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           Title: The Life of Jesus Christ in Its Historical Connexion and
                  Historical Developement.
      Creator(s): Neander, Augustus (1789-1850)
     Print Basis: New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers (1870)
          Rights: Public Domain
   CCEL Subjects: All;
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    THE

                              LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST

    IN ITS

  HISTORICAL CONNEXION AND HISTORICAL
  DEVELOPEMENT.

    BY

AUGUSTUS NEANDER.

    TRANSLATED FROM THE

    Fourth German Edition.

    BY

  JOHN M'CLINTOCK AND CHARLES E. BLUMENTHAL,

    PROFESSORS IN DICKINSON COLLEGE.

  NEW YORK:

  HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,

    329 & 331 PEARL STREET,

    FRANKLIN SQUARE.

  1870.

   Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand
   eight hundred and forty-eight, by
   HARPER & BROTHERS,
   in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District
   of New York.
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TO MY CHRISTIAN BRETHREN
IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

   THE present age may be considered an epoch of transition in the
   developement of the kingdom of God; and, as such, it is full of signs.
   Among the most striking of them is a greater zeal for the spread of the
   Gospel and the Bible through all nations, combining many and various
   agencies for that work; as well as a closer union among all earnest
   Christians, seekers of salvation and truth, of all lands, however
   widely separated--a new Catholic Church, which, amid all the diversity
   of outward ecclesiastical forms, is preparing that unity of the spirit
   which has Christ for its foundation. Especially is it matter of
   rejoicing to see a growing spirit of fraternal union between the
   Christians of the Old World and those of the New; a land in which
   Christianity (the destined leaven for all the elements of humanity, how
   various soever) developes its activities under secular relations so
   entirely novel.

   It was, therefore, very gratifying to me to learn that Professors
   M'CLINTOCK and BLUMENTHAL had determined to put this volume, the fruit
   of my earnest inquiries, before the transatlantic Christian public in
   an English dress. To see a wider sphere of influence opened for views
   which we ourselves (amid manifold struggles, yet guided, we trust, by
   the Divine Spirit) have recognized as true, and which, in our opinion,
   are fitted to make a way right on through the warring contradictions of
   error, cannot be otherwise than grateful to us. For truth is designed
   for all men: he who serves the truth works and strives for all men. The
   Lord has given to each his own charisma, and with it each must work for
   all. What is true and good, then, is no man's own; it comes from the
   Father of Lights, the Giver of every good gift, who lends it to us to
   be used for all. And what is true, must prove itself such by bearing
   the test of the general Christian consciousness.

   But the pleasure with which I write these words is not unmingled with
   anxiety. To write a history of the greatest Life that has been
   manifested upon earth--that Life in which the Divine glory irradiated
   earthly existence--is indeed the greatest of human tasks. Yet the
   attempt is not presumptuous (as I have said in the preface to the
   German edition), if it be made upon the Gospel basis: every age
   witnesses new attempts of the kind. It is part of the means by which we
   are to appropriate to ourselves this highest life; to become more and
   more intimate with it; to bring it nearer and nearer to ourselves.
   Every peculiar age will feel itself compelled anew to take this Divine
   Life to itself through its own study of it, by means of science,
   animated by the Holy Spirit; to gain a closer living intimacy with it,
   by copying it. To eat His flesh and drink His blood (in the spiritual
   sense) is indeed the way to this intimacy; but science also has its
   part to do, and this work is its highest dignity. But yet, in view of
   the grandeur and importance of this greatest of tasks, in view of the
   difficulties that environ it, and our own incapacity to execute it
   adequately, we cannot see our work diffused into wider and more distant
   circles, without fear and trembling. We are fully conscious of the
   dimness that surrounds us, growing out of the errors and defects of an
   age just freeing itself from a distracting infidelity. May we soon
   receive a new outpouring of the Holy Ghost, again bestowing tongues of
   fire, so that the Lord's great works may be more worthily praised!

   I have another, and a peculiar source of anxiety. This book has arisen
   (and it bears the marks of its origin) amid the intellectual struggles
   which yet agitate Germany, and constitute a preparatory crisis for the
   future. Those who are unacquainted with those struggles may, perhaps,
   take offence at finding not only many things in the book hard to
   understand, but also views at variance with old opinions in other
   countries yet undisturbed. The English churches (even those of the
   United States, where every thing moves more freely) have perhaps, on
   the whole, been but slightly disturbed by conflicting opinions of
   precisely the kind that find place among us. Had they to deal with the
   life-questions with which we have to do, they would be otherwise
   engaged than in vehement controversies about church order and other
   unessential points. It would be easier, then, for them to forget their
   minor differences, and rally under the one banner of the Cross against
   the common foe. Perhaps a nearer acquaintance with the religious
   condition of other lands may contribute to this end.

   I am, notwithstanding, still afraid that some readers unacquainted with
   the progress of the German mind, which has developed new intellectual
   necessities even for those who seek the truth believingly, may take
   offence at some of the sentiments of this book. Especially will this be
   likely to happen with those who have not been accustomed to distinguish
   what is Divine from what is human in the Gospel record; to discriminate
   its immutable essence from the changeful forms in which men have
   apprehended it; in a word, with those who exchange the Divine reality
   for the frail support of traditional beliefs and ancient harmonies. I
   would lead no man into a trial which he could not endure; I would
   willingly give offence to none, unless, indeed, it were to be a
   transitory offence, tending afterward to enlarge his Christian
   knowledge and confirm his faith. How far this may be the case, I am not
   sufficiently acquainted with the transatlantic Church to be a competent
   judge. Nor would I, on my own sole responsibility, have introduced this
   work (which arose, as I have said, among the struggles of our own
   country) to a foreign public: this I leave to the esteemed translators,
   hoping that their judgment of the condition of things there may be well
   founded.

   But of this I am certain, that the fall of the old form of the doctrine
   of Inspiration, and, indeed, of many other doctrinal prejudices, will
   not only not involve the fall of the essence of the Gospel, but will
   cause it no detriment whatever. Nay, I believe that it will be more
   clearly and accurately understood; that men will be better prepared to
   fight with and to conquer that inrushing infidelity against which the
   weapons of the old dogmatism must be powerless in any land; and that
   from such a struggle a new theology, purified and renovated in the
   spirit of the Gospel, must arise. Everywhere we see the signs of a new
   creation; the Lord will build himself, in science as well as in life, a
   new tabernacle in which to dwell; and neither a stubborn adherence to
   antiquity, nor a profane appetite for novelty, can hinder this work of
   the Lord which is now preparing. May we never forget the words of the
   great apostle, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty."
   Whatever in this book rests upon that one foundation than which none
   other can be laid, will bear all the fires of the time; let the wood,
   hay, and stubble which find place in all works of men, be burned up.

   Perhaps the impulse [1] which the American mind has received from the
   profound COLERIDGE, who (like SCHLEIERMACHER among ourselves) has
   testified that Christianity is not so much a definite system of
   conceptions as a power of life, may have contributed, and may still
   further contribute, to prepare the way for a new tendency of scientific
   theology in your beloved country.

   A. NEANDER.

   Berlin, November 4 1847.
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   [1] Not, it is to be hoped, a one-sided, partisan tendency, as is
   justly remarked by Professor PORTER, whose article on "Coleridge and
   his American Disciples," in the Bibliotheca Sacra for February, 1847, I
   have read with great interest.
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TRANSLATORS' PREFACE.

   THE work, of which an English version is presented in this volume,
   appeared originally in 1837. It has already passed through four
   editions, from the last of which [2] this translation has been made.

   It is well known that Dr. NEANDER has been engaged for many years in
   writing a "General History of the Christian Religion and Church," and
   that he has published separately an account of the "Planting and
   Training of the Early Christian Church by the Apostles." He would
   doubtless have felt himself constrained, at some period, to give a
   history of the life and ministry of the Divine Founder of the Church;
   and, indeed, he states as much in the preface to this work (page xxi.).
   The execution of this part of his task, however, would perhaps have
   been deferred until the completion of his General History, had not the
   "signs of the times" urged him to undertake it at once. Its immediate
   occasion was the publication, in 1835, of STRAUS'S "Life of Christ,"
   [3] a work which, as every one knows, created a great sensation, not
   merely in the theological circles of Germany, but also throughout
   Europe. A brief sketch of the state and progress of parties in Germany
   may be useful to readers not familiar with the literature of that
   country; and we here attempt it, only regretting our incapacity to give
   it fully and accurately.

   Notwithstanding the dread with which German theology is regarded by
   many English and some American divines, it was not in German soil that
   the first seeds of infidelity in modern times took root. It was by the
   deistical writers of England, in the early part of the last century,
   that the authenticity of the sacred records was first openly assailed.
   The attacks of Toland, Chubb, Morgan, &c., were directed mainly against
   the credibility and sincerity of the sacred writers; and their blows
   were aimed, avowedly, against the whole fabric of Christianity. It is
   needless to say that they failed, not merely in accomplishing their
   object, but in making any very strong or permanent impression on the
   English mind. Nor has an infidelity of exactly the same type ever
   obtained firm footing in Germany. The English Deism, first promulgated
   in the Wolfenbüttel fragments, set the German theologians at work upon
   the canon of Scripture, and upon Biblical literature in general, with a
   zeal and industry un known before; and many of them pushed their
   inquiries with a freedom amounting to recklessness; but a direct and
   absolute denial of the authority of the word of God is a thing almost
   unknown among them. Still, professed theologians, of great talents and
   learning, and holding high official positions, adopted a theory (the
   so-called Rationalism) more dangerous than avowed infidelity, and
   succeeded, for a time, in diffusing its poison to a painful extent.

   The declared aim of the Rationalists was to interpret the Bible on
   rational principles; that is to say, to find nothing in it beyond the
   scope of human reason. Not supposing its writers to be impostors, nor
   denying the record to be a legitimate source, in a certain sense, of
   religious instruction, they sought to free it of every thing
   supernatural; deeming it to be, not a direct Divine revelation, but a
   product of the human mind, aided, indeed, by Divine Providence, but in
   no extraordinary or miraculous way. The miracles, therefore, had to be
   explained away; and this was done in any mode that the ingenuity or
   philosophy of the expositor might suggest. Sometimes, for instance,
   they were no miracles, at all, but simple natural facts; and all the
   old interpreters had misunderstood the writers. Sometimes, again, the
   writers of the sacred history misunderstood the facts, deeming them to
   be miraculous when they were not; e. g., when Christ "healed the sick,"
   he merely prescribed for them, as a kind physician, with skill and
   success; when he "raised the dead," he only restored men from a swoon
   or trance; when he "subdued the storm," there was simply a happy
   "coincidence," making a strong impression upon the minds of the
   disciples; when he fed the "five thousand," he only set an example of
   kindness and benevolence which the rich by-standers eagerly followed by
   opening their stores to feed the hungry multitude, &c., &c. But even
   this elastic exegesis, when stretched to its utmost capacity, would not
   explain every case: some parts of the narratives were stubbornly
   unyielding, and new methods were demanded. For men who had gone so far,
   it was easy to go farther; the text itself was not spared; this passage
   was doubtful, that was corrupt, a third was spurious. In short,
   "criticism," as this desperate kind of Interpretation was called, was
   at last able to make any thing, and in a fair way to make nothing, out
   of the sacred records. But still the rationalist agreed with the
   orthodox supernaturalist in admitting that there was, at bottom, a
   basis of substantial truth in the records; and asserted that his
   efforts only tended to free the substantive verity from the
   envelopements of fable or perversion with which tradition had invested
   it. The admission was a fatal one. The absurdities to which the theory
   led could not long remain undetected. It was soon shown, and shown
   effectually, that this vaunted criticism was no criticism at all; that
   the objections which it offered to the Gospel history were as old as
   Porphyry, or, at least, as the English Deists, and had been refuted
   again and again; that the errors of interpretation into which the older
   expositors had fallen might be avoided without touching the truth and
   inspiration of the Evangelists; and, in a word, that there could be no
   medium between open infidelity and the admission of a supernatural
   revelation. During the first quarter of the present century the
   conflict was waged with ardour on both sides, but with increasing
   energy on the side of truth; and every year weakened the forces of
   rationalism. Still, the theological mind of Germany was to a
   considerable extent unsettled: its Tholucks and Hengstenbergs stood
   strong for orthodoxy; its Twesten and Nitszch applied the clearest
   logic to systematic theology; its Marheineche and Daub philosophized
   religiously; its Bretschneider and Hase upheld reason as the judge of
   revelation; while not a few maintained the old rationalism, though with
   less and less of conviction, or at least of boldness.

   It was at this point that Strauss conceived the audacious idea of
   applying the mythical theory to the whole structure of the Evangelical
   history. All Germany has been more or less infected with the
   mytho-mania, since the new school of archaeologers have gone so deeply
   into the heathen mythology. A mythis omnis priscorum hominum cum
   historia tum philosophia procedit, says Heyne: and Bauer asks,
   logically enough, "if the early history of every people is mythical why
   not the Hebrew?" [4] The mere application of this theory to the sacred
   records was by no means original with Strauss: he himself points out a
   number of instances in which Eichhorn, Gabler, Vater, &c., had made use
   of it. His claim is to have given a completeness to the theory, or
   rather to its application, which former interpreters had not dreamed
   of; and, to tell the truth, he has made no halting work of it. That
   Jesus lived; that he taught in Judea; that he gathered disciples, and
   so impressed them with his life and teaching as that they believed him
   to be the Messiah; this is nearly the sum of historical truth contained
   in the Evangelists, according to Strauss. Yet he ascribes no fraudulent
   designs to the writers; his problem is, therefore, to account for the
   form in which the narratives appear; and this is the place for his
   theory to work. A Messiah was expected; certain notions were attached
   to the Messianic character and office; and with these Christ was
   invested by his followers. "Such and such a thing must happen to
   Messiah; Jesus was the Messiah; therefore such and such a thing must
   have happened to him." "The expectation of a Messiah had flourished in
   Israel long before the time of Christ; and at the time of his
   appearance it had ripened into full bloom; not an indefinite longing
   either, but an expectation defined by many prominent characteristics.
   Moses had promised (Deut., xviii., 15) a prophet like unto himself,' a
   passage applied, in Christ's time, to Messiah (Acts, iii., 22; vii.,
   37). The Messiah was to spring of David's line, and ascend his throne
   as a second David (Matt., xxii., 42; Luke, i., 32); and therefore he
   was looked for, in Christ's time, to be born in the little town of
   Bethlehem (John, vii., 42; Matt., ii., 5). In the old legends the most
   wonderful acts and destinies had been attributed to the prophets: could
   less be expected of the Messiah? Must not his life be illustrated by
   the most splendid and significant incidents from the lives of the
   prophets? Finally, the Messianic era, as a whole, was expected to be a
   period of signs and wonders. The eyes of the blind were to be opened;
   the deaf ears to be unstopped; the lame were to leap, &c. (Isa., xxxv.,
   &c.). These expressions, part of which, at least, were purely
   figurative, came to be literally understood (Matt., xi., 5; Luke, vii.,
   21, sqq.); and thus, even before Christ's appearance, the image of
   Messiah was continually filling out with new features. And thus many of
   the legends respecting Jesus had not to be newly invented; they existed
   ready-made in the Messianic hopes of the people, derived chiefly from
   the Old Testament, and only needed to be transferred to Christ and
   adapted to his character and teachings." [5]

   These extracts contain the substance of Strauss's theory; his book is
   little more than an application of it to the individual parts of the
   history of Christ as given in the Evangelists. A few instances of his
   procedure will suffice. He finds the key to the miraculous conception
   in Matt., i., 22: " All this was done that it might be fulfilled which
   was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying," [6] &c. "The birth of
   Jesus, it was said, must correspond to this passage; and what was to
   be, they concluded, really did occur, and so arose the myth." The
   account of the star of the Magians, and of their visit from the East,
   arose from a similar application of Numbers, xxiv., 17; Psa. lxxii.,
   10; Isa., lx., 1-6, [7] &c The temptation of Christ was suggested by
   the trials of Job; its separate features helped out by Exod., xxxiv.,
   28; Lev., xvi., 8, 10; Deut., ix., 9, [8] &c. The Transfiguration finds
   a starting-point in Exod., xxxiv., 29-35. [9] So we might go through
   the book.

   The appearance of the work, as we have said, produced a wonderful
   sensation in Germany; greater, by far, than its merits would seem to
   have authorized. It was the heaviest blow that unbelief had ever struck
   against Christianity; and the question was, what should be done? The
   Prussian government was disposed to utter its ban against the book; and
   many evangelical theologians deemed this the proper course to pursue in
   regard to it. But Dr. Neander deprecated such a procedure as calculated
   to give the work a spurious celebrity, and as wearing, at least, the
   aspect of a confession that it was unanswerable. He advised that it
   should be met, not by authority, but by argument, believing that the
   truth had nothing to fear in such a conflict. His counsel prevailed;
   and the event has shown that he was right. Replies to Strauss poured
   forth in a torrent; the Gospel histories were subjected to a closer
   criticism than ever; and to-day the public mind of Germany is nearer to
   an orthodox and evangelical view of their contents than it has been for
   almost a century.

   Besides the general impulse given by Strauss to the study of the Four
   Gospels, he has done theology another good service. His book has given
   a deadly blow to rationalism properly so called. Its paltry criticism
   and beggarly interpretations of Scripture are nowhere more effectually
   dissected than in his investigations of the different parts of the
   history and of the expositions that have been given of it. In a word,
   he has driven rationalism out of the field to make way for his myths;
   and Neander, Ebrard, and others have exploded the myths; so that
   nothing remains but a return to the simple, truthful interpretations
   which, in the main, are given by the evangelical commentators.

   But, it may be asked, why trouble ourselves with controversies of this
   kind here? We cannot help it. Strauss's book, at first, could not find
   a respectable publisher in England; and a garbled translation,
   containing its very worst features, was put out in a cheap form for the
   million. The same, or a similar abridgment, has been circulated to a
   considerable extent in this country. And within the last year a
   translation of the whole work, from the last German edition, has been
   published in London in three handsome volumes. That the soil of many
   minds is ready to receive its pestilent doctrines, both in that country
   and in our own, is too sadly true to be denied. The Westminster Review
   for April, 1847, contains an article on Strauss and Parker which talks
   about the Evangelists in the coolest strain of infidelity imaginable,
   and refers, with obvious complacency, to the signs of "unbelief or
   illumination" (it cares not which) that are at present so abundant in
   England.

   To a certain extent, as we have remarked, Neander's Life of Christ has
   a polemic aim against Strauss. But this is a small part of its merits;
   indeed, but for the notes, an ordinary reader would not detect any such
   specific tendency. It unfolds the life of the Saviour from the record
   with great clearness and skill; it invests the outline, thus obtained,
   with the fresh colours of life, without resorting to forced
   constructions and vain imaginings; and, above all, it seeks, with
   child-like humility and reverence, to learn and exhibit the mind of the
   Spirit. The characteristic of spirituality, so strongly stamped upon
   all the works of this great writer, is especially prominent here. None,
   we think, can read the book without becoming not merely better
   acquainted with the facts of the life of Christ, but more anxious than
   ever to drink into its spirit.

   At the same time, it is not to be concealed that Neander differs in his
   views on some points of doctrine, as well as of interpretation, from
   most Evangelical theologians. We wish to state distinctly that we do
   not hold ourselves responsible for these peculiarities of opinion. It
   was at one time our purpose to append notes to such passages as we
   deemed most objectionable; but after mature deliberation this intention
   was laid aside. It is hardly fair to criticise a man in his own pages,
   even if one is able to do it. The general spirit and tendency of the
   work cannot, we are sure, be otherwise than beneficial, or we should
   never have attempted to translate it. Its specific errors can be met
   and refuted elsewhere.

   The noble candour of Neander in the letter which precedes this preface
   must disarm all severity. Let us remember, in our judgment of what may
   appear to us even grave errors of opinion in the book, that its author
   has fought for every step of ground that has been gained of late years
   by spiritual religion in Germany; and, while we lament the "dimness"
   which this great man confesses with such Christian-like humility, let
   us acknowledge the grandeur of his idea of the kingdom of God, and the
   earnestness of his devotion to it. His starting-point, and many of his
   paths, are different from ours; it must, therefore, gladden our hearts,
   and may, perhaps, confirm our faith, to see that he reaches, after all,
   the general results of Evangelical theology.

   One word for the translation. We have tried to do our best; but we feel
   that we have not done very well. It is hard to translate German; and of
   all German that we have tried to put into intelligible English,
   Neander's is the hardest. We have not attempted a literal version (for
   we want the book to be read); nor on the other hand, have we willingly
   gone into mere paraphrase. We have sought to seize the sense of the
   author, and to express it in our own tongue; but none can be better
   assured than ourselves that we have very often failed. Readers of the
   original work will see that we have taken some liberties with it which
   demand explanation. The division of the text into books, chapters, and
   sections will, we hope, make the work more intelligible and acceptable
   to English readers. In many of the author's paraphrases of Scripture
   passages we have substituted the words of the English version, where it
   could be done without affecting the sense; and many passages, also, to
   which he had merely alluded, are quoted at length. A few sentences have
   been transferred from the text to the notes; and a few passages of the
   notes, of purely polemical interest, which would have needed
   explanation to put them fairly before the American public, have been
   omitted. In all that we have done, we have endeavoured to comply with
   the spirit of Dr. Neander's wishes, as kindly communicated to us by
   himself.

   January 5, 1848.

   LIST OF DR. NEANDER'S WORKS.

   Das Leben Jesu Christi, in seinem geschichtlichen Zusammenhange und
   seiner geschichtlichen Entwickelung: 1^te Aufl., 1837; 4^te Aufl., 1845
   (The Life of Jesus Christ, in its Historical Connexion and Historical
   Developement: 1st ed., 1837; 4th ed., 1845).

   Geschichte der Pflanzung und Leitung der Christlichen Kirche durch die
   Apostel: 1^te Aufl., 1832; 4^te Aufl., 1847 (History of the Planting
   and Training of the Christian Church by the Apostles: 1st ed., 1832;
   4th ed., 1847).

   Allgemeine Geschichte der Christlichen Religion und Kirche (General
   History of the Christian Religion and Church).

   (a) Die drei ersten Jahrhunderte: 1^te Aufl. in 3 Bänden; 2^te Aufl. in
   2 Bd., 1842-43. (The three first centuries: 1st edition in 3 volumes,
   1825; 2d edition in 2vols., 1842-43.)

   (b) Das 4^te-6^te Jahrhundert: 1^te Aufl. in drei Bänden, 1828; 2^te
   Auf. in 2 Bd., 1846-47. (Fourth to sixth century: 1st ed. in 3 vols.,
   1828; 2d in 2 vols., 1846-47.)

   (c) 6^te-8^te, in 1 Bd. (Sixth to eighth, 1 vol.), 1834.

   (d) 8^te-11^te, in 1 Bd. (Eighth to eleventh, 1 vol.), 1836.

   (e) 11^te-13^te, in 2 Bänden. (Eleventh to thirteenth, 2 vols.), 1841
   and 1845.

   Ueber den Kaiser Julianus und sein Zeitalter (The Emperor Julian and
   his Times), 1812.

   Genetische Entwickelung der vornehmsten Gnostischen Systeme (Genetical
   Developement of the principal Gnostic Systems), 1818.

   Anti-Gnosticus. Geist des Tertullianus und Einleitung in dessen
   Schriften (Anti-Gnosticus. Genius of Tertullian and Introduction to his
   Writings), 1825.

   Der heilige Chrysostomus und die Kirche in dessen Zeitalter, 2 Bd.,
   1820; 2^te Aufl. l^te Bd., 1832 (Chrysostom and the Church in his
   Times, 2 vols., 1820; 2d ed. of 1st. vol., 1832).

   Der heilige Bernhard und sein Zeitalter (Bernard and his Times), 1813.

   Denkwürdigkeiten aus der Geschichte des Christenthums und des
   Christlichen Lebens: l^te Aufl. in 3 Bd., 1822; 3^te Aufl. in 2 Bd.,
   1845-46 (Memorabilia from the History of Christianity and the Christian
   Life: 1st ed. 3 vols., 1822; 3d ed. 2 vols.. 1845-46).

   Kleine Gelegenheitschriften praktisch-Christlichen, vornehmlich
   exegetischen und historischen Inhalts, 3^te Aufl., 1829 (Smaller
   Treatises, chiefly exegetical and historical, 3d ed., 1829).

   Das Eine und das Mannichfältige des Christlichen Lebens; Eine Reihe
   kleiner Gelegenheitschriften, grössertentheils biographischen Inhalts
   (Series of smaller Treatises, chiefly biographical), 1840.

   Das Princip der Reformation, oder Staupitz und Luther (The Principle of
   the Reformation; or Staupitz and Luther), 1840.
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   [2] Das Leben Jesu Christi, in seinem geschichtlichen Zusammenhange und
   seiner geschichtlichen Entwickelung dargestellt von Dr. AUGUST NEANDER,
   vierte und verbesserte Auflage, Hamburg, bei Friedrich Perthes, 1845.

   [3] Das Leben Jesu, Kritisch bearbeitet von Dr. DAVID FRIEDRICH
   STRAUSS. 8 Bde Tubingen, 1835, 4te Aufl., 1840.

   [4] Strauss, i., § 8.

   [5] Strause, i., § 14.

   [6] Strauss, i., § 29.

   [7] Ibid., § 36.

   [8] Ibid., § 56.

   [9] Ibid., § 107.
     __________________________________________________________________

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

   IN the Preface to my Representation of the Christian Religion and
   Church in the Apostolic Age, I assigned my reasons for the separate
   publication of that work, and stated its relations to my General
   History of the Church. It remained for me to treat of that which formed
   the ground of the manifestation and existence of the Apostolical Church
   itself, viz., the Life and Ministry of the Divine Founder of the
   Church; and I have, moreover, been urged from many quarters to execute
   this necessary portion of my work. I was made to pause in the former
   undertaking by the lofty sacredness of the subject and its many
   difficulties; how much more, then, in the latter! But the signs of the
   times (to which, as a historian of the Church, I could not but take
   heed), the uncertainty of human affairs, and the opportunity afforded
   by a pause in my General History, have overcome my scruples, and led
   me, trusting in God, to go on with this work.

   Yet well may he hesitate who undertakes to write the life of CHRIST!
   "Who, indeed (as HERDER finely answered Lavater), could venture, after
   John, to write the life of Christ?" [10] Who will not agree with ANNA
   MARIA VON SCHURMANN, that such an attempt is "to paint the sun with
   charcoal: the life of a Christian is the best picture of the life of
   Christ?" [11]

   Yet why should not history (though assured that its description must be
   far behind the reality) occupy itself with the highest manifestation
   that has appeared in humanity--a manifestation which sanctifies, but
   does not spurn, the labours of men? The artist, inspired by devotion,
   paints a picture of Christ without any aid from history, merely from
   intuition of the idea of Christ. But we have the lineaments of the
   historical Christ, in fragments at least; and there is wanting only
   insight into their connexion to frame them into a harmonious whole. We
   feel the necessity of calling up vividly before our minds, in our own
   stage of life and scientific progress, this realized Ideal, which
   belongs to all ages; and at particular epochs in the mutations of time
   this necessity is always felt anew. The image of Christ, not of
   yesterday nor to-day, ever renews its youth among men, and, as the
   world grows old, penetrates it with a heaven-tending youthful vigour.
   What PHOTIUS says of the various ideas of Christ among different
   nations may be applied to different periods of time, viz., "that each,
   by a new representation, must make itself familiar with the image of
   Christ." Obviously, however, the peculiarities of different periods
   must be distinguished. Some periods mark a new creation in the
   Christian Church and in humanity, as already appeared; others, by
   dissolution and crisis, prepare the way for it. Our age belongs to the
   latter class: we stand between the old world and a new one to be called
   into being by the ever old and ever new Gospel. For the fourth time
   Christianity is preparing a new epoch in the life of humanity. Our
   labors can only be preparatory to that new creation, when, after the
   regeneration of life and science, the great acts of God shall be
   proclaimed with new tongues of fire! [12]

   But it may be questioned, also, whether it is possible, from the
   authorities in our hands, to exhibit a connected description of the
   life of CHRIST? Christian consciousness will be satisfied with nothing
   less than an intuition of Christ's life as a whole; and, therefore,
   science must undertake to free it from all alloy, and to found it on a
   substantial basis. It is by means of the Christian consciousness that
   we feel ourselves allied to all Christianity since the outpouring of
   the Holy Ghost--Christian consciousness, the living source from which
   every thing in life and science, which has really enriched the Church,
   has proceeded and must proceed; a far different thing from the
   changeful culture of the day, which, without it, must ever be ephemeral
   and transitory. To serve this last is the most wretched of servitudes.
   It is, indeed, time for a new beginning of Biblical criticism, of New
   Testament exegesis, of inquiries into the formation of the canon. There
   are great difficulties, indeed, especially in the chronology, [13] in
   the work which we have to do. But this, instead of deterring, must only
   stimulate us to greater efforts. We must only guard against
   relinquishing our hopes too hastily, and keep aloof from all prejudices
   either of antiquity or novelty; and then this undertaking may be one of
   the preparations, however trifling, for a new epoch in this part of
   history.

   As for those who deny that our field is properly historical, and place
   it in a pre-historical and mythical region, I need say nothing here, as
   I have sought to refute them in the course of the work itself.

   In regard to my relations to the various theological parties of the
   age, I must refer to the Preface to the first volume of my "Apostolic
   Age;" and to my letter to DEWAR, chaplain to the British Embassy in
   Hamburg. Whatever appears to me to be true, or most probable, after
   candid and earnest inquiry, with all reverence for the sacredness of
   the subject, I utter, without looking at consequences. Whoever has a
   good work to do must, as Luther says, let the devil's tongue run as it
   pleases. There are two opposite parties whom I cannot hope to please,
   viz., those who will forcibly make all things new, and fancy, in their
   folly, that they can shake the rock which ages could not undermine; and
   those who would retain, and forcibly reintroduce, even at the expense
   of all genuine love of truth, every thing that is old; nay, even the
   worn-out and the obsolete. I shall not please those hypercritics who
   subject the sacred writings to an arbitrary subtilty, at once
   superrational and sophistical; nor those, on the other hand, who
   believe that here all criticism--or at least all criticism on internal
   grounds--cometh of evil. Both these tendencies are alike at variance
   with a healthful sense for truth and conscientious devotion to it; both
   are alike inimical to genuine culture. There is need of criticism where
   any thing is communicated to us in the form of a historical tradition
   in written records; and I am sure that an impartial criticism, applied
   to the Scriptures, is not only consistent with that child-like faith
   without which there can be no Christianity or Christian theology, [14]
   but is necessary to a just acuteness [15] and profoundness of thought,
   as well as to that true consecration of mind which is so essential to
   theology. The childlike faith of the theologian who cannot violently
   rid himself of the critical element of his times or of human nature, is
   thus proved, as it were, in the fire of temptation; this is the
   tentatio (particularly in this age of scientific struggle) which must
   go along with oratio and meditatio, in the depths of the earnest and
   humble spirit. Without this priestly consecration, there can be no
   theology. It thrives best in the calmness of a soul consecrated to God.
   What grows amid the noisy bustle of the world and the empty babble of
   the age is not theology.

   God reveals himself in his word as he does in his works. In both we see
   a self-revealing, self-concealing God, who makes himself known only to
   those who earnestly seek him; [16] in both we find stimulants to faith
   and occasions for unbelief; in both we find contradictions whose higher
   harmony is hidden except from him who gives up his whole mind in
   reverence; in both, in a word, it is the law of revelation that the
   heart of man should be tested in receiving it; and that, in the
   spiritual life as well as in the bodily, man must eat his bread in the
   sweat of his brow.

   Berlin, July 18, 1837.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [10] "I write the life of Christ--I? Never. The Evangelists have
   written it as it can and ought to be written. Let us, however, not
   write it, but become it?" (Beiträge zur näheren Kenntniss Lavater's,
   von Ulrich Hegener: Leips., 1836.) May the good Zurichers, who have
   lately shown themselves so worthy of their sires in their resistance to
   revolutionary violence and their enthusiasm for the faith (dogma
   Christianum dogma populare, Augustin. opus imperf. c. Julian, ii., 2),
   erect a Christian national memorial by an edition, as complete as
   possible, of Lavater's correspondence.

   [11] Cf. Reinhard, Plan Jesu, 1; Heubner's Anm.

   [12] Most keenly does the author feel (as did his late friend, B.
   Jacobi, who has left behind him a blessed and honoured memory) that his
   work bears the marks of its production in an age of crisis, of
   isolation, of pain, and of throes.

   [13] Wherever I have not sure grounds for decision, I say "perhaps:"
   nor am I ashamed of it, unfashionable as "perhaps" is, nowadays, in
   matters of science. Would that our young votaries of science would lay
   to heart the excellent words of NIEBUHR, on the degrees of confidence,
   in the "Lebensnachrichten," ii., 208.

   [14] But the theologian must have more than a merely critical mind and
   critical aims: he needs a spiritual mind, a deep acquaintance with
   divine things; and he must study the Scriptures with his heart as well
   as head, unless he wishes his theology to be robbed of its salt by his
   criticism.

   [15] Not too sharp, so as to be notched.

   [16] This is the pervading thought of Pascal (the sage for all
   centuries) in his Pensées, though blended with many errors of
   Catholicism and absolute Predestination. Great thanks ate due to
   Faugere for the edition of this work (1844) in its original form.
     __________________________________________________________________

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

   THE reception of this work among the opposing theological parties of
   the age has been such as I anticipated in the Preface to the first
   edition. It is, therefore, the less necessary for me to vindicate
   myself against special accusations on any side. I am satisfied that the
   principles of my theological procedure are in the main correct, and
   that their claims will finally be justified. To answer the revilings or
   false inferences of fanatical prejudice on either hand, or to enter
   into purely personal controversy, forms no part of my purpose. Yet, in
   order to leave no room for doubt as to my own theological stand-point,
   it appears necessary that I should notice a few of the opinions that
   have been passed upon the work.

   A review from the pen of Consistorial Counsellor SCHULZ has appeared in
   the Allgemeine Darmstädtische Kirchenzeitung, which opposes me merely
   by dictatorial decisions; and, by isolating various passages [17] of my
   work from their connexion, ascribes to me opinions which are foreign to
   my whole theological system. What I say will not be disputed by any one
   who candidly examines that review and compares it with my work. I have
   called the attention of my readers in this edition to these perversions
   of my words; perversions in which SCHULZ shakes hands with men of a
   school directly opposite to his own. Were I not satisfied of his
   integrity, I should be under the necessity of calling them dishonest
   perversions; as the case is, I see in them only the prejudice of that
   enthusiasm of reason so admirably characterized by JACOBI in his
   remarks upon "Reason which is not Reason" (ii., 492). Of those who are
   enslaved by this enthusiasm, he says: "Their belief is always reason,
   nor can they recognize another's reason except in his belief. They
   inquire not how he feels, perceives, observes, or infers, but only what
   his opinions are--whether they agree with their canon or not; and that
   decides the matter." This stand-point as surely generates a prejudice
   which precludes all just judgment of the opinions of others, and leads
   (though unconsciously) to falsehood, as does the enthusiasm for an
   absolute system of doctrines which lays down, as a standard, a definite
   number of articles of faith, or principles therewith connected, and
   makes this standard a criterion of every one's claim to Christianity.
   In the judgments formed of my work, as well as in many other matters of
   our time, these two sets of prejudices have led to similar results.

   "What," inquires SCHULZ several times, "will the believers in creeds
   say to this?" Now, as to the opinion of this or that set of men, I am
   indifferent; it concerns me only to know how far my statements accord
   with truth, especially Christian truth. It is proper that I should say,
   however, that I go along with those who oppose "creed-believers" (to
   use SCHULZ's term) so far as this viz., that I could not subscribe to
   any of the existing symbols (except the Apostles' creed, which
   testifies to those fundamental facts of Christianity that are essential
   to the existence of the Christian Church) as an unconditional
   expression of my religious convictions.

   I believe that our path lies, through the strifes and storms of the
   present time, to a new creation in the Church, when the same Holy
   Spirit [18] that works in the life of the Church, and produces all
   truly Christian creeds as expressions (defective, indeed, as all human
   representations of the Divine must be, and stamped with the varying
   culture of the time) of Christian truth, will produce a symbol adapted
   to the new stage of the Church's developement, if it become necessary
   that such an expression of the animating faith of the Church be given
   in a new literal form. But I go along with the theologians (so called
   creed-believers) in what I believe to be the fundamental principle of
   the Reformation and of the Evangelical Church; the doctrines, viz., of
   the corruption of human nature (not, however, excluding, but
   presupposing, an element of affinity for God [Gottverwandte] in human
   nature); and of justification by faith in Jesus as the Redeemer. The
   essential part of the Evangelical Confession (the Augsburg Confession
   and its Apology), so far as it is an exposition of this doctrine,
   together with the unchangeable verities to which the Apostles' Creed
   bears witness, seem to me the irrefragable basis of the Evangelical
   Church; which, on this basis, protests against all popery whether the
   Roman or any other impure spirit of the age; against human statutes, no
   matter of what kind. Dr. SCHULZ reproaches me for speaking of the
   sinfulness of human nature. On the other hand, I cannot but be
   astonished that this truth, so clearly revealed in the Scriptures, nay,
   lying at their basis, and so plainly written upon every human heart,
   should be denied by any man. He wishes, moreover, that the terms
   "natural reason" and "self-righteousness" may hereafter not appear in
   my writings. In this respect I cannot possibly gratify him. These terms
   have a well-established right in the Evangelical Church; the
   conceptions which they express are closely connected with its
   fundamental principle; they are, moreover, firmly founded in Biblical
   Anthropology. [19] They are not the offshoot of a "new Evangelical"
   Theology, but of an old Evangelical faith. It is a mere pretended
   "enlightenment" (which, notwithstanding it may, by destroying, prepare
   the way for better things, is yet in its positive elements a source of
   darkness) that can object to those conceptions.

   I have to thank Dr. HASE for the kindness with which he has spoken of
   my work in the Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik; but it would
   take more space than a preface will allow to come to an understanding
   with him upon the points in Apologetics and Dogmatics on which he
   touches in his review. I can only remark, that a description of the
   life of Christ (although it must proceed from the Christian
   consciousness, which alone can afford a living intuition of it) does
   not necessarily demand for its foundation a complete and well-defined
   theory of the person of Christ. On the contrary, it would be one of the
   excellences of such a work, that various doctrinal tendencies (if
   supranaturalistic) could be satisfied with it. It must deal with facts,
   which are more weighty than men's conceptions, changeful as they are.
   All dogmatical theories except those which are willing to do violence
   to history must agree in acknowledging certain facts. What I have said
   of the human developement of the life of Christ harmonizes well with
   the consequent doctrine of a status exinanitionis; without this, in
   fact, the human life of Christ can have no reality. As to my views of
   the Ascension, I must adhere to them, until I can be convinced that
   without them the full import of Christ's resurrection can be asserted.
   Nor is it simply strength of faith that leads me to these results; from
   the beginning my religious life has been too much affected by the
   culture of this age to allow me to glory in such a faith--to compare
   myself with those men of child-like simplicity, those heroes whose
   Divine confidence is exalted above all doubt. [20] I have adopted them
   from consecutive reasoning upon the principles of the Christian faith.
   There is no middle ground here; unless, indeed, in order to avoid
   admitting a limit to all explanation, without, at the same time,
   affirming the opposite, we cover up the difficulty in phrases and
   formulas.

   To all those who consider the Socratic ignorance as folly, and who have
   settled beforehand the highest questions--questions whose right answers
   the great MELANCTHON placed among the beatitudes of the intuition of a
   better life--my dogmatical system must appear weak and unsatisfactory.

   In the reviewer of my work in the Halle Literaturzeitung
   (Church-counsellor SCHWARZ of Jena), I am happy to recognize a worthy
   man, who can acknowledge with congenial spirit, even amid differences
   of opinion, the work of an earnest mind and of serious study--a
   phenomenon every day becoming rarer in this age of selfish and excited
   party spirit. I am gratified, though not surprised, to find, from the
   beautiful notice of my book by Dr. LÜCKE, that that old and worthy
   friend agrees with me in all essential points.

   To find ourselves at one in the recognition of certain truths with men
   whom we must admire and honour on many accounts, ever. though our
   convictions, on important subjects, may be opposed to each other,
   cannot be otherwise than gratifying. I have no sympathy with that
   narrowness of mind which refuses to do justice to the advocate, however
   able, of opinions which we ourselves must reject. That is an unworthy
   arrogance which, in its zealous defence of a holy cause (a cause which,
   above all others breathes humility, and teaches us more and more that
   all our knowledge is but fragmentary), deems itself authorized to look
   down haughtily upon its opponent, however superior in scientific
   ability; or even seeks to cover the weakness of its own arguments by
   what is intended, according to the sickly taste of the age, to pass for
   wit and humour.

   I cannot, therefore, but rejoice to find that my treatment of the
   subject, with that of others engaged in the same controversy, has
   induced Dr. Strauss to soften down his mythical theory of the life of
   Christ in various points, and to acknowledge the truth of several
   results arrived at by my historical inquiries. In his public
   acknowledgment of this I recognize a candour and love of truth which is
   far more honourable than mere intellectual greatness. At the same time,
   I am grateful to him for the kindness with which he has spoken of me
   personally. A certain degree of harmony, then, may be attained by the
   application of those fundamental principles of historical criticism
   which all sound thinkers must acknowledge to be correct. Yet it is only
   a certain degree; it is easy to be understood how the harmony thus
   reached is interrupted by the wider differences which lie at the
   foundation of the subject.

   The chief points of controversy turn upon essential differences of
   religious thought and feeling. These fundamental differences are
   clearly set forth by Dr. Strauss in the closing dissertation of his
   third edition, and in his essay on the Permanent and the Transitory
   (das Bleibende und Vergängliche) in Christianity. They are to be found
   chiefly in opposing views of the relation of God to the world, of the
   personality of spirit, of the relation between the here and the
   hereafter, and of the nature of sin. The controversy, to our mind, does
   not lie between an old and a new view of Christianity, but between
   Christianity and a human invention directly opposed to it. It is
   nothing less than a struggle between Christian Theism and a system of
   world- and self-deification. This system (by a relative historical
   necessity) had to unfold itself in theological and philosophical
   rationalism, in order to be overthrown by the power of Christian truth
   in the natural progress of life and thought. Symptoms of it can be
   detected in the sects of the Middle Ages, and in many of the
   manifestations that preceded the Reformation; and it would have broken
   forth at an earlier period, had not the Evangelical enthusiasm of the
   Reformation suppressed it for a time. We may apply here the words of
   MELANCTHON, uttered, with his deep historical insight, in a connexion
   akin to this: Dogmatum semina, quae longe graviora tumultus aliquando
   excitatura fuerant, nisi Lutherus exortus esset ac studia hominum alio
   traxisset (Corpus Reformator., tom. i., f. 1083). Far be it from me to
   judge the heart of any man; in this regard each must be his own
   accuser. A man that knows he serves a truth above the range of the
   human mind knows, at the same time, how far below it he himself stands,
   and how high, on the other hand, others, whose individual culture
   modified by the spirit of the age may have laid them open to error, may
   in heart be raised above their error. Whoever has entered into the
   struggles of his age will be willing, at the same time that he judges
   himself, to be mild in his judgments of others, who, although they may
   have been further carried away by those same struggles, have preserved
   a seemly and becoming moderation. It is the principle alone that is in
   question, and that cannot be judged too strictly.

   I conclude with the golden words of one of the greatest men of modern
   times in testimony of the truth, and in opposition, not only to the
   vain attempt to amalgamate Christianity with the principle of modern
   mis-culture, but also to the spirit which seeks to reduce all minds to
   one mode of doctrinal conception--to the stand-point which strives to
   make the piece-work of human knowledge absolute. "The man who does not
   hold Christ's earthly life, with all its miracles, to be as properly
   and really historical as any event in the sphere of history, and who
   does not receive all points of the Apostolic Creed with the fullest
   conviction, I do not conceive to be a Protestant Christian. And as for
   that Christianity which is such according to the fashion of the modern
   philosophers and Pantheists, without a personal God, without
   immortality, without an individuality of man, without historical
   faith--it may be a very ingenious and subtle philosophy, but it is no
   Christianity at all. Again and again have I said that I know not what
   to do with a metaphysical God; and that I will have no other but the
   God of the Bible, who is heart to heart. Whoever can reconcile the
   metaphysical God with the God of the Bible, may try it, and write
   symbolical books to suit all ages; but he who admits the absolute
   inexplicability of the main point, which can only be approached by
   asymptotes, will never grieve at the impossibility of possessing any
   system of religion." [21] May the man who, with rare world-historical
   insight, was able to explain the signs of the times, be heard of many!

   Berlin, May 6, 1839.
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   [17] The reviewer has been able to point out but one
   oversight--certainly no proof of careless haste in a work on such a
   subject. The mistake was one which might have happened to any one in an
   unlucky moment, which could not fail to be noticed by any one, and
   which, in fact, was noticed by myself as soon as I glanced again at the
   passage.

   [18] The Holy Spirit going out from faith in Christ, who was crucified
   for the sins of men, who truly rose from the dead and ascended to
   heaven; the Holy Spirit, which has proved itself the same since the
   first Christian Pentecost, at all times, among all people, learned or
   unlearned; not the changeful spirit of the times, which corresponds
   more nearly to what is called in the New Testament the spirit of the
   world, and whose manifestations stand opposed to those of the Holy
   Spirit.

   [19] It is a trick of Jesuitism (which is by no means confined to one
   form, but often assumes the shape of the fanaticism of reason or
   understanding) to protest (in form) against the tendencies of the
   journal called the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, while, in fact, the
   protest is not meant to bear against those tendencies--not against
   antiquated dogmas--but against the unchangeable fundamental truths of
   the Church of Christ; truths which can appear to be antiquated dogmas
   only to the shallow and superficial spirit of the times; a spirit as
   contracted as it is conceited. At the same time, it cannot be denied
   that the one-sidedness, the exaggerations and multiform sickliness of
   the tendencies referred to may have contributed to produce a reaction.
   We say this sine ira et studio, with a full sense of the sincere and
   earnest zeal, and the true Christian endeavours and results (if those
   tendencies which find an organ in the Kirchenzeitung.

   [20] Truth before all things. I would not seem to be what I am not.
   This book, which could only have arisen in this age of strife and
   discord, is itself a mirror of the progress of my mind.

   [21] Leben Niebuhr's, Thl. ii., 344. We cannot be too grateful to the
   publishers for putting forth this treasure of sound feeling and
   profound truth.
     __________________________________________________________________

PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION.

   I HAVE sought, in this fourth edition, to improve as far as I could,
   both the matter and form of the work; but do not deem it necessary to
   add any thing to what has been said in former prefaces upon my mode of
   treating the subject. I have thought it best, in spite of a desire to
   economize space, to republish those prefaces; adding here and there a
   remark called for by the relations of the times, which I should have
   otherwise put into a separate preface. Although I would willingly have
   buried in oblivion the unpleasant personal allusions (contained in the
   second preface) to a man whom I honour and esteem, I have considered it
   necessary to republish it, in view of the truths which it contains, and
   their bearing upon the times.

   And now let my book, with the blessing of God, enter anew among the
   strifes of the age; standing in the midst of which, I shall not suffer
   myself to be shaken or perplexed by the "ta en meso amphoterothen
   kteinetai."

   A. NEANDER

   Berlin, 3d August, 1845.
     __________________________________________________________________

CONTENTS

   INTRODUCTION.
   CHAPTER I.
   THE IDEA OF THE HISTORY OF CHRIST IN GENERAL.
   § 1. The Indifference of Criticism rejected. 1
   § 2. The Truth, that Christ is God-man, presupposed. 2
   § 3. This Presupposition and the historical Accounts mutually confirm
   and illustrate each other. 3
   CHAPTER II.
   SOURCES OF THE HISTORY OF CHRIST.
   § 4. Traditional Origin of the Synoptical Gospels. 6
   § 5. Genuineness of John's Gospel. 6
   § 6. Results of Criticism. 7
   BOOK I.
   BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS.
   CHAPTER I.
   INTRODUCTION.
   § 7. Scantiness of our Information in regard to this Period of Christ's
   Life; nothing further essential to the Interests of Religion. 11
   § 8. Fundamentally opposite Modes of apprehending the Accounts.
   CHAPTER II.
   THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION.
   § 9. The miraculous Conception demanded à priori, and confirmed à
   posteriori 13
   § 10. No trace of a Mythus in the Narrative. Such a Myth could not have
   originated among the Jewish People. 13
   § 11. Objections to the Credibility of the Narrative from the
   subsequent Dispositions of Christ's Relations answered, (1) from the
   Nature of the Case; (2) from the Name Jesus. 16
   § 12. Analogical Ideas among the Heathen. 17
   CHAPTER III.
   THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF CHRIST.
   § 13. The Birth of Christ in its Relations to the Jewish Theocracy. 18
   § 14. The miraculous Events that accompanied it. 19
   § 15. Tile Taxing; Jesus born at Bethlehem. 20
   § 16. The Announcement of the Shepherds. 21
   § 17. The Sacrifice of "Purification," and the "Ransom of the
   First-born." Their Weight as Proof against the Mythical Theory. 23
   § 18. Simeon's prophetic Discourse. 24
   § 19. The longing of the Heathen for a Saviour. The Star of the Wise
   Men. 25
   § 20. The Massacre of the Innocents, and the Flight into Egypt. 27
   § 21. The Return to Nazareth. 28
   § 22. Brothers and Sisters of Jesus; the mention of them in the Gospel
   Narrative a Proof of Credibility. 29
   § 23. Consciousness of Messiahship in the Mind of Jesus. Christ among
   the Doctors. 30
   BOOK II.
   THE MENTAL CULTURE OF JESUS: HIS LIFE TO THE TIME OF HIS PUBLIC
   MINISTRY.
   CHAPTER I.
   JESUS NOT EDUCATED IN THE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS OF THE JEWS.
   § 24. The Pharisees. 35
   § 25. The Sadducees. 35
   § 26. The Essenes. 37
   § 27. The Alexandrian Jews. 39
   § 28. Affinity of Christianity, as absolute Truth, for the various
   opposing Systems. 39
   § 29. Christ's Doctrine revealed from Within, not received from
   Without. 39
   § 30. The popular Sentiment in regard to his Connexion with the
   Schools. 40
   CHAPTER II.
   THE LIFE OF JESUS TO THE OPENING OF HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY.
   § 31. Consciousness of Messiahship in Christ.. l41
   BOOK III.
   PREPARATIVES TO THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF CHRIST
   PART I.
   OBJECTIVE PREPARATION: MINISTRY OF JOHN THE BAPTIST
   CHAPTER I.
   RELATION OF THE BAPTIST TO THE JEWS.
   § 32. How far the Baptist revived the Expectation of a Messiah. 45
   § 33. Causes of Obscurity in the Accounts left us of the Baptist.
   Sources, viz., the Evangelists, Josephus. 46
   § 34. The Baptist's mode of Life and Teaching in the Desert. 48
   § 35. John as Baptist and Preacher of Repentance. 49
   § 36. Relations of the Pharisees and Sadducees to the Baptist. 50
   § 37. Relations of the Baptist to the People, and to the narrower
   Circle of his own Disciples. 52
   § 38. John's Demands upon the People compared with those of Christ. His
   humble Opinion of his own Calling. 52
   CHAPTER II.
   THE RELATION OF THE BAPTIST TO THE MESSIAH.
   § 39. The Baptist's Explanation of his Relation to Messiah. The Baptism
   by Water and by Fire. 53
   § 40. The Baptist's Conception of Messiah's Kingdom. 54
   § 41. The Baptist's Recognition of Jesus as Messiah. 55
     (1) Import of his Baptism of Jesus. 57
     (2) The Continuance of his Ministry. 57
     (3) Possible Wavering in his Convictions. 58
     (4) His Message from Prison. 60
     (5) Conduct of his Disciples towards Jesus. 60
   § 42. The Phenomena at the Baptism, and their Import. 61
     (1) No ecstatic Vision. 61
     (2) The Ebionitish View, and its Opposite. 62
     (3) Developement of the Notion of Baptism in New Testament. 63
     (4) The Baptism of Christ not a Rite of Purification. 64
     (5) But of Consecration to his Theocratic Reign. 65
     (6) John's previous Acquaintance with Christ. 65
     (7) Explanation of John, i., 31. 66
     (8) The Vision and the Voice: intended exclusively for the Baptist.
   67
   PART II.
   SUBJECTIVE PREPARATION: THE TEMPTATION OF CHRIST.
   CHAPTER I.
   IMPORT OF THE INDIVIDUAL TEMPTATIONS.
   § 43. The Hunger. 70
   § 44. The Pinnacle of the Temple. 71
   § 45. The World-Dominion. 72
   CHAPTER II.
   IMPORT OF THE TEMPTATION AS A WHOLE.
   § 46. Fundamental Idea. 73
   § 47. The Temptation not an inward one, but the Work of Satan. 73
   BOOK IV.
   THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF CHRIST ACCORDING TO ITS REAL CONNEXION.
   PART I.
   THE PLAN OF CHRIST
   CHAPTER I.
   THE PLAN OF CHRIST IN GENERAL.
   § 48. Had Christ a conscious Plan? 79
   § 49. Connexion with the Old Testament Theocracy. 81
   § 50. Christ's steadfast Consciousness of Messiahship. 81
   § 51. His Plan underwent no Alterations. 82
   § 52. Two-fold Bearing of the Kingdom of God. (1) An inward, spiritual
   Power: (2) A world-renewing Power. 86
   CHAPTER II.
   THE PLAN OF CHRIST IN ITS RELATION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT IDEA OF THE
   KINGDOM OF God.
   § 53. Christ's Observance of the Jewish Worship and Law. 88
   § 54. His Manifestation greater than the Temple..... 89
   § 55. The Conversation with the Samaritan Woman. 90
   § 56. The "Destroying" and "Fulfilling" of the Law. 91
   § 57. The Interpolation in Luke, vi., 4. (Cod. Cant.). 92
   CHAPTER III.
   NEW FORM OF THE IDEA OF THE PERSON OF THE THEOCRATIC KING.
   § 58. The Names "Son of God" and "Son of Man" 94
   § 59. Import of the Title "Son of Man," as used by Christ himself.
   Rejection of Alexandrian and other Analogies. 95
   § 60. Import of the Title " Son of God" 96
     (1) John's Sense of the Title accordant with that of the other
   Evangelists. 96
     (2) And confirmed by Paul's. 97
   PART II.
   THE MEANS AND INSTRUMENTS OF CHRIST.
   CHAPTER I.
   THE MEANS OF CHRIST IN GENERAL.
   § 61. Christ a Spiritual Teacher. 9S
   § 62. Different Theatres of his Work as Teacher. 99
   § 63. Choice and Training of the Apostles to be subordinate Teachers.
   100
   CHAPTER II.
   CHRIST'S MODE OF TEACHING IN REGARD TO ITS METHOD AND FORM.
   A. ITS GENERAL PRINCIPLES.
   § 64. His Mode of Teaching adapted to the Stand-point of his Hearers.
   101
   § 65. His Truth presented in Germ to be developed: Seeds of Thought.
   102
   § 66. Its Results dependent upon the Susceptibility of the Hearers. 103
   § 67. This corresponds to the general Law of Developement of the
   Kingdom of God. 106
   B. CHRIST'S USE OF PARABLES.
   § 68. Idea of the Parable. Distinction between Parable, Fable, and
   Mythus. 107
   § 69. Order in which the Parables were delivered. Their Perfection.
   Mode of interpreting them. 108
   § 70. Christ's Teaching not confined to Parables, but conveyed also in
   longer Discourses. 109
   § 71. John's Gospel contains chiefly connected and profound Discourses,
   and why? 110
   § 72. The Parable of the Shepherd, in John, compared with the Parables
   in the other Gospels. 111
   C. CHRIST'S USE OF ACCOMMODATION.
   § 73. Necessity of Accommodation. 113
   § 74. Distinction between Material and Formal Accommodation. 114
   § 75. Christ's Application of Passages from Old Testament. 115
   CHAPTER III.
   CHOICE AND TRAINING OF THE APOSTLES AS TEACHERS.
   § 76. Christ's Relation to the Twelve. Significance of the Number. The
   Name Apostle. 116
   § 77. Choice of the Apostles. Of Judas Iscariot. 117
   § 78. The Apostles uneducated Men. 119
   § 79. Two Stages in their Dependence upon Christ. 120
   § 80. Christ's peculiar Method of Training the Apostles. 121
   CHAPTER IV.
   THE CHURCH AND BAPTISM.
   § 81. Founding of the Church. Its Objects. 122
   § 82. Name of the Church. Its Form traced back to Christ. 123
   § 83. Later Institution of Baptism as an initiatory Rite. 126
   CHAPTER V.
   THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST: THEIR CHARACTER AND OBJECTS.
   A. THE OBJECTIVE CHARACTER OF MIRACLES.
   § 84. Connexion of Christ's Miracles with his Mode of Teaching. 127
   § 85. Negative Element. 127
   § 86. Positive Element. Teleological Object. 129
   § 87. Relation of Miracles to the Course of Nature. 130
   § 88. Relation of the individual Miracles to the highest Miracle, viz.,
   the Manifestation of Christ. 131
   § 89. Relation of Miracles to History. 132
   B. THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST AS VIEWED BY HIS CONTEMPORARIES.
   § 90. Miracles deemed an essential Sign of Messiahship. 132
   C. CHRIST'S OWN ESTIMATE OF HIS MIRACLES.
   § 91. Apparent Discrepancies: Mode of removing them. 134
     (1) Two-fold Object of the Miracles. 134
     (2) A Susceptibility for Impression presupposed. 135
   § 92. His Explanation of the "Sign of the Prophet Jonah" 136
   § 93. His Declaration, "Destroy this Temple," &c. 137
   § 94. His Distinction between the Material and Formal in the Miracles.
   137
   § 95. His Appeals to Miracles as Testimony. Three different Stages of
   Faith. 138
   § 96. The Communication of the Divine Life the highest Miracle. 140
   CHAPTER VI.
   THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST CONSIDERED IN REGARD TO SUPERNATURAL AGENCY.
   § 97. Transition from the Natural to the Supernatural in the Miracles.
   140
   A. MIRACLES WROUGHT UPON HUMAN NATURE.
   I. The Healing of Diseases.
   § 98. Use of Spiritual Agencies. Faith demanded for the Cure. 141
   § 99. Use of Physical Agencies. 142
   § 100. Relation between Sin and Physical Evil. Jewish Idea of Punitive
   Justice. Christ's Doctrine on the Subject. 143
   II. Demoniacal Possession.
   § 101. Two extreme Theories Analogous Phenomena. 145
   § 102. Connexion of the Phenomena with the State of the Times. 146
   § 103. Accommodation of the two extreme Theories. 147
   § 104. Christ's Explanations of Demonism purely Spiritual. His
   Accommodation to the Conceptions of the Demoniacs. 149
   § 105. Differences between Christ's Cures of Demoniacs and the
   Operations of the Jewish Exorcists. 150
   III. The Raising of the Dead.
   § 106. Different Views on these Miracles. 151
   B. MIRACLES WROUGHT UPON MATERIAL NATURE.
   § 107. Most obvious Manifestations of Supernatural Power. 152
   BOOK V.
   THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF CHRIST ACCORDING TO ITS CHRONOLOGICAL CONNEXION.
   INTRODUCTION.
   ON THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SYNOPTICAL GOSPELS AND JOHN.
   § 108. Differences in Chronology. 155
   § 109. Differences as to the Theatre of Christ's Labours. 155
   § 110. Proof that Christ frequently exercised his Ministry in Judea and
   Jerusalem. 156
   PART I.
   FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF CHRIST'S PUBLIC MINISTRY TO THE TRIUMPHAL
   ENTRY.
   CHAPTER I.
   JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. THE FIRST DISCIPLES.
   § 111. Message of the Sanhedrim to John at Bethabara. 159
   § 112. John points to Jesus as the Suffering Messiah, and testifies to
   his Higher Dignity. 160
   § 113. John and Andrew, Disciples of the Baptist, attach themselves to
   Jesus. Gradual Attraction of others. 162
   CHAPTER II.
   FIRST PUBLIC TEACHING OF CHRIST. CAPERNAUM.
   § 114. Miraculous Draught of Fishes. Effect on Peter, Andrew, James,
   and John. 162
   § 115. The Calling of Nathanael. 164
   CHAPTER III.
   CHRIST AT CANA.
   § 116. The Water changed into Wine. Character and Import of the
   Miracle. 166
   CHAPTER IV.
   FIRST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM TO ATTEND THE FEAST OF PASSOVER.
   § 117. The Cleansing of the Temple. 168
   § 118. The Saying of Christ, "Destroy this Temple," &c. 170
   § 119. Christ and Nicodemus. 173
     (1) Dispositions of the Pharisees and People: of Nicodemus. 173
     (2) The New Birth. 174
     (3) The Birth of "Water and the Spirit" 175
     (4) Christ intimates his own Sufferings. 177
   CHAPTER V.
   JESUS AT ÆNON, NEAR SALIM.
   § 120. Jealousy of John's Disciples. Final Testimony of the Baptist.
   His Imprisonment. 178
   CHAPTER VI.
   RETURN THROUGH SAMARIA TO GALILEE: THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
   § 121. First Impressions of the Samaritan Woman. 180
   § 122. Christ's Decision between the Worship of the Jews and that of
   the Samaritans. 181
   § 123. The Worship of God in "Spirit and in Truth" 182
   § 124. Bearing of the Spiritual Worship upon Practical Life. 183
   § 125. Christ Glances at the future Progress of his Kingdom, and at his
   own Death. 184
   § 126. Subsequent State of the Samaritans. 185
   CHAPTER VII.
   CHRIST'S FIRST GENERAL MINISTRY IN GALILEE.
   § 127. Christ heals the Nobleman's Son. Chooses Capernaum as his Abode.
   185
   § 128. Christ appears in the Synagogue at Nazareth. His Life is
   Endangered 186
   § 129. Parable of the Sower. Christ's Explanation of it. 188
   § 130. Parable of the Draw-net: of the Wheat and Tares. 190
   § 131. Christ subdues the Storm. Character of the Miracle. Its moral
   Import. 191
   § 132. The Gadarene Demoniac. 192
   § 133. Return to the west Side of the Sea. Healing of the Issue of
   Blood. 195
   § 134. Raising of Jairus's Daughter, and of the Widow's Son at Nain.
   196
   § 135. Doubts of John Baptist in Prison. His Message. Christ's
   Testimony concerning Him. Relation of Old and New Dispensations. 198
   § 136. Relation of the People to the Baptist and to Christ. The Easy
   Yoke and the Light Burden. Jewish Legalism contrasted with Christian
   Liberty. 201
   § 137. Christ's Conversation with the Pharisees in regard to his
   Disciples' Mode of Life. The Morals of Fasting. 203
   § 138. Parable of the New Patch on the Old Garment: of the New Wine in
   Old Bottles. 205
   § 139. Forms of Prayer. The Lord's Prayer. 208
   § 140. Christ and the Magdalen at Simon's House. Reciprocal Action of
   Love and Faith in the Forgiveness of Sins. 211
   § 141. Call of Matthew the Publican. The Feast. 213
   § 142. Christ's different Modes of Reply to those who questioned his
   Conduct in consorting with Sinners. Parable of the Prodigal Son: of the
   Pharisee and Publican. 214
   CHAPTER VIII.
   CHRIST'S SECOND JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM.
   § 143. The Miracle of the Pool of Bethesda. The Words of Christ in the
   Temple to the Man healed. 217
   § 144. Christ accused of Sabbath-breaking and Blasphemy. His Discourse
   in Vindication. 218
   § 145. The Discourse continued: Christ intimates his greater Works. His
   Judgment, and the Resurrection. 219
   § 146. The Discourse continued: Christ Appeals to the Testimony of his
   Works. 220
   § 147. The Discourse continued: Incapacity of the Jews to Understand
   the Testimony of God in the Scriptures. 221
   CHAPTER IX.
   CHRIST'S SECOND COURSE OF EXTENDED LABOUR IN GALILEE.
   The Sermon on the Mount.
   Introduction.
   § 148. (1) Place and Circumstances. 223
     (2) Subject-matter of the Sermon; viz., the Kingdom of God as the Aim
   of the Old Dispensation. 223
     (3) Two Editions of the Sermon: Matthew's and Luke's. 224
     (4) Its Pervading Rebuke of Carnal Conceptions of the Messiahship.
   224
   I. The Beatitudes.
   § 149. Moral Requisites for Entering the Kingdom of God. 224
     (1) Poverty of Spirit. 224
     (2) Meekness. 225
     (3) Hungering and Thirsting after Righteousness. 226
   § 150. Moral Result of Entering the Kingdom. "The Pure in Heart see
   God" 226
   § 151. Moral Relations of the Members of the Kingdom to their
   Fellow-men; viz., they are "Peace-makers," and "Persecuted" 227
   II. Influence of the Members of the Kingdom of God in Renewing the
   World.
   § 152. The Disciples of Christ the "Light" and "Salt" of the Earth. 228
   III. The Law of Christian Life the Fufilment of the Old Law.
   § 153. Fulfilling the Law and the Prophets. 229
   § 154. Fulfilling the Law in the Higher Sense. General Contrast between
   the Juridical and Moral Stand-points. 231
   § 155. Fulfilling the Law in the Higher Sense. Special Examples, viz.,
   (1.) Murder; (2.) Adultery; (3.) Divorce; (4.) Perjury; (5.) Revenge;
   (6.) National Exclusiveness. 232
   IV. True Religion contrasted with the Mock Piety of the Pharisees.
   § 156. (1.) Alms, Prayer, and Fasting; (2.) Rigid Judgment of Self,
   Mild Judgment of others; (3.) Test of Sincerity. 235
   V. Warning to the Children of the Kingdom.
   § 157. Exhortation to Self-denial. Warning against Seducers. 236
   VI. True and False Disciples Contrasted.
   § 158. Test of Discipleship. 237
   § 159. Healing of the Leper on the Way to Capernaum. 237
   § 160. Healing of the Centurion's Slave at Capernaum. 238
   § 161. Healing of the Deaf and Dumb Demoniac. Charge of a League with
   Beelzebub refuted. 239
   § 162. Conjurations of the Jewish Exorcists. 241
   § 163. Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, and against the Son of Man.
   243
   § 164. Purpose of Christ's Relatives to confine him as a Lunatic. 244
   § 165. Demand for a Sign answered by "the Sign of the Prophet Jonah"
   245
   § 166. Discourse at a Feast against the Pharisees and Lawyers. 246
   § 167. The Disciples Warned against the Pharisees. Power of Truth. 248
   § 168. Christ Heals a Paralytic at Capernaum. Charge of Blasphemy
   Repelled. 250
   § 169. Withered Hand healed on the Sabbath. Objections anticipated. 252
   § 170. Infirm Woman healed on the Sabbath. Pharisees disconcerted. 253
   § 171. Precedence at Feasts. Parable of the Great Supper. 254
   § 172. The Pharisees attack the Disciples for plucking Corn on the
   Sabbath. Christ defends them. 255
   § 173. Discourse against the merely outward Cleanliness of the
   Pharisees. 256
   § 174. Trial Mission of the Apostles in Galilee. 257
     (1) Objects of the Mission. Powers of the Missionaries. 257
     (2) Instructions to the Missionaries. Reasons for the Exclusion of
   Samaritans and Heathen. 258
     (3) Instructions continued: the Apostles to rely on Providence. 260
   § 175. Various Opinions entertained of Jesus. 260
   § 176. Return of the Apostles. Feeding of the Five Thousand. 261
   § 177. Christ Walks upon the Waters. 264
   § 178. Christ in the Synagogue at Capernaum. 265
     (1) Carnal Mind of the Multitude rebuked. 265
     (2) Christ is the "Bread of Life" 266
     (3) Eating, Christ's Flesh and Drinking his Blood. 267
     (4) Sifting of the Apostles. Confession of Peter. 269
   CHAPTER X.
   JESUS IN NORTH GALILEE, AND ON THE WAY TO CESAREA PHILIPPI.
   § 179. Reasons of the Journey. 270
   § 180. Blind Man cured at Bethsaida. Peter's Second Confession. Power
   of the Keys. 270
   § 181. The Disciples forbidden to reveal Christ's Messianic Dignity.
   Peter's Weakness rebuked. 272
   § 182. Monitions to the Apostles. 273
     (1) Wisdom of Serpents and Harmlessness of Doves. 273
     (2) Parable of the Unjust Steward. 274
     (3) "Friends of the Mammon of Unrighteousness" 275
   § 183. Caution against imprudent Zeal. 277
   § 184. The Syro-Phoenician Woman. (1.) Her Prayer; (2.) Her Repulse;
   (3.) Her persevering Faith; (4.) The Result. 279
   § 185. The Transfiguration. 281
   § 186. Elias a Forerunner of Messiah. 283
   § 187. Cure of a Demoniac, after vain Attempts of the Disciples. 283
   § 188. The Disciples' Failure explained. The Power of Faith. Prayer and
   Fasting. 285
   § 189. Return to Capernaum. Dispute for Precedence. The Child a
   Pattern. Acting in the Name of Christ. 286
   § 190. Christ's two Sayings, "He that is not against you is for you;"
   and, "He that is not for me is against me" 288
   § 191. The Stater in the Fish 290
   CHAPTER XI.
   CHRIST'S JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM TO ATTEND THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES.
   § 192. His Precautions against the Sanhedrim. 291
   § 193. Christ Explains the Nature of his Teaching as Divine Revelation.
   292
   § 194. The Pharisees attempt to arrest Him. 293
   § 195. Christ a "Spring of Living Water," and the "Light of the World."
   Validity of his Testimony of Himself. 294
   § 196. Connexion between Steadfastness, Truth, and Freedom. 296
   § 197. Vain Attempts of the Sanhedrim. First Decision against Christ.
   297
   § 198. Man born Blind healed on the Sabbath. Individual Sufferings not
   to be judged a Punishment for Sin. 298
   § 199. Attempts of the Sanhedrim to corrupt the restored Man. "The
   Sight of the Blind, and the Blindness of the Seeing." 300
   § 200. Parable of the Good Shepherd. The Parable extended. 301
   § 201. Divisions among the People. Christ returns to Galilee. 302
   CHAPTER XII.
   RETURN FROM CAPERNAUM TO JERUSALEM THROUGH SAMARIA.
   § 202. Reasons for the Journey through Samaria. 303
   § 203. Mission of the Seventy. Significance of the Number. 304
   § 204. Instructions to the Seventy. The Wo to the Unbelieving Cities.
   305
   § 205. Exultation of the Disciples. Christ warns them against Vanity.
   306
   § 206. The Kingdom revealed to Babes. Blessedness of the Disciples in
   beholding it. 307
   § 207. Requisites of Discipleship. Self-Denial, Submission, taking up
   the Cross. 309
   § 208. Self-Denial further illustrated: Parables of the building of the
   Tower, of the Warring King, of the Sacrificial Salt, of the Treasure
   hid in a Field, of the Pearl of Great Price. 311
   § 209. Christ refuses to interfere in Civil Disputes. His Decision in
   the Case of the Adulteress. 312
   § 210. Christ Intimates the Future. 314
   § 211. Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven. 314
   § 212. The Fire to be Kindled. The Baptism of Sufferings. Christianity
   not Peace, but a Sword. 315
   § 213. The Kingdom of God cometh not with Observation. 317
   § 214. Christ's personal Return and the Day of Judgment. 317
   § 215. Exhortation to Watch for Christ's Coming. The importunate Widow
   318
   § 216. Call to entire Devotion. The Straight Gate. 319
   § 217. The Signs of the Times. 320
   § 218. The contracted Jewish Theocracy Rejected. 321
   § 219. Parable of Dives and Lazarus. 321
   § 220. Persecutions of Herod Antipas. 323
   § 221. Christ Speaks of his Death. 323
   § 222. Healing of the Ten Lepers. Ingratitude of the Nine. Gratitude of
   tie one Samaritan. 324
   CHAPTER XIII.
   CHRIST'S STAY AT JERUSALEM DURING THE FEAST OF DEDICATION.
   § 223. His Statement of the Proofs of his Messiahship. His Oneness with
   the Father. He defends his Words from the Old Testament. 326
   CHAPTER XIV.
   CHRIST IN PERÆA (BETHABARA).
   § 224. His Decision on the Question of Divorce. Celibacy. 328
   § 225. The Blessing of Little Children. 331
   § 226. Conversation with the rich Ruler of the Synagogue. 332
   § 227. The Dangers of Wealth. 334
   § 228. The Reign of Believers with Christ. 335
   CHAPTER XV.
   CHRIST IN BETHANY.
   § 229. Family of Lazarus. Martha and Mary. Their different Tendencies.
   336
   § 230. Sickness of Lazarus. Christ's Reply, to the Messengers. 337
   § 231. Death of Lazarus. Christ's Conversation with the Disciples in
   regard to it. 338
   § 232. Death of Lazarus. Christ's Conversation with Martha; with Mary.
   340
   § 233. Resurrection of Lazarus. Christ's Prayer. 342
   § 234. Measures of the Sanhedrim. 343
   CHAPTER XVI.
   CHRIST IN EPHRAIM.
   § 235. The Necessity for his Death. 344
   CHAPTER XVII.
   CHRIST'S LAST PASSOVER JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM.
   § 236. Journey to Jericho. Blind Bartimeus. 345
   § 237. Christ Lodges with Zaccheus. 346
   § 238. The Request of Salome. Ambition of the Disciples rebuked. 347
   § 239. Parable of the Pounds. 348
   § 240. Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard. 349
   § 241. Passion for Rewards rebuked. 350
   § 242. Christ Anointed by Mary in Bethany. 351
   PART II.
   FROM THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY TO THE ASCENSION.
   CHAPTER I.
   FROM THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY TO THE LAST SUPPER
   § 243. The Entry into Jerusalem. 354
   § 244. Sadness of Christ at Sight of the City. 356
   § 245. The Fig-tree Cursed. Parable of the Fig-tree. 357
   § 246. Machinations of the Pharisees. 359
   § 247. Union of the Pharisees and Herodians. Tribute to Caesar. 360
   § 248. Christ's Reply to the Pharisees about the Resurrection. 361
   § 249. His Exposition of the First and Great Commandment. 362
   § 250. Parable of the Good Samaritan. 363
   § 251. Christ's Interpretation of Psalm cx., 1. 364
   § 252. The Widow's Mite. 366
   § 253. Christ predicts the Divine Judgments upon Jerusalem. 366
   § 254. He predicts the Coming of the Kingdom, and the Second Advent.
   367
   § 255. Parable of the Marriage Feast of the King's Son. 369
   § 256. Parable of the wicked Vine-dressers. 371
   § 257. Parable of the Talents compared with that of the Pounds. 372
   § 258. Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. 373
   § 259. Christ teaches that Faith must prove itself by Works. 373
   § 260. The Heathens with Christ. 375
   § 261. Christ's Struggles of Soul. The Voice from Heaven. 376
   § 262. Christ closes his Public Ministry. 378
   § 263. Machinations of his Enemies. 378
   § 264. Motives of Judas in Betraying Christ. 379
     (1) Avarice? 380
     (2) False Views of Christ's Messiahship? 381
     (3) Gradually developed Hostility? 383
   CHAPTER II.
   THE LAST SUPPER.
   § 265. Object of Christ in the Last Supper. 384
   § 266. Christ's washing of the Disciples' Feet. 386
   § 267. His Words with, and concerning, his Betrayer. 387
   § 268. Institution of the Eucharist. 388
   CHAPTER III.
   CHRIST'S LAST DISCOURSES AT TABLE WITH THE DISCIPLES.
   § 269. The New Commandment. 391
   § 270. The Request of Peter: Christ predicts his Denial. 392
   § 271. He predicts Danger to his Disciples. 392
   § 272. He consoles the Disciples. 394
   § 273. Conversation with Philip and Thomas. 395
   § 274. Of Prayer in the Name of Christ. He promises the Comforter. 397
   § 275. Christ's Salutation of "Peace." Its Import. 398
   CHAPTER IV.
   DISCOURSES OF CHRIST AFTER RISING FROM TABLE.
   § 276. Similitude of the Vine and Branches. The Law of Love. 399
   § 277. Final Promise of the Holy Ghost. 400
   § 278. Christ's Prayer as High-priest. 402
   CHAPTER V.
   GETHSEMANE.
   § 279. Comparison of John's Gospel with the Synoptical Gospels. 404
   § 280. The Agony in the Garden. 407
   § 281. The Arrest. Peter's Haste rebuked. 408
   CHAPTER VI.
   THE TRIAL AND CONDEMNATION.
   § 282. Night. Examination before Annas 410
   § 283. Morning. Examination before Caiaphas. 411
   § 284. Double-dealing of the Sanhedrim. 412
   § 285. Christ before Pilate. His Kingdom not of this World. 413
   § 286. Christ sent to Herod. 415
   § 287. Pilate's Fruitless Efforts to save Christ. Dream of Pilate's
   Wife. 415
   § 288. Last Conversation with Pilate. The Sentence. 416
   § 289. Christ led to Calvary. Simon of Cyrene. 417
   CHAPTER VII.
   THE CRUCIFIXION.
   § 290. Details of the Crucifixion. 418
   § 291. Christ prays for his Enemies. The two Thieves. 419
   § 292. Christ's Exclamation, Psalm xxii. His last Words. 420
   § 293. Phenomena accompanying the Death of Christ. 421
   CHAPTER VIII.
   THE RESURRECTION.
   § 294. Did Christ predict his Resurrection? 422
   § 295. Sudden Transition of the Apostles from Dejection to Joy.
   Argument from this. 423
   § 296. Was the Reappearance of Christ a Vision? 424
   § 297. Was Christ's a real Death? 425
   § 298. The Resurrection intended only for Believers. 428
   § 299. The Women, Peter, and John at the Grave. 428
   § 300. Christ appears to the Women to Mary; to the two Disciples on the
   Way to Emmaus. 429
   § 301. Christ appears to Peter; to all the Apostles except Thomas. 431
   § 302. Christ appears to five hundred Believers; to James; to all the
   Apostles. Conversation with Thomas. 432
   § 303. Christ appears in Galilee to the Seven on Genesareth. 434
   § 304. Christ appears in Galilee for the last Time. 435
   § 305. Christ appears for the last Time near Jerusalem. 435
   CHAPTER IX.
   THE ASCENSION.
   § 306. Connexion of the Ascension with the Resurrection. 436
   § 307. The Ascension necessary for the Conviction of the Apostles. 437
   § 308. Connexion of all the supernatural Facts in Christ's
   Manifestation. 438
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

                                 INTRODUCTION.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER I.

  THE IDEA OF THE HISTORY OF CHRIST IN GENERAL.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 1. The Indifference of Criticism rejected.

   IT has been often said that, in order to true inquiry, we must take
   nothing for granted. [22] Of late this statement has been reiterated
   anew, with special reference to the exposition of the Life of Christ.
   At the outset of our work we refuse to meet such a demand. To comply
   with it is impracticable; the very attempt contradicts the sacred laws
   of our being. We cannot entirely free ourselves from presuppositions,
   which are born with our nature, and which attach to the fixed course of
   progress in which we ourselves are involved. They control our
   consciousness, whether we will or no; and the supposed freedom from
   them is, in fact, nothing else but the exchange of one set for another.
   Some of these prepossessions, springing from a higher necessity,
   founded in the normal order of the universe, and derived from the
   eternal laws [23] of the Creator, constitute the very ground and
   support of our nature. From such we must not free ourselves.

   But we are ever in peril of exchanging these legitimate sovereigns of
   our spiritual being, against which nothing but arbitrary will can
   rebel, for the prepossessions of a self-created or traditional
   prejudice, which have no other than an arbitrary origin, and which rule
   by no better title than usurpation. But for this peril, the way of the
   science of life would be as safe as the way of life itself. Life moves
   on in the midst of such diversified and ever-commingling
   prepossessions, especially in our own time, which, torn by
   contrarieties (contrarieties, however, which subserve a higher wisdom
   by balancing each other), forms the period of transition to a new and
   better creation. On the one hand we behold efforts to bring the human
   mind again into bondage to the host of arbitrary prejudices which had
   long enough enslaved it; and on the other, we see a justifiable protest
   against these prejudices running into the extreme of rejecting even
   those holy prepossessions which ought to rule our spiritual being, and
   which alone can offer it true freedom.

   What, then, is the duty of Science? Must she dismiss all
   prepossessions, and work out her task by unassisted thought? Far from
   it. From nothing nothing comes; the Father of spirits alone is a
   Creator. Empty indeed is that enthusiasm which seeks only the mere
   sound of truth--abstract, formal truth. [24] This absolute abnegation
   of all prepossessions would free the soul from those holy ties by which
   alone it can connect itself with its source--the source of all
   truth--and comprehend it by means of its revelations in humanity. The
   created spirit cannot deny its dependence upon God, the only creative
   Spirit; and it is its obvious destination to apprehend the revelation
   of God in creation, in nature, and in history. So, the work of science
   can only be to distinguish the prepossessions which an inward necessity
   constrains us to recognize, from such as are purely voluntary. Indeed,
   the healthfulness of our spiritual life depends upon our ridding
   ourselves of the latter, and, at the same time, yielding in lowliness
   and singleness of heart to the former, as the law of the Creator, as
   the means by which light from heaven may be conveyed to our minds. All
   that the intellect has to do in regard to these last is to demonstrate
   their necessity, and to show that our being contradicts itself in
   rebelling against them.
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   [22] [Voraussetzungslosigkeit: "freedom from presuppositions."]

   [23] Of which, says Sophocles, beautifully,

   hon olumpos
   pater monos, oude nin thnata
   phuois aneron etikten, oude`
   ma'n pote la'tha katakoima'sei
   me'gas en tou'tois theo`s
   ou`de` gera'skei.

   [24] It is one of Pascal's best thoughts, that "On se fait une idóle de
   la vérité même; car la vérité hors de la charité n'est pas Dieu; c'est
   son image, et une idóle, qu'il ne faut point aimer, ni adorer, et
   encore moins faut-il aimer ou adorer son contraire, qui est le men
   songe."
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 2. The Truth, that Christ is God-MAN, presupposed.

   What, then, is the special presupposition with which we must approach
   the contemplation of the Life of Christ? It is one on which hangs the
   very being of the Christian as such; the existence of the Christian
   Church, and the nature of Christian consciousness. [25] It is one at
   whose touch of power the dry bones of the old world sprung up in all
   the vigour of a new creation. It gave birth to all that culture (the
   modern as distinguished from the ancient) from which the Germanic
   nations received their peculiar intellectual life, and from which the
   emancipation of the mind, grown too strong for its bonds, was developed
   in the Reformation. It is the very root and ground of our modern
   civilization; and the latter, even in its attempts to separate from
   this root, must rest upon it: indeed, should such attempts succeed, it
   must dissolve into its original elements, and assume an entirely new
   form. It is, in a word, the belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God
   in a sense which cannot be predicated of any human being,--the perfect
   image of the personal God in the form of that humanity that was
   estranged from him; that in him the source of the Divine life itself in
   humanity appeared; that by him the idea of humanity was realized
     __________________________________________________________________

   [25] It was one of the epoch-making indications of SCHLEIERMACHER'S
   influence upon theology that he succeeded in stamping this phrase
   (Christian consciousness) as current, with the meaning that he assigned
   to it, in an age which (although some men, blind to the lessons of
   history, look back upon it longingly as the golden age of our nation)
   was guided only by the naked understanding, and destitute at once of
   faith and of true historical insight. He used it to denote Christianity
   as an undeniable. self-revealing power, entering into the life of
   humanity; an immediate, internal power in the spiritual world, from
   which went forth, and is ever going forth, the regeneration of the life
   of man, and which produces phenomena which can be explained in no other
   way. This phrase, and the thought which it expresses, are able to
   maintain their ground against that formalism of thought which is so
   hostile to every thing immediate, and wishes to substitute empty
   abstractions for the living powers that move the human race, as well as
   against that low and mean view of the world (impertinently obtrusive as
   it has been of late) which owns no power above those which build
   rail-ways and set steam-engines agoing. As the intuitive consciousness
   of God indicates to the human mind the existence, the omnipresent power
   and the self-revelation of a personal Deity, so does this "Christian
   consciousness" testify that Christ lived, and that he continues, by his
   Spirit, to operate upon mankind. The works of creation only reveal God
   to him who already has a consciousness of the Divine existence; for he
   who has not God within can find him nowhere. So it is only he who has a
   "Christian consciousness" that can recognize CHRIST in the fragments of
   tradition and the manifestations of history, or that can comprehend the
   history of CHRIST and his Church.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 3. This presupposed Truth and the Historical Accounts mutually
   confirm and illustrate each other.

   But as man's higher nature can only reach its true destiny in Christian
   consciousness, from which the great First Truth just mentioned is
   inseparable, it is necessary that this first truth should be shown to
   be essential also to the general consciousness of man. That it is so
   can be proved from its harmony with the universal and essential
   prepossessions of human nature; but the exhibition of this proof
   belongs more properly to the department of Apologetics. It is shown to
   be a necessary and not a voluntary prepossession; first, because it
   satisfies a fundamental want of human nature, a want created by
   history, and foreshadowing its own fulfilment; and, secondly, because
   this view of Christ's person arose from the direct impression which his
   appearance among men made upon the eye-witnesses, and, through them,
   upon the whole human race. This image of Christ, which has always
   propagated itself in the consciousness of the Christian Church,
   originated in, and ever points back to, the revelation of Christ
   himself, without which, indeed, it could never have arisen. As man's
   limited intellect could never, without the aid of revelation, have
   originated the idea of God, so the image of CHRIST, of which we have
   spoken, could never have sprung from the consciousness of sinful
   humanity, but must be regarded as the reflection of the actual life of
   such a CHRIST. It is Christ's self-revelation, made, through all
   generations, in the fragments of his history that remain, and in the
   workings of his Spirit which inspires these fragments, and enables us
   to recognize in them one complete whole. [26] It is a stream of the
   Divine Life which has spread abroad through all ages since the
   establishment of the Christian Church. And the peculiar mark of this
   Divine Life is precisely this, that it is grounded in a consciousness
   of absolute dependence upon Christ; that it is nothing else but a
   constant renewing after the image of Christ. But as we often find this
   stream darkened and troubled, we are necessarily led back to HIM, the
   well-spring from whom the full-flowing fountain of Divine Life gushes
   forth in all its purity; the Son of God, and the Redeemer of men. He
   who could with Divine confidence present himself as such to mankind,
   and call all men to come unto him to satisfy the cravings of their
   higher nature, must have had within himself the authority of an
   infallible consciousness.

   Now if we can show that the Life of Christ, without the aid of the
   First Truth which forms the ground of our conception of it, must be
   unintelligible, while, on the contrary, with its assistance, we can
   frame the Life into a harmonious whole, then its claims will be
   established even in the exposition of the Life itself. [27] Nay, the
   idea of Christ which has come down to us through Christian
   consciousness (the chief element of which is the impression which He
   himself left upon the souls of the Apostles) will, by comparison with
   the living manifestation (i. e., of Christ in his life), be more and
   more distinctly defined and developed in its separate features, and
   more and more freed from foreign elements.

   So it is in considering the life of any man who has materially and
   beneficially affected the progress of the race, especially if the
   results of his labours have touched upon our own interests. We form in
   advance some idea of such a man, and are not disposed, from any
   doubtful acts of his that may be laid before us, to change our
   preconceived notion for an opposite one.

   But while this preconceived idea may be our guide in studying the life
   of such a man, the study itself will contribute to enlarge and rectify
   the individual lineaments of the picture. But we must not lose sight of
   one important difference. In all other men there is a contrast between
   the ideal and the phenomenal. While in many of their traits we may
   discern the Divine principle which forms their individuality, the
   archetype of their manifestation in time, in others we see opposing
   elements, which go to make a mere caricature of that principle. We can
   obtain no clear view of the aim of the life of such men, unless we can
   seize upon the higher element which forms the individual character;
   just as an artist might depict accurately a man's organic features,
   and, for want of the peculiar intellectual expression, fail completely
   in giving the entire living physiognomy. But without a conception of
   the living whole we could not detect the separate features which mar
   the harmony of the picture. On the other side, again, if we contemplate
   the whole apart from the individual features, we shall only form an
   arbitrary ideal, not at all corresponding to the reality.

   In CHRIST, however, the ideal and the phenomenal never contradict each
   other. All depends upon our viewing rightly together the separate
   features in their connexion with the higher unity of the whole. We
   presuppose this view of the whole, in order to a just conception of the
   parts, and to avoid regarding any necessary feature in the light of a
   caricature. This can the more easily be done, as the phenomena which we
   are here to contemplate stand alone, and can be compared with no other.
   And as, even in studying the life of an eminent man, we must commune
   with his spirit in order to obtain a complete view of his being, so we
   must yield ourselves up to the Spirit of Christ whom we acknowledge and
   adore as exalted above us, that He him self may show us his Divine
   image in the mirror of his Life, and teach us how to distinguish all
   prejudices of our own creating from the necessary laws of our being.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [26] Strauss, in his "Leben Jesu" (part ii., p. 719), has drawn a just
   distinction between the abstract idea of human perfection which is
   involved in our consciousness of sinfulness, and seems inseparable from
   our natural tendency to the idea of God, and the "actual (concrete)
   working out of the picture, with the traits of individual reality." In
   relation to this last he says, "Such a faultless picture could not be
   exhibited by a sinful man in a sinful age; but," adds he, "such an age,
   itself not free from these defects, would not be conscious of them; and
   if the picture is only sketched, and stands in need of much
   illustration, it may, even in a later and more clear-sighted age,
   willing to afford favorable illustrations, be regarded as faultless."
   In opposition to this, we have to say that the picture of the Life of
   Christ which has been handed down to us does not exhibit the spirit of
   that age, but a far higher Spirit, which, manifesting itself in the
   lineaments of the picture, exerted a regenerating influence not only in
   that age, but on all succeeding generations. The image of human
   perfection, concretely presented in the Life of Christ, stands in
   manifold contradiction to the tendencies of humanity in that period; no
   one of them, no combination of them, dead, as they were, could account
   for it. Whence, then, in that impure age, came such a picture (a
   picture which the age itself could not completely understand, of which
   the age could only now and then seize a congenial trait to make a
   caricature of), the contemplating of which raised the human race of
   that and following ages to a new developement of spiritual life? The
   study of this picture has given a new view of the destiny of humanity;
   a new conception of what the ideal of human virtue should be, and a new
   theory of morals: all which vanish, however, when we withdraw our gaze
   from its lineaments. The spirit of ethics, which had taken to itself
   only certain features of the picture broken from their connexion with
   the whole, and was corrupted by foreign elements that had bound
   themselves up with the Christian consciousness, was purified again in
   contemplating the unmutilated historical Prototype in the days of the
   Reformation. And whenever the spirit of the age cuts itself loose,
   either in the popular turn of thought or in the schools of philosophy,
   from this historical relation, it estranges itself also from the ethics
   of Christianity, and sets up a new and different ideal of perfection
   from that which the revelation of Christ has grounded in the
   consciousness of man. So much for what Strauss, l. c., and Baur
   (Gnosis, p. 655), have said against Schleiermacher.

   [27] Ta`s upothe'seis poiou'menos ouk archa`s, alla to onti upotheseis,
   hoion epitha'seis te kai horma's, as Plato says, in a different
   connexion, at the end of the sixth book of the Republic.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER II.

  SOURCES FOR THE HISTORY OF CHRIST.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 4. Traditional Origin of the Synoptical Gospels.

   IN using the authorities, I shall follow the general rules of
   historical criticism, and seek the truth by comparing the individual
   accounts with themselves and with each other. A correct judgment of the
   nature of the authorities may be derived from thus examining them in
   detail.

   The settled result of my investigations on this subject may be stated
   as follows: The historical remains, as well as the nature of the case,
   show that the writing of the Gospel history did not originate in any
   design to give a connected account of the life and public ministry of
   Christ as a whole, but rather grew out of a series of traditional
   accounts of separate scenes in his history. These accounts were partly
   transmitted by word of mouth, and partly laid down in written memoirs.
   The commission of the whole to writing naturally soon followed the
   spread of Christianity among the Greeks, a people much accustomed to
   writing. There can be no doubt that Paul made use of written memoirs of
   the life of Christ. [28] The objections of Weisse against this view are
   of no importance. Our first three Gospels resulted from the compilation
   of such separate materials, as Luke himself states in his introduction.
   [29] Matthew's Gospel, in its present form, was not the production of
   the apostle whose name it bears, but was founded on an account written
   by him in the Hebrew language, chiefly (but not wholly) for the purpose
   of presenting the discourses of Christ in a collective form.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [28] See my Apostol. Geschichte, 3d edit., p. 131.

   [29] Luke, i.. 1, 2.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 5. Genuineness of John's Gospel.

   John's Gospel, which contains the only consecutive account of the
   labours of Christ, arose in a very different way. It could have
   emanated from none other than that "beloved disciple" upon whose soul
   the image of the Saviour had left its deepest impress. So far from this
   Gospel's having been written by a man of the second century (as some
   assert), we can. not even imagine a man existing in that century so
   little affected by the contrarieties of his times and so far exalted
   above them. Could an age involved in perpetual contradictions, an age
   of religious materialism, anthropomorphism, and one-sided
   intellectualism, have given birth to a production like this, which
   bears the stamp of none of these deformities? How mighty must the man
   have been who, in that age, could produce from his own mind such an
   image of Christ as this? And this man, too, in a period almost
   destitute of eminent minds, remained in total obscurity! Was it
   necessary for the master-spirit, who felt in himself the capacity and
   the calling to accomplish the greatest achievement of his day, to
   resort to a pitiful trick to smuggle his ideas into circulation?

   And then, too, while it is thought sufficient to say of the three other
   Gospels that they were compiled from undesigned fables, we are told
   that such a Gospel as this of John was the work of sheer invention, as
   lately Dr. Baur has confessed, with praiseworthy candour. Strange that
   a man, anxious for the credit of his inventions, should, in the
   chronology and topography of his Life of Christ, give the lie to the
   Church traditions of his time, instead of chiming in with them;
   stranger still, that, in spite of his bold contradiction of the
   opinions of his age in regard to the history, his fraud should be
   successful! In short, the more openly this criticism declares itself
   against the Gospel of John, the more palpably does it manifest its own
   wilful disregard of history.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 6. Results of Criticism.

   A comparison of the representation of Christ derived from the
   traditions of the Apostolic Church, with that which the direct and
   personal knowledge of the beloved disciple affords to us, will not only
   aid our general conception of his image as a whole, but will also prove
   the identity of these two representations with each other, from their
   agreement as well in the separate features as in the general picture.

   It must be regarded as one of the greatest boons which the purifying
   process of Protestant theology in Germany has conferred upon faith as
   well as science, that tie old, mechanical view of Inspiration has been
   so generally abandoned. That doctrine, and the forced harmonies to
   which it led, demanded a clerk-like accuracy in the evangelical
   accounts, and could not admit even the slightest contradictions in
   them; but we are now no more compelled to have recourse to subtilties
   against which our sense of truth rebels. In studying the historical
   connexion of our Saviour's life and actions by the application of an
   unfettered criticism, we reach a deeper sense in many of his sayings
   than the bonds of the old dogmatism would have allowed. The inquiring
   reason need no longer find its free sense of truth opposed to faith;
   nor is reason bound to subjugate herself, not to faith, but to
   arbitrary dogmas and artificial hypotheses. The chasms in the Gospel
   history were unavoidable in the transmission of Divine truth through
   such lowly human means. The precious treasure has come to us in earthen
   vessels. But this only affords room for the exercise of our faith--a
   faith whose root is to be found, not in science, not in demonstration,
   but in the humble and self-denying submission of our spirits. Our
   scientific views may be defective in many points; our knowledge itself
   may be but fragmentary; but our religious interests will find all that
   is necessary to attach them to CHRIST as the ground of salvation and
   the archetype of holiness.
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     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

BOOK I.
     __________________________________________________________________

BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD

OF

JESUS.

                                    BOOK I.

                     THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. [30]
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER I.

  PRELIMINARY REMARKS.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 7. Scantiness of our Information in regard to this Period of Christ's
   Life.--Nothing further really essential to the Interests of Religion.

   IN writing the life of any eminent man, we should not be likely to
   begin with a period when his character was fully developed and his
   world-historical importance recognized. On the contrary, we should
   study the growth of his being--seek for the bud which concealed the
   seed, and the powers that conspired to unfold it.

   We cannot fail to have the same desire in studying that Life which far
   transcends every other, both in its own intrinsic excellence and in its
   bearing upon the history of the human race; but we are kept within very
   narrow limits on this point by the paucity of our materials,
   consisting, as they do, of fragmentary accounts, whose literal accuracy
   we have no right to presuppose. To exhibit these features in the life
   of Christ did not belong to the Apostolic mission, which was designed
   to meet religious rather than scientific wants; to relate the mighty
   acts of Christ, from the beginning of his ministry to the time of his
   ascension, rather than to show how, and under what conditions, his
   inner nature gradually manifested itself. It belongs to science to give
   a pragmatico-genetical developement of the history; religious faith
   occupies itself only with the immediate facts themselves. We cannot
   expect this part of the history to give so accurate a detail as that
   which treats of Christ's public ministry and his redemptive acts; nor
   do the wants of faith require it.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 8. Fundamentally opposite Modes of apprehending the Accounts.

   The problems offered to scientific inquiry at this point are, first, to
   distinguish the objective reality of the events from the subjective
   form in which they are apprehended in the accounts; and, secondly, to
   fill up, as far as may be, the chasms which necessarily arise in the
   history from its being composed of detached narratives. These problems
   nearly involve each other; for we must obtain a clear view of the
   events themselves, before we can solve the difficulties that arise in
   connecting them together. Of these, various views may be taken,
   different in themselves, yet each in harmony with the interests of
   religion.

   But this cannot be said of all the different views which may be taken
   of the subject. The attempt might be made, for instance, to explain the
   life of Christ just as that of any eminent man, on the natural
   principles of human developement; rejecting, of course, the first truth
   of Christian belief in Christ as the Son of God and our Saviour. This
   theory, denying the supernatural element of Christianity, necessarily
   leads its advocates to consider every thing in the Gospel accounts
   which contradicts it as simply mythical. Thus, even in what may be
   called the ante-historical part of our work, we find arrayed against us
   those views which always reject the supernatural in the events of the
   life of Christ; although this is a dispute which cannot be settled
   empirically by inquiries into the separate accounts; for this very
   distinction of historical and non-historical presupposes a final
   decision between these opposing views made elsewhere. Thus, the Deistic
   and Pantheistic theories, which, although they arise from directly
   opposite modes of thought, agree perfectly in opposing supernaturalism,
   must deny, in the outset, what the supernatural-theistic views hold to
   be essential to the idea of a genuine world-redeeming Christ.

   We must, then, in order to bring the individual features into harmony
   with our portraiture of Christ, form the latter definitely from a view
   of his whole life, and of the organism of that Christian consciousness
   which grows out of his impress left upon humanity, and manifests his
   perpetual revelation. In relation to the individual features of the
   history, it only remains to prove, by naked historical inquiry, that
   there is no sufficient ground, apart from the general prejudices of
   rationalism, to deny their historical basis; and to show that the
   origin of the accounts themselves cannot be explained without the
   actual occurrence of the events which they describe on the very ground
   where they arose.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER II.

  THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 9. The Miraculous Conception demanded à priori, and confirmed à
   posteriori.

   IF, then, we conceive the manifestation of Christ to have been a super
   natural communication of the. Divine nature for the moral renewal of
   man, a new beginning in the chain of human progress; in one word, if we
   conceive it as a miracle, this conception itself, apart from any
   historical accounts, would lead us to form some notion of the beginning
   of his human life that would harmonize with it.

   It is true, this human life of Christ took its appointed place in the
   course of historical events--nay, all history was arranged with
   reference to its incorporation; yet it entered into history; not as
   part of its offspring, but as a higher element. Whatever has its origin
   in the natural course of humanity must bear the stamp of humanity; must
   share in the sinfulness which stains it, and take part in the strifes
   which distract it. It was impossible, therefore, that the second Adam,
   the Divine progenitor of a new and heavenly race, could derive his
   origin from the first Adam in the ordinary course of nature, or could
   represent the type of the species, the people, or the family from which
   he sprung, as do the common children of men. We must conceive him, not
   as an individual representative of the type which descended from our
   first parents, but as the creative origin of a new type. And so our own
   idea of Christ compels us to admit that two factors, the one natural,
   the other supernatural, were coefficient in his entrance into human
   life; and this, too, although we may be unable, à priori, to state how
   that entrance was accomplished.

   But at this point the historical accounts come to our aid, by
   testifying that what our theory of the case requires did, in fact,
   occur. The essential part of the history is found precisely in those
   features in which the idea and the reality harmonize; and we must not
   only hold fast these essential facts which are so important to the
   interests of religion, but carefully distinguish them from unimportant
   and accidental parts, which might, perhaps, be involved in obscurity or
   contradiction.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 10. Mythical View of the Miraculous Conception.--No trace of it in
   the Narrative.--No such Mythus could have originated among the Jews.

   The accounts of Matthew and Luke agree in stating that the birth of
   Christ was the result of a direct creative act of God, and not of the
   ordinary laws of human generation. They who deny this must make one of
   two assumptions; either that all the accounts are absolute fables, or
   that some actual fact was the ground-work of the fabulous conception.

   Those who adopt the former view tell us that, after Christ had made
   himself conspicuous by his great acts, men, struck with his
   extraordinary character, formed a theory of his birth to correspond
   with it. But this assumption is utterly irreconcilable with the simple
   and prosaic style in which Matthew tells the story of Joseph's
   perplexity at finding Mary pregnant before her time; [31] and the
   supposition that this prosaic narrative was the offspring of some
   previous mythical description, is out of all harmony with the character
   of the primitive Christian times. As for the second assumption, those
   who adopt it can assign no possible fact to explain the origin of the
   account, but one of so base a nature as utterly to shock every
   religious feeling, and every just notion of the overruling Providence
   of God. Had such an occurrence ever been deemed possible, the fanatical
   enemies of Christ would very soon have made use of it. [32] Both these
   assumptions failing, nothing remains but to admit that the birth of
   Christ was a phenomenon out of the ordinary course of nature. [33]

   Nor would such a mythus have been consistent with Jewish modes of
   thought. The Hindoo mind might have originated a fable of this
   character, though in a different form from that in which the account of
   the Evangelists is given; but the Jewish had totally different
   tendencies. Such a fable as the birth of the Messiah from a virgin
   could have arisen any where else easier than among the Jews; their
   doctrine of the Divine Unity, which placed an impassable gulf between
   God and the world; their high regard for the marriage relation, which
   led them to abhor unwedded life; and, above all, their full persuasion
   that the Messiah was to be an ordinary man, undistinguished by any
   thing supernatural, and not to be endowed with Divine power before the
   time of his solemn consecration to the Messiahship, all conspired to
   render such an invention impossible among them. The accounts of Isaac,
   Samson, and Samuel cannot be quoted as in point; these case[ rather
   illustrate the Hebrew notion of the blessing of fruitfulness; and in
   them all the Divine power was shown, not in excluding the male, but in
   rendering the long-barren female fruitful, contrary to all human
   expectation. The conception of Christ would have been analogous to
   these, had Mary, after long barrenness, borne a son, or had Joseph been
   too old to expect offspring at the time. [34]

   It was on this very account, viz., because the miraculous conception
   was foreign to the prevailing Jewish modes of thought, [35] that one
   sect of the Ebionites, who could not free themselves from their old
   prejudices, refused to admit the doctrine; and the section which
   contains the account is excluded from the Ebionitish recension of the
   Gospel to the Hebrews, which arose from the same source as our Matthew.
   As for the single obscure passage in Isa., vii., it could hardly have
   given rise to such a tradition among the people of Palestine, where,
   unquestionably, Matthew's Gospel originated.
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   [31] We cannot believe, notwithstanding what Strauss says on this point
   in his 3d edition, that a fable could originally be presented in so
   prosaic a garb as that of Matthew. Cases are not wanting, however, in
   which the substance of a mythus, after it had come to be received as
   history, has been given out in a prosaic form.

   [32] They would have done so before Jewish malevolence employed the
   history of the miraculous conception to invent the fable which Celsus
   first made use of.--Orig., i., 32. Had any such legends been in
   circulation before, we should find some trace of them in the
   Evangelists, who do not conceal the accusations that were made against
   Christ.

   [33] Schleiermacher, whose reverence for sacred things forbade him to
   adopt the latter of these two suppositions, while his conscientious
   love of truth compelled him to admit the reality of the history, says,
   in comparing the statements of Matthew and Luke (Critical Inquiries, p.
   47), "We may well leave the statement of Matthew in the judicious
   indefiniteness in which it is expressed; while the traditional basis of
   the poetical announcement in Luke rebukes those impious explanations
   which soil the veil they cannot lift." But, in sober truth, no one can
   admit the veracity of the history, and, at the same time, deny the
   miraculous conception, without falling into the very conclusion which
   Schleiermacher rejects with such pious indignation.

   [34] E. g., in the apocryphal Gospel of James, ch. ix., it is stated,
   that when the priest was about to give Mary as a wife to the aged
   Joseph, the latter said, "I have sons and am old, while she is yet
   young; shall I not then become a mockery for the sons of Israel?"

   [35] Professor Weisse, in his work, "Die Evangelische Geschichte" (The
   Gospel History, critically and philosophically treated, Leips., 1838),
   admits that the Jews could not have invented this mythus, but ascribes
   to it a heathen origin. How, in view of the relations that subsisted
   between early Christianity and heathenism, the pagan mythus of the sons
   of the gods could so soon have been transformed into a Christian one;
   and how the latter could have found its way into St. Matthew's Gospel,
   which unquestionably had a Jewish-Christian origin, are among the
   incomprehensibilities which abound in Prof. W.'s very intelligible
   work. He says, p. 178, that "as Paul found himself involuntarily
   compelled, in addressing the Athenians, to quote Greek poetry (For we
   are also his offspring, Acts, xvii., 28), so it is possible that the
   apostles to the heathen were led to adopt the pagan mythus of the sons
   of the gods, in order to make known to them the truth, that Christ is
   the Son of God, in a form suited to their way of thinking, and that
   their figurative language, literally understood, formed the
   starting-point for such a mythus ." Things very heterogeneous are
   thrown together in this passage. What religious scruples need have
   hindered Paul from alluding to the consciousness of the Divine origin
   of the human race, which the Athenians themselves had expressed, and to
   the vague idea which they entertained of an unknown God? Not was such
   an allusion likely to be misunderstood. How could a man, imbued with
   Jewish feelings in regard to the heathen mythology (feelings which his
   conversion to Christianity would by no means weaken), compare the birth
   of the Holy One--of the Messiah--with those pagan fables, whose
   impurity could inspire him with nothing but disgust? Weisse has
   transferred his own mode of contemplating the heathen myths to a people
   that would have revolted from it. It is quite another thing when Weisse
   adduces the comparisons in which the early Christian apologists
   indulged. These men, themselves of heathen origin, were accustomed to
   the allegorical interpretations of the mythology, and it was natural
   for them to seek and occupy a position intermediate between their
   earlier and later views. But, so far from these comparisons having
   given rise to the accounts of the supernatural conception, it was the
   latter which caused the former. They wished to show to the heathen that
   this miraculous event was not altogether foreign to their own religious
   ideas, while they carefully guarded against the sensuous forms of
   thought involved in the myths; and, as they could presuppose this
   event, they had a right to employ the myths as they did, inasmuch as
   these poetical effusions of natural religion anticipated (though in
   sadly-distorted caricatures) the great truth of Christianity, that the
   union of the Divine with the human nature was brought about by a
   creative act of Omnipotence. The early apologists expressed this in
   their own way "Satan invented these fables by imitating the truth."
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 11. Objections to the Narrative drawn from the subsequent
   Dispositions of Christ's Relatives, answered (1) from the nature of the
   case; (2) from the name Jesus.

   An objection to the credibility of the narrative has been raised on the
   ground that if such events had really preceded the birth of Christ, his
   own relatives would have been better disposed to recognize him as the
   Messiah. It is possible that the circumstances of his birth did raise
   their expectations to a lofty pitch; but as for thirty years no
   indications corresponding with ordinary views of the Messiah manifested
   themselves, their first impressions gradually wore away, only to be
   revived, however, by the great acts which Jesus performed after the
   opening of his public career. And as for Mary (in whom a doubt of this
   sort would appear still more strange, as she was directly cognizant of
   the miraculous features of the history), there is no proof whatever
   that she ever lost the memory of her visions, or relinquished the hopes
   they were so well calculated to raise. Her conduct at the marriage of
   Cana proves directly the reverse. She obviously expected a miracle from
   Christ immediately after the proclamation of his Messiahship by John
   the Baptist. The confirmation which John's Gospel, by its recital of
   this miracle, affords to the other evangelists is the more striking, as
   John himself gives no account of the events accompanying the birth of
   Christ. [36]

   The name Jesus itself affords additional proof that his parents were
   led by some extraordinary circumstances to expect that he would be the
   Messiah. Such names as Theodorus, Theodoret, Dorotheus, among the
   Greeks, were usually bestowed because the parents had obtained a son
   after long desire and expectation. As names were also given among the
   Jews with reference to their significancy, and as the name Jesus
   betokens "Him through whom Jehovah bestows salvation;" and, moreover,
   as the Messiah, the bearer of this salvation, was generally expected at
   the time, it must certainly appear probable to us that the name was
   given with reference to that expectation. Not that this conclusion
   necessarily follows, because the name Jesus, Joshua, was common among
   the Jews; but yet, compared with the accounts, it certainly affords
   confirmatory evidence.
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   [36] (a) John's silence in regard to the miraculous conception is no
   proof that he was either ignorant of the accounts of that event or
   disbelieved them. His object was to testify to what he had himself seen
   and heard, and to declare how the glory of the Only begotten had been
   unveiled to him in contemplating Christ's manifestation on earth. But
   that he recognized the miraculous conception is evident from his
   emphatic declarations (in opposition to the ordinary Jewish idea of the
   Messiah), that the Divine and the human were originally united in the
   person of Christ, and that the Logos itself became flesh in him; while
   at the same time he avers that "that which is born of the flesh is
   flesh." No man could hold these two ideas together without believing in
   the immediate agency of God in the generation of Christ (b) The
   objection that Jesus was known among the Jews as the son of Joseph and
   Mary, and that this fact was adduced against his claims, has been
   sufficiently met in the text; but it has been urged further that Christ
   himself, when this objection was brought against him (Matt., xiii.,
   55), did not allude to the miraculous conception. As to this, we need
   only say that it was far more likely and natural that Jesus should call
   men's attention to the proofs of his Divinity which were before their
   eyes in his daily acts, showing, at the same time, that the causes of
   their disbelief lay in themselves, rather than that he should dwell
   upon the circumstances which preceded his birth, the proof of which had
   to rest upon the testimony of Mary alone. (c) Nor is Paul's silence on
   this point proof of his not acknowledging it. It only shows that, for
   his religious sense, the sufferings Ad resurrection of Christ, the
   centre and support of the Christian system, stood out more prominently
   than the miraculous conception.' In the passages in which he speaks of
   Christ's origin, he had a different object in view than to treat of
   this subject; e. g., in Rom., ix., 5, "Whose are the fathers, and of
   whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God
   blessed forever," and in Rom., i., 4, where he brings out prominently
   the two-fold manifestation of Christ, as the Son of David and as the
   Son of God, raised above all human and national relationships, as he
   revealed himself after the resurrection. If we could infer from such
   passages Paul's disbelief in the miracle, we can draw precisely the
   opposite conclusion from Gal., iv., 4; although, as the case is, we do
   not lay much stress upon the expression, "born of a woman." And if Paul
   could represent Jesus as the Son of God from heaven, as being without
   sin in the flesh (sarx), in which sin before had reigned, while at the
   same time he taught the propagation of sinfulness, from Adam down, it
   is likely that the supernatural generation of Jesus was so firmly
   established in the connexion of his own thoughts, that he felt the less
   necessity to give it individual prominence. We shall have occasion to
   make a similar remark hereafter in regard to the omission of the ac
   count of Christ's ascension as an individual event.
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   § 12. Analogical Ideas among the Heathen.

   Moreover, inferences in favour of the accounts of the miraculous
   conception, as well as against them, may be obtained by comparing them
   with the ancient myths of other religions. The spirit of the pagan
   mythology could not have penetrated among the Jews, and therefore
   cannot be assigned to explain the similarity between the Christian and
   pagan views. We must seek that explanation rather in the relations that
   subsist between mythical natural religion and historical revealed
   religion; between the idea, forming, from the enslaved consciousness
   which it sways, an untrue actualization; and the idea, grounded in
   truth, and developing itself therefrom into clear and free
   consciousness.

   The truth which the religious sense can recognize at the bottom of
   these myths, is the earnest desire, inseparable from man's spirit, for
   communion with God, for participation in the Divine nature as its true
   life--its anxious longing to pass the gulf which separates the
   God-derived soul from its original--its wish, even though unconscious,
   to secure that union with God which alone can renew human nature, and
   which Christianity shows us as a living reality. Nor can we be
   astonished to find the facts of Christianity thus anticipated in poetic
   forms (imbodying in imaginative creations the innate yet indistinct
   cravings of the spirit) in the mythical elements of the old religions,
   when we remember that human nature itself, and all the forms of its
   developement, as well as the whole course of human history, were
   intended by God to find their full accomplishment in Christ. But the
   genius of Christianity is mistaken by those who despise the simplicity
   of the Gospel history, and contrast it with the poetry of religion. The
   opposition, apparently essential to the mere natural man, between
   poetry, transcending the limits of the actual, and the prose of common
   reality, is taken away by the manifestation of Christ, and will be done
   away wherever Christianity passes into flesh and blood. The peculiarity
   of Christian ethics is indeed founded upon this.

   The characteristic difference between the religion of Theism and that
   of the old mythology lies in this one point: that in the evangelical
   histories the Divine power is represented as operating immediately, and
   not by the interposition of natural causes; while, in the mythical
   conceptions, the Divine causality is made coefficient with natural
   agencies; the Divine is brought down to the sphere of the natural, and
   its manifestation is thus physically explained. [37] Thus the Gospel
   histories, precisely as a just idea of Christ would lead us to
   presuppose, attribute to the creative agency of God alone the
   introduction of that new member of humanity through which the
   regeneration of the race is to be accomplished.
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   [37] Baumgarten-Crusius has noticed this distinction in his Biblical
   Theology, p. 397; but Strauss denies it, and asserts that the
   expression huios Theou in Luke i., 35, is to be taken entirely in a
   physical sense. There is no such meaning in the passage; it predicates
   the terms "the holy one," "the Son of God," of Christ, on the ground of
   the special agency of the Holy Spirit in his birth. He who was
   conceived under such an agency must stand in a special relation to God.
   Not merely the Jewish mode of thinking on the subject, bus also the
   fact that Jesus is designated both as the Son of David and the Son of
   God, exclude the physical interpretation.
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     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER III.

  THE BIRTH OF CHRIST.
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   § 13. The Birth of Christ in its Relations to the Jewish Theocracy.

   AS the entrance of Christ into the course of humanity was brought about
   by the co-working of supernatural with natural elements, so both these
   agencies conspired in preparing the way for that great event, the
   centre of all things, and the aim of all preceding history. So we
   interpret the relations of the Jews and heathens to the appearance of
   Christ. The natural developement of the heathen was destined, under the
   Divine guidance, to prepare them for receiving the new light which
   emanated from Jesus; and the history of the Jewish people was all
   preparatory to the appearance and ministry of Christ, who was to come
   forth out of their midst. This preparation was accomplished by means of
   a chain of separate, but organically connected revelations, all tending
   toward the full revelation in Him, whose whole life was itself to be
   the highest manifestation of God to man.

   There was peculiar fitness in Christ's being born among the Jewish
   people. His life revealed the kingdom of God, which was to be set up
   over all men, and it properly commenced in a nation whose political
   life, always developed in a theocratic form, was a continual type of
   that kingdom. He was the culminating point of this developement; in Him
   the kingdom of God, no longer limited to this single people, was to
   show its true design, and, unfettered by physical or national
   restraints, to assert its authority over the whole human race. The
   particular typifies the universal; the earthly, the celestial; so
   David, the monarch who had raised the political theocracy of the Jews
   to the pinnacle of glory, typified that greater monarch in whom the
   kingdom of God was to display its glory. Not without reason, therefore,
   was it that Christ, the summit of the theocracy, sprang from the fallen
   line of royal David. [38]
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   [38] However the discrepancies in the two genealogies of Christ may be
   explained, his descent from the race of David was admitted from the
   beginning, and the evangelists took it for granted as indisputable. How
   Weisse should deny this, as he does (p. 169), is unaccountable. His
   arguments can convince no one endowed with the slightest powers of
   observation, and need no answer. The only one which is at all plausible
   is that founded on Mark, xii., 35; and that depends upon the question
   whether Mark uses these words in their original application; a question
   which we shall hereafter have occasion to examine. Certainly, if they
   admit of more than one interpretation, we shall adopt any other sooner
   than that which comes into conflict with Paul, who assumed Christ's
   descent from David as certain. Could the apostles have embraced a
   notion which the Saviour himself had denounced as an invention of the
   scribes? There was nothing in Paul's turn of feeling or thought to
   incline him towards it, had it not been established on other grounds;
   on the contrary, the doctrine that Christ was not the Son of David, but
   the Son of God and the Lord of David, would have afforded him an
   excellent point of attack against Judaism. Although Luke's genealogy is
   not directly stated as following the line of Mary, yet it may have done
   so, and have only been improperly placed where it is. Justin Martyr
   (Dial. c. Tryph., f. 327) was acquainted with such a genealogy
   referring to Mary. Luke, i., 32-35, seems to show that Mary was of
   David's race. Her relationship to Elizabeth, the mother of John
   Baptist, does not prove the contrary; for members of the tribe of Levi
   were not restrained from intermarriage with other tribes; and
   Elizabeth, although of that tribe on the father's side, and herself the
   wife of a priest, might very well have sprung from the tribe of Judah
   on the mother's side.
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   § 14. The Miraculous Events that accompanied the Birth of Christ.

   The Divine purpose in the supernatural conception of Jesus could not
   have been accomplished without some providential forewarnings to his
   parents; nor could these intimations of the certainty of the
   approaching birth of the theocratic King have been given by ordinary,
   natural means. In the sphere of the greatest miracle of human history,
   the miracle which was to raise mankind to communion with Heaven, we do
   not wonder to see rays of light streaming from the invisible world, at
   other times so dark.

   From the very nature of the case, we can expect no full account of
   those extraordinary manifestations of which, naturally enough, Mary
   alone could testify. [39] But a mere mythus, destitute of historical
   truth, and only serving as the veil of an ideal truth, is a very
   different thing from what we are here stating, viz., that a lofty
   history may be imparted in a form which must have more than its mere
   literal force and that events of a lofty character necessarily impart
   their higher tone to the language in which they are conveyed. In this
   latter case, we may harmlessly differ in our modes of arranging the
   materials, and of filling up the chasms of the history, so that we only
   hold fast the substantial facts which form its basis. The course of the
   events described in Matt., i., 18-25, may be arranged as follows: When
   Mary informed Joseph of the remarkable communication that had been made
   to her, he could not at once bring himself to believe it; which was not
   at all strange, considering its extraordinary character, and how little
   he was prepared for it. A struggle ensued in his feelings, and then
   occurred the night vision which brought his mind to a final decision.
   [40]
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   [39] Mary could only have been taught to expect the Saviour in a way
   harmonizing with her views at the time, and with the prevailing Jewish
   ideas of the Messiah, viz., that the Messiah should come of the line of
   David, to establish an everlasting kingdom among the Jews. But this was
   only a covering for the higher idea of the Redeemer, the founder of the
   eternal kingdom of God.

   [40] We need be the less afraid of a free, unliteral interpretation
   when we find a difference in the subjective conception of these events
   by even the evangelists themselves, Matthew speaking only of dreams and
   visions, and Luke of objective phenomena, viz., the appearance of
   angels.
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   § 15. The Taxing.--Birth of Christ at Bethlehem.

   By a remarkable interposition of Providence, interwoven, however, with
   the course of events in the world, was it brought about that the
   promised King should be born in Bethlehem (as Micah the prophet had
   foretold), the very place where the house of David had its origin;
   while, at the same time, the lowly circumstances of his birth were in
   striking contrast with the inherent dignity and glory that were veiled
   in the new-born child.

   The Emperor Augustus had ordered a general census of the Roman Empire,
   partly to obtain correct statistics of its resources, [41] and partly
   for purposes of taxation. [42] As Judea was then a dependency of the
   empire, and Augustus probably intended to reduce it entirely to the
   state of a Roman province, he wished to secure similar statistics of
   that country, and ordered King Herod to take the census. In performing
   this duty, Herod followed the Jewish usage, viz., a division by tribes.
   [43] Joseph and Mary belonged to the tribe of David, and therefore had
   to repair to Bethlehem, the seat of that tribe. On account of the
   throng, they could find no shelter but a stable, and the new-born
   infant had to he laid in a manger. [44]
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   [41] This was not confined to the Roman provinces, but extended also to
   the Socii.--Tacit., Ann., i., xi.

   [42] Cassiodor., i., iii., ep. 52: Augusti temporibus orbis Romanus
   agris divisus censuque descriptus, ut possessio sui nulli haberetur
   incerta, quam pro tributorum susciperet quantitatibus solvendam. (Conf.
   Savigny's dissertation in the "Zeitschrift für die geschichtl
   Rechtswissenschaft, Bd. vi., H. 3.) This language of the learned
   statesman shows that he followed older accounts rather than a Christian
   report drawn from Luke; and the expression of Tacitus confirms this
   conclusion. There is no ground, therefore, for the doubts started by
   Strauss, 3d ed., p. 257.

   [43] Luke's account of the matter is so prosaic and straightforward,
   that none but a prejudiced mind can find a trace of the mythical in it.
   Examine the Apocryphal Gospels, and you will see the difference between
   history and fable. And even if it could be shown that the census was
   incorrect, and that the gathering at Bethlehem was due to some other
   cause, no suspicion would thereby be cast upon the entire narration;
   the only reasonable conclusion would be, that Luke, or the writer from
   whom he copied, had fallen into an anachronism, or an erroneous
   combination of facts, in assigning the census as the cause of the
   gathering. Such an error could not affect in any way the interests of
   religion. Moreover, what right have we to demand of Luke so exact a
   knowledge of the history of his times, in things that did not
   materially concern his purpose? Such anachronisms, in things
   indifferent, are common to writers of all ages. But the account itself
   contains no marks of improbability. The emperor would naturally order
   Herod, whom he still recognized as king, to take the census, and Herod
   as naturally followed the Jewish usage in doing it. It was the policy
   of the emperor, at that time, to treat the Jews with kindness, and
   therefore he would naturally make the first attempt at a census as
   delicately as possible. How repugnant such a measure was to them is
   shown by Josephus's account of the tumults that arose on account of the
   census under Quirinus, twelve years afterward. Luke may have gone too
   far in extending (as his language seems to imply) the census over the
   whole empire; or, perhaps, in stating the gradual census of the whole
   empire as a simultaneous one. Perhaps he mistook this assessment for
   the census which occurred twelve years later, and on that account
   erroneously mentioned Quirinus. Nevertheless, Quirinus may have been
   actually present at this assessment, not, indeed, as governor of the
   province, but as imperial commissioner; for Josephus expressly says
   that he had held many other offices before he was Governor of Syria, at
   the time of the second census. I do not agree with any of the
   explanations, either ancient or modern, which attempt to make Luke's
   statement agree exactly with history; they all seem to me to be forced
   and unphilological, while the want of exactness in Luke is easily
   explained, and is of no manner of importance for the object which he
   had in view.

   [44] The tradition in Justin Martyr (Dial. c. Tryph., 304, a), that
   they found shelter in a cave near the town, which had before been used
   for a cattle stall (en spelaio sunengus tes komes, may be true,
   although we should not like to vouch for it. It is more likely that the
   prophecy in Isai., xxxiii., 16 (which Justin refers to in the
   Alexandrian version), was applied to this tradition after it arose,
   than that the tradition arose from the prophecy. At that time men were
   accustomed to find every where in the Old Testament predictions and
   types of Christ, whether warranted by the connexion or not. The
   tradition does not specify such a cave as the passage in Isaiah would
   lead one to expect, nor, indeed, does the passage seem distinctly to
   refer to the Messiah.
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   § 16. The Announcement to the Shepherds.

   It is in accordance with the analogy of history that great
   manifestations and epochs, designed to satisfy the spiritual wants of
   ages, should be anticipated by the prophetic yearnings of pure and
   susceptible hearts, inspired by a secret Divine consciousness. All
   great events that have introduced a new developement of human history
   have been preceded by unconscious or conscious prophecy. This may seem
   strange to such as ascribe to God the apathy of the Stoics, or who
   believe only in the cold, iron necessity of an immanent spirit of
   nature; but to none who believe in a personal, self-conscious Deity, a
   God of eternal love, who is nigh unto every man, and listens willingly
   to the secret sighs of longing souls, can it appear unworthy of such a
   Being to foreshadow great world-historical epochs by responding to such
   longings in special revelations.

   Far more probable, then, would such manifestations be, in reference to
   the highest object of human longings, the greatest of all world
   historical phenomena; and so, at the time of Christ's coming, the
   people of Judea, guided by the prophecies of the Old Testament, yearned
   for the appearance of the Messiah with an anxiety only rendered more
   intense by the oppressions under which they groaned. This feeling would
   naturally be kept alive in Bethlehem, associated as the place was with
   recollections of the family of David, from which the Messiah was to
   come. So, even among the shepherds, who kept nightly watch over the
   flocks, were some who anxiously awaited the appearance of the Messiah.
   It is true, the account does not say that the shepherds thus longed for
   the Messiah. But we are justified by what followed in presupposing it
   as the ground for such a communication's being especially made to them;
   and it is not unlikely that these simple souls, untaught in the
   traditions of the scribes, and nourished by communion with God, amid
   the freedom of nature, in a solitude congenial to meditation and
   prayer, had formed a purer idea of the Messiah, from the necessities of
   their own hearts, than prevailed at that time among the Jews. A vision
   from Heaven conducted them on that night, so big with interest to man's
   salvation, to the place where the object of their desire was to be
   born. [45]
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   [45] Justly and beautifully says Schleiermacher, "There is something
   remarkable, something divine, in the satisfaction not seldom afforded
   in extraordinary times even to individual longings." We agree with this
   great teacher in thinking that this account came indirectly from the
   shepherds themselves, as it recites so particularly what occurred to
   themselves personally, and makes so little mention of what happened to
   the child after their arrival. The facts may be supposed to have been
   as follows: The faithful were anxious to preserve the minute features
   of the life of Jesus. (We cannot be persuaded by the assertions of
   modern Idealism that this feeling had no existence. We see every day
   how anxiously men look for individual traits in the childhood of great
   men.) Especially would any one who had the opportunity prosecute such
   researches in the remarkable place where Christ was born. Perhaps one
   of these inquirers there found one of the shepherds who had witnessed
   these events, and whose memory of them was vividly recalled after his
   conversion to Christianity. We cannot be sure that such a man would
   give with literal accuracy the words that he had heard; but, taking
   them as they stand, it is astonishing how free they are from the
   materialism which always tinged Jewish expression, and in how purely
   spiritual a way they describe the sublime transaction of which they
   treat. Whether we follow the received version or that of the Cod.
   Alex., we find the same thought expressed in the statement of the
   shepherds, viz., that "God is glorified in the Messiah, who brings
   peace and joy to the earth, and restores man again to the Divine
   favour."
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   § 17. The Sacrifice of Purification, and the Ransom of the First-born;
   their Weight as Proof against the Mythical Theory.

   The mass of the Jewish people, whose minds were darkened by their
   material and political views, entertained a totally false idea of the
   Messiah; but there were many at Jerusalem who longed for a purer
   salvation, and these, also, were to receive a sign that the object of
   their hopes had at last appeared.

   Forty days after the birth of the infant Jesus his parents carried him
   to the temple at Jerusalem, in order to offer, according to their
   means, the prescribed sacrifice for the purification of Mary, and to
   pay the usual ransom for their first-born. [46] This appears strange,
   in view of the extraordinary circumstances that preceded and followed
   the birth of the child, which, one might suppose, would make it an
   exception to ordinary rules. The points which the Levitical law had in
   view seem not to have existed here: so remarkable a birth might have
   pre eluded the necessity of the Levitical purification. The ransom
   which had to be paid for other first-born sons, in view of their
   original obligation to the priesthood, could hardly be necessary in the
   case of an infant who was one day to occupy the summit of the
   Theocracy. It would be natural to suppose that Mary must have
   hesitated, and laid her scruples before the priests for decision before
   she could make up her mind to perform these ceremonies. But we cannot
   judge of such extraordinary events by common standards. Mary did not
   venture to speak freely in public of these wonderful things, or to
   anticipate the Divine purposes in any way; she left it to God to
   educate the child, which had been announced to her as the Messiah, so
   as to fit him for his calling, and, at the proper time, to authenticate
   his mission publicly and conspicuously.

   Now a mythus generally endeavors to ennoble its subject, and to adapt
   the story to the idea. [47] If, then, the Gospel narrative were
   mythical, would it have invented, or even suffered to remain, a
   circumstance so foreign to the idea of the myth, all so little
   calculated to dignify it as the above? A mythus would have introduced
   an angel, or, at least, a vision, to hinder Mary from submitting the
   child to a ceremony so unworthy of its dignity; or the priests would
   have received an intimation from heaven to bow before the infant, and
   prevent its being thus reduced to the level of ordinary children.
   Nothing of all this took place; but, instead of it, simply and
   unostentatiously, the high dignity and destiny of the child were
   revealed to two faithful souls.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [46] Exod., xiii., 2, 12; Num., iii., 45; xviii., 15; Levit., xii., 2.

   [47] The remarks of Strauss, 1. c., p. 326, do not at all weaken what
   is here said. He adduces, also, the fact that Luke (iii., 21) states
   the baptism without mentioning John's previous refusal (Matt., iii.,
   14); but all the force of this lies in his presupposition that Luke's
   narrative is also mythical, which I deny. As to Gal., iv., 4, we of
   course believe that Christ strictly fulfilled the Mosaic law; but this
   fact, on Jewish principles, is no parallel to the other, viz., that
   Mary, under the circumstances of the miraculous birth, needed
   purification, and that the Messiah, who was destined for the highest
   station in the Theocracy needed a ransom from the obligation to the
   priesthood.
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   § 18. Simeon's Prophetic Discourse.

   The aged and devout Simeon, [48] who had longed and prayed for the
   coming of Messiah's kingdom, had received the Divine assurance that he
   should not die without seeing the desire of his heart. Under a
   peculiarly vivid impulse of this presentiment, he entered the Temple
   just as the infant Jesus was brought in. The Divine glory irradiating
   the child's features harmonized with the longing of his inspired soul;
   he recognized the manifested Messiah, took the infant in his arms, and
   exclaimed, in a burst of inspired gratitude, "Lord, now let thy servant
   depart in peace according to thy promise, for mine eyes have seen thy
   salvation which thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a
   light to enlighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel."
   [49] Then, turning to Mary, he exclaimed, "Behold, this child is set
   for the fall and rising again of many in Israel, and for a sign which
   shall be spoken against; [50] and a sword shall pierce through thine
   own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may he revealed."

   Notice, now, the remarkable idea of the Messiah which these words
   convey; precisely such a one as we should expect from a longing Jew, of
   deep, spiritual piety. Although it cannot be said to contain really
   Christian elements, it is far above the ordinary conceptions of the
   times; and this not only confirms the truth of the narrative, but
   stamps the discourse as Simeon's own, and not a speech composed in his
   name. [51] It is true, Simeon conceives the kingdom of Messiah as
   tending to glorify the Jewish people, but yet extends its blessings
   also over the heathen, and believes that the light of the knowledge of
   God will illumine them also. Nor does he conceive Messiah's kingdom as
   triumphing at once by displays of miraculous power, but rather as
   developing itself after struggles with prevailing corruptions, and
   after a gradual purifying of the theocratic nation. The conflict with
   the corrupt part of the nation was to be severe before the Messiah
   could lead his faithful ones to victory. The foreboding of suffering to
   Mary, so indefinitely expressed, bears no mark of post factum
   invention. But the inspired idea of Messiah in the pious old man
   obviously connected the sufferings which he was to endure in his strife
   against the corrupt people with those which were foretold of him in
   Isaiah, liii.

   The other devout one, to whom the destiny of the infant Jesus was
   revealed, was the aged Anna, who heard Simeon's words, shared in his
   joyful anticipations, and united in his song of thanksgiving. [52]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [48] We have no reason to suppose him to be the Rabbi Simeon, the
   father of Gamaliel, as no distinguishing mark of eminence is assigned
   to him.

   [49] It is said in Luke, ii., 33, that "Joseph and Mary marvelled" at
   the words of Simeon. Now it is strange that what he said should appear
   marvellous to the parents, who were already cognizant of so many
   wonderful events in the history of the child. But we are to remember
   that the first three Gospels do not contain connected histories, but
   compilations of separate memoirs; and, again, the writer of the
   narrative may have been so imbued with wonder at the extraordinary
   whole, as to transfer this feeling to his expression in detailing the.
   separate parts, again and again. The narrative would have worn a very
   different aspect had Luke designed to compose a systematic work, with
   the parts accurately adjusted, instead of writing, as he did, with
   simple and straightforward candour.

   [50] The results of Messiah's appearance among men depend upon their
   own spiritual dispositions: salvation for the believer, destruction for
   the unbeliever. Around his banner the hosts of the faithful gather; but
   infidels reject and fight against it. Salvation and doom are
   correlative ideas; all world-historical epochs are epochs of
   condemnation.

   [51] The accurate report of this discourse is accounted for by the
   supposition that the account came indirectly from Anna: not only the
   discourse, but the whole occurrence, must have made a deep impression
   upon her mind.

   [52] We agree with Schleiermacher in thinking it probable that the
   narrative came indirectly from Anna. She is far more minutely described
   in it than Simeon, although the latter and his discourse constitute the
   most important part of the account, while her words are not reported at
   all.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 19. The Longing of the Heathen for a Saviour.--The Star of the Wise
   Men.

   Not only dwellers about Bethlehem, but also men from a far-distant
   land, imbued with the longing desires of which we have spoken, were led
   to the place where Christ was born by a sign suited to their peculiar
   mode of life, a fact which foreshadowed that the hopes of heathen as
   well as Jews, unconscious as well as conscious longings for a Saviour,
   were afterward to be gratified. [53] We have before remarked, that the
   natural developement of the heathen mind worked in the same direction
   as the movement of revealed religion among the Jews to prepare the way
   for Christ's appearance, which was the aim and end of all previous
   human history. There is something analogous to the law and the prophets
   (which, under revealed religion, led directly, and by an organically
   arranged connexion, to Christ), in the sporadic and detached
   revelations, which, here and there among the heathen, arose from the
   Divine consciousness implanted in humanity. As, under the Law, man's
   sense of its insufficiency to work out his justification was
   accompanied by the promise of One who should accomplish what the Law
   could never do, so, in the progress of the pagan mind under the law of
   nature, there arose a sense of the necessity of a new revelation from
   heaven, and a longing desire for a higher order of things. The notion
   of a Messiah, carried about by the Jews in then intercourse with
   different rations, every where found a point of contact with the
   religious sense of men; and thus natural and revealed religion worked
   into each other, as well as separately, in preparing the way for the
   appearance of Christ. [54]

   Thus it happened that a few sages in Arabia (or in some part of the
   Parthian kingdom), who inquired for the course of human events in that
   of the stars, became convinced that a certain constellation or star
   [55] which they beheld was a token [56] of the birth of the great King
   who was expected to arise in the East. It is not necessary to suppose
   that an actual miracle was wrought in this case; the course of natural
   events, under Divine guidance, was made to lead to Christ, just as the
   general moral culture of the heathen, though under natural forms, was
   made to lead to the knowledge of the Saviour.

   The Magi studied astrology, and in their study found a sign of Christ.
   If it offends us to find that God has used the errors of man to lead
   him to a knowledge of the great truths of salvation, as if thereby He
   had lent himself to sustain the False, then must we break in pieces the
   chain of human events, in which the True and the False, the Good and
   the Evil, are s inseparably linked, that the latter often serves for
   the point of transition to the former. Especially do we see this in the
   history of the spread of Christianity, where superstition often paves
   the way for faith. God condescends to the platforms of men in training
   them for belief in the Redeemer, and meets the aspirations of the
   truth-seeking soul even in its error! [57] In the case of the wise men,
   a real truth, perhaps, lay at the bottom of the error; the truth,
   namely, that the greatest of all events, which was to produce the
   greatest revolution in humanity, is actually connected with the epochs
   of the material universe, although the links of the chain may be hidden
   from our view.

   In the narrative before us, we need not attach the same indisputable
   certainty to the details as to the general substance. That the Magians
   should be led, by their astrological researches, to a presentiment of
   the birth of the Saviour in Judea--that their own longings should impel
   them to journey to Jerusalem and do homage to the infant in whom lay
   veiled the mighty King--this is the lofty, the Divine element in the
   transaction, which no one who believes in a guiding, eternal love--no
   one who is conscious of the real import of a Redeemer--can fail to
   recognize.

   We cannot vouch with equal positiveness for the accuracy of Matthew's
   statement of the means by which the sages learned, after their arrival
   in Jerusalem, that the chosen child was to be born in Bethlehem; but it
   matters little whether they were directed thither by Herod, or in some
   other way. At any rate, in so small a place as Bethlehem, they might
   easily have been guided to the exact place by providential means not
   out of the common way; for instance, by meeting with some of the
   shepherds, or other devout persons, who had taken part in the great
   event; and they, perhaps, described the whole as it appeared to them
   subjectively, when, after reaching the abode, they looked up at the
   starry heavens.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [53] If this narrative is to be considered as mythical, we must yet
   ascribe its origin to the same source which produced the Hebrew Gospel,
   viz., the Jewish-Christian congregations in Palestine--a likely origin,
   indeed, for a myth ascribing so great interest and importance to
   uncircumcised heathen! An extravagant exaggeration of the real
   occurrence was subsequently made, probably from a fragment of one of
   the recensions of the Hebrew Gospel (Ignat., Epist. ad Ephes., § 19):
   "The star sparkled brilliantly beyond all other stars; it was a strange
   and wonderful sight. The other stars, with the sun and moon, formed a
   choir around it, but its blaze outshone them all."

   [54] We do not insist upon Tacit., Hist., 5, 13, and Sueton.,
   Vespasian, 4, who speak of a rumour spread over the whole East, of the
   approaching appearance of the great King, as it is yet doubtful whether
   these passages are not imitated from Josephus.

   [55] It is necessary to distinguish what is objectively real in the
   narrative from what arises from the subjective stand-point of the
   author of our Matthew's Gospel, who certainly did not receive the
   account from an eye-witness. Not merely philological exegesis, but also
   historical criticism, are required for this; and if the result of such
   an inquiry be pronounced arbitrary, because it does not either affirm
   or reject the objective reality of every thing in the account, then
   must all historical criticism be pronounced arbitrary also, for it has
   no other mode of procedure in testing the accuracy of a narrative.

   [56] Conf. Bishop Munter's treatise on the "Star of the Wise Men," and
   Ideler's Chronology, ii., 399. It is immaterial whether the sages were
   led to seek for the sign by a theory of their own, or by a traditional
   one.

   [57] Hamann strikingly says, "How often has God condescended, not
   merely to the feelings and thoughts of men, but even to their failings
   and their prejudices! But this very condescension (one of the highest
   marks of his love to man), which is exhibited every where in the Bible,
   affords subjects of derision to those weaklings who look into the word
   of God for displays of human wisdom, for the gratification of their
   pert and idle curiosity, or for the spirit of their own times or their
   own sect." --Works, i., 58.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 20. The Massacre of the Innocents and the Flight into Egypt.

   The account of the massacre of the infants at Bethlehem cannot appear
   incredible when we consider the character of the man to whom this act
   of blind and senseless cruelty, worthy of an insane tyrant, is
   ascribed.

   It was that Herod, whose crimes, committed in violation of every
   natural feeling, ever urged him on to new deeds of cruelty; whose path
   to the throne, and whose throne itself, were stained with human blood;
   whose vengeance against conspirators, not satiated with their own
   destruction, demanded that of their whole families; [58] whose rage was
   hot, up to the very hour of his death, against his nearest kindred;
   whose wife, Mariamne, and three sons, Alexander, Aristobulus, and
   Antipater, fell victims to his suspicions, the last just before his
   death; who, in a word, certainly deserved that the Emperor Augustus
   should have said of him, "Herodis mallem porcus esse, quam filius."
   [59] It was that Herod, who, at the close of a blood-stained life of
   seventy years goaded by the furies of an evil conscience, racked by a
   painful and incurable disease, waiting for death, but desiring life,
   raging against God and man, and maddened by the thought that the Jews,
   instead of bewailing his death, would rejoice over it as the greatest
   of blessings, commanded the worthies of the nation to be assembled in
   the circus, and issued a secret order [60] that, after his death, they
   should all be slain together, so that their kindred, at least, might
   have cause to weep for his death! [61] Can we deem the crime of
   sacrificing a few children to his rage and blind suspicion too
   atrocious for such a monster?

   As we have no reason to question the narrative of the tyrants attempts
   upon the life of the wonderful child whose birth had come to his ears,
   we can readily connect therewith the flight into Egypt. On the
   supposition that this flight actually took place, it was natural
   enough, especially with a view to obviate any objections which the
   issuing of the Messiah from a profane land might suggest to Jewish
   minds, for men to seek analogies between this occurrence and the
   history of Moses and the theocratic people; while, on the other hand,
   it would be absurd to suppose that a legend of the flight, without any
   historical basis, should have had its origin solely in the desire to
   find such analogies.

   Thus, in the very beginning of the life of Him who was to save the
   world, we see a foreshadowing of what it was afterward to be. The
   believing souls, to whom the lofty import of that life was shown by
   Divine signs, saw in it the fulfilment of their longings; the power of
   the world, ever subservient to evil, raged against it, but, amid all
   dangers, the hand of God guided and brought it forth victorious. [62]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [58] Joseph., Archaeol., xv., viii., § 4.

   [59] These words were applied, in the fifth century, by an anachronism
   of the pagan write Macrobius, to the massacre of the infants at
   Bethlehem.--Saturnal., ii., 4.

   [60] It Was never executed.

   [61] Josephus (Archaeol., xvii., 6, 5) says of him: "Melaina chole
   auton herei epi pasin exagria inousa." Even Schlosser admits (View of
   Ancient History and Civilization, iii., 1, p. 261 that the account of
   the massacre of the infants, viewed in this connexion, offers no
   improbability.

   [62] Instead of seeing the expression of the idea in the facts, we
   might, with the idealistic ghost-seers, invert the order of things, and
   say that "the idea wrought itself into history in the popular
   traditions" (whose origin, by-the-way, it would be hard to explain
   after what has been said) "of the Christians." In that case we must
   consider every thing remarkable, every scintillation of Divinity in the
   lives of individual men, as absolutely fabulous. This were, indeed, to
   degrade and atheize all history and all life; and such is the necessary
   tendency of that criticism which rejects all immediate Divine
   influence.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 21. The Return to Nazareth.

   Joseph and Mary remained but a short time with the child in Egypt. The
   death of Herod soon recalled them to Palestine, and they returned to
   their old place of abode, the little town of Nazareth, [63] in Galilee.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [63] It was formerly thought that Matthew and Luke contradicted each
   other here. Luke states that Nazareth was the home of Joseph and Mary,
   and that, laving gone to Bethlehem for a special purpose (the taxing),
   they remained long enough to perform the necessary ceremonies after the
   birth of the child, and then returned home. According to Matthew,
   Bethlehem appears to have been their settled place of abode, and they
   were only induced, by special considerations, to betake themselves to
   Nazareth after their return from Egypt. The apparent contradiction
   vanishes when we consider that the memoirs were collected and written
   independently of each other. Luke may have received the account of the
   journey of Christ's parents to Bethlehem, without learning either their
   intention to remain there with the child, or the cause that led them to
   change that intention; while the author of the Greek text of Matthew
   may have adhered to the separate statements that were given to him, in
   ignorance of the special cause of the journey to Bethlehem. Both
   accounts may be equally true, and harmonize well with each other,
   although those who put them imperfectly together may not perceive the
   argument. Moreover, even in Matthew (xiii., 54) we find Nazareth named
   as Christ's "own country." There is no improbability in supposing that
   Joseph and Mary were induced, by the remarkable events which marked the
   birth of the child at Bethlehem, and by the revelation of his destiny
   that was vouchsafed to them, to fix their residence at the seat of the
   tribe of David, in the vicinity of the Holy City; but that fear of
   Archelaus, who emulated his father's cruelty and contempt of holy
   things, led them to change this purpose. This much is certain, that
   Matthew's statement of the apprehension which grew out of Archelaus's
   accession to the government agrees precisely with the testimony of
   history in regard to that prince, who, in the tenth year of his reign,
   was accused before Augustus of various crimes, and exiled to
   Vienna.--Joseph., xvii., xiii., 2.
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   § 22. Brothers and Sisters of Jesus; the Mention of them in the Gospel
   Narrative, Proof of its historical Character.

   Various scattered statements in the Evangelists lead us to conclude
   that Christ had younger brothers and sisters. [64] The religious
   principles of Joseph and Mary offered no hindrance to this; it
   harmonizes well with the Christian view of the sanctity of wedlock; nor
   is there any thing at variance with it in the authentic traditions of
   the apostolic age.

   But had the miraculous conception been mythical, the idea of later-born
   children would have been abhorrent to the spirit which originated such
   a myth. In later times, indeed, this idea did appear abhorrent to some
   minds; but it still remains a mystery why the mythical spirit did not
   exercise its power in remodelling the historical elements.

   It is worthy of note that Mark and John agree in stating that these
   brothers of the Saviour remained unbelievers during his stay on earth,
   a fact which illustrates the truthfulness of the history, since it by
   no means tended to glorify either Christ or his brothers, one of whom,
   at least (James), was in high repute among the Jewish Christians. It is
   not to be wondered at that the prophet was without honour among those
   who dwelt under the same roof, and saw him grow up under the same laws
   of ordinary human nature with themselves. True, this daily contact
   afforded them many opportunities of beholding the Divinity that
   streamed through the veil of his flesh, yet it required a spiritual
   mind and a lively faith to recognize the revealed Son of God in the
   lowly garb of humanity. The impression of humanity made upon their
   senses day after day, and thus grown into a habit, could not be made to
   yield to the Divine manifestations, unless in longer time than was
   required for others; but when it did yield, and, after such
   long-continued opposition, they acknowledged their brother as the Son
   of God and the Messiah, they only became thereby the more trustworthy
   witnesses.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [64] The word heos, in Matt., i., 25, in connexion with the statement
   that Jesus was Mary's first-born, leads us to infer Matthew's knowledge
   of children subsequently born to her (conf. De Wette on the passage),
   which we the more certainly conclude, as the same Evangelist mentions
   brothers and sisters of Jesus especially, together with his
   mother.--See Matt., xiii., 55. This view is the most natural in such
   passages as name them together, e. g., Luke, viii., 21; Mark, iii., 31;
   John, ii., 12; vii., 3. It would be forced work indeed to suppose that
   in all these passages adelphoi is placed for anepsioi.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 23. Consciousness of Messiahship in the Mind of Jesus.--Jesus among
   the Doctors.

   The extraordinary circumstances of the birth of Christ not only served
   as portents of the greatest event in the world's history, but also,
   perhaps, furnished external occasions for the developement, in the mind
   of Jesus, of the consciousness of his Messiahship. True, this
   developement, far from admitting of mechanical illustrations, required,
   above all, an inward light in the depths of the higher
   self-consciousness, the internal testimony of the Spirit; but such a
   testimony by no means precludes the agency of external impressions,
   acting as suggestive occasions. The inward Divine light and the
   revelation from outward events touch upon each other; and this
   connexion between the internal and the external belongs to the essence
   of purely human developement. [65]

   Of the early history of Jesus we have only a singe incident; but that
   incident strikingly illustrates the manner in which the consciousness
   of his Divine nature developed itself in the mind of the child. Jesus
   had attained his twelfth year, a period which was regarded among the
   Jews as the dividing line between childhood and youth, and at which
   regular religious instruction and the study of the Law were generally
   entered upon. For that reason, his parents, who were accustomed [66] to
   visit Jerusalem together [67] annually at the time of the Passover,
   took him with them then for the first time. When the feast was over,
   and they were setting out on their return, they missed their son; this,
   however, does not seem to have alarmed them, and perhaps he was
   accustomed to remain with certain kindred families or friends; indeed,
   we are told (Luke, ii., 44) that they expected to find him "in the
   company," at the evening halt of the caravan. Disappointed in this
   expectation, they returned the next morning to Jerusalem, and on the
   following day found him in the synagogue of the Temple among the
   priests, who had been led by his questions into a conversation on
   points of faith. [68] His parents reproached him for the. uneasiness he
   had caused them, and he replied, "Why did you seek me? Did you not know
   that I must be about my Father's business?" Now these words of Jesus
   contain no explanation, beyond his tender years, [69] of the relations
   which he sustained to the Father; they manifest simply the
   consciousness of a child, a depth, to be sure, but yet only a depth of
   presentiment.

   We can draw various important inferences from this incident in the
   early life of Christ. At a tender age he studied the Old Testament, and
   obtained a better knowledge of its religious value by the light that
   was within him than any human instruction could have imparted. Nor was
   this beaming forth of an immediate consciousness of Divine things in
   the mind of the child, in advance of the developement of his powers of
   discursive reason, at all alien to the character and progress of human
   nature, but entirely in harmony with it. Nor need we wonder that the
   infinite riches of the hidden spiritual life of the child first
   manifested themselves to his consciousness, as if suggested by his
   conversation with the doctors, and that his direct intuitions of Divine
   truth, the flashes of spiritual light that emanated from him, amazed
   the masters in Israel. It not unfrequently happens, in our human life,
   that the questions of others are thus suggestive to great minds, and,
   like steel upon the flint, draw forth their inner light, at the same
   time revealing to their own souls the unknown treasures that lay in
   their hidden depths. But they give more than they receive; the outward
   suggestion only excites to action their creative energy; and men of
   reflective and receptive, rather than creative minds, by inciting the
   latter to know and develop their vast resources, may not only learn
   much from their utterance, but also diffuse the streams which gush with
   overflowing fulness from these abundant well-springs. And these remarks
   applying--in a sense in which they apply to no other--to that mind,
   lofty beyond all human comparison, whose creative thoughts are to
   fertilize the spiritual life of man through all ages, and whose
   creative power sprang from its mysterious union with that Divine Word,
   which gave birth to all things, show us that His consciousness
   developed itself gradually, and in perfect accordance with the laws of
   human life, from that mysterious union which formed its ground.

   And further--without in the least attempting to do away with the
   peculiar form of the child's spiritual life--we can recognize in this
   incident a dawning sense of his Divine mission in the mind of Jesus: a
   sense, however, not yet unfolded in the form in which the corruption of
   the world, objectively presented, alone could occasion its
   developement. The child found congenial occupation in the things of
   God: in the Temple he was at home. And, on the other hand, we see an
   opening consciousness of the peculiar relation in which he stood to the
   Father as the Son of God. We delight to find in the early lives of
   eminent men some glimpses of the future, some indications of their
   after greatness; so we gladly recognize, in the pregnant words of the
   child, a foreshadowing of what is afterward so fully revealed to us in
   the discourses of the completely manifested Christ, especially as they
   are given to us in John's Gospel.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [65] Weisse maintains (I cannot see on what grounds) that this view
   degrades the Divine element in the inner calling of Christ to a
   mechanical result of circumstances, p. 264.

   [66] Luke (ii., 42) says, "that they went to Jerusalem every year at
   the feast of the Passover." This may mean either that Joseph attended
   yearly no other feast but this, which would imply that it was not the
   general custom in Galilee to attend the three chief feasts at
   Jerusalem, or that Mary used to accompany him to this feast only. In
   either case, it proves the peculiar eminence of the Passover.

   [67] Mary accompanied her husband, although the Jewish law did not
   demand it.

   [68] How little of the mythical there is in this may be seen from the
   case of Josephus, who states of himself, that when he was fourteen
   years old the priests of the city met with him to put questions to him
   about the law.

   [69] The addition of extravagant and fabulous colourings to historical
   elements may be seen in such instances as the following from Irenaeus,
   on the childhood of Jesus, taken out of an apocryphal Gospel
   originating in Palestine: "When the teacher told the boy to pronounce
   Aleph, he did so. But when he told him to say Beth, the child replied,
   Tell me the meaning of Aleph, and then I will tell you what Beth is"
   (an allusion to the mystical import of the letters, according to the
   Kabbala). There was any number of such apocryphal Gospels, as Irenaeus
   says.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

   [30] I do not enter into the minute researches which are necessary to
   fix the exact date of Christ's birth.
     __________________________________________________________________

BOOK II.
     __________________________________________________________________

THE MENTAL CULTURE OF JESUS. HIS LIFE TO THE TIME OF HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY.

                                    BOOK II.

THE MENTAL CULTURE OF JESUS. HIS LIFE TO THE TIME OF HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER I.

  JESUS NOT EDUCATED IN THE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS OF THE JEWS.

   WE have already seen that in the early progress of the mind of Christ
   every thing was original and direct, and that external occasions were
   needed only to bring out his inward self-activity. As we must suppose
   that his developement was subsequently continued in the same way, we
   come at once to the conclusion that His education for a teacher was not
   due to any of the theological schools then existing in Judea. But we
   can reach this conclusion also by comparing the peculiar tendencies of
   those schools with the aims of Christ, with his mode of life and
   instruction, and with the spirit which he diffused around him.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 24. The Pharisees.

   In the outset, how unlike Christ was the legal spirit of Pharisaism,
   with its soul-crushing statutes, its dead theology of the letter, and
   its barren subtilties! Some few of the sect, endowed with a more
   earnest religious sense, and a more sincere love of truth than their
   fellows, could not resist the impression of Christ's Divine
   manifestation; but they came to him with a full knowledge of the
   difference between his mode of teaching and theirs, and not as to a
   teacher sprung from among themselves. They had first to overcome their
   surprise at his strange and extraordinary language, before they could
   enter into closer connexion with him. They had to renounce the wisdom
   of their schools, to disclaim their legal righteousness, and to attach
   themselves to Christ with the same sense of deficiency in themselves,
   and the same desire for what he alone could impart, as all other men.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 25. The Sadducees.

   The spirit of the Sadducees presents a still more rugged contrast to
   the spirit of Christ. Their schools agreed in nothing but denying;
   their only bond of union was opposition to the Pharisees, against whom
   they strove to re-establish the original Hebraism, freed from the
   foreign elements which the Pharisaic statutes had mixed up with it. But
   an agreement in negation can be only an apparent one, if the negation
   rests upon an opposite positive principle. Thus certain negative
   doctrines, that agree with Protestantism in rejecting the authority and
   traditions of the Romish Church, separate themselves further from
   Protestantism than the Romish doctrine itself, by the affirmative
   principle on which they rest their denial, and by carrying that denial
   too far. The single positive principle of Sadduceeism was the one-sided
   prominence given by them to morality, which they separated from its
   necessary inward union with religion. But Christ's combat with the
   Pharisees arose out of the fullest interpenetration of the moral and
   religious elements. The Sadducees wished to cut off the progressive
   developement of Hebraism at an arbitrary point. They refused to
   recognize the growing consciousness of God, which, derived from the
   Mosaic institute, formed a substantial feature of Judaism, and hence
   could not comprehend the higher religious element from which, as a
   germ, under successive Divine revelations, the spiritual life of
   Judaism was to be gradually developed. [70] Rejecting all such growth
   as foreign and false, they held a subordinate and isolated point to be
   absolute and perpetual; adhering to the letter rather than the spirit.
   To the forced allegorizing of the Pharisees in interpreting the
   Scripture, they opposed a slavishly literal and narrow exegesis. But
   Christ, on the other hand, while he rejected the Pharisaic traditions,
   received into his doctrine all the riches of Divine knowledge which the
   progressive growth of Theism, up to the time of John the Baptist, had
   brought forth. His agreement, then, with the Sadducees, consisting, as
   it did, solely in opposition to Pharisaism, was merely negative and
   apparent.

   Some have detected an affinity between the moral teaching of Christ and
   the Anti-Eudaemonism of the Sadducees, the principle, namely, that man
   must do good for its own sake, without the hope of future recompense.
   [71] But here, again, Christianity agrees with Sadduceeisnm only in
   what it denies, not in what it affirms. The divine life of Christianity
   has no more affinity for that selfish Eudaemonism which seeks the good
   as means to an end, than for the spirit of Sadduceeism which denies the
   higher aims of moral action, and makes it altogether "of the earth,
   earthly." These opposite errors sprang from one common source, namely,
   the debasement of the spiritual life into worldliness, and therefore
   Christianity is alike antagonistic to them both, whether seen in the
   worldly admission of a future life by the Pharisees, or in its worldly
   rejection by the Sadducees. Yet in the doctrine of the former, it must
   be admitted, lay a germ of truth which only needed to be freed from
   selfish and sensual tendencies to show itself in its full spiritual
   import. [72]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [70] See below for the way in which Christ illustrated this to the
   Sadducees. As to the Canon, it cannot be actually proved that the
   Sadducees held it differently from other Jews. It is true, Josephus
   says (Archaeol., xiii., x., 6) that they rejected every thing but the
   Mosaic law--haper ouk anagegraptai en tois Mouseos nomois. But the
   Mosaic law is not here opposed to the rest of the Canon, but to oral
   traditions; and the only question was whether the Mosaic law alone, or
   in connexion with oral tradition, was to be held as authority for
   religious usages. The remaining books of the Old Testament were not in
   dispute, as no religious usages at all were derived from them. Still,
   it is not unlikely that the Sadducees went so far, in their opposition
   to Pharisaism, as to reject all doctrines that could not be shown to
   have a Mosaic origin, and to consider the Pentateuch as the sole, or,
   at least, the chief, source of religious truth. As we find such views
   of the Canon among the Jewish-Christian sects (Cf. the Clementines), we
   may infer that they previously existed among the Jews. They would
   hardly have denied Immortality and the Resurrection, if they had held
   the Prophets to be law in the same sense as the Pentateuch; although it
   is possible that they interpreted such passages of the Prophets in
   another way. The general terms in which Josephus speaks of the
   recognition of the Canon among the Jews (i., c. Apion, § 8) do not
   suffice to prove that there were no differences in this respect in the
   different sects.

   [71] No reliance is to be placed in the Talmudic tradition in Pirke
   Aboth, i., 3, according to which the principle thus perverted to the
   denial of a future life came from Antigonus Ish Socho, or Simeon the
   Just. The prevalent orthodoxy was always inclined to ascribe error to
   the perversion of some orthodox doctrine.

   [72] Dr. von Cölln arrives at the conclusion that "the moral philosophy
   of the Sadducees was better than that of the Pharisees, because the New
   Testament does not attack their moral principles, but only their denial
   of the Resurrection."--(Bibl. Theol., i., 450.) We do not admit the
   inference. This silence of the New Testament can be readily accounted
   for on the ground that Sadduceeism had few points in common with
   Christianity; and while it was necessary to guard men frequently
   against Pharisaic abuses of great truths (e. g., of the truth that
   morality and religion are inseparable), the open contrast of
   Sadduceeism made such special controversy with its teachers
   unnecessary.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 26. The Essenes.

   The secrecy which the sect of the Essenes affected has given rise to
   many subtle and arbitrary hypotheses. Some have found in its ardent
   religious spirit ground for believing in a connexion between it and
   Christianity. [73] This argument, by proving too much, proves nothing;
   on the same principle we might show a connexion between Christianity
   and every form under which mysticism has appeared and reappeared in the
   history of religion. But there were other points of similarity between
   Essenism and Christianity, besides this mystic element which has its
   source in man's native religious tendencies. Essenism grew out of
   Judaism, and was pervaded by a moral belief in God, a spirit which was
   nourished and strengthened by habits of seclusion from the stir of
   life, of religious communion, and of quiet prayer and meditation. Other
   resemblances may be discovered between Essenism and the doctrine of
   Christ, or the forms of the first Christian communities; but they may
   be traced, like those just mentioned, to sources common to both, and
   therefore afford no proof of a real connexion between them. A closer
   examination will demonstrate that the similarities were only apparent,
   while the differences were essential.

   For instance, the Essenes prohibited oaths, and so did Christ. Here is
   a resemblance. But the former, confounding the spirit with the letter,
   made the prohibition--which grew out of their rule of absolute veracity
   and mutual confidence in each other--a positive law, unconditionally
   binding, not only within their own community, but in the general
   intercourse of life. Christ prohibited oaths, on the other hand. not by
   an enactment binding only from without, but by a law developing itself
   outwardly from the new spiritual life which he himself implanted in his
   followers. Paul knew that an asseveration, made for right ends, and in
   the spirit of Christ's command, was no violation of that command.

   Again, the law of the Essenes prohibited slavery, and so was Christ's
   intended to subvert it. The sect agreed with the Saviour in seeing that
   all men alike bear the image of God, and that none can have the right,
   by holding their fellows as property, to degrade that image into a
   brute or a chattel. So far Essenism and Christianity agree; but see
   wherein they differ. The one was a formula for a small circle of
   devotees; the other was a system for the regeneration of mankind: the
   one made positive enactments, acting by pressure from without; the
   other implanted new moral principles, to work from within: the one put
   its law in force at once, and declared that no slave could be held in
   its communion; the other gave no direct command upon the subject. Yet
   the whole spirit of Christ's teaching tended to create in men's minds a
   moral sense of the evil of a relation so utterly subversive of all that
   is good in humanity, and thus to effect its entire abolition.

   Let us take another apparent resemblance. The Essenes devoted
   themselves much to healing the sick, and so did Christ (and the gift of
   healing was imparted to the first congregations); but the agencies
   which they employed were essentially different. They made use of
   natural remedies, drawn from the vegetable and mineral kingdoms, and
   handed down the knowledge thereof in their books; [74] but the Saviour
   and his apostles wrought their cures by no intermediate agents, but by
   the direct operation of power from on high. [75] Even when Christ did
   make use of physical means, the results were always out of proportion
   to them.

   Finally, let us compare the scope of Essenism, as a whole, with the
   aims of Christ's mission. Essenism, probably originating in a
   commingling of Judaism with the old Oriental [76] theosophy, manifested
   a spirit at once monkish and schismatic. [77] How strong a contrast
   does such a system present to the active spirit of the Gospel, aiming
   only to implant holy feelings, and so to secure holy lives, seeking
   every where for needy souls, and, wherever the need appears, pouring
   forth its exhaustless treasures without stint! Such a spirit broke away
   at once the wall of separation between man and man, which the
   aristocratic and exclusive spiritual life of Essenism was ever striving
   to build up.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [73] First alluded to in an unpublished treatise of J. G. Wachter, De
   Primordiis Christianae Religionis, libri duo. See, especially,
   Reinhard's Versuch über den Plan Jesu [Reinhard's Plan of the Founder
   of Christianity, translated by A. Kaufman, Andover].

   [74] Joseph., B. J., ii., viii., enthen (i. e., from old writings)
   autois pros therapeian pathon rhizai te alexeterioi kai lithon
   idiotetes anereunontai.

   [75] Cf. what is said further on, under the head of "The Miracles of
   Christ."

   [76] Some modem writers prefer to derive Essenism from Alexandrian
   Platonism transplanted into Palestine, but I can find no proof that
   their view explains the general character or the individual features of
   Essenism as well as that in the text. Moreover, I remain of the opinion
   that the doctrines of the Therapeutae and the Essenes were allied, but
   independent religious tendencies.

   [77] I can give no other translation than the following to the passage
   in Josephus (Archaeol., xviii., 1, 5) which speaks of the Essenes. It
   will be seen that I take the word eirgomenoi, not in the passive, but
   in the middle sense. "They send, it is true, their offerings to the
   temple, but they bring no sacrifices, because they so greatly prefer
   their own way of purifying and sanctifying themselves; and, for fear of
   defilement by taking part with the rest of the people, they keep away
   from the common sanctuary, and make their sacrifices apart surrounded
   only by the initiated."
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 27. Supposed Influence of the Alexandrian--Jewish Doctrines.

   A few words in regard to the supposed influence of the doctrines of the
   Alexandrian Jews upon Christ's culture. Even admitting that these
   doctrines penetrated into Palestine, it can by no means be presupposed
   that they entered into Galilee, and especially into the narrow circle
   of the common people within which he was educated. The grounds on which
   some profess to find traces of such an influence in the discourses of
   Christ would serve as well to prove that Christianity derived its
   origin from Brama or Buddhu. [78]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [78] Cf. my Kirchengeschichte, 2d edit., Part I., for the relation
   between the Alexandrian theology and Christianity.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 28. Affinity of Christianity, as absolute Truth, for the various
   opposing Religious Systems.

   On the dissolution of Judaism, its elements, originally joined together
   in a living unity, necessarily produced various religious tendencies,
   which mutually opposed and excluded each other. In all these we can
   find something akin to the new creation of Christianity. And wherever
   Christianity appears for the first time, or reveals itself anew in its
   own glory, it must offer some points of affinity for the different
   opposing systems. The living, perfect truth has points of tangency for
   the one-sided forms of error; though we may not be thereby enabled to
   put together the perfect whole from the scattered and repellent
   fragments.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 29. Christ's Teaching revealed from within, not received from
   without.

   Had the source of Christ's mighty power been merely a doctrine, it
   might have been received, or at least suggested, from abroad. But his
   power lay in the impression which his manifestation and life as the
   Incarnate God produced; and this could never have been derived from
   without. [79] The peculiar import of his doctrine, as such, consists in
   its relation to himself as a part of his self-revelation, an image of
   his unoriginated and inherent life; and this alone suffices to defy all
   attempts at external explanation.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [79] We recall here the profound sentiment of a prophetic German mind:
   "The pearl of Christianity is a life hidden in God, a truth in Christ
   the Mediator, a power which consists neither in words and forms, nor in
   dogmas and outward acts; it cannot, therefore, be valued by the common
   standards of logic or ethics."--Hamann, iv., 285.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 30. The popular Sentiment in regard to Christ's Connexion with the
   Schools.

   Had Jesus been trained in the Jewish seminaries, [80] his opponents
   would, doubtless, have reproached him with the arrogance of setting up
   for master where he himself had been a pupil. But, on the contrary, we
   find that they censured him for attempting to explain the Scriptures
   without having enjoyed the advantages of the schools (John, vii., 15).
   His first appearance as a teacher in the synagogue at Nazareth caused
   even greater surprise, as he was known there, not as one learned in the
   Law, but rather as a carpenter's son, who had, perhaps, himself worked
   at his father's trade. [81] The general impression of his discourses
   every where was, that they contained totally different materials from
   those furnished by the theological schools (Matt., vii., 29).
     __________________________________________________________________

   [80] Dr. Paulus supposes that Christ, because he was called Rabbi, not
   only by his disciples, but by the distinguished Rabbi Nicodemus, and
   even by his enemies (John, vi., 25), obtained that title in the way
   usual among the Jews; and he intimates that Christ studied with the
   rabbis of the Essenes, and perhaps obtained the degree from them (Life
   of Christ, i., 1, 122). But when we remember that he stood at the head
   of a party which recognized his prophetic character, we can see why
   others, who did not recognize it, would yet call him their master, e.
   g., Matt., xvii., 24; ho didaskalos humon. Nicodemus, however, did
   really acknowledge him as a Divine teacher; nor were those who
   addressed him as Rabbi, in John, vi., 25, by any means his enemies.
   This style of address, therefore, does not imply his possession of a
   title from a Jewish tribunal, but rather arose in the circle of
   followers that he gathered around him. As to the Essenes, it cannot be
   proved that they created rabbis, as did the Jewish synagogues; and if
   they did, such titles would hardly be recognized by the prevailing
   party, the Pharisees.

   [81] It cannot be decided certainly that this was the case. There was a
   tradition in primitive Christian times to that effect; so Justin Martyr
   (Dialog., c. Tryph., 316) says: tauta ta tektonika erga eirgaxeto en
   anthropois o'n, kai zuga dia touton kai ta tes dikaiosu'nes sombola
   didaskon kai energe bion. It may be that this, and the tradition, also,
   that Christ was destitute of personal beauty, were rather ideal than
   historical conceptions, framed to conform with his humble condition "in
   the form of a servant." Christ was not to come forth from a high
   position, but from a lowly workshop; as, according to the reproach of
   Celsus, his first followers were mechanics. But the report may have
   been true, and was, if the ordinary reading of Mark, vi., 3, be
   correct. Against this has been adduced the following passage in Orig.,
   cont. Cels., vi., 36, viz.: hoti oudamou ton en tais ekklesi'ais
   pherome'non euangeli'on te'kton auto` o Iesous anagegraptai. The
   reading in Mark, vi., 3, may have been altered before the time of
   Origen, from a false pride that took offence at Christ's working as a
   common mechanic and a foolish desire to conciliate the pagans, who
   reproached Christians with this feature in the life of their founder.
   Fritzsche founds an ineffectual argument on the following internal
   ground, viz.: "Christ's working at a trade would not have interfered
   with his appearing as a public teacher. The Jews had no contempt for
   artisans, and even the scribes sometimes supported themselves by
   mechanical toils." True, the scribes might occasionally work at trades
   without reproach, but to be merely a mechanic (and no scribe) was quite
   a different thing; so that the ensuing objection, "How comes this
   carpenter to set up as our teacher?" was quite in character, even among
   Jews. It does not follow because, afterward, only designations of
   family are given in the passage, that therefore the first designation
   was fixed upon him only as "the son of the carpenter;" for, certainly,
   the two ideas, "he himself is only a carpenter," and "his relations
   live among us as ordinary people," hang well together. They could
   utter, first, the most cutting contrast, "he is a carpenter, like the
   others, and he now will be a prophet," and then mention only his
   relations who were yet living, but not Joseph, who was already dead. It
   is perfectly in accordance with the genius of Christianity (although
   not necessarily flowing from it), that the Highest should thus spring
   from an humble walk of life, and that the Divine glory should manifest
   itself at first to men in so lowly a form. The Redeemer thus ennobled
   human labour and the forms of common life; there was thenceforth to be
   no banauson in the relations of human society. Thus began the influence
   of Christianity upon the civil and social relations of men--an
   influence which has gone on increasing from that day to this.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER II.

  COURSE OF CHRIST'S LIFE UP TO THE OPENING OF HIS PUBLIC M1NISTRY.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 31. Growing Consciousness of His Messiahship in Christ.

   ALTHOUGH so many years of our Saviour's life are veiled in obscurity,
   we cannot believe that the full consciousness of a Divine call which he
   displayed in his later years was of sudden growth, If a great man
   accomplishes, within a very brief period, labours of paramount
   importance to the world, and which he himself regards as the task of
   his life, we must presume that the strength and energies of his
   previous years were concentrated into that limited period, and that the
   former only constituted a time of preparation for the latter.

   Most of all must this be true of the labours of Christ, the greatest
   and most important that the world has known. We have the right to
   presume that He who assumed as his task the salvation of the human race
   made his whole previous existence to bear upon this mighty labour. The
   idea of the Messiah, as Redeemer and King, streamed forth in Divine
   light, from the course of the theocracy and the scattered intimations
   of the Old Testament, in full extent and clearness, and in Divine light
   he recognized this Messiahship as his own; and this consciousness of
   God within him harmonized with the extraordinary phenomena that
   occurred at his birth.

   But the negative side of the Messiahship, namely, its relation to sin.
   he could not learn from self-contemplation. He could not learn
   depravity by experience; yet, without this knowledge, although the idea
   of the Messiah as theocratic king might have been fully developed in
   his mind, an essential element of his relations to humanity would have
   remained foreign to him. But although his personal experience could not
   unfold this peculiar modification of the Messianic consciousness, many
   of its essential features were continually suggested by his intercourse
   with the outer world. There, in all the relations of life, he saw human
   depravity and its attendant wretchedness. The sight, and the
   sympathizing love which it awoke, made a profound impression upon his
   soul, and formed, at least, a basis for the consciousness of his own
   relation to it as Messiah.

   We may assume, then, that when he reached his thirtieth year, [82]
   fully assured of his call to the Messiahship, he waited only for a sign
   from God to emerge from his obscurity and enter upon his work. This
   sign was to be given him by means of the last of God's witnesses under
   the old dispensation, whose calling it was to prepare the way for the
   new developement of the kingdom of God--by John the Baptist, the last
   representative of the prophetic spirit of the Old Testament, whose
   relation to Christ and his office we shall now more particularly
   examine. [83]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [82] The age at which the Levites entered on their office.--Numb., iv.

   [83] A promising young theologian of Lübeck, L. von Rohden, has lately
   put forth an excellent treatise on this subject, well adapted for
   general circulation, entitled "Johannes der Täufer, in seinem Leben und
   Wirken dargestellt."
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

BOOK III.
     __________________________________________________________________

PREPARATIVES TO THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF CHRIST
     __________________________________________________________________

PART I. OBJECTIVE PREPARATION.--JOHN THE BAPTIST.

PART I1. SUBJECTIVE PREPARATION.--THE TEMPTATION.

                                   BOOK III.

PREPARATIVES TO THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF CHRIST.
     __________________________________________________________________

PART I.

OBJECTIVE PREPARATION. THE MINISTRY OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER I.

  THE CALLING OF THE BAPTIST, AND HIS RELATIONS TO THE JEWS.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 32. How far the Baptist revived the Expectation of a Messiah.

   PROCLAMATION of the approaching kingdom of God, involving the
   restoration of the sunken glory of the Theocracy, and the dawning of a
   brighter day upon God's oppressed ones, was essentially necessary as a
   preparation for Christ's public ministry.

   But this was not all; it was equally necessary to announce Him who was
   called to the accomplishment of this great work. The expectation of the
   kingdom and the king should always have gone together; but we find that
   they did not actually do so. The prophecies of the general renewal were
   often distinct from those which foretold the agent chosen by God to
   accomplish it; and the hope of the former often existed in minds which
   had lost sight of the latter. A Philo proves this. The Greek and
   Alexandrian culture, and perhaps the combination of the two in the
   religious Realism of Palestine, may have tended to bring about this
   result. Be that as it may, it is essential for our purpose to keep the
   two ideas--the announcement of the kingdom and the proclamation of the
   Messiah--separate from each other.

   Some suppose that John the Baptist was the first [84] to suggest the
   idea of a Messiah to the Jewish mind of that day. But certainly this
   idea, so thoroughly interwoven with the theocratic consciousness, could
   not have fallen into oblivion; nay, the sufferings of the people, their
   shame at being slaves to those whom they believed themselves destined
   to rule, and their desire for deliverance from this degrading bondage,
   must have constantly tended to bring it more and more vividly before
   them. It would be going too far, then, to say that this idea had been
   lost out of the mind of that age, and that its revival was due to the
   efforts of a single individual. Much rather should we conceive that the
   spirit of the individual was stirred by an impulse from the spirit of
   the age. But while the general tendency of the popular mind prepared
   the way for John, his labours reacted mightily upon the spirit of the
   age, and formed, indeed, a new epoch in the hopes of men for the
   appearance of the Kingdom and of the Messiah. Christ himself makes this
   epoch the transition-period between the old and the new dispensations.
   [85]

   It was essential, also, to this preparation for the Messiah, that the
   minds of the people should obtain a clear conception of the object to
   which their hopes were directed, and the means by which it was to be
   obtained, involving a more correct notion of the work and kingdom of
   Messiah, and of the moral requisites for participation therein. All
   this belonged to the calling of the Old-Testament order of prophets, of
   which John constituted the apex. We must look for the peculiar features
   of his position in the fact that he himself not only formed the point
   of transition to the new era, but was allowed to recognize and point
   out the Messiah, and to give the signal for the beginning of his public
   ministry.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [84] So Schleiermacher (Christliche Sittenlehre, p. 19) states that
   John's work was "to revive the forgotten idea of the Messiah."

   [85] Matt., xi., 12. We shall have occasion to say more on this passage
   hereafter.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 33. Causes of Obscurity in the Accounts left us of the
   Baptist.--Sources: The Evangelists. Josephus.

   The difficulties and obscurities that remain in the accounts of this
   remarkable man seem to have arisen necessarily from the peculiar
   stand-point which he occupied. In a prophet or a forerunner, we must
   always distinguish between what he utters with clear
   self-consciousness, and what lies beyond the utterance, concealed even
   from himself, until a later period; between the fundamental idea, and
   the form, perhaps not wholly fitting, in which it veils itself.
   Opposite elements always meet each other in an epoch which constitutes
   the transition-point from one stage of developement to another; and we
   cannot look for a logical and connected mode of thinking in the
   representative of such an epoch. In some of his utterances we may find
   traces of the old period; in others, longings for the new; and in
   bringing them together, we may find different views which cannot always
   be made perfectly to harmonize.

   The nature of the authorities to which we are confined makes it
   peculiarly difficult to come at the objective truth in regard to John
   the Baptist. On the one side we have the accounts of the Evangelists,
   given from the Christian stand-point, and for religious ends; and on
   the other that of Josephus, [86] which is purely historical in its
   character and aims..

   As to the first, it is very probable that John could be better
   understood in the light of Christianity than he understood himself and
   his mission. The aims of a preparatory and transition-period are always
   better comprehended after their accomplishment than before; so, truths
   which were veiled from John's apprehension stood clearly forth before
   the minds of the Evangelists. But this very fact may have caused the
   obscurity which we find in their accounts of the Baptist. We are very
   apt, in describing a lower point of view from a higher, to attribute to
   the former what belongs only to the latter. Any one who has passed
   through a subordinate and preparatory stage of thought to a higher one,
   will find it hard to keep the distinction between the two clearly
   before his consciousness: they blend themselves together in spite of
   him. So, perhaps, it may have happened that the distinctive differences
   between the stand-point of John and that of Christianity were lost
   sight of when the evangelical accounts were prepared, and that the
   Baptist was represented as nearer to Christianity than he really was.
   The likelihood of this result would be all the greater if the Christian
   writer had been himself a disciple of John; such a one, even though
   endowed with the sincerest love of truth, would naturally see more in
   the words of his old master than the latter himself, under his peculiar
   circumstances, could possibly have intended. After a prophecy has
   reached its fulfilment, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to
   reproduce the precise consciousness under which the prediction was
   uttered.

   If, therefore, we find, on close inquiry, that the historical
   statements are somewhat obscured by subjective influences, our estimate
   of their veracity need be in no wise affected thereby. Such a result
   would not conflict in the least with the only tenable idea of
   Inspiration. The organs which the Holy Ghost illuminated and inspired
   to convey his truth to men retained their individual peculiarities, and
   remained within the sphere of the psychological laws of our being.
   Besides Inspiration, both in its nature and its object, refers only to
   man's religious interests and to points connected with it. But
   practical religion requires only a knowledge of the truth itself; it
   needs not to understand the gradual genetic developement of the truth
   in the intellect, or to distinguish the various stages of its advance
   to distinct and perfect consciousness. On the other hand, these latter
   are precisely the aims towards which scientific history directs itself.
   It follows, therefore, that the interest of practical religion and that
   of scientific history may not always run in the same channel; and the
   latter must give place to the former, especially in points so vital as
   the direct impression which Christ made upon mankind. Frequent
   illustrations of this distinction are afforded by the interpretations
   of passages from the Old Testament given by the apostles.

   In all our inquiries into the evangelical histories, we must keep in
   view the fact that they were written not to satisfy scientific, but
   religious wants; not to afford materials for systematic history, but to
   set forth the ground of human salvation in Christ and his kingdom.
   There was, indeed, one who could distinguish the different stages in
   the developement of revelation at a single piercing glance; but this
   one was He in whom God and man were united. He himself told his
   Apostles that ho had this power, and his words in regard to the
   stand-point of John the Baptist illustrate it. These words alone must
   form our guiding light.

   It might be inferred, if what we have said be true, that the account of
   Josephus, which proceeds from a purely historical interest, should be
   preferred to that of the Evangelists. But it must not be forgotten that
   historical events can only be correctly understood when viewed from the
   stand-point of the province to which they belong; and so events that
   fall within the sphere of religion are only intelligible from a
   religious stand-point. And as John's import to the history of the world
   consists in the fact that he formed the dividing line between the two
   stages of developement in the kingdom of God, it cannot be fully
   understood except by an intuitive religious sense, capable of
   appreciating religious phenomena. Of such a religious sense Josephus
   was destitute. Now the religious sense can get along without the
   scientific; but the latter cannot do without the former, where the
   understanding of religious events is concerned; and hence the living
   peculiarities of John the Baptist vanished under the hands of Josephus,
   although he was able to apprehend John's character and appearance in
   their general features. To his religious deficiency must be added his
   habit of adapting himself to the taste and culture of the Greeks, a
   habit which could not but wear away his Jewish modes of thought and
   feeling. He saw in John only a man of moral ardour, who taught the
   truth to the Jews, rebuked their corruptions, and offered them, instead
   of their lustrations and outward righteousness, a symbol of inward
   spiritual purification in his water-baptism. With such a narrow view as
   this we could neither understand John's use of baptism, nor explain his
   public labours among such a people as the Jews. It is but a beggarly
   abstraction from the living individual elements which the Gospel
   accounts afford.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [86] Archaeol. xix. 1.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 34. The Baptist's Mode of Life and Teaching in the Desert.

   We learn from Josephus [87] that many pious and earnest men among the
   Jews, disgusted with the corruptions of the times, retired, like the
   monks and hermits of Christianity at a later day, into wilderness
   spots, and there, becoming teachers of Divine wisdom, collected
   disciples around them. Such a one was John. Consecrated from his birth,
   by a sign from heaven, to his Divine calling, he led a rigid and
   ascetic life from his very childhood. Had we nothing but Josephus's
   [88] account to guide us, we might suppose that John only differed from
   the other teachers of the desert in the fact that the spirit of his
   teaching was more practical, and tended to carry him out into a wider
   field of action. While they only revealed the truths of a higher life
   to such as sought them in their solitude, he felt constrained to go
   forth and raise his reproving voice aloud among the multitude, to
   condemn the Jews for their vices and their hypocrisy, and to call them,
   abandoning their false security and their debasing trust in outward
   works, to seek the genuine piety which comes from the heart. This part
   of John's ministry, viz., his work as a reformer, Josephus has brought
   out prominently; while he has entirely failed to notice the indelible
   stamp of the Baptist's labours left upon the history of the Theocracy.

   John had retired to the desert region west of the Dead Sea, and there
   lived a life of abstinence and austerity, harmonizing well with his
   inward grief, for the corruptions of his people. Like his type, Elias,
   he wore coarse garments, and satisfied his wants with a nourishment
   which nature offered in a species of locusts, sometimes used as food,
   and wild honey. [89]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [87] An example is afforded in the case of Banus, of whom Josephus, who
   was his disciple, gives an account in his autobiography, § 2: "estheti
   men apo dendron chromenon, trophen de ten automatos phuomenen
   prospheromenon, psuchro de hudati ten hemeran kai ten nukta pollakis
   louomenos pros agneian."

   [88] Archaeol., xviii., v. 2.

   [89] In the Ebionitish recension of Matthew, we find the food of John
   described as meli agrion, hou he geusis en tou manna, hos enkris en
   elaio ("it had the taste of manna, as a cake baked in oil."--Num., xi.,
   8). The simple statement of Matthew is here misrepresented, and even
   falsified. The akrides (locusts) seemed to this writer food unworthy
   for John, and he makes enkrides (cakes) out of them, and thus gets a
   chance of comparing John's food with manna.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 35. John as Baptist and Preacher of Repentance.

   While John was thus sighing in solitude over the sins of a degenerate
   people, and praying that God would soon send the promised Deliverer,
   the assurance was vouchsafed to him from above that the Messiah should
   soon be revealed to him. He felt himself called to declare this
   assurance to the people, and to exhort them to prepare their souls for
   the approaching epoch. He abandoned the solitude of the desert for the
   banks of the Jordan, [90] gathered the people in hosts about him, and
   announced to them the coming appearance of both the Messiah and his
   kingdom, which ideas he never separated. He proclaimed to them that God
   would sift his people, and that the unworthy should be condemned and
   excluded from the Theocracy. He denounced as false and treacherous the
   prevailing idea that theocratic descent and the observance of outward
   ceremonies were the only requisites for admittance into Messiah's
   kingdom, and exhorted all to true repentance as the one essential
   preparation. He made use of baptism as a symbol of preparatory
   consecration to the Messiah's kingdom, a course to which he might have
   been led by the lustrations common among the Jews, and by the
   intimations of prophecy, such as Mal., iii.; Zach., xiii.; Ezek.,
   xxxvi., 25, even if the baptism of proselytes was not then extant among
   the Jews. Doubtless the Baptist stood in a special relation to those
   that flocked about him as followers; although, as preacher of
   repentance, as the voice of one crying in the wilderness (Isai., xl.,
   3), whose duty it was to prepare the way for the Messiah amid a people
   estranged from God, he held a general and common relation to all.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [90] We follow the statement of Luke (iii., 2), which has the advantage
   in distinguishing from each other the periods in John's manifestation.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 36. Relations of the Pharisees and Sadducees to the Baptist.

   We are naturally led here to inquire into the relations which John
   sustained to the different classes of the Jewish people. Was he, as
   preacher of repentance, only a man of the people, and did the
   Pharisees, the hierarchical party, manifest their jealous opposition
   from the very first, or did it arise by degrees at a later period? Of
   one thing we may be sure, from Matt., iii., 7, viz., that many
   Pharisees were to be found among the number that crowded about John and
   submitted to his baptism. Yet Christ, in one of his last discourses at
   Jerusalem (Matt., xxi., 32), drew a striking contrast between the
   publicans who believed in John's prophetic calling, and were led by him
   to repentance, and the Pharisees, who persevered in their
   self-sufficiency and unbelief. The words of Matt., xi., 16, seem also
   to indicate that the general spirit of the people was as hostile to
   John as it subsequently showed itself to Christ, and that only a few,
   open to the lessons of heavenly wisdom, admitted the Divine mission of
   the Baptist. So, also, in Luke, vii., 29, 30, the course of the people
   and the publicans, in following John and submitting to his baptism, is
   contrasted with the very opposite conduct of the Pharisees and lawyers,
   who "rejected the counsel of God against themselves."

   Still, Matthew (iii., 7) states expressly, that "many Pharisees and
   Sadducees came to John's baptism," and the form of the statement
   distinguishes these from the ordinary throng. It seems somewhat
   unhistorical that these sects, so opposite to each other, should be
   named together here, as well as in some other places in the Gospels;
   but an explanation is perhaps to be found in the fact that it was
   customary to name them together on the ground of their common hatred to
   Christianity. It appears improbable that men of the peculiar religious
   opinions of the Sadducees should have been attracted by the preacher of
   repentance, the forerunner of the Messiah; nor does John, in his severe
   sermon, make any special reference to that sect, an omission which
   could hardly have occurred had any of the sect so far departed from
   their ordinary habits as to listen to his preaching. [91] It does not
   follow, however, that the mention of the Pharisees is in the same
   predicament; on the contrary, the historical citation of the latter may
   have given rise to the unhistorical mention of the Sadducees. Nor does
   the fact that the Pharisees, at a later period, maintained an attitude
   of hostility towards John prove that they had opposed him from the
   beginning. His rigid asceticism and zeal for the Messiah were in entire
   harmony with the spirit of their sect; and they could listen with
   approval to his energetic reproofs and calls to repentance, so long as
   they were aimed only at the people and the publicans. So, in the
   Christian Church, ardent reformers and witnesses to the truth have been
   favoured even by the heads of the hierarchy, so long as they attacked
   only the common faults and vices of men. But the first assault upon the
   hierarchy itself roused all its hatred and its vengeance.

   In the earlier period of John's preaching, then, there may have been
   nothing to excite the jealousy of the Pharisees. Moreover, it is not
   likely that all who bore the name of Pharisees were fully imbued with
   the spirit of the sect. Although the majority of them, intent only upon
   selfish and party aims, may have regarded John's ministry with an eye
   of suspicion, there were probably among them some earnest, upright men,
   upon whom his preaching could not fail to make an impression. These two
   thoughts may serve to reconcile Matt., iii., 7, with the other passages
   quoted, in which the hostility of the Pharisees is mentioned. Again,
   the expression of Christ in John, v., 35, seems to imply that the
   Pharisees received and approved John's prophecy of the coming Messiah,
   but did not allow his words to sink deep into their hearts or to
   operate upon their thoughts and inclinations. The severe sermon [92]
   reported by the Evangelists was certainly not adapted to such as came
   to John, penitent and broken-hearted, to obtain consolation and
   guidance; but rather to the haughty and arrogant Pharisee, who felt
   sure of his share in the Messiah's kingdom, appear when it might,
   without either repentance or forgiveness. It was these that he
   stigmatized as a "brood of vipers," and no sons of Abraham. It was
   these to whom he said, in tones of warning and reproof, "Who has told
   you that by simple baptism you shall escape God's coming judgment?
   Would you really escape it? Then repent, and do works meet for
   repentance. Trust not to your saying Abraham is our father;' for I tell
   you that the developement of the kingdom is not confined to the race of
   Abraham; nay, from these very stones that lie upon the river bank, God
   can raise up his children."

   In these last words he meant to tell them that if the Jews disgraced
   their Theocratic descent, God would remove his kingdom from them and
   impart it unto strangers. He ends by proclaiming that the Messiah would
   sift his people thoroughly, and exclude' all that should be found
   unworthy. Such preaching must have been enough to imbitter and alienate
   the Pharisees, even if they had been before disposed to approve and
   favour the preacher.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [91] We cannot support the expression of Matthew by the statement of
   Josephus (xviii., I., 4), that the Sadducees were accustomed to
   accommodate their own convictions to the principles of the Pharisees,
   on account of the strong hold which the latter had upon the people. In
   this case, at least, no such accommodation was required, from the
   repute in which John was held among the Pharisees.

   [92] Luke, iii., 7; Matt., iii., 7. Luke reports it as addressed to the
   people; Matthew to the Pharisees and Sadducees.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 37. Relations of John to the People, and to the narrower circle of
   his own Disciples.

   True penitents who came to the Baptist inquiring the way of life found
   in the severe ascetic a kind and condescending teacher. He gave them no
   vague and high-sounding words, but adapted his instructions with minute
   care to their special condition and circumstances. John resembled the
   austere preachers of repentance who sprung up in the Middle Ages in
   more than one respect; but especially in the two fold relation which he
   sustained, to the people generally, and to his disciples in particular.
   While the latter imitated his own ascetic piety in order to fit
   themselves for preachers of repentance, he did not demand of the former
   to abandon their ordinary line of life, even when it was one obnoxious
   to the prejudices of the Jews; the soldier was not required to leave
   the ranks, nor the tax-gatherer his office, but only to fulfil their
   respective duties with honesty and fidelity. All alike were commanded
   to do good; but only those whose occupations were sinful had to abandon
   them, and at his command many did so [93]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [93] Matt., xxi., 32.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 38. John's Demands upon the People compared with those of Christ.
   --His humble Opinion of his own Calling.

   But how very moderate do John's requirements appear in comparison with
   those of Christ, who demanded at the very outset an absolute sacrifice
   of the will and the affections! This difference arose naturally,
   however, from the different positions which they occupied. John was
   fully conscious that the moral regeneration which was indispensable to
   admittance into the Messiah's kingdom could only be accomplished by a
   Divine principle of life; and, knowing that to impart this was beyond
   his power, he confined himself to a preparatory purification of the
   morals of the people. The great, the God-like feature of his character
   was his thorough understanding of himself and his calling. Filled as he
   was with enthusiasm, he yet felt that he was but the humble instrument
   of the Divine Spirit, called, not to found the new creation, but only
   to proclaim it; nor did the thronging of eager thousands to hang upon
   his lips, nor the enthusiastic love of his own immediate followers,
   ever ready to glorify their master, in the least degree blind his
   perceptions of duty, or raise him above his calling. Convinced that he
   was inspired of God to prepare, and not to create, he never pretended
   to work miracles, nor did his disciples, strongly as he impressed them,
   ever attribute miraculous powers to him.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER II.

  RELATION OF THE BAPTIST TO MESSIAH.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 39. John's Explanation of his Relation to the Messiah. The Baptism by
   Water and by Fire.

   CAREFULLY, however, as John avoided exciting false expectations, they
   could hardly fail to arise at a period so full of foreboding and hope
   for the coming of Messiah, after time enough had elapsed for him to
   make a powerful impression upon the public mind as a preacher of
   repentance and proclaimer of a better future. [94] Many of those whom
   his preaching had so deeply moved became uneasy to ascertain his true
   relation to the Messiah; and as his language on the subject was always
   concise, and rather suggestive than explanatory, they were inclined to
   think that his real character was only kept in the back ground for the
   time, and would afterward be gradually unfolded. But when the Baptist
   saw that men mused in their hearts whether he were the Christ or no,
   [95] he resolved to define his relation to the Messiah explicitly and
   unmistakeably. His mission, he told them, was to baptize by water, as a
   symbol of the preparatory repentance which had to open the way for that
   renewal and purification of the nation by Divine power which was to be
   expected in the Messiah; the lofty one that was to follow, raised so
   far above himself, that he should be dignified by performing for him
   the most menial services. He it was that should baptize them with the
   Holy Ghost and with fire; that is to say, that as his (John's)
   followers were entirely immersed in the water, so the Messiah would
   immerse the souls of believers in the Holy Ghost, imparted by himself;
   so that it should thoroughly penetrate their being, and form within
   them a new principle of life. And this Spirit-baptism was to be
   accompanied by a baptism of fire. [96] Those who refused to be
   penetrated by the Spirit of the Divine life should be destroyed by the
   fire of the Divine judgments. The "sifting" by fire ever goes along
   with the advance of the Spirit, and consumes all who will not
   appropriate the latter. So John represents the Messiah as appearing
   with his "fan" in his hands, to purify the "threshing-floor" of his
   kingdom, to gather the worthy into the glorified congregation of God,
   and to cast out the unworthy and deliver them over to the Divine
   judgments.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [94] Paul's words (Acts, xiii., 25) lead us to infer that this took
   place first towards the end of John's career.

   [95] Luke, iii., 15.

   [96] Some think the "fire" is used as a symbol of the Holy Ghost,
   inasmuch as it is employed in other places in Scripture to denote
   Divine influences. In this view of the passage, as the baptism by water
   symbolizes preparatory repentance, so that by fire symbolizes the
   transfiguring and purifying power of the Holy Spirit. Our own opinion
   is, however, that as judgment by fire is spoken of but a few verses
   after (Luke, iii., 17), it must be taken in the same sense here; and
   the baptism by fire referred to the sifting process immediately
   mentioned. Thus the fire is the symbol of the power which consumes
   every thing impure, in the same sense in which God is said to be "a
   consuming fire."
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 40. John's Conception of Messiah's Kingdom.

   Let us inquire now upon what view of the calling and work of the
   Messiah, and of the nature of his kingdom, these expressions of the
   Baptist were founded. He contradicts the notion, so prevalent among the
   Jews, that all the descendants of Abraham who outwardly observed the
   religion of their fathers would be taken into the Messiah's kingdom,
   while his heavy judgments would fall upon the pagans alone. On the
   contrary, he maintains the necessity, for all who would enter that
   kingdom, of a moral new birth, which he sets forth to them by the
   Spirit-baptism; and proclaims, as a necessary preparation for this new
   birth, a consciousness of sin and longing to be free from it; all which
   is implied in the word metanoia, when stated as the necessary condition
   of obtaining the promised baptism of the Spirit, He expects this
   kingdom to be visible; but yet conceives it as purely spiritual, as a
   community filled and inspired by the Spirit of God, and existing, in
   communion of the Divine life, with the Messiah as its visible King; so
   that, what had not been the case before, the idea of the Theocracy and
   its manifestation should precisely correspond to each other. He has
   already a presentiment that the willing among the pagans will be
   incorporated into the kingdom in place of the unworthy Jews who shall
   be excluded. The appearance of Messiah will cause a sifting of the
   Theocratic people. This presupposes that he will not overturn all
   enemies and set up his kingdom at once by the miraculous power of God,
   but will manifest himself in such a form that those whose hearts are
   prepared for his coming will recognize him as Messiah, while those of
   ungodly minds will deny and oppose him. On the one hand, a community of
   the righteous will gather around him of their own accord; and, on the
   other, the enmity of the corrupt multitude will be called forth and
   organized. The Messiah must do battle with the universal corruption;
   and, after the strife has separated the wicked members of the
   Theocratic nation from the good, will come forth victorious, and
   glorify the purified people of God under his own reign.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 41. John's Recognition of Jesus as the Messiah.

   (1.) Import of his Baptism of Jesus.--(2.) The Continuance of his
   Ministry.--(3.) Possible Wavering in his Conviction of Christ's
   Messiahship.--(4.) His Message from Prison.--(5.) Conduct of his
   Disciples towards Jesus.

   As John's conception of the Messiah included his office in freeing the
   people of God from the power of evil, and imparting to them a new life
   in the life of God, it appears that he presupposed also the fulness of
   the Holy Ghost dwelling in him in such a way as that he could best w it
   upon others. From the first germ of the idea of Messiah in the Prophets
   down to the time of Christianity itself, we find ever that a just and
   profound conception of his office involves in it a higher idea of his
   person. So, perhaps, John, although his expectation of a visible
   realization of the Theocracy shows him as yet upon Old Testament
   ground, may have at least touched upon the stand-point of Christianity.
   His position was very like that held by Simeon, and indeed, in general,
   by all those Jews who, in advance of the sentiments of the times, were
   inspired with earnest longings for the appearance of the Messiah, and
   thus stood upon the border-land between the two stages of the kingdom
   of God. And in John's representation of his own inferiority to him
   "that should come," and in his clear apprehension of the limits of his
   mission and his power--an apprehension that distinguished him from all
   other founders of preparatory epochs--we have an assurance that he will
   never imagine his preparatory stand-point to be a permanent one; and
   that, as he feels himself unworthy "to unloose the shoestrings" of the
   lofty One that is to appear, so he will bow himself in the same humble
   reverence when He, whom his spiritual sense shall recognize as the
   expected one, shall appear in person before him.

   We are fully aware of the objections that may be raised against these
   conclusions. It may be said, and truly, that one may do homage to an
   idea, whose general outlines are present to his intuition, but may be
   unfit to recognize the realization of the idea when presented before
   his eyes in all its features. The prejudices of his time and
   circumstances are sure to start up and hinder him from the recognition.
   But surely, in the case of John, the lowliness of mind and sobriety of
   judgment to which we have just referred give us ground to expect that
   he, at least, would so far surmount his peculiar prejudices as to
   recognize the admission of a higher element into the course of
   events--to recognize a stand-point even essentially different from his
   own; especially as he had himself pointed out beforehand the
   characteristics of such a difference. Yet we do not wish to deny that
   doubts may arise, in regard to the fact of John's recognition of Jesus
   as Messiah, in the minds of those who do not presuppose the
   unconditional credibility of the Gospels. Perhaps the remark above
   made, in reference to a possible commingling of the subjective and the
   objective in the Gospel accounts, may be applicable here. But before we
   proceed with our connected historical recital, we must seek sure
   historical footing, by inquiring into the grounds of the doubts
   referred to.

   The following questions, perhaps, express these grounds: If John was
   really convinced of Christ's Messiahship, why did he continue his
   independent ministry, and not rather submit himself and all his
   followers as disciples to Christ 1 Why did he wait until after his
   imprisonment before sending to inquire of Jesus whether he were tile
   Messiah, or men should look for another? Why, even after the Baptist's
   death, did his disciples preserve their separate existence as a sect?
   How happened it that, in a public proclamation of the Gospel (Acts, x.,
   37; xiii., 25), no stress is laid upon John's divinely inspired
   testimony concerning Christ--nay, it is not even quoted--while his
   exhortations to repentance and his announcement of the coming Messiah
   are dwelt upon as the preparation for Christ's public ministry? Do not
   these difficulties make it doubtful whether John really did, before the
   time of his imprisonment, recognize Christ's Messiahship? Or, is it not
   probable that the Christian view, which sees in Christ the erchomenos
   announced by John, was involuntarily attributed to the Baptist, and so
   the tradition grew up that he had personally recognized the Messiahship
   of Jesus, and introduced him into his public labours? In this case we
   should have to admit that he was first induced, while in prison, by
   what he heard of Christ, to recognize his calling--and that not only
   had this fact been transferred to an earlier period in his history, but
   too much made of it altogether.

   Now it would be easy to overthrow this whole structure at once, by
   assuming the genuineness and authority of John's Gospel. [97] It is
   true, as has been before said, the disciple, after going beyond his
   Master, might have seen more in the previously uttered words of the
   latter than he himself had intended; but, at any rate, those words must
   at least have afforded some ground for the disciple's representation.
   If the above-mentioned doubts are well grounded, John's
   misrepresentation of what occurred between the Baptist and Christ is
   nothing short of wilful falsehood. The later Christian traditions,
   indeed, might have admitted such a transposition without the intent to
   deceive; but John was an eye-witness. We do not intend, however, to
   appeal to John's authority, but shall examine the matter on internal
   evidence, grounded on the nature of the case.

   (1.) Import of the Baptism of Jesus by John.

   We first consider the baptism of Jesus by John. Those who carry their
   doubts of John's testimony farthest, dispute even the fact of this
   baptism. But this is absolutely groundless skepticism; for all the New
   Testament accounts, however else they may differ, presuppose the event
   as a fact. It would be impossible to account even for the origin of
   such a tradition, if the event itself did not originate it; the very
   application of John's baptism to the sinless Jesus must have caused
   difficulties to the Christian mind, which a peculiar line of thought
   alone could remove. But, admitting the fact, it cannot be supposed that
   Christ submitted to the baptism in the same sense, and for the same
   purpose, as others did; for we can find no possible connecting link
   between the sense of sin and the desire for purification and redemption
   felt by all ordinary applicants for the ordinance, and the
   consciousness of the sinless Redeemer. It was with this latter,
   unoriginated consciousness, however, that Jesus presented himself for
   baptism. But we cannot suppose that he did it in silence; such a course
   might have led the Baptist, if not otherwise enlightened, to suppose
   that he came forward in the same relation to the ordinance as other
   men. Its probability is diminished, too, in proportion to our idea of
   John's susceptibility for the disclosures which Christ might have made
   to him. We are led, therefore, by the internal necessity of the case,
   to suppose that, in administering the baptism, he received a higher
   light in regard to the relation which he himself sustained to Christ.

   (2.) The Baptist's continuance in his Ministry of Preparation.

   We must conclude, however, that if John did recognize Jesus as Messiah,
   he applied to him all his Old-Testament ideas of Messiah as the founder
   of a visible kingdom. With these views he would expect that Christ
   would bring about the public recognition of his office by his own
   Messianic labours, without the aid of his testimony. This expectation
   would naturally cause him to forbear any public testimony to Christ,
   and to content himself with directing only a few of the most
   susceptible of his disciples to the Saviour; but this would have been a
   merely private affair, forming no part of his open mission to the
   world. That mission remained always the same, viz., to prepare the way
   for the Messiah's kingdom, and to point to Him who was soon to reveal
   himself; not to anticipate his self-revelation, and to declare him to
   the people by name as the Messiah. This preparatory position of John
   had to continue until the time when the entrance of Jesus as Theocratic
   King, upon the establishment of his kingdom, gave the signal for all to
   range themselves under his banners. The Baptist, true to the position
   that had been assigned to him in the Theocratic developement, had to
   continue his labours until their termination, a termination which
   external circumstances were soon to bring about. [98] As, therefore,
   John's testimony was merely private, and never openly laid before the
   people; and, moreover, as its value depended entirely upon the
   recognition of John's own prophetic calling (a recognition by no means
   universal among the Jews), there is no difficulty in accounting for the
   fact that so little use was made of his testimony in the citation of
   proofs for Jesus's Messiahship by Peter and Paul, in the passages above
   referred to. [99]

   (3.) Possible Wavering in John's Conviction of the Messiahship of
   Jesus.

   Supposes now, that John's faith did waver in his prison--that, in an
   unhappy hour, he was seized with doubts of Christ's Messiahship--would
   it follow that he had not before enjoyed and expressed with Divine
   confidence his conviction of the truth? Would the later doubt suffice
   to do away with the earlier and out-spoken certainty? Can the man who
   makes such an assertion have any idea of the nature and developement of
   religious conviction and knowledge--of the relation between the Divine,
   the supernatural, and the natural? It is true that scientific knowledge
   and conviction, logically obtained, can never be lost so long as the
   intellect remains unimpaired; but it is quite another thing with
   religious truths. These do not grow out of logic; but, presupposing
   certain spiritual tendencies and affections, they arise from an
   immediate contact of the soul with God, from a beam of God's light,
   penetrating the mind that is allied to him. The knowledge and the
   convictions which are drawn neither from natural reason nor from the
   knowledge of the world, but are always rebelled against by the latter
   until the whole spirit is penetrated by the Divine, can retain their
   vitality only by the same going forth of the higher life which gave
   them birth; only so far as the soul can maintain itself in the same
   atmosphere, and in the same tendency to the supernatural and the
   Divine. So one may, when in the full enjoyment of the higher life, when
   no vapours of earth dim his spiritual vision, have clear conception and
   conviction of religious truths, which may perplex him with obscurities
   at times when the earthly tendencies prevail. And thus we may explain
   the fluctuations and transitions in the developement of religious life,
   convictions and knowledge, of which the experience of Christians in all
   ages affords instances. It may be said that, although this explanation
   holds good of religious life in general, it cannot apply to an inspired
   prophet like John, or to the truths which he obtained from the light of
   a supernatural revelation. This objection would imply that a single
   objective revelation is the only source of Christian truth, which is
   not the case. The apprehension of such truths in every individual mind
   rests not merely upon this single objective ground, but also upon a
   repetition of the Divine manifestation to the mind itself. The
   difference between the inspired prophet and the ordinary Christian
   believer, in regard to the reception of God's truth, is not a
   difference in kind, but in degree. Christ declared that the least of
   Christians was greater than John; words that ill entitle us to draw
   such a line of distinction between the Baptist and living Christians of
   all ages as to apply another standard and another law to his religious
   life. It is true, there is a lifeless supernaturalism which views all
   Divine communications rather as overlying the mind than incorporating
   themselves with its natural psychological developement; and the
   opponents of revealed religion caricature this view to serve their
   purpose of subverting the doctrines they so bitterly hate. But
   notwithstanding, the doctrine of such Divine communication is perfectly
   in accordance with the facts of the Divine life as they are stated in
   the Scriptures; and we are compelled thereby to connect these
   manifestations with the natural growth of the mind in its receptive
   powers and spontaneous activity; to apply the general laws of the mind
   to the developement of whatever is communicated to it by a higher
   light.

   As we have before remarked, John stood between two different stages of
   the developement of the Theocracy. It is, therefore, not unlikely that
   in times of the fullest religious inspiration, caused in his soul by
   Christ's revelations to him, he obtained views of the coming kingdom
   which he could not always hold fast, and his old ideas sometimes
   revived and even gained the ascendency. Although he had just
   conceptions of Messiah's kingdom in regard to its moral and religious
   ends, he was always inclined to connect worldly ideas with it. But the
   object of his hopes was not realized. He heard, indeed, a great deal
   about the miracles of Jesus, but saw him not at the head of his visible
   kingdom. The signal so long waited for was never given. Is it,
   therefore, matter of wonder if, in some hour of despondency, the
   worldly element in the Baptist's views became too strong, and
   perplexity and doubt arose within him?

   (4.) The Message from Prison.

   The inquiry which John sent to the Saviour from prison [100] shows that
   his doubts did not refer at all to the superiority of Christ, but to
   the question whether the mission of the latter was the Messiahship
   itself, or only a preparation for it. So great was his respect for the
   authority of Christ, that he expected the decisive answer to the
   question from his own lips. Neither the form of the question nor the
   Saviour's reply favour the supposition that John was led, simply by the
   reports of Christ's labours which had reached him in prison, to the
   thought that he might be the erchomenos. Had this been the case, Christ
   would have answered him as he did others in similar circumstances; he
   would not have warned him not to be perplexed or offended because his
   groundless expectations in regard to the Messiah were not fully
   realized in Christ's ministry, but, on the contrary, would have
   cherished a faith which could grow up in one who was languishing in
   prison, and unable to see with his own eyes the mighty works that were
   done, and would have encouraged him to yield himself fully up to the
   dawning conviction. The warning against skandalizesthai was precisely
   applicable to one who had once believed, but whose faith had wavered
   because his hopes were not fully fulfilled. The answer of Jesus,
   moreover, shows plainly in what expectations John was disappointed:
   they were, as we shall have occasion to show hereafter, such as grew
   out of his Old Testament stand-point, and attributed an outward
   character to the kingdom of God.

   (5.) Conduct of John's Disciples towards Jesus.

   It does not militate at all against our position, in regard to the
   Baptist's recognition of Christ, that many of his disciples did not
   join the Saviour at a later period; and even that a sect was formed
   from them hostile to Christianity. We have already seen that it was
   necessary for John to maintain his independent sphere of labour, and
   that his position naturally led him to direct only the more susceptible
   of his disciples to Jesus, and that too by degrees. These latter were
   probably such as had imbibed more of John's longing desire for "him
   that was to come," than of the austere and ascetic spirit of the sect.
   As to the rest, we have only to say that we have no right to judge the
   master by his scholars, or the scholars by their master. Men who hold a
   position preparatory and conducive to a higher one, often retain the
   peculiar and one-sided views of their old ground, and are even driven
   into an attitude of opposition to the new and the better. This seems to
   have been the case with John's disciples in relation to Christianity.

   From this full investigation of the question, we cannot but conclude
   that there is no reason to doubt the historical veracity of the
   narrative. It is matter of fact, that John openly recognized Jesus as
   the Messiah when he baptized him. Having secured this firm historical
   basis, we proceed now, with the greater confidence, to inquire into the
   peculiar import of the baptism itself.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [97] John, i., 7, 15; iii., 32; v., 33.

   [98] I am gratified to find that Winer, one of the most eminent
   investigators of Biblical literature, has given an intimation of the
   view which I have here fully carried out. See his "Biblisches
   Realwörterbuch," i., 692, 2d ed.

   [99] Acts, x., 37; xiii., 25. Paul had much more occasion to quote
   John's testimony when preaching to his disciples at Ephesus (Acts,
   xix., 1-5). There is no ground for asserting positively that he did not
   quote it, although the passage does not state expressly that he did;
   for it remains doubtful whether the words tout' estin, of verse 4, are
   applied by Paul to the erchomenos announced by John, or were intended
   by him to be attributed to the Baptist. What is said of Apollos (Acts,
   xviii., 25: he was instructed in the way of the Lord, knowing only the
   baptism of John) cannot be understood nakedly of the pure, spiritual
   Messiahship. This could only be the case if ho'dos tou kuriou (v. 25)
   were equivalent to Theou o'dou (v. 26), and signified merely the way
   revealed by God, the right way of worshipping God. But this cannot be.
   The word kurios must be taken in its specific, Christian sense, as
   applicable to Christ; an interpretation confirmed by what follows,
   viz.: he taught diligently the things of the Lord, which cannot refer
   to the doctrine of God, but to the proclamation of Jesus as Messiah.
   But if it could be fully proved that all these disciples of John knew
   as yet nothing of Jesus as the erchomenos announced by the Baptist, it
   would not affect our assertion at all; for we have already admitted
   that the latter only partially directed his followers to Christ as
   Messiah.

   [100] Matt., xi, 2, 3.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 42. The Phenomena at the Baptism, and their Import.

   (1.) No Ecstatic Vision.--(2.) The Ebionitish View and its
   Opposite.--(3.) Developement of the Notion of Baptism in New
   Testament.--(4.) The Baptism of Christ not a Rite of
   Purification.--(5.) But of Consecration to his Theocratic Reign.--(6.)
   John's previous Acquaintance with Christ.--(7.) Explanation of John,
   i., 31.--(8.) The Vision and the Voice; intended exclusively for the
   Baptist.

   Two questions present themselves here: the bearing of the baptism upon
   John, and its bearing upon Christ. The first can easily be gathered
   from what has been said already, and from the concurrent accounts of
   the Evangelists. It is clear that John was to be enlightened, by a sign
   from heaven, in regard to the person who was to be the erchomenos whom
   he himself had unconsciously foretold. The second, however, is not so
   easy to answer. The accounts do not harmonize so well with each other
   on this point, nor are all men agreed in their opinions of the person
   of Christ; and these causes have given rise to several different
   solutions of the question.

   The point to be settled is this: Was the Divine revelation made on this
   occasion intended, though in different relations, for both John and
   Christ; not merely to give the former certainty as to the person of
   Messiah, but to impart a firm consciousness of Messiahship to the
   latter? And did Jesus, thus for the first time obtaining this full
   consciousness, at the same moment receive the powers essential to his
   Messianic mission? Did what John's eyes beheld take place really and
   objectively, and the fulness of the Holy Ghost descend upon Jesus to
   fit him for his mighty work?

   (1.) No Ecstatic Vision to be supposed in the case of Christ.

   If we adopt this latter view, we must look at all the phenomena
   connected with the baptism, not as merely subjective conceptions, but
   as objective supernatural facts. It is true, we may imagine a
   symbolical vision to have been the medium of a Divine revelation common
   to Christ and John; but we must certainly be permitted to doubt the
   application of such a mode of revelation to Christ. It may be granted
   that the Prophets were sometimes, in ecstatic vision, carried beyond
   themselves and overwhelmed by a higher power: but in these instances
   there is an abrupt suddenness, an opposition of the human and the
   Divine; a leap, so to speak, in the developement of consciousness,
   which we could hardly imagine in connexion with the specific and
   distinctive nature of the person of Christ. Nor, in fact, is there a
   hint at such a possibility in the Gospel narratives.

   (2.) Ebionitish Views of the Miracle at the Baptism, and its Opposite.

   There are two opposite stand-points which agree in ascribing to the
   events of the baptism the greatest importance in reference to Christ's
   Messiahship. The first is that of the Ebionites, who deny Christ's
   specific Divinity. It is, that he not only received from without, at a
   definite period of his life, the consciousness of his Divine mission,
   but also the powers necessary to its accomplishment. The other view
   (proceeding, however, from firm believers in the divinity of Christ)
   supposes that the Divine Logos, in assuming the form of humanity,
   submitted, by this act of self-renunciation, to all the laws of human
   developement; and further, that when Christ passed from the sphere of
   private life to that of his public ministry, he was set apart and
   prepared for it as the prophets were; with this single element of
   superiority, viz., that he was endowed with the fulness of the Holy
   Ghost.

   As for the first view, it is not only at variance with the whole
   character of Christ's manifestation, but also with all his own
   testimonies of himself. In all these there is manifested the
   consciousness of his own greatness, not as something acquired, but as
   unoriginated, and inseparable from his being. He does not speak like
   one who has be come what he is by some sudden revolution. In short,
   this whole mode of thinking springs from an outward supernaturalism,
   which represents the Divine as antagonist to the human, and imposes it
   upon Christ from without; instead of considering his entire
   manifestation from the beginning as Divine and supernatural, of
   deriving every thing from this fundamental ground, and recognizing in
   it the aim of all the special revelations of the old dispensation. This
   is a continuation of the old Jewish view of the progress of the
   Theocracy: all is formed from without, instead of developing itself
   organically from within; the Divine is an abrupt exhibition of the
   supernatural. How opposite to this is the view which sees in the human,
   the form of manifestation under which the Divine nature has revealed
   itself from the beginning, and perceives, in this original and thorough
   interpenetration of the Divine and the human, the aim and the
   culmination of all miracles.

   The second view above mentioned will appear the most simple and
   natural, if, instead of considering a Divine communication from without
   to have been made necessary by the self-renunciation of the Logos in
   assuming human form, we admit a gradual revelation (in accordance with
   the laws of human developement) of the Divine nature, potentially
   present, as the ground of the incarnate being, from the very first, and
   trace all that appears in the outward manifestation to the process of
   developement from within. In the lives of all other reformers, or
   founders of religions, whose call seems to have dated from a certain
   period of life, the birth-time, as it were, of their activity, it is
   impossible not to trace, in their later labours and in their own
   personal statements, some references to the earlier period when their
   call was unfelt. [101] In the discourses of Christ, however there is
   not the most distant approach to such an allusion.

   (3.) Different Steps in the New Testament Notion of the Baptism, up to
   that of John the Evangelist.

   In the revelations of the New Testament, and in the process of the
   developement of Christianity which those revelations unfold, we can
   distinguish various steps, or stages, of progress from the Old
   Testament ideas to the New. Especially is this the case in regard to
   the person of Christ. The conception of Christ, as anointed with the
   fullness of the Holy Spirit, and superior to all other prophets, is
   akin to Old Testament ideas, and forms the point of transition to the
   New, which rest upon the manifestation of Christ. But it required a
   completely developed Christian consciousness to recognize, in his
   appearance on earth, the Divine glory as inherent in him from the
   beginning, and progressive only so far as its outward manifestation was
   concerned. These two views, however, by no means exclude each other;
   the one is rather the complement of the other, while both, at a
   different stage of developement, tend to one and the same definite aim.
   And the latter, or highest stage of Christian consciousness, we are
   naturally to look for in that beloved apostle who enjoyed the closest
   degree of intimacy with Christ, and was, on that account, best of all
   able to understand profoundly both his manifestation and his
   discourses. From John, too; we must expect the highest Christian view
   of the person of Christ. [The account of the principal event of the
   baptism is thus given in John's Gospel: "And John bare record, saying,
   I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon
   him. And I knew him not; but he that sent me to baptize with water, the
   same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and
   remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.
   And I saw and bare record that this is the Son of God." [102] ] Now the
   fact thus stated, if interpreted in an outward and material sense, and
   combined with the view of Christ which we mentioned a while ago as akin
   to the Jewish ideas, might easily give rise to the doctrine that Christ
   obtained at the baptism something which he had not possessed before.

   Our conclusion is, that Christ was already sure of his Divine call to
   the Messiahship, and submitted himself, in the course of the Theocratic
   developement, to baptism, as a preparative and inaugural rite, from the
   hands of the man who was destined to conduct prophecy to its
   fulfilment, and to be the first to recognize, by light from heaven, the
   manifested Messiah.

   (4.) The Baptism not a Rite of Purification.

   The idea that Christ was baptized with a view to purification is
   absolutely untenable, no matter how the notion of purification may be
   modified. Akin to this idea, certainly, is the view held by some, [103]
   that he submitted to this act of self-humiliation in the same sense in
   which he humbled himself before God, as the One alone to be called
   good. [104] This view would suppose him conscious, not of actual sin,
   but of a dormant possibility of sin, inherent in his finite nature and
   his human organism, always restrained, however, by the steadfast
   firmness of his will, from passing into action. But if we suppose in
   Christ the abstract possibility to sin [105] which is inseparable from
   a created will, pure but not yet immutable--such a capability as we
   attribute to the first man before the fall--even this would not
   necessarily connect with itself a dormant, hidden sinfulness, involving
   in him a conscious need of purification in any sense whatever. Such a
   consciousness can grow only out of a sense of inherent moral
   defilement, by no means originally belonging to the conception of a
   created being, or of human nature. We cannot admit a dormant principle
   of sin as an essential element of the moral developement of man's
   original being. Sin is an act of free will, and cannot be derived from
   any other source, or explained in any other way. [106] There is, then,
   in Christ's humbling himself, in his human capacity, before God, the
   only Good, no trace of that sense of need and want with which the
   sinner, conscious of guilt, bows himself before the Holy One. The act
   manifested only a sense, deeply grounded in his holy, sinless nature,
   of absolute dependence upon the Source of all good.

   (5.) The Baptism of Christ a Rite of Consecration to his Theocratic
   Reign.

   All difficulties are cleared away by considering John's baptism as a
   rite of preparation and consecration, first in its application to the
   members of the Theocratic kingdom, and secondly to its Founder and
   Sovereign. The repentance and the sense of sin which were essential
   preliminaries to the baptism of the former, could in no way belong to
   Him who, at the very moment when the rite was administered, revealed
   himself to the Baptist as the Messiah, the deliverer from sin. But
   while the import of the rite thus varied with the subjects to whom it
   was administered, there was, at bottom, a substantial element which
   they shared in common. In both it marked the commencement of a new
   course of life; but, in the members, this new life was to be received
   from without through communications from on high: while in Christ it
   was to consist of a gradual unfolding from within; in the former it was
   to be receptive; in the latter productive. In a word, the baptism of
   the members prepared them to receive pardon and salvation; that of
   Christ was his consecration to the work of bestowing those precious
   gifts.

   (6.) Had John a previous Acquaintance with Christ?

   If the Baptist had an earlier acquaintance with Jesus, he could not
   have failed, with his susceptible feelings, to receive a deeper
   impression of his divinity than other men. We cannot but infer, from
   Luke's [107] statement (chap. i.) of the relationship [108] between the
   two families, that he had heard of the extraordinary circumstances
   attending the birth of Jesus. The Saviour "prayed" at the baptism
   (Luke, iii., 21). If we figure to ourselves his countenance, full of
   holy devotion and heavenly repose, as he stood in prayer, and its
   sudden association, in the mind of the Baptist, with all his
   recollections of the early history of Jesus, we, cannot wonder that the
   humble man of God--all aware as he was that the Messiah was to be
   consecrated by his baptism--should have been overwhelmed, in that hour
   so pregnant with mighty interests, with a sense of his own comparative
   unworthiness, and cried, "I have need to be baptized of thee, and
   comest thou to me?"

   (7.) Explanation of John, i., 31.

   One of two things must be true: either John baptized Christ with sole
   and special reference to his Messianic mission, or with the same end in
   view as in his ordinary administration of the rite, involving in its
   subjects a consciousness of sin and need of repentance. Now it is clear
   that he did not take upon himself to decide to what individual the
   Messianic baptism was to be administered, nor was he willing to rest it
   upon any human testimony, but waited for the promised sign from heaven;
   and as for Jesus' receiving the rite in the second sense at his hands,
   his own religious sense must have rebelled against it. Nor is this
   contradicted by his words recorded in John, i., 31, "And I knew him
   not; but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come
   baptizing with water." John's refusal to baptize Christ did not
   necessarily involve (as we have already said) a knowledge of his
   Messianic. dignity; and the words just quoted refer only to that
   dignity. He means to say with emphasis that his conviction of Christ's
   Messiahship is not of human, but of Divine origin. His previous
   expectations, founded upon his knowledge of the circumstances of
   Christ's birth, were held as nothing in comparison with the Divine
   testimony immediately vouchsafed to him. [109]

   (8.) The Vision at the Baptism, and the Voice, intended exclusively for
   the Baptist.

   When the Baptist thus drew back in reverence and awe, Christ encouraged
   him, saying, "For the present, [110] suffer it; for thus it becomes us
   (each from his own stand-point) to fulfil all that belongs to the order
   of God's kingdom." While Jesus prayed and was baptized, the reverence
   with which John gazed upon him was heightened into prophetic
   inspiration; and in this state he received the revelation of the Divine
   Spirit in the form of a symbolical vision; the heavens opened, and he
   saw a dove descend and hover over the head of Christ. In this he saw a
   sign of the permanent abode of the Holy Spirit in Jesus; not merely as
   a distinction from the inspired seers of the old dispensation, but also
   as the necessary condition to his bestowing the Divine life upon
   others. It indicated that the power of the Spirit in him was not a
   sudden and abrupt manifestation, as it was in the prophets, who felt
   its inspiration at certain times and by transitory impulses; but a
   continuous and unbroken operation of the Holy Ghost, the infinite
   fulness of the Divine life in human form. The quiet flight and the
   resting dove betokened no rushing torrent of inspiration, no sudden
   seizure of the Spirit, but a uniform unfolding of the life of God, the
   loftiness, yet the calm repose of a nature itself Divine, the
   indwelling of the Spirit so that he could impart it to others and fill
   them completely with it, not as a prophet, but as a Creator.

   The higher and essential unity of the Divine and human, [111] as
   original and permanent in Christ, which formed the substance symbolized
   by the vision, was further and more distinctly indicated to John by the
   voice from heaven, [112] saying, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am
   well pleased." Words that cannot possibly be applicable, in their full
   meaning, to any mere man, but to Him alone in whom the perfect union of
   God and man was exhibited, and the idea of humanity completely
   realized. It was this union that made it possible for a holy God to be
   well pleased in man. John's Gospel, it is true, makes no mention of
   this voice; but it will be recollected that this evangelist does not
   relate the baptism (John, i., 29, 33), but cites John Baptist as
   referring to it at some later period. The subsequent testimony of the
   Baptist, thus recorded ("I saw and bare record that this is the Son of
   God," v. 34), presupposes the heavenly voice which pointed out that
   Sonship. At all events, the voice expressed nothing different from the
   import of the vision; it was the expression of the idea which the
   vision itself involved.

   We consider, then, that the vision and the voice contained a subjective
   revelation of the Holy Spirit, intended exclusively for the Baptist,
   [113] to convince him thoroughly that He whose coming he had
   proclaimed, and whose way he had prepared, had really appeared. He was
   alone with Jesus; the latter needed no such revelation. What was
   granted to John was enough; he recognized, infallibly, the voice from
   heaven, and the revelation of the Spirit, by his inward sense; no
   outward sensible impression could give him more. For others the vision
   was not intended; it could benefit them only mediately through him, and
   in case they regarded him as a prophet.

   After Jesus had thus, alone with John, submitted to his baptism, and
   received in it the sign for the commencement of his public Messianic
   ministry, he withdrew into solitude in order to prepare himself. by
   prayer and meditation, [114] for the work on which he was about to
   enter. This brings us to inquire more closely into Christ's subjective
   preparation for his public labours.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [101] As in Luther we see frequent references to the light which first
   broke upon his mind during his monastic life at Erfurth, an epoch of
   the utmost moment to his after-career as a reformer.

   [102] John, i., 32-34.

   [103] De Wette, on Matt., iii., 16. Conf. his Sittenlehre, § 49, 50;
   and Strauss, too, after he had seen that the view formerly expressed by
   him was untenable (1. c., 432, 433).

   [104] Matt., xix., 17.

   [105] This is not the place to examine the old controversy whether
   Christ's sinlessness is to be regarded as a posse non peccare or a non
   posse peccare.

   [106] We cannot enter further into this subject here, but take pleasure
   in referring our readers to the late excellent work of J. Müller, viz.,
   "Die Lehre von der Sünde," in which the subject is treated with
   remarkable depth and clearness. The new elucidations in the 2d edition,
   especially, evince a soundness of mind that is not more rare than
   excellent.

   [107] The Apocryphal Gospels contain many fables in regard to Mary's
   descent from a priestly lineage, arising, perhaps, from the fact that
   the Messiah was to be both high-priest and king. (So in the second
   Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Testament of Simeon, § 7:
   anastesei kurios ek ton Leui archiere'a kai ek ton Iouda bosile'a, both
   in the person of the Messiah.) There is nothing akin to these in Luke's
   account of the relationship between Mary and Elizabeth, the latter
   being of priestly lineage, which is only given en passant; the stress
   is laid upon the descent from David's line.

   [108] Matthew's omission to mention this relationship and to give any
   reason for John's reluctance to baptize Christ, only proves his
   narrative to be more artless, and therefore more credible. The
   Ebionitish Gospel to the Hebrews shows far greater marks of design,
   and, indeed, of an alteration for a set purpose. It represents the
   miraculous appearances as preceding and causing John's conduct.--When
   John hears the voice from heaven, and sees the miraculous light, he
   inquires, Who art thou? A second voice is heard to reply, This is my
   beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. John is thereby led to fall at
   his feet and cry, Baptize thou me. Christ, refusing him, says, Suffer
   it.--Here not only are the phenomena exaggerated, but the facts are
   remodelled to suit Ebionitish views, which denied the miraculous events
   at Christ's birth, and demanded that the sudden change by which he was
   called and fitted for the Messiahship at the moment of baptism should
   be made prominent by contrast with all that had gone before. They
   conceived, accordingly, that he first received the Holy Ghost when it
   descended upon him in the form of a dove, and that at that period he
   was endowed with a new dignity, and must offer new manifestations. His
   divine character was thus obtained in a sudden, magical way; and the
   two periods of his life, before and after that event, were brought into
   clear and sharp contrast: every thing that occurred at the baptism was
   deemed miraculous, while all the wonders of his previous life were
   rejected; in short, his Divine and human nature were rudely torn
   asunder. We see in all this the effect of a one-sided theory in
   obscuring history, and detect in it also the germ of a tendency which
   led the way from Judaism to Gnosticism. So it was with the doctrines of
   Cerinthus and Basilides on the person of Christ, according to which
   Christ possessed, as man, the hamartetikon of human nature (although it
   never became actual sin in him); and the Redeemer was not Christ, but
   the heavenly Spirit that descended upon him. Another instance of the
   way in which the general object of John's baptism (viz., purification
   and forgiveness) was brought to bear upon the doctrine of the person of
   Christ may be seen in the Gospel of the Nazarenes, translated by
   Jerome, in which the account runs, that when Christ was asked by his
   mother and brothers to go with them to John, in order to be baptized
   for the remission of sins, he replied, quid peccavi, ut vadam et
   baptizer ab eo, nisi forte hoc ipsum quod dixi ignorantia est ("unless
   I, who have not sinned, carry the germ of sin unconsciously within
   me"). (Hieron., b. iii., Dialog. adv. Pelag., ad init.). It is seen
   more strongly still in the kerugma Petrou, according to which Christ
   made his confession of sin before the baptism, but was glorified after
   it. Thus we see two opposite tendencies conspiring to falsify history
   in the life of Christ. The one sought falsely to glorify his early
   life, and embellished his childhood with tales of marvel; the other
   sought to degrade his prior life as much as possible, in order to
   derive all that he afterward became from his Messianic inauguration.
   The relation of our Gospels to both these false and one-sided
   tendencies is a proof of their originality. I cannot suppose, with Dr.
   Schneckenburger (Studien der Evang. Geistlichkeit Würtemburgs, Bd. iv.,
   s. 122), that Matthew's simple account of Christ's baptism was abridged
   from the Ebionitish narrative, which, as we have seen, gives evidence
   of a designedly false colouring. Nor can I agree with Usteri and Bleek
   (Stud. u. Krit., Bd. ii., s. 446, and 1833, s. 436), that the dialogue
   between John and Christ, which, according to the Ebionitish version,
   took place during the baptism, is inaccurately placed by Matthew before
   it.

   [109] It was the main object of John the Evangelist to bring out
   prominently the Divine testimony given to John the Baptist (as the
   latter pointed the former originally to Christ); the knowledge which
   the latter had derived from human sources was comparatively
   unimportant. In fact, he seems not to have thought any thing about it,
   and hence his words may imply that the Baptist had no previous
   acquaintance at all with Christ; but such an interpretation of them is
   not necessary, considering the definite end which he had in view. Let
   an event be described by different eye-witnesses, and their accounts
   will present varieties and even contrasts, simply because each of them
   seizes strongly upon some one point, and leaves the rest comparatively
   in the back-ground. True, there are degrees in historical accuracy, and
   we must distinguish them. In this case, the one certain fact, involved
   in all the narratives, however they may differ in other respects, is,
   that the Baptist was led, by, revelation made to him at the time, to
   consecrate Jesus to the Messiahship by baptism. This fact must remain,
   even if the other discrepancies were irreconcilable. We always consider
   a thing stated in common by several variant historical narratives, to
   be more probably historically true.

   [110] Showing that this relation between him and the Baptist was to be
   but momentary, and soon to be followed by a very different one. De
   Wette's remarks (Comm., 2d ed.) seem to me not very cogent. "Christ
   describes his baptism as prepon, and hence this view cannot be
   correct." But what made it prepon was the fact that it was but
   transitory and preparatory to the revelation of Christ in all his
   glory. The remark of Christ applied to the now and only to the now. The
   arti implies the contrast, which is not expressed.

   [111] We do not intend to say, by any means, that John comprehended
   this in the full sense which we, from the Christian stand-point, are
   able to give to it.

   [112] Although the words of the voice, as given in our Gospels, contain
   at most only an allusion to Psalm ii., 7, we find that passage fully
   quoted in the Ebionitish Evang. ad Hebraeos. The words are still better
   put together in the Nazarean Gospel of the Hebrews, used by Jerome:
   Factum est autem quum ascendisset Dominus de aqua, descendit fons omnis
   Spiritus Sancti et requievit super eum, et dixit illi; Fili mi, in
   omnibus prophetis expectabam te, ut venires et requiescerem in te. Tu
   es enim requies mea, tu es filius meus primogenitus, qui regnas in
   sempiternum (Hieron., 1. iv., in Esaiam, c. xi., ed. Vallarsi, t. iv.,
   p. 1, f. 156). Here a profound Christian sense is expressed: Christ is
   the aim of the whole Theocratic developement, and the partial
   revelations of the Old Testament were directed to him as the
   concentration of all Divinity; in him the Holy Ghost finds a permanent
   abode in humanity, a resting-place for which it strove in all its
   wanderings through these isolated, fragmentary revelations; he is the
   Son of the Holy Ghost, in so far as the fulness of the Holy Ghost is
   concentrated in him. But although a Christian sense is given, the
   historical facts are obviously coloured.

   [113] We follow here especially the account of John, according to whom
   the Baptist testified only of what he had seen and heard. If this
   statement be presupposed as the original one, the rest could easily be
   derived from it. What the Baptist stated as a real fact for himself
   would readily assume an objective form when related by others. This
   original apprehension of the matter seems to appear also in Matthew
   (iii., 16), both from the heavenly voice being mentioned in indirect
   narration, and from the relation of eide to auton; although the
   expression is not perfectly clear (conf. Bleek, Stud. u. Krit., 1833,
   s. 433, and De Wette, in loc.). A confirmation of the originality of
   Matthew's account may be obtained by comparing it with that in the
   Ebionitish Gospel. In this, first, the words are directly addressed to
   Christ, and Psalm ii., 7, fully quoted; then a sudden light illuminates
   the place, and the voice repeats anew, in an altogether objective way,
   the words that had been directed to Christ. In comparing our
   Evangelists with each other, and with the Ebionitish Gospel we see how
   the simple historical statement passed, by various interpolations, into
   the Ebionitish form; and how a material alteration of the facts arose
   from a change of form, through the addition of an imaginary and foreign
   dogmatic element. These accounts form the basis, also, of the view held
   by the sect called Mandaeans (Zabii, disciples of John), who combined
   the elements of a sect of John's disciples opposed to Christianity,
   with Gnostic elements. But as their object was to glorify the Baptist
   rather than Christ, they further distorted and disfigured the original
   with new inventions. "The Spirit, called the Messenger of Life, in
   whose name John baptized, appears from a higher region, manifests still
   more extraordinary phenomena, submits to be baptized by John, and then
   transfigures him with celestial radiance. Jesus afterward comes
   hypocritically to be baptized by John, in order to draw away the people
   and corrupt his doctrine and baptism." (See Norberg's Religionsbuch of
   this sect.)

   [114] The chronology of the Gospels by no means excludes such a time of
   preparation, although we cannot decide whether the "forty days" are to
   be taken literally, or only as a round number. John's Gospel, as we
   have said, does not relate the baptism in its chronological connexion
   (John, i., 19, presupposes the occurrence of the baptism); so that
   there is no difficulty in supposing a lapse of several weeks between
   the baptism and the first public appearance of Christ. The words in
   John, i., 29, may have been the greeting of the Baptist on first
   meeting Christ upon his reappearance. Nor does the retirement of Christ
   throw a shade upon the credibility of the narrative as matter of fact.
   It is entirely opposed to the mythical theory; for we do not see in it
   (as we should were it a mythus) any of the ideas of the people among
   whom Christianity originated; on the contrary, it displays a wisdom and
   circumspection in direct antagonism to the prevailing tendencies of the
   time. As St John's object was only to state those facts in Christ's
   life of which he had himself been an eye-witness, his silence on the
   subject is easily accounted for.
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PART II.

SUBJECTIVE PREPARATION. THE TEMPTATION
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  CHAPTER I.

  IMPORT OF THE INDIVIDUAL TEMPTATIONS.

   WHILE, on the one hand, we do not conceive that the individual features
   of the account of the Temptation are to be literally taken, the
   principles which triumph so gloriously in its course bear the evident
   stamp of that wisdom which every where shines forth from the life of
   Christ. Its veracity is undeniably confirmed by the period which it
   occupies between the baptism of Christ and his entrance on his public
   ministry; the silent, solitary preparation was a natural transition
   from the one to the other. We conclude, from both these considerations
   together, that the account contains not only an ideal, but also a
   historical truth, conveyed, however, under a symbolical form. [115]

   The easiest part of our task is to ascertain the import of the several
   parts of the Temptation, and to this we now address ourselves. We shall
   find in them the principles which guided Jesus through his whole
   Messianic calling--principles directly opposed to the notions prevalent
   among the Jews in regard to the Messiah.
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   § 43. The Hunger.

   The first temptation was as follows: [116] After Jesus had fasted for a
   long time, he suffered the pangs of hunger. As no food was to be had in
   the desert, the suggestion was made to him, "If thou art really the
   Messiah, the Son of God, this need cannot embarrass thee. Thou canst
   help thyself readily by a miracle; thou canst change the stones of the
   desert into bread." Jesus rejected this challenge with the words, "Man
   shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of
   the mouth of God" (what is produced by God's creative word) To
   apprehend these words rightly, we must recall their original connexion
   in Deuteronomy (viii., 3), viz., that the Jews were fed in the
   wilderness with manna, in order to learn that the power of God could
   sustain human life by other means than ordinary food. They longed for
   the bread and flesh of Egypt, but were to be taught submission to the
   will of God, who was pleased to supply their wants with a different
   food. Applying this thought to Christ's circumstances, we interpret his
   reply to the tempter as follows: "Far be it from me to prescribe to God
   the mode in which he shall provide me sustenance. Rather will I trust
   his omnipotent creative power, which can find means to satisfy my
   hunger, even in the desert, though it may not be with man's usual
   food."

   The principle involved in the reply was, that he had no wish to free
   himself from the sense of human weakness and dependence; that he would
   work no miracle for that purpose. He would work no miracle to satisfy
   his own will; no miracle where the momentary want might be supplied,
   though by natural means such as might offend the sensual appetite. In
   self-denial he would follow God, submitting to His will, and trusting
   that His mighty power would help in the time of need, in the way that
   His wisdom might see fit. On this same principle Christ acted when he
   suffered his apostles to satisfy their hunger with the corn which they
   had plucked, rather than do a miracle to provide them better food. On
   this same principle he acted when he gave himself to the Jewish
   officers sent to apprehend him, [117] rather than seek deliverance by a
   Divine interposition. Of the same kind, too, was his trial when he hung
   upon the cross, and they that passed by said, "If he be the King of
   Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him."
   [118]
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   [116] Matt., iv., 2-4.

   [117] Matt., xxvi., 53.

   [118] Ib., xxvii., 42.
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   § 44. The Pinnacle of the Temple.

   He was then taken to the pinnacle of the Temple, and the tempter said
   to him, "If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down; thou art sure of
   aid by a miracle from God;" and quoted, literally, in application, the
   words of Psa. xci., 11, 12, ";The angels shall bear thee up in their
   hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone." But Christ arrays
   against him another passage, which defines the right application of the
   former: "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." (Deut., vi., 16.) As
   if he had said, "Thou must undertake nothing with a view to test God's
   omnipotence, as if to try whether he will work a miracle to save thee
   from a peril that might be avoided by natural means" (i. e., by coming
   down from the battlement in the usual way).

   These words of Christ imply that the pious man can look for Divine aid
   at all times, provided he uses rightly the means which God affords him,
   and walks in the way which has been Divinely marked out for him by his
   calling and his circumstances: the Messiah was not, in gratuitous
   confidence of Divine assistance, to cast himself into a danger which
   common prudence might avoid. They involve the principle, that a miracle
   may not be wrought except for wise ends and with adequate motives;
   never, with no other aim than to display the power of working wonders,
   and to make a momentary, sensible impression, which, however powerful,
   could leave no religious effect, and, not penetrating be. yond the
   region of the senses, must be but transient there. And on this
   principle Christ acted always, in not voluntarily exposing himself to
   peril; in employing wise and prudent means to escape the snares of his
   enemies; and going forth, with trust in God and submission to his will,
   to meat such dangers only as his Divine mission made necessary, and as
   he could not avoid without unfaithfulness to his calling. On this
   principle he acted when the Pharisees and the fleshly-minded multitude
   came to him and asked a miracle, and he refused them with, ["there
   shall no sign be given to this wicked and adulterous generation but the
   sign of the Prophet Jonah."] [119]
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   [119] Matt.. ii. 39..
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   § 45. Dominion.

   We do not take the third temptation as implying literally that Satan
   proposed to Christ to fall down and do him homage, as the price of a
   transfer of dominion over all the kingdoms of the world: no
   extraordinary degree of piety would have been necessary to rebuke such
   a proposal as this. We consider it as involving the two following
   points, which must be taken together, viz., (1) the establishment of
   Messiah's dominion as an outward kingdom, with worldly splendours; and
   (2) the worship of Satan in connexion with it, which, though not fully
   expressed, is implied in the act which he demands, and which Christ
   treats as equivalent to worshipping him. Herein was the temptation,
   that the Messiah should not develope his kingdom gradually, and in its
   pure spirituality from within, but should establish it at once, as an
   outward dominion; and that, although this could not be accomplished
   without the use of an evil agency, the end would sanctify the means.

   We find here the principle, that to try to establish Messiah's kingdom
   as an outward, worldly dominion, is to wish to turn the kingdom of God
   into the kingdom of the devil; and to employ that fallen Intelligence
   which pervades all human sovereignties, only in a different form, to
   found the reign of Christ. And in rejecting the temptation, Christ
   condemned every mode of secularizing his kingdom, as well as all the
   devil-worship which must result from attempting that kingdom in a
   worldly form. We find here the principle, that God's work is to be
   accomplished purely as His work and by His power, without foreign aid;
   so that it shall all be only a share of the worship rendered to HIM
   alone.

   And Christ's whole life illustrates this principle. How often was he
   urged, by the impatient longings and the worldly spirit of the people,
   to gratify their intense, long-cherished hopes, and establish his
   kingdom in a worldly form, before the last demand of the kind was made
   upon him, as he entered, in the midst of an enthusiastic host, the
   capital city of God's earthly reign; before his last refusal, expressed
   in his submission to those sufferings which resulted in the triumph of
   God's pure spiritual kingdom!
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   [115] If we assign a symbolical character to the Temptation, it may be
   asked whether the fasting, which formed a ground-work for it, was not
   symbolical also. But the fasting is immediately connected with the
   obviously historical fact of Christ's retirement. We conceive it thus:
   Christ, musing upon the great work of his life, forgot the wants of the
   body. (Cf. John, iv., 34.) The mastery (and this we must presuppose)
   which his spirit had over the body prevented those wants from asserting
   their power for a long time; but when they did, it was only the more
   powerfully. It formed part of the trial and self-denial of Christ
   through his whole life, that, together with the consciousness that he
   was the Son of God, he combined the weakness and dependence of
   humanity. These affected the lesser powers of his soul, although they
   could never move his unchangingly holy will, and turn hill to any
   selfish strivings.
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  CHAPTER II.

  IMPORT OF THE TEMPTATION AS A WHOLE.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 46. Fundamental Idea.

   THE whole temptation taken together presents us one idea; a contrast,
   namely, between the founding of God's kingdom as pure, spiritual, and
   tried by many forms of self-denial in the slow developement ordained
   for it by its head; and the sudden establishment of that kingdom before
   men, as visible and earthly. This contrast forms the central point of
   the whole. All the temptations have regard to the created will as such;
   the victory presupposes that self-sacrifice of a will given up to God
   which determines the whole life. And as this self-sacrifice of the
   created will in Christ had to be tested in his lifelong struggles with
   the Spirit of the world, which ever strove to obscure the idea of the
   kingdom of God and bring it down to its own level; so the free and
   conscious decision manifested in these three temptations, fully
   contrasting, as they did, the true and the false Messiahship, the
   unworldly and the secularized Theocracy, was made before his public
   ministry, which itself was but a continuation of the strife and the
   triumph.
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   § 47. The Temptation rot an inward one, but the Work of Satan.

   We find, then, in the facts of the temptation the expression of that
   period that intervened between Christ's private life and his public
   ministry. These inward spiritual exercises bring out the
   self-determination which stamps itself upon all his subsequent outward
   actions. Yet we dare not suppose in him a choice, which, presupposing
   within him a point of tangency for evil, would involve the necessity of
   his comparing the evil with the good, and deciding between them. In the
   steadfast tendency of his inner life, rooted in submission to God, lay
   a decision which admitted of no such struggle. He had in common with
   humanity that natural weakness which may exist without selfishness, and
   the created will, mutable in its own nature; and only on this side was
   the struggle possible--such a struggle as man may have been liable to,
   before he gave seduction the power of temptation by his own actual sin.
   In all other respects, the outward seductions remained outward; they
   found no selfishness in him, as in other men, on which to seize, and
   thus become internal temptations, but, on the contrary, only aided in
   revealing the complete unity of the Divine and human, which formed the
   essence of his inner life.

   Nor is it possible for us to imagine that these temptations originated
   within; to imagine that Christ, in contemplating the course of his
   future ministry, had an internal struggle to decide whether he should
   act according to his own will, or in self-denial and submission to the
   will of God. We have seen from the third temptation that, from the very
   beginning, he regarded the establishment of a worldly kingdom as
   inseparable from the worship of the devil; he could, therefore, have
   had no struggle to choose between such a kingdom, outward and worldly,
   and the true Messiah-kingdom, spiritual, and developed from within.

   Even the purest man who has a great work to do for any age, must be
   affected more or less by the prevailing ideas and tendencies of that
   age. Unless he struggle against it, the spirit of the age will
   penetrate his own; his spiritual life and its products will be
   corrupted by the base admixture. Now the whole spirit of the age of
   Christ held that Messiah's kingdom was to be of this world, and even
   John Baptist could not free himself from this conception. There was
   nothing within Christ on which the sinful spirit of the age could
   seize; the Divine life within him had brought every thing temporal into
   harmony with itself; and, therefore, this tendency of the times to
   secularize the Theocratic idea could take no hold of him. But it was to
   press upon him from without; from the beginning this tendency
   threatened to corrupt the idea and the developement of the kingdom of
   God, and Christ's work had to be kept free from it; moreover, the
   nature of his own Messianic ministry could only be fully illustrated by
   contrast with this possible objective mode of action; to which, foreign
   as it was to his own spiritual tendencies, he was so frequently to be
   urged afterward by the prevailing spirit of the times.

   But if, according to the doctrine of Christ, [120] the rebellion of a
   higher intelligence against God preceded the whole present history of
   the universe, in which Evil is one of the co-operating factors, and of
   which man's history is only a part; if that doctrine makes Satan the
   representative of the Evil which he first brought into reality; if,
   further, it lays down a connexion, concealed from the eye of man,
   between him and all evil; then, from this point of view, Christ's
   contest with the spirit of the world must appear to us a contest with
   Satan--the temptation, a temptation from Satan--continued afterward
   through his whole life, and renewed in every form of assault, until the
   final triumph was announced, "It is finished." As the temptation could
   not have originated in Christ, he could only attribute it to that
   Spirit to which all opposition to God's kingdom, and every attempt to
   corrupt its pure developement, can finally be traced back. On the
   working out of Christ's plan depended the issue of the battle between
   the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the Evil One; and we cannot
   wonder, therefore, that this Spirit, ever so restlessly plotting
   against the Divine order, should have been active and alert at a time
   when, as in the case of the first man, an opening for temptation to the
   mutable created will was afforded to him.

   Christ left to his disciples and the Church only a partial and
   symbolical account [121] of the facts of his inner life in this
   preparatory epoch; an account, however, adapted to their practical
   necessities, and serving to guard them against those seductions of the
   spirit of the world to which even the productions of the Divine spirit
   must yield, if they are ever allowed to become worldly.
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   [120] We must hereafter inquire whether this is Christ's doctrine, and
   only make here a preliminary remark or two. The arguments of the
   rationalists against the doctrine which teaches the existence of Satan
   are either directed against a false and arbitrary conception of that
   doctrine, or else go upon the presupposition that evil could only have
   originated under conditions such as those under which human existence
   has developed itself; that it has its ground in the organism of human
   nature, e. g., in the opposition between reason and the propensities;
   that human developement must necessarily pass through it; but that we
   can not conceive of a steadfast tendency to evil in an intelligence
   endowed with the higher spiritual powers. Now it is precisely this view
   of evil which we most emphatically oppose, as directly contradictory to
   the essence of the Gospel and of a theistico-ethical view of the world;
   and, on the contrary, we hold fast, as the only doctrine which meets
   man's moral and religious interests, that doctrine which is the ground
   of the conception of Satan, and according to which evil is represented
   as the rebellion of a created will against the Divine law, as an act of
   free-will not otherwise to be explained, and the intelligence as
   determined by the will. I am pleased to find my convictions expressed
   in few words by an eminent divine of our own time, Dr. Nitzsch, in his
   excellent System der Christlichen Lehre, 9d ed., p. 152. They are
   further developed by Twesten, in his Dogmatik. The same fundamental
   idea is given in the work of Julius Muller, already mentioned (Lehre
   von der Sunde).

   [121] We can apply here Dr. Nitzsch's remark in reference to the
   Biblical account of the Fall (Christl. Lehre, § 106, s. 144, anm. 1,
   2^te. Aufl.): "The history of the temptation, in this form, is not a
   real, but a true history."
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BOOK IV.
     __________________________________________________________________

THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF CHRIST

IN ITS

REAL CONNEXION.
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   PART I. THE PLAN OF CHRIST.

   PART II. THE MEANS AND INSTRUMENTS OF CHRIST

                                    BOOK IV.

           THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF CHRIST IN ITS REAL CONNEXION. [122]
     __________________________________________________________________

PART I.

THE PLAN OF CHRIST.
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  CHAPTER 1.

  A. THE PLAN OF CHRIST'S MINISTRY IN GENERAL.
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   § 48. Had Christ a conscious Plan?

   IT is most natural for us, in treating of Christ's public ministry, to
   speak first of the plan which lay at the foundation of it. First of
   all, however, the question comes up, whether he had any such plan at
   all. [123]

   The greatest achievements of great men in behalf of humanity have not
   been accomplished by plans previously arranged and digested; on the
   contrary, such men have generally been unconscious instruments. working
   out God's purposes, at least in the beginning, before the fruits of
   their labours have become obvious to their own eyes. They served the
   plan of God's providence for the progress of his kingdom among men, by
   giving themselves up enthusiastically to the ideas which the Spirit of
   God had imparted to them. Not unfrequently has a false historical view
   ascribed to such labours, after their results became known, a plan
   which had nothing to do with their developement. Nay, these mighty men
   were able to do their great deeds precisely because a higher than human
   wisdom formed the plan of their labours and prepared the way for them.
   The work was greater than the workmen; they had no presentiments of the
   results that were to follow from the toils to which they felt
   themselves impelled. So was it with LUTHER, when he kindled the spark
   which set half Europe in a blaze, and commenced the sacred flame which
   refined the Christian Church.

   Were we at liberty to compare the work of CHRIST with these creations
   wrought through human agencies, we should need to guard ourselves
   against determining the plan of his ministry from its results. We might
   then suppose that he was inspired with enthusiasm for an idea, whose
   compass and consequences the limits of his circumstances and his times
   prevented him from fully apprehending. We might also distinguish
   between the idea, as made the guide and the aim of his actions by
   himself, and the more comprehensive Divine plan, to which, by his
   voluntary and thorough devotion to God, he served as the organ. And it
   would rather glorify than disparage him to show, by thus comparing him
   with other men who had wrought as God's instruments to accomplish His
   vast designs, that God had accomplished through him even greater things
   than he had himself intended.

   But we are allowed to make no such comparison. The life of CHRIST
   presented a realized ideal of human culture such as man's nature can
   never attain unto, let his developement reach what point it may. He
   described the future effects of the truth which he revealed in a way
   that no man could comprehend at the time, and which centuries of
   history have only been contributing to illustrate. Nor was the progress
   of the future more clear to his vision than the steps in the history of
   the past, as is shown by his own statements of the relation which he
   sustained to the old dispensation. Facts, which it required the course
   of ages to make clear, lay open to his eye; and history has both
   explained and verified the laws which he pointed out for the progress
   of his kingdom. He could not, therefore, have held the same relation to
   the plan for whose accomplishment his labours were directed, as men who
   were mere instruments of God, however great. He resembled them, it is
   true, in the fact that his labours were ordered according to no plan of
   human contrivance, but to one laid down by God for the developement of
   humanity; but he differed from them in this, that He understood the
   full compass of God's plan, and had freely made it his own; that it was
   the plan of his own mind, clearly standing forth in his consciousness
   when he commenced his labours. The account of his temptation, rightly
   understood, shows all this.

   With this, also, are rebutted those views which consider Christ as
   having recognized the idea of his ministry only through the cloudy
   atmosphere of Judaism; and those which represent his plan as having
   been essentially altered from time to time, as circumstances
   contradicted his first expectations and gave him clearer notions. They
   are further refuted by the entire harmony which subsists between
   Christ's own expressions in regard to his plan, as uttered in the two
   different epochs of his history.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [123] We use the phrase "plan of Jesus," inasmuch as we compare his
   mode of action with that of other world-historical men, in order to
   bring out the characteristic features which distinguish him. The
   exposition which follows will show that I agree with the apt remarks of
   my worthy friend, Dr. Ullmann, made in his beautiful treatise on the
   "Sündenlosigkeit Jesu" (Sinlessness of Jesus), p. 71, and that his
   censures there of those who use the above-mentioned phrase do not apply
   to me. [See Ullmann's Treatise, translated by Edwards and Park, in the
   "Selections from German Literature."]
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 49. Connexion with the Old Testament Theocracy.

   The object of Christ was, as he himself often describes it, to
   establish the kingdom of God among men; not, as we have shown, after a
   plan of man's devising, but after one laid down by God; not only in the
   general developement of the human race, but also, and specially, in the
   developement of the Jewish nation, and in the revelations of the old
   dispensation. We must, therefore, look back upon the Old Testament
   foundations of the kingdom of God, before we can correctly understand
   the plan of Christ as set forth in his. acts and words. The one
   prepared the way for the other. In the former it was outward and
   confined to the narrow community of the Jewish people, in the form of a
   state founded and governed by Divine authority; in the latter it was to
   be universal, all-embracing, a communion, springing out of the
   consciousness of God, intended to be the principle of life and union
   for all mankind. In the former, the Divine law, ordering from without
   all the relations of state and people, governed the nation through
   organs appointed by God and inspired by his Spirit, viz., priests,
   kings, and prophets. But this idea could not be realized; the kingdom
   of God could not be founded from without. It needed first a proper
   material; and this could not be found in human nature, estranged from
   God by sin. The history of the Jewish nation was designed to bring this
   contradiction out into clear consciousness; and to awaken a more and
   more vivid anxiety for its removal, and for the re-establishment and
   glorification of the Theocracy. So the revelations of God pointed more
   and more directly to HIM, the Messiah, under whose dominion the Divine
   kingdom was to be exalted, and the worship of Jehovah to be
   acknowledged and to triumph even among the nations so long estranged
   from him.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 50. Christ's Steadfast Consciousness of his Messiahship.

   And Jesus knew and testified to his Messiahship from the beginning,
   from his first public appearance until his last declaration, made
   before the high-priests in the very face of death; although he did not
   always proclaim it with equal openness, especially when there was risk
   of popular commotions from false and temporal conceptions of the
   Messiah on the part of the people; but rather gradually led them, from
   the acknowledgment of his prophetic character (by which, indeed, they
   were bound to believe in his words), to recognize him as the Messiah, a
   Prophet also, but in the highest sense.

   In this respect there is no contradiction whatever between the
   Synoptical Gospels [124] and John. They all agree in stating that Jesus
   spoke and acted from the beginning in consciousness of his Messiahship;
   and also that, as circumstances demanded, he was sometimes more and
   sometimes less explicit [125] in regard to it. Nor is John silent [126]
   about the fluctuations and divisions of opinion (easily explained on
   psychological grounds), even among the more favourably disposed
   portions of the multitude: nay, he tells us that some of the Apostles
   were slow to believe, and wavered in their faith. All this, however,
   does nothing to prove similar fluctuations in Christ's conviction of
   his Messiahship. According to Matthew, Jesus commenced his ministry,
   like John the Baptist, by summoning men to repentance, as a preparation
   for the coming kingdom of God. But this by no means implies that his
   intention and his announcement, at the beginning, were the same as
   those of the Baptist. It was necessary for him to take this
   starting-point, as he joined his ministry upon John's proclamation, and
   upon the desire for the manifestation of the kingdom of God which it
   had awakened, in order to purify this desire and direct it to its
   object, the real founder of the kingdom. It was essential to awaken and
   preserve in the minds of the people a sense of the necessity of
   repentance as a condition of participation in the kingdom, and the
   first starting-point for a clear idea of its nature. After this general
   summons had gone before, Jesus could prove, by the impression of his
   own works, that the kingdom had really been manifested through him
   (Matt., xii., 28; Luke, xvii., 21). The proclamation of the approaching
   kingdom and the announcement of Jesus as its founder and central-point,
   were closely connected together; but sometimes the one was announced
   more prominently, and sometimes the other, as circumstances might
   demand. Compare the Sermon on the Mount with the discourses of Christ
   as recorded in John's Gospel.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [124] Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

   [125] John, viii., 25; x., 24.

   [126] John, vii., 40; Matt., xvi., 14; John, vii., 12. The less hostile
   portion of the people agreed, at first, only in believing that Christ
   had good intentions and was no seducer of the people.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 51. No alterations of Christ's Plan.

   It may be imagined, however, that although Christ was conscious, from
   the beginning, of his calling to realize the idea of the kingdom of
   God, the plan of his work may have been modified from time to time
   according to the varying results which depended upon the vacillating
   temper of the public mind; that at first, perhaps, he hoped to find the
   greater part of the Jewish nation ready to receive him; and designed,
   under this supposition, to separate the incorrigible from the better
   part, and collect the latter into a Theocratic community under his
   government; and that he expected that the kingdom of God, once seated
   firmly in this way, would, by the might of its prevailing spirit of
   Divine life, by degrees transform all other nations into the same
   kingdom. In fact, what an incalculable influence might a nation,
   thoroughly imbued with the spirit of Christianity and illustrating
   Christianity in all its relations, exert toward the moral regeneration
   of the rest of mankind! A light indeed would it be, not hid under a
   bushel, but throwing its beams on all sides into the surrounding
   darkness: the salt and the leaven, truly, of all mankind. And some,
   [127] in fact, assert that Christ cherished these hopes when he first
   appeared in public. Hence, say they, the joyous feeling with which he
   announced the "acceptable year" in the synagogue at Nazareth; [128]
   hence his purpose, manifested in the Sermon on the Mount, to give to
   the people new Theocratic statutes in accordance with his higher
   stand-point; hence his promise to the apostles that they should govern,
   under him, the new Theocratic community; [129] hence, too, his last
   lamentation over Jerusalem, that he had so often tried to save the
   nation which ought to have submitted to his guidance. All which, they
   say, presupposes a belief on his part that the results might have been
   different had the people listened to his voice, and that he expected
   more of them to listen to him; that the aim of his ministry was altered
   when he found the resistance more stubborn and general than he had
   supposed; and that, from the course of events themselves, he learned,
   in the light of the Divine Spirit, that the plan for the establishment
   of the kingdom of God which the Divine counsels had formed, was such,
   that he himself must submit to the power of his enemies, and rise
   victorious from his sufferings; while the kingdom itself was only to
   advance by slow degrees, and after many combats, to its final triumph.

   Yet, after all, these reasonings are only specious, not solid. Even the
   most important of them rather opposes than sustains the theory they are
   adduced to support. It is true, there is such a thing as a holy
   enthusiasm for a Divine idea, which is blind to all difficulties, or
   deems that it can gain an easy victory. Such, however, was not the
   enthusiasm of Christ for his Divine work; on the contrary, he combined
   with it a discretion which fully comprehended the opposition he must
   encounter from the prevailing opinions and feelings of the times. He
   was far from trusting to the momentary impulses under which the people,
   excited by his words and actions, sought to join themselves to him. He
   readily distinguished, with that searching glance that pierced the
   depths of men's hearts, the few who came to him, drawn of the Father
   and following an inward consciousness of God, from those who sought him
   with carnal feelings, to obtain that which he came not to bestow. How
   did he check the ardour of his disciples, when he rebuked the false
   self-confidence inspired by a transient enthusiasm, and reminded them
   of their weakness! There was no extravagance in his demands upon men;
   nothing exaggerated in his hopes of the future. Every where we see not
   only a conscious possession of the Divine power to overcome the world,
   which he was to impart to humanity, but also of the obstacles it should
   meet with from the old nature in which the principle of sin was yet
   active. This was the spirit which passed over from him to the Apostles,
   and which constituted the peculiar essence of Christian ethics. CHRIST,
   while as yet surrounded only by a handful of faithful followers,
   describes the renewing power which the seed that he had sown would
   exert on the life of humanity; yet, brilliant as the prospect is, his
   eyes are not dazzled by it; he sees, at the same time, how impurity
   will mix itself with the work of God, and how clouds will obscure it.
   Could He whose quick glance thus saw the depths of men's hearts, and
   took in at once the present and the future, who knew so well the
   corrupt carnality of the Jewish nation before he entered on his public
   ministry, so far deceive himself as to suppose that he could suddenly
   transform the larger part of such a nation into a true people of God?
   He that searched men's hearts and knew what was in man could not be
   ignorant that his severest battles were to be fought with the prevalent
   depravity of men; and in connexion with these struggles, how natural
   was it for him to look forward to the death which he should suffer in
   the faithful performance of his calling! Even at an early date he
   intimated the violent death by which he was to be torn from the happy
   fellowship of his disciples, leaving them behind him in tears and
   sorrow. [130]

   His temptation, the historical truth and import of which we have shown,
   makes it clear that he had decided, before he commenced his public
   labours, not to establish the kingdom of God in a mere outward way by
   miraculous power. And this is further shown by his assigning, in the
   first epoch of his ministry, to John the Baptist, whom he called the
   first among the prophets, a subordinate place in relation to the new
   era of religion; for this could only have been done in view of John's
   in ability fully to comprehend the essential feature of this new era,
   viz.; the spiritual developement of the kingdom of God from within. And
   again, in reference to John he said, "Blessed is he, whosoever shall
   not be offended in me;" evidently presupposing that John's Old
   Testament views would be offended at the new era; a presupposition
   which refers to the new spiritual growth of the Divine kingdom. It is,
   therefore, undeniable that from the beginning Christ aimed at this new
   developement of that kingdom.

   We find further proof of this in all the parables which treat of the
   progress of his kingdom, and the effects of his truth upon human
   nature, viz., the parables of the mustard seed, of the leaven, of the
   fire which he had come to kindle upon earth, all which were designed to
   illustrate the distinction between the Old Testament form of the
   Theocracy and that of Christ; to illustrate a developement which was
   not at once to exhibit an external stately fabric; but to commence with
   apparently small beginnings, and yet ever to propagate itself by a
   mighty power working outwardly from within; and to regenerate all
   things, and thus appropriate them to itself. All these parables
   presuppose the renewal of human nature by a new and pervading principle
   of spiritual life; and imply that the kingdom of God. cannot be visibly
   realized among men until they become subjects of this renewal. To the
   same effect was Christ's saying (which we shall further examine
   hereafter), "neither do men put new wine into old skins, else the skins
   break and the wine runneth out." He who uttered such truths, involving
   a steadfast and connected system of thought, could not have set out
   with the purpose of establishing an outward kingdom, and have afterward
   been induced by circumstances to change his plan in so short a time.
   What an immense revolution in his mental habits and course of thinking
   must a few months have produced, on such a supposition! It would be,
   indeed, a gross misapprehension of the precepts given in the Sermon on
   the Mount to interpret them literally as laws laid down for an outward
   Theocratic kingdom. Such an interpretation would involve the
   possibility of a struggle between Good and Evil in the kingdom of God;
   such as can never take place in Messiahs reign, if it be realized
   according to its idea. The form of a state cannot be thought of in
   connexion with this kingdom; a state presupposes a relation to
   transgression; an outward law, the forms of judicature, the
   administration of justice are essential to its organization. But all
   these can have no place in the perfect kingdom of Christ; a community
   whose whole principle of life is love. Laws intended for the free mind
   lose their import when their observance is compelled by external
   penalties of any kind whatever. More of this view hereafter, when we
   come to treat especially of the Sermon on the Mount.

   Nor is a change in Christ's feelings to be in any wise admitted. The
   year of joy [the acceptable year, Luke, iv., 19] did not refer to the
   happy results which he hoped to attain, but to the blessed contents of
   the announcement with which he commenced his labours; the substance of
   the message itself was joyful, whether the dispositions of the people
   would make it a source of joy to them, or not. And even on his first
   proclamation at Nazareth, the hostility of the carnally-minded
   multitude could have enabled him to prognosticate the general temper
   with which the whole people would receive him. It follows by no means,
   from the wo which he uttered over his loved Jerusalem (Luke, xiii., 34,
   35), that he had hoped at first to find acceptance with the entire
   nation, and to make Jerusalem the real seat of his Theocratic
   government. Yet, although he could not save the nation as a whole, he
   offered his warnings to the whole, leaving it to the issue to decide
   who were willing to hear his voice.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [127] De Wette and Hase. Paulus also, with some modifications.

   [128] Luke, iv., 17, seq.

   [129] Matt., xix., 28.

   [130] Matt., ix., 15. Hase says, indeed, that these words do not imply
   necessarily an approaching violent death, but might be uttered in view
   of the common lot of mortals. But, in the first place, Jesus, if he
   applied to himself the Old Testament idea of the Messiah, could not
   believe that he would be torn by natural death from the Theocratic
   community which he should found among the Jews, and thus leave it to
   the direction of others; but must expect (if he hoped to found an
   external Theocracy) always to remain present as Theocratic king. (This
   applies, also, to what Hase says (2d edit. of his Leben Jesu, p. 89),
   in opposition to his previously expressed views.) Again, it would be
   strange indeed for a man of thirty to express himself to older men, in
   reference to the common end of mortals, in such language as the
   following: "Now is your time for festal joy; for when your friend shall
   be removed, it will be time for fasting and sorrow." The whole
   connexion of the passage shows that Jesus did not expect to part from
   them under happy circumstances, but amid many conflicts and sufferings.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 52. Two-fold bearing of the Kingdom of God--an inward, spiritual
   Power, and a world-renewing Power.

   There are two sides to the conception of the kingdom of God, as Christ
   viewed it; in reference to its ideal and its real elements, which must
   be contemplated in their connexion with each other. The discourses of
   Christ will be found every where to contradict a one-sided view of
   either of these elements.

   The kingdom of God was indeed first to be exhibited as a communion of
   men bound together by the same spirit, inspired by the same
   consciousness of God; and this communion was to find its central point
   in CHRIST, its Redeemer and King. As he himself ordered and directed
   all things in the first congregation of his disciples, so he was
   subsequently to inspire, rule, and cultivate this community of men by
   his law and by his Spirit. The revelation of the Spirit, shared by all
   its members, was all that was to distinguish it from the world, so
   called in the New Testament, that is, the common mass of mankind, as
   alienated from God.

   But as this community was gradually to prevail even over the mass of
   mankind through the power of the indwelling Spirit, it was not always
   to remain entirely inward and hidden, but to send forth, continually
   more and more, a renewing influence; to be the salt, the leaven of
   humanity, the city set upon a hill, the candle which, once lighted,
   should never be extinguished. And Christ was gradually, through this
   community, his organ and his royal dwelling-place, to establish his
   kingdom as a real one, more and more widely among men, and subdue the
   world to his dominion. In this sense were those who shared in his
   communion to obtain and exercise, even upon earth, a real
   world-dominion. It is the aim and end of history, that Christianity
   shall more and more become the world-governing principle. In fine, the
   end of this developement appears to be (though not, indeed, simply as
   its natural result) a complete realization of the Divine kingdom which
   Christ established in its outward manifestation, fully answering to its
   idea; a perfect world-dominion of Christ and of his organs; a world
   purified and transformed, to become the seat of His universal empire.

   So did Christ intend, in a true sense, and in various relations, to
   describe himself as King, and his organs as partakers in his dominion
   of the world. It was, indeed, in a real sense that he spoke of his
   KINGDOM, to be manifested on earth. And as he was to build up this
   kingdom on the foundations laid down in the Old Testament, and to
   realize the plan of God therein prefigured, he could rightfully apply
   to himself the figures of the Old Testament in regard to the progress
   of the Theocracy, in order to bring the truths which they veiled
   clearly out before the consciousness of men. [131] Although his
   disciples at first took these figures in the letter, still, under the
   influence of Christ's intercourse and teaching, they could not long
   stop there. And not only his direct instructions, but the manner in
   which he opposed the idea of his spiritual and inward kingdom to the
   carnal notions of the Jews, contributed to give his followers the key
   to the right interpretation of these types and shadows.

   In thus comparing Christ's discourses with each other, and in the unity
   of purpose which a contemplation of his whole life makes manifest, we
   find a guard for all after ages, against carnal misconceptions of his
   individual discourses, or of separate features of his life. [132] In
   general, when we find in the accounts of any world-historical man such
   a unity of the creative minds we are willing, if individual features
   come up in apparent contradiction to the general tenor, to believe that
   he was misunderstood by incapable contemporaries; or, if this cannot be
   safely asserted, because the contradictory features are inseparable
   from others that bear his unmistakable impress, we endeavour, by
   comparing his manifestations, to find that higher unity in which even
   the unmanageable points may find their rightful place. Utterly
   unhistorical, indeed, is that perverted principle of historical
   exegesis which teaches that an original, creative mind, a spirit far
   above his times, is to be comprehended from the prevailing opinions of
   his age and nation; and which presupposes, in fact, that all these
   opinions are his own. [133]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [131] Some suppose that every thing in Christ's discourses, as reported
   by Matthew and Luke, in reference to this real Theocratic element, is
   to be ascribed to the Jewish views that obscured the truth as uttered
   by Christ, and caused it to be reported incorrectly That this is not
   the case is obvious from Paul's plain references to such expressions of
   Christ's, e.g., 1 Cor., vi., 2.

   [132] We shall speak more particularly of this when we come to treat of
   the mode in which Christ trained his apostles.

   [133] Conf. what Schleiermacher says (Hermeneutik, s. 20) of
   "historical interpretation," and also (s. 82) of the "Analogy of
   Faith."
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER II.

  THE PLAN OF CHRIST IN ITS RELATION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT IDEA OF THE KINGDOM OF
  GOD.

   The question now arises, in what relation the new form of the kingdom
   of God, according to Christ's plan, stood to the Old Testament form
   thereof; a question which we shall have to answer from the intimations
   afforded by Christ himself. Indeed, it has already been answered by our
   remarks upon his idea of the kingdom as developing itself from within;
   but as the subject has its difficulties, and especially as some have
   tried to prove that Christ spoke and acted at different times from
   opposite points of view, we must examine it more closely.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 53. Christ's Observance of the Jewish Worship and Law.

   No question can arise as to Christ's intention to extend his kingdom
   abroad among the pagan nations; the Messianic predictions of the Old
   Testament had already intimated the general diffusion of the worship of
   Jehovah; and John the Baptist had hinted at the possible transfer of
   the kingdom of God from the Jews to the heathen, in case the former
   should prove to be unworthy of it. And what was afterward novel to the
   apostles was, not that the pagans should be converted and received into
   the fellowship of the Messiah, but that they should be received without
   accepting the Mosaic law. It was against the latter view, and not the
   former, that even the strictest Judaizers objected. It was to refute
   this that the Ebionites appealed to Christ's strict observance of the
   law, and to his saying, in the Sermon on the Mount, that he "came not
   to destroy, but to fufil the law," and that "not one jot or tittle of
   the law should pass away."

   We must not oppose this doctrine by quoting Christ's declarations that
   the essence of religion must be found in the soul, and that outward
   things could neither cleanse nor sanctify mankind; [134] for even in
   the light of the Old Testament it was known that piety of heart was
   indispensable to a true fulfilment of the law. Christ himself appealed
   to a passage in the Old Testament (Hos., vi., 6) in proof of this; and
   even the well-disposed scribe (Mark, xii., 33) admitted it. Still, the
   necessity of an outward observance of the law might be maintained by
   those who deemed inward purity essential to its value. [135]

   Viewing the relation of Christ's doctrine to the legal stand-point only
   on this side, we might conceive it to have stood as follows: Directing
   his attention only to the necessity of proper dispositions in order to
   piety, he held, as of fundamental importance, that nothing in religion
   not springing from genuinely pious feelings could be of any avail; and,
   holding fast to this, did not investigate further the question of the
   continued authority of the ceremonial law. Satisfied with saving what
   was most essential, he permitted the other to stand as inviolable in
   its Divine authority. Such a course would have been eminently proper in
   Christ, if we regard him as nothing more than a genuine reformer Every
   attempt at true reformation must have, not a negative, but a positive
   point of departure; must start with some truth which it fully and
   necessarily recognizes.

   The view which we have just set forth is not invalidated by Christ's
   denunciations of the Pharisees for their arbitrary statutes and
   burdensome additions to the law.Matt., xxiii. In all these he
   contrasted the law, rightly and spiritually understood, with their
   false traditions and interpretations. As for actual violation of the
   law, he could never be justly accused of it; even Paul, who so
   strenuously resisted the continued obligation of the law, declares that
   Christ submitted to it. [136]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [134] Such as Matt., xv., 11; Mark, vii., 15.

   [135] Even Philo, from the stand-point of his religious idealism, held
   the necessity of a strict observance of the ritual law, believing that
   it facilitated the understanding of the spiritual sense of the law. He
   asserted this against the idealists, who adhered absolutely to the
   letter, in his treatise "De Migratione Abraami."

   [136] Gal., iv., 4.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 54. His Manifestation greater than the "Temple."

   But a comparison of Matt., xii., 6-8, with Mark, ii., 28, will suggest
   to us something more than a mere assault upon the statutes of the
   Pharisees. In the first passage he begins with his opponents upon their
   own ground. "You yourselves admit that the priests who serve the Temple
   on the Sabbath must break the literal Sabbatical law in view of the
   higher duties of the Temple service." Then he continues, "But I say
   unto you, there is something here greater than the Temple." [137] In
   these, as in many of Christ's words, there is more than meets the ear.
   [138] When we remember the sanctity of the Temple in Jewish eyes, as
   the seat of the Shekinah, as the only place where God could ever be
   worshipped, we can conceive the weight of Christ's declaration that his
   manifestation was something greater than the Temple, and was to
   introduce a revelation of the glory of God, and a mode of Divine
   worship to which the Temple-service was entirely subordinate. We may
   infer Christ's conclusion to have been, "If the priests have been freed
   from the literal observance of the Sabbath law because of their
   relation to the Temple, heretofore the highest seat of worship, how
   much more must my disciples be freed from the letter of that law by
   their relation to that which is greater than the Temple! (Their
   intercourse with Him was something greater than Temple-worship.) They
   have plucked the corn on the Sabbath, it is true, but they have done it
   that they might not be disturbed in their communion with the Son of
   Man, and in reliance upon his authority. They are free from guilt,
   then, for the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath." He thus laid the
   foundation for that true, spiritual worship to which the Temple-service
   was to give way.

   Of the same character were those words of Jesus which taught a Stephen
   that Christ would destroy the Temple and remove its ritual-worship.
   (Acts, vi., 14.) Whether he learned this from the words recorded in
   John, ii., 19, or from some others, we leave for the present undecided.
   The doctrine of Paul in regard to the relation between the Law and the
   Gospel was only an extension of the truth first uttered by Stephen.
   This doctrine could not have originated in Paul, without a point of
   departure for it in the instructions of Christ himself; still less, if
   those instructions had been in direct contradiction to it.

   Christ's declaration, "My yoke is easy and my burden light" (Matt.,
   xi., 30), was designed, indeed, primarily, to contrast his manner of
   teaching and leading men with that of the Pharisees; but it certainly
   meant far more. It contrasted his plan of salvation with legalism
   generally, of which Pharisaism was only the apex. Paul's doctrine on
   the subject is nothing but a developement of the intimation contained
   in these words. [139]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [137] I prefer Lachmann's reading (meizon) both on internal and
   external grounds. I cannot, however, believe, with De Wette, that the
   passage refers to Christ's Messianic calling alone; but rather to his
   whole manifestation, of which his ministry as Messiah formed part.
   Similar expressions of Christ refer to his whole appearance, e. g.,
   Matt., xii., 8, speaks of his person. Conf. Luke, xi., 30.

   [138] Justly says Dr. von Cölln (Ideen üb. d. inneren Zusammenhang der
   Glaubenseinigung und Glaubensreinigung in der evangel. Kirche, Leips.,
   1824, s. 10): "Every religious student of the Scriptures, however he
   may be satisfied with the sense that he has obtained from them by the
   aids of philosophy and history, must be constrained to acknowledge that
   the simplest words of the Saviour contain a depth and fulness of
   meaning which he can never boast of having mastered." These holy words,
   containing the germ of an unending developement, could only be
   understood in the Spirit (as by the Apostles); and they who had not
   received this Spirit, like the Judaizers, who adhered to the letter
   could not but misunderstand them.

   [139] Schleiermacher (in his Hermeneutik, s. 82) very aptly applies the
   oft-abused comparison between Christ and Socrates to illustrate the
   relation between the apostolic doctrines, especially those of Paul, and
   the immediate teachings of Christ. He justly remarks, that while there
   was a similarity in the fact that the teachings of Socrates were not
   written down by himself, but transmitted through his disciples, who
   marked them with their own individuality without at all obliterating
   the Socratic ground-colours, the substantial difference lay in this,
   that the affinity of the Apostles was closer than that of the followers
   of Socrates, "because the power of unity which emanated from Christ was
   in itself greater, and acted so powerfully upon those Apostles who,
   like Paul, had marked individual peculiarities, that they appealed, in
   their teachings, exclusively to Christ. Although Paul first brought out
   the idea of the conversion of the heathen into perfect clearness before
   the Apostles, yet he advocated it in no other power than that of
   Christ. Had not the idea been contained in Christ's teaching, the other
   Apostles would not have recognized Paul as a Christian, much less an
   Apostle." The same remark may be applied to many other important
   doctrines.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 55. The Conversation with the Samaritan Woman.

   We have thus far confined ourselves to Christ's declarations as given
   by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, avoiding John, because the credibility of
   his reports of Christ's discourses has been more disputed. But, having
   shown the tendency of Christ's doctrine of the Law from the first
   Gospels alone, we are surely now entitled to appeal to his conversation
   with the woman of Samaria (John, iv., 7-30), in which he set forth the
   Christian view, that religion was no more to be confined to any one
   place. In fact, the discourse involves no doctrine which cannot be
   found in Christ's declarations elsewhere recorded. Perfectly accordant
   with his declaration to the hostile Pharisees who clamoured so loudly
   for the ritual law--"the manifestation of the Son of Man is greater
   than the Temple; and he is Lord of the Sabbath"--was his answer to a
   woman (ignorant, to be sure, and destitute of a spiritual sense of the
   Divine, but yet free from prejudice, and susceptible of receiving
   instruction from him, because she believed him to be a prophet), when
   she inquired as to the right place to worship God: "The time is coming
   when the worship of God will be confined to no visible temple for the
   hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the
   Father in spirit and in truth." This declaration could only have been
   founded on the fact that something greater than the Temple had appeared
   among men.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 56. The "Destroying" and "Fulfilling" of the Law.

   But although we infer that Paul's doctrine of the disjunction of
   Christianity from the Mosaic law was derived, mediately at least, from
   Christ's own words, we must admit that the Judaizing Christians, unfit
   as they were, from their Jewish stand-point, fully to apprehend his
   teaching, might have found some support for their peculiar opinions
   both in his words and in his actions. Take, for instance, the passage,
   "Think not that I am come to destroy the Law and the Prophets; I am not
   come to destroy, but to fulfil." [140] Their Jewish views might
   interpret this to mean that he did not intend to abrogate the
   ceremonial part of the law, but to bring about a strict observance of
   it. Nor shall we apply here the distinction between the moral and the
   ritual law; neither the connexion of the passage nor the stand-point of
   the Old Testament would justify this. Certainly, as he used the terms
   Law and Prophets to denote the two great divisions of the Old
   Testament, and declared he would not destroy either, he must have had
   in view the entire law; it was the law, as a whole, that he came not to
   destroy, but to fulfil.

   We need only to understand correctly what kind of "destroying" it is
   which Christ disclaims. It is a "destroying" which excludes
   "fulfilling;" a destroying which is not at the same time a fulfilling.
   The general positive clause, "I am come to fulfil," is used as proof of
   the special and negative clause, "I am not come to destroy the Law and
   the Prophets;" nor are we to make the former a special one, by seeking
   an object for it in the preceding words. On the contrary, the general
   proposition, "I am come to fulfil," which holds good of Christ's entire
   labours, is, in this case, specially applied to his relation to the Old
   Testament. Christ's activity is in no sense a destroying and negative,
   but in every respect a fulfilling and creative agency. For instance, by
   that agency human nature is to lose none of its essential features; but
   only to be freed from the bonds and defects which sin has imposed upon
   it, so that its ideal, as originally designed by the Creator, may
   become the real. This is fulfilling; but yet it must be accompanied by
   the destroying of whatever opposes it. We apply the same principle to
   Christ's relation to the Mosaic law. The Mosaic Institute, as the
   fundamental law of the special Theocracy exhibited in the Jewish
   nation, was a veil, a limited form, in which the will of God, the
   eternal law of the Theocracy, was appropriately impressed upon the men
   of that time. But the general and eternal Theocratic law could not find
   its free developement and fulfilment in the form of an outward State
   law. The law (in its whole extent I mean, including what is called in a
   narrower sense the moral, as well as the ritual law) aimed to realize
   the will of God, to present the true dikaiosune under the relations
   above defined. But what the law, in its whole extent, aimed at, is
   accomplished through Christ; the veil is rent, the bonds are loosed by
   the liberating Spirit, and the law reaches its before unattainable
   fulfilment. This fulfilment, indeed, involves the removal of all
   obstructions; but this destroying process cannot be called destroying,
   as it is an essential condition, and a negative element, of the
   fulfilment itself. So the fulfilment of prophecy in the manifestation
   and labours of Christ necessarily involved the destruction of the
   prophetic veil and covering of the Messianic idea. [141]

   The Ebionites, adhering only to the letter, misunderstood Christ's
   declarations on this subject; but Paul, viewing them in their true
   spirit and universal bearing, obtained those views on the relation of
   the Law and the Gospel which he presents in such passages as Rom.,
   iii., 31: viii., 3, 4.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [140] Matt. v. 17.

   [141] We shall see hereafter how this interpretation of Christ's words
   is verified in the whole train of thought in the Sermon on the Mount.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 57. The Interpolation in Luke, vi., 4. (Cod. Cant.)

   There is a traditional account of another remarkable saying of Christ
   in regard to the observance of the Sabbath, [142] viz., that on a
   certain occasion, seeing a man at work on the Sabbath, he said to him,
   "Happy art thou if thou knowest what thou art doing; but if thou dost
   not know, thou art accursed, and a transgressor of the law." We must
   not leave this unnoticed, for as other words of Christ which did not
   find place in the canonical Gospels were handed down by tradition,
   [143] so it is possible that an event of the character here related may
   have been preserved in some collection of evangelical traditions (e.g.,
   an apocryphal Gospel or some other), and may have been afterward
   transferred to Luke, vi., 4, as having an affinity with the context
   there. There is nothing in the words themselves which Christ might not
   have uttered under certain circumstances; for their import is a
   sentiment which he always made prominent; viz., that all depends upon
   the spirit in which one acts. The force of the passage is, "Happy is he
   who has arrived at the conviction that God must be worshipped, not at
   special times and places, but in spirit and in truth; and who feels
   himself free from the Old Testament Sabbatical law. But he who, while
   acknowledging that law, allows himself to be induced by outward motives
   to labour on the Sabbath, is a guilty man; the law is in force for him,
   and, by violating his conscience for the sake of an external good, he
   pronounces his own condemnation."

   It is quite a different question, however, whether this narrative does
   not bear internal marks of improbability; whether, under the specified
   circumstances, Christ would have spoken as he is reported to have done.
   First, it is hardly possible to imagine that any one, at that day,
   among the Jews of Palestine, would have ventured to labour on the
   Sabbath. Again, it is hard to believe that Christ would have pronounced
   such labour in any wise good, unless it were performed in the discharge
   of a special duty. Such a procedure, more than any other, would have
   laid him open to the reproach of contemning the law. He looked upon the
   law as having been a divinely ordained part of the developement of
   God's kingdom, and as, therefore, necessary, until the period when the
   new form of that kingdom should go into operation. Only in the progress
   of this new form was the abrogation of the law to follow from the
   consciousness of redemption through Christ; and then, indeed, its
   destruction would be one with its fulfilment; and until that point of
   progress arrived, Christ himself set the example of a conscientious
   observance of the law. He opposed the Pharisaic statutes, indeed, but
   it was because they took the law in its letter, not in its spirit, and
   surrounded its observance with difficulties. He made it a fundamental
   point, that all true obedience must spring from piety and love; but
   still it was obedience to the law. He gave therefore, as we have seen,
   intimations only of that higher period in which the law was to be done
   away; intimations, moreover, which could only be understood through his
   own Spirit, after his work upon earth was done. Hence he certainly
   could have pronounced no action good in which man's will allowed itself
   to anticipate God's order, especially an action, grounded on motives
   understood by nobody, which might have injuriously affected the
   religious convictions of others. Paul lays down quite a contrary rule
   in 1 Cor., viii. Nor did Christ himself act in such a way in other
   cases.

   There is, then, very poor authority for this passage, either internal
   or external. Its invention was probably suggested by the words of Paul
   in Rom., xiv., 22, 23, and affords a very good illustration of the
   difference between mere individual inventions and the genuine
   historical traditions of the Evangelists.
     __________________________________________________________________

   We close our survey of Christ's sayings in regard to his relations to
   the Old Testament with a remark directly suggested by it, from which
   the weightiest consequences may be deduced.

   The manner in which he contrasted the Old Testament with its
   fulfilment, the New, and elevated the least of Christians above all the
   prophets, shows how clearly he distinguished the kernel from its
   perishable shell, the Divine idea from its temporary veil, the truth
   which lay in germ in the Old Testament, from the contracted form in
   which it presented itself to Old Testament minds. Applying this general
   principle to individual cases as they arise, we may learn how to
   interpret, in Christ's own sense, the figures which he employed to
   illustrate his Messianic world-dominion. In this way some of the
   results at which we have already arrived may find further confirmation.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [142] In the Cod. Cant. (Cod. Bezae), this passage immediately follows
   Luke, vi., 4: "te haute eme'ra theasamenos tina ergazomenon to sabbato
   eipen hauto; a'nthrope, ei men oidas ti poieis, makarios ei; ei de me
   oidas, epikataratos kai parabates ei tou nomon."

   [143] Acts, xx., 35.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER III.

  NEW FORM OF THE IDEA OF THE PERSON OF THE THEOCRATIC KING.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 58. The Names Son of God and Son of Man.

   OUR conception of the person of the Messiah, as Theocratic King, is
   closely connected with that which we may entertain of the kingdom of
   God itself, and of its process of developement. In reference to both,
   Jesus joined himself indeed to the existing Jewish conceptions, but, at
   the same time, infused into them a new spirit and a higher regenerating
   element.

   Both of the names which he applied to himself--Son of God and Son of
   Man--are to be found among the designations of the Messiah in the Old
   Testament; but he used them in a far higher sense than was current
   among the Jews. He obviously employed them antithetically: they contain
   correlative ideas, and cannot be thoroughly understood apart from their
   reciprocal relation. It is clear from Matt., xvi., 16; xxvi., 63; John,
   i., 50, and from all that is known of the current theological language
   of the Jews at that time, that the name "Son of God" was the most
   common designation of Messiah, as the best adapted to denote his
   highest dignity, that of Theocratic King. The name "Son of Man"
   involves, indeed, an allusion to the description of the Messiah in
   Dan., vii. (further illustrated in Christ's last words before the
   high-priests, Matt., xxvi., 64); but it is certain that this name was
   not among the more usual or best known titles of Messiah. This may
   explain why, [144] when Jesus on a certain occasion had stated a fact
   in regard to himself as Son of Man [viz., his approaching death] which
   did not accord with prevailing ideas, that his hearers began to doubt
   whether he did not mean to designate by that title some other person
   than the Messiah. It is used by none of the apostles for that purpose;
   and, indeed, nowhere in the New Testament, except in the discourses of
   Christ and in that of Stephen (Acts, vii., 56); and in this last case
   it is probable, as Olshausen justly remarks, that Stephen had an
   immediate and vivid intuition of Jesus, as he had seen him in his human
   form.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [144] John, xii., 34.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 59. Import of the Title Son of Man, as used by Christ
   himself--Rejection of Alexandrian and other Analogies.

   Christ must, therefore, have had special reasons for adopting, with an
   obvious predilection, the less known Messianic title. Even if we were
   to grant that lie used it more frequently because of its less obvious
   application, in order, at first, to lead the Jews gradually to
   recognize him as Messiah; still we should not have a sufficient
   explanation of his employing it so generally and so emphatically. [145]
   We find a better reason for it in Christ's conscious relation to the
   human race; a relation which stirred the very depths of his heart. He
   called himself the "Son of Man" because he had appeared as a man;
   because he belonged to mankind; because he had done such great things
   even for human nature (Matt., ix., 8); because he was to glorify that
   nature; be cause he was himself the realized ideal of humanity. [146]

   We certainly cannot find in Christ's use of the title any trace of the
   Alexandrian Theologoumenon of the archetype of humanity in the Logos,
   of Philo's distinction between the idea of humanity and its
   manifestation (or the Cabbalistic Adam Cadmon); notwithstanding it was
   not by accident that so many ideal elements, formed from a commingling
   of Judaism and Hellenism, were given as points of departure to the
   realism of Christianity; although this last was grounded on the highest
   fact in history.

   So, too, the fundamental idea of the title "Son of Man" is, perhaps,
   allied to that involved in the Jewish designation of Messiah as the
   "second Adam;" but it is clear that Christ was not led by the latter
   fact to employ it. Much rather do we suppose that the name, although
   used by the prophets, received its loftier and more profound
   significance from Christ's own Divine and human consciousness,
   independent of all other sources. It would have been the height of
   arrogance in any man to assume such a relation to humanity, to style
   himself absolutely Man. But He, to whom it was natural thus to style
   himself, indicated thereby his elevation above all other sons of
   men--the Son of God in the Son of Man.

   The two titles, "Son of God" and "Son of Man," therefore, bear
   evidently a reciprocal relation to each other. And we conclude that as
   Christ used the one to designate his human personality, so he employed
   the other to point out his Divine; and that as he attached a sense far
   more profound than was common to the former title, so he ascribed a
   deeper meaning than was usual to the latter.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [145] I must differ here from Scholten, Lücke, Von Cöln (Bibl. Dogm.,
   ii., 16), and Strauss (Leben Jesu); and agree with Schleiermacher,
   Tholuck, Olshausen, and Kling (Stud. u. Krit, 1836, i., 137). Justly
   says Schleiermacher of the title "Son of Man," "Christ would not have
   adopted it had he not been conscious of a complete participation in
   human nature. Its application would have been pointless, however, had
   he not used it in a sense inapplicable to other men; and it was
   pregnant with reference to the distinctive differences between him and
   them" (Dogmatik, ii., 91, 3d. ed). Certainly there is manifest, in the
   often-repeated expressions, sayings, and proverbs uttered by Christ,
   more the impression of an original and creative mind than a mere
   appropriation of what might have been given to his hand by his age and
   nation. It is one of the merits of the great man whose words we have
   just quoted, that he vindicated this truth in many ways in opposition
   to a shallow theology. The unclean spirit which he banished is now
   endeavouring, with seven others worse than himself, to take possession
   of this age, in which endeavour, please God, he will not succeed.

   [146] Conf. Matt., xii., 8; John i., 52; iii., 13; v., 27; vi. 53. The
   force of the first passage in John (i., 52) is, that Christ would
   glorify humanity by restoring its fellowship with celestial powers. The
   second (iii., 13) imports that he reveals his Divine being in human
   nature, and lives in heaven as man. The third (v., 27), that as man he
   will judge the human race. The fourth (vi., 53), that we must
   thoroughly take to ourselves and be penetrated by the flesh and blood
   (i. e., the pure humanity, the form of which he assumed to reveal the
   Divine) of him who can be called man in a sense that can be predicated
   of no other, and who himself has incarnated the Divinity. (On the
   passage from Matt., see p. 89.) In Matt., ix., 8, there is in the
   statement that the entire human nature is glorified in Christ, an
   intimation of what is expressed in the title "Son of Man" in Christ's
   sense of it. It is remarkable, that while this emphatic title of the
   Son of Man appears in the discourses of Christ both in the synoptical
   Gospels and John, that its deeper sense, although not to be mistaken in
   some of the passages in the former, is far more vividly expressed in
   John. Yet if it were the case (as has been said) that John, following
   the prevalent opinion, designed to represent Jesus as the Logos
   appearing in humanity, and, leaving the human nature in the
   back-ground, to present the Divine conspicuously, he could not have
   used this title so frequently. There is no trace of Alexandrianism in
   John, nor can his preference for the expression be attributed to his
   individual peculiarities, for there is nothing of the kind in his
   Epistles. The only individual peculiarity that we can detect in John,
   in this respect, is his susceptibility to impression from certain
   emphatic expressions especially such as relate to the person of Christ.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 60. Import of the Title Son of God.

   (1.) John's Sense of the Title accordant with that of the other
   Evangelists.

   We are indebted to John's Gospel, more than to either of the others,
   for those expressions of Christ which relate especially to the
   indwelling within him of the Divine essence. It does not, however (as
   some suppose), follow from this that John, consciously or
   unconsciously, remodelled the discourses of Christ according to the
   Alexandrian theology. The fact may be explained on entirely other
   grounds, e. g., his more intimate connexion with Christ, and the
   peculiar profoundness of his mind; moreover, the discourses recorded by
   him are longer and more consecutively didactic and controversial than
   those given by the other Evangelists. The impartiality, too, with which
   he sets forth the pure humanity of Christ is sufficient to prove the
   groundlessness of such a reproach.

   If we can only find individual expressions in the other Evangelists
   which involve the idea of the "Son of God" in John's sense, we shall
   have proved satisfactorily that the latter was derived immediately from
   Christ himself. Now Matt., xi., 27, "No man knoweth the Son but the
   Father, neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son," is just such
   a passage. It intimates precisely such a mysterious relation between
   the Father and the Son as John more fully sets forth as imparted to him
   by the revelation of Christ. So, also, the question propounded by
   Christ to the Pharisees, "What think ye of the Christ? whose Son is
   he?" could have had no other object than to lead them to conceive
   Messiah as the Son of God in a higher sense than they were accustomed
   to. Again, the heathen centurion (Matt., viii., 5), who deemed his roof
   unworthy of Christ, and begged him, without approaching his abode, to
   heal the sick servant by a word, certainly considered him as a superior
   being who had ministering spirits at command. He evidently did not form
   his idea of Christ from the common Jewish conceptions of the Messiah;
   on the contrary, his explanation (verse 9) of the impression which he
   had received (either from the accounts of others, or from personal
   observation of Christ's person and labours) is perfectly in keeping
   with his character and notions while as yet a pagan. [147] But Christ
   (who always rejected any honours that were ascribed to him from
   erroneous views [148] ) not only did not correct the centurion, but
   held his faith up as a model.

   In a word, the whole image of Christ presented in the synoptical
   Gospels exhibits a majesty far transcending human nature, and utterly
   irreconcilable with Ebionitish conceptions. A manifestation so
   extraordinary presupposes an inward essence such as that which John's
   Gospel fully unfolds to us.

   (2.) And confirmed by Paul's.

   Nor could the origin of Paul's doctrine of the person of Christ be
   explained, unless Christ himself had given statements corresponding to
   those recorded in John's Gospel. So, too, the various theological
   tendencies that developed themselves after the apostolic age presuppose
   a turn of thought intermediate between that especially exhibited in
   Matthew and that of Paul. Precisely such an intermediate point was
   occupied by John. [149]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [147] The whole account bears the inimitable stamp of historical truth.

   [148] Luke, xi., 21; xviii., 19.

   [149] Lücke has justly remarked upon the difference between the
   classic, creative tendencies of the apostolic times, and the later
   imitations of them. The dividing line between the former and the latter
   is distinctly marked. The later developement of Christian doctrine
   presupposes the different apostolic types of doctrine, and among them
   that of John. It is, therefore, utterly unhistorical to seek the origin
   of such a Gospel as John's in later Church developements (as some
   attempt to do). The latter are utterly destitute of the harmonious
   unity of Christian spiritual elements that distinguishes the former.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

PART II.

THE MEANS AND INSTRUMENTS OF CHRIST.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER I

  A. THE MEANS OF CHRIST IN GENERAL.
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   § 61. Christ a Spiritual Teacher.

   AS the kingdom which Christ came to establish was a spiritual one,
   intended to develope itself outwardly from within, so the means which
   he employed in its foundation were entirely of a spiritual nature. In
   his declaration before Pilate, [150] after he had (1) disclaimed any
   purpose of setting up an earthly kingdom, affirming at the same time
   (2) that he was King in a certain sense, he added (3) that he came into
   the world to testify of the truth. These three propositions, taken
   together, set forth his purpose to found his kingdom, not by worldly
   means, but by the testimony of the truth. But he testified of the truth
   by his whole life, by his words and works, comprising the entire
   self-revelation of Him who could say, "I am the Truth."

   Inasmuch, therefore, as he himself designates the testimony of the
   truth as his means of founding his kingdom; inasmuch, also, as he
   appeared first as Prophet, in order to lead those who recognized him as
   such to recognize him also as Messiah and Theocratic King, we must
   treat of his work as Prophet, or of his exercise of the office of
   Divine Teacher, as the instrument by which he laid the ground-work of
   his reign among men.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [150] John, xviii. 33-38.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 62. Different Theatres of Christ's Labours as Teacher.

   Christ exercised his office as teacher in two distinct theatres,
   Galilee and Jerusalem; and his mode of teaching varied accordingly.
   That carnal mania for miracles (directly contrasted by Paul [151] with
   the Greek pride of reason) which infected the Jews every where, whether
   in Galilee or Jerusalem, and added presumption to their
   narrow-mindedness, proved, indeed, in both places, the greatest
   hindrance to their reception of the words of Christ. This common Jewish
   feature of opposition to the spirit of Christ justified the Apostle
   John, when he was reviewing the past in its great outlines, in
   embracing not only the dominant Pharisaic party at Jerusalem, but also
   the hosts of Galilee, under the general conception of Ioudaioi. [152]

   Yet as the people of Galilee were of a more simple turn of mind, and
   were less subject to the influence of Pharisaism than those of
   Jerusalem, they must naturally have been more susceptible to his
   instructions. But a prophet is not wont to be held in honour in his own
   country; nor was the narrow-minded, carnal supranaturalism of the
   Galileans likely to recognize in the son of the carpenter of Nazareth
   the man sent of God. It was not until the displays of his power in the
   metropolis of the Theocracy had revealed him in a higher light, that he
   found a better reception on his return to the villages of Galilee.John,
   iv., 44, 45.

   It was partly, then, in Jerusalem, where the Jews gathered together
   from all the world at the Passover, and partly in Galilee, where he
   spoke to the people, clustered in more or less numerous groups about
   him. especially as he walked along the shores of Genesareth, that the
   scone of his labours as a public teacher lay.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [151] 1 Cor., i., 22.

   [152] See John's Gospel, passim.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 63. Choice and Training of the Apostles to be subordinate Teachers.

   Those who had no ear to hear the teachings of Christ fell off one by
   one, and left around him a narrow and abiding circle of susceptible
   souls, who were gradually more and more attracted by him, and more and
   more deeply imbued with his spirit. A closer [the closest] circle still
   was formed of his constant companions, the Apostles. As the seed which
   he sowed was received and developed so differently in the soils of
   different minds, and as the import of his teaching could not be
   thoroughly comprehended until his work upon earth was finished, there
   was danger that the confused traditions of the multitude would hand
   down to posterity a very imperfect image of himself and his doctrines,
   and that the necessary instrument for the foundation of the kingdom of
   God, viz., the propagation of the truth, would be wanting.

   It might be supposed that Christ could have best guarded against this
   result by transmitting his doctrine to all after ages in a form written
   by himself. And had He, in whom the Divine and the human were combined
   in unbroken harmony, intended to do this, he could not but have given
   to the Church the perfect contents of his doctrine in a perfect form.
   Well was it, however, for the course of developement which God intended
   for his kingdom, that what could be done was not done. The truth of God
   was not to be presented in a fixed and absolute form, but in manifold
   and peculiar representations, designed to complete each other, and
   which, bearing the stamp at once of God's inspiration and man's
   imperfection, were to be developed by the activity of free minds, in
   free and lively appropriation of what God had given by his Spirit. This
   will appear yet more plainly hereafter, from the principles of Christ's
   mode of instruction, as set forth by himself. At present we content
   ourselves with one single remark. Christ's declaration, "It is the
   Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing," [153] and his
   emphatic rejection of an act of worship that, without thought of the
   Spirit, deified only his outward form, [154] may serve to guard all
   after ages against that tendency to deify the form which is so fatal a
   bar against all recognition of the essence. What could have contributed
   more to produce such a tendency than a written document from Christ's
   own hand?

   Since, therefore, Christ intended to leave no such fixed rule of
   doctrine for all ages, written by himself, it was the more necessary
   for him to select organs capable of transmitting to posterity a correct
   image of himself and his teaching, Such organs were the apostles, and
   their training constituted no unimportant part of his work as a
   teacher.
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   [153] John, vi., 63.

   [154] Luke, xi., 27.
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  CHAPTER II.

  CHRIST'S MODE OF TEACHING IN REGARD TO ITS METHOD AND FORM.

   A. GENERAL PRINCIPLES.
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   § 64. His mode of Teaching adapted to the Stand-point of his Hearers.

   WE shall first seek, in the intimations of Christ himself, for the
   principles of his mode of teaching, and the grounds on which he adopted
   it.

   Such an intimation may be found in Matt., xiii., 52. After he had
   uttered and expounded several parables in regard to the kingdom of God,
   and had been assured by the apostles that they understood him, he
   continued: "From the example I have given you, in thus making hidden
   truths clear by means of parables, ye may learn that every scribe who
   is instructed into the kingdom of Heaven is like a householder, who
   bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old." As a
   householder shows his visitors his jewels; exhibits, in pleasing
   alternation, the modern and the antique, and leads them from the common
   to the rare, so must the teacher of Divine truth, in the new
   manifestation of the kingdom of God, bring out of his treasures of
   knowledge truths old and new, and gradually lead his hearers from the
   old and usual to the new and unaccustomed. Utterly unlike the rabbins,
   with their obstinate and slavish adherence to the letter, the teachers
   of the new epoch were to adapt themselves freely to the circumstances
   of their hearers, and, in consequence, to present the truth under
   manifold varieties of form. In a word, Christ himself, as a teacher,
   was the model for his disciples.

   As the passage above quoted referred primarily to the parabolic mode of
   teaching which Christ had just employed, we find in it an important
   reason for the frequent use which he made of figures and similitudes.
   It was, namely, in order to bring new and higher truths vividly before
   the minds of his hearers, by means of illustrations drawn from objects
   familiar to them in common life and nature.

   But the passage can be applied also to many other features of his mode
   of teaching; for instance, to his habit of leading his hearers, step by
   step, from the stand-point of the Old Testament to that of the New
   adapting himself to the old representations and the Jewish modes of
   thought and speech derived from them (especially those which referred
   to Messiah's kingdom), and thus imparting the new spirit under the
   ancient and accustomed forms. All his accommodation to forms finds its
   explanation here.
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   § 65. His Teaching presented Seeds and Stimulants of Thought.

   Again, he told his disciples (John, xvi., 25) that up to that time he
   had veiled the truth in parables, but that the time was approaching
   when he should declare plainly and openly all that he had to tell them
   of his Father. He thus taught them that they would be enabled, at a
   later period, by the aid of the illuminating Spirit, to develope from
   his discourses the hidden truths which they enfolded. It must,
   therefore, by no means surprise us to find that the full import of most
   of his words was not comprehended by his contemporaries: such a result,
   indeed, was just what we might expect. He would not have been "Son of
   God" and "Son of Man," had not his words, like his works, with all
   their adaptation to the circumstances of the times, contained some
   things that were inexplicable; had they not borne concealed within them
   the germ of an infinite developement, reserved for future ages to
   unfold. It is this feature (and all the Evangelists concur in their
   representations of it) which distinguishes Christ from all other
   teachers of men. Advance as they may, they can never reach him; their
   only task need be, by taking Him more and more into their life and
   thought, to learn better how to bring forth the treasures that lie
   concealed in him. [155]

   The form of his expressions, whether he uttered parables, proverbs,
   maxims, or apparent paradoxes, was intended to spur men's minds to
   profounder thought, to awaken the Divine consciousness within, and so
   teach them to understand that which at first served only as a mental
   stimulus. It was designed to impress indelibly upon the memory of his
   hearers truths perhaps as yet not fully intelligible, but which would
   grow clear as the Divine life was formed within them, and become an
   ever-increasing source of spiritual light. His doctrine was not to be
   propagated as a lifeless stock of tradition, but to be received as a
   living Spirit by willing minds, and brought out into full
   consciousness, according to its import, by free spiritual activity. Its
   individual parts, too, were only to be apprehended in their first
   proportions, in the complete connexion of that higher consciousness
   which He was to call forth in man. The form of teaching which repelled
   the stupid, and passed unheeded and misunderstood by the unholy, roused
   susceptible minds to deeper thought, and rewarded their inquiries by
   the discovery of ever-increasing treasures.
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   [155] Schleiermacher says beautifully (Christliche Sittenlehre, p. 72),
   that all our progress [in Divine knowledge] must consist solely in more
   correctly understanding and more completely appropriating to ourselves
   that which is in Christ.
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   § 66. Its Results dependent upon the Spirit of the Hearers.

   But the attainment of this end depended upon the susceptibility of the
   hearers. So far as they hungered for true spiritual food, so far as the
   parable stimulated them to deeper thought, and so far only, it revealed
   new riches. Those with whom this was really the case were accustomed to
   wait until the throng had left their Master, or, gathering round him in
   a narrow circle, in some retired spot, to seek clearer light on points
   which the parable had left obscure. The scene described in Mark, iv.,
   10, shows us that others besides the twelve apostles were named among
   those who remained behind to ask him questions after the crowd had
   dispersed. Not only did such questions afford the Saviour an
   opportunity of imparting more thorough instruction, but those who felt
   constrained to offer them were thereby drawn into closer fellowship
   with him. He became better acquainted with the souls that were longing
   for salvation.

   The greater number, however, in their stupidity, did not trouble
   themselves to penetrate the shell in order to reach the kernel. Yet
   they must at least have perceived that they had understood nothing;
   they could not learn separate phrases from Christ (as they might from
   other religious teachers) and think they comprehended them, while they
   did not. And so, in proportion to the susceptibility of his hearers,
   the parables of Christ revealed sacred things to some and veiled them
   from others, who were destined, through their own fault, to remain in
   darkness. The pearls, as he himself said, were not to be cast before
   swine. Thus, like those "hard sayings" [156] which were to some the
   "words of Life," and to others an insupportable "offence," the parables
   served to sift and purge the throng of Christ's hearers.

   A single example will bring this vividly before us. On a certain
   occasion, when Christ had pronounced a parable, and the multitude had
   departed, the earnest seekers after truth gathered about him to ask its
   interpretation. [157] He expressed his gratification at their eagerness
   to learn the true sense of his words, and said: "Unto you it is given
   [158] to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to others in
   parables [without the explanations that are given to susceptible
   minds], that they may see with their eyes, and yet not see; that they
   may hear with their ears, and yet not hear." There is here expressed a
   moral necessity, a judgment of God, that those who were destitute of
   the right will (on which all depends, and without which the Divine
   "drawing" is in vain), could understand nothing of the things of the
   Lord which they saw and heard. So long as they remained as they were,
   the whole life of Christ, according to the same general law, remained
   to them an inexplicable parable. [159] It is worthy of remark, that
   "the others," with whom Luke contrasts the inquiring disciples, are
   styled by Mark (iv., 11) "those that are without." The simplest way to
   interpret this phrase is to apply it to those who did not enter to ask
   a solution of what they had not understood; it may mean those who were
   outside of the narrower fellowship around Christ; but in either sense
   the result is the same. [160]

   "The mystery," in the passage above quoted, is something hidden from
   men of worldly minds; incomprehensible to them, and to all who are
   excluded, by their spirit and disposition, from the kingdom of God. And
   this is the case with all truths that relate to that kingdom, however
   simple and clear they may seem to those whose inner life has made them
   at home in it.

   After Christ had explained the parable to his disciples, he took
   occasion, from this particular case, to impress upon them the general
   lesson that every thing depended on the spirit in which they received
   his words. He came not (he told them) to hide his light, but to
   enlighten the darkness of men. It was his calling to be the Light of
   the world (Mark, iv., 21). (He spoke in order to reveal the truth, not
   to hide it.) The truth which he had obscurely intimated was to unfold
   itself for the instruction of all mankind (v. 22; cf. John, xvi., 25).
   Yet the organs who were destined to unfold it must have "hearing ears"
   (v. 23). And he proceeds (v. 24), "Take heed, therefore, what ye hear
   (be not like the stupid multitude, who perceive only the outward word);
   and unto you that hear shall more be given (my revelations to you will
   increase in proportion to the susceptibility with which you appropriate
   the truths which I have intimated)." And he concludes with the general
   law, [161] "Whosoever has--in reality has--whosoever has made to
   himself a living possession of the truths which he has heard, to him
   shall more be ever given. But he that has received it only as something
   dead and outward, shall lose even that which he seems to have, but
   really has not." [162] His knowledge, unspiritual and dead, will turn
   out to be worthless--the shell without the kernel.

   Some have supposed that these words (v. 25) were merely a proverb of
   common life, of which Christ made a higher application. But the proofs
   that have been offered [163] in favour of the existence of such a
   proverb are by no means to the point; and, in fact, it would be hardly
   true applied to temporal possessions, for the poor man can increase his
   small store by industry and prudence; and the rich, without those
   qualities, may soon lose his heaped-up treasures. The saying is fully
   true only in an ethical sense; it speaks of moral, and not material
   possessions. Applied, however, as a proverb, it must refer, not to mere
   possession, but to property held as such, and can only mean that he who
   holds property, as his own, will not keep it as dead capital, but gain
   more with it; while he, on the other hand, who does not know how to use
   what he has, will lose it. Thus understood, the words are not only
   fully applicable to the special case before us, but also to manifold
   relations in the sphere of moral life.

   The apostles had as yet, in their intercourse with their Master,
   received but little; but that little was imprinted on their hearts.
   They did not, like the multitude, receive the word only by the hearing
   of the ear, but made it thoroughly and spiritually their own. And thus
   was laid within them the foundation of Christian progress.
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   [156] John, vi., 60.

   [157] Luke, viii., 10; Mark, iv., 11.

   [158] I. e., they followed the inward " drawing of God (John, vi., 44,
   45), and thence became susceptible of Divine impressions.

   [159] According to Mark and Luke, the disciples asked of Christ the
   meaning of the parable; according to Matthew (xiii., 10), they inquired
   why he spoke to the multitude in parables. In Luke there is only an
   allusion to Isai., vi., 9; in Matthew the passage is cited in full. In
   both respects the statement in Mark and Luke seems to be the more
   simple and original. The apostles had more reason to ask the meaning of
   the parables than to find out Christ's motive for uttering them; yet as
   Christ, in reply, did state that motive, it was perhaps implied in the
   question. The full quotation of the passage in Isaiah was a natural
   change, and accorded with Matthew's habit. The connexion is well
   preserved in Matthew, and the difference between his statement and the
   others is merely formal; nor is there the slightest ground to suppose
   that the author of Matthew simply worked out Mark's account or some
   other which lay before him. It goes on naturally thus: in answer to the
   question why he spoke to the multitude in parables, Christ replied (v.
   11), that it was not given to them, as to the disciples, to know the
   mysteries of the kingdom of God; the reason, founded in their moral
   dispositions, is stated in v. 12; and then, in v. 13, the Divine
   sentence, that "on account of their stupidity he spoke to them only in
   parables." There is nothing inconsistent here, nor is any arbitrary
   procedure attributed to Christ; for, in fact, the parables served to
   veil as well as to reveal; and they did the one or the other, according
   to the moral disposition of those that heard them.

   [160] Whatever may have been the original expression of Christ in this
   passage, the fact that Luke speaks of "mysteries" in the plural, and
   Mark of "mystery" in the singular, contributes, at any rate, to its
   elucidation. We have here another proof that the germs of Paul's
   teaching are to be found in the discourses of Christ: this passage
   contains Paul's whole doctrine of tire relation of the natural mind to
   the knowledge of Divine things; e. g., 1 Cor.. ii. 14.

   [161] Mark, iv., 25; Luke, viii., 18; Matt., xiii., 12.

   [162] I must hold ho dokei echein to be the true reading of Luke,
   viii., 18, in spite of what De Wette says to the contrary.

   [163] Conf. Wetstein on Matt., xiii., 12.
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   § 67. His Mode of Teaching corresponds to the General Law of
   Developement of the Kingdom of God.

   It was, then, according to Christ's own words, a peculiar aim and law
   of his teaching, to awaken a sense for Divine things in the human mind,
   and to make further communications in proportion to the degree of
   living appropriation that might be made of what was given. And this
   corresponds with the general laws established by Christ for the
   developement of the kingdom of God. It is his law that choice must be
   made, by the free determination of the will, between God and the world,
   before the susceptibility for Divine things (which may exist even in
   the as yet fettered soul, if it incline towards God), and the emotions
   of love [164] for the Divine which springs from that susceptibility,
   can arise in the human heart. The heart tends to the point from whence
   it seeks its treasure (its highest good). [165] The sense for the
   Divine, the inward light, must shine. If worldly tendencies extinguish
   it, the darkness must be total. Christ's words, Christ's manifestation,
   can find no entrance. The Divine light streams forth in vain if the
   light-perceiving eye of the soul is darkened. [166] The parable of the
   sower vividly sets forth the necessity of a susceptible soil, before
   the seed of the Word can germinate and bring forth fruit. And so he
   constantly assured the carnal Jews that they could not understand him
   in their existing state of mind. He who will not follow the Divine
   "drawing" (revealed in his dawning consciousness of God) can never
   attain to faith in Christ, and must feel himself repelled from his
   words. The carnal mind can find nothing in him. [167] The form of his
   language (so he told those who took offence at it [168] ) appeared
   incomprehensible, because its import, the truth of God, could not be
   apprehended by souls estranged from Him. The form and the substance
   were alike paradoxical to them. The uncongenial soul found his mode of
   speaking strange and foreign; it is foreign no more when the spirit,
   through its newly-roused sense for the Divine, yields itself up to the
   higher Spirit. The words can be understood only by those who have a
   sympathy for the spirit and the substance.

   Thus, then, the other Evangelists agree with John in regard to the
   fundamental principles of Christ's mode of teaching.
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   [164] Pascal (Art de Persuader), "qu'il faut aimer les choses divines,
   pour les connaitre." Beautifully said.

   [165] Matt., vi., 21.

   [166] Luke, xii., 34; Matt., vi., 22.

   [167] John, vi., 44.

   [168] John, viii., 33, 44. In v. 43, lalia expresses the mode of
   speaking. The substance is expressed by logos. See Lücke's excellent
   remarks on the passage.
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   § 68 Idea of the Parable.--Distinction between Parable, Fable, and
   Mythus.

   Without doubt the form of Christ's communications was in some degree
   determined by the mental peculiarities of the people among whom he
   laboured, viz., the Jews and Orientals. We may find in this one reason
   for his use of parables; and we must esteem it as a mark of his freedom
   of mind and creative originality, that he so adapted to his own
   purposes a form of instruction that was especially current among the
   Jews. But yet his whole method of teaching, as we have already set it
   forth, would have led him, independently of his relations to the people
   around him, to adopt this mode of communicating truth. Not inaptly has
   one of the old writers compared the parables of Christ's discourses to
   the parabolic character of his whole manifestation, representing, as it
   did, the supernatural in a natural form. [169]

   We may define the parables as representations through which the truths
   pertaining to the kingdom of God are vividly exhibited by means of
   special relations of common life, taken either from nature or the world
   of mankind. A general truth is set forth under the likeness of a
   particular fact, or a continuous narrative, commonly derived from the
   lower sphere of life; the operations of nature, and the qualities of
   inferior animals, or the acts of men in their mutual relations with
   each other, being assumed as the basis of the representation. Those
   parables which are derived entirely from the sphere of nature are
   grounded on the typical relations that exist [170] between Nature and
   Spirit. So, in the vine and its branches, Christ finds a type of the
   relation between himself and those who are members of his body. He is
   the true Vine The law whose reality finds place in the spiritual life
   is only imaged and typified in nature.

   Even though the fable be so defined as to be included in the parable,
   as the species is comprehended in the genus, still the latter,
   especially as Christ employs it, has always its own distinctive
   characteristics. The parable is allied to the fable, as used by Æsop,
   so far forth as both differ from the Mythus (an unconscious invention),
   by employing statements of fact, not pretended to be historical, merely
   as coverings for the exhibition of a general truth; the latter only
   being presented to the mind of the hearer or reader as real. But the
   parable is distinguished from the fable by this, that in the latter,
   qualities or acts of a higher class of beings may be attributed to a
   lower (e.g., those of men to brutes); while in the former, the lower
   sphere is kept perfectly distinct from the higher one which it serves
   to illustrate. The beings and powers thus introduced always follow the
   law of their nature, but their acts, according to this law, are used to
   figure those of a higher race. The fable cannot be true according to
   its form, e. g., when brutes are introduced thinking, speaking, and
   acting like men; but the representations of the parable always
   correspond to the facts of nature, or the occurrences of civil and
   domestic life, and remind the hearer of events and phenomena within his
   own experience. The mere introduction of brutes, as personal agents, in
   the fable, is not sufficient to distinguish it from the parable, which
   may make use of the same contrivance; as, for instance, indeed, Christ
   employs the sheep in one of his parables. The great distinction here,
   also, lies in what has already been remarked; brutes introduced in the
   parable act according to the law of their nature, and the two spheres
   of nature and the kingdom of God are carefully separated from each
   other. Hence the reciprocal relations of brutes to each other are not
   made use of, as these could furnish no appropriate image of the
   relation between man and the kingdom of God. And as the lower animals
   are, by an impulse of their nature, attached to man as a being of a
   higher order, Divine, as it were, in comparison to themselves, and
   destined to rule over them, the relations between man and this inferior
   race may serve very well to illustrate the still higher relations of
   the former to the kingdom of God and the Saviour. Thus, for instance,
   Christ employs the connexion of sheep and the shepherd to give a vivid
   image of the relations of human souls to their Divine guide.

   There is ground for this distinction between parable and fable, both in
   the form and in the substance. In the form, because the parable in
   tends that the objects of nature and the occurrences of every-day life
   shall be associated with higher truths, and thus not only illustrate
   them, but preserve them constantly in the memory. In the substance,
   because, although single acts of domestic or social virtue might find
   points of likeness in the qualities of the lower animals (not morality
   in general, for this, like religion, is too lofty to be thus
   illustrated), the dignity of the sphere of Divine life would be
   essentially lowered by transferring it to a class of beings entirely
   destitute of corresponding qualities.
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   [169] Diote kai o kurios ouk o`n kosmko`s, os kosmikos heis
   anthro';pous elthen. Strom., vi., 677.

   [170] "It can readily be shown that the parables, as used by Christ,
   had the significance of their types. Nature, as she has disclosed
   herself to the mind of man, must in them bear witness of Spirit."
   Steffens (Religionsphilosophie, i., 146). And so Schelling, on the
   relation between Nature and History, "They are to each other parable
   and interpretation." Philos. Schriften, 1809, 457.)
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   § 69. Order in which the Parables were Delivered.--Their
   Perfection.--Mode of Interpreting them.

   We find many parables placed together in Matthew, xiii.; and the
   question naturally arises whether it is probable that Christ uttered so
   many at one and the same time. We can readily conceive that he should
   use various parables in succession in order to present the same truth
   or several closely related truths, in different forms; this variety
   would tend to excite attention, to present the one truth more clearly
   by such various illustration, to put the one subject before the
   beholder's eye more steadily, in many points of view, and thus to
   imprint it indelibly upon his memory. But it is not to be supposed that
   Christ delivered a succession of parables different both in form and
   matter, or, if somewhat alike in form, different in scope and design;
   for this could only have confused the minds of his hearers, and thus
   frustrated the very purpose of this mode of instruction.

   It will be easy to gather what is necessary to the perfection of the
   parable, from what we have said of its nature. In the first place, the
   fact selected from the lower sphere of life should be perfectly
   adapted, in its own nature, to give a vivid representation of the
   higher truth; and, secondly, the individual traits of the lower fact
   itself should be clearly exhibited according to nature. Hence, in order
   to understand the parables correctly, we must endeavour to seize upon
   the single truth which the parabolic dress is designed to illustrate,
   and refer all the rest to this. The separate features, which serve to
   give roundness and distinctness to the picture of the lower fact, may
   aid us in obtaining a more many-sided view of the one truth, the higher
   sphere corresponding to the lower in more respects than one (e. g., the
   parables of the shepherd and the sower); but we must never seek the
   perfection of the parables of Christ in giving significancy, apart from
   the propel point of comparison, to the parts of the narrative which
   were merely intended to complete it; for this, by diverting the mind
   from the one truth to a variety of particulars, can only embarrass
   instead of assisting it, and must thus frustrate the very aim of the
   parable itself. Such a procedure would open a wide field for arbitrary
   interpretation, and could not fail to lead the hearer astray.

   The separate parables will be treated in their proper connexions in the
   course of the narrative.
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   § 70. Christ's Teaching not confined to Parables, but conveyed also in
   longer Discourses.

   It followed, not only from Christ's chosen mode of teaching, but also
   from his relations to the new spiritual creation whose seeds he
   implanted in the hearts of his disciples, that he used pithy and
   sententious sayings and aphorisms instead of lengthened exhibitions of
   doctrine. They were intended to be retained in ever vivid recollection,
   and, notwithstanding their separation, to contain the germs of an
   organically connected system of moral and religious truth. The
   interpreter and the historian find the difficulty of placing these in
   their proper relations and occasions increased by the fact that the
   accounts of the first three Evangelists arrange and present them in
   different connexions of thought. The Church, however, has lost nothing
   by this; it only establishes the doctrine that the truths uttered by
   Christ admit of manifold apprehension and application. Yet there is no
   ground for the assumption that Christ taught only by means of parables
   and aphorisms. The supposition, in itself, is sufficiently improbable,
   that he never employed longer and more connected forms of discourse for
   the instruction of the circles of disciples who had received
   impressions from him and gathered themselves about his person; and,
   besides, an example of this kind (recorded by the first three
   Evangelists) is to be found in the Sermon on the Mount. We shall
   hereafter inquire more closely into the system of Christian truth
   contained in that discourse.
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   § 71. John's Gospel contains chiefly connected and profound Discourses;
   and Why?

   We must here consider the difference between the form of Christ's
   expositions as given by the first three Evangelists, and as recorded by
   John. Some recent writers have found an irreconcilable opposition
   between them both of form and substance; and have concluded therefrom
   either that John, in reproducing the discourses of Christ from memory,
   involuntarily blended his own subjective views with them, and thus
   presented doctrines which a real disciple could not at the time have
   apprehended; or that some one else at a later period, and not John, was
   the author of this Gospel. They contrast the thoroughly practical
   bearing of the Sermon on the Mount with (what they call) the mystical
   character of the discourses recorded by John. They find every thing in
   the former simple and intelligible, while the latter abounds in
   paradoxes, and seems to study obscurity. Moreover, the latter is almost
   destitute of parables; a form of eloquence not only national, but also
   characteristic of Christ, judging from his discourses as given in the
   other Gospels.

   But let any one only yield himself to the impression of the Sermon on
   the Mount, and then ask himself whether it be probable that a mind of
   the loftiness, depth, and power which that discourse evinces, could
   have employed only one mode of teaching? A mind which swayed not only
   simple and practical souls, but also so profoundly speculative an
   intellect as that of Paul, could not but have scattered the elements of
   such a tendency from the very first. We cannot but infer, from the
   irresistible power which Christianity exerted upon minds so diversely
   constituted and cultivated, that the sources of that power lay combined
   [171] in Him whose self-revelation was the origin of Christianity
   itself. Moreover, the other Gospels are not wanting in apparently
   paradoxical expressions akin to the peculiar tone of John's Gospel, e.
   g., "Let the dead bury their dead." [172] Nor will an attentive
   observer find in John alone expressions of Christ intended to increase,
   instead of to remove the offence which carnal minds took at his
   doctrine. We repeat, again. that the words and acts of the true Christ
   could not have been free from paradoxes; and from this, indeed, it may
   have been that the Pharisees were led to report that he had lost his
   senses.

   Still, it is true, that such passages are given by John much more
   abundantly than the other Evangelists. But there is nothing in his
   Gospel purely metaphysical or unpractical; none of the spirit of the
   Alexandrian-Jewish theology; but every where a direct bearing upon the
   inner life, the Divine communion which Christ came to establish. Its
   form would have been altogether different had it been composed, as some
   suppose, in the second century, to support the Alexandrian doctrine of
   the Logos, as will be plain to any one who takes the trouble to compare
   it with the writings of that age that have come down to us The
   discourses given in the first three Gospels, mostly composed of
   separate maxims, precepts, and parables, all in the popular forms of
   speech, were better fitted to be handed down by tradition than the more
   profound discussions which have been recorded by the beloved disciple
   who hung with fond affection upon the lips of Jesus, treasured his
   revelations in a congenial mind, and poured them forth to fill up the
   gaps of the popular narrative. And although it is true that the image
   of Christ given to us in this Gospel is the reflection of Christ's
   impression upon John's peculiar mind and feelings, it is to be
   remembered that these very peculiarities were obtained by his
   intercourse with, and vivid apprehension of, Christ himself. His
   susceptible nature appropriated Christ's life, and incorporated it with
   his own.
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   [171] We should believe this even if we were to admit Weisse's view,
   viz., that the basis of this Gospel was a collection of the logia tou
   kuriou made by John, and afterward wrought by another hand into the
   form of a historical narrative. But Weisse's critical processes seem to
   me to be entirely arbitrary. John's Gospel is altogether (with the
   exception of a few passages which are suspicious both on external and
   internal grounds) a work of one texture, not admitting of critical
   decomposition. In Matthew, not only internal signs, but also historical
   traditions, when considered without prejudice, seem to distinguish the
   original and fundamental composition from the later revision of the
   work. On the other hand, the author in whom we first find the tradition
   referred to (Papias, Euseb., iii., 39) makes mention of no such thing
   in regard to John's Gospel. He must have known the fact, had it been
   so, living as he did in Asia Minor. Some adduce Papias's silence about
   John's Gospel as a testimony against its genuineness; but his object,
   most likely, was to give in formation in regard to those parts of the
   narrative whose origin was not so well known in that part of the
   country; whereas John's Gospel was fresh in every one's memory there.

   [172] Had this expression occurred in John, it might have been cited as
   a specimen of "Alexandrian mysticism."
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   § 72. The Parable of the Shepherd, in John, compared with the Parables
   in the other Gospels.

   Parables, as we have said, are peculiarly fitted for oral tradition. We
   need not wonder, therefore, that they are more abundant in the first
   three Gospels, which were composed of such traditions, than in John;
   and, moreover, the latter, presupposing them to be known, may have had,
   in his peculiar turn of mind, and in the object for which he wrote his
   Gospel, sufficient reasons for omitting them. Yet the discourses of
   Christ, as given by him, are marked by the very peculiarity that gives
   rise to the use of parables, viz., the illustration of the Spiritual
   and the Divine, by images taken from common life.

   But real parables are not entirely wanting in John's Gospel. The
   illustration of the shepherd and the sheep (ch. 10) has all the
   essential features of the parable, and John himself applies that name
   to it (ver. 6). Here, as in other parables, we find a religious truth
   vividly represented by a similitude taken from the sphere of nature.
   As, for instance, in the parable of the sower, Christ is likened to the
   husbandman, the Divine word to the seed, and the various degrees of
   susceptibility for the word in men's souls to the variously productive
   soils in which the seed is planted; so, in this similitude, the
   relation of souls to Christ is compared with that of sheep to the
   shepherd; and the self-seeking teacher, who offers himself, on his own
   authority and for a bad purpose, as a guide of men, is likened to a
   thief who does not enter the sheep-fold by the door, but climbs over
   the wall. Strauss has remarked that this parable differs from those of
   the Synoptical Gospels in this, that it does not give a historical
   narrative, with beginning, middle, and end, of a fact actually once
   taking place, but makes use simply of what is commonly seen to happen.
   But even this feature cannot be said to be essential to all the
   synoptical parables, but only to those in which a specific occurrence
   in human intercourse is assumed to illustrate a spiritual truth; [173]
   for in those, on the other hand, which are not taken from social and
   civil life, but from the sphere of man's intercourse with nature, the
   one especial fact given is nothing but a specimen of what commonly
   takes place; and the form of the statement could be entirely changed in
   this respect, without at all affecting its substance. Of this the
   parable of the sower is an example, and, indeed, those of the leaven
   and the mustard seed also. So, too, John's parable of the shepherd and
   the sheep might be stated in the form of a fact once occurring, without
   losing a particle of its individuality.

   C. CHRIST'S USE OF ACCOMMODATION.
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   [173] Even were the name parables (as a distinct form of similitudes)
   restricted to representations of this class, such a distinction would
   not destroy the analogy between Christ's discourses in John and those
   in the other Gospels, founded on their use, in common, of the same mode
   of vividly exhibiting spiritual truths.
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   § 73. Necessity of Accommodation.

   We must mention Christ's adaptation of his instruction to the capacity
   of his hearers, as one of the peculiar features of his mode of
   teaching. Without such accommodation, indeed, there can be no such
   thing as instruction. The teacher must begin upon a ground common to
   his pupils, with principles presupposed as known to them, in order to
   extend the sphere of their knowledge to further truths. He must lower
   himself to them, in order to raise them to himself. As the true and the
   false are commingled in their conceptions, he must seize upon the true
   as his point of departure, in order to disengage it from the
   encumbering false. So to the child the man becomes a child, and
   explains the truth in a form adapted to its age, by making use of its
   childish conceptions as a veil for it.

   In accordance with this principle, every revelation of God, having for
   its object the training of mankind for the Divine life (and we must
   never forget that this was the sole aim of Christianity, as well as of
   the preparatory institutions which preceded it), has made use of this
   law of accommodation, in order to present the Divine to the
   consciousness of men in forms adapted to their respective stand-points.
   And as Christ by no means intended, as we have before remarked, to
   impart a complete system of doctrine as a mere dead tradition; but
   rather to stimulate men's minds to a living appropriation and
   developement of the truth which he revealed, by means of the powers
   with which God had endowed them; it was the more necessary for him to
   adapt his instruction to the capacities of those who heard him. His
   teaching by parables, in which the familiar affairs of every-day life
   were made the veil and vehicle of unknown and higher truths, was an
   instance of accommodation. The pedagogic principle of joining the old
   with the new, of making the old new and the new old, and of deriving
   the new from the old, is fully illustrated in the saying of Christ
   before referred to, viz., that the teacher, instructed in the kingdom
   of Heaven, is like "a householder, who bringeth forth out of his
   treasure things new and old." To this principle, constantly employed by
   Christ in his teaching, we must ascribe the extraordinary influence of
   Christianity upon human culture from the very beginning. But, just as
   the "form of a servant" hindered many eyes from seeing the Son of God
   in the Son of Man, so the Divine, which adapted itself to human
   infirmities by veiling its heavenly grandeur, was often concealed by
   the very veil which it had assumed.
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   § 74. Distinction between Positive (Material) and Negative (Formal)
   Accommodation; the latter necessary, the former inadmissible.

   We must carefully separate false from true accommodation; there is a
   broad distinction between a negative accommodation of the form and a
   positive one of the substance. The teacher who adopts the latter will
   confirm his hearers in an error, in order to gain their confidence, and
   to infuse into their minds, even by means of error, some important
   truth. But the laws of morality do not admit that "the end sanctifies
   the means;" nor can the establishment of error ever be a just means of
   propagating truth. And it is as impolitic as it is immoral; for error,
   as well as truth, contains within itself a fructifying germ, and no one
   can predict what fruit it will produce. He who makes use of it
   renounces at once the character of a teacher of truth; no man will
   trust him, and he can therefore exert a spiritual influence upon none.
   There is no criterion for distinguishing the truth of his aims from the
   falsehood of his means. Such an accommodation as this was utterly
   repugnant to the holy nature of Him who called himself The Truth; and
   there is no trace of it to be found in his teachings.

   It is quite a different thing with the negative and formal
   accommodation. As Christ's sole calling as a teacher was to implant the
   fundamental truths of the kingdom of God in the human consciousness, he
   could not stop by the way to battle with errors utterly unconnected
   with his object, and remote from the interests of religion and
   morality. Thus he made use of common terms and expressions without
   entering into an examination of all the false notions that might be
   attached to them. He called diseases, for instance, by the names in
   common use; but we should not be justified in concluding that he
   thereby stamped with his Divine authority the ordinary notions of their
   origin, as implied in the names. Nor does his citation of the books of
   the Old Testament by the accustomed titles imply any sanction on his
   part of the prevalent opinions in regard to their authors. We must
   never forget that his words, as he himself has told us, are Spirit and
   Life; and that no scribe of the old Rabbinical school, no slave to the
   letter, can rightly comprehend and apply them.

   Nor did he make use of positive accommodation in seizing, as he did,
   upon those religious conceptions of the times which concealed the germ
   of truth under material forms. It was not his aim to preserve the mere
   shell, the outward form, but to disengage the inner truth from its
   covering, and bring it out into free and pure developement. This he
   could only effect by causing men to change their whole carnal mode of
   thinking, of which the material form of representation, just referred
   to, was only one of the results. These remarks apply especially to the
   use which he made of the common outward images of the Messianic
   world-dominion; which he certainly would not have employed, if they had
   not contained a substantive truth in regard to the developement of the
   kingdom of God from the Old Testament standpoint. [174] To attack these
   material ideas directly, and present the pure, spiritual truth as a
   ready-made system, would have been fruitless; it was only from the
   deeper ground in which the erroneous tendencies were imbedded that they
   could be successfully overthrown. And Christ, taking the truth that lay
   in the outward form as his point of departure, attacked the root of all
   the separate errors; the selfish, carnal mind, the longing for worldly
   rank and rewards; and implanted, on the other hand, the purely
   spiritual ideas of the Divine kingdom, as seeds from which, in due
   time, a free reaction against the material tendency would spontaneously
   arise.

   Of the same character was the use which Christ made of figurative
   analogies like that in Matt., xii., 43, [175] et seq. In such cases the
   figurative representation was employed, like the parable, to exhibit an
   idea vividly to the minds of his hearers, while, at the same time, its
   connexion was such that he could not possibly be misunderstood.
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   [174] See p. 86 and 87.

   [175] We shall have occasion to speak of this passage more fully in
   another connexion.
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   § 75. Christ's Application of Passages from the Old Testament.

   What we have said in regard to Christ's habit of taking up a concealed
   truth is especially applicable to his use of quotations from the Old
   Testament, which enveloped, as it were, and contained the germ of
   truths which he was fully to unfold and develope. In this point of
   view, he derived, from the Old Testament, truths which, though not
   contained in the letter of its words, were involved in its spirit and
   fundamental import. The higher spirit, which appeared in its unlimited
   fulness in Christ, was predominant in the Old Testament; all the
   preparatory revelations of that spirit had Christ for their aim; the
   Theocratic idea, which formed the central-point both of the Scriptures
   and the Jewish nation, had found no fulfilment, but looked to the
   future for its realization. Christ was perfectly justified, therefore,
   in so interpreting the Old Testament as to bring out clearly its hidden
   intimations and germs of truth, and to unfold from the covering of the
   letter the profounder sense of the Spirit. We shall have occasion to
   illustrate this more fully in our exposition of Christ's didactic and
   polemic use of the Old Testament. Paul's interpretation of the Old
   Testament was of precisely the same character; with this difference
   only, that Christ was better able to distinguish the different stages
   of the Theocratic developement, pointing, as they all did, to his
   manifestation.
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  CHAPTER III.

  CHRIST'S CHOICE AND TRAINING OF THE APOSTLES.
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   § 76 Christ's Relation to the Twelve.--Significance of the Number
   Twelve.--The Name Apostle.

   WE have before remarked, that among the most important means employed
   by Christ in founding the kingdom of God was the training of certain
   organs; not only to replace his personal labours as a teacher (which
   were limited to so very brief a period), but also to propagate a true
   image of his person, his manifestation, his Spirit, and his truth. Here
   arises the question, whether Christ intentionally selected twelve men
   for this purpose, and took the individuals thus chosen into closer
   communion with himself, or whether this intimate relationship arose out
   of a gradual separation of the more susceptible disciples from the
   mass, who formed by degrees a narrower and more permanent circle about
   his person; whether, in a word, the choice of the twelve was made once
   for all, by a definite purpose, or arose simply from the nature of the
   case. [176] Some adopt the latter notion, with a view to answer
   objections against the wisdom of Christ's selection; such, for
   instance, as that he chose several insignificant men, who accomplished
   nothing of importance, and omitted others who were afterward signally
   eminent and useful; that he must either have been deceived in admitting
   Judas into the number, [177] or else (what is entirely out of keeping
   with his character) must have made him an Apostle with a full
   consciousness of his inevitable destiny, in order to lead him on to his
   destruction. It is urged, moreover, against the probability of Christ
   himself having conferred the name of Apostles upon these men
   especially, that others, (e.g., Paul), who laboured in proclaiming the
   Gospel at a later period, received that designation.

   This question would be at once decided, if we could consider the Sermon
   on the Mount as an ordination discourse for the Apostles; but this
   view, as we shall hereafter show, is untenable. But there are passages
   [178] which speak expressly of the choosing of the twelve; and, even
   without attaching undue weight to these, there are other and sufficient
   grounds for believing that such a choice was actually made. Christ
   himself tells the Apostles (John, xv., 16) that they had not chosen
   him, but that he had chosen them, as his own peculiar organs, which
   would not have been true if they had first separated, of their own
   accord, from the rest of the multitude, and chosen him for their Master
   and guide, in a narrower sense than others.

   Nor is the number twelve destitute of significance. Without seeking any
   sacred, mystical meaning in the number, we can well see in it a
   reference to the number of the tribes of Israel. The particular, Jewish
   Theocracy was a type of the universal and eternal kingdom of God; and
   Christ first designated himself as head of that kingdom in the Jewish
   national form. The twelve were to lead the kingdom as his organs. [179]
   Their superiority to all others, who should also act as organs of the
   Holy Spirit testifying within them of the Redeemer (the common calling
   of all believers), consisted in this, that they received a direct and
   personal impression of the words and works of Christ, and could thus
   testify of what they had seen and heard. This personal testimony of
   eye-witnesses is expressly distinguished by Christ (John, xv., 27) from
   the objective testimony of the Holy Spirit; which, indeed, animated
   them, but could also bear witness through other organs. Hence, when one
   of the twelve was lost, the Apostles deemed it necessary to replace
   him, and thus fill up the number originally instituted by Christ. [180]

   The more general application of the name Apostle in the Apostolic age
   is no proof that Christ did not originally use it in the narrower
   sense. The Apostolic mind was under no such painful subserviency to the
   letter as to avoid the use of a name in a sense suggested by the name
   itself, simply because Christ had used it in a more contracted
   signification. The term apostoloi (slytyn) denoted persons sent out by
   Christ to proclaim the kingdom of God; and it was quite natural, as all
   who preached the Gospel were considered as sent out by him, that all
   who laboured in proclaiming it in a wide sphere should receive the same
   designation. [181] Although Paul used the term in its wider meaning, he
   yet considered the narrower sense to be the original one, [182] and
   justified his application of the latter to himself only on the ground
   of the direct and immediate call which he had received from Christ.
   [183]
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   [176] See the arguments for this view in Schleiermacher on Luke, p. 88.

   [177] Celsus thought to disparage Christ by telling that he was
   betrayed by one of his disciples. (Orig., c. Cels., ii., § 12.)

   [178] Luke, vi., 13; Mark, iii., 13, 14.

   [179] Matt., xix., 28; Luke, xxii., 30. Ye also shall sit upon twelve
   thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

   [180] Acts, i., 21.

   [181] The questions whether Christ chose twelve men as his special
   organs, and whether he himself gave them the name Apostles, are
   entirely distinct. There is no good reason to doubt the latter.

   [182] 1 Cor., xv., 7.

   [183] 1 Cor., ix. 1; xv., 9.
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   § 77. Choice of the Apostles.--Of Judas Iscariot.

   There are a few examples on record of Christ's drawing and attaching to
   himself disciples who exhibited to his piercing eye the qualities
   necessary for his service. Probably this procedure was the same in the
   cases not recorded. The wisdom of Christ, moreover, leads us to
   conclude that the cultivation of these agents, on whose fitness so much
   depended, was an object of his special care and attention. Although we
   have not sufficient information to decide, in the case of each Apostle,
   why he especially was admitted into the number of the twelve, yet such
   examples as Peter and John, men of most striking character, who show us
   how the most marked features of human nature receive and tinge
   Christianity, illustrate the profound wisdom of Christ, and the
   penetrating glance with which he could detect the concealed plant in
   the insignificant germ. Yet we are not bound, in order to vindicate
   Christ's wisdom, to conclude that all the Apostles were alike men of
   mark, alike capable of great achievements. It was enough for the
   fulfilment of their calling that they loved him truly, that they
   followed him with child-like confidence, and gave themselves wholly up
   to the guidance of his Spirit; for thus they would be enabled to
   testify of him, and to exhibit his image in truth and purity. It was
   enough that among the number there were a few men of pre-eminently
   powerful character, on whom the rest might lean for support. It
   sufficed, nay, it was even advantageous, for the developement of the
   Church, that the Apostles, as a whole, left their accounts of the
   history of Christ without the peculiar stamp of individual character,
   since there was only one John among them capable of giving a vivid
   image of the life of the Saviour in harmonious unity. And it is,
   therefore, not at all wonderful that men appeared in the later period
   of the Apostolic Church who accomplished greater things than even some
   of the Apostles.

   As for Judas Iscariot, it by no means follows from the passages which
   say that Christ knew him from the beginning, that he knew him as an
   enemy and a traitor; nor does the awful contrast between his Apostolic
   calling and his final fate show that Christ was wholly deceived in him.
   Judas may have at first embraced the proclamation of the kingdom of God
   with ardent feelings, although with expectations of a selfish and
   worldly stamp; which, indeed, was the case with others of the Apostles.
   He may have loved Christ sincerely so long as he hoped to find in him
   the fulfilment of his carnal desires. Christ may have seen in him
   capacities which, animated by pure intentions, might have made him a
   particularly useful instrument in spreading the kingdom of God. At the
   same time, he doubtless perceived in him, as in the rest of the
   Apostles, the impure influence of the worldly and selfish element, yet
   he may have hoped (to do for him what he certainly did for the others,
   viz.) to remove it by the enlightening and purifying effects of his
   personal intercourse; a result, however, which, we freely admit,
   depended upon the free self-determination of Judas, and could,
   therefore, be unerringly known to none but the Omniscient. And even
   when Judas, deceived in his carnal and selfish hopes, felt his
   affection for Christ passing into hatred, the love of the Saviour,
   hoping all things, though he saw the rising root of evil, may have
   induced him to strive the more earnestly to attract the wanderer to
   himself, in order to save him from impending ruin. [184]
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   [184] See, hereafter, more on the character and fate of Judas.
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   § 78. The Apostles Uneducated Men.

   It may appear strange that Christ should have selected, as his chosen
   organs, men so untaught and unsusceptible in Divine things, and should
   have laboured, in opposition to their worldly tendencies, to fit them
   for their office; especially when men of learned cultivation in Jewish
   theology were at hand, more than one of whom had attached themselves
   sincerely to him. But we are justified in presupposing that he acted
   thus according to a special decision of his own wisdom, as he himself
   testifies (Matt., xi., 25): "I thank thee, O Father, because thou hast
   hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto
   babes." Precisely because these men, destitute of all higher learning,
   attached themselves to him like children, and obeyed even his slightest
   hints, were they best fitted to receive his Spirit with child-like
   devotion and confidence, and to propagate the revelations which he made
   to them. Every thing in them was to be the growth of the new creation
   through Christ's Spirit; and men who had received a complete culture
   elsewhere would have been ill adapted for this. They were trammelled,
   it is true, by their carnal conceptions of Divine things; but this was
   counterbalanced by their anxiety to learn, and their child-like
   submission to Christ as Master and guide; while, on the other hand, in
   surmountable obstacles would have been presented in the want of such
   submission--in the stubborn adherence to preconceived views of men who
   had been trained and cultivated before. Moreover, this reverential
   submission to Christ on the part of the disciples, in their daily
   intercourse with him, tended surely and constantly to refine and
   spiritualize their mode of thinking. His image, received into their
   inner life, exerted a steady and overruling influence. In the mode in
   which the new revelations were embraced and developed, we recognize the
   general law, according to which truths beyond the scope of human reason
   are imparted to it from higher sources, to be afterward appropriated
   and elaborated as its own. They were first received and unfolded by men
   who had no previous education to enable them to work out independently
   that which was given them; and only at a later period was a Paul added
   to the Apostles--a man capable, from his systematic mental cultivation,
   of elaborating and unfolding, by his own power of thought, yet under
   the guidance of the same Spirit of Christ the material of Divine
   revelation that was bestowed upon him. The fact, too, that a people
   like the Jews, and not the Greeks, were first the chosen organ for the
   propagation of revealed religion, is an illustration of the same law,
   Here we find the source of the ever-renewed struggle between
   Revelation, which demands a humble reception of its gifts, and Reason,
   which will recognize nothing that is not wrought out, or, at least,
   remodelled, in its own laboratory.

   Still Christ could not have deemed the period of two or three years
   sufficient to prepare these untrained disciples, according to his mind,
   for teachers of men. Nor could he have foretold, with such confidence,
   the success of such men in propagating his truth for the salvation and
   training of men, for the victorious founding of the kingdom of God in
   all ages, had he not been conscious of powers higher than had been
   granted to any other teacher among men, which justified him in making
   such predictions.
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   § 79. Two Stages in the Dependence of the Apostles upon Christ.

   From the very beginning the Apostles stood to Christ in a relation of
   complete dependence and submission, but we must distinguish in this two
   different forms and periods. In the first, their dependence was more
   outward and unconscious; in the last, it was more inward, and
   thoroughly understood by themselves. From the beginning, they gave
   themselves up, with reverent confidence, to the will of Christ as their
   supreme law, inspired by the conviction that what he commanded was
   right; yet without a clear apprehension either of his will or word, and
   without the ability to harmonize their will with his by free
   consciousness and self-determination. But, during this stage of outward
   dependence, they were to be trained to apprehend his will (or, what is
   the same thing, the will of God revealed and fulfilled by him); to
   incorporate it with their own spiritual tendencies; in a word, to make
   it their own. Christ himself pointed out this two-fold relation, when
   he said to them, in view of his approaching death, in reference to
   their dawning consciousness of the necessity of his suffering in order
   to establish the Divine kingdom: "Henceforth I call you not servants;
   for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth: but I have called you
   friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made
   known unto you. Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and
   ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your
   fruit should remain; that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my
   name, he may give it you." [185] The servant follows the will of his
   master not as his own, but another's, without understanding its aim;
   but friendship is a harmony of souls and sympathy of intentions. The
   ultimate aim of all Christ's training of the Apostles was to raise them
   from the first stand-point to the second.
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   [185] John, xv., 15, 16. So, v. 14, "Ye are my friends, if ye do
   whatsoever I command you." Their efforts to perform his will perfectly
   proved that they had made it their own.
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   § 80. Christ's peculiar Method of training the Apostles.

   The words of Christ recorded in Luke, v., 33; Matt.. ix., 14, [186]
   throw a distinct light upon his peculiar method of training the
   Apostles. When reproached because he imposed no strict spiritual
   discipline, no fasting or outward exercises upon his disciples, but
   suffered them to mingle in society freely, like other men, he justified
   his course by stating (in effect) that "fasting, then imposed upon
   them, would have been an unnatural and foreign disturbance of the
   festal joy of their intercourse with him, the object of all their
   longings. But when the sorrow of separation should follow the hours of
   joy, fasting would be in harmony both with their inward feelings and
   their outward life. As no good could come of patching old garments with
   new cloth, or putting new wine into old skins, so it was not his
   purpose to impose the exercises of spiritual life, fasting, and the
   like, by an outward law, upon his yet untrained disciples, but rather,
   by a gradual change of their whole inward nature, to make them vessels
   fit for the indwelling of the higher life. When they had become such,
   all the essential manifestations of that indwelling life would
   spontaneously reveal themselves; no outward command would then be
   needed."

   Here we see the principle on which Christ acted in the intellectual, as
   well as in the moral and religious training of the Apostles. As he
   would not lay external restraints, by the letter of outward laws, upon
   natures as yet undisciplined, so it was not his purpose to impart the
   dead letter of a ready-made and fragmentary knowledge to minds whose
   worldly modes of thought disabled them from apprehending it. He aimed
   rather to implant the germ, to give the initial impulse of a total
   intellectual renovation, by which men might be enabled to grasp, with a
   new spirit, the new truths of the kingdom of God. In every relation he
   determined not to "patch the old garment, or put new wine into old
   bottles." And this principle, thus fully illustrated by Christ's
   training of his Apostles, is, in fact, the universal law of growth in
   the genuine Christian life.
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   [186] More on these passages hereafter, in their proper connexion in
   the narrative.
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  CHAPTER IV.

  THE CHURCH AND BAPTISM.
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   § 81. Founding of the Church.--Its Objects.

   CLOSELY connected with the questions just discussed is that of the
   founding of the Church; for the Apostles were the organs through whom
   the religious community which originated in Christ was to be handed
   down to after ages, the connecting links that were to unite it with its
   Founder. A clear conception of the idea of the Church, in comparison
   with what we have said of the plan of Christ, will make it obvious that
   he intended to establish the Church, and himself laid its foundation.

   By the Church we understand a union of men arising from the fellowship
   (communion) of religious life; a union essentially independent of, and
   different from, all other forms of human association. It was a
   fundamental element of the formation of this union, that religion was
   no longer to be inseparably bound up, either as principal or
   subordinate, with the political and national relations of men, but that
   it should develop itself, by its own inherent energy, as a principle of
   culture and union; superior, in its very essence, to all human powers.
   This involved both the power and the duty to create an independent
   community, and that community is the Church.

   And Christianity is proved to be the aim and object of all human
   progress, not only by the craving for redemption, which no man can
   deny, in human nature, but also by the very idea of such a community as
   the Church, which overthrows all natural barriers, and binds mankind
   together by a union founded on the common alliance of their nature to
   God. The spirit of humanity, feeling itself confined by the limits
   which the opposing interests of nations impose upon it, demands a
   communion that shall overleap these barriers, and lay its foundations
   only in the consciousness, common to all men, of their relation to the
   Highest--a relation transcending the world and nature. Apart from
   Christianity, indeed, we could not conceive the idea of such a
   communion; but now that Christianity has freed Reason from the
   old-world bonds that hindered its developement, and unfolded for it a
   higher self-consciousness, there can be no science of human nature that
   does not reckon this communion as the aim of human progress, that does
   not assign to the Church its proper place in the universal moral
   organism of humanity. Schleiermacher has done this in his
   "Philosophical Ethics," and has thus found, in the Church, the point of
   departure for Christian morals. And so every system of ethics must do
   which is not willing to fall in the rear of human progress, and to be
   guilty of cruelly mutilating the nature of man. Nay, the minds of the
   sages who sought to break through the limits of the ancient world
   yearned for this idea long before its realization in Christianity.
   Zeno, [187] the founder of the Stoa, proclaimed it as the highest of
   human aims, that "men should not be separated by cities, states, and
   laws, but that all should be considered fellow-citizens, and partakers
   of one life, and that the whole world, like a united flock, should be
   governed by one common law." [188] Plutarch, who quotes these words,
   was probably right in saying that "Zeno had some phantom of a dream
   before him when he wrote;" [189] for how could an idea, so far
   transcending the spirit of antiquity, be realized in its sphere? Such a
   communion could only be brought about, at that time, by the destruction
   of the separate organization of nations, to the detriment of their
   natural and individual progress; and the very event in which Plutarch
   thought he saw its fulfilment, viz., the commingling of the nations by
   Alexander's [190] conquests, carried the germ of self-destruction
   within it. A total revolution of the ancient world necessarily had to
   precede the realizing of this idea. Mankind had to be freed from the
   power of sin, and the disjunctive and repulsive agency of sin, before
   there could be any place for this Divine communion of life, which
   overleaps, without destroying, the natural divisions of nations. And
   this is the realization of the idea of the Church.

   Now as this revolution could only be brought about by Him who was at
   once Son of God and Son of Man, so He, when he recognized himself as
   the Saviour and King bestowed upon mankind, was fully conscious, also,
   of his power to realize this idea. It is clear, from what we have said
   of the Plan of Christ, that the results which were to flow in after
   ages from the indwelling power of the Word proclaimed and sent forth by
   him to regenerate and unite mankind, lay fully revealed before his
   all-surveying glance. He knew that it contained the elements of a
   spiritual community that would burst asunder the confining forms of the
   Jewish Theocracy, and take all mankind into its wide embrace.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [187] In his work, peri politeias.

   [188] Hina me kata po'leis, mede` kata` de'mous oikomen, idio'is
   e'kastoi diorisme'noi dikai'ois, alla` pa'ntas anthro'pous ego'metha
   demo'tas kai` poli'tas, eis de` bi'os e kai` ko'smos o'sper age'les
   sunno'mou nomo koino suntrephome'nes. Plut. in Alex., i., c. vi.

   [189] Touto Zenon men egrapsen hoster o'nar e` ei`dolon eunomi'as
   philoso'phou kai politeias anatuposa'menos

   [190] To whom he applies what can only be said of Christ: koinos e'kein
   theo'then armoste`s kai` diallaktes ton holon nomi'zon.
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   § 82. Name of the Church.--Its Form traced back to Christ himself.

   But even if it be admitted that Christ intended to found a Church, the
   further (but less important) question arises, whether the name,
   ekklesia, which has been stamped upon it, had its origin with himself.
   There is no ground for doubting even this (as some have done), and
   thereby casting suspicion upon passages like Matt., xvi., 18, in which
   he is reported to have used the term. The name corresponds to the
   Hebrew qhl, in connexion with h'lhym ,yhvh ,ysr'l, which expressed the
   old Theocratic national community; and so was transferred to the new
   congregation of God, which was to emerge from the ancient covering.
   This communion in itself, indeed, is nothing but the form in which
   Christ has established the kingdom of God upon earth, and in which he
   intends it shall develope itself until its full consummation.

   But it must not, therefore, be concluded that this community was ever
   to realize itself in the form of a State. [191] The name, borrowed from
   an earthly kingdom, is, on one side, entirely symbolical, and was
   immediately taken from the form in which the idea of the Divine
   community was represented by the Jewish nation. But the essential
   difference between the Jewish and the Christian stand-point consists in
   this, that in the latter the political element is wholly discarded.
   Excluding all other relations that belong to the essence of a state,
   the only real feature expressed by the symbolical name is the
   monarchical principle; and that, too, in a sense that cannot be applied
   to any temporal state, without subverting its organism, and making it a
   horde of slaves under the arbitrary will of a despot. The fundamental
   principle of the Christian community is, that there shall be no other
   subordination than that of its members to God and Christ, and that this
   shall be absolute; while, in regard to each other, they are to be upon
   the footing of complete equality. Christ himself drew a striking
   contrast between his own community and all political organizations in
   this respect. [192]

   But even though it be admitted that Christ intended to found a visible
   Church, and gave the first impulse to a movement that was afterward to
   propagate itself, it does not necessarily follow that he himself
   directly established such a separate community, and made the
   arrangements and preparations that naturally belonged to it.

   It may be said that the outward fabric of the visible Church could not
   be erected until that which constituted its true essence, viz., the
   life of the invisible Church, which as yet lay only in the germ, should
   be more fully unfolded--until the higher life had obtained in the
   disciples a more substantial and self-dependent form, a state of things
   presupposed in a community whose manifold members were reciprocally to
   affect each other. So, too, it may be said [193] that one of the
   specific differences between Christ and other founders of religions
   was, that, as he did not impart a complete and sharply-defined system
   of doctrines to his Apostles, but left it to their human activity,
   under the guidance of the Divine Spirit, to form such a system from the
   elements which he bestowed, [194] so, also, he founded no outwardly
   complete and accurately defined religious community, with a fixed form
   of government, usages, and rules of worship; but, after implanting the
   Divine germ of this community, left it also to human agency, guided by
   the same Holy Spirit, to develope the forms which it should assume
   under the varying relations of human society. According to this view,
   only the fructifying elements were given by Christ, and all the rest
   was left to human developement proper, animated by the Divine principle
   of life.

   According to this view, the only defined community which Christ
   established was that of the Apostles, who, as bearers and organs of his
   Spirit, formed the sole prototype of the Church, which only grew up at
   a later period from the seed which Christ had sown. He did not wish to
   establish an exclusive school or sect, but to draw all men to himself.
   In this view, further, it would be necessary to suppose that he had, at
   that time, fixed no rite of initiation into his narrower fellowship;
   that such passages as John, iii., 22; Matt., xxviii., 19, arose only
   from the attempts of a later period to ascribe the origin of baptism
   directly to Christ; and that baptism, with confession of the name of
   Christ, was introduced by the Apostles subsequently [195] to the
   formation of a separate Christian congregation, as a sign of membership
   therein. And the high estimate [196] which was put upon the rite may be
   ascribed, not to its having been instituted by Christ, but to the
   extraordinary phenomena of inspiration which were wont to attend it.

   We agree fully with the fundamental principle of the view just recited.
   Christ only prepared the way for the foundation of the Church,
   according to its inner essence and its outward form; as he gave no
   complete doctrinal system, so he erected no Church fabric that was to
   stand through all time; his work was rather to implant in humanity the
   new spirit, which was to adapt to itself such outward forms as would
   meet the wants of human progress in successive ages But, while we
   cordially go thus far, we do not find ourselves warranted, either by
   history or by the idea of such a community, in granting so wide a
   latitude as the theory demands to a principle so just in itself.

   The gradual and natural formation of the circle of disciples about
   Christ is no reason for believing that he did not found a Church. His
   manifestation to men of different degrees of susceptibility caused,
   indeed, a sifting process, which soon separated the congregation of
   believers from the mass that rejected Christ; but the natural way in
   which this result was brought about is no argument against the
   establishment of the Church at that time, more than against its
   existence at any time; for, in fact, in a certain sense this is always
   the case. The relations of Christ to the world typified, in every
   respect, what were afterward to be the relations of Christianity to the
   world. We find the name of disciples applied with a wider signification
   than that of Apostles; and why may we not consider the bands of these,
   scattered through different parts of Palestine, and especially those
   who, apart from the Apostles, formed the constant retinue of Christ, as
   constituting the first nucleus of the Church?
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   [191] See this inference drawn by Rothe, in his work "Uber die Anfänge
   der Christlichen Kirche und ihrer Verfassung," p. 89.

   [192] Luke, xxii., 25, 26.

   [193] As is asserted by Weisse (p. 387, seq.; 406, seq.), whose views
   and proofs we shall examine in another place.

   [194] It is not without good ground, therefore, that we do not devote a
   separate section of this work to a systematic exposition of the
   doctrines of Christ, but content ourselves, both here and in the
   Apostolic age, with pointing out, in his words, the fundamental
   principles which were afterward expanded by the Apostles.

   [195] Weisse thinks that the first trace of the institution is to be
   found in Acts, ii., 38.

   [196] The ecclesiastical import of baptism would remain untouched, even
   if it were granted that the symbol was first instituted by the Apostles
   at the time of the bestowing of the Holy Spirit, which the rite
   symbolized; for, even in that case, we must consider them as Christ's
   organs, and acting out his will.
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   § 83. Later Institution of Baptism as an Initiatory Rite.

   As for Baptism, we certainly do not find, either in the nature of the
   case or in the historical accounts, any ground for assuming that Christ
   himself, during his stay upon earth, instituted it as a symbol of
   consecration. As long as he could, in person, admit believers into
   communion with himself, no substituted symbol was necessary; and,
   besides, the Holy Spirit, which constitutes the essence of Christian
   baptism, and specifically distinguishes it from that of John, had not
   as yet been manifested. The element of preparation was sufficiently
   indicated by John's baptism, and therefore Christ (in the prophetic
   words which have been preserved to us in Acts, i., 5) contrasted that
   preparatory rite with the spiritual baptism which he himself was soon
   to impart to his disciples. The Apostles, however (quite naturally, in
   view of the ground which they occupied), were unwilling that John alone
   should baptize, and applied the rite, as the Messianic symbol of
   inauguration which Christ himself had recognized, in order to separate
   from the rest such as admitted the Divine calling of Jesus, and
   attached themselves to him. [197] We cannot infer from this, however,
   that there existed at the time a definite rule for the application of
   baptism. Yet, although Christ did not command, he permitted it, as
   fitted to form a point of transition from John's to Christian baptism.

   But when he was about to withdraw his personal presence from his
   disciples, it became necessary to substitute a symbol in its place for
   his sufferings and resurrection, the fundamental facts from which the
   new creation, through the Holy Spirit, was to spring, had necessarily
   to take place before the institution of Christian baptism proper; for
   that baptism implies an appropriation of the fruit of his sufferings, a
   fellowship in his resurrection, and a participation of that life, in
   communion with Him, which is above the world and death. The full import
   of baptism could not be realized until the process which began with
   Christ's death and resurrection had reached its consummation; until the
   exaltation had followed the resurrection, and the glorified Redeemer
   had displayed his triumphant power in the outpouring of the Holy Ghost.
   The same effects which flowed to mankind in general from these facts,
   and the process which rested upon them, were to be repeated in every
   individual case of baptism.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [197] John, iv., 2.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER V.

  THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 84. Connexion of Christ's Miracles with his Mode of Teaching.

   WE have before remarked that what most distinguished the Teaching of
   Christ was, that it was his self-revelation, and in this view it
   embraces both his Words and Works. His Miracles, then, must be spoken
   of in connexion with his mode of Teaching. Although they are not to be
   sundered from their connexion with his whole self-revelation, yet, as
   an especially prominent feature of it, they served the highest purpose,
   in a certain sense, in vividly exhibiting the nature of Christ, as Son
   of God and Son of Man. They have also an additional claim to be
   mentioned in this connexion, as they served as a basis and support of
   his labours as a teacher, as a preparatory means of leading from
   sensible phenomena to Divine things, and of rendering souls, as yet
   bound to the world of sense, susceptible of his higher Spiritual
   influences.

   In regard to the Miracles, three distinct inquiries present themselves:
   (1.) What was their real objective character and relation to the
   universe, and the Divine government thereof? (II.) In what view, and
   with what impressions, did the contemporaries of Christ receive them?
   (III.) What decision did Christ himself pronounce as to their nature,
   their value, and the ends he sought to accomplish by them?

   (A.) THE OBJECTIVE CHARACTER OF MIRACLES.
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   § 85. Negative Element of the Miracle.--Its Insufficiency.

   We must distinguish in the Miracle a negative and a positive element.
   The former consists simply in this, that a certain event, either in the
   world of nature or man, is inexplicable by any known laws or powers.
   Events, however, thus simply inexplicable, [198] and even acknowledged
   to be so, are not miracles, unless they bear upon religious interests.
   Many will admit certain facts to be inexplicable by an) known laws, and
   at the same time refuse to grant them a miraculous or supernatural
   character. Some are led, by an unprejudiced admission of the facts, to
   acknowledge, without any regard whatever to religion, that they
   transcend the limits of existing science, and content themselves with
   that acknowledgment; leaving it to the progress of natural philosophy
   or psychology to discover the laws, as yet unknown, that will explain
   the mysterious phenomena. Or, if the narrative of facts be such as to
   preclude even the possibility of such subsequent discovery and
   solution, they seek an explanation in ascribing chasms and deficiencies
   to the account, and withhold, for the time at least, their judgment
   upon the facts themselves; while a spur is given to inquiry and
   research, in order, if possible, by some process of combination or
   conjecture, to fill up the existing gaps of the narrative.

   Even an objective (real) deviation from ordinary phenomena may be
   admitted by those who refuse to admit of miracles, in the religious
   sense of the term. That is, indeed, a narrow and ignorant skepticism
   which measures every thing by the stiff standard of known laws, and
   passes sentence at once upon every fact, no matter how well attested,
   which transcends those laws; but a more profound and scientific
   philosophy knows that there are powers yet undiscovered, which will
   explain many apparent anomalies. With such minds we can more readily
   come to an understanding in regard to the historical truth of a
   narrative of extraordinary events. No unprejudiced reader of history
   can deny the occurrence of inexplicable phenomena in all past ages; and
   even those of magnetism, ill-defined as they are as yet, have taught us
   not to decide so promptly against every thing that goes beyond our
   knowledge of the powers of nature.

   Yet we must not suppose that all this gains any thing directly to the
   cause of religion, within whose sphere alone the conception of the
   miracle is a reality. It leaves us still in the domain of nature and of
   natural agencies. It is not upon this road, therefore, that we can lead
   men to recognize the supernatural and the Divine; to admit the powers
   of heaven as manifesting themselves upon earth. Miracles belong to a
   region of holiness and freedom, to which neither experience, nor
   observation, nor scientific discovery can lead. There is no bridge
   between this domain and that of natural phenomena. Only by means of our
   inward affinity for this spiritual kingdom, only by hearing and
   obeying, in the stillness of the soul, the voice of God within us, can
   we reach those lofty regions. If there be obstacles in our way, no
   science can remove them.

   In fact, the mode of thinking to which we have refereed, instead of
   necessarily leading to Theism (the only religious stand-point; for
   religion demands something supramundane, and must enter the sphere of
   another world), is perfectly consistent with the Pantheistic view of
   the world, and may be used to confirm it. It is not the results of
   experience which fix our point of view; but the latter, independently
   assumed on other grounds, gives character to all our judgments of the
   former. Nay, by applying natural laws to religious phenomena, one may
   view new religions simply as proceeding from the laws of the
   developement of the universe, in order to form new epochs in the
   history of the world, and thence consider the founders of such
   religions as organs of the soul of the world, concentrating in them the
   hidden powers of nature. This was the view of Pomponatius, who thought
   that in this way, while denying every thing supernatural, he could
   admit many of what others call miracles. It is true, there are some of
   the miracles of the Bible which, on the face of them, admit of no such
   explanation, but one who holds such views will find no great difficulty
   in doubting every account of miraculous events which cannot be made to
   harmonize with them; as Pomponatius did, who could not with sincerity,
   after an utter denial of the supernatural, abandon his ground simply
   because come of the miracles could not be explained by it.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [198] A prodigium, or teras, but no semeion, distinguishing these words
   according to their original import.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 86. Positive Element.--Teleological Aim of Miracles.

   Miracles, then, are entirely different from results of the powers of
   nature intensified. The question of their character cannot be decided
   on the ground either of Deism or Pantheism (opposed as these theories
   are to each other; the one incorrectly separating the idea of God from
   that of the world, the other as incorrectly blending the two together),
   but only in regard to the Final causes of the government of God,
   considered as an Omniscient and Omnipotent personal Being. We might
   dispute with these theories in reference to isolated facts, on
   historical and exegetical grounds; but the question of miracles, as
   such, rises into a very different sphere, and no agreement on separate
   points would bring us nearer to an adjustment.

   The positive element, which must be added to the negative one, already
   spoken of, in order to constitute any inexplicable phenomenon a
   miracle, is, that the Divine power in the phenomenon itself shall
   reveal it to our religious consciousness as a distinctive sign of a new
   Divine communication, transcending the natural progress and powers of
   humanity, and designed to raise it to a position higher than its
   originally created powers could have reached. That higher position to
   which the Divine revelations, accompanied by miracles as distinctive
   signs, were destined to elevate mankind, is the character originally
   stamped by God upon human nature, which was lost by sin. Man violently
   sundered his union with God, his true element of life, in which the
   Supernatural and the Natural were in perfect harmony: it was necessary,
   therefore, that the former should reveal itself in opposition to the
   latter--that Miracles should be opposed to Nature--in order that Nature
   might be brought back to her original harmony with God. But miracles,
   considered as signs of the Divinity revealed in the world of sense,
   cannot, as such, be considered apart from their connexion with the
   whole revelation of God. Their essential nature is to be discovered,
   not by viewing them as isolated exhibitions of Divine power, but as
   elements of his revelation as a whole, in the harmony of his
   inseparable attributes, the Holy Love and Wisdom appearing as much as
   the Omnipotence. It is this which stamps Divinity upon such phenomena,
   and attracts all souls that are allied to God. Thus the negative
   element of miracles is only a finger-post to the positive; the
   inexplicable character of the event leads us to the new revelation,
   which it accompanies, of that same Almighty love which gave birth to
   the laws of the visible world, and which, in ordinary times, veils its
   operations behind them.
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   § 87. Relation of Miracles to the Course of Nature.

   Omnipotence is always as directly operative in nature as it was at the
   creation; but we can only detect its workings by means of the law of
   cause and effect in the material world. Under this veil of natural
   laws, religious faith always discovers the Divine causality, and the
   religious mind, although it may, indeed, contemplate natural phenomena
   from different points of view, and may distinguish between free and
   necessary causalities in nature, will always trace them back to the
   immediate agency of Almighty love. Just so in miracles, we do not see
   the Divine agency immediately, but in a veil, as it were; the Divine
   causality does not appear in them as coefficient with natural causes,
   and therefore cannot be an object of external perception, but reveals
   itself only to Faith. But the miracle, by displaying phenomena out of
   the ordinary connexion of cause and effect, manifests the interference
   of a higher power, and points out a higher connexion, in which even the
   chain of phenomena in the visible world must be taken up.

   Miracles, then, present themselves to us as links in that great chain
   of manifestations whose object is to restore man to his lost communion
   with God, and to impart to him a life, not derived from any created
   causality, but immediately from God. As here new and higher powers
   enter into the sphere of humanity, there must be novel effects re
   suiting from them, which cannot be explained apart from the
   accompanying revelation, but point out to the religious consciousness
   their self-revealing cause. Such effects are the miracles, which, from
   the considerations we have mentioned, lay claim, even as inexplicable
   phenomena simply, to a religious interest. And although, from their
   very nature, they transcend the ordinary law of cause and effect, they
   do not contradict it, inasmuch as nature has been so ordered by Divine
   wisdom as to admit higher and creative agencies into her sphere; and it
   is perfectly natural that such powers, once admitted, should produce
   effects beyond the scope of ordinary causes. [199] In the Divine plan
   of the universe (of whose fulfilment the connexion of causes in the
   visible world manifests only one side), miracles stand in relations of
   reciprocal harmony to events occurring in accordance with natural laws.
   From the chain of causes involved in that great plan, indeed, no
   events, natural or supernatural, are excluded; both circles of
   phenomena belong to the realization of the Divine idea.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [199] The Schoolmen of the 13th century rightly distinguished the
   potentia activa from the potentia passiva, in regard to the relation of
   the supernatural to the natural.
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   § 88. Relation of the individual Miracles to the highest Miracle, the
   Manifestation of Christ.

   In the miracles nature is shown to be related, like history, to the one
   highest aim of God's holy love, namely, the redemption of the human
   race to the communion of the Divine life, or, what is the same thing,
   the establishment of His kingdom among men. Nature was destined to
   reveal and glorify God; but it can only do this in connexion with
   rational beings, together with whom it forms the world as a whole. Now
   the communion of rational beings, working together with conscious
   freedom to reveal and glorify God, is nothing else but the kingdom of
   God; and as the unity which is to exhibit the world as a whole can only
   be complete when nature has been fully appropriated for the revelation
   of that kingdom, it follows that the realization of the latter is the
   aim of the whole creation--of both nature and history.

   The manifestation of Christ, the founder of the kingdom of God, the
   bestower upon mankind of that Divine life which constitutes the essence
   of the kingdom, was the highest miracle, the central-point of all
   miracles, and required other and analogous phenomena to precede and
   follow it. But as the re-establishment of the original harmony between
   the natural and the Divine (which coincides with the completion of the
   Divine kingdom) was the final aim of redemption, so, when the Divine
   life, the essential principle of the miracle itself, which is purely
   and in its essence supernatural, was incorporated with the natural
   progress of humanity by the manifestation of Christ, it followed that
   thenceforward, in all ages, it should operate within the forms and laws
   of human nature.
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   § 89. Relation of Miracles to History.

   The relation of miracles to history is perhaps sufficiently obvious
   from what has been said. Every theory of history that proceeds from the
   stand-point of natural reason, admitting nothing superior to itself,
   must, from its very point of departure, reject the idea of miracles. It
   must seek to include and explain all events by one and the same
   pragmatical connexion of causes, and can therefore find no place for
   miracles. Even if it be desirous to examine the acts of Christ without
   prejudice, it can only, from its peculiar stand-point, manifest such
   freedom by representing truthfully, according to the accounts that
   remain, how Christ himself wished these phenomena to be regarded, and
   what impression they made upon his contemporaries.

   But this holds good of only a very limited and arbitrary idea of
   history, one which barricades itself by its own prejudices against all
   higher views. The conception of the miracle, as such, is in no way
   repugnant to a really scientific theory of history; and as it is the
   task of the latter to study the proper character of every fact and
   phenomenon, the import of miracles, as miracles, is one of its
   necessary problems. The manifestation of Christ, indeed, can only be
   rightly understood when it is conceived as being originally Divine and
   supra-historical, and as having become historical; and Christianity can
   only be explained as a supernatural principle, destined to impart to
   history a new tendency and direction. In this connexion the individual
   miracles, preceding, accompanying, and following the manifestation of
   Christ, appear entirely in accordance with nature. As for history
   itself, when it does not refer to Christianity and the kingdom of God
   as the object of all human progress, it appears but as a lawless play
   of forces moving hither and thither, rising and falling, without aim
   and without unity. Christianity alone shows us that it has both. But in
   order to comprehend Christianity, and, through it, History, reason must
   receive the higher light of faith, without which the eye of the mind
   must remain blind to the operations and revelation of the Divinity in
   the course of human progress. [200]

   (B.) THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST AS SUBJECTIVELY VIEWED BY HIS
   CONTEMPORARIES.
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   [200] My view of the miracles agrees with what Twesten has said in the
   Introduction to his "Dogmatik;" and I am gratified to find a similar
   agreement, also, in his second volume, pt. i., p. 170, seq.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 90. Miracles deemed an essential Sign of Messiahship.

   It is evident from many passages in the Gospel narrative that miracles
   were essentially necessary, as signs of the Messianic calling. Had
   Christ, therefore, wrought no miracles, his contemporaries could not
   have believed in his Messiahship; nor could he himself have been
   thoroughly and permanently convinced of it, had he not both been
   conscious of power to perform them, and put that power into exercise.
   John the Baptist was satisfied, from his own inability to achieve such
   works, that he was not endowed with the Messianic fulness of the
   Spirit; and it is obvious, from his receiving Christ's miracles as a
   proof of his Messiahship, that he expected such signs of the indwelling
   fulness of Divine power in the true Messiah.

   Nor can it be proved (as some suppose) that it was common among the
   Jews to spread rumours of miracles wrought by men whose deeds had made
   them objects of popular veneration, as was subsequently the case in the
   Middle Ages, where we find miraculous powers ascribed to such men even
   during their lifetime. There is a great difference in the relations of
   the two periods. The Middle Age was the period of a new creation,
   developed from the new principle of life which Christianity (even
   alloyed as it was with Jewish elements) introduced among the
   uncultivated nations. It was a period of youthful freshness,
   enthusiasm, and poetry. The men of that time, through their lively
   faith in the Divine power of Christianity, as ever present and ever
   active, kept their connexion with the miracles that attended its first
   appearance unbroken, and figured and imitated them by their youthful
   and inventive power of imagination. [201] But while such was the
   relation between the Middle Age and the period of Christ's appearance,
   there was no similar relation between the latter and the Old Testament
   age. Christ did not manifest himself at a period of new creation
   through influences previously wrought into the life of the people by
   Judaism, but at a time when Judaism itself was decaying and dying; the
   revelations and mighty works of Divine power lay buried in a
   far-distant antiquity; and there was a vast chasm, visible to all eyes,
   between the lofty, holy age of Prophecy, and that weak and lifeless
   time. After the voice of prophecy was hushed, God was said to reveal
   himself only by occasional utterances; such, for instance, as the Bath
   Col, [202] a miraculous sound from heaven; or by words of men,
   interpreted as omens. Scarcely any tales of wonder were told but such
   as referred to the Exorcists, [203] who were skilled in the deceptive
   arts of jugglery, and were said to do many marvellous things. In short,
   it is sufficiently proved that miracles were deemed no ordinary
   occurrences among the Jews, [204] by the fact that they were expected
   to be distinctive signs of the Messiah, and that they were not ascribed
   even to John the Baptist, notwithstanding his great deeds and the
   honour in which he was held as a prophet.

   (C.) CHRIST'S OWN ESTIMATE OF HIS MIRACLES.
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   [201] The miraculous tales of the excited Middle Age may be explained
   from the co-working of various influences, but this is not the place to
   enter into the subject.

   [202] The Bath Col may be explained on the ground that a heavenly voice
   was supposed to be heard in a period of devotion, or that words
   accidentally spoken by one person had a peculiar subjective meaning for
   another, like the tolle lege of Augustine.

   [203] Joseph., Archaeol., viii., 2, 4.

   [204] Josephus says, with reference to miracles, "ta paraloga kai meizo
   tes elpidos tois homoiois pistoutai pragmasin."--Archaeol., x., 2, 1.
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   § 91. Apparent Discrepancies, and Mode of Removing them.

   There are apparent contradictions in the several explanations given by
   Christ of his miracles, and by following them out separately we might
   arrive at different views of the estimate which he himself placed upon
   them. But in order to bring perfect harmony out of these apparent
   contradictions, it is only necessary to distinguish the different
   points of view in which the miracles present themselves. It has been
   already said, that miracles can be correctly understood, not when
   viewed as isolated facts, but in connexion with the whole circle of
   Divine revelation. Those of Christ, especially, are intelligible only
   when considered as results of his self-revelation, or, as St. John
   expresses it, as the manifestation of his glory. They demand,
   therefore, to be so conceived in connexion as to exhibit vividly his
   whole image in each of these separate manifestations; and, on the other
   hand, the same considerations point out, as the highest aim of
   miracles, the revelation of Christ's glory in the whole of his personal
   manifestation.

   (1.) Christ's Object in working Miracles two-fold.

   In their formal import miracles are semeia, signs, designed to point
   from objects of sense to God; powers which, by producing results
   inexplicable by ordinary agencies, are intended to lead minds yet under
   the bonds of sense, and unfitted for an immediate spiritual revelation,
   to yearn after and acknowledge a higher power. But as they were
   designed to show forth the whole revealed Christ, and as the Divine
   attributes, in the totality of which the image of God was realized in
   him, cannot be isolated from each other, so no separate manifestation
   of power could proceed from him, not at the same time exhibiting all
   the other attributes belonging to the Divine image. It is clear,
   therefore, that although miracles, in relation to nature, are
   especially manifestations of Power, they could not be performed except
   in cases where the other attributes, the Wisdom and the holy Love, were
   brought into requisition. For the same reason, too, we cannot conceive
   Christ's miracles as epideictic, i. e., wrought for no other purpose
   than to display his power over the laws of nature. In them, as in all
   his other actions, the end which he had in view is shown by the given
   circumstances in each case.

   Accordingly, we distinguish a two-fold object of his miracles, the
   first a material one, i. e., the meeting of some immediate emergency,
   of some want of man's earthly life? which his love urged him to
   satisfy; the other and higher one to point himself out to the persons
   whose earthly necessities were thus relieved, as the One alone capable
   of satisfying their higher and essential spiritual wants; to raise them
   from this single exhibition of his glory in the individual miracle to a
   vivid apprehension of the glory of his entire nature. Nor was this last
   and higher aim of the miracle confined to the persons immediately
   concerned; it was to be to all others a sign, that they might believe
   in Jesus as the Son of God.

   (2.) A Susceptibility to receive Impressions from the Miracles
   presupposed.

   But all external influences designed to produce an impression such as
   we have stated demand a susceptible soil in the minds of those who are
   to receive them. The revelation of Christ by his works, no more than by
   his words, could produce a Divine impression without an inward
   susceptibility of Divine influences. The consciousness of God must
   exist in the soul, though dormant. The Divine revelation must find some
   point of contact in human nature before religious faith can spring up;
   there is no compulsory influence from without by which the
   unsusceptible soul can be driven to faith by an irresistible necessity.

   So, when a carnal, worldly mind is the prevailing tendency, outward
   phenomena, however extraordinary, pass by, and make no impression. The
   mighty power of the will cannot be subdued by any external force. The
   worldly spirit makes every thing which touches it worldly too.
   Encompassed by Divine powers, it remains closed against them, in its
   earthly inclinations, thoughts, and feelings. The mind, thus perverted,
   cheats itself by denying all miracles, because to acknowledge them
   would oppose its fleshly interests, and contradict the system of
   delusion to which it is a slave. It calls the powers of sophistry to
   aid its self-deception, by converting every thing which could tend to
   undeceive it into a means of deeper delusion; like those Pharisees who,
   when compelled to acknowledge works beyond explanation by ordinary
   agencies, referred them to the powers of darkness rather than of light,
   in order to escape an admission which they were deter mined to evade.
   So he who totally rejects the supernatural has al ready decided upon
   all separate cases, and a miracle wrought before his very eyes would
   not be recognized as such. He might admit the fact as extraordinary,
   but would involuntarily seek some other explanation. A mode of thinking
   that controls the mind cannot be shaken by any power acting wholly from
   without. Such is the might of the free will, which proves its freedom
   even by its self-created bondage.

   Or if miracles do impress the fleshly mind for a moment by the flash of
   gratification or astonishment which they afford, the impression, made
   merely upon the senses, is but transitory; for it lacks the point of
   contact in the soul which alone can make it permanent. How quickly are
   sensible impressions, even the strongest, forgotten when other and
   contrary ones follow them! And here we find one of the reasons why
   Christ refused the demand for miracles merely as proofs of his
   wonderworking power. For those, he said, whose perverted minds could
   not be roused to repentance by Moses and the prophets, would not be
   persuaded though one rose from the dead.

   How grossly ignorant, then, of human nature must the Deists of the 17th
   century have been, who plead in opposition to the reality of Christ's
   miracles, the comparatively little effect which they produced! [205]

   We shall find, therefore, Christ's own statements in regard to his
   miracles to harmonize perfectly with each other, if we properly
   distinguish the various classes of human character in their religious
   and moral relations to miracles, and the different relations and
   tendencies of the miracles themselves.
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   [205] Like that strange enthusiast, Daniel Müller, who appeared in
   Nassau in the transition period between mysticism and rationalism, and
   in whom these two tendencies joined hands. From the extreme of mystic
   supernaturalism he passed over to the skeptical conclusions of our
   modern critics. In his treatise against Lessing he says, "It is
   impossible that there should have been a Christ 1700 years ago, who
   literally wrought such wonders as these. Had any man, by his mere word,
   caused the blind to see and the lame to walk, given health to the leper
   and strength to the palsied, fed thousands with a few loaves, and even
   raised the dead, all men must have esteemed him Divine, all men must
   have followed him. Only imagine what you yourself would have thought of
   such a man; and human nature is the same in all ages. And with so many
   followers, the scribes and Pharisees could not have killed
   him."--Ilgen's Zeitschrift, 1834, p. 257.
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   § 92. The Sign of the Prophet Jonah.

   Christ's declaration, in answer to a demand for a miraculous
   attestation of his Messiahship, that "no sign shall be given to this
   generation but the sign of the Prophet Jonah," has been thought by some
   to indicate either that he wrought no miracles at all, or that he did
   not mean to employ them as proofs of his Divine calling. The passage
   preceding that declaration of itself is enough to refute this; for he
   had just appealed to the healing of a demoniac as proof of the Divine
   character of his power, [206] and to the fact that the kingdom of God
   was victoriously introduced among men by him [207] as a testimony that
   his ministry was Divine. But we can refute it by simply showing the
   only sense which the words could have conveyed, in the connexion in
   which they were used.

   The works of Jesus had made a great impression, very much to the
   discomfort of those whose mode of thinking and party interests made it
   necessary for them to oppose him. They naturally sought to counteract
   this impression; to dispute the evidence of the facts which confirmed
   his ministry as Divine. While the most base and hostile, compelled to
   admit the superhuman powers of Christ, attributed them to the kingdom
   of darkness, there were others who did not dare to utter such an
   accusation, but asked a sign of a different character, an objective
   testimony from God himself in favor of Christ and his ministry, which
   could not deceive; a visible celestial phenomenon, for instance, or a
   voice from heaven, clearly and unequivocally authenticating him as a
   messenger from God. In answer, then, to those who asked a Divine sign
   apart from his whole manifestation, a sign for that which was of itself
   the greatest of all signs, Christ appeals to that loftiest of signs,
   his own appearance as the God--Man, which included within itself all
   his miracles as separate, individual manifestations. [208] To this (he
   told them)--viz., that "The manifestation of the Son of Man was greater
   than that of Jonah or of Solomon"--belonged all those works of his
   which no other could perform; every thing was to be referred to that
   manifestation as the highest in the history of humanity. Had these
   words been spoken by any other, they would have convicted him of
   sacrilegious self-exaltation.
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   [206] Luke, xi., 20.

   [207] Luke, xi., 22.

   [208] We cannot but be surprised at the remark of De Wette, Comm. on
   Matt., 2d ed., p. 132: "If Jesus had wished to express this thought, he
   would have uttered nonsense--No sign shall be given to them, but still
   given." Christ said that to those who were not satisfied by his whole
   manifestation, as a sign, no other separate sign would be given; how
   could any thing be a sign for them to whom the highest sign was none?
   The words, however, do wear that air of paradox which we often find in
   the discourses of Christ.
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   § 93. "Destroy this Temple," &c.

   Similar to this was Christ's reply at the Passover, which he first kept
   in Jerusalem, to those who, unable to comprehend an act of holy zeal,
   asked him to prove his calling as a reformer by a miracle--"Destroy
   this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." Instead of working
   a miracle, uncalled for by the circumstances, for their idle
   satisfaction, he pointed them to a sign that was to come, a great,
   world-historical sign, which may have been either his resurrection,
   that was to seal the conclusion of his ministry on earth, and bring
   about the triumph of his kingdom, in spite of the machinations of his
   foes, who hoped to destroy his work by putting him to death; or the
   creation, as the end and aim of his whole manifestation, of the new,
   spiritual, and eternal Temple of his kingdom among men, after the
   visible Temple should have been destroyed by their own guilt.
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   § 94. Christ's Distinction between the material Element of Miracles and
   their essential Object.--John, vi., 26.

   Christ himself distinguishes the material part of the miracle, i. e.,
   its effect in satisfying a momentary want, and its formal part, as a
   sign to point from objects of sense to God, and to accredit himself as
   capable of satisfying all higher spiritual wants. To those who embraced
   the miracles in this latter sense, properly as semeia, he freely
   communicated himself; and, on the other hand, he must more and more
   have alienated himself from those who attached themselves to him only
   from a momentary interest of the former kind. He, therefore, reproached
   those who eagerly sought him after the feeding of the five thousand, by
   saying that they did not seek him because they "had seen the miracles"
   (i. e., as signs to lead them to something higher), but simply because
   their human wants had been satisfied--"Ye did eat of the loaves and
   were filled." The light of his works (he told them) was not sufficient
   to lead them to believe on him, inasmuch as they lacked--what was
   essential to faith--a sense for the Divine. The gratification of their
   natural senses was all they sought. In the spirit in which they were,
   faith was impossible; their preponderating worldliness of mind,
   subjugating the better tendencies of their nature, left room for no
   sense of higher wants, and prevented them from feeling the inward
   "drawing of the Father." [209]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [209] John, vi., 36, 44.
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   § 95. Christ appealed to the Miracles as Testimonies; John, xv.,
   24.--Three different Stages of Faith.

   Although Christ appeals (in John's Gospel) to the miracles as
   testimonies of his works, we are not to understand him as appealing to
   them simply as displays of power, for the grounds already stated. Yet
   he does, in more than one instance, declare them to be signs, in the
   world of sense, of a higher power, designed to lead minds as yet
   unsusceptible of direct spiritual impressions, to acknowledge such
   influences. "If I had not done among them the works which none other
   man did, they had not had sin." [210]

   In viewing the miracles thus as means of awakening and strengthening
   faith, we must distinguish different stand-points in the developement
   of faith. On the lowest stage stood those who, instead of being drawn
   by an undeniable want of their spiritual nature, inspired by the power
   of God working within them, had to be attracted by a feeling of
   physical want, and by impressions made upon their outward senses. Yet,
   like his heavenly Father, whose providence leads men to spiritual
   things even by means of their physical necessities, Christ condescended
   to this human weakness, sighing, at the same time, that such means
   should be indispensable to turn men's eyes to that which lies nearest
   to their spiritual being. "Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not
   believe." [211]

   A higher stage was occupied by those who were, indeed, led to seek the
   Messiah by a sense of spiritual need, but whose religious feelings were
   debased by the admixture of various sensuous elements. As these were
   yet in some degree in bondage to sense, and sought the Saviour without
   perfectly apprehending him as the object of their search, they had to
   be led to know him by miracles suited to their condition. Such was the
   case with the Apostles generally, before their religious feelings were
   purified by continued personal intercourse with Christ. He condescended
   to this condition, in order to lead men from it to a higher stage of
   religious life; but yet represented it as subordinate to that purer
   stage in which they should receive the whole impression of his person,
   and obtain a full intuition of the mode in which God dwelt and wrought
   in Him. Jesus said unto Nathanael, "Because I said I saw thee under the
   fig-tree, believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things than these.
   Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and
   descending upon the Son of Man." [212]

   A far loftier stage of faith was that which, proceeding from an inward
   living fountain, did not wait for miracles to call it forth, but went
   before and expected them as natural manifestations of the already
   acknowledged God. Such a presupposed faith, instead of being summoned
   by the miracles, rather summoned them, as did the pagan centurion whom
   Christ offered to the Jews as a model: "I have not found so great
   faith, no, not in Israel." [213]

   It appears, therefore, that Christ considered that to be the highest
   stage of religious developement in which faith arose, not from the
   sensible evidence of miracles, but from an immediate Divine impression
   finding a point of contact in the soul itself--from a direct experience
   of that wherein alone the soul could fully satisfy its wants; such a
   faith as testifies to previous motions of the Divine life in the soul.
   We have an illustration in Peter, who expressed his profound sense of
   the blessings that had flowed to him from fellowship with Christ, in
   his acknowledgment, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
   And Jesus said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and
   blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in
   heaven." [214] This acknowledgment itself might have been made by Peter
   at an earlier period; but the way in which he made it at that critical
   moment, and the feeling which inspired it, showed that he had obtained
   a new intuition of Christ as the Son of God. It was for this that
   Christ called him; "blessed," because the drawing of the Father had led
   him to the Son, and the Father had revealed himself to him in the Son.
   Peter made his confession, at that time, in opposition to others, [215]
   who, although they had a dawning consciousness of Christ's higher
   nature, did not yet recognize him as the Son of God. The spirit in
   which he made it is illustrated by a similar confession made by him in
   view of the defection of many who had been led by "the revelation of
   flesh and blood" to believe in Jesus, and had afterward abandoned him,
   [216] for the very reason that their faith had so low an origin: "Lord,
   to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we
   believe, and we are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the
   living God." [217]

   And so, when Thomas doubted, Christ condescended to give him a visible
   proof of his resurrection; [218] but at the same time he declared that
   that was a higher faith which needed no such support. but rested, with
   undoubting confidence, upon the inward experience of Divine
   manifestations. "Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have
   believed."
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   [210] John, xv., 24.

   [211] John, iv., 48.

   [212] John, i., 50, 51.

   [213] Matt., viii., 10.

   [214] Matt., xvi., 16, 17.

   [215] Matt., xvi., 14.

   [216] John, vi., 66.

   [217] John. vi., 69.

   [218] John, xx.. 27.
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   § 96. The Communication of the Divine Life the highest Miracle.--John,
   xiv., 12.

   Finally, the words of Christ himself assure us that the communication
   of the life of God to men was the greatest of all miracles, the essence
   and the aim of all; and, further, that it was to be the standing
   miracle of all after ages. "He that believeth on me, the works that I
   do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do, because
   I go to my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I
   do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son." The power of
   diffusing the Divine life, which had been confined to him alone, was,
   by means of his glorification, to be extended to others, and to assume
   in them a peculiar self-subsisting form--the miracle which was to be
   wrought among all men, and in all time, by the preaching of the Gospel.
   ["He shall send you another Comforter, that he may abide with you
   forever, even the Spirit of Truth."]
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     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER VI.

  THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST CONSIDERED IN REGARD TO SUPERNATURAL AGENCY.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 97. Transition from the Natural to the Supernatural in the Miracles.

   IT has been asserted in modern times, that in order to receive miracles
   at all, we must conceive them as directly and abruptly opposed to
   nature, and admit no intermediate agencies whatever. But we cannot be
   confined to this alternative by men who wish to caricature the views
   which we maintain. Abrupt contrasts may be set up in abstract theories;
   but in real life we do not find them. There are always intermediate
   agencies and points of transition. And why should this not be the case
   in the opposition between the natural and the supernatural? We think
   that we have already shown that the higher unity of the Divine plan of
   the world embraces miracles as well as the ordinary developement of
   nature. We hold ourselves justified, therefore, in distinguishing, with
   regard to the marvellous part of the miracles, certain steps of
   transition from the natural to the supernatural. Not that we can
   separate these gradations so nicely as to constitute a division of the
   miracles thereby; but we can trace an important harmony with the
   universal laws of the Divine government of the world in the fact that
   here, too, there are no sudden leaps, but a gradual transition by
   intermediate steps throughout.

   Looking at all the miracles, there are some in regard to which it may
   be doubted whether they belong to the class of natural or supernatural
   events; on the other side, there are some in which the creative power
   is exhibited in the highest degree, and which. bear no analogy whatever
   to the results of natural causes. Between these extreme classes, there
   are many miraculous works in which the supernatural can be made vividly
   obvious by means of natural analogies. To these last belong most of the
   miracles which Christ wrought upon human nature; while those wrought
   upon the material world, rejecting all natural analogies, may be ranged
   under the second extreme class above mentioned. The latter are very few
   in comparison with the former, and far less intimately connected with
   Christ's peculiar calling.

   A. CHRIST'S MIRACLES WROUGHT UPON HUMAN NATURE.

   I. The Healing of Diseases.
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   § 98. The Spiritual Agencies employed.--Faith demanded for the Cure.

   Those works of redeeming love which Christ wrought upon the human body,
   the healing of diseases, and the like, displayed the peculiar feature
   of his whole ministry. The ailments of the body are closely connected
   with those of the soul; [219] and even if, in individual cases, this
   cannot be proved, yet in the whole progress of human developement there
   is always a causal connexion between sin and evil; between the
   disorganization of the spirit through sin, and all forms of bodily
   disorder, There was a beautiful connexion, therefore, between Christ's
   work in healing the latter, and his proper calling to remove the
   fundamental disease of human nature, and to restore its original
   harmony, disturbed by sin.

   Some of these diseases, also, arose purely from moral causes, and could
   be thoroughly cured only by moral and spiritual remedies. Little as we
   know of the connexion between the mind and the body, we know enough to
   make it in some degree clear to us how an extraordinary Divine
   impression might produce remarkable effects in the bodily organism.

   We do not mean, however, by this remark, to bring all such influences
   down (as some have done) into the sphere of the purely subjective. It
   is true that a natural power, highly intensified, might produce effects
   closely resembling the supernatural; it is true that the imagination,
   strongly stimulated and exalted, often works strange wonders; but we
   have to do here only with effects which must be attributed to higher
   causes, which must be due to an objective Divine agency. In. the cases
   to which we refer (as, indeed, in all cases), the objective and
   subjective factors could co-operate; the Divine influence of Christ
   upon the soul, and, through it, upon the bodily organism, could work
   together with the susceptibility to impression, the receptivity (so to
   speak), on the part of man. Hence it was that Christ demanded a special
   Faith as a necessary condition of his healing agency; indeed, we can
   find no instance of his working a miracle where a hostile tendency of
   mind prevailed.

   We can conceive of bodily cures thus wrought by means of spiritual
   influences more readily than any others; and they correspond precisely
   with the laws which Christ's operations have never ceased to follow.
   But we cannot bring all the instances of healing which he wrought under
   this class; some of them were wrought at a distance, and offer no point
   of departure of this kind. And as we are compelled to admit, in some of
   the miracles, immediate operations upon material nature, we are the
   less authorized to deny that such direct influences were exerted upon
   the bodily organism.
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   [219] It is remarkable that great plagues often spread over the earth
   precisely at the same time with general crises in the intellectual or
   moral world; e. g., the plague at Athens and the Peloponnesian war: the
   plagues under the Antonines and under Decius; the labes inquinaria at
   the end of the 6th century; the ignis sacer in the 11th; the black
   death in the 14th, &c. That great man, Niebuhr, whose letters contain
   so many golden truths, alluded to this coincidence in another
   connexion.--Leben, ii., 167.
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   § 99. Use of Physical Agencies in the Cure of Diseases.

   Christ employed his miraculous power in various modes of operation. He
   operated by his immediate presence, by the power of that Divine will
   which exercised its influence through his word and his whole
   manifestation; and this in the very cases in which we might admit a
   bodily cure by the use of physical agencies. Sometimes, indeed. there
   was besides a material application, e.g., the contact of the hand. In
   other cases he made use of material substances, and even of such as
   were thought to be possessed of healing virtues, as, in blindness, of
   saliva, [220] water, [221] and anointing with oil.

   But in these cases the means were too disproportionate to the results,
   for us to imagine that they were naturally capable of producing them;
   and as Christ did not always employ them, there is no room to suppose
   that they were necessary as vehicles of his healing power--a
   supposition which brings the miracles too far down into the sphere of
   merely physical agencies. We must rather presuppose that as Christ. in
   his teaching, &c., took up the forms in common use among men to work
   out something higher from them, so he allowed his powers of healing to
   exhibit themselves in the use of these ordinary means in symbolical
   way. He may have designed thereby to bestow some peculiar lessons of
   instruction.

   The cures wrought at a distance do not admit of this material
   connecting link; but the operations of Christ's will could overstep all
   the barriers of space.
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   [220] Plin., Hist Natur., xxviii., 7.

   [221] Mark, viii.; John, ix.
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   § 100. The Relation between Sin and Physical Evil.--Jewish Idea of
   Punitive Justice.--Christ's Doctrine on the Subject.

   We must now examine Christ's miracles of healing in their moral
   aspects, and in their connexion with his ministry as Redeemer. If it
   can be shown that all those disturbances of the bodily organism, which
   we call diseases, have their origin in Sin, as the source of all
   discord in human nature, we may infer that there is a close connexion
   between these miracles and his proper calling; and that, in healing the
   diseases produced by sin, by means of his influence upon the essential
   nature of the disturbed organism, he displayed himself also as the
   Redeemer from sin. In many cases, also, we may find the physical and
   the moral cure reciprocally operating upon each other.

   The question first occurs, In what relation does Christ himself place
   disease to sin? This question is connected with the broader one, In
   what relation to sin does he place physical evil in general? In Luke,
   v., 20, and John, v., 14, he seems to assign a special connexion
   between sin and certain diseases as its punishments; but other
   expressions of his appear to contradict such a connexion. To solve this
   difficulty, we must not only distinguish the different aims of these
   several expressions, but also discriminate between the true and the
   false in the modes of thinking prevalent among the Jews.

   The doctrine that sin is guilt, and that the Divine holiness reveals
   itself in opposition to sin, as punitive justice, is one of the
   characteristics of the religion of the Old Testament in its relations
   to the various shapes of natural religion. Punitive justice displays
   itself in the established connexion between sin and evil, in
   consequence of which the sinful will that rebels in act against the
   Divine law must be compelled, through suffering, actually to
   acknowledge that law, and to humble itself before its majesty.
   According to this view of the world, which subordinates the natural to
   the moral, all evil is to be attributed to sin; it shows itself to the
   soul estranged from God as belonging to, and connected with sin; the
   consciousness that sin is opposed to the Divine order of nature is
   developed by sufferings; and thus sin appears, even to the sinner, to
   be deserving of punishment. All history proves that the consequences of
   bad actions, as well as of good ones, operate for generations; all
   history testifies that "God is a jealous God, visiting the iniquities
   of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation."
   We can see this especially in the crises of the history of nations, by
   tracing them to their preparatory causes. The history of the Jewish
   nation, particularly, was designed to exhibit this universal law in
   miniature, but with striking distinctness.

   To this conception of the punitive justice of God, as displaying itself
   in the progress of history and in the course of generations, a
   contracted Theodicy had joined itself, which arrogantly assumed to
   apply the universal law to special cases. [222] The book of Job had
   already refuted this contracted view; and Christ himself opposed it;
   taking, however, the basis of truth which was found in the Old
   Testament, purifying it from foreign admixtures of error, and giving it
   a fuller developement. [223]

   The doctrine of punitive justice was in no degree impugned by the new
   and lofty prominence which Christ gave to the Redeeming love of God; on
   the contrary, the latter doctrine presupposed the former, but at the
   same time gave it peculiar modifications. And as Christ teaches us that
   all human events are subservient to the manifestation of redeeming
   love, the highest aim of God's moral government, it follows that the
   connexion between sin and physical evil, ordained by Divine justice,
   must serve the same great end. The universal evil introduced by sin is
   so distributed in detail as to aid in preparing the soil of men's
   hearts to receive and appropriate redemption and salvation, and in
   further purifying the hearts of those who have already become partakers
   of the Divine life.

   There are two passages in which Christ contradicts, in the one
   negatively and in the other positively, the contracted view of punitive
   justice, before referred to.

   The negative contradiction is given in Luke, xiii., 2, 4: "Suppose ye
   that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they
   suffered such things? I tell you, nay; but except ye repent, ye shall
   all likewise perish. Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam
   fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that
   dwelt in Jerusalem?" In this passage Christ teaches that the evil that
   befel the individuals did not necessarily measure their individual
   guilt, but that their particular sufferings were to be traced back to
   the general guilt of the nation.

   The positive contradiction is found in John, ix., 2, 3: "Master, who
   did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus
   answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the
   works of God should be made manifest in him." Here he rebukes the
   presupposition that the calamity of the individual sufferer was to be
   referred to sins committed by his ancestors, and brings out, in strong
   contrast with it, that Almighty love which shows itself even by so
   distributing physical evil as to train men for salvation. [224]

   We interpret, in accordance with this view, the explanations which
   Christ gave in several cases of a relation between disease and sin, and
   between healing and the pardon of sin. He referred either to the
   general connexion, through which all evil was intended to call forth
   the consciousness of sin; or to a closer connexion, in individual
   cases, between a given misfortune and a specific sin. The relation
   between the bodily cure and the pardon of sin was still closer. [225]

   II. Demoniacal Possession.

   The connexion, of which we have spoken, between sin and evil, must be
   especially predicated of those forms of disease which, view them as we
   may, exhibited a moral wreck, not only of the individual sufferers, but
   of the age in which they lived; and which admitted no means of perfect
   cure except moral influences. We mean the psychical diseases, the
   sufferings of the so-called Demoniacs.
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   [222] The fact that this view was maintained by the carnally-disposed,
   and that the later Jewish history often apparently reversed the
   connexion between sin and evil, piety and happiness, gave rise,
   subsequently, to an Ebionitish reaction, which maintained that in this
   world, belonging as it does to Satan, the wicked have possession of the
   goods of this life, while poverty and pain must be the lot of the
   pious; and that this state of things will only be compensated in the
   Millennium, or in the life to come. Christ's truth opposes both these
   false views.

   [223] Luke, xiii., 4.

   [224] We shall examine this explanation again in its proper place in
   the narrative.

   [225] Matt., ix., 2-5.
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   § 101. Two Theories of the Affliction: (a) Possession by Evil Spirits
   (b) Insanity.--Analogous Phenomena in other Times.

   There are two points of view, opposed to each other, but yet, perhaps,
   admitting of an intermediate ground, in which we may contemplate these
   forms of disease; they may have originated either (a) from internal
   causes in the soul itself, or (b) from causes entirely outward and
   supernatural. Those who adopt the first view confine their attention to
   the characteristic symptoms as reported, and compare them with the very
   similar ailments, the diseases of the mind and of the nervous system,
   which not only existed in that age, but have appeared at all subsequent
   periods. [226] Those who strictly adopt the latter view adhere closely
   to the letter of the narrative, and make no attempt to distinguish what
   is objective in it from what is subjective; but see in the miserable
   demoniacs only passive instruments of evil spirits.

   If, in accordance with this view, we admit no intermediate agency, but
   ascribe the phenomena immediately to evil spirits, the cures must be
   directly attributed to Christ's dominion over the powers of the other
   world; thus strikingly showing his supernatural control over a
   supernatural cause of disease. And, on the other hand, if we class
   these phenomena with diseases of the mind in general, and consider the
   supposed indwelling of evil spirits only as a symptom grounded on
   natural causes, we shall more readily be able to conceive how a disease
   arising entirely, or, at least, chiefly from a psychical cause, could
   be cured by a purely psychical agency. Nor would this in the least
   degree deny, or even detract from, the miraculous character of Christ's
   acts; for to restore a raving maniac to reason by a look or a word was
   surely beyond all natural psychological influence, and presupposed
   powers transcending all ordinary agencies. It is true, we find
   analogous cases in later times, in which great things were wrought by
   immediate Divine impressions, and by devout prayer in the name of
   Christ. [227]

   Not only at the time of Christ's appearance, but also in the centuries
   immediately following, [228] many forms of disease like those called
   demoniacal in the New Testament were spread abroad; and we may infer
   that the same cause was at work in both periods.
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   [226] Similar diseases, occurring in the first centuries, were
   explained in this way by the physicians.--Orig., in Matt., xiii., § 6.

   [227] We must not take the spirit of an age of materialism or
   rationalism as a rule for judging of all phenomena of the psuche, which
   veils within itself the Infinite; which is capable of such manifold
   excitement; and whose various powers are alternately dormant and
   active--now one prevailing, and now another. An age may be destitute of
   certain phenomena and experiences, because it has no organs for
   developing them; and this would prove no thing against their reality.
   Although I can hardly think it possible that the view given in the
   text, taken in connexion with the general principles of this book, can
   be misunderstood, yet, in order to guard against a possible
   misinterpretation, I deem it best to add, that it was far from my
   intention to do away with the distinction between the natural and the
   supernatural, or to trace the latter entirely to the developement of
   powers inherent in the psuche. I wished only to point out the organ,
   the point of contact, in the psuche, for supernatural communications
   and influences; to show that it is itself supernatural in its hidden
   essence, which looks forward to be unfolded hereafter in the higher
   world to which it is allied.

   [228] As seen in the Fathers, and in Lucian's Philopseudes.
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   § 102. Connexion of the Phenomena with the State of the
   Times.--Conceptions of the Jews in regard to them: of the Demoniacs
   themselves.

   The diseases of the mind in every age bear the stamp, to some degree,
   of the prevailing tendencies and ideas of the times; and those to which
   we refer reflected the peculiar and predominant features of the Jewish
   mind of that age. The wretched demoniacs seemed to be hurried onward by
   a strange and hostile power that subjugated their intellectual and
   moral being, and whose chief characteristic, as displayed in their
   paroxysms, was a wild and savage destructiveness. The Jews explained
   these phenomena according to their own notions, and especially by the
   general opinion that man was surrounded on every side by the operations
   of evil spirits, who were the authors of both moral and physical evil.
   [229] And as a fierce destructiveness was considered to be
   characteristic of these spirits, the condition of the demoniacs was
   ascribed to their being possessed by one or more of them. [230]

   The diseased persons themselves involuntarily conceived of their own
   experience according to the prevalent opinion, and their expressions,
   literally taken, contributed to confirm it. Every thing irrational
   which suggested itself to them appeared to their consciousness as the
   work and the will of the indwelling evil spirit. They conceived
   themselves, in fact, as possessed of two natures, viz., their real
   proper being (the true I), and the evil spirit which subjugated the
   other; and thus it happened that they spoke in the person of the evil
   spirit, with which they felt themselves blended into one, even in
   instincts and propensities utterly repugnant to their true nature. The
   sense of inward discord and distraction might rise to such a height as
   to induce the belief that they were possessed by a number of spirits,
   to whom they were compelled to lend their utterance.

   We may find a reason for the remarkable prevalence of such phenomena at
   that time, not only among the Jews, but also throughout the Roman
   Empire, in the character of the age itself. It was an age of spiritual
   and physical distress, of manifold and violent disruptions; such as
   characterize those critical epochs in the history of the world at
   which, from the dissolution of all existing things, a new creation is
   about to unfold itself. The sway of Demonism was a sign of the
   approaching dissolution of the Old World. [231] Its phenomena--symptoms
   of the universally felt discord--were among the signs of the times
   which pointed to the coming of the Redeemer, who was to change that
   discord into harmony. The insatiable craving of want is always a
   precursor of the approaching supply.
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   [229] Some have attributed the prevalence of this opinion to an
   admixture of Persian religious doctrines; but it had a far deeper
   ground in the religious spirit of the age. It arose from the sense of
   discord which penetrated the whole mind of that time, and which was
   reflected in the doctrine of Dualism, then so extensively prevailing.

   [230] We agree with Strauss, that, according to "the Jewish mode of
   thinking, the interference of evil spirits must be really supposed, and
   that the views of Josephus (B. J., vii., 6, 3: ta gar kaloumena
   daimonia poneron estin anthropon pneumata, tois zosin eisduomena) were
   modified by his Greek culture. At a later period, when Oriental
   influences were more felt, the idea of demons, as spirits allied to
   matter, or as hypostatic emanations from the hule, was common even
   among the educated Hellenists.

   [231] Schelling's remark on this subject, in his "Philosophical
   Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom," is worthy of note: "The
   time is coming when all this splendour will be dissolved; when the
   existing body of this fair world will fall to pieces, and chaos come
   again. But before the final wreck, the all-pervading powers assume the
   nature of evil spirits; the very powers which in the sounder time were
   the protecting spirits of life, become, as dissolution draws on, agents
   of mischief and destruction.
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   § 103. Accommodation of the two extreme Theories.

   If now the question be asked whether these phenomena are to be
   considered as wholly natural or as supernatural, we answer, that these
   two extreme views may be more or less abruptly opposed to each other.
   On the one hand, we may ascribe the origin of the disease to natural
   causes, and judge of the symptoms accordingly, without excluding the
   operation of the other concealed cause; the question whether such a
   cause existed or not can be by no means decided merely by the symptoms.

   Christ teaches that all wickedness, and all evil in its connexion with
   wickedness, must be traced back to a higher cause--to a Spirit [232]
   that first rebelled against God, to an Original Sin, which gave birth
   to the first germ of wickedness. As he lays down a certain connexion
   between the various stages of the kingdom of God, so he assigns a
   similar connexion between all the manifestations of the powers of evil.
   It is thus, in perfect accordance with the teaching of Christ, that we
   ascribe those fearful disturbances of the corporeal, spiritual organism
   (in which the might of the principle of sin in human nature and the
   moral degeneracy of that nature are so strikingly exhibited), to the
   general kingdom of the Evil One.

   On the other hand, in admitting the higher and concealed cause, we need
   not necessarily conceive it as operating in a magical way, without any
   preparation. A preparation, a point of contact in the pyschological
   developement, is by no means excluded by such an admission, but, as is
   the case in all influences wrought upon man's inner nature, rather
   presupposed. In every instance we both can and ought to distinguish the
   symptoms of these diseases (as stated in the narrative) which arose
   from the hidden cause, from those which might have originated in the
   current opinions of the times, or in the peculiar psychological
   condition of the sufferers themselves. In either case we shall have to
   ascribe the radical cure, which Christ alone could accomplish, to the
   operation of his Spirit upon the evil principle in the man himself.
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   [232] "If it could be proved that Christ had only taken up the doctrine
   of the existence of Satan by way of formal accommodation (p. 114), the
   question of the demoniacs would be at once decided. It cannot be denied
   that in many of his expressions we might substitute, for Satan, the
   objective notion of evil, without at all affecting the thought. We
   might, in deed, admit that he used the doctrine (borrowed from the
   circle of popular ideas) merely as a figurative covering for evil, if
   he himself had any where intimated that he did not intend thereby to
   confirm the view of the origin of evil which the popular notion
   involved; just as we showed from his own words that, in transferring
   the popular figures to his Messianic kingdom, he did distinguish
   between the substantial truth and its formal covering. But this is by
   no means the case here. There is not a vestige of evidence in his
   conversations with his disciples to show that he did not intend to
   establish the doctrine that a higher intelligence, estranged from God,
   was the original source of evil. Neither can we class this question (as
   some do) among those which have no bearing on the interests of
   religion, and which Christ's mission did not require him to interfere
   with; our conception of evil will be very different if we confine it to
   human nature, from what it would be, if we admit its existence also in
   spirits of a higher order. In John, viii., 44, Christ gives a perfectly
   defined conception of Satan; he designates him as "the Spirit alienated
   from truth and goodness (for, according to John's usage, aletheia
   involves both the true and the good); in whom falsehood and wickedness
   have become a second nature; who can find no abiding-place in the
   truth." The revelation of truth which the spirits were to receive from
   communion with the Father of Spirits passes by him unheeded; he cannot
   receive and hold it fast, because he has no organ to embrace it, no
   susceptibility for its impressions. Christ tells the Pharisees that
   they, serving the Spirit of Lies, and living in communion with him,
   showed themselves, by the spirit which their actions manifested, to be
   children of Satan, rather than of Abraham and God. Schleiermacher's
   attempt to prove (Works, iii., § 45, p. 214) that even in this passage
   the idea of a personal Satan is untenable, is by no means successful.
   "This passage," says he, "can not be interpreted throughout on the
   theory of the reality of the devil, without either opposing the devil
   to God in the Manichaean sense, or else calling Christ the Son of God
   in the same extended signification in which the Pharisees are called
   Sons of the Devil. "The argument is unsuccessful, we say, because the
   proper point of comparison would be, not the sense in which Christ can
   be called the Son of God, but the sense in which pious men could be so
   called; and in a comparison it is not necessary that al the relations
   should be adequate, but only those which are common to the point of
   comparison itself. Nor can we admit that Christ, in making use of the
   current doctrine as a covering for his own, added nothing new to it. It
   is true that he made no disclosures on the subject to satisfy the
   speculative curiosity of science, but here, as elsewhere, made his
   communications only to meet practical wants. It is, however, precisely
   in the region of practical religion that the doctrine of the
   personality of Satan was newly modified by its connexion with the
   doctrine of Jesus, as the author of salvation. As for the passages in
   which "evil" might be substituted for "Satan," it is enough to say,
   that after the existence of such an intelligence, the first rebel
   against God, had been given as a fact, it was natural to employ him as
   the representative of evil in general. We may use "Satan" as a symbol
   for wickedness in general, without implying any thing against the
   doctrine of his personal existence. See p. 74
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   § 104. Christ's Explanations of Demonism purely Spiritual.--His
   Accommodation to the Conceptions of the Demoniacs.

   It is important to inquire whether Christ assigned, in express words,
   any definite view of the origin of these diseases, or established any
   view by taking it as a point of departure. That he did not dispute the
   current opinion, does not prove that he participated in it; this would
   have been one of those errors, not affecting the interests of religion,
   which his mission did not require him to correct. Apart from its moral
   ground, it belongs to the domain of science, which is left to its own
   independent developement--to natural philosophy, psychology, or
   medicine; sciences entirely foreign to the sphere of Christ's immediate
   calling as a teacher, although they might derive fruitful germs of
   truth from it. It was his peculiar office only to reveal to men the
   moral ground of both general and special evil, and thus to convince
   them that its thorough cure could be effected only by influences
   wrought upon the principle of moral corruption in which it originated.
   In order to this, the doctrine that these diseases were caused by
   indwelling evil spirits could be made use of as a point of departure,
   especially as the truth of the idea of a kingdom of Satan, in its moral
   sense, was presupposed.

   In regard to Christ's accommodation to the conceptions which the
   demoniacs themselves had of their own condition, our remarks in another
   place (p. 114) in reference to the distinction between formal and
   material accommodation are not fully applicable. The law of veracity,
   in the intercourse of beings in possession of reason, does not hold
   good where the essential conditions of rational intercourse are done
   away. In such cases, language obeys its natural laws only in proportion
   as the use of reason itself is re-established.

   There lay a profound truth at the bottom of the demoniac's
   consciousness that his feelings, inclinations, and words did not spring
   from his rational, God-allied nature (his true I), but from a foreign
   power belonging to the kingdom of the devil, which had subjugated the
   former. And this truth offered the necessary point of contact for the
   operation of Christ's spiritual influence to aid the soul, which longed
   to be delivered from its distraction and freed from its ignominious
   bond age. In the mind of the demoniac, the fundamental truth was
   inseparable from the form in which he conceived it; it was, therefore,
   necessary to seize upon the latter, in order to develope the former.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 105. Difference between Christ's Healing of the Demoniacs and the
   Operations of t/he Jewish Exorcists.

   The so-called Exorcists were at that time practising among the Jews
   their pretended art of expelling demons; an art which they affected to
   derive from Solomon. [233] The means which they employed were certain
   herbs, fumigations, and forms of conjuration. They probably possessed a
   dexterous legerdemain, and perhaps by natural agencies, aided by the
   imagination, could produce powerful effects for the moment, the cases
   of obvious failure being forgotten in those of apparent success. Had
   Christ produced only similar effects, their very commonness would have
   made them unimpressive. The moral and spiritual influences of Christ,
   proceeding from his immediate Divine power, were of a totally different
   character from these juggling tricks.

   An excellent illustration of this is afforded in the account of the
   cure of the deaf and dumb demoniac, in Luke, xi., 14; Matt., xii., 22.
   Even the most hostile Pharisees could not deny that in this instance
   something was done which could not be explained by natural causes; and
   to obviate the impression which it made upon the multitude, and to
   prevent them from acknowledging the Divinity of Christ, they accused
   him, contrary to their own convictions, of being in league with the
   ruler of evil spirits, and of working his wonders by powers derived
   from that dark source. Christ points out the contradiction involved in
   their assertion, and showed that such works could be wrought only by
   the power of God, which alone could free the human soul from the
   dominion of the evil spirit. He designates this individual case as a
   sign that the kingdom of God, before which the powers of darkness must
   flee away, had manifested itself. He gives them to understand that the
   original source of evil in mankind and in men had first to be re moved,
   before its particular effects could be subdued. And from this it
   necessarily followed (he showed) that every casting out of evil
   spirits, every healing of demoniacs, which was not founded upon a
   victory over the original evil power, was only an apparent exorcism,
   and must be followed by a worse reaction. Thus the ordinary exorcists,
   who apparently produced the same effects as Christ, in reality did the
   very opposite. The evil was banished only to return with increased
   power.

   He that does not work in communion with Christ, and by the power of the
   same Spirit, will, in producing effects apparently the same, bring
   about totally different results. He advances the kingdom of the devil,
   and not the kingdom of God.

   The case of the Gadarene [234] who was restored from raving madness to
   a sound mind by the Divine power of Christ, and who was so drawn to the
   Saviour that he wished to remain always with him, shows that the
   radical cure of the demoniacs consisted in this, that they who were
   freed from the evil spirit were drawn to the Spirit of God which had
   delivered them. Such a condition was perhaps to many the crisis of a
   higher life. In this way Mary Magdalene appears to have been brought
   into the narrower circle of Christ's disciples. [235]

   The silence of John's Gospel in regard to Christ's healing of demoniacs
   may be ascribed to the fact that the disease was more common in Galilee
   than in Jerusalem.
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   [233] Joseph., Archaeol., viii., 2, § 5. Josephus appeals to a
   remarkable proof of this fact, which one of these exorcists had given
   before Vespasian in presence of part of the Roman army. See the Greek
   Testament of Solomon (written at a later period) in Dr. Fleck
   "Theologische Reisefrüchte," iii., 113.

   [234] Mark, v., 1. Luke, viii., 26.

   [235] Mark, xvi., 9.
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   III. The Raising of the Dead.

   § 106. Different Views on these Miracles.

   The position to be assigned to the miracle of the raising of the dead
   will depend upon the view which we take of the real condition of those
   said to be raised. Some suppose that they were not absolutely dead in
   the physiological sense, but that there was an intermission of the
   powers of life, presenting symptoms resembling death; and those who
   adopt this view of the case consider the miracle to differ only in
   degree from that of healing the sick.

   But if the accounts are taken literally, and we suppose a real death,
   the miracle was specifically different from that of healing, and, in
   fact, constituted the very culminating point of supernatural agency.
   Yet, even to awaken the dormant powers of life, and kindle up again the
   expiring flame, would certainly have been a miracle, demanding for its
   accomplishment a Divine power in Christ.

   A precise account of the symptoms, and a knowledge of physiology, would
   be necessary to give us the elements for a decision of this question,
   in the absence of any testimony from Christ's own mouth to decide it.
   In regard to Christ's own words, it is a fair question whether he meant
   to distinguish closely between apparent and real death, or whether he
   made use of the term "death" only in accordance with the popular usage.

   If it be presupposed that the dead were restored to earthly life after
   having entered into another form of existence--into connexion with
   another world--the idea of resurrection would be dismal; but we have no
   right to form such a presupposition in our blank ignorance of the laws
   under which the new form of consciousness developes itself in the soul
   after separation from the body. [236]
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   [236] See hereafter on the resurrection of the "Widow's Son," and of
   "Lazarus."
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   B. CHRIST'S MIRACLES WROUGHT UPON MATERIAL NATURE.

   § 107. These exhibit Supernatural Power most obviously.

   We pass now to a consideration of the miracles which Christ wrought
   upon material nature, in which the supernatural exhibits itself in the
   highest possible degree, as an intermediate psychical agency is, by the
   very nature of the case, excluded.

   Apart from individual cases, it is certain that a power of controlling
   nature is one of the marked features of the image of Christ given to us
   in the evangelical tradition. He had fully impressed men's minds with a
   belief of this. And in deciding upon the individual cases themselves,
   every thing depends upon the conception of Christ's character as a
   whole, with which we set out. Were such a narrative of the acts of an
   ordinary man handed down to us, even though we might be unable to
   separate the actual course of fact from the subjective dress given to
   it in the account, we should yet be inclined to suppose that the man
   had wrought some mighty influences upon the minds of his
   contemporaries, and that they had involuntarily transferred these to
   nature, which is so often made the mirror of what passes in the mind of
   man.

   But if we set out in our investigation of the Gospel narrative with a
   just idea of the specific difference between Christ and any, even the
   greatest, of mere men; if we set out with a full intuition of the
   God-Man, we shall find no difficulty whatever in believing that he
   operated upon the most secret powers of nature as no other could have
   done, and, by the might of his Divinity, controlled nature in a way
   which finds no parallel among men.
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     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

   [122] To promote unity of view, I deem it best, especially as much of
   the chronological order must remain uncertain, to treat and divide
   Christ's public ministry, first, according to its substantial
   connexion, and, secondly, according to its chronological connexion.
     __________________________________________________________________

BOOK V.
     __________________________________________________________________

THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF CHRIST

ACCORDING TO ITS

CHRONOLOGICAL CONNEXION.
     __________________________________________________________________

   PART I. FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF HIS MINISTRY TO THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY.

   PART II. FROM THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY TO THE ASCENSION.

                                    BOOK V.

    THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF CHRIST ACCORDING TO ITS CHRONOLOGICAL CONNEXION.
     __________________________________________________________________

INTRODUCTION.
     __________________________________________________________________

ON THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SYNOPTICAL GOSPELS AND JOHN.

   IN comparing the first three Gospels with John, we find several
   discrepancies in regard both to the chronology of the narrative and to
   the theatre of Christ's labours.
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   § 108. Differences of Chronology.

   Matthew, Mark, and Luke include but one feast of the Passover within
   the period of Christ's public ministry, while John's narrative embraces
   three or four. It may be enough to say in regard to this, that the
   former Gospels do not confine themselves to a chronological
   arrangement, and therefore we are entitled to draw no conclusion from
   the fact that the Passover is mentioned in them but once, and that
   towards the close of Christ's career upon earth. The facts narrated may
   have extended through several years, and yet the mention of the Pass.
   over feasts may have been omitted, as other chronological marks have
   been.

   There is nothing in the first three Gospels to contradict the theory
   that Christ's ministry lasted for several years. Even in Luke himself
   [237] there is a passing remark which necessarily presupposes the
   occurrence of one Passover in the midst of that ministry. There is
   nothing, then, to invalidate John's account, which mentions the
   occurrence of several.
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   [237] Luke, vi., 1 the sabbaton deuteroproton, in connexion with the
   "ripe ears of corn."
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 109. Differences as to the Theatre of Christ's Labours.

   According to the synoptical Gospels, Galilee was the chief theatre of
   Christ's labours, and he only transferred them to Jerusalem whey he was
   going to meet his approaching death.

   We must here more minutely examine the question before lightly touched
   upon (p. 99). Did Christ purposely confine his labours chiefly to
   Galilee in hope of finding more ready access to the hearts of its
   simpler-minded inhabitants, who were less in bondage to the traditions
   of the Pharisees than the people of Jerusalem? or was it because he was
   less exposed there to the "snares" of the Pharisees, and could,
   therefore, hope to exercise his labours more uninterruptedly, and for a
   longer period? Did he wait until he had laid the foundation of his work
   so firmly that it would endure, and propagate itself after his death,
   before he determined to go and meet the perils that awaited him at the
   seat of the priesthood? Did he only make up his mind to go, in spite of
   the dangers which he foresaw would environ him, in order to avoid the
   reproach of distrusting the Divinity of his own cause, and thereby
   giving occasion of perplexity to his disciples?

   If these questions are answered in the affirmative, we should have to
   suppose that the tradition which John followed in his Gospel did not
   give correctly the original relations of Christ's labours. It war
   utterly inconsistent with a wish on his part to be recognized as
   Messiah, for him to conceal himself so long in a corner of Galilee, and
   to hold back, for so long a time, his testimony to his Divine calling
   before the face of the people and the priests at Jerusalem. It would
   have been a stumbling-block, indeed, for one who professed to
   acknowledge the old Mosaic religious ideas in all their holiness, to
   refrain, during the whole course of his public labours, from visiting
   the Temple at one of the chief feasts of the Jews.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 110. Proof that Christ frequently exercised his Ministry in Judea and
   Jerusalem.

   It is every way accordant, indeed, with internal probability, that
   Jesus should have expected to find easier access to the simple-minded
   Galilean peasants than to the rich, the haughty, and the learned at
   Jerusalem. But it is altogether improbable to suppose that he would
   subject himself to the reproach of despising the ancient and holy
   institutions [238] of the Jews, by absenting himself from the
   gatherings of the devout at their chief feasts; [239] and it would have
   been strange if he had neglected the opportunity of extending his
   labours that was afforded by the general coming together of Jews from
   all countries at those festivals.

   And how unwise would it have been in him to defer the commencement of
   his labours in the Theocratic capital until the precise period when his
   ministry in Galilee must have drawn upon him the hatred and the fears
   of the prevailing Pharisaic party of Jerusalem, when he must have
   foreseen, too, that he would be overcome by them!

   As to his putting off his journey to Jerusalem until the Apostles were
   sufficiently prepared to carry on the work without his personal
   presence, surely the Apostles knew as yet too little of his doctrines
   to render such a course consistent even with human foresight.

   Moreover, the fanatical hatred of Christ which was manifested by the
   Pharisaical party can only be explained upon the ground that he had
   excited their opposition by a previous ministry, of some duration, in
   the city of Jerusalem itself. Nor are there wanting, even in the first
   three Gospels, intimations to the same effect, e. g., Matt., iv., 25;
   xv., 1, in which the scribes and Pharisees of Jerusalem are spoken of
   as gathering round Jesus in Galilee and asking him entangling
   questions. It may have been the case, either that, after his labours in
   Jerusalem had drawn their hatred upon him, they followed, and watched
   him suspiciously, even in Galilee; or that some of the events that
   originally happened in the city were, in the course of tradition,
   intermingled and confused with those which occurred in Galilee. Again,
   the earnest exclamation of Christ, recorded in Luke, xiii., 34; Matt.,
   xxiii., 37, distinctly implies that he had often endeavoured, by his
   personal teaching in Jerusalem, to rouse the people to repentance and
   conversion, that they might be saved from the ruin then impending over
   them. The words, "children of Jerusalem," although they might apply to
   the whole nation, must, in this exclamation, which is specifically
   addressed to the "city which killed the prophets," be taken as
   referring directly to the inhabitants of that city.

   The account of Christ's relations with the family of Lazarus, given in
   Luke (x., 38-42), coincides in spirit with John's statement (xi., 5) of
   the intimate affection with which the Saviour regarded them; and the
   intimacy must have been formed during a prolonged stay in Jerusalem.
   The fact, too, that several distinguished men of that city (e. g.,
   Joseph of Arimathea, as we are told by the first Evangelists) had
   attached themselves to Christ, affords us the same conclusion. Nor can
   we fail to trace, in Luke's account (ix., 51-62) of his last journey to
   Jerusalem, some confusion, arising from a blending together, in the
   narrative, of events that had occurred on a former journey.

   And, again, can it be imagined that Christ omitted to make use of his
   miraculous powers [240] precisely in Jerusalem, where the best
   opportunities of employing them for the relief of human suffering would
   have been afforded? Would there not, moreover, have been some trace of
   this in the mode of his reception at Jerusalem, similar, probably, to
   what occurred on his first labours at Nazareth? Would not his labours
   there have been very different from what the synoptical Gospels report
   them, if they had been his first efforts in the city?

   Thus there are many things in the first three Gospels themselves which
   indicate and presuppose the accuracy of John's narrative. The latter
   is, besides, entirely consistent with itself, both in its chronology,
   and in its accounts of the several journeys of Christ to the Feasts.

   Finally, those who infer from the synoptical Gospels that Christ made
   but one journey, must ascribe to the author of John's Gospel a
   fabrication, wilfully invented, to serve his own purpose. But the man
   who could do this could never have written such a Gospel. Moreover,
   were it a fiction, still, if intended to be believed, it would have
   been more accommodated to the popular tradition. No one individual
   could have remodelled the entire tradition after an invented plan of
   his own, contradicting all others.

   But, on the other hand, by following John, we do not charge any
   falsification upon the three other Evangelists: we can easily conceive
   how the separate traditions, of which those Gospels were made up, may
   have been so put together, without any intention to deceive, as
   apparently to represent Christ as making one Passover journey. From the
   account of the appearances of Christ after the resurrection given by
   Matthew, we may see how easily such obscurities crept into the circle
   of Galilean traditions. Luke agrees with John in assigning Jerusalem as
   the scene of those appearances; yet, from reading Matthew alone, we
   might infer that they all took place in Galilee. [241]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [238] In the Talmudical treatise "Chagigah," c. ii., none (among
   adults) but the deaf, the sick, the insane, and the very aged, are
   exempted from the obligation to attend the principal feasts at
   Jerusalem. Of course, this law could not apply to the Jews of distant
   countries, who were only required to send annually a deputation to the
   Temple, with sacrifices, and with the money arising from the price of
   the first fruits. Conf. Philo, Legat. ad Cajum, §§ 23, 31.

   [239] Luke, ii., 41, shows that the devout of Galilee felt themselves
   bound to journey to Jerusalem at least at the Passover; the passage
   even speaks of the journey of a woman, on whom the law imposed no such
   obligation. We cannot (with Strauss) find any proof even in Matthew
   that absence from the festivals was held of no account among the
   Jewish-Christians.

   [240] This difficulty, indeed, is avoided in Matthew's Gospel, for it
   is there stated (xxi. 14). quite indefinitely, however, that "he healed
   the lame and the blind in the Temple." It is impossible not to see that
   the historical connexion is lost in this passage of Matthew; we can
   gather it correctly only from John's Gospel.

   [241] A favourable light is thrown upon the genuineness and credibility
   of John's Gospel by the fact that it alone contains a closely connected
   and chronological account of Christ's public ministry.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

PART I.

FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF CHRIST'S PUBLIC MINISTRY TO THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER I.

  JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST.--THE FIRST DISCIPLES.

   WE resume the thread of our historical narrative at the point where it
   was broken off. [242]

   On issuing from the solitude in which he had prepared himself for his
   public labours, Jesus again sought the prophetic man who had given him
   the Divine signal for their commencement, and had consecrated him to
   his holy calling. Not, indeed, in order to form a close connexion with
   him, for John had to remain true to his office as Forerunner, and to
   continue his ministry in that capacity, until the Messiah should lay
   the foundation of his visible kingdom with miraculous power, and, by
   securing general acknowledgment, should indicate to the Forerunner,
   also, that he should submit himself, with all others, to the Theocratic
   King. But in the circle of Galilean disciples that had gathered around
   John, full of longing aspirations, Jesus might expect to find some
   suitable to be taken into fellowship with himself and trained to become
   his organs. The sphere of John's ministry was calculated to offer the
   best point of transition to Christ's independent labours.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 111. Message of the Sanhedrim to John at Bethabara.

   Meanwhile John, with his disciples, had been traversing both shores of
   the Jordan; and just at that time he was on the east side of the river,
   in Perea, at Bethany, or Bethabara. [243] The Jewish Sanhedrim, the
   highest ecclesiastical authority, had at first quietly suffered him to
   go on preaching repentance. But when his followers and influence
   increased to such an extent that men were even inclined to look upon
   him as the Messiah, that high tribunal thought it best to send a
   deputation [244] to obtain from his own lips an explanation of the
   calling in which he laboured.

   John did not at once give as positive a statement as was desired, but
   satisfied himself with giving a negative to the popular idea which had
   probably caused the deputation to be sent ["I am not the Christ"]. But
   as he accompanied this denial with no further explanation in regard to
   himself, the messengers were compelled to press him with further
   questions. They naturally asked him, then, whether he wished to be
   considered as one of the great personages who were looked for as
   precursors of Messiah; presupposing that only in this sense he could
   assume a Divine calling to baptize. John continued to give curt
   replies, just enough to meet each separate question. Although in a
   spiritual sense he was the Elias who was to precede Messiah, he denied
   that he was so (i. e., in the carnal sense in which they put the
   question and would understand the answer). He described himself only in
   general terms, not liable to perversion, as the one through whom the
   voice of God called upon the nation to repent and prepare for a new and
   glorious revelation that was at hand. Humbling himself, as the bearer
   merely of a prefigurative baptism, he pointed to the mightier One who
   should baptize with the Spirit, who already stood, unrecognized, in
   their midst. His remark, "ye know him not," was doubtless founded upon
   the fact (which he did not utter) that he knew him, as he had before
   been revealed at his baptism.

   These answers to the deputation are less clear and full than those
   which the Baptist gave for the warning and instruction of individuals,
   as recorded in the first Gospels. As the ruling powers had little
   favour for John, he had good reason to suspect the intentions with
   which the Sanhedrim had sent their messengers. Hence the brevity and
   reserve with which he answered them.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [243] Two different names given to the same place at different times,
   both having the same meaning, "a place of ships," "a place for crossing
   in ships" (a ferry). See Lücke on John i. 28; Winer's "Biblisches
   Realwörterbuch," i., 196, 2d ed.

   [244] John. i. 19, seq.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 112. John points to Jesus as the Suffering Messiah, and testifies to
   his Higher Dignity.

   On the day after John had thus (officially, as it were) pointed Christ
   out as having already appeared among the people, though unrecognized by
   them, the Saviour came forth from his seclusion, and showed himself in
   the midst of John's disciples. [245] The Baptist, beholding his
   approach, exclaimed, "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin
   of the world." The image of the Holy One, suffering for his people, and
   bearing their sins (Isa., liii.), stood before his soul as he uttered
   these words. As we have already seen, John believed that the Messiah
   would have to go through a struggle with the corrupt part of the
   people; and he readily joined to this belief the idea of a Messiah
   suffering for the sins of the people, and triumphing through suffering.
   The intuition to which he gave utterance was simultaneous with the
   appearance before his eyes of Christ's person, so gentle, so calm, and
   so meek; [246] and his conception of the idea of Messiah, in a
   prophetic spirit, reached its very acme. Yet we cannot define precisely
   the meaning which John himself attached to the words; for we cannot
   suppose in him a doctrinal conception of their import such as a fully
   Christian mind would have. [247] His was a prophetic intuition,
   bordering indeed on Christianity, but yet, perhaps, commingled with
   wholly heterogeneous elements.

   After John had thus designated the character of Jesus, to whom he
   wished to direct his disciples, he repeats anew the testimony which he
   had before publicly given "of him that was to follow" (although
   probably not given, in the first instance, with the same confidence as
   to the person), and applies it, in stronger terms, to Christ--"This is
   he of whom I said, After me cometh a man that is preferred before me,
   for he was before me." [248] ("Who has taken a higher place than I,
   according to his nature.")
     __________________________________________________________________

   [245] John, i., 29.

   [246] Hence the appropriateness of the figure of the lamb rather than
   of any other animal used in the offerings. What we say is enough to
   indicate the grounds on which we differ from other interpretations of
   this passage. Conf. Lücke, in loc.

   [247] We do not suppose, therefore, that the Baptist had before his
   mind the full sense which the Evangelist, from his Christian
   stand-point, connected with the words. It cannot be known with
   certainty but that the former used the word m, which the latter
   translated kosmos. From a mind like the Evangelist's we could hardly
   expect so fine a distinction between the objective and subjective to be
   distinctly marked in his statement of the words of another. He perhaps
   involuntarily blended them. He revered the memory of the Baptist, his
   spiritual guide; these words of the Baptist had greatly tended to
   develope his inner life, and had led him to Christ; it was, therefore,
   all the easier for him to attribute to them a higher Christian sense
   than the Baptist had when he uttered them. The interpretation which he
   gave to them may also thus have reacted upon the form in which they
   were impressed upon his memory. This view does not in the least impugn
   the veracity of the narrative, or tend to show that John was not its
   author. The whole tone of the Baptist's words is consistent with his
   character and habits. Moreover, as we have before remarked (p. 54), the
   kingdom of God, as spreading among the heathen nations, had opened
   partially to his view; he may, therefore, in the passage under
   discussion, have had reference to mankind, rather than to the Jewish
   world.

   [248] John, i., 30. These obscurely prophetic words were the Baptist's
   own, and not put into his mouth by the Evangelist. But this only makes
   their explanation more difficult. According to the usage of the Greek,
   and of language generally, the before of place and time may express,
   figuratively, precedence of dignity; and, in this usage, emprosthen mou
   gegonen is easily interpreted, "although (in the order of time) he
   comes after me, yet (in the order of dignity) he was before me." In the
   full certainty of prophetic intuition, the Baptist describes this as
   already realized. It is harder to interpret protos mou en. Referring
   the words "he was before me" to the pre-existence of Christ, they would
   imply that his dignity as Messiah was to grow out of his pre-existing
   Divine nature. Nor could it, in this case, be said that the Evangelist
   had involuntarily modified the language of the Baptist by an infusion
   of his own Christian ideas; for, in the mind of the latter, the higher
   conception of the person of the Messiah, as well as of his work and
   kingdom, may have been developed from a profoundly spiritual
   interpretation of the prophecies of the Old Testament. This much,
   indeed, is implied in his partial statements (recorded by the other
   Evangelists) in regard to the peculiar indwelling of the Holy Ghost in
   the Messiah; although it does not follow that the Baptist was fully
   conscious of this. It remains a question, whether it would not be more
   in accordance with the simple conception of the Baptist to take protos
   as referring, not to pre-existence, but to priority of nature, which
   interpretation I have followed in the text. This involves no tautology;
   the "becoming greater" is derived from the "being greater." The word en
   is used, and not esti, to indicate that the "priority of essence"
   preceded "the priority of dignity," which was not obtained by Christ,
   in its manifestation, until a later period. It is an oxymoron: "he was
   that, which he has become." Thus interpreted, the passage corresponds
   to what John says of Christ in another form, in Matt., iii., 11. If
   this view be adopted, we must remember to distinguish between the sense
   in which the Baptist uttered the words and that which the Evangelist,
   from his higher Christian consciousness, attributes to them.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 113. John and Andrew, Disciples of John, attach themselves to
   Jesus.--Gradual Attraction of others.

   These words of the Baptist were listened to by two Galilean youths, who
   stood in the circle of his disciples--John and Andrew. It was about
   four o'clock in the afternoon, when, obeying the hint of the Baptist,
   they followed Jesus; refraining, however, in reverence, from Disturbing
   his meditations. The Saviour, noticing them, turned kindly and asked
   what they desired. Even then they did not venture to express their
   longing to be honoured with his friendship; but only timidly inquired
   where he dwelt. Anticipating their request, he kindly invited them to
   visit him. The few hours that remained before evening were spent in his
   society. This was their first impression of Christ: he left it to work
   in their hearts. Thus was it also with Simon (John, i., 42), in whom
   Christ discerned in a moment the yet dormant spirit of the Man of Rock.
   And those whose first impressions were thus received pointed Christ out
   to their fellows; and thus arose the first circle of disciples, which
   accompanied him from Peraea back to Galilee. [249]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [249] John, i., 42-47. It is apparent from John's statement alone that
   Christ did not take these young disciples, who were afterward to be his
   organs, immediately into close fellowship, but left them for a while to
   themselves. John gives us no further account of the forming of the
   Apostolic community; he presupposes many things, which we must
   endeavour to fill up by comparing the synoptical Gospels.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [242] Page 69.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER II.

  COMMENCEMENT OF CHRIST'S PUBLIC TEACHING.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 114. The Miraculous Draught of Fishes.--Effect of the Miracle on
   Peter.

   ON his return to Galilee Christ at once began his labours as a teacher;
   not, however, in the synagogues, but in instructing the groups that
   gathered around him. He betook himself first, not to Nazareth, his
   native place, where he could least hope to be received as a prophet
   (the carnal mind looks only at the outward appearance), but to the
   little town of Capernaum. The young men who had accompanied him from
   Peraea were from the neighbourhood of Capernaum and Bethsaida; and he
   only waited for a suitable opportunity to take them into closer
   communion. Such an opportunity was the following:

   One day, as he was walking upon the western shore of the Sea of
   Genesareth, an increasing throng of eager listeners collected about
   him. Some fishermen who had toiled all night and brought up nothing but
   empty nets, had left their vessels fastened near the shore. Jesus asked
   Simon, to whom one of the fishing-boats belonged, to push it out a
   little way from the shore, that he might stand on board, and thus
   address the people to better advantage. [250] On finishing his
   discourse, he turned to Peter, who doubtless was anew struck with the
   power of his words, and told him to cast his net into the deep.
   Although he had toiled all night in vain, he obeyed the Master at a
   word. This full confidence of Peter shows that he had already been
   impressed to some extent, at least, with the Divinity of Christ. [251]
   An impression of the most powerful character, however, must have been
   made upon him (as a fisherman) by the wonderful result of this once
   letting down of his net, after the vain attempts of the long night
   before. The manifestation of the Divine power to him in the exercise of
   his own trade was characteristic of the Divine operations generally in
   the history of Christianity; he was thus led from the Carnal to the
   Spiritual. [252] All his previous impressions were revived and deepened
   by this sudden exhibition of the power of a word from Christ, and the
   Saviour appeared so exalted that he felt himself unworthy to be near
   him ["Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!"] [253] The Divine
   power appears fearful, in its holiness, to the sinner who is conscious
   of his sinfulness it fills him with consternation; he shrinks back from
   it with trembling Infinite, indeed, in view of the law, must the chasm
   appear between the sinner and the Divinely exalted Holy One. [254]

   Christ seized upon this impression, and, glorifying the Physical into
   the Spiritual, by his prophetic explanation of the phenomenon, said to
   Peter [Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men]: "Shrink not
   back in fear. Take confidence in me. Attach thyself henceforth wholly
   to me. Thou shalt see greater proofs of my power than this. In
   fellowship with me thou shalt achieve greater miracles. From henceforth
   thy net shall catch men."

   The same impression, also, caused Andrew, James, and John [255] to join
   themselves from thenceforth more closely to Jesus.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [250] A comparison of Luke, v., with Matt., iv., 18, will vindicate the
   correctness of this representation. Here we have two independent
   statements: that in Matthew an abbreviated one, while Luke's is the
   vivid and circumstantial account of an eye-witness. The words of Christ
   to Peter, as given by Matthew (iv., 19), "I will make you fishers of
   men," seem to presuppose an event such as the miraculous draught of
   fishes; but Matthew presents them as entirely isolated, while Luke
   gives the occasion of them very graphically. None but those
   abstractionists who must measure all phenomena, however infinite in
   variety, upon the Procrustean bed of their own logical formulas, will
   see in this account the stamp of a legendary story. It has all the
   freshness of life and reality about it. Whoever is well read in the
   history of the diffusion of Christianity in all ages will be able to
   recall many analogous cases. Schleiermacher (Comm. on Luke, in loc., or
   "Werke," ii., 53), in his remarks on this case, showed with what nice
   tact he could distinguish history from legend. Honour to the memory of
   that great man, whose profoundly logical mind humbled itself, in pure
   love of Truth, before the power of History!

   [251] It also confirms the account in John's Gospel. The connexion of
   the narrative which I have given abundantly shows that Matthew's
   account is not irreconcilable with Luke's, or both with John's, as some
   suppose. I do not mean to say, however, that the connexion thus made by
   comparing all the accounts was present to the minds of the writers
   severally, for in that case, doubtless, the form of their narratives
   would have been different from what it is now. Such discrepancies can
   surprise no man who has attempted to gather a connected narrative of
   any kind from several distinct accounts.

   [252] Those who believe in a Divine teleological government of the
   world, in a Providence which makes Nature subserve the progress of the
   kingdom of God, must regard this event as one of those in which the
   border line between the natural and supernatural is hard to be
   distinguished, and which form the point of transition from the former
   to the latter.

   [253] On account of this peculiar relation between Christ and Peter, we
   can hardly suppose (although much may be said in favour of it) that
   this event occurred after he had known Christ for some time, or after
   he had been a witness of his first public labours at Jerusalem so,
   also, we cannot, for the same reason, place it after the wedding at
   Cana; although this last is more probable than the other, since we
   cannot say certainly what impressions the occurrences at Cana made, at
   first, upon the disciples. The view which we have followed in the text
   seems to be contradicted by the connexion between John, i., 43, and 46;
   but there is no real contradiction. The calling of Nathanael (John, i.,
   46) and that of Philip (i., 43) are not necessarily connected in place
   and time. John mentions an intended return to Galilee (v. 43), but says
   nothing about the journey itself; he may have been induced, by the
   mention of Bethsaida, to place the theatre of the account in that
   region. (See Bleek, Stud. u. Krit., 1833, ii.) The late B. Jacobi (in
   the same periodical, 1838, iv., 852) adduces against this view John's
   accuracy, in this passage, in mentioning time and place. It is not
   clear, however, that John meant to give, in each case in the chapter,
   the time and place exactly. His exactness extends only to the events
   which served to lead John's disciples to Christ; and it is not at all
   evident that Nathanael belonged to that number. The way in which Philip
   describes the Messiah to him, saying nothing of the Baptist's
   testimony, rather shows the contrary. Moreover, the opposite view would
   prove that Nathanael was first found in Galilee.

   [254] The truth of this individual trait, as narrated of Peter, is
   confirmed by the subsequent developement of his character, The
   consciousness of his sinfulness and distance from the perfectly Holy
   One must, indeed, have remained; and his sense of the loftiness of
   Christ could be diminished by no degree of intimacy with him. But there
   was this great difference between the two periods of his religious
   life, that in the latter, as he imbibed more and more the spirit of
   communion with Christ, he felt himself no more repelled as a sinner
   from Him in whom the source of Divine life for men was revealed, but
   attracted to him, not merely by his own spiritual affinities, but by
   his personal experience, that He "had the words of eternal life." The
   redeeming power of the Divine One was more and more fully revealed to
   him; the Divinity appeared to him no more as a merely outward, but as
   an inward power. The central source of all the individual rays of
   Divinity shone forth upon his consciousness, and the separate rays of
   themselves, therefore, appeared in a new light.

   [255] Luke says (v. 10) that James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were
   "partners with Simon;" they were, therefore, eye-witnesses of that
   event, and received the same impression from it. In Matthew's statement
   (iv., 21) they were with their father, in another vessel, "mending
   their nets." This agrees well enough with Luke, since he likewise
   mentions two vessels, and--not, indeed, the mending, but--the washing
   of the much-used nets.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 115. The Calling of Nathanael.

   In the case of a John, the full impression of Christ's personality,
   first received, prepared the depths of his youthful soul for sudden and
   separate impressions of the Divinity of Jesus, which soon brought him
   to a complete decision. But the narrow prejudices of a Nathanael had to
   be overcome by a separate supernatural sign before he could receive the
   impression of Christ's manifestation and nature as a whole When Philip
   first announced to him that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, he
   expressed both surprise and incredulity that any thing so high should
   come forth from a corner like Galilee. Instead of discussing the point,
   Philip appeals to his own experience, and tells him to "come and see."
   Nathanael's prejudice was not strong enough to prevent his compliance,
   or to hinder him from being convinced by facts. Christ sees and esteems
   his love of truth, and receives him with the words, "Behold an
   Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile" (a true and honest-hearted
   member of the Theocratic nation). The candid youth is surprised to find
   himself known by a stranger. He expresses his astonishment, and Christ
   increases the impression made upon his feelings, by a more striking
   proof still of his supernatural knowledge, telling him that his glance,
   piercing the barriers of space, had rested on him before Philip called
   him as he stood "under the fig-tree" (this probably had some reference
   to the thoughts which occupied his mind under the fig-tree). His
   prejudices are readily removed [he acknowledged Christ as "Son of God
   and King of Israel"]; Christ admits that he is in the first stage of
   faith, [256] but tells him that his faith must develope itself from
   this beginning, and advance to a higher aim (John, i., 50, 51). A faith
   thus resting on a single manifestation might easily be perplexed by
   some other single one, that might not meet its expectations. That is a
   genuine faith (according to Christ) which carries itself to the very
   central-point of revelation, seizes the intuition of Divinity in its
   immediate nature and manifestation as a whole, and obtains, through
   immediate contact with the Divine in the Spirit, a standpoint which
   doubt can never reach. Nathanael was to see "greater things" than this
   isolated ray of the supernatural. He was to see the "heavens opened
   upon the Son of Man," into whose intimacy he was about to enter, and
   "Angels of God ascending and descending" upon him. He was to learn
   Christ in his true relation to the developement of humanity, as Him
   through whom human nature was to be glorified; through whom the
   locked-up heavens were again to be opened; the communion with heaven
   and earth restored; to whom and from whom all the powers of heaven were
   to flow. Such was to be his Divine glory in its full manifestation; all
   other signs were but individual tokens of it.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [256] See p. 138.
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     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER III.

  JESUS AT CANA.
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   § 116. The Change of Water into Wine.--Character and Import of the
   Miracle.--Little Impression made upon the People.

   THREE days after Christ had thus set forth the mode in which he from
   that time should reveal himself, he displayed, at a wedding in Cana,
   [257] the fulness of "the power of heaven" streaming forth from him
   self, which was to transfigure, as he had said, both nature and
   humanity. The wine provided for the occasion gave out, and Mary
   requested her Son to supply the lack by employing the powers that were
   at his command. Having recognized him as Messiah, she necessarily
   expected him to work miracles, and this expectation was increased by
   the impression which he had made in the short time that had elapsed
   after his consecration to the Messianic mission. She looked impatiently
   for the hour when he should reveal himself in his glory, as Messiah,
   before the eyes of all men.

   But Christ, although he held all purely human feelings sacred, yet
   demanded that "man should deny father and mother" when the cause of God
   required it. He had now to apply this principle to his own mother, and,
   conscious of his Divine character and calling, to rebuke the request
   thus made to him, and the feelings which prompted it. "What have I to
   do with thee? mine hour is not yet come;" as if he had said, "Our
   wishes lie apart. My Divine powers cannot be made subservient to
   earthly aims and motives. My acts obey a higher plan and loftier laws,
   in accordance with which each of them has its appointed time. As yet,
   the moment for revealing myself in my Messianic dignity, by miracles
   apparent to all eyes, has not arrived."

   Christ intended, as he here intimates, to come forth gradually from his
   obscurity. He had no idea of displaying his glory, as Mary wished, at
   once. Still, as she might have been accustomed to take from his words
   and look more than he uttered, she probably understood that her wish
   would be met, so far as the fact was concerned, though from a point of
   view totally different from her own. And so it was; the thing was done,
   but in no very striking way, nor in a way calculated to reveal his
   Messianic glory to all eyes.

   As for the character of the miracle itself, we cannot place it, as some
   do, among the highest of Christ's miraculous acts. We conceive it thus:
   He brought out of water, by his creative energy, a substance (wine),
   which is naturally the joint product of the growth of the vine, and of
   human labour, water being only one of the co-operating factors; and
   thus substituted his creative power for various natural and artificial
   processes. But we are not justified in inferring that the water was
   changed into manufactured wine; but that, by his direct agency, he
   imparted to it powers capable of producing the same effects; that he
   intensified (so to speak) the powers of water into those of wine. [258]
   Indeed, this latter view of the miracle conforms better to its
   spiritual import than the former. [259]

   It is not a sufficient explanation of the final cause and moral bearing
   [260] of the miracle to say that Christ intended, by thus exhibiting
   his glory, to incite and confirm a faith in his calling. We must seek
   its import rather by contemplating it in reference to his moral
   self-revelation as a whole; by inquiring how the peculiar Spirit of
   Christ was reflected and illustrated in this single act.

   While in retirement, he had resembled, in the austerity of his life,
   the ascetic preacher of repentance, John the Baptist. Now, however, in
   the very beginning of his public labours, no longer in solitude, but
   mingling in the social life of men, he enters into all human interests,
   shares all human feelings, and thus at once presents a contrast to the
   severe legalism of John. In the joyous circle of a wedding, he performs
   his first miracle to gratify a social want. Thus he sanctifies
   connexions, feelings, joys, that are purely human, by his personal
   presence, and by unfolding his Divine powers in such a circle and on
   such an occasion. In this view the miracle gives the spirit of
   Christian Ethics, whose task it is to apply to all human relations the
   image of Christ as stamped upon his self-revealed life. But it has a
   further and a great symbolical import: Christ employed water, one of
   the commonest sup. ports of life, as the vehicle of a higher power: so
   it is the peculiarity of Christ's Spirit and labours, the peculiarity
   of the work of Christianity not to destroy what is natural, but to
   ennoble and transfigure it; to enable it, as the organ of Divine
   powers, to produce effects beyond it, original capacities. To energize
   the power of Water into that of Wine is, indeed, in every sense, the
   peculiar office of Christianity.

   This first stay of Christ in Galilee after his inauguration as Messiah
   was attended with important results in the training of the narrower
   circle of his disciples: but he does not appear, in that short time, to
   have made any lasting impression upon the people. There were few so
   ingenuous in their prepossessions as a Nathanael; the prejudices of
   many against the "son of the carpenter at Nazareth" could not be
   removed until they had obtained a vivid impression of his public
   labours at the feast of the Passover in the metropolis. Even in this
   beginning of his labours in Galilee, he had probably found occasion to
   apply the Jewish proverb, "a prophet hath no honour in his own
   country." [261]
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   [257] It is to be remarked that Nathanael was "the son of Tholmai," i.
   e. Bartholomew, of Cana, which fact may confirm our view of the order
   of the events.

   [258] I would be pleased to believe, if I could, that the view here
   taken had as old ecclesiastical authority as the late
   Baumgarten-Crusius supposes he has found for it, in the ancient hymn
   "De Epiphania Domini" (Daniel, Thesaurus Hymnologicus, i., p. 19): "Vel
   hydriis plenis aqua vini saporem infuderis." But the word saporem can
   hardly be made emphatic. In the sense of the hymn, the words "vini
   saporem infundere" probably mean nothing more than "in vinum mutare."

   [259] Compare, as analogies, the mineral springs, in which, by natural
   processes, new powers are given to water; and the ancient accounts of
   springs which sent forth waters like wine-intoxicating waters:
   "Pollachou d' eisi krenai hai men potimo'terai kai oinode'sterai, hos e
   peri Paphlagoni'an, pro`s e'n phasi tous echori'ous upopi'nein
   prosio'ntas."--Athenaeus, Deip., ii., § 17, 18 Of another water says
   Theopompus, "tou`s pi'nontas auto` methu'skesthai, katha` kai` tou`s
   to`n oinon."

   [260] The supposition that John's Gospel was written by some one of
   Alexandrian education, with a tendency to Gnosticism, is refuted by
   this narrative. Such a man would never have assigned such an object and
   such a scene for Christ's first miracle. Such a one could not have
   invented and put into the mouth of the "ruler of the feast" the clumsy
   jest which he uttered (John, ii., 9), (although we do not (as some do)
   lay stress upon it, and infer that the guests were nearly drunk). Any
   one writing a history of Christ apologetically, and with a view to
   exalt his character according to the tendency of those times, would
   rather have altered and adorned a true narrative of such facts (if such
   existed) than have invented a false one bearing against his object; or,
   if he had some symbolical meaning in his view, he would certainly have
   stated it.

   [261] John. iv., 44: doubtless referring to this period; a supposition
   which the use of gar renders probable. Thus interpreted, we should have
   John's testimony that Christ had already sought to appear as a teacher
   in Galilee.
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     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER IV.

  FIRST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM TO ATTEND THE FEAST OF THE PASSOVER.
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   § 117. The Purifying of the Temple.

   DURING the feast of the Passover Jesus appeared at Jerusalem in his
   prophetic calling, and accredited it by miracles. [262] On visiting the
   Temple, he found its worship disturbed by disorders which desecrated
   the holy place--a picture of the general secularization of the
   Theocracy. [263]

   For the convenience of the Jews from a distance who wished to offer
   sacrifices, booths had been erected in the Temple-court, in which every
   thing necessary for the purpose was kept for sale, and moneychangers
   were also allowed to take their stand there; but, as might have been
   expected from the existing corruption of the Jewish people, many foul
   abuses had grown up. The merchants and brokers made every thing
   subservient to their avarice, and their noisy huckstering was a great
   disturbance to the worship of the Temple.

   It was Christ's calling to combat the corruptions of the secularized
   Theocracy, and to predict the judgments of God against them. And as the
   general desecration of all that was holy was imaged in these profane
   doings at the Temple, he first manifested against them his holy anger.
   Threatening the traders with a scourge of small cords, he drove them
   out of the Temple; and said to those who sold doves, "Take these things
   hence; make not my Father's house a house of merchandise." [264]

   These words are not only applicable to the special case, but also
   contain a severe reproof of that carnal tendency which debases God's
   house into a merchant's exchange. The lifting up of the scourge could
   not have been in token of physical force, for--apart from Christ's
   character--what was one man against so many? It could only be a
   symbolical sign--a sign of the judgments of God that were so soon to
   fall upon those who had corrupted the Theocracy. [265]

   There was no miracle, in the proper sense, wrought here, but a proof of
   the confident Divine power with which he influenced the minds of men;
   an example of the direct impression of Divinity, of the power of the
   manifestation of the Holy One as a punisher, in rousing the slumbering
   conscience. Origen, who found many difficulties in this narrative,
   [266] and was inclined to regard it as ideal and symbolical, thought
   that if it were to be received as history [267] the miracle would be
   greater than the change of water into wine, or, indeed, any other of
   Christ's deeds; as in this case he would not have had to act upon inert
   and lifeless matter, but upon living beings capable of resistance. But,
   on the contrary, no miracle, in the proper sense, was wrought,
   precisely because Christ had to operate upon men, endowed, it is true,
   with a will capable of resisting, but also with susceptibilities that
   had to yield to the moral and religious force of an immediate Divine
   impression, and with conscience, that slumbering consciousness of God
   which man can never wholly abnegate, and which may be roused by a
   commanding holy power, in a way that is not to be calculated. There are
   many things in history that must be regarded as myths by minds that
   judge only by the standard of every-day reality.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [262] Although the purifying of the Temple doubtless belongs to an
   early period of Christ's teaching, it is by no means clear, from John's
   account, that Christ had not taught and wrought miracles before;
   indeed, the manner in which the priests addressed him rather shows the
   contrary.

   [263] Here a difficulty arises: the cleansing of the Temple is placed
   by John at the beginning of Christ's ministry, during his first stay at
   Jerusalem; by the other Evangelists at the end of his labours, during
   his last stay there. Unless the same event took place twice, and in the
   very same way (which is hardly probable), either John or the others
   must have deviated from the chronological order. It may appear more
   probable that an act implying so great power over the priests, and the
   throng of buyers and sellers, was done after his last triumphal entry,
   when the people were, for the moment, enthusiastic in his favour, than
   at the beginning of his labours. On the other hand, he would have had
   more occasion, after his triumphal entry, to avoid every thing that
   could occasion public disturbance, or wear the appearance of employing
   earthly power. As for the difficulty of the thing at his opening
   ministry, no one can say what influences the immediate power of God
   might produce upon the minds and feelings of men. It is certainly less
   easy to account for such an anachronism in John, whose account is all
   of a piece, and accurate in chronological order, than in the other
   Evangelists; the latter might naturally connect a fact like this, well
   adapted to oral tradition, with the last entry, which was the only one
   mentioned in the circle of accounts which they compiled. According to
   John (ii., 18), the Jews put the question, "What sign showest thou us?"
   &c.; in Luke, xx., 2, the Sanhedrim ask, "By what authority doest thou
   these things?" &c. It might be supposed that this last question
   suggested the statement of the event which gave rise to it, if it were
   certain (as, indeed, it is not) that in the passage in Luke it has this
   special reference to the act, and not a reference to Christ's teaching
   in general at that time.

   [264] John, at most, alludes to Isa., lvi., 7; Jer., vii., 11: but the
   other Gospels give direct citations. This is another proof of the
   originality of John's narrative.

   [265] How absurd would it be to attribute the invention of such an
   incident as this to a man of Alexandrian culture! Its utter repugnance
   to Alexandrian views is shown by the fact that Origen considered it one
   of the greatest objections to the credibility of the narrative.

   [266] T. ix. in Joann.

   [267] Origin, however, exaggerated the throng that Christ had to expel
   into thousands. John, more simply than the other Evangelists, speaks
   only of the expulsion of the sellers; they, of the buyers also.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 118. The Saying of Christ, "Destroy this Temple," &c.--Additional
   Exposition of it given by John.

   Some of the priests asked Christ by what signs he could prove his
   authority to act thus. He gave them an answer, at once reproof and
   prophecy, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."

   The most natural and apparent interpretation of these words, according
   to the circumstances under which they were uttered, laying no
   particular stress upon the specification of "three days," would be the
   following: "When you, by your ungodliness, which desecrates all that is
   holy, have brought about the destruction of the Temple, then will I
   build it up again;" alluding (according to the mode of conception every
   where prevalent in the New Testament) to the relation between
   Christianity and Judaism. The kingdom of God had a common basis in
   both; the new spiritual Temple which Christ is to erect among men is,
   therefore, represented as the Temple at Jerusalem, rebuilt after its
   destruction; the latter being a symbol of the destruction of the entire
   Jewish worship, which was identified with the Temple itself. The Temple
   and the kingdom of God are identical in Judaism and in Christianity:
   [268] there, in a form particular and typical; here, in a form
   corresponding to its essence, and intended for all men and all ages. As
   Christ is conscious that the desecrated and ruined Temple will be
   raised up by him in greater splendour, he acts upon this consciousness,
   as reformer of the old Temple, in the very beginning of those labours
   which are to lay the foundation of the new and spiritual one.

   But what a glance into futurity was required in him thus to foretell
   not only the ruin of the Temple by the guilt of the Jews--the
   dissolution of their worship being necessarily identified
   therewith--but also the erection of the spiritual Edifice that was to
   take its place; to predict in himself the mightiest achievement in the
   history of humanity, at a time when but a few apparently insignificant
   men had joined him, and even they had but a distant dawning idea of
   what he intended to accomplish! So vast a meaning was involved in those
   dark words--dark, as all prophecies are dark! An analogous meaning was
   contained in his expression on another occasion, "Here is something
   greater than the Temple;" [269] showing, perhaps, that he was
   accustomed thus to point from the temporary Temple to the higher one
   which had already appeared, and which would still further reveal itself
   in the course of his labours.

   Among the accusations brought against Christ by the false witnesses, at
   a later period, was this, that he had said, "I am able to destroy the
   Temple of God, and to build it in three days." [270] Some may suppose
   that the editor of our Greek Matthew may have been ignorant of the
   occasion and the true sense on which the words were uttered by Christ,
   and therefore attributed them entirely to the invention of the
   witnesses. It is likely, however, that the testimony was called false
   by Matthew, because the witnesses perverted, and put a false
   construction on Christ's real words; he had not said that "he would
   destroy the Temple," but (what is very different) that its destruction
   would be brought about by the guilt of the Jews. The priests might very
   naturally have falsely reported the words, in order to put a sense upon
   them that would not bear against themselves so closely, and which, at
   the same time, would appear more obnoxious to the people. In Mark,
   xiv., 58, the words are still more perverted by the false witnesses: "I
   will destroy this Temple that is made with hands, and within three days
   I will build another." [271] Not that they understood Christ that he
   would build a spiritual temple instead of the visible one; but,
   probably, that he could, after destroying the latter, replace it in
   greater glory by magic (after the visionary representations of the
   Chiliasts), or cause one to descend from heaven. Even one of the
   thieves on the cross malevolently quoted these words against Christ.
   All this shows that, whatever amazement the words excited, they had
   made a great and general impression. [272]

   The faithfulness of John is strikingly shown by the way in which he
   distinguishes his own interpretation of these words of Christ from the
   words themselves. [273] Christ, in uttering them (according to John's
   explanation), pointed to his own body [referring to the resurrection].

   Although this does not appear to bear so directly upon the aim of
   Christ at the time, and upon the question of the Jews, as the view
   given above, it yet may involve the following deeper import, viz.: "The
   Temple at Jerusalem is only a temporary place consecrated to God; but
   Christ, in his human nature, shall build up the everlasting Temple of
   God for man. The former shall be destroyed, and not rebuilt; but the
   body of Christ, the temple of the indwelling Divine Nature, shall rise
   triumphant out of death." [274]

   The first interpretation seems to us more simple, and to connect itself
   snore naturally with Christ's intention; but the latter has the
   advantage in giving a more intelligible bearing to the "three days."
   [275]
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   [268] Just as the "House of God" (Heb., iii., 2-6) is made the same in
   both dispensations; as the later one fulfills the law of the older. I
   cannot see any force in Kling's objections (Stud. u. Krit., 1836, i.,
   127). The kainon is already implied in the egeirein.

   [269] See above, p. 89.

   [270] Matt., xxvi., 61.

   [271] Mark observes (xiv., 59): "But neither so did their witness agree
   together."

   [272] It is a special confirmation of John's Gospel that he alone gives
   the natural occasion for the utterance of these words by Christ, and
   their original form. Strauss, however, thinks that the original form of
   the expression was that put into Stephen's mouth by his accusers, Acts,
   vi., 14; and that the "three days" were added subsequently, with
   reference to the resurrection. But these are not Stephen's words, nor
   is it even attributed to him that he quoted Christ's, but only that he
   uttered a thought of his own, perhaps derived from them. At any rate,
   the mention of the " three days" would have been unsuited to the
   thought ascribed to Stephen. The interpolation of the words "three
   days" is more improbable, as neither Matthew nor Mark explain them at
   all; on the contrary, it is much more likely that the presence of the
   words led to their being applied subsequently to the resurrection, than
   that the resurrection itself led to their interpolation.

   [273] It may be disputed whether John's interpretation is intended to
   give the exact sense in which Christ used the words [or only
   accommodated them to the resurrection, as is perhaps implied in the 22d
   verse, "when, therefore, he was risen from the dead, his disciples
   remembered that he had said this unto them"]. An instance of such
   accommodation, of words uttered by Christ, in a sense different from
   the original one, is found in John, xviii., 9; although, in this case,
   John must have known that he applied them differently, and was glad to
   find them admit such application. John's authority, in regard to the
   sense of the words of the Master whom he followed so devoutly, and
   whose sayings he preserved so faithfully, is necessarily of great
   weight; still, in the explanation of special expressions [as to their
   original import], the natural relations and connexions might compel us
   to deviate from him. Nor would this at all conflict with Inspiration,
   rightly understood, which would only require that the explanation given
   by the Evangelist should be true in itself, although the words might
   not be applied with Christ's original meaning. He would none the less
   be the proclaimer of the whole truth made known to him by the
   illumination of the Holy Ghost. The mention of the "three days" (which
   cannot, indeed, be easily explained, except by the resurrection) might
   have led the author of this Gospel, who always dwelt with peculiar
   fondness upon every thing that concerned the person of Christ, at once
   to think of his resurrection. The interpretation given by the
   Evangelist is a further proof against the theory that this Gospel had a
   later Hellenistic or Alexandrian origin. It would have accorded much
   better with the taste of that school to apply Christ's words, in the
   grand prophetic bearing, to the building of the spiritual Temple (the
   nuos pneumatikos, in place of the naos aisthetos) than to the
   resurrection of his body.

   [274] I agree with Kling's (1. c.) refutation of certain modern
   objections to John's explanation, and also with his view of the
   impossibility of connecting the two interpretations together.

   [275] Many passages have been quoted by others to prove that "three
   days" must necessarily mean a time of short duration, but I am not yet
   convinced of it. In general, it means "a round number," and we must
   learn from the context whether a longer or shorter period is intended.
   In this case the contrast with the length of time taken to build the
   Temple justifies us in assuming that a short period is meant. The new
   spiritual Temple, the progressive developement of the new spiritual
   kingdom of God, did in fact immediately follow the overthrow of the old
   form of the Theocracy.
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   § 119. Interview of Christ with Nicodcmus.

   (1.) Disposition of the People and Pharisees towards
   Christ.--Dispositions of Nicodemus.

   Many of the people were attracted to Christ during this his first stay
   at Jerusalem. And although the prevailing Pharisaic party looked upon
   him with an eye of suspicion, they could not openly oppose him, as he
   had not as yet arrayed himself against their statutes and traditions,
   but directed his blows against abuses which no one dared to defend. And
   even of the Pharisees it cannot be supposed that all were hypocrites,
   governed only by selfish motives; doubtless there were many whose
   piety, however debased by the errors of their entire system, was yet
   sincere. [276] Such could not remain without Divine impressions from
   the words and works of Christ.

   A specimen of this better class was Nicodemus. [277] To him,
   especially, the miracles of Jesus appeared to be works transcending all
   merely human power, and undeniable signs of a Divine calling. Beyond
   this general impression, however, he had no clear views of Christ's
   person or mission; and his desire to obtain more definite information
   was the greater, because he had participated in the expectations
   awakened by John the Baptist, in regard to the approaching reign of
   Messiah. Recognizing Christ as a prophet, he determined to apply to him
   personally, and came to him by night, to avoid strengthening the
   suspicions of his colleagues in the Sanhedrim, probably already aroused
   against him.

   We may presuppose that he shared in the ordinary Jewish conceptions of
   the Messianic kingdom, and expected it soon to be founded in visible
   and earthly glory; although he may have had, at the same time, some
   more worthy and spiritual ideas in regard to it. He considered himself
   sure, as a rigidly pious Jew and Pharisee, of a share in that kingdom.
   and was only anxious to be informed as to the approaching manifestation
   of Messiah.

   Addressing Christ as an enlightened teacher, accredited from God by
   miracles, he expected to obtain from his lips a further account of his
   calling and of his relation to the Messianic kingdom. But instead of
   entering upon this, Christ purposely gives an answer especially adapted
   to the moral and religious wants of Nicodemus, and all of like mind.
   [278] The truth which he uttered was not only new and strange to
   Nicodemus, but also fundamentally opposed to his whole system: "Except
   a man be born again, [279] he cannot see the kingdom of God."

   (2.) The New Birth.

   Uprooting the notion that any particular line of birth or descent call
   entitle men to a share in God's kingdom, Christ points out an inward
   condition, necessary for all men alike, a title which no man can secure
   by his own power. His answer to Nicodemus presupposes that all men are
   alike destitute of the Divine life. It was directed as well against the
   arrogant self-righteousness of the Pharisees as against the contracted
   externalizing of the kingdom of God in Jewish particularism. It
   involves also (although we are not sure, from the form of the
   expression, that Christ intended precisely this) that a faith like that
   of Nicodemus was insufficient; springing, as it did, from isolated
   miracles, and not from inward experience, or an internal awakening of
   the Divine life. Certainly it hit the only point from which Nicodemus
   could and must proceed in order to change his mode of conceiving the
   Messianic kingdom. Even if he at first still expected it to appear as
   an outward one, he must have had a higher and nobler moral conception
   of it. He doubtless took Christ's words "cannot see the kingdom" to
   mean "cannot share in the visible kingdom;" while Christ meant an
   inward spiritual "entering into" that kingdom which was first to be
   founded, as a spiritual one, in the hearts of men. [280]

   The mere figure of a new birth, in itself, would have been nothing so
   unusual or unintelligible to Nicodemus; he could have understood it
   well enough if applied, for instance, to the case of a heathen
   submitting himself to circumcision and the observance of other Jewish
   usages. [281] But what startled him was the altogether novel
   application which Christ made of the figure; not to a change of
   external relations, as in the case above supposed, but to a totally
   different change, of which the learned scribe had not the glimmering of
   an idea. He knew not what to think of such an answer to his question,
   and no wonder; a dead, contracted, arrogant scribe-theology is always
   amazed at the mysteries of inward, spiritual experience. This first
   direct impression, perhaps, did not allow him, at the moment, to
   distinguish between the figure and the thing, and he asked, "How can a
   man be born when he is old?"

   (3.) The Birth of Water and of the Spirit.

   But Christ confirms what he had said, and explains it further: "Verily,
   except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into
   the kingdom of God." [282] He thus describes more exactly the active
   principle (the creative agent) of the new birth, the Divine Spirit,
   which implants a new Divine life in those who give themselves up to it;
   producing a moral change, a reversion of the. universal tendency of
   man, as the offspring of a race tainted by sin.

   So much is clear. But what shall we say of the "water?" [283] We infer
   from the fact that Christ says nothing more of "water," but proceeds to
   explain the operations of the "Spirit," that the former was only a
   point of departure to lead to the latter. It was the baptism of the
   Spirit, the "birth of the Spirit" into a new Divine life, that was
   unknown to Nicodemus; whereas John's baptism might have already made
   him acquainted with water as a symbol of inward purification, pointing
   to a higher purification of soul, to be wrought by the Messiah, and
   aiding in its comprehension.

   After this preparation, Christ sets forth the general principle on
   which his previous declarations to Nicodemus were founded, viz., the
   total opposition between the natural life--the life of all those who
   continue to live according to nature simply--and the new life which God
   imparts ["That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is
   born of the Spirit is Spirit"]. But as this "birth of the Spirit" was
   still strange to Nicodemus, Christ made use of a sensible image to
   bring it more vividly before him. "As none can set bounds or limits to
   the wind, as one hears and feels its blast, but can not track it to its
   source or to its aim; so it is with the breath of God's Spirit in those
   who have experienced the new birth. There is something in the interior
   life not to be explained or comprehended, which reveals itself only in
   its operations, and can be known only by experience; it is a life which
   no one can trace backward to its origin, or forward to its end."

   The light begins to dawn upon Nicodemus. But to his mind, yet in
   bondage to a legal Judaism, prone to conceive all Divine things in an
   outward sense, and to keep God and man too far apart, the fact asserted
   by Christ seems marvellous; and he exclaims in amazement, "How can this
   be?" Jesus seizes upon this exclamation to humble the pride of the
   learned theologian, to convince him of his want of insight into Divine
   things, and to make him feel the need of further illumination. "You, a
   teacher of Israel, and this, without which all religion is a dead
   thing, not known to you! And if you believe me not when I speak of a
   mere matter of fact, which every man upon earth may test by his own
   experience, [284] how will you believe when I proclaim truths beyond
   the circle of man's experience and transcending the limits of his
   reason; when I tell you the hidden and unfathomable counsels of God for
   human salvation!"

   (4.) Jesus intimates his own Sufferings.

   This introduction prepares us to expect something totally opposed to
   the ordinary conceptions of the Jewish scribes. It would have been
   quite inappropriate if Christ had merely been about to speak of the
   exaltation of Messiah, for that idea was familiar enough; or even if he
   had been about to apply that exaltation personally to himself as
   Messiah; for this claim could not appear very marvellous to Nicodemus,
   who was already inclined to recognize him as a prophet. But nothing
   could have been more startling to Jewish modes of thought, or even to
   the mind of Nicodemus, who was still in bondage to the outward letter,
   than an intimation that Messiah was not to appear in earthly splendour,
   but was to found the salvation of mankind upon the basis of his own
   sufferings. [285] This was indeed, and ever, the stumbling-block of the
   Jews.

   But Christ did not announce this truth, so strange to Nicodemus,
   plainly and in full breadth. Employing a well-known figure from the Old
   Testament, he compared the lifting up of the Son of Man with the
   serpent that was raised in the wilderness [286] before the eyes of all
   the people; and, having thus intimated the truth to the scribe by a
   simile drawn from his own familiar studies, he left it to be further
   developed by his own thoughts. The brazen serpent may have appeared to
   the fathers a paradoxical cure for the serpent's bite; and such a
   paradox is the salvation of the world through a suffering Messiah. The
   very strangeness of the comparison must have stimulated the mind of
   Nicodemus. [287]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [276] It is probable, in the nature of things, that although the
   Pharisees, scribes, and chief men, as a whole, were ill-disposed to
   Christ, there were among them individual susceptible minds. In the
   first Gospels we find Joseph of Arimathea; in Matt., ix., 18, a ruler;
   in Mark, xii., 28, a scribe, manifesting an interest in his Divine
   calling, and from these we may infer the existence of other cases.
   There is no ground, therefore, for Strauss's assertion that the case of
   Nicodemus is improbable. Utterly unhistorical, too, is his assertion
   (i., 633) that the accounts of rich and chief men coming secretly to
   Christ (and so of Nicodemus) were invented at a later period, to remove
   the reproach brought against the primitive Christians, "that none but
   the poor and illiterate attached themselves to Jesus." Instead of being
   a "reproach," it was the pride and glory of the primitive Church that
   the new creation of Christianity began among the poor; that the wise of
   this world were put to shame by the ignorant. There was no inducement,
   then, for such inventions. Moreover, this mode of thinking pervades the
   whole of John's Gospel; he that could represent Jesus as unfolding his
   highest truths to a poor woman could not have been tempted to in vent a
   conversation between him and a distinguished scribe.

   [277] Strauss strains hard to give a symbolical and mythical meaning to
   this common Jewish name, nqdymvn. There is no trace in the early
   Christian history of mythical persons thus originating from mere fancy,
   without any historical point of departure. Only at a later period was
   the history of really eminent men exaggerated by (voluntary or
   involuntary) invention into fables; e. g., Simon Magus was thus made
   mythical.

   [278] An answer, too, entirely characteristic of Jesus, and which would
   not have occurred to one inventing this dialogue.

   [279] Or "from above;" but I cannot prefer this reading, even after
   Lücke's arguments. "Born again" corresponds with "becoming like
   children" (Matt., xviii., 3); with palingenesia (Matt., xix., 28);
   compared with the loutron palingenesias of Paul. We infer that this
   mode of expression belonged to the peculiar type of Christ's teaching,
   as it agrees, also, with his expressions (recorded in the first three
   Gospels) in regard to his operations upon human nature.

   [280] The idea of a "new birth" was not unknown to the Greek and Roman
   mind, although its true import is only revealed in the light which
   Christianity lends to self-scrutiny. The non emendari, sed
   transfigurari of Seneca (Ep. ad Lucil., vi.), which is rather a
   rhetorical expression any how, applies to a gradual amendment of
   character by lopping off separate vices, and not to a radical change of
   nature. As the Christian new birth is the beginning of a process in
   human nature, which is to go on until the consummation of the kingdom
   of God, the new birth in individuals preparing the way for the new
   birth of a glorified world, so the Stoic doctrine speaks of a periodike
   palingenesia ton o'lon, anastoicheiosis. But this is connected with the
   pantheistic conception of a cycle of alternate destructions and
   renewals of the world, utterly opposed to the teleological point of
   view in Christianity. Ho tessarakontou'tes, ean noun oposonoun e'che,
   panta ta gegonota kai ta eso'mena e'o'rake kata to omoei'des.--(Anton.
   Monol., xi., 1.) "He who lives only forty years and observes well, has
   experienced every thing which occurs in the whole eternity of this
   ever-renewed process."

   [281] Strauss thinks (p. 701) that the way in which Paul uses the
   expression "a new creation" (2 Cor., v., 17; Gal., vi., 15), without
   explaining it, implies that it was in common use in Judaism. We do not
   agree with him, but rather see in such expressions the new dialect
   created by Christianity, which Paul's readers might be supposed to
   understand. If Strauss's view were correct, we should expect such
   antitheses in Paul as the following: "Circumcision cannot develope a
   new creation in the heathen, but leaves all in its old condition; a new
   creation can only grow out from within, through faith."

   [282] How different the words of Christ, in their original simplicity,
   were from the later dress given to them, may be seen by comparing John,
   iii., 5, with the Clementines, Hom., xi., § 26: "ean me anagennothete
   u'dati zonti eis onoma patros, huiou, agiou pneumatos," &c. It is
   immaterial whether this passage was borrowed from John's Gospel
   immediately, or from some tradition.

   [283] It is said, by some, that the hand of a later writer is to be
   traced here, who planned this conversation, half fiction, half truth,
   upon the basis, perhaps, of an earlier narrative, and added "birth by
   water" to "birth by spirit," in order to give additional authority to
   baptism in the Church. But this theory is contradicted by the fact that
   baptism is only incidentally mentioned by John; that he nowhere
   expressly ascribes its institution to Christ, and nowhere says any
   thing of the baptism of the Apostles. A writer influenced by an
   ecclesiastical intent, and permitting himself to remodel the history of
   Christ from such a motive, would not have made these omissions. It
   might even be said, with more plausibility, that John had been led to
   connect baptism and regeneration together, and had attributed this
   combination to Christ. We have no right, because of a mere difficulty,
   to charge such a thing, even though involuntary, upon the faithful
   disciple. The whole turn of John's feelings, the mystic element (in its
   good sense) that predominated in his mind, would alone have prevented
   him from making any outward thing prominent that was not made so in the
   original words of Christ.

   [284] A Jewish believer could understand this, from its analogy to
   separate impulses of the Divine life experienced under Judaism.

   [285] See p. 83, 84.

   [286] Conf. the explanation of Jacobi. (Stud. u. Krit., 1825, pt. i.)

   [287] The words of Christ end with ver. 15, we think. Nicodemus had the
   goad in his mind, enough to wake him out of his spiritual slumber, and
   urge him to deeper thought upon the truth, partly clear and partly
   obscure, to which he had listened. In the nature of the case.
   therefore, Jesus would not be likely to add any thing further. The
   verses, 16-21, have al together the air of a commentary added by the
   Evangelist, from the fullness of his heart and experience. He has seen
   the working of the Gospel, and the judgments, too, which attend its
   preaching, and he records them. John's Gospel is a selection from the
   history of the Gospel, made with a definite purpose; he begins it with
   a reflection, and he frequently interrupts the narrative with a course
   of reflection, as appears to us to be the case in the passage under
   consideration. Verse 16takes up and repeats Christ's closing words in
   verse 15, and explains them, as the gar obviously shows. The marks of a
   change in the speaker seem to me very evident. It appears to be
   characteristic of John not to mark such transitions very distinctly;
   although, of course, he could never intend to intermix his own words
   with those of the Saviour.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER V.

  JESUS AT ÆNON, NEAR SALIM.

   WE cannot fix with certainty the length of Christ's first stay in
   Jerusalem after the beginning of his public ministry. But it is certain
   that he went directly thence to Ænon, [288] near Salim (Salumias), a
   part of the country which was, at that time, the theatre of John the
   Baptist's labours. Here he probably spent most of the time from the
   Passover to the late harvest. He may have had two objects in this,
   viz., to continue the training of his disciples more uninterruptedly,
   and also to make use of the connecting link which the ministry of John
   the Baptist afforded. The reason for the continuance of the latter's
   separate labours has already been mentioned. [289]
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   § 120. Jealousy of John's Disciples.--Final Testimony of the
   Baptist.--His Imprisonment.

   The rapid growth of Christ's sphere of labour excited the jealousy of
   many of John's disciples, who would hear of no other master but their
   own, and who had not imbibed enough of his spirit to know that he was
   to give way before the higher one. They had seen that Christ obtained
   his first disciples by John's testimony in his favour. Having no desire
   themselves to go beyond John's teaching, they did not strive to
   understand that testimony fully, and deemed it unreasonable that
   Christ, who owed his first followers to the recommendation of their own
   master, should exalt himself above the latter. But when they mentioned
   their surprise to John, he answered them, "Do not wonder at this; it
   had to be so. No man can usurp what Heaven has not granted him. (No
   man's labours can transcend the limit appointed by God. Christ's
   influence proclaims the Divinity of his calling. Men would not join
   him, if God did not give them, in him, what I could never bestow.)" He
   then calls them to witness that he had never announced himself to them
   as Messiah, but always, and only, as the Forerunner: "I said I am not
   the Christ, but that I am sent before him."

   It is to be observed (and it confirms what we have said of the
   historical position of the Baptist) that he does not here appeal to his
   private declarations as to Christ's Messiahship, made to individual
   susceptible disciples, but only to his continuous public testimony. The
   jealous spirits, therefore, may never have had, from the lips of their
   master, any Such special direction to Christ.

   But he added, "My goal is reached; my joy is fulfilled. I have led the
   Bride (the Theocratic congregation) to the Bridegroom (the Messiah), to
   whom she belongs, who alone can fulfil her hopes. He must increase, but
   I must decrease." [290]

   In uttering these words the Baptist probably had a presentiment that
   the end of his career was at hand. When he returned to the other side
   of the river, Herod Antipas, who ruled in Peraea, succeeded in laying
   hold of him. The rigid censor of morals, who had no respect for persons
   where the holy law of God was concerned, had offended the tetrarch;
   [291] and, by order of the latter, he was conveyed as a prisoner to the
   border fortress of Machaerus. [292]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [290] John, iii., 30. Thus far the words bear the stamp of the Baptist,
   their meaning being figuratively intimated rather than expressed. But
   those which follow (31-36) are totally different. The Evangelist,
   having in his own Christian experience so rich a commentary upon the
   words of his former Master, feels bound to apply it in explaining them.
   The relation of the Baptist to Christ sets aside all that has been
   said, in later times, about some imaginary person's having invented
   this scene and tacked it on to John's Gospel. Had such a one, as
   Strauss thinks, made the fiction in order to oppose the disciples of
   the Baptist (who kept aloof from Christianity) by the authority of
   their own master, he would have gone much further; it would have been
   just as easy, and far more effective, to invent a dialogue between
   Christ and the Baptist himself. The apocryphal writings of that period,
   manufactured to favour certain religious ideas, were not wont to
   confine their inventions within such narrow limits.

   [291] Josephus differs from the Gospels (Matt., xiv., 3-5; Mark, vi.,
   17-20; Luke, iii., 19-20; as to Herod's reasons for this act; according
   to the latter, it was done because John had reproved him for carrying
   off and marrying his brother Philip's wife; according to the former,
   the tetrarch was induced by fear of political disturbances. "Deisas to
   epi tosonde pithanon autou tois anthropois me epi apostasei tini
   pheroi; panta gar eo'kesan sumboule te ekeinou praxontes, polu kreitton
   hegeitai prin ti neoteron ex autou genesthai, prolabon anai'rein e
   metaboles genomenes eis ta pragmata empeson metanoein."--(Archaeol.,
   xviii., v., § 2.) Now the character of the Evangelists, as historians,
   would not be affected, if we admit that they followed the popular
   report, even though incorrect, as the matter had no connexion with
   their immediate object. But the difficulty is cleared up, and a better
   insight into the nature of the case obtained. by the supposition that
   Josephus gave the ostensible, and the Evangelists the real and secret
   reason that impelled Herod. As the Baptist did not claim to be Messiah,
   and exhorted the people to fidelity in the several relations of life,
   Herod could have had no political fears except such, indeed, as might
   arise from John's honest boldness in reproving his sins. It is a
   further proof of his personal hatred to John, that he not only
   imprisoned, but killed him. History affords many instances in which
   faithful witnesses to the truth have fallen victims to the craft of
   priests or women, and often of the two combined.

   [292] Supposing that John appeared in public about six months before
   Christ, and that ha was imprisoned about the same length of time after
   Christ's first Passover, his whole public ministry lasted for about a
   year.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [288] vnn, a name derived from yk ("a place abounding in water"), John,
   iii., 23. Eusebius (Onomastikon) says that such a place was still
   pointed out, eight Roman miles south of Scythopolis, near Salim and the
   Jordan. (Hieron., Opp., ed. Vallars, iii., 163; Rosenmüller, Handb. d.
   Biblisch. Alterth., ii., 2, 133; Robinson's Palestine, iii., 322.) This
   suits the place described in John, as Christ goes thence to Samaria. If
   it appear strange that the Baptist should go to Samaria, it is to be
   remarked that the place belonged, as a border town, to Judea; and the
   Baptist may have found it necessary, in order to avoid persecution, to
   betake himself to this out-of-the-way corner. Perhaps, also, with his
   more liberal tendency of mind, he had no scruples about abiding on the
   borders of Samaria.

   [289] Page 57.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER VI.

  JESUS RETURNS THROUGH SAMARIA TO GALILEE.--THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. (John, iv.)

   THE Pharisaic party became more suspicious of Jesus than they had been
   of the rigid preacher of repentance, when it was found that his
   ministry was beginning to attract still greater attention than John's
   had done. He determined, therefore, to leave that part of the country.
   [293] Galilee offered a safe abode; and, besides, a good spiritual soil
   for his instructions would probably be found there, as deep impressions
   had been made upon the minds of many Galileans attending the Passover,
   by his public labours at Jerusalem. He took the shortest road--three
   days' journey--to Galilee, through Samaria; and made use of the
   opportunity to scatter seeds for the future among the people of that
   country, who were then longing for new revelations, and among whom no
   political perversions of the Messianic idea were to be found, as among
   the Jews.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 121. Impressions made upon the Samaritan Woman.

   In the mean time the summer months, and part of autumn, had passed
   away. It was in seed time, which lasted from the middle of October to
   the middle of December, that Jesus arrived in the fertile plain of
   Sichem. Fatigued with travelling, he stopped to refresh him self about
   midday [294] at the well of Jacob. He was alone, for he had sent his
   disciples into the city to buy provisions; not without the intention,
   probably, to elevate them above the Jewish prejudice which regarded the
   Samaritans as unclean. While he sits by the well-side, a poor woman
   from the neighbouring city comes [295] to draw fresh water. He asked
   her for water to quench his thirst, and embraced the occasion (as he
   always embraced every moment and opportunity to fulfil his Divine
   calling) to plant in her soul the seeds of Divine truth. [296] Adapting
   his mode of teaching to her condition and culture, he made use of a
   natural figure, offered by the occasion ["If thou knewest the gift of
   God, and who it is that saith unto thee, Give me to drink,' thou
   wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water"].

   The figure was admirably adapted to awaken in her as yet unspiritual
   mind a longing for the precious possession thus intimated, before she
   could apprehend the nature of the possession itself ["Whosoever
   drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst: it
   shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life"].
   How joyfully must she have heard of water, ever fresh and flowing,
   which one could always carry with him, and never need thirst or be
   weary with constant travelling the dusty road to draw! And so, under
   this figure, Christ pictured forth for her the Divine life which he had
   come to impart, which alone can quench the thirst of the soul, and is,
   for all who receive it, an endless stream of life flowing onward into
   eternity!

   After thus exciting in her mind a desire for the miraculous water, of
   which she could as yet form no just conception, he breaks off without
   giving her further explanations of what, at that time, she could not be
   made to understand. He turns the conversation, first, to make her look
   within, as self-knowledge alone can prepare us rightly to apprehend
   Divine things; and, secondly, to satisfy her that he was a prophet by
   showing an acquaintance with parts of her private history of which, as
   a stranger, he could have known nothing. [297]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [294] That traveling could be continued until twelve o'clock shows that
   it must have been late in autumn.

   [295] This, too, could not have been done at that hour in summer.

   [296] Here is another refutation of the theory that assigned an
   Alexandrian origin to this Gospel. A man trained in that school would
   have been as little disposed as a Jewish theologian of Palestine to
   represent Jesus as conversing with a poor woman and displaying to her
   the prospect of a new future of religious developement! But it was
   perfectly in Keeping with the character of Him who thanked God that
   "what had been hidden from the wise had been revealed unto babes," and
   who had come to break down all barriers that separated men, and to
   glorify human nature even in the form of woman!

   [297] It has been made a question whether Christ, at the moment when he
   requested the woman to call "her husband" (John, iv., 16), had the full
   and supernatural knowledge of her real circumstances, and only spoke
   thus to her in order to test her disposition, and in duce her to speak
   of her course of life with candour; or whether he had not that
   knowledge at the moment, and really wished her husband to come, in
   order to open a communication with the Samaritans; so that the final
   turn of the conversation was different from what he had expected. We
   are not acquainted with the laws under which the beams of supernatural
   knowledge broke forth from the soul of Christ, nor with the relation
   between external occasions and the internal developement of his higher
   knowledge. And therefore we cannot say whether the woman's explanation,
   that "she had no husband," excited the streaming forth of the Divine
   light within him or not.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 122. Christ's Decision between the Worship of the Jews and that of
   the Samaritans.

   Struck with his insight of her secret history, the woman recognized him
   as a prophet. She must, in consequence, have supposed that a higher
   sense lay hid in what he had uttered, enigmatical as it yet appeared to
   her, and she laid it up in her mind. It was natural, also, for her to
   question him further, as a prophet, on religious subjects, and thus
   elicit from him new instruction. And what question so likely to occur,
   or fraught with deeper interest to her, than that which formed the bone
   of contention between the Jews and Samaritans, and which was suggested
   to her by the very spot on which they stood, Mount Gerizim itself
   towering up just at hand ["Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and
   ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship"].

   The answer of Christ has a two-fold reference: one to the existing
   stage of the Theocracy, thus answering the spirit of the woman's
   question; the other alluding to the higher stage of the Theocratic
   developement which he himself was about to introduce.

   In regard to the first, he decides (v. 22) in favour of the Jews "The
   Samaritans are ignorant of the true worship of God, because they reject
   the prophets, the several stages of revelation that have prepared the
   way for that which is the aim of all, the manifestation of the
   Redeemer; the Jews, on the other hand, do worship God intelligently,
   [298] since they have recognized his successive revelations, and are
   thus fitted to be the medium through which salvation may come forth for
   men; to lead to which salvation is the end and aim of all God's
   revelations. Jerusalem, meanwhile, had to be the seat of worship,
   because from Jerusalem the Redemption, which was to raise worship to a
   higher sphere, was to spring up."
     __________________________________________________________________

   [298] This, of course, is only said objectively, with reference to the
   stand-point of the Jewish nation; subjectively, applied to individuals,
   it would only be true of those who correspond in spirit to the
   definition that follows.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 123. The Worship of God in Spirit and in Truth.

   Christ thus showed that the worship at Jerusalem was only preferred in
   view of the salvation that was to come forth there, and that the
   superiority would cease at the time of its coming forth. He had, then,
   to describe that higher era before which the question in dispute
   between Jews and Samaritans would wholly cease: "The hour cometh, and
   now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit
   and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship him: God is
   Spirit, and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and in
   truth." To the worship of God as previously conceived--the sensuous,
   external worship, confined to special times and a fixed place--Christ
   opposes a worship limited by neither, but proceeding from the Spirit,
   and embracing the whole being. The true worship of God, as Spirit, can
   only spring from Divine affinities in the Spirit.

   And such worship can only be "Worship in the Truth;" the two are
   inseparable; the Truth must be taken up into the life of the Spirit
   before it can utter spiritual worship--Truth, the Divine element of
   life, the link that binds the world of spirits to God, their original.
   As worship in spirit is opposed to that which is confined wholly, or
   chiefly, to isolated outward acts, so worship in the Truth is opposed
   to that which adheres to sensuous types and images that only veil the
   truth, And this true spiritual worship can only flow from those who are
   in communion of life with God, as Father.

   Christ used the words, "the time cometh, and is now," because the true,
   spiritual worship was realized, in its perfection, in himself; and
   because he had planted seeds in the hearts of his disciples, from which
   it was to develope itself in them, and through them m all mankind.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 124. The Spiritual Worship.--Its Bearing upon Practical Life.

   Christ uttered here no merely theoretical truth, bearing only upon
   knowledge, but one eminently practical, and including in itself the
   whole work which he was to accomplish in humanity. The sages of both
   the East and the West had long known that all true worship must be
   spiritual; but they believed it impossible to extend such worship
   beyond the narrow circle of thoughtful and spiritually contemplative
   minds; nor did they even know rightly how to realize it for themselves.
   They sought in Knowledge what could only spring from Life, and was in
   this way to become, not the privilege of a favoured few, but the common
   good of all men.

   On the other hand, Christ not only gave the true Idea, but realized it.
   As Redeemer of men, he placed them in a relation to God, through which
   the tendency to true and spiritual worship is imparted to their whole
   life. He made the Truth which he revealed the source of life for men;
   and by its means, as spirits allied to God, they worship him in Truth.
   Only in proportion as men partake of the Divine life, by appropriating
   Christ's revealed truth, can they succeed in worshipping God in spirit
   and in truth.

   The knowledge of God as Spirit was by no means communicated to men
   ready made and complete. It was to develope itself in the reflective
   consciousness only from true worship of God, rooted in the life; here,
   and here only, were men to learn [299] the full import of the words,
   "God is Spirit." [300]

   How has the lofty truth, the world-historical import, of this saying of
   Christ been lost sight of by those who have taken it as an isolated
   expression, apart from its connexion with Christian Theism and with the
   whole Divine process for the developement of Christian life, by those
   abstract, naked, one-sidedly intellectual Deists and Pantheists who
   have dreamed that they could incorporate them into their discordant
   systems by their spiritual Fetichism, which substitutes the deification
   of an Idea for the spiritual, truthful adoration of God as Spirit! The
   aristocracy of education, the one-sided intellectualism of the ancient
   world, was uprooted by Christ when he uttered this grand truth to an
   uneducated woman, who belonged to an ignorant and uncultivated people:
   For all men alike, the Highest must spring from life [and not from
   culture].
     __________________________________________________________________

   [299] The history of religious opinions in the first three centuries
   affords most vivid proof of this. E. g.: "pan pneuma, ei haplousteron
   eklambanomen, soma tunchanon." (Orig. in Joann., t xiii., § 22.)

   [300] This great truth, rightly understood, was closely connected with
   the moral and religious wants of the Samaritans, as represented by the
   woman. The natural order of this conversation, the simplicity and depth
   of Christ's words--so free from the diffuseness characteristic of
   intentional imitation--is a strong proof of its originality.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 125. Christ's Glances at the future Progress of his Kingdom, and at
   his own Death.

   After Christ had made himself known as Messiah to the Samaritan woman,
   she hastened joyfully to the city to tell the strange things that had
   happened to her. Her countrymen came out in throngs at her call. In the
   mean time, however, the disciples had returned, and found their Master
   just closing his conversation with the woman; and, although both
   surprised and curious, they asked no questions about the occasion or
   subject of the conversation.

   But they wondered that he did not touch the provisions they had
   brought. His corporeal wants are forgotten in the higher thoughts that
   occupy him; the work of his life is before him, the planting of the
   seeds of Divine truth in a human soul, and through it in many others,
   even beyond the limits of the Jewish people. The Samaritan woman is an
   exponent of this new progress of the kingdom of God. Her countrymen are
   approaching; the seed is already germinating. He replies, therefore, to
   his disciples, "I have meat to eat which ye know not of. (The
   nourishment of the body is forgotten in that of the Spirit.) My meat is
   to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work (to sow the
   seed for the general diffusion of the kingdom of God among men)."

   He then illustrates the work of God, which he had just begun among the
   Samaritans, by a similitude [301] from the face of Nature before them.
   Glancing, on the one side, at the peasants scattered over the fertile
   valley, busily sowing their seed, and, on the other, at the Samaritans,
   thronging from the town in answer to the woman's call, he says to the
   disciples, "Are ye not wont to say, at this season of the year, There
   are yet four months, and then cometh harvest?' [302] So it is, indeed,
   in the natural, but not in the spiritual world. The seed is just sown,
   and already the harvest appears. Lift up your eyes' (pointing to the
   approaching Samaritans), and see how the fields are already whitening
   to the harvest.'"

   A profound glance into the soul of Christ and the secret connexion of
   his thoughts is now opened to us. [303] He cannot utter this prediction
   of the glorious harvest that is to follow the seed which he has sown,
   without the mournful, though pleasant, thought that he shall not live
   to see its gathering. He must leave the earth before the harvest-home;
   nay, his death itself is to prepare the way for it. So he tells his
   disciples that they shall reap what he had sowed; but that he shall
   rejoice with them ["That both he that soweth and he that reapeth may
   rejoice together. I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no
   labour"]. [304] Distant intimations like this were the only
   announcements of his approaching death that Christ made at this early
   period of his ministry. [305]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [301] This similitude is of the same character with Christ's parables
   given in the first three Gospels in general, and especially with those
   taken from sowing seed, &c.; a sign of the common character that
   pervaded all his discourses.

   [302] A proverb taken from the climate and farming of that part of the
   country.

   [303] A mark of truth, not of fiction.

   [304] There is no ground whatever to refer John, iv., 37, 38 (as
   Strauss does) especially to the later ministry of the Apostles in
   Samaria. The prediction which they contain is just like those in Matt.,
   x., 26; Luke, xii., 3; and in the parables hereafter examined (p.
   188-190). Any one putting these words into Christ's mouth, in order to
   point to the labours of the Apostles in Samaria as having been preceded
   by Christ's, would have been less reserved and delicate about it by
   far.

   [305] Luke, v., 35.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 126. Subsequent State of the Samaritans.

   At the earnest request of the Samaritans, who were deeply impressed
   with his appearance and his words, Christ remained two days with them
   before continuing his journey to Galilee. We have no information as to
   the immediate fruit of these his first labours among that people;
   perhaps it was the source of that religious awakening among them which
   is recorded in the Acts (viii., 14). If this be so, the seed sown by
   Christ, rich and fruitful as it was in the short time of his stay, was
   not afterward carefully cultivated until the Apostles went to Samaria;
   many foreign elements had crept in, and enthusiasts and false prophets
   had led the people astray. The pure manifestation of Divinity was
   followed by a paltry caricature. The unsophisticated Samaritans
   believed in Christ, from the Divine power of his words and his
   appearance, without any miracle; but at a later period, when their
   minds had been debauched by magical arts and legerdemain, the most
   striking miracles were requisite to restore them.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [293] Here is the occasion of Matthew's statement, Matt., iv., 12. But
   as the first three Gospels only speak expressly of Christ's last
   journey (see p. 155), no distinction is made between his stay in
   Galilee before and after his first journey. Hence arose the mistake as
   to the time of John's imprisonment, to correct which error in the
   tradition probably John, iii., 24, was intended.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER VII.

  CHRIST'S FIRST GENERAL MINISTRY IN GALILEE.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 127. Christ heals the Nobleman's Son.--Chooses Capernaum for his
   Abode.--Healing of Peter's Wife's Mother.

   ON his arrival in Galilee Jesus went again to Cana. (John, iv., 46.)
   While there, there came to him a man belonging to the court (basilikos)
   of Herod Antipas, and begged him to go down to Capernaum and cure his
   son, who was dangerously ill. Distress drove this man to Christ;
   although he might (if he had chosen), perhaps, have received Divine
   impressions before. He probably was, at first, among the number of
   those who verified the proverb in regard to Christ, "a prophet is
   without honour in his own country." The Samaritans believed, because of
   their inward wants, and of the inward power of Divinity; the faith of
   the Galileans had to be roused by visible miracles and material
   blessings. To this must we refer the words of reproof uttered by Christ
   before he granted the man's prayer: "Except ye see signs and wonders,
   ye will not believe." [306]

   Having, by the miracle wrought in this case, produced a new and
   favourable impression upon the public mind at Capernaum, he chose that
   place as the seat of his ministry. Here he taught in the synagogue, and
   healed the sick. It happened on a certain Sabbath, that when he left
   the synagogue he went, attended by his disciples, to the house in which
   Peter lived, with his mother-in-law, who lay ill at the time of a
   fever. [307] Jesus healed her, at once and fully, so that she was able
   to attend to her household duties and detain her guests for the
   Sabbath-day's dinner. [308] As Christ spent the day in the house (the
   rumour having probably been spread that he would soon leave the town),
   sick persons were brought in from all sides; not, however, until after
   sunset, to avoid breaking the law of the Sabbath. On the next day the
   people strove to prevent his departure, but he told them, "I must
   preach the kingdom of God to other cities also, for therefore am I
   sent."
     __________________________________________________________________

   [306] See p. 138.

   [307] Luke, iv., 38; Matt., viii., 14; Mark, i., 29.

   [308] Joseph., De Vita Sua., § 54: "hekte hora, kath' hen tois sabbasin
   aristopoieisthai nomimo'n estin hemin.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 128. Christ appears in the Synagogue at Nazareth.--His Life is
   Endangered. (Luke, iv., 16-30.)

   From Capernaum Christ went to Nazareth, but the fame of his great deeds
   at the former place had gone before him. All eyes were turned upon him
   when he appeared in the synagogue on the Sabbath; they had known him as
   a very different person from what fame now proclaimed him to be. He
   took the scroll of the prophets that was handed to him, and, Divinely
   guided, opened it at Isaiah, lxi., 1. We may infer from the words of
   this passage that he proclaimed the arrival of the prophetical Jubilee,
   and declared himself to be the promised one that was to open the eyes
   of the blind, and to bring liberty to those who languished in the
   bondage of sin and Satan.

   But his hearers were unconscious of their spiritual bondage, and longed
   for no deliverance; they knew not of their blindness, and asked not to
   be healed. Engrossed in the affairs of life, they were conscious of no
   higher wants, and, therefore, although his words made an impression, it
   was only upon the surface. Their astonishment that a man whom they had
   known from childhood should speak such words of power was soon followed
   by the doubt, "How comes it that such a man should do such great
   things?" Incapable of appreciating the heavenly gifts which Christ
   offered, they wished him (in their hearts, if not with their lips) to
   work wonders there as he had done at Capernaum.

   We have seen already [309] that the fundamental principles on which
   Christ acted forbade him to accept a challenge of this sort. He could
   do nothing for those who insisted on seeing in order to believe. Slaves
   to the outward seeming, and destitute of a spiritual sense, they would
   have been satisfied with nothing he might do; and he refused them with
   a rebuke that pointed to the ground of their offence and unbelief: "Ye
   will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself;'
   whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy
   country." He then quoted, with special reference to Nazareth, the
   proverb which he had, on another occasion, applied to the whole of
   Galilee, "A prophet is without honour in his own country;" [310] and
   illustrated, by examples from the Old Testament (in opposition to their
   contracted arrogance), the truth that the grace of God, in the
   distribution and application of miraculous gifts, acts freely; so that
   they could not extort a miracle by their challenge, if it was the will
   of God that none should be wrought. He came by no means to heal all the
   Jewish nation.

   At this rebuke the wrath of the scribes and of the rude multitude was
   enkindled against him, [311] and the protecting hand of God alone saved
   him from the death which threatened him.

   This rejection of Christ at Nazareth, due mainly to the disposition of
   the chief men, is worthy of note as a type of the rejection which
   awaited him at the hands of the leaders of the whole nation from the
   same cause.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [309] See p. 136.

   [310] The Nazarenes represent the character of the whole Jewish people.
   The doctrine which Christ arrayed against them--that God's grace is not
   imparted according to any human standard--contains the germ of Paul's
   ninth chapter to the Romans, which meets similar Jewish demands.

   [311] Luke's account of this is very graphic, but very brief; many
   other things may have occurred to stir up the anger of the people. But
   when we remember the fame that had preceded his coming, the striking
   exordium with which he opened his speech (addressed, however, only to
   susceptible souls), and, finally, that, instead of complying with their
   request, he refused and rebuked them at the same time, we may readily
   conceive why they should be angry at the "son of the carpenter," now
   coming forward with the pretensions of a prophet. Their excited
   selfishness now took the garb of zeal against a false prophet.
   According to Luke's account, Christ wrought no miracle here, and this
   accords with the words he uttered; the less detailed statements of the
   other Evangelists (Matt., xiii., 58; Mark, vi., 5) imply that he
   wrought a few. In this last case, it might be supposed that he did not
   leave the town immediately after the synagogue service, and that,
   meanwhile, something occur red to excite the people. It is probable,
   however, that we must consider Luke's statement the most definite, both
   in view of the general principles on which Christ wrought his mighty
   works, and also of the special relation in which he stood to the
   Nazarenes.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 129. The Parable of the Sower. [312] --Christ's Explanation of the
   Parable to the smaller Circle of his Disciples.

   The time intervening between Christ's return to Galilee in November,
   and his journey to Jerusalem to attend the feast of the Passover in the
   following March or April, was spent in scattering the seeds of the
   kingdom more widely among the people of that country. Probably many of
   the events recorded by the first three Evangelists belong to this
   period.

   Perhaps, also, it was during this period that he took occasion, as he
   walked by the shores of Genesareth, to offer Divine truth to the
   gathered crowds around him, in the form of a parable suggested by the
   labours of the peasants who were sowing their fields around. He
   exhibited vividly to their minds, under the figure of the seed, the
   object of his proclamation, the dispositions of mind with which it must
   be received in order to accomplish that object, and the hindrances with
   which it is wont to meet in human nature.

   It is not to be supposed that Christ uttered this parable (which refers
   solely to the operations of the word proclaimed by him) as an isolated
   speech; indeed, it is distinctly intimated (Mark, iv., 2) that an
   exhortation or warning to his hearers preceded it.

   He divides his hearers into two principal classes, (I.) those in whom
   the word received is unfruitful, and (II.) those in whom it brings
   forth fruit. In the first class, again, he distinguishes (a) the
   totally unsusceptible, and (b) those to whom the word, indeed, finds
   access, but yet brings forth no fruit. Of these last, again, there are
   two subdivisions.

   I. THE UNFRUITFUL HEARERS.

   (a.) The totally Unsusceptible.

   The seed, which does not penetrate the earth at all, but remains upon
   the surface, and is trodden or devoured by birds, corresponds to the
   relation of the Divine word to the wholly worldly, who, utterly
   unsusceptible, reject the truth without ever comprehending it at all.

   (b.) The partially Susceptible.

   (1.) The Stony-ground Hearers.--Under the figure of the stony ground,
   in which the seed shoots up quickly, but withers as soon, for want of
   earth and moisture, he depicts that lively but shallow susceptibility
   of spirit which grasps the truth eagerly, but receives no deep
   impressions, and yields as quickly to the reaction of worldly
   temptations as it had yielded to the Divine word. Faith must prove
   itself in strife against the world without, as well as within; but the
   mind just described never appropriates the truth in such a way as to
   obtain power to resist.

   (2.) The Word Choked among Thorns.--The seed which germinates and takes
   root, but is stifled by the thorns that shoot up with it, figures the
   mind in which the impure elements of worldly desire develope themselves
   along with the higher life, and at last become strong enough to crush
   it, so that the received truth is utterly lost.

   II. THE FRUITFUL HEARERS.

   When seed is sown into good ground, it is variously productive ac
   cording to the fertility of the soil. So the fruitfulness of Divine
   truth, when once appropriated, depends upon the degree in which it
   penetrates the whole interior life and all the powers of the spirit,
   stamping itself upon the truth-inspired course of life.

   With what perfect simplicity are the profoundest truths in regard to
   the growth of religious life unfolded in this parable! So vivid an
   impression was made upon a woman in the throng, that she exclaimed,
   "Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the breast that gave thee
   suck." [313] But Christ rejected this external veneration, and said, as
   if with prophetic warning against that tendency to fix religious
   feeling upon the outward, which in later times so sadly disfigured true
   Christianity, "No, rather blessed are they that hear the word of God
   and keep it;" with obvious reference to the parable, which illustrated
   the faithful reception and use of the Divine word.

   After the dispersion of the multitude, the smaller circle of disciples
   gathered about Christ and asked a further explanation of the parable.
   [314] He told them that to them it should remain no longer a parable;
   [315] they might clearly apprehend the truth which was only offered in
   a veil to the stupid multitude. After unfolding its import, he taught
   them that the truth then veiled in parables was to become a light for
   all mankind; that they were to train themselves to be his organs in
   diffusing it; but that, in order to this, they must ever grow in the
   knowledge of his truth by a faithful employment of the means that he
   had given them. "No man, when he hath lighted a candle, covereth it
   with a vessel, or putteth it under a bench; but setteth it on a
   candlestick, that they which enter in may see the light. (So, also, the
   truth, destined to be a light for all mankind, must not be concealed,
   but diffuse its light on all that seek to enter the kingdom of God.)
   For there is nothing hid that shall not be known and come abroad. (And
   he adds warningly to his disciples), Take heed, therefore, how ye hear;
   for whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from
   him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have. (Every thing
   depends upon the spirit in which the truth is received and put to
   use.)"
     __________________________________________________________________

   [312] Matt., xiii., 1-9; Mark, iv., 1-9; Luke, viii., 4-8.

   [313] Luke, xi., 27. We shall give our reasons, further on, in placing
   these words in this connexion.

   [314] Matt., xiii., 18-23; Mark. iv.. 10-25; Luke, viii., 9-18.

   [315] Cf. p. 105
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 130. Parable of the various Kinds of Fish in the Net. [316] --Of the
   Wheat and the Tares. [317]

   Marvellous was the spirit-glance with which Christ surveyed not only
   the process by which the higher life which he had introduced into
   humanity was to develope itself, according to its own inherent laws,
   but also the manifold corruptions and hindrances that awaited it. The
   parables in which he illustrated the hindrances and obstacles of the
   truth were also derived from the sphere of nature and of life
   immediately around him--the toils of the fishermen in the Sea of
   Genesareth, and of the husbandmen in the fertile fields about its
   shores.

   He had to teach his disciples that not all who joined him were fitted
   to be genuine followers, and that the spurious and the true should be
   intermixed in his visible kingdom, until that final process of decision
   which God had reserved to himself. To convey this truth, he compares
   the kingdom of God, in the process of its developement on earth (which
   corresponds to the visible Church as distinguished from the invisible),
   to a net cast into the sea, in which fish of all kinds, good and
   worthless, are caught, and which are only assorted after the net has
   been drawn to the shore.

   It was, perhaps, an expression of surprise on the part of his
   disciples, at the long forbearance of Christ toward some whom they
   deemed unworthy--and certainly there was one such in the immediate
   circle of his followers--that gave him occasion to utter the parable of
   the "Wheat and the Tares." Its object was to warn them (and the leaders
   of the Church in all ages) against arbitrarily and impatiently
   anticipating the Divine wisdom, which guides all the threads of the
   Church's progress to one aim; against attempting to distinguish the
   spurious from the genuine members before that final sifting of the
   kingdom which God himself will make; to teach them that men have no
   means of making such decisions unerringly, and might cut off, as false,
   some who were, or might become, true subjects of the kingdom.

   The chief point in the parable is, that while the genuine seed
   germinates and brings forth fruit, the bastard seed is also sown among
   it, and both shooting up together, the bastard wheat, from its likeness
   to the true, cannot well be discriminated until harvest, when its real
   nature is manifested. The other point of comparison is the impatience
   of the servants, who wish to pull up the tares at once.

   It is a question whether the individual trait that the tares were sown
   by the enemy "while men slept" had any special prominence. If so, it
   contains an exhortation to the leaders of the Church to be watchful;
   implying that carelessness and indifference on their part may admit
   false members among the true. But no such exhortation is afterward
   expressed, and, moreover, the whole plan of the parable presupposes
   that these spurious admixtures will necessarily take place in the
   progress of the kingdom; that no care or foresight can prevent them. We
   must, therefore, consider this trait as belonging to the colouring
   rather than the substance of the parable.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [316] Matt., xiii., 47.

   [317] Matt., xiii., 24.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 131. Christ subdues a Storm on the Sea.--Character of the Act as a
   Miracle.--Its moral Significance.

   The disciples had many opportunities, on the Sea of Genesareth, of
   contrasting their own spiritual feebleness with the calmness of the
   Saviour's soul; an experience that was useful, not only at the time,
   but as a preparation for their own subsequent calling.

   On one occasion, [318] sailing from the western to the eastern shore of
   the sea, in a vessel with a number of his disciples and others, he sunk
   into sleep, probably worn out with his previous labours in supplying
   the physical as well as spiritual necessities of the people. While he
   was asleep, a storm arose, so violent as to threaten the destruction of
   the vessel. The disciples, full of consternation, and always accustomed
   to seek his aid in distress, now roused him from sleep. In a few short
   words he commands the winds and the waves to "be still," and is obeyed;
   a calm is spread over the face of nature. He mildly rebukes the
   disciples: "Where is your faith? what sort of trust in God is this,
   which can so easily be shaken?"

   Not only the disciples, but the other persons in the ship, were deeply
   impressed by this miracle. One of the strangers [319] (for the
   disciples had seen too many of his wonders to ask such a question)
   exclaimed. "What kind of man is this, that even the elements obey him."

   The question has been started whether this occurrence cannot be
   explained from the subjective apprehension of the men themselves, e.
   g., as follows. When Jesus awoke, and spoke calmly to them, his
   composure quieted their perturbed minds. A calm in the elements ensued;
   and they transferred the impression made upon their minds to Nature.
   Interpreting the few words uttered by Christ in this way, they
   involuntarily altered them a shade in repeating them afterward.

   Now, even if this theory were admitted, it would leave the Divine image
   of Christ untouched in its sublimity. He that, on awaking suddenly from
   sleep, could impress men's minds with such a belief, by a word and a
   glance, must have been the Son of God.

   But the theory cannot be admitted. Christ must have known that the
   observers looked upon his words as the cause of the calm that ensued,
   and would not have employed a deceit to confirm their faith in his
   sovereignty, which, resting upon the foundations of truth, needed no
   such props as this. He would rather have taken occasion, from such a
   misunderstanding (had it occurred), to convey a useful lesson to his
   future Apostles. He would have told them, probably, that his work was,
   not to subdue the storms and waves of nature, but of men's souls; that
   to souls full of his peace and joy no powers of the world could bring
   terror.

   In short, our interpretation of the event will depend upon the general
   view of the person of Christ with which we set out. Were an achievement
   like this attributed to a saint, we should be entitled to give it such
   an interpretation as the above; but it is ascribed to Jesus, the Son of
   God, who revealed, in the history which we have of his life, powers
   adequate to such a deed.

   The moral design of the miracle was, partly, to impress his sovereignty
   upon the minds of certain persons who had before seen no exhibitions of
   it; and, partly, to confirm the faith of the Apostles in his power to
   subjugate nature, and make her operations tributary to the kingdom of
   God. And this sensible miracle was an image of that higher spiritual
   one which Christ works in all ages, in speaking peace to the soul amid
   all the tempests of life, and in bringing to obedience all the raging
   powers that oppose the progress of his kingdom.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [318] Luke, viii., 22-25; Matt., viii., 23-27; Mark, iv., 36-41. The
   connexion of this history with that of the Gadarene in the text of the
   Evangelists is a proof of historical reality, no causal ground of such
   a connexion exists.

   [319] The expression hoi anthropoiin Matt., indicates that these
   persons were not disciples.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 132. The Gadarene Demoniac. [320] --Christ's Treatment of him after
   the Cure.--Inferences from it.

   Christ landed on the eastern shore, near the town of Gadara. Many
   pagans probably resided in that vicinity, as herds of swine abounded. A
   demoniac, [321] who could not possibly be kept chained in his raging
   paroxysms, but constantly broke his fetters and eluded his guardians,
   was wandering about near the landing-place. He believed himself
   inhabited and hurried hither and thither by a host of evil spirits.
   Driven naked from the haunts of men by the direful powers, he sought a
   dreary refuge amid the grave-stones and old tombs [322] of the
   wilderness.

   Probably attracted by the noise of the landing, the demoniac ran to
   meet the passengers as they disembarked; having probably, also, heard
   of the fame of Jesus, which had spread from the western to the eastern
   shore of the lake. From what we can learn, we should judge that the man
   was a heathen, who had, however, dwelt much among the Jews, and
   therefore confounded Jewish and pagan notions together in his disturbed
   consciousness. So he probably addressed Jesus as "the son of the
   highest God," rather in a pagan than Jewish sense. [323] The appearance
   of Christ (probably combined with what he had previously heard)
   affected him profoundly; the warring powers within him--as was
   generally the case when Christ's Divinity came in contact with
   demoniacs--partly urged him toward the Saviour, and partly held him
   back; attracted as he was, he could not bear the presence of Jesus.
   There is something in him which resists and dreads the Divine power.
   Losing his proper identity in that of the evil spirits that possess
   him, he personates them, and recognizing, with terror, the Son of God
   as the future Judge, he exclaims, in anguish, "What hast thou to do
   with us, thou Son of the Highest? (What would the Heavenly, so near
   us?) Why hast thou come hither before the time (before the final doom),
   to make us feel thy power, and torment us?" [324]

   Christ's first procedure is not such as to imply that he has to do with
   evil spirits. He directs his words to the man, seeks to get his
   attention and draw him into conversation, so as to prepare the way for
   further influences. As a beginning, he asks the man his name. But the
   demoniac, still blending his own identity with that of the evil
   spirits, answers, "Legion;" it is a whole legion of evil spirits that
   dwell in him. He then reiterates, in their person, the prayer that
   Christ would not cast them into Hades before their time; and perceiving
   a herd of swine feeding at a distance, the unclean spirits are
   associated with the unclean beasts in his perturbed thoughts. He then
   beseeches Christ that, if the spirits are compelled to leave the man,
   they may be permitted to enter the swine, under the notion that they
   cannot exist except as united to material bodies.

   There is a gap here in our connexion of the facts. Did Christ really
   participate in the opinions of the demoniac, or was it only
   subsequently inferred, [325] from the fact that the swine rushed down,
   that Christ had allowed the evil spirits to take possession of them? It
   is certain, at any rate, that they did cast themselves over the
   precipice into the sea, as if driven by an invisible power, and that
   many of them perished.

   One thing is very clear, a man in such a state could not have been
   cured by Christ's merely humouring his whims, and by a single
   coincidence like that of the herd's throwing themselves over the
   precipice. Nay, he could not have made the request that he did, nor
   have believed that the evil spirits had abandoned him at Christ's
   command, had not Christ, by the power of his spirit, made a mighty
   impression upon him before. What followed shows, however, more clearly
   that Christ used higher influences to restore his shattered soul to its
   pristine soundness.

   Although no detailed account is left of what immediately followed, we
   may yet conclude, from the result, that many things occurred between
   Christ and the demoniac after the preparatory work above related. His
   heart had been made susceptible of farther spiritual influences. The
   presence and words of Christ produced additional effects, as we find
   the man sitting clothed, and in his right mind, at the feet of Jesus,
   listening to him with eager devotion. So moved is he, that he wishes to
   attach himself to Christ and follow him every where.

   But Christ (who had reserved for a subsequent period the conversion of
   the heathen) tells the restored man to "go home to his friends." [326]
   We see in this, as in many other examples, how Christ's conduct varied
   with circumstances, and how carefully we should guard against deducing
   general principles from his procedure in isolated cases. While he calls
   upon some to leave home and family to follow him, he bids this man to
   follow first the purely human feelings which had been reinstated in
   their natural rights within him; to return, sane and calm, to the
   family which he had abandoned as a maniac; and to glorify God among
   them, by telling them how Christ had wrought the mighty change, and
   giving them a living proof of it in his own person. He tells some on
   whom he had wrought miracles not to say too much about what he had
   done; but this one he commands to publish every where among his friends
   what great things God had wrought for him. In this case it was heathens
   (not Jews) that were concerned.

   The way in which Christ gave peace and harmony to this distracted and
   lacerated soul affords an image of the whole work of redemption. The
   first emotion of the uncultivated and (chiefly) heathen people around
   was fear; not the feeling then best adapted to render them susceptible
   of his teaching. But the simple story of the restored man's experience
   was adapted to lead them to contemplate Christ, no longer on the side
   of his power, but of his love and holiness. [327]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [320] Matt., viii., 28; Mark, v., 1-20; Luke, viii., 26-39. Two
   demoniacs are mentioned by Matthew, perhaps because the demoniac speaks
   in the plural number.

   [321] Cf. p. 145.

   [322] These are still to be found among the ruins of Om-Keis, probably
   the ancient Gadara. (Cf. Burckhardt, i., 426; Gesenius, Anmerkungen,
   538; Robinson, iii., 535.) Origen must have been mistaken (t. vi. in
   Joann., § 24) in saying that Gadara could not be the spot because there
   is neither lake nor precipice near; he probably looked for the theatre
   of the event in the immediate vicinity of the town, which by no means
   follows, necessarily from the narrative.

   [323] Cf. the words of the heathen woman, Acts, xvi. 17.

   [324] The original form of these words is probably that given by
   Matthew. Every thing leads us to conclude that the demoniac, impressed
   by the person of Christ, addressed him first.

   [325] Strikingly as this graphic narrative bears the marks of truth,
   this is still its obscure point. Some have attempted to clear it up by
   the supposition that the demoniac threw himself upon the herd after
   Christ spoke to him. But this is inconsistent with the facts. It is not
   probable that a paroxysm like this could have seized him after the
   impression which Christ had made upon him. Moreover, this explanation
   affords no ground for the notion of the demoniac that the spirits had
   abandoned him for the swine, but would rather convince him of the
   continuance of their power over him. In order to believe the former, he
   must have stood as a quiet spectator while the herd was violently
   driven into the sea by an invisible power. The analogy of the notions
   of the time favours this. In the reference to Josephus, before made (p.
   150), the exorcist bids the demon leave the sufferer and enter a vessel
   of water that stood by; and his obedience is proved by the fall of the
   vessel of its own accord. So the swine must have rushed down of their
   own accord, to afford any proof that the devils had left the man and
   entered them. Finally, an attack of the swine, on the part of the
   demoniac, could have been no matter of surprise to the swineherds
   (Matt., viii., 37.)

   [326] Mark, v. 1.

   [327] The narrative does not say whether this foundation of Divine
   knowledge was ever built upon among them.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 133. Christ Returns to the west side of Genesareth.--Healing of the
   Issue of Blood. [328]

   When Christ returned to the western shore of the lake, he found a
   multitude of people awaiting his arrival. One of the rulers of the
   synagogue, named Jairus, whose daughter of twelve years [329] lay so
   ill that her death was hourly expected, pressed through the throng to
   the Saviour, and besought him to go to his house. He arose to grant the
   sorrowing father's prayer, but the crowd detained them.

   A woman who had suffered with an issue for twelve years, and had sought
   aid in vain from physicians, approached him through the press from
   behind. She did not venture to address him directly, but having formed
   the idea in her own way, she thought that a sort of magical healing
   power streamed forth from his person, and that she might be relieved of
   her malady simply by touching his garment. Her believing confidence,
   although blended with erroneous conceptions, was not disappointed.

   Christ felt that some one had touched his robe, [330] and inquired who
   it was. Peter, forward as usual, spoke for the disciples, and said
   (very candidly, doubtless, as he probably did not observe the woman's
   movement), "How canst thou be surprised, in the midst of such a throng,
   that the people approach and touch thee!" But Christ repeated his
   question, and the woman, who had not before ventured a word, expecting
   to be discovered, fell trembling at his feet, and proclaimed before all
   what had happened to her. Jesus, kindly encouraging the trembling
   heart, said to her, "Be of good cheer, thy faith hath saved thee; go in
   peace." [331]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [328] Matt., ix., 18-26; Mark, v., 21; Luke, viii., 40.

   [329] Strauss says that this age of "twelve" was a mere fiction, in
   imitation of the twelve years of the issue of blood. There is not a
   shadow of reason to suppose that Luke's statements are not literally
   correct in both instances; but even if they were not, if a round number
   only is meant, and the one period modelled after the other, the
   veracity of the narrative would be in nowise impeached.

   [330] Luke's account could have been given by none but an eye-witness
   in such lively and minute detail; e. g., Christ's question, Peter's
   answer, the repetition of the question, etc. Moreover, Luke makes the
   cure immediate upon the touching of the garment; in Matthew it follows
   the words of Christ in the usual way. Luke's eye-witness had the
   conception of the mode of cure that the woman herself had, and so
   interpreted Christ's words (viii., 46).

   [331] The narrative does not decide whether the approach of the woman
   was known to Christ, and he healed her intentionally, or whether the
   cure was a Divine operation, independently of him (a physical cause
   being laid out of the case), caused by the woman's faith, and thus
   serving to glorify her trust in Christ.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 134. Raising of Jairus's Daughter.--And of the Widow's Son at Nain.

   In the mean time a message came from the house of Jairus that his
   daughter was dead, and that, as nothing could be done, the Master need
   be troubled no further. [332] But Christ, not hindered by the news,
   said to the father, "Be not afraid; only believe, and she shall be made
   whole."

   What right had he to hold out this hope to the parent, and in what
   sense did he do it? Did he know, from the reported symptoms, that the
   death was only apparent, and that he was going to cure a fainting-fit
   by remedies in his possession? Had this been the case, he surely would
   have guarded against exciting hopes that might be disappointed; he
   would have said, in words, that his expectations were founded only on
   the supposition that the girl was in a trance; and as natural signs
   alone could give no unerring certainty of cure, he would, in mere
   prudence, have spoken conditionally, telling the father, perhaps, to
   trust in God, but yet, at the same time, to resign himself to the
   Divine will. In a word, he could only have spoken as he did, from a
   Divine confidence that he could, by the power of God within him,
   restore life to the dead body.

   At the door of the house the mother comes to meet them. A throng of
   curious persons at the door desire to enter, but he admits only the
   parents, with three of his most intimate disciples. In the chamber of
   death he finds already gathered the minstrels and mourners. "Weep not,"
   said he to them; "she is not dead, but sleepeth."

   These words might have been used, it is true, if he meant (as some
   suppose) to state her condition according to the symptoms, and to make
   this a ground of consolation; as if he had said, "she is only in a
   trance resembling sleep." But they were equally appropriate, if,
   without any reference to natural symptoms and consequences, he meant
   only to say that this condition would be, for her, only sleep, as he
   was able to raise her out of it. The character in which Christ acted,
   as well as the whole connexion of the narrative, compel the conclusion
   that he spoke with reference to the result rather than to the nature of
   the condition in which the maiden lay; even though the circumstances
   might make it probable that this condition was a trance.

   ["And he put them all out."] In stillness must such a work be wrought!

   When the noisy mourners were gone, and he was alone with the few that
   had accompanied him into the chamber of death, he spoke to the maiden
   the life-inspiring words. He then "charged them to tell no man what had
   been done." It has been said that he did this to prevent their giving
   him the false reputation of having done a miracle in the case; false,
   because he had restored the maiden, in an entirely natural way, from a
   death that was only apparent. Had this been the case, he certainly
   would have explained himself more definitely. He would have told them,
   in that case, how to report the matter; not that they should not report
   it at all. But he could not have wished that the event should be
   otherwise regarded than as a work of Divine power; and the prohibition
   was doubtless made in view of circumstances, especially in view of the
   dispositions of the people.

   To this period of Christ's ministry, probably, belongs also a miracle
   akin to the raising of Jairus's daughter, which is reported only by
   Luke. [333]

   On a journey, accompanied by his disciples, and by many others who had
   joined him on the road, he arrives before the little town of Nain,
   [334] in the vicinity of Mount Tabor, and not far from the well-known
   Endor. Near the gate he meets a funeral procession; and in the sad line
   a widow, mourning for her only son. In compassion [335] to her grief,
   he exclaims, "Weep not." Had he not been conscious of power to remove
   the cause of grief, by giving back her son, he would have tried to
   soothe her sorrow, instead of exciting a vain hope, only to plunge her
   deeper into anguish.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [332] The discrepancy between Luke's account (viii., 49) and Matthew's
   (ix., 18, seq.) has been made a ground of objection. It has been
   supposed that the second message is a mere filling up of Luke's. A
   similar discrepancy, as to the sending of a message, occurs in the case
   of the centurion, Matt., viii., 5-10; Luke, vii., 6. Grant that the two
   cases were entirely alike, it would not follow that there had been an
   intentional invention. But the dissimilarity of the two is greater than
   their similarity. In both cases, indeed, the message is, that Christ
   need not come; but the reason assigned in the one is, that he can help
   without coming, and in the other, that it is too late for him to help
   at all. What, then, is unlikely in either? especially as Luke's
   statements, derived from eye-witnesses, are full, while those of
   Matthew are abridged reports.

   [333] Luke, vii., 11.

   [334] Now a little village, Nein, inhabited by a few
   families.--Robinson, iii., 460 [Am. ed., iii., 218, 226].

   [335] Olshausen thinks that, although Christ only made his compassion
   for the mother prominent in this miracle, he still had regard to the
   salvation of the son; for, as he well remarks. the life of one human
   being cannot be used merely as means for another's peace or welfare.
   But, although we cannot decide that Christ had reference at the time to
   the manner in which the youth's resurrection would tend to his personal
   welfare, he must have been satisfied that, in the wisdom of God, it was
   destined to secure it. As the organ of God, he must have been conscious
   of a harmony between--not merely his whole manifestation, but also--all
   his individual actions and the Divine plan for the government of the
   world. A physician may save a man's life by natural means without
   knowing, at the time, what use the man will make of it; but, if he is a
   believer, he must be satisfied that God would not allow it, if the
   restoration were not for the best, in regard to his individual
   well-being. The same relation would subsist if the means employed were
   supernatural.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 135. Doubts of John the Baptist in his Imprisonment. [336] --His
   Message to Christ, and its Result.--Christ's Testimony concerning Him.
   --His view of the relation between the Old and New Dispensations.

   John the Baptist had now languished in prison for several months in the
   fortress Machoerus. He was not wholly interdicted from intercourse with
   his disciples; for the fear of political disturbance from him was, as
   we have seen, [337] the ostensible, not the real, reason of his
   imprisonment.

   In the testimony which he gave to Christ, just before his imprisonment,
   [338] he had declared his expectation that he would soon be obscured by
   the public manifestation of Jesus as Messiah, and by his recognition at
   the hands of the worthy members of the Theocratic nation. What he heard
   in prison of Christ's mighty works only made him look more impatiently
   for the founding of his visible Messianic kingdom. The delay of this
   event might very naturally cause doubts to spring up in his mind. [339]
   But as his faith in the Divine calling of Jesus remained unshaken, he
   looked for a definite decision of the question from his own lips, and
   sent two of his disciples with the inquiry, "Art thou He that should
   come, or do we look for another?" [340]

   In this reply Christ gives them, as proof of his Messiahship, the
   miracles that he had wrought, both upon matter and spirit. [341] He
   first combines the two classes, applying the material as a type or
   image of the spiritual; and then makes the spiritual especially
   prominent. "The blind receive their sight" (both physical and
   spiritual), "the lame walk, [342] the lepers are cleansed, the deaf
   hear, the dead are raised, [343] the poor have the Gospel preached unto
   them." [344]

   Thus he presents himself as the Messiah, selecting the spheres of his
   labours among the poor in goods and in spirit, displaying his relieving
   and redeeming power to those who feel their need of it; the
   self-revealing, yet self-concealing Messiah, who does not offer himself
   as Theocratic king visibly before men's senses, as the Jews
   expected--all expectation which perplexed even the Baptist's own mind.
   And, therefore, he closes with the pregnant words of warning, "And
   blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me." (Happy is he who
   is satisfied, by these signs, to admit my Messiahship, and who is not
   offended because it does not precisely meet his expectations.)

   After the disciples of John had departed, Jesus said to the multitude
   around him, "What went ye out into the wilderness [345] to see? A reed
   shaken with the wind on the shore of Jordan?" To see a fickle,
   changeful man, the sport of outward influences? (He thus intends to
   represent John as a prophet, faithful and true to his convictions, and
   to vindicate him from any charge of instability on the ground that this
   question, sent by his disciples, was in conflict with his earlier
   testimonies.) "But perhaps ye went out to see a man in soft and
   splendid garments? Such men ye find not in deserts, but in the palaces
   of kings." A striking contrast between the preacher of repentance, the
   austere censor of morals, and the luxurious courtiers who wait upon the
   smiles of princes. [346]

   After these negative traits, Christ designates the stand-point of John
   positively. He calls him a "prophet," and "more than a prophet," and
   points him out as the Forerunner, the preacher of repentance predicted
   in Malachi (iii., 1), who was to go before, in the spirit of Elias, and
   prepare the way for the Messiah. He declares that none, in all time
   before, had held a higher position in the developement of the kingdom
   of God than John; that none had enjoyed a higher degree of religious
   illumination. [347] Yet, said he, the least in the manifested kingdom
   of God (i. e., in the Church founded by Christ as Redeemer), the least
   among truly enlightened Christians is greater than John.

   These words have a double importance, as they define not only Christ's
   view of the stand-point of John the Baptist, but also of the Old
   Dispensation in general, in regard to Christianity.

   In regard to the first, we must distinguish wherein John was behind
   Christianity, and wherein he towered above the prophets. He was behind
   Christianity, because he was yet prejudiced by his conception of the
   Theocracy as external; because he did not clearly know that Messiah was
   to found his kingdom by sufferings, and not by miraculously triumphing
   over his foes; because he did not conceive that this kingdom was to
   show itself from the first, not in visible appearing, but as a Divine
   power, to develope itself spiritually from within outward, and thus
   gradually to overcome and take possession of the world. The least among
   those who understand the nature and process of developement of the
   Divine kingdom, in connexion with Christ's redemption, is in this
   respect greater than the Baptist, who stood upon the dividing line of
   the two spiritual eras. But John was above the prophets (and Christ so
   declared), because he conceived of the Messiah and his kingdom in a
   higher and more spiritual sense than they had done, and because he
   directly pointed men to Christ, and recognized Him as the manifested
   Messiah.

   In regard to the second, viz., the relation of the Old Dispensation in
   general to Christianity, the fact that Christ places the Baptist above
   the prophets, who were the very culminating-point of the Old Covenant,
   and yet so far below the members of the new developement of the
   kingdom, exhibits in the most striking way possible his view of the
   distance between the old preparatory Testament and the New. The
   authority of Christ himself, therefore, is contradicted by those who
   expect to find the truth revealed by him, already developed in the Old
   Testament. If in John we are to distinguish the fundamental truth which
   he held, and which pointed to the New Testament, from the limited and
   sensuous form in which he held it, much more, according to Christ's
   words, are we bound to do this in the Old Testament generally, and in
   its Messianic elements especially. Following this intimation, we must,
   in studying the prophets, discriminate the historical from the ideal
   sense, the conscious from the unconscious prophecies.

   The testimony which Christ added in regard to the effects of John's
   labours corresponds precisely with the above view of his stand-point.
   "From the days of John the Baptist until now [348] the kingdom of
   heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force." [349]
   (That is, "the longing for the kingdom, excited by John's preaching,
   has spread among men; they press forward, striving to secure it, and
   those who strive with their whole souls obtain a share in it.") "And if
   ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come." (John is the
   Elias who was to come to prepare the way for Messiah--if you will only
   understand it--spiritually, not corporeally.)
     __________________________________________________________________

   [336] Matt., xi., 2-15; Luke, vii., 19-30.

   [337] Cf. p. 179.

   [338] Cf. p. 178.

   [339] Cf. p. 58.

   [340] We have before shown that this presupposes rather than
   contradicts the previous baptism and recognition of Jesus by the
   Baptist. It illustrates, however, the method in which the synoptical
   Gospels were compiled: the author of this statement, if he had known of
   that previous recognition, could hardly have failed to notice it.

   [341] It by no means follows, from the narrative, that Christ wrought
   all these miracles in presence of John's messengers. They could hear of
   them any where, and see their effects. Nor is a chronological connexion
   between the resurrection of the widow's son and this message of John's
   to be inferred from the juxtaposition in which Luke places them; he may
   have been led to this by Christ's mention of "the raising of the dead."

   [342] There is an obvious allusion here to Isa., xxxv., 5; lxi., 1; yet
   it is not absolutely necessary so to consider it. Nor are we bound to
   square the words of Christ by the quotation, and to infer that all
   which deviates from it has been added by another hand. A close
   connexion is obvious in the text.

   [343] This is to be understood especially of spiritual death and
   resurrection, a sense which joins better to the following clause, since
   it is precisely by the "preaching of the Gospel" that the spiritually
   dead are raised.

   [344] The word "poor" may be taken in the spiritual as well as the
   natural sense here, both, indeed, are connected, as it is among the
   poor in worldly goods that most of the spiritually poor are to be
   found, i. e., such as feel their inward wants and crave a supply for
   them.

   [345] It is possible that these words had no higher meaning, and were
   only used to impress the single thought negatively, thus: "Ye must have
   gone to the wilderness to seek something more than the wilderness
   itself could afford to you." But as all that follows refers
   antithetically to John, we infer that these words also had such a
   reference.

   [346] Unless the words have this meaning, they appear to have none;
   with it, they imply that John's conduct had given occasion for such
   comparisons; and perhaps this may have contributed to his imprisonment.

   [347] We cannot, in Matt., xi., 11, supply prophetes after meizon; the
   last clause of the verse forbids it. It probably was not in Christ's
   original words; and if it be not a gloss in Luke (vii., 28), it is only
   an explanatory addition in the statement itself. The "superiority" does
   not refer to subjective moral worth, in which, certainly, Christ could
   not intend to place the "least" in the Christian Church above this man
   of (God; but refers to advantages for apprehending the nature and
   progress of the kingdom of God. It is in this sense that the greatest
   of the old, preparatory stage were less than the least of the new.
   Since the prophets, who form the point of transition between the two
   dispensations, occupied the highest stand-point in the religious
   developement of antiquity, the sense of the passage is the same, with
   or without the word prophetes.

   [348] These words (Matt., xi., 12) obviously presuppose that John's
   labours had ceased, and, of course, that he had lost his liberty. This
   is enough to refute the hypothesis of Schleiermacher, that he sent the
   message before his imprisonment. The whole tenor of the passage implies
   that John's era was at an end. It has also been inferred from the words
   apo de ton hemeron Ioannou, that the passage was a later interpolation,
   improperly put into Christ's mouth. If this were true, it would only
   affect the form, not the substance of the passage, and we should have
   to follow Luke, xvi., 16 (where, however, the words are obviously out
   of place). But it is not true.

   [349] These words are expressly chosen to denote the earnest will, the
   struggle, and the entire devotion of soul which are requisite to enter
   into the kingdom of heaven. All the powers. of the spirit, its
   submission, its efforts, are necessary at all times, to secure the
   kingdom amid the reactions of the natural man, the carnal mind, its
   selfishness, its worldliness of spirit; but at that time it was
   especially the worldly notions of the Messiahship that had to be
   struggled against. The nature of the case shows that biazein is to be
   thus figuratively taken; the usus loquendi does not contradict it; and
   it suits the natural connexion of the passage.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 136. Christ shows the Relation of his Contemporaries to the Baptist
   and to Himself. [350] --The Easy Yoke and the Light Burden.--Jewish
   Legalism contrasted with Christian Liberty.

   The discourse which Christ continued to the groups around him is
   especially important as unfolding the relation in which he stood to the
   Jews.

   "They are like children sitting in the market-place, and saying, We
   have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you,
   and ye have not wept." The merry music and the mournful are alike
   displeasing; they will neither dance nor be sad. So it was with John
   and the Son of Man on the one hand, to the people of that time on the
   other. The ascetic of the desert, preaching repentance with fasting and
   austerity, was laughed at as a madman; the Son of Man, mingling in the
   intercourse of men, and sharing in their human joys, was "a glutton and
   a wine-bibber." Yet "Wisdom was justified of her children," was
   recognized by those who really belonged to her. (While the multitude,
   sunk in worldly-mindedness and self-conceit, and deaf to the voice of
   Divine wisdom, took offence, for opposite reasons, at both these
   messengers of God, the humble and susceptible disciples of the wisdom
   of God, on the other hand, could understand the different standpoints
   of John and Jesus, and appreciate the reasons for their different modes
   of life and action.)

   The discourse concluded with an exhortation to the gathered multitude,
   in which Christ, with the greatest tenderness, invited the susceptible
   souls among them (the children of Wisdom) to "come unto him" [351] and
   find, in his fellowship, a supply for all their wants. He contrasts
   himself, as the Redeemer of "heavy-laden" souls, with the rigid
   teachers of the law, who, while they burdened men's consciences with
   their multiplied statutes, imparted no power to perform them, and
   repelled, in haughtiness, the conscience-stricken sinner, instead of
   affording him peace and consolation. The contrast, perhaps, was
   intended to apply not only to the Pharisees, but to the Baptist, who
   also occupied the stand-point of the law.

   The "friend of publicans and sinners" thus invites all who feel their
   wretchedness to enter his communion; and announces himself as the "meek
   and lowly" one, repelling none because of their misery, condescending
   to the necessities of all, taking off the load from the weary soul
   instead of imposing new burdens, and giving them joy and rest in his
   fellowship. He makes no extravagant, impracticable demands. Obedience,
   indeed ("the easy yoke"), he does require; but an obedience which
   (although it embraces more than the righteousness of the law) is easy
   and pleasant, flowing spontaneously from the Divine life within, and
   rendered in the spirit of love. "Come unto me (says he), all ye that
   labour and are heavy laden (all that sigh under the legal yoke and the
   sense of sin, like the poor in spirit' of the Sermon on the Mount), and
   I will free you from your burdens, and give you the peace for which you
   sigh. Enter the fellowship of my disciples, and you will find me no
   hard master, but a kind and gentle one; you shall obtain rest for your
   souls, for my yoke is mild, and the burden which I shall lay upon you,
   light." [352]

   Our inference, from Christ's own words, in respect to the relation in
   which he stood at that time to the Jewish people, is: That the majority
   of them were dissatisfied with him, as they had before been with the
   Baptist; but that a smaller number of those who had recognized the
   Divine calling of John, acknowledged also that of Christ, and passed
   over, in submission to the guidance of Divine wisdom, from the former
   to the latter.

   It is clear that a strong opposition was already formed against Christ,
   and the chief point on which it supported itself was precisely that
   which distinguished the stand-point of the Saviour from that of the Old
   Testament, and also from the peculiar one of John the Baptist. It was
   the spirit of liberty with which, in Christianity, the Divine life
   takes hold of and appropriates to itself the relations of the world and
   society, in contrast with the spirit of ascetic opposition to the
   world. The Jews could see nothing of the holy prophet in a man who
   shared with his disciples in the pleasures of social life, and
   sanctified them by his presence; in a man who did not hesitate to
   partake of the entertainments of publicans and sinners. Striking,
   indeed, must have been the contrast between the comparatively
   unrestrained mode of life adopted by Christ's disciples, and the
   austere asceticism of the pupils whom the Baptist was training to be
   preachers of repentance, or of the neophytes of the Pharisaic schools.
   No schools of spiritual life, indeed, before that time, had trained
   their pupils as Christ did his. We can easily imagine the amazement of
   the Pharisees!
     __________________________________________________________________

   [350] Matt., xi., 17.

   [351] These incomparable words, preserved for us by Matthew alone (xi.,
   28-30), fitly conclude the discourse; the interposed passage (20-27)
   was probably taken from some other of Christ's addresses by the editor
   of our Matthew (see hereafter), and placed here because of its affinity
   to the context.

   [352] Here is the germ of Paul's entire doctrine, not only of the
   contrast between law and Gospel, but also of the Gospel itself as a
   nomos pisteos, pneumatos.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 137. Christ's Conversation with the Pharisees in regard to the Mode
   of Life indulged by his Disciples. [353] --The Morality of Fasting.

   It is not strange, therefore, that on a certain occasion the Pharisees
   came to Christ, and expressed their surprise at the free and social
   mode of life in which he indulged his disciples. They did not confine
   their appeal to the example of their own school, but intentionally
   added that of the Baptist's disciples, believing that the latter would
   be the more to their purpose, as Christ had recognized John for an en
   lightened teacher.

   It may be asked whether the Pharisees, in putting this question, sought
   only for instruction, and wished to obtain from Christ himself the
   principles on which a course so inexplicable to them was founded, or
   whether they meant to reproach him personally for sitting at the
   banquets of publicans and sinners, and only made use of their question
   about the disciples for a crafty blind to their attack? The gentle and
   instructive tone of Christ's reply seems (although it certainly is not
   proof) to favour the first view. [354] Would he have said so much to
   justify his conduct, without a word in reproof of their question, if he
   had to deal with crafty opponents utterly unsusceptible of instruction?
   [355]

   Be that as it may, some of them came to him with the question, "Why do
   the disciples of John fast often, and make prayers, [356] and likewise
   those of the Pharisees; but thine eat and drink?" Christ replies: "Can
   you make the companions of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is
   yet with them? Does fasting harmonize with the festal joy of a wedding?
   The time of fasting, indeed, will come of its own accord, when the
   bridegroom is gone, and the festal days are over."

   So privations, suited to the time of mourning, would have been out of
   keeping with the joyous life in common of the disciples and their
   Lord--with those happy days when the object of their desire was yet
   present in their midst. Fasting would have been as foreign to their
   state of mind--as outward and as forced--as to the guests at a wedding.
   But as the days of the feast are followed by others when fasting is in
   place; so, when the joy of happy intercourse with Christ shall give
   place to mourning at separation from Him who is their all in all, in
   those sad days, indeed, the disciples will need no outward bidding to
   fast. Their anode of life will naturally change with their state of
   feeling; fasting will then be but the spontaneous token of their souls'
   grief.

   Taken in this sense, it is clear that the words could not have been
   intended to apply to the whole life of the disciples after Christ
   should have been removed from them. The sad feelings here described
   were not intended to be permanent; the transitory pain of personal
   separation was to be followed by a more perfect joy in the
   consciousness of spiritual communion with Christ. Applying the passage,
   then, to this transition period of grief, we infer from it, as the rule
   of Christian ethics in regard to fasting, that it is neither enjoined
   nor recommended, but only justified, as the natural expression of
   certain states of feeling analogous to those of the disciples in the
   time of sadness referred to; e. g., the sense of separation from
   Christ, which may precede an experience of the most blissful communion
   with Him. In such states of the interior life, all outward signs of
   peace and joy, all participation in social intercourse and pleasure are
   unnatural and repugnant; although, when Christ is present in the soul,
   these social joys are sanctified and transfigured by the inward
   communion with Him. The interior life and the outward expression should
   be in entire harmony with each other. Another glance at this subject,
   however, after examining what follows, will afford us another view of
   it.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [353] Matt., ix., 11-17; Mark, ii., 15-22; Luke, v., 33-39.

   [354] The collocation of Luke, v., 33 and 34, if it be the original
   chronological order, opposes this view. In that case, after Christ had
   caused the question of the Pharisees to recoil upon themselves, they
   returned with it in a more concealed form. But it is probable [that
   different classes of Pharisees were concerned in the two cases], and
   that, this distinction being lost sight of, the occurrence in question
   was connected with one of the real machinations of that party in
   general against Christ.

   [355] We follow Luke, v., 33; Mark, ii., 18, which have more internal
   probability than Matt., ix., 14. It is, indeed, possible that those
   disciples of John who adhered only one-sidedly to the views of their
   master may have taken offence, and expressed it, just as the Pharisees
   did. Probably, too, at a later period, there grew up a gradual
   opposition between the Christians and part of John's disciples; and the
   Jewish sect of hemerabaptistai may have been no other than these
   (Hegesipp. in Euseb., iv., 22. Cf. the Clementines, Hom., ii., 23,
   Ioannes hemerabaptistes.) But it is by no means as probable that they
   joined themselves with the Pharisees, their bitter enemies; they could
   have had no tendency to associate with men whom they could consider as
   having had a hand, at least, in the sacrifice of their master. The fact
   that the scribes had quoted the example of John's disciples may easily
   have passed into the report that the latter had come to Christ with the
   same question. This view is adopted, also by Schleiermacher. De Wette's
   objections are sufficiently refuted by what has been said.

   [356] De Wette considers the mention of "prayer" (Luke, v., 33) as out
   of place, and argues from it that Luke had departed from the original
   tradition. But certainly it was natural enough for the Pharisees thus
   to characterize the (to them) strikingly worldly life of the disciples;
   for the former made a show of sanctity, not only by fasting, but by
   repeated prayers; and, moreover, John had prescribed a form of prayer
   for his disciples (Luke, xi., 1), which Christ as yet had not done. As
   the words "eating and drinking" are used in the question to designate
   the profane and carnal life, so "fasting and prayer" denote its
   opposite--the strict spiritual life. Now, had the word "prayers"
   originally existed in the passage, and been afterward lost in
   transmission, we might easily account for it: because it might be
   thought that Christ's reply does not allude to "prayer," that such a
   depreciation of prayer (mistakenly imagined) would be a
   stumbling-block, and, besides, contradictory to Christ's own teaching
   in other places. But to account for its interpolation is quite a
   different matter. As for Christ's not alluding to prayer in his reply,
   he had no call to do it; it was the spirit of outward and ascetic
   piety, as a whole, that he rebukes.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 138. The Parable of the New Patch on the Old Garment, and of the New
   Wine in Old Bottles. [357]

   Christ added another illustration in the form of a parable. "No man
   putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both
   the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new
   agreeth not with the old. And no man putteth new wine into old bottles
   (skins), else the new wine will burst the bottles and be spilled, and
   the bottles shall perish. But new wine must be put into new bottles,
   and both are preserved."

   The old nature cannot be renewed by the imposition from without of the
   exercises of fasting and prayer; no outward and compulsory asceticism
   can change it. Individual points of character are significant only so
   far as they are connected with the tendency of the whole life: a
   reformation in these, indeed, may be enforced, and the stamp and spirit
   of the life remain unchanged. A fragment of the higher spiritual life,
   thus broken off from its living connexion (destroyed in the fracture),
   and forced upon the nature of the old man, would not really improve it;
   but, on the other hand, by its utter want of adaptation, would worsen
   the rent in the old nature--would tear it rudely away from its natural
   course of developement. A mere renewal from without is at best an
   artificial, hypocritical thing. The new cloth is torn, and a patch laid
   upon the old that does not fit it. The new wine is lost, and the old
   skins perish. [358]

   The premature imposition, therefore, of such exercises upon the
   disciples, instead of developing the new life within them, would have
   hindered it by mutilating and crippling what they had. [359] Separate
   branches of the spiritual life, apart from their connexion with the
   whole, cannot be grafted upon the stem of the old nature; that nature
   must be renewed from within in order to become a vessel of the Spirit.
   (In the case of the Apostles, the way was prepared for this by their
   personal intercourse with the Saviour.) The whole garment had to be
   new; the wine required new bottles. The new Spirit had of itself to
   create a new form of life.

   Glancing back from this point to the words before spoken on fasting, we
   may refer them to the privations that lay before the Apostles in their
   course of duty--privations which they would joyously go to meet under
   the impulse of the new Spirit that was to animate them.

   But although no outward impulses (no patches upon the old garment)
   might be needed when the interior life should freely guide, it might
   yet naturally be the case that "No man, having also drank old wine,
   straightway desireth new; for, he saith, the old is better." [360] The
   disciples had to be weaned gradually from the old life and trained for
   the new--a law applicable in all ages of the Church, and which, if
   faithfully observed, might have saved her from many errors in Christian
   life and morals. [361]

   This example affords another illustration of the truth that individual
   parts of Christ's teaching cannot be rightly understood apart from
   their connexion with his whole system of truth.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [357] Matt., ix., 16; Mark, ii., 21; Luke, v., 36.

   [358] We deviate from the ordinary interpretation of this parable. Our
   explanation is not only adapted to the preceding context (Luke, v.,
   33-35), but also fits the minute details of the comparison, which the
   one commonly given does not. According to the latter, the substance of
   the parable is, that the outward religious exercises of Judaism are not
   adapted to the higher stage, Christianity, for which the disciples were
   training. But Christ admits (verse 35) that fasting may be a good thing
   at the right time; which, he said, had not then come, but would come.
   Instead of taking up this point, and unfolding it in the parable in
   another aspect, as one might expect, the common interpretation
   introduces a new and entirely different thought, viz., that such
   exercises were unsuitable (not to their condition at that time, but) to
   Christianity at any time. Again, one would naturally think, from v. 34,
   35, that the "new wine" and the "new cloth" of the parable were
   intended to represent the fasting, &c., of which Christ was speaking,
   viz., that fasting which the Apostles were to practice at a later
   period. But the usual interpretation, on the other hand, supposes
   fasting to be something defective in itself, and as belonging to that
   form of life which is represented by the "old garment." The sense thus
   obtained contains a thought not true in itself; for, in the case of the
   Apostles, the new wine of Christianity was put into the old bottle of
   Judaism, and was intended to break it to pieces. If the prescribed
   fasting was to be disregarded by the Apostles as belonging to Jewish
   legalism, so also, on the same principle, the whole Jewish legalism
   would have to be done away by them, as foreign to the new spirit
   introduced by Christ. It is remarkable that this obviously false
   interpretation should have kept so long in the back-ground the true one
   developed by Chrysostom, Hom. in Matt., xxx., § 4. Independently of my
   exposition, Wilke has recently declared himself (in his Urevangelisten)
   in favour of the view here given. De Wette styles it "forced," but how
   the term can apply to an interpretation so accurately fitting the
   details of the parable, I cannot imagine. I should be very glad to see
   the attention of interpreters directed to the views which I have set
   forth.

   [359] Sincerum est nisi vas, quodcunque infundis, acescit.

   [360] It is a proof of the originality and faithfulness of Luke's
   narrative, that this passage, so indubitably stamped with originality,
   and yet so closely connected with the context, is recorded by him
   alone.

   [361] Pope Innocent III. understood and applied this passage correctly,
   in reference to the establishment of a mission in Prussia: "Cum veteres
   uteres vix novum vinum contineant." Epp., 1. xv., 148.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 139. Forms of Prayer.--The Lord's Prayer; its Occasion and Import.
   [362] --Encouragements to Prayer; God gives no Stone for Bread.

   We take up now a subject akin to that of which we have just treated,
   without implying (what, indeed, is of no importance) a chronological
   connexion between them.

   We have seen that one thing which surprised the Pharisees was that
   Christ did not lay stress upon outward prayers. He had not, like John
   the Baptist, prescribed forms of prayer for his disciples. In this
   respect, as well as others, their religious life was to develope itself
   from within. From intercourse with Christ, and intuition of his life,
   they were to learn how to pray. The mind which he imparted was to make
   prayer indispensable to them, and to teach them how to pray aright.

   On a certain occasion, the desire arose in their hearts, from beholding
   him pray, to be able to pray as he did; and one of them asked, "Lord,
   teach us how to pray, as John also taught his disciples." [363]

   Christ replied that they were not, in their prayers, to use "many
   words," and to repeat details to God, who knew all their wants before
   they could be uttered. And then, in a prayer framed in the spirit of
   this injunction, he gave them a vivid illustration of the nature of
   Christian prayer, as referring to the one thing needful, and
   incorporating every thing else with that. As prayer is no isolated
   thing in Christianity, but springs from the ground of the whole
   spiritual life, so this prayer, which forms a complete and organic
   whole, comprehends within itself the entire peculiar essence of
   Christianity.

   "Our Father who art in Heaven." [364] The form of the invocation
   corresponds to the nature of the Christian stand-point; our Father
   because Christ has made us his children. We address God thus, not as
   individuals, but, in the fellowship of Christ, as members of a
   community which He has placed in this relation to the common Father.
   Side by side with this consciousness of communion as children goes that
   of our distance as creatures; the God that dwells in his children is
   the God above the world (so that Christianity is equally far from
   Pantheism and Deism). " Our Father--in heaven"--that the soul may soar
   in prayer from earth to heaven, with the living and abiding
   consciousness that earth and heaven are no more kept asunder. To this;
   indeed, the substance of the whole prayer tends.

   "Hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as
   it is done in heaven." While the Christian, dwelling on earth, where
   sin reigns, prays to the Father in heaven, he longs that earth may be
   completely reconciled to heaven, and become wholly an organ of its
   revelations. And this is nothing else but the coming of the kingdom of
   God centre of all Christian life, and the object of all Christian
   desire, the three positive prayers first given directly refer. The
   special prayer, "Thy kingdom come," is guarded against the possibly
   carnal and worldly interpretation (to which the disciples were at that
   time inclined) by the one which precedes ("Hallowed be thy name"), and
   the one which follows ("Thy will be done"). The Holy One is to be
   acknowledged and worshipped by all, according to His holy nature and
   His holy name; [365] not by a nakedly abstract knowledge and confession
   thereof, but by a life allied to Him. This "hallowing" of the name of
   God implies the "coming of his kingdom," and this last is further
   developed in the prayer that "his will may be realized on earth, as it
   is in the communion of perfect spirits." The kingdom will have come
   when the will of men is made perfectly at one with the will of God, and
   to accomplish this is the very aim of the atonement. Among all rational
   intelligences, the one common essence of the kingdom of God is the
   doing his will, and thus hallowing his name.

   "Give us, day by day, our daily bread." The positive prayers for the
   supply of Divine wants are followed by one (and only one) for the
   supply of human wants; in regard to which, also, the disciple of Christ
   must cherish an abiding consciousness of dependence on the Heavenly
   Father. It is not the tendency of Christianity to stifle or suppress
   the wants of our earthly nature, but to hallow them by referring them
   to God; at the same time keeping them in their proper sphere of
   subordination to the higher interests of the soul.

   "And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive every one that is
   indebted to us." The first negative prayers correspond to the first
   positive ones. Conscious of a manifold sinfulness, which, so long as it
   remains, hinders the full developement of the kingdom of God within
   them, the disciples of Christ pray for forgiveness of past sins,
   originating in the reaction of the old evil nature. But they cannot
   pray for this, with conscious need of pardon, without a disposition, at
   the same time, to forgive the wrongs which others have done to
   themselves; only thus can their prayer be sincere, only thus can they
   expect it to be answered. The Christian's constant sense of the need of
   God's pardoning grace for himself necessarily gives tone to his conduct
   towards his fellows.

   "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." The prayer
   for pardon of past sins is followed by one for deliverance in the
   future. The word "temptation" has a two-fold meaning in Scripture,
   expressing either outward trials of Christian faith and virtue, or an
   inward point of contact for outward incitements, caused by the strife
   of the sinful principle with the life of God in the soul; and the
   question may be asked, which of the two--the objective or subjective
   temptation--is referred to in the prayer. Certainly Christ could not
   have intended that his disciples should pray for exemption from
   external conflicts and sufferings; for these are inseparable from the
   calling of soldiers of the kingdom in this world, and essential for the
   confirmation of Christian faith and virtue, and for culture in the
   Christian life; and He himself told them that such trials would become
   the salt of their interior life. But, on the other hand, the prayer
   cannot be confined to purely subjective temptations; for Christ could
   not have presupposed that God would do any thing so contradictory to
   His own holiness as to lead men into temptation in this sense. A
   combination of the two appears to be the true idea of the prayer: "Lead
   us not into such situations as will form for us, in our weakness,
   incitements to sin;" thus laying it down as a rule of life for
   Christians not to put themselves, self-confidently, in such situations,
   but to avoid them as far as duty will allow. But every thing depends
   upon deliverance from the internal incitement to sin; and hence,
   necessarily, the concluding clause of the petition, "Deliver us from
   inward temptation by the power of the Evil One." Confiding, in the
   struggle with evil, upon the power of God, we need not fear such
   outward temptations as are unavoidable.

   Thus the prayer accurately defines the relation of the Christian to
   God. The disciple of Christ, ever called to struggle against evil.
   which finds a point of contact in his inward nature, cannot fight this
   battle in his own strength, but always stands in need of the assistance
   of the Holy Spirit. The prayer holds the fundamental truths of
   Christian faith before the religious consciousness, in their essential
   connexion with each other--God, revealed in Christ, who redeems man,
   formed after his image, yet estranged from him by sin; who imparts to
   him that Divine life which is to be led on by him to its consummation
   through manifold strifes against the Power of Evil.

   It appears, therefore, that Christ did not intend by "the Lord's
   Prayer" to prescribe a standing form of prayer to his disciples, but to
   set vividly before their minds the peculiar nature of Christian prayer,
   in opposition to heathen; and, accordingly, he followed it up by urging
   them to present their wants to their Heavenly Father with the most
   undoubting confidence (Luke, xi., 5-13). By a comparison drawn from the
   ordinary relations of life, he teaches that if our prayers should not
   appear to be immediately answered, we must only persevere the more
   earnestly (v. 5-8); and then impresses the thought that God cannot deny
   the anxious longings of his children (9, 10).

   Here, also, the internal character of Christian prayer is strongly
   contrasted with the pagan outward conception of the exercise. Even the
   "seeking," the longing of the soul, that turns with a deep sense of
   need to God, is prayer already; indeed, there is no Christian prayer
   without such a feeling. The comparison that follows (v. 11-13) glances
   (like the Lord's Prayer) from the relation of child and parent on earth
   to that of the children of God to their Father in heaven--a comparison
   opposed, in the highest conceivable degrees, to all Pantheistical and
   Deistical notions of the relations between God and creation. "If a son
   shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a
   stone (in shape resembling the loaf)? or, if he ask a fish, will he
   give him a serpent? or, if he ask an egg, will he offer a scorpion? And
   how should your Heavenly Father, [366] of whose perfect love all human
   affection is but a darkened image, mock the necessities of his children
   by withholding from their longing hearts the Holy Ghost, which alone
   can satisfy the hunger of their spirits?" Here, again, as in the Lord's
   Prayer, the main objects of Christian prayer are shown to be spiritual;
   the giving of the Holy Ghost, the one chief good of the Christian,
   includes all other gifts. [367]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [362] Luke, xi.

   [363] We follow Luke, xi. The passage in Matt., vi., 7-16, appears
   foreign to the original organism of the Sermon on the Mount, in which
   prayer, fasting, &c., were treated especially in contrast with the
   hypocrisy of the Pharisees. As that longer discourse was made a
   repertory for Christ's sayings, in which they were arranged according
   to their affinities, so perhaps it was with this. We may certainly
   conclude that Christ would not have sketched such a prayer for the
   disciples without a special occasion for it; for the wish to lay down
   forms of prayer was, as we have seen, remote from his spirit and
   object. But we cannot think it possible [with some] that Christ uttered
   this prayer as appropriate for himself, and that the disciples adopted
   it for that reason; it had no fitness to his position: he, at least,
   could not have prayed for the pardon of his sins. The occasion given by
   Luke was a very appropriate one; the form was drawn out by Christ at
   the request of the disciples. It was probable, moreover, from the
   nature of the case, that Christ, who did not wish to prescribe standing
   forms of prayer, would make use of such an occasion to explain further
   the nature of prayer itself [as he does in Luke, xi., 5-13]. In the
   Sermon on the Mount, also (Matt., vii., 7), a passage similar [to Luke,
   xi., 9] is found; and Matt., vi., 7, perhaps contains the beginning of
   Christ's reply to his disciples' request on the subject.

   [364] In the shorter form of the prayer given in Luke, the words hemon
   and "ho en tois ouranois are omitted. It is probable that the original
   form of the prayer is that given by Matthew. Luke is more accurate in
   giving the chronological and historical connexion of Christ's
   discourses, but Matthew gives the discourses themselves more in full.

   [365] In Hebrew and Hellenistic usage, the name expresses the outward
   self-revelation of the thing; the image of the thing, as such, or in
   some defined relation. Where the Occidentalist would use the idea, the
   Orientalist, in his vividly intuitive language, puts the name. The
   sense then is, "God is to be hallowed as God the common Father."

   [366] The words "pateer ho ex ouranou," Luke, xi., 13, plainly point to
   the invocation in the Lord's Prayer.

   [367] Cf. the indefinite agatha, in Matt., vii., 11, generalized from
   the domata agatha in the first clause of the verse. The "Holy Ghost"
   answers definitely to the point of comparison the nourishment of the
   soul, as bread is to the body.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 140. Christ forgives the Magdalen at the House of Simon the Pharisee.
   [368] --The reciprocal action of Love and Faith in the Forgiveness of
   Sins.

   It was Christ's free mode of life with his disciples, his intercourse
   with classes of people despised by the Pharisees, his seeking the
   society even of the degraded, in order to save them, which first drew
   upon him the assaults of that haughty and conceited sect.

   On one occasion he was invited to dine with one of the Pharisees, named
   Simon, a man certainly incapable of appreciating the Saviour Either
   from his natural temper, or from his peculiar disposition to wards
   Christ, he gave him but a cool reception. While the Saviour was there,
   a woman came in who had previously led a notoriously vicious life, but
   who now, convinced of sin and groaning under it, sought consolation
   from Christ, from whom she had doubtless previously received Divine
   impressions. She threw herself at his feet, moistened them with her
   tears, wiped them with her hair, and anointed them with ointment. With
   what power must He have attracted the burdened soul, when a woman,
   goaded by conscience, could come to him with so sure a hope of
   obtaining balm for her wounded heart!

   The Pharisee was astonished that He should have any thing to do with
   her. "Were this man," thought he, "possessed of the prophet's glance,
   piercing the thoughts of men, he could not be so deceived." Christ,
   noticing his amazement, gave an explanation of the principle on which
   he acted, that must have shamed and humbled Simon; contrasting his cold
   hospitality with the heartfelt love which the woman, though oppressed
   with grief and sin, had manifested for him. Looking at the disposition
   of the heart, he prefers the woman--guilty, indeed, before, but, even
   for that reason, now longing the more earnestly for salvation, and
   penetrated with holy love--to the cold, haughty, self-righteous
   Pharisee, who, with all his outward show of observing the law, was
   destitute of quickening love, the essential principle of a genuine
   Divine life. "Her sins," said he, "which are many, are all forgiven,
   for she loved much; but to whom little is forgiven, he loveth little."

   It is love, according to Jesus, which gives to religion and morality
   their true import. The faith of the woman proved itself genuine,
   because it sprang from, and begat love; the love from the faith, the
   faith from the love. Her grief for her sins was founded in her love to
   the Holy God, to whom, conscious of her estrangement, she now felt
   herself drawn. Her desire for salvation led her to Jesus; her love
   aided her in finding a Saviour in him; with warm love she embraced him
   as such, even before he pronounced the pardon of her sins. Therefore
   Christ said of her, "Her many sins are forgiven, because she has loved
   much;" and to her, "Thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace;" thus
   exhibiting the reciprocal relations of the two--the faith proving
   itself true by the love. The Pharisee, whose feelings were ossified,
   bound up in the mechanism of the outward law, was especially lacking in
   the love which could lead to faith; and therefore, in speaking to him,
   the woman's love, and not her faith, was made prominent by Christ.

   The very vices of the woman made her conviction more profound, her
   desire for salvation more ardent, her love for the Redeemer, who
   pronounced her sins forgiven, more deep and heartfelt. But she had not,
   even in the midst of her transgressions, been further removed from the
   true, inward holiness that springs from the Divine life, than was the
   Pharisee in his best estate. He separated himself from God as
   effectually, by that unfeeling selfishness which often coexists with
   what is called morality, and with a conspicuous sanctity of good works,
   as if he had yielded, like the woman, to the power of evil passions. He
   was none the better because his colder nature offered no salient points
   for such temptations. Christ's standard of morality was different from
   that which the world, deceived by appearances, is wont to apply. The
   Pharisee had succeeded in avoiding these glaring sins, and in keeping a
   fair show of obedience to the law; but all this only propped up his
   self-deceiving egotism, which delighted in the illusion of
   self-righteousness. In such a man, the sense of alienation from God,
   the consciousness of sin, as an abyss between him and the Holy One,
   without which there can be no true repentance, could find no place.

   Nay, the abject woman, in her course of vice, may have been nearer to
   the kingdom than the haughty and self-righteous man; even then, there
   may have been a spark of love, stifled, indeed, by sensuality, but
   still existing in her heart, which needed only the touch of a higher
   power to kindle into flame. In her case, what was in itself bad may
   have been a means of good; good, however, which certainly might have
   been arrived at by another road. The pangs of repentance made her
   susceptible of Divine impressions, the Divine love that met her kindled
   the spark in her own heart; and she rose, by the living faith of love,
   above the Pharisee, who, in his arrogant selfishness, was hardened
   against Divine impressions, and did not recognize the love of God, even
   when he saw it manifested. [369]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [368] Luke, vii., 36, seq.

   [369] The simplicity of this narrative, and the stamp of Christ's
   spirit which it bears, are sufficient proofs of its originality and
   truth. But I find no ground for believing it to be identical with the
   anointing of Christ by Mary at Bethany, which also, according to Matt.
   (xxvi., 6), occurred in the house of a Simon. The resemblances are
   accidental; such things could occur again and again amid Oriental
   customs. That a woman, in order to show her reverential love for the
   Saviour, might serve him like a slave, wash his feet, not with water,
   but with the costliest material in her possession, &c.; all this could
   easily have occurred twice and both times, too, in the house of a man
   named Simon, which was a very common name among the Jews; although it
   is possible that the name may have been transferred from the one
   account to the other. But while the resemblances are accidental, the
   differences are substantial. In the one the woman is an awakened
   sinner; in the other, one who had always led a devout life, and was, at
   the time, seized with additional gratitude at the saving of a beloved
   brother's life. In the one, the different relations in which a
   self-righteous Pharisee and an awakened sinner stand to Christ, who
   rejects no repentant sinner, are set forth; in the other, a heartfelt
   love, which knows no measure, is contrasted with the common mind,
   incapable of comprehending such love. In the one it is Christ that is
   blamed and justified; in the other, the woman.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 141. Matthew the Publican called from the Custom-house.--Familial
   Intercourse of Christ with the Publicans at the Banquet.--The Pharisees
   blame the Disciples, and Christ justifies them.--"The Sick need the
   Physician."

   What surprise and offence must the Pharisees have felt when they saw
   Christ admit even a publican into the immediate circle of his
   disciples. [370]

   As he was walking one day along the shore of the lake, [371] he saw a
   publican sitting in his toll-booth, named Matthew; a man who had
   doubtless, like Peter, received many impressions from Christ before,
   and was thereby prepared to renounce the world at his bidding. Jesus,
   with a voice that could not be resisted, said unto him, "Follow me."
   Matthew understood the call, and did not hesitate to follow, at any
   cost, Him who had so powerfully attracted his heart. He left his
   business, rejoicing that Christ was willing to take him into his closer
   fellow ship. This decisive event was celebrated by a great
   entertainment, [372] intended also, perhaps, as a farewell feast to his
   old business associates. Christ, in whose honour the entertainment was
   given, did not disdain this token of grateful love, but took his place
   at the feast with a set of men who were regarded as the scum of the
   people, but to whom his saving influences were to be brought nigh.

   Shortly after, some of the Pharisees took the disciples to task for
   their free and (as they thought) unspiritual mode of life, in eating
   and drinking with degraded sinners and tax-gatherers. It is evident
   that the attack was intended for Christ, though they hesitated, as yet,
   to assault him openly. He, therefore, took the matter up personally,
   and justified his conduct by saying, "They that are whole need not a
   physician, but they that are sick." Indicating that he sought, rather
   than avoided, degraded sinners, because they, precisely, stood most in
   need of his healing aid, and were most likely, from a sense of need, to
   receive it willingly.

   But he certainly did not mean to say that he came to save only those
   who were sunken in vice. He was far, also, from meaning, that though
   all have need of him, all have not the same need of him; that any were
   excluded from the number of the "sick," who needed him as a
   "physician." But he taught that as he had come as a physician for the
   sick, he could help only those who, as sick persons, sought healing at
   his hands. He sought the tax-gatherers rather than the Pharisees,
   because the latter, deeming themselves spiritually sound, had no
   disposition to receive that which he came to impart. Undoubtedly, he
   did not mean to grant that they were sound, or less diseased than the
   publicans.

   Indeed, he pointed out their peculiar disease by saying to them, "Go
   ye, and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not
   sacrifice.'" [373] On the one hand, by this quotation, he pointed out
   the feeling that inspired his own conduct, the love which is the
   fulfilling of the law; and, on the other, he indicated their
   fundamental error of making religion an outward thing, while they
   totally lacked the soul of genuine piety. This was to convince them
   that they themselves were sick and needed the physician. Dropping the
   figure, he gave them the same thought in plain terms: "I came not to
   call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."
     __________________________________________________________________

   [370] There are discrepancies in the narrative of the calling of
   Matthew, not, however, affecting the credibility of the account, which
   comes from several independent sources, and bears no marks of
   exaggeration. In Matthew's Gospel, ix., 9, the person here spoken of is
   called Matthew, and in x., 3, Matthew the publican is mentioned among
   the Apostles; but in Luke, v., 27; Mark, ii., 14, he is called Levi.
   Mark appears to be more definite than the others, calling him the son
   of Alpheus, which does not look like a fanciful designation. The
   difficulty might be overcome by supposing (what was not uncommon among
   the Jews that the same man was designated in the one case by the name,
   in the other by the surname. An objection to this (though not decisive)
   is the fact that in the list of Apostles given in Matt., x., 3, he is
   called merely Matthew the publican, with no surname, and in the lists
   given by Mark and Luke, Matthew, simply, with no surname; and, farther,
   that an old tradition existed, which discriminated Matthew and Levi,
   and named the latter, in addition, among the prominent heralds of the
   Gospel. (Heracleon, in Clem. Alex., Strom., 1. iv., c. xi.) On this
   ground we might admit, with Sieffert, that the names of two persons, i.
   e., of the Apostle Matthew, and some other who had been admitted, at
   least, among the Seventy, had been confounded together. But as Matthew
   himself was the original source of the materials of the Gospel which
   bears his name (materials arranged, perhaps, by another hand), we
   cannot attribute the confusion to this Gospel. It is, at the same time,
   possible that the giver of the feast (Luke, v., 29), Levi, was another
   rich publican, a friend of the publican Matthew, who afterward also
   attached himself to Jesus; especially as nothing is said in Matt., ix.,
   10, about a great feast being given at the house of Matthew; and that
   thus the name of Matthew, whose call to the ministry occasioned the
   feast, and that of Levi, the host, in whose life it made an epoch, and
   who afterward became known as a preacher of the Gospel, were confounded
   together.

   [371] Mark, ii., 13.

   [372] Luke, v., 29.

   [373] Matt., ix., 13; Hos., vi., 6.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 142. Christ's different Modes of Reply to those who questioned his
   Conduct in consorting with Sinners.--The Value of a Soul.--Parable of
   the Prodigal Son.--Of the Pharisee and the Publican.

   There is a difference in one respect in Christ's replies at different
   times to those who found fault with his kindness to publicans and
   degraded sinners. In some cases he stopped short after vividly
   exhibiting the mercy of God to all truly repentant sinners; in others,
   he not only justified his own conduct, but took the offensive against
   those who had attacked him, and showed them their own deficiencies in
   true righteousness, and their inferiority to the sincerely repentant
   publicans. The former course was probably taken with those who were
   more sincerely striving after righteousness, and who took offence at
   him on purer grounds. It is necessary to note this distinction is order
   to apprehend Christ's words rightly, and to derive, from comparing his
   discourses together, a connected system of doctrine.

   Under the first class may be placed the parables which are recorded in
   the fifteenth chapter of Luke. In verses 3-10 we have a vivid
   illustration of the value which God attaches to the salvation of one
   soul, shown by the great joy which the repentance of a sinner causes in
   a world of spirits, allied in their sympathies to Him. This is the one
   point which is to be made prominent and emphatic in interpreting the
   passage; we should err in pressing the separate points of comparison
   further.

   To the same class, also, belongs the parable of the Prodigal Son. [374]
   The elder son, who remains at home and serves his father faithfully,
   represents a Pharisee [375] of the better class, who sincerely strives
   to keep the law and is free from glaring sins, but still occupies a
   strictly legal stand-point. The younger son represents one who seeks
   his highest good in the world, throws off the restraints of the law,
   and gives full play to his passions. But experience shows him the
   emptiness of such a life; estranged from God, he becomes conscious of
   wretchedness, and returns, sincerely penitent, to seek forgiveness in
   the Father's love.

   Christ does not go far, in this parable, in illustrating the
   deficiencies of the Pharisee. His legal righteousness goes without
   specific rebuke, but his envy (v. 28) and his want of love ("the
   fulfilling of the law") show clearly the emptiness of his morality. It
   may have been the Saviour's intention to lead the person here
   represented to discover, of himself, his total want of the substance of
   religion.

   The one chief point of the parable is to illustrate, under the figure
   of relations drawn from human life, the manner in which the paternal
   love of God meets the vilest of sinners when he returns sincerely
   penitent. How strikingly does this picture of the Father's love, ever
   ready to pardon sin, rebuke not merely the Jewish exclusiveness, but
   all those limitations of God's purposes for the salvation of the human
   race, whether before or after Christ, which the arbitrary creeds of men
   have attributed to the Divine decrees! The parable clearly implies that
   the love of the Father contemplates the salvation of all his fallen
   children, among all generations of men. Yet it by no means excludes,
   although it does not expressly declare, the necessity of the
   mediatorial work of Christ; we must not expect to find the whole circle
   of Christian doctrine in every parable. Indeed; the mediation of Christ
   itself is the precise way in which the paternal love of God goes out to
   meet and welcome all his fallen children when they return in
   repentance. The parable images the condition of fallen man in general,
   as well as of that class of gross sinners to which, from the occasion
   on which Christ uttered it, it necessarily gives special prominence.

   The line of distinction between the Pharisee and the publican is still
   more closely drawn in the parable contained in Luke, xviii., 9-14.
   [376] The publican humbles himself before God, deeply sensible of sin,
   and only seeking forgiveness, and is therefore represented as having
   the dispositions necessary for pardon and justification. The Pharisee,
   trusting in his supposed righteousness, exalts himself above the
   notorious sinner, and is therefore destitute of the conditions of
   pardon, though he needs it as much as the other. Christ himself deduces
   from the example this general truth: "Every one that exalteth himself
   shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." That
   is, he who sets up great pretensions before God on account of his
   self-acquired virtue or wisdom, will be disappointed; his arrogant
   assumption of a worth which is nothing but vileness will exclude him
   from that true dignity which the grace of God alone can bestow; which
   dignity will be bestowed, on the other hand, upon the sinner who truly
   humbles himself before God from a conscious sense of moral
   unworthiness.

   In this parable we find the germ of Paul's doctrine; even of some of
   his weighty expressions on this subject. The doctrine is the same as
   that which Christ taught in pronouncing the "poor in spirit" blessed.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [374] Luke, xv., 11-32.

   [375] This must be the case, on the supposition that Luke, xv., 2,
   expresses the precise occasion of this parable, but we cannot
   positively assert this. It is possible that one of the disciples who
   had not fully imbibed the spirit of Christ may have given the occasion
   for it.

   [376] This parable is one (cf. p. 107) in which a truth relating to the
   kingdom of God is illustrated by an assumed fact; but the fact is one
   taken from the same sphere of life as that which it intended to depict.
   Moreover, the relation which must exist, in all time, between the
   self-righteous saint by works and the humbly penitent sinner is
   illustrated by an example such as once constantly occurred in real
   life--in Pharisees and publicans.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER VIII.

  CHRIST'S SECOND JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. [377]
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 143. The Miracle at the Pool of Bethesda.--The Words of Christ in the
   Temple to the Man that was healed. (John, v., 1-14.)

   CHRIST, having spent the winter in Galilee, was called again to
   Jerusalem by the feast of the Passover. His stay in the city at that
   feast forms a marked period in his history; for a cure wrought upon a
   certain Sabbath in that time was the occasion, if not the cause, of a
   more violent display of the opposition of the Pharisees than had yet
   been made against him.

   A certain spring at Jerusalem was believed by the people to possess
   remarkable healing powers at particular seasons, when its waters were
   moved by (what they supposed to be) a supernatural cause. [378] It is
   unimportant whether this belief was an old one, or was called forth at
   a later period by actual occurrences, of which, as was common, too much
   was made. The healing-spring itself, or the covered colonnade connected
   with it, was called Bethesda [379] ("place of mercy").

   At this fountain Christ found, on the Sabbath day, a man who had been
   lame for thirty-eight years, and had long waited for the moving of the
   waters in hope of relief, but had never been able to avail himself of
   it for want of a kind hand to help him into the water at the auspicious
   moment. It is probable that many pressed to the spring in haste to
   catch the passing instant when its healing powers were active. But the
   sick man was to find help from a far different source. [Jesus saith
   unto him, Arise, take up thy bed and walk, and immediately the man was
   made whole.]

   The restored man lost sight of the Saviour in the throng, but afterward
   Christ found him in the Temple, where he had probably first gone in
   order to thank God for his recovery. The favourable moment was seized
   by the Saviour to direct his mind from the healing of his body to that
   of his soul. His words, "Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto
   thee," may be considered either as implying that the sickness, in this
   particular case, was caused by sin, or as referring to the general
   connexion between sin and physical evil, in virtue of which the latter
   is a memorial of the former as its source. In either view they were
   intended to remind him of his spiritual necessities, and to point out
   the only way in which they could be relieved.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [378] Against the credibility of this account, Bretschneider and
   Strauss adduce the silence of Josephus and the Rabbins in regard to
   such a healing spring; but this argument--like every argumentum e
   silentio, unsupported by special circumstances--is destitute of force.
   These very authorities tell us that there were many mineral springs in
   Palestine. Eusebius, in his work, "peri ton topikon honomaton ton en te
   theia graphe, (Onomasticon), says, under the word "Bezatha"--"kai nun
   dei'knutai en tais autothi li'mnais didu'mois, hon ekatera men ek ton
   kat' e'tos hueton pleroutai, thatera de` paradoxos pephoinigme'non
   dei'knusi to` u'dor, i'choos, o's phasi, phe'rousa ton palai
   kathairome'non ierei'on, par' ho kai prodatike kaleitai dia ta`
   thu'mata." (Hieron., Opp., ed. Vallars., tom. iii., pt. i., p. 181.)
   The old tradition, that the waters had become "red," from the washing
   of the sacrifices in them in old times, leads to the conclusion that it
   contained peculiar components. The legend of the angel (in v. 4, which,
   according to the best criticism, does not belong to John, but is a
   later gloss) could not have arisen unless the spring and its phenomena
   really existed. Robinson (Palestine, ii., 137, 156) thinks that he
   found in the irregular movement of the water in the "Fountain of the
   Virgin" phenomena similar to those recorded of the Pool of Bethesda,
   and contributing to explain them.

   [379] chsd and bvh.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 144. The Pharisees accuse Christ of Sabbath-breaking and
   Blasphemy.--His Justification. (John, v., 10, 17-19.)

   This occurrence gave the Pharisees the first occasion (so far as we
   know) to accuse Christ of breaking the Sabbath and of blaspheming
   against God. The first accusation was made in their contracted sense of
   the Sabbatical law, and of its violation; the latter arose from their
   legal Monotheism, and their narrow idea of the Messianic office.

   In his justification, Christ struck at the root of the first error,
   viz., the carnal notion that the sanctity of the Sabbath was founded
   solely upon God's resting after the work of creation, as if his
   creative labours were then commenced and ended; and points out, on the
   other hand, the ever-continuing activity of God as the ground of all
   being--my Father worketh hitherto, and I work. [380] ("As He never
   ceases to work, so do I work unceasingly for the salvation of men.") He
   rejects the narrow limits which their contracted view of the law of the
   Sabbath would assign to his healing labours, which were to go on
   uninterruptedly. Nor did he lower his tone in regard to the relations
   which he sustained to his Heavenly Father because his opponents charged
   him with claiming, by his words, Divine dignity and authority. On the
   contrary, he strengthened his assertions, taking care only to guard
   against their being perverted into a depreciation of the Father's
   dignity, by declaring that he laboured in unity with the Father, and in
   dependence upon him. "The Son," said he, "can do nothing of himself,
   but what he seeth the Father do." (He would have to deny himself as the
   Son of God, before he could act contrary to the will and example of the
   Father.)
     __________________________________________________________________

   [380] John, v., 17. This is not out of place, nor borrowed from Philo,
   as some suppose, nor a mere metaphysical proposition, but one belonging
   immediately to the religious consciousness. It is said, moreover, that
   Christ's transition (in verses 17, 19, seq.) from the Sabbath
   controversy to an exposition of his higher dignity is out of keeping
   with his character and mode of teaching, as exhibited in the first
   three Gospels. What would be said, then, if a transition like that
   recorded in Matthew, xii., 6, were recorded in John's Gospel?
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 145. The Discourse continued: Christ intimates his future greater
   Works.--His Judgment, and the Resurrection. (John, v., 20-29.)

   Christ proceeds to declare (v. 20) that the Father will show him
   greater works than these, i. e., than reviving the dead limbs of the
   paralytic. And what were these "greater works?" Without doubt, that
   work which Christ always describes as his greatest--as the aim of his
   whole life--the awakening, namely, of Divine life in the spiritually
   dead humanity; a work which nothing but the creative efficiency of God
   could accomplish. "That ye may marvel;" for those who then would not
   recognize the Son of God in the humble garb of the Son of Man would
   indeed, at a later period, be amazed to see works (wrought by one whom
   they believed to be dead) which must be acknowledged to be great in
   their moral effects, even if their intrinsic nature could not be
   understood.

   He describes these greater works more exactly, and points out, at the
   same time, the perfect power which he would have to do them in the
   words: "For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them,
   even so the Son quickeneth whom he will." The raising to life is as
   real in the latter clause as in the former. It depends upon His will,
   indeed; but his is no arbitrary will; and it follows that submission to
   his will is requisite before man can receive this Divine life. This,
   like that other passage--the wind bloweth where it listeth--breaks down
   the barriers within which Judaism inclosed the Theocracy and the
   Messianic calling.

   And because it depends upon the Son to give light to whom He will the
   whole judgment of mankind is intrusted to his hands. "For the Father
   judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son." The
   negative is joined to the positive. The judgment is brought about by
   men's bearing towards Him from whom alone they can receive life: "That
   all men should honour the Son, even as also they honour the Father." He
   that will not recognize the Divine mission of the Son dishonours the
   Father that sent him.

   The truth thus enunciated in general terms, Christ presented still more
   vividly, by applying it to his work then beginning, and which was to be
   carried on through all ages, until the final judgment and the
   consummation of the kingdom of God. "He that heareth my word, and
   believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not
   come into judgment, but is passed from death into life (the true,
   everlasting, Divine life). The hour is coming, and now is, when the
   (spiritually) dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they
   that hear shall live; for as the Father hath (the Source of Divine)
   life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have (Divine) life in
   himself. (If the Source of life, which is in God, had not been
   communicated to the human nature in him, then communion with him could
   not communicate the Divine life to others.) And hath given him
   authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of Man (as
   man he is to judge men)."

   His hearers, who saw him before their eyes in human form, were
   startled, doubtless, by these declarations. They looked for Messiah to
   establish a visible kingdom, with unearthly splendours, expecting it to
   be attended by an outward judgment; and Christ's announcement of a
   spiritual agency, that was to be coeval with the world's history, was
   beyond their apprehension. He referred them, therefore, to the final
   aim of the course which he was laying out for the human race, the final
   Messianic work of the Judgment and the general Resurrection; a work in
   itself, indeed, more familiar to them, but which, as ascribed to him,
   must have still more raised their wonder. "Marvel not at this; for the
   hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall Hear his
   voice, and shall come forth: they that have done good, to the
   resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the
   resurrection of damnation."
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 146. The Discourse continued: Christ Appeals to the Testimony of his
   Works. (John, v., 30-37.)

   Having thus unfolded his whole Messianic agency, embracing both the
   present and the future, Christ returns (v. 30) to the general
   proposition with which he had commenced (in v. 19). As he had applied
   his unity of action with the Father to his whole course, so now he
   applies it specifically to his judgment, which must, therefore, be just
   and true: "I can of mine own self do nothing; as I hear, I judge, and
   my judgment is just."

   His decision against his opponents must, therefore, be just and true
   also. They need not say (he told them) that his testimony was not
   trustworthy, because given of himself (v. 31), It was another that bore
   witness of him, whose testimony he knew to be unimpeachable (v. 32). He
   did not allude to John, whose light, which had been to them, as to
   children, a source of transitory [381] pleasure, they had not followed
   to the point whither it ought to have guided them; he did not allude to
   John's, nor, indeed, to any man's testimony, but to a greater, viz.,
   the works themselves, which the Father had given him to accomplish, and
   which formed the objective testimony to the Divinity of his labours:
   "The same works that I do, bear witness of me that the Father hath sent
   me; and the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of
   me" [382] (v. 36, 37).
     __________________________________________________________________

   [381] The words of John, v., 35, imply that the ministry of the Baptist
   belonged to the past, and they may have been spoken after his death;
   although the only necessary inference is, that he had ceased his public
   labours.

   [382] I cannot agree with those who (like Lücke, Comm. John, v., 37)
   refer the first clause of verse 37 to the testimony of the Father, as
   given in the Old Testament. The connexion demands a climax. But how
   could the testimony of God in the Scriptures be more direct than in the
   Divine agency of Christ itself? There could be no revelation more
   direct or powerful than this. The present tense ("the works bear
   witness") is used in verse 36, because Christ's agency was still going
   on, and to continue. But because part of it was already past, and a
   subject of contemplation, the perfect tense is used in verse 37 ("the
   Father hath borne witness"). The 37th verse looks back to the 36th, the
   ho pempsas me referring to the hoti ho pater me apestalken. The climax
   consists in the transfer of what has been said of the works, as
   testifying of God, to God himself, as testifying through the works.
   Then Christ shows why the Jews do not perceive this testimony, but
   always demand new proofs. They ask a testimony that can be heard and
   perceived by the carnal senses; and there is none such to be had. God
   reveals himself only in a spiritual way, to the indwelling Sense for
   the Divine. This last they have not; and the revelation of the Old
   Testament has always been to them a dead letter; the word of God has
   not penetrated their inner being. To this very naturally follows verse
   39, "Ye search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal
   life;" which life only Christ can impart. In opposition to the most
   recent commentators, I must think this the true connexion of the
   passage.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 147. The Discourse continued: Incapacity of the Jews to Understand
   the Testimony of God as given in the Scriptures. (John, v., 37-47.)

   It was precisely through the works, Christ told them, that the Father
   had testified to him. "But," continued he, in effect, " it is no wonder
   that you ask another testimony of me, seeing that you are destitute of
   the spiritual capacity which is necessary to perceive this one. It can
   not be perceived with the senses; [383] you have never heard with your
   ears the voice of the Father, nor seen with your eyes his form. God
   does not reveal himself to the fleshly sense; and in you no other sense
   is developed. And for this reason, too, you cannot understand the
   testimony of the Scriptures. The word of God, which you ought to have
   received within you from the Scriptures, dwells not in you; it has
   remained for you simply outward. Hence your searching of the
   Scriptures' is a lifeless thing. Thinking that, in the letter of the
   word, you have eternal life, you will not come unto Him who alone
   imparts that life, and to whom the Scriptures were only intended to
   lead; your dispositions and mine are directly contrary. I am concerned
   only for the honour of God; you for your own. With such a disposition,
   you cannot possibly believe in me. If another should come, in feeling
   like yourselves, and seek, in his own name, to lord it among you, him
   you will receive. [384] Moses himself, for whose honour you are
   zealous, but whose law you violate whenever it clashes with your
   selfish interests, will appear as your accuser. Did you truly believe
   Moses--not according to the letter merely, but also to the spirit--you
   would also believe in me." [385]

   Had the Pharisees been truly sincere in observing the law, the law
   would have been to them a paidagogos eis Christon (a schoolmaster to
   lead to Christ), and they would have discovered the element of prophecy
   even in the Pentateuch itself. Their adherence to the letter made them
   blind to the Messiah; but their carnal mind caused their adherence to
   the letter. Justly, then, could Christ say to them, "Ye strive for the
   honour of Moses, yet, in fact, you seek your own honour more than his,
   and, therefore, do not believe him; how, then, can you believe my
   words, which must appear altogether strange and new?"

   From this time the ruling Pharisaic party persecuted Christ as a most
   dangerous enemy, who exposed their sentiments with a power of truth not
   to be controverted. "Sabbath-breaking and blasphemy" were the pretexts
   on which they sought his condemnation.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [383] We may remember how the Jews were inclined to look for
   Theophanies (visible appearances of the Deity).

   [384] Cf. the predictions, in the synoptical Gospels, of false prophets
   that should deceive the people.

   [385] For Moses' highest calling was to prepare the way for Messiah.
   Both by the whole stage which he occupied in the developement of the
   Divine kingdom, and by individual prophetic intimations (like Deut.,
   xviii., 15; Gen., iii., 15, in their spiritual meaning), he had pointed
   out the Messiah.
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   [377] John, v., 1. The chronology of the life of Christ depends a good
   deal upon the question whether the feast mentioned John, v., 1, was or
   was not the Passover. The indefiniteness of the word "feast" in this
   passage, and the mention of the Passover itself in John, vi., 4, might
   lead us to infer that the feast of Purim was meant, which occurred a
   few weeks before the Passover; but every thing else is against this
   inference. The Purim feast did not require of the pious Jew anabainein
   eis Hierosoluma; had this feast, therefore, been in question, we might
   expect in John, v., 1, a statement of Christ's reason for going up to
   it, instead of waiting for the Passover. The most ancient
   interpretation favours the Passover (Iren., ii., 22), which feast was
   attended by most of the foreign Jews, and required the anabainein. The
   omission of the definite article in the text is not so important as
   some suppose. The text says en heorte--"it was feast"--further defined
   by anebe, showing that the chief feast is intended. Even in German [or
   English] we might say, loosely, "it was feast," omitting the article,
   as in the Greek. It is unlikely, too, that Christ, who had already
   roused the prejudices of the Pharisees against him, should have gone to
   the Purim feast, where he would have had to contend with them alone in
   Jerusalem, instead of continuing his labours undisturbed in Galilee
   until Passover. John's omission to say more of Christ's ministry up to
   the time of the next Passover (vi., 4) may be accounted for on the
   ground that it was not his purpose to recount his labours in Galilee,
   which were preserved in the circle of the ordinary traditions. The two
   first verses of chap. v. show how summary his account is. Only in chap.
   vii., 1, is an occasion offered for assigning the reason for Christ's
   stay in Galilee; we can the more readily account for the surprise of
   the brothers (vii., 3, seq.) if he spent the whole year and a half in
   Galilee.
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  CHAPTER IX.

  SECOND COURSE OF EXTENDED LABOURS IN GALILEE.

   SUCH was the affiliation of parties throughout Judea, that the
   opposition which the Pharisees stirred up against Christ at Jerusalem,
   soon made itself felt throughout the country. A new epoch of his
   ministry therefore began.

   The charge of heresy and blasphemy having spread into Galilee, Christ
   was led to unfold, in a connected discourse, the relation which existed
   between the old stand-point of the law and the new era of the kingdom
   of God introduced by himself. His exposition was adapted to the
   capacities of his hearers at the time, and, therefore, did not include
   the circle of truths which was afterward to be revealed, through the
   Holy Spirit, in the progress of the kingdom. This discourse was the

   SERMON ON THE MOUNT.
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   Introduction.

   § 148. (1.) Place and Circumstances of the Delivery of the Sermon, (2.)
   Its Subject-matter, viz.: the Kingdom of God as the Aim of the Old
   Dispensation; (3.) The Two Editions, viz.: Matthew's and Luke's; (4.)
   Its Pervading Rebuke of Carnal Conceptions of the Messiahship.

   (1.)

   In the course of the summer, as Jesus was returning from one of his
   extensive preaching-tours in Galilee, multitudes followed him,
   attracted by his words and works. Toward evening they came near
   Capernaum and a few of the company hastened thither in advance, while
   the greater number remained, in order to enter the city in company with
   the Master. The multitude stopped at the foot of a mountain near the
   town; but Jesus, seeking solitude, went higher up the ascent. The next
   morning he took his place upon the declivity of the mountain, and,
   drawing his twelve disciples into a narrower circle about him, [386]
   delivered the discourse. It was intended for all such as felt drawn to
   follow him; to teach them what they had to expect, and what would be
   expected of them, in becoming his disciples; and to expose the false
   representations that had been made upon both these points.

   (2.)

   The connected system of truths unfolded in the discourse was intended
   to exhibit to the people the kingdom of God as the aim of the Old
   Dispensation; as the consummation for which that dispensation prepared
   the way. The Sermon on the Mount, therefore, forms the point of
   transition from the Law to the Gospel; Christianity is exhibited in it
   as Judaism spiritualized and transfigured. The idea of the kingdom of
   God is the prominent one; the person of the Theocratic king is
   subordinate thereto. The discourse is made up of many sententious
   passages, calculated, separately, to impress the memory of the hearers,
   and remain as fruitful germs in their hearts; but, on the other hand,
   bound together as parts of an organic whole. This was admirably adapted
   to preserve the discourse, in its essential features, uncorrupted in
   transmission.

   (3.)

   Accordingly, we find the two editions (Matt., v., vi., vii.; and Luke,
   vi., 20-29), each giving the body of the discourse, with beginning,
   middle, and end; although they certainly originated in different
   traditions and from different hearers.

   Comparing the two copies, we find Matthew's to be more full, as well as
   more accurate in the details; it also gives obvious indications of its
   Hebrew origin. But the original document of Matthew passed through the
   hands of the Greek editor, who has inserted other expressions of Christ
   allied to those in the organic connexion of the discourse, but spoken
   on other occasions. Assuming that what is common to Matthew and Luke
   forms the body of the sermon, we have a standard for deciding what
   passages do, and what do not, belong to it as a connected whole.

   (4.)

   There runs through the whole discourse, implied where it is not
   directly expressed, a rebuke of the carnal tendency of the Jewish mind,
   as displayed in its notions of the Messianic kingdom, and of the
   requisites for participating therein; the latter, indeed, depending
   entirely upon the former. It was most important to convince men that
   meetness for the kingdom depended not upon alliance to the Jewish stem,
   but upon alliance of the heart to God. Their mode of thinking had to be
   modified accordingly. A direct attack upon the usual conceptions of the
   nature and manifestation of the kingdom would have been repelled by
   those who were unprepared for it; but to show what dispositions of
   heart it required, was to strike at the root of error. In his mode of
   expression, indeed, Christ adhered to the Jewish forms (e.g., in
   stating the beatitudes); but his words were carefully adapted and
   varied, so as to guard against sensuous interpretations. The truth was
   clearly to be seen through the veil.
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   [386] If Luke, vi., 13, is intended to recite the choosing of the
   Apostles, it is clear that it is done only incidentally, and not in
   chronological connexion. Luke does not say that the discourse was
   specially directed to the Apostles, nor is there a trace of internal
   evidence to that effect. The discourses of Christ that were specially
   intended to teach the Apostles the duties of their calling have a very
   different tone.
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   I. The Beatitudes.

   § 149. Moral Requisites for Entering the Kingdom of God: (1.) Poverty
   of Spirit; (2.) Meekness; (3.) Hungering and Thirsting after
   Righteousness.

   (1.)

   Glancing at the poor, who probably comprised most of his congregation,
   Christ says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom
   of heaven. Happy are they who feel the spiritual wretchedness of the
   Theocratic nation; who long after the true riches of the kingdom; who
   have not stifled the higher cravings of their souls by worldly
   delights, by confidence in their Jewish descent, by the pride of
   Pharisaic righteousness and wisdom; but are conscious of their
   spiritual poverty, of their lack of the true riches of the Spirit and
   the kingdom." [387] Such are they to whom the kingdom of God belongs;
   "theirs," says Christ, "is the kingdom of heaven;" as, in certain
   respects, a present possession.

   (2.)

   As the pride of the Pharisee is joined with sternness, so poverty of
   spirit is attended by meekness and humility. In the Sermon, "blessed
   are the poor in spirit" is followed by [388] "blessed are the meek, for
   they shall inherit the earth." A remarkable contrast: Dominion is
   promised to that precise disposition of heart which is most averse to
   it. A contrast, too, which serves to point out the peculiar kind of
   world-dominion promised, as distinguished from the prevailing Jewish
   ideas on the subject. According to the latter, the sceptre of the
   Messianic reign over the heathen nations was to be a sceptre of iron;
   according to the former, the "gentle-spirited" are to obtain possession
   of the earth.

   It is true, the expression, "shall inherit the earth," is included
   (like the other beatitudes) in the more general one, "theirs is the
   kingdom of heaven*' it is doubtless true, also, that the phrase was not
   uncommon among the Jews; but we are not, therefore, obliged to conclude
   that the thought involved in it is only the general one of" the
   blessedness of the kingdom of God." The expression has a significance
   of its own. The "inheritance of the earth" is that world-dominion which
   Christians, as organs of the Spirit of Christ, are ever more and more
   to obtain, as the kingdom of God shall win increasing sway over mankind
   and the relations of society, until, in its final consummation, the
   whole earth shall own its dominion; and the Power which is to gain this
   world-dominion is Meekness; the quiet might of gentleness: it is with
   which God's kingdom is to subjugate the world.

   (3.)

   Christ, then, further developes the characteristics of poverty of
   spirit in the beatitude: "Blessed are they that mourn (that are
   conscious of inward woe), for they shall be comforted." That this
   mourning is not grief for mere outward afflictions, appears from the
   next: "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness,
   for they shall be filled" (shall find their wants supplied in the
   communion of the kingdom of God).
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   [387] "Poverty of spirit" includes all that we have here expressed. De
   Wette (in Heidelb. Studien, vol. iii., pt. 2, in his Comment. de morte
   Jesu Christi expiatoria, in his Christliche Littenlehre, pt. i., p.
   246, and in his Commentary, in loc.) has done much to develope the idea
   genetically. He has rightly called attention to the derivation of the
   phrase from the Old Testament views. "The humble citizen of the fallen
   Theocracy, deeply feeling the misery of the Theocratic nation, bruised
   in spirit, and hoping only in God, is poor in spirit,' in contrast with
   the haughty blasphemer, who has no such feeling: 'vyvn ,nv, in contrast
   with rs; Isa., lxi., 1." Applying this spiritually, with reference to
   the inner life we naturally infer that the ptochoi to pneumati are
   "those who feel their want of that which alone can satisfy and enrich
   the Spirit," and so all the rest that we have intimated. The difference
   in these explanations--easily harmonized--consists only in the
   reference of the idea to its genetic historical developement in the
   one, and to the objective Christian meaning, which holds good for all
   ages. Conf. James (i., 9, 10), whose epistle accords in many points
   with the Sermon on the Mount, and follows its stand-point in the
   developement of Christianity.

   [388] In the order of the Beatitudes, I follow the text of Lachmann,
   which gives them in s connexion not only logical, but corresponding
   with their aim as instruction.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 150. Moral Result of Entering the Kingdom of God, viz.: The "Pure in
   Heart see God."

   The preceding beatitudes point out the moral requisites for entering
   into the kingdom of God; but it must not be inferred that they are
   demanded only on entrance into it, and no longer. Rather, as our
   appropriation of the kingdom can never be a finished act while we
   remain on earth, must its moral requisites continue, nay, continually
   grow in strength. We can discern already, in their connexion, the
   peculiar essence of Christianity. The Christian it conscious of no
   moral or spiritual ability of his own, needing only to be rightly
   applied to gain the wished-for end; on the contrary he feels that he
   has, of himself, nothing but want and weakness, insufficiency and
   wretchedness. Already Christ announces redemption as his own peculiar
   work.

   Presupposing, then, that those who are endowed with these requisites
   will enter his kingdom, satisfy their spiritual need, and share in his
   saving power, Christ describes them, in consequence, as "pure in heart"
   (pure, however, not according to the standard of legal piety). And to
   those who possess this purity he promises that "they shall see God."
   They shall have perfect communion with Him, and that complete and
   intuitive knowledge of his nature which, founded in such communion,
   forms the bliss of everlasting life.

   This promise refers, it is true, to that full communion with God which
   shall be realized in eternal life, or in the consummation of the
   kingdom of God only. But this by no means excludes its application to
   that participation in the kingdom which begins during our earthly life;
   just as the preceding promises were to be gradually and progressively
   fulfilled until their consummation. The prominent connexion of thought
   is, that the knowledge of Divine things must spring from the life, from
   that purity of heart which fits men for communion with God that in our
   life on earth we are to be prepared, by purification of heart, for
   complete Divine knowledge. For the rest, this promise leads over to
   those which relate to the future everlasting life (the consummation of
   the kingdom).
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   § 151. Moral Relations of the Members of the Kingdom to their Fellow
   men: viz., They are "Peace-makers," and "Persecuted."

   Christ next describes certain relations in which the members of his
   kingdom stand to others. Inspired by love and meekness, they seek peace
   with all men. But as they serve a holy kingdom, and do battle with the
   prevalent wickedness of men, they cannot escape persecutions. Here,
   again, Christ dissipates the hopes with which the Jews, expecting a
   Messiah, are wont to flatter themselves. Instead of promising to his
   followers a kingdom of earthly glory and prosperity, he predicts for
   them manifold persecutions, such as the prophets of old had suffered
   for the cause of God.

   They shall suffer "for righteousness" sake; but he then passes over,
   from the general idea of the kingdom (righteousness--holiness) to his
   own person: "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, &c., for My
   sake." Their very relations to Him were to draw upon them all manner of
   slanders and calumnies; thus presupposing that the prevailing Jewish
   opinions would be opposed by his disciples. [389]

   The accompanying beatitudes are also full of meaning. "Blessed are the
   peace-makers, for they shall be called [390] the children of God," that
   is, shall be invested with the dignity and the rights of children of
   God. This promise refers partly to the present life, and partly, in its
   highest meaning, to the future. [391] "Blessed are they which are
   persecuted, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." . . . "For great is
   your reward in heaven."

   The "reward" may be understood, even apart from what Christ has said
   elsewhere, from the connexion of this discourse itself. [392] The first
   beatitudes show that we have no claim to the kingdom but our humble
   wants and susceptible hearts; the idea of merit, therefore, claiming a
   reward as its due, is wholly out of the question. The reward is a
   gracious gift. But when grace has admitted us into the kingdom, our
   participation in its "blessedness" depends upon our bearing in the
   struggles to which our membership in the kingdom exposes us on earth.
   The "reward," therefore, designates the relation between the Divine
   gifts and our subjective worth; the gifts are proportioned to the work
   which the members of the kingdom, as such, have to do. [393] It is
   obvious, then, that no external reward is meant--no acting with a view
   to such--for these ideas are foreign to the nature of the kingdom of
   God itself.

   What, then, is the "reward?" It is, that the wants of our higher nature
   shall be satisfied; that we shall enjoy perfect communion with God,
   and, in consequence, perfect knowledge of him; that we shall have, and
   exercise, the perfect privilege of sons of God. It is nothing but the
   perfect realization of what is implied in "the kingdom," "the children
   of God," "the Divine life." In our struggles for the kingdom, we must
   direct our eye to the goal of the consummation; must feel that we
   struggle for no vain ideal. The two expressions "reward in heaven," and
   "inherit the earth," mutually illustrate each other; the latter is to
   be a spiritual, and not a carnal, Jewish, world-dominion; the former
   does not betoken a locality, but a perfected communion of life with
   God, i. e., a Divine life brought to perfection.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [389] This agrees very well with the point of time to which we have
   referred the Sermon on the Mount, i. e., the period when the Pharisees
   began to persecute Christ and his disciples. Moreover, his foresight at
   that time of the hatred he would excite, and the persecutions his
   followers would suffer, combined with the fact that throughout the
   discourse there is not the slightest hint of a purpose to triumph over
   his foes by an overwhelming miraculous power--nay, that the whole
   spirit of the discourse is opposed to such a purpose--agrees very well
   with his anticipating, at the time, that he should die in fulfilling
   his calling.

   [390] The name is the outward sign of the thing--its manifestation and
   confirmation.

   [391] Indicated in klethesontai, especially.

   [392] Cf. De Wette's excellent remarks on Matt., v., 12.

   [393] Cf. Nitzch's striking observations on the Divine Justice and
   Rewards, System der Christlichen Lehre, p. 115, 2d ed.
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   II. Influence of the Members of the Kingdom of God in Renewing the
   World.

   § 152. The Disciples of Christ the "Light" and "Salt" of the Earth.

   Christ then points out to his disciples the regenerating influence
   which the qualities before described must exert when exhibited to the
   world. His followers are "the light of the world," which, where it
   exists, cannot be hid, but must shine forth. They are to become "the
   salt" of mankind. As salt preserves from decay and corruption every
   thing to which it is applied, so Christians are to incite mankind to
   live according to their high destiny; are to impart freshness to
   humanity, and to preserve it from the corruption into which it
   naturally passes, by the power of their higher principle of life. The
   course of the human race, apart from Christianity, is always downward;
   all its civilization ends in barbarism. It is for Christians to
   preserve the spiritual life of mankind fresh and undecayed.

   But if the salt lose its saltness--becomes stale and
   worthless--wherewith shall it be salted? Wherewith shall the Divine
   life be preserved in those to whom Christianity, the source of the
   reanimating, freshening power, has been dead? In that case, those that
   should stand upon the highest point of human developement will sink to
   the lowest; it is good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden
   under foot of men Christ knew that the new element of life which,
   through him, was given to humanity, had power to keep it ever fresh and
   living; but ho knew also the impure influences to which it would be
   liable. These words of his declare the fate of Christianity, whenever
   it degenerates into dead forms and outward show. History affords the
   fullest and saddest commentary upon this prophetic passage.
     __________________________________________________________________

   III. The Law of Christian Life the Fulfilment of the Old Law.

   § 153. Fulfilling of the Law and the Prophets: (1.) General View; (2.)
   Particular Exposition; (3.) Demand for a Higher Obedience than that of
   the Pharisees. (Matt., v., 17-20.)

   (1.)

   After commanding his disciples to become the " salt" of the earth, and
   to "let their light so shine before men that they might see their good
   works, and glorify their Father in heaven," it remained for him to set
   vividly before them, by specific illustrations, the mode in which they
   were to let their light shine through their actions; which would
   distinguish them palpably from those who then passed for holy men among
   the Jews.

   This gave him occasion to refute the charge spread abroad by the
   Pharisees, that he aimed to subvert the authority of the law. But,
   instead of confining himself to a mere refutation, he took a course
   conforming with the dignity of his character, and justified himself in
   a positive way, by unfolding the relation in which his New Creation
   stood to the stand-point of the Old Covenant. He incorporated this,
   moreover, very closely with the practical purpose of the whole
   discourse (v. 17, seq.). He characterizes the new law of life by
   distinct and separate traits. He proclaims the new law as the
   fulfilment of the old. For since the old law proceeds from the
   commandment "to love God above all things, and our neighbour as
   ourselves," it contains the eternal law of the kingdom of God; and only
   where love rules the whole life can we secure this object, which the
   whole religious law of the Old Testament aimed at, but could not
   realize. "On these two commandments (says Christ, Matt., xxii., 40)
   hang all the law and the prophets," i. e., the whole Old Testament.
   They could not be fulfilled from the Old Testament stand-point, because
   men needed, in order to fulfil them, a new life, proceeding from the
   spirit of love; and this Christ came to impart. He presupposes its
   existence in those for whom he communicates the new law.

   Moreover, although the everlasting Theocratic law could be derived from
   the two commandments specified, yet its spirit, tied down to the
   stand-point of the political Theocracy, and cribbed in its contracted
   forms could not attain its free and full developement. But Christ, by
   freeing it from this bondage of forms, brought it into complete
   developement, not only in the consciousness, but in the practical life.
   In this respect, then, he fulfilled the law; and this was the object
   for which he appeared. [394]

   (2.)

   Christ begins, therefore, by saying, Think not that I am come to
   destroy the law and the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to
   fufil. [395] By this we are to understand the whole of the Old
   Testament religion; he came to annul neither of its chief divisions, as
   his general mission was (last clause of v. 17 [396] ) "not to destroy,
   but to fulfil." He adds, in a still stronger averment (v. 18), that not
   one jot or tittle of the law should lose its validity, but that all
   have its fulfilment, until the consummation of the kingdom of God.
   [397] This last will be the great "fulfilment," for which all previous
   stages of the kingdom were but preparatory.

   Here, again, it is shown that, in this sense, "destroying" and
   "fulfilling" are correlative ideas. The consummation of the kingdom
   will be the "fufilling" of all which was contained, in germ, in the
   preparatory stand-point; it will, on the other hand, be the
   "destroying" of all that was, in itself, only preparatory. In pointing
   to this consummation of the kingdom of God as the final "fulfilling" of
   all, Christ at the same time fixes the final end for the fulfilment of
   all the promises connected with the beatitudes. Thus the connexion with
   the words sp( ken before is closely preserved. [398]

   (3.)

   Passing from the Old Testament in general to the "law" in particular,
   and applying to it the general proposition that he had advanced, Christ
   commands his disciples (v. 19, 20) to fulfil the law in a far higher
   sense than those did who were at that time considered patterns of
   righteousness. In proportion as each fulfilled the law was he to have a
   higher or a lower place in the developement of the kingdom (v. 19). The
   principle of life which they all possessed in common (the essential
   requisite for fulfilling any of the demands of the sermon) by no means
   precluded differences of degree; it might penetrate one more thoroughly
   than another, and display itself in a more (or less) complete
   fulfilling of the law. Christ illustrates the same doctrine in the
   parable of the Sower.

   Such, then, and so superior is the fulfilling of the law which Christ
   requires of all who would belong to his kingdom: Except your
   righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and
   Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of Heaven. [399]
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   [394] Cf. p. 91, 92.

   [395] Gfrörer asserts ("Heilige Sage," ii., 84, seq.) that these words
   were not Christ's, but were more likely put into his mouth by the later
   Judaists in their controversies with Paul; an opinion adopted also by
   Dr. Roeth (Epist. ad Hebr. non ad Hebraeos, sed ad Christianos genere
   gentiles Scriptam esse, Francof., 1836, p. 214). The former writer
   thinks that these striking words, had they existed, would have been
   used against Paul by the strenuous advocates of the continued validity
   of the Mosaic law; which, he infers, they did not do, from the silence
   of Paul's epistles on the subject. We are compelled directly to
   contradict this assertion; it is refuted sufficiently by the close
   connexion of the words with the current of thought in the context. Paul
   understood their import too well to find any embarrassment from them in
   his controversies with the Judaists. If they were quoted against him,
   he refuted the false use made of them by his developement of the whole
   doctrine, rather than by separate and detailed quotation, as was his
   custom in controversy.

   [396] De Wette, in explaining the 17th verse, attempts to prove, from
   Matt., vii., 12, and xxii., 40, that the "law and prophets" were
   conceived, also, as the source of the moral law, and deems that the
   words are here to be taken only in that sense, with no reference at all
   to the prophetic element of the Old Testament. I cannot agree with him.
   Even the passages which he adduces do not refer exclusively to the
   moral contents of the Old Testament, but to the Old Testament in its
   whole nature and extent. Christ designates--as the end and aim to which
   the whole Old Testament tends--only the quintessence of the whole
   Theocracy, religious as well as moral, viz.: the spirit of love; as
   also the end and aim of Redemption is to make love the ruling principle
   of man's nature. De Wette argues that "no one of his hearers could have
   imagined that Christ wished to be received as Messiah in opposition to
   all the prophecies of the Prophets; so he speaks afterward only of the
   fulfilling of the law." Now the question is, was Christ speaking
   against a misunderstanding of his disciples, or against an accusation
   of his enemies? If the latter, as we suppose, he had good call to prove
   that his ministry was opposed neither to the "law" nor to the
   "prophets," and that he would show himself to be Messiah by fulfilling
   both. His subsequently making one part (the law) particularly prominent
   is no proof that he had not both in his mind before. Moreover, even De
   Wette has to admit that the prophetic element is alluded to in v. 18.
   We infer, therefore, that both "law" and "prophets" are referred to
   from the beginning.

   [397] Cf. Tholuck on v. 18.

   [398] By assuming this relation to the law and the prophets, Christ
   gave himself out as Messiah. How untenable, then, is Strauss's
   assertion that at that time Jesus had not decidedly presented himself
   as Messiah! We have shown that the passage is too closely bound up with
   the organism of the whole sermon to be considered an interpolation.

   [399] The gar in verse 20 obviously introduces a confirmation of the
   preceding verse; and this opposes Olshauser's view of the connexion,
   although he has well marked the distinction between verses 19 and 20.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 154. "Fufilling of the Law" in the Higher Sense.--General Contrast
   between the Juridical and Moral stand-points.

   In verses 22-48 Christ illustrates, in a number of special examples,
   the sense in which the law was, not "destroyed," but " fulfilled"
   through him; also the sense in which the members of his kingdom were to
   signalize themselves by zeal in fulfilling the law; and also (but here
   subordinately) the difference between their righteousness--answering to
   their position in the new developement of the Divine kingdom--and the
   seeming righteousness of the Pharisees.

   In these illustrations he contrasts the eternal Theocratic law with the
   political Theocratic law; the absolute law with the particular law of
   Moses. Although the former lay at the foundation of the latter, it
   could not, in that limited and contracted system, unfold and display
   itself; and it could not be fully developed until the shell, the
   restraining form, which had cribbed and confined the spirit, was broken
   and destroyed. [400] The opposition is between the law as bearing only
   upon the overt act, and the law as bearing upon the heart, and
   fulfilled in it; between the juridical and the moral stand-point.

   We infer, then, as a rule in interpreting the following separate
   precepts, that outward acts are to be taken as vivid exhibitions of a
   required inward disposition, and are to be understood literally only
   when they are the necessary expression of such a state of heart.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [400] I agree with the Greek and Socinian interpreters in thinking that
   Christ means here not merely the Pharisaic interpretations of the law,
   but also the legal stand-point in general. This follows necessarily,
   (1) from the connexion as we have unfolded it; (2) from the fact that
   he quotes the commandments in their literal Old Testament form. (Even
   "thou shalt hate thy enemy" (v. 43), though not found literally in the
   commandment, is implied in the preceding positive commandment, as
   limited by the particular Theocratic stand point); (3) because errhethe
   tois archaiois (v. 33) cannot well be interpreted otherwise than "it
   has been said to the men of old" (the fathers, hence during the Mosaic
   promulgation of the law). Had Christ referred to the statutes of the
   elders (which would not agree so well with the whole form of the
   expression either), he would have used presbuterois, as also De Wette
   acknowledges. Tholuck's argument, of an antithesis between archaiois
   and ego is not to the point; the connexion does not require such an
   antithesis. The opposition is not in the subject of the commandment,
   but in its conception. Christ recognized the voice of God in the Old
   Testament, and Moses as sent of God; but he wished to oppose the
   fulfilling form of the new legislation to the narrow and deficient form
   of Old Testament legislation, which belonged to a temporary and
   preparatory epoch. Had Christ had the subject of the commandment in
   view, tois archaiois would naturally have preceded errhethe; while the
   present collocation of the words indicates that the opposition is
   instituted between what was said in earlier times and what was then
   said by him. The prominence that he assigns to the Pharisaical
   conception and application of the law connects very well with this
   opposition to the old law in general; for the Pharisees especially
   refused to admit the spirit to pass from the old law and find its
   fulfilment in the new, but adhered to the letter in a one-sided and
   exclusive way. Pharisaism, in a word, was the culmination of the old
   stand-point, adhering to the letter, and estranged from the spirit.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 155. Fulfilling of the Law in the Higher Sense.--Particular Examples,
   viz., (1.) Murder; (2.) Adultery; (3.) Divorce; (4.) Perjury; (5.)
   Revenge; (6.) National Exclusiveness.

   (1.)

   The law condemns the murderer to death. But the Gospel sentences even
   him who is angry [401] with his brother. The passion which, when
   full-blown, causes murder, is punished in the bud of revengeful
   feeling, whether concealed in the heart or shown in abusive words [402]
   (v. 22).

   (2.) The law of the particular Theocracy condemns the adulterer. But
   the law of Christ condemns the germ of evil passion in the husband, as
   the source of adultery [403] (v. 27).

   (3.) As Christ thus already considers marriage as the union, in part,
   of two persons of different sexes, he takes occasion to develope still
   further his opposition to the stand-point of the Mosaic law in regard
   to this relation. [404]

   The Mosaic law, intended for a rude people, who were to be cultivated
   by degrees, allowed divorce; seeking to place some restraints, at
   least, upon unlimited wilfulness. Political legislation must adapt
   itself to the material on which it has to act. [405] But the law of
   Christ sets forth the moral idea of marriage in its full strictness,
   and demands that its communion of life shall be indissoluble. Nothing
   but the actual adultery of one of the parties can dissolve the tie, and
   leave the innocent one at liberty to marry. [406]

   (4.) The Mosaic law prohibits perjury, and maintains the sanctity of
   oaths. But the law of Christ demands that yes and no shall take the
   place of all other confirmation. "Whatsoever is more than these [407]
   cometh of evil," i. e., testifies to a want of that disposition of
   heart which every member of his kingdom ought to possess; a want of
   that thorough truthfulness which makes every other affirmation
   superfluous, and of the mutual confidence that depends upon it.

   (5.) The Mosaic law, moreover, corresponding to the civil law, admits
   of retaliation, like for like. But the law of Christ so completely
   shuts out the desire of revenge, that it creates in its subjects a
   disposition to suffer all injury rather than to return evil for evil
   (v. 39).

   (6.) The old law enjoined the "love of one's neighbour;" but none were
   regarded as "neighbours" but members of the Theocratic community, and,
   therefore, the law implied "hatred" of the enemies of that community as
   enemies of the kingdom of God. The law of Christ, on the contrary,
   enjoins love without limit; [408] a love that takes into its wide
   embrace enemies and persecutors, yea, even those who, as enemies of the
   kingdom of God, persecute its members; a love which not only impels us
   to do them good, but is so absolutely exclusive of even the germ of
   hatred, as to urge us to pray for them. The children of God are to be,
   like their heavenly Father, perfect in love (v. 45, 48). And the
   perfect love of God does not exclude His enemies. How perfect, indeed,
   must His love be, to seek the redemption even of His enemies!
     __________________________________________________________________

   [401] I must agree with those who reject eike (v. 22). Thus to lessen
   the force of the law certainly does not harmonize with the connexion.

   [402] It seems to me that the words "hos d' an eipe to adelpho autou;
   rhaka, enochos estai to sunedrio;" should be taken away from this
   passage. Apart from these, the connexion is perfect and obvious.
   Kri'sis = judgment, condemnation, its common meaning in the New
   Testament, and so geenna, with another word. Degrees of violation of
   the Theocratic law nowhere appear in this connexion; on the contrary,
   it teaches that the smallest violation, as well as the greatest,
   involves a disposition of heart opposed to the kingdom of God, which
   demands holiness of heart. Reviling is purposely put side by side with
   murder, bemuse the disposition that inspires the former leads, when
   further expanded, to the latter; the reviler is a murderer before that
   bar which looks only at the heart. A gradation between rhaka and moros
   violates both the aim and connexion of the discourse, and seems
   entirely unbecoming its dignity. Moreover, we should then have to look
   for a gradation in the punishment, which, again, is inconsistent with
   the connexion. The "Sanhedrim" brings us before the Jewish civil
   jurisdiction--the politico-Theocratical stand-point--the very thing to
   which Christ opposes himself throughout the discourse. And how is
   geenna, in that case, to be distinguished from kri'sis? In what
   relation does the mention of the Sanhedrim stand to kri'sis and geenna?
   Things entirely incompatible are here brought together. All attempts to
   solve the difficulty lead to forced and untenable interpretation. The
   fact that rhaka means just the same thing as more, confirms the
   supposition that the clause in question was introduced by the Greek
   translator as another version of the following, and original, clause in
   Matthew's Hebrew.

   [403] Verses 23-26 are among those expressions of Christ which we
   suppose to have been uttered elsewhere, and transferred to this
   connexion from their affinity of subject. (Cf. v. 25, 26, with Luke,
   xii., 58, 59.) So of v. 29, 30; Christ is treating of the mere
   legislation, not of the element of self-discipline as such.

   [404] Polygamy was not yet wholly forbidden among the Jews, as appears
   from Josephus. Speaking in reference to the polygamy of Herod, he says:
   pa'trion gar en tauto plei'osin emin sunoikein (Archaeol., xviii., 1,
   2). And Justin casts up to the Jewish doctors that, even in his time,
   "oi'tines kai mechre nun kai tessoras kai pente echein umas gunaikas
   e'kaston sunchorousi" (Dial., c. Tryph. Jud., ed. Colon., 363, E).
   Still we may infer that the Jewish schools in Christ's time recognized
   monogamy as the only lawful marriage, from his saying nothing expressly
   on the subject, while the precepts that he delivers presuppose it.

   [405] The sklerokardia tou laou. Matt., xix., 8.

   [406] I cannot agree with those who would make this law an outward one
   by legislation, the discourse aims at the heart, and its precepts can
   be fulfilled in the life only from the heart. They hold good only for
   those who recognize Christ as their Lord from free conviction, and are
   led by his Spirit; and who, therefore, find in them only the outward
   expression of the inward Spirit. The state can no more realize these
   laws than it can make Christians or create holiness. Its laws must be
   adapted to the sklerokardia tou laou. The attempt to accomplish, by
   legislative sanction, what redemption alone can do, would create a sort
   of stunted, Chinese life, but nothing better. Precisely because the
   Sermon on the Mount is the Magna Charta of the kingdom of God, it is
   not fit for a state law. On the other hand, I differ from those who
   suppose that Christ alluded only to the then existing form of Jewish
   divorce, which did not require legal investigation and decision. The
   moral idea which Christ developed had a more than temporary bearing.

   [407] The formulas in v. 34, 35, 36 (not properly oaths, as they do not
   take God to witness) illustrate still more forcibly Christ's purpose to
   banish from his kingdom every affirmation. but yes and no. Had he not
   mentioned them, his hearers might have thought that he referred only to
   the immediate invocation of Jehovah to witness, which all pious Jews
   sought to avoid, and instead of which these very formulas, which helped
   those that were disposed to gloss over a perjury, were, in fact,
   invented. This is enough to refute what Göschel says (über den Eid,
   Berlin, 1837, p. 118, 119), in order to prove that Christ's precept was
   not directed against oaths in general. There was no necessity that he
   should define the proper sense of an oath; every body understood it;
   but it would have been by no means so obvious to his hearers that he
   condemned also the common formulas, invented out of reverence for the
   Divine name (Philo, De Special., § 1). He condemns them especially for
   the reason that it is inconsistent with the condition of dependent
   creatures to appeal to the creature in confirming an averment. There
   remained nothing but the true oath--the appeal to Almighty God--and
   this, also, he forbade; yes and no were to suffice. Göschel says (p.
   116), "As Christ came not to abolish, but to fulfil the law, the law of
   the oath was not to be abolished, but fulfilled." True; just as the
   law, "Thou shalt not kill," is fulfilled by avoiding emotions of
   hatred; just as the law of the Sabbath is fulfilled in consecrating
   every day to God. So yes and no are bonds as sacred for the Christian
   as an oath to other men.

   [408] The First Epistle to the Corinthians (as Rückert has remarked)
   contains many passages, the germs of which are to be found in the
   Sermon on the Mount. Cf. iv., 8-13; vi., 7; vii., 10. Paul may also
   have borrowed from it these words of Christ, which were preserved for
   us only by his means, Acts, xx., 35, "It is more blessed to give than
   to receive." This saying expresses the disposition which, in Matt., v.,
   40-42, is set forth in outward acts; the very nature of love, happy in
   communicating. How beautifully does this saying reveal the whole heart
   of Christ, whose whole aim was to impart to others from the fulness of
   his heavenly riches!
     __________________________________________________________________

   IV. True Religion contrasted with the Mock Piety of the Pharisees.

   § 156. (1.) Alms, Prayer, Fasting; (2.) Rigid Judgment of Self, Mild
   Judgment of others; (3.) Test of Sincerity in Seeking after
   Righteousness. (Matt., 1-18; vii., 1-5.)

   (1.)

   After setting forth the opposition between legal and true holiness,
   Christ passes on to contrast the latter with the false spiritual
   tendencies at that time existing; to contrast that piety which attaches
   no importance either to its own works or to the show of them, with the
   mock religion of the Pharisees, which did every thing for show. It is
   the contrast, in a word, between being and seeming; and no words could
   express it more strikingly than "when thou doest thine alms, let not
   thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth. So far from doing good
   that others may see it, thou must not even think of it as thy own work;
   do it, in childish simplicity, from thy loving spirit, as if thou
   couldst not do otherwise." This principle Christ applies to three
   separate acts, in which the Pharisees were specially wont to make a
   pious display, viz.: Alms, prayer, and fasting [409] (vi., 1-18).

   (2.)

   The sin which is next [410] condemned (vii., 1-5) springs from the same
   root as the one just mentioned. The Pharisees judged others severely,
   but were quite indulgent to themselves, and, indeed, never rightly
   examined themselves. He that knows what true righteousness is, and
   feels his own want of it, will be a rigid censor of his own life, but a
   mild and gentle judge of others. ["And why beholdest thou the mote that
   is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine
   own? Thou hypocrite! first cast out the beam that is in thine own eye,
   and then shalt thou see clearly to cast the mote out of thy
   brother's."]

   (3.) The Saviour then [411] gives (vii., 12) a criterion to distinguish
   true from Pharisaic righteousness. "Therefore, all things whatsoever ye
   would that men should do unto you, do ye also unto them; for this is
   the law and the prophets." (If you are striving sincerely after the
   essence of righteousness, you will place yourself in the condition of
   others, and act towards them as you would wish them, in such case, to
   have acted towards you.)

   It was certainly not Christ's purpose here to set up a rule of morals
   contradictory to the whole spirit of the rest of the sermon, which
   places the seat of true morality in the heart. Mere outward action,
   according to this rule, might spring from diverse dispositions, e.g.,
   the mere prudence of selfishness might lead us to observe it, in order
   to get like for like. But, placing it in connexion with what has gone
   before, and making love the mainspring of our actions, the rule affords
   a touchstone of their character. And when our actions stand this test,
   Christ says that "the law and the prophets (i. e., the life and essence
   of piety to which they point) are fulfilled;" for, as he elsewhere
   says, "love is the fulfilling of the law."

   V. Exhortations and Warnings to the Children of the Kingdom.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [409] Since Christ specifies these three, in order to apply to them the
   general principle of v. 1 ten dikaiosunen me poiein emprosthen ton
   anthropon), we infer that it was foreign to his purpose to give an
   exposition of the nature of prayer here, which confirms our view that
   the "Lord's Prayer" is not here in its proper chronological connexion.

   [410] Matt., vii., 1, stands in a close logical connexion with vi., 18,
   and the preceding verses; and is also given by Luke, proving that it
   belongs to the original body of the discourse, but vi., 19-34 [not
   given by Luke in this connexion] appears as obviously not so. So of
   5-11, below.

   [411] The oun in verse 12, as well as the course of thought, connect it
   with v. 5.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 157. Exhortation to Self-denial.--Caution against Seducers. (Matt.,
   vii., 13-24.)

   Christ had now pointed out the moral requisites for entrance into his
   kingdom, and the moral qualities which must mark its members. He now
   warns them (v. 13) against the delusion of expecting to secure its
   blessings in any easier way than he had pointed out, or hoping to avoid
   struggle and self-denial; [412] and cautions them against false
   teachers, who would lead them into such delusions, and draw them out of
   the right way. First, he gives a warning against such as shall falsely
   pretend to a Divine call as teachers and guides, inspired by
   self-seeking alone. "Wolves in sheep's clothing, [413] their evil
   fruits, proofs of their evil hearts, distinguish them from genuine
   prophets of God" (v. 15, 20). This warning was strikingly applicable at
   that time of out-breaking battle with the hierarchical and Pharisaic
   party.

   The general proposition, that the state of the heart must be shown by
   the "fruits," is then applied to all believers (v. 21-23). Not every
   one who honours Jesus as Messiah and Theocratic King; and makes a
   zealous confession thereof, is thereby fitted to share in the kingdom;
   the heart must be shown to accord with the confession, by a faithful
   performance of the will of God. [414] ["Not every one that saith unto
   me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that
   doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven."]

   VI. True and False Disciples Contrasted.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [412] Matt., vii., 13-14, describe the difficulties of the way, and
   join closely to what precedes. The figure of the "gate," &c., is more
   aptly introduced in Luke, xiii., 24, 25, and it might be supposed that
   the author of the Greek Matthew had transferred the passage to this
   connexion from the actual one in which Christ uttered it. But so
   obvious a figure as the "gate" and the "way" may have been used
   repeatedly by Christ; and in these two places, moreover, there is a
   difference in its application. In Luke, the "gate" is to be entered
   before the Master has closed it; in Matt., it is "the wide gate and the
   broad way, which many see; the narrow gate and the narrow way, which
   few find." In the former the thought is, "that few are willing to
   undergo the necessary labours and struggles to enter the kingdom;" in
   the latter, "the majority deceive themselves as to the difficulties of
   the task," &c.

   [413] Cf. John, x., 1-5.

   [414] Ch. vii., 24, connects closely with v. 21. On the relation of v.
   22, 23, to the rest of the passage, we shall speak hereafter.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 158. Test of Discipleship. (Matt., vii., 24-27.)

   Christ concludes the whole discourse with a contrast between true and
   false disciples; between those who take care to apply to their life and
   practice the truths which he had laid down, and those who do not. He
   thus makes prominent, in the conclusion, the great truth announced in
   the beginning, and carried through the discourse, viz., that a right
   disposition of heart is essential in all things. According to their
   right application of his words his hearers were to judge themselves,
   and find their destiny described (v. 24-27). ["Therefore, whosoever
   heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a
   wise man, which built his house upon a rock: and the rain descended,
   and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and
   it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth
   these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a
   foolish man., which built his house upon the sand: and the rain
   descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that
   house, and it fell; and great was the fall of it."]

   These words of warning, at the end of the discourse, harmonize well
   with its beginning.

   END OF THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 159. Healing of the Leper on the Road to Capernaum. [415]

   After Christ had concluded his deeply impressive discourse, he
   dismissed the multitude and came down from the mountain with his
   disciples. Hosts of people attended him to Capernaum. A leper, who had
   probably heard of his miracles, and learned that he would pass that
   way, had planted himself by the road-side. Full of faith, he threw
   himself at the Saviour's feet and said, "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst
   make me clean." After Christ had granted his petition, he bade him (as
   was his wont in such cases) first to do what the law--which He had come
   to "destroy" only by "fulfilling"--demanded, [416] viz., to show
   himself to the priests and offer the prescribed sacrifice, in order to
   readmission into the Theocratic community, from which he had been
   excluded as unclean.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [415] Matt., viii., 1. I follow Matthew's account, which suits the
   chronology, in preference to Luke's (v. 12), which says nothing about
   the locality of the event. It was not customary, under the Mosaic law,
   for lepers to reside within the cities. Cf. Joseph., c. Apion, i.
   xxxi.; Archaeol., iii., 11, § 3.

   [416] Levit., xiv., 1.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 160. Healing of the Heathen Centurion's Slave at Capernaum. [417]
   --The Deputation of Elders.--Faith of the Centurion.

   As soon as Christ arrived at Capernaum, his aid was sought in behalf of
   another sufferer. The elders of the synagogue came to him with a
   petition in the name of a centurion. He was a heathen; but, like many
   other heathens of that age, unsatisfied with the old and languishing
   popular religion, and impressed, by the moral and religious spirit of
   the Jewish Theism, he has been led to believe in JEHOVAH as the
   Almighty. Whether a proselyte of the gate [418] or not, he had proved
   his faith by building a Jewish synagogue at his own expense.

   His love and care for a faithful slave [419] shows how his piety had
   influenced his character. During Christ's absence this slave became
   severely ill; and just when he was ready to die, the centurion heard,
   to his great joy, of the Saviour's return. Placing his only hopes in
   Him, he hastened to ask his assistance. But he had been accustomed to
   look upon the Jews alone as consecrated to the worship of the Most
   High; and Christ yet appeared to belong only to that people. He did not
   venture, therefore, as a heathen, to apply to him directly, but sought
   the mediation of the elders, whom he had laid under obligation. [420]

   The centurion heard that Christ, in compliance with the request of the
   elders, was approaching his house. But then the thought arose, "Hast
   thou not gone too far in asking the Son of God, who has spirits at his
   command, to come to thy house? Hast thou not lowered him, by presuming
   that his corporeal presence is necessary to the healing of thy slave?
   Could he not have employed one of his hosts of ministering spirits to
   accomplish it?" ["Say in a word, and my servant shall be healed. For I,
   also . . . say unto one, Come,' and he cometh; and to another, Go,' and
   he goeth." [421] ] Although his hesitation, doubtless, arose in part
   from his unwillingness, as a heathen, to summon the Saviour to his
   house, his words imply that it arose far more from his conscious
   unworthiness in comparison with Christ's greatness. He conceived Christ
   to be the Son of God in a sense natural to one who had, from paganism,
   become a believer in Theism.

   The centurion illustrates a state of heart which, in all ages of
   Christianity, belongs to those who are susceptible of admitting and
   embracing Christ: the consciousness, namely, of His loftiness and our
   own unworthiness. Here was the deep import of his signs of faith; and
   here the ground of these striking words of Christ addressed to the
   attendant multitudes: "I have not found so great faith, no, not in
   Israel." He had, indeed, found access to the people; he had, indeed,
   found faith, but not such faith as that of this pagan. The faith of the
   Jews, prejudiced by their peculiar notions of the Messiahship, could
   not, as yet, raise itself to a just intuition of the super-human
   greatness of Christ. But the pagan, viewing Christ as Lord of the World
   of Spirits, had reached a point which the Apostles themselves were only
   to attain at a later period. And here we have a sign that the true and
   high intuition of the person of Christ was to come rather from the
   stand-point of paganism than of Judaism.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [417] Matt., viii., 5; Luke, vii., 2. The chronological agreement of
   the accounts, derived from separate sources, is proof of their
   veracity. We follow Luke's, as the more original.

   [418] The relation in which he appears to stand to Judaism and the Jews
   would make it probable that he was a proselyte of the gate. But, on the
   other hand, if he had been, the Jewish elders would probably have
   mentioned it in their recommendation of him; he would have had the
   usual designation, sebomenos, phoboumenos ton Theon..

   [419] The word used in Matthew is, pais, nr; which may, indeed, mean
   slave, but seems to be intended by him for "son," as he uses the
   article throughout the narrative (ho pais). This, however, may be
   explained on the ground that either the centurion had but one slave, or
   that he valued this one particularly. If "son" were intended, it might
   be accounted for from the ambiguity of the word both in Hebrew and
   Greek; the high degree of love which the centurion displayed, also, was
   more likely to be felt for a son than a slave, and this may have led to
   the use of the word.

   [420] Luke's account, on its face, shows that it was taken from life;
   but Strauss (with whom De Wette agrees) thinks it bears the marks of a
   later hand, working over Matthew's purer and more original statement.
   According to Strauss, the humility with which the centurion himself
   addressed Christ (Matt., viii., 8) gave rise to the conclusion that a
   heathen who had had so low an opinion of himself could not possibly
   have applied to Christ except through Jewish mediation; and then it was
   necessary to invent such an embassy, in order to assign a proper motive
   for Christ's immediate compliance with the request of the heathen.
   Grant, for a moment, that it were in itself reasonable and in harmony
   with the simplicity of our Evangelists; still, we should expect such an
   interpolation rather in Matthew, whose narrative is supposed to be
   derived from a Palestine Jewish-Christian tradition, than in Luke, who
   belonged more to the type of Paul. True, the conduct of the centurion,
   as stated by Luke, is precisely suited to his character, as shown in
   his words recorded by Matthew; to his mode of thought in regard to the
   person of Christ and the relation between Jews and heathen. But must
   the very naturalness and probability of the statement itself be made a
   ground to suspect it as an invention? As for Matthew's statement, that
   the centurion himself applied to Christ, it may naturally and easily be
   explained on the supposition of an abbreviation of the narrative, or
   obliteration of individual features of the occurrence.

   [421] We cannot admit Dr. Strauss's assertion that the prayer sent by
   the elders (Luke. vii., 3) is inconsistent with the second message (v.
   6), and that, therefore, the connexion which in Matthew is natural is
   unnatural in Luke. Had Luke's account been a fiction, instead of making
   the centurion take back his prayer sent by the elders, it would have
   given the prayer a different character from the beginning. Considering
   it as a narrative of fact, it bears precisely the stamp of real life:
   the centurion, at first, absorbed in his anxiety, sends for Christ to
   come to him; afterward, when he finds the fulfilment of his desire at
   hand, the sense of his unworthiness in comparison with the greatness of
   Christ becomes prominent, and with it a sense of the impropriety of his
   request.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 161. Healing of the Deaf and Dumb Demoniac.--The Charge of a League
   with Beelzebub: a Visible Sign demanded.--The Charge refuted.

   The constantly increasing influence of Christ naturally heightened the
   wrath of the Pharisees. A movement which they could not check was in
   progress against the spirit and the interests of their party. But a
   powerful impression, wrought by a single miracle, gave the signal for a
   new and more artful attack. This occasion was the healing a man of
   imbecile mind, or a melancholy idiot, who went about appearing neither
   to see nor to hear any thing that passed around him. [422] The people
   received the cure as a sign of Christ's Messianic power.

   It was necessary for the Pharisees to remove this impression from their
   minds. But how was it to be done? The fact could neither be denied nor
   attributed to natural agencies. In this dilemma they had recourse to
   falsehood, and accused him of employing an evil magic, a relief in
   which still propagated itself among the traditions [423] of Jewish
   fanaticism. The Prince of Evil Spirits, they said, in order to secure
   favour among the people for the false prophet who was labouring for
   Satan's kingdom, had given him power to exorcise inferior spirits from
   men; thus sacrificing a less object for a greater. [424]

   Others, again, whose hostility to Christ and to truth was not so
   decided (although they were not susceptible of Divine impressions),
   only refused to acknowledge the miracle as a sufficient sign of
   Messiahship, and demanded an immediate token from God--a voice from
   heaven, or a celestial appearance. [425]

   Christ first replied to the most decided opponents, and, to show the
   absurdity of their accusation, reasoned as follows: "It is a
   contradiction in terms to suppose that good can be directly wrought by
   evil; [426] that evil should be conquered by evil; that one should be
   freed from the power of the Evil One by the power of the Evil One.
   Could evil thus do the works of good, it would be no more evil." He
   then applies an argumentum ad hominem to the Pharisees [If I by
   Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out?
   therefore shall they be your judges]. If a charge of the sort, he tells
   them, were brought against their exorcists, they would soon pronounce
   it untenable. It follows, then, that this Divine act--the delivery of a
   human soul from the evil spirit that had crushed its self-conscious
   activity--was wrought by the power and Spirit of God alone.

   "But," he continues, "if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then
   the kingdom of God is come unto you." This single victory proves that a
   power has come among men which is able to conquer evil--the power,
   namely, of the kingdom of God, which ever propagates itself in
   struggling with evil; the negative presupposes the positive. The
   similitude that follows illustrates the same truth: "When a strong man,
   armed, keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace; but when a stronger
   than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all
   his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils." So, had not
   the power of evil itself been subdued by a higher power, such
   individual manifestations of it as the evil spirit in the demoniac
   could not have been conquered. [427]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [422] Luke, xi., 14; Matt., xii., 22. This view of the case is founded
   upon the fact that the man's dumbness is ascribed (which is not done in
   other cases) to his being possessed with demons, and his subsequent
   ability to hear and speak to their expulsion. Matthew adds blindness,
   which harmonizes well with our view. We infer from the impression
   produced by the miracle that the case differed from ordinary
   possessions. It is possible, however, that the case is confounded in
   Matthew with other cures of blind men; cf. Matt., ix., 27-34. This last
   passage, v. 32-34, seems to be but an abridged account of the very case
   under discussion.

   [423] Celsus took a hint from these.

   [424] Matt., xii., 24-26.

   [425] How strongly expectations of this kind were cherished by the Jews
   is shown by the fact that Philo's Hellenic-Alexandrian culture could
   not free him from them, although the expectation of a personal Messiah
   is not prominent in him. He believes that, when the purification of the
   scattered Jews is accomplished, they will be drawn together from all
   nations, by a celestial phenomenon, to one definite place:
   "xenagoumenoi pros tinos theioteras e` kata phusin anthropinen opseos,
   ade'lou men hete'rois, monois de tois anasozomenois emphanous."--De
   Execrat., § 9.

   [426] There is, indeed, a sense in which the kingdom of evil is always
   at war with itself; but in evil, as such, as opposed to good, there is
   always a definite relative unity. If this unity was destroyed, if Satan
   were to accomplish the same good as that wrought by the power of God,
   it would be a contradictio in adjecto; the kingdom of evil would be
   ipso facto subverted. Evil may, and indeed must, indirectly subserve
   good; but it cannot directly do good so long as its nature, as evil,
   remains. A kingdom, or a family, may continue to exist as such, with an
   internal discord in its bosom that is the germ of its dissolution; but
   the relative unity must remain. This truth admitted the further
   application -- which Christ did not express, but left to the Pharisees
   to make--that Satan could not seek to secure access to the hearts of
   men for one whose whole nature and labours were opposed to the kingdom
   of evil. "Satan, casting out Satan," would be no more Satan. The
   difficulties, therefore, which De Wette finds in the passage are
   overcome. The truth of Christ's proposition does not lie upon the
   surface.

   [427] Christ here indicates that the so-called demoniacal possessions
   were nothing else but individual phenomena of Satan's kingdom
   manifested among men.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 162. The Conjurations of the Jewish Exorcists. (Luke, xi., 23-26.)

   It followed, from the foregoing words of Christ in reply to the
   Pharisees, that all cures of demoniacs wrought on any other principles
   must be entirely apparent and deceptive. [428] It was of no avail to
   remove individual symptoms while the cause, viz., the dominion of the
   evil principle, remained unshaken. The very agency that removed the
   former for a time would only strengthen the latter, to break forth
   again with increased power. Therefore, although Christ, speaking kat'
   anthropon, presupposed that the Jewish exorcists could heal demoniacs,
   he could not recognize their cures as genuine. So he says (Luke, xi.,
   23), "Whosoever is not with me (works not in communion with me in the
   power of the Holy Ghost) is against me (opposes in his works the
   kingdom of God); and he that gathereth not with me (does not, in
   communion with me gather souls for the kingdom) scattereth abroad [429]
   (leads them astray, and thus really works for the kingdom of Satan,
   against which he apparently contends)." The exorcists pretended, in
   casting out devils, to fight against Satan; but in fact, by their arts
   of deceit, were striving against the kingdom of God. How cutting a
   contrast to the assertion of the Pharisees that devils might be cast
   out by the aid of Satan!

   The same truth is illustrated in parabolic form in verses 24-26; unless
   a radical cure of the demoniac is made by the redeeming power of the
   Divine Spirit, his soul remains estranged from God, the apparently
   cured disease seizes it with new force, the ungodly spirit finds his
   old haunt--his former dwelling is completely prepared for his
   reception. [430]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [428] As a physician, who treats the symptoms of disease, but neglects
   the cause, strengthens the latter by the very medicines which palliate
   the former. A vivid illustration of the pregnant truth here unfolded by
   Christ in reference to the cures of the demoniacs.

   [429] This text is put in the same connexion in Matt. (xii., 30). But
   the dia touto of v. 31 does not naturally join with v. 30; there is no
   such causal relation as is implied by the phrase, nor does it join any
   more closely with what follows; indeed, it appears rather to belong at
   the end of all the proofs adduced against the Pharisees. The right
   arrangement is doubtless that of Luke (xii., 23-26); and the more
   profound order of the thought, as Luke presents it, is not the work of
   chance, but a proof of the originality of the account. I must differ,
   therefore, from Professor Elwert, who, in his ingenious dissertation
   (Stud. der Geistl. Würtem., ix., i., 1836), denies that Luke, xi., 23,
   has reference to the verses immediately preceding. Understanding the
   parable more in the sense of Matthew (although. he admits Luke's
   originality also), he connects this passage with it, and considers it
   as directed against the indecision of the multitude, who, after moments
   of enthusiastic excitement in Christ's favour, suffered themselves to
   be so easily led astray. But we ought not to seek new combinations when
   the original connexion of a passage, lying before us, offers a good
   sense. Even apart from this, however, Prof. E.'s explanation does not
   suit the latter clause of v. 23 at all--"He that gathereth not with me,
   scattereth"--which is obviously not directed against an inward
   disposition, but outward acts; viz., acts which pretend to be done in
   favour of Christ's kingdom, but in reality operate against it. Prof. E.
   himself admits (p. 180) that the words quoted, if taken strictly in
   their connexion, do not favour his view; but thinks he is justified, by
   their approaching to the character of a proverb, in departing from the
   strict construction. There is no proof, however, that Christ made use
   here of an existing proverb; but this is immaterial to the
   interpretation of the passage. On the whole, my view corresponds with
   that of Schleiermacher, in loc. The relation of Luke, xi., 23, to ix.,
   50, will be examined in its place hereafter.

   [430] Luke, xi., 24-25. In Matt., xii., 43-45, the passage is
   introduced in a different connexion, and must be differently
   interpreted; it was applied to illustrate the truth, viz., that that
   generation, refusing to obey the call to repentance, should therefore
   fall into worse and more incurable corruption. This corresponds
   perfectly to the sense of the parable, and the thought which it
   contains finds a rich and manifold illustration in history, both on a
   large and small scale; in all those cases, namely, in which a temporary
   and apparent reformation, without a radical cure of fundamental evil,
   has been followed by a stronger reaction. This application of the
   passage implies that signs of an apparent amendment had shown
   themselves in "that generation;" and, moreover, it requires that the
   passage itself should be referred to the impressions, great, but not
   permanent, which Christ's works, now and again, produced upon the
   multitude. But it is clear that the nearer and stricter application of
   the passage is that given in Luke, viz., to the apparent healing of the
   demoniacs. One thing is evident from Matthew's use of it, viz., that it
   was well understood from the beginning that the passage was not to be
   taken literally, but figuratively, which, indeed, is obvious enough
   from the whole form of discourse. It would have been contrary to all
   analogy for the men of that time, disposed as they were to take every
   thing in a literal sense, to attach a spiritual meaning to these words,
   if it had not been obvious that he spoke them entirely by way of
   parable. This is written--quite superfluously--solely against Strauss;
   for the sense in which Christ used the parable is plainly obvious from
   the connexion.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 163. Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost and against the Son of Man.
   (Matt., xii., 32.)

   Christ, having thus shown to the Pharisees the emptiness of their
   charge, and the absurdity of the assumption which formed its basis,
   then assumed the offensive, and pointed out to them the ground of their
   coming to utter such a self-refuting accusation. It was because the
   disposition of their hearts ruled and swayed their decision; what
   aggravated their guilt was, that they suppressed the consciousness of
   God and of truth, to whose strivings in their minds their very
   accusation bore testimony. "Because you cannot really believe that I
   work with the power of the Spirit of Evil, but, on the other hand,
   could readily have satisfied yourselves that I could do such works only
   by the power of the Holy Ghost, therefore, I say unto you, it is one
   thing with those who stumble at the human form of my manifestation, and
   are unable to recognize the Son of God in the veil of flesh, with those
   who, through prejudice or ignorance, blaspheme the Son of Man because
   he does not appear, as they expected the Messiah would, in earthly
   splendour; [431] and quite another thing with you, who will not receive
   the revelation of the Holy Ghost that comes towards you, who suppress
   the conscious truth within you, declaring that to be the Evil Spirit's
   work which you feel yourselves impelled to recognize as the work of the
   Holy Ghost" (v. 31-33).

   Where the root in the heart is not corrupted, where the sense of truth
   is not stifled--as in the case of those who blaspheme the Son of Man
   not known as such--there Christ finds a starting-point for repentance,
   and access for forgiveness. But where the Spirit of Lies has taken full
   possession, says he, there can be no room for repentance, and,
   consequently, no forgiveness. It is not clear, however, whether he
   meant to charge upon the very individuals in question this total
   suppression of truth and submission to the Spirit of Lies, thus utterly
   excluding them from repentance and pardon; or whether, by drawing this
   distinct line of demarcation, he wished to show them how precarious a
   footing they held, far from the first class, and near to the second. In
   fact, the Spirit of Lies, which permits no impressions of the Good and
   the True, held a high degree of dominion over these Pharisees.

   Christ further told the Pharisees (in close connexion with his exposure
   of their evil disposition of heart) that, in their moral condition,
   they could not speak otherwise than they had done: "O generation of
   vipers! how can ye, being evil, speak good things?" Their decision upon
   his act bore the impress of their ungodly nature. "For out of the
   abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh;" and therefore it
   is--because the evil nature can express itself outwardly in words as
   well as deeds--that Christ attaches so much import to their words. The
   judgment of God, which looks only at the heart, will visit words no
   less than works: "I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall
   speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment; for by
   thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words shalt thou be
   condemned." [432]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [431] There were some such among the Jews, led away by prejudice and
   ignorance, rather than by evil dispositions, to blaspheme what they did
   not understand. These were not beyond the reach of Divine impressions
   and convictions, if presented at more favourable periods. Many who then
   stumbled at the Son of Man in the form of a servant were afterward more
   readily led to believe by the operations of the Spirit proceeding from
   the glorified Son of Man. But what clearness and freedom of mind, what
   elevation above all personal influences, did Christ display in thus
   distinguishing, in the very heat of the battle, the different classes
   of his enemies! The distinction thus drawn by Christ is applicable to
   the different opponents of Christianity in all ages.

   [432] This announcement was directly opposed to the Pharisees'
   doctrine, according to which morality was judged by the standard of
   quantity.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 164. Purpose of Christ's Relatives to confine him as a Lunatic.--He
   declares who are his Relatives in the Spiritual Sense [433]

   While Christ was thus exposing the machinations of the Pharisees and
   the evil spirit that inspired them, he was informed that his mother and
   his brothers, who could not approach on account of the throng, were
   seeking him. [434] As the scene that was going on threatened bad
   results to the Pharisaic party by making a strong impression upon the
   people, the Pharisees had sought to break it up, by persuading his
   relatives that he had lost his senses. [435] His severe discourses,
   doubtless, appeared to many a bigoted scribe as the words of a madman
   (John, x., 20), and the Pharisees probably made use of them in imposing
   upon his relatives. The apparent contrarieties in Christ's discourses
   and actions could only be harmonized by a complete and true intuition
   of his personality; to his brothers he was always an enigma and a
   paradox, and they could, therefore, the more easily, in an unhappy
   moment, be perplexed by the crafty Pharisees. [436] It is difficult,
   however, to imagine that Mary could have been thus deceived; she may
   have followed them from anxiety of a different kind about her son.

   But Christ, surrounded by a host of anxious seekers for salvation,
   heard the announcement undisturbed. To show, by this striking case,
   that blood relationship did not imply affinity for his Spirit, he
   asked, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Pointing to the
   seeking souls around him, and to his nearer spiritual kindred--the
   disciples--he said, "Behold my mother and my brothers! For whosoever
   shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my
   brother, and sister, and mother." [437]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [433] Matt., xii;, 46-50; Mark, iii., 31, seq.; Luke, viii., 19, seq.

   [434] By exo (in Matthew and Mark) we are, perhaps, to understand
   "outside of the throng, or, outside of an enclosure. It is not
   necessary (nor, indeed, suitable) to assume that the assembly was
   gathered in a house.

   [435] Mark, iii., 21. This does not look [as some would have it] like a
   wilful colouring, added to the facts by tradition, or by Mark himself;
   but rather indicates, as do slight characteristic touches in other
   passages given by Mark alone, that this Evangelist made use of
   authorities peculiarly his own. Such an invention, or perversion of
   tradition, would have been utterly inconsistent with the tone of
   thought and feeling generally prevalent in regard to Christ: who, in
   those days, would have believed that Christ's own brothers could listen
   to such a blasphemy against him! It has been supposed, again, that the
   statement in Mark originated in a misunderstanding of the accusation
   brought against Christ by the Pharisees; but this is impossible; who
   could suppose the accusation to mean that "he cast out devils, being
   himself a demoniac?" On the other hand, different members of the
   Pharisaic party, or the same persons with different objects in view,
   might have originated both slanders; at one moment charging him with
   the Satanic league, and at another with being a demoniac himself.

   [436] It is worthy of note that John (vii., 5-7) mentions, precisely
   with reference to this same point of time, that Christ's brothers did
   not believe in his Divine calling, but wished to put him to the proof;
   and that he then described them as belonging to the world.

   [437] These words are given by Luke (viii., 21) in a different
   connexion; one in which, indeed, Christ might very well have uttered
   them, although the occasion for them does not appear so obvious as in
   Matthew and Mark. In connexion with the account of the healing of the
   deaf and dumb demoniac given by Luke, we have a different passage (xi.,
   27, 28) from the one now under discussion, but which yet contains
   something of a similar import, viz.: a contrast between a mere outward
   love of Christ's person and true reverence for him. This affinity of
   meaning may have caused the two passages to change places with each
   other. We presupposed this in our use of Luke, xi., 28, on p. 189. And
   the affinity of the two expressions may have also caused the two
   accounts in Matthew and Mark to be chronologically connected together.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 165. The Demand of a Sign from Heaven answered only by the Sign of
   the Prophet Jonah. (Luke, xi., 16, 29-36.)

   We stated, on p. 240, that the less violent of Christ's opponents
   demanded of him "a sign from heaven." In answering these, he showed
   that their ungodly disposition of heart was at once the ground of their
   unbelief and the secret motive of their demand.

   [An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there
   shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the Prophet Jonah. For as
   Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so, also, shall the Son of Man be to
   this generation.] "In vain did they ask a new sign; such a one as they
   asked they should not obtain. No other sign should they have but that
   of the Prophet Jonah, [438] i. e., the whole manifestation of Christ,
   [439] by which the Jews were to be called to repent and escape the
   threatened judgment." He was to be a sign, shining for all mankind; and
   this candle, once lighted, was not to be put in a secret place, neither
   under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that all who should enter the
   house might see the light (v. 33). So was He to be a light unto all
   men. But in order to receive the light, the eye must be sound. And what
   the eye is to the body, the inner light of Divine consciousness,
   originally implanted in our nature, is to the soul. Where this light
   has become darkness; where the Divinity in man, the consciousness of
   God, has been subjugated and stifled by the world, all that is within
   is full of darkness, and no light from without can illumine it. The
   organ where with to receive Divine revelations is wanting (v. 34-36).

   Thus it was, because of the inner darkness of their souls, that these
   men could not understand "the sign" given by Christ's whole
   manifestation; and for this reason it was that, in spite of all the
   signs that lay before their eyes, they ever asked for more.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [438] See above, p. 136.

   [439] In Matt., xii., 40, the reference is made to bear upon the
   resurrection of Christ, which is quite foreign to the original sense
   and connexion of the passage. It was Christ's whole manifestation, then
   developing itself before the eyes of them that heard him, that was in
   question; the resurrection was witnessed only by persons who were
   already believers, for whom it was a sign to reanimate their faith. For
   those who persisted in unbelief, notwithstanding the sign of his whole
   manifestation, the resurrection was a sign of reproof, a testimony that
   the work of God had triumphed over all their machinations. A special
   Application of the type in this way would have drawn the attention of
   the hearers away from the main point of comparison. For these reasons,
   we think the verse in question is a commentary by a later hand.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 166. Discourse pronounced at a Feast against the Hypocrisy of the
   Pharisees and the Lawyers. (Luke, xi., 37-52.)

   While Christ was engaged in the conversation just referred to, a
   certain Pharisee, who did not display his hostile disposition so openly
   as the rest, but masked it under the garb of courtesy, came and invited
   him to breakfast, probably with a view to catch up something in his
   words or actions that might point a charge of heresy, or serve to cast
   suspicion upon him at a subsequent period.

   In this spirit, he found it quite a matter of offence that Christ sat
   down to table without washing his hands. The Saviour took occasion from
   this to expose the hypocrisy of the sect; and availed himself, for the
   purpose, of illustrations drawn from the objects around him at the
   feast. "You Pharisees make the cups and dishes clean outside, but.
   leave them full of dirt within. So you are careful to preserve an
   outward show of purity, but inwardly you are full of avarice and
   wickedness. [440] Ye fools, are not the inward and the outward, made by
   the same Creator, inseparable? From within must true morality proceed;
   from the heart must the essence of piety be developed."

   From this he takes occasion (v. 41-44) to expose the mock piety of the
   Pharisees, displayed in their satisfying themselves, not merely in
   religion, but also in morality, with outward and empty show. [441] They
   manifested their hypocrisy (v. 42) in giving "tithes" of the most
   trifling products (mint, cummin, &c.), and entirely neglecting the more
   essential duties of righteousness and love. Their vanity and
   haughtiness were shown (v. 43) in their claiming to lord it over every
   body. They were (v. 44), like tombs, so beautifully painted that no one
   would suppose them to be graves; but whose fair exterior concealed
   nothing but putrefaction.

   At this point a lawyer [442] who was present asked Christ whether he
   meant to apply these censures to the class to which he belonged, also
   From this the Saviour took occasion, in the remainder of the discourse
   (v. 45-52), to expose the crimes that were peculiar to the lawyers.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [440] It is a question whether Matt., xxiii., 25, or Luke, xi., 39,
   contains the original form of these words. In the latter, the second
   member of the illustration is wanting; Christ passes over from the
   illustration (the vessels) to the thing illustrated (the Pharisees).
   The two members are more complete in Matthew: "Ye make clean the
   outside of the cups and platters, but inwardly they are full of
   extortion and wickedness," i. e., their contents were obtained by
   avarice and oppression. But neither is this precisely apt, nor does it
   seem likely that Christ would have reproached the Pharisee exactly in
   this form. In Luke the last member of the illustration (the cups are
   dirty within) and the first member of the application (ye are careful
   for outward purity) are wanting. In the above interpretation of Matthew
   we follow the reading adikias; it would not apply if we take that of
   the lect. recept., viz., akrasias; which is not without good authority.
   This reading recommends itself as the more difficult: it is easy to
   conceive, as De Wette remarks, how the others could have grown out of
   it.

   [441] Luke, xi., 41, presents a difficulty. On any interpretation it
   seems to me that ta enonta corresponds to esothen, as contrasted
   exothen, v. 39, and must therefore be applied to the heart. This being
   admitted, the only question is whether the words were or were not
   spoken ironically. If they were not, it must seem strange that Christ,
   whose design was to aim at the disposition of the heart, should have
   laid down any thing so easily perverted into opus operatum. It may be
   said that, in accordance with a mode of teaching which he frequently
   adopted, viz., to give a specific instead of a general precept,--to
   command an outward act, as a sign of the disposition, instead of
   enjoining the disposition itself; he here enjoins alms-giving as proof,
   in act, of the possession of that love which imparts to others. This
   appears to be confirmed by the verse following, in which justice and
   love are mentioned as virtues wholly neglected by the Pharisees;
   implying that their alms-giving, previously mentioned, being destitute
   of the proper disposition, was valueless. But, on the other hand, where
   Christ employs this mode of teaching, the peculiar kind of special
   injunction that he gives is always determined by the character of his
   hearers; and alms-giving-- would have been an inapt injunction to
   Pharisees, who, as we learn from the Sermon on the Mount, made great
   show and display thereof. Still, the injunction may have been given in
   view of the character of the individual Pharisees before him, who may
   have been known as avaricious men; and Christ may have known that to
   part with their money would be a test of love which they could not
   stand. If it be supposed that the words are not accurately reported,
   and that the special injunction is due to the writer, and not to
   Christ, still the connexion sufficiently guards even the writer from
   the charge of setting forth the opus operatum. All difficulties would
   disappear if we could assume that Christ intended only to point out the
   prevailing spirit in which the Pharisees acted, and the sophisms with
   which they satisfied their consciences. "As to your inward parts, all
   you have to do is to give alms, and lo! all is clean for you!" (You
   think that alms-giving is to cleanse your life and atone for your
   sins.) Although this view does not appear perfectly simple and natural,
   I cannot share in the decisive sentence which modern writers, and even
   De Wette, have pronounced against it. It may be connected with verse
   42, as follows: "You cannot with this mock piety satisfy the law of
   God, and escape his judgments; but Woe unto you!" He then adds another
   illustration--their "tithing of mint," &c., as corresponding to their
   kind of alms-giving; and contrasts both forms of hypocrisy (last clause
   of v. 42) with the true righteousness and love of which they were
   destitute.

   [442] There appears to have been a marked distinction between these
   nomikois and the Pharisees proper. They probably applied themselves
   more to the Scriptures than to the traditions; not, however, wholly
   rejecting the authority of the latter. (Perhaps they formed a
   transition sect to the later Karaites.) This might account for their
   expecting Christ to express himself more favourably of them than of the
   Pharisees, but did not save them from his reproach. They could derive a
   lifeless and unspiritual system from the letter of the Scriptures as
   well as from traditions; could be as severe as the Pharisees in judging
   others, and as indulgent towards themselves. This distinction between
   the nomikoi and the others confirms the originality of Luke. Strauss
   and De Wette think that these interlocutions of other persons, giving
   occasion to new turns of the discourse--a sort of table-talk--belong
   merely to the peculiar dress which Luke gives to the account; but it
   appears to me on the contrary, that their apt adaptation to the several
   speakers is a strong proof of the originality of the narrative. They
   belong to the very character of table conversation; and their faithful
   and accurate transmission may be easily accounted for; they were
   probably again and again repeated, and finally, in aid of memory,
   committed to writing; Any argument against the verisimilitude of these
   accounts, drawn from the modern etiquette of the table, is totally out
   of place, and valueless.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 167. Christ Warns his Disciples against the Pharisees.--The Power of
   Divine Truth. (Luke, xi., 52; xii., 3.)

   It is probable that the conversation, commenced at the
   breakfast--table, was continued in the open air; [443] the irritated
   Pharisees interrogated him anew, seeking, by captious questions, to
   find some handle by which to gratify their malice and secure the
   vengeance which they hoped to wreak upon him. A multitude of other
   persons gathered; groups were formed around Christ; and the Pharisees
   finally withdrew. The Saviour then addressed himself to the immediate
   circle of his disciples, and gave them warnings and cautions, probably
   occasioned by the recent machinations of the Pharisees. "Beware of the
   leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy;" a leaven which
   impregnates all that comes from them, and poisons all who come in
   contact with them. They were to be on their guard; to trust no
   appearances; the hostile aim was there, even when carefully concealed.
   All their acts alike were poisoned by hypocrisy; against them all it
   would be necessary to watch. [444]

   After this note of warning, which probably perturbed their minds, he
   allowed them, for their comfort, to catch a glimpse of the coming
   triumphs of the kingdom of God, and of the victories which his truth
   should achieve. The craft of men, he told them, should not check its
   progress; it should make its way by the power of God. His truth, as yet
   veiled and covered, was to be brought to the knowledge of all men. "For
   there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed; and hid, that
   shall not be known. What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in
   light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the house-tops
   (the flat roofs of Eastern dwellings)." [445] And with this promise,
   too, is connected an exhortation to firmness and steadfastness in their
   struggles for the truth: "Be not afraid of them that kill the body,"
   [446] &c.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [443] We see from Luke, xi., 53, compared with xii., 1, that the
   conversation was continued. The transition is not managed with the art
   that we should look for in a fictitious narrative; had Luke invented
   the dialogue, he would hardly have joined so awkwardly, without any
   connecting link, the table conversation with the discourse afterward
   delivered to the multitude. Bet our assertion that Luke, in describing
   the table-talk with what preceded and followed, has actually given us a
   real scene from the life of Christ, does not imply there is nothing in
   the statement that belongs in another place. Things are repeated here
   which we find often in both Matthew and Luke. The case was probably as
   follows: an original body of discourse, e.g., the Sermon on the Mount,
   a conversation on some special occasion, at table or elsewhere, was
   handed down and written, subsequently, in particular memoirs. Other
   separate expressions, not specifically connected with them, were also
   handed down, and were incorporated in suitable places in the larger
   discourses, the more effectually to secure their preservation and
   transmission. Such may have been the case in the passage before us;
   e.g., xi., 49, for example, which is given, in its original form, in
   Christ's last anti-Pharisaic discourse, Matt., xxiii., 34.

   [444] We do not know how far the leaven of the Pharisees did succeed in
   poisoning the heart of an Iscariot. The caution in the text was
   obviously occasioned by the pretended friendship of the Pharisee who
   invited Christ to breakfast, and by the captious questions put to him
   under pretence of securing his opinions on important points. We do not
   find the passage in as original a form in Matt., xvi., 6; the Pharisees
   are connected (as is often done in Matt.) with the Sadducees; a
   connexion, as we have remarked before, not natural or probable. It is
   difficult to conceive how Christ could have connected the doctrine of
   the Pharisees with that of the Sadducees; or how he could have warned
   his disciples against the influence of the latter, to which, from their
   own religious stand-point, and the circle of society in which they
   moved, they certainly were not exposed. Schneckenburger (Stud. d.
   Geist. Würtemb., vi., 1, 48), indeed, says that the doctrine of the
   Pharisees could not have been alluded to either, because Christ
   recommends the latter himself (Matt., xxiii., 3). But we cannot agree
   with him; Christ's object, in the passage quoted, is to contrast the
   rigid precepts of the Pharisees with their practice. It was the example
   of their life that the disciples were to guard against; but as their
   righteousness was to exceed that of the Pharisees, they were enjoined
   to live up even to the strict precepts of that sect, so that none might
   be able to accuse them of violating the law. But surely there was
   nothing in this inconsistent with opposition, on Christ's part, to the
   doctrines of the Pharisees in other respects; and proofs of such
   opposition abound in the Evangelists. It is possible, from the
   connexion in Matt., that Christ may. have given his warning in view of
   Pharisaic ideas of the kingdom of God and of the signs of its
   appearance, and that the figure of the leaven may have been intended to
   apply to this; but yet it is more natural to explain it as alluding (in
   Luke's sense) to the hypocrisy of the sect, which Christ had just
   before condemned. In Mark, viii., 15, indeed, no other sense is
   admissible; the disciples might be warned against the hypocrisy of
   Herod Antipas, but not against his doctrine. It may, indeed, be said
   that Luke's version is the original one; that Matthew, as was usual
   with him, added Sadducees to Pharisees; and that Mark, finding this
   unsuitable, substituted Herod. In answer to this, Christ may have
   employed the phrase more than once. In the case of Herod, the caution
   was not uncalled for; the disciples might have been deceived by his
   wish to see Jesus, although he wished it with no good intentions. Mark
   probably employed a different and original account; and, in the nature
   of the case, the substitution of the Sadducees for Herod was unlikely:
   it is not known that Herod was a Pharisee.

   [445] In Matt., x., 26, 27, these words are incorporated into the
   discourse at the mission of the Apostles, in which several other
   passages are out of place. Their form is probably more accurately given
   in Matt. than in Luke; in the former, it is what they hear that is to
   be proclaimed; in the latter, what they speak; for at that time the
   disciples themselves did not fully understand and utter the truth among
   themselves. It was only to become plain to them at a later period.

   [446] Other things are added, after Luke, xii., 5, probably out of
   their proper connexion; especially the "blasphemy against the Holy
   Ghost," of which we have spoken before (p. 243). I cannot adopt the
   interpretation of Schleiermacher, which is adapted to the passage as if
   this were its proper place.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 168. Christ Heals a Paralytic at Capernaum, and the Pharisees accuse
   him of Blasphemy.--The Accusation Repelled. (Matt, ix., 1; Mark, ii.,
   1; Luke, v. 17.)

   The attack made upon Christ at Jerusalem involved, as we have seen, two
   charges, viz., that he violated the law, and that he assumed a power
   and dignity to which no man could have a right. The Pharisees continued
   their persecutions, on the same grounds, in Galilee also, where his
   labours offered them many points of assault. But against all such
   attacks his Divine greatness only displayed itself the more
   conspicuously.

   On one occasion he returned to Capernaum from one of his preaching
   tours, and when his arrival was known many gathered around him. Some
   sought him to hear the words of life from his lips; to obtain help for
   their bodies or their souls; others, doubtless, with hostile intent, to
   put captious questions, and act as spies upon his words and actions;
   and curiosity, too, had done its part; so that the door of the house
   was beset with people. The Saviour was interrupted in his teaching by a
   great noise without. A man palsied in all his limbs, tormented by pain
   of body and anguish of heart, had caused himself to be carried thither.
   His disease may have been caused by sinful excesses; or it may have so
   awakened his sense of guilt as that he felt it to be a punishment for
   his sins; but, be this as it may, the disease of his body and the
   distress of his soul seem to have been closely connected, and to have
   reacted upon each other. [447] Both required to be healed, in order to
   a radical cure. Though the bodily ailment was a real one, and not due
   to a psychical cause, still, such was the reciprocal action of spirit
   and body, that the spiritual anguish had first to be remedied. And, on
   the other hand, as the disease seemed to be a punishment for sin, he
   needed, for the healing of his soul, a sensible pledge of the pardon of
   his sins; and such a pledge he was to find in the cure of his palsy.

   Four men carried the couch on which the sick man lay; but the throng
   was so great that they could not make their way through. The palsied
   man was anxious to see the Saviour, by whom he hoped to be relieved.
   Entrance by the door was impossible; but the Oriental mode of building
   afforded a means of access, to which they at once had recourse. Passing
   up the stairs, which led from the outside to the flat roof of the
   house, [448] they made an opening by removing part of the tiles, and
   let the couch down into an upper chamber.

   Christ's first words to the sick man, addressed to his longing and
   faith, were, "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee;" and this balm, poured
   into the wounded spirit, prepared the way for the healing of his
   corporeal malady.

   The Pharisees, always on the watch, seized upon this opportunity to
   renew their accusations; he had claimed a fulness of power which
   belonged to God alone; the power, namely, to forgive sins. Perceiving
   their irritation, he appealed to a fact which could not be denied, as
   proof that he claimed no power which he could not fully exercise.
   ["Whether is it easier to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say,
   Arise and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on
   earth to forgive sins [449] (then saith he to the sick of the palsy),
   Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thy house. And he arose, and
   departed to his house."] " It is easy to say, Thy sins be forgiven
   thee; for if these words really produce any result, it could not be
   perceptible to the senses, and, for that reason, the lack of the result
   could not convict an impostor; [450] but he who says Arise and walk
   must really possess the power which his words claim, or his untruth
   will be immediately exposed."

   And the fact that the Divine power of his words revivified the dead
   limbs of the paralytic proved that he had the power, by granting
   forgiveness of sins, to awaken the dead soul to a new spiritual life.
   In this case the two were bound together.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [447] Schleiermacher concluded, from the great pains that were taken,
   and the unusual means that were resorted to to bring the sick man to
   Christ, that the Saviour was about to depart immediately from the city.
   But Mark's account shows that he had just returned, and that a vast
   crowd had gathered about him. A momentary exacerbation of the sick
   man's sufferings may have caused the haste; but we do not know enough
   about his case to decide this.

   [448] The accounts of Mark and Luke bear throughout the vivid stamp of
   eye-witnesses. The unusual feature of the event is related in the
   simplest possible way, without a trace of exaggeration; and it is all
   in perfect keeping with Oriental life. Strauss assumes, without the
   slightest ground, that these accounts are exaggerated copies of
   Matthew's (ix., 1), which is much the most simple. We have far more
   reason to take it the other way, and consider Matthew's as an abridged
   statement, the main object of which was to report what Christ said, and
   not to give a full detail of the circumstances. Strauss says, further,
   that the words, "when he saw their faith," gave occasion for the
   invention of the story of the letting down of the bier through the
   roof, &c. Let us look at this. If Jesus set so high a value upon the
   faith of the men, he did it, either because he saw their faith by that
   glance of his which searched men's hearts, or because they gave some
   outward sign of it. [Strauss would not be likely to admit the first,
   and the second] is precisely met by the statement of Luke. Moreover, an
   invention of this kind would have been utterly inconsistent with the
   spirit of early Christianity, which had too high a conception of
   Christ's power to pierce the thoughts of men to suppose that he needed
   any outward sign of a really existing faith. Again, if it be agreed
   that admittance could be had by a door in the roof, it may be
   questioned whether such a door would be large enough to admit a couch
   But, probably, no such door existed in Eastern houses. Joseph.,
   Archaeol., I. xiv., xv.,) § 12, confirms this. Herod I. had taken a
   village, in which there were many of the enemy's soldiers; part of them
   were taken on the roofs, and then, it is said, "tous orophous ton oikon
   kataskapton, emplea ta kato ton stratioton heora athroon apeilemmenon."
   Even those who suppose Mark's account to be an imitation of Luke's, or
   of the apomnemoneuma which Luke followed, must still admit that it
   implies an intimate acquaintance with the construction of Eastern
   houses. Had there been a way of getting through the roof otherwise, he
   would not have said that they broke it. As I have said before, Mark's
   details, in many places, imply that he used a separate authority;
   although I cannot believe, with some, that his Gospel was the original
   basis of Matthew and Luke.

   [449] God forgives the sins in heaven, but Christ, as Man, announces
   the Divine forgiveness. "Son of Man" and "in earth" are correlative
   conceptions.

   [450] It was only in this sense, and not with reference to the act of
   power in itself, that Christ said, "It is easier" &c.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 169. The Withered Hand healed on the Sabbath.--The Objections of the
   Pharisees anticipated and refuted. (Mark, iii., 1-6; Luke, vi., 6-8;
   Matt., xii., 10.)

   A man with a withered hand appeared in the synagogue on a certain
   Sabbath while Christ was teaching, probably at Capernaum. The
   Pharisees, perhaps, had brought him there, as they stood by and watched
   eagerly to see what Christ would do; but the latter saw their purpose,
   and acted with his characteristic calmness and confidence. Taking no
   notice whatever of his crafty foes until he had called the sufferer
   forth into the midst of the synagogue, he then, by putting an
   unavoidable dilemma to the Pharisees, anticipated all that they could
   say: "Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath days, or to do evil; to
   save life, or to kill?" This question did not offer a choice between
   doing or not doing a specific good, but between doing the good or its
   opposite evil; and even the Pharisees could not pretend to hesitate as
   to the reply. It was precisely for this reason that Christ so put it.

   But was he justified in this? Let us see. The point assumed was, that a
   sin of omission is also a sin of commission. Whoever omits to do a good
   act which he has the power and, therefore, the calling to do, is
   responsible for all the evil that may flow from his omission; e.g., if
   he can save a neighbour's life, he ought; and if he does not, he is
   guilty of his death. [451] So with the case of this lame man; there he
   was; Christ could cure him; Christ ought to cure him; and, if he did
   not, would be responsible for the continuance of his impotency. That it
   was a duty to save life on the Sabbath was taught even by the Pharisees
   themselves; and, as the spirit of the law required, Christ extended the
   principle further. The exception allowed by the Pharisees showed that
   the law could not, unconditionally, be literally fulfilled.

   After putting his question, he looked around to see if any of them
   would venture a reply. All were silent. Then, with Divine word of
   power, he said to the lame man, "Stretch forth thine hand;" and it was
   done. [452]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [451] Wilke's objections (Urevangelisten, p. 191) to the word
   apokteinai are not decisive. A strong word would naturally be used by
   Christ to give emphasis to the declaration that, it such a case, not to
   save life, is to kill.

   [452] It is obvious that the accounts of this event in Matthew, Mark,
   and Luke were written independently of each other, from independent
   sources; and this seems to confirm their truth. Immediate originality,
   and the vivacity of an eye-witness, are strikingly exhibited in Luke's
   account; e.g., before the Pharisees open their lips, Christ anticipates
   them both by word and deed; which is much more characteristic than
   Matthew's statement. And as for Christ's words, as given by Luke, being
   due to a later revision of the original, it is the less likely, because
   the striking application of which they admit does not lie upon the
   surface at all. The clause in Matt., xii., 12, exesti tois Sabbasi
   kalos poiein, gives a hint of the thought more fully developed in Luke.
   As to Matt., xii., 11, it may be out of place; and, in that case, may
   be the same as Luke, xiv., 5, in a different form, the latter being
   supposed to give the true occasion on which the words were uttered. But
   it is just as possible that Christ uttered the same thought on two
   occasions; or that he appended both illustrations to his answer to the
   question given in Luke, vi., 9.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 170. Cure of the Infirm Woman on the Sabbath; the Pharisees
   disconcerted. (Luke, xiii., 10.)--Of the Dropsical Man. (Luke, xiv.)

   On another Sabbath, while Christ was teaching in the synagogue, his
   attention was arrested by a woman who had gone for eighteen years bowed
   together and unable to erect herself. He called her to him and laid his
   hands upon her; she was healed, and thanked God.

   The ruler of the synagogue, not venturing to attack Christ directly,
   turned and reproached the people with, There are six days in which men
   ought to work; in them, therefore, come and be healed, and not on the
   Sabbath day. Christ saw that the reproach was intended for himself; and
   exposed to the man (who only illustrated the spirit of his whole party)
   the hypocrisy of his language, and the contrast between Pharisaic
   actions and a Pharisaic show of zeal for the law, by the question, Doth
   not each of you, on the Sabbath, loose his ox or his ass from the
   stall, and lead him away to watering? And shall not this daughter of
   Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo! these eighteen years, be loosed
   from this bond on the Sabbath day! [453]

   Often the hidden aims of the Pharisees were veiled in the garb of
   friendliness; but the Saviour anticipated their attacks before they
   were uttered, and thus often prevented their utterance at all. An
   illustration of this is to be found in the account given by Luke (xiv.)
   of a meal taken at the house of a Pharisee, by whom he had been invited
   on the Sabbath. Whether by accident, or by the contrivance of the
   Pharisees, a dropsical man was there, seeking to be healed. Jesus first
   turned and asked them, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day? When
   they made no reply, he touched the man and cured him. When he had left
   the house, the Saviour saw that the Pharisees were disposed to put an
   ill construction on what he had done; and appealed, as he had done
   before, to the testimony of their own conduct: Which of you shall have
   an ox or an ass fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him
   out on the Sabbath day?
     __________________________________________________________________

   [453] The expression "whom Satan hath bound" may imply a demoniacal
   possession, a state, perhaps, of melancholy imbecility; and the words
   pneuma astheneias appear to confirm this. But they may also be referred
   to the connexion between sin and evil in general, or in this particular
   case; and so a demoniacal possession, in the full sense, need not be
   presupposed. The terms may have been used in view of prevalent
   opinions, or because of the peculiar form in which Christ wished to
   express himself in this case.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 171. The Strife for Precedence at Feasts.--The Poor, not the Rich, to
   be invited.--Parable of the Great Supper. (Luke, xiv.)

   When the time of sitting down to the meal arrived, there was a strife
   for precedence among the Pharisees, forming an apt display of their
   vanity and pride of rank; and illustrating, in the lower sphere of
   life, the arrogant and evil disposition which they carried into the
   higher, and which totally unfitted them for the kingdom of prudence,
   the true wisdom of the kingdom, by giving them, in a parabolic form, a
   rule of prudence for the lower sphere of life.

   This rule was, that, instead of appropriating the highest seat, and
   thus exposing one's self to the shame of being bidden to leave it, one
   should rather seek the lowest place, and thus have the chance of being
   honoured, before all the guests, by an invitation to a higher. It is
   obvious enough, on the face of this, that Christ did not intend it
   merely as a rule of social courtesy; he himself (v. 11) sets forth the
   prominent thought illustrated, viz.: that, to be exalted by God, we
   must humble ourselves; that all self-exaltation can only deprive us of
   that humility which constitutes true elevation.

   During the repast, the Saviour turned to the host and attacked the
   prevailing selfishness that ruled all the conduct of the Pharisees. He
   illustrated this by contrasting that selfish hospitality which looks to
   a recompense with the genuine love that does good and asks no return.
   The heart that is fit for the kingdom of Heaven looks to no earthly
   reward, but will receive, in their stead, the heavenly riches (v.
   12-14) of that kingdom.

   One of the guests, probably wishing to turn the conversation from a
   disagreeable subject, seized upon the words uttered by Christ, to
   allude to the blessedness of the kingdom of God. "Blessed," said he,
   "is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God." He may have
   borrowed the figure from the scene around him; or, perhaps, employed it
   from a tendency to Chiliastic ideas of heaven. On this, Christ took
   occasion to show the Pharisees, who deemed themselves secure of a share
   in the Messianic kingdom, how utterly destitute they were of its moral
   requisites, and how far those whom they most despised were superior to
   them in this respect. He demanded a disposition of heart ready to
   appreciate the true nature of the kingdom of God as manifested and
   proclaimed, and willing to forsake all things else in order to lay hold
   of it.

   To set this vividly before their minds, he made use of the figure of a
   supper, suggested, doubtless, by the circumstances around him. The
   first invited--those to whom the servant is sent to say, "Come, for all
   things are now ready"--are the Pharisees, who, on account of their
   life-long devotion to the study of the law, and their legal piety,
   deemed themselves certain of a call to share in the Divine kingdom.
   They are not accused, in the parable, of decided hostility, but of
   indifference to that which ought to be their highest interest. Not
   knowing how to value the invitation, they excuse themselves from
   accepting it under various pretexts. The character of all persons,
   indeed, who are too busy to give heed to Christ's words, is here
   illustrated.

   When the invited guests refused to come, a call was sent forth for "the
   poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind;" guests uninvited, indeed,
   and not expecting such an honour. By these we understand the despised
   ones, the publicans and sinners, whom Christ took to his embrace.

   Still there is room; the highways must be ransacked; that is, the
   heathen, strangers to the Theocratic kingdom, are to be summoned to
   Christ's kingdom.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 172. The Pharisees attack the Disciples for plucking Corn on the
   Sabbath.--Christ defends them. (Luke, vi., 1; Matt., xii., 18.)

   During the first or second year of Christ's labours in Galilee, he
   walked, on the first Sabbath after the Passover, [454] through a
   corn-field with his disciples. The corn was ripe; and the disciples,
   urged by hunger, plucked a few ears, rubbed them in their hands, [455]
   and ate them. Some of the Pharisees (always on the alert) reproached
   them for doing such a thing on the Sabbath day. As the charge was, in
   fact, meant for Christ himself, he replied to and refuted it; and, not
   content with bare refutation, he intimated a higher truth, which could
   not be brought out clearly and fully until a later period.

   First, he showed to the Pharisees, on their own ground, the falsity of
   their slavish adherence to the letter of the law. David, he told them,
   violated their principle in satisfying his hunger with the sacred
   bread, when no other could be had.1 Sam., xxi. The Mosaic law itself
   opposed it, inasmuch as the priests were necessarily compelled, in the
   Temple-service, to infringe upon the Sabbath rest; clearly showing that
   not all labour was inconsistent with that rest, so that the true aim of
   the law was kept in view. But (he proceeded, intimating the higher
   truth) if a deviation from the letter of the law was justifiable in the
   priests, because engaged in the Temple-service, how much more in men
   who were engaged in the service of that which was greater than the
   Temple, the highest manifestation that had been made to mankind. [456]

   Having thus vindicated the disciples, he opposed Hosea, vi., 6, to that
   idea of religion which rests in outward forms and lacks the inward
   life; which, in this as in other cases, was the root of error from
   which the conduct of the Pharisees proceeded. Had they known that lore
   is greater than all ceremonial service, they would not have been so
   forward to condemn the innocent. [457] For innocent the disciples were,
   who had acted as they did for the sake of the Son of Man, who is
   greater than the Sabbath, and who, as Lord over all things, is Lord
   also [458] of the Sabbath. [459] The Sabbath was only a means of
   religious developement up to a certain period. That period had arrived
   in the manifestation of the Son of Man, the aim of all preparatory
   things, in whom the original dignity of man was restored, the ideal of
   humanity realized, and the interior life of man made independent of
   time and place. [460]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [454] Sabbaton deuteroproton, Luke, vi., 1. Meaning, if the reading be
   correct, the first Sabbath after the second Easter-day, when the first
   sheaf of corn was presented in the Temple.

   [455] A customary way of appeasing hunger in those lands, even to this
   day; cf. Robinson, Palestine, ii.. 419 and 430.

   [456] Cf. p. 89.

   [457] The gar in Matt., xii., 8, may refer either to v. 7 or v. 6; in
   either case it has a connexion of thought with v. 6.

   [458] The kai, in Luke, vi., 5, agrees well with this.

   [459] Mark, ii., 27, joins well to this. The "man" of v. 27, refers to
   "Son of Man" in v. 28; a reference that cannot be conceived as the work
   of a later hand.

   [460] I consider myself justified in finding all this in the passage,
   by taking the words in their full meaning, and comparing them with
   other expressions of Christ's.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 173. Christ's Discourse against the merely outward Cleanliness of the
   Pharisees.--He explains the Discourse to his Disciples. (Matt., xv.,
   1.-20.)

   The free mode of life pursued by Christ's disciples was always an
   object of scrutiny to the Pharisees, who were constantly looking for
   signs of heresy. It could not fail to give them opportunities of fixing
   suspicion on the Master himself. Once, when he was surrounded by
   inquiring throngs, they put the question, involving, also, an
   accusation, why his disciples so despised the ancient traditions as to
   neglect the ordinary ablutions before eating.

   His reply was, in fact, an accusation against their whole system. He
   told them, in effect, that all their piety was outward and
   hypocritical; that they justified, by their own arbitrary statutes,
   their actual violation of God's holy law, and thought to escape its
   observance by their sophistical casuistry. Having thus repulsed the
   Pharisees, he turned to the multitude, and warned them against the
   Pharisaical tendency so destructive to Jewish piety, the tendency to
   smother true religion under a mass of outward forms. "Hear and
   understand; not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but
   that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man." Here Christ
   displays the same conscious, lofty superiority so often manifested in
   his disputes with the Pharisees (as recorded in John, as well as in the
   synoptical Gospels); instead of softening down the offensive doctrine,
   he presents it more and more forcibly in proportion as they take
   offence. The words just quoted might be interpreted as an attack upon
   the Mosaical law in respect to food, &c., and thus could afford the
   Pharisees a clear opportunity to fix a charge of heresy upon him.

   When the disciples called his attention to the offence which the
   Pharisees had taken, he gave them to understand that this caused him no
   uneasiness: Every plant which, my heavenly Father hath not planted
   shall be rooted up; let them alone; they be blind leaders of the blind;
   both shall fall into the ditch. ("All merely human growths--every thing
   not planted by God--must fall; the whole Pharisaic system shall come to
   the ground. Let not their talk trouble you; blind are they, and those
   that follow them; both leaders and led are going on to destruction.")

   The disciples probably expected a different explanation; they were
   still too much ruled by Jewish views to apprehend correctly the full
   force of Christ's figurative language. The form of expression was
   simple enough in itself; it was the strange thought which made it
   difficult. It was only at a later period that even Peter could learn,
   and that, too, by the illumination of the Holy Ghost, that every thing
   is pure, for men, which comes pure from the Creator's hand. In the case
   before us, Peter, as spokesman for the disciples, asked an explanation
   of the obscure point. In reply, Christ first expressed his surprise
   that, after having so long enjoyed his society and teaching, they had
   made so little progress in religious knowledge; that such a saying
   should awake their scruples as well as the Pharisees'. "Do ye not yet
   understand," said he, "that what enters a man's mouth from without
   cannot defile the interior life? It is the product of the heart, it is
   that which comes from within that makes a man unclean." This truth was
   then immediately applied only to the case in point, viz.: eating with
   unwashed hands; the wider application of which it was capable could not
   be unfolded to them until a much later period. [461]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [461] Cf. p. 88.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 174. Trial Mission of the Apostles in Galilee. (Luke, ix.; Matt., x.)

   (1.) Objects of the Mission.--Powers of the Missionaries.

   The extended period of time which Christ spent in Galilee was employed,
   also, in the education of the men who were to carry on his work upon
   earth. The disciples, at first, accompanied him as witnesses of his
   ministry; but, in order to accustom them to independent labours, and to
   test their qualifications for the work, he sent them forth on a trial
   mission. An additional object was to spread, by their agency, through
   all the towns and villages of Galilee, the announcement that the
   kingdom of God had appeared. He by no means sent them to proclaim the
   whole truth of salvation; they were as yet incapable of this; and it
   was at a later period only that he promised the gift of the Spirit to
   qualify them for it. So long as HE remained upon the earth, HE was the
   sole teacher. They were only to proclaim every where that the kingdom
   of God, the object of all men's desire, had come; to point out to the
   people of Galilee the great grace of God in calling the Founder of that
   kingdom from their midst. Their present work was to be a type of their
   future one, when the great work within them should be accomplished. As
   they were to become bearers of the word, the Spirit, and the powers of
   Christ, so preparation was already to be made for this, though as yet
   incompletely.

   "Then he called his twelve disciples together, and gave them power and
   authority over all devils, and to cure diseases. And he sent them to
   proclaim the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick." We see that Christ
   could communicate certain of the supernatural powers that dwelt in him
   to those who devoted themselves to serve him as organs. But as these
   powers emanated from the source of Divine life in him, so we conclude
   that the degree in which they were imparted to others depended upon the
   degree in which they had imbibed that life from him.

   (2.) Instructions to the Missionaries.--Reasons for the Exclusion of
   the Samaritans and Heathen. (Matt., x., 5-6; Luke, ix., 1, &c.)

   The disciples thus sent forth were to confirm the truth of their
   announcement by miraculous acts, pointing to Him who gave the power to
   perform them. At first, the general attention of the people was only to
   be called to the great epoch that had dawned; the developement of the
   doctrine of the kingdom was to be left to Christ's own teaching, and to
   the subsequent operations of his Spirit. This explains why he did not
   further direct the Apostles as to what they should teach. Their mission
   was to Galilee alone; and the exclusion of the Samaritans and heathen
   [462] is, therefore, not at all inconsistent with what we have said of
   Christ's plan for the universal establishment of his kingdom. All the
   difficulties that have been found in this restriction flow from
   considering it apart from the proper period of Christ's life to which
   it belongs. During his life on earth, His ministry was to be confined
   to the Jews. Before the kingdom of God could be planted among the
   heathen by the proclamation of his truth in this new form, it was
   necessary that the knowledge of it should be fully developed in the
   disciples; and this could only be done, after his departure, by the
   enlightening power of the higher Spirit that was to be imparted to
   them. The links of the chain of internal and external progress, by
   which this last great event was to be brought about, were closely bound
   to each other; a premature developement would only hinder instead of
   hastening the result. Before the Apostles could teach the heathen, or
   find access to their hearts, they had to learn the peculiarities of the
   Gospel itself, as well as its relations to the religion of the Old
   Testament. Even had they succeeded in reaching the mind of the heathen
   with their defective apprehension of Christ's doctrine, and thus making
   Jews of them, it would only have been the more difficult afterward to
   eradicate the laboriously--planted errors, and impart a pure form of
   Christianity. But this knowledge was among the things of which Christ
   himself said to his disciples, "Ye cannot bear them now;" it was bound
   up with many truths that were as yet veiled from them. Nor could he,
   consistently with his plan, as we have above unfolded it, [463] impart
   these truths as separate and ready--made; the fruit of knowledge had to
   grow up in their religious consciousness from the seeds of knowledge
   sown there by the Spirit of God.

   The direction, therefore, given to the Apostles, not to go to the
   heathen in Galilee and on the border, necessarily followed from the
   plan of Jesus. "But," it may be asked, "why did he not explain to them
   the grounds of this restriction?" It might be enough to reply to this,
   that it is not likely that the full instructions, with the reasons in
   detail, are preserved to us, but only an extract containing the most
   essential features. But, apart from this, Christ could not at that time
   have given them all his reasons; for, in that case, he must have
   imparted to them what they could not as yet comprehend. They were then
   unconscious organs for the execution of his commands.

   But their relation to the Jews was quite a different thing. To the
   latter they were to impart no entirely new doctrine; and there was,
   therefore, no fear, as in the case of the heathen, that they would
   plant seeds of error which would have to be uprooted afterward. The
   Apostles were to take hold of expectations already cherished among the
   Jews, and to proclaim that the object of desire had come. The errors
   which yet biassed their own minds were shared by the Jews as a body;
   errors from which nothing but the spirit of the Gospel could free
   either them or the Jews. And, besides, they must have received many
   seeds of the higher life from the society and teaching of Christ; and,
   in scattering these, they could aid in preparing the ground for
   subsequent culture.

   Perhaps, also, the Saviour, in pointing out "the lost sheep of the
   house of Israel" as the first objects of their toil, had in view, also,
   "other sheep, not of this fold," [464] belonging to those whom he had
   come to collect into one flock, under one shepherd. There was
   sufficient ground, moreover, for excluding Samaria from the sphere of
   this trial--mission, in the brief duration to which it had to be
   limited; apart from the fact that the Apostles did not stand in the
   same relation to the Samaritans as to the Galilean Jews. They were not
   prepared to adapt themselves to the feelings of the Samaritans, nor to
   meet the controversies into which they must inevitably be led among
   them; the way in which the two sons of Zebedee treated that people at a
   later period is proof of this. There was no danger, however, that the
   disciples would so misunderstand Christ as to infer that the Samaritans
   were to be excluded from the kingdom of God; what they had seen of his
   personal intercourse with that people, and of the love which he
   cherished for them, sufficiently guarded against that.

   And so, too, they could not but infer that the exclusion of the heathen
   must not be extended too far. Besides, the Jews themselves [465]
   admitted that the heathen were to obtain a certain share in the kingdom
   of God, on condition of observing the Jewish law; and the disciples
   could hardly think less would be granted by their Master, whose words
   and actions breathed so very different a spirit.

   (3.) The Instructions continued; the Apostles enjoined to rely on
   Providence

   Christ sought to train his ministers to perform the duties of their
   calling without anxious care for the future. He bade them make no
   provision for their journey, [466] but to trust in God, who would not
   see them want while faithfully doing their duty; to be content with
   what was offered them; to abide in the first house that was hospitably
   opened to them; and thus, having made one family their home, to extend
   their labours around it as a centre. The issue satisfied them that
   their Master had predicted rightly; they found, as he had promised, all
   their wants supplied. [467] At that time the fame of Christ's miracles
   had rendered the dispositions of the Galileans favourable; they had to
   fight no battles with fanatical enemies. Moreover, the substance of
   their teaching was not as yet so inconsistent with the prevailing modes
   of thought as to excite hatred and opposition.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [462] Matthew evidently connects many things with the instructions
   given to the Apostles in view of their first journey, which,
   chronologically, belong later, viz.: to those given at the mission of
   the Seventy, which he omits. But it is likely that Luke, ix., 1, seq.
   gives but an abridgment, and we may fill it out from Matthew.

   [463] Book iv., pt. i., chap. ii.

   [464] John, x., 16.

   [465] Cf. p. 88, 89.

   [466] This is the essential part of the instruction; differences of
   detail are of no moment.

   [467] Luke, xxii., 35.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 175. Various Opinions entertained of Jesus. (Luke, ix., 7-9.)

   In the mean time Christ's fame was spreading through all the land, and
   various opinions existed in regard to the character of the powers which
   could not be denied. A very small minority of the people recognized him
   as the Messiah; but the greater number expected that when Messiah
   should come, he would prove himself such by founding an earthly kingdom
   in visible glory; and that his power would be displayed, not in a
   corner of Galilee, but in the Theocratic metropolis But those who had
   been impressed by the labours of John the Baptist could hardly realize
   his total disappearance; and such, seeing greater works done so soon
   after his death, explained them thus: "He is risen from the dead, and
   therefore mighty works do show forth themselves in him" (Matt., xiv.,
   2). Others said that Elias, or one of the ancient prophets, had
   reappeared, to prepare the way for Messiah's kingdom.

   It is obvious that the impression produced by Christ's works caused him
   to be generally regarded as higher than John--as the highest, indeed,
   next to Messiah; but not as Messiah himself, on account of the false
   expectation above mentioned. It is no matter of surprise that there
   should have been inconsistent and contradictory opinions at a time so
   disturbed and uneasy.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 176. Return of the Apostles.--Miraculous Feeding of the Five
   Thousand. (Matt., xiv.; Mark, vi.; Luke, ix.)--Object and Significance
   of the Miracle.--Its Effect upon the Multitude.

   Christ had now spent a whole year in Galilee. The time of the Passover
   approached, and the Apostles returned from their missionary journey.
   Multitudes still thronged about him, seeking aid for soul and body; the
   caravans, gathering to the Passover, increased the press. The Saviour
   did not wish at once to expose himself to the dangers that threatened
   him at Jerusalem; moreover, he desired, for a time, to prolong both his
   ministry in Galilee, and his intercourse with the Apostles, whose
   training for the work was now his first object. He sought a season of
   undisturbed society with them; to receive the report of their first
   independent labours, and to give them advice and instruction for the
   future (Mark, vi., 30, 31). For this purpose, he departed, with the
   disciples, from the neighbourhood of Capernaum, on the western shore of
   Genesareth, to a mountain on the eastern shore, at the head of the
   lake, near Bethsaida Julias. [468] But the multitude took care to see
   whither he accompanied his disciples, and immediately hastened after
   him. [469]

   And here followed the feeding of the five thousand. This miracle formed
   the very acme of Christ's miraculous power; [470] in it creative agency
   was most strikingly prominent, although it was not purely creation out
   of nothing, but a multiplication of an existing substance, or a
   strengthening of its properties. For this very reason, there is more
   excuse in regard to this than some other of the miracles for inquiring
   whether the subjective element of the account can be so separated from
   the objective as to offer a different view of the nature of the act.

   A theory has accordingly been constructed to do away with the
   miraculous character of the act, and explain it as a result of Christ's
   spiritual agency, brought about in a natural way. It amounts to this:
   the feeding of the vast multitude with five loaves and two fishes was
   accomplished by the example and moral influence of Christ, which
   induced the better-provided to share their food with the rest, Christ's
   spirit of love bringing rich and poor to an equality, as it has often
   done in later Christian times. So, then, the result was rightly judged
   to have been brought about by the Spirit of Christ; but the spiritual
   influence was translated into a material one; Christ's power over men's
   hearts into a power exerted by him over nature; and the intermediate
   link in the chain was thus omitted.

   Now, although it is possible that an account of the miracle might have
   originated in some such way as this--examples of the like are not
   wanting in the Middle Ages--the details of the narrative, in all the
   different versions of it, are irreconcilable with the hypothesis. Had
   part of the people been supplied with provisions, the disciples must
   have known it; on the contrary, according to the narrative, they had no
   such thought; nothing remained for them but to "send the multitude away
   into the villages to buy victuals." Had they supposed that the caravans
   were partly supplied with food for their journey to Jerusalem, it would
   have been most natural for them to say to Christ, "Thou who canst so
   control the hearts of men, speak the word, that they may share with the
   needy." But there is no plausibility in the hypothesis that there were
   provisions on the ground; the multitudes had not come from a great
   distance; and there were villages at hand where food could be bought;
   so that there was no inducement to carry it with them. Moreover, had
   Christ seen such a misunderstanding of his act arise, he would, instead
   of turning the self-deception of the people to his own advantage, have
   taken occasion, by setting the case truly before them, to illustrate,
   by so striking an illustration, what the spirit of love could do.
   Finally, the narrative, as given by John (vi., 15), puts this theory
   wholly out of the question. So powerfully were the multitude impressed
   by what Christ had done, that they wished to take Jesus as Messiah, and
   make him king. The act must have been extraordinary indeed that could
   produce such an effect as this upon a people under the dominion of the
   senses, and not at all susceptible of any immediately spiritual agency
   which Christ might have employed.

   The miracle was not wrought without reason; the circumstances which
   demanded it may be thus stated: A multitude of persons, travelling to
   Jerusalem for the Passover, followed Christ from the western to the
   eastern shore; he had spoken the words of Life to them, and healed the
   sick. They were chained the whole day to his presence, and evening came
   upon them. The sick who had just been healed were without food; they
   could not go, fasting, to the villages to obtain it. [471] Here, then,
   was a call for his assisting love; and, natural sustenance failing, his
   miracle-working power must supply the lack.

   The effect of the miracle illustrates for us the mode of Christ's
   working in all ages; both in temporal and spiritual things, the spirit
   that proceeds from him makes the greatest results possible to the
   smallest means; that which appears, as to quantity, most trifling,
   multiplies itself, by his Divine power, so as to supply the wants of
   thousands. The physical miracle is for us a type of the spiritual one
   which the power of his words works in the life of mankind in all time.
   [472]

   Up to this time Christ had only impressed the multitude with the belief
   that he was a mighty Prophet, whose appearance was preparatory to the
   Messianic era. But this climax of his miracle-working power produced
   one, also, in their opinions. "He that can do such a miracle can be no
   other than Messiah; we must do homage to him as Theocratic king, and
   urge him to establish his kingdom among us." Plans of this sort Christ
   had to evade; and he returned alone to the mountain.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [468] Luke, ix., 10. The tetrarch Philip, who raised the village of
   Bethsaida (on the east side) to the dignity of a city, distinguished it
   from the village of the same name on the west side, by adding the name
   Julias, from the emperor's daughter (Joseph., Archaeol., xviii., 2, §
   1). It is not strange that the name byttsydh (meaning a place of fish,
   a fishing-town), should be applied to two places on different sides of
   a lake abounding in fish.--Robinson's Palestine, vol. iii., p. 566.

   [469] It appears possible, from John, vi., 5, that Christ only withdrew
   to the east shore after spending a great part of the day with the
   multitude on the west side. In this case it would be natural for Christ
   to express, first, a care for their corporeal wants, when he saw them,
   after spending nearly the whole day without food, follow him at a late
   hour. What was done upon the two shores, therefore, may perhaps have
   been blended together in the synoptical accounts.

   [470] Cf. p 152.

   [471] John's Gospel, however, differs from others in this point (vi.,
   5), in stating that Christ himself asked the question, "Whence shall we
   buy bread?" &c., before any thing else was done. We find, therefore, by
   comparison with the other Gospels, that John has omitted part of the
   details. Christ would not make this the first question, when a
   multitude stood before him in want of spiritual as well as bodily
   relief; nor is it likely that he meant to prepare the way for the
   miracle from the beginning. From John, vi., 17, also, we gather that
   the event took place towards evening, leaving room for the inference
   [apart from the accounts in the other Gospels] that the multitude had
   been about Christ some time. In this statement, then, John plunges at
   once into the midst of the account, without the vividness of detail
   which usually marks his Gospel. On the other hand (cf. Matt., xv., 32),
   it is not likely that Christ waited for an intimation from the
   disciples before manifesting his ever-watchful love and compassion; nor
   was it his custom to work a miracle suddenly, but in a
   naturally-suggested and prepared way. All difficulties disappear if we
   adopt the view of note , p. 261.

   [472] The question arises, whether the miracle recorded in Matt., xv.,
   32, seq., and Mark, viii.. 1-8, is different from the one of which we
   have just treated, or whether it is the same, differently stated. The
   fact that the narratives are substantially alike, and differ in matters
   comparatively unimportant, may be urged in favour of the latter view;
   but the relative differences of measure (4000 instead of 5000, with
   seven loaves instead of five, and the multitude spending three days
   with Christ) favour the former. The resemblances may be ascribed to the
   one account's having been modelled after the other. Matt., xvi., 9, 10,
   would not prove them different; that passage may have been modified at
   a later period, when the facts were presupposed to be different,
   without affecting its veracity. The localities might help to decide the
   question. The first miracle took place, as we have said, on the eastern
   side of Genesareth, near a mountain. The locality which we assign to
   the second will depend upon our answer to a question still debated,
   viz., where Magdala, to which Christ passed over (Matt., xvi., 39), was
   situated, According to the Talmudical accounts (Lightfoot, Chorograph.,
   c. 76; Wetstein, in loc.), it was near Gadara, consequently, on the
   eastern side of the sea. If this be so, the second miracle must have
   been wrought upon a mountain on the western shore; thus assigning a
   locality to it different from that of the first. But, on the other
   hand, there is shown to this day, south of Capernaum, on the road to
   Tiberias, a village called el-Mejdel (Robinson), a name corresponding
   to the ancient Magdala (Burckhardt, Germ. trans., ii., 559; cf.
   Rosenmüller, Handbuch der Biblischen Alterthumskunde, ii., 73). This
   agrees with the Talmudic accounts that place the site near Tiberias;
   but not so well with the one quoted above, namely, that it was near
   Gadara, out cannot the Migdal Gadar, therein mentioned, be otherwise
   explained? Cf Gesenius's remark on the passage cited; Burckhardt, ii.,
   1056; Robinson, iii., 529; Matt., xvi., i. (Pharisees meeting Christ),
   agrees better with the supposition of the western shore. If, then,
   Magdala was on the western shore, the second miracle, like the first,
   must have occurred on the eastern; the direction of their subsequent
   passage across the lake would agree pretty well. Then the general
   geographical course (indicated in Matt., xvi., 13) would accord very
   well with Matt., xv., 21; and all this favours the opinion that we have
   two reports of one and the same miracle. There is an important
   difference between Matt., xv., 39, and xiv., 22; the latter stating
   that Christ sent his disciples away first by ship; the former, that he
   went immediately himself; but this might have arisen from an omission,
   in the former passage; just as we fin4 Luke, also, saying nothing of
   it. The probability of the miracle having been wrought twice is
   lessened by the view that we have taken of it as constituting the
   climax of his miraculous works. We recognize in Matt., xv., 29; xvi.,
   12, a break in the historical and local connexion; and, in fact, we
   frequently find in this document, although an original and evangelical
   one, the same expressions and events narrated more than once; sometimes
   in longer, sometimes in shorter forms.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 177. Christ Walks upon the Waters. (John, vi., 16; Matt., xiv., 2;
   Mark, vi., 45.)

   Dismissing the disciples at evening, he commanded them to sail across
   to the western shore, in the direction of Bethsaida and Capernaum. They
   departed, but sailed for a while slowly along the shore, expecting
   Christ to come to them after he had dismissed the multitude; but they
   waited in vain. It was now dark; they became aware that their
   expectations would not be fulfilled, and took their way for the other
   shore. But the wind was against them; they had to contend with storm
   and waves. After struggling with the elements in great anxiety for more
   than an hour and a half in the open sea, they strove again to reach the
   shore which they had left. While they were toiling to accomplish this,
   suddenly, between three and six in the morning, Christ appeared to them
   walking on the waters, and approaching the vessel. [473] Bewildered
   with fear, they did not recognize the Saviour amid the storm and
   darkness, but thought they saw "a spirit." [474] But Christ called to
   them, "It is I; be not afraid." The well-known voice turned their fear
   into joy. They sought, longingly, to take him into the vessel; but,
   before they could succeed in it, they were wafted to the shore by a
   favourable wind. This, too, was full of import to them; as soon as
   Christ made himself known, every thing took a joyful turn. [475]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [473] If it were even grammatically possible to translate epi tes
   thalasses "along the sea," and epi` te`n tha'lassan "towards the sea,"
   although the connexion be unnatural (thus supposing that Christ had
   gone in a half circle to the other side of the shore, and so reached
   the disciples, who had slowly toiled along the shore); if this, I say,
   were grammatically possible, such a construction is directly opposed to
   the tenor and intention of the narrative. This is most obvious in
   John's account, which is the most direct and simple, and has least of
   the miraculous about it. Suppose the disciples to have sailed 25 or 30
   furlongs, not across, but along the sea, and then, seeing Jesus on the
   shore, to have taken him in; how will this agree with John's statement
   (vi., 21), "immediately the ship was at the land, whither they went?"
   If they saw Jesus, then, on the shore, it must have been the western
   shore; and what meaning could there be, in that case, in their taking
   him into the vessel? Cf. Lücke's excellent remarks, in loc.

   [474] Not a likely thought, if Jesus was walking on the shore; it could
   have been nothing strange, especially towards Easter, when so many were
   travelling towards Jerusalem, to see a man walking on the lake-side
   towards morning.

   [475] I follow John's account, as most naturally explaining itself.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 178. Christ in the Synagogue at Capernaum. (John, vi.)

   (1.) The Carnal Mind of the Multitude rebuked.

   Christ met certain of the eye--witnesses of the miraculous feeding of
   the five thousand in the synagogue at Capernaum, either on the Sabbath,
   or on some other day. [476] They were surprised, and, therefore, the
   more gratified, at his sudden appearance, since they had left him on
   the eastern shore; and their pleasure was shared by others whom they
   had told of the miracle. Doubtless they were full of expectation that
   he would work new wonders to confirm his Messiahship, and gratify their
   carnal longings. But the higher their hopes of this kind were, the
   deeper was their disappointment, and the greater their rage, when he
   offered them something entirely different from what they sought. The
   miracle could produce no faith in those who were destitute of a
   spiritual mind; their enthusiasm, carnally excited, was soon to pass
   over into opposition. A process of sifting was to take place, and the
   discourse which Christ uttered was intended to bring it on. n.

   They questioned him; but, instead of replying, he entered at once upon
   a rebuke of their carnal temper: "Ye seek me, not because ye saw the
   miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled. Labour
   not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth/
   unto everlasting life, which the Son of Man shall give unto you; for
   him hath God the Father sealed." Ye seek me, not because the sign of my
   Divine working, which ye saw, has led you to me as the Son of God, who
   alone can supply your spiritual wants; but only because I have appeased
   your bodily appetite; and so you look to me only for sensible gifts,
   which I come not to bestow (i. e., such was the carnal hue of their
   expectations of Messiah). Strive not for perishable, but eternal food,
   imparting eternal life, which the Son of Man will bestow; God has
   sealed him to this by miracles wrought before your eyes, in attestation
   of his Divine calling."

   Upon this, the purer-minded among them asked him, "What must we do,
   then, to become worthy of the Divine favour?" They expected him to
   prescribe new religious duties; but, instead of this, he led them back
   to the one work: "Believe on him whom God hath sent." With this faith
   every thing is given.

   (2.) A greater Sign demanded.--The Answer: "Christ the Bread of Life."

   Then others [477] came out; either eye-witnesses of the miracle, who
   (according to the nature of the unspiritual mind), still unsatisfied,
   and seeking greater signs, were liable, from their want of faith, to be
   soon perplexed even in regard to what they had already experienced;
   [478] or persons who had only heard of the miracle from others, and who
   had decided from the first to see for themselves before they would
   believe. These demanded of Christ (v. 30) a new miraculous attestation;
   [479] and, as the Messiah was to be a Moses with new powers, they asked
   that he should give them bread from heaven--celestial manna--angels'
   food, according to their fancies of the millennial bliss.

   Christ took the opportunity (v. 32-42) thus naturally offered to lead
   them from the material to the spiritual and Divine, and declared
   himself to be the true bread from heaven, at the same time seeking to
   awaken in them a desire for it. But their carnal feelings were
   susceptible of no such desire; and, still regarding only the earthly
   appearance, they took offence that the carpenter's son should say, "I
   came down from heaven." He did not attempt to reason them out of their
   scruples, but laid bare the source of them, i. e., their dispositions
   of heart and mind; of these they had first to be rid, before they could
   recognize the Divinity in his human manifestation (v. 43-47). "Murmur
   not among yourselves; no man can come unto me, except the Father, which
   hath sent me, draw him." Seek within you, not without you, for the
   cause of your surprise; it lies in this: you came to me carnally, with
   no sense of spiritual need; and, therefore, have not the drawing of the
   Father, which all must follow who would come unto me aright." It is
   among the prophecies that are to be fulfilled in the Messianic age that
   "they shall all be taught of God;" [480] and so, every one that follows
   the Father's call, comes to me. (The voice of God, which testifies of
   the Redeemer in all needy souls and calls them, will be heard every
   where.) But this must not be understood as if any one could know the
   Father, or be united with him, except through the Son; the Son alone,
   derived from the Father, knows him perfectly, and can impart this
   knowledge to others ["Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he
   which is of God; he hath seen the Father"]. This preventing operation
   of the Holy Spirit was only intended to lead them to the Son, as their
   Redeemer: "He that believeth on me hath everlasting life." Again (v.
   48-51) he repeats the assertion, "I am that bread of life from heaven,"
   confirmed by the proof that none could attain a share in the Divine
   life, or communion with the Father, except through him; and describes
   himself as the true manna from heaven.

   He then proceeds to tell them (v. 51) that he would give them a bread
   which was to impart life to the world; hence, that the bread which he
   was about to give was, in a certain sense, different from the bread
   which he was; different, that is, from his whole self-communication.
   "And the bread which I will give is my flesh." This bread was to be the
   self-sacrifice of his bodily life for the salvation of mankind. [481]
   The life-giving power, as such, was his Divine-human existence; the
   life-giving power, in its special act, was his self-sacrifice. The two
   are inseparable; the latter being the essential means of realizing the
   former; only by his self-sacrifice could his Divine--human life become
   the bread of life for men. [482]

   (3.) Eating Christ's Flesh and drinking his Blood.--His own Explanation
   of this (John, vi., 53, seq.)

   The Jews wilfully perverted these words of Christ (v. 52) into a carnal
   meaning; and therefore he repeated and strengthened them. "Except ye
   eat the flesh of the Son of Man," &c. (v. 53-58). "Except ye receive my
   Divine-human life within you, make it as your own flesh and blood, and
   become thoroughly penetrated by the Divine principle of life, which
   Christ has imparted to human nature and himself realized in it, ye
   cannot partake of eternal life."

   To make the sense of his figurative expressions perfectly clear, he
   changed the figure again to the "bread from heaven;" as the living
   Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me,
   [483] even he shall live by me. [484] This is the bread that came down
   from heaven. But most of his disciples still lacked the capacity to
   understand how his words mutually explained each other. Adhering to the
   outward and material sense, they seized upon those expressions which
   were most striking, without catching their connexion, or taking the
   trouble to understand his figures by comparing them with each other and
   with the unfigurative expressions; a process which could not have been
   difficult even to those among them who were incapable of profound
   thought, accustomed as they were to the figurative style of Oriental
   language, and to Christ's peculiar manner of speaking. Fastening only
   upon the expression, "eating his flesh and drinking his blood," in this
   sense, they found it "a hard saying which they could not bear" (v. 60).

   And this was true not merely of the mass of hearers in the synagogue,
   but also of many who had become his followers during his protracted
   labours in Galilee, without, however, in heart and spirit, really
   belonging to the circle of disciples. The foreign elements had to be
   separated from the kindred ones; and the very same impressions which
   served to attach really kindred souls more closely to the person of
   Christ were now to drive off others, who, though previously attracted,
   were not decided within themselves as to their relations to him (v.
   61-66).

   When he had left the synagogue, and was standing among persons who, up
   to that time, had been his constant attendants, he said, in view of the
   state of feeling above described, "I have spoken to you of eating my
   flesh; doth this offend you? What, then, will you say, when the Son of
   Man will ascend into heaven? You will then see me no more with your
   bodily eyes; [485] but yet it will be necessary for you to eat my flesh
   and drink my blood, which then, in a carnal sense, will be plainly
   impossible." It is obvious, therefore, that Christ meant no material
   participation in his flesh and blood, but one which would have its
   fullest import and extent at the time specified.

   He then naturally passes on to explain the spiritual import of his
   life-streaming words: "It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh
   profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and
   they are life. It is the Spirit that giveth life; the flesh is nothing;
   hence I could not have meant a sensible eating of my flesh and blood,
   but the appropriation of my Spirit, as the life-giving principle, as
   this communicates itself through my manifestation in flesh and blood.
   As my words are only the medium through which the Spirit of life that
   gushes forth from me is imparted, they can be rightly understood only
   so far as the Spirit is perceived in them." But this was precisely what
   those who misunderstood him were deficient in; and, "therefore," said
   he, "I said unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were
   given unto him of my Father. Only those that hear His call, and come
   with a susceptibility for Divine things, can apprehend my words and
   obtain faith in me. As I said unto you, your carnal sense is the source
   of your misunderstanding and unbelief."

   (4.) Sifting of the Disciples.--Peter's Confession.

   Then followed a sifting of the disciples. [From that time many of his
   disciples went back, and walked no more with him.] As this was the
   natural result of his relations to them, he rather furthered than
   checked it; it was time that the crisis that had been preparing in
   their hearts should manifest itself outwardly. And the departure of the
   unworthy was to test the genuine disciples, and make them conscious of
   the true relation in which they stood to Christ. He wished them,
   therefore, in that critical moment, to prove their own selves; for
   there was one among them already upon the point of turning away, who
   might yet,. by heeding Christ's injunction, have saved himself from the
   destruction that awaited him.

   He said to the twelve, "Will ye also go away?" Peter, speaking, as
   usual, for the rest, bore testimony to their experience in his
   fellowship: "Lord, to whom can we go?" and confirmed Christ's words by
   his own consciousness, in whose depths he had felt the flow of their
   life-giving fountain: "Thou hast the words of eternal life." And, there
   fore, he was able to confess in the name of all the rest, from a
   conviction founded in personal knowledge and experience, that Jesus was
   Messiah (v. 69). But Christ warned them that there was one among them
   who did not share this conviction, although included in Peter's
   confession. He had chosen them--drawn them to himself--he said, and yet
   one of them had the heart of an enemy. These words, showing to Judas
   that his inmost thoughts lay bare before Christ, might, had he been at
   all open to impression, have brought him to repent and open his heart
   to the Saviour, seeking forgiveness. Failing this, they could only
   strengthen his enmity.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [476] Part of what occurred would have been a violation of the Sabbath;
   in later times there were assemblies in the synagogue on the second and
   fifth days of the week (Winer, Real wörterbuch. 2d ed., vol. ii., p.
   637.

   [477] It is part of John's manner not to distinguish individuals or
   classes closely in his narrations.

   [478] For the miracle in the miracle, the Supernatural, as such, can
   only be apprehended by the Sense for the Supernatural. The reaction of
   the senses on the critical understanding can soon uproot a conviction
   growing only in the soil of the senses. One reasons away what he thinks
   he has seen; "it could not have happened so."

   [479] It is to be noted, in comparing the accounts of the two instances
   in which the multitude were miraculously fed, that the second is
   followed (Matt., xvi., 1) by a demand made upon Christ for a sign from
   heaven.

   [480] John, vi., 45. This cannot be understood of the subsequent
   teaching of all by the bestowing of the Holy Ghost, or of the general
   teaching of Christianity; the thing in view in the passage was, the
   Divine voice in men, preceding faith, to lead them to Christ as
   Saviour, which was not to be restrained by any human statutes.

   [481] Lachmann's text omits the words en ego` do'so v. 51, a reading
   which is supported by considerable authority. Omitting these words,
   only the general idea (the sa'rx, to be devoted for the salvation of
   men) would be made prominent in the passage; not, however, to the
   exclusion of his self-sacrifice as the culminating-point of his life
   devoted to God and to man's salvation. But the omission would make the
   passage harsh, and unlike John's style: the words may have slipped out
   of some of the MSS., from their similarity to the preceding o`n ego`
   do'so.

   [482] I am well aware of what Kling says against Lücke (Stud. u. Krit,
   1836, 1) in regard to this division of the discourse, but my views
   remain unaffected. I cannot find in the words of Christ the Lutheran
   Realism, so called.

   [483] To "eat him" and "to eat his flesh and blood" have the same
   meaning.

   [484] The way in which Christ himself explains his meaning by changing
   his words is enough to show how far removed these words are from any
   reference to a communication of the body of Christ in the Lord's
   Supper.

   [485] The removal of Christ's bodily presence from the earth, and his
   exaltation to heaven, are united together by him. Unbelievers see only
   the negative side, the removal; the eye of faith in seeing the one,
   sees the other.
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     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER X.

  JESUS IN NORTH GALILEE, AND ON THE WAY TO CESAREA PHILIPPI.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 179. Reasons for the Journey.

   WE have said that Christ desired to obtain an opportunity for private
   intercourse with the disciples, in order to hear the re port of their
   mission journey, and to prepare their minds for the stormy times that
   were approaching. As it seemed impossible to secure this in the
   neighbourhood of Tiberias, he determined to go to some distance from
   that region of country, a purpose which other circumstances soon
   hastened.

   Herod Antipas, who then reigned in Galilee, hearing of the fame of
   Jesus, became personally desirous to see him. This wish was probably
   dictated by mere curiosity, or by a desire to test Christ's power to
   work miracles; [486] certainly it arose from no sense of spiritual
   need. As such a meeting could lead to no good result, Christ must have
   desired to avoid it. This formed an additional motive for withdrawing
   himself into North Galilee; and perhaps beyond, into Paneas, or Cesarea
   Philippi, the domain of the Tetrarch Philip. [487] The first stage of
   the journey took him to Bethsaida Julias, on the west side of the Sea
   of Genesareth.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [486] Cf. Luke, xxiii., 8. In view of the character of Herod, there is
   more internal probability in Luke, ix., 7, than Matt., xiv., 1, 2.

   [487] We infer the direction which Christ took with his disciples from
   comparing Matt., xv., 21; xvi., 13; Mark, vii., 24; viii., 27; Luke,
   ix., 10-18.
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   § 180. Cure of the Blind Man at Bethsaida.--Peter's Second
   Confession.--The Power of the Keys. (Mark, viii.; Matt., xvi.)

   At Bethsaida a blind man was brought to Christ, who took him out of the
   town to avoid public notice; and then performed on him the cure whose
   successive steps are so graphically described by Mark. He then forbade
   him for the time being to tell of what had been done as notoriety would
   have been inconsistent with his purpose above mentioned. [488]

   When left alone with the disciples, he questioned them about their
   travels, and concerning the opinions generally prevalent in regard to
   himself. Peter renewed, in a different form, the confession which he
   had before made on a similar occasion. [489] In contrast with those who
   saw in Jesus only a Prophet, he said, "Thou art the Messiah;" certainly
   implying more than was included in the ordinary Jewish sense; although
   he must have felt more than he could unfold in definite thought when he
   added, "the Son of the living God."

   Thus had Peter, on two distinct occasions, given utterance to the same
   confession, drawn from the depths of his inward experience; in the
   first instance, in opposition to those whose hearts were wholly
   estranged from Christ; and in the second, to those who had obtained
   only an inferior intuition of the person of Christ. The Saviour,
   therefore, thought him worthy of the following high praise: "Blessed
   art thou, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my
   Father which is in heaven." Peter's conviction was the result of no
   human teaching, no sensible impression or outward authority; but of an
   inward revelation from God, whose drawing he had always followed--a
   Divine fact, which comes not to men from without; which no education or
   science, how lofty soever, can either make or stand in stead of. [490]

   In view of this conviction of Peter, thus twice confessed, in regard to
   that great fact and truth which forms the unchangeable and immovable
   basis of the eternal kingdom of God, Christ called him by the name
   which at an early period, with prophetic glance, he had applied to him
   (John, i., 42), the man of rock, on whom he declared that he would
   build his Church, that should triumph over all the powers of death,
   [491] and stand to all eternity.

   This promise was not made to Peter as a person, but as a faithful organ
   of the Spirit of Christ, and his steadfast witness. Christ might have
   said the same to any one, who, at such a moment, and in such a sense,
   had made the same confession; although Peter's uttering it in the name
   of all the twelve accorded with his peculiar charisma, which
   conditioned the post that Christ assigned to him.

   In the same sense he confided to Peter the "keys of the kingdom of
   Heaven," which was to be revealed and spread abroad among men by the
   community founded by him; inasmuch as men were to gain admittance into
   that kingdom by appropriating the truth to which he had first
   testified, and which he was afterward to proclaim. This was to be the
   key by which the kingdom was to be opened to all men. And with it was
   entrusted to him the power, on earth, "to bind and loose" for heaven;
   since he was called to announce forgiveness of sins to all who should
   rightly receive the Gospel he was to proclaim, and the announcement of
   pardon to such as received the offered grace had necessarily to be
   accompanied by the condemnation of those who rejected it. [492]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [488] This suits well with the point of time here assigned to it.

   [489] In all the Gospels this event is closely connected with the
   miraculous feeding, which confirms our view of the historical connexion
   of the facts. True, it is possible that Peter's confession, as recorded
   by John, is the same as that recorded by Matthew, and nothing essential
   would be lost if it were so. But we may certainly suppose that, at so
   critical a period, Christ could have questioned his disciples thus
   closely on two different occasions in regard to their personal
   convictions, which were soon to undergo so severe a trial.

   [490] Cf. p. 139.

   [491] The "Gates of Hades," in Matt., xvi., 18 (cf. Isa., xxxviii., 10;
   1 Cor., xv., 55), designate rather the kingdom of death than of Satan.
   In this view the passage means, that "the Church should stand forever,
   and that its members, partakers of the Divine life, should fear death
   no more--of course implying, however, that she should be victorious
   over all hostile powers.

   [492] This view of the "binding and loosing" power is sustained by
   John, xx., 23. The same thing is expressed in other words in Matt., x.,
   13; 2 Cor., ii., 15, 16. The difference between the figure of "the
   keys" and that of "binding and loosing" need cause no difficulty; they
   refer to different conceptions; the former, to reception into, and
   exclusion from, the kingdom of Heaven; the latter, to the means of
   reception and exclusion, viz., the pardon of sin and the withholding of
   pardon.
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   § 181. The Disciples prohibited to reveal Christ's Messianic
   Dignity.--The Weakness of Peter rebuked. (Matt., xvi., 20-28; Mark,
   viii., 30.)

   Thus Christ confirmed the Apostles in their confession of his Messianic
   dignity. But he knew, at the same time, that their minds were still
   tinctured with the ordinary ideas and expectations of a visible kingdom
   to be founded by Messiah; and he, therefore, gradually taught them that
   it was by his own sufferings that the kingdom of God was to be
   established. [Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no
   man that he was Jesus the Christ. From that time he began to show to
   his disciples how that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things,
   &c.]

   The prohibition was doubtless given with a view to prevent them from
   diffusing the expectations of Messiah which they then entertained, and
   thus leading the people to political undertakings, and the like, in
   opposition to the objects of Christ. The words that immediately follow
   the prohibition confirm this view of it. But Christ's declarations that
   sufferings lay before him was too far opposed to the disciples'
   opinions and wishes to find easy entrance to their minds. "Be it far
   from thee, Lord," said Peter; an exclamation inspired, indeed, by love,
   but a love attaching itself rather to the earthly manifestation of
   Christ's person, than to its higher one; a love in which natural and
   human feelings were not as yet made sufficiently subordinate to God and
   his kingdom. And as the Saviour had just before exalted Peter so
   highly, when he testified to that which had not been revealed to him by
   flesh and blood, but by the Father in heaven; so now he reproved him as
   severely for an utterance inspired by a love too much debased by flesh
   and blood. Human considerations were more to him than the cause of God;
   he sought, by presenting them, as far as in him lay, to prevent Christ
   from offering the sacrifice which his Divine calling demanded; [493]
   and his disposition was rebuked with holy indignation. [494]

   Christ then turned to his disciples, and gave them a lesson directly
   opposed to Peter's weak unwillingness to sacrifice every thing to the
   one holy interest. He impressed upon them a truth pre-eminently
   necessary to the fulfilment of their calling, viz., that none but those
   who were prepared for every species of self-denial [495] could become
   his disciples, and enter into the kingdom of God, whose foundations he
   was about to lay. Finally, he announced to them that many among them
   would live to see the kingdom of God come forth in glorious victory
   over all its foes. It is true, they were not at that time able fully to
   comprehend this; only at a later period, by the illumination of the
   Holy Ghost, and by the course of events, the best commentary on
   prophecy, were they to be brought completely to understand it.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [493] The alternations in Peter's feelings, and his consequent desert
   of praise or blame from she Master, within so short a time, are so
   easily explained from the stand-point which he then occupied, that I
   cannot find any thing strange in Christ's expressing himself thus
   oppositely to him, as Schleiermacher does (Werke, ii., 107). And,
   therefore, I see no internal ground for believing that the passage is
   not properly connected with the narrative here.

   [494] This helps to fix the right point of view for understanding
   Christ's previous declaration and promise to Peter; and the two
   addresses to him, taken together, attest the fidelity of the narrative
   as uncorrupted by a later ecclesiastical interest.

   [495] It was naturally necessary for Christ to impress this truth
   frequently upon the disciples; Matt., xvi., 24; Mark, viii., 34, 35;
   Luke ix., 23, 24; and, therefore, the occurrence of similar passages,
   e.g., Matt., x., 38; John, xii., 25, 26, proves nothing against the
   originality of the discourses there recorded; although it is possible
   that his sayings to this effect on one occasion may have been combined
   with those uttered on another to the same tenor.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 182. Monitions of Christ to the Apostles in regard to Prudence in
   their Ministry.--(1.) The Wisdom of Serpents and Harmlessness of Doves.
   (Matt., x., 16.)--(2.) The Parable of the Unjust Steward (Luke, xvi.,
   1-13.)--(3.) "Make to yourselves friends of the Mammon of
   Unrighteousness," &c.

   (1.)

   To this period, in which Christ conversed with his disciples in regard
   to their first missionary tour, and gave them cautions for their future
   and more difficult labours, doubtless belong many advices of the same
   tenor, found in different places in the Gospels. We, therefore, join
   together several sayings of this kind here; if not chronologically at
   least according to the substantial connexion.

   As he sent the disciples forth like defenceless sheep among wolves, he
   bade them, in the struggles through which they must pass, to combine
   childlike innocence and purity of heart, symbolized by the harmless
   dove, with prudence and sagacity, whose symbol was the serpent. [496]
   They were, indeed, to labour as organs of the Divine Spirit, and to be
   furnished with Divine powers for their ministry; but he did not wish
   them, on that account, to neglect all proper human means for overcoming
   the difficulties they should meet with, but rather to apply that wisdom
   which knows how to use circumstances prudently. No such rule would have
   been given had he expected his kingdom soon to be established by a
   sudden interference of Omnipotence; it was prescribed in view of a
   gradual developement by the use of means provided in the general course
   of nature.

   Yet the attempt to exercise prudence for the kingdom of God might (he
   taught) easily beguile them from purity and simplicity of heart. The
   wisdom of the serpent was, therefore, limited by the innocence of the
   dove; their prudence was to be defined by purity. They were to use none
   but pure and truthful means for the advancement of the holy objects of
   the kingdom. On the other hand, the combination of wisdom with
   innocence showed that the childlike simplicity of discipleship was
   perfectly consistent with the culture and use of the understanding, and
   with a judicious share in the manifold and diversified relations of
   life; the one thing needful was, that purity should inspire their
   wisdom. Here, as always, Christ brings into their higher unity things
   which elsewhere oppose and contradict each other.

   (2.)

   The parable of the Unjust Steward illustrates this combination of
   simplicity with prudence. [497] We find the main point of comparison
   not, as some do, in the proper management of earthly possessions, but
   in the words emphasized by Christ himself: "The children of this world
   are wiser in their generation than the children of light" (v. 8). The
   children of the world, using more wisdom than the children of light,
   often succeed in carrying out their purposes against the latter; as, on
   the other hand, the children of light fail of ends connected with the
   Divine kingdom, because they lack wisdom in the choice of the means.
   That wisdom, therefore, which characterizes the children of the world
   is to be recommended to the children of light. This is the main
   thought; the proper use of earthly goods, subordinating every thing to
   the kingdom of God, is a minor one. Keeping this in view, the
   difficulties of the parable vanish; the special feature in it which
   forms a stumbling block to some will be found precisely adapted to this
   thought, and necessary to its illustration.

   The example of the unjust steward is to be imitated, not in regard to
   the disposition that impelled him, but to his undivided attention to
   every thing which could serve as a means to his ends. As the children
   of the world aim steadily at their selfish objects, and, with
   ever-watchful prudence, seize upon all the means necessary to secure
   them, so the children of light are to keep constantly before their eyes
   the relations of life to the Divine kingdom, and to press every thing
   into their service in its behalf. It is, indeed, a difficult task to
   combine the singleness of aim and simplicity of heart which the Gospel
   requires with that shrewd sagacity which can bend all earthly things to
   its holy purposes. Yet if the aim to serve God's kingdom be the ruling
   power of one's life, and all the manifold interests of life are made
   subordinate thereto; if the holy decision be once made and never
   swerved from, it will bring forth, as one of its necessary fruits, this
   true sagacity and moral presence of mind. It is precisely this
   connexion of prudence with a single, steadfast aim, though a bad one,
   that is illustrated in the conduct of the unjust steward. A bad man was
   necessarily chosen for the example; its very object was to show how
   much the children of light might do for the kingdom of God, if they
   would, in this respect, imitate the children of the world.

   (3.)

   The subordinate point of the parable is the special application of this
   prudence to the use of earthly goods. We must take care, in
   interpreting the verses which follow, not to lose sight of the parable
   itself. As the unjust steward secures the favour of the debtors by
   gratuities, in order to make sure of a home for himself when his office
   is taken away; so the children of light, by the right use of earthly
   possessions, are to make for themselves friends who will receive them
   into everlasting mansions when they are called away from this life.

   It is plain that charities to the pious are meant here, as none can
   "receive into everlasting habitations" unless they themselves dwell
   there. But it would be inconsistent with Christ's general teaching to
   suppose that he meant to say that pious souls in heaven would have the
   power to receive those who had done kindness to them on earth into a
   share of their blessedness; or that the merely outward act of
   almsgiving to the pious could atone for past sins and secure eternal
   joy. The persons addressed are presupposed as already "children of
   light;" and they are required to manifest their inward feelings in
   outward acts. The active love of Christians is to show itself such, in
   the use of earthly goods, by sharing them with fellow-Christians. "Fit
   yourselves, by your labours of love, to become fellow-inmates of the
   heavenly mansions with those whose wants you have willingly alleviated
   during their earthly wayfaring." The form of expression is adapted to
   the parable; there the debtors of the rich man were made friends by the
   unjust steward to secure a home on earth; here the pious poor are made
   friends by the Christian to secure an eternal mansion in heaven.

   Christ annexes to this application of the parable certain directions
   for the use of property by the children of God. He designates worldly
   goods mammonas tes adikias, adikos mammonas; because they are usually
   unjustly obtained, and employed in the service of the devil, who is,
   and will be, the ruler of this world (and thus called kosmokrator)
   until the consummation of the kingdom of God. And this evil mammon is
   contrasted with the true riches, which cannot be possessed except by
   the children of light. [498] The wealth of this world belongs to the
   children of this world, who devote it to the service of Evil; it is
   another man's, and not the Christian's own; while he dwells in a world
   of strangers, he knows of higher riches, of which the worldling is
   totally ignorant. [499]

   The summary, then, of precepts annexed to the parable by Christ, and
   illustrating its import, is as follows (v. 10-13): "Be faithful in
   managing your earthly property, that you may be found worthy to be
   intrusted with the higher riches. He that is faithful in the least, is
   faithful also in much;' the fidelity which is proved by the right use
   of wealth may be trusted with the riches of the kingdom. The latter
   will be granted in proportion to the former. But he that is unjust in
   the least, will be unjust also in much.' Who will trust you with the
   true riches, if you misapply the unrighteous mammon? And if ye have not
   been faithful in that which is another's, who shall give you that which
   is your own?' Who will give you that which properly belongs to your
   higher nature, if you mismanaged what was not your own, but only
   intrusted to you?"

   The concluding thought is: "No servant can serve two masters at once,
   the servant, in the strictest sense, being wholly dependent upon the
   master, and, in fact, his instrument; so no man can have two masters
   spiritually; the one only who rules the whole life is the master." No
   man's life can depend, at the same time, upon both God and Mammon. To
   find one's true good in Mammon, and to serve God as Master, these
   things are incompatible. The true child of God applies his earthly
   wealth to His service, and therein proves himself a faithful servant;
   regarding it not as a good in itself, but only in its bearing upon the
   kingdom of God--the highest good.

   It is clear that this passage (placed out of its connexion in Matt.,
   vi., 24) stands properly here, closely joined to the parable; and,
   indeed, requisite to set the idea of the parable in its proper light.
   The principal scope of the latter, as we have seen, is to show the
   connexion between wisdom and a steadfast aim of life; and the passage
   in question (v. 13) contains precisely the same thought; as it teaches
   that we cannot rightly use our earthly goods unless we make our choice
   decidedly between God and the world, and then, with undivided aim,
   refer all things to the one Master to whom we have consecrated our
   whole life.

   Thus the parable illustrates the precept, "Be wise as serpents, and
   harmless as doves." It exhibits the unjust steward as a model of
   serpent wisdom, which, imitated by Christians, becomes the wisdom of
   innocence. The concluding words of Christ, above explained (v. 13),
   teach that the true simplicity, i. e., singleness of aim, generates
   that controlling presence of mind which is the element of wisdom. What,
   at a later period, was the chief source of Paul's Apostolical wisdom
   but this, that his heart was not divided between God and the world;
   that he had but one aim, and served but one Master?
     __________________________________________________________________

   [496] Paul, who frequently alludes to Christ's sayings, does so several
   times to this one, Rom., xvi., 19; 1 Cor., xiv., 20. I place the
   passage in this connexion as better adapted to it than to the first
   Apostolical missionary journey.

   [497] It is to be noted that this parable, according to Luke, xvi., 1,
   was addressed to the disciples, even though we apply the word to the
   larger circle of disciples, and not specifically to the Apostles. We
   need not suppose, from v. 14, that it was directed against the avarice
   of the Pharisees.

   [498] The antithesis of a'dikon and alethinon, in v. 11, might lead us
   to interpret the first as "what is, in itself, not good;" but the
   phrase mammonas tes adikias, and the implied allusion to the parable,
   favour the sense given in the text.

   [499] Here is illustrated the difference between the Ebionitish idea of
   worldly goods and the true Christian view. According to the first,
   Satan is Lord and Master of this world in a physical sense; and the
   possession of property, beyond the bare necessaries, is considered as
   sinful in itself, as sharing in a domain which ought to be left
   exclusively to the servants of Satan. According to the latter, earthly
   goods are not the true riches, which the Christian alone can possess,
   and shall possess forever, in greater and greater fulness; they belong
   to Satan in the same sense as the whole world belongs to him. But as
   the world, from a kingdom of Satan, is to become the kingdom of God, so
   worldly goods are to be employed by the children of light to advance
   the latter, with a wisdom (illustrated in the parable) not to be
   surpassed by the wisdom of the world. It is to be remarked that Christ,
   instead of presenting the principle in its abstract generality, applied
   it specifically to acts of benevolence; the disciples, at that period,
   had no opportunity of employing their property to further the other
   objects of the kingdom of God, such as have been abundantly furnished
   in the later course of its developement. Cf. De Wette, Matt., xix., 21.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 183. Caution against imprudent Zeal in Preaching the Gospel.

   Akin to the wisdom thus recommended to the Apostles is the rule of
   preaching the truth given in Matt., vii., 6, Give not that which is
   holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they
   trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. "Valuable
   as pearls are to men, they would only enrage hungry swine, who would
   trample them, and rush upon him that had so deceived their hunger."
   Under this vivid illustration, Christ enjoined his disciples to guard
   against hastily offering the sacred truths of the kingdom to minds
   carnally unfit for them, and destitute of a sense of spiritual need;
   the holy pearls would be valueless in the eyes of such. To meet them on
   their own ground, and yet offer them nothing to satisfy their carnal
   desires, would only rouse their evil passions, and expose valuable
   lives, which ought to be preserved for the kingdom of God, without
   doing any good. The witness for the truth must needs be zealous and
   courageous, but he need not be imprudent or indiscreet.

   The Apostles, then, were cautioned against the error into which some
   later missionaries have fallen, of offering the Gospel, under the
   impulse of inconsiderate zeal, without regard to the proprieties of
   time and place. Still, it by no means followed that they were not to
   preach under circumstances in which the Word might prove a stone of
   offence to some, while it pricked others to the heart; the Word was
   destined, of necessity, to sift the various classes of men that should
   hear it. Nor was the caution neglected by Christ himself, when he
   refused to allow the rage of carnal and narrow-minded hearers to hinder
   him from uttering his truths boldly, and without regard to
   consequences, revealing a spiritual power that defied all opposition;
   or when he punished their obduracy by ceasing to condescend to their
   weakness and prejudice, and by offering the truth in its sharp and
   naked outlines, even although it excited the wrath of some, while it
   led others to reflection.

   The apophthegm that we have just considered was in itself a judgment
   and a prediction. The more immediate application of such sayings
   depended upon the circumstances under which they were uttered; to
   interpret them, it is not sufficient to have their letter only, but
   also the life-giving Spirit which originally inspired them.

   An ancient and wide-spread tradition ascribes to Christ the following
   saying: "ginesthe trapezitai dokimoi: become approved money-changers.'
   This expression bears the stamp of Christ's figurative manner of
   speech; and the external and internal evidence is in favour of its
   genuineness. [500] If this expression be deemed akin to the parable of
   the Talents, its sense could be given thus: "Be like acute
   money-changers; adding daily to the capital intrusted to you." But the
   principal figure in the parable of the talents is not the
   money-changer, but the person who puts money at interest with him; and,
   besides, the money-changers did not gain money with borrowed capital,
   but with their own. We must, therefore, look for an interpretation more
   in accordance with the business of the broker. Ecclesiastical
   antiquity, which perhaps first received these words of Christ in
   connexion with others that explained them, affords us such an
   interpretation. It was part of the business of the money-changer to
   distinguish genuine from counterfeit coin. So Christ might have given
   this rule, capable of manifold application in the labours of the
   Apostles; to imply a careful circumspection in order to distinguish the
   true from the apparent, the genuine from the counterfeit, the pure from
   the alloyed; not to condemn hastily, but, on the other hand, not to
   trust lightly. -
     __________________________________________________________________

   [500] See Fabricii, Cod. Apocryph. N. T., i., 330; iii., 524. We find
   this saying in apocryphal writings, both heretical and Catholic; and
   many imitations of it seem to have been made by the ecclesiastical
   teachers of the first century, which could not have happened at that
   time had it not been uttered by Christ or one of the Apostles. Paul
   (whose writings contained many allusions to Christ's words, and
   sentiments taking their hue from them) perhaps had this saying in mind
   in 1 Thess., v., 21, as has been supposed by Hansel, with whose view of
   the apophthegm I agree.--(Stud. u. Krit., 1836, I.)
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   § 184. The Syro-Phoenician Woman. (Matt., xv., 21; Mark, vii.,
   24.)--(1.) Her Prayer.--(2.) Her Repulse.--(3.) Her Faith.--(4.) The
   Result.

   (1.)

   Christ, having passed beyond the northern border bf Galilee, reached a
   place where he wished to remain unknown. But the fame of his miracles
   had preceded his arrival. A heathen woman of the neighbourhood (a
   Canaanite or Phoenician), whose daughter was a demoniac, hastened to
   seek help from the Saviour. As he went out with the disciples, she ran
   and cried to him, "Have mercy on me, O Lord! thou Son of David; my
   daughter is grievously vexed with a devil."

   (2.)

   "But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the
   house of Israel. . . . It is not meet to take the children's bread and
   to cast it to dogs." Taking this reply alone, apart from the
   circumstances under which Christ uttered it, it appears mysterious,
   indeed, that he should so emphatically restrict his mission to the
   Jews, that he should speak of the heathen in such a tone of contempt;
   and repel the prayer of the woman with so much severity. But although
   we may not be able, from the close and abridged narrative, to obtain a
   clear view of the matter, we can yet remove its difficulties to a great
   extent by considering it in its proper historical connexion. [501]

   We have before said that the restriction of Christ's mission to the
   lost sheep of the house of Israel was not inconsistent with his purpose
   of establishing a universal kingdom. This restriction referred to his
   personal agency, which in fact belonged to the Jewish people; not,
   however (as he himself said), but that he had "other sheep not
   belonging to this fold," which were at some time to be brought into the
   same fold, and under the same shepherd, with the lost sheep of the
   house of Israel. But in other cases, also (as we have seen), he
   afforded his personal assistance to individual heathens. We must,
   therefore, seek the reasons of Christ's conduct in the peculiar
   circumstances of the case, and of the time at which it occurred.

   In the first place, it is clear that he wished, at that juncture, to
   remain hidden, and therefore to avoid public labours (Mark, vii., 24).
   In the previous cases in which he had assisted individual pagans, no
   further consequences were likely to follow; but his agency in this case
   was likely to draw multitudes around him, and to extend his ministry
   among the heathen, in opposition to his general plan. His action,
   therefore, was directed only to the Apostles and to the woman; the
   latter he wished to relieve after she had proved her faith and poured
   out her whole heart before him; to the former the case afforded an
   example of pagan faith that might shame the Jews, and teach the
   Apostles that the heathen would yet believe in him, and share, through
   their faith, in the blessings of his kingdom. It may be a question
   whether this was Christ's intention from the beginning, or whether the
   woman's fervent prayer and believing importunity overcame his first
   purpose to send her away. There is nothing in the latter supposition
   inconsistent with the character of Jesus, since, in his purely human
   being, he was differently determined by different circumstances.

   And again, hard as the words "one ought not to cast the children's
   bread to the dogs" may sound to us, we must remember that it was a
   figurative expression, meaning nothing more than that the mercies
   destined for the Theocratic people could not as yet be extended to a
   people at that time far from the kingdom of God, and by no means
   excluding the expectation that this relation should be so changed as
   that all should become "children."

   (3.)

   The woman doubtless felt that these words, severe as they were, came
   from a heart overflowing with love, and she continued her prayer with
   trustful importunity, herself entering into the words of Christ and
   acknowledging their truth. "Yes, Lord; yet the dogs eat of the crumbs
   which fall from their master's table."

   Now if this total abasement before a man of another nation be regarded
   merely as an outward and human submission for the sake of a bodily
   blessing, it must appear abject indeed; nor could Christ have praised
   it and granted the favour so earnestly yet basely sought. But it was
   not of such a character; the pagan woman felt herself unworthy of the
   kingdom of God, and therefore was not degraded by her sense of
   inferiority to the Theocratic nation; she humbled herself, not before a
   man, but before one in whom (whatever conception she had of his person)
   God revealed himself to her heart; it was to a Divine power, not a
   human, that she gave so lowly a submission. It is precisely this sense
   of unworthiness and unconditional submission to God, when revealed in
   his omnipotence and mercy; it is precisely Faith, in this peculiarly
   Christian sense, which is made, throughout the New Testament, the
   condition of all manifestations of the grace of God. The act of Christ
   in the case illustrated his own saying, "He that humbleth himself shall
   be exalted;" he answered the woman, commending her as he would not
   commend the Jews, "O woman, great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as
   thou wilt." He set up the believing woman as a pattern of that faith
   which was to become, among the pagans, the foundation of the kingdom of
   God.

   Thus, again and again, under the most varied circumstances, did Christ
   set forth the value in which he held a spirit of humble, self-denying
   devotion to God and submission to his revelation in Christ; this
   spirit, so irreconcilably opposed to the pride of natural Reason which,
   in the ancient world, was held to be man's highest dignity, was made by
   Christ the essential condition of participation in his kingdom. Idle,
   indeed, and vain, therefore, must be all attempts to make Christianity,
   in this sense, a religion of reason, or to make Christian ethics a
   morality of reason.

   The transaction affords another lesson, also. The Christian may comfort
   himself under the hardest trials and severest struggles--nay, even when
   his most ardent prayers appear to be unheard and unanswered--with the
   consoling belief that behind the veil of harshness the Father's love
   conceals itself:

   [Behind the frowning Providence
   He hides a smiling face.]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [501] The attempt to remove these difficulties by the theory that
   Christ altered his plan at different periods cannot be made to
   harmonize with the attendant circumstances of this case, as related by
   Mark as well as Matthew; for these circumstances (the journey into
   North Galilee, &c.) prove that this case must be placed chronologically
   after other cases in which Christ had assisted individual heathens.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 185. The Transfiguration of Christ. (Luke, ix., 29-36.)

   Six days [502] after the conversation in which Christ first unfolded to
   the Apostles the sufferings and the fate that awaited him, he took
   Peter, James, and John up into a mountain apart, and was transfigured
   before them.

   The Transfiguration may be considered either (1) as an objective fact,
   a real communication with the world of spirits; or (2) as a subjective
   psychological phenomenon. The account of Luke bears indubitable marks
   of originality and historical truth; the attempts that have been made
   to resolve it into a mythical narrative are absurd But it certainly
   appears to favour the second view above stated rather than the first.

   If we adopt the first view, and assume that the narrative is intended
   to relate an objective fact, it affords us a partial exhibition of the
   intercourse of Christ. himself with the world of spirits. It could not
   have been intended merely for the Apostles to witness; for, during its
   progress, they were "heavy with sleep," and, therefore, unfit to
   apprehend it, or to transmit an account of it as matter of fact. We
   cannot, however, deny the possibility of such an occurrence, and of
   some unknown object for it, in the connexion of a history which is
   entirely out of the ordinary course of events. Once admitting the event
   as such, all that we should have to do would be to confess our
   ignorance, instead of losing ourselves in arbitrary hypotheses and
   speculative dreams.

   But, on the other hand, by following the indications given in Luke, we
   may arrive at the following view of the narrative: Jesus retired in the
   evening with three of his dearest disciples, apart, into a mountain,
   [503] to pray in their presence. We may readily imagine that his prayer
   referred to the subjects on which he had spoken so largely with the
   disciples on the preceding days, viz., the coming developement of his
   kingdom, and the conflicts he was to enter into at Jerusalem in its
   behalf. They were deeply impressed by his prayer; his countenance
   beamed with radiance, and he appeared to them glorified and
   transfigured with celestial light. At last, worn out with fatigue, they
   fell asleep; and the impressions of the Saviour's prayer and of their
   conversation with him were reflected in a vision [504] thus: Beside
   Him, who was the end of the Law and the Prophets, appeared Moses and
   Elias in celestial splendour; for the glory that streamed forth from
   Him was reflected back upon the Law, and the Prophets foretold the fate
   that awaited him at Jerusalem. In the mean time they awoke, and, in a
   half-waking condition, [505] saw and heard what followed. Viewed in
   this light, the most striking feature of the event is the deep
   impression which Christ's words had made upon them, and the conflict
   between the new views thus received and their old ideas, showing itself
   thus while they were in a state of unconsciousness.

   Still the difficulty remains, that the phenomena, if simply
   psychological, should have appeared to all the three Apostles precisely
   in the same form. It is, perhaps, not improbable, that the account came
   from the lips of Peter, who is the prominent figure in the narrative.
   [506]

   The disciples did not, at first, dwell upon this phenomenon. The turn
   of Christ's conversations with them, and the pressure of events,
   withdrew their attention from it until after the resurrection, when, as
   the several traits of their later intercourse with Christ were brought
   to mind, this transfiguration was vividly recalled, and assigned to its
   proper connexion in the epoch which preceded and prepared the way for
   the sufferings of the Saviour. [507]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [502] Luke says eight days; Matthew six; involving no discrepancy,
   however, for it is easy to show that they employed different modes of
   computation. Statements of time thus agreeing in fact but differing in
   form, are among the surest signs of veracity in historical narratives.

   [503] We do not know whether this was Mount Hermon, or the mountain
   from which Cesarea Philippi took the name Paneas. The old tradition,
   which makes Mount Tabor the site of the transfiguration, cannot be
   relied on.

   [504] Cf. Matt., xvii., 9.

   [505] Cf. Luke, ix., 33, last clause.

   [506] We have several times remarked that too much importance is not to
   be attached to the omission of any event by John that is recorded by
   the other Evangelists. Still his silence in regard to the
   transfiguration is remarkable, seeing that he himself was an
   eye-witness, and that the event itself, if an objective reality, was
   calculated to display the grandeur of Christ in a very high degree. Two
   reasons may be supposed for this: (1.) That he did not deem himself
   prepared, from the circumstances of the event, to give a distinct
   representation of it; or, (2.) That he did not view it as an objective
   reality, and, therefore, did not attach so much importance to it. Dr.
   Schneckenburger (Beiträgen zur Einleitung in das Neue Testament) thinks
   that John omitted the transfiguration because of the Gnostics and
   Docetics, who night have used it to support their views of the person
   of Christ; but to us it appears that this would have been, on the
   contrary, a reason why he should mention it, to guard, by a full and
   clear statement, against misinterpretation on that side.

   [507] Luke, ix., 36, is most simple: they kept it close, and told no
   man in those days any of those things which they had seen. The
   statement in Matthew and Mark, that Christ forbade it, gives a reason
   for this silence, in accordance more with the view that the event was
   purely objective.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 186. Elias a Forerunner of Messiah. (Matt., xvii., 10-13.)

   The relations of Elias to Christ at that time greatly occupied the
   minds of the disciples, as is obvious from the portions of one of their
   conversations with him that are preserved to us. [508]

   As we have seen [Matt., xvi., 21], he was at this period unfolding to
   his disciples his approaching appearance at Jerusalem as Messiah, and
   his impending fate. They presented to him in connexion with this, as a
   difficulty in their minds, the prediction taught by the scribes, and
   the very one which they arrayed against the Messiahship of Jesus--that
   Elias must first appear, to introduce the Messiah among the Theocratic
   people. He answered that the scribes were right in saying that Elias
   must first come and make smooth the way for the coming of Messiah; but
   that they were wrong in the carnal and literal sense which they put
   upon the saying, as if Elias were to appear in person. Elias, he told
   them, was spiritually represented by John the Baptist; he "is come
   already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they
   listed. [509] Likewise, also, shall the Son of M/an suffer of them."
   The same selfish spirit, the same adherence to the letter, which
   hindered them from seeing Elias in John, and induced them to get rid of
   so troublesome a witness, would prevent them from recognizing Messiah
   in the Son of Man, and lead them to treat him as they had done the
   Baptist.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [508] We think we are justified in considering Matt., xvii., 10-13, as
   one of these; the oun with which the question commences shows that it
   has a connexion elsewhere.

   [509] These words prove that Christ attributed John's fate to the
   machinations of the Pharisees.
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   § 187. Christ Cures a Demoniacal Youth after the Disciples had
   attempted it in vain. (Mark, ix., 14; Matt., xvii., 14; Luke, ix.,
   37.)--He Reproves the unbelieving Multitude.

   On descending from the mountain with Peter, James and John, Christ
   found the rest of the disciples surrounded by a multitude of persons,
   some well, and others ill disposed. A man in great distress on account
   of a deeply--afflicted son [510] had gone thither, attracted by the
   fame of Christ's agency in healing similar cases. The youth appears to
   have been subject to epileptic fits, with a state of imbecility or
   melancholy, in which last condition he was incapable of utterance. He
   frequently attempted to kill himself during these attacks, by throwing
   himself into the fire or into the water. The unhappy father had first
   met the disciples who remained at the foot of the mountain, and these
   last attempted to make use, in this case, of the powers of healing
   conveyed to them by Christ. But the result satisfied them that they
   were yet far from being able to act as organs for his Divine powers.
   They could not cure the demoniac; and some unfriendly scribes who were
   present took advantage of the failure, and of the excitement which it
   caused among the people, to question the disciples; probably disputing
   the miracles and the calling of their Master. [511]

   In the mean time, Christ suddenly appeared amid the throng, to their
   great surprise. [512] Part of the multitude were full of hope that He
   would do what his disciples had failed to accomplish; others,
   doubtless, as anxiously hoped that his efforts would be as impotent as
   theirs. In this, as in other cases, the Saviour combined earnest
   reproof with con descending love. He reproved them because his long
   labours had not yet satisfied them; because they still felt no higher
   than corporeal wants; because their unbelief still demanded sensible
   miracles. "O faithless generation! how long shall I be with you and
   suffer you." [513]

   The demoniac was brought in; and, as usual in such cases, the Divine
   manifestation appears to have produced a crisis, attraction and
   repulsion. His convulsions came on with new power. To prepare the mind
   of the father, Christ listened patiently to his history of the disease,
   which he closed, as if oppressed by the sight of his suffering son,
   with the prayer, "But if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us
   and help us." Fervent as the prayer was, the words, "If thou canst do
   any thing," implying a distant doubt, led Christ to reprove him gently,
   and encourage him to believe, not by saying, "Doubt not; I can do all
   things," but by pointing out to him the defect within himself: "Can I
   do any thing? Know that if thou canst believe, all things are possible
   to him that believeth" (thou thyself canst do all things, if thou only
   believest; faith can do all). [514] The gentle reproof had its full
   effect; the father, full of feeling, cried out in tears, "Yes, Lord, I
   believe (yet I feel as yet that I do not believe sufficiently); help
   thou my unbelief." Christ then spoke in tones of. confident command;
   and the demoniac suffered a new and intense paroxysm, which exhausted
   all his strength. He lay like a corpse; "but Jesus took him by the hand
   and lifted him up, and he arose."
     __________________________________________________________________

   [510] Nothing could be a stronger proof of historical veracity than the
   three separate but agreeing accounts of this event, all from different
   sources. Mark's narrative is obviously due to an eye-witness; it is
   marked by simplicity and naturalness, without a trace of the
   exaggeration which Strauss would see in it.

   [511] The presence of the scribes would fix the site rather at some
   mountain of Galilee than at Mount Hermon or Paneas.

   [512] exethambe'the, Mark, ix., 15, appears entirely natural; any thing
   but exaggerated, as Strauss will have it.

   [513] It by no means follows that Christ's exclamation refers to the
   disciples: much more probably to all that had preceded; the spirit in
   which his aid had been sought, and his miraculous power doubted. The
   word genea is too general for the Apostles; nor would the Lord, who
   generally bore with their weaknesses so benignantly, have so severely
   reproved them in this case. Nor would they, in that case, have put the
   question in ver. 28.

   [514] I give a free translation of that very difficult passage, Mark,
   ix., 23; such as the connexion appears to me to demand. Ei du'nasai, in
   v. 23, I think, refers to the words spoken by the man, v. 22: to =
   "that," which had been said: pisteusai is wanting in Cod. Vatican.,
   according to Bentley's collation, and in Cod. Ephraëm. Rescript. (see
   Tischendorf's reprint); and I think it is a gloss. Knatchbull considers
   it as middle, but without ground.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 188. Christ tells the Disciples the Cause of their Failure.--The
   Power of Faith.--Prayer and Fasting. (Matt., xvii., 20, 21.)

   After this experience, so important in view of the coming independent
   labours of the disciples, they asked of Christ, "Why could not we cast
   him out?" and thus gave him occasion to point out to them a twofold
   ground in their own selves, viz.: (1) a want of perfectly confiding
   faith, and (2) a want of that complete devotion to God and renunciation
   of the world which is implied in prayer and fasting. The former
   presupposes the latter, and the latter reacts upon the former. "Because
   of your unbelief; [515] for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as
   a grain of mustard seed, [516] ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove
   hence to yonder place, and it shall remove, [517] and nothing shall be
   impossible unto you." [518] And then he adds (probably after some
   intermediate sentences not reported in this brief but substantial
   account): "Such a power of the Evil Spirit as is in this form of
   demoniacal disease can only be overcome by prayer and fasting." That
   is, by that ardent prayer [519] which is offered in humiliation before
   God, and abstraction from the world, in still collectedness of soul,
   undisturbed by corporeal feelings. Doubtless, by this whole statement,
   Christ intended to satisfy the disciples that they were not spiritually
   prepared fully to discharge the duties of their ministry. [520]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [515] I. e., want of lively confidence in the promises they had
   received of Divine Power, through Christ, to work miracles, and in
   their Divine calling and communion with God through Christ; in general,
   a want of religious conviction and confidence, as practically displayed
   in subduing all doubts and difficulties; e.g., such as Paul's.

   [516] The same figure as in the parables of the kingdom of God,
   probably intended to illustrate the growth of faith, once rooted in the
   heart, by the power of God that dwells in it: like the growth of the
   mighty tree from the diminutive seed-corn.

   [517] In Oriental manner, Christ takes a concrete figure from the
   visible creation before him, to set forth the general thought: "You
   will be able to remove all difficulties; apparent impossibilities will
   become possible."

   [518] The right limitation of this (not to extend it to an indefinite
   generality) lies in its reference, in the context, to men working as
   organs of the Spirit of God; it excludes, therefore, all self-will,
   refusing to submit to the Divine order, which is, indeed, antagonistic
   to faith itself.

   [519] The Jews and early Christians, in times of special prayer,
   retired from social intercourse and bodily enjoyments, restraining the
   bodily appetites; and the insertion of prayer and fasting together
   implies this state of entire collectedness and devotion.

   [520] There are some discrepancies in the Evangelists as to the
   collocation of the passages here referred to. The two verses in Matt.
   (xvii., 20, 21) harmonize well with each other and with the connexion.
   But in Mark, xi, 23, the saying of Christ in regard to the power of
   faith is given in a connexion not homogeneous to it, especially the
   withering of the fig-tree, which was not adapted to illustrate the
   positive efficiency of faith. In Luke, xvii., 6, a different figure is
   used, viz., the uprooting of a sycamore; and this passage was probably
   uttered in a different locality; as it is most likely that the Saviour,
   in view of his approaching separation from the disciples, took many
   occasions, and employed various figures, to encourage and strengthen
   their believing confidence. A more striking difference is, that in
   Mark's account of Christ's reply to the question of the disciples (ix.,
   28, 29) the first sentence (the power of faith) is left out, and the
   second only (prayer and fasting) given. As this last is given by both
   Matthew and Mark, it is more certain that it was spoken in that
   connexion. But then, again, Mark, ix., 23, contains a statement of the
   power of faith, addressed, not to the disciples, but to the father of
   the demoniac, in so natural a connexion, too, that it would be
   impossible to deny the aptness of the collocation; but in Matthew this
   is entirely wanting. This last omission, and the mistaken
   interpretation put upon genea` a'pistos (Matt., xvii., 17), may have
   given occasion for referring dia` te`n apisti'an (v. 20) to that phrase
   in v. 17, and for here transferring the passage on the power of faith
   to this place from some other. Yet it is also possible that Christ
   uttered both expressions (viz., Mark, ix., 23, and Matt., xvii., 20),
   and that their similarity of thought induced each writer to retain but
   one. In confirmation of this, Luke does not mention (xvii., 5, 6) the
   historical connexion in which the thought was uttered; the disciples
   would not have asked, "Lord, increase our faith," but for an experience
   of their want of it; and precisely such an experience is given in the
   accounts of Matthew and Mark.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 189. Return to Capernaum.--Dispute among the Disciples for
   Precedence.--The Child a Pattern.--Acting in the Name of Christ. (Luke,
   ix., 46; Mark, ix., 33; Matt., xviii.)

   We have seen that on a certain occasion [521] Christ replied to those
   who asked, "why his disciples did not fast," &c., that "the time had
   not yet come." But a new epoch was now approaching; and he himself gave
   his disciples another rule, and taught them what they lacked to fit
   them, by further abstraction from the world and earnest collectedness
   of heart, for their high calling.

   Although Christ had directly discountenanced, in his conversations
   after the return of the Apostles from their trial mission, the sensuous
   expectations which they entertained from his Messiahship, still the
   ideas on which their hopes were founded were too deeply rooted it their
   hearts and minds to be readily eradicated. With these was connected,
   partly as cause and partly as effect, the self-seeking which tinged
   their relations to the kingdom of God. This same feeling was manifest
   in their conversation on the way back to Capernaum from their northern
   tour; they disputed among themselves on the journey about their
   relative activity in the service of their Master, and who among them
   should hold the first place in the kingdom of God. [522]

   After their arrival at Capernaum, Christ asked them the subject on
   which they had disputed by the way, intending that the very shame of
   answering his question might make them conscious how unworthy of
   disciples such a dispute had been. This end being answered, he did not
   directly reprove them further; but in a few words, made impressive by a
   vivid illustration, he set before them the worthlessness of their
   contention, and its utter antagonism to the spirit which must rule in
   the kingdom of God. Taking a little child, he placed him in their
   midst, and said, "Let this child, in its unassuming ingenuousness, be
   your model; he among you that is most child-like and unassuming, that
   thinks least of himself and his own worth, he shall be greatest (shall
   be of most importance to the kingdom of God)." [523] Then, embracing
   the child, he added, "Whosoever shall receive one such little child in
   my name, receiveth me; and whosoever receiveth me, receiveth him that
   sent me." [524]

   The truth herein expressed, though different from the other, is yet
   akin to it; and both rebuke the strife for precedence, the disposition
   to dwell upon one's own merits, and set a false value upon actions as
   great or small. It is not merely what a man does that makes his action
   worthy, but the spirit in which he does it. The deed in itself may be
   great or small; its worth depends upon its being done in the name of
   Christ and for his sake. And this spirit is pleasing to God, for our
   actions can only be referred to Him by means of our relation to Christ.

   The principle thus announced by Christ struck at the root of the
   contention among the disciples. Their false emulation could have no
   place, if their actions, whether great or small, were alike in value,
   if alike done in the name of Christ; and to magnify themselves, or
   their claims, would have been absurd in view of such a rule of action.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [521] Cf. p. 203.

   [522] This is not to be confounded with a later dispute of the same
   character; in the instance before us the question referred to the
   present, not to the future, who is the greatest in his personal
   qualities and performances? Christ's reply was directed to this
   question; not, as in the subsequent case (Luke, xxii., 24, &c.), to one
   concerning precedence in the Messianic kingdom. Matthew's account,
   therefore (xviii., 1.), seems to be less original than those of Luke,
   ix., 46; Mark, ix., 33. The former is less homogeneous; and, besides,
   in it the disciples propose the question; in the others Christ
   anticipates them; which seems the more likely, as they might readily
   feel that their dispute was foreign to Christ's spirit, and, therefore,
   be ashamed to put the question. It is also easier to explain the origin
   of Matthew's statement from this, as the original form, than that of
   the latter from the former. It must always be a debatable question, so
   far as Luke, ix., 46, is concerned, whether the disciples only thought
   this, or expressed their thoughts to each other.

   [523] Luke's report of the sayings of Christ upon this occasion,
   although more simple and homogeneous than those of Matthew and Mark,
   does not seem to retain the order of the two expressions so well. This
   is evident, both from the ga`r in the last clause of v. 48, and from
   John's question in v. 49, which was evidently occasioned by the words
   immediately before spoken by Christ, but not by those in the last
   clause referred to.

   [524] In Matt., x., 42, we find another saying to the same effect as
   that which has been placed here in its connexion. "Even a drink of
   water given to the most insignificant person as a disciple of Christ,
   and in his name, will not lose its reward." It is the disposition to
   act in Christ's name which gives value to the most unimportant act. The
   form in which the disposition shall reveal itself is conditioned by
   circumstances which are not under the control of man; but the
   disposition itself, which is stamped as Christian from its reference to
   the name of Christ, is independently rooted in the heart.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 190. Christ's two Sayings: "He that is not against you is for you,"
   and, "He that is not for me is against me." (Mark, ix., 40.)

   It is hardly probable that the disciples at once understood the pro
   found meaning of Christ's words on the occasion referred to in the
   pre3eding section; and thus it was that John (Mark, ix., 38) brought
   for ward an instance which appeared to him inconsistent with the rule
   just laid down. [525]

   It appears that the miracles of Christ, and those wrought by the
   Apostles by calling upon his name, had induced others, not belonging to
   the immediate circle of the disciples, to call upon the name of Jesus
   for the healing of demoniacs. [526] The disciples, displeased that one
   out of their circle, and unauthorized by Christ, should try in this way
   to make himself equal with them, had forbidden him to do so. Even here,
   selfish motives appear to have intruded; only those who belonged to
   them were to be allowed to make use of Christ's name. In view of what
   Christ now said, however, of the value of even the smallest actions, if
   done in His name, John seems to have thought within himself: "If every
   thing that is done in His name be so worthy, have we not done wrong in
   forbidding him who was thus working in his name?"

   It is true Christ's words referred to the disposition of the heart, and
   a mere external calling upon his name would not necessarily involve all
   that he meant. And had the disciples fully understood his meaning, they
   would probably not have alluded to such an instance. But the instance
   itself may have been allied to that which has the aim of Christ's
   words; a man who thought so highly of Christ's name as to believe that
   by using it he could do such great works, even though he enjoyed no
   intimate relations with the Saviour, might have been on the way to
   higher attainments, and, by obtaining higher knowledge and a purer
   faith, might have reached the stand-point designated by Christ; and so
   his outward calling upon the name might have led the way to a true
   acting in that name. He, therefore, reproved them; they should let this
   stand-point pass as a preparatory one: "Forbid him not [for there is no
   man which can do a miracle in my name which can lightly speak evil of
   me]; for he that is not against you is for you." The explanation (in
   brackets) is given by Mark, but not by Luke; it aids the interpretation
   of the latter clause, but does not exhaust its meaning.

   These words of Christ allow us to suppose that the man in question,
   perhaps, only used His name by way of conjuration, and was far from him
   in heart; but they imply, also, that the very fact of his giving credit
   to the Name for so great power might lead him to inquire who and what
   Christ was, and to attach himself to him. His procedure, also, might
   call the attention of others to Christ's power, and bring them nearer
   to his communion. Jesus here taught the disciples (and the lesson was a
   most weighty one for their coming labours) that they were not to
   require a perfect faith and an immediate attachment to their communion
   from men at once; that they were to recognize preparatory and
   intermediate stages; to drive back no one whose face was turned in the
   right direction; to hinder none who might wish to confess or glorify
   Christ among men in any way; in a word, to oppose no one who, instead
   of offering himself, in this sense, to them, sought the same end, and
   thus advanced the object of their ministry, even though out of their
   own communion, and not seeking to glorify Christ precisely in the same
   sense and by the same methods as themselves.

   Comparing this saying of Christ with the other and opposite one, to
   which we have before referred, [527] viz., "He that is not for me is
   against me," we must, in order to harmonize them, seek the precise
   objects which He had in view in the two cases. In the latter, an action
   was treated of which seemed to agree perfectly with Christ in its
   results--the expulsion of evil spirits--but yet not done in the Spirit
   of Christ at all, but just the opposite; apparently done for the
   kingdom of God, but, in fact, against it; outwardly like Christ's acts,
   but inwardly and essentially antagonistic to them. In the former there
   was an act, again, agreeing in result, and also in the mode, viz., by
   calling upon the name of Christ; not, it is true, entirely in the right
   way, but in a way preparatory to the right one, and which might lead to
   it, if not disturbed by an impatient zeal. In the former the outward
   coincidences concealed an inward and essential opposition, but in the
   latter an inward affinity, which might possibly be ripened into full
   communion.

   The common feature, therefore, of these two sayings is this: Every
   thing depends upon the relation in which the outward act and its
   results stand to the spirit and the heart from which they proceed.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [525] Strauss objects to Schleiermacher's view (which accords in
   substance with mine), that "it presupposes a readiness of thought in
   the disciples of which they were by no means possessed." It is just the
   reverse; it seems to have been precisely the want of clear apprehension
   at the time which led John, without further thought upon the sense and
   bearing of Christ's remarks, to seize upon the words, "In my name."

   [526] As (though with another motive) in Acts, xix., 13.

   [527] Cf. p. 241.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 191. The Stater in the Fish. (Matt., xvii., 27.)

   Christ's previous visit to Capernaum probably took place at the time
   set apart for collecting the Temple tribute of half an ounce of silver,
   i. e., the month Adar, corresponding nearly to our March. It is likely
   that the great commotion which we have before described as occurring
   just before his departure had prevented him at that time from paying
   it. On his return, the collectors came to Peter, who was regarded as
   the spokesman of the little society, and asked why his Master did not
   pay the tribute. Christ and his disciples were known to perform all
   duties arising from the natural relations of life faithfully; but this
   tribute belonged to the religious constitution, and implied a relation
   of dependence upon the Theocracy; and, as it became constantly more
   evident that he claimed to be the Messiah, they perhaps doubted whether
   he would recognize its obligation. Peter, as we have seen, was at that
   time full of the idea of Messiah, which he saw realized in Jesus; and
   he might, therefore, naturally conclude that the latter, as Head of the
   Theocracy, was not subject to the tribute. But, on the other hand, he
   had just heard from the lips of Jesus that his kingdom was not to be an
   outward one, and that he should suffer before his dominion could be
   seen; and, in this view, he might be subject to the tax. With his usual
   promptness, he answered the question in the affirmative, without
   knowing where the tribute was to come from; for, perhaps because as
   they had just returned from a long journey, they were out of money.
   [528]

   Christ decided to pay the tax, and showed Peter that the act formed
   part of the self-abasement to which, conscious of his own dignity, he
   submitted himself during his earthly life. He illustrated this by a
   comparison drawn from human relations. As kings do not tax their own
   children, so the Messiah, the Son of God and Theocratic King, for whose
   appearance the whole Temple discipline was but preparatory, was not
   bound to pay this purely ecclesiastical tax; his relations to the
   Theocracy were against it. Had the Jews known him for what he was,
   viz., the Messiah, they would not have asked him to pay it. [529] But
   since they did not, he wished to afford them no occasion, even from
   their own stand-point, to accuse him as a violator of the law. He
   places himself on a footing with them, as to the duties devolving upon
   subordinate members of the Theocracy. Nor did he work a miracle to
   procure the tribute--money, but directed Peter to make use of the means
   which his trade supplied. In a place where fishing was the common trade
   of the people, it was not likely that the first fish caught would be
   worth the whole sum needed; but an unusual blessing of Providence, as
   Christ well knew, attended the effort. The very first fish caught was
   to supply the means; a stater, which it had swallowed, was found within
   it.

   By his procedure in this case, Christ taught the Apostles that they
   were not to claim all their rights, but to submit in all cases where
   regard to the needs of others required it; and, further, that they
   might look with confidence for the blessing of God upon the means
   employed by them to comply with such demands. It is worthy of note that
   this lesson was given to Peter, in whose name a course of conduct
   precisely opposed to that which it conveyed was often practiced in
   after ages.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [528] This account suits well to the historical connexion in which it
   occurs, Matt., xvii., 24, but then we cannot take the month Adar
   strictly. If this last cannot be allowed, we must place the occurrence
   immediately after the feeding of the 5000; as the multitude then wished
   to proclaim Jesus as Messiah, the collectors might well doubt of his
   paying the tax. We cannot think, with Wieseler, that the tax was due to
   the Empire, for the whole import of the narrative turns upon its being
   a Temple tax, and not a political one.

   [529] De Wette's remarks on the duty of obedience to magistrates,
   referring to Rom., xiii., 6 are not applicable here; the relation
   involved in this case was the Theocratic-political relation, which was
   to be abolished by Christ, with the whole form of that Theocracy.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XI.

  CHRIST'S JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM TO ATTEND THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 192. His Precautions against the Persecutions of the Sanhedrim.
   (John, vii.)

   FOR nearly eighteen months Christ had been employed in scattering the
   seed of the kingdom of God in Galilee, and in training the Apostles for
   their calling. During all this time he had kept away from the
   metropolis, to which he had before been used to go at the time of the
   three chief feasts.

   The Feast of Tabernacles occurred during the month of October; and he
   determined to attend it, in order to confirm the faith of such as had
   received Divine impressions from his former labours in Jerusalem, and
   to avoid the imputation, likely otherwise to be cast on him, that he
   feared to give public testimony to his Divine calling in presence of
   his enemies and the Sanhedrim. It was his rule of conduct to avoid, by
   prudent choice of time and place, all such dangers as were not
   necessarily to be met in the course of duty; he determined, therefore,
   to appear suddenly in the city, after the body of visitors to the feast
   had arrived, before the Sanhedrim could take measures to seize upon his
   person. [530]

   The minds of his own brothers were not fully made up as to his
   character. [531] When they were about to set out for the feast, they
   could not understand why he remained behind. They expressed their
   surprise that he kept his ministry so concealed. If he wrought such
   great works [532] (they told him), he should not confine himself to
   such a corner as Galilee, but should make his followers, gathered from
   different quarters to the feast at Jerusalem, witnesses of his
   miracles, and accredit himself as Messiah publicly, before the
   assembled nation. Imbued with such sentiments, and incapable of
   apprehending the reasons of Christ's conduct, they did not deserve his
   confidence, and needed to be made conscious that they did not. He,
   therefore, only told them that his relations to the world were
   different from theirs; that his movements were not to be judged by
   theirs; that his motives must be unknown to them, as they were engaged
   in no struggle with the world, and had nothing to fear at Jerusalem. He
   did not say, however, but that there would be, subsequently, a proper
   time for himself to go: "My time is not yet come to show myself
   publicly at Jerusalem; but you need not wait to choose the favourable
   moment, for your time is always ready; you have nothing to fear; the
   world cannot hate you, for it looks upon you as its own; but me it
   hateth, because I testify of it that the works thereof are evil. Go ye
   up unto this feast; I go not yet up, because my time is not yet full
   come."

   He afterward set out unnoticed, and arrived at Jerusalem about the
   middle of the eight-days' feast. Great anxiety for his arrival had been
   felt, and the most opposite opinions had been expressed concerning him.
   We need not be surprised to find the charge of Sabbath-breaking still
   fresh, though eighteen months had elapsed; for this was all ways the
   favourite starting-point of the Pharisees in their accusations against
   him, both in the city and through their agents in Galilee.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [530] John, vii., 8. The mention of this circumstance by John proves
   his veracity as an eye-witness. A merely traditional or invented
   narrative would have said nothing about it, as tending to lower the
   estimate of Christ's divinity and supernatural power.

   [531] Cf. p. 244.

   [532] Little as John relates of Christ's labours in Galilee, he implies
   them in vii., 3, 4. This passage obviously alludes to a chasm filled up
   by the other Evangelists.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 193. He explains the Nature of his Doctrine as Divine Revelation
   (John, vii., 16-19.)

   Anew the power of Christ's words over the hearts of the people
   displayed itself. Even those who were prepossessed against him had to
   wonder that one who had not been taught in the schools of the scribes
   could thus expound the Scriptures; yet they could not, from the force
   of prejudice, admit that his knowledge was derived from any higher
   source. Their conclusion was soon made up that nothing could be true
   that had not been learned in the schools; and that one not educated in
   them had no right to set up for a teacher. In view of this, Christ said
   publicly, in the Temple, "Wonder not that I, all uneducated in your
   schools, appear to teach you; my teaching is not mine, but his that
   sent me; not invented by me as a man, but revealed by God. But for your
   lack of the right will, you might be convinced of this. [533] Whoever
   in heart desires to do the will of God, will, by means of that
   disposition, be able to decide whether my teaching is Divine or human.
   Such a one may see that no human self-will is mixed up with my labours,
   but that in them all I seek only to glorify Him that sent me. But (v.
   19) that ye lack the spirit essential to this, is shown by your deeds;
   pretending to zeal for the Mosaic law, and using that pretence to
   persecute one who seeks only to honour God, you care not, in reality,
   to keep that law."

   It astonished the people to find that Jesus could testify thus openly
   against his opponents, and yet no hand be laid upon him; and they
   asked, "Can it be possible that the members of the Sanhedrim know this
   man to be the Messiah?" (v. 26). But they continued, still held in the
   prejudice and bondage of sense, " How can it be so, when we know him to
   be the son of the Nazarene carpenter? while the Messiah is to reveal
   himself suddenly in all his glory, so that all must acknowledge him"
   (v. 27). To expose the vanity of these expressions, Christ said, " It
   is true, ye both know me, and ye know whence I am; and yet ye know not;
   for ye know not the heavenly Father who hath sent me, and therefore ye
   cannot know me." Thus does he ever return to the principle that " only
   those who know God, and belong to him in heart (i. e., who really
   endeavour to do his will), can be in a condition to recognize the Son
   of God in his self-manifestation, and to acknowledge that he is from
   heaven. Those who are estranged from God and slaves to sense, think
   they know him, but in fact do not."
     __________________________________________________________________

   [533] John, vii., 17. With Schott and Lücke, I deviate from the old
   exegesis which refers this passage to the testimony of inward
   experience, the testimonium Spiritus Sancti. Not the will of God, as
   revealed by Christ, was the aim of discourse here, but the will of God,
   as far as the Pharisees themselves might have known it; so that, "to do
   the will of God" = "to make the glory of God the object of one's
   actions," as opposed to "following one's own will, and seeking one's
   own honour." When Christ had to do with such as did not fully believe,
   but were on the way to faith, he could say, "Try only to follow the
   drawing within you, to submit to my teaching and practice it, and all
   your doubts will be practically solved. Your hearts will feel the
   Divine power of my teaching, and this experience will remove the
   difficulties from which you cannot free yourselves." But the persons to
   whom he was speaking in this instance were far removed from faith; and
   to such he had to point out objective tests by which they might judge
   of the Divinity of his mission; but, as they were destitute of the
   dispositions requisite to apply these tests properly, he had to show
   them distinctly that they lacked the will to be convinced, the earnest
   of which is obedience to the will of God. He was justified in making
   this demand or a proper disposition universal, as without it all
   argument and proof must be in vain.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 194. The Pharisees attempt to arrest Christ.--He warns them that they
   should seek Him, but should not find Him. (John, vii., 30, seq.)

   The increasing influence of Christ's words and works naturally excited
   the fears and jealousy of the heads of the Pharisaical party; their
   domination was in danger from a spiritual power directly opposed to
   their spirit and statutes. He had so often, both in Jerusalem and
   Galilee, overcome their machinations by the power of truth, and
   frustrated their charges of heresy by his words and works, that no
   course was left but to withdraw him from his sphere of labour by actual
   force.

   They sought, therefore, to lay hold of his person; but Christ,
   perceiving their plans, declared in words of prophetic warning, "Yet a
   little while I am with you, and then will I go back unto him that sent
   me. Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me; and where I am, thither ye
   cannot come." He thus warned the Jews, that if they did not use the
   time that was rapidly passing, they would not be able to escape the
   distress that was to come upon them by their own fault. In that time of
   trouble they would long the more earnestly for the Deliverer and
   Messiah--whom they might have known--but in vain; they could then find
   no Redeemer, nor obtain the fellowship of Him who would have been
   raised into heaven. The Jews maliciously interpreted this dark saying
   to mean that he intended to go forth as a teacher of the heathen (v.
   35); a point worthy of note, from the inference it allows, that their
   anxiety to make him a heretic was founded upon a dawning presentiment
   that his teaching was destined to be a universal one.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 195. Christ a Spring of Living Water, and the Light of the World.
   (John, vii., 38, seq.)--The Validity of His Testimony of Himself.
   (John, viii., 13, seq.)--He foretels the subsequent Relations of the
   Jews to Him. (John, viii., 21.)

   It was the last chief feast of the last year of Christ's labours upon
   earth; and he could not let it pass without, at its conclusion, giving
   a special message to the multitudes who were soon to be scattered
   through the country, and many of whom would never see him more. Under
   various figures he represented himself to them as the source of true
   riches and unfailing contentment, and thus stimulated their longing for
   him.

   Thus did he cry out to the congregation in the Temple (probably
   alluding to the ceremony in which the priests, in great pomp, brought
   water from the spring of Siloa to the altar), " Here is the true spring
   of living water; if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.
   Whosoever believeth on me, his inward life shall become a well-spring,
   whence shall flow streams of living water." [534] And in another figure
   (viii., 12) he declared that he was to be in the spiritual world what
   the sun is in the material. "I am the light of the world; he that
   followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light which
   beams forth from life and leads to life." [535]

   The Pharisees objected (viii., 13) that Christ s testimony was
   worthless, because it was given of himself. Christ, in reply, admitted
   that self-witness is not generally valid, but declared that in his case
   it was, because he testified of himself with the confidence and
   clearness of a consciousness founded in Divinity. "Though I bear
   witness of myself, my testimony is true for I know whence I came and
   whither I go" (a higher self-consciousness, transcending, in its
   confidence, all doubt and self-deception; the eternal Light beaming
   through the human consciousness). Judging merely by outward appearance,
   and incapable of apprehending the Divine in him, they were deceived (v.
   15). But his testimony and judgment were true, because not given by
   himself as a man of himself, but by him with the Father (v. 19). Thus
   there were two witnesses: his own subjective testimony, infallible
   because of his communion with the Father; and the objective testimony
   of the Father himself, given in his manifestation and ministry as a
   whole.

   But these carnal-minded men, unsusceptible for this spiritual
   revelation of the Father in the manifestation and works of his son,
   still asked, "Where is this witness? let us hear the Father's voice,
   and behold his appearance." He showed them, in turn, that the knowledge
   of Him and of the Father were interdependent; that they could not know
   him as he was, because they knew not the Father; and that they could
   not know the Father, because they knew not the Son in whom he revealed
   himself.

   Again, with reference to the continued persecutions of the Sanhedrim,
   Christ repeated the saying, "I go, and you will seek me;" adding, also,
   the reason why they should seek in vain (v. 21), "Because ye will not
   believe in the Redeemer, but die in your sins, and there fore be
   excluded from heaven;" because (as he himself explained it, v. 23)
   there was an impassable gulf between those that belong to this world
   and Him who did not. But the prophetic words in v. 28 were not spoken
   with reference to these, but to others: "When ye have lifted up the Son
   of Man, then shall ye know that I am lie, and that I do nothing of
   myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things." This
   was spoken of such as then mistook the Son of Man in his human
   appearance (who might have fallen into the pardonable sin of blasphemy
   against the Son of Man, Matt., xii., 32), but who, still possessing a
   dormant susceptibility kept down by prejudice, would be led to believe,
   by the invisible workings of his Divine Spirit, when they should see
   that work which was believed to be suppressed by his death, spreading
   abroad with irresistible power.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [534] These words were not uttered by Christ as a prediction, but as a
   declaration of the power of faith in developing the Divine life. But as
   it was not fully realized until the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, that
   stream of living water which flows without ceasing through the
   communion of believers in all ages, John justly applied them to this
   (v. 39), as illustrated in the progress of the Church before his eyes
   when he wrote.

   [535] Cf. these words, "the light of life, the light which giveth
   life," with "the bread of life," p. 266. The "light" precedes; as
   Christ enlightens the darkened world, and thus leads it from death unto
   life. He appears first to the dark soul as the enlightening teacher of
   truth, in order to raise it to communion with himself, and so to
   partake of the Divine life. The relation of "light" and "life" is not
   outward and indirect, but inward and direct. The light and the life are
   from the same Giver; sometimes the one is made more prominent,
   sometimes the other, according to the bearings in which he is spoken
   of; the life as light (John, i., 4), or the light of life.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 196. The Connexion between Steadfastness, Truth, and Freedom. (John,
   viii., 30-32.) Freedom and Servitude; their typical Meaning (33-38).

   The Divine superiority with which Christ silenced his opponents
   completed the impressions of his previous ministry in the minds of many
   of the people: "As he spake these words, many believed on him." But he
   did not suffer himself to be carried away by the enthusiasm of the
   multitude. He says that many of them lacked true, spiritual faith, and
   knew that they would easily be turned aside, if he should not, as
   Messiah, satisfy their expectations. In order, therefore, to point out
   the requisites of true discipleship, and to show what they might, and
   what they might not, expect of him, he said (v. 31, 32), "Only by
   holding fast my doctrine can ye be my disciples indeed; and then only
   (when you shall have incorporated the truth with your life) will you
   know the truth (the knowledge, therefore, springing from the life), and
   the power of the truth, thus rightly known, shall make you partakers of
   true freedom."

   Judas of Gamala and the Zelotists had incited the people to expect in
   Messiah a deliverer from the temporal yoke of the Romans. In the words
   above cited, Christ contrasted his own aims with such as these. Those
   who were inclined to look upon him as a temporal Messiah were to be
   taught that the true freedom, without which there can be no other, is
   inward and spiritual; and that this alone was the freedom which he had
   come to bestow, a liberty not to be communicated from without, but to
   spring up from within, through the interpenetration of His truth with
   the practical life. The fact that his words were perverted or
   misunderstood (v. 33), even if not by those who had attached themselves
   to him with some degree of susceptibility, gave him occasion to
   develope their import still further.

   The same persons who were wont to sigh under the Roman yoke as a
   disgraceful servitude, now felt their Theocratic pride offended because
   Christ described them as "servants, who had to be made free," a
   disgrace for descendants of Abraham (v. 33). In view of this pride of
   the Theocratic people, and the carnal confidence which they indulged in
   their outward dignity, a dignity unaccompanied by proper dis.
   positions, Jesus said, "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin,
   The servant abideth not in the house forever; he may be expelled for
   his faults; but the Son of the house abideth in it ever. And the Son of
   the house may obtain liberty for the servant, and make him a free
   member of the household. Think not, therefore, that ye have an
   inalienable claim to the kingdom of God; you may, for your
   unfaithfulness, like disobedient servants, be excluded from it. Only
   when the Son of God, who guides the Theocracy in the name of the
   Father, shall make you free, will you be free indeed; no more as
   servants of the kingdom of God, but as free members thereof, as
   children."

   They boasted without reason, he told them, of being Abraham's children.
   By attempting the life of one who was offering them the truth, and thus
   acting as enemies to the truth, they showed themselves children of
   Satan [536] rather than of Abraham; their disposition and actions
   savoured more of the Father of lies than the Father of the faithful (v.
   37-44). The cause of their unbelief, therefore, was precisely this,
   that their disposition of heart was the reverse of Abraham's. Him, whom
   Abraham longed for, they sought to destroy. He employed thus the
   misunderstanding of the Jews to bring anew before them the idea of
   Messiah as Son of God in the higher sense, an idea always a
   stumbling-block [537] to those who entertained carnal conceptions of
   Messiah. This excited their rage anew, and drew upon him the accusation
   of blasphemy. [538]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [536] Cf. p. 148.

   [537] Cf. p. 266.

   [538] As interpreters have often remarked on John, viii., 57, the
   expression of the Jews was not inconsistent with the fact of Christ's
   being just thirty years old. "Thou art not yet fifty, and hast thou
   seen Abraham, who lived so many centuries ago?" (Christ was at the
   beginning of the middle period of life, ending with fifty, in which
   year the Levites were freed from the regular service of the Temple,
   Numb., iv., 3; viii., 25.) Nothing but wilfulness could lead Weisse and
   Gförer to conclude, in contradiction to all the accounts and to
   internal probability, that Jesus was much older than is generally
   supposed when he entered on his public ministry. On the tradition that
   Jesus was nearly fifty, which arose from a misunderstanding of these
   words, cf. my Geschichte des Apostol. Zeitalters, 3d. ed.. vol. ii., p
   539.
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   § 197. Vain Attempts of the Sanhedrim against Christ. (John, vii.,
   40-53.)--Dispute in the Sanhedrim.--First Decision against Christ.

   Christ continued his labours in Jerusalem for a time after the close of
   the feast. The Sanhedrim gradually assumed a more hostile attitude, and
   would have taken violent measures at once, had not a division ensued
   between the fanatical zealots who held that any means were justifiable,
   and those who, with various degrees of hostility, were more moderate in
   their opinions and feelings. Even during the continuance of the feast
   they had sought to seize his person, but part of the multitude were on
   his side; and even the officers of the Sanhedrim that were sent to take
   him, unable to resist the impression of his appearance and words,
   returned with the exclamation. "Never man spake like this man."

   The dominant party sought to secure the immediate condemnation of Jesus
   as a violator of the law and a blasphemer; but there Were others who
   felt the power of his words and works more than they openly confessed;
   as, for instance, Nicodemus, who said, "Doth our law judge any man
   before it hear him?" This had to be admitted even by the rest; but, as
   is usual in such cases, the more moderate party incurred the suspicion
   of the zealots. And when the latter found that they could not succeed
   in condemning Christ personally, they proposed, to lessen his influence
   at least in some degree, that every one who acknowledged him as Messiah
   should be excommunicated. In this they presupposed that the Sanhedrim
   was the highest legislative and executive authority in religious
   affairs; and that no recognition but its own, of any Divine calling,
   and especially of the highest, the Messiahship, would be valid. The
   result was, that, although no decisive judgment was pronounced against
   the person of Christ, it was made punishable for any one to recognize
   him apart from the authority of the Sanhedrim. This, then, was the
   first decree pronounced against Christ. (John, ix., 22.)
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   § 198. A Man, born Blind, healed on the Sabbath.--Christ's Conversation
   at the Time.--Individual Sufferings not to be judged as Punishment for
   Sins.--Christ the Light of the World. (John, ix.)

   If the charge of heresy brought against Christ, on account of the
   pretended violation of the Sabbath, produced such striking results, he
   gave a new stimulus to the rage, and, at the same time, to the
   jealousy, of the hierarchical party, by a miraculous cure performed on
   the Sabbath.

   As the disciples were leaving the Temple with their Master, his
   attention was drawn, in passing, to a beggar who had been blind from
   his birth. Their first thought, suggested by their contracted Jewish
   ideas of the government of God, [539] was, how far the necessary
   connexion between sin and evil might be supposed in the case: "Master,
   who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" An
   untenable theory drove them to this dilemma; even if, as it is hardly
   to be supposed that the pre-existence of souls was presupposed by the
   questioner, he either had no definite idea in referring to "this man,"
   or did not know certainly at the time that he was born blind. Christ,
   not admitting such a precise connexion between special sins and special
   evils, replied, at first, concisely, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor
   his parents; [540] but that the works of God should be made manifest in
   him;" that his sufferings might seem the higher objects of God's love
   both to himself and others, and God's works of saving power and mercy
   be displayed in him. And for himself, apart from others, the cure of
   his physical blindness was to lead to that of his spiritual darkness;
   and then his experience was to become, also, the means of saving
   others. Passing over directly to the remark that through himself the
   works of God were revealed, Christ said, "I must work the works of him
   that sent me while it is day; [541] he night cometh, when the work of
   the day cannot be done. [542] As long as I am in the world, I am the
   light of the world." [543]

   The cure for which he thus prepared them was probably gradual (as in
   the case mentioned p. 270); the patient, perhaps, begin to see when
   Christ anointed his eyes, and, after bathing in Siloam, [544] was
   completely healed. [545]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [539] Cf. p. 143, 144.

   [540] An apocryphal writer would have made Christ contradict this view
   more fully.

   [541] The day, the time for labour; its fleeting hours must be
   improved. "I cannot let the opportunity pass without doing what I only
   upon earth can do. My stay here will soon end. Nothing, therefore, must
   hinder me from that which I (as the shining Sun) have now to work upon
   the earth."

   [542] The day = the time allotted to Christ's ministry on earth; the
   night, therefore, = the approaching end of his earthly labours.

   [543] So long as Christ remained on earth, he must remain according to
   his nature, the Sun of the world; so long, therefore, he must shed
   light around him, dispense bodily and spiritual blessings; no
   opportunity of doing this must pass. The cure of this blind man, bodily
   and spiritually, was part of his work as "light of the world." Not,
   indeed, that he has ever ceased to be "the light of the world;" but his
   personal and visible manifestation was here in question; the Sun of the
   world, visible upon the earth itself.

   [544] Would any one have invented this, which tends to diminish,
   instead of magnifying the miracle? "But it was invented for the sake of
   the mystical allusion to Siloam." Were this so, a longer explanation
   than the sentence, "which is, by interpretation, sent'" (v. 7), would
   have been given. If o` ermeneu'etai apestalme'nos is genuine, and a
   mystical meaning is assumed, it is needless to insist strictly upon
   grammatical accuracy in the translator, especially as the word sylvch,
   sending out, could be applied by metonymy to one of the canals from the
   spring of Siloam; and the form slch (Neh., iii., 15) comes, in fact,
   near to this translation. As has been said, a later writer, intending
   to give a mystical interpretation, would have coloured it more deeply.
   But, on the other hand, if we do not arbitrarily assume that the
   operations of the Holy Ghost rudely tore asunder peculiarities that
   were rooted in the culture of the people and the times, we may readily
   imagine that John, who eagerly caught at all allusions to the object of
   his love, would be inclined to find a mystical and higher meaning in
   the sending of the blind man to wash in the pool, and that the more,
   because the act in itself was comparatively unimportant; and that he
   thus made Siloam the symbol of the heavenly apostalos, by whom the
   diseased man was to be healed.

   [545] John's omission to mention expressly that the cure was gradual
   does not militate against our view. If it were not gradual, we should
   have to supply some other points omitted by the narrative, e.g., that
   some one led the blind man to the pool, or, that he was so accustomed
   to the way as to need no guidance. Such omissions as this are no proof
   that the account was not due to an eye-witness; especially as, on the
   theory that the account was an invention, it would be impossible to
   account satisfactorily for the mention of the subsidiary features at
   all. In all the rest of the narrative--the conduct of the blind man and
   of the Pharisees--the stamp of eye-witness is indubitable; and the want
   of minuteness in the detail of the fact itself was probably caused by
   the narrator's hastening from the miracle itself to that in which he
   was most interested, viz., its result.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 199. Attempts of the Sanhedrim to corrupt and alarm the restored
   Blind Man.--Christ's Conversation with him.--The Sight of the Blind,
   and the Blindness of the Seeing.

   A great sensation must have ensued among the multitude at sight of a
   man so well known as the blind beggar walking about completely
   restored. John gives a graphic description (ch. ix) of the arts
   employed by the Sanhedrim to deny or explain away a fact which so
   publicly testified to the power of Christ. Their craft was used in
   vain. Nothing could be extorted from the lips of the man or of his
   parents to further their designs. The beggar's incorruptible love of
   truth was shown in his indignation at their attempts to explain away
   his own experience and force him to a lie. Their spiritual arrogance
   was wounded by his firmness, and their rage soon turned against
   himself.

   His heart was prepared by this conflict with the foes of Christ to
   receive from the latter a revelation of his character. This was given
   (v. 35-37) probably at some public place where Jesus found him; and
   since he was already convinced that the man who had cured him was
   endowed with Divine power, he could the more readily recognize him as
   Messiah, when announced by himself as such.

   The conduct of this poor man on the one hand, and the Pharisees on the
   other, represented the tendencies of two opposite classes of mankind;
   and Christ set this opposition forth vividly thus: "For judgment I am
   come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they
   which see might be made blind." The spiritual was here figured by the
   corporeal; the blind man had been made to see, while the Pharisees, who
   would not see the fact before them, became blind with their eyes open.
   The same thing occurred in a spiritual sense; the beggar, spiritually
   blinded by involuntary ignorance, but conscious of it, humbly accepted
   the spiritual light that was offered him, and became a seeing man. The
   Pharisees, on the other hand, had knowledge enough, but would not use
   it; and, in their pride of knowledge, shutting out the Divine light,
   they became more culpably blind.

   And this judgment avails for all ages. Wherever the Spirit of Christ
   operates among men, the blind are made to see, the seeing become blind.
   The work of Christ, in enlightening and blessing mankind, can, not be
   accomplished without this "sifting;" it flows necessarily from the
   opposite moral tendencies of men. The grace and the condemnation go
   hand in hand; the offer of the one involves the infliction of the
   other.

   The Pharisees who stood around knew well that these words were directed
   against themselves, and asked him, in offended pride, "Are we, then,
   blind also?" Christ had not said that they were blind, but that they
   would become so by their own guilt; and he replied: "If ye were blind,
   ye should have no sin; but now ye say, we see; therefore your sin
   remaineth." (Ignorance would have excused them, as in the case of the
   sin against the Son of Man. But their boast of knowledge was a witness
   against themselves. Able to see, but not willing, their blindness was
   their guilt.)
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 200. Parable of the Good Shepherd.--The Parable extended. --Christ
   the Door.--Intimation of Mercy to the Heathen. (John, x.)

   Christ proceeded to characterize the Pharisees, with just severity, as
   false guides of the people; doubtless having in view at the time the
   conduct of the tyrannical hierarchs towards the poor blind man, and his
   bearing, in turn, towards them. He first describes himself, in contrast
   with the Pharisees, as the genuine and divinely--called leader of the
   people. The blind man whom he had healed was the representative of all
   such oppressed souls as were repelled by the selfish judges, and drawn
   to Christ. It may have been the case (although the supposition is not
   necessary) that the sight of a flock of sheep at hand suggested the
   parabolic [546] illustration that he employed.

   The thief who leaps over the wall, instead of entering the fold by the
   door, represents those who become teachers and guides of the people of
   their own mere will. The Shepherd, entering in at the door, represents
   Christ, who offers himself, divinely called, to guide seeking souls to
   the kingdom of God. His voice harmonizes with the Divine drawing within
   them; they know it, and admit him; he knows them all, and all their
   wants. He goes before them, and leads the way to the pasture where
   their wants can be satisfied. But the voice of the selfish leaders is
   strange to them, and they flee with repugnance; knowing well that such
   guides have other aims than the salvation of the souls of those that
   hear them.

   To present the thought still more strikingly, he extended the figure,
   adding several new traits. [547] The first outline of the parable
   simply contrasted a lawful with an unlawful entering into the fold; in
   the ex tended form of it, the door assumes a new significance. He
   himself is not only the good shepherd, but also the door of the fold,
   inasmuch as through him alone can longing souls find entrance into the
   kingdom of God. This very fact, that he is at once both shepherd and
   door, distinguishes him from all other shepherds; it is the peculiar
   feature of Christ's teaching, as distinct from all teachers, that he is
   himself the revealer, and all his revelations refer back to himself; he
   can point out no other door to the kingdom but himself. He represents
   himself as the door both for the sheep and the shepherds; the latter
   more prominently here. In the simple outline of the parable he had
   contrasted himself, as shepherd, with the thieves; he now further
   contrasts other shepherds with the thieves. All who sought to gather
   followers and form parties in the Theocratic community, and, instead of
   turning men's hearts to Messiah, turned them rather to themselves, were
   thieves and robbers; but such could find no access to hearts really
   seeking salvation. But those shepherds that enter in by him as the door
   have nothing to fear; they can go in and out, and find pasture for the
   sheep. The true teacher who leads souls to Christ will not only be
   saved himself, but will be able to satisfy the wants of the souls
   intrusted to his care.

   In this form of the parable Christ contrasts himself (as the shepherd
   who alone seeks the welfare of the sheep) not only with the thieves,
   but also with the hirelings. These two classes corresponded to two
   different classes of Pharisees, viz., those who sacrificed the welfare
   of the people to their wholly selfish aims; and those who, with better
   feelings, had not love enough, and therefore not courage enough, to
   risk every thing for the good of souls. The latter, afraid of the power
   of the former, gave the poor people up to the power of the Evil One
   (the wolf, v. 12), to scatter and divide. Standing between Christ and
   the Sanhedrim, this party, with all. their good intentions, had neither
   the steadiness of purpose nor the self-sacrificing love which were
   needed in such a position. In contrast with such, Christ declares, "I
   am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine (thus
   betokening the inward sympathy between himself and those that belonged
   to him by the Divine drawing within them), and I lay down my life for
   the sheep."

   With this view of his coming self-sacrifice for the salvation of men
   before him, his eye glances forward to the greater developement of his
   work that was to follow that sacrifice, and there he sees "other sheep
   not of this fold"--souls ready for the kingdom among other nations, who
   were also to have their place before its consummation: "Them, also, I
   must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold
   and one shepherd."
     __________________________________________________________________

   [546] Cf., on the parables of John, p. 111.

   [547] Examples of the same mode of extending a parable are to be found
   in the Synoptica. Gospels.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 201. Divisions among the People.--Christ's return into Galilee.

   The worldly-minded and fanatical portion of the people were incapable
   of understanding these words of Christ; instead of inspiration they saw
   nothing but extravagance. But others were irresistibly attracted;
   words, such as no other could utter, seemed to them in perfect harmony
   with works, such as no other could do. New divisions arose and the
   power of the Sanhedrim, of course, was upon the side of Christ's
   enemies.

   The life of Jesus was more and more endangered every day at Jerusalem,
   and his ministry more and more disturbed. He, therefore, withdrew from
   the metropolis and returned to Capernaum, now, indeed, for the last
   time. [548]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [548] From the statements of John, taken alone, we should infer that
   Christ did not leave the city immediately after the Feast of
   Tabernacles, but remained until that of the Dedication. It is true that
   John does not expressly say (x., 22) that he remained, which deviation
   from the ordinary rule we might expect him to have mentioned; but this
   omission can be explained more readily than the omission of the journey
   back to Galilee. Moreover, it would be easier to trace the connexion of
   the history by supposing the previous journey to have been the last,
   than by admitting the one adopted in our text (chap. xi.). The course
   of preparation for his death to which he subjected his disciples (as
   already related) would suit much better to this hypothesis, as taking
   place just before the last journey than before the next to the last.
   Thus far we agree with B. Jacobi (Dissertation on the Chronology of the
   Life of Jesus, before cited). But we learn from Luke, ix., 51, that
   Jesus made his last journey through Samaria; that he travelled slowly,
   in order to scatter the seeds of the kingdom in the towns and villages
   as he passed, and to make wholesome impressions upon the people.
   Against John's testimony such an authority as this would not avail; and
   it may be admitted, too, that the accounts of two journeys are blended
   together in it, with other foreign matter. Cf. Luke, xiii., 22; xvii.,
   11, in which passages a beginning is made towards accounts of two
   journeys, though they, perhaps, refer to the same one. But it is clear,
   in any case, that many things recited here must belong to a last
   journey; for instance, xiii., 31-33. Now it cannot be for a moment
   supposed that this journey, so described, was the one that Christ took
   in order to attend the Feast of Tabernacles (John, viii., 2, seq.); for
   John tells us that in that case he remained behind the rest, and,
   avoiding all publicity, came into the city unexpectedly after the feast
   had gone on for some days; all utterly in conflict with Luke's account
   of the journey through Samaria. Nor is it internally probable that
   Christ would have remained in the city after the feast at a time when
   his labours must have suffered so many hindrances from the persecutions
   of the Pharisees; the last period of his stay on earth was to be more
   actively employed. Nor does this view of the case contradict John's
   statements; it only presupposes a blank necessary to be filled. We have
   thus drawn attention to the arguments advanced on both sides; not
   intending, however, to preclude further inquiry of our own. Cannot
   John's statement, that Jesus went up to the feast "not openly, but, as
   it were, in secret" (vii., 10), be explained by supposing that he did
   not take the usual caravan road, nor journey with a caravan, but took
   an unusual route through Samaria, a province that held no connexion
   whatever with Judea? May not his late arrival at Jerusalem, in the
   middle of the feast, be explained on the ground that he intentionally
   took the longer route? Admitting this, it will be easy (as Krabbe and
   Wieseler allow) to reconcile John's account with Luke's.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XII.

  CHRIST'S RETURN FROM CAPERNAUM TO JERUSALEM THROUGH SAMARIA.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 202. Reasons for the Journey through Samaria. (Luke, ix., 51, seq.)

   AFTER a short abode at Capernaum Christ determined to take a L final
   leave of that place, so long the centre of his labours. He wished to
   visit Jerusalem again at the Feast of the Dedication, which occurred
   towards the end of December. Many had believed on him during his last
   stay in the city, and he had been compelled to leave them to the arts
   of the hierarchy; it was now necessary to strengthen and confirm their
   faith by his personal presence. He chose to make this journey by way of
   Samaria, rather than through Peraea, in order to scatter the seed of
   truth as widely as possible among the towns and villages on the road. A
   longer time than ordinary was, therefore, required for the journey; and
   he left Capernaum sooner than was absolutely necessary had he intended
   to go directly to Jerusalem.
     __________________________________________________________________

   § 203. Choice of the Seventy. (Luke, x.)--Import of the Number
   "Seventy."

   The prospect