of God’s power from heaven, destroying all sinners in his wrath, and delivering and comforting his people, giving them their lot in a veritable Canaan situated in a renewed earth.  Such visions are recorded in the Book of Daniel and the Revelation of John.  They are found in many other apocalypses not included in our Bible, and indicate how persistently the minds of the people turned towards the promises spoken by the prophets, and meditated on their fulfilment.  The Devout were midway between the Zealots and the Apocalyptists.  The songs of Zachariah and Mary and the thanksgiving of Simeon express their faith.  They hoped for a kingdom as tangible as the Zealots sought, yet they preferred to wait for the consolation of Israel.  They believed that God was still in his heaven, that he was not disregardful of his people, and that in his own time he would raise up unto them their king.  They looked for a Son of David, yet his reign was to be as remarkable for its purification of his own people as for its victories over their foes.  These victories indeed were to be largely spiritual, for their Messiah was to conquer in the strength of the Spirit of God and “by the word of his mouth.”  Such as these were ready for a ministry like John’s, and not unready for the new ideal which Jesus was about to offer them, though their highest spiritualization of the Messianic hope was but a shadow of the reality which Jesus asked them to accept.

18.  This last conception of the Messiah is found in a group of psalms written in the first century before Christ, during the early days of the Roman interference in Judea.  These Psalms of Solomon, as they are called, are pharisaic in point of view, yet they are not rabbinic in their ideas.  Their feeling is too deep, and their reliance on God too immediate; they fitly follow the psalms of the Old Testament, though afar off.  Of another type of contemporary literature, Apocalypse, at least two representatives besides the Book of Daniel have come down to us from the time of Jesus or earlier,—­the so-called Book of Enoch, and the fragment known as the Assumption of Moses.  These writings have peculiar interest, because they are probably the source of quotations found in the Epistle of Jude; moreover, some sayings of Jesus reported in the gospels, and in particular his chosen title, The Son of Man, are strikingly similar to expressions found in Enoch.  Can Jesus have read these books?  The psalms of the Devout were the kind of literature to pass rapidly from heart to heart, until all who sympathized with their hope and faith had heard or seen them.  The case was different with the apocalypses.  They are more elaborate and enigmatical, and may have been only slightly known.  Yet, as Jesus was familiar with the canonical Book of Daniel, although it was not read in the synagogue service in his time, it is possible that he may also have read or heard other books which had not won recognition as canonical.  If, however, he knew nothing of