ad great influence over these
unhappy beings. Circumstances seem to indicate that he became a
thaumaturgist late in life and against his own inclinations. He accepted
miracles exacted by public opinion rather than performed them.

_THE NEW KINGDOM OF GOD_

During the eighteen months between the return from the Passover of the
year 31 and his journey to the feast of tabernacles in the year 32, all
that was within Jesus developed with an ever-increasing degree of power
and audacity. The fundamental idea of Jesus from his earliest days was
the establishment of the Kingdom of God. This kingdom he appears to have
understood in divers senses. At times it is the literal consummation of
apocalyptic visions relating to the Messiah. At other times it is the
spiritual kingdom, and the deliverance at hand is the deliverance of the
soul. The revolution desired by Jesus in this last sense is the one
which has really taken place. That the coming of the end of the world
and the appearance of the Messiah in judgment was taken literally by the
disciples, and at certain moments by the Master himself, appears
absolutely clear. These formal declarations absorbed the minds of the
Christian family for nearly seventy years. The world has not ended, as
Jesus announced, and as his disciples believed it would end. But it has
been renewed and in one sense renewed as Jesus desired. By the side of
the false, cold, impossible idea of an ostentatious advent, he conceived
the real City of God, the raising up of the weak, the love of the
people, esteem for the poor, and the restoration of all that is humble
and true and simple. This restoration he has depicted, as an
incomparable artist, in touches which will last for eternity. His
Kingdom of God was doubtless the apocalypse which was soon to be
unfolded in the heavens. But besides this, and probably above all, was
the soul's kingdom, founded on freedom, and on the feeling of sonship
which the good man knows in his rest on the bosom of his Father. This is
what was destined to live. This is what has lived.

_THE CLASH OF OLD AND NEW_

Throughout the first epoch of his career, it seems as though Jesus met
with no serious opposition; but when he entered upon a path brilliant
with public successes the first mutterings of the storm began to make
themselves heard. He recognised only the religion of the heart, while
the religion of the Pharisees almost exclusively consisted of
observances. As his m