A second possibility which deserves considera tion is that the thought of Jesus himself had a gradual development during his ministry, and passed by degrees from the external to the spiritual view of the kingdom, so that, while at the beginning of his teaching he shared the popular Messianic ideal and preached a kingdom which was to appear in the clouds of heaven, he became by degrees aware that this consummation was not to happen, and that the real kingdom was, even while he taught, being spiritually realized in the hearts that accepted him.1 This view, however, is also not without grave difficulties. There are, indeed, indications that, as the ministry of Jesus proceeded, the meaning and end of it grew clearer and more commanding to his mind. The hopes with which no doubt he began, of finding acceptance among his people, turned out to be vain; the cross disclosed itself to him as an inevitable end; and at last he "set his face," as we read, "to go to Jerusalem."2 Yet, on the other hand, the brief limits of his ministry give scanty room for any radical reconstruction of his thoughts concerning the kingdom. Indeed, his first teachings recognized as fully as his later utterances its spiritual nature. What is called his temptation was the

1 Beyschlag, "Leben Jesu," I, 229 ff., "The probability is that he came gradually to think of himself as the deliverer promised by the prophets"; and the criticism of Wendt, I, 380 ff. For the converse of this view, see Toy, p. 352.

2 Luke ix. 51.

deliberate putting away by him of material tests and rewards. If any deepening spirituality can be traced in his language as it proceeds, it is much more probably to be traced to his gradual instruction of the disciples in the profounder view than to a gradual illumination of his own mind. There are, in fact, many indications which suggest a deepening and spiritualizing of the idea of the kingdom, not so much in the mind of Jesus as in the minds of his hearers and followers. It may well have been to them, at the first hearing, difficult to realize that Jesus was enriching an old phrase with a new signification, and his bold use of traditional language may have been accepted by them, as it has been accepted by many modern scholars. By degrees, however, it may have come to pass that one after another, in recalling their impressions of the teaching of Jesus, became aware of the deeper meaning which at first they had missed, until at last the very phrase, "The kingdom of God," is in the fourth gospel lost in the larger conception of "life" and "eternal life." This gradually dawning consciousness of the interior meaning of the teaching of Jesus seems to find its fulfilment in the mind of Paul. To him the spiritual view has become the only conceivable one: "The kingdom of God is he says without qualification, "righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost."1

We are brought, then, to the apparently para

1 Rom. xiv. 17.

doxical conclusion that the kingdom of God had to Jesus both significations, that of a future and that of a present state, that of a heavenly and that of an earthly, society. This apparent paradox, however, disappears when we consider the conception of the kingdom in the light of the two principles which we have already laid down. Jesus, as we have seen, views the world from above. He sees in it the movement of the life of God on the souls of men. Wherever, then, this spirit of God finds welcome in a human life, there, immediately, unostentatiously, yet certainly, the kingdom of God has already come; and when at last that same spirit shall penetrate the whole world, then there will result a social future which language itself is hardly rich enough to describe. This is no inconsistency or confusion of thought. thought of Jesus considers both what is and what is to be; the present potentiality of the kingdom and its future realization. Here is the significance of the parables of the leaven1 and of the mustard seed.2 The kingdom has as its very essence the capacity for expansion. It has as real an existence in the seed as in the tree, but not less real in the future glory than in the present seed. is hidden in the leaven, but it is not less demonstrably to be revealed in the mass. The social ideal, then, of Jesus Christ, is to be interpreted only through his religious consciousness. He looks

1 Matt. xiii. 33; Luke xiii. 21.

2 Matt. xiii. 31, 32; Mark iv. 31, 32; Luke xiii. 19.

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on human life from above, and, seeing it slowly shaped and purified by the life of God, regards the future of human society with a transcendent and unfaltering hope. In the purposes of God the kingdom is already existent, and when his will is done on earth, then his kingdom, which is now spiritual and interior, will be as visible and as controlling as it is in heaven.1

On the other hand, Jesus approaches life from within, through the inspiration of the individual. Here is his answer to that question which the disciples themselves asked, "When shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming?" The kingdom is to come, answers Jesus, not by outward force or social organization or apocalyptic dream, but by the progressive sanctification of individual human souls. And does one

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1 Holtzmann," New Testament Theology," I, 200, "The kingdom of God is both a gift to be received and a result to be achieved" (ebensosehr Gabe wie Aufgabe). So Harnack, "History of Dogma," I, 62, "Jesus announced the kingdom of God . . . as a future kingdom, and yet it is presented in his preaching as present; as invisible, and yet it was visible for one actually saw it." B. Weiss, "Biblical Theology of New Testament" (tr. 1882), I, 72, “It is this interpretation of present and future, it is this certainty of its completion at every stage of the empirical realization of the kingdom of God, which has become an inalienable moment of the Christian consciousness, in consequence of the teaching of Jesus." See also Stevens, "Theology of the New Testament," 1899, 37 ff. Holtzmann, s. 208, collects in a note a long series of definitions of the kingdom.

2 Matt. xxiv. 3.

3 On the kingdom as spiritual, see Bruce, "The Kingdom of God," 4th ed., 1891, Ch. I; "Christ's Idea of the Kingdom," p. 58,

ask again what is to be the motive of this personal sanctification? It is to be found, according to Jesus, in the thought of the kingdom. On the one hand the kingdom is an unfolding process of social righteousness, to be worked out through individuals; on the other hand, the individual is prompted to his better life by the thought of bringing in the kingdom. Thus the individual! and the kingdom grow together. The individual discovers himself in the social order, and the social order, like that "whole creation" of which Saint Paul wrote, "waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God."1

In other and more modern language, the social teaching of Jesus Christ is this, that the social order is not a product of mechanism but of personality, and that personality fulfils itself only in the social order. Thus the social philosophy of Jesus is but another statement of his philosophy of religion. Speaking as a religious teacher, Jesus says that the life of man is discovered to itself in the service of God. The son comes to himself

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when he says, "I will arise and go to my father.' His sense of dependence, in the language of Schleiermacher, is the beginning of his religious life. Religion is freedom from the world through de"In all probability the title was used alternatively [kingdom of God, or of heaven] by Jesus, for the express purpose of lifting the minds of the Jewish people into a brighter region of thought"; and on the kingdom as social, see Mathews, "Social Teaching of Jesus," Ch. III, and his "History of New Testament Times," 1899, p. 171 ff. 1 Rom. viii. 19. 2 Luke xv. 18.