ment for Christian living? Does it convey the new motive power? "Before Jesus could utilize this love" of His disciples "He had to create it, and this was not accomplished either by His example or His teaching” (p. 189). It follows that it was not created by the Sermon on the Mount. It follows that the contents of that Sermon are not an adequate equipment for Christian living. But this is what, by his own showing, a creed must be. What, then, is the necessary supplement? "Give Me a Cross whereon to die," said Jesus, "and I will make thereof a throne from which to rule the world." Jesus' imagination was powerfully affected

. by the mag

netic attraction of the Cross when He cried, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me" (p. 190).

Quite so. And this is the reason why the Cross and its triumphant issue are the substance of the model creed given us by the great Apostle with remarkable formality, "I make known unto you, brethren, the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye received, wherein also ye stand, by which also ye are saved." Well, what is it? Not a system of ethics; but the impelling force by which ethics may overcome sloth and self-indulgence and contempt of other men: "that Christ died for our sins, and that He was buried, and that He hath been raised" (1 Cor. xv. 1-3).

(We note in passing that St. Paul did not expect men to be saved by regarding the death of Jesus as "impossible.")

To make good the supreme claim of this so-called creed (which is yet a sermon), it is urged that "the teaching of Jesus must have a solitary value and authority" (p. 26). "Ought we to read St. Paul in the light of Jesus, or Jesus in the light of St. Paul? It is difficult to see how any one can hesitate in his reply, who believes either in the divinity of Jesus' person or in the divinity of His teaching" (p. 39).

These are brave words, but yet we venture to hesitate in our reply; or rather we reply, without hesitation, in the contrary direction from Dr. Watson. Jesus ought not to be the commentator on St. Paul, but St. Paul on Jesus: it is a high testimony to His supreme rank that inspired commentators, both before His incarnation and after His ascension, "spake of Him," and in the light of these we are surely meant to read Him.

Now it is a safe assertion that they all insist twenty times upon His suffering and ascension for once that they allude to His preaching.

Nay, Dr. Watson is himself our best evidence that it is no disrespect to Jesus to read Him in the light of the common instinct of all Christendom, which is not thinking of the Mount of the Sermon when it sings of the "green hill far away." "Whatever is said by St. Paul or St. John, by Augustine or Clement, so far as it conforms to type, may be assigned to Jesus, so that while He said little, if one goes by volume of speech, and wrote nothing, He has been speaking in every after age where any disciple has thought according to His mind. So it was right to say that Jesus gave the Evangel with His own lips,-right also to say that the Evangel has been continued by Him through other lips. unto this present" (pp. 29, 30). Right also, we must urge, to find no disrespect to Jesus in valuing those truths which they "could not bear" while He was with them, but which He taught when the Spirit led them into all truth. Was St. Paul disrespectful to Jesus when he was "ever the reverent student and faithful expositor of the mind of Jesus declared to him by heaven and by the inner light"? (pp. 38, 39). How then can our employment of his revelation be a slight put upon his Master?

But even if we granted that our faith must rest upon words spoken by the lips of Jesus upon earth, Dr. Watson tells us that even of subjects which He treated on the

Mount, He "only concluded His treatment before His arrest in the garden" (p. 160), and He insists that St. Paul's treatment of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is "not to be compared with the promise of the Comforter given in the upper room" (p. 33). Granted, but it follows that this doctrine at least in the Nicene Creed need not be surrendered by way of respect to the words of our Lord Himself. It is absent however from the Sermon on the Mount.

Dr. Watson urges that although "certainly Jesus did expound and amplify the principles of His first deliverance, there is no evidence that He altered the constitution of His kingdom, either by imposing fresh conditions or omitting the old" (p. 19). But He surely said, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in yourselves." "The Son of Man must be lifted up, that whosoever believeth on Him may have eternal life." The time is definitely marked out for us when "Jesus began" to teach the doctrine of His suffering and death (Matt. xvi. 21), and if (which at least is surely "thinkable")—if the actions of Jesus were as great as His words, and if His supreme action was His exodus which He accomplished at Jerusalem, then it follows by a necessary consequence that the real import of His appearance among men could only be explained by His removal.

In truth there is no conflict whatever between the Sermon and these later sayings. They tell how life must be kindled; the Sermon tells in what directions it must exert its energies. The former is the very essence, the differentiating quality of our religion. Least of all should it be ignored by one who allows himself to say that "it is open to debate whether Jesus said anything absolutely new, save when He taught the individual to call God Father" (p. 50), and who is therefore reduced by the exigency of his position

to emaciate the creed of Christendom (as he would have it) until it has no more distinction than this: "Originality is not an addition to knowledge, it is only a new arrangement of colour" (p. 51).

If this is indeed all, one pities the apologists of the next century. And yet, perhaps, if this be all, their inevitable defeat need not concern us or them very sorely.

G. A. DERRY AND RAPHOE.

CHRIST'S ATTITUDE TO HIS OWN DEATH.

III.

THE ministry in Jerusalem is the supreme moment in the history of Jesus, and we have therefore to inquire whether it reveals, and, if so, in what degree it defines, His idea as to His death. We must keep clearly in view the positive features in the situation: He comes to the Holy City, the heart of the religion, the home of the temple, the throne of the priesthood, the one place where sacrifices acceptable to God could be offered. He was under no illusion as to the fate that there awaited Him: the prophet could not perish out of Jerusalem.' Hither He came speaking and acting consciously as the Christ, with everything He was to do and suffer stamped by Him and for Himself with a distinct Messianic character. What now was the idea as to His work and fortunes as the Messiah which governed His consciousness? Let us attempt to discover it by an analysis of His words and acts.

I.

A. We begin with the triumphal entry. It can hardly be regarded as an accidental or even spontaneous outburst of popular enthusiasm. The Synoptists were agreed in

1 Luke xiii. 33.

ascribing the initiative to Jesus; He sends for the ass and the ass's colt in order that He may fitly enter the Holy City, and though John is less detailed he is almost as explicit. The disciples read the command as a public assertion of His claim to Messianic dignity, and proceed to possess the multitude with their belief. And so Jesus is welcomed as the King come to claim His own by a jubilant people, crying, "Hosanna to the Son of David!" He does not rebuke their joy, or, as He had once done, 3 enjoin silence as to His being the Christ, but accepts their homage as His rightful due. Hence when the Pharisees said, 'Master, rebuke Thy disciples," He answered that, were they to be silent, the very stones would cry out.1 He thus endorses and vindicates their recognition. But He knows that while the people are trustful and waiting to be led, the rulers are suspicious and watching to crush the leader and-to fulfil His prophecy. For to subtle rulers nothing is so easy as to use a simple people as they will.

But for His judgment on these public events we must turn to words spoken in the intimacy of His immediate circle. On the morrow, as He returns to the city, He speaks the parable of the barren fig tree. It has a double moral, one pointed at the Jews, another at the disciples. The first tells how in the season of fruition He came to Israel, and instead of fruit "found nothing but leaves." And what was the good of the fruitless tree save to be bidden "to wither away"? The scribes, who ought to have been the eyes of the people, saw not the time of their visitation, saw only that their own custody of the parchment which held the oracles of God was threatened, and so they made the great refusal. The chief priests, who ought to have been the conscience of Israel, had no

VOL. V.

1 Matt. xxi. 1 ff.;

2 John xii. 14.

4 Luke xix. 40.

Mark xi. 1 ff.; Luke xix. 29 ff.

3 Matt. xvi. 20.

5 Matt. xxi. 18-22.