persons they must share the sufferings of the Messiah, before their hopes could be purified and purged of selfishness and selfish patriotism. Suffering, each testified to his fellows, that the servant was not above his master but must help to fill up the deficiencies of the Messianic sufferings.

Long enough He had been with them: now it was expedient for them that He depart. Their faith, to which their presence testified, had grown deeper and stronger. They had been with Him in His temptations, and had been tested and tried therein themselves. Surely they had come to know Him better than the crowds, who only hoped to be healed from bodily infirmities. To none had He avowed Himself to be the Messiah. Devils had recognized Him; and He had bidden them hold their peace. By deed and not by word He revealed Himself to be at once the Saviour and the way of Salvation. Men believe their eyes more than their ears,' as Seneca said. Plato and Aristotle and all the divergent crowd of sages drew more from the manners than from the words of Socrates. Magnos viros non schola Epicuri sed contubernium fecit. But of the disciples of Jesus only Peter knew Him and proclaimed Him as the Messiah. The rest were disillusioned. Even Peter seems to expect that the Recognition will lead to a sudden reversal of fortune--that Jesus will throw away His disguise, will bend the bow of the Son of David and slay the suitors who vex and oppress His Bride. There was indeed a Peripeteia bound up with this Recognition -not such as Peter expected, but one conformable to Aristotle's definition, 'a change by which a train of action produces the opposite of the effect intended.'1

The account which the disciples give of the opinions current among the crowds who still attend Him, or among mankind generally, so far as it has taken cognizance of Jesus, seems to be a summary of an earlier and fuller report submitted to Herod : And Herod the king heard (for the name of him became notorious) and he was saying, 'John Baptist has risen from the dead and there

1

1 Aristotle Poetics xi. The best form of Recognition is coincident with a reversal of fortune. . . . The Recognition of persons combined with a reversal of fortune will produce either pity or fear; and actions producing these effects are those which tragedy represents. (Butcher's translation.) So Peter expostulates with Jesus as if pitying Him, and the disciples follow Him fearing even before the Peripeteia is actually accomplished.

fore the powers are active in him': others said 'It is Elias': others 'A prophet like one of the prophets'. But Herod when he heard was saying, 'John whom I beheaded arose.'1

It may be that the present summary has been added to serve as a foil for Peter's insight. But the rest presumably shared one or other of the popular ideas of Jesus. And perhaps they departed justified rather than Peter. In any case it is in the manner of Jesus to elicit men's opinions and to expose their self-contradictions. He did not always employ the method of teaching indicated by the formula 'It was said to them of old ... but I say to you'. Rather He inclined to use the Socratic method, and therein to reduce men to perplexity, in order that they might be moved to think out afresh their traditional creed. For Socrates

did not come forward with any counter-theories: he declared expressly that he had none to propose and that he was ignorant. He put questions to those who on their side professed to know and he invited answers from them. His mission, as he himself described it, was to scrutinize and expose false pretensions to knowledge. Without such scrutiny he declared life itself to be not worth living. He impugned the common and traditional creed not in the name of any competing doctrine but by putting questions on the familiar terms in which it was confidently enunciated and by making its defenders contradict themselves and feel the shame of their contradictions.2

To this description of the teaching of Socrates it must suffice here to add that he also anticipated death and refused to evade it.

He is John Baptist.

The theory that Jesus was John Baptist is ascribed definitely to Herod by St Mark (Mark vi 16), and St Matthew is content to follow him. St Luke, however, corrects the ascription, which is probably the result of a misunderstanding on the part of some receiver of the tradition. With better knowledge of the original, or perhaps of the character of the Herods, he says, unambiguously, 'Herod the tetrarch . . . was puzzled because it was said by some, "John has been raised . . ." and he said," John I beheaded: who 1 Mark vi 14-16.

2 Grote Plato vol. i pp. 256 f.

things? " ' 1 Other Perhaps they were

is this concerning whom I hear these popular conjectures are irrelevant here. added for the sake of completeness by the narrator. If they were reported to Herod, he took his stand upon facts as he knew them, and passed over, as a Jewish fancy with which he had little sympathy, the possibility of any return from the dead.

Whoever believed that Jesus was John Baptist might be misled by the mystery which hid his fate,2 or take refuge in the thought that Jesus had received a portion of his spirit. In any case the belief indicates a certain narrowness of outlook and a neglect of the facts of past history as they are recorded in scripture.

He is Elias.

Others held that He was Elias. And they at least did not forget the past, which must repeat itself. A Jew untainted by foreign superstition, whose conscience was free from remorse for unjustifiable homicide, might shrink from the thought that a slain man could be raised, before the general resurrection, though all things be possible with God. But to such an one the fact that Elias did not die at all but was translated or removed by God, proved beyond all doubt that in due course he must reappear on earth. The greatest prophet is not exempt from the common lot of death.

This reappearance of Elijah was foretold by Malachi. By the mouth of His messenger God had said:

3

Remember ye the law of Moses my servant... Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord come. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to the fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a ban.'

From the last of the prophets the chief of the Sages, Jesus ben Sira, inherited this tradition and enriched it. In the Hymn of the Fathers he recites the wondrous deeds of Elijah, and assigns to him not merely the function of Conversion described by

1 Luke ix 7, 9

'The Synoptic tradition gives prominence to the account of John's death and presumably attached importance to it. Mal. iii 23 f (iv 4 f).

3 20 LXX ἀποκαταστήσει.

Malachi, but also that of Restoration which belongs to the Servant of Jehovah pourtrayed by Isaiah:

Who was recorded for reproofs in their seasons
To pacify anger, before it brake forth into wrath,
To turn the heart of the father unto the son

And to restore the tribes of Jacob.'

The fathers' and 'children' of Malachi are presumably the past and present Israelites. If these are to be reconciled with those, they must be obedient to the law; for the lapses of their ancestors are forgotten and their sanctity assured by their antiquity. Or it may be a question of teachers and pupils. But 'the father' and the son' of ben Sira can only be God and Israel. For the Sage, therefore, this Elias who is to come has a greater part to play. He shall mediate between Jehovah and His adopted son, and further he shall by his mediation achieve the Restoration of those offenders who were punished by exile. And this latter function belongs, as has been said, to the Suffering Servant. It is written :

And he said unto me, Thou art my servant; Israel, in whom I will be glorified. But I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought and vanity: yet surely my judgement is with the Lord, and my recompense with my God. And now saith the Lord that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, and that Israel be gathered unto him: (for I am honourable in the eyes of the Lord, and my God is become my strength:) yea, he said, It is too light a thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.

Thus the messenger or forerunner of Jehovah is also His Servantand there is no Messiah to come.

After the prophet the sage. After the sage the scribes. Such of the Scribes as still looked for Messiah taught that Elias cometh first and restoreth all things. This teaching is based on the prophecy of Malachi as it is interpreted by the Greek translator, who says in effect 'Read not, He shall turn again this to that, but, He shall restore.' But the Restoration for which they looked was, the prophet foretold, universal, and not only

1 Ecclus. xlviii 10, cf. Luke i 17.

national. After the vision of the transfigured Jesus accompanied by Moses-the first and typical prophet-and Elias, the disciples propounded to their Master this doctrine of the Scribes as a problem.

And they were asking him and saying, 'The Scribes say, "Elijah cometh first." He answered and said to them, Elijah cometh first, that he may restore everything. And how is it written of the Son of Man? Is it not that he should suffer much and be crucified? But I say to you [-whatever the Scribes may say-] Elijah hath come and they did with him all that they would, as it is written of him.'

Here is fresh cause of perplexity. The four disciples seem to have discarded that part of the tradition which spoke of the Restoration of all things; for of this1 they see no sign. Jesus reaffirms it and adds that Elias has come. How then-they might well ask-must the Son of Man suffer-who is this Son of Man? If John Baptist is Elias, why must he suffer? It would seem that Jesus accepted the identification of Elias with the Suffering Servant of Isaiah. For, according to the history, Elijah was not maltreated by his enemies. Though he despaired of his life and entreated God to take it away, he was preserved until he had appointed his own successor and anointed Hazael and Jehu.2 Then he was taken up into heaven for that he was exceeding zealous for the law.3

It may be that Herod and Herodias correspond to Jezebel and Ahab, and succeed in fulfilling the intentions of their prototypes. It may also be that men in exercise of their freewill have frustrated God's plan for the time, or at least have hidden the superficial evidence of its success.

The extant authorities, from whom the Messianic Hope of this generation must be reconstructed, are fragmentary and discrepant. The vague figures of their dreams are apt to dissolve into one another. God was pleased to sum up all things in Christ, and His people had attempted to piece together His earlier messengers-all the more readily, because some of them were anonymous and others did not die.

2

'Peter still regards it as future after the final ascension of Jesus: Acts iii 21. 1 Kings xix. 31 Macc. ii 58; 2 Kings ii.