NATIONAL SENTIMENT
AND PATRIOTISM IN
THE NEW TESTAMENT

.UCKLER

DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

NATIONAL SENTIMENT
AND PATRIOTISM IN
THE NEW TESTAMENT by
GEORGINA G. BUCKLER
Gibson Prize Essay, 19 16

CAMBRIDGE:
DEIGHTON BELL &, CO., Limited
LONDON:
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Definitions of Patriotism

1

Patriotism in N.T. days as shown by

(1) Proselytes of the Covenant

3

(2) Proselytes of the Gate .

3

(3) Pagans

4

Liberal treatment of Jews by foreign masters

5

Racial and religious intolerance chiefly found among Jews

9

Growth of nationalism in Jewish history .

9

The Messianic hope

14

Zealots

16

Attitude towards Patriotism of

(1) Our Lord, (a) The Kingdom of God

20

(b) The Messiahship

23

(c) The Law

25

(&) The Gentiles

28

(2) The Apostles

30

Conclusion

42

BIBLIOGRAPHY
The books principally consulted in writing this Essay
are as follows :
Josephus. Works.
Augustine. De ciuitate Dei.
Rodkinson. History of the Talmud.
Edersheim. Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah.
Charles. Religious Development between the Old and New
Testaments.
Sohurer. History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus
Christ.
Ramsay. St Paul the Traveller. The Church in the Roman
Empire.
Hastings. Dictionary of the Bible. (Survey of Conditions at the
time of Jesus Christ.) (Sanday.)
Hastings. Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels. (Nationality.)
Kmsopp Lake. The Stewardship of Faith.
W. Temple. The Church and the Nation.
Zangwtll. The War for the World.
Westcott. Social Aspects of Christianity.
Lightfoot. Galatians.
Gore. Romans. Ephesians.
Neumann. Der rOmisehe Staat und die allgemeine Kirche.

NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
Probably never since the world began have National
Sentiment and Patriotism loomed so large on the mental
horizon as at present, when no less than fourteen nations
are at war. And probably never has there been less
unqualified acceptance of them as adequate springs of
action. To the Eoman "pro patria" was a reason for
all things, but even to a Tory of the Tories this present
war seems "a judgment on all Christendom for having
allowed Nationalism to grow to such a height that it
superseded the true devotion of the Catholic Church"
(Lord Hugh Cecil at St Martin's in the Fields, August 4th,
1916). Zangwill puts it more tersely: "The Twentieth
Century is an era of nationalism run mad" (War for ihe
World, p. 338), and Nurse Cavell felt that Patriotism was
"not enough." It ought surely therefore to be helpful
as well as interesting to go back to the sources of the
Christian religion which twelve out of the fourteen
belligerent nations profess, and see what the New Testa
ment teaches as to National Sentiment and Patriotism.
At the very outset it may be well to define the terms
we are discussing, and for practical purposes National
Sentiment may be taken as equivalent to Patriotism.
The former has perhaps strictly speaking an ethnological
B. 1

2 NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
and linguistic, the latter a political and geographical
basis, but as a matter of fact the national sentiment of
patriots is generally compounded of all these elements —
pride of race, pride of language (with the traditions it
involves), loyalty to an approved government, and love
for a special part of the earth's surface. So that in
choosing a definition it will be enough to get one for the
second term only. Now Patriotism is one of the qualities
which most people have hitherto accepted unquestioningly
as virtues, and it is therefore not a little surprising to
find, on more careful investigation, that there have always
been some dissentients from this view.
Murray's Dictionary gives us indeed from Berkeley's
Maxims concerning Patriotism (1750) the obvious definition
of a patriot as "One who heartily wisheth the public
prosperity and doth. . .also study and endeavour to promote
it"; but Horatio Smith {Tin Trumpet, 1836) is quoted
as saying that Patriotism is " too often the hatred of other
countries disguised as love of our own"; while going
further back we get Dr Johnson's pronouncement that
"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" (Boswell,
April 7, 1775); and Dryden's scathing summing up
(Abs. and Achit. 965) "Never was patriot yet but was
a fool." Nor is this opinion confined to the professional
makers of epigrams. Ruskin somewhere treats Patriotism'
as merely a developed form of egotism. Lord Acton
states that it consists in " the development of the instinct
of self preservation into a moral duty " (Hist, of Freedom
and other Essays). Lessing said of love of country: "It
is to me at best a heroic weakness." Grant Allen (The
Woman who Did) ventures to assert that "Patriotism
is the one of these lowest vices which most often

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 3
masquerades in false garb as a virtue. .. .Nothing more
than collective selfishness." Prominent thinkers have also
echoed Nurse Cavell's sentiment. Thus Bolingbroke in
his Patriot (n. 100) long ago insisted that "Patriotism
must be founded in great principles and supported by
great virtues"; and in our own day Jaures has taught
us: "La vraie formule du patriotisme c'est le droit egal
de toutes les patries a la liberte et a la justice, c'est le
devoir pour tout citoyen d'accroitre en sa patrie les forces
de liberte et de justice."
Which then of all these various definitions are we to
take in considering what Patriotism meant in the begin
ning of the Christian era? The answer to this must
obviously depend on the differing psychologies of the
peoples affected by the sentiment. In studying this
point, though St Paul gives the spirit of the New Testa
ment in the words "To the Jew first and also to the
Gentile" (Rom. ii. 10), it will be more convenient to
reverse the order and take the Gentile and his National
Sentiment first.
The Gentiles in the New Testament are of three kinds
— Greek-speaking Greeks, Greek-speaking Asiatics, and
Latin-speaking Italians, especially Romans.
These, again come under three heads :
(1) Some were Proselytes of the Covenant who had
undergone a process of religious naturalisation and there
fore were virtually Jews. The Talmud tells us that for
such Proselytes the rites of initiation consisted of cir
cumcision, a bath of purification and a sacrifice.
(2) A second class of Gentiles more or less affected
by Judaism were the uncircumcised Proselytes of the
Gate, also described as <re/36fievot (tov ®eov). These
1—2

4 NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
attended Feasts at Jerusalem (John xii. 20) though
kept on pain of death out of the Inner Temple Court
(Dittenberger, Or. Gr. Inscr. 598). They frequented the
synagogues (Acts xiii. 42) and a Roman centurion is
said to have built one (Luke vii. 5). Their familiarity
with the Old Testament is shown by Acts xv. 21, and also
by St Paul's frequent quotations in addressing the Gentiles
of Asia Minor and Rome. As God-fearers they were
bound (so we may infer from the decision of the Jerusalem
Council) to abstain from the moral impurity rampant in
the heathen life of the day (Rom. i. 24 sqq. ; 1 Cor. v. 9, 10 ;
Eph. iv. 19 ; Col. iii. 5-7 ; 1 Th. iv. 5, and Roman satirists
passim), and also from image worship which to the higher
thinkers of the classical world was hardly less distasteful
than to a Hebrew. In matters of personal intercourse,
they seemed to the strict Jews unclean (Luke vii. 6;
Acts x.).
(3) Finally, we have instances of men frankly heathen
supporting the Jewish religion either from indifference or
from respect. Ever since the days of Judas Maccabeus
and his covenant with the Romans, the Jews had been
singularly favoured by the Latin rulers of the world,
especially by the Caesars. Josephus (Ant. xiv. 10)
proudly enumerates the various decrees that issued from
Rome and other pagan cities to give the Jews special
privileges — their own law-courts (17), exemption from
military service (12), the right to assemble together (24),
and to observe the "holy festivals," with "common
suppers" and "contributions" forbidden to "other
Bacchanal rioters" (8, and cf. War, vi. 6. 2), and above all,
freedom to keep the Sabbath (25), even, as we know, when
it interfered with legal business. We learn from Suetonius

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 5
(Cues. 84) that of all his subjects "praecipue Judaei"
mourned Julius Caesar's death. So it is quite natural to
find that Pilate, cruel and anti-Jewish as he personally
was, yielded to Christ's accusers when they claimed "We
have a law" (John xix. 7) — that Gallio and Claudius
Lysias declined to pass judgment in matters of purely
Jewish significance (Acts xviii. 12-17, xxiii. 26-29) —
and that St Paul throughout his story is as a rule cour
teously treated by the Romans (Acts xxiv. 23, xxvii. 3,
xxviii. 16, but contr. xvi. 22). Indeed, Josephus (War,
v. 13. 6) and Philo (Leg. ad Cai. 37) inform us that, true
to the non-exclusive spirit of Roman religion, Augustus
and his wife and his son-in-law Agrippa actually sent
offerings to the Temple at Jerusalem.
This tolerance is not peculiar to the Romans. The
three classes of Gentiles of whom we have spoken as
appearing in the New Testament were all in principle free
from any desire to act as inquisitors over the beliefs of
others, and even in the earlier history the oppression
endured by the Jews since the fall of the kingdoms of
Israel and Judah had been, with one great exception,
political, not religious. Under the dominion first of
Babylon and then of Persia, they were allowed full exercise
of their religion, and if they adopted some of their con
querors' ideas (e.g. Chaldaean angelology and the Parsee
doctrines traced among the Essenes) this does not argue
religious persecution but rather the reverse. The stories
of intolerance in Daniel are probably anachronisms
composed much later, at the time of what we have called
the one great exception, i.e. the mad attempt of Antiochus
Epiphanes (more rightly called e7ri/j,av-ij<;, as Polybius
says) to enforce Hellenism in Judaea and abolish the old*

6 NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
Hebrew religion with its circumcision and its Sabbath
and its strict monotheistic worship. This led to the
national rising under the Maccabees and the temporary
restoration of Jewish independence. In later days,
Pompey it is true sacrilegiously entered the Holy of
Holies, and Caligula was only stopped by the prayers of
Herod Agrippa I from setting up his own statue in the
Temple (Philo, Leg. ad Cai. 35-41); but on the whole
both the Seleucids and the Romans showed remarkable
respect for Jewish idiosyncrasies. In the New Testament
days the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem, defined by Schurer as
"a native aristocratic Senate" (consisting apparently of
the chief priests and elders who were mostly Sadducees
— Acts v. 17, xxiii. 1-9, — and the Scribes, who were
mostly Pharisees), acted as a High Court of Justice with
rather undefined powers, but having probably power of
life and death (though the Dictionary of Christ and the
Gospels thinks their capital sentences needed Roman
confirmation), and with authority to give orders to the
synagogues in other cities (Acts ix. 2, xxii. 5). The Jews,
we are told by Josephus, retained their own laws (War,
vr. 6. 2), and when we read in the Jerusalem Gemara that
forty years before the Temple was destroyed judgment in
capital cases was taken away from Israel, it probably
merely means disused in practice ; so that to the words of
the Jews before Pilate : " It is not lawful for us to put any
man to death," we must mentally add "at the Feast"
(John xviii. 31). This would, of course, retain for
Jerusalem (which on the Roman side was, since 57 B.C.,
the capital of one of the five districts into which Gabinius,
pro-Consul of Syria, divided Palestine) the hegemony
over all the Jews throughout the world.

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 7
Furthermore, when Herod the Great became a Bex
Socius of the Roman Empire, Judaea was independent in
all affairs of home administration, including taxes. Only
in external matters, of wars and treaties, and the providing
of troops, was she subject to imperial jurisdiction. She
did not even in the later years of Christ have a Legion
stationed in her, and the soldiers of the Crucifixion were
probably Syrian auxiliaries. In spite of this, the Jews
hated the Herodian dynasty so much that they begged
after the death of Herod the Great (4 B.C.) to be directly
under Rome ; yet when this request was granted ten years
later, they at once began to sigh for their old freedom of
national existence. By an unfortunate coincidence, all
the procurators appointed from 6 to 41 a.d., and again
from 44 to 70 a.d., were men of narrow minds and over
bearing dispositions, who resided at Caesarea and rarely
honoured Jerusalem by a visit. They had no sympathy
with their subjects, and Pilate, for instance, outraged
popular sentiment by taking the Roman money from the
Treasury to build an aqueduct into Jerusalem (alluded to
in Luke xiii. 4) and brought the Roman ensigns within
the city walls. Still the relations between the Jews and
the Romans, though often strained by rebellion on the
one hand (Acts v. 36, 37 and xxi. 38) and cruel repression
on the other (Luke xiii. 1), continued with tolerable smooth
ness till the Zealots or Canaanites were deliberately guilty
of what Neumann (Der romische Staat und die allgemeine
Kirche) calls "ein Manifest des Krieges."
We have seen how great was the religious toleration of
Rome towards the Jews. Their peculiar tenets were
humoured ; Roman coins and standards in their land were
without human heads ; the cult of the Emperor, in which

8 NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
as Lord Bryce (Journal of Roman Studies, 1915, Vol. v.
Pt. i) tells us, " only the monotheistic Jews and the mono
theistic Christians refused to worship with the rest," was
not enforced. Only one thing was required, the offering
up of daily sacrifices and prayers in the Temple "for
Caesar and the Roman people" — an established rite to
which Josephus appeals as a proof of Jewish loyalty
(in Apion. n. 6). When therefore the Nationalist party
in Jerusalem refused this simple act of obedience, they
raised the standard of revolt, and the War of 70 a.d.,
with its disastrous conclusion, became inevitable. But we
ought not to forget what Josephus the Jew is for ever
impressing on us, that it was his own people who were
responsible for the war and not their Roman masters.
Certainly throughout the first twenty-six books of the
New Testament the Imperial rule is represented as on
the whole fair and reasonable ; it is only after the perse
cution of Christians by Domitian that Rome appears in
the Book of Revelation as the Beast, and "Babylon the
great Whore."
In the case of the other two classes of heathen Gentiles
mentioned in the Gospels and Epistles, the Greeks and
the Asiatics, the same amicable relations with the Jews
prevail. Wise men come from the East to get information
from Hebrew scholars (Matt, ii.); the people of Athens
allow St Paul to dispute in Socratic fashion in the market
place (Acts xvii. 17) ; the Council of the Areopagus put
him through a trial speech to see whether he can be
licensed as a University lecturer (W. M. Ramsay, St Paul
the Traveller); the "barbarous people" of Malta show
the shipwrecked Jews "no little kindness" (Acts xxviii. 2),
and the population of Lystra, in the uncouth "speech of

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 9
Lycaonia," hail Paul and Barnabas as gods (Acts xiv. 11).
Though the Greeks might divide the world into Greeks
and barbarians, and the Romans might have one word for
stranger and enemy, yet for racial and religious intolerance
we must turn not to the heathen but to the chosen people
of God. In order to substantiate this statement, we will give a
rapid glance at the history of Israel before the Christian
era. From the very beginning, the Jews, as the seed of
Abraham and the followers of Yahweh, were pre-eminently
marked by the Tribal Instinct which Lord Bryce (Race
Sentiment as a Factor in History, Creighton Lecture, 1915)
distinguishes, as a less advanced stage of social progress,
from the sentiment of nationality. He says: "By the
Tribal instinct I mean that natural tendency which draws
men towards those who resemble themselves in aspect, in
speech and in customs — especially religious customs....
They often deemed themselves to be blood relatives
sprung from a common ancestor." Anyone who reflects
on the tenacious vitality of the Jewish nation, knit
together by a common language and stock and a common
Law of Jehovah, though lacking all bonds of country
and home, will agree that this definition of Tribal Instinct
applies most accurately to their case, and that in -them
"a strong national passion is visible." It is no wonder
that their aloofness and their strange customs made them
seem to the Romans a " sceleratissima gens" (Seneca in
Aug. Giu. Dei, iv. 34), holding a "barbara superstitio"
(Cic. pro Flacco, 28), filled with "odium generis humani,"
who taught their proselytes "contemnere deos, exuere
patriam, parentes liberos fratres uilia habere" (Tac. Hist.
v. 5). Circumstances were partly answerable for this.

10 NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
When the Israelites came as a nomad horde out of Egypt
and dispossessed with inferior numbers the kindred
Canaanite tribes, they could only (or so their greatest
teachers thought) preserve their worship of Yahweh by
avoiding all close intercourse with their neighbours. All
through the rule of the Judges and the reigns of the Kings,
intermarriage with strangers was forbidden, and a com
promise with native cults was considered worthy of death
(see especially the history of Elijah) ; and gradually this
loyalty to the God of Israel degenerated into a belief
"that Israel's God was bound by a tie which could not be
severed to protect the people which worshipped Him"
(Cheyne's Two Religions of Israel, p. 15). This was the
teaching of the "lying prophets" (1 Kings xxii. 22, 23;
Jer. xxvii. 9, 10), in other words of the same nationalist
or patriotic party that punished Jeremiah as a traitor
for advising submission to Babylon, and it is against this
spirit that Amos and the higher prophets protest with so
much fervour. Lord Bryce truly says: "The national
sentiment of Israel was religious rather than racial," and
it was as sons of Yahweh even more than of Abraham that
they despised their neighbours and were arrogantly con
fident in a predestined supremacy. Yet from the secular
point of view, it has been said by Kirsopp Lake (Steward
ship of Faith) that " one of the most important sides of
the story of the Jews is a chapter in the history of
nationalism," i.e. in the struggle of great empires against
small nations. We must note that it was when the
empires of the East were beginning to threaten the
Israelites, and they in their turn were drawing the robe
of national and religious complacency tighter round them,
that Amos dared to denounce the "transgressions" of

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 11
Israel as even more heinous than those of the heathen
(i. 3, ii. 6 and iii. 2), and to proclaim that nationalism was
equally precious in all nations under heaven (ix. 7).
W. Temple (The Church and the Nation, p. 45) points
out that at first in the Old Testament everything was
"concentrated on the primary object of fashioning Israel
into a nation," but that the turning-point comes with
Amos' teaching that " all nations stand on an equal footing
before the Judgment Seat of God." We find the same
breadth of view in Isaiah xix. 23-25, where Egypt,
Assyria and Israel are all to serve God together — while
as the national glories were extinguished in the Babylonian
captivity, the prophets of the Exile, Jeremiah, Ezekiel
and others, turned their minds to a future hope for the
race and the individual, — a coming Messiah and eternal
life. Then came the transference from the Babylonian
Empire to the Persian, and the return to the Holy Land.
St Augustine in Ciu. Dei, xiv. 34, tells in graphic words
the rest of the Jewish story — how their hopes of national
restoration after the repairing of the Temple (due to a
misunderstanding of Haggai ii. 6-9) were shattered by
the invasion of Alexander the Great, who actually
sacrificed in the Sacred House — how the kings first of
Egypt and then of Syria ruled over the land, leading
many of the Jews captive; how Judas Maccabeus "re
stored the Temple to the ancient dignity," and his brother
Jonathan founded a new high-priestly dynasty, that of
the Asmoneans ; how Aristobulus, his great-nephew, " did
assume a diadem and became both king and priest";
how the Romans in the next generation were called in by
Hyrcanus against his brother, the second Aristobulus,
and how "Pompey the great general of Rome's forces

12 NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
brought his powers into Judaea, took Jerusalem... and, as
a profaner entered the sanctum sanctorum." "Here," the
old writer concludes, " began the Jews to be the Romans'
tributaries.... And within a few years after, Herod an
alien was made their Governor," thus fulfilling in Augus
tine's eyes Gen. xlix. 10, for "the Jews had never been
without a prince of their blood until Herod's time, who
was their first alien king." "Now then was the time
of Shiloh come; now was the New Testament to be
promulgated." The subsequent history of the Jewish nation is soon
told. After the death of Herod the Great (4 B.C.) his sons,
Archelaus and Antipas, respectively received from Augus
tus (in spite of the Jews' pleading for direct Roman
government) Judaea with Samaria and Galilee with
Peraea. In 6 a.d. Archelaus was deposed, and Judaea
obtained as her ruler the coveted equestrian procurator,
who was more or less subject to the Governor of Syria.
These procurators proved, as we have seen, harsh and
unsympathetic in their administration. In any case also,
the more ardent Jewish patriots would have felt the
payment of tribute to a heathen ruler incompatible with
their cherished ideas of theocracy and sovereignty over
all nations : hence the opposition to the census (Acts v. 37).
In the days of Herod the Great, the taxes were collected
for his use, but when Judaea became an imperial province
they were paid into the fiscus, and the Jewish publicani
were hated not only as grasping but as unpatriotic. For
three short years, Herod Agrippa I restored the semblance
of Jewish independence, having received from Claudius in
41 a.d. all the dominions of his grandfather Herod the
Great. On his death in 44, Judaea became again a part

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 13
of a Roman province, and the last series of procurators
were worse than the first. It would seem as if the sending
of the freedman Festus as Governor (52-60 a.d.) was a
deliberate insult to the Jews, and more and more the
nationalist spirit rose and swelled. Riots, largely due to
misguided Messianic hopes, were very frequent in Judaea
and more so in Galilee, and though many Zealots were
crucified as "robbers," they were succeeded by the
Sicarii, an even more reckless and dangerous band.
Finally came the procurator Florus, last and worst of
his cruel and venal kind, and with him the fall of Jeru
salem, changing for ever the destinies not only of Judaism
but of Christianity. On the one hand, the Christians
learnt once and for all the lesson taught by their Master
to the Samaritan woman, that the Father was to be
worshipped not in Jerusalem only, but everywhere, and
by all nations, so that the judaizing party in the Church
received its death-blow. On the other hand, the Jews as
a nation shook off such influence as Hellenism had had
on them, abjured all idea of the brotherhood of man, and
turned for comfort to the strictest observance of the
Torah and its outgrowth, the Talmud. The Sanhedrin
disappeared and the Sadducees with it ; all that was left
was rigidly exclusive Pharisaic Judaism, clinging desper
ately to the Messianic hope.
This sketch has taken us almost beyond our proper
boundaries, and yet it is the writings of Jews in the
Christian era — Philo, Josephus, the authors of the later
Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha and the compilers of the
Talmud — which enable us to reconstruct for ourselves a
picture of Jewish life in the time of Our Lord and His
apostles. When Christ was born, Herod the Great, though

14 NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
Idumaean by race and utterly pagan in spirit, was still
nominally a Jewish king. By the time the Public Ministry
began, Judaea was under a Roman procurator, but the
Sanhedrin still held sway. St Paul's first trial at Rome
(Acts xxviii.) transports us to the reign of Nero, with
Seneca still alive to teach his master tolerance for a sect
of the Jewish religion — before the burning of Rome had
brought Christians under suspicion as law-breakers, and
before their abstention from common worship and festivals
had come to seem anti-social. Years pass on, and finally
the Book of Revelation carries us right away from the
Jews and the Law, and is concerned only with Rome,
"drunken with the blood of the saints" (xvii. 6). As
regards the Jewish nation, the New Testament might
almost stand for a Gibbon's Decline and Fall, and it is
at just such crises that National Sentiment and Patriotism
come most to the fore.
In any careful study of the attitude of the Jews of
New Testament times to other nations, we must not forget
the great and distinguishing feature of later Jewish teach
ing, the Messianic hope and the Coming of the Kingdom.
Under an alien king and distant overlords, Judaea as a
sovereign state, whether monarchy, theocracy or aristo
cracy, had, in the eyes of her most faithful subjects,
ceased to exist. All round her were heathen cities,
whether Syrian as Tyre and Sidon, or Roman colonies
as Caesarea, or Greek communities as those of Decapolis,
with their seductive Hellenic culture and luxury. Even
in Jerusalem itself the hellenizing Herod had built a
theatre and instituted games, while foreign mercenaries
guarded his person. East of the Sea of Tiberias, there
were nomads always ready to encroach on the soil of

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 15
Palestine ; south-east, there were the Idumaeans, forcibly
converted to Judaism by John Hyrcanus, and beyond
them the Arabians, also nominal worshippers of Jehovah.
Almost at the doors of Jerusalem lay Samaria, renamed
Sebaste, with its mixed population, hated by the Jews
and returning the hatred (Ezra iv. and Neh. iv.), and its
temple built to Augustus by Herod, the professing Jew.
From the south-west, the insidious Egyptian and Greek
influences of Alexandria filtered into the land, a fact
easily appreciated from Philo's statement that there were
in his day a million Jews of the Dispersion in Egypt
alone. From the far East the Babylonian Jews came
up to worship at Jerusalem, bringing with them some at
least of the notions of Chaldaea and Persia, while from
farther still there had appeared in Asia Minor and Palestine
since the days of Herod the Great the dreaded Parthian
savages. And behind all the rest, as a stubborn fact to
be ignored but never forgotten, there stood the mighty
power of Rome. Can we wonder that, "set in the midst
of so many and great dangers" to their spiritual life, the
Jews strove with might and main to erect round them
selves a wall of national exclusiveness, and dreamt of a
glorious future as compensation for present woes 1
In the early days of the Diadochi, the Chasidim
("pious") were a minority in Judaea, till the insults of
Antiochus Epiphanes roused the whole people to rabid
fanaticism. The first Asmonean rulers themselves be
longed to these Chasidim, forerunners of the Pharisees
("separated"), but their political schemes drew them
nearer to the Sadducees, whose interests were as essentially
mundane as those of the opposite sect were essentially
religious.

16 NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
The third Jewish sect mentioned by Josephus, the
Essenes, were communists and mystics and need not
concern us here.
John Hyrcanus (135-105 B.C.) joined the Sadducean
sect, and his son, Alexander Jannaeus, extended the
Jewish dominions ; there is an obvious connection between
these two facts. In the long run, however, Pharisaism
triumphed. It was patronised by Herod the Great, who
deliberately insulted the Sadducees, proud of descent from
Zadok, by choosing all his high priests but one from non-
Palestinian Jews, and above all it was favoured by the
people. By a strange transformation, this sect, to which
foreign dominion was not only immaterial, as long as
Jehovah might be worshipped, but actually a heaven-sent
judgment, much as Cyrus was a heaven-sent deliverer,
gave birth to the Zealots (defined by Josephus as "zealous
in the worst actions," War, iv. 13) who regarded the
expulsion oi foreign rulers as the sacred duty of every
God-fearing Jew — the shortest way to bring about fulfil
ment of the Messianic hope. The last act of Herod the
Great was to burn to death the nationalist Rabbis who
had taken down off the Temple gate a hated golden eagle,
and the rebellion which this started was not stamped out
till Varus, the Governor of Syria, had sold numberless
Galilaeans as slaves and crucified 2000 Jews. In other
places, tumults were not infrequent. In 38 a.d. the Jews
in Alexandria were severely handled by the Governor
Flaccus for having refused to worship the Emperor.
Claudius, as we know, banished the Jews from Rome
(Acts xviii. 2; Suet. Claud. 25), and while St Paul was
at Caesarea on the way to Rome, a riot over citizen
rights occurred there between the Jewish and the Syrian

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 17
inhabitants, and was decided by Nero in favour of the
latter. Herod Agrippa II in his kingdom of the North might
keep his power by unconditional submission to Rome, but
in Judaea and above all in Galilee, the establishment of
Messiah's kingdom on earth became the consuming desire
of every patriot. Even the Sadducees, essentially phil-
Hellene and worldly, had to follow the Pharisees in their
views, or the "multitude would not tolerate them" (Jos.
Ant. xviii. 1. 4 and cf. John xi. 47-50). And, as always
happens, the darker the political outlook grew, the more
the extreme party became predominant, till they dragged
the nation into final ruin.
What, then, did a religious Jew, and especially the
Pharisee, mean by the Messianic hope, that hope which,
in St Paul's eyes, was no less vivid for Christian than for
Jew (Acts xxvi. 6, 7 and xxviii. 20) ? The subject is too
enormous for more than the most cursory sketch, chiefly
based on R. H. Charles' Religious Development between
the Old and New Testaments. Whereas Prophecy had
treated of the destiny of Israel as a nation, Apocalyptic,
fostered by national calamity, concerned itself with future
blessedness for the individual. Prophecy had told of a
final cataclysm and of the Messiah coming to reign for
ever on the present earth, with every circumstance of
material splendour and happiness, after either seventy
years, as in the teaching of Jeremiah, or seventy weeks of
years, according to Daniel, or seventy reigns of seventy
angelic patrons, as in Enoch. Apocalyptic, by 100 B.C.,
had learned to regard this world as irreclaimably bad,
and to hope for a spiritual kingdom. This hope took
various forms. Sometimes men dreamed of a temporary
Messianic kingdom on a transformed earth, followed_hy_
B.

18 NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
the Judgment; sometimes their thoughts went straight
to a spiritual reign and a heavenly Jerusalem. In any
case, whether the kingdom included all nations, as the
wider-minded prophets and pseudepigraphists maintained
(Messiah is the "hght of the Gentiles" in Isaiah xlix. 6
and in 1 Enoch xlviii. 4), or ended with Judaea, it
certainly began there. As Edersheim puts it, in his Life
and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Vol. I. p. 4, "History,
patriotism, religion and hope alike pointed to Jerusalem
and the Temple as the centre of Israel's unity," and Philo
could truly assert (in Flaccum, 971) that, wherever sojourn
ing, the Jews had but one metropolis. (See the peculiar
feeling about Jerusalem in Ps. cxxxvii., John ii. 19, iv. 20.)
The more the Jews of the Dispersion, who formed the vast
majority, were exposed to Greek influences, the more the
Palestinian Jews paraded the strictest Hebrew orthodoxy,
laying the greatest stress on purity of descent, and even
considering the Septuagint, the People's Bible, though
translated by Rabbis from Jerusalem, as no less disas
trous to Israel than the Golden Calf (end of Vol. ix. of
Babylonian Talmud). All Jews, says Edersheim, beheved
in the "absolute superiority of the Jew as such," and all
hoped for the restoration of Israel's dominion (sometimes
with a Messiah as Prince, sometimes as a direct theocracy)
and the return of all the "Dispersed." Israel's ideal of
unity rested on the Law, and her ideal of independence
on the Messianic hope. "To the orthodox Jew" (Eder
sheim, i. 84) "the mental and spiritual horizon was
bounded by Palestine," and if the Gentiles were not to
be cast with Satan into Gehenna, as Yalkut teaches, or
set to gaze with shame and envy at the Messianic feast,
according to the Rabbinical explanation of Psalm xxiii. 5,

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 19
they would attain their salvation by God's favour, not
by right, as would the Jews. This attitude of mind
necessarily produced sublime contempt, even hatred, for
these same inferior Gentiles. The Talmudic Tractate
Mekhilta stands perhaps alone in its savage injunction:
"The best among the Gentiles, kill; the best among
serpents, crush its head." But the existence of Jewish
dfii^ia and bitterness towards outside nations would seem
to be proved by the fact that Edersheim expends many
words in asserting it, while Josephus against Apion, and,
in our own days, Montefiore in his Jowett Lectures and
Rodkinson in his History of the Talmud, do the same in
denying it, the last-named admitting however that the
Babylonian Talmud has occasional uncharitable utter
ances against non-Jews, "due to momentary indignation."
Passages from the Mishna and Gemara may doubtless be
quoted on both sides, but for the purposes of our present
study, it is enough to note that at the beginning of the
Christian era the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans
(their kinsmen by blood, at least in great measure, and
doing honour to the same God and the same Pentateuch)
and that it needed a special revelation to make St Peter
go into the house even of a God-fearing Gentile. In such
an atmosphere, as Edersheim points out, no high spiritual
aspirations were fostered. "All that Israel needed:
"study of the law and good works,' lay within the reach
of everyone; and all that Israel hoped for was national
restoration. Everything else was but means to these
ends; the Messiah Himself only the grand instrument
in attaining them" (i. 164). It makes us under
stand why Our Lord so sternly preached that without
conversion and a becoming as little children, no Jew
2—2

20 NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
could enter the Kingdom of which he felt so absolutely
secure. We have now given a brief and inadequate sketch of
the background against which the drama of the New
Testament story is played. Perhaps it may be allowable
to quote an unpublished letter from a Cambridge scholar.
"Try to picture to yourself a parallel case. Suppose a
little nation somewhere in the Anglo-Indian Empire, with
a puppet prince of alien blood, kept in possession by a sort
of British military resident, whose relation to the prince is
rather that of Sirdar to Khedive ; picture a temple with
worldly ecclesiastics, having vested interests dominant —
a dean and chapter managing the precincts to make their
own profits, a number of pious and narrow high-churchmen
and a few mystics, and around all the mob, nationalist,
swayed to and fro by the Zealot-party or Sinn Feiners....
Perhaps it may in a confused way give you the atmosphere
at Jerusalem when Christ came."
Against this background let us try to draw in the
principal figures — Jews by birth and Christians by re
birth. But first we must try reverently to estimate the
attitude towards National Sentiment of Our Blessed Lord.
On the very briefest inspection, we cannot fail to
perceive that " the purely national elements " which played
so large a part in Rabbinic expectation "scarcely entered
into the teaching of Jesus about the Kingdom of God"
(Edersheim, i. 164). The Kingdom as preached by Him
is spiritual (Lu. xvii. 21 ; Matt. vi. 10) and only won by
obedience (Matt. v. 19 and vii. 21), righteousness (Matt.
v. 20 and vi. 33) and kindness to others (Matt. xxv. 34 sqq.).
It is hard work to enter it (Matt. xi. 12), and needs vigilant
toil (Matt. xxv. 1, 14), yet once inside, the subjects find

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 21
rest (Matt. xi. 28-30, contr. the Pharisaic bondage, Matt.
xxiii. 4). It is for the "little ones" of this life— those
with the hearts of children (Matt, xviii. 3 and xix. 14;
John iii. 3), the poor in spirit (Matt. v. 3), and the per
secuted (Matt. v. 10). The rich are wellnigh excluded
(Mark x. 23-25). It is heralded by repentance (Matt.
iv. 17), and it brings good news (Matt. iv. 23), and God's
forgiveness (Matt, xviii. 27). So it is a pearl of great
price (Matt. xiii. 44-46), and its mysteries are the precious
possession of Christ's followers (Matt. xiii. 11). With
marvellous secret power, it influences the whole life
(Matt. xiii. 31-33 ; Mark iv. 26-29) ; but, above all, it
knows no national restrictions. The Jews were by birth
"Children of the Kingdom" (Matt. viii. 12), yet the
privileges they slighted may pass on to others (Matt. xiii.
38, 43 and xxi. 43). It is as all-embracing as a great net
(Matt. xiii. 47), and is to be proclaimed in all the world
(Matt. xxiv. 14, xxvi. 13, xxviii. 19 ; Lu. xxiv. 47 ; John
iii. 16, vi. 33, x. 16, xii. 32 ; Acts i. 8).
In order that all material hopes may be destroyed,
Christ five times refuses to stand forth as an earthly king
(Matt. iv. 8-10; Lu. xix. 11; John vi. 15, xviii. 33-37;
Acts i. 6), and tells His disciples to expect no reward in
this life (Matt. xix. 27-29 and xx. 20-28). When He
speaks of the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom (Matt.
xvi. 28) He probably refers either to the Transfiguration
or to the fall of Jerusalem, though His Galilaean followers,
with their ardent patriotic hopes, doubtless took the words
in a literal sense. In this connection we may note the
fact that eleven out of the twelve Apostles — all, in fact,
but the traitor Judas — seem to have come from Galilee,
described by Charles as the "home of the religious seer

22 NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
and mystic," and by Edersheim as the "home of warm
impulsive hearts, of intense nationaUsm." One was a
Zealot; another, Judas the brother of James, if indeed
he wrote the letter called by his name, was steeped in the
patriotic literature known as Apocalyptic; while James
the son of Alphaeus may have given us that interesting
epistle which reminds Talmudic students of the teaching
of Shammai, greatest of nationalists. The Galilaeans
killed by Pilate were probably rebels (Lu. xiii. 1), and it
has been pointed out that Barabbas versus Jesus was
equivalent to Zealotism versus Quietism (Lu. xxiii. 19).
Thus we may say that Our Lord carefully selected the
most fanatically patriotic Jews, to learn His great lesson
of a universal brotherhood, with the God of Israel for
Father. For no dispassionate reader can deny that this universal
brotherhood, this breaking down of the middle wall of
partition, is one of the key-notes of Christ's message.
Whether Patriotism is in itself good or bad, its advocates
are bound to admit that it is never expressly inculcated
by Christ; nay, more, as far as its contemporary form
went, is constantly discouraged. W. Temple (op. cit.)
says: "Patriotism is particular; religion ought to be
universal."..." The instinct of nationality was never
christened at all."..." The church is essentially not
accidentally international." Zangwill points out that
the universalism of Christianity clashed peculiarly with
European tribalism. Westcott (Social Aspects of Chris
tianity) advocates the "one experiment of Christian
statesmanship which has not yet been tried, the policy
of national brotherhood." James Martineau (National
Duties) almost treats "the Universality of the Gospel"

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 23
as a weakness, and finally Loisy (The War and Religion)
sums up the matter in two short sentences : " The Gospel
knows nothing of Patriotism.... The Gospel of Jesus
implies the non-existence of nationality; it effaces it."
This has been partly shown in considering Christ's
teaching about the Kingdom. It may be further studied
in connection with His attitude :
(1) To Himself as Messiah ;
(2) To His compatriots and the Law ;
(3) To the Gentiles.
(1) It is remarkable that Christ during His public
ministry never calls Himself the Messiah, at least in the
Synoptic Gospels. The confession of St Peter is to be
kept strictly private (Matt. xvi. 13-20). Critics have
even supposed that it was his Master's Messianic hopes
which Judas "betrayed," so that at His trial before
Caiaphas further concealment was useless (Matt. xxvi.
63, 64). St John's account is, of course, very different
(John iv. 25, 26, vi. 69, vii. 26-28, ix. 22, x. 24-26), and
in any case the secret was to be revealed after Christ's
death. On the other hand, Christ deliberately fulfilled the
generally accepted Messianic prophecy of Zech. ix. 9 —
an anomaly which is somewhat hard to explain, though
in Hastings' Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels ("Nation
ality") this act is described as "the expression of His own
patriotic consciousness." He allowed Himself to be
hailed as Son of David by the many (Matt. ix. 27, xx. 30,
xxi. 15) and as Son of God by the few (Matt. xvi. 16;
John i. 49, xi. 27, and cf. the heavenly voices at the
Baptism and Transfiguration). But His usual name for
Himself is Son of Man, which probably merely bears its

24 NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
Aramaic meaning of "human being" (Mark ii. 10, 28).
This subject is discussed at some length in Hastings'
Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels. In the first passage
where the term appears (Dan. vii. 13) the contrast is
clearly between "humanity" and the "four great beasts,"
representing heathen empires, and the later expansion of
this chapter in 1 Enoch xlvi. does not give adequate ground
for taking the title as equivalent to "Messiah." The
fact that Christ's followers never use it but once after His
Ascension (Acts vii. 56) seems to point in the same direc
tion; it had no superhuman connotation and in using it
Christ made no Messianic claim. Indeed, it was not as
the King-Messiah that He wished His disciples to follow
Him on this earth. At the last days He would come
again in glory, fulfilling all the nation's hopes in an even
grander way than they dreamed (Matt. xix. 28, xxiv. 30,
xxv. 31, xxvi. 64), but now was His time of humiliation
and suffering and death (Matt. xvi. 21, xx. 17-19 and
xxvi. 54; Lu. xvii. 25, xxiv. 26, 46). He refused to
appear before the multitude as the conventional Messiah
borne by angels (Matt. iv. 5-7). He would not give them
signs from Heaven (Matt. xvi. 1-4; John vii. 3 and xiv.
22), for preaching, not miracle-working, is His proper
task (Mark i. 38 ; cf. Lu. ix. 2, 11), and even in the moment
of His Transfiguration His thoughts dwelt on the " decease
which He should accomphsh at Jerusalem" (Lu. ix. 31).
His disciples, much as they humanly shrank from such
an ending to their hopes (Matt. xvi. 22, 23; Lu. ix. 45
and xviii. 34), came to feel that He was thus the prototype
of the Suffering Servant and God-sent Healer of Isaiah
liii. and lxi. — neither of which chapters received a Messianic
application from the Jews themselves. Just as Christ

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 25
wished to change and elevate men's views of the Kingdom
of God, so did He transform their conception of the
Messiah from a national earthly King to the spiritual
ruler of "as many as received Him."
(2) About Our Lord's affection for His country there
can be no doubt. He wept over her neglected chances
(Matt, xxiii. 37 ; Lu. xix. 41-44) ; He had all a patriot's
admiration for the great and beautiful buildings whose
downfall He foresaw (Matt, xxiii. 17; Mark xiii. 1, 2;
John ii. 16, 17), and even in His own agony He mourned
for His native land (Lu. xxiii. 28-30). In His personal
life He was a devout Jew, frequenting the synagogue,
attending the feasts at Jerusalem, paying the Temple
tribute. The worldliness and scepticism of the Sadducean
priests was to Him no reason for refusing attendance at
the services they conducted. As an infant He was cir
cumcised and presented in the Temple (cf. Gal. iv. 4);
as a man He enjoined on the healed leper to show himself
to the priest and offer the gift which Moses commanded
(Matt. viii. 4). He set great store by the Law (Matt. v.
17, 18); considering it a perfectly adequate guide to
conduct (Matt. xix. 17 ; Lu. x. 25-28, xvi. 29 ; John v. 46).
Even the ordinances of the Pharisees were to be obeyed
(Matt, xxiii. 3) except when they made the commandment
of God of none effect by their tradition (Matt. xv. 6).
Only where the Law of Moses seemed to Him narrow or
unloving did He point to anything higher (Matt. v. 21-48,
xix. 3-9 ; Lu. xx. 27-36 ; John viii. 3-11). His familiarity
with the Old Testament is shown at the Temptation, in
His first sermon (Lu. iv.) and throughout His dealings
with His people (e.g. Matt. xxi. 13, 16; Lu. xx. 41-44,
xxiv. 25-27, 45). He feels emphatically that "salvation

26 NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
is of the Jews" (Matt. xv. 26 ; John iv. 22). Yet all this
did not save Him from the charge of blasphemy and law--
breaking. The Pharisees, all along shocked at His opening
His Kingdom to despised "publicans and sinners," began
to hate Him when by plucking the corn, restoring the
withered hand and healing impotence, dropsy and blind
ness, He set aside that conventional rigid view of the
Sabbath which dated from the time of the Maccabees
(1 Mace. ii. 32-38). His neglect of fasts (Matt. ix. 14)
and ceremonial washings (Mark vii. 5-23), though He
Himself was baptized "to fulfil all righteousness" (Matt.
iii. 15), added fuel to the fire, while His refusal to regard
burying the dead as a paramount duty was in direct
opposition to Rabbinical teaching (Matt. viii. 22). The
Pharisees on their side seemed to Him "blind leaders of
the blind" (Matt. xv. 14) lost in the darkness of externalism
(Matt. xv. 8 and xxiii. 5, 14, 23, 25 ; Lu. xviii. 11, 12) and
exclusiveness (Matt, xxiii. 13) — truly "scribes and Phari
sees, hypocrites" (Matt, xxiii. 15). In another quarter
the rich Sadducees were hurt in their financial interests
by the cleansing of the Temple, a definite interference with
the priests' commercial monopoly, and considered by some
writers to have been the immediate cause of the Cruci
fixion. Finally, Christ's attitude to the multitude was no
less strikingly un-Jewish. Not only did He consort with
the traitor publicans and choose one for an apostle (Matt.
ix. 9 — 11 ; Lu. xv. 1, 2, xix. 1-9), but Kirsopp Lake (op.
cit.) would have us see in the Gospels a distinct anti-
Zealot polemic. The people wished to make Him a king,
and His refusal marks the point when fickle popular favour
began to turn against Him. It is patience and submission,
not militant patriotism that He praises (Matt. x. 22, 23,

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 27
xxiv. 13). However much He loved Jerusalem, He could
calmly foretell that she would be "trodden down of the
Gentiles " (Lu. xxi. 24), and His command to His followers
in the hour of her crisis was "Flee into the mountains"
(Matt. xxiv. 16). Every act and word of Christ in Holy
Week, from His acceptance of Roman rule in the matter
of the Imperial tribute (Matt. xxii. 15-22) to His abjuring
even celestial violence in His own defence (Matt. xxvi.
53, 54), must have seemed to the Jewish people a wilful
shattering of their most sacred hopes. Julia Wedgwood
(Message of Israel) truly says : " We do not enough realise
the utterly unpatriotic aspect which the attitude of Christ
must have taken in the eyes of His countrymen." It was
essentially hurt religious and racial pride which led them
to consider Him an incarnation of Satan (Matt. xii. 24;
John viii. 48), and finally to trump up before the Romans
the charges of sedition and blasphemy (Lu. xxiii. 2-5;
John xix. 7, 19-22). If He would not behave as the
Messiah, neither showing signs as a Prophet, nor enforcing
the traditions of the Elders as a Priest, nor claiming
sovereignty as a King, let Him be put to death for fear
of trouble (John xi. 48). As the Dictionary of Christ and
the Gospels says: "Though He embodied the hope of
Israel and fulfilled the Law of Moses, it was in the name
both of the hope which the priests mistook, and of the
Law which the Scribes misinterpreted, that Jesus was
brought to the cross."
If we turn from the actions of Our Lord to His dis
courses, we find the same protest against Jewish exclusive
ness! The parables of the Wicked Husbandmen (Matt.
xxi., and cf. Matt. viii. 12), the Two Sons (Matt, xxi.),
the Wedding Guests (Matt, xxii.) deal solely with this

28 NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
topic, while the Labourers in the Vineyard (Matt, xx.)
and the Barren Fig Tree (Lu. xiii.) may be so interpreted.
The Jews in their obstinate rejection of the Gospel are
unfavourably compared not only with the men of Tyre
and Sidon (Matt. xi. 21, 22) and the Queen of Sheba
(Matt. xii. 42) but even with the sinful people of Sodom
and Gomorrah (Matt. xi. 23, 24) and of Nineveh (Matt.
xii. 41). They are not truly children of Abraham (John
viii. 39) nor followers of Moses (John v. 46) ; in the words
of Isaiah "This people's heart is waxed gross" (Matt.
xiii. 15) and the sentence is pronounced in solemn words :
" The kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given
to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof" (Matt.
xxi. 43).
(3) This last sentence is a fitting introduction to our
third point — Christ's attitude to the Gentiles. We have
seen in all His preaching that the door of His Kingdom is
open to all, and His first discourse at Nazareth threw down
the glove, as it were, to Jewish exclusiveness. God cared
about the widow of Sarepta and the Syrian Naaman no
less than for His chosen people (Lu. iv. 25-27). Ever
after Christ goes out of His way, we may almost say, to
reprove the misguided patriotism which thought only
Jews acceptable to God. The withholding of the Gospel
during His lifetime from Samaritans and Gentiles as a
whole (Matt. x. 5, 6) was obviously only a temporary
measure, as is proved in Lu. xxiv. 47, Acts i. 8, and the
consequent behaviour of the Apostles after Pentecost.
Jesus is willing to go into the house of the uncircumcised
centurion, and warmly praises the spirit which he shows
(Matt. viii. 10). He rewards, after a hesitation not
altogether easy to understand, the faith of the Syro-

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 29
phenician woman (Matt. xv. 21-28) and He allows Philip
and Andrew to bring Greeks to Him (John xii. 22). He
goes to the country of the Gergesenes, where the inhabit
ants kept swine (Matt. viii. 28-34), and He is to be found
in the Syrian "coasts of Tyre and Sidon" (Matt. xv. 21)
as well as the Hellenic "coasts" of Caesarea Philippi
(Matt. xvi. 13) and Decapolis (Mark vii. 31). It is surely
no accident that whereas He answers nothing to the would-
be Jew, King Herod (Lu. xxiii. 9), He speaks freely to the
Roman Governor (John xviii. 36, 37, xix. 11) and makes
allowances for him. We have already seen His respect
for Gentile authority (Matt. xxii. 21); the same thing
comes out in His warnings to His disciples of what they
would suffer from that authority (Lu. xii. 11, xxi. 12).
The Gentiles are not to be imitated in their worldly-
mindedness (Matt. vi. 32) and their desire, for power
(Matt. xx. 25), but they are to be courteously treated
and "loved" even when enemies (Matt. v. 43-47). The
half-breed Samaritans, more obnoxious to the Jew than
the real Gentiles (John viii. 48), are to be admitted to
Gospel privileges (John iv.), and one of the despised race
is chosen as the hero of Christ's most beautiful parable
(Lu. x.). When the Samaritans churlishly refuse Him
passage through their country, He checks all feelings
of animosity in His disciples (Lu. ix. 52-55), and the
thankfulness of the Samaritan leper is made to shine out
in edifying contrast against the ingratitude of the Jews
(Lu. xvii. 16). Even if it were possible to see with G. B.
Shaw (Preface to Androcles) a "Chauvinist Jew" in the
Christ of St Matthew's Gospel, there is certainly the very
reverse of such a spirit in the Christ portrayed for us
by St Luke and St John. It hardly needs St Paul's

30 NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
magnificent words to make us realise that in Christ
"there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond
nor free, there is neither male nor female" (Gal. iii. 28).
The middle wall of partition is for ever broken down.
Such, then, was the attitude of Our Blessed Lord
towards National Sentiment: the Gospel of Jesus, as
Loisy says, effaces Nationality. It now remains to be
seen how far His disciples followed in His steps.
(1) During their Master's lifetime, the twelve Apostles
seem to have grasped this great tenet of Christianity as
little as they did all the rest. They see in Jesus a Jewish
Messiah who will restore a temporal kingdom and give
them earthly rewards. They fail to understand His
allusions to shame and death. They treat the Syro-
phenician mother as a mere nuisance, more easily sent
away if relieved first (Matt. xv. 23), and they watch in
horrified silence Christ's treatment of the woman of
Samaria. It is only after the coming of the Holy Spirit
that the idea of a universal Kingdom of God is unfolded
to them by slow degrees. St Matthew writes his Gospel
as a Jew for Jews, beginning it with a genealogy of Christ's
descent from Abraham. Christ is to him above all things
the fulfiller of prophecy, a claim which he makes for Him
no less than fourteen times (i. 23, ii. 5-6, 15, 18, 23, iii. 3,
iv. 14, viii. 17, ix. 13, xii. 17-21, xxi. 5, xxvi. 56, xxvii. 9,
35), and it is the "God of Israel" Whom Christ's mighty
works lead people to glorify (Matt. xv. 31). Even
St Peter, destined afterwards to baptise the first un
circumcised convert, shows no breadth of view, but is
as Jewish and material as the others in his Messianic
hopes (Matt. xvi. 22, xix. 27; Mark i. 36-38), so that
he has to ask Christ "privately" about anything so

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 31
unheard of as the fall of Jerusalem (Mark xiii. 3). It may
even be remarked that St Mark, under St Peter's tuition,
writes almost affectionately of Herod Antipas, who, with
all his vices, might seem to a Jewish patriot the repre
sentative of Mariamne and the Asmonean house (Mark
vi. 20, 26). Yet this hot-headed Galilaean, with his
provincial dialect (Mark xiv. 70) and racial impulsiveness
(Matt. xiv. 28; Mark xiv. 31; John xiii. 37), was
chosen by Christ to bear the keys of the Kingdom of
Heaven and to be the Christian pioneer in preaching the
Gospel, not only to the Jews and their children but to
"all that are afar off" (Acts ii. 39). To St John with his
Greek culture (how attained we need not here consider)
Christ is the Universal Light (i. 9, viii. 12) and Saviour
(John i. 29, iii. 16, xii. 32). He was rejected by the Jews,
"His own" (i. 11, xii. 37-41, cf. viii. 42), though He
fulfilled their scriptures (xix. 28, 36, 37) ; but His kingdom
is not of this world (xviii. 36) and has no limits of race
(x. 16). In Catholic spirit, the writer of the fourth
Gospel stands far above the other evangelists, and is
akin to if not identical with the mystical seer of the Book
of Revelation, who saw the chosen thousands of Israel
closely followed by the "great multitude which no man
could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people,
and tongues" (Rev. vii. 9).
(2) From the Gospels we pass to the Acts, where the
events of the second chapter mark a new era in Christian
thought. It is significant that the Universal Gospel
preached by St Peter to " Jews, devout men out of every
nation under heaven" (Acts ii. 5) should be reinforced in
his teaching by an appeal to Joel — the prophet who
united (as Charles points out) the legalistic Pharisaism

32 NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
which developed into modern Judaism, and the apoca
lyptic Pharisaism which was the forerunner of Christianity.
Joel urges "fasts" and "a solemn assembly," yet he
foresees that Yahweh will pour out His spirit " upon all
flesh" (ii. 15, 28). The gradual expansion of this thought
is the theme of the Acts, and the writer was peculiarly
fitted for his task. Himself a Greek of Macedonia (then
the leading Greek country) probably from Philippi, with
the "local feeling" that Ramsay (op. cit.) tells us was
"the strength and weakness of all Greeks," Luke wrote
for a converted Roman official, described like Felix
(Acts xxiii. 26) and Festus (Acts xxvi. 25) as /epaTtoro?
(Lu. i. 3), whose assumed name of Theophilus perhaps
shows that it was already inexpedient for Romans in
high places to profess Christianity. In his Gospel he
gives many proofs of his non-Jewish proclivities. The
quotation from Isaiah about John the Baptist is extended
to include the verse "and all flesh shall see the salvation
of God" (Lu. iii. 6), and Christ is proclaimed to be not
only the Glory of Israel but "a light to lighten the
Gentiles" (ii. 32). His Circumcision, Presentation and
First Passover, passed over as matters of course by the
Jewish Matthew, are narrated in full by St Luke, who
also alone tells of the Roman census (ii. 1, 2) and carefully
enumerates the rulers of the Holy Land (iii. 1). He alone
gives us the universalist sermon at Nazareth, mentions
the generosity of the Roman centurion at Capernaum
(vii. 4, 5) and of the despised publican Zacchaeus at
Jericho (xix. 1-8), and displays special interest in the
Samaritans (ix. 52-56, x. 33 sqq., xvii. 11 sqq.). Indeed,
a sentence in the last chapter of his Gospel (xxiv. 27),
" That repentance and remission of sins should be preached

1-

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 33
in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem,"
might be said to be the text or motto of the Acts. First,
we have the good news told to the Jews of the Dispersion,
with synagogues scattered everywhere from Parthia to
Cyrene and from Arabia to Rome (Acts ii. 9-11 and vi. 9).
Then, for their special needs, deacons are appointed
(ch. vi.), of whom six are Greek-speaking Jews (EWrjviaT ai,
Grecians) and one is a Greek proselyte, i.e. by birth a
EWrjv or Greek. The leader of the seven, St Stephen,
is said by Lightfoot to have sounded the death-knell of
Mosaic ordinances and temple worship. Next comes the
mission to the Samaritans (ch. viii.) begun by Philip the
Deacon and completed by Peter and John, and as a kind
of sequel, the charming story of Philip baptizing the
Ethiopian eunuch. So far the Gospel had only been taken
to Jews, or half-Jews, or proselytes of the Covenant, but
the calling of the Gentiles had been revealed to Ananias
as the future work of Saul the Persecutor (Acts ix. 15).
The first step, however, was taken not by St Paul but by
St Peter, who welcomed as a convert the uncircumcised
Cornelius, and announced as God's revelation to himself
that "In every nation he that feareth Him and worketh
righteousness is accepted with Him" (Acts x. 35). When
we meet Gentiles again it is in the synagogue of Antioch
in Pisidia (xiii. 42) and to them St Paul turns when the
Jews reject his message (xiii. 46); from now onwards,
St Paul is the acknowledged Apostle of the Gentiles
(Acts xiv. 27, xv. 3, etc.) and champions their claims to
Christian freedom (Acts xv. and Gal. ii.). Broad-minded
counsels prevail at the Council of Jerusalem, and the
Gentile converts are excused by the Jewish leaders of the
Church from obligatory circumcision; only idolatry and
b. 3

34 NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
impurity are forbidden, and for purposes of easy inter
course with Jews they are told to eat kosher meat. Finally,
the story of the Acts shows Paul confronted with definitely
Pagan Gentiles, who are drawn by Luke with minute
accuracy — Asiatic and Roman magistrates (of whom the
latter are usually more friendly than the former) — the
populace of Athens and its learned men, to whom he
preaches (as once before at Lystra and once later in
Romans L, ii.) a sermon of Natural Rehgion worthy of
a Stoic philosopher — and finally the military represen
tatives of Rome. This, according to Ramsay, completes
Luke's scheme. His task was to show, when writing
under the hostile rule of Domitian, that Paul's acquittal
was a charter of religious liberty; that in Paul's eyes
Christianity was destined not to destroy but to save the
Roman Empire, and must be thought of, so to speak, in
imperial terms ; and that Paul, though a " Hebrew sprung
from Hebrews" (Phil. iii. 5) and a citizen of Tarsus, a "no
mean" Greco-Asiatic city (Acts xxi. 39), yet attached
supreme importance to being a Roman and freeborn
(Acts xvi. 37, xxii. 27, 28). To Bernard Shaw (op. cit.)
St Paul is " more Jewish than the Jews, more Roman than
the Romans, proud both ways"; but this twofold pride
learnt to become "all things to all men" (1 Cor. ix. 20-22).
It was just these different sides of his nature — his un
stained record as a pure-bred and orthodox Pharisee
(Acts viii. 3, xxii. 3, xxiii. 6, xxiv. 14-18, xxv. 8, xxvi.
4 sqq., xxviii. 17; Rom. ix. 1-5, xi. 1; 2 Cor. xi. 22;
Gal. i. 14 ; Phil. iii. 5 ; 2 Tim. i. 3), possibly sprung from
the Jews settled in Asia Minor by Antiochus IV (175-164
B.C.), — his Greek culture acquired in Tarsus, which Strabo
tells us surpassed even Athens and Alexandria in zeal for

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 35
philosophy (see Acts xxi. 37), — and his consciousness of
membership in a world-wide Empire whose institutions
he honoured and in whose laws he constantly shows
himself versed (e.g. Gal. iv. 5, 7) — that enabled St Paul
(Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels) to " draw out to the
full logical issue the universal implication of the Gospel,"
so that "what nationality had hitherto done for religion...
humanity was to do henceforth." In this great task, the
dominion of Rome, with its centralised government and
easy inter-communication, and with Greek understood
everywhere, was an incalculably important agent. It is
difficult to put this too strongly. Edersheim, from one
point of view, may deplore the fact that "Roman sway
had levelled the ancient world and buried its national
characteristics," but Ramsay can with equal truth boast
that, following in the wake of Stoic philosophy, it was
" the mission of Rome to make the idea of cosmopolitanism
a practical reality," and Lightfoot (Galatians) describes
the Empire as "a great framework for the spread of the
Catholic Church." So, from the moment when Saul
changed his name to Paulus (Acts xiii. 9) and, in Ramsay's
words, "stepped forward as a citizen of the Roman
Empire," he seems to have aimed at nothing less than
making Christianity the Imperial Religion. Thus he is
eager to go to Spain, as the great seat of Latin civilization
in the West (Rom. xv. 24, 28). Roman pohcy had indeed
much in common with Christianity. Both favoured the
Greek language — the Romans by studying it at home
and allowing it abroad, and the Christians by expecting
all their converts to read the Scriptures in Greek. At
Rome, for 250 years, the Christians, as we tell from
inscriptions.BZBre a Greek-speaking community, while

36 NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
Latin down to the Late Empire was obligatory only in
official matters (John xix. 20). Both fostered Imperial
Patriotism and obhterated tribal distinctions, the one by
the cult of the Emperors (an Egyptian and Asiatic phase
of religion shrewdly adopted by Augustus), the other by
a Catholic Church. Both set their faces against the low
morality of Asiatic nature worship, and while Roman
poets deplored the influx of Eastern vices into Rome,
Tatian the Christian apologist could claim that Christianity
supplied to the Empire the desired moral law for all. To
both, Universal Citizenship, Equality of rights for men,
and a Universal Religion, were objects of aspiration, and
in consequence, till persecution began, Christian teachers
all agreed in placing the Roman Government in a favour
able light (contrast Rom. xiii. and 1 Pet. ii. with Rev.
xvii.). All pohtical agitation is discouraged by St Paul,
as putting the ephemeral in the place of the eternal
(Phil. iii. 20; 1 Th. iv. 11, v. 14; 2 Th. iii. 6, 11 ; 1 Tim.
ii. 2 ; Tit. iii. 1, 2). Even the Emperor-cult, withdrawal
from which finally brought the Christians into trouble as
sacrilegious and unsociable — Roman subjects who "looked
to a non-Roman unity" (Ramsay, The Church in the Roman
Empire) — was not without its uses in the spread of Chris
tianity. The Roman provinces, organised on a politico-
religious basis for the purposes of the cult, became to
St Paul and his biographer appropriate districts of mission
work. Three of the Seven Churches of Revelation —
Ephesus, Smyrna and Pergamos — were in cities known
as veaKopot, i.e. Keepers of an Imperial Temple erected
by the koivov or Provincial Council, and of these
the first was founded by St Paul in the very seat of
Roman Government. Where Rome had established one

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 37
unifying rehgion, it was less difficult to replace it by
another. If this universal religion begins in the Acts with
St Peter, it is, as we have seen above, St Paul who carries
it forward. As a Jew he had possibly been a member of
the Sanhedrin (Acts viii. 1, xxii. 20), with its power over
synagogues in distant cities (Acts ix. 2, xxii. 5). As a
Christian he preached by preference to Jews first (Acts
xiii. 46, xviii. 5, 6, xxviii. 25-28; Rom. ii. 9, 10), but
it was as missionary to the Gentiles that he held his
special position in the Church (Acts xiii. 47, xiv. 27,
xv. 3, 12, xxi. 19, xxii. 21, xxvi. 17-23; Rom. xi. 13,
xv. 9-19 ; Gal. i. 16 and ch. ii. ; Eph. iii. ; Col. i. 27 ;
1 Tim. ii. 7; 2 Tim. i. 11). He himself kept the feasts,
took Jewish vows and attended services in synagogues
and the Temple, quoted the Hebrew Scriptures to all his
hearers and readers, and on one occasion had a half-
Jewish disciple (Timothy) circumcised "because of the
Jews which were in those quarters" (Acts xvi. 1-3).
Yet in all his Epistles, especially those to the Galatians
and Romans, he inveighs with fervour (Rom. ii. 28, 29)
against the Jewish idea that God was bound to their
nation, "a perpetual privilege on the part of one race,
however they might behave" (Gore, Romans), and never
ceases to assert that, for a Gentile convert, circumcision,
which came into operation later than the promise to
Abraham (Rom. iv. ; Gal. iii.) is unnecessary — indeed,
positively hurtful, as showing want of faith in the New
Covenant (1 Cor. vii. 19 ; Gal. v. 2-6, vi. 15 ; Phil. iii. 2, 3 ;
Col. ii. 11, iii. 11, and see Gal. ii. 3). The Law, how
ever holy in itself (Rom. vii. 12; 1 Tim. i. 8), is but a
Trai&ayayos to bring men to Christ (Gal. iii. 24, 25) ; it
3—3

38 NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
consists of "weak and beggarly elements" (Gal. iv. 9);
it is "weak through the flesh" (Rom. viii. 3) and those who
remain content with it are "blind" (Rom. xi. 25; 2 Cor.
hi. 14, 15). After this, it is hardly surprising that even
in St Paul's earliest Epistles the hostihty of the Jews to
his teaching is patent (1 Th. ii. 14-16) and is restrained
only by the Roman Empire (2 Th. ii. 7, cf. also 2 Cor.
xi. 24, 26). The Jews of Jerusalem despised even the
Jews of Asia Minor as corrupt and hellenized ; how much
more then these uncircumcised Gentiles whom Paul
favoured (Acts xxii. 21, 22 ; Gal. v. 11) ! But to St Paul
these Gentiles were beloved children, and though, as a
patriotic Jew, he holds the Church of Jerusalem to be the
Mother Church, entitled to honour and support from
others (1 Cor. xvi. 1-3 ; 2 Cor. ix.) while he himself yearns
over his people, ready to purchase their salvation even by
his own perdition (Rom. ix. 3), he clearly realises that the
Gentiles are the Church of the future, to which indeed
they had given its name (Acts xi. 26). The Jewish nation,
as the "Israel of God," had had great and solemn privi
leges (Rom. iii. 1, 2, ix. 4), unmerited, as their wisest
men had felt (Deut. xxvi. ; Ezek. xvi. ; Amos ix. 7-10) ;
yet these had only served to make the Cross a " stumbling-
block" to their possessors (1 Cor. i. 22, 23). At the same
time, culture had led the Greeks to view that same Cross
as "foolishness," — a bitter indictment of current learning
and philosophy due doubtless in some measure to St Paul's
disappointing experiences at Athens. God had concluded
them all, Jew and Gentile alike, "in unbelief, that he
might have mercy upon all" (Rom. xi. 32; cf. Rom. v.;
2 Cor. v. 15 ; 1 Tim. ii. 4 ; Tit. ii. 11). And so to St Paul,
as to his Master, days and meats seemed minor matters

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 39
(Rom. xiv.; 1 Cor. viii., x.; Gal. iv. 10; Col. ii. 16;
1 Tim. iv. 3) in view of the great revelation of Christianity
— the novel and universal duty of loving all men, an idea
so new that it required a new word, ayairt], to embody it.
" The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink but righteous
ness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost" (Rom. xiv. 17),
and God is not "the God of the Jews only," but "of the
Gentiles also," so that we are "all one in Christ Jesus"
(Rom. iii. 29, x. 12 ; 1 Cor. xii. 13 ; Gal. iii. 28 ; Eph. ii.
14, iv. 4-6; Col. i. 12-23, iii. 11). It is indeed a strange
irony that this devout Jew, this peace-loving citizen of
the Roman Empire, should have been accused, hke his
Lord before him, of political rebellion and sedition (Acts
xvi. 21, xvii. 7, xxiv. 5), and of rehgious apostasy and
sacrilege (Acts xviii. 13, xxi. 21, 28, xxiv. 6). Truly
could he say that the Jews "both killed the Lord Jesus
and their own prophets and have persecuted us, and they
please not God and are contrary to all men, forbidding us
to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved" (1 Th.
ii. 15, 16). Yet even St Paul could hardly realise the
debt owed by Christianity to those Gentile converts who
ultimately, as Kirsopp Lake says, "made Christ the
centre of a cult." The Jewish Messiah had never been
considered as divine, and the prerogatives of forgiving
and judging were, even in the Messianic kingdom, reserved
for Yahweh. St Paul himself never actually calls Jesus
Christ God (1 Cor. viii. 6) ; but the Greek Christians, in
using the title Kvpios so long apphed to divine Emperors
(1 Cor. xii. 3), took a great step towards claiming Our
Lord's divinity, and to them in large measure modern
Christology owes its origin. They shall bring the glory
and honour of the nations into the heavenly Jerusalem,

40 NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
and to each race is assigned some special contribution of
thought. Perfect Christianity, as Gore says, needs the
Jew, the Greek, the Roman, the Kelt, the Teuton, and
the Slav.
In the New Testament, St Paul's personality is so
dominating that after his hfe and his Epistles are done
with, little remains to be studied. That little is, however,
of considerable interest. St Peter's Epistles (whether
genuine or not) are specially addressed to Gentile Christians
(1 Pet. ii. 10, iv. 3), and he writes, if we take the phrase
literally, from Babylon (v. 13). Yet he makes an unusual
number of allusions to the Old Testament and the
Apocrypha (Noah, Lot, Balaam and "the angels that
sinned") and speaks of prophecy with peculiar reverence
(2 Pet. i. 19-21, iii. 2). His eschatology is purely Jewish.
Christ is to come in judgment (1 Pet. iv. 5) and glory
(1 Pet. v. 1, 4) and the dissolution of all visible things is
to be followed by new heavens and a new earth (2 Pet. iii.).
At the same time, in spite of (or because of) their ever-
present hope of their Lord's coming, Christians are to be
pure and peaceable, submitting "to every ordinance of
man for the Lord's sake" (1 Pet. ii. 13). This teaching
reappears in the Epistle of Jude, which is strikingly like
2 Peter in many ways. The Epistle of James is of such
uncertain origin that some, treating ii. 1 as an interpolation,
have even ascribed it to an unconverted Jewish author.
It is full of scriptural allusions, and dwells on the practical
virtues, brotherly love, restraint of speech, and the
repression of the "lusts" which lead to war. Even if it
comes from the pen of a patriotic follower of the Rabbi
Shammai, nothing of National Sentiment can be fairly
gleaned from it.

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 41
On the other hand, the Epistle to the Hebrews, by an
unknown author, runs directly counter to the religious
and racial feelings of the Jews. The whole argument is
that the sacred Law contained merely "a shadow of good
things to come" (x. 1) and that Christianity is the "New
Covenant" foretold by Jeremiah (ch. viii.): "The law
made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope
did" (vii. 19). So Christ is a better Priest than the High
Priest, and a better Sacrifice than the blood of bulls and
goats. And the conclusion of all this is, that because
Christians have greater privileges than the Jews, there
fore they have greater responsibilities (ii. 1-3, x. 26-29,
xii. 18-28). The writer takes us away from the earthly
Zion and leads us "unto the city of the living God, the
heavenly Jerusalem... to the general assembly and- church
of the firstborn" (xii. 22, 23), and in the dazzling light of
that unity, national differences disappear.
Finally, we come to the writings of John — whether one
John or two — three Epistles and the great Christian
Apocalypse. In the Epistles there is nothing bearing on
our subject except the statement that obedience to God
and love to men is the true test of a divine sonship (1 John
iii. 10), and that Christ is the propitiation "for the sins
of the whole world" (1 John ii. 2). But the Book of
Revelation — on the universalist spirit of which we have
already dwelt — transports us to a fresh and marked stage
in Christian history, very different from even the latest
days of St Paul. The animosity of the Jews to the
Christians is now insignificant (Rev. ii. 9 and iii. 9), and
hostile power has passed into far mightier hands — those
of Imperial Rome. The burning of the capital had first
laid the Christians under the suspicion of Nero; then

42 NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND PATRIOTISM
their persistent refusal to worship the Emperor excited
the wrath of Domitian, and the storm of persecution
burst. So from ii. 13, where the temple of Zeus at
Pergamos is described as "Satan's Seat," down to the
magnificent tirades against Babylon the Great in chapters
xvii. and xviii., Rome stands forth under varied figures
as a gigantic, overpowering force of lust and pride and
cruelty. It is not till she is fallen that God's servants
can cry: "Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reign
eth!" (xix. 6). Little did the writer think that before
many years Rome herself would bow to Christ's sway,
and that the pretensions of her Empire would be revived
in those of the Holy Catholic Church.
We have now at least attempted to examine the whole
of the New Testament in the hght of National Sentiment
and Patriotism. What, then, is the conclusion of the
whole matter? Surely that in as far as its writers and
actors are Christian, so far are they international rather
than national, cosmopolitan rather than patriotic. It
may be true, as is claimed by Temple (op. cit.), that "the
Bible strongly insists on the nation as existing by divine
appointment," but this is certainly not true of its Christian
half. It may be, as Westcott says (op. cit.), that "the
nation is an element no less important in the life of the
Church than in the life of humanity" ; but, if so, it is a
truth revealed elsewhere than in the Gospels. Martineau
(op. cit.) may assert that "ineradicable differences of race
...have a divine right to exist and are ordained by Provi
dence," but he has to draw on his own inner consciousness
for a proof. To the ordinary reader of the New Testament
one fact surely must be perfectly clear — that patriotism
is not in itself a Christian virtue. We are to love all men

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 43
and obey our rulers, but to distinctive national sentiment
there is no appeal. On the contrary, the aim of Christ
and His followers would seem to have been the abolishing
of national differences, the dissipation of racial prejudices
and antagonisms, the breaking down of those middle walls
of partition which we, with our flags and our national
anthems and our customs-duties and our so-called
patriotism, have toiled so successfully to rebuild. Under
the Roman Empire and in the early Christian Church,
men were all brothers ; can we use the expression without
absurdity to-day? We have "Rule Britannia" on the
one hand; we have "Deutschland fiber alles" on the
other, and we gloat over each other's misfortunes. The
Talmudic legend tells us that God rebuked Miriam for
her Song of Triumph: "How can ye sing when my
children are perishing?" But the "good patriot" in
Christian times must show no such tenderheartedness.
It is indeed an era of "nationaUsm run mad," and the
end is not yet. One need not be a pacifist to endorse
Temple's noble aspiration (op. cit. page 60) : " Here is
field enough for heroism and the moral equivalent of war.
The Church is to be transformed and become a band of
people united in their indifference to personal success or
national expansion, and caring only that the individual
is pure in heart and the nation honourable." The end
is not yet ; but down the ages comes the echo of the great
Apostle's voice, and we thank God and take courage :
" Ye have put off the old man with his deeds, and have
put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after
the image of Him that created him : where there is neither
Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian,
Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all and vo all."

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AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS