phase of civilization, further, is not a mere aggregation of unrelated individuals, but is a family. The king is a father and the subjects are brothers. It is no insignificant fact that in certain of its aspects, notably its perfection, the life of an isolated individual received little attention from Jesus. Indeed, when the fate of some single person is in question, as for instance "the disciple whom Jesus loved,"[1] his words became enigmatic and, for his immediate audience, unintelligible. His mission included the salvation of individual souls, but salvation with Jesus, so far as his words are witnesses, did not consist in living a detached life. The only possible conclusion to be drawn from this silence is this: Jesus recognizes human life as essentially social. Neither this nor any other statement should be taken as implying a neglect of the individual on the part of Jesus. Righteousness was not to be gotten by the wholesale. Rather it emphasizes the impossibility of disintegrating the kingdom into unrelated lives.
This conclusion is by no means the truism that it may seem. Among religious teachers, at least, social life has not generally been held to be the normal life for the man who seeks an ideal development. Withdrawal from society, monachism, the literal flight from a corrupt world—these have been the characteristics of the great mass of the religions of the past. Modern evangelicism is often guilty of the same mistake in its attempts to distinguish and withdraw from "worldly" influences. But with Jesus the entrance into the kingdom[2] is the goal and the reward of the individual's endeavor. He is above all to seek such entrance; within it is he to heap up true riches; to miss it is the saddest lot; to gain it is the consummation of happiness.
(2) In sharpest opposition to all this is the Christian concep-
- ↑ John 21:22. In the case of Simon Peter (Luke 22:30) we have an apparent except on to this general attitude, and others also occur. But in all of them it is easy to perceive a purely personal interest.
- ↑ Matt. 5:20, 7:21, 18:1, 19:23, 25:34, John 3:3 and numerous other sayings. In the same line are those sayings in which the kingdom is the reward to be reached by men of high morality, e. g., the poor in spirit, Matt. 5:10, the humble and child-like, Mark 10:14, 15.
