unto," in his parables. If the evidence has been correctly interpreted, this striking fact adds yet another to the many indications that by this discourse Jesus intended once for all to define his conceptions of the kingdom of God.

7. That these parables have an unusual content, and that on this occasion the parabolic method was employed with a purpose different from that in the mind of Jesus elsewhere in his employment of parables, are both indicated by the fact that nowhere else does Jesus speak of the parabolic method as intended as a safeguard for his cause. Elsewhere the parables do not deal with such fundamental concepts as the Messiah and the kingdom of God.

8. That the truth in these parables is of a very different nature from that contained in the other parables of Jesus seems evidenced further by the fact that these are the only ones of which the interpretation is so far from obvious to the disciples that they make the special request that Jesus tell them what he intended to teach by these parables.

In view of all these considerations, it seems necessary to conclude that these parables from Jesus: (1) contain substantially the whole of his revelatory message about the future of the kingdom of God; and, (2) may not be so interpreted as to find in them nothing other than current notions of the kingdom of God, but must be expected to yield thoughts about the kingdom in opposition to those held by the contemporaries of Jesus. It would surely have been gratuitous to devote a definitive discourse to a subject on which one had nothing to say other than what was commonly known and generally held.

When the personal estimate of Jesus as to the place and significance of these parables in his teaching about the kingdom of God is seen with clearness and conviction, their exposition remains no longer in doubt and demands neither interpretative skill and ingenuity nor extended statement. In the course of an examination of that explication of two of them which is reputed to have been given by Jesus himself, it was necessary, as a part of the argument, to state what is believed to be the truth intended to be conveyed by the parable of the Wheat and Tares and that of the Drag-net. This may be found fully stated, therefore, in chap. v, §6. In brief, these

See pp. 200-2.

parables seem to teach that, contrary to the expectation and teaching of John the Baptist, the kingdom is not to be constituted in the near future by the separation of the unrighteous from the righteous and the forming of the latter into a holy community. There is to be no catastrophic interference with the normal relationships of good and bad men. Both must remain together "until the harvest." And "the time of the harvest" is in no degree defined by these parables, except that the thought of it as lying in the near future is excluded by their very purpose, namely, to be corrective to the conceptions of John the Baptist and his contemporaries.

No doubt "the harvest" will come "when the fruit is ripe." That is a natural inference, and it is this inference which is expressed after the parable of the slowly growing grain: "But when the fruit is ripe, straightway he putteth forth the sickle, because the harvest is come." But who will venture to predict when the fruit of the history of mankind is to be fully ripe? Jesus himself apparently does not endeavor to be precise about it. He seems satisfied to sketch the future in broad lines, to assert his belief that history has a long course yet to run, to oppose in the most general yet most positive way the belief that the kingdom of God is to be an affair of the near future. These things he does very clearly and effectively in

DOCUMENT MK §22

So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed upon the earth; and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should spring up and grow, he knoweth not how. The earth beareth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.

That it was the primary and dominant concern of Jesus in this parable discourse to correct what he deemed mistaken notions about the future of the kingdom is made more convincingly evident by his return to this single theme in each new parable. There is expressed no truth essentially different from that in the parable of the Growing Grain when Jesus passes to that of the Mustard Seed:

DOCUMENT MK §23 = DOCUMENT P§37 A

How shall we liken the kingdom of God? or in what parable shall we set it forth? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown upon the earth, though it be less than all the seeds that are upon the earth, yet when it is sown, groweth up, and becometh greater than all the herbs, and putteth out great branches; so that the birds of the heaven can lodge under the shadow thereof.

The thought of growth, development, enlargement, extension, the working-out of a process as opposed to the sudden realization of an event, is prominent here as in that of the Growing Grain. To this

I Document MK §22.

thought there is added here more clearly the consciousness that the kingdom is destined to have a future suggested in no adequate degree by its mean and unpromising condition in its initial form as represented in the present small and despised society of Jesus. The revelatory truth consists primarily in the veiled declaration that the kingdom has an unimpressive rather than a glorious inauguration-"less than all the seeds."

Not fundamentally different, though with another emphasis, is the central thought in the parable of the Leaven, which follows upon that of the Mustard Seed in

DOCUMENT P $37B

Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of God? It is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till it was all leavened.

There is here the thought of a slow, unfolding, enlarging process, which must be allowed to take its own normal course, and cannot be hastened by desire or expectation. The kingdom of God is not an imposed social condition effected by the powerful interposition of God or his Christ, but is an interposed force with potent permeative energy, which must work slowly but surely in the structure of society, good and bad together, "till it is all leavened."

Not all of the contemporaries of John the Baptist, even of those who looked most longingly for "the consolation of Israel," "the redemption of Jerusalem," had sympathy with the drastic form of programme announced by John. There were those who hoped that the rise of some prophet like unto the prophets of old, who should speak a powerful message of righteousness to the nation, would result in such a turning of the nation to righteousness that it would be fitly prepared for the coming of the Messiah. It was their hope and expectation that there would be a national repentance and a national remission of sins and a doing of that which was pleasing to Jehovah. It was the aim of the more earnest to usher in such a state, if it were only for a day. This they thought could be accomplished by some powerful prophetic message. Jesus was not misled by such dreams of a national repentance and a national turning about as initial to the coming of the kingdom. He recognized that no teaching, however perfect and powerful, would establish the kingdom of God in Israel as a whole, would move mankind in the mass. His own thought as to the best that could be affirmed of any prophetic message seems to be

expressed in the parable of the Sower. To the prophetic method employed for the propagation of the kingdom by Jesus then, and by his disciples in the future, response must not be expected at any time, much less at once, from the whole body of the hearers. Such a form of the coming of the kingdom is not less mistaken, in the view of Jesus, than that held by John the Baptist.

In several of these parables of the future of the kingdom of God, Jesus uses the figure of seed sown upon the earth. In no one of them does he state under figure explicitly the limits of the sowing of the seed, that is, the bounds of the kingdom of God in the future. At one point in his dealing with his opponents, the chief priests and scribes and Pharisees, during Passion Week, Jesus spoke several parables which apparently were intended to modify their conceptions of the limits of the kingdom of God. By the first of these,' he included the publicans and the harlots as eligible. According to the report of gospel MT, the second was intended to teach that the kingdom was to pass into the hands of another nation: "Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." But document MK does not report this saying. The verse forms an interruption to the natural course of even the Matthaean record. Document MK 12:12 represents the scribes and the chief priests and the Pharisees as recognizing that the parable was spoken against them, that is, as teaching that henceforth others than themselves were to be privileged with the message of the kingdom, namely, the disciples of Jesus, rather than another nation. In the third parable,5 which, unlike the others, is opened by the phrase," "The kingdom of heaven is likened unto," the broadcast invitation to the marriage feast might be interpreted to forecast the opening of the kingdom to 1 Document M 822.

2 Document MK 12:1-11.

3 Matt. 21:43.

4 On the source of the verse, gospel MT 21:43, see pp. 88-92.

5 Document M 823 = document P §43E.

6 But this phrase is wholly absent from the docurrent P report of this parable, and in the document M record is probably to be explained on grounds set forth in a study of this parable formula on pp. 200-2, that is, because of the contiguity in document M of the original parables of the kingdom.

others than the Jews; but this is not an inevitable inference, for the reference may be simply to the extension of privilege to the outcast classes of Jewish society. To hold that no one of these three parables has any outlook beyond the Jewish people is certainly to keep their meaning well within the very narrowest of possible interpretations.

That it may have been the intention of Jesus to suggest through one or more of these parables the extension of the kingdom of God beyond his own people has the indirect support of one apparently very explicit statement of a positive kind which is recorded by

DOCUMENT P $40

And they shall come from the east and west, and from the north and south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God.

While it is to be held with conviction that none of the parables of "the mystery of the kingdom of God" explicitly defines the limits of that kingdom, it is at the same time to be recognized that the future of the kingdom portrayed by them, especially by the parable of the Mustard Seed and by that of the Leaven, implies perhaps that the limits of the kingdom were to be set somewhat beyond that people to whom the message of the kingdom was brought by Jesus.

It is not surprising that in this hour of outlook, this hour of inspiration and sweep of vision beyond the present, there should be borne in upon Jesus the sense of the immeasurable importance to the individual of his own participation in the privileges of the kingdom. It is to this feeling apparently that Jesus gives free and strong expression in the other parables spoken, as it seems, on this occasion, and reported by

DOCUMENT M §§16, 17

The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hidden in the field; which a man found, and hid; and in his joy he goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a merchant seeking goodly pearls: and having found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it.

$6. THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

There has been brought under review in one or another of the preceding sections of the present chapter every reference in the Synoptic Gospels to the future of the kingdom of God, except three brief sayings on the coming of the kingdom. These constitute the material for examination in this concluding section on the kingdom of God.