The chief rules for the understanding of the specific character of our Lord's revelation appear to be the following. The life and teaching must be taken entire; and, within this entirety, each stage must be apprehended in its own special peculiarities. The thirty years in the home, the school, the synagogue, the workshop at Nazareth, form a profoundly important constituent of His life and teaching--impressively contrasted, as they are, with the probably not full year of the Public Ministry, even though we are almost completely bereft of all details for those years of silent preparation. The Public Ministry, again, consists of two strongly contrasted stages, divided by the great scene of Jesus with the Apostles alone at Caesarea Philippi (Mark viii. 27-33; Luke ix. 18-22; Matt. xvi. 13-23). The stage before is predominantly expansive, hopeful, peacefully growing; the stage after, is concentrated, sad, in conflict, and in storm. To the first stage belong the plant parables, full of exquisite sympathy with the unfolding of natural beauty and of slow fruitfulness; to the second stage belong the parables of keen watchfulness and of the proximate, sudden second coming. Both movements are essential to the physiognomy of our Lord. And they are not simply differences in self-manifestation; they represent a growth, a relatively new element, in His human soul's experience and outlook. The central doctrine in the teaching is throughout the Kingdom of God. But in the first stage this central doctrine appears as especially upheld by Jesus's fundamental experience--the Fatherhood of God. In the second stage the central doctrine appears as especially coloured by Jesus's other great experience--of Himself as the Son of Man. In the earlier stage the Kingdom is presented more in the spirit of the ancient prophets, as predominantly ethical, as already come in its beginnings, and as subject to laws analogous to those obtaining in the natural world. In the second stage the coming of the Kingdom is presented more with the form of the apocalyptic writers, in a purely religious, intensely transcendent, and dualistic outlook--especially this also in the Parables of Immediate Expectation--as not present but future (Matt. xix. 28); not distant but imminent (Matt. xvi. 28; xxiv. 33; xxvi. 64); not gradual but sudden (Matt. xxiv. 27, 39, 43); not at all achieved by man but purely given by God (so still in Rev. xxi. 10). To the earlier stage belongs the great Rejoicing of Jesus (Matt. xi. 25-30; Luke x. 21, 22). The splendid opening, 'I thank Thee, Father--for so it hath seemed good in Thy sight', and the exquisite close, special to Matthew, 'Come unto Me--and my burthen is light', raise no grave difficulty. But the intermediate majestic declaration, 'All things are delivered unto Me by the Father--neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him', causes critical perplexities.