in the recollection of those who had witnessed it." We cannot therefore regard the predictions of the Passion as historical, or "at most we might perhaps suppose that Jesus in the consciousness of His innocence may have said to His disciples: 'If I should die, may God for the sake of My blood be merciful to you and to the people.'"
He went to Jerusalem, then, to fulfill the will of God. "It was God's will that the preaching by which alone the people could be inwardly renewed and made into a real people of God should be recognised and organised by the national and religious authorities. To effect this through the existing authorities, or to realise it in some other way, such was the task which Jesus felt Himself called on to perform." With his eyes upon this goal, behind which lay the near approach of the Kingdom of God, He set His face towards Jerusalem.
"But nothing could be more natural than that out of the belief that He was engaged in a work which God had willed, there should arise an ever stronger belief in His personal vocation." It was thus that the Messianic consciousness entered into Jesus' thoughts. His conviction of His vocation had nothing to do with a political Messiahship, it was only gradually from the development of events that He was able to draw the inference that He was destined to the Messianic sovereignty, "it may have become more and more clear to Him, but it did not become a matter of absolute certainty." It was only amid opposition, in deep dejection, in consequence of a powerful inner reaction against circumstances, that He came to recognise Himself with full conviction as the anointed of God.
When it began to be bruited about that He was the Messiah, the rulers had Him arrested and handed Him over to the Procurator. Judas the traitor "had only been a short time among His followers, and only in those unquiet days at Jerusalem when the Master had scarcely any opportunity for private intercourse with him and for learning really to know him. He had not been with Jesus during the Galilaean days, and Jesus was consequently nothing more to him than the future ruler of the Kingdom of God."
After His death the disciples "could not, unless something occurred to restore their faith, continue to believe in His Messiahship." Jesus had taken away with Him in His death the hopes which they had set upon Him, especially as He had not foretold His death, much less His resurrection. "At first, therefore, it would be all in favour of His memory if the disciples remembered that He Himself had never openly and definitely declared Himself to be the Messiah." They returned to Galilee. "Simon Peter, and perhaps the son of Zebedee, who afterwards ranked along with him as a pillar of the Church, resolved to continue that preparation for their work which
