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THE LIFE AND TEACHINGS.^— -^-^ 
 
 OF JESUS 
 
 SEP 25 1918 
 
 /^ 
 
 %i'>eiCAL li^^^ 
 
 s 
 
 A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE SOURCES 
 
 OF THE GOSPELS, TOGETHER WITH A 
 
 STUDY OF THE SAYINGS OF JESUS 
 
 y 
 
 ARTHUR KENYON ROGERS 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 
 
 LONDON 
 
 24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND 
 
 8t^e ^nichtrbockcr ^uss 
 1894 
 
Copyright. 1894 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR KENYON ROGERS 
 
 Entered at Stationers' Halt, London 
 
 By G. p. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 Electrotyped, Printed nnd Bound l>y 
 
 Ube Iknicheibocfccr prces, 'flew IBorIt 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
TO 
 
 MY FATHER AND MOTHER 
 

 CONTENTS. 
 
 Introduction 
 
 fa/^t i.— the sources. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. — The Synoptic Gospels . 
 II. — The Fourth Gospel 
 III. — The Credibility of the Gospels 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 22 
 67 
 
 PART II.— THE LIFE AND TEA CHINGS OF JESUS. 
 
 I. — The Preparation .... 
 
 II. — The Kingdom of Heaven 
 III. — The Messiahship of Jesus , 
 IV. — ^Jesus' Attitude towards the Taw 
 
 V. — ^Jesus' Doctrine of God and Man 
 VI. — The Future of the Kingdom 
 
 187 
 210 
 229 
 242 
 
 259 
 
 278 
 
VI 
 
 Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 VII. — The Galilean Ministry . 
 VIII. — The Last Days of Jesus . 
 
 IX. — The Resurrection of Jesus 
 
 Appendix 
 
 Index to Passages in the Gospels 
 
 297 
 312 
 326 
 337 
 351 
 
 
THE LIFE AND TEACHINGS 
 OF JESUS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE discussions about religion which we have been 
 familiar with in recent years have had one thing 
 about them which, if it is not new, is at any 
 rate sufficiently striking to deserve that a particular 
 emphasis should be put upon it, and that is the way 
 in which the discussion has been taken out of the 
 hands of a small circle of professed champions, and has 
 become a topic of public interest, familiar even to readers 
 of magazines and newspapers. This perhaps has not 
 been without its disadvantages, for the controversies 
 have not always been marked by soberness or by very 
 great wisdom ; and yet one hardly can regret a fact 
 which shows what a hold religion has over the minds 
 of men, and in how real a manner they are concerned 
 about it. But whatever we may think about the fact, 
 it has shown in a very unmistakable way, what religious 
 teachers are still sometimes disposed to ignore, that 
 there are a very great number of persons who are no 
 longer content to take their religious creeds upon 
 
2 The Life and Teachmgs of fesus. 
 
 authority, but who are demanding a reason for what 
 they have been taught, and who want a faith which 
 shall harmonize with what in other ways they are 
 beginning to learn about the universe. 
 
 And also, to one who is willing to recognize the 
 facts, popular Christianity, the forms of Christianity 
 which our churches and our religious newspapers pre- 
 dominatingly represent, has so far failed to satisfy this 
 demand, and it does not seem likely that it will be able 
 to satisfy it. The Church has insisted upon it that it 
 had a religion which was perfect, a religion where no 
 changes could be allowed ; and it therefore cannot be 
 surprised if other things have been changing and have 
 left it behind. For that it has been left behind, that 
 no longer it is in sympathy with what is most charac- 
 teristic in modem ways of thinking, is the plainest of 
 facts, whether or not we may regret that this is so. 
 The break between science and religion we long ago 
 were told of, aggressively enough on both sides ; and 
 every day it seems to be growing harder for men to 
 read and think, and still to hold to beliefs which a 
 hundred years ago men found little dilGSculty in hold- 
 ing to. Popular religion, it is true, in its more out- 
 spoken representatives, has its own explanation for 
 this, an explanation not flattering to science and 
 culture ; but explainable or not, for all eyes the fact is 
 there, and it is not well for any one to pass too lightly 
 by it. For while truth of course may be doubted, and 
 for all that may be none the less true, yet we must not 
 forget that the proper business of truth is to approve 
 itself to us, to satisfy us ; and whatever steadily and 
 inevitably gives rise to doubt, to doubt which is the 
 greater as knowledge becomes greater, and which 
 often men cannot get rid of unless they refuse to think 
 
Introduction. 
 
 at all, we may hesitate fairly to receive as truth. 
 Christianity has claimed it as a chief excellence, that 
 through its means religion is no longer esoteric, the 
 possession of philosophers, but is brought home to all 
 men, that one who does not have the training of the 
 schools still may enjoy the benefits which it confers ; 
 and it has done quite right to insist upon this. But 
 when religion becomes, not something where the wise 
 man and the ignorant stand upon terms which are 
 fairly equal, but where the wise man is at a disadvan- 
 tage, something which is less easily to be accepted by 
 the thinker than by the one who cannot or who will 
 not think at all, then the mistake is just as fatal as the 
 old mistake of making salvation depend upon phi- 
 losophy, and such a religion cannot long continue. 
 
 To religion itself, fortunately, there seems to be but 
 little danger. Religion, of some sort or other, there 
 appears no likelihood that men will be content to do 
 without, if it be nothing more than M. Kenan's playing 
 at religion . But whether this is likely to be the Christian 
 religion, the religion of the Bible, there is more reason 
 perhaps to be in doubt. Certainly, those who tell us 
 that the Christian religion must now be set aside are 
 fairly numerous, and they are not lacking at all in 
 positiveness ; if they only might agree better as to what 
 is to take its place, we should listen to them, perhaps, 
 more hopefully. For myself, I confess I do not believe 
 that the religion of the Bible is yet to be put aside ; 
 rather does it seem to me that more and more men are 
 likely to come back to it, and to rest upon it. For, 
 for one thing, however skilfully our new religions have 
 been framed and adapted to meet the needs of a univer- 
 sal religion, a religion of mankind, mankind in general 
 has steadily refused to see their superiority, and has 
 
4 TJic Life and TeacJiings of Jesus. 
 
 found them exceedingly comfortless and iinsatisfj'ing. 
 This the author of the religion no doubt finds explicable 
 enough. To know truth, he will say, requires a cer- 
 tain amount of preparation, of culture, and most of all 
 it requires a clear vision and a freedom from prejudice ; 
 and these qualifications the mass of men do not possess, 
 notoriously they are under the control of priest-craft 
 and of superstition. But after all the matter is not to 
 be so easily explained. That Christianity for some 
 eighteen hundred years now has had the power to 
 arouse a boundless love in multitudes of men, shows 
 very plainly that a real truth, and a very essential 
 truth, does indeed lie wrapped up in it. Superstition, 
 mistaken enthusiasm, does not act in this way, it does 
 not hold men as Christianity holds them, it does not 
 work upon them as Christianity has done to make them 
 in a surprising way purer and better men, a test which 
 is, after all, not the worst one that could be applied. 
 That the Christian religion, too, has succeeded best in 
 bringing joy to men, in bringing them peace and satis- 
 faction, this also is not to be lightly thought of. Now 
 just in this lies the one evidence for the Christian reli- 
 gion which cannot be shaken, the evidence that rests 
 upon experience. That men have been made better, 
 and the needs which they feel to be their deepest needs 
 have been satisfied, that somehow or other this has 
 come to them through the Bible, however we may ex- 
 plain this we cannot explain it away. But upon this 
 fact men have not been content to rest ; they have made 
 the explanation of it more important than the fact itself, 
 and they have even made the fact depend upon the ex- 
 planation. The Christian, on his side, has his creed, 
 his elaborate theory of the Bible, and upon the cer- 
 tainty of this theory he hotly maintains that the cer- 
 
Introduction. 
 
 tainty of his experience must depend. The unbeliever 
 is quite ready to meet him half way, and he demon- 
 strates eagerly that the theory is all wrong, and so the 
 experience ought not to exist at all. But then the ex- 
 perience does exist, it stands as a fact ; and to show 
 that any number of explanations may be questionable 
 explanations does not change the fact in the slightest. 
 This then is the important thing about the Bible, the 
 benefit which actually it may be the means of bringing 
 to us. To criticise the Bible, to find out when and 
 how it was written, and what is the truth about the 
 matters of history which it deals with, however im- 
 portant this may be, is still a matter of secondary 
 importance ; and when criticism stops at this, and 
 thinks that by explaining this it has explained every- 
 thing, it is of very little importance indeed. So far as 
 religion is concerned, one might even prefer to have 
 nothing to do with criticism at all, to let questions of 
 date and authorship look after themselves ; but to 
 many people this is no longer possible, and that it is 
 no longer possible the Church has itself largely to 
 blame. The Church has not been content to insist 
 upon the many things in the Bible which are undeni- 
 ably true and beautiful, but it must needs surround 
 the Bible with a rigid theory about it, it must warn 
 people to accept the whole Bible without demur, as 
 the Church accepted it, or else to let the Bible quite 
 alone. To show that these theories cannot be true, to 
 show that this or that belief about the Bible can no 
 longer be accepted, is not the highest work or the 
 most important, but this is the first thing that has to 
 be done. Such work is destructive, and one could 
 wish it did not need doing at all ; done at its best it 
 dissatisfies us somewhat. Such a work was that of 
 
6 TJlc Life and Teachings of Jesus, 
 
 Strauss in his famous Life of Jesus, a book almost to be 
 regretted, in spite of all its great merits. But, neverthe- 
 less, it is one of the objects of this work to show that, 
 after all that an unsparing criticism can say, the re- 
 ligious value of the Bible still remains, and that it 
 speaks to the present generation with a power which, 
 under the old conceptions, it could never hope to have. 
 As for the results in Bible criticism which so far 
 have been established by scholars, especially by the 
 German scholars, I am not disposed to make too 
 sweeping claims. But one thing at any rate criticism 
 has established, for which, with all its failures, we 
 should be very grateful to it, and that is the claim of 
 the writings which make up the Bible to be treated as 
 literature, as historical documents. Very much of our 
 English and American criticism has failed to have any 
 influence, and must of necessity fail, because it is not 
 willing to recognize this fact ; it is a criticism which is 
 still busying itself about theories of verbal inspiration, 
 and which still hopes that it may be able to remove all 
 inconsistencies from the Bible. No one who under- 
 stands the spirit of these endeavors will have any de- 
 sire to ridicule them ; but we must insist that they are 
 hopeless, and, besides being hopeless, that they are do- 
 ing a great deal to destroy the credit of the Bible itself. 
 Such conceptions as these it will not be possible for me 
 to argue against in detail ; to this end Mr. Ingersoll 
 has been raised up, and Mr. Ingersoll we may safely 
 leave with those who are interested in his writings, to 
 settle matters among themselves. Nor is argument, 
 however clear and logical it may be, likely t?o have 
 very much influence in convincing any one, for of argu- 
 ment there never has been any lack. So long as men 
 look at the Bible as a book direct from heaven, no 
 
Introduction. 
 
 evidence that can be brought forward on the other 
 side will ever be strong enough to outweigh its testi- 
 mony. But we are coming to see that it is not possible 
 to look upon the Bible as a book direct from heaven, 
 we are finding out that the Bible is only one sacred 
 book among many, and that it is not the Christian 
 only who has his doctrine of infallibility. And if 
 those to whom the narratives of the Bible are so sacred 
 that they are not to be handled freely as other narra- 
 tives are handled, could for just one moment stand 
 aside from their own point of view, and could realize 
 that criticism, if it is honest criticism, must begin by 
 looking upon the Bible just as they themselves look 
 upon other sacred books, as something to be tested 
 just as other books are tested, at least some of the 
 bitterness of controversy would be done away. 
 
 There is the more need to speak plainly and sharply 
 in this matter, because many of our religious leaders 
 are disposed to admit the principle, while they are not 
 willing to apply it. The Bible, they say, may contain 
 errors. But that any particular statement is an error, 
 they will not admit so long as there is any way, prob- 
 able or improbable, in which it may be explained. 
 Now this is not consistent, and it is not quite honest ; 
 it is pretending to treat the Bible in an impartial way, 
 without treating it in a way that is actually impartial. 
 When we are dealing with any other book we do not 
 assume that its statements are true so long as there is 
 any conceivable way in which they might be true ; we 
 balance the evidence, and then we decide for the more 
 probable view. And we must insist that the state- 
 ments of the Bible are to be accepted or rejected on 
 just the same degree of probability or improbability 
 which would govern us anywhere else. 
 
8 TJic Life and TcackiuQS of Jesus. 
 
 We have had no lack of discussion in recent years 
 as to just what inspiration is, and how much ground it 
 covers. Such discussions, one cannot help thinking, 
 are to no very great profit. One who holds that the 
 Bible is wholly without error is at the least consistent ; 
 but if we admit but one error, however slight that error 
 may be, we really have no right to stop half way. For 
 if error is possible, then any particular statement may 
 be in error, and there is nothing left for it but to test 
 each statement upon its own merits. No more have 
 we the right, while w^e hand over the history to criti- 
 cism, to retain our claim of infallibility for the religious 
 teaching. For, apart from the fact that we very often 
 cannot separate the two, it is just in the religious 
 teaching that we meet with some of the greatest difii- 
 culties. Let us take such a story as that which is 
 given in the twenty-first chapter of Second Samuel : 
 Jehovah sends a famine upon the land because, some 
 years before, Saul had slain the Gibeonites ; the seven 
 sons of Saul are put to death, and Jehovah is appeased. 
 Let us apply our test to it ; what should we have said 
 if we had met with this story in any other book ? With- 
 out hesitation we should have said that it was barbar- 
 ous and superstitious, a wholly unworthy notion of 
 God. Then with no less hesitation let us say the same 
 thing when it is in the Bible that we find it. So, too, 
 in the New Testament we find the whole Church be- 
 lieving in a second coming of Christ, which should 
 take place within a few years. This is a belief which 
 is distinctly a religious belief, and yet for all that it was 
 a mistaken belief, and we have to admit that it was 
 mistaken. 
 
 If then we will make up our minds that God has not 
 seen fit to give men a book which will save them the 
 
Introdtiction. 
 
 trouble of doing their religious thinking for themselves, 
 we shall find that we have left a theory of inspiration, 
 which may not settle all our questions in so short and 
 easy a fashion, but which at least has the advantage 
 that it is something which can be verified. None of 
 us, if we had lived in the days of Isaiah or of Paul, 
 would, it is likely, have been willing to submit to Isaiah 
 or to Paul, as to infallible guides, who could make no 
 mistake in their teaching, any more than, in our own 
 day, we should have been willing to submit to Mr. 
 Arnold or Mr. Spurgeon. And the mere use of pen 
 and ink surely gives no stamp of infallibility to any 
 man's beliefs. But any one of us might have been 
 glad to recognize in Isaiah or in Paul a man to whom 
 had been granted a new insight into religious truth, 
 truth which we accepted, not because it came from 
 Isaiah or from Paul, but because it bore in itself the 
 testimony to its own truthfulness. And in the Bible 
 this is just what we have, we have the words, coming 
 to us directly or through other men, of those who have 
 been the world's greatest religious teachers ; only here 
 we do not have them by word of mouth, but in the 
 form of literature, of many different books. These 
 books were called forth just as sermons and essays and 
 histories are called forth now. In the same way they 
 represent the convictions of the authors. But for just 
 the reason that we do not believe there have lived in 
 the world some thirty-five or forty men whose opinions 
 on history and science and religion have been infallibly 
 true, for just this reason we do not believe the books 
 they have written are infallibly true. Just what is true 
 and what is not true we have to determine exactly as 
 we should determine it in the books of Mr. Arnold and 
 Mr. Spurgeon. The statements of history and of 
 
lo The Life and Teachings of fesus. 
 
 science we have to judge by the rules which govern 
 historical and scientific criticism ; the religious truths 
 we must judge by their own inherent reasonableness. 
 
 And coming to the Bible in this way, treating it as 
 we should treat any other book, it will not escape us 
 that it is just in the matter of the miraculous that the 
 case for the Bible is the weakest. For in other books 
 it is precisely this supernatural element which we treat 
 with the least hesitation ; when we meet with miracles 
 we do not ask any one to prove to us that they are not 
 true, we simply assume that they are not true. We 
 may ask what foundation lies at the bottom of them, 
 but even when there is no such foundation that we can 
 come at, we are none the less sure that it is only with 
 natural events that we have to do. 
 
 Now that this method men should hesitate to apply 
 rigorously when they come to the Bible miracles, to 
 the Gospel miracles most of all, one may not find very 
 surprising. For the Gospel miracles there are many 
 things to be said which one cannot say for other mir- 
 acles, and upon the Gospel miracles, too, vastly more 
 depends. But still men have been far too eager to 
 establish their importance, and they have made much 
 to depend upon them which really does not depend 
 upon them at all. For the divine character of the 
 Christian religion may stand, quite apart from the 
 question of any miracles that are connected with it, 
 and one may quite consistently hold to the one while 
 he lets the other go. A miracle, we may say, defined 
 in simple terms, is something which the working of 
 natural and every day laws could not bring about, 
 which is not the result of an orderly extension and 
 development of forces with which we are acquainted, 
 but an interruption of this development, whose value 
 
Introduction. 1 1 
 
 lies just in the fact that it is not permanent, not some- 
 thing that we are used to, — putting aside philosophical 
 refinements, this is what naturally we mean. Now so 
 soon as one recognizes what a miracle is, he will see 
 that to deny miracles is not at all to deny the presence 
 of God, to deny the supernatural. Indeed one might 
 fairly say to the arguer for miracles. When you insist 
 upon the miraculous, you are neglecting the very thing 
 which points most clearly to the supernatural. It is 
 just in the fact of law, of orderly development, of the 
 absence of what is simply disconnected and arbitrary, 
 that men to-day are inclined to see the presence of God 
 most clearly. The indications of a goal to which the 
 universe is tending, and which was wrapped up in its 
 very beginnings, the slow and steady progress from 
 the simple to the complex along definite lines, the evi- 
 dence of a purpose in the long stretch of material 
 evolution and human history, this is where men now 
 are looking to see God's hand at work. And it is 
 because the Christian religion does not interrupt this 
 development, but falls in naturally with it, because we 
 see a religion slowly unfolding till it should be fit to 
 become a world religion, because we see righteousness 
 working itself out in an extraordinary nation and an 
 extraordinary life, and then extending itself to raise 
 the rest of the world to the same level, that we call 
 that religion and that life divine. But you do not 
 think that such proof is enough ; in law, it is true, you 
 do find a revelation of God, and you insist upon it, but 
 in his highest revelation you think that he has given 
 up this proof and has gone over to the other side, that 
 he revealed himself in law, and then he revealed him- 
 self by breaking his law. And when you blame us, 
 one might still go on to say, because in denying mir- 
 
12 The Life and TcacJiings of Jesus. 
 
 acles we show a lack of faith in God, we might reply 
 that this may be a matter of opinion. For to see a 
 revelation of God in the Christian religion because it is 
 reasonable, because it is worthy of God and in harmony 
 with the other revelations that he has made, this also, 
 we think, is faith after a sort, and perhaps as accept- 
 able as a faith in miracles. For a miracle after all 
 proves very little indeed, and strictly it has nothing to 
 do at all with what is the real object of faith. A mir- 
 acle only shows that the one who performs it has a 
 certain power over physical things, and it does not 
 prove in the least that his words are true, though 
 naturall)' enough we are more ready to accept them as 
 true. We might conceive certainly that God could not 
 warrant his truth to us except hy giving us a sample 
 of what he can do, by showing us how powerful he is ; 
 but it would be quite as worthy of God, we think, if 
 the truth had in it the power to attest itself. Indeed 
 the greatest weakness of your argument appears in 
 what you yourselves admit. You will not treat fairly, 
 you say to us, the evidence for miracles ; you assume to 
 begin with that they are not true, you let your natiu-al 
 objection to them influence your judgment. To you 
 this seems to be a serious fault, perhaps a moral fault, 
 but to us what you say appears to overthrow your own 
 position. That there is a natural objection to miracles 
 which makes them not easily to be believed, that everj- 
 day it is growing harder and harder to believe them, 
 and that they cannot be received except on the firmest 
 and surest evidence, you yourselves will be ready to 
 admit. But miracles are only valuable for the proof 
 they furnish ; in themselves they have for the most 
 part no value at all. So that you are insisting that the 
 Christian religion is to be proved by the very things 
 
Introduction. 1 3 
 
 which themselves are most in need of proof ; you tell 
 us that the proof of God rests upon the miraculous, and 
 then you blame us because we have not faith enough 
 in God to believe the miracles. It does not seem to us 
 that for God to place men in a world where, after they 
 came to know it, a distrust of miracles would become 
 inevitable, and then to base the proof of his revelation 
 to them upon this very thing, would be either fair or 
 likely ; and the fact that we find it natural to suspect 
 the miraculous, shows, we think, that miracles do not 
 happen. 
 
 For most people, doubtless, there will still be reasons 
 which will keep them wholly from giving the miracles 
 up, and most of all they will fear that they are detract- 
 ing from the greatness of Jesus himself. The fear is a 
 natural one, and it is not lightly to be disregarded; 
 but seriously we may ask ourselves whether the honor 
 we have paid to Jesus has not been of a very doubtful 
 sort after all, whether it has not been more a seeming 
 honor than a real one. In our theologies, no doubt, 
 and in our creeds, we have made much of him, but it 
 has been the glory of a doctrine rather than the glory 
 of a person, and of the real Jesus we have had far too 
 little. And to the real Jesus we now must come, for 
 the world no longer can content itself with a mock- 
 man ; full and true humanity it must have first of all. 
 How are men who must walk by faith to be helped by 
 one who walked by sight, men who must fight their 
 way through doubts and perplexities, by one who 
 remembers a former life in heaven, who is omniscient 
 and all-powerful ? Such a view as this does not honor 
 Jesus, but by making easy and necessary for him what 
 for other men is hard, it makes it impossible that he 
 should attain that which is a man's highest achieve- 
 
14 TJie Life and Teachings of fesus. 
 
 ment, it takes away from him the blessedness of those 
 who have not seen and yet have believed. The truth 
 is, that if Jesus is to hold his old position, he must 
 needs be rid first of the incubus of the sensuous and 
 magical conceptions of religion with which he has been 
 weighted. For these beliefs the foundations are rapidly 
 crumbling away, and not even the authority of Jesus 
 can hold them up much longer. Now, no one who 
 has once submitted to the charm of Jesus' influence and 
 has felt the immense power of his personality^ can for 
 a moment doubt that his position will be vindicated in 
 the end ; nevertheless it is not so easy to give the proofs 
 for one's faith, and to show just how the growth of 
 legend which has gathered about the real Jesus and 
 obscured his features is to be stripped away. It is this 
 that I have made the attempt to do. I have not tried 
 at all to treat questions of scholarship, except those 
 necessary for my purpose, in an exhaustive way, nor 
 to give a picture of the times in which Jesus lived. 
 This already has been done much better than I could 
 do it. Nor have I had any special desire to make a 
 vivid narrative out of hazardous conjectures. What I 
 have had in mind particularly to do was to bring the 
 results of a careful criticism of the Gospels to bear upon 
 the words attributed to Jesus, and to bring together 
 into a consistent picture whatever the test may have 
 left untouched. The beauty and the grandeur of this 
 picture as it exists in my own mind I fear I have not 
 been able to reproduce, but at least I trust I have re- 
 moved some of the hindrances to each man's seeing 
 that beauty for himself. 
 
 I know that there are many to whom this book, if 
 they ever happen to read it, will seem to be only an 
 attack on what they hold as sacred. I shall be sorry 
 
Introdtiction. 1 5 
 
 if this is so, but I do not see how it can well be helped. 
 I have tried to let the facts make their own impression 
 upon me, and I can do no better than to tell frankly 
 what that impression is. And in the end I feel sure this 
 will prove the truest method. Enough compromise in 
 religious matters we have had already. If the scalpel 
 does not go deep enough, the pain has been of no avail 
 and the operation might as well never have been per- 
 formed. I cannot feel surprised, however, that men 
 should want to keep their own beliefs, and should not 
 like to see them treated too roughly ; and I believe that 
 the spirit which prompts this deserves all consideration. 
 Our liberal writers of late years have made us tolerably 
 familiar with the idea, no doubt startling enough in its 
 time, that belief, after all, is not of very much account 
 in religion, and that we may be satisfied if we can 
 acquit ourselves fairly in the matter of conduct. Why, 
 they are accustomed to say, should we trouble ourselves 
 about creeds and articles of faith ? I^et us stop preach- 
 ing doctrines, and let us go to preaching practical 
 duties ; it makes but little difference what a man be- 
 lieves so long as his life is right. Our knowledge at 
 the best is fragmentary and uncertain ; let us recog- 
 nize this, and let us not try to force it upon other men 
 besides. And up to a certain point at least, as a pro- 
 test against dogmatism, this idea is true and admirable 
 enough. Certainly we ought not to lose sight of our 
 own fallibility ; humility is an intellectual virtue which 
 might with profit be cultivated more carefully, even 
 among liberal thinkers. Still one cannot help feeling 
 that creeds have been dismissed in somewhat too con- 
 temptuous a way ; one hardly likes to treat his beliefs 
 in so cavalier a fashion. It is true, no doubt, that my 
 conceptions of truth are far from being perfect ; but 
 
1 6 The Life and Teachmgs of yeszis. 
 
 then they are all I have, and I cannot be wholly indif- 
 ferent to them. One must protest against making 
 tolerance simply indifference about one's beliefs ; what- 
 ever it may be or may not be, it surely is not this. The 
 conviction that the truth which I see, others will come 
 to see besides, the desire that this should be so, surely 
 this is not something that one could wish to see driven 
 out of the world. It goes hard if one may not be sure 
 that the truth will conquer in the end ; and, with all 
 readiness to be corrected, what can I know of truth be- 
 yond what seems true to me, my belief and creed ? This 
 at least is what the most of us act upon, nor do I know 
 that it is much worse to anathematize my neighbor 
 because he does not accept my creed, than it is to abuse 
 him because he declines to do without a creed alto- 
 gether. Tolerance, therefore, one may say again, 
 whatever it may be, is not indifference about belief. It 
 is not true that what a man believes makes no differ- 
 ence with him ; it may possibly make a great differ- 
 ence, and usually it does make a difference of some 
 sort. If there is any such thing as truth at all, one 
 certainly must wish for men to know it. 
 
 And yet for all that, tolerance in religion is certainly 
 a good thing, and one is rather concerned to know in 
 how far tolerance and zeal may go together. We are 
 often told that ours is a tolerant age. I do not know ; 
 perhaps it is true. But one cannot help thinking that 
 what tolerance the Church possesses, it has gained some- 
 what at the expense of its logic. What right, indeed, 
 has the Church to be tolerant ? If a man's salvation 
 depends upon his accepting certain beliefs, can there 
 be any freedom of thought which is not really license ? 
 Questionings, doubts, these belong where truth is un- 
 certain ; here it is only to be accepted, and every devi- 
 
Introduction. 1 7 
 
 ation from it is dangerous. I do not think, however, 
 that the Church has been wrong in growing more toler- 
 ant in recent years ; on the contrary, it has been quite 
 right in doing this, and the mistake lies wholly in its 
 logic. The Church has not been wrong in making 
 much of doctrines, but it has been fatally wrong in con- 
 necting doctrines with salvation. If it had followed 
 Jesus it never would have done this ; but Jesus' view 
 unfortunately was too simple to satisfy the ingenuity 
 of his followers, who were for having a philosophy, a 
 theology, that should speak with authority : and 
 whereas Jesus had thought of salvation as character, 
 as the growth of a man into the divine life, the theo- 
 logians came to look upon the other side of it ; they 
 were anxious to escape from the punishment of their 
 sins, and they called this salvation. And looking at 
 salvation in this way, it was inevitable that they should 
 make belief the starting-point for it ; it is only when we 
 get back to Jesus' view that the matter of belief will 
 adjust itself. No man at any definite time can say 
 what his beliefs shall be. He only can seek out the 
 evidence, and then let his beliefs shape themselves as 
 they will ; how they shape themselves will depend upon 
 very many things which are outside himself. But a 
 man can always say that he will recognize what is 
 honorable and just, that he will follow this as truly as 
 he can, and model his life upon it ; and by doing this 
 he is following the directions of Jesus, and the only 
 directions which Jesus gave. This is not to say that 
 belief is not a part of salvation, or that a man is all 
 that he is capable of becoming, so long as what he be- 
 lieves is not in harmony with reality. Not this at all ; 
 but belief cannot be manufactured to order, and it is 
 something which very often must come at the end 
 
1 8 The Life and TeacJmigs of Jesus. 
 
 rather than at the beginning, which is not the cause of 
 salvation so much as it is the result of it. The Church, 
 on the contrar}^ has wished to force a theology on 
 every one from the outset ; it has not recognized that 
 belief is a growth just as character is a growth, that 
 the accepting of truth in such liberal quantities renders 
 it impossible to assimilate it and make it a part of our- 
 selves, that such an acceptance is not believing, but 
 only saying that we believe. And the course which 
 this has led to is so manifestly unwise that one would 
 think even the Church might have seen its lack of 
 wisdom. A young man is beginning to think for him- 
 self, and he is overwhelmed by doubts and contradic- 
 tions. What now shall the Church say to him ? shall 
 it say, Hold fast to your belief in goodness, live up to 
 all the faith that is in you ; and that you may do this 
 the better, come in with us, and whether you can be- 
 lieve in God and the future, or not, we will help you 
 andsympathizewith5^ourdifl&culties, — this surely might 
 have something in its favor. But no, it does nothing of 
 the sort ; it says to him. We can have no fellowship with 
 you. Go and have your struggle out by yourself, and 
 then, if you find that you can agree with us, come back 
 and we will let you in. 
 
 It is just here that the fault lies in most of the dis- 
 cussions we are having on the question of Church union; 
 men are assuming all the while that the Church, in one 
 way or another, must be founded upon belief. Some 
 writers will have us settle upon the Bible as a basis of 
 union, as if now all sects alike did not appeal to the 
 Bible as their authority, and as if a common Bible 
 could be of any avail without a common principle of 
 interpretation. If we must wait till all Christians can 
 agree upon a creed, I fear we shall have long to wait ; 
 
Introduction. 1 9 
 
 so long as belief at all is held to be essential, men will 
 not be inclined to limit the number of their beliefs, and 
 the doctrine that has been strong enough to form a sect 
 will not readily give way for the sake of unity. But 
 upon one thing every Christian can unite. That the 
 ideal of character which Jesus represents is the true 
 ideal, that for the realization of this ideal in the in- 
 dividual and in the nation the Church is founded, this 
 surel)'- is a real basis of union, quite as strong as any 
 compromise about articles of faith. It is true that the 
 Church as a whole will stand for more than this, and it 
 will not need to minimize its doctrines ; but without 
 doing this, it still can give to the doctrines their proper 
 place. Similarity of belief still might determine a 
 man's Church associations, and yet one may doubt 
 whether even this is altogether for the best, whether 
 the association of those who look at truth in different 
 ways would not have its advantages. We have the 
 example of our Unitarian friends, who, with a great 
 deal that is excellent in their creeds, have gone off by 
 themselves, — one cannot help thinking they have lost 
 something in spiritual life. Such association may not 
 indeed have been possible in the past, and it may not 
 now in every case be possible. So long as any one rests 
 his salvation upon his doctrines he cannot always be 
 courteous, for it is a matter of life and death with him. 
 But if once we can give up this idea of salvation, one 
 hardly sees why we may not come to a discussion even 
 of religious truth in a kindly spirit and a spirit of fel- 
 lowship. This most of all is what we need. There on 
 the one side is the liberal Christian, who will have it 
 that Christianity consists to a considerable extent in 
 not being Orthodox, who is much too ready to show 
 his contempt of tradition, and who appears to think that 
 
20 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 his liberalism is a necessary proof of his intellectual 
 superiority ; and there is the conservative Christian, 
 who is inclined to suspect the motives of those who dis- 
 agree with him, — each of these, it may be, might learn 
 from the other, if only they could be brought together. 
 The Church has come to a crisis in its history, and 
 whether in the future it is to retain the influence which 
 it has had in the past, will rest very largely with itself. 
 I have confidence that it will not fail ; there are many 
 indications which show that already it is beginning to 
 realize that it has new opportunities and new duties, 
 that it is working under conditions which are fast 
 changing. The theologians who are willing to bring 
 dogmas to the test of history, who are not afraid to look 
 facts in the face, and, best of all, who are coming back 
 more and more to Jesus, and trying to find out what he 
 really stood for, are constantly becoming more numer- 
 ous. But they still are far too few, and there is still 
 very much that the Church will have to learn ; first of 
 all it must learn that truth is sacred, and that in the 
 search for truth dogma and tradition must be held at 
 their proper value. It has talked glibly of Strauss and 
 Wellhausen, of atheism and rationalism, let it now try to 
 understand what it has been talking about, let it ask 
 itself whether the opinions which it deplores could have 
 had such influence, if they had been wholly wrong and 
 the Church wholly right, let it be less concerned to dis- 
 cover arguments for its own side than to discover truth. 
 I do not complain that the Church refuses to accept new 
 opinions, I complain only because it shows little incli- 
 nation to be just to them, and because it is too ready to 
 resort to the least convincing of all arguments, mis- 
 representation and abuse. It is not well that the Church 
 should change at once its old creeds ; it is not well that 
 
Introditction. 
 
 21 
 
 those who are satisfied by the old forms of truth should 
 be made to exchange them for new ones. But those 
 who no longer find that the old forms satisfy their 
 needs, who do not find them in harmony with the new 
 light that has come from science and philosophy, these 
 also have their rights, and it surely is well that these 
 rights should be respected. 
 
PART /.— THE SO URGES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THK SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 
 
 IF we are to obtain any secure results about the life 
 of Jesus, it will be necessary first to make a careful 
 examination of the sources which furnish the facts 
 relating to that life, and in particular to find out on 
 whose authority they come to us, and whether we have 
 to fall back on the words of men who really had the 
 means of knowing the truth about the matter. And 
 this leads at once to the problem which of all the New 
 Testament problems is perhaps the most perplexing, 
 perplexing because the answer to it depends upon an 
 immense number of separate points which themselves 
 may be decided in altogether dijBferent ways, and 
 which all of them must be kept in mind, and be placed 
 side by side, in order to see the bearing which they 
 have ; so that a special preparation one really needs, 
 if the question is to be perfectly clear to him. And, 
 indeed, a strict demonstration, one which shall do 
 away with all ground for dispute, is hardly to be 
 looked for. The best one can do in such a case is to 
 
 23 
 
24 The Life aiid Teachings of yesus. 
 
 establish probabilities, and the result must be judged, 
 not by its being demonstrably certain in any case, but 
 by the number of cases to which it can be made to 
 apply with naturalness. At any rate the solution 
 must be attempted, for upon it, in a very large degree, 
 one's conception of the Gospels will have to depend. 
 
 What then is the problem that calls for solution? 
 Stated very briefly it is this. Our first three Gospels, 
 the Gospels which sometimes are known as the synop- 
 tic Gospels, to distinguish them from the Gospel of 
 John, are connected with one another in a very curious 
 way, which commentators from early times have no- 
 ticed, and have made more or less satisfactory attempts 
 to explain. While each of the Gospels contains 
 matter which is not to be found in either of the other 
 two, yet there is general resemblance between them 
 which is very decided. In all of them there is the 
 same general order of events. There are long sections 
 which correspond very largely word for word, and this 
 verbal agreement, in a greater or less degree, extends 
 to nearly all of the material which is common to two 
 or more of the Gospels. But alongside of this re- 
 semblance there are differences also, and the differences 
 are just as decided as the resemblances are. Not a few 
 narratives are placed in quite different connections 
 by different Evangelists. The most of Jesus' sayings 
 are assigned to two or more different occasions. It is 
 very seldom that narratives are absolutely identical, 
 one an exact copy of the other, and in the midst 
 of verbal resemblances there often are strange differ- 
 ences, which it has taken all the ingenuity of commen- 
 tators to keep from the appearance of discrepancy. It 
 is evident that we have here a complicated literary 
 problem, which it will not be possible to solve without 
 
The Synoptic Gospels. 25 
 
 going into a somewhat tedious and laborious com- 
 parison of details ; but before doing this let us look 
 at a few more general considerations, which will help 
 to clear the ground. 
 
 All explanations, it will be seen, would fall roughly 
 into three classes. Either our Gospels are quite inde- 
 pendent of one another, or they are not ; and if they 
 are not independent, then either they must have used 
 a common source or sources, or they must, along with 
 this perhaps, have made use also of one another. In 
 our own country it is the first view which is by all 
 means the most popular one, and it is not hard to see 
 why this should be so. At first glance it might appear 
 to be the most natural view, as certainly it is the 
 simplest. Not very many men have either the time or 
 the inclination for the somewhat complex critical pro- 
 cesses which are necessary for understanding the basis 
 on which either of the other theories rests, and perhaps 
 it is true that the very different results which the Ger- 
 man critics have reached are not calculated to impress 
 one with the accuracy of the methods which they use. 
 But, what also is an important reason, it is the view 
 which almost of necessity follows certain theories of 
 inspiration, the only one that can very well be held 
 when criticism has chiefly to do with harmonizing. The 
 manner in which this theory would seek to explain the 
 connection between the three Gospels is briefly as fol- 
 lows. The repetition of sayings and of incidents from 
 the life of Jesus naturally would play an important 
 part in the teaching of the Apostles; and in the 
 poverty of the Aramaic dialect these would tend to 
 become more or less stereotyped in form, and in course 
 of time would grow into a considerable body of tradi- 
 tion. For a while this oral teaching would be suffi- 
 
26 The Life arid Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 cient, but as the Church grew, and tradition came less 
 to be relied on, a need would be felt for more authori- 
 tative records ; and to meet this need, it is supposed 
 that about the same time our three Gospels appeared. 
 In this way it is sought to explain both the resem- 
 blances and the diflferences, the former by the fact 
 that all the narratives were drawn from a common 
 body of tradition, the latter by the natural discrepan- 
 cies to be expected in independent reports of oral 
 teaching. 
 
 Now no doubt this theory has in it a certain amount 
 of truth. The words of Jesus, at any rate, must early 
 have become to a certain extent fixed in form, for it 
 would have been impossible, when the Gospel litera- 
 ture first arose, for any one to reproduce the longer 
 sayings and discourses which have come down to us, 
 without some such oral tradition as this to fall back 
 upon. But the more one tries to make this serve for 
 explaining the whole problem, the less he will find that 
 it will answer. For however it may seem at first to 
 account for the verbal resemblances, it by no means 
 accounts so well for the resemblances in order. Let us, 
 for example, compare roughly Mark with Luke. Up 
 to Luke 9 : 17, we find that Luke has nearly every 
 incident that Mark has, and, with a very few excep- 
 tions, in the same sequence. Then, after omitting a 
 section from Mark, Luke follows his order up to 9 : 51. 
 Then comes a long section which is peculiar to Luke, 
 but at the end of this section he takes up Mark again 
 where he left ofi", and follows Mark's order to the end. 
 That is, we may put it as a general rule, to which 
 there are hardly a handful of exceptions, that the sec- 
 tions which are common to Luke and Mark are placed 
 by them in the same relative position to one another. 
 
The Synoptic Gospels. 27 
 
 Now clearly this similarity cannot be accidental. 
 The order of events, as well as the events themselves, 
 must have been a part of this oral tradition. And so 
 we have to suppose that it was something very differ- 
 ent from what we ordinarily understand tradition to be. 
 We must suppose that it was something like the oral 
 tradition of the Rabbis, something settled down to the 
 wording and to the sequence of events, even to the 
 connecting links between the different narratives, and 
 then taught by the Apostles and learned by their 
 disciples, and everywhere recognized as authoritative. 
 We cannot think of such a narrative as this springing 
 up naturally from random teachings ; it must have been 
 moulded positively into a definite form. Then we must 
 suppose that there were schools where this narrative 
 was carefully committed to memory by the disciples ; 
 single narratives they might have caught simply by 
 listening to them, but a long and intricate series of 
 events they only could have come to know by memo- 
 rizing it. But surely all this elaborate machinery is 
 very unlikely, natural enough in the Rabbinical 
 schools, where religion had come to be a dead thing, 
 but not natural in the freedom and spontaneity of the 
 Apostolic age. What is more important, we have no 
 trace of anything at all like it, either in the New 
 Testament or outside of it. If any such tradition was 
 widely spread, we certainly should expect to find it 
 cropping out in the Acts or in the Kpistles, as well as 
 in the writings of the Fathers, a little later on, but no 
 such thing do we find. The Apostles appear to have 
 confined themselves very largely in their preaching to 
 the great historic facts of the Messiahship of Jesus, his 
 Death, his Resurrection ; and incidents from Jesus' life, 
 and words of his, they only made use of as occasion 
 
28 The Life and Teachings of fcsiis. 
 
 called for them, for edification, and not with any wish 
 to settle details of history. And it is such a clumsy 
 way of going to work ; the Apostles, if they went to 
 all this trouble must surely have thought that such a 
 record was very important, but why then did they not 
 think of writing ? it would have been infinitely easier, 
 and it would have served their purpose even better. 
 This is a very different case from the case of the Rab- 
 bis, where the tradition had grown up very gradually 
 by small accretions ; here the tradition had to be 
 formed outright as well as learned. Besides all this, if 
 the form was so important, how is it that our three re- 
 ports, which at least, one would think, must have come 
 to us at third or fourth hand, after all the care taken to 
 secure exactness, should show such decided differences. 
 And it is quite conclusive that the differences, as will 
 be seen later, so often show that they are dependent 
 upon literary motives, motives which would have no 
 play in oral teaching, that we can hardly doubt that 
 the Evangelists actually had documents before them. 
 
 As for the second theory in its simplest form, that all 
 our Gospels drew from a common source, it never has 
 been able to explain enough to make it necessary to 
 delay upon it. It may be that here too is a partial 
 truth, but it will not serve to explain the whole prob- 
 lem, unless it is combined with the third hypothesis, 
 that the Gospels in some way have made use of one 
 another. And indeed this is only what we might have 
 looked for. Bver}' author is supposed to make use of 
 those who have written before him ; Luke certainly 
 found a number of such predecessors, as he tells us 
 himself, men who were at least as near the Apostolic 
 age as he was, and a refusal to make use of their labors 
 only would have been to lessen the value of his own 
 
TJie Synoptic Gospels. 29 
 
 work. That some such interdependence there was 
 then will be assumed, but just what it was is still to be 
 determined. The possibilities, as we see, are numer- 
 ous, and it will be well to begin by excluding some of 
 them, so as to simplify the question as much as pos- 
 sible. 
 
 In the first place, then, is Mark taken from Matthew 
 or lyuke, or from both of them together ? At once we 
 say that this is not natural to suppose. For Mark is 
 by far the shortest of the Gospels, with comparatively 
 little that is peculiar to itself, and it is not easy to see 
 why any one should have thought it necessary to 
 abridge the fuller accounts which he had before him, 
 without adding anything that was essentially new. 
 To get the history within a shorter compass must, it 
 would seem, have been an object with him ; but there 
 is no good reason why he should have wished to do 
 this, and, besides, it is not always borne out by the 
 way in which he goes to work. For, instead of con- 
 densing the narratives, he very often expands them ; 
 he adds details which are simply picturesque, and he 
 even introduces some new incidents of his own, though 
 none of these have any great importance. That Mark 
 is an abstract of either of the other Gospels singly we 
 may dismiss at once ; for if we compare Mark with 
 Luke, for instance, we shall find that over and over 
 again lyuke is plainly secondary, so that Mark's ac- 
 count could not have been derived from him. One 
 instance will be sufficient to show this. I^uke has this 
 saying of Jesus : "No man rendeth a piece from a new 
 garment, and putteth it upon an old garment ; else he 
 will rend the new, and also the piece from the new will 
 not agree with the old." ' But Mark gives the saying 
 
 ' Luke 5 : 36. 
 
30 The Life and Teachings of Jesiis. 
 
 in a somewhat different form: "No man seweth a 
 piece of undressed cloth on an old garment : else that 
 which should fill it up taketh from it, the new from 
 the old, and a worse rent is made." ' It is clear that 
 Mark has the original form, and so he could not well 
 be copying here from Luke. And Mark cannot have 
 drawn wholly from Matthew, for just the same reason 
 that he cannot have drawn from Luke, because there 
 are too many passages in which Mark is plainly origi- 
 nal. So when, instead of the question which Mark 
 has, ' ' Why callest thou me good ? " ■ Matthew makes 
 Jesus say, "Why askest thou me concerning that 
 which is good ? " ^ it is plain that Mark did not get his 
 more original form from the other Gospel. 
 
 And it is not much easier if we suppose that Mark 
 is combining the other Gospels ; besides what has been 
 said already, it is not possible to show any principle on 
 which he makes this combination. It must have been 
 extremely arbitrary. Sometimes he follows one of his 
 sources throughout a narrative, jumping over to the 
 other for a single word or phrase, and again he forms 
 an intricate mosaic from the two. Such a w^ay of going 
 to work is very improbable, when we consider that this 
 combination and revision of two narratives which go 
 over essentially the same ground is not something in- 
 cidental to a larger task, but must have been one of the 
 author's main purposes in writing ; and it is all the 
 more improbable as Mark has a definite style of his 
 own, and has not brought over any of the peculiarities, 
 sometimes very marked, which distinguish the Gospels 
 from which it is supposed he is compiling. Nor, 
 
 ' Mk. 2 :2i. 
 2 Mk. lo : i8. 
 '^ Matt. 19 : 17. 
 
The Synoptic Gospels. 31 
 
 again, is it probable that an editor would have been 
 able in so large a majority of cases to escape the sec- 
 ondary touches in both of his authorities, following 
 Luke when Matthew was secondary, and vice versa. 
 
 And it is equally unlikely that there is any direct 
 connection between Matthew and Luke ; at most it 
 can have been an acquaintance which affected details, 
 and not the real substance of the narrative. For as 
 one is sometimes plainly secondary and unoriginal, 
 and sometimes the other, neither could have been the 
 primary source of the other, just as neither could have 
 been the source for Mark. And this is especially evi- 
 dent when we look at the great body of sayings which 
 are wanting in Mark, but which Matthew and Luke 
 have in common. These sayings must have come 
 from a common source, but it is also clear that neither 
 Evangelist could have got them from the other. Luke's 
 text to a very large extent is so evidently a free ren- 
 dering, almost a paraphrase sometimes, that it is quite 
 impossible that Matthew's more original version could 
 have come from it ' ; and, on the other hand, the 
 original connection which Luke gives to very many 
 of the sayings he never could have guessed if he had 
 taken them from Matthew.' And it becomes especially 
 probable that there is not even a slight connection 
 between the two, when we look at the account which 
 each gives of the birth of Jesus, and of his appearances 
 after the resurrection. It hardly seems as if either, 
 when he wrote his account, could have known any- 
 thing of the other. Matthew, for example, tells of an 
 
 ' Luke 6 : 35-38, 46-49 ; n : 21, 22, 36, 47, 48 ; 13 : 28, 29 ; 15 ; 
 3-7, etc. 
 - Luke II : 2, 9 ; 12 : 2, 58 ; 13 : 24-29 ; 14 : 34 I I5 : 4, etc. 
 
32 The Life and Teachhigs of yesus. 
 
 appearance in Galilee which Ivuke seems expressly to 
 exclude. ' And this is particularly clear in the narra- 
 tive of the infancy. It is not so much that the narra- 
 tives of the birth and infancy of Jesus differ from each 
 other in the two Gospels, as that they are in evident 
 ignorance of each other. According to Luke the 
 parents of Jesus openly present him in the Temple, 
 and then return quietly home to Nazareth ; Luke 
 knows nothing of any plot of Herod, or of any flight 
 into Egypt. Matthew, on the other hand, supposes 
 that Bethlehem was the home of Joseph and Mary. 
 Here Jesus lives for some little time ; and when, after 
 the return from Egypt, they go to Nazareth, Matthew 
 has no suspicion that they had ever lived there before. 
 So that for neither of them would it have been possible 
 to write as he did, if either had been acquainted with 
 the narrative of the other. 
 
 So far then the results are only negative. We have 
 found that Mark is not taken from Matthew or Luke, 
 and that Matthew and Luke are not taken one from 
 the other. But when we go a step farther, and ask, 
 Do Matthew and Luke make use of Mark ? we no 
 longer find the same objections. Certainly, so far as 
 the general narrative goes, both of the Gospels might 
 seem to have incorporated Mark almost entire. Up to 
 Mark 6 : 45, nearly the whole of Mark's narrative is 
 found in Luke, and, as has been said, with two or 
 three exceptions in the same relative order of events. 
 Then Mark 6 : 46-8 : 27 is omitted, but reasons for this 
 can easily be found, and one verse from the omitted 
 section Luke has in the latter part of his book," just as 
 
 ' Luke 24 : 50-53 ; Acts i : 4. 
 "^ Luke 12 : i. 
 
The Synoptic Gospels. 33 
 
 when in other cases he leaves out shorter passages, he 
 shows afterwards that he is acquainted at least with 
 portions of them.' And the awkward way in which he 
 tries to bridge over the gap shows clearly enough that 
 he is making an omission. For Mark reads, "And 
 straightway he constrained his disciples to enter into 
 the boat, and to go before him unto the other side to 
 Bethsaida, while he himself sendeth the multitude 
 away. And after he had taken leave of them, he de- 
 parted into the mountain to pray. ' ' " Now lyuke stops 
 just before this last sentence, and passes to Mark 8 : 27, 
 where Jesus is travelling with his disciples through the 
 villages of Csesarea Philippi, but he joins the two 
 together in this fashion : ' ' And it came to pass, as he 
 was praying alone, the disciples were with him. And 
 he asked them, saying, Who do the multitudes say 
 that I am? " ^ Here we see he gets his connection, 
 but it is somewhat at the expense of the meaning ; for 
 when Jesus was in the mountains he might have been 
 alone, but he hardly could be alone when the disciples 
 were with him. Finally, from Mark 8 : 27 to the end 
 of the book, we find practically the whole in Luke. 
 And in Matthew the case is not much different. In 
 the first part of Matthew nearly all of Mark's material 
 is present, although the order is not very closely fol- 
 lowed ; and yet even here there are long sections 
 where the order corresponds.* But from Mark 6 : 14 
 to the end, the narratives of Mark, with a very few ex- 
 ceptions, are found in Matthew, and, as before, in the 
 same order. 
 
 ' Luke 12 : lo ; i6 : 16-18. 
 
 ' Mk. 6 : 45, 46. 
 
 " Luke 9 : 18. 
 
 * Mk. 1 : 1-28 ; 2:1-3:5; 3 : 22-4 : 34. 
 
34 The Life and Teachings of Jesus . 
 
 And when we come to compare the Gospels more 
 critically, we shall find the evidence for a dependence 
 on Mark appearing constantly. This secondary 
 character is perhaps rather more apparent in Luke 
 than it is in Matthew ; if we examine Luke carefully, 
 traces of Mark may be discovered lying everywhere at 
 the base of it. The proof of this in detail has been 
 given most elaborately by Professor Weiss, and we 
 shall not attempt to go over it here ; but as a single 
 example the story of Jairus' daughter may be taken, 
 as it is given by Luke and Mark. 
 
 And -when Jesus had crossed 
 over again in the boat unto 
 the other side, a great multi- 
 tude were gathered unto him : 
 and he was by the sea. And 
 there cometh one of the rulers 
 of the synagogue Jairus by 
 name ; and seeing him, he 
 falleth at his feet, and beseech- 
 eth him much, saying, My 
 little daughter is at the point 
 of death : I pray thee, that 
 thou come and lay thy hands 
 on her, that she may be 
 made whole, and live. And 
 he went with him ; and a great 
 multitude followed him, and 
 they thronged him. And a 
 woman which had an issue of 
 blood twelve years, and had 
 suffered many things of many 
 physicians, and had spent all 
 that she had, and was nothing 
 bettered, but rather grew 
 worse, having heard the things 
 3 
 
 And as Jesus returned, the 
 multitude welcomed him ; for 
 they were all waiting for him. 
 And behold there came a man 
 named Jairus, and he was a 
 ruler of the synagogue : and 
 he fell down at Jesus' feet and 
 besought him to come into his 
 house ; for he had an onlj- 
 daughter, about twelve years 
 of age, and she lay a-dying. 
 But as he went the multitude 
 thronged him. And a woman 
 having an issue of blood twelve 
 years, who had spent all her 
 living upon physicians, and 
 could not be healed of any, 
 came behind him and touched 
 the border of his garment : 
 and immediately the issue of 
 her blood stanched. And 
 Jesus said, Who is it that 
 touched me? And when all 
 denied Peter said, and they 
 that were with him, Master, 
 
The Synoptic Gospels. 
 
 35 
 
 concerning Jesus, came in the 
 crowd behind, and touched his 
 garment. For she said, If I 
 touch but his garments, I shall 
 be made whole. And straight- 
 way, the fountain of her blood 
 was dried up, and she felt in 
 her body that she was healed 
 of her plague. And straight- 
 way Jesus, perceiving in him- 
 self that the power proceeding 
 from him had gone forth, 
 turned him about in the crowd 
 and said, Who touched my 
 garments? And his disciples 
 said unto him, Thou seest the 
 multitude thronging thee, and 
 sayst thou. Who touched me 1 
 And he looked round about to 
 see her that had done this 
 thing. But the woman, fear- 
 ing and trembling, knowing 
 what had been done to her, 
 came and fell down before 
 him, and told him all the 
 truth. And he said unto her, 
 Daughter, thy faith hath made 
 thee whole ; go in peace, and 
 be whole of thy plague. While 
 he yet spake, they come from 
 the ruler of the synagogue's 
 house, saying, Thy daughter 
 is dead : why troublest thou 
 the Master further! But 
 Jesus, not heeding the words 
 spoken, saith unto the ruler 
 of the synagogue, Fear not, 
 only believe. And he suffered 
 no man to follow with him, 
 
 the multitudes press thee and 
 crush thee. But Jesus said, 
 Some one did touch me : for I 
 perceived that power had gone 
 forth from me. And when the 
 woman saw that she was not 
 hid, she came trembling, and 
 falling down before him de- 
 clared in the presence of all 
 the people for what cause she 
 touched him, and how she was 
 healed immediately. And he 
 said unto her, Daughter, thy 
 faith hath made thee whole; 
 go in peace. While he yet 
 spake, there cometh one from 
 the ruler of the synagogue's 
 house, saying, Thy daughter 
 is dead ; trouble not the Mas- 
 ter, But Jesus, hearing it, 
 answered him, Fear not : only 
 believe, and she shall be made 
 whole. And when he came to 
 the house, he suffered not any 
 man to enter in with him, 
 save Peter, and John, and 
 James, and the father of the 
 maiden and her mother. And 
 all were weeping and bewail- 
 ing her : but he said. Weep 
 not ; for she is not dead, but 
 sleepeth. And they laughed 
 him to scorn, knowing that she 
 was dead. But he, taking her 
 by the hand, called, saying. 
 Maiden, arise. And her spirit 
 returned, and she rose up 
 immediately : and he com- 
 manded that something be 
 
TJie Life and Teachings of fesus. 
 
 save Peter, and James, and 
 John the brother of James. 
 And they come to the house 
 of the ruler of the synagogue ; 
 and he beholdeth a tumult, 
 and many weeping and wail- 
 ing greatly. And when he 
 was entered in, he saith unto 
 them, Why make ye a tumult 
 and weep ? the child is not 
 dead, but sleepeth. And they 
 laughed him to scorn. • But 
 he, having put them all forth, 
 taketh the father of the child 
 and the mother, and them that 
 were with him, and goeth in 
 where the child was. And 
 taking the child by the hand, 
 he saith unto her, Talitha 
 cumi ; which is, being inter- 
 preted, Damsel, I say unto 
 thee, Arise. And straight- 
 way the damsel rose up and 
 walked ; for she was twelve 
 years old. And they were 
 amazed straightway with a 
 great amazement. And he 
 charged them much that no 
 man should know this ; and 
 he commanded that something 
 should be given her to eat. 
 Mark 5 : 21-43. 
 
 given her to eat. And her 
 parents were amazed : but he 
 charged them to tell no man 
 what had been done, 
 lyuke, 8 : 40-56. 
 
 Without going into too great detail, some of the 
 points may be noticed in which I^uke's account is 
 secondary. In the first place it is an " only ' ' daughter, 
 and this looks like an embellishment to make the scene 
 a trifle more pathetic. Then the girl's age, which 
 
The Synoptic Gospels. 37 
 
 Mark has a reason for giving, in connection with the 
 ability of the girl to walk, Luke brings in at the out- 
 set by anticipation. The statement in I^uke that the 
 crowds thronged Jesus, most naturally requires the 
 accompanying statement in Mark, that they had fol- 
 lowed him. In the healing of the issue of blood, I^uke 
 makes all answer Jesus' question with a denial, al- 
 though this takes the wind out of Peter's words, which 
 imply, quite the contrary, that of necessity they must 
 all the time be touching him ; and the explanation 
 which Mark gives of Jesus' question, rightly an expla- 
 nation of his own, and given in connection with the 
 question itself, Luke puts into Jesus' own mouth. The 
 description of the woman's fear follows most naturally 
 after the statement which Mark has given, and which 
 I^uke omits, ' ' And Jesus looked round about to see her 
 that had done this thing." The expression "all the 
 truth ' ' is amplified in Luke. Passing again to the 
 continuation of the first story, the words of Jesus, 
 ' ' Fear not : only believe, ' ' are made less dramatic by 
 Luke's addition, "and she shall be made whole" ; 
 and this expression, too, borrowed from an earlier 
 part of Mark's story, where it refers to recovery from 
 sickness, is not so appropriate now that the girl is dead. 
 Then Mark tells how Jesus entered the house, rebuked 
 the mourners, and, after putting them out, entered into 
 the dead girl's chamber. Luke confuses this in two 
 ways. ' ' And when he came into the house, he suffered 
 not any man to enter in with him, ' ' says Luke, and 
 doubtless he refers to entering the chamber, though 
 he does not make it perfectly plain. But after this he 
 tells about the conversation with the mourners, when 
 Jesus already had left the mourners behind him ; he 
 reverses the natural order of relation, as it appears in 
 
38 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 Mark, Again, he adds an explanatory clause, 
 ' ' knowing that she was dead ' ' ; and the statement, 
 " he commanded something to be given her to eat," is 
 far more effectiv-e from a literary point of view when it 
 ends the story. Finally, the charge that no man 
 should be told the deed is evidently connected in 
 Mark's mind with the stopping of the multitudes as 
 soon as the death is announced, for of course the charge 
 would be a waste of words if the house was thronged 
 with people ; with this, too, goes Mark's statement 
 that the mourners were put out. But lyuke, while he 
 retains the charge, has omitted what leads up to it. 
 
 Now what we find in this narrative we can find 
 throughout. Passages in Luke appear in a clearly more 
 original form in the second Gospel. Details are added 
 which are intended to explain the older account and 
 to make it more exact.' Even in narratives peculiar 
 to himself Luke shows traces of Mark's influence.' Let 
 us look only at one case of this, which is by no means 
 the clearest case that might be given, but which still 
 has some probability in its favor. In Mark the chapter 
 on the second coming concludes with these words : 
 ' ' Watch therefore ! for ye know not when the Lord of 
 the house cometh, whether at even, or at midnight, 
 or at cock-crowing, or in the morning; lest coming sud- 
 denly he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you 
 I say unto all, Watch." ^ What we wish especially to 
 notice are these two phrases, " at even, or at midnight, 
 or at cock-crowing, or in the morning," and " What I 
 
 ' Luke 3 : 15, 22 ; 4 : 5, 6, 13 ; 5 : I7 ; 6 : 19 ; 7 : 21 ; 8 : 46, 
 53 ; 9 : 31. 32 ; II : 18 ; 20 : 38 ; 22 : 45, 51 ; 21 : 20, 24. 
 
 "^ Luke 4 : 22^, 24, cf. Mk. 6 : 3, 4 ; 5: 10, cf. Mk. i : 19 ; 7 : 
 37, cf. Mk. 14 . 3. 
 
 3 Mk. 13 : 35-37- 
 
The Synoptic Gospels. 39 
 
 say unto you I say unto all " ; the only parallels to 
 these phrases are found in a single passage in I^uke. 
 "And if he shall come in the second watch," says 
 Jesus, " and if in the third, and find them so, blessed 
 are those servants ' ' ; and shortly after Peter asks, 
 " I/)rd, speakest thou this parable unto us, or even 
 unto all ? " ' But in both cases the words come in more 
 naturally in Mark. The discourse on the second com- 
 ing, as is shown by the warning which is thrown in, 
 " IvCt him that readeth understand," is addressed to 
 Christians generally, so that such an ending to it is 
 very appropriate ; as a question from Peter, on the 
 other hand, one cannot see that it has any very distinct 
 meaning. And the probability of this conclusion will 
 be strengthened when we show, as we shall try to do 
 in another place, that the whole of the passage in 
 Ivuke is only a free condensation of a longer dis- 
 course. 
 
 And this connection with Mark appears too in cases 
 where Luke has not wholly understood his source. This 
 may be seen in a phrase which Mark uses in the ac- 
 count which he gives of the first day at Capernaum : 
 "And they were astonished at his teaching, for he 
 taught them as having authority, and not as the 
 scribes." ^ Luke, in his parallel account, also uses the 
 same word, iB,ovaia^ but it is with a different meaning: 
 ' ' And they were astonished at his teaching, for his 
 word was with authority. ' ' ^ The narrative goes on to 
 tell how the people, in surprise, exclaimed, ' ' With 
 authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits, 
 and they come out ' ' ; and this new meaning of the 
 
 ' Luke 12 : 38, 41. 
 ' Mk. 1 : 22. 
 ^ Luke 4 : 32. 
 
40 The Life and Teachings of Jestis. 
 
 word, implying miraculous power, Luke has carried 
 back into the preceding phrase, as will be evident if 
 one will compare the similarity of the wording in the 
 two places. But it is clear that the word ought to re- 
 fer, as in Mark, to his teaching, and not to his miracu- 
 lous power, if for no other reason because the miracle 
 had not yet been performed. When, too, Luke, in the 
 narrative of the entry to Jerusalem, makes the " cer- 
 tain of those who stood there," of Mark's account, the 
 owners of the colt, it seems like an inference, and a 
 mistaken inference, from Mark's words ; for the way 
 in which the objection is made, and the failure to recog- 
 nize Jesus' disciples, agrees better with the character 
 of bystanders, and it is more likely that there were a 
 number of bystanders than that there were several own- 
 ers of the colt. Mark, again, in the account of the 
 paralytic man, mentions in the middle of his narrative 
 that certain scribes were present ' ; but Luke antici- 
 pates this remark at the beginning of his account, and 
 explains it as a concerted meeting of Pharisees and 
 scribes out of every village of Galilee and Judsea and 
 Jerusalem, "^ which can hardly be considered likely. 
 Another misunderstanding occurs in the account of the 
 crucifixion, where the oflfering of vinegar, according to 
 Mark's account, was far from being intended in mock- 
 ery, as Luke supposes ; and where the symbolism which 
 Mark attaches to the rending of the veil of the Temple 
 is clearly not understood, for it is spoken of as taking 
 place before Jesus died. And, finally, the remark at 
 the close of Mark's Gospel, " And they said nothing to 
 any one, for they were afraid, ' ' Luke must have read, 
 for he tries to get around it by what evidently is a mere 
 
 ' Mk. 2 : 6. 
 •2 Luke 5 : 17. 
 
The Synoptic Gospels. 41 
 
 makeshift: "Now they were Mary Magdalene, and 
 Joanna, and Mar}'- the mother of James ; and the other 
 womeii with them told these things to the Apostles. ' ' 
 
 The same phenomena are to be found in Matthew 
 also. Here, too, it is clear that we have to do with a 
 narrative which in a very large measure is secondary 
 and dependent, and that it is dependent upon a source 
 which at least strongly resembles our Mark. Incidents 
 which in Mark are simply placed side by side, the first 
 Evangelist supposes are arranged chronologically, and 
 once this leads him into a curious mistake. Mark, 
 after he has told how the disciples were sent out two 
 by two, mentions the effect which Jesus' fame had 
 upon Herod, who saw in him John the Baptist risen 
 again. This gives him an opportunity for telling the 
 story of how John had been murdered, an event which 
 he represents as having taken place some time before. 
 After this digression he goes back to his narrative, and 
 relates what happened on the disciples' return, namely, 
 the journey to the other side of the lake.' Now 
 Matthew also has the same events, but because this 
 journey and the beheading of John are placed by Mark 
 together, he supposes that they are connected in time, 
 and that one was the cause of the other. ^ But he 
 forgets that the story of John's murder had carried the 
 narrative backwards, so that really he is making the 
 disciples return before they set out. So, too, he has 
 changes and additions,' sometimes exaggerations,* 
 where Mark's text is undoubtedly original ; the ad- 
 dition of a colt, in the account of the entry into Jeru- 
 
 ' Mk. 6 : 7-30. 
 
 2 Matt. 14 : 13. 
 
 3 Matt. 3 = 7; 13 : 55, 58; 20:20; 21 :2, 19; 22:7, 11-13, etc. 
 ^ Matt. 14 : 21. 
 
42 The Life and Teachi^tgs of yesus. 
 
 salem, in order to make a closer correspondence with 
 prophecy, is a very evddent case. Again there are a 
 fairly large number of instances where Matthew's text 
 reads a little unnaturally, or shows an actual miscon- 
 ception, which we can explain easily by comparing 
 him with Mark. So, for example, in the dispute about 
 fasting,' Matthew makes the disciples of John the 
 questioners, although this is highly improbable. But 
 if we turn to Mark we find that he says : ' ' And John's 
 disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And they 
 come and say unto him, Why do John's disciples and 
 the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but thy disciples fast 
 not ? " * Now it is clear that the ' ' they ' ' of Mark is in- 
 definite, or perhaps it refers to the Pharisees who have 
 been spoken of in the narrative just before; but it is 
 also clear that a reader might refer it to John's dis- 
 ciples, who are mentioned in the preceding sentence. 
 Again, at the end of one of the Sabbath cures in 
 Matthew occur the words : "So that it is permitted to 
 do good on the Sabbath day." ^ But in Mark the same 
 account is introduced by the question, " Is it lawful to 
 do good on the Sabbath day, or to do harm ? " ^ and 
 to this question the words in Matthew seem to point. 
 Another case not quite so evident occurs in the story 
 of the rich young man. "It is hard," so Matthew 
 reads, " for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of 
 heaven. And again I say unto you, it is easier for a 
 camel to go through a needle's eye." ' In Mark, how- 
 ever, this "again " comes in much more naturally: 
 
 ' Matt. 9 : 14. 
 2 Mk. 2 : 18. 
 
 * Matt. 12 : 12. 
 " Mk. 3 : 4. 
 
 * Matt. 19 : 23, 24. 
 
The Synoptic Gospels. 43 
 
 " And Jesus looked round about, and saith to his dis- 
 ciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter 
 into the kingdom of God ! And the disciples were 
 amazed at his words. But Jesus answered again, and 
 saith unto them, Children, how hard is it to enter 
 into the kingdom of God." ' One more example may 
 be given, which perhaps is to be explained in the same 
 way. In Matthew, at the close of the address to the 
 Twelve, is a saying which runs as follows : ' ' Whoso- 
 ever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a 
 cup of cold water only, in the name of a disciple, verily 
 I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward." " 
 Jesus has been speaking to the disciples directly, 
 " Whosoever receiveth jj/^?^, receiveth me" ; and the 
 way in which he changes now to the expression, " one 
 of these little ones," does not strike one as at all 
 natural. But in Mark the saying also occurs in a dif- 
 ferent connection, and here it reads : ' ' Whosoever shall 
 ^\Y^ you to drink a cup of cold water."' But just 
 before it we find the saying, which also, in a slightly 
 different form, stands just before it in Matthew : 
 ' ' Whosoever shall receive one of such little children 
 in my name, receiveth me ' ' ; and here it is to actual 
 children that the saying is referred. So that it prob- 
 ably is from this passage in Mark that Matthew bor- 
 rows his expression. 
 
 And another fact also points to this same dependence, 
 the fact that in Mark there is a definite plot, a clearly 
 developed conception of the course of Jesus' ministry, 
 which Mark has followed throughout, but which the 
 other Evangelists have disarranged. Mark shows how 
 
 ' Mk. 10:23, 24. 
 
 - Matt. 10:42. 
 * Mk. 9 : 41. 
 
44 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 Jesus' fame began at Capernaum, and kept constantly- 
 spreading ; he traces the development of the Pharisees' 
 hostility, and of the disciples' belief; he carefully re- 
 serves the confession of Jesus' Messiahship for the cul- 
 minating day at Csesarea Philippi, and when before 
 this the demons salute Jesus as the Messiah, he makes 
 Jesus sternly enjoin silence upon them. Then, from 
 the day at Csesarea Philippi, the whole is overshadowed 
 by the approaching death ; the relations with the 
 Pharisees reach their height in a series of attacks and 
 counter-attacks, beginning with the triumphal entry into 
 Jerusalem, and ending in the success of the Pharisees' 
 plots : but even in the midst of apparent defeat, the 
 promise of victory appears, in the words of the angel 
 at the empty tomb. Any such clear-cut plan, with in- 
 dications all the time appearing that point to it, we 
 shall not find in the other Gospels, and j-et traces of 
 this plan which Mark follows are constantly cropping 
 out. Mark, for example, tells how, just before the 
 choice of the Apostles, Jesus healed ' ' many of the 
 sick. And the unclean spirits, wheresoever they be- 
 held him, fell down before him and cried. Thou art 
 the Son of God. And he charged them much that 
 they should not make him known." ' Here the pro- 
 hibition is closely connected with Mark's view of 
 Jesus' Messiahship. But Matthew, in the same ac- 
 count,' tells how Jesus "healed all the sick," and 
 ' ' charged them that they should not make him known, * ' 
 although this has no meaning, because Jesus' healing 
 ministry he could not possibly have kept a secret if he 
 had wished to do so. Then the throngs which at- 
 
 ' Mk. 3 : II, 12. 
 
 - Matt. 12 : 15, 16. Cf. connection in both Gospels with de- 
 fence against Pharisees. 
 
The Synoptic Gospels. 45 
 
 tended Jesus, Mark is very fond of describing. He 
 tells how Jesus must rise up a great while before day 
 in order to escape them ; how they crowd about him 
 so that none can approach ; so that he has not leisure 
 so much as to eat ; how he can no longer openly enter 
 into a city, but is without in desert places, and even 
 here the people come from every quarter. ' The other 
 Evangelists retain some of the elements of this descrip- 
 tion, but they do not at all appreciate it. I^uke, in his 
 parallel to this last passage, only says, " But so much 
 the more went abroad the report concerning him ; and 
 great multitudes came together to hear, and to be 
 healed of their infirmities. But he withdrew himself 
 in the deserts and prayed " " : he misses entirely what 
 Mark portrays so vividly, and we should hardly see 
 why he spoke of the desert at all, if we had not Mark 
 to compare him with. 
 
 Sometimes also we have evidence that Mark was used 
 by both of the other Evangelists in a single passage, 
 which shows at the same time that Matthew and Euke 
 did not use each other. One such case there is in the 
 account of the call of Levi : "It came to pass, ' ' says 
 Mark, "that he sat at meat in his house"'; but 
 whose house is meant, there is at least chance for 
 doubt. And the other Evangelists we find actually 
 have interpreted it in different ways, Matthew suppos- 
 ing that it means Jesus' own house, and Luke that it 
 is the house of Levi." And in the same way a para- 
 bolic saying of Jesus' , which in the second Gospel is 
 
 1 Mk. 1 : 45. 
 
 " I/uke 5 : 15, 16. 
 
 ^ Mk. 2 : 15. 
 
 ^Matt. 9 : 10 ; I^uke 5 : 29. 
 
46 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 given without remark — " Beware of the leaven of the 
 Pharisees " ' — is explained by Matthew as the teaching 
 of the Pharisees, while Luke understands it to mean 
 their hj^pocrisy.^ Probably Mark means neither the 
 teachings of the Pharisees nor their hj^pocrisy, for he 
 adds, ' ' And of the leaven of Herod, ' ' an allusion which 
 points to the plots which Mark already has mentioned, 
 and which the Pharisees and Herodians had entered 
 into against Jesus, to the suspicions, therefore, which 
 they were instilling among the people. 
 
 And in two other passages, also, this may be seen, 
 one of them the passage with which Mark starts in his 
 Gospel, the account of the first day at Capernaum. 
 Here Mark gives a consistent picture, whose relation 
 to the rest of his design is evident, forming, as it does, 
 a vivid description of the beginning of Jesus' ministry, 
 with the first awakenings of belief, and the foretaste 
 of his coming popularit3^ Jesus calls his four disciples, 
 and with them enters their native town, Capernaum. 
 It is the Sabbath, and he enters the synagogue to 
 teach. The people are amazed at his teaching, and 
 their amazement is increased when Jesus performs his 
 first miracle. After the service he goes to the home 
 of his new disciple, where another miracle takes place, 
 the healing of Peter's mother-in-law. The fame of 
 these miracles spreads throughout the city, and at sun- 
 set the whole city comes together to be healed. But 
 Jesus has not come to Capernaum only, and the next 
 morning he hurries off to carry the Gospel to other 
 cities also. But both of the other Evangelists succeed 
 in spoiling this narrative ; in the first place they do 
 
 ' Mk. 8 : 15. 
 
 * Matt. 16 : 12 ; Luke 12:1. 
 
The Synoptic Gospels. 47 
 
 not notice that it is meant as an introductory piece, 
 and they put other parts of Jesus' ministry before it. 
 Then both have separated the call of Peter from the 
 visit to Peter's house. I,uke has another version of 
 the call, which he brings in later on, so that here the 
 name of Simon comes up suddenly, without anything 
 to tell us who Simon is. Matthew again, who has 
 dropped the account of the Sabbath cure in the syna- 
 gogue, still makes the people wait till sunset before 
 they come together, although, judging from the narra- 
 tive which he places just before, it was not a Sab- 
 bath day at all ; and to L^uke the fact that it was a 
 Sabbath day has become a little obscured, for he says 
 not "when the sun had set," but " while it was set- 
 ting." And, finally, I^uke in the conclusion misses 
 Mark's intention, for he says that the people, and not 
 the disciples, sought Jesus and found him. But even 
 this has an explanation in Mark ; in Mark Peter tells 
 Jesus, ' ' All are seeking thee. ' ' 
 
 The other case which we spoke of occurs in the 
 account of the last days at Jerusalem, in the discussions 
 which Jesus had with his opponents. The last ques- 
 tion which is put to Jesus runs as follows : 
 
 And one of the scribes came, and heard them questioning 
 together, and knowing that he had answered them well, asked 
 him, What commandment is the first of all ? Jesus answered, 
 The first is, Hear, O 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. The second is this : Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater 
 than these. And the scribe said unto him. Of a truth, Master, 
 thou hast well said that he is one ; and there is none other but 
 he : and to love him with all the heart, and with all the under- 
 standing, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbor as 
 
48 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 himself, is much more than all whole burnt ofiFerings and sacri- 
 fices. And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said 
 unto him. Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. And 
 no man after that durst ask him any question.' 
 
 Let US see how the other Evangehsts treat this pas- 
 sage. Matthew, for a reason which will be suggested 
 in another place, gives the first part of the incident, 
 but he omits the lawyer's answer ; and then, just as 
 Mark does, he gives a question which Jesus in turn 
 puts to the Pharisees. But that he may not lose 
 entirely what he has omitted, the last sentence of it, 
 ' ' neither durst any man from that day forth ask him 
 any more questions," he places at the very end, after 
 the question which Jesus asks. But here it loses the 
 meaning which it has in Mark, and no longer serves 
 as a transition from the questions put by the Pharisees 
 to the counter-attack by Jesus. And lyuke leaves out 
 the incident altogether ; but he takes a sentence from 
 it, the beginning of the scribe's reply, " Master, thou 
 hast well said," and places it at the end of the pre- 
 ceding incident, the attack by the Sadducees, although 
 here it is by no means so appropriate. 
 
 So far, then, there is good reason to believe that 
 both Matthew and Luke have incorporated into their 
 work the narrative of Mark, or, at least, of a book very 
 similar to Mark. There are other indications, it is 
 true, which will have to be considered later on, and 
 which will modify our view somewhat ; but these will not 
 affect the general result which has been reached. But 
 now we are prepared to go a step further. For, besides 
 using Mark, it appears that both the Evangelists must 
 have used another document which was distinct from 
 
 ' Mk. 12 : 28-34. 
 
The Synoptic Gospels. 49 
 
 Mark ; for there is a large amount of material which 
 Mark does not possess, but which is common to both 
 Matthew and I,uke ; and by far the largest part of this 
 material is made up of the sayings of Jesus. 
 
 Let us now sum up our results. Mark does not 
 know Matthew or I,uke, Matthew and L,uke do not 
 know each other ; but both make use of an account 
 very similar at least to our Mark, and of another docu- 
 ment which contained at any rate many sayings of 
 Jesus. So far the process has been comparatively 
 simple ; but there is one other fact which is a very 
 important one, and which offers no little complication. 
 Not only do Matthew and lyuke agree with each other 
 in the case of material which Mark does not possess, 
 but they often agree with each other in opposition to 
 Mark. To put it in another way, in some of the nar- 
 ratives which we have supposed so far that Matthew 
 and lyuke derived independently from Mark, they 
 agree with each other instead of with Mark, and Mark's 
 account seems to be a secondary one. There is no 
 need to multiply examples of this at present ; one ex- 
 ample will be found in the healing of the epileptic 
 boy,' where the correspondence between Matthew and 
 Luke is perfectly evident. How, it must be asked, is 
 this fact to be accounted for ? 
 
 There are several ways in which it might be ac- 
 counted for. It is possible to suppose that our Mark 
 is only a revision of an original Mark, which Matthew 
 and Luke use ; and that when Matthew and Luke 
 agree, they preserve the reading of this original Mark, 
 which the revision has lost. But such a revision is 
 very problematical, and indeed critics are not agreed as 
 to whether it was an abridgment or an enlargement of 
 
 1 Matt. 17 : 14/, ; Luke 9 : 37#- ; Mk. 9 : 14^. 
 
50 The Life and Teachings of yesus. 
 
 the original ; in either case the theory presents serious 
 difi&culties. We cannot well think that the original 
 Mark was shorter, because, with very slight excep- 
 tions, Matthew and Luke together contain everything 
 that is found in our present Mark. The original Mark 
 hardly can have been much larger, because, in one of 
 the most important features, the order of events, just 
 as soon as Matthew and Luke cease to agree with our 
 present Mark, they cease to agree with each other. 
 Again, Luke might have known Matthew and copied 
 from him at times, or Matthew might have known 
 Luke. But this we have seen is not at all likely, and, 
 besides, it would only account for the resemblance, and 
 would not account for the secondarj^ character of Mark. 
 Let us apply this to a passage at the beginning of the 
 Gospel, the report of the Baptist's ministry, where 
 Matthew and Luke agree in opposition to the much 
 shorter account of Mark. If this theory is true, then 
 the brief account in Mark came first, and was ex- 
 panded by one of the later Evangelists, let us say by 
 Matthew ; finally Luke, having both accounts before 
 him, follows Matthew in preference to Mark. But the 
 objection to this is, that Matthew does not read at all 
 like a secondary account, while Mark seems clearly to 
 be only an abridgment of Matthew. But this very 
 passage suggests at once the explanation which we 
 conceive to be the true one. Mark also has before him 
 the original work which the other two Evangelists 
 both use, and from which they draw their sayings ; 
 and when he disagrees with Matthew and Luke, the 
 other Evangelists are not drawing from him, but all 
 alike are drawing from the original source, which in 
 this particular case Mark has followed less closely than 
 the others have. 
 
The Synoptic Gospels. ,51 
 
 Let us now, to begin with, test the theory by a case 
 which is not by any means a simple one, but which 
 perhaps can be made plain : we shall go into it at some 
 length, because it is a very good example of the more 
 intricate phases of the relation between the Gospels, 
 and it shows clearly that there is a relationship there, 
 if only we can get at it. If any one will examine the 
 narrative Mark 9 : 33-50, and compare with it the 
 parallel accounts in Matthew and Luke, ' he will see 
 that they present a somewhat complex problem. The 
 sayings of which the passage is composed are very 
 miscellaneous, and apparently they are put together in 
 rather an arbitrary manner. The parallel passages, 
 moreover, differ very essentially among themselves, and, 
 on top of all, there is hardly a sentence in them which 
 does not occur elsewhere in the Gospels in a different 
 connection. Taking Mark by itself, indeed, there is 
 no great difi&culty. Mark, as we shall see, is rather 
 fond of combining a few sayings in a connection of his 
 own. He has, we may suppose, two incidents to give, 
 Jesus' rebuke to the ambition of the disciples, and the 
 account of the man who cast out demons in Jesus' name. 
 Just what Jesus had said on these occasions he does not 
 know, but he selects a few sayings from among the 
 logia which seem to him to be appropriate, and these 
 he weaves into his account, as he does in many other 
 cases. And Luke accordingly, when he has followed 
 Mark in giving the bare incidents, stops, for all that 
 follows, the sayings about offences, and about the sac- 
 rifice of an offending member, he has met with in his 
 other source, and he knows what their true connection 
 is. But in Matthew the process is more complicated. 
 
 Matt. 18 : 1-35 ; Luke 9 : 46-50. 
 
52 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 He starts in, indeed, with the incident which Mark 
 gives, but he modifies it a little. Apparently he thinks 
 that the reply which Mark attributes to Jesus is not 
 quite pointed enough, which indeed it is not, and so he 
 introduces a saying which really is more appropriate, 
 though it belongs to another narrative, where Jesus 
 blesses the little children.' Then he omits the second 
 incident which Mark gives, perhaps because he has 
 already made use of one verse of it,* and takes Mark 
 up again at the forty-second verse, ' ' Whoso shall cause 
 one of these little ones which believe on me to stumble, 
 it is profitable for him that a great millstone should be 
 hanged about his neck, and that he should be sunk in 
 the depth of the sea." 
 
 But now Matthew introduces a verse which Mark 
 does not have : ' ' Woe imto the world because of occa- 
 sions of stumbling ! for it must needs be that the occa- 
 sions come ; but woe to that man through whom the 
 occasion cometh ! ' ' And if we turn to L,uke, we shall 
 see why he did this. For L,uke also has the same two 
 verses together at the beginning of a discourse," so that 
 they must have been together in the source ; and Mat- 
 thew, finding one of them in Mark, turns to the soiu"ce 
 and quotes the other. But then he turns back to Mark 
 again, to the sajangs about offending members, and 
 this time he gets through with Mark for good. But he 
 adds two other sayings, because, like what has gone 
 before, they have to do with children, one a saying 
 peculiar to himself, and the other a parable which he 
 takes from the source. This parable indeed did not 
 
 ' Mark lo : 15. 
 
 "^ Matt. 10 : 42, cf. Mk. 9 : 41. 
 
 ^Luke 17: \ff. 
 
The Synoptic Gospels. 53 
 
 originally refer to children, but the Evangelist makes 
 it do so by an application of his own. 
 
 And now there follows another series of sayings, 
 commencing with certain rules of Church discipline, 
 and again we understand why this is introduced if we 
 turn to lyuke. For we have seen that the Evangelist 
 has already quoted two verses which stood at the head 
 of one of the discourses in the source, and this dis- 
 course, according to Euke, goes on as follows : ' ' Take 
 heed to yourselves : if thy brother sin, rebuke him ; 
 and if he repent, forgive him. And if he sin against 
 thee seven times in the day, and seven times turn again 
 to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him." 
 Now here is the same idea that we have in Matthew, 
 and it is likely that the account in Matthew is only a 
 development of this. For these words of Matthew are 
 not probable in the mouth of Jesus ; they do not have 
 the right ring to them ; they point to a period when 
 the Church and Church government were in existence ; 
 they have all the appearance of ecclesiastical rules. 
 The Evangelist gives them as a definite application of 
 Jesus' words ; and then, led by the idea of Church au- 
 thority, he adds a sentence which really was spoken to 
 Peter, ' ' Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be 
 bound in heaven ; and whatsoever ye shall loose on 
 earth shall be loosed in heaven." But although the 
 first Evangelist does not retain the original form of the 
 saying about forgiveness, he does retain something 
 which points to it. For just below he tells us how 
 Peter came to Jesus and asked him, " I,ord, how often 
 shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him ? 
 till seven times? " So that from Matthew and lyuke 
 together we can reconstruct the whole incident. Jesus 
 had said. If thy brother sin against thee seven times in 
 
54 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 a day, and seven times repent, thou shalt forgive him. 
 A little while after Peter comes to him and asks, Lord, 
 did you mean that we only need forgive seven times ? 
 After that saying, " If he trespass against thee seven 
 times in a day, thou shalt forgive him," when we try 
 further to reconstruct the passage in the source, for a 
 moment we are at a loss. For Luke goes on, "And 
 the Apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith. 
 And the Lord said, If ye have faith as a grain of 
 mustard seed, ye would say unto this sycamine tree. 
 Be thou rooted up, and be thou planted in the sea ; 
 and it would have obeyed you." Of this, however, 
 Matthew has nothing. Instead he goes on without 
 any break, " Again I say unto you, that if two of you 
 shall agree on earth as touching anything that they 
 shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which 
 is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered 
 together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. ' ' 
 Then comes Peter's question, and Jesus' answer in the 
 parable of the debtors. But here Mark comes in to 
 help us ; that saying about the sycamine tree he has 
 used, with its form slightly changed, in the account of 
 the barren fig-tree, and after it he has added two verses. 
 "Therefore I say unto you. All things whatsoever 5'e 
 pray and ask for, believe that ye have received them, 
 and ye shall have them. And whensoever ye stand 
 praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any one ; 
 that your Father which is in heaven may forgive yoyx 
 your trespasses." ' But these are exactly the two 
 ideas, given partly in the same words, that we find in 
 Matthew, the potency of prayer, and the duty of for- 
 giveness. Mark has evidently abbreviated the passage 
 
 * Mk. II : 23-25. 
 
The Synoptic Gospels. 55 
 
 from the source, and it is very significant that he gives 
 us just the three thoughts, in the same order, which 
 we should get independently by combining the ac- 
 counts in Luke and Matthew. And even the parable 
 with which I^uke closes,' a parable which he must have 
 got from some other source, shows enough likeness to 
 the parable of the debtors to explain how Luke thought 
 of putting it here. 
 
 Now this passage shows, we think, in a concrete 
 way, every process which we have assumed ; it shows 
 that Matthew and Luke have made use of Mark, and 
 it shows that all of our Gospels alike have made use of 
 a common source, which still can be detected at the 
 bottom of them. And when now we go further, and 
 ask how extensive a use Mark, our earliest Gospel, 
 has made of this source, we think that we shall be able 
 to reach results that are a little surprising. First there 
 are the sayings of Jesus which Mark has, and which 
 he must have got in this way. He often puts these 
 sayings, indeed, in new combinations, but with a very 
 few exceptions, which perhaps he got from oral tradi- 
 tion, every one of them can be traced back to a prob- 
 able, oftentimes to a certain connection in the source.^ 
 And the same thing is true of a surprisingly large 
 number of the narratives. Matthew and Luke both 
 show that they are dependent on Mark, but there are 
 also indications, not so numerous, indeed, but still to 
 be detected, that Mark also is secondary, that Matthew 
 and Luke sometimes have retained the original reading. 
 In the account of John the Baptist and of Jesus' tempta- 
 tion this is very plain ; let us look at some of the cases 
 
 1 Luke 17 •."] ff. 
 " See Appendix. 
 
56 The Life and Teachmgs of Jestis. 
 
 where it is not so evident. To begin with, there are 
 four miracle stories which are given by Matthew in a 
 ver)^ much simpler form than that in which Mark gives 
 them, the miracles of the palsied man,' the Gadarene," 
 Jarius' daughter,' and the epileptic boy." In Matthew 
 these stories do not bear the marks of having been 
 abridged, and indeed the very fact that they are so 
 much shorter and simpler would show that they are 
 more original. Tradition does not proceed from the 
 elaborate to the simple, but from the simple to what is 
 more elaborate. Nor are special indications lacking of 
 the secondary character of Mark's additions. In the 
 story of the paralytic, the faith which in the earlier ac- 
 count Jesus commends consists in the fact that the sick 
 man was brought, bed and all. The change which 
 Mark introduces, and the whole incident of the open- 
 ing in the roof, has always excited suspicion, and it 
 becomes doubly suspicious when we notice that the 
 incident is closely connected with Mark's pragmatism. 
 Mark is constantly insisting upon the crowds which 
 followed Jesus, and this appears to be the motive for 
 his change ; not so much to give a picture of faith as 
 to show Jesus with so many hearers about him that ap- 
 proach to him is impossible. Again, in the story of 
 the Gadarene, Mark appears at a disadvantage ; for it 
 is less likely that a writer who had a good explanafion 
 before him should change it into a poor one, than 
 that, finding in his narrative that two demons were 
 made to destroy a whole herd, and not understanding 
 how this could be, he should conjecture that a legion 
 
 ' Mk. 2 : \ff. ; Matt. 9 : \ff. 
 ' Mk. 5:1//. ; Matt. 8 : 2%//. 
 8Mk. 5 : 21/f. ; Matt. 9 : iS/f. 
 <Mk. 9 : 1/^//. ; Matt. 17 : i\//. 
 
The Synoptic Gospels. 57 
 
 of demons had entered into a single man, one for each 
 of the swine. And another secondary trait appears in 
 the healing of the issue of blood, where Mark retains 
 the words which effect the cure just as they stand in 
 Matthew, but at the same time makes the cure to 
 have taken place before the words are spoken. And 
 that the stories really were in the source, and that 
 Mark found them there, is further shown by the fact 
 that in all of them I^uke has points of contact with 
 Matthew's narrative, while in one of them, the cure 
 of the epileptic boy, he clearly agrees throughout with 
 Matthew rather than with Mark. 
 
 Next let us take the two Sabbath controversies, and 
 first the story of the plucking of grain on the Sabbath 
 day. Here also Matthew and I^uke agree in opposition 
 to Mark, Not to speak of several minor points of con- 
 tact in the language, both omit the saying which Mark 
 gives, " The Sabbath was made for man, and not man 
 for the Sabbath, ' ' and both disagree with Mark as to 
 the cause of the controversy. "The disciples were an 
 hungred, ' ' says Matthew, ' ' and began to pluck the 
 ears of com and to eat ' ' ; and I^uke has the same idea 
 of it. But Mark says nothing about their eating, and 
 makes the offence consist in breaking a path through 
 the fields, though the illustration which Jesus uses, if 
 nothing else, would make it evident that the other 
 version is in the right. The story of the withered 
 hand, again, seems to have had a curious history. The 
 story, substantially as Matthew gives it, is shown to 
 have been in the source by its presence in I^uke, ' with 
 only its setting changed, and the withered hand 
 
 altered to dropsy. Mark's narrative then can hardly 
 
 • • 
 
 ' I^uke \\\xff. 
 
58 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 be anything else than his version of the same story, 
 for the entire framework of the incident, apart from 
 Jesus' words, is identical in the two Evangelists. 
 Mark, probably because he is more interested in the 
 illustration which it affords of the Pharisees' hostility 
 than in anything else, drops Jesus' reply, and instead 
 of the Pharisees' question, he makes Jesus ask a ques- 
 tion which is somewhat similar to it in phraseologJ^ 
 When Matthew comes to this story in Mark, he rec- 
 ognizes it, and substitutes the account in the source. 
 Ivuke, however, thinks they are two events, and gives 
 both. Only the withered hand has got changed into 
 the dropsy — lack of moisture vs. excess of it ; — and 
 while the question is given as in the source, "Is it 
 permitted to heal on the Sabbath ? " it is attributed 
 through the influence of Mark's account to Jesus, 
 instead of to his opponents. 
 
 Next comes the story of the miraculous feeding, 
 and this too Mark appears to have found in his source. 
 Not only are there a number of points in the language 
 where Matthew and I^uke agree,' but this seems to be 
 the easiest way of accounting for the fact that two 
 versions are given of the same event. If Mark had 
 found one account in writing, and from some other 
 source had got the story in a slightly different form, 
 he might have thought that they referred to two 
 distinct events ; otherwise there is no good reason why 
 he should have thought this. In the story of the 
 transfiguration, too, Mark's account seems to be 
 secondary, and in several minute ways Luke shows an 
 agreement with Matthew. In both while Peter is yet 
 speaki7ig a cloud overshadows them, and a voice comes 
 
 ' See Appendix. 
 
The Synoptic Gospels. 59 
 
 from the cloud ; in I^uke it is the cloud, in Matthew, 
 more naturally, the voice, which excites the alarm of 
 the disciples. But both dififer from Mark, who thinks 
 that the fear is excited by the vision of the two men, 
 and who makes Peter's words the result of this fear, a 
 thing which, apart from the agreement of Matthew 
 and lyuke, appears like a misapprehension ; for in the 
 words themselves there is nothing to suggest that they 
 are the result of fright, and on the contrary, Peter's 
 expression, " I,ord, it 's a good thing that we are 
 here," is quite in line with his assertive and self- 
 confident character. And in addition, the statement 
 which all the Evangelists have, " I^ooking round about, 
 they saw no one, save Jesus only," comes in more 
 naturally in Matthew, where the disciples in their 
 fear have thrown themselves with their faces to the 
 ground, and so for the moment have not been 
 looking. 
 
 And now, after all this, we should not expect the 
 concluding history of the Passion to be wholly inde- 
 pendent, and, in fact, we find indications that it is not 
 so, indications which in themselves are perhaps not 
 always very strong, but which are stronger when they 
 are taken all together. These begin with the story of 
 the entry into Jerusalem, where Matthew and lyuke both 
 have a saying of Jesus' in answer to a complaint on the 
 part of the Pharisees.' These sayings are not the 
 same, but they are similar, and it is more likely that 
 the presence of one of them should have suggested the 
 other, than that, with nothing to suggest it, both 
 Evangelists, having so little original knowledge as 
 they seem to have, should have brought in a similar 
 
 ' Matt. 21 : 16 ; I,uke 19 : 40. 
 
6o The Life and Teachings of fesus. 
 
 saying in the same narrative. Besides this, both ac- 
 counts make the cleansing of the Temple take place on 
 the day of the entry, while Mark postpones it to the 
 following day ; and the account of the answer which 
 Jesus gave to his opponents when they asked him his 
 authority,' an account in which there are several 
 points of contact between Matthew and I^uke, has a 
 close connection with this cleansing. 
 
 Another indication occurs in the stoiy of the prepa- 
 rations for the last supper. While Mark tells minutely 
 how Jesus gave directions to his disciples to go into 
 the city till they should meet a man bearing a pitcher 
 of water, and then to follow him and address the owner 
 of the house where he should enter — plainly the ac- 
 count of a miracle, — Matthew simply reads, " Go into 
 the city to such a man," which seems to be original, 
 for the first Evangelist never abbreviates a longer ac- 
 count in a way like this, particularly if by doing so he 
 lets go the chance to relate a miracle. Then, in the 
 story of Gethsemane, Matthew and I^uke both have the 
 form, "Thy will be done," while Mark only has " Not 
 what I will, but what thou wilt " ; this might, how- 
 ever, be due to a reminiscence of the L,ord's Prayer. 
 But in the account of the denial the coincidences are 
 stronger. In both Matthew and lyuke the prophecy 
 reads, ' ' Before the cock crow, ' ' while Mark has ' ' Be- 
 fore the cock crow twice." Both add the sentence, 
 "And Peter went out and wept bitterly." Again, in 
 Mark Peter is questioned the second time by the maid 
 who spoke to him at first, while in Luke it is another 
 man ; so that the " other maid," whom the first Evan- 
 gelist speaks of, may possibly be a compromise between 
 
 ' Matt. 21 : 23. 
 
The Synopizc Gospels. 6i 
 
 the two. Then, according to Mark, Jesus says to his 
 judges, "Ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the 
 right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of 
 heaven." Such a saying is a little suspicious, particu- 
 larly as Jesus hardly could sit at the right hand of 
 power, and come with the clouds of heaven at the 
 same time, which seems to be intended. Matthew, 
 again, has it, " Henceforth ye shall see the Son of 
 man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming on 
 the clouds of heaven," which does not make good 
 sense. But in L,uke we find, "But from henceforth 
 shall the Son of man be seated at the right hand of the 
 power of God. ' ' If this was the form in the source, 
 which Luke has been the only one to retain, it explains 
 at once how Mark's misunderstanding arose, and how 
 the first Evangelist got his "henceforth," which other- 
 wise cannot very well be explained. In the closely 
 connected account of the mocking of Jesus, also, Mat- 
 thew and lyuke both have the question, " Who is he 
 that smote thee ? ' ' And, in conclusion, there are a 
 number of other verbal coincidences between Matthew 
 and L/uke.' 
 
 And not only has Mark taken all his most important 
 incidents from the source, but even in the narratives 
 which are due to himself he shows his dependence on 
 the source in a remarkable way. To take for the pres- 
 ent only the most striking example of this, in Matthew 
 
 ' rjvXit^Ero, Luke 21 : 37, cf. Matt. 21 : 17 ; hitirakEv, Luke 
 22 : 50, cf. Matt. 26 : 51 ; omission of Mk. 14 : 51 and 15 : 44 ; ual 
 i6Tr}KEi 6 Xabz OEcopcSv and rov Qsov, Luke 23 : 35, cf. Matt. 
 27 : 36, 40 ; evervXiZsv, Luke 23 : 53, c/. Matt. 27 : 59 ; ov ovh 
 r/v ovSei'i ovTCeo jcsi^svo?, Luke 23 153, cf. Matt. 27 : 60 ; eTts- 
 q)Go6KEi', Luke 23 : 54, cf. Matt. 28 : i ; ddrpaTCrovdy, Luke 
 24 : 4, cf. Matt. 28 : 3. 
 
62 The Life a7id Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 there is connected with the Sermon on the Mount a 
 short introduction and conclusion, nearly every sen- 
 tence of which has its counterpart in Mark. 
 
 And Jesus went about in all 
 Galilee, teaching iu their 
 synagogues, and preaching 
 the Gospel of the kingdom, 
 and healing all manner of 
 disease and all manner of 
 sickness among the people. 
 
 And the report of him went 
 forth into all Syria : 
 
 and they brought unto him all 
 that were sick, holden with 
 divers diseases, and torments, 
 possessed with demons, and 
 epileptic and palsied ; and he 
 healed them. 
 
 And there followed him 
 great multitudes from Galilee, 
 and Decapolis, and Jerusalem 
 and Judaea, and from beyond 
 Jordan. 
 
 And seeing the multitudes, 
 he went up into the moun- 
 
 Jesus came into Galilee, 
 preaching the Gospel of God. 
 Mk. I : 14, 15. 
 
 And straightway on the 
 Sabbath day he entered into 
 the synagogue, and taught. 
 I : 21. 
 
 And he went into their 
 synagogues throughout all 
 Galilee, preaching and casting 
 out devils, i : 39. 
 
 And the report of him went 
 out straightway everywhere 
 into all the region of Galilee 
 round about, i : 28. 
 
 They brought unto him all 
 that were sick, and them that 
 were possessed with demons, 
 and he healed 
 many that were sick with 
 divers diseases, i : 32-34. 
 
 He healed many, insomuch 
 that as many as had plagues 
 pressed upon him that they 
 might touch him. 3 : 10. 
 
 And a great multitude from 
 Galilee followed, and from 
 Jerusalem, and from Idumaea 
 and beyond Jordan, and about 
 Tyre and Sidon. 3:7/ 
 
 And he goeth up into the 
 mountain, and calleth unto 
 
The Synoptic Gospels. 63 
 
 tain : and when he had sat him ■whom he himself would, 
 down, his disciples came unto and they went unto him. 3 : 
 him. 13- 
 
 And it came to pass when And they were astonished 
 
 Jesus ended these words, the at his teaching, for he taught 
 multitudes were astonished at them as having authority, and 
 his teaching : for he taught not as the scribes, i : 22. 
 them as one having authority, 
 and not as the scribes. Matt. 
 4: 23-5 ; I : 7 : 28, 29. 
 
 It is evident from this comparison that there is a di- 
 rect literary connection between this passage and 
 Mark's Gospel, and there are two wa3^s in which the 
 connection might have arisen. Our first Evangelist, 
 wishing to form an introduction to his account, may- 
 have gone through Mark, and have picked out these 
 passages and put them together ; or, on the other hand, 
 Mark may have found the passage in his source, and 
 may have used it in a certain way as a basis for his 
 representation. Something is to be said for the first 
 view, but much more, we think, for the second. Let 
 us take some of the sentences by themselves. ' ' The 
 report of him went abroad into all the region round 
 about" ; this certainly would follow from Matthew's 
 account, but in Mark not only is the single modest 
 miracle not so likely to have attained this fame, but the 
 sentence does not come in naturally. After it we should 
 expect the narrative to stop, but instead of this it goes 
 on to describe the other events of the same day ; in 
 other words, the saying interrupts a continuous narra- 
 tive to speak of something that only occurred after the 
 events of this narrative were finished. Then the de- 
 scription of Jesus' teaching, ' ' He taught them as having 
 authority, and not as the scribes, ' ' is peculiarly appro- 
 
64 The Life and Teachings of fesus, 
 
 priate after the Sermon on the Mount, from which one 
 gets just this impression very vividly ; while in a sim- 
 ple statement that Jesus taught in the synagogue, there 
 is nothing especially to suggest it. And closely con- 
 nected with this, ' ' The multitudes were astonished at 
 his teaching," goes the statement of the crowds which 
 followed Jesus ; in Mark, however, this statement is 
 connected with the choice of the Apostles, where the 
 crowds are rather in the way, and where we are not 
 told just how they were disposed of while Jesus was 
 upon the mountain. Again, in Mark the description 
 of Jesus' choice of the Apostles is not quite natural, 
 " He goeth into the mountain, and calleth unto him 
 whom he himself would, and they went unto him." 
 Whom did he send after them ? Why did he not bring 
 them with him? In Matthew, however, the words read 
 much more naturally. And with this conclusion there 
 are other things that agree. lyuke also opens his ac- 
 count of Jesus' ministry with a short passage, which is 
 an abridgment of the passage in Matthew,' and he 
 therefore must have found this in his source ; for that 
 both Evangelists should have made the same combina- 
 tion of passages from Mark, and that Luke should have 
 done this when he goes on to repeat the passages again 
 in the connection in which Mark gives them, and when 
 an introduction was ready to his hand from Mark, is 
 decidedly improbable. Luke, again, when he comes 
 to the account in Mark of the choosing of the Twelve, 
 takes that occasion to bring in the Sermon on the 
 Mount. More than that, he changes the order 
 in Mark, and, contrary to Mark, he gives the 
 names of the Apostles first, and then brings 
 
 ' Ivuke 4 : 14, 15 
 
The Synoptic Gospels. 65 
 
 in the description of Jesus' cures as an introduction to 
 the Sermon. Some such introduction he must there- 
 fore have known in the source from which the Sermon 
 was derived. And finally, Mark shows that other 
 things at least he has borrowed to make up his narra- 
 tive. The words by which Jesus is made to announce 
 his ministry are those which John the Baptist uses, 
 and the words of the demoniac, ' ' What have we to do 
 with thee ? ' ' are also found in the account which the 
 source gives of two demoniacs. ' Where they are the 
 most likely to be original is evident. 
 
 This therefore is the conclusion to which we have 
 come, that back of all our Gospels there lies a single 
 common source, which still can be restored within cer- 
 tain limits by comparing carefully passages in our Gos- 
 pels which are parallel. The author of Mark, the first 
 of our present Gospels, had this before him, and used 
 it as a mine from which to draw the material which he 
 needed for his purpose. After him came the other two 
 Evangelists, who, with two books now in their posses- 
 sion, attempted, each in his own way and with his own 
 end in view, to combine them into a single narrative, 
 adding besides a certain amount of other matter. But 
 what bearing does this have upon the authorship of 
 the books ? The earliest tradition which we have about 
 the authors is due to Papias, who gives it in these 
 words : 
 
 Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down 
 accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, 
 in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ. 
 For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied him. But after- 
 wards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his 
 
 ' Matt. 8 : 29. 
 
66 The Life and Teachings of Jesiis. 
 
 instructions to the necessities of his hearers, but with no inten- 
 tion of giving a regular narrative of the Lord's sayings. Where- 
 fore Mark made no mistake in thus writing some things 
 as he remembered them. For of one thing he took especial 
 care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put any- 
 thing fictitious into the statements. Matthew put together the 
 sayings of the Lord in the Hebrew language, and each one in- 
 terpreted them as best he could. 
 
 Must we then give this early source which has been 
 discovered to Matthew the Apostle? Granting that 
 the tradition has some basis to it, this nevertheless can 
 scarcely be insisted on, when we call to mind how our 
 Gospels arose. The preceding analysis points to a 
 somewhat informal and haphazard origin of the Gospel 
 tradition, a gradual accretion about an original nucleus, 
 each new editor or author adding a little something 
 that was new, and leaving a more or less deep impress 
 of his own peculiarities on the whole. We have I^uke's 
 testimony that Gospel writing was not considered the 
 peculiar prerogative of an eye-witness, but that 
 ' ' many ' ' before his time had tried their hand at it. 
 Under these circumstances it would be extremely haz- 
 ardous to assign the Gospels in their final stage of 
 development to any special person designated by tradi- 
 tion. When we have got back as far as our data will 
 permit, we scarcely have arrived at the Apostle Mat- 
 thew, though some such a document as is attributed to 
 Matthew must lie at the foundation of it all, if we are 
 to account for the surprising accuracy with which 
 many of the sayings of Jestis are preserved. But 
 while, if Papias' statement is reliable, Matthew's work 
 was a collection of sayings, or logia, the source which 
 our Gospels used contained a very considerable amount 
 of historical matter as well, and this, as will be shown, 
 
The Synoptic Gospels. 67 
 
 is not always reliable enough to be the work of an 
 Apostle. Indeed we sometimes can see traces of more 
 hands than one. In two discourses of a less authentic 
 character, earlier discourses have been made use of ; 
 and the Sermon on the Mount, which, as its contents 
 show, was spoken only to disciples, the writer of the 
 introduction to it has understood as if it were spoken 
 to the multitudes. Still more unsafe is it to attribute the 
 second Gospel to the companion of Peter. Papias' Mark 
 gets his material from Peter, and writes without much 
 reference to order ; our Mark derives by all odds the 
 most important part of his matter from written sources, 
 and his peculiarity lies just here, that his seems to 
 have been one of the first attempts to give a real his- 
 tory, a systematic narrative, of Jesus' life. This is 
 indeed the motive for his book ; the facts which he has 
 found strung loosely together he has combined to form 
 a definite picture. For this picture he certainly de- 
 serves some credit ; but also, in carrying it out, he 
 continually is showing his lack of accurate knowledge, 
 as will appear more in detail in a succeeding chapter. 
 This of course leaves open the question of Papias' testi- 
 mony. If that was not based upon an erroneous tradi- 
 tion, then either the Gospel of Mark must have 
 disappeared, or else it must already have been incorpo- 
 rated with Matthew's work before our present Gospels 
 arose. 
 
 ' Matt. 10 : 15 ; Mk. 13 : 11. 
 
 cs^^^: 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEIv. 
 
 DR. ABBOT, not long ago, is reported to have said, 
 though we do not ourselves recall the passage, 
 that the question of the Fourth Gospel and its 
 authorship is a question which has been settled these 
 forty years ; and in saying this. Dr. Abbot is only voicing 
 a sentiment which is very widespread indeed among re- 
 ligious people both in our own country and in England. 
 One has only to read the religious newspapers to find 
 that this is so, and to see in how confident a fashion 
 the verdict is given, as if the whole thing had been dis- 
 posed of once for all. Still the newspapers may per- 
 haps be pardoned if they are not too accurate at times 
 in matters of this sort, and we could listen to them with 
 fairly good composure ; but when just the same claim 
 is made repeatedly by men who really are leaders in 
 Christian thought, and who are deserving of admira- 
 tion and respect, we feel that we have the right to 
 complain. If when a writer uses such words as those 
 of Dr. Abbot's which have been quoted, he means 
 nothing more by them than that the arguments for the 
 genuineness of the Gospel are so strong that he him- 
 self has been convinced by them, then certainly no one 
 ever would dream of denying his right to say this as 
 
 68 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 69 
 
 strongly as he pleased. But to say that, as a question 
 among scholars, the genuineness of the Fourth Gospel 
 is a settled question, is a very different thing indeed, 
 and it never would be said by one who had taken 
 impartial account of the literature on both sides of 
 the subject. It would not be fair to claim, on the 
 other hand, that the spuriousness of the Gospel is a 
 settled question, though we think that there has been 
 a tendency in this direction, of which the change of 
 opinion on the part of certain German critics is one 
 significant indication. But what makes us disposed to 
 complain of such a claim as that which Dr. Abbot 
 makes, is not so much the fact that it is a mistaken 
 claim, as for this reason, that it tends to increase a feel- 
 ing about the Fourth Gospel which is a most unfor- 
 tunate one, and because in itself it usually is an 
 expression of this feeling. Of the Foirrth Gospel it 
 is true in a peculiar way, as it is not true of any 
 other book of the Bible, that it has become a test ques- 
 tion in theology rather than a question which is purely 
 critical and historical. If one is concerned for religion, 
 and wishes to commend himself to religious people, it 
 is almost impossible that he should do this if he gives 
 it out that he does not accept the Fourth Gospel as the 
 work of an Apostle, while if one does accept it firmly, 
 this is enough, as has been shown more than once in 
 recent days, to cover a multitude of theological sins. 
 This, we say, is unfortunate, and the more important 
 the question that is concerned in it, the more unfor- 
 tunate it is. That a critic does not accept the Fourth 
 Gospel as genuine is to most people plain proof that he 
 simply will not accept it, that he has decided before- 
 hand that the Gospel cannot be genuine, and now is 
 only concerned to find arguments that will support his 
 
yo The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 decision ; so that when the question continues to be 
 raised, it is not strange if it is met by a certain feehng 
 of impatience, as if a stubborn blindness were the only 
 thing that inspired the attempt. And with this opinion 
 of an opponent, it is hardly possible that one should try 
 very seriously to imagine to himself that opponent's 
 point of view. At the same time we do not deny that 
 this is a natural feeling ; on the contrary it is wellnigh 
 an inevitable one, and it would be most surprising if 
 such a feeling did not exist. For the Fourth Gospel 
 does really lie at the centre of the Bible, and more than 
 any other book of the Bible it will determine what the 
 truth of the Bible history really is. If the Fourth 
 Gospel is not genuine, then the supernatural concep- 
 tion of Jesus which the Gospel upholds inevitably will 
 have to fall away with it ; and if, on the other hand, 
 the Gospel can be shown to be the work of the Apostle 
 John, then the Apologists are right when they claim 
 that really it carries the proof of the miraculous with 
 it. 
 
 But in saying this, we wish to guard ourselves against 
 a retort which very likely will occur to any who are in- 
 clined to be critical. For, they will say, such a state- 
 ment only goes to indicate, what we have all along 
 maintained, that at bottom it is an aversion to the 
 miraculous which underlies all the opposition to the 
 Fourth Gospel ; it is the perception that the Gospel 
 implies the miraculous which furnishes the sufficient 
 proof that it cannot be genuine. That we should con- 
 vince any one that it is not a fear of the miracles which, 
 in spite of the real difficulties of the subject, has brought 
 us to the conclusion which we have reached, we have, 
 we confess, but little hope. Still this is the less im- 
 portant as the critic who rejects the Gospel is not the 
 
The Fourth Gospel. *j\ 
 
 only one who comes with his prepossessions to the in- 
 quiry. Prof. Sanday, who is as fair an opponent as one 
 could wish to meet, said not very long ago, if we recall 
 him rightly, that while the Old Testament problems 
 are not of such a nature that the basis of our faith de- 
 pends upon the way in which they may be settled, the 
 problem of the Fourth Gospel diflFers from them in this. 
 But one who has a system of religious belief which he 
 wishes to retain, and which depends upon the question 
 whether a book was written by a certain man, surely 
 will not come to that book without his prepossessions 
 about it, nor are we able to see how he is likely to be 
 a more impartial critic than the man who takes offence 
 at the miracle stories. But if our objection to the Gos- 
 pel is based upon the miraculous, we at least are not 
 aware of it. When we came to the book, we determined 
 as much as possible to set aside the miraculous elements, 
 and to decide the question, if it were possible to decide 
 it, wholl}^ upon other grounds ; and at first, indeed, we 
 were strongly inclined to accept the Gospel as genuine. 
 But there were other things also which we found, and 
 these at last compelled us to do what we had much 
 rather not have done, to believe that the Fourth Gospel 
 is in no sense the work of the Apostle John ; and the 
 reasons for this change we shall now give. 
 
 When we pass from the first three Gospels to the 
 Fourth, we find at once that there are very many and 
 very obvious differences which have to be accounted 
 for. We meet with new persons and new scenes, and 
 indeed the whole framework of the history is changed 
 completely ; and even in those narratives which are 
 found in the older Gospels, there are often divergen- 
 cies, some of them slight divergencies, but others very 
 important ones. Now in itself, it must be noticed, the 
 
72 The Life and Tcachi7igs of Jesus. 
 
 fact that such a conflict exists does not prove at all that 
 the F'ourth Gospel is wrong, and it might even tell in 
 its favor. To one who knows how the early Gospels 
 arose, it will not appear strange that an eye-witness 
 should find many things to correct in them ; and, in 
 fact, whoever did not find things to correct we should 
 saj' at once could not have been an eye-witness. So 
 that when John contradicts the Synoptists, we cannot, 
 to start with, assume that John is wrong, but in each 
 case we must ask ourselves which account in itself is 
 most likely to be right ; we must ask whether the 
 changes which we find are the changes which an 
 Apostle, an eye-witness, would have been likely to 
 make, or whether there is some other way in which 
 they can be more easily explained. 
 
 Let us begin with a case which, however it may be 
 decided at last, is in its main features fairly plain, 
 the healing of the nobleman's son, in the fourth chap- 
 ter of the Gospel. It is possible that this narrative, 
 and the narrative of the centurion's child in the older 
 Gospels, may refer to two distinct events. It is pos- 
 sible ; but when we notice the very striking resem- 
 blances between the two stories, it is hard to get rid of 
 the suspicion that it must be the same event that both 
 relate. Both occur at the beginning of the ministry 
 in Galilee, in both the one who asks for help is a man 
 of importance, in both his home is at Capernaum, in 
 both a sick child is cured, in both the boy is healed at 
 a distance, in both a rebuke to the Jews is implied. 
 So that, while we admit the possibility, we do not 
 think it is the most natural thing, to suppose that two 
 events are meant. But if it is to the same healing 
 that both refer, then it is evident that there are feat- 
 ures which cannot be reconciled with each other, and 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 73 
 
 in the case of the most important diiference, it is quite 
 as evident that, if we must choose between the two, 
 the earUer account has all the marks of being the more 
 original one. If we turn to this account, we shall find 
 that the whole story centres about a remarkable say- 
 ing of the centurion's, a saying which excited the 
 admiration of Jesus. But this saying John does not 
 give, and, more than that, he directly excludes it. 
 According to the older account, Jesus had not thought 
 of working a cure at a distance, and it is the faith of 
 the centurion which suggests this, a faith which Jesus 
 contrasts with the unbelief of his own countrymen. 
 But in John all this is changed ; here the nobleman 
 himself is included in the rebuke, Jesus of his own 
 accord performs the cure at a distance, and the noble- 
 man, far from suggesting it, only entreats Jesus to 
 "come down ere his child dies." Here, we say, if 
 either account is right, it is far more likely to be the 
 older one ; and the only question is, How are we to 
 explain the difference in John's narrative ? If the 
 narrative is really John's, if it is the narrative of an 
 eye-witness, then the only way in which it can be 
 explained is to suppose that there has been a confusion 
 of memory ; and perhaps it would not be safe to say 
 that this is impossible to suppose. But the supposi- 
 tion becomes a somewhat dangerous one when we 
 remember that it is not a detail of no importance 
 which John has forgotten, but the very point of the 
 whole story. If John is confused here, and still gives 
 his confused recollections so circumstantially, is it not 
 likely to lessen a little one's confidence in his accu- 
 racy ? And even if it is possible that John could have 
 forgotten such a striking thing, yet it must have been 
 recalled to him if he had ever read our Synoptic Gos- 
 
74 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 pels, as it seems exceedingl}^ probable that he had 
 done. Now there is another way in which the differ- 
 ences might be accounted for, and this way gets rid 
 of the difficulty which is found in supposing that 
 there has been a slip of memor3^ The aim of the 
 Fourth Gospel is to glorify Jesus ; this much at least 
 is certain, whatever the means may be that are taken 
 to do it. If now we suppose that the author has taken 
 the miracle which he found in the older Gospels, and, 
 with this purpose in his mind, has transformed it freely 
 to suit himself, we have a supposition which, taking 
 the passage alone, will explain the facts at least in a 
 plausible way. This will account for the difference 
 which already has been dwelt upon. In its early form 
 the miracle is not a glorification of Jesus so much as it 
 is a glorification of the centurion, and if one wished to 
 exalt Jesus' share in it, he would be likely to do much 
 as we find in the Fourth Gospel has actually been done ; 
 he would make Jesus the one to propose the distant 
 cure, he would exalt Jesus' majesty and self-confi- 
 dence, and tone down the centurion's faith, he would 
 make it seem natural and customary' that Jesus should 
 command in this way the powers of sickness, instead 
 of its being necessar>^ for the sick man to be in his 
 presence, as, in the vast majority of cases, the older 
 Gospels presuppose. And the other features of the 
 s\.oxy fit in curiously with this explanation. There is, 
 for instance, the place at which the miracle happened, 
 at Cana, according to John, while the other Gospels 
 put it at Capernaum. It might be that the old account 
 was corrected by John, but it is not quite easy to see 
 why such a detail as this should have dropped out, 
 while it is ver}'^ easy to see how, if one wished to 
 heighten the account, the miracle might seem a little 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 75 
 
 more effective if the distance were increased. Just the 
 same thing is true of the conclusion which is given to 
 the account. This conclusion is not found in the older 
 Gospels, but Matthew's narrative closes with these 
 words, ' ' And the child was healed in that hour. ' ' Now 
 if the writer had been working over the miracle upon 
 the basis of the old account, what is it likely that he 
 would have done ? Why he would have done as we 
 find has really been done in the Fourth Gospel, he 
 would have shown how these words were literally true, 
 how the very moment when Jesus spoke was the mo- 
 ment of the child's recovery. And that this is the true 
 explanation, that the addition is not history at all, at 
 least one thing goes to show, the well-known difficulty 
 about the time when the cure was performed. Accord- 
 ing to John this was about one o'clock in the after- 
 noon, and yet, although the servants started out to 
 meet the nobleman, and the journey was a short one, 
 it was not till the next day that he learned the news. 
 No explanation has been given of this which is enough 
 to make it seem natural, and we do not think that any 
 explanation can be given ; but if we account for the 
 narrative in the way in which we have tried to account 
 for it, then no explanation will be necessary. 
 
 Now we will not insist that this waj- of accounting 
 for the narrative is fixed and certain, that it is neces- 
 sarily the true way. If the difficulty stood alone in the 
 Gospel, if there were nothing more which pointed to 
 this explanation, then we should say that undoubtedly 
 it was not the true way, and that some other way must 
 be found. All that we claim is that it is a plausible 
 wa}^ that taken by itself it is even the most plausible 
 way of accounting for the facts. But if we find that 
 there are other incidents in the Gospel which can be 
 
76 The Life and Teachings of Jestis. 
 
 accounted for in the same way, that there are many 
 such incidents, then the explanation becomes more 
 than a possibility, it becomes distinctly probable. Now 
 there are other things in the Gospel which, if they do 
 not necessarily demand this explanation, at least fall in 
 with it very readilj^ and as another illustration we may 
 take the very next miracle that is recorded, the miracle 
 of the man at the pool of Bethesda. Upon the diflScul- 
 ties in the miracle itself we do not wish to dwell, al- 
 though there are some features of it which are a little 
 suspicious. This long and unsuccessful waiting at a 
 pool with miraculous properties is not altogether easy 
 to imagine, and there is the more important fact that 
 Jesus volunteers of his own accord to heal the man, 
 while in the other Gospels he is accustomed to wait till 
 he is asked. But what we want especially to point out 
 is the fact that here too, as in the fonner miracle, there 
 are remarkable points of contact with a narrative in 
 the Synoptic Gospels, the narrative of the paralytic 
 borne of four. Here the helplessness of the man and 
 the character of his sickness is the same, the command 
 of Jesus and the result which followed it are given in 
 just the same words, in both Jesus assumes that the 
 man's sickness is due to sin, and both give rise to an 
 accusation of blasphemy on the part of the Pharisees. 
 Moreover the narrative in Matthew is closely connected 
 in order with the story of the centurion's child, which 
 also precedes it in John. Now to understand what the 
 force of our argument is, it is necessarj^ not to take 
 this miracle alone, but to look at it in connection 
 with the miracle of the nobleman's son which already 
 has been considered. Here are two narratives which 
 agree in a most remarkable way with two correspond- 
 ing narratives in the older Gospels. Is this agreement 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 77 
 
 an accidental one ? does it stand for nothing ? To us 
 it is not possible to believe this ; not easy to believe it 
 in the case of the first miracle, and impossible when 
 we put the two together. And the explanation which 
 in the first miracle we thought perhaps was conceiv- 
 able, the explanation that there had been a fault of 
 memory, becomes in the second not conceivable at all. 
 So that again we are led to conclude, as we were dis- 
 posed to conclude before, that the author is not an eye- 
 witness, but a man who is freely using and changing 
 over stories which he found already before him in 
 writing. 
 
 One other narrative it may be well to take before 
 going through the Gospel more in detail, the one 
 which tells of the anointing of Jesus at Bethany. 
 This story is told in John more circumstantially than 
 it is told in the Synoptic Gospels ; Mary, for example, 
 is the woman who anoints Jesus, and Judas is the 
 disciple who objects to the waste of the ointment. 
 Now this may go to show that John has a better knowl- 
 edge of the event than the older narrators, but it is 
 just as possible that it shows something very different. 
 Tradition often tends to give definiteness to a story, to 
 discover names and add details, and tradition it is quite 
 possible has been at work here. Indeed it is rather 
 easier to explain how unknown persons should be inden- 
 tified with names that were familiar, than to explain how, 
 if the one who anointed Jesus was a well-known follower 
 of his, and the objecting disciple was the disciple who, 
 a few days later, proved a traitor, facts like these should 
 come to be lost sight of in the earlier account. Then 
 when John makes the ointment a full pound in weight 
 the amount certainly is extravagant, and the words of 
 Jesus by which he commends the woman are much 
 
78 The Life and Teachings of yesus. 
 
 more pointed in the older story. But the difference 
 which is most significant consists in this, that while in 
 the Synoptic Gospels the head of Jesus is anointed, 
 John makes Mary anoint his feet, and wipe them with 
 the hair of her head. Here again we cannot say 
 absolutely that the Fourth Gospel is wrong. Perhaps 
 it is right. Still the probabilitj' seems to be very 
 much against it. For if we turn to the seventh chapter 
 of lyuke, we find the account of another anointing 
 which bears a curious resemblance to John's narrative. 
 A woman, we are told, who w^as a sinner, came and 
 stood at Jesus' feet behind him, weeping, and began to 
 wash his feet with tears, and to wipe them with the 
 hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed 
 them with the ointment. Now the evidence for this 
 story is not unfortunatel)^ of the best, for it shows 
 clearl}' a dependence upon other narratives. This is 
 true of the incident of the anointment, which we think 
 is taken from the anointing at Bethan)^ to which the 
 name of the host, Simon, is also due. Then again 
 the two sentences spoken to the woman are taken, the 
 one from the miracle of the palsied man, and the 
 other from the miracle of the woman with an issue of 
 blood, and the forgiving of the woman's sins also 
 recalls the story of the paralytic. Besides this, Jesus' 
 application of his parable is a little confused, a sinful 
 woman would hardly have been likely to enter a 
 Pharisee's house, and Jesus' rebuke is harsh when we 
 remember that he was enjoying the Pharisee's hospi- 
 tality. At the same time the story is so beautiful and 
 so characteristic that we should be glad to believe 
 there was some basis for it, and perhaps the parable 
 reall}^ was spoken by Jesus to defend some woman who 
 had shown an unusual token of her gratitude. But 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 79 
 
 however this may be, the story in I^uke oflFers an easy 
 way of explaining how John's account arose. In 
 I/Uke the woman bends over Jesus, weeping, and as 
 some of her tears fall on his feet, she brushes them 
 away with her hair ; and this is not unnatural. But 
 that Mary should have poured ointment on his feet, 
 and wiped that away with her hair, is plainly not so 
 natural, so that John's account seems to be a secondary 
 one, and his confusion must have been due to lyuke. 
 But such a confusion in the case of an eye-witness is 
 hardly possible, and it points rather to one who is 
 drawing his facts from the Gospels, and has no origi- 
 nal knowledge about them of his own. 
 
 This then is our theory, that in the history which 
 he gives, our author is taking facts which he has found 
 in the older Gospels, and is freely using these facts, 
 and transforming them, sometimes, so that they shall 
 suit the purpose which he has in view. Such a theory 
 demands more proof than has been given for it as yet, 
 and so we shall go through the book with some detail, 
 and shall try to show that there are many things which 
 seem to point to it. And first we will begin with the 
 story of John the Baptist. This account, when we 
 first look at it, seems to be very different from the 
 older narrative. There is the deputation from the 
 Sanhedrin, and John's testimony to this deputation, 
 an incident in itself not at all improbable, although 
 the Synoptists do not know of it. Then three 
 times John bears witness to Jesus among his own 
 disciples, and of this also the earlier Gospels know 
 nothing. And what the earlier Gospels do speak of, 
 the Baptism and the Temptation, in John are not so 
 much as hinted at ; whether he leaves a place for them 
 at all is a somewhat doubtful question. And now 
 
8o The Life and Teachings of yestis. 
 
 with diflferences such as these, it becomes a little 
 strange that the elements of John's account, very 
 nearly the whole of them, are found also in the Synop- 
 tists. John speaks of himself as a " voice of one crjdng 
 in the wilderness," and this quotation, hardly natural 
 in John's own mouth, the Evangelists we find have 
 already applied to him. He bears witness before the 
 Pharisees in a sentence which, in the older accounts, is 
 addressed to the people, and this earlier connection we 
 can hardly hesitate to say is the more correct one. 
 Then again, in the Synoptic Gospels, a dove appears 
 to Jesus when he is baptized, and a voice from heaven 
 attests his Messiahship to him, — an experience clearly 
 of Jesus' own. Now the Fourth Gospel has this in- 
 cident, or at least a part of it, but here the experience 
 does not come to Jesus but to John himself. If one 
 feels no trouble in believing that the dove was a real 
 appearance " in bodily form," of course it will not be 
 hard for him to explain this ; but if he finds this diffi- 
 cult to accept, any attempt to reconcile John's account 
 with the other one brings in endless complications. 
 Then in addition to these there is another point of 
 contact which is a peculiarl)^ significant one. ' ' He that 
 cometh after me, "says John, "is become before me, 
 for he was before me," and upon this testimony a good 
 deal of emphasis is laid. But in the other Gospels 
 there is a sentence which is suggested by this very 
 strongly, " He that cometh after me is mightier than 
 I, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop 
 down and unloose." No doubt it is possible to say 
 that these are two difi"erent sayings, but it is not easy 
 to believe that this is so, particularly when we find 
 that the testimony is brought in as something already 
 well-known, ' ' this is he of whom I said, ' ' and that in 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 
 
 the twenty-seventh verse John practically makes the 
 identification himself. But to suppose that an Apostle 
 should have altered a saying in so arbitrary a way as 
 this is very difficult to suppose indeed. 
 
 And this last alteration goes along with two other 
 testimonies to Jesus which the Fourth Gospel attributes 
 to the Baptist, one of them the saying, " Behold the 
 Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world," 
 and the other the long speech to the disciples in the 
 third chapter. These three testimonies have all of them 
 the same point of view ; Jesus is pre-existent, he comes 
 down from heaven, he is, in the theological language 
 of the book, the divine Logos, sent into the world for 
 the salvation of men. Now this certainly is the point 
 of view of the Evangelist, it is exactly the fashion in 
 which he speaks of Jesus in other places ; but it is 
 most improbable that a metaphysical belief like this 
 was held by the Baptist. John's conception of the 
 Messiah, if we can judge from his sayings in the Gos- 
 pels, did not differ radically from the best conceptions 
 of his day ; to him the Messiah was a king, a con- 
 queror, whose task it was to lay the axe to the root of 
 the trees, to sift the chaff from the wheat, to execute 
 vengeance upon God's enemies, and bring about the 
 triumph of his people. And from a view like this to 
 get the view of the Fourth Gospel, it is not, we think, 
 historically possible to do, for the two sets of sayings 
 show an altogether different type of mind. And closely 
 connected with this, there is another point in which 
 the two accounts cannot easily be made to agree. 
 John, after his imprisonment, sent to Jesus with a 
 question about his Messiahship, and this question 
 makes it evident that there was a doubt upon the 
 matter in John's mind. But while we can understand 
 
82 The Life and Teachings of Jestis. 
 
 how John, with a tendency to beHeve that Jesus was 
 the Messiah, afterwards might be led by circumstances 
 to be in doubt about it, we cannot understand this if 
 John's beHef was so clear and definite as the Fourth 
 Gospel makes it out to be. If a divine token had been 
 revealed to John, and he had clearly recognized this 
 token in Jesus, if again and again he had borne witness 
 to Jesus' Messiahship with perfect confidence, if his 
 clearest and most unequivocal testimony had been 
 given after Jesus for some time had been engaged in a 
 ministry which did not in the least point to a visible 
 and temporal kingdom, then John's doubt becomes 
 very strange, and we do not think that it can be natu- 
 rall)^ explained. And still one thing more, if John 
 spoke in this way, how is it that John's disciples still 
 held aloof from Jesus, that "he to whom John bare 
 witness beyond Jordan " is still to them their master's 
 rival, a man to be jealous of, a man with whom John's 
 death even does not bring them into fellowship ? This 
 too we find not easily answered. 
 
 There are these difficulties, then, in the account 
 which the Fourth Gospel gives. We do not wish to 
 be too positive, and we will grant to the defenders of 
 the book that, not easily indeed, nor without violence, 
 but still after some fashion they all of them may be 
 accounted for. But also we wish to point out how 
 simply, with how little forcing, they may be explained 
 upon our theory. This strange baptism of the Son of 
 God by a sinful man, this submission to the power of 
 the devil in the wilderness, what could be more natural 
 than to drop out such stories as really not to be explained, 
 and in their place to show how clearly the forerunner had 
 recognized his master? First to the Jews, then to the 
 disciples, — naturally these testimonies would fall into a 
 
 6 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 83 
 
 series of three, a favorite number with the Evangelist. 
 A dove, so tradition said, had appeared to Jesus ; then 
 the Baptist too must have seen it, it must have been a 
 sign to him, a sign that already had been foretold, a 
 sign which he could not have kept his disciples igno- 
 rant of, — no reasoning could be simpler. Jesus must ap- 
 pear, too, that witness may be borne to him, a shadowy 
 form, indeed, moving mysteriously by in the distance ; 
 what doing ? whither going ? what need to ask if only 
 he give the Baptist a chance to speak ! And then if 
 the Baptist was a man sent from God, he must have 
 recognized Jesus plainly, he must have recognized him, 
 not as the Messiah only, but as the pre-existent Son of 
 God ; and if the early Gospels did not tell of this, then 
 the early Gospels could not have been complete. 
 
 After the testimony which the Baptist gives, there 
 comes an account of the call of several of John's disciples, 
 and here again the difference from the old account is 
 noticeable. In the Synoptics, though here too there are 
 difiiculties to be met, Jesus gradually gathers the band 
 of Apostles about him, for not all at once does he meet 
 with the men whom he wants ; but in the Fourth Gos- 
 pel they are ready to his hand, and six of them he has 
 at the end of the second day. Which one of these ac- 
 counts is in itself more likely to be the true one, the 
 historical one, we can hardly doubt ; if one had wished 
 to glorify Jesus, this is just the way he would have 
 gone to work. To glorify Jesus, — that is what every 
 detail seems fitted to do. Jesus does not test and judge 
 men in a human way, but at a glance he knows what 
 is in them. Peter is a rock, Nathanael is an Israelite 
 without guile, and even definite facts in Nathanael' s 
 life Jesus knows miraculously ; when we come to see 
 what this knowledge makes necessary, when we apply 
 
84 The Life a7id Tcachi^igs of yesus. 
 
 it, as the Evangelist does, even to the case of Judas, 
 and say that Jesus had chosen Judas, knowing that he 
 would prove a traitor, then we see how absurd and im- 
 possible it becomes. And what also makes it hard to 
 accept this account is the fact that already the older 
 Evangelists have told how four of these disciples re- 
 ceived a call from Jesus in a way that is altogether dif- 
 ferent. Of this calling in Galilee, by the Lake of 
 Genneseret, John does not speak, and it is difficult to 
 find a place in his account where the event is possible. 
 Jesus, in the Fourth Gospel, goes to Cana, to Caper- 
 naum, to Judaea, where for seven months he baptizes, 
 to Galilee again, and all this time his disciples are with 
 him, as a fixed part of his household. Who are these 
 disciples ? naturally of course they are the disciples 
 whom John alreadj' has mentioned. If now the other 
 account is to be brought into the narrative of John, we 
 must suppose that when Jesus came this second time 
 into Galilee, after the disciples had been with him for 
 many months, he disbanded them for a time, to collect 
 them together again in the manner of which our Syn- 
 optic Gospels have given an account. But if John 
 gave the least hint of this, which he does not, if such 
 a cessation of Jesus' ministry were probable, if it could 
 be explained how this first year dropped completely out 
 of tradition, still the fact remains that the old account 
 means to tell of a first call, and is not intelligible if we 
 explain it in any other way ; so that no real harmony 
 between the two can be admitted. 
 
 For the moment we will pass by the miracle at Cana, 
 which has nothing in the Synoptics to correspond with 
 it, and will come to the cleansing of the Temple. And 
 this event is so closely connected with another difference 
 between the two traditions, the most striking difference 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 85 
 
 of all, that we shall take up the two together. If we 
 had the Synoptic Gospels alone, we undoubtedly should 
 suppose that Jesus' ministry lasted at the most a 
 little over a year, and that, except for a few days at 
 Jerusalem before his death, it was confined chiefly to 
 Galilee. But the Fourth Gospel contradicts this de- 
 cidedly ; it extends Jesus' public life to several years, 
 and it gives to him a ministry, an extended one, in 
 Judaea and in Jerusalem, as well as in Galilee. Now 
 it would be very unsafe to rest much in the matter of 
 chronology upon the authority of the early Gospels, for 
 they seem to have had no chronological data worth 
 speaking of to go on, and it only is the fact that they 
 lump all the narratives together, which makes it 
 appear that these were included in a single year. So 
 far as the mere fact goes, then, it may very well be that 
 John is nearer to the truth when he assigns a longer 
 duration to Jesus' public life ; nor is it impossible that 
 a ministry in Judaea should have been lost sight of by 
 tradition. But when we consider the nature of the 
 ministry which John tells of, then the matter begins to 
 take on a difierent complexion. According to John, 
 after a few days at Capernaum Jesus goes straight to 
 Jerusalem, and for the next seven months, until 
 December, he labors in Judaea. Then he goes back 
 to Galilee, where, if John is right, he disbands his dis- 
 ciples for a season ; but very soon we find him again 
 in Jerusalem, in all probability at the feast of Purim, 
 in March. In April he again is in Galilee, and from 
 this time we lose sight of him till October, when he 
 comes to the feast of Tabernacles ; and in December 
 he still is in Jerusalem. Till the next April again he 
 is in hiding, when he appears to meet his fate. Jesus, 
 then, passes as much of his time in Judaea as he passes 
 
86 The Life and Teachings of fesus. 
 
 in Galilee, and indeed he passes rather more of his 
 time there. If we had the Fourth Gospel alone, we 
 even should suppose that the ministry- in Galilee was 
 an afterthought, that Jesus could not walk in Judaea 
 because the Jews sought to kill him, and so went in 
 to the northern province, that the Galileans received 
 him because they saw his miracles in Jerusalem. All 
 this time Jesus has very definite and bitter relations 
 with the authorities in Jerusalem, and these relations 
 affect closely the future of his life. Could tradition 
 have forgotten all this? it seems rather difiicult to 
 believe. And when we examine it a little more 
 closely, the difiiculty becomes a greater one. The 
 most of the events which the older Gospels tell us of, 
 conservative critics such as Weiss have had to assign 
 ver}^ definitely to a period that lies between two points, 
 between the opening of the ministry in Galilee, and the 
 feeding of the multitudes, if the history is to be at all 
 intelligible. Here take place the rise, the progress, 
 and the failure of the Galilean ministry, which the 
 early accounts think of as the whole of Jesus' work. 
 But if we are to fit this into John's chronology^, we 
 must assign it — the great mass, let us remember, of 
 what is told us about Jesus' life, — to a period which is 
 even shorter than the Synoptists allow for it, to the 
 few months between the arrival in Galilee, in Decem- 
 ber, and the feeding of the multitudes, a little before 
 the Passover in April ; and even this period has to be 
 shortened hy the time it required to dismiss the dis- 
 ciples and call them together again, and we have to 
 break into it by another journey to Jerusalem at the 
 feast of Purim. It is true that we may get a longer 
 period by making the feast of John 5 : i some other 
 feast than Purim, but this is doing violence to the 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 87 
 
 natural interpretation. In a writer whose chronology 
 we can follow elsewhere without any trouble, and who 
 is particularly careful to mention the Passovers, it is 
 unnatural to drop out a Passover feast and a whole 
 year with it entirely without mention. When he 
 mentions a Passover in the second chapter, and again 
 another in the sixth, we must assume that the one 
 follows on the other, unless there are strong reasons 
 against supposing this. And here the only reason is 
 this very difficulty which we are urging against the 
 Gospel. But the rest of the time, how are we to fill 
 that up ? The seven months of the ministry in Judaea, 
 of which not a hint has come down to us, although we 
 certainly should expect that the impression which 
 Jesus' first appearance made would not wholly have 
 been lost ; the long stretch from the feeding of the 
 thousands to the feast of Tabernacles, from April to 
 December ; another long stretch from December to 
 April, when Jesus actually was in hiding, — how are 
 we to fill these clumsy stretches of time ? And still 
 more fatal is the confusion which this brings into Jesus' 
 life-work. There is no clear-cut plan, but a strange 
 vacillation, a leaving of one work to go to another, 
 with success in neither of them, a six months' flight, a 
 four months' hiding. But how easily this is all ex- 
 plained when we stop trying to harmonize our accounts. 
 Jesus must testify to himself in the capital, he must be 
 rejected by the rulers, it was at the feasts that he 
 would appear, of course, to testif)^ to himself he must 
 have appeared more than once ; and nothing was 
 easier than to hit upon the threefold Passover scheme, 
 when we come to see the meaning of the number three. 
 It is true that the intervals between these feasts are 
 very hazy and indistinct ; in the most surprising way 
 
88 The Life and Teachings of fesus. 
 
 we find that no sooner is one feast done than another 
 is at hand, with only an " after these things " to show 
 that any time has elapsed. At the feast of Taber- 
 nacles we enter upon what is apparently a continuous 
 narration, and all at once we find ourselves in the feast 
 of the Dedication, three months later. In March Jesus 
 heals a sick man, and the next October he refers to it 
 as if it had been yesterday. But why should the 
 Evangelist trouble himself for this ? He has brought 
 Jesus to Jerusalem, and that is all he cares to do ; the 
 trouble he was to bring the commentators he hardly 
 could have guessed. 
 
 And now to come back to the point where we began, 
 the cleansing of the Temple, which John puts here, 
 and which the Synoptists put at the very end, has 
 appealed so diiferently to different persons, according 
 to the point of view from which they start in, that it is 
 hardly worth while putting much stress upon it. To 
 us indeed the event seems more natural at the end of 
 Jesus' ministry than at its beginning, because the 
 Synoptic Gospels show that Jesus did not enter upon 
 his work as a reformer, but that he tried to win men 
 by gentleness and by his teaching ; and they imply 
 also that the opposition to him began in a very differ- 
 ent way. However, we will not insist upon this, if 
 others will be content not to argue from it to John's 
 originality. 
 
 When we come to the next long narrative in the 
 Fourth Gospel, the miraculous feeding and the walking 
 on the sea, we find that John agrees closely with the 
 older accounts, and so we need not stop here very long. 
 Still there are changes to be noticed, and again these 
 changes all tend to glorify Jesus. Jesus is the one to 
 propose the miracle, he suggests it, not after the multi- 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 89 
 
 tudes in listening to his words have grown weary and 
 hungr>', but as soon as he sees them coming to him, he 
 plays good-humoredly with the disciples' unbelief. To 
 the walking on the sea, also, another stupendous mira- 
 cle is added, and the boat is conveyed suddenly to the 
 land ; nor do we think that the sudden appearance of 
 boats enough to carry five thousand persons across the 
 lake has everything in its favor. But the difficulty is 
 more serious when, a little farther on, we come to 
 Peter's confession. In the older account this is at 
 Csesarea Philippi ; here it seems to be at Capernaum. 
 In the older account Peter is addressed as Satan ; here 
 too Jesus calls one of his disciples " a devil," but it is 
 Judas Iscariot, and not Peter. But there is a much 
 more important change in the whole spirit of the inci- 
 dent. We need not attempt here to decide whether 
 Peter's words were the first expression of the disciple's 
 belief that Jesus was the Messiah, but this much the 
 incident certainly was, a crisis in Jesus' ministry, when 
 he had good reason to be doubtful what the answer to 
 his question would be. But in John there is no trace 
 of this crisis ; the disciples recognize Jesus fully in the 
 beginning, their faith is increased by miracle after 
 miracle, and now instead of a solemn avowal from 
 Peter and a joyful outburst from Jesus, we only have, 
 in a tone of grieved surprise, as if the answer were 
 obvious enough, "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou 
 hast the words of eternal life." Clearly, from the 
 Evangelist's standpoint, the disciples' faith never could 
 have wavered, but with this standpoint the verdict of 
 history cannot agree. 
 
 It is at the close of the history, in the account of the 
 Passion, that John's connection with the Synoptics is 
 most extended, and this we shall now have to look at. 
 
90 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 In their general outline the two agree very well, but 
 still the differences are sufficiently marked. First there 
 comes the famous difficulty about the day on which 
 Jesus was crucified ; was it the first day of the feast, 
 as the Sj'noptics imply, or the day before, the 14th of 
 Nisan, as John tells us? We do not care to venture 
 into the vast wilderness of learning which has grown 
 up about this discussion, since we probably should not 
 convince any one who does not care to be convinced. 
 We are ready to admit that there are difficulties on 
 both sides. That the arrest and trial of Jesus should 
 have taken place upon a feast day is not what we 
 should have expected, but at the same time the fact 
 that Jesus ate the Passover on the night of his betrayal 
 is hardly to be denied, and it is not possible to show 
 that the Passover could be eaten at any other than the 
 appointed time. But again we have to notice the sus- 
 picious readiness with which John's account can be 
 explained. Naturally enough Christian teachers came 
 early to see a type of Christ in the Paschal lamb, and 
 to speak of " Christ our Passover who suffered for us " ; 
 for all the circumstances of his death went to make this 
 almost inevitable. Now the Fourth Evangelist most 
 of all would be inclined to a view which gave a spirit- 
 ual tm^n to the old ritual, and at the same time did 
 away with it as something literally to be observed ; 
 and with this thought once in his mind, it would not 
 be hard for him to conclude that Jesus' death must 
 have conformed much more exactly to the older type 
 than the Synoptists made it out to do, that Jesus must 
 really have been slain when the Paschal lamb was 
 slain. And there are several indications which, possi- 
 bly at least, point to this very thing. The Baptist, it 
 will be remembered, points out Jesus expressly as the 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 91 
 
 Lamb of God. In a speech of Jesus' own, too, there 
 is a metaphor which, carried out perhaps somewhat 
 too crudely, indicates the same thing, the metaphor of 
 Jesus' flesh and blood. Then the anointing of Jesus is 
 placed by John, in opposition to the other Gospels, six 
 days before the Passover, on the da)^ when the Paschal 
 lamb was selected. The account of the Passover meal is 
 ignored by John, and the explanations that have been 
 given for this, if they are possible explanations, are 
 still not quite satisfactory ; but if Jesus was the Pass- 
 over lamb himself, of course he could not have eaten 
 the Passover, and the omission is explained at once. 
 Then John places the sentence of Jesus at noon, which 
 does not agree with the older Gospels, but which does 
 agree with the time when preparations were begun for 
 killing the Passover lamb. Last of all he brings in an 
 incident which is quite unknown to the older Gospels, 
 and by which he shows that the command which was 
 given in regard to the Paschal lamb, that a bone of it 
 should not be broken, was fulfilled in the case of Jesus. 
 Differences so decided as this will not be found in the 
 rest of the account, but still the differences are numer- 
 ous, and they are not the most of them easily to be 
 justified. There are, for example, the plots of the 
 Pharisees against Jesus, which John places back at 
 the very commencement of Jesus' ministry. Again 
 and again the Jews try to take him and put him to 
 death, and they even send ofiicers to seize him ; but 
 the officers are overawed by Jesus' words, and return 
 without their prisoner, and the Jews do not dare to re- 
 sent the disobedience of their subordinates except by 
 a harmless sneer. And yet along with this helpless- 
 ness, the Pharisees find no trouble in directing the 
 ban of the synagogue against all who confess Jesus, 
 
92 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 the people hardly venture to speak above their breath 
 for fear of the Jews, Jesus himself is forced into hid- 
 ing, and public orders are given that any one who 
 knows his whereabouts shall make it known ; and it 
 is just after the most alarming demonstration in Jesus' 
 favor that his enemies cast aside their fears and venture 
 to seize him. To us it is not easy to think of circum- 
 stances which make proceedings such as these quite 
 probable, and all the more as a desire to show the 
 majesty of Jesus and the power of his words, to repre- 
 sent the fruitless struggles of the powers of the world 
 against the decrees of God, which only could be carried 
 out when the time was come, would concern itself but 
 little with the probabilities of history. And the way in 
 w^hich at last the catastrophe is brought about, this too 
 is significant. So long as Jesus wishes to protect him- 
 self from his enemies he has no trouble in doing this ; 
 but he is only waiting till the time is fulfilled, till he 
 can sujffer as God has appointed him, as a Passover, a 
 sacrifice for the nation. And when this time comes, he 
 goes of his own accord to meet his fate, he insists that 
 his death is purely voluntary, he goes to the place 
 where he was wont to resort with his disciples that he 
 may not seem to be trjdng to escape, he knows the trai- 
 tor from the beginning. Again do we not see how the 
 old account would give offence, how Jesus must be the 
 decider of his own destiny ? and yet we cannot hold 
 this view unless we make Jesus' death nothing less 
 than suicide. 
 
 We do not care to dwell in detail upon the rest of the 
 story, however instructive such a comparison might be. 
 John for example does not tell of the trial before the 
 Sanhedrin ; Jesus is taken to Annas and then to Caia- 
 phas, and from Caiaphas he is l^d before Pilate, and 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 93 
 
 whether there is room here for a trial we feel inclined 
 to doubt. Indeed John, if we read him naturally, 
 would seem to say that the trial before Pilate was the 
 only one. Then the strange incident of a voice from 
 heaven, the strange power of Jesus in the garden, 
 where his captors fall before him to the ground, — how 
 hard these are to think of as real events. And again 
 the curious shifting of the scene in Jesus' trial, the 
 negotiations with the rulers and not with the people 
 concerning the release of a prisoner, the omission of 
 the agony in Gethsemane, with only a sentence to show 
 that even for a moment Jesus' " soul was troubled," 
 the greater minuteness of the fulfilment of prophecy 
 in the division of Jesus' raiment, the flowing of blood 
 and water from Jesus' side, so doubtful in itself and so 
 clearly meant to have a deeper meaning, the enormous 
 amount of the embalming spices, — all these and other 
 things cannot in fairness be overlooked. All of them 
 perhaps may be explained away, and if any one is satis- 
 fied to explain them away we have no quarrel with him. 
 We only ask that men should see that there is a prob- 
 lem to be accounted for, and that one even may find it 
 not to be accounted for at all in the old way, and still 
 not wilfully be creating difficulties for himself where 
 difficulties do not exist. 
 
 Finally we come to the last two chapters of the book, 
 to the events which followed Jesus' resurrection ; and 
 here too, if we will not shut our eyes to them, the 
 difficulties are very plain. Upon the great difficulty 
 which we have when we try to conceive of such a resur- 
 rection as John's account implies, we will not now 
 insist, although that must be allowed its proper 
 weight. Nor will we compare the Fourth Gospel with 
 the older stories, though here, too, there are things 
 
94 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 which need to be explained. So, for one thing, the 
 appearance of the angels to Mary, which lacks all 
 motive here, we cannot well help thinking was taken 
 from the older Gospels, where the angels have a real 
 announcement to make. On this, however, we do not 
 insist, but what we do wish to insist upon is the rela- 
 tion which our story bears to Paul's account. To 
 Paul the resurrection stood as the centre of his faith, 
 and he had made careful inquiries about it when the 
 facts still were fresh. Accordingly, he is able to give 
 the number of appearances and their order, and in his 
 letter to the Corinthians this is what he does. Now 
 Paul is our only witness to the resurrection who is 
 unassailable, and Paul, in a passage where evidently 
 he is trying to be as exact as he knows how, can tell 
 only of five appearances — to Peter, to the twelve, to 
 five hundred brethren, to James, and to the twelve 
 again. But we cannot make this list agree with the 
 list which the Fourth Gospel gives. First, there comes 
 an appearance to Mary, and this Paul does not men- 
 tion ; however, Paul's opinion of women, as we know, 
 was not very high, and perhaps he thought that to 
 bring in Mary as a witness would only be to hurt his 
 case. Then the appearance to Peter, John, it may be, 
 does not exclude, and yet one gets a strong impression 
 from the account, that the appearance in the evening 
 was the first time that Jesus had shown himself to any 
 of his disciples. This latter appearance we must iden- 
 tify with the one which Paul speaks of, though Paul, 
 it is to be noticed, thinks that all the disciples were 
 present and does not know of Thomas's absence. Still, 
 so far the difficulties, while they are real difficulties, 
 are perhaps not inexplicable, but the other differences 
 we do not think can be explained in any natural way. 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 95 
 
 Of the appearance in Jerusalem a week later Paul 
 knows nothing, for we cannot think that it is the sec- 
 ond appearance to the twelve which Paul speaks of, 
 because with Paul this comes last, while with John 
 other appearances follow. Besides, the week which 
 John speaks of does not give time for the appearance 
 to the five hundred, which only could have taken place 
 in Galilee. Finally, the scene by the lakeside, a story 
 which, it is significant, Luke also has in another con- 
 nection, has no point of contact at all with Paul's list. 
 So that of the four appearances which John gives, 
 there are three which Paul is ignorant of altogether, 
 and in the case of the other one the agreement is not 
 exact. How are we to reconcile the two accounts ? 
 Must it not be admitted that they are not to be recon- 
 ciled ? 
 
 There are still three incidents which have not been 
 spoken of as yet, because it only is in the Fourth Gos- 
 pel that they are found, and so they cannot be com- 
 pared with accounts which have come to us from other 
 sources. But these incidents are so important that they 
 cannot be passed by in silence, and to these it will now 
 be necessary to go back. The first of these is the 
 miracle of the wine, which is found in the second chapter 
 of the Gospel. With the question whether a miracle is 
 possible we are not now concerned ; but that in this 
 particular miracle the difficulties which one has to 
 meet are peculiarly great, most critics latterly have 
 been willing to admit. To supply a lack of wine 
 Jesus' mother hints to him, so it seems almost neces- 
 sary to understand, that he should work a miracle, 
 although Jesus up to this time never had shown any 
 ability to work miracles, least of all a miracle like this. 
 Jesus sharply rebukes his mother, and thereupon goes 
 
96 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 on at once to follow out her suggestion, — then there 
 are minor difficulties. Tradition, too, knows nothing 
 of the miracle, and this, when we consider how great 
 a one it was, will also seem to be a little strange. But 
 what after all is the real objection is the fact that we 
 can find no motive for the deed which seems at all 
 strong enough to account for it. There was no real 
 necessity for wine ; the guests already had well drunk, 
 and to supply more would only be to lead to excess. 
 The quantity of the wine which Jesus makes is, one 
 cannot refuse to admit, enormous, and wine moreover 
 was not something there was any need should be 
 created, but it was to be obtained in a natural way. 
 So that there is nothing left for it but to say, as the 
 Evangelist says, that this miracle Jesus performed only 
 to manifest forth his glory. Now a miracle of ostenta- 
 tion is most of all a difficult miracle to hold to. So 
 long as Jesus' works are works of love, of mercy, 
 meant to help the needs of men, as in the older Gospels 
 they for the most part are, then at the least we see a 
 reason why they should be performed ; but when we 
 take away this motive, and leave only the wonder part 
 behind, the magic, one cannot well complain if men 
 find this less easy to accept. And here again we can- 
 not refuse to see how simply all our trouble is got rid 
 of, if only our theory of the Gospel is true. "To 
 manifest forth his glory" — that throughout our Evan- 
 gelist has it in his mind to do ; and with this in his 
 mind is not our miracle just the sort of miracle he 
 would have been likely to hit upon ? Already he has 
 one miracle before him, the miracle of the bread, and 
 this he refers expressly to the breaking of Christ's 
 body, to the Eucharist. Evidently then there must be 
 another miracle to make this complete, the miracle of 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 97 
 
 the wine, the blood. A correspondence like this in a 
 real event it is not likely ever would occur ; but as an 
 idea, a result of reflection, it is quite intelligible, and 
 in no other way, we are inclined to think, is it intelli- 
 gible at all. 
 
 In the ninth chapter there is another story which 
 is not present in the Synoptics, the healing of the man 
 bom blind. We say that it is not present in the 
 Synoptics, though after all the use of material means 
 to effect the cure suggests that it may be based upon 
 the similar story in the eighth chapter of Mark. In 
 itself, however, this story is not so suspicious as the 
 miracle of the wine, although there are indeed features 
 of it which are suspicious. Again the miracle is to 
 glorify Jesus ; Jesus does not heal the man through 
 pity, and he even tells his disciples that the man was 
 born blind simply that he might have an opportunity 
 to work the miracle. Then too the means which he 
 uses to effect the cure are very strange, — magical, 
 we should almost be inclined to call them. Still to 
 the account as a whole we have no very great objection, 
 and one might even find in it strong indications of its 
 truth. Certainly it is all very vivid and life-like. The 
 coolness and keen, sarcastic common-sense of the blind 
 man, the discomfiture of the Pharisees, the ludicrous 
 eagerness of the parents to keep themselves out of any 
 entanglement, the dramatic movement of the whole, is 
 admirable indeed ; and to many no doubt this vividness 
 of the Gospel seems to be a strong argument in its 
 favor. To us however it has always seemed that this 
 argument is a very dangerous one, and that rather it 
 points quite decidedly the other way. For we have 
 been obliged to ask how it is that John has been able 
 for so many years to keep in his mind just the details 
 
98 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 fitted to form a perfect and finished picture ; how, more 
 important still, did he get them at the start? We 
 have been constantly surprised to find how accurately 
 our Evangelist is informed of events where he could 
 not, it would seem, possibly have been present himself. 
 So, here, John knows the conversation of the neigh- 
 bors, he knows what was said at several interviews 
 with the Pharisees, and what passed between the Phar- 
 isees themselves. And if we go through the book we 
 find constantly the same difficulty ; the conversation 
 between the Baptist and his disciples at ^non, the 
 talk with the woman of Samaria, where Jesus was 
 alone, the talk among the Samaritans themselves, the 
 conversation between the Jews and the impotent man, 
 the murmuring of the Jews once and again about Jesus, 
 the secret plottings of the rulers in council. He knows 
 too the elaborate conversation between Jesus and Pilate ; 
 did John follow back and forth at Pilate's heels, or did 
 he find some soldier of the guard who had enough 
 spiritual insight to report the words ? If only once 
 or twice we had to account for this, we should not 
 lay stress upon it, but should say that in some un- 
 known way, which now we only can guess, the in- 
 formation may have come to John ; and even now, if 
 one will have it so, the same thing may be true, for 
 there is nothing of which we cannot conceive a pos- 
 sible way in which it might have become known. But 
 still when everything is put together we cannot think 
 that it is natural to suppose this, least of all when we 
 notice how dramatically the whole is pictured, how 
 artistically all things work together to give an over- 
 whelming impression of Jesus' majesty and power, can 
 we help suspecting that we have to do with an author 
 who is not bound down and hampered by a partial ig- 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 99 
 
 norance, but who can make his picture dramatic and 
 effective because his picture is ideal. 
 
 lyast of all there is the story which is the most re- 
 markable, perhaps, of all the stories in the Fourth 
 Gospel, the account of the raising of the dead I^azarus. 
 Here again we will not deny that the miracle is pos- 
 sible, but, admitting that it is possible, we only 
 will ask whether it is likely to have happened, 
 whether the proof for it is clear and unassailable. And 
 to begin with, no one we think can help seeing that 
 the spirit of the miracle, while it is very easy to under- 
 stand from the standpoint of the Evangelist, is from 
 Jesus' standpoint very strange indeed. That Jesus 
 should let his friend die in order that he might raise 
 him up again, that he should rejoice at the opportunity 
 to work a great miracle, that before the grave he should 
 call attention to his glory in a prayer which was ad- 
 dressed to the people and not to God, is to the Evan- 
 gelist quite natural, but to us we confess it is not 
 conceivable at all. It is Jesus' compassion, as we have 
 said before, his desire to relieve distress, which most of 
 all gives to his miracles a convincing power. That 
 now he should reverse all this, that he should create 
 the distress in order to relieve it, that he should glorify 
 himself at the expense of Lazarus and his sisters, this 
 is what we cannot bring ourselves to believe. And 
 there is another objection to the miracle which in itself 
 is almost conclusive, the fact that no trace of it appears 
 in the older Gospels. For among the cures of which 
 the Gospels give a great abundance this is by all means 
 the one which is the most striking. To raise a man 
 who has been four days in the grave, this every one 
 must feel is more striking, appeals more to the imagina- 
 tion, than to restore a girl who has died scarcel}' an 
 
lOO The Life and Teachings of yesus. 
 
 hour before. And not only is this the most striking of 
 Jesus' cures, but it is a cure which took place at the 
 crisis of Jesus' life, and which had much to do in bring- 
 ing that crisis about. That tradition, with all its love 
 of the marvellous, should have lost sight of an event 
 like this comes little short of being inconceivable, and 
 before admitting it we must have evidence for the 
 reality of the event which is very strong indeed. 
 
 And now with these objections before us, if we find 
 that there is a way which will explain how the story 
 came to be thought of, and that there is a curious 
 coincidence which only can be accounted for in this way, 
 then for our part we cannot any longer be in doubt. 
 It happens that there is such a way, and that we still 
 are able to point it out. The name Lazarus is not a 
 common name in the New Testament, and indeed there 
 is only one other place where it occurs, in a parable 
 found in the third Gospel ; and the parable of the rich 
 man and Lazarus closes with this sentence, " Neither 
 will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." 
 And this is just what John's story means to show, that 
 not even when Lazarus is raised from the dead will the 
 Pharisees believe ; their hatred only is intensified, and 
 at once they plot Jesus' death. That the name should 
 occur but once, and then should be found in a passage 
 which lends itself so readily to an explanation like this, 
 is surely a curious fact ; we are not able to think that 
 it is a coincidence and nothing more. 
 
 We have now gone through the Gospel, and with 
 some detail have shown why we find it hard to believe 
 that the Gospel was written by an Apostle. We have 
 not tried to hunt up objections, but have taken only 
 those which are on the surface ; and because there are 
 so many of them, because they all of them point so 
 
The Fourth Gospel. loi 
 
 clearly in this one direction, we are not satisfied with 
 the attempts which have been made to explain them 
 away, although for each one of them an explanation 
 doubtless can be found. But it is not an explanation 
 simply that we are looking for, we want a probable 
 explanation ; and this, although we willingly would 
 have done so, we have not been able to discover. And 
 there is still one thing more, the discourses of the Gos- 
 pel, which of all things is perhaps the hardest to ex- 
 plain. Against the speeches of the Fourth Gospel 
 there are upon the face of them very obvious objections 
 to be brought. They are all long speeches, some very 
 long indeed, so that for any one to have reproduced 
 them immediately after they were spoken, would have 
 been a difficult thing to do, to say nothing of repro- 
 ducing them after half a century had passed. Then, be- 
 sides, the character of the speeches differs very greatly 
 from the sayings of Jesus which the Synoptic Gospels 
 give, so that one would be inclined to say that they 
 cannot possibly have come from the same man ; and so 
 far as the style goes this undoubtedly is true, as all 
 critics we suppose are now ready to admit. But that 
 the style belongs to the Evangelist and not to Jesus 
 does not of necessity count for much, for the ground- 
 work of the speeches still might be genuine, even if 
 John had been obliged to give his recollections largely 
 in his own words. But the matter of the speeches also 
 is new, and this is not so easily set aside. The sayings 
 of the Fourth Gospel have a strangely different ring to 
 them : ' ' Except a man be born of water and of spirit, 
 he cannot enter the kingdom of God " ; " No one hath 
 ascended into heaven, except he who came down out 
 of heaven, even the Son of Man" ; "That all may 
 honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He 
 
I02 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 that honoretli not the Son honoreth not the Father who 
 sent him " ; " When je shall see the Son of Man go- 
 ing up where he was before " ; "I and the Father are 
 one " ; " Before Abraham was, I am " ; " All that 
 came before me are thieves and robbers " ; "I came 
 forth from the Father, and am come into the world ; 
 again I leave the world and go to the Father. ' ' In the 
 Synoptic Gospels there is nothing to compare with this, 
 or at the very most there are only two or three faint 
 traces of it ; there Jesus speaks of righteousness, of 
 the kingdom of heaven. But here this is the way in 
 which Jesus always talks, and we expect nothing else 
 of him. Now if Jesus uttered sa5'ings like these in so 
 great an abundance, we do not see how tradition came 
 to miss them, for we should suppose they were just the 
 sayings to be seized upon first. But whether Jesus 
 ever could have spoken like this seems fairly to be 
 doubtful. Discussions with the Jews about his di- 
 vinity, constant claims of a pre-existence, of a descent 
 from heaven, of a superhuman knowledge, these appear 
 to us far more natural in the mouth of a late disciple 
 than in the mouth of Jesus himself. Sometimes this 
 becomes evident even to the commentators, and they 
 .suppose — one case is in the talk with Nicodemus — that 
 John suddenly passes from Jesus' words to his own 
 reflections ; but there is no ground whatever for sup- 
 posing this, and the narrative goes along without a 
 break. And the claims which Jesus makes for him- 
 self — I am the light of the world, I am the bread of 
 life, I am the water of life, I am the vine, I am the 
 good .shepherd, I am the door, I am the way, the truth, 
 and the life, I am the resurrection and the life, — it 
 surely is strange that all these claims, .so like to one 
 another, should have been made by Jesus in the com- 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 103 
 
 paratively few speeches which John has given ; they 
 look much more like the results of reflection upon 
 Jesus' person. Nor is it easy to reconcile these say- 
 ings with the fact which we learn from the other Gos- 
 pels, that it was at any rate only towards the close of 
 his work* that Jesus claimed definitely to be the Mes- 
 siah. Now John himself recognizes this, at least in 
 words, for he makes the Pharisees ask Jesus why he 
 keeps them in doubt, why he does not tell them plainly. 
 But then too Jesus replies to them that he already has 
 told them from the beginning ; and truly if the Phari- 
 sees could have been in any doubt after all that Jesus 
 had said and done, they must have been indeed dull of 
 understanding. And another thing which impresses us 
 strongly in these speeches of Jesus in the Fourth Gos- 
 pel is the lack of sympathy the\' show, the absence of the 
 tenderness and love of Jesus. Jesus takes no pains to 
 win men, to conciliate them ; his words are cold and 
 judicial. There is no divine sorrow over the blindness 
 of his people ; " Unless ye believe that I am he, ye 
 shall die in your sins." Jesus assumes from the begin- 
 ning that they will not listen to him, and his words are 
 only to assert himself, to make them without excuse. 
 Even when men are beginning to believe on him, Jesus 
 does not try to strengthen the weakness of their faith, 
 but only has a cold word of exhortation for them ; 
 and when they fail to understand this he sharply repels 
 them as children of the devil. These things are on 
 the surface ; and when we come to examine the 
 speeches a little more carefully, we find that there 
 are other things besides. We have had to notice 
 already how artistically the book is made up, how the 
 details are subordinated to a definite end ; and this is 
 even more noticeable in the speeches perhaps than it is 
 
I04 The Life and Teacliings of Jesus. 
 
 in the narratives. The variet)^ in these speeches is 
 very small indeed ; from beginning to end it is to the 
 same thing that all point. There are a few favorite 
 thoughts and phrases which are repeated again and 
 again, and which are dwelt upon in every aspect ; one 
 speech indeed, is made up entirely of sentences which 
 already have been given, and seems to be meant as 
 a sort of summary of what has gone before.' The 
 speeches are bound closely together, often by cross 
 references. Jesus refers to a miracle performed seven 
 months before, to the disciples he speaks of a saying 
 which six months before he had spoken to the Jews, 
 the Jews attempt to entangle Jesus in argument by 
 bringing up an admission which he had made seven 
 months previousl}^ The speeches, too, are closely 
 interwoven with the events, they take the events as a 
 text, and turn them into figure and symbol. Espe- 
 cially does one have to suspect the conversations w^hich 
 so often occur, and the questions which are put to 
 Jesus ; it would be so easy for an author to think of 
 remarks which should help along the progress of the 
 speech and save it from monotony, and in themselves 
 the remarks do not tell very strongly in favor of their 
 genuineness. A conversation with a crowd of men in 
 the manner in which the Gospel often represents it is not 
 quite easy to imagine, and least of all is it easy when 
 Jesus has a miraculous knowledge of what his hearers 
 are talking about among themselves. For, to say 
 nothing of the difficulty about the miracle, it gives one 
 the impression that Jesus had constantly to wait for his 
 hearers to talk his words over, and then that he took 
 up his discourse again to answer them. And the ques- 
 
 ' John 12 : 44 if: 
 
The Fou7^th Gospel. 105 
 
 tions themselves are not probable. The misunder- 
 standings are too constant and too gross, and often the 
 questions are so vague that they hardly have any 
 meaning ; too plainly they only give a catch-word 
 which Jesus can develop. Let us take a single dis- 
 course and examine it more carefully, and that we 
 may not be unfair, we will take one where the argu- 
 ments which can be brought forward for its genuineness 
 are unusually strong. The conversation with the 
 woman of Samaria is very dramatic and spirited, it 
 contains several sentences which show deep spiritual 
 insight, and it betrays a considerable acquaintance with 
 the scenery of the spot, and with Jewish and Samar- 
 itan custoins. But just because it is so spiritual is it 
 suspicious, easy to understand as an ideal picture, a 
 foil to the unbelief of the Jews, but not so easy to 
 understand as a real scene. The story in the first 
 place does not agree with the facts of history. A 
 successful ministry in Samaria during Jesus' lifetime 
 there are strong reasons for doubting ; after such say- 
 ings and such deeds as these the history of the early 
 Church and its slow perception of the universal char- 
 acter of the Gospel is hardly to be understood. Nor 
 is Jesus likely in any case to have amused himself by 
 speaking thus to a dissolute Samaritan woman, to 
 whom his words must have been without meaning ; 
 it is to the reader they are spoken rather than to the 
 woman. The questions of the woman, the remark of 
 the disciples, the approach of the Samaritans, every 
 thing serves as an occasion for this spiritual teaching. 
 But the woman's words, however well they serve this 
 purpose, are not very probable in themselves. The 
 comparison with Jacob, the theological question about 
 the place of worship, are brought in somewhat vie- 
 
io6 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 lently ; and one remark in particular, when she is 
 made to say, " Give me this water that I thirst not," 
 is all the more likely to be a device of the author's, as 
 he uses it again when he makes the Jews ask, " Ever- 
 more give us this bread." Then also the reply of 
 Jesus to his disciples, which gives him the appearance 
 of rejecting the food which they have brought to him, 
 seems in the connection a little artificial for Jesus to 
 have said, for Jesus is not ordinarily so fond of an epi- 
 gram that he will give a wrong impression in order to 
 get a chance to bring it in. And the words about the 
 harvest also, which certainly seem to be closely con- 
 nected with what goes before, make no account of the 
 time which must have passed before the Samaritans 
 could come in sight. But what points most clearly to 
 an account which is symbolic and ideal is the strange 
 saying about the woman's past life. This knowledge 
 on the part of Jesus is a little troublesome, even though 
 one holds to the miracles ; if for no other reason because 
 it is something exceptional, because Jesus certainly 
 depended for the most part upon natural means of 
 knowledge. But it seems to us quite plain that we 
 have here nothing but an allegory of the Samaritan 
 nation, that the five husbands are the five religions 
 which, according to the book of Kings, the Samaritan 
 settlers brought in, and that the sixth is the pseudo- 
 Jehovah whom they now were worshipping. 
 
 If now, after all the trouble that we have been to, 
 nothing else is plain, this at least will have been made 
 clear, that if indeed we have to do with history at all, 
 at least it is with history of a special sort, history 
 which only is cared about as it expresses an idea. 
 That there should be no doubt about this our author 
 tells us himself that it is so, for he says that he has 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 107 
 
 written that his readers may believe that Jesus is the 
 Son of God. Nor has he left it doubtful what the 
 Son of God means to him ; at the head of his book he 
 has put a prologue in which briefly his philosophy is 
 summed up. God, says our author, is pure Spirit, 
 whom no man can know directly. But God has 
 revealed himself through a mediator, his Word, 
 through whom the world was made, and who partakes 
 of the nature of God himself. But the world refused 
 to know God, and to lead men into light and life the 
 Word became flesh in the person of Jesus, To all 
 who came to him he gave eternal life, a life which 
 consists in perfect communion with God through him ; 
 but all men did not accept him, and there came about 
 a conflict between light and darkness, between life and 
 death, God and the Devil. And so to the world this 
 appearance of the lyOgos proved a judgment, and a 
 judgment which was consummated in the very act by 
 which darkness seemed to triumph, by the death on 
 the cross. This very briefly is the argument of the 
 book, though of course such an outline does no justice 
 to its sublime and profoundly spiritual conceptions ; 
 but what we wish especially to point out is that the 
 author's philosophy is not a philosophy which hangs 
 in the air, which is something new with Christian 
 thinkers, but that it has its roots in a definite school 
 of thought which at that time was exerting a deep 
 influence over men, the Alexandrian philosophy of 
 Philo. We do not mean by this that the Fourth Gos- 
 pel is only a reproduction of Alexandrian speculations, 
 for, on the contrary, the essential thing in the Gospel, 
 the incarnation of the lyOgos, is profoundly original 
 with it ; but still in its whole mode of thought, in its 
 conception of God and the universe, it is to Philo that 
 
io8 The Life and Teachiiigs of Jesus. 
 
 the Gospel undoubtedly goes back. And now with 
 this thought before us, that our author is a man versed 
 in the Alexandrian thought of his day, who thinks he 
 has found the key to that philosophy, its crowning 
 glor}^, in the person of Jesus, we may gather up the 
 loose threads of our examination, and see what light it 
 casts upon them. Now we are ready to see how com- 
 pletely the book is a work of art centring about this 
 one great idea, how even in the details of its structure 
 the skill of the artist appears, with the dependence on 
 the number three which runs through the book. We 
 see how a great drama unfolds itself before us, the 
 rise, the progress, and the culmination of the conflict 
 between light and darkness ; we see how everywhere 
 symbol determines the choice of the materials, how 
 one miracle shows Jesus as the source of light, another 
 as the source of life, how one points to his body and 
 another to his blood, how the unbelief of the Jews 
 stands over against the receptiveness of the Gentiles. 
 And finally w^e understand how the speeches, no longer 
 to be forced painfully into the framework of the older 
 Gospels, are only the vehicles of the author's thought, 
 and serve to put it clearly and dramaticall}^ before us. 
 
 But still, one maj^ saj-, is it not possible that even so 
 the Gospel may have been written by an Apostle ? may 
 not John during his stay in Ephesus have come in con- 
 tact with the Alexandrian philosoph)^ have absorbed it 
 and filled it out in just this way, may he not have made 
 a choice of his material for this purpose, and have had 
 a perfect right to do so ? That such a thing is impos- 
 sible we will not sa5^ but probable it certainlj^ is not, 
 and to understand why it is improbable, apart from 
 what has been said already, let us look at it a little 
 more closely. Now there are several arguments that 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 109 
 
 have been urged against John's authorship which we 
 shall not attempt to defend. Thus many critics, and 
 among them Mr. Arnold, have insisted that the author 
 could not have been a Jew ; to us it seems that he could 
 not well have been anything else. The Greek of the 
 Gospel appears to show this, and so too does the un- 
 doubted knowledge which the author has of Jewish 
 customs and beliefs, and even of Palestine itself. We 
 do not feel quite sure that all his references are correct, 
 but at least his mistakes are so few that it would be 
 hazardous to lay any stress upon them, least of all upon 
 the two mistakes which have been insisted on the most. 
 The author speaks of a Bethany beyond Jordan, and it 
 is supposed that he means the well-known Bethany near 
 Jerusalem, and makes a blunder in the situation. He 
 speaks of Caiaphas as the ' ' high-priest of that year, ' ' 
 and it is supposed that he confounds the Jewish cus- 
 toms with that of Asia Minor, where there was a high- 
 priest who was elected yearly. But when repeatedly 
 he speaks of the better known Bethany without any 
 qualifying phrase, and shows that he knows its situa- 
 tion, and when he seems to distinguish this from 
 another Bethany, a Bethany "beyond Jordan," it is 
 easiest to suppose that really he does mean to speak of 
 two towns of the same name ; though whether this 
 second Bethany, which never has been discovered, 
 actually existed, is another question. And as for the 
 other statement which he makes, the statement about 
 the high-priest, we cannot help feeling it a little im- 
 probable that any one, Jew or Greek, who had so good 
 a knowledge of Jewish affairs as our author certainly 
 had, should have been ignorant about so very simple 
 and notorious a fact as this, not a thing that we could 
 easily credit, unless we were driven to it through lack 
 
I lo The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 of any other explanation. And it is not, we think, 
 wholly imagination which sees something of a tragic 
 significance in those words " the high-priest of that 
 year," the Death Year. Such a touch we should per- 
 haps not look for in an Evangelist like the first three 
 Evangelists, but in our author it is quite what we 
 should expect. Just so he is telling us in another 
 place how Jesus points out the traitor to the disciple 
 who is leaning on his breast, and he adds, " He then, 
 having received the sop, went immediately out : and it 
 was 7iight." Our author, moreover, is well acquainted 
 with the Old Testament, and perhaps he quotes it once 
 or twice from the original ; he appeals to it constantly 
 for fulfilment of prophec}', and it tinges the most of 
 his conceptions. Critics, it is true, when Jesus speaks 
 of ' ' all who had come before him " as " thieves and 
 robbers," have tried to make the Evangelist responsi- 
 ble for a very bitter and uncompromising spirit of anti- 
 Judaism, but this is unfair to the whole spirit of the 
 book. On the contrary, of the divine character of the 
 old religion he speaks often and strongly. The Scrip- 
 tures cannot be broken, they testify of Jesus, Moses 
 and the prophets wrote of him, Abraham rejoiced to 
 see his day, the Temple is to Jesus his Father's house, 
 Israel is ra i'dia, God's own possession, salvation 
 is of the Jews. It is very true indeed that the Evange- 
 list is no longer a Jew in sentiment, and his theology is 
 the most spiritual and universal, the freest from national 
 limitations, of any that is to be found in the New Tes- 
 tament. In general, however, it appears that these pro- 
 founder views of his are added to the popular concep- 
 tions rather than take the place of them. Belief in Jesus 
 because Jesus' words are true he places above belief 
 in miracles, but belief in miracles he does not reject. 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 1 1 1 
 
 Jesus is the resurrection and the life, a resurrection and 
 life which is ours here and now ; but he also believes 
 in a resurrection at the last day. And with all his per- 
 ception that the kingdom of heaven is essentially a 
 spiritual thing, he probably holds, as all the early 
 church held, to a speedy second coming of the Ivord. 
 What is somewhat more significant, a point which Mr. 
 Arnold specially relies upon, is a certain manner of 
 speaking which the writer adopts toward the Jewish 
 people and their beliefs, which, so Mr. Arnold thinks, 
 a true Jew never could have brought himself to use. 
 So he speaks of the manner of the purifying of the 
 Jews, of a dispute between some of John's disciples 
 and a Jew about purifying, of the Jews' Passover, the 
 Preparation of the Jews. Jesus recalls to his disciples 
 words which he had spoken to the Jews, and to the Jews 
 themselves he speaks of "your law." That Mr. Ar- 
 nold has put more emphasis upon these facts than 
 naturally they will bear there can be no doubt ; but 
 perhaps it is true that in an ordinary case, such a case, 
 say, as that of the Englishman whom Mr. Arnold sup- 
 poses, we should not expect a man to speak in quite 
 so objective a way of his own nation as the author of 
 the Fourth Gospel speaks of the Jews. But then this 
 hardly is an ordinary case. For as Judaism was a 
 religion quite as much as it was a national bond, it 
 would not be hard for a Jew of the Dispersion, even 
 for a Jew of Palestine, to grow strange to it, if he had 
 lived in an atmosphere of Greek culture, and had 
 allowed the peculiarities of Jewish belief to drop away ; 
 and most of all this would be easy if he were a Chris- 
 tian, now that Christianity stood in open antagonism 
 to the Jewish nation. But it is when we come to apply 
 this to the Apostle John that we begin to feel its diffi- 
 
112 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 culty, for all the conditions which make it possible are 
 signally lacking in the case of John. There is no 
 evidence that John in his conception of Christianity 
 differed essentially from the rest of the Apostles ; on 
 the other hand there is good evidence that he did not 
 differ. For when Paul came to Jerusalem ' ' after four- 
 teen 5^ears," he found John still in the city, working 
 alongside of Peter and James, a pillar-Apostle with 
 them. Plainly he is mentioned as one who confined 
 himself to the Jews, who still looked on Christianity 
 as a form of Judaism. Now if John went to Ephesus 
 between 60 and 70 a.d., no doubt we might expect 
 that his new surroundings would have some effect 
 upon him, that he would be broadened a little, and 
 that some of his prejudices would fall away. But 
 still we must set a limit to this ; environment will do 
 much, but it will not work miracles, it will not change 
 a man into his exact opposite, and least of all will it 
 do this when he has reached the decline of life and 
 his real work is behind him. We should be surprised 
 if Alexandrianism were to influence him decidedly in 
 any way ; but that it should destroy his early stand- 
 point altogether, that it should lead him to a univer- 
 salism beyond that of Paul himself, that from a con- 
 ception of Christianity as a religion for the Jews it 
 should turn him to a conception of Christianity as first 
 of all for the Gentiles, that those for whom he had 
 spent the best of his life in working should now be set 
 aside with no trace of sympathy or regret, this seems 
 hardly to be credible. And the fact that this uni- 
 versalism goes back ostensibly to words of Jesus' 
 makes it all the harder to understand ; that John 
 should have taken twenty or thirty years to discover 
 their meaning is surely strange, and it throws great 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 113 
 
 doubt upon the words themselves. So that, taking the 
 probabilities fairly, it does not appear that the Gospel 
 can have been written by one of the Apostles them- 
 selves, but it is much more likely to have come from 
 some one who had grown up in the atmosphere of later 
 conceptions, and who did not need to have so violent 
 a change brought about in his ways of thinking. 
 
 Now when one comes to this conclusion he will find 
 a number of other things in the Gospel which it will 
 throw light upon. For one thing it will make it easier 
 for him to account for the unusual wa)' in which John 
 is spoken of as the ' ' disciple whom Jesus loved. ' ' This 
 we never have been able to look upon as an expression 
 which could be wholly justified in a man's own mouth, 
 even if Jesus really had shown a very marked favorit- 
 ism, which for several reasons must be considered 
 doubtful. Then in another place John is spoken of 
 as ' ' known to the high-priest, ' ' a statement which is 
 much more likely to have been written when the his- 
 torical conditions had grown dim and uncertain, than 
 to have come from the fisherman himself. True, the 
 commentators have found this only means that John 
 was accustomed to supply the high-priest's kitchen 
 with fish, a thing in itself not quite impossible, if only 
 this were what the author said. But these things we 
 will pass by, for there is a much more important ques- 
 tion that must be considered. The whole possibility 
 that John could have written the Gospel depends upon 
 the statement that he passed his last years in Ephesus, 
 and if this tradition is not true the entire case for the 
 genuineness of the book falls to the ground. We hesi- 
 tate a little to contradict this tradition ; in upholding a 
 theory which Mr. Arnold has set aside as a " vigorous 
 and rigorous ' ' theory, we suppose that to many we 
 
114 T^^^ Z?/^ and Teachings of yesus. 
 
 shall seem to be attempting a tour de force which we 
 hardly would venture to attempt if our view of the 
 Gospel did not make it necessary for us. However, let 
 us first consider how the question stands, and then we, 
 shall be able to determine better whether Mr. Arnold 
 is right in settling it in such an off-hand way. 
 
 What then is the evidence in favor of the tradition ? 
 Apparently it is very strong indeed, no less than the 
 unanimous testimou}'^ of the Fathers from the last part 
 of the second century onward. One of these Fathers 
 is a bishop in the very church where John is supposed 
 to have lived, anecdotes are told about the Apostle, he 
 is cited in support of a certain opinion. But clearest 
 and most unequivocal of all is the testimonj^ of Irenaeus, 
 so very clear and definite that with it the tradition will 
 have to stand or fall. Now Irenaeus tells us that John, 
 the disciple of the Lord, published a Gospel during his 
 residence in Asia, and again that the Church of Ephesus 
 had John remaining among them permanently until the 
 times of Trajan. Papias, he tells us, was a disciple of 
 John's, and he gives a saying which Papias had heard 
 from the Apostle. But what seems quite conclusive, 
 Irenaeus remembers in his boyhood to have heard Poly- 
 carp, who also, he says, was a disciple of John, and he 
 can recall how Polycarp used to speak of his familiar 
 intercourse with John and with the rest of those who 
 had seen the Lord. Have we the right to ask for any 
 better evidence than this, the words of a man who is 
 within a single generation of John, and who has re- 
 ceived his information directly from one who knew 
 John himself. 
 
 But before we stop here satisfied with our results, let 
 us consider for a moment what sort of men these are 
 whose testimony we are relying on. We do not in the 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 1 1 5 
 
 least mean that the early Fathers were men credulous 
 beyond their fellows, men who were incapable of ap- 
 preciating evidence or of detecting the flaws in an argu- 
 ment. This is not so ; on the contrary, many of them 
 were able and clever men, men capable of reasoning 
 acutely, and quite as good witness to a fact as other 
 men of their time probably would have been. But 
 still no one who reads their writings can fail to see at 
 once how completely they are lacking in the power to 
 weigh tradition rightly, in the critical estimate of facts 
 which modern times lay so much stress upon. The 
 Fathers depend constantly upon tradition, they appeal 
 to it again and again, but that they have any apprecia- 
 tion of the immense dangers to which tradition is ex- 
 posed, that they reckon with the almost numberless 
 chances for error to creep in, they hardly give us any 
 hint. When traditions come in conflict, then they do 
 what they can to reconcile them, but to go back of this 
 and question tradition itself, to ask whether tradition 
 has good grounds for what it says, seems very seldom 
 to occur to them ; and this often is as true when they 
 are dealing with the Greek mythology, as when they 
 are talking about the early Elders and Apostles. Ex- 
 cept in unusual cases it is enough for them that a state- 
 ment has been made by some one who has preceded 
 them ; it does not occur to them to sift the matter any 
 further. This clearly does not prevent them from 
 telling many things that are true, and the fact that 
 they believe them true may fairly keep us from reject- 
 ing their statements where we have no special reason 
 for doing this. But it also leads them into many mis- 
 takes, and mistakes which are so obvious that we 
 cannot have any doubt about their being mistakes. 
 So that to look with suspicion upon a statement of 
 
1 1 6 The Life and Teachings of fesus. 
 
 theirs, to be read)- to reject it, however positively it 
 may be made, if we find that there is good reason to 
 doubt it, is not mere captiousness, but is only what 
 more than once we are compelled to do. Is there 
 then any reason to doubt this statement which 
 Irenseus makes so confidently ? Yes, there is a very 
 strong reason, and to understand what this is we must 
 go back to the first part of the century, to a statement 
 which is made by another Father, Papias, the Bishop 
 of Hierapolis. This Papias was a diligent collector of 
 traditions which he published in his five books called 
 the Expositions of the Logia of the Lord, and this book 
 Irenaeus had before him. Now in one extract Papias 
 gives us the sources of his information. "If then," 
 he says, ' ' any one who had attended on the Elders came, 
 I asked minutely after their sayings, what Andrew or 
 Peter said, or what was said by Philip or by Thomas 
 or by James or by John or by Matthew or by any other 
 of the Lord's disciples ; what things (or which things) 
 Aristion and the Presbyter John, the disciples of the 
 Lord, sa3^" This John the Presbyter was, it seems, 
 one of Papias' chief authorities. ' ' He asserts, ' ' says 
 Eusebius, who also had read the Expositions, "that 
 he heard in person Aristion and the Presbyter John. 
 Accordingly, he mentions them frequently by name, 
 and in his writings gives their traditions. " Who then 
 was this Presbyter John ? 
 
 There can be no doubt whom Irenseus takes him to 
 be, for quite certainly he thinks that he is the Apostle. 
 " Papias," he says, " who was a hearer of John and a 
 friend of Polycarp ' ' ; and when Irenaeus speaks of 
 John, everywhere he means the Apostle. This much, 
 therefore, we have to start with ; and now it is hardly 
 less certain that John, whose disciple Polycarp had 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 117 
 
 been, and whom Irenaeus had heard Polycarp speak of, 
 is this same John the Presbyter, whom we meet with 
 in Papias. Irenaeus, as we have seen, clearly under- 
 stands him to be so ; in just the same way he calls 
 him the disciple of the I^ord, and he makes both 
 Papias and Polycarp his disciples. And we can see 
 that Irenseus here could not have been mistaken. 
 That Papias and Polycarp, living at the same time 
 and in the same country, should both have received 
 their traditions chiefly from a disciple of the I^ord 
 named. John, that neither should have shown the 
 least acquaintanceship with more than one John, and 
 yet that these Johns should have been different per- 
 sons, is highly improbable. So that this also we may 
 look at as settled, unless we should find exceedingly 
 strong evidence on the other side, that whenever any- 
 thing is said about a John in Asia Minor, it every- 
 where has reference to a single man. 
 
 Now let us go back to the testimony of Papias and 
 look at it once more in the light of the conclusions we 
 have reached. There are only two interpretations we 
 can put upon this testimony. It certainly is to John 
 the Presbyter, that Irengeus, and therefore the whole 
 tradition of the second century, refers ; and it may be 
 that Irenaeus is right, and that the Presbyter is none 
 other than the Apostle himself. But if the Presbyter 
 is not the Apostle, then the evidence for the residence 
 of John in Asia Minor falls away at once ; indeed, 
 this residence is really excluded by what Papias 
 says. The Apostle John, along with the other Apos- 
 tles, Papias has just mentioned, and he has called them, 
 too, by the same name, presbyters ; so that if his read- 
 ers had been familiar with the Apostle as one who, 
 within their own recollection, had lived among them, 
 
1 1 8 The Life and Teachings of jfesus. 
 
 Papias could not have brought in another John in this 
 way, without a single mark to distinguish him, as if he 
 were the only John whom his readers were acquainted 
 with. The fact that he does bring him in in this way, 
 shows that his readers were in no danger of supposing 
 that by any possibility he could have got his information 
 direct from the Apostle. Is then Irenaeus right, when 
 he makes an Apostle out of John the Presbyter ? This is 
 what now must be decided. 
 
 Well, taking the words in Papias by themselves, it 
 is pretty clear that no one would be likely to come to 
 this conclusion, Papias has already spoken of the 
 Apostle John, and when now in the same list he men- 
 tions John again, we cannot easily help referring it to 
 another person. We might suppose, it is true, that 
 Papias is distinguishing what indirectly he had heard 
 about John, and what he had heard directly from John 
 himself, and this perhaps is not impossible ; but still it 
 is far from being natural. The words themselves, then, 
 do not naturally fit into Irena^us' interpretation, and 
 indeed the only real argument that there is for that 
 interpretation is the unlikelihood that Irenaeus could 
 have been mistaken. Is it conceivable, we are asked, 
 that Irenseus, who with his own ears had heard Poly- 
 carp tell of his intercourse with John, could have com- 
 mitted so gross a mistake as to confound the Apostle 
 with an obscure presbyter ? is not such a mistake al- 
 most be5'ond belief? No, we answer, however great a 
 blunder it may have been, it is not, when we consider 
 the circumstances, by any means inconceivable. Ire- 
 naeus, so he tells us, was only a boy when he listened 
 to Polycarp. Now he could remember how Polycarp 
 often had mentioned the name of John and had given 
 sayings of his, how he had spoken with reverence of 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 119 
 
 him as a man of great age and authority, perhaps as 
 one who in his youth had seen the Lord. And as 
 Irenaeus recalled this in later years there would be 
 every inducement for him to connect this name, as 
 tradition very likely before this had connected it in 
 other quarters, with the Apostle John, and to bring 
 the traditions upon which he laid such emphasis into 
 direct contact with the Twelve. To be sure we should 
 not accuse him of a blunder like this if there did not 
 seem to be good reason for doing so ; but the blunder 
 is not inconceivable, it is capable of being accounted 
 for. 
 
 And that Irenseus did make a blunder seems to us 
 to be almost certain, for to make Papias' words refer to 
 the Apostle John is very difficult indeed. In the first 
 place it is strange that Papias should call John a 
 " presbyter," and " a disciple of the Lord," but not an 
 Apostle. It is true that just before he speaks of the 
 Apostles in a body as " presbyters," but this is a very 
 different thing from selecting this title again and again 
 to name a particular Apostle who is his direct author- 
 ity, and in itself the use of the word shows that to 
 Papias the Apostles belonged to a past generation, 
 which could be spoken of indefinitely as " elders." 
 But when he speaks of the Presbyter John, and denies 
 this title to Aristion, he apparently is referring to the 
 ecclesiastical ofl&ce which John filled, and this he 
 hardly would have done if John also had been an 
 Apostle. And then again the way in which John is 
 brought in after the unknown Aristion is quite incon- 
 ceivable if he were one of the Twelve. And for this 
 conclusion, which surely we must come to if we depend 
 upon the passage itself, we fortunately are not left 
 without a witness. Eusebius, who had the whole 
 
1 20 The Life and TeacJiitigs of Jesus. 
 
 work before him, and who had carefully examined it, 
 says distinctly that Irenaeus had made a mistake, and 
 that John was not John the Apostle, but another man. 
 Now when we remember that Papias often mentions 
 John and gives many traditions which had been re- 
 ceived from him, we see how improbable it is that 
 Eusebius could have made a mistake about this. 
 Papias could not have had an Apostle's authority back 
 of him, and still have left his readers in any doubt 
 about it ; Apostolic authority was not valued so lightly 
 in the second centur5^ The fact that it was not made 
 plain, that even a possibility was left for doubting it, 
 shows conclusively that it was not the Apostle John of 
 whom Papias was speaking. And we have another 
 extract from Papias which points to this same thing, 
 a long saying about the millennium which is attributed 
 to Jesus, and which Papias says was told by John. If 
 John was the Apostle then this chain of testimony is 
 unusually strong, and yet the saying is certainly not 
 genuine, and could not have come from Jesus at all ; 
 so that John again hardly could have been the Apostle. 
 So then, however gross the blunder may seem to us, 
 a blunder we nevertheless must suppose that Irenseus 
 has made, upon the testimony of Eusebius and of Papias 
 alike. Irenseus has no other proof to give for the tra- 
 dition of John's residence in Asia Minor, only a pas- 
 sage in Papias which reallj^ tells the other waJ^ and 
 the presence in Asia many years before of a disciple of 
 the Eord named John. The interest which Irenaeus 
 had in believing this to be the Apostle is evident, and 
 we can see now how it influenced him, how indefinitely 
 he speaks of Polycarp's intercourse with John and the 
 rest of those who had seen the Lord, how an Apostle 
 grows into Apostles a7id many who had see?i Christ, how 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 1 2 1 
 
 Polycarp was appointed by Apostles as bishop of 
 Smyrna. But Polycarp, even if John as the last of the 
 Apostles had lived nearly to the second century, could 
 hardly have been much more than thirty when John 
 died, so that his instruction by other Apostles is almost 
 out of the question, and least of all could he have been 
 made bishop of Smyrna by Apostles. The whole of 
 Irenseus' statement must be given up, as Eusebius 
 long ago saw that it must so far as Papias is concerned ; 
 only we must recognize also, what Eusebius failed to 
 see, that with it goes the proof of a residence of the 
 Apostle John in Asia Minor. 
 
 If John then did not write the Fourth Gospel, where 
 are we to look for the author ? at what time did the 
 Gospel arise ? The question is difl&cult to answer, and 
 perhaps it cannot be answered at all in a way that is 
 wholly satisfactory. There is no external testimony of 
 the slightest value which points to any one except the 
 Apostle, nor will we deny that the testimony to the 
 genuineness of the book is of some weight. To start 
 with the last quarter of the second century, we find 
 our four Gospels in full possession of the field. They 
 are unquestioned, they have no rivals, they are held as 
 sacred. So much no one denies, and it is important to 
 remember this because it is just for the reason that 
 critics have lost sight of these broad facts and have 
 plunged themselves into details, that they have come to 
 such different conclusions. For when we come down 
 still farther, to Justin Martyr, about the middle of the 
 century, we find that he too has Gospels which he ap- 
 peals to as authority for his facts, " Memoirs," he calls 
 them, anofAvripiovavjAaTa, composed by the Apostles 
 of Christ and their companions. That he is referring 
 here to certain definite books, and that too to books 
 
1 22 The Life a7id Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 which were held in no small esteem, is plain, for he 
 says : ' ' On the day called Sunday all who live in cities 
 or in the country gather together to one place, and the 
 Memoirs by the Apostles or the writings of the Proph- 
 ets are read as long as time permits. " Is it then still 
 our Gospels that he means, and so invests with Apos- 
 tolic authority ? To this question many scholars have 
 answered no, and the reasons for their answer are 
 briefly these, that Justin's quotations very seldom cor- 
 respond exactly with our Gospels, and that a few of 
 the facts which he mentions, the statement, for exam- 
 ple, that Jesus was born in a cave, or that the Magi 
 came from Arabia, are not to be found in our Gospels 
 at all. Into this question we do not care to go, but it 
 seems quite plain to us that, however Justin may have 
 obtained isolated facts, his real sources, those which he 
 refers to under the name ' ' Memoirs, ' ' were none other 
 than our Gospels. And without entering into any 
 minute inquiry we can easily see why this must almost 
 needs be so ; we cannot readil)^ conceive that books 
 which were looked upon with such high esteem could, 
 within twenty-five . years, have given place to other 
 books, which still could be described in just the same 
 terms. It cannot be denied that the evidence for the 
 Fourth Gospel is much weaker than the evidence for 
 the other three ; still that Justin does use it, and use 
 it more than once, there can be no reasonable doubt. 
 So he says in speaking of baptism : " For Christ also 
 said, ' Except ye be born again ye shall in no wise enter 
 into the kingdom of heaven.' But that it is impos- 
 sible for those who have once been born to enter into 
 the wombs of those who brought them forth, is man- 
 ifest to all." The quotation is not exact, but the last 
 clause shows that he must have taken it from John ; 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 123 
 
 and apart from this there are at least nine or ten other 
 allusions which cannot be explained plausibly except 
 as going back to the Fourth Gospel. That Justin used 
 the Fourth Gospel, then, we must regard as certain ; 
 but it still may be asked whether there is any evidence 
 that he regarded it as John's. Yes, we think that this 
 too must be answered in the affirmative, for unless in 
 Justin's time there had been a strong tendency to look 
 upon the book as the work of an Apostle, we cannot 
 well explain how twenty-five years later the book was 
 accepted without any trace of doubt. But while we 
 are ready to admit this, we think that it is very much 
 more doubtful whether in Justin's time the book was 
 already beyond suspicion, and stood quite on a level 
 with the other Gospels, for otherwise it is difficult to 
 explain the very sparing use which Justin makes of it, 
 a use which will appear the more strange when we 
 compare it with the lavish quotations of Irenseus, a 
 few years later. Already then at the time of Justin 
 the book probably was looked upon as John's, but it 
 still was used very hesitatingly, and possibly it was 
 not yet read in the churches along with the other 
 Gospels. 
 
 So much for Justin. And before Justin's time 
 unfortunately the literature which we have is very 
 meagre. Still there are witnesses, and the most im- 
 portant of these is Papias. But Papias does not men- 
 tion the Fourth Gospel in any of the extracts which 
 Eusebius has preserved for us, and consequently we 
 are led to suppose that he did not mention it at all, for 
 if he had mentioned it, Eusebius would have been 
 most likely to tell us of it. So some critics have come 
 to the conclusion that Papias either did not know of 
 the Gospel, or at any rate that he did not accept it as 
 
124 The Life and Teachings of yesus. 
 
 genuine, and that accordingly we have here at last an 
 indication of the time when the Gospel made its ap- 
 pearance. Is this a necessary inference, or is it even a 
 very probable one ? 
 
 Papias tells us : "I shall not be unwilling to put down 
 along with my interpretation whatever instructions I re- 
 ceived at any time from the Elders, and stored up in my 
 memory, assuring you at the same time of their truth. 
 For I did not, like the multitude, take pleasure in those 
 who spoke much, but in those who taught the truth, 
 nor in those who related strange commandments, but 
 in those who rehearsed the commandments given by 
 the Lord to faith, and proceeding from truth itself. 
 If then any one who had attended on the Elders came, 
 I asked minutely after their sayings, what Andrew or 
 Peter said, or what was said by Philip or by Thomas 
 or by James or by John or by Matthew or by any other 
 of the Lord's disciples ; what Aristion and the Presbyter 
 John, the disciples of the Eord, say. For I imagined 
 what was to be got from books was not so profitable to 
 me as what came from the living and abiding voice." 
 Now what are we to gather from these words ? Appar- 
 ently this, that Papias was concerned to glean from a 
 tradition now fast becoming a second-hand tradition 
 any facts that he might pick up which related more es- 
 pecially to the commandments, the teachings of Jesus. He 
 is not interested in giving us an account of the Christian 
 literature, and indeed he tells us that for this he does 
 not very much care. It happens that he has heard the El- 
 der tell how Matthew and Mark wrote their Gospels and 
 he puts this down ; but it is quite incidental, and of the 
 rest of the rich literature which existed in his da)^ ex- 
 cept of the Apocalypse, he has nothing to say. And, sup- 
 posing that the Gospel were genuine, there would be a 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 125 
 
 special reason why, when he spoke of Matthew and of 
 Mark, he would not be likely to speak of the Fourth 
 Gospel along with them. Papias is something of an 
 antiquarian, who is getting together for his own 
 generation the oral traditions of a preceding generation 
 because the men of that generation are fast disappearing. 
 Now was it necessary for this aim that he .should tell 
 anything about the Fourth Gospel ? Certainly it was 
 not. If the Gospel was genuine it must have appeared 
 within his own and other men's recollections. It 
 would be nothing he had heard from the Elders but it 
 would be a fact that was well known, and there would 
 be no reason that would make it necessary for him to 
 mention it. So that the fact that he did not mention it 
 does not prove that he did not know it ; it simply 
 proves nothing one way or the other. But may not 
 Papias, if he did not speak of the Gospel directly, have 
 quoted some sayings from it among his interpretations ? 
 There is no evidence that he did this, but the fact that 
 Eusebius does not mention any such quotations does 
 not show conclusively that he may not have done it. 
 Eusebius tells us that he means to trace ' ' what portions 
 of the Antilegomena earlier writers had made use of, 
 and what they said about the Homologoumena," that 
 is, when he finds any quotations from the Antilegomena, 
 the books which were disputed, he promises that he will 
 let us know of them, but the Homologoumena, the books 
 which every one accepts, he will only mention if he finds 
 some definite statement about them. And the Fourth 
 Gospel is one of the Homologoumena. So then our an- 
 swer to the question whether Papias knew the Gospel 
 must depend upon other data, if such data exist. Such 
 data are very scanty, but so far as they go they tend to 
 answer the question in the afiirmative. If Papias does 
 
126 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 not mention the Gospel, we have the testinionj^ of 
 Eusebius that he did know the Epistle and that he 
 drew proof texts from it. Of course one may say 
 to this that Eusebius made a mistake and did not 
 know what he was talking about, and this indeed 
 some scholars have said. But such a denial has no 
 evidence back of it, and it is all the more improba- 
 ble as Polycarp has an undoubted quotation from the 
 same Epistle, and Polycarp lived at the same time 
 that Papias lived. And in addition to this is the 
 fact that, according to all the testimony which we 
 have, the heretics of the early part of the century, 
 about the j^ear 125, and in particular Valentinus and 
 Basilides, who were noted heresiarchs, already accepted 
 and made use of the book. Here again it is possible 
 to throw doubt upon the testimony ; Tertullian and 
 Hippolytus, we are told, the writers who give us an 
 account of these early heretics, are very inexact in 
 their statements, and when they tell us that Basilides 
 or Valentinus held to this or that opinion we cannot 
 be sure that they are not mixing up the systems of 
 these early heresiarchs with those of their later fol- 
 lowers, as they sometimes do mix them up. Perhaps 
 we may not be sure about it, but we hardly are satisfied 
 to reject this testimony altogether, and on the whole it 
 seems more probable that in this case Tertullian and 
 Hippolytus are not mixing up the systems of the early 
 and of the later heretics, but are giving the real views 
 of BasiHdes and of Valentinus. By the year 125 a.d. 
 the Gospel was then probably in existence. It was not 
 accepted at once, and even in the' middle of the century 
 its position was a little doubtful ; but with the excep- 
 tion of one small sect there was no decided oppo.sition 
 made to it. It is true that if John had lived iu Asia 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 127 
 
 Minor, and if men were still alive who had known 
 him, we should find some difl&culty in accounting for 
 the acceptance of the book ; but as it is the thing is 
 inconceivable only when we carry back into the second 
 century a critical spirit which is quite foreign to the 
 times. The books of the New Testament were still 
 far from being Scripture, and Papias prefers oral tra- 
 dition to written records in whatever relates to Christ's 
 teachings ; a book was valuable because it was edify- 
 ing, and no one thought of scrutinizing carefully the 
 evidence for its antiquity. Listen to the argument of 
 Tertullian for the apocryphal Book of Enoch. ' ' I 
 suppose," he says, referring to those who did not 
 accept the book, "they did not think that, having 
 been published before the deluge, it could have safely 
 survived that world-wide calamity, the abolisher of all 
 things. If that is the reason, let them recall to their 
 memory that Noah, the sur\avor of the deluge, was 
 the great-grandson of Enoch himself, and he of course 
 had heard and remembered from domestic renown and 
 hereditary tradition concerning his own great-grand- 
 father's grace in the sight of God, and concerning all 
 his preachings, since Enoch had given no other charge 
 to Methuselah than that he should hand on the knowl- 
 edge of them to his posterit>\ If Noah had not had 
 this by so short a route, there would still be this con- 
 sideration to warrant our assertion of the genuineness 
 of this Scripture, he could equally have renewed it 
 under the Spirit's inspiration, after it had been de- 
 stroyed by the violence of the deluge." When rea- 
 soning like this could satisfy one of the acutest men of 
 his times, when men did not busy themselves with sug- 
 gesting doubts, but only with getting rid of them if 
 they were too obvious, we see how impossible it is to 
 
128 The Life attd Teachings of fesus. 
 
 make the acceptance of a book like the Fourth Gospel 
 appear incomprehensible. The very audacity of the 
 book, the audacity of a work of genius, and the har- 
 mony in which it stood with the best tendencies of the 
 age, which it carried out and completed, would make 
 it successful where a lesser book might have failed. 
 
 But still we have the question to answer, who after 
 all was the author of the book, if the author was not 
 John ? is it not indeed possible at least to give some 
 share of the book to the Apostle, to carry it back to 
 him at any rate in part ? This is what Mr. Arnold has 
 tried to do, and he has found in the book traces of the 
 hand of one of John's disciples, who had put together 
 after his own fashion what he had heard from his 
 master, and had published it with the approval of the 
 church at Ephesus ; upon the Tubingen professors, 
 who have discovered in the book a profound art, Mr. 
 Arnold is very severe. But such a theory as this, 
 apart from the criticism upon the vigorous and rig- 
 orous German theories, has too many serious difficul- 
 ties in its wa}^ which Mr. Arnold has passed somewhat 
 lightly over ; for one thing it does not tell us where 
 the greater part of the matter came from. The whole 
 conception of Jesus which dominates the Gospel, the 
 whole historical framework, the composition of the 
 speeches outside of isolated logia, long narratives which 
 contain miracles or which for other reasons we find it 
 difficult to accept, — all this, on Mr. Arnold's theory, we 
 must give to the author and not to the Apostle. Mr. 
 Arnold seems indeed not wholly to have overlooked 
 the difficulty, but the way in which he gets rid of it 
 one might wish had been a little clearer. He does say, 
 it is true, that the narrative ' ' might well be thought, 
 not indeed invented, but a matter of infinitely little 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 129 
 
 care and attention to the writer, ' ' but this is so vague 
 an answer that we hardly can accept it as an answer at 
 all. What Mr. Arnold means we perhaps may guess 
 from the way in which he explains Bethany beyond 
 Jordan. "The author's Palestinian geography was 
 so vague, ' ' he says, ' ' that when he wants a name for 
 a locality he takes the first village that comes into 
 his remembrance, without troubling himself to think 
 whether it suits or no," — a way of going to work 
 which it is not altogether easy for a plain reader to 
 distinguish from invention. And as for the narrative 
 being a matter of infinitely little care to the writer, 
 surely here Mr. Arnold is mistaken. For when a 
 writer devotes fully half his book to narrative, when 
 he is all the time giving notices of time and place, 
 and when he closes with an account of the Pas- 
 sion which is fuller than that which the older tradi- 
 tion has given, this cannot be all a matter of infinitely 
 little care to him. And to suppose, as Mr. Arnold 
 supposes, that the Elders of Ephesus should have 
 added their testimony that it was the Apostle who had 
 "written these things," is, even upon Mr. Arnold's 
 own showing, somewhat absurd. 
 
 But what must decide the question for us is the fact 
 that whoever the author may be, he certainly intends to 
 speak in the person of the Apostle John. It is true 
 indeed that this fact has been disputed, and so we shall 
 have to examine it somewhat more closely. As we 
 read the book, we every now and then find ourselves 
 meeting with a certain disciple who, it is clear, stands 
 in some peculiar relation to the work. He is spoken 
 of for the most part as the disciple whom Jesus loved, 
 and he is never named any more definitely than this. 
 This disciple leans on Jesus' breast at supper, and asks 
 
1 30 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 the name of the traitor ; he admits Peter to the palace 
 of the high-priest ; he stands by the cross and receives 
 Jesus' dying message ; he runs with Peter to the empty 
 tomb. He clearly is the unnamed disciple of the Baptist 
 who hears him speak and follows Jesus. And as the 
 narrative has just left him at the cross, without doubt 
 it is to him that appeal is made as a witness to the 
 flowing of blood and water from Jesus' side : ' ' He 
 that hath seen hath borne witness, and his witness is 
 true, and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye also 
 may believe. ' ' Who then are we to understand that the 
 disciple is ? Naturally we should look for him among 
 the three disciples who were most intimate with Jesus. 
 Now Peter is repeatedly mentioned along with him, 
 and James was early put to death, so that we have 
 only John who is left. And as John is never named 
 in the Gospel, and it is not likely that he would have 
 been passed over without being spoken of at all, we 
 can hardly refuse to see him in the disciple whom 
 Jesus loved. John, then, is the beloved disciple, and 
 from the way in which he is mentioned we are com- 
 pelled to draw the inference that he stands in some 
 peculiar relation to the work, either that he is the au- 
 thor who is referring to himself in this indirect way, 
 or that he is the source of the statements which the 
 author makes. Now which are we to suppose that he 
 really is, the author, or the source of the author's 
 knowledge ? 
 
 Dr. Cone, in his chapter on the Fourth Gospel, has 
 no doubt that he is the source of the author's knowl- 
 edge, and that the language plainly shows that this is 
 so. "For," he says, "certainly the only natural 
 explanation of the passage" — he is speaking of the 
 passage which has already been quoted, — ' ' certainly 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 131 
 
 the only natural explanation of the passage is that the 
 author refers in it to one who has already borne testi- 
 mony which he uses and wishes to assure the reader 
 to be trustworthy. An author writing of himself could 
 neither say 'that one,' nor 'hath borne witness.'" 
 Could not say it ? Well, we turn to the ninth chapter 
 of the Gospel and we find that our author has put these 
 words into Jesus' mouth : " Thou hast both seen him, 
 and that one it is {eusivo'C) who speaketh with thee.'" 
 Then let us turn to the first chapter, to the thirty- 
 fourth verse, and there again we shall find these words : 
 ' ' I have seen and have borne witness that this is the 
 Son of God." It is the Baptist who is speaking, and 
 the witness he refers to is that which he is just then 
 bearing, a case which we see is perfectly parallel to 
 our passage. So that it is not impossible after all ; 
 and indeed if the author is all the while speaking in 
 the third person, as certainly he has a right to do if he 
 chooses, it is the very thing that we should expect. 
 And on the other side, if the author is referring to 
 another person, what can be the meaning of that clause 
 "he knoweth that he saith true " ? The Apostle is 
 dead now, we remember ; and how indeed could any 
 one appeal at all to another person's consciousness of 
 truth? to his truth, perhaps, but not to his conscious- 
 ness of truth. And then, too, the very indefinite allu- 
 sion, "he who hath seen," and the fact that the writer 
 never names this authority of his, how are we to 
 explain this ? A person who is writing of himself it 
 suits well enough, but it does not suit at all the tone 
 of a disciple who is speaking of his master and of the 
 source from which he gets his facts. Such a reserve is 
 quite out of place ; rather should we expect him to tell 
 us very plainly of it, and to make much of the fact 
 
132 TJie Life and Teachings of fesus. 
 
 that he has no less authority than that of John behind 
 him. 
 
 And that we have found the true explanation is 
 shown very distinctly in the last chapter, where a cer- 
 tain person or persons distinguish themselves from the 
 disciple whom Jesus loved, and name him as the 
 author of the book. Now this certainly appears to 
 make a distinction between the last chapter and the 
 rest of the book, and such a distinction we think is 
 quite unquestionable. At the end of chapter twenty 
 the book evidently comes to a close, and while before 
 this every thing has apparently been written in the 
 character of an eye-witness, in the appendix this is 
 suddenly dropped. Besides the verse which expressly 
 distinguishes the writer from the disciple who wrote 
 the rest of the book, we find such an expression as 
 " the sons of Zebedee," and in the twentieth verse we 
 have a reference to the beloved disciple which is so 
 clearly objective that we can hardly think it is meant 
 to be understood as coming from a writer who is speak- 
 ing of himself. So that very many critics have come 
 to the conclusion that the last chapter was written by 
 another person. Their confidence, however, we do not 
 find ourselves able to share. The book never appears 
 without this last chapter, so that at least it must have 
 been added ver>^ early ; and in style the chapter agrees 
 with the rest of the Gospel in a very minute waj'. We 
 think that the critics have been too ready to suppose 
 the existence of a writer who could imitate at once the 
 conceptions and the style of the Gospel so cleverly, 
 especially as his object in doing this is by no means 
 clear. So that we think it much more probable that 
 we have to do with the same writer who, after speaking 
 throughout the book in the character of the disciple, 
 
The FouiHk Gospel. 133 
 
 now drops the character which he has assumed, and 
 speaks for himself. And the reason for his doing this, 
 if what we have discovered about the Gospel be true, is 
 not far to seek. Just who the author was it is not likely 
 that we shall ever know. We think it is probable that 
 the three Epistles were written by him, the first Epistle 
 certainly, and, as it seems, the other Epistles also, for 
 as forgeries we do not see just what object they could 
 have attained. In this case then, the author probably 
 was a presbyter in one of the cities of Asia Minor, but 
 at any rate he was a man who had reached a new 
 conception of Christianity, a philosophy of religion, 
 which, as Jesus stood at the centre of it, he wished to 
 carry out in a representation of Jesus' life ; and in ac- 
 cordance with a very common literary custom he deter- 
 mined that it should be written in the person of one 
 who actually had lived in Jesus' time, and who should 
 stand for the religious conception which he had to 
 represent. It was natural that he should choose one 
 of the three disciples who were especially close to Jesus ; 
 but James had early been put to death, and Peter had 
 come to stand so definitely for Judaic Christianity, the 
 Gospel of the Circumcision, that he could not very well 
 be made to represent a Gospel which was purely spirit- 
 ual and universal. So that John alone was left, and 
 him the author chose. But while John certainly is 
 meant by the beloved disciple, yet it is true also that 
 he appears rather as an ideal figure, as a representation 
 of the spiritual Christianity of the Gospel, than as the 
 actual, the personal John. It is only in this way that 
 we can explain wh)^ his personal name never is applied 
 to him, and why Jesus' especial love for him is so often 
 insisted on. And this also explains the very peculiar 
 relation in which John stands to Peter — Peter, who 
 
134 T^^^^ ^{/^ ^^^^ Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 represented Judaic Christianity. In the early Gos- 
 pels it is Peter who without question stands first among 
 the disciples, but in the Fourth Gospel this is com- 
 pletely reversed, and reversed in such a significant way 
 that we scarcely can refuse to see it. It is John, not 
 Peter, who is called first ; he leans on Jesus' breast at 
 supper and acts as a mediator between Peter and the 
 Lord ; at the betrayal he follows Jesus boldly where 
 Peter follows with trembling, and it is through him 
 that Peter enters the palace. He alone stands by the 
 cross and receives the Lord's mother into his charge; 
 he outruns Peter in coming to the tomb. Now as his- 
 tory this is all very doubtful, for to take only the part 
 which John plays at the crucifixion, the older accounts 
 make it clear that the disciples forsook Jesus at the 
 betrayal, and that only Peter ventured to follow timidly 
 at a distance. But here John, to say nothing of the 
 difiiculty of his being known to the high-priest, appears 
 with no trace of fear, and apparently is present 
 throughout the whole proceedings. The older Gospels 
 again exclude the presence of any of the diciples at 
 the cross, and only speak of a few women afar oflf ; but 
 here John remains at the very foot of the cross till the 
 end comes, a thing which we must think is quite im- 
 possible. In all this there is no hostility to Peter, but 
 still he must ever}' where be second, he must, so we 
 cannot help thinking, give place to the purer Chris- 
 tianity which John represents. And the appendix in 
 our view is no after-thought, but the author's state- 
 ment of this, it is the carrying out of the allegory 
 which appears throughout the book. To Peter the 
 Lord restores his favor, he entrusts him with the care 
 of his sheep ; but then he predicts to him his death. 
 And Peter, turning to the beloved disciple, asks, 
 
The Fourth Gospel. 135 
 
 "I,ord, and what shall this man do?" And Jesus 
 answers : " If I will that he tarry till I come, what is 
 that to thee ? follow thou me. ' ' Jewish Christianity, 
 material and partial, has its work to do, but it is to pass 
 away ; the higher, the spiritual Christianity is to en- 
 dure till Christ himself shall come. Does any one think 
 that this is forced, that it is a play of fancy? But we 
 have failed entirely if we have not shown that through- 
 out the book there is much which has no explanation 
 unless it is explained in just such a way as this. And 
 right at this crowning point the author gives us a hint 
 of his purpose : " Yet Jesus said not unto him, ' He 
 shall not die,' but, ' If I will that he tarry till I 
 come, what is that to thee ? ' " ; what does this mean if 
 it is not to warn the reader that there is something 
 behind the natural meaning of the words, something 
 which will give him the key for understanding them ? 
 Such allegory may seem strange to us now, but it was 
 not strange to men of the second century, and certainly 
 it was not strange to a writer who, sending a friendly 
 letter to a neighboring church, addresses the church as 
 " Lady," and keeps up the figure to the end. 
 
 This then we must recognize if we are to understand 
 the book : that the history, the facts, are not facts at all, 
 but only an outward dress, a picture of the ideas which 
 the author wishes us to see beneath them. The author 
 does not mean them to be accepted as facts, and the 
 very boldness of his attempt shows his ingenuousness ; 
 a man who had gone to work cunningly with an inten- 
 tion to deceive, would have kept much more closely 
 to the ordinary tradition, for it would have occurred to 
 him that he must not depart too far from the regular road, 
 that he must make his work not too difficult to accept. 
 To call the book a forgery is to lose all sight of the 
 
136 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 different point of view from which men once looked at 
 the matter, and to forget that it was then a perfectly- 
 legitimate device ; in reality it corresponds more nearly 
 to a modern work of fiction. At this very period we 
 have traces of a number of books in which, under the 
 name of some famous man, often under the name of an 
 Apostle, an author presented his opinions, and which no 
 one would think of calling dishonest ; and of these our 
 Gospel is only one. But among these it stands alone 
 as a work of the highest genius. As history it has 
 no value, but as the highest expression of religious 
 philosophy which Christianity produced, it will always 
 remain, as Luther called it, " the only tender, true 
 chief- Gospel." The form in which its philosophy is 
 expressed we ma)^ sometimes have to discard, but 
 the substance remains untouched. The thought of 
 Jesus as a revelation of God in man, the absolute free- 
 dom of worship, the dominion of truth, eternal life as 
 something which is essentially spiritual, a present pos- 
 session which consists in perfect communion with God, 
 — this and more besides has become our permanent 
 inheritance, and to the Fourth Gospel we owe it most 
 of all. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THi; CREDIBILITY OF THE GOSPEI^S. 
 
 BEFORE entering upon any positive sketch of Jesus' 
 life and teaching, it will simplif}' the problem 
 materially if we can come in some approximate 
 degree at an estimate of the amount of historical credi- 
 bility which is to be assigned to the Gospel narratives, 
 and so can get some standard which maj- be applied to 
 the more doubtful cases. It may be said that this is 
 precisely the object of the whole investigation, and can 
 only come as a result at the end, after all the facts have 
 been examined ; and up to a certain extent this is true. 
 But against such a method, if followed out strictly, 
 there is this objection, that the reader quickly gets 
 involved in a tangle of conflicting probabilities and 
 provisional results, and becomes so bewildered in try- 
 ing to extricate himself that he loses sight of his path, 
 and has at the end only a confused notion of the ground 
 over which he has been travelling. It ought to be 
 possible, by selecting out the cases which are the clear- 
 est, to obtain an answer to the question in a general 
 way, and so to clear up in some measure the road to a 
 positive reconstruction. Moreover, in the present case 
 this becomes a necessity in view of the fact that we 
 have the question of miracles to settle, and this is a 
 
 137 
 
138 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 question of so peculiar a nature that it can best be 
 disposed of by itself. We shall therefore first discuss 
 the question of the miraculous, in its bearing upon the 
 historicity of the Gospels, and then shall try to find 
 some general criterion as to the trustworthiness of 
 each individual book which has come down to us. 
 
 In starting once again on the question of miracles, 
 one cannot help a disheartened feeling that probably 
 nothing which he shall say will have the least effect 
 upon those who do not already agree with him. 
 Nevertheless, some of the unsatisfactoriness which is in- 
 cident to such discussions may perhaps be eliminated by 
 defining carefully the grounds on which it is proposed to 
 argue. In the present case these will be historical 
 grounds simply, and all purely philosophical consider- 
 ations, just so far as one can help making use of those 
 principles which lie at the bottom of his mental make- 
 up, and form the medium which inevitably tinges his 
 view of things, will be ruled out. This is not saying 
 that philosophical arguments deserve to have no weight, 
 for it is not reasonable to ask a man to accept, without 
 special evidence, that which goes flat against the best 
 conceptions he has been able to form of the universe. 
 But if such arguments are to have any practical effect 
 in convincing others, one will first have to prove that 
 his philosophy is right, and that in itself is liable to be 
 a matter of difficulty. And besides there is some justi- 
 fication for the distrust with which in general purely 
 philosophical considerations are apt to be viewed, for 
 after all the universe is a ver}^ vast and a very complex 
 thing, and when the philosopher undertakes to prove 
 that this or that event cannot occur, the possibility 
 that there is something which he has failed to take 
 into his account is so great, that no one, except per- 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 139 
 
 haps the philosopher himself, is quite ready to look 
 upon the matter as settled. We therefore shall con- 
 sider that we are spared in our character as historian 
 the somewhat tedious task of trying to show that a 
 miracle is an impossibility or a philosophical absurdity, 
 and shall make no assumption whatever about the 
 matter. And this may be supposed to give us the 
 privilege of passing by as well those arguments on 
 the other side, which have attempted to show that a 
 miraculous revelation is just the sort of thing we ought 
 to look for. The two may be considered to balance 
 each other. 
 
 But in refusing to assert that miracles are impossible, 
 it is not of course intended to say that they have lost 
 any of their inherent improbability, though many seem 
 to imagine that this step is an easy one, and to con- 
 sider that after they have shown that the possibility 
 of a miracle is not absolutely excluded, the bulk of 
 their work has been done. But this shows an entire 
 failure to appreciate the nature of the problem. The 
 strength of the case against miracles lies first of all 
 in the historical argument against them, and this 
 must have a preponderant influence. Now as a matter 
 of fact, leaving out this single period which is in dis- 
 pute, — for the Old Testament miracles are the weakest 
 of broken reeds, and can only be bolstered up by the 
 very strongest evidence from the New, — we know that 
 events in nature have come about according to definite 
 and unvarying laws, and that miracles have not hap- 
 pened. But — and this is the real point of the matter — 
 vi\\rz.Q\s.- stories are the commonest things in the world, 
 and have sprung up in the greatest profusion in every 
 age, not excluding the present one. There is therefore 
 against the miracle-stories which are recorded in the 
 
140 The Life and Teachings of yesus. 
 
 Gospels the overwhelming presumption which is af- 
 forded by these two facts, that events of such a nature 
 as those which the Gospels relate are absolutely un- 
 known, whereas the collections of miracle-stories which 
 exist are indefinite in number, and in every other case 
 they are demonstrated to be baseless. Accordingly, 
 there is an immense presumption that in this case, too, 
 the phenomena are not to be explained in some new 
 and strange way, but just as the same phenomena have 
 been explained before. It is not necessary to say with 
 Hume that this presumption is absolutely conclusive. 
 Suppose that miracles actually have happened, and 
 there is nothing in it to render impossible a proof of 
 their occurrence which to all practical intents shall be 
 a satisfactory one. If it could be shown conclusively 
 that the writings which described these miracles came 
 from the hand of eye-witnesses, or else from their im- 
 mediate hearers, if the good faith of all the parties 
 concerned could be made morally certain, if the mir- 
 acles were of such a character that they could not be 
 attributed without the greatest forcing to a blunder or 
 mistake, and if there was nothing in the rest of the 
 history or the literature of that time to contradict or 
 throw doubt upon their testimony — all of which is con- 
 ceivable enough, — it hardly would be fair to make any 
 further demands. To put the case more concretely, if 
 our four Gospels could be shown to have proceeded from 
 the men whose names they bear, with as much probabil- 
 ity as it can be shown that the Epistle to the Romans 
 comes from Paul, there would be little more to say. 
 But again it must be insisted that such a hypothetical 
 case destroys none of the antecedent improbability 
 of miracles, and that they are to be treated with the 
 utmost rigor and suspicion. And in this respect the 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 141 
 
 Gospel miracles do not have the slightest advantage 
 over their fellows. Such a claim is sometimes made 
 for them, based chiefly upon the unique character 
 and personality of Jesus, and to this extent it may be 
 conceded that the claim has an element of truth in it, 
 that if on independent grounds the truth of the mir- 
 acles can be sustained, then the uniqueness of Jesus 
 will go a little way to make them more conceivable. 
 But in so far as it is intended by this to weaken the 
 antecedent suspicion with which miracles are to be re- 
 garded, and to deprecate the most searching criticism 
 of them, the plea is entirely without force. The 
 uniqueness of Jesus does not make it unlikely that 
 miracle-stories should have grown up about him, nor 
 does it make it probable that he will really work mir- 
 acles himself, simply because spiritual greatness has 
 no sort of connection with miracles at all. One might 
 argue much more forcibly on the other side that 
 miracles, which in every other case are a proof of super- 
 stition and of error, are the very last things by which 
 we ^hould expect Jesus to attest his greatness and his 
 truth. What the defenders of the miracles are called 
 upon to prove is, not that they are connected with the 
 person of Jesus, but that in themselves they are quite 
 different from other miracles ; and as this is just the 
 question at issue, it can have no influence with us at the 
 start. It is true that upon the whole the Gospel miracles 
 are more sober than those of other great cycles of miracle- 
 stories ; but that is not a matter of any special moment. 
 Nor do vague impressions of the truthfulness and 
 historical character of the narratives count for any- 
 thing, for of course those things will have the flavor 
 of reality to us which we have always been accustomed 
 to believe were true. What we are bound to do is 
 
142 The Life and Teaclii7igs of Jesus. 
 
 to rid ourselves as much as possible of the glamour 
 which the sacredness of the story has cast about it, and 
 then subject the story to precisely the same tests 
 which we are accustomed to use elsewhere. If the 
 story will not stand these tests, with what face can we 
 blame people if they do not accept the story as true. 
 The great fault of Christian Apologists lies just here, 
 that they have been too indulgent to the Gospels, that 
 they have refused to treat them rigorously, and they 
 practically have asked us to approach the miraculous as 
 a perfectly open question, to be decided upon the same 
 degree of evidence which would satisfj^ us in the case 
 of a natural event. But of course this cannot be ad- 
 mitted for a moment. To be sure we come to the 
 miracles with a prejudice against them, and anyone 
 who comes in a different waj^ is totally unfit to reason 
 on the question. Accordingly, we shall assume they 
 are not true till we find the very strongest evidence for 
 changing our opinion ; we shall search for errors and 
 contradictions ; between two divergent accounts, the 
 one which has least of the miraculous in it will be 
 unhesitatingly preferred if other things are equal ; the 
 ability to show how a miracle might have arisen will 
 be considered as sufiicient proof against it. Instead of 
 confining ourselves to the cases for which the most can 
 be said, and slurring over those which are most sus- 
 picious, and bear more clearly the marks of legend, 
 we shall consider that the latter are particularly sig- 
 nificant in their bearing, and that instead of being 
 buoyed up by the others they tend to drag the others 
 down with them. Hypotheses for harmonizing the 
 discrepancies which occur in parallel accounts we 
 shall not regard as needing refutation, because the 
 problem is not to show that the different versions may 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 143 
 
 be reconciled, but that the presumption against the story 
 itself can be removed, and its falsity shown to be out 
 of the question. We shall not deem it necessary to 
 accoimt definitely for each individual miracle, or to 
 point out just the logical process by which each detail 
 arose, because logic is the last thing to be expected, 
 and because it is the very nature of the growth of 
 miracle-stories to be irresponsible and incalculable. 
 This is simply what we do in other cases. There are 
 many other miracles for which the external evidence 
 is strong to a surprising degree, and yet we do not 
 hesitate in the least to set conjecture over against the 
 clearest testimony, and to reject the testimony at once. 
 It is just in this that a miracle differs from a natural 
 event ; we do not balance the evidence, but so long as 
 there is a possibility that a mistake has been made, we 
 accept that possibility as established. If any one 
 objects to this way of proceeding, we really do not 
 know what to say to him. He is asking us to slay 
 the miracles after taking every weapon out of our 
 hands. 
 
 Now to begin with, the existence of miracle-stories 
 in the early Christian communities does not furnish 
 the least difficulty, but it would have been a most 
 surprising thing if legend had not been actively 
 at work. Every condition was present in an unusual 
 degree, ignorance, an unwavering belief in the possi- 
 bility of the miraculous, an intense religious excite- 
 ment ; and at other times these conditions have given 
 rise to just the sort of phenomena which we find in the 
 age of the Apostles. And right here one great objec- 
 tion to the miracles lies. If it were only in the life of 
 Jesus that we found them, then we could at least see 
 some principle to account for them ; but when we find 
 
1 44 The Life and Teachings of festis. 
 
 that the Apostles too worked miracles, and that many of 
 the otlier Christians were credited with the same power, 
 when we see the miraculous stretched out through 
 several centuries, and only d5-ing gradually away, do 
 we not see that this has all the marks of a natural 
 phenomenon and not of a divine revelation ? There is 
 the case of the Apostle Paul, the clearest and the most 
 unequivocal of any in the New Testament ; Paul be- 
 lieves that the men about him have the power of work- 
 ing miracles, and he believes that he, himself, has 
 worked them, — could there be any more definite testi- 
 mony than this? But St. Bernard also believed that 
 he had worked miracles, and it surely cannot satisfy 
 us to say that Bernard must have been mistaken, and 
 that Paul must have been right. It is just for this 
 that there is no proof whatever. Paul had no better 
 knowledge than his age had, and he was as likely as 
 any one to account for a surprising event, of which he 
 did not understand the cause, as a work of divine 
 power. We have a clear evidence of this in a case 
 which is very similar to the case of miracles, the 
 so-called gift of tongues. There can hardly be any 
 doubt that this gift, which Paul describes in his letter 
 to the Corinthians, was only a form of strong religious 
 excitement, which we cannot call inspired unless we 
 are willing to give the same name to the similar out- 
 breaks among modern sects, an excitement, moreover, 
 that was capable of leading to great abuses. But 
 Paul, while with much good sense he rebukes these 
 excesses, and will not allow that the gift stands very- 
 high in the scale, yet has no doubt that it is of divine 
 origin, and that it enables the disciple " in the spirit to 
 speak mysteries." 
 
 In such an age, therefore, we .should look for miracle- 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 145 
 
 stories, even if we had to do with actual eye-witnesses ; 
 and yet in this case the chance for mistake would be 
 very much lessened, and we should expect to be able, 
 with some probability, to sift out what actually had 
 happened. But Paul, who speaks of his own miracles, 
 fails to give us any concrete instance of them, while 
 the writers on whom we must depend for our examples, 
 not only cannot be proved to have been eye-witnesses, 
 but most probably had some of them never seen an eye- 
 witness ; so that the chances for error become almost 
 infinite. To make one who does not wish it see that 
 in the Gospels there are clear traces of legend, which 
 we can even watch in its growth, we fear is hardly pos- 
 sible, for we know how strong a hold the Gospel narra- 
 tives have over men ; but we think that without any 
 doubt the evidence is there. Not to start in with the 
 Gospels themselves, there is a very good example con- 
 nected with the phenomenon which has just been 
 mentioned, the gift of tongues. The author of the 
 Acts has at the beginning of his book an incident 
 which took place on the day of Pentecost, and there 
 can be no reasonable doubt that the phenomenon is the 
 same as that which is described by Paul. But how 
 does the author understand it ? Why, he thinks that 
 it is nothing else than a speaking in foreign languages ; 
 he makes a miracle out of what we have the clearest 
 proof was something very different. Commentators 
 have tried in the most artificial of ways to avoid this 
 conclusion, and we believe have charged it to the arbi- 
 trariness of rationalistic criticism ; but this always has 
 been upon the assumption that the account is thor- 
 oughly reliable, and that a mistake is the last thing 
 to be admitted. If we once will admit that a miracle 
 in itself is suspicious, we shall wonder how any other 
 
146 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 explanation could ever have been thought of, when so 
 simple a one lay at hand. Now this same thing can 
 be traced in the Gospels as well, a tradition which is 
 constantly growing more and more legendary by a 
 process which we often can detect taking place under 
 our ver>' eyes. It is no accident that the stories which 
 are peculiar to Matthew, the stories of Jesus' infancy, 
 the miracle of the coin in the fish's mouth, the walking 
 of Peter on the water, and the resurrection of the saints 
 at the death of Jesus, belong to the latest stratum of 
 the Gospel literature ; and they are no whit harder to 
 account for than a host of legends about saints and 
 martyrs. How natural it would be to collect wonders 
 about as stupendous an event as Jesus' death ; how 
 natural, too, still to keep the risen saints in the grave, 
 that they should not anticipate Jesus' resurrection ! 
 The story of Peter's walking on the water, a trans- 
 parent allegory of the Apostle's fickleness, is especially 
 instructive, for not only by its connection with the 
 walking of Jesus on the sea does it reveal the source 
 from which its form was derived, but we also have 
 this story about Jesus in an earlier Gospel, which evi- 
 dently is quite ignorant of Peter's experience. And 
 this story, too, about Jesus, as appears from the way in 
 which he stills the tempest, we probably can trace to 
 a simpler story which was present in a still earlier Gos- 
 pel, where Jesus is only represented as calming the 
 stonn. 
 
 And in Luke's Gospel the same process is plainly 
 visible. A comparison of Luke with Mark, in the inci- 
 dent of the high priest's servant, will give an illustra- 
 tion of the way in which the determined miracle- 
 monger can make use of the merest hint. Tradition 
 had told how one of Jesus' captors had lost an ear 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 147 
 
 through the zeal of a certain disciple. But this is too 
 good an opportunity for a miracle to be lost, and so in 
 Luke we find that the ear has been healed by a touch 
 from Jesus' hand. How arbitrary the favorite device 
 is of supposing that the absence of an incident in the 
 earlier accounts is simply a failure to tell the whole 
 story appears in this case, for it is incredible, if a mir- 
 acle really had occurred, that the earlier narratives 
 should just have given the unimportant introduction to 
 it, and have omitted the miracle itself, for which the 
 incident would be remembered. It is as if one should 
 recall the rising of the curtain, but forget that the play 
 had followed. Jesus had the power to heal the ear, — 
 such the reasoning seems to have been, — and, there- 
 fore, the ear was healed. Similarly in the stor}^ of the 
 Resurrection, while the rest of the accounts are con- 
 tent to say that the stone was rolled away, Matthew 
 knows just how the whole thing happened, and brings 
 the women on the scene to witness the event. Of 
 course, the writers imagine that they are giving the 
 real facts of the case, and the freedom of their con- 
 jectures might readily be paralleled among the Rabbis 
 or the Fathers, or among modern scholars even ; but, 
 nevertheless, we must recognize what a wide field it 
 gives for error and mistake. The miraculous draft of 
 fishes, which is given in Luke, is another case in 
 point ; how can we fail to see on what a slender 
 thread the whole thing hangs, when we find that there 
 is an earlier account of the very same incident, in 
 which the miracle is not so much as hinted at ? With 
 a miracle to start with, how could the very fact of its 
 occurrence have dropped out of sight, when the inci- 
 dent was told ? And in a similar way, in the account 
 of a visit to Nazareth, we find that Luke has brought 
 
148 The Life and Teachings of yesus. 
 
 in a miraculous escape on Jesus' part which Mark 
 knows nothing of. 
 
 If we recognize then that legend has been at work, 
 we see how irresistibly it will burst through all the 
 limits we may try to set to it, and how difficult it will 
 be to save a part of the miraculous at the expense 
 of the rest. As we said before, we shall not undertake 
 to account perfectly for ever>' stor}-, and ver>^ likely 
 there are some wdiose special motive it is no longer 
 possible to discover. But there are others again which 
 can be explained with perfect confidence. The rending 
 of the Temple vail, for example, is clearly only the 
 materialization of a doctrinal truth, a metaphor turned 
 into actual fact ; and the story of the ten lepers, to say 
 nothing of the unlikelihood that Jesus should have 
 healed men like this in batches, is little more than an 
 allegory in disguise. These examples will suggest one 
 set of influences which would be at work to produce 
 miracle-stories, — doctrinal views, that is, about Jesus 
 and his work, and especially such views as became in 
 later 5'ears a centre of controversy ; although we are 
 not disposed to give a very prominent place to this. 
 Then there would be the fruitful influence of the Old 
 Testament, which Strauss laid so much stress on, and 
 which we cannot doubt was active from the first. 
 Among men to whom it was self-evident that the Old 
 Testament was filled with types and prophecies of the 
 Messiah, the tendency was irresistible to find these 
 types fulfilled in Jesus' life, and to them an Old Testa- 
 ment quotation would be as clear a proof as one could 
 wish for. One evident example of this we have in the 
 account of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, where the first 
 Evangelist has two animals in place of the single one 
 of the older account ; and the proof he gives for his 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 1 49 
 
 change is simply a passage from Isaiah, " Behold, thy 
 king Cometh, sitting upon an ass, and a colt, the foal 
 of an ass. ' ' This example is the more striking because 
 it all comes from a mistaken interpretation, and a fail- 
 ure to notice the parallelism in the Old Testament 
 account. Of course it would not be diflScult to put 
 too much stress upon the influence which was exerted 
 by the Old Testament, and in no case ought it to be 
 divorced from the all-pervasive craving after miracles. 
 One certainly is not to think of a conscious feeling of 
 the need of supplying parallels in Jesus' life, without 
 which there would have been no tendency to legend at 
 all. A well-defined feeling of this sort does not appear 
 to have existed, for it is rarely that we find, what in 
 such a case we might look to find, stories which mani- 
 festly are copies throughout. But with a tendency to 
 legend once given, and sure to make itself felt in one 
 form or another, the influence of the Old Testament 
 would go a long way to determine what that form 
 should be, and besides would give an immense impetus 
 to the whole movement, by furnishing ready to hand a 
 great mass of material in every way suited to the pur- 
 pose, and everywhere familiar, particularly if theologi- 
 cal and controversial interests stood ready to give each 
 newly discovered point of contact a warm welcome, and 
 find for it general acceptance. Furthermore, there is 
 the possibility that a saying or a parable may have 
 grown into a narrative of a real event, and this seems 
 in part to be the explanation of the cursing of the fig- 
 tree. This story is not creditable to Jesus, and one 
 might wish to get rid of it even apart from the miracle. 
 There seems to be no good reason for thinking, as some 
 have done, that Jesus meant this act just to give his 
 disciples a striking object-lesson, with the Jewish na- 
 
150 The Life and Teachings of fesus. 
 
 tion as its text. The account itself hardly would sug- 
 gest this, but rather would suggest that it was regarded 
 as an illustration of the power which faith puts in the 
 hands of the believer, for this is all that Jesus has to 
 say in explanation of it. So then, when we find that 
 these words which are given to Jesus really were spoken 
 on another occasion,' and when we find that a parable 
 actually has come down to us about a barren fig-tree 
 which was threatened with condign punishment, it 
 hardly seems necessary to hunt any further for an ex- 
 planation of the story. These three tendencies at least 
 we may constantly be on the lookout for, but besides 
 these there would be numberless other ways in which a 
 miracle-story might be suggested. It would be hope- 
 less at the present day to expect to find in every case 
 just what the starting-point for the story was, but it 
 often can be suggested with a good deal of probability. 
 The story of the miraculous feeding may be taken as 
 an example. So far as external authority goes this is 
 the best attested miracle to be found in the Gospels. 
 Each of the four Evangelists has his version of it, and 
 indeed two of them have given us a double version, 
 though that perhaps is hardly to be reckoned a point 
 in its favor. But unless one stands ready to stick by 
 the miraculous through thick and thin, there are pe- 
 culiar difficulties about this story which make it very 
 hard to accept on any testimony. Without insisting 
 on the fact that there really is no adequate occasion for 
 so stupendous an event, our narrative brings out clearly 
 a difficulty, which often is suffered to drop out of view 
 by reason of the dim religious light in which the mira- 
 cles are kept enveloped, but which the mind inevitably 
 feels when it tries to picture to itself a miracle as actu- 
 
 ' See Ivuke, 17 : 6. 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 1 5 i 
 
 ally taking place. For this reason the healing-miracles 
 are somewhat less difficult to believe in, because there 
 the process is a hidden one and does not appear to call 
 for a very close scrutiny ; but in the nature-miracles it 
 is otherwise. It is a very different thing to say in 
 general terms that God has omnipotent power, and 
 actually to think of a loaf which has been broken 
 suddenly become whole again, or of a new loaf in- 
 stantly appearing when one has been picked up. The 
 whole thing has an air of magic about it, of legerde- 
 main ; it is what we expect to see at a conjuror's enter- 
 tainment, and instinctively we shrink from connecting 
 it with Jesus. In this story too there are points of 
 contact with the Old Testament, but perhaps the real 
 clue to the narrative is supplied by the Fourth Evan- 
 gelist, when he connects it with a discourse which 
 points to the I^ord's Supper. Jesus sitting at the head 
 of the table, blessing the food and distributing it to his 
 followers, it is very likely that we have here a reflection 
 of the simple love- feast of later days carried back into 
 the legendary atmosphere of Jesus' own life. 
 
 So far no mention has been made of a theory which 
 in the past has had a great place in the criticism of 
 the miracles, and which must always be recognized as 
 at least a possibility. After the suspicion once gains 
 ground that miracles are of doubtful credibility, the 
 most natural step, because the shortest, is to assume 
 that some real historical event lies at the bottom of 
 each story, but has been given a wrong twist through 
 misunderstandings on the part of eye-witness or narra- 
 tor. But the absurdities into which the old rational- 
 istic criticism fell in trying to carry out this method, 
 furnish a sharp admonition that the method is at any 
 rate to be employed with the utmost caution. There 
 
152 The Life ajid Teachings of yesus. 
 
 are decided diiSculties in the waj' of such a theoty. If 
 it is to be carried out with any plausibility a good share 
 of the blame has to be laid upon the eye-witnesses 
 themselves ; and the existence of so many events in 
 Jesus' life which would lend themselves so easily to a 
 mistake, together with the negligence of Jesus in cor- 
 recting these mistakes, and the verj^ considerable degree 
 of stupidity on the part of the spectators, is in itself 
 extremely odd. But in the case of one particular class 
 of events, the miracles of healing, it might seem that 
 the tlieor)^ stood a good show of being carried out with 
 success, and it will be necessary to examine these with 
 some detail. 
 
 There is in all three of the Gospels the account of an 
 argument which Jesus had with the Pharisees about a 
 demoniac whom Jesus had cured. The man is called 
 a dumb demoniac in the older account, and there is 
 nothing very improbable in this, though the fact that 
 in Matthew the dumb man has become blind as well, 
 ought to suggest caution about relying too implicitly 
 upon details. However, the main point is that a re- 
 markable cure had been efiected in a way that was open 
 and undeniable, and this much must be regarded as 
 beyond reasonable doubt. And it is to be noticed in 
 passing that just here, when for the first time we get 
 on firm ground, the miraculous appears in a particu- 
 larly dubious light. This matter of possession fur- 
 nishes a striking example of the disturbing influence 
 which a wrong point of view to start with may exert. 
 If the upholder of the miracles would try seriously to 
 realize the impression which a case of this sort must 
 make upon a mind not already prejudiced in favor of 
 the miraculous, he perhaps would be more ready to 
 admit some reason for his opponent's scepticism. For 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 1 5 3 
 
 his own part he has convinced himself already, and he 
 can afiford to pass somewhat lightly over what makes 
 against him ; but if one has not as yet reached this 
 position, the case against the influence of demons in 
 disease seems as complete as one could reasonably ask 
 for. The phenomena known as possession by no 
 means appear for the first time with Jesus. The belief 
 was already current among the Jews when Jesus was 
 born, and it is continually being met with among other 
 nations before and since. This very passage shows 
 that Jewish exorcists sometimes were successful in 
 their treatment of such cases ; and in the days of the 
 Fathers, as well as in later times, there are well au- 
 thenticated instances in which cures were effected by 
 means which were looked upon as miraculous. Ac- 
 cordingly, if we are to maintain our view that Jesus' 
 cure was a miracle, and the actual casting out of a 
 demon, we either must suppose that of two cases, not 
 outwardly different, the one is a miracle and the other 
 is a natural event, which is not very convincing ; or 
 we must say that the others too were miracles, and that 
 the Jews before Jesus' time were divinely guided to a 
 correct diagnosis in this special class of diseases, and 
 this is quite as unsatisfactory. Moreover, phenomena 
 of the same sort occur at the present day, and have 
 been shown beyond any doubt to come from natural 
 causes. The whole attempt to save the credit of the 
 Evangelists is artificial, and does not deserve considera- 
 tion in view of the perfectly obvious explanation that 
 the Evangelists simply were accepting the erroneous 
 belief of their day, as of course it was to be expected 
 they would do. But what we are concerned about 
 more particularly is the explanation which Jesus him- 
 self gives to this cure, "If I by the power of God 
 
154 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 cast out demons, then doubtless the kingdom of God 
 is come nigh unto you." Now in just this case such 
 a saying was true in a special manner. Most of the 
 diseases which were classed under possession were very 
 largely of a mental nature, and often of a moral na- 
 ture as well ; that is, they were most likely to prevail 
 in an age where, along with an intense belief in the 
 supernatural, there went great wickedness and highly 
 wrought passions ; and the breaking of the power of 
 such diseases was connected in an immediate way with 
 the sane and healthful views of the kingdom of heaven 
 which Jesus taught. But the words also suggest the 
 question whether Jesus did not carry out the idea fur- 
 ther still. It is perfectly possible that a strong and 
 beneficent nature such as Jesus' was, and especially in 
 such an age as the age in which Jesus lived, might 
 have had a much wider influence over sickness than 
 this ; that Jesus might have carried on a somewhat 
 extended ministr}^ of healing which he looked upon as 
 a special token of God's presence, and which he thus 
 appealed to in support of his mission. 
 
 Now it must be noticed that this is rather more than 
 can fairly be got out of the argument with the Phari- 
 sees when taken by itself, for it is not just the same 
 thing to make a passing argument ad homineni in an- 
 swer to an attack which actually has been made upon 
 him, and really to rest his authority upon this argu- 
 ment, and make continual use of it. Still the latter 
 is not impossible, or even very unlikely. To be sure 
 we may not like to find that Jesus has fallen into such 
 a mistake, but the possibility that he should be mis- 
 taken must be conceded. If he had found himself 
 possessed of the power of working remarkable cures, 
 it is conceivable, with his vivid sense of God's imme- 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 1 5 5 
 
 diate presence in the universe, that he should have at- 
 tributed his success more directly to God's special and 
 unusual agency than one who had a more modern and 
 scientific view of the world would feel justified in do- 
 ing. And this might seem to account admirably for 
 several puzzling things in the Gospels. It would ac- 
 count for the unwavering and comparatively early testi- 
 mony to such miracles of healing in Jesus' life ; it would 
 account for a number of sayings attributed to Jesus in 
 which he seems to claim for himself miraculous power ; 
 and it would serve at least as a basis in accounting for 
 those narratives which have been especially stubborn 
 in resisting a mythical and legendary explanation. 
 
 So far as the general descriptions of Jesus' healing 
 go, when they are not backed by something concrete 
 and definite they cannot be held to count for very much 
 as evidence. The greater part of them are due to 
 Mark, and they seem to be nothing more than infer- 
 ences or generalizations from the concrete stories. If 
 the source from which Mark drew told how the disci- 
 ples had been commissioned to heal the sick, and then 
 if Mark proceeds to tell how the sick were healed, his 
 statement cannot be assigned any independent value. 
 Moreover, if cures really did occur in the case of de- 
 moniacs, as we are ready to admit, even though there 
 may have been no great number of them, this would 
 be quite enough to give a start to tradition, and it only 
 would require a moderate amount of time to grow into 
 a general healing ministry. But this tells nothing as 
 to what Jesus' attitude towards these cures may have 
 been, and to answer this question it will be necessary 
 to examine, first the sayings which are attributed to 
 Jesus, and then the narratives of special cures which 
 seem to deserve particular attention. 
 
156 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 When John sent messengers to Jesus to ask him 
 about his Messiahship, Jesus did not send back a 
 direct answer. "Tell John," he says, "the things 
 which 5'e do hear and see : the blind receive their sight, 
 the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead 
 are raised up, and the poor have good tidings preached 
 to them. And blessed is he who.soever shall find none 
 occasion of stumbling in me. ' ' This reply is not alto- 
 gether above suspicion, and yet there does not seem to be 
 ground enough for rejecting it in its essential features. 
 Assuming then that words resembling these really were 
 spoken by Jesus, on the surface they might seem to fur- 
 nish an answer to the question, and to show that Jesus 
 had performed some remarkable cures upon which he 
 was content to rest the proof of his Messiahship. But as 
 soon as one begins to examine the answer, he will see 
 that this is by no means so certain as it might appear. 
 To be sure it must be admitted that in their present 
 form the words refer most naturally to the actual heal- 
 ing of diseases, and the Evangelists evidently under- 
 stand them in this way ; but there is nothing at all 
 violent in the supposition that the sa^dng may have 
 been modified somewhat in the course of transmission, 
 through a desire that it .should conform more exactly 
 to the cures which actually were reported of Jesus. 
 And in favor of this there are two facts to be consid- 
 ered. In the first place the selection of examples is 
 strange in Jesus' mouth. The cure of demoniacs, which 
 is well attested, is not mentioned at all, and the things 
 which are mentioned, the cleansing of lepers and most 
 of all the raising of the dead, even the Gospels recog- 
 nize as marking an exceptional height of Jesus' power, 
 so that they could not have been spoken of in this way 
 as ordinary occurrences. But it would have been quite 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 157 
 
 natural for a later disciple to choose for his samples 
 those instances which seemed to him most striking. 
 And again there is the fact that undoubtedly the say- 
 ing has a reference in it to a set of passages in the book 
 of Isaiah, and so is likely in the first instance to have 
 corresponded somewhat more closely to these than it 
 does at present. But at any rate this connection with 
 Isaiah has an important bearing on the manner in 
 which the saying ought to be interpreted. In Isaiah 
 these passages in part describe in a highly figurative 
 way the blessings of the Messianic age, and in part 
 they refer solely and unmistakably to facts which are 
 purely spiritual ; in no case however would they be 
 satisfied by the bodily healing of a few sick people. 
 Now it certainly is true that Jesus might have under- 
 stood that these words were to be literally fulfilled, but 
 it also is true that a mistake of this kind is just what 
 Jesus is least likely to fall into. Jesus is not accus- 
 tomed to misapply passages which have a spiritual 
 meaning in a literal way, but, on the contrary, he is 
 more likely to pierce down to the spiritual meaning of 
 literal words ; and on account of this we seldom are 
 justified in taking the baldly literal meaning of Jesus' 
 sayings unless we find that a deeper meaning is forced 
 and unnatural. But here, if once we admit that Jesus 
 intends a quotation, there is no difficulty in the least. 
 Jesus does not say to John, Look at the miracles which 
 I do, and divine my spiritual rank from them ; but what 
 he says is this : I cannot answer your question directly, 
 because to you and to me the question does not mean 
 the same. I only can point you to the place where you 
 will find w^hat my conception of the coming one is, and 
 ask you to look for the fulfilling of that prophecy in my 
 life. If to you the Messiah is one who comes to heal 
 
158 The Life and Teachings of fesus. 
 
 the spiritual ills of men, to make the Gospel of divine 
 truth the common propertj^ of all, yes, I am the Mes- 
 siah ; and blessed is he whosoever shall find none occa- 
 sion of stumbling in me. And there are a number of 
 things which go to show that this interpretation is. the 
 right one. The closing sentence of Jesus' words indicates 
 that the proof which he had offered was not one which 
 he had much hope would appeal to men, but which was 
 more like to put a stumbling-block in their way ; and 
 this was not true of the proof from miracles, which is 
 frankly and without disguise a popular appeal. More- 
 over, a reference to miracles would be no real answer to 
 John's question. If miracles had been performed John 
 must have felt all their force before he sent to Jesus ; 
 and if he still were in doubt, what would be gained by 
 sending back word to him, lyook to the miracles ? Was 
 this really the strongest proof that Jesus had to offer ? 
 And a closer examination of the words themselves will 
 point to the same thing : ' ' the dead are raised up, the 
 poor have good tidings preached to them. " " The poor 
 have good tidbigs preached to themy Jesus' teaching is 
 not to be got rid of altogether then ; but in this case 
 it comes in in a secondary way, as an afterthought. 
 Moreover, it destroys the unity of the saying ; the last 
 clause brings in something which is entirely out of 
 harmony with the rest of the sentence, an argument 
 of a totally different kind. And yet there is no indica- 
 tion that the train of thought has been shifted, and 
 from the structure of the sentence one never would 
 suspect the presence of a double line of argument. If, 
 therefore, one clause can refer to nothing else than 
 Jesus' spiritual ministry, and if the rest of the sen- 
 tence may be interpreted in more ways than one, the 
 part which is unequivocal ought to be allowed the 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 159 
 
 casting vote. The figurative meaning is then, we 
 think, by far the more natural meaning ; but, it is 
 said, John would not have understood it in this way. 
 Undoubtedly he would not have understood it so if 
 he had known of remarkable cures on Jesus' part which 
 were thought to be miraculous and to which he could 
 apply the words ; but if he had not known of these 
 he could not have understood it otherwise. But the 
 cures of Jesus are just what we have to establish ; till 
 they are established we can only take the words in the 
 most probable way. And taking them in this way, 
 they exclude the cures. 
 
 And for this conclusion the words of Jesus to the 
 Pharisees when they asked him for a sign tell very 
 strongly indeed. " An evil and adulterous generation 
 seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given 
 it but the sign of Jonah the prophet. The men of 
 Nineveh shall stand up in the judgment with this 
 generation and shall condemn it ; for they repented at 
 the preaching of Jonah, and behold a greater than 
 Jonah is here. ' ' The first Evangelist understands this 
 as a reference to the resurrection, but there can be no 
 doubt that he is mistaken ; Jesus explains it himself, 
 and explains it of his teaching. I^et us notice carefully 
 what Jesus says : he rebukes an anxiety for miraculous 
 signs as belonging to an evil and adulterous generation, 
 he declares absolutely that no sign shall be given to it, 
 and he appeals wholly to the truth and the self-evi- 
 dential nature of his preaching. If the Pharisees had 
 known about the miracles of healing, how could they 
 still have asked for a sign ? they had a sign already, 
 and then too a knowledge of Jesus' power must have 
 made them hesitate to provoke a display of it which 
 should be to their own disadvantage. If Jesus had 
 
1 60 The Life and Teachings of yesus. 
 
 performed cures which he thought were miraculous, 
 and had appealed to them as his authority, how could 
 he have spoken of signs as he does speak of them? 
 The whole passage is an unequivocal denial of the 
 miraculous in Jesus' life ; and because it goes clean 
 against the tendencies which were working in tradition, 
 and because it has besides all the antecedent probabili- 
 ties in its favor, it is worth much more as evidence 
 than any saying on the other side could be. And along 
 with this we may notice the fact that the people were 
 so slow in thinking of Jesus as the Messiah. If Jesus 
 had engaged in an extended ministrj^ of healing which 
 was thought to be miraculous, and if he himself had 
 appealed to these miracles, this fact is very difficult to 
 explain. 
 
 Among the other sayings of Jesus whose authenticity 
 cannot fairly be questioned, there is only one, apart 
 from the narratives of special cures, which seems to 
 claim a miraculous power, and this is the Woe against 
 the Galilean cities. Here again probably it would be 
 hypercritical to deny that by ' ' mighty works ' ' the 
 Evangelists thought that miracles were meant, and it 
 may be that the word itself can mean nothing less than 
 this. And yet there are two great objections against 
 understanding the saying in this way ; it implies what 
 in other words of his Jesus seems expressly to exclude, 
 and it places the people's guilt in their rejection of his 
 miracles and not in the rejection of his teaching, which 
 is utterly opposed to what we know of Jesus. In an- 
 other place where Jesus is referring to this same thing, 
 to his rejection by the people, he speaks simpl}^ of his 
 teaching ministry : ' ' We have eaten and drunk in thy 
 presence, and thou hast taught in our streets," he 
 represents the people as saying, while of miracles he 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 1 6 1 
 
 gives no hint. It is true that in Matthew, in this same 
 passage, there is a direct allusion to miracles, and this 
 shows how easily such an allusion could be brought 
 into Jesus' words, when it did not at all belong there. 
 For that we have the genuine form in Ivuke and not in 
 Matthew will appear when we notice that in lyuke 
 Jesus' words are addressed to his unbelieving country- 
 men, which must be the meaning of the passage, while 
 Matthew refers them to unfaithful Christians, Chris- 
 tians who prophesied in Jesus' name, and cast out 
 demons, and did many wonderful works, but who yet 
 were workers of lawlessness, — a phenomenon which 
 belongs not to Jesus' day, but to the times when the 
 Evangelist wrote. We think then that Jesus can only 
 be referring in general to his ministry, and to the 
 power of God which had been manifested through him, 
 and not to wonderful cures which he had wrought. 
 Even if dvvajM? can hardly mean this, yet we have no 
 evidence as to just what w^ord it was that Jesus used, 
 particularly if we have to do with a translation. At 
 any rate either this saying or the saying about a sign 
 has to be turned from its more obvious meaning, and 
 we do not hesitate to say that here the diflSculty in do- 
 ing this is vastly less. 
 
 We now have examined those sayings which seem to 
 us to be from Jesus and which have a bearing on the 
 question ; but there still remain a number besides 
 which cannot be received with so much confidence. 
 One of these, which is present in the charge to the 
 Twelve, we shall have to examine with some thorough- 
 ness at a later point, and so to save repetition we will 
 pass it by for the time being, and turn to the others. 
 And we should like to anticipate here a criticism which 
 no doubt will be made, that it is easy enough to prove 
 
1 62 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 a point when one is at liberty to explain away all the 
 evidence on the other side. But because a point can 
 only be established after opposing evidence is tested 
 and rejected, this need not give rise to any presumption 
 against its being true ; and it is a cheap triumph to 
 dismiss it with the words "explained away." As a 
 matter of fact it is the very nature of human testimony 
 that it should be conflicting, and a great part of the 
 critic's duty is to find out, if he can, what part of the 
 evidence cannot be relied on. That there always will 
 be much which cannot be relied on we have to expect, 
 and there is nothing which would lead us not to look 
 for it in the Gospels also. Now here we have tried to 
 show a probability that Jesus did not believe himself to 
 have worked miraculous cures. In so far as this has 
 been established, opposing evidence must be looked on 
 with suspicion, and if other good grounds for doubting 
 it are found, it may reasonably be rejected. And to 
 start in with, it must be noted that these sayings do 
 not go back, as the others did, to the earlier tradition, 
 but are due to Mark or else to I,uke, and this greatly 
 weakens the external witness in their favor. The in- 
 stances in Luke may be taken first, and here in every 
 case the connection which is given to the saying is 
 particularly doubtful. The first case is found in the 
 storj' of Jesus' visit to Nazareth, and against this story 
 there are decided objections. In Mark there is an 
 earlier account of a rejection at Nazareth, and with this 
 Luke's account does not very well agree ; and while 
 of course there is nothing against two visits to the 
 place, two rejections are hardly to be thought of. 
 Moreover, any attempt to make two different events 
 out of the different versions is opposed by the fact that 
 nearly all of Mark has been worked by Luke into his 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 163 
 
 own narrative. We say "worked in," because the 
 elements seem more original by far in Mark. In I^uke 
 the sceptical question which the neighbors ask comes 
 in very abruptly, after a sentence which gives just the 
 opposite impression, that Jesus' words had aroused 
 their admiration ; Mark, however, has already led up 
 to this question. And again the proverb which Jesus 
 puts to them is introduced by Mark after the rejection 
 has taken place, while in lyuke it seems a rather un- 
 gracious anticipation of this rejection. And besides 
 this there is the fact which, as will be seen later, is 
 very improbable, that Jesus openly proclaims himself 
 as the Messiah ; there is the saying of Jesus, " Physi- 
 cian, heal thyself," whose meaning in this connection 
 never has been settled ; and there is the miracle at the 
 end, which is the more improbable as Mark knows 
 nothing of any violence offered to Jesus. The whole 
 narrative then appears to have grown out of the earlier 
 form in Mark, and to have reached its present shape 
 mainly through a desire to have a frontispiece which 
 should exhibit in miniature the later and national re- 
 jection by the Jews. So if the saying about Elijah and 
 Elisha was really spoken by Jesus, as is not impossible, 
 at least it was not spoken in this connection, and 
 consequently there is not the slightest thing to show that 
 it referred to miracles. Nor indeed in this connection 
 even is such a reference necessary. And the other 
 two cases to be found in Luke are quite as doubtful. 
 In one of these, when the Pharisees warn Jesus against 
 Herod, the greater part of Jesus' answer is taken from 
 an entirely different connection in the discourse against 
 the Pharisees, and this is shown by the fact that the 
 closing words addressed to Jerusalem, "Ye shall not 
 see me henceforth, ' ' are obviously inappropriate when 
 
164 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 Jesus had just declared that he was on the way to Jeru- 
 salem. We cannot therefore rest with any confidence 
 on the few words which still remain, for they have no 
 special guarantee of genuineness, and the way in which 
 Jesus makes his ministry consist in nothing else but 
 healing is decidedly improbable. The other case is 
 where the disciples come back from their mission and 
 tell Jesus of the cures they have wrought. The legen- 
 dary character of Jesus' answer is strongly marked in 
 one part of it, where he gives his followers authority to 
 tread on serpents and escape all hurt ; but the great 
 objection to the incident is the fact that it does not 
 agree with the narrative to which Luke joins it, and 
 which of necessity it implies. In that narrative Jesus 
 authorizes the disciples whom he is sending out to 
 cast out demons, but here the power over demons 
 appears as something unexpected. L,uke himself 
 notices this hitch in the connection, and so he leaves 
 all reference to the demons out of Jesus' charge. And 
 to make assurance doubly sure, even if the incident 
 could be shown to belong to this connection, that very 
 fact, as we shall show in another place, would be fatal 
 to it. 
 
 After Ivuke it would be in order next to take the 
 instances in Mark, but because these are so closely 
 connected with the larger question as to the general 
 credibility of Mark's additions, we shall pass them by 
 for the moment, content with the main results which 
 we have reached. It is to be remembered that at best 
 Jesus' words only establish the existence of strange 
 cures effected by him, and not that these cures were mir- 
 acles ; and it would be easier to think that Jesus was 
 mistaken than, simply to save his authority, to suppose 
 the miracles were real ones. But we have tried to 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 165 
 
 show that of the sayings which bear upon the question, 
 after we have thrown out those whose genuineness is 
 so doubtful that as evidence they can count for nothing, 
 there is one which denies distinctly any connection 
 on Jesus' part with miraculous signs, and there is 
 only one which can fairly be used to prove the con- 
 trary, and that this is open to another meaning. When 
 therefore we turn to the stories themselves which we 
 have in the Gospels, there is, we think, a certain 
 presumption against their being true. At least we 
 may expect to find a large admixture of legend, for it 
 would be strange indeed if, when the nature-miracles 
 have so much of legend in them, none should be pre- 
 sent in the cures as well. Nevertheless there are cer- 
 tain of the cures which seem to have special marks of 
 genuineness which the nature-miracles do not have, 
 and these are the ones which we shall examine first. 
 The most prominent of these are the Sabbath cures, 
 and these apparently are four in number. But this list 
 has carefully to be sifted, and we have shown already 
 how three of them depend upon a single story which 
 was present in the source. And now the words of 
 Jesus, which Matthew and Luke both have retained, 
 the illustration of a sheep fallen into a pit, without doubt 
 are genuine. But in how far does this saying make the 
 miracle necessary ? If we compare Matthew and Luke 
 we find that the account originally opened with a ques- 
 tion, about which both Evangelists agree, " Is it lawful 
 to heal on the Sabbath day ? " ; only Luke gives this 
 question to Jesus, while Matthew attributes it to the 
 Pharisees. And Matthew here has the probabilities in 
 his favor, for such questions often were put to Jesus by 
 the Pharisees, while Jesus knew verj' well what the 
 Pharisees believed about it. Luke's change, besides, 
 
1 66 The Life and Teachings of yesus. 
 
 can be explained by comparing him with Mark, for 
 Mark too has a very similar question put in Jesus' 
 mouth. But as soon as we admit this, at once it be- 
 comes probable that we have to do, not with a miracle 
 at all, but only with a theoretical question, like the 
 question about the great commandment or about di- 
 vorce, by which the Pharisees constantly were trying 
 to entrap Jesus. It is not likely, as Matthew repre- 
 sents, that the Pharisees would have asked the question 
 to lead Jesus into a real violation of the law, for if the 
 cure had seemed to be miraculous of course it would 
 have put them to confusion ; nor is it likely that in the 
 presence of a miracle the Pharisees would have ventured 
 to make any objection. And the nature of the cure 
 itself bears this out, for the withered hand and the 
 command of Jesus point clearly to the Old Testament 
 story of Jeroboam. At first then, we must think, there 
 was only a question which was put to Jesus, and which 
 he answered in this way ; but afterwards it was sup- 
 posed that Jesus pointed his moral with an actual cure, 
 and so, following a story in the Old Testament, the 
 miracle crept into the narrative. How, as the Gospel 
 literature grew, other accounts, slightly differing, arose 
 out of this, it still is possible to trace. And in the 
 meanwhile in a different field, tradition had taken still 
 another turn, and as a result we have the story of the 
 woman bowed together. In itself this story is suspi- 
 cious, for, not to insist upon its late appearance, the 
 bearing of the ruler of the synagogue in the presence 
 of a miracle is far from being probable, and the corre- 
 spondence between the cure and the illustration is too 
 ingenious to be natural. But what is fatal to it is its 
 evident resemblance to the other stor>' ; and since it 
 imitates this, not only in the illustration which it puts 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 167 
 
 in Jesus' mouth, but also in the later addition of a mir- 
 acle, it cannot be allowed any authority. 
 
 And in the other case where a saying of Jesus is closely 
 connected with a cure, the case of the palsied man, in 
 spite of the confidence with which the genuineness of 
 the saying has been said to be self-evident, we cannot 
 think that this is so. ' ' Who is this that forgiveth 
 sins also ? " say the Pharisees ; and Jesus answers, 
 ' ' Whether is easier, to say Thy sins are forgiven ; or 
 to say Arise and walk ? But that ye may know that 
 the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, — 
 Arise, and take up thy bed, and go unto thy house." 
 lyCt us notice that here the cure is only a secondary 
 thing, performed just to let the Pharisees know that 
 the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins. 
 This is the motive of the whole narrative ; the claim 
 is not forced from Jesus, but he expressly leads to it. 
 Now who is it likely would have been most anxious to 
 prove the authority of Jesus to forgive sins, and would 
 have thought that this was established satisfactorily 
 by a miracle, Jesus himself, or a disciple who was 
 occupied with theories about Jesus' person and 
 authority ? We think that there can be but one 
 answer to the question. And as an incident in Jesus' 
 life there are two strong objections to this story : it 
 goes upon a view which we know is a mistaken view, 
 and which a man of Jesus' spiritual insight is not 
 likely to have held, that sickness is sent as a punish- 
 ment for sin, and it contradicts other facts in Jesus' 
 life. We shall find that Jesus in his public life care- 
 fully avoided any direct claim to be the Messiah, and 
 that his Messiahship for a long time was not suspected. 
 But this claim which Jesus makes without any provo- 
 cation really involves a claim to be Messiah, and it is 
 
1 68 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 hard to understand how the Pharisees could have 
 avoided seeing it. 
 
 And now let us take another narrative which it has 
 been thought makes a miracle by Jesus necessary, and 
 which we agree has a strong appearance of being gen- 
 uine, the narrative of the Syro-Phcenician woman. It 
 ma}' make the matter plainer to reproduce the story in 
 full as it is given in Matthew. 
 
 ' ' And Jesus went out thence, and withdrew into the 
 parts of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanitish 
 woman came out from those borders, and cried, saying, 
 Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David ; my 
 daughter is grievously vexed with a demon. But he 
 answered her not a word. And his disciples came and 
 besought him, saying, Send her away ; for she crieth 
 after us. But he answered and said, I was not sent 
 but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But 
 she came and worshipped him, saying. Lord, help me. 
 And he answered and said. It is not meet to take the 
 children's bread and cast it to the dogs. But she said. 
 Yea, Lord : for even the dogs eat of the crumbs which 
 fall from their masters' table. Then Jesus answered 
 and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith : be it 
 done unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter 
 was healed from that hour. ' ' 
 
 Now in the first place, a part of this story, the words 
 of the disciples and Jesus' answer to them, is not found 
 in Mark ; was it originally a part of the narrative ? A 
 majority of critics have said that it does belong to the 
 original story, but in spite of this we have no hesita- 
 tion in answering the other way. We will not argue 
 that these words of Jesus are oppo.sed to Jesus' own 
 point of view, for this is something that we have still 
 to prove ; we only point out their connection with an- 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 169 
 
 other sentence which is attributed to Jesus. " Go not 
 into any way of the Gentiles, and enter not into any 
 city of the Samaritans : but go rather to the lost sheep 
 of the house of Israel,'' — here we have the same phrase 
 and the same point of view. In the case of every 
 other saying in the Gospels which is found in two or 
 more connections, there is reason to believe that only 
 one of these connections is a true one, and here there- 
 fore it is probable that we have no exception. And 
 we actually find that while in the instructions to the 
 disciples the phrase is closety bound up with the context, 
 in the case of the miracle the phrase is brought in quite 
 violently. In Mark's account the woman comes to 
 Jesus and makes her request, and this is what naturally 
 she would do. But in Matthew she follows Jesus for 
 some distance, shouting aloud to him, which is much 
 less likely. And even in Matthew, after the object of 
 this strange proceeding is accomplished and Jesus has 
 been given an opportunity to utter the saying which 
 has been put into his mouth, the woman comes at once 
 to Jesus and makes her request in a reasonable way, 
 just as she does in Mark. Mark's account then, we 
 think, is the original account ; and in this form it seems 
 at first, as we have already admitted, somewhat violent 
 to deny its genuineness. Indeed, we should like to be- 
 lieve that so charming a story in the main was true, 
 and we should be inclined to do so if it were not for 
 one thing about it, the curious relation which it bears 
 to another story in the Gospels, the story of the centu- 
 rion's son. Just as soon as we get rid of the additions 
 by Matthew we see that the parallelism is complete. 
 Both are concerned with Gentiles ; then in one we have 
 a father asking help for his son, in the other a mother 
 for her daughter ; both centre about a clever saying 
 
1 70 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 uttered by the suppliant, the only instances of the kind 
 in the Gospels ; in both Jesus, contrary' to his usual 
 custom, commends highly the faith which is displayed ; 
 in both he heals the sufferer at a distance, again the 
 only instances of this ; both narratives close with the 
 same words. If either of these narratives had stood 
 alone we should have hesitated much before we doubted 
 it, but with both of them together, \\dthout hesitation 
 we must reject them both. That in the only two in- 
 stances in which Jesus came in contact with a Gentile, 
 the circumstances, unusual in themselves, should have 
 been exactly the same, is almost impossible, so that we 
 can only regard it as a clever attempt to picture, by 
 two companion stories, the faith of the Gentiles carried 
 back into Jesus' own life. 
 
 The narratives of healing for which the most can be 
 said we have now considered, and have found reason 
 to reject them all, without, we hope, using means that 
 are too forced. And now the rest of the cures it be- 
 comes ver)^ hazardous to retain, particularly as in the 
 most of them there are clear marks of legend. As an 
 example we maj^ take the raising of Jairus' daughter ; 
 after we throw out Mark's additions and go back to 
 the earliest account, we see how ver>^ slender the evi- 
 dence for it is. A man asks Jesus to raise his dead 
 daughter ; without demur Jesus goes to the house, quiets 
 the mourners with an assurance that the death will only 
 prove a sleep, and restores the girl to life. How can 
 any one possibly maintain that this story blocks the 
 way to a rejection of the miracles ? The storj^ is found 
 in a book whose author we do not know, and one hardly 
 can ask for clearer marks of legend than it presents. 
 The only thing which has been able to save it in the 
 past has been the life-like details which Mark has 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 1 7 1 
 
 added, and these, as we have seen and shall see again, 
 cannot be allowed the least authority. Again there is 
 the healing of the epileptic boy : the very feature which 
 seems to be the most genuine, the despondent words of 
 Jesus, " How long shall I be with you ? how long shall 
 I suffer you ? ' ' show how little the narrative is to be 
 depended on, when we notice how, coming after the 
 descent from the Mount of Transfiguration, they point 
 to the displeasure which Moses showed when he came 
 down from the mountain, himself transfigured. But 
 into further details we shall not go ; if we have con- 
 vinced our readers in the cases which already we have 
 examined we have said enough, and if we have not 
 convinced them it is useless to say more. 
 
 We conclude then that for an extended healing min- 
 istry in Jesus' life, for anything, in fact, more than an 
 influence over demoniacs, the evidence is very slight 
 indeed. And with this also we rest the case against 
 the miracles as a whole. We started by assuming that 
 there must be a strong presumption against any narra- 
 tive which professed to tell of a supernatural event, and 
 that only the most unassailable evidence could serve to 
 overcome this presumption. Such evidence we have 
 not found, but, quite the contrary', we have found the 
 evidence breaking down just where it seemed the 
 strongest ; we constantly have come across the signs 
 which ordinarily mark the presence of legend, and have 
 been able in some cases to detect legend in its growth. 
 Accordingly we hereafter shall consider ourselves justi- 
 fied in doing what elsewhere the critic does not hesitate 
 to do without all this preliminary investigation, and 
 shall regard a narrative, when it tells of the miracu- 
 lous, as on the face of it in some sort of error. We 
 have then one criterion which will aid most effectually 
 
172 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 in answering the question which it will be convenient 
 at this point to ask in regard to each of our three Gos- 
 pels, What, in some approximate measure, is the 
 degree of weight which ought to be assigned to a 
 statement when it cannot be traced to the definite body 
 of tradition which has been called the source ? In the 
 case of Matthew the answer to the question is very- 
 easy. The new matter which Matthew brings in is not 
 only legendary, but it is flagrantly so. Angels inter- 
 fere continually and as a matter of course in human 
 affairs, mysterious stars appear to guide adoring magi 
 to the infant King, men walk on the sea, coins are 
 found in fishes' mouths, dead men rise and appear to 
 many. And quite in the fashion of legend, too, though 
 without the miracle, is the direct prophecy to Judas, 
 the washing of Pilate's hands and his wife's dream, 
 the fearful end of the traitor, and the guard at the 
 tomb. In one or two cases when a new fact is intro- 
 duced, the writer himself shows us what authority he 
 had by joining an Old Testament prophecy to it. In- 
 deed the very fact that the Evangelist has so little that 
 is new shows that he had no original source of infor- 
 mation. When he wants two stories to fill out a group 
 of miracles, he does not hunt for new ones, but in a 
 slightly mutilated form he uses two which he had before 
 him in his source, and which he afterwards proceeds to 
 bring in again in their proper places.' In Luke again, 
 while the answer cannot be given as absolutely as in 
 the case of the first Gospel, yet on the whole the same 
 decision must become to, that Luke's authorities, when 
 he leaves his two main sources, are not very reliable, 
 and that his narratives at least have been a good deal 
 
 ' Mat. 9 : 27-34. 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 173 
 
 demoralized in the process of transmission, even if they 
 had any secure basis at the start. A number of the 
 narratives already have had to be examined in various 
 connections, or will have to be : the rejection at Naza- 
 reth, the call of the disciples, the anointing of Jesus 
 in the Pharisee's house, the return of the seventy, the 
 story of the woman bowed together and of the lepers, 
 and the reply to the Pharisees' warning against Herod. 
 Cases of the same sort with these are the two narra- 
 tives of the centurion's servant and of the widow's son 
 at Nain. The first is a further development of a story 
 which has been shown to be without foundation, and it 
 is not a very happy development at that, for it takes the 
 point from the centurion's words to make them only an 
 after-thought, and to put them in the mouth of ser- 
 vants, while the motive for this is evident in a desire to 
 increase the centurion's humility. And the second 
 seems to be an imitation of the older raising of the 
 dead, although it goes beyond this in the fact that 
 Jesus makes the first move in the matter. A similar 
 judgment must be passed upon the early chapters of 
 the Gospel, which throughout are pervaded with the 
 atmosphere of miracle. Quite as adverse must be the 
 decision in the less numerous cases where a statement 
 must be assigned to the author of the book himself, 
 and not to some unknown source which he is using. 
 How ready the author is to avail himself of the right 
 of conjecture has appeared in several instances during 
 the discussion of the Synoptic problem, and these are 
 not the only ones. The most noticeable instance is the 
 way in which he brings a considerable part of the ma- 
 terial of his book into the last journey to Jerusalem, and 
 creates besides a mission of seventy disciples in connec- 
 tion with this journey. Now in itself this cannot be 
 
T 74 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 called likely, and indeed Luke finds the carrying out 
 of his program a clumsy enough task. In the ninth 
 chapter the time for Jesus' death is almost at hand, 
 and he already has got as far as to Samaria, with his 
 face stedfastly set towards Jerusalem ; and in the tenth 
 and thirteenth chapters again he still is "on the way." 
 But in the thirty-first verse of the thirteenth chapter 
 he is back again in Galilee, and in the seventeenth 
 chapter only has got to the Samaritan border. More- 
 over Jesus sends out thirty-five pairs of disciples in 
 whose footsteps he is to follow, a formidable task at 
 best, one might think, for a single man. But instead 
 of starting off at once to do this, though already he has 
 begun his journey to Jerusalem and the days are well- 
 nigh come that he should be received up, all the 
 seventy have returned before he makes another step ; 
 and yet from Jesus' charge to them we should suppose 
 that he anticipated a somewhat lengthy absence. But 
 it is needless to dw^ell upon these difficulties, when we 
 notice the material out of which L,uke has constructed 
 his account. For the most part he has taken a great 
 section bodily from his source, but in the source this 
 section was nothing but a group of disconnected inci- 
 dents, and Luke's disposal of it is onl)^ a curiously 
 infelicitous instance of the way in which he constantly 
 tries to force his two authorities into the same chrono- 
 logical scheme. The charge to the Seventy, again, is 
 precisely the charge which in Matthew is given to the 
 Twelve, and we need better authority than Luke can 
 give us before two separate events can be admitted. As 
 a matter of fact Luke seems to have made the same 
 mistake here which he makes once again in the case of 
 the Sabbath cure. In the source the charge probably 
 was given to ' ' disciples, ' ' for the source had no account 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 1 75 
 
 of the calling of the Twelve. But Mark in his 
 abridged account limited it to the Twelve, and in this 
 Matthew followed him. I^uke, however, because he 
 found a short account in Mark and a longer one in the 
 source, got the idea that they referred to different 
 events, and it only was left for him to discover that the 
 ' ' disciples ' ' were seventy in number, and so symbol- 
 ized the mission to the nations. This is perhaps the 
 most striking instance which will be found in the book, 
 but somewhat similar cases in which an unfortunate 
 setting is given to an incident are not infrequent. 
 Such a case is the supposition that the woes against 
 the Pharisees were spoken at table, and were directed 
 towards the host himself, because he had expressed 
 surprise that Jesus' disciples were not following the 
 ordinary custom. Such an occasion lowers Jesus' 
 matchless oratory into a mere tirade, which does not 
 even keep to the bounds which common politeness 
 would prescribe. Something more than this was 
 needed to raise Jesus to such a fierce heat of indignation, 
 and the whole situation seems only to have been sug- 
 gested by the figure of the cup and platter, which was 
 wholly innocent of any such a literal side-reference. 
 A very similar case occurs in the fourteenth chapter, 
 where a whole list of incidents are strung together as 
 table-talk at a Pharisee's house. There is a possibility 
 that the saying about Sabbath healing, before it was 
 turned into a miracle, had such a setting, though the 
 Pharisees who were interested to lead Jesus into a trap 
 were not the most likely to show hospitality to him ; 
 but the parable of the supper, as its connection in 
 Matthew and its own internal character show, does not 
 belong here, and the discourse about the chief seat 
 loses all its force, and becomes only a more subtle and 
 
I 76 The Life and Teachings of fesus. 
 
 eflfective minister to pride, when it is turned into direc- 
 tions literally to be observed. 
 
 There still remain a considerable number of dis- 
 courses which are peculiar to the third Gospel, as well 
 as a few historical allusions by which Luke's accuracy 
 may be tested, and these will be referred to in their 
 proper place. But of the historical matter a pretty 
 large share has now been mentioned, enough to enable 
 us to draw the same conclusion which was drawn in 
 the case of Matthew, that the Evangelist is not an 
 original authority, and by himself furnishes no guaran- 
 tee that he has got at the true facts of the case, though 
 no doubt he does the best he can, and has no thought 
 of creating wrong impressions. When we turn to 
 Mark, however, a case presents itself which in a con- 
 siderable degree diflfers from anything which we have 
 come across in the other Gospels, and which cannot be 
 settled in exactly the same way. Matthew and Luke 
 do indeed treat their sources with great freedom, and 
 yet on the whole they evidently do not intend to give 
 anything more than what actually lies before them, 
 with such explanatory notes as they think will make 
 things plainer to their readers. They have apparently 
 no special ambition to add embellishments of their 
 own, and what they do add is mostly in the nature of 
 conjecture, suggested in the larger number of cases by 
 something in the narrative itself. In Mark, however, 
 this explanation will not suffice, for Mark is all the 
 time bringing details for which there is no justification 
 in the context. Moreover the greater part of Mark's 
 new matter, alike the stories which are wholly new, 
 and the amplifying details, are so thoroughly of a 
 piece, and so related to the general design of the book, 
 that we hardly can suppose that he has got them from 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 177 
 
 oral tradition or from another written source ; so that 
 we are left to face the dilemma either of invention, 
 with perhaps in most cases some hint come by through 
 tradition as a starting-point, or else of a particularly- 
 wide and close acquaintance with the actual facts. 
 And in favor of this last alternative there can be 
 brought forward the undoubted vividness and life-like- 
 ness of Mark's additions, which have led an influential 
 school of modern critics to look on Mark as represent- 
 ing a very old stratum of tradition indeed. Neverthe- 
 less we are obliged to reject this decisively. We have 
 already given reasons for thinking it impossible that 
 the author of the book should have got his facts direct 
 from eye-witnesses of Jesus' life, and the more carefully 
 the book is examined, the more this conclusion will 
 approve itself. With all their verisimilitude, the 
 narratives will not stand a careful scrutiny. Among 
 the instances which were adduced in the first 
 chapter, it will be remembered that there were four 
 miracle-stories which appeared in a longer form in 
 Mark, and we showed why, on critical grounds, we 
 thought that Matthew's versions were to be preferred. 
 And now, after the discussion of the miracles, we may 
 add that the fact that it is to miracle-stories that the 
 additions have been made, goes again to show that 
 real reminiscences they cannot be. And yet they are 
 to the full as admirable specimens of the art of story- 
 telling as will be found anywhere in the book. And 
 the story of the epileptic boy deserves a special men- 
 tion. It is here that one of the sayings comes in 
 which would point to a healing ministry on Jesus' 
 part, if only it were genuine, — " This kind goeth not 
 out save by prayer." That this is a part of Mark's 
 additions is shown by its absence from the other Gos- 
 
178 The Life and TeacJmigs of yesus. 
 
 pels, and also by the fact that the preceding seutence 
 which appears in Matthew, "The boy was healed 
 from that hour," is a regular formula in the source to 
 mark the end of a narrative of healing. The same 
 objection also, that the}^ tell of miracles, will condemn 
 several other stories which are due to Mark entire. 
 The cursing of the fig-tree and the walking on the 
 sea have been discussed already, and besides these is 
 the. cure of blind Bartimaeus, and the cures of a deaf 
 man and a blind man in the seventh and eighth chap- 
 ters. These, all of them, show Mark's dexterous 
 touch most distinctly in the minuteness with which 
 they enter into details, and the last two should be 
 noticed in particular. These introduce a touch which 
 is quite anomalous, and represent Jesus' cures as medi- 
 ated through phj'sical means. If we take these nar- 
 ratives seriously, and try to find an explanation for 
 them, we shall only have our labor for our pains. 
 Suppose we take the case of the blind man : Jesus 
 spits on his eyes and effects a partial cure, and then 
 a second application completes the process. But apart 
 from the fact that this is an isolated case, why any- 
 way should Jesus have used spittle ? Of course, in no 
 case could the spittle have done good, so what was to 
 be gained by such a sham ? If one says it was to in- 
 crease the blind man's faith, this may mean either of 
 two things. If it means that faith, or mental confi- 
 dence, was the effective instrtmient of the cure, then 
 at least it does away with the need of a miracle. But 
 a faith cure in such a case is barely possible, and the 
 confidence with which Jesus goes to work, as well as 
 the success he meets with, is strange enough. If, 
 however, one means faith in the higher sense, and 
 supposes that this b}'-play was just to keep the mira- 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 1 79 
 
 cle from being morally unfruitful, then nothing is 
 explained after all ; for it is not easy to see how a par- 
 tial miracle caused by spittle would be likely to beget 
 truer faith than a complete miracle effected by a word. 
 In truth, the thing would be hard to solve on any 
 terms, if it were not in Mark that it was found ; but 
 if Mark has gone to work as we contend he has, then 
 this is nothing but another example of the concrete, pal- 
 pable, minute way, in which he loves to bring before 
 himself every detail which will make an incident more 
 real. 
 
 And another point against Mark's pictures is the 
 way in which, to form them, he brings details to- 
 gether out of his written sources. Nearly all of his 
 discourses he has made up in this way, by joining 
 passages together which seemed to afford a pretty good 
 connection ; and sometimes in his history he has fol- 
 lowed the same plan. The best example of this is in 
 the sketch with which he opens Jesus' ministry. We 
 have shown already how Jesus' words are borrowed 
 from the Baptist, how the miracle in the sjmagogue is 
 taken from another connection, how the phraseology 
 depends continally upon the source. With what con- 
 fidence can we rely upon such a piece of patchwork, 
 however cleverly it is put together, as a true ac- 
 count ? or what likelihood is there that an au- 
 thor w^ho was forced to use such methods had rich 
 stores of good information within his reach ? And 
 there is, besides, against this sketch, the fact that it 
 makes Jesus start in at once on a general healing 
 ministry, and the fact that it has a wrong idea of what 
 the real nature of Jesus' teaching was. No doubt it 
 adds to the picturesqueness of the scene, and gives an 
 incisiveness to the delineation, to represent Jesus as 
 
i8o The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 starting on his work with so much vim, rushing from 
 town to town, with time only for a day in the largest. 
 But as a real fact Jesus was not in such a hurrj- as this, 
 and if he had been it would have played havoc with 
 all his plans. Even if his thought had been just to 
 put himself before the people as Messiah, he could not 
 have gained this by a hurried proclamation simply ; 
 but really his aims w^ere far deeper than this, as we 
 shall see, and could be carried out only by patient and 
 continued effort. And another case may be noticed in 
 this connection, because it has a saying that refers to 
 miracles connected with it. In the ninth chapter there 
 are two incidents related, the dispute about precedence 
 and the account of a man who cast out demons in 
 Jesus' name, and there is, besides, a long discourse 
 joined with them. But the parts of this discourse — 
 almost all of them — are taken out of other connections ; 
 there is another dispute about precedence where the 
 accompanying discourse is far more genuine ; and 
 Jesus' reply to John's complaint is only a transforma- 
 tion of a better attested saying, ' ' He that is not for us 
 is against us " : so that there really remains nothing, 
 except possibly one aphorism by Jesus, upon which one 
 can lay his hand securely as a token of real knowledge. 
 And one other strong indication against the relia- 
 bility of Mark's statements still remains in the fact that 
 a good share of them are connected more or less closely 
 with the dramatic framework in which Jesus' life is 
 set. We have noticed some of the elements of this 
 already, and now that, along with the paucity of new 
 information in other directions, Mark should 3'et have 
 possessed such an abundance of reliable intelligence on 
 a very few unimportant points, for instance that he 
 should have had such graphic knowledge of the crowds 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 1 8 1 
 
 about Jesus and the sick people who were healed on so 
 many different occasions, passes credence, and is a clear 
 indication of the way in which these picturesque de- 
 tails should be received. The repeated prophecies of 
 coming death, largely in the same words, are another 
 instance of the sort, and so too are the numerous 
 notices which centre about Mark's idea of Jesus' Mes- 
 siahship and its acknowledgment. This last may be 
 noticed because it accounts for a fact which often has 
 been brought up as proof for the reality of the mira- 
 cles, that Jesus sometimes forbids the miracle to be 
 reported. The truth however seems to be that this is 
 due to Mark, who, with his conception of Jesus' Mes- 
 siahship as hidden from the people by reason of their 
 unbelief, makes use of it, now to keep demons from 
 making known the fact, and now to restrict the spread 
 of some particularly marvellous deed of power. It 
 may be thought that also it is meant to serve for 
 heightening the impression of Jesus' popularity, for 
 there often is joined to it a notice that it proved of no 
 avail, and that the crowds only thronged about Jesus 
 the more. But apart from these more patent cases, two 
 other instances, less obvious, may be pointed out in 
 which the author's desire to give dramatic movement 
 to his story has dominated the use of his material. 
 One is the way in which he depicts the growth of the 
 hostility against Jesus, and more particularly two 
 incidents which he gives with this aim in view. In 
 the third chapter he tells how the enmity of the Phari- 
 sees reaches such a height that they resolve to make 
 away with Jesus, if it lies within their power ; and for 
 this purpose they even are ready to join hands with the 
 Herodians. How much reliance can be placed upon 
 this very definite statement will appear from the fact 
 
1 82 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 that the occasion for it is found in the heahng on the 
 Sabbath day, and we have seen that this cure never 
 occurred at all. Mark then clearly in this place has 
 transformed a miracle which he found before him, to 
 adapt it better to his purpose, and then has made it a 
 marked point in the drama which he is constructing 
 and has connected a definite statement with it, entirely, 
 it would seem, under the guidance of his own sense of 
 fitness. And closely connected with this there is an- 
 other incident which is even more elaborate, the inci- 
 dent on the lake when the disciples forget to take 
 bread. The saying about leaven, which the other 
 Evangelists misunderstand, has, as Mark shows, a di- 
 rect reference back to this same statement which is 
 made in connection with the Sabbath healing. But if 
 the motive for the incident is swept away, then it is 
 dangerous of course to hold on to the incident itself, 
 and not less dangerous when we notice how gross the 
 disciples' mistake is for a real mistake, and how the 
 stor)' goes on to imply the two miracles of feeding, 
 which are in the last degree doubtful. Again there- 
 fore we are led back to the same explanation, which 
 we might indeed hesitate to apply if there were not so 
 many other cases which called for it as well, that Mark 
 has not scrupled to construct a story when he needed 
 it to give completeness to his picture. 
 
 And this appears again in a way which perhaps is 
 still more striking. We have seen already that Luke's 
 account of the visit to Nazareth is not to be depended 
 on, and for that matter hardly more is Mark's account. 
 We do not mean to doubt the fact that Jesus failed to 
 find belief among his fellow-townsmen, which may all 
 be true, but only to doubt whether Mark had any suffi- 
 cient information ou which to base his narrative. This 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 183 
 
 must be considered improbable, because for one thing 
 his story is filled so with the presupposition of the 
 miracles, although the fact of a rejection he may pos- 
 sibly have had to go on. What, however, we are after 
 is not to disprove this narrative so much as to point 
 out again the dramatic completeness which is charac- 
 teristic of Mark. ' ' A prophet is not without honor, 
 save in his own country, and among his own kin, and 
 in his own house, " is a proverbial saying which may 
 or may not have been spoken by Jesus, but which at 
 least is of special interest to Mark. For this narrative 
 is only the climax of a series, and already he has shown 
 how Jesus suffered from unbelief among his own kins- 
 men, and in his own house, in the third chapter of his 
 book. These incidents have played some part in the 
 theories of German critics, and curious results have 
 been the outcome of them ; yet they will not stand a 
 searching criticism. Jesus, we are told, returns home, 
 and at once has such a crowd about him that he gets 
 no chance so much as to eat. His kinsmen thereupon 
 give it out that he is beside himself, and it is this which 
 suggests to the Pharisees a way of accounting for 
 Jesus' cures. Then Jesus' mother and brethren ap- 
 pear on the scene and try in vain to get at him through 
 the crowd, and this is connected closely with the accusa- 
 tion of insanity. Jesus resents their interference, and 
 rebukes them. Now here again there is the suspicious 
 fact that the whole story is one of Mark's numerous 
 attempts to picture graphically the great popularity of 
 Jesus, and the enormous crowds which thronged about 
 him, and there is nothing to show that he had any his- 
 torical warrant for this in the matter of definite details. 
 And then again the accusation by the Pharisees, which 
 is taken from Mark's source, really arose in an en- 
 
184 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 tirely diflferent waj', and there is not the least prob- 
 ability in connecting it with anything that Jesus' kins- 
 men may have said. On the contrary, the charge made 
 by the Pharisees seems to have been what suggested 
 this other charge to Mark. And furthermore it is 
 only by shutting one's eyes resolutel)' to the context 
 that one can refuse to see a sharp rebuke in Jesus' 
 words, and such a rebuke directed to his mother we 
 should be a little loth to admit. But the whole thing 
 gives no difficulty if we will recognize what we have 
 tried to show by cumulative proof, that Mark in his 
 descriptions has let his imagination have full play. 
 Certainly where legend works at all, as legend cer- 
 tainly does work in the Gospels, imagination contin- 
 ually must come in, and it is no harder to admit that 
 it comes in at this particular point, than that to some 
 one else was due the details which the Gospel writer 
 simply copied as he found them. 
 
 And where then, some may ask in real perplexity, 
 are we to find the materials which will help us to make 
 out the true story of Jesus' life, if his biographers are 
 not to be depended on, and if legend throws a dark 
 mist over everything which we would fain look to for 
 light. Now we are not responsible for the facts in the 
 case. We should rejoice as much as any one if there 
 were full and unmistakable knowledge which would 
 bring before us every phase of Jesus' life. But if the 
 knowledge is not there, it will not better things to pre- 
 tend we have it, and to refuse to give up any scrap of 
 information after its baselessness has appeared, just be- 
 cause we have nothing else to take its place. It is true 
 that a large part, yes, a very large part indeed of all 
 we seemed to know about Jesus has crumbled away, 
 and it naturally is with regret that we see it fall. But 
 
The Credibility of the Gospels. 185 
 
 fall it must, and all we can do is to go cheerfully to 
 work, and see if enough is not still left to restore the 
 picture, which seems on the point of fading away, to 
 something of its former brightness, perhaps to a glory 
 that shall eclipse the old. It is to this task that we 
 shall now address ourselves. 
 
PART II.— THE LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF 
 JESUS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE PRKPARATION. 
 
 THE early life of Jesus is wrapped in an obscurity 
 which we can never hope will grow any less dark 
 and impenetrable than it is at the present. 
 Apart from what we can say of any Jewish child, and 
 from a few guesses to which later events give- a certain 
 probability, there are barely two or three facts about 
 him which dimly can be descried in the shadowy back- 
 ground by which poetic legend and religious faith have 
 striven with loving pains to fill up the broken outlines 
 of the Master's life. For any hope that out of the 
 stories in the early chapters of the Gospels, beautiful 
 as some of them undoubtedly are, anything of value 
 can be disentangled for the real history of Jesus' life, 
 will end in disappointment. It would be a waste of 
 time for us to criticise the narratives at length, because 
 one's bearing towards them is determined already by 
 his bearing towards the Gospels as a whole. They are 
 in the latest stratum of the Gospel literature, and by 
 
 187 
 
1 88 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 themselves they furnish no weapon for their own de- 
 fence. If the other parts of the Gospels, and so the 
 miraculous in general, once were firmly established, 
 then the stories of the early life might be allowed to 
 stand under their protection ; but failing this they have 
 nothing that can be said for them. 
 
 According to the Gospels Jesus was bom in Bethle- 
 hem of Judaea, the city of David ; but this statement 
 is bound up so closely with the assumption that it was 
 in Bethlehem that the Messiah must be born, that it 
 loses a great share of its value. It is more likely that 
 Nazareth in Galilee is to be assigned the honor, for at 
 least it was at Nazareth that Jesus spent his early life. 
 Joseph, his father, is usually agreed to have been a 
 carpenter ; and while in reality it is Jesus who is called 
 the carpenter in the more original account, and while 
 this account itself is not a very early or reliable one, 
 yet the statement may be allowed to stand. The tra- 
 dition that Jesus was of the family of David is rather 
 more uncertain, because it has so evident a motive in 
 his Messiahship ; but since it was accepted by men like 
 Paul, who had an opportunity to know the truth, it 
 may after all be thought to be not unlikely. More 
 doubtful still is the time of Jesus' birth. As two in- 
 dependent traditions put it in the reign of Herod we per- 
 haps may accept this as having some real basis, but any 
 attempt to fix the date more closely, by relying on 
 apocryphal stars or even upon such definite statements 
 as are made by Luke, will only be a waste of inge- 
 nuity. For if in the rest of the book L,uke shows that 
 he has no independent knowledge of Jesus' ministry, 
 it is unlikely, when he goes still further back, that his 
 calculations of chronology can be relied on ; and the 
 desperate methods which have to be employed to free 
 
The Preparation. 189 
 
 him from the charge of proven error do not prepossess 
 one in his favor. We must be content to say we do 
 not know. 
 
 Fancy will always love to dwell with the boy Jesus 
 on the slopes of the Galilean hills, and watch the un- 
 folding of that mind and character which were to work 
 such a mighty revolution in the world of thought and 
 action. A quiet boy he must have been, a little shy 
 perhaps, full of genuine human sympathy and with a 
 heart quickly touched, a genial friend and comrade, 
 but fond, too, of the fields and watercourses, where 
 he could muse without hindrance over Israel's great 
 past and greater future and over Israel's God, and 
 have quiet and free play for the struggling thoughts 
 and emotions which came thronging to his brain. 
 Then there was the home teaching in the Law to oc- 
 cupy him, and the synagogue worship, with its sacred 
 associations, and talks with neighbors and acquaint- 
 ances, perhaps, from time to time, with some pious 
 lawyer or Pharisee, about the Law and the hope of 
 Israel. And most of all there was the Book of the Law 
 itself, and all the treasures of sacred psalm and story 
 and prophecy, over which Jesus had pored till he had 
 mastered the fulness of the revelation which it had to 
 give. To the Law and to Jesus' own supreme genius 
 and insight, all that is most characteristic in his after- 
 teaching seems to have been due. No doubt, with his 
 keen vision for the things and the men about him, he 
 made himself familiar with all the phases of religious 
 life and thought which were influencing his country- 
 men, but no one phase predominates over the rest, so 
 that we can say, without hesitation, This was taken 
 from such and such a source. Jesus is no Pharisee or 
 Essene ; the liberalism of Alexandria is not Jesus' lib- 
 
IQO The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 eralism. What is good he takes from any source, but 
 all has been so fused together and transformed by his 
 own genius that it becomes a new thing in the process. 
 It could not be long before Jesus would begin vaguely 
 to feel that from those about him he already had got the 
 most they had to give him. For Judaism there was one 
 sufficient answer to all religious questions, and that 
 answer was — Authority. It is one of the most strik- 
 ing elements of Jesus' genius that, in the midst of this 
 stagnation of the human mind, when thought was 
 chained to the pettj' treadmill of logical and grammati- 
 cal inference, he j'et was forced to ask the question — 
 Why ? And what had Judaism in the way of answer ? 
 Because it is written, because the Elders have said, be- 
 cause this is Rabbi So-and-so's opinion, — all most ex- 
 cellent reasons to the ordinarj^ Jew, but not the sort of 
 thing to satisfy Jesus. Something better he must have 
 than this, something to bring him closer into the presence 
 of the God and Father who every day was becoming 
 more to him, something worthy of God and of the 
 manhood to which God revealed himself. More and 
 more Jesus would find that he was forced back upon 
 his own thinking, and upon the book in which already 
 he had found something of the freedom which Juda- 
 ism so signally was lacking in ; and with the book 
 open before him, and an eye keen to catch every gleam 
 of what was kindred to his own half-conscious crav- 
 ings, the religious heroes of his boyhood could not 
 fail before much time had passed to lose a good deal 
 of the glamour which still surrounded them in the eyes 
 of the people as a whole. And in truth they were not 
 very heroic figures when one had got used to the glare 
 of their somewhat pretentious piety, and recovered him- 
 self a little from the first shock of awe. Was it, after 
 
The Preparation. 191 
 
 all, the highest duty of man to wash his hands before 
 meals, and keep from eating eggs laid on the Sabbath ? 
 Had God thundered on Sinai and led his children 
 through fightings and perils of every kind just for 
 this, that they should spend their lives in avoiding the 
 touch of half of God's creation, and then in purifying 
 themselves when their painstaking had been without 
 avail ? Was God no more than a particularly strict 
 Rabbi, on a larger scale, and man no better than a use- 
 less drudge, a slave to a code of rules which led no- 
 where and which had no meaning to an)' one ? No ; 
 to Jesus, as to all the nobler spirits in the nation, it 
 must appear that men were meant for far greater 
 things than this ; but while others were content to let 
 the two conceptions stand side by side, Jesus must 
 needs ask himself what their relation was. And Jesus 
 was no more satisfied with the popular and patriotic 
 ideal. The need of his people stood before him as a 
 very patent fact, and it met a quick response in his 
 large human sympathy. But could this need be met, 
 as the zealots of his people whispered, by throwing off 
 the Roman yoke and proclaiming the independence of 
 the nation ? and would it be much different if a con- 
 queror should come from on high with supernatural 
 power, and set up, not a kingdom founded on the right 
 relation of the individual man to God, which Jesus' 
 own experience was leading him to see was after all 
 the source of the truest blessedness, but an external 
 kingdom that never should be moved ? 
 
 How long it took for Jesus to answer these ques- 
 tions, and to come to the position of calm certainty in 
 which afterwards we find him, it is not possible for us 
 to say. Probably the process was a gradual one, for 
 Jesus was too profoundly sensitive to religion to throw 
 
I 92 The Life and Teachings of yesus. 
 
 off lightly what came to him with the odor of sanctity- 
 clinging to it ; and besides, the external influences 
 which could help him were very few. But he did 
 reach the answer, which is the main thing, and proba- 
 bly the matter already lay pretty clearly in his mind 
 when the nation was startled by the announcement 
 that a new prophet had arisen. A new prophet ! it 
 was this that for centuries now the pious Jew had been 
 anxiously desiring and looking forward to, — a token 
 that God's presence still was with the nation ; and one 
 can imagine the thrill which stirred every village 
 where the news was told. And the hopes of the 
 people were not disappointed. It is little enough that 
 we can say of John to-day, and 3'et, even apart from 
 Jesus' magnificent eulogy, the few words of his which 
 have come down to us are sufl&cient to stamp him at 
 once as a man of genuine and unmistakable power, one 
 of the heroic type of mankind, on whom the eye of 
 Jesus could well rest with genuine satisfaction, and 
 whom he could hold up with something like scorn along- 
 side the t3^pical Galilean, fickle and unreliable, or the 
 effeminate and luxurious Herodian courtier. Without 
 originality in the highest sense, deficient in his range 
 of vision and in his sj-mpathies, not possessed of the 
 catholicity and tolerance which indeed were hardly to 
 be looked for in a Jew of his time, he yet was filled 
 with such a terrible earnestness and such an over- 
 whelming sense of the pre-eminent value of righteous- 
 ness, that he would have been called great in any age. 
 Indeed he was a true successor to the older and greater 
 prophets, possessed, like them, of one supreme idea, 
 and striking sledge-hammer blows in its behalf, utterly 
 careless of the opposition and hatred he might draw 
 upon himself. The degradation and hypocrisy of the 
 
The Preparation. 193 
 
 nation filled him with immeasurable disgust ; surely 
 the promised presence of Jehovah could not be long 
 delayed to do away utterly with such unworthiness. 
 The lurid light of avenging fire and coming wrath fills 
 his preaching. No fancied security from their father 
 Abraham will serve them, nothing except repentance 
 and righteousness. Already the axe is laid to the root 
 of the trees, the time is short : repent, for the kingdom 
 and its Messiah are at hand, not only with the bless- 
 ings you are expecting, but with woes as well for those 
 who are not prepared for him. 
 
 Naturally enough, the leaders of the nation did not 
 greatly relish John's preaching. It was not pleasant 
 to be told that they themselves had been so conspicu- 
 ously a failure, and doubtless, too, John's insistence 
 upon righteousness alone seemed to them dangerous, 
 and not to recognize sufficiently the great duty of 
 obedience to the Law, and its ritual. They had no sym- 
 pathy with such heresy, and they called him a fanatic, 
 a man with a demon. To the people, however, John's 
 preaching appealed powerfully, and especially the more 
 despised classes, the publicans and harlots, turned 
 eagerly to him. Crowds flocked to hear him preach 
 and to submit to the simple rite by which he tried to 
 symbolize and drive hard home the change of life and 
 purpose which he called for. But to one man the re- 
 port of John's preaching had come with a special sig- 
 nificance. It may be that Jesus already had reached 
 the complete conception of what his life-work was to 
 be, and yet it is quite possible that John's appearance 
 furnished just the impetus which caused his purposes 
 to crystallize and take on definite form. At last Jesus 
 had come to see clearly what the gift was that God 
 had in store for his people, and how wofully inade- 
 
1 94 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 quate were the old ideals ; and his heart bled for the 
 men about him, who were groping blindly after what 
 they never could attain, and what, if attained, would 
 bring no satisfaction with it, while the true blessings 
 lay right within their reach. And the fact that he was 
 not alone, but that one other man at least within the 
 nation had seen the same thing, even though less 
 clearly than himself, and had dared to come out and 
 speak the truth that he had seen, must have inspired 
 him with fresh courage. And what of that other prom- 
 ise which John had made ? Was it indeed true that 
 God was about to visit his people, and that his chosen 
 one was close at hand. And then, it may be in a flash 
 of insight, or perhaps by slow degrees, the knowledge 
 would come to him that he, who alone had experienced 
 the full blessedness of the kingdom, and who alone 
 saw wherein in truth it consisted, was by this very 
 fact marked out as the Messiah, the one who should 
 bring home to the nation the truth which he had real- 
 ized in himself and which would place in their posses- 
 sion all the blessedness that God had promised. 
 
 It is an interesting question whether John ever rec- 
 ognized in Jesus the one whom he had come to an- 
 nounce. The view which is based upon the Fourth 
 Gospel, that John had recognized Jesus and openly had 
 testified to him, it will be necessary to give up, for in 
 that case Jesus' Messiahship must early have been 
 known among the people. It seems, too, definitely to 
 be set aside by Jesus' own words, which speak of John 
 as still outside the kingdom. There is indeed much to 
 be said for the opposing view that it was only after his 
 imprisonment that John came to think of Jesus in this 
 light, and that the question which he sent from the 
 prison shows the first dawning of belief. Perhaps 
 
The Preparation. 195 
 
 there is really not enough data for us to go upon, and 
 yet to us it seems that this view hardly accounts for 
 everything in the Gospels. It is in itself rather proba- 
 ble that Jesus should have been acquainted with John ; 
 it is not likely that the two men whose aims at bot- 
 tom were the same should have kept wholly apart. 
 Then we have, too, the evidence that Jesus took ad- 
 vantage of John's baptism to dedicate himself to the 
 new work on which he had resolved. It is true that 
 the narrative which tells of this cannot be accepted. 
 This narrative seems to have been due more immedi- 
 ately to the passage which is quoted in the twelfth 
 chapter of Matthew: "Behold m}^ servant, whom I 
 have chosen," runs Matthew's somewhat corrupt ver- 
 sion, " my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased. 
 I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall declare 
 judgment to the Gentiles." And accordingly, in the 
 story of the baptism we read how the Spirit came upon 
 Jesus at the opening of his ministry, and how a voice 
 came from heaven, " Thou art 7ny beloved son, in whom 
 I am well pleased.'^ Nevertheless, the fact itself is 
 hardly to be rejected, because it is a fact of such a sort 
 that tradition would be less likely to invent it than to 
 take offence at it, as Matthew seems already to have 
 done. Moreover, we find Jesus in several passages 
 showing a somewhat intimate knowledge of the Bap- 
 tist, and this would suggest that he had come into 
 close contact with him. And the very form of the 
 question which John asks, if it be genuine, im- 
 plies a former acquaintanceship. If the thought 
 had been a new one to John, he would have asked, 
 ' ' Art thou the coming one ? ' ' but he hardly would 
 have added "or do we look for another ? ' ' These 
 added words point to somewhat different circum- 
 
196 The Life and Teachings of jfesus. 
 
 stances, and the circumstances to which they point 
 seem to us to be these. There is nothing to show that 
 John, with all his profound sense of the necessity of 
 conduct, was yet able to lift himself out of the atmos- 
 phere of externality which clung to the whole Jewish 
 scheme of belief about divine things. His Messiah, 
 for example, is a Messiah whose functions are insepa- 
 rably connected with righteousness, and yet his influ- 
 ence is after all outward and supernatural. Sin is 
 overthrown by destroying the sinner, righteousness is 
 promoted by the setting up of the direct rule of God 
 through his representative. The conception of God's 
 relation to man as solel}' a spiritual thing within the 
 man himself, John was not able to reach ; he was too 
 impatient to wait for the kingdom of righteousness to 
 come about by natural growth, but must have it estab- 
 lished at one blow. It only can have been some such 
 far-reaching diflference as this between the two concep- 
 tions which Jesus had in mind when he spoke of John 
 as still outside the kingdom, and, with all his magnifi- 
 cent achievement, less than the little ones who really 
 had mastered the idea of Jesus. Now if Jesus had 
 known John he must have talked with him about the 
 kingdom and have tried to show John his own concep- 
 tion of it ; and his Messiahship, if he had spoken of it 
 at all, he only could have spoken of hypothetically 
 in this connection ; and perhaps even Jesus at that 
 time, was not fully assured of his mission, and as 
 yet had only a growing belief in it. If, then, we think 
 of conversations in which Jesus' Messiahship, in con- 
 nection with his new view of the kingdom, had been 
 spoken of tentatively, and had been recognized as a pos- 
 sibility, John's question becomes somewhat more natu- 
 ral. Art thou, he asks of Jesus, the coming one, as 
 
The Preparation. 197 
 
 once we thought it possible of thee ? or after all must 
 we wait for another ? And the answer which Jesus 
 makes to John, this also becomes plain. If John was 
 just rising to a belief in Jesus, the curt, enigmatical 
 answer which Jesus sends back to him is not easily 
 explained, for it seems calculated to check John's grow- 
 ing faith rather than to encourage it. But if the two 
 already had talked the question over, if perhaps this 
 very passage from Isaiah they had discussed together, 
 Jesus' answer would be plain enough to John, and it 
 would be all the answer that Jesus could give. And 
 with all Jesus' praise of John we still seem to detect in 
 his words a slight censure, as if John, with all his 
 greatness, had not been able to rise to the spiritual 
 conceptions of Jesus, even when the opportunity actu- 
 ally had come to him. 
 
 How long the ministry of John continued we are 
 entirely unable to say ; and between Josephus and the 
 Gospels, the cause of his imprisonment is not quite 
 certain. It seems most likely, hovv^ever, that it was not 
 until this last event that Jesus entered upon the real 
 work of his ministry. For this we have the statement 
 of the earliest source ; and if later on the report actually 
 got abroad that John had appeared again in the person 
 of Jesus, this would point the same way, for if the two 
 had carried on a public ministry together they must 
 have been perfectly distinct in the popular mind. Just 
 as little do we know the age of Jesus when he began 
 his work, for Luke's statement that he was thirty years 
 old has too manifest a foundation to be trustworthy. 
 All we can say about it is that he was in the vigor of 
 his powers, and that the conceptions upon which his 
 preaching was based had already taken final and clearly 
 defined shape. Before any attempt is made, however, to 
 
198 The Life and Teachings of Jesris. 
 
 formulate Jesus' teaching, a few words will have to be 
 said about the principles which are to be followed in 
 criticising the records of Jesus' sayings which are 
 present in the Gospels. The great value of the Gos- 
 pels lies in the sajdngs which they have preserved for 
 us, and there cannot be the slightest doubt that a large 
 number of these sayings are a very exact report of 
 Jesus' own words. For the most part they supply 
 their own evidence. The inexhaustible charm which 
 the}' have, the combination of tenderness and vigor, 
 the tireless play of fancy which brings before us by a 
 single stroke the deepest spiritual truths in such a way 
 that their truth is made self-evident, this is all some- 
 thing which is quite inimitable. But while this is true 
 in the main of the Gospel discourses, yet it would be 
 vain to expect it to be true everywhere. In the case 
 of books which have arisen as our Gospels did, and 
 which contain so much that is unreliable in their his- 
 torical parts, it would be almost a miracle if we did 
 not find a great deal attributed to Jesus which he never 
 uttered, and we ought constantly to be on the lookout 
 for this. And as a matter of fact, when one tries to 
 formulate Jesus' teachings more exactly, he will come 
 across very much indeed that will perplex him, and in 
 nearly every case, in trying to determine what these 
 teachings were, we will find evidence that is directly 
 contradictory. And so long as the relation of the 
 three Gospels to one another is left out of the account, 
 it will hardly be possible for him to determine with any 
 certaint)' what in many cases Jesus really said, for 
 either he must assume uncritically that all of the sa)-- 
 ings which the Gospels record are of equal genuine- 
 ness, or he must attempt to distinguish between them 
 in a way which at best will have to depend very much 
 
The Preparation. 199 
 
 upon conjecture. But if once we can determine 
 whether these sayings stood in the source which our 
 Evangelists used, or whether they got them in some 
 less reliable way, then at least one great point will 
 have been gained. Moreover where, as is the case 
 more often than not, a saying has got into two or three 
 different connections, the discovery of the original con- 
 nection which it had will often throw a flood of light 
 upon it ; and to determine this with some probability 
 is not in the majority of cases a very difiicult thing to 
 do. For the most part it is Luke who has kept the 
 connection best, while Matthew more frequently than 
 I^uke has woven the sayings into long discourses ; but 
 of course this cannot be given as an unvarying rule, 
 and it would not be safe to follow either blindly. As 
 an example of the process which often must be gone 
 through with, we may take the series of sayings which 
 is found in the eleventh chapter of Luke, where the 
 order is as follows : the dispute about casting out de- 
 mons, the parable of the unclean spirit, the discourse 
 about a sign, the sayings about the lamp under a 
 bushel and about the sound eye. Matthew does not 
 agree with this altogether. To begin with, he puts the 
 parable of the unclean spirit after the demand for a 
 sign, not after the dispute about casting out demons, 
 and in this he seems to be right ; for while in Luke 
 there is a connection of subject, in Matthew there is 
 an inner connection in meaning which is much 
 stronger. But what to do about the last two sayings 
 one does not see so readily, for their connection in 
 Luke is very forced, only an outer connection between 
 lamp and light, and Matthew gives them both in sur- 
 roundings which are wholly different. However, if the 
 first of these, the saying about a lamp under a bushel, 
 
200 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 we place as Matthew places it, at the opening of the 
 Sermon on the Mount, the second one, the saying 
 about the sound eye, conies in very naturally after the 
 parable of the unclean spirit and the discourse about a 
 sign. For here it is a rebuke to the people for their 
 blindness, while in Matthew's connection it only can 
 refer to the aims on which the heart is set, and this has 
 no natural connection with the sj^mbolism of the 
 eye. 
 
 In the first place therefore we shall have to deter- 
 mine in what connection the saying originally stood. 
 No doubt the process may often be a tedious one, and 
 it would be much easier if we were able to dispense 
 with the task altogether ; but to do this would only 
 land us in greater difiiculties, and the advantage of it 
 we think will very quickly appear. But even if we 
 can determine this, we still are not sure that we have 
 Jesus' own words, for the Apostles may have trans- 
 mitted them incorrectly, or they may have been added 
 to at a very early period, before our three Gospels 
 arose ; so that the task which it will be necessary to 
 enter on is not an easy one. And no doubt to a very 
 great extent the decisions which we come to must be 
 subjective — that is, the critic must depend upon his own 
 sense of what is likely, and in this there is large chance 
 for error. But still his decision need not be arbitrarj'- ; 
 there are certain general principles which in nearly 
 every case will serve to guide him. He has, to begin 
 with, in a very large number of cases, two reports of the 
 same saying, and a careful comparison of these will 
 often prove exceedingly suggestive. As a simple illus- 
 tration of this we may take the parable of the lost 
 sheep, as it is found in Matthew and in lyuke. 
 
The Preparation. 
 
 20I 
 
 In Matthew. 
 
 How think ye? if any man 
 have a hundred sheep, and 
 one of them be gone astray, 
 doth he not leave the ninety 
 and nine, and go into the 
 mountains and seek that which 
 goeth astray ? And if so be 
 that he find it, verily I say 
 unto you, he rejoiceth over it 
 more than over the ninety and 
 nine which have not gone 
 astray. 
 
 In Luke. 
 
 What man of you having a 
 hundred sheep, and having 
 lost one of them, doth not leave 
 the ninety and nine in the 
 wilderness, and go after that 
 which is lost, until he find it ? 
 And when he hath found it, 
 he layeth it on his shoulders 
 rejoicing. And when he cometh 
 home, he calleth together his 
 friends and his neighbors, say- 
 ing unto them. Rejoice with 
 me, for I have found my sheep 
 which was lost. I say unto 
 you that even so there shall 
 be joy in heaven over one sin- 
 ner that repenteth, more than 
 over ninety and nine righteous 
 persons which need no repen- 
 tance. 
 
 Now we see that this comparison of the one with the 
 ninety and nine is in both accounts, and therefore it 
 was in the source from which both drew. But while in 
 Luke this is in the form of an explanation which is at- 
 tached to the parable, and an explanation besides which 
 in itself is somewhat questionable, in Matthew it is an 
 integral part of the parable itself, and comes in with 
 perfect naturalness, so that there can be little doubt that 
 Matthew is nearest the original. And with this the 
 other element in Luke will fall away as an addition, 
 the calling together of the neighbors. And this after 
 all only detracts from the naturalness of the parable, 
 for it is not something which would be likely to happen 
 in everyday life. 
 
202 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 Now there are several principles which this compari- 
 son suggests, and they all of them may be put together 
 under one general head, conformity to the style of 
 Jesus. The argument from style no doubt is often 
 a dangerous weapon to employ, but in the case of Jesus 
 it is singularly effective, there scarcely ever has been 
 a style more characteristic and more hard to imitate. 
 It will be worth while to look at this somewhat closely 
 in special connection with the parables. Whatever 
 else may be true of Jesus' parables there are two things 
 which we always may expect to find ; in the first place 
 the illustration is exquisitely natural, it is taken from 
 the actual life of the people or from nature, and in the 
 second place it mirrors forth a vSpiritual truth, and 
 usually a single truth, by a happy analogy. But very 
 soon the parables came to be looked at as allegories, in 
 which each detail had to have its special exposition. 
 There is the parable of the sower, which shows the 
 naturalness of the kingdom's origin and its dependence 
 upon the laws of growth : Mark already had found in 
 its picturesque touches, types of the various classes of 
 Christians, the birds of the air became Satan, the 
 thorns tribulations and sufferings ; and the first Evan- 
 gelist follows him in the baldest of allegorical inter- 
 pretations. Now it can be said positively that Jesus' 
 parables were not allegories. An allegory is essentially 
 artificial, while a parable is natural : it is a flash of 
 insight which discovers an analogy between spiritual 
 and material things. Why Jesus chose to speak in 
 parables is a question which hardly would be raised if 
 it had not been started first by Mark, who cannot be said 
 however to have thrown much light upon it. Naturally 
 we should suppose it was because a parable is an ad- 
 mirably vivid and efiective way of presenting truth, 
 
The Preparation. 203 
 
 and because Jesus' mind naturally turned to figure 
 rather than to abstract definition. But the Gospels 
 have another explanation for it. It is not to the 
 disciples that Jesus speaks in parables but only to the 
 people, " because," says Matthew, " they are so blind 
 they cannot understand anything else," "in order," 
 Mark has it, ' ' that they may be punished by having 
 the truth presented to them in a form they cannot 
 understand." Now this goes upon the assumption, 
 which undoubtedly the Evangelists make, that a parable 
 is an allegor>% a darkening of knowledge and not an 
 enlightenment. But Jesus certainly did not mean 
 that the most important part of his teaching should 
 hide the truth rather than reveal it, and there is every 
 reason to suppose that the parable was his ordinary 
 way of teaching in the case of his disciples as well as 
 of the people. The whole passage to which this inci- 
 dent belongs seems to have been due to Mark. In the 
 source there apparently was a group of parables here, 
 and the last one of them, the parable of the scribe 
 instructed into the kingdom, shows that at least they 
 were meant for the disciples as much as for the people. 
 Mark has broken into this series so that he may give 
 an allegorical explanation of one of them : but that it 
 is an interruption there are several things which go to 
 show. He has to shift the scene in an unnatural way ; 
 he is obliged to make up a part of his discourse from 
 sayings which belong elsewhere ; the rest of it differs 
 decidedly in style from«the parables themselves, and in 
 the use of such a phrase as the mystery oi the kingdom, 
 and in the absolute way in which " the word" is used, 
 shows a later theological stand-point ; and finally there 
 is the mistaken idea as to what a parable is. In many 
 cases no doubt it is not hard to give the parable an 
 
204 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 allegorical turn, but this is always arbitrary, and it 
 alvvaj'S runs the risk by its attention to details of losing 
 the real point of the parable itself. Even in the par- 
 able of the sower, where it is easiest of all, Mark has 
 to interpret the seed, sometimes as the word of preach- 
 ing, and sometimes as the hearer ; and when we come 
 to apply it to the parable of the unjust steward, or of 
 the unjust judge, or of the discontented laborers, the 
 difficulties are endless. When we find therefore that 
 we are getting into allegory, it will make us su.spect 
 that we have to do, not with Jesus' own words, but 
 with the words of the Evangelist instead. When this 
 is something which is added to a parable of Jesus' own 
 it usually is not difficult to detect. There is for ex- 
 ample the allegory of the wedding-garment which is 
 attached to the parable of the marriage feast ; not 
 only does this add an incongruous idea to a parable 
 which is already complete, and which has a perfectly 
 plain and simple meaning, but Luke knows nothing 
 about it. And in the same parable the " certain man " 
 of Luke has been changed into a king, who makes a 
 marriage feast for his son, the Messiah, whose servants, 
 the prophets, are killed and beaten, and who sends out 
 his armies to " destroy those murderers and burn up 
 their city," an obvious reference to the Jews and to 
 Jerusalem. In the parable of the talents, on the other 
 hand, Luke has been the offender, and has brought in 
 a motiveless allusion to Archelaus. When it is the 
 whole parable that is at fault we perhaps cannot speak 
 so confidently, and yet here again we usually do not 
 have to hesitate very long. The best example of this 
 is the parable of the wicked husbandmen, which from 
 beginning to end is nothing but an allegor>\ But even 
 apart from the fact that it is an allegory there are many 
 
The Pi''eparation. 205 
 
 grounds for suspecting it. Surelj^ a parable which 
 assumes that Jesus had been slain, just as the prophets 
 had been slain, is more natural in the mouth of a dis- 
 ciple after Jesus' death than it is in the mouth of Jesus 
 himself, while he was still alive. Jesus is spoken of, 
 too, in an unusual way as the Son of God, and we seem 
 even to get an echo of the fact that he was put to death 
 without the city, when it is said that the husbandmen 
 " cast him out of the vineyard and slew him." And 
 the parable violates another canon besides : it is forced 
 and unnatural, while Jesus' parables are always true to 
 life. An allegory has indeed to be unnatural, for the 
 details do not of their own accord fall into place, and 
 it is necessary to force them in ; and so here we find 
 the husbandmen pursuing a design which is quite 
 absurd, and we find the owner of the vineyard acting in 
 a way in which no one ever would have acted, only that 
 the allegory may be kept up. This is not at all Jesus' 
 method ; Jesus does not manufacture his parables, they 
 are revealed to him. And wherever we meet with a 
 made-up story, the likelihood is that it must be rejected. 
 And before we leave the matter of the parables, a 
 word ought to be said about the three long parables 
 which are peculiar to Luke, the parables of the prodi- 
 gal son, the good Samaritan, and the rich man and 
 Lazarus. Parables we call them, but strictly they are 
 not parables after all ; they differ essentially from the 
 most of Jesus' parables. Instead of expressing a spirit- 
 ual truth in a natural analogy, they are simply illus- 
 trations of a truth by a fictitious example. Cases of 
 something of the same sort are to be found in the better 
 attested discourses, and the stor>' of the unforgiving 
 debtor, for example, does not differ materially from the 
 story of the prodigal son ; but such instances are rare, 
 
2o6 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 and nothing indeed is quite parallel to the stories of the 
 good Samaritan and of L,azarus. Moreover, all the 
 three narratives have certain peculiarities about them, 
 in the manner of narration, which serve to set them oflf 
 by themselves apart from the other discourses of Jesus. 
 A suspicion about them, therefore, inevitably arises, 
 not simply because they stand in a measure by them- 
 selves, but because this difference from Jesus' ordinary 
 manner only appears in the late and untrustworthy tra- 
 dition which is represented by lyuke. And against 
 each of these three stories there are special grounds 
 of objection. The introduction to the story of the 
 Samaritan is constructed out of an incident which in 
 its original form had an entirely different turn ;' the 
 story of the prodigal son appears to be based upon a 
 much simpler parable in Matthew, the parable of the 
 two sons ; and the story of lyazarus, besides being in- 
 troduced by sayings which did not at first belong to it, 
 is very obscure, and just what it teaches is a puzzle. 
 From the final sentence we should think that it was 
 meant to show the validity of the I^aw of Moses ; and 
 yet this sentence only is tacked on to the end of the 
 story, without receiving any proof or illustration from 
 it, and might quite as well have stood alone. The whole 
 thing cannot readily be made to teach anything except 
 the virtue of poverty and the damnableness of wealth. 
 The beauty of the first two stories is undeniable, but 
 their beauty is not lessened if they come from some 
 one else than Jesus ; and of course it would be very 
 easy for anything of the kind to get attributed to Jesus 
 when its real origin was forgotten. 
 
 If we turn back now to the point from which we 
 started, the parable of the lost sheep, the comparison 
 
 ' See Matt. 22 : y^ff. 
 
The Preparation. 207 
 
 will suggest another caution, that the applications of 
 the parables are much more likely to be the work of 
 the Evangelists than of Jesus, and that the Evangelists 
 are by no means certain to be right. When the first 
 Evangelist converts the sign of Jonah into a prediction 
 of the resurrection, we have a striking example of this 
 in a little different field, but less apparent examples are 
 scattered through the Gospels. "Or else," says Jesus 
 in the parable of the warring kings, ' ' while the other 
 is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage and 
 asketh conditions of peace ' ' ; and the Evangelist adds, 
 " So, therefore, whosoever he be of you that renounc- 
 eth not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple," — 
 here the application seems to be connected with the 
 Evangelist's peculiar views about poverty. In general 
 it seems plain that Jesus left his hearers to make their 
 application for themselves, and when we find the moral 
 given too expressly we must be suspicious of it. And 
 somewhat in line with this there are likely to be a num- 
 ber of cases where, without any external mark of it, 
 the Evangelist has modified what he has before him in 
 a greater or less degree. Such cases cannot be classi- 
 fied, and no absolute demonstration can be given for 
 them ; much will have to be left to the feeling of the 
 reader. There is the quotation in the Sermon on the 
 Mount which Jesus makes from the Old Testament, 
 "Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and" — so Matthew 
 adds — "hate thine enemy." But this of course we 
 shall not find in the Old Testament, and, moreover, the 
 contrast in Jesus' thought is not between hating our 
 enemies and loving them, but between loving our 
 friends and loving our enemies as well, between partial 
 and universal love : may we not venture therefore to 
 throw the last clause out of Jesus' words ? Sometimes 
 
2o8 The Life a7id Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 the insertion has been a more important one than this. 
 In the discourse about John, for instance, there is a 
 sentence in which Jesus speaks of John as fulfilling a 
 prophecy in Isaiah, But if we drop this out and notice 
 how closely the parts on either side of it fit together — 
 "yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet. 
 Among those born of women there hath not arisen a 
 greater," — it will seem most likely that some Evangelist 
 on his own notion has thrust in this prophecy which 
 the Church had found for John. For it is to take all 
 the meaning out of Jesus' words to make him put 
 John's greatness simply in the fact that he had an- 
 nounced the immediate coming of the Messiah. And 
 still another instance is that most violent of all the 
 words attributed to Jesus, "ye serpents, ye offspring 
 of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of Ge- 
 henna ! " which in this case betraj^s itself by its de- 
 pendence on the words of the Baptist. 
 
 It is evident therefore that to determine just what 
 Jesus said is not a work which can be done off-hand ; 
 it requires a continual weighing and sifting. And there 
 is a special danger from the fact that Jesus is so far 
 above his hearers, that just so soon as they leave the 
 task simply of reporting word for word what Jesus 
 said, they are pretty certain to bring their own mis- 
 conceptions in. We constantly shall find upon the 
 same subject views attributed to Jesus which are mutu- 
 ally inconsistent, a spiritual view, and a materialistic, 
 Jewish view, and we shall have to choose between 
 them. And this furnishes one other rule of interpre- 
 tation : whenever we find that this is the case, the 
 probabilities in so far lie with the more spiritual view. 
 Jesus we know in many things did rise far above his 
 contemporaries ; it is more likely therefore that his 
 
The Prcpa7^atio7i. 209 
 
 reporters have brought him down to their own level 
 than that they have been able to rise above him. It is 
 true that we cannot assume this without question in 
 every case ; only the evidence for a belief which puts 
 Jesus below his own general level must needs be 
 stronger than that which would satisfy us in the case 
 of a belief which harmonizes with Jesus' other teach- 
 ings. And upon this principle of course we must al- 
 ways go, that what is uncertain must be judged by 
 what is sure. There are some things in Jesus' teaching 
 which we can establish beyond a doubt, and other 
 things must be at least in a measure consistent with 
 these. To establish anything upon a single saying, or 
 even to establish it upon two or three sayings, will be 
 hazardous, unless the genuineness of these sayings is 
 pretty certain. With these things in mind therefore 
 we shall try to bring into order the somewhat chaotic 
 condition of the Gospels, and to determine in their 
 main outlines what the essential points in Jesus' doc- 
 trine were. 
 14 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 
 
 WHAT then was the sum of Jesus' teaching ? 
 What lay at the centre of the announcement 
 which he had to make to his nation ? Mark, 
 as it seems, was the first to give a literary form to 
 this : Jesus, he says, came into Galilee preaching the 
 Gospel of God and saying. The time is fulfilled, and 
 the kingdom of God is at hand ; repent ye, and be- 
 lieve in the Gospel. Now certainly Jesus did not use 
 these very words, and the passage only pretends to be a 
 summary of his message ; but to this extent undoubtedly 
 Mark is right, that it is the kingdom of heaven 
 which Jesus came to proclaim. But Mark also gives 
 us the impression which, knowing nothing to the 
 contrary, would be the natural view to hold, that Jesus' 
 attitude towards the kingdom was essentially the 
 attitude of his nation, an attitude to which the national, 
 the political features were by no means unimportant, 
 even if they did not occupy the foremost place. Cer- 
 tainly if Jesus had made his announcement in this bald 
 way the people could have got no other notion from it, 
 and if he had announced it as something which was 
 at hand, as something coming in the future, the 
 inference would be the same. But Mark's statement in 
 
The Kingdom of Heaven. 2 1 1 
 
 itself has no value, for it is dependent on the words of 
 John the Baptist ; and if we look at the actual say- 
 ings of Jesus we shall see at once that, whatever his 
 idea of the kingdom may have been, it differed greatly 
 from the idea which his countrymen had of it. 
 
 By far the most complete statement which Jesus 
 makes of his position is to be found in the Sermon on 
 the Mount, and indeed it would seem that Jesus here 
 intended to give in a brief form the substance of his 
 teaching about the kingdom. The discourse was 
 spoken to the disciples, as all the internal evidence goes 
 to show, and it probably belongs to the latter part of 
 Jesus' ministry ; for so long a sermon could not easily 
 have been remembered when the disciples were 
 new to Jesus' teaching. Unfortunately, we do not 
 now have this discourse in its original form, as a com* 
 parison of Matthew and of lyuke will soon convince 
 one. Luke has abbreviated constantly by leaving out 
 those sayings which have reference to Jewish customs 
 and beliefs, and what he has retained he often has 
 paraphrased very freely ; while Matthew in his usual 
 fashion has interwoven with it sayings which at first 
 were quite distinct. But many of these sayings are 
 still to be found in Luke in a far better connection, 
 and by a careful comparison it is possible to restore 
 within reasonable limits the discourse as it stood origi- 
 nally. It appears to start with that Luke, apart from 
 the Woes, which he certainly adds on his own account, 
 has the Beatitudes in a more original form. Luke's 
 version of them is so consistent that it is hard to think 
 he got it by mutilating the longer form in Matthew, 
 while Matthew on the other hand is not quite con- 
 gruous throughout, he borrows liberally from the Old 
 Testament, and his changes are easily to be explained 
 
212 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 on the basis of a simpler account. The first Beatitude in 
 particular, despite the efforts to find a profound mean- 
 ing in it, is not a natural expression, as the very neces- 
 sity for these efforts shows, and it is easily accounted 
 for as a somewhat mechanical addition to the ' ' poor ' ' 
 of Luke. Then, too, the second Beatitude Matthew 
 has been forced to leave without spiritualizing it. 
 Besides, the direct address, " Blessed are ye," is proven 
 at any rate for the last Beatitude, so that the tenth 
 verse in Matthew is a repetition which is due to him ; 
 and the way in which the Sermon goes on in Matthew 
 shows that Jesus is speaking to his disciples directly. 
 From this point, however, there is little to do except to 
 throw out those sayings which have a better connec- 
 tion in lyuke. These are the sayings about salt, where 
 the warning is not called for by the context, about the 
 adversary and about divorce, the Lord's prayer, the 
 discourse about laying up treasure, and all that follows 
 it through the warnings against anxiety. Then the 
 saying about pearls before swine, while it is not found 
 in Luke, hardly belongs here, for it breaks into the 
 connection ; and the two discourses about seeking 
 and finding, and about the narrow way, also find their 
 place in Luke. Again in Luke the last part of the 
 Sermon — Luke 6 : 43-45 — seems to follow the original 
 more closely than Matthew does, for Matthew makes 
 these words refer to false prophets, which is contrary 
 to the whole meaning of the discourse. Jesus has 
 been referring throughout to personal conduct, he ends 
 with a reference to personal conduct, and it must be of 
 the same thing that he is speaking here. And this is 
 shown also by the literary structure of Matthew. 
 Luke reads : " A good tree bringeth not forth corrupt 
 fruit, neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 
 
The Kingdom of Heaven. 2 1 3 
 
 For every tree is known by its own fruit. For of 
 thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble 
 bush gather they grapes." Matthew, on account of his 
 reference to false prophets, starts with ' ' Ye shall know 
 them by their fruits." Then he goes back to the verse 
 he has omitted, but after it he again repeats, ' ' By their 
 fruits ye shall know them, ' ' just as it is found in lyuke ; 
 so that this seems to be the right place for the saying. 
 Now if we examine carefully the discourse which 
 we have left after this critical process, it will be found 
 that there is one very definite conception which domi- 
 nates the whole of it, which Jesus insists upon, and 
 which he says expressly is the crucial point in the rela- 
 tion of the citizen to the new kingdom. The kingdom 
 implies of course the rule of God, but it is a govern- 
 ment which has absolutely nothing external about it, 
 which is directed towards the heart and conscience of 
 the individual citizen, which aims, not to bring about 
 outward conformity simply, but comformity which is 
 due to character, and which in every detail rests 
 squarely upon the great, and to Jesus the self-evident 
 principles of righteousness. Do not be angry, be for- 
 giving, avoid lustful thoughts, be scrupulously truth- 
 ful, return good for evil, love your enemies, avoid pride 
 and ostentation, be merciful and charitable in judg- 
 ment ; it is by your fruits that you will be j udged, he 
 who follows these commandments of mine is the wise 
 man, he who neglects them the fool, — from beginning 
 to end a single note runs through the whole, it is in 
 this the kingdom consists, and there is no hint that it 
 consists in anything else. If one were to put it in a 
 single sentence it would be something like this — the 
 kingdom of heaven is the rule of righteousness in 
 human life, when righteousness is not looked at as 
 
2 1 4 The Life a7id Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 something external, but as the natural fruits of a 
 heart that is governed by love to God and love to men. 
 If this really is the heart of Jesus' idea of the king- 
 dom, when we take into account all that it implies it is 
 far and away the greatest achievement in religious 
 thought which the world has witnessed. That Jesus 
 should have held so tenaciousl}^ to the elements of real 
 and permanent religious value for which the human 
 heart can never cease to crave, and that he yet should 
 have been able to free these so effectually from the 
 extra-beliefs, the transient forms by which men's fan- 
 cies have tried to picture to themselves the eternal veri- 
 ties of which dimly and partially they had caught a 
 glimpse, and should have brought out into a clear light 
 their intimate and absolutely essential relationship to 
 conduct, would be a marvel in any case, and it is the 
 more marvellous when we consider how absolutely for- 
 eign it all was to the Judaism of the times. Indeed, 
 even to the present day the Church has not been able 
 to convince itself that religion, if it is to be secure, 
 does not need the extra support of all these appeals to 
 the imagination and the material sense. Most of all, 
 men constantly are clamoring for something in religion 
 which shall serve to guarantee for them their own hap- 
 piness and safety, and the closer they can cling to the 
 solid foundation of a sensible earth, the better they are 
 pleased. Accordingly, in Jesus' day, the great mass 
 of the people were for having an earthly kingdom, 
 with plenty to eat and drink, a king with supernatural 
 powers enough to insure their getting the better of 
 their enemies, and a certain amount of worship and 
 morality, no doubt, somewhere in the background. 
 From this it is a long ways, certainly, to the ordinary 
 conception of Christianity, and yet something of the 
 
The Kingdom of Heaven. 2 1 5 
 
 same mistake there is in both : both, that is, put reli- 
 gion too much in the idea of the reward attached to it 
 from the outside. In Christianity this appears in the 
 altogether disproportionate place which is given to the 
 doctrine of heaven. This is what the kingdom of 
 heaven earl}^ came to stand for : it was taken to mean 
 a future kingdom into which death alone can bring us, 
 heaven, shut off by the sharpest boundaries from the 
 things of earth. Now, without doubt, there is much 
 in this conception which answers to a real religious 
 need, and which we could ill afford to do without. We 
 need the comfort of looking to the future, when the 
 conditions which hem us in and thwart us, and so often 
 render wickedness triumphant and goodness impotent, 
 shall be done away, when joy shall take the place of 
 sadness, and that harmony which we crave in vain in 
 our present life shall be a thing accomplished. But 
 then, this is not the whole of religion, and it is not the 
 core of it, and by putting the first emphasis upon it, it 
 may lead to a religion which is very faulty and per- 
 verted. And this alwa3^s has been the tendency in 
 human thought. Religion has been made to gather 
 about the soul's salvation, salvation, that is, in this 
 narrow sense, of escape from punishment and the get- 
 ting of a heavenly reward. Duty, conduct, character, 
 have been hardly more than a road to heaven and 
 eternal happiness. But it is clear that this hope, just 
 of getting into heaven, unless it is bound up very 
 closely indeed with the thought of the sort of character 
 which heaven implies, is only a selfish hope, none the 
 less selfish, only a bit more etherialized, because the 
 objects of its desire are after death rather than before 
 it. And selfishness is not religion. God is not God, 
 truth is not truth, goodness is not goodness, simply 
 
2i6 The Life and Teachings of fesus. 
 
 that you and I may be forever happy. It may be that 
 God would not be God if there were not true and last- 
 ing joy within the reach of men, but at least the em- 
 phasis must not be put upon the wrong side. Now, 
 this is what, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus 
 appears to recognize and teach : God, righteousness, — 
 these are first and foremost. Blessedness they do in- 
 deed bring with them, but it is not the blessedness 
 which gives to them their worth, and it is only by 
 striving after them for their own sakes that the blessed- 
 ness will come. Jesus' kingdom is a kingdom which 
 rests upon character. It is the bringing into the indi- 
 vidual and into the universal life the eternal principles 
 of righteousness. It is the joyful recognition of these, 
 not simply as leading to my happiness, but as in them- 
 selves eternally worthy and binding. It is the swallow- 
 ing up of the selfish will in the will of God, and the 
 recognition that God's will is not something vague and 
 belonging to another world than this, but that it un- 
 folds itself in the ordinary human relations and duties. 
 It is human society become divine by having all the 
 selfishness in it rooted out, and God's will recognized 
 freely by each individual. 
 
 But it may be said that the Sermon on the Mount 
 does not necessarily imply all this, or at least that it 
 does not imply this conception so exclusively. For one 
 may still insist with all strenuousness upon the need 
 of character, and yet make the kingdom itself to con- 
 sist in some more outward and sensible relationship 
 between God and men. This was true of John, for 
 example. No man yielded to John in the assertion of 
 the supremacy of righteousness, and yet to him the 
 kingdom was not come till the sinners were weeded 
 out of the nation and the Messiah had appeared, a 
 
The Kijigdoiu of Heaven. 2 i 7 
 
 visible representative of God's sway. So in Jesus' 
 case it may have been that, while he set up conduct as 
 an absolute necessity for the citizen, he nevertheless 
 b}^ the kingdom itself meant not this only, but a special 
 and supernatural relationship into which God was to 
 enter with men, either a supra-mundane, heavenly con- 
 summation, when the principles which he had laid 
 down were to be completely victorious, or it may be 
 even an earthly realization of a completely righteous 
 nation, perhaps established by a special display of 
 God's power. Both of these suppositions, in so far as 
 they involve a supernatural intervention, we shall have 
 to consider more at length in another chapter, when we 
 come to ask what Jesus expected of the future of his 
 kingdom. For the present, just a word may be suffi- 
 cient. It is often said that the two conceptions, the 
 thought of the kingdom as the natural growth of men 
 in their individual lives and their social relations into 
 the divine character, and as the consummation of all 
 things in a society under supernatural conditions, are 
 not mutually inconsistent, but are only the two parts 
 of one conception. This claim, however, is only 
 partially true. No doubt it is a fact that Jesus be- 
 lieved in what we may call by the name of Heaven. 
 Nevertheless, heaven stands first of all for the idea of 
 happiness, of rest and peace after the conflict of life, 
 of the satisfaction of human cravings, and as such it 
 is entirely distinct from the idea of righteousness and 
 its authoritative claims, which, from the nature of the 
 case, we can represent only under the form of the hu- 
 man relationships and duties which we are familiar 
 with. Accordingly, while one may hold the two ideas 
 together and find in one the supplement of the other, 
 yet they are two ideas after all, and it is not easy to 
 
2i8 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 combine them into one definite conception without 
 shghting the one or the other. And it makes all the 
 difference in the world whether religion is made to 
 centre first of all about the future, or about the every- 
 day duties of the present. And all that we are trying 
 to maintain is that, while Jesus recognized hope for the 
 future as a legitimate incentive and consolation, he did 
 not lay the stress of his teaching upon this, but made 
 it to centre about conduct and character for this present 
 world ; and this is what we think the Sermon on the 
 Mount tends to show. This, however, we shall return 
 to later. But apart from all question of the super- 
 natural, it will be necessary to take a somewhat more 
 extended survey of Jesus' teaching about the kingdom 
 with reference to the charge which often has been 
 brought against him, and which has, perhaps, not been 
 sufficiently replied to as yet, that, after all, though doubt- 
 less with the best and most patriotic of intentions, politi- 
 cal motives did have some weight with him, and that 
 his hope for a righteous nation was somehow or other 
 connected with the deliverance of Israel from the adverse 
 external conditions with which it was struggling. 
 
 As against any such political aim on Jesus' part, the 
 very name which he chooses is significant. According 
 to Mark and Luke it is the kingdom of God, but Mat- 
 thew has it, the kingdom of heaven. It is not probable 
 that both names were used as the ordinary designation, 
 and from critical reasons, as well as from historical, 
 Matthew is probably to be preferred. In one verse at 
 least — Matt. 7 : 21 — " heaven " seems to be required by 
 the parallelism of the sentence ; and in another case — 
 21 : 43 — Matthew himself has " kingdom of God," and 
 he has it in a verse which seems to be due to himself. 
 So that it is not probable that he would have changed 
 
The Kingdom of Heaven. 2 1 9 
 
 "God" to "heaven" wherever he found it in his 
 source, and then have used ' ' God ' ' himself where no 
 change would have been necessary. But " the king- 
 dom of heaven " is just such a title as we might have 
 expected one to use who wished to dissociate his king- 
 dom as much as possible from all earthly empire, and 
 point to it simply as a divine ideal to be realized among 
 men. And then the kingdom — so Jesus implies at the 
 beginning of the Sermon on the Mount — was something 
 which was intended to bring joy, blessedness, and to 
 bring it into the lives of those who stood most in need 
 of it, of the poor, the wretched, whom religion, as well 
 as philosophy and culture, had hitherto been very apt 
 to neglect. One who had come to announce the restora- 
 tion of the national greatness, the approach of a time 
 when the religion of their ancestors might be enjoyed 
 free of disturbance, never would have spoken first of 
 all in this way. This tenderness towards the weak 
 ones of mankind, and the confidence that he has that 
 which will fill the void in their lives, is one of the 
 striking things in Jesus' teaching : but he always rep- 
 resents this ministry as a moral one ; he has come to 
 heal the sick who need a physician ; and he never re- 
 gards this as a means, as a reform of the nation which 
 will allow the political ideal to be realized, but as the 
 end in itself. He that is but little in the kingdom of 
 heaven, he says, is greater than John, and this has no 
 meaning unless the greatness of the kingdom is solely 
 a spiritual greatness, an eminence in spiritual knowl- 
 edge and achievement. And indeed in so many words 
 Jesus puts the kingdom and righteousness together, 
 as if they were one and the same thing, and sharply 
 distinguishes them from other, from material things.' 
 
 ' Matt. 6 : 33. 
 
2 20 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 And once again, in the prayer which he makes, the 
 kingdom is to come when God's will is done on earth. 
 It is the innocence and the humilit}' of the child which 
 is the necessary condition of entrance. The harvest is 
 to be reaped, not by the expulsion of the Romans and 
 the setting up of a kingdom of the saints, but by the 
 work of the laborers who are to be sent forth into the 
 harvest, among the people. The Pharisees, Jesus com- 
 plains, have shut up the kingdom of heaven against 
 men, and not content with refusing to enter in them- 
 selves, they have kept out those who were on the point 
 of entering. If alreadj^ they have done this, the king- 
 dom already is established, and their fault is that they 
 have refused to see it in the righteousness which Jesus 
 preached. And indeed Jesus tells them on another 
 occasion that while thej^ are looking for some outward 
 demonstration to which they can point and saj', L,o 
 here, or I^o there, the kingdom already has sprung up 
 silently in their midst. 
 
 An ideal such as this certainly has very little in com- 
 mon with political aims of au)^ sort, indeed it seems 
 entirely to exclude them ; and there are other sayings 
 of Jesus which establish this still more securely. The 
 recognition of the kingdom and its Messiah, so Jesus 
 tells Peter, does not belong to flesh and blood, and, 
 therefore, it must be something which is purely spirit- 
 ual, and has nothing to do with earthly things. If 
 Ivuke is to be trusted, we find Jesus expressly re- 
 jecting the function which would have been proper to 
 him as the Messiah of the popular kingdom, the func- 
 tion of judge and divider, and he certainly declines to 
 have anything to do with the question which, if in any 
 sense his aim had been political, he must have attached 
 some importance to, the relation in which the country 
 
The Kingdom of Heaven. 221 
 
 stood to Caesar and the Roman government. Still, one 
 has to recognize two or three elements in the Gospels 
 which seem to go against this view, and to show that 
 Jesus after all was not wholly untouched by the popular 
 ideals. One thing indeed which might be used to show 
 this, does really, we think, point the other way, the 
 promise which Jesus makes to his disciples, seemingly 
 a political promise, that they shall sit on twelve thrones 
 judging the twelve tribes of Israel. If this really was 
 spoken by Jesus, and was meant to be understood liter- 
 ally, then Jesus must have thought of a political eman- 
 cipation, however this emancipation was to be brought 
 about. But if this imagery is to be taken literally, it 
 stands very nearly alone among Jesus' sayings, and 
 that fact by itself would almost be enough to show the 
 saying was not genuine ; and so soon as we get it in 
 its right connection we shall see that there is no need 
 of its being taken literally at all. The connection 
 which Matthew gives to it is hardly possible, for it 
 seems clearly to be thrust in between Peter's question 
 and the real answer which was given to that question.^ 
 But lyuke places it at the end of a discourse, the dis- 
 course on ambition, which, as the other Kvatigelists 
 show, was called forth by a request which James and 
 John had made ; and here it fits in admirably. James 
 and John had come to Jesus asking for the chief places 
 in the kingdom of heaven, a kingdom which they still 
 looked upon as something material ; and Jesus' words 
 on the occasion are significant. He does not say that 
 hereafter the chief place shall be given to him who 
 deserves it best by his service, that humility and self- 
 sacrifice now shall be exchanged for honor and posi- 
 tion when the kingdom is established : he says that 
 ' Matt. 19 : 28. 
 
222 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 humility is greatness, that the chief place consists in 
 being the servant of all. And then, when iimnedi- 
 ately he promises to the Twelve the greatness which 
 James and John had just been seeking, we only can 
 interpret this by what Jesus himself has said. The great- 
 ness which he promises to them is the greatness of ser- 
 vice ; it is the superiority which comes from doing and 
 from suffering the most, the superiority which Jesus 
 himself had won ; and the form in which he puts this 
 probably was suggested by the brothers' question. 
 This, we think therefore, shows what we have found 
 was shown by other things, that Jesus' conception of 
 the kingdom was wholly spiritual ; there are two 
 things, however, which cannot easily be explained in 
 this way and which apparently show a very different 
 point of view, and these are the mission of the twelve 
 Apostles, and the entry into Jerusalem. 
 
 With regard to the mission of the disciples it is hard 
 to see how, under the circumstances, it could have 
 failed to have a very conspicuous political significance. 
 In the first place the disciples themselves thought of 
 the kingdom much as the people thought of it, and as 
 yet were far from comprehending the real bearing of 
 Jesus' conception. And even if they partly had under- 
 stood him, the people could not have done so ; to them 
 the disciples' words only could have had one meaning. 
 And then when we ask in what the disciples' message 
 consisted we meet with difficult}-. If apart from Jesus' 
 teachings about the kingdom they pointed to Jesus as 
 the Messiah, they simply were sowing the seeds of 
 revolution ; and even if they did not do this expressly, 
 if, as is hardly conceivable, they confined themselves 
 to the bare statement that the kingdom was at hand, 
 the result still would have been very much the same. 
 
The Kingdom of Heaven, 223 
 
 For both the kingdom and the Messiahship were to the 
 Jewish mind indissolubly bound up with the thought 
 of political change, and if Jesus' purpose was to rid the 
 ideal of the kingdom of its political features, the worst 
 thing he could do would be to sow broadcast hopes 
 which only would stand in the way of the fulfilment 
 of his designs. Jesus could not well have failed to see 
 this, and if in spite of it the disciples were sent out, the 
 easiest explanation is that, disappointed at his slow 
 progress, he had determined to arouse the popular 
 enthusiasm and to make use of it to promote his aims. 
 But this it is hard to believe, for not only is it utterly 
 opposed to the view of the kingdom which Jesus' own 
 words make it almost certain that he held, but it is 
 opposed to the fact that even after Jesus' appearance 
 at Jerusalem his enemies had no proof that he claimed 
 to be the Messiah. The whole incident therefore, we 
 should doubt, even if we had no other reasons to ap- 
 peal to ; but other reasons are by no means lacking. 
 
 If we examine the speech which is attributed to 
 Jesus on this occasion, there is a curious thing that 
 will be noticed about it. Of all the sayings of which 
 the speech is made up, there is not a single one against 
 which plausible objections cannot be brought. We do 
 not mean to say that all of these objections are equally 
 strong, or that by themselves the sayings might not 
 possibly be vindicated for Jesus ; only when we find 
 that all of them may be objected to, the defence that 
 can be made for each one of them loses something of 
 its force. If we take the speech in order, first there 
 comes the injunction not to preach to Gentiles or 
 Samaritans. It is not necessary to ask here whether 
 this is consistent with Jesus' own views ; we only will 
 suggest that the injunction is not likely because it is 
 
224 ^/^^ Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 useless. The disciples never would have thought of 
 doing what Jesus commands them not to do ; that they 
 were to go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel would 
 have been the only thing that would have entered their 
 minds. On the contrary, the words seem to imply a 
 time when missions to the Gentiles and to the Samari- 
 tans were not unheard of, or else the prohibition of 
 them seems unintelligible, not the time of Jesus there- 
 fore, but later times after the Church had been estab- 
 lished. The difficulty of the announcement which 
 they were to make already has been touched upon. 
 The difficulty vanishes if we do not try to account for 
 the narrative as a real event, but suppose that, when 
 the labors of the Apostles had become familiar, this 
 activity of theirs was carried back into the times of 
 Jesus, and they were thought of as sent out by Jesus 
 to preach his Messiahship, just as they really did go 
 out in later times. And then an ideal speech that 
 suited the occasion was put in Jesus' mouth, as in the 
 book of Acts speeches are put in the mouths of the 
 Apostles. 
 
 The next saying, in the form in which it is given in 
 Matthew, is clearly an impossibility : " Heal the sick, 
 cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons." 
 But this it is likely is not the original form, and if we 
 drop the two middle clauses we shall probably have the 
 sentence as it stood at first ; for this is all that the 
 other Evangelists know of, the healing of the sick and 
 the casting out of demons. But even in this simple 
 form the saying is doubtful enough, for we have al- 
 ready shown that the other sayings attributed to Jesus 
 in behalf of miracles are to be rejected. And it is very 
 easy to see how a later writer, who believed in the 
 Apostles' miracles, should infer that the power had 
 
The Kingdom of Heaven. 225 
 
 been formally bestowed upon them by Jesus, — easier 
 by all means than it is to think of Jesus as really doing 
 this. The next sentence also is better suited to later 
 times than it is to the times of Jesus. Certainly this 
 entire absence of self-support would be more natural 
 for itinerant teachers in communities where already 
 there were Christian families to aid them, than it 
 would be in wholly new fields ; and the injunction 
 which comes just after, to seek out a worthy family and 
 there abide, also suggests this, for it only would be 
 with a co-religionist that a stranger could count so 
 securely on a continued welcome. Nor is this anxiety 
 that the disciples should be supported by the commu- 
 nity, that they should not even use the money they 
 possessed, quite worthy of Jesus ; it would seem to 
 point rather to a time when the support of itinerant 
 preachers had become an ecclesiastical question. 
 
 Jesus next goes on to give directions as to the atti- 
 tude which the disciples are to bear towards their 
 hearers. These directions are somewhat trivial, and 
 are scarcely of the sort which one would suppose the 
 disciples would have needed most ; and the whole 
 passage does not impress us as being in the spirit of 
 Jesus. Least of all is it like Jesus to encourage the 
 impatience of his disciples, to tell them to shake 
 off the dust of their feet against those who will 
 not hear them ; and the comparison with Sodom 
 shocks us by its quite uncalled-for severity. And 
 indeed this saying is taken from another dis- 
 course by Jesus, from the woes against the Gali- 
 lean cities, and even here it seems to have been added 
 by the Evangelist, to correspond with the saying 
 which goes just before, " It shall be more tolerable for 
 Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you." 
 
226 The Life and Teachings of yesus. 
 
 But in this connection the severity is justified, for 
 Jesus is speaking of the cities to which he had 
 devoted the greater part of his ministry ; in our passage 
 however the words are spoken of cities which only 
 were to receive a flying visit from a disciple, and 
 which, if they rejected his message, did not by any 
 means reject the truth which Chorazin and Caper- 
 naum had rejected. But this is easy to understand 
 from a disciple who had in his thoughts a rejection 
 of the Gospel which had followed years of teaching 
 by the Apostles. And pointing to the same thing is 
 the impression which one gets from our passage of a 
 more extended ministry than would have been possible 
 in Jesus' lifetime. The disciples are to go from city to 
 city, they are to stay in each till their message has 
 been accepted or until it has been rejected. But this 
 could not happen all at once, and our passage implies 
 as much when it assumes that the disciples will be 
 tempted to move about from house to house. Such a 
 prolonged ministry in Jesus' lifetime is unlikely ; what 
 the disciples needed was not practice in preaching but 
 the companionship of Jesus, and an opportunity them- 
 selves to learn, and Jesus hardly would have ventured 
 to assign them such an errand until they were better 
 prepared for it. In the same direction, too, points 
 the fact that they are warned against dangers, they 
 are sent out as sheep into the midst of wolves. But 
 dangers only came at a later time, and Jesus could not 
 have anticipated danger in such a mission as this. 
 And then the speech closes with a threat — Luke prob- 
 ably has retained this more correctly — "Whoso re- 
 ceiveth you receiveth me, and whoso rejecteth you, 
 rejecteth me, and whoso rejecteth me rejecteth him 
 that sent me." Matthew has added a saying peculiar 
 
 i 
 
The Kingdom of Heaven. 227 
 
 to himself, and he has made the whole into a promise 
 to those who should receive the disciples ; but the 
 objection to this is that the promises are made to 
 persons who are absent, and have no relation to the 
 disciples, to whom the words are immediately ad- 
 dressed. And this last sentence also calls up objec- 
 tions ; to say nothing of the fact that it implies Jesus' 
 relationship to God in a way in which Jesus very 
 seldom speaks of it, it is not even just, for it is not 
 true that a rejection of the disciples under these cir- 
 cumstances would in any sense have been a rejection 
 of the truth for which Jesus stood. 
 
 For all these reasons we do not hesitate to reject the 
 whole account, and still less do we hesitate to reject 
 the account of the entry into Jerusalem. This too 
 is unintelligible apart from some political aim. What 
 possible pleasure could Jesus take in the shouts of a 
 fanatical rabble, if the dignity which they claimed for 
 him was something utterly opposed to what he was 
 seeking to obtain ? Could he really not forego the 
 gratification of this bit of triumph under false pre- 
 tences before his final failure ? But to this narrative 
 the same objections apply which applied to the other : 
 it is not like Jesus, and it would have put an end to 
 any uncertainty which the Pharisees felt about his 
 claims to the Messiahship. And in itself the narrative 
 has very little in its favor : the miracle with which it 
 opens, its evident and minute dependence upon the 
 Old Testament, the manifest motive there was for it 
 in the glorification of Jesus, all tell against it. And 
 probably the immediate occasion for it we have in the 
 words with which Jesus is welcomed by the multitude. 
 Already in a saying which had been attributed to 
 Jesus he had said, ' ' Ye shall not see me until ye say, 
 
2 28 The Life and Teachings of yesus. 
 
 Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord ' ' ; 
 and now that he actually was to enter the city, must 
 not the people have met him with these words ? We 
 find therefore no reason to alter the opinion which we 
 reached before, or to think that Jesus' conception of 
 the kingdom had in it the smallest political element. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE MESSIAHSHIP OF JESUS. 
 
 IN the conclusion which has been reached about the 
 form which the conception of the kingdom took in 
 Jesus' mind, a good deal is already implied with 
 regard to the idea which he had of the Messiah of that 
 kingdom. If the kingdom is a purely spiritual one, 
 a kingdom of righteousness, then at one blow all the 
 adventitious dignity of the popular Messiah, the earthly 
 glory, the seat on the throne of David, become a mat- 
 ter of perfect indifference. When this is granted, how- 
 ever, there still is a considerable amount of perplexity 
 attaching to the subject, and the difficulty may be 
 summed up with sufficient accuracy in the two ques- 
 tions, What part did Jesus' Messiahship play in his 
 dealings with the people ? and, Just how did it present 
 itself to his own consciousness, and how did he speak 
 of it in his communications with his chosen disciples ? 
 These two questions play into each other more or less, 
 and the answer to one of them suggests the answer to 
 the other, but nevertheless, they are distinct enough to 
 make it convenient to consider them apart. 
 
 It ordinarily is assumed that the fact of Jesus' 
 Messiahship had a prominent place, if not the most 
 prominent, in his own consciousness, and that the 
 
 229 
 
230 The Life and Teachings of fesus. 
 
 recognition of this Messiahship was the objective 
 point towards which all his efforts were directed. And 
 undoubtedly this is the idea which is present in our 
 sources. It is easj^ to see how such a belief got to pre- 
 vail : the idea of Jesus as the Messiah was the central 
 thing in the preaching of the Apostles, among whom 
 Jesus' conception of righteousness, while it influenced 
 their lives and their incidental teachings profoundly, 
 never was able to assume the central place in their 
 theories of religion, and compete in the line of doctrine 
 and theology with their earlier Jewish conceptions ; 
 and accordingly it would seem quite natural that Jesus 
 should work to get this belief fixed in the people's 
 minds, that he should send his disciples out to spread 
 it everywhere and make it familiar, and should encour- 
 age it wherever it appeared. Nevertheless, there are 
 serious difiSculties in the way of this manner of con- 
 ceiving Jesus' ministry which have not always been 
 regarded. It is certain that to the minds of the people 
 such an announcement must have conveyed a notion 
 which differed totally from that which Jesus had him- 
 self, and which promoted just the error which proved 
 one of the greatest stumbling-blocks in his ministry, 
 and against which he had constantly to be fighting. 
 Moreover, it is idle to suppose that any man could 
 have been the centre of Messianic hopes for so long a 
 time, and still have aroused no sort of opposition from 
 the watchful Roman authorities. The first of these 
 difficulties indeed usually receives a half-way recogni- 
 tion, but the attempt to mend things only makes the 
 matter worse. In order to harmonize all the points of 
 view which make their appearance in the Gospels, 
 Jesus is made to blow hot and cold with the same 
 breath ; he lets the belief in his Messiahship spread, 
 
The Messiahs hip of Jesus. 231 
 
 and then tries to work it over into his own conception ; 
 he thinks to avoid the compHcations which result 
 simply by refusing to meet the advances of those who 
 want to see him accept the popular role, while he still 
 insists upon the fact of his Messiahship ; by turns he 
 tries in some striking way to stimulate belief, by feed- 
 ing men miraculously, by riding in triumph into Jeru- 
 salem, and then again, to vary matters, he makes 
 spasmodic and what must necessarily be quite useless, 
 efforts to stem the tide by forbidding the report of 
 something which might seem a bid for popular favor. 
 But such a veering course as this is quite inexplicable. 
 If belief in Jesus as the popular Messiah had been only 
 a stepping-stone, a halting-place on the road to the 
 belief which Jesus himself wished to inspire, then the 
 course would have had its advantages ; but this was 
 not the case, and instead of being a help to him it was 
 a positive hindrance and a detriment. What Jesus had 
 to do then, if we can give him credit for a very moder- 
 ate share of clear-sightedness, was to avoid arousing 
 hopes which he afterwards would have to be to the 
 pains of extinguishing, and from the start to keep the 
 question of his Messiahship resolutely in the back- 
 ground until men were ready to receive it ; there was 
 no keeping it within bounds, if once it were allowed 
 to get started at all. This then is what, from a priori 
 reasoning, we should expect Jesus to do, and that he 
 did do it is shown by the best-attested facts in the Gos- 
 pels. Of course there are plenty of statements to the 
 contrary, but these must be subjected to a liberal dis- 
 count by reason of the obvious influences which were 
 at hand to produce them. It would be strange indeed 
 if later times had not imported something of its own 
 faith into Jesus' words and acts. And it is to be no- 
 
232 The Life and Teachings of Jesics. 
 
 ticed that by far the greater number of these cases, 
 where Jesus is saluted as the Messiah, or where he acts 
 in such a way that his Messiahship is implied, occur 
 in the stories of miracles, and so are demonstrated to 
 be of later origin. On the other hand, there is to start 
 with the account of Peter's confession at Csesarea 
 Philippi, which is of capital importance on the ques- 
 tion. Here it is distinctly implied that up to this time 
 the people had not thought of Jesus as the Messiah, 
 but only as some great prophet ; and at the close of 
 the account again Jesus strictly forbids that the fact 
 should be made known. To this narrative we shall 
 have occasion to return again. The name which Jesus 
 chooses to designate himself also speaks for the same 
 conclusion. It is still an unsettled question whether 
 there is any evidence that alread)?^ in Jesus' day the 
 term "Son of man" carried any Messianic signifi- 
 cance with it, and in the absence of conclusive proof 
 to the contrary the testimony of the Gospels must be 
 accepted as decisive. This goes strongly against any 
 such notion. In particular, Jesus never could have 
 asked the question of his disciples, ' ' Whom do men 
 say that the Son of man is ? " and have followed it by 
 the second question, ' ' Whom do ye say that I am ? ' ' 
 if the answer already was contained in the former 
 phrase ; and that this is the real form of the question 
 is indicated by Peter's corresponding phrase, " the Son 
 of God," apparently a reference to it. The question 
 is a harder one just what Jesus himself had in mind 
 when he chose the phrase, and it is complicated by the 
 fact that the words occur so often in very doubtful pas- 
 sages. Most of these passages have already- received 
 some attention, or else will be treated of before we are 
 finished ; without, therefore, going for a second time 
 
The Mcssiahship of Jesus. 233 
 
 into a detailed criticism, it will be enough to say that 
 there are only five places in our opinion where the words 
 can be allowed to be genuine. One of these is the case 
 j ust mentioned in the account of Peter' s confession ; then 
 there are the two sayings, ' ' The Son of man hath not 
 where to lay his head, ' ' and, ' ' The Son of man came 
 eating and drinking," and perhaps the saying about 
 the unpardonable sin, and the words which Jesus is 
 reported to have spoken at his trial. Reasons will ap- 
 pear in another chapter why we do not think it prob- 
 able the phrase was taken from the book of Daniel 
 and had an apocalyptic sense attached to it ; it will be 
 noticed that the passages we have quoted none of them 
 point to this, not the last one even when the true read- 
 ing is retained. ' It is tempting, when one remembers 
 the deep human sympathy of Jesus, and the part which 
 it played in the consciousness of his mission, to think 
 that this must in some way have lain at the bottom of 
 his choice of expression, and two of the passages — 
 the others do not give any clear indication one way 
 or another — are decidedly in favor of this view. Deeply 
 impressed with the sense of his character as the up- 
 lifter of humanity, it would be very natural that he 
 should catch up an expression which seemed to give 
 the essence of his mission so admirably, and which 
 already one of the great prophets had used to designate 
 himself, without of necessity his giving any special 
 thought to what the elder prophet had meant by it. 
 And at any rate Ezekiel is the most obvious source to 
 which to look for the origin of the phrase, for else- 
 where it is by no means so prominent as it is in Ezekiel, 
 and nowhere else is it applied, as Jesus applies it, to 
 a definit e person. The fact therefore, to repeat, that 
 ' Cf. Luke 22 : 69. 
 
234 T^^^^ ^if^ ^^^^ Teachings of Jestis. 
 
 Jesus chose such a term, and not one which pointed 
 clearly to a Messianic dignity, shows that he did not 
 wish to insist upon that dignity. Two or three other 
 indications also may be briefly mentioned. Jesus does 
 on one occasion speak to the people directly about the 
 Messiah, but it is to show them how utterly their con- 
 ception is in the wrong. If Christ is David's son, 
 how then doth David in spirit call him I^rd, saying, 
 The lyord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right 
 hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool ? Could 
 they not see that if the Messiah's dignity was just 
 what David's dignity had been, the leadership of a 
 material kingdom, David and the Messiah were ex- 
 actly on a level ? it was only if the Messianic dignity 
 was something higher than this, something in a 
 difierent realm, that David could call him lyord. But 
 here, unless the impression which the narrative makes 
 upon us is totally out of the way, there appears no 
 consciousness that the people were likely to apply this 
 to himself ; he speaks of the Messiah and of theories 
 about the Messiah in a much more impersonal way 
 than he could have done if he himself had been a 
 prominent candidate before the people. Then again 
 in another passage Jesus' opponents ask him what 
 authority he has for certain acts of his. The very 
 question shows that Jesus had not appeared in the 
 character of Messiah, for in that case the authority 
 which he claimed would have been evident. And in 
 his answer too he does not make this claim ; he declares 
 that his authority rests upon the plane on which John's 
 rested, the authority of truth everywhere against error 
 and falsehood, and that, if they will not recognize such 
 authority, he has none of the palpable evidence which 
 they demand. And of some weight too is the fact that 
 
The Messiah ship of Jesus, 235 
 
 when Jesus' enemies finally set about his destruction 
 and tried to involve him in political complications, 
 they found it impossible to get hold of any proof 
 against him. 
 
 According to the Gospels, just before Jesus was put 
 to death, when he was undergoing his trial, he did de- 
 clare openly to his judges the truth of what they were 
 trying to establish against him. It is not clear how 
 much authority can be given to this statement, but 
 there is nothing very improbable about it. Jesus saw 
 that his death was determined on, and his words no 
 longer could arouse false expectations ; to refuse now 
 to speak might seem to him cowardice rather than 
 prudence. But this implies that in a real sense Jesus 
 did look upon himself as the Messiah, and we may 
 now turn to the more important question as to just 
 what emphasis he put upon the fact in his own mind. 
 For the most part the belief prevails that he brought 
 it very emphatically to the foreground, that he made 
 altogether startling claims for himself and placed his 
 own person at the centre of his doctrine. We have 
 already indicated our belief that this is overdrawn, 
 that Jesus' idea of himself as the Messiah was 
 thoroughly tributary to his conception of the kingdom, 
 and that it only was the perception of the people's 
 need, and of his own ability to satisfy this need, which 
 clothed itself in the garb which it naturally would take 
 on in a Jewish mind, the belief that he was the 
 bringer of the only true salvation to his people, and 
 therefore the Messiah. Now the very fact that the 
 kingdom of heaven had such a supreme value in Jesus' 
 mind, and the way in which it is the kingdom and the 
 kingdom alone which is insisted on in the greater 
 number of his sayings, makes it unlikely that he di- 
 
236 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 vided his allegiance between two not very closely con- 
 nected doctrines. And again the narrative of the day 
 at Csesarea Philippi bears this out. Doubts have been 
 raised as to the genuineness of this account, but 
 they do not seem to us to be well founded. It 
 seems certainly to have been present in the earliest 
 source. Mark, it is true, and following him Luke, 
 omit Jesus' words, but the narrative which they do 
 have has all the marks of an abridgment. Apart 
 from Jesus' words Peter's statement ceases in large 
 measure to be intelligible, and in its brevity and 
 terseness gives no hint that the event was one of cap- 
 ital importance in Jesus' life. Since therefore Mark 
 makes of it the crisis in the development of his plot, 
 and since Mark, even when he is the freest, seldom 
 is without some basis in his source for his more im- 
 portant conceptions, it is probable that he had the 
 longer and more intelligible form before him. And 
 in this way it is easily explained how, with no sound 
 tradition to back him, he comes so near to being right 
 in his general conception of Jesus' Messianic relations 
 with the people. Moreover, he uses the opening sen- 
 tences of the narrative in another story of his own," 
 and when he does this it usually is with material which 
 he gets out of his source. But this would make the 
 origin of the passage much too early to let it be ex- 
 plained as due to Roman influence, and this is the only 
 natural explanation of it if it is not genuine. But 
 there really is no need to suspect the story, for it fits 
 in unobtrusively with what we have shown was the 
 general position which Jesus took. l/joked at as in fact 
 the words of Jesus, the passage makes it plain that not 
 even to the disciples had Jesus spoken of himself as 
 ' Mk. 6 : 14-16. 
 
The MessiahsJiip of Jesus. 237 
 
 the Messiah, but that he had been waiting till it should 
 be no external information to them, but they should 
 be read}' to see it with their own eyes, and to under- 
 stand it something as he did himself. It is only as 
 a first confession that the solemn joy of Jesus can be 
 understood. No flesh and blood could reveal it 
 to them, but only the Father in heaven. Up to this 
 time therefore Jesus had been to them only the Son of 
 man ; he had not been willing to force by any artificial 
 process a higher faith in him, although he had been 
 working and hoping that this might come about. 
 And now in fear and trembling he puts the question 
 which shall show whether or no he has succeeded, and 
 he finds that Peter at least has learned the lesson. 
 But with all this it is the kingdom, and not his own 
 position which is the great thing to him. The joy 
 that Jesus showed at Peter's confession was due, not 
 to the recognition of his own dignity, but to the fact 
 that this recognition revealed a dawning sense of what 
 the kingdom really was. Peter had been able to see 
 the head of that kingdom, not in a prince of the house 
 of David, but in a simple teacher of righteousness. 
 And the way in which Jesus goes on to speak is the 
 proof of this. For the reason that he gives for the joy 
 he has just expressed is that now at last the success of 
 the kingdom is assured. Jesus already saw that to him 
 the full assurance of victory was not to be given, 
 he was to set in motion the conflict, and that was all ; 
 and if he were to die with his message still not under- 
 stood, everything would have been thrown away. 
 But now that Peter once had taken the decisive step 
 and had gotten a glimpse, though ever so slight a one, 
 of Jesus' meaning, the truth would care for its own, 
 and the kingdom must conquer in the end, though the 
 
238 The Life a7id Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 very gates of Hades should oppose it. Peter was the 
 first, but he was the promise of all the great assembly 
 of the future. Just what form the new movement 
 was to take, what its outward organization was to be, 
 or whether it was to be organized at all, Jesus could 
 leave for the disciples themselves to work out as their 
 own needs and circumstances should prompt them ; 
 he was satisfied if he could get firmly settled in them 
 the living principle of truth. 
 
 The conception of Jesus' Messiahship was therefore 
 in his own mind distinctly subordinate to the concep- 
 tion of the kingdom of heaven. Nevertheless it would 
 be a mistake to minimize this element of his doctrine, 
 and there seems to be evidence to show that Jesus 
 really did claim for himself a position which at the 
 least was unique. A distinction must be made how- 
 ever between the claims which Jesus makes to the 
 people and those which he makes to the inner and 
 more intimate circle of his disciples. It does not 
 appear that in speaking to the people Jesus assumed 
 a much greater authority than any bold and earnest 
 prophet might have done, and the passages which 
 seems to go against this will not stand a critical scru- 
 tiny. The claim to forgive sins already drops away 
 with the miracle to which it is attached. The similar 
 claim to be I^ord of the Sabbath is less suspicious, and 
 might without very great difl&culty be made out to be 
 in harmony with Jesus' attitude ; but the ease with 
 which an Evangelist in telling of the incident might 
 draw the conclusion ' ' The Son of man is L<ord even 
 of the Sabbath," and the unlikelihood that Jesus, in 
 arguing with enemies, should have irritated them by a 
 useless and quite anomalous appeal to his own personal 
 authority, which was precisely what they did not 
 
The Messiahship of Jesus. 239 
 
 recognize, debars us from allowing any value to the 
 saying. Connected with this there is the somewhat 
 similar saying found only in Matthew, in which Jesus 
 speaks of himself as greater than the Temple, and 
 which probably is one of Matthew's own additions. 
 This has the same objection to it as the last, and both 
 moreover are precluded by the fact that they bring 
 confusion into Jesus' argument. Jesus wishes to show 
 that the accusation which the Pharisees bring against 
 his disciples is based upon no essential principle of 
 right and wrong, and he does this, as his custom is, 
 by appealing to the I/aw which they all recognize. He 
 only weakens and obscures this if he goes on to say, 
 At any rate I claim the authority to make what rules 
 I please about the Sabbath, or, Since the priests have 
 the right to perform their sacred duties in the Temple 
 on the Sabbath, and I am greater than the Temple, 
 those who are connected with my person have also 
 special privileges. Neither of these are arguments, 
 for they go on premises which are not admitted ; and 
 in the last one there is really no analogy between satis- 
 fying one's own needs and carrying on the ritual of wor- 
 ship. The most striking saying which we have left is 
 that in which Jesus compares himself to Solomon and 
 Jonah, and asserts his superiority to both. But while 
 he always speaks with authority it is seldom that he 
 puts his authority forward so prominently as he does 
 here. When he is talking with his disciples, however, 
 the case is somewhat different, and there can be little 
 doubt that he speaks with a self-confidence which at 
 times is almost startling ; though of course not all that 
 is attributed to him can be relied on. The baptismal 
 formula which is put in his mouth would have to be 
 rejected even if it were not represented as being spoken 
 
240 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 after his resurrection, for it clearly shows the influence 
 of dogma ; and the promise to be continually in the 
 midst of his disciples to answer prayer is an amplifica- 
 tion of a saying which we still have nearer in its 
 original form in Mark. ' Moreover, the saying which 
 Matthew records, " He that loveth father or mother 
 more than me is not worthy of me, ' ' probably must give 
 place to the form as it appears in I<uke, " If any man 
 Cometh to me, and hateth not his father and mother, 
 he cannot be my disciple " ; for the saying stands at 
 the head of a discourse, where the latter form is less 
 abrupt. And between the phrases ' ' for my sake ' ' and 
 "for the kingdom of heaven's sake," both of which 
 are found, the choice is doubtful, with perhaps an 
 advantage in favor of the latter. Nevertheless with 
 no uncertain voice Jesus proclaims himself their I^ord 
 and Master, above whom the disciple cannot rise, he 
 commands with all the authority of an " I say unto 
 you," prophets and kings have looked forward to his 
 day, to confess him is to be confessed before the Father. 
 Doubtless this was due in part to a perception of how 
 vast an incentive personal love and devotion must 
 prove in the disciples' lives, but it was also more than 
 this. The very fact that with such confidence Jesus 
 could have felt himself the Messiah of an ideal so 
 lofty and deep-reaching as his own, which made the 
 little ones of the new kingdom greater than the 
 greatest who had gone before, is proof positive of a 
 conviction that his was a relationship to God and men 
 above that which other men had found it possible to 
 attain. But this greatness is no external one, it is a 
 greatness which belongs to service, and which gives 
 him no privileges above his fellows ; in particular it is 
 ' Matt. 18 : 19-20; cf. Mk. 11 : 24. 
 
The Messiahship of Jesus. 241 
 
 a greatness which rests upon the greatness of the truth 
 which has been revealed to him. It is to this that Jesus 
 points in the passage which marks his Messianic con- 
 sciousness at its highest. " I thank thee, O Father, 
 lyord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these 
 things from the wise and understanding, and didst 
 reveal them unto babes : yea, Father ; for so it was 
 well pleasing in thy sight. All things have been 
 delivered unto me of my Father : and no one knoweth 
 the Son save the Father ; neither doth any know the 
 Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son 
 willeth to reveal him. Come unto me, all ye that 
 labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 
 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am 
 meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall find rest imto 
 your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is 
 light. ' ' The passage is unique among Jesus' sayings, 
 and yet we do not think that there is any sufficient 
 reasons to doubt that Jesus really spoke it. The 
 knowledge that in the midst of loneliness and mis- 
 understanding and the heartsickness of failure, God 
 knew the truth of him and had marked him for his 
 own, the consciousness that he was permitted to stand 
 in a special relation to the Father, and that to him 
 God had been revealed as he had not revealed himself 
 to any other man, that this revelation was a message of 
 infinite love and compassion to weary and burdened 
 men, which he alone was able to make real to them, 
 this is what gave Jesus his divine confidence. From 
 another man words like these would sound strange 
 and boastful ; from the lips of Jesus they come to us 
 
 naturally, because of Jesus they are true. 
 16 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 JESUS' ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE I<AW. 
 
 OF the general attitude which Jesus held towards 
 the Mosaic law and the religion of the Old Tes- 
 tament there can be no reasonable doubt. Jesus 
 certainly believed that the Old Testament furnished a 
 revelation of God's will, and upon it his own spiritual 
 life had been nourished. There is no evidence that 
 upon critical questions which concern the Old Testa- 
 ment he held views which differed from those views 
 which his contemporaries held ; critical questions one 
 might say indeed would have had very little attraction 
 to him. He reveres the Temple with all its associa- 
 tions ; he recognizes sacrifice as one way of paying 
 worship to God ; he does not blame the Pharisees be- 
 cause of the attention which they paid to the lesser 
 matters of the lyaw, but because they neglected what 
 was weightier ; there is one who is good, he says, and 
 therefore, in having his law the way to eternal life is 
 already given : so much we may agree to without hesi- 
 tation. 
 
 But this, after all has been said, really tells very 
 little indeed, for whatever at bottom Jesus' attitude 
 had been, this in any case would have been true. If 
 Jesus had possessed the reforming spirit, if he had 
 
 242 
 
yesus Attitude towards the Law. 243 
 
 been fond of attacking errors and correcting misap- 
 prehensions, the case would have been different ; but 
 the spirit of iconoclasm was least of all congenial to 
 Jesus, who cared most to insist upon positive truth. 
 Instead of overthrowing old institutions, and thus run- 
 ning the risk that men would lose the elements of 
 truth which these institutions contained, he set himself 
 to introduce, wherever he was able, a higher view, 
 which, as soon as it was mastered, should leave the old 
 one to fall away of itself. If, therefore, Jesus had 
 looked upon the Mosaic law as something temporary 
 and unessential, we should not have expected him to 
 state this plainly ; the age was not ready for such a 
 statement, and his disciples were not ready for it, and 
 he only could give to them principles which afterwards 
 they might carry out for themselves. Nor is it quite 
 right to speak of this as an accommodation to the dis- 
 ciples' views. Jesus' reverence for the old religion and 
 his recognition of its divine character would be per- 
 fectly sincere, and he only would not insist upon what 
 he thought would for the present do more harm than 
 good. And this, if it had been Jesus' attitude, we now 
 are in a position to see would have been the only thing 
 for him to do. One cannot teach truth by stating it in so 
 many words ; such a statement is worse than useless un- 
 less the hearer can be made to see the basis upon which 
 the truth rests, the reason for it. And how impossible it 
 would have been to make the disciples understand this, 
 we can guess from the fact that even that which formed 
 the centre of Jesus' teaching and which continually he 
 was insisting on, the kingdom of heaven as a kingdom 
 of righteousness, the disciples never more than half 
 understood. 
 The great mistake of later Judaism lay in the fact 
 
244 ^^ ^if^ ^^^^ Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 that it was a religion based almost wholly upon an out- 
 ward revelation in the past, the religion of a book. 
 God, it was thought, had given a certain number of 
 rules which men were to observe, not because there 
 was anything in the rules themselves which claimed 
 their obedience, but because God had commanded 
 them ; and in this Law religion was contained. It was 
 not until comparatively late times that the elaboration 
 of these rules reached such a height that they became 
 an intolerable burden ; then the scribes, by an endless 
 hair-splitting, had drawn from the more general com- 
 mands in the Old Testament applications to almost 
 every conceivable case, and each of these was just as 
 binding as if it had been expressly stated in the Law. 
 But we must not overlook the fact that the same thing 
 was to be found in the Old Testament itself, although 
 there it was not yoX. carried to such absurd lengths. 
 The ritual legislation, the distinction between what 
 was clean and what was not clean, were already laid 
 down in the Law with wearisome detail, and were rec- 
 ognized as binding in just the same degree as the moral 
 requirements. And the casuistry of later times was a 
 necessary result of this, for puzzling cases must con- 
 stantly be arising, and then men had to have some rule 
 to follow. Doubtless this strictness in guarding the 
 Law was not without its advantages, but the essential 
 defect of it all, as we have said, was the attempt to 
 make religion depend upon external authority. God, 
 it was thought, might command what he pleased, and 
 that the rules were quite arbitrary, that they had no 
 moral quality in the least, counted for nothing against 
 the fact that God had commanded them. To abstain 
 from pork was just as much a command of God as to 
 abstain from murder, and from this the step was not a 
 
yesMS Attitude towards the Law. 245 
 
 very long one that the one was as important as the 
 other ; it was a mistake which the prophets had fore- 
 seen, and into which the nation as a whole gradually 
 but surely fell. What right had men to make any dis- 
 tinction between God's commands? Were they not 
 all equally important ? And so the distinction between 
 moral duties and ritual duties grew weaker and 
 weaker. Injustice would tend to become a crime, not 
 because it was unjust, but because it was forbidden ; 
 and consequently, if one could be unjust, and still 
 could keep within the letter of the law, he had nothing 
 to fear. And it was just to this that Judaism came. 
 The letter of the I^aw was everything, the spirit very 
 little ; men might seize upon the pretext of a religious 
 duty to neglect the duty which they owed their par- 
 ents. And quite as naturally was the Pharisaic self- 
 sufficiency, his utter lack of humility and of sympathy 
 with his fellows, the result of this tendency. When 
 duty is made a matter of the heart no man is likely to 
 come so close to his ideal that he is greatly inclined to 
 pride himself upon his attainments. But with the 
 Pharisees religious duty was a perfectly definite thing, 
 not too far out of the reach of a careful man. He was 
 not to commit murder — well, that was not a very hard 
 task : angry thoughts he did not concern himself much 
 about. He had certain definite things to avoid, cer- 
 tain definite washings and sacrifices to go through, and 
 every now and then he might well look back upon a 
 day in which he had walked with well-nigh perfect 
 uprightness. 
 
 Now was this in any way Jesus' attitude towards 
 the I^aw ? did he think of the I^aw as something which 
 in its smallest prescriptions was of divine authority, 
 which in its ritual was always to be binding upon the 
 
246 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 citizens of the new kingdom ? As has been said al- 
 ready, we cannot expect that Jesus will answer this 
 question directl)-, and we only can judge of what his 
 answer would be by the indications which he lets fall. 
 And to begin with, Jesus does not speak of his teach- 
 ing as the revival of old truth which had become 
 neglected, he speaks of it as something new. It is 
 new wine that cannot be contained in old bottles ; the 
 personal element in his teaching — I say unto you — he 
 constantly is making prominent ; the scribe who is in- 
 structed into the kingdom is neither to neglect the 
 former things nor to make them all-important, he is 
 to bring forth from his store-house things new and old. 
 Now this, by itself, if we consider it, is really a setting 
 aside of the old point of view ; the Law no longer is 
 the perfect standard, and instead of being judged by 
 it, Jesus judges the I^aw. The one who is but little in 
 the kingdom which Jesus announces is greater than 
 the greatest who came before him, greater, therefore, 
 than Moses himself, who gave the Law. And this 
 principle Jesus does not hesitate to put in practice. 
 The Law grants divorce, Jesus says that divorce is 
 not to be granted ; the Law permits retaliation, and 
 Jesus forbids it : the authority, the perfect straight- 
 forw^ardness with which Jesus does this, shows that 
 however sacred the Law was to him, it was not the 
 simple fact that a command was in the Law which 
 made it sacred, but that he had a standard by which 
 even the Law was to be measured. And still more sig- 
 nificant is the silence of Jesus. In Jesus' controversies 
 with the Pharisees he once or twice directly opposes a 
 precept of the Law, but ordinarily he does not do this. 
 On the contrary, he opposes the law to the later tra- 
 dition, which the Pharisees observed, and even when 
 
yesus Attitude towards the Law. 247 
 
 he is arguing against divorce, he does this by an ap- 
 peal to another passage in the Law. But while in this 
 Jesus seems to argue as the scribes might have argued, 
 it is remarkable that he never appeals to anything 
 which does not have a direct moral significance, and 
 which does not carry its own authority with it. This 
 is indeed the value which expressly he sets upon the 
 Old Testament, its power for righteousness. Whatso- 
 ever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even 
 so to them, — this is to him the I^aw and the prophets. 
 That which sums up everything is love to God and 
 love to one's neighbor ; judgment, mercy, truth, these 
 are the weightier matters of the Law. And the utter 
 absence of any reference to circumcision, to the per- 
 formance of ritual duties, is really decisive against 
 them. If, when other men were insisting upon these, 
 Jesus planted himself squarely upon righteousness, 
 and made righteousness the sole condition, we hardly 
 can think that it was an oversight on Jesus' part, or 
 that he did not see the bearing of his own teachings. 
 And fortunately we have several instances where, in 
 a less general way, Jesus shows what his real attitude 
 was, and first is his teaching in reference to the Sab- 
 bath. Jesus' argument was directed against Rabbinical 
 subtilties, and it had no direct reference to the Old 
 Testament at all ; but really it tells nearly as strongly 
 against the priestly views of the Sabbath which we 
 find in the Old Testament, as it does against the 
 Rabbis. And that Jesus was not unaware of this, we 
 might gather from the illustration which he gives 
 about the shew-bread. " Have ye not read what David 
 did, when he was an hungred, and they that were with 
 him ; how he entered into the house of God, and did 
 eat the shew-bread, which it was not lawful for him to 
 
248 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 eat, neither for them that were with him, but only for 
 the priests ? ' ' Here certainly it is a violation of the 
 Law which Jesus justifies, and if this illustration 
 proves that the Rabbinical rule may be broken, it 
 proves just as clearly that the rule about shew-bread 
 may be broken also without oflfence to God, The argu- 
 ment can scarcely be simply that in a case of great 
 necessity God's commandment may be overborne. 
 This of itself would compel one to go further and to 
 make distinctions, for surely Jesus never would have 
 justified this in the case of the " weightier matters " of 
 the Law ; and besides, in this case, the need of the 
 disciples seems by no means to have been great, and so 
 such a consideration would not be suggested b}^ the 
 incident. Really it seems to lead to this, that require- 
 ments of this sort which have no moral significance, 
 cannot be the immutable, the eternal will of God, and 
 so cannot have that sanction which the Pharisees as- 
 serted. We might appeal also to the way in which 
 Jesus bases forgiveness of sins altogether upon moral 
 grounds, without any reference to offerings or sacri- 
 fices. But what is most decisive is the attitude which 
 he shows towards ceremonial cleanness. ' ' There is 
 nothing," he says, " from without that entering into a 
 man can defile him, but the things which come out 
 firom a man, these defile the man." Here, too, the 
 argument is directed in the first place against the tra- 
 ditional additions to the Law, and we may doubt 
 whether the explanation of the saying which the Gos- 
 pels give really came from Jesus. But there can be no 
 doubt that the explanation is the true one, and what- 
 ever Jesus' reference may have been, the argument 
 applies just as decisively to the Old Testament regula- 
 tions with regard to clean and unclean food. Did 
 
Jesus Attitude towards the Law. 249 
 
 Jesus, with all his clear-sightedness, fail to see this? 
 did he think that the principle which he sets down 
 clearly and without limitation applies to the traditions 
 of the Rabbis, and ceases to apply when it come in 
 contact with the Law ? if Jesus fails to make this dis- 
 tinction for himself, we do not feel justified in making 
 it for him. 
 
 Taken altogether, these indications give a pretty 
 clear account of what Jesus' position was. There are 
 three attitudes, any one of which it is conceivable he 
 might have taken. He might have set everything in 
 the Law squarely on the same basis, so far as its obli- 
 gatoriness went, or he might have put the supreme value 
 of the Law on its power for righteousness. And in 
 this latter case again, he might or he might not have 
 recognized all that his position implied. For since the 
 Law does actually consist of a mixture of absolute 
 principles with much that is arbitrary and that has 
 very little to do with righteousness, it would be quite 
 possible for one, taking only the grand sweep of the 
 book into his account, to lay the great emphasis upon 
 the principles which do indeed run through it, and 
 still not go the length of rejecting out and out the 
 other elements which it contains, but, without scru- 
 tinizing carefully the basis of their authority, accept 
 them as a matter of fact, and then simply suffer them 
 to drop into the background. This is the attitude 
 which to-day is adopted widely with reference to the 
 Bible ; everything that is in the Bible is claimed to be 
 divine, but the stress is laid upon the general trend of 
 the Book, and what is inconsistent with this general 
 trend is practically ignored. We have tried to show 
 that not only did Jesus not take the first position, but 
 that in looking at the Law as a power for righteousness 
 
250 The Life and Teachings of ^esiis. 
 
 and not as a legal code, he recognized that this meant 
 in time the falling away of much that was in the Law 
 itself, the rooting up of everything the heavenly Father 
 had not planted. There are, however, in our Gospels, 
 several sajdngs which tend to disprove this position 
 though some of these are found in passages which for 
 other reasons have already been rejected. And of the 
 two which remain one must be given up without hesi- 
 tation, the passage in which Jesus exhorts the people 
 to observ^e the tradition of the elders. Not only is this 
 utterly opposed to the rest of Jesus' teaching, but the 
 critical reasons against it are unusually strong. The 
 whole passage by which Matthew introduces the woes 
 against the Pharisees seems to be a literary combina- 
 tion. The address changes in an impossible way from 
 the people to the disciples, and then to the Pharisees. 
 The accusation against the scribes, that they give no 
 help to those whom they load with burdens, as it seems 
 originally to have been, becomes an accusation that 
 they do not bear these burdens themselves, and this 
 historically seems not to have been true. Then Mark's 
 parallel account is inserted, and five verses follow, two 
 of which we still have in their original connection in 
 the source from which both I^uke and Matthew drew, 
 while the other three, the prohibition of titles, appar- 
 ently are of a later origin. It hardly was necessary to 
 warn Galilean fishermen against accepting the title of 
 Rabbi ; the Christ is spoken of in a very objective way, 
 and the position which he is given is the later theo- 
 logical one ; and the whole spirit of the prohibition 
 does not suggest Jesus, who himself accepted the title 
 of Rabbi and teacher without demur. The discourse 
 may originally have opened with the verse which gives 
 its motive, ' ' Ye shut the kingdom of heaven against 
 
yesus Attitude towards the Law. 251 
 
 men." The other passage, however, of which we 
 spoke, and which is found at the beginning of the 
 Sermon on the Mount, deserves a more elaborate 
 treatment. 
 
 "Think not," says Jesus, "that I came to destroy 
 the lyaw or the prophets : I came not to destroy, but 
 to ftdfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and 
 earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise 
 pass away from the I^aw, till all things be accomplished. 
 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least com- 
 mandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least 
 in the kingdom of heaven : but whosoever shall do and 
 teach them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of 
 heaven." If Jesus really spoke these words, they settle 
 at once his position in regard to the Law, for it does 
 not seem possible legitimately to get any other meaning 
 out of them than what appears on the surface. Critics 
 who have not wished to admit this, have tried to give a 
 different turn to them : Professor Bruce, for example, has 
 explained them merely as a protest against a hasty and 
 irreverent setting aside of these time-honored require- 
 ments, against the negative spirit, the spirit of icono- 
 clasm ; and others see in them only a highly figurative 
 assertion of the perpetuity of the Law in its grand and 
 essential features. But, however one may try to per- 
 suade himself of this, as soon as he comes back to the 
 words themselves he must feel that his explanations 
 are not perfectly natural ones. If Jesus had wished to 
 say that the Law, in its entirety, was to be perpetually 
 valid, could he have used any stronger words than 
 these, or indeed any very different words ? Till heaven 
 and earth pass, not the smallest letter shall pass from 
 the Law ; the very least commandment it is forbidden 
 to set aside. It seems to us that these words are to be 
 
252 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 taken naturally, upon the face of them, in their literal 
 sense. If an American orator, in talking of the Con- 
 stitution, were to say, Not a letter shall be altered while 
 the country stands, and he who disputes the smallest 
 provision that it contains is a traitor, we should not 
 naturally suppose him to mean only that the Consti- 
 tution was a work of broad-minded statesmanship, 
 embodying excellent political principles, but not nec- 
 essarily adapted in its details to the future, because the 
 Constitution carries to us, just as the Law carried to 
 the Jew, the idea of a definite document. Now sup- 
 pose that when Jesus says neither jot nor tittle is to 
 pass away, he can mean simply that the ethical stand- 
 ard of the L,aw shall not be lowered a particle, can he 
 mean this when he speaks of the least commandment ? 
 Commandments are commandments, not principles ; 
 instead of looking at the I^aw as an ethical standard 
 and so ignoring its legal side, he here uses the very 
 expression which points to definite prescriptions. The 
 word ' ' least ' ' emphasizes this reference. We know 
 what Jesus meant by the lesser matters of the Law ; 
 what can this least commandment mean but the ceremo- 
 nial precepts as well ? And another reason against this 
 interpretation lies in the fact that Jesus' hearers could 
 not have understood him to have this meaning, and 
 must even have understood him very differently. The 
 Pharisees were accusing Jesus, not in the least of low- 
 ering the ethical standard of the Law, but of breaking 
 its ceremonial requirements. It is true that in their 
 minds the accent was not upon the " ceremonial," but 
 upon the " Law," for to them the Law was a whole; 
 nevertheless', it was really to the Law as ceremonial 
 that their complaint had reference. If now to this 
 state of mind Jesus had addressed such words as these, 
 
Jesus Attitude towards the Law. 253 
 
 they only could have been understood in one sense, 
 that the Law, as the Jews understood it, was to be per- 
 petually valid. So that Jesus lays himself open to the 
 charge intentionally of using words liable to be mis- 
 understood, in order to defend himself against the 
 charge of his enemies. And even granting he meant 
 to be understood in the less obvious way, and that his 
 hearers so understood him, there is the further diffi- 
 culty that he is begging the whole question, for in 
 ignoring the I,aw as a legal code, he is ignoring the 
 very point which the Pharisees made against him. 
 
 For these reasons we cannot convince ourselves that 
 the words are meant to be understood other than in 
 their literal sense, so that if Jesus really spoke them, 
 he is here expressly denying the position which we 
 have attributed to him. But did Jesus really speak 
 these words ? if he did speak them, then they stand 
 alone among his sayings, they are contrary to what 
 there are strong reasons for thinking was Jesus' real 
 belief; and this is enough to make them very doubtful. 
 And the passage as an interpolation is easily explained. 
 The question of the Law was a most important one in 
 the early Church, and some Jewish copyist, meeting 
 with the words of Jesus, " I came not to destroy, but to 
 fulfil, ' ' may well have thought he was only carrying 
 out and expounding Jesus' meaning, in opposition to 
 the Paulinists, by this note which he added. This 
 moreover explains the emphasis which is laid upon 
 teaching that the Law is abrogated, a thing which 
 seems to imply the actual controversy in the Church ; 
 whereas Jesus, in a discourse relating wholly to per- 
 sonal conduct, would not have been likely to bring in 
 this allusion to a future error of doctrine. What, how- 
 ever, is most decisive is the fact that we can still detect 
 
254 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 in our passage a mixture of two entirely distinct points 
 of view. "Think not," says Jesus, "that I came 
 to destroy the Law or the prophets : I came not to 
 destroy, but to fulfil. ' ' Now what does this sentence 
 fairly imply ? Does it not imply that there was some- 
 thing in Jesus' teaching w^iich seemed to a superficial 
 view an abrogation of the Law ? Why otherwise 
 should it occur to them to think that he had come to 
 destroy ? But, says Jesus, this is not so : even when 
 I seem to destroy I am really bringing out the true, 
 the hidden principle which the Law strove to express 
 in a partial, a tentative way. But in the verses 
 which follow, the verses let us notice where all the 
 critical difiSculty occurs, the point of view suddenly 
 changes, and we have a man to whom the Law is 
 everything, who clings passionately to the smallest 
 letter as well, and will not endure the least change in 
 it. And with this first point of view, not with the 
 second, the sayings which follow agree. "I came 
 not," says Jesus, "to destro}-, but to fulfil"; and 
 then he goes on to show how this fulfilment is to be 
 brought about ; instead of a command against mur- 
 der, no angry feelings, instead of a command against 
 adultery, no lustful desires, instead of strict justice, 
 mercy, instead of partial love, love which is complete. 
 If this interpretation is correct then, it is a clear 
 statement of the attitude which w^e have attributed to 
 Jesus. The idea had alreadj^ got afloat that Jesus was 
 for breaking down the Law, and in answer to this he 
 declares that he has no mind to destroy but to com- 
 plete. But this very statement implies that Jesus 
 recognized the incompleteness of the Law, and in 
 showing how this incompleteness is to be remedied he 
 points out in detail some of the defects he has in his 
 
yesMS Attitude towards the Law. 255 
 
 thought. It would not touch the general position of 
 Jesus, although that position would not be so dis- 
 tinctly stated in the present passage, if these words 
 actually were spoken, as some have thought, with the 
 practice of the Pharisees particularly in view, and not 
 the teaching of the Law. The evidence, however, 
 seems to us to go against this theory. The word 
 n\i]p&)Gai might in the connection have any one of 
 three meanings. It might mean that Jesus had come 
 to fulfil the Law in the sense that a prophecy might 
 be fulfilled, by doing what had been looked forward 
 to and in a sense foretold when the Law was given ; 
 or it might mean that Jesus was to exhibit in his own 
 life a perfect realization of the Law ; or that, as we 
 have held, he came to complete it, to fill it with a 
 fuller meaning. As for the first theory, which is a 
 popular one, that Jesus by his death was to fulfil the 
 Old Testament ritual and so do away with it, it only 
 need be mentioned in passing. Whoever holds this 
 theory will probably not be willing to reject the follow- 
 ing verses, and so it may be pointed out that one does 
 not talk about heaven and earth passing if he only 
 means a year or so ; and besides it was only after Jesus* 
 death that what he forbids could occur, the teaching 
 that some of the Law was no longer binding. Between 
 the other two meanings there are several considera- 
 tions which decide in favor of the last one. In the 
 first place ' ' complete "is a better contrast to ' ' de- 
 stroy ' ' than ' ' perform completely " is : to " destroy 
 the Law" and to "complete the Law," that is, are 
 both to produce certain modifying and external effects 
 upon the Law itself Moreover, it is something quite 
 anomalous in Jesus' teaching, if he lays the stress 
 upon his own perfect life, and not upon the perfection 
 
256 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 of the truth which he brings ; Jesus elsewhere never 
 transgresses the virtue of humility when his own per- 
 sonal character is concerned. And it also stands alone 
 in the discourse in which it is found, for through- 
 out the Sermon Jesus does not again call attention to 
 himself ; whereas if the word means ' ' to complete, ' ' it 
 stands in an intimate connection with the sayings 
 which follow. Jesus says that he has come to complete 
 the Law, and then he goes on immediately to show 
 how this completion is to be brought about. The 
 obvious connection between these two sections, when 
 they are interpreted in such a way, goes far to show 
 that the interpretation is a true one. 
 
 If therefore nXijpwaai is to be translated " to com- 
 plete " the law, it is almost certain that in the succeed- 
 ing verses Jesus has the Law direct in mind, and not 
 simply Pharisaic perversions of the Law. There are 
 arguments indeed for this last alternative. The phra- 
 seology which Jesus uses, it is argued, ' ' ye have heard 
 that it hath been said, ' ' instead of "ye have read, ' ' 
 points to the teaching prevalent in the synagogue ; and 
 the illustrations which follow are thought to show the 
 Pharisaic temper in a slavish clinging to the letter, and 
 a refusal to enter into the spirit of the old command. 
 And particularly this would be the case with the in- 
 junction, not simply to love one's neighbor, but to hate 
 one's enemy as well. But the first argument is weak- 
 ened by the fact that while Jesus naturally would say 
 " ye have read," in addressing Pharisees and Rabbis, he 
 just as naturally would say, ' ' ye have heard, ' ' when he 
 had to do with uneducated listeners, who had got the 
 most of their knowledge by word of mouth . Moreover, 
 ' ' I say unto you ' ' is better contrasted with ' ' it hath been 
 said ' ' than with ' ' ye have heard ' ' ; and the very fact 
 
yesus Attitude towards the Law. 257 
 
 that the Old Testament is mentioned at all is enough 
 to show that Jesus had it in his mind. If Jesus had 
 been thinking of the Pharisees' teaching he would 
 probably have put it, " ye have heard it said," and not 
 ' ' ye have heard that Moses said. ' ' And as for the other 
 objection, we have already indicated that we think the 
 last clause is to be thrown out ; and besides it is in no 
 wise probable that the Pharisees, any more than the 
 Law itself, made hatred of enemies an express theolog- 
 ical tenet in their synagogue teaching. And if this 
 clause is dropped all the illustrations are then based 
 directly upon the Old Testament, and Jesus' teaching 
 is just as truly an advance upon the I^aw as it is upon 
 the Pharisees' interpretation. To be sure Jesus con- 
 siders that he is only carrying out principles which really 
 lie at the basis of the Old Testament regulations, and 
 which any one, if he had insight enough, might extract 
 from them, but this does not alter the fact that in 
 reality the lyaw had stopped half-way, and failed to 
 carry out the principles to their true conclusion. 
 
 To sum up, therefore, once again, Jesus occupies 
 himself first and foremost with the positive value of 
 the I,aw for righteousness. He says nothing against 
 ritual, because in itself ritual may be a good thing ; 
 he simply ignores it, and by ignoring it he denies its 
 authority. A perfect illustration of what Jesus' method 
 was we find in a lesser question, the matter of fasting. 
 In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus recognizes fasting 
 as a legitimate form of religious exercise, and he as- 
 sumes that his disciples will practise it. But when 
 the Pharisees are for making it a religious rule, a thing 
 of divine appointment, Jesus refuses to submit to this. 
 " Can ye make the children of the bride-chamber fast so 
 
 long as the bridegroom is with them ? But the days will 
 17 
 
258 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 come in which the bridegroom shall be taken from them, 
 and then shall they fast. ' ' Fasting may be a good 
 thing, he has nothing to say against it ; but it only is 
 good when it is a perfectly natural expression of reli- 
 gious feeling, and any attempt to make it more than 
 this, to make it an obligation, Jesus steadily resists. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 JESUS ' DOCTRINE OP GOD AND MAN. 
 
 THE religious conception of Jesus, which he em- 
 bodied in his one comprehensive doctrine of the 
 kingdom of heaven, gathers itself about two main 
 centres, which modern thought indeed has often tried 
 to show have no essential connection with one another, 
 but which in Jesus' mind were closely bound together, 
 and each of which played a necessary part in making 
 up the final harmony of his view of the world. These 
 two central conceptions were, on the one side his doc- 
 trine of God, and on the other side his strong realiza- 
 tion of the obligation and the beauty of righteous 
 character, and his sense of the pre-eminent dignity and 
 value which it lent to every being who was capable 
 of attaining to it. Indeed it was the very intensity 
 of these two beliefs which brought it about that there 
 were no more, which kept Jesus' doctrine so admirably 
 simple, and enabled him to let go of the swarm of half- 
 religious conceptions which filled the creeds of his 
 time. For the most part it is not men of deep religious 
 feeling whom we expect will be the first to see the 
 insufficiency of the prevalent forms into which religious 
 truth has become cast. The very vividness of their 
 religious insight invests the forms as well as the inner 
 
 259 
 
26o The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 reality, unless these forms are morall}^ unworthy as 
 well, with a sacredness which keeps them from seeing 
 the deficiencies. It often happens that the very defects 
 of a man's mind are of use to him in discovering the 
 negative aspects of truth. It is his insensibility to 
 what is really of value in an inadequate conception 
 which enables him to disentangle the knot which 
 holds the true and the false elements together, and to 
 see wherein the inadequacy consists. It only is in 
 supreme minds that the intensity and white heat of 
 real and positive truth ser\jes this same purpose, and 
 crumbles away everything that has the least element 
 of weakness in it. And it was in this, rather than in 
 the critical way, that Jesus' mind acted. 
 
 Jesus' doctrine of God is not a product of philoso- 
 phizing, but the outcome of a real personal need and of 
 a direct insight. Jesus never reasons about the exist- 
 ence of God, but he simply assumes it. It was in an 
 atmosphere of belief in God that he grew up, and there 
 was but little in the influences which were brought to 
 bear upon him which could tend to call up the philo- 
 sophic doubts of modem times. Atheism, if real 
 atheism there was at all, in the circle in which Jesus 
 moved, was only the wilful disbelief of the wicked 
 man to whom the thought of God was distasteful. 
 But the influence which this belief has over Jesus 
 is not due to the fact that he had been taught to 
 believe it, for he had been taught to believe other 
 things which he afterwards came to set aside ; it is due 
 to its meeting and satisfying the deepest needs in 
 Jesus' own nature. Accordingly he has not simply 
 taken up the conception as it came to him, but he has 
 modified it ver)'' essentially in accordance with his own 
 personal genius. The God of Jesus is both more com- 
 
yesus Doctrine of God and Man. 261 
 
 prehensive and more human than the God of Judaism. 
 The latter was essentially a being throned outside the 
 world, whose direct relationship to men was spasmodic 
 and supernatural. But to Jesus this was too cold a 
 conception. He had too keen a sense for the color and 
 life of external nature, to be willing that this should 
 be shut off from the all-pervading influence of the 
 divine working. Accordingly to him the universe is 
 filled with God ; God is immanent in nature, if we may 
 give a somewhat modern tinge to the statement. He 
 clothes the lily and directs the sparrow's fall, with 
 impartial beneficence he sends his rain on the evil and 
 on the good. Whether Jesus was perfectly consistent 
 in following this out it is very difl&cult to say. Strictly 
 it would do away with the Jewish belief in Satan and 
 a host of evil spirits who exert an influence on earthly 
 matters ; but there is not enough evidence to show 
 whether Jesus went so far as to reject this view alto- 
 gether. It is true that the Gospels attribute to him 
 clearly enough a belief in Satan and in demons, but 
 the great bulk of these passages are dubious in the 
 extreme. The passage in which he defends himself 
 against the accusation of the Pharisees, and the parable 
 of the demoniac, are the only clear pieces of evidence, 
 and these do not settle the question the one way or the 
 other. In the first instance he confessedly is adopting 
 the standpoint of his opponents, and in any case his 
 habit of mind is so picturesque that he naturally 
 would be led to make use of a popular belief which lent 
 itself so readily to vivid description. And the parable 
 of the demoniac in particular, with its demons roaming 
 restlessly about in the dry places, and coming back to 
 their home to find it empty, swept, and garnished, 
 impresses us as decidedly not being a literal attempt 
 
262 The Life and TcacJimgs of Jesus. 
 
 to give Jesus' ideas about devils. And if the popu- 
 lar views of the habits of evil spirits Jesus regarded 
 merely as a bit of poetry with which to give color to a 
 parable, the probability is that he did not stop here. 
 Moreover, it may be noticed that Jesus ordinarily 
 places the source of evil with the man himself, in the 
 human heart. The good man out of the good treasure 
 brings forth good things, and the evil man out of the 
 evil treasure brings forth evil things. If in the Sermon 
 on the Mount Jesus speaks of the evil one as a source 
 of evil, this also may be only a natural use of an ordi- 
 nary conception ; and the very fact that it is decidedly 
 uncertain whether the word is a masculine or a neuter 
 goes to show that he did not have the thought of an 
 evil personality clearly fixed before his mind. 
 
 A much more important modification, however, of 
 the common doctrine of God was that which had to do 
 with the personal relations between God and men. We 
 are become so used to the phrase, the Fatherhood of 
 God, that we fail sometimes to realize all the meaning 
 that it carries with it. It is the final and definite re- 
 jection of all that is barbarous and arbitrary in the idea 
 of God. It means the coming over to religion of the 
 mightily transforming power of love. God is no longer 
 a being to propitiate, to ser\^e with fear and trembling 
 lest he be angry ; religion does not consist in the careful 
 avoiding of a multitude of things which a stern law- 
 giver has forbidden ; but God himself is the first to ofier 
 forgiveness to his erring children, and the knowledge 
 that it is God's will that is being done gives a new joy 
 and incentive to action. Worship accordingly ceases 
 to be the perfunctory thing which Judaism had made 
 of it. No longer something which God commands 
 for his own glory, it is the unforced outpouring of the 
 
Jesus Doctrine of God and Man. 263 
 
 worshipper's heart to one whose goodness he adores 
 and whose loving aid he is sure of before he asks for it. 
 Since, therefore, God is not a God outside the world, 
 but constantly is working in it, since all things depend 
 upon the will of God and carry out his loving purposes, 
 Jesus could teach his disciples perfect trust in God 
 even in the material things of this life, and could warn 
 them against the anxiety which could see no over- 
 looking Providence caring for the affairs of men. It 
 certainly would be a mistake to interpret this as if 
 Jesus were an impractical idealist who would have his 
 followers leave the solid ground of reality and live in 
 the visionary realm where the question of bread and 
 butter no longer called for any thought or interest. 
 This would show an unwarrantable neglect to make 
 allowance for the character of Jesus' style. In reality 
 it is the same thought which Paul expresses in less 
 picturesque language, that all things work together for 
 good to them that love God. Doubtless even then the 
 doctrine is difficult for us to hold with the absolute 
 confidence with which Jesus gave expression to it. 
 Nevertheless, if the world is not a bad world, if good- 
 ness and joy do in the last analysis lie at the basis of 
 it, such a belief is no fool's dream with which to cheat 
 ourselves, but a faith which is well founded, even 
 though there is much that seems to go against it ; and 
 the fact that we often seem to ourselves to be losing 
 this faith, is only because we do not see so clearly as 
 Jesus did the divineness of the world. And when this 
 unfaith takes the form of anxious worryings, of con- 
 tinual absorption in the grosser things of life so that 
 the higher powers of the soul have no opportunity left 
 them for action, then it becomes an unmitigated evil, 
 and deserves all the warning that Jesus directs against 
 
264 The Life and Teachings of fesus. 
 
 it. In connection with this also is to be considered 
 Jesus' doctrine of prayer. Jesus encourages his follow- 
 ers to bring their needs to God, and ask for his assist- 
 ance, and the assurance that their prayers will be heard 
 he bases upon the fact of God's love, which always is 
 working for the best good of his children. It would 
 seem from a few passages that Jesus meant by this 
 what a later and somewhat mechanical interpretation 
 has supposed him to mean, that prayer is an instru- 
 ment for forcing from God directly a definite, and, if 
 need be, miraculous answer, but this is opposed to the 
 whole trend of Jesus' teaching, and to his constant 
 exaltation of the will of God. And there is after all 
 no good support for such a view, for the saying about 
 a sycamore tree removed and planted in the sea, when 
 it is taken out of its secondary connection in the story 
 of the barren fig-tree, is clearly a highly figurative ex- 
 pression ; and the saying about the efficiency of prayer 
 which appears in the discourse about ofiFences, has in all 
 probability been treated very freely by Matthew and 
 Mark alike, so that we cannot reckon on its original 
 form. And Jesus' own pra^-er which has come down 
 to us shows what form it was he meant that petitions 
 for material blessings should take, and how it was 
 based upon the deeper conviction of the beneficent 
 working of God in the material world. 
 
 The doctrine of God which Jesus held undoubtedly 
 gave a deeper and more abiding sanction to his insist- 
 ence on righteousness. It gives in the first place the 
 assurance that efforts for righteousness will not prove 
 impotent, and that goodness has enlisted on its side 
 the power which is supreme, and so is sure to conquer 
 in the end. Moreover it brings the motive of loving 
 gratitude into play ; Jesus could say, as in effect he 
 
Jesus Doctrine of God and Man. 265 
 
 did sa}^ The love of God which he has shown to you, 
 and which you owe to him, makes it incumbent on you, 
 if you are not to be self-convicted of ingratitude, to 
 work all the harder to accomplish God's will for you. 
 But it probably is neither on the authority of God, nor 
 on the love of God, though both these motives go to 
 swell the stream, that Jesus rests ultimately the obliga- 
 tion of right-doing. Here again Jesus does not go 
 upon philosophy, but on insight ; he does not reason 
 that such and such a thing is right, but he assumes 
 that when it is pointed out to them all men will recog- 
 nize its obligation. He goes on authority, as the Jews 
 did, but it is on the authority of the moral insight 
 rather than on the authority of external commands. 
 And the supreme value of his teaching about righteous- 
 ness lies in the marvellous lucidity of his vision, and 
 the unerring touch with which he settles upon just the 
 principles which continued experience and modern 
 scrutiny tend to establish most firmly and securely. 
 
 One of the most noticeable features which this intro- 
 duced into Jesus' teaching was the supreme importance 
 and value which he attached to the individual. This 
 was due, in part, to his keen sympathies with the sor- 
 rows and misery of men, and to the clearing away of 
 all artificial distinctions and harsh, unloving judg- 
 ments which his perception of the love of God would 
 necessarily bring about. When Jesus came with the 
 announcement, Blessed are the poor, blessed are the 
 sorrowful, when he turned to the publicans and harlots, 
 he struck, in a very large measure, a new note in reli- 
 gion. The old religion of Israel had been a religion for 
 the nation ; Jesus' religion was a religion for the man, 
 and not for the wise man alone, nor for the strong man. 
 Blessed are the poor, blessed are they that mourn ; not 
 
266 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 because they are poor, but because poverty is no longer 
 to debar them from their manhood ; not because they 
 mourn, but because comfort is within their reach. And 
 his perception that righteousness is not something 
 to be brought about in the lump, but that each man 
 must win it for himself in his owm character, went also 
 to make him turn his efforts, first of all, to the indi- 
 vidual. He made no attempt to found an organization 
 in the strict sense of the word. It was in the disciples' 
 hands that the keys of the kingdom were placed, to 
 bind or loose, as the Spirit should direct them. Into 
 questions of politics he declined to enter : ' ' Render 
 unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God 
 the things that are God's," was his answer to the 
 eternal problem of his contemporaries as to what rela- 
 tion the people of God should bear towards the Roman 
 power. And in this reserve of Jesus, in this devotion 
 to a single end, there lay one great secret of his success. 
 Jesus sometimes has been blamed because he did not 
 throw himself more into the social and political ques- 
 tions of the day, because he did not leave us his views 
 upon philanthropy and government and the manifold 
 questions, important no doubt, which call for a solution 
 from society. But such a criticism is short-sighted. 
 If Jesus had done this he might have been a great 
 reformer, but he never could have been the teacher and 
 the saviour of the world ; if he had worked directly for 
 institutions and for social organizations, he must have 
 accommodated himself to the conditions by which he 
 was surrounded, and have given up all thought of 
 universal truth. For institutions cannot well be estab- 
 lished on such a basis, they must be content, not with 
 the best, but with the best that can be had ; and most 
 of all this would have been so in Jesus' day. So that, 
 
Jesus Doctrine of God and Man. 267 
 
 do the best he could, he must still have left the future 
 to solve its own problems. But while social questions 
 are relative, the principles which are to control the 
 individual in all relations, the motives which are to 
 govern his conduct, are, in large measure, absolute and 
 universal ; and it is upon these, after all, that social 
 questions rest. It is only when the man is transformed, 
 as Jesus tried to transform him, that the solution of 
 social questions first becomes possible. 
 
 What the ideal was which Jesus set as the goal of 
 human attainment, one cannot get more clearly before 
 him than by reading the words of Jesus himself as they 
 are recorded in the Gospels. No paraphrase of them 
 can convey half so vivid an impression. Nevertheless, 
 without trying to make a complete statement of it, a 
 few of the more prominent points may here be noticed. 
 In the first place, as has been mentioned already, Jesus 
 places the sphere of a man's religious activity first and 
 foremost in the ordinary and every-day relations of the 
 present life. It is true that he puts love to God before 
 love to man, because, in his view of it, love to God is 
 the more comprehensive of the two and implies the 
 other at the same time that it insures its completeness 
 and permanence. But religion ordinarily goes beyond 
 this, and puts an equally high value upon the more 
 purely formal phases of the relationship between God 
 and man. The forms of worship accordingly, the 
 observance of a certain number of acts by which cus- 
 tom has settled it that the existence of a Divine Being 
 shall be recognized, whatever in fact has come to be 
 closely associated with the bare name of God, is looked 
 upon as in a special degree the property of religion, 
 and the tendency is that it should be regarded as exclu- 
 sively so. Nowadays, for instance, there are many to 
 
268 TJie Life ajid Teachings of yestcs. 
 
 whom it seems that keeping a specified time holy to 
 God, attending a prayer-meeting, bearing testimony in 
 a religious gathering, are religious acts par exccUmce ; 
 so that a man even may be a thoroughly religious man, 
 whose life is wholly selfish, or upon whose word his 
 neighbors cannot rely. Not only does this have a bad 
 effect in deadening and formalizing those acts upon 
 which the stress is laid, but what is much worse, it 
 confines religion to a very restricted and inadequate 
 field, and makes it indifferent, or ev^en antagonistic, to 
 what to the majority of men must always be the larger 
 and the more interesting part of life. Jesus is far from 
 making any such a limitation. The sphere of religion 
 is co-extensive with the sphere of human conduct. 
 Religionism, as opposed to righteousness, Jesus merci- 
 lessl3' condemns in its typical representatives, the 
 Pharisees. Nothing Godward is of the least avail if 
 it is not backed and fortified by the practical religion 
 of neighborly love. The gift is to be left unhesitat- 
 ingly upon the altar till the reconcilement is brought 
 about, for not till then will the worship be accepted. 
 
 Closely akin to this, there is the avoidance in Jesus' 
 ideal of the fault which is distinctively a religious 
 fault, and which to a deeply religious mind has a 
 peculiar charm, the tendency to asceticism. It is true 
 that there are a few passages which have been thought 
 to show just this tendency in Jesus, but there is the 
 whole spirit of his sa5dngs to set over against these. 
 Nothing is more evident from Jesus' words taken as a 
 whole than the genialness of the man, his ready 
 sympathy with all the varied forms of popular life, his 
 quick eye for nature and his keen delight in natural 
 beauty. Moreover, so far was he from adopting in his 
 own mode of life the ascetic habit, and such a 
 
yesus Doctrine of God and Man. 269 
 
 contrast was he to the austere and gloomj^ John, that 
 it oflfered a handle to the Pharisees for their taunt of 
 glutton and winebibber. This is really decisiv^e as to 
 the tone which characterized Jesus, and there is nothing 
 that can be brought up on the other side that is suffi- 
 cient to make one come to any different conclusion. 
 To be sure Jesus does recognize the disparity in the 
 value of things, that what is good may not be what is 
 best, and he insists upon the supreme obligation of 
 what is highest and noblest. Jesus recognizes too that 
 even good things ma}^ by force of circumstance become 
 an evil, and then, he says, get rid of them at whatever 
 cost. ' ' If thy hand or thy foot cause thee to stumble, 
 cut them off and cast them from thee." But this is 
 far from saying that a hand is not in itself a pre-em- 
 inently desirable thing, or that its loss does not leave 
 one maimed and imperfect. In the matter of wealth, 
 to take the example which is most often brought up 
 against Jesus, he declares, what is a simple matter of 
 fact, that it is hard for the rich man to enter into the 
 kingdom of heaven, that the eager pursuit of wealth, 
 and the lassitude which comes with the possession of 
 wealth, do not naturally, in the case of the average 
 man, make for a temper of mind to which devotion to 
 the higher interests and capacities, to the things of the 
 kingdom of heaven, as Jesus puts it, is of supreme 
 importance. But while Jesus requires everything to be 
 made tributary to the service of God, to be held in 
 readiness, that is, to be used as love to God and love to 
 man, and not selfish interest, may demand, there is 
 nothing to show that he thought of imposing any hard 
 and fast program on his followers, according to which 
 they were literally to give up what they possessed. 
 The sayings which seem to imply this are most of 
 
270 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 them due to Luke, who doubtless himself had some 
 such notion. 
 
 Still less is there any reason to suppose that Jesus 
 saw anything unworthy in the marriage relation ; on 
 the contrary he gives to it all the sacredness which 
 comes from a divine sanction. It probably is of him- 
 self that he is thinking when he speaks to his disciples 
 of those who have made themselves eunuchs for the 
 kingdom of heaven's sake. It was because his work 
 was to him before all things sacred, and because noth- 
 ing else had the right to interfere with this, that he 
 himself had never married. But he expressly states 
 this, not as a general rule, but as something which 
 exceptional circumstances, which each one must judge 
 of for himself; may make best for a man ; and one 
 may even catch a note of wistful sadness in the sajdng, 
 as if Jesus knew in himself that a ' ' eunuch for the 
 kingdom of heaven's sake " was something to which 
 one's natural inclinations did not lead, but which one 
 must ' ' make himself, ' ' an attainment not naturally or 
 easily come by. The only passage which really seems 
 to show a different temper is the saying to a would-be 
 follower, when he asked permission first to go and 
 bury his father. This on the surface does not show 
 the mild and sympathetic spirit of Jesus, and if the 
 circumstances were no more nor less than those which 
 are reported, the harshness of Jesus is scarcely to be 
 defended. Nevertheless it is not difiicult to suppose 
 that if we knew just the facts of the case the words of 
 Jesus would have a different complexion, and some 
 such modifying circumstances perhaps we may conjec- 
 ture, so as to bring the passage into harmony with the 
 rest of Jesus' sayings. The similar incident with 
 which lyuke follows this is still more foreign to Jesus' 
 
yesus Doctrine of God and Man. 2 7 1 
 
 character, and Ivuke's authority is not enough to create 
 any presumption in favor of its genuineness. 
 
 Joyfulness is therefore a conspicuous thing in the 
 character of him who has been instructed into the 
 kingdom of heaven. Jesus' reHgion is something de- 
 cidedly cheerful and hopeful. Blessedness is the key- 
 note to it, the children of the bride-chamber perforce 
 must rejoice, it is like to hid treasure for the eager de- 
 light of possession. Of late, it has been rather the 
 fashion to be suspicious of happiness as a motive, and 
 only to find those actions deserving of respect which 
 have no taint of recompense in any way attached to 
 them, but which are based solely on a stem and stoical 
 sense of duty. And it is true, of course, that when 
 our happiness is the end we have direct in view, it is 
 only selfishness we are acting out, however it may be 
 disguised. Nevertheless the paradox always remains 
 that happiness must have its part in a completed ideal 
 of humanity, and that, without usurping the place of 
 supreme importance, its influence must nevertheless 
 be felt indirectly throughout the whole range of human 
 activity, by giving a tinge of hopefulness, and by 
 guarding against any gloomy and despairing view of 
 life, such as it is inevitable will weaken the springs of 
 action in the larger part of mankind. Popular religion 
 is apt to err in the direction of a more or less thinly 
 disguised selfishness, by the emphasis which it lays 
 upon the idea of reward in another life. Jesus guards 
 against both faults, at once by the balance which he 
 maintains between the two motives of a desire for hap- 
 piness and a naked sense of duty, and partly also by 
 the nature of the happiness which he promises. It is 
 not often, when Jesus is urging some definite duty 
 upon men, that we find him making much appeal to 
 
272 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 the desire for happiness ; he prefers that they should 
 make their fight and gain their victory as much as pos- 
 sible on the lines of simple right and wrong. And on 
 the other hand he does not tell his disciples that the 
 desire to be happ}' is something selfish and culpable, 
 but he dwells just enough upon this desire, and the 
 certainty of its accomplishment, to keep men from de- 
 spondency, and to fill them with a general cheeriness 
 and healthfulness of moral tone which shall stand them 
 in the time of actual struggle. And besides this the 
 joy which Jesus promises is less frequently the some- 
 what external and arbitrary reward which makes the 
 most appeal to self-seeking, than the more delicate and 
 quiet joy which lies wrapped up in right-doing itself, 
 the joy of generosity, of self-sacrifice, of helpfulness 
 towards men and peace with God. For in its practical 
 working such a reward is no subtle bait to entice men 
 to goodness, but onlj^ after the spirit of sacrifice has 
 been won by a joyless struggle does the joy which it 
 brings become a real and living motive, capable of 
 influencing to action. 
 
 Another characteristic of the ideal of life which 
 Jesus sets up is the way in which he goes to the bot- 
 tom of things, and devotes his attention to the inner 
 springs of action rather than to outward conduct 
 alone. When it is said that Jesus' teaching had chiefly 
 to do with morality, the assertion is apt to meet with 
 disapproval in certain circles at the present day, in con- 
 sequence of the fact that the word morality, in its re- 
 ligious use, has come to have a somewhat anomalous 
 meaning. The moral man, in religious language, is 
 the man just with a veneer of decency, which prevents 
 him from getting into the penitentiarj^, but which does 
 not come from the fulness of life and character within. 
 
yesus Doctrine of God and Man. 273 
 
 It is this too external conception of what righteousness 
 is, which has done much in keeping up the intermina- 
 ble discussions as to the relative value of faith and 
 works in a man's salvation, and which has been the 
 truth at the bottom of the constant contention of reli- 
 gious teachers, that morality alone will not save a man. 
 Now Jesus does away at once with the whole ground 
 of dispute by basing salvation not upon conduct, but 
 upon character. When a man gets so that he not only 
 does right but loves right, when he not merely keeps 
 from committing murder but has no disposition to be 
 angry with his neighbor, when he no longer simply 
 keeps his lust from mastering him in outward acts but 
 is absolutely pure in heart, there is no higher salvation 
 than this, the growth of a man into the divine char- 
 acter. And this is the goal which Jesus constantly 
 has in view, and than which he is satisfied with noth- 
 ing less. 
 
 The principle which lies at the bottom of the de- 
 mands which Jesus makes of the citizen of the new 
 kingdom may be summed up in the one word, unselfish- 
 ness. No longer is each man to make of his own petty 
 self the centre of the universe, and toil and plan for his 
 own individual interests first of all ; he must recognize 
 that beside him stands his brother, whose welfare and 
 interests have just as great a value as his own, and 
 that his true life consists, not in living to himself alone, 
 but in the larger and freer life of the whole, where in- 
 dividual interests are seen with the truer vision of 
 universal love. ^ Without trying to follow Jesus out in 
 all the applications which he makes of this principle, 
 we may close with a brief examination of the doctrine 
 which illustrates it in the most thorough- going way, 
 
 and which is altogether one of the most original ele- 
 18 
 
2 74 The Life and Teachmgs of fesus. 
 
 ments in Jesus' ethical teaching, his doctrine of retalia- 
 tion. Jesus' expression of this doctrine has sometimes 
 been found to furnish difficulty, chiefly because enough 
 attention has not been paid to his ordinary manner of 
 teaching. What does Jesus mean ? When one injures 
 us, are we actually to invite him to repeat the injury ? 
 Are wrongs absolutely to go unpunished. Is universal 
 and unquestioning giving what Jesus would have ? At 
 once we feel the difficulty of this, and we see how dan- 
 gerous it might become if it were faithfully carried out. 
 But it is evident that this is not what Jesus meant, evi- 
 dent from the very sermon of which the passage on 
 retaliation is a part. It is the foundation of Jesus' 
 teaching that he insists on principles rather than on 
 particular applications. He does not say to men, 
 Under these circumstances do so and so ; under those 
 circumstances act in the opposite way ; but he shows 
 the motive which is to guide them, whatever the cir- 
 cumstances may happen to be, because he recognizes 
 that no man can possibly prescribe to his neighbor just 
 what his actions ought to be, but at best can only giv^e 
 him the clue which will enable him to decide for him- 
 self. So in this sermon it is Jesus' special aim to get 
 back of the particular requirements of the old law to 
 the underlying principles, and this very purpose he 
 would have defeated if he had only substituted other 
 special requirements instead. Only, instead of putting 
 these principles in an abstract form, he chooses some 
 concrete example to illustrate them in a striking and 
 even at times exaggerated way, that they may strike 
 home upon the imaginations of his hearers. But he no 
 more means that of necessity we are to turn the other 
 cheek to the one who strikes us, than that we are 
 actually to pluck out the eye or sever the limb which 
 
yesus Doctrine of God and Man. 275 
 
 causes us to stumble. What then, is the principle 
 which by these examples he is trying to express ? 
 
 We have seen the thing that Jesus does not mean : 
 he does not mean that wrong-doing shall go on quite 
 without restraint and check. He does not say that 
 society shall not protect itself, and make it difficult and 
 dangerous for wrongs to be committed ; indeed, he 
 probably is not thinking of society at all. And so, in 
 the same way, if in any case by punishing an act of 
 personal wrong done to himself, a man should so be 
 able to protect himself and society in the future, to this 
 also Jesus' words would not apply. We shall begin 
 to see what Jesus has in mind if we recognize the pur- 
 pose that belongs to punishment. For there are two 
 very diflferent ways in which one may look at punish- 
 ment ; there is punishment which has some greater 
 good in view behind it, and there is punishment just 
 for punishment's sake. It may be that by punishing 
 a wrong, a man can bring about his neighbor's good, 
 that he can deter the wrongdoer from going farther 
 in the way which, after all, will bring most harm to 
 himself; and then, of course, punishment would be 
 the very best proof of love that he could give. But 
 punishment that is not based upon love, retaliation, 
 a mere penalty, so much suffering received for so 
 much given, this is what Jesus forbids ; the spirit of 
 love that seeks one's neighbor's best good, is the prin- 
 ciple he lays down in its stead. No doubt the doc- 
 trine seems a very hard one ; indeed, there are few 
 things which the ordinary man is less ready to accept. 
 What, we say, are we not to have our rights? are we 
 to suffer injuries without resenting them ? are we not 
 to get justice for ourselves? No, says Jesus, how- 
 ever natural your feeling may be, so long as you stand 
 
276 The Life and Teachings of yesMS. 
 
 upon your rights you are not a follower of mine. For 
 in so doing you still are making yourself the centre, 
 whereas I command )ou to give up your own indi- 
 vidual life for the principle of love that shall take in 
 your neighbor as well. It is this very feeling which 
 seems so natural to 3^ou against which, first of all, my 
 principle is directed. Not that the feeling of indigna- 
 tion and of protest is wholly wrong. We feel that we 
 are right to be indignant at injustice and oppression ; 
 we burn at wrongs done to the helpless. But however 
 well this may be in the abstract, we know that as a 
 matter of fact, and particularly where it is ourselves 
 that are wronged, there usually is something quite 
 different that comes in. It is not pure indignation at 
 injustice which prompts a man to pay his enemy back, 
 it is his wrong, it is anger that he should be de- 
 frauded and his rights disregarded, it is resentment 
 that is personal and vindictive ; and this resentment 
 Jesus' principle forbids just as truly as it forbids an 
 outward act of retaliation, because resentment just as 
 truly as retaliation is contrary to love. Many a man 
 has said to himself, I will not pay my enemy back, as 
 he deserves, though I should very much like to do it, 
 if it were not forbidden ; but I wash my hands of him 
 from this time forth, and he need expect no more 
 favors from me. But how much better is he, measured 
 by Jesus' principle, than his neighbor w^ho pays his 
 debts by knocking his enemy down ? What that prin- 
 ciple forbids is not only the expression of resentment, 
 but resentment itself, even more truly ; what it enjoins 
 is the spirit of love which lays up no grudge for inju- 
 ries, which always is ready with help and with for- 
 giveness. 
 
 And so we have the culminating stage of Jesus' doc- 
 
yesus Doctrine of God and Man. 277 
 
 trine of human character. It is not so very difficult to 
 be honest in business, to treat our neighbors fairly and 
 justly, to abstain from cheating them when we have 
 the chance, to live purely and honorably. It is easy 
 to love those who love us, to bear kindly feelings 
 and give generous help to those who are courteous and 
 honorable in their dealings, pleasant neighbors and 
 good friends. But to love our enemies, to bless them 
 that curse us, to look on and see what we take to be 
 our rights trampled upon, and resist the desire to 
 make the offender smart for his deeds, to do this with- 
 out a particle of resentment and ill-feeling, and to be 
 ready, however often we may be ill-treated and our 
 good offices spurned, to offer our help again when the 
 help is needed, how very hard it seems to us ; how 
 often we are tempted to say such virtue is out of hu- 
 man reach. And yet this is the ideal which Jesus sets ; 
 and he sets it, not as an ideal which is beautiful and 
 admirable, but which a man, if he finds it a little too 
 hard, may set aside and be content with something 
 just a little easier, but as the necessary goal of every 
 man's attainment. For Jesus nothing less than per- 
 fection will suffice. ' ' Ye therefore shall be perfect, 
 even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THB FUTURE OP THE KINGDOM. 
 
 IT is one of the diflScult things about Jesus' teaching, 
 perhaps on the whole the most difficult question of 
 all, precisely what it was that Jesus believed about 
 the future of the kingdom which he had come to found. 
 It is not the case here, as it is in other aspects of his 
 teaching, that on one side is a belief which we can 
 determine with practical certainty that Jesus held, and 
 on the other side a few passages which conflict with 
 this ; at any rate the conflicting passages are much 
 more evenly divided, and there is considerably more 
 reason to hesitate before settling upon which set of them 
 is to be preferred. It is not strange that this should be 
 so, for it is about the future that the religious fancy 
 most inveterately plays, and for the early generations 
 of the Christians in particular the apocalyptic elements, 
 brought over from Judaism into Christianity, possessed 
 a peculiarly intense interest, which could not fail to 
 influence materially the tradition of Jesus' words. It 
 will be well therefore to begin somewhat cautiously 
 with those passages which are best assured. 
 
 According to our Gospels, which here seem to be 
 following Mark, Jesus began immediately after Peter's 
 confession at Csesarea Philippi to warn his disciples of 
 
 278 
 
The Ftiture of the Kingdom. 279 
 
 his approaching death ; and in connection with this 
 there is an incident in which he rebukes Peter, because 
 Peter will not recognize such a possibilit3^ This 
 narrative, it is true, can scarcely be depended on. 
 Mark's authority is never of the best, and the fact that 
 here, as usual, he constructs his picture out of material 
 which he gets piecemeal from his source, and puts in 
 Jesus' mouth words which tradition already had told 
 of more appropriately in the answer to the devil in the 
 wilderness, is still further against him. Nevertheless 
 all that it is important for us to establish, the fact that 
 Jesus looked forward to his own death, is contained in 
 the words by which, just before, Jesus commends 
 Peter. The Church which Jesus himself had not been 
 able to found shall still be founded, now that the dis- 
 ciples have recognized the central thought of his 
 teaching ; theirs is the task of realizing it as an actual 
 community, of determining what its external form and 
 polity shall be. Here certainly Jesus looks to the ex- 
 tension of his kingdom ; and because to the disciples 
 and not to himself is left the authority, it is an exten- 
 sion which is to take place after he is dead. And there 
 is no difficulty in this. If Jesus' idea of the Messiah- 
 ship was wholly spiritual, and not material at all, there 
 was nothing to make his own death impossible for him 
 to think of, while an insight much less keen than his 
 own must have shown him that from the Pharisees he 
 stood in serious danger. No doubt the Evangelists 
 have made his predictions much more definite than 
 they really were, and indeed we have no direct predic- 
 tion of death which is worth a great deal. The only 
 case for which much can be said, barring a few re- 
 corded just before his betrayal which will be examined 
 in another place, is the parable of the bridegroom, 
 
28o The Life a7id Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 and probably from the parable of the bridegroom we 
 are not safe in drawing any but the most general con- 
 clusion. The parable is not meant definitely as an 
 allegory of Jesus and his disciples ; what Jesus means 
 to say is that expression of sorrow will come with the 
 time of sorrow, and he illustrates this by an example 
 taken from everj'-day life, although it may be indeed 
 that he is casting a side-glance at himself. There is, 
 however, suflScient evidence that Jesus prepared his 
 disciples for a ministry in which his own previous 
 death was clearly implied. Even here, it is true, we 
 cannot rely upon every passage. The passage in 
 Matthew, for instance, upon Church discipline, is 
 shown both on critical grounds and by internal evi- 
 dence to be of later origin ; and the last Beatitude, 
 which speaks of persecutions which the disciples are 
 to endure — evidently with the supposition that Jesus 
 no longer is with them, — in all probability is an inter- 
 polation. Jesus has been speaking of the blessings 
 which are to come into the lives of the needy through 
 the knowledge of the kingdom, of the void which the 
 kingdom is to fill ; and now it is an entirely forced 
 transition to pass over at once to the rewards for cer- 
 tain unpleasant things which only are to come some- 
 time in the future. The only bond between the two is 
 that they both refer to phj^sical sufferings. But with- 
 out leaning upon these passages, the words to Peter 
 are enough to prove the point, and to this may be 
 added in particular the discourse upon confidence in 
 God." Here Jesus assumes that the teaching which 
 he has given to them in secret is after his death to be 
 proclaimed openly, and that their work will not be free 
 from dangers which will tempt them to deny him ; in 
 
 ' I^uke 12 : xff. 
 
The Future of the Kingdom. 281 
 
 its main features the discourse bears plainly the marks 
 of Jesus' style. 
 
 And in these passages, we have to notice, with an 
 exception which will be spoken of afterwards, Jesus 
 talks as we should expect him to talk ; he does not 
 speak of a kingdom which shall be brought about by 
 a visible descent from heaven and a visible judgment, 
 but of a kingdom of truth, which is established by 
 spreading the truth which it has been his work to 
 teach. And what he implies here it is the express 
 purpose of several of his parables to state. There is 
 the parable of the talents : in this parable the empha- 
 sis certainly is not upon any suddenness or unexpec- 
 tedness in the lord's arrival, but the kingdom is made 
 to centre about the use which is made of the opportu- 
 nities in this life, and it has nothing to do with con- 
 ditions that differ from the conditions that hold at 
 present. Agreeing with this is the emphasis which 
 Jesus lays upon the naturalness, the normalness of the 
 kingdom's growth ; it is like a grain of mustard-seed 
 and like the leaven gradually spreading through the 
 lump, it falls and takes root and bears fruit, or else it 
 dies away without fruition, with just as absolute a 
 dependence on the natural laws of growth, as the seed 
 which the sower casts from his hand. There are 
 indeed two parables which seem to go against this, 
 and which make the consummation of the kingdom, 
 not the end of a natural process, but a violent catas- 
 trophe ; but of one of these we fortunately are still able 
 to detect the origin. The parable of the wheat and 
 tares is connected, by its position and by the elements 
 which make it up, with the parable of the growing 
 seed which we find in Mark, and this suggests at once 
 that they only are two varying forms of one and the 
 
282 Tlie Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 same thing. And if we put the question in this way, 
 Of two forms of a parable, one of which is simple and 
 natural, and the other elaborate and allegorical, one 
 of which agrees perfectly with Jesus' teaching, and the 
 other disagrees with it, which is most likely to be the 
 original form ? the question answers itself. The 
 parable of the growing seed teaches what the parable 
 of the sower teaches, the perfect naturalness of the 
 kingdom's growth : the parable of the tares is pro- 
 fessedl)^ an allegory ; it teaches so manj^ things that it 
 teaches nothing clearly ; it does not represent some- 
 thing taken from common life, but a perfectly strange 
 and isolated case. And it is not true to life, as Jesus' 
 parables are, for the servants never would have asked 
 so absurd a question as to how tares came to be among 
 the wheat, unless they had been quite new to farming, 
 and the master could not have known an enemy had 
 sown them, because, under any circumstances, tares 
 were likely to spring up. Indeed the parable, together 
 with the similar parable of the net and fishes, betrays 
 its late origin by the way in which it presupposes an 
 organized Church, in which the good and the evil are 
 mixed up together. Jesus never thought of the king- 
 dom in this way, not because he could not see that evil 
 would get into the Church, but because in just so far 
 it would have ceased for him to be the kingdom, 
 because it was the kingdom only as it embodied right- 
 eousness. 
 
 And what from Jesus' parables we find that he 
 believed, we easily can see that he must have believed, 
 if we are not to attribute to him a lack of insight which 
 the rest of his teaching would not prepare us for. If 
 he saw that for the present the kingdom was a king- 
 dom of righteousness in which all external influence 
 
The Future of the Kingdom. 
 
 over men was out of place, then he must have seen that 
 this forever would be so, and that it was just as impos- 
 sible to set up the kingdom by coming in a cloud from 
 heaven and by separating the wicked from the good, 
 as it was to establish an earthl}^ empire and to make 
 men righteous by freeing them from their oppressors. 
 Both alike had nothing to do with the formation of 
 character, and because the kingdom had to do with 
 character, everything external, every interference with 
 the course of history, whether it was present or future, 
 natural or supernatural, was foreign to it. Neverthe- 
 less, while we may regard this as the natural deduction 
 from Jesus' conception, the apocalyptic element has 
 worked itself so intricately into the fabric of Jesus' 
 speeches, as recorded in the Gospels, that a somewhat 
 minute inquiry will be needed to clear up more ejGFect- 
 ually Jesus' connection with the doctrine which ap- 
 pears all through the New Testament under the name 
 of the Coming of the Son of man. 
 
 In entering upon this discussion, the passage which 
 is the crucial one, because it is least open to suspicion, 
 is the discourse about watchfulness, which is found in 
 both Matthew and L,uke ; in Luke from the thirty-fifth 
 verse of the twelfth chapter, to the forty-seventh verse. 
 The first four verses of this section, we are inclined to 
 think, are a mere abstract, taken from Mark and from 
 the parable of the virgins, which, as Matthew seems 
 to show, stood originally in this place. Briefly our 
 reasons for thinking so are these : in Luke the allusion 
 to burning lamps and to a marriage feast has no special 
 motive, as in Matthew's parable ; the whole passage is 
 confused, and hovers between the literal and the para- 
 bolic ; and the action of the master is unnatural, and 
 out of all proportion to that which calls it forth. But 
 
284 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 the rest of the discourse, in which Matthew and lyuke 
 agree and which no doubt is genuine, is what we wish 
 to call attention to. Now this speaks of a Coming of 
 the Son of man, but it cannot at all apply naturally to 
 a single visible appearance once for all. Naturally 
 this discourse, together with the parable of the virgins, 
 which goes along with it, is no more than an exhorta- 
 tion to constant readiness and watchfulness, and a warn- 
 ing that the judgment of God is continually hanging 
 over the unfaithful and the careless. " But if that 
 servant shall say in his heart. My lord delayeth his 
 coming ; and shall begin to beat the menservants and 
 the maidservants, and to eat and drink, and to be 
 drunken ; the lord of that vServant shall come in a day 
 when he expecteth not, and in an hour when he know- 
 eth not, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint his 
 portion with the unfaithful." The Jews had a final 
 judgment day for the ungodly ; Jesus' thought goes 
 deeper, and with him this judgment is something which 
 is occurring daily, wherever there is unfaithfulness and 
 corruption, — "except ye repent ye shall all likewise 
 perish." "Whenever," saj^s Jesus, " the evil serv^ant 
 says thus in his heart ' ' ; but of a general Parousia he 
 could not have said that it was sure to come whenever 
 a man was neglectful of his duty. Interpreting these 
 words, then, as other words of his have to be inter- 
 preted, remembering that with him the outward, the 
 sensuous form, is of small account, and the spirit, the 
 inner meaning, is everything, we cannot well come to 
 any other conclusion. The only great objection to this 
 is that such a judgment is not very happily described 
 as a Coming of the Son of man. This title has too 
 decidedly an apocalyptic coloring to make it very proba- 
 ble that Jesus deliberately should have chosen it, when 
 
The Future of the Kingdom. 285 
 
 he saw, as he must have seen, how likely it was to lead 
 his followers away from the right track. There is no 
 need, however, that this title should be retained against 
 the obvious meaning of the passage. One of the verses 
 in which it occurs is found again in the more general 
 form, ' ' Ye know not the day nor the hour ' ' ; and the 
 other verse, " Be ye therefore also ready, for in an hour 
 when ye think not the Son of man cometh, ' ' is of the 
 nature of a moral or deduction drawn from Jesus' para- 
 ble, and we have seen that such express explanations 
 are always to be suspected. But if in this passage, 
 where Jesus speaks so distinctly of judgment and of 
 the necessity of watchfulness, he yet repudiates, to all 
 intents, the doctrine of a supernatural coming, we are 
 justified in approaching the passages in which such a 
 doctrine does clearly show itself with an added cau- 
 tion, ready to reject them, without very much cere- 
 mony, in case they fail to produce pretty decided 
 evidence to support their claims. 
 
 And of these passages, the parable of the unjust 
 judge, which is found in Luke alone, need hardly 
 come into consideration, because it is in the last degree 
 doubtful whether it represents what Jesus really said. 
 This parable, or at any rate the turn which is given to 
 it b}^ lyuke, reveals clearly a later time. Men are 
 beginning to despair of Christ's coming, they arepraj^- 
 ing for vengeance upon their persecutors, faith seems 
 likely to be driven from the earth. How else are we 
 to account for the combination of a long delay and a 
 speedy vengeance, unless we have the words of a man 
 for whom the delay was in the past, the speedy ven- 
 geance in the future ? Then too, if Jesus spoke these 
 words, he taught his disciples to pray for vengeance 
 upon their enemies, and this also cannot be admitted. 
 
286 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 The body of the parable may indeed be genuine, but 
 if it is genuine it only is meant to show, like the 
 parable of the friend and the loaves, the difference 
 between man's unwillingness and the willingness of 
 God. But what, unless it can be accounted for, is 
 really fatal to the view we have advanced, is the long 
 chapter which is concerned entirely with the second 
 coming of Christ. This is given by all of the Evan- 
 gelists, but if the three accounts are compared, it will 
 be found that Matthew as usual has added much that 
 does not belong here, and that the discourse originallj^ 
 stood much as it stands in Mark at present ; and so we 
 shall follow Mark's form to avoid confusion. 
 
 The meaning of this discourse as it stands in Mark 
 cannot fairly be questioned. Jesus with much detail 
 predicts the fall of Jerusalem and the prodigies which 
 are to attend it, and immediately after the catastrophe 
 he saj's that he is to appear in the clouds of heaven, to 
 put an end to existing things, and to introduce a new 
 era, an everlasting reign of the saints. If language is 
 to have any meaning it is quite impossible to spiritual- 
 ize the passage, or to get away from the fact that the 
 event which it predicts is to come about within a 
 moderate period of time, before the end of the 
 existing generation. Before criticising this, however, 
 it will be necessar>^ to look at two other isolated 
 sayings in the Gospels which have the same point of 
 view. One of these comes in a collection of sayings 
 which Mark has made, and which we will give entire. 
 
 If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and 
 take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever would save 
 his life shall lose it ; and whosoever shall lose his life for my 
 sake and the gospel's shall save it. For what doth it profit a 
 man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life ? For what 
 
The Futiire of the Kingdom. 287 
 
 should a man give in exchange for his life ? For whosoever 
 shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and 
 sinful generation, the Son of man also shall be ashamed of him, 
 when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy 
 angels. Verily I say unto you, There be some here of them 
 that stand by, which shall in no wise taste of death, till they see 
 the kingdom of God come with power. Mark 8 : 34 — 9 : i. 
 
 Now this account has no independent value ; it is 
 made up after Mark's fashion out of sayings which he 
 has found in his source. The first two verses have 
 their true place in Luke,' and the thirty -eighth verse is 
 probably only a crude form of the saying which already 
 has been met with, " Whosoever shall deny me before 
 men, him will I also deny before my Father which is 
 in heaven. ' ' The last verse therefore cannot be insisted 
 on as if it were undoubtedly genuine, and if we find 
 that this verse also could have been taken from Mark's 
 source, we cannot hesitate to do so. And clearly it 
 only is another way of saying what actually we find in 
 the chapter on the second coming, ' ' This generation 
 shall not pass away, till all these things be fulfilled." 
 The other saying which we have spoken of involves a 
 somewhat more complicated problem, and one which 
 requires some knowledge of the Gospel relations if it is 
 to be made clear ; nevertheless we shall try to make it 
 as plain as possible. In both Matthew and Luke there 
 is found a discourse against the fear of men, which up 
 to a certain point agrees in both Gospels,' and in both 
 Gospels, in connection with this discourse, there is also 
 another saying, which appears too in the chapter on the 
 second coming, ' ' Be not anxious what ye shall speak, for 
 it shall be given you in that same hour what ye ought 
 
 ' Luke 14 : 26, 27 ; cf. Matt. 10 : 37-39. 
 - Matt. 10 : 26-33 ; Luke 12 : 1-9. 
 
288 The Life and TeacJmigs of yesus. 
 
 to speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the spirit of 
 your Father which speaketh in you," — only in Luke 
 this saying follows the discourse, while in Matthew it 
 precedes. This saying therefore, we conclude, was 
 connected with the discourse in the source from which 
 lyuke and Matthew both draw ; but who is right, Luke 
 who puts the saying after, or Matthew who places it 
 before ? Luke in all likelihood is right and for this 
 reason, that the discourse naturally opens with the 
 saying with which Luke makes it open, ' ' There is 
 nothing covered that shall not be revealed, or hid that 
 shall not be known ' ' ; while Matthew, in putting this 
 saying in the middle of the discourse, gives it an ex- 
 ceedingh^ poor connection. And this leads to another 
 question. The saying about reliance upon the spirit 
 of God occurs also, as we said before, in the chapter on 
 the second coming, and the whole connection which it 
 has in this chapter Matthew gives in the passage with 
 which we now are concerned. 
 
 But beware of men : for they will deliver you up to councils, 
 and in their synagogues they will scourge you ; yea, and before 
 governors and kings shall ye be brought for my sake, for a tes- 
 timony to them and.to the Gentiles.. But when they deliver you 
 up, be not anxious how or what ye shall speak. For it shall be 
 given you in that hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye 
 that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you. 
 And brother shall deliver up brother to death, and the father his 
 child : and children shall rise up against parents, and cause them 
 to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my 
 name's sake : but he that eudureth to the end, the same shall be 
 saved. But when they persecute you in this city, flee into the 
 next : for verily I say unto you. Ye shall not have gone through 
 the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come. A disciple is 
 not above his master, nor a servant above his lord. It is enough 
 for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his 
 lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, 
 how much more shall they call them of his household ! 
 
The Future of the Kingdom. 289 
 
 All but the last two verses of this passage are found 
 iu the discourse about the second coming. Was then 
 the passage original iu its present connection, and was 
 it borrowed to form a part of the discourse on the sec- 
 ond coming? or, on the other hand, was its original 
 place in the chapter on the second coming, which bor- 
 rowed onl)^ the one verse about reliance upon the 
 Spirit, and did the first Evangelist, meeting with this 
 verse, and remembering its connection in another place, 
 turn to this place and quote the entire passage ? 
 
 We have little hesitation in saying that the verses 
 about which we are in doubt are very much better 
 suited to their connection in the chapter on the second 
 coming, and agree perfectly with the general style of 
 that chapter. But in the discourse about freedom from 
 fear the atmosphere we must feel is different. The 
 sayings are in Jesus' free and plastic style ; there is no 
 minute prediction of definite events : ' ' What ye hear in 
 the ear, proclaim upon the housetop " ; " Are not two 
 sparrows sold for a farthing ? and not one of them 
 shall fall to the ground without your Father. ' ' Com- 
 pare these with the other sayings, " They will deliver 
 you up to their councils, and they will scourge you in 
 the synagogues, and ye shall be brought before govern- 
 ors and kings for my sake " ; " Children shall rise up 
 against their parents and cause them to be put to 
 death " ; " Ye shall be hated of all men for my name's 
 sake, but he that endureth to the end, the same shall 
 be saved " : is it not easy to see the difference at once ? 
 Moreover when we let these sayings fall away we 
 have an excellent connection left. " Whosoever shall 
 confess me before men, him will I also confess before 
 my Father which is in heaven ; and whosoever shall 
 deny me before men, him will I also deny before my 
 
290 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 Father which is in heaven. And be not anxious what 
 ye shall sa)-, for it shall be given you in that same hour 
 what ye ought to say," — it is in connection with con- 
 fessing Jesus before men that the saying has its mean- 
 ing. Then the last two verses make a fitting close : 
 ' ' The disciple is not above his master, or the servant 
 above his lord." We know that these verses were in 
 the source, because lyuke gives them in another con- 
 nection, although his connection is an impossible one. 
 In this case however the remaining verse, which is 
 the one we have been aiming at in all this discussion, 
 must also fall away : "When they persecute you in 
 one city, flee into another, for ye shall not have gone 
 through the cities of Israel till the Son of man be 
 come." This does not suit the rest of the discourse, 
 for it is not poetr>% but a bald and literal prediction ; 
 it probably was suggested in the same way in which 
 the saying in Mark was suggested, and had its special 
 form determined by the discourse on the sending out 
 of the twelve Apostles, which Matthew places just be- 
 fore. This very fact, that the saying, "Ye shall not 
 have gone through the cities of Israel," points so un- 
 mistakably to the mission of the disciples from city 
 to city, not to Samaria or heathendom, but to the lost 
 sheep of the house of Israel, is enough to show that 
 the saying could not have belonged to a discourse 
 which originally could have had no sort of connection 
 with this mission of the Twelve, because it had to do, 
 not with events in Jesus' lifetime, but with events after 
 his death. 
 
 To the chapter on the second coming, therefore, 
 everything goes back ; and of this chapter what are we 
 to say ? So much at any rate, that of all the speeches 
 which are attributed to Jesus, this has the very least 
 
The Future of the Kingdom. 291 
 
 in its favor. The style is utterly unlike Jesus' style, 
 and only here and there do we find a touch which re- 
 minds us in the least of him. The whole is a list of 
 literal predictions, such a list as one living in the midst 
 of the events would be likely to draw up ; there is no 
 trace of spiritual truth, but everything refers to out- 
 ward events ; much is made up of Old Testament 
 quotations ; and other discourses have occasionally 
 been used. And when it is considered, in addition, 
 that there is no reconciling this with others of Jesus' 
 teachings, it is not too much to say, that, in its present 
 form, the discourse cannot possibly have come from 
 him. There is much probability in the conjecture that 
 we have here a little Apocalypse, which the Evangelist 
 has inserted in his book, and which it is possible that 
 tradition points to when it speaks of a divine revelation 
 which warned the Christians to flee from the doomed 
 city. At any rate, it probably was written when de- 
 struction was impending.' But still is it not possible 
 that some real reminiscence of Jesus' words lies at the 
 bottom of the discourse ? may not Jesus at least have 
 predicted the fall of Jerusalem, and may he not have 
 said that, while the day and hour were unknown to 
 him, the catastrophe was likely to come before that 
 generation should have passed away ? In itself there 
 is nothing impossible in this ; Jesus reproached his 
 countrymen because they could not read the signs of 
 the times, and he surely may have had the wit to read 
 them better. And if his predictions were made a little 
 more circumstantial, if an event so astounding it was 
 thought, must usher in the coming of the Son of man 
 himself then the chapter is sufficiently accounted for. 
 But what tells strongly even against this is the absence 
 ' Cf. Mk. 13 : 14. 
 
292 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 of any reference to such a prediction in the rest of the 
 New Testament, although there are places where such 
 a reference would seem unavoidable. The Apocalypse 
 has to do with just this circle of ideas, and here the 
 destruction of the Temple seems to be excluded ; at 
 any rate the writer hardly could have avoided giving 
 us a hint of it, if he had been acquainted with such a 
 prediction from the mouth of Jesus. And in the letters 
 to the Thessalonians also, the prediction hardly would 
 have been ignored altogether, and a knowledge of it 
 must have put some check upon the restlessness and 
 uncertainty of the early Church. 
 
 With the great discourse on the second coming out 
 of the way, the backbone of the argument for such a 
 belief on Jesus' part is broken. Nevertheless there 
 still remains one passage which deserves consideration. 
 This is the discourse which is found in the seventeenth 
 chapter of Luke, and which Matthew also gives in a 
 very disjointed way, which also has to do with the 
 coming of the Son of man. There are a few foreign 
 elements which seem to have got attached to this pas- 
 sage : the twenty-fifth verse looks like a gloss by the 
 Evangelist ; the thirty-third belongs to another dis- 
 course, and here does not have its real meaning ; and 
 the warning which is given in the thirty -first verse is 
 found also in the great chapter on the second coming, 
 where it has reference to the destruction of Jerusalem, 
 and is appropriate enough, while here it does not fit in 
 well with the concluding verses. The catastrophe 
 could not have been so sudden as these verses repre- 
 sent it, and still have given an opportunity for flight. 
 But the rest of the discourse gives a fairly consistent 
 picture : Jesus warns his disciples not to be led astray 
 by their longing for his coming, for when the time 
 
The Future of the Kingdom. 293 
 
 does really come, there will be no possibility of mistake 
 about it. And the time will not come when men are 
 looking for it, but when they are careless and secure. 
 By a somewhat violent feat of interpretation, it is pos- 
 sible to make even this agree with the results which 
 already have been obtained from Jesus' teaching. 
 " Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be 
 gathered together," is the way in which the discourse 
 comes to an end ; and we might take this as containing 
 in a nutshell the whole point of the passage, and as 
 meaning simply this : wherever corruption is, there 
 judgment is hanging over it, sudden, visible to all ; 
 and in this judgment the coming of the Son of man 
 consists. And this essentially is what we have found 
 already that Jesus taught. Nevertheless, however 
 tempting this may be, it will have to be set aside. The 
 coming of the Son of man, as has been said, is not a 
 natural name for such a judgment, and the comparison 
 with lightning refers unmistakably to an appearance 
 such as the early Church conceived of it. There is 
 nothing for it, then, but to give up this discourse as 
 well, for, left alone as it is, it cannot stand out against 
 the presumption which has been raised against the 
 doctrine which it sets forth. And apart from the fact 
 that it does not show very distinctly the marks of 
 Jesus' style, there is one point in particular to be made 
 against it. It is connected by I^uke with the incident 
 in which the Pharisees ask Jesus about the time of the 
 kingdom's appearance, and this incident is so very 
 characteristic, it shows Jesus' point of view so clearly 
 in distinction from the later point of view, that it can- 
 not easily be rejected. But the narrative which con- 
 ceives of the kingdom as a future and supernatural 
 thing, becomes decidedly more improbable when we 
 
294 ^'^^^ ^^f^ ^^^^ Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 find that it has got placed alongside a narrative in 
 which the kingdom stands out plainly as a present and 
 natural thing ; the connection at any rate cannot be 
 retained. Moreover it appears that the discourse on 
 the coming of the Son of man has borrowed from the 
 other, and this is suflBcient to condemn it. " Ye shall 
 not say, Lo here, or, Lo there," says Jesus to the Phari- 
 sees ; and he means that the kingdom has no external 
 marks or boundaries to know it by. But, in the other 
 saying, "Then if they shall say unto you, Lo here, 
 or, IvO there," all the poetry has gone out of the phrase, 
 and instead of being a picturesque way of putting an 
 abstract statement, it is simply the prophecy of a literal 
 fact. And this repetition of a phrase in a different atmos- 
 phere, so that the meaning of it is changed, of itself 
 goes far to throw doubt upon the passage where the 
 repetition occurs. 
 
 All this therefore leads to the conclusion that Jesus 
 did not look for any supernatural appearance which 
 was to change violently the course of the world, but 
 that he regarded the growth of his kingdom as a silent 
 and natural growth by which human society should 
 gradually be transformed. Doubtless he also had a 
 doctrine of last things, but precisely what form this 
 doctrine took in his mind it perhaps is not possible to 
 determine with the little evidence we have. In two or 
 three passages Jesus makes use of the conception of a 
 final judgment-day, but it is not likely we can attribute 
 to him safely anything beyond the kernal of this doc- 
 trine, any more than in the case of the doctrine of 
 Gehenna, which Jesus also makes use of in figurative 
 passages. The only exception to this is in the great 
 judgment scene which is found in Matthew ; but while 
 this naturally seems to show a belief in a literal judg- 
 
The Future of the Kingdom. 295 
 
 ment-day, it hardly is to be attributed to Jesus, in spite 
 of the undeniable beauty of its teaching. Two doc- 
 trines appear in the passage, which were held to 
 strongly in later times, but which it is improbable that 
 Jesus taught : the coming of the Son of man, and the 
 eternal punishment of the wicked in its most literal 
 sense. I^ikewise the kingdom is spoken of in a man- 
 ner very unusual with Jesus, as something belonging 
 to the future ; and the position of supremacy which 
 Jesus is made to assume in relation to his followers, 
 and the recognition of this supremacy among all na- 
 tions, is as little like Jesus' ordinary tone as it is per- 
 fectly in accord with later theologies, in which Jesus' 
 Messiahship had taken the place of first importance, 
 and when the Gospel had spread over the world. The 
 imagery moreover does not show the taste of Jesus, for 
 the abrupt interjection of the metaphor of the sheep 
 and goats, while the rest of the passage is literal, is a 
 fault which Jesus never would have been guilty of. 
 The objective way in which Jesus is spoken of through- 
 out makes it probable that whoever first was the author 
 of the passage did not intend it should be put in Jesus' 
 mouth. That Jesus did believe in a future world is 
 put beyond doubt by the argument in favor of it which 
 he addresses to the Sadducees. The argument is 
 probably not the merelj'- verbal argument which at 
 first sight it might seem to be, for Jesus is very little 
 given to playing upon words. Most likely at the 
 bottom of his argument there Ues the thought that 
 God could not thus belittle himself in solemnly declar- 
 ing that he was the God of men whose ephemeral exist- 
 ence had long since been cut short ; in other words, 
 the fact that men stood in relationship to God pointed 
 them out as immortal beings. But at any rate Jesus' 
 
296 The Life afid Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 answer throws a gleam of light upon the doctrine 
 which he held, and shows that it was no sensuous and 
 bodily form of life that he looked forward to, but that 
 it involved a great change from human conditions. 
 More than this it is hardly safe to say. And likewise 
 as regards his belief about the punishment of the 
 wicked, it is certain that Jesus insists upon the punish- 
 ment which wrongdoing must ever bring in its train ; 
 but what the nature of that punishment shall be, or 
 what shall be its time relations, he does not seek to 
 settle. All such speculations lie without the range of 
 the eternal principles on which Jesus founded his 
 beliefs. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE GAXII^EAN MINISTRY. 
 
 THERE is a great temptation, in trying to recon- 
 struct the details of Jesus' life, to act with 
 somewhat more tenderness towards the Gospel 
 narratives than can be wholly justified, and to grasp at 
 whatever in particular instances may be used to save 
 the credit of the story, without enough bearing in 
 mind the treacherousness in general of the tradition 
 which we have to do with. So long as the Gospels 
 are regarded as upon the whole a credible record of 
 history, a certain caution in admitting of mistakes is 
 of course quite proper, though this caution often has 
 been carried to extremes. If however it is admitted 
 that the reports which have reached us are so thor- 
 oughly honey-combed with legend, we no longer have 
 the right to pretend that there is a very large or a very 
 secure residue left behind. A very natural hesitancy 
 about wholly giving up possessions we have cherished 
 has caused men steadily to approach the Gospels with 
 the thought of saving everything they were not ab- 
 solutely forced to let go their hold of. Accordingly, 
 if there was a narrative which in itself was not im- 
 possible, they have preferred not to scrutinize too care- 
 fully the company in which it is presented to them. 
 
 297 
 
298 The Life and TeacJii7igs of Jesus. 
 
 But this is not the method of histor5\ The question 
 of histor}' is not, How much of our material can be 
 retained without positive contradiction? but, What 
 probably is true? If the most of what a particular 
 Evangelist tells us is surely legendar}^, and then we 
 come upon something which has no great unlikelihood, 
 it is not enough to saj^ that it maj^ be true, but we 
 must have something to show pretty clearly that it 
 cannot easily be otherwise. We must therefore resign 
 ourselves to the conclusion, however unpalatable it 
 may be, that the purely historical matter which the 
 Gospels can furnish will at the best be meagre, and 
 that for facts which can be depended on with perfect 
 securit}', it will be necessarj^ to limit ourselves pretty 
 much to the actual sayings of Jesus, or to such narra- 
 tives as are closely bound up with a saying. 
 
 Probably soon after the imprisonment of John the 
 Baptist Jesus entered upon the work to which he had 
 given up his life. It was with no blare of trumpets 
 that he went about his ministry. Moving quietly from 
 place to place, mixing in the homely life of the Gali- 
 lean peasants, talking of righteousness and the king- 
 dom wherever he could find an audience — who was to 
 guess that a new and tremendous force had come into 
 the world? The Gospels are inclined to represent 
 Jesus as if he had been constantly on the move, 
 hurrying about through all Galilee from city to city. 
 This, which is intelligible if Jesus had no deeper mes- 
 sage than his own Messiahship, hardly works in so 
 well with a message which required, as the message of 
 the kingdom did, that it should be so drilled and ham- 
 mered into men before it stood any show of true accept- 
 ance ; and it is more likel}', as is indicated by one of 
 Jesus' sayings, that the bulk of his ministry was con- 
 
The Galilean Ministry. 299 
 
 fined to a comparatively small region about the north- 
 ern shore of the Sea of Galilee, and centring in the 
 cities of Capernaum, Chorazin, and Bethsaida. Tradi- 
 tion has it, and probably has it rightly, that Capernaum 
 was made in a manner the seat of his labors, although 
 the statement which Matthew makes, depending partly 
 upon prophecy, and which is implied in Mark as well,' 
 that Jesus had a house there, does not agree with Jesus' 
 statement that the ' ' Son of man hath not a place to lay 
 his head." 
 
 It was not long before the fame of Jesus began to 
 spread. Possessed as he was of a natural and win- 
 ning eloquence, the curiosity of the volatile Galileans 
 would quickly bring crowds together to him, and, once 
 there, they would be held there by stronger bonds. 
 His authority, his straightforwardness, his freedom 
 from all the subtilties and trivialness of the Pharisaic 
 . teaching, appealed to them as earnestness and simplic- 
 ity, backed by the power of righteousness and the call 
 to duty, must always appeal. Jesus seems moreover 
 to have had a peculiar influence over the affections of 
 men. The more degraded parts of the community in 
 particular, to whose despair Jesus' words of tenderness 
 and forgiveness brought an unlooked-for gleam of hope, 
 seem to have repaid him with a passionate love. Even 
 the higher classes of the nation could not remain unaf- 
 fected by the charm of one whose wit was so keen and 
 whose insight so acute, and we read of one scribe at 
 least who wished to be reckoned as a follower of his. 
 
 Nevertheless Jesus' popularity did not deceive him 
 for a moment into thinking that his task was to prove 
 an easy one. He saw that to interest the people and 
 arouse their enthusiasm was a very different thing from 
 
 ^ See Mk. 3 : 20, and cf.d: 4. 
 
300 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 effecting the permanent revolution in their character 
 and conceptions which he had set about doing. It was 
 with this in his mind that he began to look about him 
 for a closer band of disciples, whom he might keep more 
 constantly under his own personal influence, and so 
 might get the chance to mould to his own purposes. 
 The story of the disciples belongs to the history of the 
 Church, and the most general account of them will be 
 sufiicient here. That they were twelve in number may 
 be taken as settled by Paul's testimony, and their 
 names, which are given first by Mark, are so naturally 
 the property of tradition, that we may take the list as 
 at least approximately correct. Luke changes the 
 name of Thaddseus to Judas, though why he does so 
 is uncertain, and the first Evangelist identifies Matthew 
 with Levi the publican. Possiblj^ this identification 
 came about through a correct tradition that Matthew 
 had been a publican ; at any rate, the identification 
 itself is scarcely to be defended. For to Mark is due 
 both the story of Levi and the notice of the calling of 
 the Twelve, so that it is evident Mark meant to point 
 them out as different men. Moreover one cannot help 
 the suspicion that the Levi of Mark never had any real 
 existence. To begin with, Mark's methods are so 
 doubtful that the very fact a story comes from him is 
 no slight evidence against it. Now it happens that in 
 Luke there is a series of sayings for which the saying 
 about the whole and the sick, which is connected with 
 Levi's call, would furnish an excellent introduction ' ; 
 and that the saying originally did stand there is indi- 
 cated by the reminiscences of it which Luke has in a 
 verse of this passage which he is himself responsible 
 for : ' ' There is joy over one sinner that repenteth^ more 
 
 ' See Luke 15 : \ff. 
 
The Galilean Ministry. 301 
 
 than over ninety and nine righteous persons who need 
 no repentence. ' ' The passage begins with a statement 
 that the Pharisees were murmuring because Jesus ate 
 with sinners ; and it is just in Mark's fashion to take 
 this up, and make it more vivid by giving a special 
 instance of it, and by adding names and details. And 
 this is made more probable by the resemblance which 
 the abrupt and startling call of I^evi has to the equally 
 abrupt call of the other four disciples which Mark 
 relates. In both cases it is the evident intention of the 
 narrative to give dramatic force by representing the 
 call as entirely without preparation, and the obedience 
 as coming from the instantaneously exerted power of 
 Jesus. This is without probability in itself, and the 
 fact that it comes from Mark is sufi&cient to condemn it. 
 To the training of these few disciples Jesus turned 
 himself more and more, as he saw that, so far as the 
 great mass of the people was concerned, he was failing 
 of his purpose. The reasons for this failure appear in 
 Jesus' own utterances. In the first place the people 
 were too deeply immersed in their material ideals. 
 ' ' From the days of John the Baptist until now the 
 kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the men of 
 violence take it by force." John had aroused the 
 popular enthusiasm, but it had taken a wrong course, 
 and the people were bent upon a kingdom of violence, 
 of political changes. Even more however it was to 
 the spiritual leaders of the nation that Jesus owed his 
 lack of success : ' ' Ye have shut the kingdom of 
 heaven against men," says Jesus; "ye enter not in 
 yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering in 
 to enter ;" this is the motive of his terrible indictment 
 of them. We cannot perhaps hope after these years 
 to trace with very great detail the progress of the 
 
302 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 quarrel between Jesus and the Pharisees, but yet a 
 good deal of material which bears upon that quarrel 
 is still present in the Gospels, and the main lines of it 
 are fairly distinct. It is not to be wondered at that 
 many of the Pharisees, whose very life was in the 
 reward of praise and veneration which their piety 
 brought them, viewed with no very friendly eyes the 
 rise of a new teacher, without the technical training of 
 the Scribe, who bid fair to outstrip them all in popular- 
 ity. There would be no very weighty pretext needed 
 therefore to bring their religious prejudices into line 
 with their personal feelings, and enable them to gloss 
 over their selfishness by an appeal to the glory of God. 
 They did not have to go far in order to find an occasion. 
 Jesus from the very start had acted flatly in opposition 
 to the notions which in the typical Pharisee's mind 
 made up the sum and substance of religion. Presently 
 the Pharisees began to find fault. Jesus was not keep- 
 ing the traditions of the elders, they complained ; he 
 was associating himself with men who must of neces- 
 sity defile him : and what, reasoned the pious Pharisee, 
 was any hypothetical good to the sinner in comparison 
 with the honor of God's law. Again, he did not 
 trouble himself or his disciples to go through with all 
 the requisite washings and purifications which the 
 wisdom of the Elders had devised. Jesus' disciples ate 
 and drank when they should be fasting. Nay, more, 
 he was even encroaching upon the sanctity of the 
 Sabbath itself, and making it a cheap and common 
 thing. It is unnecessary to ask in just what proportion 
 sincerity and selfish passions were mingled in the 
 Pharisees' complaints. No doubt they were sincere in 
 their own fashion ; they really did regard Jesus as a 
 dangerous leveller and heretic, who was working to 
 
The Galilean Ministry. 303 
 
 destroy the religion once for all delivered to the saints. 
 But this does not lessen the blame attaching to them, 
 and their chiefest condemnation, as Jesus pointed out, 
 was that with eyes wide open they could look upon the 
 handiwork of God's own Spirit and give it to the devil, 
 that they could do the devil's work and still believe 
 they were offering God service. The calm and con- 
 vincing answers which Jesus gave to their complaints 
 they made no effort to understand, but only were irri- 
 tated the more. From resenting actual violations of 
 tradition on Jesus' part they began to hunt up occasions 
 against him. They plied him with questions designed 
 to arouse an oditan theologicimi, or even to bring him 
 into disrepute with the authorities. And the fact that 
 they always were worsted in their arguments did not 
 tend to make their resentment any the less keen. 
 
 Meanwhile Jesus apparently had gone about his 
 work quietly and persistently, and had been content 
 for the most part with assuming the defensive against 
 his enemies. But presently there came a new move on 
 the part of his opponents. Perceiving that Jesus could 
 not be conquered by argument, they began to strike at 
 him in a more vulnerable place, and to seek to under- 
 mine his influence with the people. The worst con- 
 struction was put upon his actions, and his name was 
 bandied about as a glutton and a drunkard. Slanders 
 began to be circulated about him, such as that he was 
 an emissary of Beelzebub. It was demanded that he 
 should attest his authority by miraculous means, in 
 order that his failure to do so might discredit him with 
 the wonder-loving populace. It was inevitable that the 
 influence of those who sat in Moses' seat, and to whom 
 the people had grown accustomed to look up to as their 
 natural religious teachers, when cast well-nigh unani- 
 
304 The Life and Teachings of yesns. 
 
 mously ill one direction, should in the long run bear its 
 fruit. It was in vain that Jesus gave his warnings ; a 
 sevenfold demon of perversitj^ seemed to have entered 
 the nation and its leaders. We become conscious of 
 an altered tone in Jesus' words ; he warns them of the 
 judgment which is close upon the nation unless they 
 repent, a judgment pointed to by no supernatural signs, 
 but by such as their own eyes might behold if they 
 would but look, just as they see the signs of drought 
 and rain. If thej^ will not look, if the ver>' eye that is 
 given them for light be turned to darkness, how great 
 must they expect that darkness to be ! If the tree 
 yields no fruit, and even after an excess of pains upon 
 it shows that its usefulness is over, what advantage is 
 there in its cumbering the ground? Indeed it must 
 have been plain to any one not blinded by national 
 partiality that heroic measures were necessary to save 
 a nation thus compounded of dead formalism and blind 
 fanaticism. Whether Jesus ever openly proclaimed 
 that other nations were to come into the inheritance 
 which Israel had refused, is a little more uncertain, but 
 there can be no question that he himself realized the 
 universality of his message, and the parable of the 
 rich man's supper, and the discourse about the narrow 
 gate, although they are not certainly genuine, are 
 most likely so, and they make the announcement of the 
 fact explicit. 
 
 To Jesus we cannot doubt that these were days of 
 bitter trial. In spite of their utter baselessness, the 
 taunts of his enemies hurt him. In one of his later 
 discourses we find, by an allusion to it, that the old 
 charge about Beelzebub had not even then lost its 
 sting. More and more he turned himself to the quiet 
 instruction of his disciples, content to wait for the 
 
The Galilean Minishy. 305 
 
 future, when what he told in the ear should by them 
 be proclaimed upon the house-tops, with better chances 
 of success than at the present. But even his disciples, 
 though they had made a start in the right direction, 
 fell sadly short of what Jesus had a right to expect 
 from them. Towards the very close of his ministry 
 we find two of them, fired by just the spirit of ambition 
 and self-seeking which Jesus was trying so patiently to 
 ween them from, asking for the places of honor in the 
 kingdom, the same limited and gross old kingdom of 
 an earthly ideal ; and something of a sigh still breathes 
 through Jesus' words as he answers them, "Ye know 
 not what ye are asking. ' ' And then all of the disciples 
 begin to fight among themselves with jealous rivalry, 
 and Jesus patiently goes back and gives their lesson to 
 them over again once more. In his own family, too, 
 it is probable that Jesus suffered. The narratives 
 which Mark gives of this are indeed doubtful, but it 
 may be considered likely that Mark had the fact to go 
 upon, and besides, this may very well be the sense of 
 the somewhat enigmatical passage which L,uke gives 
 in the twelfth chapter. ' ' I came to cast fire upon the 
 earth ; and what will I, if it is already kindled ? But 
 I have a baptism to be baptized with ; and how am I 
 straitened till it be accomplished ! Think ye that I 
 am come to give peace on the earth ? I tell you. Nay ; 
 but rather division : for there shall be from henceforth 
 five in one house divided, three against two, and two 
 against three. They shall be divided, father against 
 son, and son against father; mother against daughter, 
 and daughter against mother; mother-in-law against her 
 daughter-in-law, and daughter-in-law against her 
 mother-in-law." This passage probably was in the 
 source, for Matthew's phrase, "cast peace," is less 
 
3o6 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 natural than "cast fire," and shows a reminiscence of 
 it ; and the other phrase, "a baptism to be baptized 
 with," is repeated by Mark in the account of the request 
 of James and John,' where the use, contrary to Mat- 
 thew, of two phrases to express a single idea, is awk- 
 ward. Now if Jesus had just been suflfering from hos- 
 tility in his own family, this would explain his choice 
 of family discord as an example of the effect the Gospel 
 was to have, and it would give a more personal mean- 
 ing to the opening clause. I am come to sow discord, 
 says Jesus, and what right have I to complain if I am 
 the first to suffer from it? It only is a part of the 
 baptism of suffering which I know my work must 
 bring to me. 
 
 The Passover drew on, and Jesus determined to go 
 up to Jerusalem. Whether he had visited the city 
 before since his ministry opened, it seems impossible 
 to say. The only passage which bears very closely on 
 the question is the lament over Jerusalem, and this, in 
 spite of its poetical beauty, it does not seem easy to 
 attribute to Jesus. The woes against the Pharisees 
 close with a highly dramatic outburst against the Jew- 
 ish people. " 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 : that upon you may come all the righteous blood 
 shed on the earth, from the blood of Abel the righteous 
 to the blood of Zachariah, whom ye slew between the 
 sanctuary and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All 
 these things shall come upon this generation." Now 
 the way in which this passage mentions scribes goes to 
 show that it comes from an adherent of the Pharisees, 
 
 ' Mk. lo : 38. 
 
The Galilean Ministry. 307 
 
 and that at least it does not belong to a discourse which 
 was devoted to a condemnation of the scribes. Then 
 too in no natural sense could Jesus speak of himself 
 as sending to them prophets. But in I^uke the passage 
 opens with the words, ' ' On this account the Wisdom 
 of God saith," and this expression seems to have been 
 taken from the source. For not only otherwise is 
 lyuke's insertion of it not easy to explain, but Matthew 
 also starts in with "on this account," and what has 
 gone before does not give the reason for the sending, 
 but, as in lyuke, the reason why the words are quoted. 
 All the difficulty therefore is got rid of, if we suppose 
 that we have here a quotation from some lost book in 
 which Wisdom is represented as the speaker. Now 
 the lament over Jerusalem probably is a part of the 
 same passage, for Matthew places them together, and 
 the style is all of a piece ; the one then who would 
 have gathered the children of Jerusalem together, is 
 the one who had sent prophets and wise men and 
 scribes. And this enables us to let ' ' often ' ' have its 
 proper meaning, and not limit it to the very few visits 
 which at best Jesus could have made to the capital. 
 And finally this explains the sentence where it is said 
 that the speaker shall not again be seen until they are 
 ready to greet him with the cry, " Blessed is he that 
 Cometh in the name of the I^ord." These words only 
 are appropriate in the mouth of one who is just on the 
 point of turning his back upon the city of his own 
 accord, as Wisdom might well be conceived as doing, 
 and who refuses to return until the inhabitants shall 
 have changed their minds. But if Jesus spoke them, 
 and then went on to teach in the Temple, they lose 
 their point, and they cannot easily be made to refer to 
 a violent taking away by death. 
 
3o8 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 The Gospels clearly have the idea that Jesus went 
 up to Jerusalem with a full knowledge of what was to 
 befall him there. There is no likelihood in this, how- 
 ever, which makes his death but little less than self- 
 destruction. Nevertheless it is probable that already 
 his opponents had begun to cherish the thought of 
 getting rid of him by violent means. Their hatred had 
 been still more inflamed by the incisive way in which 
 Jesus had from time to time shown up their own 
 hypocrisy and worthlessness. The last and greatest 
 denunciation of them may have been brought about in 
 the capital itself, but already it is likely, as in the in- 
 stance when they disputed with him about the washing 
 of hands, that he had let his scorn of their miserable 
 casuistry, which could pervert the Law of God to the 
 most selfish ends, lead him into a more searching criti- 
 cism of their conduct than they cared to listen to. He 
 had found them wanting, too, in more general parables, 
 such as the parable of the two sons, and had placed 
 them, at least by implication, even below the despised 
 publicans. It was in Jerusalem however that the 
 crisis came about at last. According to the Gospels 
 the final attack of the Pharisees was brought on by an 
 act on the part of Jesus which really was a direct 
 declaration of hostility, the cleansing of the Temple ; 
 and possibly the Gospels may be right in this. It is 
 true that this act is not at all in the character of Jesus, 
 but shows rather the spirit of the older prophets ; and 
 to us it seems not only useless, but it seems needlessly 
 to have provoked the hostility of his enemies. It is 
 possible though that Jesus' indignation may have led 
 him to do what ordinarily he would have avoided do- 
 ing. What makes the account much more doubtful is 
 its apparent physical impossibility. It is not easy to 
 
The Galilean Ministry. 309 
 
 see how Jesus could have done what the Gospels repre- 
 sent him as doing, even by making use of a violence 
 which we must decidedly refuse to admit. On the 
 other hand, without some foundation it is rather diffi- 
 cult to see how the story^ got about, and there appar- 
 ently is connected with it a question of the chief priests 
 which by all means appears genuine, the question as to 
 what authority Jesus had for acting as he did. This 
 question naturally implies that Jesus had done some- 
 thing out of the way, something which had aroused a 
 suspicion in the minds of the rulers. Once before no 
 doubt the same question practically had been put to 
 him, when it was demanded that he should give a sign ; 
 but there is an important difference between the two 
 incidents — the question which there had been asked 
 by the Pharisees as a trap for Jesus, now, if we may 
 trust the account, comes from the Sadducean, the aris- 
 tocratic party as well. Now it is clear that both the 
 Pharisees and the Sadducees had a hand in Jesus' 
 death, and the Sadducees appear to have been no less 
 eager for it than their rivals. But their hostility could 
 not have had the same grounds ; Jesus' attitude 
 towards tradition, which gave so much oflfence to the 
 Pharisees, might to them have been even a matter of 
 satisfaction. If actually they did join the Pharisees, 
 this seems only to be explained if the Pharisees had 
 been able to convince them that Jesus had political 
 designs, and for this some act of Jesus which would 
 give color to the charge is not improbable. Therefore, 
 while we do not think that the event could have been 
 just as the Gospels describe it, some basis for the 
 account there probably was, although we do not now 
 feel able to determine just wherein this consisted. 
 And now Jesus' enemies found an ally in one of 
 
3IO The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 Jesus' own disciples. What gave rise to this resolu- 
 tion in Judas' mind we only can conjecture, for we 
 have verj' little more than the fact of the betrayal to 
 go upon. We can guess however motives which may 
 have led him on. Judas, no more than the other disci- 
 ples, came to Jesus in the first place with the idea that 
 he should find in him the Messiah ; and when the other 
 disciples, following in the lead of Peter, began to have 
 a dawning sense of the truth about their Master, the 
 new revelation only left him in bewildered uncertainty. 
 For the life of him he could not dispossess himself of 
 the old ideals, and that Jesus should lay claim to the 
 Messianic dignity, and then go straight against all that 
 he looked and hoped for from the Messiah, might 
 arouse in him a feeling of protest and even of resent- 
 ment. It would be harsh to blame him too unspar- 
 ingly for this, in view of the fact that the other 
 disciples as well had got but little farther on, and to 
 the very end of their lives only had succeeded in com- 
 prehending Jesus' meaning dimly. And then when 
 Judas found the whole array of the piety and learning 
 of the nation standing over against the new teacher, 
 it might well give added strength to the doubts and 
 suspicions which already had sprung up in his own 
 mind. Still this does not give an adequate motive for 
 his treachery, and this perhaps we are to look for in 
 fears for his own personal safety. What influences 
 had been brought to bear upon him we do not know, 
 but it is unlikely that Judas proceeded absolutely of his 
 own initiation. This, it is true, is the idea which the 
 Gospels give, but the Gospels had no means of know- 
 ing the inside history of the case, and naturally would 
 take the alternative which was least complimentary to 
 the traitor. The Pharisees must have kept a sharp 
 
The Galileaii Ministry. 
 
 311 
 
 eye on the little circle about Jesus, and have taken 
 note of any symptoms of discontent which might be 
 made to serve their purposes. Perhaps it was some 
 intimation of the plans that had been set on foot that 
 frightened him to action that he might keep his own 
 skin whole, perhaps it was the hope of some substan- 
 tial reward along with this which finally decided him 
 upon his course ; at any rate the resolution was made, 
 and it only was left to find a convenient opportunity. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS. 
 
 THE exact facts of the next few daj^s, or weeks, as 
 the case may be, are exceedingly difiicult to de- 
 termine, for the different sources which make up 
 the substance of our Gospels are here not always easy 
 to disentangle, and even when the separation is made 
 and the earliest account is got at, it is hard to say 
 where legend begins and history leaves off. So far as 
 Matthew and Luke are concerned, our criticism of the 
 Gospels leaves us little option in giving up whatever 
 can be shown to come from them. In Matthew, the 
 legendary character of the additions is particularly 
 pronounced, as it has many times been shown, and in 
 Luke, although the case is not as self-e\'ident, the same 
 judgment must be given. The dispute about prece- 
 dence, which Luke, against all inherent probability, 
 assigns to the last supper, the other Gospels show took 
 place on the occasion of the request of James and 
 John. Again, the saying about buying a sword is 
 disproven by the accompanying reference to the dis- 
 course on the sending out of the disciples, which we 
 have shown that Jesus never spoke. The different 
 order which is given to the trial scene, is shown to be 
 a displacement of the older account on which Luke is 
 
 312 
 
The Last Days of yesus. 3 1 3 
 
 drawing, by the fact that the maltreatment of Jesus is 
 made to come before his condemnation, while in 
 Matthew and Mark the condemnation forms its obvious 
 motive. The story of the sending to Herod, apart 
 from its entire absence from the other Gospels, is a 
 manifest interruption of what in the older account is 
 a connected and straightforward story ; the elements 
 of which it is composed, the silence of Jesus, the ac- 
 cusations of the priests, the mockery of the soldiers, 
 are just the elements of the other trial ; the expecta- 
 tion of seeing a miracle is unwarranted if Jesus worked 
 no miracles ; and the pretext which Pilate gives, that 
 Jesus belonged to Herod's jurisdiction, makes it inex- 
 plicable that Herod should at once have sent him 
 back again. Then the story of the crucifixion is a 
 confused, and at times blundering reproduction of 
 Mark's account, and the additions which L,uke does 
 give in the sayings which Jesus is recorded to have 
 uttered, it is impossible to defend, for they either have 
 their basis in the Old Testament, or else in themselves 
 they are extremely suspicious. The most elaborate 
 addition is the incident of the dying thief ; and not 
 only is this a late story, from an untrustworthy source, 
 which contradicts, too, the earlier statement that both 
 the robbers reviled Jesus, but the recognition of Jesus' 
 Messiahship just when he was the very farthest from 
 its realization in the popular sense, is out of the ques- 
 tion, and, in any case, there is no likelihood that any 
 of Jesus' disciples were allowed near enough to him to 
 hear a conversation of such a sort. And finally, the 
 circumstantial stories about the appearances of the 
 risen Jesus, are, as will be seen in the next chapter, an 
 absolute impossibility. 
 
 And now, after we have disregarded Matthew and 
 
3 1 4 The Life and Teachings of fcsus. 
 
 lyuke, there still remains the task of tracing Mark's 
 hand in what is left behind, and then again the task 
 of testing rigorously the residue. We cannot hope 
 then with any confidence to have more than a some- 
 what meagre array of facts left to us after all is done. 
 The chronology of Jesus' stay in Jerusalem, which 
 apparently is due to Mark, and which makes the time 
 a week, is hardly worthy of much credence. Whether 
 we ought to allow a longer or a shorter time there is 
 not much use in asking, although the statement that 
 Jesus preached by daj^ in the Temple and went out in 
 the evening to lodge in the Mount of Olives, and the 
 statement that Judas sought from that time an oppor- 
 tunity to betray him, both imply that the older narra- 
 tive thought of the period as at least of some little 
 duration. At length, however, the Passover came, and 
 for the last time Jesus sat down to eat with his disci- 
 ples. 
 
 Did Jesus know that the end was so near at hand ? It 
 certainly is not impossible that he should have had 
 some intimation of it, but whether he did or no must 
 be determined by examining the sayings in the Gospels 
 which point to such a knowledge. There are a set 
 of these, beginning with the story of the anointing 
 at Bethany. This story is a beautiful one, and taking 
 it alone there is nothing very damaging to be said 
 against it ; but for critical reasons it seems necessary 
 to attribute the story to Mark, It comes in between 
 two sections which naturally belong together, the two 
 statements that the Pharisees sought means to put 
 Jesus to death, and that they found an opportunity of 
 doing this through Judas. This connection the story 
 interrupts, and in addition it betrays its origin by the 
 vividness of its style, and by the use of the term 
 
The Last Days of Jesus. 3 1 5 
 
 svayysXiov in a way which seems in the Gospels to 
 be peculiar to Mark. If therefore we can trace the 
 narrative back to Mark, it would be rash in view of 
 Mark's bad reputation to allow it very much impor- 
 tance ; and we may therefore turn to the other passages, 
 all of which centre about the supper itself. The first 
 of these, the pointing out of the traitor, has the least 
 in its favor. It is not even certain whether it was 
 present in the source, for it does not fit with perfect 
 appropriateness into the story of the supper, and L,uke, 
 by deposing it from its position at the beginning, would 
 rather indicate that the source proceeded directly to 
 an account of the Paschal meal. And in any case the 
 natural desire which tradition would feel to give to 
 Jesus a foreknowledge of the traitor must constantlj^ 
 be kept in view. Again it must be remembered that 
 the question is not, Is there anything which absolutely 
 prevents our accepting the history as genuine ? When 
 a narrative comes to us in company with so very much 
 that shows the work of legend, the fact that it too can 
 easily have sprung up in the same way is much the 
 same as saying that for the purposes of history that is 
 the explanation we are bound to give it. Now, here, 
 as has been said, the motive for the incident is obvious, 
 and an actual foreknowledge on Jesus' part of plans 
 which Judas must have tried very hard to keep a secret, 
 is not to be admitted without special reason. And 
 when we add to this that the language to Judas is based 
 upon the Old Testament, and that Jesus, in a way 
 common to the Church, but showing a mechanical view 
 of prophecy which does not appear in the authen- 
 ticated sayings of Jesus himself, makes his death come 
 about through a necessity that prophecy should be 
 fulfilled, and apparently bases his knowledge, not on 
 
3i6 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 information, but upon this fact of prophecy, we are 
 obliged to reject the account. Similarly we must 
 decide in the case of the prophecy of Peter's denial. 
 That Peter did deny his Lord we may indeed sup- 
 pose to be an actual fact ; but with this given it would 
 be a very simple thing for tradition to dress it up and 
 give to it dramatic completeness, and in pursuit of this 
 to put a forewarning into Jesus' mouth. It happens 
 that we have two versions of this warning, which 
 indicates the amount of dependence we can place upon 
 them severally ; and in the earlier version we have the 
 same use of prophecy and the same conception of it 
 which was found in the narrative just before. When 
 therefore we find that the words of Jesus are peculiarly 
 definite and show an improbable knowledge that the 
 blow was to fall that very night, we must allow that 
 the whole is very doubtful. 
 
 The last case to be cited has decidedly a better at- 
 testation than any of the others, and it leads to the 
 somewhat larger question as to the facts about the sup- 
 per as a whole. Here we may take leave of the Gos- 
 pels for a moment, as we have an earlier and more 
 reliable account in the letter to the Corinthians. Paul's 
 account runs as follows : ' ' For I received of the Lord 
 that which also I delivered unto you, how that the 
 Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took 
 bread ; and when he had given thanks, he broke it, 
 and said, This is my body, which is for you : this do 
 in remembrance of me. In like manner also the cup, 
 after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in 
 my blood : this do, as oft as ye drink it, in remem- 
 brance of me." It will be noticed that the Gospel ver- 
 sion adds to this nothing essential except the words, 
 ' ' I will no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until 
 
The Last Days of Jesus. 3 1 7 
 
 that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God." 
 Since this is absent from Paul's account, and since, in 
 addition, it most naturally indicates a conception of 
 the kingdom as something material, or apocalyptic, at 
 the best, we may dismiss it from consideration. But 
 even when we take the account as it stands in Paul's 
 letter, there is no little difficulty connected with it. It 
 is hardly possible to give any other meaning to Jesus' 
 words than that he looked upon his death as a sacrifice 
 for sin, which introduced a new era in the dealings of 
 God with men. Now, it may be that Jesus, deeply 
 impressed with the thought that this was in all proba- 
 bility his last Paschal meal, and with his natural 
 tendency to figure, was struck by the resemblance of 
 his own approaching death, in very truth a sacrifice 
 for men, to the old sacrificial rite of Jewish worship, 
 and that the wine and broken bread came to him as an 
 effective way to give an object lesson to his followers, 
 which at the same time should furnish a simple bond 
 of union for the new spiritual community. This cer- 
 tainly is not inconceivable, and yet after all one ought 
 not to blind himself to the fact that such a conception 
 as this lies decidedly outside the realm of thought 
 which constituted Jesus' ordinary mental life. There 
 is nothing to correspond to it in what we have dis- 
 covered of Jesus' teaching, for the saying in Mark, 
 ' ' The Son of man came to give his life a ransom for 
 many," drops away when we retain the subsequent 
 sentence about the twelve thrones, as is done by Luke,' 
 and is shown to be a dogmatic paraphrase of Jesus' 
 words. Now there is nothing which has come out 
 more clearly in our survey of Jesus' teaching than the 
 manner in which he clears away all the artificialities 
 ' See Luke 22 : 27. 
 
3 1 8 The Life and Teachings of fesus. 
 
 which had grown up about the relations between God 
 and men, and gets right down to the simple and uni- 
 versal principles on which the religious life is built. It 
 is just for this reason that Jesus' words appeal so 
 powerfully to the modern consciousness, because they 
 come to us so largely unrefracted by the medium of 
 Jewish technical terminology and theological concep- 
 tions. Paul also got out into the light after a good 
 deal of trouble about it, but it was by an entirely dif- 
 ferent path. To Paul the old artificial barriers between 
 God and men, the legalities of an external covenant, 
 and the complicated relationship to an external law, 
 still had all their force ; and in order to get himself 
 out of the meshes of a partial and mechanical Judaism, 
 with which his profound religious feeling would not 
 let him rest content, he had to construct an intricate 
 sj'stem, in which the old legalism was beaten on its 
 own ground, in which with all a lawyer's subtilty God 
 was relieved from the technical difficulties in which he 
 had got himself involved, and his love and care for 
 men allow^ed free course. Jesus needed nothing of 
 this, simply because his mind had been able to slip the 
 artificial restraints which caused all the difficulty in the 
 first place, by means of the discovery that God did not 
 stand to men in the relation of magistrate and custo- 
 dian of a law outside himself, but rather of a Father, 
 that love on God's part, never restricted or pent up by 
 mechanical devises or contracts, and on the part of 
 man repentance and loving obedience which the Father 
 was only too ready to meet more than half-w^ay, left no 
 room for the problems of theology which aim to do 
 away with conditions which never existed. But while 
 these words move in a different realm of thought from 
 that in which Jesus lived, we also ought to notice that 
 
The Last Days of yesus. 319 
 
 they exactly chime in with the circle of ideas in which 
 Paul was more especially interested. To Paul the 
 sacrificial aspects of Christ's death were a matter of a 
 great deal of importance, and the " new covenant " is 
 essentially a Pauline formula, about which his theology 
 largely centred. 
 
 This therefore must be borne in mind while we turn 
 aside to notice a peculiar feature in Paul's account. 
 This is the way in which Paul speaks of his informa- 
 tion as something which he had received from the 
 lyord. Now there is the possibility, which we admit, 
 that Paul means nothing more by this than that it is 
 to the Lord that the institution of the supper originally 
 goes back ; and yet if this is what he means he cer- 
 tainly has chosen a very ambiguous way of saying it. 
 If Paul had wished merely to say that he was about to 
 give them Jesus' words, there was an easy way for 
 him to say it ; whereas the form of statement which he 
 does use, the stress that is put upon himself as the 
 recipient and upon the Lord as the source of informa- 
 tion, inevitably gives the impression that he is speak- 
 ing of something made known directly to himself. 
 When in another place he gives a piece of history, the 
 story of the resurrection, he talks about it in the way 
 we should expect him to, while if he wishes to empha- 
 size his entire independence of a human medium, as 
 in the case of the principles of his Gospel, he speaks 
 in the same fashion of receiving his knowledge straight 
 from God and not from man. It must be noticed, too, 
 that Paul does not say he received from the Lord the 
 command to observe the rite, unless he is using lan- 
 guage very loosely, but rather it is the fact that Jesus 
 uttered these words which he received. Now of course 
 we cannot admit that Paul actually got the information 
 
320 The Life and Teachings of Jesus, 
 
 in a miraculous way ; a miracle to save the trouble of 
 asking some one for himself is least of all conceivable : 
 and so we are led to ask if there is not some other 
 explanation available, before giving up the natural 
 meaning of the words. 
 
 Now if we put together the two facts, that the say- 
 ing attributed to Jesus is redolent of Pauline theology 
 and extremel}' difiicult to fit in with Jesus' conceptions, 
 and that Paul himself apparently tells us that he got 
 the saying b)^ direct and supernatural means, we are 
 already pointed in the direction we shall have to follow. 
 The last paschal meal of Jesus with his disciples, when 
 his life was so soon to go out in the tragedy of cruci- 
 fixion, must have been a subject of never-failing attrac- 
 tiveness for religious meditation. Paul had come to his 
 doctrine of the sacrificial nature of Christ's death, and 
 now how tempting it would be to find an intimation 
 of this in what was almost the last word of Jesus ; 
 indeed, if the doctrine was a true one, as Paul had no 
 manner of doubt, how could Jesus possibly have 
 avoided such a reference. There was to go upon the 
 fact that Jesus had taken bread and offered it to his 
 disciples, and likewise the wine after supper : what 
 were the bread and wine but emblems of the broken 
 body and the blood of the new covenant ? And with 
 the conviction that such was the fact once firmly 
 rooted, the step is not a very long one to the belief that 
 Jesus really had made the explanation, particularly if 
 we may suppose that a vision sealed it to him. 
 
 Now this hypothesis is not an arbitrarj'' attempt to 
 overthrow Paul's testimony, but it is an effort to get 
 rid of two real difficulties. Of course there are diffi- 
 culties also that can be raised against the hypothesis 
 itself ; to these however answers can be given. To 
 
The Last Days of jfesus. 32 1 
 
 say that Paul never could have worked himself into 
 such a conviction is a very large assumption, when we 
 consider how foreign modern caution was to the times 
 in which he lived. It is a fault of conservative criti- 
 cism, that it argues too much upon what men are 
 likely to do when actuated by pure and enlightened 
 reason, and refuses to take into account the plain fact 
 that men's minds often do not work along these lines, 
 but are subject to vagaries of every sort. When dog- 
 matic conclusions are held as truth unassailable, then 
 facts of history, as might be shown even by modern 
 examples, must accommodate themselves to dogmas, 
 or it goes hard with them ; and moreover such a 
 growth of dogma into history the whole phenomenon 
 of the Gospels compels us constantly to assume. It 
 also may be objected that the report must inevitably 
 have been corrected by the older Apostles. But this 
 loses sight of the fact that Paul seldom came in contact 
 with the Apostles, who confined themselves pretty 
 closely to their own field of work, and. that when he 
 did meet them it was to settle some all-absorbing ques- 
 tion. Another objection may lie in the supposed im- 
 possibility that a rite which did not actually have 
 Jesus' sanction back of it should j^et have become uni- 
 versally adopted by the Church. But Paul's authority 
 was certainly sufficient for Gentile Christianity, which 
 was the dominant influence in the catholic Church, 
 and of the early history of the rite in the primitive 
 Apostolic church we have practically no definite knowl- 
 edge. Moreover it may be argued that the institution, 
 when first it meets us, is by no means what we should 
 expect a memorial rite to be. The very name by which 
 the meeting went at which it is supposed that it was 
 celebrated, and which from Paul's account would 
 
322 The Life and Teachings of yesus. 
 
 seem to be identical with it, the agape, points to a dif- 
 ferent origin. It seems to have been a common social 
 gathering of the Church, and this characteristic hardly 
 could have assumed the prominence it did, so as to 
 supply the name of the gathering, if the rite had been 
 definitely instituted by Jesus himself for another pur- 
 pose. And then again a memorial rite naturally would 
 be celebrated once a year, on the anniversary of the 
 event it commemorated, or at any rate it would be cele- 
 brated at certain definite times. 
 
 Before dropping the matter however it may be 
 allowable to hazard one more conjecture. The fact 
 that it was the love-feast which grew into the Lord's 
 Supper suggests that perhaps after all some special 
 character had already been attached to it which made 
 the transition a natural and an easy one. Moreover, 
 while the discovery of a dogmatic significance in Jesus' 
 act, and the conclusion from this that Jesus must have 
 seen it and indicated it, is no xoxy violent assumption 
 when the premises that governed Paul's reasoning are 
 taken into account, yet there is no such obvious 
 dogmatic basis for the command, ' ' Do this in remem- 
 brance of me " ; and if we could regard this command 
 as really issuing from Jesus, the arbitrariness of Paul's 
 addition would be very much lessened. What there- 
 fore do these words refer to in Paul's account? What 
 w^as it that Jesus commanded to be done ? They cannot 
 mean, Repeat this formula, as modern churches do, 
 for of this there is not the least hint in the narrative. 
 Neither can they very well mean, Celebrate this rite. 
 To the disciples the supper simply was the Passover 
 meal, and if Jesus had wished to command them to 
 celebrate, after his death, which they did not know 
 
The Last Days of Jesus. 323 
 
 was so imminent, another supper, with an entirely dif- 
 ferent motive and in an entirely different way, he would 
 have needed to go much more into detail than he does. 
 Besides this, such a command would have been given 
 only once, referring to the rite as a whole, whereas, by 
 repeating it in connection both with the bread and the 
 wine, Jesus indicates that he means something, not 
 including both, but connected with each. And when, 
 the second time, he gives the command before the cup 
 is passed, he hardly can be guilty of the tautology, 
 Drink this wine, as often as ye drink it, or. Celebrate 
 this rite, as often as by drinking the wine ye celebrate 
 it ; the added clause, " as often as ye drink," makes it 
 improbable that the words should be meant as the 
 institution of a rite. 
 
 The only other suggestion which occurs to us as 
 natural is the very simple suggestion that Jesus just 
 means this : Do what I have just now done ; and the 
 only thing he is recorded to have done is to have given 
 thanks. And this at once would explain the fact that 
 the words are repeated both before the bread and wine, 
 and most of all it would explain Jesus' words in the 
 latter case: "Do this," says Jesus, ''as often as ye 
 drink.''' And does it not strike one too as eminently 
 natural, and as just what we might expect of Jesus? 
 He wishes some simple token to bring him to their 
 minds, and what more appropriate than this, whereby 
 each day, and constantly throughout the day, the 
 grateful recognition of God's mercies should be the 
 spell to call up the thought of him who taught them 
 to say " Our Father." Easily the recollection of this 
 simple memorial might become especially attached to 
 those meals where all the band of Christians met in 
 
324 The Life and Teachings of fesus. 
 
 common, just as here Jesus had been seated with his 
 disciples ; and then Paul's discovery of the sacramental 
 nature of the act would form the transition point 
 through which the love-feast came gradually to be the 
 solenni rite of the Lord's Supper. 
 
 We shall not attempt to criticise in detail the rest of 
 the Gospel narrative. The story undoubtedly has got 
 its coloring in a very decided degree from the Old 
 Testament, and in some places, as in the account of 
 the crucifixion, is taken almost bodily from that source. 
 What appears with certainty is that Jesus was arrested 
 privately and condemned by the Sanhedrin, and that 
 sufficient influence was brought to bear upon the 
 procurator to secure his execution, most likely on the 
 charge of treason to the Roman power. Probably a 
 few other facts may also be established with greater or 
 less confidence, but the}^ are not certain enough to 
 build very much upon. Already we have before us the 
 most that we can hope to know about the external 
 aspect of Jesus' life. How that life in its apparent de- 
 feat and extinction yet went on to change so mightily 
 the course of all human history, belongs to the story 
 of the Church. To-day its power is at work more 
 mightily than ever before, and in a new and truer way. 
 His own disciples never fullj^ understood Jesus, and in 
 the Church his features grew so indistinct and unearthly 
 that only the greatness of his personality, which once 
 perceived, never could be quite forgotten, caused that 
 they should not be altogether lost to sight. To-day it 
 is our task to dispel the misty clouds of incense about 
 his head, which hide while the}^ fain would do him 
 honor, and let the world look full upon his face. The 
 hope for the Church is that she has set herself to do 
 
The Last Days of yesus. 
 
 325 
 
 this task, and already the effects are beginning to ap- 
 pear. Every effort to do this, partial though it may 
 be, deserves the fullest welcome ; every attempt to 
 hinder it must inevitably fail. If one has confidence 
 in truth, he cannot fear the issue. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 
 
 AND SO with the death on the cross Jesus' life-work 
 closed, and for the moment, with all its magnifi- 
 cent promise and heroic struggle, defeat seemed 
 all that had come of it at last. How after that short in- 
 terval of darkness light began again to break, how the 
 idea of Jesus gradually and in the midst of stupidities 
 and conventionalities and misunderstandings without 
 number finally began to show what power and intense life 
 was wrapped up in it, belongs, as we have said, rather 
 to the history of the Christian Church. But there is 
 one factor in this great result, the belief in Jesus' 
 Resurrection, which is bound up so closely with Jesus' 
 life that some slight discussion of it can hardly be 
 avoided even if it leads just a little out of the way. 
 Besides it is a difficult question, as we admit, and we do 
 not want to have it appear that we would wish to 
 shirk it. When, however, we say that the question is 
 not an easy one, we do not mean to have it understood 
 that a particularly strong case can be made out for the 
 story of Jesus' bodily Resurrection as the Gospels 
 understand it. This indeed is far from being true ; 
 the evidence for the Resurrection as the Gospels speak 
 of it is very weak, weaker upon the whole than the 
 
 326 
 
The Resurrection of Jesus. 327 
 
 evidence for most of the other miracles in the Gos- 
 pels. It is not necessary to dwell again upon the 
 inconsistencies of the Gospel stories, but one 
 surely cannot help seeing that many inconsist- 
 encies there are. According to one account the 
 Resurrection took place at the end of the Sabbath, 
 according to others on the first day of the week. Jesus 
 appears first, now to Mary Magdalene alone, now to a 
 number of women, now to Peter. In one Gospel the 
 Apostles do not leave Jerusalem, in another the only 
 appearance is in Galilee. The farewell words of Jesus 
 do not agree. The ascension is now from the Mount 
 of Olives, now from a mountain in Galilee. The 
 appearances which are found in one Gospel are not 
 found in another, and Paul, who professes to give an 
 accurate list of them, excludes one half of the appear- 
 ances which the Gospels give. Now we do not insist 
 so much upon the fact that there are inconsistencies, 
 as upon the fact that these inconsistencies should 
 occur just here. There is no other part of the Gospels 
 where the narratives are so impossible to reconcile, and 
 yet this is just the place where we should suppose they 
 would have been most exact. It was upon the Resur- 
 rection that the Apostles based their preaching, they 
 constantly were making their appeal to it ; well, then, 
 we ask, why was there not here a definite statement 
 of fact upon which tradition could draw ? why do 
 the Evangelists here seem to be left entirely to their 
 own resources, and their narratives to assume more 
 distinctly the appearance of legend ? why do the 
 Apostles appeal simply to the fact of the Resurrection 
 and not to its special features ? how does it happen 
 that it is only in the latest strata of our Gospels, in our 
 present Matthew and lytike, that we find the definite 
 
328 The Life and Teaclmigs of Jesus. 
 
 features at all, and that even Mark had to stop with the 
 appearance of the angels at the tomb ? It may be that 
 there are other good reasons for this, but we think by 
 far the best reason is, that nothing more was told 
 about the Resurrection because, in a word, there was 
 nothing to tell, because the appearances were appear- 
 ances only, with no external features to them, and 
 because it was only when tradition had been given 
 time to work that anything more could be told. 
 
 And then, while we are finding diflficulties, one must 
 we think admit that the Resurrection is peculiarly 
 hard to accept, not perhaps because it is a miracle so 
 much as because it is unimaginable : that a thing 
 is unimaginable is surely, miracle or no miracle, no 
 mean argument against it. What, w^e have to ask, 
 was the nature of the body in which Jesus rose ? was 
 it still a material body ? this certainly is what we 
 should gather from the accounts. It is the same body 
 which only a day before was buried, and a miracle by 
 which matter has been changed of a sudden into spirit 
 is at all events a little startling. And the Evangelists 
 scarcely leave us in any doubt about this : Jesus 
 speaks with a human voice, he is seen with the ej'e, he 
 eats material food, he can be touched and handled, 
 the wounds still are in his hands and side, " a spirit," 
 he says, ' ' has not flesh and bones as ye see me have. ' ' 
 We do not intend to argue against the Resurrection in 
 this sense, the raising up of the material body ; those 
 who can hold to this belief we have no desire to dis- 
 turb. But those who onl}' can look upon the Resur- 
 rection as something, not material, but spiritual, we ask 
 how they are to reconcile with this the Resurrection of 
 Jesus which the Gospels speak of And we do not 
 lose sight of the fact that there are other features 
 
The Resurrection of Jesus. 329 
 
 which point in a different direction, which seem to 
 imply a body which was not material after all. Jesus 
 passes through closed doors, he vanishes in an instant, 
 he appears in different forms, he ascends into the 
 clouds : these things, say the commentators, all show a 
 spiritual body. If these qualities went by themselves 
 we should have but little to say ; but the fact that they 
 are qualities which are superadded to a material body, 
 this is what makes the whole thing most inconceivable. 
 How are we to think of a body which can be touched 
 and still can pass through wood ? a body that can 
 digest food and yet vanish in a moment ? How can we 
 help seeing that here we are in the realm of magic, of 
 fairy-land, where contradictions are overlooked, and 
 where everything is possible? It is just because the 
 doctrine of the Apostles is something very different 
 from this that it is not to be rejected without hesitation. 
 And that the doctrine of the Apostles was not at all 
 like this is proven by the testimony of Paul, the only 
 testimony that w^e have which is beyond suspicion, so 
 that upon it our whole conception of the Resurrection 
 must depend. In his letter to the Corinthians, he has 
 occasion to recall to them the evidence upon which 
 their faith is based, and he does this very carefully and 
 circumstantially. "For I delivered unto you first of 
 all that which also I received, how that Christ died 
 for our sins according to the Scriptures ; and that he 
 was buried ; and that he hath been raised on the third 
 day according to the Scriptures ; and that he appeared 
 to Cephas ; then to the Twelve ; then he appeared to 
 above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the 
 greater part remain until now, but some are fallen 
 asleep ; then he appeared to James ; then to all the 
 Apostles ; and last of all, as unto one born out of due 
 
330 The Life and Teachitigs of fesus. 
 
 time, he appeared tome also." We notice here that 
 Paul speaks only of an appearance ; he does not speak 
 of long interviews, he does not tell how Jesus walked 
 and talked with his disciples and what commands he 
 gave them ; he gives no hint of all this. And when 
 we remember that Paul is giving here the strongest evi- 
 dence that he can of the Resurrection, we say again 
 that the only natural reason why he did not give details 
 is that there were no details to give, that the appear- 
 ances were momentar}' visions, and nothing more. 
 And Paul shows this clearl}' when he classes his own 
 vision with those of the Apostles, and makes no differ- 
 ence between them. For in the case of Paul there can 
 be no doubt that we have a vision of the glorified 
 Christ, not at all any seeing with the bodily eyes ; and 
 surely if the other Apostles had seen Jesus on earth as 
 an ordinary man, who had walked and talked with 
 them, Paul never could have put his experience along 
 with theirs, for the two are quite distinct. So that 
 without hesitation we sa}^ that the fact of the Resur- 
 rection w^as a series of visions, of momentarj^ appear- 
 ances of the risen Christ, which were not visible to the 
 bodily eye ; and the only question is whether we can 
 explain these appearances in a purelj' natural way. 
 
 We think that certainl}' there is much to be said in 
 favor of a natural explanation. Jesus had exercised 
 such an influence over the minds of his disciples, that 
 even his death is not likely wholly to have shaken 
 their faith in him, and gradually they would have 
 tried to reconcile his death wdth their earlier con- 
 ceptions. And this thej^ actuall}' did in some way or 
 other succeed in doing ; they found Jesus' sufferings 
 in the Scriptures, and with this discover}^ their confi- 
 dence may well have returned in some measure. With 
 
TJie Resurrection of fesiis. 331 
 
 the thought of Jesus' death as a sacrifice they easily 
 could conceive of him as throned in heaven, only wait- 
 ing to come again in order to complete his mission. 
 And when this point was reached, in a moment of 
 excitement, one of the disciples may have had a vision 
 of the glorified Jesus ; and then it would have spread to 
 others, srb that even a number of persons at the same 
 time, in highly wrought expectation, might think that 
 they had seen it. Now what gives this theory its force 
 is the fact that it does correspond to conditions which 
 are to be found in the early Christian times. Such 
 phenomena as these, visions and ecstasies, we know 
 were frequent, and it was believed that they were 
 divinely produced. One of the very witnesses to the 
 Resurrection, the Apostle Paul, had this power, the 
 power of seeing visions, which, in other cases at least, 
 we must refer to natural causes. We cannot think of 
 the Apostles as cautious and skeptical, ready to weigh 
 and to scrutinize the supernatural, as it was just in 
 these qualities that they were most signally lacking. 
 If we can trust the account in Acts, the beginning of 
 the Church was especiall}' marked by these ecstatic 
 outbreaks, and we need onl)^ recall the gift of tongues, 
 a gift that was looked at by ever}^ one, even by Paul, as 
 divinely produced. That all these phenomena were 
 really miraculous we scarcely can believe, because we 
 find what is analogous to them in all times of great 
 religious excitement ; so that we must hesitate before we 
 explain the appearances of Jesus in any different way. 
 
 Nor do we think that the point which has been so 
 vigorously pressed, the disappearance of Jesus' body, 
 is any objection to this theory ; it only becomes diffi- 
 cult when we refuse to see that there are legendarj^ 
 elements in the Gospels. We learn from the Gospels 
 
332 The Life and Tcac Jungs of Jesus. 
 
 that after the Sabbath the women found the tomb 
 empty, while a vision of angels made known to them 
 that Jesus had risen. But the whole of this story is 
 decidedly suspicious ; to begin with, there is the vision 
 of angels, and this at least cannot be history. And if 
 we drop this vision then the whole motive for the story 
 is gone ; to say nothing of the fact that the purpose 
 which brings the women to the tomb, the anointing of 
 a body which already has been buried, is utterly op- 
 posed to Jewish custom. And along with this is the fact 
 that the disciples, in all likelihood, had fled at once to 
 Galilee to escape the fate of their Master. It only is in 
 the latest accounts that Jesus appears in Jerusalem, 
 and we can see how this would be the tendency of tra- 
 dition, to centre everything about the capital. But in 
 the older accounts it is in Galilee that Jesus shows him- 
 self; the appearance to five hundred disciples which 
 Paul speaks of could have taken place in Galilee and in 
 Galilee only ; the angels expressly send word through 
 the women that he will meet the disciples in Galilee, 
 and this loses all of its significance if there was a prior 
 meeting in the city. We have no indication either as 
 to how long it was before the visions took place, for 
 the forty days which lyuke speaks of clearly has no 
 historical value ; and when the visions did take place, 
 questions about Jesus' body must have been of infi- 
 nitely little importance. It never could have occurred 
 to the disciples that the Resurrection needed any such 
 proof as this. Doubtless they assumed that the grave 
 was empty, but even if we could conceive that they 
 should think it necessary to make an examination, yet 
 they were in Galilee, and already so long a time may 
 have passed since the burial that examination would 
 be useless. 
 
The Resurrection of Jestis. 333 
 
 At the same time we will not deny that after all has 
 been said the difficulties in the way of this theory are 
 still sufficiently great, and we do not feel that it is to 
 be accepted unhesitatingly. In the first place a con- 
 dition of mind which could produce a vision is not 
 likely to have arisen at once after Jesus' death. True, 
 the despondency of the disciples has we think often 
 been much exaggerated. If Jesus had prepared the 
 disciples for his death, as it seems probable that he had 
 done, and if in words which they still remembered he 
 had assumed that they were to carry on his work, then 
 they could not have been utterly cast down when the 
 crisis came ; and the fact that as many as five hundred 
 of them still recognized themselves as Jesus' disciples, 
 and could on occasion be gathered together, is proof 
 that this was not so. But still the shock must have 
 been a severe one, and they could not all at once have 
 recovered from it ; they had now to go to work under 
 conditions which certainly tended to sober their imag- ^ 
 
 inations, and we do not see that there was much in / 
 
 their situation to call forth these extravagances. ; 
 
 Now we do not know how long it was before the 
 visions appeared, and yet we hardly can allow a very 
 great interval of time. The Apostles placed the Resur- 
 rection on the third day, and this is not difficult to 
 account for; as Paul says, it was "according to the 
 Scriptures." But while this does not fix the time of 
 Christ's appearing, yet it is natural to think that this 
 bore some reasonable relation to the time which the 
 Apostles fixed upon for the Resurrection, and it agrees 
 with this that Paul separates his own vision sharply 
 from those of the other Apostles, and implies that there 
 was a long interval of time between them. 
 
 Moreover we do not think it is altogether in favor of 
 
334 ^^^ Zz/^ and Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 the vision theory that it is- in general only to the Apos- 
 tles that the visions come ; on the whole we think that 
 naturally these would have been the last to be affected 
 by the delusion, and that it would have been more 
 likely to appear among the less distinguished followers 
 of Jesus. The Apostles were men who especially had 
 been picked out by Jesus, and for some time they had 
 been living under his direct influence, an influence 
 that was eminently sane and heathful ; moreover the 
 work which they afterwards accomplished shows that 
 Jesus had not been altogether mistaken in them. But 
 to think that just these men, not one or two of them 
 alone, but all of them together, should twice have been 
 deceived by a heated imagination into the belief that 
 Jesus had appeared to them, is not without its diffi- 
 cult5^ And we also should take into account the cer- 
 tainty which they felt that this appearance was real, 
 and the immense consequences which resulted from the 
 conviction. And most of all is it difficult to explain 
 the limited number of the appearances ; the course of 
 events seems to have been just what in the case of a 
 religious excitement we should not have expected it to 
 be, and the whole thing suddenly stops when it has 
 reached its greatest intensit\\ How such a delusion 
 might spring up it is easy to explain ; but when it 
 once had got under way its whole tendency would be 
 to spread, to assume wider and wider proportions. 
 Here we have all the conditions, we have five hundred 
 people so wrought upon that they fancy they have seen 
 a vision ; and yet so far as Paul seems able to tell, this 
 appearance, outside the Apostolic circle, is the first and 
 the last one. 
 
 If one thinks that these arguments are not to be set 
 aside, there still is left open to him the possibility of a 
 
The Resurrection of Jesus. 335 
 
 real influence of Jesus upon his disciples, a revelation 
 of his continued existence, though a revelation purely 
 psychical. We cannot at present deny the possibility 
 of such an influence ; the evidence which in other 
 cases points to its possibility is certainly extremely 
 dubious, and yet even there it is not absolutely without 
 force. So long as any other explanation is sufficient 
 we cannot resort to this ; for our part however we are 
 not ready to insist that other explanations are entirely 
 sufficient. Of one thing only we can be sure, that the 
 faith which the disciples needed for their task came to 
 them ; and if we find God at all in historj', least of all 
 we shall refuse to find him here. Only it is not upon 
 this that we can rest our own faith, if we would rest it 
 securely ; it is after all only an objective fact, a fact of 
 history, and such a fact always will be open to the 
 possibility of doubt. Jesus for men to-day has brought 
 life and immortality to light, but it is because he has 
 revealed to us the real meaning of life, and has shown 
 us that in its very nature it is divine and eternal. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 AN ATTEMPT TO RECONSTRUCT THE COMMON SOURCE 
 USED BY THE WRITERS OF THE THREE GOSPELS. 
 
 I. Matt. 3 : 1-12 (omitting v. 4). 
 
 I. The account of John is shown to have been in the source 
 by the evident relation between Matt, and Luke. Just how it 
 originally opened it is difficult to say. Mk.'s opening sentence 
 appears from the word EZa/yEXiov to be due to himself. The 
 word f.vayyiXiov is used by Mk. only in a technical and theo- 
 logical sense (Mk. 1:15, in connection with belief; 8:35; 
 ID : 29 ; 13 : 10 ; 14 : 9), and is so used nowhere else in the 
 Synoptics, except where it is taken from Mk. (Matt. 26 : 13). 
 In the source it probably was used once in the sense of "glad 
 tidings " (Matt. 4 : 23, cf. 9 : 35). 7I7? ''lovdaiai may be an 
 
 Note. In the following pages I have presupposed the work 
 of Professor Weiss, to whom I hardly need to acknowledge my 
 indebtedness. I am convinced that he has discovered the truth 
 about the Gospel relations so far as his general theory goes. 
 Barring points of detail, I differ from him only in the belief 
 that Mark made a far greater use of the source than he would 
 allow. When this is granted I think that a great many things 
 will be explained, which cannot be explained otherwise ; in fact I 
 believe that there is no phenomenon in the Gospel which will not 
 find a natural explanation. Especially I call attention to the 
 way in which the sayings of Jesus are disposed of in the follow- 
 ing pages, a good test of the theory. I have made no attempt to 
 restore the order of the source except in isolated cases, and do 
 
 not think that such a restoration is possible. 
 22 
 
 337 
 
^TfS Appendix. 
 
 2. Mk, I : 9-1 1. 
 
 3. Matt. 4 : i-ii. 
 
 4. Matt. 4 : 23-5 : 2. 
 
 addition by Matt. The phrase /.uravt eIte, r/yyixEv yap if 
 /3a6i^£ia riSv ovpav gjv, is better attributed to John, than, 
 as in Mk. (i : 15) to Jesus ; for John's was more particularly a 
 preaching of repentance and of preparation. The picturesque 
 description of John (v. 4) is probably due to Mk. Matt, brings 
 it in here because Mk.'s order is no longer natural when the 
 verses which Mk. omits are retained (Matt. 3 '.^ff.). 'H itEpi- 
 Xoopoi Tov ^lopddvov, omitted by Mk. is shown to have been 
 in the source by its presence in Luke (3 : 3). The reference to 
 the Pharisees and Sadducees is apparently due to the first Evan- 
 gelist. Mk. adds the prophecy from Malachi. He changes the 
 direct address to /?a7rrz(3;/ar fteravoiai eH acpE6iv djuapricSv, 
 in which he is followed bj- Luke. He omits most of John's 
 ■words, changes the order of the clauses which he does give, 
 probably changes rd vnodrji-iara fta6Td6ixi to uvrpai Xvdat 
 Tov iiidvra tcSv vnodrjuaToov cxvtov, and omits xal nvpi, 
 the special motive for which disappears with the omission of 
 Matt. 3 : 10. 
 
 2. As the question of John and the answer of Jesus are 
 unknown to the other Evangelists, the incident is probably 
 added by Matt, as an attempt to account for the fact of the 
 baptism. The agreement of Matt, and Luke shows that dvoiyoa 
 was used in the source, instead of Mk.'s dxitoo. 
 
 3. 'Ayiav TtoXiv for 'ispodoXvjua is probably due to Matt. 
 Mk., followed by Luke, makes the temptation continue 
 through the forty days, but loses the motive for this statement 
 of time by his omission of the hunger and consequent temp- 
 tation. 
 
 4. Seep. 61. Matt, follows Mk. (4 : 17-22), and then goes back 
 to follow the source. Perhaps this section opened, as in Mk., 
 by a reference to John's imprisonment. Luke condenses the 
 introduction to the source (4 : 14-15), and then opens his account 
 of the ministry with a narrative of his own. He then takes 
 up Mk., only omitting the call of the disciples, which he brings 
 in in a different form at the close of Mk.'s account of the first 
 
Appendix. 339 
 
 5. Luke 6:20b, 21; Matt. 5:11-12, 14-48 (omitting vv. 
 25, 26, 31, 32); 6: 1-6, 16-18; 7: 1-5, 12; Luke 6:43-45; 
 Matt. 7:21, 24-29. 
 
 6. Matt. 8 : 1-4. 
 
 day. It seems better to retain Matt.'s phrase 7 ftadikEia rwv 
 ovpavcAv , rather than Mk.'s rov Oeov. See p. 218. Once how- 
 ever row Geoi; occurs in the source (Matt. 12 : 28, cf. ev nvevfiari 
 Qeov), and Mk. may have got his phrase here. 
 
 5. Luke's woes are probably due to his own point of view 
 on the question of wealth, and it might be that, for the same 
 reason, he has, in the beatitudes, changed what originally was 
 spiritualized. I take the opposite view however. Seep. 211. For 
 the sermon as a whole see p. 211/". For Matt. 5 : 25, 26, see 33. 
 
 For Matt. 5 : 31-32, see 45. It is inappropriate here, as Jesus 
 is laying down principles and not rules. Luke omits the early 
 part of the sermon as having too special a reference to Jewish 
 customs. He begins abruptly with the formula, dXXd v/.iiv 
 Xeyoo ro?5 OLKovovdir {cf. Matt.'s 7/H0i;'(jarre), and mixes up the 
 sayings about retaliation and love to enemies. He then omits 
 Matt. 6 : 1-6, 16-18, for the same reason as above. Matt, gathers 
 together various passages on prayer. For 6 : 9-13, see 25 ; 
 6 : 14-15, see 42. Matt. 6 : 7-8 is probably due to oral tradition. 
 Another long insertion occurs Matt. 6 : 19-34. For vv. 19-21, 
 25-33, see 30, (v. 34 is probably a current proverb added by 
 Matt.); vv. 22-23, see 27 : v. 24, see 41. Luke paraphrases 
 the sayings about the mote and beam very freely, and inserts 
 two sayings (6 : 39-40) for which see 19 and 29. For Matt. 7 : 7-1 1, 
 see 25 ; 7 : 13-14, 21-23 ; 8 : 11-12, see 35. Matt. 7 : 19 is taken 
 from the words of John (Matt. 3 : 10). Matt. 7 : 6 is probably 
 due to oral tradition. Perhaps 7 : 15b is a popular proverb. 
 6 ayaBoi avdpooTtoi . . . to drojiia avrov is inverted by 
 Matt., and put in another connection (12 : 35). 
 
 6. The presence of this narrative in the source is indicated 
 by the fact that Matt, brings it in immediately after the Sermon 
 (probably its original position), instead of following Mark ; 
 and also by slight points of contact between Matt, and Luke. 
 See iSov, Kx'<pie, and the omission of Mk.'s picturesque 
 touches dnAcxyx^^^^^^^ and kufipiiui]6a)j.Evoi aurcp. 
 
340 Appendix. 
 
 7- 
 
 Matt. 8:5-13 (omitting vv. 11, 12). 
 
 8. 
 
 Matt. 9 : 18-26. 
 
 9- 
 
 Matt. 11 : 2-19 (omitting vv, 14, 15). 
 
 10. 
 
 Matt. II : 20-24. 
 
 II. 
 
 Matt. II : 25-30. 
 
 12. 
 
 Luke 10: 23-24. 
 
 7. Luke also places this after the Sermon, but alters it very 
 materially. Matt, now takes up Mark again for a few verses 
 (8 : 14-16), losing of course the connection of this passage with 
 Mk. 1 : 16-28. 
 
 8. As Luke follows the account of the centurion's son with 
 the raising of the widow's son at Nain, this may have been the 
 original position of the raising of the dead which was in the 
 source. Luke has one point of contact with Matt, in the use 
 of T{pa6TtE?>ov. The narrative Matt. 9:27-31, is probably a 
 combination by Matthew of the stories of blind Bartimteus, 
 and of the blind man in the eighth chapter of Mark. The 
 use of the epithet vik JaveiS, here without any connection 
 with the rest of the narrative, is in Mark met by a protest from 
 the people, and seems to be connected with Mark's view of 
 Jesus' Messiabship. In Matthew the 7tpo67}A.0av avrcp oi rvfpXoi 
 (c/. Mk.'s ^XBev Ttpoi zov 'lr;6ovv) comes in abruptly and with- 
 out explanation. Jesus is made to disregard the entreaties of 
 *he man and to let them follow without notice, till he comes to 
 the house. "Why should he do this if he meant to heal them ? 
 The touching of the eyes, on the other hand, and the command 
 to tell no one, without however the preliminary precautions 
 which would make this prohibition of any use, come from the 
 story in the eighth chapter. This would explain the presence 
 of two blind men in the story, a number which Matthew retains 
 when he comes to the story of Bartimaeus. Matthew makes 
 this combination simply to get a story for his list of miracles. 
 C/. his mutilation of another narrative in the following section 
 (9:32-34). 
 
 9. As Luke brings in here the discourse about John, we may 
 perhaps assume that this was the original position. Matt, in- 
 troduces vv. 14, 15 from Mk. 9 : 13. 
 
 12. I put this here on the authority of Luke. Matthew has 
 
Appendix. 341 
 
 Matt. 13 : 3-9 ; Mk. 4 : 26-29 ; Matt. 13 : 31-33, 44-46 
 
 13- 
 
 Matt. 
 
 13 : 3-9 ; 1 
 
 51-52. 
 
 
 
 14. 
 
 Matt. 
 
 8 : 19-22. 
 
 15- 
 
 Matt. 
 
 8 : 23-27. 
 
 16. 
 
 Matt. 
 
 8:28-34. 
 
 17- 
 
 Matt. 
 
 9 : 1-8. 
 
 18. 
 
 Matt. 
 
 14:13-21. 
 
 19. 
 
 Matt. 
 
 15:1-14. 
 
 interwoven it into the parable discourse (13 : 16-17), but this 
 can hardly be its place, for it makes the verb refer in the first 
 sentence to spiritual, and in the second to physical vision. 
 
 13. See p. 203. This section, which seems in the source to 
 have been a parable discourse, is somewhat difficult to restore 
 with certainty. I have given the introductory remarks about 
 the crowd to Mark, because this is a favorite touch of his, and 
 because the question attached to the last parable, dwrjuazs 
 ravra itavra, appears to suggest that the parables were spoken 
 to the disciples. 
 
 15. I put this incident in because of its somewhat simpler 
 form in Matt., and because it is so closely connected with the 
 next following one. 
 
 17. Luke agrees with Matt, in uXivri, v. i8, and (pofiov^ 
 v. 26. 
 
 18. The connection of this with the return of the Twelve, 
 and the notice of the crowds which prevented them from tak- 
 ing rest, are probably due to Mk. Luke has a few points of 
 contact with Matt. Y^ai rovi jpszay sxovrai OspaTteiai idro, 
 V. II ; the disciples' answer, given as in Matt., with a para- 
 phrase of Mk.'s addition thrown in afterwards, v. 13; ro 
 TtEpj66Ev6av HXad/Licxrcov Kocpivoi SooSena, \. 17. The story 
 of the walking on the sea contains no clear indication, but in 
 my opinion is due to Mark. If this was not present in the 
 source, it would help to explain why Luke omits it. 
 
 19. This appears to have been in the source (i) from the 
 saying about blind guides, which Luke also has retained in an 
 impossible connection (6 : 39), and (2) from the apparently 
 more original character of Matt. Thus Mk. on account of an 
 addition which he makes, repeats the reason of the Pharisees' 
 
342 Appendix. 
 
 20. Matt. 15 : 21-22, 26-28. 
 
 21. Matt. 16 : 13-20. 
 
 22. Matt. 17: 1-9. 
 
 23. Matt. 17: 14-18. 
 
 24. Matt. 9 : 36-38 ; y<al npodnaXEdafxavoi rov ftaOT^rdi 
 avrov £7tE6TEtXEv avrovi ytal naprjyyEiXEv avroli Xsyaov ; 
 Matt. io:5b-i6; Luke 10:16. 
 
 attack a second time (7 : 2, 5) ; the order of Jesus' answer, the 
 ground of the denunciation preceding the denunciation itself, 
 seems more natural in Matt. In changing this order Mk. has 
 to insert a xal eXeyev avroii, and to repeat a sentence twice 
 (7 : 8, 9). Mk. has secondary touches not present in Matt. 
 Notice KaXSi in v. 9, apparently suggested by the much more 
 natural xaXcji, v. 6 ; the awkwardness of the two relative 
 clauses in v. 11 ; the statement ovxiri dq)i te avrov ov^kv 
 itoiri6ai. Mk. introduces explanatory notes for gentile readers, 
 vv. 3, II. I attribute to him the interpretation of the parable, 
 principally because the other interpretation which he gives 
 seems certainly to belong to him, and because the style of the 
 interpretation, especially the list of sins, savors more of a 
 Pauline disciple than of Jesus. 
 
 20. See p. 168. To Mk. is probably due the notice of Jesus' 
 inability to remain unknown, the words dq)Ei itpcSrov 
 XopTa60rjvai rd vekvcx, and the more definite description of 
 the result of Jesus' promise, v. 30. 
 
 21. The presence of rov fiEov in Luke, makes probable 
 Matt.'s reading in v. 16. On account of the parallelism I have 
 retained rov viov rov dvOpcoTrov {cf. o vidi rov Oeov) in v. 13. 
 The following section is probably due entirely to Mk. Notice 
 the different use of litirjfxav in v. 30, and w. 32, 33 ; see p. 236. 
 
 22. The discourse about Elias is omitted by Luke, and is 
 probably due to Mk. 
 
 23. See p. 177. Matt, has added a saying from the source. 
 See 42. 
 
 24. See p. 224. Mk.'s report of this discourse is evidently 
 an abstract of the longer version. Matt, follows him in 10 : i. 
 As between Matt, and Luke, Matt, as usual for the most part 
 keeps closer to the original. The words inf^i- dvo ;(^zrfJ7'aS 
 jurfdE Cno57Jfiara jut/Se pd/3dov, are also probably an addition 
 
Appendix. 343 
 
 25. Luke II : I (omitting first clause); Matt. 6: 9-13; Luke 
 11:5-8; Matt. 7: 7-1 1. 
 
 26. Matt. 12:22-32. 
 
 27. Matt. 12:38-39; Luke 11:30; Matt. 12:41-45 (omit- 
 ting the last sentence) ; Matt. 6 : 22-23. 
 
 28. Matt. 23 : 13-28 ; 4 : 29-32, 34-39. 
 
 from Mk. They obscure the meaning, for the agio's yap 6 
 kpyd.T7]'i rfj'i rpoqjTji avrov can refer only to the taking of 
 bread and money. Moreover the long string of objects makes 
 the sentence clumsy. Mk. adds these picturesque details, and 
 pictures the disciples as going out with only a staff of all the 
 traveller's ordinary equipment, an idea not quite correspond- 
 ing with the prohibition of scrip and money in the source, but 
 still harmless enough. Matt., perhaps without looking at the 
 passage very carefully, remembered that a staff had been men- 
 tioned, and included it also in the prohibition. Luke's version 
 is at times hardly more than a paraphrase. The opening sec- 
 tion he omits, probably by reason of its reference to the Samari- 
 tans and Gentiles, but portions of it he brings in later (v. 9). 
 To obviate the clumsiness which results from this omission, 
 he anticipates the simile of the sheep and wolves. V. 12 was 
 probably taken originally from the woes against the Galilean 
 cities, and accordingly Luke takes this occasion to bring in 
 that discourse. Matt, as usual brings together a number of 
 sayings from the source. Vv. 17-22, see 29 and Mk. 13:9-13; 
 vv. 24-33, see 29 ; vv. 34-36, see 32 ; vv. 37-39, see 39. For v. 42, 
 cf. Mk. 9 : 41. V. 41 may be due to tradition. For Luke 10 : 
 17-20, see p. 164. 
 
 26. Matt, adds rvtpXov. This probably was not in the origi- 
 nal account, as Luke omits it, and Matt, himself says, "the 
 dumb man both spake and saw," whereas we naturally should 
 have expected "the blind and dumb man," or else "the blind 
 man," as that was the worse affliction. The last two verses 
 seem to be modified somewhat in phraseology by tradition. 
 Matt., because of the reference to blasphemy, adds verses taken 
 for the most part from the Sermon on the Mount (vv. 33-35). 
 
 27. See p. 199. 
 
 28. This discourse is difficult to restore. For iutroduction 
 see p. 250. V. 4 I place after v. 28, on the authority of Luke. V. 
 
344 Appendix. 
 
 29. Luke 12 : i (to np^rov) ; Matt. 10 : 26-33, 19-20, 24-25. 
 
 30. Luke 12 : 13-20 ; Matt. 6 : 25-33, 19-21. 
 
 31. Matt. 25 : 1-12 ; 24 : 42-51. 
 
 32. Luke 12 : 49-50 ; Malt. 10 : 34-36. 
 
 33. Luke 12 : 54-59- 
 
 34. Luke 13 : 1-9. 
 
 33 is due to Matt., as is shown by ytwiniara extSv^v, bor- 
 rowed from the words of Johu. If this arrangement be ap- 
 proximately correct, Luke's version may be tolerably accounted 
 for. On account of his mistaken interpretation of its occasion, 
 he puts the saying about the cup and platter first. Then the 
 other sections follow in the same relative order as in the source, 
 only with several omitted because of their reference to matters 
 specifically Jewish. Finally, what originally was the opening 
 paragraph, displaced by the saying about the cup and platter, 
 is thrown in at the end. For ^ docpia rov Oeov see p. 306. 
 Luke is often manifestly secondary. See 11 :4i ; 47-48, where 
 the whole point is missed ; 49, xai 6| avrcSy, where a statement 
 as to w'hat happened to others, as in Matt., is obviously wanted ; 
 49, a7to6roXuuS. viov Bapaxiov is probably due to Matt. 
 
 29. The saying about leaven is introduced by Luke (notice 
 Ttf)c^Tov) simply to use it up (as is also v. 10). By making the 
 next sentence refer back to vTtoxpi6tv, an entirely wrong sense 
 is given to it. Notice Luke's EiitavE, transferred to the rela- 
 tive clause, and so obscuring the thought {cf. Matt.). With 
 this saying removed, a fairly good meaning is obtained for the 
 introductory remark. It is the sight of the crowds which re- 
 minds Jesus of the future, when the true knowledge of the 
 kingdom will be given to the world, and not simply to a little 
 company. For the remainder see p. 280/. 
 
 30. Luke 12 : 13-20 I assign to the source because it seems to 
 be authentic, and because it would account for the 8id zovto 
 (Matt. 6 : 25). 
 
 31. See p. 283/". In addition cf. the knocking of the master 
 with the knocking of the belated virgins. Luke 12 : 47-48 is 
 most likely due to the Evangelist, for o (ipvyf.i6i rtSv odovroov 
 naturally brings the section to an end. 
 
 34. Cf. the use of the parable by Mk. in the story of the 
 barren fig-tree. 
 
Appendix. 345 
 
 35. Matt. 7 : 13-14 ; 22 a ; Luke 13 : 26-27 ; Matt. 8 : 1 1-12. 
 
 36. Matt. 12 : 1-13 (omitting vv. 5-7, 12). 
 
 37. Luke 14 :8-i4. 
 
 38. Luke 14 : 16-24. 
 
 39. Luke 14 : 26 (omitting eti . . . eavrov), 27; Mk. 
 8 : 35 (omitting nal rov evayyF.Xiov)\ Luke 14 : 28-35. 
 
 40. Luke 15:1-2; Mk. 2:17; Matt. 18:12-13; Luke 
 15:8-10 (altered to correspond to preceding); Matt. 
 21 : 28-32. 
 
 41. Luke 16: 1-13. 
 
 42. Luke 17: 1-6; Mk. II : 24 ; Matt. 18: 21-34 ; 6 : 14-15. 
 
 35. Luke's introduction is suspicious, and perhaps suggested 
 by the oXiyoi ei6lv oi evpidHovrs? avrrjv. Luke correctly 
 makes the passage refer to Jewish contemporaries. Luke, in 
 paraphrasing the passage freely, has introduced features from 
 the parable of the virgins : avtouXsi'd]^ njv Qvpav ; uvpie, 
 avot^ov 7}jiiTv ; oiKoSedTtorrji. His representation is shown to 
 be secondary because (i) the figure of the oiHodeditori/i has 
 nothing in the context to suggest or explain it, and is inconsist- 
 ent with V. 26^ V. 26 especially, shows that Jesus is speaking 
 of himself, as he does in Matt.'s account ; (2) the first reply of 
 the master, ovh oiSa vjudi ttoOev idrs, is simply an anticipa- 
 tion of the second, and so must be dropped out. This makes 
 necessary a reconstruction of the whole. 
 
 36. See p. 238. 
 
 37. The saying vtai 6 vipoov . . . vrpooOTJdsTai, which 
 was certainly in the source, gets its best connection here. 
 
 38. See p. 204. 
 
 39. The verse o5 d^av BeX'^ . , . doodei avrrjv probably 
 belongs here, as Matt, and Mk. both give it in this context, and 
 Luke's err re ual tjjv xpvxf?y eauroiJ seems to be a reminiscence 
 of it. 
 
 40. See p. 300. For displacement of the parable of the two 
 sons by the parable of the prodigal son, cf. ri 8k vjuiv donei, 
 Matt. 21 : 28 and 18 : 12. For the conclusion see Luke 7 : 29-30. 
 
 41. V. 13 probably belongs here. Luke's version may in parts 
 be a free one. 
 
 42. Luke more probably has the original form of the saying 
 about prevailing faith. When it became connected with the 
 
346 Appendix. 
 
 43. Luke 17 : 20-27 (omitting v. 25) ; Matt. 24 : 40-41 ; Luke 
 
 17:37- 
 
 44. Mk. 2 : 18 ; Matt. 9: 15-17. 
 
 45. Mk. 10 : 2-10 ; Luke 16:18; Matt. 19 : 10-12. 
 
 46. Mk. 10 : 13-16. 
 
 47. Mk. 10:17-27; Luke 18 : 28-30. 
 
 48. Matt. 20 : i-i6. 
 
 49. Mk. 10 : 35-37 ; Matt. 20 : 22-27 ; Luke 22 : 27-30. 
 
 50. Matt. 21:1; Mk. 11:2-3; 7-8; Matt. 21:9; Luke 
 19:39-40, 45-46; 21:37-38. 
 
 51. Matt. 21 : 23-27. 
 
 52. Matt. 21 : 33-44 (omitting 43). 
 
 story of the barren fig-tree, the sycamore was changed to a 
 mountain. The verse Mk. 11: 24 is probably corrupt in both 
 Matt.'s and Mk.'s version. For the conclusion, the form of 
 Matt. 6 : 14-15 seems most original. 
 
 43. See p. 292. 
 
 44. Luke shows a slight connection with Matt, in kxxv- 
 
 45. The saying Ttdi 6 (XTroXvoov . . . yUoz;|^«u£t is present 
 in Luke, and agrees with Matt, in the last clause (Matt. 5 :32), 
 and in having a participial instead of a relative construction. 
 /J?) titi TtoftVEi'a seems to be due to Matt. In general Mk. has 
 retained the original form. 
 
 47. Probably in the source. vSee rfirjuaro'i ; omission of ixr] 
 dno6T(.pi)6T;)i and 7)ydn7)6Ev avrov ; TtoXAanXadiova, and in 
 general the concluding verses. For Matt. 19 : 28 see 49. 
 
 49. Matt, has ^ itijnjp toov viooi' ZefiESaiov, perhaps to save 
 the credit of the Apostles. But in Jesus' answer the plu. is re- 
 tained, 5 aireldds. Notice that the ri dsXsii does not come in 
 naturally after Matt.'s airov6c\ n, an indication that his text is 
 secondary. 
 
 50. Mk. II : 5-6 is omitted by Matt., and it strikes me as one 
 of Mk.'s additions. Similarly Mk. 11 : 15 b, 16. The omission 
 by Matt, of dyopdZ^ovraZ at any rate seems an improvement. 
 
 51. Luke has slight points of agreement with Matt. {8iSd6- 
 xovtoS, Hayoo}. 
 
 52. Luke 20 : 15a agrees with Matt., and both add nd? 6 
 neGojy . . . \iKfxri6Ei avrov (at least in WH. text). 
 
Appendix. 347 
 
 S3 
 
 54 
 55 
 56 
 57 
 58 
 59 
 
 Matt. 22 : 15-22, 
 Matt. 22 : 23-33. 
 Matt. 22 : 35-40. 
 Mk. 12:35-37. 
 Mk. 13. 
 
 Matt. 25 : 14-29. 
 Matt. 25 : 31-46. 
 
 The historical notice in Matt. 21 : 45, 46, follows Mk., but 
 is influenced by Matt. 21 : 26. 
 
 53. Just what historical setting this series of narratives had, 
 or whether they belong together at all, it is not easy to say. 
 Matt, and Luke agree in having itovr]fiiav (Ttavovpyuxv) for 
 Mk.'s VTtoKpidiv. Moreover, the first Siddduszi in Luke may 
 be an echo of a version like Matt.'s. Mk. seems to be less 
 original in v. 14 (last clause), v. 15^, i6a. 
 
 54. Matt, seems slightly more original than Mk. in 22 : 25, 
 26; 29, TtXavddOe on; 30, h' r^ dva6rd6£i ; omission of 
 TtoXv TiXav(x6BE, and perhaps elsewhere. 
 
 55. Matt, is shown to be original by the fact that Luke has 
 made use of the narrative in the parable of the good Samaritan, 
 and has retained vo/J-iKoi, TtEipaQcov, and ^iSadxaXs. 
 
 56. The actual question and answer in Matt, may be due to 
 the TtiSi Xeyovdtv oi ypai.tfiar£li. 
 
 57. Matt, adds xai dvvzEXtiai rov alcSvoi, v. 3 ; perhaps 
 firfdh da/J/3droo, v. 20. Matt. 24 : 9-14, is a free paraphrase, due 
 to the fact that this passage already has been used by Matt. 
 (10 : 17-22). In V. 22, Matt, has xoXofJojOjjdovrai ai t/jne'pai 
 euEivai, and this may be a reminiscence of the original form. 
 In this case Mk. must have changed the form of the whole 
 sentence from a standpoint after the event, and in the first 
 clause have been followed by Matt. It seems more likely, 
 however, that Mk.'s form is original. EvOEoo'i{\. 29), however, 
 seems to be a survival from the soiorce. Luke is very free, 
 and reveals a standpoint to which the fall of Jerusalem is 
 past. He is much more definite in his predictions (vv. 20, 
 24), and he separates the catastrophe from the parousia, placing 
 between them the uaipoi eBvcSv, of indefinite extent. 
 
 58. Matt. 25 : 30, is very likely an addition, modelled after 
 similar endings. 
 
348 Appe7idix. 
 
 60. Luke 22: I, 2 (introduce Iv SdAqj MparT/dcxvre'i) ; Mk. 
 14:10, iia; Matt. 26:i6-i8a (to Aeyei); Mk. 14:14-15 
 (from Ttov); Matt. 26 : 19. 
 
 61. Matt. 26 : 20, 26-30 (omitting fH dq>E6iv djuapTi&v). 
 
 62. Matt. 26 : 31-35 (omitting v. 32). 
 
 63. Matt. 26 :36, 39-41 a (omitting rcj nerpcp). 
 
 64. Matt. 26 : 47-52, 56 b. 
 
 65. Matt. 26:57-59; Mk. 14:56, 60-62 (through eii-ti); 
 Luke 22:69; Mk. 14:63-65 (insert ri'i 16tiv 6 nai'oai 6e); 
 66-72 (omit £H Ssvzepov, and substitute H<h icsXOa^v e%oo 
 €HXav6ev mxpoo's). 
 
 60. Some section of this sort is necessary as a connecting 
 link, and the simpler form in Matt, (without the suggestion of 
 a miracle), seems original. See also evxaipiav in Matt, and 
 Luke. The opening verse I take from Luke, because it seems 
 a trifle more natural, and because it suits better the dnd rove 
 of Matt, (though of course this may itself be secondary). Matt. 
 26 : 2, i8b, I take as a free reproduction of the sense. The 
 original form seems to be in Mk. 
 
 61. The prophecy of the betrayal may possibly belong here. 
 Notice, however, that Luke displaces it, and throws it in later, 
 which he would have been less likely to do if he had had both 
 Mk. and the source against him. 
 
 62. V. 32 has a poor connection, and seems to be due to Mk. 
 
 63. Luke's account is much the shorter, and it seems rather 
 less likely that he should abbreviate it, than that Mk., as he 
 often does, should enlarge upon it. Moreover, the leaving 
 behind of the disciples in two sections, looks a little artificial, 
 especially as all the disciples appear to be present when Judas 
 arrives, although Jesus had not returned to the larger body of 
 them. Notice also, that Matt, has the pin. i6xv<iocrE, though he 
 follows Mk. in making the words addressed to Peter only. 
 
 64. This is only a guess. Matt, and Luke agree in putting 
 two sayings in Jesus' mouth, but the sayings diff"er. The inci- 
 dent of the sword seems in Mk. to be a little too parenthetical, 
 and to need something to complete it. 
 
 65. Mk. 14 : 57-59, gives me the impression of being an 
 insertion. It, moreover, is omitted by Luke. Hard tov Osov 
 
Appendix. 349 
 
 66. Mk. IS : 1-41. 
 
 67. Matt. 27:57-60. 
 
 68. Matt. 28: I (omitting first clause); Mk. 16:4-5; Matt. 
 28 : 5-7. 
 
 TovZ,S)VTo'i, in Matt., seems to be a reminiscence of Matt. 
 16: 16. 
 
 66. In the lack of positive data, I do not venture to restore 
 this section, but, in all likelihood, Mk. has amplified it more or 
 less. 
 
 68. The incident of the preparation of the spices, I refer, 
 with some hesitation, to Mk., cf. 60. The Ka^oj? eitcev is 
 assigned both by Matt, and Luke to the resurrection, and not, 
 as by Mk., to the meeting in Galilee, cf. 62. 
 
 Sections of the Gospel Narrative due to the writer of our 
 First Gospel. 
 
 Matt. I ; 2 ; 3 : 14-15 ; 4 : 13-16 ; 5 : 5> 7-9 ; 6 : 7, 8, 34 b ; 7:6; 
 8 : 17 ; 9 : 13 a ; 10 : 41 ; 12 : 5-7, 17-21 ; 13 : 35-43, 47-50 ; 14 : 28-31 ; 
 15 : 23-25 ; 17 : 24-27 ; 18 : 10, 15-17, 19-20 121:4, 5i 1O1 H) 14-16 ; 
 23 : 2-3, 8-10, 33 ; 26 : 15, 25, 53 (?) ; 27 : 3-10, 19, 24-25, 51 b-53, 
 62-66 ; 28 : 2-4, 9-20. 
 
 Sections of the Gospel Narrative due to the writer of our 
 Second Gospel. 
 
 Mk. 1 : 6, 16-39, 45 ; 2:2, 4, 13-15, 27 ; 3 : 3-4, 6, 9-21, 31-35 ; 
 4:1, 10-20, 33-34; 5:3-6, 8-9, 18-20, 30-32, 35-37, 43; 6:1-6, 
 13-33, 45-56 ; 7 : 3-4, 17-23, 31-37 ; 8 : 1-26, 31-33 ; 9 : 11-18, 20-26, 
 28-41; 10:1, 32-34, 46-52; 11:12-14, 20-22; 12:32-34, 38-44; 
 14:2-9, 13-14, 17-21, 33-34, 39-42, 48-49, 51-52. 
 
 Sections of the Gospel Narrative due to the writer of our 
 Third Gospel. 
 
 Luke i; 2; 3:1-2, 10-15, 23-2S ; 4:16-30; 5:1-9; 7:11-17, 
 36-50; 8:1-3; 9:61-62; 10:17-20,25-42; 11:27-28; 13:10-17, 
 31-33 ; 15 : 11-32 ; 16 : 19-31 ; 17 : 7-19 ; 18 : 1-14 ; 19 : i-io, 41-44 ; 
 22 : 31-38 ; 23 : 6-12, 27-31, 39-43 ; 24 : 13-53. 
 
350 
 
 Appendix. 
 
 Cases in which Mark has borrowed phrases or incidents from 
 the Common Source, and has used them apart from their origi- 
 nal connection. 
 
 Mk. I : 15, (/ Matt. 3:2; i : 21, </^ 4 : 23 ; \ -.22, cf. 7 : 28-29 ; 
 I : 24, cf. 8 : 29 ; i : 28, cf. 4 : 24 ; i : 32, 34, </". 4 : 24 ; i : 45, and 
 similar passages, cf Luke 12:1; 2:15-16, cf. Luke 15:1-2; 
 3 : 4, (/. Matt. 12:12; 3 : 7-8, </". 4 : 25 ; 3 : 13, ^. 5 : i ; 3 : 14-15, 
 cf. 10 : 7-8 ; 3 : 21, 22, cf. 12 : 22-24 ; 4 : 21, ^ 5 : 15 ; 4 : 22, </! 
 10 : 26 ; 4 : 24, </. 7:2; 4 : 25, (/. 25 : 29 ; 6 : 6 b, (/". 4 : 23 ; 6 : 7 b, 
 13, cf. 10:8; 6:12, cf 10:7; 6:14-16, cf. 16:14; 6:34, cf 
 9:36 (?); 6:56, cf. 9:21 ; 8 :ii-i2, f/". 12:38; 8:33, cf. 4:10; 
 
 8 : 34. 35, cf 10 : 38-39 ; 8 : 38, cf. 10 : 33 ; 9:1, c/^ 24 : 34 ; 9 : 23, 
 ^. Luke 17:6; 9 : 33-35, cf. Matt. 24 : 26 ; 9 : 37, cf. Luke 10 : 16 
 and Matt. 10 : 40 ; 9 : 40, cf. Matt. 12 : 30; 9 : 42, (/ Luke 17:2; 
 
 9 : 45-48, </: Matt. 5 : 29-30 ; 9: 50, cf. Luke 14 : 34-35 ; 10 : 31, 
 cf. Matt. 20 : 16 ; 10 : 38 b, cf. Luke 12 : 50 ; \i : 12 ff. cf. Luke 
 I3:6_^. ; 11 : 22-23, ^ Luke 17 : 5-6 ; n : 24-25, ^. Matt. 18 : 19, 
 21 ff.\ 12:38, </. Matt. 23; 14:21, cf. Luke 17:2; 14:28,^. 
 Matt. 28 : 7. 
 
INDEX TO PASSAGES IN THE GOSPELS. 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 i.-ii 32 
 
 iii. 1-12 50 
 
 iii- 13-17 195 
 
 iv. 13 299 
 
 iv. 23-v. 1 62 
 
 v.-vii 211, 251 
 
 V. 11-12 280 
 
 V. 29 269 
 
 V. 38-48 273 
 
 V. 43 207 
 
 vi. 22-23 200 
 
 vi. 25-33 263 
 
 vii. 22-23 161 
 
 vii. 28-29 63 
 
 viii. 5-13 169 
 
 viii. 14-17 47 
 
 viii. 21-22 270 
 
 viii. 28-34 56 
 
 ix. 1-8 56, 167 
 
 ix. 10 45 
 
 ix. 14 42 
 
 ix. 14-17 257, 279 
 
 ix. 18-26 57, 170 
 
 ix. 27-34 172 
 
 X. sff . .222 
 
 PAGE 
 
 X. 17-33 287 
 
 X. 37 240 
 
 X. 42 43 
 
 xi. 2-6 156, 194 
 
 xi. 10 208 
 
 xi. II 219 
 
 xi. 12 301 
 
 xi. 20-24 160 
 
 xi. 25-30 241 
 
 xii. 1-8 57,238,247 
 
 xii. 9-13 57- 165 
 
 xii. 12 42 
 
 xii. 15-16 44 
 
 xii. 22-32 152, 261, 303 
 
 xii. 31 303 
 
 xii. 38-42 159 
 
 xii. 43-45 261 
 
 xiii. 3-9 281 
 
 xiii. 24-30 281 
 
 xiii. 36-43 202 
 
 xiii. 47-50 282 
 
 xiv. 13 41 
 
 xiv. 13-21 58, 150 
 
 xiv. 22-27 146 
 
 xiv. 28-33 146 
 
 XV. 1-20 248 
 
 351 
 
352 Index to Passages in the Gospels. 
 
 PACK 
 
 XV. 21-2S 1 68 
 
 xvi. 12 46 
 
 xvi. 13-20. . . .220, 232, 236, 279 
 
 xvii, 1-8 58 
 
 xvii, 14-20 57, 171, 264 
 
 xviii. 1-35 5iff. 
 
 xviii. 12-13 201 
 
 xviii. 19-20 264 
 
 xix. 10-12 270 
 
 xix. 16-26 269 
 
 xix. 23-24 42 
 
 xix. 28 221 
 
 XX. 20-28 305 , 3 1 7 
 
 xxi. 1-17 59, 14S, 227, 308 
 
 xxi. 23-27 234, 309 
 
 xxi. 33-46 204 
 
 xxii. i-r4 204, 304 
 
 xxii. 23-33 295 
 
 xxii. 34-46 48 
 
 xxii. 41-46 234 
 
 xxiii. 1-12 250 
 
 xxiii. 13 220, 250, 301 
 
 xxiii. 33 208 
 
 xxiii. 34-39 306 
 
 xxiv. 36-xxv. 13 283 
 
 XXV. 14-30 281 
 
 XXV. 31-46 294 
 
 x.xvi. 6-13 314 
 
 xxvi. 18 60 
 
 xxvi. 21-24 315 
 
 xxvi. 25 172 
 
 xxvi. 26-29 3^6 
 
 xxvi. 33-35 316 
 
 xxvi. 36-46 60 
 
 xxvi. 64 61, 235 
 
 xxvi. 69-75 60 
 
 xxvii. 3-10 172 
 
 xxvii. 19 172 
 
 xxvii. 24-25 172 
 
 PAGR 
 
 xxvii. 51 148 
 
 xxvii. 51-53 146 
 
 xxvii. 62-66 172 
 
 xxviii. 1-5 147 
 
 xxviii. i-io 332 
 
 xxviii. 16-20 32, 239 
 
 MARK. 
 
 i. 1-8 50 
 
 i. 14-15 210 
 
 i 14-39 62, 179 
 
 i. 16-20 301 
 
 ii. 1-12 56, 167 
 
 ii. 14-17 300 
 
 ii- 23-28 57 
 
 iii. 1-6 57, 181 
 
 iii. 7-19 62 
 
 iii. 20-22 183 
 
 iii. 22-30 152 
 
 iii. 31-35 183 
 
 iv. 10-20 202 
 
 iv. 26-29 2S2 
 
 V. r-20 56 
 
 V. 21-43 34. 57 
 
 vi. 1-6 182 
 
 vi. 13 155 
 
 vi. 30-44 58, 150 
 
 vii. 24-30 168 
 
 vii. 31-37 17S 
 
 viii. 14-21 46, 182 
 
 viii 22-26. . . . 178 
 
 viii. 32-33 279 
 
 viii. 34-ix. I 286 
 
 ix. 2-8 58 
 
 ix. 14-29 57. 177 
 
 ix. 33-50 5iff, 180 
 
 X. 17-19 242 
 
 X. 46-52 178 
 
 xi. i-ir 59 
 
Index to Passages in the Gospels. 35, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 xi. 12-14, 20-25 149 
 
 xi. 23-25 54, 264 
 
 xiii 286, 290 
 
 xiii. 35-37 38 
 
 xiv. 13-14 60 
 
 xiv. 32-42 60 
 
 xiv. 62 61 
 
 xiv. 66-72 60 
 
 LUKE. 
 
 i.-ii 32 
 
 iv. 14-15 64 
 
 iv. 16-30 147. 162 
 
 iv. 31-43 47 
 
 iv. 32 39 
 
 V. i-il 147 
 
 V. 15-16 45 
 
 V. 17 40 
 
 V. 29 45 
 
 vi. 1-5 57 
 
 vi. 6-11 57. 165 
 
 vi. 12-20 64 
 
 vi. 20-49 211 
 
 vii. i-io 173 
 
 vii. 11-16 173 
 
 vii. 18-23 156 
 
 vii. 36-50 78 
 
 viii. 40-56 34 
 
 ix. 10-17 58, 150 
 
 ix. 18 33 
 
 ix. 28-36 58 
 
 ix. 46-50 5iff- 
 
 ix. 61-62 270 
 
 x. I 173 
 
 X. 17-20 164 
 
 X. 25-37 205 
 
 xi. 14-23 152 
 
 xi. 14-36 199 
 
 xi. 37-39 ^75 
 
 FACE 
 
 xii. I 280, 287 
 
 xii. 32-48 283 
 
 xii. 38 39 
 
 xii. 41 39 
 
 xii. 49-53 305 
 
 xiii. 11-17 166 
 
 xiii. 24-30 304 
 
 xiii. 26 161 
 
 xiii. 31-35 163 
 
 xiv. 1-15 175 
 
 xiv. 33 207 
 
 XV. 3-7 201, 300 
 
 XV. 11-32 205 
 
 xvi. 14-31 205 
 
 xvii. l-io ... 52ff. 
 
 xvii. 1 1-19 148 
 
 xvii. 20-21 220 
 
 xvii. 22-37 292 
 
 xviii. 1-8 285 
 
 xix. 11-27 204 
 
 xix. 29-48 59 
 
 xix. 33 40 
 
 XX. 39-40 48 
 
 xxii. 24-30 221, 312 
 
 xxii. 35-36 312 
 
 xxii. 39-46 60 
 
 xxii. 51 146 
 
 xxii. 54-62 60 
 
 xxii. 63-65 313 
 
 xxii. 69 61 
 
 xxiii. 6-12 313 
 
 xxiii. 36 40 
 
 xxiii. 39-43 313 
 
 xxiii. 45 40 
 
 xxiv. 10 41 
 
 xxiv. 50-53 32 
 
 JOHN. 
 
 1. 15-34- 
 
 .79 
 
354 Judex to Passages in the Gospels. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 i- 35-51 83 
 
 ii. i-ii 95 
 
 ii. 13-22 88 
 
 iv. 1-45 105 
 
 iv. 46-54 72 
 
 V. 1 86 
 
 V. 2-iS 76 
 
 vi. 1-24 88 
 
 PACK 
 
 vii. 45-49 91 
 
 ix 97 
 
 xi 99 
 
 xii. i-S 77 
 
 xix. 31-37 91 
 
 xix. 35 130 
 
 XX 93 
 
 xxi 132, 134 
 
Date Due 
 
 DE5 '52 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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