Page:Philochristus, Abbott, 1878.djvu/190

182 Others asked what Jesus meant by dividing them that were "born of women" from them that are in the Kingdom of Heaven; and whether the former meant the living and the latter meant the dead. Now I understood (for Nathaniel had instructed me) that Jesus put a difference between them which are born of flesh and blood, and them which are born of the Spirit; wherefore I partly perceived the meaning of his saying, namely, that the kingdom of the Law and of the Prophets now had an end, and that the Kingdom of the Spirit of God was at hand; and that the greatest in the former kingdom was less than the least in the latter. Likewise I understood Jesus to say that the sending of this message and the moving of Jesus to take up the arms of the flesh, argued in John a certain nature of flesh; as if he thereby shewed himself to be born not of the New Kingdom, but of the Old Kingdom of flesh and blood, albeit the greatest therein. Yet for alt this, that such an one as Jesus of Nazareth, whose gentleness and meekness (albeit mixed at all times with a certain royal carriage and demeanor) for the most part exceeded the meekness of a little child, should notwithstanding seem to rate so low the greatest of all the prophets of Israel, and exalt so high the meanest of all the citizens in the Kingdom that was to come (which also seemed perforce to include a certain magnifying of himself as being chief in that Kingdom); this, I say, for all my poising and pondering, still perplexed and distracted my mind, as a thing new and strange, and (I had almost said) monstrous to human reason.

I desired to question Nathaniel the son of Zebedee concerning these things; but I could not. For having noted the face of one of my mother's household in the congregation, and fearing lest he might have some message touching my mother's health, I hasted to seek the man