the Lord's prayer, where He so strangely inserts the petition for daily bread between the petitions tor the coming of the Kingdom and for deliverance from the peirasmoV.
The feeding of the multitude was more than a love-feast, a fellowship-meal. It was from the point of view of Jesus a sacrament of salvation.
We never realise sufficiently that in a period when the judgment and the glory were expected as close at hand, one thought arising out of this expectation must have acquired special prominence-how, namely, in the present time a man could obtain a guarantee of coming scatheless through the judgment, of being saved and received into the Kingdom, of being signed and sealed for deliverance amid the coming trial, as the Chosen People in Egypt had a sign revealed to them from God by means of which they might be manifest as those who were to be spared. But once we do realise this, we can understand why the thought of signing and sealing runs through the whole of the apocalyptic literature. It is found as early as the ninth chapter of Ezekiel. There, God is making preparation for judgment. The day of visitation of the city is at hand. But first the Lord calls unto "the man clothed with linen who had the writer's ink-horn by his side" and said unto him, "Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof." Only after that does He give command to those who are charged with the judgment to begin, adding, "But come not near any man upon whom is the mark" (Ezek. ix. 4 and 6).
In the fifteenth of the Psalms of Solomon, [1] the last eschatological writing before the movement initiated by the Baptist, it is expressly said in the description of the judgment that "the saints of God bear a sign upon them which saves them."
In the Pauline theology very striking prominence is given to the thought of being sealed unto salvation. The apostle is conscious of bearing about with him in his body "the marks of Jesus" (Gal. vi. 17), the "dying" of Jesus (2 Cor. iv. 10). This sign is received in baptism, since it is a baptism "into the death of Christ"; in this act the recipient is in a certain sense really buried with Him, and thenceforth walks among Men as one who belongs, even here below, to risen humanity (Rom. vi. 1 ff.). Baptism is the seal, the earnest of the spirit, the pledge of that which is to come (2 Cor. i. 22; Eph. i. 13, 14, iv. 30).
This conception of baptism as a "salvation" in view of that which was to come goes down through the whole of ancient theology. Its preaching might really be summed up in the words, "Keep your baptism holy and without blemish."
- ↑ Psal. Sol. xv. 8.
