ment of the Baptist may have served as an appointed call to Jesus to proclaim His mission more distinctly. It was the vanishing of the last ray of light from the page of the old Covenant. However this may be, from the commencement of the ministry the kingdom of God was preached, and He who preached it put forth an authority which showed that He was the King and the Head. more justly sees that John the Baptist and his disciples certainly did never make common cause with Jesus, and that Jesus never regarded John as capable of appreciating Him and His mission, nor as capable of forming part of the kingdom of heaven.'* But whether the intercourse and influence appear more or less, the teaching of Jesus belongs to a wholly different sphere. Nay more, the Lord Himself has set a wide gulf between Him and the Baptist. In that Now what was this kingdom, the theory answer to the question about fasting, Christ of which was perfected among a people presents Himself as the bridegroom spreading whose national or sectarian pride was the his own life and joy into the hearts of all foremost element of their character? Amid that were with him; whilst the figures of Pharisees whose very naine was separation, the new and heady wine in old bottles, and amidst Essenes whose bigoted exclusiveness the new cloth in the old garments, contains went far beyond even Pharisees, Carist prosomething of rebuke of the dulness which claimed a system from which natural and failed to recognise the new order of things exclusive privileges had been silently abolthat had come. There was reproof, too, inished. The beatitudes in the Sermon on the words Blessed is he that shall not be offended in me.' Lastly, the least in the kingdom of heaven was pronounced greater than John. We have gained from recent investigations a stronger assurance than before of the complete originality of the teaching of Jesus. Not that all writers are agreed; but that when one bids us seek for the germs of it among the Pharisees as Keim does, and another rejects this view and refers us to the Essenes, as Hilgenfeld, we find each able to refute convincingly the opposite opinion, but unable to produce any proof of his own. In this point, this independence of local and traditional influence, the last results of criticism' so much vaunted confirm the uncritical estimate which believing people, with a better touch-stone in their hands even than criticism, have formed about Christ from the beginning. Now this teacher from the time of His Baptism looked on himself as the Messiah foretold by the Jews. Whether and how this consciousness grew in Him, it would be barren speculation to discuss. From the opening of His Ministry He assumed a position which could only belong to one of highest authority. In the Sermon on the Mount no scribe would have ventured to deal with the law as He did: His words are not interpretation but reformation of the law. He forgives sins. At Nazareth He applies to Himself a passage of Isaiah that had never been interpreted save of the Messiah. He selects a company of disciples, and expects from them a great devotion and a complete renouncement of earthly cares and ties. All this we know from the first three Gospels; the fourth is more express. The imprison FOURTH SERIZA. * Page 43. the Mount speak of a kingdom to which men must be admitted for moral and spiritual qualities, for meekness and mercy, purity and peace, and the hopes and prospects of which are not bounded by the sensible world, but belong to heaven itself. The writers before us may attempt to fix the precise time at which Jesus assumed fully the title and functions of Messiah; but we must maintain that when the Sermon on the Mount was uttered then were the old contracted hopes of Abraham's seed scattered for ever. A new law from the lips of a new law-giver, and new terms of admission and citizenship in a new kingdom, are plainly. written in this discourse. There is no allusion to the foreign yoke that pressed on the sacred people and made their hearts bitter. There is no hope held out of a redintegrated nation, and a reign splendid and prosperous like Solomon's; no word is uttered of a brave deliverance by the soldier's sword. Another sort of glory the preacher presents to His hearers: the glory of God's reign in men's hearts; the conquest of sin in their breasts, ay, even the idle word and loose thought conquered by the tender and enlightened conscience. This should not be overlooked, when writers like Sibenhal and Keim persuade us that the idea of a kingdom that should embrace the Gentiles only grew up later, and is first seen clearly in the journey to Tyre and Sidon. There is some confusion between the outward teaching and the inward growth. The new kingdom was offered first to the Jews, and of fered without any shock to their prejudices. It would take time to learn that a kingdom that included Gentiles was not to be abhorred as a kingdom of the unclean. But, if the question be of inward growth, then it is LIVING AGE. VOL. III. 46. + . quite safe to say that, at no moment of His ministry, did any narrow theory of exclusion find favour with Him. There is a large class of passages in which some writers find marks of doubt and hesitation, instead of the singular prudence that marked the preaching of the Kingdom of God. Where He seems to put from Him the title of Messiah, and charges men not to make Him known, He wishes to be seen as the Messiah that He is, and not as the Messiah of men's false preconceptions. He will do nothing to excite in His person the carnal hopes of political fanatics, or to provoke prematurely the hostility of religious fanatics.' He shall not strive nor cry: neither shall any man hear His voice in the streets. A bruised reed shall He not break, and smoking flax shall He not quench until He send forth judgment unto victory.' This prudence was the highest love. It would have been easy to have kindled all the inflammable elements of the people into a fire of wild enthusiasm, to use their false prepossessions in aid of the kingdom that was to be; but many a bruised reed had then been broken, and the smoking flax had often had the feeble spark of divine love smothered out of it. This reserve was intentional, was necessary; it was also temporary, and applied to the present state of the people. What I tell you in darkness,' He says to the twelve, that speak ye in light and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops. There is, moreover, another fact for which allowance must be made. The Jews had enjoyed divine favour, were the people of God. That His favour was not wholly withdrawn from them even now was manifest from the fact that the light of the world appeared among them; and if they had not loved darkness rather than light, light would have been their portion. In the mysterious counsels that we cannot explore, by which the world is governed, it was decreed that salvation should be first preached to the Jews, and then to the Gentiles. Salvation was for all the world: the kingdom was open to the poor in spirit, the meek, the heavy-laden in every land; but the offer was first made to the Jews. Hence Christ appears sometimes to regard himself and His apostles as sent to Jews, because the first invitations to the heavenly feast were to them. The offer and the refusal are often spoken of by the Lord: The parables of the Wedding Guests, the two Sons, the Vineyard, all refer to it; the last most expressly, for He makes the application, The Kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing * Riggenbach. forth the fruits thereof." There is in the teaching of the Lord, from the first, a clear indication that the Kingdom of God' was to be open to the whole world. Not less clearly do we see that it was a spiritual kingdom; that the confusion of temporal and spiritual, which has marked other religions, had no place here; that the ideal of humanity, which He exhorted his followers to attain, left on one side all the boasted privileges of the Jews. Was not this a great stride in spiritual progress? If we may at all trust research, it was made by Christ alone. No idea in history ever stood so clear from the ordinary train of visible causes and effects. It came out of a society dominated by Pharisees in its lower ranks, by Sadducees in its upper, and by Essenes - a small element of the community - but honoured for their simple life and virtues. It was a system exactly opposite to all their teaching. The Sadducee would meet the theory of a spiritual kingdom, having its glory in the future and in heaven, with a civil sneer: The Pharisee was nothing, if not a son of Abraham, sealed upon the forehead with the seal of destiny for great privileges, when the overturned throne of David should be set up again. The Essenian opinions were narrower still. To men that had crept about in a narrow rift of rocks, too narrow to let in the sea, or to be swept by the invigorating air, a voice called suddenly and bade them come up upon a high mountain, and see the far-off kingdoms and the isles that stud the sea, and feel the glorious sun bringing blood back to their livid cheeks, and the soft west wind bringing faint odours in its refreshing coolness. The voice was Christ's; the day on which it was uttered was an epoch for the world. And no earthly master taught or could teach this bold utterance, these tones that stir the jaded hearts of men. Survey as closely as we can the records of Jewish life, we shall find, no doubt, some points of contact with Pharisee or Essene, for Jesus was taught of men and also sympathised with men; and how should a teacher help using phrases and forms of thought which were the only ones known and understood by hearers? But we shall find it to be new. No one will dig up a MS. of some scholar of Hillel or Shammai, in which its germs are contained. As well seek for the lineage of Melchisedec, 'without father, without mother, without descent,' as try to affiliate on earthly authors this Gospel of the Kingdom. We might not agree with M. Guizot in every part of his interpretation of the two * Matt. xxi. 43, xxii · 2-10, xxi. 28. principles on which this kingdom wa founded; and his witness to their orginality is one of the most valuable. ye me, ye hypocrites? Show me the tribute money, and they brought unto him a penny. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? They say unto him, therefore unto Cæsar the things which are CæCæsar's. Then saith he unto them, Render sar's and, unto God the things that are God's. When they had heard these words, they marvelland left him, and went their way. Thus disappears gradually, in the name of the God of the Jews himself, the exclusive privilege of the Jews to the divine revelation and to divine grace. And thus, too, the restricted religion of Israel gives place to the grand cath-ed, olicity of the religion of Christ. The benefit of the true faith and of salvation is no longer limited to one people, whether great or small, ancient or modern; but is imparted to all the races of mankind. "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." "And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature."t These were the last words which Christ addressed to his apostles, and the apostles execute faithfully the instructions of their divine Master; they go forth, in effect, preaching in all places and to all nations, his history, his doctrine, his precepts, and his parables. St. Paul is the special apostle of the Gentiles. From Jesus, says this apostle, "We have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name.' “Is he the God of the Jews only is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also." "For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him."‡ In spite of his prejudices as a Jew, and of the differences that took place in the infancy of the Church, St. Peter adheres to St. Paul; the apostles and elders assembled at Jerusalem adhere to St. Peter and St. Paul. The God of Abra ham and of Jacob is now not merely the One God: He is the God of the whole human race; to all men alike He prescribes the same faith, the same law, and promises the same salva tion. 'Another question, more temporal in its nature, still a great, a delicate one, is raised in the presence of Jesus Christ. He withdraws from the Jews their exclusive privilege to the knowledge and the grace of the true God; but what does he think of that which touches their existence as a nation, and as a great one? Does he direct them to rebel and to struggle against their earthly governor and sovereign? Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk, and they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men. Tell us therefore. What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Cæsar or not? But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt Matt. xxviii. 19. Mark xvi. 15. Romans 1. 5, lit, 29, x. 12. In this reply of Christ there was much more posed; it was in effect much more than an adroit matter for admiration than the Pharisees supevasion of the snare that had been intended for Him; it defined in principle the distinction of man's life as it regards religion, and man's life as it concerns society; the bounds, in fact, of Church and State. Cæsar has no right to intervene, with his laws and material force, between the soul of man and his God; and, bound to fulfil towards Cæsar the duties which on his side, the faithful worshipper of God is the necessity of the maintenance of civil order imposes. The independence of religious faith, and at the same time its subjection to the laws of society, are alike the sense of Christ's reply to the Pharisees, and the divine source of the greatest progress ever made by human society since it began to feel the troubles and agitations of this earth. these two great acts of Jesus, 'I take, again, these two grand principles, of every privilege in the relations of God and the abolition and his civil life. I confront with these two man, and the distinction of man's religious principles all the history, and every state of and I am unable to discover in those essentially society previous to the advent of Jesus Christ, Christian principles any kindred, any human origin. Every where, before Christ, religions were national, local religions; they were reliindividuals, enormous differences and inequaligions which established between nations, classes, ties. Everywhere, also, before Christ, man's civil life and his religious life were confounded, and mutually oppressed each other; that religion or those religions were institutions incorporated in the state, which the state regulated this catholicity of religious faith, in this indeor depressed as its interest dictated. But in pendence of religious communities, I am conples, and to see in them flashes from the light strained to recognize new and sublime princiof heaven. It needed many centuries before mental vision was capable of receiving that light; and no one shall pronounce how many centuries will be needed before it will pervade and penetrate the entire world. But, whatever difficulties and shortcomings may be reserved in the womb of the future for the two great truths to which I have just referred it is clear that life and teaching of Jesus Christ.' † God caused them first to beam forth from the * Matt. xxii. 15-22; Mark xii. 12-17; Luke xx. 19-25. Meditations on the Essence of Christianity, and on the Religious Questions of the Day,' by M. Guizot, pp. 275-280. But a theory may be an intellectual effort, and no more. In this case the person and character of Christ are knit up with the theory, and must be taken into account if we would answer the great question of the day Whence came Christ? The character of Jesus is the great witness on this point. We would fain avoid speaking of it. Warning examples are before us: of all the fantastic parts that we poor men allow ourselves to play, surely the worst is that of a patron of the Lord. To mete out little praises, concessions, extenuations, and to end in a cautious judicial approval, a man must be one of the most bold and least wise of his kind. Yet we must not shrink from that question, which is the key of the whole argument. stantly appears, which reigns in the actions and Jesus The title which Jesus loved to give Himself, of Son of Man, was not a usual and technical title of Messiah, as some pretend. It was a name which the Lord adopted for Himself; and He employs it constantly in all the Gospels, whilst it is hardly ever applied to him by others. Whether it was a title of Messiah has been much disputed; but those who heard Jesus apply it to Himself did not understand it as meaning the Messiah. What term more fit to give emphasis to the great fact of the humiliation of Christ in His incarnation? Jesus, leaving the glory of the Father, abases Himself, and becomes one of this insignificant yet rebellious race, a minister of God to men like Himself. We know not whether to rank this beautiful humility as a mark of His character or as a means of furthering the kingdom of God. It is essential to the preaching of the kingdom that sin should be denounced without any false tenderness, for sin can never be suffered to enter the kingdom of holiness. Of bold denunciations we have examples; but He who calls Himself the Son of Man deals with sin in a manner altogether new. Holding up the mirror to the sinful, He strikes conviction into hearts that never felt a pang before; but then He is the Son of Man, and with the name of man He takes up the burden of manhood, and even sinners feel before him that he is not merely a judge, but a brother of the tenderest heart and most unfailing sympathy. The co-existence of zeal for holiness and loving indulgence is gone a test which no other has had to bear. one more mark of this new kingdom which His avowed aspiration was, beyond meas appears to prove its divine origin by sever-ure, great: to lead the Jews into the kinging it from the usual chain of visible cause dom promised by the prophets, and to shed and effect. M. Guizot says: What is the signification of this sublime fact, what the meaning in Jesus of this uuion, like holiness and of human sympathy? It is this harmony of severity and of love, of saintHeaven's revelation of the nature of Jesus himself, of the God-man. God, he made himself man. God is his father, men are his brethren. He is pure and holy like, God; He is accessible and sensible to all that mau feels. Thus the vital principles of the Christian faith, the Divine and the human nature united in Jesus, start to evidence in his sentiments and language respecting the relations between God and man. The dogma is the foundation of the principles.' 'Nothing strikes me more in the Gospel than this double character of austerity and love, of severe purity and tender sympathy, which con This holy tenderness, this loving justice, is an example to all teachers, and was the means by which the true kingdom of God was spread; but it is an example and a means, because it is a revelation of God. So God regards sin and sinners, hating it and loving them, with a hatred that will never approve the evil or confound it with the good, and with a love that is ever ready to take them in and speak to them amnesty and pardon. We believe this of God; we aim at it ourselves, and fall into indulgence of the sin in one place, and repel the sinner with harshness in another. In Christ we have seen it perfectly realised; nowhere else in history shall we find it. The character of the Lord has under abroad to Gentiles, to the ends of the earth, this sort is, that by-and-by other human the things which God had prepared for all inventions surpass them. But what ideal alike. In order to do this, the ideal of that have the eighteen centuries produced which kingdom was purified and raised. It was has distracted men's affections from the to be a kingdom not of pomp but of purity, Christ, and drawn them to some other obnot of earth but of heaven. Moreover, ject? At this moment the person and every step towards that kingdom was as- character of Jesus is an object even of more sociated not alone with the teaching but interest than, it has ever been before. And also with the person of the Preacher. He whilst the miracles are denied and the dates was the example to imitate; the expositor of the Gospels disputed, each writer in turn of the law speaking with authority. His does homage after his fashon to the moral sufferings and death were no private mat- purity and dignity of Christ. Strauss conters, but concerned the welfare of the race. cedes to Him the beautiful nature;'. Renan The Apostles are our witnesses of all this. calls Him demi-God,' whereat M. Lasserre They approached this whole system at first may well ask, Is God divided?' Chanwith manifest repugnance. We may well ning, a Unitarian, stands before this unique believe that they were men as spiritually- character, and abstracting his mind from minded, when Christ called them, as were former impressions, tries to see it as a new to be found amongst the Jews of their phenomenon, and feels that he is in presrank, age, and education. Yet it was a ence of one who spake as never man visible kingdom that they wanted; and, as spake before or since. Schenkel and Keim for a Messiah who should become their are far from a true conception of Christ: King, by eminence in humility (so to but both admit that history has produced speak), and by love for all souls alike, and no parallel. Schenkel, whose book is by suffering, they not only did not expect marred by a certain democratic twang, such a one, but He inverted all their ex- says of Jesus, He lived in Galilee, He died pectations. For glory, humbleness; for an in Jerusalem, but He lives for ever in the army, themselves, who never struck but one. souls that attain, through His word to truth, blow with a sword, and then received re- to true piety, and to love.' Keim, a writer buke; for a kingdom, judgment at the bar of higher strain, and with more of a true of Cæsar's deputy; for a throne, the cross historical spirit, admits that here is one of death. Their repellant dulness, when whom history cannot explain, and that the these things are first forced on their belief. person of Jesus is a fact unique in the hisis pathetic. Nothing of all they tell us of tory of the world. After all the waves of Christ's plan was approved by their pre- criticism shall have passed over us, we feel possessions. They were poor men, but that this will remain, which criticism has they had a great stake upon the venture not shaken, - the admiration for the moral they had made; for it is a fearful thing for perfection of Jesus the Son of God. The the good to spend the one life that is given person of Christ, as Schaff has well said, is them upon a religious delusion. What do the miracle of history. The question these witnesses hand down to us? Not so about miracles can afford to wait. Men are much asseverations that Christ was perfect- jealous of interference with the laws of ly holy, as a general picture of His life, science. Be it so: Science makes the which makes on all who read it the impres- mistake of confounding the new with the sion of holiness. What are the chief ele- impossible. In a world of minerals the first ments of holiness? Great love, great self-plant would be miraculous; in a world of abandonment, avoidance of evil even to plants, the first moving animal. Did an the appearance of it, and, above all, a con-image of God's perfection make known to stant sense of dependence on and union men His divine presence in Palestine long with God, and a zeal for the doing of His work. That the Evangelists never put these elements together, but left us to do so for ourselves, adds, if possible, to the weight of their testimony. They do not say, 'Here is a righteous man!' but the facts that pass under their pens produce in generation after generation the impression of complete holiness. We do not say that no generation can invent an ideal somewhat higher than it self; but the fate of all human inventions of ago? Then He, rather than any one act of His, is the miracle which supersedes the laws that govern lower natures. It is hard to believe that Jesus rose from the dead; it is harder to believe that He said with all His heart, I am come to seek and to save that which is lost.'... Come unto me all that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' He Himself is more surprising than all that He appears to have wrought of mastery over material laws. • Pp. 26, 27, 29, 30, 32, 36. |