e take it by force." John had been the
greatest of the prophets; with him a new swift movement had begun; but
something far greater was coming; even the least in the new age would have
an advantage over John (Matt. 11:11-19).

The popular conception expected the new age to come by divine miraculous
interference simply. The Messiah would descend from heaven with angelic
legions, expel the Romans, judge the nation, punish the apostate Jews, and
then the new Jerusalem, which was already complete and waiting in heaven,
would descend from above. That was the Utopia of Jewish apocalypticism.
Jesus never eliminated the direct acts of God and the significance of
divine catastrophes from his outlook. But in his parables taken from
biological processes (see especially Matthew 13) he developed a conception
of continuous and quiet growth, culminating at last in the judgment act of
God. The Kingdom of God, he said, is like a farmer who sows his grain and
lets the forces of nature work; he goes about his daily tasks, and all the
time the tiny blades come up, the ear forms and gets heavy, and then comes
the harvest (Mark 4:26-29). Jesus was working his way toward evolutionary
conceptions. They were so new to his followers that he put them in parable
form to avoid antagonism.

Such a conception of the Kingdom brought it closer to human action. It was
already at work; it was in one sense already present (Luke 17:20-21). It
was possible then to help it along.

The most obvious duty was for every man to clean up his own backyard and
repent of his sins. Every one should approximate the life of the Kingdom
by living now as he would expect to live then. But, as we have seen from
his sayings, Jesus went far beyond this. He demanded an elevation of the
accepted ethical standards. It was not simply a matter of erring and
lagging individuals, but of the socialized norms of conduct. He had deep
reverence and loyalty for the religion of his nation, and never told his
followers to break with it. But he asserted boldly that the customary
ethics of Judaism, based on the Decalogue and its interpretation by the
Jewish theologians, was not good enough. It was good as far as it went,
and he had no destructive criticism of it, but it needed to be "fulfilled"
and to have its lines prolonged.

We have studied the six sample instances which he offered in order to
explain his principle of moral and social progress. In each case he
accepts the law as it sto