So far as the goapeU go, it is ag:ain St. Luke's which 8U!:jp,estg that the ApostoHc Age had slightly affected the primitive outlook.
Twice we meet suggestions of this kind. The first group (a) is less important, viz. the references in the birth narrative ; the second (6) in 18"f- carries more significance, (a) The former contains the militant imagery of the Magiiificat and the Bene-
* In Zee 99 ; cf. the present writer's Theology of the Gospels^ i^onrlon, 1912, pp. 163-164.
t To take a parallel from history : the sincere and intense craving for peace and order, and the enthusiastic hopes enter- tained of Augustus, as a donor of quiet to the empire, were due to the weariness (elt by Romans who had come through the internal strife of the later Republic. But the peace of Augustus was not disarmament ; it was to be the result of a strong, wise, non-aggressive ruler— in a word, a peace resting on the master of the legions. The ideal monarch, who is the hope of a Hebrew lyric like the 72nd psalm, also rules by ' crushing the oppressor ' ; his justice and good order win him widesi>road homage and secure peace, but he enforces good government by the sword, if need be.
dictus — for the only allusion to the sword (2^: * a sword shall ]>ierfe througli thy own bouI also') is of course metaphorical. But the warlike terms of the songs are religious reminiscences of the OT — e.g. of Hannah's song— and are fundamentally* figurative also. Jesus did not come to * put down the mighty from their seats' in Ca;sarea Philippi or at Rome; John was arrested by Herod, according to Josejjhus, because the Jewish ruler feared that his popularity would develop revolutionary tendencies, but John's mission was not to 'deliver the Jews from the hand of their' Roman 'enemies.* Oriental symbolism is enough to account for such terms in those hymns of the primitive Palestinian church (cf. J. G. Machen, in Princeton Theol. Review^ x. [1912] 1-3S). This interpretation is not affected by the song of the angels at the birth of Jesus (2i-i), which, in the mistranslation, * on earth peace, good will toward men,' especially when it is unconsciously read in the light of Milton's Ode. on the JS'ativity, seems a definite programme of peace. The peace proclaimed is between God and man, however, not between man and man. The gospel is nob announced as an international league of peace. Charles Wesley was right when he put these two liues of interpretation into his Christian hymn —
* Peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled 1 *
The line of the angels' song is meant to allay any suspicion of God's goodwill towards men. 'Of God's goodwill to men, and to all creatures, for ever, there needed no proclamation by angels,' says Ruskin ( I'al d'Arno, x. 258). But this was precisely what did need to be proclaimed, in view of human sin and ill-will towards God. The coming of Jesus implies and proves that the divine thoughts to men are thoughts of peace and not of evil, that the suspicions of God which sin prompts are unjustified, and that He intends to create harmony between men and Himself. There is now ' peace on earth for men whom He favours.' And this message is sung by a detachment of the angelic a-TparCa !
It is a very different matter when we turn to (b) the language of IS"'-, where, after describing how even a selfish and callous magistrate will attend to a widow's complaint, if she is onl}' persistent enough, Jesus asks : 'And will not God see that justice is done to his elect who cry to him by day and night? Will he be tolerant to their foes [en-' avrol^, as in Sir yS""^, of which this passage is a reminiscence]? I tell you. he will quickly see justice done to his elect.' The wording is judicial, but justice in the East was military in the last resort, and that is the meaning here. The Sirach passage describes the confident hope that God will effectively interpose on belialf of the oppressed who cry out bitterly against tlie tyrannical power of the over- lords. These pagan oppressors will be put down from their thrones, and Israel, the mourning widow, relieved. The Lucan words suggest that some saying of Jesus lias been sharpened in the course of transmission through a period of what seemed to the Apostolic Church to be almost intolerable misery. It is a momentary relapse into the terms if not into the spirit of militant Jewish eschatology. But the wonder is that such relapses were not more frequent. Besides, the cry for vengeance on the foes of religion is the Oriental expression of the innate yearning for justice in the moral order. The note of impatience with God's apparent toleration of evil men and His intolerable delay (cf. 2 P 3^), as well as the longing for the speedy end of things in order that the present distress may be relieved, is not so definite and characteristic as the appeal for retribution, however, and, as this is loudly echoed in t Rev e^o-il—the great Quousque of the church — it obliges us to look back upon the course and trend of religious feeling which prompted it.