always that the words as used by him come with a new volume of significance derived from his whole personality.  Everything turns on the connotation which he gives to the term God—­that is central and pivotal.  What this new Kingdom of God is, or will be, he does not attempt fully to explain or analyse.  In the parables, the treasure-finder and the pearl merchant achieve a great enrichment of life; so much they know at once; but what do they do with it?  How do they look at it?  What does it mean to them?  He does not tell us.  We only see that they are moving on a new plane, seeing life from a new angle, living in a fuller sense.  What the new life means in its fullness, we know only when we gain the deeper knowledge of God.

He suggests that this new knowledge comes to a man from God himself—­flesh and blood do not reveal it (Matt. 16:17).  “Unto you it is given,” he says on another occasion, “to know the mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mark 4:11), and he adds that there are those who see and do not see; they are outside it; they have not the alphabet, we might say, that will open the book (cf.  Rev. 5:3).  He makes it clear at every point in the story of the Kingdom of God that there is more beyond; and he means it.  It is to be a new beginning, an initiation, leading on to what we shall see but do not yet guess, though he gives us hints.  We shall not easily fathom the depth of his idea of the new life, but along with it we have to study the width and boldness of his purpose.  This new life is not for a few—­for “the elect,” in our careless phrase.  He looks to a universal scope for what he is doing.  It will reach far outside the bounds of Judaism.  “They shall come from the east and from the west, and from the north and from the south, and shall sit down in the Kingdom of God” (Luke 13:29).  “Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world,” he says (Mark 14:9).  “My words shall not pass away” (Luke 21:33).  All time and all existence come under his survey and are included in his plan.  The range is enormous.  And this was a Galilean peasant!  As we gradually realize what he has in mind, must we not feel that we have not grasped anything like the full grandeur of his thought?

He makes it plain, in the second place, that it will be a matter for followers, for workers, for men who will watch and wait and dare—­men with the same abandonment as himself.  He calls for men to come after him, to come behind him (Mark 1:17, 10:21; Luke 9:59).  He emphasizes that they must think out the terms on which he enlists them.  He does not disguise the drawbacks of his service.  He calls his followers, and a very personal and individual call it is.  He calls a man from the lake shore, from the nets, from the custom house.