Page:Quest of the Historical Jesus (1911).djvu/254

 in early Christianity, does not give the ricrht clue for the interpretation of the character of Jesus as a whole. His joy in the world was real; a genuine outcome of His new type of piety. It prevented the eudaemonistic eschatological idea of reward, which some think they find in Jesus' preaching, from ever really becoming an element in it.

Jesus is best understood by contrasting Him with the Baptist. John was a preacher of repentance whose eyes were fixed upon the future. Jesus did not allow the thought of the nearness of the end to rob Him of His simplicity and spontaneity, and was not crippled by the reflection that everything was transitory, preparatory, a mere means to an end. His preaching of repentance was not gloomy and forbidding; it was the proclamation of a new righteousness, of which the watchword was, "Ye shall be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect." He desires to communicate this personal piety by personal influence. In contrast with the Baptist He never aims at influencing masses of men, but rather avoids it. His work was accomplished mainly among little groups and individuals. He left the task of carrying the Gospel far and wide as a legacy to the community of His followers. The mission of the Twelve, conceived as a mission for the rapid and widespread extension of the Gospel, is not to be used to explain Jesus' methods of teaching; the narrative of it rests on an "obscure and unintelligible tradition."

This genuine joy in life was not unnoticed by the contemporaries of Jesus who contrasted Him as "a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber," with the Baptist. They were vaguely conscious that the whole life of Jesus was "sustained by the feeling of an absolute antithesis between Himself and His times." He lived not in anxious expectation, but in cheerful gladness, because by the native strength of His piety He had brought present and future into one. Free from all extravagant Jewish delusions about the future, He was not paralysed by the conditions which must be fulfilled to make this future present. He has a peculiar conviction of its coming which gives Him courage to "marry" the present ^ith the future. The present as contrasted with the beyond is for Him "o mere shadow, but truth and reality; life is not for Him a mere illusion, but is charged with a real and valuable meaning. His own time ^ the Messianic time, as His answer to the Baptist's question shows. And it is among the most certain things in the Gospel that Jesus in His earthly life acknowledged Himself as Messiah both to His disciples tod to the High-Priest, and made His entry into Jerusalem as such."

He can, therefore, fully recognise the worth of the present. It is not true that He taught that this world's goods were in themselves bad-what He said was only that they must not be put first.