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Even more significant is Jesus' attack upon the grafting high priests (cf. p. 257). Apparently nothing but a sharp blow would arouse these smugly intrenched highwaymen, who under the protection of the highest and holiest office in their nation were reaching their hands into the pockets of the common people and shamelessly robbing them. For their sake, as well as for that of the helpless masses, Jesus declared open war against them. In so doing he stressed an element in his social teaching which the extreme pacifist is in danger of overlooking. He proclaimed the law of love and no other law, but he saw that the high-priestly party were standing in the way of the normal operation of this law. He recognised that in this imperfect world there are certain types of criminal whose consciences apparently only compulsion will awaken. If this be true, then love itself sometimes demands the use of compulsion. But when thus invoked it is but the agent of love.

Human society has been slow to impose upon nations the same ethical principles that are recognised as binding on the individual. The moral laws that are accepted as valid in the case of the individual are based on thousands and millions of moral experiments, and their authority is as well established as that of the natural laws in the physical world. But in the field of international politics there have up to the present been far fewer experiments. As a result the data from which to formulate the principles of international ethics have been far less numerous and therefore less convincing. Hence the fallacious and pernicious theory has gained wide acceptance that a state, in its relation to other nations, is justified in doing many acts which would never be palliated if done by a private individual. Jesus acknowledged no such distinction. As Paul declares (Col. 311):

In that new creation there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor freedman; but Christ is everything and in all of us.

Racial and national and class divisions become insignificant in the presence of this conception of one great human family.

Communities and nations are but social groups, separated by imaginary boundary lines, yet subject to the same moral and social laws as the individuals who compose them. The same royal law of love applies to Christian nations as to the individual citizen. They are under as solemn obligation to conserve the highest interests of their fellow nations as their own. A nation, in even a larger sense than the individual, is the champion of the dependent. Therefore as long as defiantly lawless nations ruthlessly seek to trample on the weak, Christian nations have felt compelled, when all others methods failed, to resort to war. War, however, has no abiding-place in the new social order that Jesus proclaimed, and war between two nations which fully accept his social principles will ultimately become impossible. The law of love eliminates deception and distrust and false ambition and hatred and all the malign emotions that beget war. Instead it establishes justice and brotherliness and mutual helpfulness as the invincible forces binding together nations as well as individuals. Jesus did not deny the service which Rome had accomplished by bringing peace and order to the world. He apparently did not advocate the immediate disbanding of the armies and police forces of the world. But he did proclaim to humanity a better way of securing peace than by force. He declared by word and by example that love is far more potent than the sword. He taught the power of active non-resistance, of a love which is not merely passive but by acts of service wins the gratitude and devotion of the would-be aggressor. The supreme question, therefore, of the twentieth century is whether or not nations will follow the Leader whom they nominally acknowledge, and in all their international relations substitute the law of love for that of force.

THE RULE OR KINGDOM OF GOD

Jesus' Use of the Term Kingdom of God. It is a suggestive fact that in the early narrative of Mark the term kingdom of God is used only once by Jesus during the earlier part of his ministry. After his work had been established in Galilee the use of the term is increasingly frequent until it becomes most common in his closing addresses during the last week at Jerusalem. Does this mean that Jesus' conception of the kingdom only gradually crystallised? Or is it possible that, as he avoided the popular term Messiah, he also avoided using kingdom of God during the earlier part of his ministry because it had a firmly fixed meaning in the minds of the people which he did not fully accept? The two possibilities are not necessarily exclusive. Furthermore, the term, like the kinetic word Messiah, was inflammable. He who used it in public was in constant danger of bringing down upon his head the heavy hand of Rome, which was acutely suspicious of any other rule than its own. The Aramaic word commonly translated kingdom meant, literally, rule or dominion. It was derived from the same root as the Hebrew word for king. The kingdom of God, therefore, meant the reign or rule of God. Inasmuch as in Jesus' day the Jews strenuously avoided the use of all direct titles of the deity, the term heaven, as in I Maccabees (cf. I Mac. 221,350, 60), was commonly substituted for God or Jehovah. Under the influence of this tendency the author of Matthew's gospel habitually prefers the term kingdom of heaven. With the true instincts of a teacher, Jesus knew well the value of a dynamic watchword. He fully appreciated the potentialities of the popular phrase kingdom of God. It at once ar

rested the interests and kindled the enthusiasm of every son of Abraham. It embodied the loftiest aspirations of his race. It was the goal toward which all were eagerly looking. Historically it represented the finest elements in Israel's social ideal. As interpreted by many of the earlier prophets, it was world-wide in its outlook and reached from the present out into the limitless future. It was a term, therefore, well calculated to lead men out of their selfish individualism and to bind them together in united social effort. At the same time it was a term which had been very differently defined by Israel's early teachers. To the minds of the different men and women to whom Jesus spoke it conveyed a great variety of meanings. There was a certain vagueness and mystery about it which were fascinating but at the same time confusing. Therefore, at first Jesus apparently used this magic term only sparingly. Then, as his marvellous work in Galilee crystallised his convictions, he devoted his attention more and more to defining in the minds of his disciples the rich content of this historic term, which he employed to represent his own ultimate social ideal.

Popular Jewish Conceptions of the Kingdom of God. In Jesus' day the term kingdom of God conveyed almost as many different meanings to different minds as does the modern term Socialism. All were agreed that it stood for a new social order in which the present tyranny and corruption should disappear and the principles of justice and righteousness prevail. The Zealots and probably a large proportion of the people of Galilee expected it to take form in an earthly kingdom, with its capital at Jerusalem, which would conquer and absorb the all-embracing Roman empire. Many of them were ready and eager to unsheathe the sword against Rome in order speedily to bring about this longed-for consummation. The Pharisees and the more intelligent leaders of Judaism, who were fully aware of the impossibility of throwing off the Roman yoke by use of force, cherished and promulgated the belief that the kingdom of God would be miraculously established. The book of Daniel voices this expectation most clearly (Dan. 24):

POPULAR CONCEPTIONS

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The God of heaven shall set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall the sovereignty be left to another people; but it shall break in pieces and destroy all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.

Some believed that the Messiah was to be the divine agent who would inaugurate this new era. Thus the author of the Psalter of Solomon in 1723 prays:

Behold, O Lord, and raise up to them their king, in the time which thou, O God, knowest, that he may reign over Israel, thy servant. . . . He shall destroy the ungodly nations with the word of his mouth . . . and he shall gather together a holy people.

Others believed with the author of the book of Daniel that God himself would miraculously interpose and suddenly and supernaturally and through Israel's patron angel establish his kingdom and the rule of his people over all mankind (Dan. 713, 14):

I saw in the night visions, and behold, there came with the clouds of heaven one like to a son of man, and he came even to the aged One, and was brought near before him. And there was given him dominion and glory and sovereignty, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his sovereignty one which shall not be destroyed.

Some, like the earlier ethical prophets and sages, undoubtedly believed that the inauguration of the kingdom would be natural and evolutionary rather than catastrophic and revolutionary, and that the ultimate transformation would be social and moral rather than supernatural and political. To this group probably belonged many of the followers of Hillel and John the Baptist. Many, undoubtedly, confused these kaleidoscopic hopes. A majority of the people of Galilee, and even Jesus' immediate followers, continued to cling to the Pharisaic belief in a temporal kingdom to be miraculously established at Jerusalem. This hope was doubtless instilled into the mind of