Note 40 — Chapter IV · JESUS AS THE MESSIAH.1

This has been attempted chiefly by supposing an earlier and a later form of the plan of Jesus.40 Although, it has been said, the moral improvement and religious elevation of his people were from the first the primary object of Jesus, he nevertheless, in the beginning of his public life, cherished the hope of reviving, by means of this internal regeneration, the external glories of the theocracy, when he should be acknowledged by his nation as the Messiah, and thereby be constituted the supreme authority in the state. But in the disappointment of this hope, he recognised the divine rejection of every political element in his plan, and thenceforth refined it into pure spirituality. It is held to be a presumption in favour of such a change in the plan of Jesus, that there is a gladness diffused over his first appearance, which gives place to melancholy in the latter period of his ministry; that instead of the acceptable year of the Lord, announced in his initiative address at Nazareth, sorrow is the burthen of his later discourses, and he explicitly says of Jerusalem, that he had attempted to save it, but that now its fall, both religious and political, was inevitable, As, however, the evangelists do not keep the events and discourses proper to these distinct periods within their respective limits, but happen to give the two most important data for the imputation of a political design to Jesus (namely the promise of the twelve thrones and the public entrance into the capital), near the close of his life; we must attribute to these writers a chronological confusion, as in the case of the relation which the views of Jesus bore to the messianic idea in general: unless as an alternative it be conceivable, that Jesus uttered during the same period the declarations which seem to indicate, and those which disclaim, a political design.