IV.

exponent. And according to these later apostolic records, CHAP. the coming of Christ is not a visible or personal, but a spiritual coming to the soul of man.

When the doctrine of the Divine sonship shall go forth from Jerusalem as the Word of God; when the spiritual law which proceeded from the servant of God shall 'rest for a light of the people,' as the Divine Spirit rested upon the servant of God; when the people in whose heart is the law of God1 shall rally under the banner of the Lord our righteousness,' and 'God with us,' then the bridegroom shall have come, and the wise virgins shall follow Him to the marriage.

3

When the messenger of the covenant, whom Israel has desired of old; when the terrestrial Messiah, the Messianic reaper, shall have led the Immanuel-Israel of all tongues and nations to the land of promise, under the way-preparing leadership of the breaker,' at that time Jehovah will come to His temple, that is to the heart of man, to the tabernacle of the soul.2 There He will meet with man, and will commune with him from above the mercy-seat. The new Israel will then be called to a royal priesthood, and every citizen of the city of the great King' shall offer up on the altar of his own sanctuary holiness to the Lord.'4 And since in the unity of the Spirit the Son and the Father are at One, the coming of Jehovah to His temple is also the coming of Christ. Both will make their abode in the hearts of those who look for Him,' and who will see Him with the eye of faith. For the Christ of the latter days will be the indwelling Saviour.

This invisible manifestation of the Divine Spirit in man may be accompanied by one or more visible apparitions of the risen Christ. But of such we know nothing certain ; for we have shown that on this subject even the Apostles were allowed to form erroneous ideas, which were the

1 Is. li. 1-7.

3 Comp. Ex. xxv. 22.

2 Mal. iv. 1.

4 Ex. xxviii. 36 f.

VOL. I.

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IV.

necessary consequence of their misunderstanding the Messianic prophecies. Not distinguishing between those

which refer to the Messianic sower and those which refer to the Messianic reaper, the Jews, as a nation, have been prevented from recognising Jesus as the heavenly Messiah ; and the Christians, ever since the earliest times, have been led to expect a visible reign on earth of Jesus the Son of God, as the promised terrestrial Messiah.

The author hopes in all humility and in deference to more light which may be granted on this important subject, that the new solution offered in the chapter on chronology with regard to the mystery of the seventy weeks, the seven thousand years, and the millennium, may tend, in conjunction with the view here delineated about the Hidden Wisdom of Christ, to a fuller knowledge and a more universal acknowledgment of the truth as it is in Jesus,' who has said, where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them,' and who has promised to be with His Church alway, even unto the end of the world.'1

1 Mat. xviii. 20; xxviii. 20.

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CHAPTER V.

THE GOSPEL REVEALED TO PAUL.

INTRODUCTION-THE HIDDEN WISDOM-THE 'OTHER GOSPEL-PAUL AND

'Stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began.'-Rom. xvi. 25.

CHAP.

tion.

V.

In all ages the Divine Spirit proceeding from the eternal Creator had been poured on all flesh. The purpose of these Divine incarnations, to raise sons of God among Introducsons of men, had been but imperfectly attained, in consequence of the liberty granted to the creature, either to obey or to disobey the indwelling Spirit of Him who created man to the image of His Maker. The Spirit of God, which before the creation of man moved above the waters that covered the earth, had come down from heaven and had been breathed into the nostrils of the first Adam, thus enduing him with a living soul, with the germ of immortality. By making the wrong use of his liberty, by resisting the Divine Spirit, man fell from his first estate. To redeem sinful man, to restore him to the image of God, this was the mission of the Spirit of holiness. Nothing but obedience, or truth in the inward parts, was required from the sons of men. In all ages some of them were moved by the Spirit from above, and by this Divine operation, human will permitting, that

V.

Gamaliel.

is, by the combined effect of God's grace and man's obedience, they were initiated in the Divine sonship. Thus obedience led to righteousness by the grace of God. The righteous were perfected, their souls kept alive and accepted as a propitiation for sin, as a well-pleasing sacrifice. But although God had perfected sinful man, yet the perfect incarnation of the Holy Spirit, the image of God's glory, the man after God's aboriginal idea and pattern, the ideal man, must be sinless.

Such perfect obedience, such entire union between the finite and the infinite, was reserved for the fulness of time. The Son of Man was born; He lived the life of the Son of God and died the atoning death of the righteous. Yet even His chosen disciples understood Him not; whilst the chosen nation looked only for a Messiah who should set up the promised terrestrial kingdom in Zion. Suddenly a leading persecutor of those who called themselves Nazarenes, and who by the Gentiles were later called Christians, was miraculously led to the conviction that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, the Son of God. This man was Saul, later called Paul, of Tarsus in Cilicia.

Paul's father, a Pharisee,1 having destined him to become a Rabbi, his master in the Jewish capital, the famous Gamaliel, made him a member of the sect of the Pharisees. We have seen that in the Rabbinical schools of Palestine the interpretation of the law, in accordance with the principles of that gnostic reform of the Jews which originated in Babylon, had gradually supplanted, before the beginning of the Christian era, the original religion of the Jews. Among the learned Rabbinical schools of the Pharisees the most eminent were the rival schools of Hillel and Shammai. How great the antagonism between them was may be gathered from the fact that, according to the teaching of Hillel, God created first the earth and then the heavens; and, according to

V.

Shammai, first the heavens and then the earth. The latter CHAP. view was in harmony with the Aryan traditions with which the Jews had come into contact in Babylon, and also with the text of Genesis as sanctioned by Ezra. Hillel's doctrine must be regarded as an earlier development of Jewish tradition, under the influence of Egyptian theology and cosmogony, according to which the earth formed in all eternity the centre, and also the aboriginal germ of the universe.

6

Hillel, the Babylonian,' who lived in the beginning of Herod's reign, was father of Simeon ben Jochaï, or ben Zachaï, literally 'glory of science, or gnosis.' And again, Simeon was the father of Gamaliel, the teacher of Paul. These three men, Hillel, Simeon, and Gamaliel, as well as his successor Akiba, have been at all times regarded as the chief authorities for the interpretation of the law, in accordance with the traditional principles of gnostic reform. They were the most renowned among the 'tanaïms' or 'teachers of tradition.' Of Gamaliel we are informed in the Acts, that he was had in reputation of all the people;' and we know that he was one of the seven who alone among the learned doctors of the Jews have been honoured with the title of Rabban' or 'Rabboni.' It is not improbable that Simeon, his father, was the same just and devout' man to whom the Holy Ghost revealed that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.' If so, the Song of Simeon recorded in Luke may be regarded as an epitome of the Messianic expectations as taught in the school in which Paul was brought up. And it is by no means impossible that the very Gamaliel, at whose feet the young Paul had sat about the year 14 A.C., was among the number of those doctors in the temple in the midst of whom Jesus sat, both hearing them and asking them questions.'

6

2

Since Onkelos, the earliest known Chaldee paraphraser of the Pentateuch, is reported to have been likewise a 2 Comp. 'The Gospel after Luke.'

1 v. 34.