Therewith it is also explained why the determination to encounter suffering and death could and must suggest itself. The realisation of the Kingdom of God was Jesus’ mission. This he had undertaken to effect at first within narrow limits during his Galilean ministry. Through his preaching of the new morality grounded upon faith in the divine Father, and under the influence of the power which proceeded from him, the beginnings of this Kingdom developed. It was a happy, successful period—the “Galilean spring [pg 062] time,” Keim called it. The climax of this period was reached with the mission of the Disciples. Through their preaching the glorious seed was to be strewn abroad everywhere. As they upon their return announced to him their success he broke out with the cry of exultation which accounted the victory already present (Mt 11:25-27). Then came the time of defeat. The opposition was contrived and carried out from Jerusalem (Mk 7:1). Before this the sympathy of the people delivered him from the consequences of occasional friction with the officials. Now, however, as the opposition was systematically pursued, even his followers fell away from him. It was ominous that the discussion about ceremonial purification brought to light the contradiction in which Jesus found himself with the legal tradition (Mk 7:1-23). Before spring had again returned to the land he had been obliged to leave Galilee. Far away in the north, in quiet and solitary retirement, he collected his energies in the effort perfectly to understand himself. For the realisation of the Kingdom there remained but one way still open to him,—namely, conflict with the power which opposed his work. He resolved to carry this conflict into the capital itself. There fate should decide. [pg 063] Perhaps the victory would fall to him. But, even if it should turn out that in the course of earthly events the fate of death awaited him inevitably, so long as he trod the path which his office prescribed, this very suffering of death must signify in God’s plan the performance by which his work was to be crowned. It was then God’s will that the moral state appropriate to the Kingdom of God should be inaugurated by the highest moral deed of the Messiah. With this thought he set out for Jerusalem—in order to remain Messiah. 2. The Four Assumptions of the Modern-Historical Solution. 1. The life of Jesus falls into two contrasted epochs. The first was fortunate, the second brought disillusion and ill success. 2. The form of the Synoptical Passion-idea in Mk 10:45 (his giving himself a ransom for many) and in the institution of the Lord’s Supper (Mk 14:24: his blood given for many) is somehow or another influenced by the Pauline theory of the atonement. 3. The conception of the Kingdom of God as a self-fulfilling ethical society in which service is the highest law dominated the idea of the Passion. [pg 064]