of Peter and the terrible rebuke which follows almost immediately. Luke kindly suppresses this portion of the story; but that Mark should allow his readers to look upon Peter as a Satan, who had no sympathy with the aims of Christ, while he deliberately expunged the exalted commission on which the salvation of the world was to depend, and recorded only a rebuke for his acknowledgment of the Messiahship of Jesus, is surely most improbable. I am compelled therefore to believe that this famous passage is of late origin, and on the most favourable view depends on a tradition which it is impossible for us to trust.

Professor Bacon, however, defends the passage by appealing to a Rabbinical parallel. He quotes from Dr. Chase's article on the First Epistle of Peter in Dr. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, where it is cited from an article by Dr. Schechter in the Jewish Quarterly Review.1 The passage is as follows: 'Abraham also bears in Rabbinic literature the title of Rock . . . The Rabbinic passage forms an illustration of Num. xxiii. 9, "for from the top of the rocks I see him," and runs thus: There was a king who desired to build, and to lay foundations he dug constantly deeper, but found only a swamp. At last he dug and found a petra (this is the very word the Rabbi uses). He said, "on this spot I will build and lay the foundations." So the Holy One, blessed be he, desired to create the world, but meditating upon the generations of Enoch and the deluge, he said, "How shall I create the world whilst these wicked men will only provoke me?" But as soon as God perceived that there would rise an Abraham, he said, "Behold, I have found the petra upon which to build and to lay foundations." Therefore he called Abraham Rock, as it is said, "look unto the rock whence ye are hewn. Look unto Abraham your father" (Is. li. 1, 2).'2 (Is. li. 1, 2).'2 Professor Bacon

1 XII, 1900, pp. 428 sq.

2 The reference is to Yalkut, I, § 766, and adds 'See Dr. Taylor's Sayings of the Jewish Fathers, ed. 2, p. 160.

says,1 'This shows a pre-Christian conception of the commonwealth of God as God's building (1 Cor. 3: 9; Heb. 3: 3-6), and both protects and illuminates the logion.' Not every one will agree with Professor Bacon that the existence of a preChristian conception is proved by a Rabbinical citation in a work which appears not to be earlier than the eleventh century; and even if that could be admitted, the parallel could prove no more than that the saying was of JewishChristian rather than of Gentile origin. More to the purpose is the appeal to the choosing of the twelve, and to the logion Matthew xix. 28, Luke xxii. 30, promising that the apostles should sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel, 'protected,' as he says, by I Corinthians vi. 2, the saints shall judge the world.' These, he thinks, will be hard to account for if Jesus had no idea of instituting a new Israel. That Jesus not only contemplated, but actually carried on, a reforming movement in Israel no one, I suppose, will deny; but the logia which are cited are eschatological, and have nothing to do with the founding of a Church. As Professor Bacon refers in the same note to the omission of the address to Peter in the Diatessaron, it may be as well to say that the alleged omission is very doubtful.2

1 In an article on The Transfiguration Story,' in the American Journal of Theology, April, 1902, p. 238, note.

2 Harnack, indeed, in an article on Tatian's Diatessaron and Marcion's Commentary, published in the Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte in 1881, conjectured that the words were not in the Harmony because they are not quoted by Ephraem, and he thought that the context in Ephraem's Commentary showed that they were not before him (p. 484). But he himself was quite aware of the fragmentary character of Ephraem's citations (p. 479), and that he generally selected and commented on only one or two clauses in his text, and passed over the rest (p. 474). Zahn's important work on Tatian appeared later in the same year, and he maintained that Harnack's view of the passage was arbitrary, and it was unintelligible how he could maintain it (p. 163, note 3). The passage is contained in the Arabic Version (see the translation by Rev. J. Hamlyn Hill, 1894, p. 136). It might of course be a later insertion; but of this there is no evidence. Wernle adopts Harnack's view, but without giving

Whether or not we attribute this saying to Christ, it is at all events apparent that his primary aim was not to found a Church, but to extend the kingdom of God. It is indeed commonly assumed that the kingdom of God is the Christian Church, and that the vast multitude of men who are outside this ark of safety are subjects of a God-forsaken realm. But this narrow idea belongs to the theologians, and not to Christ. He recognizes his spiritual kindred in all who do the will of God. Iniquity alone excludes from the Divine kingdom; goodness alone admits to it. This test confessedly does not apply to membership in the Church; and though it may be true that it applies to the invisible Church' of Protestantism, this only represents the fact that the kingdom of God has a home in the Christian Church as well as in other parts of the world. The larger idea, though destined so soon to pass away, found expression even in the second century; and a man so little distinguished by breadth of view as Justin Martyr declared that all who had lived or were still living with Reason (the Logos) were Christians.1 An unwarrantable extension may thus be given to the word Christian; but it shows that even then the true mark of the subjects of the kingdom of God was regarded as spiritual, not institutional. There seems to be a remnant of the same view in the declaration of the Catechismus Romanus that 'all the faithful who have been from the time of Adam to the present day, or who shall be as long as the world shall exist, professing the true faith, belong to the same Church';2 for certainly the visible unity of the Church, under the

reasons (Die synoptische Frage, p. 135). His supposition that Tertullian omitted the words, 'The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it,' does not concern us. It rests simply on the fact that in the two places where Tertullian refers to this passage he quotes only the words that were important for his argument (De Pud. 21; De Praescr. Haeret. 22).

...

1 Οἱ μετὰ λόγου βιώσαντες Χριστιανοί εἰσι, κἂν ἄθεοι ἐνομίσθησαν, οἷον ἐν Ἕλλησι μὲν Σωκράτης καὶ Ἡράκλειτος καὶ οἱ ὅμοιοι αὐτοῖς. oi Se μετὰ λόγου βιώσαντες καὶ βιοῦντες Χριστιανοὶ . . . ὑπάρχουσι. Αροί. Ι, 46. 2 Pars I, Art. IX, cap. x, § xvii.

supremacy of the Pope, has not existed from the time of Adam. In the early centuries after Christ, when to be a Christian was to be hated and persecuted, there may have been comparatively few members of the new faith who were not led by the Spirit of God, and in the midst of the corrupt Roman society Christianity might well appear to believers to be the one redeeming power; but nevertheless the Church was an instrument for furthering the kingdom of God, and was not identical with it. Of Christ's teaching this is certainly true; and we do not honour him by forcing on him an exclusiveness which he disowned.

Did, then, Christ not found and constitute a Church at all? I think there is no evidence that he did; for the gathering together of disciples, and the selection of twelve to share his closest intimacy and spread abroad his teaching, can hardly be described in these terms, though they no doubt prepared the way for the formation of a distinct and organized community. Even the words which he is said to have addressed to Peter speak only of a purpose which he did not live to accomplish, and there is no hint of any sort in the records of his life that he prescribed a definite organization for the ecclesiastical government of his disciples. Nevertheless, I believe that the Christian Church sprang inevitably and properly out of the movement which he began, and may in this sense be spoken of as having a Divine origin. Gladstone says that 'national organization is evidently of divine appointment, as growing out of the primary necessities and impulses of our nature, and tending to its highest developments.' With at least equal justice it may be said that religious organization is of Divine appointment, though we may be obliged to add in each case that there is no particular mode of organization which is alone legitimate. The religious affections draw men together in fraternal union; and under Christianity the communion of the Holy Spirit, binding the disciples together as one family of the children of God, 1 The State in its Relations with the Church, p. 50.

2C

was especially conspicuous. The first disciples felt themselves to be, not a loose assortment of unrelated atoms, but a holy brotherhood in Christ; and therefore they were drawn each to each for common worship and mutual encouragement. And again the impulse of saving love was a dominant motive among the earliest believers. They were driven by the spirit of Christ to carry the light of truth and the renovating power of divine grace into the dark abodes of superstition and sin. Thus within a generation after the date of the crucifixion there were congregations of Christians scattered over the wide extent of the Roman empire, which were bound to one another by common sympathies and faith, and were already conscious that they formed a single Church, although their spiritual unity had not yet found formal and organized expression. It is therefore correct to speak of Christ as the founder of the Church, although he founded it, not by express command, but by the power of his spirit.

The view here presented seems to be in accordance with the earliest tradition. The commission to the Apostles is by all four evangelists placed after the resurrection. In Matthew the eleven disciples meet Jesus on an appointed mountain in Galilee; and he then declares that all authority has been given to him in heaven and on earth, and desires them to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep everything that he has commanded; and 'lo!' he adds, 'I am with you all the days until the completion of the age." According to the usual ending of Mark2 Jesus appeared to the eleven while they were reclining at table, and directed them to go into all the world, and preach the gospel to all the creation. He added, 'He that has believed and been baptized shall be saved, and he that has not believed shall be condemned.' After he had spoken to them he was taken up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. In Luke,3 having said that in

1 Matt. xxviii. 16-20.

2 xvi. 14 sqq.

3 xxiv. 47 sqq.