character and power of him who performed it. Such conclusions, supposing them to be legitimate, will always belong in the order of knowledge, and will never constitute a moral and religious faith."

CHAPTER VI

EARLIEST PREACHING OF JESUS ON THE KINGDOM OF GOD

THE two words Hammalkuth hashshamayim (the kingdom of heaven) are certainly those which Jesus most often uttered; he preferred this expression to the "kingdom of God." In our former volume we explained that the two expressions are synonymous. Jesus employed the former; the apostles, doubtless in order to be better understood by Gentiles, made use of the second. Still, though the two expressions are synonymous, they present a shade of difference; and we may compare with the marked preference of Jesus for the form "kingdom of heaven (les cieux), his use of the expression of which he was equally fond, "the Father who is in heaven" (les cieux). He speaks also of rewards "in heaven" (les cieux). Now, the Rabbis of that time held to the

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existence of several heavens, - at least seven, one above the other, overhead in the blue expanse which is spread abroad beyond the clouds. There was to be found the new earth, "the heavenly Jerusalem," the kingdom to come; and the doctors, founding their view upon Daniel 2 and Enoch, believed that this kingdom, called "of the heavens" because it was in the heavens, would descend from it, all complete, all set in order in some sort, to be established upon the earth. The Son of Man appearing in the clouds would found it, with the help of the angels.5 Then the elect would "see" and "enter" it.6 These expressions were taken in their most literal sense; and when men said the kingdom is at hand, or has come, they meant it is about to descend, it will soon be established.

Nothing indicates that Jesus understood by "kingdom of heaven" anything different from what his contemporaries understood;

1 Bereshith Rabba. Bamidebar Rabba. Syb. Orac. 3,83; Test. Patriarch, 12 (cf. 2 Cor. xii. 2; Eph. iv. 10; Heb. iv. 14).

2 Dan. vii. ff.

4 See Rev. xxi. 10.

• John iii. 3, 5.

8 Book of Enoch, passim.

5 Matt. xvi. 27.

7 Matt. iv. 17.

nothing authorizes us to find him using on this subject any different language from that of the doctors of his people.

If Jesus had held any other views upon this important doctrine than those of his contemporaries, he would have said so; he would have carefully distinguished his way of looking at it from that of his people. Especially when speaking to his apostles, deprecating any misunderstanding on their part, clearly perceiving how natural such a misunderstanding would be, he would have taken care to dissipate it, would have warned, explained, put them on their guard. But he did nothing of the kind. Not only did he never take these precautions; on the contrary, he made use of all the expressions of his contemporaries, used them just as they used them, repeated them just as they did and in the sense which everybody gave them. To say that Jesus was speaking with another meaning, spiritualizing, allegorizing, symbolizing, is wholly arbitrary. The hearers of Jesus could have understood another mode of speech concerning the kingdom to come only with the clearest and most precise explanations, distinguish

ing the two views. But the Gospels show not the slightest trace of explanations of this kind.

When Jesus spoke of the kingdom, he always used the future tense. All the rewards promised in the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount were in the future. For him, as for all his contemporaries, the kingdom was to come. It was always in the future in his teachings; and never, not even on the eve of his death, did he speak of the kingdom as present and already founded.1

Jesus also taught his disciples to say, "Thy kingdom come!"-the continual prayer of the Jews ever since the Exile, and certainly his own, as it had been in his childhood and his youth. If he added, Thy will be done on earth as in heaven," it was because he mentally added "that

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1 If we read is instead of will be in the following passages, Matt. v. 3, 10, xi. 11; Luke vii. 28, ix. 62 [The English version is in the present. - Trans.], the reference is evidently to a possession so certain that it is anticipated as present. In the same way Jesus says elsewhere," He that believeth in me hath eternal life." For that matter, Jesus spoke without the verb, in Aramæan, Lo anîm hammalkuth hash-shamayim! (“To the poor in spirit the kingdom of heaven!")

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