Ti>e salvation constituted and oti'ered in Christ is a positive salvation, to be realized and possessed in Himself. With that salvation the gospel is occupied. Our concern is with that — with the hope which is declared to us and with the Kingdom which He has opened to believers. We know the end, for we know the way. There is an alternative — a way that is not to life and an end that is not with Christ. It is named only, for our fear. It is the background of outer darkness against which the glory in Christ is tlirown up into splendour. But it is in no sense the subject-matter of revela- tion. That which is revealed is life and incor- ruption (2 Ti 1'"). This is the general principle of Christian teaching. Two aspects of resurrection are accordingly discoverable in tliat teaching, and first in the teaching of our Lord. Of these the one belongs to the essence of positive gospel ; the resurrection of Christ Himself is already its be- ginning and pattern, and tiie root for us of its power ; it is matter of assurance and exposition ; our present life in Christ is full of experiences referable to it, and is explicable only in its terms ; it is dynamically identified with whatever we are in Christ now or hope to be in Him hereafter. Tlie other, resurrection of condemnation, is only indicated as in some sense an element of final adjustment of the issues of life. It remains in the spiiere of apocalyptic, out of which the resurrection of life has been brought into the historic present by the resurrection of Christ which already demon- strates and illustrates it. This resurrection, in which He is our forerunner, of whi(;h His victory over death is the operative force, wliich sliall result in us as the effect of our vital union with Him, and is the extension to us of the life from death to which He has attained, is the subject of our faith and the topic of Christian doctrine. See preced- ing art. § 10 (6) (7).
Literature. — Charles, Eschatoloqy, Hebrew, Jeivish, and Christian; Apoc. of Baruch, ed. Charles; Book of Secrets of Enoch, do. ; Book of Enoch, do. ; Muirhead, Eschatolmm of Jesus; Millipan. Resurrection of the Dead; Swete, Apocalypse of St. John ; Westcott, Gnsp. of St. John ; Gore, Ep. to Romans ; Sch«artzkoi>fT, Prophecies of Jestis Christ ; 3. M. Whiton, Beyond the Shadow ; Church, Cath. and Univ. Sermons, p. 131 ; R.'C. Moberly, Christ our Life, p. 98.
H. J. WOTHERSPOON.
RETALIATION (Mt 5^»-*^ Lk 6^-*^). — i. The lex tnlionis must have been part of the most primitive Semitic law, as it was current in almost identical words in Babylon and Canaan. The
Code of |i:amnmrabi prescribes (§§ 196, 200) : ' If a man has caused the loss of a gentleman's eje, his eye .shall one cause to be lost'; 'if a man has made the tooth of a man that is his equal to fall out, one shall make his tooth fall out.' The verse Ex 212-1, -vvhicii Clirist quotes (Mt 53«), belongs to the Book of the Covenant, the oldest stratum of Hebrew law.
2. In various ways the later Hebrew legislation mitigated the severity of the lex talionis. That laAv could be, at best, but a very rough-and-ready method of dispensing justice. The man who had only one eye, and wlio destroyed the eye of another, would suffer, by the loss of his remaining eye, a penalty infinitely greater tiian the damage he had inflicted. And, apart from actual difficulties in the working of this law as a hard-and-fast rule, — difficulties which were, in point of fact, settled by the judge as they arose (Ex 2l-^-<^-, Lv 24i«-22),_tliere was a growing feeling that the exaction of the full letter of the Law was out of harmony with wliat was known of the will of God (Lv 19'^) : ' Thou shalt not avenge nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people' (cf. Pr 20=^ 242», Sir 28'-'). It was in harmony with this sentiment that the Hebrews, in the later days of the kingship, miti- gated the severity of the old desert law, by refusing to allow the children to suft'er for the sins of the parents, and vice versa (Dt 24"^) ; but this allevia- tion of the penalty was an innovation (1 K 21''', 2 K 9-6).
3. When Christ came to deal with the Pharisees, He found that this broader interpretation of the Law was lacking. The interest of the scribes lay not in the eflbrt to do the will of God as between man and man, but in the academic discussion of the compensation to be awarded, in soulless casuistry instead of in the effort to make straight the way in the practical business of life (Mk 7'^). In nothing- was His teacliing more utterly at variance with the received traditions of His day than liere. The law of the Kingdom was love. Men were to be moved not by the spirit which was always seeking its own, but by the s])irit which desired the welfare of the other. Christ put forward a principle instead of insisting' upon the observance of a multitude of details. The whole question of the treatment of the adversary was lifted into another sphere. And what Christ counselled in the Sermon on the Mount He practised in His own life and death. The disciples Aviio wished to call down fire from heaven upon the inhospitable village were rebuked (Lk g-'"*) ; the disciple who began to meet armed force by arms was told to put up his sword into its sheath (Jn 18'^) ; the false accusers were met by silence (Mk 146').