ment was given in it of the prophetic promises of the salvation of the Messianic time; therefore He designated the saving influences that went out from Him by such conceptions as those by which Old Testament prophecy vividly depicted the blessings of the latter day (Isa. xxxv. 5f.; lxi. 1; cf. Luke iv. 18 ff.). Thereby, however, He did not think of a mere literal fulfilment of the Old Testament promises, so far as they referred, according to their verbal tenor, to a miraculous removal of earthly wants and sufferings and an establishment of external prosperity and salvation, but He thought of a fulfilment in the way (of consummating and adopting the true idea of the Old Testa ment promises) which corresponded to His general attitude to the Old Testament revelation.' The Old Testament ideas, that the blind would receive sight, the deaf would have their ears opened, and the lame would leap, had so far gained a general and transferred meaning for Him. In His answer to John's message He would certainly think also of the healing influences which He sought, in love and trust in God, to bring to the sick; but He did not think of these alone, nor did He think of them in so far as they were mani

1 Cf. above, p. 19.

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2 In L. J. i. p. 72 f. (Log. § 4a), I have given my opinion that the references to the cleansing of the lepers and the raising of the dead did not apparently belong to the original form of the saying of Jesus, because the prophetic descriptions of the salvation of the latter day contain no corresponding promises. The above-given explanation of the saying of Jesus is not, however, altogether dependent on our holding as non-authentic this reference to the cleansing of the lepers and the raising of the dead. As Jesus could understand in a spiritual sense the idea of the blind receiving sight (cf. Mark iv. 12; Luke x. 23f.; John ix. 39 ff.), so He could also speak of the unclean being made clean (cf. Mark vii. 15 ff.) and the raising of the dead (cf. Luke ix. 60) in a transferred and spiritual meaning.

festations of His miraculous power, but so far as they were manifestations of the general Divine blessing which He proclaimed and imparted to men.

4. Jesus devoted His Messianic activity only to the people of Israel, not at all because, in spite of a wish to the contrary, He had become checked by external circumstances in the extension of His work, but because He saw this limitation of His activity to be a necessity founded on His special vocation, and therefore He limited it on principle. In the first period of His ministry, when He sought to extend as far as possible His message of the nearness of the kingdom of God, in order to afford to as many as possible the opportunity and invitation to enter the kingdom, and when, knowing His own limited power, in view of the greatness of the field of work, He made the Twelve His messengers to aid Him in extending His message (Luke x. 2 ff.; cf. Mark iii. 14; vi. 7 ff.), He gave these disciples the express commission not to go on the highways of the Gentiles nor into the Samaritan cities, but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. x. 5 f.). That they were to confine their preaching of the kingdom of God in all the future to the Jews in Palestine, was by no means enjoined upon them; but in the present, whilst they were only employed as aids to Jesus' own vocationwork, the restriction which He made a point of duty

1 Cf. L. J. i. p. 85 f., Log. §7a. For the understanding of this saying of Jesus it is important to consider that the Logia-discourses, to which it belongs, do not refer to the later apostolic calling of the Twelve, as it appears according to the account of "our first evangelist," but rather to the sending out of the disciples in the lifetime of Jesus, as Luke clearly reports it.

in the case of His work applied also to them. Also when Jesus, in the later period of His work, passed the limits of Palestine and went northwards to the region of Tyre and Sidon (Mark vii. 24, 31), He by no means publicly manifested His activity in this region, but only sought to gain rest for the private instruction of the smaller circle of His disciples (Mark vii. 24; cf. ix. 30 f.). The help which He allowed Himself to impart to the strongly - trusting Syrophenician woman (Mark vii. 25 ff.), was an exception whereby He expressly reserved the rule usually binding Him.

We must not infer from this, however, that Jesus altogether represented the kingdom of God as one intended only for the people of Israel, and attributed to His Messianic work no significance reaching beyond the bounds of this people. Not only did the Old Testament promises of the blissful state of Israel in the latter day always embrace the idea, that the influences of that state would extend to other nations by their attaining through the medium of Israel to the true knowledge and worship of God (cf. Amos ix. 12; Isa. ii. 2 ff.; xix. 23 ff.; Micah iv. 1 ff.; Zeph. iii. 9; Zech. ii. 11; viii. 22 f.; xiv. 16 ff.; Jer. iii. 17; xvi. 19 ff.; Ezek. xxxvi. 36; xxxvii. 28; Isa. xlii. 1 ff.; xlix. 6; li. 4 f.); and this universalistic widening of the Messianic expectations, whereby Israel's prerogatives should remain absolutely safe, was rather enhanced than diminished in the views of later Judaism,' so that already by this tradition Jesus would be led to the thought of a significance of the kingdom of God and

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1 Cf. Schürer, History of the Jewish People, ii. pp. 420 and 454 f. Transl., Div. II. vol. ii pp 130 and 172.

of His own Messianic work also for the extra-Israelitish world. But His peculiarly high ethical apprehension of the character of God and of His kingdom, and of the conditions of participation in this kingdom, contained in itself the presuppositions out of which the idea of the universal destination of the blessedness of the kingdom for all mankind must follow as a consequence. And that Jesus Himself must consciously have drawn this consequence, is plainly discernible from some of His utterances, of which we have yet to speak in a later passage. But the knowledge that the blessedness of the Messianic kingdom must extend beyond the limits of Israel, leaves the question open as to whether the Messiah was to commence at once with this extension. From Jesus' mode of judging and of acting, which was so admirably regulated throughout, we can quite understand that in His clear recognition of the design of the kingdom of God to overpass the limits of Israel, He still did not find it His personal mission to go directly into the wide world to work for the establishment of the kingdom, but rather first to lay a firm basis for the kingdom among the people whom He recognised as the organs of a true revelation which held the promise and preparation of this kingdom, and as therefore also called to participate foremost of all in its realisation. Certainly it was not after long reflection and doubt, but by an immediate impulse which, in the increasing prevision of the approaching close of His ministry, formed itself into a clear sense of duty, that He concluded that only in this limitation He manifested Himself to be the Master, and

could frame His Messianic work into a successful whole.

Jesus confidently reckoned upon His work resulting in bringing the kingdom of God to a sure condition, which should be the basis of a successful further development. The certainty of this result was indissolubly connected with His assurance of being the Messiah sent from God. He did not allow Himself to be staggered by the hindrances and failures which He found in His work; but, on the contrary, His immovable assurance of His Messiahship, and of the truth of the kingdom of God as preached by Him, produced the confidence that, in spite of all these hindrances and failures, His work would yet attain to glorious success, and the kingdom of God preached by Him would attain to mighty results. The parables which Mark records in chap. iv. are beautiful expressions of this confidence of Jesus in the success of His work. In the parable of the Sower, whose grain, when it fell upon many kinds of unfavourable soil, could not grow to the fruit-bearing ear, but, when it fell upon good ground, brought forth thirty, sixty, and an hundred-fold (vers. 3-8), He expressed that while His word finds among many hearers no acceptance, or one that is only superficial or transitory, and therefore has no real success, it yet produces rich results in all those who manifest a true receptiveness. By the parable of the seed from which, after it has been sown on land, gradually, without the sower observing or contributing anything further, puts forth the blade and then the fruit-bearing ear (vers. 26-29), He expressed His certainty that His