when men
come to own God as their Father, and seek to do his will for the love
they bear him. It shows development towards its full manifestation when
men as children of God look on each other as brothers, and govern conduct
by love which will no more limit itself to friends than God shuts off his
sunlight from sinners. From this love to God and men it will grow into a
new order of things in which God's will shall be done as it is in heaven,
even as from the little leaven the whole lump is leavened. Jesus did not
set aside the idea of a judgment, but while his fellows commonly made it
the inauguration, he made it the consummation of the kingdom; they thought
of it as the day of confusion for apostates and Gentiles, he taught that
it would be the day of condemnation of all unbrotherliness (Matt. xxv.
31-46). This central idea--a new order of life in which men have come to
love and obey God as their Father, and to love and live for men as their
brothers--attaches to itself naturally all the various phases of the
teaching of Jesus, including his emphasis on himself; for he made that
emphasis in order that, as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, he might lead
men unto the Father.

III

Jesus' Knowledge of Truth

242. The note of authority in the teaching of Jesus is evidence of his own
clear knowledge of the things of which he spoke. As if by swift intuition,
his mind penetrated to the heart of things. In the scriptures he saw the
underlying truth which should stand till heaven and earth shall pass
(Matt. v. 18); in the ceremonies of his people's religion he saw so
clearly the spiritual significance that he did not hesitate to sacrifice
the passing form (Mark vii. 14-23); such a theological development as the
pharisaic doctrine of the resurrection he unhesitatingly adopted because
he saw that it was based on the ultimate significance of the soul's
fellowship with God (Mark xiii. 24-27); he reduced religion and ethics to
simplicity by summing up all commandments in one,--Thou shalt love (Matt.
xxii. 37-40); and at the same time insisted as no other prophet had done
on the finality of conduct and the necessity of obedience (Matt. vii.
21-27). His penetration to the heart of an idea was nowhere more clear
than in his doctrine of the kingdom of God as realized in the filial soul,
and as involving a judgment which should take cognizance only of
brotherliness of conduct. It would not be difficult to show that all these