Jesus had professed to be the Messiah. So much is undisputed. Could his title be admitted? Now, in the first place, it was the central conception of the Messianic office that its holder should exercise temporal power. He was not expected to be a teacher of religious doctrines, for this was not what was required. The code of theological truth was, so far as the Jews were aware, completed. The Revelation they possessed never hinted, from beginning to end, that it was imperfect in any of its parts, or that it needed a supplementary Revelation to fill up the void which it contained. Whatever Christians, instructed by the gospel, may have thought in subsequent ages, the believers in the Hebrew Bible neither had ascertained, nor possibly could ascertain, that Jehovah intended to send his Son on earth to enlighten them on questions appertaining to their religious belief. This they thought had long been settled, and he who tried either to take anything from it or add anything to it was in their eyes an impious criminal. Such persons, they knew, had been sternly dealt with in the palmy days of the Hebrew state, and the example of their most honored prophets and their most pious kings would justify the severest measures that could be taken against them. A spiritual reformer, then, was not what they needed: a temporal leader was. And this they had a perfect right to expect that the Messiah would be. The very word itself—the Anointed One, a word commonly applied to the king—indicates the possession of the powers of government. Their prophecies all pointed to this conception of the Messiah. Their popular traditions all confirmed it. Their political necessities all encouraged it. The very disciples themselves held it like the rest of their nation, for when they met Jesus after his resurrection we find them inquiring, "Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom of Israel?" (Acts i. 6.). The conversation may be imaginary, but the state of mind which such a question indicates was doubtless real. The author represented them as speaking as he knew that they had felt. Now, if ever they, who had enjoyed the intimate friendship of Jesus, could still look to him as one who would restore to Israel something of her bygone grandeur, was it to be expected that the less privileged Jews, who had inherited from their forefathers a fixed belief in this temporal restoration, should suddenly surrender it at the bidding of Jesus of Nazareth? For he at least did not realize the prevailing notions of what the Messiah ought to be. For temporal sovereignty he was clearly unfit, nor does he seem to have ever demanded it. There was a danger no doubt that his enthusiastic followers might thrust it upon him, and that, thus urged, he might be tempted to accept it. But his general character precludes the supposition that he could ever be fit to stand at the head of a national movement. The absence, moreover, of all political enthusiasm