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A YOUNG MAN'S JESUS 
 
A YOUNG MAN'S JESUS 
 
 BY 
 
 BRUCE BARTON 
 
 MAR 16 196? 
 
 THE PILGRIM PRESS 
 
 BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 
 
 R. P. I. 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1914 
 BY LUTHER H. GARY 
 
 THE -PLIUPTON -PRESS 
 NORWOOO-UASS-U-S-A 
 
TO MY FATHER 
 A YOUNG MAN'S PREACHER 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 Preface ix 
 
 I And Overthrew Their Tables . . 3 
 
 II And Waxed Strong 18 
 
 III Behold, a Man 34 
 
 IV That He Should Eat with Him . . 52 
 V And Besought Him 64 
 
 VI Generation of Vipers 75 
 
 VII The Outside of the Cup .... 93 
 
 VIII As Yourself 106 
 
 IX First the Kingdom of Heaven . . , 120 
 
 X The Man who Could Have Been King 134 
 
 XI Walked with Him no More . . . 152 
 
 XII With Him Two Robbers .... 169 
 
 XIII The Third Day 193 
 
 XIV More than a Man 211 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IT is time for those of us who are this 
 side of thirty-five to unite and take 
 back our Jesus. We have been too care- 
 lessly generous. We have allowed Him to 
 be appropriated here, there, and everywhere 
 until we have forgotten how indisputable 
 is our own first claim to Him. We have 
 surrendered His statues to cathedrals and 
 hospitals and — Heaven forgive us — even to 
 monasteries. We have looked on unprotest- 
 ingly while painters have made Him soft- 
 faced, and effeminate; and hymn- writers 
 have written of His sufferings as though that 
 were all in His life worth writing about. We 
 have only ourselves to blame, if out of all 
 the repellent medley of hospitals and monas- 
 teries and weak pictures and spiritless hymns, 
 the public has formed its own conception of 
 a tired, unhappy, martyred Jesus who lived 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 without a real laugh and looked forward to 
 dying in a sort of fanatical eagerness. 
 
 If this is the picture which red-blooded men 
 have of Him, then it is our fault who are 
 still this side of thirty-five. For He is our 
 Jesus in a special sense. He died before He 
 was thirty-five. He had our bounding pulses, 
 our hot desires. He felt His spirits leap in 
 the bracing air of the new morning. He knew 
 the stirring cheer of good fellowship. We 
 who dream our dreams of success know how 
 He felt that morning when He rode into 
 Jerusalem over the strewed palms; and 
 because our road stretches out a long way in 
 front, through years of sunshine, as His 
 might have stretched, the agony of that cry 
 from the cross rings more sharply in our ears 
 than in any others. He is our Jesus, and we 
 have surrendered Him to priests and to 
 women, to hospitals and monasteries, without 
 so much as a struggle. 
 
 The trouble starts in the Sunday schools. 
 Who of us does not remember the fine thrill of 
 appreciation with which he welcomed Samson 
 into his list of heroes — and David .'^ They 
 
PREFACE XI 
 
 were regular men's men: we knew how they 
 felt and what they struggled against. When 
 they killed a lion or a giant, or wiped out an 
 army, they had our admiration, every bit of 
 it. They were real flesh and blood men and 
 we liked them. 
 
 Why we could not have come up to the life 
 of Jesus in the same wholesome flesh and 
 blood style is a mystery — but somehow we 
 did not. As soon as we left Malachi and 
 crossed the three blank pages that lie between 
 the Testaments all the reality seemed to 
 disappear. For one thing Jerusalem never 
 seemed real. Whether there was any business 
 in it, any dwellings, any stores and oflBces, 
 we could never quite make out: it was to us 
 a sort of stage city consisting of a temple and 
 a wall. And compared to David and Sam- 
 son — hot, pulsing realities — Jesus seemed 
 hardly more than the shadow of a man./ He 
 was the "lamb," the "meek and lowly," the 
 "man of sorrows," the long-suffering one who 
 had turned the other cheek. He was every- 
 thing in our Sunday school teaching which I 
 judge He Himself would have preferred not 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 to be. To think of Him as a real man, doing 
 a tremendous task, was made to seem some- 
 how irreverent: to have suggested that He 
 was strong physically, that the muscles stand- 
 ing out in His arms and legs helped to breed 
 respect in the crowd that followed Him, would 
 have been nothing short of sacrilege. We 
 admired Him, as we might admire a man in a 
 hospital who suffered without flinching. But 
 we did not feel close to Him — not as we felt 
 close to Samson and David, nor to Moses with 
 his wand and brass snake. 
 
 Against all this negative conception of the 
 Young Man of Galilee, we, to whom He 
 belongs in a special sense, ought vigorously 
 to protest. That our objection may be more 
 compelling, we should have our own picture 
 of Him so clear-cut and distinctive that the 
 whole world must acknowledge it. It is to 
 present this truer portrait — of a young man 
 glowing with physical strength and the joy of 
 living, athrill with the protest of youth against 
 oppression and intolerance, yet radiating a 
 spiritual power that has transformed the 
 world — that this little book is written. 
 
PREFACE xiii 
 
 It makes no pretense of being a "Life of 
 Christ" in the accepted sense. Of such hves 
 there are scores already and we have pillaged 
 from the best of them shamelessly in preparing 
 these pages whenever we could. Neither 
 chronology nor theology find here the defer- 
 ence which they are accustomed to receive; 
 and all those important but never to be de- 
 cided questions, concerning which men have 
 held fiercest dispute, are utterly ignored. 
 We have simply dipped down into the rich 
 and varied color of His life, and choosing 
 such material as suited our need, have fash- 
 ioned a portrait of Him as He really was, a 
 master of men subhmely powerful, a young 
 man, whom strong men can love. 
 
 That men should have failed to remember 
 how strong He was seems strange indeed, 
 when you think of the thirty years in a car- 
 penter shop, and the rough usage of His three 
 years of pubhc life. Much of the time He 
 had nowhere to lay His head: His couch was 
 a nest of boughs under the open sky. A fine 
 physique glories in exposure of that sort, but 
 weakness breaks down under it. 
 
xiv PREFACE 
 
 And do you think the miracles which He 
 did could have been wrought by any man 
 unless he radiated health and healing like the 
 sun? 
 
 "We have sought to exhume His hearty 
 laugh from the pages of dry theological treatise 
 which have smothered it, and to set it ringing 
 joyously across the record of His days. Men 
 loved to have Him at their dinners, and He 
 loved the tumult of the crowd. The first 
 criticism tossed against Him was not that He 
 was too spiritual, but that He was not spiritual 
 enough, in the dead and formal sense. "If 
 you really are the Promised One, why don't 
 you fast instead of attending these banquets? " 
 the disciples of John demanded of Him. And 
 the self-righteous Pharisees caught up the 
 complaint querulously, "This man is no 
 prophet," they said; "He makes friends of 
 publicans and sinners, and eateth with them.'* 
 
 We love Him for that criticism, for the 
 enemies that He made. He dared to be an 
 insurgent in the days when insurgency had 
 not become the popular and easy thing, 
 when its penalty was death. He might so 
 
PREFACE XV 
 
 very easily have been conventional and safe. 
 The established order would have received 
 Him gladly. Money is always orthodox; it 
 welcomes orthodoxy with open arms. Those 
 doctors who listened admiringly to His pene- 
 trating questions when He was a mere stripling 
 of twelve would have opened the door of 
 opportunity to Him gladly. He might have 
 been a rabbi of commanding influence: the 
 Sanhedrin was an easy possibility. He 
 turned His back on all that to take His stand 
 on our side — on the side of us who are young, 
 who protest against special privilege because 
 we are too new in the world to have accumu- 
 lated any privileges, and against entrenched 
 wealth because the glitter of it blinds the eye 
 of truth. 
 
 Up to the very end of His life there was 
 plenty of chance for Him to make just the 
 little concession that would have saved Him 
 to power and affluence. If the bestowal of 
 only half a loaf would have satisfied Him — 
 who was offering the bread of life — the 
 Pharisees would have been ready enough to 
 take the half. On some of the very last days 
 
XVI PREFACE 
 
 they invited Him to their homes: it was His 
 chance to take them over, to show them that 
 after all He was not so dangerous an enemy 
 to their settled order. They were very eager 
 to hear what He would say at dinner that 
 night, to see what He would do — and what 
 He did was to pronounce His own death 
 sentence. "I am the Son of God," He told 
 them. That was his answer. It was as 
 though Daniel had struck every individual 
 lion across the face. 
 
 It was too late then to hope for pardon: 
 and He sought none. His young blood was 
 too hot to suffer any toleration of their 
 formalism, their churchly righteousness, their 
 dead faith. So they killed Him, just as in 
 the last year He had known that they would. 
 It was bitter. For He loved life, and He was 
 so young; there was so much ahead of Him, 
 so great an opportunity. We know how He 
 felt, who see the years stand loaded with gifts 
 ahead of us. He was eager to work, so tired 
 with the stress of the last days, that left Him 
 deserted even by His disciples. We know 
 why He cried out in the Garden : we can hear 
 
PREFACE XVll 
 
 — when we close our eyes — the wail that 
 forced itself from between clenched teeth on 
 the cross. We are His age: we know Him: 
 He is ours. He's nearer to us who are young, 
 because of that cry. And we place Him at 
 the top of our list of heroes because in spite of 
 the cry He was still true to the end. 
 
 If He were to be in the city today we should 
 look for him where the crowd is thickest — 
 in church perhaps, if it were Sunday, but 
 during the week He spent little time in 
 churches. At least not when the sun was 
 warming the corn into ripeness, when all 
 Nature was luring tired men and women away 
 to the hills. If there were a world's cham- 
 pionship series in town, we might look for 
 Him there, at least at one of the games. 
 And if not, then He would be, we think, 
 somewhere about the busiest part of the 
 streets. 
 
 So we would search until we saw some- 
 one stop in the middle of the way to lift a 
 little child and dry its tears, or to carry a 
 cripple over the torrent of traffic, or to chat 
 with the corner loafer out of whose eyes light 
 
XVm PREFACE 
 
 seemed to have died. And we would go up to 
 Him quite frankly and openly, as we know 
 He would want us to do. Then with the 
 full-muscled, powerful grip of His hand still 
 tingling on our palms, we should be reconciled, 
 almost, to His death; almost glad that they 
 cut Him off while the hot blood of idealism 
 still coursed, uncooled, through His veins, 
 while youth had yielded not one niggardly 
 concession to the deadening conservatism of 
 years. We should forgive them, almost, that 
 they saved Him to us, that He died while He 
 was still our own — still strong, still full- 
 blooded and f ull-f aithed : always, through 
 the ascending ages, a young man's Jesus. 
 
A YOUNG MAN S JESUS 
 
A YOUNG MAN'S JESUS 
 I 
 
 ''AND OVERTHREW THEIR TABLES'* 
 
 NOBODY knows how many thousands 
 of strangers there were in Jerusalem 
 on that April morning. The streets 
 were decked with palms and banners, as 
 modern streets sometimes are on the occasion 
 of a great convention or a world's fair; but 
 the number of visitors — so many times the 
 total population — far exceeded anything that 
 modern cities know, and indeed placed a tre- 
 mendous tax upon the resources of Jerusalem, 
 accustomed though it was to these annual 
 festivals. Every room in lodging-houses or 
 private residences was jammed with pilgrims; 
 as far outside the walls as one could see, tents 
 stretched away toward the nearby villages; 
 and some pilgrims, disappointed in their 
 search for shelter, had spent the night in the 
 streets, or curled up within the shadow of 
 the larger buildings. 
 
4 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 The night before had been a troubled one, 
 such as always preceded the great Feast of the 
 Passover. Long after darkness had fallen 
 the streets were still full of people — some 
 hurrying home from the houses of friends, 
 where they had spent the evening; others 
 searching for a place to sleep; still others, 
 driven merely by curiosity and made restless 
 by the presence of the crowd, wandering here 
 and there seeking excitement. And there was 
 plenty to be found. Here a drove of cattle 
 on their way to the Temple, in preparation 
 for the sacrifices, collided with a pack train 
 from the North country; and while the 
 frightened animals scattered in all directions, 
 the owners heaped blows and maledictions on 
 each other. A few blocks beyond a Roman 
 soldier caught up a petty thief prowling about 
 the goods of the pilgrims, and carried him 
 away to the citadel. All night long the 
 streets rang with the hoofs of incoming 
 caravans and the shouts of tired travelers. 
 There was little sleep in Jerusalem on the 
 night before the great day: the first rays of 
 the rising sun found the whole population 
 
AND OVERTHREW THEIR TABLES 5 
 
 stirring, tired-eyed and somewhat ill-tempered, 
 but expectant. 
 
 The Young Man from Nazareth had spent 
 the night with friends outside the walls, 
 partly to gratify their desire and partly that 
 He might catch His first view of the city under 
 the gilding light of the morning sun. He had 
 never lost the memory of His first view of it 
 eighteen years before, when as a boy. His father 
 and mother had brought Him to the Temple 
 for the ceremony that stamped Him oflicially 
 a *' son of the law." He had traveled hard the 
 day before, and was thankful for a chance to 
 pass the night in the relative quiet of the 
 open country. But even outside the walls He 
 found little opportunity for sleep. The group 
 of friends who had started with Him from 
 GaHlee had grown to much larger proportions 
 during the day's journeying, as the word was 
 passed about that He, too, traveled to the 
 Feast. By night-time there were several 
 hundred; and long after the stars were out, 
 they piled wood upon the fire and sat Hstening 
 to His parables'and plying Him with questions. 
 When at last they left Him, He walked out a 
 
6 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 long way under the stars alone; for the things 
 that He had heard during the day burned 
 deep into His soul and He wanted a time to 
 think and to plan. 
 
 Most of what He had heard was bitter 
 complaint, the deep-toned protest of the poor 
 against the exactions of a heartless aristocracy. 
 These were peasants who were making the 
 journey to Jerusalem, and for most of them it 
 was the great occasion of their lives. Some, 
 to be sure, came every year, but others had 
 saved and looked forward to this one coming 
 as the crowning experience of a lifetime — 
 a memory to be treasured and handed down 
 to their children. For months they had been 
 making active preparations: those with any 
 money had taken it to the booth of the money- 
 changers in their local communities and had 
 changed it for the currency of the Temple 
 (for only the coinage of the priests might be 
 used in the Temple offerings), paying the 
 exorbitant rate of exchange that was charged. 
 The poorer worshipers, in whose lives actual 
 silver was unknown, had gone through their 
 slender herds to select a kid without blemish 
 
AND OVERTHREW THEIR TABLES 7 
 
 or a pair of doves with which to make their 
 sacrifices. They had chosen their offerings 
 gladly, even though they could little afford 
 the cost — proud that, poor as they were, 
 they might still share in the great festival of 
 the nation; and cheerily they had set out 
 from their homes on the long, tiring trip. 
 Now that they were at the very gates of the 
 city, their hearts sank; they wished almost 
 that they had not come. 
 
 For they knew well the humiliation that 
 awaited them on the morrow; all day long 
 they had trembled in apprehension of it. 
 Other travelers from their home towns, who 
 had made the journey in previous years, had 
 told them what they might expect. At the 
 very door of the Temple, standing between 
 them and the altar of their God, were the 
 agents of the priests whom they might not 
 pass until they had submitted to every manner 
 of extortion and humiliation. One pilgrim 
 told how his sister, a poor widow, had come 
 up to the Temple the year before, bringing a 
 pair of doves which she had purchased with 
 her meagre savings. And at the gate a 
 
8 A YOUNG MAN*S JESUS 
 
 priest had motioned her back scornfully, pro- 
 nouncing her offering blemished and, driving 
 her across to the counters of those that sold 
 doves, had forced her to spend her last pennies 
 for another sacrifice. Another had spoken 
 of his cousin, who, in changing his money into 
 the Temple coin, had been robbed by the 
 money-changers, who belonged to the family 
 of Annas, the High Priest; and almost every 
 one of the travelers, it seemed, had a similar 
 story of outrage which he poured into the 
 ears of the Young Man from Nazareth, until 
 His blood flamed. 
 
 That night, under the stars, their stories 
 beat through His heart, one after the other, 
 each one adding to the fire of His indignation. 
 He was young; He was an idealist; He had 
 been raised up to look with reverence on the 
 capital city of His people, and to consider 
 the Temple as housing at once the spiritual 
 and civil authority of the nation. To find 
 its precincts thus desecrated, its worship 
 eaten by greed and made the pretext for the 
 oppression of the poor, stirred every red 
 corpuscle of His young manhood. 
 
AND OVERTHREW THEIR TABLES 9 
 
 He thought, as He walked there under the 
 stars, of Jeremiah, who had cried out against 
 the "prophets that prophesy falsely and the 
 priests that bear rule by their means"; and 
 against the "shepherds that destroy and 
 scatter the sheep of my pasture." He re- 
 membered how Ezekiel had opened the vials 
 of his wrath upon the whole priestly tribe 
 because, "like roaring lions," they devoured 
 the people and oppressed the poor. Against 
 all this heartless formalism, this priestly 
 usurpation, Isaiah, too, had uttered burning 
 protest; his words ran through the heart of 
 the Young Man of Nazareth — the words 
 of Jehovah, summoning the people away from 
 petty observances and meaningless fasts: 
 
 "Behold ye fast for strife and contention ... is this 
 
 the fast that I have chosen? 
 "Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to loose the 
 
 bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, 
 
 and to let the oppressed go free? " 
 
 "To undo the bands of the yoke" — the 
 Young Man said it over to Himself again and 
 again, as He walked there alone under the 
 stars. The words were still upon His lips 
 
10 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 as He lay down to sleep; and the next morn- 
 ing, when the little group of His intimate 
 followers came to call Him, they found Him 
 already dressed, a look of set determination 
 upon His fine, sun-browned face. 
 
 The people would have engaged Him in 
 further conversation, as they traversed the 
 little distance that separated them from the 
 city, but He was strangely silent and thought- 
 ful. Even their exclamations of joy, as they 
 saw the rich rays of the morning sun touch 
 one tower of the Temple buildings after an- 
 other into golden radiance, did not arouse 
 Him. At length they dropped a little behind, 
 leaving Him to walk alone; and so He led 
 them, His eyes fixed on the city before Him, 
 through the gates, and straight to the outer 
 court of the Temple. 
 
 The hour was still early, but the Temple 
 area seethed and roared in a scene of strife 
 and confusion. On one side were the shambles 
 of the cattle dealers, surrounded by a gesticu- 
 lating mob of intending purchasers. Men's 
 voices rose into fierce, strident tones as they 
 protested against the extortionate prices and 
 
AND OVERTHREW THEIR TABLES 11 
 
 pleaded for consideration. They might as 
 well have lifted up their voices to the pillars 
 as to the hard faced priests and traffickers, so 
 solidly entrenched behind the protection of 
 their monopoly. Around every money- 
 changer's table men and women, and some- 
 times whole families, alternately threatened 
 and pled in their bargaining; and as each 
 pilgrim left, elated or broken, according to 
 his success, another pressed forward to change 
 his hard-earned pennies for the priestly shekels. 
 Across the court were the cages crowded 
 thick with doves; and here the poor threw 
 themselves piteously upon the mercy of 
 the traders. The clamor of dispute carried 
 beyond the veil that shut off the Temple from 
 the altar and echoed about the Holy of Holies. 
 But sadder even than the noise of protest 
 was the stolid indifference with which the great 
 company of worshipers went about their 
 sacrifices. The Temple had always been a 
 market-place within their memory ; the priests 
 had always robbed. It did not occur to 
 them that there was anything offensive about 
 the scene this morning: they had never 
 
12 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 stopped to ask themselves whether this great 
 ghttering tomb, with its snarhng crowd of 
 traders, were fit to represent the faith of their 
 fathers. Their worship had become a thing 
 detestable and they did not even suspect it; 
 their very souls were dead. 
 
 No detail of the shameful scene escaped the 
 Man of Nazareth. He saw the little peasant 
 family at one side, bowed in tears because 
 the pitiful sum they had scraped together 
 was not sufficient to satisfy the greed of 
 the sellers; He saw the peasant mother 
 carry her doves tremblingly before the 
 cruel eye of the examining priest only to 
 have them spurned and thrown back con- 
 temptuously; He saw the cynical smile of 
 the overseeing priest, who passed from table 
 to table, calculating the profits of the day's 
 transactions. 
 
 While He had been watching He had picked 
 up from the floor a few pieces of cord and 
 braided them together into a whip, as the boys 
 in Nazareth had often done. And suddenly. 
 His cheeks red with righteous anger. His 
 eyes aflame, He stepped forward to the table 
 
AND OVERTHREW THEIR TABLES 13 
 
 of the money-changer nearest Him, and 
 flung it half across the court. Before the 
 astonished crowd knew what had happened 
 He strode on to the next and overturned it, 
 and the next. Then across to the counters of 
 the dove-sellers He pushed, and throwing 
 wide the gates of their cages loosed a perfect 
 flock of doves. A mighty cheer went up from 
 the crowd as they caught the significance of 
 His outburst. The bolder spirits put them- 
 selves at His back and when He approached 
 the shambles where a wild-eyed little group 
 of dealers opposed themselves, there were a 
 hundred willing hands to brush them aside 
 and loose the fastenings of the cattle. In a 
 moment the whole court was in pandemonium. 
 Tables were upset; doves fluttered into the 
 Temple towers, and frightened cattle rushed 
 madly through the gates and out into the 
 streets. Only the Man of Nazareth, among 
 all the frenzied crowd, was calm. With the 
 whip which He had braided together, He 
 lashed the horde of thieves and oppressors 
 before Him, until the last one had been 
 scourged from the court, and He stood amid 
 
14 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 the wreck of His rebellion, in the midst of the 
 glorying crowd of pilgrims. 
 
 Even the Roman soldiers, stationed in the 
 outer courts of the Temple to maintain order, 
 were spellbound at the splendor of His 
 single-handed victory. But the priests could 
 not restrain their fury. Rushing up to Him 
 they raised their hands in impotent rage and 
 demanded to know who He was and by what 
 authority He did these things. Looking down 
 at them — the great men and rulers of His 
 nation — in the calm supremacy of moral cour- 
 age, the Young Man from Nazareth, the 
 carpenter, unlearned in any school, replied: 
 
 "It is written, My house shall be called a 
 house of prayer for all the nations, but ye 
 have made it a den of robbers." 
 
 That day the whole city rang with His 
 name, and crowds of delighted pilgrims fol- 
 lowed Him wherever He walked. But the 
 Young Man of Nazareth went quietly about 
 His business, expounding His views to those 
 who questioned Him, and renewing His ac- 
 quaintance with such friends as happened to 
 be in the city. His anger had cooled and He 
 
AND OVERTHREW THEIR TABLES 15 
 
 was again the quiet teacher, the lovable social 
 companion. The cheers of the populace con- 
 fused Him no more than had the imprecations 
 of the priests. Indeed His magnificent self- 
 possession, in the face of a popularity so sweep- 
 ing and so suddenly acquired, created a 
 marked impression on the minds of the more 
 influential men in the city. They questioned 
 among themselves who He might be, and 
 whether any use could be made of His unusual 
 gift for leadership. 
 
 Only a few weeks before, so the report had 
 it, He had come out of a carpenter shop in 
 Nazareth and had presented Himself for bap- 
 tism to John, the remarkable young preacher 
 who had recently been gathering multitudes 
 of listeners and even converts on the shores 
 of the Jordan. The two had known each 
 other in youth; were, in fact, cousins, each 
 endowed in wonderful measure with the ability 
 to draw other young men to Himself by 
 personal magnetism and the vigor and uncon- 
 ventionality of their thought. 
 
 John had already scored a tremendous 
 success. Even some of the chief men of the 
 
16 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 capital had thought it worth while to journey 
 out to his camp by the river side; and among 
 the populace the impression was fast gaining 
 currency that he was none other than the 
 promised Messiah, who should throw off the 
 Roman yoke and restore the throne to Jeru- 
 salem. 
 
 Yet on the day when the Young Man from 
 Nazareth presented Himself for baptism a 
 remarkable thing had happened. John, a 
 man of national prominence, had drawn back 
 from this unknown young convert as though 
 reluctant to administer the rite. The de- 
 nouncer of rulers had shown himself suddenly 
 diffident in the presence of a simple carpenter, 
 and to the gaping crowd had announced: 
 
 "This is He of whom I spoke to you, 
 the latchet of whose shoes I am unworthy to 
 unloose." 
 
 What did he mean? Who was this strange 
 young man who, having lived for thirty years 
 in a country village, could in a single day make 
 Himself the most prominent figure in a capital .'^ 
 What depths of power lay behind that majestic 
 exterior to carry Him so faultless through 
 
AND OVERTHREW THEIR TABLES 17 
 
 these unprecedented experiences? What 
 vision had He received to transform Him 
 suddenly from a carpenter into the Champion 
 of Pure Rehgion, the Defier of Oppression? 
 
 His act was the talk of the feast: and at the 
 end of that week an army of visitors left the 
 city to scatter the report of it into thousands 
 of little towns and hamlets throughout the 
 known world. From that day, wherever He 
 went, there was eagerness to hear the Man 
 of Nazareth, the Young Man, who, single- 
 handed, had set the power of His idealism 
 against the oppressors and pillagers of a 
 nation. 
 
II 
 
 ''AND WAXED STRONG'* 
 
 IT was no feeling of awe before a flaming 
 moral purpose that swept that crowd of 
 pillagers out of the Temple; nor was it 
 altogether their fear of the shouting wor- 
 shipers who so readily took the Young Man's 
 part. He, Himself — stalwart, broad-shoul- 
 dered, perfectly developed — was the real 
 reason for their eagerness to give way before 
 Him. As that lash of cords was lifted and 
 swept over their faces or across their necks, 
 the loose sleeve of His garment fell back to 
 reveal a forearm on which the muscles stood 
 out like knots of iron; against such an arm 
 and such a shoulder there was not one among 
 the flabby multitude who cared to risk him- 
 self. 
 
 Into the muscles which swung that lash 
 thirty years of outdoor labor had poured 
 their best of manly strength. Indeed, His 
 
AND WAXED STRONG 19 
 
 preparation for that moment had started at 
 the very instant of His birth. His father and 
 mother had been on a journey up to Bethlehem 
 at the time, where they were to be numbered 
 with their neighbors for the levying of a 
 Roman tax. On the long ride that preceded 
 His birth His mother had carried Him across 
 the steep hills of Galilee, as Napoleon's mother 
 is said to have borne her son in her bosom 
 while she traveled with his father to the war. 
 When they reached Bethlehem, long after 
 night had fallen, it was to find every room in 
 the inn taken and no place available for them 
 except a stall in one of the stables. There 
 He was born, surrounded by the animals and 
 the animal-like men who tended them, and 
 they cradled Him on a pillow of straw in the 
 manger. A weakling child would have per- 
 ished in that first night, but He, to whom 
 peasant parents had given the only fortune 
 which peasants can give — a sound body and 
 rich red blood — laughed Himself into the 
 world, a vigorous, perfectly -formed child. 
 
 From that day His hfe was spent in the 
 open. The parents traveled from Bethlehem 
 
20 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 down into Egypt, and after some years made 
 the long, hard journey back into GaHlee and 
 settled in the Kttle town of Nazareth. By 
 the time of that return, He, though still a 
 child, was deemed old enough to walk, because 
 there were younger children in the family, 
 and so, at His father's side. He trudged along, 
 leading the ass on which His mother rode, 
 covering on foot the whole hard way, which 
 would have taxed the strength of many a 
 grown man. If He sometimes grew very 
 weary with the walking, as He doubtless did; 
 and if the foraging, in search of fagots and 
 thorns for the fire, left Him sometimes utterly 
 fatigued, the nights spent in sleep under the 
 stars replenished His vigor. Every day that 
 passed added to the hardness of His little 
 muscles, and the perfect development of 
 His strength. 
 
 His father, a stalwart peasant of simple 
 thought but generous nature, was a carpenter 
 by trade; and when at length the long journey 
 was completed and the family settled in Naz- 
 areth, He opened there his httle shop. Car- 
 pentering in those days was no gentle business. 
 
AND WAXED STRONG 21 
 
 It was centuries before the invention of the 
 sawmill, or the steam-driven plane. He who 
 contracted for the erection of a house under- 
 took the whole task, from the excavation for 
 the foundations to the last finishing touches 
 of the interior. Except for the brief hours 
 that He spent in the Synagogue, acquiring 
 the education of the orthodox Jewish lad, 
 Jesus was busy throughout the day with his 
 father in the roughest sort of physical toil. 
 
 Afterwards, when the crowds that used to 
 gather along the Sea of Galilee to listen to 
 His stories, heard Him speak of the "man 
 who built his house upon a rock," of the 
 "axe being laid to the root of the tree," they 
 had no doubt that He knew what He was 
 talking about. They remembered seeing Him 
 dig at the hard earth of Nazareth's hills to 
 make a place for foundations that should not 
 be affected by wind or storm; they had not 
 forgotten how, on many a day. He had gone 
 off into the mountains, an axe across His 
 shoulder, to hew out the sturdy timbers, 
 nor how at nightfall they had watched Him 
 trudging back, often with a beam across His 
 
22 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 shoulders that would have been a load for 
 a strong man. 
 
 As He grew in stature and in years, there 
 developed in Him a remarkable capacity, 
 not merely for personal work at His trade, 
 but for the direction of other workmen; 
 His father recognized it and allowed Him a 
 measure of authority over the men. Thus, 
 when the father died, Jesus, the Carpen- 
 ter-son, took up the responsibility of the 
 family's support, where Joseph, the carpenter- 
 father, had laid it down. The later years 
 of His young manhood were spent partly in 
 work of supervision, which added to that 
 splendid endowment of natural executive 
 ability that played so great a part in His 
 pubhc life. But the work with His own hands 
 was never entirely given up. For the first 
 thirty years of His young life, hardly a day 
 passed, except the Sabbath, when He did not 
 spend some hours in forcing a saw through 
 the hard fiber of beams and boards or smooth- 
 ing their rough sides with a carpenter's plane. 
 And even on the Sabbath He could not often 
 content Himself to remain quietly indoors. 
 
AND WAXED STRONG 23 
 
 Indeed, there were those in the gossipy village 
 who criticised Him because He so often pre- 
 ferred to spend the afternoon in a walk among 
 the surrounding hills, sometimes going beyond 
 the narrow hmits of the prescribed "Sabbath 
 day's journey," and frequently — to the 
 greater • scandal of the critical — taking a 
 group of laughing children with Him. 
 
 But such criticism as this caused little dis- 
 comfort to the big-framed, powerful, young 
 carpenter. Indeed it was completely buried 
 beneath the general tribute of respect which 
 the community gave to Him. Older men 
 grew to value Him because He was the best 
 and most skilful workman in town, and 
 because His judgment in business matters 
 proved so unvaryingly good. Among the 
 younger element He developed an easy and 
 uncontested leadership. He was the strongest 
 among them; and ultimately His superiority 
 was so well established and so unquestioned 
 that He was ruled out of their contests, and 
 became a sort of arbiter in the village, whose 
 judgments were generally respected, not 
 merely because of their wisdom but also be- 
 
24 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 cause it was known that He, Himself, if He 
 would, could give them force. 
 
 So He "waxed strong" in thirty years of 
 wholesome outdoor work and play, at first 
 only dimly realizing how magnificent an 
 asset He was building up for the work and 
 trials that were to come. 
 
 For only a man of transcending physical 
 power could have met the tests that were 
 laid upon Him after He left the carpenter shop 
 and entered upon the three years of His pubHc 
 work. He was poor, of course, and rather 
 gloried in it; but poverty, which makes 
 necessary such privations as He had to endure, 
 has proved the undoing of many a man of 
 strong will and average physique. They 
 asked Him one day where He lived, and He 
 told them that He had no home, that He lay 
 down at night and slept wherever He happened 
 to be. "The birds have nests," He said, "and 
 foxes have holes, but I have nowhere to lay 
 my head." Some nights, of course. He stayed 
 with friends, but many and many a night He 
 must have spent, with the sturdier of His 
 fishermen-disciples, stretched under the blue 
 
AND WAXED STRONG 25 
 
 sky. Yet He was never sick; never tired; 
 each morning He could greet the sunshine 
 with the glad smile of perfect health, and 
 begin His long day of tramping from village 
 to village in the open air. He was an out- 
 door man, the sort that we have come to envy 
 in these shut-in modern days. Even in the 
 time of His greatest popularity, when He 
 might have dined every night in one of the 
 great houses of the capital. He preferred to 
 slip away at nightfall to the Mount of Olives. 
 His deep chest craved the sweetness of country 
 air; He loved to be awakened by the playing 
 of the sun across His bronzed face. 
 
 In Capernaum one day the crowd had been » 
 thick about Him; the house where He was 
 stopping was packed with a multitude that 
 spread out into the adjoining streets. Sud- 
 denly there was a commotion on the outside 
 and four men pushed through to the front 
 door, carrying a lame man on a stretcher. 
 In the face of the invalid was a look of pathetic 
 eagerness; he had been sick a long time, and 
 had never expected to walk again. But that 
 day his friends had come to tell him about the 
 
26 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 new Teacher who was in the city, in whose 
 marvelous health-radiating presence scores 
 of sick people had been made well. He had 
 determined to see this Teacher, whatever the 
 cost. His four friends succeeded in getting 
 him to the door of the house and there, on the 
 very threshold, his wish seemed doomed to 
 disappointment. Those inside the door were 
 too eagerly intent to give way even to an 
 invalid. His shrill entreaties would not move 
 them; they would not let him in : sorrowfully, 
 his four friends prepared to carry him home 
 again. But the will of the sick man was 
 strong in spite of his feeble body. Rising 
 on his elbow, he directed them to carry 
 him up the outside stairway to the roof, 
 and there to let him down through the ceiling 
 into the presence of the Teacher. And they 
 did. 
 
 Lowered at last to the floor, he had his wish 
 gratified. The young Teacher looked on him 
 with eyes that were very full of sympathy. 
 Reaching down He took one flabby hand in 
 His great strong grasp, and, smiling, reassur- 
 ingly said, 
 
AND WAXED STRONG 27 
 
 *'Son, thy sins are forgiven thee: rise, take 
 up thy bed and walk.'* 
 
 A moment the lame man hesitated, stupified. 
 "Walk!" — it was impossible; he had never 
 expected to walk again. Of course he couldn't 
 — and then he looked into those eyes full 
 of assurance; he felt his withered limbs bathed 
 in the magnetism that radiated from that 
 body, so splendidly overflowing with health, 
 and suddenly, almost before he knew it, he 
 was on his feet, and had gathered the stretcher 
 under his arm. 
 
 Had an undersized man, or a weakling, stood 
 there and said to him, "Rise and walk," he 
 would have smiled a wan smile of disappoint- 
 ment and motioned the bearers to carry him 
 away again. But in that presence, thrilled by 
 the radiation of that perfect health — health 
 such as he had never known or thought possible 
 for himself — nothing seemed too difficult to be 
 attempted. He rose and walked, healed, Uke 
 hundreds in GaHlee before and after, by the 
 power of their own wills, strengthened and 
 inspired by the glowing example of transcen- 
 dent good health before them. 
 
28 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 Of the little handful of people who knew 
 the Young Man intimately, nearly half of 
 those whose names we have were women. 
 They were women of various sorts, drawn to 
 him out of very different walks of life. There 
 was His mother, of course, who without 
 wholly understanding Him saw His genius 
 flower and stood by Him adoringly, even to 
 the cross. There were Mary and Martha, 
 two kindly maiden women who lived outside 
 of Jerusalem in Bethany; there were women 
 who had touched His garment as He had 
 walked through the streets of the city, and 
 had been healed by the touch ; and there were 
 those others — women of the streets, some of 
 them — who had seen in His face the first 
 glance of manly courtesy that had ever glowed 
 for them in the eyes of any man, and had 
 felt themselves re-created from that moment. 
 
 Among this varied company there was one 
 common bond of union, their adoring love and 
 adulation for Him. The sallow-faced, so- 
 called spiritual, type of man may stir the 
 mother instinct in a woman's breast, may 
 draw out upon himself a devotion that is half 
 
AND WAXED STRONG 29 
 
 respect, half pity. But since the world began 
 there has been no magnet that has really- 
 fastened the affections of women upon men 
 like manly strength. These faithful ones 
 who followed Him through the successes and 
 disappointments of His ministry, even to the 
 last great disappointment, seem rather to 
 have felt His call than heard it. He passed 
 them on the road, robust, powerful, but 
 splendidly considerate, and, looking upon 
 Him, they knew Him in an instant for their 
 Lord. 
 
 He was a woman's man, in the sense that 
 every man of strength and conquering will 
 has been, but He was a man's man too, every 
 inch of Him, and in every single moment of 
 His career. Power, decision, authority — 
 these were His first disciples. Walking along 
 the seashore, alone, a stranger, and without 
 any badge of authority or promise of support. 
 He looked upon the fishermen busy at their 
 work. "Follow me!" He said, and they 
 abandoned their nets instantly at His word. 
 So accustomed was He to immediate obedi- 
 ence, that when one whom He had summoned 
 
30 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 asked first for a few days in which to bury his 
 father, He was astonished at the request. 
 They who walked with Him knew His power, 
 and even those who hated Him, who would 
 gladly have ended His ministry almost before 
 it was begun, felt themselves humbled in its 
 presence. 
 
 And His nerves — they were the hardened 
 servants of a man of iron. Napoleon once 
 said, "I have known few men who had courage 
 of the two o'clock in the morning variety" — 
 but He had it. Even during the last week, 
 when the whole city was throbbing for or 
 against Him, when His days were passed in a 
 perfect foment of passionate attack. He lay 
 down every night to unbroken slumber. He 
 was with His disciples one night on a boat 
 when there came one of those fierce gales 
 which in a few minutes can turn the quiet 
 surface of the Sea of Galilee into a torrent of 
 destruction. Tugging at the anchor ropes, 
 the disciples who had sailed that Sea from 
 childhood and were not to be foolishly fright- 
 ened gave themselves up for lost. The little 
 boat tossed terribly; water came in over the 
 
AND WAXED STRONG 31 
 
 side with every lurch, and it seemed as if each 
 succeeding wave must engulf it and send it to 
 destruction. Yet, through it all. He slept, in 
 absolutely untroubled slumber. And when 
 at length they roused Him by their panic- 
 stricken summons. He looked out over the 
 Sea in perfect equanimity and issued the few 
 quiet orders that were necessary to bring the 
 boat safely in to shore. 
 
 If ever there was a real man with a real 
 man's nerves, it was He. Almost a year 
 before they killed Him He knew that they 
 would do it; and He knew exactly what 
 death at their hands meant. He had passed 
 the writhing victims of their fury, nailed 
 to crosses along the roadside; He had seen 
 them wilt for days before release came from 
 their misery. For a whole year He knew 
 that every sunset closed one more of the 
 dwindling handful of days that shielded Him 
 from His cross. On any morning He might 
 have made the little compromise that was 
 necessary to save His life. But the thought 
 of retirement, or of compromise, apparently 
 never came to Him. Calmly, cheerfully, un- 
 
32 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 hesitatingly He walked His path, striking 
 the hard blows against hypocrisy and oppres- 
 sion which were to be echoed in ringing 
 strokes upon the nails of His cross — and 
 never faltering. 
 
 And when, at length, they came out into 
 the Garden, with a company of soldiers, to 
 take Him, there was never the suggestion of a 
 tremor as He stood forth alone and unarmed 
 to face them. 
 
 *'Are ye come out as against a robber with 
 swords and staves to seize me?" He asked 
 them, scornfully. *'I was daily with you 
 in the Temple, teaching, and ye took Me 
 not." 
 
 " When He spoke the whole brazen crowd 
 of them "went backward and fell to the 
 ground." There was not an ounce of senti- 
 ment in the entire company; they were 
 Roman regulars, trained to charge into a mob 
 of women and children, if necessary, at the 
 word of command. They were iron men of 
 iron nerve; yet they acknowledged a nerve 
 more iron. His every movement spoke of 
 physical perfection; His voice was vibrant 
 
AND WAXED STRONG 33 
 
 with the tones of command. And they who 
 had been trained from boyhood to obey 
 dropped on their knees involuntarily before 
 the most perfect Young Man whom their eyes 
 had ever seen. 
 
Ill 
 
 ''BEHOLD A MAN'' 
 
 BUT physical strength and physical cour- 
 age — these are, after all, baser metals 
 in the structure of a man. They can 
 be bought at petty prices; an offer of five 
 dollars a day will fill a car-barn with strike- 
 breakers willing to toss their lives away in a 
 quarrel which is none of their affair. Army 
 officers know that when there is a particularly 
 hazardous bit of work to be done the offer of 
 a money reward will invariably double the 
 number of volunteers. For a handful of 
 silver, or a woman's smile, or a ribbon to wear 
 on their coats, men will laugh gaily into the 
 teeth of Death, careless of the swing of his 
 scythe. And though the courage that is not 
 cowed by pain nor the approach of death will 
 never be so common a thing that it will fail 
 to excite our admiration, it does not of itself 
 command our reverence. 
 
BEHOLDAMAN 35 
 
 There is a courage so much more rare that 
 one is compelled to go through history almost 
 with a microscope if he would find it. His- 
 tories are filled with the names of leaders rich 
 in bodily courage, who have wilted at the first 
 breath of criticism on the part of their own 
 families, have withered away as their followers 
 dropped from them and have died at length 
 heart-broken, bitter haters of their kind; and 
 with the names of other leaders, who, having 
 achieved a small success, have lowered their 
 standards to attract the multitude and so 
 have failed even while they succeeded. To 
 endure the taunts of relatives, the misunder- 
 standing of friends and the treachery of 
 disciples, to resist the temptation of compro- 
 mise, even when offered in the fairest guise 
 and with death as an alternative, to be 
 rejected in succession by one's kindred, one's 
 home town, and one's nation; yet to speak 
 the truth as one sees it fearlessly and to die 
 with a faith undimmed — that is courage of 
 the almost unknown sort. And the Young 
 Man of Galilee had it. 
 
 He went back one day to Nazareth, where 
 
36 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 He had been brought up. He had gone away 
 a few months before, an unknown carpenter; 
 He came back as one of the most talked-about 
 men in His nation. He had put Himself 
 single-handed against the hated clique of 
 extortioners at the temple and had driven them 
 before Him like a class of bad children: in 
 Cana He had performed a miracle, the report 
 of which had reached His old associates; and 
 in Capernaum there had been mighty works 
 whose stories had been received in the little 
 village of His boyhood with an astonished in- 
 credulity. Surely the accounts must be ex- 
 aggerated: hadn't they known Him all his 
 life.'^ wasn't He just Jesus, the son of Joseph 
 the carpenter? A bright young man, to be 
 sure, but a prophet? — what nonsense ! They 
 could hardly contain their curiosity until He 
 should appear again among them, and when the 
 word went round one Sabbath morning that He 
 would speak that day in the Synagogue, the 
 little building was crowded to the limit of its 
 capacity. They were eager to see Him. 
 
 And He wanted, too, to see them. If only 
 His home town might undertsand and appre- 
 
BEHOLDAMAN 37 
 
 ciate Him — was there ever a successful man 
 who has not cherished the hope? No praise 
 is quite so sweet, no appreciation so welcome 
 as that which comes from the friends of youth. 
 Jesus must have shared something of that 
 common feeling. To be known as "Jesus of 
 Nazareth" in Jerusalem and Capernaum, to 
 feel that the sudden glory which had come to 
 Him was reflected in a measure on the little, 
 almost unknown town where He had grown 
 up, must have given Him a glow of satisfac- 
 tion. One can imagine how wistfully He had 
 looked forward to this first visit home, in the 
 hope that these His old neighbors might be- 
 come His first disciples, and His own home 
 town perhaps be fashioned into the corner- 
 stone of the new social structure of which He 
 dreamed. 
 
 It needed only a glance around the Syna- 
 gogue that Sabbath morning to shatter the 
 hope He had cherished so fondly. Instead of 
 sympathetic understanding on these faces. 
 He found only curiosity mixed with ill-con- 
 cealed derision. He might fool the outside 
 world, they seemed to say, but He could not 
 
38 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 fool Nazareth: they knew Him; He was just 
 a carpenter, that was all; they would show 
 the cities, which had gone wild about Him, 
 that here in His little old home town they were 
 not to be so easily stampeded. They handed 
 Him the roll of the prophet Isaiah, and, 
 standing up, He read to them: 
 
 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me 
 Because He anointed me to preach good tidings to 
 
 the poor. 
 He hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives, 
 And recovery of sight to the blind; 
 To set at liberty them that are bruised, 
 And proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." 
 
 Then very quietly He closed the book, and 
 handing it back to the attendant, said simply : 
 "This day hath this scripture been fulfilled in 
 your ears." There was an ominous silence in 
 the Synagogue: "The eyes of all were fastened 
 upon Him." He knew what they were think- 
 ing: they were waiting for Him to do some 
 such mighty work as He had wrought in 
 Capernaum. But He felt also the useless- 
 ness of it; the glances of scorn, of ignorant 
 self-sufficiency, with which they had greeted 
 
BEHOLDAMAN 39 
 
 Him had cut Him to the quick. He knew the 
 bitter truth. They would never receive Him; 
 never be proud of Him. "No prophet," He 
 said to them sadly, "is acceptable in his own 
 country. Elijah did his great works in a 
 foreign city; Elisha could accomplish nothing 
 except beyond the borders of his own home." 
 With a look around that was filled with a 
 great soul- weariness, He turned to leave the 
 Synagogue, but the scorn and wrath of the 
 people, which had grown steadily more intense 
 since He closed the book, could be restrained 
 no longer. Rising with a roar of anger, they 
 swarmed about Him, hurrying Him to the 
 edge of a precipice on the outskirts of town, 
 where they would have thrown Him over. 
 But the wrath which had been sufficient to 
 conceive His destruction grew suddenly impo- 
 tent when He turned and faced them. The 
 memory of His faultless life, the thought of 
 the respect, approaching reverence, which 
 His moral grandeur had won for Him even as 
 a youth among them, defeated their intent. 
 He took one step toward them and they melted 
 away Hke snow, leaving His path clear to the 
 
40 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 open country. So He left His home town, 
 too utterly heart-sick even to look back; and 
 from that day Nazareth lost its right to the 
 incomparable glory which might have belonged 
 to it, and Capernaum was called "His own 
 city." 
 
 His mother and His brethren had been 
 witnesses of the defeat. They were simple, 
 unimaginative peasants, these kinsfolk of 
 His, and as, from time to time, reports were 
 brought of His seditionary speeches, and the 
 astonishing works which He did, they held 
 many a worried family conference concerning 
 Him. Such speeches would surely get Him 
 imprisoned if He continued them. The things 
 which He did could only be explained in one 
 way — He had gone mad. Wliat the Phari- 
 sees said about Him must be true: He cast 
 out devils because He Himself had a devil. 
 They were irritated and ashamed: who could 
 say that His wild career might not involve 
 them all in the displeasure of the authorities, 
 perhaps landing them in prison together? 
 Once when the Feast of Tabernacles was 
 about to be held in Jerusalem, they urged 
 
BEHOLDAMAN 41 
 
 Him to "go up," to "depart hence" and 
 taunted Him, saying that if He really could 
 do the things which He claimed, the place for 
 Him to make His reputation was at the Capi- 
 tal. Almost anything was better than that He 
 should continue in Galilee, so near home. "For 
 even His brethren did not believe on Him." 
 
 Right in the middle of one of His dis- 
 courses in Capernaum, when the crowd hung 
 spellbound on His words, there occurred a 
 sudden interruption from the outside and a 
 messenger broke in to tell Him that His 
 mother and His brethren were there and 
 wished to speak to Him. One can picture 
 the sharp look of pain that cut across His 
 fine features. He knew why they had come; 
 they had been threatening it for a long time. 
 They had made up their minds that He was 
 utterly crazy and they were there to take Him 
 away to an asylum where at least He would 
 not involve them in His inevitable ruin. 
 Turning to the messenger He said aloud: 
 
 "My mother and my brethren? Behold 
 these who believe on me (pointing to His dis- 
 ciples) : they are my mother and my brethren." 
 
42 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 They were His real kindred, and many- 
 times they proved themselves worthy of the 
 distinction; but even their devotion could not 
 remove the hurt. When, later, the shouts of 
 "Hosanna" rang in His ears and palms were 
 spread in the streets before Him, even in His 
 hour of triumph. His heart must have been 
 sore at the thought that in that crowd were 
 none of the brothers for whom He had worked 
 and sacrificed after their father's death. 
 Those whose whisper of admiration would 
 have sounded louder than the cheering of the 
 crowd still felt the flush of apology at the 
 mention of His name — still thought Him 
 not quite sane. 
 
 Yet those who were constantly in His 
 presence detected no slightest sign of bitter- 
 ness: one searches His speeches in vain for 
 any word of blame. Indeed His disciples 
 might have felt Him well compensated for 
 the rejection at home by the enthusiastic 
 successes which attended the first year of His 
 ministry everywhere else. Crowds flocked 
 to hear Him, returning day after day, often 
 forgetting to eat, in their enthusiasm. Great 
 
BEHOLDAMAN 43 
 
 men from the cities were found in His congre- 
 gations, and it seemed to Him, as the weeks 
 lengthened into months and His fame showed 
 no signs of diminishing, that He might indeed 
 reahze His dream, that the whole world might 
 come to accept His message. It was in these 
 hours of His good fortune that He showed 
 that rarest type of courage, which will not 
 accept the slightest compromise even as the 
 price of assured success. Few men have been 
 great enough to stand that test; Mohammed 
 was not. Biographies of him record the 
 deliberate lowering of his standard which 
 took place at the beginning of his great success 
 and apologize for it on the ground that some 
 lowering is inevitable if the world is to be 
 conquered. The Young Man of Galilee recog- 
 nized no such necessity. 
 
 One night in the first flush of His power, 
 immediately after He had swept the traffickers 
 from the Temple, He opened His chamber 
 door to find a great man of the nation, Nicode- 
 mus, standing at the top of the staircase. 
 Self-possessed as He was under every cir- 
 cumstance, He could not conceal a momentary 
 
44 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 sign of surprise at the visit. Nicodemus, one 
 of the members of the Sanhedrin — a judge 
 of the Supreme Court if you will — coming 
 to Him, who a few weeks before had been an 
 unknown carpenter in a provincial village — 
 one might well look to find Him expressing 
 His sense of honor at the visit, and seeking 
 by every means to win over this notable man 
 to His principles. The gaining of such an 
 adherent would mean much in the promotion 
 of His ambitions. 
 
 "Rabbi," said the great man, "we know 
 you are a teacher come from God; for no man 
 can do these signs that you do except God be 
 with him." 
 
 One catches his breath involuntarily at the 
 Young Man's answer. Instead of an assumed 
 humility, instead of any eager show of defer- 
 ence, what is it that He is saying.'* 
 
 "Verily, verily, I say to you, Nicodemus, 
 except you are born again you cannot see the 
 kingdom of Heaven." And a few moments 
 later in the conversation, "If I have told you 
 earthly things and you have not believed, how 
 shall you believe if I tell you heavenly things.'^ " 
 
BEHOLDAMAN 45 
 
 This to one of the great men of the nation, 
 "a ruler of the Jews." For a long time they 
 talked, the great man undergoing the curious 
 experience of being taught by an almost 
 unknown young man from an out of the way 
 village. When at length he left, he who was 
 daily importuned to lend his name to this 
 great enterprise or that, not only had he not 
 been urged to join the new movement; he 
 had been told that he must utterly trans- 
 form his life and mode of thought before he 
 could even be invited. 
 
 Some weeks later a traveler from Gahlee, 
 entering Jerusalem, brought the names of 
 those whom the Young Teacher had called 
 to be His first disciples. Nicodemus glancing 
 over the list could hardly believe it possible 
 that a young man of such apparent good 
 judgment could have made so glaring a 
 blunder. The foolish Young Idealist, who, 
 by just the smallest concession, by exhibiting 
 only a little willingness to conform to the 
 estabhshed usages, might have decorated His 
 rolls with some of the powerful names of 
 Jerusalem, had chosen a handful of ignorant 
 
46 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 fishermen, and — as if to add insult to the 
 injury — had named one tax-collector, the 
 lowest and of all classes the most despised in 
 the eyes of the orthodox Jew. 
 
 This was His answer to those who looked 
 to Him to lower His standards; here was the 
 courage for which one seeks among the other 
 leaders of the world almost in vain. 
 
 To trace the workings of that courage 
 through all the progress of His public life 
 would fill too many pages; but one may 
 throw the light just here and there for a mo- 
 ment, to show how blow after blow was struck 
 at His soul without loosening the fastenings 
 of His faith or detracting for one instant from 
 the strength of His purpose. 
 
 The friend nearer than any other to Him 
 was John, whom the public had come to know 
 familiarly as "the Baptist." John had intro- 
 duced Him to the people, and His first disciples 
 came to Him because John had pointed Him 
 out as a greater prophet than himself. He 
 had gloried, too, in the friendship, and when 
 Herod cast John into prison because his 
 denunciations of the vicious condition of the 
 
BEHOLDAMAN 47 
 
 court and society were stirring up the people 
 to a dangerous state of excitement, a shadow 
 was thrown over the heart of the Young Man 
 of Gahlee that was never hfted. He had 
 already grown beyond John's limited message, 
 which was a merely destructive program of 
 criticism and denunciation, and had refused 
 to adopt John's rigid mode of life. John was 
 an ascetic, living alone in the desert; Jesus 
 was a warm-hearted, friendly man, never so 
 happy as when in a crowd: John had imposed 
 upon His disciples a rigorous regimen of fasts 
 and ceremonies; Jesus disregarded both and 
 encouraged His disciples to disregard them. 
 The two men were wholly different in thought 
 and method, but it had not occurred to the 
 Young Man of Galilee that their differences 
 could ever loosen the bond of their friendship. 
 It must have cut Him to the very depths of 
 His soul, when one day a disciple of John's, 
 sent from his master's prison cell, came with 
 this wistful, doubting question: 
 
 "Are you really the Messiah as I have 
 believed you were: you who, instead of 
 fasting, are attending these dinners and 
 
48 A YOUNG MAN S JESUS 
 
 banquets; you whose disciples do not fast or 
 even observe the ceremonies which the Mosaic 
 law prescribes — are you what I thought you, 
 or must we look for another?" 
 
 And very tenderly, but sadly, the Young 
 Man sent back His reply. "Go tell John 
 the things that ye have seen and heard, how 
 the blind see, the lepers are cleansed, and the 
 dead are raised to life. Let him judge from 
 
 this whether or not I am fulfilling his hope of 
 
 >> 
 me. 
 
 A few weeks later, in the dungeon of Herod's 
 
 castle, John paid the last great penalty of his 
 
 courage and idealism. The Young Man of 
 
 Galilee, when they told Him of it, withdrew 
 
 into the hills alone. The best friend whom 
 
 He had had in the world had gone out from 
 
 Him, a sacrifice to the brutality and hate of 
 
 the social order which He, Himself, was 
 
 laboring to transform. It came over Him 
 
 then with fresh and distressing clearness that 
 
 they, who had destroyed John, would one 
 
 day compass His destruction also. How 
 
 long He remained alone with His sorrow we 
 
 do not know, but when He came out there 
 
BEHOLDAMAN 49 
 
 was no sign of weakening upon Him, nothing 
 in His face to indicate what He had passed 
 through, except a finer radiance, a determina- 
 tion more fixed. 
 
 In hard and quick succession the blows were 
 struck after that. The disciples for whom 
 He had done so much were loyal to the extent 
 of their ability — but there were times when 
 the petty limitations imposed by their igno- 
 rance and trifling ambition tried Him to a point 
 that would have exhausted a patience less 
 than infinite. Too often, when He returned 
 to them, stung by the taunts and controversies 
 of the crowd, it was only to find Himself 
 plunged into a more trying atmosphere of 
 misunderstanding and dissension. Yet His 
 regard for them. His faith that ultimately 
 they would prove themselves worthy, never 
 faltered. Almost to the very last they mis- 
 understood the real purpose of His work and 
 message, though He repeated it to them time 
 and again in the quiet of their talks together. 
 
 When the fickle multitude came finally to 
 beUeve that He was not destined to give power 
 and leadership to their latent revolt against 
 
50 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 the Romans — "whereupon many of His 
 disciples went back and walked no more with 
 Him" — the little group of His intimate 
 friends were utterly crushed at the destruction 
 of their hope. But He, though the burden 
 of disappointment was far heavier upon His 
 heart, gave no outward sign of discouragement. 
 With His eyes fixed upon the end which He 
 knew to be inevitable, and without which — 
 as He had come to see so clearly — the wider 
 results and the after-success of His work could 
 not be He pressed steadily forward. He had 
 lost His home town; His own brethren had 
 turned contemptuously from Him; His best 
 friend had died, tortured with doubt; the 
 great crowd of His followers had fallen away; 
 and even those who had been His intimates, 
 whom He had honored with the name of 
 *' kindred" had failed utterly to grasp the 
 meaning of His work. All this He had borne 
 without a quaver, and to it all there was added 
 a last drop in the cup of His trial. One of the 
 twelve, whom He had selected to be always 
 with Him, deserted to the enemy, and for a 
 mere handful of silver betrayed Him. 
 
BEHOLDAMAN 51 
 
 It was after all this — the sorrow of ten 
 lifetimes — had been poured into a few short 
 months of His young manhood, that He stood 
 still, calm-eyed, and confident, before Pilate, 
 His judge, from whose lips the sentence of 
 death was in a few moments to be pronounced 
 upon Him. But before that sentence was 
 formed into words there burst from those 
 coarse lips another sentence of involuntary 
 admiration. To the hooting crowd outside 
 he showed the Young Man who had displayed 
 a courage and sublime composure never before 
 known in those judgment halls and pointing 
 to Him, said, "Behold a man!" 
 
IV 
 
 ''THAT HE SHOULD EAT WITH HIM'' 
 
 IN the early part of His public work — even 
 before His spectacular day in the Temple 
 — the Young Man had stopped at Cana 
 in Galilee with His mother and His disciples 
 to attend a wedding. In those times weddings 
 lasted several days, and the festivities that 
 attended them and the honeymoon were 
 sometimes far from restrained. They were 
 great occasions in the lives of the simple 
 peasant folk: cares were laid aside, wine 
 flowed freely, and the whole company enjoyed 
 a jovial, whole-hearted good time. 
 
 Suddenly in the midst of the feast which 
 followed the banquet at Cana word was 
 brought to the dismayed hostess that the wine 
 had given out. To the good woman, who a 
 moment before had been looking out over the 
 feasters in wistful happiness, the message was 
 a terrible one. She was not rich, but she was 
 
HE SHOULD EAT WITH HIM 53 
 
 proud and sensitive. This, her daughter's 
 wedding, was the one great social occasion of 
 her hfe; she had planned for it and looked 
 forward to it a long time; it was her hope 
 that her neighbors might remember it as the 
 one finest and most perfect wedding that 
 the town had ever known. And now in the 
 very midst of the festivities, the wine had 
 given out. 
 
 With that quick insight which enables one 
 woman sometimes to read the mind of another, 
 Mary the mother of Jesus, who was helping 
 to serve the guests, sensed the hostess' em- 
 barrassment and realized the cause. Ever 
 since the death of her husband she had accus- 
 tomed herself to bring all her diflSculties and 
 problems to the clear judgment and unfailing 
 resource of her son: she leaned over to Him 
 now, and said, "Son, the wine is gone." 
 
 He was only one among a hundred guests: 
 the trouble belonged no more to Him than to 
 any one of the others; not so much, indeed, 
 as to those who were relatives, and who would 
 share most in the embarrassment and criti- 
 cism. Only a short while before, when He 
 
54 A YOUNG MAN S JESUS 
 
 had been for forty days and nights without 
 food in the wilderness, He had refused to use 
 His miraculous power to provide food for His 
 own needs, deeming it a gift too sacred to be 
 thus employed. Yet now as His keen sym- 
 pathetic sight took in the situation. He did not 
 hesitate a moment. Calling an attendant 
 to Him, He ordered six large stone waterpots 
 to be filled with water. When they were 
 full He commanded that some of the hquid 
 be drawn off and carried to the master of the 
 ceremonies. That dignitary, touching his 
 lips to the glass, and finding new wine of sur- 
 passing quality, called the bridegroom to him 
 and said, "Every man setteth on first the good 
 wine, and when men have drunk freely, then 
 that which is worse; thou hast kept the good 
 wine until now." And over across the room, 
 a happy hostess, looking at the Young Man out 
 of eyes that glistened, smiled and nodded her 
 heartfelt appreciation. 
 
 With the miracles which He wrought we 
 are as little concerned in this book as He would 
 wish us to be. The evidence for some of 
 them at least is so well authenticated that 
 
HE SHOULD EAT WITH HIM 55 
 
 there can be no doubt of His miraculous power. 
 But He Himself attached little importance 
 to His so-called wondrous works: always He 
 was seeking to avoid the necessity for them, 
 and attempting to suppress reports of them, 
 reiterating to His disciples that His words 
 — not His works — were of real moment. 
 But there has been so much written of Him 
 as the "man of sorrows" and His happy, 
 joyous, social nature has been so long traduced, 
 that this first miracle of His, the only one 
 performed by Him for a full year, should not 
 be forgotten. It was performed not to teach 
 a lesson nor impress a crowd, but merely to 
 save a hostess from embarrassment. He who 
 had considered His power too holy to be used 
 in recruiting His own strength, did not hesitate 
 to use it in adding to the success of a social 
 party. Judged by the award of His wondrous 
 works, a social occasion, the joyous mingling 
 together of kindred spirits, was of equal im- 
 portance in His thought with healing the sick 
 or preaching the gospel. He was just as 
 ready to perform a miracle to promote the one 
 as the other. 
 
56 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 Indeed His hearty laugh rings continuously 
 throughout the first happy months of His 
 ministry. He was so cheerful, so companion- 
 able, so ready to lay aside the burdens of His 
 work for a good time with His friends, that 
 plenty of people criticised Him for it. John 
 — who lived much closer to the popular idea 
 of a prophet — had been a dweller alone, 
 shutting himself away from the world, declin- 
 ing all social pleasures and uttering his dire 
 warnings in the heart of the wilderness. His 
 earnestness and self-sacrifice had made a deep 
 impression on the crowds, and even the Young 
 Man of Galilee Himself had felt the influence 
 of it during the early weeks of His ministry. 
 For a brief time — forty days — He had 
 followed John's example, retiring into the wil- 
 derness, and denying Himself food and social 
 intercourse. But forty days was enough; 
 at the end of that time His warm, companion- 
 loving nature had rebelled. He was convinced 
 that however right that mode of life might 
 be for John, His own work must be done by 
 mingling happily with people in the every- 
 day work and pleasures of their lives. 
 
HE SHOULD EAT WITH HIM 57 
 
 Thereafter the same people who had said 
 "John has a devil," because "he came neither 
 eating nor drinking," turned their criticisms 
 against the Young Man from Galilee. He 
 is a "gluttonous man" they said, "and a 
 winebibber. He makes friends of publicans 
 and sinners, and eateth with them." 
 
 Their criticism worried not the Young 
 Man. \Vlien the disciples of John came to 
 Him to complain that His own disciples never 
 fasted, as John required his followers to do, 
 He compared himself to a bridegroom, and 
 His disciples to the guests at a wedding. 
 That was His conception of hfe — an experi- 
 ence continuously as good and joyous as a 
 honeymoon. "Surely you don't expect the 
 companions of the bridal chamber to fast 
 while the bridegroom is with them," He said; 
 "there will be time enough for fasting when He 
 is gone." 
 
 Whenever He visited a city He became 
 immediately the most popular man in it. 
 Crowds flocked about Him to such an extent 
 that He had diflBculty in getting in or out of 
 the house; even when He attempted to steal 
 
58 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 away from them in a boat, some one was 
 sure to spread the news, and as He stepped 
 on shore it would be to find the first breathless 
 leaders of the multitude already awaiting Him. 
 To have Him as a guest at any sort of function 
 was a social triumph. The stories of His 
 life abound with expressions hke these: "A 
 certain ruler desired Him that He should eat 
 with Him"; "They desired Him greatly to 
 remain and He abode there two days." Even 
 those who feared and hated Him could not 
 resist the charm of His presence or deny 
 themselves the pleasure of His company. 
 After He had denounced the Pharisees as 
 "hypocrites" and "children of the devil," 
 they continued to invite Him to their houses; 
 and in the closing weeks of His life, when they 
 had already perfected their plans for destroy- 
 ing Him as an enemy of their system too 
 dangerous to be tolerated, a "chief of the 
 Pharisees desired Him that He would dine at 
 his house." 
 
 He almost never missed a feast at Jerusalem, 
 apparently. We read of His making the long 
 journey with His disciples on foot, again and 
 
HE SHOULD EAT WITH HIM 59 
 
 again, to the Feast of Tabernacles or the Feast 
 of the Passover. Not that He attached par- 
 ticular significance to the observances — in- 
 deed the thing for which the Pharisees could 
 not forgive Him was His utter disregard of 
 and scorn for their all-important formalities 
 — but He loved to be in a crowd. Wherever 
 the people were thickest, there He was certain 
 to be found, telling them His stories, driving 
 home His barbed criticisms of the oppressing 
 classes, or parrying the sharp questions of 
 wise ones among His listeners with answers 
 which called forth a roar of applause and 
 laughter. Living was a joyous occupation 
 with Him; holiness and health, in His vocab- 
 ulary, were twin derivatives from the same 
 root. When He called a new disciple — Mat- 
 thew, a tax-gatherer — the disciple, instead 
 of withdrawing himself from the world for 
 fasting and prayer, prepared a banquet, and 
 everybody — the Young Man and the dis- 
 ciples and a jovial group of publicans and 
 sinners together sat down in celebration. 
 
 He had a list of friends so long and so varied 
 that any modern politician might well envy 
 
60 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 Him. Those to whom He is a smugly re- 
 spectable preacher, and those who view Him 
 as merely a working-class agitator who gath- 
 ered the poor to His standards by indiscrim- 
 inate denunciations of the rich need equally 
 to study the list. Arranged in the order of 
 position and prominence — which is the way 
 that He would never have consented to ar- 
 range it — it reached from one end of the 
 social ladder to the other. There were rich 
 men, in plenty, who made no concealment of 
 their admiration for Him and pride in His 
 friendship. A Roman centurion in Caper- 
 naum was one; the wife of the steward of 
 Herod, and probably the steward himself, 
 welcomed Him to their home whenever He 
 could come. Some wealthy man, the owner 
 of an estate on the Mount of Olives, threw 
 it open to Him as a place of retirement when 
 He was in Jerusalem. Did He require an 
 upper room in which to give a dinner to His 
 disciples? He had only to send word to one 
 of His well to do friends and the room was set 
 aside for Him. When at last His enemies 
 had done their worst and His body hung 
 
HE SHOULD EAT WITH HIM 61 
 
 limp and mutilated on the cross, it was a 
 rich man who came to carry Him away to 
 the finely-finished tomb prepared for his own 
 burial. 
 
 From the plane of these wealthy companions 
 the line of His friendship cut down through 
 every stratum of society to the very bottom. 
 There were Pharisees and fishermen; rulers 
 of the Synagogue and street- walkers, shep- 
 herds, merchants, day laborers, and even 
 those utterly despised classes, the publicans 
 and the Samaritans. What motley array of 
 social outcasts may have been included in the 
 phrase "and sinners" with which the respect- 
 able members of society were always careful 
 to conclude the list of His followers, we can 
 only conjecture. 
 
 And the children. Sincerity and patience 
 and a happy disposition draw them as irresist- 
 ibly as the pole draws the compass. They 
 were always with Him; and He was never too 
 busy or too weary to welcome them. When, 
 after a hard day. He had seated Himself for 
 a little rest, and the disciples were endeavoring 
 to send away the mothers so eager to crowd 
 
62 A YOUNG MAN S JESUS 
 
 about Him with their httle ones, He reproved 
 their effort. "Suffer the httle children to 
 come unto me," He said, "and forbid them 
 not: for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." 
 Some of the finest of His teachings were ut- 
 tered while He sat with a child in His lap; 
 they felt even more subtly than their elders 
 the charm and cheer of His presence and 
 responded to it just as eagerly. 
 
 How — from a study of this freest, most 
 joyous life — men could have found justifica- 
 tion for asceticism, for a withdrawal from the 
 world and a bitter scorn of its pleasures; 
 how they could have dared to bury His 
 ringing laughter under the cold walls of a 
 monastery, is one of the great, tragic mys- 
 teries of all time. His very speech was teem- 
 ing with the keenness of His joy in life. He 
 drew no lessons from the Synagogue, nor 
 pointed morals from the dull formalism of 
 religious practise. His stories were of a sower 
 who went forth to sow, singing his song as 
 he went; of a man who made a banquet 
 and invited a great company of guests. He 
 Himself, in His discourses, was the "bread of 
 
HE SHOULD EAT WITH HIM 63 
 
 life" which a man might eat and never again 
 be hungry. 
 
 Four disciples set down their impression of 
 His life and teachings ; and every page of their 
 writings is a testimony that in social grace, 
 in all that makes a genial companion and a 
 lovable man among men, their Master stood 
 preeminent among all the men of the world. 
 But we are not left to form our judgment from 
 their biased testimonies. In the troubled 
 last days of His ministry the chief priests and 
 scribes sent out officers and men to arrest 
 Him. These mingled with the crowd of His 
 hearers for a while, felt the charm of His 
 presence, the rich warmth of His voice, the 
 wonderful appeal of His words, and returned 
 shamefaced to their employers. 
 
 "Why didn't you bring Him?" the chief 
 priests and the Pharisees demanded angrily. 
 
 And the oflScers had no real excuse to pre- 
 sent. "You should hear Him yourself," was 
 all they could say, "and you'd understand. 
 Never man so spake." 
 
V 
 
 ''AND BESOUGHT HIM'* 
 
 IT is something of an axiom in the business 
 world that the bigger a man is the more 
 easily is he accessible. The man of small 
 affairs and little responsibihties is most swelled 
 by the sense of his own importance; once 
 elude the vigilant swarm of these little ones 
 who occupy space in outer offices, and you find 
 the chief executive, almost always, a man 
 affable, courteous, and considerate of sugges- 
 tions. 
 
 Measured by this standard of greatness the 
 reformers of the world have not always ap- 
 peared to special advantage. The mass of 
 humanity, with whose salvation they have 
 charged themselves, has weighed too heavily 
 upon their time and conscience to allow any 
 attention to the individual. When they have 
 had a thought they have demanded an audi- 
 ence commensurate with it. To cast their 
 
AND BESOUGHT HIM 65 
 
 pearls before a single listener, when but one 
 lifetime is given them in which to save the 
 world, has generally seemed to them an in- 
 excusable waste of their substance. If there 
 are reporters present they will talk; otherwise 
 they are too busy. 
 
 Away from this worried, bustling crowd 
 of those who have sought to carry out some 
 particular bit of His program without any 
 deference whatever to His method, one turns 
 with relief to the Young Man of Galilee Him- 
 self — the one reformer in history who was 
 never hurried, never oppressed with a sense 
 of His own importance, never too busy to 
 talk to anybody who really wanted to see 
 Him. The number and variety of His friends, 
 the magic compulsion of His personality, 
 are an enigma unless we have learned with 
 what bands of personal attention and cour- 
 teous consideration He bound those friends to 
 Him. The man who wanted to see Him was 
 always the man whom He wanted to see. 
 Some of His richest thoughts were uttered 
 in the Sermon on the Mount before a vast 
 audience; but others, equally precious, were 
 
66 A YOUNG MAN S JESUS 
 
 poured out into the ears of single listeners, 
 sometimes of the meanest intelligence. So 
 great was His respect for the miracle of human 
 personality, so sacred was every atom of 
 human life to Him, that no one who "besought 
 Him to come down" ever sought in vain. 
 
 He was going back from Jerusalem after 
 His first great day of triumph, a day in itself 
 sufficient to have destroyed the sense of pro- 
 portion and balance of most men, and, coming 
 to Jacob's Well, He sat down. His disciples 
 had dropped behind at one of the villages to 
 purchase food. He was alone therefore when 
 a Samaritan woman came out of the neigh- 
 boring city to draw water. Even to notice 
 a woman on the street was a serious infrac- 
 tion of the code of the Pharisees : those right- 
 eous gentlemen were accustomed to turn their 
 faces to the wall when a woman passed. To 
 accost a Samaritan, man or woman, was to 
 be accursed. The woman was well enough 
 aware of the Jewish prejudice and prepared 
 to meet it with a prejudice equally proud and 
 scornful. To her utter astonishment the 
 Young Man spoke to her. 
 
AND BESOUGHT HIM 67 
 
 They talked for perhaps half an hour. 
 The disciples, returning with food, could not 
 conceal their dismay at finding Him so 
 engaged, and at His announcement that He 
 had accepted the invitation of the friends of 
 the woman, who were residents in the city, 
 to remain with them two days. Important 
 business waited in Galilee; and His followers 
 were eager to be back among their friends 
 with reports of the great success in Jerusalem. 
 That He should allow His simple fondness 
 for folks to turn Him aside into a foreign 
 and outcast city at such a time, when the 
 report of it was certain to be circulated to 
 the prejudice of His work, was to them in- 
 explicable. 
 
 They would have been even more non- 
 plussed had they known what had passed 
 between the woman and the Young Man 
 during their talk together. For to that single 
 ignorant listener, whose mind seemed utterly 
 incapable of grasping the most fundamental 
 precepts. He had stated one of the sublimest 
 truths of His ministry. *'Your people say 
 that God ought to be worshiped in this 
 
68 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 mountain," He had told her, "and the Jews 
 say that Jerusalem is the place divinely or- 
 dained for worship. But as a matter of fact 
 it doesn't make any difference. God is spirit 
 and they that worship Him must worship Him 
 in spirit and in truth." 
 
 In the light of that great utterance men have 
 reconstructed their whole idea of God and 
 religion and worship. Any other reformer 
 would have wanted to speak it to an audience 
 of a thousand, or to have written it in a book, 
 lest it should be forgotten and lost to the world. 
 The idea never occurred to the Young Man of 
 Galilee. Here was an audience of one, a 
 child of God eternally precious; He gave her 
 the best that He had in response to her par- 
 ticular need, bestowing one of the richest gems 
 of His whole teaching upon her, a Samaritan 
 and a woman. 
 
 To be sure He allowed Himself regular 
 periods of solitude, when, alone with His God, 
 He might recruit His strength and prepare 
 Himself for the new demands that would be 
 made upon Him. But during practically all 
 the days of His ministry He was forever 
 
AND BESOUGHT HIM 69 
 
 available to any man, woman, or child who 
 needed help. He might be in the city, or 
 traveling from village to village or resting at 
 the home of a friend — it made no difference. 
 He could be reached, and was reached by those 
 who sought Him, sometimes in moments when 
 His whole spirit cried out for rest. 
 
 In the beginning of the third period of his 
 ministry, when the clouds were thickening 
 about Him, He had left the beloved shores of 
 the Sea of Galilee for the only journey that He 
 ever made into the ancient cities of Tyre and 
 Sidon. The best friend whom He had on 
 earth. His cousin, John the Baptist, had been 
 slain by the hand of Herod, and the blow had 
 caused Him infinite sorrow. Though His 
 faith was undimmed. His hearty laugh rang 
 out less freely in the months that succeeded; 
 the smile, ever ready on His lips and always 
 tender, became often very wistful. The com- 
 mon people no longer "heard Him gladly." 
 He was sensible that a period of crisis had been 
 reached in His public work, and there were 
 moments when the visions of His own cross 
 loomed suddenly and vividly before Him. 
 
70 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 The opposition, which had thus far been 
 hidden beneath the great wave of His popu- 
 larity, rose to the surface, emboldened by 
 John's defeat. He felt it in the cities where 
 He had done His best work and met His 
 largest successes. Galilee grew cold; Caper- 
 naum, "His own city" which He had loved 
 most, began to doubt Him ; and Bethsaida and 
 Chorazin, cities that had seen the mightiest 
 of His miracles, no longer responded to His 
 call. Brooding over all these things, and 
 wanting more than anything else to be alone 
 that He might think and plan and pray. He 
 turned aside into Tyre, "and entered into a 
 house and would have no man know it." 
 
 "But He could not be hid." Straightway 
 a woman He had never seen, a foreigner who 
 had not the slightest claim upon Him, came 
 and fell down at His feet to pour out the bitter 
 story of her daughter's illness. The child 
 had been sick from infancy, and the poor 
 woman, having tried without result all the 
 crude remedies which the science of the age 
 provided, crowded herself in upon Him and 
 demanded help. She received it: the daughter 
 
AND BESOUGHT HIM 71 
 
 was healed. He on whose heart was then cast 
 the burden and care of the whole world was 
 not too preoccupied nor too weary to give 
 Himself to a single soul in distress. 
 
 Some months later, when He was nearing 
 Jerusalem for the last time, knowing what was 
 before Him, a blind man, named Bartimseus, 
 a beggar, saw Him and called His name. 
 "Jesus," he called, *'oh, Jesus, thou son of 
 David, have mercy on me." 
 
 The disciples were angry. They had never 
 seen their Lord so preoccupied. Though they 
 could only vaguely conjecture what was 
 passing in His mind, they knew by the way 
 that He walked ahead of them, alone, and by 
 the silence which had taken the place of His 
 genial conversation, that He was sorely 
 troubled. They hurried over to the side of 
 the beggar man and rebuked him sharply 
 for his impudence, bidding him be still and 
 leave the Great Man to His thoughts. But 
 the mind which for three years had made itself 
 sensitive to every slightest whisper of need 
 heard the call even through its cloud of worry 
 and preoccupation. The Young Man stopped 
 
72 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 quietly in the road, and turning, said, "Call 
 ye him." 
 
 Tn an instant the beggar was before Him, 
 having dropped his garment in his eagerness. 
 The Young Man looked down at him and in 
 that moment the dirty, unkempt, cringing 
 figure became more important to Him than all 
 the burden of His care for the world. 
 
 "What is it," He asked, "that you want Me 
 to do for you?" 
 
 The bhnd man replied, "Rabboni, that I 
 should receive my sight." 
 
 Over the Young Man's face spread the smile 
 which had carried healing with it wherever 
 it had shone, and He said, "Go thy way: 
 thy faith hath made thee whole." 
 
 The inevitable crowd had gathered. It 
 was known which way He was to pass, and the 
 streets were lined with people on every side. 
 One little man, a publican who had grown 
 rich in the collection of taxes in Jericho, 
 knowing that he could not see over the heads 
 of the crowd, had run ahead and climbed up 
 into a tree. The most that he had hoped was 
 that he might catch a glimpse of the wonder- 
 
AND BESOUGHT HIM 73 
 
 ful Young Man in the street; he had known 
 too well his own unpopularity and the preju- 
 dice of the Jews against his class to expect 
 anything more than that. He saw the crowd 
 approaching, a group of boys racing before, 
 the people pushing into the street from all 
 sides, and finally the Young Man Himself. 
 Nearer He came, and nearer; suddenly to 
 the astonishment of the little man in the tree 
 He stopped almost beneath its branches, 
 and calling him by name said: 
 
 ^'Zacchaeus, come down; to-day I must 
 abide at thy house." 
 
 Zacchseus could hardly believe his ears; 
 that he of all the men in the city should be so 
 honored before the whole multitude was al- 
 most incredible. Trembling with eagerness, 
 he came down before the crowd, which for 
 once was too dumbfounded to display its 
 antagonism toward him, and with joy such as 
 he had never before known led the Young 
 Man away to be his guest. 
 
 It had been years since anyone had even 
 spoken kindly to Zacchseus, to say nothing of 
 accepting his hospitality. In the warm glow 
 
74 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 of the Young Man's companionship all that 
 was best in his tortured, sympathy-starved 
 nature asserted itself. Leaning over to his 
 guest, he said, 
 
 "Behold, Lord, I am going to give half of 
 my goods to the poor; and if I have wrongfully 
 extorted of any man I will restore fourfold." 
 
 And the Young Man who in a few days was 
 to give not merely His goods but His hfe for 
 the poor, smiled and answered, 
 
 "To-day is salvation come to this house." 
 
 After that He "went on before them, going 
 up to Jerusalem," completing the hardest, 
 most bitter journey which any young man 
 has ever had to make. But the people who 
 met Him by the way were not aware that the 
 journey was bitter: the smile which greeted 
 them when they stopped Him gave no evi- 
 dence of the strife that was going on within. 
 For each one who hailed Him received the 
 very choicest care that the Young Man had 
 to give; in the moment of their conversation 
 together, the petty need of each chance ac- 
 quaintance was of more importance than the 
 awful problem of His own life and death. 
 
VI 
 
 ''GENERATION OF VIPERS" 
 
 IT was a weary world on which Jesus had 
 looked out over the sides of His manger- 
 cradle; just how weary He came to realize 
 better during the thirty years of His life as 
 the member of an impoverished peasant 
 family. The cloud of Rome's greed hung over 
 the whole earth, obscuring the sun of ambition 
 and hope; the East, including Galilee, had 
 for generations been the treasure-chest of 
 every Roman adventurer whose fortunes 
 needed recouping. One army after another 
 overran its fertile fields and pillaged its 
 treasuries, until hope had been blurred out 
 of all life, and self-respect was dead. 
 
 Of what use was it to be ambitious? The 
 larger the prosperity the more sure to attract 
 the covetous glance of the despoiler. Why 
 seek for an increased crop or a growing herd.'' 
 The greater the increase the heavier the taxes. 
 
76 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 Added to the extortions of the priests and the 
 insatiable demands of the Herods came the 
 decree of Caesar that "all the world should 
 be taxed." More money must be forthcoming 
 from the groaning proletaire to provide the 
 Roman holiday, or rather the one hundred 
 holidays, the third of every year, which Rome 
 had hallowed to dissipation. Like a great 
 beast she lay along the banks of the Tiber, 
 sucking the blood of the whole world; and 
 from its farthest corners came a sullen roar 
 of hatred, as men beheld their slender flocks 
 cut in two, their household goods pillaged, 
 their sons carried off to be pitted against the 
 sons of their neighbors in the arena, their 
 daughters snatched away to be made the play- 
 things of some pleasure-sated Roman lord. 
 
 The world was not merely economically 
 exhausted; it was spiritually dead. In its 
 first days Rome had professed a religion, 
 but long since that religion had fallen into 
 decay as a useless encumbrance to a "prac- 
 tical'* people. To be sure, its forms were 
 still in evidence, but they were forms alone. 
 The priests in Rome sold their auguries to the 
 
GENERATION OF VIPERS 77 
 
 highest bidder, emperors disported themselves 
 with the Vestal Virgins, and at the contests 
 in the arena, where sometimes hundreds of 
 gladiators met death in a single day, these 
 Virgins occupied a box especially set apart 
 for them. Though no temple was erected to 
 Money in the great city, Money none the less, 
 as Tacitus has pointed out, was the only real 
 god. Everything was subordinated to a rapa- 
 cious greed for wealth which left no place for 
 any other motive. The world was covered 
 with an everlasting twilight in which the men 
 and women moved about wearily, too trod 
 upon to think; too soul-sick to plan. 
 
 Against all this bitterness of oppression the 
 hot young blood of Jesus rose rebelliously. 
 To Him the one sacred and worth-while 
 thing in the world was personality; every 
 single soul, every man and woman, was a 
 thing mystical, wonderfully capable of divine 
 possibilities. That the world should have 
 been handed over bodily to a little group of 
 degenerates on the Tiber, who had coined 
 men's souls into dollars and ground the 
 precious stuff of manhood and womanhood 
 
78 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 into the dust and ashes of palaces, and villas, 
 and arenas, and temples, and mere wealth — 
 all this was to Him the vilest sacrilege. He 
 needed not that any man should tell Him the 
 conditions: He Himself had grown up in a 
 peasant home and felt the pinch of poverty. 
 When His father and mother had taken Him 
 up to the Temple at the age of twelve for 
 dedication, they had been compelled, by their 
 want, to substitute two pigeons for the usual 
 sacrifice of a young kid. He had never for- 
 gotten that, nor the bitter shame of His 
 parents because of their necessity. The begin- 
 nings of His own public ministry had been 
 delayed until after His thirtieth year — a 
 long time in a country where men mature in 
 their teens — for the demands of a family of 
 growing children had kept Him at home until 
 they were able to look after themselves. It 
 may be, indeed, that His surrender of the 
 privileges of marriage was a sacrifice laid 
 upon Him by the burdens which His father's 
 death had entailed. For there are unmarried 
 men. He once said, who were born incapable 
 of marriage: and there are others who have 
 
GENERATION OF VIPERS 79 
 
 voluntarily foregone the privileges of marriage 
 for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake. Was He 
 speaking out of His own experience when 
 He said it? Did there lie back in Nazareth 
 the memory of some defeated romance of 
 His earlier life, crushed to death, like too 
 many other joys, by the hand of poverty 
 made ruthless by extortion? We can only 
 conjecture. 
 
 He had Himself seen the woman, of whom 
 He told, who, having gathered together a 
 petty sum of ten pieces of silver, lost one and 
 swept the house feverishly from top to bottom 
 until she found it; He had seen the man with 
 the slender flock of a hundred sheep, who 
 trudged all night long through briers and brush 
 to recover the single wanderer. The poor 
 householder stirred out of bed by an unex- 
 pected guest and compelled to beg three loaves 
 of bread from his neighbor was a character 
 easily recognized by His listeners, in whose 
 experience empty cupboards were the rule 
 rather than the exception. The laborers in 
 His parable, who, when asked "Why stand ye 
 here all the day idle?" had answered, *'Be- 
 
80 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 cause no man hireth us," and who eagerly 
 accepted the offer of work at a penny a day, 
 were represented in large numbers in the 
 crowds that followed Him. They were not 
 in slavery — as nearly one half the population 
 of the civilized world was at the time — but 
 they might nearly as well have been. In 
 the attitude of the well to do members of 
 their own race, the Pharisee and the Scribe and 
 the lawyer, there was the same disdain and 
 contempt which well-bred Romans felt for 
 their bondsmen. *'Out of Galilee," said the 
 Pharisees sneeringly, "ariseth no prophet." 
 Samaria was a "city of fools." "This mul- 
 titude that knoweth not the law" — all the 
 great mass of artisans, small farmers, day 
 laborers, publicans, and sinners, the multitude 
 to whom Jesus belonged and whose prophet 
 He was — "this multitude is accursed." 
 
 Insurgency in our day has become the easy 
 and popular thing. To revolt is to have one's 
 picture published in the magazines; insur- 
 rection is punished with publicity. Nobody 
 dies for his faith or perishes leading a hopeless 
 crusade for the recovery of his shrines; burn- 
 
GENERATION OF VIPERS 81 
 
 ings at the stake have long since passed out of 
 fashion, and even were they to occur, their 
 terrors would be mitigated, at least, by the 
 consoling presence of the moving-picture 
 camera. But in the days of Tiberius and 
 Herod, he who lifted his voice against the 
 greed and oppression of the System, did so 
 at the imminent risk of his life. The Young 
 Man of Galilee knew precisely what it meant 
 to be an insurgent, if not at the very beginning 
 of His ministry, at least before He had pro- 
 gressed very far. He had seen the fate of 
 some insurgents with His own eyes. In 
 His first impressionable years a certain Judas, 
 a patriot Galilean made mad by the tyrannies 
 laid upon his people, had risen in revolt, 
 and several thousand had flocked to his 
 banner. The memory of it must have been 
 with Jesus like a restless dream throughout 
 the days of His own protest. For the Romans 
 had made short work of Judas. Two legions 
 had stamped down upon Galilee. For weeks 
 the sky was black with the smoke of burning 
 villages; and every roadside was made hor- 
 rible with the writhing forms of the men 
 
82 A YOUNG MAN S JESUS 
 
 nailed on crosses in warning to the rest of 
 their kind. 
 
 It needed no one to tell the Young Man of 
 Galilee the cost of revolt. He knew both the 
 cost and the penalty. While greed and extor- 
 tion were crushing out the souls of men, 
 He who had come to make them conscious 
 of their divinity could not be silent. "Think 
 not," He said to His disciples, "that I am come 
 to bring peace into the world. I am not come 
 to bring peace but a sword." And to those 
 who sought to cast their lot with Him He 
 made no concealment of the danger. "If 
 any man would come after me, he must be 
 prepared to take up his cross and follow me." 
 He and His disciples went forth as "sheep 
 among wolves," knowing full well the danger 
 and inevitable consequence. Yet they went. 
 
 How He struck His first blow at the very 
 heart of the wicked System we have already 
 seen in the opening chapter. The sin of 
 the Temple rulers consisted not merely in the 
 extortion of more than $3,500,000 from the 
 poor a year — there issued from the Temple 
 also that hateful spirit which regarded all the 
 
GENERATION OF VIPERS 83 
 
 race outside of the narrow confines of Pharisa- 
 ism as "accursed," the spirit against which 
 the resentment of Jesus burned most hotly. 
 One can imagine how His first messages must 
 have fallen hke oil on the smoldering spirits 
 of the oppressed classes. He told them that 
 He had come to preach the Kingdom of 
 Heaven, and that they — sinners, social out- 
 casts, harlots, pubhcans, out of whom all 
 vestige of hope and self-respect had been 
 crushed — were to enter into that Kingdom 
 in advance of the Scribes and Pharisees. He 
 told them that God was their relative, their 
 Father, and that each one of them was equal 
 in His sight with the greatest and most power- 
 ful of the world. To the poor He said, " Yours 
 is the Kingdom of Heaven": to the meek and 
 downtrodden He promised that they should 
 "inherit the earth." On the rich and power- 
 ful, who had grown great through oppression. 
 He poured out warnings of destruction. 
 
 "Woe unto you that are rich," He said, 
 "for ye have received your consolation." 
 
 "Woe unto you, ye that are full now: for 
 ye shall hunger." 
 
84 A YOUNG MAN S JESUS 
 
 "Woe unto you, ye that laugh now: for 
 ye shall mourn and weep." 
 
 He sowed that leaven of democracy which 
 in every age since has proved the most pow- 
 erful inspirer of self-respect and the most active 
 fomenter of revolt. "You are God's special 
 care," He told them, "not a hair of your 
 heads can be touched without His knowle^dge. 
 He has commissioned Me to preach the King- 
 dom of Heaven among you. I am His son. 
 You are His sons and daughters; believe in 
 Me and you shall see Him. I am come to 
 you to preach deliverance to the captive: 
 to declare the acceptable year of the Lord." 
 
 It was terrible language, viewed from the 
 standpoint of those who lived by oppression, 
 and from whose minds there was never 
 absent the haunting fear of a peasant revolt. 
 Its syllables echoed from Galilee to Judea, 
 from the Temple to the Palace of Herod, 
 and inside the Palace, where the servile tyrant 
 heard and quaked at their sound. Thirty 
 years before, his father had learned from 
 Galilee disquieting news of the birth of a 
 child who was hailed by the populace as a 
 
GENERATION OF VIPERS 85 
 
 promised deliverer. "When Herod the King 
 heard it he was troubled, and all Jerusalem 
 with him." The father had been a man of 
 magnificent nerve, capable of dealing vigor- 
 ously with rebels of any sort; the son was a 
 weakling, forever trembling between dread 
 of the Romans on one hand and of the people, 
 who hated him, on the other — a creature of 
 intrigue and stealth. His very existence was 
 dependent upon his success in keeping the 
 soul of the nation dead: when therefore he 
 heard that a strange young man was preaching 
 in the North country, denouncing him, as 
 John the Baptist had done, using the very 
 phrase of John — "generation of vipers" — 
 in describing those who were the bulwarks of 
 his power, the report shook his petty being to 
 its foundations. "It is John the Baptist," 
 he moaned, "whom I beheaded." And he 
 immediately took counsel against Jesus how 
 he could kill Him. 
 
 Jesus knew it. He was aware that He could 
 not hope to kindle a new spirit of hope and 
 faith in the people without engendering revolt 
 against the unrighteous rule of Herod, and so 
 
86 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 inviting His own destruction. For a time He 
 attempted to discourage any uprising; He 
 disclaimed all desire for a temporal Messiah- 
 ship. To those zealous partisans who would 
 have made Him king He answered flatly that 
 they could not look to Him to follow in the 
 footsteps of Judas and lead a futile uprising. 
 But the wonderful seed of His democracy had 
 been too well sown. Between Herod and 
 Himself, with His gospel of divine sonship, 
 there could be no compromise. He sought 
 none. "In that very hour there came certain 
 Pharisees saying to Him, ' Get Thee out and 
 go hence for Herod would fain kill Thee!'" 
 
 Rising to the full height of His splendid 
 stature the Young Man of Galilee flung back 
 His answer in a voice loud enough so that all 
 the crowd might hear it, beginning with the 
 words, "Go tell that fox — " 
 
 "That fox." The phrase, so aptly descrip- 
 tive of Herod's cringing nature swept through 
 Galilee and Judea and all the provinces. It 
 was a bit of insurgent rhetoric which for the 
 courage involved in it is hardly equalled in 
 history. 
 
GENERATION OF VIPERS 87 
 
 But Herod was not the only oppressor 
 against whom His wrath was kindled. The 
 priests, the Scribes and Pharisees — all that 
 self-righteous, disdainful aristocracy whose 
 activities centered at the Temple — were pos- 
 sessed of great power. Much of the distress 
 which the people suffered was caused by their 
 exactions. From the day when He had 
 struck at them in their tenderest spot — the 
 monopolies and vested interests which yielded 
 their income — they did not cease to pursue 
 Him. With an implacable hatred they dogged 
 His footsteps with informers, sought to entrap 
 Him by sharp questions, and plotted *'how 
 they might take Him." He accepted their 
 enmity as a justifiable feature of His ministry, 
 and met their assaults with courage that 
 never wavered. 
 
 Did they invite Him to their tables, and seek 
 there to entrap Him into some damaging 
 statement which might be used against Him? 
 He turned upon them, in their own houses, 
 with the most outspoken denunciation: 
 
 *'Woe unto you. Scribes and Pharisees, 
 hypocrites; because ye shut the Kingdom of 
 
88 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 Heaven against men; for ye enter not in 
 yourselves, neither suffer them that are enter- 
 ing in to enter. 
 
 "Woe unto you la^vye^s, for ye load men 
 with burdens grievous to be borne, and your- 
 selves touch not the burdens with one of your 
 fingers." 
 
 And in the hearing of all the people He said : 
 "Beware of the Scribes which desire to walk 
 in long robes and love salutations in the 
 marketplaces, and chief seats at the syna- 
 gogues and chief places at the feasts; which 
 devour widows' houses and for a pretence 
 make long prayers: these shall receive the 
 greater condemnation." 
 
 The Scribes, the Pharisees, the lawyers, 
 and Herod — they were all "loading the 
 people with burdens grievous to be borne"; 
 they were all "devouring widows' houses"; 
 and He poured out His denunciation upon 
 them in equal measure. He had not come to 
 preach economic deliverance nor to captain a 
 social revolution, but He was a Son of Man 
 — not of any special man, but just the com- 
 mon, poor, eternally-oppressed man, disdained 
 
GENERATION OF VIPERS 89 
 
 by the oligarchy — and in behalf of His own 
 class and of the poor and despoiled everywhere 
 He lifted up His voice against the powerful 
 oppressing element in the nation. Even when 
 it meant, as He knew, that He must lay down 
 His life as the price of His words. 
 
 There came a time when the people deserted 
 Him, impatient because He would not throw 
 the spiritual message of His ministry to the 
 winds and lead them in arms against their 
 material enemies; when many of His disciples 
 walked with Him no more, and it grew safe 
 for His persecutors to pursue in the opei^ the 
 attacks which they had hitherto urged against 
 Him privately. He sensed more quickly than 
 anyone else the change in the situation, and 
 knew its portent for Him. There was plenty 
 of time for Him to save Himself; indeed, on 
 any night during His final week He might 
 have slipped off from His retreat in the Mount 
 of Olives to retirement in safety. But instead 
 He walked boldly among them up to the very 
 end. His insurgent spirit unbroken by their 
 threats or the knowledge that they would 
 ultimately prevail against Him. All the last 
 
90 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 week He blocked their streets with His crowd, 
 which brushed boisterously against them; 
 and the harshest words which He spoke were 
 said at a meal in one of their own houses. 
 
 When they led Him finally before Pilate it 
 was to accuse Him with having stirred up the 
 crowd against Rome and "forbidden men to 
 render tribute to Caesar," a thing which He 
 had never done. It was in their own private 
 star-chamber session of the Sanhedrin that 
 the real rankling motive for their hatred came 
 out. There they shook their fists at Him in 
 thei/" fury and said, "We heard you say 'I 
 will destroy this Temple that is made with 
 hands and in three days I will build another 
 that is made without hands.'" 
 
 The place where they had heard Him say 
 it was in the court of the Temple itself, when 
 He had driven the thieving crowd of their 
 underlings before Him. Not because He had 
 denounced them but because He had struck 
 at their source of revenue were they bent 
 on His destruction; not because they were 
 priests but because they were robbers. 
 
GENERATION OF VIPERS 91 
 
 In an age when the wages of protest were 
 death, He raised His voice gladly and without 
 fear, giving utterance to those great truths 
 which have been the inspiration of every 
 succeeding crusade for the rights of men. If 
 the words seem sometimes harsh and jarring, 
 it must be remembered that the abuses against 
 which He hurled them were deep-rooted and 
 cruel, and the consciences that He hoped to 
 stir had been a long time dead in indifference. 
 No gentle rebuke could have availed anything. 
 
 In another chapter we shall discover the 
 constructive program which He had for a 
 new social order to be evolved out of the ele- 
 ments of the old. But at this point, with the 
 record of His denunciations before us, we can- 
 not fail to be impressed with the gulf of infi- 
 nite dimensions which separates the Young 
 Man of Galilee from all the other great 
 economic reformers of history. They have 
 protested against economic wrong because it 
 keeps the great mass of men from having 
 something that they ought to have; His pro- 
 test was uttered because men. His brothers, 
 were prevented from being something which 
 
92 A YOUNG MAN S JESUS 
 
 they ought to be, the sons and daughters of 
 their Father, God, and heirs with Him in the 
 Kingdom of Heaven. The evils against 
 which He protested have not disappeared. 
 There are still rich and poor, rulers and ruled, 
 oppressors and oppressed. But He put into 
 the hands of the oppressed the weapon with 
 which social righteousness must one day con- 
 quer. He taught them to say "Thou shalt 
 not do this thing to me, for I, too, am a child 
 of God." 
 
 Thus He stands as the founder and guiding 
 spirit of all unselfish protest against injustice; 
 and youth, in whose hot arteries insurgency 
 dwells, claims Him for its own on that account. 
 But the form of His protest or its language 
 become meaningless, unless clothed with the 
 reverence for human souls that prompted it, 
 a reverence great enough to include even the 
 souls of them whose actions He denounced. 
 
VII 
 
 THE OUTSIDE OF THE CUP 
 
 NO man could be an economic insurgent 
 in Jesus' day without being a reli- 
 gious insurgent as well. The same 
 system that was responsible for the poverty 
 and distress of the common people had 
 petrified their religion into a cold, formal 
 thing of rites and ceremonies; the same little 
 band of priests and Pharisees were responsible 
 for and profited by the corruption of both the 
 social organization and the religious life. 
 Both had their heart and center in the Temple, 
 that great, glittering monument to a dead 
 faith on whose construction the elder Herod 
 had poured out the lives and treasure of the 
 - nation for forty-six years. Jesus had laid the 
 axe to the root of the tree unerringly when He 
 opened His ministry with that dramatic 
 cleansing of the Temple court. 
 
94 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 Formalism and ritualism sank their roots 
 deeper every year into the dying faith of the 
 people, sucking what little life-blood remained. 
 The law became a code of petty exactions 
 terrifying in their detail, and grew so complex 
 that it could be mastered only by the little 
 group of Scribes and lawyers in Jerusalem 
 who devoted their whole life to it: they took 
 to themselves great honor because of their 
 rigid observance of every requirement and 
 were vehement in their scorn of the great mass 
 of the people "which knew not the law" and 
 was therefore "accursed." Sixty -four pages 
 in the accepted version of the code were 
 devoted to minute prescriptions as to what 
 might and what might not be done upon the 
 Sabbath. Tithing was carried by the formal- 
 ists even to the "mint and rue and every 
 herb" that grew about their houses. A large 
 portion of every day was expended in the 
 various ceremonial washings and in prayers 
 made ostentatiously "in the market places" 
 and in deeds done "to be seen of men." 
 
 Meanwhile the spirit of real religion was 
 fast dying in the rank and file of the nation: 
 
THE OUTSIDE OF THE CUP 95 
 
 in its leaders it was already dead. They 
 "made broad their phylacteries" but they 
 despised their fellow men; they made a show 
 of philanthropy, but they employed the letter 
 of their law, as the Young Man of GaUlee 
 pointed out to them in scathing language, to 
 *' transgress the tradition of God." 
 
 "For God said," He repeated to them, 
 "Honour thy father and mother, and he that 
 speaketh evil of father or mother, let him die 
 the death. But ye say. Whosoever shall say 
 to his father or mother. That wherewith thou 
 mightest have been profited in me (the support 
 that you have a right to expect from me) is 
 Corban, that is to say, is given to God — ye 
 no longer suffer him to do aught for his father 
 or mother; making void the word of God by 
 your tradition which ye have delivered; and 
 many such things ye do." 
 
 Clearly enough He realized in His youthful 
 idealism that the moral awakening which He 
 strove for could never be accomplished until 
 rehgion was rid of this cankering mass of 
 tradition and ritual. From the very beginning 
 of His ministry, straight through to the end, 
 
96 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 He never ceased to pour forth His burning 
 denunciations of the whole priestly class, who 
 had slain the faith of a people in order to build 
 up a ceremonial law for their own use. 
 
 "Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, 
 hypocrites!" — the words were constantly in 
 His mouth — "for ye tithe mint and anise 
 and cummin and have left undone the weigh- 
 tier matters of the law, judgment and mercy 
 and faith. Ye blind guides which strain at 
 a gnat and swallow a camel. 
 
 "Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, 
 hypocrites! for ye cleanse the outside of the 
 cup and the platter, but within they are full of 
 extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, 
 cleanse first the inside of the cup and the 
 platter, that the outside thereof may become 
 clean also. 
 
 "Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, 
 hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepul- 
 chers which outwardly appear beautiful but 
 inwardly are full of dead men's bones and of 
 all uncleanness. Even so ye outwardly appear 
 righteous unto men, but inwardly ye are full 
 of hypocrisy and iniquity. 
 
THE OUTSIDE OF THE CUP 97 
 
 "Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, 
 hypocrites! for ye build the sepulchers of 
 prophets and garnish the tombs of the right- 
 eous, and say, If we had been in the days of 
 our fathers we would not have been partakers 
 with them in the blood of the prophets. 
 Wherefore ye witness to yourselves that ye 
 are sons of those that slew the prophets. 
 Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. 
 Ye serpents, ye offspring of vipers, how shall 
 ye escape the judgment of hell? Therefore, 
 behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise 
 men, and scribes; some of them shall ye kill 
 and crucify; and some of them shall ye 
 scourge in your synagogues, and persecute 
 from city to city." 
 
 There is not in all literature more scathing 
 excoriation than this. It rises in majesty and 
 intensity through the three years of his public 
 work, until it culminates in the magnificent 
 sentences first quoted above, delivered in the 
 final week of His life almost under the very 
 shadow of the cross. The enthusiasm with 
 which such utterances were received by the 
 common people, who had suffered long under 
 
98 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 the intolerance and disdain of the priests and 
 therefore "heard him gladly," was equalled 
 only by the hatred which they engendered 
 in the hearts of those against whom they were 
 hurled. In the earnestness of His protest, 
 His actions and examples spoke even more 
 loudly than His words. So eager was He 
 to establish the truth that real religion is a 
 matter of spirit, purpose, and desire rather 
 than of ritual or presented performance, that 
 He swung His disciples away from every 
 formal act, no matter how harmless, which 
 might crystallize later into a ceremony to 
 plague His faith. 
 
 Among all the Jewish religious customs 
 none was more severely enjoined than fasting. 
 As originally instituted by Moses in the 
 wilderness, fasting had unquestionably con- 
 tributed to the health and vigor of the nation, 
 but it had long since degenerated into a mere 
 religious formality, and was much abused. 
 Nevertheless John had practised fasting and 
 it was his disciples, worried by the good 
 fellowship and convivial habits of Jesus, who 
 had put the question to Him; 
 
THE OUTSIDE OF THE CUP 99 
 
 "Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, 
 but Thy disciples fast not?" 
 
 In His answer, had they but understood it, 
 He embodied the whole philosophy and pur- 
 pose of His antagonism to forms and cere- 
 monies. 
 
 "No man putteth new wine into old 
 wineskins," He said, "lest the wineskins 
 burst and the wine be spilled. I must 
 have an entirely new container for my 
 message: the old forms and customs are 
 weak and rotting; if I consent merely to 
 pour my new gospel into them it will 
 not remake them. They will merely burst 
 and my message will be lost in the general 
 ruin." 
 
 When Scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem 
 came to ask Him, "Why do Thy disciples 
 transgress the tradition of the elders, for 
 they wash not their hands when they eat 
 bread?" His answer was, "Why do ye 
 also transgress the commandment of God 
 because of your tradition? Ye hypocrites," 
 He continued, "well did Isaiah prophesy of 
 you saying. 
 
100 A YOUNG MAN S JESUS 
 
 This people honoureth me with their lips. 
 
 But their heart is far from me. 
 
 But in vain do they worship me. 
 
 Teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men." 
 
 Like the other religious institutions of the 
 nation, the Sabbath and attendance at the 
 Synagogue had become idols whose neglect 
 was punishable with a detailed list of penalties. 
 Some of the bitterest controversies in the hfe 
 of the Young Man were waged over His 
 refusal to recognize any other necessity on the 
 Sabbath except the divine injunction to rest 
 and to worship. Usually, to be sure, He 
 entered into the Synagogue — "as was His 
 custom — " but not always. Sometimes He 
 would take His disciples for a walk. And if 
 in the course of the excursion they passed 
 through cornfields they did not hesitate to 
 satisfy their hunger, even though by so doing 
 they violated no less than five separate articles 
 of the Jewish law. Again and again the Phari- 
 sees came to Him in a towering rage because 
 of His violation of their tradition and nothing 
 in His life illustrates better His supreme 
 mastery of men than the interviews which 
 
THE OUTSIDE OF THE CUP 101 
 
 followed. For He did not content Himself 
 with mere denunciations of their narrowness: 
 out of His intimate knowledge of history and 
 the literature of His nation. He drew illustra- 
 tions to support His course, even quoting 
 sometimes their own law to confute them. 
 
 "Why do you find fault with my disciples 
 for plucking the ears on the Sabbath?" He 
 inquired in pretended astonishment. "Don't 
 you remember how David when he was hungry 
 went into the Temple and ate the shew-bread 
 which is not lawful to be eaten by any except 
 the priests? Surely if David was not to be 
 condemned you need not blame me." 
 
 And when they protested because He had 
 healed a sick man on the Sabbath, He said, 
 
 "Does not your law allow a man if his sheep 
 or his ass fall into a pit on the Sabbath to pull 
 him out? Is it any less lawful for me to pull 
 this man out of the pit of his infirmity? 
 What is your idea of the law, anyway? Is it 
 lawful on the Sabbath day to do good or to 
 do harm, to save life or to kill? The Sabbath 
 was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." 
 
 They could not answer the logic of His 
 
102 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 contentions, but they recognized how fatal 
 His teaching must prove to their rehgious 
 system and the position of prominence which 
 they enjoyed because of it. Thus shortly after 
 this incident we find the Pharisees (who were 
 ordinarily bitter against the followers of 
 Herod) sinking their personal differences in 
 the' overwhelming hatred which both classes 
 had come to feel for this common enemy, and 
 "straightway taking counsel with the Hero- 
 dians how they might destroy Him." 
 
 He did not Himself baptize any of His 
 converts but allowed His disciples to do so, 
 since baptism was a custom with whose 
 significance the people as a whole were 
 familiar, but He apparently attached little 
 importance to it. Indeed He was jealous of 
 any rite or ceremony which might come to 
 attain an undue value, and so weaken the 
 emphasis which He sought to place upon the 
 essentially spiritual quality of religion and 
 worship. His whole life was a living protest 
 against a formalism which had held the human 
 soul in bondage. "God is a spirit: it is not 
 in a mountain or in temples that He would be 
 
THE OUTSIDE OF THE CUP 103 
 
 worshipped, not with rites or ceremonies, but 
 in the ideals and purposes, the spirit of your 
 Hfe." This was His message — the truth 
 that sets men spiritually free. 
 
 Nothing was farther from the desire of the 
 Pharisees and priests than that men should 
 be free; their whole existence was dependent 
 upon a complicated code which kept the 
 spirit of the nation trammeled; if they were 
 to continue to *' occupy the chief seats at the 
 feasts," and '* receive salutations in the market 
 places," the law must be enforced in its every 
 letter. Once allow a single precept to be 
 questioned and there would be loosed a spirit 
 of interrogation which would not rest until the 
 whole vicious structure should be destroyed. 
 If the Young Man of Galilee, in the first flush 
 of His youthful idealism, failed to realize how 
 insurmountable were the ramparts against 
 which He was striking, the realization was 
 not long delayed. After the death of John 
 the Baptist He no longer deluded Himself 
 with the hope that in His single lifetime the 
 whole nation might be stirred to the beauty 
 of the vision which shone in His own soul. 
 
104 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 It was necessary first that seed should be 
 planted and watered with blood. 
 
 So, young as He was and throbbing with the 
 joy of life, He ofifered His life as the final 
 protest against the ritualism and greed and 
 selfishness that were eating out the soul of 
 His people. The system that had sought 
 His destruction emerged triumphant; but its 
 triumph was surprisingly short lived. His 
 work had been too well performed. Within 
 a single generation after He had gone His 
 followers had penetrated into the eternal city 
 itself, the center and heart of all greed and 
 formalism, proclaiming "ye shall know the 
 truth and the truth shall make you free." 
 And in far-off Macedonia the cry was raised, 
 "They that have turned the world upside 
 down have come hither also." 
 
 So end the two chapters in which we have 
 walked with the Young Man of Galilee in 
 the hours of His insurgency, hours when His 
 anger blazed hot against intolerance and 
 formalism and extortion and greed. So sacred 
 was human life in His sight, so reverent was 
 
THE OUTSIDE OF THE CUP 105 
 
 He in the presence of every atom of person- 
 ality, no matter what its outward dress, that 
 He could not but cry against the infamy that 
 had ground out personahty under the wheels 
 of ritualism, and sacrificed souls to a system. 
 Yet here again the ear must guard itself lest 
 a part only of the message be received, lest 
 beneath the flaming syllables, "woe unto you 
 scribes and pharisees, hypocrites," it should 
 fail to hear the gentler tones, "do good to 
 them that hate you, and pray for them that 
 despitefully use you": lest in the tumult that 
 attends the seeming triumph of His adver- 
 saries, there should be lost the last words 
 spoken by the lips that had denounced them, 
 "Father, forgive them, for they know not 
 what they do." 
 
VIII 
 
 ''AS YOURSELF" 
 
 WAS the Young Man of Galilee an 
 Individualist, a Socialist, an An- 
 archist, a Single Taxer, a Social 
 Settlement Worker, a Communist, a Woman 
 Suffragist? All these cults and a thousand 
 others have laid eager hold upon Him, snatch- 
 ing at this or that sentence in His teachings 
 to support their claim. Can He be classified 
 with one of these groups, or was His social 
 philosophy too broad to be included in any 
 of them? Had He any real social philosophy 
 at all; and if so what is it, and how much 
 guidance does it afford in the myriad problems 
 of our complex modern society? 
 
 Nothing is more certain than that He did 
 have a clearly -defined remedy for the evils 
 which He struck at so vigorously, and that 
 He believed its application would heal every 
 social complaint. He was no mere denouncer. 
 
AS YOURSELF 107 
 
 That was John's difficulty. People flocked 
 around John to nod their heads in approval 
 when he characterized the Pharisees and 
 priests as a "generation of vipers," but when 
 they asked him what they were to do about 
 it he was nonplussed. He had nothing to 
 suggest except that those with two coats 
 should divide with those who had none, and 
 that the publicans should cease their extor- 
 tions and the soldiers refrain from violence. 
 It was an unsatisfactory program: John 
 was as keenly conscious of the fact as were 
 his auditors, and he looked eagerly for the 
 arising of a greater prophet than himself who 
 should lead the people boldly along the rough 
 road which his denunciations had blazed out 
 — and beyond. His wish was not long in 
 being gratified. Within a few weeks the 
 disciples of Jesus were baptizing more than 
 John, and the Pharisees had turned their 
 attention away from him to this new enemy 
 of their privilege. 
 
 It required no careful process of reasoning 
 to align the Young Man of Galilee on the side 
 of the poor: He was born on their side; He 
 
108 A YOUNG MAN S JESUS 
 
 grew up a poor peasant, practising a trade 
 which, in common with all other trades and 
 all merchandising, was regarded with disdain 
 and contempt by the well to do. The "com- 
 mon people" who "heard Him gladly" had 
 no need to pour out the story of their priva- 
 tions in His ear: He, too, had gone to bed 
 hungry; He had felt the biting chill of a cold 
 morning; He knew what it was to have "no 
 place to lay His head." The very day of 
 His birth was the day designated by the 
 decree of Csesar on which "all the world 
 should be taxed"; and often in His youth 
 He must have witnessed the heart-breaking 
 scenes which attended the collection of a 
 tax from some poverty-stricken neighbors. 
 Yet this experience had not embittered 
 Him, nor narrowed His vision. He could 
 always see the other man's point of view: 
 in His virile denunciation of the wealthier 
 classes. He was broadminded enough to 
 recognize exceptions, and to welcome among 
 His friends at least some rich men whose 
 wealth had not destroyed their social con- 
 sciousness. 
 
AS YOURSELF 109 
 
 Nevertheless He felt, as did every prophet 
 of His race before Him, that surplus wealth 
 is the great impeder of any program for 
 social betterment, and that the gnawing greed 
 for wealth with which the world of His day 
 was eaten was responsible for all of its other 
 troubles. "And the cares of the world, and 
 the deceitfulness of riches," He says, "choke 
 the word, and it becometh unfruitful." 
 "How, hardly, shall they that have riches 
 enter into the Kingdom of God." That 
 sentiment stands out boldly in a number of 
 those story -preachments which were His pecu- 
 liar method of conveying moral truth. 
 
 There was a certain rich man. He said, 
 named Dives, who lived on the fat of the land; 
 and a beggar, Lazarus, was accustomed to he 
 at the rich man's door and ask for alms. 
 In course of time. Death, the great leveler of 
 all social distinctions, removed them both, 
 Lazarus to his reward. Dives to punishment. 
 Dives in the midst of his distress looked 
 across and seeing Lazarus in Abraham's 
 bosom asked that he might be sent down with 
 a cup of water. The request was refused, not 
 
110 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 merely because Dives had received his riches 
 and pleasures in his lifetime, while Lazarus 
 had suffered, but because between the two 
 there was a "great gulf fixed," which neither 
 might cross over. 
 
 The story as the Young Man related it did 
 not say that Dives was a bad man, nor that 
 he had gained his wealth dishonestly. The 
 inference is that he had inherited it and had 
 grown up never knowing any other life than 
 that of a well to do idler. Undoubtedly he 
 occasionally threw alms to Lazarus as he 
 passed in and out of his home, and regarded 
 himself as a thoroughly respectable and 
 valued member of society, furnishing employ- 
 ment by his wealth to many laboring men and 
 making occasional routine contributions to 
 the Associated Charities of the city. It was 
 with the bitterest astonishment that he dis- 
 covered the positions of himself and the beggar 
 reversed in the other world. He had assumed, 
 of course, that he would go on through eternity 
 as he had through time, comfortable, well 
 cared for, deferred to. His sin was not in 
 any actual oppression for which he was re- 
 
AS YOURSELF 111 
 
 sponsible, but in the isolation from his fellow 
 men which his wealth created. It never 
 occurred to him that he had any brotherly 
 responsibility for Lazarus nor for anyone else. 
 The protecting walls of his fortune drew in 
 closer upon him as years passed, narrowing 
 his vision. He became more firmly convinced 
 of the divine right of money, more certain 
 that he and his kind were the bulwarks of 
 society, more impatient at any voice that 
 was lifted in behalf of the rights of men as 
 against the rights of property. The gulf 
 between himself and Lazarus was not one 
 arbitrarily created in an after life. He him- 
 self had created it in the selfish enjoyment of 
 his wealth; it had grown with the shrinking 
 in upon itself of his own nature, until it was 
 impassable. 
 
 A clean-cut, fine-featured young fellow ran 
 up to the Young Man one day, and kneeling 
 before Him said, "Good Master, what shall 
 I do to inherit eternal Hfe?" And the Young 
 Man said, 
 
 "You know the commandments — do not 
 kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do 
 
112 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 not bear false witness, do not defraud, honour 
 thy father and mother." 
 
 The inquirer smiled happily. "Master," 
 he said, "I have done all these things from 
 my youth up." 
 
 And Jesus loved him; he was so genuine 
 in his enthusiasm, so apparently eager to 
 lead a life of respectable usefulness. 
 
 "One thing thou lackest," He replied, "go 
 sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, 
 and thou shalt have treasure in Heaven; 
 and come, follow me." 
 
 "But his countenance fell at the saying 
 and he went away sorrowful, for he was very 
 rich." 
 
 Jesus, looking after him pityingly, as he 
 walked away, said to His disciples, "How 
 almost impossible it is for a man that has 
 riches to enter into the Eangdom of Heaven." 
 
 That wealth cuts a man off from his fellows 
 and so unfits him for the exercise of brother- 
 hood, and that the greed for wealth is the 
 root of all social evil — these were the Young 
 Man's convictions, oft reiterated. To the 
 Pharisees who were "lovers of money" He 
 
AS YOURSELF 113 
 
 told the parable of the Unjust Steward with 
 its solemn warning, "No man can serve two 
 masters, for either he will 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." The whole ancient world, 
 from Caesar down, might have seen itself pic- 
 tured in the story of the man who in his eager- 
 ness to grow richer, "tore down his barns 
 that he might build greater" and had pro- 
 nounced upon him the searching question, 
 " What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole 
 world and lose his own soul?" 
 
 "It shall not be so among you," said the 
 Young Man of Nazareth, pointing to the 
 bitter spectacle of a society wearied and 
 desolated in its madness after riches and 
 sensual pleasure. "Whosoever will be great 
 among you let him be your minister; and 
 whosoever shall be chiefest shall be servant 
 of all. For even the Son of Man came not to 
 be ministered unto but to minister." It shot 
 through the turgid atmosphere of that self- 
 serving, loveless world like the cleansing flash 
 of lightning — this law of service, which 
 
114 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 was to rule the new social order. If a man 
 would hold the highest place let him be the 
 greatest servant; not the greatest menial, the 
 greatest butler, or the greatest footman; but 
 the greatest servant, as Edison has been, or as 
 Lincoln was. If any man have wealth, let 
 him regard himself as his brother's keeper, a 
 trustee of Almighty God. 
 
 Wealth, said the Young Man, is like every 
 other talent: the man who is most richly 
 endowed is required by God to render the 
 largest return. And He illustrated it by the 
 story of a wealthy man, who, departing into 
 a far country, gave to each of his servants a 
 certain sum of money in trusteeship, until he 
 should return. When the day of reckoning 
 arrived it was found that some servants had 
 employed their gifts to such good advantage 
 as to double them in their master's interest. 
 These were promoted, and having been faith- 
 ful in small trusts were given larger ones. 
 To those, however, who had done badly no 
 reward was given, and the single servant who 
 because he had had but one talent had thought 
 it not worth while to make any effort at all, 
 
AS YOURSELF 115 
 
 was stripped of even the little that he had, and 
 suffered severe condemnation. Whatever the 
 amount of possession, either material or men- 
 tal, it is a loan from God, to be employed with 
 the utmost efficiency in the service of His 
 children. According as a man serves his 
 fellow men shall he have honor — this, said 
 the Young Man, is the whole law and the 
 prophets. 
 
 It is easy to pick His teachings to pieces 
 and to find in them commendation for this 
 modern propaganda or that. He who said 
 "it is better that a millstone were hung around 
 your neck and you were drowned in the sea 
 than that you should blight the lives of one 
 of these little children," would unquestionably 
 align himself with the foes of child labor. 
 Hanging His whole social hope as He did 
 upon the preservation of the family, it seems 
 sure that the Young Man, if He were living 
 today, would take an exceedingly conservative 
 attitude on the question of divorce; certainly 
 He would do His utmost to end the exploita- 
 tion of the labor of women in industry. He 
 who defined adultery not alone as a physical 
 
116 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 act, but as impurity of mind as well would 
 loose the vials of His wrath upon those that 
 share in the blood-profits of the white slave 
 traffic. 
 
 All this and much else one may conjecture 
 as to His attitude on modern social problems, 
 citing His own words in proof. Yet it may 
 properly be questioned whether the Young 
 Man of Galilee, were He at work today, 
 would scatter His energies very much in pro- 
 paganda aimed against specific evils. He 
 did not do so in His three years in Palestine. 
 There were robbery, and social crime, and a 
 hundred other problems in that day, no one 
 of which is specifically dealt with in His 
 discourses. His work, as He conceived it, 
 was not to form committees to deal with the 
 varied shortcomings of life individually, but 
 to create in those with whom He came into 
 contact a new heart and to renew a right spirit 
 within them. To this end He devoted Him- 
 self with a fixed purpose that never wavered. 
 The new heart, and the right spirit. He knew 
 — if He inspired them in a sufficient number 
 of people — would banish greed with all its 
 
AS YOURSELF 117 
 
 attendant evils and usher in the brighter day 
 of the brotherhood of man. 
 
 So He said to Martha, who was doubtless 
 a member of a score of synagogue committees, 
 and sewing societies and tenement commis- 
 sions and working-girls' leagues, and was 
 "cumbered with much serving": *' Martha, 
 Martha, thou art anxious and troubled about 
 many things, but one thing is needful. Seek 
 ye first the Kingdom of Heaven; and this is 
 the law of the Kingdom — to love the Lord 
 thy God, and thy neighbor as thyself." 
 
 Not "more than thyself," as some preachers 
 in their over-emphasis would have it inferred. 
 The Young Man of Galilee was first of all a 
 preacher of self-respect, in a world out of 
 which self-respect had been almost crushed 
 by greed and intolerance. 
 
 "You are to love yourself," the Young 
 Man would say, "for you, too, are a member 
 of the Kingdom of Heaven. To debase your- 
 self in the service of your neighbor is to do 
 injury to a child of God as truly as though 
 you sinned against another. But having 
 developed a wholesome self-respect, a right- 
 
118 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 eous love for yourself as a child of God, you 
 are to love your neighbor with an equal 
 affection. Loving him, you will be a good 
 citizen, because the efficiency of the various 
 activities of your city and state — its schools 
 and police and health — is essential to your 
 neighbor's happiness and to yours. Loving 
 him, you will not underpay nor overwork his 
 son who is in your office, nor mislead his 
 daughter, nor defraud him of his lands nor 
 covet his goods. You will extend the cir- 
 cumference of your sympathies until it be- 
 comes a horizon, embracing the whole world 
 of God's children. Thus men shall come to 
 know God by His love exemplified in you, 
 and 'seeing your good works shall glorify 
 your Father who is in Heaven.' " 
 
 It seemed a singularly simple program with 
 which to replace the complicated system of 
 economic wrong which He protested against; 
 and yet the world has not yet grown beyond 
 it. "Love the Lord thy God, and thy 
 neighbor as thyself," is still the social gospel of 
 those who cherish the purest, widest vision of 
 the social future of the race. It is His whole 
 
AS YOURSELF 119 
 
 economic message compressed into a single 
 sentence. And to every program or move- 
 ment for social betterment, in proportion 
 as it partakes of the spirit of this Gospel, 
 He contributes a sympathetic and virile 
 allegiance. 
 
IX 
 
 "FIRST THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN'* 
 
 IT is hardly fair to the Young Man of 
 Gahlee to separate His social and His 
 rehgious teachings even by putting them 
 into different chapters. His whole thirty- 
 three years was spent in an effort to erase the 
 artificial barrier which men had erected be- 
 tween religion and life, to show that all right 
 living is worship, that the full-hearted enjoy- 
 ment of a social occasion is no less religious 
 than attendance on a church service, that man 
 may push a plane to the glory of God as truly 
 as he may preach a sermon. Yet books have 
 to be divided into chapters or no one would 
 read them — and in this chapter we want to 
 set down in the fewest possible words just 
 what it was that the Young Man of Galilee 
 left His carpenter's bench to say about religion 
 and about God. 
 
 We have seen already how His youthful 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 121 
 
 idealism flamed against the religious system 
 which had debased the simple faith of the 
 prophets into the bloodless formalism of the 
 Temple worship; and how almost the very- 
 first act of His public hfe was to strike a 
 ringing blow at that system. He found the 
 ten commandments of Moses pulverized into 
 more than six hundred petty *'thou shalts" 
 and "thou shalt nots"; the priests and 
 Temple given over to doctrine and to greed 
 while the people perished; the nation blinded 
 and being led by the blind. He had seen how 
 the same condition had repeated itself again 
 and again in Jewish history, one prophet after 
 another arising with his "Thus saith Jehovah 
 thy God" and attempting to call the nation 
 away from form and back to faith. 
 
 "Bring no more vain oblations: incense is an 
 abomination to me : the new moons and Sabbaths, 
 the callings of assemblies, I cannot away with; 
 it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting : your new 
 moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth." 
 
 So Jehovah had said through the mouth of 
 Isaiah his prophet, and the words must have 
 
122 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 vibrated through the Young Man's soul on 
 every visit into the pandemonium of the 
 Temple. It was inconceivable to Him that 
 the educated men and women of His time 
 could have studied their own literature to so 
 little purpose; could have mumbled over the 
 writings of the prophets until they knew them 
 by heart and still have gathered nothing what- 
 ever of the prophets' clear, simple picture of 
 the nature of God. 
 
 "He hath showed thee, O man, what is 
 good," said Micah; "and what doth Jehovah 
 require of thee, but to do justly, and to 
 love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy 
 God?" 
 
 In that paragraph the Young Man found 
 summarized all the teaching which the proph- 
 ets had striven to din into the ears of the 
 people since the days of Moses; starting with 
 that He built His own teaching, the purest, 
 most simple, most satisfying conception of God 
 and religion that the world has ever known. 
 To the confused and embittered disputes that 
 raged all about Him, to the heated conten- 
 tions about duties and rites, heaven and hell, 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 123 
 
 the saved and the unsaved. He appHed one 
 all-powerful dissolvent. "When ye pray," He 
 said, "say 'Our Father.'" 
 
 Pretty nearly all His religious teaching 
 may be summarized in those two words: 
 certainly all of it, if we add to them these 
 also, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and 
 his righteousness." Once catch the vision of 
 His full meaning in these simple phrases, and 
 you have the whole message which He came 
 to bring; the message that, distorted into a 
 thousand creeds, still lives to give vitahty to 
 the church and to religion. 
 
 "God is your father," He told that soul- 
 sick, oppressed crowd that jostled about Him 
 on the shores of Galilee, and the words blew 
 down into the spirits of each one of them, 
 clear to the bottom, where there yet smol- 
 dered a tiny flickering ember of self-respect, 
 and fanned it into flame. They had never 
 been told such gospel as that, such good news, 
 for that is what "gospel" means. They had 
 heard themselves spoken of as "accursed" and 
 as "outside the law," as "fools," and "slaves," 
 for so long a time as almost to believe they 
 
124 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 were. Here was one who told them that 
 they were children of God, that not a hair of 
 their heads could be touched without His 
 knowledge, that they might enter into the 
 Kingdom of Heaven before the scribes and 
 Pharisees. Those who wonder why the com- 
 mon people of that day "heard Him gladly," 
 while the common people of this day pass by 
 the church, may find here some gleam of light. 
 People are interested always in news: what 
 that crowd of tired-eyed Galileans heard was 
 the greatest news that had ever come into 
 the world. Human nature has not changed. 
 When the Church has news to give, men will 
 crowd its doorways and stand before it in the 
 streets. 
 
 "God is your father," He said, and the 
 inference was very plain. "If you say you 
 believe that to be true, and do not respect 
 yourself, do not hold your own personality in 
 sacred reverence as a thing of supreme con- 
 cern to the Maker of the world, you are de- 
 ceiving yourself — you do not really believe 
 it — you are not really my friend; you can- 
 not properly call yourself a Christian." 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 125 
 
 "God is your father." If you say you 
 believe that and are not happy; if you do not 
 greet the morning sun with a smile on your 
 lips; if you do not fill every day with the 
 most joyous wholesome good time; if you 
 have not the reputation of being the best and 
 happiest man on your street, you only half 
 believe in your heart what your lips repeat. 
 
 The chief business of a father is to love his 
 children, said the Young Man. Your Father 
 loves you; in making this world He has done 
 the best He knows how to provide a place that 
 will give you a lifelong good time. If you do 
 not find it good you are hurting Him; every 
 frown that crosses your face, every harsh 
 word that passes your lips, is a criticism of 
 His world, or of one of His children, and 
 strikes deep into His heart. On the other 
 hand every smile is worship; every hearty 
 laugh is a Te Deum; every word of praise or 
 hand-shake is a Hallelujah Chorus. 
 
 This is the news that the Young Man 
 flashed across the dead sky of that weary, 
 sin-sick, poverty-stricken world; no wonder 
 the crowds hardly allowed Him time to eat in 
 
126 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 their eagerness to have Him repeat it. His 
 message had its obHgations as well as its 
 benefit. Love is a two-sided business; he 
 who covets its enjoyments must stand ready 
 to fulfil its duties. "You cannot please your 
 Father," said the Young Man, "unless you 
 really love the other members of His family 
 as He loves them. You must learn that there 
 is no such thing as 'common people,' that 
 nothing which God has made is 'common or 
 unclean,' that every human being with which 
 he has clothed a spark of his spirit is to him 
 sacred." Any thought or action, any institu- 
 tion or social usage that oppresses one or more 
 of these sacred children, that makes it harder 
 for them to hve their lives to the full, to ex- 
 press themselves to the limit of their capacity, 
 is sinful. Whatever cheers and raises up, 
 whether it be a cathedral mass or a ball game, 
 a communion service or a social party, is holy 
 unto the Lord. 
 
 "It does not make any difference where 
 you worship God," the Young Man said to 
 the Samaritan woman, "whether in this 
 mountain, as your people are taught, or in 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 127 
 
 Jerusalem, as the Jews contend. God is a 
 spirit: they that worship Him must do so in 
 spirit, in the real purpose and aim of their 
 lives." 
 
 They brought Him one day a poor woman 
 who had been taken in adultery. A very 
 righteous, holier-than-thou crowd of Pharisees 
 and scribes it was that brought her: most of 
 them had not been absent from the Synagogue 
 on a single Sabbath for years ; not a single jot 
 nor tittle of the cumbersome law had escaped 
 their obedience; they looked disdainfully on 
 this unschooled carpenter-prophet, this man 
 who associated with publicans and sinners, as 
 they set the cringing, red-faced girl before 
 Him. 
 
 "For this crime Moses said that we might 
 stone her," they told Him. "What do you 
 say.?" 
 
 He did not answer them immediately, but 
 stooped down and wrote on the ground. 
 Perhaps the words He wrote were names of 
 places or people in the city whose memory 
 caused severe discomfort among that smug, 
 accusing company; perhaps He wrote merely 
 
128 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 to hide the smile that played across His face 
 as He considered the effect that His reply 
 would produce. Finally He said: 
 
 "Let the one among you who is sinless cast 
 the first stone." 
 
 Still He stooped low, and traced with His 
 finger in the sand, and when at length He 
 looked up, every man of them had slunk away 
 leaving the woman there with Him alone. 
 
 "Daughter," He said, "where are they that 
 accuse thee?" 
 
 "They are gone," she answered. 
 
 "Is not one left to condemn thee? No? 
 Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no 
 more." 
 
 He whose soul was stung into hot protest 
 at the long prayers and blatant cant of the 
 Pharisees could find no word of censure for 
 the sin of a shrinking woman — not because 
 the act was unsinful in His eyes, but because 
 He looked behind the act to her shame, the 
 overpowering affection that had carried her 
 off her feet; because any mere act to Him 
 was of secondary importance to the spirit, the 
 thought behind it. "Ye have heard it said. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 129 
 
 do not commit adultery," He told them once, 
 "but I say to you that the mere act is noth- 
 ing; any man who has looked upon a woman 
 in lust hath committed adultery already in 
 his heart." "Moses said, thou shalt not 
 kill, but I say unto you that any man who is 
 angry at his brother, is guilty of murder in 
 his heart; and he that says to his brother in 
 hatred, 'Thou fool' is in danger of hell fire. 
 You have been commanded not to steal, and 
 you think it is enough if you refrain from 
 actual theft; but I tell you that any man 
 who even looks covetously on another man's 
 goods is already a thief." " As a man thinketh 
 in his heart, so he is." God is a spirit: He 
 must be worshiped not by prescribed acts or 
 forms, not by doing this or refraining from 
 that, but in spirit, in the ideal and purpose 
 that actuate the life. 
 
 How immediately all the so-called problems 
 of moral conduct fade out in the light of that 
 simple teaching. 
 
 Would Jesus go to church today? Un- 
 doubtedly; because the Church, in spite of 
 its lack of vision and its shortcomings, stands 
 
130 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 for the best in the hfe of the community and 
 is therefore worthy of help. But He would 
 make it clear that He went to church because 
 He loved His Father — not that He loved 
 His Father because He went to church; that 
 the Church is not the kingdom of heaven, 
 but only a little section of it. He would go 
 to church because He would believe that the 
 Church is capable of great service to the men 
 and women of the day. But should it ever 
 become, what the church in His day had 
 become, a fossilized institution, preying upon 
 its members, maintaining a ritual instead of 
 serving the race, the mere fact that it is labeled 
 "church" and that it says "Lord, Lord" 
 would not hold Him in it. He would arraign 
 it for the betrayal of its trust as scathingly as 
 ever He condemned the priests and scribes 
 of Jerusalem. 
 
 Would he play ball on Sunday.'^ He walked 
 always on the Sabbath. If Sunday ball lifts 
 men out of the close air of crowded homes, and 
 the bad environment of saloons into a more 
 vigorous health : if it makes it easier for them 
 to live happily and wholesomely, and to 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 131 
 
 believe that there is a God who cares for them 
 and wants them to be happy, it seems alto- 
 gether possible to conceive Him at a Sunday 
 ball game. Would he drink wine? He did, un- 
 doubtedly; but it is equally certain that with 
 the bitter record of the saloon's extortion and 
 destruction, He would today not merely re- 
 frain from drink but would fling Himself 
 unsparingly into the crusade that would end 
 this fearful curse forever. Would he tithe 
 His income? Would He run a union shop? 
 Would He favor votes for women? Would 
 He do this and that and the other thing? 
 
 Ask Him these questions, and He would 
 doubtless reply, 
 
 "Ye know the commandments. Seek ye 
 first the kingdom of heaven. Do these 
 things hasten the coming of the kingdom or 
 retard it? Do they make life easier and 
 happier and more joyous for the children of 
 God, or harder and more miserable? Do they 
 lift men's eyes up, stir their ambitions, raise 
 their hopes, and make them conscious of their 
 eternally precious heritage as heirs of God, or 
 is their effect destructive to the best that is 
 
132 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 in men? Love your God and your neighbor, 
 and all of these problems will answer them- 
 selves." 
 
 Above all, He would be joyous if He were 
 here on earth again. That much is certain. 
 He would not cease to preach the glad news 
 that "God is not the God of the dead but of 
 the living" and that they who are most keenly 
 alive are they who share most fully in His 
 divinity. There is no key to which the doors 
 of Heaven swing open more readily than the 
 music of a hearty laugh. The truth that He 
 came to declare imposes no wearying burdens : 
 He came to "set men free." His yoke is 
 easy — the simple expression of one's best 
 self in love to God and to the men and women 
 and children in the world, every one of whom 
 is equally a child of God. He who glories in 
 the sunshine, whose heart is lifted at every 
 manifestation of beauty — whether in trees 
 or flowers, or a river's sparkle, or a cathe- 
 dral's arch — praises God. He who is never 
 too busy to do a kind thing to the man or 
 woman nearest, who does it not because it is 
 commanded or from any sense of duty, but 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 133 
 
 because it is the spontaneous expression of a 
 life filled full with love, is a brother of the 
 Young Man of Galilee — a Christian. For 
 in the stead of six hundred laws and precepts 
 He gave His own two-sentence gospel: 
 
 "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His 
 righteousness," and "Inasmuch as ye have 
 done it unto one of the least of these my 
 brethren, ye have done it unto me." 
 
 This is the whole law and the prophets. 
 
X 
 
 THE MAN WHO COULD HAVE BEEN 
 KING 
 
 BECAUSE what He ivas is so vastly more 
 important than what He did, we have 
 somewhat disregarded the chronology 
 of the life of the Young Man of Galilee. His 
 strength, His courage, His warm social nature. 
 His insurgency, His mastery over men and 
 His leadership as expressed in a construc- 
 tive social and religious program — all these 
 elements in His character have been so long 
 omitted or pressed into the background that 
 it is proper for us to have thrown them into 
 the forefront of our portrait. Yet the chro- 
 nology is important; it too has been neglected. 
 Men have been taught to think of His life as 
 though it had no well-defined stages of prog- 
 ress, as though He had made no mental 
 growth during the three years of His public 
 
COULD HAVE BEEN KING 135 
 
 work, but had started with the purpose of 
 proclaiming certain ideas, and had died with- 
 out modifying those ideas in any way nor 
 adding to them. As though, indeed, His hfe 
 was no real life at all, but a bit of stage-play 
 in which He had seen the end from the begin- 
 ning, and had proceeded to it wearily, thank- 
 ful that it was to be delayed only three years. 
 Against the bitter injustice to the Young 
 Man of such a view as this all young men 
 who really admire Him must make contin- 
 uous protest. 
 
 We have seen Him launch His career upon 
 the attention of the world by His spectacular 
 cleansing of the Temple. He had probably 
 had no plan for any such virile outburst when 
 He first turned His feet away from Gahlee 
 toward Jerusalem. But the bitter complaint 
 of the poor had dinned itself into His ears 
 and heart on that long journey until He knew 
 that He must strike a blow at the very center 
 of the system that oppressed them. It was 
 the same call to which the idealism of every 
 other youthful reformer has responded since 
 the world began; the bitter outcry under 
 
136 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 which Emerson represents God Himself as 
 smarting : 
 
 God said, I am tired of kings, 
 I suffer them no more, 
 Up to my ear the morning brings 
 The outrage of the poor. 
 
 The echoes of the deed done that April day 
 in the Temple were carried to the ends of the 
 known world by the mass of pilgrims returning 
 from Jerusalem. In any village large enough 
 to have sent a single representative to the 
 feast, the story was told before the end of 
 another month. Almost instantly, therefore, 
 the Young Man of Galilee became a figure of 
 world-wide reputation ; those who represented 
 the system against which His message must 
 prevail were cowed and silenced by the tre- 
 mendous storm of popular approval which 
 His act had created; the wildest dreams of 
 His youth appeared certain of realization. 
 He was started upon a public career which 
 seemed assured of the greatest possible success. 
 
 The week which He spent in Jerusalem was 
 a triumphal one. His appearance on the 
 streets gave the signal for an outburst of 
 
COULD HAVE BEEN KING 137 
 
 enthusiasm; crowds gathered at the corners, 
 blocking traffic, and cheered wildly the short 
 epigrammatic sentences with which He spoke 
 His message. To complete the measure of 
 His satisfaction He opened the door of His 
 lodging one dark night to find Nicodemus, a 
 member of the Sanhedrin, come to visit Him. 
 
 "Rabbi," said the great man to the Young 
 Insurgent, "we know that thou art a teacher 
 come from God." 
 
 He seemed to speak not merely for himself 
 but for the whole ruling class of which he 
 was a representative. "We know" — well 
 might the enthusiasm of the Young Man run 
 high. A month before He had been an un- 
 known carpenter-preacher in the despised 
 province of Galilee. In a single day the com- 
 mon people of the nation had been won over 
 to Him, almost in a body; and now apparently 
 the rulers themselves were ready to follow in 
 their lead. 
 
 He left Jerusalem and turned His steps 
 northward toward His own Galilee. It was a 
 little province, and much disdained by the 
 aristocracy of Jerusalem and Judea, but it 
 
138 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 offered a very fertile field for the new gospel. 
 Other reformers had found it responsive, 
 notably Judas, who in the first years of the 
 Young Man of Galilee had formed here his 
 ill-fated rebellion against the Romans. On 
 the way He passed through the borders of 
 Samaria, and to His great satisfaction dis- 
 covered that even this comparatively foreign 
 population had heard of His achievement in 
 Jerusalem and were eager to have Him remain. 
 For two days He stayed, and then pressed on; 
 but even before He reached the borders of 
 Galilee messengers came to tell Him the public 
 announcement which John had made concern- 
 ing Him — John the Baptist, who, until then, 
 had been the foremost insurgent orator, and 
 one of the great public figures of the nation. 
 
 "He is the Christ, the promised one!" John 
 had said; *'my joy is now fulfilled. He must 
 increase and I shall decrease." 
 
 Apparently there was not a cloud in His 
 sky; the vision which He had of restoring a 
 new heart in His nation, re-creating the self- 
 respect of the people, abolishing the rule of 
 formalism and substituting for it a fresh con- 
 
COULD HAVE BEEN KING 139 
 
 ception of the fatherhood of God and the 
 brotherhood of man, seemed to be on its way 
 to reahzation. The year, or year and a half, 
 that followed in Galilee was filled with days 
 of increasing success and reputation. In 
 Cana, where He had performed His first mira- 
 cle a few months before, a nobleman from the 
 neighboring city of Capernaum met Him, 
 one of the chief men of that important center. 
 "Master, I beseech you to save my son," 
 pleaded the ruler; and when the news spread 
 through Capernaum a few hours later that 
 the son had been restored to health by the 
 mere word of the Young Man, hundreds 
 hurried across to Cana to see Him. His days 
 were filled with preaching and with healing: 
 almost every night a dinner was given for Him 
 in one of the finer houses; on the visit to 
 Capernaum itself, which was made a little 
 later, the crowds were so great that He had 
 difficulty in making His way into the house. 
 Sick people were carried to Him from miles 
 around, and particularly those "possessed of 
 devils," a curious mental affliction of the time 
 which yielded with special readiness to the 
 
140 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 magnificent normality and optimism of the 
 Young Man's presence. Any constitution 
 except a very rugged one would have given 
 away under the strain of days so full of 
 activities as these, but the Young Man woke 
 every morning thoroughly refreshed, and 
 leaped joyously into the problems and con- 
 quests of the new day. 
 
 His success was not unobserved by the little 
 group of reactionaries in Jerusalem who had 
 been so incensed at His first cleansing of the 
 Temple. They sent their spies and informers 
 into the North country to report His every 
 action, and to do what they could to turn the 
 people away. The Young Man was conscious 
 of the presence of these unfriendly ones in 
 His audiences but He was too happy to care. 
 What did it matter, anyway .^^ The Jerusalem 
 hierarchy would never dare to seize Him in 
 Galilee: when such a crowd of almost wor- 
 shiping followers were about Him even the 
 Romans might well have hesitated to interfere. 
 His fame was spreading faster and farther 
 than the power of the Jerusalem clique could 
 ever reach : for every convert whom they lured 
 
COULD HAVE BEEN KING 141 
 
 away He was adding a hundred. The king- 
 dom of heaven was at hand: He proclaimed 
 the fact joyfully, and at every repetition of it 
 the multitude burst into renewed shouts of 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 They were perhaps the most gladsome days 
 that any preacher or reformer on this earth 
 has ever experienced. The warm sun which 
 makes Galilee a garden of delight seemed to be 
 outdoing itself in an effort to contribute to the 
 general rejoicing. To hear the Young Man 
 of Nazareth became the great pastime and 
 recreation of the province. The business of 
 making a living in such a climate and among 
 such people is not an all-day affair; whole 
 families could leave their tiny houses for days 
 without great embarrassment. So the crowds 
 about Him grew, until finally He was com- 
 pelled to withdraw out of the cities into the 
 nearby hills. The women and children could 
 not so easily follow Him there, but the men 
 were not to be thwarted by any journey, no 
 matter how difficult. Even into the hills a 
 great multitude flocked about Him, and, 
 seating Himself on a boulder that raised Him 
 
142 A YOUNG MAN S JESUS 
 
 a little above their heads, He spoke the 
 immortal sentences of His Sermon on the 
 Mount. 
 
 "Blessed are you poor; blessed are you 
 meek. . . . You are the salt of the earth. . . . 
 Ask and it shall be given unto you: seek and 
 ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened 
 unto you. ... If ye then, being evil, know 
 how to give good gifts to your children, how 
 much more shall your Father which is in 
 Heaven give good gifts to them that ask him? 
 . . . All things therefore, which ye would that 
 men should do unto you even so do ye also 
 unto them ; for this is the law and the proph- 
 ets. . . . Not every one that sayeth unto me 
 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter into the Kingdom of 
 Heaven, but he that doeth the will of my 
 Father which is in Heaven. . . . Everyone 
 therefore that heareth these words of mine, 
 and doeth them shall be like a man that built 
 his house upon a rock, and it stood against all 
 storms and winds. But he that heareth these 
 words and doeth them not shall be like a 
 foolish man that built his house upon the 
 shifting sands, and when the storms came 
 
COULD HAVE BEEN KING 143 
 
 the house was washed away, and great was 
 the fall thereof." 
 
 Never in all history had there been such 
 speaking as was heard on those Galilean hill- 
 sides. Day after day the crowds flocked to 
 Him, to ask for the explanation of some point 
 in the previous day's teaching, and to listen 
 eagerly for such new truth as He would unfold 
 to them. Enthusiasm grew as the whole 
 plan of His message began to unfold itself 
 and men saw in it a new self-respect, a release 
 from the bondage of formalism and intoler- 
 ance. But what inspired even greater joy 
 than the words themselves was the manner 
 in which they were spoken. There was no 
 note of apology for their revolutionary char- 
 acter, no slightest hesitation, no references to 
 authorities nor appeals to the law. The 
 Young Man spoke as one who had come to 
 present a message greater than the law; He 
 told them not boastingly but calmly, quietly, 
 as a matter of course, that He was the Son of 
 God, and that they were also sons. He gave 
 them His message as one which His Father 
 and theirs had revealed to Him for them — 
 
144 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 and encouraged them to ask their Father for 
 anything they might want in the confident 
 assurance that their requests would be granted. 
 
 "And it came to pass that when He had 
 ended these words the multitudes were as- 
 tonished at His teaching; for He taught 
 them as one having authority, and not as 
 the scribes. And when He was coming down 
 from the mountain great multitudes followed 
 Him." 
 
 Even greater days were in store for Him. 
 From village to village He went joyously, 
 dining sometimes with rulers, sometimes with 
 publicans and sinners, sometimes with Phari- 
 sees, but extending always the number of His 
 devoted followers, and spreading the good 
 tidings. As the vision of His gospel grew in 
 His own mind He saw that the old ritualism 
 must be swept away before His truth could 
 really possess and vitalize the spirit of the 
 nation. Hence it caused Him no embarrass- 
 ment when the disciples of John came to 
 protest because His own disciples did not 
 fast. "I have not told them to fast," He 
 responded; "what is the use of pouring new 
 
COULD HAVE BEEN KING 145 
 
 wine into old bottles, of attempting to com- 
 press a great new truth into an outworn form? " 
 His disciples, when they were hungry on the 
 Sabbath, plucked ears of corn; and He, far 
 from rebuking them, defended them from the 
 assaults of the legalists, turning the very law 
 and the prophets to their aid. When He 
 healed a man with a withered hand, one 
 Sabbath, and the ruler of the Synagogue re- 
 buked Him, He responded that the Sabbath 
 was made for man, and that to do good on it 
 — even though the law was transgressed — 
 fulfilled its real purpose. And it terrified 
 Him not at all — so sure was He that He was 
 right and that the people were with Him — 
 when it was reported to Him that the "Phari- 
 sees and the Herodians had taken council 
 together how they might destroy Him." 
 
 For in spite of the growing antagonism of 
 the inner circle, who recognized the menace of 
 His message to their special privileges. His 
 popular following grew by leaps and bounds. 
 One day after a series of miracles of healing, 
 which had left Him and His disciples not even 
 time to eat, He took a boat and, setting sail 
 
146 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 on the Sea of Galilee, landed in a desert place, 
 where He planned to spend the night. To 
 His surprise as He stepped ashore He dis- 
 covered that the place, instead of being 
 deserted, as He had supposed it would be, 
 was already filled with the crowd of those that 
 had been with Him all the morning. They 
 were not to be thrown off: they would follow 
 Him even though it took them far from home; 
 even though there was every prospect that 
 they would have to spend the night out of 
 doors, with nothing to eat either that evening 
 or the next morning. And when He saw 
 them, He "had compassion on them." They 
 remained with Him all day long, and in the 
 afternoon His disciples came to Him, wearied 
 almost to the point of petulance, and asked 
 Him to send them away. 
 
 "But they have come a long journey and 
 been with us all day without food," He replied. 
 "We will feed them before they go." 
 
 The disciples looked at Him with that 
 expression of dumb surprise which they were 
 never able to conquer even to the end of His 
 life. 
 
COULD HAVE BEEN KING 147 
 
 "Feed them — on what? We have no 
 money and if we had there are more than 
 five thousand of them, to be fed." 
 
 The Young Man, apparently, did not hear 
 them. *'Go out into the crowd," He said. 
 "Have them sit down; and gather up what- 
 ever food they have and bring it to me." 
 
 Doubtingly, but too well trained by their 
 previous experiences with Him to disobey, 
 the disciples followed His instructions, bring- 
 ing back to Him the meager supply of food 
 that the more prudent members of the crowd 
 had provided. Laying it out before Him, 
 and lifting His eyes to heaven. He blessed it, 
 and ordered it distributed among the multi- 
 tude. And they all ate, every one of the five 
 thousand, and were satisfied. 
 
 It was the moment for which they had been 
 waiting; the last sign that completed their 
 assurance of His Messiahship. Moses had 
 fed their fathers upon manna in the wilder- 
 ness; here was one, who, in another desert 
 place, spoke the blessing of heaven upon an 
 apparently inadequate food supply and so 
 divided it that all of them were fed. Surely 
 
148 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 He was the Messiah, the Christ, who would 
 arm them against the Romans, and leading 
 them in triumph to Jerusalem, reestablish 
 the throne of David. With hurrahs and 
 hosannas they shouted the news back and 
 forth to each other. The day of deliverance 
 of the Jews had come at last; the Son of 
 David was with them; they would take Him 
 and make Him their king. He had ordered 
 His disciples to seat them in fifties and in 
 hundreds so that the food might more easily 
 be passed among them: now these little 
 groups started to their feet and found them- 
 selves organized almost as though by magic 
 into companies. They were an army and 
 they had not realized it: right there, as they 
 stood, they were enough to outnumber the 
 Roman garrison in Jerusalem; and they were 
 only a fraction of the hosts who would rally 
 to the standard as they marched through 
 Galilee and on through Judea. A half dozen 
 of their leaders started forward to the place 
 where the Young Man had been, with the 
 offer of their allegiance, and then — 
 
 He had foreseen their purpose, and while 
 
COULD HAVE BEEN KING 149 
 
 they had been shouting back and forth to 
 each other, perfecting their own arrangements, 
 doubt had raged through His mind with the 
 force of a tempest. Here was His oppor- 
 tunity; should He seize it? The five thou- 
 sand organized before Him would swell to 
 fifty thousand, perhaps a hundred thousand, 
 should He but give the word. Once let it 
 be known that He had put Himself at the 
 head of an insurgent army, and the whole 
 nation would flame with revolt. He would 
 go up to Jerusalem with hosts that would 
 simply overwhelm any army which the 
 Romans could possibly marshal. Should 
 the city close its gates against Him, the Jews 
 inside, bitter as many of them were, would 
 forget their enmity in their greater bitterness 
 against the Romans, and open them to Him. 
 In a month He would be sitting upon the 
 throne of David, King of the Jews, with an 
 army ready at His hand to defend the title. 
 
 It was an appealing picture. He would 
 have to surrender the vision which His youth- 
 ful idealism had created, to be sure — the 
 vision of a people spiritually revived and fit 
 
150 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 to assume the spiritual leadership of the world. 
 And yet after all He might not have to surrender : 
 Solomon had been a king and at the same time a 
 prophet: David had written his Psalms even 
 while he ruled the people; might not He, too — 
 It was as splendid a picture as ever stirred 
 the ambition of a strong man with the full 
 pulse of youth athrob within him. For only an 
 instant the Young Man of Galilee allowed His 
 eyes to rest on it. Then He saw the other 
 picture — the great mass of men and women, 
 His brothers and sisters, not merely in Pales- 
 tine but throughout the known world, as 
 blind led by the blind; oppressed, their self- 
 respect destroyed, their souls squeezed dry 
 of hope and faith and love by the hard ma- 
 chinery of formalism and intolerance. He 
 saw generations born and die and new genera- 
 tions take their places, all slaves to the same 
 spiritual bondage, a servitude which nothing 
 could end except the truth He had come to 
 declare. To put Himself at the head of the 
 army of fanatical patriots would be perhaps 
 to risk His life and His message with it. But 
 worse than the possibility of such a failure 
 
COULD HAVE BEEN KING 151 
 
 was the probability of success. For to be 
 King of the Jews would mean a lifetime spent 
 in the defense of that empty title, a lifetime of 
 strife and bloodshed and intrigue, a lifetime 
 in which His message would never be spoken. 
 Living, He would give His people only an 
 empty semblance of national life; dying. 
 He would leave them to be recaptured by the 
 Roman power — and the truth which he 
 had come to declare, the truth that was ca- 
 pable of continuing its work of emancipation 
 throughout the earth so long as time should 
 last, would be traded for a glittering crown 
 and an empty name. He saw it all in a flash, 
 as He stood there looking out over the eager 
 crowds of His followers. And even as their 
 leaders separated themselves from the mul- 
 titude and started toward Him, He issued a 
 few quiet orders to His disciples, and turning, 
 quickly disappeared. 
 
 "Jesus, therefore, perceiving that they were 
 about to come and take Him by force to make 
 Him King, withdrew again into the mountain 
 Himself alone." 
 
XI 
 
 "WALKED WITH HIM NO MORE" 
 
 THE weak man falters into a decision 
 only to recede from it the next mo- 
 ment. His mind is continually at 
 war with itself; real decision, the kind that 
 carries unwaveringly to the end, is impos- 
 sible. There was nothing of that deficiency 
 in the character of the Young Man of Galilee. 
 What struggle He may have had in the hours 
 following His withdrawal from that shouting 
 multitude can only be imagined, but when He 
 returned at length to His followers there was 
 no more evidence of struggle. His face had 
 new light. His talk from that moment 
 sounded a new note. For in those hours of 
 solitude He had looked down the path of His 
 future to see Death staring back at Him from 
 the other end. He knew at last that He 
 should fail, that the forces which had proved 
 too strong for John would ultimately compass 
 
WALKED WITH HIM NO MORE 153 
 
 His destruction also. Out of the wilderness 
 He stepped as one on whom the sentence of 
 the cross had already been pronounced. 
 
 Men receive that sentence in different ways 
 according to the measure and the material of 
 their manhood. Some are crushed utterly; 
 some plunge into dissipation, determined to 
 forget; and some draw back from the world 
 into prayer and fasting. The Young Man of 
 Galilee did none of these; in all its outward 
 manifestations the course of His life remained 
 unchanged. They continued to invite Him 
 to their dinners and He was, as ever, the center 
 of all interest; they brought the sick to Him 
 and He healed them; His days were as busy 
 as ever, and apparently as happy. Indeed 
 when it seemed to Him that He could no longer 
 withhold the secret from His disciples, lest 
 the end should come even more suddenly 
 than He thought, and leave them entirely 
 unprepared, they could not think that He was 
 serious. He be executed — the thought was 
 incredible. Why, He was the hope of the 
 nation, it was He who should restore the 
 throne to Jerusalem. They were sure of it. 
 
154 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 these disciples of His; the idea that all His 
 immense following could be dispersed, that 
 He Himself could be taken into custody by 
 the Temple clique, which now stood so mani- 
 festly in fear of Him, was too absurd to be 
 entertained for a moment. 
 
 "From that time began Jesus to shew unto 
 His disciples that He must go into Jerusalem, 
 and suffer many things of the elders and 
 chief priests and scribes, and be killed. . . . 
 And Peter took Him and began to rebuke 
 Him, saying. Be it far from thee. Lord; this 
 shall never be unto thee." 
 
 But He was wiser than they. The year 
 that followed that splendid but abortive 
 attempt to make Him king was far different 
 from the two years of happy triumph that had 
 preceded it. In it. He passed through the 
 trial that is the severest test of greatness; 
 He saw His following crumble away. His 
 popularity fade, cheers turn into curses 
 and reverence into hate; yet His faith was 
 unshadowed, His spirit unsoured. 
 
 It must have been a dramatic moment when 
 He returned from His solitude to face the great 
 
WALKED WITH HIM NO MORE 155 
 
 company whom He had fed upon the moun- 
 tain side. They were still hoarse with ho- 
 sannas, still ready to crown Him if He would. 
 One can imagine the startled dismay which 
 His first words cast among them. "I am not 
 come to restore the kingdom to Jerusalem," 
 He said; "mine is a spiritual mission. I am 
 the bread of life. You have been following me 
 because I fed you in the wilderness, but I tell 
 you what I have come to offer you is myself, 
 that by knowing me you may know your 
 Father." It was too much for them. They 
 had flocked about Him because they had seen 
 Him heal the sick, because He had denounced 
 the oppressors who made their lives unbear- 
 able. He was to be their hope of emancipa- 
 tion, their leader against the defilers of the 
 Temple; what did He mean by this senseless 
 mysticism .f^ 
 
 "The Jews therefore murmured concerning 
 Him, because He said, I am the bread that 
 came down out of heaven. And they said, 
 Is not this Jesus, the Son of Joseph, whose 
 father and mother we know; how doth 'He 
 now say, I am come down out of heaven?" 
 
156 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 What nonsense! Gentiles might continue to 
 follow such a man, but His company was 
 clearly no place for a self-respecting Jew. 
 
 Yet a somewhat diminished group continued 
 with Him through the week and on the Sab- 
 bath crowded the synagogue, where it was 
 known that He would be, but there was no 
 comfort for them in what He spoke there. 
 It was a repetition merely of the seemingly 
 senseless talk about the "bread of life." What 
 had happened? Why had He played with 
 them thus? What was it that had so sud- 
 denly destroyed His senses? Sorrowfully they 
 acknowledged themselves baffled, and their 
 last hope for Israel destroyed. "These are 
 hard sayings," they said; "who can under- 
 stand them?" 
 
 "Upon this many of His disciples went 
 back and walked with Him no more." 
 
 "Will you also go away?" He asked the 
 little group of twelve whom He had taken 
 from their fishing and made famous through- 
 out all Galilee by His friendship. And they 
 answered, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou 
 hast the words of eternal hfe." It was the 
 
WALKED WITH HIM NO MORE 157 
 
 one gleam of light in the darkness of His 
 desertion. 
 
 The pleasant coasts of Galilee which had 
 been the scene of His triumphs became now 
 unbearable to Him. They were too full 
 of associations, too teeming with memories 
 that in these hours returned to plague Him. 
 For the only time in His public work He left 
 Palestine, and led His wondering but still 
 dutiful disciples into the foreign cities of 
 Tyre and Sidon. We have followed Him 
 there in a previous chapter. 
 
 This little journey through those foreign 
 coasts was indeed something of a repetition 
 of His earlier triumphs. These people were 
 not Jews ; they had no hope for the establish- 
 ment of a throne in Jerusalem and their in- 
 terest in Him was untinctured by any thought 
 that in His triumph they might find individual 
 place or profit. They sought Him only be- 
 cause His words thrilled them, because they 
 felt their better selves touched and made 
 vibrant by the wonder of His life. 
 
 When at length the time came to turn His 
 steps back to Gahlee He experienced a feeling 
 
158 A YOUNG MAN*S JESUS 
 
 of sorrowful reluctance. Every road, every 
 street corner, almost every house and tree, 
 were alive with memories of His success. 
 To tread those paths again, knowing that it 
 might be the last time, that He should leave 
 them, a failure, on His way to death, must have 
 cut deep. In His distress. He cried out 
 against the cities where His mighty works had 
 been done — Chorazin, Bethsaida, and even 
 the beloved Capernaum. He had healed their 
 sick, and fed their hungry, and spoken His 
 greatest words in their streets; their crowds 
 who had waited outside His door all night in 
 order to catch the first glimpse of Him in the 
 morning — it seemed as though they at 
 least, might have stood faithful. "Woe unto 
 you!" He cried to them out of His lonehness, 
 "for if the mighty works which were done in 
 you had been done in Sodom and Gemorrah, 
 they would have repented long ago, sitting in 
 sack-cloth and ashes." 
 
 For a few weeks of that last summer He 
 staid quietly in Galilee, part of the time in the 
 cool of the woods wherein He could be alone 
 with His disciples. But when autumn came 
 
WALKED WITH HIM NO MORE 159 
 
 He determined to visit Jerusalem again, 
 and attend the Feast of Tabernacles. It was 
 an almost foolhardy resolve. The report of 
 His dwindling following had been carried 
 eagerly to the Temple clique, whose members 
 were emboldened by the news. There were 
 spies in every company that listened to Him; 
 the echo of His smallest act flew to the capital; 
 He could not hope to arrive inside the walls 
 without imminent danger of arrest. All this 
 He knew, but it did not weigh against His 
 resolve. This might be His last feast. There 
 would be visitors from all over the world, 
 some perhaps who in future days might help 
 to spread the message. He must be true 
 to His mission, at whatever cost. Thus He 
 went. We catch one fleeting glance of Him 
 standing on the Temple steps, a snarling 
 crowd of Jews about Him. Into their very 
 faces He hurls His defiance, yet there is a 
 mighty wistfulness in His tones, as of one 
 who has loved deeply and has had His love 
 scornfully rejected. "I have come to give 
 you the truth," He says, "the truth that will 
 make you free." Indignantly they cry out. 
 
160 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 "We are Abraham's children and have never 
 been in bondage to any man." 
 
 "If you were Abraham's children," He cries, 
 His voice rising full-toned above the clamor, 
 "you would hear me, for Abraham knew the 
 spiritual freedom that I am come to proclaim, 
 and lived in it. But you are not his children, 
 you are children of the devil." 
 
 Imagine the scene — the crowd surging 
 about the steps, already determined upon 
 His destruction, the Young Man towering 
 majestically above them. Infuriated, they 
 took up stones to cast at Him, but even 
 while their hands were drawn back they 
 looked upon Him, and feeling anew the 
 mystery of His personality, the divine per- 
 fection of His life, dropped their stones to 
 the ground. A moment longer He gazed 
 sorrowfully out over them. His own people 
 whom He had loved and lost, and then strid- 
 ing calmly through their parted ranks, made 
 His way out of the city and so back to Galilee. 
 
 Much has been made of the forty days' 
 temptation which He underwent in the wilder- 
 ness in the first months of His ministry — too 
 
WALKED WITH HIM NO MORE 161 
 
 much. And almost no one has remembered 
 the long year of harsher trial between the day 
 when they offered Him the crown and that 
 other day when they nailed Him to the cross. 
 Yet every single hour of that year had its 
 terrible temptation. There was the tempta- 
 tion to drop out of sight, to retire and so 
 avoid the bitterness of death; there was the 
 temptation to placate the Pharisees by some 
 easy sophistry that would swing His followers 
 back into their ranks; and there was still the 
 temptation, renewed every day by His own 
 disciples, to abandon the spiritual emphasis 
 of His message and let them make Him king. 
 Did He retire? See Him as He twice goes 
 openly to Jerusalem, and each time so infu- 
 riates the Jews with the sting of His truth that 
 they would stone Him. Did He seek com- 
 promise? To this year belongs the parable 
 of the Pharisee who made ostentatious prayer, 
 and the poor publican who said only, *'Lord 
 have mercy on me, a sinner," whose prayer 
 availed while the prayer of the other was 
 branded an offense to heaven. All Jerusalem 
 must have laughed its appreciation of that 
 
162 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 comparison and retold the story in the streets 
 and meeting-places. It was in this last 
 danger-fraught year, also, that He termed 
 them *' vipers," "children of hell," "hypo- 
 crites," *' consumers of widows' houses" — 
 these proud Pharisees who had the power to 
 kill Him and were at the very time plotting 
 how it could be done. 
 
 Did the kingship tempt Him from His 
 mission? Studied in the light of its last 
 chapter the whole story of the year shows 
 Him eager only to perfect His little following, 
 that the message might go on. Indeed from 
 them, ploddingly loyal as they were, and not 
 from His enemies, came the haunting dread 
 that harassed Him through the year. Sup- 
 pose they should prove incapable of grasping 
 His real message, even to the end. What 
 confidence could He feel in them, who after 
 almost three years of intimate association 
 still understood Him so little as to dispute 
 who should be prime minister in His kingdom .^^ 
 Had He been wise, after all, in staking every- 
 thing upon intelligences so painfully cir- 
 cumscribed.'^ What if they were to fail Him? 
 
WALKED WITH HIM NO MORE 163 
 
 Spring came, and He turned His back on 
 Galilee forever. The departure meant little 
 to the disciples; a dozen times they had left 
 Galilee with Him to attend various feasts at 
 Jerusalem. To their blunted perceptions this 
 departure was no different from any of the rest 
 — they record their recollection of it in two 
 sentences. It meant nothing to them. But 
 to the Young Man of Galilee it was every- 
 thing. Once more He looked about Him 
 on the familiar spots of His triumphus, the 
 synagogues that had been crowded to hear 
 Him, the streets where multitudes had almost 
 trampled upon each other, the houses in which 
 lived men and women whom He had healed. 
 It was a heartrending farewell. Weakness 
 would have spilled itself out in bitter com- 
 plaint. The Young Man of Galilee gave no 
 sign. His soul was bleeding, but even they 
 who shared His closest companionship had no 
 suspicion of it. 
 
 Just for the moment there seemed a revival 
 of interest in Him. The crowds flocked back 
 again in the old triumphant way, and the 
 disciples noted their presence joyously. "The 
 
164 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 multitudes come together unto Him again," 
 they exclaimed gladly, and out of their 
 bubbling hope they revived their vision of His 
 success. But dismay followed fast upon their 
 dreams. Against their ardent protest He 
 carried them off, away from the crowds, into 
 close retirement. They were restless there, 
 discouraged at the dwindhng multitudes, 
 distressed at the careless fashion in which He 
 alienated His supporters. Was it necessary 
 to be quite so harsh with the Pharisees? 
 After all there were many estimable gentle- 
 men among them, who could have contributed 
 much to His success. Why should He have 
 ridiculed them out of His company? Why 
 tell the world that with all their attention to 
 religious rites their prayers were less acceptable 
 to God than the prayers of a hated publican? 
 There were hundreds of earnest Jews who might 
 have followed Him. Why should He slight 
 their ready hospitality by turning aside into 
 the home of Zacchseus, an outcast? With the 
 Pharisees gone, the scribes and lawyers antag- 
 onistic, the rank and file of the Jews offended, 
 how could He hope for success? 
 
WALKED WITH HIM NO MORE 165 
 
 So they questioned among themselves, still 
 groping without vision of His real message or 
 mission, while they moved down slowly to 
 Jerusalem, to the great feast. Most of them 
 had not been with Him three years before, 
 but to Him almost every spot along the road- 
 side brought memories of that other journey 
 when He had been so young, so sanguine and 
 so certain of success. He remembered how 
 the crowd had sat late around their camp-fires 
 to listen to Him, how they had poured into 
 His ears the story of their wrongs at the hands 
 of the Temple clique, how gloriously they had 
 shouted His praises when He had scourged 
 the oppressors before Him. Three years 
 had passed — years of hard, consecrated en- 
 deavor — and He was going to Jerusalem 
 again. Three years in which He had hoped 
 to create a new heart in the world and renew 
 a right spirit within it. And in those years 
 John had been slain; the grafters had reen- 
 trenched themselves in the Temple more 
 firmly than ever; the common people, who 
 had "heard Him gladly," had grown tired of 
 waiting for His success; their oppressors now 
 
166 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 made no concealment of their hatred — what 
 had the three years profited? 
 
 Just outside the city, in the httle town of 
 Bethany, He stopped for supper at the home 
 of Simon, a leper whom He had healed. As 
 the meal was drawing to a close there came a 
 woman through the crowd, and, making her 
 way to where He sat, she opened a cruse of 
 exceedingly precious ointment and poured 
 it on His head. It was an act of reverence 
 peculiarly impressive. While the fragrance 
 of the ointment spread through the chamber 
 there was a moment of reverent silence. Then 
 suddenly, jarringly, came a murmured pro- 
 test from the end of the table where some of 
 the disciples sat. 
 
 "To what purpose is this waste .'^" they 
 whispered indignantly. *'For this ointment 
 might have been sold for much and given to 
 the poor.'* 
 
 The Young Man of Galilee, hearing them, 
 looked around upon them sadly. It was 
 the end of His third year; tomorrow He 
 would enter Jerusalem to face the malig- 
 nant hatred of His enemies: the crowds had 
 
WALKED WITH HIM NO MORE 167 
 
 lost their faith in Him; the powerful among 
 His followers had nearly all of them deserted; 
 and now, on the very eve of His supreme 
 trial, His own disciples, the poor fishermen 
 whom He had called from their nets to 
 be His confidants — even they — murmured 
 against a simple act of reverence toward 
 Him. 
 
 Surely He would have been justified in 
 turning back into retirement and safety. No 
 one could say He had not done His best: 
 why need He throw away His life for an 
 ignorant crowd, and a band of fickle disciples 
 ever ready to lose patience? So He might 
 have argued with Himself that night. The 
 road runs straight through Bethany in either 
 direction — eastward back to Jericho and into 
 Galilee's peaceful recesses, where no destroying 
 enemy would follow, out of which no endanger- 
 ing report would be carried; and westward 
 toward the Jordan and Jerusalem, where were 
 gathered the Herodians, whose king He had 
 called a fox; the Pharisees, smarting under His 
 denunciations; the lawyers and scribes, jealous 
 of His prominence and hating His doctrines; 
 
168 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 the grafters whom He had driven before Him; 
 and the rabble whose proffered kingship He 
 had so stubbornly refused. 
 
 "And on the morrow He drew nigh unto 
 Jerusalem." 
 
XII 
 
 "WITH HIM TWO ROBBERS** 
 
 AFTER all it is the last week that makes 
 Him forever the Young Man's Jesus. 
 An old man would have fallen under 
 its manifold activities from mere want of 
 physical strength : he would have arisen tired- 
 eyed out of restless nights and faced the 
 repeated challenges of the cleverest men in 
 Jerusalem with a brain fogged and impotent; 
 he would have crumbled away completely 
 under the gruelling processes of that final 
 ordeal. Not so the Young Man of Galilee. 
 The rich treasure of His reserve strength, 
 stored up through years of outdoor life and 
 labor responded to every demand. Day by 
 day He strode through those streets in the 
 midst of His enemies, commanding respect 
 by the grandeur of His bearing and the subtle 
 perfection of His manhood. Thirty-six hours 
 of sleepless trial at the end of the week left 
 
170 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 Him still fresh and powerful : He met the final 
 hours of agony clear-eyed, with nerves that 
 never flinched. 
 
 In truth every feature of His splendid 
 manliness which has been the subject of com- 
 ment in these pages shines out with redoubled 
 brilliance in the record of these last few days. 
 It was inevitable that with such a vibrant 
 sympathy for the poor He should let His 
 wrath blaze against the oppressors even in 
 the very hours when they had completed 
 their plan for His destruction. And so we 
 find Him uttering here, upon the threshold 
 of His departure, stronger strictures than had 
 yet passed His lips. " Woe be unto you scribes 
 and Pharisees, hypocrites, ye serpents, ye 
 offspring of vipers," he repeated again and 
 again, knowing that every repetition raised 
 higher the flame of their wrath. The friend- 
 liness, the love of man that made Him always 
 accessible to the individual in need, never 
 displayed itself so wonderfully as in that later 
 moment when He turned, burdened with the 
 weight of His cross, to speak words of comfort 
 to the sorrowing women who followed Him. 
 
WITH HIM TWO ROBBERS 171 
 
 The social instinct, that had caused Him to 
 be the most sought-after guest in every city 
 which He visited, made it natural that He 
 should take leave of His friends, not at some 
 tearful fast, but around the table, after a 
 final supper. And His supreme dignity, recog- 
 nized even in His first days out of the car- 
 penter shop by the rulers of the nation, caused 
 the hardened Roman governor to render Him 
 a reluctant word of homage in the very speech 
 that sentenced Him. • 
 
 His disciples had never been in higher 
 spirits than on the morning of His entry 
 into the city. Time and again He had at- 
 tempted to make clear to them the nature and 
 probable outcome of this visit, but their ears 
 were deaf to His warnings. To their eyes. He 
 was still the Son of David, the promised King 
 of the Jews; the presentiments of death, 
 which He endeavored to communicate to 
 them, were regarded as mere vagaries of a 
 passing depression. And the nature of His 
 approach to the gates seemed for the while 
 to fulfil their richest desire. The simple 
 Galileans, who had traveled the road to the 
 
172 A YOUNG MAN S JESUS 
 
 feast, heard that He too was on the way and 
 waited for Him outside the walls. As He 
 came riding along, followed by His disciples, 
 some one among them quoted the bit of 
 ancient prophecy: 
 
 "Tell ye the daughter of Zion, 
 Behold thy King cometh unto thee 
 Meek and riding upon an ass. 
 And upon a colt the foal of an ass." 
 
 The mere suggestion was like a spark dropped 
 upon their volatile spirits: immediately the 
 cry was raised, "Hosanna to the son of 
 David! Blessed is He that cometh in the 
 name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!" 
 From lip to lip it spread until the enthusiasm 
 of the crowd was fanned into a flame of ex- 
 cited demonstration. Men tore palm leaves 
 from the trees and threw them in the road be- 
 fore Him, others flung out their coats, women 
 tossed flowers, and little children waved their 
 arms as they ran before. "Hosanna!" they 
 cried, and the encircling hills threw back the 
 shout, "Hosanna!" 
 
 Joy thrilled the hearts of the disciples. It 
 was come; the outburst which they had ex- 
 
WITH HIM TWO ROBBERS 173 
 
 pected so long had swept Him up and would 
 carry Him through the gates, over the feeble 
 resistance of His enemies and into the palace. 
 Their own shouts were louder than the cries 
 of the rabble. In all the crowd only the 
 Young Man Himself was unmoved: only 
 He knew how ephemeral, how futile, was the 
 outburst. His eyes were trained upon the 
 future, and already there sounded in His 
 ears that other cry, which would four days 
 later burst from lips like these — the cry of 
 "Crucify, Crucify!" For the first time in 
 His life He was too preoccupied with His 
 own thoughts to be really conscious of what 
 was going on about Him. While the shouting 
 grew louder and the palm branches were 
 strewn thicker before Him, He pulled up His 
 little steed, and looking out over the city, 
 the capital of the nation that He had hoped 
 to save. He wept. They were not tears for 
 Himself. Jerusalem, the splendid center and 
 heart of the national life, lay before Him. 
 Three years earlier He had set forth to restore 
 its faith and make it the spiritual ruler of 
 the world. And He had failed. Its days 
 
174 A YOUNG MAN S JESUS 
 
 were numbered. Already He could foresee 
 the destruction that would come. "O Jeru- 
 salem," He sobbed, *'if thou hadst known the 
 things which belong unto peace, but now they 
 are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall 
 come upon thee when thine enemies shall 
 compass thee round and shall dash thee to 
 the ground, and they shall not leave in thee 
 one stone upon another, because thou knewest 
 not the time of thy visitation." There was 
 no weakness in those tears. Weak men sob 
 for themselves: it takes manhood and vision 
 to weep for a city. 
 
 But the shouting after that was more 
 subdued; it did not seem a kingly thing to 
 this fickle crowd to weep in the hour of tri- 
 umph. They picked their garments out of the 
 way, and when the first rank of them reached 
 the city gates, it was not "Hosanna to the 
 King!" that they shouted. To the cynical 
 questionings of the loiterers who came out 
 to meet them, saying "Who is this.^^" they 
 answered meekly, "This is the prophet, 
 Jesus, from Nazareth of Gahlee." They 
 hung their heads a little as they said it, and 
 
WITH HIM TWO ROBBERS 175 
 
 slipped off into the byway, leaving Him to 
 pass quietly into His lodgings. 
 
 But there were those in the crowd to carry 
 the announcement of his arrival further. 
 Within an hour, the chief priests knew that 
 He was in the city, and the councils of the 
 Temple chque buzzed with plans for His 
 undoing. "The whole world is gone out after 
 Him" cried those who brought the report of 
 His triumphal reception, and the shrewdest, 
 most powerful men in Jerusalem trembled 
 at the words. Their hour had come; they 
 must win against Him now, or lose forever. 
 Once let the emotional crowd that thronged 
 the city raise the cry of "Hosanna to the 
 King!" again, and blood would flow in the 
 streets; they and all the entrenched power 
 and privilege, which they represented, might 
 be swept away before the onslaught. The 
 crowd must be won away from Him. It was 
 no time for a display of force in the face of 
 that excitable multitude; they must trap 
 Him into damaging pubhc statements that 
 could be used against Him. They must turn 
 His own fickle following to His destruction. 
 
176 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 So, group after group, they flung themselves 
 upon Him, the shrewdest, most subtle leaders 
 of every faction in the city. The chief priests 
 and scribes, having most cause to dread Him, 
 tried their skill first. They found Him in the 
 Temple area. Pushing through the breathless 
 crowd about Him, their bright robes gaining 
 place for them, they interrupted Him rudely. 
 
 "By what authority doest thou these 
 things?" they demanded. "Who gave thee 
 thy authority.''" 
 
 The Young Man of Gahlee, knowing the 
 crafty hatred that prompted the question, 
 and the danger that lurked beneath it, 
 responded : 
 
 "I will ask you one question: answer me, 
 and I will tell you by what authority I do these 
 things. The Baptism of John, was it from 
 heaven or from men. Answer." 
 
 They reasoned with themselves, for they 
 were shrewd and not easily entrapped. "If 
 we shall say from heaven," they said, "He 
 will say. Why then did ye not believe him? 
 But should we say from men — they feared 
 the people, for all verily held John to be a 
 
WITH HIM TWO ROBBERS 177 
 
 prophet. And they answered Jesus and said, 
 We know not. And Jesus saith unto them 
 neither tell I you by what authority I do these 
 things." 
 
 Amazed, discomfited, they fled, and after 
 them He hurled His reproaches, the crowd 
 catching every sentence as it dropped from 
 His lips and shouting their approval. 
 
 "I say to you that the publicans and the 
 harlots go into the Kingdom of Heaven before 
 you. For John came unto you in the way of 
 righteousness and ye believed him not: but 
 the publicans and harlots believed him. . . . 
 Therefore, I say unto you the kingdom of 
 heaven shall be taken away from you." Their 
 hatred of Him blazed up into sudden fury. 
 They would have slain Him on the spot, but 
 they were afraid of the multitude about Him. 
 
 So the first onslaught upon Him ended in 
 the complete repulse of His enemies. Within 
 half an hour the result had been reported to 
 the Temple rulers, and those responsible for 
 it were heaped with reproaches. Why had 
 they blundered so crudely in their attack; 
 why had they gone at Him with a plan so 
 
178 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 ill formed, so certain to react upon themselves? 
 Did they realize that they had deliberately 
 played into His hands? He was stronger 
 than ever with the multitude because of the 
 encounter. Something must be done, and 
 at once. In their perplexity the leaders of 
 the Herodians, together with certain shrewd 
 Pharisees, came to them — for the fear of 
 His popular following and the destructive 
 democracy of His teachings had united all 
 parties — and offered a plan admirable in its 
 simplicity and keenness. They would ask 
 Him about rendering tribute to Caesar, the 
 question of fiercest national controversy. 
 Should He say that Caesar was entitled to 
 tribute the crowd would cry out against Him; 
 should He take the popular position they 
 would accuse Him to Pilate as a traitor and an 
 inciter of riot. 
 
 "And when they were come they said unto 
 Him, Master, we know that thou art true and r 
 carest not for any man: for thou regardest 
 not the person of men but of a truth teachest 
 the way of God. Is it lawful to give tribute 
 unto Caesar or not? Shall we give or shall we 
 
WITH HIM TWO ROBBERS 179 
 
 not give? But He, knowing their hypocrisy, 
 said unto them, Why tempt ye me; bring me 
 a penny that I may see it. And they brought 
 it. And He saith unto them, Whose is the 
 image and superscription? And they say unto 
 Him, Caesar's. And Jesus said unto them, 
 Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's 
 and unto God the things that are God's. 
 And they marveled at His answer and held 
 their peace." 
 
 It was a magnificent answer. For a second 
 time in a single day He had proved Himself 
 the master of the brainiest men in the Capital. 
 Yet His victory was not an unmixed triumph, 
 as no one knew better than Himself. The 
 crowd had expected to hear Him hurl back 
 the question with some demagogic outburst 
 against the iniquity of Caesar's rule and the 
 injustice of his tribute. They had hoped 
 for a crisp epigram with which to rouse the 
 smoldering spirit of nationality. It was the 
 last of His great temptations. To have 
 answered as the people hoped He would 
 answer would have been to sweep the city into 
 a revolt out of which He would have emerged 
 
180 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 either as king or as martyr. For the last 
 time He met squarely the evil impulse to 
 subordinate the spiritual element of His mes- 
 sage to a mere economic and political leader- 
 ship. "Render unto Caesar the things that 
 are Caesar's," He said, "and to God the things 
 that are God's." Whilst the questioners were 
 silenced and abashed, the crowd repeated 
 the answer over to themselves, remembering 
 the first half and forgetting the rest. "He 
 told us to render tribute to Caesar," they 
 said, "surely then He is no king." Deliber- 
 ately He had pricked the national hope at 
 its most sensitive spot. From that moment 
 the hosannas grew faint and more faint until 
 they were drowned down entirely in the 
 bitter cries of "Crucify!" 
 
 The Sadducees, cynical, but intellectually 
 keen, brought Him their vulgar question, and 
 them He answered with logic so keen and in- 
 controvertible that "they durst not any more 
 ask Him any question." 
 
 Only the scribes were left: before the day 
 was over one of their number rose to try 
 conclusions with Him. The question as to 
 
WITH HIM TWO ROBBERS 181 
 
 which was most important among the five 
 hundred laws and precepts of the Pharisees 
 had been always discussed and never settled. 
 To venture an opinion on it was certainly 
 to inflame one or another faction of the Phar- 
 isaical party. It was a question loaded with 
 explosive and the scribe knew it. "What 
 commandment," he asked Jesus, "is the first 
 of all." 
 
 Closer the crowd pressed about Him as they 
 waited for His answer — especially the Phar- 
 isees — ready to snatch up His reply and dis- 
 pute it with Him. But He gave them no 
 opportunity. 
 
 He answered, "Hear, oh Israel! The Lord 
 our God, the Lord is one: and thou shalt 
 love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
 and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, 
 and with all thy strength. This is the first 
 commandment. The second is this. Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is 
 none other commandment greater than these." 
 
 Deliberately disregarding the elaborate code 
 of their law. He compressed His whole teach- 
 ing into a single paragraph, which included. 
 
182 A YOUNG MAN*S JESUS 
 
 SO He said, all the moral law that could pos- 
 sibly be written. Let men observe the spirit 
 of this commandment, and it mattered not 
 about the form of their worship, the character 
 of their dress, their rituals or their ceremonial. 
 In these two sentences were the whole law and 
 the prophets. 
 
 So the day closed, leaving Him unques- 
 tionably the intellectual champion of Jerusa- 
 lem. Wise men were there from all over the 
 world, and He had proved Himself wiser than 
 them all. The leaders of every party had 
 tried their skill against Him, and He had 
 flung them back beaten and discomfited. 
 It was His day of supremest triumph. And 
 yet, such was the nature of the situation, 
 by His very victory He had made more certain 
 the final defeat. Each group that had felt 
 the sharp sting of His logic retired more bitter 
 in their hatred, more certain that His con- 
 tinued existence meant destruction to their 
 power. He had offended priests, Pharisees, 
 scribes, and Sadducees, and even the more 
 revolutionary among the populace. He knew 
 it; He realized that the day's proceedings had 
 
WITH HIM TWO ROBBERS 183 
 
 sealed His fate, and yet majestically He walked 
 out from among them, and lay down upon the 
 Mount of Olives to untroubled sleep. 
 
 No one molested Him upon the following 
 day, which was spent in retirement with His 
 disciples. No guard watched over Him; no 
 spies were sent to invade His resting-place. 
 It would have been a simple thing to set out 
 again toward Galilee, and they, who, inside 
 the city walls, had perfected their plans for 
 His defeat, would have rejoiced had He 
 seized the opportunity. But there was no 
 wavering. Young as He was, with bounding 
 pulses, loving the world and the joys of life 
 as few men have ever loved them. He had 
 deliberately determined to die. The disciples 
 even then did not suspect it; but He knew, 
 when He walked into the city on that Thurs- 
 day afternoon, that He was entering those 
 gates for the last time. 
 
 That night at supper He gathered them 
 together, the same friendly, companionable 
 Lord who for three years had broken their 
 bread and blessed it. Others in His position 
 might have sought to be excused from eating. 
 
184 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 or called their followers into an hour of solemn 
 fast, but not He. After supper they went 
 out into the Garden of Gethsemane, where 
 so many of their evenings had been spent. 
 The very air was fragrant with the memory 
 of their happiest hours. Under this tree they 
 had gathered for worship, while the setting 
 sun gilded the towers of the city : in the waters 
 of that brook they had often found refresh- 
 ment: to left and right of them the very 
 trees and stones cried out in heartrending 
 reminder of the days that were gone. He 
 walked a little ahead, in silence, followed by 
 the eleven — for one had slipped away at the 
 supper table, to walk with them no more. 
 Thus He led them up into the Garden until 
 they could see the city in dim outline behind: 
 and He left them while He fought out his last 
 battle alone — and won. 
 
 In the loneliness and darkness the barriers 
 of His determination, which had held firm 
 under the taunting insults of men, broke, and 
 there burst over His soul all the accumulated 
 flood of grief and humiliation which the pre- 
 ceding weeks had piled up. One after another 
 
WITH HIM TWO ROBBERS 185 
 
 the experiences of His ministry repeated 
 themselves — the rejection by his own towns- 
 people, the doubt of John, the stumbling 
 discipleship of the twelve; the plottings of 
 the Pharisees, the hatred of the Temple group ; 
 all these stampeded in quick succession across 
 His wounded mind, until He cried out in 
 tortured protest — 
 
 Where was the justice of it? How could 
 it be explained? He knew His own heart: 
 never in the history of His people. He knew, 
 had one gone forth with purer motives or 
 more unselfish ideals: never one had strug- 
 gled harder for the right, and the end of all 
 the struggle was what? Not merely death — 
 the fear of death had lost its terror — but 
 ignominy, shame, the accusation of blas- 
 phemy, a reputation before the world of one 
 who had sought to destroy religion and truth, 
 and had failed. 
 
 Beaten down, broken in the effort to stem 
 alone the tide of His grief. He sought the com- 
 panionship of His disciples. "My soul is 
 exceeding sorrowful even unto death," He 
 had said to them. "Tarry ye here and watch 
 
186 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 with me." And when He came back to them, 
 after only a Httle absence, He found them 
 slumped upon the ground in a dead, unknow- 
 ing sleep. Even so short a vigil had proved 
 too heavy for their feebleness: there was no 
 comfort to be found with them. 
 
 The evening hours wore on, and still He 
 struggled. "Father," He cried in the agony 
 of His spirit, "Father, if it be thy will let this 
 cup pass from me. Let me not die amid the 
 wreckage of everything for which I have hoped 
 and struggled. Save me from a death that 
 will leave my name a blot upon the world's 
 memory. Give me time in which to wipe 
 out the shameful charge of blasphemy and evil 
 that they have heaped upon me : time in which 
 to build this little handful of my disciples into 
 sturdier righteousness, that the work which 
 thou wouldst have done in the world may not 
 be halted. Oh, Father, not yet — let the cup 
 pass for a little while until the work is done — 
 not now — not yet — " 
 
 A second time He picked His way back to 
 the disciples, only to find them still lost in 
 slumber; and this time He did not disturb 
 
WITH HIM TWO ROBBERS 187 
 
 them. The furore of His grief had worn itself 
 out: the manhness which had never deserted 
 Him in a single moment of His three taxed 
 years, which had never been taught to rely 
 on human reenforcement for its strength, 
 forced back the tide of His humiliation and 
 distress. There have been in the world other 
 strong men, who have conquered every human 
 obstacle only to batter their souls into defeat 
 against the inscrutable plans and apparent 
 injustices of the Infinite. The Young Man of 
 Galilee met that final temptation to betray 
 His manhood and rejected it. Out of the 
 very valley of His despair He won His way 
 back to self-control, and to His manliness 
 brought the final crown of perfection in the 
 complete entrusting of His faith and His 
 work to the hand of God. 
 
 "If it be not thy will that this cup pass 
 from me," He prayed again, "then, Father, 
 thy will be done." 
 
 It was the victory chant after the pivotal 
 battle of His three-years' war. With the 
 calm peace of the conqueror He could go 
 back to His disciples, who still slumbered all 
 
188 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 unconscious of the struggle that had taken 
 place not a dozen yards beyond them. He 
 was perfectly prepared for the final scenes in 
 the drama of His life; and it was thus, in the 
 midst of His disciples, still heavy-eyed, that 
 the soldiers found Him. From His resting- 
 place, far up on the side of the hill. He could 
 see them crossing the brook, and could follow 
 the weird glare of their torches as they made 
 their clumsy ascent towards Him. The clang 
 of their armor rang jarringly through the 
 peace of the Garden: the occasional rough 
 word, borne on the breath of the evening, 
 seemed more than profane in such surround- 
 ings. He waited until they had stumbled 
 almost into His presence, and then, rising, 
 stepped forth to meet them. 
 
 "Whom seek ye?" He inquired. 
 
 Taken by surprise, and awed by His pres- 
 ence they could only mumble His name: 
 
 "Jesus of Nazareth." 
 
 "I am He," He answered them. 
 
 They had been prepared for a violent out- 
 burst, or even armed resistance, but such 
 magnificent composure was beyond the narrow 
 
WITH HIM TWO ROBBERS 189 
 
 limits of their experience. Involuntarily 
 they drew back, and some of them, responding 
 instinctively to the tones of power, "fell 
 to the ground." It was a tribute silent but 
 magnificent; He was never more the master 
 than in the moment of His arrest. 
 
 *'I told you," He repeated calmly, "that 
 I am He." And then, His thought rebounding 
 to those who had shared with Him the joys 
 and perils of His three years of public life, 
 "If therefore ye seek me let these others go 
 their way." But He had no need to make 
 the demand. As He turned in the direction 
 where His followers had stood, it was to find 
 the spot deserted. "They all left Him and 
 fled." Silently the soldiers closed in about 
 Him : and they led Him away — alone. 
 
 There was no pretense to a fair trial. The 
 decision had been made against Him three 
 years before, on that memorable morning when 
 He drove the robbers from the Temple and 
 set the whole corrupt structure of their world 
 to tottering. The Sanhedrin — the Supreme 
 Court — of the nation hastily convened in an 
 illegal night session, utterly forgot its sense of 
 
190 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 dignity in the mad hatred of its members 
 against the Young Man who had menaced its 
 fortunes. Like ill-bred children they spat upon 
 Him and struck Him with their hands, dancing 
 about Him in the ecstasy of their hate. Their 
 blows left Him unmoved; neither taunts nor 
 insults could cause Him to answer a word to 
 their false accusation. He was their prisoner, 
 but it was by His own free will. They knew it. 
 Even in their wrath they felt His mastery, and 
 the guilty consciousness added to their wrath. 
 A little thing occurred as they were hurry- 
 ing Him across the city to the judgment hall 
 of Pilate, just an incident that showed them 
 Pharisees and formalists to the last. It was 
 their Passover period, when to enter the house 
 of an unbeliever was to sin against^ their 
 law. Up to the judgment hall they rushed, 
 and just outside, their voices hoarse with the 
 cries of "Crucify!" they stopped. They 
 were there to shed the innocent blood of one 
 whose only crime had been to rebuke their 
 excesses. Murder was nothing to them, but 
 to enter the house of a Gentile — that was an 
 offense against their religion. 
 
WITH HIM TWO ROBBERS 191 
 
 Reluctantly, and after a resistance, remark- 
 ably sustained in a politician and a hireling, 
 Pilate yielded the Young Man of Galilee into 
 their hands. "Behold a man," he said, rend- 
 ering his involuntary tribute to the most 
 remarkable prisoner who had ever been haled 
 before him; but the words were drowned in 
 the hateful roar that rolled in great waves 
 below. "Crucify! Crucify!" came the shout 
 from the robed judges and priests crowded close 
 about the palace, and "Crucify!" echoed the 
 multitude that once had "heard Him gladly." 
 
 So, on a barren hillock outside the city, 
 they murdered Him, hanging His perfect 
 body on a cross; and on either side they 
 hanged a robber. It was the end. The crowd 
 had sickened of its revenge in the moment of 
 realization, and was gone; His followers were 
 scattered through the city, each alone with 
 his sorrow; there was nothing left of the 
 external influences that had impressed men's 
 minds and made it easy to believe on Him. 
 He could do no miracle there, hanging as He 
 was in the throes of a shameful death; and 
 yet — 
 
192 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 "Jesus," said one of the robbers, turning 
 his head painfully to speak the words; "Jesus, 
 remember me when thou comest into thy 
 kingdom." 
 
 Think of it — even as He waited for death 
 there upon the cross, tortured by pain and 
 taunted with the cries of passers-by, the 
 strange magnetism that had drawn the mul- 
 titudes to Him still made itself felt. A thief, 
 hanged like Himself upon a cross, felt His 
 charm, the compelling power of His presence, 
 and even there believed. To the very end 
 He was still dominant, the incomparable 
 master of men. 
 
XIII 
 
 TEE THIRD DAY 
 
 SO came night. Along the stony paths 
 that led back to the city, wet-eyed 
 women stepped droopingly. Inside the 
 gates at the house of the high priest. His 
 murderers reclined in eager celebration of the 
 event that had removed the chief menace to 
 their security. And down from the stained 
 shoulders of the cross friendly arms lifted 
 Him tenderly and bore Him away. 
 
 It was over, there could be no doubt of 
 that. In a few weeks His little following, 
 all undisciplined, would be scattered abroad; 
 sixty days would be enough to render His 
 name only an obscure memory. It had been 
 so with a hundred other rebels against the 
 established order, whose names were recorded 
 only on the executioner's record; it would 
 be so with Him. Thus they reasoned, who 
 
194 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 drank their wine that night in celebration of 
 His destruction, and there was none among 
 His disciples who even dared cherish any 
 hope. What they did, where they went, for 
 the next two days, they could not afterwards 
 remember. Grief covered their world like a 
 shroud, and there was no sun. 
 
 And on the third day something happened. 
 
 Some way, somehow, the sun shone again 
 upon the tired world. By some magic they 
 who had buried their hearts with Him re- 
 ceived them back again. Hope sprang sud- 
 denly afresh within their souls; their eyes 
 danced. 
 
 Men have disputed much as to what it was 
 that happened to them on tluit third day. 
 Their own explanation was this — the Young 
 Man of Galilee, whom they had seen crucified, 
 came back into their dead lives. 
 
 Down through the pageant of the ages 
 that explanation has passed from generation 
 to generation, carrying hope. *' Because He 
 lived, we shall live again," men have whispered 
 to each other, while they clasped hands above 
 the bitter wreckage of death. 
 
THE THIRD DAY 195 
 
 A magnificently audacious hope, you say; 
 a fateful hope to hang upon the slender word 
 of a few Galilean fishermen. Perhaps, and 
 yet it does not hang upon their word alone. 
 "He rose from the dead,'* said the eleven. 
 But you need not depend upon their testimony. 
 Close about you, in your own city if you will, 
 you may find hundreds to tell you the story 
 of how He is risen. 
 
 "He came back into our lives on the third 
 day," was the glad news the disciples preached. 
 That was nineteen hundred years ago. But 
 into a thousand lives today, out of which He 
 has died as completely as ever He did out of 
 theirs, He does come back with power that 
 breeds a manliness of the quality of His own. 
 
 On more than one occasion I myseK have 
 seen Him come. 
 
 Under the elevated railroad structure on 
 Van Buren Street, Chicago, on the south 
 side of the street, is a narrow doorway that 
 leads neither into a cigar store nor a saloon. 
 The buildings that crowd about it rise 
 several stories higher and bend down over 
 
196 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 it sneeringly. Electric cars, which in their 
 happier moments traverse the broad thor- 
 oughfares near the lake front, clang out their 
 protests as they are hurried by. The "ele- 
 vated" thunders up above. And all along 
 the sidewalk the well to do are jostled up 
 against the worthless. Van Buren street is 
 the dead-line of downtown Chicago. To the 
 north of it respectability travels and barters, 
 worships, marries and is given in marriage. 
 To the immediate south poor, hopeless bits 
 of human wreckage are tossed about from bar 
 to bar, empty bottles on the sea of life. The 
 building which is neither a cigar store nor a 
 saloon is the Pacific Garden Mission. Its 
 door opens north, but those who enter through 
 it come up from below the dead-line from the 
 south. 
 
 Two days before Christmas you will find 
 a guard at the door who will inform you that 
 the room is full, and then, noting that you 
 come from the north instead of the south, 
 will step aside, deferentially, to let you in. 
 And you will pass into a long, rather dark 
 hall packed full of men. It is not different 
 
THE THIRD DAY 197 
 
 from other missions. There are the same 
 platform and organ, the same verses painted 
 on the walls, the same ragged song-books, 
 and the same smell. Clothes that do duty 
 both night and day come to have that smell 
 after a few weeks. When you have been to 
 many missions you grow accustomed to it, 
 and they who work there all their lives pretend 
 not to notice it at all. You will sit upon the 
 steps of the platform probably, because the 
 chairs are full, and from that point of vantage 
 you can read the signs that are printed on the 
 faces down below. 
 
 It is sometimes said of a character in a book 
 that "His face was like parchment." These 
 faces are of that sort; yellowed they are, and 
 drawn, and life has written on them in black 
 lines and in red. Most of the messages are 
 as easily distinguished as the verses printed 
 on the walls. For instance, the face of the 
 bent, blear-eyed old man in the second row — 
 you see it — reads, "The wages of sin is 
 death." The middle-aged chap whose fea- 
 tures have some trace of an earlier distinction 
 — the lines there read, "They who sow the 
 
198 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 wind shall reap the whirlwind." The writing 
 on the face of the young fellow who sits two 
 rows back on the left is so not distinct. One 
 has to look twice and carefully to make it 
 out. Under such scrutiny it reads, "Unless 
 ye repent ye shall likewise perish." 
 
 They are not pleasant messages; one turns 
 from them with something of relief to the 
 face of Harry Monroe, the chief gardener in 
 this Pacific Garden. He is a hard-packed 
 man of medium height, who preaches in short, 
 swift sentences, driven home with sharp 
 jabs of his arms. He was leading the singing 
 as we came in at the door. Now he steps 
 forward to introduce one of the mission's 
 converts who is going to "talk to the boys." 
 
 "Boys, I want you to take a good look at 
 this next speaker. Do you see him? Looks 
 pretty good, don't he — black coat and creased 
 pants? You ought to have seen him ten years 
 ago. Why, when he first walked in here he 
 hadn't had a bath in six weeks and he was so 
 crooked he cast a shadow like a corkscrew." 
 
 The speaker begins, but you have heard 
 stories like his a good many times before and 
 
THE THIRD DAY 199 
 
 unconsciously your attention drifts back to 
 the faces in front. Your eyes pass searchingly 
 from one to the other and settle finally on 
 a man who at first glance has little to distin- 
 guish him from the others. His clothes are 
 almost as shabby, and his back is stooped. 
 But something in his look arrests you — the 
 eyes shine with an unusual brilliance; it is 
 as though an unseen spirit had breathed on 
 dead embers and started them into a new and 
 brighter light. You wish some way that you 
 knew the story connected with that face. 
 And here it is. 
 
 "I don't know as you'd rightly call it a 
 story, pardner. I'm what you might call 
 just the ordinary sort of a short-stake man. 
 You don't know what a short-stake man is? 
 Of course you don't — I forgot. We're all 
 either short-stake men or long-stake men, 
 all us poor lads that works in the construction 
 camps. The long-stake man saves his wad 
 and the short-stake man blows his in, and there 
 you have it — the difference. The long- 
 stake man may be savin' for the old lady and 
 
200 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 the kids and sendin' his wad home regular 
 every month. Or he may just be savin' 
 for a couple o' months till he gets enough to 
 go on a continuous jag. But us short-stakers 
 never saves nothin'. It's work a week and 
 then all night at the bar, and then work 
 another week. And when we don't show up 
 Monday mornin' they fires us and we move 
 on to the next camp and starts in all over 
 again. 
 
 "It sounds horrible enough all right, but 
 you'd understand it better if you ever went 
 to the camps. Your sort never does go, of 
 course. You ride over the road when it's 
 finished and look out along the track and see 
 a row of tar-paper shacks and say: * There's 
 a construction camp,' but you never seen the 
 hell that's there when the road is goin' through. 
 If you did you'd understand how we get 
 to be short-stake men. You'd know how it 
 is to work ten hours in the mud and have 
 nothin' to do on Sunday but get drunk and 
 imagine you're somewhere else. 
 
 "You don't care about my family — and 
 there ain't much to tell about them, anyway. 
 
THE THIRD DAY 201 
 
 The old lady was decent and hard workin' 
 enough — and there never was no old man. 
 Least I never heard her speak about him. 
 And soon as I could walk to the railroad I 
 left and went into the camps. I had some 
 ambition at that; most of us do at the start. 
 And when they started me in as water boy I 
 thought maybe I could see my way clear right 
 up to foreman, and maybe even higher'n 
 that. But, man, you don't know the curse 
 of it. You don't know what it is to work 
 and work, and roll in between dirty blankets 
 on hard board bunks. You don't know the 
 rotten things you hear and the rotten sights 
 you see. And hell camps on the trail of the 
 construction gang, and the Devil is the first 
 passenger over the rails. And you're lonesome 
 for decent people and home and nice girls and 
 some one that cares. 
 
 "It's an awful business, pardner. I re- 
 member the first camp that I went to; they 
 claimed that the town was the wickedest town 
 in the world, and I guess probably it was at 
 that. We was sort of proud of the claim, 
 anyway, and the fellows took some pride in 
 
202 A YOUNG MAN S JESUS 
 
 makin' it good. There hadn't been no town 
 there at all ten days before. And then sud- 
 denly the work opened up. Five camps was 
 started within five miles. The graders come 
 and the bridge gangs, almost a thousand men 
 in ten days, shipped in in bunches like hogs. 
 And where there hadn't been nothin' before 
 but one little store, with the post-office in it, 
 all of a sudden there was ten saloons and a 
 couple of gamblin' joints and a barber shop. 
 And girls come, too — poor things. The 
 city'd had its use of them and had thrown 
 them out, and they found their way into the 
 camps. And that was home to me for a year. 
 *'I don't know just how I come to get to 
 drinkin' but maybe you'd understand if you'd 
 been in the camps. I was all right while the 
 work lasted, but Sundays, when the job shut 
 down, it just seemed as if I couldn't stand it 
 at all. The lonesomeness, pardner, is what 
 does it, that and to know that whatever you 
 do nobody's goin' to know it, and nobody 
 cares. It just used to seem to me that if 
 there was one human bein' that would care 
 whether I kep' on hvin' or not, that maybe I 
 
THE THIRD DAY 203 
 
 would have pulled through all right. But 
 there wasn't no one. And so I just got to 
 goin' the way of the crowd, and pretty soon 
 I was workin' for the saloons as hard as the 
 rest of the guys. 
 
 "There ain't any use of botherin' to tell 
 the whole yarn. You wouldn't understand 
 anyway, because you've never been to the 
 camps. I got to firin' on a dinky, and after 
 a while they gave me one to run. And that 
 paid me $3.50 a day. First I used to save 
 a little every month, but there weren't nothin' 
 to do with the money except to buy booze. 
 And I kept makin' the stakes a little shorter 
 and the celebrations a little longer, until 
 finally they chucked me out of the job and I 
 banged around from one camp to another, 
 workin' a few days and blowin' it in, and work- 
 in' and blowin' it in. 
 
 "Winters when the jobs shut down I drifted 
 back to Chicago with the rest, or to Denver 
 or San Francisco, or wherever the nearest city 
 happened to be. Sometimes there was the 
 ice camps to give you a job through the cold 
 months. Sometimes I just hung around the 
 
204 A YOUNG MAN S JESUS 
 
 gin mills down here south of Van Buren; 
 sometimes I shovelled snow for a while, but 
 it was always the booze. Work and drink, 
 and more work and more drink, made up the 
 program — and I come to sort of like it finally, 
 and then to think that after all it was all the 
 life that I'd ever know, or care to know. 
 And finally I just quit thinkin' at all. 
 
 "I presume you're married, pardner? No? 
 Well, you got some folks, ain't you — someone 
 that you sort of care for more'n the rest of the 
 world, and that sort of Hkes you? I thought 
 so. Was you ever away from them at this 
 time of the year, along now about Christmas, 
 in some town where you didn't know no one? 
 If you was you can imagine a little how it 
 used to hit me. Lord, how I used to hate 
 it — the things in the windows, and the fellows 
 in overcoats and the good-lookin' girls on the 
 streets. And everyone happy and laughin' 
 and spendin' their money. and plannin' good 
 times at home with the folks. Home — the 
 word used to make me pretty near sick. To 
 know that everyone else in the world had a 
 home, and someone in it that cared. 
 
THE THIRD DAY 205 
 
 "Last year some way it seemed to get me 
 worse than it ever had before. I don't know 
 why — perhaps because I'm not as young as 
 I used to be, and it seemed as though I'd 
 done everythin' in the world that I could 
 to find pleasure, and all I had for my pains 
 was memories that hurt when I looked at them. 
 Everywhere was Christmas, until, pardner, 
 it seemed to me that rather'n have that 
 cursed day come on me again I'd end the whole 
 business. Sounds awful to you, probably, 
 but it didn't seem awful to me then, least not 
 so awful as the lonesomeness and hell of the 
 day. And I made up my mind to quit the 
 whole business — the river was cold, but it 
 would do its work quick, and I knew other 
 fellows that had gone out that way before, 
 and it seemed to me they was lucky. 
 
 "Does it bore you? No? Well, there 
 ain't much more to tell. Why I didn't do 
 it I don' know. But some one had told me 
 that this mornin' — it was just a year ago 
 this mornin' — some one told me that today 
 Harry Monroe and his crowd in here would 
 be feedin' the bums. Why not get a square 
 
206 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 meal? I says to myself. If you're goin' 
 to end the rotten game, why don't you end it 
 with your stomach full? Maybe it was that, 
 or maybe it was because I needed a little time 
 to brace up my nerve. But I turned in here 
 anyway, and sat down right here in this 
 seat. 
 
 "It was the first time I ever got into a 
 place like this, and what they were doin' 
 didn't mean much to me. I was too busy 
 thinkin' about my own troubles. There was 
 a lot of singin', mostly by Harry, with a little 
 by some of the bums that thought they would 
 get more of the grub if they sang. Then there 
 was speakin' by well-dressed fellows from 
 uptown that looked as though they had homes 
 and someone to work for. And I didn't 
 listen to them. Finally Harry got up. I 
 didn't pay much attention at first, but after 
 a while what he was sayin' sort of drummed 
 into my ears and I sat up and began to take 
 notice. 
 
 "I don't remember it very well now, but 
 I mind that he said he was down and out once 
 himself. And he told us his hard luck story. 
 
THE THIRD DAY 207 
 
 and finally he says, 'You fellows think there 
 ain't no one as cares; but I'm here to tell 
 you you're wrong. There's One that does 
 care and He's cared ever since you was born. 
 Every night that you've been soaked with 
 booze He's cried for you. And every day that 
 you've pan-handled your way along these 
 dirty streets He's been walkin' along with 
 you and try in' to give you a hand. And you 
 wouldn't have nothin' to do with Him. You 
 gave Him the marble shoulder. And He cried 
 for you, and He loves you, and He wants you 
 to give Him a chance.' 
 
 "'What sort of foolishness is that?' I says 
 to myself, but I didn't say nothin' out loud 
 and Harry went right along talkin'. 'He 
 used to work at the carpenter business,' 
 says Harry, 'and He had his own troubles 
 in life, and He knows what it is to be down 
 and out and have everybody in the world on 
 the other side. That's why He's strong for 
 you. His name is Jesus. He followed you 
 in here today and He's standin' right along- 
 side of you now. And He cares for you, boys, 
 He cares.'" 
 
208 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 "Well, that's all — except that I give Him 
 a chance, the way Harry said — and I find 
 out what Harry says was no lie. I been sober 
 now for a year, pardner, the first decent year 
 in my life since I was fifteen years old. And 
 I'm savin' the stake every week for a little 
 home of my own, and there's a girl that's 
 promised to come in when I get it fixed. And 
 every day for a year I been walkin' through 
 these streets with one shoulder a little higher'n 
 the other, because He's had His hand on one 
 of them. And, pardner, it's the greatest 
 feelin' in the world to know that He's walkin' 
 alongside, and He cares — " 
 
 There is a rustle back by the door and 
 waiters come elbowing their way into the 
 room with great trays of ham sandwiches and 
 pitchers of black coffee and plates of rolls. 
 The dark, bleared eyes of the men turn hun- 
 grily in that direction. They reach out hke 
 animals and snatch at the trays as the waiters 
 pass down between them. In swift, beast- 
 like gulps they swallow the food, stretching 
 out their grimy hands at the same time for 
 
THE THIRD DAY 209 
 
 more. Some visitor at your side, who has 
 come from curiosity and who does not beheve 
 in missions, turns away in disgust. "Look 
 at them fighting their way up to the trough," 
 he grumbles. "What good does it do to 
 feed them.'^ Look at them fight for it — the 
 beasts." 
 
 You look, but your gaze turns back to your 
 friend in the rear of the room near the door. 
 It was just a year ago, you remember, that he, 
 too, was a beast, fighting his way into the 
 trough. He has paused in his eating to speak 
 earnestly to the wistful young fellow who 
 sits at his right. And as he speaks there 
 comes over the wistful face an expression of 
 wonder, then greater wonder, and finally a 
 gleam that seems almost the promise of con- 
 tent. 
 
 Hundreds of times in all sorts of places, 
 I have seen a tremor in a very grave of a life, 
 and out of that grave the Young Man of 
 Galilee has emerged triumphant. It is a 
 sight not reserved for the wise or the privi- 
 leged. Anyone may see it for himself on any 
 
210 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 night on the Bower3% in Water Street, in 
 Van Buren Street, in a dozen parts of almost 
 any city. Wherever it happens it is the one 
 greatest masterpiece that can ever be written 
 on the Hfe of the Young Man of Gahlee, the 
 only perfect tribute to His manliness. 
 
 For there have been many manly men in 
 the world, many even with courage sufficient 
 to die for their faith. But in all history there 
 has been only one manliness so potent, so 
 superlatively youthful and vibrant with life 
 that it can reach across nineteen centuries, 
 and, touching a dead life, create new manliness 
 in its own image. 
 
 These beings new-created — they are His 
 resurrection. 
 
XIV 
 
 MORE THAN A MAN 
 
 A GENERATION later, in the Im- 
 perial City of Rome, another young 
 man died, in his thirty-first year. 
 Only a handful of sobbing peasants mourned 
 the Young Man of Galilee. The tidings of 
 His death were carried a little distance beyond 
 Jerusalem into the villages that He had vis- 
 ited, where they caused a momentary flutter 
 of comment and passed rapidly out of memory. 
 The great historian of His nation mentions 
 the crucifixion in a mere sentence and in 
 enumerating the religious sects of the period 
 omits any reference to the pathetic little band 
 of His followers. No disciplined organiza- 
 tion remained to keep His memory fresh; 
 no books to perpetuate His message; noth- 
 ing— 
 
 But when, in the Imperial City, the other 
 young man died the whole world heard, and 
 
212 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 remembered. For since his seventeenth year 
 his word had been absolute from Spain to 
 the Himalayas; a thousand governors and 
 tetrarchs had borne rule in his name, and 
 to the farthest corners of the known world 
 armies had carried the eagles of his standards. 
 
 Not a dozen men in all history have enjoyed 
 so splendid an opportunity to re-create the 
 earth in their own image. Rome had wel- 
 comed him eagerly; he was so young, so 
 handsome, and in his first few years, appar- 
 ently so good. The Senate had hastened 
 to confer its honors upon him, and the rough 
 voices of soldiers broke forth into enthusiastic 
 acclaim at his approach. Let him but nod, 
 and a city would rise full-grown out of the 
 sands of the desert, or three thousand miles 
 away a whole province be laid desolate. What 
 he did was right, for was he not Emperor, 
 and a god? 
 
 For seventeen long years — six times the 
 public life of the Young Man of Galilee — 
 there was no other will within the weary 
 world but his. When brutish passion slowly 
 overran his soul, subjugating the finer sensi- 
 
MORE THAN A MAN 213 
 
 bill ties of his earlier years, there was no effec- 
 tive protest against his ruthlessness. The 
 wisest, most patriotic men in Rome were 
 blotted out to ease his guilty dread, and there 
 was only a murmured discontent. Even the 
 smoldering ruins of the Imperial City itself, 
 sacrificed to make an evening's spectacle for 
 his degenerate enjoyment, were not sufficient 
 to rouse revolt. The world was his own; he 
 was omnipotent in it; and when at length 
 death struck the blow that had been so long 
 delayed, men could not believe that he was 
 dead. Surely omnipotence could not perish; 
 surely a god, to whom the world had proffered 
 worship during the memory of half the liv- 
 ing population would not be subject to the 
 common fate of men. '^Nero redivivuSy^ they 
 cried — "Nero will return" — and for a thou- 
 sand years there were those that believed it. 
 The age was prone to superstition; even 
 men of solid sense in Rome felt the spell 
 which the dominant personality of the dead 
 emperor had cast upon them. The whisper 
 *'Nero will return" was sufficient to carry a 
 tremor into the very heart of the palace; 
 
214 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 and at intervals for ten centuries men rose in 
 this province or that to proclaim themselves 
 Nero reincarnated, and always there were 
 behevers who flocked to the raised standard. 
 
 Even the persecuted Christian Church did 
 not escape the influence of the superstition. 
 Such fearful moral turpitude as his, it seemed, 
 must have gained itself an immortality of 
 infamy. The author of the Apocalypse, 
 though he did not credit the superstition, 
 made use of it; his "beast with the healed 
 wound," was none other than the hated 
 emperor resurrected, and in his vision of the 
 Antichrist, shared by the great multitude of 
 his fellow Christians, one may read the dread 
 belief that Nero would return. 
 
 But generations passed and Nero did not 
 return. Little by little the legend of his 
 resurrection grew more faint, one by one they 
 who had centered their hope, or their fear, 
 upon him dropped off. And today there is 
 not in all the world a single human being to 
 whom the cry "Nero redivivus" would cause 
 one momentary flicker of hope. Nero is 
 forever dead: the man who held the world in 
 
MORE THAN A MAN 215 
 
 liis hand, for whose return thousands looked, 
 has today no shrine in any single human 
 heart. 
 
 And the Young Man of Galilee, draining 
 out His heart's blood upon a felon's cross — 
 what of Him? Three days after they had 
 laid Him into the tomb, there were a score 
 of sorrowing people in Jerusalem to whom in 
 some astonishing fashion the conviction came 
 suddenly that He had risen from the dead, 
 was in truth again among them. Sixty days 
 later the score had become three thousand; 
 a decade passed and the far-off provinces 
 were startled by the announcement, "They 
 that have turned the world upside down have 
 come hither also"; and within a short cen- 
 tury it was written, and acknowledged by 
 both friends and enemies alike, that "At this 
 time there is no people under heaven, even 
 of those that wander on the desert and dwell 
 in tents, where prayers are not daily offered 
 in the name of the crucified Jesus." 
 
 The faith that centered on a throne grew 
 dimmer in each generation until it flickered 
 and went out; the faith born underneath the 
 
216 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 cross and at the mouth of a borrrowed tomb 
 finally compassed the world. What shall 
 be said in explanation of a phenomenon so 
 contrary to all human probability? Of all 
 the great ones who have sought with their 
 little lifetimes to reshape the world, only 
 one — the Young Man of Galilee — has in- 
 spired permanently in any considerable 
 portion of humanity the conviction that He 
 is still present in the world, actively and dom- 
 inantly influential. Shall you say that credit 
 is due to the shrewdness of His chief followers 
 who fabricated the myth concerning Him and 
 perpetuated it.^^ Nero's followers were greater 
 in number, more powerful in wealth and not 
 less shrewd. Or is it easier to say that He 
 was more than a man? 
 
 "Heaven and earth shall pass away," said 
 the Young Man of Galilee, "but my words 
 shall not pass away" — an astounding utter- 
 ance in the mouth of a youth, an untaught 
 peasant, hardly out of the shadow of a 
 carpenter shop. But not more astound- 
 ing than scores of other sentences that fell 
 from His lips. Forget for a moment that 
 
MORE THAN A MAN 217 
 
 you know the source of these words; try to 
 hear them as though they were new to your 
 ears; get the full compelhng power of them. 
 Listen — 
 
 "I am come a light into the world that 
 whosoever believeth on me should not abide 
 in darkness. And if any man hear my words 
 and believe not, I judge him not; for I came 
 not to judge the world, but to save the world." 
 
 "I am the way, the truth and the life: no 
 man cometh to the Father but by me." 
 
 "All things that the Father hath are mine. 
 . . . Verily, verily I say unto you. Whatso- 
 ever ye shall ask of the Father in my name he 
 will give it to you." 
 
 "In the world ye shall have tribulation, 
 but be of good cheer; I have overcome the 
 world." 
 
 "These things spake Jesus and lifted 
 up His eyes to heaven, and said. Father the 
 hour is come, glorify thy son, that thy Son 
 may also glorify thee." 
 
 "As thou hast given Him power over all 
 flesh that He should give eternal hfe to as 
 many as thou hast given Him." 
 
218 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 "And this is life eternal that men should 
 beheve upon thee, the only true God; and 
 Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." 
 
 "Also I say unto you, Whosoever shall 
 confess me before men, him shall the Son of 
 Man confess before the angels of God. But 
 he that denieth me before men shall be denied 
 before the angels of God." 
 
 "I am the bread of life; he that cometh 
 to me shall not hunger, and he that believeth 
 on me shall never thirst." 
 
 "For I am come down from Heaven not 
 to do mine own will but to do the will of Him 
 that sent me. For this is the will of my Father 
 that everyone that beholdeth the Son and 
 believeth on Him should have eternal life; 
 and I will raise Him up at the last day." 
 
 "Jesus answered. If I glorify myself my 
 glory is nothing; it is my Father that glori- 
 fieth me; of whom ye say, he is your God. 
 And ye have not known him, but I know him 
 and keep his word. Your father Abraham 
 rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was 
 glad. The Jews therefore said unto him. 
 Thou art not yet fifty years old and hast thou 
 
MORE THAN A MAN 219 
 
 seen Abraham? Jesus said unto them, Verily, 
 verily I say unto you, Before Abraham was 
 I am." 
 
 "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, 
 shall draw all men unto me." 
 
 *'Not everyone 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." 
 
 "Again the high priests asked Him, and 
 said unto Him, Art thou the Christ the son 
 of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am: 
 and ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the 
 right hand of power, and coming with the 
 clouds of heaven." 
 
 Merely drops, these, dipped up at random 
 out of the majestic river of His utterance, 
 yet how astounding! In the glory of His 
 physical manliness, in the keenness of His 
 enjoyment of life. He was as we have seen 
 Him, delightfully but superbly normal. What 
 shall be said of utterances like these in one 
 otherwise so splendidly well-balanced and 
 sane? Shall we say that He was carried 
 away by the ecstasy of His emotions, that 
 
220 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 He who in all else was so clearly master of 
 every situation, failed in this respect to be 
 master of Himself? Or is it easier to accept 
 the belief that has persisted from heart to 
 heart through nineteen centuries, that these 
 words are the final manifestation of His 
 real character; that abnormal and meaning- 
 less as they are on the lips of any man, they 
 are the perfectly natural expression of one 
 who was more than a man? 
 
 If time be the test of words as it is of lives, 
 what shall be thought of the continuing 
 vitality of these sentences in comparison 
 with any other words that have ever been 
 spoken or written. Socrates, too, gave the 
 world great utterances, as did Aristotle and 
 hundreds of others. Placed in the curriculum 
 of a seminary or college, they are still, after 
 more than two thousand years, capable of 
 bringing to those who read them a new vision 
 of truth, a clearer habit of thought. But in 
 all the generations that have passed since 
 Socrates lived no one has ever thought it 
 worth while to risk his life in order that the 
 words of Socrates might be translated into the 
 
MORE THAN A MAN 221 
 
 speech of a savage tribe. Milton wrote mag- 
 nificently of life and death and Heaven and 
 eternity, the very subjects of the Young 
 Man of Galilee; and men of sensitive soul 
 are lifted out of themselves at the beauty 
 of Milton's thought. But translate Milton 
 into the language of the South Sea Islanders, 
 teach them his cadences by heart, and they 
 would be savages still. 
 
 But once carry the words of the Young Man 
 of Galilee to a pagan shore, and behold a 
 miracle. In even one generation a civiliza- 
 tion is created full grown and perfect, and 
 justice takes the place of hate. 
 
 Much can be wrought in the minds of men 
 by clever ruse, but is it reasonable to believe 
 that a civihzation could be reared on a corner- 
 stone of falsehood? If the Young Man of 
 GaHlee was self-deceived in the claims that 
 He made for Himself, how have those words 
 retained regenerating vitality through a lapse 
 of nineteen hundred years? 
 
 Almost any reformer in history had a 
 better chance than the Young Man of Gahlee 
 to perpetuate his influence. Marcus Aure- 
 
222 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 lius, Roman Emperor, speaking his thoughts 
 with the bulwarks of the Empire as his sound- 
 ing board, also trained a little group of dis- 
 ciples who were to carry forward his reforming 
 message after he should be gone. But a 
 single generation removed them, and so far 
 as its life and habits are concerned the world 
 might never have known that he or his fol- 
 lowers had sought to influence it. Socrates 
 left Xenophon to preserve his message, and 
 Plato, a pupil almost greater than the master, 
 to develop and perfect its power. Thousands 
 today are grateful to him for the mental stimu- 
 lus which His message brings. But never yet 
 have I seen a man turned from a drunkard's 
 course into good citizenship by reading Soc- 
 rates, nor a community that gave credit to 
 his words for whatever in its character is best. 
 Napoleon said: "Alexander, Caesar, Charle- 
 magne and myself founded empires. But 
 on what did we rest the creation of our genius.'^ 
 Upon sheer force. Jesus Christ alone founded 
 His empire upon love; and at this hour 
 millions of men will die for Him. In every 
 other existence but that of Christ how 
 
MORE THAN A MAN 223 
 
 many imperfections. From the first day to 
 the last He is the same; majestic and simple; 
 infinitely firm and infinitely gentle." 
 
 Empire is a large word. It denotes 
 numbers, and wealth, and absolute rule within 
 fixed boundaries. Can the rule of the Young 
 Man of Galilee be justly called imperial .^^ 
 Is the influence of His words and life gaining 
 dominion over the affairs of the nations? 
 Are the kingdoms of the world becoming the 
 kingdoms of His God? Observation must 
 join its hand to faith in the answer of all such 
 questions, and no two men will read the 
 record with the same eyes. For myself I 
 have found some satisfaction in sinking a 
 test pit here and there into the great powerful 
 forms of modern industrial life, to discover 
 whether, near its heart, it carries anything 
 of the teachings of the Young Man of Galilee. 
 Within a few months I have talked with six 
 men, typical representatives of the successful 
 men of America, directing great enterprises, 
 and dreaming big dreams. 
 
 "What is your ambition?" I said to one, 
 the president of a railroad that spans a con- 
 
224 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 tinent. "Why do you work so hard when you 
 have raoney enough?" And he looked at 
 me quizzically, as though surprised that I 
 should understand him so little as to suppose 
 money the mainspring of his life. 
 
 "Come with me," he said, "and I will show 
 
 you." 
 
 We went far out into the West, where his 
 railroad controls an area that is several times 
 larger than some of our smaller states. We 
 saw the untouched part of the vast expanse, a 
 barren waste unfit for anything. Then sud- 
 denly, we had stepped across an imaginary 
 line, and as if by a miracle the landscape blos- 
 somed all about us. Flowers bloomed, crops 
 held forth their bounty, men and women and 
 red-cheeked children played joyously at the 
 business of hfe. 
 
 "That's why I work," said the great man. 
 "I'm finishing up the part of God's plan that 
 He left undone. I'm taking the desert and 
 making it fit to live in. I'm picking up folks 
 that have scraped and starved and struggled 
 through their married hfe, and I am bringing 
 them up here into this wonderful new country 
 
MORE THAN A MAN 225 
 
 where they can find health and prosperity 
 and education for their children and the 
 fulfilment of dreams — where they can crys- 
 tallize their existence into lives. That's why 
 I'm working eighteen hours a day; the money 
 is incidental. Before I die I expect to bring 
 a million people up here and have them wor- 
 shiping God in happy useful lives. That's 
 my faith, my life, my rehgion." 
 
 "Where did you learn it?" I asked. 
 
 And he answered, "It was born in Naza- 
 reth." 
 
 "What is your vision?" I asked of a man 
 who directs a giant corporation, with factories 
 in every country of the world, and hundreds 
 of millions in assets. "Why are you working 
 so hard?" 
 
 "It's a long way from realization — my 
 vision," he answered. "There are lots of 
 abuses that have grown up inside corpora- 
 tions and when you are working with 
 twenty-three thousand men the mass moves 
 sometimes very slowly. But at the first 
 meeting I ever held with our directors, I 
 said. 
 
226 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 '"Gentlemen, the very first thing I propose 
 to do is to put our own house in order. I 
 mean to make this corporation so free from 
 criticism in its business methods, so fair in 
 its deahngs with its employees, so open in 
 its competition that it will be a model to all 
 others of its kind.' 
 
 "It's a long, hard fight," he continued, 
 *'but we've made a little progress. We've 
 adopted the most advanced profit-sharing 
 scheme that has yet been evolved; we have 
 formed a mutual benefit association among 
 our employees; we have offered to open our 
 books wide to the government; we have 
 reduced prices instead of raising them; and 
 we have taken our company out of politics 
 just so far as the politicians will let us. But 
 progress is mighty slow. We're a long way 
 off from our vision. 
 
 "For I believe our company can be made 
 the greatest missionary society in the world. 
 We go into a land stricken and barren and 
 unprogressive, a land where women are hitched 
 to the plows and men strive all day in the 
 sun for a bare hving, and we hand them the 
 
MORE THAN A MAN 227 
 
 magic power of machinery. We make it pos- 
 sible for one man in an hour to do the day's 
 work of three. We remove forever the haunt- 
 ing dread of famine; the joy of hving takes 
 the place of bitter struggle. The people are 
 left emancipated to new happiness and edu- 
 cation and real worship. That's my religion; 
 there are lots of crosses in it, but it's a working 
 creed." 
 
 *' Where did you learn to live like that.''" 
 I asked him. And he answered, "That's the 
 way He lived." 
 
 If that is not empire I do not know what 
 empire is. Together these two men command 
 more wealth than was ever in a Roman 
 province; their army of workmen would out- 
 number a dozen Roman legions. Yet they 
 regard themselves as mere stewards of the 
 Young Man of Galilee, tetrarchs bearing 
 rule by His favor and in His name. 
 
 In a thousand diverse places I have taken 
 the back covers off successful men and watched 
 their souls go 'round — in the offices of de- 
 partment store heads, in the back lobbies of 
 big hotels, in the private cars of railroad 
 
228 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 presidents, and the offices of penitentiary 
 wardens — and time and again where I never 
 suspected it, I have been astounded to dis- 
 cover the insignia of the Young Man's empire 
 indehbly inscribed. I have scratched suc- 
 cessful men with a sharp question such as, 
 *' What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole 
 world and lose his own soul?" — scratched 
 them just to make them bleed a little. And 
 hardly a single sample of real red business 
 blood have I ever examined without finding 
 some trace of idealism, of faith, and hope and 
 love — the stuff that made the life-blood of 
 the Young Man of Galilee. 
 
 "What shall be said of empire such as this 
 — invisible, yet all-pervasive and all-power- 
 ful? Or of words which through nineteen 
 hundred years are still potent to establish 
 empire and to rule? Did He deceive Himself, 
 who said that God had given Him the king- 
 doms of the world for His own? Could de- 
 ception have persisted nineteen hundred years 
 and still gain victories? 
 
 We have traveled through the preceding 
 pages together, meeting the Young Man of 
 
MORE THAN A MAN 229 
 
 Galilee on only His warm, virile, human side. 
 We have sought to avoid all those doubts 
 and suppositions concerning Him that have 
 been the occasion for unceasing discussion; 
 we have tried to voice a protest against the 
 great mass of literature that in exalting His 
 divinity has made His life so unreal as to 
 seem almost a myth. We have rejoiced with 
 Him in the glory of physical strength and 
 achievement; we have laughed happily at 
 the jests of the sinners and publicans, and His 
 own quick retorts, as we have sat with Him 
 at dinner in their houses; we have thrown 
 back our heads with Him to draw in the full 
 rich tonic of the Galilean breezes; we have 
 cheered with the multitude at His fearless 
 denunciations of those that "devoured widows, 
 houses and for a pretense made long hypo- 
 critical prayers"; we have felt our pride in 
 His friendship lift us high, as we watched Him 
 stand majestically before the rulers of His 
 nation scorning their subterfuge and refusing 
 a single word in answer to their false accusa- 
 tions; we have stood crushed beneath His 
 cross, and yet wonderfully happy because, 
 
230 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 to the very end, He had shown Himself a 
 man, and a master of men. Our httle jour- 
 ney through these pages will have come to 
 no end, unless we can close our eyes, and see 
 Him right at this moment, virile, broad- 
 shouldered. His strong corded hand out- 
 stretched. His lips parted in a smile reveaHng 
 perfect teeth, a flash of joy in His eyes; 
 unless we can hear the hearty man-to-man 
 hail with which He would welcome us; un- 
 less we can know that, of all the men in history 
 whom one might choose as the companion of 
 a joyous half-day, the Young Man of Gahlee 
 would be most joyous, most completely and 
 inspiringly attractive and worth while. 
 
 That is the picture that I should like to 
 leave of Him, and to it I should add, not a 
 halo, but just a single beam of transfiguring 
 light. For I have not been able to read His 
 story critically, to follow Him day by day 
 through His various experiences, marking the 
 absolute perfection of His life, and His won- 
 derful mastery of men, without concluding 
 soberly that there is something greater in 
 the Young Man of Gahlee than in any who 
 
MORE THAN A MAN 231 
 
 has ever walked this earth, and something 
 different. By each human being who comes 
 to know Him, and to count Him as a friend, 
 the question of the divinity in His nature has 
 to be settled individually, not from such 
 fragmentary glances as have been furnished 
 here, but from the record of those who were 
 His first friends, or the record written in the 
 lives and work of those who profess His friend- 
 ship today. The evidence is ready to the 
 hand of him who would open it. It has been 
 submitted again and again to courts of priests 
 and prelates, and to courts of robed judges. 
 But because this is a man's book, for men, I 
 have thought it worth while to pass by all 
 such tribunals, and to record the judgment 
 of a court martial upon the Young Man of 
 Galilee, in His claim to divinity. Surely 
 among soldiers, if anywhere, one may expect 
 to find cool judgment, unswayed by sentiment 
 or interest. 
 
 "What think ye of Him?" we ask. 
 
 There are three soldier judges, and they 
 render their opinions individually. The first 
 is he who was sent out with a band of guards 
 
232 A YOUNG man's JESUS 
 
 to arrest the Young Man, and returned empty- 
 handed after minghng with the crowd that 
 hstened to His words. 
 
 "What think you of Him?" we ask. And 
 he answers. 
 
 "Never man so spake." 
 
 "And you?" we demand, facing the second 
 judge, a short powerful man, who led the best 
 manhood of a nation to destruction, and lev- 
 eled the thrones of Europe at his feet. "You, 
 Napoleon, what think you of Him? " 
 
 "I tell you," he answers deliberately, "that 
 I understand men; and Jesus was more than 
 a man.'' 
 
 The last of the judges has left his opinion 
 recorded in the story by Mathew. He is 
 the Roman centurion detailed to superin- 
 tend crucifixions in Jerusalem. Sentiment 
 has no place in his character; his duty is to 
 nail the victims to the cross and to get it 
 done quickly. There is much blood on his 
 hands, some of it the blood of the Young 
 Man of Galilee. 
 
 "Now when the Centurion and they that 
 were with him watching Jesus saw the earth- 
 
MORE THAN A MAN 233 
 
 quake and the things that were done they 
 feared exceedingly, saying: 
 
 "Truly this was the Son of God." 
 Infinitely firm, yet infinitely tender, pow- 
 erful, majestic, perfect in all the qualities 
 that excite the admiration of strong men. 
 He remains the one all-satisfying ideal of 
 young manhood. Of all great lives only His 
 led beyond the grave into greater hfe; only 
 He could say in the apparent awful collapse 
 of everything that He had given His life for, 
 "I have overcome the world." Because of 
 the marvel of that life, rather than because 
 of His works or words, or the testimony of 
 men concerning Him, we call Him not merely 
 Friend and Companion, but Master and Lord. 
 The Young Man's Jesus is, too, the Young 
 Man's Christ. 
 
Pnnctlon Theolo91c.ll Sfm(n.iry-Spee' 
 
 1 1012 01151 1542 
 

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