Skizzen u. Vorarbeiten)
I. Heft. 1884.

Baldensperger. Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu im Licht der Messianischen
Hoffnungen seiner Zeit, 1888, (2 Aufl. 1891). The prize essays of
Schmoller and Issel, Ueber die Lehre vom Reiche Gottes im N. Test. 1891
(besides Gunkel in d. Theol. Lit. Ztg. 1893. N deg.. 2).

Wendt. Die Lehre Jesu. (The teaching of Jesus. T. and T. Clark. English
translation.)

Joh. Weiss. Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes, 1892.

Bousset. Jesu Predigt in ihrem Gegensatz zum Judenthum, 1892.

C. Holtzman. Die Offenbarung durch Christus und das Neue Testament
(Zeitschr. f. Theol. und Kirche I. p. 367 ff.) The special literature in
the above work of Weiss, and in the recent works on the life of Jesus,
and the Biblical Theology of the New Testament by Beyschlag. (T.T.
Clark)

Sec. 3. _The Common Preaching concerning Jesus Christ in the First
Generation of Believers._

Men had met with Jesus Christ and in him had found the Messiah. They
were convinced that God had made him to be wisdom and righteousness,
sanctification and redemption. There was no hope that did not seem to be
certified in him, no lofty idea which had not become in him a living
reality. Everything that one possessed was offered to him. He was
everything lofty that could be imagined. Everything that can be said of
him was already said in the first two generations after his appearance.
Nay, more: he was felt and known to be the ever living one, Lord of the
world and operative principle of one's own life. "To me to live is
Christ and to die is gain;" "He is the way, the truth and the life." One
could now for the first time be certain of the resurrection and eternal
life, and with that certainty the sorrows of the world melted away like
mist before the sun, and the residue of this present time became as a
day. This group of facts which the history of the Gospel discloses in
the world, is at the same time the highest and most unique of all that
we meet in that history; it is its seal and distinguishes it from all
other universal religions. Where in the history of mankind can we find
anything resembling this, that men who had eaten and drunk with their
Master should glorify him, not only as the revealer of God, but as the
Prince of life, as the Redeemer and Judge of the world, as the living
power of its existence, and that a choir of Jews and Gentiles, Greeks
and Barbarians, wise and foolish, should along with them immediately
confess that o