Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/378

366 approach; in the synagogue at Nazareth he declared the glowing promises of Isaiah fulfilled in the ears of his hearers; unbelieving and hostile professional religious teachers were told that there was no longer need of straining after a glimpse of a distant glory, for the kingdom was among them; his followers are congratulated on seeing that for which their ancestors had longed, but had not seen; the kingdom in the person of its members is already the good seed in the field, that is the world, some of these members having had to struggle mightily in order to gain their entrance; and the word of the kingdom is described as having different results in the hearts of different men. The natural force of some of these passages may be evaded, but it is impossible in the light of them all and of other sayings of Jesus to believe that he occupied an exclusively eschatological point of view. Only on one or the other of two alternatives can the opposite opinion be supported: Either Jesus saw the impossibility of early plans for social or political revolution and looked to a heavenly Messianic kingdom, or such passages as are not clearly eschatological are to be rejected as the mistaken reports and interpretations of the gospel history. So far as the last possibility is concerned the contrary is quite as likely; while in regard to the first suggestion, it may be urged that an unbiased chronology and exegesis fail to disclose any such change on the part of Jesus. And finally, the apparent contradiction, or at least variation in the presentation of the kingdom, as invisible and yet seen, as future and yet present, may be naturally explained as indicating first, that Jesus thought of the kingdom as a concrete reality rather than an idea, and second, that this reality was not to be left as an unattainable ideal, but was to be progressively realized, perhaps evolved.

The question, however, yet remains. If we are thus led to reject as incomplete such interpretations of this term of Jesus as would restrict it to politics, or character, or heaven, can we hope to discover an approximate definition which shall combine the