tality of the nation, an immortality wholly of this world. In earlier Jewish belief, therefore, Sheol, or the under-world, was practically synonymous with the grave. "In death there is no remembrance of thee; in Sheol who shall give thanks?" (Psalm vi. 5). When, later on, the idea of personal immortality began to dawn in the Jewish mind, Sheol came to be thought of much in the same way as the Greek Hades, that is, as a gloomy and mysterious region in which the souls of the departed remained in a state from which all the light and joy of earth-life were excluded. In the last century B.C. thought was in a comparatively fluid state concerning this underworld and its denizens, so much so, that it is impossible to regard any one theory as being consistently or generally held. It was widely believed, however, that there was a difference in the lot of the good and the bad respectively; the former, although in the under-world, were received into the state of peace piously termed "Abraham's bosom," while the latter were tormented. Others spoke of the state of the departed as a sleep, and one very considerable party maintained that it was a sleep from which there would be no waking. This last-named view was abhorrent to the typical Jew, for it was antagonistic to his theory of the coming of the Kingdom. What he looked for when the Messiah came was a universal judgment for which the dead would have to come up from the under-world; this judgment would result in the purging of the earth plane from all the

evil that afflicted the chosen people and the shutting of all the servants of Satan down in Hades.

In this brief review of the main ideas concerning the Kingdom of God which existed in the Jewish mind at the moment when Christianity began many developments have necessarily had to be omitted. Even as it is, the statement may seem to some readers to be unduly theological and to devote too much attention to beliefs which have long since become obsolete, and can have no sort of value for the modern mind. In my judgment, however, the survey has been necessary in order to show something of the intellectual environment in which the religion of Jesus took its rise, and, therefore, what the starting-point of apostolic preaching had to be. If we do not understand the conventional ideas of the GræcoJewish world of Jesus' day we shall not understand primitive Christianity. It will already have become evident to those of my readers who have not had much previous acquaintance with the subject that the ideas described in this chapter are taken for granted on nearly every page of the New Testament.

Summary. To summarise the situation, then, let us recognise that the germ of the early Christian idea of the Kingdom of God is to be found in Jewish belief in the theocratic constitution of ancient Israel. The great preachers, whose words are recorded in the Old Testament, had held up to the national consciousness the ideal of a universal brotherhood of nations under the sovereignty of God, and had declared it

to be Israel's vocation to witness this to the world. But, for the most part, and never more so than at the time when Jesus was born, the Jews had come to believe that they were the only people who mattered much to God. They were confident that a good time was coming, and this they thought of as the restoration of their ancient theocratic State with greater power and splendour than it had ever possessed before. They believed that this Kingdom of God, as they called it, would be established suddenly and by force; that God would raise up a descendant of David to do it; that it would include vengeance upon Israel's enemies; and that it would culminate in a period of general prosperity and peace. No doubt there were many pious and humble souls who thought of the good time coming as the victory of goodness rather than the triumph of Jewish national pride, but these could never have been more than a few at any time; the general view was more political and materialistic. With the lapse of time the expected national deliverer became thought of as a quasi-supernatural being who would do all kinds of wonderful things, but still most people thought of him as being born into the world in an ordinary way and growing up like an ordinary man. When the supreme moment came, and this Messiah entered into conflict with world powers, His victory would be signalised by a general judgment to which the dead would be summoned as well as the living; this judgment would be followed by a thorough purging of

the earth from everything evil and the inauguration of the uninterrupted reign of the saints, that is, of the faithful among the descendants of Abraham.

This was the general Jewish expectation concerning the Kingdom of God, the expectation in which the Founder of Christianity Himself was trained, and which He took for granted in all His hearers. We have now to observe the ways in which this expectation, and the ideas commonly associated with it, coloured Christian thinking and preaching in the apostolic age.

CHAPTER III

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

II. IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY

The Christian sources. Christianity, as we have seen, began as the proclamation of the near advent of the Kingdom of God. The special teaching associated with this proclamation is stated to have been given by Jesus of Nazareth, who is now regarded as the central figure of human history. If estimated by his achievements this position is well deserved; no master of men is comparable to Jesus in influence over the destinies of mankind. There are those who would say that this influence is due to an ideal formed by the Christian imagination rather than to an actual historical personage; such critics would maintain that we know so little about Jesus that we are not justified in asserting anything positively about His character and teaching. Still, I think the consensus of scholarly opinion to-day would be not only that Jesus really lived, but that His personality must have been one of unique greatness and power. But, apart from the doubtful testimony of ecclesiastical tradition, our only sources of information about Jesus are the writings collected in the New Testament, and