ANDOVER-HARVARD APR 3 1915 HARVARD H43,233 Copyrighted 1915. By DWIGHT GODDARD, Ann Arbor, Michigan. THE ANN ARBOR PRESS INTRODUCTION. This book is an interweaving of the Four Gospels into one connected account of the Life and Teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, in which the attempt is made by free translation and paraphrase to bring out clearly the unity and the reasonableness of his system of thought from a modern point of view. In Matthew 4:23 the message of Jesus is spoken of as the Good News of a Spiritual Realm. The Jews of his day were looking forward to the restoration of their nation as a Messianic Kingdom and had almost no conception of a Spiritual Realm; to them the message of Jesus was a disappointment. We must admit also that, with splendid exceptions, the full spiritual significance of his teaching, even down to our own day, has not been understood nor appreciated. This is particularly true in regard to his teaching concerning the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of heaven. It has been variously misinterpreted as the Church; as an ideal state of human society where the will of God will be more perfectly done; as another realm, similar the natural realm, where the life after death will be passed. There is no mistaking the fact that the study of natural science has placed those who want to believe in a spiritual interpretation of it on the defensive; and forced many, who ought to have had more faith in a spiritual interpretation, back into a second line of defense where they are defending, not the independent reality of a Spiritual Realm, but an intellectual and spiritual idealizing of it, which makes of the Kingdom of God an ideal state of human society, and limits the purpose of the Christian life, very largely, to living a good life and "to the getting of God's will done among men." However much the teachings of Jesus may have been misunderstood in the past, or are being misunderstood to-day, there is no mistaking the fact, if this effort to present his teachings is sound, that four assertions stand out in clear relief. First. He asserts the existence of two levels of reality: a higher or Spiritual Realm, and a lower or natural realm. Second. He asserts that God is Sovereign of the Spiritual Realm as well as the Creator and Ruler of the natural realm; that God is Love 4 |