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mingled a supernatural element. The Messiah, who was imagined to correspond, was to be first of all an irresistible conqueror, who would come suddenly from heaven and overturn the existing order; and then he would reign in a divine power and splendor which nothing could withstand or rival. It was to be a kingdom inaugurated by miracle, and maintained not by the inner worth and integrity of its subjects but by the limitless might and glory of its absolute Monarch. Such was the idea among the less thoughtful and more demonstrative. It would easily find the response of the floating masses, who were equally ready to be swayed by pretenders raising insurrections against Roman rule or by fanatics who would form a new religious sect. Already by the time of Jesus' coming several such movements had risen and been put down (cf. Acts v, 36, 37) movements generally characterized by excess and violence, though having at heart the expected kingdom. There was a sect called the Zealots, apparently of revolutionary sentiments, from whom Jesus, in his large tolerance of human temperaments, chose one of his apostles (see Luke vi, 15; Acts i, 13). Men of all classes, it would seem, were to be educated for the new order.

NOTE. Of this Messianic expectancy Dr. Sanday (" Life of Christ in Recent Research,” p. 81) says: It may be . . . true that there were a good many Jews for whom the Messianic hope was more or less dormant. But I imagine that from the time of the Maccabees to the time of Barcochba there was a Messianic background or something like it to every popular movement that swept over Palestine. I cannot think that the Zealots, for instance, were either simple brigands or a purely political party without any admixture of religion. Just as the Book of Daniel reveals the spiritual atmosphere of the age to which it belongs, so also do the Psalms of Solomon reveal the like conditions a hundred years later, and the Assumption of Moses later still.... That the religious hopes as well as the political often took a very coarse and violent form, I regard as certain. Therefore it seems to me that if our Lord appealed to these hopes, He could not do so without to some extent correcting them."

Among the
Spiritually

To the more contemplative and devout-minded, however, and especially the common people remote from public affairs, the coming new order shaped itself in terms less material and political, and more as a spiritual Minded emancipation and blessedness. Such people, for instance, were Simeon and Anna (Luke ii, 25, 38), an aged devout man and a prophetess in the time of Jesus' infancy, who were "looking for the consolation of Israel" and for "the redemption of Jerusalem." Such also was the councillor Joseph of Arimathea (Luke xxiii, 51), who was "looking for the kingdom of God." It was from this class of people, too, that the parents of Jesus came, and the cousins and friends from whom he selected his disciples (cf. John i, 35-42). It was on such a basis of character and hope as these represented that a sane and constructive conception of the kingdom and the Coming One could best be shaped.

I

The Prophetic Herald. One element in the Jewish expectation of the Messiah was that when he came he would be preceded by a herald or messenger, whose function it would be to prepare the way for him. This idea they drew, not from the popular apocalyptic literature but from the older prophets. "The voice of one that crieth, Prepare ye... the way of Jehovah" (Isa. xl, 3), for instance, was accepted as the prophecy of an event much later than the time of its utterance. There was also a prediction of a messenger to prepare Jehovah's way, given by the latest prophet Malachi, about four hundred years before (Mal. iii, 1). To the literalminded this prediction was made realistic by the same prophet's assertion (Mal. iv, 5) that the herald was to be the prophet Elijah; who would supposedly come back from the unseen world for the purpose. Thus the imagination of the people had endowed the expected herald as well as the Messiah himself with mystic and super-earthly powers.

Doubtless, too, there was a variety of ideas, from the most material to the most spiritual, as to how this herald would be identified when he came. Their literature, in fact, had given them a personal image; and time and fancy had made this loom so large that any concrete object answering to it must almost necessarily be more or less estranging. In other words, both the herald and the Messiah, when they came, had to meet the inevitable sense of shrinkage that seems to ensue when an object of imagination becomes an object of actual sense-perception.

The Idea
Made Real

John the Baptist, whose mission it was to be the forerunner of Jesus, was a kinsman of his, six months his elder (Luke i, 36). He was of priestly stock, born of parents who were of the Puritan type of Jewish piety (Luke i, 5, 6). St. Luke relates that his mission, to go before the Messiah in the spirit and power of Elijah, was prophesied of him before his birth (Luke i, 17); and as a young man both his training and temperament led him to the same kind of ascetic and austere life as had been lived by Elijah the Tishbite more than eight centuries before (cf. 1 Kings xvii-xxii; also 2 Kings i, 7, 8). Until his public ministry began he lived in the Judean wilderness, perhaps in one of the numerous caves of the region; and his dress, diet, and habits emphasized the almost savage sternness of his attitude to life. It was as if by such symbolic means he would warn men to return from the artificial and degenerate tendencies of civilization to primitive first principles. "John the Baptist," says Professor J. R. Seeley,1 "was like the Emperor Nerva. In his career it was given him to do two things to inaugurate a new régime, and also to nominate a successor who was far greater than himself." Of these two things he was aware from the beginning of his career, and ordered his ministry accordingly. Adopting a primitive custom, he embodied his requirement in a symbolic 1 Seeley," Ecce Homo," p. 15.

act, namely, the baptism of those who heeded his word and repented of their evil life. As he administered the rite, however, he told his hearers that this baptism was only preliminary to something greater. Expressed in water, it meant merely the negative virtue of cleansing and change of, purpose; while the successor who was coming would impart the positive virtue, symbolized by the Holy Spirit and fire (Matt. iii, 11). Such was the acted metaphor by which he gave his message a spiritual significance. He also figured his successor, when at length he saw him, as an atoning lamb (John i, 29, 36); a symbol drawn from the priestly ideas familiar to all Jews, with perhaps a reminiscence of Isa. liii, 7. On the principles involved in these symbols John met the prevailing expectation, proclaiming that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. When questioned who he was, however, he denied all claim to being the Messiah, or Elijah, or any other ancient prophet (John i, 19-27). He was only the Voice, he said, to proclaim the Coming One, and a Mightier than he was to succeed him. John's personal character, therefore, in its complete self-effacement, precluded all idea of inaugurating a new order by revolution or violence except the spiritual revolution involved in repentance. The preparation he advocated was not of national insurgency nor of any concerted movement, but of the individual mind and heart.

Substance

The substance and tone of John's preaching corresponded to the austerity of his life. It was the kind of message natural to one who, living apart from men and and Tone of their affairs, lacked sympathy with them; in this his Message respect like that of his prophetic predecessors Elijah and Amos. It was stern and minatory; demanding repentance; pronouncing censure and judgment; sparing none on account of family or race or position. The coming kingdom he portrayed in terms of doom and punishment, and the Coming One as a bringer of vengeance and severity.

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The Christ, in his anticipation, was to be not the Friend and Brother of mankind, but the Chastiser and Judge; and the régime corresponding was figured as an ax ready to hew down an unfruitful tree, and as a fan which would separate wheat from chaff that the latter might be burned. It was the sternness of the old Jewish dispensation concentrated into a threat of retribution and doom. For the ancient idea of the day of Jehovah men's newer imagination had substituted the idea of the kingdom of heaven; but like the prophets before him John attacked their too easy optimism by warning them that if they pictured it in colors of fancy rather than principle they were liable to find it a dies iræ.

NOTE. In the most striking Old Testament prophecies of a coming Personage, or of a regenerating people, there is a note of severity mingled with the beneficence; cf. Isa. xi, 1-5, and especially verse 4, which was in John's mind. See also Isa. xli, 15, where that severity is predicated of the people, and xlix, 2, where the Servant of Jehovah himself speaks. The Day of Jehovah, also, was divested of its idle optimism and pictured in terms of judgment and wrath; see Amos v, 18; Joel i, 15; Zeph. i, 14, 15; Isa. xiii, 6, 9.

At the End of an Era

John the Baptist, one of the noblest, is also one of the most pathetic figures of history. He is a solitary representative of the primitive prophetic ideal; standing between the old era and the new, just where his prophecy must maintain its eternal validity, and yet where the fulfillment, coming immediately after, makes the prophecy itself obsolete. This is expressed in the tribute that Jesus paid to him: "Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist; yet he that is but little in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he" (Matt. xi, 11).

From the literary point of view John's announcement of the Christ kingdom is an instance of the foreshortening of prophetic vision, such as we have already noted in the earlier prophets. He sees the kingdom as it is destined ultimately

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