^W? 
 
 ,.^1 
 
 
 ^^ 
 
 ^vJLJt.,*ir-''H'^' 
 

 THE 
 
 BARNES REFERENCE LIBRARY. 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 fitted OD. Bairttc$« 
 
 Not to be takeri frorri t\\e roorri, 
 
 iJ^ 
 
Cornell University Library 
 BT301 .B41 1871a 
 
 Life of Jesus, the Christ /.M,i}finrv War 
 
 oiin 
 
 3 1924 029 376 625 
 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 
 — ■aiftf ■^ 
 
 <7fr0 
 
 1\ 
 
 ■ 
 
 ■F»^- 
 
 / 
 
 
 
 m^lZ 
 
 :^^=:S^ 
 
 ,^1 ; 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 CAVLORD 
 
 
 
 PRINTEOINU.S.A. 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029376625 
 

 / /y^, ./.../;/.. 
 
 /-^-:XYT7, 26. 
 
 Re'jfored. Pajnted. &. En^xaved. .-i.ier J.eonardc ds I'-ncis ^:':i2s-~ JJ^sct 
 
 '■■nffi r.ri.sr supper" 
 
 .F^XP'i^.i:-s-j{ ros. H.W.flK-CHERS. Ijfx Of Jesus the Chris ■, 
 
THE LIFE.vix'VV'-^';: 
 
 OP 
 
 JESUS, THE OHEIST. 
 
 HENEY WARD BEECHER. 
 
 " But when the fnhiess of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, 
 made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under 
 the law." — Gal. iv. i, 6. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 J. B. rORD AND COMPANY. 
 
 r EDINBURaH AND LONDON: THOMAS NELSON & SONS. 
 1871. 
 [All rights reserved.] 
 
 X 
 
(^■/^3 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, 
 
 BY J. B. FORD AND COMPANYj* 
 
 in the Office of the librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 University Pkess : Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
 Camuridub, 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I HAVE undertaken to write a Life of Jesus, the 
 Christ, in the hope of inspiring a deeper interest in 
 the noble Personage of whom those matchless his- 
 tories, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and 
 John, are the chief authentic memorials. I have en- 
 deavored to present scenes that occurred two thousand 
 years ago as they would appear to modem eyes if 
 the events had taken place ia our day. 
 
 The Lives of Christ which have appeared of late 
 years have naturally partaken largely of the dialectic 
 and critical spirit. They have either attacked or de- 
 fended. The Gospel, like a city of four gates, has 
 been taken and retaken by alternate parties, or held 
 in part by opposing hosts, while on every side the 
 marks of siege and defence cover the ground. This 
 may be unfortunate, but it is necessary. As long as 
 great learning and acute criticism are brought to assail 
 the text of the Gospels, their historic authenticity, the 
 truth of their contents, and the ethical nature of their 
 teachings, so long must great learning and sound phi- 
 losophy be brought to the defence of those precious 
 documents. 
 
IV 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 But such controversial Lives of Christ are not the 
 best for general reading. While they may lead 
 scholars from doubt to certainty, they are likely to 
 lead plain people from certainty into doubt, and to 
 leave them there. I have therefore studiously avoid- 
 ed a polemic spirit, seeking to produce conviction 
 without controversy. 
 
 Joubert ^ finely says : " State truths of sentiment, 
 and do nc^t try to prove them. There is danger in 
 such proofs ; for in arguing it is necessary to treat 
 that which is in question as something problematic ; 
 now that which we accustom ourselves to treat as 
 problematic ends by appearing to us as really doubt- 
 ful. In things that are visible and palpable, never 
 prove what is believed already ; in things that are 
 certain and mysterious, — mysterious by their great- 
 ness and by their nature, — make people beheve them, 
 and do not prove them ; in things that are matters of 
 practice and duty, command, and do not explain. 
 ' Fear God ' has made many men pious ; the proofs of 
 the existence of God have made many men atheists. 
 From the defiance springs the attack j the advocate 
 begets in his hearer a wish to pick holes ; and men 
 are almost always led on from a desire to contradict 
 the doctor to the desire to contradict the doctrine. 
 Make Truth lovely, and do not try to arm her." 
 
 The history of the text, the authenticity of the 
 
 ' As quoted by Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism, p. 234 (•London 
 ed.), 1865. 
 
PREFACE. y 
 
 several narratives, the many philosophical questions 
 that must arise in such a field, I have nbt formally dis- 
 cussed ; still less have I paused to dispute and answer 
 the thousands of objections which swarm around the 
 narrative in the books of the sceptical school of 'criti- 
 cism. Such a labor, while very important, would con- 
 stitute a work quite distinct from that which I have 
 proposed, and would infuse into the discussion a con- 
 troversial element which I have especially sought to 
 avoid, as inconsistent with the moral ends which I had 
 in view. 
 
 I have however attentively considered whatever 
 has been saidj on every side, in the works of critical 
 objectors, and have endeavored as far as possible so 
 to state the facts as to take away the grounds from 
 which the objections were aimed. 
 
 Writing in full sympathy with the Gospels as au- 
 thentic historical documents, and with the nature and 
 teachings of the great Personage whom they describe, 
 it is scarcely necessary to say that I have not attempt- 
 ed to show the world what Matthew and John ought 
 to have heard and to have seen, but did notj nor 
 what things they did not see or hear, but in their 
 simplicity believed that they did. In short, I have 
 not invented a Life of Jesuis to suit the critical phi- 
 losophy of the nineteenth century. 
 
 The Jesus of the four Evangelists for wellnigh two 
 thousand years has exerted a powerful influence upon 
 the heart, the understanding, and the imagination of 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 mankind. It is that Jesus, and not a modem substitute, 
 whom I have sought to depict, in his life, his social re- 
 lations, his disposition, his deeds and doctrines. 
 
 This work has been delayed far beyond the expec- 
 tation of the pubhshers, without fault of theirs, but 
 simply because, with the other duties incumbent upon 
 me, I could not make haste faster than I have. Even 
 after so long a delay the first Part only is ready to 
 go forth ; and for the second I am obHged to solicit 
 the patience of my readers. But I aim to complete 
 it within the year. 
 
 The order of time in the four Evangelists has 
 always been a perplexity to harmonists, and it seems 
 likely never to be less. But this is more especially 
 characteristic of details whose value is little affected 
 by the question of chronological order, than of the 
 great facts of the life of Jesus. 
 
 I have followed, though not without variations, the 
 order given by ElUcott,^ and especially Andrews.^ 
 But a recent " Gospel History Consolidated," pub- 
 lished in London by Bagster,^ so generally accords 
 with these that I have made it the working basis; 
 and, instead of cumbering the margin with references 
 to the passages under treatment, have preferred to 
 reproduce at the end of this volume a corresponding 
 portion of the text of the " Gospels Consolidated," by 
 
 ' Historical Lectures on the Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ. 0. J. Ellicott. 
 ' The Life of Our Lord upon Earth. Samuel J. Andrews. 
 " Imported and sold in the United States by John Wiley and Son, New 
 York. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 VU 
 
 a reference to which, chapter by chapter, those who 
 wish to do so will find the groundwork on which this 
 Life is founded. 
 
 Although the general arrangement of the " Gos- 
 pels Consolidated " has been followed,^ it will be seen 
 that I have frequently deviated from it in minor mat- 
 ters. For example, believing that the reports of the 
 Sermon on the Mount, as given in Matthew and in 
 Luke, are but two separate accounts of the one dis- 
 coiirse, I have not treated Luke's account as the rec- 
 ord of a second delivery of the same matter, as is 
 sometimes done. The two narrations of the discourse 
 and uproar at Nazareth I have regarded as referring 
 to but a single transaction, while the " Gospels Con- 
 solidated" treats them as separate events. But such 
 differences in mere arrangement are inevitable, and 
 not important. No two harmonists ever did agree in 
 all particulars, and it is scarcely possible that any two 
 ever will. The very structure of the Gospels makes 
 it wellnigh impossible. They are not like the " dis- 
 sected maps," or pictured, whose severed parts can, 
 with some patience, be fitted together iuto the origi- 
 nal whole, a hundred times exactly alike. They are 
 little more, often, than copious indexes of a volumi- 
 nous life, without dates or order. It is not probable 
 
 '' I would not be understood as recommending the " Gospels Consoli- 
 dated" as a substitute for the four Gospels, but as an auxiliary. The 
 fulness with which transactions are there made to stand out will help the 
 common reader to attain conceptions to which scholars come by a laborious 
 intercomparison of the four narratives. 
 
Viii PREFACE. 
 
 that a single note was taken, or a line written, in 
 Christ's hfetime. The Gospels are children of the 
 memory. They were vocally delivered hundreds of 
 times before being written out at all ; and they bear 
 the marks of such origin, in the intensity and vivid- 
 ness of individual incidents, while chronological order 
 and hterary unity are but httle regarded. In the 
 arrangement of particulars, therefore, when no clew 
 to the real order of time could be foimd, I have felt at 
 liberty to select such order as would best help the 
 general impression. 
 
 That this work may carry to its readers the rich- 
 est blessing which I can imagine, a sympathetic in- 
 sight into the heart of its great subject, Jesus Christ, 
 the Kedeemer of the world, and a vital union with 
 him, is my earnest wish and devout prayer. 
 
 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 
 Bkookltn, N. Y., August, 1871. 
 
OOE"TElsrTS OF PAET I. 
 
 -4- 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 Faoe 
 
 Intboductoby 1 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 The Oveeture op Angbxs 11 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 The Doctrinal Basis 44 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 Childhood and Eesidencb at Nazareth .... 54 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 The Voice in the Wilderness 82 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 The Temptation 114 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 1, his Personal Appearance 134 
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 The Outlook . . . . • 156 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 The Household Gate 181 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 The First Jud^an Ministry 
 
 200 
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 Thk Lesson at Jacob's Well 229 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 Early Labors in Galilee 253 
 
 CHAPTEE XIII. 
 A Time op Joy, 280 
 
 CHAPTEE XIV. 
 
 The Sermon on the Mount. — The Beatitudes . . . 305 
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 The Sermon on the Mount (continued) .... 331 
 
 CHAPTEE XVI. 
 The Beginning of Conflict 364 
 
 CHAPTEE XVII. 
 
 Around the Sea of Galilee 399 
 
 APPENDIX 433 
 
 INDEX 513 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 ENGRAVING ON STEEL. 
 Head op Christ. Eestored, painted, and engraved by W. E. 
 
 I Vl A BSHAIjL •.....•• Frontispiece. 
 After photograph of the rapidly decaying Supper Scene of Lbonabdo 
 DA Vinci, at Milan. 
 
 96 
 
 ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD. 
 
 1. Scene on the Upper Jordan. A Swamp op Papyrus Ebeds. 
 
 (Full page.) .•......."• 
 
 The idea and general view were taken from MacGregor's most interest- 
 ing "Bob Eoy on the Jordan" ; but the scene is worked up' anew, 
 and the reeds are studied from both the Syrian and the Egyptian 
 papyrus. The view is found among the upper sources of the Jordan ; 
 looming above the horizon, to the north, is the "rounded head of 
 splendid, glittering Hermon,'' while, to the left, is seen "the far-off 
 snow on the sharp indented Suimin, chief of the Lebanon range." 
 
 2. Heads op Christ. (Puiipage.) 134 
 
 Out of the multitudes of heads giving artistic fancies as to the personal 
 look of Jesus, six have been selected as representative. First is that 
 of Leonardo da Vinci (b. 1452, d. 1519), reproduced ia the frontis- 
 pieoe. On the page facing p. 102 are five : No. 1. From the earliest 
 picture of Christ that is known, a fresco in the Catacombs of St. 
 CaHxtus, near Rome, fourth century ; No. 2. From an emerald in- 
 tagUo of the sixth century, now in Rome, given out of the treasury of 
 Constantinople to Pope Innocent VIII. for the redemption of the' 
 brother of the Emperor of the Turks, then a prisoner of the Christians ; 
 No. 3. From a Pieid, or "Dead Christ," by the Italian painter Eai- 
 bolini of Bologna, known as Francisco Francia (b. 1450, d. 1517); 
 No. 4. From a crucifix by Albrecht Diirer, the great German painter 
 and engraver (b. 1471, d. 1528) ; No. 5. From a painting by Paul de 
 
 , la Roche, the French painter (b. 1797, d. 1856). 
 
xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 3. General Map op Palestine, (two pages.) .... i€0' 
 
 4. Plan of the Temple, according to Fergusson's restoration . 204 
 
 The ground plan is given 'below, and above is a longitudinal section, on 
 an east and west line, showing the elevation of the different portions. 
 
 5. Map. Vicinity of Nazabeth and Capernaum, Galilee • 30§ *? 
 
 6. The Lake of Genesaebth, or Sea of Galilee . . ■ 416 
 
 Northeasterly view, from the northwestern shore of the lake across to- 
 wards Bethsaida and Tell Hum, or Capemauin. 
 
 MAPS. 
 
 Constructed by A. L. Eawson. — Engraved by G. W. & C. B. 
 
 COLTON & Co. 
 In preparing the Maps, use was made of the latest works of Van 
 de Velde and of the French and English surveys, these being correct- 
 ed by every means of later information accessible. 
 
 The General Map comprises the whole country visited by Jesus 
 (except the journey in infancy to Egypt), giving but a few of the 
 most important names. 
 
 The Vicinity of Nazareth and Capernaum is quite fuU in de- 
 tail, showing how many towns there are or were in this region 
 (though nearly one half of the whole have been omitted, to avoid 
 crowding). 
 
 The Plan op the Temple of Herod is after Fergusson. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 How "well the Hebrew Priest, but especially the 
 Prophet, had done his work, may best be seen in that 
 moral element which made Judaism to religion what 
 the Greek spirit had been to the intellectual life of 
 the world. Nowhere out of Judaea were to be found 
 such passionate moral fervor and such intense spiritual 
 yearnings. But this spirit had spent itself as a for- 
 mative power; it had already overshot the multitude, 
 while higher natures were goaded by it to excess. 
 There was need of a new religious education. This 
 was the desire and expectation of the best men of 
 the Jewish Church. How their spiritual quickening 
 was to come, they knew not. That it was coming 
 was generally believed, and also that the approach- 
 ing deliverance would in some mysterious way bring 
 God nearer to men. "Of the day and of the hour" 
 knew no man. The day had come when a new mani- 
 festation of God was to be made. A God of holiness, 
 a God of power, and a God of mercy had been clearly 
 revealed. The Divine Spirit was now to be clothed 
 with flesh, subjected to the ordinary laws of matter, 
 placed in those conditions in which men live, become 
 the subject of care, weariness, sorrow, and of death 
 itself 
 
2 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 The history of this divine incarnation we are now 
 to trace, in so far as the religious knowledge which has 
 sprung from it can be carried back to its sources, and 
 be made to illustrate the sublime truths and events 
 of the Lord's earthly mission. 
 
 Since there are four inspired lives of our Lord, — two 
 of them by the hands of disciples who were eye-wit- 
 nesses of the events recorded, namely, those by Ma1>- 
 thew and John^ a,nd two, those of Mark and Luke, by 
 men who, though not disciples, were yet the com- 
 panions of the Apostles, and derived their materials, in 
 part, from them, — why should it be necessary to frame 
 other histories of Jesus, the Christ? Since the mate- 
 rials for any new life of Christ must be derived from 
 the four Evangelists, is it likely that uninspired men, 
 after a lapse of nearly nineteen hundred years, can 
 do better than they did who were either witnesses or 
 contemporaries of the Lord, and who were appointed 
 and guided by the Divine Spirit to make a record of 
 truth for all time ? 
 
 The impression produced by such suggestions will be 
 materially modified upon a close examination of the 
 Gospels. 
 
 1. The very fact that there are four lives, which 
 strikes one as a fourfold blessing, and which surely 
 is an advantage, carries with it also certain disadvan- 
 tages. For a clear view of the life and teachings 
 of our Lord, four fields are to be reaped instead of 
 one. 
 
 The early ages needed testimony; our age needs 
 teaching. Four witnesses are better for testimony. 
 But for biography one complete narrative, combining 
 in it the materials of the four, would have given a pic- 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 3 
 
 ture of our Lord more in accordance with the halpits 
 and wants of men in our day. 
 
 This diversity of witnesses subserves other important 
 ends. No single man could have represented all sides 
 of the Saviour's teaching. A comparison of Matthew's 
 Gospel with that of John will show how much would 
 have been lost, had there been only a single collector 
 and reporter of Christ's discourses. 
 
 It is not easy, even for one trained to investigation, 
 to gather out of the four Evangelists a clear and con- 
 sistent narrative of our Lord's ministry ; and still less 
 will unstudious men succeed in doing it. 
 
 No one will deny that every Christian man should 
 seek a comprehensive, and not a fragmentary, knowl- 
 edge of his Lord. In other words, every Christian 
 reader seeks, for himself, out of the other four, to 
 weave a fifth life of Christ. • Why should not this in- 
 dispensable work be performed for men, with aU the 
 aids of elaborate investigation? 
 
 2. The impression derived from this general view is 
 greatly strengthened by a critical examination of the 
 contents of the Gospels. 
 
 It is one of the striking facts in history, that One 
 whose teachings were to revolutionize human ideas, 
 and to create a new era in the world's affairs, did not 
 commit a single syllable to paper, and did not organize 
 a single institution. An unhmited power of acting 
 upon the world without these subsidiary and, to men, 
 indispensable instruments, — viz. writing and organiza- 
 tion, — and only by the enunciation of absolute truths 
 in their relation to human conduct, is one of the marks 
 of Divinity. 
 
 There is no evidence that Jesus appointed any of his 
 
4 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 disciples to perform the work of an historian. None 
 of them claim such authorization. Only Luke ^ makes 
 any reference to the motives which led him to under- 
 take the task of writing, and he claims no other than 
 a personal desire to record a knowledge which he 
 deemed fuller than that of others. 
 
 The four Gospels are evidently final and authoritar 
 tive collections of oral histories and compilations of 
 narratives which were already circulating among the 
 early Christians. In the cases of Matthew and John, 
 these materials were wrought upon the fabric of their 
 own personal observation and experience. 
 
 There is in none of them any consistent regard to 
 the order of time or of place. The principle of arrange- 
 ment evidently is to be found in the moral similari- 
 ties of the materials, and not in their chronological se- 
 quences. Different events are clustered together which 
 were widely separated. Whole chapters of parables 
 are given as if they had been delivered in a single 
 discourse. We should never have known from Mat- 
 thew, Mark, or Luke, that our Lord was accustomed 
 to go up to Jerusalem to the great Jewish feasts ; but 
 we do get it from John, who is mainly concerned with 
 the history and discoiirses of his Master in Judaea. 
 Matthew, on the other hand, bestows his attention 
 upon that part of the Saviour's life which was spent 
 in Gahlee. Moreover, he seldom enters, as John does, 
 
 ' Luke i. 1-4. "Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth 
 in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among 
 us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eye- 
 witnesses, and ministers of the word; it seemed good to me also, having had 
 perfect understanding of all things from tlie very first, to write unto th^ee in 
 order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of 
 those things wherein thou hast been instructed." 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 5 
 
 upon interior and profoundly spiritual experiences. 
 John almost as little notices the merely external facts 
 and events of the Lord's life, which Matthew habitually 
 regards.-^ 
 
 In their structure the Evangelical narratives have 
 been well compared to Xenophon's Memorabilia of 
 Socrates. They are clusters of events, parables, mir- 
 acles, discourses, in which the order of time is some- 
 times obscure, and sometimes wholly inverted. 
 
 In every age of the Church it has been deemed wise 
 to attempt to form a harmony of the four Gospels. 
 Since the year A. D. 1500, there have been more than 
 fifty harmonies made by most eminent Christian schol- 
 ars. Of Lives of Christ and Harmonies there have 
 been more than one hundred and fifty. 
 
 But for some such help, the difficulties arising from a 
 comparison of the different narratives would be insolu- 
 ble. Many obstacles are thus removed, many apparent 
 contradictions are congruously explained, many appar- 
 ent inconsistencies are harmonized ; and it is shown 
 that, of the inexplicable facts remaining, none are im- 
 portant, — certainly not as respects the great truths or 
 the essential events of the narrative. 
 
 3. It is probable that no equal amount of truth was 
 ever expressed ia a mode so well fitted for universal 
 circulation. And yet, as the Gospels were written by 
 
 ' "The first three Evangelists describe especially those things which Christ 
 did in our flesh, and relate the precepts which He delivered on the duties 
 to be performed by us. while we walk on earth and dwell in the flesh. But 
 St. John soars to heaven, as an eagle, above the clouds of human infirmity, 
 and reveals to us the mysteries of Christ's Godhead, and of the Trinity in 
 Unity, and the felicities of Life Eternal, and gazes on the Light of Immuta- 
 ble Truth with a keen and steady ken." — St. Augustine, translated hy Dr. 
 Wordsworth. Introduction to Commentaries on the New Testament. 
 
6 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 Jews, and with primary reference to certain wants of 
 the age in which the writers lived, they are full of 
 allusions, references, customs, and beliefs, which have 
 long since passed away or have become greatly modi- 
 fied. There are also in the New Testament allusions 
 to customs of which there is no knowledge whatever 
 preserved. 
 
 But far more important is it to observe the habits of 
 thought, the whole mental attitude of the Apostolic 
 age, and the change which has since come upon the 
 world. Truths remain the same ; but every age has its 
 own style of thought. Although this difference is not 
 so great as is the difference between one language and 
 another, it is yet so great as to require restatement or, 
 as it were, translation. The truth which Paul argues to 
 the Romans is as important for us as it was for them. 
 But we are not Jews.^ We care nothing for circum- 
 cision. The Hebrew law has never entangled us. We 
 have our prejudices and obstinacies, but they are 
 not the same as those which the Apostle combated. 
 The truth of the Epistle to the Romans, when separ 
 rated from the stalk and ear on which it grew, is of 
 universal nutriment. But in Paul's own day the stem 
 and the husk also were green and succulent; they 
 were living and indispensable parts of his statement 
 of the truth. Far less is this distinction applicable to 
 the Gospels, and yet it is, in a measure, true of them. 
 
 Our age has developed wants no deeper, perhaps, 
 nor more important, than those in the Apostohc age, 
 
 • Jews were dispersed through all the civilized world, and in general, 
 both in Greek and Roman cities, there were synagogues, in which the Old 
 Testament Scriptures were read, and in which the Apostles made known to 
 their own countrymen the fulfilment of those Scriptures in the history of 
 our Lord. See Acts 28 : IG- 24. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 7 
 
 but needs essentially different. "We live for different 
 ends. We have other aspirations. We are plagued 
 with new infidelities of our own. We are proud in a 
 different way, and vain after our own manner. To meet 
 all these ever-changing necessities of the human heart 
 and of society, men are ordained to preach the gospeL 
 If merely reading the text as it was originally dehvered 
 were enough, why should there be preachers ? It is 
 the business of preachers to re-adapt truth, from age 
 to age, to men's ever-renewing wants. 
 
 And what is this, but doing by single passages of 
 Scripture what a Life of Christ attempts to do system- 
 atically, and in some dramatic form, for the whole? 
 Some have said, almost contemptuously, "The only 
 good Lives of Christ are those by the four Evangelists." 
 And yet these very men are so httle content with these 
 same Evangelists, that they spend their hves in restat- 
 ing, illustrating, and newly applying the substance and 
 matter of the Evangelical writings, — thus by their 
 own most sensible example refuting their own most 
 foolish criticism! 
 
 4. But there are reasons yet deeper why the Life 
 of Christ should be rewritten for each and every age. 
 The life of the Christian Churqh has, in one point 
 of view, been a gradual unfolding and interpretation of 
 the spiritual truths of the Gospels. The knowledge 
 of the human heart, of its yearnings, its failures, its sins 
 and sorrows, has immensely increased in the progress 
 of centuries. 
 
 Has nothing been learned by the Christian world of 
 the methods of moral government, of the communion 
 of the Holy Ghost, of the power of the Divine Spirit to 
 cleanse, enrich, and fire the soul, after so many centu- 
 
8 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 ries of experience ? Has this world no lore of love, no 
 stores of faith, no experience of joy unfolded from the 
 original germs, which shall fit it to go back to the truths 
 of the New Testament with a far larger understanding 
 of their contents than they had who wrote them ? Proph- 
 ets do not always understand then- own visions ; Apos- 
 tles dehver truths which are far deeper, and more 
 glorious in their ulterior forms, than even their utterers 
 suspect. 
 
 It is both a privilege and a duty of the Chm-ch of 
 Christ to gather up, from time to time, these living 
 commentaries upon divine truth, — these divine inter- 
 pretations, by means of human experience, of the truth 
 as it is in Jesus, — and carry back this hght and knowl- 
 edge to the primal forms and symbols. Our Lord him- 
 self declared that his kingdom of truth was as a seed. 
 But what shall interpret a seed hke its own growth 
 and harvest ? To us the narratives of the Gospel ought 
 to mean far more than to the primitive disciple, or they 
 have been germs without development, seed without a 
 harvest. 
 
 All critics of the Gospels, though, in each group, 
 differing by many shades among themselves, may be 
 reduced to two classes : — 
 
 1. Those who beheve that the writings of the Evan- 
 gelists are authentic historical documents, that they 
 were divinely inspired, and that the supernatural ele- 
 ments contained in them are real, and to be credited as 
 much as any other parts of the history; and, — 
 
 2. Those who deny the inspiration of the Gospels, 
 regarding them as unassisted human productions, filled 
 with mistakes and inaccuracies; especially, as filled 
 with superstitions and pretended miracles. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 9 
 
 These latter critics set aside all traces of tlie super- 
 natural. They feel at liberty to reject all miracles, 
 either summarily, with "philosophic" contempt, or by 
 explanations as wonderful as the miracles are marvel- 
 lous. In effect, they act as if there could be no evi- 
 dence except that which addresses itself to the ma- 
 terial senses. Such reasoning chains philosophy to 
 matter : to which statement many already do not ob- 
 ject, but boldly claim that, in our present condition, 
 no truth can be known to men except that which con- 
 forms itself to physical laws. There is a step further, 
 and one that must soon be taken, if these reasons are 
 logically consistent j namely, to hold that there is no 
 evidence of a God, unless Nature be that God. And 
 this is Pantheism, which, being interpreted, is Atheism. 
 
 We scarcely need to say, that we shall take our stand 
 with those who accept the New Testament as a collec- 
 tion of veritable historical documents, with the record 
 of miracles, and with the train of spiritual phenomena, 
 as of absolute and hteral truth. The miraculous ele- 
 ment constitutes the very nerve-system of the Gospel. 
 To withdraw it from credence is to leave the Gospel 
 histories a mere shapeless mass of pulp. 
 
 What is left when these venerable records are 
 stripped of the ministry of angels, of the mystery of the 
 divine incarnation, of the wonders and miracles which 
 accompanied our Lord at every step of his career? 
 Christ's miracles were not occasional and occult, but in 
 a long series, with every degree of publicity, involving 
 ahnpst every element of nature, and in numbers so 
 great that they are summed up as comprehending 
 whole villages, towns, and neighborhoods in their bene- 
 factions. They produced an excitement in the public 
 
10 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 mind so great that ofttimes secrecy was enjoined, lest 
 the Roman government should interfere. 
 
 That Christ should be the centre and active cause 
 of such stupendous imposture, on the supposition that 
 miracles were but deceptions, shocks the moral feeling 
 of those even who disbelieve his divinity. Widely as 
 men differ on every topic connected with the Christ, 
 there is one groimd on which all stand together, 
 namely, that Jesus was good. Even Infidelity would 
 feel bereaved in the destruction of Christ's moral 
 character. But to save that, and yet to explain away 
 the miracles which he wrought, has put ingenuity to 
 ludicrous shifts. 
 
 Eenan, to save the character of his poetic hero, is 
 obUged to depict him as the subject of an enthusiasm 
 which grew upon him until it became a self-deceiving 
 fanaticism. It seems, then, that the whole world has 
 been under the influence of one who was not an impos- 
 tor, only because he was mildly insane ! 
 
 That such a conclusion should give no pain to men 
 utterly destitute of religious aspirations may well be 
 conceived. But all others, looking upon this wanton 
 and needless procedure, will adopt the language of 
 Mary, and say, " They have taken away my Lord, and 
 I know not where they have laid him." 
 
THE OVERTURE OF ANGELS. H 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE OVERTUEE OF ANGELS. 
 
 Had it been the design of Divine Providence that 
 the Gospels should be wrought up like a poem for lit- 
 erary and artistic effect, surely the narrative of the 
 angelic appearances would have glowed in all the 
 colors of an Oriental morning. They are, indeed, to 
 those who have an eye to discern, a wonderful and ex- 
 quisitely tinted prelude to the dawn of a glorious day. 
 It is not to be supposed that the earth and its dull in- 
 habitants knew what was approaching. But heavenly 
 spirits knew it. There was movement and holy ecstasy 
 ia the Upper Air, and angels seem, as birds when new- 
 come in spring, to have flown hither and thither, in 
 songful mood, dipping their white wings into our at- 
 mosphere, just touching the earth or glancing along 
 its surface, as sea-birds skim the surface of the sea. 
 And yet birds are far too rude, and wings too burden- 
 some, to express adequately that feehng of unlabored 
 angehc motion which the narrative produces upon the 
 imagination. Their airy and gentle coming would per- 
 haps be better compared to the glow of colors flung by 
 the sun upon morning clouds that seem to be born 
 just where they appear. Like a beam of light striking 
 through some orifice, they shine upon Zacharias in the 
 Temple. As the morning light finds the flowers, so 
 found they the mother of Jesus. To the shepherds' 
 
12 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 eyes they filled the midnight arch like auroral beams 
 of light ; but not as silently, for they sang, and more 
 marvellously than when "the morning stars sang 
 together and all the sons of God shouted for joy." 
 
 The new era opens at Jerusalem. The pride with 
 which a devout Jew looked upon Jerusalem can 
 scarcely be imagined in our prosaic times. Men 
 loved that city with such passionate devotion as we 
 are accustomed to see bestowed only on a Hving per- 
 son. When the doctrine of immortality grew more 
 distinctly into the belief of holy men, no name could 
 be found which would make the invisible world so 
 attractive as that of the beloved city. New Jeru- 
 salem was the chosen name for Heaven. 
 
 Upon this city broke the morning rays of the 
 Advent. A venerable priest, Zacharias, belonging to 
 the retinue of the Temple, had spent his Avhole life in 
 the quiet offices of religion. He was married, but 
 childless. To him happened a surprising thing. 
 
 It was his turn to bum incense, — the most honor- 
 able function of the priestly office. Upon the great 
 altar of sacrifice, outside the holy place, the burnt- 
 offering was placed. At a signal the priest came 
 forth, and, taking fire from this altar, he entered the 
 inner and more sacred place of the Temple, and there, 
 before the altar of incense, putting the fragrant gum 
 upon the coals, he swung the censer, filling the air 
 with wreaths of smoke. The people who had gath- 
 ered on the outside, as soon as the smoke ascended 
 silently sent up their prayers, of which the incense 
 was the symbol. « And there appeared unto him an 
 angel of the Lord, standing on the right side of the 
 altar." 
 
THE OVERTURE OF ANGELS. 13 
 
 That he trembled with fear and awe is apparent 
 from the angel's address, — "Fear not!" The key- 
 note of the new dispensation was sounded! Here- 
 after, God was to be brought nearer, to seem less 
 terrible ; and a religion of the spirit and of love was 
 soon to dispossess a reUgion of ceremonials and of 
 fear. 
 
 " Fear not, Zacharias : for thy prayer is heard ; 
 And thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, 
 And thou shalt call his name John. 
 And thou shalt have joy and gladness ; 
 And many shall rejoice at his birth. 
 For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, 
 And shall drink neither wine nor strong drink ; 
 And he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother's 
 
 womb. 
 And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their 
 
 God. 
 And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, 
 To turn the hearts of the parents to the children. 
 And the disobedient to the wisdom of the just ; 
 To make ready a people prepared for the Lord." 
 
 If this address, to our modern ears, seems stately 
 and formal, it is to be remembered that no other lan- 
 guage would seem so fit for a heavenly message t^ a 
 Jewish priest as that which breathed the spirit of the 
 Old Testament writings; and that to us it savors of 
 the sermon because it has since been so often used 
 for the purposes of the sermon. 
 
 But the laws of the material world seemed to the 
 doubting priest more powerful than the promise of 
 that God who made all physical laws. To this distinct 
 promise of a son who should become a great reformer, 
 and renew the power and grandeur of the prophetic 
 of&ce, he could only say, "Whereby shall I know 
 this ? " His doubts should have begim earher, or 
 
14 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 not at all. He should have rejected the whole vision, 
 or should have accepted the promise unphcitly; for 
 what sign could be given so assuring as the very- 
 presence of the angel ? But the sign which he asked 
 was given in a way that he could never forget. His 
 speech departed; silence was the sign; — as if the 
 priest of the Old was to teach no more untU the com- 
 ing of the New. 
 
 When Zacharias came forth to the people, who 
 were already impatient, at his long delay, they, per- 
 ceived by his altered manner that some great experi- 
 ence had befallen him. He could not speak, and could 
 dismiss them only by a gesture. 
 
 We have no certainty whether this scene occurred 
 at a morning or an evening service, but it is supposed 
 to have been at the evening sacrifice. In that case 
 the event was an impressive symbol. The people be- 
 held their priest standing against the setting sun, 
 dumb, while they dispersed in the twihght, the shadow 
 of the Temple having already fallen upon them. The 
 Old was passing into darkness; to-morrow another sun 
 must rise ! 
 
 Elisabeth, the wife of Zacharias, returned to the "hiU- 
 country," or that region lying west and south of Jeru- 
 salem. The promise had begun to be fulfilled. All the 
 promises made to Israel were pointing to their ful- 
 filment through her. These promises, accumulating 
 through ages, were ample enough, even in the letter, to 
 fiU a devout soul with ardent expectancy. But falling 
 upon the imagination of a greatly distressed people, 
 they had been magnified or refracted until the public 
 mind was filled with inordinate and even fantastic ex- 
 pectations of the Messianic reign. It is not probable 
 
THE OVERTURE OF ANGELS. 15 
 
 that any were altogether free from this delusion, not 
 even the soberest and most spiritual natures. We 
 can therefore imagine but faintly the ecstatic hopes 
 of Zacharias and Elisabeth during the six months in 
 which they were hidden in their home among the hills 
 before the history again finds them. They are next 
 introduced through the story of another memorable 
 actor in this drama, the mother of our Lord. 
 
 It is difficult to speak of Mary, the mother of Jesus, 
 both because so little is known of her and because so 
 much has been imagined. Around no other name in 
 history has the imagination thrown its witching Ught 
 in so great a volume. In art she has divided honors 
 with her divine Son. For a thousand years her name 
 has excited the profoundest reverence and worship. 
 A mother's love and forbearance with her children, as 
 it is a universal experience, so is it the nearest image 
 of the divine tenderness which the soul can form. 
 
 In attempting to present the Divine Being in his 
 relations to universal government, men have well-nigh 
 lost his personality in a sublime abstraction. Those 
 traits of personal tenderness and generous love which 
 alone will ever draw the human heart to God, it has 
 too often been obUged to seek elsewhere. And, how- 
 ever mistaken the endeavor to find in the Virgin 
 Mary the sympathy and fond familiarity of a divine 
 fostering love, it is an error into which men have been 
 drawn by the profoundest needs of the human soul. 
 It is an error of the heart. The cure will be found 
 by reveahng, in the Divine nature, the longed-for 
 traits in greater beauty and force than are given them 
 in the legends of the mother of Jesus.- 
 
 MeanwhUe, if the doctors of theology have long 
 
16 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 hesitated to deify the Virgin, art has unconsciously 
 raised her to the highest place. There is nothing in 
 attitude, expression, or motion which has been left un- 
 tried. The earlier Christian painters were content to 
 ■ express her pure fervor, without relying upon the ele- 
 ment of beauty. But as, age by age, imagination 
 kindled, the canvas has given forth this divine mother 
 in more and more glowing beauty, borrowing from 
 the Grecian spirit all that was charming in the high- 
 est ideals of Venus, and adding to them an element of 
 transcendent purity and devotion, which has no paral- 
 lel in ancient art. 
 
 It is difficult for one whose eye has been steeped in 
 the colors of art to go back from its enchantment to 
 the barrenness of actual history. By Luke alone is the 
 place even of her residence mentioned. It is only in- 
 ferred that she was of the royal house of David. She 
 was already espoused to a man named Joseph, but not 
 as yet married. This is the sum of our knowledge 
 of Mary at the point where her history is introduced. 
 Legends abound, many of them charming, but hke 
 the innumerable faces which artists have painted, they 
 gratify the imagination without adding anything to 
 historic truth. 
 
 The scene of the Annunciation will always be admi- 
 rable in literature, even to those who are not disposed 
 to accord it any historic value. To announce to an 
 espoused virgin that she was to be the mother of a 
 child, out of wedlock, by the unconscious working in 
 her of the Divine power, would, beforehand, seem 
 inconsistent with delicacy. But no person of poetic 
 sensibility can read the scene as it is narrated by 
 Luke without admiring its sublime purity and serenity. 
 
THE OVERTURE OF ANGELS. 17 
 
 It is not a transaction of the lower world of passion. 
 Things most difficult to a lower sphere are both easy 
 and beautiful in that atmosphere which, as it were, 
 the angel brought down with him. 
 
 "And the angel came in unto her and said, Hail! 
 thou that art highly favored } The Lord is with thee ! " 
 
 Then was announced the birth of Jesus, and that he 
 should inherit and prolong endlessly the glories prom- 
 ised to Israel of old. To her inquiry, " How shall this 
 be ? " the angel replied : — 
 
 " The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, 
 And the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee ; 
 Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee 
 Shall be called the Son of God." 
 
 It was also, made known to Mary that her cousin 
 EUsabeth had conceived a son. And Mary said : " Be- 
 hold the handmaid of the Lord ! Be it unto me accord- 
 ing to thy word." 
 
 Many have brought to this history the associations 
 of a later day, of a different civilization, and of habits of 
 thought foreign to the whole cast of the Oriental mind. 
 Out of a process so unphilosophical they have evolved 
 the most serious doubts and difficulties. But no one 
 is fitted to appreciate either the beauty or the truth- 
 fulness to nature of such a scene, who cannot in some 
 degree carry himself back in sympathy to that Jewish 
 maiden's life. The education of a Hebrew woman 
 was far freer than that of women of other Oriental na- 
 tions. She had more personal hberty, a wider scope of 
 intelKgence, than obtained among the Greeks or even 
 among the Komans. But above all, she received a 
 moral education which placed her high above her sis- 
 ters in other lands. 
 
18 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 It is plain that Mary was imbued with the spirit of 
 the Hebrew Scriptures. Not only was the history of 
 her people familiar to her, but her language shows that 
 the poetry of the Old Testament had filled her soul. 
 She was fitted to receive her people's history in its 
 most romantic and spiritual aspects. They were God's 
 peculiar people. Their history unrolled before her as 
 a series of wonderful providences. The path glowed 
 with divine manifestations. Miracles blossomed out of 
 every natural law. But to her there were no laws of 
 nature. Such ideas had not yet been born. The 
 earth was " the Lord's." All its phenomena were direct 
 manifestations of his wUl. Clouds and storms came 
 on errands from God. Light and darkness were the 
 shining or the hiding of his face. Calamities were pmi- 
 ishments. Harvests were divine gifts ; famines were 
 immediate divine penalties. To us God acts through 
 instruments ; to the Hebrew he acted immediately by 
 his will. " He spake, and it was done ; he commanded, 
 and it stood fast." 
 
 To such a one as Mary there would be no incredu- 
 Hty as to the reality of this angelic manifestation. Her 
 only surprise would be that she should be chosen for a 
 renewal of those divine interpositions in behalf of her 
 people of which their history was so full. The very 
 reason which would lead us to suspect a miracle in our 
 day gave it credibility in other days. It is simply a 
 question of adaptation. A miracle as a blind appeal 
 to the moral sense, without the use of the reason, was 
 adapted to the earher periods of human life. Its 
 usefulness ceases when the moral sense is so developed 
 that it can find its own way through the ministration 
 of the reason. A miracle is a substitute .for moral 
 
TBE OVERTURE OF ANGELS. 19 
 
 demonstration, and is peculiarly adapted to the early 
 conditions of mankind. 
 
 Of all miracles, there was none more sacred, con- 
 gruous, and grateful to a Hebrew than an angelic vis- 
 itation. A devout Jew, in looking back, saw angels fly- 
 ing thick between the heavenly throne and the throne 
 of his fathers. The greatest events of national history 
 had been made illustrious by their presence. Their 
 work began with the primitive pair. They had come 
 at evening to Abraham's tent. They had waited upon 
 Jacob's footsteps. They had communed with Moses, 
 with the judges, with priests and magistrates, with 
 prophets and holy men. All the way down from the 
 beginning of history, the pious Jew saw the shining 
 footsteps of these heavenly messengers. Nor had the 
 faith died out in the long interval through which their 
 visits had been withheld. Mary could not, therefore, 
 be surprised at the coming of angels, but only that 
 they should come to her. 
 
 It may seem strange that Zacharias should be struck 
 dumb for doubting the heavenly messenger, while Mary 
 went unrebuked. But it is plain that there was a 
 wide difference in the nature of the relative experi- 
 ences. To Zacharias was prcfmised an event external 
 to himself, not involving his own sensibility. But to a 
 woman's heart there can be no other announcement 
 possible that shall so stir every feeling and sensibility 
 of the soul, as the promise and prospect of her first 
 child. Motherhood is the very centre of womanhood. 
 The first awaking in her soul of the reality that she 
 bears a double life — herself within herself — brings a 
 sweet bewilderment of wonder and joy. The more 
 sure her faith of the fact, the more tremulous must 
 
20 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 her soul become. Such an announcement can never 
 mean to a father's what it does to a mother's heart. 
 And it is one of the exquisite shades of subtle truth, 
 and of beauty as well, that the angel who rebuked 
 Zacharias for doubt saw nothing in the- trembling 
 hesitancy and wonder of Mary inconsistent with a 
 childlike faith. 
 
 If the heart swells with the hope of a new life in the 
 common lot of mortals, with what profound feeling 
 must Mary have pondered the angel's promise to her 
 son! 
 
 " He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest ; 
 And the Lord God shall give him the throne of his father David ; 
 And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, 
 And of his kingdom there shall be no end." 
 
 It is expressly stated that Joseph was of the " house 
 of David," but there is no evidence that Mary was 
 of the same, except this implication, " The Lord God 
 shall give him the throne of his father David." Since 
 Joseph was not his father, it could only be through his 
 mother that he could trace his lineage to David. 
 
 There is no reason to suppose that Mary was more 
 enlightened than those among whom she dwelt, or that 
 she gave to these words that spiritual sense in which 
 alone they have proved true. To her, it may be sup- 
 posed, there arose a vague idea that her son was des- 
 tined to be an eminent teacher and deliverer. She 
 would naturally go back in her mind to the instances, 
 in the history of her own people, of eminent men 
 and women who had been raised up in dark times to 
 deliver their people. 
 
 She lived in the very region which Deborah and 
 Barak had made famous. Almost before her eyes lay 
 
THE OVERTURE OF ANGELS. 21 
 
 the plains on which great deliverances had been 
 wrought by heroes raised up by the God of Israel. 
 But that other glory, of spiritual dehverance, was 
 hidden from her. Or, if that influence which over- 
 shadowed her awakened in her the spiritual vision, it 
 was doubtless to reveal that her son was to be some- 
 thing more than a mere worldly conqueror. But 
 it was not for her to discern the glorious reality. It 
 hung in the future as a dim brightness, whose par- 
 ticular form and substance could not be discerned. 
 For it is not to be supposed that Mary — prophet as 
 every woman is — could discern that spiritual truth 
 of the promises of the Old Testament which his own 
 disciples did not understand after companying with 
 Jesus for three years, nor yet after his ascension, nor 
 until the fire of the pentecostal day had kindled in 
 them the eye of flame that pierces all things and dis- 
 cerns the spirit. 
 
 "And Mary arose in those days, and went into the 
 hill-country with haste, into a city of Juda, and entered 
 into the house of Zacharias and saluted Elisabeth." 
 
 The overshadowing Spirit had breathed upon her 
 the new life. What woman of deep soul was ever 
 unthrilled at the mystery of life beating within life ? 
 And what Jewish woman, devoutly believing that in 
 her child were to be fulfilled the hopes of Israel, could 
 hold this faith without excitement almost too great to 
 be borne ? She could not tarry. With haste she trod 
 that way which she had doubtless often trod before in 
 her annual ascent to the Temple. Every village, every 
 brook, every hill, must have awakened in her some sad 
 recollection of the olden days of her people. There 
 was Tabor, from which came down Barak and his men. 
 
22 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 And in the great plain of Esdraelon he fought Sisera. 
 The waters of Kishon, murmuring at her feet, must 
 have recalled the song of Deborah. Here, too, Josiah 
 was slain at Megiddo, and " the mourning of Hadad- 
 Rimmon in the valley of Megiddon " became the by- 
 word of grief Mount Gilboa rose iipon her from the 
 east. Ebal and Gerizim stood forth in remembrance 
 of the sublime drama of blessings and cursings. Then 
 came Shechem, the paradise of Palestine, in whose 
 neighborhood Joseph was buried. This pilgrim may 
 have quenched her thirst at noonday, as afterwards 
 her son did, at the well of Jacob ; and farther to the 
 south it might be that the oak of Mamre, under which 
 the patriarch dwelt, cast its great shadow upon her. 
 
 It is plain from the song of Mary, of whfch we shaU 
 speak in a moment, that she bore in mind the his- 
 tory of the mother of Samuel, wife of Elkanah, who 
 dwelt in this region, and whose song, at the presenta- 
 tion of Samuel to the priest at Shiloh, seems to have 
 been the mould in which Mary unconsciously cast her 
 own. 
 
 Thus, one after another, Mary must have passed the 
 most memorable spots in her people's history. Even 
 if not sensitive to patriotic influences, — still more if 
 she was alive to such sacred and poetic associations, — 
 she must have come to her relative Elisabeth with 
 flaming heart. 
 
 Well she might ! What other mystery in human life 
 is so profound as the beginnhig of life ? From the 
 earliest days women have called themselves blessed of 
 God when life begins to palpitate within their bosom. 
 It is not education, but nature, that inspires such tender 
 amazement. Doubtless even the Indian woman in 
 
THE OVERTURE OF ANGELS. 23 
 
 such periods dwells consciously near to the Great 
 Spirit! Every one of a deep nature seems to herself 
 more sacred and more especially under the divine 
 care while a new life, moulded by the divine hand, is 
 springing into being. For, of all creative acts, none 
 is so sovereign and divine. Who shall reveal the end- 
 less musings, the perpetual prophecies, of the mother's 
 soul ? Her thoughts dwell upon the unknown child, — 
 thoughts more in number than the ripples of the sea 
 upon some undiscovered shore. To others, in such 
 hours, woman should seem more sacred than the most 
 solemn temple; and to herself she must needs seem 
 as if overshadowed by the Holy Ghost ! 
 
 To this natural elevation were added, in the instance 
 of Mary and Elisabeth, those vague but exalted expec- 
 tations arising from the angelic annunciations. Both 
 of them believed that the whole future condition of 
 their nation was to be intimately affected by the lives 
 of their sons. 
 
 And Mary said : — 
 
 " My soul doth magnify the Lord, 
 And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. 
 For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden ; 
 For, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. 
 For He that is mighty hath done to me great things ; 
 And holy is his name. 
 And his mercy is on them that fear him 
 From generation to generation. 
 He hath shewed strength with his arm ; 
 
 He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. 
 He hath put down the mighty from their seats, 
 And exalted them of low degree. 
 He hath filled the hungry with good things ; 
 And the rich he hath sent empty away. 
 He hath holpen his servant Israel, 
 In remembrance of his mercy ; 
 As he spake to our fathers, 
 To Abraham, and to his seed forever." 
 
24 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 UnsjTnpathizing critics remark upon the similarity 
 of this chant of Mary's with the song of Hannah,^ the 
 mother of Samuel. Inspiration served to kindle the 
 materials already in possession of the mind. This 
 Hebrew maiden had stored her imagination with the 
 poetic elements of the Old Testament. But, of all the 
 
 ' " My heart rejoiceth in the Lord ; 
 
 My horn is exalted in the Lord ; 
 
 My mouth is enlarged over mine enemies ; 
 
 Because I rejoice in thy salvation. 
 
 There is none holy as the Lord ; 
 
 For there is none beside thee ; 
 
 Neither is there any rock like our God. 
 
 Talk no more so exceeding proudly : 
 
 Let not arrogancy come out of your mouth : 
 
 For the Lord is a God of knowledge, 
 
 And by him actions are weighed. 
 
 The bows of the mighty men are broken, 
 
 And they that stumbled are girded with strengtL 
 
 They that were fuU have hired out themselves for bread ; 
 
 And they that were hungry ceased ; 
 
 So that the barren hath borne seven; 
 
 And she that hath many children is waxed feeble. 
 
 The Lord killeth, and maketh alive : 
 
 He bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up. 
 
 The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich : 
 
 He bringeth low, and lifteth up. 
 
 He raiseth up the poor out of the dust. 
 
 And lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, 
 
 To set them among princes. 
 
 And to make them inherit the throne of glory : 
 
 For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, 
 
 And he hath set the world upon them. 
 
 He will keep the feet of his saints. 
 
 And the wicked shall be silent in darkness : 
 
 For by strength shall no man prevail. 
 
 The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces ; 
 
 Out of heaven shall he thunder upon them : 
 
 The Lord shall judge the ends of the earth; 
 
 And he shall give strength unto his King, 
 
 And exalt the horn of his Anointed." 
 
TEE OVERTURE OF ANGELS. 25 
 
 treasures at command, only a devout and grateful na- 
 ture would have made so unselfish a selection. For it is 
 not upon her own blessedness that Mary chiefly dwells, 
 but upon the sovereignty, the goodness, and the glory 
 of God. To be exalted by the joy of our personal 
 prosperity above self-consciousness into the atmos- 
 phere of thanksgiving and adoration, is a sure sign of 
 nobility of soul. 
 
 For three months these sweet and noble women 
 dwelt together, performing, doubtless, the simple labors 
 of the household. Their thoughts, their converse, their 
 employments, must be left wholly to the imagination. 
 And yet, it is impossible not to be curious in regard to 
 these hidden days of Judaea, when the mother of our 
 Lord was already fashioning that sacred form which, in 
 due time, not far from her residence, perhaps within the 
 very sight of it, was to be lifted up upon the cross. 
 But it is a research which we have no means of 
 pursuing. Her thoughts must be impossible to us, 
 as our thoughts of her son were impossible to her. 
 No one can look forward, even in the spirit of proph- 
 ecy, to see after-things in all their fulness as they 
 shall be ; nor can one who has known go back again to 
 see as if he had not known. 
 
 After Mary's return to Nazareth, Elisabeth was de- 
 hvered of a son. Following the custom of their peo- 
 ple, her friends would have named him after his father, 
 but the mother, mindful of the name given by the an- 
 gel, called him John. An appeal was made to the priest 
 — who probably was deaf as well as dumb, for they made 
 signs to him — how the child should be named. Calling 
 for writing-materials, he surprised them all by naming 
 him as his wife had, — John. At once the sign ceased. 
 
26 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 His lips were unsealed, and he broke forth into thanks- 
 giving and praise. All the circumstances conspired to 
 awaken wonder and to spread throughout the neigh- 
 borhood mysterious expectations, men saying, "What 
 manner of child shall this be ? " 
 
 "The -first chapter of Luke may be considered as 
 the last leaf of the Old Testament, so saturated is it 
 with the heart and spirit of the olden times. And the 
 song of Zacharias clearly reveals the state of feeling 
 among the best Jews of that day. Their nation was 
 grievously pressed down by foreign despotism. Their 
 people were scattered through the world. The time 
 was exceedingly dark, and the promises of the old 
 prophets served by contrast to make their present dis- 
 tress yet darker. We are not surprised, therefore, to 
 find the first portion of Zacharias's chant sensitively 
 recognizing the degradations and sufferings of his peo- 
 ple : — 
 
 " Blessed be the Lord God of Israel ; 
 For he hath visited and redeemed his people, 
 And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us 
 In the house of his servant David 
 (As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, 
 Which have been since the vrorld began) ; 
 That we should be saved from our enemies. 
 And from the hand of all that hate us ; 
 To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, 
 And to remember his holy covenant, 
 The oath which he sware to our father Abraham, 
 That he would grant unto us. 
 
 That we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies 
 Might serve him without fear. 
 In holiness and righteousness before him. 
 All the days of our life." 
 
 Then, as if seized with a spirit of prophecy, and be- 
 holding the relations and oflaces of his son, in language 
 
THE OVERTURE OF ANGELS. 27 
 
 as poetically beautiful as it is spiritually triumphant he 
 exclaims : — 
 
 " And tliou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest : 
 For thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways ; 
 To give knowledge of salvation unto his people 
 By the remission of their sins, 
 Through the tender mercy of our God ; 
 Whereby the day-spring from on high hath visited us, 
 To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, 
 To guide our feet into the way of peace." 
 
 Even in his childhood John manifested that fulness 
 of nature and that earnestness which afterwards fitted 
 him for his mission. He "waxed strong in spirit." 
 He did not mingle in the ordinary pursuits of men. 
 As one who bears a sensitive conscience and refuses 
 to mingle in the throng of men of low morality, he 
 stood apart and was solitary. He "was in the deserts 
 until the day of his showing unto Israel." 
 
 Mary had returned to Nazareth. Although Joseph, 
 to whom she was betrothed, was descended from 
 David, every sign of royalty had died out. He earned 
 his livelihood by working in wood, probably as a car- 
 penter, though the word applied to his trade admits of 
 much larger application. Tradition has uniformly repl 
 resented him as a carpenter, and art has conformed to 
 tradition. He appears but on the threshold of the his- 
 tory. He goes to Egypt, returns to Nazareth, and is 
 faintly recognized as present when Jesus was twelve 
 years of age. But nothing more is heard of him. If 
 alive when his reputed son entered upon public min- 
 istry, there • is no sign of it. And as Mary is often 
 mentioned in the history of the Lord's mission, it 
 is probable that Joseph died before Jesus entered 
 upon his public life. He is called a just man, and we 
 know that he was humane. For when he perceived 
 
28 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 the condition of his betrothed wife, instead of press- 
 ing to its full rigor the Jewish law against her, he 
 meant quietly and without harm to set her aside. 
 When in a vision he learned the truth, he took 
 Mary as his wife. 
 
 In the thousand pictures of the Holy Family, Joseph 
 is represented as a venerable man, standing a little apart, 
 lost in contemplation, while Mary and EUsabeth caress 
 the child Jesus. In this respect. Christian art has, it is 
 probable, rightly represented the character of Joseph. 
 He was but a shadow on the canvas. Such men are 
 found in every community, — gentle, blameless, mildly 
 active, but exerting no positive influence. Except in 
 one or two vague implications, he early disappears 
 from sight. No mention is made of his death, though 
 he must have deceased long before Mary, who in all 
 our Lord's ministry appears alone. He reappears in 
 the ecclesiastical calendar as St. Joseph, simply be- 
 cause he was the husband of Mary, — a harmless 
 saint, mild and silent. 
 
 An imperial order having issued for the taxing of 
 gthe whole nation, it became necessary for every one, 
 i^according to the custom of the Jews, to repair to the 
 *'city where he belonged, for registration.-^ 
 
 ' It is needless to consider the difficulty to which this passage has given 
 rise. Josephus states that Quirinius (Cyrenius) became governor of Juda:a 
 after tlie death of Archelaus, Herod's son and heir, and so some eight or 
 ten years after the birth of Christ. How tiien could that taxing have 
 brought Joseph from Nazareth to Bethlehem ? The immense ingenuity 
 which has been employed to solve this difficulty will scarcely add to the 
 value of hypothetical historical reasoning. Especially when now, at length, 
 it is ascertained upon grounds almost certain, that Quirinius was twice gov- 
 ernor of Syria. See Schaff's note to Lange's Com. (Luke, pp. 82, 33), and 
 the more full discussion in Smith's Bible Dictionary, Art. " Cyrenius," and 
 President Woolsey's addition to this article in Hurd and Houghton's Amei^ 
 ican edition. 
 
THE OVERTURE OF ANGELS. 29 
 
 From Nazareth to Bethlehem was about eighty miles. 
 Travelling slowly, as the condition of Mary required, 
 they would probably occupy about four days in reach- 
 ing their destination. Already the place was crowded 
 with others brought thither on the same errand. They 
 probably sought shelter in a cottage, for "the inn was 
 full," and there Mary gave birth to her child. 
 
 It is said by Luke that the child was laid in a man- 
 ger, from which it has been inferred that his parents 
 had taken refuge in a stable. But tradition asserts that 
 it was a cave, such as abound in the limestone rock of 
 that region, and are used both for sheltering herds 
 and, sometimes, for human residences. .The precip- 
 itous sides of the rock are often pierced in such a way 
 that a cottage built near might easily convert an adr 
 joining cave to the uses of an outbuildiag. 
 
 Caves are not rare in Palestine, as with us. On the 
 contrary, the whole land seems to be honeycombed 
 with them. They are, and have been for ages, used for 
 almost every purpose which architecture supplies in 
 other lands, — -as dwellings for the living and sepul- 
 chres for the dead, as shelter for the household and for 
 cattle and herds, as hidden retreats for robbers, and 
 as defensive positions or rock-castles . for soldiers. 
 Travellers make them a refuge when no better inn is 
 at hand. They are shaped into reservoirs for water, 
 or, if dry, they are employed as granaries. The lime- 
 stone of the region is so porous and soft, that but a 
 little labor is required to enlarge, refashion, and adapt 
 caves to any desirable purpose. 
 
 Of the " manger," or « crib," Thomson, long a mis- 
 sionary in Palestine, says : " It is common to find two 
 sides of the one room, where the native farmer resides 
 
30 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 with his cattle, fitted up with these mangers, and the re- 
 mainder elevated about two feet higher for the accom- 
 modation of the family. The mangers are built of 
 small stones and mortar, in the shape of a box, or, 
 rather, of a kneading-trough, and when cleaned up and 
 whitewashed, as they often are in summer, they do 
 very well to lay little babes in. Indeed, our own chil- 
 dren have slept there in our rude summer retreats on 
 the mountains." ^ 
 
 The laying of the little babe in the manger is not to 
 be regarded then as an extraordinary thing, or a posi- 
 tive hardship. It was merely subjecting the child to 
 a custom which peasants frequently practised with 
 their children. Jesus began his life with and as the 
 Iqwest. 
 
 About five miles south of Jerusalem, and crowning 
 the top and sides of a narrow ridge or spur which 
 shoots out eastwardly from the central mass of the 
 Judasan hills, was the village of Bethlehem. On every 
 side but the western, the hill breaks down abruptly 
 into deep valleys. The steep slopes were terraced and 
 cultivated from top to bottom. A little to the east- 
 ward is a kind of plain, where it is supposed the shep- 
 herds, of all shepherds that ever lived now the most 
 famous, tended their flocks. The great fruitfulness of 
 its fields is supposed to have given to Bethlehem its 
 name, Avhich signifies the " House of Bread." Famous 
 as it has become, it was but a hamlet at the birth of 
 Jesus. Here King David was born, but there is noth- 
 ing to indicate that he retained any special attachment 
 to the place. In the rugged valleys and gorges which 
 
 ' Thomson's The Land and the Book, Vol. 11. p. 98. 
 
THE OVERTURE OF ANGELS. SI 
 
 abound on every side, he had watched his father's flocks 
 and had become inured to danger and to toil, defend- 
 ing his charge on the one hand against wild beasts, and 
 on the other against the scarcely less savage predatory 
 tribes that infested the region south and east. From 
 Bethlehem one may look out upon the very fields 
 made beautiful forever to the imagination by the 
 charming idyl of David's ancestress, Ruth the Moabitess. 
 Changed as Bethlehem itself is, which, from holding a 
 mere handful then, has a population now of some four 
 thousand, customs and the face of nature remain the 
 same. The hills are terraced, the fields are tilled, 
 flocks are tended by laborers unchanged in garb, work- 
 ing with the same kinds of implements, having the 
 same manners, and employing the same salutations as 
 in the days of the patriarchs. 
 
 Were Boaz to return to-day, he would hardly see an 
 unfamiliar thing in his old fields, — the barley harvest, 
 the reapers, the gleaners, the threshing-floors, and the 
 rude threshing, — all are there as they were thousands 
 of years ago. 
 
 At the season of our Saviour's advent, the nights 
 were soft and genial.-^ It was ' no hardship for rugged 
 
 ' This is true, whichever date shall be selected of the many which have been 
 urged by different learned men. But further than this there is no cer- 
 tainty. " In the primitive Church there was no agreement as to the time 
 of Christ's birth. In the East the 6th of January was observed as tlie day 
 of his baptism and birth. In the third century, as Clement of Alexandria 
 relates, some regarded the 20th of May, others the 20th of April, as the 
 birthday of our Saviour. Among modern chronologists and biographers of 
 Jesus there is still greater diflference of opinion, and every month — even 
 June and July (when the fields are parched from want of rain) — has been 
 named as the time when the great event took place. Lightfoot assigns the 
 Nativity to September, Lardner and Newcome to October, Wieseler to Feb- 
 ruary, Paulus to March, Greswell and Alfera to the 5th of April, just after 
 the spring rains, when there is an abundance of pasture ; Lichtenstein 
 
32 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 shepherds to spend the night in the fields with their 
 flocks. By day, as the sheep fed, their keepers might 
 while away their time with sights and sounds along 
 the earth. When darkness shut in the scene, the 
 heavens would naturally attract their attention. Their 
 eyes had so long kept company with the mysterious 
 stars, that, doubtless, like shepherds of more ancient 
 times, they were rude astronomers, and had grown 
 famiUar with the planets, and knew them in all their 
 courses. But there came to them a night surpassing 
 all nights in wonders. Of a sudden the whole heavens 
 were filled with light, as if morning were come upon 
 midnight. Out of this splendor a single voice issued, as 
 of a choral leader, — " Behold, I bring you glad tidings 
 of great joy." The shepherds were told of the Saviour's 
 birth, and of the place where the babe might be found. 
 Then no longer a single voice, but a host in heaven, 
 was heard celebrating the event. " Suddenly there was 
 with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, prais- 
 ing God, and saying, 
 
 " Glory to God in the highest, 
 And on earth peace, good-will toward men.'' 
 
 Raised to a fervor of wonder, these children of the 
 field made haste to find the babe, and to make known 
 on every side the marvellous vision. Moved by this 
 
 places it in July or December, Strong in August, Robinson in autumn, 
 Clinton in spring, Andrews between the middle of December, 749, and the 
 middle of January, 750, A. U. C. On the other hand, Roman Catholic histo- 
 rians and biographers of Jesus, as Sepp, Friedlieb, Bucher, Patritius, and also 
 some Protestant writers, defend ' the popular tradition, — the 25th of De- 
 cember. Wordsworth gives up the problem, and thinks that the Holy Spirit 
 has concealed the knowledge of the year and day of Clirisfs birtli and the 
 duration of his ministry from the wise and prudent, to teach them huniil- 
 ity."— Dr. Schaff, in Lange's Commentary (Luke, p. Sfl). 
 
TEE OVERTURE OF ANGELS. 33 
 
 faith to worship and to glorify God, they were thus 
 unconsciously the earliest disciples and the first evan- 
 gelists, for " they made known abroad the saying which 
 was told them concerning this child." 
 
 In beautiful contrast with these rude exclamatory 
 worshippers, the mother is described as silent and 
 thoughtful. " Mary kept all these things and pon- 
 dered them in her heart." If no woman comes to 
 herself until she loves, so, it may be said, she knows 
 not how to love until her first-bom is in her arms. 
 Sad is it for her who does not feel herself made 
 sacred by motherhood. That heart-pondering! Who 
 may tell the thoughts which rise from the deep places 
 of an inspired love, more in number and more beauti- 
 ful than the particles of vapor which the sun draws 
 from the surface of the sea? 
 
 Intimately as a mother must feel that her babe is 
 connected with her own body, even more she is wont 
 to feel that her child comes direct from God. God- 
 given is a familiar name in every language. Not from 
 her Lord came this chUd to Mary. It was her Lord 
 himself that came. 
 
 A sweet and trusting faith in God, childlike simplicity, 
 and profound love seem to have formed the nature of 
 Mary. She may be accepted as the type of Christian 
 motherhood. In this view, and excluding the dogma 
 of her immaculate nature, and still more emphatically 
 that of any other participation in divinity than that 
 which is common to all, we may receive with pleasure 
 the stores of exquisite pictures with which Christian 
 art has filled its realm. The " Madonnas " are so many 
 tributes to the beauty and dignity of motherhood; 
 
34 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CERIST. 
 
 and they may stand so interpreted, now that the 
 superstitious associations which they have had are so 
 wholly worn away. At any rate, the Protestant re- 
 action from Mary has gone far enough, and, on our 
 own grounds, we may well have our share also in the 
 memory of this sweet and noble woman. 
 
 The same reason which led our Lord to clothe him- 
 self with flesh made it proper, when he was born, to 
 have fulfilled upon him all the customs of his people. 
 He was therefore circumcised when eight days old, and 
 presented in the Temple on the fortieth day, at which 
 period his mother had completed the time appointed for 
 her purification. The offering required was a lamb and 
 a dove ; but if the parents were poor, then two doves. 
 Mary's humble condition was indicated by the offering 
 of tAvo doves. And yet, if she had heard the exclama- 
 tion of John after the Lord's baptism, years afterwards, 
 she might have perceived that, in spite of her poverty, 
 she had brought the Lamb, divine and precious ! 
 
 Surprise upon surprise awaited Mary. There dwelt 
 at Jerusalem, wrapped in his own devout and longing 
 thoughts, a great nature, living contentedly in obscurity, 
 Simeon by name. This venerable man seized the child 
 with holy rapture, when it was presented in the Temple, 
 and broke forth in the very spirit of a prophet : — 
 
 " Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, 
 According to thy word : 
 For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, 
 Wliich thou hast prepared before the face of all people ; 
 A light to lighten the Gentiles, 
 And the glory of thy people Israel." 
 
 Both Mary and Joseph were amazed, but there was 
 something in Mary's appearance that drew this inspired 
 
THE OVERTURE OF ANGELS. 35 
 
 old man specially to her. " Behold, this child is set for 
 
 the fall and rising again of many in Israel Yea, 
 
 a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also." 
 
 As the asters^ among plants, go all summer long un- 
 beautiful, their flowers hidden within, and burst into 
 bloom at the very end of summer and in late autumn, 
 with the frosts upon their heads, so this aged saint had 
 blossomed, at the close of a long life, into this noble 
 ecstasy of joy. In a stormy time, when outward life 
 moves wholly against one's wishes, he is truly great 
 whose soul becomes a sanctuary in which patience 
 dwells with hope. In one hour Simeon received full 
 satisfaction for the yearnings of many years ! 
 
 Among the Jews, more perhaps than in any other 
 Oriental nation, woman was permitted to develop nat- 
 urally, and liberty was accorded her to participate 
 in things which other people reserved with zealous se- 
 clusion for men. Hebrew women were prophetesses, 
 teachers (2 Kings xxii. 14), judges, queens. The ad- 
 vent of our Saviour was hailed appropriately by 
 woman, — Anna, the prophetess, joining with Simeon 
 in praise and thanksgiving. 
 
 But other witnesses were preparing. Already the 
 footsteps of strangers afar off were advancing toward 
 Judsea. Erelong Jerusalem was thrown into an excite- 
 ment by the arrival of certain sages, probably from 
 Persia. The city, like an uneasy volcano, was always^on 
 the eve of an eruption. When it was known that these 
 pilgrims had come to inquire about a king, who, they 
 believed, had been born, a king of the Jews, the news 
 excited both the city and the piilace, — hope in one, 
 fear in the other. - Herod dreaded a rival. The Jews 
 longed for a native prince whose arm should expel the 
 
36 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 intrusive government. No wonder that "Herod was 
 troubled, and all Jerusalem with him." He first sum- 
 moned the Jewish scholars, to know where, according to 
 their prophets, the Messiah was to be born. Bethle- 
 hem was the place of prediction. Next, he summoned 
 the Magi, secretly, to learn of them at what time the 
 revealing star had appeared to them, and then, craftily 
 veiling his cruel purposes with an assumed interest, he 
 charges them, when the child was found, to let him be 
 a worshipper too ! 
 
 The same star which had drawn their footsteps to 
 Jerusalem now guided the wise men to the very place 
 of Jesus' birth. 
 
 What was this star ? All that can be known is, that 
 it was some appearance of light in the sky, which by 
 these Oriental philosophers was supposed to indicate a 
 great event. Ingenuity has unnecessarily been exer- 
 cised to prove that at about this time there was a con- 
 junction of three planets. But did the same thing 
 happen again, after their arrival at Jerusalem ? For 
 it is stated that, on their leaving the city to go to Beth- 
 lehem, " lo, the star which they saw in the east went 
 before them till it came and stood over where the young 
 child was." How could a planetary conjunction stand 
 over a particular house ? It is evident that the sidereal 
 guide was a globe of light, divinely ordered and ap- 
 pointed for this work. It was a miracle. That nature 
 is but an organized outworking of the divine will, that 
 God is not limited to ordinary law in the production of 
 results, that he can, and that he does, produce events by 
 the direct force of his will without the ordinary instru- 
 ments of nature, is the very spirit of the whole Bible. 
 
 These gleams of immediate power flash through in 
 
THE OVERTURE OF ANGELS. 37 
 
 every age. The superiority of spiritual power over 
 sensuous, is the ilkiminating truth of the New Testa- 
 ment. The gospels should be taken or rejected unmu- 
 tilated. The disciples plucked the wheat-heads, and, 
 rubbing them in their hands, they ate the grain. But 
 our sceptical believers take from the New Testament its 
 supernatural element, — rub out the wheat, — and eat 
 the chaff. There is consistency in one who sets the 
 gospels aside on the ground that they are not inspired, 
 that they are not even historical, that they are growths 
 of the imagination, and covered all over with the 
 parasites of superstition ; but in one who professes to 
 accept the record as an inspired history, the disposition 
 to pare miracles down to a scientific shape, to find 
 their roots in natural laws, is neither reverent nor 
 sagacious. Miracles are to be accepted boldly or not 
 at all. They are jewels, and sparkle with divine light, 
 or they are nothing. 
 
 This guide of the Magi was a light kindled in the 
 heavens to instruct and lead those whose eyes were 
 prepared to receive it. If the vision of angels and the 
 extraordinary conception of the Virgin are received as 
 miraculous, it ought not to be difficult to accept the 
 star seen from the east as a miracle also. 
 
 The situation of the child ill befitted Oriental notions 
 of a king's dignity. But under the divine influence 
 which rested upon the Magi, they doubtless saw more 
 than the outward circumstances. Humble as the place 
 was, poor as his parents evidently were, and he a mere 
 babe, they fell down before him in worship, and pre- 
 sented princely gifts, " gold, frankincense, and myrrh." 
 Instead of returning to Herod, they went back to their 
 own country. 
 
38 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 And now' it was time for Joseph to look well to his 
 safety. If there was to be a king in Israel, he was to 
 come from the house of David, and Joseph was of that 
 stock, and his child, Jesus, was royal too. Herod's 
 jealousy was aroused. He was not a man wont to 
 miss the fulfilment of any desire on account of hu- 
 mane or moral scruples. The return of the Magi with- 
 out giving him the knowledge which he sought seemed 
 doubtless to the king like another step in a plot to sub- 
 vert his throne. He determined to make thorough work 
 of this nascent peril, "and sent forth and slew all the 
 children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts 
 thereof, from two years old and under." He put the 
 limit of age at a period which would make it sure that 
 the new-born king of the Jews would be included. 
 
 It has been objected to the probable truth of this 
 statement, that such an event could hardly faU to be 
 recorded by secular historians, and especially by Jose- 
 phus, who narrates the contemporaneous history with 
 much minuteness. But this event is far more striking 
 upon our imagination now, than it was likely to be 
 upon the attention of men then. For, as Bethlehem 
 was a mere hamlet, with but a handful of people, it has 
 been computed that not more than ten or fifteen chil- 
 dren could have perished by this merciless edict. Be- 
 sides, what was such an act as this, in a life stored fuU 
 of abominable cruelties ? " He who had immolated a 
 cherished wife, a brother, and three sons to his jealous 
 suspicions, and who ordered a general massacre for the 
 day of his funeral, so that his body should not be borne 
 to the earth amidst general rejoicings," may easily be 
 supposed to have filled up the spaces with minor cruel- 
 ties which escaped record. But here is an historical 
 
THE OVERTURE OF ANGELS. 39 
 
 record. It is no impeachment of its truth to aver that 
 there is no other history of it. Until some disproof is 
 alleged, it must stand. 
 
 Stirred by a divine impulse, Joseph had already re- 
 moved the child from danger. Whither should he flee ? 
 Egypt was not distant, and the roads thither were easy 
 and much frequented. Thither too, from time to time, 
 exiled for various reasons, had resorted numbers of 
 Jews, so that, though in a foreign land, he would be 
 among his own countrymen, all interested ahke in hat 
 ing the despotic cruelty of Herod. There is no record 
 of the place of Joseph's sojourn in Egypt. Tradition, 
 always uncertain, places it at Matarea, near LeontopoUs, 
 where subsequently the Jewish temple of Onias stood. 
 
 His stay was probably brief For, within two or 
 three weeks of the foregoing events, Herod died. 
 Joseph did not return to Bethlehem, though he de- 
 sired to do so, but was warned of God in a dream 
 of his danger. It was probable that Archelaus, who 
 succeeded to Herod in Judsea, would be as suspicious 
 of danger from an heir royal of the house of David as 
 his father had been ; so Joseph passed — it may be 
 by way of the searcoast — northward, to Nazareth, 
 whence a few months before he had removed. 
 
 Before closing this chapter we shall revert to one 
 of the most striking features of the period thus far 
 passed over, namely, the ministration of angels. The behef 
 ia the existence of heavenly beings who in some man- 
 ner are concerned in the affairs of men, has existed 
 from the earliest periods of which we have a history 
 This faith is peculiarly grateful to the human heart, 
 and, though it has never been received with favor by 
 
40 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 men addicted to purely physical studies, it has been, 
 entertained by the Church with fond faith and by the 
 common people with the enthusiasm of sympathy. 
 
 It is scarcely possible to follow the line of develop- 
 ment in the animal kingdom, and to witness the gradar 
 tions on the ascending scale, unfolding steadily, rank 
 above rank, until man is reached, without having the 
 presumption awakened that there are intelligences 
 above man, — creatures which rise as much above him 
 as he above the inferior animals. 
 
 When the word of Gpd announces the ministration 
 of angels, records their early visits to this planet, repre- 
 sents them as bending over the race in benevolent 
 sympathy, bearing warnings, consolations, and messages 
 of wisdom, the heart receives the doctrine even against 
 the cautions of a sceptical reason. 
 
 Our faith might be put to shame if the scriptural 
 angels bore any analogy to those of the rude and puerile 
 histories contained in apocryphal books. But the long 
 line of heavenly visitants shines in unsullied brightness 
 as high above the beliefs and prejudices of an eaily age 
 as the stars are above the vapors and dust of earth. 
 While patriarchs, prophets, and apostles show all the 
 deficiencies of their own period and are stained with 
 human passions, the angelic beings, judged by the most 
 fastidious requirements of these. later ages, are without 
 spot or blemish. They are not made up of human 
 traits ideahzed. They are unworldly, — of a different 
 type, of nobler presence, and of far grander and 
 sweeter natures than any living on earth. 
 
 The angels of the oldest records are like the angels 
 of the latest. The Hebrew thought had moved through 
 a vast arc of the infinite cycle of truth between the days 
 
THE OVERTURE OF ANGELS. 4]^ 
 
 when Abraham came from Ur of Chaldaea and the times 
 of our Lord's stay on earth. But there is no develop- 
 ment in angels of later over those of an earlier date. 
 They were as beautiful, as spiritual, as pure and 
 noble, at the beginning as at the close of the old dis- 
 pensation. Can such creatures, transcending earthly 
 experience, and far outrunning anything in the life of 
 man, be creations of the rude ages of the hmnan under- 
 standing ? 
 
 We could not imagine the Advent stripped of its an- 
 gelic lore. The dawn without a twilight, the sun with- 
 out clouds of silver and gold, the morning on the fields 
 without dew-diamonds, — but not the Saviour without 
 his angels ! They shine within the Temple, they bear 
 to the matchless mother a message which would have 
 been disgrace from mortal lips, but which from theirs 
 fell upon her as pure as dew-drops upon the lilies of 
 the plain of Esdraelon. They communed with the 
 Saviour in his glory of transfiguration, sustained him 
 in the anguish of the garden, watched at the tomb ; and 
 as they had thronged the earth at his coming, so they 
 seem to have hovered in the air in multitudes at the 
 hour of his ascension. Beautiful as they seem, they 
 are never mere poetic adornments. The occasions of 
 their appearing are grand. The reasons are weighty. 
 Their demeanor suggests and befits the highest con- 
 ception of superior beings. These are the very ele- 
 ments that a rude age could not fashion. Could a 
 sensuous age invent an order of beings, which, touch- 
 ing the earth from a heavenly height on its most mo- 
 mentous occasions, could still, after ages of culture had 
 refined the human taste and moral appreciation, remain 
 ineffably superior in deUcacj, in pure spirituality, to 
 
42 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 the demands of criticism ? Their very coming and 
 going is not with earthly movement. They suddenly 
 are seen in the air as one sees white clouds round 
 out from the blue sky, in a summer's day, that melt 
 back even while one looks upon them. They vibrate 
 between the visible and the invisible. They come 
 without motion. They go without flight. They dawn 
 and disappear. Their words are few, but the Advent 
 Chorus yet is sounding its music through the world. 
 
 A part of the angelic ministration is to be looked for 
 in what men are by it incited to do. It helps the mind 
 to populate heaven with spiritual inhabitants. The ' 
 imagination no longer translates thither the gross 
 corporeity of this life. We suspect that few of us 
 are aware how much our definite conceptions of spirit- 
 life are the product of the angel-lore of the Bible. 
 
 It is to be noticed that only in Luke is the history 
 of the angelic annunciation given. It is to Luke also 
 that we are indebted for the record of the angels at 
 the tomb on the morning of the resurrection. Luke 
 has been called the Evangelist of Greece. He was 
 Paul's companion of travel, and particularly among the 
 Greek cities of Asia Minor. This suggests the fact 
 that the angelic ministration commemorated in the 
 New Testament would greatly facilitate among Greeks 
 the reception of monotheism. Comforting to us as is 
 the doctrine of angels, it can hardly be of the same 
 help as it was to a Greek or to a Roman when he first 
 accepted the Christian faith. The rejection of so many 
 divinities must have left the fields, the mountains, the 
 cities and temples very bare to all who had been accus- 
 tomed to heathen mythology. The ancients seem to 
 have striven to express universal divine presence by 
 
THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 43 
 
 multiplying their gods. This at least had the effect of 
 giving life to every part of nature. The imaginative 
 Greek had grown familiar with the thought of gods 
 innumerable. Every stream, each grove, the caves, the 
 fields, the clouds, suggested some divine person. It 
 would be almost impossible to strip such a one of those 
 fertile suggestions and tie him, to the simple doctrine 
 of One God, without producing a sense of cheerless- 
 ness and solitude. Angels come in to make for him an 
 easy transition from polytheism to monotheism. The 
 air might stUl be populous, his imagination yet be fuU 
 of teeming suggestions, but no longer with false gods. 
 Now there was to him but one God, but He was 
 served by multitudes of blessed spirits, children of 
 light and glory. Instead of a realm of conflicting 
 divinities there was a household, the Father looking 
 in benignity upon his radiant family. Thus, again, to 
 the Greek, as to the Patriarch, angels ascended and de- 
 scended the steps that lead from earth to heaven. 
 
44 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE DOCTRINAL BASIS. 
 
 Before we enter upon the childhood of Jesus, and, 
 with still more reason, before we enter upon his adult 
 life, it is necessary to form some idea of his original 
 nature. No one conversant with the ideas on this 
 point which fill the Christian world can avoid taking 
 sides with one or another of the philosophical views 
 which have divided the Church. Even mere readers, 
 who seem to themselves uncommitted to any doctrine 
 of the nature of Christ, are unconsciously in sjrm- 
 pathy with some theory. But to draw up a history 
 of Christ without some pilotridea is impossible. Every 
 fact in the narrative will take its color and form from 
 the philosophy around which it is grouped. 
 
 Was Jesus, then, one of those gifted men who have 
 from time to time arisen in the world, differing from 
 their fellows only in pre-eminence of earthly power, in 
 a fortunate temperament, and a happy balance of facul- 
 ties? Was he simply and only an extraordinary Man? 
 This view was early taken, and as soon vehemently 
 combated. But it has never ceased to be held. It 
 reappears in every age. And it has special hold upon 
 thoughtful minds to-day ; at least, upon such thought- 
 ful minds as are imbued with the present spirit of ma- 
 terial science. The physical laws of nature, we are 
 told, are invariable and constant, and all true knowl- 
 
THE DOCTRINAL BASIS. 45 
 
 edge is the product of the observation of such laws. 
 This view will exclude, not only miracles, the divin-e 
 inspiration of holy men of old, and the divinity of 
 Jesus Christ ; but, if honestly followed to its proper 
 consequences, it will destroy the grounds on which 
 stand the behef of the immortality of the soul and 
 of the existence of angels and spirits ; and, finally 
 and fatally, it will deny the validity of all eviden- 
 ces of the existence and government of God. And 
 we accordingly find that, on the Eiu-opean continent 
 and in England, the men of some recent schools of 
 science, without denying the existence of an intelli- 
 gent, personal God, deny that there is, or can be, any 
 human knowledge of the fact. The nature of the hu- 
 man mind, and the laws under which all knowledge is 
 gained, it is taught, prevent our knowing with cer- 
 tainty anything beyond the reach of the senses and of 
 personal consciousness. God is the Unknown, and 
 the life beyond this the Unknowable. There are 
 many inclining to this position who would be shocked 
 at the results to which it logically leads. But it is 
 difficult to see how one can reject miracles, as philo- 
 sophically impossible, except upon grounds of mate- 
 rialistic science which lead irresistibly to veiled or 
 overt atheism. 
 
 The Lives of Christ which have been written from 
 the purely humanitarian view have not been without 
 their benefits. They have brought the historical ele- 
 ments of his life into clearer light, have called back 
 the mind from speculative and imaginative efforts in 
 spiritual directions, and have given to a dim and dis- 
 tant idea the clearness and reality of a fact. Like 
 some old picture of the masters, the Gospels, ex- 
 
46 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 posed to the dust and smoke of superstition, to re- 
 varnishing glosses and retouching philosophies, in the 
 sight of many had lost their original brightness and 
 beauty.. The rationalistic school has done much to re- 
 move these false surfaces, and to bring back to the eye 
 the original picture as it was laid upon the canvas. 
 
 But, this work ended, every step beyond has been 
 mischieyous. The genius of the Gospels has been cru- 
 cified to a theory of Christ's humanity. The canons 
 of historical criticism have been adopted or laid aside 
 as the exigencies of the special theory required. The 
 most lawless fancy has been called in to correct the 
 alleged fancifulness of the evangelists. Not only has 
 the picture been " restored," but the pigments have 
 been taken off, reground, and laid on again by mod- 
 ern hands. A new head, a different countenance, 
 appears. They found a God : they have left a feeble 
 man ! 
 
 Dissatisfied with the barrenness of this school, 
 which leaves nothing upon which devotion may fas- 
 ten, another class of thinkers have represented Jesus 
 as more than human, but as less than divine. What 
 that being is to whose kind Jesus belongs, they cannot 
 tell. Theirs is a theory of compromise. It adopts 
 the obscure as a means of hiding definite difficulties. 
 It admits the grandeur of Christ's nature, and the 
 sublimity of his life and teachings. It exalts him 
 above angels, but not to the level of the Throne. 
 It leaves him in that wide and mysterious space that 
 lies between the finite and the infinite. 
 
 The theological difficulties which inhere in such a 
 theory are many. It may enable reasoners to elude 
 pursuit, but it will not give them any vantage-ground 
 
THE DOCTRINAL BASIS. 47 
 
 for a conflict with philosophical objections. And yet, 
 as the pilot^idea of a Life of Christ, it is far less mis- 
 chievous than the strictly humanitarian view ; it does 
 less violence to recorded facts. But it cannot create 
 an ideal on which the soul may feed. After the last 
 touch is given to the canvas, we see only a Creature. 
 The soul admires ; but it must go elsewhere to bestow 
 its utmost love and reverence. 
 
 A third view is held, which may be called the doc- 
 trine of the Church, at least since the fourth century. 
 It attributes to Jesus a double nature, — a human soul 
 and a divine soul in one body. It is not held that 
 these two souls existed separately and in juxtaposi- 
 ' tion, — two separate tenants, as it were, of a common 
 dwelling. Neither is it taught that either soul ab- 
 sorbed the other, so that the divine lapsed into the 
 human, or the human expanded into the divine. 
 But it is held that, by the union of a human and a 
 divine nature, the one person Jesus Christ became 
 God-Man ; a being carrying in himself both natures, 
 inseparably blended, and never again to be dissevered. 
 This new iheardhropic being, of blended divinity and 
 humanity, will occasion no surprise in those who are 
 familiar with modes of thought which belonged to the 
 early theologians of the Church. It is only when, in 
 our day, this doctrine is supposed to, be found in the 
 NcAV Testament, that one is inclined to surprise. 
 
 For, as in a hot campaign the nature of the lines of 
 intrenchment is determined by the assaults of the 
 enemy, so this doctrine took its shape, not from. 
 Scripture statements, but from the exigencies of 
 controversy. It was thrown up to meet the assaults 
 upon the true divinity of Christ ; and, although cum- ' 
 
48 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 brous and involved, it saved Christianity. For, the 
 truth of the proper divinity of Christ is the marrow 
 of the sacred Scriptures. It is the only point at 
 which natural and revealed religion can be reconciled. 
 
 But if by another and better statement the divinity 
 of Christ can be exhibited in equal eminence and with 
 greater simplicity, and if such exhibition shall be found 
 in more obvious accord with the language of the New 
 Testament, and with what we now know of mental 
 philosophy, it will be wise, in constructing a life of 
 Christ, to leave the antiquated theory of the mediaeval 
 Church, and return to the simple and more philosophi- 
 cal views of the sacred Scriptures. 
 
 We must bear in mind that many questions which 
 have profoundly excited the curiosity of thinkers, and 
 agitated the Church, had not even entered into the 
 conceptions of men at the time when the writings 
 of the New Testament were framed. They are medi- 
 aBval or modern. The Romish doctrine of the Virgin 
 Mary could hardly have been understood even, by 
 the apostles. The speculations which have absorbed 
 the thoughts of men for ages are not only not 
 found in the sacred record, but would have been in- 
 congruous with its whole spirit. The evangelists 
 never reason upon any question; they simply state 
 what they saw or heard. They never deduce in- 
 ferences and principles from facts. They frame their 
 narrations without any apparent consciousness of the 
 philosophical relations of the facts contained in them 
 to each other or to any system. It is probable that 
 the mystery of the Incarnation never entered their 
 minds as it exists in ours. It was to them a moral 
 fact, and not a philosophical problem. 
 
THE DOCTRINAL BASIS. 49 
 
 now Jesus was Son of God, and yet Son of Man, is 
 nowhere spoken of in those simple records. The 
 evangelists and the apostles content themselves with 
 simply declaring that God came into the world in the 
 form of a man. " The Woed was God." " And the 
 Word tvas made flesh, and dwelt among us." This is 
 all the explanation given by the disciple who was 
 most in sympathy with Jesus. Jesus was God ; and 
 he was made flesh. The simplest rendering of these 
 words would seem to be, that the Divine Spirit had 
 enveloped himself with the human body, and in that 
 condition been subject to the indispensable limitations 
 of material laws. Paul's statement is almost a direct 
 historical narrative of facts. "Let this mind be in 
 you which was also in Christ Jesus : who, being in the 
 form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with 
 God ; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon 
 him the form of a servant, and ivas made in the likeness 
 of men ; and being found in fashion as a man, he hum- 
 bled himself and became obedient unto death, even 
 the death of the cross." (Phil. ii. 5-8.) This is 
 a simple statement that Jesus, a Divine Person, 
 brought his nature into the human body, and was 
 subject to all its laws and conditions. No one can 
 extract from this the notion of two intermixed souls 
 in one nature. 
 
 The same form of statement fippears in Eomans viii. 
 3 : " For what the law could not do, in that it was 
 weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in 
 the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in 
 the flesh." There is no hint here of joining a human 
 soul to the divine. In not a single passage of the New 
 Testament is such an idea even suggested. The Ian- 
 
50 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 guage which is used on this subject is such as could 
 not have been employed by one who had in his mind 
 the notion of two souls in coexistence. 
 
 As it is unsafe to depart from the obvious teaching 
 of the sacred Scriptures on a theme so far removed 
 from all human knowledge, we shall not, in this Life of 
 our Lord, render ourselves subject to the hopeless con- 
 fusions of the theories of the schools, but shall cling to 
 the simple and intelligible representations of the Word, 
 " Great is the mystery of godliness : God was manifest 
 in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, 
 preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, 
 received up into glory." (1 Tim. iii. 16.) 
 
 The Divine Spirit came into the world, in the person 
 of Jesus, not bearing the attributes of Deity in their 
 full disclosure and power. He came into the world 
 to subject his spirit to that whole discipline and expe- 
 rience through which every man must pass. He veiled 
 his royalty ; he folded back, as it were, within himself 
 those ineffable powers which belonged to him as a free 
 spirit in heaven. He went into captivity to himself, 
 wrapping in weakness and forgetfdness his divine en- 
 ergies, while he was a babe. " Being found in fashion 
 as a man," he was subject to that gradual unfolding of 
 his buried powers which belongs to infancy and child- 
 hood. "And the child grew, and ivaxed strong in 
 spirit."^ He was subject to the restrictions which hold 
 and hinder common men. He was to come back to 
 himself little by little. Who shall say that God can- 
 not put himself into finite conditions? Though as a 
 free spirit God cannot grow, yet as fettered in the flesh 
 he may. Breaking out at times with amazing power, in 
 smgle directions, yet at other times feeling the mist 
 
TEE DOCTRINAL BASIS. 51 
 
 of humanity resting upon his eyes, he declares, " Of 
 
 that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the 
 
 angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the 
 
 Father." This is just the experience which we should 
 
 expect in a being whose problem of life was, hot 
 
 the disclosure of the full power and glory of God's 
 
 natural attributes, but the manifestation of the love 
 
 of God, and of the extremities of self-renunciation to 
 
 . . . .' 
 
 which the Divine heart would submit, in the rearing 
 
 up from animalism and passion his family of children. 
 The incessant looking for the signs of divine power 
 and of infinite attributes, in the earthly life of Jesus, 
 whose mission it was to bring the Divine Spirit within 
 the conditions of feeble humanity, is as if one should 
 search a dethroned king, in exile, for his crown and his 
 sceptre. We are not to look for a glorified, an en- 
 throned Jesus, but for God manifest in the flesh; and 
 in this view the very limitations and seeming discrep- 
 ancies in a Divine life become congruous parts of the 
 whole sublime problem. 
 
 We are to remember that, whatever view of the 
 mystery be taken, there will be difficulties which no 
 ingenuity can solve. But we are to distinguish be- 
 tween difficulties which are inherent in the nature of 
 the Infinite, and those which are but the imperfections 
 of our own philosophy. In the one case, the perplex- 
 ity lies in the weakness of our reason ; in the other, in 
 the weakness of our reasoning. The former will always 
 be burdensome enough, without adding to it the pres- 
 sure of that extraordinary theory of the Incarnation, 
 which, without a single express Scriptural statement in 
 its support, works out a compound divine nature, with- 
 out analogue or parallel in human mental philosophy. 
 
52 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 Early theologians believed suffering to be inconsist- 
 ent with the Divine perfection. Impassivity was es- 
 sential to true divinity. With such ideas of the Divine 
 nature, how could they believe that Jesus, a man of 
 suffering, and acquainted with grief, was divine ? A 
 human soul was therefore conjoined to the divine, and 
 to that human element were ascribed all the phenom- 
 ena of weakness and suffering which they shrank from 
 imputing to the Deity. This disordered reverence was 
 corroborated by imperfect notions of what constitutes 
 a true manhood. If God became a true man, they 
 argued, he must have had a human soul. As if the 
 Divine nature clothed in flesh did not constitute the 
 most absolute manhood, and fill up the whole ideal ! 
 
 Man's nature and God's nature do not differ in kind, 
 but in degree of the same attributes. Love in God 
 is love in man. Justice, mercy, benevolence, are not 
 different in nature, but only in degree of power and 
 excellence. "And God said. Let us make man in 
 our image, after our likeness." (Gen. i. 26.) "In 
 
 him we live, and move, and have our beinar 
 
 Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God," etc. 
 (Acts xvii. 28, 29.) 
 
 This identification of the divine and the human na- 
 ture was one of the grand results of the Incarnation. 
 The beauty and preciousness of Christ's eartMf/ life 
 consist in its being a true divine Ufe, a presentation 
 to us, in forms that we can comprehend, of the very 
 thoughts, feelings, and actions of God when placed in 
 our condition in this mortal life. To insert two na- 
 tures is to dissolve the charm. 
 
 Christ was very God. , Yet, when clothed with a hu- 
 man body, and made subject through that body to 
 
THE DOCTRINAL BASIS. 53 
 
 physical laws, he was then a man, of the same moral 
 faculties as man, of the same mental nature, subject 
 to precisely the same trials and temptations, only with- 
 out the weakness of sin. A human soul is not some- 
 thing other and different from the Divine soul. It is as 
 like it as the son is like his father. God is father, man 
 is son. As God in our place becomes human, — such 
 being the similarity of the essential natures, — so 
 man in God becomes divine. Thus we learn not only 
 to what our manhood is coming, but when the Divine 
 Spirit takes our whole condition upon himself, we see 
 the thoughts, the feelings, and, if we may so say, the 
 private and domestic inclinati,ons of God. What he 
 was on earth, in his sympathies, tastes, friendships, 
 generous familiarities, gentle condescensions, we shall 
 find him to be in heaven, only in a profusion and 
 amplitude of disclosure far beyond the earthly hints 
 and glimpses. 
 
 The tears of Christ were born of the flesh, but 
 the tender sympathy which showed itself by those 
 precious tokens dwells unwasted and forever in 
 the nature of God. The gentleness, the compas- 
 sion, the patience, the loving habit, the truth and 
 equity, which were displayed in the daily life of 
 the Saviour, were not so many experiences of a hu- 
 man soul mated with the Divine, but were the 
 proper expressions of the very Divine soul itself, that 
 men might see, in God, a true and perfect manhood. 
 When Jesus, standing before his disciples as a full 
 man, was asked to reveal God the Father, he an- 
 swered, " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." 
 Manhood is nearer to godhood than we have been 
 wont to believe. 
 
54 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CERIST. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CHILDHOOD AND RESIDENCE AT NAZARETH. 
 
 The parents of Jesus returned to Nazareth, and there 
 for many years they and their child were to dwell. 
 
 There was nothing that we know of, to distinguish 
 this child from any other that ever was born. It passed 
 through .the twilight of infancy as helpless and depend- 
 ent as all other children must ever be. If we had 
 dwelt at Nazareth and daily seen the child Jesus, we 
 should have seen the cradle-life of other children. This 
 was no prodigy. He did not speak wonderful wisdom 
 in his infancy. He slept or waked upon his mother's 
 bosom, as all children do. He unfolded, first the per- 
 ceptive reason, afterwards the voluntary powers. He 
 was nourished and he grew under the same laws which 
 govern infant life now. This then was not a divinity 
 coming through the clouds into human life, full-orbed, 
 triumphing with the undiminished strength of a 
 heavenly nature over those conditions which men must 
 bear. If this was a divine person, it was a divine 
 child, and childhood meant latent power, undeveloped 
 faculty, unripe organs ; a being without habits, without 
 character, without experience ; a cluster of germs, a 
 branch full of unblossomed buds, a mere seed of man- 
 hood. Except his mother's arms, there was no circle of 
 light about his head, fondly as artists have loved to paint 
 it. But for the after-record of Scriptures, we should 
 
CHILDHOOD AND RESIDENCE AT NAZARETH. 55 
 
 have no reason to suppose that this child differed in any 
 respect from ordinary children. Yet this was the Son 
 of God ! This was that Word of whom John spake : 
 " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was 
 with God, and the Word ^vas God ! " 
 
 It was natural that Joseph and Mary should desire 
 to settle in Judaea. Not alone because here was the 
 home of their father David, but especially because, 
 when once they believed their son Jesus destined to ful- 
 fil the prophecies concerning the Messiah, they would 
 wish him to be educated near to Jerusalem. To them, 
 doubtless, the Temple and its priesthood were yet the 
 highest exponents of religion. 
 
 Divine Providence however removed him as far 
 from the Temple and its influences as possible. Half- 
 heathen Galilee was better for his youth than Jeru- 
 salem. To Nazareth we must look for his early history. 
 But what can be gleaned there, when for twelve 
 years of childhood the only syllable of history uttered 
 is, "And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, 
 filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon 
 him?" 
 
 Not a single fact is recorded of his appearance, 
 his infantine ways; what his parents thought, what 
 his brothers and sisters thought of him; the im- 
 pression made by him upon neighbors ; whether he 
 went to school ; how early, if at all, he put his hand to 
 work; whether he was lively and gay, or sad and 
 thoughtful, or both by turns ; whether he was medita- 
 tive and refined, standing apart from others, or robust, 
 ajid addicted to sports among his young associates: 
 no one knows, or can know, whatever may be inferred 
 or suspected. He emerges for a moment into history 
 
56 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 at twelve years of age, going with his parents to Jeru- 
 salem. That glimpse is the last which is given us for 
 the next sixteen or eighteen years. 
 
 But regarding a life over which men have hung with 
 an interest so absorbing, it is impossible to restrain the 
 imagination. There will always be a filling up of 
 the vacant spaces. If not done by the pen, it will 
 none the less be done in some more fanciful way by 
 free thoughts, which, incited both by curiosity and 
 devotion, will hover over the probabilities when 
 there is nothing better. Nor need this be mischiev- 
 ous. There are certain generic experiences which 
 must have befallen Jesus, because they belong to aU 
 human life. He was a child. He was subject to 
 parental authority. He lived among citizens and im- 
 der the laws. He ate, drank, labored, was weary, re- 
 freshed himself by sleep. He mingled among men, 
 transacted affairs with them, and exchanged daily 
 salutations. He was pleased or displeased; he was 
 glad often and often sorrowful. He was subject to the 
 oscillations of mood which belong to finely organized 
 persons. There must have been manifestations of fihal 
 love. In looking upon men he was subject to emo- 
 tions of grief, pity, and indignation, or of sympathy 
 and approval. He was a child before he was a man. 
 He had those nameless graces which belong to all 
 ingenuous boys; and though he must have seemed 
 precocious, at least* to his own household, there is 
 no evidence that he was thought remarkable by his 
 fellow-citizens. On the other hand, none were lesS 
 prepared to see him take a prominent part in pub- 
 lic affairs than the very people who had known him 
 from infancy. "Whence hath this man this wisdom, 
 
CHILDHOOD AND RESIDENCE AT NAZARETH. 57 
 
 and these mighty works ? Is not this the carpenter's 
 son ? Is not his mother called Mary ? and his brethren, 
 James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas ? and his sisters, 
 are they not all with us ? " — this is not the language of 
 admiring neighbors, who had thought the boy a prod- 
 igy and had always predicted that he would become 
 remarkable ! This incident throws back a light upon 
 his childhood. If he went through the ordinary evolu- 
 tions of youth it is certain that the universal experi- 
 ences of that period must have befallen him. Nothing 
 could be more unnatural than to suppose that he was 
 a child without a childhood, a full and perfect being 
 cleft from the Almighty, as Minerva was fabled to have 
 come from the head of Jupiter; who, though a Jew, 
 in Nazareth, probably following a carpenter's trade, 
 was yet but a celestial image, a white and slen- 
 der figure floating in a half-spiritual transfiguration 
 through the days of a glorified childhood. He was 
 " the Son of Man," — a real boy, as afterwards he was 
 a most manly man. He knew every step of growth ; 
 he underwent the babe's experience of knowing noth- 
 ing, the child's, of knowing a little, the universal neces- 
 sity of development! 
 
 But there is a question of education, which has been 
 much considered. Was the development of his nature 
 the result of internal forces ? Or was he, as other men 
 are wont to be, powerfully afiected by external circum- 
 stances ? Was his imagination touched and enriched 
 by the exquisite scenery about him ? Did the historic 
 associations of all this Galilean region around him 
 develop a temper of patriotism ? Was his moral nature 
 educated by the repulsion of ignoble men, — by the 
 necessity of toU, — by the synagogue, — by his mother 
 
58 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 at home, — and by his hours of solitary meditation; and 
 of holy communion with God ? 
 
 That Jesus was sensitive to every influence which 
 would shape an honorable nature, is not to be doubted. 
 But whether there was more than mere recipiency, 
 may well be questioned. Circumstances may have 
 been the occasions, but not the causes, of development 
 to a divine mind, obscured in a human body, and learn- 
 ing to regain its power and splendor by the steps which 
 in common men are called growth. 
 
 We shall make a brief discussion of the point a 
 means of setting before the mind the physical features 
 of Galilee, and the local influences which prevailed 
 there during our Lord's life. 
 
 If it was desirable to bring up the child Jesus as far 
 as possible from the Temple influence, in Palestine and 
 yet not under excessive Jewish influence, no place could 
 have been chosen better than Nazareth. It was a 
 small village, obscure, and remote from Jerusalem. Its 
 very name had never occurred in the Old Testament 
 records. And though, after the fall of Jerusalem, Gal- 
 ilee was made the seat of Jewish schools of religion, — 
 Sepharis, but a few miles north of Nazareth, being 
 the head-quarters, — yet, at our Lord's birth, and dur- 
 ing his whole life, this region of Palestine was but 
 little affected by Jerusalem. The population was a 
 mixed one, made up of many different nationaUties. 
 A debased remnant of the ten tribes, after their cap- 
 tivity had wandered back, with Jewish blood and 
 heathen manners. The Roman armies and Eoman 
 rulers had brought into the province a great many 
 foreigners. A large Gentile population had divided 
 with native Jews the towns and villages. Greeks 
 
CEILDEOOD AND RESIDENCE AT NAZARETH. 59 
 
 swarmed in the larger commercial towns. Galilee was, 
 far more than Judaea, cosmopolitan. Commerce and 
 manufactures had thriven by the side of agriculture. 
 Josephus says that Galilee had more than two hun- 
 dred cities and villages, the smallest of which con- 
 tained not less than fifteen thousand inhabitants. This 
 seems an extravagant statement, but it will serve to 
 convey an idea of the great populousness of the prov- 
 ince in which the youth of Jesus was spent and in 
 which also his public life was chiefly passed. The in- 
 fluences which had changed the people had provincial- 
 ized their language. A Galilean was known by his 
 speech, which seems to have been regarded as unre- 
 fined and vulgar.^ 
 
 Among such a people was the Lord reared. If, as 
 is probable, he followed his father's business and 
 worked among the common people, we may perceive 
 that his education, remote from the Temple, not only 
 saved him from the influence of the dead and corrupt 
 schools of Jerusalem, but brought him into sympa- 
 thetic relations with the most lowly in life. In all his 
 after ministry, apart from his divine insight, he could 
 of his own experience understand the feelings, tastes, 
 and needs of his audiences. " The common people heard 
 him gladly." He had sprung from among them. He 
 had been reared in their pursuits and habits. For 
 thirty years he was a man among men, a laboring man 
 among laboring men. It is in this contact with human 
 life on all its sides, — with the pure Jew, with the 
 degenerate Jew, with the Greek, the Phoenician, the 
 Roman, the Syrian, — that we are to look for the most 
 fruitful results of the Lord's youth and manhood in 
 
 ' Mark xiv. 70 ; Acts ii. 7. 
 
60 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 Nazareth and the surrounding region. In this rich and 
 populous province the civilized world was epitomized. 
 Jesus had never travelled as did ancient philosophers ; 
 but he had probably come in contact more largely with 
 various human nature by staying at home, than they 
 had by going abroad. 
 
 The village of Nazareth had a bad reputation. This 
 is shown in the surprised question of Nathanael, who, 
 being a resident of Cana, in its immediate neighbor- 
 hood, undoubtedly reflected the popular estimate, " Can 
 any good thing come out of Nazareth?" This ques- 
 tion incidentally shows, also, that our Lord's childhood 
 had not been one of portents and marvels, and had 
 not . exhibited any such singular characteristics as to 
 create in the region about him such a reputation as 
 easily grows up among ignorant people aroimd any 
 peculiarity in childhood. Something of the spirit 
 which had given Nazareth such bad repute shows 
 itself on the occasion of our Lord's first preachiag 
 there, when, as the application of his discourse was 
 closer than they liked, the people offered him per- 
 sonal violence, showing them to be unrestrained, pas- 
 sionate, and bloodthirsty. 
 
 The town, or as it then was, the village, of Nazareth 
 was an exquisite gem in a noble setting. All writers 
 grow enthusiastic in the description of its beauty, — a 
 beauty which continues to this day. Stanley, in part 
 quoting Richardson, says: "Fifteen gently rounded 
 hills seem as if they had met to form an enclosure for 
 this peaceful basin. They rise round it like the edge 
 of a shell, to guard it from intrusion. It is a rich and 
 beautiful field in the midst of these green hills, abound- 
 ing in gay flowers, in fig-trees, small gardens, hedges of 
 
CHILDHOOD AND RESIDENCE AT NAZARETH. 61 
 
 the prickly pear; and the dense rice-grass affords an 
 abundant pasture."^ 
 
 The town was built not upon the summit, but upon 
 the sides, of a high hill. The basin runs from north- 
 east to southwest, and it is from its western slope that 
 the village of Nazareth looks forth. 
 
 It must needs be that, in his boyhood wanderings, 
 Jesus often ascended to the top of the hill, to look over 
 the wide scene which opened before the eye. It often 
 happens that the finest panoramas in mountain coun- 
 tries are not those seen from the highest points. The 
 peculiar conformations of the land frequently give to 
 comparatively low positions a view both wider and no- 
 bler than is obtained from a fourfold height. The 
 hOl of Nazareth yielded a view not equalled in Pales- 
 tine, — surpassing that seen from the top of Tabor. 
 The village itself, built on the side of one of the hills 
 which form the mile-long basin, was four hundred feet 
 below the summit, and was so much shut in by sur- 
 rounding heights that it had but little outlook. But 
 from the hill-top behind the village one looked forth 
 upon almost the whole of Gahlee, — from Lebanon, and 
 from Hermon, always white with snow, in the far north 
 and northeast, down to the lake of Gennesareth, with 
 Hattin, Tabor, Little Hermon, Gilboa, on the east and 
 southeast; the hills of Samaria on the south; Carmel 
 and the Mediterranean Sea on the southwest and west. 
 Two miles south of the village of Nazareth stretched 
 clear across the breadth of GaUlee the noblest plain 
 of Palestine, — Esdraelon, (which name is but a modi- 
 fication of the old word Jezreel), a meadow-like plain 
 with an undulating surface, or, as it would be called in 
 
 ' Sinai and Palestine, p. 357. 
 
62 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 our Western phrase, a rolling prairie, three or four 
 miles wide at its widest, and about j^fteen in length. 
 
 These names recall some of the most romantic 
 and critical events of the old Jewish history. The 
 places were identified with the patriarchs, the judges, 
 the prophets, and the kings of Israel. Across the 
 great plain of Jezreel the tide of battle has not ceased 
 to flow, age after age; the Midianite, the Amalekite, 
 the Syrian, the Philistine, each in turn rushed through 
 this open gate among the hills, alternately conquering 
 and conquered. Its modem history has made good its 
 ancient experience. It has been the battle-field of 
 ages; and the threat of war so continually hangs 
 over it, that, while it is the richest and most fruitful 
 part of Palestine, there is not to-day an inhabited city 
 or village in its whole extent. 
 
 The beauty of all this region in the spring and 
 early summer gives rise to endless praise from travel- 
 lers. It may be doubted whether this scene does not 
 owe much to local contrast, and whether, if it were 
 transported to England or to America, Avhere moisture 
 is perpetual, and a kinder sun stimulates but seldom 
 scorches, it would maintain its reputation. But in one 
 respect, probably, it excels all foreign contrasts, and 
 that is, in the variety, succession, and brilliancy of its 
 flowers. The fields fairly glow with colors, which 
 change every month, and only in August disappear 
 from the plain ; and even then, retreating to the cool 
 ravines and edges of the mountains, they bloom on. 
 The region swarms with singing-birds of every plum- 
 age, besides countless flocks of birds for game.^ 
 
 ' Professor J L. Porter, in Kitto's Biblical Encychpmdia (Art. " Galileo") 
 says : " Lower Galilee was a land of husbandmen, famed for its corn-fields, as 
 
CHILDHOOD AND RESIDENCE AT NAZARETH. 63 
 
 The whole of Galilee is to every modern traveller 
 made profoundly interesting by the life of Christ, 
 which was so largely spent in it. But no thoughtful 
 mind can help asking, "What did it do to him ? 
 
 Of this the Gospels are silent. No record is made of 
 his youthful tastes, or of his manhood pursuits. We are 
 unwilling to believe that he never ascended the hill to 
 look out over the noble panorama, and still less are we 
 willing to believe that he beheld all that was there 
 without sensibility, or even with only an ordinary hu- 
 man sensitiveness to nature. We cannot doubt that 
 he beheld the scenes with a grander impulse than man 
 ever knew. He was in his own Avorld. "All things 
 were made by him ; and without him Avas not anything 
 made that was made." But whether this knowledge 
 existed during his childhood, or whether he came to 
 the full recognition of his prior relations to the world 
 gradually and only in the later years of his life, may 
 be surmised, but cannot be known. 
 
 It is certain that the general statements which have 
 recently been made, respecting the influence of Naza- 
 reth and its surroundings upon the unfolding of his 
 genius, are without either positive historic evidence 
 
 Upper Galilee was for its olive groves and Judsea for its vineyards. The rich 
 soil remains and there are still some fruitful fields ; but its inhabitants are few 
 in number, and its choicest plains are desolated by the wild Bedouin. Gali- 
 lee was and is also remarkable for the variety and beauty of its wild flowers. 
 In early spring the whole country is spangled with them, and the air is filled 
 with their odors. Birds, too, are exceedingly numerous. The rocky 
 banks are all alive with partridges ; the meadows swarm with quails and 
 larks ; ' the voice of the turtle ' resounds through every grove ; and pigeons 
 are heard cooing high up in the cliffs and glen-sides, and are seen in flocks 
 hovering over the corn-fields. The writer has travelled through Galilee at 
 various seasons, and has always been struck with some new beauty ; the deli- 
 cate verdure of spring, and its blush of flowers, the mellow tints of autumn, 
 and the russet hues of the oak-forests in winter, have all their charms." 
 
64 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 or any internal evidence to be found in his discourses, 
 conversations, and parables. 
 
 The slightest study of our Lord's discourses will 
 show that he made almost no use of nature, as such, 
 in his thoughts and teachings. He had in his hands 
 the writings of the old prophets of his nation, and he 
 was familiar with their contents. In them he beheld 
 all the aspects of nature, whatever was sublime, and 
 whatever was beautiful, employed to enforce the lessons 
 of morality with a power and poetic beauty which had 
 then no parallel, and which have since had no rival. 
 But there would seem to have been in his own use of 
 language a striking avoidance of the style of the proph- 
 ets. In the employment of natural objects, no contrast 
 can be imagined greater than that between the records 
 of the Evangelists and the pages of Isaiah, Jeremiah, 
 Habakkuk, and the Psalmists. Our Lord never drew 
 illustrations from original and wild nature, but from na- 
 ture after it had felt the hand of man. Human occu- 
 pations furnish the staple of his parables and illustrar 
 tions. It was the city set upon a hill that our Lord 
 selected, not the high hill itself, or a mountain ; vines 
 and fig-trees, but not the cedars of Lebanon, nor the 
 oaks. The plough, the yoke, the seed-sowing, the har- 
 vest-field, flocks of sheep, bargains, coins, magistrates, 
 courts of justice, domestic scenes, — these are the pre- 
 ferred images in our Saviour's discourses. And yet he 
 had been brought up in sight of the Mediterranean 
 Sea ; for thirty years, at a few steps from his home, he 
 might have looked on Mount Hermon, lifted up in soli- 
 tude above the reach of summer ; the history of his 
 people was identified with Tabor, with Mount Gilboa, 
 with Ebal and Gerizim, — but he made no use of them. 
 
CHILDHOOD AND RESIDENCE AT NAZARETH. 65 
 
 The very changes which war had wrought upon tho 
 face of the country, — the destruction of forests, the 
 drying up of springs of water, the breaking down of 
 terraces, the waste of soil, and the destruction of vine- 
 yards, — were striking analogies of the effects of the 
 passions upon human nature. Yet no allusion is made 
 to these things. There are in the Gospel narratives no 
 waves, clouds, storms, hons, eagles, mountains, forests, 
 plains.^ 
 
 The lihes and the sparrows and the reed shaken by 
 the wind are the only purely natural objects which he 
 uses. For water and light (with the one exception of 
 lightning) are employed in their relations of utility. 
 The illustration of the setting sun (Matt. xvi. 2) is 
 but the quotation of a common proverb. The Jordan 
 was the one great historic stream: it is not alluded 
 to. The cities that were once on the plain, Sodom 
 and Gomorrah, are held up ia solemn warning; but 
 that most impressive moral symbol, the Dead Sea it- 
 
 ' When Moses would show God's tender care of Israel, it was the eagle 
 that represented God. " As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over 
 her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her 
 wings ; so the Lord alone did lead him." (Deut. xxii. 11, 12.) 
 
 The profound care of our Lord was represented by him in the figure of 
 a bird, but taken from husbandry. " How often would I have gathered thy 
 children together, even as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, 
 and ye would not I " 
 
 The same contrast exists in the employment of illustrations drawn from 
 the floral kingdom. Had Ruskin been writing, instead of Solomon, he could 
 not have shown a rarer intimacy with flowers than is exhibited in Solo- 
 mon's Songs. " I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. As 
 the lily among thorns, so is my love among daughters. As the apple-tree 
 among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons." " My be- 
 loved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come 
 away. For Ip, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone ; the flowers ap- 
 pear on the earth ; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of 
 the turtle [dove] is heard in our land. The fig-tree putteth forth her green 
 
66 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 eelf, Christ did not mention. We must not allow our 
 thoughts to suppose that the Lord's soul did not see 
 or feel that natural beauty which he had himself cre- 
 ated and which he had through ages reproduced with 
 each year. The reasons why his teaching should be 
 unadorned and simple are not hard to find. The 
 literary styles which are most universally attractive, 
 and which are least subject to the capricious change 
 of popular taste, are those which are rich in material, 
 but transparently simple in form. Much as men ad- 
 mire the grandeur of the prophets, they dwell on the 
 words of Christ with a more natural companionship 
 and far more enduring satisfaction. 
 
 Although it is not expressly said that Christ fol- 
 lowed his father's trade, yet Mark represents the dis- 
 affected people of Nazareth, on the occasion of an un- 
 popular sermon, as saying of Jesus, " Is not this the 
 carpenter?" (Mark vi. 3.) 
 
 We should not give to the term " carpenter " the close 
 
 figs, and tho vinos with the tender grape give a goodly smell " In this 
 joyous sympathy -with nature, the Song flows on like a brook fringed 
 with meadow-flowers. "A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse. . . . 
 Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; cam- 
 phire, with spikenard. Spikenard and saffron ; calamus and cinnamon, 
 witli all trees of frankincense ; myrrh, and aloes, with all the chief spices : 
 a fountain of gardens, a well of living water?, and streams from Lebanon. 
 Awake, north wind ; and come, thou south, blow upon my garden, that 
 the spices thereof may flow out." 
 
 The single instance, in the Gospels, of an allusion to flowers is remarkably 
 enough in reference to this very Solomon whose words we have just quoted. 
 " Consider the lilies of the field, how tliey grow, they toil not neither do 
 they spin ; and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was 
 not arrayed like one of these." 
 
 The affluence and splendor of illustrations, in the Old Testament, drawn 
 from the poetic piile of nature, and in contrast with the lower tone and the 
 domesticity of New Testament figures, will be apparent upon the slightest 
 comparison. 
 
CHILDHOOD AND RESIDENCE AT NAZARETH. 67 
 
 technical meaning which it has in our day. All trades, 
 as society grows in civilization, become special, each 
 single department making itself into a trade. Carv- 
 ing, cabinet-making, joinery, carpentry, wooden -tool 
 making, domestic -ware manufacturing, tinkering, are 
 each a sub-trade by itself But in our Lord's day, as it 
 is yet in Palestine, they were all included in one busi- 
 ness. The carpenter was a universal worker in wood. 
 He built houses or fences, he made agricultural im- 
 plements or tools, such as spades, yokes, ploughs, 
 etc., or houseware, chairs, tables, tubs, etc. Carving 
 is a favorite part of the wood-worker's business in the 
 East to-day, and probably was so in ancient times. 
 Justin Martyr says that Jesus made yokes and ploughs, 
 and he spiritualizes them as symbols of obedience and 
 activity. JEven had Christ been brought up to wealth 
 as he was to poverty, there would be no reason why 
 he should not have learned a mechanical trade. In this, 
 as in so many other respects, the Jewish people were 
 in prudence greatly in advance of the then civilized 
 world. It was not only deemed not disgraceful to learn 
 some manual trade, but a parent was not thought to 
 have done well by his child's education who had not 
 taught him how to earn a living by his hands. But 
 in Joseph's case, little other education, it is probable, 
 had he the means of giving his son. John records the 
 surprise of the scholars of the Temple upon occasion 
 of one of Christ's discourses : " The Jews marvelled, 
 saying, H^ow knoweth this man letters, having never 
 learned ? " The term " letters " was used, as it still is, 
 to signify literature, and in this case religious litera- 
 ture, as the Jews had no other. There is no evidence 
 in the Lord's discourse that the occupations of his 
 
68 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 youth had any special influence upon his thoughts or 
 imagination. He made no allusion to tools, he drew 
 no illustrations from the processes of construction, he 
 said nothing which would suggest that he had wrought 
 with hammer or saw. 
 
 More attractive io the heart are the probable in- 
 fluences of home. It will always make home more 
 sacred to men, that the Lord Jesus was reared by a 
 mother, in the ordinary life of the household. For 
 children, too, there is a Saviour, who was in all things 
 made like unto them. 
 
 Sacred history makes everything of Mary, and noth- 
 ing of Joseph. It is taken for granted that it was 
 with his mother that Jesus held most intimate com- 
 munion. The adoration of the Virgin by the Romish 
 Church has doubtless contributed largely to this behef 
 There is nothing improbable in it. But it is pure sup- 
 position. There is not a trace of any facts to support 
 it. Though an ordinary child to others, that Jesus 
 was to his parents a child of wonder, can scarcely be 
 doubted. Such manifestations of his nature, as broke 
 forth at twelve years of age in the Temple scene, 
 must have shown themselves at other times in vari- 
 ous ways at home. Yet so entirely are our minds 
 absorbed in his later teachings, and so wholly is his 
 life summed up to us in the three years of his min- 
 istry, that we are not accustomed to recall and fill out 
 his youth as we do his riper years. Who imagines 
 the boy Jesus going or coming at command, — leav- 
 ing home, with his tools, for his daily work, — lifting 
 timber, laying the line, scribing the pattern, fitting 
 and finishing the job, — bargaining for work, demand- 
 mg and receiving his wages, — conversing with fellow- 
 
CHILDHOOD AND RESIDENCE AT NAZARETH. 69 
 
 workmen, and mingling in their innocent amusements ? 
 Yet must not all these things have been ? We must 
 carry along with us that interpreting sentence, which 
 like a refrain should come in with every strain : " In 
 all things it behooved him to be made Uke unto his 
 brethren." (Heb. ii. 17.) 
 
 In the synagogue and at home he would become fa- 
 miliar with the Scriptures of the Old Testament. This 
 itself was no insignificant education. The institutes 
 of Moses were rich in political wisdom. They have 
 not yet expended their force. The commonwealth es- 
 tablished in the Desert has long ceased, but its seeds 
 have been sown in other continents ; and the spirit of 
 democracy which to-day is gaining ascendency, in 
 every land has owed more to the Mosaic than to any 
 other political institution. 
 
 The Saviour's discourses show that his mind was 
 peculiarly adapted to read the Book of Proverbs with 
 keen relish. Under his eye the practical wisdom of 
 those curt sentences, the insight into men's motives 
 which they give, those shrewd lessons of experience, 
 must have had a larger interpretation than they were 
 wont to receive. If one has observed how the frigid 
 annals of history, when Shakespeare read them, blos- 
 somed out into wonderful dramas, he can partly im- 
 agine what Solomon's philosophy must have become 
 under the eye of Jesus. 
 
 He lived in the very sight of places made memor- 
 able by the deeds of his country's greatest men. If he 
 sat, on still Sabbaths, upon the hill-top, — childlike, alter- 
 nately watching and musing, — he must at times have 
 seen the shadowy forms and heard the awful tones of 
 those extraordinary men, the Hebrew prophets. There 
 
70 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 was before him Gilboa, on which Samuel's shadow cams 
 to Saul and overthrew him. Across these plains and 
 over these solitary mountains, Elijah, that grandest 
 and most dramatic of the old prophets, had often 
 come, and disappeared as soon, bearing the Lord's 
 messages, as the summer storm bears the lightning. 
 He could see the very spots where Elisha, prophet of 
 the gentle heart, had wrought kind miracles. 
 
 The sword of David had flashed over these plains. 
 But it is David's harp that has conquered the world, 
 and his psalms must have been the channels through 
 which the soul of Jesus often found its way back 
 to his Heavenly Father. Not even in his youth are 
 we to suppose that Jesus received unquestioning the 
 writings of the holy men of his nation. He had come 
 to inspire a loftier morality than belonged to the 
 twilight of the past. How early he came to himself, 
 and felt within him the motions of his Godhood, none 
 can tell. At twelve he overrode the interpretations 
 of the doctors, and, as one having authority, sat 'm 
 judgment upon the imperfect religion of his ancestors. 
 This first visit to Jerusalem stands up in "his childhood 
 as Mount Tabor rises from the plain, — the one soli- 
 tary point of definite record. 
 
 At twelve, the Jewish children were reckoned in the 
 congregation and made their appearance at the great 
 annual feasts. Roads were unknown. Along paths, on 
 foot,— the feeble carried upon mules,— the people made 
 their way by easy stages toward the beloved city. At 
 each step new-comers fell into the ever-swelling stream. 
 Relatives met one another, friends renewed acquaint- 
 ance, and strangers soon lost strangeness in hospitable 
 company. Had it been an Anglo-Saxon pilgrimage, aU 
 
CHILDHOOD AND RESIDENCE AT NAZARETH. 71 
 
 Palestine would scarcely have held the baggage-train 
 of a race that, instead of making a home everywhere, 
 seek everywhere to carry their home with them. The 
 abstemious habits of the Orientals required but a 
 slender stock of provisions and no cumbering baggage. 
 They sang their sacred songs at morning and evening, 
 and on the way. Thus one might hear the last notes 
 of one chant dying in the valley as the first note of 
 another rose upon the hill, and song answered to song, 
 and echoed all along the pleasant way. 
 
 We can imagine group after group coming at even- 
 ing into the valley of Samaria, — guarded by Gerizim 
 and Ebal, — beginning to feel the presence of those 
 mountain forms which continue all the way to Jeru- 
 salem, and chanting these words : — 
 
 " I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, 
 From whence cometh my help. 
 My help cometh fiom the Lord, 
 Which made heaven and earth. 
 He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: 
 He that keepeth thee will not slumber. 
 Behold, ho that keepeth Israel 
 Shall neither slumber nor sleep. 
 The ] jord is thy keeper ; 
 The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. 
 The sun shall not smite tliee by day, 
 Nor the moon by night. 
 The Lord shall preserve thee. from all evil: 
 He shall preserve thy soul. 
 Tlie Lord shall preserve thy going out, 
 And thy coming in, 
 From this time forth. 
 And even forevermore." 
 
 Eefreshed by sleep, breaking up their simple camp, 
 the mingled throng at early morning start forth again. 
 A voice is heard chanting a psalm. It h ca,ught up by 
 
72 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 others. The whole region resounds. And these are 
 the words : — 
 
 " I was glad when they said unto me, 
 Let us go into the house of the Lord. 
 Our feat shall stand 
 Within thy gates, O Jerusalem I 
 Jerusalem is builded 
 Asa city that is compact together : 
 Whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, 
 Unto the testimony of Israel, 
 To give thanks unto the name of the Lord. 
 For there are set thrones of judgment, 
 The thrones of the house of David. 
 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem : 
 They shall prosper that love thee. 
 Peace be within thy walls, 
 And prosperity within thy palaces. 
 For my brethren and companions' sakes 
 I will now say. Peace be within thee, 
 Because of the house of the Lord our God 
 I will seek thy good." 
 
 The festival over, the mighty city and all its envi- 
 rons sent back the worshippers to their homes. It had 
 been a religious festival, but not the less an uncon- 
 strained social picnic. How freely they mingled with 
 each other, group with group, is shown in the fact that 
 Joseph and Mary had gone a day's journey on the road 
 home before they missed their child. This could not 
 have been, were it not customary for the parties often 
 to break up and mingle in new combinations. " But 
 they, supposing him to have been in the company, went 
 a day's journey." It is plain, then, that at twelve years 
 of age Jesus had outgrown the constant watch of his 
 parents' eyes, and had assumed a degree of manly Hb- 
 erty. 
 
 They turned back. It was three days before they 
 found him. One day was required by the backward 
 
CHILDHOOD AND RESIDENCE AT NAZARETH. 73 
 
 journey. Two days they must have wandered in and 
 about the city, anxiously enough. In the last place 
 in which they dreamed of looking, they found him, — 
 "in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, 
 both hearing them, and asking them questions." 
 Christ's questions were always like spears that pierced 
 the joints of the harness. It seems that even so 
 early he had begun to wield this weapon. 
 
 What part of these three days Jesus had spent at the 
 Temple, we are not told. But we may be sure that it 
 was a refreshing time in that dull circle of doctors. An 
 ingenuous youth, frank, and not hackneyed by the con- 
 ventional ways of the world, with a living soul and a 
 quick genius, is always a fascinating object, and per- 
 haps even more to men who have grown stiff in formal 
 ways than to others. There is something of youthful 
 feeling and of fatherhood yet left in souls that for 
 fifty years have discussed the microscopic atoms of 
 an imaginary philosophy. Besides, where there are 
 five doctors of philosophy there are not less than five 
 opposing schools, and in- this case each learned man 
 must needs have enjoyed the palpable hits which his 
 companions received from the stripling. The people 
 who stood about would have a heart for the child : 
 what crowd would not? And, if he held his 
 own against the doctors of law, all the more the 
 wonder grew. It is not necessary to suppose that 
 a spiritual chord vibrated at his touch in the hearts 
 of all this circle of experts in Temple dialectics. 
 Yet we would fondly imagine that one at least 
 there was — some unnamed Nicodemus, or another 
 Joseph of Arimathea — who felt the fire burn within 
 him as this child spake- Even in Sahara there are 
 
74 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 found green spots, shaded with palms, watered and 
 fruitful. There might have been sweet-hearted men 
 among the Jewish doctors! 
 
 Upon this strange school, in which the pupil was the 
 teacher and the teachers were puzzled scholars, came 
 at length, her serene face now flushed with alarm, 
 the mother of Jesus. She, all mother, with love's 
 reproach said, "Son, why hast thou thus dealt with 
 us?" and he, all inspired with faslrcoming thoughts, 
 answered, "Wist ye not that I must be about my 
 Father's business ? " 
 
 Not yet ! This ministry of youth was not whole- 
 some. Premature prodigies have never done God's 
 work on earth. It would have pleased the appetite 
 for wonder, had his childhood continued to emit such 
 flashes as came forth in the Temple. But such is not 
 the order of nature, and the Son of God had con- 
 sented to be " made under the law " ! It is plain, from 
 his reply to his mother, that he was conscious of the 
 nature that was in him, and that strong impulses urged 
 him to disclose his power. It is therefore very signifi- 
 cant, and not the least of the signs of divinity, that he 
 ruled his spirit, and dwelt at home in unmurmuring 
 expectation. " He went down with them, and came to 
 Nazareth, and was subject unto them." (Luke ii. 51.) 
 This might well be said to be to his childhood what the 
 temptations in the wilderness were to his ministry. 
 The modesty, the filial piety, the perfectness of self- 
 control, contentment in mechanical labor, conscious sov- 
 ereignty undisclosed, a wealth of nature kept back, — 
 in short, the holding of his whole being in tranquil si- 
 lence, waiting for growth to produce his ripe self, and 
 for God, his Father, to shake out the seed which was 
 
CHILDHOOD AND RESIDENCE AT NAZARETH. 75 
 
 to become the bread of the world, — all this is in itself 
 a wonder of divinity, if men were' only wise enough 
 to marvel. Christ's greatest miracles were wrought 
 within himself. 
 
 In a review of the childhood of Jesus, there are 
 several points which deserve special attention. 
 
 1. While it is true that, by incarnation, the Son 
 of God became subject to all human conditions, and, 
 among them, to the law of gradual development, by 
 which "he increased in wisdom and stature," — for "the 
 child ffreu', and waxed strong in spirit," — we must 
 not fall into the error of supposing that Jesus was 
 moulded by the circumstances in which he was placed. 
 Not his mother, nor the scenery, nor the national as- 
 sociations, nor the occupations of his thirty years, 
 fashioned him. Only natures of a lower kind are 
 shaped by circumstances. Great natures unfold by 
 the force of that which is within them. When food 
 nourishes, it receives the power to do so by that which 
 
 ' the vital power of the body gives it. Food does not 
 give life, but by assimilation receives it. Christ was 
 not the creation of his age. We may trace occasions 
 and external influences of which he availed himself, 
 but his original nature contained in its germ all that 
 he was to be, and needed only a normal unfolding. 
 
 The absolute independence from all external forma- 
 tive influence, and the sovereignty of the essential self, 
 was never so sublimely asserted as when Jehovah 
 declared, " I am that I am." But, without extrava- 
 gance or immodesty, the mother of Jesus might have 
 written this divine legend upon his cradle. 
 
 2. Wo have said nothing of the brothers and sisters 
 
76 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 of our Lord. They are not only mentioned, but the 
 names of his brothers are given, and allusions are 
 made to them in several instances.^ Yet the matter 
 does not prove upon examination to be as simple as at 
 first sight it seems. 
 
 Undoubtedly, it suited the peculiar ideas which were 
 early developed in the Church, to consider Jesus not 
 only the first-born, but the only, child of Mary. But 
 there are real and intrinsic difiiculties in the case. 
 The term brethren was often used in the general sense 
 of relative. To this day authorities of the highest 
 repute are divided in opinion, and in about equal 
 proportions on each side. There are several suppo- 
 sitions concerning these brothers and sisters : They 
 were the children of Joseph by a former marriage ; 
 or, they were adopted from a deceased brother's 
 family; or, they were the children of a sister of the 
 mother of Jesus, and so cousins-german to him ; 
 or, they were the children of Joseph and Mary, 
 and so the real brothers of Jesus. We shall not 
 enter upon the argument.^ The chief point of in- 
 terest is not in doubt : namely, that our Lord was not 
 brought up alone in a household as an only child; 
 that he was a child among children ; that he was su]> 
 rounded by those who were to him, either really his 
 own brothers and sisters, or just the same in senti- 
 ment. He had this ordinary experience of childhood. 
 The unconscious babe in the cradle has a Saviour 
 who once was as sweetly helpless as it is. The prat- 
 
 ' Matthew xii. 40-50; xiii. 55, 56. Mark iii. SI ; vi. 3. Luke viii. 19. 
 John ii. 12; vii. 3. Acts i. 14. 
 
 Those -who desire to investigate the matter may see Andrews's very 
 clear and judicial estimate of the case (Life of our Lord, pp. 104- IIC); 
 also, Lange, Life of Christ, Vol. I. pp. 421-437. 
 
CHILDHOOD AND RESIDENCE AT NAZARETH. 77 
 
 tling child is passing along that path over which 
 the infant footprints of Jesus were marked. The 
 later friendships of brothers and sisters derive a 
 sacred influence from the love which Jesus bore to his 
 sisters while growing up with them. There is thus 
 an example for the household, and a gospel for the 
 nursery, in the life of Jesus, as well as an " ensample" 
 in his manhood for the riper years of men. 
 
 3. While we do not mean to raise and discuss, in 
 this work, the many difficulties which are peculiar to 
 critics, there is one connected with this period of our 
 Lord's life which we shall mention, for the sake of 
 laying down certain principles which should guide us 
 in reading the Sacred Scriptures. 
 
 Matthew declares that " he came and dwelt in a city 
 called Nazareth : that it might be fulfilled which was 
 spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Naz- 
 arene." No such line has ever been found in the 
 prophets. 
 
 Infinite ingenuity of learning has been brought to 
 bear upon this difficulty, without in the slightest de- 
 gree solving it. It is said that the term " Nazareth " is 
 derived from ndser, a sprout, as the region around 
 Nazareth is covered with bushes ; and by coupling 
 this with Isaiah xi. 1, where the Messiah is predict- 
 ed under the name of a Branch, the connection is 
 established. That Matthew, the most literal and 
 unimaginative of all the Evangelists, should, have be- 
 taken himself to such a subtle trick of language, 
 would not surprise us had he lived in England 
 in Shakespeare's tinie. But as he wrote to Jews 
 who did not beUeve that Christ was the Messiah, we 
 should, by adopting this play on words, only change 
 
78 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 the verbal difficulty into a psychological one still 
 more vexatious. 
 
 Others have supposed that Matthew referred to 
 some apocryphal book, or to some prophecy now 
 lost. This is worse than ingenious. It is perverse. 
 The Old Testament canon was, and had long been, 
 complete when Matthew wrote. What evidence is 
 there that anything had ever been dropped from it, 
 — or that any apocryphal book had ever existed, con- 
 taining this sentence ? Is our faith in the inspired 
 record helped or hindered by the introduction of such 
 groundless fancies ? The difficulty of the text is not 
 half so dangerous as is such a liberty taken in explain- 
 ing it. Others of this ingenious band of scholars 
 derive the name Nazarene from notscr, that which 
 guards. Others think that it is from netser, to separate, 
 as if the Messiah were to be a NazanVe, which he was 
 not ; nor Avas it anywhere in the Old Testament pre- 
 dicted that he should be. Lange supposes that, already 
 when Matthew wrote, Nazarene had become a term of 
 such universal reproach, as to be equivalent to the 
 general representations of the prophets that the Mes- 
 siah should be despised and rejected, and that it might 
 even be interchangeable with them. The whole ground 
 of this explanation is an assumption. That Nazarene 
 was a term of reproach, is very likely, but that it had 
 become a generic epithet for humihation, rejection, 
 scorn, persecution, and all maltreatment, is nowhere 
 evident, and not at all probable. 
 
 But what would happen if it should be said that 
 Matthew recorded the current impression of his time 
 in attributing this declaration to the Old Testament 
 prophets? Would a mere error of reference invali- 
 
CHILDHOOD AND RESIDENCE AT NAZARETH. 79 
 
 date the trustworthiness of the Evangelist? We lean 
 our whole weight upon men who are fallible. Must 
 a record be totally infallible before it can be trusted 
 at all ? Navigators trust ship, cargo, and the lives of 
 all on board, to calculations based on tables of loga- 
 rithms, knowing that there was never a set computed, 
 without machinery, that had not some errors in it. 
 The supposition, that to admit that there are imma- 
 terial and incidental mistakes in the Sacred Writ 
 would break the confidence of men in it, is contra- 
 dicted by the uniform experience of life, and by the 
 whole procedure of society. 
 
 On the contrary, the shifts and ingenuities to which 
 critics are obliged to resort either blunts the sense of 
 truth, or disgusts men with the special pleading of crit- 
 ics, and tends powerfully to general unbelief 
 
 The theory of Inspiration must be founded upon the 
 claims Avhich the Scriptures themselves make. "All 
 Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profita- 
 ble for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruc- 
 tion in righteousness ; that the man of God may be 
 perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works." 
 (2 Tim. iii. 16, 17.) 
 
 Under this declaration, no more can be claimed for 
 the doctrine of Inspiration than that there shall have 
 been such an influence exerted upon the formation of 
 the record that it shall be the truth respecting God, and 
 no falsity ; that it shall so expound the duty of man 
 under God's moral government, as to secure, in all who 
 will, a true holiness ; that it shall contain no errors 
 which can affect the essential truths taught, or which 
 shall cloud the reason or sully the moral sense. 
 
 But it is not right or prudent to infer, from the 
 
80 T^IE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 Biblical statement of inspiration, that it makes pro- 
 vision for the very words and sentences ; that it shall 
 raise the inspired penmen above the possibility of lit- 
 erary inaccuracy, or minor and immaterial mistakes. 
 It is enough if the Bible be a sure and sufficient guide 
 to spiritual morality and to rational piety. To erect for 
 it a claim to absolute literary infallibility, or to infalli- 
 bility in things not directly pertaining to faith, is to 
 weaken its real authority, and to turn it aside from its 
 avowed purpose. The theory of verbal inspiration 
 brings a strain upon the Word of God which it cannot 
 bear. If rigorously pressed, it tends powerfully to 
 bigotry on the one side and to infidelity on the other. 
 
 The inspiration of holy men is to be construed as 
 we do the doctrine of an overruhng and special Provi- 
 dence ; of the divine supervision and guidance of the 
 Church ; of the faithfulness of God in answering 
 prayer. The truth of these doctrines is not inconsis- 
 tent with the existence of a thousand evils, mischiefs, 
 and mistakes, and with the occurrence of wanderings 
 long and almost fatal. Yet, the general supervision 
 of a Divine Providence is rational. We might expect 
 that there would be an analogy between God's care 
 and education of the race, and His care of the Bible 
 in its formation. 
 
 Around the central certainty of saving truth are 
 wrapped the swaddling-clothes of human language. 
 Neither the condition of the human understanding, nor 
 the nature of human speech, which is the vehicle of 
 thought, admits of more than a fragmentary and par- 
 tial presentation of truth. « For we know in part, and 
 we prophesy in part. " (1 Cor. xiii. 9.) Still less are we 
 then to expect that there will be perfection in this 
 
CHILDHOOD AND RESIDENCE AT NAZARETH. gl 
 
 vehicle. And incidental errors, which do not reach the 
 substance of truth and duty, which touch only contin- 
 gent and external elements, are not to be regarded as 
 inconsistent with the fact that the Scriptures were in- 
 spired of God. Nor will our reverence for the Scrip- 
 tures be impaired if, in such cases, it be frankly said, 
 Here is an insoluble difficulty. Such a course is far 
 less dangerous to the moral sense than that pernicious 
 iflgenuity which, assuming that there can be no literal 
 errors in Scripture, resorts to subtle arts of criticism, 
 improbabilities of statement, and violence of construc- 
 tion, such as, if made use of in the intercourse of 
 men in daily life, would break up society and destroy 
 all faith of man in man. 
 
 We dwell at length upon this topic now, that we 
 may not be obliged to recur to it when, as will be the 
 case, other instances arise in which there is no solution 
 of unimportant, though real, literary difficulties. 
 
 There are a multitude of minute and, on the whole, 
 as respects the substance of truth, not important ques- 
 tions and topics, which, like a fastened door, refuse to 
 be opened by any key which learning has brought to 
 them. It is better to let them stand closed than, hke 
 impatient mastiffs, after long barking in vain, to lie 
 whining at the door, unable to enter and imwilling to 
 go away. 
 
82 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. 
 
 The long silence is ended. The seclusion is over, 
 with all its wondrous inward experience, of which no 
 record has been made, and which must therefore be 
 left to a reverent imagination. Jesus has now reached 
 the age which custom has established among his peo- 
 ple for the entrance of a priest upon his public duty. 
 
 But, first, another voice is to be heard. Before the 
 ministry of Love begins, there is to be one more great 
 prophet of the Law, who, with stern and severe fidel- 
 ity, shall stir the conscience, and, as it were, open the 
 furrows in which the seeds of the new life are to be 
 sown. 
 
 Every nation has its men of genius. The direction 
 which their genius takes will be determined largely by 
 the peculiar education which arises from the position 
 and history of the nation ; but it will also depend upon 
 the innate tendencies of the race-stock. 
 
 The original tribal organizations of Israel were 
 moulded by the laws and institutions of Moses into a 
 commonwealth of peculiar characteristics. Each tribe 
 scrupulously preserved its autonomy, and in its own 
 province had a local independence; while the whole 
 were grouped and confederated around the Tabernacle, 
 and afterwards about its outgrowth, the Temple. On 
 the one side, the nation approximated to a democracy ; 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. £3 
 
 on the other, to a monarchy. But the throne, inde- 
 pendent of the people, was not independent of an aris- 
 tocracy. The priestly class combined in itself, as in 
 Egypt, the civil and sacerdotal functions. The Hebrew 
 government was a theocratic democracy. A fierce and 
 turbulent people had great power over the govern- 
 ment. The ruling class was, as in Egypt it had been, 
 the priestly class. The laws which regulated personal 
 rights, property, industry, marriage, revenue, military 
 afiairs, and religious worship were all ecclesiastical, — 
 were interpreted and administered by the hierarchy. 
 The doctrine of a future existence had no place in the 
 Mosaic economy, either as a dogma or as a moral influ- 
 ence. The sphere of religion was wholly within the 
 secular horizon. There was no distinction, as with us, 
 of things civil and things moral. All moral duties 
 were civil, and all civil were moral duties. Priest 
 and magistrate were one. Patriotism and piety were 
 identical. The military organization of the Jews was 
 Levitical. The priest wore the sword, took part in 
 planning campaigns, and led the people in battle.-' The 
 Levitical body was a kind of national university. Lii> 
 erature, learning, and the fine arts, in so far as they 
 had existence, were preserved, nourished, and diffused 
 by the priestly order. 
 
 Under such circumstances, genius must needs be re- 
 ligious. It must develop itself in analogy with the 
 history and institutions of the people. The Hebrew 
 man of genius was the prophet. The strict priest 
 was narrow and barren; the prophet was a son of 
 liberty, a child of inspiration. All other men touched 
 
 ' For some instructive and interesting remarks on tliis topic, see A. P. 
 Stanley, Jewish Church, § 2, p. 448. 
 
84 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 the ground. He only had wings; he was orator, poet, 
 singer, civihan, statesman. Of no close profession, 
 he performed the functions of all, as by turns, in the 
 great personal freedom of his career, he needed their 
 
 elements. 
 
 That temperament which now underhes genius was 
 also the root of the prophetic nature. In ordinary 
 men, the mind-system is organized with only that 
 degree of sensibiUty which enables it to act under 
 the stimulus of external influences. The ideal perfect 
 man is one who, in addition, has such fineness and 
 sensibility as to originate conceptions from interior 
 cerebral stimulus. He acts without waiting for ex- 
 ternal solicitation. The particular mode of this auto- 
 matic action varies with different persons. With all, 
 however, it has this in common, that the mind does not 
 creep step by step toward knowledge, gaining it by Ut- 
 tle and little. It is rather as if knowledge came upon 
 the soul by a sudden flash ; or as if the mind itself 
 had an illuminating power, by which suddenly and in- 
 stantly it poured forth light upon external things. This 
 was early called inspiration, as if the gods had breathed 
 into the soul something of their omniscience. Itis^tUl 
 called inspiration. 
 
 If the intellect alone has this power of exaltation 
 and creativeness, we shall behold genius in literature 
 or science. But if there be added an eminent moral 
 sense and comprehensive moral sentiments, we shall 
 have, in peaceful times, men who will carry ideas 
 of right, of justice, of mercy, far beyond the bounds at 
 which they found them, — moral teachers, judges, and 
 creative moralists; and in times of storm, reformers 
 and martyrs. 
 
TEE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. 85 
 
 This constitution of genius is not something abnor- 
 mal. Complete development of all the body and all 
 the mind, with a susceptibility to automatic activity, is 
 ripe and proper manhood. To this the whole race is 
 perhaps approximating, and, in the perfect day, will 
 attain. 
 
 But in a race rising slowly out of animal condition, 
 in possession of unripe faculties, left almost to chance 
 for education, there sometimes come these higher na- 
 tures, men of genius, who are not to be deemed crea- 
 tures of another nature, lifted above their fellows for 
 their own advantage and enjo3rment. They are only 
 elder brethren of the race. They are appointed lead- 
 ers, going before their child-brethren, to inspire them 
 with higher ideas of life, and to show them the way. 
 By their nature and position they are forerunners, seers, 
 and foreseers. 
 
 Such men, among the old Jews, became prophets. 
 But a prophet was more than one who foretold events. 
 He forefelt and foretaught high moral truths. He had 
 escaped the thrall of passion in which other men lived,, 
 and, without help inherited from old civilizations, by 
 the force of the Divine Spirit acting upon a nature 
 of genius in moral directions, he went ahead of his na- 
 tion and of his age, denouncing evil, revealing justice, 
 enjoining social purity, and inspiring a noble piety. 
 A prophet was born to his office. Whoever found in 
 himself the uprising soul, the sensibility to divine 
 truth, the impulse to proclaim it, might, if he pleased, 
 be a prophet, in the peculiar sense of declaring the 
 truth and enforcing moral ideas. The call of God, in 
 all ages, has come to natures already prepared for the 
 office to which they were called. Here was a call 
 
86 TBE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 in birth-structure. This was well understood by the 
 prophets. Jeremiah explicitly declares that he was 
 created to the prophetic office : "The word of the Lord 
 came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee in the 
 belly I knew thee ; and before thou earnest forth out 
 of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee 
 a prophet unto the nations." (Jer. i. 4, 5.) When God 
 calls men, he calls thoroughly and begins early. 
 
 The prophets, although wielding great influence, 
 seem not to have been inducted into office by any 
 ecclesiastical aiithority. There was no provision, at 
 least in early times, for their continuance and succes- 
 sion in the community. There was no regular suc- 
 cession. Occasionally they shot up from the people, 
 by' the impulse of their own natures, divinely moved. 
 They were confined to no grade or class. They might 
 be priests or commoners ; they might come of any tribe. 
 In two instances eminent prophets were women ; and 
 one of them, Huldah, was of such repute that to her, 
 though Jeremiah was then alive and in full authority, 
 King Josiah sent for advice in impending public dan- 
 ger. (2 Kings xxii. 14 - 20.) 
 
 It was from the free spirit of the prophet in the 
 old Jewish nation, and not from the priesthood, that 
 religious ideas grew, and enlarged interpretations of 
 rehgion proceeded. The priest indeed had a very 
 limited sphere. The nature of the Temple service re- 
 quired him to be but little conversant with the living 
 souls of men, and as little with ideas. In preparing 
 the sacrifices of oxen, of sheep, of birds, the Temple or 
 Tabernacle could have appeared to the modern eye but 
 little less repulsive than a huge abattoir. The priests, 
 with axe and knife, slaughtering herds of animals, 
 
TEE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. 87 
 
 needed to be, and certainly in the early days were, 
 men of nerve and muscle, rather than men of rich 
 emotion or of strong religious feeling.' The subordi- 
 nate priests had as little occasion for moral feeling, in 
 the performance of their ordinary duties, as laborers 
 in the shambles. The higher officers were neither 
 teachers nor preachers. In scarcely a single point, 
 from the high-priest downward, do the members of 
 the Jewish hierarchy resemble the Christian minister. 
 It is true that the Levites were appointed to instruct 
 the people in the Law ; but this instruction consisted 
 merely in an occasional pubhc reading of the Levitical 
 Scriptures. Until after the captivity, and down to a 
 comparatively late period in Jewish history, this func- 
 tion was irregularly performed, and , with but little 
 effect. If there had been no other source of moral 
 influence than the priesthood, the people might almost 
 as well have been" left to themselves. 
 
 The prophetic impulse had been felt long before the 
 Levitical institutes were framed. Now and then, at 
 wide intervals, men of genius had arisen, Avho carried 
 forward the moral sentiment of their age. They en- 
 larged the bounds of truth, and deepened- in the con- 
 sciences of men moral and religious obligations. It is 
 only through the imagination that rude natures can be 
 spiritually influenced. These men were often great 
 
 ' Wlien Solomon brought up the ark and the sacred vessel to the new 
 Temple, it is said that he sacrificed sheep and oxen " that could not be told 
 nor numbered for multitude," and, at the close of the dedicatory services, 
 " Solomon offered a sacrifice of peace-offerings, -which he offered unto the 
 Lord, two and twenty thousand oxen, and an hundred and twenty thousand 
 sheep. So the king and all the children of Israel dedicated the house of 
 the Lord." (1 Kings viii. 5, 63 ) This must have been the climax. Such 
 gigantic slaughters could not have been common. But the regular sacrifices 
 involved the necessity of killing vast numbers of animals. 
 
88 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 moral dramatists. They kept themselves aloof. Some 
 of them dwelt in solitary places, and came upon the 
 people at unexpected moments. The prophets were 
 intensely patriotic. They were the defenders of the 
 common people against oppressive rulers, and they 
 stirred them up to throw off foreign rule. Wild and 
 weird as they often were, awful in their severity, car- 
 rying justice at times to the most bloody and terrific 
 sacrifices, they were notwithstanding essentially hu- 
 mane, sympathetic, and good. The old prophets were 
 the men in whom, in a desolate age, and in almost 
 savage conditions of society, the gentler graces of the 
 soul took refuge. We must not be deceived by their 
 rugged exterior, nor by the battle which they made for 
 the right. Humanity has its severities ; and even love, 
 striving for the crown, must fight. Like all men who 
 reform a corrupt age, the rude violence of the prophets 
 was exerted against the animal that is in man, for the 
 sake of his spiritual nature. 
 
 Had there been but the influence of the Temple or 
 of the Tabernacle to repress and limit the outflow of 
 those passions which make themselves channels in 
 every society of men, they would have swept like a 
 flood, and destroyed the foundations of civil life. It 
 was the prophet who kept alive the moral sense of the 
 people. He taught no subtilties. It was too early, 
 and this was not the nation, for such philosophy as 
 sprung up in Greece. The prophet seized those great 
 moral truths which inhere in the very soul of man, and 
 which natural and revealed religion hold in common. 
 Their own feelings were roused by mysterious contact 
 with the forces of the invisible world. They con- 
 fronted ahlce the court and the nation with audacious 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. 89 
 
 fidelity. Often themselves of the sacerdotal order, and 
 exercising the sacrificial functions of the priest (as in 
 the instance of Samuel), yet when, in later times, true 
 spirituality had been overlaid and destroyed by ritu- 
 alism, they turned against the priest, the ritual, and the 
 Temple. They trod under foot the artificial sanctity 
 of religious usages, and vindicated the authority of 
 morality, humanity, and simple personal piety against 
 the superstitions and the exactions of religious institu- 
 tions and their officials. 
 
 Jeremiah speaks so slightingly of sacrifices as to seem 
 to deny their divine origin. He represents God as say- 
 ing : " For I spake not unto your fathers, nor com- 
 manded them in the day that I brought them out of 
 the land of Egypt, concerning burnt-offerings or sacri- 
 fices. But this thing commanded I them, saying. Obey 
 my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my 
 people." (Jer. vii. 22, 23.) 
 
 Isaiah is even bolder : " To what purpose is the 
 multitude of your sacrifices unto me ? . . . . Your new 
 
 moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth 
 
 Your hands are full of blood. "Wash you, make you 
 
 clean Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge 
 
 the fatherless, plead for the widow." (Isa. i. 11 - 17.) 
 
 Amos, in impetuous wrath, cries out : " I hate, I de- 
 spise your feast-days, and I will not smell in your 
 
 solemn assemblies Take thou away from me the 
 
 noise of thy songs But let judgment run down 
 
 as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream." 
 (Amos V. 21 - 24.) 
 
 Considering the honor in which he was held, and the 
 influence allowed him, the old prophet was the freest- 
 speaking man on record. Not the king, nor his coun- 
 
90 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 sellers, nor priests, nor the people, nor prophets them- 
 selves, had any terror for him. When the solemn in- 
 fluence coming from the great invisible world set in 
 upon his soul, his whole nature moved to it, as the 
 tides move to celestial power. 
 
 But the prophet did not live always, nor even often, 
 in these sublime elevations of feeling. The popular 
 notion that, wrapt in moods of grandeur, he was al- 
 ways looking into the future, and drawing forth secrets 
 from its mysterious depths, — a weird fisher upon the 
 shores of the infinite, — is the very reverse of truth. 
 Revelatory inspirations were occasional and rare. 
 They seldom came except in some imminent catastro- 
 phe of the nation, or upon some high-handed aggres- 
 sion of idolatry or of regal immorality. The prophet 
 labored with his hands, or was a teacher. At certain 
 periods, it would seem as if in his care were placed the 
 music, the poetry, the oratory, and even the jurispru- 
 dence of the nation. The phrase "to prophesy" at 
 first signified an uncontrollable utterance imder an 
 overruling possession, or inspiration. It was an irre-- 
 sistible rhapsody, frequently so like that of the inoane, 
 that in early times, and among some nations even 
 yet, the insane were looked upon with some awe, as 
 persons overcharged with the prophetic spirit. But 
 in time the term assumed the meaning of moral dis- 
 course, vehement preaching; and finally it included 
 simple moral teaching. In the later periods of Jewish 
 history, the term " to prophesy " was understood in 
 much the same sense as our phrases " to instruct," " to 
 indoctrinate." Paul says, " He that prophesieth speak- 
 eth unto men to edification, and exhortation, and com- 
 fort." (1 Cor. xiv. 3.) The criticisms and commands 
 
THE VOICE IN TEE WILDERNESS. Ql 
 
 of the Apostle respecting prophecy show clearly that 
 in his day it was in the nature of sudden, impulsive, 
 impassioned discourse, — that it was, in short, sacred 
 oratory. 
 
 The absolute spontaneity of the old prophet, in con- 
 trast with the perfunctory priest, is admirable. Out 
 of a ritiial service rigid as a rock is seen gushing a 
 liberty of utterance that reminds one of the rock in 
 the wilderness when smitten with the prophet's rod. 
 Although the prophets were the religious men, far more 
 revered for sanctity than the priests, it was not because 
 they held aloof from secular affairs. They were often 
 men of rigor, but never ascetics. They never despised 
 common humanity, either in its moral or in its secular 
 relations. 
 
 The prophet was sometimes the chief justice of the 
 nation, as Samuel ; or a councillor at court, as Nathan ; 
 or a retired statesman, consulted by the rulers, as 
 Elisha ; or an iron reformer, as Elijah ; or the censor 
 and theologian, as Isaiah, who, like Dante, clothed phi- 
 losophy with the garb of poetry, that it might have 
 power to search and to purify society. But whatever 
 else he was, the prophet was the great exemplar of 
 personal freedom. He represented absolute personal 
 liberty in religious thought. He often opposed the 
 government, but in favor of the state ; he inveighed 
 against the church, but on behalf of religion ; he de- 
 nounced the people, but always for their own highest 
 good. 
 
 It must be through some such avenue of thought 
 that one approaches the last great prophet of the Jew- 
 ish nation. The morning star of a new era, John is 
 speedily lost in the blaze of Him who was and is the 
 
92 THE LIFE OF JESUS. TEE CHRIST. 
 
 "Light of the world." His history seems short. The 
 child of prophecy, — the youth secluded in the soli- 
 tudes,— the voice in the wilderness,— the crowds on 
 the Jordan,— the grasp of persecution, — the death in 
 prison, — this is the outline of his story. But in the 
 filling up, what substance of manhood must have been 
 there, what genuine power, what moral richness in 
 thought and feeling, what chivalric magnanimity, to 
 have drawn from Jesus the eulogy, "Among those that 
 are born of women there is not a greater prophet than 
 John the Baptist"! But his was one of those lives 
 which are lost to themselves that they may spring up 
 in others. He came both in grandeur and in beauty, 
 like a summer storm, which, faUing in rain, is lost in 
 the soil, and reappears neither as vapor nor cloud, but 
 transfused into flowers and fruits. 
 
 One particular prophet was singled out by our Lord 
 as John's prototype, and that one by far the most drar 
 matic of all the venerable brotherhood. " If ye wiU 
 receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come" 
 (Matt. xi. 14), — Elijah, called in the Septuagint ver- 
 sion Elias. Malachi, whose words close the canon of 
 the Jewish Scriptures, had declared, "Behold, I will 
 send you Elijah the prophet, before the coming of 
 the great and dreadful day of the Lord." There was, 
 therefore, a universal expectation among the Jews that 
 the Messiah should be preceded by Elijah.* It was 
 
 ' Stanley says of this prophet : — " He stood alone against Jezehel. He 
 stands alone in many senses among the prophets. Nursed in the bosom of 
 Israel, the prophetical portion, if one may so say, of the chosen people, vin- 
 dicating the true religion from tlio nearest danger of overthrow, setting at 
 defiance by invisible power tlie whole forces of tlie Israelite kingdom, he 
 reached a height equal to that of Moses and Samuel in the traditions of his 
 country. 
 
 " He was the prophet for whose return in later years his countrymen have 
 
TEE VOICE IN TEE WILDERNESS. Qg 
 
 an expectation not confined to the Jews, but shared 
 by the outlying tribes and nations around Palestine. 
 There is no real interior resemblance between John 
 and Elijah. Their times were not alike. There are 
 not elsewhere in recorded history such dramatic ele- 
 ments as in the career of Elijah. Irregular, almost 
 fitful, Elijah the Tishbite seemed at times clean gone 
 forever, dried up hke a summer's brook. Then sud- 
 denly, like that stream after a storm on the hills, he 
 came down with a flood. His sudden appearances 
 and as sudden vanishings were perfectly natural to one 
 who had been reared, as he had been, among a nomadic 
 people, not unlike the Bedouin Arabs. But to us they 
 seem more like the mystery of spiritual apparitions. 
 When the whole kingdom and the regions round about 
 were searched for him in vain by the inquisitorial 
 Jezebel, then, without warning, he appeared before the 
 court, overawed its power, and carried away the peo- 
 ple by an irresistible fascination. Almost alone, and 
 mourning over his sohtariuess, he buffeted the idola- 
 trous government for long and weary years of discour- 
 agement. His end was as wonderful as his career. 
 Caught up in a mighty tempest, he disappeared from 
 
 looked with most eager hope. The last prophet of the old dispensation 
 clung to this consolation in the decline of the state. 
 
 " In the gospel history we find this expectation constantly excited in each 
 successive appearance of a new prophet. It was a fixed belief of the Jews 
 that he had appeared again and again, as an Arabian merchant, to wise 
 and good rabbis at their prayers or on their journeys. A seat is still placed 
 for him to superintend the circumcision of the Jewish children. 
 
 "Passover after Passover, the Jews of our own day place the paschal 
 cup on the table and set the door wide open, believing that this is the mo- 
 ment when Elijah will reappear. 
 
 " When goods are found and no owner comes, when difficulties arise and 
 no solution appears, the answer is, ' Put them by till Elijah comes.' " — Stan- 
 ley, E'uUory of the Jewish Church, Part II. p. 290. 
 
94 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 the earth, to be seen no more, until, in the exquisite 
 vision of the Transfiguration, his heavenly spirit blos- 
 somed into light, and hung above the glowing Saviour 
 and the terrified disciples. 
 
 "This is Elias, which was for to come." John 
 from his childhood had been reared in the rugged re- 
 gion west of the Dead Sea, southeast from Jerusalem 
 and Bethlehem. (Luke i. 80.) His raiment was a 
 cloth of camel's hair, probably a long robe fastened 
 round the waist with a leathern girdle. Whether he 
 lived more as a hermit or as a shepherd, we cannot 
 tell. It is probable that he was each by turns. In a 
 manner which is peculiarly congenial to the Oriental 
 imagination, he fed his moral nature in solitude, and 
 by meditation gained that education which with West- 
 ern races comes by the activities of a benevolent life. 
 
 He probably surpassed his great prototype in native 
 power and in the importance of his special mission, but 
 fell below him in duration of action and dramatic effect. 
 Elijah and John were alike unconventional, each hav- 
 ing a strong though rude individualism. Living in the 
 wilderness, fed by the thoughts and imaginations which 
 great natures find in solitude, their characters had 
 woven into them not one of those soft and silvery 
 threads which fly back and forth incessantly from the 
 shuttle of civilized life. They began their ministry 
 without entanglements. They had no yoke to break, 
 no harness to cast off, no customs to renounce. They 
 came to society, ^oi from it. 
 
 Each of them, single-handed, attacked the bad morals 
 of society and the selfish conduct of men. Though of 
 a priestly family, John did not represent the Temple 
 or its schools. He came in the name of no Jewish 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. 95 
 
 sect or party. He was simply "the voice of One cry- 
 ing in the wilderness." 
 
 John was Christ's forerunner, as the ploughman goes 
 before the sower. Before good work can be expected, 
 there must be excitement. The turf-bound surface 
 of communities must be torn up, the compacted soil 
 turned to the air and light. Upon the rough furrows, 
 and not on the shorn lawn, is there hope for the seed. 
 
 This great work of arousing the nation befitted 
 John. His spirit was of the Law. He had, doubtless, 
 like his ancient brethren of the prophet brood, his 
 mysterious struggles with the infinite and the un- 
 known. He had felt the sovereignty of conscience. 
 Right and wrong rose before his imagination, amidst 
 the amenities of an indulgent hfe, like Ebal and Geri- 
 zim above the vale of Samaria. In his very prime, and 
 full of impetuous manhood, he came forth from the 
 wilderness, and began his career by the most direct 
 and unsparing appeals to the moral sense of the people. 
 There was no sensuous mysticism, no subtile philosophy, 
 na poetic enchantment, no tide of pleasurable emotion. 
 He assailed human conduct in downright earnest. He 
 struck right home at the unsheltered sins of guilty 
 men, as, the axe-man strikes. Indeed, the axe should 
 be the sign and symbol of John.' There are moods 
 in men that invite such moral aggression as his. 
 When a large and magnetic nature appears, with 
 power to grasp men, the moral feeling becomes elec- 
 tric and contagious. Whole communities are fired. 
 They rise up against their sins and self-indulgent hab- 
 
 ' " And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees : therefore 
 every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into 
 the fire." (Matt. iii. 10.) 
 
96 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 its, they lead them forth to slaughter, as the minions 
 of Baal were led by Elijah at Mount Carmel. Not the 
 grandest commotions of nature, not the coming on of 
 spring, nor the sound of summer storms, is more sub- 
 lime than are these moral whirls, to which, especially 
 in their grander but less useful forms, rude men, in 
 morally neglected communities, are powerftdly ad- 
 dicted. 
 
 The wilderness of Judaea, where John began his 
 preaching, reaches on its northern flank to the river 
 Jordan. From this point he seems to have made brief 
 circuits in the vicinity of the river valley. " He came 
 into all the country about Jordan." (Luke iii. 3.) 
 But, as his fame spread, he was saved the labor of 
 travel. " There went out unto him all the land of 
 Judaaa " (Mark i. 5), — city, town, and country. Thft 
 population of this region was very dense. It was 
 largely a Jewish population, and therefore mercurial 
 in feeling, but tenacious of purpose; easily aroused, 
 but hard to change ; not willing to alter its course, 
 but glad to be kindled and accelerated in any direc- 
 tion already begun. An Oriental nation is peculiarly 
 accessible to excitement, and the Jews above all Ori- 
 entals were open to its influence. Fanaticism lay 
 dormant in every heart. Every Jew was like a grain 
 of powder, harmless and small until touched by the 
 spark, and then instantly swelling with irresistible 
 and immeasurable force. Just at this time, too, the 
 very air of Judasa was full of feverish expectation. 
 Its people were sick of foreign rule. Their pride 
 was wounded, but not weakened, or even humbled. 
 The Jews were the children of the prophets. That 
 one Voice crying in the wilderness touched the deep 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. 97 
 
 religious romance of every patriotic heart. It was 
 like the olden time. So had the great prophets 
 done. Even one of less greatness than John would 
 have had a tumultuous reception. But John was 
 profoundly in earnest. It was his good fortune to 
 have no restraints or commitments. He had no phi- 
 losophy to shape or balance, no sect whose tenets he 
 must respect, no reputation to guard, and no deluding 
 vanity of an influence to be either won or kept. He 
 listened to the voice of God in his own soul, and 
 spake right on. When such a one speaks, the hearts 
 of men are targets, his words are arrows, and multi- 
 tudes wUl fall down wounded. 
 
 And yet no one in the full blessedness of Chris- 
 tian experience can look upon the preaching of John 
 without sadness. It was secular, not spiritual. There 
 was no future, no great spirit-land, no heaven above 
 his world. The Jewish hills were his horizon. It is 
 true that he saw above these hiQs a hazy light ; but 
 what that light would reveal he knew not. How 
 should he ? To him it seemed that the Messiah would 
 be only another John, but grander, more thorough, 
 and wholly irresistible. " But he that cometh after 
 me is mightier than I." What would this mightier 
 than John be ? What would he do ? Only this : " He 
 shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire : 
 whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge 
 his floor, and will gather the wheat into his gar- 
 ner ; but the chaff he wUl bum with fire unquench- 
 able." 
 
 All this was true ; but that does not describe the 
 Christ. John saw him as one sees a tree in winter, 
 — the bare branches, without leaves, flowers, or fruit. 
 
98 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 What would he have thought, if he had heard the 
 first sermon of Jesus at Nazareth, — " He hath sent me 
 to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to 
 the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to 
 set at liberty them that are bruised " ? No wonder 
 Jesus said' of him that the least in the kingdom of 
 heaven should be greater than he ! John would have 
 said. Purity and then divine favor j Christ, Divine 
 favor that ye may become pure. 
 
 This great Soul of the Wilderness was sent to do 
 a preparatory work, and to introduce the true Teacher. 
 Though he represented the Law, that Law had not 
 in his hands, as it had in the handling of the priests, 
 lost all compassion. There is a bold discrimination in 
 the Baptist's conduct toward the ignorant common 
 people and the enlightened Pharisee. " What shall we 
 do?" is the question of a heart sincerely in earnest; 
 and this question brought John to each man's side like 
 a brother. 
 
 Knowing that to repent of particular sins was an 
 education toward a hatred of the principle of evil, — 
 sins being the drops which flow from the fountain of 
 sin, — he obliged the tax-gatherer to. repent of a tax- 
 gatherer's sins, — extortion and avarice. The soldier 
 must abandon his peculiar sins, — violence, rapine, 
 greed of booty, revengeful accusations against all 
 who resisted his predatory habits. Selfish men, liv- 
 ing together, prey on one another by the endless 
 ways of petty selfishness. John struck at the root 
 of this universal self-indulgence when he commanded 
 the common people, " He that hath two coats, let him 
 impart to him that hath none ; and he that hath meat, 
 let him do likewise." It is probable that he had 
 
THE VOICE IN TEE WILDERNESS. 99 
 
 seen right before him hungry and shivering men by 
 the side of the over full and luxuriously clothed. 
 
 There were others in the crowd besides publicans 
 and sinners. There were saints there, — at least 
 the Pharisees thought so. They looked upon others 
 with sympathy, and were glad that the common peo- 
 ple repented. Although they themselves heeded no 
 amendment, it yet could do no harm to be baptized, 
 and their pious example might encourage those who 
 needed it ! This John was doing good. They were 
 disposed to patronize him ! 
 
 If this was the spirit which John perceived, no 
 wonder he flashed out upon them with such light- 
 ning strokes. " generation of vipers, who hath 
 warned you to flee from the wrath to come ? Bring 
 forth fruits meet for repentance." These dazzling 
 words did not altogether offend, for the Pharisees 
 were sure that John did not quite understand that 
 they were the choicest and mpst modern instances 
 of what the old saints had been! Looking around 
 on the sun-bleached gravel and mossless stones, John 
 replied to their thoughts : " Think not to say within 
 yourselves, We have Abraham to our father; for I 
 say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise 
 up children unto Abraham." 
 
 The preaching of John is plain. But what was 
 the meaning of his baptism ? Was it into the Jew- 
 ish church that he baptized? But the people were 
 already members of that church. It was a national 
 church, and men were born into it without any fur- 
 ther trouble. Was it an initiation into a new sect ? 
 John did not organize a sect or a party. He ex- 
 plicitly declared his office to be transitory, his func- 
 
100 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 tion to prepare men for the great Commg Man. 
 Was it Christian baptism? Christ was not yet de- 
 clared. The formula was not Christian. 
 
 If that inevitable husk, an outward organization, 
 had not become so fixed in men's minds, John's own 
 explanation would suflS.ce. It is clear and explicit: 
 " I baptize you with water unto repentance." It was 
 a sjTnbolic act, signifying that one had risen to a 
 higher moral condition. It was an act of transition. 
 It was a moral act, quite important enough to stand 
 by itself, without serving any secondary purpose of 
 initiation into any church or sect. Neither John nor 
 afterwards Jesus gave to the act any ecclesiastical 
 meaning. It had only a moral significance. It was 
 an act neither of association nor of initiation. It was 
 purely personal, beginning and ending with the individ- 
 ual subject of it. It conferred, and professed to confer, 
 nothing. It was declaratory of moral transition. Bap- 
 tism is that symbolic act by which a man declares, 
 "I forsake my sins, and rise to a better life." 
 
 A study of the fragments of John's discourses enables 
 us to understand the relation of their subject-matter 
 to the spiritual truths which Christ unfolded. He 
 dwelt in the truth of the old dispensation. He saw 
 the twilight of the coming day, but did not compre- 
 hend it. He called men to repentance, but it was 
 repentance of sin as measured by the old canons of 
 morality. He called men to reformation, but not to 
 regeneration. He summoned men back to the highest 
 conception of rectitude then known ; but he did not, 
 as Christ did, raise morality into the realm of spiritu- 
 ality, and hold forth a new ideal of character, incom- 
 parably higher than any before taught. If the very 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. IQl 
 
 Reformer himself, in the estimation of Jesus, was less 
 than the least in the kingdom of Heaven, how much 
 lower must his rude disciples have been than the " new 
 man in Christ Jesus " ! 
 
 Ideals are the true germs of growth. No benefactor 
 is like him who fills life with new and fruitful ideals. 
 Christ gave to every duty a new motive. Every vir- 
 tue had an aspiration for something yet nobler. He 
 carried forward the bounds of life, and assured immor- 
 tality to the world as a new horizon. He blew away 
 the mists of the schools, and the nature of God shone 
 out with redoubled radiance. He was the God of the 
 Jews, because he was the God of the whole earth. He 
 was King, because he was Father. He was Sover- 
 eign, because love reigns throughout the imiverse. 
 He suffered, and thenceforth altars were extinguished. 
 He died, and Sinai became Calvary. Where he lay, 
 there was a garden ; and flowers and fragrant clusters 
 were the fit symbols of the new era. 
 
 The true place of John's preaching cannot be so well 
 fixed as by this contrast. But John answered the end 
 for which he came. He had aroused the attention of 
 the nation. He had stimulated, even if he had not 
 enlightened, the public conscience; and, above all, he 
 had excited an eager expectation of some great nar 
 tional deliverance. 
 
 The Jew had deep moral feeling, but little spirit- 
 uality. His moral sense was strong, but narrow, 
 national, and selfish. Tenacious of purpose, elastic and 
 tough, courageous even to fanaticism, heroic in suffer- 
 ing, the one element needed to a grand national char- 
 acter was love. "Thou shalt love thy friends and 
 hate thine enemies," gave ample scope to his nature ; 
 
102 fHE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 for his friends were few, and his enemies nearly the 
 whole civilized world. The Hebrews looked for a 
 Messiah, and he was already among them. Love was 
 his nature, love his mission, and his name might 
 have been called Love. How should he be known 
 by a nation who were practised in every inflection of 
 hatred, but who had never learned the spiritual quality 
 of love ? 
 
 Restless as was' the nation, and longing for divine 
 intervention, every portent was quickly noticed. Fierce 
 factions, and from a lower plane the turbulent peo- 
 ple, watched his coming. The wretched multitude, a 
 prey by turns to foreigners and to their own country- 
 men, had, with all the rest, a vague and superstitious 
 faith of the coming Messiah. Holy mien like Simeon, 
 and devout priests like Zacharias', there were, amidst 
 this seething people, who, brooding, longing, waiting, 
 chanted to themselves day by day the words of the 
 Psalmist, "My soul waiteth for the Lord more than 
 they that watch for the morning." (Ps. cxxx. 6.) As 
 lovers that watch for the appointed coming, and start 
 at the quivering of a leaf, the flight of a bird, or the 
 humming of a bee, and grow weary of the tense 
 strain, so did the Jews watch for their Deliverer. It 
 is one of the most piteous sights of history, especially 
 when we reflect that he came, — and they knew him 
 not! 
 
 This growing excitement in all the region around 
 the Jordan sent its fiery wave to Jerusalem. The 
 Temple, with its keen priestly watchers, heard that 
 voice in the wilderness, repeating day by day, with 
 awful emphasis, "Prepare, prepare! the Lord is at 
 hand 1 " With all the airs of arrogant authority came 
 
TEE VOICE IN. THE WILDERNESS. 103 
 
 down from the Sanhedrim priestly questioners. It is 
 an early instance of the examination of a young man 
 for license to preach. 
 
 " Who art thou ? " 
 
 « I am not the Christ." 
 
 « What then, art thou Elias ?" 
 
 " I am not." 
 
 "Art thou that prophet?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Who art thou, that we may give an answer to them 
 that sent us ? What sayest thou of thyself ? " 
 
 "I am the Voice of one crying in the wilderness, 
 Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet 
 Esaias." 
 
 " Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not that 
 Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet?" 
 
 " I baptize with water. But there standeth One 
 AMOSTG YOU whom ye know not. He it is, that, coming 
 after me, is preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet 
 I am not worthy to unloose." 
 
 There can be no doubt of the effect of John's replies 
 upon the council at Jerusalem. It was simply a de- 
 nial of their authority. It was an appeal from Ritual 
 to Conscience. He came home to men with direct 
 and personal appeal, and refused the old forms and 
 sacred channels of instruction; and when asked by 
 the proper authorities for his credentials, he gave his 
 name, A Voice in the WUderness, as if he owed no 
 obligation to Jerusalem, but only to nature and to 
 God. 
 
 Already, then, their Messiah was mingling in the 
 throng. He was looking upon men, and upon John, 
 but was not recognized. What his thoughts were at 
 
104 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 the scenes about him, every one's own imagination 
 must reveal. 
 
 On the day following the visit of this committee from 
 Jerusalem, as John was baptizing, there came to him 
 one Jesus from Nazareth, and asked to be baptized. 
 John had been forewarned of the significant sign by 
 which he should recognize the Messiah : "He that sent 
 me to baptize with water, the same said imto me. Upon 
 whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remain- 
 ing on him, the same is he who baptizeth with the 
 Holy Ghost." Although that signal had not been 
 given, yet he recognized Jesus. Whether, being cou- 
 sins, they had ever met, we know not. It is evident 
 that they were in sympathy, each having fully heard 
 of the other. Perhaps they had met year by year in 
 the feasts of Jerusalem, to which we know that Christ 
 went up, and at which John, as a man of the old dis- 
 pensation and a thorough Jew, heart and soul, was 
 even more likely to have been present. 
 
 How fierce had been the reply of the Baptist when 
 the Pharisees asked to be baptized ! How gentle was 
 his bearing to Jesus, and how humble his expostula- 
 tion, " I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest 
 thou to me?" 
 
 His heart recognized the Christ, even before the de- 
 scent of the Spirit. 
 
 Equally beautiful is the reply of Jesus. He had not 
 yet been made known by the brooding Spirit. He had 
 neither passed his probation, nor received that enlarged 
 liberty of soul which was to be to him the signal for his 
 peculiar ministry. He was simply a citizen of the com- 
 monwealth of Israel, under the Law, and he was walk- 
 ing in the footsteps of his people, " that in aU things 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. 105 
 
 he might be made like unto his brethren " " of the 
 seed of Abraham." 
 
 They went down together, the son of Elizabeth and 
 the son of Mary, John and Jesus, into the old river 
 Jordan, that neither hastened nor slackened its current 
 at their coming ; for the Messianic sign was not to be 
 from the waters beneath, but from the heavens above. 
 
 Hitherto the Jordan had been sacred to the patriotic 
 Jew from its intimate connection with many of the 
 most remarkable events in the history of the common- 
 wealth and of the kingdom. Another Jesus -^ had once 
 conveyed the people from their wanderings across this 
 river dry shod. The Jordan had separated David 
 and his pursuers when the king fled from his usurpiag 
 son. Elijah smote it to let him and Elisha go over, 
 and erelong Elisha retimied alone. The Jordan was 
 a long sUvery thread, on which were strung national 
 memories through many himdred years. But all these 
 histories were outshone by the new occurrence. In all 
 Christendom to-day the Jordan means Christ's bap- 
 tism. Profoundly significant as was this event, the 
 first outward step by which Jesus entered upon his min- 
 istry, it was followed by another stiQ more striking 
 and far more important. Jesus ascended from the Jor- 
 dan looking up and praying. (Luke iii. 21.) As he 
 gazed, the sky was cleft open, and a beam of light 
 flashed forth, and, alightiag upon him, seemed in 
 bodily shape like a dove. Instantly a voice spake 
 from out of heaven, "This is my beloved Son, m 
 whom I am well pleased." (Matt. iii. 17.) 
 
 • In the Hebrew the name SaTiour appears Tinder the different forms 
 HosHEA (Oshed), Jehoshtja (Joshua), later Hebrew Jebhua (Greek 
 Jesus). 
 
106 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 We know not what opening of soul came from this 
 divine light. We know flot what cords were loosed 
 and what long-bound attributes unfolded, — as buds 
 held by winter unroll in the spring. But from this 
 moment Jesus became The Christ ! He relinquished 
 his home and ordinary labors. He assumed an au- 
 thority never before manifested, and moved with a 
 dignity never afterward laid aside. We cannot, by 
 analysis or analogy, discern and set forth the change 
 wrought within him by the descent of the Holy Ghost. 
 But those who look with doubt upon the reality of 
 any great exaltation of soul divinely inspired may do 
 well to see what often befalls men. 
 
 It is a familiar fact, that men, at certain periods of 
 their lives, experience changes which are like an- 
 other birth. The new life, when the passion, and, still 
 more significatitly, when the sentiment, of love takes 
 full possession of the soul, is familiar. Great men 
 date their birth from the hour of some great inspi- 
 ration. Even from human sources, from individual 
 men, and from society, electric influences dart out 
 upon susceptible natures, which change their future 
 history. How much more powerful should this be 
 if there is a Divine Spirit! If secular influence has 
 transforming power, how much more divine influence ! 
 
 The imiversal belief of the Church, that men are the 
 subjects of sudden and transforming divine influences, 
 is borne out hy facts without number. The most 
 extraordinary and interesting phenomena in mental 
 history are those which appear in religious conver- 
 sions. Men are overwhelmed with influences to which 
 they were before strangers. Without changing the 
 natural constitution of the mind, the balance of power 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. 107 
 
 is SO shifted that dominant animal passions go under 
 the yoke, and dormant moral sentiments spring up 
 with amazing energy. With such sudden transfor- 
 mations within, there follows a total outward revo- 
 lution of manners, morals, actions, and aims. Per- 
 haps the most dramatic instance is Paul's. But 
 inward changes, without the external brilliancy, have 
 been made in thousands of men and of women, full 
 as thorough and transforming as that of the great 
 Apostle. Indeed, such changes are no longer rare 
 or remarkable. They are common and familiar. And 
 even though we should join those who, admitting 
 the change, account for it upon the lowest theory 
 of natural principles, the main thing which we have 
 in view would still be gained ; namely, to show that 
 the human soul is so organized that, when brought 
 under certain influences, it is susceptible of sudden 
 and complete transformation. 
 
 If it is thus impressible at the hands of secular in- 
 fluence, how much more if there be admitted a divine 
 energy, as it were an atmosphere of divine will, in 
 which all material worlds float, and out of which physi'- 
 cal laws themselves flow, as rills and 'rivers from ah 
 inexhaustible reservoir ! 
 
 But the soul iipon which the Spirit descended over 
 the Jordan was divine. It was a divine nature, 
 around which had been bound cords of restraint, now 
 greatly loosened, or even snapped, by the sacred flame ; 
 with attributes repressed, self-infolded, but which now, 
 at the celestial touch, were roused to something of 
 their pristine sweep and power. 
 
 All before this has been a period of waiting. Upon 
 his ascent from the Jordan, Jesus the Christ, indued 
 
108 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 with power by the Holy Spirit, steps into a new sphere. 
 He is now to appear before his people as a divine 
 teacher, to authenticate his high claims by acts so far 
 above human power that they shall evince the Divme 
 presence; and, finally, to be offered up, through suf- 
 fering unto death, as a sacrifice for sin, — the one 
 victim which shall forever supersede all other sacri- 
 fices. Here, then, upon the banks of the Jordan, be- 
 gins the new dispensation. 
 
 There is a remarkable symmetry of mystery about 
 John. He had all his life lived apart from society, 
 unknowing and unknown. Standing by the side of 
 the Jordan, he made himself felt in aU Jud^a and 
 throughout Galilee. The wise men of his time sought 
 in vain to take his measure. Like all men who seek 
 to reduce moral truth to exact forms and propor- 
 tions, the Pharisees had their gauge and mould, and 
 John would not fit to any of them. If he was not 
 Messiah, or Elias, or that prophet, he might as well 
 have been nobody. They could not understand him ; 
 and when he described himself as a voice to men's 
 consciences from the wUderness, it must have seemed 
 to his questioners either insanity or mockery. 
 
 We are better informed of his true nature and pur- 
 poses ; yet how little of his disposition,' of his personal 
 appearance and habits, the style of his discovirse, his 
 struggles with himself, his alternations of hope and 
 fear, do we know! 'Looking back for the man who 
 moved the whole of Palestine, we can say only that 
 he was the Voice from the wilderness. Though the 
 history of our Lord will require some further notice 
 of John by and by, yet we may here appropriately 
 finish what little remains of his personal history. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. 109 
 
 He continued to preach and to baptize for some time 
 after Christ entered upon his mission, ascending the 
 Jordan from near Jericho, where it is supposed that he 
 began his baptismal career, to Bethany (not Bethabara), 
 beyond Jordan, and then, stUl higher, to ^non. His 
 whole ministry is computed to have been something 
 over two years. Herod Antipas had long looked with 
 a jealous eye upon John's influence. No man who could 
 call together and sway such multitudes as John did 
 would be looked upon with favor by an Oriental despot. 
 It only needed one act of fidelity on the prophet's part 
 to secure his arrest. John pubHcly denounced the 
 wickedness of Herod, and particularly his indecent 
 marriage with his brother Philip's wife, Herodias, who 
 eloped from Philip to marry Herod Antipas. John 
 was imprisoned in the castle of Machserus, which stood 
 on the perpendicular clifis of one of the streams emp- 
 tying into the Dead Sea from the east, and not far 
 from its shores. There John must have remained in 
 captivity for a considerable period of time. It was 
 not Herod's intention to do him further harm. But 
 Herodias could not forgive the sting of his public 
 rebuke, and watched for his destruction. Not long, 
 however, had she to wait. By her voluptuous dancing 
 upon a state occasion, at a banquet, the daughter of 
 Herodias won from the king the boon of choosing her 
 own reward. Instructed by her vindictive mother, 
 she demanded the head of John. With a passing 
 regret, the promise was kept, — and the feast went 
 on. John's disciples buried his body. Thus ended 
 the earthly Hfe of this child of promise, — the solitary 
 hermit, the ardent reformer, the last prophet of the 
 Old Testament line. 
 
110 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 It was upon these mountains of Moab, or in their 
 ravines, that Moses was buried. Thus the first great 
 prophet of Israel and the last one were buried near 
 to each other, outside of the Promised Land, amidst 
 those dark hills beyond Jordan and the Dead Sea. 
 
 There is a striking analogy, also, in another respect. 
 Moses came only to the border of the Promised Land, 
 the object of his whole life's labor. He looked to the 
 north, to the west, to the south, over the whole of 
 it. " I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, 
 but thou shalt not go over thither." 
 
 John had gone before the promised Messiah, to 
 prepare his way, and to bring in the new dispen- 
 sation. But he himself was not permitted to enter 
 upon it. Out of his prison he sent to Jesus an 
 anxious inquiry, "Art thou he that should come, or 
 look we for another ? " The account which his disci- 
 ples brought back must have assured his lonely heart 
 that the Messiah had come. His spirit beheld the 
 dawning day of holiness, and was dismissed. 
 
 Until this day no one knows where either Moses or 
 John was buried. They were ahke in the utter hiding 
 of their graves. 
 
 We have already spoken of the nature of John's 
 baptism. The question arises, Why should Jesus be 
 baptized ? His reply was, " Thus it bccomcth us to fulfil 
 all nffhkoiisncss." But baptism Avas not a part of the 
 Jewish service. Even if proselytes were baptized 
 into the Jewish church, there is no evidence that a 
 Jew was required to be baptized at any period of his 
 life. We are not to confound the umhings of the Le- 
 vitical law with baptisms, Avhich were totally different. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. HI 
 
 It certainly could not be a baptism of repentance 
 to Jesus in "the same sense that it is to all others. 
 Very many solutions have been given of this per- 
 plexing question.^ 
 
 Every man who has been, like John, successful in 
 arousing men from evil and leading them toward a 
 higher life, has noticed that repentance always takes 
 on at first the form of turning from evil, rather than 
 of taking hold on good. To part with swee1>hearted 
 sins, to forsake and break up evil habits, especially 
 habits formed upon the passions and appetites, re- 
 quires vehement exertion. As this is ordinarily the 
 first experience in repentance, and usually the most 
 sudden and painful one, while righteousness is gradual 
 
 ' Meyer gives a digest of the various opinions whicli have been held con- 
 cerning Christ's baptism: — "Jesus did not come to be. baptized from a 
 feeling of personal sinfulness (Bruno Bauer, comp. Strauss) ; nor because, 
 according to the Levitical law, his personal connection with an impure 
 people rendered him impure (Lange) ; nor for the purpose of showing that 
 there was no incompatibility between his aap^ aaBeveias and life in the 
 Spirit (Hofmann, Weksagiwg und ErfdUung, Vol. II. p. 82) ; nor because 
 baptism implied a declaration of being subject to a penalty of death 
 (Ebrai'd) ; nor in order to elicit the Divine declaration that he was the 
 Messiah (Paulus) ; nor to confirm the faith of his followers, insomuch as bap- 
 tism was a symbol of the regeneration of his disciples (Ammon L. J., Vol. 
 I. p. 268) ; nor to sanction the baptism of John by his example (Kuinoel, 
 Kern) ; nor to indicate his obligations to obey the law (Hofmann, Krabbe, 
 Osiandor) ; nor, lastly, because before the descent of the Spirit he acted like 
 any other ordinary Israelite (Hess, Kuhn, comp. Olshausen). 
 
 " The true explanation of this act, as furnished in verse 15, is, that as the 
 Messiah he felt that, according to the Divine will, he had to submit to the 
 baptism of his forerunner, in order to receive the divine declaration of his 
 Messianic dignity (verseslO, 17). 
 
 " It was not in baptism that he first became conscious of his dignity as the' 
 Messiah, as if by that act he had been inwardly transformed into the Mes- 
 Biah; the expression 'thus it becometh us' (verse 15) implies that he was 
 conscious of being the Messiah, and of the relation in which, as such, John 
 stood toward hun." — Quoted by Lange, on Matthew, Chapter III. 
 
112 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 both in fact and fruition, so it is not surprising that 
 the popular idea of repentance should be the forsaking 
 of ml To "break off one's sins li/ rigUeousness" is 
 a later knowledge. And yet this is the very core 
 and marrow of repentance. It is the rising from 
 grossness into refinement, from selfishness into univer- 
 sal good-will,, from passion to sentiment, — in short, 
 from the flesh into the spirit. 
 
 Repentance, in its last analysis, is rising from a 
 lower life into a higher one, and to a holy being 
 this would be the side first seen and most valued. 
 To the eye of John, the multitude who were bap- 
 tized by him, " confessing their sins," were forsak- 
 ing evil. In the sight of Christ, they were coming 
 to a higher and better life. 
 
 Imagine, then, the sympathy of Jesus for these 
 things. Whatever would carry forward the work 
 should be favored. He, too, though he had no sins 
 to repent of, had higher attainments to make. " The 
 Captain of our salvation was made perfect through 
 suffering." Even though, in his full and original 
 nature, he was God, yet while in humOiation, and 
 robbed, as it were, of the full disclosure of his own 
 attributes, he must go through the unfolding process, 
 and rise from step to step of spiritual experience. 
 
 A baptism to a higher life would probably be Christ's 
 interpretation of John's baptism for himself. And he 
 submitted to it, as one of the great miiltitude. " It 
 becometh us" He joined the movement; he added 
 his example to the good work going on. Others 
 repented, — or turned from evil to good; Jesus only 
 advanced from point to point in a line of gracious 
 development. That which repentance means, in its 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. 113 
 
 true spirit, namely, the rising from lower to higher 
 moral states, Jesus experienced ia common with the 
 multitude ; although he had not, like them, any need 
 of the stings of remorse for past misconduct to drive 
 him upward. Repentance is but another name for 
 aspiration. 
 
114 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE TEMPTATION. 
 
 At every step the disclosure of the life of Jesus 
 was a surprise. He came into the world as no man 
 would imagine that a Divine person would come. 
 His youth was spent without exhibitions of singular 
 power. His entrance upon pubUc life was unosten- 
 tatious. His baptism, to aU but John, was like the 
 baptism of any one of the thousands that thronged 
 the Jordan. 
 
 Shall he now shine out with a full disclosure of 
 himself? Shall he at once ascend to Jerusalem, and 
 in the greatness of his Divinity make it apparent to 
 all men that he is indeed the very Messiah ? 
 
 This was not the Divine method. It was not by a 
 surprise of the senses, nor by exciting mere wonder 
 among unthinking men, that Jesus would make plain 
 his Divine nature. It was by evolving a sweeter 
 and nobler life than man ever does, and in circum- 
 stances even more adverse than fall to the lot of 
 man, that- his nature was to be shown. 
 
 It is not strange to us, now well instructed in the 
 spirit of Christ's mission, that he did not enter at 
 once upon his work of teaching. Midway between 
 his private life, now ended, and his public ministry, 
 about to begin, there was to be a long and silent 
 discipline. The three narratives of the Temptation, 
 
TEE TEMPTATION. 115 
 
 by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, lift us at once into 
 the region of mystery. We find ourselves beyond 
 our depth at the first step, and deep follows deep 
 to the end. The mystery of that Divine Spirit which 
 possessed the Saviour, the mystery of forty days' 
 conflict in such a soul, the mystery of the nature 
 and power of Satan, the mystery of the three final 
 forms into which the Temptation resolved itself, — 
 these are beyond our reach. They compass and 
 shroud the scene with a kind of supernatural gloom. 
 The best solution we give to the difl&culties will cast 
 but a twilight upon the scene. 
 
 It has been supposed by many that the Tempta- 
 tion took place among the solitary mountains of Moab, 
 beyond the Jordan. It was thither that Moses re- 
 sorted for his last and longing look over the Prom- 
 ised Land; and it would certainly give us a poetic 
 gratification if we could beheve that the " exceed- 
 ing high" mountain, from which the glory of the 
 world flashed upon the Saviom-'s view, was that same 
 summit upon which his type, the great prophet Moses, 
 had stood, thus singularly making the same peak 
 behold the beginning of the two great dispensations, 
 that of the Old and that of the New Testament. 
 It is a pleasant fancy, but hardly true as history. 
 Westward from Jericho, rising in places with steep 
 cliffs of white limestone fifteen himdred feet in height, 
 is a line of mountains, whose irregular and rugged 
 tops against the sky, seen from the plains of the 
 Jordan, present a noble contrast to the ordinary mo- 
 notony of the Judgean hills. One, called Quaranta- 
 nia from its supposed relation to the forty days of 
 temptation, has been pointed out by tradition as the 
 
116 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 scene of the Lord's conflict. It rises high, is pierced 
 with caves and gashed with ravines, and is solitary 
 and wild enough to have been, as recorded by Mark, 
 a lair of wild beasts, as it continues to be to the 
 present day. 
 
 Into the solitude of this mountain in the wilderness 
 came Jesus, under the same guidance as that which 
 convoyed the prophets of old. Indeed, we must dis- 
 miss from our minds modern notions, and even the ideas 
 which ruled in the time of Jesus, and go back to the 
 days of Samuel, of Elijah, and of Ezekiel, if we would 
 get any clew to the imagery and the spirit of the 
 extraordinary transaction which we are about to con- 
 sider. Had this scene been recorded of some of the 
 prophets hundreds of years before, it would have har- 
 monized admirably with the narratives which relate 
 the old prophetic histories. But in the later days 
 of Gospel history this scene of temptation is like 
 some gigantic boulder drifted out of its place and 
 historic relations, and out of sight and memory of the 
 cliffs to which in kind it belonged. It is in perfect 
 accord with the elder Hebrew nature, and it was the 
 last and greatest of that sublime series of prophetic 
 tableaux, through which Hebrew genius delivered to 
 the world its imperishable contributions of moral truth. 
 
 Like the seers of old, Jesus was powerfully excited 
 by the descent upon him of the Divine Spirit. There 
 were all the appearances common to states in which 
 there is a partial suspension of voluntary action. The 
 language of the Evangelists is significant. Luke says : 
 " And Jesus, being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from 
 Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness" 
 (" led up" says Matthew). But Mark's language is 
 
THE TEMPTATION. 117 
 
 more strikingly significant of the prophetic orgasm : 
 "And immediately the Spirit driveth Km into the wil- 
 derness." This is the language of the prophet-parox- 
 ysm. Seized with an irresistible impiilse, so the " holy 
 men of old " were impelled by the Spirit. Thus Eze- 
 kiel says : " In the visions of God hrougM he me into 
 the land of Israel, and set me upon a very high moun- 
 tain." (Ezek. xl. 2.) The operation of the Divine in- 
 spiration upon the mind of Ezekiel throws important 
 light upon the philosophy of this opening scene of 
 Christ's ministry. 
 
 We believe the temptation of Christ to have been 
 an actual experience, not a dream or a parable, in which 
 his soul, illumined and exalted by the Spirit of God, 
 was brought into personal conflict with Satan ; and the 
 conflict was none the less real and historic, because 
 the method involved that extraordinary ecstasy of 
 the prophet-mind. Of the peculiarities of the pro- 
 phetic state we shall speak a little further on. 
 
 The whole life of Christ stands between two great 
 spheres of temptation. The forty days of the wilder- 
 ness and the midnight in the garden of Gethsemane 
 are as two great cloud-gates, of entrance to his min- 
 istry and of exit from it. In both scenes, silence is 
 the predominant quality. 
 
 The first stage of the Temptation includes the forty 
 days of fasting. This may be said to have been the 
 private struggle and personal probation. 
 
 The forty days were not for human eyes. If the 
 history of these experiences was ever spoken, even to 
 the ear of John, the most receptive of the disciples, it 
 was not designed for record or publication. It is more 
 probable that the experience was iacommunicable. 
 
118 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 Even in our lower sphere, mental conflicts cannot be 
 adequately reported. The vacillations of the soul, a 
 full expression of its anxieties, its agonizing suspense, 
 shame, remorse, of its yearnings and ambitions, cannot 
 be uttered or written. For the word "shame" does 
 not describe the experience of shame. Nor is the 
 word " love " a portrait of love. The real life of the 
 heart is always imfolding in pUence ; and men of large 
 natures carry in the centre of their hearts a secret 
 garden or a sUent wilderness. But in how much 
 greater degree is this true of the mystery of Christ's 
 temptation in the wilderness, and of his trial in Geth- 
 semane ! If there are no heart-words for fuU human 
 feeling, how much less for divine ! 
 
 We know that Jesus grappled with the powers of 
 the invisible world, and that he was victorious. His 
 life in the wilderness is not to be imagined as the 
 retirement of a philosophic hermit to contemplative 
 solitude. The cavernous mountain was not merely a 
 study, in which our Lord surveyed in advance the 
 purposes of his ministerial life. All this, doubtless, 
 formed a part of his experience ; but there was more 
 than studious leisure and natural contemplation. There 
 was a conflict between his soul and the powers of dark- 
 ness ; a sphere of real energy, in which the opposing 
 elements of good and evil in the universe met in 
 intense opposition. 
 
 Out from that infinite aerial ocean in the great Ob- 
 scure, beyond human life, came we know not what 
 winds, what immeasurable and sweeping forces of 
 temptation. But that the power and kingdom of the 
 Devil were there concentrated upon him was the be- 
 lief of his disciples and the teaching of the Apostles, 
 
TEE TEMPTATION. 119 
 
 and it is the faith, of the Christian Church. It is not 
 needful for us to understand each struggle and its vic- 
 tory. It is enough for us to know, that in this un- 
 friendly solitude every faculty in man that is tried 
 in ordinary life was also tested and proved in Jesus. 
 
 He was "tempted in all poMs" or faculties, as we 
 are, though not with the same means and implements 
 of temptation. No human being will ever be tried in 
 appetite, in passion, in affection, ia sentiment, in will 
 and reason, so severely as was the Lord ; and his vic- 
 tory was not simply that he withstood the particular 
 blasts that rushed upon him, but that he tested the 
 utmost that Satan could do, and was able to bear up 
 against it, and to come off a conqueror, — every fac- 
 ulty stamped with the sign of invincibility. 
 
 The proof of this appeared in all his career. The 
 members of his soul were put to the same stress that 
 sinful men experience in daily life. There may be 
 new circumstances, but no new temptations; there 
 may be new cunning, new instruments, new conditions, 
 but nothing will send home temptation with greater 
 force than he experienced, or to any part of the soul 
 not assaulted in him. Through that long battle of life 
 in which every man is engaged, and in every mood of 
 the struggle which men of aspiration and moral sense 
 make toward perfect hoUness, there is an inspiration 
 of comfort to be derived from the example of Christ. 
 In places the most strange, and in the desolate way 
 where men dwell with the wild beasts of the passions, 
 if there be but a twilight of faith, we shall find his 
 footstep, and know that he has been there, — is there 
 again, hving over anew in us his own struggles, and 
 saying, with the authority of a God and the tenderness 
 
120 THE LIFE OP JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 of a father : " In tlie world ye shall have tribulation ; 
 but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." 
 The world is a better place to live in since Christ suf- 
 ered and triumphed in it. 
 
 We pass now to another form of the Temptation. 
 It was no longer to be a private and personal scrutiny. 
 Jesus had baffled the tempter, and driven him back 
 from the gate of every emotion. But Jesus was not to 
 be a private citizen. He had a transcendent work to 
 perform, of teaching and of sviffering. His hands were 
 to bear more largely than before the power of God. 
 Since the descent upon him of the Spirit on the banks 
 of the Jordan, the hidden powers of his nature were 
 springing into activity. Only when he was prepared 
 to lay aside the clog of an earthly body could he be 
 clothed again with all that glory which he had with 
 the Father before the world was. But the entrance 
 upon his pubHc ministry was to be signalized, if not by 
 the disclosure of his full nature, yet by an ampler ia- 
 telligence and a wider scope of power. Tropical plants 
 in northern zones, brought forward under glass, their 
 roots compressed to the size of the gardener's pot, and 
 their tops pruned back to the dimensions of the green- 
 house, are at midsummer turned out into the open 
 ground, and there shoot forth with new life and vigor; 
 and yet never, in one short August, attain to the gran- 
 deur of their native tropical growth. So this Heav- 
 enly Palm, dropped down upon Palestine, dwarfed by 
 childhood and youth, shot forth new growth when 
 enfranchised by the Holy Spirit; and yet could not 
 in this climate, in the short summer of human life, 
 swell to the full proportions of its celestial life. 
 
 These swellings of power, this new radiance of Intel- 
 
THE TEMPTATION. 121 
 
 ligence, were to be employed according to the law of 
 Heaven ; and to this end was permitted that dramatic 
 threefold temptation with which the scene in the wil- 
 derness closes. 
 
 We have already said that the three closing tempta- 
 tions of Christ are to be regarded, not as parables, but 
 as prophetic visions. They were historical events, but 
 in the same sense as the visions of Isaiah or of Ezekiel 
 were historical. Jesus was a Hebrew, and stood in the 
 Hne of the Hebrew prophets. However fantastic the 
 scenery and the action of the closing temptations may 
 seem to modem thought, they were entirely congruous 
 with the Hebrew method of evolving the highest 
 moral truths. Nor can we fully appreciate them with- 
 out some knowledge of the prophetic ecstasy. 
 
 The prophet-mind, in its highest moods, hung in a 
 trance between the real physical life and the equally 
 real spiritual state. The inspiration of those moods 
 seems to have carried up the mind far beyond its 
 ordinary instruments. Not ideas, but pictures, were 
 before it. The relations of time and place seemed to 
 disappear. The prophet, though stationary, seemed to 
 himself to be ubiquitous. He was borne to distant 
 nations, made the circuit of kingdoms, Jield high con- 
 ference with monarchs, saw the events of empires dis- 
 closed as in a glass. His own body often became 
 unconscious. He lost ordinary sight of the physical 
 world. He slept. He swooned. For long periods of 
 time he neither himgered nor thirsted. The prophets 
 saw visions of the spirit-land. Angels conversed with 
 them. The throne of God blazed full upon their daz- 
 zled eyes. 
 
 More wonderful still was the symbolization employed 
 
122 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 in this prophetic state. All the globe became a text- 
 book. Beasts were symbols of kings or of kingdoms. 
 Floods, whirlwinds, and earthquakes moved in proces- 
 sion before them as types of events in history. The 
 rush and might of human passions, revolutions, and 
 wars were written for them in signs of fire and blood. 
 Captivity and dispersion were set forth in the gorgeous 
 imagery of storm-driven clouds j of the sim and moon 
 stained with blood; of stars, panic-stricken, like de- 
 feated warriors, rushing headlong through the heavens. 
 
 How httle are the close-cut wings of the modem 
 imagination prepared to follow the circuits of men who 
 dwelt in this upper picture-world, where the reason 
 was inspired through the imagination! Physical sci- 
 ence has as yet no analogue for such moods. The 
 alembic says, It is not in me ; the rocks and soil say. 
 It is not in us. Poets, nearest of any, are in sjTnpa- 
 thy with the prophets ; but they mostly sing in the 
 boughs, low down, and not from the clear air above. 
 The whole life of the prophet was absorbed into an 
 intense spiritual intuition. 
 
 The moral faculties of the human soul have this 
 susceptibility to ecstatic exaltation, and therefore the 
 prophetic mood was in so far natural. But these facul- 
 ties never unfold into the ecstatic visions of prophecy 
 except by the direct impulse of the Divine power. 
 And herein the prophetic differs from the merely 
 poetic. 
 
 If the prophets had left only these gigantic frescoes, 
 we might pass them by as the extraordinary pro- 
 duct of fantasy. But this was the prophetic style of 
 thinking. Out of all this wonderful commixture came 
 the profoundest teaching in regard to national moral- 
 
THE TEMPTATION. 123 
 
 ity, the most advanced views of their times as to 
 personal purity and dignity, the most terrible invec- 
 tives against dishonor m the individual and corrup- 
 tion in the government. Those clouds and flames 
 and storms, those girdles and yokes and flails, those 
 trumpets and voices and thunders, were only so many 
 letters by which were spelled out, not merely the no- 
 blest spiritual truths of the prophets' age, but truths 
 which are the glory of all ages. Men often are glad 
 of the fruit of the prophetic teaching, who reject with 
 contempt the methods by which prophets taught. 
 
 The effect becomes ludicrous when modem inter- 
 preters, not content with a disclosure of the ruhng 
 thought, attempt to transform the whole gorgeous pic- 
 ture into modem eqtiivalehts,to translate every sign 
 and symbol into a literal fact. Some have thought 
 that prophets were insane. They were always rational 
 enough in their own ways. It has been the interpret- 
 ers and commentators who have gone crazy. The at- 
 tempt of men to work up the Song of Solomon into 
 church-going apparel is foUy past aU conceit. Spelling 
 Hebrew words with English letters is not translation. 
 Solomon's Song, in our modem exposition, would have 
 put Solomon and all his court into amazement. Who 
 can reproduce the opalesque visions of Ezekiel and 
 Hosea in the lustreless language of modern days ? K 
 men were to attempt with brick and mortar to build a 
 picture of the auroral hghts, it would scarcely be more 
 absurd than the attempt to find modem equivalents 
 for every part of the sublime Apocalypse of St. John. 
 Let every nation think in its own language. Let every 
 period have its own method of inspiration. As we do 
 not attempt to build over again Egjrptian temples in 
 
124 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 American cities, new pyramids on our prairies, but 
 allow those sublime memorials to remain where they 
 belong, symbols of the thought of ages ago, so we are 
 to let the old prophets stand in their solitary gran- 
 deur. 
 
 Like the prophets of earlier days, Jesus fasted long, 
 and, shutting out external scenes, except such as be- 
 longed to the most solitary phases of nature, he rose 
 at length to the vision state; for as in oratorios the 
 overture foreshadows in brief the controlling spirit 
 and action of the whole performance, so in the three 
 trial points which close the Temptation there would 
 seem to be a foreshadowing of the trials which through 
 his whole career would beset Jesus in the use of Di- 
 vine power. 
 
 It is impossible for us to strive too earnestly to gain 
 some idea of this mystery. Yet, with aU our powers 
 of sympathy and imagination, we cannot enter vividly 
 into the condition of a pure being, come into the world 
 from the bosom of God to take the place of a subject 
 and of suffering man. He was " plagued as others are " ; 
 he was poor and dependent on friends for very bread, 
 and yet was conscious of carrying within himself a 
 power by which the whole world should fly to serve 
 him ; he was in disgrace, the pity of the ignorant and 
 the scorn of the great, and yet held in his hand 
 that authority by which, at a word, the very stars 
 should praise him, and his brightness outshine the 
 utmost pomp of kings ; he was counted with servants, 
 and yet conscious of infinite dignity; he was hated, 
 hunted, persecuted, even unto death, — a death, too, 
 which then suggested turpitude and ignominy, — and 
 yet possessed, imused, a power which made him supe- 
 
THE TEMPTATION. 125 
 
 rior to all and more powerful than all. Such experi- 
 ences might well require beforehand that training and 
 divine instruction by which the Captain of our salva- 
 tion was to be made perfect. 
 
 Weary with watching, and spent with hunger, he 
 beholds the Adversary approach. " If thou be the Son 
 of God, command that these stones be made bread." 
 This scene wUl be desecrated if we cannot rise above 
 the gross materialism of the Latin Church. Contrast 
 the awful simplicity of Christ's teachings respecting 
 evil spirits with the grotesque and hideous representa- 
 tions of the mediagval ages. The Eomans, it is proba- 
 ble, derived this taint of the imagination from the old 
 Tuscans, to whom, if we may judge from what remains 
 of their arts, the fiitm-e was a paradise of horrors.-' 
 
 S " The predominating feature of tlie Etruscan nation, a feature whicli 
 had been the result of a natural disposition, and principally of a sacerdotal 
 system very skilfully combined, was a gloomy and cruel superstition. The 
 science of the aruspices and the discipline of the augurs were, as is well 
 known, of Etruscan invention ; it was from Etruria that this kind of super- 
 stition, reduced to a system carefully drawn up, was imported at an early 
 period into Kome, where it became the religion of the state, and, as such, 
 intolerant and absolute ; while in Greece ideas originally similar, but re- 
 moved at an early period from the exclusive dominion of the priests, exer- 
 cised through the means of oracles and great national festivities, which con- 
 tinually placed the people in movement and the citizens in connection one 
 with the other, — exercised, I say, no other influence and acquired no other 
 authority than that of popular legends and traditions. With this feature 
 of the national character in ancient Etruria, a feature which emanates from 
 a primitive disposition, strengthened by the sacerdotal system, we shall 
 soon see how strongly impressed are all the monuments of this people. 
 Hence the human sacrifices which were for a long time in use there. Hence 
 the blood-stained combats of gladiators, which were also of Etruscan origin, 
 and which, after having been for a long time a game among that people, 
 became a passion among the Romans. Hence, in fine, the terrible images 
 made to inspire terror which are so frequently produced on the monuments 
 of this people, — the larvae, the phantoms, the monsters of all kinds, the Soyl- 
 lae, the Medusa, the Furies with hideous features, and Divine justice under 
 
126 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 This sensuousness of imagination and cruel conception 
 of the*future passed into the Roman Christian Church. 
 
 The sublime conception of the Evil One as an intelli- 
 gent prince, who would organize the world for selfish 
 pleasure, and who perpetually strives to bring down 
 spirit to matter and life to mere sense, the everlast- 
 ing antagonist of the God of love and of pure spirit, 
 gives place in the Roman theology to those monstrous 
 images which have but the single attribute of hideous 
 and brutal cruelty. That fatal taint has corrupted 
 the popular idea of Satan to this day. He is not a 
 mighty spirit, but a sooty monster, an infernal vam- 
 pire, a heathen Gorgon. The figures of the Scrip- 
 ture, which in their place are not misleading, the 
 serpent and the lion, (figures employed by Jesus to 
 inculcate qualities becoming even in Christians,) joined 
 to the herd of bestial images with which heathenism 
 — the heathenism of a degraded Christianity — has 
 filled the world, lapse into excessive grossness and 
 vulgarity. 
 
 Not such was the great Tempter of the wUdemess. 
 He might well have risen upon the Saviour's sight as 
 fair as when, after a stormy night, the morning star 
 dawns from the east upon the mariner, — " an angel 
 of light." To suppose that there could be any temp- 
 tation experienced by Jesus at the solicitation of 
 such a Devil as has been pictured by the imaginar 
 tions of monks, is to degrade him to the level of the 
 lowest natures. In this ecstatic vision we may sup- 
 avenging forms ; wMle in Greece milder manners, cultivated by a more 
 humane religion, represented death under agreeable, smiling, and almost 
 voluptuous images." — Kaoul Eochette, Lectures on Ancient Art, translated 
 from the French, (London, 1854,) pp. 54, 55. 
 
TEE TEMPTATION. 127 
 
 pose that there arose upon the Saviour's iinagmation 
 the grandest conception of reason and of wisdom. 
 It was not meant to seem a temptation, Taut only a 
 rational persuasion. It was the Spirit of this, World 
 soliciting Jesus to employ that Divine power which 
 now began to efiulge in him, for seciilar and physical, 
 rather than for moral and spiritual ends. It was, if 
 one might so say, the whole selfish spirit of time and 
 history pleading that Jesus should work upon matter 
 and for the flesh, rather than upon the soul and for 
 the spirit. 
 
 "If thou be the Son of God, command that these 
 stones be made bread." 
 
 If this scene were historic in the sense of an ordi- 
 nary personal history, how slight to a divine nature 
 would be the temptation of eating bread, and how 
 harmless the act solicited ! For if it is right that 
 man should employ his faculties in rearing harvests 
 to supply necessary food, would it be wrong for the 
 Son of Man to employ his power in procuring the 
 needed bread ? 
 
 But as a vision of prophetic ecstasy, in which bread 
 is the symbol of physical life, the temptation is genu- 
 ine and vital. "Draw from its sheath the power of thine 
 omnipotence, if thou be the Son of God. Come forth 
 from the wilderness as the patron of physical thrift. 
 Teach men inventions. Multiply harvests. Cover the 
 world with industry and wealth. Nourish commerce. 
 Let villages grow to cities. Let harbors swarm with 
 ships. How glorious shalt thou be, how will men follow 
 thee and all the world be subdued to thy empire, if 
 thou wilt command the very stones to become bread ! 
 If such power as thou surely hast shall inspire even 
 
128 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 the dead rocks with nourishment, Nature, through all 
 her realm, will feel the new life, and seed and jBniit, 
 vine and tree, will give forth, a glorious abimdance, and, 
 the wilderness shall blossom as the rose." 
 
 This temptation, interpreted from the side of pro- 
 phetic symbolism, struck the very key-note. Shall 
 Jesus be simply a civilizer, or shall he come to develop 
 a new soul-hfe ? Is it to give new force to matter, or 
 to break through matter and raise the human soul to 
 the-Hght and joy of the great spiritual sphere beyond? 
 He came from the spirit-land to guide the itmermost 
 soul of man, through matter, to victory over it. 
 
 The reply, " It is written, Man shall not live by bread 
 alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the 
 mouth of Grod," is the precise counterpart and repul- 
 sion of the perverting suggestion of Satan. " Men do 
 not need that to be strengthened in them which is 
 already too strong. Not sUver and gold, nor wine 
 and oil, nor cities and kingdoms great in riches, will 
 raise my brethren to a higher manhood. My new 
 food they need, but that food is spirit-life. The word 
 of love, the word of mercy, the word of justice and 
 holiness, issuing from God, — on these the inner life 
 of man must feed." 
 
 Was not this single temptation a glass in which 
 he saw the whole throng of temptations that would 
 meet him at every turn, namely, of absolute power 
 used for immediate and personal convenience? We 
 do not enough consider what a perpetual self-denial 
 would be required to carry omnipotence, unused and 
 powerless, amidst the urgent requirements of a life 
 vehemently pressed with motives of self-indulgence 
 in its myriad minor forms. 
 
THE TEMPTATION. 129 
 
 ■ The vision passed; but another rose in its place. 
 Since he would not employ physical power for physical 
 results, since men were not to be led through their 
 physical wants, but through their spiritual nature, 
 Jesus was next solicited to let the spirit of admi- 
 ration and praise be the genius of the new move- 
 ment. And now the vision took form. There stood 
 the Temple, and from the peak of the roof on the 
 court of Solomon, the plunge downward, over the 
 cliff, to the deep vaUey below, was fearful. But won- 
 derful indeed would it be if one casting himself down 
 thither, in the sight of priests and people, should be 
 buoyed up by iavisible hands, and, bird-like, move 
 through the air unharmed. 
 
 " If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from 
 hence ; for it is written. 
 
 He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee ; 
 
 And in their hands they shall bear thee up, 
 
 Lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone." 
 
 This sjTubol, as a trial scene, contains not only an 
 appeal to the love of praise in Jesus, but an appeal 
 to the principle of admiration in the multitude. K 
 he would have a prosperous following and an easy vic- 
 tory over the world, let him become the master of 
 marvels. Let him show men that a Divinity was 
 among them, not by the inspiration of a higher life 
 in their souls, but by such a use of Divine power as 
 should captivate the fancy of all who saw the won- 
 ders of skill, of beauty, of power and daring, which he 
 should show. StUl more, let him employ his Divine 
 power to shield his heart from the contempt of in- 
 feriors who were outwardly to be his masters. He 
 was to be a servant, when he knew that he was Lord ; 
 
130 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 he was to have not where to lay his head, — birds- 
 and foxes having more rights than he. He was to be 
 surrounded with spies, and pointed at as a Jew with- 
 out love of country, as conniving with Rome and 
 undermining the Temple. In every way, his outward 
 inferiority was to be sharply brought home to him, 
 and that instinctive desire of all right souls, to ,be 
 held in esteem, was to be painfully excited. One 
 flash of his will, and scoffs would become hosannas. 
 Let him employ Divine power for the production of 
 pleasure and surprise and brilliant applause, and men 
 would honor him, and save him from that under- 
 valuing contempt which the spirit of the Temple (on 
 which in vision he stood) was yet erelong to pour 
 upon him. 
 
 In a parallel way, the apparition from the mountain- 
 top, of all the glory of the nations, as a literal fact 
 was impossible except by a miracle. And though a 
 miracle is a fact wholly within the bounds of reason, 
 yet we are not needlessly to convert common events 
 into miracles. There is no such mountaia, nor on a 
 round globe can be. Besides, as a direct persuasion 
 to worship Satan, it would be worse than feeble, it 
 would be puerile. Far otherwise would it seem ui 
 a prophetic vision, where, as a symbol, it was to the 
 real truth what letters and sentences are to the mean- 
 ing which they express. The impression produced 
 outruns the natural force of the symbol. 
 
 There was a tremendous temptation to exhibit be- 
 fore men his real place and authority; to appear as 
 great as he really was ; to so use his energies that men 
 should admit him to be greater than generals, higher 
 than kings, more glorious than Temple or Palace. In 
 
THE TEMPTATION. 131 
 
 that mountain vision he saw the line of temptations 
 which would beat in upon the principle of self-esteem, 
 that source and fountain of ambition among men. In 
 all three of these final outbursts we see a prophetic 
 representation of temptations addressed to his public 
 and ministerial course. They related to that mat- 
 ter of transcendent importance, the carriage and uses 
 of absolute power. He was in danger of breaking 
 through the part which he had imdertaken. He must 
 keep the level of humanity, not in moral character 
 alone, but ia the whole handling of his Divinity. Men 
 have argued that Christ did not manifest Divine 
 power ; forgetting that it was to lay aside his govern- 
 ing power, and to humble himself as a man, that he 
 came into the world. With men, the difficulty is to 
 rise into eminence. "With Jesus, the very reverse was 
 true. To keep upon the level of humanity was his 
 task, and to rise into a common and familiar use of 
 absolute power was his danger. 
 
 This view is not exhaustively satisfactory. No view 
 is. Whichever theory one takes in explaining the 
 Temptation, he must take it with its painful perplex- 
 ities. That which is important to any proper con- 
 sideration of the obscure sublimity of this mystery 
 is, that it shall be a temptation of the Devil as an 
 actual personal spirit; that it shall be a real temp- 
 tation, or one that put the faculties of Christ's soul 
 to task, and required a resistance of his whole nature, 
 as other temptations do of human nature. It is on 
 this account that we have regarded the Temptation 
 as of two parts or series, — the first, a personal and 
 private conflict running through forty solitary days 
 of fasting in the wilderness ; and the second, a min- 
 
132 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 isterial trial, represented by the symbolism of the 
 bread, the Temple, and the mountain-top. 
 
 It is not because we think the literal history open 
 to many of the objections urged that we prefer the 
 theory of a symbolic vision. The difficulty sometimes 
 alleged, that the Scripture narrative clothes Satan 
 with transcendent power, is not a vaHd objection, 
 unless the whole spirit of the New Testament on this 
 point be false and misleading. He is a prince of 
 power. Neither is it an objection that Christ seemed 
 to submit to his dictation. For Jesus had humbled 
 himself; he had put himself under the dominion of 
 natural law, of civil rulers, of ecclesiastical require- 
 ments; and why should we hesitate to accept this 
 experience of the domineering arm of the Tempter? 
 
 Nor should we hesitate, if they were all, at the 
 feeble questions, " How could he be conveyed to the 
 Temple's summit?" and, "How would it be possi- 
 ble from any mountain-top to see the whole world, 
 or any considerable part of it?" If the temptation 
 in such a literal manner was needful and appropri- 
 ate, there can be no doubt that there was miraculous 
 power to produce its conditions. 
 
 But we disincline to the literal because it renders 
 Satan a wretched, puerile creature, shallow, flippant, 
 and contemptible. It makes it impossible that Christ 
 should have been tempted. Such bald suggestions 
 would scarcely have power to move a child. They 
 would be to Christ what a fool's bauble would be 
 to a statesman like Cecil, what a court jester's frib- 
 bles would have been to Bacon or to Sully. The 
 very possibihty of tempting such a one as Jesus re- 
 quires that Satan should be a person of some gran- 
 
THE TEMPTATION. 133 
 
 deur of nature, one whose suggestions should indicate 
 a knowledge of the springs of the human heart, and 
 some wisdom in acting upon them. 
 
 The practical benefit of this mysterious and obscure 
 passage in the life of Jesus does not depend upon 
 our ability to reduce it by analysis to some equiv- 
 alent m. human experience. It is enough that the 
 fact stands clear, that he who was henceforth to be 
 the spiritual leader of the race came to his power 
 among men by means of trial and suffering. The 
 experience of loneliness, of hunger, and of weariness 
 for forty days, of inward strife against selfishness, 
 pride, and the glittering falsities of vanity, brought 
 him into sympathy with the trials through which must 
 pass every man who seeks to rise out of animal con- 
 ditions into a true manhood. Suffering has slain myr- 
 iads ; yet, of all who have reached a true moral great- 
 ness, not one but has been nourished by suffering. 
 Perfection and suffering seem, in this sphere, insep- 
 arably joined as effect and cause. 
 
 Here too, in this strange retirement, we behold the 
 New Man refusing the inferior weapons of common 
 secular life, determined to conquer by " things that 
 are not," by the "invincible might of weakness," by 
 the uplifting force of humility, by the secret energy 
 of disinterested love, and by that sublime insight. 
 Faith, not altogether unknown before, but which 
 thereafter was to become the great spiritual force of 
 history. 
 
134 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 JESUS, HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 
 
 No man will ever succeed in so reproducing an age 
 long past that it shall seem to the beholder as it did 
 to those who lived in it. Even if one is in possession 
 of all the facts, and has skill to draw a perfect pictm-e, 
 he cannot prevent our looking upon a past age with 
 modern eyes, and with feelings and associations that 
 will put into the picture the coloring of our own time. 
 But we can approach the times and spirit of Eoman 
 life, or of life in Athens in the days of Socrates, far 
 more readily and easily than we can the Jewish life 
 in the time of Christ. He was of the Shemitic race ; 
 we are of the Japhetic. The orderliness of our 
 thought, the regulated perceptions, the logical ar- 
 rangements, the rigorous subordination of feehng to 
 volition, the supremacy of reason over sentiment and 
 imagination, which characterize our day, make it al- 
 most impossible for us to be in full sympathy with 
 people who had little genius for abstractions, and whose 
 thought moved in such association with feeling and 
 imagination that to the methodical man of the West 
 much of Oriental literature which is most esteemed ia 
 its home seems like a glittering dream or a' gorgeous 
 fantasy. 
 
 But the attempt to reproduce the person and miiid 
 of Jesus, aside from the transcendent elevation of the 
 
BIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 135 
 
 subject, meets with a serious obstacle in our uncon- 
 scious preconceptions. We cannot see him in Galilee, 
 nor in Judaea, just as he was. We look back upon 
 him through a blaze of light. The utmost care will 
 not wholly prevent our beholding Jesus through the 
 mediiun of subsequent history. It is not the Jesus 
 who suffered in Palestine that we behold, but the Christ 
 that has since filled the world with his name. It is 
 difficult to put back into the simple mechanic citizen 
 Him whom ages have exalted to Divinity. Even 
 if we could strain out the color of history, we could 
 not stop the beatings of the heart, nor disenchant the 
 imagination, nor forget those personal struggles and 
 deep experiences which have connected our lives in 
 so strange a manner with his. We cannot lay aside 
 our faith hke a garment, nor change at wUl our 
 yearning and affection for Christ, so as not to see 
 him in the light of our own hearts. His very name 
 is a love-name, and kindles in tender and grateful 
 natures a kind of poetry of feeling. As at evening 
 we see the sun through an atmosphere which the sun 
 itself has filled with vapor, -and by which its color 
 and dimensions are changed to the eye, so we see 
 in Jesus the qualities which he has inspired in us. 
 
 Such a state of mind inclines one to devotion, 
 rather than to philosophical accuracy. The exalted 
 idea which we hold of Jesus, and our implicit and rev- 
 erential view of his Divinity, still tend, as they have 
 tended hitherto, to give an ideal color to his person 
 and to his actual appearance among men in the times 
 in which he lived. It is unconsciously assumed that 
 the inward Divinity manifested itself in his form and 
 mien. We see him in imagination, not as they saw 
 
136 TEE LIFE. OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 him who companied with him from the beginning, but 
 under the dazzUng reflection of two thousand years of 
 adoration. To men of his own times he was simply a 
 citizen. He came to earth to be a man, and succeeded 
 so perfectly that he seemed to his own age and to his 
 followers to be only a man. That he was remarkable 
 for purity and for power of an extraordinary kind, that 
 he was a great prophet, and Hved in the enjojrment 
 of peculiar favor with God, and in the exercise of pre- 
 rogatives not vouchsafed to mere men, was fully ad- 
 mitted ; but until after his resurrection, none even of 
 ■ his disciples, and stiU. less any in the circle beyond, 
 seem to have held that view of his person which 
 we are prone to form when in imagiaation we go 
 back to Palestine, carrying with us the ideas, the 
 pictures, the worship, which long years of training 
 have bred in us. 
 
 There is one conversation "recorded which bears 
 directly on this very point, namely, the impression 
 which Jesus made upon his own time and country- 
 men. It was near the end of his first year of min- 
 istry. He was in the neighborhood of Caesarea Phi- 
 Hppi, north of Galilee, where he had been engaged 
 in wayside prayer with his disciples. By combming 
 the narratives in the synoptic Gospels we have the 
 following striking conversation. 
 
 "Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?" 
 
 And the disciples answered and said : " Some say . 
 that thou art John the Baptist ; but some say Elijah, 
 and others say Jeremiah, or that one of the old proph- 
 ets is risen again." 
 
 And Jesus saith unto them: "But whom say ye 
 that I am?" 
 
1. EAULIEST KNOWN, FROM CATACOMBS 
 OF ST. CALIXTUS. 
 
 2. FKOM EMERALD INTAGLIO OF 
 EMPEBOll TIBEUIUS. 
 
 4. AFTER ALBRECHT DtfRER. 
 
 6. AFTER PAUL DE LA ROCHE. 
 
BIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE. I37 
 
 Simon Peter answered and said unto him : " Thou 
 art the Christ, the Son of the living God." 
 
 This, it is true, is an explicit avowal of the speak- 
 er's belief that Jesus was the Messiah. But how im- 
 perfect the reigning expectation of even the most 
 intelligent Jews must have been, in regard to that 
 long-expected personage, need not be set forth. That 
 the disciples themselves had but the most vague 
 and unsatisfying notion is shown, not alone by 
 their whole career untU after the Lord's ascension, 
 but by the instruction which Jesus proceeded to 
 give them in immediate connection with this con- 
 versation. He began to make known to them what 
 should befall him at Jerusalem, his sufferings, his 
 death and resurrection ; whereat Peter rebuked him, 
 and was himself reproved for the unworthiness of his 
 conceptions. 
 
 There is absolutely nothing to determine the per- 
 sonal appearance of Jesus. Some ideas of his bear- 
 ing, and many of his habits, may be gathered from 
 incidental elements recorded in the Gospels. But to 
 his form, his height, the character of his face, or of 
 any single feature of it, there is not the slightest al- 
 lusion. Had Jesus lived in Greece, we should have 
 had a very close portraiture of his person and counte- 
 nance. Of the great men of Greece — of Socrates, of 
 Demosthenes, of Pericles, and of many others — we 
 have more or less accurate details of personal appear- 
 ance. Coins and statues reveal the features of the 
 Roman contemporaries- of Jesus ; but of Him, the one 
 historic personage of whose form and face the whole 
 world most desires some knowledge, there is not a 
 trace or a hint. The disciples were neither literary 
 
138 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 nor artistic men. It is doubtful whether the genius 
 of the race to which they belonged ever inclined 
 them to personal descriptions or dehneations. 
 
 The rehgion and the patriotism of the Greek incited 
 him to fin his temples with statues of gods, and with 
 the busts of heroes and of patriots. The Greek artist 
 was scrupulously trained to the study of the human 
 form, with special reference to its representation in 
 art. But the Jew was forbidden to make any image 
 or likeness or symbol of Divinity. The prohibition, 
 though primarily confined to Deity, could not but 
 affect the whole education in art; and it is not sur- 
 prising that there was no Jewish art, — that paintings 
 and statues were imknown, — that Solomon's Temple 
 was the single specimen of pure Jewish architecture 
 of which there is any history. Probably even that 
 was Phoenician, or, as spme think, Persian. 
 
 But when men have not formed the habit of rep- 
 resenting external things from an artistic point of 
 view, they do not observe them closely. We cannot, 
 therefore, wonder that there is nothing which was at 
 any time said by the common people, or by their 
 teachers and rulers, and that nothing fell out upon 
 his trial, among Roman spectators, and nothing va. the 
 subsequent history, which throws a ray of light upon 
 the personal appearance of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 
 We know not whether he was of moderate height 
 or tall, whether his hair was dark or light, whether 
 his eyes were blue, or gray, or piercing black. We 
 have no hint of mouth or brow, of posture, gesture, 
 or of those personal peculiarities which give to every 
 man his individual look. All is blank, although four 
 separate accounts of him were written within fifty 
 
SIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 139 
 
 years of his earthly life. He is to us a personal 
 power without a form, a name of wonder without por- 
 traiture. It is true that there is a conventional head 
 of Christ, which has come down to us through the 
 schools of art, but it is of no direct historic value. 
 
 The early Fathers were divided in opinion, whether 
 our Lord had that dignity and beauty which became 
 so exalted a person, or whether he was uncomely 
 and insignificant in appearance. Both views appealed 
 to the prophecies of the Old Testament respecting 
 the Messiah: "Thou art fairer than the children of 
 men;, grace is poured into thy Ups; therefore God 
 hath blessed thee forever. Gird thy sword upon thy 
 thigh, most Mighty, ■ with thy glory and thy ma- 
 jesty." (Psalm xlv. 2, 3.) 
 
 On the other hand : " Who hath beheved our re- 
 port ? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed ? 
 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, 
 and as a root out of a dry ground; he hath no form 
 nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is 
 no beauty that we should desire him." (Isaiah liii. 
 1,2.) 
 
 As men adhered to the one or the other of these 
 and like passages, they formed their theory of Christ's 
 personal appearance. During the persecutions of the 
 second and third centuries, the poor and despised 
 Christian found it pleasant to believe that his Master 
 was, though very God, yet as insignificant outwardly, 
 and as wretched, as the most vulgar of his disciples. 
 But when Christianity began to triumph, and to ' 
 hold the sceptre of government, it was very natural 
 that its votaries should desire to give to its founder 
 a more regal aspect. St. Jerome inveighed against 
 
140 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CERIST. 
 
 the earUer view, contending that, had our Lord not 
 carried a truly Divine countenance, his disciples would 
 not so implicitly have obeyed and foHowed him at his 
 first caU. It was not far, probably, from the begin- 
 ning of the fourth century that the famous letter 
 was forged, purporting to have been written by 
 Publius Lentulus, a friend of PUate, and a contem- 
 porary of Jesus, of which we shall soon speak. 
 
 Portraits of Christ began to appear about the same 
 time, each one having a legend which carried it back 
 to the original; and by the sixth century every prin- 
 cipal city and Christian community had some image, 
 picture, cameo, or other representation of Christ, of 
 which hardly any two were ahke. The absurdity 
 became so offensive that the Seventh General Coun- 
 cil, held in Constantinople in 754, condemned all pic- 
 tures whatsoever which pretended to have come 
 direct from Christ or his Apostles.^ 
 
 Such a letter as the fictitious epistle of PubUus 
 Lentulus, had one been written by a Greek or 
 Roman contemporary of the Lord, would be of un- 
 speakable interest. But, aside from the rare beauty 
 of its description, this famous letter is of interest 
 only as showing what were the received opinions of 
 Christians in the fourth century respecting our Lord's 
 personal appearance. We append the letter.^ 
 
 ' An excellent summary of tlie history of the ideas concerning our Lord's 
 appearance may be found in the Introduction to the first voliune of the 
 Life of our Lord as exemplified in Works of Art, &o., &c., begun by Mrs. 
 Jameson, and continued by Lady Eastlake. 
 
 '^ "In this time appeared a man, who lives till now, — a man endowed with 
 great powers. Men call him a great prophet ; his own disciples term him 
 the Son of God. His name is Jesus Christ. He restores the dead to life, 
 and cures the sick of all manner of diseases. 
 
 " This man is of noble and well-proportioned stature, with a face full of 
 
HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 141 
 
 Although the sacred Scriptures furnish not a single 
 hint of his mien, and although the negative evidence is 
 strong that there was nothing remarkable in his coun- 
 tenance on ordinary occasions, it is not improbable 
 that his disciples, as they everywhere narrated the 
 principal events of his life, would be inquired of as 
 to their Master's looks. Nor is it imlikely that they 
 recalled what they could of his countenance, for the 
 gratification of a curiosity inspired by love and rever- 
 ence. The letter of Pubhus Lentulus may therefore 
 be supposed to give a clear view of the countenance 
 which art had already adopted, and which afterward 
 served virtually as the type of all th^g^eads of Christ 
 by the great Italian masters, and by almost aU mod- 
 em artists. It is not a little remarkable that this 
 typical head of Christ is not a Jewish head. The 
 first portraits of Christ were made by Greek artists, 
 in the degenerate days of Grrecian art. They could 
 hardly help bringing unconsciously to their work the 
 
 kindness and yet firmness, so that tlie beholders both love him and fear 
 him. His hair is the color of wine, and golden at the root, — straight, and 
 without lustre, — but fi-om the level of the ears curUng and glossy, and di- 
 vided down the centre after the fashion of the Nazarenes (i. e. Nazarites). 
 His forehead is even and smooth, his face without blemish, and enhanced 
 by a tempered bloom. His countenance ingenuous and kind. Nose and 
 mouth are in no way faulty. His beard is full, of the same color as his hair, 
 and forked in form ; his eyes blue, and extremely brilliant. 
 
 " In reproof and rebuke he is formidable ; in exhortation and teaching, 
 gentle and amiable of tongue. None have seen him to laugh ; but many, 
 on the contrary, to weep. His person is tall; his hands beautiful and 
 straight. In speaking he is deliberate and grave, and little given to lo- 
 quacity. In beauty surpassing most men." 
 
 There is another description of Jesus found in the writings of St. John of 
 Damascus, who lived in the eighth century, and which is taken, without doubt, 
 from earlier writers. He says that " Jesus was of stately growth, with eye- 
 brows that joined together, beautiful eyes, curly hair, in the prime of life, 
 with black beard, and with a yellow complexion and long fingers like his 
 mother." 
 
142 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 feelings and ideas inspired by the splendid represen- 
 tations which had been made, by the renowned ar- 
 tists of their country, of the figures and heads of the 
 mythologic deities, and especially of Zeus, — to them 
 not only the chief of gods, but the highest reahza- 
 tion of majesty and authority. 
 
 But now is to be seen the modifying influence of 
 the Christian ideas in respect to the expression of 
 Divinity. The Christian artists all attempted to ex- 
 press in our Lord's face a feehng of spiritual eleva- 
 tion and of sympathy, which was wholly unknown 
 to classic Grecian art. Although there is in the early 
 heads of Christ the form of a Greek ideal philoso- 
 pher's face, or of a god's, the sentiment which it ex- 
 presses removes it from the sphere of Greek ideas. 
 
 Still less is the historic art-head of Christ of the 
 Roman type. The round Roman head, the hard lines 
 of face, the harsh energy of expression, form a strik- 
 ing contrast with the gentle, thoughtful, sympathetic 
 countenance which comes down to us from the fourth 
 century. As Christ spiritually united in himself all 
 nationalities, so in art his head has a certain uni- 
 versality. All races find in it something of their race 
 features. The head of Christ, as it comes to us from 
 the great Italian masters, is to art what the heart of 
 Christ has been to the human race. 
 
 But how unsatisfying is all art, even in its noblest 
 achievements, when by the presentation of a human 
 face it undertakes to meet the conceptions which we 
 have of the glory of Divinity! When art sets itself 
 to represent a Divine face in Christ, it aims not only 
 at that which is intrinsically impossible, but at an 
 unhistorical fact. It was not to show his royalty 
 
SIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE. I43 
 
 that Christ came into the -world. He took upon him- 
 self the form of a man. He looked like a man. He 
 lived and acted as a man. The very miracles which 
 he wrought served to show, by contrast, the profound 
 agreement of his general life with the great lower 
 realm of nature into which he had descended. 
 
 The attempt to kindle his face to such ethereal 
 glow that it shall seem lost in hght, must carry the 
 artist away from the distinctive fact of the life of 
 Jesus. He was not a inan striving to rise to' the 
 Deity. He was God in the flesh, seeking to restrain 
 his Divinity within such bounds as should identify 
 him with his brethren, and keep him within the range 
 of their personal sjmapathy. 
 
 No one view of the head of Jesus can satisfy the 
 desires of a devout spectator. It is impossible for 
 art to combine majesty and meekness, suffering and 
 joy, indignation and love, sternness and tenderness, 
 grief and triumph, in the same face at one time. 
 Yet some special representations may come much 
 nearer to satisfying us than others. The Christ of 
 Michael Angelo, in his renowned picture of the Last 
 Judgment, is repulsive. The head and face of Christ 
 by Leonardo da Vinci, in the Last Supper, even in 
 its present wasted condition, produces an impression 
 upon a sensitive nature which it will never forget, 
 nor wish to forget. But few of all the representations 
 of Christ which have become famous in art are at all 
 helpful, either in bringing us toward any adequate 
 conception of the facts of history, or in giving help 
 to our devout feelings by furnishing them an out- 
 ward expression. The great crowd of pictorial efforts 
 neither aid devotion, represent history, nor dignify 
 
144 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 art Made without reverence, as professional exer- 
 cises, they lower the tone of our thoughts and mis- 
 lead our imagination. Taking all time together, it 
 may well be doubted whether religion has not lost 
 more than it has gained by the pictorial represen- 
 tation of Jesus. The old Hebrew example was far 
 grander. The Hebrew taught men spirituality, when 
 he forbade art to paint or to carve an image of the 
 formless Deity; and although Jesus of Nazareth was 
 "God manifest in the flesh," and in so far not to be 
 reckoned rigidly as within the old Hebrew rule, yet 
 even in this case art can touch only the humiUation 
 of Divinity, and not its glory. 
 
 We could afford to lose the physical portraiture of 
 Jesus, if in its stead we could obtain such an idea of 
 his personal bearing and carriage as should place him 
 before our eyes with that impressive individuahty 
 which he must have had in the sight of his contempo- 
 raries. Fortunately there are glimpses of his per- 
 sonal bearing. As soon as men cease to divide the 
 life of Christ, and apportion one part to the man and 
 the other to the God, as soon as they accept his 
 whole Hfe and being in its unity, — God manifest in 
 the flesh, — events become more significant. They 
 are not the actions of a human soul in some strange 
 connection with a Divine nature ; they are the out- 
 working of the Divme nature placed in human circum- 
 stances. Their value, as interpreters of the Divine 
 feelings, dispositions, and will, is thus manifestly 
 augmented. 
 
 Every system, whether of philosophy or of re- 
 ligion, that was ever propounded, before Christianity, 
 might be received without any knowledge, in the dis- 
 
HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 145 
 
 ciple, of the person of its teacher. The Parsee and 
 the Buddhist believe in a system more than in a 
 person. What Plato taught is more important than 
 what Plato himself was. One may accept all of Soc- 
 rates's teaching without caring for Socrates himself. 
 Even Paul's development of Christian ideas does not 
 require that one should accept Paul. 
 
 Not so Christianity. Christianity is faith in Christ. 
 The vital union of our souls with his was the sum of 
 his teaching, the means by which our nature was to 
 be carried up to God's ; and all other doctrines were 
 auxiliary to this union, or a guide to the life which 
 should spring from it. To live in him, to have him 
 dwelling in us, to lose our personal identity in his, 
 and to have it return to us purified and ennobled, — 
 this is the very marrow of his teaching. " I in them, 
 and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in 
 one." The Apostle summarized Christianity as "Christ 
 in you, the hope of glory." 
 
 The very genius of Christianity, then, requires a 
 distinct conception, not of Christ's person, but of his 
 personality. This may account for the structure of 
 the Gospels. They are neither journals nor itinera- 
 ries j still less are they orderly expositions of doc- 
 trine. The Gospels are the collective reminiscences 
 of Christ by the most impressible of his disciples. 
 Their memories would retain the most characteristic 
 transactions which took place during their intercourse 
 with the Master, while mere incidental things, the 
 prosaic and unpictorial portions of his life, would fade 
 out. We find, therefore, as might be expected, in 
 all the Gospels, pictures of Christ which represent 
 the social and spiritual elements of his life, rather 
 
 10 
 
146 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 than the corporeal. If these biographies be compared 
 with the physical portraiture of heroes and gods 
 which classic literature has furnished, the contrast 
 will be striking. The Gospels give a portrait, not 
 of attitudes or of features, but of the disposition and 
 of the soul. 
 
 Most men, it may be suspected, think of Jesus as 
 one above the ordinary level of human existence, 
 looking pitifully down upon the gay and innocent 
 pursuits of common life, — abstract, ethereal, wise, 
 and good, but living apart from men, and descend- 
 ing to their level only to give them rebuke or in- 
 struction. 
 
 But we shall miss the free companionship of Christ, 
 if we thus put him out of the famUiar sympathies 
 of every-day Ufe. He was not a pulseless being, 
 feeding on meditations, but a man in every honorable 
 trait of manhood, and participating in the whole 
 range of industries, trials, joys, sorrows, and tempta- 
 tions of human kind. During at least twenty years 
 of his life, if we subtract his childhood, he was a 
 common laborer. There are incidental evidences that 
 he did not attract attention to himself more than any 
 other mechanic. Whatever experience hard-laboring 
 men pass through, of toil poorly requited, of insig- 
 nificance in the sight of the rich and the powerful, 
 of poverty with its cutting bonds and its hard limita- 
 tions, Jesus had proved through many patient years. 
 And when he began his ministry, he did not stand 
 aloof like an ambassador from a foreign court, watch- 
 ing the development of citizen manners as a mere 
 spectator. He entered into the society of his times, 
 and was an integral part of it. He belonged to the 
 
HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE. I47 
 
 nation, was reared under its laws and customs, par- 
 took of its liabilities, liad the ardor of elevated patri- 
 otism, and performed all the appropriate duties of a 
 citizen. John says, "He dwelt amonff us." 
 
 And yet it is difficult to conceive of him as spe- 
 cialized, either to any nation or to any class or pro- 
 fession. He was universal. Although he had the 
 sanctity of the priest, he was more than priest. 
 Though he had a philosopher's wisdom, he had a 
 royal sympathy with aU of human life, quite foreign 
 to the philosophic temper. He was more than a 
 prophet, more than a Jew. He touched human Ufe 
 on every side, though chiefly in its spiritual ele- 
 ments. He moved alike among men of every kind, 
 and was at home with each. Among the poor he 
 was as if poor, among the rich as if bred to wealth. 
 Among children he was a familiar companion ; among 
 doctors of theology an unmatched disputant. Sympa- 
 thy, Versatility, and Universality are the terms which 
 may with justice be applied to him. 
 
 He loved active society, and yet he was fond of 
 solitude ; he loved assembhes ; he loved wayside con- 
 versations with all sorts of men and women. To-day 
 he roamed the highway, living upon the alms of lov- 
 ing friends, and sleeping at night where he chanced 
 to find a bed; to-morrow we shall find him at the 
 feasts of rich men, both courted and feared. That 
 he did not sit at the table a mere spectator of social 
 joy is plain from the fact which he himself mentions, 
 that by his participation in feasts he brought upon 
 himself the reputation of being a reveller ! (Matthew 
 xi. 19.) The "beginning of miracles" at Cana was 
 one which was designed to prolong the festivities of 
 
148 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 a marriage feast. There is not the record of a single 
 reprehension of social festivity, not a severe speech, 
 not a disapproving sentence uttered against the pur- 
 suits and enjoyments of common hfe. He was neither 
 an Ascetic nor a Stoic. The feasts of which he par- 
 took, and which so often form the basis of his para- 
 bles, glowed with the warmth and color of iimocent 
 enjoyment. It is plain, both that he loved to see 
 men happy, and that he was himself, in his ordinary 
 moods, both genial and cheerful, or he could not 
 have glided so harmoniously from day to day into 
 the domestic and business hfe of his countrymen. 
 It was only in their public relations, and upon ques- 
 tions of morality and spirituality, that he ever came 
 into earnest colhsion with men. 
 
 It should be noticed, also, that there was a pecuhar 
 kindness in his bearing which drew him close to 
 men's persons, — the natural language of affection 
 and sympathy. He touched the eyes of the blind; he 
 put his finger in the ears of the deaf; he laid his 
 hands upon the sick. The incidental phrases, almost 
 unnoticed in the Gospels, show this yearning per- 
 sonal familiarity with men: "And he could there do 
 no mighty work, save that he laid his Imnd njjon a few 
 sick folk and healed them."^ "Now when the sun 
 was setting, all they that had any sick with divers 
 diseases brought them unto him; and he laid his 
 hands on every one of them, and healed them."^ "He 
 called her to him, .... and he laid his hands on her : 
 and immediately she was made straight."^ 
 
 The whole narrative of the blind man given by 
 Mark (viii. 22-25) is full of this tender and nursmg 
 
 ' Mark vi. 5. « Luke iv. 40. » Luke xiii. 12, 13. 
 
EIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 149 
 
 personal intercourse : " And he cometh to Bethsaida ; 
 and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought 
 him to touch him. And he took the bhnd man h^ 
 the hand and led him out of the town; and when he 
 had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon Mm, he 
 asked him if he saw aught. And he looked up, 
 and said, I see men as trees walking. After that, 
 he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made 
 him look up : and he was restored, and saw every 
 man clearly." When the leper pleaded that he 
 might be healed, " Jesus put forth his hand, and touched 
 him, .... and immediately his leprosy was cleansed." 
 (Matthew viii. 3, 4.) When the centurion asked him 
 to heal his servant, expecting him only to send the 
 word of power to his distant couch, Jesus repUed, "I 
 will come and heal him." Peter's mother-in-law being 
 sick, "he tooJc her ly the hand, and immediately the 
 fever left her." And so the Gospels are full of 
 phrases that imply a manner of great personal fa- 
 miliarity. "And he came and touched the bier: and 
 they that bare him stood still." "And he touched 
 their eyes." "And touched his tongue." "But Jesus 
 took him by the hand, and lifted him upV 
 
 In no other place is his loving and caressing man- 
 ner more strikingly set forth than in the account of 
 his reception of little children. "And he took them 
 up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed 
 them." These are bosom words, full of love-pressure. 
 And in another instance, when enforcing the truth 
 of disinterestedness, it was not enough to illustrate 
 it by mentioning childhood, but "he tooTt a child, arid 
 set him in the midst of them : and when he had taken 
 Mm in his arms, he said unto them. Whosoever shall 
 
150 ' THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 receive one of such children in my name, receiveth 
 me." (Mark ix. 36, 37.) 
 
 Nor should we fail to notice the interview with 
 Mary, after his resurrection, in the garden. "Touch 
 me not" reveals her spontaneous impulse, and casts 
 back a light upon that sacred household life and love 
 which he had prized so much at Bethany. 
 
 But we are not to suppose, because Jesus moved 
 among the common people as a man among men, 
 that he was regarded by his disciples or by the peo- 
 ple as a common man. On the contrary, there was 
 a mysterious awe, as well as a profound curiosity, 
 concerning him. He was manifestly superior to all 
 about him, not in stature nor in conscious authority, 
 but in those qualities which indicate spiritual power 
 and comprehensiveness. His disciples looked upon 
 TiiTTi both with love and fear. Familiarity and awe 
 alternated. Sometimes they treated him as a com- 
 panion. They expostulated and complained. They 
 disputed his word and rebuked him. At other times 
 they whispered among themselves, and dared not even 
 ask him questions. It is plain that Jesus had moods 
 of lofty abstraction. There were hidden depths. The 
 sublimest exhibition of this took place at his trans- 
 figuration on the mount, but glimpses of the same 
 experience seem to have flashed forth from time to 
 time. His nature was not unfluctuating. It had pe- 
 riods of overflow and of subsidence. 
 
 But these clouded or outshining hours did not pro- 
 duce fear so much as veneration. The general efiect 
 upon his disciples of intimacy with him was love. 
 Those who were capable of understanding him best 
 loved him most. Jesus too was a lover, not alone in 
 
mS PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 151 
 
 the sense of general benevolence, but in tbe habit of 
 concentrated affection for particular persons. "Then 
 Jesus, beholding him, hved him." " He whom thou 
 lovest is sick." "Now Jesus hved Martha, and her 
 sister, and Lazarus." "Then said the Jews, Behold 
 how he loved him." Surely it was not for the first 
 time at the supper following the washing of the disci- 
 ples' feet, that it could be said of John, " He, leaning 
 thus back on Jesus' breast," — for such is the force 
 of the original, in the latest corrected text.^ That 
 must be a loving and demonstrative nature with which 
 such famOiarity could be even possible. 
 
 Mark, more than any other Evangelist, records 
 the power which Christ had in his look. His eye at 
 times seemed to pierce with irresistible power. Only 
 on such a supposition can we account for , the dis- 
 may of those sent to arrest him. The crowd came 
 rushing upon him, led on by Judas. Jesus said, 
 " Whom seek ye ? They answered him, Jesus of Naz- 
 areth. Jesus saith unto them, I am he As 
 
 soon then as he had said unto them I am. he, they 
 went backward, and fell to the groimd." 
 
 When Peter had thrice denied him, "The Lord 
 turned, and looked upon Peter." "And Peter went 
 out and wept bitterly." Such cases will serve to ex- 
 plain instances like that of the healing of the man 
 
 ' The " leaning on Jesus' bosom," in the twenty-third verse (John xiii.), 
 simply indicates that John, reclining at table according to the custom prev- 
 alent since the captivity, came next below Jesus, and his head would there- 
 fore come near to his Master's breast. But in the twenty-fifth verse a differ- 
 ent action is indicated. The language implies, that, in asking the question 
 about the betrayal, he leaned back so as to rest Ids head upon his Lord's 
 bosom. The reading " leaning back on Jesus' breast," instead of " He then 
 lying on Jesus' breast," is approved by Tischendorf, Green, Alford, and 
 Tregelles. 
 
152 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 with a withered hand. And he "looked round about 
 on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness 
 of their hearts." On another occasion he is thus rep- 
 resented: "Who touched me? And he hoJced round 
 about to see her that had done this thing. But the 
 woman, fearing and trembling, .... came and fell 
 down before him." 
 
 It is plain, from a comparison of passages, that his 
 gentle and attractive manners, which made him acces- 
 sible to the poor, the outcast, and the despised, were 
 accompanied by an imperial manner which none 
 ever presumed upon. Indeed, we have incidental 
 mention of the awe which he inspired, even in those 
 who had the right to intimate familiarity. "And 
 none of the disciples durst ask him. Who art thou? 
 knowing that it was the Lord." All three of the 
 synoptical Gospels mention the effect produced by 
 his bearing and by his answers to vexatious ques- 
 tions. "And after that, they durst not ask him. any 
 question at all." 
 
 Mark mentions a very striking incident in a man- 
 ner so modest that its significance is likely to escape 
 us. "And they were in the way, going up to Jerusa- 
 lem ; and Jesus went before them ; and they were 
 amazed ; and as they followed, they were afraid. And 
 he took again the twelve, and began to tell them 
 what things should happen unto him." (Mark x. 32.) 
 It seems that he was so absorbed in the contempla- 
 tion of those great events which already overhung 
 him, and toward which he was quickening his steps, 
 that he got before them and walked alone. As 
 they looked upon him, a change came over his 
 person. Once before, on the mountain, some of them 
 
HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 153 
 
 had been bewildered by his changed look. Yet it 
 was not now an effulgent light, but rather sternness 
 and grandeur, as if his soul by anticipation was in 
 conflict with the powers of darkness, and his whole 
 figure lifted up as in the act of " despising the shame " 
 of the near and ignominious trial. 
 
 Our Lord's great power as a speaker depended 
 essentially upon the profound truths which he uttered, 
 upon the singular skUl with which they were adapted 
 to the peculiar circumstances which called them forth, 
 and to the faculty which he had of uttering in simple 
 and vernacular phrase the most abstruse ideas. But 
 there was besides all this a singular impressiveness of 
 manner which it is probable was never surpassed. His 
 attitude, the extraordinary influence of his eye, his 
 very silence, were elements of power of which the 
 EvangeUsts do not leave us in doubt. 
 
 There is in Mark's account (x. 23) a use of words 
 that indicates a peculiar, long, and penetrating action 
 of the eye, — a hngering dehberation. "And Jesus 
 hoked round ahovt, and saith unto his disciples. How 
 hardly shall they that have riches enter into the 
 kingdom of God!" When the disciples, amazed with 
 the impressiveness of his word and action, asked, 
 "Who, then, can be saved?" he apparently did not 
 reply instantly, but, with the same long gaze, his eye 
 spoke in advance of his tongue. " Jesus, hoMng upon 
 them, saith. With men it is impossible, but not with 
 God." In the account given by Mark (viii. 33) one 
 can see how large an element of impressiveness was 
 derived from Christ's manner and expression, before 
 he spoke a word. "But when he had turned abou.t, 
 and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, 
 Get thee behind me, Satan!" 
 
154 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 There were times when Jesus did not employ words 
 at all. Most impressive effects were derived from 
 his manner alone. "And Jesus entered into Jerusa- 
 lem, and into the temple; and when he had looked 
 round about upon all things, and now the even-tide 
 was come, "he went out mato Bethany." This scene 
 would not have lingered in the mind of the specta- 
 tors, and been recorded in the Gospel, if his air and 
 manner had not been exceedingly striking. It was 
 a picture that could not fade from the memory of 
 those who had seen it, yet it was a scene of perfect 
 silence ! 
 
 There is a poor kind of dignity, that never allows 
 itself to be excited, that is guarded against all sur- 
 prises, that restrains the expression of sudden interest, 
 that holds on its cold and careful way as if superior 
 to the evanescent moods of common men. Such was 
 not Christ's dignity. No one seemed more a man 
 among men in all the inflections of human moods 
 than did Jesus. With the utmost simplicity he suf- 
 fered the events of hfe to throw their lights and 
 shadows upon his soul. He was "grieved," he was 
 "angry," he was "surprised," he "marvelled." In 
 short, his soul moved through all the moods of hu- 
 man experience; and while he rose to subhme com- 
 munion with God, he was also a man among men; 
 whUe he rebuked self-indulgence and frivolity, he 
 cheerfully partook of innocent enjoyments; while he 
 denounced the insincerity or burdensome teachings 
 of the Pharisees, he did not separate himself from 
 their society or from their social life, but even ac- 
 cepted their hospitahty, and his dinner discoiorses 
 contain some of his most pungent teachings. 
 
SIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE. I55 
 
 We have purposely omitted those views of Christ 
 which, through the unfolding process of his life and 
 teaching, developed at length, in the Apostles' minds, 
 to the full and clear revelation of Divinity. We have 
 sketched him as he must have appeared during his 
 ministry, when men were gazing upon him in won- 
 der, thinking that he was " that prophet," or " Elijah," 
 or that Messiah "that should come." 
 
 We must not, then, take with us, in following out 
 the life of Jesus, the conception of a formidable 
 being, terrible in holiness. We must clothe him in 
 our imagination with traits that made little children 
 run to him; that made mothers long to have him 
 touch their babes ; that won to him the poor and suf- 
 fering ; that made the rich and influential throw wide 
 open the doors of their houses to him; that brought 
 around him a company of noble women, who trav- 
 elled with him, attended to his wants, and supphed 
 his necessities from their own wealth ; that irresistibly 
 attracted those other women, in whom vice had not 
 yet destroyed all longing for a better life ; that ex- 
 cited among the learned a vehement curiosity of dis- 
 putation, while the unlettered declared that he spake 
 as one having authority. He was the great Master 
 of nature, observin"^* its laws, lajdng all his plans in 
 consonance with the fixed order of things even in his 
 miracles ; seeming to violate nature, only because he 
 knew that nature is not only and alone that small 
 circle which touches and includes physical matter, 
 but a larger province, enclosing the great spiritual 
 world, including God himself therein. 
 
166 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE OUTLOOK. 
 
 "Think not tliat I am come to destroy the law, 
 or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to 
 fulfil." Jesus would reform the world, not by destroy- 
 ing, but by developing the germs of truth abeady 
 existing. He accepted whatever truth and goodness 
 had ripened through thousands of years. He would 
 join his own work to that already accomphshed, bring- 
 ing to view the yet higher truths of the spiritual reahn. 
 But the design of all his teaching, whether of morahty 
 or of spirituality, was to open the human spirit to the 
 direct influence of the Divine nature. Out of such a 
 union would proceed by spiritual laws and tendencies 
 aU that man needs. 
 
 The reconciliation of the human soul with the Divine 
 is also the harmonization of the two great spheres, 
 the material and the spiritual. Men wUl then be no 
 longer under the exclusive dominion of natural law 
 in the plane of matter. They will come luider the in- 
 fluence of another and a higher form of natural law, 
 that of the spirit. Nature is not confined to matter. 
 To us it begins there ; but nature includes the earth 
 and the heaven, the visible and the invisible, all mat- 
 ter and all spirit. That portion of natural law which 
 regulates physical things is nearest to our knowl- 
 edge, but is not the typical or universal. As seen 
 

CO 
 
TEE OUTLOOK. 157 
 
 from .afeove, doubtless, it is the lowest form of law. 
 Nature is the universe. Nature as men's physical 
 senses discern it is poor and meagre compared with 
 its expansion in the invisible realm where God dwell- 
 eth. Natural laws run through God's dominion in 
 harmonious subordination, those of the spiritual world 
 having pre-eminence and control. 
 
 "We discern in Jesus the demeanor of one who was 
 conscious of the universe, and who knew that this 
 earthly globe is but its least part, — normal, indeed, 
 . and serviceable, but subject, auxiliary, and subordinate 
 to higher elements. He acted as one who recognized 
 the uses of this hfe, but who by a heavenly experience 
 knew its vast relative inferiority. By no word did 
 Jesus undervalue civil laws, governments, the indus- 
 tries of men, and their accumulated wealth ; yet not a 
 syllable of instruction did he let fall on these topics, 
 nor did he employ them to any considerable degree in 
 his ministry. To us, husbandry, navigation, the per- 
 fection of mechanic arts, and the discovery of new 
 forces or the invention of new combinations, seem of 
 transcendent importance. Men have asked whether 
 he who threw no light upon physiology, who made 
 known no laws of health and no antidotes or remedies 
 for wasting sicknesses, who left the world as poor in 
 economic resources as he found it, could be Divine. 
 But to one cognizant of the spiritual universe all 
 these things would seem initial, subordinate, and in- 
 ferior; while the truths' of the soul and of the spirit, 
 the science of holiness, would take precedence of all 
 secular wealth and wisdom. 
 
 Physical elements might be safely left to unfold 
 through that natural law of development which is 
 
158 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 carrying the world steadily forward; but "the spirit 
 is weak." To bring the soul of man into the pres- 
 ence of God, to open his heart to the Divine influ- 
 ence, was a need far greater than that of any sensuous 
 help. We shall find that Jesus differed from ordinary 
 men, not by living above natural laws, but by Hving 
 in a larger sphere of natural laws. He harmonized 
 in his life the laws of spirit and of matter. In aU 
 that pertained to earthly life, he lived just as men 
 live. In that which pertained to the spirit, he lived 
 with the air and manner of one who came from 
 heaven. In his miracles he but exhibited the su- 
 premacy of* the higher over the lower, of the spiritual 
 over the material. A miracle is not the setting aside 
 of a law of nature, it is but the exhibition of the su- 
 premacy of a higher law of nature in a sphere where 
 men have been accustomed to see the operation of 
 the lower natural laws alone. No man is surprised 
 at the obedience of matter to his own wHl. Our 
 control of our bodies, and, generally, of the organ- 
 ized matter of the globe, increases in the ratio of 
 the growth of our mental strength. Jesus declared 
 that, if the soul were opened up to the Divine pres- 
 ence, this power would be greatly augmented; that 
 man's higher spiritual elements had a natural au- 
 thority over the physical conditions of this world; 
 and that faith, prayer, divine communion, in a fer- 
 vent state, would enable his followers to perform the 
 miracles that he himself performed. It was this latent 
 power of man's spiritual nature that Christ sought to 
 develop. He strove to lift men one sphere higher, 
 and, without taking them away from the senses, to 
 break open, as it were, and reveal a realm where the 
 
THE OUTLOOK. 159 
 
 spirit would dominate matter, as in this world matter 
 governs the spirit. 
 
 It is this supremacy of the spiritual over the physi- 
 cal in the great order of a universe-nature, rather than 
 of the earth-nature, that must be borne in mind, both 
 in Christ's own conduct and in his discourses and his 
 promises to those who truly entered his kingdom ; and 
 that is the rational explanation also of the extraor- 
 dinary phenomena which accompanied the Apostle's 
 preaching. (1 Cor. xii. 4-30.) 
 
 Christ was a Jew, and did not refuse to love his 
 country, nor was he without enthusiasm for the his- 
 toric elements wrought out so nobly by the great 
 men of the Hebrew natipn. And yet no one can fail 
 to perceive that above all these patriotic enthusiasms, 
 and far beyond them, he bore a nature which alUed 
 him to universal man without regard to race or pe- 
 riod, and that his being reached higher than that of 
 common humanity, and brooded in the mysterious 
 realms of the spirit land, beyond all human sight or 
 knowledge. 
 
 We may presume, therefore, that in his ministry 
 there will be found a close adhesion to nature ; that 
 as the Son of Man he will follow the methods of ordi- 
 nary physical nature, while as the Son of God he 
 will conform to the laws of spiritual nature. And it 
 may be presupposed that, to those not instructed, one 
 part of such observance of natural law may seem to 
 conflict with another part, whereas both are alike 
 conformable to nature, if by nature is meant Gfod's 
 universe. 
 
 When Jesus began his mission in Palestine, it 
 
160 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 swarmed with a population so mixed with foreign 
 elements that it might almost be said to represent ev- 
 ery people of the then civilized world. No great war 
 seemed able to leave Palestine untouched; whether 
 it was Egypt, or Assyria, or Greece, or Eome that 
 was at war, Palestine was sure to be swept by the 
 inundation. Every retiring wave, too, left behind it a 
 sediment. The physical conformation of the country 
 made the northern part of Palestine a commercial 
 thoroughfare for Eastern and Western nations, whUe 
 Judsea, lying off from the grand routes, and not 
 favorably situated for commerce, was less traversed 
 by merchants, adventurers, or emigrant hordes. And 
 so it happened that Galilee and Samaria were largely 
 adulterated, while Judaea maintained the old Jewish 
 stock with but little foreign mixture. 
 
 The Judsean Jews were proud of thig superiority. 
 They looked upon Galilee as half given over to bar- 
 barism. It was styled "GalUe'e of the Gentiles," 
 since thither had drifted a mixed population in which 
 almost every nati9n had some representatives. No 
 one would suspect from the dreary and impoverished 
 condition of Palestine to-day how popiilous it was in 
 the time of Christ. The ruins of villages, towns, and 
 cities, which aboimd both on the east and the west 
 of the Jordan, confirm the explicit testimony of Jose- 
 phus to the extraordinary populousness of Palestine 
 during our Lord's life and ministry. Samaria, the 
 great middle section of Palestine, besides its large 
 infusion of foreigners, had an adulterated home popu- 
 lation. It was on this account that the puritan Jews 
 of Jerusalem and Judasa abhorred the Samaritans, and 
 refused to have any dealings with them. 
 
TEE OUTLOOK. IgJ 
 
 Galilee, the most populous section/ was also the most 
 intermixed with pagan, elements. The Roman armies, 
 made up largely of Italian oflBicers, but of soldiers 
 drawn from conquered Oriental nations, brought to 
 all the large towns, and left in them, a detritus of 
 the outside world. Already the Greek, a universal 
 rover, the merchant of that age as the Jew has been 
 the trader of subsequent ages, was largely spread 
 through the province. Syria and Phoenicia also con- 
 tributed of their people. Thus, in every part of Pal- 
 estine, north and south, a foreign population swarmed 
 aroimd the Jewish stock without changing it, and 
 without being itself much changed. 
 
 The inequahty of condition which separated the 
 various classes of Jews was unfavorable to prosperity. 
 While the northern province was given to commerce, 
 the great plain of Esdraelon serving as a roadway be- 
 tween the shores of the Mediterranean and the great 
 Syrian interior and the countries skirting the Lower 
 Jordan and the Dead Sea, yet the bulk of the popu- 
 lation depended for a precarious subsistence upon 
 agriculture and the humbler forms of mechanic art. 
 That affecting petition in the Lord's Prayer, " Give us 
 this day our daily bread," is an historic disclosure of 
 local want, as well as an element of universal devotion. 
 It is the prayer prescribed for men to whom it was 
 said, " Take no [anxious] thought what ye shall eat, 
 what ye shall drink, or wherewithal ye shall be 
 clothed." But commerce had made a portion of the 
 people rich. Extortion had swollen the affluence of 
 others. The greatest injustice prevailed. Small pro- 
 tection was given to the weak. The Jews were a 
 
 ' The population of Galilee was about three millions. 
 
162 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 stibject race, but not subdued. Little able to govern 
 themselves, they were still less fitted to be governed 
 by another nation. Their religious training had built 
 up in them a character of great strength. They were 
 proud, fierce, and careless of Ufe to an extraordinary 
 degree, whether it was their own life or that of others. 
 Political subjection was pecuharly irksome, because, 
 as they interpreted their prophets, the Jews were 
 God's favored people. They believed that the family 
 of David, now obscure and dishonored, was yet to 
 hold the sceptre of universal monarchy. They had 
 not only a right to be free, but Grod had specially 
 promised that they should rule all other nations, if 
 only they kept his statutes. To keep his command- 
 ments was their one excessive anxiety. They scruti- 
 nized every particular, added duty to duty, multiplied 
 and magnified particulars, lest something should be 
 omitted. They gloried in the Law, and devoted them- 
 selves to it night and day with engrossing assiduity. 
 Where, then, was their reward ? Why was not the Di- 
 vine promise kept ? Instead of governing others, they 
 were themselves overwhelmed, subdued, oppressed. 
 Was this the reward for their unexampled fidelity? 
 The Pharisee had kept his blood pure from all taint ; 
 not a drop of foreign blood polluted the veins of the 
 Hebrew of the Hebrews. When Hellenism threatened 
 with self-indulgent philosophy to destroy the faith of 
 their fathers, the Pharisees had resisted, overwhelmed, 
 and driven it out. Josephus, himself a Pharisee, says 
 of them : " In their own idea they are the flower of the 
 nation and the most accurate observers of the Law." 
 And yet how had God neglected them ! His conduct 
 was inexplicable and sadly mysterious. It was not 
 
THE OUTLOOK. 163 
 
 in their power to keep their soil, nor even the holy 
 Temple, from the hated intrusion of the idolater's foot. 
 Their priesthood had been converted to the uses of 
 the detestable Romans. The high-priest, once ven- 
 erated, had become the creature of Idumgean Herod. 
 For many hundreds of years before Herod's reign the 
 Jews had seen but one high-priest deposed. But from 
 the conquest of Jerusalem by Herod to its destruc- 
 tion under Titus, a period of one hundred and eight 
 years, twenty-eight high-priests had been nominated, 
 making an average term of but four years to each. 
 Rulers were filled with worldly ambition, and scribes 
 and priests were continually intriguing and quarrelling 
 among themselves. Only so much of the distinctive 
 Jewish economy was left free as could be controlled 
 by unscrupulous politicians for the furtherance of their 
 own selfish ends. Pride and avarice were genuine ; 
 benevolence and devotion were simulated or openly 
 disowned. 
 
 It will be well to consider with some particularity 
 the three forms of religious development which existed 
 in the time of our Lord, — r Ritualism, Rationalism, and 
 Asceticism, — as represented respectively by the Phari- 
 see, the Sadducee, and the Essenej and it will be 
 especially necessary to be acquainted with the Phari- 
 sees, who were our Lord's chief and constant antago- 
 nists, whose habits furnished continual themes for his 
 discourses, and whose malign activity at length was 
 the chief cause of his death. 
 
 In no such sense as that term conveys to us were 
 the Pharisees an organized sect.^ They represented 
 
 • " It is the custom to contrast the Pharisees with the Sadducees, as if 
 they were two opposite sects existing in the midst of the Jewish nation 
 
164 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 a tendency, and answered nearly to our phrase of 
 "High Church" among the Episcopalians, by which we 
 do not mean a separate organization within that sect, 
 but only a mode or direction of thought and adminis- 
 tration. 
 
 In their origin and early functions the Pharisees 
 deserved well of their countrymen, and not so iU of 
 posterity as it has fared with them. When the Jews 
 were carried to Babylon, so dependent had they al- 
 ways been upon the Temple and the organized priest- 
 hood, that, in the absence of these, their chief re- 
 ligious supports fell to the ground. The people, left 
 without teachers, exiled, surrounded by idolatrous 
 practices which tempted the passions of men with 
 peculiar fascination, were likely to forget the worship 
 of their fathers, and not only to lapse into idolatry, 
 but by intermarriages to be absorbed and to lose their 
 very nationality. It was therefore a generous and 
 patriotic impulse which inspired many of the more 
 earnestly religious Jews to separate themselves from 
 all foreign influences, and to keep aHve the Jewish 
 
 and separated from the body of the Jews. But neither the Sadducees nor 
 the Pharisees were sects in the common acceptation of the word, least of all 
 the latter. Taken at bottom, the nation was for the most part Pharisai- 
 cally minded ; in other words, the Pharisees were only the more important 
 and religiously inclined men of the nation, who gave the most decided 
 expression to the prevailing belief, and strove to establish and enforce it by 
 a definite system of teaching and interpretation of the sacred books. All 
 the priests who were not mere blunt, senseless insti-uments clung to the 
 Pharisaical belief All the Sephorim, or Scribes, were at the same time 
 Pharisees; and where they are spoken of side by side as two different 
 classes, by the latter (Pharisees) must be understood those who, without 
 belonging by calling or position to the body of the learned, were yet zealous 
 in setting forth its principles, teachings, and practices, and surpassed others 
 in the e.\ample they gave of the most exact observance of the law."— 
 DoUinger's The Gentile and the Jew, (London, 1862,) Vol. II. pp. 304, 305. 
 
THE OUTLOOK. 165 
 
 spirit among their poor, oppressed countrymen. The 
 name Pharisee, in the Hebrew, signifies one who is sepa- 
 rated. When first applied, it meant a Jew who, accord- 
 ing to the Levitical Law, in captivity kept himself scru- 
 pulously separate from aU defilements. Unfortunately, 
 the Pharisee sought worthy ends by an almost purely 
 external course. In this respect he is in contrast with 
 the EngUsh Puritan of the sixteenth century. Both 
 of them were intensely patriotic ; both set themselves 
 vigorously against the seductive refinements and artful 
 blandishments of their times. The English Puritan, 
 with a clear perception of moral truth, and with utter 
 faith in the power of inward and spiritual disposi- 
 tions, was inclined to sacrifice forms, ceremonies, and 
 symbols, as helps liable too easily to become hin- 
 drances, fixing the senses upon an externality, and 
 leading men away from simple spiritual truth. But 
 the early Jewish Puritan had nothing to work with 
 except the old Mosaic Law. He sought to put that be- 
 tween his countrymen and idolatry. By inciting them 
 to reverence and to pride in their own Law he saved 
 them from apostasy, and kept ahve in their memories 
 the history of their fathers and the love for their na- 
 tive land. And so far the labor of the Pharisee de- 
 served praise. But the Levitical Law required, in 
 the great change of circumstances induced by the Cap- 
 tivity, a re-adaptation, and, as new exigencies arose, 
 new interpretations. Gradually the Pharisees became 
 expounders of the Law. They grew minute, technical, 
 literal. They sought for religion neither in the imme- 
 diate inspiration of God nor in nature, but in the books 
 of Moses and of the Prophets. They were zealous 
 for tradition and ceremony. The old landmarks were 
 
166 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 sacred to them. Yet they overlaid the simplicity of 
 the ancient Hebrew faith with an enormous mass of 
 pedantic, pragmatical details, that smothered the heart 
 and tormented the conscience of the devotee. Their 
 moral sense was drilled upon mere conventional quali- 
 ties. It had no intuition and no liberty. It became 
 the slave of the senses. 
 
 Little by little the work grew upon their hands. 
 Cases multiplied. Nice distinctions, exceptions, di- 
 visions, and subdivisions increased with an enormous 
 fecundity. The commentary smothered the text. The 
 interpreters were in thorough earnest ; but their con- 
 science ran to leaf and not to fruit. That befell the 
 Pharisees which sooner or later befalls aU ritualists, — 
 they fell into the idolatry of symbolism. The sym- 
 bol erelong absorbs into itself the idea which it was 
 sent to convey. The artificial sign grows fairer to the 
 senses than is the truth to the soul. Like manna, 
 symbols must be gathered fresh every day. The 
 Pharisee could not resist the inevitable tendency. 
 He heaped upon life such a mass of helps and guides, 
 such an endless profusion of minute duties, that no 
 sensitive conscience could endxu-e the thrall. One class 
 of minds went into torment and bondage, of which 
 Paul gives an inimitable pictiu-e in the seventh chapter 
 of the Epistle to the Romans. Another class, harder 
 and more self-confident, conceived themselves obedient 
 to the whole round of duty, and became conceited and 
 vainglorious 
 
 The Pharisees were sincere, but sincere in a way 
 that must destroy tenderness, devoutness, and benevo- 
 lence, and that must minister to conceit, hardness 
 of heart, and intolerant arrogance. No religion can 
 
THE OUTLOOK. 167 
 
 be true, and no worship can be useful, that does not 
 educate the understanding, kindle the aspirations, give 
 to the spiritual part a mastery over the senses, and 
 make man stronger, nobler, freer, and purer than it 
 found him. Religion proves its divinity by augment- 
 ing the power and contents of manhood. K it de- 
 stroys strength under the pretence of regulation, it 
 becomes a superstition and a tyranny. 
 
 The Pharisees had not escaped the influence of the 
 prevalent philosophies. Although they were working 
 away from the Hellenistic influence, they were indi- 
 rectly moulded by it. It was essentially in the re- 
 fining spirit of Greek philosophy that they interpreted 
 the old Hebrew statutes. Not that they desired them 
 to be less Jewish. They sought to make them more 
 intensely national. The Greek spirit wrought in the 
 Jew to make him more intensely Jewish. 
 
 But Grecian influence had raised up another school, 
 that of the Sadducees. They were the Epicureans of 
 Judaea. It is probable that, unlike the Pharisees, the 
 Sadducees recognized the Grecian philosophy, and ap- 
 plied it to the interpretation of the Mosaic statutes. 
 They accepted the chief doctrine of the Epicurean 
 philosophy. They admitted the agency of God in 
 creation. They taught that things had a nature of 
 their own, and that, after being once created and set 
 going, they had need of no Divine interference in 
 the way of providential government. Every man had 
 his fate in his own hands. Having organized the sys- 
 tem of nature, God withdrew himself, leaving men to 
 their own absolute freedom. Man was his own master. 
 He was the author of his own good and of nis own 
 evil, and both the good and the evil they believed 
 
168 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 to be confined to this life. Death ended the history. 
 There was to be no new life, no resurrection. 
 
 "We are not to suppose that the Sadducees abandoned 
 the Jewish Scriptures for any form of Grecian philoso- 
 phy. They rejected all the modern interpretations and 
 additions of the old Hebrew institutes. They pro- 
 fessed to hold to the literal construction and inter- 
 pretation of the sacred Scriptures. They rejected all 
 tenets that were not found in Moses and the prophets. 
 This principle forced them to assume a negative phi- 
 losophy. They stuck to the letter of the Law, that 
 they might shake off the vast accumulations which it 
 had received at the hands of the Pharisees. But in 
 doing this they rendered themselves infidel to the 
 deepest moral convictions of their age. The spirit of 
 denial is essentially infidel. Belief is indispensable to 
 moral health, even if the tenets believed be artificial. 
 There is no reason to think that the Sadducees had 
 a deep religious life, or any positive convictions which 
 redeemed them from the danger attending a system of 
 negation. They were a priestly class, sceptical of the 
 truths which the best men of their age cherished. 
 
 Thus, while they were strict in their construction of 
 the text, they were liberal in doctrine. It was through 
 literaUsm that they sought liberalism. If their refusal 
 of the Pharisaic traditions and glosses had been for 
 the sake of introducing a larger spiritual element, 
 they would have deserved better of their countrjrmen. 
 As it was, they were not popular. They were not 
 the leaders of the masses, nor the representatives of 
 the popular belief, nor in sympathy with the common 
 people. "We can hardly regard them in any other 
 light than that of self-indulgent and ambitious men, 
 
TEE OUTLOOK. 169 
 
 using the national religion rather as a defence against 
 the charge of want of patriotism than from any moral 
 convictions. In short, they were thoroughly worldly, 
 selfish, and unlovely. 
 
 Although the name " Essene " does not occur in the 
 New Testament, yet the sect existed in the time of 
 Christ, and probably exercised a considerable influence 
 upon the thought of many devout Jews. The Es- 
 senes observed the law of Moses with a rigor surpass- 
 ing that of any of their countrymen. They, however, 
 rejected animal sacrifices. There seems to have been 
 among them an element of worship derived from the 
 Persians. They addressed petitions each morning to 
 the Sim. They felt bound to refrain in word or act 
 from anything which could profane that luminary. 
 They kept the Sabbath even more rigorously than 
 the Pharisees. They prepared all their food the day 
 before. Not only would they kindle no fires on the 
 Sabbath, but they would suffer no vessel to be moved 
 from its place, nor would they satisfy on that day 
 any of their natural and necessary desires. They 
 lived in communities, very much apart from general 
 society ; but this does not seem to have arisen so 
 much from an ascetic spirit as from the excessively 
 restrictive notions which they cherished on the matter 
 of legal purity. To the contaminations established 
 by the Mosaic code, and all the additional ceremo- 
 nial impurities which the ritual zeal of the Pharisee 
 rendered imminent, they added others even more se- 
 vere. To touch any one not of his own order defiled 
 an Essene. Even an Essene, if of a lower grade, 
 could not be touched without defilement. Such par- 
 ticularity could scarcely fail to work social seclusion. 
 
170 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 Their meals were strictly sacrificial, and looked upon 
 as religious actions. Every one washed his whole 
 body before eating, and put on a clean Hnen gar- 
 ment, which was laid aside at the end of the meal. 
 The baker and the cook placed before each his mess, 
 and the priest then blessed the food, before which 
 none dared to taste a morsel. 
 
 They held their property in common ; so that the 
 temporary community of goods by the Christians, after 
 the Pentecostal day, was not a new or uncommon 
 act among the Jews. Marriage was forbidden. No 
 buying or selling was permitted among themselves. 
 They disallowed both slavery and war, neither would 
 they suffer any of their sect to forge warlike arms for 
 others. They were under the strictest subordination 
 to their own superiors, and implicit obedience was a 
 prime virtue. They maintained perfect silence in their 
 assemblies and during their repasts. Only adults were 
 taken into the brotherhood, and these were required 
 to undergo a probation of a year, and they then 
 entered but the lowest grade. Two years more were 
 required for full membership. The Essenes abhorred 
 pleasure. They were temperate in all things, — in 
 food, in the indulgence of their passions, and in en- 
 joyments of every kind. In many respects they seem 
 to have resembled the modern Shakers. 
 
 The Sadducees, being a priestly and aristocratic class, 
 were not disposed to take any office which would 
 impose trouble or care, and looked with indifference 
 or contempt upon the greater part of that which 
 passed for religion among the people. The Essenes 
 were small in numbers, their habits of life were se- 
 cluded, and they do not seem to have made any effort 
 
THE OUTLOOK. 171 
 
 at influencing the mind of the people at large. Only 
 the Pharisees took pains to instruct the people. And 
 we shall not understand the atmosphere which sur- 
 rounded our Lord, if we do not take into consideration 
 the kind of teaching given by them, and the national 
 feeling which it had produced. 
 
 We are not to undervalue the real excellence of the 
 Mosaic institutes on account of the burdensome and 
 frivolous additions made to them during a long series 
 of interpretations and commentaries. The institutes 
 of Moses inculcated a sound morality, a kind and 
 benevolent spirit, obedience to God, and reverence 
 for divine things. But as it was interpreted by the 
 Pharisees it disproportionately directed the attention 
 to external acts. The state of the heart was not 
 wholly neglected. Many excellent (distinctions were 
 drawn, and wise maxims were given respecting purity 
 of thought and rectitude of motive. But the influ- 
 ence of a system depends, not upon few or many 
 truths scattered up and down in it, but upon the 
 accent and emphasis which is given to its difierent 
 parts. Paul bears witness that his countrymen had 
 a "zeal of God, but not according to knowledge." 
 Like men in a wrong road, the longer they toiled 
 the farther they were from the end sought. Yet 
 they did not regard themselves as in the wrong. God 
 had given them the Law. The most signal promises 
 followed obedience to that Law. They should over- 
 come aU their enemies. They should become the 
 governors of those who now oppressed them. There- 
 fore to that obedience they addressed themselves with 
 aU their zeal and conscience. Lest they should fail un- 
 wittingly, it was a maxim with them that they should 
 
172 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 do even more than the Law required. And such was 
 the scrupulosity of the Pharisee, that he came to feel 
 that he did perfectly keep the Law, and therefore wait- 
 ed impatiently for the fulfilment of the Divine prom- 
 ises. It was a distinct bargain. They were aU looking 
 and waiting for the Messiah. When he should come, 
 he would give to the nation the long-needed leader. 
 All would unite in him. He would march at the head 
 of the whole population to expel the Romans, to re- 
 deem Jerusalem, to purify the Temple, to extend the 
 sway of the Jewish rehgion. They brooded over these 
 joyful prospects. Thus, they had their tests of Mes- 
 siahship. He must hate idolaters. He must have 
 the gift of leadership. He must represent the in- 
 tensest spirit of Jewish patriotism. He must aim to 
 make Israel the head and benefactor of all the nations 
 on earth. 
 
 It is plaia that Jesus could not meet such ex- 
 pectations. He must have known from the begin- 
 ning what reception his countrymen would give him, 
 should he at once announce himself as the Messiah; 
 and this will explain his silence, or the guarded pri- 
 vate utterance, in the beginning, as to' his nature and 
 claims. 
 
 Unfavorable as was the religious aspect, the political 
 condition of Palestine was even worse. The nation 
 was in the stage preceding dissolution, — subdued by 
 the Romans, farmed out to court favorites, governed 
 by them with remorseless cruelty and avarice. The 
 fiery and fanatical patriotism of the Jew was continu- 
 ally bursting out into bloody insurrection. Without 
 great leaders, without any consistent and wise plan of 
 operations, these frequent and convulsive spasms of 
 
THE OUTLOOK. 173 
 
 misery were instantly repressed by the Eomans with 
 incredible slaughter. 
 
 Even if it had been a part of the design of Je- 
 sus to rescue the Jewish nation and perpetuate it, he 
 came too late. These frequent convulsions were the 
 expiring struggles of a doomed people. Already the 
 prophecies hung low over the city. Death was in 
 the very air. The remnant of the people was to be 
 scattered up and down in the earth, as the wind chases 
 autumnal leaves. Jesus stood alone. He was ap- 
 parently but a peasant mechanic. That which was 
 dearest to his heart men cared nothing for ; that which 
 all men were eagerly pursuing was nothing to him. 
 He had no party, he could conciliate no interest. The 
 serpent of hatred was coiled and waiting ; and, though 
 it delayed to strike, the fang was there, ready and 
 venomous, as soon as his foot should tread upon it. 
 The rich were luxurious and self-indulgent. The 
 learned were not wise; they were vain of an im- 
 mense acquisition of infinitesimal fribbles. The igno- 
 rant people were besotted, the educated class was 
 corrupt, the government was foreign, the Temple was 
 in the hands of factious priests playing a game of 
 worldly ambition. Who was on his side? At what 
 point should he begin his mission, and how? Should 
 he stand in Jerusalem and preach? Should he enter 
 the Temple, and announce to the grand council his 
 true character? 
 
 It was not the purpose of Jesus to present him- 
 self to the nation with sudden or dramatic outburst. 
 There was to be a gradual unfolding of his claims, of 
 the truth, and of his whole nature. In this respect he 
 
174 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 conformed to the law of that world in which he was 
 infixed, and of that race with whose nature and con- 
 dition he had identified himself. We shall find him, 
 in the beginning, joining his ministry on to that of 
 John : we shall next see him taking up the religious 
 truths of the Old Testament which were common to 
 him and to the people, but cleansing them of their 
 grosser interpretations,, and giving to them a spiritual 
 meaning not before suspected: then we shall find a 
 silent change of manner, the language and the bearing 
 of one who knows himself to be Divine : and finally, 
 toward the close of his work, we shall see the full 
 disclosure of the truth, his equality with the Father, 
 his sacrificial relations to the Jews and to all the world ; 
 and in connection with this last fact we shall hear the 
 annunciation of that truth most repugnant to a Jew, a 
 suffering Messiah. 
 
 Not only shall we find this law of progressive de- 
 velopment exemplified in a general way, but we shall 
 see it in each minor element. His own ■ nature and 
 claims, implied rather than asserted at first, he taught 
 with an increasing emphasis and fulness of disclosure 
 to the end of his ministry. His doctrine of spiritual 
 life, as tmfolded ia the private discourses with his dis- 
 ciples just before his Passion, and recorded in the five 
 chapters beginning with the twelfth of John's Gospel, 
 are remarkable, not alone for their spiritual depth 
 and fervor, but as showing how far his teachings had 
 by that time gone beyond the Sermon on the Mount. 
 The earlier and later teachings are in contrast, not in 
 respect to relative perfection, but in the order of de- 
 velopment. Both are perfect, but one as a germ and 
 the other as its blossom. Jesus observed in all his 
 
THE OUTLOOK. 175 
 
 ministry that law of growth which he affirmed in re- 
 spect to the kingdom of Heaven. It is a seed, said he, 
 the smallest of all seeds when sown, but when it is 
 grown it is a tree. At another time he distinguished 
 the very stages of growth: "First the blade, then 
 the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." (Mark 
 iv. 28.) 
 
 We are then to look for this unfolding process in 
 the teachings of Jesus. "We shall find him gathering 
 up the threads of morality, already partly woven into 
 the moral consciousness of his time ; we shall see how 
 in his hands morality assumed a higher type, and was 
 made to spring from nobler motives. Then we shall 
 find the intimations of an interior and spiritual life 
 expanding and filling a larger sphere of thought, until 
 in the fiill radiance of his later teachings it dazzles 
 the eyes of his disciples and transcends their spiritual 
 capacity. 
 
 In like manner the divinity of Christ's own nature 
 and office was not made prominent at first ; but gradu- 
 ally it grew into notice, until during the last half-year 
 it assumed the air of sovereignty. In nothing, is this 
 so strikingly shown as in the teaching of his own 
 personal relations to all true spiritual life in every 
 individual. It is sublime when God declares himself 
 to be the fountain of life. It would be insufferable 
 arrogance in a mere man. But by every form of as- 
 sertion, with incessant repetition, Jesus taught with 
 growing intensity as his death drew near, that in 
 him, and only in him, were the sources of spiritual 
 life. "Come unto me," "Learn of me," "Abide in 
 me," " Without me ye can do nothing." And yet, in 
 the midst of such incessant assertions of himself, he 
 
176 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 declared, and all the world has conceded it, "I am 
 meek and lowly in heart." 
 
 There was a corresponding development in his Criti- 
 cism of the prevailing religious life, and in the attacks 
 which he made upon the ruling classes. His miracles, 
 too, assumed a higher type from period to period; 
 and, although we cannot draw a line at the precise 
 periods of transition, yet no one can fail to mark how 
 much deeper was the moral significance of the mira- 
 cles wrought in the last few months of his life, than 
 that of those in the opening of his career. "We are 
 not to look, then, for a ministry blazing forth at the 
 beginning in its full effulgence. We are to see Jesus, 
 without signals or ostentation, taking up John's teach- 
 ing, and beginning to preach, "Repent, for the king- 
 dom of heaven is at hand" ; we are to wait for further 
 disclosures issuing naturally and gradually, in an as- 
 cending series. The whole life of Jesus was a true 
 and normal growth. His ministry did not come like 
 an orb, round and shining, perfect and full, at the 
 first: it was a regular and symmetrical development. 
 
 True, it differed from all other and ordinary human 
 growths, in that no part of his teaching was false or 
 crude. It was partial, but never erroneous. The first 
 enunciations were as absolutely true as the last ; but 
 he unfolded rudimentary truths in an order and m 
 forms suitable for their propagation upon the himian 
 understanding. 
 
 It is in these views that we shall find a solution of 
 the seeming want of plan in the life of Jesus. There 
 is no element in it which answers to our ordinary 
 idea of a prearranged campaign. He knew that he 
 was a sower of seed, and not the reaper. It was of 
 
THE OUTLOOK. 177 
 
 more importance that lie should produce a powerful 
 spiritual impression, than that he should give an or- 
 ganized form to his followers. It was better that he 
 should develop the germs of a Divine spiritual life, 
 than that he should work any immediate change in 
 the forms of society. 
 
 The Mosaic institutes had aimed at a- spiritual 
 life iu man by building up around him restraining 
 influences, acting thus upon the soul from the out- 
 side. Jesus transferred the seat of action to the 
 soul itself, and rendered it capable of self-control. 
 Others had sought to overcome and put down the ap- 
 petites and passions ; Jesus, by developing new forces 
 in the soul and giving Divine excitement to the spir- 
 itual nature, regulated the passions and harmonized 
 them with the moral ends of life. When once the 
 soul derived its highest stimulus from God, it might 
 safely be trusted to develop all its lower forces, which, 
 by subordination, became auxiliary. Jesus sought to 
 develop a whole and perfect manhood, nothing lost, 
 nothing in excess. He neither repelled nor underval- 
 ued secular thrift, social morality, civU order, nor the 
 fruits of an intellectual and aesthetic culture ; he did 
 not labor directly for these, but struck farther back at 
 a potential but as yet undisclosed nature in man, which 
 if aroused and brought into a normal and vital relation 
 with the Divine soul would give to all the earlier de- 
 veloped and lower elements of man's nature a more 
 complete control than had ever before been found, and 
 would so fertilize and fructify the whole nature that 
 the outward life would haVe no need of special pat- 
 terns. Children act from rules. Men act from prin- 
 ciples, A time wiU come when they will act from 
 
 12 
 
178 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 intuitions, and right and wrong in the familiar matters 
 of life will be determined by the agreement or dis- 
 agreement of things with the moral sensibility, as 
 music and beauty in art already are first felt, and 
 afterwards reasoned upon and analyzed. 
 
 If this be a true rendering of Christ's method, it will 
 be apparent that all theories which imply that any out- 
 ward forms of society, or special elements of art and 
 industry, or the organization of a church, or the purifi- 
 cation of the household, or any other special and de- 
 terminate external act or order of events or institu- 
 tions, were parts of his plan, will fail in appreciating 
 the one grand distinctive fact, namely, that it was 
 a psychological kingdom that he came to found. He 
 aimed not to construct a new system of morals or 
 of philosophy, but a new soul, with new capabilities, 
 under new spiritual influences. Of course an outward 
 life and form would be developed from this inspiration. 
 Men would still need governments, institutions, cus- 
 toms. But with a regulated and reinforced nature 
 they could be safely left to evolve these from their 
 own reason and experience. As much as ever, there 
 would be need of states, churches, schools. But for 
 none of these need any pattern be given. They were 
 left to be developed freely, as experience should 
 dictate. Government is inevitable. It is a univer- 
 sal constitutional necessity in man. There was no 
 more need of providing for that, than of providing 
 for sleep or for breathing. Life, if fully developed 
 and left free to choose, will find its way to all neces- 
 sary outward forms, in government, in society, and in 
 industry. 
 
 Therefore they utterly misconceive the genius of 
 
TEE OUTLOOK. 179 
 
 Christ's work who suppose that he aimed at the estab- 
 lishment of an organized church. Beyond the inci- 
 dental commands to his disciples to draw together and 
 maintaia intimate social life, there is no special or dis- 
 tinctive provision for church organization. That was 
 left to itseK As after events have shown, the tendency 
 to organize was already too strong. Religion has been 
 imprisoned in its own institutions. Perhaps the most 
 extraordinary contrast ever known to history is that 
 which exists between the genius of the Gospels and the 
 pompous claims of church hierarchies. Christians made 
 haste to repeat the mistakes of the Hebrews. Religion 
 ran rank to outwardness. The fruit, hidden by the 
 enormous growth of leaves, could not ripen. Spiritu- 
 ahty died of ecclesiasticism. If the Church has been 
 the nurse, it has also been often the destroyer of 
 rehgion. 
 
 If Jesus came to found a church, never were actions 
 so at variance with purposes. There are no recorded 
 instructions to this end. He remained in. the full com- 
 munion of the Jewish Church to the last. Nor did his 
 disciples or apostles dream of leaving the church of 
 their fathers. They went up with their countrymen, 
 at the great festivals, to Jerusalem. They resorted to 
 the Temple for worship. They attempted to develop 
 their new life within the old forms. Little by little, 
 and slowly, they learned by experience that new wine 
 could not be kept in old bottles. The new Hfe re- 
 quired and found better conditions, a freer conscience, 
 fewer rules, inore liberty. For a short period the en- 
 franchised soul, in its new promised land, shone forth 
 with great glory; but then, like the fathers of old, 
 believers fell back from liberty to superstition, and 
 
180 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 for a thousand years have been in captivity to spir- 
 itual Babylon. 
 
 The captivity is drawing to a close. The Jerusa- 
 lem of the Spirit is descending, adorned as a bride 
 for the bridegroom. The new life in God is gath- 
 ering disciples. They are finding each other. Not 
 disdaining outward helps, they are learning that the 
 Spirit alone is essential. All creeds, churches, institu- 
 tions, customs, ordinances, are but steps upon which 
 the Christian plants his foot, that they may help him 
 to ascend to the perfect liberty ia Christ Jesus. 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GATE. 181 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE HOUSEHOLD GATE. 
 
 If one considers that, after his experience in the 
 wilderness, Jesus seems for a period of some months 
 to have returned to private life, — that he neither went 
 to the Temple in Jerusalem, nor appeared before the 
 religious teachers of his people, nor even apparently 
 entered the Holy City, but abruptly departed to Gali- 
 lee, — it may seem as if he had no plan of pro- 
 cedure, but waited until events should open the way 
 into his ministry. 
 
 But what if it was his purpose to refuse aU public 
 life in our sense of that term ? What if he meant to 
 remain a private citizen, working as one friend would 
 with another, eschewing the roads of influence already 
 laid out, and going back to that simple personal power 
 which one heart has upon another in genial and friend- 
 ly contact ? 
 
 His power was to be, not with whole communities, 
 but with the individual, — from man to man; and it 
 was to spring, not from any machinery of institution 
 wielded by man, nor from official position, but from 
 his own personal nature, and from the intrinsic force 
 of truth to be uttered. At the very beginning, and 
 through his whole career, we shall find Jesus clinging 
 to private life, or to public life only in its transient 
 and spontaneous developments out of private Hfe. He 
 
182 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 taugtt from house to house. He never went among 
 crowds. They gathered about him, and dissolved 
 again after he had passed on. The pubKc roadside, 
 the synagogues, the princely mansion, the Temple, the 
 boat by the sea-shore, the poor man's cottage, were aU 
 alike mere incidents, the accidents of time and place, 
 and not in any manner things to be depended upon 
 for influence. He was not an elder or a ruler in the 
 synagogue, nor a scribe or a priest, but strictly a 
 private citizen. He was iu his own simple self the 
 whole power. 
 
 The first step of Jesus in his ministry is a return 
 home to his mother. This is not to be looked at mere- 
 ly as a matter of sentiment ; it is characteristic of the 
 new dispensation which he came to inaugurate. 
 
 In the spiritual order that was now to be introduced 
 there were to be no ranks and classes, no public and 
 official hfe as distinguished from private and personal. 
 The Church was to be a household ; men were to be 
 brethren, " members one of another." God was made 
 known as the Father, magisterial in love. 
 
 Had Jesus separated himself from the common life, 
 even by assuming the garb and place of an authorized 
 teacher, had he afiiliated with the Temple ofiicers, had 
 he been ia any way connected with a hierarchy, his 
 course would have been at variance with one aim of his 
 mission. It was the private life of the world to which 
 he came. His own personal life, his home life, his famil- 
 iar association with men, his social intercourse, formed 
 his true pubhc career. He was not to break in upon 
 the world with the boisterous energy of warriors, — 
 " He shall not strive nor cry " ; nor was he to seek, 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GATE. 183 
 
 after the manner of ambitious orators, to dazzle the 
 people, — " His voice shall not be heard in the streets." 
 "Without pressing unduly this prophecy of the Messiah, 
 it may be said that it discriminates between an ambi- 
 tious and noisy career, and a ministry that was to move 
 among men with gentleness, aflfabiUty, sympathy, and 
 loving humility. 
 
 We shall lose an essential characteristip of both his 
 disposition and his dispensation, if we accustom our- 
 selves to think of Jesus as a pubUc man, in our sense 
 of official eminence. We are to look for him among 
 the common scenes of daily life, not distinguished in 
 any way from the people about him, except in supe- 
 rior wisdom and goodness. It is true that he often 
 stood in pubhc places, but only as any other Jew 
 might have done. He was never set apart in any 
 manner after the usages of the priesthood. He came 
 back from artificial arrangements to nature. There is 
 great significance in the title by which he almost inva- 
 riably spoke of himself, — "the Son of Man." By this 
 title he emphasized his mission. He had descended 
 from Grod. He was bom of woman, had joined himself 
 to the human family, and meant to cleave fast to his 
 kindred. To one conscious of his own Divinity, the 
 title " Son of Man " becomes very significant of the 
 value which he placed upon his union with mankind. 
 His personal and intimate connection with the great 
 body of the people, beginning with his early years, 
 was continued to the end. 
 
 It is not strange, then, that Jesus began his active 
 ministry with a return from the scene of his temptation 
 to his former home. He did not pause at Nazareth, biit 
 either went with his mother or followed her to Cana, 
 
184 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 where a wedding was to take place. There were two 
 Canas, — one now called Kefr Kenm, a small village 
 about four mUes and a half northeast of Nazareth, and 
 KanorelrJeKl, about nine miles north of Nazareth ; and 
 the best authorities leave it still uncertain in which 
 the first miracle of our Lord was performed. It may 
 be interesting, but it is not important, to determine the 
 question. 
 
 The appearance of Jesus at the wedding, and his ac- 
 tive participation in the festivities, are full of meaning. 
 It is highly improbable that John the Baptist could 
 have been persuaded to appear at such a service. 
 For he lived apart from the scenes of common life, was 
 soHtary, and even severe. His followers would have 
 been strongly inclined to fall in with the philosophy 
 and practices of the Essenes. If so, the simple pleas- 
 ures and the ordinary occupations of common life would 
 be regarded as inconsistent with rehgion. Jesus had 
 just returned from John's presence. He had passed 
 through the ordeal of solitude and the temptation of 
 the wilderness. He had gathered three or foiu- dis- 
 ciples, and was taking the first steps in his early career. 
 That the very first act should be an attendance, with 
 his disciples, by invitation, at a Jewish wedding, which 
 was seldom less than three and usually of seven days' 
 duration, and was conducted with most jojdful fes- 
 tivities, cannot but be regarded as a significant tes- 
 timony. 
 
 The Hebrews were led by their reUgious institutions 
 to the cultivation of social and joyous habits. Their 
 great religious feasts were celebrated with some days 
 of solemnity, but with more of festivity such as would 
 seem to our colder manners almost like dissipation. 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GATE. 185 
 
 In all nations the wedding of young people calls forth 
 sympathy. Among the Hebrews, from the earhest 
 times, nuptial occasions were celebrated with rejoicings, 
 in which the whole community took some part. 
 
 The scene comes before us clearly. The bride- 
 groom's house, or his father's, is the centre of festivity. 
 The bride and groom spend the day separately in se- 
 clusion, in confession of sia and rites of purgation. As 
 evening draws near, the friends and relatives of the 
 bride bring her forth from her parents' house in full 
 bridal apparel, with myrtle vines and garlands of flowers 
 about her head. Torches precede the company ; music 
 breaks out on every side. Besides the instruments 
 provided for the processions, songs greet them along the 
 way; for the street is lined with virgins, who yield to 
 the fair candidate that honor which they hope in time 
 for themselves. They cast flowers before her, and little 
 cakes and roasted ears of wheat. The street resounds 
 with gayety ; and as the band draws near the appointed 
 dwelling, the bridegroom and his friends come forth 
 to meet the bride and to conduct her into the house. 
 After some legal settlements have been perfected, and 
 the marriage service has been performed, a sumptuous 
 feast is provided, and the utmost joy and merriment 
 reign. Nor do the festivities terminate with the im- 
 mediate feast. A whole week is devoted to rejoicing 
 and gayety. 
 
 It must not be imagined, however, that such pro- 
 longed social enjoyment degenerated into dissipation. 
 In luxurious cities, and especially after commerce and 
 wealth had brought in foreign manners, the grossest 
 excesses came to prevail at great feasts; but the 
 common people among the old Hebrews were, in the 
 
186 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 main, temperate and abstinent. That almost epidemic 
 dnmkenness which in modern times has prevailed 
 among Teutonic races, in cold climates, was unknown 
 to the great body of the Hebrew nation. 
 
 The sobriety and vigorous industry of the society 
 in which we have been educated indisposes us to sym- 
 pathize with such expenditure of time for social pur- 
 poses as was common among the Hebrews. We spare 
 a single day at long intervals, and then hasten back 
 to our tasks as if escaping from an evil. Weddings 
 among the poorest Jews, as we have said, seldom ab- • 
 sorbed less than three days. The ordinary term of 
 conviviality was seven days. Among men of wealth or 
 eminent station, the genial service not unfrequently 
 extended to fourteen days. During this time, neigh- 
 bors came and went. Those from a distance tarried 
 both day and night. The time was filled up with 
 entertainments suitable to the condition of the various 
 classes. The young employed the cool hours with 
 dances. The aged quietly looked on, or held tranquil 
 converse apart from the crowd. Nor was intellectual 
 provision wanting. Readings and addresses were then 
 unknown. In a land where philosophy was as yet only 
 a collection of striking proverbs or ingenious enigmas, 
 it was deemed an intellectual exercise to propound 
 riddles and " dark sayings," and to call forth the exer- 
 cise of the imagination in giving solutions. These oc- 
 casions were not devoted, then, to a mere riot of merry- 
 making. They were the meetings of long-dispersed 
 friends, the gathering-points of connected fiimilies ; in 
 the absence of facilities for frequent intercourse, the 
 seven days of a wedding feast would serve as a means 
 of intercommunion and the renewal of friendships ; and 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GATE. 187 
 
 it was peculiarly after the genius of the Hebrew people 
 that both religion and social intercourse should take 
 place with the accompaniments of abundant eating and 
 drinking. The table was loaded with provisions, the 
 best that the means of the parties could supply; nor 
 was it unusual for the guests also to contribute to the 
 common stock. 
 
 There is no reason to presume that the wedding at 
 Cana was of less duration than the common period of 
 seven days; and it may be assumed, in the absence 
 of evidence to the contrary, that Jesus remained to the 
 end. It has been surmised that it was a near connec- 
 tion of his mother who was the host upon this occasion. 
 However that may be, she was actively engaged in the 
 management of the feast, kept herself informed of the 
 state of the provisions, sought to replenish them when 
 they were expended, and assumed familiar authority 
 over the servants, who appear to have obeyed her 
 implicitly. 
 
 Nothing could well be a greater violation of the 
 spirit of his people, and less worthy of him, than 
 the supposition that Jesus walked among the joyous 
 guests with a cold or disapproving eye, or that he held 
 himself aloof and was wrapped in his own meditations. 
 His whole life shows that his soul went out in sjnm- 
 pathy with the human life around him. His manners 
 were so agreeable and attractive that all classes of men 
 instinctively drew near to him. It needs not that we 
 imagine him breaking forth into effulgent gayety ; but 
 that he looked upon the happiness around him with 
 smiles it would be wrong to doubt. There are some 
 whose very smUe carries benediction, and whose eye 
 sheds perpetual happiness. 
 
188 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 But Jesus was not simply a genial guest. He had 
 chosen the occasion for the display of his first miracle. 
 It would seem that more guests had come to the wed- 
 ding than had been pro^dded for, drawn, perhaps, from 
 day to day, in increasing numbers, by the presence of 
 Jesus. The wine gave out. The scene as recorded 
 by John is not without its remarkable featiu-es. The 
 air of Mary in applying to her son seems to point 
 either to some previous conversation, or to the knowl- 
 edge on her part that he possessed extraordinaiy 
 powers, and that he might be, expected to exercise 
 them. 
 
 " They have no [more] wine." 
 
 Jesus said unto her, "Woman, what have I to do 
 with thee ? mine hour is not yet come." 
 
 Interpreted according to the impression which such 
 language would make were it employed thus abruptly 
 in our day, this reply must be admitted to be not only 
 a refusal of his mother's request, but a rebuke as well, 
 and in language hardly less than harsh. But inter- 
 preted through the impression which it produced upon 
 his mother, it was neither a refusal nor a rebuke ; for 
 she acted as one who had asked and obtained a favor. 
 She turned at once to the servants, with the command, 
 ■" Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it." This is not 
 the language of one who felt rebuked, but of .one 
 whose request had been granted. 
 
 In houses of any pretension it was customary to 
 make provision for the numerous washings, both of 
 the person and of vessel's, which the Pharisaic usages 
 required. (Mark vii. 4.) In this instance there were 
 six large water-vessels, holding two or three firJdns 
 apiece. The six " water-pots of stone," therefore, had 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GATE. 189 
 
 a capacity of about one hundred and twenty-six gal- 
 lons.^ 
 
 These vessels were fQled with water, and at the wUl 
 of the Lord the water became wine. When the master 
 of the feast tasted it, it proved so much superior to the 
 former supply as to call forth his commendation. The 
 quantity of wine has excited some criticism ; but it 
 should be borne in mind that in Palestine, where light 
 wines were so generally a part of the common drink, 
 four barrels of wine would not seem a supply so ex- 
 traordinary as it does to people in non-wine-growing 
 countries, who have been accustomed to see fiery wines, 
 in small quantities and at high prices. It must also be 
 remembered that the company was large, or else the 
 provision would not have given out, « and that it was 
 without doubt to be yet larger from day to day, the 
 miracle itself tending to bring together all the neigh- 
 borhood. It is to be considered also that wine, unlike 
 bread, is not perishable, but grows better with age ; so 
 that, had the quantity been far greater than their pres- 
 ent need, it would not be wasted. On the other hand, 
 
 ' The term " firkin," in our English version, is the Greek metretes, corre- 
 sponding, according to Josephus, to the Hebrew bath. The Attic metretes 
 held 8 gallons and 7.4 pints. The water-vessels are said in the Gospel to 
 have held between two and three firkins, or metretes, apiece, which would 
 be somewhere between 17 and 25 gallons. Calling it 21 gallons, six of them 
 would be 126 gallons. The writer in Smith's Bible Dictionary places the 
 quantity at 110 gallons; but Wordsworth gives 136. The lowest estimate 
 which we have seen puts it at 60 gallons, but the weight of authority places 
 it as in the text. 
 
 It has been remarked, that the fact that these vessels were exclusively 
 appropriated to water, and never used for holding wine, will prevent the 
 slipping over this miracle by saying that wine was already in the vessels, 
 and that water was only added to it. The quantity, too, made it impos- 
 sible that it should have been wrought in an underhanded and collusive 
 manner. It is the very first of a long series of miracles, and one of the most 
 indisputable. 
 
190 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 there were reasons why the supply should be gen- 
 erous. The wine had once given out. The strange 
 supply said to every one, There can be no second fail- 
 ure. Abundance goes with power wherever the Divine 
 hand works. 
 
 That the wine created by our Lord answered to the 
 fermented wine of the country would never have been 
 doubted, if the exigencies of a modern and most benefi- 
 cent reformation had not created a strong but unwise 
 disposition to do away with the undoubted example of 
 our Lord. But though the motive was good, and the 
 effort most ingeniously and plausibly carried out, the 
 result has failed to satisfy the best scholars ; and it is 
 the almost universal conviction of those competent to 
 form a judgment, that our Lord did both make and 
 use wines which answer to the fermented wines of the 
 present day in Palestine.-^ 
 
 ' The editors of the Congregational Review, No. 54, pp. 398, 399, in a 
 review of Communion Wine and Bible Temperance, by Rev. William M. 
 Thayer, published by the National Temperance Society, 1869, use the 
 following language : — 
 
 " We respect the zeal of Mr. Thayer, and do not question his sincerity. 
 But we have gone over the arguments he has reproduced ; we have con- 
 sidered his so-called evidence, which has so often done duty in its narrow 
 range ; we have pondered the discussions of Lees, Nott, Ritchie, and Duf- 
 field, before him ; what is more, we have gone over the Greek and Hebrew 
 Scriptures carefully for ourselves ; have sifted the testimony of travellers 
 who knew, and those who did not know ; have corresponded with mission- 
 aries and conferred with Jewish Rabbis on this subject ; and if there is any- 
 thing in Biblical literature on which we can speak confidently, we have no 
 doubt that Dr. Laurie is right and that Rev. Mr. Thayer is wrong." (Mr. 
 Thayer's book is an attempt to show that there are two kinds of wine 
 spoken of in the Bible, one of which is intoxicating and the other not.) 
 
 " In these views we are thoroughly supported. If we mistake not, tie 
 Biblical scholarship of Andover, Princeton, Newton, Chicago, and New 
 Haven, as well as Smith's Bible Dictionary and Kitto's Biblical Cyclopmdia, 
 is with us. One of the most learned and devout scholars of the country 
 recently said to us: 'None but a third-rate scholar adopts the view that 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GATE. 191 
 
 Drunkenness has prevailed in all ages and in aU 
 countries, but it lias been the vice of particular races 
 far more than of others. In the earlier periods of 
 the world, aU moral remedial influences were rela- 
 tively weak. With the progressive development of 
 man. we have learned to throw off evils by ways 
 which were scarcely practicable in early days. So it 
 has been with the sin of drunkenness. Christian men 
 proposed, some half a century ago, voluntarily to ab- 
 stain from the use, as a diet or as a luxury, of all 
 that can intoxicate. A revolution of public sentiment 
 gradually followed in respect to the drinking usages of 
 society. This abstinence has been urged upon various 
 grounds. Upon the intrinsic nature of all alcohohc 
 stimulants temperance men have been divided in opin- 
 ion, some taking the extreme ground that alcohol is 
 a poison, no less when developed by fermentation and 
 remaining in chemical combination than when by dis- 
 tillation it exists in separation and concentration, — a 
 statement in which some physiologists of note have 
 concurred. But these views have never won favor with 
 the great body of physiologists, and the more recent in- 
 vestigators are farther from admitting them than their 
 predecessors. Yet it is certain that the discussions and 
 investigations have destroyed, it may be hoped forever, 
 the extravagant notions which have prevailed in all 
 countries as to the benefits of wine and strong drinks. 
 It is admitted that they are always injurious to many 
 constitutions, that they are medically useful in far less 
 
 the Bible describes two kinds of wine.' The National Temperance So- 
 ciety has done its best to create a different popular belief, if not to cast 
 odium on those who do not accept its error. We regret it, for the tem- 
 perance cause can be carried on by sound arguments and fair means, and 
 all false methods must recoil at last." 
 
192 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 degrees and in fewer instances than hitherto has been 
 supposed, and that to ordinary persons in good health 
 they are not needful, adding neither any strength nor 
 any vitality which could not be far better attained by 
 wholesome food and suitable rest. 
 
 A certain advantage would be gained in the advo- 
 cacy of total abstinence if it could be shown that any 
 use of wine is a sin against one's own nature. But 
 the moral power of example is immeasurably greater 
 if those who hold that wine and its colleagues are not 
 unwholesome when used sparingly shall yet, as a free- 
 will offering to the weak, cheerfully refrain from their 
 use. To relinquish a wrong is praiseworthy ; but to 
 yield up a personal right for benevolent purposes is 
 far more admirable. 
 
 There have not been many spectacles of equal moral 
 impressiveness, since the coming of Christ, than the 
 example of millions of Christian men, in both hemi- 
 spheres, cheerfully and enthusiastically giving up the 
 use of intoxicating drink, that by their example they 
 might restrain or win those who were in danger of 
 ruinous temptation. K in any age or nation the evil 
 of intemperance is not general nor urgent, the entire 
 abstinence from wine may be wise for peculiar individ- 
 uals, but it can have no general moral influence, since 
 the conditions would be wanting which called for self- 
 sacrifice. 
 
 Had Jesus, living in our time, beheld the wide waste 
 and wretchedness arising from inordinate appetites, 
 can any one doubt on which side he would be found ? 
 Was not his whole life a superlative giving up of his 
 own rights for the benefit of the fallen ? Did he not 
 teach that customs, institutions, and laws must yield to 
 
THE HOVSEHOLD GATE. 193 
 
 the mherent sacredness of man t In his own age he 
 ate and drank as his countrymen did, judging it to 
 be safe to do so. But this is not a condemnation of 
 the course of those who, in other lands and under 
 different circumstances, wholly abstain from wine and 
 strong drink, for their own good and for the good of 
 others. The same action has a different moral sig- 
 nificance in different periods and circumstances. Jesus 
 followed the harmless custom of his country; when, 
 in another age and country, the same custom had be- 
 come mischievous, would he have allowed it? "All 
 things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expe- 
 dient." (1 Cor. vi. 12.) "It is good neither to eat 
 flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy 
 brother .... is made weak." (Eom. xiv. 21.) 
 
 The example of Christ beyond all question settles 
 the doctrine, that, if abstinence from wine is practised, 
 it must be a voluntary act, a cheerful surrender of a 
 thing not necessarily in itself harmful, for the sake of a 
 true benevolence to others. But if it be an extreme 
 to wrest the example of Christ in favor of the total- 
 abstinence theories of modern society, it is a yet more 
 dangerous one to employ his example as a shield and 
 justification of the drinking usages which have proved 
 the greatest curse ever known to man. Nor can we 
 doubt that a voluntary abstinence from all that intoxi- 
 cates, as a diet or a luxury, by all persons in health, 
 for moral reasons,. is in accordance with the very spirit 
 of the gospel. The extraordinary benefits which have 
 accompanied and followed the temperance reformation 
 mark it as one of the great victories of Christianity. 
 
 The scenes at Cana are especially grateful to us as 
 
 13 
 
194 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 disclosing the inward feeling of Jesus respecting social 
 life, as well as the peculiar genius of Christianity. 
 He began his mission to others by going home to his 
 mother. The household was his first temple : the 
 opening of a wedded life engaged his first sympathy, 
 and the promotion of social and domestic happiness 
 was the inspiration of his first miracle. "We are espe- 
 cially struck with his direct production of enjojTnent. 
 In marked contrast with the spirit of many of the 
 reigning moral philosophers, who despised pleasure, 
 Christ sought it as a thing essentially good. Eecog- 
 nizing the truth that goodness and virtue are the 
 sources of continuous happiaess, Jesus taught that 
 gladness is one of the factors of virtue, and none the 
 less so because sorrow is another, each of them play- 
 ing around the forms and events of practical life as do 
 light and shadow iu a picture. Far more important 
 than we are apt to consider among the secondary m- 
 fluences which have maintained Christianity itself ia 
 this world, in spite of the corruption of its doctrines 
 and the horrible cruelty of its advocates, has been its 
 subtile and indestructible sympathy both with suffer- 
 ing and with joy. It sounds the depths of the one, and 
 rises to the height of the other. Its power has never 
 lain in its intellectual elements, but in its command of 
 that nature which hes back of aU philosophy or volun- 
 tary activity. It breathes the breath of the Almighty 
 upon the elements of the soul, and again order and life 
 spring from darkness and chaos. 
 
 Through the household, as through a gate, Jesus en- 
 tered upon his ministry of love. Ever since, the Chris- 
 tian home has been the refuge of true religion. Here 
 it has had its purest altars, its best teachers, and a life 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GATE. 195 
 
 of self-denying love in all gladness, .which is consti- 
 tuted a perpetual memorial of the nourishing love of 
 God, and a symbol of the great. mystery of sacrifice by 
 which love perpetually lays down its life for others. 
 The religion of the Synagogue, of the Temple, and of 
 the Church would have perished long ago but for the 
 ministry of the household. It was fit that a ministry 
 of love should begin at home. It was fit, too, that love 
 should develop joy. Joyful love inspires self-denial, 
 and keeps sorrow wholesome. Love civilizes conscience, 
 refines the passions, and restrains them. The bright 
 and joyful opening of Christ's ministry has been gen- 
 erally lost sight of. The darkness of the last great 
 tragedy has thrown back its shadow upon the morning 
 hour of his hfe. His course was rounded out, like a 
 perfect day. It began with the calmness and dewiness 
 of a morning, it came to its noon with fervor and 
 labor, it ended in twilight and darkness, but rose again 
 without cloud, unsetting and immortal. 
 
 For two years Jesus pursued his ministry in his own 
 Galilee, among scenes famUiar to his childhood, every- 
 where performing the most joyful work which is pos- ' 
 sible to this world, — that of bringing men out of 
 trouble, of inspiring hunger for truth and righteous- 
 ness, of cheering the hopeless and desponding, be- 
 sides works of mercy, almost without number, directed 
 to the relief of the physical condition of the poor and 
 neglected. 
 
 The few disciples who had accompanied Jesus, and 
 were with him at the marriage, were drawn to him by 
 that miracle with renewed admiration. The bands that 
 at first held them to their Master must have been slight. 
 Being rude, unlettered men, accustomed to live by 
 
196 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 their senses only, they were not yet qualified to go 
 without important external adjuvants. As there was 
 no organization, no school or party, no separate religious 
 forms, but only this one peasant prophet, lately a me- 
 chanic, whose words and bearing had greatly fascinated 
 them, it was to be expected that they would soon de- 
 spond and doubt if something tangible were not given 
 them; and this miracle answered their need. The effect 
 produced on their minds was thought worthy of record : 
 "And his disciples believed on him." Of all the re- 
 maining crowd of guests, of the host and his household, 
 of the bridal pair and their gay companions, nothing 
 is said. Probably the miracle was the wonder of the 
 hour, and then passed with the compliments and con- 
 gratulations of the occasion into the happy haze of 
 memory, in which particulars are lost, and only a pleas- 
 ing mist overhangs the too soon receding past. 
 
 But it, seems certain that all of the immediate 
 household of Jesus were brought for a time under 
 his influence. For when, soon after these events, he 
 went down to Capernaum, upon the northwestern coast 
 of the Sea of Gahlee, all went with him, — " he, and 
 his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples." (John 
 ii. 12.) Nothing is disclosed of the object of this 
 visit, or of his occupation while there. It is not 
 unprobable, though it is but a supposition, that he 
 had formerly plied his trade in Capernaum, while 
 he was yet living by manual labor. After he was 
 rejected and treated with brutal ignominy by his 
 own townsmen of Nazareth, he made Capernaum his 
 home. It is probable that his mother, sister, and 
 brethren removed thither, and had there a house to 
 which Jesus resorted as to a home when he was in 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GATE. I97 
 
 Capernaum.^ It is believed that it was a city of con- 
 siderable population and importance. It was always 
 called a " city," bad its sjntiagogue, in whicb Jesus often 
 taugbt, was a Eoman garrison town and a customs sta- 
 tion. It is probable tbat it was on the lake shore, near 
 the city, that Jesus saw and called Simon Peter and his 
 brother Andrew, while they were "mending their nets." 
 Matthew — who resided there, was a pubhcan, and was 
 summoned by the Lord from this odious occupation to 
 discipleship — says, with perhaps a little pride, speak- 
 ing of Capernaum : " And he entered into a ship, and 
 passed over, and came into Ms own dtp." Here too he 
 healed the demoniac (Mark i. 21 - 28), cured the cen- 
 turion's servant (Luke vii. 1), the paralytic (Mark ii. 3), 
 and the man with" an unclean devil (Mark i. 23, Luke 
 iv. 33), and raised Jairus's daughter (Mark v. 22). It 
 was here that the nobleman's son lay when in Cana 
 the healing word went forth which restored him. It 
 was at Capernaum that, when tribute was demanded 
 of him, he sent Peter to find in a fish's mouth the piece 
 of money required (Matt. xvii. 24). Here he healed 
 Peter's wife's mother, who "lay sick of a fever"; and 
 Tristram, in arguing for the site of Capemaimi at the 
 " Round Fountain," remarks that fevers are prevalent 
 there to this day. It was in or near this city that 
 many of our Lord's most striking parables were ut- 
 tered, — "the sower," "the tares," "the goodly pearls," 
 " the net cast into the sea," and, notably, " the Sermon 
 on the Mount." It was in Capernaum that he dis- 
 coursed on fasting (Matt. ix. 10), and exposed the 
 
 ' Grove says, in Smith's BiUe Dictionary, that the phrase in Mark ii. 1, 
 " in the house," has in the Greek the force of " at home." So, in modern 
 languages, the French a la maison, the German zu House, the Italian alia 
 casa, etc. 
 
198 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 frivolous customs and vain traditions of the Pharisees 
 (Matt. XV. 1, etc.). Here also occurred the remarkable 
 discussion recorded by John only (John vi. 22-71), 
 and the discourse upon humility, with a "little child" 
 for the text (Mark ix. 33 - 50). 
 
 Jerusalem is more intimately associated with the 
 solemn close of Christ's life, but no place seems to 
 have had so much of his time, discourse, and mira- 
 cles as Capernaum. And yet nowhere was he less 
 successful in winning the people to a spiritual life, 
 or even to any considerable attention, save the tran- 
 sient enthusiasm excited by a miracle. The intense 
 cry of sorrow uttered by Jesus over Jerusalem has its 
 counterpart in his righteous indignation over the city 
 by the sea: "And thou, Capernaum, which art ex- 
 alted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell ; for 
 if the mighty works which have been done in thee had 
 been done in Sodom, it would have remained until 
 
 this day It shall be more tolerable for the land 
 
 of Sodom, in the day of judgment, than for thee." 
 (Matt. xi. 23, 24.) Even if Jesus wrought miracles at 
 this first visit to Capernaum, immediately after the 
 wedding scene at Cana, no record or notice of them 
 appears in the narrative, except that, afterward, when 
 he was in Nazareth, he heard, doubtless, the whisper- 
 ings and taunts of his impudent townsmen, and re- 
 plied : " Ye will surely say unto me this proverb. 
 Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard 
 done in Capernaum do also here in thy country." We 
 may infer, then, that the whole country was full of 
 the rumor of his miracles during his brief stay on this 
 his earUest visit to Capernaum. 
 
 Although the woes denounced against "his own 
 
TSE HOUSEHOLD GATE. 199 
 
 city" were designed to reach its citizens rather than 
 the streets and dwellings of the city itself, yet they 
 seem to have overflowed and fallen with crushing 
 weight upon the very stones of the town. The plain 
 of Genesareth and the Sea of Galilee are stiU there, 
 as when Christ made them famUiar by his daily foot- 
 steps along their border. But the cities, — they are 
 utterly perished ! Among several heaps of shapeless 
 stones upon the northeast coast of the Sea of Galilee, 
 for hundreds of years, geographers and antiquaries 
 have groped and dug in vain. Which was Bethesda, 
 which Chorazin of Capernaum, no one can teU to this 
 day. Not Sodom, under the waters of the Dead Sea, 
 is more lost to sight than the guilty cities of that other 
 plain, Genesareth. 
 
 "And they continued there not many days." The 
 Passover being at hand, Jesus went to Jerusalem, and 
 there next we must see him and hear his voice. 
 
200 
 
 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE OERIST. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE FIEST JTID^AN MINISTET. 
 
 Twelve tribes settled Palestine and a narrow strip 
 of territory east of the river Jordan. The tribal spirit 
 was strong. Had there been no provision for keeping 
 up a common national life, the Israelites would have 
 been liable to all the evils of a narrow and obstinate 
 provincial spirit. There were neither schools to pro- 
 mote intelligence nor books to feed it. Modem na- 
 tions, through the newspapers and swift tracts, keep 
 their people conversant with the same ideas at the 
 same time. Every week sees the millions of this con- 
 tinent thinking and talking of the same events, and 
 discussing the same policies or interests. But no such 
 provision for a common popular education was pos- 
 sible in Palestine. 
 
 The same result, however, was sought by the great 
 Lawgiver of the Desert by means of a circulation of 
 the people themselves. Three times in each year 
 every male inhabitant of the land who was not legally 
 impure, or hindered by infirmity or sickness, was com- 
 manded to appear in Jerusalem, and for a week to 
 engage in the solemn or joyful services of the Tem- 
 ple. The great occasions were the Passover, the 
 Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. It is proba- 
 ble that the first and last of these were borrowed 
 from celebrations already existing among other nations 
 
THE FIRST JVD^AN MINISTRY. 201 
 
 of antiquity, and primarily had reference to the course 
 of natiire. The seasons of seed-sowing and harvesting 
 would naturally furnish points for religious and social 
 festivals. We still retain a vestige of these festivals 
 in the melancholy Fast-day of New England and in the 
 Thanksgiving-day of the nation ; so that these simple 
 primitive observances of the vernal and autumnal posi- 
 tions of the sun seem likely to outlive all more elab- 
 orate institutions. But if Moses borrowed festivals 
 already in vogue, it is certain that he gave new asso- 
 ciations to them by making them commemorate cer- 
 tain great events in the history of the Israelites. 
 
 The feast of the Passover was kept in remembrance 
 of the safety of the Jews on that awful night when 
 Jehovah smote the first-born of every family in Egypt, 
 but passed over the dwellings of his own people, and 
 forbade the angel of death to strike any of their 
 households. The event itself marked an epoch in Jew- 
 ish history. The secondary benefits of its celebration, 
 however, were primary in moral importance. To be 
 taken away from home and sordid cares ; to be thrown 
 into a mighty stream of pilgrims that moved on from 
 every quarter to Jerusalem ; to see one's own country- 
 men fi"om every part of Palestine, and with them to 
 offer the same sacrifices, in the same place, by a 
 common ministration; to utter the same psalms, and 
 mingle in the same festivities, — could not but pro- 
 duce a civilizing influence far stronger than would re- 
 sult from such a course in modem times, when society 
 has so much better means of educating its people. 
 
 It was not far from the time of the Passover that 
 Jesus went to Capernaum, and his stay there was ap- 
 parently shortened by his desire to be in Jerusalem 
 
202 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 at this solemn festival. Already lie beheld among his 
 countrymen preparations for the journey. Pilgruns 
 were passing through Capernaum. The great road 
 along the western shore of the Lake of Genesareth 
 was filled with groups of men going toward Jerusalem. 
 Probably Jesus joined himself to the company; nor can 
 any one who has noticed his cheerful and affectionate 
 disposition doubt that he exerted upon his chance com- 
 panions that winning influence which so generally 
 brought men about him in admiring familiarity. 
 
 If he pursued the route east of the Jordan, crossing 
 again near the scene of his baptism, and ascending by 
 the way of Jericho and Bethany, he approached Jeru- 
 salem from the east. From thi& quarter Jerusalem 
 breaks upon the eye with a beauty which it has not 
 when seen from any other direction. At this time, 
 too, he would behold swarming with people, not the 
 city only, but all its neighborhood. Although it was 
 the custom of all pious Jews to entertain their country- 
 men at the great feasts, yet no city could hold the 
 numbers. The fields were white with tents. The hills 
 roimd about were covered as with an encamped army. 
 Josephus says that at the Passover A. d. 65, there were 
 three million Jews in attendance, and that in the reign 
 of Nero there were on one occasion two million seven 
 hundred thousand; and even greater numbers have 
 been recorded. But if the half of these were present, 
 it is plain that the whole region around Jerusalem, 
 together with near villages, must have been over full. 
 
 Eight before him, as he came over the Mount of 
 
 Olives, shone forth the Temple, whose foundations rose 
 
 ^sheer from the precipitous rocks on the eastern side 
 
 of Jerusalem, and whose white marble summits ght- 
 
TEE FIRST JUDjEAN MINISTRY. 203 
 
 tered in the sun higher than the highest objects in 
 the city itself. 
 
 We should dismiss from our minds all preconcep- 
 tions of the appearance of the renowned Temple, 
 whether based upon classic temples or upon modern 
 cathedrals or churches. It resembled none of them, 
 but stood by itself, without parallel or likeness either 
 in structure or method, as it certainly stood alone 
 among all temples in its wonderful uses. It was 
 not so much a building as a system of structures ; one 
 quadrangle within another, the second standing upon 
 higher ground than the outermost, and the Temple 
 proper upon a position highest of all, and forming the 
 architectural climax of beauty, as it certainly stood 
 highest in moral sacredness. The Temple of Solomon 
 was originally bmlt upon the rocky heights on the east 
 side of Jerusalem, and was separated from the city by a 
 deep ravine. The heights not affording sufficient room 
 for all the outbmldings, the royal architect built up 
 a wall from the valley below and filled in the enclosed 
 space with earth. Other additions continued to be 
 made, until, when Herod had finished the last Temple, 
 — that one which shone out upon Jesus -and the pil- 
 grims coming over the Mount of Olives, — the whole 
 space, including the tower of Antonia, occupied about 
 nineteen acres. The Temple, then, was not a single 
 building, like the Grecian temples or hke modern 
 cathedrals, but a system of concentric enclosures or 
 courts, — a kind of sacerdotal citadel, of which the 
 Temple proper, though the most splendid part of it, 
 and lifted high above all the rest, was in space and 
 bulk but a small part. In approaching the sacred 
 mount, the Jew first entered the outer court, called 
 
204 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 the Court of the Gentiles, not because it was set apart 
 for them, but because Gentiles, rigorously excluded 
 from every other portion of the Temple enclosures, 
 were permitted, with aU others, to enter there. This 
 outer quadrangle, taken separately from the residue 
 of the Temple system, was remarkable for its magni- 
 tude, its magnificence, and the variety of its .uses. 
 Although its walls were elevated, yet, standing upon 
 a lower level, they did not hide the interior courts, 
 with their walls, gates, and adornments. On the in- 
 ner side of the walls of this outer court extended 
 porticos or cloisters with double rows of white marble 
 Corinthian columns. The ceiling was flat, finished 
 with cedar, and nearly forty feet in height above the 
 floor. But these cloisters were quite eclipsed by the 
 magnificence of the Stoa Basilica, or Royal Porch, on 
 the south side. It consisted of a nave and two aisles, 
 six hundred feet in length, formed by four rows of 
 white marble columns, forty columns in each row. 
 The breadth of the central space was forty-five feet, 
 and its height one hundred. The side spaces were 
 thirty feet wide and fifty in height. This impressive 
 building was unhke any other, in that it was whoUy 
 open on the side toward the Temple ; it was connected 
 with the city and the king's palace by a bridge thrown 
 across the ravine. This vast arcade was a grand resort 
 for all persons of leisure who repaired to the Temple, 
 a kind of ecclesiastical Exchange, somewhat analogous 
 to the Grecian Agora or the Roman Forum; a place 
 of general resort for public, literary, or professional 
 busmess. Some parts of it were appropriated to synar 
 gogical purposes. It was here that Jesus was accus- 
 tomed to teach the people and to hold discourse with 
 
WW 
 
 ^^^w^^^^^^ 
 
 rrs:?^^ 
 
 Wiliiil 
 
 NORTH 
 
 a nnonpnanpBonnpnannnoa r 
 
 3 
 
 a d 
 
 a a 
 
 a 4 
 
 D fr q 
 
 — n 
 
 OD 
 
 B -In 
 
 .1-. 
 9 'Is 
 
 9 
 
 9 « 
 
 9 B 
 
 D n 
 
 D a 
 
 B.' '-ffTirD 
 
 COURT OF TMC GENTILES 
 
 ta 
 
 a a B B b D~v a u D d~d u d d b'D'd b b "h d u b b b b b a a b" b~b 
 
 n B nBPOBnnqDCiaHDPB''n0nqppDnpnpBPDQBB 
 
 qDCiaHDPB''n0nqppDnpnp 
 
 nCYAL CLOISTER 
 
 B Badaatl''duUDUBBDDDDDDDDdBDDBD'afi D~B d~b b U 
 
 m 
 
 iifcatiaftftMrr°'°'f rn't BAaaa^im 
 
 SOUTH, 
 
 PLAN ASD SECTIOS OF THE TEMPLE. 
 
TEE FIRST JUDJEAN MINISTRY. 205 
 
 the Scribes and Pharisees ; and here, too, the early 
 Christians, who did not consider themselves as broken 
 off from the Jewish Church or debarred from the 
 rights and privileges of the Temple, used to assemble 
 for conversation and worship. 
 
 Although the cathedral-like aisles of" Herod's Stoa 
 Basilica, on the south side, were the most magnificent 
 part of the Court of the Gentiles, yet on all its sides 
 stood spacious colonnades or cloisters, and next within 
 was an open court paved with stones of various colors. 
 StUl farther inside of this open court one came to a 
 low marble partition, beautifully carved, and bearing 
 the warning, in several languages, that it was death 
 for any Gentile to pass beyond it. Paul was accused 
 of having taken Greeks beyond it (Acts xxi. 28). By 
 bearing in mind this screen, we shall understand the 
 force and beauty of Paul's argument that Christ had 
 "broken down the middle waU of partition between 
 us."i 
 
 A few yards beyond this screen of exclusion, one 
 ascended by a series of steps to the next enclosure or 
 
 ' " But now, in Christ Jesus, ye, who sometimes were far off, are made nigh 
 by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and 
 hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us ; having abol- 
 ished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in 
 ordinances : for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace ; 
 and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having 
 slain the enmity thereby : and came and preached peace to you which were 
 afar oif and to them that were nigh. For through him we both have access 
 by one Spirit unto the Father. Now therefore ye are no more strangers 
 and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of 
 God ; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus 
 Christ himself being the chief corner-stone ; in whom all the building, fitly 
 framed together, groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord : in whom ye 
 also are builded together, for an habitation of God through the Spirit." 
 (Eph.ii. 13-22.) 
 
206 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 quadrangle, whicli was twenty-two feet above the level 
 of the Court of the Gentiles. This court was again 
 subdivided into the Court of the Israelites and the 
 Court of the Women. The Temple stood in still an- 
 other and a higher portion of this court, and was 
 approached through a gate upon which had been 
 lavished every element of architectiu-al beauty ; and 
 it was this gate, probably, which was called Beautiful 
 (Acts iii. 2). The walls and the gateways were so buUt 
 as to furnish numerous apartments for the officers of 
 the Temple, for the priests and their retinue. In the 
 Court of the Israelites and the Court of the Women 
 were the various tables and utensils in use for sacri- 
 ficial purposes. Within the Gate Beautiful stood the 
 altar, and beyond that the Temple proper, in the form 
 of an inverted T (i), comprising a portico, the sanc- 
 tuary, and the Holy of Holies. The main portions 
 of the Temple, it is believed, were of the same 
 dimensions and upon the very foundations of Solo- 
 mon's Temple. But it is supposed that, while the 
 internal space remained the same, the external pro- 
 portions were much increased, and that the wings of 
 the facade were extended, so that the length of the 
 Temple and the width of its front or facade were each 
 one hundred feet. 
 
 A general knowledge of the structure of the Temple 
 is indispensable to those who would study either the 
 history of Jesus or that of his countrymen. One may 
 know far more of Athens, her Acropolis left out, of 
 Rome without its Forum or Capitol, than of Jerusalem 
 without its Temple. Without that the city would 
 have hardly any significance left. The Temple was at 
 once the brain and the heart of the nation. It was 
 
TEE FIRST JUD^AN MINISTRY. 207 
 
 the university and chief house of the learned men and 
 priests, and gave to Palestine a centre of orthodoxy. 
 Through the Temple circulated the whole people in its 
 great annual visitations, and then, hke blood that has 
 been aerated, it carried back new life to every ex- 
 tremity of the land. 
 
 With what feelings Jesus looked upon the Temple 
 as he drew near to Jerusalem can only be surmised. 
 It might seem as though his Divine soul would per- 
 ceive little of use in the cumbrous ritual which he 
 had come to abrogate. As he looked over from the 
 Mount of OUves upon the encirchng walls and battle- 
 ments, the ascending rows of towers, arches, and gate- 
 ways, and the pure white Temple gUttering high in 
 the air above all, could he fail to contrast the outward 
 beauty with the interior desecration ? But it does not 
 follow on that account that he felt little interest. On 
 another occasion, when he looked from the same place 
 over upon the whole city of Jerusalem, whose long 
 and wearisome criminal history rose before his mind, 
 he did not any the less experience a profound affection 
 for the city, even while pronouncing its doom. In like 
 manner he might have looked upon the Temple, and, 
 though conscious of its gross unspirituality, he might 
 have yet experienced a profound sympathy for it, con- 
 sidered in its whole past history, in its intent, and as 
 the focus to which so many noble hearts had through 
 ages converged. At any rate, he is soon found with- 
 in it, and his first recorded act of authority took place 
 in the Temple. 
 
 It seems to us very strange that money-brokers, cattle, 
 sheep, and doves should be found in the Temple, and 
 that trafficking should go on in that sacred place, if by 
 
208 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 this term we bring before our minds the true and in- 
 nermost Temple. But these transactions took place 
 in the lower and outer court, and probably at the 
 western portion of the Court of the Gentiles. 
 
 Thousands of Jews must have come every year to 
 Jerusalem without being in circumstances to bring 
 with them the appropriate offerings. For then- con- 
 venience, doves, sheep, and oxen were provided and 
 held for sale, at first, probably, in the vicinity of the 
 Temple enclosure. Little by little they intruded upon 
 the space within, until they made it their head-quar- 
 ters without rebuke. 
 
 This custom was less repulsive, probably, to the Jews 
 than it would be to us, because the whole Temple 
 was used in a manner that would utterly shock the 
 sensibility of men educated in Christian chxu-ches. 
 Thousands and hundreds of thousands of sheep, every 
 Passover, as well as at every Pentecost and every Feast 
 of Tabernacles, were borne into the Temple and car- 
 ried or driven into the Court of the Priests, and there 
 slain, the blood being caught by the priests in bowls 
 and dashed upon the altar. Hour after hour, the whole 
 day long, the spectacle continued. The secret chan- 
 nels down through the rocks, toward the king's gar- 
 den, gurgled with blood. It was blood, blood, blood ; 
 nor can a modem man imagine how it could be 
 other than intolerably shocking. We cannot con- 
 ceive how even familiarity woxild abate the repulsive- 
 ness of an altar incessantly flowing with blood, and of 
 pavements and walls dripping with the same. 
 
 But the tolerant custom of herding cattle and sheep 
 in the outer court of the Temple, the place where the 
 people gathered and talked, where discussions and 
 
THE FIRST JUDjEAN MINISTRY. 209 
 
 discourses went on, had doubtless become so mucli 
 abused that portions of tbe court had become almost 
 a corral, or cattle-yard. 
 
 In this court, too, brokers had congregated to ex- 
 change foreign coin for the shekel of the sanctuary, in 
 which only could the Jew pay the Temple tax. The 
 images on imperial coins savored of idolatry. The 
 devout Jew, drawing near to the Temple, filled with 
 pious associations, would find his meditations rudely 
 broken in upon by lowing herds and bleating flocks, by 
 the hagghng of money-changers and the chink of their 
 coin. If, as is suspected, the traffic was winked at by 
 the Temple familiars because they were participants of 
 the profits, it was aU the more improper. Many deco- 
 rous Jews would be scandahzed at the growing evil, 
 but what could they do ? 
 
 On the first day of the Passover, or perhaps on the 
 day before, when the herds of cattle were hkely to be 
 most in the way, the nuisance was suddenly abated. 
 Without parley or leave asked, Jesus drove out the 
 motley herd. It must have been one of those supreme 
 moments, which came so often to him afterwards, when 
 no one could stand before his gaze. Go hence ! and 
 with a whip of small cords he drove out the lowing 
 and bleating creatures, and their owners hastened 
 after them; no one seemed to resist him. He over- 
 threw the money-changers' tables, and sent the coin 
 ringing over the marble pavements. "Take these 
 things hence ! Make not my Father's house an house 
 of merchandise ! " 
 
 The only comment made by the Evangelist John is 
 in these words: "And his disciples remembered that 
 it was written, The zeal of thy house hath eaten me 
 
 14 
 
210 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 up." But why should this passage have occurred to 
 them, unless his manner had been fuU of energy, and 
 his voice so terrible that the avaricious hucksters, 
 though assailed in privileges permitted by the Temple 
 officers, dared not resist ? The fact itself, and the com- 
 men*tary which the Evangelist adds, make it plain that 
 there was in the countenance of Jesus, and in his man- 
 ner, that which men did not choose to confront. 
 
 Nothing can better show how superior Christ was 
 to the narrow prejudices of the Jews against all for- 
 eign people. A heathen was an abomination. The 
 only part of the Temple to which the GentUe could 
 apprQach was this court. Jews did not care that cat- 
 tle and money-brokers turned the court into a vast 
 and noisy bazaar or market ; they could pass on, and 
 in the higher interior courts be free from aU molesta- 
 tion. It was only the GentUe that suffered from this 
 perversion of the great outer court of the Temple. 
 The cleansing of this place was not only an act of hu- 
 manity to the Gentiles, but may be regarded as the 
 sign and precursor of the mercy of Christ to the whole 
 world, Jew or Gentile. 
 
 Even if the rulers of the Temple were not spectators 
 of this scene, the story must have soon come to their 
 ears. There seems to have been no anger excited. 
 Among the Jews there was singular toleration for 
 any one upon whom came "the Spirit of the Lord." 
 Besides, deeper than every other feeling, stronger 
 even than avarice, ambition, and pride, or perhaps as 
 the fullest expression of them all, was the longing for 
 that Messiah who was to end their national degrada- 
 tion, exalt them to supremacy, and avenge upon the 
 heathen double for all their sufferings. In spite of all 
 
THE FIRST JUD^AN MINISTRY. 211 
 
 their worldliness, or rather a remarkable feature of it, 
 was this undying watchfulness for the Divine inter- 
 position in their behalf And when any person of 
 remarkable gifts appeared, as in the case of John the 
 Baptist, and in the earlier periods of Jesus's ministry, 
 all eyes were turned upon him, and in anxious sus- 
 pense they waited for evidence that he was the prom- 
 ised Deliverer. There is something inexpressibly sad 
 in the sight of a proud nation resenting an oppression 
 which it could not resist, and carrying an unextin- 
 guished longiag, night and day, for a promised cham- 
 pion, who was, in the sense expected, never to come. 
 
 It was not in displeasure, but rather in eager ex- 
 pectancy, that the officers put the question, "What 
 sign showest thou imto us, seeing thou doest such 
 thiags ? " It was only another form of saying, as they 
 did afterwards, " If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly." 
 Jesus had taken things into his own hands, had re- 
 voked the permission which they had given to the 
 traffickers, and for the moment he was the one person 
 in supreme authority there. That he was not seized, 
 ejected from the Temple, or even slain, shows that the 
 rulers hoped something from this new-comer who pos- 
 sessed such power of command. 
 
 Jesus replied, "Destroy this temple, and in three 
 days I wiU raise it up." The Jews, taking his answer 
 literally, were stumbled at the boast imphed. " Forty 
 and six years was this Temple in building, and wilt 
 thou rear it up in three days ? " The Evangelist John 
 adds, "But he spake of the temple of his body." 
 
 It is not strange that he should identify himself with 
 the Temple, for Jesus bore the same relation to the 
 new dispensation which the Temple did to the old. 
 
212 TBE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 What the visible altar and sanctuary were to ritual 
 worship, that his heart was to spiritual worship. It 
 is not the only instance in which Christ suggests a 
 comparison between himself and the Temple. "When 
 defending himself against the charge of Sabbath- 
 breaking, he refers to the blamelessness of the priests, 
 though working on the Sabbath in the Temple. " But 
 I say unto you, that in this place is one greater than 
 the Temple." (Matt. xii. 6.) 
 
 There has been much perplexity among commen- 
 tators at this reply, which on its face meant one thing, 
 and reaUy meant another. But Jesus did not iatend 
 to have them penetrate the hidden meaning. Then 
 why answer at aU? The mood in which the of&cers 
 evidently were would not brook a defiant silence. The 
 Jews were fanatically inflammable in all matters relat- 
 ing to the Temple. Without prudence or calculation 
 of the result, they would throw themselves headlong 
 upon Eoman soldiers, or upon any others, who seemed 
 to put contempt upon the holy place ; they were Hke 
 hornets, who, when their nest is touched, dash with 
 fiery courage upon the intruder, and that without 
 regard to the certainty of their own destruction. The 
 answer of Jesus, while it could not have seemed dis- 
 respectful, must have left them in suspense as to 
 whether he was boasting, or whether he was claim- 
 ing Divine power. It had the efiect designed, at any 
 rate. The great liberty which Jesus had taken was 
 allowed to pass without rebuke or violence, and he 
 had avoided a public declaration of his Messiahship, 
 which at that period would have been imprudent, 
 whether the rulers accepted or rejected him. His 
 time had not yet come. 
 
THE FIRST JUDJEAN MINISTRY. 213 
 
 But was this baffling reply such a one as we 
 should expect from a sincere and frank nature ? The 
 answer to this question will require us to consider 
 for a moment the method of discourse which Christ 
 adopted. No one ever taught with more transparent 
 simplicity and directness. Much of his teaching reads 
 like the Book of Proverbs, of which the Sermon on the 
 Mount, as given by Matthew, is a good instance. At 
 times he employed an argumentative or logical style, 
 as in the discussions with the Jews recorded by John. 
 He likewise taught by pictures ; for such are his ex- 
 quisite little fables, as the Greeks would have called 
 them, and which we style parables. But Jesus ex- 
 plicitly declared to his disciples, that, for wise purposes, 
 he often employed an outward form to hide within it a 
 meaning which they were not yet prepared to accept. 
 The outward form, therefore, acted the part of the 
 lobes of a seed. They first preserve the germ till 
 planting time, and then supply its food until it has 
 roots of its own. We hear Jesus expHcitly saying 
 (Matt. xiii. 10 - 16) that he taught in unintelligible 
 forms. 
 
 But we are to consider that among the Orientals, 
 and especially among the Jews, this was considered as 
 the highest form of instruction. It was the dehght of 
 philosophy to express itself in enigmas, paradoxes, par- 
 ables, and even in riddles. Friendly arguments were 
 not so much an array of facts and reasonings, as the 
 proposing and the interpreting of dark sayings. In 
 Proverbs the philosopher is thus described: "A wise 
 man will hear, and will increase learning ; and a man 
 of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels : to 
 understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the 
 
214 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 words of the wise, and their dark sayings." (Prov. i. 
 5, 6.) A "dark saying" was simply a truth locked 
 up in a figure, hidden within a parable, in such a way 
 as to stir the imagination and provoke the reason to 
 search it out. The real design was not to conceal 
 the truth, but, by exciting curiosity, to put men upon 
 the search for it. (Ps. xlix. 4 ; Dan. viii. 23.) Such 
 a method of instruction easily degenerated into a 
 mere contest of puzzles and riddles. But we see it 
 in its noblest form in the teaching of Jesus, where, 
 though often used with wonderful skill to foil the craft 
 and malice of his antagonists, it never failed to carry 
 within it some profound moral truth. 
 
 The crucifixion of Christ was to be the first step in 
 the destruction of the Temple. The blow aimed at 
 Christ would shatter the altar. All this lay before the 
 mind of Jesus. His reply was a rebound of thought 
 from the physical and the present to the invisible and 
 spiritual. It was meant neither as an explanation nor 
 as a prophecy ; it was rather a soliloquy : " Destroy 
 this Temple, and in three days I will raise it again." 
 Enigmatical to them and puzzlmg to commentators 
 ever since, it would seem quite natural to one who 
 looked at the spiritual as well as the temporal relations 
 of all events and physical facts. He did not mean to 
 speak definitely, either of his own death or of the 
 end of the Levitical system. 
 
 This answer conforms to Christ's habit of speaking, 
 not to the thing suggesting, but to the ulterior truths 
 suggested. A note being sounded, he took its octave. 
 Witness the scene (John xii. 20-26) where his disci- 
 ples tell him that certain Greeks desire to see him. 
 He replies : " The hour is come that the Son of Man 
 
THE FIRST JUDJSAN MINISTRY. 215 
 
 should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, 
 Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, 
 it abideth alone ; but if it die, it briageth forth much 
 fruit." There never was a greater enthusiasm for him 
 among the whole community than at that moment. 
 Even foreigners were infected. When told of this, he 
 answers not to the outside fact, but to the inward 
 vision. 
 
 In this light, his reply to the rulers in the Temple, 
 if obscure to them, conforms to his habits of thought 
 and speech. As they understood his reply, it must 
 have seemed extravagant. No wonder they said, "For- 
 ty and six years was this Temple in building, and wUt 
 thou rear it up in three days?" The Temple proper 
 had been completed in a year and a half after it was 
 begun. But portions of the courts and various ad- 
 juncts had been forty-six years in hand, and, indeed, 
 the work was stUl going on. 
 
 During this Passover, Jesus became the centre of 
 attraction. He both wrought miracles and taught, 
 and no inconsiderable number were disposed to join 
 him. But he saw that it was only an outward ex- 
 citement, and had no root in moral conviction. He 
 would not, therefore, draw them out, nor put himself 
 at their head. There is evidence that his ministry 
 produced an effect among the most thoughtful of the 
 Pharisees. It was doubtless a matter of conference in 
 the Sanhedrim and of conversation among such Jews 
 as had deep spiritual longings. Indeed, as soon as the 
 night extricated Jesus from the crowd, and gave him 
 leisure for extended conversation, one of the noblest 
 among the Pharisees, a ruler too, came to him. 
 
 That one luckless phrase, " by night," has sent dowm 
 
216 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 to US the name of an honest and courageous Jew as 
 one too timid to come openly, and who therefore 
 sought to steal an interview under the cover of dark- 
 ness, so as to avoid responsibility. There is not in 
 the history of Nicodemus a single fact to justify such 
 an imputation on his moral courage, except the single 
 phrase that he came "by night." He appears but 
 three times in the history, and every one of these 
 occasions shows a calm, earnest, thoughtful man, un- 
 demonstrative, but firm and courageous. 
 
 Is it the part of timidity that he, — though an emi- 
 nent man, a member of the Sanhedrim, a Pharisee, 
 with a reputation to sustain, — after witnessing Christ's 
 works and listening to his teaching, came before aU 
 others the first to seek instruction ? The night was 
 chosen simply because then Jesus was no longer amid 
 an excited multitude. The crowd was gone. He was 
 free for protracted conference. When would a dis- 
 tressed soul, in our day, seek advice, — when the 
 preacher was speaking in the fuU congregation, or 
 afterward, when he could be found at home, and at 
 leisure to consider a single case ? Nicodemus came in 
 the true hour for converse. He came by night; but 
 he was the only one of all his fellows that came at all. 
 
 The next scene in which Nicodemus appears is near 
 the close of Christ's ministry. The rulers had become 
 desperate. His death was resolved upon. It was now 
 only a matter of hesitation how to compass it. In 
 full council the Sanhedrim sat, waiting for Jesus to 
 be arrested and brought before them. The officers 
 brought word that they were overawed by his bearing 
 and his teaching. The Pharisees were enraged. They 
 inquired whether any of their own party were going 
 
TEE FIRST JUDuEAN MINISTRY. 217 
 
 over to Mm. They cursed the common people as 
 stupid and ignorant, and they reviled the delinquent 
 ofl&cers. Was this the place and time in which a 
 timid man would confront the whole ofl&cial power 
 of his people? And yet one man in that council 
 bravely spoke out, — "Doth our law judge any man 
 before it hear him, and know what he doeth ? " That 
 man was Nicodemus. 
 
 He appears yet once more. It was after the cruci- 
 fixion. All hope was over. The disciples were over- 
 awed, confounded, and scattered. There was not a 
 man left in Jerusalem who would now think it pru- 
 dent to identify himself with a lost cause ; it could 
 help nothing and would compromise the actor. Joseph 
 of Arimathea begged of Pilate the body of Jesus for 
 honorable burial. "And there came also Nicodemus 
 (which at the first came to Jesus by night), and 
 brought a mixtiu-e of myrrh and aloes, about an hun- 
 dred pound weight." Of Joseph, the Evangelist John 
 says expressly that he was " a disciple of Jesus, but 
 secretly, for fear of the Jews." (John xbc. 38, 39.) 
 But not an intimation of this kind is made against 
 Nicodemus. The phrase is only, "he that came to 
 Jesus by night " ; and again, " which at the first came 
 to Jesus by night." 
 
 Just such men as Peter and Nicodemus we have 
 around us now. The one was eager and overflowing, 
 the other calm and undemonstrative. In Peter, im- 
 pulse was strongest; in Nicodemus, reflection. Peter, 
 rash and headstrong, was confused by real peril ; Nico- 
 demus, cautious at the beginning, grew firmer and 
 bolder as difficulties developed danger. 
 
 This interview between Jesus and Nicodemus is pro- 
 
218 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 foundly interesting from the revelation which it gives 
 of the character of the better men among the Pharisees, 
 and also of the spiritual condition of the sincere and 
 devout Jews. It is besides remarkable for the first 
 disclosure made of the distinctive doctrines of the new 
 life then about to dawn. Nicodemus saluted Christ as 
 if he were a Jewish rabbi, and confessed the effect 
 wrought upon his mind by the sight of his miracles, 
 but asked no questions. Jesus, striking at once to the 
 heart of the matter, answered not his words nor even 
 his thoughts, but his unconscious spiritual needs : " Ex- 
 cept a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom 
 of God." That such a man as Nicodemus should take 
 this as a literal physical re-birth gives surprising evi- 
 dence of the externality of his religious knowledge. 
 He had not the faintest sense of the difference be- 
 tween external righteousness and internal holiness. 
 He did not even understand enough of spirituality 
 to accept the figure employed by Christ ; and he 
 needed, like a child, to have it explained that not 
 a physical, but a moral, re-birth was meant. 
 
 " That which is born of the flesh is flesh ; 
 That which is born of the Spirit is spirit." 
 
 This is the root. In these words Jesus gave the 
 fundamental philosophy of religion. Man is born 
 into the material world with all those powers which 
 are required for his physical and social well-being, 
 but within him lie dormant the germs of a Divine 
 nature. These can be developed only by the Spirit 
 of God; but when evolved they change the whole 
 nature, give to man a new horizon, new force, scope, 
 and vision. He will live thenceforth by a different 
 class of faculties. Before, he Hved by the forces 
 
THE FIRST JUDJSAN MINISTRY. £19 
 
 which nature developed through the senses. He was 
 mainly a physical being. Afterwards, he will live 
 through the forces developed by the Spirit of God, 
 — forces whose rudiments existed before, but whose 
 growth and full power demand the energy and fire of 
 the Divine soul. Like an exotic plant in a temper- 
 ate zone, the soul without God bears only leaves. 
 For blossoms and fruit there must be tropical heat 
 and light, that we may " bring forth fruit unto God." 
 
 Thus, in his very first recorded conversation, as 
 clearly as at the end of his ministry, Jesus set forth 
 the new era to which the soul of man was approach- 
 ing. The conversation as recorded has an uncon- 
 scious dramatic element. An eminent Pharisee, whose 
 life has been spent in attaining perfection, and who, 
 in his own opinion, has almost reached it, but has 
 not found satisfaction of his heart-hunger, is told that 
 his whole life-work has been in a wrong direction, — 
 he must begin anew. Like one who has gone upon 
 a wrong road, he has been carried by every step away 
 from his goal. He has sought moral perfectness by 
 rigorous discipline in external things. He must re- 
 verse the process, and reinforce the soul. 
 
 In the order of time, man develops from the sensu- 
 ous towards the spiritual. But in the order of power 
 and of self-government, that which is last must become 
 first. The spirit must be formed and filled by the Di- 
 vine soul. It is then inspired. A new force is de- 
 veloped. A conflict ensues. The spirit striveth against 
 the flesh, and the flesh lusteth against the spirit. But 
 the whole moral nature is reinvigorated. It has be- 
 come open and sensitive to truths and influences which 
 before it did not perceive nor feel. 
 
220 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 Of course the whole conversation of the two is not 
 recorded. Hours would not suffice, when once the 
 soul had found its Master, to bring him into all the 
 dark and troubled places within, where there had been 
 sorrow and trouble of soul. The stars still rose and 
 set; but Nicodemus had found his new heaven and 
 the guiding star of his future life. He marvelled. 
 Nor did his wonder cease as his Master, step by step, 
 unfolded the new life and the supremacy of the spirit- 
 ual over the carnal. As Jesus with indistinct Knes 
 sketched his own history, his death, the life-giving 
 power of faith in him, it may be supposed that his 
 listener heard only, but did not understand. 
 
 We are concerned with this earliest discourse of 
 Jesus, because its philosophy underlies the whole 
 question of religion. It has two astonishing originali- 
 ties. Men may stop suddenly in a career of evil, and 
 be born again. The Ethiopian may change his skin, 
 and the leopard his spots ! There is a power before 
 which even habit cannot stand. It also reveals that 
 a whole new development of spiritual life is possible 
 to every one. Those inspirations which before have 
 glanced upon a few, which have been the privilege of 
 genius, are now to become a free gift to all The 
 Holy Ghost is to carry a flood of light and energy to 
 every soul that is willing. 
 
 A crisis had come in the world's psychology. Rear 
 son was to receive a higher development, adding to 
 the senses the power of faith. Faith, which is reason 
 inspired to intuitions of supersensuous truth, (not a 
 blind credulity, but a new light, a higher reason, acting 
 in a sphere above matter,) was thereafter to become 
 developed into a stature and power of which the past 
 had given but hints and glimpses. 
 
THE FIRST JUD^AN MINISTRY. 221 
 
 Jesus remained in Judaea from April to December, 
 or, as some think, till January. Nothing can more 
 forcibly show how far the Gospels are from a close 
 biography than the fact that this period, at the very 
 opening of his public .ministry, is not mentioned by 
 Matthew, Mark, and Luke, who do not even give an 
 account of this visit to Jerusalem ; while John, from 
 whom we derive all our knowledge of this visit, 
 leaves the next four months, though the first months 
 of the Saviour's public ministry, without a record. 
 "After these things came Jesus and his disciples 
 into the land of Judaea." But they were already in 
 Jerusalem : . it is therefore evident that they went 
 out of the city into the adjacent parts, probably into 
 the northeast of Judaea. But even of that we are un- 
 certain. " And there he tarried with them, and bap- 
 tized." It is not said where he baptized. It is added 
 that John " was baptizing in JEnon, because there was 
 much water there." But where jEnon was hardly 
 any two investigators agree, — whether it was on the 
 Jordan, or at certain copious springs, the source of a 
 stream on its western side. It is not said that Jesus 
 was near John. All is left to conjecture. It is quite 
 certain that a period of from four to six months elapsed 
 between his leaving Capernaum for the Passover at 
 Jerusalem and his return to Galilee. Even of his 
 doings there is no hint, excejpt only of his baptizing ; 
 and this was not performed by himself, but by the 
 hands of his disciples. During these four or five 
 months occurred the other annual feasts of the Jew- 
 ish year, — the Pentecost and the Feast of Taber- 
 nacles. It is scarcely possible but that Jesus, being 
 near to Jerusalem, and habitually observant of the 
 
222 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 national customs, was present on these occasions in 
 Jerusalem. Yet no mention is made of it. Nor is 
 it said that he preached at all, or taught, or wrought 
 a single miracle ; and yet it is scarcely supposable 
 that, after having entered on his ministry, he should 
 leave so many months utterly blank. It has been sug- 
 gested by Andrews that during this period may have 
 begun his acquaintance with the family of Lazarus, 
 which afterward constituted so remarkable a feature 
 of his history, and was the occasion of a miracle which 
 gave the last impulse to the zeal of his opponents, 
 leading to his arrest and death. 
 
 If this reticence of the Evangelists arises from their 
 peculiarly un-literary and non-historic genius, it is not 
 unbecoming to the nature of Jesus. There was never 
 so impersonal a person as he. Although to an extraor- 
 dinary degree full of outward life and action, yet there 
 was something in the elevation of his nature which 
 abstracts our thoughts from the outward form of his 
 life. As in the presence of a great picture we forget 
 the canvas, the paint, and the brush, and think only 
 of the events and objects themselves ; so Jesus leaves 
 upon our minds the impression not of the journeys, the 
 acts, the words even, but of the temper, the nobility 
 of soul, the universal truths of his life and teachinscs. 
 He detaches himself from the world in which he lived 
 and through which he acted, as the perfume of fra- 
 grant vines abandons the flowers in which it was dis- 
 tilled and fills the air. 
 
 Jesus was full of a generous enthusiasm for his 
 own country and people. He was occupied until 
 within two or three years of his death in mechanical 
 labors peculiar to his place and time. He so shaped 
 
THE FIRST JUDJEAN MINISTRY. 223 
 
 his teachings as to include in them all the truths 
 then unfolded among his countrymen, and he identi- 
 fied himself with the common people in the use of 
 their customs, pursuits, domestic habits, and language ; 
 so that he was of all men a typical Jew, a Hebrew 
 of the Hebrews. And yet his life, written by four 
 Evangelists, themselves Hebrews, produces the effect, 
 not of nationality, but of universality. 
 
 We do not think of him as a Jew, but as a man ; 
 and each race appropriates him, as if he interpreted 
 their truest and deepest conception of manhood. That 
 which was peculiar to his age and country seems to 
 have withered and dropped away, as leaves do when 
 they have nourished the cluster, which could not have 
 ripened without them, but which, being grown, is un- 
 like them in form, in color, and in flavor. 
 
 The only incident mentioned by the Evangelists in 
 connection with Christ's stay in Judsea is that he bap- 
 tized there. Yet it is expressly said, " Jesus himself 
 baptized not, but his disciples." The use of water as 
 a sign of ceremonial cleanness is as old as the insti- 
 tutes of Moses, and probably was borrowed from 
 Egyptian customs. It may be said to be a custom 
 almost universal among Oriental nations. It was 
 natural that water should become in like manner a 
 symbol and declaration of moral purity. In this im- 
 portant element, the baptism of John, the baptism of 
 Jesus, and the baptism of the Apostles in the early 
 Church are substantially one. There was, undoubt- 
 edly, a variation of formula. Paul says that John bap- 
 tized a baptism of repentance, and made his converts 
 promise obedience to the Saviour that was to come. 
 No such formula could have been used in the presence 
 
224 TBE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 of the Saviour himseE Nor can we suppose that the 
 apostolic formula, by which candidates were baptized 
 into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
 Ghost, could have been unfolded at this early period. 
 But whatever the formula, and whatever the specific 
 variations, aU these forms of baptism were essentially 
 one, and were but a token and announcement of moral 
 changes begun or promised. It was of powerful in- 
 fluence in giving decision and definiteness to moral 
 reformation. Good resolutions without action soon 
 melt away. Mere purposes of a better life change 
 easily to dreams and reveries. But men who have 
 openly declared their withdrawal from evil, and their 
 adhesion to virtue and piety, are committed before 
 their fellows. After an open espousal of religion, 
 that pride and vanity which before resisted, now 
 fortify men's zeal. 
 
 It is, however, remarkable, that only in these early 
 and obscure periods of his ministry, and while he was in 
 John's neighborhood and surrounded by a community 
 that had been aroused by that bold and stem reformer, 
 did Christ continue in the use of baptism. There 
 seems to have been a special reason why he should 
 drop it. A dispute arose between John's disciples 
 and those of Jesus " about purifying." What it was, 
 is not said. It is supposed to relate to some form 
 of baptizing. Where men had been trained in the 
 school of the Pharisee, it would not be hard to find 
 occasion of difference. The moral duty of accuracy 
 in outward forms was the peculiar spirit of Pharisa- 
 ism. Indifference to all religious forms, if only the 
 interior reality be present, was the spirit of Christ. 
 To him baptism was a secondary matter, incidental 
 
THE FIRST JUDJEAN MINISTRY. 225 
 
 and declaratory. It was not an initiation, but the 
 sign of one. It conveyed no moral change, but it 
 was the profession of one. It was an act which re- 
 quired a disclosure of feeling, the manifestation of a 
 purpose, commitment to a vital decision ; and so- far 
 as by this outward action men could be aided in the 
 striiggles of a new life, it was useful, — so far and no 
 farther. Already Jesus had expounded to Nicodemus 
 the inoperative nature of baptism as a mere sign of 
 reformation : " Except a man be born of water and of 
 the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God " ; 
 which is sajdng, in effect. Do not rest in the mere 
 fact that you have been baptized. John, indeed, bap- 
 tized to repentance and reformation. That is but the 
 lowest step; it is a mere shadow and symbol. Hast 
 thou been baptized ? That is not enough. Except a 
 man be born of water ajstd op the Spirit, he cannot 
 enter into the kingdom of God. 
 
 But this long dispute that had begun between the 
 disciples of Jesus and of John is not ended yet. 
 Which of two baptisms is best, — either of which is 
 good enough as a sjnmbol, and neither of which is 
 good for anything else, — stiU engages good men in 
 conscientious and useless controversy. The Jews who 
 had been baptized by John thought, doubtless, that 
 they had been better baptized than those other Jews 
 who had been baptized by the disciples of Jesus. It 
 is very likely that there was some slight difference 
 in the way of handling the candidates. Doubtless the 
 words spoken over them in the formula of baptism 
 were a little different. But the Jews had been reared 
 to a ceremonial worship, and had become very rigor- 
 ous in the observance of each slightest particular of 
 
 15 
 
226 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 an external service, lest the absence of any single 
 particle would leave a leak through which all the 
 virtue would run out. Ceremonialism tends to scru- 
 pulosity, and scrupulosity to superstition, and super- 
 stition is idolatry. To this day men are yet camped 
 down beside the Jordan, disputing about baptism ; and 
 now, a"B then, in the full blaze of a system whose whole 
 force is spiritual, disciples are divided, not even on an 
 ordinance, but on the external method of its adminis- 
 tration. Good men have intrenched their consciences 
 behind an externality of an externality. Nor is the 
 whole common spiritual wealth of Christianity able to 
 unite men who have quarrelled over the husk and 
 rind of a symbolical ordinance. 
 
 There came near being two sects. It needed only 
 that the leaders on this question of baptism should 
 take sides with their disciples effectually to split their 
 common movement into two warring halves. Jesus, 
 seeing the danger, not only left the neighborhood, 
 but ceased baptizing. There is no record or hint 
 from this day that any of his disciples, or even that 
 his own Apostles, were baptized. 
 
 It is never easy for a master to see his authority 
 waning and another taking his place. Therefore 
 when on this occasion John's disciples resorted to 
 him, saying, " He that was with thee beyond Jordan, 
 to whom thou barest witness, behold, the same baptiz- 
 eth, and all men come to him" we see in his answer a 
 disposition worthy of the forerunner of Christ. Only 
 the noblest natures so rejoice in the whole work of 
 God on earth that they are willing to "spend and 
 be spent " for the sake of the common good. John's 
 camel's hair and food of the wilderness were well 
 
THE FIRST JUDJEAN MINISTRY. 227 
 
 enough ; his stern morality and burning zeal in re- 
 forming his people were commendable ; but not all 
 of them revealed his true nobility as did the reply of 
 this unsectarian leader to his sectarian disciples : "I 
 am not the Christ. I am sent before him. He must 
 increase, I must decrease." Thus John yielded up 
 his place, even as a flower falls and dies that it may 
 give place to the fruit that swells beneath it. Nor 
 ought we to lose the beauty of that figure which 
 John employed : " The friend of the bridegroom, 
 which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly 
 because of the bridegroom's voice : this my joy there- 
 fore is fulfilled." Jesus is the true bridegroom, I am 
 only his groomsman ; but I make his happiness my 
 own ! 
 
 The time had come for Jesus to leave Judaea. 
 Warned by these disputes of the danger of a useless 
 controversy, and perceiving as well that his opportu- 
 nity was not yet ripe, he prepared to go home to 
 Galilee. He felt the access of a larger power. He had 
 thus far pursued his work in a tentative way, and 
 without displaying those wonderful influences which 
 so often afterward swept everything before him. But 
 as when he came up from the Jordan the Spirit of God 
 descended upon him; so a second time, now on the 
 eve- of his great missionary circuit, his soul was won- 
 derfully replenished and exalted. He rose to a higher 
 sphere. He took one more step back toward his fuU 
 original self A portion of that might and majesty 
 which had been restrained by his mortal flesh was 
 unfolding, and he was to work with a higher power 
 and upon a higher plan6 than before. 
 
 By weaving together from the four Evangelists 
 
228 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 the account of his departure, we shall get a clear 
 view of the grounds on which the above remarks are 
 founded. 
 
 " Now after that John was put in prison, and Jesus 
 had heard that he was cast into prison, and when the 
 Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus 
 made and baptized more disciples than John (though 
 Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples), he left 
 Judsea, and departed again, and returned in the power of 
 the Spirit into Galilee." 
 
THE LESSON AT JACOB'S WELL. 229 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE LESSON AT JACOB'S WELL. 
 
 Fkom Jerusalem to Galilee tlie shortest and in many- 
 respects the most interesting road ran directly north, 
 along the highest ridge of the Judsean hOls. This table- 
 land was comparatively narrow. On the east, its flank 
 was cut by deep ravines running down to the Jordan. 
 On the west, another system of ravines ran down to 
 the great maritime plain. Along the upper hne be- 
 tween these gorges and valleys, the table-land was of 
 variable breadth, aiid in the time of our Lord was 
 clothed with trees and vines to an extent that can 
 hardly be imagined by one who views it in its present 
 barren and desolate state. 
 
 This region, including the ravines and valleys shoot- 
 ing down on either hand from the ridge, may be called 
 the military groimd of Palestine. At ahnost every 
 step one might here recall some famous conflict. It 
 was along this plateau that Joshua fought his chief 
 battles. Here Savd triumphed, and here he was finally 
 overthrown and slain. Over this ground the ark went 
 in captivity to Philistia. David fought over every 
 inch of this territory, hid in its caves, wandered in 
 its wilderness, and at length secured peace from his 
 enemies through their final overthrow and subjugation. 
 In his .day Jerusalem, wholly wrested from the Jebu- 
 sites, became the capital of the nation, which reached 
 
230 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 the smmnit of its prosperity under tlie briUiant but 
 delusive reign of Solomon. The glory of that reign 
 was autumnal, and presaged decay. 
 
 The very names of towns and cities on either side 
 of this great road are histories. Ai, — the first city 
 conquered by Joshua, — Gibeah, Mizpeh, Michmash, 
 Gibeon, Beth-horon, Bethel, Gilgal, Shiloh, Shechem, 
 and many others, could hardly fail to call up to any 
 intelligent Jew a host of historic remembrances. At 
 Bethel (Luz) Abraham pitched his tent, finding then, 
 as is still found, excellent pasturage j and here he and 
 Lot separated. This place was the annual resort of 
 Samuel to judge Israel. Here Jeroboam set up the 
 golden calf, when he designed to draw away the ten 
 tribes from the worship of Jehovah. It was a place of 
 eminent sacredness in Jewish history, and the prophet 
 Amos (v. 5) sadly and solemnly predicts its ruin. 
 
 Under the palm-trees between Eama and Bethel, on 
 the mount of Ephraim, the prophetess Deborah sat and 
 judged Israel (Judges iv. 4, v. 12). It was hard by 
 Bethel, but eastward, that our Saviour, near the close 
 of his hfe, took refuge in the city of Ephraim — 
 Ephron and Ophrah of the Old Testament — from the 
 malice of his enemies in Jerusalem, and thence crossed 
 over Jordan to Peraea. The names of Abraham, of 
 Isaac, of Jacob, and of Joseph, — whose grave is near 
 to Shechem, — are associated with every step of the 
 way. The lapse of time has obliterated for us a thou- 
 sand monuments and landmarks which must have 
 been fresh and vital in the day when our Lord passed 
 by them. Each bald rock had its tale, every ravine 
 its legend, every mountain peak its history. The very 
 trees, gnarled and lifted high on some signal hill, 
 
THE LESSON AT JACOB'S WELL. 231 
 
 brought to mind many a stirring incident. This was 
 the road over which Jesus himself had gone in his 
 childhood with Mary and with Joseph. 
 
 All modern travellers are enraptured with the beauty 
 of the vale in which Shechem stands. Coming down 
 from the Judsean hills, from among rocky passes and 
 stinted arboreous vegetation, the contrast at once pre- 
 sented of luxuriant fields of wheat and barley, the 
 silvery green of olive-trees, the fig, the oak, together 
 with the company of singing birds, would fill the sen- 
 sitive mind with delight. Van de Velde presents a 
 striking picture, not only of the beauty of the vale of 
 Shechem, but of the atmospheric appearance of Pales- 
 tine in general, which is worthy of preservation. 
 
 " The awful gorge of the Leontes is grand and bold 
 beyond description ; the hills of Lebanon, over against 
 Sidon, are magnificent and sublime ; the valley of the 
 hill of Naphtali is rich in wild oak forest and brush- 
 wood ; those of Asher and Wady Kara, for example, 
 present a beautiful combination of wood and mountain 
 stream in all the magnificence of undisturbed origi- 
 nality. Carmel, with its wilderness of timber trees and 
 shrubs, of plants and bushes, still answers to its ancient 
 reputation for magnificence. 
 
 " But the vale of Shechem dijQfers from them all. Here 
 there is no wilderness, here there are no wild thickets, 
 yet there is alwaj^s verdure, — always shade, not of the 
 oak, the terebinth, and the caroub-tree, but of the olive- 
 grove, so soft in color, so picturesque in form, that for 
 its sake we can willingly dispense with all other wood. 
 
 " Here there are no impetuous mountain torrents, 
 yet there is water, — water, too, in more copious sup- 
 plies than anywhere else in the land ; and it is just 
 
232 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 to its many fountains, rills, and water-courses that the 
 valley owes its exquisite beauty. 
 
 " There is a singularity about the vale of Shechem, 
 and that is the peculiar coloring which objects as- 
 sume in it. You know that wherever there is water 
 the air becomes charged with watery particles, and 
 that distant objects, beheld through that medium, seem 
 to be enveloped in a pale blue or gray mist, such as 
 contributes not a little to give a charm to the land- 
 scape. But it is precisely these atmospheric tints that 
 we miss so much in Palestine. Fiery tints are to be 
 seen both in the morning and the evening, and glit- 
 tering violet or purple-colored hues where the light 
 falls next to the long, deep shadows ; but there is an 
 absence of coloring, and of that charming dusky haze 
 in which objects assume such softly blended forms, and 
 in which also the transition in color from the foreground 
 to the farthest distance loses the hardness of outline 
 peculiar to the perfect transparency of an Eastern sky. 
 
 "It is otherwise in the vale of Shechem, at least 
 in the morning and the evening. Here the exhalations 
 remain hovering among the branches and leaves of the 
 olive-trees, and hence that lovely bluish haze. 
 
 " The valley is far from broad, not exceeding in some 
 places a few hundred feet. This you find generally 
 enclosed on all sides : there likewise the vapors are 
 condensed. And so you advance under the shade of 
 the foliage along the living waters, and charmed by 
 the melody of a host of singing birds, — for they, too, 
 know where to find their best quarters, — while the 
 perspective fades away, and is lost in the damp, va- 
 pory atmosphere." ^ 
 
 ' Van de Velde, I. 386, as quoted by Stanley. 
 
THE LESSON AT JACOB'S WELL. 233 
 
 At no other spot in Palestine, probably, could Jesus 
 have more fitly uttered his remarkable doctrine of the 
 absolute Hberty of conscience from all thraU of place 
 or tradition than here in Shechem, where the whole 
 Jewish nation, in a peculiar sense, had its beginning. 
 It was here that the great patriarch, Abraham, made 
 his first halt in Canaan, coming down from Damas- 
 cus and from Ur of the Chaldees, before any regular 
 \dllage existed except the huddled tents of Bedouins. 
 Here he built an altar and worshipped. That faint 
 smoke which lay in the air but for a moment against 
 the background of Gerizim or Ebal was the prophecy 
 of myriads of sacrificial fires in after ages, kindled in 
 this land by his posterity, to that God who was then 
 for the first time worshipped in Palestine. From Abra- 
 ham to Christ had been a long and weary way ; but 
 now the Messiah wafe come, the last sacrifice. Thence- 
 forth neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem 
 should men worship God, but under every sky, in 
 every spot where a true heart yearned or suffered. 
 
 It was here that Jacob first pitched his tent, having 
 parted from Esau in safety, and come down to the 
 Jordan through the valley cleft by the river Jabbok. 
 " And he bought a parcel of a field, where he had 
 spread his tent, at the hand of the children of Hamor, 
 Shechem's father, for an hundred pieces of money. 
 And he erected there an altar, and called it El- 
 Elohe-Iseael." When the Israehtes returned from 
 Egypt and crossed the Jordan, they lay for a time in 
 the valley, thrusting out an arm, as it were, to de- 
 stroy the chief cities on the hUls between what is 
 now Jerusalem and Shechem. But the first per- 
 manent removal of the whole camp into the interior 
 
234 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 brought them to this vale, and here they discharged 
 their sacred trust, and buried the bones of Joseph 
 near the foot of the mountain. It is one of the few 
 burial-places of the earlier heroes of the Hebrews 
 which may be regarded as having been accurately 
 preserved by tradition. 
 
 It was in this vale, and in the presence of these 
 mountains, Gerizim on the south and Ebal on the north, 
 that the most august assembly which history has ever 
 recorded was gathered together. Before the tribes 
 were separated and sent to their respective allotments 
 of territory, while yet the people were living a camp 
 life, — a vast camp of three million souls, — a mova- 
 ble city, a wandering state, a nomadic commonwealth, 
 — it seemed desirable to produce upon their memory 
 and their imagination a solemn impression, that should 
 not wear out for generations, of their especial calling, 
 of their eminent moral duties as a peculiar nation, 
 the people of Jehovah. 
 
 Into the narrow plain of Shechem came the whole 
 nation. On the north stood precipitous Ebal, over 
 against it on the south was Gerizim. The tribes 
 were divided. Six tribes drew around the base and 
 lined the sides of the one mountain, and six swarmed 
 up, a million and a half of men, women, and children, 
 upon the other; the ark, the priests and Levites, 
 standing midway between the two great mountains. 
 Then the nation, with a dramatic solemnity unpar- 
 alleled, entered into a covenant with God. All other 
 historic assemblages sink into insignificance compared 
 with this. For grandeur it can be equalled only in 
 the representation of the great final Judgment day 
 and the gorgeous Apocalyptic visions. The whole 
 
THE LESSON AT JACOB'S WELL. 235 
 
 Law was read by the Levites, to its last words. Nor, 
 from the accounts of travellers, can there be a doubt 
 that in the clear air of Palestine the human voice 
 could make itself distinctly audible through all the vale 
 and the mountain galleries, crowded with three million 
 people. The most striking, as doubtless it was the most 
 thrilling, part of the service followed the reading of 
 the Law. Moses had drawn up an inventory of bless- 
 ings which should come upon the people if they kept 
 the law ; and twice as many curses, of extraordinary 
 variety and bitterness, if they were unfaithful to the 
 Law. As each blessing was promised, all the people 
 on Gerizim shouted a cheerful Amen ! To the curses, 
 a sullen Amen ! was echoed back from Ebal. Thus the 
 mountains cried one to the other, like the sound of 
 many waters, in thunders of curses and of blessings. 
 
 For a long time Shechem served as a kind of capital ; 
 and even after Jerusalem had become the chief and 
 royal city, coronations took place at Shechem, as if it 
 had a relation to the nation's history which gave it 
 peculiar sanctity. 
 
 Samaria was inhabited in the time of Christ by the 
 descendants of heathen nations, sent thither by the 
 king of Babylon to replace the Jews, of whom the land 
 had been stripped bare by Shalmaneser, B. C. 721. 
 They had, however, endeavored to adopt the Jewish 
 worship without entirely relinquishing idolatry. Being 
 repelled by the Jews from aU participation in the 
 building of the Temple at Jerusalem, they had built a 
 temple of their own upon Mount Gerizim, and claimed 
 for it a sanctity even greater than that of Jerusalem. 
 The enmity between the Jew and the Samaritan rose 
 to such a pitch that they refused all intercourse with 
 
236 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 each other. The education of the Jew made him a 
 very determined hater, and every patriotic impulse 
 and the whole fervor of his religious feehng quickened 
 and intensified the hatred and contempt with which 
 he looked upon a mongrel race who practised idola- 
 try, the greatest crime known to the Jew, under the 
 pretence of a rival worship of Jehovah. There is no 
 passion so strong in human nature as an educated 
 religious hatred. It was this national abhorrence that 
 gave such audacity to the parable of the Good Sa- 
 maritan, uttered by our Lord, and that marks the 
 interview at Jacob's well. 
 
 There is no means of determining with exactness 
 at what time of the year Christ passed through Sama- 
 ria, and consequently scholars fix the time all along 
 from November to March. We incline to the opinion 
 that it was not far from December. With his few 
 disciples, Jesus came from the mountaia of Ephraim 
 into the plain of Shechem, and of course approached 
 the passage between Grerizim and Ebal at its eastern 
 end. Eobinson says that Jacob's well is " on the end 
 of a low spur or swell running out from the north- 
 eastern base of Gerizim, and is still fifteen or twenty 
 feet above the level of the plain below." The whole 
 region around is alive with natural springs. Seventy 
 distinct fountains have been counted, some of them 
 gushing with such force and abundance, that, after 
 supplying many houses and gardens, the waste water 
 is still suflacient to turn small mills. 
 
 This very abundance of springs has given rise to 
 the doubting question. Why should Jacob dig a well 
 ten feet in diameter, to the depth of eighty-five feet, 
 through solid rock, for the sake of obtaining water, 
 
TEE LESSON AT JACOB'S WELL. 237 
 
 when already water bubbled up in extraordinary- 
 abundance on every side ? The reason doubtless was, 
 that these natural fountains were already in posses- 
 sion of the native population, who would be jealous of 
 a foreigner whose vast herds and flocks, and whose 
 household servants and trained bands, indicated a 
 power and prosperity which they did not altogether 
 enjoy. In that land a well-spring was a valuable pri- 
 vate property, held by families and tribes very much 
 as coal and iron mines and water-powers are, in our 
 day, owned by companies. Besides, in the watering 
 of Jacob's great flocks there would be peculiar danger 
 of quarrels and conflicts with native herdsmen. It 
 was like Jacob — a pacific and sagacious manager, 
 better fitted for keeping out of danger than for the 
 display of courage and the love of fighting — to pro- 
 vide a well of his own, and thus to secure at the same 
 time peace with his neighbors and personal indepen- 
 dence. This well is among the few memorials of the 
 patriarchal period about which tradition is hardly sus- 
 pected of lying. It is safe to accept it as a gift to 
 posterity from the very hands of the most politic and 
 worldly-wise of all the Jewish patriarchs. Around it 
 his own flocks have flourished. He has himself stood 
 at evening to see the eager herds rushing to the stone 
 troughs to slake their thirst. In that burning land 
 thirst was a torment, and its relief a great luxury. 
 Indeed, there are few of the lower sensations of enjoy- 
 ment known to man that equal the cup of cold water 
 in the hour of thirst. And he is not fit for pastoral 
 life who does not take pleasure in watching animals 
 drink. "We may be sure that Jacob often stood by the 
 watering-troughs to direct the orderly administration 
 
238 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 of things, and to watch the scene with quiet satisfac- 
 tion. Eagerly the cattle plunge their muzzles deep in 
 the water. They lift their heads for breath, the drops 
 falling back to the trough, flashing in the evening 
 light like opals. They drink again. They toss the 
 water now with their lips in play. They draw large 
 draughts and stand long without swallowing, as if to 
 cool their throats, and slowly turn away, now full 
 satisfied, to couch down, with long-drawn breath, and 
 rest for the night. It were well for us if these simple 
 rural tastes could supplant the feverish pleasures of 
 vmtimely hours in crowded towns, where less of natiu-e 
 and more of man work corruption of taste and of 
 morals. 
 
 We love to think of this old well and its long -v^ork 
 of mercy. Through hundreds and through thousands 
 of years at its brink have stood old men, little children, 
 weary pilgrims, fair maidens, grim warriors, stately 
 sheiks, dusty travellers, — all sorts and conditions of 
 the East and of the West. It gave forth its water to 
 the good and bad alike. It not improbably crowned 
 its beneficence by furnishing to the prophet the sug- 
 gestion of " wells of salvation," which in time were 
 transferred to the ideal city, the great overhanging 
 Home of mankind ; and the message of God in the 
 Revelation closes with the voice of one crying to 
 the whole earth, for all time, "And the Spirit and 
 the bride say. Come. And let him that heareth say. 
 Come. And let him that is athirst come. And who- 
 soever will, let him take the water of life freely." 
 
 On the route which Jesus had chosen from Judsea to 
 Galilee "he must needs pass through Samaria." It 
 was the shortest and easiest road. Yet such was the 
 
THE LESSON AT JACOB'S WELL. 239 
 
 animosity of Jews towards Samaritans that for the most 
 part the Jews preferred the circuitous road through 
 Peraea, east of the Jordan. The December sun was 
 not so fervid as to forbid travelling through the whole 
 day. It was about noon when Jesus came to Jacob's 
 well. There was a stone platform about it, and doubt- 
 less other provision was made for the comfort of trav- 
 ellers. Here Jesus rested while his disciples went on 
 to Sychar to buy food. The town of Shechem, like 
 its modern successor Nablous, was two miles from the 
 well, and Sychar was probably the name for a neigh- 
 borhood attached to Shechem, but much nearer to the 
 well. Every considerable place will be found to have 
 nicknames for such outlying settlements, and Sychar 
 was probably such a one. 
 
 Jesus had not been long there before a Samaritan 
 woman approached to draw water, and was surprised 
 that a stranger, and he a Jew, should say to her, 
 " Give me to drink." Although an easy, good-natured 
 creature, and too fond of society, no one should say that 
 she had not shown a proper spirit in standing up for 
 the right of aU Samaritans to hate Jews ! " How is it 
 that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, who am a 
 woman of Samaria ? " 
 
 Christ was conscious of the contrast in himself 
 between appearance and reality. He felt the Divine 
 nature within, yet to the eye there was no divinity. 
 The woman's reply touched that consciousness of his 
 real superior existence. " If thou knewest the gift of 
 God, and who it is that saith to thee. Give me to drink, 
 thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have 
 given thee living water." 
 
 We see in this conversation again the very same 
 
240 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 subtile play of thought between the material and its 
 spiritual counterpart which was shown in the conversa- 
 tions with Nicodemus and with the questioners in the 
 Temple. Jesus seems like one who thought on two 
 different planes. He recognized the qualities and the 
 substance of this world as they appeared to his follow- 
 ers, while their outcome and value and meaning in 
 the spiritual life was his real and inner interpretation 
 of them. This doubleness we often see in parents, or 
 in benevolent teachers of children, who go along with 
 the child's understanding, and yet perceive that things 
 are not as the child thinks them to be, and their con- 
 sciousness plays back and forth between the child's 
 imperfect sense of truth and their own truer judgment 
 of reahty. 
 
 Jesus seemed to the woman to be talking about real 
 water. The term " hving water " has not necessarily a 
 spiritual significance. Living water was perhaps to 
 her ears spring-water, for nothing seems more ahve 
 than running water; and her mind was divided be- 
 tween respect and curiosity. At any rate, she now 
 bethinks herself of his title, and calls him Master, or, 
 as in the English version, Sir. " Sir, thou hast noth- 
 ing to draw with, and the well is deep : from whence 
 then hast thou that living water ? " And then look- 
 ing upon the traveller, and in her mind contrasting 
 his helpless appearance with the grand ideas enter- 
 tained by her people of the old patriarch Jacob, she 
 adds, with a spice of humor, " Art thou greater than 
 our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank 
 thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?" 
 Without doubt, she regarded this answer as pecu- 
 liarly effective from a Samaritan to a Jew, inasmuch 
 
THE LESSON AT JACOB'S WELL. 241 
 
 as she had given him to understand, Jew as he was, 
 that Jacob was also the Samaritan's father, and that 
 the detested Samaritan owned the patriarch's very- 
 well, so that thirsty Jews were obhged to come beg- 
 ging a drink of the very people whom they despised 
 as outcasts from Israel and out of covenant with Grod. 
 If such was her feeling, the reply of Jesus put it aU 
 away, and brought her to a different mind. Without 
 noticing her implied taunts, and now beginning to let 
 her see that he was not talking of the water in Ja- 
 cob's well, but of some other, — what other she could 
 not itnagiue, — he said : " Whosoever drinketh of this 
 water shall thirst again : but whosoever drinketh of 
 the water that I shall give him shall never thirst ; but 
 the water that I sl^all give him shall be in him a well 
 of water springing up into everlasting life." 
 
 As the body thirsts, and is contented with water, so 
 there is for unanswered yearning, for imsatisfied desires, 
 for aU that restlessness and craving of feeling, for the 
 thirst of the soul, a living water which shall quiet them j 
 not as water quiets the body, that thirsts again in an 
 hour, but with an abiding and eternal satisfaction. This 
 is indeed that "gift of God" which, had she known, 
 would have made her suppliant to him. Even yet 
 how few know it ! How few among Christian believers 
 have entered into that rest of soul, that trust and love, 
 which come from the Divine Spirit, and which, when 
 once the Holy Spirit has fully shined and brought 
 smnmer to the soul, will never depart from it, but will, 
 be an eternal joy ! 
 
 None of aU this, however, did she understand. Per- 
 haps, while Christ was speaking, she revolved in her 
 mind the convenience of the new sort of water which 
 
 16 
 
242 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 this man spoke of, and what a treasure it would 
 be if, when the summer came on, she need not 
 trudge wearily to this well. At any rate, she seems to 
 have replied in a business-like spirit: "Sir, give me 
 this water, that I thirst not, -neither come hither to 
 draw." There are many like her, who would be glad 
 of such a Divine gift of religion as should take 
 away aU ■ labor and trouble of Christian life. " That I 
 come not hither to draw" is the desire of thousands 
 who want the results of right Hving without the 
 trouble of living aright. 
 
 But it was time to bring home the truth to her 
 conscience, instead of discussing themes which this 
 poor pleasure-loving creature could understand even 
 less than Nicodemus. As if he were about to comply 
 with her request for this gift of living water, (by 
 which very likely she understood that he would dis- 
 cover to her a new and near spring, bubbling up 
 close at hand near her dwelling,) he says to her 
 pouatedly, " Go, call thy husband." There must have 
 been in the tone and manner something which startled 
 her; for evidently this adroit woman was, for the 
 moment, thrown off her guard. Instead of waiving 
 the demand, or seeming to evade it, she with some 
 sense of shame hastily repHed, " I have no husband." 
 Like an arrow well aimed from a strong bow the 
 words of Jesus struck home to her conscience. "Thou 
 hast well said, I have no husband : for thou hast had 
 five husbands ; and he whom thou now hast is not thy 
 husband : in that saidst thou truly." 
 
 It was but a second of confusion. The woman 
 was of nimble thought, and had been practised in 
 quick ways. There is great diplomacy in her recog- 
 
THE LESSON AT JACOB'S WELL. 243 
 
 nizing the truth of the allegation in a way of compli- 
 ment to this stranger, rather than of shame to her- 
 self: " Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet." And 
 then, with fluent dexterity, she eludes the personal 
 topic and glides into the stock argument between the 
 Jew and the Samaritan. Nor can we help noticing the 
 consummate tact with which she managed her case. 
 " Our fathers worshipped in this mountain." And there, 
 right before them, rose Mount Gerizim, its temple blaz- 
 ing in the midday sun, and beginning already to cast 
 its shadows somewhat toward the east. The argument, 
 too, of "our fathers" has always proved strong. Opin- 
 ions, like electricity, are supposed to descend more 
 safely along an unbroken chain. That which " our fa- 
 thers " or our ancestors believed is apt to seem neces- 
 sarily true ; and the longer the roots of any belief, the 
 more flourishing, it is supposed, will be its top. " Our 
 fathers worshipped in this mountain, and ye say that 
 in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to wor- 
 ship." This was the bone of contention. "Worship had 
 ceased to be the offering of the heart, and had become 
 a superstition of places and external methods. 
 
 The reply of Jesus is striking in its appeal to her 
 for credence : " Woman, believe me, the hour Com- 
 eth, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet 
 at Jerusalem, worship the Father." This answer was 
 not iu the spirit of the Greek philosophy, which was 
 the parent of scepticism ; nor in the Oriental spirit, 
 which was fviU of superstition ; nor in the Roman spirit, 
 which was essentially worldly and unrehgious ; and far 
 less did it breathe the contemporary Jewish spirit, 
 whether of Pharisee or of Sadducee. It expresses' 
 the renunciation of the senses in worship. It throws 
 
244 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 back upon the heart and soul of every one, whoever 
 he may be, wherever he may be, the whole office of 
 worship. It is the first gleam of the new morning. 
 No longer in this nest alone, or in that, shall religion 
 be looked for, but, escaping from its shell, heard in 
 all the earth, in notes the same in every language, 
 flying unrestrained and free, the whole heavens shall 
 be its sphere and the whole earth its home. 
 
 But, for a moment restraining these imperial views, 
 Jesus declares that in so far as the truth taught at 
 Mount Zion is to be compared with that at Gerizim, 
 Jerusalem is nearer the truth of God than Shechem. 
 "Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we 
 worship ; for salvation is of the Jews." He thus 
 authenticates the religion of the old dispensation, iden- 
 tifies himself with the Jews as distinguished from the 
 Samaritans, and witnesses to the essential truth of 
 their views of God and of Divine government. Ke- 
 suming again the theme of religion set free from aU 
 external constraints and all superstitions of place and 
 method, he adds : " But the hour cometh, and now is, 
 when the true worshippers shaU worship the Father 
 in spirit and in truth : for the Father seeketh such 
 to worship him. God is a spirit, and they that wor- 
 ship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." 
 Henceforth religion shall be personal, not official. 
 
 Sobered by the impressive manner of Jesus, and 
 having an indistinct feeUng of a great truth in his 
 teaching, the woman waives the dispute, and, catch- 
 ing at his repeated allusion to the new coming future, 
 safely closes her part in saying, " I know that Mes- 
 sias cometh, which is called Christ : when he is come, 
 he wiU tell us aU things. Jesus saith unto her, I 
 
THE LESSON AT JACOB'S WELL. 245 
 
 that speak unto thee am he." But just then came 
 the disciples, and we have never ceased to wish that 
 they had stayed away a Httle longer, for the conver- 
 sation had reached a point at which one is breathless 
 for the next sentence. The disciples were curious 
 and surprised to find their Master thus engaged, and 
 would have asked inquisitively what he was talking 
 about ; but there was something in his manner which 
 checked familiarity. "No man said. Why talkest thou 
 with her ? " 
 
 Whether Jesus received at the hands of the woman 
 the coveted draught of water, we know not. Carried 
 away by the thoughts of the new heaven and the 
 new earth, in the glorious efflux of the spirit of life 
 and Hberty he may have forgotten his bodUy thirst. 
 
 It is certain that the excitement of his soul so 
 wrought upon his body as to take away his desire for 
 food, for, when his disciples urged him to eat, his 
 enigmatical reply was, " I have meat to eat that ye 
 know not of" And they, in their simplicity, asked 
 whether any one had brought food to him. Then 
 he declared that not bread, but work, was his food. 
 He felt the power of the Spirit. His own spirit was 
 kindled, and streamed forth toward the field of 
 labor, which was ripe and waiting for the sickle of the 
 truth. The vale of Shechem was famous for its grain- 
 fields. They stretched out before his eye in the ten- 
 der green of their first sprouting. Seizing the scene 
 before him, as he was wont to do for figure, parable, 
 or theme, he said, " Say not ye. There are yet four 
 months, and then cometh harvest ? behold, I say imto 
 you. Lift up your eyes and look on the fields ; for 
 they are white already to harvest." 
 
246 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 Thus, while his words seemed to hold on to the 
 visible field of young grain, his meaning had really 
 glanced off to the transcendent field of moral life. 
 We saw the same method in his reply to the scribes 
 in the Temple, and we shall find it a peculiarity of 
 his genius, which appears in all the Gospels, but which 
 John alone seems to have reproduced fully. 
 
 The woman was profoundly affected by the surpris- 
 ing interview. She hastened back to her fi^iends, 
 not to boast a triumph, but to call them out to see 
 a man " that told me all things that ever I did." 
 There are certain experiences which stand for the 
 whole of one's life. It may be a great love, or a 
 great defeat and mortification, or a great crime, or 
 a measureless sorrow, or a joy lost irrecoverably; 
 whatever it may be, there are experiences which 
 epitomize our whole life, and represent to our mem- 
 ory the very substance of life, everything besides 
 being incidental and accessory. And he that touches 
 that hidden life seems to have revealed everything. 
 This woman's domestic career had been such as to 
 show the channel in which her nature ran. A single 
 sentence told her that the stranger knew her spirit 
 and disposition. It was not his words alone, but 
 with them there was a judicial solemnity, a piercing 
 eye that seemed to her to search her very soul, a man- 
 ner which showed that he sorrowed for her, while he 
 was exposing her career. And yet she had hved un- 
 abashed and content with herself. The whole narrative 
 shows a woman not utterly sunk in evil, careful yet 
 of appearances, — a woman quick of thought, fertile 
 in expedient, and possessed of much natural force, — 
 just such a one as might have had five husbands. 
 
THE LESSON AT JACOB'S WELL. 247 
 
 Love had. not taught her delicacy or purity. One 
 does not think pleasantly of five successive mar- 
 riages, and is not surprised that ,her last choice had 
 not even the pretence of marriage. Yet this shrewd 
 but pleasure-loving woman could not refrain among 
 her townspeople from crying out, " Is not this the 
 Christ ? " Thereupon the citizens rushed out " and 
 came unto him " ; they surrounded him with entrea- 
 ties — he too a Jew, and they Samaritans ! — that he 
 would come home with them and tarry. For two days 
 he stayed with them. His works and his discourses 
 are not recorded. The effects of them, however, 
 are : many believed ; many whose curiosity had been 
 excited by the enthusiasm of the woman exchanged 
 curiosity for a moral conviction that this was indeed 
 the Christ, the Saviour of the world. 
 
 We thus behold Jesus at the beginning of his more 
 open ministry setting himself against the seculariza- 
 tion of the Temple and the superficial morality of the 
 Pharisee, turning his back upon Jerusalem, and with 
 it upon the strongest national passion, namely, the 
 sense of superlative Jewish excellence, and the bitter 
 hatred of Gentiles, and, above all other Gentiles, of 
 the Samaritans. Patriotism among the Jews had lost 
 aU kindliness, and was made up of intense conceit and 
 hatred. To resist this spirit, according to all worldly 
 calculations, was to subject himself and his cause, in 
 the very beginning, to overwhelming obloquy. Of 
 this Jesus could not have been ignorant. He needed 
 no experience to teach him that his countrymen, by 
 a vicious interpretation of their Scriptures, and by 
 their, pecuhar sufferings in captivity and under the 
 yoke at home, had come to regard a malign and bitter 
 
248 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 hatred of all Gentiles not only as compatible with 
 religion, but as the critical exercise of it, as the fulfil- 
 ment of its innermost spirit. " Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor, and hate thine enemy." 
 
 Even common prudence, the simple instinct of safe- 
 ty, would have inclined a mere man to avoid offending, 
 at any rate on the threshold, the strongest impulses of 
 the most rehgious portion of his people, especially when 
 it needed only that he should take the right-hand 
 road and go by the valley of the Jordan, or through 
 Persea to Galilee, instead of going through Samaria. 
 But he chose to go through Samaria. "When a woman 
 doubly abhorrent to the precisionists — both as a Sa- 
 maritan^and as one of loose morals — drew near him, 
 he asked the boon of water, and thus gave her leave to 
 enter into conversation with him, and treated her, not 
 as a sinner, but as a human being, aU the more needy 
 because she was culpable ; he sent his disciples to buy 
 food at a Samaritan town, though " the Jews have no 
 dealings with the Samaritans"; and finally, though 
 right from Jerusalem and from the Temple, to the 
 horror of every right-minded Pharisee he accepted 
 the hospitality of the Samaritans, slept vmder their 
 roofs, ate at their tables, taught in their streets, and 
 altogether treated them as if they were as good as 
 Jews ! 
 
 Here, then, " the middle wall of partition " began to 
 be broken down. In the Temple, between the Court 
 of the Gentiles and the next inner court described in 
 our last chapter, was a marble screen or curiously 
 carved fence, some two feet high, beyond which no 
 Gentile could venture. Had a Samaritan put his foot 
 inside of that " wall of partition " he would have been 
 
THE LESSON AT JACOB'S WELL. 249 
 
 whirled away in a fiiry of rage, and stoned to death in 
 the twinkling of an eye. But Jesus was treading 
 down that partition wall. He that was himself the 
 spiritual counterpart of the I'emple was admitting 
 Samaritans within the pale of Divine sympathy and 
 love. 
 
 This visit in Samaria is of singular importance, at 
 the opening of Christ's ministry, ia two respects : first, 
 as a deliberate repudiation and rebuke of the exclu- 
 siveness of the Jewish Church ; and secondly, and 
 even more significantly, as to the humane manner 
 of his treatment of a sinning woman. He knew 
 her tainted life. He knew that the whole world 
 smiles upon the act of degrading a woman, and that 
 the whole world puts the double sin upon her alone, 
 hardly esteeming her paramour guUty at all, but 
 counting her sin utterly unforgivable. He who after- 
 wards said, "The pubhcans and harlots shall go into 
 the kingdom of God before you," here made it mani- 
 fest that sin does not remove the sinner from Divine 
 sympathy and- love. Christ treated not this care- 
 less, shrewd, dexterous woman of the world with 
 scorn or bitter rebuke. He made himself her com- 
 panion. That which was Divine in him had fellowship 
 with that which was human in her. His soul went out 
 to her, not as a fire to consume, but as a purifying 
 flame. This experience was a fit prelude to his now 
 opening public hfe. It was the text from which flowed 
 two distinguishing elements of his ministry, — sym- 
 pathy for mankind, and the tenderest compassion for 
 those who have sinned and stumbled. It revealed 
 God's heart, sent the prophetic beam of reconciliation 
 to each soul, and was the promise of that one family in 
 
250 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 Christ Jesus that was to comprise every nation and 
 people on the globe. 
 
 It has been objected to this narrative, that it is not 
 probable that Jesus would have gone into such profound 
 discourse with a woman, a stranger, not capable of un- 
 derstanding his meaning, and wholly unworthy, in any 
 point of view, of receiving such attention. It cer- 
 tainly is not probable, if we reason according to the 
 common tendencies of human nature. Men reserve 
 their fine speeches for fine men, and their philosophy 
 for philosophers. Had the mission of Christ followed 
 human notions, it would have differed in every partic- 
 ular from its real history. But certainly this elevated 
 doctrine delivered to the light-living woman of Sama- 
 ria is in strict analogy with the other acts of Jesus. 
 Modern critics are not the first to make such objections 
 to his career. His contemporaries reproached him for 
 this very thing, namely, consorting with pubhcans and 
 sinners, and he made the noble reply, " I came not to 
 call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance." If to 
 any this familiarity seems discordant and repulsive, 
 they have occasion to look well to their own hearts. 
 Such a course would be apt to offend pride and spirit- 
 ual conceit; it could not but harmonize with a spirit 
 of pure benevolence. 
 
 It is interesting to contrast these two conversations 
 of Jesus, that with Nicodemus and that with the name- 
 less woman of Samaria. Nicodemus was a man of 
 rank and consideration ; the woman was of the lower 
 order of an outcast people. He was cultivated, reflec- 
 tive, and eminently moral ; she was ignorant, unspirit- 
 ual,/ and unvirtuous. Far apart as they were in all 
 external proprieties, both of them had been caught in 
 
THE LESSON AT JACOB'S WELL. 251 
 
 the snare of selfishness. He had built up a life for 
 himself, and she for herself He was selfish through 
 his intellectual and moral nature, and she through her 
 senses and passions. Outwardly they were far apart ; 
 as a member of society she fell sadly below him ; but 
 in the sight of God both were aUke sinful. It was 
 not needful to argue this with her ; conscience already 
 condemned her. But to Nicodemus it was necessary 
 to say, " Ye must be born again." He was probably 
 more surprised at the truth when he understood its 
 spiritual meaning than when he stumbled at it as a 
 physiological proposition. There is but one message 
 to the high and to the low. All are crude, undevel- 
 oped, sinful. Only by the Spirit of God can any one 
 rise to that true life, whose fruit is truth and purity, 
 joy and peace. 
 
 "We are not to claim originality for the truths dis- 
 closed in the discourse at the well. The spirituality of 
 God, the fact that religion is an affection of the soul, 
 and not a routine of action, — that God is a universal 
 God, the same everywhere, accessible to all of every 
 nation without other labor than that of liftiag up pvire 
 thoughts to him, and that he dwells in heaven yet is 
 present everywhere, so that no one need seek him on 
 the high mountain, nor in any special temple, but may 
 find him near, in their very hearts, — this was taught by 
 aU the prophets, — by Samuel as really as by Isaiah, 
 by Moses as clearly as by his successors. 
 
 But the knowledge was practically lost. If the 
 clearer minds of a few discerned it, yet it was to the 
 many indistinct, being veUed, and even buried, by 
 the ritual, the priestly offices, and the superstitious 
 sanctity given to temples and altars. Men felt that 
 
252 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 in some mysterious way they derived a fitness to 
 approach God by what the altar, the priest, or the 
 influences of the sacred place did for them. That a 
 holy God demanded purity in those who approached 
 him, they knew ; but they did not realize that he him- 
 self purified by his very presence those who came to 
 him. 
 
 The fihal relationship of every human heart to God 
 did not enter the moral consciousness of men until 
 they learned it in Jesus Christ. In him every man 
 became a priest, his heart an altar, and his love and 
 obedience the only ofierings required. Men were 
 loosed from the ministration of ordinances, of rituals, 
 of days, moons, and the whole paraphernalia of a 
 gorgeous and laborious external system, and hence- 
 forth the poor, the untaught, the sinful, had a God 
 near at hand and easy of access. He was no longer 
 to be regarded as a monarch, but as a Father. No 
 longer was it to be taught that he reigned to levy 
 exactions, but to pour boundless treasure out of his 
 own heart upon the needy. God sought those who 
 before sought him. The priest stood no nearer to God 
 than the humblest peasant. God was as near to the 
 Magdalen as to the Virgin Mary. He was presented 
 to the heart and imagination as the great Helper. 
 
 The quahfication for approach to him was simply 
 NEED. They stood nearest to Divine mercy that 
 needed most. 
 
EARLY LABORS IN GALILEE. 253 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 EARLY LABOES IN GALILEE. 
 
 Bad as the Samaritans >vere esteemed to be by the 
 Jews, they excelled the people of Jerusalem both in 
 cordial reception of the truth and in hospitality. There 
 is no narrative of Christ's words or actions during the 
 two days which he was persuaded to tarry in Samaria, 
 but some idea may be formed of his teachings from the 
 conversations held with Nicodemus and' with the Wo- 
 man at the Well. The lost discourses of Jesus were far 
 more numerous than those which have been preserved, 
 and one cannot refrain from regret that so much in- 
 imitable teaching served but the purpose of the hour, 
 and passed out of mind without an authentic memorial. 
 
 Leaving Samaria, he bent his steps toward Galilee 
 as toward a shelter. Although it was like drawing near 
 to his home, yet his original home, Nazareth, seems 
 never to have had attractions for him, or to have de- 
 served his regard. He gave as a reason for not return- 
 ing there, that a "prophet hath no honor in his own 
 country." But he was cordially received in other parts 
 of Galilee. The echo of his doings in Jerusalem had 
 come down to the provinces. Many Jews from this 
 region had been at Jerusalem, and had both heard him 
 and seen his .works. What was probably more to the 
 purpose, they had heard the opinions of the chief men 
 ■ of the Temple, who, though in watchful suspense, were 
 
254 THE LIFE OF JESUS. THE CHRIST. 
 
 hoping tliat he might prove to be the longed for Leader 
 and Deliverer. The tacit approval of the Scribes and 
 Pharisees of Jerusalem would go far with the devout 
 provincial Jews. 
 
 Probably attracted by the cordiality of friends in 
 Cana, where he had wrought his first miracle, Jesus 
 repaired thither. But he had now become a celebrity. 
 It was known in all the region that he had returned 
 from Jerusalem. And here we come upon one of those 
 striking scenes of which we shall see so many during 
 his career, — pictures they seem, rather than histo- 
 ries. Out of the nameless crowd some striking figure 
 emerges, — a ruler, a centurion, a maniac, a foreign 
 woman. Under the eye of Christ these personages 
 glow for a moment with intense individuality, and then 
 sink back into obscurity. No history precedes them ; 
 no after account of them is given. Like the pictures 
 which the magic lantern throws upon the screen, they 
 seem to come from the air and to melt again into 
 nothing ; and yet, while they remain, every line is 
 distinct and every color intense. 
 
 Such a picture is that afforded by the courtier of 
 Capernaum. A " nobleman " he is miscalled in the 
 English version ; probably he was only a house-officer 
 under Herod Antipas, but with some pretensions to 
 influence. In common with others, he had heard of 
 Jesus ; and, as rumor always exaggerates, he dovibtless 
 supposed that the new prophet had performed more 
 cures than at that time he had done. This officer, who 
 would at other times have listened to Jesus only as a 
 fashionable man would listen to a wandering magician, 
 for the diversion of a spare moment, had a son lying 
 at the point of death with a fever, — that plague of 
 
„^ 
 
 
 OplUc filed ^^1' ' -- 
 
 '•' ^^^r-^ 
 
 M M 
 
 i if i\l8linjl 
 
 111 I i 1 
 
 JldnLHli ] 
 
 ^1 H T 
 
 
 J J \axt tfji- , f" 
 
 oIksifetL 
 
 ■ ^ o 
 
 \ 1 iairam. 
 
 61 r I } 
 
 =!?mam' 
 
 HadattB ( 
 
 _Moi;s ir^JJuK / / 
 
 / 1 M J 
 
 hjLAMA- _^ 
 
 V^ 
 
 iAli 
 
 0m.r>5^i;rv 
 
 iJiApIi , '"TSK-l 
 
 Bif, 
 
 ■i?4. 
 
 ■ SHTSStU 
 
 I \1 1 
 
 \rci( 1/ ^^ — — 
 
 NffilrtlL 
 
 .?>^T^' 
 
 
 "Siiu.tr, 
 
 
 M liL 
 
 ^^tnr r l t 
 
 All I ( irSv ^ y |^( 
 
 HTfD 
 
 ISEA' 
 
 )l 
 
 !r Lm el ^it era gaJTl T^A ,', > i 
 
 EXPRESSLY FOR HWSEECHERS LIFE OFJE3US THECHR ST" 
 
EARLY LABORS IN GALILEE. 255 
 
 Capernaum. Sorrow makes men sincere, and anguish 
 makes them earnest. The courtier sought out this 
 Jesus ; and as in critical danger the proudest men are 
 suppliant to the physician, so he "besought him that 
 he would come down and heal his son." To heal that 
 boy was easy ; yet, as if the boon were far too small 
 for the generosity of his heart, Jesus purposed not only 
 to restore the child to his parent, but to send back a 
 more excellent father to the child./ And so, that he 
 might awaken his better nature and prepare him to 
 receive the bounty, not as a matter of course but 
 as a gift of God,)he dealt with his petitioner as fond 
 parents do with their children, when they excite their 
 eagerness and their pleasure by holding the coveted 
 gift above their reach, and cause them to vibrate be- 
 tween desire and doubt. "Except ye see signs and 
 wonders, ye wUl not believe." 
 
 The mere thought of losing his boy through an un- 
 believing spirit seemed to touch the father's very 
 heart, and without protestations he showed his faith 
 by bursting out into an agony of imperious persuasion : 
 " Sir, come down ere my child die ! " 
 
 It was enough. The fountain was stirred. Jesus 
 did better than he was asked. Instead of going to 
 Capernaum, twenty-five miles distant, his spirit darted 
 healing power, and he dismissed the beheving parent : 
 " Go thy way; thy son liveth." 
 
 That the father believed truly is plain in that he 
 accepted the word without a doubt, and turned home- 
 ward with all haste, as one who fears no evil. It was 
 about one o'clock when the conference with Christ 
 took place ; and the next day in the afternoon, as he 
 was on the road, his servants met him with "Thy 
 
256 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 son liveth," and upon inquiry they informed him that 
 "yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him." 
 This is the more remarkable, because it departed in 
 the very heat and glow of the day, as well as at the 
 very hour when Jesus said, " Thy son Hveth." From 
 that moment the courtier became a believing disciple, 
 and with him his whole household. Thus the passing 
 sickness of one is blessed to the spiritual restoration 
 of a whole family. Sorrows are often precursors of 
 mercy. Those are blessed troubles which bring Christ 
 to us. But for that boy's deathly sickness, the father 
 might have missed his own immortality. By it he 
 saved his own soul and the souls of his household, and 
 not only recovered his son, but dwells with him eter- 
 nally. For " himself believed, and his whole house." ^ 
 But the time must come when Jesus should preach 
 in the town where his childhood and much of his 
 early manhood were spent. Not long after this act of 
 mercy to the servant of Herod, Jesus came to Nazareth. 
 On the Sabbath he entered the synagogue familiar to 
 him from his youth. The scene which took place is 
 one of the most remarkable in this period of his his- 
 
 ' Many commentators have supposed that this incident is the same as 
 that recorded by Matthew and Luke. (Matt. viii. 5 - 13 ; Luke vii. 1-10.) 
 But the differences are utterly irreconcilable. In one case it was a Roman 
 centurion, in the other an officer of Herod's household, that solicited Christ's 
 interference. The courtier's son was sick ; the centurion's servant. The 
 centurion sent the elders of the Jews to Jesus ; the courtier came himself. 
 The courtier besought Christ to come to his house, but his child was healed 
 from a distance ; Jesus ofl'ered to go to the centurion's house, but, with ex- 
 treme humility, that officer declared himself unworthy of such a guest, and 
 besought him, with a striking military figure, to heal his servant by a word. 
 The points of resemblance are few, and such as might easily occur where so 
 many miracles were wrought. The divergences are so marked that to make 
 the cases one and the same would introduce difficulties where none really 
 exist, except In the imagination of commentators. 
 
EARLY LABORS IN GALILEE. 257 
 
 tory. His life was imperilled in an unlocked for 
 uproar which broke out in the synagogue when he was 
 conducting the service. For the Jewish synagogue 
 had no ordained and regular minister ; the ruler, and 
 in his absence the elders, twelve of whom sat upon the 
 platform where the reading-desk was placed, called 
 from the congregation any person of suitable age and 
 character who could read fluently and expound with 
 propriety the lessons of the Law and the Prophets.^ 
 
 • We quote a brief extract from Kitto'a Biblical Cyclopcedm (Art. 
 " Synagogue," by Christian D. Ginsburg), , to illustrate the reading of the 
 Scriptures by Christ : — 
 
 " To give unity and harmony to the worship, as well as to enable the 
 congregation to take part in the responses, it was absolutely necessary to 
 have one who should lead the worship. Hence, as soon as the legal number 
 required for public worship had assembled, the ruler of the synagogue, or 
 in his absence the elders, delegated one of the congregation to go up before 
 the ark to conduct divine service. 
 
 " The function of the apostle of the ecclesia was not permanently vested 
 in any single individual ordained for this purpose, but was alternately con- 
 ferred upon any lay member who was supposed to possess the qualifications 
 necessary for ofiering up prayer in the name of the congregation. This is 
 evident from the reiterated declarations both in the Mishna and the Talmud. 
 
 " Thus we are told that any one who is not under thirteen years of age, 
 and whose garments are not in rags, may officiate before the ark ; that ' if 
 one is before the ark (ministers for the congregation^, and makes a mistake 
 (in the prayer), another one is to minister in his stead, and he is not to 
 decline it on such an occasion.' ' The sages have transmitted that he who 
 is asked to conduct public worship is to delay a little at first, saying that he 
 is unworthy of it ; and if he does not delay he is like unto a dish wherein is 
 no salt, and if he delays more than is necessary he is like unto a dish which 
 the salt hath spoiled.' 
 
 " How is he to do it ? The first time he is asked, he is to decline ; the 
 second time, he is to stir ; and the third time, he is to move his legs and 
 ascend before the ark. Even on the most solemn occasions, when the whole 
 congregation fasted and assembled with the president and vice-president of 
 the Sanhedrim for national humiliation and prayer, no stated minister is 
 spoken of; but it is said that one of the aged men present is to deliver a 
 penitential address, and another is to offer up the solemn prayers. 
 
 " It was afterwards ordained that, ' even if an elder or sage is present in 
 17 
 
258 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 On the morning of the Sabbath referred to, Jesus 
 was called to conduct the service. After the litiu-- 
 gical services were finished, which consisted of Psalms 
 and prayers, said and chanted responsively by the 
 reader and the congregation, he proceeded to read the 
 lesson for the day from the Prophets. It so happened 
 that Isaiah was read, and the portion for the day con- 
 tained these remarkable words, mainly as rendered in 
 the Septuagint : — 
 
 " The spirit of the Lord is upon me, 
 Because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; 
 He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, 
 To preach deliverance to the captives, 
 And recovering of sight to the blind, 
 To set at liberty them that are bruised, 
 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord." 
 
 To understand the force of these words, one must 
 read the context in the sixtieth chapter of Isaiah, and 
 consider that it is the culmination of all the glowing 
 promises of this great prophet respecting the Messiah. 
 When Jesus had finished reading and had shut the 
 book, there seems to have come over him a change 
 such as his countenance often assumed. Before he 
 uttered a word further, such was his appearance that 
 " the eyes of aU them that were in the synagogue were 
 fastened on him." Nor was the wonder decreased when 
 he broke silence, saying, "This day is this scripture 
 fulfilled in your ears." There must have been not 
 
 the coHgregation, he is not to be asked to officiate before the ark, but that 
 man is to be delegated who is apt to officiate, who has children, whose 
 family are free from vice, who has a proper beard, whose garments are 
 decent, who is acceptable to the people, who has a good and amiable voice, 
 who understands how to read the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa, 
 who is versed in the homiletic, legal, and traditional exegesis, and who 
 knows all the benedictions of the service.' " 
 
EARLY LABORS IN GALILEE. 259 
 
 only great majesty in his manijer, but also great sweet- 
 ness, for a thrill went through the audience, and they 
 all "bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious 
 words which proceeded out of his mouth " : nothing 
 could so touch the Jewish heart as an intimation that 
 the Messiah was near or was come. 
 
 It was but a transient feeling, more a testimony to 
 the power of him who was teaching than to their own 
 dociUty ; for in a moment more it came over the con- 
 gregation, that, after all, this was but their old towns- 
 man. Their vanity was wounded, and the more vulgar 
 among them began to whisper, "Is not this Joseph's 
 son ? " " Is not this the carpenter's son ? " Others 
 confirmed it, for "Is not his mother called Mary?" 
 Everybody knew him and his family, and the poor 
 way in which they had always lived. They knew " his 
 brethren, James and Joses and Simon and Judas, and 
 his sisters;" Out of such a common set it was not 
 likely that a prophet would arise, particularly when 
 it was known how httle education Jesus had received. 
 Where did he get his learning ?. How should our 
 plain townsman be able to do the mighty works that 
 we have heard of his performing ? " Whence hath 
 this man this wisdom?" 
 
 Jesus did not resent their unfavorable speeches con- 
 cerning his mother and her family. Had he chosen, 
 he could have made his townsmen enthusiastic in his 
 behalf, by doing some "mighty work" which, making 
 Nazareth famous, would give every one of his old neigh- 
 bors some participation in its glory. But already pride 
 and vanity were their bane. It was better that they 
 should be mortified, and not inflated still more. Jesus 
 perceived their spirit, and revealed it in his reply: 
 
260 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 "■ Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, 
 heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done in Car 
 pernaum, do also here in thy country." That is, You 
 do not care for me, or for the truth ; but you are jeal- 
 ous of a neighboring town, and angry because I do not 
 make as much of Nazareth as of Capernaum. You 
 think that I am not a Divine teacher because I pass 
 by my own town. But thus God often administers. 
 He passed by the whole Jewish nation, when, during 
 the great famine, by his prophet Elijah he held com- 
 munion with a Phoenician widow, though there was 
 many a Hebrew widow in the land. Also he passed 
 by the thousands of lepers in that region, and healed 
 a Syrian, Naaman, who was at that very time chief offi- 
 cer to a heathen king holding Israel ia subjugation. 
 
 These words were like flame upon stubble. The 
 love of country among the Jews was a fanaticism. 
 It carried with it a burning hatred of foreigners, as 
 heathen, which no prudence could restrain. Every 
 year this ferocious spirit broke out, and was put down 
 by the slaughter of hundreds and thousands of Jews. 
 It made no diiference. Like the internal fires of the 
 globe, it burned on, even when no eruption made it 
 manifest. The historical facts alleged could not be 
 gainsaid ; but the use of them to show that God cared 
 for other nations, even at the expense of the Jews, 
 produced a burst of uncontrollable fury. The meeting 
 broke up in a fierce tumult. Jesus was seized by the 
 enraged crowd that went shouting through the street, 
 and hurried toward one of the many precipitous ledges 
 of the mountainous hill on whose sides Nazareth was 
 built, that they might cast him down headlong. They 
 were dragging him hastily onward, when, behold, the 
 
EARLY LABORS IN GALILEE. 261 
 
 men let go their hold, and no one dared to brave his 
 eye. "Passing through the midst of them, he went his 
 way."i 
 
 It may seem to be not in accordance with the mani- 
 fest prudence of Jesus to bring on an attack by such 
 pungent discourse in his own town, when he had just 
 left Judaea on account of the danger of collision with 
 the leading men, and had taken refuge in GalUee as 
 being safer, and as affording him opportunity to unfold 
 the great spiritual truths which carried the world's life 
 in them. Where and when he shovild preach were 
 certainly matters of discretion ; but what he should 
 preach could not be left to expediency. That his 
 truth would be disagreeable to his hearers, and provoke 
 opposition, never deterred him from pungent personal 
 discourse. If the resistance was such as to be likely 
 to bring his ministry prematurely to an end, he re- 
 moved to some other place, but did not change the 
 searching character of his teaching. The outburst of 
 wounded vanity and of fanatical religious zeal among 
 his ignorant and turbulent fellow-townsmen would 
 have little effect outside of Nazareth. Such an uproar 
 in Jerusalem might have driven him from Judaea, and 
 even from Palestine. Nazareth was not Jerusalem. 
 
 Much question has arisen respecting the position of 
 
 ' This scene is given by Luke (iv. 1 6 - 30) and by Matthew (xiii. 53 - 58). 
 Many commentators regard these as separate occasions, placing the scene 
 as given by Matthew much later in the history. It seems scarcely possible 
 that two visits should have been made to Nazareth, not only with the same 
 general results, but with questions and answers almost identical ; especially 
 that the proverb used by Jesus in reply to his envious townsmen should 
 serve both occasions. There are no difficulties which compel the harmonist 
 to make two separate scenes of this kind, and every probability requires 
 them to be the same ; though, in narration, each Evangelist, as would be 
 natural, gives some particulars omitted by the other. 
 
262 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 the declivity toward which the enraged Jews were 
 bearing Jesus. From the modern village, it is two 
 miles to the precipice which overhangs the valley of 
 Esdraelon. Thomson says that near to this precipice 
 his guide pointed out the ruins of the ancient village 
 of Nazareth, which in that case was much farther south 
 than the present site. But the point is not essential. 
 Nazareth is built upon the side of a mountainous ridge, 
 which, wherever the ancient village was placed, — for 
 it was but a hamlet, — furnishes enough places for the 
 purpose intended by the Nazarenes. It was not for 
 landscape effect, but for an execution, that the crowd 
 were lookiag for a ledge, and twenty feet was as good 
 for such a purpose as fifty; especially if the plunge 
 were followed by stones, — a method of terminatiag a 
 discussion with which the Jews were quite familiar.-' 
 
 If we regard the three accounts of the transaction at 
 Nazareth as referring to the same visit, it is plain that 
 Jesus did not leave the village immediately. We are 
 not obliged to suppose that he escaped from the mur- 
 derous hands of his townsmen by a miracle. Some 
 
 ' W. H. Dixon, in The Holy Land, gives a striking view of Nazareth : — 
 " Four miles south of the strong Greek city of Saphoris, hidden away 
 among gentle hills, then covered from the base to the crown with vineyards 
 and fig-trees, lay a natural nest, or basin, of rich red and white earth, 
 star-like in shape, about a mile in width, and wondrously fertile. Along the 
 scarred and chalky slope of the highest of these hills spread a small and 
 lovely village, which, in a land where every stone seemed to have a story, is 
 remarkable as having had no public history and no distinguishable native 
 name. No great road led up to this sunny nook. No traffic came into it. 
 Trade,'war, adventure, pleasure, pomp, passed by it, flowing from west to 
 east, from east to west, along the Roman road. But the meadows were 
 aglow with wheat and barley. Near the low ground ran a belt of gardens 
 fenced with loose stones, in which myriads of green figs, red pomegranates, 
 and golden citrons ripened in the summer sun. High up the slopes, which 
 were lined and planted Uke the BMne at Bingen, hung vintages of purple 
 
EAMLY LABORS IN GALILEE. 263 
 
 have believed that he became invisible; or that he 
 changed his appearance, so that the people did not 
 recognize him ; or that he melted hke a cloud out of 
 their hands. 
 
 The language of Luke is, " But he, passing through 
 the midst of them, went his way." That Jesus at times 
 assumed an air of such grandeur that men were awe- 
 struck, and could not bear either his eye or his voice, 
 we know. The hardened soldiers that went to Geth- 
 semane to arrest him fell to the ground when he con- 
 fronted them. There are many instances of this power 
 of his person to make men quail. (See Chapter VII.) 
 We are inclined to the supposition, that Jesus assumed 
 a manner of such authority that even the riotous crowd 
 let fall their hands, and that he walked quietly away 
 from out of their midst. 
 
 This unhappy visit to Nazareth was the last. He 
 could not there bestow the mercies which doubtless 
 he would have conferred upon a spot that must have 
 been endeared to him by a thousand associations and 
 experiences of youth, and where, according to Mark, 
 
 grapes. In the plain among the corn, and beneath the mulberry-trees and 
 figs, shone daisies, poppies, tulips, lilies, anemones, endless in their pro- 
 fusion, brilliant in their dyes. Low down on the hillside sprang a well of 
 water, bubbling, plentiful, and sweet ; and above this fountain of life, in along 
 street straggling from the fountain to the synagogue, rose the homesteads 
 of many shepherds, craftsmen, and vine-dressers. It was a lovely and 
 humble place, of which no poet, no ruler, no historian of Israel had ever 
 taken note." 
 
 It need scarcely be said, that, except the hills and terraces and the 
 fountain, there is nothing now in or about Nazareth that could have been 
 there in Christ's youth. The legends that abound respecting his infancy 
 and youth are unworthy of a moment's consideration. Over the youth of 
 Christ, in Nazareth, there rests a silence far more impressive than anything 
 which the imagination can frame, and on which the puerile legends break 
 with impertinent intrusion. 
 
264 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 his sisters yet dwelt. "And are not his sisters here 
 with us ? " (Mark vi. 3.) The temper of this people 
 repelled his gracious offers of kindness. It is true that 
 "he laid his hand upon a few sick folk, and healed 
 them." But we may easUy beheve that he would have 
 been glad to make Nazareth a monument of benefac- 
 tions. A year had passed since his baptism by John, 
 Already he had experience of the unbelieving temper 
 of his age and countrymen ; but there was something 
 in the fierceness and repulsive manners of his fellow- 
 townsmen that surpassed aU ordinary experience, " and 
 he marvelled because of their unbelief." 
 
 Capernaum henceforth became his home, in so far as 
 he can be said to have had a home at aU during the 
 year now before him, and which was the great period 
 of his activity. For the ministry of Christ covered but 
 a little more than two years, and his chief labor was 
 compressed into a single one.-^ 
 
 From this time Jesus seems either to have lived in 
 retirement for about two months, or, if he carried for- 
 ward his work of teaching, no allusion is made to it 
 by any of the Evangelists. But in March of this year 
 he goes again to Jerusalem, probably to the Feast of 
 Purim, — a feast instituted to keep in remembrance 
 the great deliverance which the Jews in captivity re- 
 ,ceived at the hands of Esther.^ 
 
 ' " The ministry of our Lord would seem to have lasted about two years 
 and three months, i. e. from his baptism, at the close of 27 A. D. (780 
 A. U. C.) or beginning of 28 A. D. to the last Passover in 30 A. D. The 
 opinions on this subject have been apparently as much divided in ancient 
 
 as in modern times The general feeling of antiquity was, that our 
 
 Lord's entire ministry lasted for a period, speaking roughly, of about three 
 years, but that the more active part .... lasted one."— Ellicott's Lec- 
 tures on the Life of our Lord Jesus Christ, (Boston, 1862,) p. 145, note. 
 
 ' John simply says that it was a " feast of the Jews." It might be, there- 
 
EARLY LABORS IN GALILEE. 265 
 
 This visit of Jesus to Jerusalem was memorable, not 
 only for the beneficent miracles of mercy wrought by 
 him there, but for the decided aUenation of the Phari- 
 sees, and the beginning on their part of that deadly 
 hatred which little more than a year afterwards accom- 
 plished his crucifixion. 
 
 Jesus was not, like the Rabbis, accustomed to hold 
 himself apart from the common people, and to show 
 himself only to admiring disciples. There are many 
 indications that he moved about inquiringly among the 
 poor, and made himself familiar with their necessities. 
 He shortened the distance between himself and the 
 plain common people as much as possible. It was in 
 one of these walks of mercy that he came one Sabbath 
 day to the pool of Bethesda, which was without the 
 walls of Jerusalem and near to the Sheep Gate ; but 
 the spot is not now known. That which has for ages 
 been pointed out as the site of Bethesda — a dry reser- 
 voir on the north of the Temple wall — is now given 
 up. This " pool " was an intermitting fountain, whose 
 waters were supposed to be healing, if used at the 
 time of their regurgitation. Around it, for the con- 
 venience of the sick, had been built a colonnade, or 
 porch, and there the diseased and the crippled awaited 
 their chance to descend. 
 
 It was to just such places that Jesus was likely to 
 
 fore, tlie Dedication, tlie Feast of Purim, the Passover, the Pentecost, or the 
 Feast of Tabernacles, which fell, respectively, in the months of December, 
 March, April, May, and September. The best authorities are irreconcilably 
 at variance as to which " feast " is meant ; whichever view one takes, it will 
 be only conjecture, rather than probability. Certainty there is none. The 
 value of the truths of the gospel is not aflfected by the utter confusion of 
 chronologistSi The consecutive order of many of the events in Christ's 
 life cannot be precisely determined ; but this does not change their moral 
 worth, nor cast any suspicion upon their authenticity. 
 
266 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 come ; and on this Sabbath day he beheld a sufferer 
 unable to help himself and without friends to assist 
 him. None are more apt to be selfish than the sick. 
 Each one seeks his own cure, and is indifferent to the 
 sufferings of others. This man had brought upon him- 
 self, by some course of dissipation, the evils which af- 
 flicted him (John v. 14) ; but it was enough that he 
 suffered. Jesus saluted him with the question, " Wilt 
 thou be made whole?" and the man, not knowing 
 the stranger, and naturally supposing that he was 
 asking only the reason of his delay in entering the 
 •pool, excused himself by pleading his inability to con- 
 tend with the scrambling crowd that plunged into the 
 waters at the favored moment. As yet Jesus was but 
 little known. He had neither preached in Jerusalem, 
 nor wrought miracles in any such public way as to 
 bring his Divine power clearly before men. He did 
 not, therefore, require the exercise of faith in this 
 cripple as a condition of merqy. He surprised him 
 with the peremptory command, " Rise ! Take up thy 
 bed, and Walk ! " Then came the sudden thriU of 
 health ! The cripple had been bathed in no fountain 
 stirred by an angel. From the Fountain of life had 
 fallen on him the healing influence. His amazement 
 of joy must be imagined. 
 
 Behold him now with nimble step ascending to the 
 city ! He is stopped. What is it ? Why, he is carry- 
 ing with him his bed ! He has forgotten that it is the 
 Sabbath. " It is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed." 
 Was an Oriental bed, then, so large as to make an 
 uncomely appearance upon the man's shoulder ? No, 
 it was but a pallet, to be spread, like a blanket, on the 
 ground. EoUed up, it was a bundle less than a sol- 
 
EARLY LABORS IN GALILEE. 267 
 
 dier's overcoat, and could be carried under the arm 
 without inconvenience. But it was the Sabbath day. 
 A Jew might play on the Sabbath, join in social fes- 
 tivity, grow hilarious, but he must not work ! 
 
 There is no evidence that Jesus did not keep the 
 Sabbath day as it was enjoined in the Law of Moses. 
 He certainly did not trample it under foot, nor in any 
 way undervalue it. It was against the glosses of the 
 Pharisees that he strove. They had added to the Law 
 innmnerable explanations which were deemed as bind- 
 ing as the original. The Sabbath day had become a 
 snare. By ingenious constructions and by stretch of 
 words the Jews had turned it into a day of bondage, 
 and made it a monument of superstitions. No Jew 
 must kindle a fire on that day, nor even light a can- 
 dle. A conscientious Jew would not snuff his candle 
 nor put fuel upon the fire on the Sabbath. There were 
 thirty-nine principal occupations which, with all that 
 were analogous to them, were forbidden. " If a Jew 
 go forth on the Friday, and on the night falls short of 
 home more than is lawful to be travelled on the Sab- 
 bath day (i. e. two thousand yards), there must he set 
 him down, and there keep his Sabbath, though in a 
 wood, or in a field, or on the highway-side, without all 
 fear of wind and weather, of thieves and robbers, aU 
 care of meat or drink." " The lame may use a staff, 
 but the blind may not." Not being indispensable, for 
 a blind man to carry a staff would come under the 
 head of carrying burdens on the Sabbath. " Men must 
 not fling more corn to their poultry than will serve 
 that day, lest it may grow by lying still, and they be 
 said to sow their corn upon the Sabbath." " They may 
 not carry a flap or fan to drive away the flies." That 
 would be a species of labor. 
 
268 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 It was not enough that every device was seized to 
 prevent formal or honest labor, but there was joined 
 to this rigor an ingenious dishonesty. " To carry any- 
 thing from one house to another is unlawful; but if 
 the householders in a court should join in some article 
 of food and deposit it in a certain place, the whole 
 court becomes virtually one dwelling, and the inmates 
 are entitled to carry from house to house whatever 
 they please." " It is unlawful to carry a handkerchief 
 loose in the pocket ; but if they pin it to the pocket, 
 or tie it round the waist as a girdle, they may carry it 
 anywhere." Many of the things which a Jew would 
 by no means suffer himself to do on the Sabbath, such 
 as putting fuel on the fire, or performing tasks of cook- 
 ing, he would permit a Gentile servant to do for him, 
 if he were rich enough to employ one, inasmuch as 
 the Gentiles were not under the Law ! At the very 
 time that the Eabbis were devising restrictions on the 
 one side, they were shrewdly outwitting the Law by 
 cunning devices on the other. "A Sabbath-day's 
 journey " was two thousand paces, measured from 
 one's domicile. But by depositing food at the end of 
 the first two thousand paces on a previous day, and 
 calling that place a domicile, they were suffered to go 
 forward another Sabbath-day's journey. Thus super- 
 stitious rigor led to evasions and hypocrisy. 
 
 But this strictness was not exercised for the sake of 
 keeping the Sabbath as a day of moral instruction and 
 of devotion. For, though the Temple service was 
 more full on that day than on ordinary days, and there 
 were religious services in the synagogues, yet the Sab- 
 bath was observed on the whole as a day of recreation 
 and social enjoyment. Feasts were given, and a large 
 
EARLY LABORS IN GALILEE. 269 
 
 hospitality was exercised. The Jewish Sabbath, from 
 the days of Moses, and 'in its original intent and spirit, 
 was as much, a day of social pleasure as of religious 
 observance. Boisterous hilarity was disallowed, and 
 all secular work, that is, toil for profit of every kind, 
 was a capital offence. It was upon this claiise that 
 the Pharisaic ingenuity had run into fantastic extravar 
 gances, and a day originally appointed for reasons of 
 mercy had become a burden and an oppression. 
 
 The fortunate man who had been healed did not, 
 when questioned, even know to whom he was indebted. 
 " It is the Sabbath day," said the pious townsmen ; " it 
 is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed." But his bet- 
 ter nature told him that one who could perform such a 
 miracle upon him stood nearer to God, and was more 
 fit to be obeyed, than the men of the Temple. Brave- 
 ly he replied, " He that made me whole, the same said 
 unto me. Take up thy bed, and walk." But afterward, 
 having met Jesus in the Temple, he let it be known 
 who it was that had healed him. The excitement ran 
 high. So enraged were the Jews, that they did " per- 
 secute Jesus, and sought to slay him." Without doubt, 
 the excitement and uproar took place in the Temple 
 court. 
 
 It has been thought-, and with reason, that Jesus 
 was arraigned before ^he Sanhedrim, if not formally, 
 yet in a hastily convoked meeting. The discourse re- 
 corded by John (v. 17 - 47) could scarcely be the flow 
 of an uninterrupted speech. It bears all the marks 
 of a controversy. It is broken up into disconnected 
 topics, as if between them there had been arguments 
 and answers, or some taunting retorts, although the 
 Evangelist has not presented any part of the disputa- 
 
270 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 tion, except the points of the Lord's fepKes. To the 
 charge of breaking the Sabbath by working a miracle, 
 Jesus answers with an allusion to God's ceaseless ac- 
 tivity on all days alike ; which, even were it not the 
 highest truth, would be the noblest poetry, and not the 
 less emphatic because so condensed, — "My Father 
 worketh hitherto, and I work." 
 
 Why should I forbear on the Sabbath to do good ? 
 Does the sun cease shining ? Do rivers stand stUl ? 
 Do the grasses not grow, and fruits ripen, and birds 
 sing ? Does Nature keep Sabbath ? Is not God for- 
 ever going on in ceaseless benefaction, without vari- 
 ableness or shadow of turning ? Is it not lawful for 
 children to be bom on the Sabbath ? for medicine to 
 carry forward the cure ? for the weak to grow strong ? 
 Through ah. God's realm the Sabbath is a day of active 
 mercy, and why should I refuse a work of benevo- 
 lence ? 
 
 The reply was unanswerable. It was a sublime ap- 
 peal from the rescripts and traditions of man to the 
 authority of God. Jesus appealed from custom to na- 
 ture. Evading this reply, they seized upon the fact 
 that he had called God his Father, thus, as they said, 
 "making himself equal with God." They broke out 
 upon him with trucvilent fury, and sought to tear him 
 in pieces. Yet by some means the storm was quieted. 
 The discourse is remarkable in every respect, but in 
 nothing more than the direct assumption of Divine 
 authority. He rises above all conventional grounds 
 and above all human sanctions. He declares that he 
 acts with the direct authority of God. « The Son can 
 do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father 
 do." Instead of explanation and apology to his ac- 
 
EARLY LABORS IN GALILEE. 271 
 
 cusers, Jesus boldly claims their submission to Ms au- 
 thority ! " The Father judgeth no man, but hath com- 
 mitted all judgment to the Son : that all men should 
 honor the Son, even as they honor the Father." He 
 now drops the title Son of Man, which he had always 
 used among the common people, because it drew him so 
 near to them and made them and him of one kin, and 
 for the first time calls himself the Son of GtOD. " The 
 hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear 
 the voice of the Son of God." As it was a question 
 of authority before the Sanhedrim, he places himself on 
 gromids above all reach of competition or of compar- 
 ison. He not only does not acknowledge their right to 
 control his conscience, but he declares that he wUl hold 
 them and all mankind responsible to himself. " The 
 hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves 
 shall hear His voice, and shall come forth ; they that 
 have done good, unto the resurrection of life ; and they 
 that have done evU, unto the resurrection of damna- 
 tion." 
 
 The members of the court must have looked upon 
 him with wonder as well as with rage. He disowned • 
 the whole value of that system of authority on which 
 their pride, their power, and their ambition were built. 
 He refused to stand before them as a culprit, or to 
 be catechised as a scholar. He soared to the highest 
 heaven. He placed himself beside God. He clothed 
 himself with Divine authority. He judged his judges, 
 and condemned the highest tribunal of his people. 
 Instead of apologizing for his deeds, or even explaining, 
 he arraigned the Sanhedrim. He reminded them that 
 for a time they had been disposed to accept John as a 
 prophet : " Ye were willing for a season to rejoice in 
 
272 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 his light." John also was now a witness for Jesus. 
 But no man could be an adequate witness of his nature 
 and authority. Only God could authenticate these. 
 By his miracles he showed that God had borne witness 
 to him. He rebuked them for gross ignorance of those 
 Scriptures in which it was their pride and boast that 
 they were profoundly versed. He brings home to them 
 their worldliness, their mutual flatteries, their ambitions, 
 their poverty of love, their wealth of selfishness. 
 
 Overawed, their tumultuous anger died, and Jesus 
 went forth from this first encounter with the rulers of 
 his people safe for the present, but a marked man, to 
 be watched, followed, entrapped, and, when the favor- 
 able moment should come, to be slain. 
 
 We must not suppose that the Pharisees were moved 
 to this controversy with Jesus from any moral regard 
 for the Sabbath. It was simply a question of power. 
 To attack what may be called their theology of the 
 Sabbath was to attack the most salient point of their 
 religious authority. If they might be safely defied 
 before the people on this ground, there was no use in 
 trying to maintain their authority as leaders on any 
 other. They could not allow themselves to look upon 
 Christ's merciful deed in the light of humanity. It was 
 to them a political act, and in its tendency a subver- 
 sion of their teaching, of their influence, and of their 
 supreme authority. 
 
 No party will yield up its power willingly ; and a 
 religious party less willingly than any other, because it 
 believes itself to represent the Divine will, and con- 
 strues all attack upon itself as resistance to Divine 
 authority. Its moral sense is offended, as well as its 
 avarice and ambition. There is no bitterness so intense 
 
EARLY LABORS IN GALILEE. 273 
 
 as that which conies when the moral feelings are cor- 
 rupted into alliance with men's passions. That is 
 fanaticism. 
 
 Although there is something admirable in this scene, 
 — a single man confronting the false spirit of the age, 
 the customs of his countrymen, and the active power 
 of their government, — yet it has its sadness as well. 
 Here began the death of Jesus. From this hour the 
 cross threw its shadow upon his path. 
 
 There were two other conflicts on this very question 
 which occurred about this time ; and though there is 
 nothing by which we may fix the place where they 
 occurred, some placing it near Jerusalem, and some, 
 with more probability, in GalUee, they may be fitly 
 grouped and considered together, for they aU belong 
 to about the same period of Christ's ministry, and they 
 are, interiorly, parts of the same conflict. 
 
 This first collision settled the policy of the Temple 
 party. Word went out over all the land to their ac- 
 tive partisans that Jesus was to be watched. Wher- 
 ever he went from this time, his steps were dogged by 
 spies ; skulking emissaries Hstened for some indictable 
 speech ; and everywhere he found the Pharisees in a 
 ferment of maHce. 
 
 In one of his circuits, whether in Judaea or in Gali- 
 lee is not stated, he was on a Sabbath day passing 
 through the fields. The barley harvest was near at 
 hand. The grain was turning ripe. His disciples, 
 being hungry, began to rub out the ripe kernels from, 
 the barley-heads and to eat them. According to the 
 refinements of the Pharisees, this was equivalent to^ 
 harvesting. Jesus was permitting his disciples to reap 
 
 grain-fields on the Sabbath ! To be sure, it was but a 
 as 
 
274 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 few heads that were plucked, but harvesting did not 
 depend on much or Kttle. One grain gathered on 
 the Sabbath had the moral character of harvest labor ! 
 
 Does this seem impertinent and impossible ? Not if 
 one considers that the Pharisee forbade men to walk 
 on the grass on the Sabbath, because in so doing some 
 seeds might be crushed out under their feet, and that 
 would be threshing ! No man must catch a flea on the 
 Sabbath, for that would be hunting ! No man on the 
 Sabbath must wear nailed shoes, for that would be 
 bearing burdens ! 
 
 To make the criminality of Jesus sure, it was neces- 
 sary to call attention to the conduct of his disciples, 
 and secure his approval of it. Taking food that did 
 not belong to them was not an offence under the laws 
 of Moses, if it was done to satisfy hunger ' The alle- 
 gation was, therefore, " Thy disciples do that which is 
 not lawful to do upon the Sabhccth dat/.^' He first shapes 
 a reply that a Pharisee would feel, and then he places 
 the Sabbath on the broadest ground of humanity. 
 
 King David, the pride and glory of the Jews, was 
 never condemned for breaking a law which was regard- 
 ed with extraordinary sacredness. Driven by excess of 
 hunger, when fleeing from Saul, he entered the house 
 of God,^ deceived the high-priest, seized and ate the 
 consecrated bread, taking it, as it were, from before 
 the very face of God. To save his life he committed 
 an act of sacrilege, and yet was never deemed guilty 
 
 • "When thou comest into thy neighbor's vineyard, then thou mayest eat 
 grapes thy fill, at thine own pleasure ; but thou shalt not put any in thy 
 vessel. When thou comest into the standing corn of thy neighbor, then 
 thou mayest pluck the ears with thine hand ; but thou shaltnot move a sickle 
 uato thy neighbor's standing corn." — Deut. xxiii. 24, 25 
 
 ' I'Sam. xxi. 1-6. 
 
EARLY LABORS IN GALILEE. 275 
 
 of the sin of sacrilege. But 'it was not necessary to 
 refer to history. Right before their eyes, in their own 
 day, was the law of the Sabbath broken, and that too 
 by their holiest men. Did not the priests work every 
 Sabbath in the Temple, slaying sheep and oxen, draw- 
 ing water, cleaving wood and carrying it to the altar, 
 kindling fires, and all this, not in rare emergencies, but 
 habitually ? If the Pharisaic rule of the Sabbath were 
 binding, what should be said of men who every week 
 chose the holiest place, in the most public manner, to 
 violate, the Sabbath by hard work ? No reply was 
 made to these words, for the best of reasons. 
 
 They could not deny that the rulers of the Temple 
 had authority to permit the priests to work on the 
 Sabbath. But Jesus claimed that he was himself 
 superior in authority to the Temple. " In this place 
 is one greater than the Temple." To the Jews that 
 Temple was the syiftbol of their history, their re- 
 ligion, and their civil law. It was the nation's heart. 
 When Jesus declared himself to be superior to the 
 Temple itself, it could be understood as nothing less 
 than grasping at sovereignty ; and as it was an af- 
 firmation in justification of an assault upon the most 
 sensitive part of their authority, it could be understood 
 as nothing less than treading under foot the Sanhedrim. 
 Was it, then, one of those moments in which his heav- 
 'Cnly nature illumined his person, and filled all that 
 looked on with admiration and amazement? If not, 
 how can we account for it that there was no protest, 
 no outburst of wrath ? 
 
 This imperial mood was significant, too, because it 
 disclosed itself in the beginning of his conflict with the 
 Temple party, in the very calmness and morning of his 
 
276 THE LIFE OF JESUS. THE CHRIST. 
 
 more open ministry. The same sovereignty of spirit 
 was more and more apparent to the end. Its assump- 
 tion was not, as Kenan imagines, the final effect of con- 
 tinuous conflicts with the Jews : it belonged to Jesus 
 from the beginning. His life answered to either title, 
 Son of Man, or Son of God. In the spirit of sover- 
 eignty he claimed authority to repeal the legislation 
 of the Pharisees respecting the Sabbath, to restore the 
 Law to its original simplicity, and to leave to the in- 
 telligent moral sense of men what things were mer- 
 ciful and necessary on the Sabbath. 
 
 It is remarkable that there should be a third conflict 
 of the same kind at about the same time. . It shows that 
 the Pharisees had accepted the challenge, and were de- 
 termined to make an open issue with Jesus on the 
 subject of Sabbath-keeping. On a Sabbath not long 
 after the scene just now narrated, the people were 
 gathered in a synagogue, — where and in what one is 
 not mentioned. Christ was teaching the people. There 
 was among them a man whose right arm was paralyzed. 
 The Pharisees were there watching. They knew that 
 Jesus would be tempted by his humanity to break the 
 Pharisaic Sabbath by healing him. They hinted at the 
 man's presence by asking Jesus, " Is it lawful to heal 
 on the Sabbath day?" Before answering them, Jesus 
 called to the paralytic, "Rise up, and stand forth in 
 the midst." Then, turning to his malicious questioners, . 
 he put back to them their own question, lifted out of 
 its technical form, and placed upon moral grovmds : " Is 
 it lawful on the Sabbath days to do good, or to do evil ? 
 to save life, or to destroy it ? " They did not dare to 
 answer when the case was thus brought home to every 
 man's common sense. But Jesus was willing to meet 
 
EAULY LABORS IN GALILEE. 277 
 
 the question both, on technical and on moral grounds. 
 The Pharisees permitted a shepherd to extricate from 
 peril one of his sheep on the Sabbath day. Seizing 
 that permission to property interests, Jesus contrasted 
 with it their shameless indifference to humanity. 
 " How much then is a man better than a sheep ? 
 Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days." 
 This scene, slight as it seems in the rehearsal, went 
 to the very heart of Jesus. To him nothing seemed so 
 repulsive as the soul of an intelligent man coiled up 
 in its selfishness and striking at the poor and weak. 
 Sins of excess, unbridled passions, vices and crimes, 
 he rebuked with much of pity as well as of sternness ; 
 but intelligent inhumanity roused his utmost indigna- 
 tion. This particular case was peculiarly offensive. 
 He turned upon his questioners an eye that none could 
 bear. Calm it was, but it burned like a flame. There 
 is no expression so unendurable as that of incensed love. 
 It is plain that he searched their countenances one by 
 one, and brought home to them a sense of their mean- 
 ness. " And when he had looked round about on them 
 with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their 
 hearts, he saith unto the man. Stretch forth thine 
 hand." It was healed. 
 
 Now came the" rage of his baffled enemies. They 
 "were filled with madness." They drew together in 
 - counsel ; they began to call in as auxiliaries the venal 
 scoundrels that hung about Herod's court, seeking 
 "how they might destroy him," combining political 
 jealousy with, ecclesiastical bitterness. As yet, their 
 malice was powerless. His hour had not come. 
 
 "We have here, in a more developed form than had 
 
278 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 thus far appeared in the life of Jesus, the aggressive- 
 ness of love. He had shown himself to be personally 
 full of sympathy and kindness ; but now he makes 
 benevolence the criterion of justice and the test of 
 religion. He begins to bring the institutions, the 
 customs, and the maxims of his countrymen to the 
 criticism of the law of kindness. It is the first scene 
 in which we behold love equipped for conflict. 
 
 Whatever importance attached to the day in their 
 controversy, the Sabbath was a secondary matter.' It 
 was not a question whether it was divine, nor whether 
 it should be abrogated, nor even how it should be kept; 
 it was the spirit of inhumanity, the hard-heartedness 
 of the religious chiefs, the unsympathetic and teasing 
 spirit with which they administered religious affairs 
 that was to be judged. It was more than a dispute 
 about an ordinance ; it was a conflict between kindness 
 and unmercifulness, between fraternal sympathies and 
 ofl&cial authority, between mercy and relentless super- 
 stition. 
 
 When we hear Jesus saying, "I will have mercy, 
 and not sacrifice," and know that those words were 
 applied to the administration of law, we feel that a 
 new interpretation of justice has come. The Divine 
 administration of all laws is toward mercy. Hence- 
 forth humanity judges them, and gives them permis- 
 sion to be. Pain and penalty are not abolished, but 
 they are no longer vindictive ; they are for restraint, 
 correction, and prevention. Justice is love purging 
 things from evil and making them lovely. 
 
 The protests of Jesus against the Pharisaic ob- 
 servance of the Sabbath must not be regarded as dis- 
 countenancing the day itself as a Divine ordinance, 
 
EARLY LABORS IN GALILEE. 279 
 
 nor even as criticising the original methods of its 
 observance enjoined by Moses. He set his face against 
 the unfeeling use which the Pharisees of his time made 
 of it. It was the perversion of a day of mercy that he 
 resisted. In reasoning the case, Jesus laid down a prin- 
 ciple which affects all human institutions of every kind : 
 " The Sabbath was made for man, and not inan for the 
 Sabbath." 
 
 Institutions and laws have no sacredness in them- 
 selves. They have no rights as against the real wel- 
 fare of men. Laws are servants, not masters. No law 
 must rule unless it will serve. But one thing on earth 
 is intrinsically sacred, and that is man, and he because 
 he is God's son and the heir of immortality. His na- 
 ture is sacred. Amidst all his sins, crimes, and corrupr 
 tions, there is still within him the soul that came of 
 God, for whose sake the whole round of nature is 
 ordained ; — and how much more civil laws and eccle- 
 siastical ordinances ! The state was made for man, not 
 man for the state. 
 
 The welfare of the state depends upon the sacredness 
 of the individual citizen. The tendency has been to 
 build Tip the state at all hazard,^ — to sacrifice the cit- 
 izen to public good, as if the good of the whole de- 
 manded the sacrifice of its units. Men may offer 
 themselves up in great emergencies, revolutions, wars, 
 etc., but in the ordinary flow of hfe the strength and 
 happiness of the unit wUl determine the prosperity 
 and power of the aggregate. 
 
280 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CEBJST. 
 
 CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 A TIME OF JOT, 
 
 Thus far we have seen only the preparatory steps 
 of Christ's ministry. A year and a half had passed 
 since his baptism, of which period but an imperfect 
 record exists. The time was now come for the full dis- 
 closure of his energy. He began to feel in greater 
 measure the impulse of the Divine nature. He had 
 learned, in this last visit to Jerusalem, of John's arrest 
 and imprisonment. The field was open. He left the 
 scowling brotherhood of Judsean Pharisees, who no 
 longer disguised their deadly intentions, and repaired 
 to Galilee, making Capernaum his head-quarters. We 
 must soon follow him in the repeated circuits which he 
 made from there, and note the details of his ministry. 
 
 It was the most joyful period of his hfe. It was a 
 full year of beneficence unobstructed. It is true that 
 he was jealously watched, but he was not forcibly re- 
 sisted. He was maliciously defamed by the emissaries 
 of the Temple, but he irresistibly charmed the hearts 
 of the common people. Can we doubt that his life was 
 full of exquisite enjoyment ? He had not within him- 
 self those conflicts which common men have. There 
 was entire harmony of faculties within, and a perfect 
 agreement between his inward and his external life. 
 He bore others' burdens, but had none of his own. 
 His body was in full health ; his soul was clear and 
 
A TIME OF JOY. 281 
 
 tranquil ; his heart overfloTved with an unending sym- 
 pathy. He was pursuing the loftiest errand which 
 benevolence can conteraplate. No joy known to the 
 human soul compares with that of successful benefi- 
 cent labor. We cannot doubt that the earlier portions 
 of this year, though full of intense excitement, were 
 also full of deep happiness to him. Wherever he 
 came, he carried men's hearts with him. Whatever 
 town he left, there had been hundreds of hearts in 
 it made happy by his cleansing touch. At times the 
 excitement seemed hkely to whirl him away. He was 
 obliged to repress it, to forsake the crowds and hide 
 himself for a while, — to withhold his miracles, lest 
 the overflowing enthusiasm should be mistaken by a 
 jealous government for political insurrection, and a 
 cruel end be put to the work of beneficence. 
 
 We love to linger in these thoughts. We are glad 
 that Jesus tasted joy as well as sorrow, — that there, 
 were months of wonderful gladness. At times the 
 cloud of coming suffering may have cast its shadow 
 upon his path; but his daily work was full of light. 
 Could he behold the gladness of household after house- 
 hold and be himself immoved ? Could he heal the sick 
 through wide regions, see the maimed and crippled 
 restored to activity, and not participate in the joy 
 which broke out on every hand? Could he console 
 the sorrowing, instruct the ignorant, recall the wan- 
 dering, confirm the wavering, and not find his heart 
 full of joyfulness ? Besides the wonder and admira- 
 tion which he excited on every hand, he received from 
 not a few the most cordial affection, and returned a 
 richer love. 
 
 It is impossible not to see from the simple language 
 
282 TSE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 of the Evangelists, that his first circmts in Galilee were 
 triumphal processions. The sentences which general- 
 ize the history are few, but they are such as could 
 have sprung only out of joyous memories, and indicate 
 a new and great development of power on his side, and 
 an ebullition of joyful excitement through the whole 
 community. " And Jesus returned in the power of the 
 Spirit into Galilee : and there went out a fame of him 
 through all the region round about. And he taught 
 in their synagogues, leing glorified of all!' (Luke iv. 
 14, 15.) 
 
 To suppose that Jesus had no gladness in the work 
 which diffused so much happiness, that he could see 
 the tides of excitement flowing on every side without 
 sympathy, that he could touch responsively every 
 tender affection in the human soul and not have a 
 vibration of its joy in himself, is to suppose him less 
 than human. Any worthy conception of a Divine .na- 
 ture must make it far richer in affection and sympathy 
 than men can be. Whatever rejoicing attended his 
 career through Galilee, we may be sure that no one 
 was more happy than he. 
 
 On the Sabbath he seems always to have resorted to 
 the synagogue, as did every devout Jew, just as Chris- 
 tians now betake themselves to churches. His fame 
 would not permit him to be only a listener. He was 
 called by the rulers of the synagogue to the place of 
 teacher, and from Sabbath to Sabbath he unfolded to 
 his countrymen the deep spiritual meanings hidden in 
 their Scriptures which had been buried under the Phar- 
 isaic traditions. But he did not confine himself to a 
 Scriptural and expository method of instruction. On 
 the Sabbath, and during the week-days, 'when fit occa- 
 
A TIME OF JOY. 283 
 
 sion offered, he seized the events which were taking 
 place before their eyes,- and, applying to them the 
 criticism of the highest morahty, he made them the 
 texts from which to develop a spiritual faith. More 
 of these discourses founded upon passing events are 
 recorded than of Scriptural expositions. Indeed, while 
 we have many allusions to Scripture, we have no 
 single discourse of Jesus which may be strictly called 
 an expository one. The freshness of this method of 
 teaching, the abandonment of all mere refinements 
 and frivolous niceties, the application of humane good 
 sense and of rational justice to every-day interests, 
 gave to his teaching a power which never accom- 
 panied the tedious dialectics of the Jewish doctors. 
 "And they were astonished at his doctrine: for he 
 taught them as one that had authority, and not as the 
 scribes. . . . For his word was with power." (Mark i. 
 22 ; Luke iv. 32.) 
 
 An occurrence on one of the earliest, if not the very 
 first of the Sabbaths spent in Capernaum, will furnish 
 a good example of the scenes of this great year of his 
 ministry. 
 
 While Jesus was speaking in the synagogue, amidst 
 the profound stillness the people were startled by a 
 wild outcry. A poor wretch was there who " had the 
 spirit of an unclean devU." With the pathos of intense 
 fear he cried out, " Let us alone ; what have we to do 
 with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth ? " All this might 
 have resulted from the pungent nature of the teach- 
 ing, but not the cry, " I know thee who thou art, the 
 Holy One of God," — this was something more than 
 a random speech. We may imagine the shock which 
 such a scene would produce in the midst of a sermon 
 
284 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 in one of our churches. Jesus, undisturbed and calm, 
 enjoined silence, and with a word of command drove 
 out the evil spirit. Then came the reaction ; all men 
 were fiUed with admiration and spread the news abroad. 
 But Jesus, withdrawing from the tumult, secluded 
 himself during the heat of the day in Peter's house. 
 There he found Peter's mother-in-law prostrated with 
 a fever. At a touch of his hand she was healed, and 
 resumed her household duties before them all, as if she 
 had not been sick. The whole city was alive with 
 excitement. 
 
 During the fiery noons of Oriental cities men shut 
 themselves up in their houses; but at evening they 
 pour forth, and the gate of the city is the grand resort. 
 Thither too, upon this same day, repaired Jesus, who 
 was always drawn toward the multitudes. He was 
 evidently expected and eagerly awaited. And now 
 appeared a scene which only the imagination can 
 depict. All the diseases which the violent heats in 
 that cUmate breed upon the uncleanly habits and the 
 squalid poverty of the masses were represented at 
 the gate by appropriate subjects. Fevers, dropsies, 
 paralyses, were there. The blind, the deaf, and — hov- 
 ering on the edge afar off— the lepers implored help. 
 The lame came limping, and those too sick to help 
 themselves were borne thither by their friends, until 
 the ample space was like a camp hospital. Jesus 
 commenced among them his merciful work. It was 
 a solemn and joyful scene. Human misery was ex- 
 hibited here in many forms ; but as, one by one, the 
 touch or word of the Master healed it, came the re- 
 bound of exultation. Those who were coming, bear- 
 mg the sick on couches, met returning happy groups 
 
A TIME OF JOY. 285 
 
 of those who had been healed. Many tears of rejoic- 
 ing fell, as children were given back to despairing 
 mothers. Strange calmness in some natures, and wild 
 exhilaration in others, attested the rapture of dehver- 
 ance from loathsome disease. Never, in all their mem- 
 ories, had there been such an evening twilight of a 
 Sabbath day. But of aU who went home that night, 
 in ecstasy of gladness, there was not one whose nature 
 enabled bim to feel the deep joy of Him who said, " It. 
 is more blessed to give than to receive." 
 
 We always long to look into the souls of great men 
 at critical periods, to see how success or defeat affects 
 them. This had been a triumphal Sabbath to Jesus. 
 No opposition seems to have arisen from any quarter. 
 His instructions had been received without cavil, and 
 had awakened an almost idolatrous enthusiasm. His 
 name was on every lip ; his praise resounded through 
 the whole neighborhood, and the day had closed by such 
 a luminous display of merciful benefactions as left all 
 his former deeds in the shade. The effect of such suc- 
 cess upon his own soul is dimly shown in the record 
 by the intimations of a probably sleepless night, and 
 his going forth long before daylight into a quiet place 
 for prayer. The excitement of beneficence Ufted him 
 toward the Divine Spirit. If success had in any wise 
 tempted him to vanity, he foxmd a refuge in com- 
 munion with God. "And in the morning, rising up a 
 great whUe before day, he went out, and departed into 
 a solitary place, and there prayed." (Mark i. 35.) 
 
 But the tumult of excitement in the city could not 
 easily subside. Early the people began to throng 
 Peter's house to find him again. Peter and his broth- 
 ers went forth to search for the wanderer. We can 
 
286 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 without violence imagine that- he had selected one of 
 the near slopes of the hills which hedge in the Sea of 
 Galilee on its western limit. There lay the tranquil 
 waters. The last mists were dissolving from its face as 
 the footsteps of the throng drew near. Simon salutes 
 him, saying, " All men seek for thee " ; and the people 
 with him press around Jesus with affectionate violence, 
 as if they would carry him back to the city in their 
 arms. They " came unto him, and stayed him, that he 
 should not depart from them." The desire was natural; 
 but he had a mission of which they knew not. It was 
 not for him to settle in Capernaum, nor suffer them to 
 appropriate to themselves all his mercies. He replied 
 to their importunity, " I must preach the kingdom of 
 God to other cities also." 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the Pharisees joined in 
 this general applause. While there were just men 
 among them, the great body were either secretly or 
 openly inimical to Jesus. But they were politic ; 
 they did not choose to array themselves against the 
 people in the hour of their enthusiasm. If at first 
 they hesitated, hoping that this man of singular in- 
 fluence might be used in the interest of their party, 
 they had now given up all such expectations, and 
 their enmity grew with his popularity. Thus at this 
 time they seem to have neither applauded nor op- 
 posed him. 
 
 Jesus journeyed, after the manner of the country, 
 on foot. So thickly were the towns planted in popu- 
 lous Galilee that he needed to make but a short 
 march from one to another. It was the hospitable 
 custom of the time, when Jewish Rabbis went from 
 place to place, to provide for all their wants. Thus 
 

 
 ^ 
 
 '? 
 
 f 
 
 / 
 
 " 111' fe;m%^' 
 
 f^- '* ' M.-'^k. y^; 
 
 iV> •J. 
 
 
 /} ' ;>; 
 
A TIME OF JOY. 287 
 
 Jesus was supported by the kindness of the people 
 wherever he labored. Can it be doubted that, among 
 so many who received at his hands priceless gifts of 
 healing or consolation, there were found numbers of 
 all classes who contested for the privilege of enter- 
 taining him ? And yet there is reason to believe 
 that he allied himself very closely with the poor 
 and laboring class. It is certain that in his passage 
 through Galilee, at a later day than that of which 
 we are speaking, he was dependent upon the contri- 
 butions of grateful women whom he had healed or 
 blessed by his teaching, and who accompanied his 
 disciples. (Luke viii. 1 - 3.) We also know that the 
 company of disciples was organized into a family, 
 had a conunon treasury, and received into it the gifts 
 of benevolence for their joint support. Jesus never 
 scrupled to accept the hospitality of the rich, for they 
 too were men ; yet he seems to have been at no time 
 long separated from the poor and wretched of his 
 people. Had he dwelt among the rich and gone down 
 to the poor, he could never have come so near to 
 their hearts as when he ate their bread, slept under 
 their humble roofs, and sympathized with their tasks 
 and labors,, as his own early life peculiarly fitted him 
 to do. Many a wanderer would come to him as he sat 
 among the lowly, who would not have dared to enter 
 the mansions of the rich. Yet one wUl in vain look 
 for a syllable in all his teachings that would favor the 
 prejudices which one class usually entertains against 
 another. He was faithful to all in rebuking their 
 evil. But his spirit tended to draw men together, and 
 to unite the widely separated classes of society in the 
 sympathy of a common brotherhood. 
 
288 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 Immediately following the Sabbath whose history 
 we have given above, Jesus made the first of the series 
 of circuits which marked this period of his life, and by 
 which he compassed the whole of Galilee several times 
 during this year. So vague are the chronological 
 hints in the Evangelists, that we cannot note with pre- 
 cision either the several routes or the exact periods at 
 which the several journeys were made, nor ascertain 
 to which of the circuits belong certain descriptions 
 of the effects produced. It is probable that every 
 appearance of Jesus was the signal for great excite- 
 ment, that the course of ordinary affairs was inter- 
 rupted, and that the whole population in some in- 
 stances were turned out of the usual channels of life. 
 Not only did the people of each town throng his steps, 
 but there came from abroad, from widely different 
 directions, great multitudes, who crowded the roads, 
 choked up the villages, and went with him from place 
 to place. Matthew says that "great multitudes" of 
 people "followed" him from Galilee, from Decapolis 
 (the name of a region on the northeast of Palestine, 
 comprising ten cities), from Jerusalem, from Judsea 
 generally, and from beyond Jordan, and that his fame 
 was spread " throughout all Syria." Every day added 
 to the excitement. It threatened to become revolu- 
 tionary. Every eminent miracle shot forth a new 
 ardor. Capernaum, on one occasion, was fairly be- 
 sieged, so that, as Mark says, he "could no more 
 openly enter into the city." How large these crowds 
 actually were, we have some means of judging by the 
 numbers mentioned in the subsequent history of the 
 feeding of the multitudes ; in one case four thousand, 
 and in another case five thousand, were supplied with 
 
A TIME OF JOY. 289 
 
 food. It was certainly to be desired that the preach- 
 ing of Jesus should arouse the whole community ; but 
 an excessive and ungovernable excitement was uijfar 
 vorable to the reception of the truth, and subjected 
 the people to bloody dangers by arousing the sus- 
 picions of a vigilant and cruel government. Herod 
 woTild be likely to imagine that under all these pre- 
 tences of religion lurked some political scheme. The 
 Pharisees, as we know, had made league with the 
 Herodians against Jesus, and were fomenting malig- 
 nant jealousies. For these reasons it is not strange 
 that Jesus sought to allay enthusiasm, rather than to 
 inflame curiosity. But it was impossible; his words 
 had no more effect than dew upon a burning prairie. 
 
 Is this surprising ? "What if in one of our villages 
 such a scene as the healing of the leper, or the curing 
 of the paralytic, should take place ? For about this time 
 it was that in a "certain city" — what city we know 
 not — Jesus saw one approaching him whose dress 
 marked him as a leper. By law the leper had no right 
 to come near to any one. He was bound, if any one 
 approached him unawares, to lift up a wail of warning : 
 " Unclean ! unclean ! " Such, however, was the repute 
 of Jesus for divine sympathy, that even lepers long 
 used to unkindness and neglect forgot their habits of 
 seclusion and avoidance. Eight before the feet of the 
 Master fell a leper upon his face, and with intense sup- 
 plication "besought" him: "Lord, if thou wilt, thou 
 canst make me clean." 
 
 It was not needful to touch this loathsome creature.. 
 A word would heal him. But a word would not ex- 
 press the tenderness and yearning sympathy of the 
 Saviour's heart. "And Jesus, moved with compassion, 
 
 19 
 
290 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, 
 " I will ; be thou clean." 
 
 That Jesus commanded him to go and exhibit him- 
 self, with appropriate offerings, to the Jewish priests, 
 may seem strange, when we consider how free Jesus 
 himself was from the conventionaHsm of his age. 
 There does not seem to be an instance in which he 
 ever set aside an original Mosaic rite or institute. It 
 was the additions made by the Pharisees that he 
 pushed away without reverence, and even with re- 
 pugnance. No other Jew was more observant of the 
 original religious institutes of Moses than he who 
 came to "fulfil the law." He went behind the tra- 
 dition of the elders to the Law itself: nay, he accepted 
 the commands of Moses because they coincided with 
 the Divine will. " Ye have made the commandment of 
 God of none effect by your tradition." 
 
 In no way was the leper capable of expressing his 
 gratitude religiously other than by the customs of his 
 own people. He had not learned the higher forms of 
 spiritual life. He must speak his thanks to God in the 
 language which he had learned, even if some other were 
 a better language. All the expedients of external 
 worship in this world are but crutches to weak souls. 
 The true worship is in spirit. It requires neither altar, 
 nor priest, nor uttered prayer, but only the grateful 
 heart, open before Him who knows better than any one 
 can tell Him all that men would say. 
 
 The healed leper, however, did not obey the injunc- 
 tion. Carried away with overpowering joy, he went 
 blazing abroad the deed of mercy. Can we wonder ? 
 Leprosy was a living death. The worst form of the 
 disease, as it is seen in Palestine to-day, is described by 
 
A' TIME OF JOY. 291 
 
 Thomson in these words : "The hair falls off from 
 the head and eyebrows ; the nails loosen, decay, and 
 drop off; joint after joint of the fingers and toes shrinks 
 up and slowly falls away. The gums are absorbed and 
 the teeth disappear. The nose, the eyes, the tongue, 
 and the palate are slowly consumed j and finally the 
 wretched victim sinks into the earth and disappears, 
 while medicine has no power to stay the ravages of this 
 fell disease, or even to mitigate sensibly its tortures." ^ 
 With what sensations must health be received back 
 by this exile from society, seeing life afar off, but not 
 participating m its joyfe ! In one instant his skin was 
 sweet and smooth, his face comely, his breath whole- 
 some. He might again clasp his mother in his arms ! 
 He might take little children upon his knee ! The 
 lips of love would not now shrink from the kiss which 
 so long lay withered upon his lips ! What marvel if 
 his joy rang through the region round about, and 
 roused up other suffering wretches, who went throng- 
 ing toward the city, hopeful of a like cure ? Nor were 
 they disappointed. The narratives of the Evangelists 
 clearly imply that whole neighborhoods turned out with 
 their sick, and returned with every invalid healed. As 
 a frost kills malaria, or a wind sweeps impurity from 
 the sultry air, so the words of Jesus seemed to purify 
 the fountains of health in whole districts. None of all 
 that came were refused. It is in vain to explain away 
 the -Uliracxilous element in the few cases which are 
 given in detail, luiless some natural solution can be 
 found for the healing of hundreds and thousands, re- 
 peatedly effected at different times and in different 
 neighborhoods. 
 
 ' The Land and the Book, (American edition,) Vol. II. p. 519. 
 
292 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 At length, when the beneficence of healing had com- 
 pleted its work, Jesus retreated from the excitement, 
 from the curiosity, the admiration, the criticism, the 
 importunity of enthusiasm and affection, and hid him- 
 self in the near solitudes. The love of solitude is strik- 
 ingly shown in Jesus. Nothing exhausts one so soon 
 as sympathy with the active sorrows of men. Drawn 
 out on every side by men's needs, he regained his equi- 
 librium in the " wilderness." It was there too that his 
 thoughts rose into communion with his Father. What 
 reminiscences of heaven had he ? What dim memo- 
 ries of his former life and joy came to him? Was 
 not the silence of solitude full of whispers from the 
 spirit land? No one can tell. There are many who 
 can testify that to them the solitudes that lie near to 
 every side of life have been as the dawn of the morn- 
 ing after a troubled night, as a cool shadow in the hot 
 noon, — a fountain in a great and weary desert. 
 
 That Jesus did not confine his religious instructions 
 to Sabbath days, and that he occupied other places 
 than the synagogues, is plain from the accounts of his 
 sermons from boats to the people assembled on the 
 shore, and of his discoursing on the mountain-side, and 
 is seen in an occurrence which took place soon after his 
 return to Capernaum from his first circuit. He was 
 sitting in a private dwelling. It was soon noised 
 abroad in the city. Out rushed hundreds to find him. 
 The court of the house was choked with the crowd ; 
 the streets were thronged. There was " no room to 
 receive them, no, not so much as about the door : and 
 he preached the word unto them." While he was thus 
 engaged, four men were seen bearing upon a litter 
 between them a poor paralytic, and seeking to pene- 
 
A TIME OF JOY. 293 
 
 trate the crowd. Impossible ! An eager throng, made 
 up of persons each seeking some advantage for himself, 
 and moved by no common impulse but that of selfish- 
 ness, is harder to be penetrated than stone walls a^d 
 wooden structures. All at once, as Jesus was teach- 
 ing, without doubt in such a one-story house as is still 
 to be seen in that same neighborhood, the roof above 
 his head was parted, — as from its construction could 
 easily be done, and as was frequently done for var 
 rious purposes, — and through the opening was let 
 down before him the unhappy patient! Struck with 
 their confident faith, Jesus, interrupted in his discourse, 
 naturally conferred that favor which to him was un- 
 speakably greater than any other: "Son, be of good 
 cheer ; thy sins be forgiven thee ! " 
 
 Instantly a hum of voices was heard. Confusion 
 arose ; for he was preaching, not to unlettered citizens 
 alone, but to an imusual number of the dignitaries of 
 the synagogue and Temple. " There were Pharisees 
 and doctors of the law sitting by, which were come out 
 of every town of Galilee and Judaea and Jerusalem." 
 The bare enunciation of the forgiveness of sins could 
 hardly have disturbed these worthies. It must be that 
 Jesus uttered the words with the air of sovereignty. 
 It was one of those moments in which his Divine nature 
 shone out with radiance. The Pharisees plainly re- 
 garded him as acting in his own right, and assuming 
 authority to forgive sins, which was a Divine preroga- 
 tive. They cried out, "Blasphemy! blasphemy!" They 
 challenged him on the spot: "Who can forgive sins, but 
 God alone ? " Jesus accepted their construction, and 
 after some words of reasoning replied, " That ye may 
 know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to 
 
294 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 forgive sins" — turning to the sick man, — "Arise, 
 take up thy bed, and go thy way unto thine house." 
 To the doctors there could be but one interpretation 
 of this response. It was an unequivocal claim of Di- 
 vinity. 
 
 Men suffering from hallucinations have claimed for. 
 themselves dignities and titles transcendently above 
 their merit. One must be himself suffering from an 
 hallucination who can imagine Jesus at this period of 
 his development to be over-heated in brain, or fanati- 
 cal. His wonderful discourse, which drew and fasci- 
 nated alike the rudest and the most learned, his 
 calmness, his self-forgetfulness, and his tender sjTnpar 
 thy for others, are inconsistent with any supposition of 
 a tainted reason, and still less with an over-swollen pride 
 and self-conceit. And yet, when his attention was called 
 to the fact that forgiveness of sin was a Divine preroga- 
 tive, he did not explain that it was a delegated author- 
 ity, but reaffirmed his right to forgive of his own proper 
 self, and wrought a miracle in attestation of that right. 
 
 That his whole bearing was unusually impressive is 
 plain from the effect produced upon the common peo- 
 ple in the crowd. They had seen repeated instances 
 of healing and of other works of mercy. But there 
 was in this case something more than is set forth in 
 the narrative, and which must have been effected by 
 the majesty of his person and the greatness of his 
 spirit ; for as they dispersed they went softly and awe- 
 stricken, saying one to another, "We have seen strange 
 things to-day," — " We never saw it on this fashion." 
 Luke says, "They marvelled, and were filled with fear." 
 Matthew says they "glorified God, which had given 
 such power unto men." What the Pharisees and the 
 
A TIME OF JOY. 295 
 
 doctors said we do not know. That some of them 
 may have been inwardly convinced that this was the 
 Messiah, is quite probable ; but that the most of them 
 were only the more enraged and set against Jesus, is 
 more than probable. 
 
 It will be recollected that, soon after his baptism, 
 Jesus gathered a few disciples from among those who 
 companied with John. Although they were found and 
 called in Judaea, yet they all lived in Galilee, went back 
 with him on his return thither, and are mentioned as 
 guests with him at the marriage in Cana. During 
 the long intervals of quiet and seclusion which Jesus 
 seems to have had during the first year after his bap- 
 tism, they seem to have gone back to their occupa- 
 tions, and awaited, doubtless, the signal which should 
 recall them to him. Jesus ^as, in the eyes of his peo- 
 ple, a Rabbi, or learned teacher, although probably he 
 was deemed irregular, and was out of favor with the 
 heads of schools. He followed all the customs of his 
 people when they were innocent ; and in his teaching 
 career he undoubtedly pursued the course which was 
 common among Eabbis, of gathering ■ classes of pupils, 
 and living with them, and even upon their contribu- 
 tions. The pupils were expected, under due regulation, 
 to diffuse among others the knowledge which they re- 
 ceived from their Eabbi. They sometimes expounded 
 to the people under the eye of their teacher ; and as. 
 they advanced in capacity, they were sent out upon cir- 
 cuits of their own. Great pains was taken among the 
 Jews to promote education. Large schools existed in 
 Palestine, and in other lands whither the Jews had 
 migrated. In these schools was taught the whole round 
 
296 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 of knowledge then existing ; — theology, philosophy, 
 jurisprudence, astronomy, astrology, medicine, botany, 
 geography, arithmetic, architecture, social duties, eti- 
 quette, and even trades, were taught. Indeed, it was 
 the boast of eminent Kabbis that they had learned a 
 trade, and could, if need be, support themselves by 
 their own hands, without dependmg upon fees for tui- 
 tion ; and they prided themselves upon titles derived 
 from trades; — as. Rabbi Simon, the weaver ; Rabbi 
 Ismael, the needle-maker ; Rabbi Jochanan, the shoemaker. 
 This will suggest Paul's occupation, that of a tent- 
 maker. 
 
 Besides the teaching of these high schools or col- 
 leges, instruction was provided for children, and 
 throughout Palestine there prevailed no inconsiderable 
 zeal in the cause of popular education! Through the 
 more elementary schools it is almost certain that Jesus 
 and his disciples had passed, and equally sure that they 
 had not studied in the higher seminaries or colleges. 
 
 The method of instruction pursued in Jewish schools 
 throws light upon the course pursued by our Lord. 
 The mode of imparting knowledge was chiefly cate- 
 chetical. After the master had lectured, the pupils 
 asked questions. To stir up their pupUs if they grew 
 dull, allegories, riddles, and stories were introduced. 
 The parable was a favorite device with the Jewish 
 teacher. He often propounded questions, and, if his 
 pupils could not answer, solved them himself Christ's 
 method, then was that of his age and countrjnnen, with 
 only such differences as might arise from different per- 
 sonality. Instruction from village to village; a com- 
 pany of pupils going with him, both as learners and 
 assistants ; the familiar and colloquial style of discourse ; 
 
A TIME OF JOY. 297 
 
 the use of parables and of enigmatical sentences ; — 
 these were all familiar to his times. It was in matter, 
 and not in manner, that he differed from ordinary 
 teachers. 
 
 The time had now come for the permanent forma- 
 tion of his disciple-family, and it took place at or near 
 Capernaum. We are charmed with the picture which 
 is given of the morning scene on the shores of Genesa- 
 reth. It breathes the very air of reality, and its sim- 
 phcity gives a clear picture of our Lord's manner. It 
 was early dawn, and those whose avocations called 
 them to the busy shore were making the most of the 
 cool hours. Jesus came quietly to the water's edge, 
 and stood watching certain fishermen who had hauled 
 their nets upon the beach and were washing and 
 putting them in order. He was not left to himself; 
 for the people, as soon as they knew him, began to 
 press around him with questions and solicitations. 
 As they began to close in, he stepped upon one 
 of the fishing-boats, and, pushing out a little, turned 
 to the rude but eager crowd and delivered a dis- 
 course to them. His theme was doubtless taken from 
 something which lay before him. That was his cus- 
 tom. Both text and sermon have perished with the 
 people to whom they were spoken. As soon as he had 
 finished, he commanded Simon to push out into deep 
 water and let down his net. Simon, prompt to speak 
 and over-confident, first excused himself on the ground 
 that they had been trying all night and that there was 
 no use in trying again ; and then, having eased his wil- 
 fulness, he complied with the request. No sooner was 
 this done than such a multitude of fish was secured as 
 they had never seen at any time before. Indeed, Simon 
 
298 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 saw in it a Divine power. His boldness and familiarity 
 forsook him. He stood before a superior being, and his 
 own unworthiness was the first impression which seized 
 him. " He fell down at Jesus's knees, saying, Depart 
 from me ; for I am a sinful man, Lord." Not far 
 away were the brothers, James and John, who had 
 a partnership with Simon. Them also Jesus called. 
 Without ado, and unhesitatingly, they forsook their 
 property and their occupation, and from this time did 
 not leave him. They could not mistake the import of 
 his call : "Follow me. I will from henceforth make you 
 to become fishers of men." The whole scene is natural 
 and harmonious. There was no striking assumption of 
 authority. Fishermen were approached through their 
 own business, by methods which were adapted to their 
 habits and ideas. 
 
 The call of Levi, better known by the name of Mat- 
 thew, is recorded more briefly. He was a tax-gatherer 
 under the Eoman government. It was an ungracious 
 office. It was the last position in which to look for an 
 apostle. Collecting customs-dues of his own people 
 to feed the court of Herod and to uphold the Roman 
 usurpation, with profit to himself, was not likely to 
 endear him to his countrymen, nor to prepare his own 
 heart for the unremunerative and wandering life of 
 self-denial to which he was called. Yet there was in 
 the few simple words of Jesus a charm that wrought 
 instantly. " Follow me." « And he arose," (" left all," 
 says Luke,) " and followed him." 
 
 It is not unlikely that Matthew, like Simon, John, 
 James, and Phihp, had already been a disciple of Christ, 
 and like them had never separated himself from his 
 regular business ; so that the call, which seems to us 
 
A TIME OF JOY. 299 
 
 SO sudden, was far less peremptory and unexpected to 
 him than it seems in the narrative. 
 
 We are not to confound the outside disciples of Christ 
 with the inner circle, — the family of his Apostles, — 
 who were called " that they should be with him, and that 
 he might send them forth to preach." His Apostles 
 were disciples, but all his disciples were not Apostles. 
 
 There was collected in every circuit a large disciple 
 band without organization, attached to his ministrations, 
 rather than to his person. Of the company of twelve 
 disciples there were three pairs of brothers. All of 
 them were Galileans. All were from the humbler 
 walks of life, though in several instances they were 
 not poor. Levi had a house of his own, and could give 
 to his Master a " great feast." James and John, sons 
 of Zebedee, conducted a business which enabled them 
 to employ under-servants ; and their mother, Salome, 
 " ministered of her substance " to the Master's support. 
 It is impossible, from the materials at our command, to 
 ascertain upon what principle of selection the disciples 
 were gathered. But few of them asserted any such 
 individuahty as to bring their names into view during 
 the ministry of Jesus. 
 
 The evil record of Judas will keep his name in 
 memory. Peter was conspicuous through the whole 
 career. John was specially associated with the Master. 
 With Peter and John was associated James, though 
 little except his name appears in the Gospel narra- 
 tives. .They were all selected from the common walks 
 of life. None of them give evidence of pecuhar depth 
 of religious feeling. None except John ever exhibited 
 any traits of genius. That they were subject to the 
 common faults of humanity abundantly appears in 
 
300 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 their disputes among themselves, in their worldly am- 
 bitions, in the plotting to supersede each other, in 
 their rash and revengeful imprecations of judgments 
 upon the villagers who had treated Jesus with disre- 
 spect, and in their utter lack of courage when the final 
 catastrophe was approaching. They partook of all the 
 errors of their age. They were as little competent to 
 understand the spiritual teachings of their Master as 
 were the average of their countrymen. They believed 
 in an earthly kingdom for the Messiah, and, with the 
 rest of their people, anticipated a carnal triumph of the 
 Jews over all their enemies. They could not be made 
 to understand that their Master was to be put to death; 
 and when he was arrested, they " aU forsook him and 
 fled." They hovered in bewilderment around the sol- 
 emn tragedy ; but only one of them, John, had the 
 courage to be present and near at the crucifixion of 
 their Teacher. Looking externally upon these men, 
 contrasting them with such as Nicodemus and Joseph 
 of Arimathea, the question arises whether among all 
 the more highly cultivated Jews, among the Phar- 
 isees and doctors, there might not have been found 
 sincere men, of deeply religious natures, of educated 
 intelligence, who, under the same amount of personal 
 instruction, would have been far more capable of car- 
 rying forward the work of the new kingdom. All 
 that can be known is, that Jesus chose his disciples, not 
 from Judsea, but from Galilee, far away from the Temple 
 influence and in a province much afiected by the for- 
 eign spirit ; that he selected them, not from the specifi- 
 cally religious class, but from the working people. 
 None are mentioned as taken from agricultural pur- 
 suits, and all whose occupations are mentioned were 
 
A TIME OF JOY. 301 
 
 more or less concerned with commerce. That there 
 were reasons in his own mind for the selection none 
 can douht, and none can ever know what the rea- 
 sons were. That he felt for his immediate followers 
 a strong affection is plain, and that his regard was 
 strengthened to the end of his life can be doubted by 
 none who read those incomparable discourses of love 
 which immediately preceded his arrest, and which John 
 alone records, — John, the most impassioned, the most 
 susceptible, and at length the most perfect representa- 
 tive of his Master's spirit. 
 
 It will be well to look back, before considering that 
 remarkable discourse of Christ's, familiarly called the 
 " Sermon on the Mount," and to consider the character 
 of his teaching in this the first period of his ministry. 
 We shall be struck with three things : the stimulating 
 character indicated, the remarkable partnership of word 
 and deed, and the absence of any public claim to the 
 Messiahship. This latter fact is the more remarkable, 
 since, in his conversation with the woman of Samaria, 
 he distinctly avows himself to be the Messiah. Nowhere 
 is there evidence that he proclaimed this truth in his 
 public discourses, and in the abstracts and fragments 
 which were preserved there is nothing of the kind. 
 Neither does there seem to have been that presentar 
 tion of himself as the source of spiritual life that is 
 so wonderful at a later stage of his teaching. He ap- 
 parently aimed first at the work of arousing the moral 
 sense of the people. His characteristic theme at first 
 was, " Eepent ! The kingdom of heaven is at hand ! " 
 It is not to be supposed that he went from place to 
 place uttering these words as a text or formula. They 
 
302 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 rather describe the genius of his preaching. It aroused 
 in men an ideal and expectation of a nobler life than 
 they and their fellows were living, and stimulated a 
 wholesome moral discontent. Men's hearts were laid 
 open. Not only their sins, but the sources and motives 
 of their evil deeds, were made bare. Then his audiences 
 began to hear a vivid exposition of life., Unlike the 
 Rabbis, he did not spend his time in mincing texts with 
 barren ingenuity. Men heard their actions called in 
 question. They heard their pride, their selfishness, their 
 avarice, their lusts, so exposed that self-condemnation 
 was everywhere mingled with wonder and admiration. 
 The effects of his teaching were heightened by the 
 humanity of his miracles, and the tender sympathy 
 which he manifested for the temporal comfort of men, 
 as well as for their spiritual well-being. Miracles were 
 not mere explosions of power, designed to excite tran- 
 sient wonder. They were instruments of kindness ; 
 they imsealed fountains of joy long closed ; they tended 
 to rectify the disorders which afflicted thousands of 
 unhappy and neglected wretches ; they gave emphasis 
 to instruction ; they ratified his exhortations ; they 
 gave solemnity to his simple methods. The miracles 
 of Christ cannot be taken out of their life-connections 
 and analyzed by themselves. They were to his teach- 
 ing what gestures are to an orator, that go with his 
 thoughts, and taken alone are of no value. They were 
 the glowing expressions of sympathy. As in the moods 
 of love, the eye, the lip, the face, have expressions that 
 cannot be separated from the emotions which produce 
 them, so was it with Christ's works of mercy. They 
 were not philosophical experiments upon nature, nor 
 premeditated evidences of power. They were the inspi- 
 
A TIME OF JOY. 303 
 
 rations of a tender sympathy with human suffering, the 
 flashes of the light of love, the arms of God stretched 
 forth for the rescue or consolation of the poor and needy. 
 
 While the early preaching of Jesus seems to have 
 been of the most arousing character, we are not to sup- 
 pose that instructiveness was sacrificed, nor that the 
 next period, beginning with the "Sermon on the 
 Mount," was devoid of pungency because the instruc- 
 tive elements predominated. Only to arouse men, and 
 to leave them no solid substance of thought, is to kindle 
 a fire of shavings that but flames up and dies in ashes. 
 
 The words of Christ, primarily addressed to the peo- 
 ple of his own age and country, carried in them truths 
 so deep and universal, that, like an inexhaustible soil, 
 they have fed the roots of religious life for the world 
 ever since, and have had a stronger hold upon the intel- 
 lect and the fancy than that Grecian literature which 
 for philosophical acuteness, for grace, and for quali- 
 ties of the imagination would seem far more likely to 
 control the world of thought than the homely domes- 
 tic aphorisms and parables of the Saviour. In every 
 element of external excellence the Greek surpassed 
 the Hebrew. But the Hebrew carried in his soul two 
 worlds, the Greek only one. The Greek was busy with 
 the world he lived in ; the Hebrew concerned himself 
 with the folks that lived in the world. More than 
 this, it was the inspiration of the life to come that 
 gave such enduring force to the teaching of Jesus. 
 His sympathy with both sides of human experience, its 
 joy and its sorrow, its genial domestic tranquillity and 
 its outreach and enterprise, its sweet contentment and 
 its passionate aspiration, gave to his teachings a qual- 
 ity not to be found in any school but his. And, above 
 
304 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 all other things, his teachings had himself for a back- 
 ground. He was the perpetual illustration of his own 
 words, the interpretation of the deeper spiritual enigmas. 
 And yet there is an important sense in which the 
 preaching of Jesus was strangely unworldly. It was 
 not such discourse as in Greece made orators famous. 
 So devoid was it of secular elements, that one would 
 not know from it that Palestine was overrun with for- 
 eigners, — that the iron hand and iron heel of Rome 
 wellnigh pressed the life out of the nation, — that the 
 provinces were glowing with luxuries, cities everywhere 
 springing up, while the people, ground down by extor- 
 tion, were becoming wretched and desperate. Jesus 
 was a Jew, susceptible and sjnnpathetic to a remarka- 
 ble degree. There was never such a field for patriotic 
 oratory. But amid insurrections cruelly quelled, amid 
 the anguish of his people, he let fall no single word of 
 secular eloquence. Amidst the tumults of war and the 
 prodigahties of foreign luxury and wasteful dissipation 
 was heard the calm discourse of heavenly themes. It 
 was of the soul, of that new and possible soul, that he 
 spake, — and so spake that all the nation took heed, and 
 the sordid common people, rushing after him for bread, 
 paused, listened, and, wondering, declared " he speaks 
 with authority." Something more critical of his method 
 of discourse we shall submit by and by. Here we only 
 point out the eminent unworldliness of it, and the in- 
 troduction of a searching personal element unknown 
 before, but now so much a part of Christianity that we 
 fail to appreciate its originality in Christ. We mean 
 the individualizing of discourse to each heart, so that 
 every man felt that it was addressed to him, concern- 
 ing himself, — his spiritual self. 
 
TEE SERMON ON TEE MOUNT. 305 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. — THE BEATITUDES. 
 
 The customs of his country would naturally lead 
 Jesus to be much abroad, and he seems to have had 
 a peculiar love for the open fields. His journeys, his 
 habits of teaching by the way, his frequent resorting 
 to the sea-side and to the solitude of the hiUs, impress 
 one with the behef that he loved the open air far 
 more than the house or the street. It is certain that 
 while at Capernaum he had sought out places of se- 
 clusion, and had his own familiar haunts. These were 
 not simply for rest to the body, but also for medita- 
 tion and for communion with his Father. Wherever 
 he went, Jesus found out these natural sanctuaries; 
 while for the benefit of others he often taught in 
 synagogues and in the Temple, for his own refresh- 
 ment he loved better the wilderness, the lake-shore, 
 the hill-top, the shaded ravine, or the twilight of the 
 olive-groves. 
 
 Such a resort he found on the summit of Mount 
 Hattin, a hill rising, from the plain about seven miles 
 southwesterly from Capernaum. It was more an up- 
 land than a mountain. The two horns, or summits, 
 rise only sixty feet above the table-lands which con- 
 stitute the base, and the whole elevation is but about 
 a thousand feet above the level of the sea. From the 
 summit toward the east one may look over the Sea of 
 
 20 
 
306 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 Galilee, and northward, along the broken ranges, to the 
 snow-clad peaks of Lebanon.^ 
 
 Returning from a preaching tour, Jesus, and with him 
 the immense and motley throng that now everywhere 
 pressed upon him, reached this neighborhood at even- 
 ing. Not waiting for his voluntary blessings, the mul- 
 titudes sought to touch his very garments, that they 
 might receive benefit from that virtue which seemed 
 to emanate from his person. Gliding from among 
 them as the shadows fell, he hid himself from their 
 importunity in some part of the mountain. Here he 
 spent the night in prayer. 
 
 There is no part of the history of Jesus that 
 
 ' " This mountain, or hill, — for it only rises sixty feet above the plain, — 
 is that known to pilgrims as the Mount of the Beatitudes, the supposed 
 scene of the Sermon on the Mount. The tradition cannot lay claim to 
 any early date ; it was in all probability suggested first to the Crusaders by 
 its remarkable situation. But that situation so strikingly coincides with the 
 intimations of the Gospel narrative as almost to force the inference that in 
 this instance the eyes of those who selected the spot were for once rightly 
 directed. It is the only height seen in this direction fi-om the shores of the 
 Lake of Genesareth. The plain on which it stands is easily accessible 
 from the lake, and from that plain to the summit is but a few minutes' walk. 
 The platform at the top is evidently suitable for the collection of a multi- 
 tude, and corresponds precisely to the ' level place ' (Luke vi. 1 7, mis- 
 translated ' plain ') to which he would ' come down ' as from one of its 
 higher horns to address the people. Its situation is central both to the 
 peasants of the Galilean hills and the fishermen of the Galilean lake, be- 
 tween which it stands, and would therefore be a natural resort both to 
 Jesus and his disciples (Matthew iv. 25 — v. 1) when they retired for 
 solitude from the shores of the sea, and also to the crowds who assembled 
 ' from Galilee, from Decapolis, from Jerusalem, from Juds3a, and from be- 
 yond Jordan.' None of the other mountains in the neighborhood could 
 answer equally well to this description, inasmuch as they are merged into 
 the uniform barrier of hills round the lake, whereas this stands separate, — 
 ' the mountain,' — which alone could lay claim to a distinct name, with the 
 exception of the one height of Tabor, which is too distant to answer the 
 requirements." — Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, pp. 860, 361 (2d ed. 
 368, 369). 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 397 
 
 stirs the imagination more profoundly than these sol- 
 itary nights, in lonely places, spent in prayer. It 
 surely was not a service of mere recitation, nor such 
 implorations as the soul, wounded by sin, full of fear 
 and remorse, pours out before God. We must con- 
 ceive of it as a holy conference with God. He who 
 came down from heaven again returns to its com- 
 munion. Weighed down and impaired by evil, the 
 soul of man sometimes rises above the consciousness 
 of its -bodily condition, and rejoices in an almost ac- 
 coinplished liberty. Much more may we suppose that 
 in these hours of retirement the sinless soul of the 
 Saviour, loosed from all consciousness of physical fa- 
 tigue, hunger, or slumberous languor, rejoined its noble 
 companions, taste^d again its former liberty, and walked 
 with God. But we can hardly suppose that in these 
 exalted hours he forgot those who all day long tasked 
 his sympathy. Did not he who on the cross prayed 
 for his enemies, on the mountain pray for his friends ? 
 Did not he who now " ever liveth to make interces- 
 sion" for his followers intercede often, when he was 
 with them, for the throng of ignorant, impoverished, 
 bewildered people that swarmed about his footsteps ? 
 
 Neither Mark nor John mentions the Sermon on the 
 Mount, which was delivered on the morning following 
 this retirement. Luke gives a condensed report of it, 
 adding, however, the woes which correspond to the 
 Beatitudes. Matthew gives by far the fullest recital 
 of it. Luke says that he stood upon the plain (or, 
 a level place), but Matthew, that he went up out of 
 the plain to the mountain, and there delivered the 
 discourse. When, after a night of prayer, Jesus came 
 down to the lower parts of the hill, he found there the 
 
308 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE 'CHRIST. 
 
 great crowds which the day before had attended him. 
 Nor is it unlikely that he addressed to them words 
 of instruction. Then, withdrawing higher up the hill, 
 accompanied by the Apostles and by numbers of his 
 general disciples, he sat down, as was the manner of 
 Jewish instructors, and delivered the discourse record- 
 ed by Matthew. Luke, not having been a witness 
 of the scene, and manifestly giving but a partial and 
 general account of it, naturally speaks of the sermon 
 as delivered on the plain, because the multitude was 
 there, and because Jgsus came down and began his 
 instructions there. Matthew, who was present as one 
 of the recently selected Apostles, gives the main dis- 
 course of the day, and states also, that, on account of 
 the multitude, Jesus retired farther up the mountain 
 before delivering it. But though addressed to his 
 more immediate disciples, it is not to be supposed 
 that they alone heard the discourse. It was natural 
 that many of the throng should follow them. This 
 would be especially the case with those in whose 
 hearts the word had begun to excite a spiritual hun- 
 ger, and who, though not ready to call themselves 
 disciples, lost no opportunity of increasing their 
 knowledge. 
 
 The opinion that Matthew collected from his Mas- 
 ter's various teachings at different times the ele- 
 ments of the Sermon on the Mount, and arranged 
 them into one discourse, although formerly held by 
 many, and by one of no less repute than Calvin, has 
 lost ground, and is now taught by only a few. The 
 fact that portions of the matter of this sermon ap- 
 pear in the other Gospels as spoken under different 
 circumstances may make it probable that Jesus re- 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 309 
 
 peated important truths or striking illustrations to 
 different audiences.^ It is not, therefore, unlikely that 
 portions of the Sermon on the Mount were thus de- 
 livered elsewhere and under other circumstances. 
 
 That contrast between the Sermon on the Mount 
 and the giving of the law on Sinai, which from an 
 early day it has been the delight of commentators to 
 suggest, has in fact more reason than one is likely 
 at first to suppose. No contrast could be greater 
 than the gaunt and barren wilderness of Sinai and 
 the luxuriant fields of Galilee about the Sea of Ge- 
 nesareth ; nor could the blighted peaks of Sinai well 
 have a more absolute contrast than in the fruitful 
 slopes of Hattin, which in successive ledges declined 
 toward the lake, at every step beautiful with diver- 
 sified vegetation and redolent with the odors of fruits 
 and blossoms. If the more ancient assembly were 
 taking the first steps from a servile existence to a 
 national life of independence, so the multitudes that 
 thronged to hear the Sermon on the Mount were about 
 to be inducted into a new spiritual life. The law given 
 from Sinai was a law of morality, and chiefly concerned 
 the outward conduct. The Sermon on the Mount is 
 likewise a discourse of morality, but transcendently 
 higher than that which was written upon the tables of 
 stone. The root of morahty is always the same, but 
 at different stages' of its growth it puts forth different 
 developments. In the early and rude state, of nations 
 it concerns itself with outward affairs, rigorously guards 
 the laws by which alone society can exist, and pre- 
 
 ' Compare Matthew v. 18, and Luke xii. 58; Matthew vi. 19-21, and 
 Luke xii. 33 ; Matthew vi. 24, and Luke xvi. 13 ; Matthew vii. 13, and Luke 
 xiii. 24 ; Matthew vii. 22, and Luke xiii. 25-27, 
 
310 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 serves the life, the person, and the property of the citi- 
 zen. As civihzation refines men's nature, and brings 
 into power more of reason and of moral sentiment, 
 morality, still guarding external things, adds to its 
 charge the interior qualities of the disposition, and 
 holds men responsible, not only for actions, but for the 
 motives of action. It extends its sway over the realm 
 of thought, emotion, and the will. Thus it adds prov- 
 ince to province, until the boundary between morality 
 and the purest spiritual religion is indistinguishable ; 
 and men at length see that morality, in the ordinary 
 sense of the term, is rehgion applied to human con- 
 duct, while religion is but morality acting in the 
 sphere of the spiritual sentiments. 
 
 Jesus came to bring a new .growth to the old roots, 
 to bring into bloom that which had only shown leaves, 
 and into fruit that which had hitherto only blossomed. 
 All the superstitions and burdensome ceremonials 
 which overlaid the simplicity of the original statutes 
 of Moses were to be rescinded, and the machinery of 
 the Mosaic Law itself, not the moral element of it, was 
 to be abrogated. But that great law of universal love 
 which was to bind men to each other, and all of them 
 to God, Jesus declared to be at the foundation of the 
 Jewish religion. The whole civil and ceremonial sys- 
 tem of the Hebrews aimed at the production of uni- 
 versal love. 
 
 One would scarcely know from the Sermon on the 
 Mount whether the Jews had altar or temple, priests or 
 ritual. The pure wheat is here garnered; the straw and 
 chaff, so needful for its growth, but now in its ripe- 
 ness so useless, and even pernicious, were cleared away. 
 It is a discourse of the past for the sake of the future. 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. gl\ 
 
 To interpret tlie Sermon on the Mount as the 
 charter of Christianity, is to misconceive not only this 
 discourse, but the very nature of Christianity itself, 
 which is not a system of new truths, but a higher 
 development of existing forces. 
 
 The fulness of time had come. Man was to be lifted 
 to a higher plane, and made accessible to more power- 
 ful influences than could be exerted through the old 
 dispensation. Out of that grand renewal of human 
 nature there would spring up truths innmnerable, the 
 products of Christianity. But Christianity itself was 
 not a system of truths, nor the result of a system of 
 truths, but a name fdr living forces. It was a new 
 dispensation of power, an efflux of the Divine Spirit, 
 developing the latent spiritual forces in man. It 
 was the kingdom of God among men. It was like 
 the diffusion of a new and more fervid climate over 
 a whole continent. A development and perfection 
 would follow, never before known, and impossible to 
 a lower temperature. The one silver thread which 
 runs through the Gospels and the Epistles, and binds 
 them into unity, is the indwelling of the Divine Spirit 
 in the human soul, and the enlarged scope and power 
 of human life by reason of it. 
 
 John saw the radiant kingdom descending when he 
 cried, " There cometh one mightier than I after me, 
 .... he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost." 
 And when Jesus came, the same truth was thrown 
 forward in advance of all others : " The kingdom 
 of heaven is at hand. Cast out all evil ! Lay open 
 your souls to the Divine coming ! " Repentance and 
 forgiveness were not the gospel. The kingdom of 
 God among men, an exaltation of the race by the 
 
312 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHEIST. 
 
 Divine union with it, the wisdom of God and the 
 power of God unto salvation, — this was the good 
 news. 
 
 But the Sermon on the Mount is deficient in pre- 
 cisely these elements. It has in it no annunciation 
 of a new dispensation. That flame of fire, the Spirit 
 of God, is not mentioned. Jesus does not there claim 
 for himself any vital relation to the human soul; 
 that faith which so largely filled his subsequent 
 teachings is not alluded to. He does not even claim 
 the Messiahship. There is no word of his suffer- 
 ings and death, nor of his future mediation, nor of 
 the doctrine of repentance and the new birth. Can 
 that be an epitome of Christianity which leaves out 
 the great themes which fiUed the later teaching of 
 Jesus ? 
 
 The Sermon on the Mount gathers up the sum of aU 
 that had been gained under the Jewish dispensation, — 
 distinguishes between the original and genuine ele- 
 ments of truth in the Jewish belief, and the modern 
 and perverse inculcations of the Rabbis, — and, above 
 all, gives to famihar things a new spiritual force and 
 authority. 
 
 At the threshold of the new life it was wise to ascer- 
 tain what was real and what fictitious in the beUef of 
 the people. A repudiation of the Law and the prophets 
 would have bewildered their moral sense ; but the 
 truth of their fathers, cleansed from glosses, pure 
 and simple, would become the instrument for work- 
 ing that very repentance which would prepare them 
 for the new life of God in the soul. 
 
 Men are fond of speaking of the originality of the 
 Sermon on the Mount; but originality would have 
 
TEE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 313 
 
 defeated its very aim. All growth must sprout from 
 roots pre-existing in tbe soul. There can be no new, 
 except by the help of some old. To have spread out a 
 novel field of unfamiliar truth before the people might 
 have led them to speculation, but could not have 
 aroused their conscience, nor rebuked the degradation 
 of their natures and the sordidness of their lives. It 
 was the very aim of the Sermon on the Mount to place 
 before the Jews, in the clearest Hght, the great truths 
 out of which sprung their Law and their prophets, as a 
 preparation for the new and higher developments that 
 would come afterwards. In so doing Jesus put him- 
 self into the confidence of his own people. To the 
 sober-minded among his countrjrmen he never seemed 
 a subverter of Hebrew customs, or an innovator upon 
 the national rehgion. He was recognized everywhere 
 by the common people, and by all earnest natures not 
 wrought into the Pharisaic party, as a genuine Hebrew 
 prophet, standing on the very ground of the fathers, 
 and enunciating old and familiar truths, but giving to 
 them a scope and a spiritual elevation which, though 
 new, was neither strange nor unnatural. 
 
 The Sermon on the Mount, then, being in the nature 
 of an historical review, could not be original. It was a 
 criticism of the received doctrine. Every part of it 
 brings down to us the odor and flavor of the best days 
 and the ripest things of the Old Testament dispensa- 
 tion. It was the mount from which men looked over 
 into the promised land of the spirit. Even the Beati- 
 tudes, an exquisite prelude, which seems like a solemn 
 hjonnsung before a service, are but a collection and 
 better ordering of maxims or aphorisms which existed 
 in the Old Testament. 
 
314 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 Already Isaiah had heard God saying, " I dwell in 
 the high and holy place, with him also that is of a 
 contrite and humble spirit." And the Psalmist had 
 said, " A broken and a contrite heart, God, thou wilt 
 not despise." Already the prophet had promised 
 "Beauty for a^es, the oil of joy for mourning, and 
 the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness " ; 
 and the wise man had said, " Sorrow is better than 
 laughter." From the Psalmist were taken almost the 
 words of benediction to the meek : " The meek shall 
 inherit the earth, and shall delight themselves in the 
 abundance of peace." Where is there a hunger and 
 thirst of the soul, if it be not recorded in the forty- 
 second Psalm? This Psalm is broken into two, the 
 forty-second and forty-third, and three times the re- 
 frain comes in, " I shall yet praise him who is the help 
 of my countenance." There are abundant blessings 
 pronounced upon the merciful, upon the pure in heart, 
 upon the persecuted for righteousness' sake ; and even 
 in the old warlike age peace was not uncelebrated. 
 If there be no distinct blessing for peacemakers, there 
 are numberless woes denounced against those who stir 
 up strife and cruel war. 
 
 The Beatitudes, then, were not new principles ; the 
 truth in them had been recognized before. They were 
 truths hidden in the very nature of the soul, and, in 
 the best sense, natural. But formerly they lay scai> 
 tered as pearls not detached from the parent shell, or 
 as rough diamonds unground. Here they first appear 
 in brilliant setting. They are no longer happy say- 
 ings, but sovereign principles. They always spoke 
 with instructiveness, but now with authority, as if they 
 wore crowns upon their heads. 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 3I5 
 
 There was a noble strangeness in them. The whole 
 world was acting in a spirit contrary to them. They 
 conflicted with every sentiment and maxim of common 
 life. On a lonely hill-top sat one known to have-been 
 reared as a mechanic, pronouncing to a group of peas- 
 ants, fishermen, mechanics, and foreigners the sublime 
 truths of the higher and interior life of the soul, which 
 have since by universal consent been deemed the no- 
 blest utterances of earth. The traveller may to-day 
 stand in Antwerp, near the old cathedral, hearing all 
 the clatter of business, a thousand feet tramping close 
 up to the, walls and buttresses against which lean 
 the booths, a thousand tongues rattling the language 
 of traffic, when, as the hour strikes from above, a 
 shower of notes seems to descend from the spire, — 
 bell notes, fine, sweet, small as a bird's warble, the 
 whole air full of crisp tinklings, underlaid by the 
 deeper and sonorous tones of large bells, but all of 
 them in fit sequences pouring forth a melody that 
 seems unearthly, and the more because in such con- 
 trast with the scenes of vulgar life beneath. In some 
 such way must these words have fallen upon the mul- 
 titude. 
 
 Whether the audience felt the sweetness and ex- 
 quisite beauty of Christ's opening sentences we can- 
 not know. They are the choicest truths of the oH 
 dispensation set to the spirit of the new. But not 
 until, like beUs, they were thus set in chimes and 
 rung in the spirit and melody of the spiritual age, 
 could one have dreamed how noble they were. And 
 what blessings ! When before did such a company 
 of iUs and misfortunes find themselves mustered and 
 renamed ? No word of commendation for wealth, or 
 
316 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 favor, or high estate, or power, or pleasure. For all 
 that the world was striving after with incessant indus- 
 try there was no benediction. Congratulations were 
 reserved for the evils which aU men dreaded, — pov- 
 erty, sorrow, persecution, and the hatred of men, — or 
 for quaUties which men thought to be the signs of 
 weakness. Could his disciples understand such para- 
 doxes? We know that they did not untiL after the 
 descent upon them of the Holy Spirit, at a later day. 
 Still less would the rude multitude comprehend such 
 mysterious sayings, so profoundly true, but true in 
 relation to conditions of soul of which they had no 
 conception. The real man was invisible to their eyes. 
 Only the outward life was known to them, the life of 
 the body, and of the mind only as the ready minister 
 to bodily enjojrments ! 
 
 "Blessed aee the poor iifSPiEiT." 
 
 Not poverty of thought, nor of courage, nor of 
 emotion, — not empty-mindedness, nor any idea im- 
 plying a real lack of strength, variety, and richness of 
 nature, — was here intended. It was to be a con- 
 sciousness of moral incompleteness. As the sense 
 of poverty in this world's goods inspires men to en- 
 terprise, so the consciousness of a poverty of man- 
 liness might be expected to lead to earnest endeav- 
 ors for moral growth. This first sentence was aimed 
 full at that supreme self-complacency which so gener- 
 ally resulted from the school of the Pharisee. Paul's 
 interpretation of his own experience illustrates the 
 predominant spirit. He once had no higher idea of 
 character than that inculcated in the Law of Moses, 
 and he wrote of his attainments : " Touching the right- 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 317 
 
 eousness which is in the law, hlameless." (Phil. iii. 6.) 
 He was a perfect man ! 
 
 The land was fuU of "perfect men." Groups of 
 them were to be found in every S3Tiagogue. To be 
 sure they were worldly, selfish, ambitious, vindictive, 
 but without the consciousness of being the worse 
 for aU that. Rigorous exactitude in a visible routine 
 gave them the right to thank God that they were not 
 as other men were. For such men, ia such moods, 
 there could be no spiritual kingdom. They could 
 never sjrtnpathize with that new life which was com- 
 iug upon the world, in which the treasinres were 
 "love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, 
 faith, meekness, temperance." (Gal. v. 22, 23.) But 
 those who painfuUy felt the poverty of their inward 
 nature in all these excellences might rise to the bless- 
 ings of the new kingdom, " in which dweUeth right- 
 eousness." 
 
 In a world so full of trouble a thousand modes of 
 consolation have been sought, a thousand ways of joy. 
 But Jesus, still looking upon the invisible manhood, 
 next points out the Divine road to happiness. 
 
 "Blessed aee they that MOUKif." 
 
 For perfect beings sorrow is not needed; but to 
 creatures like men, seeking to escape the thrall and 
 biu-den of animal life, sorrow is helpful. As frosts 
 unlock the hard shells of seeds and help the germ to 
 get free, so trouble develops in men the germs of 
 force, patience, and ingenuity, and in noble natures 
 " works the peaceable fruits of righteousness." A gen- 
 tle schoolmaster it is to those who are " exercised 
 thereby." Tears, like raindrops, have a thousand 
 
318 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 times fallen to the ground and come up in flowers. 
 All the good in this world which has risen above the 
 line of material comfort has been born from some 
 one's sorrow. We aU march under a Captain "who 
 was made perfect through sufferings"; and we are 
 to find peace only as we learn of him in the school 
 of patience. 
 
 Not less astonishing than the value put upon pov- 
 erty of spirit and mourning must have seemed the 
 next promise and prediction : — 
 
 "Blessed aee the meek, for they shall inheeit 
 
 THE earth." 
 
 Each part of a man's mind has its peculiar and dis- 
 tinctive excitement. The passions and appetites give 
 forth a turbulent and exhausting experience. The full 
 activity of the domestic and social emotions produces 
 excitement less harsh and violent, but yet tumultuous. 
 The highest conditions of the soul's activity are serene 
 and tranquil. It is to this superior calm of a soul that is 
 living in the continuous activity of its highest spiritual 
 sentiments that the term meekness should be apphed. 
 It designates the whole temper of the soul in the range 
 of its moral and spiritual faculties. The appetites and 
 passions produce a boisterous agitation too coarse and 
 rude for real pleasure. The affections develop pleas- 
 ure, but with too near an alliance to our lower na- 
 ture for tranquillity. The spiritual portion of the soul 
 is at once luminous and peaceful. The strength of 
 man lies in those faculties which are farthest removed 
 from his animal conditions. It is in the spiritual 
 nature that manhood resides. The action of these 
 higher sentiments is so different in result from the 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 319 
 
 violent agitations of the appetites and passions, that 
 man may well speak of himself as a duality, a union 
 of two distinct persons, not only of different, but of 
 opposite and contradictory experiences. At the bot- 
 tom of man's nature lie rude strength, coarse excite- 
 ments, violent fluctuations, exhausting impulses. At 
 the top of man's nature the soul puts forth continuous 
 life almost without fatigue, is tranquil under intense 
 activities, and is full of the light of moral intuitions. 
 Meekness is generally thought to be a sweet benig- 
 nity under provocation. But provocation only dis- 
 closes, and does not create it. It exists as a generic 
 mood or condition of soul, independent of those causes 
 which may bring it to Hght. In this state, power and 
 peace are harmonized, — activity and tranquillity, joy 
 and calmness, all-seeingness without violence of desire. 
 From these nobler fountains chiefly are to flow those 
 influences which shah control the world. 
 
 Man the animal has hitherto possessed the globe. 
 Man the divine is yet to take it. The struggle is 
 going on. But in every cycle more and more does 
 the world feel the superior authority of truth, purity, 
 justice, kindness, love, and faith. They shall yet pos- 
 sess the earth. In these three opening sentences how 
 deep are the insights given ! The soul beholds its 
 meagreness and poverty, it longs with unutterable de- 
 sire to be enriched, it beholds the ideal state luminous 
 with peace and fuU of power. 
 
 But now the discourse rises from these interior 
 states to more active elements. Amidst the conflict- 
 ing elements of life no man can gain any important 
 moral victories by mere longing, or by rare impulses, 
 or by feeble purposes. If one would reach the true 
 
320 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 manhood, the spiritual life, of the new kingdom, it 
 must be by continuous energy during his entire career. 
 In the whole routine of daily Ufe, in the treatment of 
 all cares, temptations, strifes, and experiences of every 
 kind, the one predominant pm^pose must be the per- 
 fection of manhood in ourselves. 
 
 "Blessed ake thet who do hungee akd thiest 
 
 AFTEE EIGHTEOUSNESS, FOE THET SHALL BE FILLED." 
 
 The life of the body, its strength and skiU, are 
 every day built up by the food which hunger craves. 
 And as hunger is not a rational faculty, and does not 
 depend upon any of the rational faculties for its action, 
 but foUows the internal condition of the body, and is 
 an automatic sign and signal of the waste or repair 
 going on within; so the longing for uprightness and 
 goodness must be a deep-seated and incessant impor- 
 tunity of the soul's very substance, as it were, acting, 
 not upon suggestion or special excitement, but self- 
 aroused and continuous. To such a desire the whole 
 world becomes a ministering servant. All this is 
 strangely in contrast with the life of man. The fierce 
 conflict, the exacting enterprise, are felt, but they ex- 
 pend themselves upon externals. They seek to build 
 up the estate, to augment the power, to multiply 
 physical pleasures.. In the new life the strife and 
 enterprise are to be none the less, but will be directed 
 toward inward qualities. 
 
 These four Beatitudes not only revealed the Divine 
 conception of the new spiritual life, but they stood in 
 striking contrast with the ideas held by the leaders of 
 the Jews. The Pharisees were also expecting a king- 
 dom, and great advantage and delight. They had no 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 321 
 
 idea of the joy there is in spiritual sorrow. They 
 knew nothing of the sweet tranquillity of meekness, 
 and to them nothing seemed so little likely to inherit 
 the earth. Energetic power, invincible , zeal, and a 
 courage that did not fear disaster or death, — these 
 would win, if anything could. The Beatitudes, thus 
 far, must have been profoundly unintelligible to 
 Christ's hearers. "What wonder ? They are even yet 
 uninteUigible to mankind. 
 
 "Blessed aee the .mekcieul, for they shall 
 obtain mekct." 
 
 To an undeveloped race, struggling ignorantly for- 
 ward rather than upward, jostling, contending, quar- 
 reUing, — each man selfish, but demanding that others 
 should be kind, — each one unjust, but clamoring 
 against others for their injustice, — each one exact- 
 ing, severe, or cruel, but requiring that others should 
 be lenient, — comes the word, Blessed are the merciful 
 No one thing does human life more need than a kind 
 consideration of men's faults. Every one sins. Every 
 one needs forbearance. Their own imperfections should 
 teach men to be merciful. God is merciful because he 
 is perfect. Mercy is an attribute of high moral char- 
 acter. As men grow toward the Divine, they become 
 gentle, forgiving, compassionate. The absence of a 
 merciful spirit is evidence of the want of true holiness. 
 A soul that has really entered into the life of Christ 
 carries in itself a store of nourishment and a cordial 
 for helpless souls around it. Whoever makes his own 
 rigorous life, or his formal propriety, or his exacting 
 conscience, an argument for a condemnatory spirit 
 toward others, is not of the household of faith. Mer- 
 
 21 
 
322 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 ciless observers of men's faults, who delight in find- 
 ing out the evil that is in their neighbors, who rejoice 
 in exposing the sins of evil-doers, or who find a 
 pleasure in commentmg upon, or ridiculing the mis- 
 takes of others, show themselves to be ignorant of 
 the first element of the Christian religion. 
 
 " Blessed are the pure in heart, for thet shall 
 SEE God." 
 
 Precisely what is meant by "purity" has called 
 forth much speculation. But it should be remem- 
 bered that the whole discourse contains either a latent 
 or an avowed criticism upon the prevailing notions 
 of the Jews as to true religion. On no point were 
 the Pharisees more scrupulous than that of Levitical 
 purity. This had no direct relation in their minds 
 to the inward dispositions and purposes. Impurity 
 was contracted by some bodily act, and was removed 
 by some corresponding external ceremony. There 
 were some seventy specific cases of uncleanness de- 
 scribed by Jewish writers, and others were possible. 
 A conscientious man found his action limited on every 
 hand by fear of impurity, or by the rites of purifica- 
 tion which were required in case of defilement. A 
 ceremony designed to inspire a moral idea by a physi- 
 cal act suffered the almost inevitable fate of symbols, 
 and ended by withdrawing the mind from moral states 
 and fixing it superstitiously upon external deeds. The 
 benediction of Jesus was upon purity of heart, as dis- 
 tinguished from legal and ceremonial purity. A state 
 of heart in which all its parts and faculties should 
 be morally as free from the contamination of passion, 
 selfishness, injustice, and insincerity as the body and 
 
THE SERMON ON TEE MOUNT. 323 
 
 its members might be from Levitical defilement, was, 
 without doubt, the state upon which the blessing was 
 meant to rest. But the promise here given, " they shall 
 see God," assumes a wider view and a more profound 
 philosophy. There can be no knowledge of God in 
 any degree moral and spiritual, which does not come 
 to man through some form of moral intuition. To 
 understand justice, one must have some experience of 
 justice. There could arise no idea of love in a soul 
 that had never loved, or of pity in one who had 
 never experienced compassion. Our knowledge of 
 the moral attributes of God must take its rise in 
 some likeness, or germ of resemblance, in us to that 
 which we conceive is the Divine nature. In propor- 
 tion as we become like him, the elements of under- 
 standing increase. The soul becomes an interpreter 
 through its own experiences. They only can under- 
 stand God who have in themselves some moral resem- 
 blance to him; and they will enter most largely into 
 knowledge who are most in sympathy with the Divine 
 life. 
 
 "Blessed aSe the peacemaxees, for they shall 
 
 BE called the CHILDBEN OF GOD." 
 
 Peace is not a negative state, a mere interval be- 
 tween two excitements. In its highest meaning it is 
 that serenity which joy assumes, not only when single 
 faculties are excited, but when the whole soul is in 
 harmony with itself and full of wholesome activity. 
 An original disposition which dwells in peace by the 
 fulness and the inspiration of aU its parts is a rare 
 gift. One whose nature unconsciously diffuses peace 
 is very near to God. Jesus himself never seemed 
 
324 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CERIST. 
 
 SO divine as when, on the eve of his arrest, with the 
 cloud already casting its shadow upon him, and every 
 hour bringing him consciously nearer to the great 
 agony, he said to his humble followers : " Peace I leave 
 with you. My peace I give unto you." There is no 
 other sign of Divinity more eminent than that of a 
 nature which can breathe upon men an atmosphere of 
 peace. They who can do this, even imperfectly, have 
 the lineaments of their Parent upon them. They are 
 the children of God. 
 
 Far out from the centre of creative power, among 
 the elements of nature, there is wild turbulence, and 
 immense energies grapple in conflict. As the uni- 
 verse rises, circle above circle, each successive sphere 
 loses something of strife and develops some tendency 
 to harmony. All perfection tends toward peace. In 
 that innermost circle, where the God dwells in very 
 person, peace eternally reigns. The energy which 
 creates, the imiversal will which governs, and the in- 
 conceivable intellect that watches and thinks of aU 
 the realm, have their highest expression in a perfect 
 peace. Thus, though the lower stages of being are 
 full of agitations, the higher stages are tranquil. The 
 universe grows sweet as it grows ripe. " The God of 
 peace" is the highest expression of perfect being. 
 Whatever disturbance is raging in his remote creation, 
 He dwells in eternal peace, waiting for the consum- 
 mation of all things. There is, then, evident reason 
 why peacemakers "shall be called the children of 
 God." 
 
 In a lower way, but yet in close sympathy with this 
 supreme disposition of a soul in harmony with God, 
 are to be included all voluntary efforts for the sup- 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 325 
 
 pression of riotous miscliief and for the promotion of 
 kindness, agreement, concord, and peace among men 
 and between nations. While malign dispositions stir 
 up strife, a benevolent nature seeks to allay irritation, 
 to quiet the fierceness of temper, and to subdue all 
 harsh and cruel souls to the law of kindness. A pacifi- 
 cator will make himself the benefactor of any neigh- 
 borhood. 
 
 It is true that peace is sometimes so hindered by 
 means of corrupt passions or selfish interests that 
 there must be a struggle before peace can exist. "I 
 came not to send peace, but a sword,"was our Lord's 
 annunciation of this fact. A conflict between the spirit 
 and the flesh takes place in every individual and in 
 every community that is growing better. It is, how- 
 ever, but transient and auxiliary. Out of it comes a 
 higher Hfe. With that come harmony and peace. One 
 may sacrifice peace by neglecting to struggle, and one 
 may seek peace by instituting conflicts. Love must 
 overcome selfishness, even if the demon in departing 
 casts down its victim upon the ground and leaves him 
 as one dead. 
 
 ^'Blessed are they which ake peesecuted foe 
 eighteousness' sake, foe theiks is the kingdom 
 of heaven." 
 
 All the elements of human society were originally 
 organized by the force of reason acting in its lowest 
 plane, — selfishly. Little by little the animal gave way 
 to the social, the material to the spiritual, and room 
 began to be found in the secular for the eternal. It 
 has been a long conflict. It is a conflict still, and will 
 continue to be for ages. A just man at every step 
 
326 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 finds some one whose interests turn upon injustice. 
 One cannot make the truth clear and stimvilating with- 
 out disturbing some drowsy error, which flies out of its 
 cave and would extinguish the light. Not only have 
 pride and vanity their unlawful sway, but every pas- 
 sion has in human life some vested interest which 
 truth and love will either altogether destroy, or great- 
 ly restrain and regulate. 
 
 Now, although the truth when presented in its own 
 symmetry is beautiful, and although men, imless greatly 
 perverted, recognize the beauty of righteousness, yet 
 their selfish interests in the processes of hfe, the profit 
 or pleasure which they derive from unrighteousness, 
 sweep away their feeble admiration, and in its place 
 come anger and opposition. All potential goodness is 
 a disturbing force. Benevolent men are the friends 
 of even the selfish, but selfish men feel that benevo- 
 lence is the enemy of selfishness. The silent example 
 of a good man judges and condemns the conduct of 
 bad men. Even passive goodness stands in the way 
 of active selfishness. But when, as was to be the case 
 in the new spiritual kingdom heralded by Christ, good 
 men acting in sympathy should seek to spread the 
 sway of moral principles, the time would speedily 
 arrive when their spirit would come in conflict with 
 the whole kingdom of darkness. Then would arise the 
 bitterest opposition. Smce the world began, it has not 
 been permitted to any one to rise within hunself from 
 a lower to a higher moral state, without an angry con- 
 flict on the part of his inferior faculties. No part of 
 human society has been allowed to develop into a 
 higher form without bitter persecutions. If this had 
 been so up to that era, when the stages were tentative 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 327 
 
 and preparatory, how much more was it to be so now, 
 when the fulness of time had come, and the followers 
 of Christ were to found a kingdom in which the moral 
 and spiritual elements were to predominate over every 
 other ! 
 
 But persecution which is caused by true goodness 
 drives men more entirely from the resources of the 
 animal and secular life, and develops in them to 
 greater strength and intensity their truly spiritual or 
 divine part; and in that state their joys increase in 
 elevation, in conscious purity, in peacefulness. They 
 live in another realm. They are not dependent for 
 their enjoyment upon outward circumstances, nor upon 
 the remunerations of social life. They are lifted into 
 the very vicinage of heaven. They hold commimion 
 with God. A new realm, invisible but potential, 
 springs up around them. Dispossessed of common 
 pleasures, they find themselves fiUed with other joys, 
 unspeakable and full of glory. " Theirs is the king- 
 dom of heaven." 
 
 Here the Beatitudes end. They raise in the mind 
 an exalted conception of the spiritual manhood. In 
 the new kingdom manhood was to be clothed with 
 new power. It had broken up through to the realm 
 above, and was clothed with Divine elements. In this 
 state, the grand instrument of success in the subjuga- 
 tion of the world was to be the simple force of this 
 new human nature, acting directly upon living men. 
 Until that time religion had, in the weakness of the 
 race, needed to employ rules, laws, and institutions, and 
 to maintain its authority by force borrowed from the 
 physical nature of man. But the new kingdom was 
 to rely sovereignly upon a new force, — the living soul 
 
328 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TSE CHRIST. ' 
 
 Nacting upon living souls. Therefore Jesus, having 
 tiBvealed by these few profound elements what was 
 the true spiritual strength of man, declares to his dis- 
 ciples their mission. They were to be the preservative 
 element of life. They were to become sons of God, 
 not alone for their own sake, but as spiritual forces in 
 subduing the world to goodness. While Pharisees 
 were intensely concerned to maintain their own sup- 
 posed blameless state, and Essenes were withdrawing 
 from human life more and more, and various rehgion- 
 ists were playing hermit, shunning a world which 
 they could not resist or overcome, the disciples of 
 the new kingdom of the spirit, inspired by a Divine 
 influence, and living in an atmosphere imcontaminated 
 by the lower passions, were to go boldly forth into 
 hfe, taking hold of human affairs, seeking to purify the 
 household, to reclaim the selfishness and the sordidness 
 of material life, to infuse a spirit of justice and of 
 goodness into laws and magistrates, and to make the 
 power of their new life felt in every fibre of hmnan 
 society. " Ye are the salt of the earth ! " "Ye are 
 the light of the world!" 
 
 The opening portion of the Sermon on the Mount 
 must not have the canons of modern philosophy ap- 
 plied to it. Its organic relations with the rest of the 
 discourse must not be pressed too far. It depicts the 
 moral qualities which are to give character to the new 
 hfe, but does not include all the elements of it, nor 
 even the most important ones. Hope, faith, and 
 love are not mentioned. It is plain, therefore, that 
 the principle of selection was largely an external one. 
 Jesus was about to criticise the national religion. He 
 
THE SERMON ON TEE MOUNT. 329 
 
 fixed his eye upon tlie living officers and exemplars 
 of that religion, and emphasized with his benediction 
 those qualities which most needed to be made promi- 
 nent, and which were signally lacking in the spirit of 
 the Pharisee. 
 
 Just as Httle should we attempt to exhibit in the 
 Beatitudes a natural progression, or philosophic order 
 of qualities. There is no reason why the second Be- 
 atitude should not stand first, nor why the fifth, sixth, 
 and seventh might not be interchanged. The fourth 
 might without impropriety have begun the series. 
 The order in which they stand does not represent 
 the order of the actual evolution of moral qualities. 
 On the contrary, we perceive that the spirit of God 
 develops the new Hfe in the human soul in no fixed 
 order. Men who have gone far in overt wickedness 
 may find their first moral impulse to spring from a 
 condemning conscience ; but others are more affected 
 by the sweetness and beauty of moral qualities as seen 
 in some goodly life. Sometimes hope, sometimes 
 sjnnpathy, sometimes fear, and sometimes even the 
 imitativeness that becomes contagious in social life, 
 is the initiatory motive. For the human soul is like 
 a city of many gates ; and a conqueror does not 
 always enter by the same gate, but by that one which 
 chances to lie open. It is true that a general sense 
 of sinfulness precedes all effort after a higher life. 
 But a clear discrimination of evil, and an exquisite 
 sensibility to it, such as are implied in the first two 
 Beatitudes, do not belong to an untrained conscience 
 first aroused to duty, but are the fruits of later stages 
 of Christian experience. 
 
 The Beatitudes constitute a beautiful sketch of the 
 
330 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 ideal state, when the glowing passions, which in the 
 day of Christ controlled even the religious leaders, 
 and still so largely rule the world, shall be supplanted 
 by the highest moral sentiments. The ostentatious 
 wealth and arrogant pride of this sensuous Kfe shall 
 be replaced in the new life by a profound humihty. 
 The conceit and base content of a sordid prosperity 
 shall give way to ingenuous spiritual aspiration. Men 
 shall long for goodness more than the hungry do for 
 food. They shall no longer live by the force of their 
 animal life, but by the serene sweetness of the moral 
 sentiments. Meekness shall be stronger than force. 
 The spirit of peacemaking shall take the place of irri- 
 tation and quarrelsomeness. But as we can come to 
 the mildness and serenity of spring only through the 
 blustering winds and boisterous days of March, so this 
 new kingdom must enter through a period of resist- 
 ance and of persecution ; and all who, taking part m 
 its early establishment, have to accept persecution, 
 must learn to find joy in it as the witness that they 
 are exalted to a superior realm of experience, to the 
 companionship of the noblest heroes of the prophetic 
 age, and to fellowship with God. 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 33X 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. — (Continued.) 
 
 After pronouncing the Beatitudes, and before en- 
 tering upon his criticism of the current religious ideas, 
 Jesus ptit his disciples on their guard lest they should 
 suppose that he meant to overturn the religion of their 
 fathers. Think not that I am come to destroy the Law or 
 the Prophets. If men's moral beliefs were the result 
 of a purely logical process, their religious faith might 
 be changed upon mere argument, and with as little 
 detriment to their moral constitution as an astronomer 
 experiences when, upon the recalculation of a prob- 
 lem, he corrects an error. But men's moral convic- 
 tions spring largely from their feelings. The intellect 
 but gives expression to the heart. The creed and 
 worship, however they may begin in philosophy, are 
 soon covered aU over with the associations of the 
 household ; they are perfumed with domestic love ; 
 they convey with them the hopes and the fears of life, 
 the childhood fancies, and the imaginations of man- 
 hood. To change a man's religious system is to recon- 
 struct the whole man himself. Such change is full of 
 peril. Only the strongest moral natures can survive 
 the shock of doubt which dispossesses them of all that 
 they have trusted from childhood. There are few 
 strong moral natures. The mass of men are creatures 
 of dependent habits and of unreasoning faith. Once 
 
332 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CERIST. 
 
 cut loose from what they have always deemed sacred, 
 they find it impossible to renew their reverence for 
 new things, and sink either into moral indifference or 
 into careless scepticism. Men must, if possible, see 
 in the new a preservation of all that was valuable in 
 the old, made still more fruitful and beautiful. It is 
 the old in the new that preserves it from doing harm 
 to untaught natures. 
 
 The recognition of this truth is nowhere more re- 
 markable than in the progress of Christianity under the 
 ministration of Jesus and of his Apostles. Although 
 surrounded by a people whose hatred of foreign re- 
 ligions was inordinate and fanatical, the Jews did not 
 hear from the lips of Jesus even an allusion to hea- 
 thenism. If the narratives of the Gospel are fair speci- 
 mens of his manner, there was not a word that fell 
 from him which could have wounded an honest hea- 
 then -j^ and, afterwards, his Apostles sought to find some 
 ground of common moral consciousness from which to 
 reason with the idolatrous people among whom they 
 came. We are not to suppose that Jesus made an ab- 
 rupt transition from the religious institutions of Moses 
 to his own spiritual system. He said no word to 
 unsettle the minds of his countrymen in the faith of 
 their fathers. He was careful of the religidus preju- 
 dices of his times. The very blows directed against 
 the glosses and perversions of the Pharisees derived 
 their force from the love which Jesus showed for the 
 Law and the Prophets. He pierced through the out> 
 ward forms to the central principle of Mosaism, and 
 made his new dispensation to be an evolution of the old. 
 
 ' The word " heathen," Matt. vi. 7, and xviii. 17, is used rather as a 
 designation than as a criticism. 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 333 
 
 Think not that I am come to destroy the Law or the 
 Prophets : I am not come to destroy, hut to fulfil. 
 
 Here is the law of development announced by an 
 inspired Hebrew to a peasant and mechanic crowd ia 
 obscure Galilee, ages before the philosophy of evolu- 
 tion was suspected or the laws of progress were found 
 out. Jesus did not come to destroy old faiths, but to 
 carry them forward by growth to the higher forms 
 and the better fruit that were contained within them. 
 
 This tenderness for all the good that there was in 
 the past of the Jewish nation is in striking contrast 
 with the bitter spirit of hatred against the Jews which 
 afterwards grew up in the Christian Church. No man 
 can be in sjnnpathy with Jesus who has no affection 
 for the Jew and no reverence for the oracles of the 
 old Hebrew dispensation. 
 
 It was peculiarly appropriate, at the beginning of 
 a discourse designed to search the received interpre- 
 tations of the Law with the most severe criticism, that 
 Jesus should caution his disciples agaiast a tendency, 
 often developed in times of transition, to give up and 
 abandon all the convictions and traditions of the past. 
 Jesus therefore amplified the thought. The central 
 truths of Hebraism were fundamental and organic. 
 The ceremonies and institutions which surrounded 
 them might change, but the enshrined principles were 
 permanent. Heaven and earth should pass away be- 
 fore one jot or tittle of them should perish. No man 
 must seek notoriety by a crusade against his father's 
 rehgion. He who should break one of the least com- 
 mandments, or should inspire others to do so, should 
 be least in the kingdom of heaven. The temper of 
 the new life was not to be destructive, but construe- 
 
334 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 tive. Even that part of the old religion which was 
 to pass away must not be destroyed by attack, but 
 be left to dry up and fall by the natural develop- 
 ment of the higher elements of spiritual life contained 
 within it. And that should not be till the old was 
 " fulfilled " in the new : the blossom should be dis- 
 placed only by the fruit. 
 
 Jesus was now prepared to pass under review the 
 ethical mistakes which his countrymen had made in 
 interpreting the Law of Moses. He began by declar- 
 ing that the reigning religious spirit was totally insuf- 
 ficient. No one under its inspiration could rise into 
 that higher hfe which was opening upon the world. 
 Except your rigMeousness shall exceed the righteousness 
 of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the 
 Mngdom of heaven. 
 
 This may be called the theme of the whole sermon 
 following. From this text Jesus now developed his 
 view of the ethics of the new life. He furnished the 
 ideals towards which men must strive, setting forth 
 the morality of the teleologic state of mankind. For 
 this purpose he selected a series of cases in which 
 the great laws of purity and of love were the most 
 violated in the practical life of his times, and ap- 
 plied to them the ethics of the final and perfect 
 state of manhood. This he did, not as a legislator, 
 nor as a priest. He was not attempting to regulate 
 civil society, nor the church, by minute regulations, 
 but by inspiring the soul with those nobler emotions 
 from which just rules spring, and which themselves 
 need no laws. He spoke from conscious divinity in 
 himself to the moral consciousness in man. He was 
 not framing principles into human laws or institutions. 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 335 
 
 He held up ideals of disposition for the attainment 
 of which all men were to strive. They are not the 
 less true because men in the lower stages of devel- 
 opment are unable to attain to their level. They are 
 the true basis of all social and civil procedure, even 
 though nations are not yet civilized enough to prac- 
 tise them. 
 
 There are nine topics successively treated, all of 
 them relating to the state of man's heart, namely: 
 1. Murder ; 2. Adultery ; 3. Divorce ; 4. Oaths ; 5. Ke- 
 tahation ; 6. Disinterested Benevolence ; 7. Almsgiv- 
 ing; 8. Prayer; 9. Fasting. Following the enuncia- 
 tion of principles in regard to these topics are a series 
 of cases relating to the outward hfe, or economico- 
 ethical instructions. The spiritual ethics which Jesus 
 laid down with the quiet authority of conscious divin- 
 ity not only antagonized with the private passions of 
 men and the customs of society, but directly contested 
 the popular interpretation of the Law of Moses. 
 
 1. Murder. — Christ teaches that the true life is that 
 of the thoughts and emotions ; that the highest au- 
 thority and government is that which is within the 
 soul, and not alone that which breaks out into ac- 
 tive civil law and takes cognizance of acts. Spiritual 
 law takes hold of the sources of all acts. Now the 
 Pharisee sought to restrain evil by a microscopic con- 
 sideration of externals. Jesus went back to the foun- 
 tain, and would purify all the issues by cleansing it. 
 
 Ye have heard that it was said hy them of old time, Thou 
 shaU not Mil ; and whosoever shall Mil shall he in danger of 
 the judgment : but I say %nto you, That whosoever is angry 
 vnth his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the 
 judgment : and whosoever tstml sag to his brother, Maca, shall 
 
336 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 he in danger of the council: hut whosoever shall say, Thou 
 fool, shall he in danger of hell fire. 
 
 What is murder ? The law of the land answered in 
 its way. Jesus replied, The voluntary indulgence of 
 any feeling that would naturally lead to the act, — that 
 is murder. The crime is first committed in the sliad- 
 owy realm of thought and feeling. Many a murder 
 is unperformed outwardly, while all that constitutes 
 its guilt is enacted in the heart. A legalist would 
 regard himself as innocent if only he did not act as 
 he felt. But in the kingdom of the Spirit feelings 
 are acts. A murderous temper is murder. John says, 
 " Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer." 
 
 This does not forbid aU anger. There may be a 
 just indignation which carries in it no malice, which 
 springs from affronted benevolence. This is implied in 
 the phrase, " Whoso is angry with his brother without 
 a cause," i. e. a just cause, a cause springing from high 
 moral considerations, as where indignation is aroused 
 at the sight of one who is conimitting a great cruelty. 
 
 Not alone anger which leads to violence, but even 
 that degree of anger which leads one to abuse another 
 by the use of opprobrious epithets, is forbidden. Yet 
 more severely condemned is such a transport of anger 
 93 leads one, under the influence of merciless pas- 
 iions, as it were, to tread out all sense of another's 
 manhood and to annihilate him. 
 
 Not only are we to carry kind thoughts ourselves, 
 but we are bound, by every means within our power, 
 to prevent unkind thoughts in others. If we know 
 that another " hath aught against us," the removal of 
 that unkind feeling is more important before God than 
 any act of worship. Leave the altar, remove the un- 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. SSY 
 
 kindness, then return to thy prayers. First humanity, 
 then devotion. 
 
 2. Adultery. — The same general principle is applied 
 to the passion of lust. 
 
 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman 
 to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in 
 his heart. 
 
 Not only is he guilty who suflfers desire to ruii its 
 full length and consummate itself in action, but he 
 also who nourishes the desire which he cannot or dare 
 not consummate. And though the temptation require 
 the uttermost strength of resistance, it must be van- 
 quished. As a soldier fights though wounded, and is 
 triumphantly received though his victory has lost him 
 an arm or an eye, so at every sacrifice and with all 
 perseverance must the true man maintain chastity in 
 his feelings, in his thoughts, and in his imagination. 
 If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out. If thy right hand 
 offend thee, cut it off. 
 
 3. Divorce. — In the kingdom of the Spirit the new 
 man shall no longer be suffered to consult his own 
 mere pleasure in the disposal of his wife. In the 
 Orient and among the Jews polygamy was permitted ; 
 the husband might take as many wives as he could 
 support, and he was at liberty to dismiss any one of 
 them upon the most trivial cause. Woman was help- 
 less, a slave of man's convenience, without redress 
 when wronged. She could demand a legal document 
 of her husband if he put her away, and that probably 
 was equivalent to a general certificate of respectable 
 character, such as employers give to servants when 
 for any reason they wish no longer to retain them. 
 
 Under Oriental laws, to this day, women are little 
 
 22 
 
338 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CERIST. 
 
 better than slaves. The husband has despotic power 
 over them. Among the Hebrews, the condition of 
 woman was far better, and her privileges were greater, 
 than in other Eastern nations ; yet the husband could 
 dispossess her of her marriage rights almost at his own 
 will. He had uncontrolled jurisdiction. There was 
 no necessity for obtaining permission from a civil or 
 religious tribunal to put away his wife. It was a 
 household afiair, with which the public had nothing to 
 do. Her stay in the house was purely a matter of her 
 lord's will. He could send her forth for the most 
 trivial fault, or from the merest caprice. The doctrine 
 of Jesus sheared off at one stroke all these unnatural 
 privileges from the husband, and made the wife's 
 position firm and permanent, unless she forfeited it 
 by crime. By limiting the grounds of separation 
 to the single crime of adultery, Jesus revolutionized 
 the Oriental household, and lifted woman far up on 
 the scale of natural rights. Considered in its histor- 
 ical relations, this action of our Lord was primarily a 
 restriction upon the stronger and directly in the in- 
 terest of the weaker party. 
 
 This theme and our Lord's teaching upon it will be 
 resumed where we come to treat of a later period in 
 his ministry, when he more fully disclosed his doctrine 
 upon the subject. But it is clear that our Lord be- 
 longed to neither of the two schools which existed 
 among the Jews, — the lax school of Hillel, or the 
 rigid school of Shammai. He rose higher than either. 
 He made the outward relation permanent, on account 
 of the true spiritual nature of marriage, it being the 
 fusion or real unity of two hearts. Having once 
 been o.utwardly united, they must abide together, and 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 339 
 
 even when they found themselves in conflict must 
 learn to be one in spirit by the discipline of living 
 together. If they enter the wedded state unprepared, 
 the household is the school in which they are to learn 
 the neglected lesson. 
 
 4. Ocdhs. — K men loved the truth always, there 
 would be no need of an oath ; but so prone are 
 they to deceit, that in cases of public interest they 
 must be incited to speak truly by a lively fear acting 
 upon an aroused conscience. By an oath men swear 
 to God, and not to man, of the truth of facts. A day 
 shall come when men will speak the truth in the love 
 of truth. Then all judicial oaths will be needless. 
 The perfect state will have no need of them, and they 
 will be done away. 
 
 The casuists among the Jews had corrupted the 
 oath. Men were not bound by it, unless it was an oath 
 directly to God. They might win confidence by giving 
 to their solemn afiirmations the appearance of an 
 oath. They might swear by heaven, by the earth, by 
 Jerusalem, by one's head ; but it was held that from 
 these oaths they might draw back without dishonor. 
 Jesus exposed the deception and impiety of such oaths. 
 He laid down for all time the canon, that the true 
 man shall declare facts with the utmost simplicity. It 
 must be yea, yea, or nay, nay ; nothing more. This 
 certainly forbids the use of all trivial oaths, and re- 
 duces judicial oaths to the position of expedients, 
 tolerated only on account of the weakness of men, and 
 to be abolished in the era of true manhood. Oaths 
 will be dispensed with just as soon as men can be 
 believed without an oath. 
 
 5. Retaliation. — Jesus passed next to a consideration 
 
340 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 of the law of retaliation. The lower down upon the 
 moral scale men live, the more nearly must they be 
 governed wholly by fear and force. Under the laws 
 of nature, disobedience brings pain. Men learn the 
 same government, and inflict pain upon those who 
 offend. Civil government methodizes this economy of 
 pain. It is, however, the method pecuhar to unde- 
 veloped manhood. Force is the lowest, pain is the 
 next, and fear the next ; but all of them are methods 
 of dealmg with creatures not yet brought up to their 
 true selves. They are therefore expedients of educa- 
 tion, and, like all instruments of training, they cease 
 as soon as they have carried their subjects to a higher 
 plane. In the coming kingdom of love, the fuU man 
 in Christ Jesus will no longer repay evil with evil, 
 pain with pain. Evil-doing will be corrected by the 
 spirit of goodness, and love will take the place of force 
 and pain and fear. 
 
 Even if it be yet impossible to develop among men 
 this future and ideal government, it can be held up as 
 the aim toward which progress should be directed. 
 This Jesus did. I say unto you, That ye resist not evil; 
 hut whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him 
 the other also. Nay, more ; he who acts in the full 
 spirit of love, so far from revenging an injustice, will 
 yield more than is demanded. It was a time of in- 
 justice and of tyrannical exactions ; but the command 
 of Jesus was, If the law, wickedly administered, should 
 take your property, rather than quarrel give more 
 than is asked ; if impressed in your property and per- 
 son into the public service, exceed the task laid upon 
 you; if solicited, lend and give freely. As society is 
 constituted, and in the low and animal condition of 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 341 
 
 mankind, it may be that these commands could not 
 be fulfilled literally ; but they furnish an ideal toward 
 which every one must strive. 
 
 6. Disinterested Benevolence. — Having developed the 
 genius of the new kingdom of love negatively, it was 
 natural that Jesus should next disclose the positive 
 forms of love and its duties. He laid down the funda- 
 mental principle that love must spring forth, not from 
 the admirableness of any object of regard, but from 
 the richness of one's own nature in true benevolence. 
 Like the sun, love sends forth from itself that color 
 which makes beautiful whatever it shines upon ; there- 
 fore love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do 
 good to them that hate you, and pray for them that 
 despitefully use you. The new men of the future 
 must not derive their notions of perfection from be- 
 neath them, — in that direction lies the animal, — but 
 from above. Seek for that kind of perfection which 
 God desires, — the perfection of a disinterested love. 
 The. sun and the seasons interpret that. They pour 
 life and bounty over the whole race, whether deserv- 
 ing or not. In spite of the pains and penalties of 
 which nature is fuU, over all the earth are the sym- 
 bols that God's greater government is one of good^ 
 ness. He must be a bad man who does not love that 
 which is lovely. Even selfishness can honor and serve 
 that which wUl redound to its benefit. The worst 
 men in' society will please those who will return like 
 service. 
 
 This, too, hke the teaching upon the other topics, is 
 to be accepted as the ideal of the new kingdom. It 
 can be but imperfectly carried out as yet. But it 
 is that spirit which every man is to recognize as 
 
342 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 the standard, and to carry out «as much as in Mm 
 
 lies." 
 
 7. Almsgiving. — Jesus now cautions his disciples 
 against doing right things from wrong motives. They 
 must give alms, not for the sake of reputation, not for 
 their own interests, hut out of a simple benevolence. 
 The love of praise may go with benevolence, but must 
 not take the place of it. It is hypocrisy to act from 
 selfish motives, whUe obtaining credit for disinterested 
 ones. This passing off of our baser feelings for our 
 noblest is a species of moral counterfeiting as preva- 
 lent now as in the times of our Lord. 
 
 8. Prayer. — Men should pray from a sincere feeling 
 of devotion, and not from vanity or mere custom. And, 
 as both Jewish and heathen prayers had become filled 
 with superstitious and cmnbersome repetitions, Jesus 
 enjoins simplicity and privacy, rather as the cure of 
 ostentation than as absolute excellences. God does 
 not need instruction in our wants. He knows better 
 than we what we need. Neither does he need per- 
 suasion. He is more ready to give good gifts than 
 parents are to bestow good things on their children. 
 
 It is probable that the sermon of Christ on the 
 mount was dehvered in the most famUiar and inter- 
 locutory manner. It seems to have been reported in 
 outline, rather than in full, and between one portion 
 and another there would doubtless be questions asked 
 and answered. In this way we can interpret the succes- 
 sion of topics which have no internal relation to each 
 other, but which might be drawn out of the speaker 
 by some interposed question or explanation. Luke 
 gives us a clew to one such scene. 
 
 " And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a 
 
TEE SERMON ON TEE MOUNT. 343 
 
 certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said 
 unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught 
 his disciples." (xi. 1.) 
 
 Many of John's disciples, after the imprisonment of 
 their master, attached themselves to Jesus. The tran- 
 sition was natural and easy. Jesus must have seemed 
 to them like a second John, greater in miracles, but 
 far less in sanctity. John was wholly a reformer. 
 He did not take upon him the duties and burdens of 
 common citizenship, but stood apart as a judge and 
 censor of morals. He had that severe mood of sanc- 
 tity which always impresses the imagination of the 
 ignorant and the superstitious. Jesus was a citizen. 
 He knew the fatigues of labor, the trials which beset 
 poverty, the temptations arising from the practical 
 conduct of business. He lived among men in all the 
 innocent experiences of society life, a cheerful, com- 
 panionable, and most winning nature. There was no 
 gayety in his demeanor, but much cheerfulness. He 
 did not assume the professional sanctity that was 
 much in esteem. He was familiar, natural, unpreten- 
 tious, loving that which was homely and natural in 
 men, rather than that which was artificial and preten- 
 tious. 
 
 But John's disciples must have felt the difference 
 in the teaching of the two masters. Especially must 
 they have observed the devotional spirit of Jesus. 
 And on the occasion mentioned, when he had spent in 
 prayer the night preceding the Sermon on the Mount, 
 some of them asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, 
 " as John also taught his disciples." 
 
 Prayer was no new thing to the Jews. Sjoiagogues 
 abounded, and their liturgical service was rich in 
 
344 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 prayers, which in general were scriptural and emi- 
 nently devotional. But their very number was bur- 
 densome, and their repetition confusing. Liturgies 
 furnish prayers for men in groups and societies. This 
 meets but one side of human want, Man needs to 
 draw himself out from among his fellows, and to pray 
 alone and individually. New wine disdains old bot- 
 tles. Intense feeling will not accept old formulas, but 
 bursts out into prayer of its own shaping. Yet it 
 was hardly this last want that led the disciples to ask 
 Jesus to teach them how to pray. It was more prob- 
 ably a request that he would, out of the multitude of 
 prayers already prepared, either select for them or 
 frame some prayer that should be in sympathy with 
 the spiritual instruction which he was giving them. 
 Now, in the Sermon on the Mount, as given by Mat- 
 thew, Jesus had just been reprehending the practice of 
 repetition in prayer, so striking in the devotions of 
 the heathen, who frequently for a half-hour' together 
 vociferate a single sentence, or word even. The dis- 
 ciples of John very naturally asked him to give them 
 such a prayer as he would approve. Jesus gave them 
 what has become known as " the Lord's Prayer." It 
 may be used liturgically, or it may serve as a model 
 for private prayer, as shall seem most profitable. 
 
 One knows not which most to admire in this form, 
 — its loftiness of spirit, its comprehensiveness, its 
 brevity, its simplicity, or its union of human and divine 
 elements. Our admiration of it is not disturbed by 
 that criticism which questions its originality and finds 
 it to be made up, in part, of prayers already existing. 
 Is the diamond less princely among stones because its 
 constituent elements can be shown in other combi- 
 
THE SERMON ON TEE MOUNT. 345 
 
 nations? The brilliant contrast between the inor- 
 ganic elements and their crystaltiiie form is a sufficient 
 answer. All prayer may be saiA to have crystallized 
 in this prayer. The Church has worn it for hundreds 
 of years upon her bosom, as the brightest gem of 
 devotion. 
 
 The opening phrase, Our Father, is the key to 
 Christianity. God is father; government is personal. 
 All the tenderness which now is stored up in the 
 word "mother" was of old iucluded in the name 
 "father." The household was governed by law, and 
 yet it was small enough to enable the father to make 
 himself the exponent of love and law. 
 
 In the household, strength and weakness are 
 bound together by the mysterious tie of love. The 
 superior serves the inferior, and yet subordination is 
 not lost. Children learn obedience through their affec- 
 tions, and fear supplements higher motives. In this 
 the family differs from aU civil institutions. The father 
 is in contact with his children, and governs them by 
 personal influence. The magistrate cannot know or 
 be known to the bulk of his subjects. Love in the 
 household is a living influence, in the state it is an 
 abstraction. In a family where love and law are 
 commensurate, the father's will is the most perfect 
 government. 
 
 Civil government is an extension of the family only 
 in name. Kings are not fathers, and national gov- 
 ernments cannot be paternal because they cannot be 
 personal. It is a question of the utmost importance, 
 then, whether we shall form our idea of the Divine 
 moral government from the family or from the state ; 
 whether we shall conceive of God as Father or as 
 
346 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 King, and his government as one of abstract laws or 
 of personal influences. "Our Father" is itself a 
 whole theology. We are prone to transfer to the 
 moral administration of God those peculiarities of 
 civil government which really spring from men's lim- 
 itation and weakness, and are therefore the worst pos- 
 sible analogies or symbols of Divine things. The im- 
 personality of magistrates and the abstractions of law 
 are necessary in hmnan government, because men are 
 too weak to reach a higher model. The Divine gov- 
 ernment, administered by means of universal laws, 
 still leaves the Supreme Father free to exercise his 
 personal feelings. If God be only a magistrate, the 
 charm is gone. He governs no longer by the influ- 
 ence of his heart, but by a law, which, as projected 
 from himself, is conceived of by men as a thing sepa- 
 rate from Divine will, though at first springing from it. 
 At once justice becomes something inflexible, severe, 
 relentless. A king is weak in moral power in pro- 
 portion as he relies upon the law of force. His hand 
 for matter, his heart for men. 
 
 A father on earth, though dear and venerated, is 
 yet himian and imperfect ; but a " Father in heaven " 
 exalts the imagination. The Celestial Father dis- 
 charges all those duties and offices of love and au- 
 thority which the earthly parent but hints at and 
 imperfectly fulfils. It is the ideal of perfection in 
 fatherhood. It enhances our conception of the ideal 
 home, in " the house not made with hands, eternal in 
 the heavens." As children in an earthly family come 
 to a parent, so with all the privileges of children our 
 spirits ascend to the spiritual Father in heaven. 
 
 With a child's love and admiration mingles not only 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 347 
 
 a sense of tlie superiority of its parent, but an affec- 
 tionate desire for Ms honor and dignity. Hallowed he 
 ihy name is the expression of the desire that God may 
 be held in universal reverence. Experiencing the 
 blessedness of veneration, the soul would clothe the 
 object of its adoration with the love and admiration 
 which it deserves. It is not a supplication for one's 
 self, but an affectionate and holy desire for the wel- 
 fare of another. There is in it no servUe adulation, 
 no abject awe. It springs from the highest spiritual 
 affection, and is rational and ennobling. 
 
 In the next petition the soul yearns for that per- 
 fect state toward which men have always been look- 
 ing forward. However imperfect the conceptions may 
 be, men have always conceived of the present as a sin- 
 gle step in one long advance toward an ideally perfect 
 state. Somewhere in the future the spirit of man is to 
 be elevated, purified, perfected. The discords and mis- 
 rule and wretchedness of the present are not to con- 
 tinue. From afar off, advancing surely though slowly 
 through the ages, comes that kingdom "in which 
 dwelleth righteousness." Every good man longs for it, 
 and his thoughts frequently take shelter in it. Thy 
 Mngdom come is the petition of every one who loves 
 God and his fellow-man. 
 
 The next is like unto it : Thy wiU he done in earth, 
 as it is in heaven. 
 
 All natural laws are the emanations of the Divine 
 will. Those fundamental principles of right, upon 
 which all human laws are founded, are derived from 
 the Divine will. That wiU represents order, progress, 
 and government. God's will is universal harmony. 
 On earth, men are largely ignorant of this regulative 
 
348 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 will, and are irregiolar in their obedience to that which 
 is known, or are wholly disobedient and rebellious. 
 But in heaven perfect obedience follows knowledge. 
 The will of God is unobstructed. Men are here in the 
 uproar of an untuned orchestra, each instrument at 
 discord with its fellows; but in heaven the chorus 
 wlU flow forever in harmonious sweetness. In desir- 
 ing our own spiritual good, we must come into sym- 
 pathy with the work of God in the whole race, and 
 seek ardently the consummation of the Divine will 
 in all the earth and through all time. 
 
 Thus far, in the Lord's Prayer, men are taught to 
 express love, reverence, and the aspiration of earnest 
 benevolence. They are to put forth their first desires, 
 and their strongest, in behalf of the Divine glory and 
 of the welfare of the whole kingdom. Then, as single 
 individuals in that kingdom, they may make supplica- 
 tion for their own personal wants. Give iis this day 
 our daily bread. 
 
 Bread may be regarded as the sjnnbol of all that 
 support which the body needs. To pray for daily 
 bread is to pray for all necessary support. It is to ia- 
 voke the protection of Divine Providence, and in its 
 spirit it includes whatever is needed for the comfort of 
 otir physical life. Thus, however favored of wealth 
 and its fruits, all men have conscious needs which are 
 touched by the spirit of this cry for bread. But they 
 to whom it was first spoken knew the pangs of hun- 
 ger. Their daily bread was by no means sure. It 
 was the one want that never left them. Nor is it to 
 be forgotten that the great mass of men on the globe 
 to-day are living in such abject condition as to make 
 the question of food a matter of anxiety for every 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 349 
 
 single day. The prayer for bread unites more voices 
 on earth, than any other. 
 
 The next petition is for the forgiveness of sins ; and 
 it is coupled with a reminder of man's duty of for- 
 giveness toward his fellow-men. Forgive us our debts, 
 as we forgive our debtors. No other offence seems to 
 have been regarded as so fatal to true manhood as a 
 cruel and harm-bearing disposition. Even indifference 
 to another's welfare aroused the Master's rebuke ; but 
 a wilful animosity, or an infliction of unnecessary pain, 
 was regarded with the severest condemnation.^ No 
 other sin is more common or more culpable. The only 
 comment of our Lord upon this prayer touches this 
 malign trait in a manner of peculiar solemnity. For 
 if ye forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father 
 will also forgive you : hut if ye forgive not men their tres- 
 passes, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. 
 
 The next petition. Lead us not into temptation, is not 
 inconsistent with the expression of joy when men fall 
 into divers temptations.^ Men often rejoice in a con- 
 flict, after it is past, which they dreaded in anticipa- 
 tion. Looking forth into the future, a soul conscious 
 of its weakness dreads being put under severe temp- 
 tation. Those who have seen the most of active life 
 wiU most deeply feel the need of this petition. No 
 one can tell beforehand how he will be affected by 
 persistent, insidious, and vehement temptations. If it 
 is a duty to avoid evil, it is surely permissible to 
 soUcit Divine help thereto. 
 
 But when under Divine Providence it is necessary 
 that men should pass through a conflict with evil, that 
 
 ' See Matt. vi. 14, 15 ; Luke vi. 37 ; Matt, xviii. 35. 
 ' James i. 2. 
 
350 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 very consciousness of their own weakness which led 
 them to pray that they might not be tempted now 
 causes them to turn to God for strength to resist and 
 overcome the evil. In like manner the Saviour prayed 
 in Gethsemane that the cup might pass; but then, 
 since that might not be, he conformed himself to the 
 will of God. All deep feelings grow into paradoxes. 
 Fear and courage may coexist. One may dread to be 
 tempted, and yet rejoice in being tried.^ 
 
 9. Fasting. — We have seen that Jesus was in the 
 midst of a criticism upon pretentious almsgiving and 
 ostentatious prayer, when asked to give an example 
 of prayer. Having comphed, he now resumes the in- 
 terrupted theme, and warns them against fasting in a 
 spirit of vanity. Religious fasting had long prevailed 
 among the devout Jews. It had been perverted by 
 ascetics on the one hand, and by the Pharisees on the 
 
 ' The doxology, " For tUne is the kingdom," etc., is admirably accordant 
 with the spirit of the Lord's Prayer, but not with its object. It was not 
 included in the prayer as originally recorded by Matthew, and in Luke it 
 does not appear even now. In the Jewish religious synagogical services, to 
 which the early Christians had been trained, the doxology was of frequent 
 occurrence, and in using the Lord's Prayer it was natural that it should 
 be appended to this as to all other prayers. It is not strange that at 
 length it should creep into the text of early versions, without the design 
 of improper interpolation, simply because in oral use it had so long been as- 
 sociated with the prayer itself The most ancient and authoritative manu- 
 scripts are unanimous in omitting it. 
 
 Called forth by the request of a disciple, the prayer was given, as we see 
 by Matthew's Gospel, as a model of brevity, in contrast with the senseless 
 repetitions of the heathen prayers. It is an extraordinary fact, that the 
 Lord's Prayer has been made the agent of that very repetition which it was 
 meant to correct. Tholuok says : " That prayer which He gave as an anti- 
 dote to those repetitions is the very one which has been most abused by 
 vain repetitions. According to the rosary, the Pater Noster (Patriloquia, 
 as it is called) is [in certain of the church services] prayed fifteen times (or 
 seven or five times), and the Ave Maria one hundred and fifty times 
 (or fifty or sixty-three times)," 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 35I 
 
 other. Jesus certainly uttered no word which tended 
 to increase the respect of men for this practice. His 
 example was regarded as lowering the value of fasting, 
 and he was on one occasion expostulated with, and 
 John's example contrasted with his more cheerful 
 conduct. But. he did not come to found a religion 
 of the cave or the cloister, but a religion which should 
 develop every side of manhood, and which, while 
 deep and earnest, should yet be sweet and cheerful. 
 In such a religion nothing could be more offensive 
 than insincere devotion, pretentious humility, and 
 hypocritical self-denial. 
 
 Thus far the discourse had borne upon the popular 
 notions of religious worship. Jesus now subjects to 
 the spiritual standard of the new life those economic 
 opinions which then ruled the world, as they still do. 
 Next after the glory of military power, the imagina- 
 tion of the world has always been infatuated with 
 riches. They command so many sources of enjoy- 
 ment, and redeem men from so many of the humilia- 
 tions which poverty inflicts, that the Jew, to whose 
 fathers wealth was promised as a reward of obedience, 
 a token of Divine favor, would naturally put a very 
 high estimate upon it. In fact, the pursuit of wealth 
 was one of the master passions of that age. Every- 
 thing else was made subordinate to it. It usurped 
 the place of religion itself, and drew men after it 
 with a kind of fanaticism. Against this oVer-valuation 
 and inordinate pursuit of wealth our Lord protested. 
 Zai/ not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, .... hut lay 
 up for yourselves treasures in heaven. Here moral excel- 
 lence is put in contrast with physical treasure. Men 
 are to seek nobility of character, riches of feeling. 
 
352 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 strength of manhood, and not perishable wealth. Nor 
 can they divide their hearts between virtue and riches 
 when these stand in opposition. The soul's estate 
 must be the supreme ambition. Unity and sim- 
 phcity of moral purpose is indispensable to good- 
 ness and happiness. The reconciliation of avarice 
 with devotion, of self-indulgence in luxury with su- 
 preme love to God, is utterly impossible. One may 
 serve two masters, if the two are of one mind ; one 
 may serve two alternately, even if they differ. But 
 where two masters represent opposite qualities and 
 wills, and each demands the whole service, it is im- 
 possible to serve both. Ye cannot serve God andmanv- 
 mon. The absolute supremacy of man's moral nature 
 over every part of secular life is nowhere taught with 
 such emphasis and solemnity as in Christ's treatment 
 of riches. The ardor and force of his declarations 
 might almost lead one to suppose that he forbade 
 his followers all participation in riches, as will more 
 plainly appear when we shall give a summary view of 
 all his utterances on that topic. 
 
 Not only did Jesus reprobate the spirit of avarice, 
 but the vulgar form of it which exists among the 
 poor came under his criticism. All grinding anxiety 
 for the common necessaries of life he declared to be 
 both unwise and impious : unwise, because it did no 
 good; impious, because it reflected upon God's kind 
 providence. He referred to that economy in nature 
 by which everything is provided for in the simple 
 exercise of its common organs or faculties ; the grass, 
 the lily, the sparrow, had but to put forth their re- 
 spective powers, and nature yielded all their needs. 
 Let man, a higher being, put forth his nobler faculties, 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 353 
 
 — reason and the moral sentiments, — and a life guid- 
 ed by these would be sure to draw in its train, not 
 only virtue and happiness, but whatever of temporal 
 good is necessary. 
 
 There is no worldly wisdom like that which springs 
 from the moral sentiments. On the great scale, Piety 
 and Plenty go hand in hand. He that secures God 
 secures his favoring providence. Man is governed 
 by laws which reward morahty. Piety itself is the 
 highest morality. SeeJc ye first the kingdom of God and 
 his righteousness, and all these things shall he added unto 
 you. The sordid anxieties of the poor and the ava- 
 rice of the rich spring from the same source, and 
 are alike culpable. Faith in Divine Providence should 
 forestall and prevent fretting cares and depressing 
 fears. 
 
 This matchless discourse closes with a series of moral 
 truths that are clustered together more like a chapter 
 from the Book of Proverbs than like the flowing 
 sentences of an ordinary discourse. Censorious judg- 
 ments of our fellow-men are forbidden. Men who be- 
 lieve themselves to hold the whole truth, and pride 
 themselves on knowledge and purity, are very apt to 
 look with suspicion and contempt on all that are not 
 orthodox according to their standard. Harsh judg- 
 ments in religious matters seem inseparable from a 
 state in which conscience is stronger than love. Leni- 
 ency and forgiveness are commanded ; blindness to our 
 own faults and sensitiveness to the failings of others 
 are pointed out. Caution is enjoined in speaking of 
 eminent truths in the hearing of the base. The far 
 therhood of God, far nobler and kindei; than any 
 
 23 
 
354 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 earthly fatherhood, is made the ground of confident 
 supplication. The Golden Eule is set forth. Religion 
 is declared not to be an indolent luxury, but a vehe- 
 ment strife, taxing men's resources to the uttermost. 
 His disciples are cautioned against false teachers, 
 against specious morality, against a boastful famil- 
 iarity with Divine things while the life is carnal and 
 secular ; and, finally, his hearers are urged to a prac- 
 tical use of the whole discourse by a striking pic- 
 ture of houses built upon the sand or upon the rock, 
 and their respective powers of endurance. 
 
 1. In this sermon of Jesus there is a full and con- 
 tinual disclosure of a Divine consciousness which did 
 not leave him to the end of his career. His method 
 was that of simple declaration, and not of reasoning or 
 of proof. The simple sentences of the Sermon fell 
 from him as ripe fruit from the bough in a still day. 
 Although they reached out far beyond the attain- 
 ments of his age, and developed an ideal style of 
 character and a sphere of moraUty which addressed 
 itself to the heroic elements in man, his teachings 
 were not labored nor elaborate, but had the complete- 
 ness and brevity of thoughts most famihar to him. 
 He unfolded the old national faith to its innermost 
 nature. In his hands it glowed as if it were de- 
 scended from heaven ; and yet he spoke of the relig- 
 ion of the Jews with the authority of a god, and not 
 with the submissiveness of a man. He stood in the 
 road along which travelled a thousand traditions and 
 evil glosses, and turned them aside by his simple, im- 
 perial, " I say unto you " ! 
 
 There was no inequality or unharmony in the 
 whole discourse. The pitch at the beginning was 
 
TEE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 355 
 
 taken far above the line of any doctrine tlien in prac- 
 tice, and to the end the elevation was sustained. It 
 was the teaching of one who saw men as men had 
 never yet been. The possible manhood, never yet 
 developed, was famihar to Jesus, and upon that ideal 
 he fashioned every precept. Not a note fell from the 
 pitch. Every single thought was brought up to a man- 
 hood far transcending that of his own age. It is this 
 that gives to the Sermon on the Mount an air of im- 
 possibility. Men look upon its requisitions as exceed- 
 ing the power of man. But none of them were 
 lowered in accommodation to the moral tone of his 
 times, every one of them chording with the key- 
 note, — Except your righieousness shall exceed the righteous- 
 ness of tJie Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter 
 into the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 2. In its spirit and secret tendency the Sermon on 
 the Mount may be regarded as a chaetbe of PEEsoisrAii 
 LIBERTY. It does not formally proclaim man's freedom, 
 but no one can follow it without that result. It places 
 moral life upon grounds which imply and promote 
 moral sovereignty in the individual. This it does by 
 removing the emphasis of authority derived from all 
 external rules, and placing it in man's own moral con- 
 sciousness. It is an appeal from rules to principles. 
 Rules are mere methods by which principles are specifi- 
 cally applied. Feeble and undeveloped natures need 
 at each step a formula of action. They are not wise 
 enough to apply a principle to the changing circum- 
 stances of experience. But rules that help the weak 
 to follow principle should tend to educate them to 
 follow principle without such help. Instead of that, 
 rulers, teachers, and hierarchs, finding them convenient 
 
356 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 instruments of authority, multiply them, clothe them 
 with the sanctity of principles, and hold men in a 
 bondage of superstition to customs, rites, and arbitrary 
 regulations. 
 
 The appeal in the Sermon on the Mount is always 
 to the natural grounds of right, and never to the tra- 
 ditional, the historical, and the artificial. In no single 
 case did Jesus institute a method, or external law. 
 Every existing custom or practice which he touched 
 he resolved back to some natural faculty or principle. 
 By shifting the legislative power from the external to 
 the internal, from rules to principles, from synagogues 
 and Sanhedrim to the living moral consciousness of 
 men, the way was prepared for great expansion of 
 reason and freedom of conscience. The most striking 
 example of philosophic generalization in history is that 
 by which Jesus reduced the whole Mosaic system and 
 the whole substance of Jewish literature into the 
 simple principle of love. " Thou shalt love the Lord 
 thy God with aU thy heart, and thy neighbor as thy- 
 self. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the 
 Prophets." 
 
 This discourse recognizes the soul as the man. The 
 body is only a passive instrument. Action is but the 
 evidence of what is going on within ; it has no moral 
 character, good or bad, except that which is impressed 
 upon it by the faculties which inspire it. A man's 
 thoughts and cherished feelings determine his char- 
 acter. He may be a murderer, who never slays his 
 enemy ; an adulterer, who never fulfils the wishes of 
 illicit love ; an irreligious man, who spends his life in 
 offices of devotion ; a selfish creature, whose vanity in- 
 spires charitable gifts. It is the soul that determines 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 357 
 
 manliood. Only God and man's self can control these. 
 Man is the love-servant of God, and sovereign of him- 
 self. The highest personal liberty consists in the 
 abUity and willingness of man to do right from inward 
 choice, and not from external influences. 
 
 3. In this inward and spiritual element we have 
 the solution of difficulties which to many have be- 
 set what may be called the political and economic 
 themes of this discourse. Jesus disclosed to his dis- 
 ciples a kingdom ia which no man should employ 
 physical force in self-defence ; and yet this would 
 seem to give unobstructed dominion to selfish strength. 
 No man may resist the unlawful demands of govern- 
 ment, — let him rather do cheerfully far more than is 
 wrongfully required, — and to every aspect of physi- 
 cal force he would have his disciples oppose only the 
 calmness and kindness of benevolence ; yet this would 
 seem, to make wicked governments secure. The his- 
 tory of civilization certainly shows that society can 
 redeem itself from barbarism only by enterprise, by 
 painstaking industry, by sagacious foresight and rea- 
 sonable care ; but Jesus refers his disciples to the 
 flowers and birds as exemplars of freedom from care ; 
 forbids men to lay up treasure on earth, or to live in 
 regard to earthly things more than by the single day, 
 and declares that they must implicitly trust the pa- 
 ternal care of God for all their wants. Nay, if they 
 are possessed of some wealth, they are not to hus- 
 band it, but give to him that asJceth thee, and from him 
 that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. 
 
 It is certain that a literal interpretation of these 
 precepts respecting giving, lending, resistance of evil, 
 forethought, acquisition of property and its tenure in 
 
358 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 common, would bring Christianity into conflict with 
 every approved doctrine of political economy, and 
 would seem to compel man to spend his earthly life 
 in little more than meditation, — a conception which 
 might suit the natural ease, not to say indolence, of 
 an Oriental life in a genial tropical climate, but which 
 would seem utterly ruinous to the prosperity of a 
 vigorous and enterprising race in the cold zones and 
 upon a penurious soil. To insist upon a literal ful- 
 filment of am/ economic precepts would violate the 
 spirit of the discourse, whose very genius it is to re- 
 lease men from bondage to the letter and bring them 
 into the liberty of the spirit. 
 
 It is very certain that an earnest attempt to make 
 the spirit of these precepts the rule of life wiU bring 
 out in men a moral force of transcendent value, and 
 that among primitive Christians, and in modem days 
 in the small company of Friends, a remarkable degree 
 of prosperity even in worldly things has followed a 
 more rigorous interpretation of these commands than 
 is generally practised. On the other hand, the at- 
 tempt to make property the common and equal pos- 
 session of aU has led to some of the worst social evils. 
 The partial success which has attended the experi- 
 ment, in small bodies, has been at the expense of a 
 general development of the individuals. But whether 
 an immediate and literal obedience to Christ's teach- 
 ings upon the subject of property and industry would 
 be beneficial, or would be possible in nations not 
 placed as the Jews were, — whether the weight of 
 society and all the accumulations of that very civili- 
 zation which Christianity has produced could be sus- 
 tained upon such foundations, — hardly admits of 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 359 
 
 debate. If his precepts were meant ever to be taken 
 literally, it must have been in a condition of society in 
 the future, of which, there was yet no pattern among 
 men. 
 
 It is certain that every step which human life has 
 ever taken toward a full realization of the general 
 morality of the Sermon on the Mount has developed 
 an unsuspected and wonderful prosperity, moral and 
 social. 
 
 We must believe, then, that Jesus gave this grand 
 picture of the new life for immediate and practical 
 use, but that it was to be interpreted, not by the 
 narrowness of the letter, but by the largeness of the 
 spirit. He seemed to foresee what has so often ap- 
 peared, the barren admiration of men who praise this 
 discourse as a power, as a merely ideal justice, as a 
 beautiful but impracticable scheme of ethics ; for he 
 turns upon such, at the close, with a striking para- 
 ble designed to enforce the immediate application of 
 his teachings. And why call ye me Lord, Lord, and 
 do not the things which I say ? Therefore whosoever 
 cometh to me, and heareth these sayings of mine, and 
 doeth them, I will show you to whom he is like : he 
 is like a wise man which built his house and digged 
 deep, and laid the foundation on a rpck; and when 
 the rain descended, and the floods came, and the 
 winds blew, and the storm beat violently upon that 
 house and could not shake it, it fell not, for it was 
 founded on a rock. But every one that heareth these 
 sayings of mine, and doeth them not, is like a fool- 
 ish man, which built his house without a foundation 
 upon the sand ; and the rain descended, and the floods 
 came, and the winds blew, and the storm did beat 
 
360 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 vehemently upon that house, and immediately it fell, 
 and great was the fall of it. 
 
 4. The hold which the Sermon on the Movmt has 
 had, and continues to have, upon men of diverse tem- 
 peraments and beliefs, is not to be accounted for by 
 an inventory of its ethical points. It reached to the 
 very centre of rectitude, and gave to human conduct 
 inspirations that will never diminish. All this might 
 have been done in unsympathetic severity, leaving 
 the Sermon like a mountain barrier between right 
 and wrong, so rugged, barren, and solitary that men 
 would not love to ascend or frequent it. But Jesus 
 breathed over the whole an air of genial tranquillity 
 that wins men to it as to a garden. The precepts 
 grow like flowers, and are fragrant. The cautions 
 and condemnations lie like sunny hedges or walls 
 covered with moss or vines. In no part can it be 
 called dreamy, yet it is pervaded by an element of 
 sweetness and peace, which charms us none the less 
 because it eludes analysis. Like a mUd day in early 
 June, the sky, the earth, the air, the birds and herbage, 
 things near and things far ofl^ seem under some 
 heavenly influence. The heavens unfold, and in place 
 of dreadful deities we behold " Our Father." His 
 personal care is over all the affairs of life. The trials 
 of this mortal sphere go on for a purpose of good, and 
 our fears, our burdens, and our sufferings are neither 
 accidents nor vengeful punishments, but a discipline 
 of education. The end of life is a glorified manhood. 
 At every step Jesus invokes the nobler motives of the 
 human soul. There is nothing of the repulsiveness of 
 morbid anatomy. Where the knife cut to the very 
 nerve, it was a clean and wholesome blade, that carried 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 361 
 
 no poison. The whole ' discourse lifts one out of the 
 lower life, and sets ia motion those higher impulses 
 from which the soul derives its strength and happiness. 
 While it has neither the rhythm nor the form of 
 poetry, yet an ideal element in it produces all the 
 charms of poetry. Portions of the Sermon might be 
 chanted in low tones, as one sings cheering songs in 
 his solitude. It is full of light, full of cheer, full of 
 faith in Divine love and of the certainty of possible 
 goodness in man. The immeasurable distance between 
 the flesh and the spirit, between the animal and man, 
 is nowhere more clearly revealed than in this beautiful 
 discourse. Thus the Son of God stood among men, 
 talking with them face to face as a brother, and giving 
 to them, in his own spirit, glimpses of that heavenly 
 rest for which all the world, at times, doth sigh. 
 
 The Sermon on the Mount drew a line which left 
 the great body of the influential men of his country 
 on one side, and Jesus and his few disciples on the 
 other. If it were to be merely a discourse, and nothing 
 else, it might be tolerated. But if it was a policy, to 
 be followed up by active measures, it was scarcely less 
 than an open declaration of war. The Pharisees were 
 held up by name to the severest criticism. Their 
 philosophy and their most sacred religious customs 
 were mercilessly denoimced, and men were warned 
 against their tendencies. The influence of the criti- 
 cisms upon fasting, prayer, and almsgiving was not 
 limited to these special topics, but must have been 
 regarded as an attack upon the whole method of wor- 
 ship by means of cumbersome rituals. Ritualism was 
 not expressly forbidden ; but if the invisible was to be 
 
362 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 SO highly esteemed, if simplicity, heart purity, spirit- 
 uality, and absolute privacy of spiritual life, were to be 
 accepted as the governiag ideals of worship, all author- 
 itative and obligatory ritualism would wither and drop 
 away from the ripened grain as so much chaf^ — with- 
 out prejudice, however, to the spontaneous use of such 
 material forms in worship as may be found by any 
 one to be specially helpful to him. Neither in this 
 sermon nor in any after discourse did Jesus encourage 
 the use of symbols, if we except Baptism and the 
 Lord's Supper. He never rebuked men for neglect of 
 forms, nor put one new interpretation to them, nor 
 added a line of attractive color. The whole land was 
 full of ritual customs. The days were all marked. 
 The very hours were numbered. Every emotion had 
 its channel and course pointed out. Men were drilled 
 to religious methode, untO. all spontaneity and personal 
 liberty had wellnigh become extinct. In the midst 
 of such artificial ways, Christ stands up as an emanci- 
 pator. He appeals directly to the reason and to the 
 conscience of men. He founds nothing upon the old 
 authority. He even confronts the " common law " of 
 his nation with his own personal authority, as if his 
 words would touch a responsive feeling in every heart. 
 " Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time," 
 — Bvi I say unto you. This was an appeal from aU 
 the past to the living consciousness of the present. It 
 was so imderstood. There was an unmistakable and 
 imperial force in that plnrase, "I say unto you"; and 
 when the last sentence had been heard, there was a 
 stir, and the universal feehng broke out in the expres- 
 sion, " He teaches as one having authority, and not as 
 the Scribes." 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 353 
 
 Whatever may have kept the Pharisees silent, there 
 can be no doubt that this discourse was regarded by 
 them as an end of peace. Henceforth their only 
 thought was how to compass the downfall of a dan- 
 gerous man, who threatened to alienate the people 
 from their religious control. Every day Jesus would 
 now be more closely watched. His enemies were all 
 the while in secret counsel. Step by step they fol- 
 lowed him, from the slopes of Mount Hattin to the 
 summit of Calvary ! 
 
364 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF CONI'LICT. 
 
 The crowd did not disperse or open to let Jesus 
 pass through, but closed about him and thronged his 
 steps, as he returned home to Capernaum. His dis- 
 courses seem to have fascinated the people almost as 
 much as his wonderful deeds astonished them. We do 
 not imagine that the walk was a silent one. There 
 must have been much conversation by the way, much 
 discussion, and doubtless many replies of wisdom and 
 beneficence from Jesus not less striking than the sen- 
 tences of the sermon. From this time forth the life 
 of Jesus is crowded with dramatic incidents. No- 
 where else do we find so many events of great moral 
 significance painted with unconscious skill by so few 
 strokes. Their number perplexes our attention. Like 
 stars in a rich cluster in the heavens, they run to- 
 gether into a haze of brightness, to be resolved into 
 their separate elements only by the strongest glass. 
 Each incident, if drawn apart and studied separately, 
 affords food for both the imagination and the heart. 
 
 By one occurrence a striking insight is given into 
 the relations which sometimes subsisted between the 
 Jews and their conquerors. Not a few Romans, it may 
 be believed, were won to the Jewish religion. The 
 centurion of Capernaum, without doubt, was a convert. 
 We cannot conceive otherwise that he should have built 
 
THE BEGINNING OF CONFLICT. 365 
 
 the Jews a synagogue, and that he should be on such 
 intimate terms with the rulers of it as to make them 
 his messengers to Jesus. This Eoman, Hke so many- 
 other subjects of the Gospel record, has come down 
 to us without a name, and, except a single scene, with- 
 out a history. 
 
 Soon after the return of Jesus to Capernaum, he was 
 met (where, it is not said) by the rulers of the syna- 
 gogue, bearing an earnest request from the centurion 
 that he would heal a favorite slave, who lay sick and 
 at the point of death. The honorable men who bore 
 the message must have been well known to Jesus, and 
 their importunity revealed their own interest in their 
 errand. "They besought him instantly, saying that 
 he was worthy for whom he should do this." Nor 
 should we fail to notice this appeal made to the patri- 
 otism of Jesus, which, coming from men who were 
 familiar with his life and teachings, indicates a marked 
 quality of his disposition. " He loveth our nation, and 
 he hath built us a synagogue." That the heart of 
 Jesus was touched is shown in that he required no tests 
 of faith, but with prompt sympathy said, " I will come 
 and heal him." And, suiting the action to the word, he 
 went with them at once to the centurion's house. 
 
 Learning that Jesus was drawing near, the centu- 
 rion sent another deputation, whose message, both for 
 courtesy and for humility, in one born to command, 
 was striking, — "Lord, trouble not thyself; for I am 
 not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my roof: 
 wherefore neither thought I myself worthy to come 
 unto thee ; but speak the word only, and my servant 
 shall be healed." Then, alluding to his own command 
 over his followers, he implies that Jesus has but to 
 
366 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 make known his will, and all diseases, and life, and 
 death itself, would obey as promptly as soldiers the 
 word of command. The whole scene filled Jesus with 
 pleasurable astonishment. He loved the sight of a 
 noble nature. And yet the contrast between the 
 hardness of his unbelieving countrymen and the art- 
 less dignity of faith manifested by this heathen for- 
 eigner brought grief to his heart. It suggested the 
 rejection of Israel and the ingathering of the Gentiles. 
 Many shall come from the east and west, and shall 
 sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the 
 kingdom of heaven; but the children of the king- 
 dom shall be cast out into outer darkness. Then 
 turning to the messenger he said, "Go thy way; and 
 as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee." The 
 servant was instantly healed. 
 
 The severity of tone with which Jesus spoke of the 
 unbelief of the leaders of his people, and of his re- 
 jection by them, is only one among many indications 
 of the rising intensity of his feelings at this period. 
 Every day seemed to develop in him a higher energy. 
 His calmness did not forsake him, but the sovereignty 
 of his nature was every hour more apparent. He 
 was now more than ever to grapple with demonic in- 
 fluences, and to overcome them. He was about to 
 make his power felt in the realms of death, and 
 bring back to life those who had passed from it. The 
 conduct of his family and the criticisms of the jealous 
 Pharisees, as we shall soon see, plainly enough indi- 
 cate that this elevation of spirit manifested itself in 
 his whole carriage, and many even believed that he 
 was insane, or else under infernal influences. 
 
 On the day following the healing of the centurion's 
 
THE BEGINNING OF CONFLICT. 367 
 
 servant, Jesus, on one of the sliort excursions which 
 he was wont to make from Capernaum, came to the 
 village of Nain, on the slope of Little Hermon and 
 nearly south of Nazareth, on the edge of the great 
 plain of Esdraelon. In the rocky sides of the lull 
 near by were hewn the burial-chambers of the vil- 
 lage, and toward them, as Jesus drew near, was slowly 
 proceeding a funeral train. It was a widowed mother 
 bearing her only son to the sepulchre. She was well 
 known, and the circumstances of her great loss had 
 touched the sympathies of her townsfolk, " and much 
 people of the city was with her." His first word was 
 one of courage to the disconsolate mourner, — " Weep 
 not!" He then laid his hand upon the bier. Such 
 was his coimtenance and commanding attitude that 
 the procession halted. There was to be no deluding 
 ceremony, no necromancy. " Young man, I say unto 
 thee. Arise ! " The blood again beat from his heart, 
 the light dawned vipon his eyes, and his breathing lips 
 spake ! 
 
 There is no grief like a mother's grief. No one who 
 has the heart of a son can see a great nature given 
 up to inconsolable sorrow without sympathy. It was 
 not the mission of Jesus to stay the hand of death, nor 
 did he often choose to bring back the spirit that had 
 once fled ; but there seem to have been two motives 
 here for his interposition. The overwhelming grief of 
 the widowed mother wrought strongly upon his sym- 
 pathy, and there were special reasons why he should 
 just now make a supreme manifestation of his Divine 
 power. Every day the leaven of opposition to him 
 was working. Openly or insidiously, he was resisted 
 and vilified. His own spirit evidently was roused to 
 
368 TRE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 intensity, and began to develop an elevation and force 
 which far surpassed any hitherto put forth. At such 
 a time, the restoration to life of a dead man, in the 
 presence of so vast a throng, could not but produce 
 a deep impression. It was an act of sovereignty 
 which would render powerless the efforts of the emis- 
 saries from Jerusalem to wean the common people 
 from his influence. This end seems to have been 
 gained. The people were electrified, and cried out, 
 "A great prophet is risen up among us!" others said, 
 " God hath visited his people." The tidings of this 
 act ran through the nation; not only in "the region 
 round about," but "the rumor of him went forth 
 throughout all Judaea." 
 
 The battle now begins. Everywhere he carried with 
 him the enthusiastic multitude. Everywhere the Tem- 
 ple party, lurking about his steps, grew more deter- 
 mined to resist the reformation and to destroy the 
 reformer. We are not to suppose that the presence 
 and the miracles of Jesus produced the same effect 
 upon the multitudes present with him that they do 
 upon devout and believing souls now. Om* whole life 
 has been educated by the discourses of this Divine Man. 
 We do violence to our nature, to all our associations 
 and sympathies, if we do mt believe. But in the 
 crowds which surrounded Jesus in his lifetime there 
 was every conceivable diversity of disposition; and 
 though curiosity and wonder and a general social ex- 
 hilaration were common to all, these were not valuable 
 in the eyes of Jesus. The insatiable hunger of Ori- 
 entals for signs and wonders was even a hindrance to 
 his designs of instruction. In every way he repressed 
 this vague and fruitless excitement. The deeper moral 
 
THE BEGINNING OF CONFLICT. 369 
 
 emotions which he most esteemed were prodxiced in 
 very imperfect forms and in but comparatively few 
 persons. Cautious men held their convictions in sus- 
 pense. Many favored him and followed him without 
 really committing themselves to his cause. 
 
 There will always be men who will show favor to 
 the hero of the hour. Such a one was Simon the 
 Pharisee, who probably dwelt in Nain or in its neigh- 
 borhood, for at that tinae this whole region was pop- 
 ulous and prosperous. It had not then been given 
 over to the incursions of the Bedouins, who for cen- 
 turies have by continual ravages kept this beautiful 
 territory in almost complete desolation. 
 
 Invited to the house of Simon to dine, Jesus re- 
 paired thither with his disciples. There went with 
 him, also, unbidden guests. Not the widowed mother 
 alone had felt the sjTnpathy of his nature. While he 
 was bringing back to life her son, there was in the 
 crowd one who felt the need of a resurrection from 
 the dead even more than if her body, rather than her 
 honor, had died. In the presence of Jesus the sense 
 of her degradation became unendurable. In him she 
 beheld a benefactor who might rescue her. All men 
 despised her. Her reputation, like a brazen wall, 
 stood between her and reformation. For her there 
 were no helpers. Bad men were friendly only for 
 evil. Moral men shut up their sympathies from one 
 who was an outcast. The gratitude of the mother for 
 her child restored must have been like incense to the 
 sensitive soul of Jesus. But it is doubtful whether he 
 did not more profoundly rejoice in the remorse, the 
 absorbing grief, the hope struggling against despair, 
 that filled the bosom of this imknown Magdalen. 
 
370 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 As Jesus reclined at dinner, according to the Ori- 
 ental custom, this penitent woman, coming behind, 
 without word or permission, wept at the feet of Jesus 
 unrebuked. So copiously flowed her tears that his feet 
 were wet, and with her dishevelled locks she sought to 
 remove the sacred tears of penitence. The very per- 
 fumes which had been provided for her own person she 
 lavished upon this stranger's feet. That she was not 
 spumed was to her trembling heart a sign of grace and 
 favor. When the Pharisee beheld, without sympathy, 
 the forbearance of Jesus, it stirred up his heart against 
 his guest. Like many others he had been in suspense 
 as to the true character of the man. Now the decis- 
 ion was unfavorable. It was clear that he was not a 
 prophet of God. " This man, if he were a prophet," 
 he said within himself, " would have known who and 
 what manner of woman this is that toucheth him : for 
 she is a sinner." He could not conceive of a divinity 
 of compassion. God, to his imagination, was only an 
 enlarged Pharisee, careful of his own safety, and care- 
 less of those made wretched by their own sins. These 
 thoughts were interpreted upon his countenance by a 
 look of displeasure and contempt. He did not expect 
 to be humbled in the sight of all his guests by an 
 exposition of his own inhospitality; for it seems that 
 while he had invited Jesus to dine, it was more from 
 curiosity than respect, and he seems to have consid- 
 ered that the favor which he thus conferred released 
 him from those rites which belong to Oriental hospi- 
 tality. In a parable, Jesus propounded to him a ques- 
 tion. If a creditor generously forgives two debtors, 
 one of fifty pence and the other of five hundred, 
 which will experience the most gratitude? The an- 
 
THE BEGINNING OF CONFLICT. 371 
 
 swer was obvious, "I siTppose that he to whom he 
 forgave most." "Thou hast rightly judged." Then, 
 in simple phrase, but with terrible emphasis, he con- 
 trasted the conduct of this fallen woman with the 
 insincere hospitality of the host. "Seest thou this 
 woman ? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me 
 no water for my feet : but she hath washed my feet 
 with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. 
 Thou gavest me no kiss : but this woman since the 
 time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My 
 head with oil thou didst not anoint : but this woman 
 hath anointed my feet with ointment. Wherefore I 
 say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven ; 
 for she loved much : but to whom little is forgiven, 
 the same loveth Httle." With ineffable grace, Jesus 
 turns from the Pharisee, silent under this rebuke, to 
 the woman : " Thy sins are forgiven." The effect 
 produced upon the company shows that these words 
 were no mere pious phrases, but were uttered with 
 an authority which a mere man had no right to 
 assume. "Who is this that forgive th sins also?" 
 Truly, who can forgive sins but God only ? Jesus did 
 not deign an explanation. In the same lofty mood 
 of sovereignty he dismissed the ransomed soul : " Thy 
 faith hath saved thee ; go in peace." But such a gra- 
 cious sentence was the strongest possible confirmation 
 of their judgment that he had assumed to perform the 
 functions of a Divine Being. 
 
 We shall hereafter find many a brief controversy in 
 which a parable, or a simple question touching th^ 
 marrow of things, puts his adversaries to silence, con- 
 victing them even when they would not be convinced. 
 Upon this day there had been two deaths, and the 
 
372 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 living death the most piteous and least pitied among 
 men: two resurrections, and the less marvellous of 
 the two was the more wondered at: two proofs of 
 Divinity, — one to the senses, and impressive to the 
 lowest and highest alike; the other transcendently 
 brighter, but perceived only by those whose moral 
 sensibilities gave them spiritual eyesight. The fur- 
 ther history of the Avidow's son is not recorded. For 
 a moment he stands forth with singular distinctness, 
 and then sinks back into forgetfulness, without name 
 or memorial. 
 
 At about this time the figure of John comes for a 
 moment to the light. He had probably lain for six 
 months in his prison at Machaerus. Although in his 
 youth he had been trained in solitude, it was the soli- 
 tude of freedom and of the wilderness. There is evi- 
 dence that his long confinement in prison began to 
 wear upon his spirits. It is true that he was not 
 wholly cut off" from the companionship of men. As 
 John's offence was political only in pretence, Herod 
 did not guard his prisoner so but that his disciples had 
 access to him. Can we doubt what was the one theme 
 of the Baptist's inquiry? The work Avhich he had 
 begun, which Jesus was to take up, — how fared it? 
 Why was there no overwhelming disclosure of the 
 new kingdom ? Of what use were discourses and won- 
 derful works so long as the nation stood unmoved ? A 
 long time had elapsed since Christ's baptism. He had 
 not openly proclaimed even his Messiahship. He had 
 not gathered his followers either into a church or an 
 army. He gave no signs of lifting that banner which 
 was to lead Israel to universal supremacy. He was 
 spending his days in Galilee, far from Jervisalem, the 
 
THE BEGINNING OF CONFLICT. 373 
 
 • 
 
 proper capital of the new kingdom as of the old, and 
 among a largely foreign population. Nor was he de- 
 nouncing the wickedness of his times as John did, nor 
 keeping the reserve of a lofty sanctity, but was teach- 
 ing in villages like a prophet-schoolmaster, receiving 
 the frequent hospitality of the rich, and even partaking 
 of social festivities and pubhc banquets. Many of 
 John's disciples, as we know, were with Jesus during 
 several of his journeys, attentive listeners and observ- 
 ers. Many openly adhered to the new leader, and all 
 seemed friendly. But it is natural that a few should 
 be jealous for their old master, and that they should 
 prefer the downright impetuosity of John to the calmer 
 and gentler method of Jesus. They would naturally 
 carry back to the solitary man in prison accounts col- 
 ored by their feehngs. To all this should be added 
 that depression of spirits which settles upon an ener- 
 getic nature when no longer connected with actual 
 affairs. Much of hope and courage springs from sym- 
 pathy and contact with society. We grow uncertain 
 of things which we can no longer see. 
 
 Whatever may have been John's mood and its 
 causes, it is certain that the message which he now 
 sent to Jesus implied distressing doubts, which were 
 reprehended by the closing sentence of Jesus's reply. 
 Blessed is he, whosoever shall not he offended in me. John 
 was in danger of losing faith in Jesus, and there is 
 an almost piteous tone of entreaty in the inquiry 
 which he sent his disciples to make : " Art thou he 
 that should come? or look we for another?" Of 
 what use would be an asseveration in words, or an 
 apologetic explanation ? There was a more cogent 
 reply. It would seem that Jesus delayed his answer, 
 
374 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 and went on with his teaching and miracles in the 
 presence of John's waiting disciples. " In that same 
 hour he cured many of their infirmities and plagues, 
 and of evil spirits ; and unto many that were bUnd 
 he gave sight." It is possible that these messengers 
 had been with Jesus at Nain and beheld the rais- 
 ing of the widow's son, since he mentions the raising 
 of the dead as one of the acts of power which they 
 had witnessed, and the widow's son was the first in- 
 stance recorded. During his ministry only three cases 
 of this kind are mentioned, namely, the young man at 
 Nain, the daughter of Jairus, and Lazarus, the brother 
 of Mary and Martha. Yet it by no means follows 
 that these were the only instances. 
 
 These wonderful deeds, enacted before their eyes, 
 were the answer which they were to carry back. It 
 implies the essential nobility of John's nature, as if he 
 only needed to be brought into sympathy with such 
 living work to recognize the Divine power. " Go, .... 
 tell John these things which ye have seen and heard : 
 how that the blind receive their sight, and the lame 
 walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the 
 dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel 
 preached unto them." 
 
 It was not the rumor of wonderful works that 
 John's messengers were to carry back, but the testi- 
 mony of what they themselves had "seen and heard." 
 No rumor could surpass the reality ; none of all the 
 special deeds performed would be likely to satisfy the 
 mind of John so much as the greatest marvel of all, 
 — that one had appeared to whom the poor were an 
 ■ object of solicitude ! Not the healing of the sick, nor 
 even the raising of the dead, was so surprising as 
 
TEE BEGINNING OF CONFLICT. 375 
 
 that a person clothed with Divine power, able to draw 
 to him the homage of the rich and of the influential, 
 should address himself specially to the poor. Wonders 
 and miracles might be counterfeited ; but a sympathy 
 with suffering and helplessness so tender, so laborious, 
 and so long continued, was not likely to be simulated. 
 Such humanity was unworldly and divine. 
 
 Ample provision was made among the Jews for the 
 instruction of all the families of the nation, but the 
 great disasters which had befallen that people had in- 
 terrupted the action of this benevolent polity. Sifted 
 in among the native Jews, especially in GalUee, were 
 thousands of foreigners, many of them extremely ig- 
 norant, debased, and poor, who were objects of re- 
 ligious prejudice and aversion. The Mosaic institutes 
 breathed a spirit of singular humanity toward the 
 poor. No nation of antiquity can show such benevo- 
 lent enactments ; nor can Christian nations boast of 
 any advance in the temper or polity by which the 
 evils of poverty are alleviated and the weak preserved 
 fropa the oppression of the strong. It was promised 
 to the ancient Jew, at least by implication, that, if he 
 maintained the Divine economy established by Moses, 
 " there shall be no poor among you " (Deut. xv. 4, 5). 
 In the palmy days of Israel there were no beggars ; 
 and there is no Hebrew word for begging.^ But in 
 
 ' Professor T. J. Conant, of Brooklyn, for many years engaged in the 
 translation and revision of the Scriptures for the American Bible Union, 
 a friend to whom I am indebted for many valuable suggestions in matters 
 of scholarly research, writes me, in reference to this, as follows : — 
 
 " There is no word in Hebrew that specifically means to heg. Three 
 verbs, hv.p in Kal to ask, Piel to ask importunately, &B2 to seek, and B'l'l 
 to search for, to seek, are strained from their natural sense to express beg- 
 ging, for lack of a proper expression of it ; and this in only four passages. 
 
 " The first, '7^''' (compare Judges v. 25, ' he asked water '), Kal form, 
 
376 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 the distemper of those later times all regard for the 
 poor had wellnigh perished. Jesus renewed the old 
 national feeling in a nobler form. Himself poor, the 
 child of the poor, he devoted himself to the welfare of 
 the needy; and though he associated freely with all 
 ranks and classes of people, his sympathy for the poor 
 never waned, and his ministrations continued to the 
 very end to be chiefly among them. 
 
 John's disciples depart. The great excitable and 
 fickle crowd remain. How easily they had let go of 
 John ! How eagerly they had taken up Jesus ! How 
 quickly would they rush after the next novelty ! Like 
 the tides, this changeable people were always coming 
 and going, under influences which they could neither 
 control nor understand. It did not please Jesus to see 
 them the sport of every fantastic creation that could 
 dazzle them with pretentious novelties. 
 
 What went ye out into the wilderness for to see? 
 A reed shaken with the mnd? It was as if he had said. 
 Now it is a mountebank, shrewd and shifty, that sends 
 you roaming into some gathering-place, hoping for de- 
 liverance from the oppressor at the hands of one who 
 
 is used in Proverbs xx. 4, ' shall beg in harvest,' — properly, shall ask help ; 
 Piel (intensive), Psalm cix. 10, 'let his children be vagabonds and beg,' — 
 properly, ask importunately. 
 
 " The second, t^j (participle), is used in Psalm xxxvii. 25, ' nor his 
 seed begging bread,' — properly, seeking bread, as it is translated in Lamen- 
 tations i. 19, ' they sought their meat.' 
 
 " The third, fn, is used in Psalm cix. 10, 2d member, Eng. V., ' let them 
 seek (their bread).' Gesenius needlessly gives it (here only) the sense 
 to beg. The meaning is, let them seek (help), be seekers, far from their 
 ruined homes. 
 
 "The word 'beggar,' in 1 Samuel ii. 8, is a mistranslation of trsx, needy, 
 poor. ' ■ ' • 
 
 " I think it entirely safe to say, as you have done, that ' there is no He- 
 brew word for begging.' " 
 
THE BEGINNING OF CONFLICT. 377 
 
 only plays on your credulity for his own benefit, and 
 is himself swayed hither and thither by the breath of 
 self-interest, like a reed quivering in the wind ! 
 
 Turning to others, he said : But what went ye out 
 for to see ? A man clothed in soft raiment ?, Did you 
 expect deliverance woidd come to Israel from rich and 
 luxurious men, pleasure-loving courtiers ? Look for 
 such men only in courts and mansions. They will 
 never task themselves for this people, but wUl bask in 
 sumptuous palaces. 
 
 Turning again to others, Jesus said : But what 
 went ye out for to see ? A prophet ? A great re- 
 former, flaming with indignation at evil, and vehement 
 in rebuke ? John was indeed a prophet, eminent above 
 the great brotherhood of former days. No other 
 prophet was ever like him; and yet even John can 
 never bring in that kingdom which God has promised 
 to his people. The kingdom of the spirit is not phy- 
 sical nor forceful. It dwells in the heart. It is the 
 empire within the soul, pure, spontaneous, benevolent. 
 Even the least member of this kingdom of the spirit 
 is greater than the greatest prophet of the old and 
 external dispensation. 
 
 This was the language of criticism and rebuke. It 
 contrasted the eagerness which many among his hear- 
 ers had shown to rush after any sign of empirfe that 
 had the tokens of external movement and force, and 
 the disappointment which they could not conceal that 
 Jesus should, with all his wonderful power, do noth- 
 ing except to instruct people and to relieve the suf- 
 ferings of the unfortunate. If this is all, said they, if 
 marvel and discourse are not leading on to organized 
 revolt and to victorious onset, what is the use of 
 
378 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 them ? Truth and purity of motive and self-denying 
 kindness may be all very well, but will they dispossess 
 foreign armies and reinstate the Jewish rulers ? Thus 
 the real excellence of the new kingdom was tinned 
 against it as a weakness. 
 
 The teaching and miracles of Jesus were doing lit- 
 tle good, and seemed to quicken that fatal tendency 
 toward pride and self-indulgence which had already 
 prevented the development of moral sensibility. It 
 was not personal but political changes that men 
 wanted. Neither John nor Jesus fed their insatiable 
 ambition, and each in turn was rejected on a mere 
 pretence. John is a recluse, abstinent, rigorously se- 
 vere. He is possessed by the demon of the wilder- 
 ness ! Jesus dwells among his people, adopts the 
 social customs of his times, disowns all pretentious 
 fasting and all acerb morality. He eats and drinks 
 like other men: to-day he breaks bread among the 
 poor ; to-morrow some ostentatious rich man will have 
 him at his table ; — it makes no difference. A couch 
 or the hard plank of a ship, the banquet or the crust 
 of bread, are alike to him. But this imiversal social 
 sympathy is charged against him by his censorious 
 critics: He is a dissipated fellow, a companion of 
 grossly wicked men ! For John the Baptist came neither 
 eating Iread nor drinUng wine; and ye my, He hath a 
 devil. The Son of Man is come eating and drinJcing ; and 
 ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a winehibber, a friend 
 of publicans and sinners! 
 
 To such unfriendly thoughts Jesus replies by point- 
 ing out a group of peevish children that had gath- 
 ered in the pubUc square. Their companions cry, 
 "Let us play funeral." No, they will not play at 
 
TEE BEGINNING OF CONFLICT. 379 
 
 that; it is too solemn. "Well, then, play wedding! 
 No, they do not like pipes and dancing! Nothing 
 will suit them. The severity of John and the gentle- 
 ness of Jesus were alike unpalatable to men who 
 wanted riches, power, and obsequious flatteries. This 
 impenetrable worldliness appears to have affected the 
 spirits of Jesus in an unusual degree. He was sad- 
 dened that so little of promise had resulted from his 
 labors. 
 
 In the full sovereignty of his nature, he called to 
 judginent the cities in wMch he had wrought the most 
 striking miracles in the greatest numbers with the 
 least possible effects. " Woe unto thee, Bethsaida," — 
 it was a soliloquy probably, low-voiced, and heard only 
 by his disciples, — " woe unto thee, Chorazin ! for if 
 the mighty works which were done in you had been 
 done in Tyre and Sidon [heathen cities], they would 
 have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes." In 
 this solemn hour, Capernaum, his home after his re- 
 jection by the people of Nazareth, rose before him 
 as guUtiest of all. Nowhere else had he taught so 
 assiduously, or performed so many beneficent works. 
 He dwelt there, and was there well known. Yet in 
 no other place was there so little change for good. 
 "Thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, 
 shalt be brought down to hell ; .... it shall be more 
 tolerable for the land of Sodom, in the day of judg- 
 ment, than for thee." Jesus did not undervalue the 
 guilt of the cities of the plain. He left bestial vices 
 as odious as the moral sense of the world had ranked 
 them. But he raised the estimate of the guilt of 
 selfish and sordid sins. Sodom was not less, but 
 Capernaum was more, guilty than men judged. The 
 
380 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 sentence of Jesus does not change the emphasis of 
 condemnation, but its relative distribution. 
 
 Throughout this scene of reproach, and the follow- 
 ing passages of conflict with the cold and selfish re- 
 ligionists, the character of Jesus assumes a new ap- 
 pearance. It loses nothing of benevolence, but it 
 reveals how terrible benevolence may become when 
 arrayed against evil. The guUt of sin is that it 
 destroys happiness in its very sources. Regarding 
 the law of right as the law of happiness, the viola- 
 tion of right is the destruction of happiness. A dis- 
 position of disobedience is malign. It reaches out 
 against universal well-being. Divine benevolence, as 
 a part of the very exercise of kindness, sternly re- 
 sists every active malign tendency. In a pure soul, 
 indignation at evil is not an alternative or mere ac- 
 companiment of benevolence, but is benevolence itself 
 acting for the preservation of happiness. It seems 
 impossible that one should be good, and not abhor 
 that which destroys goodness. 
 
 In all the reproofs of Jesus there is an exaltation 
 and calmness which renders them more terrible than if 
 they were an outburst of sudden passion. It is not 
 angered ambition, but repulsed kindness, that speaks. 
 There is sadness in the severity. The very denun- 
 ciations seem to mourn. 
 
 After his distress had given itself voice in those 
 severe words, he seems to have let go the trouble, and 
 to have arisen in prayer to the bosom of his God. The 
 gloom is breaking ! He sees an infinite wisdom in that 
 love which hides from the proud and vain the ineffable 
 truths of religion, and which reveals them to the humble 
 and the heart-broken. The vision of God brings peace 
 
THE BEGINNING OF CONFLICT. 2,^\ 
 
 to him. He turns again to the people, every cloud 
 gone from his face and the sternness from his words. 
 Full of pity and of tenderness, in sentences that have 
 in them the charm of music, he invites the troubled 
 and unhappy around him to that rest of the heart 
 which will keep in perfect peace him whose soul is 
 stayed on God : — 
 
 Come unto me, all ye thai labor and are heavy laden, and 
 I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn 
 of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall 
 find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my 
 hurden is light. 
 
 John's message of doubt and wavering came to Jesus 
 while he was in full conflict with the emissaries from 
 Jerusalem, who were sowing distrust, and who, as we 
 shall see, had even stirred up his own family connec- 
 tions against him. The whole tone of Jesus's reply, 
 the progression of thought, is that of one thoroughly 
 aroused and indignant at the exhibitions of moral 
 meanness around him. His words were warrior words. 
 Though in prison, saddened, and about to perish, John 
 was gently but faithfully rebuked. " Blessed is he, 
 whosoever shall not be offended in me." If even 
 John was culpable, how much more the malignant 
 enemies around him ! Still more 'the cities which had 
 been the focal points of his ministration ! Thus step 
 by step his soul manifests its noble repugnance to evil', 
 till it breaks forth in prayer before God, and returns, 
 full of pity and of yearning, to beseech once more the 
 liberty of doing good to ungrateful enemies. Noth- 
 ing can justify the royal tone of Jesus in this whole 
 scene but the reality of his Divinity. That a man 
 should make himself the fountain of cleansing in- 
 
382 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 fluence, and summon all his fellows to be healed by 
 his spirit, would exhibit an arrogance of pride which 
 to their rnjnds could be palUated only on the supposi- 
 tion of insanity. 
 
 His family connections do not seem to have been 
 greatly in sympathy with Jesus at any time. We 
 know that at a much later period his brethren reject- 
 ed his claims of Messiahship. Of course they must 
 have watched his career, and listened to all that was 
 said of him by those to whom they had been ac- 
 customed to look for right opinions in matters of re- 
 ligion. The increased activity of Jesus, the resolute 
 front which he opposed to the constituted teachers of 
 his people, the increasing opposition which he stirred 
 up, the visible effect of all this upon his own spirit, 
 the loftiness both of carriage and of language with 
 which he confronted his opponents, together with his 
 frequent retirements and his deep reveries, suggested 
 to his friends the notion of insanity. Without doubt 
 this was at first a hinted criticism, a shaking of the 
 head and a whispering of one with another. 
 
 His life must have seemed strange, if they looked 
 upon Jesus without faith in his Divine mission, or sym- 
 pathy with it, and applied to him such practical rules 
 as regulated their own conduct. The intensity of his 
 spirit, the apparent restlessness which compelled him 
 to go throughout every village and city, "preaching 
 and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God," 
 must have seemed unaccountable. Then, his company 
 was extraordinary. His twelve disciples were now his 
 constant attendants. But besides these a singular 
 band of women went with him, and largely provided 
 for his support. First mentioned is Mary Magdalene, 
 
THE BEGINNING OF CONFLICT. 383 
 
 who, whatever doubts may rest upon her history or 
 the origin of her name, clung to Jesus with a fidelity 
 that could not be surpassed, an aflfection which seems 
 to have grown more earnest and fearless with dan- 
 ger, and which, during his crucifixion and after his 
 burial, places her even before his own mother in in- 
 tensity of self-devotion. Chusa, the wife of Herod's 
 steward, was another ; and Susanna, whose name only 
 remains to us, was also conspicuous. But it is said 
 by Luke that there were "many others." He also 
 states that "they ministered to him of their sub- 
 stance." This was an extraordinary procession for a 
 teacher to make. His kindred felt that they had a 
 right to interfere, and it was not long before they 
 had the opportimity. Indeed, there seem to have 
 been two separate efforts to withdraw him to the 
 privacy of his home, — or, rather, two stages of the 
 one search and attempted interference. On one oc- 
 casion the enthusiasm of the people rose to an uncon- 
 trollable height. Jesus appears to have been utterly 
 swallowed up by the crowd. He and his disciples 
 " could not so much as eat bread." Then it was that 
 his friends, when they heard of it, " went out to lay 
 hands upon him ; for they said. He is beside himself" 
 
 But the work went on. The Pharisees beheld his 
 growing power with the people, especially after his 
 mastery of a case of demoniacal possession of a pecu- 
 Harly malignant and obstinate character. The easy res- 
 toration of the victim filled the multitude, even though 
 they had almost grown familiar with his miracles of 
 mercy, with wonder and amazement. They cried out 
 in spontaneous enthusiasm, "Is not this the son of 
 David ? " By that title was the long-desired Messiah 
 
384 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 familiarly known. This homage of the people stirred 
 the Scribes. Taking hint from the impression of his 
 friends that he was insane, they added to the charge 
 that it was an insanity of demoniacal possession! 
 That he cast out demons could not be denied; but 
 they said that did not argue his Divinity, for he was 
 himself a dupe or an accomplice, working under the 
 power conferred by Satan ; in short, a magician, a nec- 
 romancer, one who had made a league with the devil ! 
 
 The emissaries from Jerusalem and their confeder- 
 ates in Galilee were blind to all the excellences of 
 Jesus. If he was to thrive otitside of their party, and 
 raise up an influence antagonistic to it, then, the better 
 he was, the more dangerous to them. How unscrupu- 
 lous and malignant their conversation became is re- 
 vealed by the epithets employed : he was a drunkard ; 
 he was a glutton ; he was a companion of knaves 
 and courtesans ; he was a sabbath-breaker, a blas- 
 phemer, a charlatan, a necromancer, an imclean fel- 
 low. (Mark iii. 30.) His power could not be gain- 
 said ; but its moral significance might be blurred, 
 nay, it might be made to witness against him, if 
 they could persuade the people that the devil sent 
 him among them, and that under the guise of kind- 
 ness he was really weaving infernal snares for their 
 easy credulity ! 
 
 The reply of Jesus to this last aspersion was con- ' 
 elusive, if judged from their point of view. " You 
 believe that Satan is carrying forward his work by me. 
 Would he begin, then, by acting against himself? 
 "Will Beelzebub cast out Beelzebub? Satan fight 
 Satan ? Is not this a house divided against itself, and 
 sure to fall ? But why charge me with acting from 
 
THE BEGINNING OF CONFLICT. 385 
 
 infernal power, when you believe that evil spirits are 
 cast out by your own disciples and by lawful naethods ? 
 When your pupils employ the exorcisms which you 
 prescribe, and men are relieved, do you admit that it 
 was the devil that wrought with them ? On the con- 
 trary, you believe it to be a Divine power that helps 
 your children. Their example condemns your argu- 
 ments against me." 
 
 If the carefulness of the Lord's reply seems strange, 
 it is only because the exceeding gravity and danger- 
 ousness of this attack upon him is not appreciated. 
 Beelzebub was a heathen god, and to charge Jesus 
 with acting as his emissary was to suggest the most 
 insidious form of idolatry. To the common people 
 Jesus was the very model of a Jew. He revived and 
 represented the heroic national character. His whole 
 career appealed to the patriotic element. His use of 
 their Scriptures, his teaching in their synagogues, his 
 conformity to aU Jewish rites and usages in worship, 
 the historical basis of his teachings, and the very at- 
 tempt to bring back the old Jewish life by reforming 
 the abuses of the school of the Pharisee, all gave to 
 him a high repute with the common people as a rep- 
 resentative national man with the stamp of the old 
 prophets. 
 
 If his enemies could destroy this impression, and 
 excite a suspicion that, after all, he was in sympathy 
 with foreign nations and was really an emissary of an 
 idolatrous system, they would easily -destroy his in- 
 fluence. , For on no other point was the Jewish mind 
 so inflammable as against idolatrous foreign influences. 
 Beelzebub was the chief of foreign heathen deities. 
 To charge Jesus with acting under his inspiration was 
 
 25 
 
386 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 an appeal to the national fanaticism. The vigor of 
 Christ's reply manifests his sense of the danger of 
 such an imputation, and explains also the solemn and 
 judicial severity with which he immediately turned 
 upon his assailants. For the lines were drawn. All 
 hope of accommodation was past. Between him and 
 the Pharisees the gulf had been opened that could never 
 be closed. Hitherto he had entered into controversy 
 with them as a Kabbi would dispute with any one in 
 his school who dissented from his teaching. In his 
 Sermon on the Mount he had clearly taken ground 
 against the whole ethics and rehgious philosophy of 
 this school. But now the hour had come when he 
 distinctly assailed them as a corrupt party. There 
 could be no more friendliness between them. No one 
 could be on both sides, or be indifferent. All must 
 choose. Pointing to his antagonists, he declared, " He 
 that is not with me is against me. He that gathereth 
 not with me scattereth abroad." He now asserts his 
 Divinity as he had never done before, not by assum- 
 ing to himself Divine titles, but by identifjdng their 
 resistance to him as a direct and conscious resistance 
 to the Holy Ghost. ' 
 
 The scene at this point is extraordinary. Jesus had 
 hitherto stood upon the defensive. But there was 
 something in the spirit of his antagonists which roused 
 in him the latent royalty to a most august disclosure. 
 He no longer explains or defends. He brings home to 
 the conspiring Pharisees the terrible charge of blas- 
 phemy. He expressly excludes the idea that this was 
 done simply because they had opposed him. Whoso- 
 ever speaketh a word against the Son of Man, it shall be for- 
 given him. Jesus accepted his place among men, and 
 
THE BEGINNING OF CONFLICT. 387 
 
 did not demand any exemption from the criticisms 
 and arguments with which men contested all the phi- 
 losophies or religious teachings of the Eabbis. He did 
 not hold his antagonists guilty because they had op- 
 posed his claims or his doctrines. It was their own 
 highest nature, in its state of Divine illumination, that 
 they had deliberately violated. His w9rks and his 
 expositions had not failed j there was among these 
 men an hour of full conviction that this work and 
 this doctrine was of God. But pride and malign sel- 
 fishness rose up against the light. For the sake of 
 sinister interests, they dishonored the noblest intu- 
 itions of their souls. 
 
 There are hours in which men are lifted out of the 
 dominion of sensuous fact, and come up into the full 
 blaze of spiritual truths. They are consciously in the 
 very presence of God. The Divine influence is so per- 
 sonal and pervasive, that in their own consciousness 
 they think, feel, and wiU, as it were, face to face with 
 God. These are the hours of the soul's sovereignty, 
 and its choices are final, since they are made when 
 every advantage is concentrated upon them. If they 
 are right, they are eternally right ; if wrong, they are 
 wrong forever. 
 
 In such a supreme mood the Pharisees had not only 
 dishonored their own luminous convictions of the 
 truth, but, transported with the anger of mortified 
 vanity, had poured contempt and ridicule upon them. 
 The sentence of Mark is very significant, — "Because 
 they said. He hath «^^ unclean spirit." What unclean 
 spirit was meant, is shown by Matthew : " This fellow 
 doth not cast out devils but by Beelzebub." Beelze- 
 bub was to the Jews the heathen god of nastiness, 
 
388 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 god of the dunghill, of universal excrement!^ The 
 Vulgarity of the abuse must be left to the imagi- 
 nation. 
 
 Affairs had reached a crisis. It is well, therefore, at 
 this point, to look somewhat closely into the precise 
 relations subsisting between the party of the Temple, 
 the common people, and Jesus. 
 
 The Scribes and Pharisees were neither better nor 
 worse than men usually are who hold power in their 
 hands, and are determined, at all hazards, to main- 
 tain it. If Jesus could have been made to work un- 
 der their general direction, and so to contribute to the 
 stability of the Temple influence, they would have 
 suffered him to utter almost any sentiment, and to 
 execiite rigorous popular reformations. Every word 
 and every act was scrutinized from one point of view, 
 — its relations to the influence of the dominant 
 school. 
 
 In the progressive conflict with Jesus, which ended 
 with his death, the Scribes acted within the familiar 
 
 • See Smith's Bible Dictionary (American edition, Hurd and Houghton), 
 Art. " Beelzebul." 
 
 Moreover, on this point Professor Conant writes: "To the heathen 
 themselves Beelzebub was not the ' god of nastiness,' but a very respectable 
 sort of a divinity, with an honorable vocation, according to their notions. 
 
 "■Beelzebub (3n; Sjra), with final S, occurs only once, in 2 Kings i. 2, 
 as a god of the Philistines at Ekron, to whom Ahaziah sent messengers to 
 inquire whether he should recover from his disease. He was then, it seems, 
 a god of good repute even in Israel. 
 
 "Prom the etymology, Gesenius explains the name as 'fly-Baal, fly- 
 destroyer, like the Zeis 'hiT6fivios of Elis and the Mylagrm deus of 
 
 the Romans.' Fiirst, under a-n?, compares the 'epitiiets of Hercules, 
 moKTdvos (vermin-killer) and Kopvoniav (locust-killer).' 
 
 " The Jews, with their propensity to sarcastic punning, pronounced the 
 name Beelzebul (S^.t hyf), 'god of the dunghill,' dunghill-god. 
 
 " There can be no reasonable doubt that the view you give in the text 
 is the true one." 
 
THE BEGINNING OF CONFLICT. 389 
 
 sphere of ordinary political immorality. They were not 
 monsters, but simply unscrupulous politicians. At first 
 they contented themselves with observing Jesus, and 
 would evidently have been wilHng to conciliate, had a 
 chance been given them. They then followed him, 
 watching for some mistake which would bring down on 
 him the grasp of a jealous foreign government. This 
 was by far the most pohtic method of dealing with 
 him. A dangerous man would thus be removed by an 
 odious foreign despotism, without prejudice to the Jew- 
 ish rulers. But Jesus was fully conscious of this peril. 
 So cautious was he in discourse, that from the records 
 of his teaching one would scarcely know that there 
 was an intrusive government in Palestine. He used 
 his authority to keep down popular excitement ; and 
 when the enthusiasm could not be controlled, he 
 frequently withdrew from sight, and sometimes hid 
 himself absolutely. The wisdom of his course was 
 justified. The Roman officials, after a while, seem to 
 have dismissed his movements from their thoughts j 
 and even at the crisis of his death they appear to 
 have cared but little for the .matter, and to have 
 been pushed on by the resolute fury of the Jewish 
 leaders. 
 
 If the Temple party could not check the career of 
 Jesus by direct political interference, the next obvi- 
 ous step of policy would be to embroil him with his 
 own countrymen. This would seem not difficult. The 
 Jewish people were inordinately sensitive to secta- 
 rian and national prejudices. It seemed likely that 
 a bold reformer like Jesus would first or last strike 
 some blow that would rouse up the whole wrath of 
 a bigoted people, and that he would be sacrificed in 
 
390 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 some popular tumult. This line of policy was skil- 
 fully followed by them. It was not wise to shock 
 . the enthusiasm of the people, or to stand cold and 
 unmoved amid so much popular feeling. It was 
 better to go with the crowd as friends, but as con- 
 servative friends. They listened, but in a gentle and 
 respectful way sought to entangle him in his teach- 
 ings. The ill success of this course little by little 
 increased their zeal. But they were politic. They 
 could not break with Jesus so long as the mass of 
 the people were with him. They therefore still main- 
 tained outward amicable relations, but watched and 
 waited, Avhispering, suggesting, criticising j — yet all 
 in vain. The current would not be turned by these 
 puflfs of wind that ran across its surface. 
 
 Jesus seems to have been perfectly aware of all 
 this, and of the dangers which threatened. His tran- 
 quil avoidance of their snares disclosed how skilful 
 may be the highest moral endowments. It was diffi- 
 cult to oppose the whole religious teaching of his 
 times without appearing to set aside the Jewish faith, 
 and bringing upon himself the charge of infidelity,— 
 always a facile and effective weapon. It was diffi- 
 cult to resist the authority of the representative men 
 of his nation, withoiit violating the fanatical sense of 
 patriotism among the people. The consciousness of 
 such peril would render a weak nature cautious, would 
 limit his sphere of remark, and enfeeble his criti- 
 cisms of evil. Nothing is more striking than the 
 attitude of Jesus in the face of this danger. His 
 teachings did not flag. His words became more pow- 
 erful. The sphere of topics every day enlarged. Like 
 a skilful surgeon, confident of his hand, he plunged 
 
THE BEGINNING OF CONFLICT. 3 91 
 
 the probe down, amid nerves and arteries, with un- 
 failing and unsparing fidelity. At times his adver- 
 saries could not forbear admiration of his tact and 
 skill. He never struck wrong, nor ever missed a 
 stroke. They beheld him every day less in peril of 
 the court, less likely to lose his hold upon the com- 
 mon people, and more clearly endangering their own 
 " name and place." 
 
 It was at this point of affairs that the cry was first 
 heard, Is not this the son of David? By that phrase 
 was meant Messiahship ! The spark had fallen. The 
 fire was kindled. The Scribes seemed thrown off 
 their guard by the extremity of danger. Then it 
 was, as we have seen, that they blindly charged him 
 with being a minion of infernal influences, the evil 
 victim of a foreign god of filthy and detestable attri- 
 butes. And it was to this open declaration of war 
 that Jesus opposed as openly the terrific denuncia- 
 tions which consigned them to a doom not to be 
 reversed in this world nor in the world to come. 
 
 The Scribes at once saw their blunder. They had 
 not carried the people with them. They had aroused 
 in Jesus a spirit of sovereignty before which they 
 quailed. They had thrown the javelin, but it had 
 missed, and they stood disarmed. 
 
 They then attempted to recover their position. It 
 is quite likely that the Scribes, who had led the onset, 
 gave place to others, who put on a face of kindness as a 
 mask to their real feelings. They came to him with an 
 affectation of reasonableness and of devotion : — Mas- 
 ter, we wish that we might only see a sign from thee. 
 He was not to be deceived by this sudden complai- 
 sance. With even increasing elevation of spirit and 
 
392 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 of manner he denounced them as an "evil and adul- 
 terous generation." No sign should be wrought for 
 their purposes. But a sign they should have. What 
 Jonah was to Nineveh, that should the Son of Man 
 be to Jerusalem. So far from softening his words or 
 abating his authority he takes a bolder step, and de- 
 clares himself superior to Jonah, an eminent prophet, 
 and to Solomon, the most renowned philosopher and 
 the most brilliant king of the Hebrew race. That 
 such arrogation of rank did not offend the people is 
 a testimony to the hold which Jesus had gained up- 
 on their veneration. 
 
 This plausible attempt of the Pharisees to return to 
 amicable relations with him did not for a moment im- 
 pose upon Jesus. He signified his judgment of the 
 value of their mood by a parable, which, however, did 
 not expend its force upon them, but, after the method of 
 the prophecies, had a kind of moral ricochet and struck 
 successive periods. Their pretended reformations were 
 but a getting ready for renewed wickedness. 
 
 When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh 
 through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth rwne. Then he 
 saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; 
 and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. 
 Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits 
 more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there : 
 and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even 
 so shall it he also uiito this wicked generation. 
 
 In his adversaries, the discourses of Jesus produced 
 anger, and at times rage. The people generally felt 
 admiration and enthusiasm for them, some being ca- 
 pable of appreciating their spiritual excellence and 
 entering profoundly into sympathy with him. Thus, 
 
THE BEGINNING OF CONFLICT. 393 
 
 while he was unfolding the truth, a woman in the 
 crowd, quite borne away by the admirableness of 
 his teaching, cried out with a true mother's feeling, 
 " Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps 
 which thou hast sucked ! " This was the very pride of 
 motherhood breaking into rapture of worship. It is 
 not likely that she knew Mary. There certainly is 
 no unconscious blessing pronounced upon the Virgin 
 Mother; it was upon Christ that her heart rested. 
 She struck an unimagined chord in the heart of Jesus. 
 There is sadness in his reply. Yea, rather, hkssed are they 
 that hear the word of God, and keep it. And reason there 
 was for this sadness. At that very moment his mother, 
 with other members of the family, were hovering on 
 the outskirts of the excessive crowd, seeking him. By 
 Mark (iii. 20, 21, 31-35) we see what her errand was. 
 Driven by maternal solicitude, she had become more 
 anxious for his personal safety than for the develop- 
 ment of the kingdom of heaven. Her love for him as 
 her own son was stronger than her love for him as the 
 Son of God. She might not have believed that he was 
 <' beside himself;" she might naturally have felt that 
 by excessive zeal he was putting his hfe in perU. Fol- 
 lowing in the wake of the crowd, she would gather up 
 into her anxious heart all the angry speeches and 
 significant threats of his enemies. Why should we 
 imagine that Mary was made perfect without suffering, 
 without mistakes, without that training which every 
 one of the disciples passed through, and without need 
 of those tender rebukes from the Master which all 
 experienced ? If even the unflinching and sturdy 
 John faltered, can we wonder that a mother should 
 dread the storm which she saw gathering around her 
 beloved son? 
 
394 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 It was while the cry of sympathy from a nameless 
 woman in the crowd was in his ear, that word was 
 brought to Jesus, " Behold thy mother and thy brethren 
 stand without, desiring to speak with thee." This is 
 the sequel of that previous statement, "When his 
 friends (kinsmen) heard of it, they went out to lay 
 hold of him ; for they said. He is beside himself." 
 
 "Were it not for this history, it would be hard to 
 redeem the reply of Jesus to the messenger of his 
 mother from the imputation of severity, bordering on 
 harshness. Who is my mother ? and who are my brethren ? 
 Is this the language of a child's love, in whose ear his 
 mother's name is music ? Is this the honored recep- 
 tion, before all the people, which a mother had a right 
 to expect from such a son ? 
 
 Then it was that he seems to have drawn himself up 
 and looked round upon the crowd with an eye of love 
 veiled by sorrow. There must have been something 
 striking in his manner of speaking, that should lead 
 the Evangelists always to describe his personal ap- 
 pearance in that act. They were not anatomists, nor 
 close students of details j they mentioned that which 
 struck them forcibly. It was not a glance, a flash, but 
 a long and piercing gaze : " he looked round about on 
 them which sat about him " ; and then, stretching 
 forth his hand toward his disciples, he said, " Behold 
 my mother and my brethren ! "Whosoever shall do 
 the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same 
 is my brother, and my sister, and my mother ! " ^ 
 
 ' President Woolsey, of Yale College, holds the following language : — 
 
 " However we explain Mary's participation in the design of her kinsmen, 
 
 she is included in what is a virtual censure on the part of our Lord. He 
 
 neither goes out to meet her and her companions, nor admits them into his 
 
 presence. He exclaims that his nearest of kin are the children of God, 
 
THE BEGINNING OF CONFLICT. 395 
 
 While this was unquestionably a rebuke to his 
 mother and brethren for want of moral sympathy with 
 him, it presents an admirable illustration of the way 
 in which Jesus looked upon all the social relationships 
 of life. As much in domestic as in religious matters 
 the exterior is but the. veil, the interior is the sub- 
 stance and reality. As manhood is not made up by 
 the members of the body, but by the soul, so re- 
 lationship is not simply by blood, but by affinities of 
 character. The household which is grouped around 
 natural parents, with all its blessedness, does not limit 
 within itself one's real kindred. All that are good 
 belong to each other. All, in every nation, who call 
 God Fatiiee, have a right to call each other brother, 
 sister, mother ! Thus around the visible home there 
 extends an invisible household of the heart, and men 
 of faith and aspiration are rich in noble relationships. 
 
 This scene between Jesus and his mother was a 
 mere episode in the sharp conflict which, under one 
 form and another, was going on between Jesus and the 
 emissaries from the Temple, together with their con- 
 federates in the provinces. But it was not all an open 
 conflict. It would seem as if, while some plied him 
 with opposition, others tried the arts of kindness, and 
 the seductions of hospitahty. For these invitations 
 
 and asks, ' Wlio is my mother and my brethren ? ' It is thus remarkable 
 that in the only two instances, until the crucifixion, where Mary figures in 
 the Gospel, — the marriage at Cana and the passage before us, — she ap- 
 pears in order to be reproved by the Saviour, and to bo placed, as far as 
 the mere maternal relation is concerned, below obedient servants of God. 
 These passages must be regarded as protests laid up in store against the 
 heathenish eminence which the Roman Church assigns to Mary, and espe- 
 cially against that newly established dogma, of her being without sin from 
 her birth, which they so signally contradict." — Religion of the Present and 
 of the Future, p. 46. New York : Charles Scribner & Co. 1871. 
 
396 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 which brought him to feasts in the houses of dis- 
 tinguished Pharisees, as the whole carriage of Jesus 
 showed, were not always acts of simple kindness. No 
 doubt they were inspired to some extent by curiosity, 
 mingled with vanity at having possession of one 
 who was stirring the whole community. But they 
 evidently had in them also an element of seduction. 
 He might be flattered by attentions. He might be 
 softened by social blandishments. He might, in the 
 confidence of honorable hospitality, be thrown off his 
 guard and led to incautious speeches, by which after- 
 wards he might be entangled. 
 
 Soon after this interview with his mother, a Pharisee 
 urged him to dine. No sooner had they sat down 
 than the latent design of this hospitality began to 
 appear. Jesus had neglected to wash his hands offi- 
 cially, after the ctistom of the strict among the Jews, 
 and he was at once questioned about it. It seems that 
 there was present a large company of lawyers and 
 doctors of the law, and that all were sharpened for 
 conflict, and this will sufficiently account for the 
 character of the most extraordinary after-dinner speech 
 that was ever recorded. Jesus was not for a moment 
 deceived by their pretensions and formal courtesies. 
 He knew what their politeness meant. He rephed to 
 the inward reality, and not to the outward seeming. 
 It was a fearful analysis and exposure of the hollow- 
 heartedness of the men who were seeking his downfall. 
 
 The manner of this speech seems to have been thus : 
 One after another would question him, and upon his 
 replies still other criticisms would be made, followed 
 again by taunts and contemptuous questions. Luke 
 gives us an insight into the method and spirit of this 
 
THE BEGINNING OF CONFLICT. 397 
 
 remarkable dialogue : " As lie said these things unto 
 them, the Scribes and the Pharisees began to urge him 
 vehemently, and to provoke him to speak of many 
 things ; laying wait for him, and seeking to catch 
 something out of his mouth, that they might accuse 
 him." The speech as given in the text may be regard- 
 ed as a condensed record of the substance of his 
 replies, the interpolated questions and disputatious 
 passages being left out. It is this interlocutory char- 
 acter of the Lord's discourses, both here and elsewhere, 
 that must supply us with a clew to the succession of 
 topics, which otherwise will seem forced. 
 
 And the Lord said unto Tiim, Now do ye Pharisees make 
 clean the outside of the cup and the platter ; but pour imvard 
 part is full of ravening and wickedness. . Ye fools, did not 
 he thai made that which is without make that which is within 
 also ? But rather give alms of such things as ye have; and-, 
 behold, all things are clean unto you. But woe unto you, 
 Pharisees ! for ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of 
 herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God : these 
 ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Woe 
 unto you, Pharisees I for ye love the uppermost seats in the 
 synagogues, and greetings in the markets. Woe unto you. 
 Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye are as graves which 
 appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware 
 of them. Then answered one of the lawyers, and said unto 
 him, Master, thus saying thou reproachest us also. And he 
 said. Woe unto you also, ye lawyers ! for ye lade men with 
 burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the 
 burdens with one of your fingers. Woe unto you ! for ye 
 build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers Jailed 
 them. Tndy ye bear witness that ye allow the deeds of your 
 fathers : for they indeed killed them, and ye build their sepul- 
 
398 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 chres. Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send 
 them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay 
 and persecute : that the blood of all the prophets, which was 
 shed from the foundation of the world, may he required of 
 this generation, from the blood of Abel urdo the blood of 
 Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple : 
 verily I say unto you. It shall be required of this generation. 
 Woe unto you, lawyers ! for ye have taken away the key of 
 knowledge : ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were 
 entering in ye hindered. 
 
 The kindled flame was to be nourished by new 
 fuel every day. The courage and boldness of Jesus 
 were equalled only by the bitterness and cunning of 
 the Scribes. He knew the issue. " I am come to send 
 fire on the earth, and what will I, if it be already 
 kindled?" 
 
AROUND THE SEA OF GALILEE. 399 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 ^ AROUND THE SEA OF GALILEE. 
 
 The discourses of Jesus grew deeper and richer 
 from the beginniag of his ministry to the end. But 
 the transitions were never formal or abrupt. Nor can 
 we anywhere lay our finger upon a precise moment or 
 occasion when the deepening or widening took place. 
 His teaching was like the flow of a river, whose depth 
 and breadth continually increase, but nowhere sud- 
 denly. From the first he had preached the kingdom of 
 heaven, but at this time he seems to have made that 
 theme the special subject of discourse. Indeed, just 
 before he sent out his twelve disciples to teach, there 
 was a crisis in his ministry and a change in his style 
 which proceeded from profoimd reasons that deserve 
 careful consideration. 
 
 Whatever spiritual benefit had been derived by 
 single persons from his ministry, it was plain that in 
 general his teaching had fallen only upon the outward 
 ear, and that his beneficent works had stirred up the 
 worldly side of men more than the spiritual. They 
 were glad to have their sicknesses healed, to know 
 that the kingdom of heaven (interpreted according 
 to Jewish expectations) was advancing. His family 
 friends were plying him with prudential considerations. 
 His adversaries were organizing a powerful, though 
 as yet cautious and crafty, opposition. He stood in 
 
400 T^E tIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 an excited circle of worldly men ; and whether they 
 were for him or against him, they were for the most 
 part seeking a material and secular interest. It was 
 important that he should, if possible, break through 
 this carnal view, and kindle in their minds some idea 
 of that spiritual kingdom which he sought to establish. 
 
 On no other subject did he concentrate so n^any 
 parables as upon this. Eight of them in succession, 
 and apparently at about the same time, evince his 
 earnestness, and his estimate of the importance of the 
 topic. The Sower, the Tares, the Growth of Seed, the 
 Grain of Mustard-seed, the Leaven, the Treasure-field, 
 the Pearl, the Net, — each one of these expounded 
 some view of his kingdom. In reading them, one is 
 struck with the wholly spiritual and unworldly charac- 
 ter of that kingdom. There is no intimation of a so- 
 ciety or of organization. 
 
 These parables are evidently the fragments of dis- 
 course. The disciples remembered and recorded them 
 as brief and striking pictures; but it is not liliely 
 that Jesus put them forth one after the other, without 
 any filling up or exposition. We know, in regard 
 to some, that they were parts of interlocutory dis- 
 course, and that they gave rise to questions and to an- 
 swers. It is highly probable that all of them were 
 preceded and followed by expository matter, on which 
 the parables were wrought like the figures upon lace. 
 The sudden addiction of Christ to parables is the sign 
 of a serious change in his relations to that part of the 
 people who were now secretly banding together in 
 opposition to his influence. We have already seen the 
 feeling which this conduct produced in his bosom. 
 Although his personal relations were apparently not 
 
AROUND THE SEA OF GALILEE. 401 
 
 affected, and he moved among the Pharisees as he had 
 always done, he regarded portions of them as being 
 so dangerous that it was prudent to forestall their 
 efforts to catch something ovi of his mouth, that they might 
 accuse him. 
 
 A parable — or a moral truth thrown into the form 
 of an imaginary history, a germ drama — was pecu- 
 liarly fitted for the double office which in his hands it 
 had to perform. It was an instructive form of speech, 
 addressing the inaagination, and clinging tenaciously to 
 the memory. It was admirably suited to the intelli- 
 gence of the common people. It had also this advan- 
 tage, that throughout the East it was a famihar style 
 of instruction, and the people were both used to it and 
 fond of it. On the other hand, its polemic advantages 
 were eminent. By parables Jesus could advance his 
 views with the utmost boldness, and yet give to his 
 enemies but little chance of perverting his words. It 
 was necessary to baffle their devices, without restrict- 
 ing the scope of his teaching or abating his activity. 
 
 We have already glanced at the methods by which 
 the Scribes sought an end to this reformer, as soon 
 as they became satisfied that he could not be used 
 as a tool for their own advantage. The topic will 
 bear unfolding still further. They first attempted to 
 excite against him the fears of the government, and 
 to cause his arrest as one politically dangerous. This 
 would seem beforehand to promise the surest and 
 speediest results. Herod was suspicious, jealous of 
 his power, and cruel in vindicating it. The great 
 excitement which kindled around Jesus, and the ex- 
 cessive throngs which followed him, gave color to 
 unfavorable representations. The general conduct of 
 
 26 
 
402 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 Jesus must have been very circumspect. Indeed, we 
 are struck, not only with the absence of political 
 topics from his teachings, but with the unworldly 
 treatment of common secular duties. Mi/ Mngdmn is 
 not of this world was as plainly indicated by the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount as by his final declaration. Poh- 
 ticians were shrewd enough to see that Jesus had 
 no purpose of pubhcly or secretly organizing the peo- 
 ple. Every political party has one or two sensitive 
 tests. If a man is sound or harmless in respect to 
 them, he is regarde,d as safe. In ecclesiastical admin- 
 istration these tests are apt to be doctrinal or ritual. 
 In political management they are more likely to re- 
 late to practical policy. Judged by political tests, it 
 must have seemed to disinterested spectators that Jesus 
 was simply a very benevolent man, with great power 
 of personal fascination, who indulged in impracticable 
 dreams of an ideal future ; that he neglected the 
 most admirable opportunities for forming a party, and 
 squandered his influence for lack of organization. 
 The people again and again came at his call, but dis- 
 solved and sunk away without bringing to him any 
 advantage. His doctrine passed over the surface of 
 society as the shadows of white clouds high up in the 
 heavens pass over fields and forests, making transient 
 pictures, but changing nothing in root, leaf, or fruit. 
 There was far less to fear in such a man than in the 
 narrower, but more immediately practical, John the 
 Baptist. Besides, it may be presumed that there were 
 in Herod's household friends of Jesus, who had the 
 ear of the king or of his advisers. We know that the 
 wife of Herod's steward was a devoted friend to the 
 prophet of Galilee. The fate of men and of pohcies 
 
AROUND THE SEA OF GALILEE. 493 
 
 often depends upon the soft wMsper, in an hour of lei- 
 sure, of one whom the public neither sees nor knows, 
 whose very obscurity lends to his influence by disarm- 
 ing jealousy or the fear of selfish counsel. 
 
 Political influences failing, the next obvious method 
 of destroying Jesus would be to embroil him with 
 the people. The Pharisees, representing the patri- 
 otic feeling of the nation, were very popular with 
 the masses. The people were apt upon the slightest 
 provocation to burst out into uncontrollable fanati- 
 cism. How easy it would be to sweep away this man 
 of Nazareth in some wild outbreak! But Jesus, a 
 man of the common people, living day by day among 
 them, familiar with all their prejudices, their thoughts, 
 their wants, and ministering to their- necessities by 
 almost daily acts of beneficence, could not easily be 
 withdrawn from the sjonpathies of the poor. The 
 crowds of grateful creatures that surrounded him 
 might be ignorant of his real doctrines, and take little 
 profit from his spirit ; but they proved a stronger bar- 
 rier between him and his enemies of the sjmagogu'e 
 and the Temple than an imperial army would have 
 been. ^ They were imconsciously his body-guard. 
 
 The only other method of putting Jesus out of the 
 way was by the exercise of the power of discipline 
 in the hands of the Jewish Sanhedrim. But a trial for 
 heresy required material. It was not easy to procure 
 it. Jesus was in disagreement with the religious 
 leaders of his people, but he was historically in accord 
 with Moses and the Prophets. He was really more 
 orthodox than the Eabbis. 
 
 It was for the sake of bringing him to trial before 
 the religious tribunal of his people for some form of 
 
404 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 error, that lie was now watched with indefatigable 
 vigilance ; and the change in his method of teaching 
 may be attributed greatly to that. For a marked 
 change took place in the style of his teaching soon 
 after the calling and sending forth of his disciples. 
 In expounding to them the parable of the Sower, as we 
 shall see, Jesus expressly gave as a reason for using 
 the parabolic form in teaching, that it would baffle his 
 enemies. It would convey the truth ; and yet, as the 
 vehicle was a fiction, his adversaries would be unable 
 to catch him in his words. There is no instance in 
 which his parables were alleged as an offence. The 
 Pharisees knew at whom they were aimed; yet so 
 wisely did Jesus frame them, that nothing contrary 
 to the law or to national customs could be made out 
 of them. 
 
 But the larger use of the parable in his teachings 
 is not the only change to be noticed at this period. 
 We shall find an impetus to his discourses, an attack- 
 ing force, which shows that he designed to put his 
 adversaries on the defensive. Instead of watching 
 him, they found themselves impelled to study their 
 own defence. Many came as if conscious of great 
 superiority, and as pompous patrons. But they were 
 handled as if they were very poorly instructed pupils. 
 
 These considerations of the state of the conflict wUl 
 not only illustrate the general prudence of Jesus's 
 course, but will give significance to many incidents 
 which otherwise would lose their real bearings. 
 
 It was in the face and under the influence of this 
 crafty conspiracy against him that he pronounced the 
 words recorded by Luke, which not only informed 
 them explicitly that he divined their plans, but in- 
 
AROUND TEE SEA OF GALILEE 405 
 
 structed his disciples that both they and their master 
 were under the care of a Divine Providence which 
 watches over the minutest elements of creation. Con- 
 sidered as the utterance of one standing amidst shrewd 
 and venomous enemies, this tranquillizing and com- 
 forting spirit is truly divine. 
 
 "In the mean time, when there were gathered to- 
 gether an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch 
 that they trode one upon another, he began to say unto 
 his disciples first of all. Beware ye of the leaven of the 
 Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. For there is nothing 
 covered that shall not be revealed ; neither hid, that 
 shall not be known. Therefore whatsoever ye have 
 spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light ; and that 
 which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be 
 proclaimed upon the house-tops. And I say unto you 
 my friends. Be not afraid of them that kill the body, 
 and after that have no more that they can do. But I 
 will forewarn you whom ye shall fear : Pear him which, 
 after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell ; yea, 
 I say imto you. Fear him. Are not .five sparrows sold 
 for two farthings ? and not one of them is forgotten 
 before God : but even the very hairs of your head 
 are all numbered. Fear not, therefore :' ye are of more 
 value than many sparrows. Also I say unto you, 
 Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the 
 Son of Man also confess before the angels of God : 
 but he that denieth me before men shall be denied 
 before the angels of God. And whosoever shall speak 
 a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven 
 him ; but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy 
 Ghost, it shall not be forgiven. And when they bring 
 you unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates and 
 
406 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 powerg, take ye no thought how or what thing ye 
 shall answer, or what ye shall say: for the Holy. 
 Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye 
 ought to say." 
 
 An incident occurred about this time which deserves 
 more than a passing notice. A yoimg man appealed 
 to Jesus against his brother, in the matter of dividing 
 some property that had been left to them. " Master, 
 speak to my brother that he divide the inheritance 
 with me." One who was smarting imder a wrong 
 would naturally appeal to a great teacher of morals 
 for advice and influence. The reply of Jesus surprises 
 us by ah apparent severity for which at first we can- 
 not account, — " Man, who made me a judge or a 
 divider over you?" But if the cunning Scribes had 
 whispered this young man on, hoping to induce Jesus 
 through his sjTnpathies to assume judicial functions 
 and to step into a snare, we can understand that the 
 severity of his abrupt refusal was meant more for the 
 Pharisees than for their dupe. Yet, though he could 
 not assume the authority of courts and distribute prop- 
 erty, he could fasten the attention upon the most lofty 
 views respecting the ends of life. Beware of covetous- 
 iiess : for a maris life consisteth not in the abundance of the 
 things which he possesseth. One may be happy in riches ; 
 but there is a higher enjoyment than any which wealth 
 can bestow. This view was not left as a mere apo- 
 thegm. He framed it into a picture which no one 
 could ever forget. For the memory of things received 
 through the imagination is ineradicable. 
 
 In a dozen lines he gives a perfect drama. Avarice, 
 made good-natured by prosperity, counsels with itself 
 and fills the future with visions of self-iadulgence. 
 
AROUND THE SEA OF GALILEE. 407 
 
 Then from out the great realm above comes a voice 
 pronouncing eternal bankrviptcy to the presumptuous 
 dreamer ! 
 
 " And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The 
 ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully : 
 and he thought within himself, saying. What shall I do, 
 because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? 
 And he said, This will I do : I will pull down my barns, 
 and build greater; and there will I bestow all my 
 fruits and my goods. And I wiU say to my soul, Soul, 
 thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take 
 thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said 
 unto him. Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be re- 
 quired of thee : then whose shall those things be 
 which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up 
 treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God." 
 
 This is the contrast that evermore exists, in ten 
 thousand forms, between the visible and the invisi- 
 ble. Just beyond inordinate mirth lie gloom arid 
 sadness. Through the tears of desponding sorrow 
 rises on the background beyond a tender rainbow. 
 When the sun is setting, the human form projects a 
 grotesque and monstrous shadow far along the ground ; 
 and so character casts forward a shadow into the future, 
 whether fair or hideous, in prodigious disproportion to 
 the seeming magnitude of the living reality. 
 
 The parables of Jesus, as we find them in the Gos- 
 pels, are like pearls cast into a jewel-case, without 
 order or selection. The thread that connected them 
 is lost. But we often find an inward congruity be- 
 tween the parable and the events just then happen- 
 ing, that creates a probability as to the order. Thus 
 the two parables respecting the imminence of death 
 
408 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 would seem naturally to have followed the parable 
 of the rich fool. There are two ; one in light, the 
 other in shadow. Could anything be more radiant 
 and original, contrasted with the frightful pagan ideas 
 of death, or with the dismal ideas of the primitive 
 Jewish nations, than the figure of Death as a bride- 
 groom returning from wedding festivities to his house- 
 hold? Yet, in exhorting his disciples to be in con- 
 stant preparation for the event of death, Jesus urges 
 them to be vigilant and cheerful watchers, " like unto 
 men that wait for their lord, when he will return from 
 the wedding." Their lord shall cause them to sit 
 down to a banquet, and he himself, in love, shall honor 
 and serve them. This watching must run through the 
 series of hours, whether he come in the second watch 
 or in the third watch. It is to be an aU-night fidelity. 
 There is a fine vein of poetry in the implication that 
 this life is a night, and death the breaking of the 
 morning, the awaking from sleep. But the mention 
 of the night watches suggests a new illustration, and 
 the parable changes. It is a householder now, secure, 
 asleep, dreaming happily. But hovering near is the 
 artful thief He steals noiselessly to the window. He 
 enters without discovery and despoils the house of 
 treasure in the very face of its owner, too fast asleep 
 to know the mischief that is going on. When the 
 man awakes and discerns the state of things, no doubt 
 he will bestir himself But too late ! The thief is 
 gone, and with him the goods ! ^ 
 
 Peter now interposes a question as to whether the 
 parables referred to the disciples only, or also to the 
 whole multitude. The reply is not recorded ; but the 
 
 ' Lukexii. 85-40. 
 
AROUND THE SEA OF GALILEE. 499 
 
 new parable which followed it indicates the nature 
 of the reply, — that he was speaking to all alike. 
 In a few words Jesus depicts the interior of some 
 princely household j the master is absent, and not 
 soon expected home ; the faithless steward, assuming 
 airs of superiority, betakes himself to inordinate fes- 
 tivities, and in his drunken revelling plays the petty 
 tyrant, abusing the servants with words and blows. 
 In the midst of the shameful debauch, the master sud- 
 denly appears. In an instant all is changed. The 
 unfaithful servant is convicted, dispossessed, and cast 
 forth. There could be no doubt in Peter's mind 
 whether he spoke " to all " or not. By such a picture, 
 the materials of which were too abundant in that age 
 and country, Jesus would fix in the memory of a 
 curious crowd, subject to evanescent excitements, the 
 great danger of giving way to their passions in this 
 life without regard to that great After-Life, which, 
 though silent, is certain and near at hand, and whose 
 happiness depends upon the results of the moral edu- 
 cation evolved in this visible world. 
 
 The picture was not only likely to abide in the 
 memory, teaching its own_ lesson, but it was made to 
 carry with it certain short sentences, whose truths he 
 at the foundation of responsible moral government. 
 The servant that knew his lord's will, and did it not, 
 shall be beaten with many stripes ; but he that knew 
 not, with few stripes. The severity of punishment is 
 to be graded by the deliberation with which the law 
 of duty is broken. Under a government of physical 
 laws, the motive of the transgressor has no influence 
 upon the penalty. The ignorant and the intelligent, 
 those who disobey wUfully and those who do it xm- 
 
410 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 knowingly, suflFer alike. But under a moral govern- 
 ment the penalty is graded according to tlie deliber- 
 ation and wilfulness with which disobedience takes 
 place. The very essence of moral government consists 
 in its administration, not by an implacable law, but by 
 an intelligent ruler, who can shape rewards and penal- 
 ties to the moral character of a subject's conduct. It 
 is plain that Jesus was speaking of the future life, and 
 of the effect of men's conduct here upon their con- 
 dition hereafter. Indeed, we shall presently see that 
 in this respect he stood in extraordinary contrast to 
 the great teachers of the Old Testament dispensation, 
 who, whatever may have been their private hopes, 
 never derived motives or sanctions from the great 
 truth of an after life, but wholly from the relations of 
 conduct to this present existence. Jesus, on the "con- 
 trary, scarcely noticing the effect of human actions on 
 men's secular welfare, almost invariably points to the 
 future world as the sphere in which the nature and 
 consequences of men's actions will be disclosed. 
 
 The doctrine of immortality in a world to come has 
 not in the teachings qf Jesus the appearance of a 
 fresh philosophical theory or of a new truth, kindling 
 in him a constant surprise and intensity. It seems 
 rather like unconscious knowledge. He speaks of 
 the great invisible world as if it had always lain be- 
 fore him, and as familiarly as to us stretches out the 
 landscape which we have seen since our birth. The 
 assertion of a future state is scarcely to be met with in 
 his teachings : the assumption of it pervades them. 
 
 This familiarity with another world, and the cahn 
 sense of its transcendent value over this life, must be 
 kept in mind if we would fully appreciate his instruc- 
 
AROUND TEE SEA OF GALILEE. m 
 
 tions. Men seemed to him as laborious triflers, toiling 
 for perishable things, and indifferent to things momen- 
 tous and eternal. That silent contrast between the 
 spiritual sphere and the world of matter seems never 
 to have been absent from his mind. Out of this 
 atmosphere came parable, criticism, judgment, and 
 rebuke, and their force and spirit cannot be under- 
 stood unless we enter fuUy into this conception. 
 
 To one before whom dwelt the eternal calm and joy 
 of a higher life, how foolish must have seemed the 
 frivolous zeal, the intense absorption in trifles, the 
 thoroughly sensuous life, of the Pharisees ! Their 
 sacred heats were like- a rash upon the skin. They 
 thought themselves superlatively wise. They prided 
 themselves upon their tact in managing men, their 
 sagacity in planning and skill in executing their petty 
 schemes of party and personal ambition. And yet 
 in their very midst stood the greatest person that 
 had ever appeared on earth, teaching sublime wisdom, 
 almost unheard; and the Pharisees could see nothing 
 in him but a dangerous zealot ! " Ye can discern 
 the face of the sky," said Jesus to them, " and of the 
 earth, but how is ,it that ye do not discern Mis time ? 
 Why even of yourselves do ye not judge what is 
 right?" They were going on blindly to eternity, 
 there to meet an unlooked-for doom. Jesus likened 
 them to debtors in the hands of a rigorous creditor: 
 When thou goest with thine adversary to the magistrate, as 
 thou art in the way, give diligence that thou may est he deliv- 
 ered from him ; lest he hale thee to the judge, and the judge 
 deliver thee to the officer, and the officer cast thee into prison. 
 I tell thee, thou shalt not depart thence till thou hast paid the 
 very last mite. 
 
412 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 And yet there was hope even for Pharisees. God 
 was waiting with long patience, and bringing to bear 
 upon them the most extraordinary moral influences. 
 For a little time this would continue. Then would 
 come the irremediable end. All this he set forth in 
 the parable of the fig-tree : — He spake abo this parable : 
 A certain man had a fig-tree planted in Ms vineyard; and he 
 came and sought fruit thereon, and found nane. Then said 
 he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years 
 I come seeking fruit on this fig-tree, and find none : cut it 
 down; why cmnbereth it the ground? And he ansivering 
 said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig 
 about it, and dung it : and if it hear fruit, well: and if not, 
 then after that thou shall cut it down. 
 
 While he was thus teaching, some one from the 
 crowd — with that familiarity which strikingly reveals 
 the footing on which Jesus stood with the people, and 
 which led them to bring to his notice the news, the 
 rumors, and the questions of the day, that they might 
 hear what he had to say — told him of the slaughter 
 by Herod, in the Temple at Jerusalem, of certain peo- 
 ple of his own province of Galilee. 
 
 It is probable that this was one of those minor in- 
 surrections which were continually taking place among 
 the Jews, one which was not of sufficient importance 
 to be noticed in any history. The informants of Jesus 
 appear to have thought that the cruel death of these 
 men indicated their great sinfulness. No. The prov- 
 idential deahngs of God with men do not proceed 
 upon grounds of moral desert. He maketh the sun 
 to rise and the rain to fall upon the good and bad 
 alike. 
 
 There were presmit at that season some that told him of the 
 
AROUND THE SEA OF GALILEE. 4^3 
 
 Galileans, whose hlood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 
 And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these 
 Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they 
 suffered such things ? I tell you. Nay : but, except ye repent, 
 ye shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen, upon whom 
 the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they 
 were sinners above all men that dwett in Jerusalem ? I tell 
 you, Nay : but, except ye repeat, ye shall all likewise 
 perish. 
 
 By this declaration Jesus put himself in direct an- 
 tagonism to the philosophy of his nation, and to the 
 belief which had prevailed through the whole period 
 of the Old Testament dispensation. The old Hebrew 
 approached very near to the modern doctrine of ma- 
 terial laws ; only, he attributed directly to the Divine 
 will the effects which we refer to "natural laws." 
 But he believed, with the modern, that good or evil 
 results from obedience or disobedience. By a natural 
 inference he supposed that one upon whom a great 
 evil came was suffering the punishment of sin. Al- 
 though the doctrine of a future life and of rewards 
 and punishments after death was already familiar to 
 the Jewish mind, yet the old notion that misfortune 
 is an evidence of criminality had not been weeded 
 . out, and Jesus plainly told them that those who had 
 been slain by Herod, and those crushed by the falling 
 tower in Siloam, were not sinful more than others. 
 God's judgments are spiritual, and they overhang all 
 men alike who continue in worldly and selfish courses. 
 
 In the incessant conflict of opinion that now at- 
 tended Jesus, he was obliged to assume a vigorous 
 defence, or to make pimgent criticism. To easy and 
 indolent natures, that do not so much love peace as 
 
414 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 dislike laborious exertion, it is more than likely that 
 Jesus seemed an unnecessary disturber. Why is it 
 needful, they would say, to dispute with the authori- 
 ties of the synagogue ? Of what use will be so much 
 reprehension? Is the Messiah's kingdom to be ad- 
 vanced by such intestine turmoil and conflict? Is 
 not the coming Prince to be meek and gentle among 
 his own people, and terrible only to the heathen? 
 And his kingdom, is it not to bring peace? Human 
 nature must have undergone a great change since 
 then, if many of his auditors did not suggest to him 
 such considerations. 
 
 But iar different was the Messiah's kingdom! It 
 was to have no external form and no national history. 
 No one could see it coming, as he could view the ad- 
 vance of an army, or witness the development and 
 growth of a secular nation. When men should have 
 their passions in perfect control, when benevolence 
 should have expelled selfishness, when purity and 
 truth should pervade society where deceit and vul- 
 gar appetite held sway, then the kingdom of the 
 Messiah would dawn. But how long and severe a 
 struggle ! The corruption of human nature would 
 not be purged out without pain. There doubtless 
 rose before the mind of Jesus those ages of conflict 
 through which Christian civilization has sought to 
 expel the animal passions from the control of h\iman 
 society. Suppose ye, he cried, that I am come to 
 give peace on earth? I tell you nay, but rather di- 
 vision ! And it shall not be simply a division created 
 by selfishness, or the collisions of self-will and pride. 
 Conscience also shall disturb men. Kenewed and ex- 
 alted sensibilities shall make the selfish waj's of life 
 
AROUND THE SEA OF GALILEE. 4^5 
 
 seem hateful, and a zeal for purity and goodness shall 
 burn as a fire. My kingdom shall separate closest 
 friends. It shall divide the household. The father 
 shall be divided against the son, and the son against 
 the father ; the mother against the daughter, and the 
 daughter against the mother. 
 
 We must not imagine all these things as said on 
 a single occasion, or before the same audience. The 
 record is but an epitome of the labors of days and 
 weeks, - — in Capernaum, by the sea-shore, in the fields, 
 along the wayside, in towns and villages. The sun 
 rose and set between many of the lines of the record. 
 Between verse and verse miracles were performed. 
 Much that was said and done is left out. Jesus was 
 more active than appears on the face of the Gospel 
 narratives; rich as they' are in his words, he was far 
 more fruitful than they represent. John, with the 
 first three Gospels before him, closes his own his- 
 tory of the life of Jesus with a declaration whose ex- 
 travagance fitly attests his sense of the fruitfulness of 
 Jesus's life. And there are ako ynany other things which 
 Jesus did, the which, if they should he written every one, I 
 suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books 
 that slwuld he written. 
 
 The period of which we are now treating was the 
 very height of the Lord's activity, and we may easily 
 imagine that the unrecorded part of his labors far ex- 
 ceeded those portions which were afterwards written 
 down. Jesus did not live all the time in the excite- 
 ment of the throng. At noonday he retired from the 
 open air to the shelter of his Capernaum house. 
 When the heat diminished, and the shadows began to 
 fall upon the lake, " went Jesus out of the house and 
 
416 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 sat by the seaside." The Sea of Galilee would hardly 
 have been heard of had it depended for fame upon 
 its scenery alone. A hundred lakes surpass it in pic- 
 turesque beauty. But no other lake on earth fires the 
 imagination and fills the heart with such emotion as 
 this strip of water a little over twelve miles long, and 
 in its widest part not quite seven broad. Although it 
 is between six and seven hundred feet below the level 
 of the Mediterranean Sea, the descent to it is not pre- 
 cipitous, and at but few points is the shore line steep, 
 or overhung with cliffs of any considerable height. 
 The west shore, especially, is bounded by slopes of 
 rounded hills, and in some places edged with small 
 plains, — notably the little plain of Genesareth, whose 
 fertility and beauty seem to have excited the enthu- 
 siasm of Josephus. 
 
 The public life of Jesus may be said to have had 
 its centre and chief development around the Sea of 
 Galilee. Nothing can excel or equal in intensity of 
 interest the few closing weeks of his life in Jerusalem; 
 but, these apart, the Sea of Galilee witnessed the 
 chief part of his ministrations. This he was himself 
 conscious of He taught everywhere, through Upper 
 and Lower Galilee ; but only against the cities on 
 the shores of the lake did he utter maledictions for 
 their obduracy. Upon them he had bestowed a 
 long-continued and fruitful activity without a parallel. 
 But little of his time seems to have been given to the 
 southern portions of the lake-shore population. He 
 dwelt upon the northern border, and the most mem- 
 orable events of his Galilean ministry took place at 
 the upper end of the lake ; and with a few striking 
 exceptions, such as the feeding of the multitude and 
 
AROUND TEE SEA OF GALILEE. 4I7 
 
 the casting out of demons from the man of the tombs, 
 his deeds and teachings belong chiefly to the north- 
 west portion. 
 
 It was but a short distance from Capernaum to the 
 plain of Genesareth. Part of the beach is made up 
 of fragments of basalt, but in many places it is com- 
 posed of fine white sand, pebbles, and shells. Without 
 doubt it was far more pleasant for passage in that day, 
 when the commerce of a swarming population re- 
 quired such a roadway as the shore would make, than 
 it now is, after the neglect of ages. The traveller 
 then would find many a sward of green grass kindled 
 with brilliant flowers. It is doubtful if, in the time of 
 our history, the borders of the lake were edged with 
 trees to the degree that we are accustomed to see 
 around the lakes in temperate Northern lands. But 
 they doubtless flourished to an extent which one could 
 hardly imagine who now looks upon the barren hills 
 and shore from which vandal hands have stripped 
 wellnigh every tree. There must have been places 
 within easy reach of his house in Capernaum where 
 cool rocks were overshadowed by dense foliage. Mac- 
 gregor, who explored the Sea of Galilee in a canoe, 
 foimd near to Bethsaida " great rocks projecting from 
 the shore into the waves, while verdure most pro- 
 fuse teems over them, and long streamers of ' maiden's- 
 hair,' and richest grasses and ferns and briers and 
 moss, wave pendent in the breeze, or trail upon the 
 water." Along the shore, in favored spots, grew reeds 
 and rushes, and the far-famed papyrus ; the olive, the 
 fig, and the palm at that time abounded. Nor can 
 we doubt that oaks, walnuts, and terebinths cast down 
 
 dense and grateful shade on many a point along the 
 
 27 
 
418 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 shore. The thorn-trees, in thickets, and luxuriant 
 clumps of oleander, glowing with rosy and pink blos- 
 soms like a burning bush, added to the charms of the 
 scene. 
 
 The solitary walks of Jesus must often have been 
 along this level beach, which, with slight obstructions 
 here and there, ran around the whole lake. He must 
 often have seen the morning mists rise as the sun 
 advanced, and heard the cry of the fishermen return- 
 ing shoreward from their early work. Before his eyes 
 rose the high and scarped hills of Bashan on the east 
 of the lake. The mouth of the upper Jordan, coming 
 into the lake from the north, was but two or three 
 miles distant, probably not then green with reeds as 
 in our day, but edged with the houses of cities now 
 perished. That Jesus was observant of nature, at least 
 when associated with human industry, is shown by 
 his parables ; and it is none the less striking because 
 his eye discerned the moral uses, rather than the 
 purely aesthetical relations of things. No one could 
 be conversant with the Hebrew prophets, or with the 
 singers of Israel, and be indifferent to the aspects of 
 the natural world. The moral suggestions, the sub- 
 limity and beauty of mountains and hills, of rivers 
 and the sea, of trees and vines, of flowers and grass, 
 of clouds and storms, of birds and beasts, as they are 
 felt by poetic and devout natures in our day, were 
 unknown to the people of antiquity, with the single 
 exception of the Hebrew nation. Jesus was truly a 
 Hebrew. He loved solitude, as the great prophets 
 always did. He "discerned the face of the sky," and 
 the clothing of the hills, and the mystery of the sea, 
 as well as the processes of husbandry and the ways 
 
AROUND THE SEA OF GALILEE. 419 
 
 of the city. His resort to the shore was not merely 
 for purposes of lonely meditation. The sea was the 
 centre of active commerce. All along its shore busy 
 towns plied their industry. The fisheries were a 
 source of great profit. The surface of the lake was 
 dotted at morning and evening with ^eets of boats 
 busy in fishing ; others darted hither and thither, 
 transporting passengers from side to side of the lake. 
 On its peaceful bosom, too, had raged naval battles 
 between Roman and Jewish galleys. 
 
 Now the sea is almost deserted. Tiberias yet exists; 
 but the long belt of proud and busy towns that en- 
 compassed this inland lake is gone, and men from 
 distant lands grope among the thorns or overgrown 
 heaps of stone, disputing the position of one and 
 another city which in the days of Jesus seemed too 
 strong to be ever wasted. Both around the sea and 
 in all the country far away on each side of it, the 
 cities and towns have utterly perished. Temples and 
 synagogues are gone. Walls of towns and marble 
 palaces are in heaps. The architectural ambition of 
 Herod, the city-building aspirations of the Greeks, the 
 engineering achievements of the Eomans, all alike 
 have hopelessly perished. The Lake of Genesareth is 
 without a boat. Its fish swarm unmolested. The soil 
 adjacent runs rankly to thorns and briers. Only a few 
 Arabs hover about its edges. But one thing remains; 
 it is the memory of Jesus. The sky, the surround- 
 ing hills, and the water have but one story to tell the 
 educated traveller. Jesus still wanders slowly along 
 these deserted shores. His spirit yet walks upon these 
 waters; and the very name of this plain and solitary 
 lake sends a thrill through every one who hears it! 
 
420 THE LIFE OF JESUS, TEE CHRIST. 
 
 Toward evening, after a day of great labor, Jesus 
 resorted to the shore of the lake. The shadows were 
 faUing from the west, and coolness was coming on with 
 night. Across the lake the light was playing on the 
 hills, and kindling them with colors rarely seen in 
 any other locality. If Jesus sought solitude for medi- 
 tation or the refreshment of a walk, he was disappoint- 
 ed. Such was the intense interest now felt in aU his 
 doings that the sight of him gathered a crowd. We 
 have seen before -how at times the multitude so 
 thronged him that he had no leisure so much as to eat, 
 that his family could not by any effort press through to 
 his side, and that the people absolutely trod upon one 
 another; and now so great was the throng upon the 
 sea-shore that he took refuge in a boat, and, pushing 
 out a little, taught them from this novel seat. If 
 we suppose that the boat had been drawn up in some 
 inlet, then the audience might line either side, and, 
 from the rise of the ground, stand on successive levels, 
 as in a natural amphitheatre; so that the "great mul- 
 titudes" "come to him out of every city" could easily 
 be within speaking distance. We are to remember, 
 also, that the region of this lake is famed for the 
 propagation of sound.^ 
 
 As soon as he had gained a favorable position for his 
 floating pulpit, he began to instruct the people, who 
 seem never to have wearied of hearing his words, and 
 
 ' Macgregor, in coasting along the sea in the famed canoe Rob Eoy, 
 gives an account of a running conversation with an Arab travelling on shore 
 while the Rob Roy was paddling at a distance of three hundred yards from 
 him. " It was very remarkable how distinctly every word was heard, even 
 at three hundred yards off; and it was very easy to comprehend how in 
 this clear air a preacher sitting in a boat could easily be heard by a vast 
 multitude standing upon the shore." — The Rob Roy on the Jordan, p. 328. 
 
AROUND TEE SEA OF GALILEE. 421 
 
 seldom to have obeyed them. There was the eager, 
 fickle multitude, rapt in attention, stirred to their souls 
 while he was speaking. Yet their consciousness moved 
 with his. How beautiful, while he spoke, was the 
 holiness of the kingdom of God ! How noble to 
 break away from evU and rise to the serene moods of 
 virtue ! But how transient the impression on their 
 minds ! Before the darkness fell upon the sea, forget- 
 fulness would descend upon most of his hearers. A 
 few would for some days carry a heart of thoughtful 
 purpose ; but secular cares would soon change the cur- 
 rent, and they would relapse into indifference. Only 
 here and there a single one would receive from Jesus 
 the permanent impulse to a higher life. This wasting 
 away of moral impressions was the very theme of his 
 discourse. Eight before his eyes and theirs were the 
 materials of the parable which pictured the truth. 
 
 " Hearken : Behold, there went out a sower to sow 
 his seed : and it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell 
 by the wayside, and it was trodden down, and the fowls 
 of the air came and devoured it up. And some fell 
 on stony ground where it had not much earth ; and 
 immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of 
 earth : but as soon as it was sprung up, when the sun 
 was up, it was scorched ; and because it lacked moisture 
 and had no root it withered away. And some fell 
 among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it, and 
 choked it, and it yielded no fruit. And other fell on 
 good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and 
 increased ; and brought forth, some an hundred-fold, 
 some sixty-fold, some thirty-fold." 
 
 The grain-fields were not, as in our farming districts, 
 near the farmers' dwellings, but remote from them, so 
 
422 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 that the sower indeed "went out" to sow; there were 
 only paths, narrow and often rocky, and no wide 
 roads with fields of soil on either side. Patches of 
 thistles and jungles of thorns sprang up in spots, and 
 defied extermination ; while the ledges of rock that 
 broke through to the surface, or were covered by a 
 mere film of soil, furnished another element of this 
 rural picture. 
 
 Although truths illustrated by this parable are of 
 continuous efficacy and of universal application in the 
 propagation of moral forces among men, yet it is 
 easy to see why Jesus should have felt called to an- 
 nounce such truth at that particular time. Brilliant 
 in many respects as his ministry was, what, after all, 
 had been gained? The expectation of a new king- 
 dom was not a poetic notion among thinking Jews, but 
 a deep and earnest faith, and at times an agonizing 
 wish. It was not a matter to be trifled with. He who 
 claimed, or allowed his followers to believe, that he was 
 the longed-for One, and that the kingdom of heaven 
 was at hand, touched the heart of the nation to the 
 quick. He who excited hopes that verged upon fanat- 
 icism must not expect to escape, if he did nothing to 
 justify anticipations which he had aroused. It is evi- 
 dent that a spirit of impatience was springing up. The 
 message of John from his prison is one indication of 
 it ; another is the impression of Jesus's own relatives, 
 that he was an enthusiast, acting without a rational 
 aim. The same feeling broke out a little later, when 
 his brethren again interfered with him : " Go into 
 Judaea, that thy disciples also may see the works that 
 thou doest. For there is no man that doeth any- 
 thing in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known 
 
AROUND TEE SEA OF GALILEE. 423 
 
 Openly. If thou do these things " (i. e. if there is no 
 deceit in these miracles, and they are what they 
 seem to be), " show thyself to the world." (John 
 vii. 3, 4.) 
 
 That a feeling of secret and growing dissatisfaction 
 existed, there can hardly be a doubt. Nor are we to 
 leave out of consideration the working of another 
 thing, the failure of Jesus to convince or win the 
 educated and religious portion of the community. It 
 would be said, and felt far more often than said, "This 
 man has the art of stirring up the ignorant crowd; 
 but what does it all amount to ? They gather to-day, 
 and are gone to-morrow. He comes down on the 
 people like a gust of wind upon yonder sea. The 
 waves roll, the whole sea is alive ; but in an hour the 
 wind is down, and the lake is just as it was before. 
 It is only a momentary excitement among ignorant 
 men. He makes no head with those who are intelli- 
 gent. Why don't he convince those whose business 
 it is to study the truth ? " 
 
 To meet this mood, Jesus expounds in the parable 
 of the sower the nature of moral teaching. Imme- 
 diate results are no test of the reality of the truth. 
 The new kingdom is to come by growth, and not by 
 miracle. Truth, like seed, is to be sown, subject to aU 
 the conditions of human nature. The worldly cares, 
 the sordid passions, have, as it were, beaten hard paths 
 along the life of men. The Divine truth falls upon 
 these ways of selfishness, or of avarice, or of hatred ; 
 but there is nothing in them to grasp it. It lies 
 like seed in a trodden path ; and as birds devour such 
 seed, tincovered, exposed, before it can hide its roots 
 or send up a stem, so truth, falling on uncongenial 
 
424 TBB LWE OF JESVS, TBE CSRIST. 
 
 minds, rolls off, or is dispersed and consumed by gad- 
 ding and hungry world-thoughts. Or, it may be in 
 the crowd that swarms around the teachers are many 
 whose hearts are more kindly, but they lack force. 
 The truth is readily accepted, but there is no deep 
 moral nature into which its roots may penetrate. In- 
 tense feeling and vivid imagination flourish for a day, 
 and then languish, perish, and disappear. In the case 
 of other natures, the truth finds a bed in which to be 
 planted, but one where weeds also have found root ; 
 and as in nature that which spends its strength m 
 fruit or grain has not strength to cope with that 
 which gives little to its fruit, and spends all on its 
 robust leaves and stem, the rank growth chokes the 
 tender grain. A few hearts only are like good soil, 
 well tended, capable of developing the truth-germ to 
 its full form. 
 
 Thus the moral teacher finds himself limited by 
 hard natures that will not receive truth at all, by 
 vivacious and fickle natures that retain no impressions 
 long, and by strong natures preoccupied with worldly 
 interests ; while he finds only a few which are in 
 condition to understand, entertain, and deal fairly with 
 the truth. Hardness, shallowness, and preoccupation 
 are perpetual hindrances. 
 
 This parable of the sower was an illustration of an 
 important fact respecting the progress of moral truth ; 
 but it was also an answer to those Avho expected Jesus 
 to bring in the new kingdom by the exertion of super- 
 natural forces. It gave the clew to the reason why no 
 larger resiilts followed so great an excitement. Taken 
 in connection with the abundance of his miracles, it 
 has peculiar significance. Jesus wrought no miracle 
 
AHOUND THE SEA OF GALILEE. 425 
 
 upon the human soul. He distinctly marked the line 
 between the physical realm and the spiritual. Upon 
 matter he laid a hand of power ; for that was to treat 
 it according to its own nature. The human soul he 
 left to its own freedom, approaching it only by moral 
 influences ; that was to treat the soul according to its 
 nature. 
 
 In no instance did he seek to secure moral results 
 by direct power. By his will he changed water to 
 wine, but never pride to humility. He multiplied a 
 few loaves into great abundance of bread, but never 
 converted the slender stores of ignorance into the 
 riches of knowledge. The fury of the sea he allayed 
 by a word, but the storms of human passion he never 
 controlled by his irresistible will. During his whole 
 career, there is not an instance in which the two 
 realms of matter and of mind were confounded, or their 
 respective laws disregarded. His miracles were natu- 
 ral, and his teaching was natural. The former man- 
 aged physical nature according to its genius, and the 
 latter reached out to the human soul according to 
 its peculiar constitution; and both of them are ad- 
 mirable illustrations of a conformity to nature, in a 
 sense far more intensive and radical than is usually 
 attached to that phrase. 
 
 It is for those who regard the Gospels as the gradual 
 unfolding of myths, having perhaps a germ of fact, to 
 explain how, in early ages, and among ignorant and 
 superstitious men, this nice distinction between the 
 two great realms of creation should have been invari- 
 ably maintained. If the Gospels are not a true his- 
 tory of a real Jesus, written by the men whose names 
 they bear, but are the product of superstition gradu- 
 
426 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 ally acting through a long period, how is it that so 
 fine an abstinence from miracles upon the human soul 
 should have been observed by men who evidently 
 had an eager appetite for wonders, and who filled 
 their history with marvels without number, but al- 
 ways miracles wrought upon matter, and never once 
 upon the spirit of man ? 
 
 It is true that Jesus made way for his spiritual teach- 
 ing by the exercise of power upon the infirmities of 
 the body. But that was only a preparation for instruc- 
 tion, as ploughing is for seed-sowing. The furrow was 
 opened, but the seed was left to germinate by its own 
 nature and laws. This remarkable subordination of 
 physical force to moral influence pervaded his whole 
 life and ministry. He exercised his authority to for- 
 give sins, but never his power to reform the sinner. 
 Diseases of the body were peremptorily cured; but 
 the sores and fevers of the soul could not be arbitra- 
 rily healed. By his coercive power he often cast out 
 demons; but evil dispositions, never. Between the 
 teaching of Jesus and that of rabbi or philosopher the 
 difierence was that of substance, not merely of method. 
 He addressed truth to the understanding, motives to 
 the will, and feeling to the emotions. Not only was 
 he patient with the tardy results, but, in all his min- 
 istry, he acted as one who left his cause to the evolu- 
 tion of the ages. 
 
 If one will compare the Sermon on the Mount with 
 the teaching in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, he 
 will see a reason why the disciples should be struck 
 with his altered method, and why they should inquire 
 from Jesus the reason of so large a use of the parable. 
 The spirit of the reply will be better understood, if 
 
AROUND THE SEA OF GALILEE. 427 
 
 we consider it as a statement of his reasons for not 
 employing an open didactic method. The parable was, 
 under the circumstances, more likely to inspire curi- 
 osity and to lead perhaps, by and by, to some knowl- 
 edge of the truth. His disciples were within the new 
 kingdom, by virtue of their sensibility to moral ideas. 
 They who from conceit or lack of feeling rejected 
 spiritual truth were " without." To them there could 
 be no instruction, because there was no susceptibility 
 to moral truth. Words fell upon such as seed upon a 
 beaten path. As there is something in the eye waiting 
 for the light, and in the ear prepared for sound, and in 
 the body ready to digest and assimilate food, so there 
 must be in the soul some pre-existing fitness for truth. 
 Where the universal moral sense is kept clear and 
 practical, the soul wUl increase in moral excellence. 
 But when it is abused, it will lose sensibility and waste 
 away. " He answered and said unto them, Because it 
 is given unto you to know the mysteries of the king- 
 dom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For who- 
 soever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have 
 more abundance : but whosoever hath not, from him 
 shall be taken away even that he hath. Therefore 
 speak I to them in parables : because they seeing see 
 not ; and hearing they hear not, neither do they 
 understand." 
 
 In illustration of this view, Jesus quotes from Isaiah 
 (vi. 9) a passage which, judged from its face alone, 
 would seem to say that Jesus taught in parables for 
 the purpose of actively blinding those who were 
 ''without," and securing their destruction by hiding the 
 saving truth from their minds. But this is abhorrent 
 to every sentiment of honor or justice, utterly irrecon- 
 
428 THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 cilable with the very errand of Jesus into the world, 
 and the direct opposite of that disposition of pity and 
 love which he not only taught, but manifested all his 
 life long. The true heart of Jesus was expressed at a 
 later period in these words : " How often would I have 
 gathered thy children .... but ye would not." 
 
 A parable was adapted to arouse the curiosity of 
 even the hardened, and to excite reflection in men's 
 minds, and so ultimately bring them to the truth bet- 
 ter than would didactic instruction. Men will remem- 
 ber an illustration when they would forget a principle. 
 The parable, so far from being an instrument for 
 blinding, was better adapted to give light than would 
 be the unillustrated statement of spiritual things. At 
 the same time, it put the truth in such a form that 
 those who were lying in wait to catch Jesus in his 
 words would find nothing upon which to lay hold. 
 
 The discourse of Jesus was not delivered to a mere 
 peasant audience. There were those present capable 
 of acute criticism. They had kept up with the cur- 
 rent of Jewish thought. They would be likely to say, 
 " This kingdom, — this new notion of a kingdom that 
 no one can see, that has no outward show, — pray, how 
 shall one know whether it is present or absent ? " 
 
 And he said, So is the Mngdom of God, as if a man 
 shoidd cast seed into the ground ; and should sleep, and rise 
 night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he 
 Jcnoiveth not how. For the earth hringeth forth fniU of her- 
 self, first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the 
 ear. But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he put- 
 teth in the sickle, because the harvest is come. 
 
 The realm of the disposition or heart, of which Paul 
 says, "The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, 
 
AROUND THE SEA OF GALILEE. 429 
 
 but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy 
 Ghost," does not march in as armies do, but develops 
 by stages of evolution, as do plants. "Yet surely," 
 they would say, " there should be some beginning to it ! 
 Is there no starting-point to this mysterious kingdom ? 
 It is to be a vast, earth-filling kingdom, — where are 
 its elements ? Are there no materials which show a 
 preparation ? " In reply to such queries. 
 
 Another parable put he forth unta them, saying'. The king- 
 dom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard-seed, which a man 
 took, and soived in his field : which indeed is the least of all 
 seeds : hut when it is grown, it is the greatest among herhs, 
 and hecometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and 
 lodge in the branches thereof. 
 
 " Ah, it is an influence then," they said. " But 
 where is the working of that influence ? " 
 
 The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman 
 took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was 
 leavened. 
 
 It is silent influence. It works within the heart. 
 The woman neither sees nor hears what is going on 
 in the dough ; yet in the morning it is leavened. 
 Thus the Divine influence is silently working in the 
 souls of men. 
 
 "This motley crowd, is this your kingdom? Are 
 these all good men ? Ragged, squalid, mean, mixed 
 of all nations, running after you from curiosity, or in 
 hope of some gain, or for an interested purpose, — 
 do you pretend that God's ' kingdom is made up of 
 such?" 
 
 The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast 
 into the sea, and gathered of every kind : which, when it 
 was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the 
 
430 TEE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 good into vessels, hut cast the lad away. So shall it be at the 
 end of the world : the angels shall come forth, and sever the 
 wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the fur- 
 nace of fire : there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. 
 
 " At the end of the world ? That is a long time to 
 wait ! Why do you not select and enroll your follow- 
 ers ? Why not at once cast away from you all unwor- 
 thy persons, and register the clearly good ? " 
 
 To this Jesus replies that the thing cannot be done.' 
 The church will always have unworthy members, the 
 kingdom of God on earth will always be represented 
 by rude and imperfect materials : — 
 
 Another parable put he forth unto them, saying. The king- 
 dom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in 
 his field : but while men slept, Ms enemy came and sowed tares 
 among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was 
 sprung up, and brought forth fruif, then appeared the tares . 
 also. So the servards of the householder came and said unto 
 him. Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from 
 whence then hath it tares ? He said unto than, An enemy 
 hath done this. The servants said unto him. Wilt thou then 
 that we go and gather them up ? But he said. Nay ; lest 
 while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with 
 them. Let both grow together until the harvest : and in the 
 time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together 
 first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them : but 
 gather the wheat into my barn. 
 
 While all things are imperfect, the separation of 
 good and bad is impossible. When all things are ripe, 
 there will be no difficulty in securing the wheat. 
 
 Insignificant and valueless as a share in this in- 
 visible new kingdom might seem to men greedy of 
 gain or inflamed with ambition, there was nothing in 
 
AROUND THE SEA OF GALILEE. 43^ 
 
 life to compare with it. One might well give aU his 
 time, his influence, and his means, to be possessed 
 ofit: — 
 
 The Jdngdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; 
 the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy 
 thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and luyeth thai 
 field. 
 
 What are houses, lands, and money worth to a 
 heart stirred tip with discontent? A heart at peace, 
 or overflowing with joy, can better be without world- 
 ly goods, than have riches without heart happiness ! 
 Many a man, outwardly hard and rugged as the oyster- 
 shell, carries within him a pearl of exceeding worth : — 
 
 The Idngdom of heaven is like unto a merchant-m%an seeking 
 goodly pearls : who, when he had found one pearl of great 
 price, went and sold all that he had, atid bought it. 
 
 It is likely that not a single person of his audience 
 gained a clear idea of God's spirit-kingdom, but it is 
 still less probable that any left the shore of Galilee 
 that day without the beginnings of new thoughts, 
 which from that time forth began to leaven their 
 minds. 
 
 It is a difficult task even now, after so many hun- 
 dred years of experience, to expound to unknowing 
 hearts the meaning of the kingdom of heaven, so that 
 they shall comprehend it. It was yet more difficult 
 in the days of the Son of Man. But, with all our 
 progress in knowledge, we still go back to these para- 
 bles of Jesus as the easiest and clearest expositions 
 of his kingdom that can be received, — not through 
 the 'hearing of the ear, but only by the understanding 
 heart. 
 
432 TBE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 
 
 The Voice ceased. The crowd disappeared. The 
 light that had sparkled along the waters and fired the 
 distant hills went out. Twilight came on ; the even- 
 ing winds whispered among the rustling reeds, and the 
 ripples gurgling upon the beach answered them in 
 liquid echoes. The boom of the solitary bittern came 
 over the waters, and now and then, as darkness fell 
 upon the lake, the call of the fishermen, at their night- 
 toil. The crowd dispersed. The w^orld received its 
 own again. With the darkness came forgetfulness, 
 leaving but a faint memory of the Voice or of its 
 teachings, as of a wind whispering among the fickle 
 reeds. The enthusiasm of the throng, like the last 
 rays of the sun, died out; and their hearts, like the 
 sea, again sent incessant desires murmuring and com- 
 plaining to the shore 
 
APPEISTDIX. 
 
 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
INTEODU0TIOII5'. 
 
 inkei.i-4 "rpOEASMUCH as many have taken in hand to set 
 -L forth in order a declaration of those things which 
 are most surely believed among us, even as they deliv- 
 ered them unto us, which from the beginning were eye- 
 witnesses, and ministers of the word ; it seemed good 
 to me also, having had perfect understanding of all 
 things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, 
 most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know 
 the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been 
 instructed.^ 
 
PEEFAOE. 
 
 npHE object of this compilation has been to consolidate the matter 
 -*- of the four Gospels so as to form it into one continuous narra- 
 tive, and at the same time' to enable the reader to ascertain with 
 facility the source from which each part has been derived. 
 
 In the construction of this narrative, every word of each Gospel 
 has been incorporated, except where the same words are found con- 
 currently in more than one Gospel, or where the forms of concurrent 
 expressions are such as not to admit of their coalescing : in the lat- 
 ter case the words not incorporated in the text are noted in the 
 margin. In this way every word of all the four Gospels will be 
 found either in the text or in the margin. 
 
 It has been necessary to add certain words, and been thought 
 advisable to substitute others, ia order to preserve the sense, or the 
 grammatical construction: the words added and substituted are, 
 however, carefully noted, and distinguished from those taken from 
 the Gospels. 
 
 The nature of the compilation has made crudeness and tautology, 
 in many places, unavoidable ; but these defects of style have been 
 thought of less moment than that loss of authenticity which would 
 necessarily have resulted from an extensive modification of the text. 
 
 The verbal accuracy of the authorized version of the Gospels is 
 assumed, and no criticism or comment is attempted. 
 
 The main endeavor has been, by placing the Gospel narrative 
 before the reader in the form in which other narratives are now 
 usually written, to enable him, unconsciously as it were, to receive 
 
436 PREFACE. 
 
 all the information famislied by the fotir Gospels comhined, without 
 the labor and distraction of consulting the several Gospels ; and, at 
 the same time, to facilitate reference to the Gospels themselves for 
 verification of the text.- 
 
 The arbitrary division of the Scriptures into chapters and verses 
 makes a greater demand upon the attention of the reader than does 
 a narrative in the usual form ; and the comparison of different par- 
 allel accounts, even with the assistance of a Harmony, involves such 
 additional concentrated attention as can be looked for only in the 
 earnest biblical student. This compilation, it is hoped, wOl enable 
 even a casual reader to follow out the thread of the Gospel history, 
 without effort or distraction. 
 
 An explanation of the system of arrangement adopted is subjoined, 
 and a reference table is added, by which it can be ascertained in 
 what part of the work the chapters and verses of the different Gos- 
 pels are incorporated. 
 
 A full Index to the Gospel history is also appended.* 
 
 r. T. H. 
 
 SoTTTH Hampstead, 1869, 
 
 * It has been thought best to quote the compiler's prefatory explanation en- 
 tire, but the Eeference Table and Index mentioned are not included in the pres- 
 ent Appendix to " The Life of Jesus, the Christ." 
 
EXPLAI^ATIOl^. 
 
 THE figure (") in the text indicates that the portion preceding it has been 
 taken fi^om St. Matthew's Gospel. In like manner the figures f), f), and 
 (*) indicate the Gospel firom which the portions preceding them are taken, 
 O indicating St. Mark's, f) St. Luke's, and (') St. John's Gospel. 
 
 The figures (*), Q, 0, and (*) after the words in the margin indicate in like man- 
 ner the Gospels in which such words are found, in lieu of the words to 
 which the notes of reference are appended. 
 
 The figure (^ indicates that the words preceding it are not found in any of the 
 four Gospels, but have been either introduced or substituted. 
 
 The chapters and verses quoted in the margin show what portions of each Gos- 
 pel are incorporated in each particular page. 
 
 EXAMPLE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 ParMes — the Sower — the Tares and the Wheat — the Grow- H^'f-.^i-^Tn"' 
 
 Mark IV. 1 - 10. 
 
 iiig Seed — the Grain of Mustard Seed — the Leaven — Luke viii. 4-9. 
 the Hid Treasure — the Pearl of Great Price — the Net 
 and Fishes. 
 
 THE same day went Jesus out of tlie house, and sat 
 by the seaside,^ and he began again to teach.^ And " " •^'i '^^^^ " 
 great multitudes were* gathered together unto him,^ and great multitude, a 
 were come to him out of every city,° so that he went " into w^e. 3^"°^ ^ 
 a ship, and sat"^ in the sea:^ and the whole multitude stood =™terea.2 
 
 ^' •' a was by the sea 
 
 on the shore.'' And he spake many things unto them,'' on the land, a 
 and^ taught them^ in parables," saying^/ unto them in his ° by Sparable. 3 
 
 doctrine,^ /and said. 2 
 
 The figure Q) in the second line indicates that all that precedes is taken firom 
 St. Matthew. 
 
438 EXPLANATION. 
 
 The figure (^ in the same line indicates that the words " and he began again 
 
 to teach " are taken from St. Mark. 
 The figure Q) in the third hne indicates that the words " And great multitudes 
 
 were gathered together unto him " are taken from St. Matthew. 
 The figure (') in the fourth line indicates that the words " and were come to him 
 
 out of every city " are taken from St. Luke. 
 In'the same way it will be understood that the words, 
 
 " so that he went into a ship, and sat " are fi-om St. Matthew. 
 
 "in the sea"; " St. Mark. 
 
 " and the whole multitude stood on \ 
 
 the shore. And he spake many >■ " St. Matthew. 
 
 things unto them " J 
 
 " taught them " " St. Mark. 
 
 " in parables, saying " " St. Matthew. 
 
 " unto them in his doctrine,'' " St. Mark. 
 
 The figure f ) in the seventh Hne indicates that the word " and " is not to be 
 
 found in either G-ospel, but has been introduced. 
 
 "Matt. xiii. 1-10. 1^ :,-..,. ., .- ^ ., . , - , 
 
 ^ , . 1 1 n ( Indicate that these portions of those particular Gospels are 
 
 LiAevm. 4-9.") i^icorporated in that page. 
 
 Note a, indicates that in St. Luke the words " And when " occur instead of the 
 
 word " And." 
 
 " &, that in St. Mark the words " there was a great multitude," and that in 
 
 St. Luke the words "much people, were," occur instead of the words 
 
 "great multitudes were." ' 
 
 " c, that in St. Mark the word " entered " occurs instead of the word " went." 
 
 " d, that in St. Mark the words " was by the sea on the land " occur instead 
 
 of the words "stood on the shore." 
 " e, that in St. Mark the words " by parables," and in St. Luke the words 
 " by a parable," occur instead of the words " in parables." 
 /, that in St. Mark the words " and said," occur instead of the word "say- 
 ing." 
 
TABLE OF C0B"TEl!5"TS. 
 
 Chapteb Pagb 
 
 L The Divinity of Jesus Christ 441 
 
 n. The Birth of John the Baptist and the Birth of Jesus foretold, 
 
 and the Meeting of Mary and Elisabeth 442 
 
 m. Birth and Oiroumoision of John the Baptist .... 445 
 
 rV. Birth and Circumcision of Jesus Christ 446 
 
 V. The Genealogies of Jesus Christ 449 
 
 VI. The Infancy of Jesus Christ 452 
 
 VII. The Preaching of John the Baptist 455 
 
 VIII. The Baptism of Jesus Christ, and his Temptation .... 457 
 
 IX. , The Testimony of John the Baptist to Jesus, and the Calling of the 
 
 first Disciples . 459 
 
 X. The Marriage at Cana. — Journey to Jerusalem. — The Casting 
 
 out of the Traders from the Temple 461 
 
 XI. Jesus and Nioodemus. — Further Testimony of the Baptist . 463 
 
 XII. Imprisonment of John the Baptist. — Return of Jesus to Galilee. 
 
 — Interview with the Woman of Samaria .... 465 
 
 XIIL The Preaching of Jesus in Galilee. — Several Miracles. — Calling 
 
 of several Disciples 469 
 
 XIV. Heahng of a Leper, and oi a Paralytic 474 
 
 XV. Healing of a Man on the Sabbath, and consequent Discussion . 476 
 
 XVI. Christ's Teaching as to the Sabbath. — The Ordination of the 
 
 Twelve Apostles 479 
 
440 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 XVn. The Sermon on the Mount 482 
 
 XVIII. The Healing of the Centurion's Servant, and the Raising of the 
 
 Widow's Son at Nain 489 
 
 XIX. Jesus and the Disciples of John Baptist — Jesus' Testimony of 
 John Baptist, — his Condemnation of the unbeKeving Cities. 
 — Jesus anointed by a Woman at a Pharisee's House . . 491 
 
 XX. Another Circuit through G-aUlee. — Denunciation of the Scribes 
 and Pharisees on the Occasion of a Devil being cast out, and 
 of a Dinner at a Pharisee's House 495 
 
THE 
 
 GOSPEL HISTOET. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 The Divinity of Jesus Chrisv. 
 
 THE beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, tlie Son Marki. i. ^ 
 of God.2 u" 16-18.'" 
 
 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
 God, and the Word was God. The same was in the begin- 
 ning with God. All things were made by him ; and without 
 him was not anything made that was made. In him was 
 life ; and the life was the light of men. And the light 
 shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it 
 not.* 
 
 He*" was the true Light, which lighteth every man that oihat.* 
 Cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the 
 world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He 
 came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as 
 many as received him, to them gave he power to become 
 the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name : 
 which were bom, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, 
 nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was 
 made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, 
 the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of 
 grace and truth.* And of his fulness have all we received, 
 and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but 
 grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen 
 God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the 
 bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.* 
 
442 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 Tlie Birth of John the Baptist and the Birth of Jesus fore- 
 told, and the Meeting of Mary and Elisabeth. 
 
 lukei.s-iT. rT^HERE was a man sent from God, whose name was 
 
 Johni. 6-8,15, 
 
 J- John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness 
 of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He 
 was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that 
 Light.* John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, 
 " This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is 
 preferred before me : for he was before me."* 
 
 There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, a 
 certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia : and 
 his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was 
 Elisabeth. And they were both righteous before God, 
 walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the 
 Lord blameless. And they had no child, because that 
 Elisabeth was barren, and they both were now well stricken 
 in years. 
 
 And it came to pass, that while he executed the priest's 
 office before God in the order of his course, according to the 
 custom of the priest's office, his lot was to bum incense 
 when he went into the temple of the Lord. And the whole 
 multitude of the people were praying without at the time 
 of incense. And there appeared unto him an angel of the 
 Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. 
 And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell 
 upon him. 
 
 But the angel said unto him, 
 
 " Fear not, Zacharias : for thy prayer is heard ; and thy 
 wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his 
 name ' John.' And thou shalt have joy and gladness ; and 
 many shall rejoice at his birth. For he shall be great in 
 the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor 
 strong drink ; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, 
 even from his mother's womb. And many of the children 
 of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. And he shall' 
 
ZA CH ARIAS. — GABRIEL. 443 
 
 go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah,^" to turn i^akei. 17-32. 
 the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobe- "Eiias.s 
 dient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people 
 prepared for the Lord." 
 
 And Zacbarias said unto the angel, 
 " Whereby shall I know this ? for I am an old man, and 
 my wife well stricken in years." 
 
 And the angel answering said unto him, 
 " I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God ; and 
 am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad 
 tidings. And, behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to 
 speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, 
 because thou believest not my words, which shall be ful- 
 filled in their season." 
 
 And the people' waited for Zacharias, and marvelled that 
 he tarried so long in the temple. And when he came out, 
 he could not speak unto them : and they perceived that he 
 had seen a vision in the temple : for he beckoned unto 
 them, and remained speechless. 
 
 And it came to pass, that, as soon as the days of his 
 ministration were accomplished, he departed to his own 
 house. , 
 
 And after those days his wife Elisabeth conceived, and 
 hid herself five months, saying, 
 
 " Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein 
 he looked on me, to take away my reproach among men." 
 
 And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from 
 God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin 
 espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of 
 David ; and the virgin's name was Mary. 
 
 And the angel came in unto her, and said, 
 
 "Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with 
 thee : blessed art thou among women." 
 
 And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, 
 and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this 
 should be. 
 
 And the angel said unto her, 
 
 " Fear not, Mary : for thou hast found favor with God. 
 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring 
 forth a son, and shalt call his name ' Jesus.' He shall be ° 
 
444 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 Luke 1^-61. great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest : and the 
 Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father 
 David : and he shaU reign over the house of Jacob forever ; 
 and of his kingdom there shall be no end." 
 Then said Mary unto the angel, 
 " How shall this be, seeing I know not a man 1 " 
 And the angel answered and said unto her, 
 " The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power 
 of the Highest shall overshadow thee : therefore also that 
 holy thing which shall be bom of thee shall be called the 
 Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath 
 also conceived a son in her old age : and this is the sixth 
 month with her, who was called barren. For with God 
 nothing shall be impossible." 
 And Mary said, 
 
 " Behold the handmaid of the Lord ; be it unto me ac- 
 cording to thy word." 
 And the angel departed from her. 
 
 And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hUl 
 oJuda.» country with haste, into a city of ° Judah;*" and entered 
 
 into the house of Zacharias, and saluted Elisabeth. And it 
 came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of 
 Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was 
 filled with the Holy Ghost ; and she spake out with a loud 
 voice, and said, 
 
 " Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit 
 of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother 
 of my Lord should come to me ? for, lo, as soon as the 
 voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe 
 leaped in my womb for joy. And blessed is she that 
 believed : for there shall be a performance of those things 
 which were told her from the Lord." 
 And Mary said, 
 
 "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath 
 rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded the low 
 estate of his handmaiden : for, behold, from henceforth all 
 generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty 
 hath done to me great things ; and holy is his name. And 
 his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to 
 generation. He hath shewed strength with his arm; he' 
 
BIRTH OF JOHN. 445 
 
 hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. r'"h°i- 61-66. 
 He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted 
 them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good 
 things ; and the rich he hath sent empty away. He hath 
 holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy ; as 
 he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for- 
 ever." 
 
 And Mary abode with her about three months, and re- 
 turned to her own house.' 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Birth and Circumcision of John the Baptist. 
 
 "VTOW Elisabeth's full time came that she should be de- i-u^^ ■■ 67-67. 
 -1-^ livered; and she brought forth a son. And her 
 neighbors and her cousins heard how the Lord had shewed 
 great niercy upon her ; and they rejoiced with her. 
 
 And it came to pass, that on the eighth day they came to 
 circumcise the child ; and they called him Zacharias, after 
 the name of his father. 
 
 -And his mother answered and said, 
 
 « Not so ; but he shall be called ' John.' " 
 
 And they said unto her, 
 
 " There is none of thy kindred that is called by this 
 name." 
 
 And they made signs to his father, how he would have 
 him called. And he asked for a writing-table, and wrote, 
 saying, 
 
 " His name is John." 
 
 And they marvelled all. And his mouth was opened 
 immediately, and his tongue loosed, and he spake, and 
 praised God. And fear came on all that dwelt round about 
 them : and aU these sayings were noised abroad throughout 
 all the hill country of Judsea. And all they that heard 
 them laid them up in their hearts, saying, 
 
 " What manner of child shall this be ! " 
 
 And the hand of the Lord was with him. 
 
 And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost, 
 and prophesied, saying, ' 
 
446 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 Luke i^-80. « Blessed be the Lord God of Israel ; for he hath visited 
 °'°-' and redeemed his people, and hath raised up* a'" horn of 
 
 salvation for us in the house of his servant David ; as he 
 spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been 
 since the world began : that we should be saved from our 
 enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us ; to perform 
 the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his 
 holy dovenant j the oath which he sware to our father Abra- 
 ham, That he would grant iinto us, that we being delivered 
 out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without 
 fear, in holiness and righteousness before him, all the days 
 of our life. 
 
 "And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the 
 Highest : for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to 
 prepare his ways ; to give knowledge of salvation unto his 
 people by the remission of their sins, through the tender 
 mercy of our God ; whereby the dayspring from on high 
 hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness 
 and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way 
 of peace." 
 
 And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was 
 in the deserts till the day of his shewing unto Israel.* 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Birth and Circumcision of Jems Christ. 
 
 Matt, i. 18-21. ~"VFOW the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise : 
 
 -L> When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, 
 before they came together, she was found with child of the 
 Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, 
 and not willing to make her a public example, was minded 
 to put her away privily. But while he thought on these 
 things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeai-ed unto him 
 in a dream, saying, 
 
 " Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee 
 Mary thy wife : for that which is conceived in her is of the 
 Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou 
 shalt call his name 'Jesus,' for he shall save his people 
 from their sins."* 
 
BIRTH OF CHRIST. 447 
 
 Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which Jf^^-J'.f.-jf ■ 
 was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, — 
 
 " Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son. 
 
 And they shall call his name Emmanuel," " (which being interpreted 
 
 ■ <<n J -n. "\ e, If a Isaiah Til. 14. 
 
 13 "God with us. ) 
 
 Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of 
 the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife : and 
 knew her not tiU she had brought forth her first-born 
 son.i 
 
 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a 
 decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world shoidd be 
 taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was 
 governor of Syria.) And aU went to be taxed, every one 
 into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, 
 out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of 
 David, which is called Bethlehem ; (because he was of 
 the house and lineage of David : ) to be taxed with Mary 
 his espoused wife, being great with child. 
 
 And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were 
 accomplished that she should be delivered. And she 
 brought forth her first-bom son, and wrapped him in swad- 
 dling clothes, and laid him in a manger ; because there was 
 no room for them in the inn. 
 
 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding 
 in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, 
 lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory 
 of the Lord shone round about them : and they were sor^ 
 afraid. And the angel said unto them, 
 
 " Fear not : for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great 
 joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is bom 
 this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the 
 Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you ; Ye shall find 
 the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger." 
 
 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of 
 the heavenly host praising God, and saying, 
 
 " Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good- 
 will toward men." 
 
 And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from 
 them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, * 
 
448 TEE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 Luke ii^-34. « Lgt US now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing 
 which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known 
 imto us." 
 
 And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, 
 and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen 
 it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them 
 concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered 
 at those things which were told them by the shepherds. 
 But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her 
 heart. 
 
 And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God 
 for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was 
 told unto them. 
 
 And when eight days were accomplished for the circum- 
 " ^^4°'^' cising of the child, his name was called " " Jesus," which 
 '^™' was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the 
 
 womb. And when the days of her purification according to 
 the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to 
 Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord ; (as it is written in 
 the law of the Lord, " Every male that openeth the womb 
 shall be called holy to the Lord";) and to offer a sacri- 
 fice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, 
 " A pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons." 
 
 And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name 
 was Simeon ; and the same man was just and devout, 
 Waiting for the consolation of Israel : and the Holy Ghost 
 was upon him. And it was revealed unto him by the Holy 
 Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the 
 ' Lord's Christ. And he came by the Spirit into the temple : 
 
 and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for 
 him after the custom of the law, then took he him up in 
 his arms, and blessed God, and said, 
 
 " Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, 
 according to thy word : for mine eyes have seen thy salva- 
 tion, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; 
 a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people 
 Israel." 
 
 And Joseph and his mother maiTelled at those things 
 which were spoken of him. 
 
 And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother,' 
 
SIMEON. —ANNA.— GENEALOGIES. 449 
 
 "Behold, tMs child is set for the fall and rising again of into u. 34 -39. 
 many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken 
 against; (yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul 
 also), that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed." 
 
 And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of 
 Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher :"^ she was of a great age, a Aaer.» 
 and had lived with' a' husband seven years from her vir- ^m.a 
 ginity ; and she was a widow of about fourscore and four 
 years, which departed not from the temple, but served God 
 with fastings and prayers night and day. And she coming 
 in that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and 
 spake of him to all thein that looked for redemption in 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 And 'they '"performed all things according to the law "^wtenthey 
 of the Lord.» 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Genealogies of Jesus Christ. 
 
 THE book of the generation of Jesus Christ.* Matt.i.i-7. 
 
 The son of David. 
 The son of Abraham. 
 Abraham begat Isaac ; and 
 Isaac begat Jacob ; and 
 
 Jacob begat * Judah ' ^ and his brethren ; and * ^ 3^^- ' 
 
 Judah^-i begati Pharez^' and* Zarah«/of * Tamar j^f ;p^^^™' 
 
 g^jj(J 1 pThamar.l 
 
 Phares ^ ' begat * Hezron ; ^ ' and * * Esrom, i 
 
 Hezron ^ * begat ^ Earn ; ^ ' and * ■ Aram, i 
 
 Eam 5 ' begat i Amminadab ; « ^ and * * ^™°^*- ' 
 
 Amminadab ^ ' begat ^ Nahshon ; ^ ' and * ' Na^""- ' 
 
 Nahshon ^ ' begat Salmon ; and 
 
 Sahnon begat ^ Boaz « ™ of Kahab ; « » and * 7^1 . 
 
 Boaz ^ " begat Obed of Ruth ; and 
 
 Obed begat Jesse ; and 
 
 Jesse begat David the king ; and 
 
 David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the 
 
 wife of 1 Uriah ; « ° and " '^^■'^ 
 
 Solomon begat * Rehoboam ; ^i" and i ^ «»'"«-■ ' 
 
 29 
 
450 
 
 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 Matt. i. 7-17. 
 Mark 1. 1. 
 liuke iii. 23, 24. 
 
 A Roboaan. ^ 
 6 Abia. i 
 c Josaphat. I 
 d Joram. 1 
 e Ozias. i 
 / Joatham, i 
 
 9 Achaz, 1 
 
 ft Ezekias. J 
 i Hanasses. 1 
 
 ^ JoBias. 1 
 Z Jechonias. i 
 
 •n Zorobabel. 1 
 
 Eehoboam ^ " begat ^ Abijali ; "^ * and ^ 
 
 Abijah ' ' begat Asa ; and 
 
 Asa begat ^ Jehoshaphat ; ° ° and ^ 
 
 Jehoshaphat ^ " begat ^ Jehoram ; * "^ and • 
 
 Jehoram ^^ begat -^ Uzziah ; ^ ' and ■'^ 
 
 Uzziah ^ ' begat ^ Jotham ; ^f and ^ 
 
 Jotham ^f begat * Ahaz ; ^ s- and * 
 
 Ahaz ' s- begat ^ Hezekiah ; ° * and ^ 
 
 Hezekiali ^ * begat ^ Manasseb ; * ' and * 
 
 Manasseh ° ' begat Amon ; and 
 
 Amon begat ^ Josiah ; ^ * and '^ 
 
 Josiah ' * begat ^ Jeconiah ' ' and his brethren, 
 
 About the time they -vrere carried away to Babylon : 
 And after they were brought to Babylon, ^ 
 Jeconiah ^ ' begat Salathiel ; and 
 Salathiel begat ^ Zerubbabel ; ° "■ and ^ 
 Zerubbabel * "' begat Abiud ; and 
 Abiud begat Eliakim ; and 
 Eliakim begat Azor ; and 
 Azor begat Sadoc ; and 
 Sadoc begat Achim ; and 
 Achim begat Eliud ; and 
 Eliud begat Eleazar ; and 
 Eleazar begat Matthan ; and 
 Matthan begat Jacob ; and 
 Jacob begat 
 Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was bom 
 
 Jesus who is called Christ. 
 So aU the generations from Abraham to David are four- 
 teen generations; and from David until the carrying away 
 into Babylon are fourteen generations ; and from the carry- 
 ing away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen genera- 
 tions.^ 
 
 Jesus Christ the Son of GOD.'' 
 
 Jesus ° being (as was supposed) the son of 
 
 Joseph, which was the son of 
 
 Heli, which was the son of 
 
 MStthat, which was the son of 
 
 Levi, which was the son of 
 
 Melohi, which was the son of ° 
 
GENEALOGIES. 451 
 
 Janna, wliich was the son of lukem. 24-32. 
 
 Joseph, which was the son of 
 
 Mattathias, which was the son of 
 
 Amos, which was the son of 
 
 Naum, which was the son of 
 
 Esli, which was the son of 
 
 Nagge, which was the son of 
 
 Maath, which was the son of 
 
 Mattathias, which was the son of 
 
 Semei, which was the son of 
 
 Joseph, which was the son of 
 
 Juda, which was the son of 
 
 Joanna, which was the son of 
 
 Ehesa, which was the son of* 
 
 Zerubbabel,* " which was the son of ozorobabei.s 
 
 Salathiel, which was the son of 
 
 Neri, which was the son of 
 
 Melchi, which was the son of 
 
 Addi, which was the son of 
 
 Cosam, which was the son of 
 
 Elmodam, which was the son of 
 
 Er, which was the son of 
 
 Jose, which was the son of 
 
 Eliezer, which was the son of 
 
 Jorim, which was the son of 
 
 Matthat, which was the son of 
 
 Levi, which was the son of 
 
 Simeon, which was the son of ■ 
 
 Juda, which was the son of 
 
 Joseph, which was the son of 
 
 Jonan, which was the son of 
 
 Eliakim, which was the son of 
 
 Melea, which was the son of 
 
 Menan, which was the son of 
 
 Mattatha, which waS the son of 
 
 Nathan, which was the son of 
 
 David, which was the son of 
 
 Jesse, which was the son of 
 
 Obed, which was the son of 
 
 Boaz,^* which was the son of* ibooz.s 
 
452 
 
 TEE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 liukeiii 32 -! 
 a Naa^son.s 
 h Aminadab. 3 
 c Arajn. 8 
 ^ JSsrom. 8 
 € Phares. 8 
 •/•Juda.' 
 
 cThara-a 
 ft Nachor. 3 
 • Saruoli. 3 
 ^Ra^u. 8 
 ! Phalec. 3 
 M Heier. 8 
 nSaJa. 3 
 
 o Sem. 3 
 pNoe. 3 
 
 3 Mathusala. 8 
 
 r MaleleeL 8 
 
 Salmon, wliich was the son of ° 
 Nahshon/ " which was the son of" 
 Amminadab/* which was the son of 
 Kam,^° which was the son of* 
 Hezron,*'' which was the son of 
 Pharez/' which was the son of* 
 Judah,'/ which was the son of 
 Jacob, which was the son of 
 Isaac, which was the son of 
 Abraham, which was the son of* 
 Terah,^ s which was the son of ° 
 Nahor,^* which was the son of 
 Serug,* ' which was the son of ' 
 Eeu,^ * which was the son of ° 
 Peleg,^ ' which was the son of 
 Eber,^" which was the son of* 
 Shelah,^ " which was the son of 
 Cainan, which was the son of 
 Arphaxad, which was the son of 
 Shem,^ " which was the son of * 
 Noah^-P which was the son of 
 Lamech, which was the son of ' 
 Methuselah,^ » which was the son of 
 Enoch, which was the son of 
 Jared, which was the son of 
 Mahalaleel,* *■ which was the son of 
 Cainan, which was the son of 
 Enos, which was the son of 
 Seth, which was the son of 
 Adam, which was the son of 
 GOD.« 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 The Infancy of Jesiis Christ. 
 
 Matt.ii^2. "^T^^ ^^^"i Jesus was bom in Bethlehem of Judsea in 
 -'-^ the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise 
 men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, 
 
 "Where is he that is bom King of the Jews'! for we' 
 
THE INFANCY OF JESUS CHRIST. 453 
 
 have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship Matt.a.2-iB. 
 him." — 
 
 When Herod the king had heard these things, he was 
 troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had 
 gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people to- 
 gether, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. 
 
 And they said unto him, 
 
 " In Bethlehem of Judsea : for thus it is written by the 
 prophet, 
 
 " 'And thou Bethlehem, in the land of 1 Judah.^ « 
 Art not the least among the princes of ^ Judah ; * " 
 For out of thee shall come a Governor, 
 That shall rule my people Israel.' " ' ' Micah v. 2. 
 
 Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, 
 inquired of them diligently what time the star appeared. 
 And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, 
 
 " Go and search diligently for the young child ; and 
 when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may 
 come and worship him also." 
 
 When they had heard the king, they departed ; and, lo, 
 the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till 
 it came and stood over where the young child was. When 
 they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. 
 
 And when they were come into the house, they saw the 
 young child with Mary his mother, and fell down and 
 worshipped him : and when they had opened their treas- 
 ures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, 
 and myrrh. And being warned of God in a dream that 
 they should not return to Herod, they departed into their 
 own country another way. 
 
 And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the 
 Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, 
 
 "Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and 
 flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word : 
 for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him." 
 
 When he arose, he took the young child and his mother 
 by night, and departed into Egypt : and was there until 
 the death of Herod : that it might be fulfilled which was 
 spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, 
 
 " Out of Egypt have I called my son." l" 
 
454 
 
 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 Matt. ii. 16-23. 
 Luke ii. 39-47. 
 
 a Jeremy, i 
 
 6'Jer. J 
 
 n.l5. 
 
 che.i 
 
 dto.3 
 eacitycaUed.l 
 
 /la. liii. 2. 
 
 Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the 
 wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew 
 all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the 
 coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to 
 the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. 
 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by ^ Jeremiah ^ " 
 the prophet, saying, 
 
 " In Rama was there a voice heard. 
 Lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, 
 Eachel weeping for her children, and would not he comforted. 
 Because they are not." ^ 
 
 But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord 
 appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, 
 
 " Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go 
 into the land of Israel : for they are dead which sought the 
 young child's life." 
 
 And he arose, and took the young child and his mother, 
 and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that 
 Archelaus did reign in Judaea in the room of his father 
 Herod, he was afraid to go thither : notwithstanding, being 
 warned of God in a dream,^ they'" turned aside,^ and* 
 returned ' into the parts of Galilee : and ^ they * '^ came and 
 dwelt in ■^ * their own city ' JNazareth : ° that it might be 
 fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, " He shall be 
 called a Nazarene." '/ 
 
 And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled 
 with wisdom : and the grace of God was upon him. 
 
 Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the 
 feast of the passover. And when he was twelve years old, 
 they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast. 
 And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the 
 child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem ; and Joseph and 
 his mother knew not of it. But they, supposing him to 
 have been in the company, went a day's journey ; and they 
 sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. And 
 when they found him not, they turned back again to Jeru- 
 salem, seeking him. 
 
 And it came to pass, that after three days they found 
 him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both 
 hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that' 
 
THE PREACHING OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. 455 
 
 heard him were astonished at his understanding and J-uke ii- 47-52. 
 answers. And when they saw him, they were amazed : and 
 his mother said unto him, 
 
 " Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us ? behold, thy 
 father and I have sought thee sorrowing." 
 
 And he said unto them, 
 
 " How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I miist 
 be about my Father's business V 
 
 And they understood not the saying which he spake unto 
 them. 
 
 And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, 
 and was subject unto them : but his mother kept all these 
 sayings in her heart. 
 
 And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor 
 with God and man.* 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Preaching of John the Baptist. 
 
 ""VyOW in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Matt.iii. i,a 
 -L^ Csesar," Pontius Pilate being governor of Judsea, and Lukeiu. i-4. 
 Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip « in those days. 1 
 tetrarch of Iturea and of the region of Trachonitis, and 
 Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiaphas being 
 the high-priests, the word of God came unto John' the 
 Baptist,^ the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness. And he 
 came into all the country about Jordan/ and ^ did baptize ^ 
 in the wilderness of Judaea,^ and preach^' the baptism of spreaching.i' 
 repentance for the remission of sins,' saying," c and saying, i 
 
 " Repent ye : for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." ' 
 
 As it is written in the prophets, 
 
 " Behold, I send my messenger 'before thy face, 
 Which shall prepare thy way hefore thee : 2 ■* a Malachl iii. 1, 
 
 and^ in the book of the words of Isaiah ^ ' the prophet, eEsaias.a 
 saying, 
 
 " The voice of one crying in the wilderness, 
 
 Prepare ye the way of the Lord, 
 
 Make his paths straight.' 
 
456 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 Matt. m. 8-10. Every valley shall be filled, 
 
 Luke iii. 6-16. And every mountain and hill shall be brought low ; 
 
 And the crooked shall be made straight, 
 
 And the rough ways shall be made smooth ; 
 « Isaiah xl. 3 - 6. And all flesh shall see the salvation of God. " ' " 
 
 6 Esiuas.i For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet * Isaiah.* ^ 
 
 c was clothed j^mj the Same John had his raiment of° camel's hair, and 
 
 with. 2 ' 
 
 d with a girdle of a leathern ffirdle ^ about his loins : and his meat was ' 
 
 askin.!" , , ., , , 1 
 
 e he did eat. 2 locusts and Wild honey.'- 
 
 /And. 2 Then '/ there went out unto f him all the land of Judaea, 
 
 ' "■ and they of Jerusalem," and all the region round about 
 
 Jordan, and were * all baptized of him in the river of 
 
 Jordan, confessing their sins." 
 
 Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be 
 » tut when. 1 baptized of him,* when* he saw many of the Pharisees 
 i he said unto and Sadducees come to his baptism,' 
 
 them. 1 , 
 
 " generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee 
 from the wrath to come ? Bring forth therefore fruits 
 fth-^°k*i''' ■worthy of* repentance, and begin' not to say within your- 
 selves, ' We have Abraham to our father ' : for I say unto 
 you. That God is able of these stones to raise up children 
 unto Abraham. And now also the axe is laid unto the 
 root of the trees : every tree therefore which bringeth not 
 forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire." 
 
 And the people asked him, saying, 
 
 " What shall we do then % " 
 
 He answereth and saith unto them, 
 
 " He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that 
 hath none ; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise." 
 
 Then came also publicans to be baptized, and said unto 
 him, 
 
 " Master, what shall we do ? " 
 
 And he said unto them, 
 
 " Exact no more than that which is appointed you." 
 
 And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, 
 
 "And what shall we do?" 
 
 And he said unto them, 
 
 " Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely ; and 
 be content with your wages." 
 
 And as the people were in expectation, and aU men' 
 
BAPTISM IN JORDAN. 457 
 
 mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ, Matt, m ii, 12. 
 or not; John answered," saying unto them all, Lukeiu.'iB-is. 
 
 "I indeed baptize' you with water ° unto repentance: o ana preached. 2 
 buti there cometh one= mightier than I after me,^ the chTttau^to 
 latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and -''•' 
 unloose :'"'' he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and "itear.i 
 with fire : whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly 
 purge his floor, and will gather the ' wheat into his garner ; " '^- ' 
 but the chaff he will bum ' up '^ with fire unquenchable." * 
 
 And many other things in his exhortation preached he 
 unto the people.' 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The Baptism of Jesus Christ, and his Temptation. 
 
 "VTOW»/it came to pass in those days,^? when all the Matt. ffi. 13-17. 
 -1-^ people were baptized,' that Jesus came* from Naza- ^^^^^^i%i_ 
 reth of Galilee" to Jordan unto John to be baptized of — J^-^X 
 him. -^And.s 
 
 g then, i 
 
 But John forbad him, saying, * cometh. » 
 
 " I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to 
 me?" 
 
 And Jesus answering said unto him, 
 
 " Suffer it to be so now : for thus it becometh us to fulfil 
 all righteousness." 
 
 Then he suffered him,^ and was baptized- of John in 
 Jordan.^ 
 
 And Jesus,^ praying," when he was *■ baptized; went up* faisohemg.s^ 
 straightway out of the water : and, lo, the heavens were' ihesawthehcaT- 
 opened iinto^ John,*™ and he saw the Spirit of God, ^ the theheayen wns.» 
 Holy Ghost,' descending i" in a bodily shape,' like a dove, Tderended.' 
 and lighting upon him: and lo a voice ^ came'" from otterecamea 
 heaven,^ which said.'J' p B»yi°g- ' ' 
 
 " This is« my beloved Son, in whom' I am well pleased."^ r th™."' 
 
 And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from 
 Jordan, and' was ' immediately " led up of the Spirit" into J^y™' 
 the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.^ " 'Jj« ^^S^''^' 
 
 And he was " there in the wilderness forty days, tempted ^ „ tdng. » 
 
458 TEE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 Matt. iT 2-11. of Satan;" and was with the wild beasts ;== and in those 
 ^^ jij- l^ig days he did eat nothing." 
 
 — And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights,* he 
 
 a the devil. 8 k i i j 
 
 6 when they were was afterward^ a^° hungred." 
 
 t^A And when the tempter,^ the devil,* came to him, he said* 
 
 ''^ST'*'"""untohim,» 
 
 e thiB stone that " If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones' 
 
 it. s 
 
 be made bread." 
 /And. a But'/ Jesus^ answered him, saying,* 
 
 " and. " It is written, ' That man shall not live by bread alone, 
 
 land said. 1 -^^^ by every word ° that proceedeth out of the mouth of 
 
 • Deut. Tiii. 3. God."" * 
 
 * And he.8 Then the devil * * brought him to Jerusalem,' and* taketh 
 iset.3 him up into the holy city, and setteth' him on a pinnacle 
 m said. 3 of the temple, and saith " unto him, 
 
 " If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down * from 
 hence ; " for it is written, ' He shall give his angels charge 
 
 » over. 3 concerning " thee,' to keep thee: and in their hands they 
 
 shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot 
 
 Pe. xci. u, 12. against a stone.' " ° 
 
 And Jesus, answering, said unto him,' 
 
 p said. 3 "It is written again,? 'Thou shalt not tempt the Lord 
 
 9 Deut. vi. 16. thy God.' " ? 
 
 r And. 8 Again,*" the devil taketh ' him up into an exceeding high 
 
 ( shewed onto. > mountain, and sheweth ' him all the kingdoms of the 
 world, and the glory of them,' in a moment of time ; ' and ' 
 
 "said. 8 the devil ' saith " unto him, 
 
 " All these things ' and the glory of them,' and * all this 
 power will I give thee,' (for that is delivered unto me ; and 
 to whomsoever I wiU I give it,)' if thou wilt fall down and 
 
 v> if thou there- worship me.''' " 
 
 fore wilt wor- rm i t 
 
 ship me, all Then'"" Jesus answered and said 3' unto him, 
 
 shall be thine. 8 ,~, i i 
 
 a: And. 3 "Get thee hence,^ Satan: for it is written, 'Thou shalt 
 
 sbehi'ndme.a Worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou 
 a Deut. vi. la Serve.' " ' " 
 
 i>then.i And when the devil had ended all the temptation, Mie 
 
 ^'trrieis.* departed from" him for a season.' And, behold, angels'* 
 
 came and ministered unto him.' 
 
 And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of 
 
 age.' 
 
TESTIMONY OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. 459 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Testimony of John the Baptist to Jesus, and the Catt- 
 ing of the first Disdples. 
 
 A ND this is the record of John, when the Jews sent John i, 19-30. 
 -^-*- priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, 
 
 "Who art thou V 
 
 And he confessed, and denied not j but confessed, 
 
 " I am not the Christ." 
 
 And they asked him, 
 
 "What then? Art thou ^ Elijah ?" ^ <• aEii^.i 
 
 And he saith, 
 
 " I am not." 
 
 "Art thou that prophet 'i " 
 
 And he answered, 
 
 "No." 
 
 Then said they unto him, 
 
 "Who art thou? that we may give an answer to them 
 that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself? " 
 
 He said, 
 
 " I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ' Make 
 straight the way of the Lord,' ' as said the prophet* ' is ^- 3. 
 
 Isaiah. " Bsaias. * 
 
 And they which were sent were of the Pharisees. And 
 they asked him, and said unto him, 
 
 " Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not that Christ, 
 nor * Elijah,^ ^ neither that prophet ? " a BUaa. * 
 
 John answered them, saying, 
 
 " I baptize with water : but there standeth one among 
 you, whom ye know not ; he it is, who coming after me is 
 preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy 
 to unloose." 
 
 These things wSre done in Bethabara beyond Jordan, 
 where John was baptizing. 
 
 The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, 
 
 " Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin 
 of the world. This is he of whom I said, 'After me* 
 
460 TEE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 John!. 80-45. oometh a man which is preferred before me': for he was 
 before me. And I knew him not : but that he should be 
 made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with 
 water." 
 
 And John bare record, saying, 
 
 I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and 
 it abode upon him. And I knew him not : but he that 
 sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, 
 ' Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and 
 remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the 
 Holy Ghost.' And I saw, and bare record that this is the 
 Son of God." 
 
 Again the next day after John stood, and two of his dis- 
 ciples ; and looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, 
 
 " Behold the Lamb of God ! " 
 
 And the two disciples heard him speak,, and they followed 
 Jesus. Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and 
 saith unto them, 
 
 " What seek ye f " 
 
 They said unto him, 
 
 " Eabbi," (which is to say, being interpreted, " Master,") 
 " where dwellest thou ? " 
 
 He saith unto them, 
 
 " Come and see." 
 
 They came and saw where he dwelt, and abode with him 
 that day : for it was about the tenth hour. One of the 
 two which heard John speak, and followed him, was An- 
 drew, Simon Peter's brother. He first findeth his own 
 brother Simon, and saith unto him, 
 
 "We have found the Messias," (which is, being inter- 
 preted, " the Christ,") 
 
 And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld 
 him, he said, 
 
 " Thou art Simon the son of Jona : thou shalt be called 
 ' Cephas,' " (which is by interpretation, " A stone.") 
 
 The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and 
 findeth Philip, and saith unto him, 
 
 " Follow me." 
 
 Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and 
 Peter. Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him,* 
 
MARRIAGE AT CANA. ^gi 
 
 "We have found him, of -whom Moses iu the law, and Joiini.45-Bi. 
 the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of 
 Joseph." 
 
 And Nathanael said unto him, 
 
 " Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? " 
 
 Philip saith unto him, 
 
 " Come and see." 
 
 Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, 
 
 " Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile ! " 
 
 Nathanael saith unto him, 
 
 " Whence knowest thou me ?" 
 
 Jesus answered and saith unto him, 
 
 " Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under 
 the fig-tree, I saw thee." 
 
 Nathanael answered and saith unto him, 
 
 " Rabbi, thou art the Son of God ; thou art the King of 
 Israel." 
 
 Jesus answered and said unto him, 
 
 " Because I said unto thee ' I saw thee under the fig- 
 tree,' believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than 
 these." 
 
 And he saith unto him, 
 
 " Verily, verily, I say unto you. Hereafter ye shall see 
 heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descend- 
 ing upon the Son of man." * 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The Marriage at Cana. — Journey to Jerusalem. — The cas- 
 ing out of the Traders from the Temple. 
 
 AND the third day there was a marriage in Cana of John a 1-4. 
 Galilee ; and the mother of Jesus was there : and 
 both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage. 
 
 And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith 
 unto him^ 
 
 " They have no wine." 
 Jesus saith unto her,* 
 
462 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 John a. 4 -18. "Woman, what have I to do with thee] mine hour is 
 not yet come." 
 
 His mother saith unto the servants, 
 
 " Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it." 
 
 And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after 
 the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two 
 or three firkins apiece. 
 
 Jesus saith unto them, 
 
 " Fill the waterpots with water." 
 
 And they filled them up to the brim. And he saith un- 
 to them, 
 
 " Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast." 
 
 And they bare it. When the ruler of the feast had 
 tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence 
 it was : (but the servants which drew the water knew ;) 
 the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, and saith 
 unto him, 
 
 " Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine ; 
 and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse : 
 but thou hast kept the good wine until now." 
 
 This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, 
 and manifested forth his glory ; and his disciples beUeved 
 on him. 
 
 After this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his 
 mother, and his brethren, and his disciples : and they con- 
 tinued there not many days. 
 
 And the Jews' passover was at hand, and Jesus went up 
 to Jerusalem, and found in the temple those that sold oxen 
 and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting : 
 and when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove 
 them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen ; 
 and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the 
 tables ; and said unto them that sold doves, 
 
 "Take these things hence; make not my Father's 
 " '"'■ * house * a ' " house of merchandise." 
 
 And his disciples remembered that it was written, 
 6 Psalm ixix, 9. " The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up." ' 
 
 Then answered the Jews and said unto him, 
 
 "What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou 
 doest these things?"* 
 
mCODEMUS. 4g3 
 
 Jesus answered and said unto them, John a. i9- 22. 
 
 " Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it 
 up." 
 
 Then said the Jews, 
 
 " Forty and six years was this temple in building, and 
 wilt thou rear it up in three days 1 " 
 
 But he spake of the temple of his body. When there- 
 fore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered 
 that he had said this unto them ; and they believed the 
 scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.* 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Jesus and Nicodemus. — Further Testimony of the Baptist. 
 
 "VyOW when he was in Jerusalem at the passover, in John a. 23-25. 
 _L^ the feast day, many believed in his name, when they — 
 saw the miracles which he did. But Jesus did not commit 
 himself unto them, because he knew all men, and needed 
 not that any should testify of man : for he knew what was 
 in man.* 
 
 There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a 
 ruler of the Jews : the same came to Jesus by night, and 
 said unto him, 
 
 "Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from 
 God : for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, 
 except God be with him." 
 
 Jesus answered and said unto him, 
 
 " Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be bom 
 again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." 
 
 Nicodemus saith unto him, 
 
 " How can a man be bom when he is old ? can he entet 
 the second time into his mother's womb, and be born 1 " 
 
 Jesus answered, 
 
 " Verily, verily, I say unto thee. Except a man be bom 
 of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the king- 
 dom of God. That which is bom of the flesh is flesh ; and* 
 
464 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 Johnia6-25. that which is bom of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that 
 I said unto thee, 'Ye must be bom again.' The wind 
 bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound there- 
 of, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it 
 goeth : so is every one that is bom of the Spirit." 
 
 Nicodemus answered and said unto him, 
 
 " How can these things be ? " 
 
 Jesus answered and said unto him, 
 
 "Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these 
 things ? Verily, verily, I say unto thee. We speak that we 
 do know, and testify that we have seen ; and ye receive not 
 our witness. If I have told you earthly things, and ye be- 
 lieve not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly 
 things % And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he 
 that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which 
 is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the 
 wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up ; that 
 whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have 
 eternal life. 
 
 " For God so loved the world, that he gave his only be- 
 gotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not 
 perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son 
 into the world to condemn the world ; but that the world 
 through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is 
 not condemned : but he that believeth not is condemned 
 already, because he hath not believed in the name of the 
 only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, 
 that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness 
 rather than light, because their deeds were eviL For every 
 one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the 
 light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth 
 truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made 
 manifest, that they are wrought in God." 
 
 After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the 
 land of Judsea ; and there he tarried with them, and bap- 
 tized. And John also was baptizing in Mnon near to 
 Salim, because there was much water there : and they 
 came, and were baptized. For John was not yet cast into 
 prison. 
 . Then there arose a question between some of John's dis- * 
 
BEROD AND HERODIAS. 465 
 
 ciples and the Jews about purifying. And they came unto JoimiU- 25-36. 
 John, and said unto him, 
 
 " Eabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordan^ to whom 
 thou barest witness, behold, the same baptizeth, and all 
 men come to him." 
 
 John answered and said, ' 
 
 " A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from 
 heaven. Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ' I am 
 not the Christ,' but that I am sent before him. He that 
 hath the bride is the bridegroom : but the friend of the 
 bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth 
 greatly because of the bridegroom's voice : this my joy 
 therefore is fulfilled. He must increase, but I must de- 
 crease. He that cometh from above is above all : he that 
 is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth : he 
 that cometh from heaven is above all. And what he hath 
 seen and heard, that he testifieth ; and no man receiveth 
 his testimony. He that hath received his testimony hath 
 set to his seal that God is true. For he whom God hath 
 sent speaketh the words of God ; for God giveth not the 
 Spirit by measure unto him." 
 
 The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things 
 into his hand. He that believeth on the Son hath ever- 
 lasting life : and he that believeth not the Son shall not 
 see life ; but the wrath of God abideth on him.* 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Imprisowment of John the Baptist. — Return of Jesus to 
 Galilee. — Iiiierview with the Woman of Samaria. 
 
 "VrOW ' " Herod the tetraroh = himself ^ sent ' forth and ^^^'^:^^l 
 
 -iM laid" hold upon"* John, and ^ bound him, and put m^*^i*^ 
 
 him in prison for Herodias' sake, his brother Philip's wife;i Luke m^g, 20. 
 
 Herod' being reproved by him for Herodias,' (for he had »But.3 for. 13 
 
 married her,^) and for all the evils which" he"' had done, chadiaia.> 
 
 and' he 6 added yet this above aU, that he shut up John f ™^ , 
 
 in prison.' 
 
 30 
 
466 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 Matt. iT. 12. For John had said unto Herod," 
 
 Mark vi. 18 -20. "It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife." * 
 
 Lukeiv. 14. . - . 
 
 John iy. 1-12. Therefore Herodias had a quarrel against him, and would 
 
 "him. I have killed him; but she could not ; for Herod,^" when he 
 
 c and. 1 would have put him to death, feared ^ the multitude, be- 
 
 dhefeaied.i cause thev counted him for' a prophet: and Herod also ^ 
 
 eas. 1 *' 1 o e. f 
 
 /an. 2 feared John, knowing that he was a just man and ^ a ^fholj, 
 
 and observed him ; and when he heard him, he did many 
 things and heard him gladly.'' 
 (7 when. » Now after that John was put in prison,^ and ^ Jesus had 
 
 tjohn.i heard that^ he ^* was cast 'into prison,^ and^ when' the 
 
 '^re!*'''"' Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made 
 and baptized more disciples than John, (though Jesus him- 
 self baptized not, but his disciples,) he left Judaea, and de- 
 h came. 2 Jesus Darted again * and ' returned * in the power of the Spirit 
 
 retumed.8 7 ^ ,.f o ~ 
 
 into Galilee." 
 
 And he must needs go through Samaria. 
 
 Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called 
 Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to 
 his son Joseph. Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus there- 
 fore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well : 
 and it was about the sixth hour. 
 
 There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water : Jesus 
 saith unto hfir, 
 
 " Give me to drink." 
 
 (For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy 
 meat.) Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, 
 
 " How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, 
 which am a woman of Samaria % for the Jews have no deal- 
 ings with the Samaritans." 
 
 Jesus answered and said unto her, 
 
 " If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that 
 saith to thee, ' Give me to drink ' ; thou wouldest have 
 asked of him, and he would have given thee living water." 
 
 The woman saith unto him, 
 
 "Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is 
 deep : from whence then hast thou that living water ? Art 
 thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, 
 and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cat- 
 tle ?" * 
 
THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA. 467 
 
 Jesus ans-wered and said unto her, John iv. 18-28. 
 
 " Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again : 
 but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him 
 shall never thirst ; but the water that I shall give him shall 
 be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting 
 life." 
 
 The woman saith unto him, 
 
 " Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come 
 hither to draw." 
 
 Jesus saith unto her, 
 
 " Go, caU thy husband, and come hither." 
 
 The woman answered and said, 
 
 " I have no husband." 
 
 Jesus said unto her, 
 
 " Thou hast well said, ' I have no husband ' : for thou 
 hast had five husbands ; and he whom thou now hast is not 
 thy husband : in that saidst thou truly." 
 
 The woman saith unto him, 
 
 " Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers 
 worshipped in this mountain ; and ye say, that in Jerusa- 
 lem is the place where men ought to worship." 
 
 Jesus saith unto her, 
 
 "Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall 
 neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the 
 Father. Ye worship ye know not what : we know what we 
 worship : for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour com- 
 eth, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship 
 the Father in spirit and in truth : for the Father seeketh 
 such to worship him. God is a Spirit : and they that 
 worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." 
 
 The woman saith unto him, 
 
 " I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ : 
 when he is come, he will tell us all things." 
 
 Jesus saith unto her, 
 
 " I that speak unto thee am he." 
 
 And upon this came his disciples, and marvelled that he 
 talked with the woman : yet no man said, " What seekest 
 thou " or, "Why talkest thou with her?" The woman 
 then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and 
 saith to the men,* 
 
468 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 JoimiTj9-4fi. li Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I 
 did : is not this the Christ ? " 
 
 Then they went out of the city, and came unto him. 
 
 In the mean -while his disciples prayed him, saying, 
 
 "Master, eat." 
 
 But he said unto them, 
 
 " I have meat to eat that yeS know not of." 
 
 Therefore said the disciples one to another, 
 
 " Hath any man brought him ought to eat '! " 
 
 Jesus saith unto them, 
 
 " My meat is to do the wiU of him that sent me, and to 
 finish his work. Say not ye, ' There are yet four months, 
 and then cometh harvest ? ' behold, I say unto you. Lift up 
 your eyes, and look on the fields ; for they are white 
 already to harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, 
 and gathereth fruit unto life eternal : that both he that 
 soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. And 
 herein is that saying true, ' One soweth and another 
 reapeth.' I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no 
 labor : other men labored, and ye are entered into their 
 labors." 
 
 And many of the Samaritans of that city believed on 
 him for the saying of the woman, which testified, " He told 
 me all that ever I did." So when the Samaritans were 
 come unto him, they besought him that he would tarry 
 with them: and he abode there two daj'S. And many 
 more believed because of his own word ; and said unto the 
 woman, 
 
 " Now we believe, not because of thy saying : for we 
 have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the 
 Christ, the Saviour of the world." 
 
 Now after two days he departed thence, and went into 
 Galilee. For Jesus himself testified, that a prophet hath 
 no honor in his own country. Then when he was come 
 into Galilee, the Galileans received him, having seen all the 
 things that he did at Jerusalem at the feast : for they also 
 went unto the feast.* 
 
THE PREACHING OF JESUS IN GALILEE. 459 
 
 CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 The Preaching of Jesus in Galilee. — Several Miracles. — 
 Calling of several Disciples. 
 
 FROM that time Jesus began to preach * " the gospel of Matt. iv. 17. 
 the kingdom oiGod,^ and to say, * LukeiT.ii-ie. 
 
 John iv 46 — 64 
 
 " The time is fulfilled, and " the kingdom of God "* is at —^ 
 
 hand : repent ye, and believe the gospel." '^ 6 saying."^ 
 
 And there went out a fame of him through all the region 
 round about. And he taught in their synagogues, being 
 glorified of all.* 
 
 So Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee, where he made 
 the water wine. And there was a certain nobleman, whose 
 son was sick at Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus 
 was come out of Judsea into Galilee, he went unto him, and 
 besought him that he would come down, and heal his son : 
 for he was at the point of death. 
 
 Then said Jesus unto him, 
 
 " Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe." 
 
 The nobleman saith unto him, 
 
 " Sir, come down ere my child die." 
 
 Jesus saith unto him, 
 
 " Go thy way ; thy son liveth." 
 
 And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken 
 unto him, and he went his way. And as he was now going 
 down, his servants met him, and told him, saying, 
 
 "Thy son liveth." 
 
 Then inquired he of them the hour when he began to 
 amend. And they said unto him, 
 
 " Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him." 
 
 So the father knew that it was at the same hour, in the 
 which Jesus said unto him, " Thy son liveth " : and himself 
 believed, and his whole house. This is again the second 
 miracle that Jesus did, when he was come out of Judsea 
 into Galilee.* 
 
 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought 
 Tip : and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on " 
 
 c for. 1 
 d lieavea. ^ 
 
470 
 
 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 oEBaias. & 
 
 Matt iv. 13. tiie sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was 
 
 Luke !y. 16-81. "^ 
 
 delivered unto him the book of the prophet ** Isaiah.^" 
 And when he had opened the book, he found the place 
 where it was written, 
 
 " The Spirit of the Lord is apon me, 
 Because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor ; 
 He hath sent me to heal the hroken-hearted. 
 To preach deliverance to the captives, 
 And recovering of sight to the blind, 
 To set at liberty them that are bruised, 
 6 Isaiah Ixi. 1,2. To preach the acceptable year of the Lord." < * 
 
 And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the 
 minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that 
 were in the synagogue were fastened on him. 
 
 And he began to say unto them, 
 
 " This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." 
 
 And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious 
 ■words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, 
 
 " Is not this Joseph's son 1 " 
 
 And he said unto them, 
 
 " Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, ' Physician, 
 heal thyself' : 'Whatsoever we have heard done in Caper- 
 naum, do also here in thy country.' " 
 
 And he said, 
 
 " Verily I say unto you, no prophet is accepted in his 
 own country. But I tell you of a truth, many widows 
 were in Israel in the days of^ Elijah,^" when the heaven 
 was shut up three years and six months, when great famine 
 was throughout all the land ; but unto none of them was ' 
 Elijah^" sent, save unto' Zarephath '^ <* a city of Zidon,^' 
 unto a woman that was a widow. And many lepers were 
 in Israel in the time of° Elisha^/ the prophet; and none 
 of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian." 
 
 And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these 
 things, were filled with wTath, and rose up, and thrust him 
 out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill 
 whereon their city was built, that they might cast him 
 down headlong. But he passing through the midst of 
 them went his way, and ' leaving Nazareth, he ' came down 
 to " and dwelt in Capernaum,^ a city of Galilee,' which is ^ 
 
 cEIias. s 
 
 d Sarcpta. 3 
 e Sidon. 3 
 
 /EliBeus.3 
 
Naphtali : « ' that it migM be fulfilled which was spoken Mark i. le. 
 by^ Isaiah*" the prophet, saying, 
 
 NAZARETH. — CAPERNA UM. 471 
 
 upon the sea-coast, in the borders of^ Zebulun ^ " and* ^at'. iy. 13-16, 
 
 18. 
 i. 16 
 -10. 
 
 oZabulon.l 
 
 "The land of Zetulun 5« l NephthaUm.i 
 
 And the land of ' Naphtali 6 6 
 
 By the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, 
 
 Galilee of the Gentiles ; 
 
 The people which sat in darkness saw great light ; 
 
 And to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is 
 
 ^ sprung up."'' dlsajahix. 1,2. 
 
 And Jesus, walking' by the sea of Galilee,/ saw? two '™^M^* 
 brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, f^^' °f g«°"«- 
 casting a net into the sea : for they were fishers.* And ' » he saw. 2 
 when^ they^* were gone out of their ships,^' and were ^tiiefiBhennen." 
 
 . " ^ ' 2 them. 5 
 
 washing their nets," it came to pass that' the people 
 
 pressed upon him to hear the word of God.* And * as ' he 
 
 stood by the lake,/ and saw ' the ^ two ships standing by 
 
 the lake,' he entered into one of them,** which was * the ships. » 
 
 Simon's, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little 
 
 from the land. And he sat down and taught the people 
 
 out of the ship. 
 
 Now when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, 
 
 " Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a 
 draught.'' 
 
 And Simon answering said unto him, 
 
 " Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken 
 nothing : nevertheless at thy word I will let down the 
 net." 
 
 And when they had this done, th^y enclosed a great 
 multitude of fishes : and their net brake. And they beck- 
 oned unto their partners, which were in the other ship, 
 that they should come and help them. And they came, 
 and filled both the ships, so that they began to sink. 
 
 When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, 
 saying, 
 
 " Depart from me ; for I am a sinful man, Lord." 
 
 For he was astonished, and all that were with him, at 
 the draught of the fishes which they had taken : and so 
 was also James, and John, the sons of Zebedee, which were 
 partners with Simon.' 
 
4^2 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 ^-■^^u^ And JesuB said " unto « them,i * 
 
 Mark Tit -29. « pear not ; * come ye after " me, and I will ^ from hence- 
 
 LukeiT. 3l-38i ' "^ „ , ., ,, » 
 
 -r T. 10, u. forth * make you to become fishers of " men. 
 ahesaith.! And when they had brought their ships to land, they' 
 
 » fbUo°w.'i straightway ' forsook ' all/ and followed him.* 
 
 "^ ^^^^^*' And when he had gone a little further s thence,^ he saw 
 
 e ieft.i the ' other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and 
 
 g going™!! frtm.i Johu his brother,^ who also were in the '' other ' * ship with 
 fta.i the. a Zebedee their father, mending their nets.^ And straight- 
 way he called them : and they ^ immediately left the ship 
 and their father ^ Zebedee in the ship with the hired ser- 
 i followed. 1 vants, and went after' him.^ 
 
 And they went into Capernaum ; and straightway on the 
 
 *'i»y-' sabbath^ days'* he entered into the synagogue and taught.' 
 
 And they were astonished at his doctrine : for he taught 
 
 them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes,^ for 
 
 his word was with power.' 
 
 m tho » And there was in their ™ synagogue a man which had a 
 
 » with an unclean spirit of an uuclean devil ; ' " and he cried out ^ with a loud 
 
 epirit. 8 . o . 
 
 voice, saying, 
 
 " Let us alone ; what have we to do with thee, thou 
 Jesus of Nazareth ] Art thou come to destroy us ? I 
 know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God." 
 
 And Jesus rebuked him, saying, 
 
 " Hold thy peace, and come out of him." " 
 unclean spirit. 8 And when the devil" had' torn him,^ and' thrown him 
 in the midst,' and cried with a loud voice, he came out of 
 him,'' and hurt him not.' 
 
 And they were all amazed, insomuch that they ques- 
 r spake. » tioned ? among themselves, saying, 
 
 "What thing is this'! What new doctrine is this?^ 
 And what a word is this ! For with authority and power ' 
 commandeth he even the unclean spirits, and they do obey 
 him,'' and come out."' 
 a the fame of him. And immediately his fame' spread abroad throughout all 
 the region round about Galilee,^ and ' went out into every 
 place of the country round about.' 
 
 And he arose out of the synagogue,' and forthwith when 
 r. leans was. 1 they were'' come out of the synagogue, they entered into 
 
 B Peter's house, ^.ni /.n- i*t .it -, t ■, n 
 
 Simon's house, a the house of Simon' and Andrew, with James and John.'' 
 
. MIRACLES. 473 
 
 But " Simon's ' wife's mother ^ was taken with a great Matt. yiii. 14-17. 
 
 *=* Mark 1.30-39. 
 
 fever, and' lay sioV" and anon they tell him of'' her,^and I'Mkeiy. 38-44. 
 besought him for her.' And he came ^ and stood over her,' "And. 3 
 
 i his. 1 
 
 and took her by the ' Ijand, and lifted her up,^ and rebuked c sick of a fever, i 
 
 the fever;' and immediately the fever/ left her, and she^ dhesaw.i" 
 
 arose and ' ^ ministered unto them. ^ touched her. 1 
 
 /it. 3 
 And at even,* when the sun did set,^ ' all they that had g and immediate- 
 
 any sick with divers diseases brought them ^ unto him,' and ° j no„. 3 
 
 also ' many ' that were possessed with devils.^ And all the ' '^o^J'f '^^ 
 
 city was gathered together at the door. And he ^ laid his sefting ™^ 
 
 hands on ' all that were sick ^ " and healed ^ them : ^ that * a" *i>at were 
 
 diseased. ^ 
 
 it might be fulfilled which was spoken by ^ Isaiah ^ " the i them. 2 
 
 , . . m every one of 
 
 prophet, saymg, them, 3 
 
 many that were 
 
 " Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses." » ^i?"^ of divers 
 
 diseases. 2 
 
 And he cast out ^ many devils ^^ with his word j^ and' " ]f^i°^ u;; 4, 
 the ° devils came out * crying out, and saying, p the spirits. 1 
 
 " Thou art Christ the Son of God." many. 3 
 
 And he rebuking them suffered them "■ not to speak : for ' '^ ^^^^^^T^ ^ 
 they knew ' him,^ that he was Christ.' 
 
 And in the morning,' rising up a great while before day, ' ^a™3' ^^ 
 he went out, and departed into a solitary" place, and there "desert.* 
 prayed.^ And the people sought him.' And Simon and 
 they that were with him followed after him. And when 
 they had found him, they said unto him, 
 
 "All men seek for thee." ^ 
 
 And ' the people * came unto him, and stayed him, that 
 he should not depart from them.' 
 
 And he said unto them, 
 
 " I must preach the kingdom" of God to other cities also : 
 for therefore am I sent." ' w them, a 
 
 And he said unto ^ Simon and they that were with him,^ ™ 
 
 " Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there 
 also : for therefore came I forth." a: their, a 
 
 And he preached in^the'^ synagogues throughout all!' » of.* 
 Galilee, and cast out devils.^ 
 
474 
 
 TEE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Healing of a Leper, and of a Paralytic. 
 
 Matt. iT. 23-25. 
 — Tiii. 2-4. 
 Mark i. 40-45. 
 liUkeT. 12-16. 
 
 a man full of 
 
 leprosy. ^ 
 6 there came. 1 2 
 c kneeling down 
 
 to him. 2 
 d beseeching. 2 
 
 c he.» 
 
 /and saith unto 
 him.a 
 
 g his leprosy. 1 
 ^ Jesus. 1 
 
 I tell no. 1 to 
 
 tell no. 3 
 Ic and shew. 8 
 
 I the gift that. 1 
 according as. ^ 
 
 m him. 3 
 
 n insomuch that.2 
 
 o Jesus. 2 
 
 p and. 3 
 
 a they. 2 
 
 r was without in .2 
 
 AND Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their 
 synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the king- 
 dom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of 
 disease among the people. And his fame went throughout 
 all Syria : and they brought unto him all sick people that 
 were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those 
 which were possessed with devils, and those which were 
 lunatic, and those that had the palsy ; and he healed 
 them. And there followed him great multitudes of people 
 from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and 
 from Judsea, and from beyond Jordan.-' 
 
 And it came to pass when he was in a certain city, be- 
 hold* a leper,^" who seeing Jesus,' came "' to him,^and^ 
 fell on his face,' " and worshipped him,^ and besought ^ him, 
 saying ' unto him,'' 
 
 " Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." ' 
 
 And Jesus,' moved with compassion, put forth his hand, 
 and touched him,^ saying,'/ 
 
 " I will ; be thou clean." 
 
 And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy 
 departed from him, and he ^ was cleansed. 
 
 And he * straitly charged him, and forthwith sent him 
 away ; and saith unto him, 
 
 "See thou say nothing to any 'man: but go thy way, 
 shew* thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing 
 those things which' Moses commanded for a testimony 
 unto them." 
 
 But he went out, and began to publish it much, and to 
 blaze abroad the matter,^ and' so much the more went 
 there a fame abroad of ' Jesus,* "* that '^ " he * ° could no 
 more openly enter into the city,'' for ^p great multitudes « 
 came together " to him from every quarter,'' to hear, and 
 to be healed by him of their infirmities.' And he with- 
 drew himself into'"' desert places" in" the wilderness, 
 and' there' prayed.' 
 
A PARALYTIC. 
 
 475 
 
 And again he entered into Capernaum, after some days.^ Matt. ix. 2-7. ; 
 
 , '^ ' •' Mark ii. 1-12. 
 
 And it came to pass on a certain day, as he was teaching, Luke t. 17-25. 
 that ° it was noised that he was in the house. And straight- 
 way many were gathered together, insomuch that there 
 was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the 
 door : and he preached the word unto them. And ^ there 
 were Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting by, which 
 were come out of every town of Galilee, and Judsea, and 
 Jerusalem : and the power of the Lord was present to heal ^, ^ ■ , , , 
 
 ■^ ^ a they brought. 1 
 
 them. And, behold,' they come" unto' him, bringing ^ a men brought. 3 
 ■ man,"" sick of the"* palsy,'* lying on' a bed^ which was cone. 2 
 borne of four :^ and they sought means to bring him in, "* Tn wUh a's*"*^" 
 and to lay him before him. And when they could not find ' ™- ^ 
 by what way they might bring him in/ because of the /ope nigh unto 
 multitude,*' they went upon the housetop, and ' uncovered a for the press. 2 
 the roof where he was ; and when they had broken it up, * herein 'the*'* 
 they let " him down through the tiling with his'' bed ^ * into skk of the palsy 
 the midst before Jesus. And when he ' saw ^ their faith, » Jesus. 2 
 
 seeing. ' 
 
 he said unto * the sick of the palsy,^ ' i him. 3 
 
 " Son," be of good cheer ; thy sins ^ are " forgiven thee." ' "^i^""-' 
 And, behold,'" the -? scribes and Pharisees ' who were ^ but there were.3 
 sitting there ^ .began to reason** in their hearts,^ and said'"" g reasoning. 2° 
 within themselves,! '■eaying.s 
 
 " This man blasphemeth." ' 
 " Who is this which speaketh blasphemies ? " ' 
 " Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies ? " * 
 " Who can forgive sins, but God alone T " » » °^-J- " 
 
 And immediately' when Jesus ^ (knowing their thoughts) ' 'b»'-' 
 perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within them- 
 selves," he, answering,' said unto them,^ « their thought8.3 
 
 " Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts ? ' And * why ™ " what, s 
 reason ye these things in your hearts 1 ^ For,' whether is 
 it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, ' Thy sins be for- 
 given thee ' ; or to say, 'Arise,'' and take up thy bed, and ^Kiseup.3 
 walk ' ? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath 
 power on v earth to forgive sins," "" I ^^™- " 
 
 Then saith ^ he to » the sick of the palsy,' « unto. 3^ 
 
 "I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed,' and go '"""fis 
 thy way into ' thine house." _ , , , , 3 '^ t^o'k^ 
 
 And immediately he arose,'' took ' up the bed v whereon /that. 3 
 
476 
 
 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 Matt. Ix. 7-9. 
 Markii. 12-K 
 Luke y. 25-28. 
 
 a insomuch that. 
 
 And. 3 
 6 were all 
 
 amazed. ^ 3 
 
 c Jesus. 1 
 d forth from 
 
 thence, i 
 e man.i 
 / Matthew. X 
 g eaith. i 
 
 A rose up. 8 
 
 he lay,' and went forth before them all," and departed to 
 his own house, glorifying God.' But " when the multitudes 
 saw it, they marvelled,^ ' and were filled with fear,' and 
 glorified God, which had given such power unto men/ 
 saying, 
 
 " We never saw it on this fashion." ^ 
 
 " We have seen strange things to-day." ' 
 
 And after these things,' he went forth again by the sea- 
 side ; and all the multitude resorted unto him, and he 
 taught them. And as he " passed by,"* he saw ^ a publican " 
 named ' Levi/ the son of Alpheus sitting at the receipt of 
 custom, and " he ' said ^ unto him, 
 
 "Follow me." 
 
 And he arose ^ * left all,' and followed him." 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Healing of a Man on ike Sabbath, and consequent Dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 John V. 1-7. A FTER this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus 
 
 -lTjL went up to Jerusalem. 
 
 Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, 
 which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having 
 five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent 
 folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the 
 water. (For an angel went down at a certain season into 
 the pool, and troubled the water : whosoever then first after 
 the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of 
 whatsoever disease he had.) And a certain man was there, 
 which had an infirmity thirty and eight years. When Jesus 
 saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in 
 that case, he saith unto him, 
 
 " Wilt thou be made whole % " 
 
 The impotent man answered him, 
 
 " Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put 
 me into the pool : but while I am coming, another steppeth 
 down before me."* 
 
THE SABBATH. — THE IMPOTENT MAN. 4,'J'J 
 
 Jesus saith unto him, John t. 8-23. 
 
 " Rise, take up thy bed, and walk." 
 
 And immediately the man was made whole, and took up 
 his bed, and walked : and on the same day was the sab- 
 bath. 
 
 The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, 
 
 " It is the sabbath day : it is not lawful for thee to carry 
 thy bed." 
 
 He answered them, 
 
 " He that made me whole, the same said unto me, ' Take 
 up thy bed, and walk.' " 
 
 Then asked they him, 
 
 " What man is that which said unto thee, ' Take up thy 
 bed, and walk"?" 
 
 And he that was healed wist not who it was : for Jesus 
 had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that 
 place. 
 
 Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto 
 him, 
 
 " Behold, thou art made whole : sin no more, lest a 
 worse thing come unto thee." 
 
 The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus, 
 which had made him whole. And therefore did the Jews 
 persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had 
 done these things on the sabbath day. 
 
 But Jesus answered them, 
 
 " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." 
 
 Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because 
 he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that 
 God was his Father, making himself equal with God. 
 
 Then answered Jesus and said unto them, 
 
 " Verily, verily, I say unto you. The Son can do nothing 
 of himself, but what he seeth the Father do : for what 
 things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. 
 For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things 
 that himself doeth : and he will shew him greater works 
 than these, that ye may marvel. For as the Father rais- 
 eth up the dead, and quickeneth them ; even so the Son 
 quickeneth whom he will. For the Father judgeth no man, 
 but hath committed all judgment unto the Son : that all * 
 
478 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 JohnTj3-48. mgn gtould honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. 
 He that honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father 
 which hath sent him. 
 
 " Verily, verily, I say unto you. He that heareth my word, 
 and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, 
 and shall not come into condemnation ; but is passed from 
 death unto life. 
 
 " Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and 
 now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of 
 God : and they that hear shall live. For as the Father 
 ha;th life in himself ; so hath he given to the Son to have 
 life in himself; and hath given him authority to execute 
 judgment also, because he is the Son of man. Marvel not 
 at this : for the hour is coming, in the which all that are 
 in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth ; 
 they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life ; 
 and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of dam- 
 nation. 
 
 " I can of mine own self do nothing : as I hear, I judge : 
 and my judgment is just ; because I seek not mine own 
 will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me. 
 
 " If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. 
 There is another that beareth witness of me ; and I know 
 that the witness which he witnesseth of me is true. Ye 
 sent unto John, and he bare witness unto the truth. But 
 I receive not testimony from man : but these things I say, 
 that ye might be saved. He was a burning and a shining 
 light : and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his 
 light. But I have greater witness than that of John : for 
 the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the 
 same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father 
 hath sent me. And the Father himself, which hath sent 
 me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his 
 voice at any time, nor seen his shape. And ye have not 
 his word abiding in you : for whom he hath sent, him ye 
 believe not. Search the scriptures ; for in them ye think 
 ye have eternal life : and they are they which testify of 
 me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life. 
 I receive not honor from men. But I know you, that ye 
 have not the love of God in you. I am come in my^ 
 
THE SABBATH. 479 
 
 Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another ehall John v. 43-47. 
 come in his own name, him ye ■will receive. How can ye 
 believe, which receive honor one of another, and seek not 
 the honor that cometh from God only? Do not think; 
 that I will accuse you to the Father : there is one that 
 accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye 
 believed Moses, ye would have believed me : for he wrote 
 of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye 
 believe my vrords ] " * 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Christ's Teaching as to the Sabbath. — The Ordination of 
 the Twelve Apostles. 
 
 A 
 
 ND it came to pass ^ at that time,* being * " the second Matt. m. 1-7. 
 
 ■^ ,0 , Mark ii. 23-26. 
 
 sabbath" after the first, that Jesus" went* through Luke yi. 1-4. 
 the com * fields ; ^ and his disciples were * a ^ "^ hungred, and <> on. s 
 began,* as they went,^ to pluck' the ears of corn, and to.^ day. 12 
 eat,* rubbing them in their hands.' But when *ff certain ^^'^^ 
 of the Pharisees saw it they said unto him,* « plucked, a 
 
 " Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do g And. 3 
 upon '■ the sabbath day.* * Why do they "' do so ? " ^ *^'^73 ' 
 
 But **" Jesus," answering,' said unto them, tdays.s 
 
 " Have ye not" read* so much as this,' what David did, m And. 2 3 
 when he*^ and they which? were with him' were a*'' '"'e''' 
 
 *' o never, "* 
 
 hungred,* and * had need 1^ how he entered ' into the house p Mmseif.s 
 of God,* in the days of Abiathar the high-priest,'^ and did rwian.iaa 
 take and eat the shewbread, and gave also to them that 'went. 2 3 
 were with him ; ' which it was ' not lawful for him to eat, ( is. 2 5 
 neither for them which were with him, but only" for the u alone. a 
 priests '\ Or have ye not read in the law, how that on the 
 sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, 
 and are blameless '! But I say unto you. That in this 
 place is one greater than the temple. But if ye had known 
 what this meaneth, 
 
 '"I will have mercy, and not sacrifice,' 
 ye would not have condemned the guiltless." * 
 
480 
 
 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 Matt. xli. 7-15. 
 
 Markii. 27, 28. 
 
 — iii. 1-7 
 
 Luke Ti. 5-11. 
 
 o For. 1 That, s 
 & even. * 
 
 c went into thoir.^ 
 
 d which had his 
 hand withered.l 
 which had a 
 withered hand.3 
 
 /and he saith 
 unto, 2 
 
 17 kill. 2 
 
 h then.l looking.8 
 i upon. 3 
 
 * said. 8 
 «to. 1 
 m thy. s 
 
 «didso.3 forth.l 
 oit.i 
 
 i? And they. 3 
 9 fbrth. 2 
 
 »* held a council 
 against him. 
 
 a great multi- 
 tude. 2 
 
 And he said unto them, 
 
 " The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the 
 sabbath : therefore « the Son of man is Lord also '' of the 
 Sabbath-day."^ 
 
 And it came to pass also on another sabbath,' when he 
 was departed thence,^ that he entered* again'' into the" 
 synagogue and taught : and,' behold, there was a man ^ 
 there ^ whose right hand was withered.' ^ And they asked 
 him, saying, 
 
 " Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath days 1 " ^ 
 
 And the scribes and Pharisees watched him, whether he 
 would heal ' him ^ on the sabbath day j that they might 
 find an accusation against ' him. 
 
 But he knew their thoughts, and said to /the man which 
 had the withered hand, 
 
 " Rise up, and stand forth in the midst." 
 
 And he arose and stood forth. 
 
 Then said Jesus unto/ them, 
 
 " I will ask you one thing ; Is it lawful on the sabbath 
 days to do good, or to do evil 1 to save life, or to destroy 
 itr"ff 
 
 But they held their peace. And he said unto them, 
 
 " What man shall there be among you, that shall have 
 one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will 
 he not lay hold on it, and lift it out 1 How much then is a 
 man better than a sheep 1 Wherefore it is lawful to do well 
 on the sabbath days.'' " 
 
 And when he had looked * round about on * them ° all ' 
 with anger,^ being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, 
 he saith * unto ' the man, 
 
 " Stretch forth thine "" hand." 
 
 And he stretched it out : " and his hand ° was restored 
 whole like ^ as the other.^ 
 
 Then the Pharisees'? were filled with madness;' and'' 
 went out ^ * and communed one with another what they 
 might do to Jesus,' "■ and straightway took counsel with the 
 Herodians against him, how they might destroy him.^ 
 
 But when Jesus knew it, he withdrew himself,'' with his 
 disciples,^ from thence,' to the sea ; ° and great multi- 
 tudes ' ' from Galilee followed him, and from Judtea, and ° 
 
THE TWELVE APOSTLES. 4g2 
 
 from Jerusalem, and from Idumea, and from beyond Jor- Matt. x. 2, 3. 
 dan; and they about Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, Markm/s-fs^' 
 when they had heard what great things he did, came unto ^"^"^l^-^- 
 him,'' and he healed them all.^ 
 
 And he spake to his disciples, that a small ship should 
 wait on him because of the multitude, lest they should 
 throng him. For he had healed many; insomuch that 
 they pressed upon him for to touch him, as many as had 
 plagues. And unclean spirits, when they saw him, fell 
 down before him, and cried, saying, 
 
 " Thou art the Son of God ! " 
 
 And he straitly charged them that they should not make 
 him known : ^ that it might be fulfilled which was spoken 
 by ^ Isaiah ^ " the prophet, saying, a Bsaiaa. i 
 
 "Behold my servant, whom I have chosen ; 
 My heloved, in whom my soul is well pleased : 
 I win put my spirit upon him, 
 And he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles. 
 He shall not strive, nor cry ; 
 Neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. 
 A hruised reed shall he not break. 
 And smoking flax shall he not quench, 
 TOl he send forth judgment unto victory. 
 And in his name shall the Gentiles trust." ' ' j Isaiahxlii 1 -3 
 
 And it came to pass in those days, that he went out " " gocth np. 
 into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer 
 to God. And when it was day, he called'' unto him * <« caUeth. 2 
 whom he would ^ of ^ his disciples ; ° and they came unto 
 him : " and of them he chose * and ° ordained ^ twelve, 
 whom also he named apostles ; ' that they should be with 
 him, and that he might send them forth to preach, and to 
 have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils.'' 
 
 Now the names of the twelve apostles are these ; the 
 first,^' Simon, whom he also named,'/ and ^ who is called «»nd.3 
 
 _- . . /suruamed. 2 
 
 Peter, and Andrew his brother; and James the son of 
 Zebedee, and John theS' brother of James; and he sur- ffhis.i 
 named them Boanerges, which is " The sons of thunder " ; ^ 
 and Philip and Bartholomew ; and Matthew ' the publican ; * 
 and Thomas, and James the son of Alpheus, and Judas ° 
 or ^ Lebbeus, whose surname' was Thaddeus,^ the brother of 
 31 
 
482 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 Mark m. 18 19. James ; " and Simon the Canaanite,^ called Zelotes,' and 
 
 LukevLK-ig. Judas Iscariot,^ who « also betrayed him.^* 
 
 a which, a ^mj jjg came down with them, and stood in the plain, 
 
 i was the traitor.3 „,.-,.., n , i..,i ,. 
 
 and the company of his disciples, and a great multitude of 
 people out of all Judaea and Jerusalem, and from the sea- 
 coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear him, and to 
 be healed of their diseases ; and they that were vexed with 
 unclean spirits : and they were healed. And the whole 
 multitude sought to touch him : for there went virtue out 
 of him, and healed them all.' 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 The Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 Matt. T. 1-12. A ND seeing the multitudes, he went up into a moun- 
 
 LukeTi.20-23. A , . % ■• x. ^. i,- j- • i 
 
 — _i— 1- tain : and when he was set, his disciples came unto 
 him.' And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples,' and ■■ 
 
 c said. 8 opened his mouth, and taught them, saying," 
 
 ''be ye. a "Blessed are the"* poor in spirit: for theirs' is the 
 
 /God.s kingdom of heaven.-'" 
 
 ff ye. " " Blessed are they ^ that mourn ' * now : ' for they ? shall 
 
 • laugh, a be comforted.' 
 
 " Blessed are the meek : for they shall inherit the earth. 
 
 * ye- ' " Blessed are they * which ' do hunger and thirst after 
 
 !that.8 . , 
 
 righteousness '■ now : for they * shall be filled. 
 
 '' Blessed are the merciful : for they shall obtain mercy. 
 " Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see God. 
 " Blessed are the peacemakers : for they shall be called 
 the children of God. 
 
 " Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' 
 sake : for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 " Blessed are ye, when men shall ' hate,' revile,' and per- 
 secute you, and when they shall separate you from their 
 company, and shall reproach you, and ' say all manner of 
 "Tme''^ey"B ^^^'^ against you '"falsely, for my" salce. Rejoice' ye in 
 n the Son^of that day, and leap for joy,' and be exceeding glad : for ' 
 the like. 3 behold," great is your reward in heaven : for ' in like ' ° 
 
SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 433 
 
 manner did their fathers unto" the prophets = which were Matt. t. 12-23. 
 
 v /. 11 i- j:- Luke Ti. 23-26. 
 
 before you ! ' 
 
 <e T> i J. ,t . . -. a so persecuted 
 
 iJut woe unto you that are nch ! for ye have received "iey.> 
 your consolation. 
 
 " Woe unto you that are full ! for ye shall hunger. 
 
 " Woe unto you that laugh now ! for ye shall mourn and 
 weep. 
 
 " Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you ! 
 for so did their fathers to the false prophets.' 
 
 " Ye are the salt of the earth : but if the salt have lost 
 his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth 
 good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden 
 under foot of men. 
 
 "Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on* 
 a^' hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, 'an-* 
 and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick ; and it 
 giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light 
 so shine before men, that they may see your good works, 
 and glorify your Father which is in heaven. 
 
 " Think not that I am come to destroy the la,w, or the 
 prophets : I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For 
 verily I say unto you. Till heaven and earth pass, one jot 
 or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be 
 fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these 
 least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be 
 called the least in the kingdom of heaven r but whosoever 
 shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in 
 the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you. That except 
 your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the 
 scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the 
 kingdom of heaven. 
 
 " Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, 
 ' Thou shalt not kill ; and whosoever shall kill shall be in 
 danger of the judgment ' : but I say imto you, That whoso- 
 ever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in 
 danger of the judgment : and whosoever shall say to his 
 brother, 'Raca,' shall be, in danger of the council: but 
 whosoever shall say, ' Thou fool,' shall be in danger of hell 
 fire. Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and 
 there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against * 
 
484 
 
 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 Matt. T. 24-40. 
 Luke vi. 27-29. 
 
 a unto him that 
 
 smiteth. 3 
 6 tho one. 8 
 c offer. 3 
 d him. 8 
 « that taketh. » 
 /eloko. 8 
 
 thee ; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way ; 
 first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer 
 thy gift. Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou 
 art in the way with him ; lest at any time the adversary 
 deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the 
 of&cer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto 
 thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou 
 hast paid the uttermost farthing. 
 
 " Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, 
 ' Thou shalt not commit adultery ' : but I say unto you. 
 That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath 
 committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if 
 thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from 
 thee : for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members 
 should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast 
 into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, 
 and cast it from thee ; for it is profitable for thee that one 
 of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole 
 body should be cast into heU. 
 
 " It hath been said, ' Whosoever shall put away his wife, 
 let him give her a writing of divorcement ' : but I say 
 unto you. That whosoever shall put away his wife, saying 
 for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adul- 
 tery : and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced com- 
 mitteth adultery. 
 
 " Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of 
 old time, ' Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt per- 
 form unto the Lord thine oaths ' : but I say unto you, 
 Swear not at all ; neither by heaven ; for it is God's throne : 
 nor by the earth ; for it is his footstool : neither by Jeru- 
 salem ; for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt 
 thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one 
 hair white or black. But let your communication be ' Yea,' 
 'yea'; 'Nay,' 'nay'j for , whatsoever is more than these 
 Cometh of evil. 
 
 " Ye have heard that it hath been said, ' An eye for an 
 eye, and a tooth for a tooth ' : but I say unto you, That ye 
 resist not evil : but whosoever shall smite " thee on thy 
 right ^ cheek, turn to him ° the other also. And if any 
 man '' will sue thee at the law, and take ' away thy coat,V 
 
SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 405 
 
 let him have " thy oloke ' also. And whosoever shall com- Mf."- "'■■ *"-*«■ < 
 pel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him" li^kert'.ag'.so, 
 that asketh » of = thee, and from him that would borrow of ^^"'.— 
 thee turn not thou away.i And of him that taketh away " te£.*3°°""' 
 thy goods ask them not ag-ain.» \ °^^'^. » 
 
 " Ye have heard that it hath been said, ' Thou shalt love 
 thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.' But I say unto 
 you ^ which hear. Love your enemies,' bless them that 
 curse you, do good to them thaf hate you, and pray for a which, a 
 them which despitefully use you, and persecute you ; that 
 ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven : 
 for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, 
 and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye 
 love them which love you, what reward ' have ye 1 •' for sin- « thank. 3 
 ners also love those that love them.' Do not even the 
 publicans the same ? And if ye salute yoxir brethren only, 
 what do ye more than others ? Do not even the publicans 
 so ? ^ And if ye do good to them which do good to you, 
 what thank have ye 1 For sinners also do even the same. 
 And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what 
 thank have ye ? For sinners also lend to sinners, to receive 
 as much again. But love ye your enemies, and do good, 
 and lend, hoping for nothing again ; and your reward shall 
 be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest : for 
 he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. Be 'ye 
 therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.' And ^ 
 be ye ^ perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is 
 perfect. 
 
 " Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be 
 seen of them : otherwise ye have no reward of your Father 
 which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, 
 do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in 
 the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have 
 glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their 
 reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand 
 know what thy right hand doeth : that thine alms may be 
 in secret : and thy Father which seeth in secret himself 
 shall reward thee openly. 
 
 " And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypo- 
 crites are : for they love to pray standing in the syna-^ 
 
486 , THE GOSPELS CONSOLWATED. 
 
 Matt.Ti£-23. gogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be 
 seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their 
 reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy clos- 
 et, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father 
 which is in secret ; and thy Father which seeth in secret 
 shall reward thee openly. But when ye pray, use not vain 
 repetitions, as the heathen do : for they think that they 
 shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye there- 
 fore like unto them : for your Father knoweth what things 
 ye have need of, before ye ask him. After this manner 
 therefore pray ye : — 
 
 " Our Father which art in heaven. 
 Hallowed be thy name. 
 Thy kingdom come. 
 
 Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. 
 Give ns this day our daily bread. 
 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. 
 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil : 
 For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. 
 Amen. 
 
 " For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly 
 ■ Father will also forgive you : but if ye forgive not men 
 their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your tres- 
 passes. 
 
 " Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a 
 sad countenance : for they disfigure their faces, that they 
 may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, 
 They have their reward. But thou, when thou fastest, 
 anoint thine head, and wash thy face ; that thou appear not 
 unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret : 
 and thy Father which seeth in secret shaU reward thee 
 openly. 
 
 " Lay not up for youi-selves treasures upon earth, where 
 moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through 
 and steal : but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, 
 where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where 
 thieves do not break through nor steal : for v.'here your 
 treasure is, there will your heart be also. The light of the 
 body is the eye ; if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole 
 body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy 
 whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the * 
 
SERMON ON THE MOUNT. aq^, 
 
 4o7 
 
 light that IS in thee be darkness, how great is that dark- Matt. ^.28-34 
 ness ! No man can serve two masters : for either he will L^^m'-l. 
 hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to ~ 
 
 the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and 
 mammon. Therefore I say unto you. Take no thought for 
 your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor 
 yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life 
 more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the 
 fowls of the air; for they sow not, neither do they reap, 
 nor gather into barns ; yet your heavenly Father feedeth 
 them. Are ye not much better than they 1 Which of you 
 by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? 
 And why take ye thought for raiment ? Consider the lilies 
 of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they 
 spin : and yet I say unto you. That even Solomon in aU 
 his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if 
 God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to- 
 morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe 
 you, ye of little faith ? Therefore take no thought, say- 
 ing 'What shall we eat?' or, 'What shall we drink?' or, 
 'Wherewithal shall we be clothed?' (for after all these 
 things do the Gentiles seek :) for your heavenly Father 
 knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek 
 ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness ; and 
 all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore 
 no th6ught for the mon-ow : for the morrow shall take 
 thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is 
 the evil thereof. 
 
 "Judge not, and ye shall not be" judged.' For with othatyebenot.i 
 what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged : ' condemn 
 not, and ye shall not be condemned : forgive, and ye shall 
 be forgiven : give, and it shall be given unto you ; good 
 measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running 
 over, shall men give into your bosom. For ' with the same " ' Ana. i 
 measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you 
 again." 
 
 And he spake a parable linto them, 
 
 " Can the blind lead the blind ? Shall they not both 
 fall into the ditch ? The disciple is not above his master : 
 but every one that is perfect shall be as his master. And' 
 
488 
 
 TEE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 Matt. Tii. 8-20. 
 LnkoTi. 31,41 - 
 
 46. 
 
 a considereBt. ^ 
 
 <: wilt. 1 
 
 d out of. 1 
 
 e and, behold, a 
 
 /caat. 1 
 
 ; And as. ^ 
 
 A also to them 
 likewise. ^ 
 
 i For of thorns 
 men do not 
 gather figs. 3 
 
 fc nor of a bram- 
 ble bush gather 
 they grapes. 8 
 
 I bringeth not.^ 
 
 m corrupt. 3 
 
 n doth. 8 
 
 why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, 
 but perceivest « not the beam that is in thine own eye 1 
 Either ' how canst " thou say to thy brother, ' Brother, let 
 me pull out the mote that is in"* thine eye,' when thou 
 thyself beholdest not the beam that ' is in thine own eye "{ 
 Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own 
 eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull/ out the mote 
 that is in ^ thy brother's eye.' 
 
 " Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast 
 ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under 
 their feet, and turn again and rend you. 
 
 " Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; 
 knock, and it shall be opened unto you : for every one that 
 asketh receiveth ; and he that seeketh findeth ; and to him 
 that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what man is there of 
 you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone 1 
 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent 1 If ye then, 
 being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your chil- 
 dren, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven 
 give good things to them that ask him ? Therefore all 
 things whatsoever s ye would that men should do to you, do 
 ye even so to them : * for this is the law and the prophets. 
 
 " Enter ye in at the strait gate : for wide is the gate, and 
 broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many 
 there be which go in thereat : because strait is the gate, 
 and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few 
 there be that find it. Beware of false prophets, which 
 come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are rav- 
 ening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. "^ For 
 every tree is known by his own fruit." Do men gather 
 grapes of thorns,' or figs of thistles 1 ^ Even so eveiy good 
 tree bringeth forth good fruit ; but a corrupt tree bringeth 
 forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring' forth evil" 
 fruit, neither can " a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 
 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, 
 and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall 
 know them.* A good man out of the good treasure of his 
 heart bringeth forth that which is good ; and an evil man 
 out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that 
 which is evil : for of the abundance of the heart his mouth 
 speaketh.' 
 
THE CENTURION. 439 
 
 " And why call ye me, ' Lord, Lord,' and do not the thinea 'i""- ■^'- 21-29. 
 
 I.- 1. T on -NT , ., . , LuksTi.48-49. 
 
 which I say r Not every one that saith unto me, ' Lord, — 
 
 Lord,' shall enter into the kingdom of heaven ; but he that 
 doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many 
 will say to me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not 
 prophesied in thy name f and in thy name have cast out 
 devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?' 
 And then wiU I profess unto them, ' I never knew you : 
 depart from me, ye that work iniquity.' 
 
 " Therefore whosoever ■^ cometh to me, and ° heareth these 
 sayings of mine," and doeth them, I wilP shew you to "my sayings. 3 
 whom he is like: he is like* a* wise man, which built ''litanhimunto.i 
 his" house,^ and digged deep, and laid the foundation on"* a ^^on.i 
 rock : and when the* rain descended, and the floods came,' « flood arose, s 
 and the winds blew,^ and * the stream beat vehemently 
 upon that house, and could not shake it : ^ it fell not, for it 
 was founded upon a rock.^ But ^f every one f that heareth /And.i 
 these sayings of mine, and doeth them not,* is like^* a a shau be likened 
 foolish man, which' built his* house,'' without a founda- jthat.s 
 tion* upon the sand : ' and the rain descended, and the * ""■ ' 
 floods came, and the winds blew, and^"" the stream did beat m against wiiich.s 
 vehemently * upon that house ; and * immediately it fell ; ° 
 and great was the fall " of it." " » ™^;;^^. , 
 
 And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, 
 the people were astonished at his doctrine : for he taught 
 them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.* 
 
 CHAPTEE XVni. 
 
 The Healing of the Centurion's Servant, and the liaising of 
 the Widow's Son at Nain. 
 
 -|rrOW when » Jesus ^i" had ended all his sayings in the ^^-^-^ji; 
 -LN audience of the people,' and* was come down from „^^ "3— 
 the mountain, great multitudes followed him,* and* he« jwas.i 
 entered into Capernaum. 
 
 And a certain centurion's servant, who was dear unto 
 him, was sick and ready to die. And when he heard of 
 
490 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 Matt.vm^5-13. Jgsus, he sent" unto him the elders of the Jews,* beseech- 
 , — inff him that he would come and heal his servant,* and 
 
 « there came. 1 ^ 
 
 6 a centurion. 1 saying, 
 
 " Lord, my servant lieth at home, sick of the palsy, 
 grievously tormented." ^ 
 
 And when they came to Jesus, they besought him in- 
 stantly, saying, that he was worthy for whom he should do 
 this : " For he loveth our nation, and he hath built us a 
 synagogue.'" 
 c him.i And Jesus saith unto ^ them,° " 
 
 " I will come and heal him." * 
 Then Jesus went with them. 
 
 And when he was now not far from the house, the cen- 
 d answered and turion Sent friends to him,'* saying unto him, 
 
 "Lord, trouble not thyself: for I am not worthy that 
 
 ecome.i thou shouldest enter' under my roof: wherefore neither 
 
 thought I myself worthy to come unto thee : but " speak 
 
 /sayina.8 the/ word Only, and my servant shall be healed. For I 
 
 also am a man set under authority, having under me 
 
 (, to this man i soldiers, and I say unto one,*" ' Go,' and he goeth ; and to 
 
 another, ' Come,' and he cometh ; and to my servant, ' Do 
 
 this,' and he doeth it." 
 
 *!*■' When Jesus heard these things,* he marvelled at him, 
 
 i to them. 1 and turned him about, and said unto the people* that 
 
 followed him,' 
 
 " Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, 
 no, not in Israel. And I say unto you. That many shall 
 come from the east and west, and shall sit down with 
 Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. 
 But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into 
 outer darkness : there shall be weeping and gnashing of 
 teeth." 
 
 And Jesus said unto^ them that were sent by' the 
 centurion, 
 tiiy.' " Go ^ your ^ ^^ way ; and^ say,' 'As thou hast believed, 
 
 BO be it done unto thee.' " ^ 
 
 And his servant was healed in the self-same hour.^ And 
 they that were sent, returning to the house, found the ser- 
 vant whole that had been sick. 
 
 And it came to pass the day after, that he went into a ' 
 
NAIN.—JOHN BAPTIST. 491 
 
 city called Nain ; and many of his disciples went with him, i-ukoTii^l-lT. 
 and much people. Now when he came nigh to the gate of 
 the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the 
 only son of his mother, and she was a widow : and much 
 people of the city was with her. 
 
 And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, 
 and said unto her, 
 
 " Weep not." 
 
 And he came and touched the bier : and they that bare 
 him stood still. And he said, 
 
 " Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.'' 
 
 And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And 
 he delivered him to his mother. 
 
 And there came a fear on all : and they glorified God, 
 saying, " That a great prophet is risen up among us" ; and, 
 "That God hath visited his people." And this rumor of 
 him went forth throughout all Judsea, and throughout all 
 the region round about.' 
 
 CHAPTEE XIX. 
 
 Jesus and the Disciples of John Baptist. — Jesiis's Testimony 
 of John Baptist, — his Condemnation of the nnbelieving 
 Cities. — Jesus anointed hy a Woman at a Pharisee's 
 House. 
 
 -ly-rOW when John had heard in the prison the works of ^^J^-^'.^Jai. 
 -IN Christ,^ for ^ " the disciples of John shewed him of all ^ ^^y- 
 these things,^ he,i ' calling unto him two of his disciples, s and John. » 
 sent them to Jesus, saying » " unto him,i -^ ^^^ ^i- ' 
 
 "Art thou he that should come? or look we "^ for ''do we look, i 
 
 another 1 " 
 
 When the men were come unto him, they said, 
 
 " John Baptist hath sent us unto thee, saying, 'Art thou 
 
 he that should come ? or look we for another 1 ' " 
 
 And in the same hour he cured many of their infirmities 
 
 and plagues, and of evil spirits ; and unto many that were 
 
 blind he gave sight.' 
 
492 
 
 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 Matt. jd. 4-18. 
 LukeYii.22-33. 
 
 a answered and. ^ 
 
 6 shew. 3 
 
 c what. 1 
 
 *i do hear and 
 see.i 
 
 e see. 8 
 
 / to the poor the 
 gospeL is 
 preached. 3 
 
 ff a^.i 
 
 A they. 1 
 
 ^he.3 
 
 ^ say. I 
 
 ' multitudes, i 
 
 m which. 1* 
 n houses. 1 
 
 oMalaohiiii. 1. 
 pthem 1 
 ff is not. 3 
 rbut.8 
 »God.s 
 
 'Elias.i 
 
 "Butwhereunto 
 •0 this. 1 
 X it la. 1 
 y markets. 1 
 
 «unto their fel- 
 lows, i 
 oto. 8 
 
 h lamented. ^ 
 
 Then Jesus answering " said unto them, 
 
 "Go your way, and tell' John' again those" things 
 which ye '■ have seen and heard : '' how that ° the blind 
 receive their sight,' and the lame walk, the lepers are 
 cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and 
 the poor have the gospel preached to them/ And blessed 
 is he whosoever shall not be offended in me." ^ 
 
 And when^ the messengers of John* were departed,' 
 Jesus ^ ' began to speak * unto the people ' concerning 
 John, 
 
 " What went ye out into the wilderness for to see ? A 
 reed shaken with the wind ? But what went ye out for to 
 see ? A man clothed in soft raiment 1 Behold, they ' 
 that "■ wear soft clothing ' and ^ are gorgeously apparelled, 
 and live delicately, are in kings' courts." But what went 
 ye out for to see ? A prophet f Yea, I say unto you, and 
 much more than a prophet." For this is he", of whom it is 
 written, 
 
 " 'Behold, I send my messenger liefore thy face, 
 Which shall prepare thy way hefore thee.'^" 
 
 For," verily '■ I say unto you, Among those ? that are bom 
 of women there ^ hath not risen s a greater ^ prophet ' than 
 John the Baptist : notwithstanding *■ he that is least in the 
 kingdom of heaven " is greater than he. And from the 
 days of John the Baptist imtil now the kingdom of heaven 
 suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. For all 
 the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if 
 ye will receive it, this is ^ Elijah,^ ' which was for to come. 
 He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.^ And all the peo- 
 ple that heard him, and the publicans, justified God, being 
 baptized with the baptism of John. But the Pharisees and 
 lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, 
 being not baptized of him." 
 
 And the Lord said, 
 
 " Whereunto then " shall I liken the men of this " gen- 
 eration ? and to what are they like 1 They are * like unto 
 children sitting in the market-place,!' and calling one to 
 another,^ and saying, ' We have piped unto you, and ye 
 have not danced ; we have mourned ' unto ' " you and ye 
 have not wept.' ' For John the Baptist came neither ' 
 
UNBELIEVING CITIES. -JESUS' FEET ANOINTED. 493 
 
 eating bread nor drinking wine: and ve ° sav, 'He hath a Matt. xi. 18-30. 
 
 j-i. mi.CT <, • I. ,, Luke Yii. 33-38. 
 
 deTU. ine Son of man is come" eatmg and drinking; — 
 and ye " say, ' Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, tcame.i 
 a friend of publicans and sinners ! ' But wisdom is justified 
 of all her children."' 
 
 Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his 
 mighty works were done, because they repented not : 
 
 " Woe unto thee, Chorazin ! Woe unto thee, .Bethsaida ! 
 for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been 
 done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago 
 in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be 
 more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of j udgment, 
 than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted 
 unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell : for if the 
 mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been 
 done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. 
 But I say unto you. That it shall be more tolerable for the 
 land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee." 
 
 At that time Jesus answered and said, 
 
 " I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, 
 because thou hast hid these things from the wise and pru- 
 dent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so. Fa- 
 ther : for so it seemed good in thy sight. 
 
 "All things are delivered unto me of my Father : and no 
 man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth 
 any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever 
 the Son will reveal him. 
 
 " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
 and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and 
 learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart : and ye 
 shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and 
 my burden is light." ^ 
 
 And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat 
 with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house, and sat 
 down to meat. And, behold, a woman in the city, which 
 was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the 
 Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and 
 stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his 
 feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, 
 and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.^ 
 
494 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 Luke tU. 39-50. -^q^ -Tihen the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he 
 spake within himself, saying, 
 
 " This • man, if he were a prophet, would have known 
 who and what manner of woman this is that toncheth him : 
 for she is a sinner." 
 
 And Jesus answering said unto him, 
 
 " Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee." 
 
 And he saith, 
 
 " Master, say on." 
 
 " There was a certain creditor which had two debtors : 
 the one oWed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And 
 when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them 
 both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him 
 mostr' ' 
 
 Simon answered and said, 
 
 " I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most." 
 
 And he said unto him, 
 
 "Thou hast rightly judged." 
 
 And he turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, 
 
 " Seest thou this woman ? I entered into thine house, 
 thou gavest me no water for my feet : but she hath washed 
 my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her 
 head. Thou gavest me no kiss : but this woman since the 
 time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head 
 with oil thou didst not anoint : but this woman hath anoint- 
 ed my feet with ointment. Wherefore I say unto thee, 
 Her sins, which are many, are forgiven} for she loved 
 much : but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth 
 little." 
 
 And he said unto her, 
 
 " Thy sins are forgiven." 
 
 And they that sat at meat with Mm began to say within 
 themselves, 
 
 " Who is this that forgiveth sins also ? " 
 
 And he said to the woman, 
 
 " Thy faith hath saved thee ; go in peace," ' 
 
ANOTHER CIRCUIT THROUGH GALILEE. 495 
 
 CHAPTEE XX. 
 
 Another Circuit through Galilee. -^ Denunciation of the 
 Scribes and Pharisees on the Occasion of a Devil being cast 
 out, and of a Dinner at a Pharisee^ House. 
 
 AND it came to pass afterward, that' Jesus'" went Matt. xu. 22-26. 
 throughout every city and village, preaching and LukBTiii. 1-3. ' 
 shewing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God : and the rr, is. ' ' 
 twelve were with him, and certain women, which had aiies 
 been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called 
 Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, and Joanna the 
 wife of Chuza Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many 
 others, which ministered unto him of their substance." 
 
 And they went into^ a" house. And the multitude ''an. a 
 Cometh together again, so that they could not so much as 
 eat bread. And when his friends heard of it, they went 
 out to lay hold on him : for they said, 
 
 " He is beside himself." " 
 
 Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil,^ 
 and it was' blind and. dumb : and he healed him,= inso- ° aton.'?^ ™' 
 much that ^ "* it came to pass, when the devil was gone out,' ^ ""*• ^ 
 that * the blind and dumb both spake and saw. And all 
 the people ^ wondered,' and ' were amazed, and said, 
 
 " Is not this the Son of David 1 " 
 
 But when the Pharisees,^ and the scribes which came 
 down from Jerusalem ^ heard it;^ some of them " said, ° "^^^-^ 
 
 "This fellow 1/ hath Beelzebub, and^ doth not cast out ■''^''■''^ 
 devils, but by Beelzebub, the prince f of the devils,^ """"f" 
 through ' whom = he casteth ' them ' out. " ' * * i^' o"' a^i^' " 
 
 But'' Jesus,^/ knowing* their thoughts,' called them j^°^;,\" 
 unto him, and said unto them in parables, 
 
 " How can Satan cast out Satan 1 " Every kingdom ' di- ' Xm be.*^'"^' 
 vided against itself is brought to desolation ; ^ that kingdom 
 
 , .,rt .. 1 «.«T-ii . , m and if a house 
 
 cannot stand. And " every city or house "• " divided against be. = 
 itself 1 " cannot ' " stand 1 but = falleth.' And if Satan cast ",\tnT„t'i 
 out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then a^t house can- 
 his kingdom stand 1 ^ If he rise up against himself, and be ^ 
 
496 
 
 Matt. jdl. 27-88, 
 Mark iii. 26-30. 
 Lukoxi. 16, 18- 
 26, 29. 
 
 a sons. 8 
 
 6 with the finger.! 
 
 cnpon.s 
 
 dorelBehowcan.1 
 e a strong 
 
 man's, i 3 
 /hewiH.2 
 
 g diTicleth. s 
 
 % sins. 3 
 
 t the sons of 
 
 men. 2 
 A; blasphemy, i 
 i the blasphemy.! 
 ni shall not be 
 
 forgiven unto 
 
 men. i 
 
 n then, i 
 
 o and others. « 
 
 i> Bought of him 
 a sign. 9 
 
 rS^E GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 also 8 divided he cannot stand, but hath an end." Be- 
 cause ye say that I cast out devils through Beelzebub. 
 And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your 
 children- cast them out? therefore they shall be your 
 judges. But if I cast out devils by the Spirit* of God, 
 then,i no doubt,' the kingdom of God is come unto'' you.^ 
 
 "When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his 
 g6ods are in peace,^ no man can"* enter into his' house, 
 and spoil ^ them,' except he/ first bind the strong man :* 
 ut when a stronger than he shall come upon him 
 and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armor 
 wherein he trusted ; ' and then he will spoil his house,^ and' 
 divide * ^ his spoils.' 
 
 " He that is not with me is against me ; and he that 
 gathereth not with me scattereth abroad. Wherefore ^ ver- 
 ily ' I say unto you, All manner of sin ^ * shall be forgiven 
 unto men,-' ' and blasphemies * wherewith soever they shall 
 blaspheme : but he that shall blaspheme ' against the Holy 
 Ghost hath never forgiveness," but is in danger of eternal 
 damnation.* And whosoever speaketh a word against the 
 Son of man, it shall be forgiven him : but whosoever speak- 
 eth against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, 
 neither in this world, neither in the world to come." ' (Be- 
 cause they said, "He hath an unclean spirit."^) "Either 
 make the tree good, and his fruit good ; or else make the 
 tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt : for the tree is known 
 by his fruit. generation of vipers, how can ye, being 
 evil, speak good things 1 for out of the abundance of the 
 heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good 
 treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things : and au 
 evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. 
 But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall 
 speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judg- 
 ment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by 
 thy words thou shalt be condemned." ^ 
 
 And when the people were gathered thick together,'" 
 certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees,^ " tempting 
 him,' answered, saying, p 
 
 "Master, we would see ^ from thee ^ a sign from 
 heaven." ' 
 
THE SIGN OF JONAH. 
 
 497 
 
 But he answered and said " unto them,^ Matt. xu. 89-48. 
 
 "This is an evil* and adulterous generation:* they ^"S°-^'. ^"^' 
 seek** after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, "hegartosay.s 
 but the sign of the prophet * Jonah.^ « For as^ Jonah 6« '^^'^1 
 was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Spn of man 
 be to this generation.' For as * Jonah ' ° was three days 
 and three nights in the whale's belly : so shall the Son of 
 man be three days and three nights in the heart of the 
 earth. The men of Nineveh *'' shall rise up in the judg- dNineTe.« 
 ment with this generation and shall condemn it : for' they « because, i 
 repented at the preaching of * Jonah ; ° " and, behold, a 
 greater than-' Jonah'" is here. The queen of the south 
 shall rise up in the judgment with the men of this genera- 
 tion, and .condemn them :/ for she came from the utter-/ it. i 
 mosts" parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon ; c utmost, s 
 and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.* 
 
 " No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a 
 secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, 
 that they which come in may see the light. The light of 
 the body is the eye : therefore when thine eye is single, 
 thy whole body also is full of light ; but when thine eye is 
 evil, thy body also is full of darkness. Take heed there- 
 fore that the light which is in thee be not darkness. If 
 thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part 
 dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright 
 shining of a candle doth give thee light.* 
 
 "When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he 
 walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding* »flndeth.i 
 none,' then * he saith, ' I will return unto ' my house ' from * '' into, i 
 whence I came out.' And when he cometh,* he findeth it ' * is come. » 
 empty,* swept and garnished. Then goeth he,° and taketh 
 with himself seven other spirits more wicked than him- ztobim.' 
 self, and they enter in and dwell there : and the last state 
 of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be 
 also unto this wicked generation." * 
 
 And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain 
 woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, 
 
 "Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps 
 which thou hast sucked ! " 
 
 But he said,' • 
 32 
 
498 THE GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 M^rkmsH'ffi' "Yea, rather, blessed are they that hear the word of 
 ^'^■^-^. God, and keep it." » 
 
 «• ' While he yet talked to the people,^ " and the multitude 
 
 a thenTar ^^^ about Mm," behold, there came ^ to him his mother and 
 
 his brethren, and could not come at him for the press,* and 
 6 stood. 1 standing* without," desiring to speak with him,^ sent imto 
 
 him, calling hinj." 
 c and they, a Then one " Said unto him, 
 
 and it wm told , , , -i ■, ■ ■, i 
 
 him by certain "Behold, thv mother and thy brethren stand without,* 
 
 which. ^ > *i *> 
 
 and * seek for thee," desiring to ^ see * and ° to speak with 
 thee." 
 rfAnd.2 3 But** he answered and said unto him* that told him,^ 
 
 e them. 3 8 * Q 
 
 saying," 
 /or. a " Who is my mother % and who are f my brethren f " ^ 
 
 And he looked round about on them which sat about 
 a he stretched, i him, and " stretched ^ forth his hand toward his disciples, 
 and said, 
 
 " Behold my mother and my brethren ! ^ They ^ are 
 these which hear the word of God, and do it.* For whoso- 
 ever shall do the will of^ God" my Father which is in 
 heaven, the same is my brother, and^ my" sister, and 
 mother." ' 
 
 And as he spake, a certain Pharisee besought him to dine 
 with him : and he went in, and sat down to meat. And 
 when the Pharisee saw it, he marvelled that he had not 
 first washed before dinner. 
 
 And the Lord said unto him, 
 
 " Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the 
 cup and the platter ; but your inward part is full of raven- 
 ing and wickedness. Ye fools, did not he that made that 
 which is without make that which is within also? But 
 rather give alms of such things as ye have ; and, behold, 
 all things are clean unto you. 
 
 "But woe unto you, Pharisees ! for ye tithe mint and rue 
 and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the 
 love of God : these ought ye to have done, and not to leave 
 the other undone. 
 
 "Woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye love the uppermost 
 seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets. 
 
 "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for' 
 
BYPOCRISY. 499 
 
 ye are as graves wMcli appear not, and the men that walk interi. 45-64. 
 over them are not aware of them." 
 
 Then answered one of the lawyers, and' said unto him, 
 
 " Master, thus saying thou reproachest us also." 
 
 And he said, 
 
 "Woe unto you also, ye lawyers ! for ye lade men with 
 burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not 
 the burdens with one of your fingers. 
 
 " Woe unto you ! for ye build the sepulchres of the 
 prophets, and your fathers killed them. Truly ye bear 
 witness that ye allow the deeds of your fathers : for they 
 indeed killed them, and ye build their sepulchres. Therefore 
 also said the wisdom of God, ' I will send them prophets and 
 apostles, and some of them they shall slay and persecute ' : 
 that the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the 
 foundation of the world, may be required of this genera- 
 tion; from the blood of Abel unto the son of' Zachariah,'" aZacharias.s 
 which perished between the altar and the temple : verily I 
 say unto you. It shall be required of this generation. 
 
 " Woe unto you, lawyers ! for ye have taken away the 
 key of knowledge : ye entered not in yourselves, and them 
 that were entering in ye hindered." 
 
 And as he said these things unto them, the scribes and 
 the Pharisees began to urge him vehemently, and to pro- 
 voke him to speak of many things : laying wait for him, 
 and seeking to catch something out of his mouth that they 
 might accuse him.' 
 
ANALYTICAL INDEX. 
 
 Adulien/, the Sermon on the Mount, 337. 
 
 Almsgiving, the Sermon on the Mount, 
 342. 
 
 Angelic Ministrations, the faith of a de- 
 vout Jew, 19; a striking feature of the 
 period, 39; faith of the church and 
 people, 40; relation to monotheism 
 among the Greeks5'42. 
 
 AnNA, the prophetess, 35. 
 
 Annunciation, the, 11. 
 
 Apostles, the, as distinguished from dis- 
 ciples, 299. 
 
 Aechelaus, the successor of Herod, 39. 
 
 Baptism, John's formula, and the mean- 
 ing of the act, 99; Christ's baptism, 
 and the Jewish law, 110; learned wri- 
 ters on the subject, 111 ; Christ's own 
 interpretation of the rite, 112; its 
 symbolic meaning and formula, 223 ; 
 the disciples' dispute about purifying, 
 224 ; the dispute not yet ended, 225. 
 
 Beatitudes. See Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 Beatitudes, the Mount of the, 306. 
 
 Beelzebub, critical examination of the 
 name, 388. 
 
 "Beg," the strained use of the word, 375. 
 
 Benevolence, the Sermon on the Mount, 
 341. 
 
 Bethesda, the Pool of, 265. 
 
 Bethlehem, to-day, and in the time of 
 Christ, 31. 
 
 Bethsaida, the judgment of Christ upon, 
 379, 
 
 "Born again," physical and moral re- 
 birth, 218. 
 
 Cana. See Wedding. 
 
 Capernaum, 197; the last traces of, 199 ; 
 a year of beneficence in, 281 ; the 
 judgment upon, by Jesus, 379; its 
 scenery, 417. 
 
 Carpenter, the trade of, now and in 
 Christ's time in Palestine, 67. 
 
 Caves in Palestine and their use, 29. 
 
 Centurion of Capernaum, the, 364. 
 
 Chaeactek of Jesus, 146 ; tenderness 
 in personal intercourse, 148; not re- 
 garded as a common man, 150 ; power 
 of his look, 151 ; power as a speaker, 
 153; impressive manner, 154; popu- 
 lar conceptions, 155; assumptions of 
 sOTereign authority, 276. 
 
 Childhood op Jesus, points for special 
 attention, 75 ; brothers and sisters, 75 ; 
 Matthew declares he would be called 
 a Nazarene, 77. 
 
 Chorazin, the judgment of Christ upon, 
 379. 
 
 Christian Art, deification of the Virgin, 
 16; tributes to Mary as the type of 
 motherhood, 33. 
 
 Christian Church, its gradual unfolding 
 and interpretation of spiritual Gospel 
 truths, 7. 
 
 Church Organization was not the aim of 
 Christ, 178. 
 
 Chusa, the wife of Herod's steward, 383, 
 402. 
 
 " Come unto me, all ye that labor," 381. 
 
 CoNANT, Professor T. J., on the word 
 "beg," 375; on the name Beelzebub, 
 388. 
 
 Covetousness, a warning) 406. ' 
 
502 
 
 ANALYTICAL INDEX. 
 
 Critics of the Gospels, 8. 
 
 David, King, the consecrated bread, 
 
 274. 
 Design of Christ's teaching, the direct 
 influence of the Divine nature upon 
 the human heart, 156. 
 Disciples, the permanent formation of the 
 disciple family, 297; Simon, James, 
 and John, 298; Matthew, otherwise 
 Levi, 298; occupations and social 
 position, 298 ; character and personal 
 relations with Jesus, 299 ; errors and 
 failings, 299 ; why chosen, 299 ; as 
 distinguished from apostles, 299. 
 Discourses of Jesus, illustrations from 
 nature, 64; reasons for simplicity, 66; 
 influence of the Book of Proverbs, 69 ; 
 to Nicodemus, 218; to the woman of 
 Samaria, 239 ; before the Sanhedrim, 
 269. 
 Divine Influences upon mental transfor- 
 mations, 106. 
 Divinity, the claims of Jesus to, 293. 
 Divorce, the Sermon on the Mount, 337. 
 Dixon, W. H., view of Nazareth, 262. 
 Doctors, the, in the Temple, 73. 
 Dolling EE, Dr., on the Pharisees, 163. 
 Education of Jesus, 296. 
 Education among the Jews, 295 ; courses 
 of study, 296 ; teaching of trades at 
 schools, 296; the rabbis, even, were 
 taught such, 296; why the disciples 
 were named after trades taught at 
 school, 296. 
 Elias the prophet, 92; dramatic inci- 
 dents of his career, 93. 
 Elizabeth. See Zachakias. 
 Ellicott's "Lectures," on the duration 
 
 of Christ's ministry, 264. 
 Essenes, organization, observances, and 
 
 faith of, 169. 
 Fasting, the Sermon on the Mount, 350. 
 Feasts, the three annual at Jerusalem, 
 200 ; the Passover, 201 ; of Purim, 
 264, See also Jerusalem. 
 Forgiveness of Sin, the repentant Mag- 
 dalene, 371 ; Christ's enunciation of 
 power to forgive sin, 293. I 
 
 Future Life, Christ's familiarity with, 
 410; its influence upon his teachings, 
 410. 
 Galilee, local influences upon Christ's 
 life, 58; scenery, 60, 416; historical 
 associations, 62 ; animal and vegetable 
 life, 62 ; admixture of pagan popula- 
 tion, 161 ; the centre of Christ's pub- 
 lic life, 416 ; Maogregor's description, 
 417. 
 Galileans, reply of Jesus on news of 
 
 their slaughter, 413. 
 Gates of Oriental cities the evening re- 
 sort, 284. 
 Genesareth, the plain of, 416; Christ's 
 solitary walks, 418; propagation of 
 sound in that region, 420 ; its desola- 
 tion in later times, 419. 
 Gospels, the four, the only material for 
 a life of Christ, 2 ; their value as tes- 
 timony, 2 ; authority and motives for 
 writing them, 3; what they are, their 
 moral rather than chronological simi- 
 larity, 4; compared to Xenophon's 
 Memorabilia of Socrates, 5 ; their ref- 
 erence to the mental altitude and cus- 
 toms of their time, 6; Jews their 
 authors, 6 ; necessity readapting with, 
 7 ; the life of Christ should be re-writ- 
 ten for every age, 7; their deeper 
 meaning to us than to the primitive 
 disciple, 8; the two classes of Gospel 
 critics, 8; to which class the present 
 writer belongs, 9 ; providential design 
 of the Gospels, 11; their structure, 
 145 ; are collective reminiscences of 
 Christ, 145; the mythical theory in 
 regard to them, 425. 
 Government a constitutional necessity in 
 man, 178; physical and moral, con- 
 sidered, 409. 
 Grain-fields of Galilee, 421. 
 Greek and Hebrew minds contrasted, 
 
 303. 
 Haitin, the scene of the Sermon on the 
 
 Mount, 305. 
 Heathen, the word as a designation, 332. 
 Hebrews, original tribal organization. 
 
ANALYTICAL INDEX. 
 
 503 
 
 82; the priests the ruling class, 83; 
 the prophetic nature, 83. 
 Hebrew Women, education and associa- 
 tions, 17 ; participation in public af- 
 fairs, 35. 
 Hebrew and Greek minds contrasted, 
 
 303. 
 Heeod, his alarm on hearing of Jesus, 
 36 ; consults the Magi and sends them 
 to seek Jesus, 36 ; they see Jesus and 
 depart to their homes, 37 ; Herod's 
 greater alarm, — the massacre of chil- 
 dren ordered, 38 ; the historical truth 
 of the statement, 38; the death of 
 Herod, 39; succeeded by Archelaus, 
 39 ; his suspicious and cruel character, 
 401 ; Jesus had friends among his 
 household, 402; the wife of Herod's 
 steward, 383, 402. 
 Holy Ghost, the descent of, upon Jesus, 
 
 105. 
 Humanitarianism. See Nature of Jesus. 
 Immortality always assumed in Christ's 
 
 teachings, 410. 
 Incarnation. See Nature of Jesus. 
 Inspiration of the Scriptures, its theory, 
 79; how the claim should be under- 
 stood, 80. 
 Israel. See Hebrews. 
 Jacob's Well, the discourse of Jesus to 
 the woman of Samaria, — locality of 
 the well, 236 ; its authenticity, 237 ; 
 he asks for water, 239 ; the woman's 
 implied taunts, 240; the "living wa- 
 ter," 240 ; the return of the disciples 
 interrupts the conversation, 245 ; its 
 effect upon the woman's mind, 246 
 she informs her town's-people, 247 
 he remains with them two days, 247 
 Jesus thus set himself against the ex- 
 clusivencss of the Jewish Church, 247 
 his treatment of a sinning woman, 
 249 ; the incident a fit prelude to his 
 opening public life, 249 ; objections to 
 the naiTative, 250; his reply to the 
 disciples who reproached him, 250. 
 Jerusalem, love of the Jews for it, 12 ; 
 the annual festival, 70; the roads, 70; 
 
 sacred songs of the travellers, 71 ; the 
 unconstrained character of the festival, 
 72 ; the approach to the city, 201 ; 
 Jerusalem to Galilee, 229. 
 Jesus, the Christ, birth of Jesus, 29 ; 
 laid in a manger, 29; opinions and 
 customs assign various dates to the 
 nativity, 31; the voice from the heav- 
 ens and the coming of the shepherds, 
 32 ; circumcision, and presentation in 
 the Temple, 34 ; Simeon and Anna, 
 35 ; the excitement at Jerusalem, 35 ; 
 Herod consults the Magi, 36 ; the guid- 
 ing star, 36 ; their worship and gifts, 
 37 ; the flight into Egypt and return 
 to Nazareth, 39 ; the nature of Jesus 
 (see Nature of Jesus) ; childhood and 
 residence at Nazareth, 54 ; his visit to 
 Jerusalem at twelve years of age, the 
 last glimpse of him for sixteen or 
 eighteen years, 56 ; his probable youth- 
 ful experiences and character, 56; 
 his brothers and sisters, 75 ; the 
 local influences of Galilee, — the bad 
 reputation of Nazareth, its beautiful 
 scenery, 60 ; historical associations of 
 GaUlee, 62; influence of the region 
 upon his genius considered, 63 - 66 ; 
 his education was little beyond his 
 father's trade of carpenter, 66 ; what 
 the term included, 67 ; his knowledge 
 of the Old Testament gained in the 
 synagogue, 69 ; the influence of that 
 knowledge upon his mind, 69; his 
 first visit to Jerusalem, 70 ; the festi- 
 val over, his parents return, — he is 
 missed after a day's journey, 72 ; they 
 find him after three days among the 
 doctors in the Temple, 73 ; John, the 
 forerunner of Jesus (see John); is 
 baptized by John, 104; the sign of the 
 dove descending, — a voice from heav- 
 en, 105 ; Jesus from that moment be- 
 came the Christ, 106 ; he begins the 
 new dispensation, 107 ; the temptation 
 in the wilderness (see Temptation) ; the 
 personal appearance of Jesus (seePcr- 
 sonal Appearance) ; the design of his 
 
504 
 
 ANALYTICAL INDEX. 
 
 teaching, 1 5S ; social and religious con- 
 dition of Palestine, 160 (see aXsoJews, 
 Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, &c.) ; 
 the expectations of a Messiah, and his 
 Teal design, 172 ; its progressive devel- 
 opment, 174 ; he did not aim to organ- 
 ize a church, 178; retained full com- 
 munion with the Jewish Church, 178; 
 his return home after the temptation, 
 181 ; he clung to the common life of 
 the people, 181 ; he was the " Son of 
 Man," 183; he went to Cana, 183; 
 the wedding feast (see Wedding ) ; his 
 life for the next two years, 195; visit 
 to Capernaum and subsequent home 
 there, 196; his miracles and life at 
 Capernaum, 197; his failure to win 
 the people to a spiritual life, 198; Je- 
 sus went to Jerusalem, 199; the first 
 Judijean ministry, — the approach to 
 Jerusalem, 202 ; the Templo, 203 ; the 
 tretffic therein, 207 ; Jesus drove out 
 the cattle and overthrew the tables, 
 209 ; is questioned by the officers of 
 the Temple, 211 ; the meaning of his 
 reply, 214; the coming of Nicodemus 
 by night, 215 ; importance of the con- 
 versation, 218; omission in John's 
 Gospel record of this period, 221 ; con- 
 jectures upon the subject, 221 ; only 
 mention is that Christ baptized in Ju- 
 dsea, 223 ; he early ceased to perform 
 it, 224 ; the dispute among the dis- 
 ciples "about purifying," 224; the 
 danger of division between Christ's 
 and John's disciples, 226 ; Christ's re- 
 turn to Galilee, 228; Samaria, 236; 
 Jesus at Jacob's well (see Jacob's 
 Well) ; went into Galilee, 253 ; heals 
 the nobleman's son at Capernaum, 
 254 ; Jesus came to Nazareth, 256 ; 
 invited to read in the synagogue, — 
 announces the fulfilment of the Scrip- 
 tures, 257 - 260 ; rage of the congregSr 
 tion, who take him out to kill him, 260 ; 
 his escape, 261 ; probable scene of the 
 attempt, 262 ; Capernaum thenceforth 
 the home of Jesus, 264 ; he again visits 
 
 Jerusalem, 264; healing the man at 
 the pool of Bethesda, 266 ; the sick 
 man unlawfully carries his bed upon 
 the Sabbath, 266 ; anger of the Jews 
 thereat, 267; Jesus is summoned be- 
 fore the Sanhedrim, 269 ; his discourse 
 in reply to accusations, 269 ; he claims 
 Divine authority, 270 ; now first calls 
 himself the Son of God, 271 ; wonder 
 and rage of the court at his defiance 
 of their authority, 271 ; it was his first 
 collision with the Temple party, 273 ; 
 the policy of the Temple thenceforth 
 hostile, 273; Jesus was watched by 
 spies, 273 ; the plucking of grain by 
 the disciples a new accusation, 273 ; 
 his replies, 275 ; his sovereignty of 
 spirit in these contests, 276 ; heals the 
 paralytic man in the synagogue, 276 ; 
 again accused, — his replies, 276 ; the 
 conflict of his love with inhumanity, 
 278 ; he went to Capernaum, 280 ; an 
 unobstructed year of beneficence, 280 ; 
 the popular wonder and admiration, 
 281 ; his preaching in the synagogues, 
 282 ; heals a. man with an unclean 
 devil, 283 ; withdraws to Peter's house, 
 284 ; heals the mother-in-law of Peter, 
 284 ; healing at the city gates, 284 ; 
 the Pharisees silent for a time, 286 ; 
 Jesus now made his first circuit 
 through Galilee, 288; suggestions of 
 routes taken, 288; the excitement 
 everywhere caused, 288 ; Herod's prob- 
 able impressions, 289 ; the healing of 
 a leper, 289 ; respect of Jesus for 
 original Mosaic rites, 290 ; the para- 
 lytic man lowered through a house 
 roof, 293 ; Jesus forgives his sins, — 
 the excitement of Pharisees present, 
 293 ; he declares his power to forgive, 
 293 ; it was a claim of divinity, 294 ; 
 his use of parables, 296 ; the perma- 
 nent formation of his disciple family 
 near Capernaum, 297 ; the miraculous 
 draught of fishes, 297; calls Simon, 
 James, and John to follow him, 298 ; 
 the call of Matthew, otherwise Levi, 
 
ANALYTICAL INDEX. 
 
 505 
 
 298 (seeAsctp/es); character of Jesus's 
 teaching at this period, 301 ; the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount (see /Sermon); 
 his return to Capernaum, 364; heal- 
 ing of the centurion's servant, 364; 
 the widow's sou restored to life, 367 ; 
 the effect of this miracle, 368 ; at the 
 house of Simon the Pharisee, 369; 
 the repeutant Magdalene, 369; the 
 message of John in prison, 372 ; his 
 warnings to Bethsaida, Chorazin, and 
 Capernaum, 377 ; ahsence of sympa- 
 thy from his family connections, 382 ; 
 his companions at this time, 382 ; 
 charges of the Scribes and Pharisees, 
 384 ; his replies, 384 ; he charges them 
 with blasphemy, 386; they said he 
 was aided by Beelzebub, 387 ; efforts 
 of the Temple party to embroil him 
 with his countrymen, 389 ; his attitude 
 in face of this danger, 390 ; the cry, 
 " Is not this the sou of David ■? " first 
 heard, 391 ; the parable of the unclean 
 spirit, 392 ; blessing of his mother by 
 a woman listener, 393; his mother 
 and brethren desire to speak with him, 
 394 ; declares who are his mother and 
 brethren, 394; invited to dine by a 
 Pharisee, 396 ; is questioned about 
 the washing of hands, 396 ; the Scribes 
 and Pharisees urge him to speak of 
 many things to accuse him, 397 ; he 
 rebukes their inward hypocrisy, 397 ; 
 around the Sea of Galilee, 399 ; eight 
 parables, 400 ; efforts to embroil him 
 with the people, 403; they were un- 
 consciously his body guard, 403 ; the 
 Pharisees watched for heresy, 403 ; 
 the prudence of his course, 404; his 
 discourse to his disciples before a mul- 
 titude, as recorded by Luke, 405 ; a 
 young man appeals against his brother, 
 — is warned against covetousness, 
 406 ; parables, 408 ; is told of the 
 slaughter of the Galileans, 412 ; the 
 labor of days and weeks epitomized in 
 the record of this time, 415 ; statement 
 by John of its extent, 415 ; manner of 
 
 his life at this time, 415 ; his solitary 
 walks about Genesareth, 417; his ser- 
 mon from a boat, 420 ; his method of 
 teaching and the theory of myths, 
 426 ; some' parables considered, 429 j 
 the Toice ceased, and the enthusiasm 
 of the crowd had gone out like the 
 last rays of the setting sun, 432. 
 Jews, their moral nature, 101 ; inequality 
 of condition and precarious existence, 
 161; political subjection, 162; their 
 glory in the law as God's chosen peo- 
 ple, 162 ; priesthood dominated by the 
 Eomans, 163; forms of religioiis de- 
 velopment, — the Pharisee, the Saddu- 
 cee, and the Essene, 163; their social 
 habits and observances, 184. 
 Jewish Church, its expected deliverance, 1. 
 Jewish Nation, tenderness of Jesus to- 
 ward the good of its past, 333. 
 John, the forerunner of Jesus, Zachar 
 rias and Elizabeth, 11-27; his char- 
 acter in childhood, 27 ; the prototype 
 of Elias (Elijah) the prophet, 92 ; in 
 what the similarity consisted, 93 ; his 
 brief history, 92 ; his mission as the 
 forerunner of Jesus, 95 ; his downright 
 earnestness, 95; his preaching was 
 secular, not spiritual, 97 ; his meaning 
 of baptism, 99 ; his formula and mean- 
 ing of baptism, 99 ; the relation of his 
 discourses to the spiritual truths which 
 Christ unfolded, 100; John eonceired 
 no new ideal of morality, 100; the 
 effects of his preaching, 101 ; excite- 
 ment in Jerusalem, 102 ; is questioned 
 by messengers from the Sanhedrim, 
 103; he declares to them the coming 
 of Jesus, 10? ; Jesus comes to him for 
 baptism, 104; the sign from heaven, 
 105; the mystery surrounding John, 
 108; his ministry after Christ's bap- 
 tism, disputes about "purifying," 224; 
 John's noble character exemplified, 
 226 ; jealousy of Herod Antipas, — 
 John denounces- his wickedness and is 
 imprisoned, — the demand for his head 
 by the daughter of Herodias, — his 
 
506 
 
 ANALYTICAL INDEX. 
 
 death, and burial by his disciples, 109 ; 
 his burial-place, like that of JVIoses, 
 unknown, 110; analogies in the his- 
 tory of Moses and John, 110; his 
 long imprisonment at Machserus, 372 ; 
 his doubting message to Jesus and the 
 reply, 373 ; conduct of the people to- 
 ward him and Jesus, 376; the most 
 perfect lepresentation of his Master's 
 spirit, 301. 
 
 Jordan, the, historical associations, out- 
 shone by the baptism of Christ, 105. 
 
 Joseph, the carpenter, the "Virgin 
 Mary's espousal to him, 16; he was 
 of the house of David, 20 ; his occupa- 
 tion, 27 ; few remaining details of his 
 history, 27 ; his death probably before 
 the public ministry of Clirist, 27 ; how 
 he is represented on pictures of the 
 Holy Family, 28; sacred history re- 
 lates nothing of him, 68. 
 
 Judma maintained the old Jewish stock, 
 dislike of the Samaritans, 160. 
 
 Judcean Hills, the road along the, — 
 scenery and memories, 229. 
 
 Kingdom of Christ, the, not of this world, 
 402. 
 
 KiTTo's Biblical Cycloposdia on Christ in 
 the synagogue, 257. 
 
 Lange, on the word "Nazarene," 78. 
 
 Law and the Prophets, Jesus came not to 
 destroy, 331 ; Christ's spiritual ethics 
 contested their popular interpretation, 
 335. 
 
 Laws, their true relation of servants not 
 masters, 279. 
 
 LBNinLUB, fictitious letter on appear- 
 ance of Christ, 140. 
 
 Leprosy, a description of, 290. 
 
 Levites, the, 83, 87. 
 
 Lives of Christ and Harmonies, 5 ; necessi- 
 ty for new adaptations for every age, 7. 
 
 Lord's Prayer, the, 342. 
 
 Luke, his motive for writing his Gos- 
 pel, 4 ; why called the evangelist of 
 Greece, 42. 
 
 Macoeegok, on the Sea of Galilee, 417, 
 420. 
 
 Magdalene, Maet, one of Christ's at- 
 tendants, 382. 
 
 Magt, the, mission to find Jesus, 36 ; the 
 guiding star in the cast, 36; they 
 worshipped him and presented gifts, 
 37 ; return to their homes, 37. 
 
 Manger, what it probably was, 29. 
 
 Mart, the mother of Jesus, the little 
 known of her, — the light of imagina- 
 tion thrown around her name, 15 ; 
 the reason why she is reverenced and 
 worshipped, 15; a mother's love and 
 forbearance the nearest image of divine 
 tenderness which the soul can form, 
 15 ; the deification of the Virgin by 
 art, 16 ; the residence, lineage, and es- 
 pousal of Mary, 16; the habits and 
 associations of her life, 17 ; her famili- 
 arity with the Hebrew Scriptures, — 
 she was imbued with their spirit, 18 ; 
 reality to her of the angelic manifesta- 
 tion, 1 8 ; her ideas of the promised 
 deliverance of Israel, 20; she went 
 into the city of Juda, to the house of 
 Zacharias, 21 ; her revelations to Eliza- 
 beth, 23 ; the exalted expectations of 
 both women, 23 ; the song of Mary, 
 23 ; its similarity with the song of 
 Hannah, 24 ; Mary's return to NazEk- 
 rcth, 25 ; the journey to Bethlehem, 
 29 ; the birth of Jesus, 29 ; a cottage 
 probably the place, 29 ; the manger 
 was in a cave excavated from the cot- 
 tage, 29 ; the coming of the shepherds, 
 32 ; purification and thank-ofiering, 
 34 ; the prophecy of Simeon and of 
 Anna, 34 ; the visit of the Magi, 36 ; 
 flight into Egypt, and return to Naza- 
 reth, 39 ; the most intimate commun- 
 ion of Jesus was with his mother, 68; 
 other children of Joseph and Mary, 
 76 ; blessed by a woman among 
 Christ's listeners, 393 ; Mary's anxiety 
 for her son, 393 ; she with his breth- 
 ren desire to speak with him, 394 ; 
 " Who is my mother ? " 394 ; it was a 
 rebuke to them, 395. 
 
 Massacre of the Innocents, 38. 
 
AlfALYTICAL INDEX. 
 
 507 
 
 Materials for a Life of Jesus, the Gospels 
 Only, — he wrote nothing, 2. 
 
 Matthew, his mental character, 77 ; 
 the term " Nazarene," 77. 
 
 Messiah, the, promises and expectations 
 of, H; the popular expectations, — 
 the real design of Jesus, 172 ; the an- 
 nunciation of a suffering Messiah, 
 174 ; the kingdom of, when at hand, 
 414. 
 
 Miracles, their rejection leads to Panthe- 
 ism, 9 ; their character and credibility, 
 19 ; angelic manifestations and the 
 Hebrews, 19 ; relation to a higher law 
 of nature, 158; deeper moral signifi- 
 cance toward the close of Christ's life, 
 176 ; the wedding at Cana, 188 ; at 
 Capernaum, 197 ; healing the noble- 
 man's son, 254 ; the impotent man, 
 266 ; the paralytic man, 276 ; the man 
 with an unclean devil, 283 ; healing 
 of Peter's mother-in-law, 284 ; healing 
 at the city gate, 284 ; healing the leper, 
 289 ; the paralytic man, 292 ; miracu- 
 lous draught of fishes, 297 ; the hu- 
 manity of Christ's miracles, 302 ; the 
 centurion's servant, 364 ; resurrection 
 of the widow's son, 367; unfriendly 
 popular criticism, 378. 
 
 Moral Beliefs and Convictions, the source 
 of, 331. 
 
 Moral Teaching, its nature, 423. 
 
 Mosaic Institutes, 171; their interpreta- 
 tion, 171 ; Christ's relations toward 
 them, 177 ; he never disregarded them, 
 290 ; their humanity toward the poor, 
 375. 
 
 Mother and Brethren, his disciples are such 
 to him, 394. 
 
 Murder, the Sermon on the Mount, 335. 
 
 Myths, the theory of, refuted, 425. 
 
 Nativity, differences as to its date, 31. 
 
 Natuke of Jesus, philosophical views 
 of the Church, 44 ; humanitarian and 
 rationalistic school and its tendency, 
 44 ; compromise views are unsatisfac- 
 tory, 45 ; church doctrine of a double 
 nature, 47 ; its services to Christianity, 
 
 47 ; more philosophical and simpler 
 views, 48 ; theological discussions ar« 
 mediseval or modern, 48 ; instances of 
 this, 48, 49 ; ground taken by the au- 
 thor, 50 ; the grand results of the in- 
 carnation, 52. 
 
 Nazareth, its bad reputation, 60; scen- 
 ery, 60 ; scene of attempt to kill Jesus, 
 261 ; W. H. Dixon's view of Naza- 
 reth, 262 ; fierceness and unbelief of 
 the townsmen, 263. 
 
 Nazarene, a term of reproach, — Mat- 
 thew's statement of its reference to 
 Jesus, 77. 
 
 New Life, the Sermon on the Mount, 
 Christ's view of its ethics, 334. 
 
 NicoDBMUS, came to Jesus "by night," 
 215; mistaken view of his courage, 
 216 ; how proved later, 217 ; spiritual 
 re-birth explained to him, 218. 
 
 Oaths, the Sermon on the Mount, 339. 
 
 Oriental Instruction and its character, 213. 
 
 Overture of Angels, the, 11. 
 
 Palestine, populations and influence of 
 wars therein, 160; political condition, 
 172. 
 
 Pantheism is atheism, — the miracles, 9. 
 
 Parables, a favorite device with Jewish 
 teachers, 296 ; their use by Jesus, 296 ; 
 the two debtors, 370 ; the unclean 
 spirit, 392; the eight spoken in sue- 
 cession, 400 ; their character and pur- 
 pose, 400; the advantage and use of 
 parables, 401 ; the parable of the 
 sower, 404, 421 ; the parable of the 
 rich man, 407 ; the servants found 
 waiting for their lord, 408; Peter's 
 questions as to whom the parables re- 
 ferred, 408 ; parable of the unfaithful 
 servant, 409 ; the rigorous creditor, 
 411 ; parable of the fig-tree, 412; par- 
 ables as used by Jesus, 426 ; the grain 
 of mustard-seed, 429 ; the kingdom of 
 heaven like unto leaven, 429 ; unto a 
 net, 429 ; the good seed and the tares, 
 430 ; the treasure hid in a field, 431 ; 
 the pearl of great price, 431. 
 Passover. See Feasts. 
 
508 
 
 ANALYTICAL INDEX. 
 
 Paul, why called a tent-maker, 296. 
 
 Peace on earth only reached by con- 
 flict, 414. 
 
 Pentecost. See Feasts. 
 
 Pbbsonal Appearance op jEstJS, the 
 difficulty of approaching the Jewish 
 life in the time of Christ, 134; the 
 exalted idea of Jesus and his Divinity 
 give an ideal color to his person and 
 appearance, 135 ; the impressions 
 which he made upon his disciples and 
 countrymen, 136; to them he was 
 simply u, citizen, and so to his dis- 
 ciples until after the resurrection, 136 ; 
 a conversation combined from the 
 Gospels on this point, 136; there is 
 nothing to determine the personal ap- 
 pearance of Jesus, 137 ; the great men 
 of Greece and Eome were commemo- 
 rated in art, 137 ; the disciples were 
 neither literary nor artistic men, — the 
 Jew was forbidden to make any image 
 or likeness of Divinity, 138 ; the early 
 Fathers differed as to his comeliness, 
 — they appealed to the prophecies 
 concerning the Messiah, 139 ; the typ- 
 ical head of Christ, 141 ; the fictitious 
 letter of Publius Lentulus, 140 ; por- 
 traits began to appear in the fourth 
 century, 140 , they were by Greek 
 artists, 141 ; their ideal characteristics, 
 142; the Ecman type, 142; the Italian 
 masters, 142; the Christ of Michael 
 Angelo, and of Leonardo da Vinci, 
 143 ; the effect of pictures of Jesus 
 upon religion, 144; the grander He- 
 brew example, 144 ; there are glimp- 
 ses of Jesus's personal bearing, 144 ; 
 > every system of philosophy or religion 
 except Christianity can be received 
 without knowledge of its founder's 
 person, 144 ; the genius of Christiani- 
 ty requires a distinct conception of 
 Christ's personality, 145. 
 
 Pharisees, their history and religious 
 tendencies, 163; extract from Dol- 
 LiNGER on the Pharisees, 163 ; arraign- 
 ment of Jesua for Sabbath-breaking, 
 
 and the motive, 269 ; their accusations 
 of Jesus, 384 ; he charges them with 
 blasphemy, 386 ; rebuked by Jesus at 
 the Pharisee's house, 397 ; their meth- 
 od of seeking to destroy him, 401 ; 
 their popularity, 403 ; their spiritual 
 blindness, 411. See also Temple. 
 
 Pilate, slaughter of the Galileans, 413. 
 
 Political Tests of Jesus by the Scribes, 402. 
 
 Poor, humanity of the Mosaic instituteg 
 toward, 375. 
 
 Prayer, the Lord's, 342. 
 
 Priests, limited sphere and influence of, 
 86. 
 
 Prophets, the prophetic nature, 84; 
 prophets among the Jews, 86 ; inde- 
 pendence of ceremonial usages, 89 ; 
 examples of particular prophets, 91 ; 
 highest moods of inspiration, 121 ; 
 symholization employed by the pro- 
 phetic state, 122; attempted interpre- 
 tation to modem equivalents, 123. 
 
 Proverbs, the Booh of, influence upon 
 Christ's discourses, 69. 
 
 Raising of the Dead, the three instances, 
 374. 
 
 Sationdism. See Natttee op Jesus. 
 
 Kenan, M., on the character of Christ, 
 10 ; on his sovereignty of spirit, 276. 
 
 Repentance, its true meaning and spirit, 
 111. 
 
 Retaliation, — Revenge, the Sermon on 
 the Mount, 339. 
 
 EocHETTE, Eaoul, Icctures on ancient 
 art, 125. 
 
 Romans, Christian converts among the, 
 364. 
 
 Sdbhath, Jewish laws and observances, 
 267 ; the conflict with the Sanhedrim, 
 269 ; the plucking of ears of grain, 
 273 ; healing the paralytic, 276 ; real 
 significance of the controversy, 278; 
 the Sabbath made for man, 279. 
 
 Sacrifices, 89. 
 
 Sadducees, their doctrines and relations 
 toward the people, 168. 
 
 St. Augustine on the four Evanget 
 ists, 5. 
 
ANALYTICAL INDEX. 
 
 509 
 
 Samaria, its population, 160 ; history 
 and inhabitants, 235 ; enmity with the 
 Jews, 235 ; cordial reception of truth 
 and hospitality, 253. 
 Sanhedrim, questions John, the forerun- 
 ner of Jesus, 103. See also Sabbath, 
 Satan, medi serai art representations of 
 evil spirits, 1 25 ; they have corrupted 
 the popular ideas to this day, 126 ; the 
 Devil pictured by the monks is de- 
 grading to the narrative, 126 ; a true 
 conception of the Evil One, 126. 
 Saviohk, Hebrew forms of the name, 
 
 105. 
 Sci-ibes and Pharisees. See Pharisees. 
 Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, 
 Mount Hattin, the scene of the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount, 305 ; extract from 
 Stanley's Sinai, 306 ; the various ac- 
 counts of the sermon, 307 ; contrast 
 between the sermon and the giving of 
 the law from Sinai, 309 ; character 
 and purpose of the sermon, 309; 
 "Blessed are the poor in spirit," 316 ; 
 "Blessed are they that mourn," 317 ; 
 " Blessed are the meek," 318; " Bless- 
 ed are they who hunger and thirst 
 after righteousness," 320; "Blessed 
 are the merciful," 321 ; " Blessed are 
 the pure in heart," 322 ; " Blessed are 
 the peacemakers," 323 ; " Blessed are 
 they who are persecuted for righteous- 
 ness' sake," 325; the sermon Jesus's 
 view of the spiritual ethics of the new 
 life, 334 ; where it contested the popu- 
 lar interpretation of the law, 335 ; 
 murder, 335 ; adultery, 337 ; divorce, 
 337; oaths, 339; retaliation, 339; 
 disinterested benevolence, 341 ; alms- 
 giving, 342; prayer, — the Lord's 
 Prayer, 342; fasting, 350; the pur- 
 suit of wealth, 351 ; general consider- 
 ations upon the sermon, 353. 
 Shechem, the vale of, and its beauties, 
 231 ; connection with great events of 
 Jewish history, 233. 
 Simeon, the prophetic rapture of, 34. 
 Son of David, is not this the, 391. _ 
 
 Son of Man, significance of the name, 
 183 ; by it Christ emphasized his mis- 
 sion, 183. 
 Son of God, Jesus assumes the title, 271. 
 Song, the, of Mary, 23 of Hannah, 24 ; 
 of Zacharias, 26 ; of the pilgrims to 
 Jerusalem, 70. 
 Stanley, on the Mount of the Beati- 
 tudes, 306. 
 Star in the East, the, 36. 
 Susanna, one of Christ's attendants, 
 
 383. 
 Synagogues, order of service in the, 257. 
 Tabernacles, See Feasts, 
 Teachings op Christ, his methods of, 
 
 296. 
 Temperance reformers, and the wedding 
 at Cana, 190 ; wine and alcohols con- 
 sidered, 191 ; conclusions from Christ's 
 example, 193. 
 Temple, the, at Jerusalem, 203 ; traffick- 
 ing in, — extent and reason of it, 
 207. 
 Temptations of Christ in the wil- 
 derness, the three narratives, by Mat- 
 thew, Mark, and Luke, 115 ; place of 
 the temptations, — erroneously sup- 
 posed to be the mountains of Moab, — 
 was one called Quarantania, of the 
 line of mountains westward of Jericho, 
 115 ; accordance of these events with 
 the elder Hebrew nature, 116; light 
 afforded by the visions of Ezekiel^ 
 117 ; the forty days' fasting a private 
 struggle and protection, 117; the si- 
 lence of Jesus upon the subject, 117; 
 his struggles with the powers of the 
 invisible world, and his victory, 118; 
 the belief of his disciples, — the teach- 
 ing of the apostles and the faith of the 
 Christian Church agree as to their 
 reality, 118; the inspiration of com- 
 fort from his victory over the utmost 
 that Satan could attempt, 119; the 
 nature of prophetic inspiration, 121; 
 the mystery of his pure being, 124 ; 
 his trials and persecutions and con- 
 sciousness of power, 124; the first 
 
510 
 
 ANALYTICAL INDEX. 
 
 temptation, " command that these 
 stones be made bread," 125 ; Satan, 
 medifeval and modern representations 
 of evil spirits, 125; Rochette's lec- 
 tures on ancient art, 125; the popular 
 idea of Satan to this day, 126 ; a true 
 conception of the Evil One, 1 26 ; the 
 prophetic symbolism of the first tempta- 
 tion, 127 ; the second temptation, "cast 
 thyself down from hence," 129; its 
 appeal to the love of praise and the 
 principle of admiration in the multi- 
 tude, 129; the third temptation, the 
 mountain-top, — its tremendous force, 
 130 ; considerations of the theories of 
 the temptations, 131 ; the objections 
 to the literal history, — why the the- 
 ory of a symbolic vision is preferable, 
 132; the practical benefit of this pas- 
 sage in the life of Jesus, 133. 
 
 Thief, the, that cometh in the night, 
 408. 
 
 Thompson, the missionary, on caves in 
 Palestine, 29 ; on leprosy, 290. 
 
 Twelve Tribes. See Feasts. 
 
 Uvbelief of the people's leaders, Christ's 
 severity towards, 366. 
 
 Van de Velde, on Palestine and the 
 vale of Shechem, 231. 
 
 ViEGiN, deification of the, by art, 16. 
 
 Watching for the Lord, 408. 
 
 Water, its ceremonial use, 223. 
 
 Water vessels amQRft the Hebrews, 189. 
 
 Wealth, the pnrsnit of, — the Sermon on 
 the Mount, 351. 
 
 Wedding, the, in Cana, — uncertainty as 
 to which Cana, 1 84 ; the presence of 
 Jesus and its significance, 184 ; social 
 and joyous habits of the Jews, 184; 
 the scene described, 185; sobriety of 
 such occasions, 185 ; Christ's geni- 
 ality as a guest, 187; the wine ex- 
 hausted, 188; the first miracle, 189; 
 the character of the wine, 190 ; Con- 
 gregational Review on Eev. W. M. 
 Thayer's " Communion Wine," &c., 
 190 ; wine and alcohol considered, 
 191 ; the conclusions to be drawn from 
 Christ's example, 193. 
 
 Weddings among the Jews, 185. 
 
 Wine. See Wedding in Cana. 
 
 Woman, Christ's humanity toward the 
 sinning, 249. 
 
 WooLSEY, President, on the mother 
 and brethren of Jesus, 394. 
 
 Zachakias, the priest, and his wife 
 Elizabeth, 11; his life and duties, 12; 
 the angel of the Lord appears to him, 
 12; the promise of a son, 13; Zacha- 
 rias doubts and is stricken dumb, 13 ; 
 their hopes of a Messiah, 14 ; return 
 to the "hill country," 14; arrival of 
 Mary, 21 ; the birth and naming of 
 John, 25; his lips were unsealed, — 
 his song of thanksgiving, 26; his 
 prophecy of John's greatness, 27. 
 
 END OP PAET I. 
 
 Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 
 
TO BOOKSELLERS 
 
 AND THE PUBLIC. 
 
 Fonowrao their undeniable right to conduct their own business in 
 their own way, provided that way does not interfere with the rights 
 of others, the Publishers of " The Life of Jesus, the Christ " wish to 
 say a few words concerning the mode of selling it which they have 
 adopted. They have chosen the " subscription method " of sale, rather 
 than the ordinary channels of the book trade, believing that their own 
 interests will be promoted by larger sales, that the author's designs will 
 be better accomplished by the distribution of his work into many districts 
 and families which it would not otherwise reach, and that, on the whole, 
 those of the reading public who want the book will be more conveniently 
 served if canvassers bring it to them, than if it were sent to stand upon 
 the shelves of bookstores till sought for. 
 
 It has been largely the custom among booksellers to get supplies of 
 subscription books and keep them for sale, despite the wishes and efforts 
 of the publishers. Not expecting to arrest this altogether, the Pub- 
 lishers of the present work propose to frankly appeal to booksellers, as a 
 matter of common courtesy, to refrain from interference with a business 
 which, taking nothing from them, really does not touch their interests, 
 and which the Publishers naturally wish to conduct to suit their own 
 convenience. 
 
 Ordinarily, such a request would doubtless be enough ; but the custom 
 of indirectly dealing in subscription books has been so generally followed, 
 and by so many booksellers of recognized integrity and high standing, 
 that it seems worth while trying to show them that both honor and 
 honesty are violated by it, as well as mere courtesy. 
 
 Each agent who undertakes to sell this book is given a certain district 
 of territory, within which he has guaranteed to him an exclusive control 
 
2 TO BOOKSELLERS AND THE PUBLIC. 
 
 of the sales, to the best of the Publishers' ability ; in return for which he 
 pledges his honor and his name, by contract, not to injure the sales of 
 other agents by selling either outside his own territory or to booksellers, 
 who would, of course, reach customers out of his district. All honest 
 agents fulfil their pledge ; while dishonest agents do not scruple to he, by 
 false orders " for subscribers," and to injure the liveUhood of honorable 
 men by selling the goods, thus obtained under false pretences, to such 
 booksellers as are willing to receive them. 
 
 It is not likely that booksellers have considered this element of dis- 
 honorable dealing and continued injury to the business of others, when 
 encouraging agents to supply them with books obtained by direct falsity 
 and breach of contract. It has been thought a rather good joke on sub- 
 scription publishers ; and it is, — just as smuggling is a good joke on the 
 government.'' But, knowing fuU well how thoughtlessly this custom has 
 grown up, the Publishers of "this work desire courteously but plainly to 
 put before all booksellers the true character of this very common trans- 
 action; for, having had many dealings with "the tra&e," and knowing 
 it to be conducted by men of honor and principle, they believe that, 
 with this clear understanding of the case, booksellers will not encourage 
 rascals who may thus be in position to violate the confidence of those 
 who fairly employ them. 
 
 If the desire of the bookseller is to accommodate customers (rather 
 than to enforce a profit from every book published, whether his services 
 are solicited for it or not), he may refer the customer to the Pubhshers, 
 and their Local Agent shall be sent to supply the demand. Everything 
 will cordially be done, that can be done, to obviate the inconvenience 
 of not having the book upon their shelves, for booksellers who grant 
 to the Publishers the common right of managing their own afiairs in 
 their own way. 
 
 J. B. EOED & CO., 
 
 Publishers. 
 
J. B. FORD AND COMPANY, 
 
 No. 27 Park Place (and 24 & 26 Murray Street), 
 
 NEW YORK, 
 
 Would respectfully ask tlie attention of the reading public to the 
 books -which they have published during the years 1868-1871, and 
 those which they have in contemplation, as set forth in the follow- 
 ing pages. 
 
 They aim to issue works of a high character and value as to the 
 contents, handsome in typography, elegant in illustration, workman- 
 like and complete in general style of manufacture; and they con- 
 fidently point to their publications as evidence of their success. 
 
 Publishing largely for the subscription trade, they desire to direct 
 the attention of Canvassers and all interested, either as sellers or 
 buyers of books, to the issues of their house, feeling sure that their 
 record is one of a more than ample fulfilment of promises. They 
 are desirous of increasing the already large number of intelligent 
 and reliable Agents now engaged in pushing their books, being pre- 
 pared to give constant and lucrative employment to energetic Canvass- 
 ers. Clergymen seeking recreation, students during vacation, enter- 
 prising men or women everywhere, can thus secure a profitable business 
 at a very small outlay of money, — the requisites being honesty, 
 intelligence, and persevering activity. 
 
 All applications, or letters of any kind asking information, will 
 meet with prompt and courteous response. 
 
 Besides the works already issued and announced, Messrs. Fobd 
 & Co. have in active preparation other new and valuable books, of 
 real public interest, which they are, at great expense of money and 
 care, getting in readiness for the Subscription Trade. Concerning 
 these, announcement will be made in due time, and Descriptive Cir- 
 culars or other information will always be gladly sent to applicants. 
 
2 
 THE BOOK FOB EVERY BOUSEHOLD. 
 
 FOUE HTJNDEED AND FIFTY VOLXfHES IN ONE. 
 
 The Libeary of Poetry and Som. 
 
 BEINO 
 
 ENGLISH, SCOTCH, IRISH, AND AMERICAN, 
 
 INCLUDING TRANSLATIONS FROM THE GERMAN, SPANISH, &o. 
 
 WITH AIT mTEODUCTION BY 
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 
 
 In one Superb Large Octavo Volume of over 800 pages, well printed, on Fine Paper, and 
 
 Illustrated with an admirable Portrait on Steel of Mr. Brtaht, together 
 
 with 26 autographic Fao-similes on Wood of Celebrated 
 
 Poets, besides other choifce Engravings 
 
 by the best Artists. 
 
 PRICES! 
 
 EED-LINE EDITION. 
 
 Extra Cloth $ 5.00 I Half Morocco, Extra .... $ 7.60 
 
 Extra Cloth, Gilt Edge and Side . . 6.00 I Turkey Morocco, Antique . . .10.00 
 
 SUPEKFINE EDITION. 
 
 (TiHTED Paper ; Fully Illustrated.) 
 
 Extra Cloth, Full Gilt ... $ 8.50 | Crushed Levant, Elegant . . $ 15.00 
 
 Polished French Levant (Matthews's Superb Binding) . $ 17.50. 
 
 The New York Times, a journal well known the country over for high Uterary excel- 
 lence and correct taste, says : — 
 
 "This very handsome volume difFera from all collections of 'elegant extracts/ parlor books, and 
 the like, which "we have seen, in being arranged according to an intelligible and comprehensive plan. 
 In containing selections which nearly cover the entire historical period over which English poetry ex- 
 tends, and in embracing matter suited to every conceivable taste and every variety of feeling and cul- 
 ture. We know of no similar collection in the English language lofiich, in copiousness and felicity of 
 
 selection and arrangsment, can at all compare with it Ine volume is a model of typographical 
 
 clearness." 
 
 The Albany (N. Y.) Evening Journal, one of the oldest papers and highest literary 
 
 standards in the country, says : — 
 
 ** It is undoubtedly the choicest and most complete general collection of poetry yet published. It 
 win be deemed sufficient proof of the Judicious character of the selections, and of their excellence, that 
 every poem has taken its place in the book only after passing the cultured criticism of Mr. William 
 Cullen Bryant.' The work could have no liigber indorsement. Sir. Bryant's introduction to the vol- 
 ?"?!? ? t"™' beautiful and comprehensive critical essay on poets and poetry, from the days of ' the 
 ratncr of tngllsh poetry' to the present time J>fo other selection we know of is as varied and com- 
 plete as this I and It must And its way Into every library and household where poetry is read and ap- 
 preciated." 
 
 This book has had a large and rapid sale, through Agents, by Subscription, and is still 
 selling very handsomely. It is regarded by experienced canvassers as one of the few 
 etatidard subscription books. 
 
 f^~ Descriptive Circulars, Terms, &c., mailed promptly on application. Exclu- 
 sive Territory assigned. .^1 
 
 J. B. FORD & CO., 
 
 '.27 Park Place, New York City. 
 
SOME GOOD BOOKS 
 
 For Bale by all Booksellers, or mailed, pre-paid, to any address, on receipt of 
 tbe price, by the Publishers, 
 
 J. B. FORD & CO., No. 27 Paek Place, New York. 
 
 Pull Set: Beecher's Sermons. First, 
 
 Second, Third, and Fourth Series, uniformly bound. 
 
 Single volumes, each complete, extra cloth, $ 2.50 ; 
 
 half morocco, $ 5. 
 
 Ofthe first volume the Advance of Chicago said: 
 " The volume is a handsome one, and is prei^ed 
 with the best portrait of Mr. Beecher we have ever 
 seen. The sermons are twenty-seven in number, 
 the regular Sunday morning and Thanksgiving dis- 
 courses of six months, and are a wonderful testi- 
 mony, not only to the real goodness of heart of the 
 great Plymouth preacher, but to the fertility of 
 resource, industry of thought, and rare abihty which 
 can lEeep his regular ministrations to such a height 
 of average excellence.'' 
 
 Each succeeding volume contains also six months' 
 sermons (about 4S0 pp.), issued in style uniform with 
 the First Series. 
 
 Leoture-Room Talks. A series of Fa- 
 miliar Discourses on Themes of Christian Experi- 
 ence. By HeketTVaudBeecheb. Phonograph- 
 ically reported by T. J. Ehinwood. 12mo, 
 extra cloth, with steel portrait. Price, % 2. 
 "J. B. Foni & Co., who are now printers and 
 publishers to the Beecher family, have collected in 
 a handsome volume the Lecture-Room Talks of the 
 Brooklyn preacher, held in the weekly prayer- 
 meetmgof the l^lymouth Church. 
 
 " There is a great deal of humorous talk mingled 
 with much that is serious; and the subjects dis- 
 cossed are of the most varied kind. It is a charm- 
 ing boo^" ~ Springfield {Mass.) Republican. 
 
 Christian Heart-Songs. A Collection 
 
 of Choruses, Quartets, and Set Pieces; together 
 with a Selection of Anthems, Motets, and Tunes of 
 all Metres. By John Zdndel, Author of " Har- 
 mony and Modulation," " Voluntaries for the Or- 
 gan," etc. 8vo. 160 pages. Boards, $1; Cloth, $1.26. 
 '* Mr. Zundel is well known aa an admirable com- 
 poser of church music. A pupil of the great Rink, 
 he shows his training in the beautiful simplicity of 
 his themes and the rich variety of his harmonies. 
 Mr.Znndel is Organist at Plymouth Church, Brook- 
 lyn (Kev. H. \V. Beecher's).'' — Troy (,N. Y.) Times. 
 
 Our Seven Churches; Eight Lectures 
 
 by Thohas K. Beeches. 16mo. Paper, 50 cents; 
 
 extra cloth, $ 1 ; cloth gilt, * 1.25. 
 
 " The eight lectures comprised in this volume are 
 
 conceived in a spirit of broad liberality, as rcfresh- 
 
 SSm it is rare. They evince, in the most gratifying 
 
 mllScr pSle, how easy it is to find something 
 
 S.^iTi one's neighbors, or opponents, or even ene- 
 
 ^ ftZl fries aithm'lly to'cfo so, instead of mak- 
 
 Keffort to di^covej: a, fault or a weakness j^^ The 
 
 TOlume is one wliich should have, as it undoubtedly 
 ^™ wide circulation." - OetroU Free Press. 
 
 IN PREPARATION. 
 
 Maternity. A Popular Treatise for 
 Young Wives and Mothers. By T. S. Verdi, 
 A. M., M. D., of Washington, D. C. Handsomely 
 printed on laid paper, bevelled boards, extra Eng- 
 lish cloth. 12mo. 450 pages. Price, 52.25. TMri 
 Edition. 
 
 " The author deserves great credit for his labor, 
 and the book merits an extensive circulation." — 
 U. 3. Medical and Surgical Journal {Chicago). 
 
 " There are few intelligent mothers who will not 
 be benefited by reading and keeping by them for 
 frequent counsel a volume so rich in valuable sug- 
 gestions. With its tables, prescriptions, and in- 
 dices at the end, this book ought to do much good." 
 —Hearth and Home. 
 
 " We hail the appearance of this work with real 
 pleasure. It is dictated by a pure and liberal spirit, 
 and will be a real boon to many a young mother." 
 — American Medical Observer (Detroit). 
 
 The Children's 'Week: Seven Sto- 
 BIE3 FOE Seven Days. By B. W. Eavmohd. 
 16mo. Nine full-page illustrations by II. L. Ste- 
 phens and Miss M. L. Hallooe. Price, extra 
 cloth,S1.25; cloth, fUll gilt, $ 2. 
 
 " The book is bright enough to please any people 
 of culture, and yet so simple that children will 
 welcome it with glee. Mr. Raymond's talcs have 
 won great popularity by their wit, delicate fancy, 
 and, vrtlhaf, admirable good sense. 'Ihe illustra- 
 tions— all new and made for the book — are particu- 
 larly apt and pleasing, showing forth both the com- 
 ical element of the book and its pure and beautiful 
 senthnent."— £!#ato {If. Z.) Commercial Adver- 
 tiser, 
 
 Principles of Domestic Science: As 
 
 applied to the Duties and Pleasures of Home. A 
 Text-book for the Use ot Young Ladies in Schools, 
 Seminaries, and CoUeges. By Catharine E. 
 Beechek and Haekiet Beechee Siowe. A 
 compact 12mo volume ol 390 pages; profusely il- 
 lustrated; well prhited, and bound in neat and 
 substantial stylo. Price, $ 2. 
 Prepared with a view to assist In training young 
 women for the distinctive duties which inevitably 
 come upon them in household life, this volume has 
 been made with especial reference to tiie duties, 
 cares, and pleasures of the famtly, as being the 
 nlace where, whatever the political developments 
 of the future, woman, from her very nature, of 
 body and of spirit, wfll find her most engrossmg 
 occupation. 
 
 m^-The work has been heartily indorsed, and 
 adopted by the directors of many ofthe leadmg col- 
 leges and seminaries for young women. 
 
 A new novel, by Mks, 
 
 rur^ Tio-ifo anti I- or Harry Henderson's History. 
 
 My Wife and l, or, "^'Jli,,^^ t^^t ^aed lady is now writing, treating 
 
 Habeiet f-^^''^^^''°^^-^'';^°^ZZSterSingproMZ, of the d„,, -questions „hich, 
 of some °f;^^7;;jXtSabi^?' aSel of the'people, and which it is her peculiar genius 
 Uke slavery in ^^'^l"^^^""^^ ,, „„^ „^g ,n The Christian Union (religious weekly, pub- 
 SCbTlhol\,-rZcompletionthere,w^^ 
 TT W Beecher's Works. Uniform Edition. This is a set of books long needed 
 
 and for which there is constant caU. 
 
The Christian Ujstion 
 
 IS AH mfSECTARLAIf EELIGIOUS WEEKXT, UNDEE THE EDITOEIAL MAITAGB. 
 
 MENT OF 
 
 REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER. 
 
 The very remarkable success of this journal, -which, in me year, attained a circulation 
 surpassing that of any other religious weekly in the United States (one only excepted, 
 and that one oyer twenty-two years old), is its best possible advertisement. 
 
 IVHY IS IT? 
 
 BSCACSX:, First, HENRY WARD BEECHER is its Editor, and his writings and Lecturo- 
 Room TaLki are sought for by thousands, while the main editorial labor is in the hands of cultiTated and 
 experienced journalists j the COJVTRIBUTORS being represBTUative men of J3LL Denominations, 
 
 BECAUSiE, Secondly, ITS FORM, sixteen pages, large quarto, Stitciiei) and Cut, is so con- 
 venient for reading, binding, and preserTation, as to be a great and special merit in its favor. 
 
 BECAUSE, Thirdly, It is called " the Most Interesting Religious Paper published," being quoted 
 from by the press of the entire country more extensirely than any other. Ihe critical Nation (N. Y.) 
 says it is " Not only the ablest and best, but also, as we suppose, the most popular of American re- 
 ligious periodicals. At aU events it is safe to predict that it will soon have, if it has not already, greater 
 influence than any other religious paper in the country." 
 
 BECAUSE, Fourthly, /( has something for emery Member of ihe Household : admirable con- 
 tributed and editorial articles, discussing all timely topics j fresh information on unhackneyed subjects j 
 reliable news of the Church and the world ; Market and Financial Reports j an Agricultural Depart- 
 ment •, excerpts of Public Opinion from the press j careful Book Reviews, with Educational, Literary, 
 Musical, and Art Notes ; much matter of a high and pure religious tone ; a Household Department * 
 choice Poems ; Household Stories j and Chat for the Little Ones. 
 
 BECAUSE, Fifthly, All subscribers are entitled to 
 
 TWO SUPERB OIL CHROMOS, 
 
 "•WIDE ^■WAKB" and "FJ^ST ASLEIDP." 
 
 ^pair — no cheap colored prints, but splendid copies of Oil Paintings, by an eminent English artist. 
 The pair, by a fortunate arrangement which one of the partners of this house was able to make with the 
 proprietors of the pictures in Paris, during the late siege, are furnished to the Publishers at a rate 
 entirely exceptional. So that, although the selling price of them is ($ 10) Ten Dollars, at which price 
 thousands have been sold in America, and still are selling and will be sold by the picture trade gen- 
 erally, the Publishers of The Chbistuh Uhion give away the two pictures, qf course unmounted, to every 
 subscriber to the paper. Or, if preferred, subscribers will receive a fine impression of Marshall's 
 Household Engraving of Washington, of which Dasliiv, the celebrated artist, says : " It is, beyond all 
 question, the best head engraved in line yet produced in this country, as well as the finest copy of Stuart's 
 portrait I have ever seen." 
 
 TEB.MS: 
 
 One Year's Subscription $3.00 
 
 The Chkistian Umion and Plymouth Pulpit, mailed for one year to 
 
 one address for $ 5.00 
 
 S^ Canvassers allowed liberal commissions. 
 
 An old agent who knows says ; " I have never presented anything ibr sale that met with the appro- 
 val of the entire reading community as nearly as does Hiket Ward Beboher's CHRISTIAN UNION. 
 Sorry I did not work for It sooner. Think it the best business for canvassers ever offered by any firm, to 
 my knowledgo." 
 
 J. B. FORD & CO., Publisliers, 
 
 'it Park Flace, New York City. 
 

>#■ - 
 
 >-\^: 
 
 ■^***^:. 
 
 
 %-^ 
 
 i^'-r-*. 
 
 .■'^■/*^-