him a fascination
from which no one in the midst of these kindly and simple populations
could escape.

[Footnote 1: The word "heaven" in the rabbinical language of that time
is synonymous with the name of "God," which they avoided pronouncing.
Compare Matt. xxi. 25; Luke xv. 18, xx. 4.]

[Footnote 2: This expression occurs on each page of the synoptical
Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and St. Paul. If it only appears
once in John (iii. 3, 5), it is because the discourses related in the
fourth Gospel are far from representing the true words of Jesus.]

[Footnote 3: Dan. ii. 44, vii. 13, 14, 22, 27.]

[Footnote 4: Mishnah, _Berakoth_, ii. 1, 3; Talmud of Jerusalem,
_Berakoth_, ii. 2; _Kiddushin_, i. 2; Talm. of Bab., _Berakoth_, 15
_a_; _Mekilta_, 42 _b_; _Siphra_, 170 _b_. The expression appears
often in the _Medrashim_.]

[Footnote 5: Matt. vi. 33, xii. 28, xix. 12; Mark xii. 34; Luke xii.
31.]

[Footnote 6: Luke xvii. 20, 21.]

[Footnote 7: The grand theory of the revelation of the Son of Man is
in fact reserved, in the synoptics, for the chapters which precede the
narrative of the Passion. The first discourses, especially in Matthew,
are entirely moral.]

[Footnote 8: Matt. xiii. 54 and following; Mark vi. 2 and following;
John v. 43.]

[Footnote 9: The tradition of the plainness of Jesus (Justin, _Dial.
cum Tryph._, 85, 88, 100) springs from a desire to see realized in him
a pretended Messianic trait (Isa. liii. 2).]

Paradise would, in fact, have been brought to earth if the ideas of
the young Master had not far transcended the level of ordinary
goodness beyond which it has not been found possible to raise the
human race. The brotherhood of men, as sons of God, and the moral
consequences which result therefrom, were deduced with exquisite
feeling. Like all the rabbis of the time, Jesus was little inclined
toward consecutive reasonings, and clothed his doctrine in concise
aphorisms, and in an expressive form, at times enigmatical and
strange.[1] Some of these maxims come from the books of the Old
Testament. Others were the thoughts of more modern sages, especially
those of Antigonus of Soco, Jesus, son of Sirach, and Hillel, which
had reached him, not from learned study, but as oft-repeated proverbs.
The synagogue was rich in very happily expressed sentences, which
formed a kind of current proverbial literature.[2] Jesus adopted
almost all this oral teaching, but imbued it with a superior
spirit.[3]