The Son of Man appears first in Daniel, but there he is not an individual, but the symbol of a nation, "the people of the saints of the Most High"; and the vision pictures Israel as coming on a cloud, not from heaven, but to God, to receive from him authority to rule over the world. It is first in a part of the Book of Enoch, the "Parables," chapters 37-71, dating probably from the reign of Herod, that Daniel's "Son of Man" becomes an individual. It is important to understand the religion of this writer in order to appreciate the significance of this heavenly Messiah. His religion consists in faith in the reality of a spiritual world which is destined to displace the present world and to be the blessed abode of the righteous. God is "the Lord of Spirits," and the voice of Isaiah's seraphim becomes, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Spirits: he filleth the earth with spirits." The sin of the kings and mighty of the earth is that they deny the Lord of Spirits and the hidden dwelling places of the righteous. This is a religion of faith in heaven and its God and its angelic inhabitants, and in the destiny of the righteous soon to share its beauty and blessedness. Among those whom Enoch sees there, one is above all significant for man. He has the appearance of a man, with a face of graciousness and beauty, like an angel's. He is described as the Son of Man to whom righteousness and wisdom belong. He has existed from before the creation, and has been revealed to the righteous. Faith in him and hope for his coming have sustained the righteous in times of trouble, and by faith in him and in the Lord of Spirits and the heavenly dwelling places, they "have hated and despised the world of unrighteousness and have hated all its works and ways." Here is a religion of pure other-worldliness. The calling of this heavenly Son of Man is to be the judge of the world at the last day. He will then "sit on the throne of his glory," will "choose the righteous and holy" from among the risen dead, will condemn and send away to destruction the kings and mighty of the earth, who because of their unbelief in the unseen world have been proud and worldly and unjust. The righteous will dwell in the new heaven and earth, with the Lord of Spirits over them and the Son of Man as their companion, having been clothed with garments of glory and immortal life. The likeness between this religion and the apocalyptic type of New Testament Christianity is striking. But it is not Christian because it is without Jesus himself. This Son of Man has not already come and lived among men. The righteous have not learned of him that God is in this world as well as in the other, that he is a God of human beings, even the lowliest, and of birds and grass, of rain and growth. They have not learned that good is already stronger than evil; least of all do they know the greatest thing, that love is supreme, and that not by hating the world