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Rh his ideas seem to have been vague, and he appears to have had no certain knowledge that Jesus was the Messiah, though he had baptized him and received the heavenly sign of which they had been forewarned.

"One truth which he announced bears evident marks of supernatural origin — since it contradicted the conceptions and prejudices of the age — that the Messiah and his kingdom were not to be national, not belonging of right and exclusion to the posterity of Abraham alone. There is a maxim, as common as the very letters of the alphabet, in the writings of the rabbis, that 'There is a part for all Israel in the world to come,' that is, in the kingdom of Messiah, merely by virtue of their descent from Abraham. That it was to be a kingdom selected from Israel and other nations, a new community by no means coextensive with the seed of Abraham, they had not the slightest idea. That it was to be a moral and a spiritual kingdom was as far from their conceptions. 'Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. Bring forth, therefore, fruits worthy of repentance. And say not, we have Abraham for our father, for God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham.' Think not that you are to belong to the kingdom of God merely because you are descended from Abraham. God is able to raise up* children to Abraham from a source now as improbable to you as the stones beneath your feet, from among the Gentiles even, whom you are accustomed to call dogs, and count as the offscouring of the earth. A discrimination is