(2) There was a second preparation in the convictions of mankind. The heathen nations were not without some religion, which contained, in various degrees, elements of truth, however mingled with or overlaid by errors. But from the first the ancient religions tended to bury God in the visible world which witnessed to Him. The Greeks never knew, in their best days, of a literally Almighty God, still less of a God of love ; but it was necessary that their incapacity to retain in their knowledge the little they did know of Him should be proved by experience. Certainly wise men tried to spiritualise the popular language and ideas about God. But the old paganism would not bear such handling ; it went to pieces when it was discussed ; while philosophy, having no facts to appeal to, but consisting only of " views," could never become a religion and take its
* W. J. Dawsou, The Divine Challenge, 78.
74 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
place. The consequence was the simultaneous growth of gross superstition and blank unbelief, down to the time of the Incarnation.
(3) There was also a preparation in the moral experience of mankind. There was at times much moral earnestness in the old pagan world. But men were content with being good citizens, which is not necessarily the same thing as being good men. In the eyes of Socrates, for instance, all obligations were discharged if a man obeyed the laws of Athens. " No man," St. Augustine has said, "approached Christianity more nearly than did Plato." Yet Plato tolerated popular vices of the gravest description, and drew a picture of a model state in which there was to be a community of wives. And yet enough survived of moral truth in the human conscience to condemn average pagan practice. Pagans still had, however obscurely, some parts of the Law of God written in their hearts.
2. In the Jewish people, too, a threefold preparation, ending also in a " fulness of time," is certainly not less observable. (1) Politically, the Jews were expecting change ; they retained the feelings while they had lost the privileges of a free people ; their aspirations looked to a better future, though they mistook its character. The sceptre had departed from Judah : Shiloh would come, they believed, immediately. (2) Their purely religious conviction pointed in the same direction. Prophecy had, in the course of ages, completed its picture of the coming DeHverer. Beginning with the indefinite promise of a deliverance, it had gradually narrowed the fulfilment to a particular race, a particular tribe, a particular family ; the birth, the work, the humiliation, the death, the triumph, of the Deliverer had been described by anticipation. There was, consequently, an " expecta- tion of Israel " for which aU good men were waiting. (3) But, above all, the Jews underwent a moral preparation for the Son of God. God had given them a Law ; in itself " holy, just, and good." But this Law itself pronounced a curse on all who did not keep it. Did the Jews keep it ? They had had the experi- ence of centuries ; had they ever kept it ? were they not as far as ever from keeping it, in any sense which conscience would sanction ? They had, no doubt, made a certain number of
ST. MARK 75
technical extracts from it, and these they could obey mechanically. But the moral principles which it contained did not govern their lives. And they knew it. The Law, then, was to them a revelation of weakness and a revelation of sin. It showed them what, in their natural strength, they could not do. Like a lantern carried into a dark chamber of horrors, which was unlighted before, it showed them what they had done. Thus the Law was, in St. Paul's eyes, a confidential servant to whom God had entrusted the education of Israel to bring him to Christ ; and this process had just reached completion.^
^ Christ is the centre of the history of the world, and there could be no error in the date of His appearance. The race had proved its inability to restore itself to lost truth, purity, and happiness. Through the discipline of the Mosaic law, and of natural law, Jew and Gentile were prepared for a spiritual, redeeming religion. And the state of the political world corre- sponded with the exigencies of a universal faith. " When the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son." ISTothing in nature is more wonderful than the way in which complementary things and creatures arrive together; and in history the same phenomenon is repeated. " God's trains never keep one another waiting." Events synchronise and harmonise. The Incarnation is the crowning example of the dramatic unities of history.^
ii The Neakness of the Kingdom,
"The kingdom of God is at hand."
1. The Kingdom of God. — The " kingdom of God," as used by our Lord, signified the whole sphere in which the will of God, as an ethical power, is recognised and obeyed. It was the reign of righteousness. The idea was so far traditional ; in it the theocracy of Israel, the ideal of the prophets, was still further purified and enlarged. In our Lord's use of it, a certain elasticity is apparent, which is, however, never vagueness. The " kingdom " may be in germ, in process of being realised, or ideally perfe jt and complete. It has two sides — the intensive, the qualities which distinguish it ; and the extensive, the moral