We encounter again the _Leitmotiv_ of the Sermon on the Mount in the epilogue to the great parables uttered in Jerusalem. Nothing but the maintenance of the new morality in all relations of life guarantees entrance into the Kingdom. Hence Jesus can say to the Pharisee who agrees to the summary of this new morality as it is expressed in the commandment of love: Thou art not far from the Kingdom of God (Mk 12:34). That does not mean that the Pharisee by such a disposition of mind has already well nigh risen to the height of the “morality of the Kingdom.” For if the double commandment of love constituted the morality of the _Kingdom,_ Jesus must have said to him (since he entirely agreed to these commandments): Thou belongest to the Kingdom. The “not far” must in fact be understood in a purely chronological sense, not as denoting some small measure of perfection which the man still lacks. He is not far from the Kingdom of God because he possesses the moral quality which will identify him as a member of the same when after a short space it appears. The “not far” contains therefore the same mixture of present and future tense which we have remarked in the Beatitudes. Reasoning from our ethical point of view [pg 099] we are inclined to apply the conception of reward to this relation between membership in the Kingdom and the new morality. This, however, does not completely render the thought of Jesus, which had to do above all with the _immediateness_ of the transition from the condition of moral renewal into the super-moral perfection of the Kingdom of God. Whosoever at the dawning of the Kingdom is in possession of a character morally renovated, he will be found a member of the same. This is the adequate expression for the relation of morality to the coming Kingdom of God. 2. The Ethics of Jesus and Modern Ethics. The depth of Jesus’ religious ethics encourages us to expect that we can find our own modern-ethical consciousness reflected in it. With respect to its eternal inward truth it is indeed independent of history and unconditioned by it, since it already contains the highest ethical thoughts of all times. Nevertheless there exists a great difference between Jesus’ sentiment and ours. Modern ethics is “unconditional,” since it creates of itself the new ethical situation,—the presumption being that this situation will evolve unto final perfection. Ethics is here an end in itself, [pg 100] inasmuch as the moral perfection of mankind comes to the same thing as the perfection of the Kingdom of God. That is Kant’s thought. This self-sufficiency of ethics (which however, exacts a certain resignation in view of the distant consummation) shows that the modern-Christian theory is permeated by Hellenistic-rationalistic ideas and has undergone a development of two millenniums.