
 vindicated forever the reality, beyond proof, of the life of 
 the spirit. The particular occasion and circumstance of the 
 crisis was temporary, and arose out of the historical con- 
 ditions of Christ's time, but the principle at stake, made good 
 by Christ, is eternal. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 The Second Temptation 
 
STUDY V 
 
 Passages for Daily Study: 
 
 Matt. 4:5-7; Luke 4:9-12; Mai. 3:1; John 7:27; Matt. 
 16:1; Mark 8:11; Luke 11:16. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 Observe the variation in order between Matthew and Luke, 
 and consider which of the two seems to you the original 
 sequence. The question of the literal truth of the narrative, 
 e.g., the actual carrying of Christ to the temple by the devil, 
 may be partly discussed here, but fuller discussion should 
 be left if possible to the next study, as already suggested. 
 Compare for the particular instance mentioned Ezek. 3:14; 
 8:3; and 1 1 : 24. 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. Which of the Gospels appears to you to represent the 
 
 original order of the temptations? 
 
 2. How do you understand the statement that the devil 
 
 placed Christ on a pinnacle of the temple? 
 
 3. What constituted the point of attack in the second 
 
 temptation ? 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 The Second Temptation 
 
 The second phase of the Temptation follows naturally after 
 the first. It also brings us closer to the contemporary con- 
 ditions of the Messianic expectation, and shows more clearly 
 the lines upon which Christ's mind was moving. The struggle 
 may be conceived as continuing in this way. Christ takes 
 his stand upon the ultimate reality of spiritual experience, 
 his own in particular. It suffices for him. No sign or mani- 
 festation of power can make it more real to him. 
 
 But now the question arises whether some manifestation 
 of divine power is not necessary to show the people, his own 
 people, who he is. Spiritual experience, inward conviction of 
 his relationship to God and of his mission, may suffice for him, 
 but will it suffice for them? Here again the current of 
 Christ's thoughts falls into Old Testament channels and shows 
 us an Old Testament expectation which had been developed 
 along familiar apocalyptic lines. In Mai. 3:1, we have the 
 prophecy, "The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to 
 his temple," and reflected in various passages in the Gospels, 
 as well as in numerous apocalyptic passages, we find the belief 
 that Messiah would suddenly appear in the temple or in the 
 heavens above Jerusalem. In John 7 : 27, one of the difficulties 
 which the Jews of Jerusalem are represented as feeling, with 
 regard to the identification of Jesus with the Messiah, is that 
 even-one knows where Jesus comes from, whereas the popular 
 belief about Messiah was that his coming must be super- 
 natural and sudden. The same point is reflected in the 
 repeated request put to Christ both by Pharisees and Sad- 
 ducees that he should show them a sign from heaven. What 
 they sought was not such miracles of healing as they were 
 already abundantly familiar with, but some such sign as 
 would prove that he came down from heaven. Here in this 
 
 29 
 
30 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 temptation we find Christ's sense of such a belief among his 
 people, and his consciousness or belief that the experience he 
 had just been through meant that he was marked out by 
 God for a special position in the Kingdom, which could only 
 be that of Messiah. Hence the suggestion is that he must 
 show a sign from heaven, if he is to be recognized as the 
 Person marked out by God to bring in the Kingdom. 
 
 With the swiftness of thought he is transported to the 
 Temple, now so familiar to him, the scene of his first vivid 
 boyhood impression. He sees again, as from the lofty wall of 
 the outer court, the busy throngs of worshipers, and pic- 
 tures to himself the rapture and enthusiasm with which he 
 would be received by them if he should suddenly appear 
 amongst them descending, as though upborne by angels, into 
 their midst. 
 
 The suggestion is striking, and the temptation subtle enough. 
 There is Scripture sanction both for the particular form of 
 the expectation, and for angelic support if such a venture 
 were made. 
 
 But the same clearness of vision, always undimmed in 
 Christ when it was a question of the way of the Spirit, showed 
 him that if he had found for himself that the Father's way 
 of revelation was purely spiritual ; if he himself could learn 
 who he was only by way of spiritual experience, no other way 
 was possible for others. They must come to know him, and 
 knowing him learn what the Kingdom was to be, by the same 
 way, not easy save to little children, the way of spiritual expe- 
 rience. 
 
 It may be that Christ did not fully realize all the conse- 
 quences yet of such a decision, the divergence from the com- 
 mon way of thinking. That we shall see later. But this 
 phase of the Temptation issues in the further victory of a 
 decision that if God's way for him was the way of experience, 
 living by the word going out of God's mouth, then it must 
 be so for others. The old, old demand for a sign — "Is the 
 Lord among us or not?" — was just tempting God, putting Him 
 to a test which proved nothing but the doubt and faint- 
 heartedness of those who put the test. "Thou shalt not tempt 
 the Lord thy God." 
 
 So once more far-reaching gain is made by Christ's deci- 
 sion. The full consequences are hardly realized even now 
 by the Church. Her history shows how often she has pre- 
 
THE SECOND TEMPTATION 31 
 
 ferred flesh and blood methods, rather than the way of the 
 Spirit. 
 
 The outcome, then, of the Temptation so far is that Christ, 
 looking out upon the work that lies before him, considering 
 the question of the ground of his appeal and the means of 
 enforcing it, chooses deliberately, yet not calmly, but under 
 tremendous stress of conflict, that the way into the Kingdom 
 for himself and for others shall be the deepest, truest, and 
 indeed the only way, the way of spiritual experience. People 
 could not be forced into the knowledge of these things. There 
 must be deliberate acceptance. The way was strait and the 
 door narrow, as Christ came to realize more and more in the 
 days to come. Men must agonize to enter. 
 
 One further point that comes out here is that we have in 
 the mind of Christ a deliberate rejection of the current view 
 of miracles, as "signs" intended to "prove" some spiritual 
 reality intellectually. Whatever miracles were for Christ, 
 and whatever he used them for, at least he did not use his 
 power to prove his Messiahship. That is clearly shown by the 
 first two phases of the Temptation. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Third Temptation 
 
STUDY VI 
 
 Passages for Daily Study: 
 Matt. 4:8-11; Luke 4:5-8; Psalm 72:8-11; Isa. 9:6, 7; 
 Zech. 9:9, 10. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 In this concluding study a number of loose ends may be 
 gathered up. Some elasticity should be allowed here, and if 
 the discussion is good, and members wish to continue it, the 
 subject may easily be carried into a fresh week, before start- 
 ing the second division of the whole. For some of the points 
 raised the student will find Sanday's "Personality in Christ 
 and Ourselves," and McDowall's "Evolution and the Need 
 of Atonement" helpful, also commentaries on special pas- 
 sages quoted. But avoid too much use of commentaries; on 
 the whole they confuse. 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. What is the final point of attack in the last temptation? 
 
 2. From what source do you consider the evangelists have 
 
 drawn their information as to the Temptation of 
 Christ? 
 
 3. Consider whether in the growth of later legend the 
 
 Church could have invented the story of the Tempta- 
 tion. 
 
 4. What bearing has the Temptation of Christ upon the 
 
 spiritual life of a Christian? 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Third Temptation 
 
 We have seen that the very conflict, the very fact that there 
 was temptation in the suggestions refused by Christ, shows the 
 divergence from the consensus of current opinion. Nothing 
 is harder than for a sensitive mind, unbrutalized by misuse 
 of power, to take a course that runs counter to convictions 
 hallowed and sanctioned by the associations of the past. In 
 this case Christ felt that even the Scriptures themselves might 
 be used against him. But the full weight of this pressure of 
 what we may call "pious opinion" comes last. Christ must 
 have realized, if only in part, that such means as his choice 
 implied would make it hard for the Kingdom to come. He 
 was throwing a great burden on God, so to speak, and also 
 a great burden on man. 
 
 There were the hard facts of contemporary history. The 
 Romans were masters of the world. The Jews were a tiny 
 subject people, enjoying the remnant of civil and religious 
 liberty only at the pleasure of the Romans. How far would 
 the method of spiritual experience, the individual reception 
 of a spiritual message, go toward removing this great mate- 
 rial mountain that barred the way to a realization of the 
 age-long Messianic dreams? And then there swept before 
 him the old vision of the prophets, the world-wide Kingdom, 
 Zion the joy of the whole earth, the nations bringing their 
 glory and honor into her, a Messiah ruling in righteousness, 
 and all kings serving him. How could such a kingdom ever 
 be realized save by methods such as the Zealots advocated, 
 and such as had been already vindicated in the glorious 
 episode of the Maccabean rising? How puny and ineffective 
 seemed the way of the Spirit! If the prophets were not too 
 pious and spiritual to think of a warrior Messiah, of a day 
 of battle and confused noise, and of garments rolled in blood, 
 
 35 
 
36 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 why should he be superior to them? He need only use the 
 temporal weapons of revolt and war to crush the Romans, 
 then let spiritual means have their place. We seem to have 
 met the suggestion in our own day. The crisis here was 
 perhaps the most acute of all. It was not so much the ques- 
 tioning of the value of some part of his experience, as facing 
 the consequences of choosing the path which his previous 
 preparation in Nazareth, reenforced by this immense expe- 
 rience, pointed out. There is no "if thou be" in this tempta- 
 tion, but a tremendous "if thou wilt." It is the final choice 
 of one path and the final rejection of the other. But the path 
 from which he was turning seemed to have so much in its 
 favor. Stated in its nakedness, the suggestion of falling 
 down and worshipping the devil hardly seems to offer a "temp- 
 tation" to Christ. But it is Christ's own way of putting it — 
 he told the story. At such a time things are seen in high 
 lights, there are no half tones, all is sharp black and white. 
 And the path which involved such methods of force as the 
 Zealots invoked to establish the material earthly kingdom 
 seemed to Christ, as he saw things in that fierce light, the 
 final sin of denying God. The same spirit that spoke in Luther 
 at Worms in those great words "here I stand, I can do no 
 other, God help me," spoke in Christ when he said, "Thou 
 shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou 
 serve." Christ threw the responsibility back on God; if the 
 Kingdom was to come as the prophets and poets of Israel 
 had dreamed, then that was God's business. For him the only 
 thing was to do God's will as he saw it, in God's way. That 
 was the whole of life for him. 
 
 And so light breaks, heaven is near again with angels 
 ascending and descending as of old — 
 
 "The angels keep their ancient places, 
 Turn but a stone and start a wing; 
 'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces 
 That miss the many-splendored thing !" 
 
 The path is chosen, and the time of preparation is ended. 
 Here ends the first part of our study. But there are one or 
 two points to be gathered up, which were intentionally passed 
 over in order not to draw off attention from the central line 
 of explanation. 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION 37 
 
 First there is the question, both in the Baptism and in the 
 Temptations, of the literal interpretation of the account. Our 
 Western minds are so constituted that we feel unhappy if we 
 are deprived of tangible, sensible data. We are tempted to 
 feel that if the voice of God was not actually heard speaking 
 in Aramaic to Christ, if there was not an actual rent in the 
 vault of heaven, and an actual dove seen hovering over and 
 settling on Christ, we have been defrauded of reality, the thing 
 was not really true. Yet the very point of the temptations, the 
 very victory Christ won, was the assertion that the things of 
 the spirit, spiritual experience, are more real, not less real, 
 than the things of sense. 
 
 When it came to telling the story, nothing was more natural 
 than that Christ, in describing the whole experience at the 
 Baptism and after, should clothe it in such imagery and 
 symbols as the prophets had used in describing their own expe- 
 riences. It is hard to think of Christ putting his experiences 
 into the language of modern psychological analysis. 
 
 Then there is the perpetual question, about which I do 
 not wish to say much, of the relation of temptation to the 
 sinlessness of Christ. Xow the main thing is that the early 
 Church regarded the Temptation as real. The triumph for 
 them lay, and rightly, not in the fact that he could not sin, but 
 that he did not sin. 
 
 The fact is, we think still of sin as something material, like 
 a soil or taint, inhering in a person. 
 
 But we are coming to think, indeed we are being forced to 
 think, in terms of evolution. And we are coming to see that 
 sin, whether racial or individual, is essentially bound up with 
 choice. The whole trend of evolution lies in the ever increas- 
 ing introduction of freedom, and choices made at first un- 
 consciously, blindly, become, as the race ascends, more and 
 more conscious and the moral element enters. Choice becomes 
 significant in a new way. Those who wish to read along the 
 modern line of Christian thought in this profoundly interest- 
 ing and difficult subject are referred to the book by Mr. 
 McDowall mentioned in the Xotes to Study VI. We have 
 not space to discuss it fully here. But the point to be made 
 now is that the Temptation means for Christ the possibility 
 of choice. He could have chosen either of the two paths 
 spoken of in the last temptation. Otherwise the whole trans- 
 action is a mere stage-play, unreal and utterly valueless to us 
 
38 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 in our own spiritual history. Finally, it is hardly necessary 
 to say much about the value of Christ's experience for us. 
 That should speak for itself, if our interpretation is in any 
 way true. 
 
 But it does seem more and more certain, as the history of 
 man's development, especially the growth of religion, is studied, 
 that a profound crisis in the spiritual history of the race was 
 being reached. It was not so much that Christ was making 
 new discoveries, as that he was affirming certain values, felt 
 already by the prophets, in a new way, and was thereby 
 entering on a new section, so to speak, of the spiritual history 
 of the race, which was to make possible new and undreamed-of 
 developments along the new path. I think this will become 
 clearer as the successive crises in the life of Christ are dealt 
 with, leading up to the final crisis of the Cross. 
 
SECOND DIVISION 
 
 THE FIRST STAGE OF 
 THE MINISTRY AND 
 THE FIRST CRISIS 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 The First Period of the Ministry 
 
STUDY VII 
 
 Passages for Daily Study: 
 Matt. 4: 12-25; Mark 1 : 14-45; Matt 5:20; Matt. 10. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 The leader should, if possible, have read carefully through 
 Matt. 5-7, 10, with parts of the parallel passages in Mark 
 and Luke. The nature of the discussion in our study pre- 
 cludes much detailed examination of the dates and places of 
 Christ's ministry, but the student should follow Stevens and 
 Burton's Harmony, or Huck's "Synopsis of the First Three 
 Gospels"; Swete's outline of the ministry in the Introduc- 
 tion to his "Commentary on St. Mark" is also admirable, the 
 map being specially helpful. The aim of the study is to 
 avoid too much discussion of irrelevant details, and to con- 
 centrate on the things suggested as central, especially the way 
 in which the first period of the ministry naturally works up 
 to a climax. Unless the historical conditions are clearly seen, 
 the crisis is quite inexplicable. 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. What is meant by "righteousness" in Matt. 5:20? Con- 
 
 nect this passage with the saying in 3: 15. 
 
 2. What place do you consider the miracles had in the 
 
 mind of Jesus? 
 
 3. What is the meaning of the saying in Matt. 10:23? 
 
 4. How far does an immediate expectation of the King- 
 
 dom seem to you to underlie the Sermon on the 
 Mount ? 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 The First Period of the Ministry 
 
 It is not the object of this study to take up the life of 
 Christ in detail, but to throw into relief the central things. 
 Hence a great deal must be passed over in order that we may 
 concentrate on the critical moments. In order to understand 
 the meaning of the first crisis we must consider a few things 
 that stand out in the first period of Christ's ministry. 
 
 First of all we must look a little more fully into what was 
 implied by the inner conflict of the Temptations. This inner 
 conflict plainly implies two divergent views of the Kingdom 
 of God. We saw reflected in Christ's mind what we may call 
 the popular view, largely based on the more material expecta- 
 tions drawn from the prophets and the apocalyptists, and a 
 spiritual conception also drawn in part from the deeper 
 element in the prophets. Of the latter we shall have more 
 to say later, although some modern scholars are ready to deny 
 the existence of this element entirely. 
 
 Here there arises the question suggested by certain rather 
 difficult passages in the Gospels — whether Christ, during the 
 first period of his w r ork in Galilee, did not look for some pos- 
 sible way by which the two divergent views might be recon- 
 ciled. Or, to put it in another way, while Christ had abso- 
 lutely rejected in the temptation the principle which would 
 deny the spiritual basis and nature of the Kingdom, it is 
 possible that he did not see fully how complete was the 
 divergence between the path on which he had firmly set his 
 feet, and the path along which the majority of the people 
 amongst whom he labored, and his own disciples as well, 
 were prepared to travel. It is this which leads up to and in 
 a sense produces the first crisis. 
 
 Bearing this in mind, we can glance at the main features of 
 the first period of Christ's work. It seems clearly established 
 that Christ did not begin his ministry immediately after the 
 Temptations. It was John the Baptist's message and ministry 
 
 43 
 
44 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 that had called him out of Nazareth, and had given the 
 impulse to action, and it was the silencing of the Baptist's 
 voice by imprisonment that gave the signal to Christ to take 
 up the torch where his predecessor had let it fall, and to 
 carry on the same message. There is no break ; it was the 
 sight of the publicans and harlots confessing their sins in the 
 Jordan that had kindled Christ's hopes of what might be done, 
 of what God was able to do, among His people, and the say- 
 ing belongs to the outset of Christ's work, "I came not to 
 call righteous persons but sinners." They were the people 
 for the Kingdom. The addition "to repentance" spoils the 
 direct connection of the saying with the expectation of the 
 Kingdom which breathes in it. 1 So we have the impression 
 of a crowded breathless time, multitudes thronging to hear the 
 new prophet and to see the works which he did, disciples 
 chosen and trained, and then sent out to do the same work in 
 the small towns and villages of Galilee. 
 
 The points which we must pick out for thought are three: 
 
 1. The main character of Christ's teaching is summed up 
 in his own later phrase "the word of the Kingdom" or in 
 the phrase of Mark "the good news of the Kingdom." It 
 was first and foremost an announcement that the Kingdom 
 so long desired was at hand. But we may also gather from 
 the discourses which Matthew has brought together in what 
 is called the Sermon on the Mount, that while the Kingdom 
 is near, very near, and the other-worldly point of view is 
 predominant throughout, yet the fundamental thing about the 
 Kingdom is "righteousness." That word is the keynote of the 
 early teaching of Christ on the Kingdom. It would take too 
 long to discuss here the history and growth of the meaning 
 of this pregnant word, and something must be taken for 
 granted when we say that the fundamental idea of righteous- 
 ness is God's character, what God is. The people who are 
 to be in the Kingdom, to possess it, are the people who are 
 like God. The behavior of the sons of the Kingdom must 
 be guided by God's way of acting — "be ye therefore merci- 
 ful as your Father also is merciful." 
 
 2. Without discussing here the philosophical and historical 
 questions which are raised by the miracles of Christ, the 
 
 1 The words els fxeravoiav (Luke 5:32) are omitted in Matt, and Mark by 
 the whole weight of manuscript evidence, and undoubtedly do not belong to the 
 primitive tradition of the saying. 
 
FIRST PERIOD OF MINISTRY 45 
 
 point to be made is that, even should we reduce the miracles 
 to the minimum admitted, e.g., in the Rev. J. M. Thompson's 
 study of the miracles of Jesus, those cures of mental and 
 nervous disorders which may be controlled by powers of sug- 
 gestion or psychiatry, we are still able to mark Christ's 
 own attitude towards his works of power. He regarded 
 them, not in any way as signs intended to attract attention 
 to himself, but as the exhibition of God's character; the 
 removal of sin and the removal of the material consequences 
 of sin were two sides of the same work, the work of God. 
 This point also will come up again later. 
 
 3. Christ looked upon the calling of sinners, the preaching 
 of the Kingdom, the healing of diseases, all as the prepara- 
 tion in the little circle round the Lake of Galilee for the 
 immediate coming of the Kingdom. In the discourse which 
 Matthew has assigned to the sending out of the Twelve, in 
 chapter 10, we have a hard saying — 10 : 23 "when they per- 
 secute you in one city, flee to the next, for verily I say to you, 
 ye shall not have finished the cities of Israel until the Son of 
 Man be come." The only way to take this passage is at its 
 face value. It shows that Christ expected, hoped, that before 
 this journey on which he was sending his disciples out should 
 be completed, the tribulations preceding the coming of the 
 Kingdom would have begun, and he himself would have 
 been manifested by God as the Messiah, the Ruler of the new 
 Kingdom in the coming age. Hence we find the suggestion 
 already made borne out, that Christ was hoping that the 
 immediate setting up of the Kingdom on earth, and his own 
 place in it, might still be compatible with the Kingdom of 
 the poor in spirit, of righteousness and likeness to God, 
 which he had set forth in his message. 
 
 This is, of course, an extremely summary sketch of the 
 character of the first part of Christ's ministry, but its object 
 is to make clear the fact which will be dwelt on more fully in 
 our next chapter, that the first period works up to a climax, 
 whose extreme tension and pressure for the mind of Christ 
 has hardly been realized in many studies of the life of Christ. 
 We find Christ at this point in his ministry waiting with an 
 intensity of expectation for what might happen that finds 
 expression in the great utterances of that most difficult chapter 
 in Matthew, the nth. We shall deal with this crisis in our 
 next chapter. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 The First Crisis. The Message from John 
 
STUDY VIII 
 
 Passages for Daily Study: 
 Matt. 11:1-19; Luke 7 : 18-35 ; 16 : 14-16. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 The parallel passages should be carefully compared. The 
 Evangelists evidently found the sayings hard, and Luke, as 
 he often does, has paraphrased some of them. The student 
 must judge for himself, in the light of his reading of the 
 whole situation, which most nearly represents the original. 
 Possibly neither has preserved entirely the exact force of the 
 Aramaic original. The leader may find some helpful sug- 
 gestions as to the meaning of the Kingdom of God in Christ's 
 time from Dalman's "Words of Jesus." 
 
 The historical situation is the main thing; once that is 
 grasped, it lights up much that is otherwise dark. 
 
 Questions: 
 
 1. What elements of crisis do you find in the situation at 
 the beginning of the nth of Matthew? 
 
 1. Can you find any connection between the Temptations 
 
 and the episode in Matt. 11:2-6? 
 
 2. What do you think is the meaning of Christ's answer to 
 
 the messengers of John? 
 4. How do you understand Matt. 11:11-14? 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The First Crisis. The Message 
 from John 
 
 It is Luke alone who keeps a touch of Christ's personal 
 experience connecting the Temptation with his subsequent 
 path. He says, and one hears an echo of Christ's voice in it, 
 "the devil left him for a season." For the conflict begun in 
 the desert solitude was to last until the Cross, but like all 
 mental struggles it had its moments of crisis and climax. 
 
 The point to which we came at the end of the last chapter 
 was such a moment. It was a moment of intense and eager 
 expectation on the part of Christ. He had sent out the Twelve 
 after due preparation, and in the nth of Matthew we find 
 him waiting in suspense for their return, and at the end of 
 the chapter learning the result. How he accepted the result 
 we shall see later. Now we have to realize upon what tensely 
 strung cords the message of John the Baptist smote. Christ 
 was waiting for the supreme mysterious moment of God's 
 intervention, for the beginning of the tribulation, the sign of 
 the end, and for the manifestation of the Son of Alan. This 
 was the psychological moment at which the messengers of 
 John the Baptist reached him with their master's pathetic 
 and despairing message, "Art thou the coming one, or do we 
 await another?" The force of the situation was extraordinary. 
 We know from the words that follow later how Christ read 
 the situation, how he regarded John the Baptist as the fore- 
 runner, the Elias of current expectation. But here was the 
 forerunner lying helpless in Machaerus at the mercy of 
 Herod's caprice, and yet God had not said a word. It is 
 difficult for us to realize how keenly Christ felt the situation. 
 John knew that Christ possessed power, and found it hard 
 to understand why such power should leave him where he was. 
 
 49 
 
50 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 The only meaning of it could be that his intuition or spiritual 
 experience at the Baptism was mistaken. Christ was not the 
 coming One, and the Kingdom was not yet at hand. 
 
 All this and more Christ felt in the message. It was the 
 temptation once more, "if thou be the Son of God." What 
 more worthy use of his power could there be than to inter- 
 vene on behalf of such a servant, to remove his doubts, to 
 convince him that his expectations and his experiences had 
 been true? Yet one sees at once, in the light of the first con- 
 flict, how the thing looked to Christ. It was the old tempta- 
 tion in a subtler form, appealing to the very affections and 
 faith of Christ. With the sense strong upon him that God 
 was about to intervene for him, the temptation must have been 
 extreme, either to do something, or to say something so clear 
 and decisive that John could no longer doubt. 
 
 But he stands firm. I cannot but think that Matthew pre- 
 serves the true spirit of the scene and the answer. Christ does 
 not fill a crowded hour with miracles and then tell the aston- 
 ished messengers to return to their master with a rebuke for 
 his little faith. That would have run clean against the issue 
 of the Temptation. John had heard from his disciples of 
 Christ's works of power. When the messengers come they 
 find Christ doing as was his wont, preaching the Gospel of 
 the Kingdom to those who most needed it, and using his 
 power as occasion offered to remove such ills as he could. He 
 says to the messengers in effect, "go and tell John that what 
 I began doing when I came out I must go on doing. I can 
 only do the will of God. But God's time is coming, let John's 
 faith hold fast to that, and he will yet rejoice in God's inter- 
 vention for him and for me." It was a sublime message of 
 faith and yet of pathetic appeal. He could not, even at the 
 risk of being misjudged by such a one as John, anticipate 
 God's time, or step one hair's breadth out of the path that he 
 had seen to be God's will for him. 
 
 So the messengers went. And then the emotion and tension 
 found some relief in strange mysterious words, half passion- 
 ate expectation and exaltation, half sadness and bitter irony. 
 What did you go out to Jordan for, when that message of 
 the Kingdom drew you? What did you expect to see? Some 
 of you saw a deluded enthusiast, shaken with the wind of 
 his own passionate belief in a dream. Some of you were dis- 
 appointed that the herald of the Kingdom of David and 
 
THE MESSAGE FROM JOHN 51 
 
 Solomon wore so mean an appearance and attire. The more 
 sober and thoughtful of you gratefully accepted God's gift 
 of prophecy, rekindled after long silence. But not one of you 
 dreamed how glorious and great was the person you saw, 
 for he was none other than the forerunner himself, Elias ! 
 The time of prophesying is over, the time for action has 
 begun, God is bringing in the Kingdom. And just as you did 
 not recognize in the somber garb of the ascetic the glorious 
 figure of Elias, so also have you no shadow of a thought 
 that among you, reckoned less even than John, is one who is 
 greater than Elias, the Messiah himself ! So through enigmas 
 and dark sayings breaks the flash of that intense expectation 
 of the moment. 
 
 Then the key changes into the minor. But can the Kingdom 
 come to such a generation? To them John is a madman, and 
 I am the companion of publicans and sinners. That is all they 
 see, how can the Kingdom come to them? 
 
 Then the quiet ending of faith, resolved to wait to the end 
 for God — "wisdom is justified of her works." So the first 
 part of the crisis passes over. The second and more intense 
 phase of it has yet to come. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 The First Crisis. The Yoke o£ the Kingdom 
 
STUDY IX 
 
 Passages for Daily Study: 
 Matt. 11:20-30; Luke 10:13-24. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 A great deal turns on the significance for Christ of the 
 return of the disciples from the mission already mentioned. 
 The great passages in this week's study cannot be understood 
 apart from this. Hence the importance of the incident 
 should be very carefully thought out. One has to remember 
 that much of the peculiar intensity of the situation would be 
 very difficult to remember and record half a century later 
 when the conditions had totally changed. Hence the extreme 
 value of such passages as these, which still preserve that glow 
 and passion of a moment whose meaning for Christ was very 
 soon almost entirely lost by a later generation. If possible, 
 it would be well for the student to try and think out the 
 connection between Matt. 11:27 and the entire situation 
 described in Matt. 11, before reading the chapter in this book 
 dealing with the subject. The treatment offered here is an 
 attempt to reinterpret along historical lines a passage that 
 has always been taken in a somewhat different sense. But 
 it is no way offered as a dogmatic statement, and each must 
 find out for himself the inner meaning of what is perhaps 
 the most deeply significant passage in the Gospels. 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. Do you consider that these passages point to a crisis 
 
 in the spiritual experience of Christ? 
 
 2. What is the connection between the external circum- 
 
 stances and the inner crisis? 
 
 3. Do you consider that Matt. 11:20-30 contains any sug- 
 
 gestion of a change of plan on Christ's part? 
 
 4. What did Christ mean by "my yoke"? 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 The First Crisis. The Yoke of 
 the Kingdom 
 
 In Luke we have an account of two missions apparently 
 closely connected, the sending out of the Twelve in chapter 9 
 and that of the Seventy, or, as many ancient authorities have 
 it, the Seventy-Two. To both of these accounts is added a 
 charge which is evidently a shorter version of the charge in 
 Matt. 10. It is possible that Luke had obtained from differ- 
 ent sources varying accounts of the same mission, and has 
 given both. However that may be, his account enables us to 
 supplement Matthew in several important points. He places 
 the great passage Matt. 11 125-30 immediately after the return 
 of the mission, and also relates the spirit in which the dis- 
 ciples returned and the strange way in which Jesus answered 
 them. These details help us to fill out the picture in Matt. 
 11. If we place the return of the mission after Matt. 11 : 19, 
 where it falls more naturally than after verse 24, we shall 
 have the situation before us which gave rise to the second 
 phase of the crisis we are studying. We saw in Matt. 10 : 23, 
 and in the opening section of chapter 11, the reflection of the 
 tension and expectation with which Christ was awaiting the 
 return of those he had sent out, or rather, was awaiting the 
 intervention of God and the ushering in of the Kingdom. The 
 tension is increased by the pathetic message from John, and it 
 is quite possible that during the absence of the disciples the 
 news may have reached Christ of John's pitiful end. 
 
 Then the disciples come back, and nothing has happened. 
 They are highly delighted at their own success in dealing 
 with cases of demon-possession, but nothing else stirs the 
 horizon, no sign of the Kingdom has broken upon them. So 
 Christ, as ever, faces the fresh crisis, and realizes what it 
 
 55 
 
56 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 means. His expectation is disappointed. They have come 
 back and yet the Kingdom has not come. John, the fore- 
 runner, is dead. Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum sleep com- 
 placently. There are three distinct sayings of Christ which 
 belong to this crisis, and help us to penetrate a little into the 
 secret of his mind. First of all, there is the saying in Luke 
 10:18-20, "I was watching Satan as lightning falling from 
 heaven." That word seems to me to reflect both the height- 
 ened expectation before, and the revulsion of feeling follow- 
 ing, the return of the disciples. In some flash of summer 
 lightning, it might be, his yearning for the coming of the 
 Kingdom and the triumph of God had traced the fall of 
 Satan from heaven. But nothing has happened ; only the dis- 
 ciples are there, not understanding his mood, pleased at their 
 own success, unaware utterly of the tragedy of the thing to 
 him. 
 
 Then the disappointment overflows in bitter prophetic words 
 of denunciation and woe upon these unmoved cities to which 
 heaven had come so near, in whose streets the powers of the 
 world to come had been seen. They had not repented, they 
 had prevented the Kingdom from coming. 
 
 But last and deepest, there is the utterance of Matt. 
 11:25-30. If Luke is right, it is the utterance of exaltation, 
 a strange and sudden transition from grief and disappoint- 
 ment. "In that hour Jesus exulted in spirit and said." 
 
 If it is so, it is the exultation of renewed victory. For 
 once more, and sharper than ever, must the conflict have 
 pressed upon him. This failure, this disappointment, John's 
 death, the dullness and narrowness of those who followed 
 him, the only result of the path that he had chosen in the 
 conflict in the wilderness seemed to be futility and folly, 
 hopeless failure. Surely such a result proved the choice 
 wrong, he must acknowledge it, and strike out a new path. 
 
 Here Christ's faith and insight shine out. He sees that 
 there is something so deep and so hard to overcome, that 
 the old visions of the Kingdom as the prophets saw it, Israel's 
 Kingdom, are receding, and his path begins to stand out apart, 
 diverging from the old track, tending on to the unknown. 
 His faith embraces the challenge of the situation, and he 
 accepts it, not with dull resignation, but with splendid cour- 
 age from the Father's hands. These limitations accepted at 
 the beginning, but now felt more clearly, are but the yoke of 
 
THE YOKE OF THE KINGDOM 57 
 
 the Kingdom which he is to bear. The rabbis had the phrase 
 for a proselyte, one who accepted the obligations of the Jewish 
 faith, that he had taken the yoke of the Kingdom of heaven. 
 Christ finds a deeper meaning in the familiar phrase. All 
 this failure, this disaster, John's death, crushing as it must 
 have seemed to him, became the very bands and cords of the 
 yoke of the Kingdom ; so the Kingdom shall come, not by the 
 rejection of these limitations, but by the acceptance of them 
 as the Father's good pleasure. He means to give the Kingdom 
 to this handful of simple people who alone have had faith to 
 follow. So be it, the Father's will is good — henceforth Christ 
 will concentrate himself upon those to whom the Father has 
 been pleased to reveal the secret hid from the wise and pru- 
 dent. 
 
 Read in this light, that strange mysterious passage in verse 
 27 seems to spring naturally out of just such an intensely 
 human struggle as the Temptation, and its connection with 
 the historical situation already described becomes clear. 
 
 "Everything has been given me by my Father." In these 
 words he accepts all the failure and disappointment of the 
 bitter hour from the Father's hand. He realizes with the same 
 faith and intensity as in childhood, but with the mature cour- 
 age and open-eyed resolution of manhood, that "the yoke of 
 the Kingdom" is being laid upon him by the Father, that thus 
 the Kingdom itself may be consummated. 
 
 "No one recognizes the Son except the Father." That 
 divine secret, realized by him at the Baptism, is still unknown 
 to others ; Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum, John the Baptist, 
 the disciples, all so far have failed to recognize him. But it 
 is enough for him that the Father recognizes him. His 
 approval carries him on. 
 
 But if no one can recognize him as yet, then it follows that 
 no one yet really knows God's secret, God's way of the King- 
 dom. "No one recognizes the Father, except the Son." He 
 feels that he is still alone, tragically alone, with his secret of 
 what God's character and God's will are. All round him he 
 sees men toiling and laboring in their various ways to bring 
 about the Kingdom, while he, and he only, knows the true way 
 of its coming. So his work is clear, if he knows he must teach 
 those whom the Father has drawn after him, "And he to 
 whomsoever the. Son is pleased to reveal Him." He offers 
 himself, the possessor of the secret of the Kingdom, the bearer 
 
58 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 of the yoke, to teach those who are willing to learn of him, 
 how good and gracious a thing is this yoke of the spirit which 
 can transform disappointment and bitterness into causes of 
 hope and exultation. 
 
 Here the second stage of our study ends. It is Matthew 
 who marks this first crisis more clearly than any of the other 
 Synoptists. It is the end of any hope that Christ may have 
 had of a beginning of the Kingdom in Galilee and of the 
 setting up of the Kingdom without his death. He turns now, 
 as we shall see, to the small body of intimate disciples and 
 followers, sets his face towards Jerusalem, and the Cross 
 begins to loom out in the distance. 
 
THIRD DIVISION 
 
 THE SECOND STAGE OF 
 THE MINISTRY AND 
 THE SECOND CRISIS 
 
CHAPTER X 
 The Second Period of the Ministry 
 
STUDY X 
 
 Passages for Daily Study: 
 Matt. 12 ; 13 : 1-17, 58 ; Mark 3 : 20-35 J Matt. 15 : 21-28. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 The order of events in this part of the ministry is even 
 more difficult to reconstruct with any certainty. We can only 
 gather the general features. The great thing to observe is 
 that a change of method clearly appears, but no change of 
 central plan. The "mission" method, if it may be so called, is 
 abandoned, and the general plan is directed towards the spe- 
 cial training and preparation of the disciples for a crisis 
 which Christ saw would be inevitable. The parables are of 
 special significance here, especially the Kingdom parables in 
 the 13th of Matthew. We have not space to deal with them 
 in detail, but the whole chapter should be very carefully 
 studied in the light of Christ's fresh outlook on the future 
 resulting from the first crisis. 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. What changes do you notice in the second stage of the 
 
 Ministry? 
 
 2. What estimate did Christ's relatives form of him at 
 
 this time, and why? 
 
 3. What is the meaning of Matt. 13:58? 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 The Second Period of the Ministry 
 
 It is well known, in spite of harmonies and other appa- 
 ratus, that nothing is more difficult than to arrange the events 
 of the life of Christ in a satisfactory historical sequence. 
 Mark is without doubt a collection of episodes and sayings, 
 with an account of the Passion quite out of proportion to 
 the rest of the Gospel in its fulness and detail. Since the 
 other two Synoptic Gospels are largely dependent on Mark 
 for their narrative, we clearly have no certain tradition of 
 the sequence of events. Hence any light on the internal signi- 
 ficance of the life of Christ must help to some extent to bring 
 the episodes into a definite grouping. Our principal object 
 in this study is not to reconstruct the life of Christ in detail, 
 but to find some inner principle which may help us to group 
 the events of his life. 
 
 So far we have followed the clue which the first great expe- 
 riences of Christ seemed to give us, and it has led to a gen- 
 eral impression of the Galilean ministry and its underlying 
 motive. Now the Galilean ministry has ended, in outward 
 failure. But the same clue will lead us on to discover the 
 general character of the second period of the ministry, even 
 though we may not be certain as to all the events and sayings 
 belonging to it, or as to the exact order of the events. 
 
 With the definite closing up of the Galilean activities of 
 Christ, there had opened before him, as the great passage of 
 the crisis in Matt, n : 25-30 suggests, a vision of the next thing 
 to be done. 
 
 He felt that it was now his work to concentrate upon the 
 handful of followers who were the total result of the Galilean 
 ministry. Christ saw, as Matt. 11:25 and Matt. 13:25 show, 
 that if the Kingdom was to come it must be by the few "babes" 
 as he calls them — perhaps with an echo of Psalm 8 : 2 in his 
 
 63 
 
64 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 mind — who had begun to see, if only dimly, what was hidden 
 from the religious leaders of the day. 
 
 Hence we shall find that the main character of the next 
 period of the ministry, uncertain as it is in detail, contains the 
 following certain factors: First, a journey, possibly a series of 
 journeys, outside the limits of Israel, with various events 
 (such as the story of the Syrophenician woman) that clearly 
 fall into their place there. Second, a period of teaching by 
 parables, a form of teaching which is immediately noted by the 
 disciples as a change. Third, directly connected with this 
 change of method in teaching, we find the record of a con- 
 sistent and evidently deliberate attempt en the part of Christ 
 to separate himself from the crowds, and to prevent any 
 works which he did from becoming known, Matt. 12:16; 
 *3'36; 14: 13, 22, 23, and others. Lastly, in utterances which 
 clearly belong to this period, we find an attention, a concen- 
 tration of interest upon the disciples which does not appear 
 to the same extent earlier, e. g., the striking passage where 
 Christ renounces the natural ties of his family and claims the 
 disciples who in following him are doing the Father's will, 
 as his only kindred, Matt. 12 : 50. 
 
 All these features have one main object, the training of the 
 disciples. By taking them away from the unrest and busy 
 days of Galilee, he had them alone. There was hardly any 
 exercise of power during such journeys, as the story of the 
 Syrophenician woman shows. There was probably not much 
 teaching, perhaps questions and answers from time to time. 
 But they were days of quiet, long marches with perhaps long 
 intervals of rest for prayer and meditation. It may be that the 
 teaching of the Lord's prayer, the prayer for the Father's 
 Kingdom, belongs to this time, as Luke suggests, although 
 Matthew has gathered it in with all the great Kingdom pas- 
 sages. They had time to watch him live, to see how he felt 
 and acted in the ordinary circumstances of everyday life — in 
 modern phrase, to study his reaction upon things. 
 
 The result of this time we shall see later. They got closer 
 to him and he to them. It was a time of forming, the influ- 
 ence of personality upon personality. But it was also a time 
 of stimulation, the bearing in upon them again and again 
 of something new which they did not understand. The para- 
 bles act in this way upon them. They are forced to ask 
 questions, and they begin to realize that there is a secret for 
 
THE SECOND PERIOD OF MINISTRY 65 
 
 them which is not for "them that are without," as Mark 
 phrases it (Mark 4: 11). 
 
 To use Christ's own pregnant word, they were, all uncon- 
 sciously, being "discipled for the Kingdom of heaven," Matt. 
 13 : 52. 'This is the keynote of this period of the ministry of 
 Christ. We shall give a chapter to the parables, because they 
 offer some important problems, and also give us an insight 
 into how Christ was thinking of the Kingdom at this time. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 The Parables of the Kingdom 
 
STUDY XI 
 
 Passages for Daily Study: 
 Matt. 13; Mark 4: 1-34; Luke 8:4-18. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 It is necessary to consider carefully why the disciples were 
 so struck by the parables. The parable had always been a 
 familiar method of prophetic instruction, and Christ had 
 probably used parables before, e.g. Matt. 7 : 24-27, if rightly 
 assigned to the first period of the ministry. But evidently his 
 method of teaching, or rather preaching, had clearly been 
 such as the collection of discourses in Matt. 5-7 suggests, a 
 straightforward announcement that the Kingdom was at hand, 
 and the exposition of its spiritual character and the kind of 
 people to whom it would belong. Now, however, the use of 
 the word mystery here shows that the parable deals with the 
 secret of the Kingdom. It shows that something had entered 
 into Christ's view of the Kingdom which could not be under- 
 stood by the mass of people, owing to their current views of 
 the nature of the Kingdom and its coming. This is the point 
 which needs most careful thought in this study. 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. What do you think was Christ's object in the parables? 
 
 2. Why were the disciples surprised at this method of 
 
 teaching ? 
 
 3. Do you consider that the order of the parables in Matt. 
 
 13 is original or not, and what light does the ar- 
 rangement throw upon the author's method? 
 
 4. What do you gather as to Christ's outlook on the King- 
 
 dom from the parables in Matt. 13? 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 The Parables of the Kingdom 
 
 The great group of parables in Matthew 13, concerning the 
 Kingdom, might well have a book to themselves, rather than 
 one poor chapter. But our purpose here as elsewhere is to 
 deal broadly with the main things that stand in relation to 
 the object of our study. The Synoptic Gospels all emphasize 
 the change implied in the use of parables and the attention 
 which it aroused in the disciples. In all probability the seven 
 parables of the Kingdom in Matt. 13, the parable of the seed 
 growing secretly in Mark 4, and perhaps some of the par- 
 ables in Luke 14-16, belong to this period of teaching. The 
 most important parable is the parable of the Sower. In Mark 
 Christ is recorded as saying to the disciples "Do ye not under- 
 stand this parable, how then will ye understand all the par- 
 ables?" Hence this parable must be taken as arising out 
 of the immediate circumstances, and giving Christ's point of 
 view on the situation. When one reads it with this in mind, 
 it stands out at once as Christ's summing up of the results of 
 the past months of work in Galilee, and his ground for hope 
 in the future. The word of the Kingdom had been sown, 
 but many causes, religious conservatism, want of stability and 
 moral earnestness, other interests, this-world interests as 
 against the other-worldly message of Jesus, had combined to 
 bring about the result already seen in the first crisis. The 
 whole promise of harvest rested on the little patch of "good 
 ground," those who in "an honest and good heart" had heard 
 the word and kept it. They were the ground of Christ's faith. 
 
 Then following this parable, Matthew, no doubt of set pur- 
 pose, has arranged six parables of the Kingdom in two par- 
 allel groups of three each. Three are spoken in public, and 
 three in private alone with the disciples. It is difficult to say 
 whether this really represents the actual order in which they 
 
 69 
 
yo CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 were given. But it is more than probable that this arrange- 
 ment represents a very definite contrast in the mind of Christ, 
 and one which he wished to give the disciples in such a form 
 that they would retain it for future thought, even though 
 they did not understand it at the time. This contrast is be- 
 tween the outward failure of the Kingdom as Christ saw that 
 it would, for a time, at least, appear to his disciples, and the 
 inner secret which for the faith of Christ guaranteed the ulti- 
 mate result, and constituted the motive for action under the 
 difficulties of such a situation. The Parable of the Tares is 
 plainly a parable of good work spoilt by the carelessness of 
 those responsible. The servants can do nothing to remedy it, 
 the only remedy lies in the final intervention of God. This 
 was the great trial and test which Christ now saw lying ahead 
 of his disciples, when they would realize obstacles and diffi- 
 culties in the way of the immediate coming of the Kingdom. 
 At present and for some time to come, their attitude was one 
 of very simple and childlike expectation of an immediate 
 earthly Kingdom. Their hopes had been greatly strengthened 
 by the revelation of the power entrusted to them during the 
 mission. The death of John had no special significance for 
 them, and we shall see later the contrast between their point 
 of view and Christ's growing very marked. The parables of 
 the leaven and the mustard seed reenforce this point of view, 
 I believe, in spite of current interpretation. 
 
 The last three parables, all peculiar to Matthew, have one 
 thing in common. They all imply a standard of value 
 which governs the action of those concerned. The ploughman, 
 the pearl-merchant, the fisherman, each in his own way is gov- 
 erned and impelled to action by a secret of his own, a knowl- 
 edge which he possesses, and which explains things that would 
 else seem strange in his way of acting. The three parables 
 all emphasize the saying which introduces the chapter, "blessed 
 are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear." 
 
 At the great crisis Jesus had acknowledged, not with bitter- 
 ness or resentment, but accepting it as God's way, that the 
 wise and prudent could not see, and that only a few simple 
 folk had been enabled to see by the Father. It is now his 
 object, as we have seen, to develop this faculty, this gift in 
 them. They are quite unaware as yet of its real meaning, of 
 the importance of what they are daily seeing, things that 
 prophets and wise men had longed to see and had not seen. 
 
THE PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM 71 
 
 This vision was to govern them and guide their course of 
 action when the great test and crisis, which Christ already 
 foresaw, should come upon them. 
 
 So when the parables for the time being were ended, Christ 
 asked them if they had understood. They thought they had, 
 and said so. He knew that much had to happen yet before 
 they really did understand, so he says in his own inimitable 
 way, "therefore every scribe discipled to the Kingdom of 
 heaven is like a householder, that brings out of his storehouse 
 new things as well as old." When their discipleship was ful- 
 filled they would see what he had meant. They would see 
 that God had new things in store, making the old more 
 wonderful than before. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 The Second Crisis. The Confession 
 
STUDY XII 
 
 Passages for Daily Study: 
 Matt. 16:13-20; Mark 8:27-30; Luke 9:18-21. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 It is necessary first to consider whether the form of the 
 confession given in Mark is original or not. There the con- 
 fession is simply a recognition of the Messiahship of Jesus. 
 The position here adopted is that the addition given by 
 Matthew is genuine and is borne out by the passage that fol- 
 lows immediately after. The significance of the addition must 
 be carefully studied. The danger is that we may read back into 
 this early stage in the disciples' development the meaning 
 which the Church has come to give to the title "Son of God." 
 The Old Testament use of the epithet, e. g., as applied to 
 angels in Job 1, shows that such a meaning was not neces- 
 sarily implied. Also if the line taken up in Matt. 11:27 be 
 carried on into this passage, the connection becomes clear, 
 and a powerful support for the genuineness of the passage 
 is thus obtained. It is also important to think out why at this 
 particular juncture Christ chose to do what he had never 
 done before, that is, to make the disciples turn their minds 
 in upon what they thought about him. 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. Is there any reason for naming this period in Christ's 
 
 experience the Second Crisis? 
 
 2. Consider the genuineness of the important addition 
 
 made by Matthew in the account of this episode. 
 
 3. What did the expression "Son of the living God" mean 
 
 as coming from Peter? 
 
 4. How did Peter arrive at this position? 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 The Second Crisis. The Confession 
 
 The second crisis in the life of Christ is less conditioned by- 
 external circumstances than the first. It is possible that the 
 death of John the Baptist helped to bring it about in the 
 mind of Christ. But the determining causes are principally 
 inward. One feels strongly that many of the early applications 
 of Old Testament passages to Christ have their source in 
 things which he said himself. There are two striking cases of 
 this in Matt 8:16; 12:18-21, and another which we shall 
 speak of when we come to it, in Luke 22: 2>7- 
 
 All three come from what are called the Servant passages in 
 Isaiah, and two of them from the crowning passage in Isaiah 
 53. We have not space to discuss the interpretation of the 
 Servant passages, but the suggestion here is that the mind of 
 Christ had been gradually influenced by the point of view 
 there put forward, and that after the disappointment of the 
 first crisis, combined with John's death, he had come to 
 believe that the work of the Servant in bringing the knowledge 
 of God to the Gentile world involved some kind of supreme 
 sacrifice, possibly death. 
 
 This working in his mind, together with the belief still as 
 strong as ever that the Kingdom was close at hand, caused 
 a sense of the shortness of the time and a desire to test the 
 results of the past months of training. He wished to know 
 whether the disciples were ready for a further advance, and 
 his own insight showed him when to put the test. Hence 
 arise the conditions of what one may call the second crisis. 
 The scene is at Caesarea Philippi, away on the limits of 
 Galilee, possibly at the end of one of the northern journeys 
 before turning southward for the last journey up to Jeru- 
 salem. 
 
 It is very marked in the Synoptic Gospels that Christ hardly 
 
 75 
 
76 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 ever directs the attention of disciples to himself, save in the 
 command to follow him. He does not tell them who he is, 
 nor ask them what they think about him, and according to 
 the Synoptic record, he constantly uses the baffling name of 
 Son of Man in speaking of himself. 
 
 But now at last he feels the time has come to sound them, 
 to find out how far they had travelled during the last few 
 months, and whether they were ready to face a crisis with 
 him. First he asked them a question which from him may- 
 have seemed strange and unusual to them. He asked them 
 what people were saying about him. They told him what they 
 had heard dropped here and there in chance conversations 
 by the way. People knew that John the Baptist had been 
 killed by Herod, and some thought that Jesus was John the 
 Baptist risen. Others thought that he was the forerunner of 
 the Kingdom, Elijah; others saw in him the spirit of the old 
 prophecy returned to Israel. These were the things men saw 
 in Jesus from the outsiders' point of view. 
 
 Then he asked them, suddenly and abruptly, "and what do 
 you say?" One can imagine a moment's tense silence. It 
 was such a moment as might focus and crystallize, so to speak, 
 all the fleeting impressions of the past months of intimate 
 intercourse. They had to ask themselves, possibly for the 
 first time definitely, "who is he, why are we following him?" 
 Peter came to it first, quick and impressionable, and yet 
 practical, "The Messiah," nothing less than that. But was 
 there more? Mark gives no more, but both Matthew and 
 Luke add more, and Matthew is the fullest, "the Messiah, the 
 Son of the living God." I do not think for myself that the 
 addition is a later doctrinal one. Its form seems against such 
 a supposition. Here I give my own point of view for what 
 it is worth. The Messiah represented for Peter the official 
 character, the position in the Kingdom which in his own mind 
 he had assigned to the one he was following. But he had 
 seen more, he had seen in Jesus such a character that,- as he 
 sought to express it in a word, there came to him the echo of 
 Christ's own description of what the children of the Kingdom 
 should be, "that ye may be sons of your Father which is in 
 heaven," (Matt. 5:45). That was the character which he had 
 seen in Jesus, the character of God lived out among men. It 
 was not that Peter had reached intellectually a position of 
 assent to the Nicene Creed, that he thought "thus of Trinity." 
 
THE COXFESSION 77 
 
 He was still a Jew, a monotheist, who would have shrunk with 
 horror from anything that denied the central principle of 
 Judaism, "the Lord thy God is one God." But he had seen 
 God in Christ, and said so. He had realized only dimly, as 
 through a rift in the clouds the far off snow peaks are seen, 
 that Christ was like God. It may not seem much, but it is 
 really everything. 
 
 Only Matthew gives the answer of Christ to Peter, and the 
 whole passage, like the great passage in Matt. II, is full of 
 light on the mind of Christ. 
 
 It seems to me as though Christ saw in Peter's words the 
 pledge and promise of the harvest, that hundredfold of which 
 the parable of the Sower spoke. It was as if the husbandman, 
 visiting the bare brown field day after day, should see at last 
 the first blade of green pushing up through the clods, and wel- 
 come it with joy that saw in it the harvest's "golden yield." 
 
 So Christ hails Peter's words with an outburst of joy. It 
 was the moment of vindication. His choice has been vindi- 
 cated by the Father. Here was one at last, who unforced, led 
 by the same quiet way that Christ himself had passed along, 
 had learnt the secret by the Spirit's way of living experience. 
 Flesh and blood methods, rejected by Christ at the Tempta- 
 tion, had not taught Peter the secret. He had learnt through 
 seeing God in Christ lived out in the simple ways of com- 
 mon life. It was true that still in his mind there blazed the 
 glorious vision of a coming Messiah, so that he could hardly 
 realize the full significance of the unofficial addition, "Son 
 of the living God," but it was there, spontaneous and unforced, 
 and Christ welcomes it with a joy that we cannot realize. 
 It was the living thread that joins the experience of the Bap- 
 tism, "thou art my Beloved Son," to the experience of the 
 confession "thou art the Son of the living God." Christ 
 need no longer say, "no man recognizes the Son." Here at 
 last was the kind of recognition which he had the faith and 
 courage to wait for, through disappointment and outward 
 failure. It was a crowning moment for Christ. 
 
 In our next study we shall take up the meaning of the much 
 vexed words that follow. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 The Second Crisis. The Confirmation 
 
STUDY XIII 
 Passages for Daily Study: 
 
 The same as for Study XII and in addition Deut. 32:4, 15, 
 18, 30, 31 ; Psalm 78 : 35 ; Isa. 22 : 22, 26 : 4. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 This passage is of course a crux. Most modern scholars 
 regard it as a later ecclesiastical addition. But this is largely 
 due to failure to understand the thoroughly Jewish signifi- 
 cance and associations of the expressions used. Even the 
 much controverted "my assembly" becomes easy to under- 
 stand, and no longer an anachronism, when put into its proper 
 setting. When once we restore the utterances here recorded 
 to their Jewish historical setting, then their real moral and 
 spiritual value appears at once. 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. What is the meaning of Christ's answer to Peter's con- 
 
 fession? 
 
 2. Why does Christ change Peter's name here? 
 
 3. What does the expression "my assembly" mean in the 
 
 mind of Christ? 
 
 4. What is meant by "the keys of the Kingdom of heaven"? 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 The Second Crisis. The Con- 
 firmation 
 
 "And I, too, say unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon 
 this rock I will build my assembly, and Hades' gates shall not 
 prevail against it." 
 
 It is not easy for the Western mind to appreciate the sig- 
 nificance that names always have had and have still for the 
 Oriental. To know a man's real name is to have power over 
 him, and a change of name is always an event of serious 
 meaning. In the Old Testament we have many changes of 
 name, and in nearly every case the change of name is asso- 
 ciated with and stands for a crisis of some kind in the 
 person's history. 
 
 In this passage, in a crisis of which we have been trying to 
 understand the meaning, Christ changes Simon's name to 
 Peter, or in Aramaic, Cephas. The first word in this perplex- 
 ing passage that calls for remark is one that is only too easily 
 passed over as an insignificant particle, the word "too," prob- 
 ably representing the emphatic position of the pronoun in 
 Aramaic. It implies a distinct connection, a reply as it were, 
 to the recognition that had awakened such a burst of joy- 
 ful emotion in the mind of Christ. One might paraphrase its 
 force somewhat in this manner — "You have recognized some- 
 thing in me, something that others have not seen and cannot 
 see, and I now too recognize in you by that very token some- 
 thing new and strange, so significant that I will mark it by 
 changing your name." 
 
 There is something implied here that is easy to miss, and yet 
 it rests upon the truth of human nature, it is psychologically 
 true. To appreciate or recognize anything spiritual, or of 
 value in the spiritual realm, there must be some common 
 
 Si 
 
82 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 ground, some moral likeness. We have a well-known saying 
 in the first epistle of John, "we shall be like Him, for we shall 
 see Him as He is," that states this principle very simply. The 
 writer's point of view is that one cannot see God as He really 
 is unless one is morally like Him. So again Christ himself 
 had already said, in laying down the first principles of the 
 Kingdom, "blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see 
 God." Here we have an example of this principle actually 
 working itself out. 
 
 But to make this clear we must ask for a moment the mean- 
 ing of the change of name. The well worn argument on the 
 difference between irirpos and ir^rpa amounts to nothing, for 
 in Aramaic it would disappear. Cephas simply means rock, of 
 any kind or size. The real point is, what would be the sig- 
 nificance of the epithet under such circumstances to a Jewish 
 mind? The only way to get at it is to go back to the Old 
 Testament associations of the name "Rock." The typical 
 passages given for study in the weekly study will show at 
 once that the title "Rock" is one of the most interesting names 
 of God. It is the name which, for the prophet's mind, marked 
 the steadfastness and faithfulness of God in contrast with 
 the change and apostasy of His people, those who had been 
 entrusted with the mission of making His real character 
 known in the world. Hence in Christ's mind, always travel- 
 ing in the deepest channels of the prophet's thought, this 
 change of name stood for something of immense importance. 
 Whatever form in time the Kingdom might take — imme- 
 diate, earthly, Jewish, catastrophic — this was the great thing, 
 that through the way God had marked out, a man had been 
 brought to see God revealed in Christ, showing that the man 
 himself had so far been made like God. Peter recognizes 
 God's character in Christ, Christ replies by recognizing God's 
 character in Peter, and marks it by that deeply significant 
 name. Nor is that all. Peter was not to be the only one. He 
 was, to use the metaphor of the harvest, just the first blade 
 of corn to appear, the others would come as surely. Now the 
 word "assembly" has not the associations that the word 
 "church" has for us today. Like the epithet "rock," the word 
 "assembly" had a very definite meaning for a Jewish mind. 
 It was the word which represented the nation of Israel from 
 a religious point of view. They were the Lord's assembly, 
 bound by common ties of past history, present religious cere- 
 
THE CONFIRMATION 83 
 
 monies, and a common future hope. From the prophet's 
 point of view, as an assembly, they had been marked out 
 from the other nations for the definite object of showing the 
 real character of God. "This people have I formed for my- 
 self, that they may show forth my praise." But in the same 
 way, from the prophet's point of view, the "assembly" of 
 Israel had failed miserably in its purpose. "The name of God 
 is blasphemed among the Gentiles on your account" is the 
 prophetic verdict. 
 
 But now Christ sees, resting upon a new foundation, a new 
 community arising. It was, in his prophetic vision, a com- 
 munity of people possessing the real character of God, like 
 God, so that he could speak of it as "his assembly" in contrast 
 with the still existing historical "assembly" of Judaism that 
 now stood self-condemned by its inability to recognize him. 
 Death could not destroy the permanence of anything possess- 
 ing God's character, hence death, under the figure of Sheol's 
 gates, the gates of that gloomy underworld where the dead 
 passed away from the presence of God and the sense of 
 communion with Him, death could not touch this new 
 assembly. Christ himself according to the flesh might die, 
 but God's character wrought out in man was eternal. The 
 spirit cannot die. 
 
 But all this is directly associated with Christ's vision of the 
 Kingdom, and he goes on to say, "I will give to thee the keys 
 of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind 
 on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt 
 loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." 
 
 Again we have to go back to the Old Testament for the 
 true meaning of the metaphor. We associate it with the power 
 to admit and exclude, and every one knows the rather ludi- 
 crous associations that have grown up round Peter and his 
 keys. 
 
 But in Isa. 22 : 22, the passage from which the metaphor is 
 taken, we can see that the thought is the administration of 
 the power of the kingdom. The new vizier, Eliakim, was to 
 assume the administrative responsibility in the place of 
 Shebna. The point that is in Christ's mind, evidently grown 
 clearer since the crisis of the Temptation, is the connection 
 between the power of the kingdom, that is God's power, and 
 the character needed to use it. Christ's delegation of the 
 power is not to Peter personally, with any thought of primacy, 
 
84 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 but follows on the recognition of God's character in him as 
 the pledge of an "assembly" of people also possessing that 
 character. It is as though, at this crisis, Christ reached a 
 mountain top, after traveling for a long time in the valley. 
 From the summit he could now see the way before him. A 
 number of things became clear. The spiritual methods chosen 
 at the Temptation are vindicated, but also it has become 
 increasingly clear that this spiritual way, vindicated by God, 
 means a divergence of immense importance from the Jewish 
 national hope of the Kingdom in the form in which Christ 
 knew it, and must to some extent have shared it. For the 
 first time Christ speaks plainly of his death, and for the 
 first time of resurrection. What this meant for Christ we 
 must discuss later. 
 
 But in reaching this crisis, Christ has reached the point 
 where God's way was sufficiently clear to him to set his mind 
 at rest about the future of the Kingdom. The assembly, his 
 assembly, would be built, and death could never overwhelm it. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 The Transfiguration 
 
STUDY XIV 
 
 Passages for Daily Study: 
 Matt. 17:1-13; Mark 9:1-13; Luke 9:28-36. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 This study offers a good deal of difficulty, but the way in 
 which we approached the Baptism and the Temptation will 
 help us here. Again we have to remember the effect of trans- 
 mission upon the story of such an experience. The suggestion 
 here is that the experience is in the first place a spiritual 
 experience of Christ's, arising out of his own faith, and 
 directly connected with his own sense of the value of Peter's 
 confession for himself. In some way, perhaps through 
 Christ's prayer, this experience was in part shared by the 
 sleeping disciples, and profoundly impressed them. We have 
 to consider its relation backward to the Confession and for- 
 ward to the Resurrection. Also the significance of the dis- 
 ciples' question about Elias, and Christ's injunction to keep 
 silence about the vision until after the Resurrection must be 
 carefully considered. 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. Compare the circumstances of the Transfiguration 
 
 Vision with those of the Baptism. 
 
 2. What is the meaning of Moses and Elias in the vision? 
 
 3. What light does the question about Elias throw on the 
 
 mind of the disciples? 
 
 4. Why was silence as to the vision enjoined? 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The Transfiguration 
 
 The passing of the second crisis brings us to the last period 
 of Christ's life. The period which it closes leaves us with 
 certain clear impressions. The disciples have so far ad- 
 vanced as to recognize Christ as the Messiah, and, what to 
 Christ means more, to recognize his likeness to God, even if 
 dimly and without any clear sense of what it meant. For 
 Christ himself the way has so far become clear that he sees 
 death at the end. The Kingdom cannot come without his 
 death. He must lose his life to find it. And lastly Christ 
 begins to leave his disciples behind. He passes into a region 
 where they cannot follow him. The divergence between his 
 mind and theirs becomes daily more marked, as we shall see. 
 
 But this last period opens with a very remarkable expe- 
 rience which seems very closely connected with what had 
 taken place at Csesarea Philippi. During the days that had 
 elapsed between the confession and the vision on the Mount 
 there must have been much thought in the disciples' minds 
 concerning Christ's words to Peter. The closing words espe- 
 cially, emphasizing the nearness of the Kingdom, would < have 
 occupied a large place in their thoughts, while the darker side, 
 the mention of death, remained unintelligible to them. Then, 
 when a week had passed, Jesus chose Peter and two others, 
 James and John, to spend a night with him on some moun- 
 tain. There Christ, as his custom was in times of crisis, fell 
 to prayer, while Peter and his companions fell asleep. The 
 precise significance of what happened on the mountain is not 
 easy to understand. Christ himself called it a vision (8pa/j.a). 
 Perhaps in some such way as the experience at the Baptism 
 was shared by John the Baptist, the disciples shared the expe- 
 rience of Christ on the mountain. There came to him, agon- 
 izing in the thought of death looming up before him, once 
 
 87 
 
88 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 more the sense of the Father's approval of his decision. Not 
 only so, but there broke in upon him, clothed in such a form 
 as visions must necessarily take when spiritual things are 
 embodied in earthly symbols, the sense of the fruit of death, 
 the triumph of the spirit, the Father's answer to his yielding 
 up of his life. Glorious and immortal, the fulfilment of the 
 law and the prophets, he tastes the anticipation of the joy 
 set before him which enabled him to endure the cross. In 
 some way the vision pierced the sleep of the disciples, and 
 they shared it, although how much belongs to Christ's expe- 
 rience, and how much to the form in which they were think- 
 ing of the Kingdom, it is impossible to say. We can gather 
 clearly from the conversation that took place as they left the 
 mountain, that what they had experienced there had con- 
 firmed their belief that Christ was the coming Messiah, the 
 glorious heir of the Kingdom that they felt to be so near at 
 hand. 
 
 But the experience conflicted with certain of their current 
 thoughts about the Kingdom. If Christ, Jesus of Nazareth 
 as they knew him, was really the Messiah of the law and the 
 prophets, where was the forerunner, where was Elias whom 
 the scribes had always maintained must come first? They 
 raise the question, and Christ's answer shows how he had 
 been thinking of the things that had happened. The series 
 of events from the first crisis and onwards, as we have traced 
 them, had profoundly influenced Christ's thoughts. He had 
 told the multitudes during the time of suspense in Matt, n, 
 that John the Baptist was the forerunner, Elias, adding his 
 challenge for the first time there, "he that hath ears to hear 
 let him hear." Then the news of John's death had come. 
 
 Now we see that Christ had accepted this, although it ran 
 wholly counter to Jewish expectation, as God's way. It was 
 for the forerunner to prepare the way of the Lord. Hence if 
 the forerunner's portion was death and darkness and tragic 
 failure here, that must be the way of the Lord, the way 
 Christ had already chosen for himself. So he tells the 
 uncomprehending disciples that Elias had come, that he had 
 not been recognized, and had been killed by the religious 
 leaders of the day. "So," he adds, "shall the Son of Alan 
 suffer of them." The passage lets a flood of light in upon 
 the way Christ had traveled. But all that the three disciples 
 got out of it at present was the certainty that John the Baptist 
 
THE TRANSFIGURATION 89 
 
 was regarded as Elias by their Master. The idea of a Messiah 
 who should die was simply incomprehensible to them as yet. 
 But the Transfiguration, like the parables, was an expe- 
 rience, perhaps the fruit of Christ's prayers, intended for the 
 future. They did not understand the parables yet, nor did 
 they understand what the Transfiguration meant. They seized 
 what agreed with their own hopes, and let the rest go. So 
 Christ tells them to be silent about the vision for the present. 
 If they had noised it about, it would have had just the opposite 
 effect from that which it was intended to have. It was not 
 meant for "a sign from heaven" such as Christ had already 
 refused for himself at the Temptation. It was for the 
 strengthening and confirmation of faith. The vision itself 
 sprang out of Christ's faith and could have its proper value for 
 the disciples only when they had learnt, at a later day, what 
 that faith really was for themselves. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 The Resurrection in the Mind of Christ 
 
STUDY XV 
 
 Passages for Daily Study: 
 Matt. 16:21-29; 17:22-23; 20:17-19; Mark 8:31-38; 9:9, 
 30-32; 10:32-34; Luke 9U3-45; 18:31-34; II Cor. 
 4: 13-14; Heb. 5:7-10. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 In this study the same difficulty faces us again in its deepest 
 form. The Resurrection is not often approached from the 
 side of Christ's experience. It is not even thought of as 
 affecting Christ's human experience at all. Here we are to 
 try to estimate the place of the Resurrection in this expe- 
 rience of Christ. It is to be considered here as a hope spring- 
 ing out of the faith of Christ. The business of the student 
 is to see whether such a point of view does not bring these 
 utterances of Christ in a new way into line with the whole 
 current of Christ's experience as we have been tracing it out. 
 The significance of such an attitude towards the Resurrection 
 will appear later when we come to the end of our study. 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. Why does Christ make no mention of his death until 
 
 after Peter's confession? 
 
 2. How did the thought of the Resurrection arise in the 
 
 mind of Christ? (cf. Isa. 26: 19; Dan. 12:2-3; Heb. 
 
 ii:35)- 
 
 3. Consider the difference between regarding Christ's atti- 
 
 tude towards his Resurrection as faith, and as fore- 
 knowledge. 
 
 4. What is meant by "the same spirit of faith" in II Cor. 
 
 4:i3? 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 The Resurrection in the Mind of 
 
 Christ 
 
 We saw that it was not until after Caesarea Philippi that 
 Jesus began to speak to his disciples of his death, and in 
 nearly ever)- case he adds the mysterious words — "and the 
 third day rise again." 
 
 Here we face one of our fundamental questions. What 
 does this utterance mean? We have again to deal with a 
 difficulty that met us in discussing the temptation and the 
 moment of self-revelation in Matt. II. 25-30. One feels, as 
 with the Temptation, that if Christ knew certainly that death 
 was for him a mere incident in a path, every detail of which 
 was already known to him from eternity, and that he would 
 rise again as a foregone conclusion, then death was not for 
 Christ the supreme test of faith. It could not be to him 
 what it is to us. 
 
 But, on the other hand, if the lines we have followed in 
 trying to understand the mind of Christ have in any way 
 given us a true presentment of Christ, then we may hope to 
 find help here in looking at the position from the same point 
 of view. 
 
 The question really is whether Christ's words about his 
 Resurrection are the utterance of divine foreknowledge or 
 the expression of a faith that went further than the most 
 daring venture of faith yet known in the history of man's 
 relations with God. 
 
 We have seen how Christ accepted the disappointment of 
 the crisis in Matt. 11. Up to that point he had clearly expected 
 that, as a result of his work — the preaching of the coming 
 Kingdom and its true character, continuing John's preparatory 
 message — the hearts of the people would be so stirred to 
 repentance and readiness for the Kingdom that God would be 
 able to intervene, and before the return of the disciples from 
 their mission the end of the old order would have come. 
 
 93 
 
94 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 The crisis came, and in the light of it and subsequent 
 events, Christ saw that he had to travel further and along 
 a harder path. The significance of John's death had been 
 borne in upon him. He began to see in the light of this 
 tragic event, and perhaps following along the lines of the 53rd 
 of Isaiah which the Jews had never understood in a Messianic 
 sense, that the Kingdom could come only through his death. 
 The suggestion is indeed worthy of consideration that Christ 
 had begun to regard his death as in some way directly con- 
 nected with the preliminary "woes" which in current belief 
 must usher in the Kingdom, the "great tribulation" or rreipacrfxos 
 of the early eschatology. He may have regarded his death 
 as a means of escape for those who were to enter into the 
 Kingdom. 
 
 But still the question remained for him of his own place in 
 the Kingdom and its future. Already the belief had grown 
 up in Jewish circles that the righteous dead, the saints of old, 
 and the martyrs were to rise again to share the blessings of 
 the earthly kingdom. Christ laid hold of this belief with the 
 same intensity of faith and insight that we have watched in 
 him throughout his life, and saw that this must be God's way 
 of vindication. Naturally the belief in the Resurrection took 
 the form in which it was current at that time, but the under- 
 lying fact was that Christ laid hold of the moral necessity of 
 God's intervention. He had already experienced this inter- 
 vention, vindicating his choice of the way of the Spirit, and 
 now he sees that he must put God to a final test, the ultimate 
 vindication. His Resurrection should be the Parousia, the 
 moment which brings in the Kingdom. He would enter into 
 the Kingdom by the only way that lay open to John the Baptist 
 and all the prophets who had trodden the path of faith. Vari- 
 ous details may remain uncertain, the reason for the "three 
 days," and other points. But the main thing stands out clear, 
 and will come out still more strikingly as we study the mind 
 of Christ during these last days of stress, that Christ's vision 
 of the Resurrection was the vision of faith, the divinest faith 
 that the world has known. 
 
 These last two chapters may be considered as a link between 
 the experience of the second period of the ministry, and that 
 last journey to Jerusalem which we are to study in the last 
 division of our subject. 
 
FOURTH DIVISION 
 THE FINAL CRISIS 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 The Way to Jerusalem. The Mind of the Disciples 
 
STUDY XVI 
 
 Passages for Daily Study: 
 
 Matt. 19:27-30; 20:20-28; Mark 9:33~37', 10:23-45; Luke 
 18:15-17, 34- 
 
 Notes : 
 
 The object of this study is twofold. First, to bring out 
 clearly the state of mind of the disciples during the last 
 period of Christ's life. If this was the attitude of those who 
 had been so close to Christ, and had had the opportunity of 
 understanding his point of view, we can see in some measure 
 what the popular mind must have been. Second, by contrast 
 to throw into relief the way in which Christ was looking 
 upon this last journey and its issue. One often hears about 
 the stupidity and slowness and selfishness of the disciples. 
 The real wonder would have been if they had been able to 
 understand in the smallest degree the amazing faith and 
 audacity of Christ's conception, so new and strange it was. 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. Why have we no mention of the strife among the dis- 
 
 ciples as to which should be the greatest until the last 
 journey? 
 
 2. What can be gathered as to the disciples' state of mind 
 
 at this time from Matt. 16:22; 18:1; 19:27; 20:21? 
 
 3. Consider the meaning of the two parables in Matt. 
 
 18:21-35; 20: 1-6 in relation to this attitude of mind. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 The Way to Jerusalem. The Mind 
 of the Disciples 
 
 The Synoptic narrative is clear that from Caesarea Philippi 
 the mind of Christ is turned towards Jerusalem. It would 
 also appear that the journey up to Jerusalem begins from the 
 point where they turn south again after reaching Caesarea. 
 There are many difficulties in detail, e. g., the question of a 
 Perean ministry, in reconstructing the course of the journey, 
 nor is it always easy to decide whether an incident or saying 
 belongs to this last period. But fortunately the main point is 
 clear — we can follow the mind of Christ in its increasing sense 
 of crisis, and in the divergence from the disciples that now 
 becomes very marked. 
 
 There is a striking saying in Luke which almost certainly 
 belongs to this last period. "I have a baptism to be baptized 
 with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished" (12: 50). 
 If we compare it with the incident in Matt. 20:20-28, which 
 also belongs to the last journey, it will serve to illustrate the 
 subject with which we are dealing in this chapter, the way in 
 which the disciples regarded this journey. 
 
 In our next chapter we shall take up the subject of Christ's 
 own attitude towards what lay before him in Jerusalem. But 
 first we have to examine the passages which show what the 
 disciples were thinking at this time. The confession at 
 Caesarea Philippi had served to bring before them all distinctly 
 the question of Christ's Messiahship. No doubt they debated 
 among themselves such questions as we saw were raised by 
 the Transfiguration, the question of Elias and his relation to 
 John the Baptist. But it is quite clear that Christ's repeated 
 statements about his dying at Jerusalem and his rising again 
 were a complete enigma to them. Such a point of view 
 
 99 
 
ioo CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 would not fit in at all with any of the current expectations of 
 the Kingdom. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the 
 Jews knew nothing of a dying Messiah. The only passage in 
 a Jewish apocalypse in which such a thought occurs only 
 shows how far removed was the point of view which Christ 
 had now come to entertain. In this passage, after the Messi- 
 anic kingdom has been set up and has lasted 400 years, the 
 Messiah and his companions die, and all the world returns to 
 primeval silence for seven days, then follows the final judg- 
 ment. Even this idea stands quite alone, and is obviously 
 totally different from any thought of the Messiah's death 
 being necessary to introduce the Kingdom. The Targum of 
 Jonathan on Isaiah which may represent a very ancient Jewish 
 exegesis of Isaiah 53, also illustrates the same point. In 
 this Targum, or Aramaic paraphrase, of Isaiah 53, all the 
 passages which speak of humiliation and suffering are most 
 skilfully transferred to the chastisement of Israel, or the 
 punishment of their enemies; only the passages of glory are 
 assigned to the Messiah. 
 
 Hence we can understand how hard it was for the dis- 
 ciples, when once they had accepted the belief that their 
 Master was the Messiah, to find any place in their minds for 
 the thought that Christ reiterates so often during this final 
 journey. 
 
 In Matt. 16:22, after the very first mention of death and 
 suffering, Peter rejects the thought as impossible, "God be 
 good to thee, Lord, this thing cannot happen to thee." It was 
 quite inconceivable to him. At times the attitude of Christ, 
 almost menacing as it seemed to them, threw them into gloom 
 and depression, Mark 10 : 32. But they quickly rallied, and it 
 is not difficult for us to reconstruct their point of view. They 
 believed in the visions of the prophets and apocalyptists, they 
 believed in the very near approach of the Kingdom which 
 they themselves had been sent out to preach. They felt that 
 they had staked everything on the belief that Jesus was the 
 Messiah, the future king of the new Kingdom. Hence their 
 minds turn continually, and sometimes in a way that seems 
 to us grotesque, to the material rewards which would be 
 theirs. There is no need to minimize the effect of the spirit- 
 ual side of Christ's teaching, and of his life upon them, that 
 bore fruit later. But now, as the tension of expectation 
 deepens, and they feel that this journey to Jerusalem will 
 
THE MIND OF THE DISCIPLES 101 
 
 end in the establishment of the promised Kingdom, they throw 
 away resolutely everything that points in another direction, 
 and concentrate upon the places and power that they will cer- 
 tainly have in a very short time. James and John feel that 
 there is a danger of Peter's outshining them, and try to secure 
 the best places at once. They wish to call down fire from 
 heaven and consume the inhospitable Samaritans who will 
 not receive their Master on his way to the throne. Even to 
 the very end, to the Last Supper, as we shall see, this atti- 
 tude of mind persisted. The events connected with the 
 triumphal entry, as it is called, must have greatly stimulated 
 their hopes. 
 
 It is necessary to grasp this point of view in order to ap- 
 preciate fully the divergence and the contrast which the mind 
 of Christ presents. This we shall take up in our next chapter. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 The Way to Jerusalem. The Mind of Christ 
 
STUDY XVII 
 
 Passages for Daily Study: 
 As in Study XVI and also Luke 12:49-53; 13:22-35. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 The point of view in this study may offer some difficulty. 
 But by a loyal acceptance of the human limitations in Christ's 
 experience, we shall reach a far deeper conception of his 
 extraordinary faith. The more the temporal element, the his- 
 torical setting in Christ's life is seen, the more clearly will 
 the eternal element appear in contrast. As many of Christ's 
 sayings as possible should be read with this in view, especially 
 those belonging to the later period of his life. The list given 
 for study is only typical and by no means exhaustive. Too 
 much care and thought cannot be given to the most important 
 part of our study. 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. What light do the above passages throw on Christ's mind 
 
 as he went up to Jerusalem? 
 
 2. What reasons had Christ for expecting that his visit to 
 
 Jerusalem would end in his death? 
 
 3. Why should he speak of what lay before him as a 
 
 baptism ? 
 
 4. Consider the meaning of the words "How am I strait- 
 
 ened" Luke 12 : 50. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 The Way to Jerusalem. The Mind 
 
 of Christ 
 
 To reconstruct the mind of the disciples at this critical time 
 is not difficult. Their attitude was a simple one, arising 
 naturally from their environment. But when we try to pierce 
 behind the fragmentary records, to recover something of what 
 Christ was experiencing during this last journey, the task is 
 far harder. Yet there are many sayings that will help us. 
 But first we must ask some questions. Probably they will not 
 all be answered, but it is no small gain to have learnt to ask 
 questions. We have to ask why Christ thought his death was 
 necessary, in spite of contemporary belief. We want to know, 
 if possible, how far Christ saw before him the coming of the 
 Kingdom, how soon and in what form he expected the King- 
 dom to come. These are not idle questions, but questions 
 which must be asked, and to which some kind of tentative 
 answers must be found if we are to get back in any way to 
 the real mind of Christ as he pushed on along this new and 
 fateful path. 
 
 First of all, there are several things we can gather from the 
 earliest passage in which Christ speaks plainly about his death, 
 in the scene after the confession at Csesarea. Christ saw there 
 that the basis of the new assembly, recognized by him as God's 
 answer to his resolute adherence to the harder way of faith 
 which he had chosen at the Temptation, was laid beyond the 
 power of death to touch — Hades' gates should not overwhelm 
 it. Further, his stern rebuke to Peter shows that he looked 
 upon his death as "God's things," in contrast to Peter's 
 expectation, "the things of men." His death, then, was in 
 some way directly connected with God's way of the Kingdom. 
 The words that follow show that he had come to think of 
 
 I05 
 
106 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 losing one's life as the fundamental principle, the law of the 
 Kingdom, so to speak. Whoever tried to keep his life would 
 lose it, although he might gain the whole world, but whoever 
 was willing to lose his life, in losing it would find it. Now 
 clearly this expresses something of what Christ had already 
 been experiencing, in yielding to the Father's will, and giving 
 up the particular form of the Kingdom hope which he had 
 held at first ; he had found a better way, and now he inter- 
 prets his experience as the way for those who would follow. 
 We saw that outside events had been converging on this point. 
 John's death and the failure of the first mission — all had 
 helped to make clear for Christ the way which now seems to 
 us almost a matter of course ; we cannot easily realize that 
 it was really a question of choice. Now in this passage the 
 choice and the struggle it involved come out clearly. In the 
 Temptation the kingdoms of the world had passed before the 
 mind of Christ and had been rejected; here again the vision 
 of the world is reflected as in a lightning flash in that awful 
 saying, "what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole 
 world and lose his life?" There is expressed Christ's own 
 experience, his horror of the abyss that lay on one side of 
 his choice. For him life lay in the doing of the will of God, 
 the rest was God's business. So we can gather, even if only 
 in a dim way, that through external events, such as John's 
 death, through the influence of that side of the prophetic 
 teaching represented by Isa. 53, and by the gradual develop- 
 ment of that line of thought which had begun at the Baptism, 
 Christ had come to look upon his death as the will of God, 
 as John's had been, and as part of God's plan for bringing in 
 the Kingdom. 
 
 Then, as has already been suggested, Christ seems to have 
 come to regard his death as accomplishing something. Of 
 course the sayings in Matt. 20:28, "to give his life a ransom 
 for many," and later at the Supper, "this is my blood, the 
 blood of the new covenant which is poured out for many, for 
 the forgiveness of sins," Matt. 26:28, have received a wider 
 interpretation in the light of subsequent history, as the Church 
 perceived the fuller meaning of the death of Christ. But in 
 trying to get at the meaning of such sayings in the mind of 
 Christ we have to be careful not to bring in the later theolog- 
 ical interpretation. We know that the thought of the great 
 tribulation, the -n-eipaafibs of the Lord's Prayer, which is often 
 
THE MIND OF CHRIST loy 
 
 found in Christ's sayings, was one of the fixed elements in the 
 expectation of the Kingdom. Only a few, a remnant would 
 come safely through this time of unparalleled trial. The 
 prayer "lead us not into temptation," the exhortation, "pray 
 that ye enter not into temptation," had a far more definite 
 meaning than we can understand now. And Christ had come 
 to think of his death as a ransom, a means of escape, for 
 those who were destined to be his companions in the new age. 
 While they were thinking how they might secure the best 
 places, he was realizing daily more intensely that God's way 
 was the way of service and of death. But none the less the 
 Kingdom was near at hand. He would drink the new wine 
 of the Kingdom with the very same companions who shared 
 the Paschal meal with him. There were those who would 
 not taste of death till they saw the Son of Man coming in 
 his Kingdom. That generation would not pass till all was 
 fulfilled. He did not know himself the day and the hour, 
 but the Father knew, and he was at least certain of this, that 
 immediately beyond the death whose shadow now lay dark 
 upon his path there was the glory of the coming Kingdom. 
 
 But as to the details of the future Kingdom we have 
 little but the outlines of the prophet's expectation, the gather- 
 ing of the elect, the judgment of the nations, and the bliss of 
 the righteous in the Father's Kingdom. 
 
 Another element in Christ's experience is expressed in the 
 saying already quoted from Luke 12 : 50, "how am I straitened 
 till it be accomplished." The link of thought seems to be 
 with the first Baptism, the lowly gate by which he had entered 
 the narrow path of faith. Now he sees before him a second 
 Baptism, a narrower gate to be entered by a more terrible 
 act of choice, but which would finally liberate his cabined 
 spirit. He would, he felt, break through into a larger sphere 
 of action. This feeling of growing straitness is reflected in 
 two incidents recorded only by Mark, and omitted by the 
 later Evangelists probably from reverential motives, in which 
 Christ finds a difficulty, a hindrance, in the exercise of his 
 power, the healing of the man with the impediment in his 
 speech, and the blind man, Mark 7:31-37, 8:22-26, cf. also 
 Mark 6:5, 6. We shall find more light on this subject as we 
 go on to deal with various incidents of the journey, but we 
 have the main features so far of the landscape as Christ 
 saw it. It is a country of descent, going down into a valley 
 
108 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 with towering walls of rock overhanging, growing darker 
 and darker as the way gets narrower, and no outlet is visible. 
 But there must be a way out, if God is God. That was the 
 essential thing in Christ's mind. He was staking everything 
 on the faithfulness of God. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 The Triumphal Entry 
 
STUDY XVIII 
 
 Passages for Daily Study: 
 Matt. 21:1-11; Mark ii:i-ii; Luke 19 129-44; John 12: 
 12-19. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 The subject offers both the opportunity and necessity for 
 a careful piece of Synoptic study. The three Synoptic ac- 
 counts should be carefully compared together and with the 
 Johannine account. Note especially the varying versions of 
 the cry of the disciples as they enter. Then the significance 
 of the incident must be carefully considered. Was it pre- 
 meditated, if so, why did Christ abandon his invariable habit 
 of avoiding any form of public notice? 
 
 Also consider carefully the significance of the connected 
 incident of the cleansing of the Temple. 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. What was the effect of the entry upon the mind of the 
 
 disciples? 
 
 2. What do you gather was the original form of the dis- 
 
 ciples' cry as they entered? 
 
 3. What significance had the incident for Christ himself? 
 
 4. What relation had it to the external crisis in the life 
 
 of Christ? 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 The Triumphal Entry 
 
 It would be easy to spend much time on the details of the 
 journey to Jerusalem, and of the last week, as every detail 
 becomes illuminating when the main line of thought is clear. 
 But we must concentrate on certain episodes which throw 
 light on the development of the external crisis or on the 
 internal crisis in the mind of Christ. First there is the 
 somewhat puzzling episode of Christ's entry into Jerusalem. 
 Several things may be gathered from the story. Following 
 Mark's account we have first the sending of the disciples to 
 borrow the ass's colt. Christ apparently intended to make 
 his entry in a public way. For reasons of his own he now 
 for the first time abandons his habit of avoiding public notice. 
 In the same account we have, not the great crowds of 
 Matthew, but the band of followers announcing his entry in 
 words which hail the Kingdom rather than the Messiah — 
 "Hosanna, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord 
 (implying nothing definite), blessed be the coming kingdom of 
 our father David" (Mark 11:9-10). 
 
 According to Mark nothing happens on that day, but Christ 
 spends the night with the Twelve at Bethany. Hence appar- 
 ently, the entry was an incident in itself, intended to draw 
 attention to Christ. On the next day occurs the incident of 
 the fig tree, which we shall take up in the next chapter, and 
 the cleansing of the Temple. According to Matthew, the 
 entry had attracted the attention of the temple authorities 
 already. Now the daring attack upon the priest's most lucra- 
 tive source of income, the system of temple exchange, not 
 only attracts attention, but makes Christ a dangerous person 
 in the eyes of the ruling class. It is a tragic thing to think 
 of Christ looking once more upon the courts of that house, 
 which he had come up to long ago with such dreams and 
 
 in 
 
ii2 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 such an intense sense of the child's joy in his Father's 
 house. Now, while the Father's house is still the same intense 
 reality to him, his maturer vision, disillusioned, sees it denied 
 by the lust and craft of those who represented God before the 
 world. 
 
 So the entry was sufficiently striking to attract the atten- 
 tion of the authorities to Christ, to make the people in the 
 streets ask who this was, and to raise the hopes of the small 
 band of followers who had come up with him from Galilee 
 to a high pitch, although it is possible that of these only the 
 Twelve shared the secret of Christ's Messiahship. To the 
 rest, as to the Jerusalem crowds, he was the prophet from 
 Nazareth, possibly even Elias the forerunner, coming in the 
 name of the Lord to announce the near approach of the King- 
 dom. 
 
 Then the cleansing of the Temple immediately following, 
 whether premeditated like the entry, or an act of generous 
 indignation, served to rouse the cold and calculating anger 
 of the priests, the Sadducees, the ruling class, a far more 
 deadly anger than the theological hatred of the Pharisees. 
 
 By these two acts Christ must have felt that the die was 
 cast, he had crossed his Rubicon, and could not retreat. He 
 felt that the final crisis would come in a very short time, 
 a matter of a few days or even hours. Hence he avoids Jeru- 
 salem at night until the Paschal night. There were instruc- 
 tions for his disciples, other reasons it may be, we cannot tell, 
 but the pathetic story of Mary's alabaster box and the tragic 
 significance which Jesus attached to that act of love shows 
 how he felt the last shadow closing over him. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 The Withered Fig Tree 
 
STUDY XIX 
 
 Passages for Daily Study: 
 Matt. 21 : 18-22; Mark 11 : 12-14, 20-25. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 This incident, like the last, again calls for a little careful 
 Synoptic study. The result of the comparison between Mark's 
 earlier narrative and Matthew's should prove instructive. It 
 is an interesting example of the way in which difficulties arise 
 from misunderstanding. The great thing is to endeavor to 
 reconstruct, from Mark, the original meaning of the incident 
 as it stands related to what was passing in Christ's mind 
 and in the mind of the disciples. It illustrates the great 
 divergence between them. They were passionately clinging 
 to the faintest signs of power that might reassure them as 
 to Christ's ability to bring them through the crisis that they 
 felt to be at hand. Christ was looking at the thing very dif- 
 ferently. He saw that it was a case for a supreme act of 
 faith ; more and more he saw that everything depended on 
 God, and that the great thing needed in order that God might 
 be able to work was the manifestation of God's character. 
 He always connects the answer to prayer with the manifesta- 
 tion of God's character. So for him it is waste of time to 
 pray while any sense of personal resentment remains in the 
 mind. 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. What inferences may be drawn from a comparison of 
 
 the records of this incident in Matthew and Mark 
 respectively ? 
 
 2. What light does it throw upon the mind of Christ? 
 
 3. What light does it throw upon the mind of the dis- 
 
 ciples? 
 
 4. What does Christ mean by "this mountain"? 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 The Withered Fig Tree 
 
 On the day of the cleansing of the Temple there occurred 
 an incident which has suffered in the telling from the want 
 of understanding of those through whom the record has been 
 handed down to us. The beginning of the misunderstanding 
 is found in the Synoptic account itself as it passes from 
 Mark to Matthew. 
 
 As we have the story in Mark, early in the morning on the 
 way from Bethany to Jerusalem, Christ was hungry and, 
 seeing a fig tree, went up to it in the hope of finding 
 some of the small dried-up fruit of the previous year still 
 adhering to the boughs. He found none, uttered the strange 
 words which the disciples heard and noticed, and passed on 
 his way. Then came the excitement of the day of cleansing 
 the Temple, and in the darkness of evening they returned to 
 Bethany. Passing by the same tree the next morning, they 
 noticed that it had withered since the previous morning, and 
 Peter, ever quick to seize the significance of signs, pointed it 
 out to Christ. It is from Peter's words that we have taken 
 our cue, and ever since the incident has been known as the 
 cursing of the fig tree. In Matthew we find several signifi- 
 cant changes. The remark "it was not the season of figs" has 
 been dropped; instead of a day and night elapsing between the 
 utterance of the words and the discovery that the tree had 
 withered, we are shown the fig tree shriveling at once before 
 the eyes of the astonished disciples, and the whole incident 
 has assumed the character which has so distressed and puzzled 
 commentators ever since. 
 
 The incident, with the remarkable saying of Christ to Peter 
 which follows it in Mark, has been chosen as illustrating that 
 side of Christ's experience which we are specially occupied 
 with in this study. We have already seen the external events 
 
 115 
 
n6 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 shaping the crisis for Christ. He had wept as he entered the 
 city. There had come upon him a sense of the irrevocable- 
 ness of the crisis. He felt that they did not, would not, 
 recognize the time of their visitation. Jerusalem and the 
 Temple were the center of all the prophets' visions. No one 
 had yet thought of a Kingdom of God of which Jerusalem 
 would not be the center and the seat of power. So the refusal 
 of Jerusalem to recognize the Messiah is the great tragedy 
 that oppressed the mind of Christ during these days. It is 
 with this problem that he was wrestling as he passed along 
 the way to and from Bethany. The things of the outward 
 life, as so often for the prophet, were but symbols of the 
 inner struggle. So the incident of the fig tree, slight in itself, 
 is full of significance for Christ: the trifling disappointment 
 merges into the more awful weight of sorrow and disappoint- 
 ment at the corrupt and hardened priesthood and blind people, 
 the unconscious tree becomes the symbol to the over-wrought 
 mind of Christ of the fruitless nation, and the words of 
 mysterious presage and doom are pronounced, not upon the 
 tree, but upon that of which the tree was the symbol. So 
 Christ disburdens in utterance some of the weight upon his 
 spirit, and passes on, while the disciples listen, knowing 
 nothing of his mysterious struggle. 
 
 Then a day and a night pass and some cause which might 
 have been perfectly natural and explicable brought about the 
 rapid drooping and sickness of the tree. Peter calls atten- 
 tion to the state of the tree, and remarks that Christ had 
 "cursed" it, a thoroughly Oriental way of regarding the matter. 
 Evidently the disciples were feeling the tension of the situa- 
 tion ; the cleansing of the Temple, like the triumphal entry, 
 would have added to their expectations, and they were on 
 the watch for every sign of miraculous power upon which to 
 stay their hopes. 
 
 But the significance of the incident for Christ is very 
 different. We have already seen how the simplicity with which 
 from the beginning Christ realized the things of the spirit 
 had never left him, but had combined with the maturity of 
 his powers to give decision of action flowing from clear 
 insight. With this simplicity he sees things in a perspective, 
 where greatness and smallness are measured by other than 
 worldly scales. Events that seem trivial are fraught for him 
 with portent, with divine messages. The simplest happenings 
 
THE WITHERED FIG TREE 117 
 
 of daily life are the expression of his Father's mind and will 
 to him. So here, where Peter saw only a display of power 
 which would be needed in dealing with a rebellious opposition, 
 Jesus saw a touching proof that the Father was watching his 
 path and knew his struggles. He accepted the withering of 
 the fig tree as a confirmation of his faith and a sign of 
 God's approval of the spirit with which he was facing the situ- 
 ation. 
 
 There are two distinct elements in the situation, both of 
 which are missed by the usual way of approaching this inci- 
 dent as a "miracle of judgment." 
 
 First, Christ was feeling profoundly the barrier which the 
 refusal of Jerusalem to recognize him raised in the way of 
 the coming of the Kingdom. His death might avail to remove 
 it, but as things stood he was facing this tremendous moun- 
 tain mass, not only Jewish unbelief, but the whole world- 
 order, Rome and all the rest of it, behind the little Jewish 
 state, all blocking his solitary way, his desperate way of faith. 
 Who could move this mountain ? God could, and the incident 
 is seized upon by Christ as a sign of God's power at work 
 for him, a confirmation of his faith that is full of precious 
 comfort and refreshment. 
 
 Secondly, there is the personal element. He was being 
 rejected personally, there was a personal hatred that he could 
 see growing against him. The closing part of this memorable 
 saying shows that already, before ever the Cross is reached, 
 that spirit that had said "be ye therefore merciful as your 
 Father is merciful," and that breathed the prayer of for- 
 giveness on the Cross itself, is meeting the personal hatred 
 with forgiveness. Christ connects the working of God's 
 power, which for him expressed itself in the unexpected 
 withering of the fig tree, with a spirit of personal forgive- 
 ness which was for him the expression of God's character. 
 So the incident throws strange and unexpected and pathetic 
 light on the struggle of Christ's heroic soul, as he fares on 
 into the shadow of the towering mass that blocks his path. 
 "Have faith in God" is the attitude of his own spirit, "for- 
 give" is the deepest feeling underlying the passion that had 
 spent itself in that act of cleansing the Temple. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 The Last Crisis. The Supper and Afterwards 
 
STUDY XX 
 
 Passages for Daily Study : 
 Matt. 26:1-35; Mark 14:1-31; Luke 22:1-38; I Cor. 11: 
 23-25. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 There is little to be said here except what will be found in 
 the chapter. I have not said much about the Supper on 
 purpose. It is principally what follows that brings out the 
 final crisis now beginning in the mind of Christ. For the 
 understanding of this the passage in Luke is of prime im- 
 portance. It may be pointed out that each crisis as it comes 
 is an advance. While the principles of the first struggle 
 reappear, yet there is no mere repetition of the same con- 
 flict, but the original choice is tested again and again by 
 fresh circumstances. Each time Christ is carried further into 
 unknown country, so to speak, in his steadfast adherence to 
 the will of God as he knows it. Now the final crisis brings 
 him to a venture which staggers the mind to contemplate. 
 We do not yet know, the Church has hardly begun to know, 
 all that was involved in that supreme act of choice. 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. What may be gathered from the narratives of the Last 
 
 Supper as to Christ's view of his own death in rela- 
 tion to the Kingdom of God? 
 
 2. What was the state of the disciples' mind at this time? 
 
 3. Consider the meaning of Christ's words in Luke 22 : 37, 
 
 "the things concerning me have an end." 
 
 4. Consider the effect of Isaiah 53 upon the mind of 
 
 Christ at this time. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 The Last Crisis. The Supper and 
 Afterwards 
 
 Events now began to move quickly to the end. The priests 
 met together to plan some way in which Jesus might be 
 quietly removed. The great difficulty for them was to find 
 an ostensible cause for a legal execution. Meanwhile Jesus 
 felt that the end was close at hand. He had for some time 
 before been aware of the mind of Judas. The last thing 
 that he desired to arrange was an opportunity for keeping 
 the Passover quietly with his disciples in Jerusalem. Jesus 
 had friends in Jerusalem, and the story of the man bearing 
 the pitcher of water points to some previous arrangement 
 made by Jesus with one of his friends in the city, who had 
 put his guest chamber at the Master's disposal for his last 
 supper. The secrecy of the arrangement shows the extreme 
 danger to which Christ felt himself exposed in entering the 
 city. 
 
 Then comes the Supper. It is immaterial for our purpose 
 to discuss the exact day and date of the Last Supper, although 
 it is clear that the Synoptic account is uncertain on the point. 
 We are concerned only with what we may learn from the 
 records of the mind of Christ on that memorable night. 
 Luke, who seems to have had access to some special source 
 of information for the whole of the last scenes of Christ's 
 life, here gives us a number of very important additional 
 details relating to the conversation after the Supper, and 
 one of the sayings of Christ, recorded only by Luke, takes 
 us deeper into the experience of Christ at this supreme 
 moment than anything else perhaps in the Gospels. 
 
 We have already spoken of Christ's thought of his death as 
 a means of deliverance for those who were marked out to 
 
 121 
 
122 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 share the Kingdom with him, also of his sense of the extreme 
 nearness of the Kingdom. These things are reflected espe- 
 cially in the words with which Christ gives the bread and 
 the cup to the disciples. But it is the conversation which 
 follows, as Luke gives it, which guides us to the heart of 
 what Christ was now feeling. 
 
 All the Evangelists tell us of the heaviness and dismay- 
 that fell on Christ immediately after the Supper, when Judas 
 had gone to do his hateful deed, and Christ knew that the 
 moments were numbered. But only Luke of the Synoptists 
 has preserved in these sayings which he gives us the rapid 
 passing of the various emotions through the mind of Christ. 
 We have again a picture of the old strife breaking out in the 
 very last gloom — the disciples were quarreling about places 
 in the Kingdom. A wave of pity surged in the heart of 
 Christ as he looked at them. All void of sympathy and 
 understanding as they were, still dreaming of an earthly 
 kingdom and material rewards, yet were they not the sole 
 companions of his struggles? They had been with him in his 
 trials, his Treipaa-fxol. He promises them, as though humoring 
 them like children, a share in whatever the Father had given 
 him. But almost as he says it there rushes over him an 
 overwhelming sense of loneliness, of change. It finds expres- 
 sion in those mysterious words which utterly bafifled his dis- 
 ciples and have remained hidden to this day, perhaps. He 
 began by reminding them of the first mission when both he 
 and they were full of hope and expectation that the Kingdom 
 lay just before them. He reminded them of the way in 
 which they had been received, they had lacked nothing, so 
 far had his name and their message availed. "Now," he tells 
 them, "all is changed. In that crisis which is about to come 
 upon you, you will be cast upon your own resources. If you 
 have a purse take it, also your swords. If any of you has 
 no sword let him part with his cloak to buy one." Then come 
 the words of doom, the words which tell us, as nothing else 
 can, the point which Christ had reached. "For I say unto 
 you that that must yet be fulfilled which is written of me — 
 'And he was numbered among the transgressors' — for the 
 things concerning me have an end." 
 
 Christ had begun his mission with a profound spiritual expe- 
 rience in which his relation to God and his relation to the 
 Kingdom had been fully revealed to him. Upon the reality 
 
THE SUPPER AND AFTERWARDS 123 
 
 of this experience he had staked everything. An increasing 
 sense of the divergence between the nature of the Kingdom 
 and the Messiah as it was revealed to him, and that which he 
 found around him in the popular expectation and which must 
 to some extent have influenced his own thoughts, had been 
 growing on him through the experiences which we have been 
 trying to follow. Now the influence of the 53rd of Isaiah upon 
 his mind, of which we have already spoken, appears here as 
 the final point of divergence is reached — Messiah numbered 
 with the transgressors ! What did such an unthinkable posi- 
 tion imply? Christ himself saw clearly, as he always did, 
 and sums up in that terrible pregnant sentence, "the things 
 concerning me have an end." At last he had come there, to 
 the point of final surrender. He must give up all the hopes 
 that the prophets had built up round the glowing picture of 
 a reigning and triumphant Messiah. He had gradually been 
 realizing how much would have to go, but now he sees it all. 
 It is all at an end. He had seen the rejection and disappoint- 
 ment in Galilee, and accepted it from the Father's hand. He 
 had heard of John's death, and seen that God did not inter- 
 vene for him, and had drawn from that pitiful end the token, 
 God's token for him, of what the Son of Man must suffer. 
 Then he had seen in the crowded days of the last week the 
 hopelessness of Jerusalem, the slayer of the prophets. It 
 could not be that a prophet should perish out of Jerusalem. 
 Now last of all, as Judas goes and the last shades gather over 
 him, he realizes what a Messiah executed as a criminal must 
 mean for all patriotic hopes, all Jewish dreams of an earthly 
 kingdom, Zion the joy of the whole earth, and all the rest of 
 the gorgeous phantasies of the apocalyptists. He had to let it 
 go, and what those words cost him as he said "the things 
 concerning me have an end," we shall never know. Paul 
 speaks of the self-emptying, the tcevdjais of Christ, and theo- 
 logians have discoursed learnedly thereon. I think that we 
 get something of its real meaning here. 
 
 Once more Christ is forced out into solitude to fight the last 
 fight in the agony of Gethsemane. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 The Last Crisis. Gethsemane 
 
STUDY XXI 
 
 Passages for Daily Study : 
 Matt. 26 : 36-46 ; Mark 14 : 32-42 ; Luke 22 : 39-46 ; Heb. 5 : 
 7,8. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 The principal thing to be said here is that we are trying to 
 confine ourselves to the meaning of Christ's experience from 
 the historical point of view. The larger question of the spir- 
 itual and universal significance of it all will come up at the 
 end. 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. What is the meaning of the vision in Luke 22:43? 
 
 2. Why does Christ speak here of the "cup" rather than 
 
 the "baptism"? 
 
 3. What is the force of the words which Mark uses to 
 
 describe Christ's mental state at this point? 
 
 4. Where does the central point of the whole conflict lie? 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 The Last Crisis. Gethsemane 
 
 In the garden, with a pathetic longing for some sympathy, 
 Christ took the three who had been closest to his mind to 
 share his vigil. His words to them show what he sought from 
 them, "watch with me." Mark uses strong and unusual 
 words to describe the tumult and oppression that now fell 
 upon Christ's soul. The old landmarks were swept away with 
 those words of which we spoke in our last chapter. It was 
 still possible to withdraw, to step away quietly, to avoid the 
 final trial. But he could not do that. So three times he 
 faces the awful choice, shrinking from the cup, yet resolute 
 to take it. He seeks some answer, some token from the Father 
 to show him if there is any other way than this. According 
 to Luke, the answer is a vision such as he had already expe- 
 rienced in previous crises. It is a vision of strength for the 
 end, not a revelation of any alternative issue. 
 
 If we have, in our previous study of the point now reached 
 by Christ, in any way followed the true line of his advance, 
 we must realize a little the intense agony of the struggle here. 
 At the Temptations the issue was seen dimly, at a distance. 
 Here it is right before him, over-shadowing all with its horror. 
 He must, if he chooses the cup — that well-known prophetic 
 figure of divine wrath — go forward into darkness. He must 
 accept, as the final consequence of the nation's failure to per- 
 ceive the time of their visitation, the shattering of his own 
 cherished hopes for them and for Jerusalem. He must go 
 out like a criminal, "numbered with the transgressors." The 
 horror of the tribulation must be his alone, with no knowledge 
 of what might come after. The agony of Christ's spirit is 
 forever stamped upon the Gospel records. 
 
 In this study, as in the previous and the following one, we 
 are dealing with a subject whose issues lie in the spiritual, as 
 
 127 
 
128 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 well as in the historical plane. We are endeavoring to estimate 
 it from the historical standpoint first, in order that we may 
 more truly estimate its meaning on the spiritual plane. Hence 
 the deliberate avoidance in these three studies of any dis- 
 cussion of the larger questions that naturally arose later, 
 when the Church began to solve for itself the question of 
 who Christ was and what he had done. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 The Cross 
 
STUDY XXII 
 
 Passages for Daily Study: 
 Matt. 27, Mark 15, Luke 23, John 19. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 In attempting to study the Cross and its meaning from the 
 historical point of view, the student will find great help from 
 a pamphlet by T. R. Glover entitled "The Death of Christ," 
 and also from Canon Streeter's article "The Historic Christ" 
 in "Foundations." I have said very little here, because all 
 the implications of the Cross and its relation to Christ's 
 actual experience have already been gradually worked out. 
 The Cross is just the final crisis, the narrow door, by which 
 Christ himself broke through into the newness of life that 
 Paul speaks of, the Kingdom of the Spirit. 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. Compare the cry on the Cross in Mark 15 : 34 with that 
 
 given in John 19:30. 
 
 2. What is implied by the bystander's remark about Elias 
 
 in Mark 15: 36? 
 
 3. Consider the meaning of Christ's last words as given 
 
 in Luke 2^ : 46. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 The Cross 
 
 We come now to the Cross. One is likely to read the 
 familiar story transfigured by the golden haze, so to speak, of 
 the victory. But the poet's words are true — 
 
 "Brightness may emanate in heaven from thee, 
 Here thy dread symbol only shadow yields." 
 
 Stripped of the glamor, it is the story of a sordid judicial 
 crime carried out with mean and petty cruelty to its miser- 
 able end. There is no brightness on the historical side, only 
 gloom. The darkness into which Christ entered in the garden 
 grows more intense, until the cry of anguish wrung from him 
 on the Cross tells us that the final agony, not of the body 
 but of the mind, is upon him. The cry shows that still through 
 the mockery of the trial, the heartless jibes of the priests at his 
 supposed Messiahship, even the half-suppressed doubt and sus- 
 pense of the bystanders as to whether Elias may yet come and 
 turn the darkness into light, he clung to the possibility that 
 God might intervene in some way. Although his will had 
 bowed to the cup, yet his heart clung to a hope that light 
 might break at the last moment. 
 
 Xow, his strength is waning, no sign appears in the dark- 
 ening sky. He feels that this is the end, and the passionate 
 cry of brokenhearted disappointment breaks from him, "Aly 
 God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The word given 
 in John is generally taken as the word of triumph, the expres- 
 sion of the sense of completion. But I cannot help feeling 
 that the rerAeo-rai has been reinterpreted, like so much else 
 in the story from the point of view of the later history. It 
 really stands for the final surrender, the completion, it is 
 true, of the act of self-emptying, the answer, as it were, to 
 that other utterance, "the things concerning me have an 
 
 131 
 
132 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 end," TerAeoTcu — "It is all over." If that were the last word 
 it would be strange. But the true note of triumph does not 
 fail. The note that was struck in Matt. 11:25 is heard once 
 more, and is the prelude to the Easter song, the token that 
 the Cross is not the end, but the beginning. After the cry of 
 anguish has been uttered, and the supreme moment of con- 
 flict has passed, the words come, apparently with a force and 
 strength that astonished the onlookers, "Father, into thy 
 hands I commend my spirit." That is the true cry of victory. 
 Christ accepts the issue of the Cross, with all its finality and 
 irrevocableness on the one side, as the way into the infinite 
 possibilities that the Father might have on the other side. 
 It might be resurrection, it must be vindication. The child 
 who found his home in the Father's house, now entrusts his 
 spirit, having done all, to the Father's hands in faith. The 
 rest is with the Father. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 The Victory of the Cross 
 
STUDY XXIII 
 
 Passages for Daily Study: 
 
 I Peter 1:18-21; 2:21-25; 3:18; Rom. 6:9, 10; II Cor. 
 13:4; Gal. 2 : 20. 
 
 Notes : 
 
 There are a great many questions deliberately left un- 
 touched in summing up. The object is that we may concen- 
 trate and see clearly the historical relation between the 
 development of the idea of the Kingdom in the Hebrew 
 prophets, and the actual life and death of Christ as the climax 
 of this process of development. We have to see Christ, not 
 as a deus ex machina, intervening to fulfil the prophets' pre- 
 dictions, but as the heir and successor of the prophets' expe- 
 riences and traditions, himself involved in the final tragedy, 
 working out God's purpose through infinite pain and sacrifice. 
 
 Questions : 
 
 1. What aspects of the death of Christ did the early Church 
 
 seize upon? 
 
 2. Consider the effect of the death of Christ upon the 
 
 Jewish order of things. 
 
 3. Consider the meaning of St. Peter's words "Christ died 
 
 to bring us to God," from the historical point of view. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 The Victory of the Cross 
 
 The author of the ist epistle of Peter went to the root of 
 the matter when he said "Christ died to bring us to God." 
 Apart from all theological considerations that sentence ex- 
 presses the experience of a multitude "that no man can num- 
 ber." Paul puts it in another way when he says "God was 
 in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself." 
 
 That is now, at the end of our study, the question for us. 
 What did Peter, what did Paul mean when they said these 
 things? Can the death of Christ have the same meaning for 
 us in our modern world? 
 
 Now it is a fact that our theology was for the most part 
 made a very long time ago. The statements which today 
 represent authoritatively the Church's belief about the Person 
 of Christ took the form in which we know them, nearly fifteen 
 centuries ago. Much of the teaching about sin, the nature of 
 God, and the effect of Christ's death in relation to both, rests 
 upon the scholastic theology of the Middle Ages. 
 
 The fact that a thing is old does not imply that it cannot be 
 good, and indeed the persistence and vitality of the creeds and 
 of the Church's theology shows that underneath it all lies 
 a firm basis of real experience. But on the other hand the 
 whole witness of the history of religion cries aloud that God 
 moves, that His way is to go on to ever fresh ways of unfold- 
 ing His eternal life in the world. Christianity itself stands 
 as the perpetual witness of the resistless movement of the 
 life of God in history. If Christianity should itself prove 
 false to the very elan vital, the vital impulse that gave it birth : 
 it must be left behind. 
 
 So at a time like this, when the cumulative effect of nearly 
 a century of extraordinary change is beginning to be con- 
 sciously felt, the best discipline is to go back to the historical 
 facts that surround the birth of Christianity and read them 
 anew in the light of fresh historical knowledge, fresh insight 
 
 T 3 " 
 
136 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 into personality and religious psychology, and a fresh perspec- 
 tive gained from the study of comparative religion. 
 
 Our study has been a mere essay, the slightest sketch of 
 such a survey. But it has at least given us a point of view. 
 We have seen in what a strange and tragic sense Christ was 
 the heir of the long prophetic line. Prophecy, although not 
 peculiar to Israel, yet had a unique history and development 
 among the Hebrew people. While the Greeks, moving along 
 their own characteristic line of development produced from 
 the infinite multiplicity of tribal sanctities, year-demons, earth 
 and corn spirits, and what not, the resplendent figures of the 
 Olympians, an eternal joy to the senses — the Hebrew prophets 
 were travailing in birth through the pangs of the catastrophes 
 that overwhelmed their nation, to bring forth the loftiest 
 conception of God as ethical and spiritual beyond all sense- 
 representation. 
 
 There were three great things that marked the work of the 
 prophets. They carried the conception of God as a spiritual 
 being to the full development of the thought of Him as the 
 Father, not only of the people of Israel, but of the individual. 
 They carried their conception of God as holy and righteous 
 into national and individual ethics, and made the synthesis of 
 religion and ethics possible. But what was most character- 
 istic of their work was their conception of a state of things, 
 a kingdom, in which the character of God and His relation 
 to His people would be fully vindicated in the world. They 
 thought of God as intervening to bring this desirable state, 
 this age to come, into being. These three elements cannot be 
 separated, and we are only now beginning to understand how 
 profoundly the last of the three gathered up and embodied 
 the others and became the central and vital thing in Jewish 
 life and thought at the time when Christ lived. Now all three 
 were essentially Jewish, as they found expression in the period 
 we have been studying. For Paul to be able even to ask the 
 question, "Is God the God of the Jews only, is He not also 
 the God of the Gentiles?" marked an advance whose cost and 
 secret is the very subject of our study. In Christ's time and 
 in his environment God was exclusively the God of the Jews. 
 To enjoy the blessings of God's favor it was necessary for 
 a Gentile to become a member of the commonwealth of Israel. 
 To enjoy the future Kingdom that seemed so near at hand 
 it was necessary to be a Jew. Paul expresses the logical point 
 
THE VICTORY OF THE CROSS 137 
 
 of view of a Jew towards the GentileS among whom he lived 
 when he reminds the Ephesians that before they became 
 Christians they were strangers from the polity of Israel, that 
 at best they could only be tolerated sojourners under the 
 covenants of the promise of the Jew, that they had no hope, 
 and were without anything that could really be called God. 
 How was the change, even in the point of view, made pos- 
 sible? How could Paul come even to think otherwise? Again 
 we come back to Christ. God's thoughts are His acts. In 
 Christ we have found this movement of liberation wrought 
 out in the infinite travail of a human experience. We have 
 seen Christ, gathering up in one personality of unique moral 
 simplicity, purity, and intensity, these three great prophetic 
 things. The Fatherhood of God was not new. It was what 
 Christ made of it in his own experience that was new. Christ's 
 ethics were the ethics of the prophets, but the spirit, the 
 motive behind the ethics, was new and revolutionary. Yet 
 Christ's horizon is Jewish, his mission is only to the lost 
 sheep of the house of Israel. His thoughts of the Kingdom 
 and the Messiah, although differing widely from those gen- 
 erally held in his time, were still Jewish. He loved Jerusalem, 
 he loved the Temple, passionately. His love for Israel was 
 such as found an echo in the words of his greatest follower 
 when he said, "I could wish myself accursed from Christ for 
 my brethren's sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh." 
 
 Yet we see him forced by his own unfaltering choice and 
 vision of the will of God to a point where he must give the 
 alabaster box to be broken, that the treasure might be liber- 
 ated. In no other way, seemingly, could the spirit that had so 
 far wrought in the history of prophecy be set free from the 
 Jewish environment and expression. We see God, cabined 
 and cribbed, as it were, within the narrow bounds of Judaism, 
 liberated by His own act in Christ, by what seemed the 
 final tragedy of the Cross. It was the end of Jewish national 
 hopes, it was the end of prophetic pictures of the Jewish 
 Messiah, it was in the deepest sense the losing of life, far 
 more than mere physical death. That was the side of the 
 Cross that Christ faced, as we have watched him through the 
 successive crises of his life approach it. 
 
 But it was the beginning of the new creation, where the 
 "spirit of Jesus," liberated from the womb of Judaism, was 
 free to work the miracle, the "greater things," that the world 
 
138 CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 saw with amazement during the first century of Christianity. 
 
 That is the victory of the Cross looked at in the broadest 
 way. There is much more, but some of it lies outside such 
 a study as this altogether, and some of it belongs to a book 
 that will follow this and take up the Resurrection and its con- 
 sequences. 
 
 But the great point is that the Cross itself is the victory. 
 All the significance of the Resurrection, however we regard it, 
 is drawn from the Cross. 
 
 There Christ lost his life and found it. There God slowly 
 working through the ages, through the travail of man's spirit, 
 at last in Christ found an instrument in which He could 
 perfectly express Himself even under full and true human 
 and historical conditions. And in dying, God in Christ entered 
 into the world's pangs in a new way, so that we may never 
 again think of God merely enthroned above between the 
 cherubim. Henceforth we see God in the self-emptying of 
 Christ on the Cross, we see God under the weight of national 
 and individual sin, suffering its consequences, in no mere 
 official and unreal sense, but really losing everything. We 
 think of God in a new way, and see that Christ did die to 
 bring us to God. We find God there. 
 
 Epilogue 
 
 "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it 
 abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." 
 
 "Thus hath He unto death His beauty given : 
 And so of all which form inheriteth 
 
 The fall doth pass the rise in worth ; 
 For birth hath in itself the germ of death 
 
 But death hath in itself the germ of birth. 
 
 It is the falling acorn buds the tree, 
 The falling rain that bears the greenery, 
 
 The fern plants moulder when the ferns arise. 
 
 For there is nothing lives but something dies, 
 And there is nothing dies but something lives. 
 
 Till skies be fugitives, 
 Till Time, the hidden root of change, updries, 
 Are Birth and Death inseparable on earth ; 
 For they are twain yet one, and Death is Birth." 
 
Appendix 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 The following passages are selected from the Jewish Apoc- 
 alyptic literature of the last century B. C. and the first century 
 A. D. as illustrating the nature of current Messianic expecta- 
 tions : 
 (a) Parables of Enoch (i Enoch 37-71), circ. 90-60 B. C. 
 
 "On that day mine Elect One shall sit on the throne of 
 
 glory 
 And shall try their works, 
 And their places of rest shall be innumerable. 
 And their souls shall grow strong within them when 
 
 they see mine Elect ones, 
 And those who have called upon my Glorious Name : 
 Then will I cause mine Elect One to dwell among them. 
 And I will transform the heaven and make it an eternal 
 
 blessing and light: 
 And I will transform the earth and make it a blessing:" 
 
 (1 Enoch 45: 3, 4.) 
 "And there I saw One who had a head of days, 
 And his head was white like wool, 
 And with him was another being whose countenance 
 
 had the appearance of a man, 
 And his face was full of graciousness, like one of the 
 holy angels. 
 And I asked the angel who went with me and shewed me all 
 the hidden things, concerning that Son of Man who he was, 
 and whence he was, and why he went with the Head of 
 Days ? And he answered and said unto me : 
 
 This is the Son of Man who hath righteousness, 
 
 With whom dwelleth righteousness, 
 
 And who revealeth all the treasures of that which is 
 
 hidden, 
 Because the Lord of Spirits had chosen him, . . . 
 
 And this Son of Man whom thou hast seen 
 Shall put down the kings and mighty from their seats, 
 etc." (1 Enoch 46: 1-4.) 
 
 141 
 
142 APPENDIX 
 
 "And at that hour the Son of Man was named 
 
 In the presence of the Lord of Spirits, 
 
 And his name before the Head of Days. 
 
 Yea, before the sun and the signs were created, 
 
 Before the stars of the heaven were made 
 
 His name was named before the Lord of Spirits." 
 
 (i Enoch 48: 23.) 
 "And they shall be downcast of countenance, 
 
 And pain shall seize them, 
 
 When they see that Son of Man 
 
 Sitting on the throne of his glory. 
 
 And the kings and the mighty and all who possess the 
 earth 
 
 Shall bless and exalt and glorify him who rules over all, 
 
 Who was hidden. 
 
 For from the beginning the Son of Alan was hidden, 
 
 And the Most High preserved him in the presence of 
 his might, 
 
 And revealed him to the elect." (1 Enoch 62: 5-7). 
 
 (b) 2 Baruch (circ. 50-100 A. D.). 
 
 "And it shall come to pass after these things, when the time 
 of the advent of the Messiah is fulfilled, that he shall return 
 in glory. Then all who have fallen asleep in hope of him shall 
 rise again." (2 Bar. 30: 1, 2.) 
 
 "And it will come to pass when the time of its consummation 
 that it should fall has approached, then the principate of my 
 Messiah will be revealed, which is like the fountain and the 
 vine, and when it is revealed it will root out the multitude of 
 its host. The last leader of that time will be left alive, when 
 the multitude of his hosts will be put to the sword, and he 
 will be bound, and they will take him up to Mt. Zion, and 
 my Messiah will convict him of all his impieties, and will 
 gather and set before him all the works of his hosts. And 
 afterwards he will put him to death and protect the rest of 
 my people which shall be found in the place which I have 
 chosen. And his principate will stand for ever, until the 
 world of corruption is at an end." (2 Bar. 39:7 — 40:3.) 
 
 (c) 4 Ezra (circ. 60-100 A. D.). 
 
 "For behold the days come, and it shall be when the signs 
 which I have foretold unto thee come to pass, then shall the 
 city that is now invisible appear, and the land which is now 
 concealed be seen. And whosoever is delivered from the pre- 
 
APPENDIX 145 
 
 dieted evils, the same shall see my wonders. For my Son the 
 Messiah shall be revealed, together with those who are with 
 him, and shall rejoice the survivors four hundred years. And 
 it shall be, after these years, that my Son the Messiah shall 
 die, and all in whom there is human breath. Then shall the 
 world be turned into the primaeval silence seven days, like as 
 at the first beginnings, so that no man is left." (4 Ezra 7: 
 26-30.) 
 
 "And as for the lion whom thou didst see roused from the 
 wood and roaring, and speaking to the eagle and reproving 
 him for his unrighteousness and all his deeds, as thou hast 
 heard. This is the Messiah, whom the Most High has kept 
 unto the end of the days, who shall spring from the seed of 
 David, and shall come and speak unto them ... at the 
 first he shall set them alive for judgment; and when he hath 
 rebuked them he shall destroy them." (4 Ezra 12: 31-33. ) 
 
 "And it came to pass after seven days that I dreamed a 
 dream by night : and I beheld, and lo ! there arose a violent 
 wind from the sea, and stirred all its waves. And I beheld, 
 and lo ! the wind caused to come up out of the heart of the 
 seas as it were the form of a man. And I beheld, and lo ! 
 this Man flew with the clouds of heaven. And whenever he 
 turned his countenance to look, everything seen by him 
 trembled ; and whithersoever the voice went out of his mouth, 
 all that heard his voice melted away, as the wax melts 
 when it feels the fire. And after this I beheld, and lo ! there 
 was gathered together from the four winds of heaven an 
 innumerable multitude of men to make war against the Man 
 that came up out of the sea. And I beheld and lo ! he cut out 
 for himself a great mountain and flew up upon it. . . . And 
 lo ! when he saw the assault of the multitude as they came he 
 neither lifted his hand nor held spear nor any warlike weapon ; 
 but I saw only how he sent out of his mouth as it were a 
 fiery stream, and out of his lips a flaming breath, and out of 
 his tongue he shot forth a storm of sparks. And these were 
 all mingled together — the fiery stream, the flaming breath, 
 and the storm, and fell upon the assault of the multitude which 
 was prepared to fight and burned them all up." 
 
 (4 Ezra 13 : 1-11.) 
 
 "And I said : O Lord my Lord shew me this : wherefore 
 I have seen the Man coming up from the heart of the sea. 
 And he said unto me : Just as one can neither seek out nor 
 
144 APPENDIX 
 
 know what is in the deep of the sea, even so can no one upon 
 earth see my Son or those that are with him, but in the time 
 of his day." (4 Ezra 13:51-52.) 
 
 [The above passages may be found in their context in Vol. 
 II of the Oxford Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the O. T. 
 ed. Charles.] 
 
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