interprets to him the obscure writing with reference to Jesus. But in doing so there is not a single syllable of allusion to the "surely he hath borne our guilt; the stripes were laid on Him that we might have peace." The only thing brought into prominence in the prophet's words is the innocence and patience of the sufferer, and His final exaltation. That cannot be

accidental. And if we now add, that the polemic discourses of the Acts connect the forgiveness of sin with simple repentance and conversion, without any reference to the death of Jesus; that the Epistle of James proceeds in exactly the same way, and does not use one word about the high-priestly office of Christ; further, that the Epistle to the Hebrews, in all probability addressed to the Church at Jerusalem, presupposes an ignorance of the High-Priesthood and the sacrificial death of Jesus in this Church,-we can have no further doubt that a point which was afterwards in Pauline Christianity to be cardinal in doctrine, but which appeared only late in Jesus' own teaching, in a few prophetic indications which His disciples had never understood, had not yet dawned on the consciousness of the original apostles.1 Not that the original apostles and the original Church had not words of Jesus such as Matt. xx. 28, xxvi. 28; every celebration of the Supper called to their remembrance the "for you," the relation of the death of Jesus to the Passover and the covenant sacrifice. But this idea manifestly had not yet entered into their doctrine of the Messiahship, so that they were not able to make any use of it in their preaching. Moreover, the impression of His suffering and death crossing their dearest hopes, was without doubt too fresh and strong to allow them to feel or think that His death could be a special source of comfort. And the whole course of the public life of Jesus which they shared with Him, and which in Jesus' own view was planned, not for defeat on the cross, but for a victory through the preaching of the gospel for the salvation of His people (Matt. xxiii. 37), seemed to entitle them to regard the violent death of the Messiah as a crossing of God's gracious

1 Appeal is indeed made for the contrary to 1 Cor. xv. 3: Tapidwxa ὑμῖν ἐν πρώτοις, ὃ καὶ παρέλαβον, ὅτι Χριστὸς ἀπέθανεν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν κατὰ τὰς γραφάς. But Paul with the ὃ καὶ παρέλαβον was probably thinking solely of the transmission of the fact, which he then transmitted to the Corinthians with a religious interpretation taken ex suis.

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intentions also. Yet they were not in any difficulty about reconciling this with their faith in God and salvation. Accustomed as pious Israelites to see in history an interplay of human freedom and God's rule in the world, in which God made room for men's freedom in order to reach His end by indirect means, they fancied that even this crossing of God's saving purpose was foreseen and permitted by Him; it should be met by the raising of the Crucified from death, and as they turned with this thought to their Holy Scriptures they found confirmation of it in them. That fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, in particular, said to them that it was God's counsel and will to let His righteous Servant suffer as an evil-doer and die through the sin of His people. But there also was found the words, "When He hath made His soul an offering for sin, He shall prolong His days-who shall declare His generation?" and passages of the Psalms spoke of the flesh of the righteous resting in hope, and that God would not leave His Holy One to see corruption (ii. 25 f.). All that had now to them been consolingly and gloriously fulfilled in Jesus. And so they never reminded the people of the death of Jesus without adding: all that has taken place has been according to God's determinate counsel and foreknowledge (ii. 23, iii. 18); and as it was not possible that the Holy One of God could be holden of death, your crime has been gloriously neutralised by His resurrection of which we are eye-witnesses (ii. 31, 32, iii. 15, iv. 10). The offence of the death upon the cross was thereby removed both for them and for the people, and, considering all the recollections and sense of guilt on the part of the people, it is easy to conceive what an overpowering impression must have been made by the glad, confident, and palpably true testimony: "God raised Him on the third day, and showed Him unto us. We have eaten and drunk with Him after His resurrection from the dead" (x. 40, 41). This was all the more impressive that there were now added to the testimony of the word, signs and wonders wrought by the apostles' hands which could not be denied. They pointed triumphantly to the fact that these were not the outcome of their own power or piety, but the effect of faith in Him the Crucified and Risen One to whom God gloriously bears witness by such deeds (iii. 12– 16).

§ 4. THE FUTURE AND THE PRESENT SALVATION

Now, of course, Jesus was not given back to His nation through the resurrection. He did not even appear to them; He showed Himself only to His chosen witnesses, in order that they might proclaim Him as the Saviour and Judge chosen by God (x. 40-43). For Israel had lost Him through her sin, and should only get Him again when converted from that sin. God had taken Him back into His heaven, as if to wait to see whether the people would repent of their outrage and make themselves worthy again of their Messiah. This view, which although strange to us was quite familiar in the thoughts. of the original apostles, is especially prominent in the passage iii. 19-21: "Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; and He shall send Jesus Christ which before was preached unto you: whom the heavens must receive until the times of the restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets in the past." In virtue of this view, the disciples considered that in a certain measure the days of John the Baptist had returned for the people, but in a higher manner. The call to repentance was again issued in the name of the kingdom of heaven, which had come near; but this call had increased in force, owing to the representation that the greatest sin which could be imagined had been committed in the interval, in the rejection of the Lord's anointed. Baptism was again proffered to the people as the seal of this repentance and the pledge of the divine forgiveness, but no longer now as a mere water baptism in the name of a greater who was to come; it was the baptism of water and of the Spirit in the name of Jesus as the Messiah who was to come again to judge the world (ii. 38, x. 42, 43). This last period of repentance and conversion, from its very nature, could only be a short one. If the original plan of God's salvation was only interrupted by the people's sin, if it were necessary on that account to postpone to a second advent of Messiah what, according to the prophets, the first and only advent should have accomplished, then the great day of the Lord must be at hand, before the door. With the outpouring of the Spirit, the prophet (Joel iii. 1 f.) had predicted, at the same

time, the preliminary signs of the judgment of the world, "Wonders in the heavens above, and in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke," and it was not without a reason that Peter quoted these words in the Pentecost sermon (ii. 16 f.), when he was explaining the outpouring of the Spirit from the prophecy of Joel. Israel's heaven, at least, was already overcast with blood and fire, signs of God's approaching judgment. The apostle's real preaching of salvation is thrown into relief by the dark background of this picture of the future; there is salvation (owτηpía) in no other (than in Jesus), for there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we are to be saved (iv. 12). The final choice. was placed before their people at the last hour. If they now continued impenitent and unbelieving, their sin, which as sin of ignorance might yet find forgiveness (iii. 17, 19), would be transformed into wanton outrage, into that mortal sin to which the words applied, "The soul that will not hear that Prophet shall be destroyed from the people" (iii. 23). On the other hand, the man who submitted to conversion and baptism, believing in the name of Jesus, might be sure of the forgiveness of his sin; the name of Jesus would be imprinted on him in this baptism as the name of his Lord, who would take him as one of His own under His wings when the storm of judgment broke forth-the name which he should call upon, in the final distress, in order by it to be saved-" And it shall come to pass that whosoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved" (ii. 21). This is the full Christian proclamation of salvation, conceived, however, entirely from the Israelite view of the world and its present situation; Jesus is the only Mediator, the Founder of communion between God and man, and faith in Him, therfore, is the decisive action of the heart by which a man lays hold of his eternal salvation. The idea of ToтEVEL eis autóv visibly advances in the preaching of the original apostles (iii. 16, x. 43) as the positive side of the μerávoia, and neither faith nor repentance can stand alone. Salvation in the Jewish conception was essentially placed in the future, in that day of final decision when all Israel's hopes should rise like a phoenix from the flames of the world's judgment; that conception alone was possible for the apostles, though it was certainly onesided, and hindered the growth of their

knowledge. But it did not really detract from the idea of salvation as a present possession; though it had to be perfected in the future, Jesus had preached and founded it as a present fact. Salvation was viewed as present, and was really given as present in the possession of the Holy Spirit. That Spirit was indeed infinitely more than the source of prophetic gifts; and although the other elements were not at present comprehended as gifts of the Spirit, yet it was felt by the apostles and all believers that a higher power was operative in them than was known in Israel; that a new nature in faith, hope, and love had come into the world in them, which every sincere man had to admit had the true child's likeness to God the Father. And they themselves, the bearers of this new nature, felt that it was so, and knew who it was who was mighty in them. They felt themselves to be the first stones. of a building of God miraculously joined together, which in point of fact was the kingdom founded by Jesus, though they did not apply that name to it, but reserved it for the kingdom of glory which they expected as near at hand. They gave expression to this feeling of present salvation and to the founding of the kingdom of God already accomplished by Jesus the Christ, by triumphantly holding up to the persecuting authorities of Israel a verse of a psalm which Jesus Himself had applied prophetically to Himself: "The stone which the builders rejected, the same has become the head of the corner (iv. 11). He who was rejected and shamefully killed by you, is already the pillar of a new building of God in Israel, which human hands have neither put together nor will overthrow.

CHAPTER III

THE LIFE OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH

§ 1. BIBLICO-THEOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH

This new divine building, which Jesus had begun on earth by the preaching of His apostles, was first of all the primitive Church. Its life offers us a welcome complement