laying down of the life, the renunciation of all possessions, and the cutting off or plucking out of the most important bodily members. In order justly to estimate these sayings, we must first keep in view that Jesus did not give them with reference to a period such as ours, wherein His ideas and precepts have attained a widespread recognition and sway in the world, and, for the most part, have become a possession of the general culture, and wherein it is therefore exceptional for one to come into a position in which he must undergo external suffering and sacrifice for the sake of his Christian testimony and the fulfilment of his duty. He spoke with reference to a period in which He had to bring in His ideas and precepts as new truths for humanity, and consistently to maintain and promote them in profound opposition to the prevailing traditions and deep-rooted prejudices and customs. This introduction and carrying into effect of truth so new, could not be done without severe conflict. In His clear foresight of this necessary conflict (Luke xii. 49-53; Matt. x. 34-36),' in which He was prepared to pledge His own life, Jesus judged with perfect justness that will and wish still clings to the aforesaid fellowship, was not quite what He meant to 'enjoin upon His disciples (cf. Luke ix. 59-62). By the idea of hatred He seeks to indicate, with the utmost clearness, the inclination of the will towards that separation. That Jesus, in selecting the expression as a characteristic designation for the inward act of renunciation, might have abstracted from the signification of a sinful hostile wish to injure, is proved by His analogous application of the ideas of violence and force in the passage, Matt. xi. 12, where these ideas are used only so far as they denote energetic seizure and appropriation, but not at the same time the unlawfulness of this seizure (cf. vol. ii. p. 48). 1 Cf. Log. § 17a, L. J. i. p. 122 f. only those were qualified to be His disciples who were determined, even as He was, to give up all for the gospel, and, like Him also, to go to the cross. As it would be a total negation of the historical understanding, if, in regard to the words of Luther, "Have done with thy body, goods, honour, child, and wife; let them go!" we were to say that they could only have a figurative meaning, because, taken literally, they would be too severe, and, in that literal sense, they would have no just practical application to many by whom they are now sung in Divine worship; so it would be a feeble unhistorical misinterpretation of those words of Jesus, which form the original of that saying of Luther, were we to judge that He could not have meant them in their full and peculiar signification. We must interpret the words according to the ideas of the time of conflict, in which such great external sacrifices for the gospel's sake must be regarded as necessary and normal, though, in the peaceful period that succeeds the victory, they appear only a possibility and exception. We shall afterwards see that, on account of His idea of the comparative shortness of the further earthly development of the kingdom of God, Jesus did not regard this period of necessary external conflict for the cause of the gospel as one of transition to a long after-period of undisturbed peace, but as filling up the whole future time until His second coming. For that very reason, however, it was precluded that, in glancing forward to future generations of His Church, He would de Nehmen sie den Leib, Gut, Ehr, Kind und Weib, clare the renunciation, which He enjoined upon His disciples in reference to the immediately approaching period of conflict, to be only necessary under the extraordinary circumstances which marked the commencement of the Church. In the second place, however, we must once more bear in mind the method of Jesus in seeking to present His general rules and precepts by such examples as brought out the thoughts intended with the greatest clearness in the briefest compass.1 Here, where He meant to indicate the renunciation which a disciple of His must be ready to make unconditionally, He neither sought to set up the precept as to the renunciation of earthly goods merely in a general way, and thereby to leave room for the possibility that some would blink the extreme consequences of this precept, and think that they would not require to put it into practice, nor did He seek in a casuistical way to give a detailed application of the rule to all possible particular circumstances; but He sought to set forth with the greatest possible brevity and clearness the whole range of His precepts, and therefore indicated the necessity of such sacrifices as were the greatest and most difficult to men on earth. Even though He was quite well aware of the possibility that, under certain circumstances, the members of the kingdom. of God must retain and use earthly goods and relationships, just in order by these to accomplish their duty in the kingdom of God, He could still, in seeking to indicate with the greatest possible clearness the greatness of the renunciation in principle which 1 Cf. vol. i. p. 130 ff. had to be made for the sake of the kingdom of God, leave out of account these special circumstances. For the rule as to renunciation in principle-namely, that all earthly goods should be absolutely subordinated to the kingdom of God, and that the pursuit and retention of earthly goods for their own sake must be renounced for the sake of the righteousness of the kingdom of God-suffers no real exception even where the earthly goods and relationships are externally retained and used for the purposes of the kingdom of God; only that renunciation is not so clearly apparent under these circumstances as when earthly goods and relationships are externally given up for the sake of the kingdom of God. In accordance with this view of the general precepts of Jesus in regard to renunciation, we must also explain the precepts given by Him to individuals. According to Mark x. 17 ff., when the rich man inquired of Him the conditions of obtaining eternal life, and declared that he had observed the Divine commands of the Old Testament, Jesus called upon him to sell all his possessions and give them to the poor, and follow Him. The Logia (§ 6) report certain cases where He required of some who would or should have joined themselves to Him, that they should sever themselves fully from their home and their relatives (Luke ix. 57 ff.). To the scribe (cf. Matt. viii. 19) who proposed to follow Him in course of His wanderings whithersoever He went,' He 1 We cannot, I think, understand the words of the scribe as meaning that he was rightly aware of the life of continual wandering led by Jesus, and meant that he would follow Him in all those wanderings wherever they might lead, so that Jesus in His reply only confirmed the correct replied that He had not where to lay His head, thus emphasising the fact that whoever would follow Him must renounce his home (Luke ix. 58); also to the man whom He had Himself called upon to follow Him, but who wished to postpone his obedience to the call until he had "buried his father," He uttered the saying, Let the dead bury their dead,” that is, let them who, in the spiritual sense, are dead, perform to their relatives those external works which yet only pertain to the perishing body,' "but go ness of this idea in regard to His wandering life; but the scribe, having met Jesus on the way, declared that he would follow Him to the end of His journey, wherever it might be. Jesus thereupon says to him that He has no such end in view, but was a homeless wayfarer. 1 The words, "Suffer me first to go and bury my father" (ver. 59), probably do not mean that the man wished to bury his father who was already dead, but that he wished to put off becoming a follower of Jesus until he should have buried his father, who at that time was still alive. After the natural bond which still united him to his parents' house was dissolved in the way of nature, he would devote himself to the new task in connection with the kingdom of God. I have been prompted to this interpretation by the following communication in the Feuille religieuse du canton de Vaud (1879, p. 476 ff.), to which Pastor L. Monod, of Lyons, has called my attention. A missionary in Syria, M. Waldmeier, there relates that an intelligent and rich young Turk, whom he had advised at the close of his education to make a tour to Europe, had answered, "I must first of all bury my father." As that father had hitherto been in the enjoyment of good health, the missionary expressed surprise at the sad intelligence of his death. But the young man hastened to set his mind at rest in regard to his father, and explained that he only meant that one must before all things devote himself to the duties owed to his relatives. If in this same sense the form of expression, “would first bury my father," was used by the man who was called to be a disciple, the answer of Jesus loses the appearance of harshness which is otherwise attached to it, and gains a very striking and significant sense. When, in place of all the other considerations that bound him to his paternal home, the man mentioned the burying of his father, which, on the one hand, postponed to an indefinite future the required severance from his home, and which, on the other hand, indicated a duty apparently so weighty that all further contention in regard to his refusal appeared to be precluded, Jesus, however, did not, in the given circumstances, recognise the alleged duty to be one which gave the man a right to |