Jesus Christ (continued) – Jesus Christ (continued)

Jesus Christ (continued)

On this general groundwork of character there emerges the love of Jesus, which was marked by extraordinary range and intensity. For man as man He had ‘a prodigality of sympathy’ and looked on Himself as a debtor to all who were burdened by suffering or sin. It may Indeed be observed that His love, while all-embracing, had degrees. The centurion of Capernaum and the Syrophcenician woman came within its scope, but He looked on the people of Israel as those who had the first claim on His affection and service. He shared the feelings for Jerusalem which are expressed in many of the Psalms, and yearned over the holy city more than over the cities of the Lake. Within the house of Israel there were three — perhaps four classes, whom He regarded with a peculiar tenderness. First in order came the disciples, next the common people and the social outcasts, and doubtless we may add the children. It is hard to believe that the family-circle at Nazareth was not also one of the nearer groups, but during the period of the Ministry the attitude of His kinsfolk, with the probable exception of Mary (John 19:26), diverted His strong natural affection to those who were His kinsfolk after the spirit. The ways in which His love expressed itself were on the one hand to seek to make those He loved truly His own by binding them to Himself by their faith and devotion; on the other, to bestow on them, and that at whatever cost to Himself, all benefits which it lay within his vocation to confer. The forms of service to which His sympathy prompted Him were as many as the forms of human distress. His mission, indeed, proceeded on the footing that the worst evils from which men suifer are spiritual, and that the benefactor whom they chiefly need is one who will lead them to repentance and show them the Father. But no small part of His ministry also was occupied with works of the ptiilanthropic kind, wiiich it would be altogether wrong to interpret on the analogy of some modern enterprises, as having the mere purpose of creating a favourable disposition for the gospel. His distinctive work was to comfort by saving, but He also acted as one who felt that the relief of pain had its own independent claim.

In seeming contrast with the gentleness of the sympathetic Christ was the sternness which marked many of His words and acts. It is of interest to note that the disciple, whom Jesus loved is remembered in the Synoptics (Luke 9) chiefly as a man with a capacity for fiery indignation; and this quality may well have been one that drew Jesus and John more closely together. If there were some sins that moved Jesus chiefly to compassion, there were others that roused Him to holy wrath. Those who, like prodigals and fallen women, could be described as their own worst enemy. He chiefly pitied, but sterner measure was never meted out than by Jesus to those whose guilt had the quality of profanity or of inhumanity. The profanity which irreverently dealt with the things of God — in swearing, in corrupting His word, in polluting His Temple, was unsparingly rebuked — on one memorable occasion by act; and the great offence of the Pharisees in His eyes was that, while making a parade of sanctity before men, they were insulting God by acting a Ue. The second type of sin which provoked His burning invective was inhumanity towards the weak. An example is the sin of those who make one of the little ones to offend (Matthew 18). which may perhaps be taken literally of those who pervert children; and the unpardonable aggravation of the guilt of the scribes was that, while maldng long prayers, they devoured widows’ houses (Mark 12:40))).

While the character of Jesus haa commonly been regarded, even by non-Christians, aa the noblest that the world has seen , it has not escaped criticism in ancient or modem times . Two forms of the indictment may be alluded to. Renan professes to find evidence of deterioration, and in this the real tragedy of the life of Jesus. Writing of the last days, he says: ‘His natural gentleness seems to have abandoned Him: Hebrews 7. sometimes harah and capricious, contact with the world pained and revolted Him. The fatal law which condemns an idea to decay as soon as it is applied t9 convert men applied to Him.’ He is even said to nave yielded to the wishes of His enthusiastic friends; and to have acquiesced in a pretended miracle by which they sought to revive His sinking cause. His death was a happy release ‘from the fatal necessities of a position which each day became more exacting and more difficult to maintain’ (p. 252). To a pessimiatically tinged scepticism there may be something congenial in this representation. As a fact the idea of degeneration is borrowed from the career of Mohammed, and has no support except in the assumption that Jesus was uncommissioned to represent the Divine wrath against sin. Very different was the insight of him who wrote that He ‘learned obedience by the things which he suffered,’ and was thus made perfect (Hebrews 5:8, 9).

From the Hellenic point of view it is a common criticism that the character of Jesus is one-sided or fragmentary. There are, it is said, elements of human excellence which He either did not possess or which He deliberately undervalued and renounced. There were whole spheres of valuable human experience into which He did not enter — married life, political service, scientific labour, the realm of sesthetic interests. His attitude, also, to the economic side of human affairs was unsatisfactory: He taught men to despise wealth and distribute it among the poor, and thus struck at the veiy foundations of the social fabric. In reply to this indictment, it is sometimes urged that the character of Jesus actually included most elements which enter into the Hellenic ideal — notably the aesthetic sense as seen in His close observance and love of things beautiful, intellectual vitality and acquisitiveness, and the temperate enjoyment of the pleasures of the table in the society of His friends. It is also pointed out that His principles sanction a much wider range of activity than He Himself actually exemplified. In His love to man, which designed to bestow every form of real good, there lay the sanction of all the activities — scientific, economic, political, as well as religious and philanthropic, wiiich fill out with helpful service the various spheres of duty in the modem world. At the same time it must be admitted that Jesus was not the universal man in the literal sense, but was limited in His equipment and aim by the special character of His mission. Hebrews 2 in the sense that in His scheme of values He severely subordinated all the goods of this world to spiritual blessings, and taught that the first w6re to be despised and renounced in the measure in which they imperilled the second. He exemplified self -limitationandself -sacrifice, not indeed as an end in itself, but as a necessary condition of accomplishing the highest for God and man,

17. The fundamental ideas of our Lord’s teaching. — It is one of the gains of modern theology that Biblical Theology is separated from Dogmatics, ai;id that the sacred writers are allowed to speak for themselves without being forced Into consistency with a system of ecclesiastical doctrine. In pursuance of this historical task, interest has centred chiefly in the attempt to expound and systematize the teaching of Jesus. It was naturally felt that no Christian documents are so valuable for an understanding of the Christian religion as those which contain the teaching of the Founder, and that, indispensable as the Apostolic writings are, they are in a very real sense derivative and supplementary. Experience also showed that the teaching of Jesus, which in the oral tradition was for a time the main sustenance of the Primitive Church, has been able to quicken and refresh the religious life of not a few in the modern world who had ceased to feel the power of the stereotyped phrases of a traditional theology. An account of our Lord’s teaching, it has to be added, is properly based on the Synoptics. The authentic matter of the Fourth Gospel is so inextricably blended with believing experience and reflexion that it can only be set forth as a supplement to the heads of doctrine collected from the Synoptists (Wendt), or utilized as a source for the Johannine Theology (Weiss).

In addition to the sketches in the great manuals of NT Theology (Weiss, Bibl. Theal. des NT, Eng. tr. 1882-3; Beysohlag, NT Theol Eng. tr 1891; Holtzmann. Lehrbuch der NT Theol., 1897; Stevens, Theol. of NT, 1899), there are numerous monographs, of which the most important is Wendt, LehreJesu (Eng. tr. 1892), and the most mteresting are Bruce, The Kingdom of God, 1890. and Harnack, Das Weien des Christenthums (Eng. tr. 1901).

A. The Kingdom oi’ God. — The Evangelists give as the summary description of the message of Jesus — ‘the gospel of the kingdom.’ ‘And Jesus went about in all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom’ (Matthew 4:23; cf. Mark 1:14, 15. Luke 8:1). As Jesus was conscious of being the promised Messiah, it was natural that His teaching ministry should be largely directed to setting forth the nature, the privileges, and the laws of the Messianic Kingdom. Most modern expositors, accordingly, have treated the idea of the Kingdom as central, and as supplying a scheme under which the whole body of the teaching may be systematically arranged. Thus, after determining the nature of the Kingdom in relation to the past of Israel, and to the ideas of contemporary Judaism, Weiss treats of the coming of the Kingdom in the Messiah and His work, of its realization in the righteousness and the privileges of its members, and of its predicted consummation in the future.

(1) Thenature of the Kingdom. — InelucidatingChrist’s conception of the Kingdom, it is usual to begin by contrasting it with pre-existing ideas. In the first place, it is clear that, while Jesus claimed to fulfil OT prophecy, and to be the Messiah for whom the people waited. He broke with the general strain of Messianic prophecy and expectation in the important particular that He rejected the conception that the Kingdom would exist in the form of a political organization. It was a very natural aspiration for the Jews to desire to be free and powerful, and more than a respectable ambition, when it is remembered that the Empire of which they dreamed was to carry in its train the worship and service of the true God; but Jesus substituted for the political conception the idea of a Kingdom which was spiritual in its nature, and by consequence universal. Its essentially spiritual character is shown by the nature of its blessings — among which there is frequent mention of the forgiveness of sins, righteousness, and the like, but little of earthly good and nothing of political power. A Kingdom which ‘Cometh not with observation’ (Luke 17:20) could not be of the same kind with the kingdom of the Maccabees or the Roman Empire. And if it was a spiritual Kingdom, in which membership was granted on terms of faith and love, it followed that it was in principle a universal Kingdom. It was no monopoly of those of Jewish birth, for not all Jews had faith, and of some who were Gentiles He said that He had not found so great faith in Israel (Matthew 8:10). ‘Many shall come from the east and the west . . . but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness’ (vv. 11, 12)

The further elucidation of its nature may be carried out by the help of an analysis of the idea of a kingdom. It involves authority and rule (doctrine of God and of the Messiah), blessings which are enjoyed by the citizens (the Kingdom as ‘a good,’ the privileges), laws which are enacted and enforced (the righteousness of the Kingdom), a title to citizenship (conditions of entrance), an organization of the subjects in community of life and service (the Kingdom as a community, doctrine of the Church), a future and a destiny (doctrine of the Last Things).

The Kingdom as present and as future. — One of the difficulties of the subject is that in some passages Jesus speaks of the Kingdom as present, while in many others He speaks of it as future; and there has been a wide difference of opinion as to the relation of the two sets of utterances, and the importance to be attributed to the eschatological series.

(i) The Kingdom as a present reality. — ^That the Kingdom had come, and was a present reality on earth when He taught and laboured^ is stated in a number of passages. He speaks of His mighty works as proof. ‘If I by the spirit of God cast out devils, then is the kingdom of God come upon you’ (Matthew 12:28; cf. Luke 10:18). In the same sense^ it i3_ said ‘the kingdom of God is among you,’ (not ‘within you,’ which could not have been said to the Pharisees (Luke 17:21)). It is also implied that there are those who are already in the Kingdom (Matthew 11:11). The parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven (Matthew 13:31–33). and also of the Seed Growing Secretly (Mark 4), seem clearly to teach that the Kingdom was then present in the world in small and lowly beginnings, whion were to be succeeded by a process of wonderful growth and expansion.

(ii) The Kingdom as a future event. — In a larger number of oases He spoke of the Kingdom, and of entrance into it, as future. ‘Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 5:20). ‘Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the’world’ (Matthew 26 • Moreover, a very large portion of His teaching is concerned with the manner of the establishment of the Kingdom in the last days, and with the sublime events by which it is to "be ushered in and established.

The time of the Consummation, Jesus declared, was unknown even to the SonCMk IS^^j but it would be heralded by various signs — persecution, apostasy, the preaching of the gospel throughout the world (Matthew 24) . Upon this would follow the return of the Son of Man, who would come in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory (24:30 25:31; cf. Mark 14:62). The immediate purpose of the Return is to sift the righteous and the wicked, to execute judgment upon the enemies of God, and to gather together the elect from the four winds (Matthew 24:29 ff.). Thereafter there is established a Kingdom which cannot be moved, in which the blessed enjoy all that is promised them, in the love of God. The scene appears to be laid on earth (Matthew 5:4). So far as the picture is elaboratedj it is by utilizing the tones and the colours of earthly expenence, as well as familiar forms of dignitjj, power, and enjoyment (Mark 10:40 14:25. Matthew 8:11). At the same time the spiritual blessings are of course the chiefest (Matthew 5:8). and the transfiguration of the natural is suggested in a significant particular (Mark 12).

(iii) Relation of the two aspects of the Kingdom. — ^There are three main views as to tne relation of the two sets of utterances about the Kingdom; they may be distinguished as the traditional, the liberalj and the eschatological.

(a) According to the traditional view, both groups of sayings are authentic, and are easily combined into a consistent whole. Jesus could say that the Kingdom was present in respect that it had come, and future in respect that it had not yet fully come in power and glory. Its history falls into two stages, one of which is now under the dispensation of the Spirit, the other to come in stupendous acts of judgment and mercy at the Second Advent.

(6) The liberal view of modem theology is that the eschatological outlook of Jesus was borrowed from, or accommodated to, temporary forms of Jewish thought, and that the valuable and enduring element Is the conception of the ICingdom as entering into the life of mankind in this world, growing in range and power, and destined to permeate society and all its institutions with its Divine spirit. From this ^oint of view the Second Coming, the central event of the History, is to be understood as a spiritual return which has been takingplacein theevents of history from Pentecost down to the present hour. Similarly the Last Judgment is interpreted as a continuous process which runs parallel with the history of nations and churches. That this view has some support in the Fourth Gospel must be admitted. The return of which Christ there speaks with much fulness is the mission of the Spirit, and the Judgment which is before the mind of the Evangelist is almost always the judgment which issimultaneous with character and conduct. There may even be claimed for it some support from the Synoptic teaching — as in the dating of the Return ‘from now’ (Matthew 26:64). and the distinction of ‘days of the Son of Man’ (Luke 17:22). and also in the association of the Second Coming with the destruction of Jerusalem (Matthew 24). But on the whole it must be said that the attempt to impute the purely spiritual conception to Jesus is unhistorical. It may be argued that His sayings are examples of prophecy, and that theology has a warrant to recast prophetic sayings in new forms . But it can hardly be gainsaid that Jesus thought of the Return as a definite event, visible and impressive, which would challenge the attention of all mankind, and involve acts that would revolutionize the order of our world.

(c) Some modem scholars hold that the distinctive teaching of Jesus was that the Kingdom was a supernatural Kingdom, to be established by Divine power at His Second Coming, and that the references in the Gospels to a present Kingdom, with a gradual development are either illusory or unauthentic (J. Weiss, Die Fredigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes). On this view Jesus claimed to be the Messiah only in the sense that He looked forward to becoming the Messiah. He was, like John the Baptist, a forerunner, but with the difference that the future Messiah to whom He bore witness was the Jesus of the Second Advent. The textual evidence which supports the view that Jesus foimded a present Kingdom, of God on earth before His death is discounted on the ground that an event which is imminent may be intelligibly said to be present. Thus the confession at CsBsarea Philippi is to be taken proleptically: it merely meant that Peter believed that He was the Messiah designate, or the heir to the office. Jesus departed this life with the consciousness that the Kinedom was not yet established’ (J. Weiss). The parables which speak of a gradual development of the Kingdom of God are explained either as having been interpolated or as teaching a different lesson. But this accentuation of the eschatological aide of our Lord’s teaching is hardly likely to be accepted, as Schweitzer claims, as an assured result of criticism. If even in the OT the Jewish State was sometimes conceived of as the present Kingdom of God, and if the Rabbinical theology sometimes spoke of the Kingdom of God as a power to be yielded to now, it is difficult to see whyjesua shouldnot have entertained the similar conception which is contained or implied in the texts quoted. Above all, it is impossible to beueve that Jesus, who taught that the highest blessings are enjoyed in communion with God, did not hold that the Kingdom was present among those who experienced His love and who obeyed His wllT

B. The Heavenly Father and His Children. — It may be doubted if the teaching of Jesus is most satisfactorily set forth under the forms of the Kingdom. The diflficulty even of the traditional conception, the doubts as to the correctness of this conception which have been referred to, and also the transitoriness of types of political constitution, suggest that the organizing idea may better be sought In another sphere. As a fact the central conceptions of His reUglous and ethical teaching are borrowed not from the political, but from the domestic sphere. When it Is said that ‘one Isaiah 7 Father,’ and that ‘all ye are brethren’ (Matthew 23:8, 9). we have the description of a family. To the writer it therefore seems that the teaching is best expounded under the rubric of the Heavenly Father and His children, or the holy family, and in what follows we shall con&ne ourselves mainly to the elucidation of the heads of this gospel of Divine and human love.

(1) The Heavenly Father. — Christ could take for granted in His hearers the elements of the knowledge of God set forth in the OT, as one God, all-powerful, all-wlse, all-holy, all-good. This splendid spiritual inheritance He enriched by the content of His doctrine of God as the Heavenly Father. The name, indeed, was not new. Even the Greeks spoke of Zeus as the father of gods and men; while in not a few OT passages God is hkened to and even named a Father. For the Greeks, however, the Fatherhood of God hardly meant more than that He was the God of Creation and Providence, while in OT thought God, as Father was the protecting God of Israel, or the Father of the Messianic King. On the hps of Jesus the name meant that God was the Father of Individual men, who lavished upon each the utmost resources of a Father’s wise and tender care. It may, in fact, be said that if we study human fatherhood at its best, note every lovely and gracious feature which is realized or adumbrated in an earthly home, and then attribute these in perfected form to the heart and the will of the Almighty, we discover the heads of the teaching of Jesus concerning God.

The relation of an earthly father to his children Involves at least seven points — to him they owe their existence, from him they borrow his nature and likeness, he provides for their wants, he educates and disciplines them, he holds intimate Intercourse with them, he is graciously disposed to forgive their offences, and he makes them his heirs. AU this, now, Jesus has afSrmed of God in relation to men. The first two points — that it is He that made us, and not we ourselves, and that we are made in His image — were articles of OT doctrine which He did not need to emphasize; though it may be pointed out that His conception of the infinite value of the Individual soul had its roots in His belief that man bears the image of the Heavenly Father. The other points mentioned are quite explicitly emphasized.

(a) God provides for the wants of His children. He is aware of their bodily wants (Matthew 6:32) the God who feeds the fowls and clothes the lilies will not suffer His children to be in want. This, in fact. Is deduced directly from the idea of fatherhood. ‘If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?’ (7:11). That the provision includes spiritual blessings as its chief part is made explicit in Luke 11:13.

(6) God educates and disciplines His children. Jesus does not say this expressly, but it may be noticed that there are two aspects of a child’s earthly training which are reproduced in what Hebrews 7:8 about the Divine education of souls. A child’s education, though arduous and painful, is designed for its good; and similarly, Jesus says. Blessed are the poor, the mourners, the persecuted, the reviled (Matthew 5:3 ff.). The second aspect is that the children do not always appreciate the wisdom and kindness of the discipline, but must be asked to take it on trust. Similarly, the earthly child must often trust the Heavenly Father’s love where he cannot comprehend His purpose, saying, ‘Yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight’ (Matthew 11:26).

(c) God holds intimate intercourse with His children. It does not lie in the idea of an earthly parent to hold aloof from his children, and God admits His to close communion with Himself. On their side it takes the form of prayer, on His of response. They are encouraged to seek both spiritual and material blessings, and that importunately (parables of the Importunate Widow, Luke 18:1 ff.; the Friend at Midnight, 11:5 ff.). and they are assured that ‘whatsoever they shall ask in prayer, believing, they shall receive’ (Matthew 21:22).

(ft) God is graciously disposed to forgive His children’s offences. His way with sinners is not the way of a man with his enemy, to whom he refuses on any terms to be reconciled, or of a creditor with his debtor, who insists on full payment, but that of a father, who meets a penitent son in a spirit of magnanimity, rejoices over his return, and receives him back to his home. The point of the three great parables in Luke 15 is that, while the respectable world was sceptical about the restoration of the erring, and frowned on those who attempted it, there is in heaven a charity that believeth all things, and joy imspeakable over one sinner that repenteth.

(c) God destines His children to an inheritance. This is itself, as has been indicated, a distinct and large topic of the teaching of Jesus, and it is sufflcient here to refer to a text in which the logic of the relationship is clearly brought out: ‘Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom’ (Luke 12:32).

In the light of the above analysis we are in a position to deal with the much-discussed question. Did Jesus conceive of God as the Father of all men, or only as the Father of those who are within the family-Kingdom? It may be that Jesus applies the name of Father to God only in relation to the children of the Kingdom, but the palpable meaning of His teaching is that God is the Father of all men, while yet it is not possible for Him to be the Father, in the full sense of the word, of those who are living in impenitence and in alienation from Him. He is the Father of all to the extent that they are created by Him, are made in His image, have their wants supplied by Him, and are disciplined by Him; but just as it is impossible for an earthly father to forgive a contumacious son, to hold intercourse with an absent son, and to make an heir of a son who has already squandered his portion, so is it impossible for God to be in the full sense a Father to those who shun His face and spurn His gifts.

(2) The terms of sonship. — The next great theme is the question how men become members of the family- Kingdom. Negatively Jesus teaches that we are not born into it, as one was born into the Jewish State, and also that membership is not an order of merit conferred in recognition of distinguished attainments in piety and virtue. The most important and comprehensive utterance of our Lord on the point is this — ‘Except ye turn and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 18:3). Here again we can trace the fidelity of the detail to the fundamental idea of the family-Kingdom: what should be so necessary in the son as childlikeness? On examination childlikeness proves to include a variety of qualities which are elsewhere declared by Jesus to be conditions of sonship: (o) Trustfulness. — When Jesus proposed the children as a model, there can be little doubt that He had prominently in mind the child’s capacity of faith. He would have His followers trust in the wisdom and the love of the Father with the sublime confidence with which a child naturally trusts in an earthly parent. There are examples of the joy which He felt at unexpected cases of heroic faith, e.g. of the centurion of Capernaum and the Syrophcenician woman. The grand object of this faith was God. ‘Have faith,’ He says, ‘in God’ (Mark 11:22). . But this faith in God included also faith in Himself as the appointed instrument for the performance of God’s great work with men. (b) Sense of need. — A child, being cast upon others for the supply of its wants, has a keen sense of need. And this sense, which from one point of view is humility, is also a prominent mark of the children of the Kingdom. We are asked to admire the publican, who, in contrast to the self-satisfied Pharisee, confessed his unworthiness and his need of mercy (Luke 18:13). The self-complacency of the Rich Young Ruler showed that though not far from, he was still outside of, the Kingdom of God (Mark 10:17 ff.). The Beatitude is for those who hunger and thirst after righteousness (Matthew 5:6). (c) T?ie penitential spirit. — With childlikeness may also be associated the graceof penitence, for childhood, when not spoiled by hardening influences, is the period of the sensitive conscience. In any case penitence is closely bound up with faith as the essential condition. ‘He came into Galilee preaching and saying. Repent ye and believe the gospel’ (Mark 1:15). The stages of penitence are vividly illustrated in the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32). (d) Resolution. — A fourth parallel is that in the child there is, along with a sense of need, a resolute determination to secure what it values. There are some, it is true, who receive the heavenly blessings in response to an invitation, or almost under compulsion, but the rule is that they are like the merchantman seeking goodly pearls, and willing to make any sacrifice to secure what they seek. ‘The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and men of violence take it by force’ (Matthew 11:12).

(3) The privileges of the children. — The enumeration of these has already been anticipated in what has been said of the implications of the Divine Fatherhood. The children possess, in fact or in promise, the fulness of the blessings which God as the Heavenly Father, who is also all-powerful, is disposed to bestow. They include the forgiveness of sins, access to the Father in prayer, the provision needed for the supply of bodily and spiritual wants, guidance in perplexity, protection in danger, power of a supernatural kind, and the assurance that their names are written in heaven (Luke 10:20). The privileges are summarily described as life (Matthew 7:14, Mark 9) and as salvation (Luke 19:9). Their exceeding value is emphasized in particular maxims (Matthew 16), and in the parables of the Hid Treasure and of the Pearl of Price (Matthew 13:44–46). In spite of the hardships and perils of the life to which they are called, the habitual mood of the children is one of repose and even of joy (Mt

(4) The filial and fraternal obligations. — ^The observation that the teaching of Jesus is in substance a system built up out of the higher elements of family life is confirmed when we approach its practical ideal. This is made up of filial obligations towards|God, and of fraternal obligations towards men. (i) The duties towards God are those which naturally devolve upon the children in consideration of the Father’s greatness, wisdom, and goodness. Love being the great thing manifested by God towards them, their fundamental duty is to love Him in return with all their heart, and with all their soul, and with all their mind, and with all their strength (Mark 12:30). Their special duties towards God, which are also privilegea, are these — to trust Him wholly, to make their desires known to Him in prayer, to perform with fidelity the work He gives them to do, and to submit in meekness and patience when He calls them to suffer.

(ii) Duty towards man. — The supreme fraternal obligation, like the filial, is love. ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself (Mark 12:31). By our neighbour we are to understand all who are in need, and whom it is in our power to help (parable of the Good Samaritan, Luke 10:30 ff.). When we inquire how this principle manifests itself, it appears that the Christian ethic has three features which are commonly described as inwardness, self-sacrificing service, and the passive virtues. Without going into detail, it is sufficient to illustrate how these form an ethical ideal which has its prototype in the life of the family.

(a) Inwardness. — A distinctive feature of the ethical teaching of Jesus is the insistence that it Is not sufficient to refrain from overt acts of wrong, and to perform the overt acts which duty requires. The heart must be pure and the motive right. From this point of view benefactions that are not accompanied by sympathy lose half their value. On the other hand, the evil purpose has the quality of an evil act; hatred is murder in the minor degree. Now, startling as is the demand for a perfect heart in an ethic of general obligation, it is familiar enough in family life. There a woman counts all benefactions as worthless if she do not possess her husband’s love; or, again, the hatred of brothers and sisters is at once felt to have an enormity of guilt beyond that of most evil deeds.

(6) Disinterested service. — In what is said of the forms of service the ideal is manifestly suggested by brotherhood. Of the chief forms may be distinguished first beneficence, which is specially directed to the relief of the poor, the entertainment of the homeless, the tending of the sick, the visiting of captives (Matthew 25:34 ff.). the comforting of the sorrowful, the reconciliation of those who are at feud (Matthew 5:9). Another is the ministry of teaching; without doubt Jesus intended His disciples, as one of their chief forms of service, to follow Him in the disseminating of the truths which He taught. A third is the spiritual ministry proper, which has the same end as His own pastoral work — to save souls from sin, and to help them to rise to higher ends of excellence and nobility. The ideal here, in short, is that the kind of things which the parent, the brother, and the sister do, or may be expected to do, in accordance with the spirit of family life, are made binding in their application to our fellow-men as such. We may also notice two accompanying rules. (") The service Is to be disinterested. This is enforced by the counsel that we are preferably to perform acts of kindness to those who are not in a position to make a return (Luke 6:34 f.). (/3) They are also to be done unostentatiously — not as by the Pharisees, who blow a trumpet before them, but so that the left hand knoweth not what the right hand doeth (Matthew 6:2–4). In the first of these counsels we see a refiexion of the spirit which has its purest expression in maternal devotion. The second states the condition without which the best service in any sphere loses its grace.

(c) The passive virtues. — A third group of graces, specially known as the passive virtues, includes meekness and patience under adversity and wrong, and the forgiveness of injuries. Very great stress is laid on forgiving injuries, of which Jesus alludes to three kinds — injury to the person (Matthew 5:39). loss of property (v. 40), and defamation of character (5:11). Instructions are given as to the steps to be taken in securing reconciliation, beginning with private expostulation (Matthew 18:15). As motives to forgiveness we are reminded that we ought to forgive as we hope to be forgiven, and also that, as God sets the example of ready clemency, the child ought to imitate the Father (Matthew 5:45). These virtues, it will again be noticed, were not new on the soil of family life. From the beginning there have been women who within the sphere of the home have borne hardship meekly, endured wrong patiently, and been ready to forgive unto seventy times seven.

(5) The unique Son and His work. — It may be thought that the scheme which has been followed is inconsistent with the witness borne by Jesus to His Person and His work, inasmuch as His claims have no obvious counterpart in the life of the family. The whole subject is treated in a special article (Person of Christ), but must be glanced at here in the general context of Synoptic doctrine. In the first place, it is certainly true that Jesus ‘asserted for Himself a peculiar dignity, and for His work a peculiar efficacy. He calls Himself not a Son, but the Son (Matthew 11:27), who stands in a unique relation to the Father, and who also makes upon the other children a demand for faith and obedience. If now we ask what it is that makes Christ unique, we find that the stress is laid upon three particulars — (o) He is in the Father’s confidence, and from Him the other children obtain their knowledge of the Father (ib.). (b) He fully possesses the privileges and fulfils the obligations which are involved in sonship. (c) His death was the means of procuring for them the highest blessings (Mark 14))). Now, all these things, if not explained by, have at least parallels in, the life of the family. The son, who in all respects obeys his father’s will, enjoys a position of peculiar intimacy and influence. The eldest son in many countries, and not least in the Jewish tradition, often occupies an intermediate position between the head and the subordinate members of the family. And if Jesus, as He certainly did, looked upon Himself as the eldest brother of the family-Kingdom — who first realized its privileges and its righteousness, and as the Son in whom the Father was well pleased, and whom consequently He took into His deepest confidence — we can see how He could teach that faith in Him was an element in the gospel. Nor are the references to the necessity of His death, as is sometimes said, inconsistent with the gospel of the Heavenly Father. Every death in a family tends to be a means of grace; the death in a noble cause of one who is revered and loved is an almost matchless source of inspiration; and there were reasons, apart from deeper theological explanations, why Jesus should teach that His death would do more even than His life to make effective the gospel of Divine and human love.

(6) The brotherhood as a society. — It followed from the nature of the teaching of Jesus that His followers should form themselves into a society. Community of faith and aim made it natural for them to do so, and those whose relations were of the nature of brotherhood were bound to realize it in a common life and common service as well as in common institutions. That the purpose of Jesus went in this direction from the first appears from the call and training of the twelve Apostles. In the later period of His Ministry we have references to a Christian society under the name of the Church (Matthew 16:18 IS’s-^"). These references have indeed been thought by some critics to be of later ecclesiastical origin; but when the breach with the Jewish authorities became inevitable. He must, in thinking of the future, have conceived of His followers as a separate society. The omissions are as remarkable as the provisions. There is nothing said about forms of worship, nothing about ecclesiastical constitution. The few provisions may be gathered up under the following heads: —