Bernhard Weiss, not being so much under the influence of modern theology as to feel bound to recognise the paedagogic purpose in Jesus, gives the text its due, and admits that Jesus intended to use the parabolic form of discourse as a means of separating receptive from unreceptive hearers. He does not say, however, what kind of secret, intelligible only to the predestined, was concealed in these parables which seem clear as daylight. That was before Johannes Weiss had stated the eschatological question. Bousset, in his criticism of the eschatological theory,(177) is obliged to fall back upon Jülicher’s method in order to justify the rationalising modern way of explaining these parables as pointing to a Kingdom of God actually present. It is true Jülicher’s explanation of the way in which the theory arose does not satisfy him; he prefers to assume that the basis of this false theory of Mark’s is to be found in the fact that the parables concerning the presence of the Kingdom remained unintelligible to the contemporaries of Jesus. But we may fairly ask that he should point out the connecting link between that failure to understand and the invention of a saying like this, which implies so very much more! If there are no better grounds than that for calling in question Mark’s theory of the parables, then the parables of Mark iv., the only ones from which it is possible to extract the admission of a present Kingdom of God, remain what they were before, namely, mysteries. The second volume of Jülicher’s “Parables”(178) found the eschatological question already in possession of the field. And, as a matter of fact, Jülicher does abandon “the heretofore current method of modernising the parables,” which finds in one after another of them only its own favourite conception of the slow and gradual development of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of Heaven is for Jülicher a completely supernatural idea; it is to be realised without human help and independently of the attitude of men, by the sole power of God. The parables of the mustard seed and the leaven are not intended to teach the disciples the necessity and wisdom of a development occupying a considerable time, but are designed to make clear and vivid to them the idea that the period of perfecting and fulfilment will follow with super‐earthly necessity upon that of imperfection.