Note 5 — Chapter VIII · CONSERVATIVE POSITIONS

When we try to form a correct view of Jesus’s utterances regarding this Kingdom of God, we find they have much vagueness and ambiguity. Their differences also in the Synoptic Gospels and the fourth are so apparent that the latter must be left out of account in any attempt to get a proper sketch of Jesus’s hopes. His apostles and other early reporters misunderstood some of His sayings, making them crasser. Oral tradition marred their original form. This is specially the case with respect to the enthusiastic hopes about the kingdom He looked for. But as the ideal did not become actual we must rest in the great fact that the Christianity He introduced was the nucleus of a perfect system adapted to universal humanity.5