concern and God's, but the sins of Israel are Israel's own; against them the righteous in Israel may execute judgement.

It would be an affectation to suggest that this subject does not raise questions of the greatest practical importance for the present age; no one is justified in evading the issues presented. The teaching of Jesus represents a non-resistant attitude which has come to be described as "pacifist," and the world has just passed through a crisis which has proved that "pacifism" and "non-resistance" are impossible policies. What does this mean for those who profess and call themselves Christians? It cannot mean that they ought to adopt a non-resistant policy either in personal or in national affairs, for experience (which has, after all, some merit) seems to prove that the policy of not resisting evil leads to its triumph rather than its defeat. But this fact gives no justification for explaining away or watering down the plain and intelligible teaching of Jesus.[20] It was his teaching; it may have been right and wise for his immediate hearers; but it is not wise or right as the general basis of conduct, whether personal or national. If Jesus intended to lay down a general principle of conduct we have to admit that he was wrong, or adopt the pacifist position. There is nothing in the context to suggest that he thought of a limited application of his words, nor in the days of persecution which followed did Christians so interpret him. If, therefore, he was wrong it is necessary to ask how we can explain the error.

The answer seems to lie in a comparison of the attitude adopted by the Jews of the first century on the one hand, and by ourselves on the other, as to the working of God in the world. The Jew believed not merely in an omnipotent God, but in a God who constantly used his power quite independently of the action of men. We, on the contrary, believe that the universe is so constituted that human action bears a fixed relation to the course of events. What men do or do not bears a definite relation to the events which will follow, and we no longer look for God to help those who are unwilling to help themselves. One of the means which we possess of helping ourselves is force, physical force. We have the power to use it for good or for evil. It is as culpable not to use force when occasion requires as it is to use it when occasion does not.

This is tolerably plain to us, but it was not tolerably plain to the Jew of the first century. The war has brought out the human limitations of the ethics of Jesus by the intellectual horizon of his own time as clearly as the application of literary criticism to the Old Testament brought out the defects of his knowledge of the authorship of the Jewish scriptures. Just as it was wrong and futile to pretend that when he said "David said" and quoted a psalm, he did not mean to ascribe it to David, it is futile to argue that when he said "resist not evil" and "love your enemies" he sanctioned the patriotic pursuit of war.

[1] The best example of this method of "restatement" is probably Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride, which discusses the Egyptian myth and the various explanations given of it in accommodation to philosophic truth. Heathenism did not long survive this kind of help; nor is it surprising that it did not.

[2] See Prolegomena to Acts, i. 199-216.

[3] Ritschlianism is perhaps an exception: it did at least attempt a synthesis with science approached through Kantian philosophy. But was it successful?

[4] No one has seen this more clearly, or expressed it more vividly, than the late George Tyrrell, especially in his A Much Abused Letter and Christianity at the Cross-roads.

[5] Josephus, Antiq. xviii. 1. 1 and 6. See also Prolegomena to Acts, i. 421 ff.

[6] This literature is now available as a whole in R. H. Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha.

[7] The suggestion has even been made that some of the polemic in the gospels, which is—as the text stands—directed against the Pharisees and Rabbis, was historically intended for the Sadducees. It was too important to be lost, and, as those who were originally attacked had ceased to be important, it was turned against the only Jewish party which still survived to oppose Christianity at the time when the gospels were written. See also p. 32.

[8] This is a free rendering, somewhat paraphrased to bring out the meaning, of the account of the martyrdom of Akiba under Tinnius (Turnus) Rufus in the Jerusalem Talmud (Berakh. ix. 7). See Prolegomena to Acts, I. 62.

[9] J. Klausner's Die messianische Vorstellungen des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter der Tannaiten is probably the clearest statement of the facts.

[10] The fourth book of Ezra is in many ways the finest of all Apocalypses, and the English authorised version (in which it is called 2 Esdras) is a magnificent piece of English, needing, however, occasional elucidation and correction by the critical editions of G. H. Box, The Ezra Apocalypse, and of B. Violet, in the edition of the Greek Christian writers of the first three centuries published by the Berlin Academy.

[11] J. Weiss, Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes. The first edition of this book is smaller and better than the second.

[12] The Quest of the Historic Jesus.