Nor is this the only positive and comforting element in Schweitzer’s view. In the Postscript he has himself laid stress upon the [pg 035] aim of his work: “to impress upon the modern age and upon modern theology the figure of Jesus in its overwhelming heroic greatness.” And this he has accomplished in unexpected ways. The figure of Jesus which we have striven so hard to bring into nearness and sympathy through our psychological analysis has eluded our grasp, and under the hands of the historian and archæologist it has receded inexorably into the remote past and into a corner of Galilee. It looks to us strange and even petty in its remote Galilean surroundings. Now that figure, by the force of an elemental energy, is seen to break the shackles which would bind it to a particular time and place and become—not modern, indeed, but—universal. One may easily be so much absorbed with the difficulties in the way of accepting Schweitzer’s construction as to ignore the light which it sheds upon some of the major difficulties of the traditional view with which we have long wrestled in vain. One may mention at least eight obscure points which are illuminated for the first time by the eschatological view of the Gospel history. 1. Jesus’ use of the title “Son of Man,”—commonly in the third person and with a futuristic sense, as denoting a dignity and [pg 036] power which were _not yet_ his. Jesus was the Messiah designate. 2. The position of John the Baptist: it was Jesus alone that discovered in him the character of Elijah “the Coming One” (cf. Jn 1:21 ). 3. The conception of the Kingdom of God as a _gift,_ to be received passively as by a little child—and yet as a thing that “violent men” must wrest to themselves “by force.” 4. The relation of Jesus’ messianic expectation to that which was current among the people. Jesus moralised the popular eschatological ideal by combining it with the preaching of the Prophets. That Jesus opposed a purely moral ideal to a popular political agitation is doubly a fiction. 5. The significance of the Mission of the Twelve and its connection with the popular excitement which drew five thousand men into the desert by the seashore. 6. The significance of the Transfiguration, coming _before_ the Confession of Peter, and explaining how the knowledge of Jesus’ Messiahship was given by divine revelation. 7. The character of the secret which Judas possessed and was in a position to betray. Our notion that during the last days in Jerusalem every one knew of Jesus’ claim to be the Christ is plainly contrary to the record. The famous disputes [pg 037] of those days would have taken a very different form if the question which agitated all minds was, Is he the Christ? or is he not? 8. Jesus’ notion of the _necessity_ of his death, his resolution to die at Jerusalem, and his conception that he was giving his life as “a ransom for _many.”_