last quoted showing rather that the aims of God are confined to the children of men, and the angels (quite in the sense of Heb. i. 14) are only means to the ends of the divine thought of love. 1.5. there are

§ 6. MAN

Thus heaven points to earth and angels to men as the proper place for the realising of the thoughts of God. The place of creaturely freedom, on whose soil the good alone can realise itself outside of God, is, as we have said, the earth on which, according to the third petition of the Lord's Prayer, the will of God is not done as in heaven of itself, but men must pray that it be so done. And the possessor of that creaturely freedom is man, the citizen of both worlds, who though he has his roots in the earth, the world of nature, is planned and destined for heaven, the eternal world of spirit. To him and not to the angels, the Lord of heaven and earth desires to be a Father, and desires that man should be His son, the heir of the kingdom of heaven. With the whole of the Scriptures Jesus distinguishes in human nature two factors, one above sense with affinities for God, and one sensuous with affinities for nature. When these two factors are conceived in their differences and contrasts, they are called flesh and spirit—as in the saying (Matt. xxvi. 41), the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. When as is the rule-they are conceived in their mutual relation and sphere of action, they are called soul and body (e.g. Matt. x. 28). In virtue of this soul, which is akin to spirit, and for that reason to God, man is raised above all other creatures and made the special object of the divine love and care. "Fear not, ye are better than many sparrows," cries Jesus to His disciples, in that saying concerning the divine care, without which not even a sparrow falls to the ground (Matt. x. 31; cf. also Matt. xii. 12). Jesus points here to the character of man as personal, to his nature as fashioned by God for His eternal purpose, and destined for a moral and spiritual perfection. Its infinite worth, together with all the responsibility that lies in that, is made prominent in the sublime saying: "What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Mark viii. 36; Matt. xvi. 26).

The whole world, the sum total of natural things and finite good, does not outweigh the human soul, the human personality, which is planned for and called to the infinite. And this impress which raises man above all finite creatures, and places him by the side of the eternal Father, is in the teaching of Jesus the property of every child of man, even the least and last. As the true shepherd does not forget the one lost lamb of his whole flock, so the love of God is not directed to humanity as a whole, but to every individual soul, that it may not be deprived of its eternal destiny. "It is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should perish" (Matt. xviii. 14). To Jesus this spiritual, moral nature of the human soul, its personality, involves, as a matter of course, its capacity for immortality. The body may be killed, and must some day yield to death, but the soul does not die-no human power can kill it (Matt. x. 29). When the body breaks up in death, angels then bear upwards the soul of the pious into another world, the world in which he trusted (Luke xvi. 22). In union with God, who is not a God of the dead but of the living, even those long dead, like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, have immortal life (Mark xii. 26, 27; Matt. xxii. 32; Luke xx. 38). This does not mean, however, that every one capable of such a life is intended for it, is certain of it. The soul may, as the two sayings adduced above remind us, suffer loss, may even be lost, if instead of surrendering itself to the supersensuous and eternal it loses itself in the vain and empty. The same Father in heaven who draws Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to His heart, and willeth not that even the least should be lost, may then be in the position to destroy both soul and body in hell (Matt. x. 29). The notion of a Sheol held by His people, a Hades or kingdom of the dead which encloses in regions far apart a Paradise and a Gehenna, a place of comfort and a place of torment (cf. Luke xxiii. 43; Matt. v. 22), was recognised by Jesus in His Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke xvi. 19-31) as essentially true. He thereby taught that behind the death of the body there awaits the soul either a glorious ascent or a sad descent, according as here on earth it has entered into the spirit of a higher dwelling-place, or wasted its earthly life in vanities.

§ 7. SIN

The destination of man for immortality) however, is opposed on earth by sin. Jesus, as the preacher of His gospel should take note, has spoken little of sin in general, and has proposed no doctrine of it, least of all a doctrine of its origin; He presupposed it as a fact, and showed its evil nature by the penalties He attached to it. In its inmost nature He regards it as an apostasy of the soul from the living God. The heart of man, in which, after the manner of the Bible, He sees the single focus of our inner life, the central seat of feeling, thought, and will (cf. Matt. xii. 34, xv. 19),—the heart is to Him for the moral man what the eye is for the sentient, the organ of light. If it is single, that is, sincere and steadfastly directed to the eternal good, to God and His will, the heavenly light, the revelation of God then streams into it, and the whole moral man, with his powers and gifts, moves in the element of light-that is, of the right, the good, the divine. But if the inner eye is distorted or diseased, then the light cannot stream into it, and then the man is in darkness, and lives and moves entirely in the darkness (Matt. vi. 22, 23; Luke xi. 34-36). But what can determine the inner eye to become thus evil? Above all, the so-called earthly goods, in the narrower sense, are the things that blind it. Mammon, that is, wealth, which has become a false god, an idol, has a special power of withdrawing man from a steadfast surrender of the heart to God. This is the constant difficulty which makes it harder for rich men than for others to enter into the kingdom of God (Mark x. 24, 25; Matt. xix. 23, 24). In spite of mammon, a man probably thinks that he can adhere to God; he desires to serve two masters, God and mammon. But the latter, like the former, claims the whole heart and mind with all their powers, and the man is unawares brought to despise and neglect the good Master, while holding to and obeying the evil (Matt. vi. 24; Luke xvi. 13). But that is only an outstanding example of how a man is drawn away from God. The possibility and temptation thereto lies entirely in his twofold nature, his twofold relation to God and the world. "The spirit is willing," cries Jesus to His disciples (Matt. xxvi. 41), "but the flesh is

weak." The spirit is willing to watch and pray and attend to that which keeps us in communion with God, but the flesh, our sensuous nature, is the weak side of the fortress on which the attractions and terrors of the sensuous world make their onset, and easily overwhelm the heart. The possibility of sin is thus explained; but this possibility has become a universal reality, and Jesus reckons with this fact without venturing on its explanation. Without hesitation He presupposes the universality of sin. He says of His hearers. (Matt. vii. 11), as something self-evident, "Ye who are evil." The call to repentance, μeтavoeîтe, is addressed without reservation to all, and in the Lord's Prayer the need of forgiveness is in the same way presupposed on the part of all, even of a Peter and a John. Moreover, His observation does not stop at individual errors and faults, though these individual offences are also duly considered in the fifth petition. From evil deeds the penetrating look of Jesus goes back to the evil word and the evil thought (Matt. v. 22), and again from all these particular phenomena to the fundamental tendency of the mind, to the tree which bears such fruits, to the treasure of the heart, the inner condition and store which has been formed by the totality of the individual moral acts, and is now the source of further individual action in word or work (Matt. xii. 32-35). Hence Jesus recognises in man a development of sin. First, the simple movement of the heart to some more venial, or more heinous, outbreak in word and then in deed (Matt. v. 22). And then the further deeper stage of increasing resistance and contradiction to the divine admonition, the passage from simple transgression to blasphemy, and from the reviling of the Son of Man, who may easily be mistaken, to blaspheming the Holy Spirit, who inwardly attests Himself, and so is not to be mistaken (Mark iii. 28, 29; Matt. xii. 31, 32). And in this last and uttermost possibility, as it excludes further knowledge, excludes conversion, and with conversion forgiveness, He sees the irrevocable ruin of the inner man. In contrast with this deep, penetrating judgment of sin, the moderate way in which this judgment goes to work is the more remarkable. In the most impartial way Jesus recognises the moral distinctions among sinful men; not merely

the great distinctions in outward civil righteousness, which He does indeed recognise in their full measure of value in His Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican (Luke xv. 1-32, xviii. 10), and in His not merely ironical contrasting of righteous and sinner (Matt. ix. 13). He even attributes truly good, really divine features to the human heart, and finds more of them in one than in another. He sets up a Samaritan, a half-heathen, as a model of love for our neighbour (Luke x. 23-37). He perceives in children a simplicity and meekness, a confidingness, which gives them an advantage in gaining the kingdom of heaven (Mark x. 14; Matt. xviii. 3). He distinguishes—just in reference to the treasure of the heart-evil men and good men (Matt. xii. 35). Amongst His people He knows not only some who are poor in spirit and hungering for righteousness, but some also who are merciful, peacemakers, pure in heart, and suffering for righteousness' sake (Matt. v. 1-10). And the poor Lazarus, the sufferer who trusts in God, goes to the bosom of Abraham without belonging to the New Testament kingdom of God (Luke xvi. 19). Only those who have no need of the μeTávola, conversion from the bottom of the heart, are unknown to Him, or rather are known only in the ironical sense of Matt. ix. 13 and Luke xv. 7,-as righteous according to human notions, who regard themselves therefore as righteous also according to the divine idea. Even the best and most pious men in Israel, His chosen disciples, have to be converted and become as little children in order to enter into the kingdom of God (Matt. xviii. 3). And it is to them directly, to Peter chiefly, that He addresses the Parable of the Ten Thousand Pounds of arrears, that is, of the infinity of man's obligations to God (Matt. xviii. 23–35). For everything that is not perfect love of God, and does not spring from perfect love of God, is ultimately sin; and with the knowledge of God and of His holy will, the feeling of guilt, the more pious a man is, grows to overwhelming strength. Finally, we must note that all these distinctions of the sinful condition, and this whole infinity of the awakened sense of guilt, does not call in question the capacity of any sinner to repent-except it be the (hypothetic) sinner against the Holy Ghost. universal call to repentance, μeтavoεîтe, presupposes an unlost

The