The explanation must be found in His further doctrine of the Kingdom of God, and the methods of its coming. There are two ways of opposing heathenism. The Pharisaic way was the negative one of denouncing it and withstanding its encroach- ment. Jesus chose the positive method of supplanting it by the Kingdom of heaven. That strong leaven He cast into the lump of humanity, well knowing that it nmst work eventually far beyond the Jewish regions. This is the ultimate point in His relations with the Gentile world. When He spoke to Pilate of His Kingdom, the Roman was relieved to hear that it was ' not of this world,' and at once set Him down as a dreamer. But Jesus was no dreamer. He was deliberately setting an actual Kingdom over against the existing empire, and history was soon to show that this was in the region of the practical and effective forces of the world. The consequences of this leaven of the Kingdom could not possiblj' be confined to the sphere of religion. 'They must eventually take political shape, and indeed affect every department of human life and interest, and spread throughout every nation of the world.
All this was in the mind of Jesus. The Book of Jonah was a favourite with Him, and it is the OT manifesto of the imperial and world-wide power of faith. His parable of the judgment of the nations (Mt 25'''-), and His prophecies of the coming of the East and West and North and South to the Kingdom of God (SU), showed plainly His ultimate designs upon the Gentile world. He spoke of other sheep beyond those of the Israelite fold (Jn 1016), and finally commanded His messengers to go out into all the world and teach all nations (Mt ^S'^). When He spoke of Himself as the Lijjht of the world (Jn 81'-), and of His life as given for the world (6-''"), it was the world that He was speaking of, and His hearers understood that it was so (cf. also Mt 16'-i 13** 55. 1.!. 14).
At times there may have crossed His mind a thought of making the wider appeal in person before His death. The most striking instance is that of the coming of the Greeks shortly before the end (Jn 12-'^). It may be, as has been held by high authorities, that He saw in that event the invitation to address to the Greek world the mes- sage which the Hebrew world was rejecting. He refused it, proclaiming, in the wonderful saying about the corn of wheat (12-'*), His knowledge that it was through death that life must come. Yet He rejoiced in it with a sudden glory (12-^), and recog- nized in it the fulfilment of His life's far-reaching purpo.se. He rejected it only that He might attain it. His own light, like that of His disciples, must be set upon a candlestick if it was to give light to all that were in the house ; and He reached the Gentiles most eflfectually by concentrating His ministry upon Israel.
3. The open field. — In order to estimate the influence of Nature upon the mind of Jesus, it is necessary, first, to distinguish between the various ways in which Nature has been conceived in relation
to humanity. At the two extremes stand material- istic realism and the purely sj)iritual and idealistic views. The former .sees in nature mere masses of living or dead matter, arranged in various shapes, quantities, and combinations, and moved by forces variously conceived. The latter sees in it the visual and sensuous revelation of the Divine life. It is 'the garment of God,' whose fine drapery at once hides and reveals the Spirit of the universe.
Between these extremes there are three main points of view. Art, searching for beauty, has discovered landscape, in which the detailed objects are groujied into larger unities invested with a larger and more composite character of their own. The experience of individuals and the history of nations have added to the facts of landscape or of single objects certain associations which give them their human interest. Thought, emotion, and imagination have discovered (some would say invented) a nij'sterious spirituality in Nature, vari- ously described or confessed to be indescribable, but perceived or felt as in some way a haunting presence, a 'something more' than meets the eye or ear.
Often we find more than one of these ways of regarding Nature combined in the mind of a single thinker. St. Paul, e.g. , seems to have had singularly little feeling for Nature in the modern sense. There is no landscape and hardly any reference to detjiil in his writings, though his travels had showed him much of the finest scenery of the Mediterranean and of Asia Minor. For him the open field ap- parently represented nothing but a set of distances to be traversed before reaching cities. Yet at times the mystery comes upon him, and he invests Nature with a dim life of her own, groaning and travailing in jiain towards some grand event (Ko 8'^'^). Dante, amid much of the grandest scenery of Europe, sees only ob-stacles to the foot of the traveller. But for him e\'ery place has historical associations, in whose light it lives in his mind. Gray is the poet who discovered English landscape. Wordsworth reaches the highest point in spiritual- izing nature :