' I* ll.l.l.l.l.l.l.l.l.l.l.l.l.(.l.l.l.l.l.l,l.l.l.1.l.l.l.l.l.1.l.l.l.l.l.l,l.l.l.l.p.l.l.l.l.l.l.l.l.l.l.1.I.I.I.I.TTT7T Library of the pile SJivtnitg Scbool The Books of lfranft Cbamberlam porter Winkley Professor of Biblical Theology Cr7Trrirrir7rmTrTrr?riTrrrrrr7rr^ ^mmmm THE KINGDOM OF GOD. THE KINGDOM OF GOD; OK, CHRIST'S TEACHING ACCORDING TO THE SYNOPTICAL GOSPELS. ALEXANDER BALMAIN BRUCE, D.D., PROFESSOR OF SEW TESTAMENT EXEGESIS IN THE FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, GLASGOW; AUTHOR OP "THE TRAINING OF THE TWELVE," "THE HUMILIATION OF CHRIST," ETC. ETC. SCRIBNER & WELFORD, 743 and 745 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 1889. OLD STUDENTS GLASGOW FREE CHURCH COLLEGE A MEMORIAL OF HOURS SPENT IN THE STUDY OF THE WORDS OF CHRIST THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. The first ten of the fifteen chapters contained in this volume appeared a few years ago in the pages of the Monthly Interpreter. They have been carefully revised and brought down to date. The remaining five chapters, with the Introduction, appear here for the first time. This book is a first instalment of a projected work on the leading types of doctrine in the New Testament concerning the Good that came to the world through! Jesus Christ, whereof the plan is briefly outlined in the last section of the Introduction. A. B. BRUCE. Glasgow, September 1889. CONTENTS. CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. SECTION I. The sources, ii. Luke's variations, ... in. The motives of Luke's variations, iv. The synoptical type of doctrine, I'agi: 1 14 28 38 CHAPTER I. CHRIST S IDEA OF THE KINGDOM. Two opposed tendencies, ... Senses of the expression : The Kingdom of God, . Idea suggested by prophecy, . The mysteries of the kingdom, Words of grace, . . .... Effect of Christ's preaching, . . . . To whom Christ preached, ..... Significance of Christ's attitude towards social abjects, Sayings involving universalism, .... Sayings of apparently contrary import, . Spirituality of the kingdom : the kingdom of Heaven, The kingdom in outline, 4647 49 50 5153 54 55 56 58 59 CHAPTER II. Christ's attitude towards the mosaic law. Reticence of Christ, Think not I came to destroy, Destroying by fulfilling, Scale of moral worth, . Stiraws showing the stream of tendency, 6364656668 CONTENTS. PAfiE Silence concerning circumcision, . ..... 6° The things that defile, . . .69 The statute of divorce, . . • ' 1 The Sabbath, .... . • .72 Made for man, . . . / 4 Summary, . . . .... 79 The least in the kingdom greater than John, ... .80 John's doubt of Christ, ... . .82 Christ's method of working, ... .83 CHAPTER III. THE CONDITIONS OF ENTRANCE. Repent and believe, 85 Repentance as conceived by Christ and the Baptist, . 86 Repentance no arbitrary requirement, ... 89 Disciples called on to repent, ... 90 The cities of the plain, . 93 Faith the chief condition of admission, . . .94 Signifies a new departure, ..... 95 Christian universalism, 96 Typical narratives showing Christ's estimate of faith, 97 The woman who was a sinner, . . 97 The psychology of faith, . 100 The Roman centurion, . 101 The Syro-Phcenician "Woman, 103 "Faith Alone," . . 107 CHAPTER IV. CHRIST'S DOCTRINE OF GOD. The divine Father, .... . 109 The new element in Christ's idea, . . . . . .110- God's Fatherhood in relation to men in general, 111 The providential aspect, .... Ill The gracious aspect : parables in Luke xv. , . . .112 Universalism involved, .... . 114 God's Fatherhood in relation to disciples, . 114 The providential aspect, . . . 115 Value of Christ's doctrine on, . . ¦ 119 Parables of The Selfish Neighbour and The Unjust Judge, . . 120 The gracious aspect, ' . .122 Parable of The Blade, the Ear, and the Full Corn, . . 124 The Fatherhood of God still imperfectly comprehended, . 127 CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER V. CHRIST S DOCTRINE OF MAN. The doctrines of God and of man ever kindred, .... Significance of Chiist's attitude towards the poor and the depraved, : Immortality, . . . .... Social salvation, ... Ideal and reality, .... .... Human depravity in Christ's teaching and in scholastic theology, The "Lost," .... . . . Zacchseus, .... The lost sheep of the house of Israel, True and false holiness, ...... Why Christ addressed Himself to the humbler classes, The Two Debtors, The Lost Sheep and the " Lapsed Masses, " The people of the land, .... ... PAGK 128 129 131 132 133 134136137 138 140142 143143 145 CHAPTER VI. THE RELATION OF JESUS TO MESSIANIC HOPES AND FUNCTIONS. Had Jesus a Messianic idea ? His idea a transformed one, Its nature, .... He claimed to be this Messiah, The proof, . Genesis of Christ's Messianic consciousness, . Did Jesus ever doubt His Messiahship ? Aids to faith in His Messianic vocation, His Messianic consciousness free from ambition, 148 149150 153153158161 162164 CHAPTER VII. THE SON OF MAN AND THE SON OF GOD. Was the Son of Man a current Messianic title ? Its use in the Book of Enoch, Old Testament source of the title, Its use in the Gospels, The texts classified, The unprivileged man, 166167169171 172 172 XII CONTENTS. The sympathetic man, ... The apocalyptic aspect, ... Future glory and present humiliation, An incognito, .... . . The title Son of God, . . .... The official sense, .... The ethical sense, .... The filial consciousness of Jesus analysed, . The metaphysical sense, ...... The two titles in relation to the doctrine of the kingdom, PAGE 173174175 177 178178 179 180 184 186 CHAPTER VIII. THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE KINGDOM — NEGATIVE ASPECT. Criticism an inevitable task for the Christ, . . . 187 The task faithfully performed, .... . . 188 Yet temperately, ... ..... 189 And with discrimination, . 190 Origin of Rabbinism, .... . 191 The process of degeneracy, . . . 192 Examples of fencing the law, . . .193 Multiplication of rules, . . . 194 Arts of evasion, .... . 196 The Sabbath laws : Erubin, ... 197 Neglect of the great commandments, . . . . 198 Externalism, ... . 1 99 Spiritual vices of Rabbinism, ..... . 200' Pharisaic righteousness outside the kingdom, . . . 203 The strait gate and the narrow way, . . ... 205 CHAPTER IX. THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE KINGDOM — POSITIVE ASPECT. The righteousness of God : its contents, Right thoughts of God, The rabbinical God, .... Perfect as the Father in heaven, . Filial righteousness : characteristics, . Righteousness of discipleship, Imitation of Christ, .... Righteousness of citizenship, Parables of The Treasure and The Pearl, The throe aspirants 207 208209211213217 219 221 222222 CONTENTS. xm Perfection, . . ... Parable of Extra Service, Parable of The Labourers in the Vineyard, General reflections PAGE 223225 226226 CHAPTER X. THE DEATH OF JESUS AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. The doctrine of the cross, .... 231 First lesson : for righteousness' sake, . 231 Second lesson : for the unrighteous, 235 A ransom for the many, .... 236 The temple-tax, 239 Third lesson : dies in love to men, 243 Mary of Bethany, ..... 244 The wastefulness of love, .... 245 Fourth lesson : for the remission of sins, 246 The new covenant, 247 The new era, 249 Characteristics 250 The Holy Supper, ..... 251 CHAPTER XI. THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH. The kingdom of God an ideal craving embodiment. The choice of the twelve, .... "My Church," . . . . . Election, how to be understood, . The sacraments : Baptism, The Trinitarian formula, .... The Holy Spirit in Christ's teaching, . The nature of the Church, .... On this rock : Peter The Church Christian, .... The Church and the kingdom, The righteousness of the kingdom realized therein Training of the apostles, .... Christ's promise and prophecy conditional, Is the Church a failure ? . . . . 252 253254 256 257 258259 260261262 264 266268271271 XIV CONTENTS. CHAPTER XII. THE PAROUSIA AND THE CHRISTIAN ERA. PAGE Conflicting texts, ....... . 273 A lengthened history anticipated by Christ, . 274 Parables of Growth, . . . . ¦ 275 A delayed Parousia, . . . . 276 Exhortations to Watch, . . 278 Parable of The Upper Servant, . . . 278 A Gentile day of grace, . 280 The times of the Gentiles, . . 283 The other class of texts, . . . . 284 The coming of the Son of Man, . 285 Three kinds of coming, ... . 287 The eschatological discourse, . . 288 Of that day knoweth no one, . . . 289 Variations in synoptical reports, . ... 291 CHAPTER XIII. THE HISTORY OF THE KINGDOM IN OUTLINE. Chequered character of the history, . . . 293 Optimistic parables : Mustard Seed and Leaven, . . 294 The reverse side : parable of The Sower, . 294 Parable of The Tares and The Drag Net, . . . 296 Parable of The Children in the Market-place, 299 Parable of The Great Supper, . . 300 Rejection of the Jews : relative parables, . 302 Christ's predictions of His resurrection, . . 304 Their meaning, . 305 " Destroy this temple, " 306 Import of the saying, . . . 307 CHAPTER XIV. THE END. The ideal will be realized, . ... 311 Purity by separation, . . . . 312 Three judgment programmes, . . . 312 Judgment of Christendom, . 312 Judgment of antichristendom, ... . . 313 Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, . .... 314 CONTENTS. XV PAGE Judgment of heathendom, ... 315 This judgment purely ethical, . 317 " Eternal " punishment, . . 318 Eternal sin, . 319 The everlasting fire not prepared for man, . . 321 Christ's doctrine of election, ... . 322 Rewards and punishments, . . 323 Judgment according to natural law, . . . 325 Pictorial representations of eternal states, . . . 326 The true object of dread . 327 CHAPTER XV. TEE CHRISTIANITY OF CHRIST. "Back to Christ," . ... 328 The Christian revival, 331 Gospellers, ... . • 331 The Shorter Catechism, . . 333 A Christian primer, . ... . 334 Church creeds : what to do with them, 335 Reunion • • 337 New apologetic, ... . • 339 Can we know Christ ? . . .340 Index, .... . • 342 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. SECTION I. THE SOURCES. The first three Gospels, from their homogeneous character called synoptical, differ widely from the fourth; as in other respects, so also and very specially, in the account which they give of our Lord's teaching. And there can be little doubt that, as compared with the fourth Gospel, the synoptical Gospels present that teaching in its original form. To the question, What did Christ really teach ? What were the very words He spoke ? the answer must be sought in the first place from them. Their reports are more " indisputably apostolic in their ultimate source, and to all appearance much less influenced by reflection on the part of the writers. But the question may be raised, even in reference to the Synoptists, whether they can be regarded as giving a perfectly trustworthy report of the sayings of Jesus. Even if they did not, their report of these sayings would still form an interesting subject of study. But it is obviously important to know how far the best sources A 2 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. extant are reliable ; for the supreme desire of all Christians is to know exactly the mind of the Master. It would inspire great confidence in the synoptical records to be assured that they were compiled by certain of the men who "had been with Jesus." These men were eye and ear witnesses of Christ's ministry; they knew much if not all that He said and did, and they could be trusted to tell honestly and with substantial accuracy what they knew. But there is no sufficient evidence that any one of the first three Gospels, in the form in which we have them, proceeded from the hand of an apostle. The most that can be said is, that their reports are based on apostolic traditions, preserved either orally or in written form. That these traditions, originating ultimately, without doubt, in apostolic preaching, had, before our Gospels were written, assumed a comparatively stereotyped form, is apparent from the extensive resemblance in the synop tical accounts both in substance and in style. The literary relations subsisting between these Gospels are such as to make it probable, if not certain, that written accounts of Christ's words and deeds were pre viously in existence, and were accessible to the evan gelists. From the preface to the third Gospel, it may be inferred that there had been considerable activity in the production of such accounts, and that at the time Luke wrote, evangelic collections had been multiplied to such an extent, as to create embarrassment to one who aimed at giving in moderate compass a full narrative of the more important facts in the life of Jesus. How many documents Luke used in the compilation CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 3 of his Gospel cannot be known ; but two sources, at least, of outstanding importance, seem to have been at his command, and to have supplied the main body of his narrative — one a collection of sayings, the other a collec tion of narrations similar in contents to the second Gospel. By a comparison of his Gospel with the other two, the inference is suggested that these two sources form the basis of all three synoptical Gospels. Whether we should identify the collection of narrations with the Gospel of Mark, or distinguish it therefrom as an original Mark, is a question on which critics are divided ; but there is general agreement of opinion as to a book similar in contents to Mark forming the basis of the common matter of the first three Gospels relating to the deeds of Jesus. Whether, again, the collection of sayings used by Luke was identical in contents and form with that used by the first evangelist, is a matter of dispute ; but the extensive similarity between the first and third Gospels in their respective reports of Christ's sayings, leaves little room for doubt that they either drew from one source, or from sources so kindred in character as to suggest the conjecture that they were different editions of the same original writing, formed under different influences. Recent criticism recognises in these two sources of the synoptical tradition the " Mark " and " Matthew " of Papias, — the former either to be identified with the canonical Mark, or to be regarded as its original, and resting on the preaching of Peter as its ultimate autho rity; the latter written by the Apostle Matthew, and forming the basis of the canonical Matthew. Critics differ in their interpretations of the statement of Papias 4 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. as to the character and contents of the two sources, some contending, e.g., that the book of Logia, said to have been compiled by Matthew, contained nothing but sayings, while others argue that it must at least have contained such brief narratives as were necessary to make the sayings intelligible. In like manner it is disputed whether Mark consisted only of narrations, or did not in its original form contain more of Christ's words than are found in canonical Mark, e.g. the Sermon on the Mount.1 But we shall not err greatly if we say that the two sources differed in their characteristics at least : the one being predominantly a collection of sayings, the other chiefly a collection of narrations. What mainly interests us is the collection of Logia. What would one not give to have that book which the Apostle Matthew wrote, just as he wrote it ! But the wish is idle ; the only course open to us is to make ourselves acquainted with its contents at second-hand through the writings of the two evangelists, who have drawn so freely from it, comparing their reports one with another so as to arrive at a probable conclusion as to the original form of the sayings recorded. Attempts have been made to reconstruct the Logia from the synoptical Gospels;2 but such attempts can be little more than ingenious conjectures. We cannot at this date resurrec- 1 For information as to the present state of opinion on these questions, readers may consult the Introductions to the New Testament by Weiss and Holtzmann. Weiss thinks the main source of apostolic tradition was the Logia, which he thinks contained many , narrations as well as sayings ; Holtzmann contends for an Urmarkus / as the main source. 2 Vide Wendt's Die Lehre Jesu, Erster Theil. CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 5 tionize a lost apostolic document ; all that is possible for us is to make ourselves acquainted with extant reports of our Lord's words, and when these vary, to do our best to determine which version is primary and which secondary. It does not take long study of the first and third Gospels to be satisfied that if their authors did really use a common source in reporting the words of Jesus, they have made respectively a very different use of it. It is, indeed, not easy to understand how such diversity could exist in reports based on the same document. Compare, e.g., the two reports of the Sermon on the Mount. How strangely divergent on the whole, and yet too similar in detail to admit of any doubt that they are different versions of the same discourse. One of two inferences is inevitable. Either one of the reporters (or possibly both) has taken considerable liberties with the source, or the source existed in different recensions, arising in different circles, and under different influences. Either supposition is possible ; in either case the causes producing the diversity might be to a large extent the same, only operating in different ways. In case the variations were due to the evangelists, we should have to acknowledge the action to a considerable extent of editorial intention, guided by possibly ascertainable motives. If, on the other hand, the variations arose gradually in copies of the Logia in the possession of different persons, before they came under the eye of the evangelists, then we may conceive them creeping in insensibly under the action of motives of which the agents in producing variation were hardly conscious. 6 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. The latter view is adopted by Weizsacker in his recently published work on The Apostolic Age. His idea of the matter is to this effect. Collections of Christ's sayings began to be formed, not in a historical spirit, but simply to meet the practical needs of disciples desirous of guidance in life. It was recorded that on this point and on that the Master spoke thus and thus. Thus groups of sayings arose, ever increasing as time went on. But the purpose aimed at not being the preparation of an exact historical record, but the instruc tion of the faithful, comments, glosses, explanations grew up simultaneously, and gradually became mixed with the words of the Lord. " The tradition was from the first not mere repetition, but was bound up with creative activity. And, as was natural, this activity increased in course of time. Explanations became text. The single word became multiplied with the multitude of its appli cations, or the words were connected with a definite occasion and shaped to suit it." 1 In this way, according to this writer, many, if not all, the variations in the reports of Christ's words are to be accounted for. The conscious editorial activity of the evangelists he seems inclined to reduce to a minimum. For the wide divergence of Luke's report of the Sermon on the Mount from that of Matthew, he is not disposed to make the evangelist responsible. He is of opinion that Luke found the Sermon in that form in his source. Even the Pauline, universalistic, element in Luke's Gospel he seems willing to impute not to Luke personally, but to the spirit of a school within Palestine 1 Das Apostolische Zeitalter, S. 406. CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 7 and the Jewish Church, originating in the influence of such men as Stephen and Barnabas. It is the product and witness of a universalism independent of Paul within the bosom of Hebrew Christianity. This new view is certainly a great improvement on the tendency-criticism of the Tubingen school, headed by Baur, and it probably contains a large amount of truth. In the way indicated arose, in all likelihood, variations in the reports of Christ's sayings which were a datum for the evangelists. But it is not at all unlikely that a certain number of the existing variations are due to the evangelists themselves. It is a nowise inad missible supposition, that they so far exercised their discretion in the use of their sources as to make the material serviceable to the edification of those for whose special benefit they wrote — acting not in a spirit of licence, but with the freedom of men who believed that it was more important that their readers should get a true impression of Christ than that they should know the ipsissima verba of His sayings. Thus may be accounted for alterations of words and phrases occur ring in the documents, and omissions of material found there not deemed suitable for his purpose by the com piler. To take one or two examples. In Luke's version of the Sermon on the Mount there are two verbal varia tions from Matthew's text : the substitution of %a/tw (thanks, grace) for iahtBo? in the saying : " If ye love them which love you, what reward have ye ? " 1 and of ol/cTipfioves (merciful) for leKeioi, in the saying : " Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father which is in heaven 1 Matt. v. 46 ; Luke vi. 32. 8 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. is perfect." 1 Assuming that the sayings stood in Luke's source the same as in Matthew's, we can easily conceive him making these changes to remove an element of apparent legalism from our Lord's utterances, and to bring them into more complete harmony with evangelic, or Pauline, habits of thought and expression. It is noticeable that Luke introduces the word %ap<9 no less than three times in the passage referred to, as if he took pleasure in repeating this watchword of Pauline theology. Of course these changes might have been made before Luke wrote, and his function at this point may have been merely to transcribe ; but the other alternative, that he made the alterations for the reason assigned, is at least equally probable. The very significant and characteristic word of Jesus, " I came not to call the righteous but sinners," appears in Luke's Gospel with the addition " unto repentance." 2 This may have been an explanatory gloss that had crept- into the text used by the evangelist, but it may quite as well have been a change made by him to render the meaning clear, and possibly to guard against the mis construction that Christ invited sinners to the Kingdom of heaven without repentance. Not only alterations but omissions might be made out of regard to edification. The story of the Syro-Phenician woman does not occur in Luke's Gospel. It by no means follows from this that he was ignorant of it, or that it was missing in his sources. He may have left it out to avoid the risk of scandalizing Gentile readers by the appearance therein of a grudging attitude on the 1 Matt. v. 48 ; Luke vi. 36. 2 Matt. ix. 13 ; Luke v. 32. CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 9 part of Jesus towards the Pagan world. Other omissions might be due not to any fear of wrong impressions being made, but simply to the consideration that the matters omitted were not of special interest or concern to - the first readers. Thus may be accounted for the absence from Luke's narrative of many sections relating to Christ's conflict with Pharisaism. In a roundabout way, a regard to edification might explain yet another class of omissions from the third Gospel: viz. duplicate incidents, such as the second feeding of the multitude, and the second storm on the lake. By such omissions we may conceive Luke making room for important matter peculiar to his Gospel, his desire being to intro duce this new matter without unduly extending his narrative ; for all inspired writers seem to have sensitively shrunk from being tedious, knowing that the feeling of weariness is fatal to edification. These instances may suffice to show how an evangelist might with perfect loyalty and a good conscience exercise an editorial discretion in the use of sources. But the point of importance for us is not in what way variations arose, but the fact that they exist, and the question which of the varying reports comes nearer to the original. This resolves itself largely into a question as to the relative merits of Matthew's and Luke's reports of our Lord's sayings in point of exactness. The question is not altogether a simple one. In some cases the evidence seems to be in favour of one evangelist, in other cases the balance inclines towards the other. Thus one can have little hesitation in pronouncing in favour of Matthew's form of the saying, "I came not to call 10 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. the righteous ; " whereas on the other hand in the case of the saying, " Seek ye first the kingdom of God " (Matt. vi. 33 ; Luke xii. 31), the critical decision gives the preference to the simple brief form of Luke, " But rather seek ye the kingdom of God," regarding the clause " and His righteousness " in Matthew as an added gloss, designed to bring the counsel into correspondence with the drift of the whole discourse, which is to contrast the righteous ness of God with the righteousness of the scribes.1 There are cases even in which in the same narrative the pro babilities are on opposite sides. Thus comparing Luke's report of the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount with Matthew's, one is inclined to give his form of the " macarisms : " " Blessed be ye poor, Blessed are ye that hunger, Blessed are ye that weep," — the preference on account of their brevity; but, on the other hand, the " woes " which he appends to them seem out of keeping with the spirit of the discourse, and rather inferences from the words spo*ken by Jesus, than sayings actually uttered by Him. On the whole, the evidence, by the general confession of critics, is in favour of the comparative originality of Matthew's reports.2 Thus reverting to the Sermon on the 1 So Weiss (Das Matthaus-Evangelium) and Wendt, Die Lehre Jesu, S. 117. The ultimate decision of the question depends on the view we take as to the original form of the Sermon. If Christ discoursed on righteousness as Matthew reports, it would be quite natural that He should give the above counsel as it appears in the first Gospel. I hesitate to give my assent to the opinion of Weiss and Wendt. 2 From this view Pfleiderer, in his recent work Das Urchristenthum (1887), decidedly dissents. In his whole views of the Gospels, and their relation to each other, as set forth in this work, he departs widely from the general current of critical opinion. " Mark " he CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 11 Mount, the two substitutions above referred to (%a/w for /Ltttr^d?, and ol/cTipfiwv for reXeios) wear the aspect of an attempt to replace difficult expressions by words of simpler meaning, just because their sense is less obvious. Matthew's phrases are to be regarded as the more original. Another point may be noted here: the less frequent use of the title " Father '' for God in Luke's Gospel, as compared with Matthew's. Thus for the expression " the children of your Father which is in heaven " (Matt. v. 45), Luke gives " the children of the Highest" (vi. 35); and for Matthew's "your heavenly Father feedeth them" (the birds, vi. 26), Luke has the colder " God feedeth them " (xii. 24). The change seems due to a desire to restrict the Fatherhood of God within the spiritual sphere, ignoring the general aspect of Divine Paternity revealed in ordinary Providence. There can be little doubt that the broader presentation of the first evangelist is truer to the style of the Master, and that Jesus saw in the sunshine and in the rain a revelation of regards as the earliest Gospel — the first attempt to present the gospel of Jesus, as the Christ which Paul had preached as a theological doctrine, in the form of a history, written under the influence of the great apostle whose scholar the author probably was (S. 360). " Luke " comes second ; it is based on " Mark," and contains additions due not so much to other historical sources as to the literary genius of the writer, who also was much under Paul's influence (S. 417). " Matthew " was the latest, originating some time after the beginning of the second century. It is throughout dependent on " Mark" and " Luke," and is a harmonizing combina tion of the two in a, Churchly interest, written by a man who was imbued with the spirit of the old Catholic Church : universalistic yet not Pauline, rather neonomian (S. 479, 493). In comparison with " Luke," the words ascribed to our Lord in " Matthew " are held to be for the most part secondary. 12 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. God's paternal love to all, not less than in the com munication of His Holy Spirit a revelation of the same love to the citizens of His kingdom. The restriction is made in the interest of edification, that the faithful might value more God's special love to them ; neverthe less it is a narrowing of the great doctrine of God's Fatherhood, as taught by Christ. The epilogue of the Sermon on the Mount as given by Luke is manifestly secondary. One can trace throughout the hand of an editor modifying, expounding, abbreviating, all with a view to general edification. For Matthew's " Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine," suited to the original hearers, Luke has " Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings" adapted to the case of all disciples, and to the whole of Christ's teaching. In Luke's version the diverse action of the two builders to whom hearers of different characters are compared, in reference to the foundation of the house, is very carefully described. The one builder is represented as digging- deep till he came to the rock, while the other is repre sented as beginning to build on the surface, without a foundation. This is a useful commentary on the Speaker's words as reported in the first Gospel, but it is a com mentary, not an exact report. The description of the oncome of the storm that was to try the two houses is very graphic in Matthew. " Descended the rain, came the floods, blew the winds : " this is in the impassioned style natural to one winding up an impressive, solemn discourse. The eloquence disappears in Luke's narrative, and for it we have simply the prosaic statement : " When a flood arose, the stream dashed against the house." CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 13 The discourses of Jesus, as reported by Matthew, both in substance and in style, correspond to the actual cir cumstances in which the Speaker was placed : they recall the world of Judea as it existed in the days of our Lord. On the other hand, as reported by Luke, these discourses seem to be adapted to the circumstances and needs of a somewhat later time, that of the Apostolic Church. Critics may have carried this distinction too far, and discovered traces of it where they are not to be found ; but, as a general observation, the statement just made is beyond doubt. The badge of the apostolic age, and the proof that its needs and modes of thought influenced the compiler of the third Gospel, may be found in the frequent use of the two phrases " the Lord " and " the apostles" in narratives where "Jesus" and "the disciples" are the expressions used by the other Synoptists.1 The Great Teacher is the Lord of the Church, and the writer reports His sayings in forms deemed best fitted for the instruction of its members. The " disciples " of a bygone time are now the apostles, and the lessons they received from the Master are conceived of as the training which fitted them for their high position, and are reported from that point of view. Thus, for example, in narrating the institution of the Holy Supper, Luke states that " when the hour was come He sat down, and the twelve apostles with Him." He thinks of them as getting their lesson how to celebrate the sacred rite commemorative of the Lord's redeeming death. 1 The remark applies specially to the latter of the two phrases. For examples of its use vide Luke vi. 13 ; ix. 10 ; xvii. 5 ; xxii. 14. The title " Lord " occurs chiefly in sections peculiar to Luke ; vide x. 1 ; xi. 39 ; xii. 42 ; xiii. 15 ; xvii. 5 ; xviii. 6. 14 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. Assuming the comparative originality of Matthew's report as established, it may be worth while to form an approximate idea of' the character and extent of Luke's variations, as also to consider more fully the influences or motives to which they probably owe their origin. These will be the subjects of inquiry in the two following sections. SECTION II. LUKE S VARIATIONS. The phenomena of variation in Luke's report of our Lord's words, as compared with Matthew's, may be classed under three heads : modifications, omissions, and additions. Besides these, there are well-known and broadly marked differences between the two evangelists in the grouping and setting of sayings ; the general fact here being that Matthew's habit is to collect into large masses sayings of kindred import, while Luke's is to disperse the material of these collections over his pages, assigning to the dissociated utterances distinct occasions. This diversity of treatment in some instances has a by no means unimportant influence on the sense ; nevertheless, it is not proposed to take any further notice of it here, beyond making the remark that it is obviously incumbent on the interpreter to be on his guard against laying too much stress on supposed historical connection. In certain cases the occasions on which sayings were uttered can be definitely ascertained, and in all such cases the most should be made of the setting to illustrate the meaning of the word. But there are instances not a few, especially in the long section of Luke's Gospel, ix. 51- CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 1 5 xviii. 14, in which to lay emphasis on the occasion would be to follow a misleading guidance. The evan gelist found valuable materials in his sources, whose exact place in the history was not known, and he introduced them into his narrative where it seemed expedient, and with such preface as the contents suggested. I. We have to notice, then, in the first place, Luke's modifications. These occur wherever a saying of Christ found in both Gospels (we leave Mark out of account), in terms so similar on the whole as to put the identity beyond doubt, is given in the third Gospel with more or less variation in the expression. Such modifications are too numerous to be exhaustively indicated here ; all that can be done is to give a selection of samples with tenta tive notes suggesting possible motives for variation. The instances which have been already alluded to in the previous section are omitted. 1. Luke viii. 12 compared with Matthew xiii. 19. Of the wayside hearer Jesus, according to Matthew, said : When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one (o Trovr]p6<;), and snatcheth away that which hath been sown in the heart. Luke reports the saying with minor variations, and appends this significant addition: lest they should believe and be saved. This looks like a gloss, stating in current Pauline or Apostolic Church phraseology the end contemplated in the preaching of the word. 2. Luke viii. 21 compared with Matthew xiii. 50 (Mark iii. 35). To those who informed Him of the desires of His relatives to see Him, Jesus, according to Matthew, replied : Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which 16 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. is in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother. Mark has the will of God, a minor variation. But in Luke occurs the major modification : " my mother and my brethren are those which hear the word of God and do it." "Word" takes the place of "will," and the spiritual brotherhood of Christ are described by a phrase which sounds secondary and stereotyped : " Those who hear the word." It recurs again and again in Luke's Gospel. Mary sat at the feet of Jesus and heard His word (x. 39). To the woman in the crowd who ex claimed : " Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the breasts which Thou didst suck ! " Jesus replies : " Yea, rather blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it" (xi. 28). The substitution of "word" for "will" makes Christ's saying concerning His brethren more evan gelical, and brings it more into line with the phrase ology current among believers in the apostolic age. 3. Luke ix. 18-27 compared with Matthew xvi. 13-28 (Mark viii. 27-ix. 1). There are several points at which Luke's narrative appears secondary as compared with Matthew's. For Matthew's form of Peter's confession: Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, Luke has the tame expression : the Christ of God ; what was for the disciple a great originality, uttered with passionate vehe mence, having become in the circle for which Luke writes, or from which his version emanated, a commonplace. In the saying concerning cross-bearing : If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me, Luke inserts " daily " (icaO' ^/xepav) after the cross, which seems a gloss intended to adapt the counsel to the facts of spiritual experience. In the final CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 17 prediction that some of those present with the speaker would live to see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom, this vivid concrete form of expression is replaced in Luke's text by the vague general phrase : till they see the kingdom of God. There can be little doubt as to which is the more original version ; there may be some doubt as to the motive of the change. 4. Luke xi. 13 compared with Matt vii. 11. The saying is : If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children; how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things (ayaOa.) to them that ask Him? Luke retains the "good gifts" (Softara ayada) of the first clause, but in place of the " good things " of the second he puts the " Holy Spirit " (-jrvevfia ayiov), God's best gift, the gift the children of the kingdom most desire, the gift of which so frequent mention is made in the Pauline Epistles, though it is referred to but seldom in the synoptical record of Christ's teaching. There is nothing to be said against the substitution, except that it is in all probability a comment on what Christ said, rather than an exact report of His precise words. 5. Luke xi. 20 compared with Matt. xii. 28. In the discourse in which He defended Himself against the blasphemous suggestion of the Pharisees that He cast out devils by the aid of Beelzebub, Jesus, as reported by Matthew, says : If I by the Spirit of God (iv irvevpart 0eov) cast out the devils, then the kingdom of God is come unto you. For " by the Spirit of God " Luke reads " by the finger of God " (eV Sa/ervXp 0eov). Matthew's version is obviously more in keeping with the connection of thought, as it offers a defence of Christ's moral character, B 18 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. assailed by the charge of being in league with Satan. Luke's form of the saying gives prominence to Christ's claim to be in possession of miraculous power, which, however well founded, was not the point requiring to be insisted on. It seems, however, to have been one of the points which the evangelist desired to make conspicuous in his narrative. It is observable in his reports of miraculous incidents that he is ever careful to bring out two features — the power and the benevolence of Jesus. The power he magnifies by specifying particulars tending to show the aggravated character of the disease healed. Peter's mother-in-law is taken with a great fever (iv. 38), the leper is full of leprosy (v. 12), the blind man at Jericho needs to be conducted to Jesus (xviii. 40, "Jesus stood and commanded him to be brought unto Him"). These heightening phrases are not necessarily exaggera tions of the fact, but they reveal a desire to make the most of the fact as a foil to the power of Christ. The benevolence of the Saviour, Luke signalizes by specifying particulars tending to show the greatness of the calamity from which He delivers, as when he mentions that the subject of a miracle is an only child (widow's son, vii. 12; Jairus' daughter, viii. 30 ; epileptic boy, ix. 47), or that the withered hand cured on the Sabbath day was the right one, the hand by which the man earned his bread (vi. 6). 6. Certain modifications seem to have sprung out of a desire to tone down the severity of Christ's sayings. The following are instances : Luke ix. 60 : "Let the dead bury their dead, but go thou and pi-each the kingdom of God" compared with Matthew's : " Follow Me, and let the CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 19 dead bury their dead." A special vocation and the urgent claims of the kingdom justify neglect of ordinary duties. Luke xvii. 2 : "It were better for him (through whom offences come) that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones." How tame compared with Matthew's : " It were better for him that a millstone turned by an ass (/tuXo? ovucos, larger than one worked by the hand, — Luke's phrase is \t'0o? /uu7u/eo?) were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea " (iv to> ireKdyei t?5? 6a\dcrar] message to proclaim that would help men to be good and happy. Therefore He was glad and hopeful, and all who came near Him felt His presence as a warm summer sun. Another significant indication of the nature of the kingdom Jesus preached may be found in the kind of people to whom He principally and by preference addressed His invitations to enter. He preached the gospel of the kingdom to the poor ; 1 He defined His mission by such sayings as these : " I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners ; " 2 " the Son of Man is come to seek and to save the lost." 3 He threw the gates of the kingdom open to all comers irrespective of ante cedent character, even if they had been really as bad as the Pharisees deemed those whom they branded as "publicans and sinners." Many morally disreputable persons responded to His call. This fact was in His view when He uttered the remarkable saying : " From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force." 4 Publicans, sinners, harlots, the moral refuse of soeiety, — such were the persons who in greatest numbers and with greatest earnestness pressed into the kingdom, — 1 Matt. xi. 5. 2 Matt. ix. 13. 8 Luke xix. 10. A Matt. xi. 12. Some take the statement in a bad sense, as im plying that the people were seeking the kingdom in a worldly spirit, bent on setting up a political kingdom, irrrespective of ethical conditions. This view is unsuitable to the connection of thought. 54 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. a phenomenon astonishing to reputable, "righteous," religious people. The kingdom of God was being made a cave of Adullam, whither every one that was in distress or deep in moral debt resorted. The city of God was being taken possession of by " dogs," whose proper place was without ; it was, as it were, being stormed by rude, lawless bands, and taken from those who thought they had an exclusive right to it. What a violence ! what a profanation ! Perhaps so ; but one thing is clear : those persons who by their passionate earnestness were storming the kingdom would not suppose that they had any right to it. They listened to Christ's call, because they gathered from His preaching that the kingdom was a gift of grace, meant, in fact, God's sovereign, unmerited love to unworthy men, blessing them with pardon, and so gaining power over their hearts. And they felt that it did gain power, and that the dominion was real. Forgiven much, they loved much. Christ also was aware of the fact, and that was one of His reasons for seeking citizens of the kingdom in such a quarter ; and that He did seek them there, for such a reason, shows very plainly what His k idea of the kingdom was : a kingdom of grace in order to \be a kingdom of holiness. The attitude of Jesus towards the social abjects is in many ways significant. It implies, as we shall see, a new i idea of man ; but what I wish now to point out is the tendency it indicates towards universalism. This part of Christ's public action, as the records show, created much surprise, and provoked frequent censure. This is not to be wondered at. It really meant an incipient religious revolution. It manifested a disregard for conventional CHRIST S IDEA OF THE KINGDOM. 55 social distinctions, involving a principle which might one day be applied on a much wider scale, in the form, viz., of a disregard of distinctions not merely between classes within the bounds of the chosen people, but between races and nations ; Jew and Gentile being treated as one, both needing salvation, neither having any claim to it, and the Gentile being not less capable of it than the Jew. In maintaining sympathetic relations with the " publicans and sinners," Jesus said in effect : " The kingdom is for them too ; it is for all who need it and make it welcome. It opens its gates, like ancient Rome, to all comers, on condition that they conduct themselves as good citizens, once they are within its walls. From east, west, north, south, let them come ; they shall not be refused admit tance." The jealous guardians of Jewish prerogative did well, therefore, to take alarm at this novel interest in the lost sheep of Israel, whom they themselves had abandoned to their fate. The universalistie drift revealed in Christ's love for the low and lowly found expression in many of His words. I refer to such as these : " Ye are the salt of the earth ; " " ye are the light of the world ; " " the field is the world." x The human race is regarded as the subject of the salting and enlightening influence of the children of the kingdom, and the field to be sown with the word of the kingdom ; so that we are not surprised to find one 1 Of course it is open to criticism to raise doubts as to the genuineness of such sayings. Weiss thinks the interpretation of the parable of the Tares, in which the last of the above sayings occurs (Matt. xiii. 38), does not proceed from Christ ; and one of his argu ments is, that He could not have said so absolutely " the field is the world." Vide his Matthaus-Evangelium, in loc. 56 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. Gospel closing with the injunction from the Master to His disciples : " Go ye therefore, and teach all nations ; " and another with a similar command : " Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to the whole creation." There is a width of horizon in such utterances that is totally irreconcilable with the hypothesis that Jesus was merely a patriotic Jew, whose sympathies as well as His work were confined to His countrymen, and whose aim was to make Israel first a righteous nation, and then a free, prosperous kingdom. But we may be reminded that there are things in the Gospels pointing in a contrary direction, which imply either that Christ's teaching and action were not self- consistent, or that the evangelists do not give us a reliable record of His ministry. They are such as these : the refusal of Jesus to grant the prayer of the woman of Canaan, on the ground that His mission was to Israel ; the exclusion of Samaria from the sphere of the mission on which the twelve were sent ; and such apparently contemptuous expressions towards pagans as those in the Sermon on the Mount : " When ye pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen do," " after all these things do the Gentiles seek ; " the still more offensive term " dogs " employed with the same reference in the inter view with the Syro-Phoenician ; and the direction given to the future ministers of the kingdom to treat an obstinately impenitent offender " as an heathen man and a publican." It is not a very formidable array of counter-evidence. When Jesus said : " I am not sent save to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," He did certainly speak seriously. He did regard Himself, in His individual capacity, as CHRIST'S IDEA OF THE KINGDOM. 57 a messenger of God to the Jewish nation exclusively, unless when good cause could be shown for making an exception. But that is a very different thing from regarding the kingdom of God, in its essential nature and ultimate destination, as a matter in which Jews alone had any interest. Assuming that the kingdom was destined to universality, it might still be the wisest method for founding a universal, spiritual monarchy to begin by securing a footing within the boundaries of the elect people ; and that could be done only by one who devoted his whole mind to it," determined not to be turned aside by outside opportunities, however tempting, or by random sympathies, however keen, with sin and misery, beyond the Jewish pale. The utterance in ques tion only shows the thoroughly disciplined spirit of Jesus in abiding at His own appointed post. As He was willing to be the corn of wheat cast into the ground to die, that through death there might be great increase, so He was willing to be God's minister to the Jews, as the best preparation for a future ministry among the Gentiles. The other particulars above referred to hardly need explanation. The direction given to the disciples not to go to the Samaritans is sufficiently explained by their spiritual immaturity. The two allusions to pagan prac tice in prayer have no animus in them : they are simple statements of fact brought in to illustrate the speaker's meaning. There is certainly an animus in the term " dogs," but it is not an animus of hatred. It was used to experiment on the spirit of the person addressed. One who really hated the Gentiles would neither have taken the trouble to make the experiment, nor been so 58 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. gratified with the result. As for the saying last quoted, the possibility of misapprehension is precluded by the familiar facts of Christ's personal history. We know what the publicans were to Him ; and if He felt towards the heathen in like manner, they were to Him objects not of aversion or contempt, but of humane, yearning compassion. One fact more I mention, as surely indicating the spiritual character of the kingdom Jesus preached. It is the alternative name for the kingdom of frequent occurrence in the first GospeL Mark and Luke call it the kingdom of God. Matthew almost uniformly calls it the kingdom of heaven. The expression suggests the thought that the kingdom is an ideal hovering over all actual societies, civil or sacred, like Plato's Republic, to be found realized in perfection nowhere on this earth, the true home of which is in the supersensible world.1 In all probability, the title was used alternatively by Jesus for the express purpose of lifting the minds of the Jewish people into a higher region of thought than that in which their present hopes as members of the theocratic nation moved ; just as, in addressing censors of His con duct in associating with publicans and sinners, He spoke of the joy in heaven over a sinner repenting to gain an entrance into their minds for the conception of a love in His own heart whereof as yet they had not so much as dreamed. There is no reason to doubt that the phrase belonged to the vocabulary of Jesus, though a writer already quoted confidently affirms that it cannot have belonged to the apostolic tradition, in other words, was 1 So Baur. CHRIST'S IDEA OF THE KINGDOM. 59 not employed by Christ.1 The opinion carries no weight, for it is a mere assertion, but it is very interesting as an indirect testimony on the part of its author that the designation in question does not fit well into his theory as to the nature of the kingdom Jesus proposed to found. The argument is: "The kingdom was to be the fulfilment of theocratic hopes, therefore it cannot have been called by Jesus the kingdom of heaven. That name must have come in when the hope of a restored kingdom of Israel was seen to be a dream." Strange that this unhistorical name should occur in the first Gospel, the most theocratic of all the four ! It would be a mistake to suppose that, in using this name, Jesus meant to banish the kingdom from earth to the skies, from this present life to the future world. As He presented it, it was very lofty in nature, yet near men, yea in their very hearts ; there if anywhere. It concerned men here and now ; all men eventually, Israelites in the first place, as they were the people of the old election, and the Herald of the kingdom was their countryman. It was to become a society on earth, 1 Weiss, Lehrbuch der Biblischen Theologie des Neuen Testaments, S. 47. Jost, Geschichte des Judenthums, i. 397, says that what the wise in Israel in the time of our Lord aimed at was simply the highest piety of life, the union in modes of feeling and action which was called the kingdom of heaven, though they did not express their meaning clearly ; and that Rabbinical expressions concerning the so-called King Messiah were all of later date. If this view be correct, the phrase "the kingdom of heaven" was current then, and had a purely ethical or spiritual meaning. Jost represents the " kingdom of heaven " of Jewish theology as a refuge to the devout from the degradation of the temple - worship by unworthy high priests, and from the bondage under which the people sighed, and as such as a pioneer to Christianity. 60 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. ever widening in extent, for a kingdom is a social thing ; it could not fail to become such if it met with any reception from those to whom it was proclaimed, for the spirit of the kingdom is love, and impels to fellow ship. It was the highest good of life, the hidden treasure which men should willingly buy with all their possessions, the precious pearl for which all else should be gladly exchanged. It was accessible to all : to the poor, the hungry, the weeping, the social outcasts, and the depraved ; not to them exclusively, but to them very specially, as most needing its blessings and most likely to welcome them. It was spiritual. The conditions of admission, the sole conditions so far as appears, and as I shall hereafter try to prove, were repentance and faith, or in one word receptivity — readiness to make the kingdom welcome. It was associated with, may almost be said to have consisted in, a certain doctrine of God, and a kindred doctrine of man. " Briefly stated, the religious j heaven of Jesus meant the Fatherliness of God for men, i the sonship of men for God, and the infinite spiritual good of the kingdom of heaven is Fatherhood and Son- ship." 1 It was all this from the beginning of Christ's ministry. Jesus did not begin to cherish and utter these gracious, spiritual, universal thoughts in the later sorrowful days of His public ministry, after painful experience had taught Him that the aim with which He started was a generous patriotic delusion. The career He ran was not this : The Nazarene prophet goes forth from His home full of youthful enthusiasm, bent on realizing the hope which prophecy had nursed, with 1 Keim, Geschichte Jesu von Nazara, 54. CHRIST S IDEA OF THE KINGDOM. 6 1 this as His watchword and programme — first, the king dom of God and His righteousness ; next, food and raiment, or in one word, prosperity. First a righteous nation, then a people free and happy. He goes about preaching the approach of the kingdom in this sense, and dispensing benefits especially to the poor and the sick with Messianic bountif ulness. The people, especially in the northern province, receive Him and His doctrine and His benefits with enthusiasm. They welcome the kingdom, and they hail Him King. But their pro gramme is not His ; it is His inverted. They desire political independence and temporal well-being first and unconditionally, and as much righteousness as can be made forthcoming after that. This once made manifest, at the Capernaum crisis, Jesus enters emphatic dissent, and the charm is gone. The multitude melts away ; and the eyes of Jesus are opened. It is all over with the dream of a theocratic kingdom of Israel with Himself for its King. What awaits Him, He now sees, is not a throne but a cross. If He is to have a kingdom, it must be one of a different sort. He seeks it meantime with sad heart in the formation of a separate society gathered out of Israel ; and gradually His mind opens up to the great inspiring thought of spiritual dominion, gained through death over human hearts, not in Judea only, but in all lands.1 Far other was the actual course of Christ's history. His greatest thoughts were present to His mind, in germ at least, from the first, though they underwent development in correspondence with outward 1 This is substantially the scheme worked out by Weiss in his Leben Jesu. It involves new interpretations of many texts. 62 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. events. He had a spiritual, universal kingdom in view the day He preached the Sermon on the Mount, as the opening sentences clearly show. He expected a tragic end at the time when He defended His disciples for the neglect of fasting. If it seem unnatural that one capable of entertaining such wide-ranging ideas, and visited with such gloomy forebodings, should devote Himself with singleness of heart to the limited and also thankless task of the regeneration of Israel, it will be well to remember that Hebrew prophets had done much the same thing. Isaiah and Jeremiah went forth in God's name to preach to their countrymen righteousness, with small hope of bringing them to repentance ; nevertheless they did their duty faithfully and nobly, at all hazards to them selves, as their recorded prophecies amply attest. CHAPTER II. CHRIST'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE MOSAIC LAW. The first impression produced by a perusal of the Evangelic records with reference to this topic, is one of surprise at the reticence of Christ regarding a subject of such importance. We might have expected Him to say distinctly whether Jewish law and custom were to prevail in the kingdom that was coming ; whether, e.g., the rite of circumcision was or was not to be observed in the new era. Yet throughout the whole range of His utterances, as recorded in the Synoptical Gospels, Jesus does not once mention circumcision. While maintaining silence regarding that particular rite of fundamental importance in the old covenant, Jesus on one or two occasions expressed Himself in general terms concerning His relation to the Mosaic Law, and that in a manner which does not seem to harmonize with the idea of the kingdom sketched in the last chapter. The chief of these utterances is the well-known passage in the Sermon on the Mount, in which the Preacher declares that He is come, not to do away with the Law and the Prophets, but rather to fulfil them. He speaks as if He were conscious that an opposite rSle would be expected of Him, and desired as early as 64 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. possible to correct the misapprehension. " Think not I came to destroy." With solemn emphasis He goes on to affirm that while heaven and earth last, the minutest particle of the law shall remain valid, till all things be accomplished. Then, as if to ensure for the declaration a permanent lodgment in the minds of His hearers, He asserts the inferiority of the destroyer of any existing laws, however unimportant, to the man who inculcates and keeps the laws great and small; and the little esteem in which the one is held in the kingdom of heaven in comparison with the other.1 The whole passage seems to teach that the laws of Moses, without exception or distinction, are to be observed while the world endures. Hence Baur, despairing of interpreting the words in accordance with what he believed to be the real attitude of Jesus, comes to the conclusion that they do not give a correct account of what the Speaker said, and sums up his discussion of them in these terms : " As Jesus did not in fact confirm the ritual law, and as, on the other hand, if He did not intend to confirm it, He could not have expressed Himself in such a way as to its enduring validity, the only course left us is to assume that His words received from the evangelist a Judaistic bias which they had not as they came from His mouth." 2 There are, however, some features of this same utter ance, even as it stands, which provoke reflection, and suggest the doubt whether our first impression of its meaning be correct. Does not the repudiation of an intention to destroy imply a consciousness that the effect of His work is to be such as may appear a destroying in 1 Matt. v. 17-20. 2 Neutestamentliche Theologie, S. 55. Christ's attitude towards the mosaic law. 65 the eyes of many ? Then why say of one who by word or deed sets aside any of the commandments that he is the least in the kingdom of heaven ; instead of saying of him, as of the Pharisee, that he cannot enter the kingdom: the position taken up by the conservative party in the Apostolic Church when they said to the Gentile Christians, " Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved." x It seems as if it were not a question of mere destroying, but rather of the right way of doing it, and as if the attitude of the Preacher were something like this : He was aware that His appearance on the stage of history might bring about a crisis in reference to the law, and inaugurate a new era in which much would be changed. But He was conscious at the same time that He came not in the spirit of a destroyer, full of headlong zeal against rude imperfect statutes and antiquated customs, but rather in the spirit of profoundest reverence for ancient institutions, believing that everything in the law, down to its minutest rules, had a meaning and value in the system of religion and morals to which it belonged, and not doubting that the least important of the commandments could not, any more than the most weighty, pass away till their pur- j pose had been fulfilled. Coming in this spirit, He felt j entitled to repudiate abrogation as an aim, whatever of / that nature might come in the way of necessary effect. ) He had no taste for the work of a mere destroyer, no inclination towards the vocation of a legal reformer demanding the abolition of this or the other particular statute or custom as no longer useful, no sympathy with J Acts xv. 1 . E 66 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. the iconoclastic zeal which rushes passionately at abuses, bent on demolishing, and heedless what may come in the idol's place. For those who pursued such an occupation He had not unqualified esteem, though they might be very conscientious ; nor did He think they would take a high place in the kingdom of God. Were the question put, " Who is the greatest in the kingdom ? " He would certainly not say, the mere reformer or destroyer. He should esteem him the least, whoever might be the greatest : greater than him He should account the man who honestly did all things enjoined, and taught others to do them. Him He called great in the kingdom. Great, but be it observed not even he is called the greatest. That place is reserved for one who not merely does the commandments and teaches respect for them, but fulfils them, realizes in Himself all their meaning, and only so, if at all, brings about the annulment of any. Thus we get an ascending scale of moral worth. The Pharisee, the man of form, who cares rnore for the little than for the great commandments, has no moral worth, and is not in the kingdom at all.1 The reformer who has a keen eye for abuses, who is impatient of laws whose utility is doubtful, and urgently calls for change where he thinks it is greatly needed, is of some worth ; he is in the kingdom, though not occupying a high place there. The man who spends not his energies in attacking abuses, but puts his heart into all duties, and so redeems from formality the minutest details of conduct, and teaches others so to live, is of greater worth ; is not only in the kingdom, but a- person of consideration there. 1 Matt. v. 20. CHRIST'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE MOSAIC LAW. 67 Finally, he who not only does, but fulfils, — that is, by his life-work inaugurates a new time that shall be the ripe fruit towards which the old time with its institutions was tending ; and so satisfies the hearts of the children of the new time, that without formal abrogation much that belonged to the old shall be allowed eventually to fall quietly into desuetude : this one is the greatest in the kingdom, the man of absolute moral worth. This interpretation of the remarkable saying in ques tion is at least legitimate, if not the only one conceivable. It is an interpretation, doubtless, which but for the light of subsequent events, we might not have thought of. The idea of a distinction between doing and fulfilling, or of a fulfilling which may at the same time be more or less an undoing, is one we take not out of the mere words, but out of history. We know that there is a fulfilling which is at the same time an undoing at all critical periods, and we bring our knowledge as a help to the interpretation of words spoken by one who has proved to be the greatest of all Initiators, and conclude that the very claim to fulfil involves a virtual intimation of eventual antiquation to a greater or less extent. More than this we cannot make of the solemn declaration on the Mount. We cannot learn from it what in Law or Prophets should, in being fulfilled, be at the same time annulled. By the nature of the case, such information was excluded, because to give such information, and say, e.g., " Circumcision must ere long pass away," would have been to belie the position taken up, and to exchange the high vocation of a fulfiUer for the comparatively low vocation of a reforrner. For the same reason we ought 68 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. not to expect explicit information, of that kind — a list of laws marked like trees in a forest to be cut down — anywhere in Christ's teaching. The utmost we can look for are hints, incidental indications showing like straws in what direction the stream of tendency was flowing. Such indications are not wanting; indications which confirm the interpretation given of the text in the Sermon on the Mount, and help us also to determine for ourselves in what respects Christ in fulfilling was at the same time to annul. The very silence of Christ concerning the fundamental rite of the old Covenant is, as Reuss has remarked, very significant. Its import is, indeed, ambiguous ; it might be held to mean that Christ never thought of calling in question the perpetual obligation of circumcision. But it is hard to credit this while reading the golden sentences wherewith the Sermon on the Mount opens, and in which are set forth the requirements for citizenship in the kingdom of heaven. The qualifications specified are exclusively spiritual. The Beatitudes take us away into an entirely different world from that of ritualism. We can hardly imagine Jesus uttering these words : Blessed are the poor, the meek, the pure, the peace makers, the persecuted, with the mental reservation, " provided always that they be Israelites and circum cised." We cannot help feeling that the kingdom must be wider than Israel, and its blessings independent of merely external and ritual conditions. The rite by which men became members of the theocratic common wealth is quietly ignored. Another significant hint that in the new kingdom the CHRIST'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE MOSAIC LAW. 69 ceremonial law at least was destined to fall into desuetude, may be found in the words spoken by Jesus when His disciples were blamed for neglecting customary ritual ablutions before eating : " Hear me, all of you, and understand : there is nothing from without a man that going into him can defile him, but the things which proceed out of a man are those that defile a man."1 By this emphatic utterance Jesus in effect, as Baur remarks, declared the observance of the Mosaic laws of purifica tion to be something morally indifferent. It is true, indeed, that the fault imputed to the disciples had not been disregard of the Mosaic ritual law, but neglect of the traditions of the elders relating to ablutions which were designed to form a hedge about the law, and ensure its strict observance. But it is manifest that the word addressed to the people enunciates a principle whose range of application is much wider than these traditions, and which, when it has got a firm hold of the popular mind, must in the end lead to the non-observance of the Mosaic laws of purification, as well as of the rules super added by the Rabbis. That it was taken in this wide scope in the Apostolic Church, and specially in the circle of which Peter formed the centre, may be inferred from the reflection appended by the second evangelist to the explanation of His own saying given by Christ to the disciples : " This He said, making all meats clean." 2 It has, however, been maintained of late that the saying of 1 Mark vii. 14, 15. Matthew's version (xv. 10, 11) is less emphatic. 2 Mark vii. 19, last clause, according to the approved reading, which substitutes Kmiapi^uu for x*4ecpl£o!>. 70 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. Jesus to the multitude is parabolic, and that it must be understood as referring throughout to things belonging to the physical sphere. The things that proceed out of a man are not, as in the subsequently given interpretation, moral offences, but matters discharged from the body whether in health, in diseases like leprosy, or in death. These, not the eating of forbidden meats, defiled in the Levitical sense, and it was against the defiling influence of these that the Mosaic rules of purification were directed. The effect, therefore, of Christ's saying was to condemn the Pharisaic additions as plants which God had not planted, but to confirm the obligation of the Mosaic laws of purification as of divine authority.1 This is ingenious but not convincing. If Christ meant to tell the multitude that ceremonial defilement pro ceeded from matters discharged from the body, not from the kind of food taken, it is difficult to see why in the subsequent conversation with His disciples He gave a spiritual turn to the thought, and made the things which proceed out of a man, evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, and the like. Why not rather ^explain to them, the future apostles, His exact position on the topic raised by Pharisaic criticism, viz. that what He condemned was simply Rabbinical additions to Mosaic rules, and that He believed in the perpetual obligation of the latter? The reference to the moral evils proceeding from the heart lifts the whole subject above the level of ceremonialism, and irresistibly conveys the impression that, in the view of the Speaker, the only cleanness and uncleanness that are real and worth minding are 1 Weiss, Leben Jesu, ii. S. 116. CHRIST'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE MOSAIC LAW. 71 those which arise from morally right and wrong feelings and actions. A third straw showing the direction of the stream of tendency may be found in the word spoken by Jesus in Perasa towards the close of His ministry concerning the Mosaic statute of divorce : " Moses out of regard to the hardness of your heart suffered you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so." 1 It was a distinct declaration that this particalar law was a con cession on the part of the Jewish legislator to a rude moral condition, and a departure from the primitive ideal. In Mark's narrative, the conversation between Christ and His captious interrogators is so arranged that there is less of the appearance of calling in question the authority of Moses than in Matthew's version of the incident. The first evangelist makes Christ, in answer to His interrogants, at once announce the original law of marriage as ordained by God at the creation, whereby Moses seems to be set in antagonism to the Creator, as ordaining an inferior law, though not without excuse in the moral condition of his people. In the account given by the second evangelist, on the other hand,2 Jesus meets the question put by the Pharisees with another, What did Moses command you ? It is possible that He meant thereby to hint that Moses had given more than one law on the subject, regarding the primitive law in Genesis as his, not less than the law in Deuteronomy. In that case He merely appealed from Moses to Moses ; from what Moses allowed under pressure of circumstances, to what Moses must have known, if, as all Jews believed, he was 1 Matt. xix. 8. 2 Mark x. 2-9. 72 , THE KINGDOM OF GOD. the author of the five books, and doubtless approved as the ideally perfect law concerning the relation of the sexes. Nevertheless, assuming Mark's version to be the more accurate, and the drift of Christ's argument to be as indicated, the fact remains that the Deuteronomic statute regulating, and by implication sanctioning, divorce for other reasons besides adultery, was explicitly declared to be a statute "not good," adapted to the sklerokardia of Israel. And as that statute did not stand alone, but was only a sample of many of the same kind, the general position was virtually laid down that the whole Mosaic civil code was far from perfect, and consequently could not be permanently valid, but must pass away in that kingdom where the sklerokardia is removed, and is replaced by the " new heart." 1 From these indications of Christ's attitude towards the ceremonial and civil laws of Moses, we pass to inquire what position He assumed in reference to what we are wont to call the "moral" law, that is, the Decalogue. The interest here concentrates on the institution of the weekly rest, which, some think, ought to be included in the same category as circumcision, maintaining also that it was actually so regarded by Jesus. I shall here go into the question so far only as is necessary to ascertain how far the latter allegation is correct. And I be°in with the observation that it is antecedently unlikely that Jesus would treat circumcision and the Sabbath as in all 1 See on the above topic, Weiss in his Leben Jesu, and also in his two works on the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. He contends for the accuracy of Mark's version, and does his utmost to minimize the significance of Christ's words as a criticism on Mosaic legislation. Christ's attitude towards the mosaic law. 73 respects of the same nature. They were certainly not so treated under the law. For though circumcision was of fundamental importance in the covenant between Jehovah and Israel, yet it was not thought necessary to put it among the Ten Words ; whereas the law of the Sabbath does find a place there along with precepts generally admitted to be ethical in their nature, and therefore of perpetual obligation in their substance. Why is this ? Apparently because circumcision con cerned Israel alone, whereas in the Ten Words it was intended that that only should find a place which was believed to concern all mankind. The Decalogue wears the aspect of an attempt to sum up the heads of moral duty, put in a form, and enforced with reasons, it may be, adapted to the history and circumstances of the chosen race, but in their substance concerning not Jews only, but men in general. Speaking of the Decalogue as the work of Moses, we may say that from it we learn what in his judgment all men ought to do in order to please God, and live wisely and happily. And we can see for ourselves that circumcision and the Sabbath are in important respects entirely different institutions. Cir cumcision was purely ritual, a mere arbitrary sign or symbol, a mark set on Israel to distinguish and separate her from the heathen peoples around. But the Sab bath was essentially a good thing. Rest from toil is good for the body, and rest in worshipful acknowledg ment of God as the Maker and Preserver of all is equally good for the spirit. Rest in both senses is a permanent need of man in this world, and a law pre scribing a resting day as a holiday and holy day is a 74 ¦ THE KINGDOM OF GOD. beneficent law, which no one having a regard to human wellbeing can have any wish to abrogate. Turning now to the Gospel records : do we find Jesus speaking of the Sabbath as, say, of ritual washings — i.e. as a thing morally indifferent, whose abolition would be no real loss to men ? We do not. On the contrary, we find Him invariably treating the institution with respect, as intrinsically a good thing ; and His quarrel with the Pharisees on this head was not as to observance, but as to the right manner of observing the law. The Pharisees made the day not a boon, but a burden ; not a day given by God to man in mercy, but a day taken from man by God in an exacting spirit. Having this idea of the weekly rest in their minds, they naturally made it as burdensome and irksome as possible, not a delight, but a horror, giving ridiculously minute definitions of work, and placing the merit of Sabbath-keeping in mere absti nence from work so defined, apart altogether from the nature of the work. With this Pharisaic idea of the Sabbath, and the manner in which it was worked out in practice, Jesus had no sympathy. He conceived of the institution, not as a burden, but' as a boon ; not as a day taken from man, but as a day given to him by a bene ficent Providence. This idea He expressed in a remark able saying, found, curiously enough, only in Mark, but doubtless a most authentic apostolic tradition : " The Sabbath was made on account of man, not man on account of the Sabbath." ' He meant to say that God appointed the Sabbath for man's good, and that it must be so observed as to realize the end originally contem- 1 Mark ii. 27. . Christ's attitude towards the mosaic law. 75 plated ; men must not be made the slaves of the Sabbath, as they were by the Pharisaic method of interpreting and enforcing the statute. This being His meaning, He consistently said, the Sabbath was made for man, not the Sabbath was made for Jews, so giving the saying a uni versal character. One who so thought of the institution could have no interest in its abolition. He would rather desire to extend the benefit, and He would favour only such changes as might' be needful to make the benefit as great and as wide-reaching as possible. Accordingly, Jesus did not propose to abolish the beneficent institute. He did, indeed, claim lordship over the Sabbath - day. But He claimed it not with a view to abolition, but in order to give full effect to the principle that the Sabbath was made for man, that is, for his good, and to emphasize the true motive of observance, love, the supreme law of His kingdom. In other words, Christ's claim of lordship was a claim of right to humanize the Sabbath, in opposi tion to the Pharisees who had Rabbinized it, and made it a snare to the conscience and a burden to the spirit. An esteemed writer has given an entirely different interpretation to the saying recorded by Mark, according to which Christ meant to draw a distinction between the laws that are of permanent validity and those that are transient, including the Sabbath in the latter category. The permanent laws are those which are an end for man, the transient are those which have man for their end. The former set forth man's chief end — the moral ideal ; the latter are merely means subservient to some tem porary human interest.1 I gravely doubt the soundness 1 Ritschl, Die Entstehung des Altkatholischen Kirche, S. 30. 76 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. of the construction thus put on our Lord's words. And as for the distinction taken between two sorts of laws, it depends on the respect in which a law has man for its end, whether it be of a temporary character or otherwise. If a law have man for its end, in the sense of having for its aim his highest wellbeing, then it is not transient, even on the principle enunciated by the author referred to, for in that case it is at the same time an end for man. The moral ideal and man's highest happiness coincide. On this view there is no good reason for the Sabbath passing away. It is made for man, doubtless, but not in the sense in which the statute of divorce was made. The latter was an accommodation to man's moral weak ness, the former was instituted to promote man's physical and spiritual wellbeing, and it is fitted to serve that end in perpetuity. The kingdom of God therefore cannot frown on the Sabbath as it must frown on the concession made by Moses to the rude moral condition of Israel in the matter of marriage. It must regard the day of rest with favour, even if it looked on it as an outside institu tion, and not of strictly ethical contents ; wherever the spirit of the kingdom prevails, the general desire will be, not for its abolition, but for its retention. Christianity countenances the Sabbath just as, and on the same general ground that it discountenances slavery. Even as, though not formally condemning slavery, yet being hostile to it, as injurious to the moral dignity of man, the Christian religion surely tended towards its abolition ; so, though not formally decreeing the perpetuating of a seventh day rest, yet being favourable to it as promotive of man's wellbeing, the Christian religion surely tended from the CHRIST'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE MOSAIC LAW. 77 first towards the perpetuation and the extension of the blessings it conferred throughout the world. Quite in accordance with the view I have given of our Lord's attitude towards the Sabbath was the manner of His defence against the Pharisaic .charge of Sabbath- breaking. He did not admit that He and His disciples were Sabbath-breakers, but took up the ground that their conduct was in accordance with the Sabbath law rightly interpreted. The correct view of the Sabbath being that it was meant to be a boon, not a burden— that it was made for man's benefit — the right observance was that which best promoted the end aimed at — man's good ; the wrong that which frustrated the design, and turned a boon into a burden. In applying this principle to His own works of healing, Jesus said : not, It is permissible to do any sort of work on the Sabbath, for the law is no longer binding ; but, It is lawful to do well on the Sabbath.1 In defence of His disciples, who, according to current ideas, had been guilty of working in rubbing the .ears of corn (it was a kind of thrashing !), Jesus reminded •the fault-finders of God's word : " I will have mercy and not sacrifice," and told them that had they laid to heart the divine oracle, they should not have condemned the guiltless,2 It remains to add that Christ's favourable attitude towards the Sabbath becomes all the more significant .when it is contrasted with the free position He took up .in reference to the civil and ceremonial law. Had He, as some think, been an indiscriminate conservative, treat ing with equal reverence all parts of the Mosaic system, 1 Matt. xii. 12. 2 Matt. xii. 7. 78 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. His respect for the day of rest would have been no argument in favour of its perpetuity. That institution might have been doomed, notwithstanding, to pass away, like circumcision, with the old Jewish world to which both alike belonged. But when we find one who could freely criticize venerable customs resting on the authority of the Hebrew legislator, in the light of the new era, so careful to clear Himself of all suspicion of irreverence towards the fourth commandment, we cannot help feeling that the rest therein enjoined does not altogether belong to the old world about to pass away, but is worthy to find a place in the new order of things. There may be a sense in which, as Paul taught, the Sabbath belonged to the era of shadows ; but there must be a sense also in which it belongs to the era of spiritual realities. Of the other precepts of the Decalogue Christ ever spoke respectfully as enjoining duties incumbent on all ; as when He said to the young ruler, " If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments," x enumerating the first four of the second table to illustrate His meaning. But, while recognising the perpetual obligation of these . com mandments, He preferred to sum up duty in the one comprehensive word Love: "Love God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself." On these, two com mands, said He, hung all that the law required and the prophets taught.2 The originality of the saying lay not in the mere words, for they occur in the Pentateuch, but in the new emphasis put upon it. Because of that Jesus was, and claimed to be, a fulfiUer, in the pregnant sense, ¦of the Decalogue in particular, as of the law and prophets 1 Matt. xix. 17. 2 Matt. vii. 12, xxii. 37-40. CHRIST'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE MOSAIC LAW. 79 in general. In the Sermon on the Mount He illustrated the sense in which He claimed to be a fulfiUer by taking up successively several precepts of the Decalogue, and insisting, in connection with each, not on the outward act of obedience only, but on conformity of inward dis position to the principle embodied in the precept. The law said, " Thou shalt not kill," and when men abstained from taking away each other's lives, the law, as a code for the government of a nation, was satisfied. But the Preacher said, " Whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment ; " 1 so interdicting not only murder but hatred, not only violent deeds but wicked passions. Thus He transformed a law of the Decalogue into a law of the divine kingdom. The result of our inquiry then is this : Christ came to fulfil the law of the Ten Words by going back with new emphasis on its great underlying principle — love to God and to man; He came to fulfil the meaning, and not immediately, but as foreknown eventual result, to annul the obligation of the ceremonial law by putting substance in place of shadow, spiritual reality in place of ritual emblem ; He came to antiquate the civil law by removing the sklerokardia, and raising up a race who should be able to order their lives according to a higher ideal. All this He did, however, after the manner of a prophet rather than after the manner of a legislator. He came not to be a rival to Moses, but to originate a new life which should' be self-legislative. When we consider the manner in which the hints, whereon the foregoing induction is founded, were given, 1 Matt. v. 22. 80 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. we see how truly Christ could say : " I came not to destroy." They were uttered for the most part in self- defence. It seems as if, had He been left alone, He would have been content to introduce the new life, and leave it to create for itself congenial habitudes without giving any indication what these were to be. As it was, He said no more than was barely necessary to defend Himself against accusers. In spite of much provocation, at the very last, He counselled the people to give heed to the teaching of the scribes who sat in Moses' seat, bidding them only beware of their practice. He would not on any account be irritated into becoming a stirrer up of discontent, or an agitator against existing customs, or a hot-headed leader of zealots bent on overturning an ancient social and religious system. All things con sidered, therefore, the conclusion, well expressed by Baur, must be accepted as just, that while Jesus introduced into some of His expressions what might form the ground of an opposition on principle, not only against the pre scriptions of the Pharisees, but even against the continued absolute validity of the law, He did not wish to come to an open breach, but left the development of the opposition already existing in implicit form, to the spirit of His j doctrine, which must of itself lead eventually thereto. In view of this conclusion, we are able to understand that saying of Christ concerning the Baptist, which has been somewhat of a puzzle to interpreters : "Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist ; notwithstanding, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." x We are > Matt. xi. 11. CHRIST'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE MOSAIC LAW. 81 not obliged to have recourse to the ingenious construc tion put by Chrysostom on the last part of the sentence : " I, Jesus, who as yet am less than John in public esteem, am greater than he in the kingdom of heaven, though not in the judgment of the world." Keeping in mind the great word in the Sermon on the Mount, wherein the Preacher defined His relation to the legal economy, and expressed His judgment in reference to diverse types of character, we have no difficulty in seeing the truth and point of this saying, viewed as a declaration that one occupying a comparatively humble place in the kingdom of heaven was greater than John, supremely great though he was in his own line. For John was in tendency and temper a destroyer, not indeed with reference to Mosaic institutions, but with reference to the actual religious life of his time. He lived the life of a hermit in the wild, taking no part apparently in the temple services, through an uncon querable disgust at prevailing hypocrisy. He denounced the Pharisees, whom he saw on the outskirts of the crowd that gathered around him by the Jordan, as a generation of vipers. He declared that the axe was already at the root of the tree, ready to hew down an unproductive vine. He proclaimed the approach of one who with fan in hand should separate wheat from chaff, and burn the chaff in unquenchable fire. And when the coming One had come, and had been long enough at work to show the manner of His working, John, now a prisoner, doubted whether He were after all the Man he had looked for. Why ? Because he saw no axe or fan in His hand. He heard reports of deeds of mercy, - F 82 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. and of gracious words spoken unto the poor, but he heard no reports of deeds of judgment. This was too genial a Messiah for his taste. The method of Jesus was also too leisurely for the prophet's ardent tempera ment. Assuming that He had the same general end in view as himself — a kingdom of righteousness — He was far too tolerant in His spirit. John desiderated an immediate crisis or catastrophe. Separate the good from the bad, destroy the bad and make the good, like Noah's family, the nucleus of a new godly nation. Simple, thoroughgoing programme, most satisfactory to a prophet's earnest temper ! But no such programme did Jesus seem to have. He went about in Galilee doing all the good He could, and left the religious world of Judaea, of whose hollowness He was well aware, to go its own way. Therefore John stood seriously in doubt of Him. And this doubt of John's is one of the most convincing proofs that his kingdom of God and that of Christ were not the same thing. There can be no greater mistake in the interpretation of the Gospel history than to explain away that doubt, or to minimize its significance. It is an index showing how wide apart in idea and spirit were the two great ones, who nevertheless were fellow- workers for God and righteousness among their people. That Christ did not under-estimate its significance the saying now under consideration proves. He divined what was passing through the prophet's mind when he sent the message of inquiry, and He said in effect : " John is great, none greater of his kind, a true hero of moral law, who has braved the wrath of earth's mighty ones, and told them their duty, regardless of conse- CHRIST S ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE MOSAIC LAW. 83 quences. I deeply honour him, though he now stand in doubt of me. Yet John is a one-sided defective man. Strong in zeal, he is weak in love ; strong in denuncia tion of evil, he is weak in patience towards the sinful ; strong in moral austerity, he is weak in the social sympathetic affections. In these respects any one in the kingdom of heaven animated by its characteristic spirit of love and patient hope is greater than he." In so speaking of John, Christ, it is hardly necessary to remark, did not mean to shut him out of the kingdom, though an impression to the contrary constitutes for many the chief difficulty of the saying. Possibly the use of the comparative — the less in the kingdom — indicates a desire to avoid the appearance of such an intention. But even taking the comparative as having the force of a superlative, the exclusion of John from the kingdom is to be understood simply in the sense that John had not identified himself openly with the movement of which Jesus was the centre. That was a simple matter of fact. John was intensely interested in the kingdom ; he had laboured for it as a pioneer ; he had announced its near approach; he prayed daily for its coming. But his conception of the kingdom differed so widely from the kingdom as it actually appeared in the person of Jesus and the society that gathered around Him, that he was not able to give the reality a hearty welcome ; he stood aloof, a doubting, puzzled spectator, wondering what it might all mean. So understood, Christ's judgment of the Baptist con firms our interpretation of the text in the Sermon on the Mount, and throws light on the attitude of the 84 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. Messianic King towards established law and custom. The Inaugurator of the new era declined the part which His forerunner had assigned to Him — declined to adopt as his insignia the axe and the fan, and to come before the world as the embodiment of divine disgust and fury. He preferred to appear as One " full of grace and truth.' He knew well that the axe and the fan were needed, but He did not believe in the Baptist's method of reaching the desired end. His way was not that of reform but of regeneration, not of judgment but of mercy, not of impatience and intolerance and rupture, but of quiet, silent influence, leading slowly but surely to the new creation, bringing it in noiselessly, gradually, like the dawn of day. Ultimately the kingdom was to bring about much more extensive change than John was prepared for ; but the means were to be, not the axe and the fan, but the vital force of a new life, the fermenta tion of the new wine. The bottles of Judaism must burst some day, but what need for passionately tearing them to pieces ? The wine will do the work, in good time, of itself. / • - < "'- ^-S»- 1 s) CHAPTER III. THE CONDITIONS OF ENTRANCE. The second evangelist represents our Lord as commenc ing His public ministry in Galilee with the announce ment, " The kingdom of God is at hand : repent ye, and believe in the good news." 1 Repentance and faith were thus at the outset declared to be the conditions of admission into the kingdom. What did Christ mean by the words, and why are the things denoted indispensable to citizenship ? The doctrine of Jesus on repentance and faith, especi ally the former, can be fully understood only when we have become acquainted with other parts of His teaching, particularly His doctrine concerning God, man, and the righteousness of the kingdom. The contents of the idea of repentance must depend on the views set forth on these cardinal topics. If God be a Father, then repent ance will mean ceasing to regard Him under any lower aspect; if man be a being of infinite importance as a moral subject and son of God, then repentance will mean realizing human dignity and responsibility ; if the right eousness of the kingdom be spiritual and inward, having reference not merely to outward acts but to motives, then the summons to repentance will be a call not merely to 1 Mark i. 15. 85 86 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. a life for moral ends, but to self-criticism, so as to discern between true and false righteousness. For the present, our inquiry must refer more to form than to matter, to principles rather than to details. These, after all, are the chief points ; for when we have settled the general nature of repentance, as Christ preached it, the particulars can be filled in afterwards without difficulty. On this subject, as in reference to the idea of the kingdom, there is a marked difference in tone and drift between Christ's teaching and that of the Baptist. Both use the same form of words, but they do not mean the same thing. The one instance of divergence is the effect of the other. Christ's conception of repentance springs out of His new thoughts concerning the kingdom of heaven. " When heaven and earth move towards each other, as in Christ's preaching of the kingdom, then on the part both of God and man must the Nay give place to the Yea, anger to love, fear to joy, shame to right action ; and in festive attire, not in mourning weeds, all that has affinity for the Divine goes to meet the approaching God, proud to be or to become like Him." x The contrast between Jesus and John is specially apparent at two points. There is first an inwardness in Christ's doctrine that is wholly lacking in John's. To perceive this, we have only to compare the Sermon on the Mount with the directions given by the Baptist to publicans, soldiers, and others, who inquired what he would have them do.2 The Sermon, which considered 1 Keim, Jesu von Namra, ii. 77. a Luke iii. 10-14. This is one of Luke's additions, but doubtless he had a voucher for it in his sources. The particulars supplied in THE CONDITIONS OF ENTRANCE. 87 positively is an exposition of the righteousness of the kingdom, may be regarded negatively as an aid to self- criticism and exhortation to repentance. With this view it bids men look into their hearts, and examine their affections and the motives from which apparently good actions spring. John, on the other hand, directed atten tion merely to outward conduct, admonishing penitents to practise neighbourliness, honesty, contentment with their wages. It was enough, if the coming kingdom was merely the restored theocratic kingdom of Israel, a secular kingdom, only more virtuous than usual. In a kingdom of this world the ruler can take cognizance only of external acts. If the people abstain from stealing, violence, lying, adultery, they are in the eye of law a righteous nation ; and they are treated as such even by the moral order of the world, for every nation which practises these and kindred virtues is found to prosper. The fact that Christ turned the thoughts of His hearers from acts to dispositions, shows conclusively that He had in view a kingdom of another and higher description, — " not of. this world." The other point of contrast is that repentance as John preached it was an affair of details, while as Christ preached it, it was a matter of principle, a radical change in the chief end of life. John came preaching in the wilderness of Judaja, saying, " Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." He meant, " Alter your ways wher ever they are amiss, for the great, dread King is near." these verses as to the counsels given by John to inquirers may be accepted at the very least as a true reflection of the impression which John's preaching had made on the popular mind. 88 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. His call resembled a summons to the population of a city to which the monarch is about to make a royal visit, to remove all nuisances out of the way, and to put on holiday attire, and turn out into the street to give their sovereign a worthy reception. But Christ called men to more than a reform of this or that bad habit, even to a radical change of mind, consisting in the recognition of the kingdom as the highest Good, and the most important subject that could engage their attention. " Seek ye first," He said, " the kingdom of God, and His righteousness ; " x meaning, " Hitherto ye have been living as if life were no more than meat, and the supreme question for you has been, What shall we eat, what shall we drink, wherewithal shall we be clothed ? Henceforth let a loftier aim guide you, even to be citizens of the Divine kingdom, and to have a character becoming members of that holy commonwealth." The form of the exhortation shows that the kingdom the Speaker had in view was not the theocratic kingdom of popular expecta tion. In that case He would have said, Seek ye first the righteousness of the kingdom, and only in the second place its temporal advantages ; for the people were seeking the kingdom in the national sense already, their only fault being that they put the material and political aspects of it before the moral. That was in effect what the Baptist said. He assumed that his hearers desired the coming of the kingdom, and bade them prepare for it by repentance and the culture of right conduct, lest its coming should prove to them the reverse of a blessing. Christ, on the other hand, was conscious that He had in 1 Matt. vi. 33. THE CONDITIONS OF ENTRANCE. 89 His eye a kingdom for whose advent the average Jew did not long, which, nevertheless, would be a priceless boon to all who received it. Therefore He said not merely, Seek the righteousness of the kingdom, but, Seek the kingdom itself and its righteousness. And the call, as already said, was a summons to a radical repentance, a true /Merdvoia, a change of mind not in reference to this or the other department of conduct, but in reference to the funda mental question, What is man's chief end and chief good ? Thus understood, the call to repentance issued by Jesus is seen to be no arbitrary requirement, but the indication of an indispensable condition of citizenship. If the kingdom be the highest conceivable object of human aims and hopes, it ought to be regarded and treated as such ; and if men have not been hitherto doing that, to ask them to do it is, in other words, to summon them to repentance. And this being the meaning of the summons, we further perceive why it should be addressed to all, as it was by Jesus. For it is certainly not the way of men anywhere to make the kingdom of God of Christ's gospel their chief end and chief good. For the many material goods, " food and raiment," are the first objects of desire. " After these things do the Gentiles seek." After these things, it is to be feared, the majority of Israelites sought more than after righteousness, even in the lower sense of right conduct, justice, truth, honesty. There was there fore an urgent need for repentance even from the Baptist's point of view ; and if his call had been generally responded to, it would have brought about an immense improvement in the actual state of things. 90 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. How much greater was the need of repentance if man's chief end was to seek the righteousness and the kingdom Christ preached, a righteousness of the heart, a kingdom of filial relations with God ! How rare the men even in Israel who cared supremely or at all for these high matters ! With such a high ideal of life, we are not surprised to find Christ preaching repentance even to His own dis ciples at a late stage of His intercourse with them. The admonition to seek first the kingdom had been addressed principally if not exclusively to them, towards the com mencement of the Galilean ministry ; and towards its close their Master found it necessary to give them this more stern one : " Except ye turn, and become as the children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven." x The term employed to denote the moral change is new,2 but the thing insisted on is the same, even a radical change of mind with regard to the chief end of life. It may indeed appear that in this case it is rather the correction of a special fault, pride or ambition, that is pointed at, than the great revolution of an initial spiritual crisis ; a conversion in detail rather than in principle. Such special conversions or repent ances are to be looked for in the course of religious experience, even in those who have already undergone radical renewal ; for after the new principle of life has been adopted, it has to be worked out in all departments of conduct ; and while this is being done, conflicts with 1 Matt, xviii. 3. 2 aTpcctpvTs. The compound tviarpitpa occurs three times in Luke's Gospel ; twice in i. 16, 17, and in xxii. 32. In Acts the verb and the corresponding noun are used to denote the conversion of Gentiles from Paganism to Christianity. THE CONDITIONS OF ENTRANCE. 91 old habits of thought and feeling and action are almost certain to occur. It was to such a conversion in detail, in the experience of Peter, Jesus alluded when, with reference to that disciple's sin of moral cowardice in denying his Master, He said, " When thou hast turned, strengthen thy brethren." * And we can hardly bring ourselves to believe that Jesus seriously considered any thing more than such a conversion necessary in the case of men who had been so long with Him, even when their sin was not, like Peter's, one of infirmity due to a surprise, but a rooted evil disposition breaking out into unseemly manifestations. And yet we may not shut our minds to the graver alternative. Christ speaks too strongly to have in view merely the correction of a particular fault. He obviously regards childlikeness not as a graceful accomplishment of the citizen of the kingdom, but as an indispensable requirement. In saying, Be childlike, He is only saying in a new way, Give the kingdom the first place. And when we con sider the matter, we see that ambition for distinction in the kingdom is only another way of committing the common sin of putting the kingdom in the second place. The many do this by giving food and raiment the first l place in their thoughts. The disciples, in forsaking all j for the kingdom, rose above the vulgar form of worldli- ! ness. But when they became supremely concerned about their place in the kingdom, they were guilty of world liness in a more refined form. They made the interests of the kingdom second, and their own standing therein first. Thus we see that Christ's demand for the unpre- : 1 Luke xxii. 32. 92 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. tentiousness of childhood is only a new proof that in His view repentance consisted in a change of mind, to the effect of exalting the kingdom to the place of supremacy. We may also find in it a significant hint as to the true nature of the kingdom and its righteousness. A kingdom of God so conceived of as to give rise to ambitious passions is not such in reality, but a kingdom of this world. The utmost devotion to such a counterfeit does not amount to compliance with the demand, Seek first the kingdom. For that there is needed not only zeal but pure motive ; and the kingdom is there only where zeal and motive coalesce, zeal excluding impurity of motive, and purity of motive guaranteeing the due measure of zeal. The kingdom of God is a kingdom of love from which selfishness in every form is excluded ; not merely the mitigated selfishness of concern about animal wants, but the intenser though subtler selfishness of egotism and vainglory. Hence it follows that there may be much religious activity, making a great display of zeal and gaining golden opinions, which has no relation to the kingdom of God, except it be one of antagonism, and no more makes us children of the kingdom than does the struggle for existence amid the secular call ings of life. The struggle for religious name and church place and power may be more respectable than the struggle for physical livelihood, but it is not less, but rather more, ungodly. It deepens our reverence for Christ as a spiritual Teacher that He said this quite plainly, and even with passionate emphasis ; not slurring over the vices of disciples, while loudly denouncing the vulgar worldliness of the multitude. THE CONDITIONS OF ENTRANCE. 93 Of this also, however, He was wont to speak faithfully, as we learn from His bitter complaint against the inhabit ants of the towns lying along the shores of the Galilean lake among whom He mainly exercised His ministry. It was to the effect that they repented not, though such mighty works had been done among them as might have moved even Tyre and Sidon and Sodom to repentance.1 The charge is significant as confirmatory of the view I have given of the sense in which Christ used the word. The inhabitants of the plain of Gennesareth are not accused of being sinners like the men of Sodom ; that ancient city is rather referred to as the extreme instance of sensual wickedness, in comparison with which the people by the Galilean Sea might justly deem themselves exemplary. What then was their fault ? It was that the mighty deeds of the Christ had not led them to give the kingdom its place of supremacy. They had been much interested in these deeds ; they had followed the Doer with eager curiosity and intense admiration ; they had even been willing, according to an intimation in the fourth Gospel, to make Him their King, and so set up the Messianic kingdom.2 Still they remained essentially as they had been before, greatly more concerned about food and raiment than about righteousness and the kingdom of God in the true sense of the words. Their state was that so graphically depicted in the words Christ is represented as addressing to the multitude at Caper naum by the fourth evangelist : " Ye seek me, not because ye saw the signs, but because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled ; " " Busy not yourselves about the 1 Matt. xi. 20-24. 2 John vi. 15. 94 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. food that perisheth, but about the food that endureth unto eternal life."1 From such words, as from those addressed to the disciples at a later date, the plain inference is that repentance as preached by Jesus was a very high requirement indeed, with which few complied in a manner He deemed satisfactory. Though mentioned here in the second place, after repentance, faith was in reality the first and chief con dition of admission to the kingdom in the teaching of Jesus. Faith was a great word with Him, and through Him it became a great word in the New Testament literature, the watchword of the era of grace, so that it might also be called the era of faith. Christ was Him self emphatically a man of faith. He lived a life of perfect holiness by faith in His heavenly Father. He wrought His miracles by faith. He demanded faith in others as the condition of His ability to work miracles for their benefit. He regarded faith as an almighty power by which not only He but any of His disciples could do wonders, and without which nothing great could be accomplished. He was grieved by manifesta tions of unbelief or weak faith ; from exhibitions of strong faith He derived intense pleasure. He had unbounded confidence in faith's virtue within the moral sphere as a recuperative influence, raising the fallen, sanctifying the sinful, restoring peace to the troubled conscience. He commended trust in their heavenly Father to His followers as the best religious service they could render, and as an infallible specific against fear and care. 1 John vi. 26, 27. THE CONDITIONS OF ENTRANCE. 95 All this was significant of a new departure. The pro minence given to faith denotes a new way of conceiving the kingdom. " Repent," the Baptist's watchword, suits one idea of it. " Believe," Christ's watchword, suits and implies another and very different one. " Repent " is the appropriate word when the kingdom is conceived of as the reward of legal righteousness ; " believe" is the more appro priate word when the kingdom is conceived of as a gift of grace to be conferred on all who are simply willing to receive it. In the one case the message to be delivered to men is, " Conform your lives to the law, that you may hope to obtain the honours of membership in the holy commonwealth ; " in the other it is, " The kingdom of grace is here, God is come to dwell among men in the plenitude of His love ; make the kingdom welcome, and it will make you welcome." To comply with this invi tation, and to receive the kingdom as offered, is to believe ; faith needs no better definition : it consists in spiritual receptivity. And the kingdom being such as described, not a mere kingdom of law in which God appears making demands, but first of all, a kingdom of grace in which God appears freely bestowing benefits, it is clear that recep tivity is not only a suitable attitude, but an indispensable one. The kingdom being a gift, the one thing needful is that it be received. This indispensable requirement is happily one within the reach of all. The gospel of a kingdom so conceived as to require only faith, is a gospel for the million. The announcement that the kingdom was approaching, made by the Baptist, was a gospel or good tidings only to the few who were righteous, or who had strength of will to reform their lives in obedience to 96 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. a mere legal demand. Christ's announcement of a king dom that had simply to be received, was a gospel for all ; for sinners not less than for saints, for them even chiefly or very expressly. He came, as He Himself said, signalizing this fact, "not to call righteous ones, but sinners ; " He came calling sinners, not " to repentance " merely, according to the expanded form of the saying as given by Luke,1 but generally to participation in all the benefits of the kingdom. If we must add an interpretative gloss to the original word, the more appropriate one would be "to faith." For the kingdom of Christ's Evangel was such that what men had to do first of all was to receive it as a boon, and sinners had the best reasons for being ready to do that. The adoption of faith as the new watchword was, moreover, a prophecy of Christian universalism. A Divine kingdom addressing itself to faith is likely not only to go down to the lowest moral depths of Jewish society that it may raise the low and lost to heavenly heights, but also to overleap the geographical boundaries of Palestine and become a world-wide phenomenon. The word " repent " holds out little hope to those outside the pale. It is spoken most fitly to a covenanted people for whom God had done much, and from whom therefore He demands much. The preacher of repentance by the banks of the Jordan thinks naturally only of the children of Abraham, and his summons refers exclusively to theocratic privileges and obligations. But when one comes preaching faith, He may readily have the Gentiles 1 Luke v. 32. The tig ftiTa.uoia.ii of Luke's text is a false reading in the other Gospels introduced' for the purpose of assimilation. THE CONDITIONS OF ENTRANCE. 97 in view. For though they too have abundant cause for repentance, they have sinned in ignorance, and are more fitly objects of compassion than of wrath. They need grace, and if they are to have any part in the kingdom, their first duty will be to believe in grace, and possibly they may develop no mean capacity for believing. Why should not the Preacher of a kingdom addressing itself to faith have these thoughts present to His mind ? Nay, how could He fail to have the Gentiles in His view if He realized the import of His own programme ? The Gospel history supplies abundant evidence that Christ fully understood the scope of His doctrine of faith in all directions. Specially significant in this con nection are the three narratives, of the woman " who was a sinner," the Roman centurion, and the woman of Syro- Phcenicia.1 The first shows Christ's estimate of the power of faith as a redemptive force ; the other two reveal His consciousness that before faith all barriers of race, rite, or election must go down. The woman who entered into Simon's house Jesus assumed to be a great sinner ; nay, held her proved to be, by the very intensity of her love to Himself as exhibited in her remarkable behaviour. From the great love He inferred a great need of forgiveness. Yet He had perfect confidence in the power of faith to " save " her, to make her happy and good. " Thy faith hath saved thee," He said to her at parting; "go into peace." In what had just taken place He saw the process of salvation begun, and even virtually completed. Faith in the good tidings we may 1 Luke vii. 36-50 ; Matt. viii. 5-13 ; Luke vii. 1-10 ; Matt. xv. 21-28 ; Mark vii. 24-30. G 98 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. assume she had heard Him preach, for " faith cometh by hearing," had led her to believe in the forgiveness of sins, and to cherish hope of being able by Heaven's help to live a useful, pure life for the future. The very sight of Him had been a gospel to the heart of this fallen one, revealing an infinite depth of tender, pure sympathy with the like of her which touched the remnants of true womanhood in her, and made sensual impulses seem hateful. And now here she was in His presence, suitable occasion offering, her heart bursting with gratitude for benefit received, and demonstrating by a series of extra ordinary actions her pure though passionate affection for her Saviour. What better evidence could one desire of faith's power than the moral transformation actually effected : a sinner turned into a penitent, a harlot into a devotee ; the shameless one raised above the shame which keeps men from doing noble actions, and become a heroine who can defy conventional proprieties at the bidding of the heart ? Here was a last one become first: in the very first passages of her new life leaving Simon the Pharisee far behind — his behaviour towards his guest, compared with hers, seeming cold and mean. It was with these things in view that Jesus declared, surely not without reason, that faith had saved that woman. True, the new life was only begun, and there were many risks ahead. Many conversions are only temporary, and early enthusiasms are too often followed by lamentable falls. Jesus knew all that full well ; but He was not a Pharisee, therefore He deemed it better to speak a generous word than to offer cold advices, to sympathize than to caution. He believed that faith, and what faith feeds on, redeeming THE CONDITIONS OF ENTRANCE. 99 love in God and man, is the best preservative against apostasy, and that when it fails no other influences will be of much avail. Nor did He send the penitent away with that cheering sympathetic word, from mere motives of prudence. He spoke from conviction, as cherishing strong hopes for the future of the erring one. He saw no reason in the evil past for despair. He believed it possible for great offenders permanently to forsake wicked ways and rise to great heights of sanctity. He even expected such, once changed, to rise highest. Therefore it was that He spent so much of His time among the outcasts. He expected to find there the best citizens of the kingdom. The motto, " Much forgiveness, much love," was part of His apology for His sympathetic relations with the class of which the woman " who was a sinner " was a sample. The confidence He expressed in her case was not the result of a momentary generous impulse. It embodied a fixed principle on which He acted all through His ministry. "It is faith that saves, it can save the lowest, it can save them most conspicuously," — such was the cheering, hopeful creed of Jesus Christ. In the light of that creed we understand why Jesus said so much less about repentance than about faith. He believed that faith would do the work of repentance, that indeed it bore repentance in its bosom. And when we recall His definition of repentance, we perceive that the fact is even so. Repentance means a change of mind consisting in the recognition of the kingdom as the chief end of man. But faith, we have found, means the recep tion of the same kingdom as the highest good, the sum of all blessedness bestowed on men as a free gift from 100 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. God. Evidently, then, the reception of the boon by faith is the most direct way to the goal aimed at in repentance, the exaltation of the kingdom and its interests to the place of supremacy. And the repentance thus brought about is altogether wholesome; not legal but evangelic, not compulsory but spontaneous ; not a habit of sadness as if doing eternal penance for the past, but a turning of the moral energies in a new direction in cheer fulness and hope, letting the dead past bury its dead. In this way, not after the rueful manner of the Baptist circle, would Jesus have His disciples repent. What He said to the palsied man, He virtually said to all: " Courage, child, thy sins are forgiven thee." 1 He summoned penitents not to fasting but to service, such as that of the women who followed Him and ministered to Him of their substance.2 She that had been a sinner probably joined that company, and that was the way by which she entered into peace. In the cases of the Roman centurion and the woman of Syro-Phoenicia, the faith manifested, though in both instances eliciting the admiration and praise of Jesus, was less obviously of the kind that " saves." The benefit sought in both cases was physical, and the faith exercised in seeking it seems rather a capacity for uttering bright sayings, and the eulogy called forth appears to be homage done to genius under another name. There is certainly something to be learned from these narratives concerning the psychology of faith as conceived by Jesus. Obviously He did not regard faith as an isolated faculty separate from reason, and still less as opposed to reason, but 1 Matt. ix. 2. 2 Luke viii. 1-3. THE CONDITIONS OF ENTRANCE. 101 rather as a function of the whole mind exercised on religion. Those whom He accounted great in faith were thus likely to be interesting people, in all respects far from commonplace either intellectually or morally ; and in fact it is evident that all the three chief characters in the incidents under consideration, the sinful woman, the centurion, and the Syro-Phcenician, were as far as possible from being commonplace. There was an element of genius and heroism in them all; a talent for doing uncommon actions, for thinking great thoughts, for uttering sparkling, witty words. And the truth is, whatever prejudice may exist to the contrary, faith is always a heroic quality, by no means a prosaic home spun virtue likely to be most conspicuous in persons of dull minds, and characterized by moral mediocrity. As to the physical nature of the benefit, Jesus did not view it in isolation any more than the faculty of faith. His idea seems to have been, that as faith in its acting main tains solidarity with all the mental powers, so all its acts are in solidarity with each other. Capacity to believe in one direction implies capacity to believe in all directions. While intellect was conspicuously active in the cen turion and in the Syro-Phoenician woman, faith in the ethical and religious sense also revealed itself in no ordinary degree. The saying of the centurion, besides indicating deep humility, showed strong faith in the power and the will of the Divine Being, as represented by Jesus, to interpose in the world's affairs as a helper of men in their needs. It is true, any one not inclined to think well of Pagans might very easily detract from 102 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. the merit of the striking word which compared Christ to a general or imperator, by representing it as the com bined product of Roman military discipline and Roman religious superstition.1 But the centurion's faith is thus made less remarkable in one aspect, only to become more significant in another direction. If Christ's praise was exaggerated, it but the more conspicuously evinces his philo-Pagan spirit, and raises the hope that the generous eye of Heaven may detect traces of faith in the hearts of benighted heathens dimly groping after the true God, where narrow-souled men judging by dogmatic tests would discover none. We may safely assume, however, that the praise, while generous, as was always Christ's way, was in the main deserved. In that case the centurion's faith, as that of a Pagan, — for such we may regard him, even if, as is probable from Luke's narrative,2 he had become a Jewish proselyte, — possesses peculiar value as foreshadowing the universal destination of the kingdom. Here on heathen soil, so to speak, is a faith which on Christ's own testimony eclipses any to be seen in Israel. It is a melancholy, although not a surpris ing fact, as it concerns Israel. Here is a people which has had a very long and careful training in religion, and has busied itself very much with religion. And the result is that the faith-faculty has almost died out within it ; has been killed out by Rabbinism, which can believe in no new revelations, but only in old revelations overgrown by the moss of centuries. There is a better chance of learn- 1 Weiss characterizes the centurion's idea as "certainly very superstitious " (Leben Jesu, i. p. 425). 2 Luke vii. 5. THE CONDITIONS OF ENTRANCE. 103 ing what faith can be and do by going outside the Jewish pale. Verily a thing of evil omen for the elect race. For if the kingdom addresses itself to faith, and if faith be forthcoming among Pagans more readily than among Israelites, will it not forsake the sacred soil and step forth into the Gentile world, going where it meets with a hearty welcome ? The reflection forces itself on our minds, and it is nowise unlikely that it suggested itself to Jesus and found expression in the words : " Many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven ; but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out." x The truth that the gospel is for the world is not expressed here as Paul expressed it. The kingdom does not go to the Pagans, the Pagans come to the kingdom, localized in the Holy Land. But the day - dawn of Christian universalism is manifestly here. In the case of the Syro -Phoenician woman the dawn grows brighter. Here also there is a double interest, a personal interest connected with the unfolding of a striking human character, and the didactic interest con nected with the fact that the heroine was a Pagan. We all feel the charm of the story. The pathos, humour, and meekness blended together in the pleadings of this Syrian mother for her afflicted daughter conquer every Christian heart. Had the narative told that Jesus persisted in His refusal, it would have been hard for 1 Matt. viii. 11. This saying is given by Luke in another con nection (xiii. 28, 29), and we cannot be sure that Matthew places it in its original position. But as it stands in his Gospel it suits well the occasion. 104 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. us to have borne it. But there was no risk of that happening. Not that Jesus was not in earnest in the declaration made to His disciples that His vocation was to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He meant that seriously, and then and always acted on it. But faith made all the difference. Faith anywhere and everywhere must be respected. Jesus accordingly did respect faith in this instance, and in the light of His ultimate com pliance with the woman's request, His rule of conduct becomes modified thus : Israel my ordinary care, with exceptions made in favour of faith. In Christ's own lifetime the exceptions were few, but these exceptions, and the one before us in particular, were prophetic of a time when the exception would become the rule. For Christian universalism was immanent in the Syro- Phcenician's faith ; therein lay its profound rehgious significance. When she said meekly and wittily, " We are Gentile dogs, yet there is a portion even for the dogs of the household crouching below the family table," she expressed by implication her belief that the barrier between Jew and Gentile was not insurmountable, that election did not exclude the outside world from all share in Divine compassion, that Heaven's grace could not possibly be confined within certain geographical bound aries. She said in effect what Paul said afterwards, " God is not the God of the Jews only, but of the Gentiles also ; " with him, she ascribed to God's love a length and breadth wide as the world. Her faith filled up the deep ravine of Pagan unworthiness, and levelled the mountain range of election which separated Jews from Gentiles, and made a straight way for the kingdom THE CONDITIONS OF ENTRANCE. 105 with its blessings even into Syro-Phoenicia. All this Jesus understood, and all this He had in view in granting the request. His ultimate compliance was not a merely exceptional favour to a Pagan out of regard to a most unusual spiritual insight. It was a virtual proclamation that before faith all partition walls must fall, that wher ever there is recipiency the blessings of the kingdom must be communicated, irrespective of race, rite, or peculiar privilege. It was an anticipation of the position taken up by the Apostolic Church in Jerusalem, when, in deference to undeniable facts, its members said, " Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life." In their case it was a reluctant acknowledgment in which deeply-rooted prejudice yielded to the force of events. One may feel disappointment that in this respect there is the appearance of a resemblance between their attitude and that of Jesus on this occasion. It is natural to wish that His universalism had been as pronounced and as undeniable as that of Paul, by the side of which his reluctant yielding to the pressure of importunate faith wears an aspect of provincial narrow ness. But that could not be. However like Paul in spirit and conviction, Jesus could not but be more reserved in utterance and in action. Respect was due to the law of development. Bright day is ushered in by the grey dim dawn. It was good and wholesome that the day of grace should thus gradually steal on. The public action of Jesus was guided by this consideration. In confining His activities to Israel, He was exercising a self-restraint which was a veritable part of His earthly humiliation. How real the self-restraint was, appears 106 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. from the heartiness and even eagerness with which exception was made on good cause shown. In the case of the Syro-Phoenician woman, as in the case of the Roman centurion, it would have been very easy for an illiberal churlish Jew to have minimized the merit of the words spoken. It is always easy to put a sinister con: struction on the conduct of people we dislike. Good qualities may be turned into their opposites : humility into impudence, genial wit into mere pertness. Christ saw in that woman nothing that was not there ; never theless He saw what He was very willing to see ; what no scribe, rabbi, or Pharisee would ever have discovered. It was once asked with reference to Himself, " Can any good thing come out of Nazareth ? " That He was not inclined to ask, " Can any good thing come out of heathendom 1 " His admiring exclamation, " 0 woman, great is thy faith ! " r very sufficiently demonstrates. Though He did not say it, He doubtless felt that here again was a faith the like of which was not to be found in Israel. The remark might have been made with even more justice than in the case of the centurion. Faith was a scarce commodity in Israel in any form ; and what there was of it was of a homeward-bound character — faith in a grace available for the chosen race, but not for those beyond the pale. Here, on Pagan soil, on the 1 Matt. xv. 28. Mark's version is less gushing : " For this saying go thy way " (vii. 29). The meaning is the same. The gush comes out in action : " The devil is gone out of thy daughter." It is noticeable that the harshness of Christ's refusal is softened in Mark's account by the introduction of the words : " Let the children first be filled" (vii. 27). This sounds like an echo of Paul's : "To the Jew first, and also to the Gentile." THE CONDITIONS OF ENTRANCE. 107 contrary, was a faith remarkable not only for its bright ness and strength, but for its spiritual enlightenment and width of horizon ; accepting as a truism what to the ordinary Jew seemed all but incredible, that there was hope in God even for Gentiles. After the foregoing observations, it can hardly be necessary to point out that, in the view of Christ, faith was not only the necessary but the sufficient condition of admission to the kingdom. " Faith alone " was a motto for Christ not less than for Paul. Faith alone with reference to repentance, because including it ; faith alone with reference to circumcision and the like externalities, because rendering them utterly meaningless. Faith alone sufficed in the case of the Syro-Phoenician mother and her daughter. The mother came to Jesus a Pagan, and she returned to her home a Pagan, yet with a blessing for herself and for her afflicted child. It is true, indeed, that faith obtained, apparently, only the dog's portion, a crumb of healing for a diseased body. Might it not suffice for that, yet fail to obtain the full benefits of citizenship in the holy commonwealth without the aid of some supplementary qualification, such as, for example, circumcision ? No, for there is solidarity in the benefits procurable by faith, as well as in faith's actings. The law of solidarity prevails all round. The soul exerts all its energies in believing ; faith's individual acts all hang together ; God's gifts to faith go in a body. If anything is given, all is given. Faith makes the dog a child, and gets a share not only of the crumbs below the table, but of all the viands on the table. That is the law of the kingdom. Recipiency is tha sole require- 108 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. ment. External conditions can have no place in reference to the Highest Good. Existing restrictions are only economical and temporary, and a sign that the era of spiritual reality is not yet come. The behaviour of Jesus towards the Pagans mentioned in the Gospels shows that He was of this mind. CHAPTER IV. CHRIST'S DOCTRINE OF GOD. In passing from the Old Testament to the Gospels, we find God spoken of under a new name. The Jehovah of Israel is replaced by the Divine Father of men. An ancient reading of Matt. xi. 27, of earlier date than the oldest of extant manuscripts, made Jesus claim to be the. revealer of God in His paternal character. "No man knew the Father save the Son." The claim is valid, independently of doubtful readings of evangelic texts. The " only -begotten " was the first effective exegete of God as Father. He declared Him so that the name Father took its place in human speech as the Christian name for the Divine Being. The declaration was an essential part of the doctrine of the kingdom. The title Father is the appropriate name of God in the kingdom of grace, for it is the kingdom of fatherly love. The doctrine was not absolutely new ; like every other Christian doctrine, it had its root in the Old Testament. But it was new in emphasis. It was also new in respect to the relation the name Father was employed to express. In Old Testament dialect the epithet expressed a relation of God to the chosen nation, or to its earthly sovereign, Jehovah's vicegerent. Israel or Israel's King was God's 109 110 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. Son. But Christ placed God in a paternal relation to individuals, and represented Him as the Father of the human spirit. It was in one sense a doctrine as old as Genesis, where it is taught that man was made in God's image. But it was the old doctrine with a marked difference. The man made in God's image, of the Book of Origins, is an ideal man untainted by moral evil. But Jesus said : God is the Father of men, sin notwith standing.1 He said this not merely with reference to the best men in whom moral evil appeared in the most mitigated form, the people of culture and character, but even with reference to the most depraved and degraded. The God He preached is Father not only of those who by His grace have become citizens of the Divine king dom, but also of those who are without. The doctrine concerned both sinners and saints, and was proclaimed to all on highway or in market-place, irrespective of social or moral antecedents. But the Fatherhood of God, as announced by Jesus, while having reference to all, does not necessarily mean the same thing for all. God cannot, any more than an earthly parent, be a Father to His prodigal children to the same effect as to sons who dwell in His house and regard Him with trust, reverence, and love. The full benefit of Divine Fatherhood can only be experienced where there is a filial attitude and spiritual receptivity. The will to bless may be in the Father's heart, yet be 1 The idea that God is the Father of the just man occurs in the Wisdom of Solomon ii. 16-18 : " He blesseth the end of the just, and boasts that God is his Father. Let us see if his words be true, and let us try his end. For if the just be the son of God, He will take his part, and deliver him from the hands of his foes." Christ's doctrine of god. Ill frustrated by unbelief or alienation. Hence, in studying the doctrine of God's paternal love, we must have regard to moral distinctions. We must ask ourselves what it means for smners, and what for saints ; for men in general on the one hand, for the children of the kingdom on the other. We shall find that the words of Jesus supply us with materials for answering both questions. The Fatherhood of God in both relations has two aspects, a providential and a gracious ; the one referring to the temporal interests of men, the other to the higher interests of the soul. The paternal Providence of God over all is taught in that word in the Sermon on the Mount, in which the Father in heaven is represented as making His sun rise upon evil and good, and sending rain on just and unjust.1 This part of Christ's doctrine is not so much a new revelation as a reversion to a simple truth of natural religion. Nature itself teaches men to think of the Maker and Sustainer of the world as a parent who gives to his children their daily bread. The Vedic Indians, with this thought in their mind, worshipped Dyaus-pitar, the heaven-Father. They felt their dependence for the things they chiefly sought after, food and raiment, on the elements ; and without clearly distinguishing between creature and Creator, they looked up to the sky, and adored the Power that sent them sunshine and showers in due season. On the other side of God's universal Fatherhood, Christ's teaching rises far above the level of man's unassisted thought. The natural man, because he seeks chiefly material good, does not much meditate on God's 1 Matt. v. 45. 112 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. paternal care for his spiritual wellbeing. This aspect comes into full view only when men begin to seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness as the first goods of life. Jesus taught that God cares with paternal tenderness for the souls of those who utterly neglect the chief end and the chief good. His teaching on this subject is an essential part of His doctrine of the king dom. It does not declare the truth concerning God's relation to the citizens of the kingdom which forms the crown of His theology, but it sets forth a truth the belief of which tends to make men become citizens. The locus classicus for this part of Christ's revelation of the Father is the fifteenth chapter of Luke's Gospel containing the parables concerning the finding of the lost, and especially the last of the three parables — the Prodigal Son. There God appears as One who takes pleasure in the repentance of sinners such as the repro bates of Jewish society, because in these penitents He sees prodigal children returning to their Father's house. By these parabolic utterances Jesus said to all, however far from righteousness, God loves you as His children, no more worthy to be called sons, yet regarded as such ; He deplores your departure from Him, and desires your return ; and He will receive you graciously when, taught wisdom by misery, you direct your footsteps homewards. It is not allegorizing exegesis to take this meaning out of the parables. Jesus was on His defence for loving classes of men despised or despaired of, and His defence in part consisted in this, that His bearing towards the outcasts was that of the Divine Being. He loved them as a Brother ; God loved them as a Father. Christ's doctrine of god. 113 Even if these parables had never been spoken, the fatherly love of God to the lost ones must still have appeared an obvious corollary from Christ's own be haviour towards them. The new doctrine of God was involved in the new line of conduct ; and the three parables concerning finding the lost, even if not genuine, truly reflect the spirit of that conduct and its religious significance.1 God was proclaimed to be the com passionate Father of the sinful by deeds more emphati cally than by the most pathetic and beautiful words. The much-blamed sympathetic intercourse of Jesus with the publicans and sinners of Israel, said to all who could understand : " The most depraved of men is still a man, my brother, my Father's child ; therefore I love him, and am fully assured that God loves him as I do." Doubt less converts to discipleship from these classes did understand. They felt instinctively that the God of Jesus was a different Being from the God of the Phari sees, who scorned and repelled them ; not a God of merely negative holiness keeping aloof from the sinful, but One who desired to make others partakers of His holiness ; not a merely righteous God, but good as well as righteous, the one absolutely Good Being, benignant, gracious, delighting to bestow favours ; not the God of a clique or coterie, the head of the Pharisaical party or of 1 Weizsacker (Untersuchungen, S. 177) regards the parables in Luke xv. and xvi. as an appendix to the first of the group, that of the Lost Sheep, which Luke has in common with Matthew (xviii. 12, 13). In proof he points to the fact that in chap, xvii, Luke goes on to Christ's discourse on Offences, the connection in which the parable occurs in Matthew's Gospel. This is a shrewd observation. , • , H 114 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. the Rabbinical schools, but the God of the populace and the profane rabble, with whom a penitent publican had a better chance of acceptance than a self-complacent religionist who studied the law day and night and scrupulously observed all prescribed rules. " These things," this Father-God, was revealed to the "babes," though hidden from the wise and understanding ; hidden from them because they desired not such a divinity, but rather one like unto themselves, priding himself on his holiness, and jealously guarding it from tarnish by isolation. This Father-God who loveth even the unholy, whom Jesus preached by word and still more impressively by action, is another sign that the coming kingdom is not national but universal. This God cannot be the God of the Jews only, any mora than He can be the God of a Pharisaic party within the Jewish nation. The Gentiles also are His children. He may seem to have neglected them hitherto, but the neglect can only have been compara tive. Now that Jesus has come revealing the Father, the period of neglect manifestly draws to a close ; the time of merciful visitation for the Gentile world is at hand. Passing now from the universal aspect of Divine Fatherhood to the more special, we find that a paternal Providence for the citizens of the kingdom was very strongly asserted by Jesus. He told His disciples that they need have no concern about temporal interests ; their Father in heaven would take charge of these ; their part was to devote themselves in filial dutifulness and trust to the service of the kingdom. " Be not anxious," He said to them, " saying, What shall we eat, CHRIST S DOCTRINE OF GOD. 115 or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed ? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek, for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye need all these things. But seek ye first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." 1 That is, Let your care be the kingdom, you yourselves will be your Father's care. It is a distribution of duties between a Father and His children. The children are to devote themselves to the kingdom and righteousness of their Father, for so these are named in the reading adopted above, which is intrinsically probable though found only in the Vatican manuscript. Devotion to the kingdom so conceived becomes an easy task. For children love to serve their Father ; subjects who are also sons do the King's will with enthusiasm. On the other hand, they are relieved from all anxiety concerning themselves. For the Divine Father and King will provide for His children. He careth for all, even for His prodigal children who are unthankful and evil ; how much more will He care for dutiful children who do His will, and devote themselves to those interests which He regards as of supreme importance ! The same distribution of duties between Father and children underlies the Lord's Prayer. First come peti tions for the advancement of the kingdom, implying that that is the main object of solicitude for the petitioners ; then follow petitions for personal wants — daily bread, pardon of shortcomings, and protection from evil, spring ing not out of anxiety, but out of an assured confidence that these boons will be granted. The import of the 1 Matt. vi. 31-33 ; Luke xii. 29-31. 116 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. prayer is : Father in heaven, our heart's chief desire is that Thy name be glorified, and we give ourselves to the service of Thy kingdom, and the doing of Thy will, trusting that Thou wilt remember all the wants of us Thy children. This paternal care of God for His servants, so patheti cally taught by Christ, is the necessary complement of the entire self-consecration which is the cardinal virtue in the ethical code of the kingdom. Those who are required to seek the kingdom and its righteousness with their whole heart are men living in the body, needing food and raiment and other things of like nature for the preservation of their natural lives ; and if they are not to be preoccupied with cares about such matters, or to permit such sordid solicitudes to take their thoughts off higher concerns, there must be some one else to look after their physical needs. There must be a Providence over them taking charge of temporalities, even as in military organization there is a commissariat department whose business it is to find the soldier in food and clothing, while he does not trouble himself about the affairs of life that he may please him who hath enlisted him for military service.1 Christ taught His disciples that the commissariat department was in the hands of their heavenly Father, so that they had but to play the part of soldiers found in everything they need. This doctrine, so clearly stated in the passage above quoted from the Sermon on the Mount, He repeated as occasion required. When, for example, He sent forth His disciples on the Galilean mission, He gave them instruc-: 1 2 Tim. ii. 4. CHRIST'S DOCTRINE OF GOD. 117 tions which might be summarized in these two precepts, " Care not ; " " Fear not." 1 Be careful about nothing, food, raiment, lodging, not even about a staff; be not anxious as to what ye shall say, or how to say it when placed in trying positions : it shall be given unto you in that hour what ye shall say. Fear not ; ye will doubtless sometimes be in circumstances fitted to inspire fear, involving peril to your lives. Yet fear not for your bodily life ; fear only one thing, the death of your souls through unfaithfulness in yielding to the tempter who whispers, " Save thyself ; prefer personal safety to duty." As for your bodies, why fear for them ? Should the worst come, you are not really harmed, and your Father will provide that the worst come not so long as you are needed for the work of the kingdom. The hairs of your head are numbered by Him who careth even for valueless sparrows. To this effect did Jesus exhort the apprentice evangelists. It is unnecessary to ask, Who is the unnamed object of fear who is distin guished from the foes that seek to stay the progress of the kingdom by killing the bodies of its apostles, as one who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna ? Who else can the ghostly foe be but the evil spirit who goeth about tempting men to prefer their personal interests to the Divine ? But why then is he not named ? That he may be all the more an object of dread. Fear ye, said Jesus in effect, the nameless secret foe who seeks your ruin by tempting you to play the coward and deserter instead of the man and the hero. God also might be described as the Destroyer, in so far 1 Matt. x. 19, 28. 118* THE KINGDOM OF GOD. as He judicially gives over to perdition those who act the part of apostates and traitors. But so to have spoken of God would have been bad policy and bad rhetoric, when the Speaker desired to lodge in the minds of His disciples the idea of God as a Father, as the antidote to all fear. To exhibit God as an object of infinite dread is a poor way of preparing men to receive Him as an object of unbounded trust. Moreover, the proper object of fear is not the judicial damnation, but that which leads to it, temptation to apostasy. The point on which we are to bring to bear all our faculty of horror is that at which the first Satanic suggestion is whispered, " Save thyself : self-preservation is the first duty ; why risk property, name, life, in a mad enterprise ? " During the time He was with them, Jesus found cause for renewing the exhortations, " Fear not," " Care not," to His disciples. In the twelfth chapter of Luke we find such a counsel against anxiety lying like a pebble on a gravel-bank which may have strayed from its original position in the evangelic history, but whose intrinsic value remains undiminished. " Fear not, little flock : for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom."1 The situation is so described as to make clear how great is the temptation to fear. The disciples are, in relation to the world, a small flock of sheep, few in number, insignificant in influence, and helpless as sheep in the midst of devouring wolves. Nevertheless, with reference even to such an apparently desperate situation, they are exhorted not to fear, but to be assured that their Father will not suffer them 1 Luke xii. 32. CHRIST'S DOCTRINE OF GOD. 119" either to lose the kingdom, the chief object of their quest, or to fall victims to hostile powers. These and other words of Jesus setting forth God's paternal care for those who serve Him, are utterances full of poetry and pathos, the bare reading of which exercises a soothing influence on our troubled spirits in this world of trial, sorrow, and care. Yet we are tempted to regard them as a romantic idyll having the rights and value of poetry, but standing in no relation to real life. Christ's whole doctrine of a Father-God may appear to us the product of a delicate religious imagination and a child-like loving heart which went through life dreaming a pleasant dream, and scarce conscious of collisions with hard unwelcome experiences. Some may think the world has outgrown the doctrine. " We are of age," writes one, " and do not need a Father's care." x Others, the majority, little inclined to adopt this haughty tone, find the doctrine very welcome, if only it were true. It is a spring in the desert of life, nevertheless is not life a desert all the same ? It may be ; but whatever the facts are which seem to justify this pessimistic view, they were perfectly familiar to Jesus. His doctrine of Divine Fatherhood did come from the heart; it was as far as possible from being the dry scientific utterance of a scholastic theologian, and scholastic theology has shown its consciousness of the fact by treating the doctrine with neglect. But Jesus uttered the doctrine with full know ledge of all in experience that seemed to contradict it, and earnestly believed it, all that notwithstanding. He knew how much there is to tempt men to say : Provi- 1 Heine, Sammtliche Werke, v. 140. 120 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. dence is anything but paternal, if indeed there be a Providence at all ; for has not every man to be his own providence, finding for himself food and raiment and all things needful as best he can, and endeavouring the while not altogether to forget higher matters ? And He spoke words fitted to lay such doubting thoughts arising out of sombre experience. How vividly He conceived the mental state of the careworn, appears from Luke's version of the counsel against anxiety, which might be thus paraphrased : " Seek not what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, neither be ye as a ship raised aloft on the billows of a troubled, tempestuous sea." 1 But it was not alone by a stray word such as this, preserved by the third evangelist,2 that Jesus showed His intimate acquaintance and deep sympathy with the trials of faith to which the servants of the kingdom are liable. From the lessons He taught His disciples on Perseverance in Prayer, it appears how well aware He was that God often shows Himself so little like a Father, that those who trust in Him are tempted to think Him rather like a man of selfish spirit who cares only for his own com fort, or like an unjust judge who is indifferent to right. Such precisely are the representations of God as He appears in the two parables of the Selfish Neighbour and the Unjust Judge? The relevancy of the parables requires that these characters should be regarded as 1 Luke xii. 29, xal fiq piTiupifyofa. ¦ 2 It is impossible to decide whether we have here an explanatory gloss on the counsel against anxiety, or an utterance of Jesus in its original form. The striking character of the expression is in favour of the latter view. 3 Luke xi. 5-8, xviii. 1-8. CHRIST'S DOCTRINE OF GOD. 121 representing God, not as He is indeed, but as He seems to tried faith. It is thus tacitly admitted by Jesus, that far from giving His children what they need before they ask or when they ask, God often delays for a lengthened period answers to prayer, so as to present to suppliants an aspect of indifference, heartlessness, unrighteousness. The didactic drift of the two parables is : You will have to wait on God, to wait possibly till hope deferred make the heart sick, but it is worth your while to wait, " for the Lord is good to them that wait on Him, to the soul that seeketh Him." Man can be compelled to hear by importunity and incessant knocking. God is not a man to be compelled, yet it may be said that the apparent reluctance of Providence can be overcome by persistent prayer which refuses to be gainsaid or frustrated, con tinuing to knock at the door with an importunity that knows no shame,1 and assailing the ear of the judge with outcries in a temper that will not be trifled with, and an attitude almost threatening.2 In other words, with full consciousness how much there is in the world which seems to prove the contrary, Jesus asserted the reality of a Paternal Providence continually working for the good of those who make the kingdom of God their chief end. And this faith is the distinctively Christian theory of the Universe. Christians believe that the kingdom of heaven is a chief end for God as well as for' themselves, and that He makes all things subservient to its interests. 1 dualhice, shamelessness, is ascribed to the petitioner in the earlier parable. 2 The unjust judge affects to be afraid lest the widow at last should strike him : ha f&q visomia-fy fa. 122 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. This faith gives them victory over all sordid solicitudes, and enables them with cheerfulness and hope to leave all their personal concerns in the hands of their Father. While assuring His disciples of God's care for their temporal wants, Jesus did not neglect to teach them the still more important truth that their spiritual wellbeing was an object of tender solicitude to their heavenly Father. This indeed hardly needed to be taught expressly. The higher care is implied in the lower. God cares for the bodies of His children, that they may give themselves without distraction to that service of the kingdom which is the very life and health of the soul. Nevertheless, Jesus deemed it expedient to make the higher aspect of God's paternal providence the subject of special declara tions. One such may be found even in the promise that food and raiment would be provided, which is so expressed as to include a reference to the higher goods of life. "All these things shall be added unto you." If food and raiment be an addition, there must be a portion to which they are added. That portion consists of the kingdom and its righteousness, chiefly sought, and surely to be found. What Jesus thus taught indirectly though most forcibly, He directly declared when He said : " Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." He gave a similar assurance by introducing into the model prayer petitions for the pardon of sin, and for protection from temptation and from the power of moral evil.1 The two parables already 1 It seems best to take tow mvypov as referring, not to the Evil One, but to evil in the abstract. The petition thereby gains the widest comprehensiveness. CHRIST'S DOCTRINE OF GOD. 123 referred to bear, if not exclusively, at least inclusively, on spiritual interests. The later parable relates to the public interest of the Divine kingdom. The earlier must be supposed to embrace within its scope all the petitions of the Lord's Prayer to which it is appended, the peti tions relating to pardon and protection from evil, not less than that relating to daily bread. From the sentence with which the lesson on prayer, recorded in the eleventh chapter of Luke, ends, we should naturally infer that the Holy Spirit as a sanctifying power is supposed to be the chief object of desire. Criticism may indeed find in the remarkable expression a tinge of Paulinism. But grant ing that we have here a Pauline modification of Christ's words, the promise of the Holy Spirit put into the mouth of Christ by Luke is nothing more than an assurance that the prayer for protection from temptation1 shall be answered. The temptations chiefly to be dreaded are those which solicit us to sacrifice primary interests for secondary, righteousness for physical wants ; and we are kept from yielding to such by the Divine Spirit dwelling in us, and imparting to us a single eye, a pure heart, a generous, noble devotion to the kingdom and its interests. It is important to observe, that while giving these various assurances to His disciples that God would attend to their spiritual welfare, Jesus did not lead them to expect that in this sphere there would be no occasion for exercising the virtue of patience. On the contrary, it is 1 In the best texts of Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer, the clause dwd foaai yiy.x; diro roii irauiioov is wanting. It/ qualifies the previous clause by explaining in what sense temptation is to be deprecated, and is therefore implied even when not expressed. 124 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. clearly implied in the parable of the selfish neighbour, that the delays which make God assume so untoward an aspect take place in connection with all the objects referred to in the Lord's Prayer : the advancement of the kingdom, daily bread, the personal spiritual necessi ties of disciples. Hence we learn that even the Holy Spirit may not be given at once in satisfying measure to those who earnestly desire it, though sure to be so given eventually. The heavenly Father may for a season appear unwilling to grant to those who seek first the kingdom, even that which they most value — righteous ness, sanctity, complete victory over evil. This is a familiar fact of Christian experience, and the fact im ports that personal sanctification is a gradual process. The Holy Spirit is given in ample measure to all earnest souls, but not even to the most earnest without such delays as are most trying to faith and patience. This fact, plainly implied in the lessons on prayer recorded by Luke, is directly recognised in the parable of the Blade, the Ear, and the Full Corn} preserved by Mark alone. The parable may be held to refer in the first place to the Divine kingdom viewed collectively, and in that view it has an important bearing on the question whether Jesus expected the kingdom to pass through a lengthened period of development. But nothing forbids us to regard the parable as applicable likewise to individual experience. The kingdom comes in the individual as well as in the community ; and the lesson we learn from the parable, is that the kingdom comes as ripe grain comes — gradually passing through stages analogous to 1 Mark iv. 26-29. Christ's doctrine of god. 125 those in the growth of corn : stages that cannot be over- leapt, that no amount of earnestness will avail to super sede ; that are indeed most marked in those who are most earnest, and who ultimately exhibit the Divine life in its highest measure of energy and beauty. This is a great truth still not well understood, which it much concerns earnest seekers after God to lay to heart.1 Some insight into it is needful to enable Christians at the critical period of their spiritual life, that of the green ear, to believe in the Fatherhood of God in its highest aspect. Failing to grasp the law of gradual sanctifica tion, they will be tempted to think that God does in the highest sphere what Jesus declared no earthly father would do in the lower sphere of physical life, viz. mock His children by giving them stones when they ask for bread, and so prove to be in truth no Father at alL And if we doubt the reality of God's Fatherhood in the realm of grace, what will it avail us to believe in His Fatherhood in ordinary providence ? If we doubt His willingness to give us the bread of eternal life, what comfort can it afford us, who desire that bread above all things, to believe that He is willing to give the bread 1 The parable above referred to contains the clearest statement of the truth that the law of growth obtains in the kingdom of God to be found in the New Testament. It is very doubtful whether this truth, in relation either to the individual or to the community, was grasped by the apostles (not excepting Paul), not to speak of the Apostolic Church in general. This consideration is the best guarantee for the genuineness of this logion recorded by Mark alone. Its absence from the other Gospels may be clue to the fact that it teaches a truth in advance of the ideas both of the evangelists and of those for whose benefit they wrote. Pfleiderer (Das Urchristenthum, S, 370) recognises the originality of the parable. 126 the kingdom of god. that perisheth ? Nay, if we let go the one faith, how can we retain the other ? If we deny the Fatherhood of God in grace, how shall we believe in a paternal Providence ? Along with faith in God as the Father of our spirits, will not faith in Him as the Provider for our bodies fade out of our hearts, and leave us with no better creed than that of a godless world — every man for himself ? That the kingdom of God comes as a spiritual posses sion, only gradually, even when earnestly sought as the highest good, the history of Christ's disciples suffices to prove. The devotion of these men to the kingdom was intense from the beginning, but it was ignorant and impure. Even at a late period they were so unacquainted with the nature of the kingdom that they could quarrel about places of distinction in it, and their motives were so corrupt that their Master found it necessary to speak of conversion as a condition of their obtaining the humblest place in the Divine commonwealth. The initial ideas of the Twelve were conventional. They accepted current ideas of the kingdom, and of righteous ness, and of God ; and poured the new wine of their enthusiasm into old bottles. This is ever the way with religious novices. There is plenty of zeal, but little spiritual discernment. Conventional orthodoxy is im plicitly adopted as the truth, all conventionally holy causes are fervently espoused, and all current religious customs are scrupulously observed. The Twelve were sincere seekers of the kingdom ; but they had to seek it not merely in the sense of serving its interests, but in the sense of striving to find out its true nature, and the Christ's doctrine of god. 127 nature of its laws, and of its Divine Ruler. They were Jews to begin with, and the task before them was to become Christians in their thoughts of God, and of all things Divine. It was for this end that " Jesus ordained twelve, that they should be with Him." T He invited them to take His yoke upon them, that He might teach them the mysteries of the kingdom, and reveal unto them the Father. The former function He performed by uttering deep truths, many of which are recorded in the Gospels ; the latter not so much by word as by life. He showed the Father by unfolding Himself. To see Him was to see the Father, to understand His spirit was to know the Father's inmost heart. According to the testimony of the fourth Gospel, the companions of Jesus were slow learners in this department of their spiritual education. " Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us," 2 Philip is made to say on the eve of the Passion. It seems a libel on a fellow-disciple. Yet, after all, the alleged ignorance is perfectly credible. Has not Christendom been slow to learn the revelation of the Father ? Have we not yet to learn it, by accept ing the Jesus of the Gospels as an absolutely true and full manifestation of the Divine Being, and believing without reserve that He and God are in spirit one ? A thoroughly Christian idea of God is still a desideratum, and when the Church has reached it, the kingdom of God shall have come in power. 1 Mark iii. 14. 2 John xiv. 8. CHAPTER V. CHRIST'S DOCTRINE OF MAN. Every doctrine of God has its congruous doctrine of man. A consistent pantheism, for example, regards man as insignificant, not distinguishable from nature, not generically different from the beasts. The Christian idea of God, on the contrary, is naturally associated with high views as to the dignity and worth of human nature in its ideal, if not in its actual condition. For as God cannot be the God of the dead but of the living, so neither can He be the Father of beings not intrinsically superior to the brutes. His children must be made in His own image, and possess the inalienable dignity of personality constituted by the possession of reason and freedom. Accordingly Jesus taught a high doctrine con cerning the dignity of man. He said with unexampled emphasis : A man is a man, not a mere human animal ; he is a being of infinite importance to God, and ought to be such also to himself and to his fellows. He quaintly hinted the deep truth by asking such thought-provoking questions as these : Is not the life more than meat ? l How much is a man better than a sheep ? 2 What shall a man give in exchange for his soul ? s 1 Matt. vi. 25. 2 Matt. xii. 12. 3 Matt. xvi. 26. 123 CHRIST S DOCTRINE OF MAN. 129 Jesus taught His new doctrine of man more empha tically by His public action than by these or any other kindred words. In His invitations to enter the kingdom, He addressed Himself very specially, as I have already had occasion to remark, to the poor, to those who were in bad social repute, to the labouring and heavy-laden, the children of sorrow and care. This did not mean that He was animated by class partialities, and desired to set one part of society against another ; the destitute against the wealthy, the profligates against well-conducted citizens. As little did the new interest in people of humble rank signify that Jesus regarded poverty as a virtue, of itself a passport into the kingdom of heaven. Some indeed have thought otherwise. " Pure Ebionism," says Renan, " that is, the doctrine that the poor alone shall be saved, that the kingdom of the poor is about to come, was the doctrine of Jesus. . . . Poverty remained an ideal from which the true lineage of Jesus never broke away. To possess nothing was the true evangelic state ; mendicity became a virtue, a holy state." J This may be a slightly plausible, but it is certainly a mistaken judgment. With equal plausibility might it be main tained that, according to Christ's teaching, publicans and harlots were as such fit subjects of the divine kingdom. The truth is that poverty and sorrow were not, any more than bad character, positive qualifications for citizenship, but merely conditions that were likely to act as predis posing causes, preparing men to listen with interest to the announcement that the kingdom was at hand. The prominence given to the poor in the Gospel of the 1 Vie de Je'sus, pp. 179, 183. I 130 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. kingdom, in so far as it had theoretic significance, and was not the spontaneous expression of compassion, marked the value set by Jesus on man as man. The poor represent man stripped of all extrinsic attributes of honour, and reduced to that which is common to all mankind. On this naked humanity the world has ever set little value. It begins to interest itself in a man when he is clothed with some outward distinction of wealth or birth or station. A mere man is a social nobody. Christ, on the other hand, highly valued in man only his humanity, accounting nothing he could possess of such importance as what he himself was or might become. "What is a man profited," He asked, " if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own life ? " 1 The life declared to be so precious is that in man which makes him a man — the life of a spirit con versant with things divine and eternal. For the pre servation and health of this higher life, Jesus taught, the lower animal life and all possessions should, if need were, be sacrificed. By the interest He took in the depraved, Jesus still further accentuated His doctrine as to the value of human nature. " Honest poverty " has a certain worth appreciable even by those who set their hearts on pos sessions. But what shall be said of humanity stripped not only of outward goods but even of character ? That it is still humanity, replied the " friend of publicans and sinners," with latent spiritual powers capable of develop ment, with the solemn responsibilities of moral agents, with features of the divine image not yet wholly effaced 1 Matt. xvi. 26. CHRIST'S DOCTRINE OF MAN. 131 and that may be restored. He did not deny the degrada tion, or utter sentimental apologies for the sin ; but He did deny the irrecoverableness. He hoped for those of whom the world despaired, the world of culture as represented by philosophers like Aristotle and Celsus ; the world of sanctity as represented by contemporary Pharisees. And because He hoped, He laboured, seeking as a physican to heal sick souls, as a shepherd to recover straying sheep. Out of this high doctrine of the dignity of human nature springs the doctrine of immortality. That doctrine needed no separate announcement. , Man in Christ's teaching is so great a being that he inevitably projects himself into eternity. The present world cannot hold him. The anthropology of Jesus also contains the germs of all manner of social improvements in the earthly life of man. It has been alleged, indeed, that by its other- worldliness Christ's teaching breeds indifference to tem poral interests. "The aim of Christianity," remarks Renan, "was in no respect the perfecting of human society, or the increase of the sum of individual happi ness. Men try to make themselves as comfortable as possible when they take in earnest the earth and the days they are . to spend on it. But when one is told that the earth is about to pass away, that this life is but a brief probation, the insignificant prelude of an eternal ideal, to what good embellish it ? One does not think of decorating the hovel in which he is to remain only for a moment." 1 But connect the doctrine of the life to come with its proper root, man's dignity as possessor of 1 Marc Aurele, p. 605. 132 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. personality and filially related to God, and there is no risk of the present life being overlooked. Man's dignity holds true in reference to both worlds, and must be respected in all relations. Each man must treat himself now as becomes a man, and must be so treated by his fellow-man. Noblesse oblige. The " children of the resur rection " must conduct themselves as becomes the heirs of a great destiny. It is therefore to be expected that, except when under the influence of morbid moods such as manifest themselves occasionally in all religions, believers in a future life will be as mindful of present human interests, physical and social, as the adherents of the modern religion of humanity, in which the divine Father and the heavenly home are discarded, and only earth and man retained. It does seem indeed as if a creed which says, " This life is all, therefore make the most of it," ought to make the most of it. But there is no small risk under this new creed of men growing weary in well-doing, through deadly doubt as to the worth of human life. While one generation says, " This life is all, let us make the most of it for ourselves and others," the next may go on to say, " This life is all, therefore it does not much matter how it is spent. Misery, vice, injustice — society is full of .them ; but no matter, it will all soon end for any individual victim." The tendency of Christ's doctrine of man to make for social improvement is apt to be overlooked because of the indirectness of its method of working. The method of Christianity is to work by idealism, not by agitation ; as a regenerative influence, not as a movement of reform. It does not say slavery is wrong, and follow up the CHRIST'S DOCTRINE OF MAN. 133 assertion by an agitation for abolition and by stirring up servile insurrection. It says : " A slave is a man, and may be a noble man," and leaves the idea to work as a leaven slowly but surely towards emancipation and free dom. To ardent reformers the method may appear slow, and those who use it chargeable with apathy. On this very account the Baptist doubted the Messiahship of Jesus. Jesus was in no hurry to renovate the world. He let it go on in its bad way, and meantime did all the good He could. To the fiery reformer, the slow, indirect method of the Regenerator seemed most unsatisfactory. Nevertheless the slow method turned out in the long-run to be the surest. To value human nature in its ideal is one thing, to take flattering views of its real state as seen in the average man is another. Jesus did the former ; He did not do the latter. The interest He took in the poor, the suffering, the depraved, was not sentimental. These classes were not pets of whose condition He took an indulgent, partial view, deeming the poor the victims of wrong, and the sinful good-hearted, though weak-willed people. He was under no illusion as to the average moral condition of mankind. He saw clearly that few realized their moral responsibilities, and conducted them selves as became sons of the Father in heaven ; and He spake as one well aware of the fact. He compared men as He found them to wandering sheep, lost coins, prodigal sons : J expressions certainly implying grave departure from the requirements of the moral ideal. It is therefore a serious mistake to suppose that Christ's view of human 1 Luke xv. 134 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. nature in its actual condition was, to use a theological term, Pelagian. Baur puts a strained meaning on certain of His words, when he says that, according to the teaching of the parable of the sower, it lies with man himself to come into the kingdom of God, in his own will, his own natural capacity and receptivity.1 A similar false impression, formed from stray utterances, seems to have dictated the remark made by Mr. Mill in his Essays on Religion : " According to the creed of most denominations of Christians (though assuredly not of Christ), man is by nature wicked." 2 Christ's authority might be cited for much that is said in the creeds on the subject of human depravity. He saw in human lives all around Him the evidence of sin's corrupting, deadening, enslaving power. Yet it must be admitted, on the other hand, that Christ's way of speaking concerning human depravity was in important respects unlike that of scholastic theology. The way of this theology is to take all Bible terms as used with scientific strictness, and thereon to build the edifice of dogma ; forgetful that the Bible to a large extent is literature, not dogma, and that its words are fluid and poetic, not fixed and prosaic. Thus the natural man is held to be " dead " as a stone is dead. Christ's view was more sympathetic, hopeful, and kindly. He saw in the sinful something more than death, depravity, and bondage — some spark of vitality, some latent affinity for good, an imprisoned spirit longing to be free, a true self victimized by Satanic agency, that would fain escape from thrall. On this better element 1 Gescldchte der Christlichen Kirche, i. 34. 2 Three Essays on Religion, p. 10. CHRIST'S DOCTRINE OF MAN. 135 He ever kept his eye ; • His constant effort was to get into contact with it, and He refused to despair of success. Most significant in this connection are the words in which He compared the multitude, whose spiritual destitution moved His compassion, to an abundant harvest waiting to be reaped.1 The comparison implies not only urgency, but susceptibility. The grain is ready to be reaped. The people are ready to receive any one who comes to them in God's name with a veritable gospel on his lips, and an honest human love in his heart ; the evidence being the way they crowded around Jesus Himself. A recent writer on the life of Jesus remarks that the words are parabolic, and that the term harvest was not applicable to the spiritual sphere ; in that region it was seed-sowing, not harvest-work, that was in request.2 This is simply a superficial explaining away of the words. The very point of interest in the saying is that Jesus does mean to say there is an abundant harvest waiting to be reaped among the masses. Doubtless it was a harvest not visible to the professional religious guides of Israel, any more than to modern commentators. What was apparent to them was merely the ignorance, the vice, the sordid misery of the million ; not a harvest, but a heap of rotting weeds exciting aversion. The harvest existed only for the eye of a faith whose vision was sharpened by love. Therein precisely lay the difference between Jesus and the Rabbis. Where they saw only useless noxious rubbish, He, with His loving, hopeful spirit, saw useful grain ; not mere sin, but possibilities of good; not utter hopeless depravity, but 1 Matt. ix. 37. 2 Weiss, Leben Jesu, ii. 119. 136 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. indefinite capabilities of sanctity. There an extensive harvest for the kingdom might be reaped, in conversions of profligates into devotees, of moral outcasts into exem plary citizens, of ignorant men into attached disciples. No wonder the religious guides of Israel misunderstood the sinner's Friend ! How could they fail to misunder stand the conduct of a man whose thoughts of the people they heartlessly abandoned to the fate of an untended flock were so generous and hopeful ? It was so much easier to call Him a bad man than to comprehend a love in which they had no share ! Sympathy and hope were expressed in the very terms which Jesus employed to describe the moral degeneracy of those whose good He sought. The remark specially applies to the term " lost " so often used by Him with that view. It is a word expressive of compassion rather than of judicial severity. It points to a condition falling far short of final irretrievable perdition. To express that state the middle voice of the verb aTroXkv/ju, is sometimes used;1 but the neuter participle to aTroXwXo?, applied by Jesus to the objects of His loving care, denotes rather a condition of peril like that of a straying sheep, or of waste like that of a lost coin, or of thoughtlessness ending in misery like that of a wayward youth. The lost ones have wandered unwittingly from the fold ; they are living in forgetfulness of the chief end of man ; they are children of passion, obeying fitful impulse, and impatient of moral restraints. But they are lost sheep that may be brought back to the fold ; they are lost coins possessing value if only they bould be found ; they are 1 Vid. John iii. 16. CHRIST'S DOCTRINE OF MAN. 137 lost sons of God, with filial memories and filial feelings buried in their hearts which will rise to the surface when want and woe have brought them to their senses. In the story of Zacchseus l the epithet seems to express a relation to society rather than a moral condition. As applied to the chief publican, it describes the state of one who is a victim of social ostracism. There is nothing in the narrative to show that he was a bad man. They called him a " sinner," but that was due to popular prejudice. He was a publican, and rich ; and no further evidence of guilt was needed. What he states con cerning himself is very much to his credit. For one occupying the position of a tax-gatherer to give half of his goods to the poor, and to restore fourfold what he may have taken from others in excess, argues no ordinary virtue. It has indeed been supposed that Zacchaeus spoke of what he meant to do in future, rather than of what he had been in the habit of doing. But he spoke in self-defence against evil insinuations, and his words would carry weight only if they not merely expressed purposes formed under a sudden impulse, but stated actual undeniable facts. That they did so is a natural inference from his eager desire to see Jesus. Evidently his remarkable behaviour springs from something deeper than curiosity. He has a history which explains the interest he feels in the Man who has the courage to be the publican's friend. He sees in Jesus one who does not believe all the evil things said of an unpopular class, and regards it as possible that good may be found even among publicans. Not that he claims to have a faultless 1 Luke xix. 1. 138 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. record ; he admits that he has sometimes yielded to the strong temptations connected with his calling. But he has repented of the wrong, and has made strenuous efforts to do justly and to love mercy. This man is not a lost sheep in the moral sense ; in love of ' righteousness he is one among a thousand. But he is still a social outcast, and the Son of Man saves him by giving him brotherly recognition, going to be the guest of one whom most shunned as a leper.1 Sometimes Jesus used the term "lost" as a synonym for " neglected." So, for example, in the instructions to the disciples in connection with the Galilean mission, in which they were told not to go into the way of the Gentiles, or into any city of the Samaritans, but to go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel? The mission had its origin in compassion for the multitude, who appeared to the eye of Jesus as a flock of sheep without a shepherd, scattered and faint. The pathetic description implies blame, but blame not of the people but of their professional religious guides, who had neglected their duty and had laid themselves open to the charge brought by the prophet Ezekiel against the shep herds of Israel in his day : " The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again that which was driven away ; neither have ye sought that which was lost."3 Their neglect made the mission necessary. The harvest was great, but the labourers were few. Of professional 1 Vid. Sermon on Zacchxus by Robertson of Brighton, 1st series. 2 Matt. x. 5, 6. s Ezek. xxxiv. 4. CHRIST S DOCTRINE OF MAN. 139 religious officials — priests, scribes, rabbis — there was no lack; and if they had been counted, the number of labourers would not have been small. But they had no sincere human sympathy with the people, and therefore Jesus left them out of account as not available for the harvest work; thus by implication pronouncing a very severe censure on them. It was a very significant judg ment as coming from Him. On some men's lips such a judgment would not amount to much. It is not unusual for enthusiastic promoters of special movements to ignore all but their own associates, and practically to limit what they call "the Lord's work" to that which is being carried on under their direction. This way of speaking is often the utterance of an offensive egotism, and it is always indicative of weakness. But in Christ were no egotism and vanity such as too often reveal themselves in the character of religious zealots. He was ever ready to recognise work done for the good of men, even when the agents stood in no close relation to Himself. His disciples might wish to reserve a monopoly of casting out devils for such as belonged to their company ; but if devils were indeed cast out He was satisfied, it mattered not by whom. " Forbid him not," J He said, with refer ence to an attempt to establish such a monopoly, so throwing His shield over all whose aims are good, however eccentric their methods. Yet He who spake that tolerant word said also " the labourers are few," so virtually asserting that the whole established machinery for the cure of souls in Israel was useless. It was a just judg ment, however severe. The parties animadverted on did 1 Mark ix. 39. 140 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. not even pretend to be labourers in Christ's sense. Their business was to attend to the sacrificial ritual, to copy and comment on the Scriptures, to study and teach the law. Those who neglected the feasts, and were ignorant of the law, they dismissed from their thoughts with a malediction. Reflecting on these false shepherds of Israel and their heartless indifference, we perceive that the prayer Jesus exhorted His disciples to offer up for the increase of labourers cannot have had in view the mere multiplication of persons professionally occupied with religion. It is rather a prayer for increase of the number of men imbued with the Christian spirit of hopeful, helpful love, and might be paraphrased thus: " Father in heaven ! pour out on the world the spirit of sympathy. Now that spirit is rare. In this land of Israel it is almost confined to the little company gathered around the Son of Man. We believe that Thou takest pleasure in the moral recovery of the lost, that the fortunes of the poor, the suffering, and the erring are not indifferent to Thee. In this faith we rejoice, by this faith we are impelled to seek those who have strayed, and to do good to all as we have opportunity. Let this inspiring faith, and this enthusiasm of love, prevail more and more, till all men believe in the heavenly Father, and sin and misery have been banished from the earth." The prayer, thus interpreted as involving a hidden allusion to the prevailing inhumanity of those who passed for good, implies a new idea of holiness, and throws light on the nature and extent of human depravity. " True holiness," it virtually teaches, " consists in love. Nega tive holiness, which carefully keeps aloof from the Christ's doctrine of man. 141 unholy, is a counterfeit. Selfishness is the root of sin ; and it reaches the lowest degree of turpitude when it is associated with religion. To be religious without love is to be at the farthest possible distance from God and true righteousness. Therefore the shepherds of Israel who pride themselves on their virtue and sanctity, and despise the sensual irreligious multitude, are more truly lost than the sheep they neglect, by reason of that very neglect." Tested by the law of love, all men come grievously short. The term " lost " embraces the whole human race. All have gone astray, each one in his own way and in his own measure. Selfishness is universal, and men are so accustomed to it that it hardly appears to them evil. How different was the view of Christ ! In one of His most striking parables a rich man is sent, at his death, to the place of torment for no other apparent reason than because he lived in this world a selfish life, enjoying his comforts and heedless of the misery of his fellow- mortals.1 The epithet ttomj/jos in another part of His teaching is applied to the average earthly father viewed simply as one who falls short of the divine standard of charity, and allows a certain measure of selfishness to enter into his dealings with his children.2 'O irovrjpo^ was His name for the Evil One, Satan ; 3 yet He deemed it not too strong a term to apply to men who, while incapable of diabolic wickedness such as giving their children a stone for bread, are not always proof against the temptation to sacrifice their children's interests to their own pleasures. Nothing could more clearly show 1 Luke xvi. 19. 2 Luke xi. 13. 8 Matt. xiii. 19, 29. 142 the kingdom of god. how serious was the view Jesus took of human depravity, than the application of so strong a term to a form of selfishness not uncommon. The fact that Jesus, while acknowledging that His mission was to the whole of Israel, yet addressed Himself specially to the humbler classes, points to a policy deliberately adopted for definite reasons. These reasons were chiefly two : belief in the greater receptivity of those classes to the blessings of the kingdom, and expectation of intenser devotion to its interests. Jesus took into account the tendency of wealth, happiness, and moral respectability to hide from their possessors their true character, to fill them with self-complacent thoughts, and to make them indifferent or contemptuous towards the grace of God. Therefore He turned to those who were exposed to no such temptations, in hope to find among them less pride, prejudice, self-delusion, more insight into the truth of things, a deeper sense of the need of pardon, a hunger of the soul for righteousness worthy of the name. That such considerations influenced Him, we learn from certain of His sayings. In explaining the parable of the Sower, He mentioned the deceitfulness of riches as one of the hindrances to fruitfulness.1 After His interview with the young ruler who inquired concerning eternal life, He sadly remarked, " How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God ! " 2 He meant to express a similar feeling in reference to the " righteous " when He said, " I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." On His defence for the crime of consorting with those whom the exemplary shunned, He thereby intimated to 1 Matt. xiii. 22. 2 Mark x. 23. CHRIST'S DOCTRINE OF MAN. 143 His accusers that He called " sinners " because they were more ready than the righteous to acknowledge their faults, and to welcome the good news of God's pardoning love. That Jesus also called the sinful because He expected converts from that class to make the best citizens, we learn from the parable of the Two Debtors viewed in con nection with its historical setting.1 On that occasion, also, He was on His defence for His sympathetic relations with social reprobates, and the gist of His apology was — the greater the forgiveness, the greater the love, and there fore the better the citizen, the test of good citizenship being devotion. " Which of them will love him most ? " He asked ; and his host, on principles of common sense, could only reply : " I suppose that he to whom he for gave most." Then said He in effect : " That is why I have relations with such as this woman. I seek such as will love me, not with cold civility as you have done, but ardently after the manner of this penitent. Such I find not among the ' righteous,' but among the ' sinners.' " This policy of Jesus, to be fully understood and appre ciated, must be looked at in connection with the peculiar religious condition of Jewish society in His time. Viewed in the abstract, and conceived of as applicable indis criminately to all communities, it may appear well intended, but mistaken. One may not unnaturally ask, " Is it to be inferred that had Christ lived in our day and country, He would have expected to find the best dis ciples among what we are accustomed, from the ecclesi astical point of view, to call the 'lapsed masses,' composed largely of persons who, without any breach 1 Luke vii. 36-50. 144 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. of charity, may be described as weeds ? That they should not be neglected is of course right ; that converts may be, and have been made among them, even in large numbers, cannot be denied ; that a few very exceptional Christians, like Bunyan, have come from their ranks is cheerfully admitted ; but surely the action of Jesus does not imply that it is the duty of the Church deliberately to turn its attention to that part of society as the most hopeful field ? " I do not care to answer these questions too confidently in the negative, lest the judgment should be but the superficial verdict of Pharisaism in a modern guise. I certainly believe that there are many more unpolished diamonds hidden in the churchless mass of humanity than the respectable church-going part of the community has any idea of. I am even disposed to think that a great and steadily increasing portion of the moral worth of society lies outside the Church, separated from it not by godlessness, but rather by exceptionally intense moral earnestness. Many, in fact, have left the Church in order to be Christians. I also believe in an indefinite power of moral reaction even in the most depraved, though it is unhappily only too rarely exempli fied. Christ has taught us to hope for wells of water springing up unto everlasting life from below the rocky surface of inveterate evil habits. Yet, withal, there is a wide difference between Britain in the nineteenth century and Juda?a in our Lord's day. In the professedly religious portion of society there is more of the salt of real righteousness, and in the outer fringe of the churchless probably less susceptibility to good influence. The strictly religious Jews in Christ's time were a compara- Christ's doctrine of man. 145 tively small coterie. Their righteousness was, moreover, as we shall see, a thoroughly artificial system, too elaborate and too unreasonable for ordinary mortals to practise. The Pharisees stood in a relation to the popu lace somewhat similar to that of the monks in the Middle Ages to the laity. To the esoteric brotherhood, in both cases, the world without appeared very unholy. And there was, in truth, much licentiousness among the uninitated ; for an artificial system of morals is ever very demoralizing, not only among those who accept it as their rule of life, but among those also who refuse to be bound by it. The latter deeming themselves fully justi fied in disregarding its arbitrary requirements, do not stop there, but indulge in indiscriminate transgression. But the Jewish populace who knew not nor kept the precepts of the scribes, Am Haarez, " the people of the land," as they were contemptuously called, were by no means so bad as their self - righteous censors accounted them.1 Among them probably were many who were not Pharisees, mainly because they were comparatively simple and unsophisticated, who were therefore not the worse but the better men because they had remained inaccessible to Pharisaic influences. Such might be open to influence of a truly wholesome kind like that which Jesus brought to bear on the " lost," and might supply the raw material 1 According to the tradition of the scribes, the Am Haarez, like the Samaritan, was a person with whom no dealings should be had. They said : " Bear no witness for him, take none from him, reveal to him no secret, entrust nothing to his charge, make him not treasurer of monies for the poor, associate not with him on a journey." He was excluded from sharing in the resurrection. Vid. Weber, System der altsynagogalen Paliistinischen Theologie, p. 43. K 146 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. out of which could be formed excellent citizens of the divine commonwealth. It was with this conviction that He devoted so much of His time and attention to them. His example is fitted to inspire a most hopeful view of the redeemableness of mankind. Apart altogether from His teaching, His public action is itself a gospel of hope, rebuking cynical despairing views of human depravity, saying to us : " Give up no man as irrecoverably lost," reminding us that much spiritual susceptibility may slumber in most unexpected quarters, and bidding us look for the most aggravated types of moral degeneracy from the divine ideal of manhood, not among the irreligious, but among the inhumanly religious. CHAPTER VI. THE RELATION OF JESUS TO MESSIANIC HOPES AND FUNCTIONS. Not less important than the question as to the attitude of Jesus towards the Mosaic Law, is the inquiry in what relation He stood to the Messianic hopes current among the Jewish people in His time. The inquiry has two aspects, one referring to the extent of our Lord's sym pathy with prevailing Messianic ideas, the other to His claim to be the Messiah. The two topics are closely related, but they may, to a certain extent, be looked at apart. Even if Jesus had not claimed to be the Christ, He would still have had to adjust Himself to a concep tion shared by nearly the whole of His countrymen, based on Hebrew prophecy, and received as a sacred inheritance from the Fathers. A priori it was to be expected that Jesus would have His Messianic idea. For the ideas of a Messiah and a kingdom of God were kindred, and one who made the latter theme the burden of his preaching could not fail to have a Messianic theory and belief. The two subjects were closely associated, not only in Hebrew prophecy, but in the nature of things. 148 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. What, then, was the position taken up by the Herald of the kingdom on this burning question ? The opinion of Dr. Baur on the point is well known. In his view, the Messianic idea had no vitality for Jesus. The pro phet of Nazareth was a purely ethical teacher, who would gladly have ignored a hope with which at heart He had no sympathy, and which He knew to be a delusion. But being a Jew, He was obliged to recognise the national expectation, however distasteful to His own feelings, and speak as if He regarded it as important ; nay, He was compelled reluctantly to let Himself be taken for the Messiah, as the indispensable condition of success on Jewish soil in an attempt to introduce a new universal religion. The truth of this view must be acknowledged to the extent of admitting that there was much in the conven tional Messianic idea with which Jesus was not in accord. His habitual reticence regarding His own claims to be the Christ is sufficient evidence of the fact. That reti cence might be adduced as a proof that His conception of the kingdom was peculiar ; for King and kingdom correspond, and divergent thoughts as to the nature of the one imply an analogous divergence in reference to the other. It shows that Christ's idea of the kingdom must have been different even from that of the Baptist ; for the preacher of repentance practised no reserve on the subject, but spoke openly of a Coming One whose shoe-latchet he was not worthy to unloose. But the point insisted on now is the significance of that reticence as an index of Christ's position in reference to the Messianic hope. It betrayed a consciousness that His RELATION OF JESUS TO MESSIANIC HOPES. 149 thoughts thereon were not those of the Jewish people, giving rise to a natural unwillingness to say much on a subject on which it was difficult to speak without being misunderstood. It did not, however, imply, as Baur imagined, that Jesus had no Messianic convictions, but merely adapted Himself prudentially to those of others. It is not credible t*hat He would be guilty of such insin cerity, any more than that such a policy, if adopted, could be successful. Had the Messianic idea in every form been void of all validity for His mind, He would certainly have discarded it and taken the consequences. For the sincere man, religious beliefs current in his time, which he cannot accept, must either be rejected or transformed. The Messianic faith of Israel could not be absolutely \ rejected, because it contained elements of truth, and therefore the only possible alternative was transforma tion. Christ's position in reference to it can be partly understood through our own in reference to an idea of vital significance in Christian piety. It is essential to a religion bearing Christ's name that it be evangelic, for that is only to say that it must conform to the teach ing and spirit of our Lord as exhibited in the Gospels. Yet the term has been so often associated with a legal spirit in theology and life, that one earnestly minded to follow the Master feels the need either of a new word or of a very discriminating use of the old one. Even so was it with the Master Himself in regard to the Jewish hope of a Messiah. The word expressed a faith in a bright future for the world, which no one not given over to atheistic pessimism would consent to part with. Never theless, in current use it was so mixed up with idle dreams, 150 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. ambitious passions, false opinions, and sham sanctities, that one wishing to hold fast his belief in the divine reality was under the necessity of breaking with tradition, and rediscovering the truth for himself ; and having found it, of uttering his thoughts concerning it, as one conscious of isolation.We may conceive of Jesus as going forth to His public ministry with transformed ideas both of the Messianic office and of the Messianic kingdom. His spiritual nature determined the form of the Messianic idea, gather ing up as by elective affinity the congenial elements of Old Testament prophecy. Ample materials for such a transformation were to be found in texts which suggested the notion of a gentle, missionary, suffering Messiah gaming power by meekness, by His wisdom giving light to the world, bearing the sins and miseries of men by sympathy as a burden on His heart. The first evangelist, who has taken pains to illustrate his narrative by pro phetic citations, quotes some of these texts, giving pro minence to that which describes the Messiah as one who shall not strive nor cry, and who also shall not break the bruised reed or quench the smoking flax.1 The oracle is introduced in connection with directions given by Jesus to the sick people whom He healed, that they should not make Him known. This retiring habit in one possessing such powers seemed to the evangelist very remarkable. And so indeed it was. It was utterly contrary to the spirit of the world, which pursues the policy of self-advertisement and self-assertion with a view to gratify personal ambition, and works by ostentation and 1 Matt. xii. 18-21. The quotation is from Isa. xiii. 1-4. RELATION OF JESUS TO MESSIANIC HOPES. 151 conflict ; by the one seeking public applause, by the other striving to overcome obstacles. It was this way the brethren of Jesus desired Him to adopt when they counselled Him to go up to Judaea to show His works, reckoning it foolish in one who had it in His power to become celebrated to remain in obscurity.1 But such counsel, whether given by the god of this world or by its children, Jesus ever declined to follow. He would not strive, but when His acts or words provoked hostility, as in the instance recorded by Matthew before citing the prophetic oracle, He withdrew from the scene. Neither would He cry or lift up His voice in the streets, follow ing the methods of those who hunt after fame ; He rather took as much pains to hide His good deeds as others took to make theirs widely known. Yet He was ever willing to do deeds of kindness ; when suffering multitudes gathered around Him in season or out of season, He healed them all. His was a spirit of gentleness, humility, and sympathy : of gentleness towards opponents, of humi lity in shunning vainglorious display, of sympathy shown in pity for the sick and in patience with spiritual weak ness. Such were the attributes of Jesus. Such were the attributes of the Servant of Jehovah, as described by the prophet, which made Him God's well-beloved and elect One, and proved that God's Spirit was in Him, The evangelist was struck with the correspondence ; and with true insight discerned in the character of Jesus,, as revealed in His actions, the fulfilment of the oracle. We cannot doubt that the significance of the prophetic utter ance was as apparent to Jesus Himself as to His disciple, 1 John vii. 3, 4. 152 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. and that it was one of the ancient texts from which He drew His idea of the Messiah. In a Messiah of the type therein sketched Jesus could earnestly believe. No other type of Messiah could have any attractions for Him : not the political Messiah of the Zealots, whose one desire was national independence ; not the Messiah of common expectation, who should flatter popular prejudices and make himself an idol by becom ing a slave ; not the Messiah of the Pharisees, himself a Pharisee, regarding it as his vocation to deliver Israel from Pagan impurity;1 not even the austere Messiah of the Baptist, who was to separate the good from the evil by a process of judicial severity, and so usher in a kingdom of righteousness. The Messiah devoutly to be longed for, and cordially to be welcomed when He came, in His view, was one who should conquer by the might of love and truth ; who should meet the deepest wants of man, not merely gratify the wishes of Jews, and prove a light and a saviour to the whole world ; who should be conspicuous by patience and hopefulness rather than by inexorable sternness, — a humane, universal, spiritual Messiah, answering to a divine kingdom of kindred character, — the desire of all nations, the fulfilment of humanity's deepest longings, therefore not destined to be superseded, but to remain an Eternal Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. 1 Montet (Essai sur les Origines des Partis Saduce'en et Pharisieti, p. 247) remarks of the Messiah described in the Psalterium Salomonis, which was purely Pharisaic in spirit : " We are tempted to say that he (Messiah) is a separatist Pharisaic king, who will deliver Israel from Pagan uncleanness." The remark rests on the words : pvunai ifiiis aii oix.a8ap