Are we to imagine then that after this revelation of his secret Jesus was henceforth regarded by his disciples as the Messiah? No, _not yet_ was he the Messiah. It must constantly be kept in mind that the Kingdom and the Messiah are correlative terms which belong inseparably together. Now if the Kingdom was not yet come, neither was the Messiah. Jesus’ disclosure had reference to the time of the dawning of the Kingdom. When [pg 186] that hour shall strike, then shall he appear as Messiah, then shall his messiahship be revealed in glory. Such was the secret which he solemnly made known to his disciples. Jesus’ messiahship was a secret, not merely because he had forbidden it to be spoken, but in its very nature it was a secret, inasmuch as it could be realised only at a definite time in the future. It was a conception which could be formulated fully only in his own consciousness. Wherefore the people could not understand it—and need not know anything about it. It was enough if by his word and his signs he might convert them to faith in the nearness of the kingdom, for with the coming of the Kingdom his messiahship would be manifest. It is almost impossible to express in modern terms the consciousness of messiahship which Jesus imparted as a secret to his Disciples. Whether we describe it as an identity between him and the Son of Man who is to appear, whether we express it as a continuity which unites both personalities, or think of it as virtually a pre-existent messiahship,—none of these modern conceptions can render the consciousness of Jesus as the Disciples understood it. What we lack is the “Now and Then” [pg 187] which dominated their thinking and which explains a curious duality of consciousness that was characteristic of them. What we might call identity, continuity, and potentiality was in their mind confounded in a conception which quite eludes our grasp. Every person figured himself in two entirely different states, according as he thought of himself now, in the pre-messianic age, or then in the messianic. Expressions which we interpret only in accordance with our unity of consciousness, they referred as a matter of course to the double consciousness familiar to them. Therefore when Jesus revealed to them the secret of his messiahship, that did not mean to them that he is the Messiah, as we moderns must understand it; rather it signified for them that their Lord and Master was the one who in the messianic age would be revealed as Messiah.