The Messiah

Passages in which Jesus refers to Himself as the Christ: — Matthew xvi. 20, 22, 42; xxiii. 10; xxiv. 23, 24; xxvi. 64. Mark ix. 41; xii. 35; xiii. 6, 21; xiv. 61. Luke iv. 18, 19, 21; xx. 41; xxi. 8; xxii. 67, 68; xxiv. 26, 46.

Passages in which others refer to Him as the Christ, He sometimes assenting: — Matthew i. 1, 16, 17, 18; ii. 4; xi. 2, 3; xvi. 16; xxvi. 68; xxvii. 17, 22. Mark i. 1; viii. 29; xiv. 61; xv. 32. Luke ii. II, 26; iii. 15; iv. 41; vii. 19; ix. 20; xxiii. 2, 35, 39.

Passages in which Jesus is called the Son of David: — Matthew i. I, 6, 17, 20; ix. 27; xii. 23; xv. 22; xx. 30, 31; xxi. 9, 15;

xxii. 42, 45. Mark x. 47, 48; xi. 10; xii. 35, 37. Luke i. 27, 32; iii. 3; xviii. 38, 39; xx. 41, 44.

Passages in which “the Kingdom” is mentioned, or “the Kingdom of Heaven,” or “the Kingdom of God:” — Matthew iv. 17, 23; v. 3, 10, 19, 20; vi. 10, [13], 33; vii. 21; viii. II,

I2;ix. 35; x. 7, 11, 12; xii. 28; xiii. II, 19, 24, 31,33, 38,41,43,

44, 45, 47, 52; xvi. 19, 28; xviii. 3, 4, 23; xix. 12, 14, 23, 24;

xx. I, 21; xxi. 31, 43; xxii. 2; xxiii. 13; xxiv. 14; xxv. I, 14, 34;

xxvi. 39. Mark i. [14], 15; iv. 11, 16, 30; ix. I, 47; x. 14, 15, 23, 24, 25; xii. 34;

xiv. 25; xv. 43. Luke i. 32, 33; iv. 43; vi. 20; vii. 28; viii. I, 10; ix. 2, 11, 27, 62;

a. 9, 11; xi. 2, 20; xii. 31, 32; xiii. 18, 20, 28, 29; xiv. 15;

xvi. 16; xvii. 20, 21; xviii. 16, 17, 24, 25, 29; xix. II, 12, 15;

xxi. 31; xxii. 16, 18, 29, 30; xxiii. 42.

IV.

THE MESSIAH*

f~F a ll the names of our Lord, with the exception of His birth-name, “Jesus,” the one which has stuck most firmly in the memory of the world is “Christ,” which is the Greek equivalent for “Messiah,” and in English is correctly rendered by the word “Anointed.” Indeed, this name may be said to dispute the foremost place with the name

* Weiss: Lehrbuch der Biblischen Theologie des Neuen Testaments, cap. I. etc.

Beyschlag: Neutestamentliche Theologie, I. pp. 39 ft.

Holtzmann: Neutestamentliche Theologie, I. pp. 188 ff.

Stevens: The Theology of the New Testament, Chapter III.

Baldensperger: Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu, cap. V.

Grau: Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu, cap. V.

Wendt Die Lehre Jesu, II.

Dalman: Die Worte Jesu, capp. I., XI.

Candltsh: 1 he Kingdom of Goa.

Bruce: The Kingdom of God.

Stanton: The Jewish and the Christian Messiah, 1886.

Issel: Die Lehre vom Reiche Gottes im Neuen Testament, 1 89 1.

Schmoller: Die Lehre vom Reiche Gottes in den Schriften des Neuen Testaments, 189 1.

Johannes Weiss: Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes, 1892.

“Jesus” itself. Why the ordinary man sometimes says “Jesus” and sometimes “Christ,” he could hardly tell; though there appear to be peculiar states of religious feeling which incline towards the one or the other. Of course the original name was “Jesus “: this was what His mother called Him, and what He was called in the streets and the workshop of Nazareth; whereas “Christ” was originally a title. Some preachers seem to themselves to be imparting freshness to their sermons by saying “the Christ” instead of simply “Christ “;

Bousset: Jesu Predigl in ihrem Gegensatz zum Judenthum,

1892. Paul: Die Vorstellungen vom Messias und vom Gottesreich bei

den Synoptikem, 1895. Ehrhardt: Der Grundcharakter der Ethik Jesu im Verhiiltniss

zu der messianischen Hoffnungen seines Volkes und zu

seinem eigenen messianischen Bewusstsein, 1895. Tmus: Die neuteslamentliche Lehre von der Seligkeit. Erster

Theil: Jesu Lehre vom Reiche Gottes, 1895. Schnedermann: Die IsraelUische Vorstellung vom Konigreiche

Gottes als Voraussetzung der Verkiindigung und Lehre Jesu,

1896. Schnedermann: Jesu Verkiindigung und Lehre in ihrer

geschichtlichen Bedeutung. 1. Hdlfte: Die Verkiindigung

Jesu vom Kommen des Kbnigreiches Gottes, 1893. 2. Hdlfte:

Die Lehre Jesu von den Geheimnissen des Konigreiches

Gottes, 1895. Krop: La Pensc’e de Jesus sur la Royaume de Dieu d’apres les

Evangiles Synoptiques, 1897. The author prefixes to his

work a very full bibliography of the subject.

and undoubtedly this was the original form; but already in the New Testament “Christ,” without the article, is a proper name. Very frequently the two names are combined in the form “Jesus Christ” or “Christ Jesus “; and even the Evangelists St. Matthew and St. Mark announce that they are going to write the memoirs of “Jesus Christ.” *

In the Old Testament “the Lord’s anointed” is a synonym for “the king;” and in poetical passages the two stand in parallellism, as Psalm xviii. 50,

“Great deliverance giveth He to His king, And sheweth mercy to His anointed.”

The king was called “the anointed “because at his coronation the sacred oil was poured upon his head, by which he was consecrated to his office. This oil was a symbol of the Spirit of God, from whom the young monarch was supposed to receive the wisdom, dignity and other gifts necessary for the discharge of his functions; as is beautifully brought out in Isaiah xi. 1-4: “And there shall come forth a Rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots, And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the

* On the N. T. use there are interesting statistics in Nosgen’s Der Menschen- und Gottessohn, pp. 118 ff. The combinations “Jesus Christ” and “Christ Jesus” are formed exactly as “Emin Pasha” and “Queen Victoria.”

Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowlege and the fear of the Lord; and shall make Him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord; and He shall not judge after the sight of His eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of His ears but with righteousness shall He judge the poor and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth; and He shall smite the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips will He slay the wicked; and righteousness shall be the girdle of His loins and faithfulness the girdle of His reins.’’ This perfect description of a king may well be quoted in full, because, although it does not contain the name “Messiah,” it had a great deal to do with shaping the meaning ultimately attached to the term; which was that of an ideal king, who should embody in himself all the attributes and achievements proper to the kingly office and thereby conduct the nation to the full realisation of its destiny.

For this ideal personage the title “Messiah” is already used in the second Psalm, though not elsewhere in the Old Testament; in the postcanonical writings of the Jews there occur more frequent instances of its use in this sense; * and in our

* Cf. Dalman, Die Worte Jesu, p. 239; Schurer, The History of the Jewish People in the time of our Lord, II. ii. 158.

Lord’s time “the Messiah” was the regular term for the expected deliverer, as is manifest from the pages of the Gospels. In the palmy days of the ministry of John the Baptist “all men,” St. Luke informs us, “mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ, or not.” * The same Evangelist tells us, a little later, that “devils came out of many, crying out, and saying, Thou art Christ; and He, rebuking them, suffered them not to speak; for they knew that He was Christ.” f That our Lord should have disliked testimony coming from such a quarter, and have tried to check it, need occasion no surprise; for, even when the same testimony came from unexceptionable quarters, He was slow to accept it. Yet this does not prove, as some extreme critics of the Gospel history have contended, that He never claimed to be the Messiah of the Jews at all. The evidence to the contrary is as strong as it can be. First there is His declaration in the synagogue of Nazareth:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He hath anointed Me to preach good tidings to the

poor: He hath sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, And recovering of sight to the blind, To set at liberty them that are bruised, To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” J

* iii. 15. t iv. 41. ± Luke iv. 18, 19, R.V.

Because these words in their original setting describe the inspiration of a prophet, it may be argued that they express no more than prophetic consciousness; but they are elastic terms, capable of embodying much more than Isaiah put into them, and capable, in fact, of embodying more than even Jesus put into them at Nazareth; because they contain the entire programme of the ripest Christianity. And, if they be compared with the expectations of the time, as we find them in the hymns, in the first chapters of St. Luke, emitted by those who were waiting for the kingdom of God, and if the exalted and solemn tone be considered in which Jesus uttered them, it can scarcely be doubtful that they are an expression of messianic consciousness. Still less questionable is the reply of Jesus to the deputation from the Baptist, whose inquiry was, “Art Thou He that should come, or do we look for another?” Can there be any reasonable question either which personage was intended by the Baptist or what was the force of our Lord’s reply? And with this we may join the fact, that more than once Jesus designated the Baptist as Elias * — the figure in the popular creed who was to be the forerunner of the Christ. Next there is the great crisis at Csesarea Fhilippi, when He drew from

* Matt. xi. 14; xvii. 12.

the Twelve the acknowledgment that He was the Christ, and manifestly rejoiced in their testimony. Finally, on His trial, “the high priest asked Him and said unto Him, Art Thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? and Jesus said, I am.” * And a little later Jesus “stood before the governor, and the governor asked Him, saying, Art Thou the King of the Jews? And Jesus said unto Him, Thou sayest.” f Around the head of Jesus, when He was hanging on the cross, these names, all meaning the same thing — “the Christ,” “the King of Israel,” “the King of the Jews” — flew, being shot like angry missiles from the mouths of His enemies, till He breathed His last; and the inscription above His head ran thus, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.” J

Another name applied still more frequently by others to Jesus — “the Son of David” — means precisely the same as “the Messiah.” It was the unanimous testimony of Old Testament prophecy that the messianic king was to be of David’s line. So far does this feature enter into the conception that He is even called “David” pure and simple;

* Mark xiv. 61, 62.

t Malt, xxvii. II. On the reply 1v el/ras see Dalman, Die Worte Jesu, pp. 253 ff., who replies to the doubt which has been started as to whether this was an affirmative answer.

t Mark xv. 32; Matt, xxvii. 42, 37.

not as if it were supposed that the son of Jesse was to rise from the dead and ascend the throne of the country again, but to emphasize the fact that the new king, being of David’s seed, was to reproduce the spirit and glory of the original.

Only once did Jesus of His own accord allude to this circumstance, when, on the great day of controversy at the close of His life, after replying to all the entangling questions of His enemies and reducing Pharisees and Sadducees to confusion, He propounded to them the problem, how it could be that in the hundred-and-tenth Psalm David called the Christ “Lord” who was at the same time his son. The school of interpreters who happen at the present moment to be most conspicuous in Germany make this out to be an announcement by Jesus that He did not claim Davidic descent or attach any importance to it. But, if Jesus had declared Himself not to be of David’s line, He would have run counter not only to the tradition of the Jewish parties, but to the testimony of the prophets, as well as to the convictions held both then and subsequently by the most intimate of His own friends; for His descent from David is much insisted on by the writers of the New Testament.* Why, if this was the intention

* Rom. i. 3; 2 Tim. ii. 8; Rev. v. 5; xxii. 16. of Jesus, should He have raised the question at all? It could only be because His descent from David was called in question by His enemies; but of this there is not a hint in the evangelic records; and yet nothing can be more certain than that it would have been a prominent and often repeated charge, if it had ever been made at all. The truth is, the question propounded by Jesus had a totally different drift: it was one of the most significant indications ever thrown out by Him of His consciousness of divine sonship in a unique sense; and the only effect of twisting the point of His question in another direction is to obscure the glory of this sublime claim.

We may look upon it, then, as proved that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, the Son of David; and this turns our attention, which has hitherto been fixed on the Person, to the Work of the Saviour; because His messiahship denotes the function which He came to fulfil. Not that these two topics lie far apart; for the loftiness of the person points to a correspondingly important work, and, the grander the work, the greater must the person be who undertakes it. But we have now before us the inquiry, What, according to His own teaching, was the object of our Lord’s earthly mission?

The immediate answer to this question is, The Kingdom of God.* If Jesus was the Messiah, the kingdom of God was the realm in which He was to rule f; and He habitually made use of the phrase for the purpose of describing succinctly all the blessings which He had come to bestow.

The ordinary reader of the Gospels hardly realises how prominent in them is the idea of the kingdom of God. A little attention, however, reveals the fact that it is omnipresent: it is the name for the contents of the Gospel — the name habitually given by Jesus to His own message. If the average man were asked what Jesus spoke and preached about, he would answer without hesitation, “The Gospel “; and in this he would not be wrong; for Jesus did characterize His message as the Gospel, or Evangel, or Glad Tidings. But, if he were further asked what the Gospel which Jesus taught was about, he would answer with equal confidence that it was

* “The idea of the /3nertXeia is found in Matthew 53 times, in Mark 16, in Luke 39, in John 5, in Acts 8, in the Epistles 18, in Revelation 7. It is absent from Philippians, 1 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, I Peter, 1-3 John and Jude.” — Issel: Das Reich Gottes, p. 27.

t There has been a good deal of discussion as to whether fiao-iKtia in the mouth of Jesus means the domain in which the Messiah was to rule or the sovereignty which he was to exercise within this domain. It has both meanings, sometimes the one and sometimes the other idea being prominent.

about Salvation; and in this he would not be so right; because, although “the Gospel of Salvation” is a phrase found in the writings of St. Paul, it never occurs in the records of the teaching of Jesus. What we find in place of it is “the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.” Sometimes it is merely said that He preached “the Kingdom “; or to this name may be added the qualifying phrase, “of God,” or “of heaven.” We find all these phrases: that Jesus preached “the Kingdom,” “the Kingdom of God,” “the Kingdom of heaven,” “the Gospel of the Kingdom of God,” and “the Gospel of the Kingdom of heaven.” * In St. Mark i. 14 the commencement of His ministry is described in these terms: “Now, after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God.” Referring to a period a little later, St. Matthew thus describes His activity: “Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom.”f Later still St. Luke says, “It came to pass afterward, that He went through every city and village, preaching and shewing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God.”£

* Matt. iv. 23; ix. 35; Luke iv. 23; Matt. x. 7; iv. 23; Mark
i. 15.
+ iv. 23.
% viii. 1.

When the Twelve are sent forth, their mission is described in these words: “He sent them to preach the kingdom of God.” * The parables of Jesus, which form so large a portion of His teaching, are collectively denominated “the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven “; f and, it will be remembered, how many of them begin with the phrase, “The kingdom of heaven is like.”

Thus it is evident that “the kingdom of God “formed the watchword of Jesus. J But, although it occupied so prominent a place in His teaching, it was not a phrase of His own invention. John the Baptist, before Him, summed up his message in the same phrase. In the First Gospel he is thus introduced:” In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judsa, and saying,

* Matt. ix. 2.

+ Matt. xiii. n.

J In St. Matthew in the majority of passages where it occurs it is called “the kingdom of heaven “; but this is only a variation of phraseology without alteration of sense, for “Heaven” appears to have been in the time of Jesus a not unusual synonym for “God.” It is thus used by Jesus in the parable of the Prodigal Son — “I have sinned against Heaven and before thee,” says the returning prodigal — and we use it to this day in the same sense in such phrases as “Heaven help them.” Of course the phrase may also mean the kingdom which comes from heaven, or which is like heaven, or which will be consummated in heaven. It cannot always be determined with certainty which of these shades of meaning the word expresses.

Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.“* Indeed, the phrase is far older. In the Book of Daniel, the influence of which is known to have been great in the generations immediately before the Advent, the young prophet explains to the monarch the image of gold, silver, iron and clay which, in his dream he has seen shattered by “a stone cut out of the mountain,” as a succession of world-kingdoms to be destroyed by “a kingdom of God,” which will last forever; and in his other famous vision of the Son of man, referred to on a previous page, it is said, “There was given Him dominion, glory and a kingdom; and all people, nations and languages shall serve Him; His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.”!

This is the proximate Biblical source of the phrase; but the idea it represents mounts far higher in history. It will be remembered that at the very origin of the monarchy in Israel the proposal to appoint a king was condemned on the ground that Jehovah was King, and the appointment of Saul was only acquiesced in as a compromise, on account of the difficulty of getting the ideal to work. In David ideal and reality became approximately identical:

* Matt. iii. 2.

t Dan. ii. 44; vii. 14.

God was King, and David was His vicegerent, governing in accordance with His will and purposes, and, therefore, able to make the kingdom great and prosperous in Jehovah’s name. In Solomon the approximation was still tolerable; but in the long succession of kings that followed there were few who did not cause the better spirits of the nation to sigh for the kingdom of God as something still unrealised. Never, however, did the conviction die out that Jehovah was the real King, and that the only right and stable kingdom would be that in and through which His will was done on earth as it is done in heaven. When at last even the form of earthly sovereignty was swept away, on account of its deflection from the ideal having become intolerable, the old faith, so far from perishing, flourished more and more vigorously; and the one hope of the dark days of exile and oppression was that God would yet restore the kingdom to Israel.* That He would do so, the pious never doubted; for to doubt this would have been to doubt His existence,

* When Israel lay beneath the shadow of the great world-powers, the pious recognised in these the diabolical counterfeit of what the kingdom of God was to be. In the relation of subordinate rulers, like their own, to the Roman central authority, for example, they saw a dim image of what the relation of the heathen princes and peoples would be to the Messiah, when he should appear.

or at all events His character and His promises. All the prophets predicted that He would soon take to Himself His great power and reign; and they vied with one another in painting the picture of the blessings which would ensue under His government. To us, with our modern habits of thought, it is astonishing that religious hope should have been so closely associated with political change. But the sense of the value of a well-ordered state to secure the safety and happiness of human life was universal in the ancient world; and there were times when this was felt to be the one thing needful. Even “salvation” — a word which we associate with the most interior experiences of the individual — was a term the significance of which was social and national, and the realisation of which was to take place through political means. Only get your state right, it was thought — with perfect laws and a perfect administration — and everything will be right: even sin will disappear; for all injustice will be smitten to the ground, and righteousness will flourish under the protection of authority. The grand difficulty was to find an earthly king — or a succession of kings — pious, able and stedfast enough to be the organ through which the divine wisdom and power might act. At this point failure had constantly taken place; and it was always becoming more and more evident that the only vicegerent of God who could ensure the perfect and enduring prosperity for which pious and patriotic hearts sighed must be One who, while earthly, shared in the perfection and everlastingness of the supreme Ruler. If they never actually put this conclusion into words, it lay in the line of their hopes to do so.

These Messianic hopes continued after the date of the latest Old Testament writings and on to the time of Jesus. The rumour of them spread so far that its echoes are heard even in the Roman historians, Tacitus and Suetonius; * and the postcanonical writings of the Jews themselves abound with descriptions, ranging from the driest prose up through all degrees to the most highly-coloured poetry, of the blessings to be anticipated when the kingdom of God begins, f Schurer, the latest historian of this period, putting these passages together, has constructed a kind of messianic creed, which he attributes to the contemporaries of Jesus. Its articles are eleven in number, and the following order indicates also the chronological sequence in which the different phases of the messianic epoch

* Quoted by Schurer, II. ii. 149.

t See the valuable texts from postcanonical Jewish literature printed as an appendix to Dalman’s Die Worte Jesu, and also published separately.

were expected to develop themselves: — (1) The last tribulation and perplexity (the night of humiliation and oppression being darkest just before the dawning); (2) Elijah as the forerunner; (3) The advent of the Messiah; (4) The final attack of the hostile powers; (S) The destruction of the hostile powers; (6) The renovation of Jerusalem; (7) The gathering together of the dispersed; (8) The kingdom of glory in Palestine; (9) The renovation of the world; (10) The general resurrection; (1 1) The last judgment: eternal condemnation and salvation.*

It remains doubtful, however, how far this creed extended, or, at least, to how many it was a living creed. Many Jews were, no doubt, too immersed in the world and too well pleased with their actual condition to care for such dreams. This was the attitude of the Sadducees. Others, imbibing these hopes in a narrow, nationalist spirit, indulged in fantastic imaginings as to the miraculous agencies through which Jehovah would destroy His enemies and bestow felicity on His favourites. Such were the Pharisees, and especially the Zealots. But the true repositories of the messianic hopes were those who, regarding them from the spiritual and moral side, cultivated them with religious

* Schiirer, II. ii. 126 ff.

enthusiasm.* Of Joseph of Arimathea it is said that “he waited for the kingdom of God “; and the same was, in all likelihood, true of Nicodemus and of other persons of rank and influence. The majority, however, of those to whom waiting for the kingdom of God was a portion of living piety, belonged to the humbler ranks of society.* To

* These were “die Stillen im Lande “— a beautiful name for the cultivators of a piety of this type. Another name is oi 7rpoa-8c6ix(poi.. Schnedermann frequently directs attention to the importance of this class in his work on the Kingdom of God. He devotes three volumes (see page 128, supra) to the repetition of the single proposition that the Kingdom of God of Jesus was fundamentally identical with the same idea as that cherished by God’s ancient people. His volumes form amusing reading to a foreigner, because he considers himself not only the owner but even the martyr of this proposition, and warns off all other writers from participation in his property. He appears, however, to excite strong feeling in the scholars of his own country, who resent his claims to originality. His writing is diffuse and paradoxical, yet he makes a number of good points. Such, for example, is his distinction between the” Israelite “and” Jewish “elements in the intellectual atmosphere in which Jesus grew up: though Judaism reigned in the schools of the scribes and held the field to outward appearance, yet an” Israelite ‘’ strain of piety and conviction prevailed in a certain section of religious society. Those who walked in the green pastures and beside the still waters of this faith of the heart were in touch with the Prophets and understood all that is deepest in the Old Testament. That this is true and valuable I have no doubt. Another of his striking sayings is that “the kingdom of God” is of fundamental but not of central importance in the teaching of Jesus.

their delightful circle we are introduced in the opening pages of the Gospel, which tell of Simeon and Anna, the Shepherds of Bethlehem, and other kindred spirits. In this circle were born both John the Baptist and Jesus; and it is in the songs which, at the time of their birth, burst from the inspired lips of Mary and Elizabeth, Zechariah and Simeon, that we discover the truest image of what the messianic hope actually was. It is infinitely deeper than the creed compiled by Schiirer. It is redolent not of the schools of the scribes, but of the inspiration of the prophets. Above all, it is instinct with the humility of broken hearts and of souls passionately longing for salvation. It reflects precisely the state of mind to which our Lord subsequently addressed Himself when He said, “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

This circle of receptive and prepared souls may have been wider than is generally supposed; for piety of this type, though exercising great influence, makes little noise and receives little notice from contemporary chroniclers. At all events, it would be the whole world to Jesus in the years during which His mind was forming. He may even, on this account, have taken long to realise how widely the spirit and views of the Jewish world at large differed from His own; and this may partly account for what is a difficulty of no inconsiderable magnitude — that He should have given such prominence in His preaching to a term understood so differently by Himself and His hearers.

His use of it has sometimes been spoken of as an accommodation to the usages and the capacities of His contemporaries; but it was the very form in which He thought His own thoughts. It was, indeed, a borrowed garment, and it may from the first have been too scanty for Him; or perhaps His mind eventually outgrew it; yet it was native to Him, and He moved in it without the sense of incongruity. It was, besides, a noble form. As the prophets had conceived it, and as it had shaped itself in the pious minds in whose midst He grew up, it was an ideal in which a young soul could revel and rejoice.

It was, therefore, with a great rush of emotion that He first announced the coming of the kingdom. His message was emphatically the “Gospel” of the kingdom of God. He commenced, like John, with announcing simply that the kingdom was at hand; * and there is no reason to doubt that there existed in the public mind a sufficient amount of messianic

* Mark i. 14.

sentiment to make this announcement attract attention and excite enthusiasm. At first everyone A would interpret it according to his own ideas of the expected kingdom; and so the rumour of the preaching of John and Jesus rang through the land, and all men were in expectation as to the shape in which the promised kingdom would appear.

As soon, however, as Jesus began to explain Himself, it became manifest that the majority of His countrymen and He were expecting the fulfilment of the promise in totally different forms. Both employed the same phrase — “the kingdom of God” — but His countrymen laid the emphasis on the first half of it — “the kingdom” — while He laid it on the second — “of God.” They were thinking of the external benefits and glories of a kingdom, such as political emancipation, a throne, a court, a capital and tributary provinces, while He was thinking of the character of the subjects of the anticipated realm and of the doing in it of the will of God as it is done in heaven.

Jesus had, indeed, Himself felt at one time the glamour of their point of view; for this was the meaning of the Temptation. The account of this experience preserved in the Gospels may be an imaginative rendering of the actual facts; and it is highly instructive as embodying a variety of reflections on temptation in general, as all men have to encounter it; but it is also the record of a crisis in the life of Jesus at a particular point, and it exhibits Him in conflict with the messianic preconceptions of His countrymen. This is clearest in the temptation in which He was offered the kingdoms of the world on condition of compromising with evil; for manifestly this was a temptation to begin at the outside instead of the inside — to begin with the nation instead of the individual — to get the shell of mere appearance first and to fill it with reality afterwards. The temptation to turn stones into bread is generally interpreted as referring to the use of His miraculous power for His own behoof, but it was also, in all probability, directed towards the winning of popularity by creating the necessaries and luxuries of life on a lavish scale — by becoming, in short, a bread-king, like those who in another country courted the popular favour by giving panem et circenses* The temptation to cast Himself from the pinnacle of the temple is the one the messianic drift of which is least certain. It obviously refers in general to the fanatical faith which scorns the use of means, but it probably also has reference to

* See a remarkable series of papers on our Lord’s Temptation in The Expositor, 3rd series, vol. hi., p. 369 ff., by the Rev. W. W. Peyton.

a contemporary expectation that the Messiah would make His appearance in a sudden and striking manner. He was supposed to be hidden till the hour of fulfilment should strike, and then He would appear suddenly, it was believed, in the midst of the nation assembled in the temple on some such public occasion as one of the annual festivals.* Probably if we knew more completely than we do the details of contemporary messianic belief, we should be able to see the historical application of each of the temptations still more clearly; but at all events Jesus left the wilderness steeled against the worldly and fantastic conception of the coming kingdom entertained by His fellow-countrymen and determined to insist upon one which was moral and spiritual.

It is impossible, as one reads the Gospels, to help pitying the Jews, who expected a Messiah so different from Jesus; but we must remember three things. First, His conception was that of the Old Testament prophets, and, therefore, it might have been theirs too, since the writings of the prophets were in their hands. It was because they were unable to appreciate the depth and spirituality of their own sacred books that they failed to understand Him.

Schiirer, II. ii, 16.

Secondly, it was His part to teach and theirs to learn. He would have been no Messiah, not even a prophet of the Lord, if He had simply fallen in with popular opinions and expectations. Thirdly, the way prescribed by Him was the true path even to the objects desired by them. If they had consented to His leading and faced the lowly road of penitence and humiliation, can there be any doubt that He would have led them up to glory in the long-run? What the history of Judaea would have been, and what the history of the world, if they had accepted Him on His own terms, is, indeed, a question which defies human calculation; but we cannot hesitate to answer it at least so far as to say, that all the happiness and the glory predicted by the prophets would have been realised. These predictions, however, as well as the conduct of Jesus, were conditioned on the response of faith made by the people. This response was never forthcoming; and so the possibilities could never be fulfilled.

For a time, indeed, it looked as if Galilee were to respond to the appeal of Jesus, whose opening ministry was, therefore, full of hope and enthusiasm. But the response never came from a deep enough place; so that He could not commit Himself to the multitude, but had to fall back on the work of preparation. This is the explanation of the fact, that, while everywhere throughout His ministry speaking with perfect freedom of the kingdom of God, He was astonishingly reticent about the Messiah.* The Messiah was not, in every mind, an absolutely essential feature of the kingdom. This is seen even in the prophets of the Old Testament; for some of them, while predicting in glowing colours the messianic age, have no vision of the messianic King; and the same may be said of the postcanonical writers. From the reticence of Jesus on this point some scholars have been disposed to draw the inference that He Himself, at first at least, was not aware that He was the Messiah, but was only conscious, like the Baptist, of being a forerunner; and the intelligent reader of the Gospels may sometimes feel a doubt whether Jesus was not bound, if He knew Himself as the Messiah, to impart this knowledge more freely to those whose duty it was to acknowledge Him. But Jesus preferred to act as the Messiah rather than to bear witness to Himself; and He was not unduly

* The question of the Reticence of Jesus is one on which the last word has not yet by any means been spoken. It does not concern His messiahship alone, as anyone can see for himself who will look up the following references in a single Gospel — Mark i. 44; iii. 12; v. 43; vii. 36; viii. 26, 30; ix. 9, 25, 30.

reticent where any disposition was shown to look upon Him and His actions with an unprejudiced eye. But He could not entrust Himself to the multitude: their expectations were too impure. St. John mentions an occasion when they tried to take Him by force and make Him a king; but of such zealotic enthusiasm He could take no advantage: it only drove Him more and more in upon Himself.

At last, however, He did break through His reserve and cease to make any secret of His claims. His triumphal entry into Jerusalem was an offer of Himself to His countrymen as their Messiah, the bona fides of which it would be unreasonable to doubt. Yet it is an incident surrounded with tragic mystery. He Himself can have had little hope. In fact, He had so little that in the midst of His triumph He burst into tears; and, after entering the city, He allowed the crowd to disperse with nothing done. It was, indeed, only a crowd of Galileans, whose shouts of, “Blessed be the Son of David, who cometh in the name of the Lord!” awakened no echo in the cold and sullen heart of Jerusalem. Still Jesus had given to His hard-hearted and guilty countrymen their last chance, leaving no mistake as to the character in which He claimed their homage; and it was by them, not by Him, that the nation’s charter of promise was torn up and nailed to a tree — an act to which, however, destiny affixed its seal, when, a few years afterwards, the Jewish state finally perished and Jerusalem was razed to the ground.

Such was the issue of laying the emphasis of the Kingdom of God on the first member of the phrase. Meantime, however, Jesus had been working out His own conception of it, laying the accent on the second member.

In the first place, He insisted on Repentance as a preparation for the kingdom. This was the very first word of His preaching; and it was a word which never disappeared. A great proportion of His recorded sayings consists of denunciations of sin. He denounced especially the sins of the upper and ruling classes; and, if He did not in an equal degree denounce the sins of the poor and the outcast, it was because it was unnecessary, as these came weeping to His feet, confessing their own sins.

To such penitents He conveyed the assurance of Pardon, claiming that He had power on earth to forgive sins. And undoubtedly His meaning was that forgiveness was even more needed by the hard and haughty hearts of Pharisees and scribes. Indeed, He told such that, unless they came down from their arrogance and became as little children, they could not enter the kingdom of God.

Inwardly the kingdom is one of Righteousness: this is its outstanding character. The greatest discourse of Jesus is wholly occupied with this theme, developing the conception of righteousness in contrast not only with current habits of living, but also with traditional maxims, and even the commandments of Moses.* Through the Sermon on the Mount, from first to last, there runs a strain of the most passionate moral earnestness. Never elsewhere in the world has there been taught so inward or difficult a morality; but it was to be the high prerogative of the kingdom of God to realise it.

The kingdom had, however, another side besides this stern one: it was Blessedness as well as righteousness. This side of it is developed with a graciousness which charms the heart as well as an originality which excites the intellect in the

* Matt. v. 17 — “Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter the kingdom of heaven.” The rest of the Sermon on the Mount is an exposition of this text, the righteousness required of Christians being contrasted first with that prescribed in the Mosaic law and the traditional exposition of the same (to the end of chapter v.), secondly with contemporary Pharisaic custom (vi. I-18), and thirdly with the ordinary course of this world (from vi. 19 to the end).

Beatitudes. Each beatitude is a paradox; because that in which blessedness is said to consist is a minus quantity. This defect, however, is only the empty place into which the positive blessing can rush; and the sum of the minus and the plus together is a divine overplus of blessedness. It is, indeed, happiness of a high order, consisting in such blessings as the vision of God and divine sonship *; but it is only of such as are capable of these aspirations that the kingdom of God is to be composed.

Thus it is manifest that the good things of which the kingdom of God was the sum, as they presented themselves to the mind of Jesus, were totally different from those dreamed of by political and revolutionary zealots. And this was made still more evident when He summed them up, as He sometimes did, in such terms as “peace” and “rest.” Again and again, where His ordinary usage would lead us to expect “the kingdom of God” in His sayings, there is substituted for it “life” or “eternal life.”f And nothing could be a more significant indication of the intense religious preoccupation of His mind. To Him existence without God was not life, but death; but to live in God —

* Matt. v. 8, 9.

t Luke xix. 42; Matt. xi. 28, 29; Mark ix. 47; x. 30.

thinking His thoughts, doing His will, enjoying His fellowship — was the sum of blessedness; and such was to be the blessedness of the kingdom of God.

In short, the thought of Jesus is prevailingly moral and religious. He began with the conceptions and the phraseology of the time, but He naturally and gradually drew away from them, out into the broad ocean. A glance at His parables makes this manifest. While some of them, like the Barren Fig Tree and the Wicked Husbandman, have a strongly Jewish flavour, others, like the Talents and the Rich Fool, belong to the realm of religion pure and simple; and many of the greatest, like the three of the fifteenth of Luke, while retaining marks of their Jewish original, have the most obvious application to the whole of humanity. So, when Jesus says that He has come to seek and to save that which is lost, we remember, indeed, that there is an allusion to the prodigal and abandoned classes of His own day, but the glory of the saying lies in its application to lost men everywhere. When He says, “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” He has, no doubt, in view His contemporaries groaning under the traditions of the ciders, but His words have, beneath this surface meaning, a universal application to all forms of spiritual unrest and anxiety. In short, as Jesus followed the guidance of His genius along this line, He passed from being the Messiah of the Jews to be the Saviour of the world.

The entrance to the kingdom is, according to the mind of Jesus, a strait gate. Indeed, it admits only one at a time: everyone, be he Pharisee or publican, must go through the ordeal of repentance. Jesus was well aware how unattractive such a rule would be; and much of His teaching is occupied with the difficulties of those who, for one reason or another, found it hard to take His yoke upon them. This was undoubtedly the chief offence to the contemporary Jews, who expected to enter the kingdom in a body, without questions asked, and disdained to do so in the company of sinners. But this individualism of Jesus was at bottom identical with universalism; because the conditions which He imposed might be accepted by anyone, whatever his previous history. They concerned man as man, not man as belonging to any race, caste or creed. The gate, though narrow, excludes no child of Adam who is willing to repent. During His earthly career, indeed, Jesus felt Himself restricted to the lost sheep of the house of Israel; but the mission work of St. Paul and the other apostles was in the direct line of His principles; and it is entirely credible that He foresaw a time when many would come from the east and the west, to sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the children of the kingdom would, through their own impenitence, be doomed to outer darkness.

A point about which there has of late been hot discussion, and which is more important than it looks, is the question, whether or not Jesus thought and spoke about the kingdom as already come. It is allowed that, when He began to preach, He announced it as on the point of coming; and He often spoke of it as lying in the future — perhaps in heaven — but did He look upon it as already established on earth by means of His ministry?

In support of the position that He did, His saying may be quoted, “If I by the finger of God cast out devils, then is the kingdom of God come upon you.”* Jesus regarded the coming ot the kingdom of God as an invasion of the realm of evil, over which Satan rules; and, when the strong man armed was driven out in the cases of dispossession, the invading kingdom occupied the ground. In the same sense, when the Twelve returned and reported that they had cast out devils on a large scale, Jesus exclaimed, “I beheld Satan as lightning falling from heaven.”f

* Luke xi. 20.
t Luke x. 18.

He meant that the frequent dispossessions were equivalent to the downfall of the prince of the empire of evil. It was the empire of sin, not the empire of Rome, that stirred the heart of Jesus — a striking proof of the spirituality of His aims, but also no doubt a cause of offence to those who thought that the first duty of every patriot was to get rid of the foreign yoke.

Another remarkable saying, “The kingdom of God is within you,”* would be more conclusive if it were certain that the preposition meant “within” and not “among.” But probably it does mean “within “; for, apart from purely linguistic considerations, this meaning agrees well with the context: “When He was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, He answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation; neither shall they say, Lo here, or, Lo there; for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” They evidently expected it to come apocalyptically, at a certain moment and at a certain place, and in full-grown completeness, like a city let down to the earth out of heaven; but He taught that the methods of God are the very reverse — inward, unobserved, gradual. Very similar is His

* Luke xvii. 21.

parable of the Seed Growing Secretly, “first the blade, then the ear, afterwards the full corn in the ear,” — one of the most characteristic of His sayings. And of kindred import are such parables as the Leaven and the Mustard Seed, both describing the growth of the kingdom from small beginnings to the perfect form.

In spite of such testimonies there are those who hold that Jesus’ own view was apocalyptic. He believed, they contend, that the kingdom, being entirely a divine creation, was to appear in a moment, and He was waiting for it all the time. But this is simply an importation into modern scholarship of the view of the kingdom which deceived the Jews; and it converts Jesus Himself into a fantastic and disappointed dreamer, whom it would be impossible to accept as the Saviour of mankind.*

Jesus Himself was there; and the kingdom had already come in His person, even if it had had no other embodiment. But round Him there sprang up a body, consisting first of the Twelve, then of

* This applies to the work of Schmoller entitled Das Reich Goites and to that of Johann Weiss entitled Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Goites. In spite of the cleverness of Weiss’ exegesis in detail, the picture of Jesus which he draws is an unintentional caricature. This fantastic figure is not the Saviour and Lord of men, but only “a dreamer of the ghetto.”

larger numbers, in whom all the blessings which the kingdom comprised, such as repentance, righteousness, sonship, rest and life, were realised in growing measure.

In the Gospels nothing is more remarkable than the perseverance with which, in spite of the solicitation of other kinds of work, Jesus devoted Himself to the Twelve, evidently looking upon their training as one of the prime objects of His ministry.* But the organization of the wider circle of His disciples cannot but have also held a prominent place in His thoughts. The statements on this subject attributed to Him in the Gospels have been much called in question; f but it is more likely that He both thought and spoke more on the Church and the sacraments than He is represented

*” Unabtrennbar von seinem Lebensbilde ist die Thatsache dass Jesus Jiinger um sich sammelte. Das ist zunachst keine Besonderheit, auch von einigen Propheten und von dem Taufcr wird dasselbe berichtet. Aber durchaus etwas neues und eigenthumliches ist es, dass diese Seite des Lebens Jesu so stark, ja fast ausschliesslich hervortritt. In der That in diesem kleineren, bescheidenen Kreise, in der Enge und Stille, hat sich die Hauptsumme der Wirksamkeit Jesu vollzogen, in dieser direkten, unmittelbaren Arbeit von Person zu Person hat er sein Leben gelebt. — Bousset, Jesu Predigt in ihrem Gegensatz zum Judenthnm, p. 55.

That Jesus can ever have spoken of the Church is denied by Holtzmann; but Ritschl, Beyschlag, Kostlin are on the opposite side. Cf. Holtzmann N. T. Theologie, p. 210, note.

to have done than that He spoke less. The history of religious movements proves that, with whatever energy and spirituality they may be initiated, they soon disappear, unless channels are provided in which their currents may be carried down to subsequent times; and a religious genius of the first order must be an organizer as well as a thinker.* It is certain that Jesus did not work out the details of the creed, doctrine or discipline of the Church; but it is just as certain that the institution itself is His creation.

When Jesus was crucified, the Jews, no doubt, believed that His movement, which had seemed to them moonshine, was at an end; but, fifty years afterwards, when their political existence was blotted out, there had sprung up, all over the known world, ’ countless communities, which, without any earthly centre — without capital, court or army — yet acknowledged one heavenly King, obeyed the same code of laws, partook of the same blessings, pursued the same objects, and were united among themselves more closely than the subjects of any earthly sovereign. And from that day to this the kingdom of God has never ceased to grow.f

* Contrast as respects permanency, the influence of Whitfield, the orator, and Wesley, the organizer.

+ Several chapters of Ecce Homo are occupied wit showing in what sense Christ is a King and Christianity a Kingdom.

Robert Browning, in the opening pages of The Ring and the Book, compares the poet’s art to that of the goldsmith, who, when he is working with the finest gold, has to make use of an alloy, in order to give the precious metal sufficient consistency to enable it to stand the action of his tools and assume the shapes which he desires. But, when the form is complete, he applies an acid, which evaporates the alloy and leaves nothing but the pure gold of the perfect ring. The poet’s ingenious application of this image to his own art we need not follow at present; but the image seems to admit of being applied to the difficult subject which we have on hand. The popular conception of the kingdom of God was the alloy with which Jesus had to mix His teaching, in order to make it fit to mingle with the actual life of the world of His day. Without it His thought would have been too ethereal and too remote from the living hopes of men. He had to take men where He found them, and lead them step by step to the full appreciation of His sublime purpose for the world. He was not to be the king of the Jews, but King of an infinitely diviner realm, yet it was by aiming at the throne which

What they offer is the speculation of a modern philosopher rather than a transcript from the mind of Christ; yet they are full of suggestiveness.

He missed that He reached the throne which He now occupies.

And shall we say that in His case, when the ring was perfected, the alloy was blown away? was it fated that the idea and the name of the kingdom of God should fade from the minds of men? It looks as if this had been the intention; for, whereas in the Synoptists we find the phrase everywhere, it is infrequent in the Gospel of St. John, and it does not appear at all in his Epistles; in all St. Paul’s Epistles it does not occur as often as in the briefest of the Gospels; and in St. Peter’s Epistles it is found but once. This is a remarkable phenomenon. Does it indicate that the apostles had forgotten the doctrine of their Master? or is it an instance of the freedom with which in that creative age the ideas of religion were grasped and its phraseology altered? The apostles were too thoroughly alive to repeat the words of others, even those of their Master, by rote. Each of them, according to his own genius and his own circumstances, expressed what the Holy Spirit had revealed to him in language of his own. After the fall of Jerusalem, Christianity had to go away among peoples to which a phrase like “the kingdom of God” would have been novel and confusing; and, therefore, the missionaries wisely avoided it, finding more appropriate phrases to take its place. Even Jesus, before the close of His life, outgrew it; and His teaching seems always striving to escape from it as from a fetter. It is impossible to subsume under it the very finest of His sayings. The phrase belongs, in short, to the “body of humiliation” * which for a time He had to bear, but from which He was destined to be liberated.

This is not, however, an opinion universally accepted. Far from it. Some of the most vigorous thinking of our century is associated with the proposal to revive the phrase as the supreme category of theology, as it was the title of the teaching of Jesus. In Germany it has long been a favourite expression. The Pietists spoke of their philanthropic and missionary endeavours as work for the kingdom of God; and the Ritschlians at the present day have given it as supreme a place in the realm of thought.f Among ourselves some are disposed to follow in the same track for various reasons. Among English Nonconformists the phrase finds a welcome, as a rival to” the Church,’’ on which, it seems to them, too much emphasis is laid by

* To awfia rrjs TanfLvaideas — Phil. iii. 21.

f I sometimes wonder whether the force of this tendency has been due in any degree to the imperial ideas dominant in that country since the great victories oi the Franco-Prussian War.

churchmen. But the strongest influence is the growth among us of social and patriotic sentiment in connexion with religion. To be a Christian is not merely to save one’s own soul, but to discharge one’s duty to the world; it is to be part of an organism, with which we suffer and with which we triumph; it is to be an adherent of a great cause and to prove loyal to a divine Leader. It is evident that many such ideas and aspirations may be conveniently gathered together within such a phrase as the kingdom of God. Indeed, I have known those to whom this name has appeared to make everything new; and, when a watchword is capable of doing this, it cannot be looked upon with anything but respect. On the whole, however, the attempt to revive this term seems to be mistaken. We are very remote now from the world to which it belonged. To many Christians, living under republican forms of government, the very name of a king or a kingdom is something foreign and out of date. Whatever may be the case in Germany, to our ears the phrase as a name for Christianity has a sound of preciosity and make-believe; and there are far better names for the same thing. The attempt to revive it is due to a mistaken reverence for Christ, as if the repetition of His mere words were obligatory upon Christians; it is a return from the spirit to the letter, an attempt to force thought back into a form which it has long outgrown.

Nevertheless, there are two words of our Lord which will always keep this phrase fresh and sweet in the mouth of Christendom: the one the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer — “Thy kingdom come” — and the other the text, “Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”