•State, personified in its ruler.' Certainly that might have admirably served to establish his State policy, and make liim believe that he had accomplished all that human ingeimity could to make his Empire as enduring as it was world-wide.
On his death in A.D. 14 a modification necessarily came, when the Senate decreed that thereafter lie should be known as 'Divus Augustus.'
The priesthood of this Imperial ' cult ' was di- vided into two classes, the one representing the State religion in a province, and the other liaving charge of religious ceremonies in the cities. The provincial priests ^^cre responsible only to the Em- peror a- roiititi'x Maximus, and had, in the West at lea^t. jiiri~ili<li(iii over the municipal priests. The way was tlius [.rcpared for the development of a full hierarchical system, which became afterwards the model for the Roman Church, with its Pontifex Maximus in Rome, its Metropolitans in each pro- vince, and the municipal priests in the cities. The 'cult' itself spread with great rapidity, was bind- ing on every Roman subject with the exception of the Jews only, and prepared the way for the appli- cation of the prime test for the Cliristians of the early ages: 'Sacrifice to the Emperor or death.' The man of all others, who created the conditions in which Christianity was to find that supreme test, was Augustus. The Universal Empire, with its ruler as an object of worship, had not long be- come an accomplished fact when the God-man, in contrast with the man-god, appeared, — ' the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.' No contrast could well be greater than that which distinguished (in B.C. 6-A.D. 14) this world-ruler from the Founder of Christianity : — Augustus, a perfect master in State-craft, merciful to his foes only when he had made his position absolutely sure, only somewhat more advanced in his morality tlian the men of his age, full of self-esteem, as the last scene of his life reveals, yet entitled to be considered by the world in which he lived as its 'chief benefactor' (Lk 22*) ; Jesus, though in His twelfth year able to claim a relationship with the Father in heaven such as distinguishes Him from eveiy other son of man, yet remaining for those 20 years of His life at Nazareth as the carpenter's son, all unknown to the great world without, subject to His reputed
father and His ' highly favoured ' mother, 'advanc- ing in wisdom' as in stature, and above all 'in favour with God and man.' Of the whole of Augustus' work there now remains little but crum- bling or half-buried ruins, but the name of Jesus 'endures,' and gives evidence of the truth of the prophecy which points to the world's kingdom as becoming His, and His reign as being 'for ever and ever' (Rev ll'^).
\tory of Ji< •; \V. M.
\irch in the /;..,
J. GoKDON Gray.
AUTHORITY OF CHRIST.-The first recorded comment on the teaching of Jesus is that of Mtr-"- (ilMk 1~, Lk43=): 'They were astonished at liis teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.' The scribes said nothing of themselves : they appealed in every utterance to tradition (TrapiSoan) ; the mes- sage they delivered was not self-authenticating ; it had not the moral weight of the speaker's person- ality behind it ; it was a deduction or application of some legal maxim connected with a respectable name. They claimed authority, of course, but men had no immediate and irresistible conscious- ness that the claim was just. With Jesus it was the opposite. He appealed to no tradition, shel- tered Himself behind no venerable name, claimed no official status ; but those who heard Him could not escape the consciousness that His word was with authority (Lk 4'-). He spoke a final truth, laid down an ultimate law.
In one respect, He continued, in so doing, the work and power of the prophets. There was a succession of prophets in Israel, but not a pro- phetic tradition. It was a mark of degeneration and of insincerity when self-styled jirophets re- peated each other, stealing God's words every one from his neighbour (Jer 23'°). The true prophet may have his mind nourished on earlier insjiired utterances, but his own message must spring from an immediate prompting of God. It is only when his message is of this kind that his word is w ith power. No mind was ever more full than the mind of Jesus of all that God had spoken in'the past, but no one was ever so spontaneous as He, so free from mere reminiscence, so completely determined in His utterance by the conditions to which it was addressed. It is necessary to keep both things in view in considering His authority as a teacher. Abstract formula- about the seat of authority in religion are not of much service in this connexion. It is, of course, always true to say that truth and the mind are made for each other, and that the mind recognizes the authority of truth because in truth it meets its counterijart, that which enables it to realize its proper being. It is always correct, also, to apply this in the region of morals and religion, and to say that the words of Jesus and the prophets are authoritative because our moral personality instinctively responds to them. We have no clioice, as beings made for morality and religion, to do anything but bow before them. The difficulty is that the ' mind,' or ' conscience,' or ' moral personality,' on which our recognition of the truth and authority of Jesus' teaching is here made dependent, is not a fixed quantity, and still less a ready-made faculty ; it is rather a possibility or potentiality in our nature, which needs to be evoked into actual existence ; and among the powers which are to evoke it and make it actual and valuable, by far the most important is that