RELATIONS OF NEW TESTAMENT SCIENCE 583 



sense the Messiah is called " the Son. " He is the Elect or Chosen, as 

 representative and head of the Elect or Chosen people. He is the 

 Beloved because they are " the Beloved people." He is called o "Ayios, 

 " the saint, " because they are ol dytoi, " the people of, the saints of, 

 the Most High. " Nay, even the designation which is most relied on by 

 sticklers for a difference in kind as well as degree between Christ's 

 sonship and ours, the Johannine /xoi/oyei/^s, the "only-begotten," is 

 paralleled thus in II Esdras : " Thou hast said that Israel is thy first- 

 born, thy only-begotten." In short, there is nothing so fundamental 

 in the Messianic hope as the doctrine resting on Ex. iv, 22, that Jeho- 

 vah chose Israel out of all the nations to be an adoption. He "called 

 his son out of Egypt." This conception of the sonship of Messiah, 

 the Son par eminence, is far more fundamental than the so-called 

 theocratic, and it is that which really corresponds both to Jesus' 

 personal consciousness, and to his proclamation of his mission. It 

 is not a sense of royalty that is expressed in the utterance, "All 

 things are delivered unto me of my Father, and no man knoweth the 

 Son save the Father, neither the Father save the Son and he to 

 whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him." It is a personal sense of 

 adoption giving the peace of filial communion to one who in the 

 purity of his own heart has seen God, and knows he can bring all that 

 will receive his easy yoke into the same blessed communion ; one who 

 knows the kingdom at hand, because in its essence he knows it 

 realized within him. He knows himself a Son because he has entered 

 the kingdom. He knows himself the Son because as yet others await 

 his revelation to become fellow heirs. 



The proof that Jesus' consciousness of sonship is of this type is to 

 be found in the proclamation of his mission in his most undisputed 

 utterances. What is the \vhole aim and purport of the Sermon on the 

 Mount but to show what kind of conduct corresponds with the daily 

 manifested disinterested goodness and forgiving kindness of God; 

 and that men must imitate this in order to " be sons of the Highest; 

 for he is kind even to the unthankful and the evil." What does Jesus 

 offer to those who w r ith him forsake home and kindred that they may 

 hear the will of God and do it? They are to be his spiritual kindred, 

 children of the one Father, his "brother and sister and mother." 



It is true that Jesus has deep sympathy for the apocalyptic escha- 

 tological preaching of the Baptist, that he reacts at last in strong 

 antagonism against the religion of scribes and Pharisees, the ortho- 

 doxy of his day. But it is after all this dominant type, nomism, 

 legalism, on which Jesus mainly builds, and from which he takes his 

 departure. The ideal of the genuine Pharisee and his are essentially 

 the same. Israel, the people of God, is to be his son, and as such 

 his heir, lords of the creation. This is to be realized in God's kingdom, 

 his sovereignty, which is the doing of his will on earth as it is done 



