life of God in the soul of man. Jesus looks at the social world from above, and that point of view gives him courage, optimism, comprehensiveness, vision, hope.

The second characteristic of the gospels which we have noticed is not less fruitful in social consequences. Jesus, as we have seen, primarily addressed himself in his teaching to individual cases and immediate ends. Once only, and that at the beginning of his ministry, and to his selected group of personal disciples, does he approach anything like a formal announcement of what may be called general principles.1 For the most part he uses a "case-system"; he discourses with a few; he heals people one at a time; he lavishes his richest instruction on individuals; and finally, having attached to his teaching only a handful of plain people, he gives back his work to the Father with a strange sense of completeness in it. "It is finished," he says; "Having accomplished the work which thou hast given me to do." He is not only indifferent to numbers, but often seems disinclined to deal with numbers. He sends the multitudes away; he goes apart into a mountain with his chosen disciples; he withdraws himself from the throng in Jerusalem to the quiet home at Bethany; he discourses of the profoundest purpose of his mission with the twelve in an upper room; he opens the treasures of his

1

wisdom before one Pharisee at night, and one unresponsive woman by the well.2 What does this extraordinary individualization of teaching indicate as to the attitude of Jesus toward social reform? It indicates the instrument to which he was willing to trust his hope for the world. What he had to give he gave to individuals, to be given again through individuals. "As the Father has sent me," he says, "even so send I you. His way of approach to the life of his age was not by external organization or mass-movements or force of numbers, or in any way from without; but by interior inspiration, by the quickening of individuals, by the force of personality, or, so to speak, from within.

When one considers the traditions and hopes of his people, and the sense of capacity in himself of which he must have been aware, it is simply amazing that Jesus did not put himself at the head of a movement, or establish an organization, or direct his teaching to the wholesale conversion of the multitude. Yet hardly any problem of exegesis is more difficult than to discover in the gospels an administrative or organizing or ecclesiastical Christ. On the contrary, there is, in his teaching, a remarkable quality of reserve and privacy. Sometimes he charges his hearers not to tell what he has said or done. He interprets privately to his friends the teaching

1 John iii. 1-21.

2

John iv. 7-29.

Matt. viii. 4; Mark viii. 26; Luke v. 14;

8 John xx. 21.
Matt. xvii. 9.

which others have not understood.1 Never did a popular leader leave his work so little systematized. The sense of incompleteness in it gave his friends in his last days a sense of bewildered helplessness. The only light they had was in his life, and when he told them that it was expedient for them that he should go away, the light seemed to them to go out.2 "But we hoped," they said, "that it was he which should redeem Israel." 3 He had given them no indication of the external form which should issue from his teaching. He trusted to the capacity of individuals, if only their hearts should have received the spirit of truth, to deal with problems of form and organization as they arrived. In short, instead of regeneration by organization, Jesus offers regeneration by inspiration. He was not primarily the deviser of a social system, but the quickener of single lives. His gift is not that of form, but that of life. "I came," he says, "that they may have life"; "The words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life";5 "Because I live, ye shall live also." The communication of vitality, the contagion of personality, the transmission of character, these are the ends he seeks, and these are possible only through that individualization of teaching which marks his ministry. As Phillips Brooks once said, "Jesus was not primarily the Deed-Doer, or the

5" 6

1 Mark iv. 34.
2 John xvi. 7.

8 Luke xxiv. 21.

4 John x. 10.

5

John vi. 63.

6 John xiv. 19.

Word-Sayer, he was the Life-Giver." 1 Even of himself and of his own mission, he announces that it begins with the individual. "For their sakes," he says, I do not, first of all, organize an associated life or announce a scheme of salvation; but, first of all, "I sanctify myself."2 Jesus, in short, not only surveys human life from above, but he approaches it from within.

These two qualities, however, of social wisdom and social power, are not the only principles which govern the social teaching of Jesus. Indeed, they are but introductory to the most conspicuous and central of his social principles. Beyond the point of view from which he looks at the world, and the instrument to which he intrusts his work for the world, lies his ideal for the world, a social ideal whose significance and scope are to be interpreted only when one has first recognized that Jesus surveys life from above and approaches it from within. This social ideal, which presents itself continuously and vividly to the mind of Jesus, is summed up in that phrase which occurs more than a hundred times in the first three gospels, -the "kingdom of heaven," or the "kingdom of God." From

1 Noble Lectures, 1898, I. A. V. G. Allen, "The Message of Christ to the Individual Man,” p. 18. Compare also the sermon of J. H. Newman, "Personal Influence the Means of propagating the Truth."

2 John xvii. 19.

8 The two titles appear to be practically identical in signification. Beyschlag, "New Testament Theology," I, 42, "That both expressions mean the same thing is manifest from the parallels of Matthew

3

the beginning of the ministry of Jesus to its close, this is the subject of his prophecy, parable and prayer. "Jesus," begins the gospel of Mark, "came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God and saying, The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand." 1 The kingdom was the one end to be desired; it was the pearl of great price for which all else might be sold; 2 it was the piece of money to find which the house was diligently swept; it was to be the theme of daily prayer for the followers of Jesus: "Thy kingdom come." It is a phrase which, on the face of the record, is often obscure, and which in different passages appears to have inconsistent meanings. The kingdom is described as both a present and a future state, as both an inward and an outward condition. Now it seems to be a remote and glorious consummation of the Messiah's reign in the day of the last things: "Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven and then shall all the tribes of the earth... see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory." 5 Again, it is obviously not remote and supramundane, but near and of this world: "There be some here of them that stand by, which shall in

on the one hand and of Mark and Luke on the other." For possible grounds of the variation in use see the interesting note in Wendt, "Teaching of Jesus," I, 370 ff.

3 Luke xv. 8.

1 Mark i. 14, 15.

2 Matt. xiii. 46.

4 Matt. vi. 10.

6 Matt. xxiv. 30.