The Passion therefore belonged to Jesus’ preaching from the beginning. In the Affliction of the last times his followers must pass with him through suffering to glory—so his hearers understood him. Only, they did not know that he with whom they must suffer would be revealed as Messiah. In Jesus’ messianic consciousness the thought of suffering acquired now, as applied to himself, a mysterious significance. The messiahship which he became aware of at his baptism was not a possession, nor a mere object of expectation; but in the eschatological conception it was implied as a matter of course that through the trial of suffering he must become what God had destined him to be. His messianic consciousness was never without the thought of the Passion. Suffering is the way to the revelation of messiahship! [pg 224] What he experienced in this age represented the hidden life and labour of the Messiah. Suffering, however, was allotted to this rôle. It was Jewish doctrine that the Messiah must be full of chastisement, for the sufferings are necessary to the making of the perfectly righteous man (Weber, p. 343). This messianic consciousness of Jesus shows the same deepening of moral tone as does his eschatology. According to the customary modernising conception, it is assumed that during the greater part of his ministry Jesus did not think of the Passion, but was first obliged to entertain that thought by the malicious enmity of the Scribes. Thus his messiahship receives in the first period an ethical-idyllic cast, in the second, a modern hue of resignation. The historic-eschatological picture is at once livelier, deeper, and more moral. Jesus’ character did not undergo an “evolution” through the acceptance of the idea of the Passion. From the beginning he knew himself as Messiah only in so far as he was resolved through suffering to be purified unto perfection. As the one who is destined to bear rule in the new age he must beforehand be delivered into the power of ungodliness in order that he may there approve [pg 225] himself for the divine lordship he is to exercise. Out of such a messianic consciousness as this he adjures those about him to remain true so that he can recognise them as his own when the glory dawns. Thus the active ethical trait which constituted the depth of the secret of the Kingdom is a controlling factor also in the secret of messiahship.