Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SECTION II THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN INTRODUCTION The general theme of the preaching of Jesus was the reign of God, or the kingdom of Heaven. The greater part of the parables bear either on the coming of this kingdom or on the way of making ready for it. In the Lord's Prayer, Christ makes His disciples say, " Thy Kingdom come!" All His teaching is given to prepare for the kingdom. However, as the gospel nowhere contains any express definition of its nature, there is room for discussion on the actual object of the conception, and discussion still continues. Before Jesus, the idea of the reign of God is above all concerned with the end of the world, and the system that is to take the place of the actual and imperfect order. Daniel, and the authors ofprophecies and visions, see in it the great manifestation of Divine power, which is to inaugurate the eternal happiness of the Saints on a regenerated earth, a happiness over which God will rule in the New Jerusalem. Various elements go to make up this conception: cosmology and a transposition of cosmogony, in that the renewal is brought about by the destruction of the present world; national sentiment, which associates the cosmic renovation and general judgment with the restoration of Israel; and religious sentiment of the Divine justice, which rewards the good and punishes the wicked. In the gospel, the national element has disappeared, the nationality of Israelite being no longer in itself a title to the kingdom ; the eschatological element no longer fills the view, and the religious and moral element comes into the foreground. But the relation between these last two elements, which seem co-ordinated, is a point much debated. Several critics maintain that the thought of Jesus was entirely dominated by apocalyptic conceptions of the... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.