Ecce Homo - Everyman's Library Author:Seeley Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. It is the object of the present treatise to exhibit Christ's career in outline. No other career ever had so much unity, no... more » other biography is so simple, or can so well afford to dispense with details. Men in general take up scheme after scheme, as circumstances suggest one or another, and therefore most biographies are compelled to pass from one subject to another, and to enter into a multitude of minute questions, to divide the life carefully into periods by chronological landmarks accurately determined, to trace the gradual development of character and ripening or change of opinions. But Christ formed one plan and executed it: no important change took place in his mode of thinking, speaking, or acting; at least the evidence before us does not enable us to trace any such change. It is possible, indeed, for students of his life to find details which they may occupy themselves with discussing ; they may map out the chronology of it, and devise methods of harmonising the different accounts; but such details are of little importance compared with the one grand question, what- was Christ's plan, and throw scarcely any light upon that question. What was Christ's plan, is the main question which will be investigated in the present treatise, and that vision of universal monarchy which we have just been considering affords an appropriate introduction to it. In discussing that vision we were obliged to anticipate. Let us now enquire, as a new question, what course Christ adopted when he mingled once more with his fellow-countrymen after his seclusion in the wilderness, and when he entered upon his public career? John's message to the nation had been, as we have seen, ' The kingdom of God is at hand.' Now this proclamation Christ took up from his...« less