Christ's doctrines of Divine and human provid- ence are thus complementary to each other. The thought of God's foreseeing care does not do away with human freedom and responsibility. On the contrary, it accentuates these by assuring us that we are not the creatures of fate, but the free chil- dren of God, and that we live our lives and fulfil our tasks under His watchful and loving eyes. The realization of the need of forethought and prepara- tion on our part for the duties and events of life does not render us independent of the Almighty care. On the contrary, man's providence rests altogether upon the providence of God, and apart from it is utterly vain. And so to win Christ's approval human providence must be the providence of religious faith, and must be directed above all to the securing of higher than earthly blessings. It is only when we seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness that we have the promise that ' all these things ' — food and raiment and M'hatsoever else we require for the bodily life — shall be added unto us.
Literature.— Schiirer, IIJP u. ii. 14 ff . ; Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, i. 20.'), 289 ; Martensen, Dogmat. p. 214 ; C. G. Montefiore, ' Heb. and Greek Ideas of Providence and Retribution ' in JQR V. (1893) 517 ; Ritschl, Chr. Doct. of Justif. and Recon. (Eng. tr. 1900) 614 ; F. H. Woods, For Faith and Science (190G), 93 ; E. A. Abbott, Silamis the Christian (1906), 109 ; W. N. Clarke, Outline of Chr. Theol. p. 147 ; Dykes, Manifesto of the King, p. 483 ; Dale, Lau'S of Christ, p. 157. J, C. LAMBERT.
PRUDENCE. — This term has a wider and a narrower reference. It may denote practical saga- city, the right choice of means to ends, clear-sighted forecasting of consequences and the shaping of conduct in accordance therewith. This would bring under review the whole of Jesus' conduct, and His methods of teaching, with their adaptation to the ends of His mission. In its more common use, prudence refers to the more self-regarding acts. It IS the narrower reference that \vc consider.
1. Jesus' rondurt. — In the earlier part of His ministry Jesus withdrew from the approach of danger. When He came from the temptation in tlie wilderness to take up His mission, hearing that Herod had put John in prison. He departed from Jordan to Galilee (Mt 4^-). Galilee was within the
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dominion of Herod Antipas, but it was remote, away from the palace where John was imprisoned, away also from the place where John liad baptized, and whither the crowds had come. In Galilee He would be more witlidrawn from Herod's observa- tion. Later on, when opposition was growing, and the Pharisees and Herodians were taking counsel together against Him, He withdrew for a time to the sea (Mt 12l^ Mk 3«). And when He heard of the execution of John, He retired with His disciples to the desert (Mt W^ Mk 6^1). The Fourth Gospel also gives instances of His shunning Judsea when passions were stirred tliere against Him (Jn 71- '" lO^^- *« U^-^). What relation had these acts of prudence to Jesus' sense of duty and of trust in the care of the Father? He shunned danger then for His work's sake. His hour was not yet come (7^). Then life, and not death, was the necessity of His mission. Again, Jesus taught the most absolute trust in the guarding care of the Father. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without Him (Mt 1029). Should He not then have com- mitted Himself to the P"ather : could Herod defeat the mission of the Messiah, the Son who alone could reveal the Father ? In the wilderness Jesus recog- nized that thought to be a temptation of Satan (4'"'). God has given us minds to look before and after; and to run into avoidable peril needlessly is to tempt God. Carefulness,, even amid duty, is lowliness' way of escape from presumption. Jesus recognized that He had to accept the ordinary con- ditions of human life, and guard Himself, for His Avork's sake, from the confinement that would hinder it, or premature death that might destroy it. But there is both in the Synoptics and in the Fourth Gospel a beautiful reconciliation of Jesus' prudence with duty and faith. When He Avith- drew to the desert on hearing of John's death, the crowds followed Him ; and Jesus, seeing them as sheep without a shepherd, had compassion on them, and began to teach them (Mk 6^^). The death of Lazarus makes Him return to Judaea, whence He had prudently withdrawn Himself (Jn 11*"^). The emergence of a duty, an appeal from circumstances to His compassion, is a call from the Father, and then Jesus enters upon danger secure in the Father's guarding providence. When a man is doing the duty clearly laid down for him at the moment, he is walking in the day, and there is no stumbling for him (IP).
Did Jesus sin against that earlier spirit of prudence in His last visit to Jerusalem ? He knew that He was going into danger. And He went thither not quietly, but making a public demon- stration. He rode up to the city on an ass's colt as the Messiah, with an enthusiastic crowd strewing palm branches and singing hosannas to the Son of David. That would rouse the Pharisees, who regarded His claim as blasphemous, and the Sadducees, who might tremble for the peace and order of the city. He went to the Temple, and drove out with a scourge of small cords them that bought and sold in the holy place. And when at last Pharisees and Sadducees were united against Him, He uttered in the public hearing His invectives against the hypocrisy of scribes and Pharisees. Jesus has been blamed for "thereby running upon death. But (1) it was necessary that He should openly make His claim to be the Messiah. He had not done so at first, for He did not desire any mere political following. It was to spiritual believers, won by His preachina: of the Father, who felt that He, the meek and lowly One, had the words of eternal life, that He made known the fact that He was God's Messiah. But it was necessary that the claim should ultimately be proclaimed, after all His gospel had been declared, that Israel's rejection of Him should be their rejection of Him as Messiah. (2) It was necessary also that the Lord of man's life should lay bare in judgment the evil of Pharisaism, the master sin which dwells in the Temple, serving the very altar (see Per- fection OF JESts, p. 337). But the invectives came only after His enemies were handed together and had decreed His death. The hour was striking when He uttered the words that maddened His foes. He chose His time with forethought and sagacity. (3) The hour of sacrifice had come. This death was no way of escape from intolerable difficulties (Renan, F. Newman). It was the end foreseen from the beginning. It lies at the back of the victory over temptation in the wilderness when He put aside the suggestion to use methods of popularity. Its shadow is over the words which He spake to the Pharisees, when early in His