to be, sternly triumphant over evil. He sees the final victory of right and truth. But he has the idea that this must come by revolution, by a sudden catastrophe; and this fills all his field of vision. The long, slow means by which the new order must be brought about, the growing spirit of goodwill and fellowship by which alone such a kingdom can prevail, he has not yet discovered. His imagination has fed itself on the sternness of the old régime, and his sense of the power of love and good-will is undeveloped. Nor can he realize this until he sees it actually embodied in the life and work of his successor, and then, indeed, only dimly. So even after he has proclaimed and identified Jesus as the Christ he falls into doubt whether after all he was right, and from the prison to which his faithful preaching has brought him sends to Jesus asking, "Art thou he that cometh, or look we for another?" (Matt. xi, 3). Jesus' answer to the question is merely to enumerate the various kinds of good work he is doing, as if bidding John judge for himself whether these fulfill Messianic conditions.

II

The Old Order Changes. The coming of Jesus, as history proves, was the coming of a radically new order and emphasis of things, wherein all that was good in the old remained as valid and integral as ever. In that transition the old order insensibly passed away, or rather became absorbed in the new. In other words, the coming of the Messiah, with all that it meant, though it eventually caused a revolution in men's minds, was at first an event as natural and unnoticed as an event of ordinary life. Of the Servant of Jehovah, who was held to be a prophetic type of the Messiah, the Second Isaiah had said, "He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him" (Isa. liii, 2). The case of Jesus' coming was analogous. It was not by display or external

claims that men were to recognize and accept him, but by the intrinsic worth and power that were in him, as seen by honest and pure-minded men.

At the beginning of this changed order, the Coming One whom John announced and the Jewish people expected must The Christ- somehow be recognized and identified when he Problem came. But the very idea of such a Personage was vague, and must be formed; was crude, and must be freed from alloy; was hazy with ages of dim imagination, and must be resolved into an object of common life. John's own identification of him was made not from personal acquaintance, but from a mystic sign (see John i, 31, 32). All that the Christ was to do and be was yet to be revealed; and even John, as we have seen (Matt. xi, 2), became doubtful of his own identification. Meanwhile, if Jesus was indeed the Coming One, how should he meet men's expectation in such a way that they should not misapprehend or misuse the fulfillment of their hopes, and that the idea of what the Messiah and his kingdom essentially are should be formed in right principle and proportion? Such was the problem which Jesus at the outset of his ministry had to raise and solve. The solution of it was the simplest and sanest possible; a model of quiet wisdom and good sense.

To begin with, he came assuming nothing. He went from Galilee to John's baptism as a man of the common people, a layman, a carpenter from the obscure town of Nazareth. He did not assume to be the Messiah nor claim any superiority to ordinary manhood. He left that rather for men to find out from their own recognition of him. The attesting sign of his unique greatness, and the voice from heaven, were personal revelations perceived only by him and John (Matt. iii, 16, 17; Mark i, 10, 11; John i, 33, 34). Nor, on the other hand, did he assume not to be the Messiah. Rather, the words he spoke and the works he did corresponded naturally to a more than human greatness in him.

He simply lived that wise, balanced, consistent life which men came to recognize as the normal life of manhood, and let that speak for itself; while, at the same time, if occasions of supernatural wisdom and power came his way they were used as a matter of course, as belonging naturally to his plane of being. It was all regarded as in the course and compass of a true human life. The answer which Jesus himself gave at the end to Pilate, when the latter asked him whether he was really a king, kept itself within human terms. To this end have I been born," he said, "and to this end am I come into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth" (John xviii, 37). To be a true man, neither shirking nor transcending the claims of true manhood, was his simple and consistent answer to the expectations of his age.

NOTE. That Jesus' design was not only to meet and satisfy but also to correct and clarify men's expectations is indicated by the course he took. To quote from H. B. Sharman: "If he considered himself called to be the Christ of expectation, no harm could come from being acknowledged as such; if, on the other hand, he was conscious of being possessed by new conceptions, he would hardly choose to make claims or awaken hopes by talking in Messianic phraseology."1

From the outset of his ministry the human life presented itself to him, and he in turn presented it to men, as a kind of problem to be solved, with its questions of order and emphasis, its progressive stages, its proper coördination of elements. For this purpose he chose disciples to be with him, observers and learners, taking them into a sort of partnership, as if all were to work out the problem together and all were to share in its avails. In other words, the Christproblem was propounded to the world as an all-men's problem, and not as the monopoly of one; and to every man its duties and possibilities were freely open. Thus his ministry was in the most valid sense the translation of the Christidea into terms of the noblest and deepest manhood.

1 Biblical World, January, 1910, p. 60.

III

Initiating the Christ-Idea. How Jesus chose to work out the problem of his mission, by identifying the Messianic life with the typical life of manhood and carrying this to its height, may be seen, in its beginnings, in some of the early experiences of his ministry.

and its

Sequel

While John the Baptist was preaching and making disciples, Jesus came to him; not, however, to become his His Baptism disciple, but to receive baptism at his hands (Matt. iii, 13-17; Mark i, 9-11; Luke iii, 21, 22). According to St. Matthew's account John was reluctant to baptize Jesus, recognizing that in the case of one so exalted as he the symbolism of the rite was meaningless. Jesus, however, interpreting it for himself as the fulfillment of a righteous requirement, insisted on his baptism as a means of identifying himself with all who would accept the ordinance (Matt. iii, 15). It was his first public act of taking man's duty without assuming to be more than man; his symbolic way of saying that his life's problem required not a break with the past or with men's good customs, but a fulfillment of all its good promise. It was immediately answered by recognition from heaven. He was aware of the form of a dove resting upon him (a new symbolism), and a voice saying, "Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased "(Mark i, 11; cf. Psa. ii, 7; Isa. xlii, 1). It is of no importance to inquire whether or not more persons than Jesus and John were aware of this supernatural sign (cf. John i, 32). Enough that Jesus himself was conscious of his unique distinction, and that this was the dominating element in his life's problem. To him the essence of Messiahship was to be the Son of God. It was the assurance of this that guaranteed his high mission in the world. Thenceforth he lived and worked in the spirit of that idea. As Son of God he was to be the embodiment of the Father's

nature and will and grace; to reproduce perfectly, as it were, the family likeness and character.

ness Ordeal

The first act of Jesus after his baptism indicates his sense of the tremendous life problem involved in being the Son of His Wilder- God (Matt. iv, 1-11; Mark i, 12, 13; Luke iv, I-13). Straightway the spirit driveth him forth into the wilderness," in such strong phrase St. Mark describes the mysterious impulse that possessed him. It seems the evangelist's way of describing how deep was Jesus' crav ing for solitude and for opportunity to think out the career that his divine distinction entailed. The Son of God must see and choose the godlike way of impressing himself upon men and of building a kingdom in the world; for to be the Son of God included all this.

If the temptation of Jesus was a fact, the account of it must have come ultimately from him; for no reporter or observer was present. The terms in which it is described must therefore be such as are at the same time most real to him and most apprehensible to men. But the depth of such an inner experience is beyond the power of literal words to convey. Each individual temptation is told rather in a kind of parable or symbol, whose scope or principle is much greater than a single act. The symbolic act suggested

making bread of stones, casting one's self from a pinnacle, giving formal obeisance to a potentate may indeed seem odd and arbitrary, until we realize the spirit of it; and then nothing can be more real and significant.

The temptations thus reported of Jesus all bore on the question how the Son of God should use his power. The reiterated plea of the evil spirit was, "If thou be the Son of God," do this and that. Jesus' answer in each case limits itself to what man should be and do. Jesus will not use his divine endowment in a way that humanity cannot share in or benefit by; nor will he yield to worldly and selfish principles of mastership. To do any of these proposed things