From the beginning, his Messianic desires must have been for the reconciliation of God and man by the conquest of human sinfulness. As he watched the ceremonialism which was then the most distinctive feature of the Jewish religion, he must have echoed the burning words in which the prophets proclaimed righteousness to be alone acceptable to God, and must have denounced all forms that tended to obscure this truth. His sympathy would be sure to be with those whom the Pharisaic rigidity of that ceremonialism shut out and degraded by exclusion, “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” The “inwardness” of Christ, the stress he laid on the purity of the heart, in the first instance was probably the result of a reaction against the formalism of his age, with its minutely defined outward morality of law. To restore primitive truths, and to make goodness the essence of religion, must have always been his aim. Judging simply from probability, we should say that there were likely to be three clearly marked periods in the life of Christ. In early manhood his longing for the Messianic times would naturally express itself in the same form in which the longing of so many of his countrymen was expressed—in the call to repentance. The wickedness of the people being regarded as the cause of God’s anger, the best way to remove his anger and, consequently, to obtain the Messiah, was to turn the people from their sins, Christ’s own personal hatred of sin also, of course, urging him in this direction. Thus at first probably he was simply a preacher like John the Baptist, not claiming to be the Messiah, but a forerunner of the Messiah, exhorting the people to repent, and promising them that the Messiah would come as soon as they had reconciled themselves to God. Gradually, while engaged in this work, as he reached maturity and his powers grew to their full development, and as with them came the consciousness of his own greatness, the conviction would force itself on him that he was himself the promised Messiah, to be revealed as such by succeeding in his labour, by converting the people and banishing sin from Israel. This second period would grow naturally out of the first. Compared with the other preachers of repentance, he must have seemed able to obtain success; his preaching, of course, would be far more effective than theirs. Such being the case, hope—and natures like his are always intensely hopeful—would lead him to imagine himself completely successful, to believe that at his call all Jews would turn with pure hearts to God. This result would be sufficient glory for the Messiah; in the dreams of the prophets it had been the chief feature of the Messianic times. During this period he would be uniformly gentle, without bitterness against any class, would speak of coming “to call not the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Then as slowly but surely it became evident that his task was impossible, that the Jews in