HAND B0(3K 1m FOR ^ BIBLE CLASSES, ^ jum \ ■(■ \ A\\'M\\ \ 6 1^. '0^ ^ ■^ ^^ i\it ®Itw%tai ^ *•% PRINCETON, N, J. % % Presented by ^rT-(2^^\C^(Sr\ W^AV^O^r Division • cop--! ^.^./,/A /"/... i :' r > h- ■ i^^- ^ ;L^-- *w,^. *< Mork6 b^ Dr. Stalker. GT)C %ite Ot Cbr(8t. a new edition, -witli an Introduction by Rev. George C. Lorimer, D. D. 12mo. IGG pages, cloth. Price 60c. " The one grand impression that the perusal of tlicse pages leaves upon the mind is, that man is greater tlian his surroundinfjs, and that even the most adverse cir- cumstances are no excuse for weakness of character; that it is possible to conquer difficulties and in so doing to generate or acquire spiritual force."— C/insfiaii atWork. Zbe %ifC of St. lP?Ul. 12mo. 183 pages, cloth. Price 60c. As admirable a "work as the exceedingly popu- lar volume by this author on " The Life of Christ. " "St. Paul is next to Jesus the greatest fissure in the g acter and the plan of the future life. What would we not give to know the habits, the friendships, the thoughts, the words, and the actions of Jesus during so many years? Only one flower of anecdote has been thrown over the wall of the hidden garden, and it is so exquisite as to fill us with intense longing to see the garden itself. But it has pleased God, whose silence is no less wonderful than His words, to keep it shut. 12. It was natural that, where God was silent and curiosity was strong, the fancy of man should attempt to fill up the blank. Accordingly, in the early Church there appeared Apocryphal Gospels, pretending to give full de- tails where the inspired Gospels were silent. They are particularly full of the sayings and doings of the childhood of Jesus. But they only show how unequal the human imagniation was to such a theme, and bring out by ttie BIRTH, INFANCY AND YOUTH. 19 contrast of glitter and caricature the solidity and truthful- ness of the Scripture narrative. They make him a worker of frivolous and useless marvels, who moulded birds of clay and made them fly, changed his playmates into kids, and so forth. In short, they are compilat. .i-S of worthless and often blasphemous fables. 13. These grotesque failures warn us not to intrude with the suggestions of fancy into the hallowed enclosure. It is enough to know that He grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. He was a leal child and vouth, and passed through all the stages of a natural de- velopment. Body and mind grew together, the one ex- panding to manly vigor, and the other acquiring more and more knowledge and power. His opening character ex- hibited a grace that made every one who saw it wonder and love its goodness and purity. 14. But though we are forbidden to let the fancy loose here, we are not prohibited, but, on the contrary, it is our duty, to make use of such authentic materials as are sup- plied by the manners and customs of the time, or by inci- dents of His later life which refer back to His earlier years, in order to connect the infancy with the period when the narrative of the Gospels again takes up the thread of biography. It is possible in this way to gain, at least in some degree, a true conception of what He was as a boy and a young man, and what were the influences amidst which His development proceeded through so many silent years. 15. We know amidst what kind of home influences He was brought up. His home was one of those which were the glory of His country, as they are of our own — the abodes of the godly and intelligent working class. Joseph, its head, was a man saintly and wise; but the fact that be 20 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST. is not mentioned in Christ's afterlife has generally been believed to indicate that he died during the youth of Jesus, perhaps leaving the care of the household on His shoulders. His mother probably exercised the most decisive of all ex- ternal influences on His development. What she vv^as may be inferred from the fact that she was chosen from all the women of the world to be crowned with the supreme honor of womanhood. The song which she poured forth on the subject of her own great destiny shows her to have been a woman religious, fervently poetical, and patriotic; a stu- dent of scripture, and especially of its great women, for il is saturated with Old Testament ideas, and moulded oii Hannah's song; a spirit exquisitely humble, yet capable of thoroughly appreciating the honor conferred upon her. She was no miraculous queen of heaven, as superstition has caricatured her, but a woman exquisitely pure, saintly, loving, and high-souled. This is aureole enough. Jesus grew up in her love and passionately returned it. 16. There were other inmates of the household. He had brothers and sisters. From two of them, James and Jude, we have epistles in Holy Scripture, in which we may read what their character was. Perhaps it is not irreverent to infer from the severe tone of their epistles, that, in their unbelieving state, they must have been somewhat harsh and unsympathetic men. At all events, they never believed on Him during His lifetime, and it is not likely that they were close companions to Him in Nazareth. He was probably much alone; and the pathos of His saying, that a prophet is not without honor save in his own country and in his own house, probably reached back into the years before His ministry began. 17. He received His education at home, or from a scribe attached to the village synagogue. It was only, ho^^ov^r, a poor man's education. As the scribes con- BIRTH, INFANCY AND YOUTH. 21 temptuously said, He had never learned, or, as we should s'ly. He was not college-bred. No; but the love of knowl- edge was early awake within Him. He daily knew the joy of deep and happy thought; He had the best of all keys to knowledge — the open mind and the loving heart; and the three great books lay ever open before Him — the Bible, Man, and Nature. 18. It is easy to understand with what fervent enthusi- asm He would devote Himself to the Old Testament; and His sayings, which ate full of quotations from it, aiford abundant proof of how constantly it formed the food of His mind and the comfort of His soul. His youthful study of it was the secret of the marvellous facility with which He made use of it afterwards in order to enrich His preach- ing and enforce His doctrine, to repel the assaults of oppo- nents and overcome the temptations of the Evil One. His quotations also show that He read it in the original He- brew, and not in the Greek translation, which was then in general use. The Hebrew was a dead language even in Palestine, just as Latin now is in Italy; but He would naturally long to read it in the very words in which it was written. Those who have not enjoyed a liberal education, but amidst many difficulties have mastered Greek in order to read their New Testament in the original, will perhaps best understand how, in a country village. He made Him- self master of the ancient tongue, and with what delight He was wont, in the rolls of the synagogue, or in such manuscripts as He may have Himself possessed, to pore over the sacred page. The language in which He thought and spoke familiarly was Aramaic, a branch of the same stem to which the Hebrew belonsfs. "We have fragments of it in some recorded sayings of His, such as " Talitha, cumi," and " Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani." He would have the same chance of learning Greek as a bov born in 32 THE LIFE OP JESUS CITRIST. the Scottish Highlands lias of leariiin>^- English, " Galilee of the Gentiles" being then full of Greek-speaking in- habitants. Thus He was probably master of three lan- guages — one of them the grand religious language of the world, in whose literature He was deeply versed; another, the most perfect means of expressing secular thought which has ever existed, although there is no evidence that He had any acquaintance with the masterpieces of Greek literature; and the third, the language of the common peo- ple, to whom His preaching was to be specially addressed. 19. There are few places where human nature can be better studied than in a country village; for there one sees the whole of each individual life and knows all one's neigh- bors thoroughly. In a city far more people are seen, but far fewer known; it is only the outside of life that is visi- ble. In a village the view outwards is circumscribed; but the view downwards is deep, and the view upwards unim- peded. Nazareth was a notoriously wicked town, as we learn from the proverbial question. Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Jesus had no acquaintance with sin in His own soul, but in the town He had a full exhibi- tion of the awful problem with which it was to be His life- work to deal. He was still further brought into contact with human nature by His trade. That He worked as a carpenter in Joseph's shop there can be no doubt. Who could know better than His own townsmen, who asked, in their astonishment at His preaching. Is not this the car- penter? It would be difficult to exhaust the significance of the fact that God chose for His Son, when He dwelt among men, out of all the possible positions in which He might have placed Him, the lot of a working man. It stamped men's common toils with everlasting honor. It acquainted Jesus with the feelings of the multitude, and helped Him to know what was in man. It was afterwards said that He BIKTH, INFANCY AND YOUTH. 23 knew this so well that He needed not that any man should teach Him. 20. Travelers tell us that the spot where He grew up is one of the most beautiful on the face of the earth. Naza- reth is situated in a secluded, cup-like valley amid the mountains of Zebulon, just where they dip down into the plain of Esdraelon, with which it is connected by a steep and rocky path. Its white houses, with vines clinging to their walls, are embowered amidst gardens and groves of olive, fig, orange, and pomegranate trees. The fields are divided by hedges of cactus, and enamelled with innumer- able flowers of every hue. Behind the village rises a hill five hundred feet in height, from whose summit there is seen one of the most wonderful views in the world — the mountains of Galilee, with snowy Hermon towering above them, to the north; the ridge of Carmel, the coast of Tyre, and the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean, to the west; a few miles to the east, the wooded, cone-like bulk of Tabor; and to the south, the plain of Esdraelon, with the mountains of Ephraim beyond. The preaching of Jesus shows how deeply He had drunk into the essence of nat- ural beauty and revelled in the changing aspects of the seasons. It was when wandering as a lad in these fields that He gathered the images of beauty which he poured out in His parables and addresses. It was on that hill that He acquired the habit of His after-life of retreating to the mountain-tops to spend the night in solitary prayer. The doctrines of His preaching were not thought out an the spur of the moment. They were poured out in a living stream when the occasion came, but the water had been gathered into the hidden well for many years before. In the fields and on the mountain-side he had thought them out during the years of happy and undisturbed meditation and prayer. 24 THE LIFE OF JESUS CIIKIST. 21. There is still one important educational influence to be mentioned. Every year, after He was twelve years old, He went with His parents to the Passover at Jerusalem. Fortunately we have preserved to us an account of the first of these visits. It is the only occasion on which the veil is lifted during thirty years. Every one who can remember his own first journey from a village home to the capital of his country will understand the joy and excitement with which Jesus set out. He traveled over eighty miles of a country where nearly every mile teemed with historical and inspiring memories. He mingled with the constantly growing caravan of pilgrims, who were filled with the reli- gious enthusiasm of the great ecclesiastical event of the year. His destination was a city whicli was loved by every Jewish heart with a strength of affection that has never been given to any other capital — a city full of objects and memories fitted to touch the deepest springs of interest and emotion in his breast. It was swarming at the Pass- over-time with strangers from half-a-lnindred count'-ies, speaking as many languages and weaiiiig as many different costumes. He went to take part for the first time in an ancient solemnity suggestive of countless patriotic and sacred memories. It was no wonder that, wlien the day came to return home, He was so excited with the new ob-. jects of interest, tliat He failed to join His party at the appointed place and time. One spot above all fascinated His interest. It was tne temple, and especially the school there i*i wiiich the masters of wisdom taught. His mind was teeming with questions which these doctors might be asked to answer. His thirst for knowledge had an o])por- tunity for the first time to drink its fill. So it was there His anxious parents, who, missing Him after a day's journey northwarf], returned in anxiety to seek Him, found Him, listening with excited looks to the oracles of the wisdom BIRTH, INFANCY AND ^OUTH. 35 of the day. His answer to the reproachful question of His mother lays bare His childhood's mind, and for a moment affords a wide glance over the thoughts which used to en- gross Him in the fields of Nazareth. It shows that already, though so young, He had risen above the great mass of men, who drift on through life without once inquiring what may be its meaning and its end. He was aware that He had a God-appointed life-work to do, which it was the one business of His existence to accomplish. It was the pas- sionate thought of all His after-life. It ought to be the first and last thought of every life. It recurred again and again in His later sayings, and pealed itself finally forth in the word with which He closed His career, — It is finished! 22. It has often been asked whether Jesus knew all along that He was the Messiah, and, if not, when and how the knowledge dawned upon Him; whether it was sug- gested by hearing from His mother the story of His birth, or announced to Him from within. Did it dawn upon Him all at once, or gradually? When did the plan of His ca- reer, which He carried out so unhesitatingly from the be- ginning of His ministry, shape itself in His mind? Was it the slow re-sult of years of reflection, or did it come to Him at once? These questions have occupied the greatest Christian minds and received very various answers. I will not venture to answer them, and especially with His reply to His mother before me, I can not trust myself even to think of a time when He did not know what His work in this world was to be. 23. His subsequent visits to Jerusalem must have greatly influenced the development of His mind. If He often went back to hear and question the rabbis in the temple schools. He must soon have discovered how shallow was their far- famed learning. It was probably on these annual visits that He discovered the utter corruption of the religion of 2 2G THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST. the day and the need of a radical reform of both doctrine and practice, and marked the practices and the persons that He was by and by to assail with the vehemence of His holy indignation. 24. Such were the external conditions amidst which the manhood of Jesus waxed towards maturity. It would be easy to exaggerate the influence which they may be sup- posed to have exerted on his development. The greater and more original a character is, the less dependent is it on the peculiarities of its environment. It is fed from deep well-springs within itself, and in its germ there is a type enclosed which expands in obedience to its own laws and bids defiance to circumstances. In any other circumstan- ces, Jesus would have grown to "be in every important respect the very same person as He became in Nazareth. CHAPTER 11. THE NATION' AND THE TIME. Paragraphs 25-39. 25-26. The Interval between Malachi and Matthew. 27. The Political Condition of the Country. 28-38. Its Religious and Social Condition — 28, 29. External Religiosity but Inner Decline; 30. Pharisees; 31. Scribes; 32. Sadducees and Herodians; 33. Different Classes of Society; 35-38. Messianic Hopes, CHAPTER II THE NATION AND THE TIME. 25. We now approach the time when, after thirty years of silence and obscurity in Nazareth, Jesus was to step forth on the public stage. This is therefore the place at which to take a survey of the circumstances of the nation in whose midst His work was to be done, and also to form a clear conception of His character and aims. Every great biography is the record of the entrance into the world of a new force, bringing with it something different from all that was there before, and of the way in which it gradually gets itself incorporated with the old, so as to become a part of the future. Obviously, therefore, two things are needed by those who wish to understand it — first, a clear compre- hension of the nature of the new force itself; and secondly, a view of the world with which it is to be incorporated. AVithout the latter the specific difference of the former can not be understood, nor can the manner of its reception be appreciated — the welcome with which it is received, or the opposition with which it has to struggle. Jesus brought with Him into the world more that was original and des- tined to modify the future history of mankind than any one else who has ever entered it. But we can neither un- derstand Him nor the fortunes which He encountered in seeking to incorporate with history the gift He brought, without a clear view of the condition of the sphere within which His life was to be passed. ^9 30 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST. 26. The Theater of His Life. — When, having finished the last chapter of the Old Testament, we turn over the leaf and see the first chapter of the New, we are very apt to think that in Matthew we are still among the same peo- ple and the same state of things as we have left in Malachi. But no idea could be more erroneous. Four centuries elapsed between Malachi and Matthew, and wrought as total a change in Palestine as a period of the same length has almost ever wrought in any country. The very lan- guage of the people had been changed, and customs, ideas, parties, and institutions had come into existence which would almost have prevented Malachi, if he had risen from the dead, from recognizing his country. 27. Politically, the nation hud passed through extra- ordinary vicissitudes. After the Exile, it had been or- ganized as a kind of sacred State under its high priests; but conqueror after conqueror had since marched over it, changing everything; the old hereditary monarchy had been restored for a time by the brave Maccabees; the battle of freedom had many times been won and lost; a usurper had sat on the throne of David; and now at last the country was completely under the mighty Roman power, which had extended its sw^y over the whole civil- ized world. It was divided into several small portions, which the foreigner held under different tenures, as the English at present hold India. Galilee and Peraea were ruled by petty kings, sons of that Herod under whom .Jesus was born, who occupied a relation to the Roman emperor similar to that which the subject Indian kings hold to our Queen; and Jud;ea was under the charge of a Roman offi- cial, a subordinate of the governor of the Roman province of Syria, who held a relation to that functionary similar to that which the Governor of Bombay holds to the Governor- General at Calcutta. Roman soldiers paraded the streets THE NATION AND THE TIME. 31 of Jerusalem; Roman standards waved over the fastnesses of the country; Roman tax-gatherers sat at the gate of every town. To the Sanhedrim, the supreme Jev/ish organ of government, only a shadow of power was still conceded, its presidents, the high priests, being mere puppets of Rome, set up and put down witli the utmost caprice. So low had the proud nation fallen whose ideal it had ever been to rule the world, and whose patriotism was a re- ligious and national passion as intense and unquenchable as ever burned in any country. 28. In religion the changes had been equally great, and the fall equally low. In external appearance, indeed, it might have seemed as if progress had been made instead of retroo-ression. The nation was far more orthodox than it had been at many earlier periods of its history. Once its chief danger had been idolatry; but the chastisement of the Exile had corrected that tendency for ever, and thenceforward the Jews, wherever they might be living, were uncompromising monotheists. The priestly orders and offices had been thoroughly reorganized after the return from Babylon, and the temple services and ani>ual feasts continued to be observed at Jerusalem with strict regular- ity. Besides, a new and most important religious institu- tion had arisen, which almost threw the temple with its priesthood into the background. This was the synagogue with its rabbis. It does not seem to have existed in ancient times at all, but was called into existence after the Exile by reverence for the written Word. Synagogues were multiplied wherever .lews lived; every Sabbath they were filled with praying congregations; exhortations were deliv- ered by the rabbis — a new order created by the need of expounders to translate from the Hebrew, which had become a dead language; and nearly the whole Old Testament was read over once a year in the hearing of the people. Schools 32 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST. of theology, similar to our divinity halls, had sprung up, in which the rabbis were trained and the sacred books inter- preted. 29. But, in spite of all this religiosity, religion had sadly declined. The externals had been multiplied, but the inner spirit had disappeared. However rude and sinful the old nation had sometimes been, it was capable in its worst periods of producing majestic religious figures, who kept high the ideal of life and preserved the connection of the nation with Heaven; and the inspired voices of the prophets kept the stream of truth running fresh and clean. But during four hundred years no prophet's voice had been lieard. The records of the old prophetic utterances were still preserved with almost idolatrous reverence, but there were not men with even the necessary amount of the Spirit's inspiration to understand what He had formerly written. 30. The representative religious men of the time were the Pharisees. As their name indicates, they originally arose as champions of the separateness of the Jews from other nations. This was a noble idea, so long as the dis- tinction emphasized was holiness. But it is far more diffi- cult to maintain this distinction than such external differ- ences as peculiarities of dress, food, language, etc. These were in course of time substituted for it. The Pharisees were ardent patriots, ever willing to lay down their lives for the independence of their country, and hating the for- eign yoke with impassioned bitterness. They despised and hated otlier races, and clung with undying I'aith to the hope of a glorious future for their nation. But they had so long harped on this idea, that they had come to believe them- selves the special favorites of Heaven, simply because they were descendants of Abraham, and to lose sight of the importance of personal character. They multiplied their THE NATIOJT AND THE TIME. 33 Jiiwish peculiarities, but substituted external observances, such as fasts, prayers, tithes, washings, sacrifices, and so forth, for the grand distinctions of love to God and love to man. 31. To the Pharisaic party belonged most of the scribes. They were so called because they were both the interpret- ers and copyists of the Scriptures and the lawyers of the people; for, the Jewisli legal code being incorporated in the Holy Scriptures, jurisprudence became a branch of theology. They were the chief interpreters in the syna- gogues, a-lthough any male worshipper was permitted to speak if he chose. They professed unbounded reverence for the Scriptures, counting every word and letter in them. They had a splendid opportunity of diffusing the religious principles of the Old Testament among the people, exhib- iting the glorious examples of its heroes and sowing abroad the words of the prophets; for the synagogue was one of the most potent engines of instruction ever devised by any people. But they entirely missed their opportunity. They became a dry ecclesiastical and scholastic class, using their position for selfish aggrandisement, and scorning those to whom they gave stones for bread as a vulgar and unlettered canaille. Whatever was most spiritual, living, human, and grand in the Scriptures they passed by. Generation after generation the commentaries of their famous men multi- plied, and the pupils studied the commentaries instead of the text. Moreover, it was a rule with them that the cor- rect interpretation of a passage was as authoritative as the text itself; and, the interpretations of the famous masters being as a matter of course believed to be correct, the mass of opinions which were held to be as precious as the Bible itself grew to enormous proportions. These were "the traditions of the elders." By degrees an arbitrary system of exegesis came into vogue, by which almost any C 34 THE LIFE OP JESUS CHRIST. opinion whatever could be thus connected with some text and stamped with divine authority. Every new invention of Pharisaic peculiarities was sanctioned in this way. These were multiplied until they regulated every detail of life, personal, domestic, social, and public. They became so numerous, that it required a lifetime to learn them all; and the learning of a scribe consisted in acquaintance with them, and with the dicta of the great rabbis and the forms of exegesis by which they were sanctioned. This was the chaff with which they fed the people in the synagogues. The conscience was burdened with innumerable details, every one of which was represented to be as divinely sanc- tioned as any of the ten commandments. This was the intolerable burden which Peter said neither he nor his fathers had been able to bear. This was the horrible night- mare which sat so long on Paul's conscience. But worse consequences flowed from it. It is a well-known principle in history, that, whenever the ceremonial is elevated to the same rank with the moral, the latter will soon be lost sight of. The scribes and Pharisees had learned how by arbi- trary exegesis and casuistical discussion to explain away the weightiest moral obligations, and make up for the neg- lect of them by increasing their ritual observances. Thus men were able to flaunt in the pride of sanctity while in- dulging their selfishness and vile passions. Society was rotten with vice within, and veneered over with a self-de- ceptive religiosity without. 32. There was a party of protest. The Sadducees im- pugned the authority attached to the traditions of the fathers, demanding a return to the Bible and nothing but the Bible, and cried out for morality in place of ritual. But their protest was prompted merely by the spirit of de- nial, and not by a warm opposite principle of religion. They were sceptical, cold-hearted, worldly men. Though THE NATION" AND THE TIME. 35 they praised morality, it was a morality unwarmed and un- illuminated by any contact with that upper region of divine forces from which the inspiration of the highest morality must always come. They refused to burden their conscien- ces with the painful punctilios of the Pharisees; but it was because they wished to live the life of comfort and seli'- indulgence. They ridiculed the Pharisaic exclusiveness, but had let go what was most peculiar in the character, ihe faith, and the hopes of the nation. They mingled freely with the Gentiles, affected Greek culture, enjoyed foreign amusements, and thought it useless to fight for the freedom of their country. An extreme section of them were the Herodians, T^ho had given in to the usurpation of Herod, and with courtly flattery attached themselves to the favor of his sons. 33. The Sadducees belonged chiefly to the upper and wealthy classes. The Pharisees and scribes formed what we should call the middle class, although also deriving many members from the higher ranks of life. The lower classes and the country people were separated by a great gulf from their wealthy neighbors, but attached themselves by admiration to the Pharisees, as the uneducated always do to the party of warmth. Down below all these was a large class of those who had lost all connection with religion and well-ordered social life — the publicans, harlots, and sinners, for whose souls no man cared. 34. Such were the pitiable features of the society on which Jesus was about to discharge His influence — a na- tion enslaved; the upper classes devoting themselves to selfishness, courtiership, and scepticism; the teachers and chief professors of religion lost in mere shows of ceremo- nialism, and boasting themselves the favorites of God, while their souls were honeycombed with self-deception and vice; the body of the people misled by false ideals; 36 THE LIFE OF JESUS CIIKIST. and seething at the bottom of society, a neglected mass of unblushing and unrestrained sin. 35. And this was the people of God! Yes; in spile of their awful degradation, these were the children of Abra- ham, Isaac and Jacob, and the heirs of the covenant and the promises. Away back beyond the centuries of degra- dation towered the figures of the patriarchs, the kings after God's own heart, the psalmists, the prophets, the genera- tions of faith and hope. Ay, and in front there was great- ness too! The word of God, once sent forth from heaven and uttered by the mouths of His prophets, could not re- turn to Him void. He had said that to this nation was to be given the perfect revelation of Himself, that in it was to appear the perfect ideal of manhood, and that from it was to issue forth the regeneration of all mankind. There- fore a wonderful future still belonged to it. The river of Jewish history was for the time clicked and lost in the sands of the desert, but it was destined to reappear again and flow forward on its God-appointed course. The time of fulfilment was at hand, much as the signs of the times might seem to forbid the hope. Had not all the prophets from Moses onward spoken of a great One to come, who, appearing just when the darkness was blackest and the degradation deepest, was to bring back the lost glory of the past? 36. So not a few faithful souls asked themselves in the weary and degraded time. There are good men in the worst of periods. There were good men even in the selfish and coi-rupt Jewish parties. But especially does piety linger in such epochs in the lowly homes of the peojjle; and, just as we are permitted to hope that in the Romish Church at the present time there may be those who, through all the ceremonies put between the soul and Christ, THE NATION AND THE TIME. 37 reach forth to Him, and by the selection of a spiritual in- stinct seize the truth and pass the falsehood by, so among the common people of Palestine there were those who, hearing the Scriptures read in the synagogues and reading them in their homes, instinctively neglected the cumbrous and endless comments of their teachers, and saw the glory of the past, of holiness and of God, which the scribes failed to see. 37. It was especially to the promises of a Deliverer that such spirits attached their interest. Feeling bitterly the shame of national slavery, the hollowness of the times, and the awful wickedness which rotted under the surface of society, they longed and prayed for the advent of the coming One and the restoration of the national character and glory. 38. The scribes also busied themselves with this ele- ment in the Scriptures; and the cherishing of Messianic hopes was one of the cliief distinctions of the Pharisees. But they had caricatured the prophetic utterances on the subject by their arbitrary interpretations, and painted the future in colors borrowed from their own carnal imagina- tions. They spoke of the advent as the coming of the kingdom of God, and of the Messiah as the Son of God. But what they chiefly expected Him to do was, by the working of marvels and by irresistible force, to free the nation from servitude and raise it to the utmost worldly grandeur. They entertained no doubt that, simply because they were members of the chosen nation, they would be allotted high places in the kingdom, and never suspected that any change was needed in themselves to meet Him. The spiritual elements of the better time, holiness and love, were lost in their minds behind the dazzling forms of material glory.* • I have not thought It necessary to describe the state of the world beyond Pal- estine; for although the gifts Jesus brought were for all mankind, yet His own 38 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST. 39. Such was the aspect of Jewish liistory at tlie time when the hour of realizing the national destiny was about to strike. It imparted to the work which lay before the Messiah a peculiar complexity. It might have been ex- pected that He would find a nation saturated with the ideas and inspired with the visions of His predecessors, the pro- phets, at whose head He might place Himself, and from which He might receive an enthusiastic and eflFective co- operation. But it was not so. He appeared at a time when the nation had lapsed from its ideals and caricatured their sublimest features. Instead of meeting a nation ma- ture in holiness and consecrated to the heaven-ordained task of blessing all other peoples, which he might easily lead up to its own final development, and then lead forth to the spiritual conquest of the world, He found that the first work which lay before Him was to proclaim a re- formation in His own country, and encounter the opposi- tion of prejudices that had accumulated there through centuries of degradation. activity was confined almost entirely to tlie house of Israel witliiii its original home. In a liistory of Earlv Christianity, or even a life of the Apostle Paul, it would be necessary to extend our view over the whole disc of civilization which surrounded the Mediterranean, and In wliicli tlie world's center, which has since shifted to other latitudes, was then to he found ; and to show how marvellously, by the dispersion of the Jews throush all civilized i ountries, the elementary concep- tions of God which were necessary for the reception of Christianity had been dif- fused beforehand far and wide; how the conquests of Alexander liad. Ijy m:ikiuK the Greek language universally understood, jirepared a vehicle by which the gospcM might lie carried to all nations- how a pathway for it had been provided by the Roman power, whose military system had made all lands accessible; and, above all, how the decay of the ancient religions and philosophies, the wearing out every- where of the old Ideals of life, and the prevalence of heart-sickening sin, had made the world ready for Him who was the Desire of all nations. CHAPTER III. THE FINAL STAGES OF HIS PREPARATION. 40-53. The Final Stages of his Preparation. 44-49. His Baptism — 45. The Baptist; 46-48. Jesus Baptised; 49. The Descent of the Holy Ghost. 50-53. The Temptation. CHAPTER IIL THE FINAL STAGES OF HIS PREPARATIJJ?. 40. Meanwhile He, whom so many in their own ways were hoping for, was in the midst of them, though they suspected it not. Little could they think that He about whom they were speculating and praying was growing up in a carpenter's home away in despised Nazareth. Yet so it was. There He was preparing Himself for His career. His mind was busy grasping the vast proportions of the task before Him, as the prophecies of the past and the facts of the case determined it; His eyes were looking forth on the country, and His heart smarting with the sense of its sin and shame. In Himself He felt moving the gigantic powers necessary to cope with the vast design; and the desire was gradually growing to an irresistible passion, to go forth and utter the thought within Him, and do the work which had been given Him to do. 41. Jesus had only three years to accomplish His life- work. If we remember how quickly three years in an ordinary life pass away, and how little at their close there usually is to show for them, we shall see what must have been the size and quality of that character, and what the unity and intensity of design in that life, which in so mar- vellously short a time made such a deep and ineffaceable impression on the world, and left to mankind such a heri- tage of truth and influence. 42. It is generally allowed that Jesus appeared as a public man with a mind whose ideas were completely de- veloped and arranged, with a character sharpened over its whole surface into perfect definiteness, and with designs 40 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST. that marched forward to their ends without hesitation. No deflection took place durinrr the three years from the lines on which at the beginning of them He was moving. The reason of this must have been, that during the thirtv years before His public w^ork began, His ideas, His char- acter and designs went through all the stages of a thorough development. Unpretentious as the external aspects of His life at Nazareth were, it was, below the surface, a life of intensity, variety and grandeur. Beneath its silence and obscurity there went on all the processes of growth which issued in the magnificent flower and fruit to which all ages now look back with wonder. His preparation lasted long. For one with His powers at command, thirty years of complete reticence and reserve were a long time. Nothing was greater in Him afterwards than the majestic reserve in both speech and action which characterized Him. This, too, was learned in Nazaretli. There He waited till the liour of the completion of His preparation struck. Notliiiig could tempt Him forth before the time — not the burning desire to interfere with indignant protest amidst the crying corruptions and mistakes of the age, not even the swellings of the passion to do His fellow-men good. 43. At last, however. He threw down the carpenter's tools, laid aside the workman's dress, and bade His home and the beloved valley of Nazareth farewell. Still, how- ever, all was not ready. His manhood, though it had waxed in secret to such noble proportions, still required a peculiar endowment for the work He had to do; and His ideas and designs, mature as they were, required to be hardened in the fire of a momentous trial. The two final incidents of His preparation — the Baptism and the Temptation — had still to take place. THE NATION AND THE TIME. 41 44. His Baptism. —Jesus did not descend on the nation from the obscurity of Nazareth without note of warning. His work may be said to have been begun before He Him- self put His hand to it. 45. Once more, before hearing the voice of its Messiah, the nation was to hear the long-silent voice of prophecy. The news went through all the country that in the desert of Judaea a preacher had appeared, — not like the numbers of dead men's ideas who spoke in the synagogues, or the courtier-like, smooth-tongued teachers of Jerusalem but a rude, strong man, speaking from the heart to the heart, with the authority of one who was sure of his inspiration. He had been a Nazarite from the womb; he had lived for years in the desert, wandering, in communion with his own heart, beside the lonely shores of the Dead Sea; he was clad in the hair cloak and leather girdle of the old prophets; and his ascetic rigor sought no finer fare than locusts and the wild honey which he found in the wilder- ness. Yet he knew life well; he was acquainted with all the evils of the time, the hypocrisy of the religious parties, and the corruption of the masses: he had a wonderful power of searching the heart and shaking the conscience, and without fear laid bare the darling sins of every class. But that which most of all attracted attention to him and thrilled every Jewish heart from one end of the land to the other, was the message which he bore. It was nothing less than that the Messiah was just at hand, and about to set up the kingdom of God. All Jerusalem poured out to him; the Pharisees were eager to hear the Messianic news; and even the Sadducees were stirred for a moment from their leth- argy. The provinces sent forth their thousands to his preaching, and the scattered and hidden ones who longed and prayed for the redemption of Israel flocked to welcome the heart-stirring promise. But along with it John had 42 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST. another message, which excited very different feelings in different minds. He had to tell his hearers that the nation as a whole was utterly unprepared for the Messiah; that the mere fact of their descent from Abraham would not be a sufficient token of admission to His kingdom; it was to be a kingdom of righteousness and holiness, and Christ's very first work would be to reject all who were not marked with these qualities, as the farmer winnows away the cliaff with his fan, and the master of the vineyard hews down every tree that brings forth no fruit. Therefore he called the nation at large — every class and every individual — to repentance, so long as there still was time, as an indispen- sable preparation for enjoying the blessings of the new epoch; and, as an outwani symbol of this inward change, he baptized in the Jordan all who received his message with faith. Many were stirred with fear and hope and submit- ted to the rite, but many more were irritated by the expo- sure of their sins and turned away in anger and unbelief. x\mong these were the Pharisees, upon whom he was spec- ially severe, and who were deeply offended l^ecause he had treated so lightly their descent from Abraham, on which they laid so much stress. 46. One day there appeared among the Baptist's hearers One who particularly attracted his attention, and made his voice, which had never faltered when accusing in the most vigorous language of reproof even the liio-hest teachers and priests of the nation, tremble with self-distrust. And when He presented Himself, after the discourse was done, among the candidates for baptism, John drew back, feeling that This was no subject for the bath of repentance, which without hesitation he had administered to all others, and that he himself had no right to baptize Him. There were in His face a majesty, a purity, and a peace which smote the man of rock with the sense of unworthiness and sin. THE NATION AND THE TIME. 43 It was Jesus, who had come straight hither from the work- shop of Nazareth. John and Jesus appear never to have met before, though their families were related and the con- nection of their careers had been predicted before rneir birth. This may have been due to the distance of their homes in Galilee and Judnea, and still more to the Baptist's peculiar habits. But when, in obedience to tlie injunction of Jesus, John proceeded to administer the rite, he learned the meaning of the overpowering impression which the Stranger had made on him; for the sign was given by