584 NEW TESTAMENT 



in heaven. Only, for scribe and Pharisee the will is all revealed in the 

 written Torah, the Law, ceremonial and moral. Whoso accepts its 

 yoke is a son, the common people that know it not are accursed. For 

 Jesus the will is revealed in the impulse of kindness in the heart of a 

 compassionate Samaritan, in the daily example of the living, loving 

 Father in heaven. He offers his call to publicans and sinners yes, 

 when faith comes to meet him across the barrier of race and religion, 

 he offers it even to the heathen Syrophoenician. Entrance into the 

 brotherhood has at last but one condition, "Whosoever will do the 

 will of my Father." This is the one aim for himself and his followers, 

 " Thy will, not mine, be done " ; but the will is not the mere written 

 Torah as given to them of old-time. It is what the God whom Jesus 

 sees and knows is ever doing in his spirit of limitless loving-kindness. 

 Paul has paraphrased it as no other could, " Be ye imitators of God 

 as beloved sons (the Messianic aim), and walk in love (make love your 

 halacha) even as Christ also (the Beloved Son) loved you and gave 

 himself up for us an offering of a sweet savor unto God." This is 

 the "reasonable worship" (XojLKrj Xarpaa) by which we are "trans- 

 formed from this world by the renewing of our minds," and come to 

 "know (as sons who boast of 'knowing the will') the good and 

 acceptable and perfect will of God." 



The consciousness of Jesus is personal and ultimate. It is a con- 

 sciousness of divine sonship. It lays hold upon the Messianic hope of 

 Israel because that is akin to it, but it is the greater absorbing the 

 less, not vice versa. The kingdom of God is to Jesus the doing on 

 earth by all of the will of his Father. But the knowledge which he has 

 of his Father, of his nature and of his will, is not delivered to him by 

 the scribes or wise men of his people; it is given to him of his Father, 

 who is seen of the pure in heart, and reveals it "unto babes." What 

 verification by actual observation is to the calculations of the astro- 

 nomer, that the insight of Jesus is to the religious heritage of his 

 people. He sees God in nature, in history, in man, and therefore knows. 

 As voicer of the highest, truest, religious instinct of humanity we 

 may indeed call him Son of Man. But call him rather just " the Son." 

 Our highest knowledge of the Father is that which the Son hath 

 willed to reveal. This is the distinctive element of the gospel, the 

 nucleus from which our New Testament science must ramify in all 

 its relations with kindred sciences. 



