expectation of the approaching Kingdom it received a sharpness of emphasis which it could not otherwise have had,—but it was a _true_ emphasis. It described the conduct appropriate to man in this present world _so long as this world shall last_—a conduct which is justified here by the expectation of a better world to come, “beyond good and evil” if you will. “Thoroughgoing eschatology” is surely not incompatible with the recognition of a deeper [pg 040] intuition in Jesus which is necessary to explain the intensity of this very eschatology itself. It would be a rigorous extreme indeed which would exclude the recognition of Jesus’ God-consciousness—his consciousness of God as Father—as the primary and all-controlling fact of his religious experience. Nothing is more obvious than that out of that consciousness he acted and spoke _immediately._ And when his acts were influenced and his speech coloured by the eschatological outlook, what was that ultimately but the consciousness of God’s _nearness?_ How could the expectation of a divine world be so constant and so vivid without the feeling that it is in a sense locally near, imminent, impending, ready to break in, indeed actually intruding upon this present world, as it were “the finger of God” touching us here? Intuitional feeling, presentiment, insight, does not readily distinguish between nearness in time and in space. Jesus’ eschatology was an expression of his God-consciousness—the most eminent expression of it. Eschatology in the strict sense, with all its apocalyptic features, has long ago passed out of our view of the world. Schweitzer shows us with what justification the Church discarded it. But the feeling that was behind [pg 041] it remains, and still constitutes the fundamental experience of religion. It is the feeling of a divine environment, close to us, unspeakably close, imminent, intruding even upon the every-day world. “This is the finger of God, The flash of the will that can, Existent behind all laws, That made them, and lo! they are.” Intuitional feeling is not especially inclined to express the sense of God in terms of time. Space is the category more familiar to it. Wordsworth finds terms to express what is so intangible. “Those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realised High instincts, before which our mortal nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.”