Thus it becomes manifest that our Lord's teach- ing embodied a philosophy of human history and progress. In this point of view His teaching was absolutely original. Nor can it ever be superseded. His ideas of human progress and His faith in it are a large part of essential Christianity. This part of His gospel is urgently needed by the present age. And multitudes are waiting to welcome it as a message from Him as the world's Saviour.
Literature. — Buckle, Hist, of Civilization ; Lux Mnndi, ch xi. ; Loring Brace, Gesta Christi ; Janet, Theory of Morals, 410 ; P. Granger, T/ie Soul of a Christian, 246; Westcott, Chr. Social Union Addresses, G(i ; W. D. Mackenzie, Christianiti/ and the Progress of Man, 217; A. R. Wallace, Studies, Scientific and Social, ii. 493; W. L. Davidson, Chr. Ethics, M; Liddon", Serrn. on Some Words of St. Paxil, 246, Serin, hefure Univ. of Oxford, 1st ser. p. 25. W. D. THOMSON.
428
PKOMISE
PROMISE
PROMISE.— The NT is full of the idea that in Christ had arrived the fulfihnent of a promise made over and over again in preceding ages. The gospel is regarded by all the writers not as an event unexpected and unprepared for, but as the due and natural sequel and climax of God's deal- ings from of old. The evayyeXLov is the fultilment of the e7ra77eXta. It was, indeed, the strength ■with which this idea Avas rooted in the mind of the Jew (' whose is the adoption and the glory and . . , the promises,' Ro 9'*) that made it so hard for him to understand how the Gentile could come within the full scope of the gospel. How could the ' dogs ' share equally with the ' children ' (Mt 15'-^ = Mk 7-") ? How could the uncovenanted and nn- circumcised be ' heirs according to the promise ' (Gal 329j 9 "Whole passages, therefore, in some of the Epistles (esp. Rom., Gal., Heb. ) have to be devoted to showing that the implication of the promise was vaster than any ©f the forms in which it had been conveyed. There is no literature which is so saturated with the spirit of anticipation as the Hebrew, no nation which has cherished so ardent and irrepressible a belief in its destiny, — ' a peoj^le A\ho were looking forwards from a great Past of Wonders to a Future of Good and Glory ' (Mason, Heb. Gram.^ p. 98). It is in the NT, however, that this note of anticiiJation becomes dominant. Anticipation, indeed, here gives place to realiza- tion. Wliile the NT contains several j^assages which show kinship with current Apocalyjitic literature and its eschatology, and indicate a linger- ing belief in the mind of the writer that the fulfil- ment of the promises lies still in the future, the unmistakably prevalent thought of the writers is that in the work of Christ they have already seen the promises fulfilled. The Evangelic records exhiliit, each in its own way, the consciousness that Israel's hopes had found their fulfilment in Christ ; and, sober and restrained as is the narra- tive, one can hardly miss in it the note of jubilant realization. JNIt. loses no opportunity of showing that what happened to Jesus was in accordance with ancient prophecy ; Mk., while seldom citing Scripture, describes Jesus as beginning His minis- try with the declaration ' The time is fulfilled ' (1^') ; Lk. commences and concludes his Gospel with episodes (i«-55. 6--69 225-38 2425-2«- 44-47) intended to show how men saw, or failed to see, in Jesus the Christ foreshadowed in the Scriptures, and Jn. (o^**) quotes Jesus as stating that the Scriptures bear witness to Him, and notes (12'^- ""^ etc.) how the reception of Jesus answered to the sayings of the proj^hets.
It was this aspect of Christ's appearance — as the fulfilment of an eagerly awaited promise — that occupied most room in the earliest preaching of the gospel. See Stephen's speech (Ac 7), Peter's (214-36 and lO^^-^^j^ Paul's (IS^^ ' We bring you good tidings of the promise made unto the fathers,' and 26"). The main line of address taken by the early preachers was always to prove that Jesus was the Christ (9^2 IT'- » IS'-'-'S).
It is to be noticed, however, that Jesus Himself in His public preaching seldom, if ever, adopted this line of appeal. Not even in His more private teaching does He appear to have attached import- ance to it. When, e.g. , John the Baptist definitely inquired 'Art thou he that cometh ? ' (Mt iP-'s, Lk 7 '^--3), Jesus deliberately appealed not to the correspondence between Himself and the expecta- tions formed of the promised Messiah, but to the efi'ect being at the moment produced by His ministry. When the same question was being discussed between Himself and His disciples (Mt 1613-16 ^Mk 827-29 = Lk 918-20)^ jgg^g ,,,^8 not con- cerned so much about their identifying Him with the One who was to come, by means of signs and
tokens which were expected to accompany His coming, as that the conviction should come in an inward and secret way (' Flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father which is in heaven,' Mt 16'^). He objected to being pro- claimed as the Christ, not simply because He knew that the people, when persuaded of this, would seek to make Him a king and expect Him to use temjjoral resources, but because the very tenacity with which His countrymen clung to their stereotyped notions of the promised Messiah would prevent them from gaining a true under- standing of the scope and purpose of His mission. He had a sublime contempt for the petty and l^edantic way in which the scribes took upon them- selves to say how the anticipations of Scripture were, or were not, to be verified, and held their pretensions up to scorn (Mt 22-'i-''6 = Mk 1235-37 = Lk 204i-'4). It was, in short, because His mind Avas so filled with the larger jjurpose of God that He assigned little weight to the recognition of that local and national theory which had so much more of patriotic bias and ambitious desire in it than of pure love of humanity. And it was pre- cisely because the priests and scribes, in their blind attachment to their own interpretation of the promise, saw, in His comparative carelessness about the traditional view and His frequent in- sistence upon a purely spiritual interpretation, a danger to their own designs, that they resolved ui)on His deatli.