29; Mark i.

22; Luke iv.

32.] It seems also that his sojourn with John had, not so much by the influence of the Baptist, as by the natural progress of his own thought, considerably ripened his ideas on "the kingdom of heaven." His watchword, henceforth, is the "good tidings," the announcement that the kingdom of God is at hand.[1] Jesus is no longer simply a delightful moralist, aspiring to express sublime lessons in short and lively aphorisms; he is the transcendent revolutionary, who essays to renovate the world from its very basis, and to establish upon earth the ideal which he had conceived.

"To await the kingdom of God" is henceforth synonymous with being a disciple of Jesus.[2] This phrase, "kingdom of God," or "kingdom of heaven," was, as we have said, already long familiar to the Jews.

But Jesus gave it a moral sense, a social application, which even the author of the Book of Daniel, in his apocalyptic enthusiasm, had scarcely dared to imagine.
[Footnote 1: Mark i.