but it caused them bitter regret that they had no part in the government of the world, and in thought they anticipated the fulfilment of their wishes.  These they raised to an ever-higher pitch in proportion as their antagonism to the heathen became more pronounced, and as the world became more hostile to them and they to the world.  As the heathen empires stood in the way of the universal dominion of Israel, the whole of them together were regarded as one power, and this world-empire was then set over against the kingdom of God, i.e., of Israel.  The kingdom of God was entirely future; the fulfilling of the law did not prepare the way for it, but was only a statutory condition for its coming, not related to it inwardly as cause to effect.  History was suddenly to come to a stop and cease.  The Jews counted the days to the judgment; the judgment was the act by which God would at once realise all their wishes.  The view thus taken of the world’s history was a very comprehensive one and well worked out from its principle, yet of an entirely negative character; the further the world’s history went wilfully away from its goal, the nearer did it unintentionally approach its goal.  In this view, moreover, the earth always continued to be the place of hope; the kingdom of God was brought by the judgment into earthly history; it was on earth that the ideal was to be realised.  A step further, and the struggle of the dualism of the earth was preluded in the skies by the angels, as the representatives of the different powers and nations.  In this struggle a place was assigned to Satan; at first he was merely the accuser whom God Himself had appointed, and in this character he drew attention to the sins of the Jews before God’s judgment-seat, and thereby delayed the judicial sentence in their favour; but ultimately (though this took place late, and is not met with in the Book of Daniel) he came to be the independent leader of the power opposed to God, God’s cause being identified with that of the Jews.  But as this prelude of the struggle took place in heaven, its result was also anticipated.  The kingdom of God is on earth a thing of the future, but even now it is preserved in heaven with all its treasures, one day to descend from there to the earth.  Heaven is the place where the good things of the future are kept, which are not and yet must be; that is its original and true signification.  But the most important question came at last to be, how individuals were to have part in the glory of the future?  How was it with the martyrs who had died in the expectation of the kingdom of God, before it came?  The doctrine of the zakuth was formed:  if their merit was not of service to themselves, it was yet of service to others.  But this was a solution with which individualism could not rest content.  And what of the ungodly?  Were they to escape from wrath because they died before the day of judgment?  It was necessary that the departed also should be