tility; the same that had excited the cupidity of the Danites in the olden time.1 Here the many fountains and branches of the Jordan foamed and rushed upon their way, to join at last in one broad stream; and the eye wandered over the fairest pastures and the noblest forests till it rested on the stately Hermon. The city whose territory lay in this favored region was called after Augustus Cæsar, like its namesake on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea; and to distinguish it from the latter it bore an additional name taken from the tetrarch Philip, who founded or at least extended and beautified it very soon after his accession, with a view to making it the seat of his government. It was for the most part a heathen city, and could boast of more than one celebrated shrine in its immediate neighborhood. At the time of which we are speak ing it was in Roman territory. What was it that took Jesus two short days' journey to the extreme north of Palestine with no apparent object? It cannot have been to escape his enemies; for he need have gone no further than Bethsaida to be safe from the plots of Herod and the pursuit of the champions of Jewish orthodoxy. Nor was his object simply to rest a time and enjoy the beauties of Nature; for he was too deeply absorbed in many questions of extreme importance to have eyes or attention for those beauties now. He felt that he must collect himself, examine his position and prospects from every side, come to some definite decision, and adopt the corresponding measures. Things could not go on as they were. He must choose some new line of action, and must hasten the decisive moment. The thoughts and projects which had long been rising and growing in his mind, especially since the death of John, now came to full maturity. And now, for the first time, he was in a position to communicate them to his friends. It was high time to do so. The third Evangelist indicates the importance of the crisis by saying that Jesus prayed. Doubtless he did ask wisdom from on high and commit the issue to God. Somewhere in the neighborhood of Cæsarea, then, as he was out of doors with the Twelve, he turned to them, and, with an expression both of face and voice which showed them it was no ordinary matter of which he spoke, asked, "Whom do people suppose me to be?" They knew that he did not mean to ask them what his opponents said of him, but what the masses, who regarded him with more or less favor, thought 1 See vol. i. pp. 376, 377. were current. and expected of him. Hitherto he had troubled himself but little with such matters, for he had always kept his own personality as completely as possible in the background; but at this crisis he must know the opinion of his followers, for much depended on it. The Twelve were naturally in a better position than Jesus himself for ascertaining the opinions generally held concerning him, and they had no difficulty in answering his question. It appeared that several opinions Some believed that he was John the Baptist, who had not really been murdered, or had been called back by God from the land of shadows to take up his work again; others thought he was Elijah, returned from heaven to perform the task that had been assigned to him and prepare for the Messianic age; others again took him for Jeremiah, risen from the dead to disclose the sacred objects that had been concealed ever since Jerusalem was sacked; others regarded him more vaguely as one of the ancient prophets returned to life from the world below to do the work of preparation.1 There is much appearance of diversity in these opinions, and at first sight their extravagance may seem astounding; but a moment's reflection will put an end to our surprise, and will show us that in the only essential point there is remarkable unanimity among them; for all the different opinions come to this, that Jesus was the precursor of the Messianic kingdom. The form which this fundamental belief adopted was dependent, in the case of each individual, upon whether he expected Elijah or Jeremiah, or, more vaguely, "one of the prophets," or John himself, to complete the work of preparation. The great mass of his disciples then regarded Jesus as the herald of the kingdom of God; and, considering the character of all his preaching from his first appearance in public, no belief could possibly have been more natural. It was clear, however, that the disciples were simply giving their Master a faithful account of what "people" said of him, and were not stating their own belief; and Jesus, following up the first question with another, asked them eagerly, "But you yourselves! whom do you think I am?" Constrained yet eager glances passed between the Twelve, and for a moment there was silence, - but for a moment only! Then Simon (Peter), the foremost of them all upon this as upon other occasions, answered confidently, "You are the Messiah!" It was evidently in the name of all the rest, as well as his own, that he offered this title (the highest that could be conceived) 1 See pp. 49, 99, 104, 272. 14 VOL. III. to his Master. Nor did Jesus reject it, though he strongly urged his disciples never to speak of it to any one, nor to let their conviction be known. But, for all that, henceforth Jesus was the Messiah; not only in his own consciousness, but to the world. His resolve, which had been his own secret hitherto, still capable of alteration, was now irrevocable. His own personal fate and the future of his cause were now decided. Here we may pause to point out some of the inferences that may be drawn from this conversation between Jesus and his friends, and to offer some necessary explanations. 2 In the first place, the two questions and answers prove incontrovertibly that hitherto Jesus had never proclaimed himself to be the Messiah, and had never been recognized as such by others. This consideration is absolutely fatal to the historical character of all those recognitions of his Messiahship which we have seen ascribed to demons, to sufferers who asked his aid, to his own disciples, and to the people at large.1 But there is another point of more importance which must be considered in this connection. According to the Gospels, Jesus very early adopted the practice of frequently speaking of himself in the third person under the designation of the Son of Man." We have treated this expression as simply equivalent to the first personal pronoun "I." Indeed, it is impossible to lay down any fixed rule as to when Jesus uses "I" and when the Son of Man," and the condition in which our authorities have come down to us is such that we cannot at all rely upon them on such a point as this. It often happens that one Gospel has "I" and another" the Son of Man" in the very same passage. For instance, in the scene we have just described Matthew gives the first question thus: Whom do people take the Son of Man to be?" For this and other reasons it is very doubtful what Jesus intended the name to mean. He certainly never used it as implying that he was himself the ideal man. To do so would have been utterly foreign to his nature. Now Ezekiel constantly calls himself in his own oracles "son of a man," that is weak mortal!" and it has been conjectured that Jesus borrowed the term from him, and used it to indicate his prophetic mission and at the same time his human infirmity and dependence upon God, —or perhaps the latter only. Others suppose that 2 See pp. 187, 199, 204, 214, et seq 1 See pp. 135, 136, 208, 269, 287. the expression was taken from the well-known vision of Daniel, where it is used for "the kingdom of the saints."1 In this case Jesus may have applied it either to the subjects of the Messianic kingdom generally, and to himself as one of them, as their leader and exemplar, or in a more strictly personal sense to himself as king. There is, indeed, no room to doubt that the vision in Daniel is the source from which the expression is taken in the numerous passages that speak of the "coming" of the Son of Man, and of his coming "with the clouds." Here and there this expression may be used as equivalent to the revelation of the kingdom of Messiah, and indeed Matthew has "the Son of Man" in a passage in which the other two read the "kingdom of God." But when it is said of this Son of Man that he shall "sit at the right hand of God," which the ideal king is described as doing in the hundred and tenth Psalm, the reference is most certainly to the Messiah himself, and specifically to Jesus as the Messiah." Here we are met by another difficulty; for if Jesus really did call himself the Son of Man before this occurrence at Cæsarea Philippi, then the expression cannot originally have meant "the Messiah," either on his lips or in the opinion of his hearers. In short, we must be content to confess our ignorance. We can be sure only of this: that Jesus never claimed the title as a personal right, but simply used it to indicate the nature of his work and his function in the world. Another point of still greater interest is the question, how long and in what sense Jesus had felt that he was called to be the Messiah? We must bear in mind that if on this occasion he accepted a title that had never before been claimed by him, or offered to him, he did so simply because it really corresponded better than any other title to his personal consciousness of the nature of his mission. His own inmost convictions emphatically forbade him to reject the title. Let no one think that he acquiesced out of complaisance to a Jewish error or a prejudice of the Apostles. Such weak compliance would have. been impossible to him, and, moreover, in this case would have been the very height of folly. Then, how are we to reconcile the beginning with the end of his career; the task of the king with that of the herald of the kingdom of God? 1 Daniel vii. 13, 14; compare verses 18, 22, 27; Psalm 1xxx. 17; and vol. ii. chap. xxii. p. 555. Matthew x. 23, xxiv. 27 (Luke xvii. 24), 30 (Mark xiii. 26; Luke xxi. 27). 4 Matthew xxvi. 64 (Mark xiv. 62; Luke xxii. 69); compare xix. 28, xxv 31; and Acts vii. 56; Revelation i. 13, xiv. 14. Had he known that he was the Messiah from the beginning of his public life, and had he hitherto concealed this knowledge? Or had his own views changed in this respect, and had he only lately assumed in his own mind the task and name of Messiah instead of those of precursor? Most people adopt the former supposition, and believe that at his baptism, as the Gospels declare, or between that event and the imprisonment of John, he became conscious that he was the Messiah. But we have adopted the other alternative, and have assumed its truth in our treatment of the narratives already dealt with. To us it appears in the highest degree unnatural that Jesus should have begun his ministry with a secret reservation, should have kept his true mission long concealed, and in a certain sense given himself out for something other than what he really believed himself to be. The natural inference always is that an honest man thinks he is what he says he is. Moreover, the Messiahship was not a right or dignity like that of the pretender to a crown — which Jesus at a definite moment felt to be his due. It was a lifetask, and to take it up required a stern resolve. When first the thought rose in his heart, and his sense of duty more and more clearly pointed him to the task, he must in the nature of things have paused for a time in uncertainty. A sublime act of faith was needed like that by which John stood up to do Elijah's work, but loftier and mightier. As John had determined to hasten the coming of God's kingdom, so Jesus resolved to do neither more nor less than bring it to earth himself! It is true that the period within which this important change in his conception of his task took place must have been very limited; but intensity and concentration of life may make one year equivalent to many. We should hardly expect a man like Jesus to begin with the very highest and hardest task before he had even tried his strength. He too, like every one else, must first express himself in word and deed, and set himself with all his powers and all his gifts to work, before he could possibly come to the full consciousness of his own nature and his own powers. Again, when first he began to teach, he had promised himself and the world that the kingdom would be shortly founded by a glorious act of God, and it needed experience to teach him that, unless he girded himself to new and intenser effort, that kingdom would not come as yet. He was disappointed in his nation and its leaders. Like all great reformers, he had expected the speedy realization of his ideal without having formed any |