should be ready to take up the cross (Mark viii. 34; Luke xiv. 27), to renounce their nearest relatives and all their possessions, yet even to yield up their life (Luke xiv. 26, 28-33), have, as we have already remarked,' their direct reference to the period of His disciples' conflict (Luke xii. 51-53), which He supposed would occupy the whole of the comparatively short duration of the further earthly development of the kingdom of God. The disciples were not to be afraid of men, whose hatred they would experience just as their master did (Matt. x. 24-26); they were not to fear those who kill the body, but Him who had power to destroy soul and body in hell (Matt. x. 28). They were to beware of being led astray by false Messiahs and prophets (Mark xiii. 5 f., 21-23). But they were to pray to God unceasingly, that by the sending of the Son of man, the true Messiah, He would bring them deliverance from dangers and distresses, in which they stand (Luke xxi. 36; xviii. 1 and 7).

3. The farewell discourses of Jesus in the fourth Gospel are, as to their main contents, words of admonition, comfort, and prayer, which Jesus uttered in prospect of His immediately near departure to His Father, and of the period of His disciples' remaining alone upon the earth, which should then begin. It is so far true, that the main contents of these farewell discourses lend themselves to a comparison with the synoptical sayings of Jesus in regard to the deportment which the disciples should observe in the future.

1 See above, p. 65.

The admonition of Jesus to His disciples, that they should abide in Him, as the branch must abide in the vine, if it would bring forth fruit (xv. 4−7); and His instruction that this abiding in Him, and in loving fellowship with Him, must consist in obedience to His words and commands, namely, His command in regard to love (vers. 9-17); His prayer to the Father that He would keep the disciples in the revelation which they had received through Him, the Son (xvii. 11-13); and, through their holding fast to this revelation, that He might guard them from the evil in the world, and keep them in devoted fellowship with Him, so that thereby they might attain to participation in the heavenly glory (ver. 24); further, His commission to the disciples, that they should testify for Him in the future (xv. 27) as His messengers to the world (xvii. 18), and that, through their loving work and fellowship among themselves, they should give men the proof of their adherence to Him as His disciples (xiii. 34 f.), and His own mission from God (xvii. 21, 23); finally, His appeal that they should take no offence at the persecutions that lay before them (xvi. 1), but should call to mind His foretelling to them of this fate (xv. 20; xvi. 4); to maintain courage and confidence by a trustful regard to Him and His Father (xiv. 1, 27; xvi. 33), and that they should seek by prayer from God all blessing even to the attainment of perfect joy (xiv. 13 f.; xv. 16; xvi. 23 f.), these utterances of the Johannine farewelldiscourses give the clear proof that the mode of view of these discourses on these points also is in full agreement with that of the synoptical discourses.

These farewell words do not need a further exposition here, because that, so far we have already more particularly considered them, when the general ideas of Jesus, on the one hand of the righteous conduct required of the disciples, and their right fellowship with Him as the Messiah, and on the other of God's manifestation of saving blessing towards them, were given expression to in those farewell words.

CONCLUSION.

COMPREHENSIVE VIEW OF THE CONTENTS OF THE TEACHING OF JESUS.

I. AFTER having considered in succession the particular parts of the teaching of Jesus, we must in conclusion take a comprehensive survey of the whole.

The basis of the teaching of Jesus was the knowledge that God is the Father, His Father and the Father of men in general, altogether animated by a sentiment of fatherly love. This knowledge had for Him the significance of a revelation, of which He was immediately conscious through the experiences of His inner personal life, and of which He found the confirmation in the words of the Old Testament scripture -a revelation which was not disclosed to Him suddenly in a passing moment of His life, but of which He bore the germ in Himself and gradually unfolded since the awakening of His consciousness, and which in its perfected form became the enduring possession of His whole life. From this knowledge of God as the Father, which was assured to Him by revelation, He derived, on the one hand, His idea of the saving benefit which God was ready to bestow on men that the true and perfect form of this saving

good does not reside in the transient earthly life and its external goods, but in the everlasting heavenly life of the future æon; but that God, even as to the present earthly life, lets the pious participate in external and spiritual blessings, so far as it is necessary and beneficial for them, and preserves them from all that tends to the injury of their true life of blessedness. From that knowledge of God He on the other hand derived His idea of the righteousness in which men have to fulfil the will of God: that the existence and value of this righteousness depends only on the inward disposition, and that the truly pious disposition must be manifested towards God in absolute childlike trust, and in the prayer arising from such trust, and towards men in unlimited, spontaneous, beneficent love, which forgives injuries after the manner of God.

In these ideas, which Jesus entertained of God, of the true saving good and of the true righteousness, lay the elements of His view of the kingdom of God. The significance of the revelation given to Him in baptism was, that He then recognised that the state of perfect blissful fellowship between God and His people, promised by the prophets, finds its highest ideal realisation where God, as the Father, conducts men to their true goal of heavenly blessedness, and where men fulfil the will of God in true inward righteousness. The realisation of the kingdom of God understood in this way was a thing already present and yet also future: its beginning was already given in Jesus Himself, and in the circle of the disciples attached to Him; but the goal of its development lay in the heavenly life of the future

VOL. II.

2 B