Accordingly we may say that Christ destroyed the distinction which existed in the Jewish thought of His time, and which still exists in popular ethics, between rewards in this world and the next. If men know where to find their happiness, how to seek for their reward, they have it now, just as the retribution of the evil conscience is immediate. Only this happiness will be a personal possession of the soul ; it may be accompanied by trouble and persecution in the world (Mk lO^", Jn W-^). The believer must not look for the twelve legions of angels to vindicate him ; none the le.ss he will know the peace of Christ, and his joy will be fulfilled even here and now\ The Beatitudes and the section on the rewards of discipleship (Mk 10-") a^re particularly instructive on this point, t
To .sum up, Christ did not so much change the place and time of happiness as alter its conception. He transformed the iclea of retribution, connecting it not with the i.solated act, but with the permanent character which lies behind the act. To find His deepest teaching we must go to the Fourth Gospel and to kindred sayings in the Synoptics. Few will dispute this metnod, whatever be our ultimate view of the nature of the Fourth Gospel. It is, of course, perfectly true that Christ uses more pojiular language without scruple, as all teachers must. He appeals to the fear of punishment, and speaks of many and few stripes (Lk 12^^). He figures the blessedness of the Kingdom under the current image
* The significance of the truth may best be emphasized by a contr.ast. Buddhism, strictly interpreted, leaves no loophole tor forgiveness. Its doctrine of Karma is that every act has its strict and inevitable resultant in another existence, either bj- transmigration, or in heaven or hell. This effect depends on the act /)'')■ w, and has nothing to do with the character. The emhryo-I'uddha in one of his existences destroyed a widow's hut in a fit of temper. Though he repented and built her a better house, and had perfornu'd innumerable other good deeds, yet for this he suffered in hell for eighty thousand years.
t It is obvious to compare Plato, Republic, x., on the rewards
of the hixxjo:
520
REU
REVELATION
of a feast (Mt 222, l^ 14'5), and He uses freely the motive of reward (Mt 6. 10" lO^s, Lk 6^3 141^) ; He even speaks as though it were the conscious motive of humility (Lk li^-n). We must interpret such language in the light of His profounder teaching. Even so, some have found it a fault that the thought of reward does not entirely disappear. Religion should be so completely unselfish that all thought of self should be eliminated. The connexion of virtue with the desire for happiness is one of the ultimate problems of Ethics, and cannot be fully treated here. But this we may say. The claim of extreme altruism must fail because it ignores personality (Gore, Sermon on the 3Iount, ch. vi.). We cannot think ourselves away. We can cease to look for our own happiness in our own short- sighted manner, at the expense of others, apart from God. We can come to identify our own ends with God's purpose for the world, but we cannot dismiss the hope that in the realization of that purpose we shall find our own happiness, that when the Kingdom comes we shall see it and have our place in it. In one sense we learn to do good, hoping for nothing again ; or else in seeking to save our life we shall lose it. And yet in the back- ground there is always the consciousness that in losing our life for Christ's sake, we do ill the fuller sense find it. In this paradox is summed up the teaching of Christ and the NT. See also Reward.
Literature. — Hastings' DB, art. ' Eschatology ' ; Wenrlt, Teaching qfJe-fus (esp. i. pp. 39 ff. and 210 ff.) ; B. Weiss, £ibl. Theol. of NT; Moberly, Atonemeyrt and Personality (chs. i. to iii.) ; Du Bose, Gospel in the Gospels ; Froude, Essay on ' Job ' ; Emerson, Essay on 'Compensation'; J. Drummond, Via, Veritas, Vita (1894), 269; A. T. Oi-raond, Concepts of Philo- sophy (190fi), 533 ; C. A. Kow, Future Retribution (1SS7) ; J. A. Beet, The Last Things (1905), 1 ; J. M. Schulhof, The Law of Forgioeness {\ai'^\),<d\. C. W. EMMET.
REU. — A link in our Lord's genealogy (Lk 3^^^ AV Bagau).
**REYELATION.— 1. The question stated. — Few
theological or philosophical problems have received keener and more industrious examination than the problem which is suggested to us by the word 'revelation.' Does the word stand for any real disclosure of His secrets by the Eternal ? Does God stoop to unveil His face to men ? And if He does, what is the mode of such manifestations ? What are the conditions under which we may believe that a revelation has been given ? Is there any room in a rational scheme of the Universe for a revelation ? It is pointed out, on the one hand, that every great religion has been promulgated in the faith of its adherents that its message was a veritable message from heaven, and not merely a well-reasoned theory about life ; while, on the other hand, it is a part of the claim of Christianity that the revelation of God in Christ is unique and final. 'Comparative Religion' has reached the dignity of a science, and it will not allow us to pass by the non-Christian religions of the world with a mere phrase of patronizing criticism or approval ; while tlie teaching of the Christian creeds will not allow us to regard our own religion as only one among the many in which men have sought and have found their God. And, within the last half-century, a yet more searching ques- tion has been suggested by the scientific view of man's gradual development in mental and moral, as in physical, stature, which dominates at this moment all scientific investigation. Is not reve- lation rather a gradual disclosure than a sudden unveiling ? And may it not be that what men have taken for an act of God should rather be described as an acquisition on man's part which came to him, as all natural knowledge has come,