Messiah submit to a violent death, but taken along with the testimony of the rest of the NT (say, especially, the I'auline and Petrine Ep]).) it shows conclusively the practically predominant importance of this event — or rather signal serrirc — in the mind and faith of the Christian Church. For every one text in the Epistles that calls atten- tion to the glory of the Kingdom that is to come in the incomprehensil.de power of God, there are probably at least two in which the emphasis rests not on the power of God the Father, but on the love of the Son of God. Indeed, it may be ques- tioned whether there is a single reference to the Consummation in the Epistles or the Apocalypse of the NT which does not in its immediate context suggest that the centre of the coming glory is the Person of Him who was delivered for the offences of His people, but raised for their justification. Even in the Epp. to the Thessa- lonians, which are commonly supposed to represent the most primitive type of Pauline doctrine, it is not the ' Kingdom of God,' but ' His Son from heaven,' that is to believers the object of waitiu"- (IThP").
This indissoluble connexion between the 'suffer- ings of the Christ' and the 'glory that .should follow' (1 P 1") could not have been fixed so securely in the mind of the first believers had it not been first in the mind of Jesus Himself. The Synoptics bear witness to tlir importance of the connexion for Jesus iml unly l.y reporting the pro- foundly significant but isoiadM sayings, Mt 20-" 26=»'- II, but by the very distimt \Miy in 'which they connect the critical incident of the disciples con- fessing their Master's Messiahship with the insti- tution of a new order of lessons, the theme of which is the necessity and the near prospect of the Messiah's sufferings ( 16="^- ||). This representation rests on a .sure basis of reminiscence, and it seems to have a special guarantee in the fact that the teaching does not contain an avticiilated doctrine of atonement lilve that \\-lii<-li is r\|.ie^^,i,| in the Epp. (esp. Koniaii,!, Inn aim- raili.Tal .Apri'ssing the necessity of (I,,. Masiia's Hillriin,.- ,„ terms that apply equally to the aiMi|i|e, \Jiiiil I in^- the distinctiveness of the twosayinj . Mi Jo I'ti-"'- ||, we seem warranted in sayiiii; ilial. ar. online; to the Synoptics, the view of thinus ih.al |iiaeli('.-illy determined the career of Jesus w-.is that the good of which He posses.sed the pledge in His unique filial consciousness would not come during the period of His own life on earth. The spirit that brought help and healing to others was, as regarded Himself, a .spirit of self-sacrifice. The sacrifice would culminate in His death. But the death would^ be momentary. In two or three days (cf. Hos 6-) He would rise again. Yet the momentary death would not be in vain. The death and resurrection of the Messiah meant a conquest of death for a new believing Israel. The death would be the ransom price {Xurpoy, Mt 20=*) which
neither man nor angel could pay for the soul of a brother man. It would be the institution and support of the true and abiding temple of the Divine presence (Ex 30""-, Job 33"*-2^ Ps 49'^-'>. See on tliis A. B. Bruce's Kingdom of God : T. & T. Clark, 1889). The thought of the redemptive value of the sufferings of Jesus as the Christ dominates the Fourth Gospel, most of the Epistles, and the Apocalypse of the NT. If it is not pro- minent, it is certainly present, in the Synoptic Go.spels. The lack of prominence finds its explana- tion in the reserve that naturally characterized the utterance of Jesus regarding His own deatli. The presence of frequent or elaborate references to the matter in these Gospels would have taken from our estimate of their 'objective' character. Jesus may well have felt that the work of the Messiah was to die, not to explain the consequences or power of that death. Of this there would be another Witness. He who sacrifices himself com- mits his case to God and to posterity. This brings us to another matter.
3. His view of the time of the Consummation.— We have seen that Jesus did not dissociate Him- self from the traditional view that the end would come in the form of a catastrophic transformation, culminating in the advent of the Messiah Himself, who would come from heaven. He seems rather everywhere, both by the assumptions and by the direct references of His language, to set His seal to this view. When we consider how widely His consciousness of personal concern in the accom- plishing of the Kingdom must have caused His view of things to ditter from all views that were by comparison tentative and theoretical, and reflect how much there is in the ethical quality of His teaching, particularly in the parables which con- ceive the Kingdom under the analogy of natural growth, to suggest an ojienness of His mind to all that may be of abiding worth in the modern idea of evolution, the tenacity with which He adhered to the catastrophic view of the final event cannot but profoundly impress us. Reverent investigators will pause before accepting the conclusion that He was in this matter under some kind of delusion. They will strive rather to see in the attitude of One who was conscious of being not .simply the herald but also the bearer of the Kingdom of God, a niodel for the attitude of all who would turn serious thoughts to the last things. Whatever else we bring to a study where there is room for all knowledge and all thought, we must give a final as well as a supreme and pervasive place to the wonder-working power of the living God. We have sure ground in the Synoptics for saying that, while Jesus regarded the work of His Father in heaven, even in what we call nature and ordi- nary providence, as wonderful (Mt 6'-™- etc.), this did not prevent Him from steadfastly contemplat- ing a final wonder of destruction and reconstruc- tion which should be the consummation of the Kingdom or its perfect establishment on earth. Wliile so much is clear, there is \ery great diflliculty involved in the question whetlier lie predicted, so definitely and unmistakably as the Synoptics lead us to suppose, that the final wonder would be accomplished within the term of the generation then living. The jiroblem is not to be solved either by the quantitatirc method of coiinting heads (whether Gospel texts or modern aii(liorities), or by the alternative method of sayini:. I'alher He was mistaken, or such texts .isMh ',)' i:i'"|| are false reports. It can hardly be doulite.! tli.it Jesus uttered words which were naturally understood, by those who heard them and by others to whom they were reported, to mean that the final wonder — the P.arousia of the ' M.an ' of Daniel's vision and of age • long expectation — would haiqien within