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 Division.-.:. 
 
THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
THE 
 
 LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM J, DAWSON 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO 
 
 103-105 South Fifteenth Street 
 
Copyright, 1901, by 
 WILLIAM J. DAWSON 
 
PREFACE 
 
 If a book is incapable of expressing its scope and inten- 
 tion with adequate lucidity, it is scarcely in the power of a 
 preface to atone for this inherent defect. A preface may, 
 however, do something to define the objects of an author, and 
 it is a recognized vehicle of personal confession. 
 
 The object of the author is to depict the human life of 
 Jesus as it appeared to His contemporaries, with a purposed 
 negligence, as far as it is possible, of the vexed problems of 
 theology and metaphysics. It is the Man Christ Jesus 
 whom the author has striven to see ; and it will be unneces- 
 sary to remind the reader that this phrase is St. Paul's. It 
 must, however, be confessed, frankly and at once, that the 
 author has not interpreted the phrase as strictly limitary. It 
 did at one time seem possible to write a life of Christ from 
 the sole point of view of its human grace and efficiency, but 
 the design was soon rejected as entirely incompetent to the 
 theme. The first chapters of the book were scarcely drafted 
 before the story seemed to pass from the author's hands and 
 to write itself in terms of its own. As the experiment pro- 
 ceeded the mind became more and more an involuntary 
 agent, acting upon instincts which were not based on reason, 
 but were superior to reason. This did not annihilate the 
 functions of criticism ; it did not replace these functions with 
 something else ; but it produced a conviction, at once pro- 
 found, gradual, and irresistible, that in the very nature of the 
 story itself, and therefore in the nature of Christ, were ele- 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 merits entirely incommensurate with the limits of the human. 
 It is not possible to disengage the human elements in Jesus 
 from the Divine. The human life may be indeed studied in 
 its integrity, and no story can be more fruitful of exalted 
 thought and impulse ; but at every stage a deepening awe 
 falls upon the mind, until at last the sublime confession rises 
 to the lips, " These things are written that ye might believe 
 that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing 
 ye might have life through His name." 
 
 Although a Pauline phrase is used to express the charac- 
 ter of the book, yet it is obvious that the only materials we 
 possess for a life of Christ are not found in the writings of 
 St. Paul, but of the Evangelists. Bentham's famous motto, 
 " Not Paul, but Jesus," is still significant of a wide cleavage 
 in religious thought. St. Paul certainly had the first word 
 in the shaping of Christianity, for his writings had made a 
 deep impression on the human mind long before the Gospels 
 were known except by oral tradition. One might have sup- 
 posed that St. Paul himself, the only man of trained mind 
 among the Apostles, would have been eager to collect these 
 traditions, and to combine them into an authoritative life of 
 Christ. But St. Paul had never seen the living Jesus. Jesus 
 only begins to exist for him on the day when He dies, or 
 rather on the day when He rises again from the dead. St. 
 Paul is pre-eminently the Apostle of the Resurrection and 
 the Spiritual Life of Jesus. The Resurrection, and the sub- 
 lime theologies which sprang from it, absorbed his mind ; 
 and, no doubt, the Resurrection was the supreme fact which 
 all the Apostles had to communicate to the world. But the 
 world needed more than a theology to save it; it needed 
 more even than the doctrine of a Resurrection. It needed a 
 human Christ, a Person who could be loved, an Example that 
 could be followed : One who, in living the most perfect of 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 all lives, had become the Arbiter of life itself, the mirror of 
 all perfection, and the fountain of all grace and virtue. 
 
 The Gospels supply this need. They compose an incom- 
 parable picture, drawn with a pencil dipped in the vital hues 
 of nature, of a life wiser, purer, loftier, and more lovable. than 
 the world had ever known. The Christ who moves through 
 these inimitable scenes is incontestably — to take the lowest 
 ground — the greatest Figure in universal history. It seems 
 almost an impertinence to inquire if this Portrait is after all 
 imaginary. Who was to imagine it ? To have invented or 
 evolved the sublime Figure of Jesus of Nazareth, the Evan- 
 gelists must have been the equals of the Christ whom they 
 invented. They were no more capable of such a task than the 
 man destitute of genius is capable of creating the master- 
 pieces of enduring art and literature. With a divinely art- 
 less art, which transcends all art and fills the mind with 
 wonder, four men of diverse idiosyncrasy describe the life of 
 Jesus in such a way that the mind of the whole world is 
 henceforth riveted upon their pages ; and the more closely 
 these Gospels are studied the more decisive becomes the ver- 
 dict of their essential truth. 
 
 To the Gospels the world will always turn to discover the 
 Portrait of Christ ; yet there are certain strong reasons why 
 from time to time men should seek to re- write the life of 
 Christ for their contemporaries. The chief of these is, that 
 every age has its own way of thinking of Christ, and, in 
 effect, speaks a new language of religion. There is also 
 something to be said of that growth of knowledge which 
 supplies perpetual incentives to clothe with some fresh color 
 of reality a story whose fascination can never be exhausted. 
 But the best reason of all is that the life of Christ is the only 
 life in which the world is permanently interested. The charm 
 of Christ is indestructible ; and, however we may account for 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 it, He is regarded by millions of the human race rather as a 
 Living Presence than as an actor in scenes long closed. 
 Alone, among the many lives which have diversified the 
 course of history, this Life presents the greatest of all ob- 
 jects of human thought ; and so fruitful is its effect on even 
 the meanest pen, that he can scarce write in vain who writes 
 of Christ. 
 
 The design on the author's part to compose some account 
 of the life of Christ was cherished through twenty years of 
 public teaching, and in part achieved, when a visit to the 
 Holy Land in the spring of 1901 at last gave determination 
 to his aims. Here the plan of the book took final outline, 
 and its general principles were settled. Living for a time — 
 alas ! too brief — in the very scenes where Jesus moved, sail- 
 ing on His own lake, beholding not alone the outlines of 
 scenery which He beheld, but many characteristics of the 
 popular life which have suffered little alteration in the wide 
 vicissitudes of twenty centuries, it was as though a new 
 Gospel were rapidly unfolded to the wondering eyes. An 
 indescribable sense of familiarity pursued the mind in every 
 aspect of these sacred scenes. The parables which Christ 
 invented, the metaphors He employed, the incidents asso- 
 ciated with His teaching, were no longer seen as delightful 
 elements of literature, but as a series of pictures, touched 
 with the hues of indelible reality. No one who has not 
 passed through Palestine with the Gospels in his hand can 
 comprehend the thrill and shock of mind thus experienced. 
 It is as though Jesus spoke afresh in a land where all things 
 speak of Him. And amid the rush of these new emotions 
 and impressions it seemed that if but a small portion of this 
 exquisite fascination could be captured by the pen, and used 
 to give fresh interest to a story of which the world is never 
 weary, it were a task worth doing. All the more did it seem 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 a task that could not fail of achieving some general good, 
 since the outlines of the life of Christ are too often treated 
 as legendary by the learned, and are dulled even to the pious 
 by the triteness of familiarity. 
 
 It goes without saying that the author owes much to pre- 
 vious writers. His first intention was to acknowledge these 
 obligations one by one, as they occurred ; but it soon became 
 evident that this could not be done without encumbering 
 every page with footnotes to an incredible degree. The same 
 remark applies to Scripture references which, in the nature 
 of things, were yet more numerous. It seemed better, there- 
 fore, to omit all footnotes. The reader familiar with the 
 work of other writers will recognize the nature of the author's 
 obligations ; the less experienced reader will perhaps be 
 grateful for a narrative which offers no distractions, and in- 
 flicts none of that peculiar irritation which elaborate foot- 
 notes rarely fail to produce in the minds of those who are 
 more interested in a history than in the technical processes 
 by which its structure is built up. 
 
 TV J. Dawson. 
 
 Londox, 1901. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE MEMORABILIA OF JESUS . . . .7 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 THE BIKTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS . . .21 
 
 CHAPTEE n 
 
 JOHN THE BAPTIST . . . . .35 
 
 CHAPTEE HI 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF JOHN ON JESUS . . .46 
 
 CHAPTEE IV 
 
 THE OPENING: SCENES . . . . .57 
 
 CHAPTEE Y 
 
 THE DrVTNE PROGRAMME . . . . .70 
 
 CHAPTEE VI 
 
 IDYLLIC DAYS . . . . . .82 
 
xii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 PAGE 
 THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE . . . .94 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 JESUS AND THE INDIVIDUAL . - . 105 
 
 CHAPTER TX 
 
 THE MIEACLE- WORKER . . . . .120 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE NEW SOCIETY ..... 132 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 ONE OF THE DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN . . . 145 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE PRTVATE LIFE OF JESUS . . . .158 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE FALLING OF THE SHADOW . . . .170 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 A GREAT CRISIS ...... 183 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE AFFIRMATION OF GOD'S BENIGNITY . . .197 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE . . . . .212 
 
CONTENTS xiii 
 
 CHAPTEE XVn 
 
 PAGE 
 THE EVENT AT C^SAREA PHriJPPI . . .225 
 
 CHAPTEE XVHI 
 
 THE FAREWELL TO GALTLEE .... 240 
 
 CHAPTEE XIX 
 
 THE UNCHASTE ...... 253 
 
 CHAPTEE XX 
 
 THE FULLER EXPOSITION OF SOCIAL TRUTHS . .269 
 
 CHAPTEE XXI 
 
 THE TEACHINGS UPON JUDGMENT . 285 
 
 CHAPTEE XXH 
 
 THE RAISING OF LAZARUS .... 301 
 
 CHAPTEE XXTLI 
 
 THE LAST RETREAT AND THE RETURN . . .317 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIV 
 
 THE ENTRY LNTO JERUSALEM . . . .332 
 
 CHAPTEE XXV 
 
 THE GREAT RENUNCIATION .... 345 
 
 CHAPTEE XXVI 
 
 THE TRAITOR ...... 361 
 
xiv CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 PAGE 
 THE LAST SUPPER AND THE ARREST OF CHRIST . .377 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 THE TRIAL OF JESUS ..... 393 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 THE DEATH OF JESUS . . . . .412 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER . . . .428 
 
 APPENDIX 449 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE MEMOBABILIA OF JESUS 
 
 To write the biography of Jesus Christ with anything like 
 unerring accuracy is a task which surpasses the genius and 
 scholarship of man. Too many centimes have passed since 
 that life was lived, and the sources of authentic information 
 are too dispersed and confused. The author of the Fourth 
 Gospel himself admits this difficulty when he states that if 
 all that Jesus did and said were narrated, the world itself 
 would not contain the books that might be written. This 
 admission admirably defines the nature of the Gospels or bi- 
 ographies of Jesus which are the only authentic sources of 
 information which we possess. They are the scattered mem- 
 orabilia of a great personage ; perhaps we should more justly 
 say the scanty tithes of these memorabilia. They are the 
 fragments and materials out of which biographies may be 
 compiled, rather than formal and orderly biographies. Cer- 
 tain outstanding facts, which all agree did occur, are here 
 narrated. Certain germinal truths, which Jesus again and 
 again reiterated in His teaching, are here preserved, but with 
 a striking disparity of recollection. St. Luke alone attempts 
 something in the nature of harmonious narrative, but in order 
 to do so he obviously prunes and combines his materials, oc- 
 casionally going to the length of fusing similar but separate 
 parables which appear to have a common ethical idea. Even 
 in matters of chronology the Gospels are far from attaining 
 
 7 
 
8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 that rigid and implacable lucidity demanded in modern biog- 
 raphy. We are left in considerable doubt as to the order of 
 important events. With the exception of certain great cen- 
 tral incidents, which were too impressive not to be remem- 
 bered accurately in relation to time and place, there is little 
 evidence that the Gospel writers possessed what we should 
 call the sense of history. 
 
 The extreme difficulty of obtaining anything like an accu- 
 rate biography of any person, many years after he has de- 
 parted from the theatre of his exertions may be brought home 
 to the mind by a simple illustration. In the modern world 
 of action no man has bulked so large, or thrown so long a 
 shadow over the fields of time, as Napoleon. There are those 
 still alive who saw him. During his lifetime a hundred pens 
 were busy in recording his words, his actions, and a multi- 
 tude of individual impressions regarding him. It is not yet 
 a century since he expired. Yet in this tiny space of time 
 much that is legendary has already mixed itself with his his- 
 tory. No two books about him convey an impression pre- 
 cisely similar. It has already become necessary for a biog- 
 rapher of Napoleon to wade through an enormous mass of 
 contradictory evidence, to discard statements which he justly 
 regards as spurious, to exercise the most sagacious care in 
 accepting other statements as undoubtedly authentic. So 
 great is this labor, so delicate and onerous the work of dis- 
 crimination which it involves, thai it has already come to be 
 doubted whether any just and perfect biography of Napoleon 
 can be written. 
 
 The general characteristics and limitations of the human 
 mind remain much the same through all the centuries, and 
 what presents insuperable difficulty in the beginning of the 
 twentieth century was not less difficult in the first century. 
 But this is a palpable understatement of the case, for the first 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 century was not nearly so well equipped for the work of biog- 
 raphy as the twentieth. The real difficulty of a biographer 
 of Napoleon lies not in the scarcity but the multiplicity of 
 documents. A man who often dictated fourteen hours a day, 
 as Napoleon did, necessarily leaves behind him an enormous 
 mass of material bearing the stamp and seal of his own mind. 
 Beside this there are letters undoubtedly written with his 
 own hand that may be consulted, state archives, and contem- 
 porary accounts of his actions. In the conditions of the 
 modern world there is nothing hidden that is not revealed 
 about a popular hero, no word that is spoken in the chamber 
 that is not speedily proclaimed from the housetop. On the 
 instant that a man emerges into fame a host of chroniclers is 
 attracted to him, and the degree of his fame regulates the de- 
 gree of their industry. 
 
 These conditions are almost wholly reversed in the case of 
 Jesus. One of the most striking facts about Him is that He 
 wrote nothing Himself, and, so far as we know, nothing was 
 written about Him in His lifetime. His method of instruc- 
 tion was purely oral. His formal discourses are singularly 
 few. Some of the most exquisite of His remembered words 
 were spoken to individuals, or to little groups of people in 
 familiar conversation. He scattered the jewels of His speech 
 Avith a lavish hand, apparently with no notion of their worth. 
 Always fresh, natural, and spontaneous, it did not occur to 
 Him that His words should be recorded with fulness and ac- 
 curacy ; at all events, there is no indication that He ever con- 
 templated a biographer. Nor if He had, would it have been 
 easy to find one among His disciples ; and this for two rea- 
 sons. One was, that they were, in the Pharisaic phrase — for 
 once just — " ignorant and unlettered men." The system of 
 national education which prevailed among the Jews in Christ's 
 day provided them with the elementary means of knowledge, 
 
10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 but between such knowledge and the least literary aptitude a 
 wide gulf is fixed. And another reason is, that with all the 
 personal and passionate love they bore their Master, the dis- 
 ciples mingled constant incredulity and misapprehension of 
 His claims. It is plain in every line of the Gospels that the 
 disciples were attracted to Jesus by His personal charm, 
 rather than by any just sense of His Divine significance. 
 And to this it may be added that the ministry of Christ in 
 Palestine was in all probability much less of a national event 
 than we take it to have been. It attracted the poor and un- 
 considered ; in very rare cases the learned and the wealthy, 
 and those mainly from motives of passing curiosity. It is 
 significant that Pilate had never heard the name of Jesus. 
 The mixture of sarcasm and curiosity with which he treats 
 his prisoner is easily explicable when we remember that 
 Pilate was suddenly called upon to judge religious phenom- 
 enona, the existence of which he did not so much as know by 
 the merest rumor. 
 
 It is difficult for the Christian believer, to whom the life 
 of Christ naturally appears to be the greatest event in uni- 
 versal history, to give the appreciation that they deserve to 
 such statements as these. Yet here again the mind may be 
 helped by a parallel more or less exact. Let us suppose the 
 sudden rise of a new religious teacher in some remote prov- 
 ince of our Indian Empire. Let us imagine this teacher 
 drawing after him numbers of peasants, gaining great local 
 popularity, at last coming into conflict with authority, and 
 at the close of three years disappearing from the scene, 
 either by exile or by death. What should we be likely to 
 know of such a teacher and such a movement after any con- 
 siderable lapse of time ? We should no doubt be able to 
 discover the brief record of the judicial proceedings which 
 condemned him ; we might find a few paragraphs in con- 
 
INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 temporary journals ; and for the curious, who sought to 
 gather information in the province where he had lived, there 
 would be something discoverable in the way of legend, tradi- 
 tion, and popular memory. We should scarcely be sur- 
 prised, however, if our researches yielded but a scant result. 
 We should be perfectly aware that many things might occur 
 in a remote province of India that would attract no notice in 
 an empire so vast ; «that such sudden religious movements 
 were by no means uncommon ; that locally memorable as 
 they might appear, yet in the larger perspective of the life 
 of three hundred millions of people, they were relatively un- 
 important. It would be much if the mere name of such a 
 teacher survived for a generation. In any case we should 
 conclude that, however rapid the means by which fame is 
 disseminated in the modern world, a local notoriety extending 
 to three years only was wholly insufficient to establish a 
 fame that should be either wide-spread or enduring. 
 
 "What a remote province in India is to the entire British 
 Empire, Palestine was in relation to the Roman Empire. It 
 was the least important of Roman possessions. It was a 
 hotbed of fanaticism and religious tumult. Gamaliel, in the 
 judgment he is forced to form on the new phenomenon of 
 Christianity, recalls two other risings, in which the religious 
 and political elements mingled; one under Theudas, the 
 other under Judas of Galilee, each of which had closed in 
 ignominy. The ministry of Jesus was immediately pre- 
 ceded by the equally popular ministry of John the Baptist. 
 Is it w T onderful that men who were accustomed to such move- 
 ments treated them with supercilious disdain, or even with 
 angry contempt? What more natural than to confuse the 
 movement led by Jesus with the superficially similar move- 
 ments of a Theudas and a Judas of Galilee ? In any case 
 it was natural that no one of any literary eminence or capac- 
 
12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 ity should have thought it worth his while to have taken 
 notes of the sayings and deeds of Jesus. The whole move- 
 ment in its actual rise and growth was too obscure to attract 
 a properly equipped biographer. The golden moment when 
 Jesus might have been studied at first-hand passed unnoticed. 
 The supremest opportunity ever offered to a biographer in 
 the entire history of the world, no one was wise enough to 
 grasp. Not until the brief career of Christ was closed did 
 men perceive His real significance and endeavor to recall His 
 words ; and who shall say, remembering the infirmity of 
 human memory, how many parables are lost for one that is 
 recorded, how many incidents are forgotten for one that is 
 narrated adequately ? 
 
 Such considerations lead inevitably to another question. 
 By what means were the teachings of Jesus and the outlines 
 of His life preserved ? Obviously the only means of pres- 
 ervation was the general memory of those who were the 
 eye-witnesses of His life, and the more intimate memory of 
 those who loved Him. General memory, it must be con- 
 fessed, is but a loose phrase, and it may be said, without the 
 least touch of irony, that its biographical equivalent is gen- 
 eral inaccuracy. We must distinguish, however, before 
 making so sweeping a criticism. The general memory of a 
 battle, or of a great historic pageant, or of the impression 
 created by a popular hero, usually presents so much of 
 diversity and disparity that it would be in the highest 
 degree incautious to place much reliance on it. The reason 
 is plain ; the individual spectator sees only one phase of a 
 battle, or the fragment of a pageant, or a brief glimpse of a 
 great personage. Yet general memory is seldom inaccurate 
 about main facts, though it may be about details. The 
 diverse reports of the conduct of such and such a regiment 
 in a battle do not lead us to imagine that the battle never 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 happened. The various descriptions of a great personage, 
 widely as they differ, afford no ground for the suspicion that 
 he never existed. When we have made every allowance for 
 human inaccuracy, there is a solid mass of substantial truth 
 still left. We may fairly apply these principles of criticism 
 to the life of Jesus. The general memory could not be 
 deceived in the main facts of His career. That He lived, 
 that He taught the people in many cities and villages of 
 Judea, that He wrought in open daylight, beneath the scru- 
 tiny of many unfriendly eyes, extraordinary acts which were 
 regarded as miraculous, that He came into conflict with the 
 rulers of His day, that He was crucified, dead, and buried, 
 and that in all He did and said He left the impression of a 
 nature of unique energy, purity, and sweetness — these are 
 matters beyond controversy. When the life of Jesus closed, 
 and for years afterward, there were multitudes of persons 
 who retained a more or less exact impression of words that 
 they had heard and acts that they had witnessed, and these 
 impressions they were naturally eager to communicate. 
 
 It does not lesson the value of such testimony to say that 
 these witnesses were for the most part persons of untrained 
 intelligence and insignificant social station ; on the contrary, 
 it strengthens it. There are few persons with any knowledge 
 of rural life who have not had occasion to remark the ex- 
 traordinary tenacity with which the memory of a peasant 
 cherishes details, both significant and insignificant, of a dis- 
 tant past. After a lapse of half a lifetime the old field 
 laborer can recall what some person of note said to him, or 
 somo relatively trivial characteristic of his appearance. The 
 very nature of a peasant's life, so simple, so austere and 
 devoid of large interests, strengthens and develops this pecul- 
 iar kind of memory. With the man who lives a life full of 
 bustling energy impression overlay c impression, till all is 
 
14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 blurred and confused. But in the life of a peasant impres- 
 sions are so rare that they assume abnormal vividness ; and 
 thus a certain event or incident, which at the time appeared 
 extraordinary, is an indelible spot of light in the grey gloom 
 of many monotonous and narrow years. 
 
 The men who saw most of Christ were men of this order. 
 The most thrilling hour they had ever known was that in 
 which Christ addressed them. In many cases their meeting 
 with Christ had been associated with some tragic or impres- 
 sive incident which they were not likely to forget — the 
 threatened death of a parent, the recovery from sickness of a 
 friend, the recall to sanity of a demented child. Or perhaps 
 it was associated with an equally memorable joy of rare ad- 
 venture, such as the journey into the wilderness with a crowd 
 of excited followers, who listened entranced to One who spake 
 as never man spake, and sat upon the green grass in fifties 
 while He fed them. The wings of wonder had hovered over 
 the grey lives of these men for a day and a night ; their 
 hearts, their imaginations had been strangely stirred. Was 
 it likely that they could forget ? Would they not talk over 
 these things with enthusiastic animation as they took the 
 mountain path back to remote villages and hamlets, and go 
 on talking of them for years, the vision of these illuminated 
 days always standing out bright and vivid to the last ? Here 
 was material of no unworthy kind for the biographer. In 
 the memories of such men many a phrase used by Jesus was 
 embedded, like a diamond in a bed of clay. And when, after 
 the death of Christ, a Christian Church grew up rapidly in 
 Jerusalem, and gathered its converts throughout the land 
 where the Son of Man had passed, what more natural thing 
 than that these converts should compare notes, should bring 
 their recollections to swell a common store, each man con- 
 tributing some saying of Christ's, which the moment it was 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 uttered was recognized and verified by the common memory, 
 until at last there grew into shape those memorabilia of 
 Jesus which became the Gospels ? 
 
 The more intimate memory of personal friends would 
 afford much surer grounds for a biographer. We must never 
 forget that during the whole of His three years' ministry 
 Jesus moved in the constant companionship of a little band 
 of adoring friends. However grossly they misapprehended 
 Him on many points, the disciples had one and all made 
 great sacrifices to ensure their intimacy with Christ, and it 
 was only natural they should hang upon His words. Few 
 human friendships afford the opportunity of intimate, un- 
 broken intercourse for a space of three years. Could we im- 
 agine ourselves enjoying such a relation with some man of 
 extraordinary genius and charm, whom we not only honored 
 as a teacher but loved with a species of passion rare in 
 friendship, it would not be wonderful if we retained indelible 
 impressions of his character and conversations. A memory, 
 ordinarily quick and retentive, would certainly be able to re- 
 produce at will his more striking sayings and his habitual 
 modes of thought, to say nothing of those episodes of action 
 which occasioned wonder at the time, and seemed yet more 
 wonderful upon reflection. Moreover, it appears to have 
 been the habit of Jesus to go over the same ground again 
 and again in His private conversations and public teachings. 
 The epigrams in which His spiritual discoveries are crystal- 
 lized are constantly reiterated. A parable is often repeated 
 in a slightly different form, but with a new application. He 
 loves to express truths in axioms which readily fix them- 
 selves in the memory. And here, too, many of His sayings 
 are associated with certain unforgettable episodes of thought 
 and action ; with public controversies, with private jealousies, 
 and with places and persons, all of which would help in the 
 
16 INTRODUCTION 
 
 task of definite recollection. In the main it can scarcely be 
 doubted, therefore, that the tradition of Christ which existed 
 among the disciples was peculiarly clear and trustworthy. 
 We may be sure that the essential outlines of His teaching 
 and action are correctly reported, and that we have His chief 
 parables, His sermons, and His public controversies in the 
 authentic form which He gave them. 
 
 But besides this, there would also be a great body of tradi- 
 tion preserved among private friends who were less officially 
 connected with the movement. In Mary of Bethany Jesus 
 found a devoted friend, who gave Him what is rare even in 
 the highest kind of friendship, the complete attention of an 
 intelligent and sympathetic mind. In the tenth chapter of 
 Saint Luke's Gospel an inimitable picture is drawn of this 
 adoring woman, who sat at the feet of Jesus listening to His 
 words, while her sister Martha was busy and burdened with 
 the cares of hospitality. We may hazard a conjecture that 
 when the memorabilia of Jesus came to be collected, one of 
 the first places the devout compiler would visit would be the 
 house at Bethany, where Jesus had tarried so often. Who 
 can estimate how much the world owes of its knowledge of 
 Jesus to this woman, who had treasured His words, and had 
 perhaps taken notes of those intimate conversations in which 
 He had opened the deep things of His heart to her? How 
 would phrases and passages, felt to be beautiful and signifi- 
 cant at the time of their utterance, but doubly significant 
 now in the light of all that had happened, flash out from a 
 memory, which desire of truth had already quickened and 
 love had dedicated to the complete service of Jesus ? Here 
 was a biographer ready made ; a still, meditative, brooding 
 woman, living an undistracted life, knowing Jesus in the rela- 
 tions of an intimacy at once sensitive and receptive, and 
 sacredly jealous to preserve His lightest word. 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 In this connection another Mary must be mentioned also : 
 Mary, the Mother of Jesus. We are specifically told that 
 after the great tragedy of Calvary she lived in the house of 
 John, and she was certainly present at the first meeting of 
 the infant Church in Jerusalem. St. Luke, who narrates the 
 proceedings of this first formal assembly of Christians, and 
 especially emphasizes the presence of Mary, also gives us by 
 far the fullest account of the Nativity of Jesus. From whom 
 did he receive these narratives, unless from Mary herself? 
 Who else could have told him the pathetic details of the 
 journey to Bethlehem, the tradition of the shepherds in the 
 fields who heard the angel music, and all the earlier and yet 
 more intimate narrative of the relations of Mary with Eliza- 
 beth, and the thoughts of Mary when first her sad and gra- 
 cious destiny loomed clear before her ? From her also is 
 perhaps derived the incident of the address of Jesus to the 
 holy women on the way to Calvary, and the yet more touch- 
 ing story of the penitent thief — details mentioned by him 
 alone—the first of which would certainly appeal strongly to 
 a woman's heart, the second of which Mary, in her closeness 
 to the cross, would have an admirable opportunity of observ- 
 ing. But it is enough if we accept these suggestions as in- 
 dications of how the Gospels came to be compiled. Although 
 there is no hint that during the lifetime of Jesus any attempt 
 at biography, or even the notes for a future biography was 
 made, yet there was preserved in the memory of intimate 
 friends and among the general public material amply suffi- 
 cient for a just and discriminating memoir of Our Lord. 
 
 One other question yet remains unanswered. How far 
 can an account of Christ compiled from such sources be 
 treated as correct ? How far does the idiosyncrasy of the 
 informant or narrator color his narration, and deflect the 
 line of an impartial criticism ? Such questions may be best 
 
18 INTRODUCTION 
 
 answered in the subsequent pages of this volume, as particu- 
 lar occasion may arise. But it may be at once and frankly 
 conceded that constant allowances must be made in the Gos- 
 pel narratives for the mental limitations of the writers, for 
 the spirit of the time in which they lived, and for the rudi- 
 mentary knowledge of criticism which they possessed. This 
 principle must be constantly observed in any estimate we 
 may seek to form of the miraculous element which runs 
 through the Gospels. Simple people, describing an extra- 
 ordinary occurrence, will naturally speak of it as miraculous, 
 and due allowance must be made for their mode of expres- 
 sion. It would not be fan* either to receive or to reject their 
 statements without criticism ; implicit faith or brusk denial 
 is equally unworthy of a rational creature. And, again, a 
 truly rational mind will constantly discriminate between one 
 alleged miracle and another. One will appear explicable 
 and another inex23licable. In some cases it is obvious that 
 a perfectly explicable natural occurrence has been colored 
 by the imagination of the narrator. In all cases it is clear 
 that Jesus Himself did not attach the importance to miracles 
 which His followers did. He often performed them with 
 reluctance ; He regarded them as entirely collateral to His 
 teaching; He uniformly discouraged the attempt to bruit 
 them abroad, and to form upon them a kind of fame which 
 He despised. 
 
 The least competent reader of the Gospels will also ob- 
 serve that the various reports of Christ's words reveal con- 
 siderable disparities. For example, there is very little in 
 common between the First and the Fourth Gospel, so far as 
 the literary spirit goes. In the Gospel of St. John the very 
 form of Christ's speech is wholly altered. Instead of that 
 epigrammatic terseness and lucidity, which gives to the least 
 phrase of Christ, as reported by St. Matthew, the fire and 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 brilliance of a jewel, we have long, involved, metaphysical 
 discourses. The simplicity of the Galilean poet, always di- 
 rect and felicitous, is exchanged for the academic subtlety of 
 the semi-Hellenist philosopher. Without going so far as to 
 say that Christ could not have spoken in two ways so utterly 
 dissimilar, we may at least conclude that it is wise to trust 
 Matthew rather than John as the more competent and exact 
 biographer. But this is by no means to dismiss John as in- 
 competent and untrustworthy. No one supposes that the 
 dialogues of Plato represent the real conversations of Socra- 
 tes. They are free renderings of those conversations, and 
 as such are quite unhistorical ; yet undoubtedly they are ad- 
 mirable interpretations of the mind of Socrates. John ren- 
 ders a similar sendee to Jesus. He is an interpreter rather 
 than an historian. We miss the common and habitual 
 phrases of Christ ; for example, " the kingdom of God " is a 
 phrase mentioned many times by St. Matthew, but only once 
 by St. John. Yet it may be claimed that John expounds the 
 " inwardness " of Christ as no one else attempts to do. We 
 can at least say that thus Christ might have spoken, so far 
 as ideas are concerned; the difference is of literary form 
 rather than of essence and spirit. But whatever weight we 
 may attach to these criticisms, it is abundantly clear that it 
 never occurred to John to subdue or obliterate his own in- 
 dividuality in speaking of Jesus. He wrote as he believed 
 honestly, but with a latitude that the modern biographer 
 would never dare to claim. It is enough to say that the 
 spirit of the time permitted such a method, and we must 
 make allowance for it. 
 
 But when every possible allowance is made, one indisput- 
 able result is reached, viz., that the Gospels do succeed in 
 giving us a portrait of Jesus, so definite and impressive, so 
 intrinsically truthful and beautiful, that there is nothing 
 
20 INTRODUCTION 
 
 comparable with it in the annals of human literature. From 
 whatever sources information is drawn, and whatever the 
 details of that information, the consensus of testimony to 
 the perfection of Christ's character and life is absolute. 
 "Whatever may be lacking in the conditions and essentials 
 of biography, the Four Gospels undoubtedly form the 
 most beautiful book in the world, and the most potent. 
 The manifest deficiencies, the inaccuracies, the lack of 
 method, the absence of chronological order, the apparent 
 contradictions, the repetitions, the omissions after all serve 
 a purpose quite unintentional, in preventing the mere sus- 
 picion of collusion. It is not thus that men would write 
 who had a case to prove. A life of Christ prepared by some 
 late council of the Church, when the Church had assimilated 
 the leaven of political ambition, would certainly have sup- 
 pressed much that the Evangelists report with uncompromis- 
 ing candor. A life of Christ as composed by any man of 
 letters, accustomed to handling literary material, would no 
 doubt have been much more lucid, systematic, and intelligi- 
 ble. But the simple methods of these unskilled chroniclers 
 did not go beyond the compilation of memorabilia. With 
 an entire absence of literary artifice, and yet with an instinc- 
 tive art, they recall events precisely as they appeared to the 
 people who beheld them. And the result is the most won- 
 derful book in human literature ; a wisdom so profound that 
 the mind of the world has been nourished on it for nineteen 
 centuries ; a story so moving and impressive, that it still 
 stirs the hearts of men, as no other story ever did, or ever 
 will do ; the depiction of a character so beautiful and lofty, 
 that it gives the standard and the measure of all human per- 
 fectibility, at once justifying men's sublimest dreams and in- 
 terpreting them. 
 
THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 THE BIETH AND EAELY LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 So much obscurity covers the early years of Jesus that it 
 is difficult to fix with more thau approximate accuracy even 
 the date of His birth. It was not until the sixth century 
 that the Christian era was definitely fixed, upon what grounds 
 it is now impossible for us to ascertain. It has even become 
 a matter of controversy whether Jesus was born in Bethle- 
 hem, and the elaborate statement of St. Luke, which con- 
 nects His birth with an imperial census, is held by many to 
 have been founded on a misconception. According to Roman 
 history the census of Augustus took place ten years later 
 than the date fixed by St. Luke. "Whether there was an 
 earlier census we do not know. Quirenius was certainly 
 Legate of Syria at the period of the traditional date of 
 Christ's birth, and it is equally certain that it was during 
 his tenure of office that a census was compiled. These dif- 
 ficulties of chronology will perhaps never be fully resolved, 
 nor is their solution of great importance. The most that we 
 can say is that it seems unlikely that St. Luke should have 
 perpetrated a gratuitous blunder, for which there is no ap- 
 parent reason or excuse ; and it is at least certain that Jesus 
 was born about four years earlier than the recorded date. 
 Stronger reasons than any that have yet been alleged 
 
 21 
 
22 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 would be necessary to discredit the distinct statement of 
 both St. Matthew and St. Luke that Jesus was born in Beth- 
 lehem. If we regard the extremely circumstantial account 
 of the Nativity furnished by St. Luke as in all probability 
 directly derived from Mary of Nazareth, the inference is 
 irresistible that the last point on which a mother would be 
 likely to err is the birthplace of her Child. It is a matter 
 of legitimate surprise that two of the Evangelists make no 
 mention of Bethlehem, but it is pushing inference beyond all 
 that is rational and legitimate to declare that because St. 
 Mark and St. John give no account of the birth in Bethlehem 
 therefore they were ignorant of it. They may have been 
 perfectly familiar with the tradition, and yet have regarded 
 it as unessential to the narrative. St. John, writing from 
 the point of view of the mystic and interpreter of ideas, 
 would certainly have so regarded it. Nor is it fair to assume 
 that the introduction of the Bethlehem story was considered 
 necessary in order to give authentication to the claim that 
 Jesus was of the House of David. Such a proof would have 
 seemed to the Jew no proof at all ; it was a device at once 
 puerile and foolish. For the Jew, of all men, was both an 
 expert and a pedant in all matters of genealogy. To this 
 day the Jew who may be called upon to bless the congrega- 
 tion in the synagogue inherits that right by oral tradition. 
 It is not necessary for him to afford any written proof of 
 descent : he knows that his fathers and forefathers blessed 
 the people before him ; and this sure and tenacious memory, 
 transmitted through many generations, is accepted as final. 
 Moreover, St. Matthew precedes his account of the birth of 
 Christ with an elaborate genealogical tree, concluding thus : 
 " So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen 
 generations ; and from David unto the carrying away into 
 Babylon are fourteen generations ; and from the carrying 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS 23 
 
 away into Babylon until Christ are fourteen generations." 
 Si Luke, with a yet bolder pen, concludes the genealogy of 
 Jesus with an immortal phrase: "Which was the son of 
 Adam, which was the Son of God." After statements so 
 daring and precise as these, it is nonsense to suppose that 
 the journey to Bethlehem was invented simply to prove Jesus 
 of the lineage of David, and therefore in line with Messianic 
 prophecy. He Himself claimed to be the Son of David, He 
 was repeatedly hailed as such by the populace, and that 
 claim was not disputed. It was not necessary to invent the 
 Bethlehem episode in order to conciliate Jewish prejudice, 
 for no Jew was likely to be deceived by a fabrication so con- 
 temptible. Moreover, by the time that the Gospels came to 
 be written Jesus has ceased to be regarded as a Jew ; He 
 was known by the sublime and catholic titles of the Son of 
 Man, and the Son of God. 
 
 The stories which cluster round the Nativity of Jesus are 
 full of idyllic charm. The exquisite story of the shepherds 
 in the fields by night, who hear a wind-borne music in the 
 starry sky, is St. Luke's alone ; on the other hand, St. 
 Matthew only relates the striking episode of the visit of the 
 Magians, guided by a star to the presence of the young Child. 
 A common idea is expressed in both these stories, viz., the 
 existence of some celestial commotion over a terrestrial event 
 of the highest consequence to man. The Oriental mind, 
 steeped in the spirit of symbolism, and keenly sensitive to 
 what may be called the ghostly element in the material 
 universe, would perceive nothing incongruous in this idea. 
 A belief in starry influences was common not only among 
 the peoples of the East, but among many races of the West. 
 The Magians had developed this belief into a science. The 
 horoscope of man was WTitten in the heavens ; the stars w r ere 
 the signals of fate ; the life of every man was forecast and 
 
24 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 foredoomed, a humble mechanism obscuring a mightier 
 mechanism, a tiny wheel in the great timepiece of Eternity, 
 acting in unison with central forces. It is, perhaps, worth 
 notice that the researches of Kepler ascertained that in the 
 year of Christ's birth a bright evanescent star, of consider- 
 able magnitude did, in all probability, appear between 
 Jupiter and Saturn. Such a phenomenon would be sure to 
 attract attention, to excite awe, and to quicken emotion and 
 imagination. Moreover, at this period a certain restlessness 
 of thought was general. It was not confined to the Jews, 
 though perhaps among them it was most active. A common 
 presentiment of change, of events expected, yet unknown, 
 filled all nations. Certain passages of the writings of Virgil 
 are very remarkable as expressions of this temper ; they may 
 almost claim to be Messianic prophecies. In Jerusalem 
 there were men like Simeon, and women like Anna, who 
 waited for the consolation of Israel, with a deepening con- 
 viction that the hour was near. The vibrations of an im- 
 mense hope ran through the world ; the wind of dawn was 
 already breathing through the darkness. What men expect 
 they always are prepared to see ; and it is by no means sur- 
 prising that Persian astrologers and simple Syrian shepherds 
 alike, thrilled and stung to ecstasy by this inarticulate hope, 
 should read and hear its messages in the midnight sky. 
 
 On that starry night two fugitives from Nazareth, them- 
 selves conscious not only of an awful hope but of an ineluc- 
 table force of fate that held their feet in an appointed way, 
 climbed the limestone hill of Bethlehem. It was the season 
 of early spring, probably toward the close of February ; for 
 at an earlier date than this it would not have been possible 
 for shepherds to spend the night on the open hillside with 
 their flocks. The country through which these fugitives 
 passed in the last stage of their journey is full of pastoral 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS 25 
 
 sweetness and charm. The town of Bethlehem, sitting 
 squarely on its terraced height, surrounded with fig-trees and 
 olive-orchards, still retains unaltered its outstanding features. 
 It is a long grey cluster of houses, with no pretence of archi- 
 tecture, a typical Syrian hill-town. At its base is the tomb 
 of Rachel, the pathetic memorial of a man's love, of a 
 woman's travail and untimely death. Doubly significant 
 would that tomb appear to this woman, whose hour had 
 come ; one can fancy the sidelong, tearful look of fear with 
 which she would regard it. But there was more than fear in 
 the heart of Mary that night. Slight as is the memorial of 
 her, yet it is deeply suggestive of the sweetness of her na- 
 ture, and especially of her devout piety of heart. Perhaps 
 it was Ruth she remembered that night rather than Rachel- 
 Ruth, the Moabitess, driven into Bethlehem by misfortune 
 and calamity, to find herself the unexpected mother of a race 
 of kings. Nor would she forget the ancient prophecy of 
 Micah, that little as Bethlehem was among the thousands of 
 Judah, yet out of it should come One who should be the 
 " Ruler of Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, 
 from everlasting." But Avhatever portents others saw in the 
 Syrian sky that night, Mary saw none. Among the crowd of 
 travelers, driven hither by a strange, almost unintelligible 
 command, she stood alone, confused, unrecognized. It was 
 an unforeseen and painful end of a journey full of sadness 
 and alarm. No door was opened to the weary, suffering 
 woman, not because the fine traditional hospitality of the Jew 
 had failed, but because already every house was crowded to 
 excess. There was no place of refuge for her but a rough 
 chamber, hewn in the limestone rock, and used as a stable. 
 In that last refuge of the destitute there was born a few hours 
 later the Child, who by Hi* poverty was to make many 
 rich. 
 
26 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 The story of the Magi, idyllic as it is, is obviously intro- 
 duced by St. Matthew for a direct historical purpose. Their 
 visit, in rousing the suspicion and alarm of Herod, had an 
 immediate influence on the early life of Jesus. The very 
 form of their question, " Where is He that is born King of 
 the Jews ? " would naturally excite a despot so unscrupulous 
 and superstitious as Herod ; and his reprisal is the massacre 
 of the innocents. In all that follows Matthew sees the ful- 
 fillment of prophecy. What is prophecy ? It is two things 
 — forth-telling and fore-telling. The prophets were in the 
 main forth-tellers, the great burden of whose message was 
 the exposition of moral and spiritual truth. But ever and 
 again, in some condition of ecstasy, they saw the clouds clear 
 from the sky of the future, and caught momentary glimpses 
 of a light upon the far-off hills of Time. They saw, as men 
 see in dreams, places, cities, countries, august figures, and 
 movements, strangely vivid and real, and yet built of lumi- 
 nous mist and shadow only, and they felt the incommunicable 
 thrill of advancing destinies. They had only a limited com- 
 prehension of their own words. They were unable to attach 
 any entirely definite meaning to them. They spoke as men 
 " in clear dream and solemn vision " speak, with vagueness, 
 yet with a thrilling accent of conviction. It is not necessary 
 to suppose that Hosea had any actual vision of Christ in 
 Egypt, or Jeremiah any exact prevision of what events would 
 make Rama a place of mourning. Nor can we suppose any 
 deliberate effort on the part of Joseph and Mary to shape 
 their Child's life upon the plan of Messianic prophecy, which. 
 would of course have been collusion. Matthew rather en- 
 deavors to illustrate these compulsions of Providence which 
 touch every life, those relations of acts which seem intimately 
 our own with higher forces, that control them by a superior 
 gravity. In a word, it is not the veracity of the prophets 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS 27 
 
 which lie seeks to prove, but the sovereignty of God. Mys- 
 tically propelled, hither and thither, now by the compulsion 
 of events, and now by inner voices of intuition that suggest 
 angelic interferences, the Child and His parents suffer and 
 do certain preappointed things, until at last they return to 
 Nazareth, which for nearly thirty years is to be the home of 
 Jesus. 
 
 For one who was to be a poet and interpreter of Nature no 
 better home could have been found than Nazareth. While 
 it can scarcely be said that its situation is unrivaled in a 
 country which displays at intervals almost every type of nat- 
 ural beauty, yet it may be fairly claimed that it ranks among 
 the loveliest spots of Palestine. Standing itself in a green 
 hollow of the hills, it is close to the edge of a wide plateau, 
 which commands enchanting prospects. In the foreground 
 rise the hills of Gilboa, the historic land of Shechem, and 
 Mount Tabor, the most exquisitely shaped of all the hills of 
 Palestine. On the west is Mount Carmel ; to the east the 
 valley of the Jordan opens ; northward lies the sea. That 
 aspect of neglect and desolation, which to-day makes so many 
 parts of Palestine a keen disappointment to the traveler, is 
 nowhere found in the neighborhood of Nazareth. Along its 
 western side many valleys lie, as green and smiling as the 
 far-famed Yale of Tempo. Nowhere is the atmosphere more 
 lucid, the general configuration of the scenery more impres- 
 sive. A cheerful fertility is its characteristic note. 
 
 Nazareth, in common with most Syrian towns, presents to 
 Western eyes an aspect of poverty. This poverty is, how- 
 ever, more apparent than real. The Jew of Christ's day, ex- 
 cept when influenced by Roman example, paid scant attention 
 to domestic architecture. He cared for neither the elegan- 
 cies nor the display of wealth. Social distinctions of course 
 existed, but they were not harshly pressed nor made too ap- 
 
28 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 parent. The original patriarchal spirit of the people had set* 
 tied the common life on broad and tolerant democratic lines. 
 That difficulty of approach between the rich and the poor, 
 which is engendered by a wide disparity in the scale and 
 method of life, has not to-day, and had not in Christ's day, 
 any existence in Nazareth. The little town showed none of 
 those startling contrasts with which we are familiar in mod- 
 ern life — the close contiguity of luxury and want, of silk and 
 rags, of the palace and the hovel. The richest man in Naz- 
 areth would dwell in a house not strikingly dissimilar from 
 that occupied by the poorest. The natural wants of life were 
 few and easily supplied ; the artificial needs, which tormented 
 and corrupted Roman life and at last became a mania, did 
 not exist. At a distance of only five hours' journey lay the 
 Lake of Galilee, which in Christ's day had become a Syrian 
 Baia3, adorned by every extravagance of Roman luxury. 
 Temples, palaces, and many splendid public buildings lined 
 those shores, to-day so silent and deserted ; amid groves of 
 palm and tropical gardens rose the villas of the rich ; pleas- 
 ure barges and hundreds of fishing-boats moved on those 
 quiet waters ; here life was seen in all its arrogance and 
 pomp. But this new spirit of display had not invaded Naz- 
 areth. Secluded in its amphitheatre of hills the little town 
 remained true to patriarchal and democratic ideals. Its peo- 
 ple lived a simple and sufficing life, much of it spent in the 
 open air, much of it in kindly gossip. No one would think 
 of scorning the young Jesus because He was a workman's 
 Child, or looking down upon His parents because they hap- 
 pened to be humble folk. In this at least He was happy, 
 His childhood knew nothing of the reproach and social dis- 
 abilities of poverty. 
 
 The pastoral simplicity of this Nazarene life left indelible 
 traces on the mind of Jesus. One of the most charming 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS 29 
 
 features of His early teachings is their homely truth. He 
 speaks of leaven hid in a bushel of meal, of women grinding 
 at the mill, of sowing and reaping, of flowers and birds, of a 
 hundred sights and sounds, episodes and small adventures, 
 of rural life. It is a peasant's characteristic view of life, and 
 all the sweeter for its accent of intimacy and experience. 
 Much of this hidden life of Christ may be discovered in these 
 parables and teachings. The good housewife baking bread, 
 or searching diligently for a lost piece of silver, surely has 
 besides her a young Boy, who watches her with serious eyes 
 and kindling interest. The selfish householder, refusing to 
 come down and open the door to the benighted traveler, is 
 some churlish Nazarene, whose harsh voice reached a wake- 
 ful Child, lying happy at His mother's side. He who spoke 
 of weather signs to those who saw not the signs of the times, 
 had often watched the evening sky aflame behind Mount 
 Carmel. The only life He knew with accuracy was the life 
 of the poor — a life modest, contented, and laborious. The 
 only pleasures He knew were the simple pleasures of the 
 poor. The larger and more complex life of men in great 
 cities habitually repels Him. His entire indifference to 
 riches sprang from a conviction to which His early life gave 
 the authority of a principle, that the highest dignity of 
 thought is consonant with the greatest humility of circum- 
 stance. Under these lowly roofs of Nazareth He framed the 
 highest philosophy of life that man has ever known ; in con- 
 stant converse with its people He learned the secrets of the 
 human heart; and up these stony paths, to the breezy 
 heights above the town, He often passed, to find Himself 
 alone with the sublimities of Nature, and to realize the pres- 
 ence of the Highest in the passing shows of earth and sky. 
 
 Secluded as Nazareth was, it must not, however, be im- 
 agiued that it was wholly cut off from all intercourse with 
 
30 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 the outer world. Jerusalem itself was but three days' jour- 
 ney, and, as we have seen, all the pagan splendors of the Sea 
 of Galilee, renamed Tiberias, from the. imposing city which 
 Herod was then rearing on its shore, was but five hours dis- 
 tant. One of the great caravan routes to Damascus passed 
 through the town ; others were contiguous. One can only 
 conjecture, not wholly without probability, that these cara- 
 vans may have dropped some seeds of wider truth and 
 knowledge into the receptive mind of Jesus. They per- 
 formed a part in the dissemination of ideas much as our own 
 railways do. Echoes of a larger thought came with them ; 
 strange whisperings, it may be, of the dying faiths of Egypt, 
 or of the living faiths of India and the further East. More- 
 over, the population of the province was composed of many 
 elements. It included not merely Romans, but Greeks, 
 Arabs, and Phoenicians. In a caravan were to be found not 
 only merchants, but a sprinkling of scholars, philosophers, 
 searchers after truth, and citizens of the world. In the study 
 of a new system of truth we are bound to analyze the com- 
 ponent elements, and these elements are usually various. 
 The resemblance between many things in Christian thought 
 and the religious system of these ancient civilizations is very 
 marked. In the Egyptian conception of God as light, in its 
 doctrine of the soul and immortality, in its ethical instruc- 
 tions — the value of sanctity, the need for purification that the 
 soul may approach God, and the singular use of the term 
 "justified before God" — we see gleams, and more than 
 gleams of Christian truth. Still more wonderful is the cen- 
 tral concept of Egyptian theology of a Son of God, dead, 
 buried, and risen again. Buddhism, in the same way, an- 
 ticipates Christianity " in its universalism and ethical char- 
 acter ; " in its primary insistence that " all men may be 
 saved, and that they are saved not at all by outward rites or 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS 31 
 
 mechanical performance, but by themselves being emanci- 
 pated from inward evil." And the spirit of Buddha's life in 
 its boundless self-sacrifice and piety is the spirit of the life 
 of Christ. Resemblances so striking as these can be scarcely 
 accidental. They are, at least, profoundly suggestive. 
 
 New truths rarely arise in the human mind by mere intuition. 
 There is almost always some process of innoculation, some 
 tiny germ planted silently, it may seem by chance, which in 
 due course is quickened into life. The biographer of Jesus 
 has to account for thirty hidden years. When once these 
 fugitive Galileans have passed into Nazareth the curtain 
 drops, and the wonder-story is broken off sharply and finally. 
 We hear no more of portents in the sky, of the enmity of 
 sovereigns, of the curiosity of pilgi'ims. No one appears to 
 have asked a single question about the future of the Child 
 whose birth had aroused such memorable interest. Had any 
 pilgrim, inspired by either enmity or curiosity, desired to 
 find Him the course was easy, the clues of discovery were at 
 hand. At the close of these hidden years the Son of Mary, 
 whose birth-story is already half forgotten, or cherished only 
 as a legend in a few pious hearts, suddenly emerges into 
 fame as the most daring religious thinker of His time. He 
 speaks out of the fulness of a mind profound, original, and 
 devout. He commands horizons of thought and aspiration 
 undreamed of by the Jew. The greatest religious thinkers 
 of His day pale their ineffectual fires before His new-risen 
 splendors. How can we account for this extraordinary de- 
 velopment in One who lived remote from the great centres of 
 thought, and ignorant of the higher branches of the fastidi- 
 ous religious culture of His day ? Manifestly we are driven 
 back upon conjecture. We remember the many curious proc- 
 esses by which the seeds of new thought are distributed in 
 days when many minds are occupied by common problems 
 
32 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 of religion. We are bound to consider the possibilities of 
 such thought finding its way into Nazareth. And hence 
 there grows within the mind a picture of the serious Child 
 mingling with many men of strange speech who halted with 
 the caravans in the market-place of Nazareth, ever curious 
 and attentive with the eagerness of an opening and hungry 
 mind, and finding in chance phrases, in some pregnant word 
 of traveling philosopher or priest, clues and suggestions 
 which gave an unsuspected bias to His own widening 
 thought. 
 
 Once only is the curtain lifted from those hidden years. 
 St. Luke narrates a journey which the family made to Jeru- 
 salem when Jesus was twelve years old, and it is chiefly re- 
 markable for the impression it conveys of Christ's early ma- 
 turity of mind. We find Him questioning the doctors of 
 the Temple with such acuteness that they were astonished 
 at His understanding. We find also sonic presentiment of 
 His vocation already working in the Boy's mind ; He must 
 be about His Father's business. The conclusion of the 
 story is that Jesus returned to Nazareth and was subject 
 unto His parents. But between boyhood and mature man- 
 hood a wide space intervenes. Surely this was not the only 
 journey Jesus made — the single and solitary excursion of 
 thirty years. In the days of youth the blood is full of wan- 
 dering and restless instincts. Then, if at all, the feet are 
 drawn into the paths of travel. Did Jesus in those years 
 turn His face toward the further East, cradle and centre of 
 all religions ? Is the prophecy of Hosea, " Out of Egypt 
 have I called my Son," capable of a wider and more accurate 
 interpretation than St, Matthew gives it ? Is it permissible 
 to imagine the young Carpenter of Nazareth, armed with the 
 tools of His craft, wandering among the palms and temples 
 of other countries than His own, in which religion still re- 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS 33 
 
 tained the spirit of mysticism long lost in the chilly Pharis- 
 aic formalism of Judea ? In some caravan, moving slowly 
 over those violet hills at dawn, was He found, who latterly 
 conceived Himself as one with a mission for the whole 
 world? We can but follow the faint pencilings of conjec- 
 ture on such a theme, and yet there is nothing in the known 
 story of the youth of Christ to forbid such conjectures. The 
 intellectual and spiritual development of Jesus must always 
 remain a mystery ; but any suggestion, not inherently im- 
 possible or irreverent, that may help us to comprehend the 
 process of that development should be welcomed. 
 
 On one matter, however, there cannot be the slighest 
 doubt : Jesus was trained in a devout Jewish household. 
 He would be taught the Shema, a sort of elementary Jewish 
 catechism, by His mother as soon as he could speak. He 
 would know the Psalms by heart, and would attend the ex- 
 positions of the Law in the synagogue at Nazareth. The 
 rule of minute religious instruction in a Jewish home was 
 fixed and invariable, and it afforded a noble scheme of edu- 
 cation. The great histories of the Bible would be singularly 
 real and vivid to a youth who looked daily on the plains 
 where Abraham dwelt, the hill that was the scene of Elijah's 
 sacrifice, and the mountains where Saul perished. Great 
 historic traditions, magnificent expressions of spiritual aspir- 
 ation, firm and clear statements of ethical truth, were the 
 food on which the mind and soul of Jesus thrived. Slowly 
 His mind came to a knowledge of its own compass, force, 
 and originality. And slowly, also, the presentiment of voca- 
 tion, of which the Child's visit to Jerusalem affords an en- 
 chanting glimpse, deepened into a sense of destiny, Nazareth 
 gave Him precisely that " shelter to grow ripe," that " leisure 
 to grow wise," so necessary, but so rarely granted to those 
 whose high fate it is to speak to the inmost heart of man, or 
 3 
 
34 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 shape his progress ; and to the last the restfulness of those 
 days clung to Him like a fragrance, producing in the minds 
 of all who knew Him an impression of fathomless serenity, 
 of peace inscrutable and infinite. 
 
CHAPTER H 
 
 JOHN THE BAPTIST 
 
 The years spent at Nazareth, quiet and unmemorable as 
 they seemed in outward events, must have been characterized 
 by much inward stress of spirit. All growth is painful, and 
 it is only through contention and dubiety of mind that th* 
 soul finds the full compass of its powers. He who pictures 
 these hidden years at Nazareth as a perfect idyll of peace 
 and contentment is surely forgetful of the normal processes 
 by which unusual genius is developed. Men of genius have 
 rarely been comprehended by their relations, and then* de- 
 velopment has usually been marked by variance and colli- 
 sion. One of the sadly wise sayings of Jesus was that a 
 prophet has no honor in his own country, and it is doubt- 
 less reminiscent of His own experience. Other events 
 showed that His own brothers — or step-brothers, as they 
 probably were — and even His mother, failed to understand 
 His aims. With all the exquisite sweetness of His disposi- 
 tion there was united a force and daring of temper that must 
 have been extremely disconcerting to these simple-minded 
 friends and kinsfolk. The rising stream of new religious 
 life was already beginning to submerge the old landmarks of 
 Mosaic tradition. Teachers like Hillel and Philo were ut- 
 tering axioms which Jesus was hereafter to fashion into a 
 new ethical revelation. Quickened by the growing life within 
 Him, stimulated by the new life around Him, Jesus must 
 
 often have spoken His mind to this humble audience in 
 
 35 
 
36 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 Nazareth, in such a way as to excite their indignation and 
 their fear. They probably regarded Him as a freethinker 
 whose genius was His peril. It was so, many centuries 
 later, that Sj)inosa, the most " God-inebriated " of all modern 
 Jewish minds, was regarded by his contemporaries ; and the 
 theological animus of the conventional Jew is something that 
 centuries cannot change. 
 
 How many times did Jesus climb those stony paths to the 
 broad plateau above Nazareth that He might escape house- 
 hold contention, and find Himself alone in the healing silen- 
 ces of Nature ? How many times was the heart of Mary 
 pierced by the sword of a great fear as she watched the 
 strange unfolding a of mind whose subtlety and depth she 
 could not comprehend ? That these things really happened 
 we need no Gospel to assure us. Nothing is more remark- 
 able in Christ than that from the moment of His public min- 
 istry He has nothing to learn. There is no doubling back 
 upon the path of truth, no hesitation ; for Him the problem 
 is solved. But this perfect finish of mind must needs have 
 had its processes, and of these processes Nazareth was the 
 theatre. The prime effort of His life was to settle religion 
 on a broad and true base. To do so much that the Jew re- 
 garded as essential to piety had to be set aside as trivial. 
 Customs to which tradition had given the sanctity of duties, 
 traditions which had usurped the place of truths, had to be 
 disregarded. Full truth is only reached by iconoclasm. 
 The strain of spirit in such intellectual adventures is great ; 
 their effect upon others who only partly comprehend is dis- 
 ruptive and full of pain. And it was by such disciplines as 
 these that Jesus reached His full development of mind. 
 Side by side with much that was idyllic in the life at Naza- 
 reth ran sequences of suffering, reaching onward to the 
 tragic. 
 
JOHN THE BAPTIST 37 
 
 Many times Jesus must have asked, in those long 
 meditations on the hills of Nazareth, why it was He 
 waited, for what it was He waited, and when the call to 
 public sendee would prove irresistible. They were not the 
 questions of an ambitious mind, but of a mind keenly con- 
 scious of advancing destiny. These questions were now 
 about to be answered, and the patiently awaited sign was to 
 be given. 
 
 In the fifteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Tiberias 
 there arose in the deserts of Judea, lying between Kedron 
 and the Dead Sea, a young preacher of singular individuality 
 and force by the name of John. He at once attracted atten- 
 tion as much by the manner of his life as by his message. 
 It is characteristic of the voluptuousness of the Oriental 
 mind that it is constantly regulated by a strong ascetic tend- 
 ency. Strange and even fearful abstinences are practiced in 
 the East to-day, and those who practice them are esteemed 
 holy. John had from his boyhood been trained in the most 
 austere ascetism. He had elected to live in the desert, not 
 far from the shore of the Dead Sea, where at that time many 
 anchorites dwelt. He is vividly described to us as wearing 
 raiment of camel's hair, with a leathern girdle upon his 
 loins — the traditional dress of Elijah — and feeding upon 
 locusts and wild honey. Far from the false and fevered life 
 of cities, living amid scenes of incomparable desolation and 
 sterility, finding in them a school of solitude and discipline, 
 John nursed the fires of a passionate and impetuous spirit. 
 None of the sweet influences of nature were here, and had 
 they been they would have made no appeal to him. The 
 land was not only savage in itself, but it seemed scarred and 
 bruised by the hand of visible judgments that had passed 
 over it. And as the scene was, so was the man. He was 
 virile, terrible, untameable, a true son of the wilderness, into 
 
38 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 whose blood all the harshness arid grandeur of the desert 
 had entered. 
 
 Such a life had nothing in it distinctly Jewish. There has 
 never been upon the earth a creature more enamored of ma- 
 terial comfort than the Jew. The smiling aspects of nature, 
 the land flowing with milk and honey, he loved ; but the 
 desert he abhorred. Jewish religion is also in itself the 
 most social of all religions. Many of its most sacred func- 
 tions are scarcely distinguishable from family festivals. It 
 is a religion of geniality, making much of domestic affec- 
 tions, and keenly sensitive to the joyousness of life. In 
 short, the Jew by nature and habit finds ascetism repugnant, 
 and it is therefore somewhat remarkable that such a life as 
 John's should have excited popular sympathy. 
 
 There is, however, a reason for this sympathy, which had 
 its root in one of the greatest periods of Jewish history. If 
 we except Moses, who was the real founder of the nation, 
 there is no man in Jewish history whose fame stands so high 
 as Elijah's. What story is there so thrilling, so impressive, 
 at times so overwhelmingly dramatic, as the story of this 
 Bedouin of the desert, sweeping down in fire and thundei 
 from the caves of Carmel, to subdue kings and terrify a 
 whole people into submission by the force of a single imperi- 
 ous will ? The very name of Elijah is to this day terrible in 
 the East ; never was there memory so potent and implacable. 
 The manner of his removal from the earth added to the 
 superstitious awe which clothed his name. He was believed 
 not to have died ; to have vanished from the earth only to 
 halt upon some dim borderland between life and death, ready 
 to reappear at any time ; to have become a supernatural 
 man, who might return, and assuredly would return in his 
 chariot of flame, when some great national crisis called for 
 him. Such legends are common ; they are associated with 
 
JOHN THE BAPTIST 39 
 
 King Arthur, and even with Francis Drake. It is a curious 
 testimony to man's inherent conviction of immortality, that 
 he finds it difficult to believe that a great hero is really dead. 
 But to the Jew, the sense of Elijah's real presence in the na- 
 tional life, his incompleted work upon the national destiny, 
 was not so much a legend as a creed. It was an impassioned 
 belief, increasing in vehemence as the times grew darker. 
 The deeper the despair and impotence of the nation the 
 more eager became the hope that Elijah would return. He 
 would surely come again and smite the house of Herod as 
 he had smitten the house of Aliab. The desert would once 
 more travail in strange birth, and from it would come the re- 
 deeming Titan. 
 
 No doubt there was some conscious or unconscious imita- 
 tion of Elijah in John's method of life. It was not servile 
 imitation; it was merely the expression of a general convic- 
 tion that the prophet must needs be a man of austere char- 
 acter, whose proper dwelling-place was the wilderness. The 
 greatest of all prophets had been such a man ; what more 
 natural than to suppose that any future prophet must con- 
 form to the type organized by Elijah ? So it happened, that 
 in spite of all the sweet and joyous elements of ordinary 
 Jewish religion, the Jew still retained an admiration of as- 
 ceticism when it was associated with prophetic claims. The 
 Jew never traveled through this awful Judean wilderness 
 without some thrill of patriotic hope. He saw in the sacred 
 but detested scene the cradle of his deliverer. He trembled 
 with a sense, at once joyous and fearful, of an unseen pres- 
 ence in the air. The very night-wind, crying in the clefts of 
 savage rocks, was as the voice of Elijah crying in the wilder- 
 ness. Suddenly all that was mythical and legendary becamo 
 defined. An indubitable figure of flesh and blood, stern, im- 
 placable, vehement as Elijah himself, had appeared in the 
 
40 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 Judean desert. Once more a voice of thunder rang through 
 the land, a presence harshly majestic confronted the nation, 
 a soul of fire began to prophesy. The most heroic episode 
 of Jewish history stood revived in John, and in a few months 
 his fame had filled the land. 
 
 John's fame was purely popular. He exercised little or 
 no influence over the priestly classes. Jesus said that the 
 prevalent estimate of John among the Scribes and Pharisees 
 was that he had a devil. It can hardly be wondered at that 
 they thought ill of him, since he thought ill of them. He 
 denounced them as vipers, and asked in mockery who had 
 taught them to flee from the wrath to come ? He waxed 
 bitterly ironical over their boasted descent from the loins of 
 Abraham, saying that God could fashion from the stones of 
 the desert sons of Abraham as good as they. His audiences 
 were composed of persons whom the strict Jew regarded as 
 pariahs. His iconoclastic spirit was seen in his institution 
 of the rite of baptism. Ablution or immersion was common 
 in the East, but it had no place in Jewish ritual, except as a 
 rite by which proselytes were admitted into the privileges of 
 Israel. As John practiced it, it was meant to supersede all 
 the elaborate ritual of Temple worship. There is no record 
 of John ever having entered the Ternple to fulfil the tradi- 
 tional duties of Jewish piety. His aversion from the estab- 
 lished religion was complete. He had no faith in its forms, 
 and complete contempt in its exponents. It sounds cynical 
 to say that he who denounces a priestly aristocracy is sure 
 of popularity with the common people ; it is not, however, 
 cynicism so much as mournful reflection drawn from the 
 general history of such aristocracies. John would not have 
 found a nation behind him in his attack upon the priesthood, 
 unless that priesthood had already forfeited respect and in- 
 curred resentment. John stood toward the Judaism of his 
 
JOHN THE BAPTIST 41 
 
 day much as Luther stood toward Catholicism ; aud his de- 
 mand was for the abolition of empty forms, the simplifica- 
 tion of religion, the revival of ethical sincerity, the return to 
 the purer and more austere elements of primitive Judaism. 
 
 Certainly no prophet ever excelled John in that peculiar 
 faculty of moral indignation, which was the Hebrew proph- 
 et's most distinctive gift. His oratory was filled with these 
 violent and vivid images which in all ages had appealed pow- 
 erfully to the imagination of the Jews. He spoke of the axe 
 laid to the root of the tree, of the flail of judgment thunder- 
 ing on the threshing-floor, of the chaff burned up with un- 
 quenchable fire. Men of this order, arising suddenly among 
 the easily excited populations of the East, have often driven 
 whole peoples Avild with a sort of frantic hysteria. They ap- 
 pear as heralds of fate, voices preluding the breaking up of 
 the times, and the birth of eras. But it is usually found that 
 such men exhaust their genius upon a narrow range of theme, 
 and are not fertile in ideas. When the prophet descends 
 from his tripod he is even as other men, save for a superior 
 sincerity. These characteristics and limitations are very 
 marked in John. When he is pressed to give direct ethical 
 instruction to his converts he has little to say that is novel, 
 nothing that is striking. His idea of charity does not go be- 
 yond conventional and unsacrificial benevolence. " He that 
 hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none. And 
 he that hath meat, let him do likewise." His advice to the 
 publicans is that they shall exact no more than is appointed 
 them, and to the soldiers that they should abstain from vio- 
 lent behavior, and be content with their wages. His pro- 
 gramme does not go beyond a moderate reform of manners, 
 and the correction of some outstanding popular abuses. 
 After the manner of all iconoclasts, he finds it much easier to 
 destroy error than to reinvigorate Truth, and give it new cur- 
 
42 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 rency. He lias no conception of any new and authoritative 
 system of religion. His mind is destitute of those great fer- 
 tilizing ideas out of which new religions grow. His moral 
 force is overwhelming ; but apart from one range of ideas, in 
 expounding which he is truly inspired, and speaks with the 
 sublime accent of the prophet, his mind is commonplace. 
 
 One thing, however, in John's ministry is both very strik- 
 ing and very beautiful. He has a presentiment, not only that 
 the revelation of the true Messiah is at hand, but that the 
 Messiah is already on the earth, living unknown among the 
 people. He himself does not know who He is, or where 
 He lives. It is evident that the wonder-stories of the birth 
 of Jesus had never reached him ; for had he known them it 
 is incredible that he had not long ago made the acquaintance 
 of One who was his junior by only half a year. It is even 
 more difficult to imagine how such incidents could have faded 
 out of the general mind at all, had they really happened. 
 The only rational hypothesis by which this ignorance can be 
 explained is that the secret of Jesus was guarded jealously, 
 perhaps through fear, and that His seclusion at Nazareth was 
 so complete that the clues of His early history were quite ob- 
 literated. But it is, at all events, certain that John had not 
 learned the secret. He was aware of no rival when he com- 
 menced his ministry. He could not but be aware also of 
 how he himself came to be regarded. The Pharisees, his 
 deadliest enemies, showed themselves uneasy at the extraor- 
 dinary resemblance he bore to the traditional Messiah, and 
 not only debated the question among themselves, but came 
 to him with the plain inquiry, " Who art thou ? " A man less 
 resolutely honest might have yielded to this persistence of 
 popular acclaim. He might have come to see in himself the 
 signs of a predestined greatness, as many a self-intoxicated 
 enthusiast has done. And what was there to prevent such a 
 
JOHN THE BAPTIST 43 
 
 course ? Simply the force of a presentiment which amounted 
 to an inspiration. He does not waver for an instant in his 
 testimony that he is not the Christ. He is convinced that 
 the utmost part he has to play is that of a precursor or a 
 herald. The real humility of a mind, naturally authoritative 
 and impatient, is beautifully revealed in a series of sayings 
 which he utters about the coming of Christ. John declares 
 that One comes after him, who is preferred before him ; that 
 this new prospect will increase as he himself decreases ; that 
 he is not worthy to unloose the shoe's latchet of the real 
 Christ. Here Avas a character surely nobler than Elijah's, 
 for while Elijah regarded his successor as his inferior, and 
 doubted if the prophetic mantle could descend to him, John 
 wished nothing better for himself than extinction in the fuller 
 light that was to come. However limited was John's range 
 of thought, none has ever yet excelled him in magnanimity 
 of temper. 
 
 This note of expectation in John's ministry must have had 
 a powerful influence over popular thought. It excited spec- 
 ulation, it kindled, hope. Who was this mystic personage, 
 whose footfall John already heard approaching? As John's 
 fame spread this question came to be debated throughout a 
 hundred villages and cities. Some caravan passing through 
 Nazareth would bring the news to the home of Mary, and all 
 the memories of Bethlehem and Jerusalem, all the episodes 
 and tokens of thirty patient years took sudden coherence and 
 significance. The news came to her heart with a shock of 
 triumph ; to Jesus with a shock of awe. Or was it fear that 
 Mary felt, when what had faded to a dream became insistent, 
 tangible; was it joy that Jesus felt, when the sweet and 
 gracious consciousness grew on Him that His hour had 
 come ? "With what awestruck eyes did Mother and Son look 
 on one another in those days ! With what timidity in the 
 
44 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 one, what growing ecstasy in tlie other, did each catch the 
 vibrations of that call of destiny, daily growing louder! 
 Sacred in every great life is the hour of high resolution, when 
 the dedicated soul accepts its fate ; but nowhere so sacred as 
 in this lowly home of Nazareth, where the fate of the world 
 itself hung trembling. If a voice warned John that the true 
 Messiah was at hand, did not that same voice warn Jesus 
 that the time had come when this secluded life of Nazareth 
 must end ? Silently He made His preparations, as silently 
 took farewell of these simple Nazarenes with whom His life 
 had passed, and these green hills among which He would 
 dwell no more. 
 
 May we trust tradition for any true portrait of the Master? 
 There is but one extant description, written long after His 
 death, and doubtless, so far as its literary form goes, a for- 
 gery ; and yet it sums up a general and received impression 
 of Christ's appearance. It is supposed to have been written 
 by Lentulus, a pro-consul of Judea, who thus describes our 
 Lord : " He is tall of stature, and His aspect is sweet and 
 full of power, so that they who look upon Him may at once 
 love and fear Him. The hah* of His head is of the color of 
 wine : as far as the ears it is straight and without glitter ; 
 from the ears to the shoulders it is curled and glossy, and 
 from the shoulders it descends over the back, divided into 
 two parts, after the manner of the Nazarene. His brow is 
 pure and even ; His countenance without a spot, but adorned 
 with a gentle glow ; His expression bland and open ; His 
 nose and mouth are of perfect beauty ; His beard is copious, 
 forked, and of the color of His hair ; His eyes are blue and 
 very bright. In reproof and threatening He is terrible, in 
 teaching and exhortation He is gentle and loving. The grace 
 and majesty of His appearance are marvelous." This is He 
 whom we see passing in the early dawn along the road lead- 
 
JOHN THE BAPTIST 45 
 
 ing downward to the Jordan valley, where John is baptizing. 
 A little later, and the invincible presentiment of John is 
 fulfilled. Among the crowd at Bethabara John discerns 
 the face that had long filled his dreams, and utters the im- 
 mortal encomium, " Behold the Lamb of God that taketh 
 away the sins of the world ! " 
 
CHAPTEE ni 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OP JOHN ON JESUS 
 
 No two temperaments could manifest wider disparity than 
 did those of John and Jesus. John's attitude to society was 
 bitterly critical and hostile, while Christ's was tolerant and 
 genial. John was by nature and choice a recluse, while 
 Jesus loved the stir of life. John had the peculiar dignity 
 which belongs to a lofty and austere character, but he had 
 little charm ; Jesus possessed a power of charm that was fell'; 
 even by young children. No one can imagine John taking 
 up little children in his arms and blessing them, or sharing 
 in marriage festivals, or mingling freely with the peoj)le in 
 familiar intercourse ; but all these things Jesus did out of 
 the affectionate warmth of a nature eminently social. Per- 
 haps this disparity of temperament strengthened the bond 
 of friendship between the two teachers, for it is not uncom- 
 mon in friendship for one to admire in the other qualities 
 which he himself does not possess. At all events it is cer- 
 tain that the friendship between John and Jesus was firm 
 and constant. It was never threatened by the jealousy 
 which too often poisons the relations of public men, although 
 the disciples of both teachers more than once tried to make 
 mischief. John never spoke of Jesus except in terms of af- 
 fectionate reverence; and Jesus, throughout His ministry, 
 expressed the warmest admiration for John. If Jesus was 
 to John " the Lamb of God," John was to Jesus " a burning 
 
 46 
 
INFLUENCE OF JOHN ON JESUS 47 
 
 and a shining light," incomparably greater than the greatest 
 of the prophets. 
 
 It must be remembered that both teachers were young 
 men, and they were inspired by common hopes and enthusi- 
 asms. Moral ardor makes light of disparity of tempera- 
 ment ; there is no union surer than the union of common 
 ideas. Jesus soon came to use the very language of John. 
 He denounces the scribes and Pharisees as serpents and 
 vipers, and these strong expressions of disgust which He 
 learned at Bethabara were on His lips throughout His min- 
 istry. He adopted baptism as a sign of penitence, and in 
 His last address to His disciples told them to baptize among 
 all nations. He incorporated John's message in His own, 
 omitting and extenuating nothing, but greatly enlarging 
 and supplementing it. It is probable that before the visit 
 to Bethabara Jesus had made some tentative efforts at teach- 
 ing among His own people. The phrase used by St. Luke, 
 that Jesus grew "in favor with God and man," seems to 
 point to some form of public life and notoriety in Nazareth. 
 It is hardly to be believed that a mind so full and ardent 
 had made no effort to utter itself through all the years that 
 lay between boyhood and mature manhood. But if the voice 
 of Christ had already spoken to the world it was only in 
 accents of idyllic sweetness. He had spoken as a poet and 
 idealist, in words of lyric charm. None had as yet been 
 offended in Him, for He had given no cause of offence to 
 any. His knowledge of the world had not yet included the 
 sadder and the baser sides of life. But at Bethabara these 
 wider and sadder perspectives were opened to Him. John 
 communicated to Him the fire of his own intensity and vehe- 
 mence, and He speedily shared John's hatreds and indigna- 
 tions. The life of the public man, full of dispute and con- 
 troversy, animated by the fervor of battle, quick with moral 
 
48 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 fire, stood revealed to Him. It was a life fertile in occasions 
 of repugnance, provocative of pain, distasteful in an hundred 
 Avays to the temper of the poet, the mystic, the idealist ; and 
 yet it was the only kind of life possible to the sincere re- 
 former of society. It was into this life that John initiated 
 the young teacher of Nazareth, and the impact John made 
 upon the mind of Christ was ineffaceable. 
 
 Just as we may trace to the influence of John the passion- 
 ate repugnance with which Jesus came to regard the relig- 
 ious aristocracy of the time, so one of the most striking epi- 
 sodes in the life of Jesus, the temptation in the wilderness, 
 is due to the same influence. It is by no means surprising 
 that Jesus should have fallen for a time under the spell of 
 John's asceticism, and have allowed Himself to be deflected 
 by it from His true path in life. There is something deeply 
 impressive in the ascetic character. Men in general are so 
 much in bondage to physical senses and appetites that they 
 cannot but regard with wonder those for whom such bondage 
 does not exist. But in the degree that the spectator of as- 
 cetic virtues is himself pure and unworldly, mere wonder is 
 rapidly intensified into emulation. The stern, and almost 
 fierce renunciation of such a life, the solitude, the isolation, 
 the singleness of purpose, the insatiable passion of self-con- 
 quest, will powerfully appeal to him. The man who seeks 
 the seclusion of the cloister is but in rare instances the bat- 
 tered worldling, who has found the temptation of the senses 
 too much for him. More frequently he is a man of delicate 
 sensibility and fastidious purity of life. For exalted spiri- 
 tuality of temperament, the law of asceticism is easy, natural, 
 and alluring. This, at least, is the consistent witness of the 
 great religious orders, and it is the explanation of the power 
 which they have wielded over the highest class of mind. 
 
 The story of the temptation in the wilderness, read in the 
 
INFLUENCE OF JOHN ON JESUS 49 
 
 light of John's asceticism, becomes easily intelligible. In 
 nothing is Jesus so instinctively a Jew as in His love for the 
 familiar and idyllic side of Nature, and in His corresponding 
 repugnance to her harsher aspects. The exquisite homeli- 
 ness of His teaching, on which we have already remarked, is 
 seen in relation to Nature as well as life. His nature-pict- 
 ures are of birds, and fields, and flowers, of wheat and tares, 
 of sowers and reapers — the simple idylls of the countryside 
 — never of the appalling terrors of the desert. The modern 
 growth of the picturesque has substituted grandeur for terror, 
 and those bred in this late cult will find it difficult to imagine 
 that Nature can be terrible. Yet it is but a century ago that 
 men regarded mountains with horror, and the passage of the 
 Alps as an appalling experience. Remembering this, we 
 may perhaps be able to imagine how Jesus would regard the 
 kind of scenery with which John was familiar. All His life 
 accustomed to the gently rounded hills of Nazareth, the charm 
 and sweetness of a fertile landscape, Jesus was now, under 
 the attraction of asceticism, suddenly thrust into a land ab- 
 solutely desolate. Tradition identifies the scene of the 
 temptation as a certain hill called Quarantania, which rises 
 from the Judean plain; it is at all events noticeable that 
 tradition affirms that the temptation took place in this very 
 Judean desert which was the school of John's austerities. 
 But John had known no other scenery ; St. Luke asserts 
 that he was in the desert until the time of his showing unto 
 Israel. The inference is that while yet very young he had 
 become an anchorite, and his sense of the horrors of the 
 wilderness had long since been blunted. If, then, it was at 
 John's suggestion, or with his acquiescence, that Jesus now 
 made the experiment of asceticism in this Judean wilderness, 
 John would be no fit judge of the effect it would be likely to 
 produce on a nature so sensitive. He would no more be 
 4 
 
50 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 able to estimate this effect than a person of robust nerves 
 can understand what is suffered by a sensitive child shut up 
 in the dark. 
 
 The analogy of the sensitive child in the dark must not 
 be pressed too hard, and yet it may fairly indicate what 
 Jesus suffered in this strange experiment. He had lived all 
 His life among kinsfolk and friends, and now He is utterly 
 alone. He had known all the happy reciprocities of domes- 
 tic affection and social intercourse ; the cheerful friendships, 
 the conversations beside the village well or at the cottage 
 door on still evenings, when heart leaped to heart, and the 
 talk drifted into intimacy. The vision which allures the eye 
 in Nazareth is of the tall workman, making ox-yokes in con- 
 tented labor, the Son on whose arm the widowed mother 
 leans, on whose knees the little children climb. The most 
 familiar path of Nature He has trod is the stony track lead- 
 ing to the wide plateau above the little town, from which he 
 has seen at sunset Carmel flushed with rose, and the Jordan 
 valley deep in purple shadow, and far away to northward 
 the azure of the sea. And now, all at once, he is confronted 
 with a new Nature, which seems no more benevolent and joy- 
 ous, but evil and malignant. These scarred and frowning 
 rocks, this bloomless waste, this gloomy illimitable plain, 
 compose a fitting theatre for diabolic energies. Night falls 
 upon the scene, and the darkness overwhelms the spirit. 
 The cry of the wind or of the wild beast thrills the nerves. 
 The immitigable silence is itself a horror. The stars alone 
 shine familiar ; elsewhere there is neither sight nor sound 
 that is not fearful and detestable. Hunger gives a new 
 poignancy to all mental and physical sensations. Stirrings 
 of the air, scarco noticeable by the normal sense, fall upon 
 the spirit like a blow. There are buffeting hands that leap 
 from the mantle of the darkness, and the laughter as of 
 
INFLUENCE OF JOHN ON JESUS 51 
 
 friends among the caverned rocks. Strange pictures run like 
 a frieze of fire upon that darkness, till at last from its chaotic 
 tumult the form of the Evil One himsel'f coheres, emerges, 
 and approaches. In a scene where all is monstrous and de- 
 formed, under a strain of mind and body quite unfamiliar 
 and abnormal, the tortured imagination falls a prey to all 
 the horror of diabolism, at last projecting on the air the 
 very shape of the Enemy of Souls himself. Such is the 
 work of asceticism upon a nature eminently social, joyous, 
 and sensitive. 
 
 The temptation in the wilderness was not the less real be- 
 cause we may thus explain it as the effect of asceticism upon 
 a peculiarly sensitive imagination. Luther's struggle with 
 the Evil One in his cell at the "Wartburg was real enough, 
 and even horribly real, although the phantom existed in his 
 eye alone. The temptations of a Francis of Assisi or of a 
 St. Anthony were in the same manner real though but spec- 
 tres of the mind. Or, to take a far more ancient story, was 
 not the struggle of Jacob at the brook Jabbok a conflict 
 really confined to the theatre of the mind ? Here are many 
 of the elements which we find in the temptation of Jesus — 
 elements which indeed are common to all such experiences. 
 Jacob, in the grip of a great anxiety, finds himself alone be- 
 side the brook amid the gathering darkness. The fear of his 
 brother passes by subtle changes into a terror of the dark- 
 ness itself. Time dwindles to a point, and all his life is 
 concentrated into a few agonized moments. The darkness 
 takes a shape, becomes as it were a man under whose invisi- 
 ble violence Jacob is forced to his knees. He wrestles, as 
 for his very life, till the breaking of the day. He is plunged 
 into the vortices of a horror so great that his very life, and 
 certainly his sanity, is in peril. When the morning comes 
 peace returns, and more than peace — a sense of triumph over 
 
52 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 ghostly forces which had threatened the very roots of being. 
 To the unimaginative such a story may appear absurd, but it 
 is time in fact. In such moments the imagination controls 
 the senses. Or perhaps we may say the imagination super- 
 sedes the senses, becoming a new and finer sense, so that 
 men see the invisible, hear the inaudible, and touch the in- 
 tangible. Personality is an abyss so deep, and so little 
 explored, that a hundred things may happen in its inmost 
 depths which the normal and conventional human creature 
 may regard as incredible. In such a case the normal human 
 creature is no judge ; but if he will approach the problem 
 not in arrogance but docility of spirit, he will admit that 
 there are many things in earth and heaven not dreamed of 
 in his philosophy. 
 
 Both St. Matthew and St. Luke give a detailed account of 
 the temptation ; St. Mark contents himself with a single sen- 
 tence, and St. John passes over it altogether. Obviously 
 what Jesus endured in these forty days and nights must 
 have been related by His own lips, for there was no specta- 
 tor of His struggles. Beneath the highly pictorial account 
 afforded us by the Evangelists there is a firmly outlined 
 ethical basis. The first temptation is a temptation of the 
 flesh, but entirely free from the grossness which in mediaeval 
 history disfigures such temptations. It is the natural and 
 relatively innocent temptation to break the vow of abstinence 
 by creating bread to satisfy the fleshly hunger. Christ's re- 
 ply is remarkable as an assertion of the right of the spirit to 
 control the body : " Man liveth not by bread alone but by 
 every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God " — a 
 familiar quotation from the writings of Moses. The second 
 temptation, taking the order of St. Matthew, which here dif- 
 fers from that observed by St. Luke, is a temptation to the 
 selfish use of miraculous power or the abuse of faith. God 
 
INFLUENCE OF JOHN ON JESUS 53 
 
 has promised that the angels shall have charge over the man 
 who trusteth in Him ; why not put the promise to the test 
 by the suicidal folly of leaping from a pinnacle of the 
 Temple ? There is something at once childish and cynical in 
 this suggestion, unless indeed it be meant to imply that de- 
 rangement of reason which struggles with the gloomy horror 
 of suicide. The reply of Christ again breathes the spirit of 
 a temperate wisdom : " Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy 
 God." The third temptation is more intelligible; it is to 
 snatch at power by the sacrifice of conscience. The king- 
 doms of the world may be gained by obeisance to the Spirit 
 of Evil. This is the familiar temptation of a Faustus, im- 
 mortalized in the great drama of Mario w, and in the greater 
 poem of Goethe. But it is a seduction that has no potency 
 for the pious idealist. " Thou shalt worship the Lord thy 
 God, and Him only shalt thou serve," is the reply of Christ. 
 The story concludes with the striking saying that after the 
 third temptation the devil left Him, and angels came and 
 ministered unto Him. 
 
 The reflection is obvious that such a story commends itself 
 to the universal preconceptions of what should form the ed- 
 ucation of a great spiritual reformer. Buddha also had his 
 period of temptation ; what great man has not ? Human 
 thought, always obedient to conventions even when appar- 
 ently most original, has arranged an invariable programme 
 for poets, prophets, teachers, and men of genius. Men can 
 conceive of no supreme virtue except the kind of virtue that 
 is won by struggle. What Milton finely calls " unbreathed 
 virtue," that is to say, virtue uncontested, unexercised, un- 
 disciplined by temptation, is really no virtue at all. It is 
 the negative of vice, but it is not virtue. The deepest 
 thought of man about the moral order of the world is that it 
 is disciplinary. Hence the hero of whatever order is one 
 
54 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 wlio lias overcome. Hence also the story of Jesus would be 
 incomplete without victory over temptation. And, in the 
 nature of things, such temptation must be real, even though 
 the vehicle of its interpretation be a tortured fancy. The 
 story of Christ's temptation loses all cogency if we are asked 
 to grant that under no possible conditions could He have 
 submitted. It then becomes little less than farcical. He is 
 seen as entering on a struggle of which the issue is a 
 foregone conclusion. A mistaken reverence insisting on this 
 view of the temptation really reduces what is in itself of 
 deep interest and abiding invigoration to humanity, to an in- 
 sincere and foolish fable. But the story, as it is related by 
 the Evangelists, gives no hint of such mental reservations. 
 It is told as a plain matter of fact, an essential circumstance 
 in the spiritual evolution of the Master, with a rational un- 
 derstanding of its implications. Temptation can imply 
 nothing less than the possibility of fall, and He who is said 
 to have been tempted in all points like we are, would have 
 missed the truly cardinal point of all such trials, if it is in- 
 conceivable that the temptation might have been effectual. 
 In other words, the desert might have proved fatal to Christ ; 
 but He escaped by His own superiority of soul, emerging 
 from the test triply armed for His great work as the ex- 
 emplar of men. 
 
 Following instantly as it does on Christ's contact with 
 John, it can hardly be doubted, as I have already tried to 
 show, that the sojourn in the desert was one of the results of 
 that association. Perhaps it was undertaken at the immedi- 
 ate suggestion of John ; perhaps it was a concession on the 
 part of Jesus to the prevalent ideals of the time. Jesus saw 
 in John a truly great man, whose greatness had been bred 
 in the school of austerity, and He Himself would fain make 
 a trial of asceticism. The trial was not disastrous ; it pro- 
 
INFLUENCE OF JOHN ON JESUS 55 
 
 ducecl great results, but the chief result was that it enabled 
 Jesus to recover, and finally affirm, the true bent of His own 
 nature. The men of real genius, in his period of immaturity, 
 makes many such experiments before he comes to a genuine 
 knowledge of himself. He is frequently deflected from his 
 course by influences which he does not perceive to be foreign 
 and even antagonistic, and by such adventures of the spirit 
 wisdom comes. Thus, after many fluctuations of ideal, he 
 finds, a permanent foothold of truth, and is the gainer rather 
 than the loser by his experiment, because he has won a wider 
 knowledge of the human heart. 
 
 It is in this light that the sojourn in the desert should be 
 read, so far as it forms a part of the development of Jesus. 
 It is significant that His intimacy with John appears to have 
 terminated with the temptation. He did not return to John, 
 nor does He seek further instruction from him ; the Pupil 
 had already surpassed His master. His friendship, His 
 reverence, His sense of obligation to John remained, but the 
 desert marked the parting of the ways. John's scheme of 
 life had many virtues, but it was incapable of general imita- 
 tion. It was an abnormal life, and the real redemption of 
 men must be wrought through the normal, not the abnormal. 
 The conception of the prophet as invincibly austere, notwith- 
 standing the general tradition and acceptance, was radically 
 wrong. Asceticism, in so far as it imposed a general rule of 
 life, was both injurious and insulting to human nature. The 
 true bent of Christ's nature once more asserted itself, and 
 the pressure of John's example ceased to be effective. To 
 tread the dusty pathways of the commonplace in a lofty 
 spirit of duty ; to seek comradeship with ordinary men and 
 women ; to be free, familiar, kind, in social intercourse ; to 
 accept life as in itself good and capable of being better ; to 
 live as a man with men — this was to help the world after a 
 
56 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 fashion niuch superior to John's. Jesus had been right after 
 all in those simple and profoundly human conceptions of 
 life, on which thirty years of lowly toil at Nazareth had set 
 their seal. John came fasting ; it was the distinguishing 
 feature of his austerity ; Jesus and His disciples came eat- 
 ing and drinking. John preached amid the deserts of 
 Judea ; Jesus henceforth turns His steps to the pleasant 
 shores of Galilee. John is a recluse ; Jesus is the Friend 
 and Brother, easily accessible, eminently sociable. The 
 break in practice is henceforth complete and irreparable. 
 Asceticism had been tried and found wanting ; it has never 
 since been revived save to the injury of religion and the 
 degradation of society. 
 
CHAPTEE IV 
 
 THE OPENING SCENES 
 
 The Lake of Galilee, toward which Jesus directed His 
 steps after His sojourn in the Judean desert, was already 
 familiar to Him, and it is probable that He entertained for it 
 the kind of love which the dalesman has for his own remote 
 and sheltered valley. It is a sheet of exquisitely blue and 
 clear water, about thirteen miles in length by a quarter of a 
 mile in breadth. Josephus describes the whole district as a 
 terrestrial paradise, laying stress upon the tempered delicacy 
 of its air, the fertility of its soil, and the natural attractions 
 of its beauty. The modern traveler may flatter himself that 
 his eye rests upon the same outlines of scenery that Christ 
 beheld and loved ; but little else remains. The thick foliage 
 that clothed its shores has disappeared as utterly as have 
 the gilded pinnaces of Herod or the glittering pleasure barges 
 of the Romans which once floated on its waters. Something 
 of the grandeur that was Rome, and the splendor that was 
 Greece may still be conjectured in the ruins in the Forum 
 Roinanum or the Acropolis ; but not a single clue remains to 
 the former prosperity and charm of the shores of Galilee. 
 
 It was with excellent judgment that Jesus chose this dis- 
 trict for the scene of His mission. The Galileans themselves 
 were of a cheerful temper, and were relatively free from the 
 arid casuistries of the various sects which struggled for pre- 
 eminence in Jerusalem. They were a simple folk much en- 
 gaged in fishing, and in other humble outdoor employments. 
 
 57 
 
58 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 A certain leaven of cosmopolitanism had also been imparted 
 to the common life by the Roman occupation. The great 
 road from Jerusalem to Damascus which passed along the 
 shores of the lake, brought a constant influx of travelers of 
 every nationality. The Galilean fisherman, by the nature of 
 his business, found himself brought into contact with many 
 types of men, and especially with the Romans, of whose lux- 
 urious appetites he was the servant. Many publicans dwelt 
 in the district, for the work of collecting the taxes in a dis- 
 trict so crowded was heavy. These men are not to be con- 
 founded with the Roman farmers of taxes, who were usually 
 patricians. They were humble clerks and collectors of cus- 
 toms chosen from the local population. The reason why they 
 were held in scornful disesteem, or even hated, was a patri- 
 otic reason. They were accounted traitors ; quite unjustly, 
 for if taxes had to be collected, even a patriotic Jew might 
 have reasoned that it was less insulting to the nation that the 
 taxgatherer should be his own countryman than an alien and 
 a pagan. This was a degree of reasonableness, however, 
 quite beyond the average Jew, who accounted all money 
 raised by taxation, even when taxation was most moderate 
 and just, stolen money, and punished the Jewish customs of- 
 ficer accordingly by a bitter ostracism which even went so 
 far as to deny him the right of making a will. The frank 
 and public friendship which Christ extended to these pariahs 
 of a bigoted patriotism must have been very grateful to 
 their hurt pride ; it healed them of their self-despisings. 
 No doubt the attitude which Christ adojited toward them 
 was largely dictated by a sense of the injustice of their 
 position. 
 
 It is interesting to remember that in this busy and popu- 
 lous district Jesus would find Himself at all points in con- 
 tact with the paganism of Rome. Wherever the Roman went 
 
THE OPENING SCENES 59 
 
 lie carried with, liim the entire apparatus of his faith and 
 civilization. Streets of tombs, such as lined the Appian way 
 or the approaches to Pompeii, marked the towns and cities 
 where the Roman power was most centralized ; votive tem- 
 ples, and statues to Pan and to the gods, sprang up among 
 these groves of Galilee ; and upon these symbols of an alien 
 faith the eyes of Christ must have often rested. No indica- 
 tion is afforded us by any word of Christ's that these monu- 
 ments of art and pagan piety made the least impression on 
 Him. On the other hand, it is clear that His relations with 
 the Romans themselves were friendly. It was in Capernaum, 
 one of the most lovely towns of Galilee, that Jesus met the 
 Roman centurion, of whom He said that his faith surpassed 
 any faith that He had met among the children of Israel. In 
 all ages a certain simplicity of character has distinguished 
 the soldier. Doubt and incertitude, which are the maladies 
 of the man of thought, rarely afflict the man of action. We 
 have already seen that the ministry of John the Baptist 
 proved attractive to the Roman soldiers. To the teaching of 
 Christ they were even more accessible. The Roman was too 
 thorough a man of the world to be a bigoted believer even in 
 his own forms of faith. He regarded all faiths with toler- 
 ance, and was ready to treat them with respect so long as 
 they presented no menace to the civil power. The more 
 thoughtful Roman went further than this ; sceptical of much 
 in his own religion, he was an inquirer after truth, full of 
 ardent curiosity, and disposed to interest in any new religion 
 that challenged him in the lands he conquered. Thus we 
 find that the centurion of Capernaum whom Christ praised 
 had built a synagogue for the Jews, and among the Romans 
 there were many men distinguished by the same fine toler- 
 ance and religious spirit. 
 
 In this district, beautiful, fertile, populous, the most cos- 
 
60 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 mopolitan of all the districts of Palestine, and therefore the 
 best fitted for the growth of a new religion, the real ministry 
 of Christ commenced. Its towns, utterly razed to the ground 
 as they are to-day, were to become more famous in the gen- 
 eral memory of man than the greatest cities of antiquity. 
 Bethsaida, Capernaum, Magdala, have been the sources of an 
 influence more invigorating, and greatly more vital than the 
 influence of even Eome or Athens themselves. The words 
 spoken in these narrow streets and beside the blue waters of 
 this humble lake have reverberated to the utmost limits of 
 the world. In Jerusalem Christ always felt Himself a for- 
 eigner ; but here He was at home. The intellectual atmos- 
 phere of Jerusalem, arid as the hills on which the city stood, 
 dulled the spontaneity and freshness of His thought ; but 
 here He spoke always with the accent of joyous inspiration. 
 Among these simple Galileans He found the friends dearest 
 to his heart, and the converts who did most for His memory. 
 Peter and Andrew his brother were fishermen of the lake. 
 Zebedee, another fisherman, received Him gladly ; his two 
 sons, James and John, became apostles, and his wife, Salome, 
 was with Jesus at Calvary. Matthew was a customs officer 
 of Capernaum ; Nathaniel belonged to Cana, and Philip to 
 Bethsaida. From Magdala came Mary, who regarded Him 
 with an adoring passion, followed Him to the cross, and was 
 first in the Garden on the morning of the resurrection. 
 Never in the history of the world did a single district pro- 
 duce so many men and women who were to become immor- 
 tal in the annals of faith, piety, love, and genius. Here 
 is the truly sacred soil of Christianity; it is to Galilee 
 rather than Jerusalem that the pilgrim feet of men should 
 travel. 
 
 Before Jesus definitely chose Galilee for the theatre of His 
 exertions several things of moment happened. Although we 
 
THE OPENING SCENES 61 
 
 have no record to guide us, we cau hardly suppose that Jesus 
 left John abruptly, with no word of affectionate farewell. 
 John would perhaps greet Hhn on His return from the wild- 
 erness, and in the calm elation of His aspect, in the radiant 
 sense of power that now clothed Jlim, would anew recognize 
 Him as the Lamb of God. In the early dawn beside the 
 fords of Jordan they parted, to meet no more. Interested 
 followers Jesus had already; He was now to choose dis- 
 ciples. Moving northward, through the Jordan valley, He 
 comes to the Lake of Galilee, and there beholds two fisher- 
 men, Simon Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net into 
 the sea. These two fishermen had already seen Jesus in the 
 congregation of John the Baptist, and had heard John's 
 declarations regarding Him. It would appear they had not 
 made up their minds about Him ; they were divided between 
 growing interest and incredulity. But now, at a simple word, 
 their divided thoughts rushed into unanimity ; no sooner had 
 Jesus said, " Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men," 
 than, " they immediately left their ship and their father, and 
 followed Him." The effect which Christ was able to produce 
 by a single word or a glance was magical. Matthew, the 
 customs officer at Capernaum, the nature of whose occupa- 
 tion would forbid any preliminary knowledge of Jesus at a 
 place so remote as Bethabara, was hereafter to surrender in- 
 stantly to the same call. James and John, the sons of 
 Zebedee, appear to have received their call at the same time 
 as Peter and Andrew. On this journey northward another 
 disciple joined the growing company — Philip of Bethsaida. 
 If Jesus had desired some definite assurance that the sense 
 of vocation which had possessed His mind in the desert was 
 not delusive, no more overpowering proof could have been 
 given Him than this new-found power over men. In one 
 swift glance He seems to have read the inmost characters of 
 
62 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 the man He chose, and in but one instance did the result 
 falsify the hope. He allowed them no time to argue, nor 
 did they manifest the least desire of argument. It was as 
 though a spell had fallen on them, too potent, too sweet and 
 gracious also, for resistance. Throughout His ministry, as 
 we shall see, Jesus relied much on this singular power of 
 His over the human will. It served Him as the most potent 
 of all weapons in dealing with cases of hysteria and mental 
 affliction. The force of His personality gave His lightest 
 word an impact which seems entirely incommensurate with 
 its ordinary insignificance. When He called He commanded ; 
 it was as though a flash of magnetism pierced to the core of 
 men's hearts and fused their desires with His own. So com- 
 mon was this effect that He grew to expect instant obedience, 
 such as these first disciples manifested ; and when a man 
 once pleaded that he must needs bury his dead before he 
 could follow Christ, the startling reply was that it was his 
 duty to follow instantly, and leave the dead to bury their 
 dead. 
 
 In one place, however, and among one population, this 
 power signally failed. It was natural that before entering 
 on His new career Jesus should return to Nazareth, where 
 He had been brought up. There were perhaps family affairs 
 to be settled, and some preparations made for a prolonged 
 absence. St. Luke gives a detailed and animated account of 
 this last visit to Nazareth. With what feelings His own 
 family received Him we may judge by certain after events of 
 His history, which reveal their open hostility. If a prophet 
 has no honor in his own country, it is still more certain that 
 he is likely to encounter much incredulity in his own family. 
 The kinsfolk of a man of genius are usually the last to under- 
 stand him. Nor are the acquaintances of his youth and the 
 witnesses of his early life in a much better position. Famil- 
 
THE OPENING SCENES G3 
 
 iarity dulls the force of insight. A scene of nature which 
 appeals powerfully to a traveler as the loveliest of its kind 
 has often little charm for those who behold it habitually. It 
 needs a Wordsworth, coming fresh upon the scene, to see the 
 delicate beauty of the humblest flower that blows ; to a Peter 
 Bell the primrose by the river's brink is a primrose, and 
 nothing more. It is no doubt discreditable to human nature 
 that these infirmities of judgment should exist ; but they are 
 so common as to form a law almost invariable. This law 
 was now to receive a truly tragic illustration in Nazareth. 
 
 The democratic custom of the Jewish synagogue permitted 
 any one of reputable character to read a passage from the 
 roll of the prophets, and expound it according to his lights. 
 There was nothing analogous to what we understand as the 
 sober order of public worship. The ordinary assembly in 
 the synagogue was rather in the nature of a debating society. 
 Questions were asked, difficulties expounded, and criticism 
 invited. The dialectic subtlety of the Jewish mind thrived 
 in such an atmosphere. It is fair also to remember that the 
 same democratic spirit which gave the right of speech to any 
 person capable of using it also permitted considerable lati- 
 tude to the speaker. Jesus was soon to be adjudged a 
 heretic, yet throughout His ministry He was permitted to 
 teach in the temples of the national faith. A more extreme 
 case is that of Saul of Tarsus, who, in spite of the bitter 
 hostility with which he was regarded as a renegade, was al- 
 lowed to preach Christ in the synagogue. It is worth notice, 
 also, that in the memorable visit of the Boy Jesus to the 
 Temple at Jerusalem, no one took exception to His extreme 
 youth when He both asked and answered questions, or 
 counted him presumptuous. Stubborn as the Jew was on 
 many points of traditional orthodoxy, yet he loved the spirit 
 of debate ; and while these public debates often degenerated 
 
64 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 into something like the asking of casuistic conundrums, they 
 did much to sharpen thought and develop a high degree of 
 dialectic efficiency in all classes of the community. 
 
 Jesus had often availed Himself of these opportunities to 
 speak in the synagogue at Nazareth. St. Luke tells us 
 specifically that it was His custom to go into the synagogue 
 on the Sabbath day and stand up to read. Some local repu- 
 tation He must have already achieved, for it is impossible 
 that He should have often taken part in these religious dis- 
 cussions without uttering many wise and memorable words. 
 That reputation was now much enhanced by His recent as- 
 sociation with John, and by the rumor of certain wonderful 
 works that He had wrought in Capernaum. What these 
 works were, what were His associations with Capernaum, 
 can only be conjectured; but it would seem that He had 
 already found friends in this town which He always loved, 
 and it is likely that He had attempted certain works of heal- 
 ing there which had been magnified by rumor into miracles. 
 There was therefore every disposition to hear Him with 
 respect and attention, not wholly unmixed, however, with 
 latent incredulity and far from affectionate curiosity. His 
 opening words on this memorable Sabbath morning gained 
 Him instant attention. He read one of the great passages 
 from the prophecies of Isaiah which had always been con- 
 sidered of Messianic significance. His thrilling accent, His 
 air of exaltation, the power of charm which had already 
 proved so remarkable in attracting disciples, had an extra- 
 ordinary effect on the Nazarene assembly. The wave of 
 magnetism passed through them, subduing and enkindling 
 them. They did not resent His solemn affirmation that, 
 " This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." Tor the 
 moment pure wonder filled their thoughts ; an occult and 
 powerful spell held them breathless. It was one of those 
 
THE OPENING SCENES 65 
 
 triumphant moments in the life of Jesus when the force of 
 His personality bore down all opposition. 
 
 The spell was soon broken. A note of sarcasm, justified 
 doubtless by many a slight and indignity that Nazareth had 
 put upon Him, introduced a discord into the music of His 
 speech which these Nazarenes had at first found so gracious. 
 He perceived their incredulity not only as latent but invincible. 
 With that same kind of piercing insight which in later days 
 foresaw the certainty of violent death when the immediate 
 prospect seemed more brilliant, He discerns that these Naz- 
 arenes will never give Him credit as a real prophet. He 
 accepts the irony of the situation as inevitable ; no prophet 
 can be accepted in his own country. It would seem that 
 some local jealousy or soreness existed between Nazareth and 
 Capernaum. Perhaps the Nazarene, whose interests were 
 narrow, held in scorn the wider freedom of the semi-pagan- 
 ized Capernaum. Many instances may be found in rural 
 districts of the incredible lengths of acrimony, and even fury, 
 to which local jealousy may lead. Such a community, filled 
 with such a spirit, while neglecting its own prophet, would 
 be easily incensed at his popularity in a rival city. Jesus 
 makes no effort to conciliate this embittered pettiness of 
 feeling. He directly challenges it by defending His prefer- 
 ence of Capernaum. He reminds them that the greatest 
 prophets did not confine their ministry even to their own 
 nation. There were many lepers in Israel in the time of 
 Elijah, yet to none was Elijah sent, save unto Naaman, who 
 was a Syrian and an outlander. If He found Capernaum a 
 more congenial soil for His work than Nazareth, if He chose 
 a semi-pagnized Capernaum to a strictly Jewish Nazareth, 
 He was but doing what Elijah had done before Him. It re- 
 quired great boldness to make such a declaration ; it was the 
 speech of a reformer whose first, deliberate, and consistent 
 5 
 
06 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 effort was to break clown Jewish narrowness of thought. For 
 that reason the declaration could not be made too plainly or 
 too early ; it was to the new movement what the theses of 
 Luther, nailed to the church door of Wittenburg, were to the 
 incipient Reformation. 
 
 The effect was an instantaneous explosion of the most 
 violent feeling. The historical parallel between Himself and 
 Elijah was naturally disregarded ; angry men care for neither 
 logic nor history. Oriental fanaticism, one of the most fero- 
 cious forces in the world when once unbridled, suddenly 
 changed these Nazarenes into a bloodthirsty mob. The very 
 men who but an instant earlier had wondered at His gracious 
 words were now intent upon His death. They essayed to 
 drive Him out of the city with curses, and even attempted to 
 thrust Him headlong from the sharp cliff on which the city 
 stood. Jesus escaped them, not by any miraculous act, but 
 by that unapproachable power of personality, which still 
 affected them like a spell. He passed through the midst of 
 them, subduing them as wild beasts are subdued by a super- 
 ior will, and went upon His way to Capernaum. Nazareth 
 saw Him no more ; henceforth Capernaum is spoken of as 
 " His own city." Here He found His true kinsfolk, " the 
 blameless family of God." Henceforth His name is linked 
 no more with Nazareth ; He is Jesus of Galilee. 
 
 One other incident, as exquisite in feeling as this Nazar- 
 ene incident is distasteful and distressing, marked the open- 
 ing ministry of Christ. Not far from Nazareth, and on the 
 way to Capernaum, lies the little town of Cana. The family 
 of Jesus had friends, and probably kinsfolk, in Cana. " On 
 the third day" — a phrase to which we can attach little 
 chronological significance — says St. John, "there was a mar- 
 riage feast in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was 
 there : and both Jesus was called, and His disciples, to the 
 
THE OPENING SCENES 67 
 
 marriage." It will be observed that no mention is made of 
 Joseph ; it is probable that he was dead. It is also clear 
 that John writes as an eye-witness, though with his usual 
 modesty he suppresses his own name, perhaps lest he should 
 give offence to his fellow-disciples. The charge of arrogance 
 and desire of precedence brought against the sons of Zebedee 
 at a subsequent period of Christ's ministry was remembered 
 by St. John even in old age ; and hence the curiously round- 
 about manner in which he speaks of himself sometimes as 
 the " other disciple," or the suppression of his own name as 
 an eye-witness of events, as in this case, when the narrative 
 would have been strengthened by a method of testimony 
 more direct. 
 
 The presence of Jesus at this purely festive gathering so 
 soon after His public appearance as a prophet is in itself 
 significant. It is another evidence of His complete sever- 
 ance from the school of John the Baptist, and His renuncia- 
 tion of all faith in ascetic modes of life. The presence of 
 His mother at the wedding, and the part she played in its 
 events, also disposes of some natural doubts as to the kind 
 of relations that existed between them. Some incertitude 
 concerning His claims and His destiny she must often have 
 felt, and perhaps still felt. The violent expulsion from 
 Nazareth came upon her as a great shock. But with the 
 beautiful instinct of a loving and gracious woman she lived 
 much with the memories most sacred to her. Amid all the 
 bitterness of household dissension she had traditions that 
 were pondered in her heart, which were the sacred food of 
 faith. She had learned to suppress herself, and to live in 
 the life of her oon, as only mothers can. More and more 
 since the death of Joseph she had lived in and for her Son ; 
 and it was with tremulous anxiety for His safety, with per- 
 haps some illuminating hope that Cana might in some way 
 
68 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 atone for the rejection of Nazareth, that she set out with 
 Him across the hills to the wedding of her kinsfolk. 
 
 Once more a picture of indescribable charm, definite and 
 joyous, as though touched with the spirit of Greek art, 
 assails the eye. In the late afternoon, as the first softness 
 of approaching sunset falls upon the hills and the far-off 
 snows of Hermon, the little party starts for Cana. Mary 
 alone rides upon a mule ; beside her walks her Son ; and 
 between them the silent intercourse of many a kindly glance 
 and hand-touch is exchanged. At a few paces from them 
 follow the newly called disciples, shy with a latent sense of 
 intrusion, talking in whispers among themselves, thrilled to 
 the heart when Jesus turns at intervals to look on them, 
 conscious that this calm evening marks the first stage upon 
 the long road of strange destinies. The twilight is falling as 
 they enter Cana. Soft notes of flute and drum already stir 
 the air, and in the fragrant gloom torches are lit one by one. 
 Along the narrow street appears a slow procession of Jewish 
 virgins, each with lighted lamp — a picture Christ reproduced 
 long afterward in one of His most striking parables. At 
 last the bride advances, garlanded with flowers, veiled from 
 head to foot, moving with timid and reluctant feet from the 
 home of maidenhood where she will dwell no more. The 
 bridegroom, attended by a crowd of joyous youths, meets 
 her ; the simple music swells into triumph ; the street 
 quivers with a hundred lights ; and then the wedding party 
 passes in to the feast, and the door is shut. It is a wedding 
 of poor people, and the feast has not proceeded far before 
 the signs of penury assert themselves. The wine is ex- 
 hausted, and the cheerful hospitality is menaced with dis- 
 grace. Mary, who knows something of the things that have 
 happened in Capernaum, turns anxiously to her Son. She 
 knows His kindliness of nature too well to suppose Him 
 
THE OPENING SCENES 69 
 
 indifferent to the mortification of His hosts. She whispers 
 to the servants, " Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it." In 
 the vestibule of the house stand six earthen waterpots, cov- 
 ered with fresh leaves, and filled with water. Jesus signs to 
 the servants to fill the empty wine-vessels from these water r 
 jars, and they, wondering much, obey. And behold, by 
 some strange alchemy, the water is turned to wine, and the 
 ruler of the feast, suspecting no miracle, compliments the 
 bridegroom on his thrift in keeping the best wine unto the 
 last. 
 
 We may be sure that from that moment neither bride nor 
 bridegroom were the central figures of the feast ; all eyes 
 were fixed on Jesus. Throughout His ministry it was 
 the same ; into whatever company He entered, He became 
 the observed of all observers, and was accounted first and 
 greatest. In the early dawn the feast ended, and the guests 
 separated. What thoughts were theirs, as they passed in 
 little groups up the familiar hill-paths to their homes ! 
 How would they stop from time to time ; discuss and argue 
 anew the strange happenings of the night ; suggest proba- 
 bilities and explanations that led to nothing, all the while 
 quivering with a joyous fear, half glad and half reluctant to 
 be released from the spell of a personality so supreme, more 
 than half convinced that this was indeed the long-desired 
 Messiah. They would circulate the strange stoiy far and 
 wide. By nightfall the whole countryside reverberated with 
 the rumor. Curious pilgrims poured into Cana, eager to see 
 One of whom such marvelous things were told. But soon 
 after dawn Jesus had departed too, traveling northward to 
 Capernaum, and taking with Him the nucleus of His king- 
 dom, His mother and His disciples, who had seen His glory 
 for the first time in Cana, and henceforth followed Him to 
 death — and beyond death. 
 
CHAPTER Y 
 
 THE DIVINE PROGRAMME 
 
 At this j)omt in the narrative we may wisely pause to in- 
 quire what was the programme of Jesus ? Every human 
 creature, who is not a mere puppet moved automatically at 
 the will of fashion and custom, usually forms some more or 
 less definite plan of life. The difference between men is not 
 so much a difference of power as of definite aim. Where the 
 ordinary man drifts hither and thither at the call of circum- 
 stances, takes the first chance path, counting one path as good 
 as another, and acquires a superficial veneer of ideas bor- 
 rowed from many sources, the superior man marks out a 
 course for himself, discriminates in all matters of truth and 
 duty, and makes his life the just expression of himself. Did 
 Jesus thus define His course ? We can hardly doubt it. 
 The exclamation of the young Boy in the Temple, " Wist ye 
 not that I must be about my Father's business ? " reveals an 
 early sense of vocation ; the last saying of Christ to Pontius 
 Pilate defines that vocation : " To this end was I born, and 
 for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear wit- 
 ness unto the truth." 
 
 Between these two declarations there lies a wide tract of 
 life and experience. Each reveals, however, the same atti- 
 tude of mind. Each expresses the temper of the idealist. 
 For all the ills of humanity, all the subjugations and tyran- 
 nies under which man groaned, Jesus had one sovereign 
 remedy : " Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make 
 
 70 
 
THE DIVINE PROGRAMME 71 
 
 you free." All vital emancipations begin in the soul. The 
 soul that is assured of truth has already soared into an em- 
 pyrean, beyond the storms of this troublesome life, and 
 equally beyond its vain dreams, its empty perturbations, its 
 unquiet desires, and its inordinate affections. Broadly 
 speaking, Jesus came te teach men the truth about God, 
 about themselves, and about their final destiny. He in- 
 cluded all these great themes in one comprehensive phrase, 
 " The Kingdom of God or of Heaven." Men were to seek 
 the Kingdom of God first because nothing else really mat- 
 tered. The quest of truth was the first duty of man, and the 
 attainment of truth his loftiest achievement. No definition 
 of spiritual idealism could be more complete, and the work 
 to which Christ now addressed Himself was to impart the 
 spirit of His own Divine idealism to the world. 
 
 This idealism soon proved itself to be the most powerful 
 of solvents when applied to the current life and thought of 
 the time. Thus, for example, the moment it was applied to 
 the current notions of Messiahship, they disappeared. The 
 last thing which the ordinary Jew expected of his Messiah 
 was a fresh revelation of truth ; what he did expect was po- 
 litical emancipation. Jesus perceived at once the grossness 
 and incompetence of this conception. It was not political 
 but spiritual salvation which the Jew needed. The restora- 
 tion of the throne of David in Jerusalem was a triviality 
 compared with the emergence of the nation into a higher 
 realm of truth and piety Patriotism, in the usual limited 
 significance of the word, had no place among the virtues 
 which Jesus taught, nor did He account it a virtue. When 
 He was directly challenged on the burning grievance of the 
 tribute-money exacted by the Romans, he gave a witty and 
 evasive reply. But the spirit of the reply is clear : He con- 
 sidered the question not worth discussion. No word or 
 
72 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 phrase of His can be cited which can be construed as a pro- 
 test against the Roman occupation of Judea. It did not 
 concern Him ; neither did it anger Him. On the contrary 
 He manifested grave displeasure with His own disciples 
 when He found that they still clung to the conception of a 
 political Messiahship, and expected Him to fulfil it. His 
 mission, as He repeatedly assured them, but in vain, was to 
 emancipate the souls of men. No one was more indifferent 
 to politics, no one less of a patriot. This temper was bound 
 to provoke anger and hostility. It was the temper of the 
 sublime idealist who lives at a height from which all the 
 mere surface conditions of human life are reduced to insig- 
 nificance. It was unintelligible to His own disciples .; it was 
 doubly unintelligible and deeply offensive to a nation so full 
 of patriotic passion as the Jew. But from the moment that 
 Jesus left Cana of Galilee to take up His life-Avork, He never 
 wavered in these convictions. Political Messiahship was 
 impossible to Him. 
 
 We shall see hereafter that some of the bitterest contro- 
 versies of Christ's life centred round the question of Messi- 
 ahship. It must be remembered that the whole nation, di- 
 vided as it was into a number of opposing factions, was prac- 
 tically unanimous in its conception of a Messiah as a political 
 redeemer. A statesman would have recognized in Jewish 
 patriotism, expressed in this Messianic hope, the noblest 
 quality of a proud and subjugated people. A politician 
 would certainly have sought to manipulate it for the nation's 
 liberation : a demagogue for his own advantage. A very cur- 
 sory glance at history is sufficient to assure us that patriot- 
 ism has been one of the most potent and invigorating forces 
 at work in society, begetting many heroic virtues, and per- 
 petually stimulating nations on the path of progress. Surely, 
 then, it was an act of fatal temerity in Christ to disregard it. 
 
THE DIVINE PROGRAMME 73 
 
 But He disregarded it, not because He scorned it, but because 
 it was incommensurate with the scale of His ideas. He al- 
 ready saw mankind as one race, one family ; and He dreamed 
 of a sublime confederation in which all nations should be 
 one. 
 
 Such an idea might have been explained with some chance 
 of success to the Greek, or to the more philosophic class of 
 Eoman, but it had no chance whatever with the Jew. In one 
 respect it would have appealed strongly to the Eoman, and 
 in after days did appeal successfully. For the Eoman ideal 
 was the ideal of unity. The boundless ambition of Eome 
 drew a sketch of the whole world as one empire, obeying 
 common laws, moving to the rhythm of a common life, fitted 
 like the manifold parts of a mosaic into one superb design 
 of ordered peace. And Eome was wise enough also to per- 
 ceive the advantage of religious unity. A simple and catholic 
 religion, embracing all nations, was part of her imperial 
 dream. Was Jesus debtor to the Eoman for some of His 
 ideas which may be described as truly imperial ? Did what 
 He saw of Eoman power and life in this semi-paganized 
 province of Galilee help to broaden His thoughts into a cath- 
 olic conception of humanity, entirely foreign to the common 
 Jewish mind ? It is by no means unlikely : but it is at least 
 certain that from the very commencement of His ministry He 
 had ceased to speak as a Jew. His rejection of the idea of 
 political Messiahship was merely part of an extraordinary 
 emancipation of mind, which excluded the sense of nationality 
 itself. He comes with a concordat which is for all peoples. 
 He proclaims something far more august than the redemp- 
 tion of the Jew — the redemption of the world. In a word, 
 He recognizes that His true Messianic mission is to establish 
 the religion of humanity. 
 
 With a religion of humanity for the main article of His 
 
74 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 programme, it soon became evident that the relations of Jesus 
 to official Judaism could not be friendly. It is almost im- 
 possible to state in language that does not appear exaggerated 
 the miserable condition of Judaism in the days of Christ. 
 Three great parties contended for pre-eminence : the Priests, 
 the Pharisees, and the Sadducees. The priests had already 
 ceased to lead or rule the national life. The high-priest, or 
 supreme pontiff, was the merest puppet in the hands of the 
 Romans. The work of the priests themselves was almost en- 
 tirely ritual and formal, and they lived in or near the Temple 
 at Jerusalem. The reverence for the Temple — a reverence 
 perhaps as much patriotic as religious — remained ; but the 
 multiplication of synagogues, each with its own set of dis- 
 putants, had greatly undermined its influence. The Pharisee 
 was in part a zealot, in part a pedant. The Sadducee was a 
 kind of " moderate " ; rich, cynical, epicurean, distrustful of 
 enthusiasm, agnostic, and proud of his agnosticism. Sama- 
 ria, again, had a religious system of its own, which was 
 treated with unsparing contempt by all the other great relig- 
 ious parties. Many sects existed, all at strife among them- 
 selves. The broad and plain outlines of Mosaic morality 
 were overlaid with a mass of foolish and contemptible ped- 
 antry. Dry-rot had eaten into the whole structure of Juda- 
 ism. It still retained the aspect of imposing strength, but 
 all its parts were dessicated. It was ready to fall at the first 
 vigorous blow ; but its renewal was impossible. 
 
 We have already noted that the Jewish mind is above all 
 things subtle, and its strongest passion is a passion for dia- 
 lectic. From dialectic fervor to pedantic casuistry is an easy 
 process of degradation. To the casuist everything is dis- 
 putable. Nothing is seen in plain outlines ; the most defi- 
 nite truth or duty is capable of being refined away until noth- 
 ing of its original and essential substance remains. This is 
 
THE DIVINE PROGRAMME 75 
 
 precisely what had happened iu relation to the Mosaic law. 
 Some of the disputes of the religious sects with Christ, which 
 aroused the keenest animosity, appear to us of an almost ab- 
 surd triviality. They frequently centred round the proper 
 observance of the Sabbath-day. On one occasion Jesus and 
 the disciples were severely blamed for plucking the corn as 
 they passed through the cornfields on the Sabbath-day. Tal- 
 mudic law recognized five different species of sin in this act : 
 To remove the husks was sifting the corn ; to rub the heads 
 of corn was threshing; to clean away the side-adherences 
 was sifting out the fruit ; to bruise the corn was grinding ; 
 to hold it up in the hands was winnowing. All these acts 
 were forbidden ; therefore a fivefold damnation rested on him 
 who plucked and ate the corn on the Sabbath-day ! Yet, by 
 another quibble, it was permitted to a man to remove a whole 
 sheaf from the field, if he had previously laid upon it a spoon 
 in common use ; for it was not sinful to remove the spoon, 
 and the sheaf might be removed with the spoon, the sheaf 
 being treated as part of the spoon for the time being ! 
 
 This is sufficiently ridiculous, but it is worse than ridicu- 
 lous, since the Sabbath law manifestly encouraged every form 
 of insincerity and hypocrisy. The man who wished to evade 
 the law which fixed two thousand cubits from his dwelling as 
 a " Sabbath-day's " journey, had only to deposit food at the 
 boundary assigned, and the place where the food was depos- 
 ited might be considered as his dwelling. He was then free 
 to travel another two thousand cubits if he wished. Sixty- 
 four folio pages of the Talmud in use in Jerusalem were re- 
 quired to state all the possible cases of exigency and excuse 
 in the keeping of the Sabbath, and they are stated with such 
 ingenuity and pompous solemnity that one might suppose 
 that they involved the entire sum of human destiny. One 
 can only imagine that the pious authors of this document 
 
76 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 were completely destitute of a sense of humor. But their 
 destitution of humor was the least of their offences ; they 
 were destitute of the spirit of humanity. They could argue 
 interminably as to how an ass should be saddled so as not 
 to offend against Sabbath laAV ; they could spend years, as 
 one Rabbi was reputed to have done, over a single chapter of 
 these sixty -four folio columns, in order to discover or remedy 
 defects ; but for such acts of mercy as healing the sick, or 
 even washing a wound, they made no allowance whatever. 
 
 What was Jesus to make of a system calling itself relig- 
 ious, which was so vitiated with trivialities, pedantries, and 
 insincerities as this ? In truth He could make nothing of it. 
 It was, as I have said, incapable of reform. To the truly 
 fine elements in the Mosaic economy Jesus never showed 
 Himself indifferent. He repeatedly declared that He came 
 not to destroy the law of Moses but to fulfil it. Morality in 
 every age has but one language. Christ spoke that language 
 in accents which Moses would have recognized, but it was 
 beyond hope that these degenerate sons of Moses should 
 recognize it. He applied to them the striking saying of 
 Isaiah that seeing they did not perceive, hearing they did 
 not hear, and did not understand. Very early in His min- 
 istry He was driven to this denunciation. He who was so 
 hopeful of human nature in general, so quick to perceive its 
 great qualities, so indulgent to its weaknesses, had no hope 
 of traditional Judaism. He recognized it as a soil intracta- 
 ble to even His husbandry. It resisted Him from the first, 
 and it would always resist. There is a point in the decay 
 of religious systems beyond which renovation becomes im- 
 possible. Mere decay may be cut away ; but as in some 
 soils and natures, apparently plastic, there runs a stratum 
 which turns the edge of the finest weapon, so deep stratas of 
 stubbornness and obstinacy ran through the pedantic pietisrn 
 
THE DIVINE PROGRAMME 77 
 
 of the Jew, which turned the edge of all reform. When this 
 happens the only real reformer is the iconoclast. Such sys- 
 tems must be wholly broken up, and the old must be thor- 
 oughly razed to the ground before the new can rise. Jesus 
 knew that He came as an iconoclast, and this iconoclasm was 
 an essential part of the programme with which He confronted 
 the Jewish world. 
 
 The spirit in which Jesus interpreted this iconoclastic part 
 of His programme is worthy of attentive study. It is most 
 easily recognized in His total aversion from many forms and 
 ceremonies to which the Jew attached great importance. 
 Thus, upon one occasion, He and His followers were accused 
 of not washing their hands before meat. To the act itself 
 Christ could have had no objection, for it was part of that 
 admirable system of hygiene which ruled all Jewish life. 
 But it was also part of a religious system which attached 
 wrong values to things. In all external matters the Jew was 
 a bigoted formalist. Christ described this formalism as a 
 mere washing of the cup and platter, and, in yet more strik- 
 ing language, as a care for external cleanliness when the 
 heart was full of all uncleanness. Hence in so small a mat- 
 ter as the ritual washing of hands before a meal He deemed 
 protest necessary. Ritualism of all kinds He abhorred. 
 He speaks in scorn of the phylacteries of the Pharisees. 
 He deliberately compares the humble attitude of a publican 
 in the Temple with the self-righteous attitude of a Pharisee 
 who has fulfilled every obligation of the law. He perceives 
 that one of the most deadly effects of ritualism is to put ex- 
 ternal rectitude in the place of internal piety and virtue. 
 The men who are most careful over the tithe of mint, and 
 anise, and cummin, omit altogether "the weightier matters 
 of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith." They " strain at a 
 gnat and swallow a camel." They fall into the common 
 
78 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 error of all extreme ritualists, they exaggerate the value of 
 trifles, they forget essentials, they see the duties of life and 
 piety in a false perspective. Yet, in spite of all that is ped- 
 dling and contemj)tible in the popular observance of the 
 Mosaic law, Christ never loses sight of the real dignity of 
 that law. He praises it, and conforms to it. He tells those 
 whom He has healed to offer such gifts in the Temple as are 
 prescribed by the law of Moses. His last public act is to 
 eat the Passover with His disciples at Jerusalem, though He 
 well knew that He risked His life and theirs by being pres- 
 ent in Jerusalem at such a time. Thus if Jesus may be 
 called an iconoclast, and a determined opponent of tradi- 
 tional Judaism, never was there an iconoclasm tempered by 
 so fine a tolerance or directed by so broad a spirit of piety 
 and sympathy. 
 
 In His aversion from the pedantries and formalism of 
 Judaism, it is natural that His attention should have been 
 specially directed to the poor. Although the acute dispari- 
 ties between poverty and wealth were not felt in the way in 
 which they are felt in modern civilization, yet they existed, 
 and they were accentuated by the spirit of contempt with 
 which the ruling classes regarded the mass of the peojne. 
 The superiority claimed by wealth is capable of great in- 
 solence and cruelty ; but when there is added to this the 
 superiority of religious pride, the effects are still more dis- 
 astrous. Both these forces were active, and malignantly 
 active, in the social life of Christ's day. The lips of the 
 Pharisee were never free from terms of contempt for those 
 who were not as himself. All country-born people were de- 
 rided as ignorant. Whole provinces were stigmatized by a 
 blighting epithet. Samaria was a " city of fools " ; no good 
 thing could come out of Nazareth ; Galilee was ridiculed as 
 having no unleavened bread in it, that is, its entire popula- 
 
THE DIVINE PROGRAMME 70 
 
 tion was tainted with the yeast of foreign admixture. The 
 poor also suffered from many unjust exactions made in the 
 name of religion. The priests at Jerusalem grew wealthy by 
 these exactions. Yet the Jewish Psalms were full of the 
 praises of poverty ; Hillel, one of the greatest of recent 
 teachers, had taught the blessedness of a humble state ; and 
 a great party, called the Ebionite, existed, whose peculiar 
 tenet was the divine privilege of poverty. To this party 
 Christ was attracted both by His sympathies and His ex- 
 perience. He had lived a poor man's life, He knew the kind 
 of virtues which it fostered, and He knew how painful was 
 the contempt that it endured. The poor needed a champiou, 
 and He esteemed such championship a duty and a privilege. 
 Thus He claims as one of the original features of His min- 
 istry that the poor have the Gospel preached to them, and it 
 is a theme of joyous congratulation with the Evangelists that 
 the common people heard Him gladly. 
 
 Yet here again the fine tolerance of Christ's mind should 
 be noticed. He was not an Ebionite any more than He was 
 an ascetic. He knew that His kingdom would naturally ap- 
 peal more powerfully to the poor than to the rich, and would 
 be largely composed of them ; but He never defined in such 
 a way as to exclude the wealthy. He offers no objection to 
 the inequalities of society as such. He utters no sweeping 
 condemnations of wealth as in itself evil. He treats the pos- 
 session of wealth not as a crime but as a trust. He points 
 out with equal truth and justice that the peril of riches is 
 their " deceitfulness." They deceive men into a sense of the 
 complete sufncingness of the present life. The sin of Dives 
 is not that he is wealthy, not even that he fared sumptuously 
 every day, but that he forgot the obligations of wealth, 
 epitomized in the beggar at his gate. The sin of the rich 
 man who added barn to barn was not the wealth which was 
 
80 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 in a real sense a tribute to his energy of character, and the 
 fruit of his industry, but that he forgot his own soul. So 
 far was Christ from scorning the wealthy and holding aloof 
 from them, that He always treated them with courtesy, 
 shared their hospitality, and felt no inconsistency in beiug 
 their guest. Those who resent the contempt that is meas- 
 ured out to poverty often retort with a corresponding con- 
 tempt of wealth. But Christ held contempt of human nature 
 in any form as wrong. A champion of the poor He could 
 be, but a revolutionary demagogue He could not be. The 
 truth about His attitude to social inequalities is perhaps best 
 expressed by saying that they only interested Him by their 
 moral effects. It was not the temporary condition of human 
 existence that interested Him most deeply ; it was human 
 nature itself. 
 
 The natural sequence of such a temper of thought as this 
 is a new religion of humanity. Starting with the principle 
 that men court spiritual phenomena, and that the only reform 
 worth caring for was a reform of the spirit, the conclusion 
 was a religion of humanity which treated all men as equal. 
 They were equal not in their powers of mind or body, still 
 less in their social conditions, but they were equal in their 
 capacity for spiritual life. They were children of a common 
 Father and heirs of a common destiny. This is the real 
 keynote of all Christ's thought. This is the real explanation 
 of His friendly attitude to the Samaritan Avhom the Jew de- 
 spised, and the Roman whom he hated. Men and women 
 of whatever nationality, of whatever order of life, found 
 themselves no longer treated with that contempt which lies 
 at the root of all social evils. They discovered in Jesus a 
 teacher who treated them as equally worthy of regard and 
 friendship, for He had in a sense rediscovered the genuine 
 worth of human nature. Pity, sympathy, and love met 
 
THE DIVINE PROGRAMME 81 
 
 them, instead of ostracism and misunderstanding. He who 
 called Himself the Son of Man was the friend of all men. 
 The new religion was to prove the one absolute religion, 
 because it was the one truly catholic religion. Henceforth 
 all passing distinctions of class and race were obliterated in 
 one immortal conception, " God is your Father, and all ye 
 are brethren." 
 
CHAPTER YI 
 
 IDYLLIC DAYS 
 
 The return of Jesus from Cana to Capernaum was prob- 
 ably a kind of triumph. Young, gracious, fascinating, He 
 had by a single act endeared Himself to a multitude of hum- 
 ble peoj)le. The rapid growth of His popularity is easily 
 explicable when we recollect the crowded condition of Galilee, 
 and the extraordinary swiftness with which rumor travels 
 among Oriental peoples in times of excitement. Residents 
 in India have often told us marvelous stories of how the 
 telegraph itself has been outstripped by the speed of popular 
 rumor. Things which the authorities have treated as pro- 
 foundly secret are openly discussed in bazaars and market- 
 places a thousand miles away. The whisper of the states- 
 man's closet vibrates through an empire. It would seem 
 that a kind of freemasonry, the methods of which are never 
 known to persons in authority, exists among these subtle- 
 witted and silent populations of the East, and by its means 
 news is desseminated as by the birds of the air. 
 
 Galilee resembled a province of Judea in its crowded life, 
 and the presence of the conquering Romans drove the people 
 to a thousand means of underground communication. Within 
 a very narrow tract of country were found more than two 
 hundred towns and villages, with an average population of 
 about fifteen thousand. The whisper of what had happened 
 in Cana travelled fast. From lip to lip, in synagogues and 
 bazaars ; among the fishing boats upon the lake, and far 
 
 82 
 
IDYLLIC DAYS 83 
 
 away in the fish-market at Jerusalem ; in the caravans that 
 filled the main roads, and among the distant hamlets of the 
 hills, there spread the thrilling news that the Messiah had ap- 
 peared. Already from the fords of Jordan there had drifted 
 back to these towns and cities the disciples of John, each of 
 whom had reported to excited throngs what John had said 
 of Jesus. Peter and Andrew, James and John, each had his 
 tale to tell. The marvelous escape of Jesus from the furious 
 crowd at Nazareth was bruited far and wide, and now there 
 came the story of the wedding in Cana, with all its glowing 
 charm of kindness and of miracle. The first touch of Jesus 
 on the strings of life had evoked the chord of a boundless 
 love and admiration. He was already a popular hero. 
 
 Idyllic days followed. It was perhaps now that, for the 
 first time, He began to teach in the open air. The local 
 synagogues could not contain the throngs of those who 
 sought to see and hear Him. Sometimes He sat upon a hill- 
 side and discoursed to these eager throngs, who forgot all 
 sense of time while He spoke. At other times a friendly 
 fisherman lent Him his boat, and from it He would address 
 a great multitude that stood upon the shores of the lake. In 
 the bright spring weather, when all nature was fermenting 
 with new life, His own mind expanded with a similar joy of 
 growth. He uttered exquisite truths with the ease and 
 felicity of a poet who is assured of the boundless resources 
 of his own genius. He scattered gems of thought with a 
 prodigal profusion. Admiration melted into adoration. The 
 multitude followed Him from place to place, with the grow- 
 ing sense that here was One whom it would be good to 
 follow to the world's end. 
 
 It was a kind of Renaissance of Judaism which He inau- 
 gurated by the waters of this sacred lake. The formalities 
 which had all but killed Judaism were stripped away like 
 
84 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 choking parasitic growths from a fair flower, and the flower 
 shot up in unsuspected splendor. Men whispered to one 
 another as He spoke that He taught with authority and not 
 as the scribes. Yet in reality He taught at this time nothing 
 that was absolutely new. All the precious beatitudes of His 
 most formal utterance — the Sermon on the Mount — are but 
 reaffirmations of truths familiar to all readers of the Hebrew 
 scriptures. They are gems of Hebrew thought and morality 
 new-set. But to these thrilled and enthusiastic crowds it 
 was as though the cold gem throbbed with fire, and became 
 a living thing. It was not merely new-set ; it was re-created. 
 The commonplaces of morality became original discoveries 
 of truth as He uttered them. They sounded simple and 
 familiar ; He made men feel that they were also profound 
 and new. Just as every flower beside the lake was in reality 
 a new creation, though it obeyed a type on which centuries 
 had set their seal, so Christ called forth from these seeds of 
 old morality truths which seemed to have sprung up there 
 and then for the first time. 
 
 A juster illustration of this process may perhaps be found 
 in what we understand as the primary colors of art, or the 
 primary notes of music. The primary colors are few : great 
 artists liks Titian or Gainsborough used but six or seven. 
 The common notes of music are few : so few that a famous 
 philosopher once lamented the approaching extinction of 
 music as a growing art, because in time all possible musical 
 combinations would be exhausted. But experience teaches 
 us that the artist cannot exhaust the possible combinations 
 of color, nor the musician the possible combinations of mu- 
 sical notation. In the degree that an artist or musician is a 
 man of original genius, he makes the art he produces an 
 original thing. In the same way Christ availed Himself 
 freely of all the materials of Hebrew morality. Absolute 
 
IDYLLIC DAYS 85 
 
 originality is impossible to man. The man who is egoistic 
 enough to suppose that he can attain it soon discovers that 
 he treads a road worn by the footprints of millions, and the 
 truth he supposed new is no sooner uttered than it is re- 
 echoed back to him from a hundred generations that have 
 been before him. The only true originality consists in see- 
 ing things with a fresh eye, passing them through the alem- 
 bic of an individual experience, and reporting them with 
 undeviating lucidity and precision. This was what Jesus 
 did in all His teaching. All the old colors of Hebrew teach- 
 ing were in His thought but the result was new. All the 
 old notes of Hebrew philosophy were sounded by Him, but 
 the music He drew from them had a loftier method and a 
 larger rhythm. The forms of things were familiar, but the 
 form was penetrated and illuminated by His own powerful 
 and gracious personality. 
 
 He adapted His teachings with inevitable skill to the minds 
 of His hearers. He treated conduct not as three-fourths of 
 life, but the whole of life. The distinction between thought 
 and conduct is both mischievous and misleading. Thoughts 
 and emotions are but actions in embryo. What we do is but 
 the ripened seed of what we are. Jesus, at this period, and 
 for a long time to come, treated conduct as the one thing 
 worth talking about. He spake to men and women of the 
 common cares and anxieties which compose so large a part 
 of life. He blamed them for the folly of laborious prepara- 
 tion for a day that might never come. He counselled them 
 to reconcile themselves to the element of the inevitable, the 
 l^w of limitations, which is found in every life. Bounds were 
 set for them which they could not overpass ; all the thinking 
 in the world could not add a cubit to their stature. As He 
 sat beside the lake and saw the hills gay with purple lilies, 
 and the birds busy in their innocent and frugal life, Nature 
 
86 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 herself adorned His discourse with illustrations. The flow- 
 ers grew, the birds were fed ; life and food were all that men 
 could rightfully demand from God, and these things God de- 
 nied to none. The real wants of men were few, the artificial 
 many. Human misery sj)rang from the dissatisfactions of an 
 artificial method of life. Blessedness lay not in the gratifica- 
 tion of desires, but in their moderation. Poverty, thus con- 
 sidered, was not a state of degradation but of beatitude. The 
 chief auditors of these discourses were poor and work-worn 
 people. Jesus made them feel the real dignity of life, and 
 few services which it is in the power of the wise to render to 
 the humble is comparable with this. 
 
 In a moment of happy inspiration Jesus invented an en- 
 tirely new form of discourse, possible only to a mind essen- 
 tially poetic. He began to teach the people in parables, and 
 the method was so successful that it is said that henceforth 
 He taught them in no other way. He told them stories, so 
 apt, so skilfully contrived, so suggestive, that once heard 
 they were never forgotten. Those who have seen the Oriental 
 story-teller in some Eastern market-place will have remarked 
 upon the extraordinary spell which he appears to exercise. 
 He begins at dawn, he ends at eve, and there is no moment 
 of the long day when there is not a multitude gathered at his 
 feet. Time and occupation are equally forgotten in the fas- 
 cination of his narrative ; the whole scene is a living com- 
 ment on the saying of Moses, that " we spend our days as 
 as a tale that is told." Eipples of laughter run through the 
 audience, glances of admiration are exchanged, and at times 
 the power of tragedy hushes the crowd into breathless si- 
 lence. So Jesus spoke to these rapt throngs beside the Lake 
 of Galilee. His mind expressed itself most freely and more 
 perfectly in these imaginative forms. He was capable of 
 translating the humblest incident of common life into a poem, 
 
IDYLLIC DAYS 87 
 
 often into a tragedy. He used at will every weapon of the 
 story-teller — irony, sarcasm, humor, pathos, an extraordinary 
 grace of narrative, and an unequalled power of dramatic in- 
 vention. After the sterile platitudes, and the still more ster- 
 ile disputes and casuistries of the synagogue how great the 
 change ! The people were as children discovering for the 
 first time the wonder of life. They thrilled, they wept, they 
 wondered, moved this way and that at the will of the speaker. 
 They were ready even to follow Him by thousands into a 
 wilderness, and to forego food for the sake of a delight so 
 novel and so exquisite. 
 
 A note of unfailing cheerfulness, a note of joyous emanci- 
 pation characterized these discourses. He spoke as one who 
 had no cares and knew not what they meant. He thus be- 
 came, as it were, the incarnation of the spirit of joy, the 
 symbol of the bliss of life. Most thoughtful men who live 
 under highly civilized conditions of society have moments of 
 depression and disgust, when they ask whether the price they 
 pay for civilization is not too great. The man who gives his 
 life to the strenuous programme of personal ambition is 
 rarely satisfied with the result. He is afflicted with a dismal 
 suspicion that whatever may be his success he has made but 
 a poor bargain. In the end he is apt to exclaim, "What 
 shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue ! " "Whole 
 races and literatures are from time to time afflicted with this 
 kind of world-weary pessimism. "When the malady reaches 
 its height some one is sure to appear with the old and sure 
 remedy of a return to nature. Jesus came with this remedy. 
 He insisted on the simplification of life as the means of 
 available happiness. Men had ransacked the earth for the 
 secret of happiness and had forgotten to water the flower of 
 felicity that grew at their own doors. A case in point was 
 the Roman patrician, who had sought " all these things " — 
 
88 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 fine raiment, luxurious food, gorgeous habitations, power and 
 fame, and yet was not nappy. On the contrary Christ re- 
 vealed Himself as having nothing yet having all things, as 
 poor yet rich, as humble in condition yet absolutely happy. 
 He defended happiness as the natural right of man. H man 
 Avas unhappy it was because he had misconstrued the terms 
 of his life. Christ's own sweet and gracious gaiety of heart 
 proved contagious. The crowds who gathered round Him 
 were joyous crowds. At His word the world had become 
 young again ; care and grief were forgotten ; it was a multi- 
 tude of happy children that sat beside the lake, emancipated 
 from themselves, and from all the " burden of this unintelli- 
 gible world." "When the Pharisees, who approved the sterner 
 rule of John, complained of this Galilean joyousness, Jesus 
 answered with a striking saying, suggested possibly by the 
 recent marriage feast at Cana, the story of which was fresh 
 in every memory. "And Jesus said unto them, Can the 
 children of the bride-chamber mourn as long as the bride- 
 groom is with them? But the days will come when the 
 bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall 
 they fast" 
 
 Perhaps no aspect of Christ's mind and teaching Las been 
 so generally neglected as this cheerful joyousness, this en- 
 thusiastic unworldliness and delight in poverty. As a rale 
 it has been neglected because it has been found inconvenient 
 to remember it. The Eoman, who represents all that we de- 
 scribe as civilization, has only too successfully contested the 
 ground with the Galilean, who represents idyllic and para- 
 disal life. The civilized man almost invariably makes a fetish 
 of civilization. He cannot be persuaded that lack of social 
 ambition is anything but folly. Nor can he understand that 
 a return to nature means anything but social anarchy. In 
 spite of many grave misgivings as to the wisdom of the con- 
 
IDYLLIC DAYS 89 
 
 ventional plan of life, the average man cannot be persuaded 
 to alter it. Hence the real beauty of this Galilean idyll is 
 never visible to him : or, at least, it is never perceived as af- 
 fording a practicable plan of life. There can be no doubt, 
 however, that Jesus did regard this early Galilean Gospel as 
 containing the only truly wise and practicable plan of life. 
 A considerable allowance must, of course, be made for the 
 conditions of time, place, and circumstance, under which it 
 was enunciated. In a climate such as Galilee possessed it 
 was no real hardship to be poor ; nor was a frugal mode of 
 life difficult, in a condition of society where luxury was rare. 
 But these qualifications do little to alter the essential fact, 
 which is that the simpler life is in its mode and scheme, the 
 likelier is it to be happy. The troublesome cares of food 
 and raiment, social custom and position, eat deeply into a 
 man's heart, consume his time and energy, and destroy his 
 capacity for the natural and enduring forms of happiness. 
 Few persons will seriously dispute that in the lives of such 
 peasants and dalesmen as "Wordsworth commemorates, or in 
 Wordsworth's own life, there were found a larger number of 
 exquisite moments of joy, together with more solid and suf- 
 ficing pleasure, than can be discovered in the most successful 
 life of the anxious merchant or the scheming politician. 
 This may be taken as Christ's doctrine of the simplification 
 of life interpreted in modern synonyms. The whole subject 
 is admirably stated in a verse of Russell Lowell's : — 
 
 " For a cap and boll our lives wo pay, 
 
 Bubbles we earn with a whole life's tasking ; 
 'Tis only God that is given away. 
 
 'Tis only Heaven may be had for the asking." 
 
 The true tragedy of life is not poverty ; it is the mis- 
 directed effort of men, who avoid poverty indeed, but discover 
 
90 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 later on that they have spent their strength for nought, and 
 toiled for that which is not bread. 
 
 Jesus did not seek to do more than impart elementary 
 truth to these Galilean crowds. Nor can it be said that He 
 was anything but tolerant and wide-minded in the rule of 
 life which He enunciated to them. His text day by day 
 was the same : First things first — " Seek ye first the King- 
 dom of God and His righteousness." He did not say, 
 "First things only" — that is the language of the monk and 
 the fanatic. His definition of right conduct allowed ample 
 scope for the various fulfilments of human taste and capac- 
 ity. The merchant may be a merchant still, the artist an 
 artist, but he must first of all be a Christian. Every form 
 of culture may adorn the life of man, but spiritual culture 
 comes first. His tolerance was extended even to the lives of 
 publicans and soldiers. There is no recorded instance of 
 His having condemned the lives of these men ; He saw in 
 their pursuits, hateful as they were to the Jew, nothing irrec- 
 oncilable with a true reception of His doctrine. He was 
 content if He enabled them to see the nature of human life 
 in its true perspective. When once self ceased to be the 
 pivot of life all other reformations of habit would follow. 
 Egoism is the real curse of man. When a man is freed from 
 egoism he takes his place once more as a contented unit in 
 the Divine order of the universe. All his thoughts that were 
 once turned inward, to his own self-torture, are now turned 
 outward, and he begins to feel the joy of existence. His 
 li'fe then moves in real rhythm with the life of the universe. 
 Many men have taught these things, but the power of Jesus 
 was that He exemplified them. Men looked into His eyes 
 and knew the doctrine true. He had found the secret of 
 happiness which all the nations of the world had missed. 
 It was the attractive power of this happiness that drew these 
 
IDYLLIC DAYS 91 
 
 thousands day by day to the lake shore on the mountain- 
 side. He offered them the wine of life, the new wine of the 
 Kingdom of God, and they could not drink deep enough of 
 a draught so divinely inebriating. Day followed day in a 
 sort of miraculous bridal feast ; for was not the Bridegroom 
 with them? 
 
 One searches history in vain to discover anything quite 
 like the idyll of these Galilean days. The nearest counter- 
 part is the career of Francis of Assisi. The power of Francis 
 lay in a certain exquisite charm of joyousness and goodness. 
 His happiness was so complete that men instinctively turned 
 to look after him as he passed, as though a strain of heavenly 
 music vibrated on the air. He was poet and a nature-lover, 
 calling himself by the delightful title of the " troubador of 
 God." The sight of flowers and woods and nesting birds, 
 and all the sunny firniaraent of the Umbrian spring, intoxi- 
 cated him with ecstasy, and made all his words lyric. The 
 simplicity, sweetness, and purity of the man overcame all 
 prejudice against his doctrines. Great Churchmen like 
 Cardinal Ugolino and St. Dominic, full of the pride of 
 learning and of power, became as little children in his pres- 
 ence, and thrilled and wept. A hush of something more 
 than admiration — of affection, reverence, tenderness — finds 
 its way into the voices of all who have spoken of him. The 
 accounts of his preaching vividly suggest many scenes that 
 happened by the Galilean lake. Men describe these utter- 
 ances as rather kindly conversations than orations, de- 
 livered with such an accent of sincerity and tenderness that 
 enemies were reconciled, social pride was forgotten, multi- 
 tudes wept they knew not why, and sought to kiss the hem 
 of his robe as he passed through them. Even the model of 
 his face taken instantly after death affects us with the same 
 sensations. The brow, so pure and peaceful, the mouth and 
 
92 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 eyes so wistfully affectionate, call for love and inspire it. 
 After seven centuries, the roads lie trod, the places lie fre- 
 quented, seem still haunted by his presence, and it is with a 
 softened and a glowing heart the traveler follows in his 
 footsteps. With such a story, still fresh and real, and in all 
 its main outlines undoubtedly authentic, it is not difficult to 
 understand the scenes in these little Eastern towns when 
 Jesus drew nigh to them. If Umbria is yet sacred to the 
 reverent heart for the sake of Francis, how much more sacred 
 these silent shores of Galilee, where Jesus moved in all the 
 first charm of His joyous grace, drawing all men after Him. 
 The first utterance of a great poet often has a flute-like 
 freshness of note never quite recaptured. It was so with 
 Jesus. His mind was to move upon an ever-widening orbit, 
 His teachings were to unfold profounder truths than any 
 uttered to these earliest disciples; but the idyll of these 
 Galilean days remains for ever inapproachable in charm. 
 He never spoke again in quite the same accent of untroubled 
 joy. He never found elsewhere an audience so immediately 
 responsive to His touch. Controversies, becoming more and 
 more embittered as His ministry increased in influence, 
 awaited Him, and we shall see hereafter with what relief He 
 returned again and again to Galilee. Probably His first so- 
 journ in Galilee was very brief, although it may have been 
 quite long enough for the utterance of His most characteristic 
 teachings upon conduct. St. John tells us that after return- 
 ing from Cana to Capernaum, Ho abode there not many 
 days ; but the term " day " is one of somewhat vague signif- 
 icance in Gospel history. It seems at least likely that He 
 remained long enough to commence those wonderful dis- 
 courses by the lake, for immediately afterwards we find Him 
 in Jerusalem, exercising a kind of authority which could 
 only have been based on previous popularity. We have 
 
IDYLLIC DAYS 93 
 
 now therefore to follow Him to Jerusalem, and to witness a 
 scene not less remarkable than these scenes beside the lake, 
 but of a quite different significance. The first fresh note of 
 joy is lost for a time in the discord of controversy, and 
 already there is heard the premonitory note of tragedy. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE CLEANSING OP THE TEMPLE 
 
 "While Jesus was engaged in these teachings beside the 
 lake, the signs of preparation for the greatest of all Jewish 
 festivals had begun to appear throughout the towns and vil- 
 lages of Galilee. The Passover commemorated a great de- 
 liverance ; and we have already seen that it was universally 
 believed that the golden age of the national life, which was 
 yet to come, would be inaugurated by a still greater deliver- 
 ance. The Passover had thus become more than a festival 
 of religion, it was a national and patriotic celebration. It 
 bore another aspect too ; it was an imposing demonstration 
 of the national unity. A common pulse of thought and emo- 
 tion beat through the whole land, gathering intensity as the 
 sacred day drew nearer. For a month before the feast there 
 stood in every market-place of town or village the booth of 
 the money-changer, to whom the poor people took their 
 mixed coins, that they might exchange them into the stand- 
 ard shekels, which alone were accepted as legitimate money 
 by the Temple authorities. Preparations for the journey it- 
 self, more or less elaborate according to the social condition 
 of the pilgrims, had to be made. This general stir of life 
 might very well have proved distracting to the congregations 
 Christ had gathered on the hillside and beside the lake. 
 Their thoughts had begun to wander from His exquisite dis- 
 courses to the long rehearsed and anticij^ated episodes of 
 the coming journey : the meeting with kinsfolk and friends, 
 
 Si 
 
THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE 95 
 
 the exchange of news and greetings, the exclamations of de- 
 light when caravan after caravan swept down from different 
 valleys, and joined the excited crowd upon the main road, 
 the new-kindled sense of the force of nationality which was 
 fostered by this gathering of the scattered units of a nation 
 into a common focus of sentiment and hope. Jesus perhaps 
 recognized the impossibility of continuing His addresses to 
 these ardent Galileans in such a period of general excite- 
 ment. Moreover, the Passover was sacred to Him as to 
 them, though for other and more spiritual reasons. He ap- 
 pears to have abruptly concluded His public ministry in 
 order that He might travel with these comrades of His 
 thought to the Passover celebration at Jerusalem. 
 
 Many memories would occupy His mind as He traversed 
 this familiar road. Nearly eighteen years before He had 
 traveled by the same road, a wandering Boy, looking for the 
 first time upon the larger things of human life. His mother 
 was with Him then ; no doubt she was with Him now ; but 
 besides her there was this joyous company of Galilean 
 friends who were to become the nucleus of His Church. He 
 had seen the mystic opening of the scroll of destiny. He 
 had learned at Nazareth that His work was not to be achieved 
 without violent hostility and opposition. What would Jeru- 
 salem say to Him ? Such a question could not be considered 
 without grave and serious thought. The lessons He had 
 learned from John, and subsequently verified for Himself, of 
 the incurable corruption of the priesthood returned to Him 
 now. He saw at the roadside many sepulchres, newly 
 whitened, in order to protect the pilgrims from pollution; 
 they were to Him sad parables of the priests and Pharisees 
 themselves, who whitened the outside life by ritual ordi- 
 nances, while within they were full of dead men's bones and 
 all uncleanness. And He saw also that this great festival, 
 
96 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 so full of sweet and solemn associations, was turned into a 
 gigantic engine of oppression by the rapacity of the rulers. 
 Ever thoughtful for the poor, Christ had abundant occasion 
 on this pilgrimage to remark how they suffered by the sys- 
 tem of legalized extortion which prevailed ; and thus, amid 
 the general rejoicing, He rode sadly meditative of the means 
 by which they might be vindicated and delivered. 
 
 We may pause a moment to examine what this rapacity of 
 the priesthood really meant in relation to the Passover cele- 
 brations. In the first place the Temple-tribute of a Galilean 
 shekel — about one shilling and twopence of our money — was 
 levied on all Jews, with the exception of minors, slaves, and 
 proselytes. The law was strict ; he who did not pay the tax 
 was liable to a distraint upon his goods. The only excep- 
 tion made was in the case of priests, who escaped the levy 
 by a wholly mean and contemptible quibble founded upon an 
 obscure passage of Leviticus. 
 
 It is obvious that in a country crowded with foreigners the 
 pure standard coin demanded by the Temple authorities was 
 not easily obtained. The poor Jew, residing in some small 
 village, rarely handled any but debased coinage, or coinage 
 which the priests declared debased. Consequently the 
 money-changer reaped a rich harvest. On every half-shekel 
 rendered he levied a charge of about twopence, so that for 
 the pure Galilean shekel the pilgrim paid f ourpence as a rate 
 of exchange. This amounted in the aggregate to between 10 
 and 12 per cent. The wealth thus accumulated by the 
 money-lenders was large ; the wealth of the priests much 
 larger. Some idea of this wealth may be formed when we 
 recollect that the annual revenue from these sources is com- 
 puted at £75,000, and that the Romans took from the Temple 
 treasury, in the final spoliation of the city, no less than two 
 and a half millions sterling of money. How far the priests 
 
THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE 97 
 
 themselves conducted this usurious business is not clear. It 
 is certain, however, that the priestly house of Annas oj)enly 
 conducted bazaars, and used the Temple itself as a centre of 
 merchandise. Yet Palestine was then, as it is now, a poor 
 country. Any one who has seen a company of pilgrims go- 
 ing to Mecca, and has ascertained anything of their personal 
 condition, will know that they are often poor to a degree 
 beyond penury, and that their pilgrimage represents the hard 
 self-denial of a lifetime. The average Jewish Passover pil- 
 grim was not perhaps so poor as these, but in the majority 
 of instances he had no little difficulty in meeting the ex- 
 penses of this annual journey to Jerusalem. Yet it was from 
 exactions levied on these poor people that the priests grew 
 rich, and became insolent to and contemptuous of the poor, 
 in the degree of their wealth. 
 
 These exactions did not stop at money-levies. The Temple 
 sj'stem of sacrifice and purification imposed further demands 
 upon the pious. The Sadducees, who were mainly priests, 
 or of priestly descent, maintained that all beasts required for 
 sacrifice should be obtained directly from the priest ; the 
 Pharisees, in this controversy for once upon the side of the 
 people, maintained that all animals for sacrifice or offering 
 should be bought in the open market, at the current market 
 price. This controversy grew in time into a bitter trade dis- 
 pute. Each side made strenuous attempts to " corner the 
 market," as we should put it. An instance is preserved of a 
 pair of pigeons being run up to no less a figure than fifteen 
 shillings, and before night being brought down to fourpence. 
 But all efforts to defeat the Sadducees collapsed. It was of 
 the first importance that any offering brought to the Temple 
 should be free from blemish, and the priest and his assistant 
 were the only persons qualified to decide on such a question. 
 It is obvious that such power was open to gross abuse. A 
 7 
 
98 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 poor countryman was very likely to find that the animal lie 
 had bought in the open market was rejected by the Temple 
 inspector. Rather than incur this peril and disgrace he went 
 to the market of the priests, and bought a certified animal at 
 a much higher than the market rate. Thus it came to pass 
 that, partly for convenience, partly as a valuable impetus to 
 trade, cattle markets came to be held in the outer courts of 
 the Temple itself. These markets appear to have been the 
 property of the High Priests. It is clear, then, that a system 
 of rapacity, not less odious and unblushing than the Roman 
 sale of indulgences, which provoked the Reformation, existed 
 in the Jewish Temple itself, and the main effect of this sys- 
 tem was not only the desecration of the Temple, but the op- 
 pression of the poor, who were the main sufferers and the 
 victims. 
 
 In these long caravans moving to Jerusalem there must 
 have been many a pilgrim who trembled at the thought of 
 the ordeal he had to face at the hands of these covetous and 
 degraded tradesmen of the Temple — for such the greatest 
 priesthood in history had virtually become. The talk among 
 the poorer groups of pilgrims turned much on these matters. 
 They discussed with anxious voices how affairs would go 
 with them, and the natural joyousness of a great religious 
 festival was overclouded by misgiving and foreboding. Few 
 things are more pathetic to a man of fine feeling than the 
 anxious economies of the poor ; nothing is more odious than 
 the advantage which is constantly taken of the inexperience 
 of the poor by the unscrupulous avarice of trade. These 
 poor Galileans would not hesitate to confide the difficulties 
 of their position to one of whose sympathy they were sure, 
 and from whose popularity they hoped some bold and effica- 
 cious scheme of reform. He heard them with a grieved and 
 indignant heart. It is noticeable that throughout His ruin- 
 
THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE 99 
 
 is try nothing so quickly excited Him to anger as the WTongs 
 of the poor. All the pity and gentleness of His nature is 
 transfused into scathing flame when He defends the poor. 
 No wonder, then, that His heart swelled more and more with 
 indignation as He drew near the Holy City, until at last in 
 the bitterness of His thought He was ready to describe the 
 most sacred of all shrines, and most august of all religious 
 edifices then upon the earth, as nothing better than a den of 
 thieves. 
 
 The last encampment of these Galilean pilgrims on the 
 road to Jerusalem would be in the neighborhood of Bethel. 
 To the Jew no spot was more sacred. Here Jacob had 
 dreamed that dream which had implanted in his mind the 
 germ of Jewish nationality, and in his soul the diviner germ 
 of a truly spiritual religion. On this starry April evening 
 did Jesus also stand in the midnight silence, under the same 
 unchanging heavens, awed and thrilled with the sense of a 
 God not afar off, but " closer than breathing, and nearer than 
 hands and feet ! " A few days later we shall find Him pass- 
 ing this way again, to meet at the well of Sychar a casual 
 listener to whom He gives the sublimest definition of religion 
 which the world had ever heard : " God is a Spirit, and they 
 that worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and in truth." 
 It may have been that on this very night of solitary reverie 
 at Bethel this great axiom first formulated itself to His mind. 
 Standing rapt and silent, His hair wet with the dews of 
 night, far from the sleeping camp, He experienced one of 
 those intense hours of self-communion out of which new 
 ideals, truths, and resolves are born. All that He had heard 
 and seen of the operation of Jewish religion in this memora- 
 ble journey returned upon Him now. He saw not merely its 
 degradation but its emptiness. He saw with new and start- 
 ling distinctness that He had no more a part or lot in it. 
 
100 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 Any attempt to impart new vitality to these worn-out forms 
 of truth would fail ; it would be pouring new wine into old 
 wine-skins, joining new cloth to old raiment. It was a night 
 of the parting of the ways. Through the infinite night si- 
 lence His soul soared into a loftier dream than Jacob's. 
 Bethel had once more become the very house of God, and 
 the gate of heaven ; and on its sacred soil that resolve was 
 taken which led Him with unerring footsteps to the Cross. 
 
 Early next morning, with the first light, the caravan started 
 for its last brief and easy stage. Very soon there came into 
 view the magnificent spectacle of Jerusalem — a city set upon 
 a hill, beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth. 
 Dominating all that great array of pinnacles and palaces rose 
 the Temple itself, one mass of burnished gold, resplendo it 
 in the sun. But Jesus saw it with preoccupied and brooding 
 eyes. That thrill of heart which every Jew felt at the sight, 
 which He Himself had known in earlier days, could no more 
 be recaptured. He felt afar off the menace of the proud and 
 glorious city, and saw in it His predestined battlefield. As 
 He and His band of Galileans passed through the crowded 
 gates, slowly making then way to the Temple courts, a plan 
 of swift and definite action sprang up in His mind. He re- 
 solved that with Him the trumpet should give no uncertain 
 sound. Men should know the meaning of His mission ; 
 they should understand from the first that He came not to 
 temporize with the old, but to supersede it ; not to obey con- 
 ditions, but to create them; not to rehabilitate the past, but 
 to make all things new. The idealist, thus armed with cour- 
 age, has seldom to look long for his opportunity. Christ's 
 opportunity met Him in the first court of the Temple which 
 He entered — the outer court where the bazaars of Annas 
 stood and the money-changers pushed then trade. The din, 
 the confusion, the indignity of the scene can easily be pic- 
 
THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE 101 
 
 hired by any one who lias once looked upon an Oriental 
 market. The presence of great herds of sheep and oxen in 
 these sacred courts gave them the appearance of a shambles. 
 Poor women chaffered anxiously at the stalls where doves 
 were sold in wicker cages, and came away elated or depressed 
 by the nature of the bargains they had made. Shrill voices 
 were raised in dispute, and violent altercations, threatenings, 
 and even blows were exchanged. It was pandemonium — 
 and it was pandemonium in the Temple. It was a scene 
 which no man of reverent mind could describe as other than 
 indecent and even infamous ; yet so entirely were the priests 
 of a great and ancient religion absorbed in the thought of 
 the tide of gold which poured from this bazaar into the 
 Temple coffers that they did not so much as regard it as in- 
 congruous. 
 
 For some moments Jesus stood and looked upon the scene 
 in perfect silence. From the open court of the Temple a 
 wide view of the city itself lay at His feet ; and 
 
 He looked upon the city every side 
 
 Far and wide ; 
 On the bridges, causeways, aqueducts, and then — 
 
 On the men ! 
 
 Anger was a rare passion with Jesus. His ministry was pre- 
 eminently a ministry of peace ; but the ministry that has no 
 flame in it is also destitute of vital heat. For Himself — that 
 is, for slights or contempt offered to Him, or for neglect of 
 kindness toward Him which the barest hospitality demanded 
 — He was never angry. He once commented in the house 
 of a rich Pharisee on such a want of hospitable courtesy ; no 
 water had been provided that He might wash His feet after 
 a toilsome journey ; but it was more in grief, or in a kind of 
 sad and gentle irony, than in anger. Anger with Christ was 
 
102 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 always a moral passion. The things that made Him angry 
 were irreverence, hypocrisy, cruelty, meanness, and unkind- 
 ness. And as He looked on this scene, profane in its irrev- 
 erence for .sacred things, hypocritical in use of religion as 
 the mask of avarice, unkind and cruel in its organized rob- 
 bery of the poor, anger swelled His veins — an auger all the 
 more awful and intense by its very rarity. Hastily gather- 
 ing together certain small cords that lay upon the Temple 
 floor, He wove them with practiced hands into a whip or 
 scourge such as cattle-drivers use. In a moment, before His 
 intention was perceived, He had fallen on the throng of 
 money-changers and cattle-merchants, driving them before 
 Him like chaff before the wind. In the tumult the tables of 
 the money-changers were overturned, and the bellowing cat- 
 tle ran madly down the steep street leading to the Xystus 
 gate. None dared to oppose Him. Insignificant and almost 
 absurd as this whip of small cords was for such a wholesale, 
 task of purgation, in His hands it had become such a sword 
 of flame as burned behind the backs of the first great fugi- 
 tives from Eden. It was as though Morality itself had leaped 
 full-armed and terrible upon these miserable hucksters and 
 traffickers who had long ago forgotten its very name. The 
 timid, awe-struck Galileans looked on incredulous of what 
 they saw. The officials of the Temple, perhaps Annas him- 
 self, hastily summoned, were still more incredulous. The 
 auger of the Galilean, like a conflagration, had passed in an 
 instant over a host of privileges, carefully nurtured through 
 many years of the astutest priest-craft, and they were con- 
 sumed. The Temple was empty, and the whole city, moved 
 to look upon this new prophet, rang with the name of Jesus. 
 The extraordinary feature of this incident is that, full of 
 fury as the priests must have been, yet no reprisals were at- 
 tempted. But for this inactivity on their part there were 
 
THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE 103 
 
 cogent reasons. One was the already great popularity of 
 Christ — for it is obvious that a quite unknown person, with- 
 out followers or reputation, would never have been permitted 
 to perpetrate such an outrage on custom. Another reason is 
 that His act was popular. The only point of view from which 
 most men would regard it would be that it was an energetic 
 vindication of the popular contention that the trade interests 
 which the priests had set up and consolidated were both in 
 essence and practice unjust Besides this there is always a 
 lurking sense of satisfaction in a populace at insults offered 
 to an oligarchy or aristocracy that has forfeited respect. The 
 priests were not wholly unaware of how they stood with the 
 people. They knew that in spite of the immense hold which 
 the Temple religion- had upon the people yet there was no- 
 where collected under heaven a population so stubborn, re- 
 bellious, and liable to frantic excess when once their passions 
 were aroused. In some respects these ancient Jews much 
 resembled the Florentines of the Renaissance, who at one 
 moment appear as utterly supine under tyranny and the next 
 as the most turbulent population of Italy — a people capable 
 of being imposed upon by any sort of priestly jugglery, but 
 equally capable of hanging an archbishop when once their 
 resentment mastered them. If the priests hesitat3cl to arrest 
 Jesus, it was for a reason that often appears in the subse- 
 quent history : it was that they feared a tumult among the 
 people. One significant incident, however, reveals the true 
 temper of men like Annas and his son-in-law Caiaphas, and 
 the priestly conclave in general. They took careful note of 
 all the words that Jesus littered to the people during this 
 brief visit to Jerusalem. Spies followed the Galilean every- 
 where, and their reports were whispered from one to another 
 in the secret sittings of the Sanhedrim Long afterwards, 
 when the hour of vengeance came, it was upon a word uttered 
 
104 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 in this first visit to Jerusalem that the priests based their 
 condemnation of Him. That word which He spoke about 
 the Temple — " Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will 
 raise it up again "—the immediate meaning of which was 
 that even were the Temple destroyed yet the power of spirit- 
 ual worship would remain — was a word carefully treasured 
 in minds equally malevolent and acute, and later on it was 
 produced against Jesus with deadly effect. Thus it was in 
 the Temple, where His first daring act of reform was done, 
 that the first shadow of the Cross fell upon Him : and this 
 scene casts a strong illumination on the drama of His death. 
 When the spirit of the market-place has entered the house 
 of God there is no measuring the nature of the disasters 
 which may ensue. They may even include utter hostility to 
 truth, the persecution of the good, and in the end the murder 
 of the just. Events proved that Jesus was crucified, not be- 
 cause He declared truth, but because He attacked privilege 
 — a crime for which the corrupt know no pardon. 
 
CHAPTEE Vm 
 
 JESUS AND THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 Nothing is more remarkable in the career of Jesus than 
 the attention, sympathy, and patience which He devoted to 
 individual inquirers after truth. Public men who have at- 
 tained great eminence are usually inclined to regard their 
 work in its collective aspect only. They reserve themselves 
 for great and formal utterances, and find it convenient to 
 leave the troublesome work of personal interviews to subor- 
 dinates. A great teacher is soon surrounded by a zealous 
 cordon of attached friends, who have an honest and quite 
 laudable desire to spare the master the intrusion of those 
 whose curiosity and enthusiasm is their only passport to his 
 presence. We repeatedly find the disciples acting in this 
 capacity, and Christ as frequently rebuking their friendly 
 zeal. It was, however, part of Christ's programme to en- 
 courage friendly personal relations with all kinds of men. A 
 casual glance at the Gospels is sufficient to convince us that 
 Christ made constant use of this Socratic method of instruc- 
 tion, for three-fourths of the wise and exquisite sayings which 
 are reported to us by the Evangelists were uttered to indi- 
 viduals or to little groups of men and women in familiar con- 
 versation. 
 
 This first Passover visit of Christ to Jerusalem as the 
 newly acclaimed Messiah is distinguished by a very remarka- 
 ble interview with a leading member of the Pharisaic sect, 
 and His journey back to Capernaum by an equally extraor- 
 dinary interview with a woman of Samaria. In each case we 
 
 105 
 
106 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 find Christ disclosing all tlie treasures of His niind to indi- 
 viduals ; for it may be claimed that in no formal address 
 which He ever uttered did He touch upon deeper themes than 
 in His conversations with these two persons. 
 
 Nicodenms appears to have been a man distinguished by 
 much sincerity of mind, combined with conspicuous timidity 
 of temper. He was a man of culture, and he had learned 
 the intellectual caution and reserve of culture. No one needs 
 to be assured that culture invariably breeds the spirit of in- 
 tellectual reserve. With the savage every emotion of hope 
 or fear finds instant, spontaneous, and complete expression. 
 He is but a larger child, easily touched, easily offended, and 
 the workings of his mind are as readily discerned as the 
 workings of a clock, whose wheels and pulleys are only 
 separated from us by a lucid barrier of crystal. But with 
 the growth of culture human nature becomes less accessible, 
 and greatly more diffident. Books teach the incertitudes of 
 knowledge, and observation the deceitfulness of appearances. 
 The man of culture hesitates to be too dogmatic in his opin- 
 ions lest he should err, and too frank in the expression of 
 his feelings lest he should be misconceived. The emotions 
 are still potent, and are perhaps deepened in force, but they 
 are not so readily touched. In such generalizations as these 
 the character of Nicodemus may be discerned. As a Phari- 
 see he had every reason to approve the daring exploit of 
 Christ in cleansing the Temple. A great reform, which 
 many had desired, the Nazarene had achieved ; what a 
 thousand had thought one man had done by the force of a 
 superior will. But the larger question yet remained — "Who 
 was this Jesus of Nazareth ? "What was the real nature of 
 His claims ? Was He a turbulent revolutionist, momentarily 
 successful in vindicating popular rights, or Avas He the very 
 Christ? 
 
JESUS AND THE INDIVIDUAL 107 
 
 Full of these questions Nicodemus sought an interview with 
 Jesus. We may gather something of the general dubiety of 
 mind and the incipient hostility of spirit which prevailed 
 among the Pharisees in respect to Christ, from the circum- 
 stance that Nicodemus adopted secret methods for his inter- 
 view. He came to Jesus by night. A teacher less tolerant 
 than Jesus might have resented the method of approach as 
 in itself an insult. Jesus, however, receives him with a per- 
 fect courtesy. Nicodemus opens the conversation with some 
 general complimentary remarks upon the obvious proofs that 
 Christ has given of authority and power. Jesus quietly 
 ignores these compliments, and replies with the startling 
 saying that Nicodemus needs to be born again. What Nico- 
 demus had expected in this interview was a prolonged dis- 
 cussion on Messiahship. He had come armed with much 
 Rabbinical lore, with text and instance, and he proposed to 
 take Christ along this well-trodden path, testing Him at 
 every point, and ascertaining how He was prepared to solve 
 the difficulties which His Messianic claims involved. Jesus 
 turns the tables, by making the interview not a testing of 
 Himself but of Nicodemus. Nicodemus must be born again ; 
 that is to say, he must recover the simplicity of a child's 
 mind and nature, he must discard the barren artificialities 
 with which a narrow culture has overlaid a mind naturally 
 sincere, he must look upon spiritual phenomena with a fresh 
 eye, and a temper of transparent candor. Repentance, which 
 was a word ever on the lips of Christ, really means nothing- 
 more than a change of mind, producing a change of direction 
 in the purposes of life, and a corresponding change of con- 
 duct. It is this gospel of repentance that Christ preaches 
 to the proud ruler in this solemn midnight interview. 
 
 The interview was intensely typical of Christ's method of 
 dealing with individuals. He rarely argued, nor did He 
 
108 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 encourage argument in others, well knowing that while argu- 
 ment often leads to embittered dispute it rarely ends in con- 
 viction. He relied rather upon simple and positive state- 
 ment, made with great directness. He gave credit to human 
 nature for an instant response to truth, when once truth was 
 clearly perceived. The form in which He put truth before 
 Nicodemus is so essentially colored with the peculiarities of 
 John's phraseology, that we may regard the expression " Ye 
 must be born again" rather as John's summary of a long 
 conversation than a precise report of it. But it is an admir- 
 able summary. New birth is not so strange a phrase as it 
 first appears, when we recollect that new knowledge com- 
 municated to the mind is in effect the new birth of thought, 
 and that a great and pure love communicated to the heart is 
 equally a new birth of the emotions. Men are constantly 
 re-born by the inrush of new truths, hopes, and enthusiasms 
 into their life. Nicodemus is inclined to regard the doctrine 
 as irrational ; in reality it is the highest reason. This Christ 
 endeavors to show by linking it with one of the best known 
 operations of the physical world. No man can tell how the 
 spring regenerates the earth, and yet it is regenerated. Th> 
 wind bloweth where it listeth, by its viewless force quicken- 
 ing all things into sudden growth. We wake upon a spring 
 morning to find a new world at our feet, and so rapid and 
 entire is the change, especially in Eastern climates, that it 
 breaks on us like a great surprise. If we were to describe 
 the most lovely sensation which the spring produces on our 
 minds, we should perhaps say that it is as though the world 
 had grown young again. Winter, which fills us with a sense 
 of the pale decrepitude and age of the world has suddenly 
 vanished, and all things are rejuvenated. This is no doubt 
 the language of a poet, but Jesus always spoke in this lan- 
 guage. Robbed of its perfume and music, and reduced to 
 
JESUS AND THE INDIVIDUAL 109 
 
 plainest prose, what Christ says to Nicoclemus is that the 
 heart needs renewing by the breath of God, as the earth is 
 renewed by the benignant magic of the spring. He who is 
 thus renewed becomes again as a little child, who lives by 
 intuitions and impressions rather than by deliberate acts of 
 reason. To such a creature a miracle is no longer unintelli- 
 gible or repellent, because all life is interpenetrated with the 
 sense of the miraculous. 
 
 In that long midnight interview, if Jesus did not make an 
 instant convert, He made a real one. A new bias had been 
 imparted to the life of Nicodemus, and his after-life showed 
 its far-reaching effects. In this interview he appears as the 
 man of reason, honestly eager to arrive at a knowledge of the 
 truth. A subsequent scene reveals him as the man of justice. 
 Many months later the time came when the incipient hostil- 
 ity of the rulers to Christ became open and malignant. Ir- 
 ritated beyond bounds by the popularity of the Nazarene, 
 they made a determined effort to arrest Him, only to find to 
 their chagrin that the very officers of justice were carried 
 away by the popular enthusiasm, and not only failed to ar- 
 rest Jesus but accounted for their failure by the extraordi- 
 nary admission that, " Never man spake as this man." From 
 one end of Jerusalem to another there rang the thrilling ciy, 
 " This is the Prophet, this is the Christ ! " The Sanhedrin, 
 summoned hastily, is driven frantic by reports of things done 
 and said in the Temple which transcend all limits of forbear- 
 ance. Then once more Nicodemus comes to the front. He 
 is all for tolerance, cool deliberation, unbiased justice. 
 " Doth our law judge any man before it hear him, and knows 
 what he has done ? " he exclaims. It was an eminently just 
 and reasonable inquiry. He sweeps aside as trivial and ab- 
 surd the question whether or not any prophet ought to come 
 out of Galilee. He is indifferent to the taunt, "Art thou 
 
110 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 also of Galilee ? " He presses the more sensible and prac- 
 tical inquiry whether tins man is not a true prophet in spite 
 of His Galilean origin. He endeavors to modify the force of 
 passion, to inculcate sobriety of judgment, to impress the 
 need for scrupulous .fairness. And in yet one later scene 
 Nicodemus appears as the man of feeling. In the final 
 drama of Christ's life he stands pre-eminent among the rulers 
 as an open friend and sympathizer. The spectacle at Cal- 
 vary, which could wring from a soldier hardened to such 
 scenes of suffering, the cry, " This is the Son of God," was 
 the last crystallizing touch which transformed Nicodemus 
 from a cautious observer and timid friend into an ardent dis- 
 ciple. In that dread hour, when he thought of all the past 
 — his wavering trust, his slow emotions, his halting appre- 
 ciation of Christ — his heart was filled with a divine tide of 
 love and sacred penitence. He could do little then to mani- 
 fest his love for Christ, but he did the one thing he could : 
 he begged the body of Christ for burial, that he might spare 
 it the indignity of a felon's grave. Such was Christ's first 
 convert in Jerusalem. If we lose something of historic se- 
 quence by thus bringing together in one brief monograph all 
 that is known of Nicodemus, Ave also gain much in the un- 
 derstanding of his character, and in the yet more important 
 understanding of the influence Christ had upon that charac- 
 ter. Although nothing revealed it at the time, Christ had 
 every reason to be proud of the first convert granted to Him 
 in Jerusalem. Events showed that that midnight interview 
 was not wasted ; Nicodemus knew what it meant to be born 
 again. 
 
 It is probable that Jesus made other friends during this 
 brief visit to Jerusalem. He may already have found His 
 way to the house at Bethany, where so many of His happi- 
 est hours.were spent ; the intimacy and tenderness of His re- 
 
JESUS AND THE INDIVIDUAL 111 
 
 lations with Mary and Martlia suggest that these faithful 
 women were probably among His earliest admirers. Nor 
 would it be an altogether unreasonable flight of imagination 
 to suppose that it was under the roof at Bethany that the in- 
 terview with Nicodemus took place. The household of Laz- 
 arus was well known in Jerusalem, and had friends and pos- 
 sibly family connections among the Pharisees. Thus we find 
 that later on, when Lazarus lay dead, many Jews came from 
 the city to condole with his sisters, and returned instantly to 
 the Pharisees to report the great miracle which Jesus had 
 wrought. The conjecture gives a vivid touch of local color 
 to the picture. On a night wonderful with moonlight we 
 may imagine Nicodemus passing out of the Holy City by that 
 very road along which Jesus journeyed in humble triumph 
 in the last week of His life ; skirting the base of that Mount 
 of Olives made for ever sacred by His Passion ; and so com- 
 ing to the quiet village whose very name is perfumed with 
 holy memories to countless multitudes of Christians. Was 
 it the hand of Mary that unlatched the door for Nicodemus 
 that night ? Was it she who had arranged the interview '? 
 And was it she also who reported it in days far remote, when 
 John sought eagerly for any reminiscence that should do 
 honor to his Master? This woman, of still and meditative 
 mind, who loved to sit at Jesus' feet, oblivious of everything 
 but the charm of His conversation, was born to be His chron- 
 icler. Martha, cumbered with much serving, had little to 
 communicate concerning the ways and words of Jesus ; but 
 Mary forgot nothing. And if, indeed, this interview took 
 place in the house at Bethany, we may be sure that few things 
 in her faithful and adoring intimacy with Christ would leave 
 so clear an impression on Mary's mind as this prolonged 
 conversation in which Christ first revealed the real scope and 
 spirit of His message to the world. 
 
112 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 That message was, however, to receive a yet more definite 
 enunciation toward the close of the month, and again in a 
 personal interview. Turning his face northward, Jesus now 
 set out in company with many returning pilgrims, for Cana 
 and Capernaum. The first day's journey would take Him to 
 Eamallah, the second to Bethel, when He and His disciples 
 detached themselves from the main caravan. From Bethel 
 the northward road becomes arduous, difficult, and even dan- 
 gerous. After an excessively steep ascent the road follows a 
 torrent, which flows between steep and bare hillsides, scan- 
 tily clothed with olive-trees. This valley or gorge is the gate 
 of one of the most fertile districts in Palestine, the land of 
 Ephraim. By this road Jesus traveled, until at last He saw 
 the great plain of Shechem, bounded by the upland country 
 of Samaria, the distant foldings of the Galilean hills, and 
 finally by the snow-clad heights of Hermon. 
 
 Jacob's well is one of the few undisputed holy sites of 
 Palestine. It stands at the roadside, not far from the little 
 village of Iskar, which is the ancient Sychar. To this well 
 Jesus came, wearied with the heat of the day and the toil- 
 some journey. His disciples went away to buy food, and He 
 sat upon the coping-stone of the well awaiting their return. 
 The rest of the story is told us with admirable simplicity by 
 St. John. A woman comes to draw water, and Christ en- 
 gages her in conversation. The act, natural and courteous 
 as it was, impressed the woman as startlingly unconven- 
 tional, for she perceived Him to be a Jew, and it was a tradi- 
 tion that the Jew had no dealings with the Samaritan. But 
 as the conversation proceeded surprise became w T onder, won- 
 der melted into fear. The woman appears to have been 
 grossly ignorant. She entirely misses the point of Christ's 
 remarks about living water. "With the literalism of a dull 
 mind she proceeds to argue about the superiority of this 
 
JESUS AND THE INDIVIDUAL 113 
 
 particular water, and reluctantly admits that if the water of 
 which this stranger speaks be indeed all that He says it is, 
 it is worth coveting. So far the conversation has been one 
 of cross purposes. Its character is now utterly changed by 
 a single abrupt word on the part of Christ. He tells her to 
 fetch her husband, and when she replies that she has no 
 husband, proceeds to show Himself acquainted with her 
 family history. The singular thing is that, disgraceful as 
 this history is, yet she is absolutely unconscious of the dis- 
 grace. Uneasy rather than humiliated, she tries to change 
 the subject by arguing about the relative merits of Jewish 
 and Samaritan worship. And then to this woman, dull of 
 mind and immoral in life, unable on every ground to appre- 
 ciate Him, Jesus utters a saying so profound that it may be 
 said to have inaugurated a new religion for the world : 
 " God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him, must worship 
 Him in spirit and in truth." 
 
 How far the woman comprehended the sublime truth of 
 this aphorism it is difficult to say. The disciples may be 
 excused for considering this an instance of casting pearls be- 
 fore swine. But Jesus had no such feeling, and that is per- 
 haps the most remarkable feature of the interview. Not only 
 does He rise entirely above the pettiness of the Jewish feel- 
 ing which had bred an age-long scorn of the Samaritan, but 
 He even seems to rise above the faults and limitations of the 
 woman, seeing her ideally as a human creature only. Per- 
 haps He meant the whole scene to be an object-lesson to His 
 disciples of His infinite catholicity of spirit. They could 
 hardly have seen their Master spending so much pains over a 
 very poor specimen of the human race, without some glimmer- 
 ing perception of the real dignity of the humblest unit of the 
 race. It was the first of many shocks which their Jewish 
 pride and Messianic hopes received at the hands of Jesus. 
 
 8 
 
114 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 It took them many years to learn the simple truth that noth- 
 ing that God has made is common or unclean. Yet that 
 truth received magnificent exposition in the very attitude of 
 Christ to this woman : and joined with it was the clearest 
 possible exposition of a new religion, absolutely free from all 
 forms, rising above them, and finding them unnecessary. 
 That day beside the well of Sychar Jesus drafted the work- 
 ing plan of Christianity. Its main principles were two : the 
 conception of humanity as one ; the definition of religion as 
 spiritual. Upon these two pillars the whole amazing struc- 
 ture of the new religion was to rest. 
 
 It will be observed that these two utterances of Christ, 
 connected in point of time, display also a common sequence 
 of thought. The message to Nicodemus, and the message to 
 the woman of Sychar, are substantially one. Christ bids 
 this virtuous Pharisee and this dissolute woman meditate 
 upon the same truth — the forgotten spirituality of their own 
 natures. Nicodemus had forgotten this in the arid casuis- 
 tries of Pharisaism, the woman in the coarse animalism of 
 her life. But until man remembers that he is a spiritual 
 creature, religion is impossible to him. He may be moral 
 or immoral, decorous or depraved, but religious he cannot 
 be, simply because religion is a perception of the spiritual 
 side of things. It is "the romance of the infinite," not, 
 however, as it exists in the mysteries of space, but in the 
 human heart itself. Neither of these persons had realized 
 this capacity for the infinite, this " eternity in the heart," as 
 the Hebrew poet finely called it ; and although Nicodemus 
 would have scorned to speak to this woman, and would have 
 been deeply affronted at the thought of being included for a 
 moment in the same category with her, yet they are alike in 
 this, that each is thoroughly unawakened to the spiritualities 
 of life. He, eager to discuss abstruse questions of Messiah- 
 
JESUS AND THE INDIVIDUAL 115 
 
 ship, and she, equally eager to discuss the relative values of 
 Jewish and Samaritan worship, are really speaking the same 
 language. And so for each there is but one message, as 
 there still is but one message for man, whatever may be 
 the decorum or indignity of his life ; he must be born 
 again into a belief in his own spiritual nature, and know 
 himself as a living soul come out from God, and returning 
 to God, before the bare conception of religion is possible to 
 him. 
 
 But perhaps the most astonishing reflection is that Christ 
 should have entrusted profound truths such as these to the 
 chances of casual conversation. Surely teachings that are 
 among His very greatest utterances deserved a wider audi- 
 ence than this ; for who can reflect without a shudder upon 
 how much of Christian truth would have been irrevocably 
 lost if these two great statements had by any chance been 
 forgotten? At first sight it does undoubtedly appear that 
 the chance of such sayings being lost was very great, and 
 that the probability of their faithful recollection would have 
 been much increased had they been uttered in some public 
 address. But we may ask if this is really so ? Are sermons 
 and public addresses so accurately recollected as a rule that 
 it can be claimed that they afford the securest guarantee for 
 the preservation of truth ? Who remembers, after many 
 years, a single sentence in a sermon, flashed upon the mind 
 in the rush of oratory, except as a vague and generally inac- 
 curate impression ? But a deep and true thing said in inti- 
 mate conversation is far better recollected. The impression 
 made is much deeper, because it is accompanied by a force 
 of personality, a flame and efflux of the spirit, more intense 
 and intimate than is ever possible in oratory. And so when 
 Christ uttered His wisest and profoundest sayings to individ- 
 uals or to little groups of people, He was, perhaps, taking the 
 
116 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 best possible means for their preservation. They sank into 
 hearts too deeply moved ever to forget them. New emotions, 
 new ideas, and a new life were dated from them. They were 
 associated with a thrill of wonder and of joy that vibrated to 
 the last hour of life. It is the crowd that forgets, the indi- 
 vidual who remembers ; and there is a far securer safeguard 
 of remembrance in the emotion of the individual than in the 
 general impressions of a multitude. 
 
 Only less astonishing is the graciousness of Christ in 
 these interviews. To a man who treats Him almost as a 
 conspirator, in seeking Him by stealth, to a woman who is 
 notoriously corrupt, Christ gives ungrudgingly the very best 
 of Himself. How easy to have put them off with formal 
 aphorisms and brief answers ! How excusable if Jesus, 
 worn out by a day of supreme excitement in Jerusalem, or 
 wearied by the long journey to Sychar, had abstained from 
 anything like detailed explanation and adequate discussion ! 
 Or, if not altogether excusable, how natural had it been, if 
 Jesus had reserved Himself, and kept back the great truth 
 with which His mind was full for some public and important 
 occasion ! But Jesus is content if, by the most lavish ex- 
 penditure of Himself, He can bring a single soul to the 
 knowledge of the truth. And later on, when His Church 
 begins its resistless propaganda, His disciples have to con- 
 tent themselves with many such obscure victories. The 
 value of the meanest unit of society became one of the car- 
 dinal axioms of their thought. The redemption of society 
 through its units became one of the cardinal principles of 
 their action. Fraternity, that feature never found in any 
 purely civil society, however enlightened, received a new 
 definition at their hands. Onesimus the slave was equally 
 " a brother beloved " with his Christian master. Christianity 
 thus meant a real triumph of democracy, although it never 
 
JESUS AND THE INDIVIDUAL 117 
 
 used the term. But if we seek for the source from which 
 this democracy was evolved, do Ave not find it in the 
 exquisite grace, entirely free from all condescension, 
 with which Christ treated the humblest units of the com- 
 munity ? 
 
 The wisdom of Christ was justified in His treatment of 
 Nicodemus by his ultimate conversion ; if we hear no more 
 of the woman of Sychar, we find that Christ's conversation 
 with her led to results that were of importance in the devel- 
 opment of this ministry. The incident made a great impres- 
 sion upon the neighboring population. The Samaritans be- 
 lieved in Him, not, indeed, for a very lofty reason to begin 
 with, but for a better reason as they knew Him better ; at 
 first because of the woman's description of how Christ had 
 read her thought, later on " because of His own word." 
 Christ gave them the opportunity of knowing Him by re- 
 maining in their city two days. It was an act, no doubt, 
 horrifying to His disciples, but it left only pleasant memories 
 on His own mind. He appears to have formed a high 
 opinion of these pariahs of Jewish civilization. " City of 
 Fools," as Samaria was, yet its folly was more agreeable to 
 Him than the frigid wisdom of Jerusalem. He found the 
 people of Samaria genial, kindly, and simple, and perhaps 
 through their very alienation from traditional Judaism the 
 more readily disposed to hear new truths with tolerance. 
 When He would choose a type of simple human kindliness 
 it is a Samaritan He chooses, boldly placing the fine conduct 
 of the Samaritan in contrast with the callousness of priests 
 and Levites to human suffering. The good Samaritan has 
 become a synonym of social sympathies. In an incident 
 recorded by St. Luke the Samaritan is also represented as a 
 type of pious gratitude. Ten lepers are cleansed, but one 
 only returns to give thanks, and he is a Samaritan. The 
 
118 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 drift of Christ's mind is clearly discerned in these incidents. 
 He found with pain that He came unto His own, and His 
 own received Him not ; but from pagans and pariahs He 
 never failed to receive a tolerant hearing and often an affec- 
 tionate welcome. So marked was His sympathy with the 
 Samaritans that in one of the passionate disputes into which 
 He was drawn with the Jews, His antagonists did not hesi- 
 tate to accuse Him of being a Samaritan. " Thou art a 
 Samaritan, and hast a devil " is their bitter taunt. His 
 reply is a reaffirmation of the truth He first taught at the 
 well of Sychar, that true religion is in essence spiritual, and 
 that to do the will of God is more than theological systems 
 or the boasts of ancestry. 
 
 These two instances of Christ's relations with individuals 
 are typical of many others. It is obvious that many who 
 heard Him speak, heard Him but once. At some given 
 point His path intersected theirs ; He talked with them for 
 a few moments, tarried with them it may be for a night, sat 
 with them at a meal, and then went upon His way, and they 
 saw Him no more. But so powerful was the spell of His 
 personality that in these rapid interchanges of thought 
 human lives were irrevocably altered. The seed of truth 
 thus scattered with a lavish hand rarely failed to spring up. 
 If such incidents do nothing else, they give us an overwhelm- 
 ing sense of His power and personality. They teach us how 
 little able we are to judge aright many features of His min- 
 istry which appear incredible, by teaching us the impossibil- 
 ity of all comparison. For the first time there begins to 
 dawn upon the mind that sublime suspicion once formulated 
 by Napoleon, when he said, " I tell you that I understand 
 men, and Jesus was more than a man." It is in the con- 
 templation of the alleged miraolos of Christ that we usually 
 fall back on this conviction ; but assuredly the miracles 
 
JESUS AND THE INDIVIDUAL 119 
 
 themselves do not appear more miraculous than the instan- 
 taneous and enduring effects of a few words uttered by Jesus 
 in altering human lives. All that the wisest can say in such 
 a case is that no wisdom is competent to measure rightly the 
 personality of Jesus. It is unique in history, and its effects 
 are also unique. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE MIRACLE-WOEKEIt 
 
 The arrival of Jesus at Cana was signalized by one of His 
 best authenticated acts of mercy. At Cana He was met by 
 a certain ruler, or Roman official of some rank, whose son 
 lay sick in Capernaum of a fever. The distressed father be- 
 lieved his child to be at the point of death, and as a last 
 resource sought help of One who had already achieved the 
 reputation of a thaumaturgus. Jesus expresses in the clear- 
 est language consistent with sympathy and courtesy His dis- 
 inclination to interfere. It is only when the ruler exclaims 
 in an agony of love and vehemence, " Sir, come down ere my 
 child die," that Jesus melted toward him. He does not re- 
 turn with the ruler to Capernaum ; He contents Himself with 
 the definite assurance that the sick child will not die. This 
 assurance the father receives in perfect faith. He returns to 
 Capernaum ; meets upon the way his own servants, who have 
 ridden out with the glad tidings that his son is convalescent ; 
 inquires at what hour the amendment had begun, and finds 
 that it synchronizes with the hour when Jesus said unto 
 him, " Thy son liveth." A coincidence so remarkable was 
 naturally interpreted as a miracle. Its immediate effect was 
 greatly to enhance the reputation of Jesus in Galilee, and to 
 add to the growing circle of His disciples one household of 
 considerable social eminence in Capernaum. 
 
 So far as this particular story goes it offers no difficulties. 
 We are told that the illness from which the child suffered 
 was a fever, the symptoms of which were no doubt described 
 
 120 
 
THE MIRACLE-WORKER 121 
 
 by the anxious father, and the nature of which was probably 
 quite familiar to Jesus, to whom the local maladies of Gali- 
 lee had been a natural subject of observation. From these 
 data it would be easy to deduce a prophecy of the child's re- 
 covery. The modem physician, trained by long experience 
 in habits of intuition and deduction, often ventures on such 
 a positive verdict, and is rarely mistaken. Jesus in this case 
 did nothing more than such a physician in the course of a 
 wide practice often does. Nor is it necessary to depart from 
 the relatively rational ground of coincidence in noting that 
 the child's turn for the better happened at the very hour 
 when Jesus dismissed the father with an assurance of his 
 recovery. Such a coincidence would have a certain occult 
 value with the ignorant, but in itself it is of slight impor- 
 tance. Things as startling have happened many times in 
 history and in individual experience. A mind predisposed 
 to faith in the supernatural is always prepared to interpret 
 a coincidence as a miracle ; and it was in entire accordance 
 with the spirit of the times that this singular case of healing 
 should have been so interpreted. 
 
 The last consideration is of vital importance in any serious 
 review of the alleged miracles of Christ. The world of 
 Christ's time had no system of medicine, and still less had it 
 any scientific knowledge of natural law. Disease was com- 
 monly regarded as the work of evil spirits, and hence exor- 
 cism was common. Natural law, as an inevitable sequence 
 of cause and effect, was not so much as apprehended, except 
 by a very few superior minds of Greece and Rome. The 
 average Eoman was in most things fully as superstitious as 
 the Oriental. Lucretius, the greatest philosophic poet of 
 antiquity, who was the first to outline the superb order of 
 the universe, was regarded by his contemporaries as an athe- 
 ist. As for the Jew, his entire history had trained him to a 
 
122 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 fixed belief in supernaturalism. The occult was interwoven 
 at all points in the national history, and ordinary events 
 were habitually interpreted in relation to spiritual forces. 
 
 The East has always had a peculiar power of producing 
 necromancers. Thus, when Moses essayed to work miracles 
 in the presence of Pharaoh, he soon discovered that the ma- 
 gicians of Egypt were able to rival him on his own ground. 
 Elijah and Elisha were regarded as magicians. Elisha was 
 supposed to have made iron swim — a piece of pure magic in 
 the sense in which an Indian juggler would use the term ; 
 and tradition further stated that both these great prophets 
 had raised the dead. Curiously mingled in the history of 
 Elijah and Elisha are indications that some of their acts were 
 conditioned by a superior knowledge of nature. Elisha, by 
 a very simple knowledge of chemistry, was able to sweeten a 
 brackish spring, and to destroy the effects of poison in a pot 
 of broth by an antidote. Each of these acts, however, passed 
 for a miracle. It would be tedious to enlarge the category. 
 The point to be observed is that the world had not in Christ's 
 day attained a rational attitude toward phenomena. Any act 
 out of the common was esteemed miraculous, and miracle 
 was demanded from a great teacher as an evidence of his au- 
 thority. It naturally follows that many acts of such a 
 teacher, in themselves quite explicable, became rapidly dis- 
 torted by the common faith in the miraculous ; and having 
 once taken the dye of miracle the original texture is no longer 
 discernible. 
 
 In dealing with the vexed question of miracle it is a safe 
 rule to seek a natural explanation of any act described as 
 miraculous, where such an explanation is jDossible. It does 
 not follow, however, that the account of the act given by a 
 contemporary historian is insincere, fraudulent, or meant to 
 deceive, because it furnishes us with a supernatural instead 
 
THE MIRACLE-WORKER 123 
 
 of a natural explanation. Nothing is clearer in Gospel his- 
 tory than that Christ was universally credited with the power 
 of working miracles. He believed in His own power of 
 miracle-working ; His disciples, who had every opportunity 
 of knowing the facts, believed in this power ; and, what is of 
 yet greater significance, His enemies, who had every reason 
 to deny His miracles, accepted them as indubitable. Nico- 
 demus, in his famous interview with Christ, began by ex- 
 pressing the opinion that no one could do the wonderful 
 works that Christ did, if God were not with him. The 
 Pharisees on a subsequent occasion attributed these same 
 wonderful works to collusion with demons and evil spirits ; 
 but in neither case was there any attempt to deny that acts 
 had been done which could only be described as miraculous. 
 The old dilemma proposed to the Christian thinker was this : 
 either these statements which attributed miracles to Christ 
 were true or false ; if true it was blasphemy to question 
 them ; if false, the whole cause of Christianity stood discred- 
 ited. But there is a middle course, at once more rational 
 and more reverent. Christianity is not discredited unless it 
 can be proved that Christ wilfully deceived Himself and oth- 
 ers, end played the part of a charlatan in these acts. Nor is 
 the story of an alleged miracle false because it contains in- 
 credible statements. The story may contain both absolute 
 truth and unconscious misrepresentation. A full and just al- 
 lowance must be made for the mental characteristics of the 
 narrator and of the time in which he lived. If we can settle 
 the main question, which is the absolute sincerity of the his- 
 tory with which we are dealing, we are then perfectly free to 
 apply the tests of criticism to the history ; and in doing this, 
 it is, as I have said, a safe rule to seek a natural explanation 
 of any act described as miraculous, where such an explana- 
 tion is possible. 
 
124 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 But it will be asked, Is a natural explanation of these as- 
 tonishing deeds possible ? We have seen that the recovery 
 of the ruler's son, which is specifically described by St. John 
 as " the second miracle that Jesus did," was not necessarily 
 a miracle at all. Christ Himself makes no such claim. His 
 own words are plain : " Go thy way, thy son liveth." He 
 states a fact of which He is inwardly assured, and the event 
 proves that He is right. The modern thinker is content to 
 let the story stand thus, as an instance of profound premoni- 
 tion. The actual spectator, living in an age which was filled 
 with faith in supernaturalism, could hardly help himself in 
 introducing an element of the occult into the story, and de- 
 scribing it as a miracle. What each does is simply to re- 
 duce the same factors to the intellectual terms of his time. 
 The wise man, in contemplating these widely different pro- 
 cesses, would say that each should be free to believe as he 
 pleases, as long as his belief in the sincerity of Christ and 
 of his biographers remains untouched. 
 
 If it be a safe rule to prefer a natural to a supernatural 
 explanation of any alleged miracle, a yet higher axiom of 
 wisdom is that no temper is so fatal to research as invincible 
 incredulity. One of the greatest masters of science in our 
 own day has laid down the rule that the true scientist should 
 show himself extremely reluctant to deny any kind of phe- 
 nomenon, merely because it appears unintelligible. " Scien- 
 tific sagacity consists in being very careful how we deny the 
 possibility of anything," says Flammarion. Such a counsel 
 is of especial value in relation to the miracles of Christ. We 
 have already seen that the closer we come to the personality 
 of Jesus the more does the conviction grow that there was an 
 element in that personality which transcends all that we 
 know of ordinary human nature. With a single glance or 
 word He was able to produce immeasurable effects on indi- 
 
THE MIRACLE-WORKER 125 
 
 viduals. Even in His last humiliation, when armed men 
 rushed upon Him in the garden of Gethsemane, there streamed 
 from Him a power that hurled them backward, and brought 
 them to their knees. Is it not easily conceivable, then, that 
 this force of personality should have an extraordinary effect 
 upon disease ? A case in point suggests itself from the life 
 of Catherine of Siena. Father Raymond relates that in the 
 time of plague in Siena he came home exhausted by his la- 
 bors, and felt himself sickening for death. Catherine then 
 " laid her pure hands upon him," prayed over him, sat by 
 his side till he fell asleep, and when he woke he was per- 
 fectly well. The stoiy suggests at once a case of healing by 
 magnetic force or hypnotism, joined with strong faith in the 
 person healed. Many of the cures wrought by Jesus sug- 
 gest the same process. He usually demands faith in the 
 sick person as a condition of the experiment He is besought 
 to make. He is conscious on one occasion of " virtue " hav- 
 ing gone out of Him — a most significant phrase. A continu- 
 ous impression is produced of a person of extraordinary 
 vitality, gifted with the rarest and highest quality of magnetic 
 force, moving among ordinary people and establishing over 
 them an absolute control. Now we know very little of the 
 limits and conditions of such forces as these ; and what we 
 know is so astounding that we cannot but feel that this is 
 pre-eminently a case for that scientific sagacity which denies 
 the possibility of nothing. 
 
 Whatever was the exact nature of this power which Christ 
 exercised, it is certain that it did much to give effect to His 
 ministry. Yet there was no inherent reason in the mere act 
 of miracle-working to produce this result. When the Phari- 
 sees said that He worked miracles by collusion with demons 
 they expressed a common conviction that supernatural power 
 had nothing necessarily Divine in it. It made Him formida- 
 
126 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 ble, but it did not prove Him good. And it is also easy to 
 see that such a power was as likely to repel men as to at- 
 tract them. It did indeed in one instance repel men; so 
 great a spirit of terror was produced that the inhabitants of a 
 whole province besought Christ to depart out of their coasts. 
 How was it, then, that the miracles of Christ proved a most 
 effective help to His ministry ? Simply because they were 
 invariably devoted to moral and benignant ends. From first 
 to last He wrought no miracle on His own behalf. He, who 
 fed the multitudes, was Himself hungry ; He, who raised the 
 dead, died. There was thus produced a profound impression 
 of the unselfishness of Christ. In after-times it became the 
 basis of the great Pauline doctrine of the voluntary humilia- 
 tion of Christ. But at the time it was felt rather as a won- 
 derful proof of the benignity of God. Men praised God that 
 such power was given unto men : they should also have seen, 
 and perhaps in part did see, that the divinest element in this 
 power was its restraint. Even if the power were much more 
 circumscribed than the story of the miracles would lead us 
 to believe, yet it is evident that it was sufficient to lay the 
 kiigloms of this world at the feet of Christ. Had personal 
 ascendancy, culminating in Kingship and Empire, been His 
 aim, He possessed a weapon by which the wildest ambitions 
 might have been gratified. That weapon was never used. 
 His Divine unselfishness was thus vindicated, and in the de- 
 gree that this unselfishness was realized, the spiritual ends 
 of His ministry was served. 
 
 The restraint with which Christ used His power of work- 
 ing miracles has another aspect. It might be argued that 
 since a power so astounding was invariably used for benig- 
 nant ends, benignity itself would dictate the widest possible 
 use of this power. Why should Jesus have been content to 
 use this power but rarely ? Why heal an occasional leper, 
 
THE MIRACLE-WORKER 127 
 
 when by a word leprosy itself might have been extinguished 
 throughout a whole city or countryside? There is some- 
 thing very remarkable about the apparently accidental char- 
 acter of Christ's miracles. A blind man or a leper meets 
 Him, and on the sudden dictate of pity He heals him. His 
 meeting with the sad procession which issued from the city 
 of Nain, bearing to the tomb the only son of the mother who 
 is a widow, is plainly accidental. There is no instance of a 
 miracle deliberately planned. But if we grant the posses- 
 sion of a real power of working miracles, we should naturally 
 expect deliberately planned miracles. We should have at 
 least expected that Jesus Himself would have chosen with 
 the utmost care the place, the time, the opportunity. And, 
 returning to the wider aspect of the whole problem, we 
 should certainly expect a much more generous use of mirac- 
 ulous power than we find. 
 
 The answer to these questions lies in Christ's own concep- 
 tion of His mission among men. That mission was spiritual. 
 Its supreme aim was not to save the bodies of men but their 
 souls. But man, being what he is, is far more concerned 
 about his body than his soul. Defective virtue is to him 
 scarcely a matter of acute regret, but defective physical 
 health is to him a cause of pain, of dismay, and of humilia- 
 tion. Christ was perfectly aware of this characteristic of 
 human nature, and grieved over it. He saw that its inevita- 
 ble tendency, as it affected Himself, must be that He would 
 find Himself far more highly valued as a miracle-worker 
 than as a teacher. Men followed Him not for the bread of 
 life which He gave them, but for the loaves and fishes. In 
 the degree that His reputation as a wonder-worker rose, the \ 
 real significance of His mission as a teacher sent of God was 
 forgotten. Miracles, seen from this point of view, so far 
 from forwarding the purposes dearest to His heart, really re- 
 
128 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 tarded them by producing a wrong estimate of His character. 
 The dilemma thus created is perfectly apparent. On the one 
 hand, mere humanity of feeling demanded that a power of 
 alleviating human suffering in no common way should be 
 widely used ; on the other hand, there was the peril that this 
 power, if allowed the widest operation demanded by a warm 
 compassion, would defeat the very purposes for which the 
 life of Christ was lived at all. Christ's way out of the di- 
 lemma was to restrain the exercise of His power to the 
 narrowest limits consistent with a sense of humanity. Hence 
 we find that He often wrought miracles with extreme reluc- 
 tance. On one occasion He sighed deeply when about to 
 restore sight to a blind man, recognizing that the anxious 
 group gathered round Him cared far more for a physical 
 good than for the best spiritual good that He could offer 
 them. He complained of the hardness of heart which was 
 incapable of recognizing a Divine truth without some earthly 
 sign. If He had spoken His whole mind to the blind man 
 over whom He sighed, He would have said that it was better 
 to enter into the Kingdom of God maimed, than having two 
 eyes to be cast into hell fire. He constantly warned those 
 whom He had healed to keep the matter secret, because He 
 did not wish to be known as a necromancer or exorcist. 
 This desire for secrecy, the expressed wish to keep hidden 
 what in the nature of things could not be concealed, has 
 often seemed to the reader of the Gospels an insincerity. 
 But it is perfectly intelligible on the grounds already stated. 
 Christ wished to be believed for His word's sake ; it was 
 only when He found how impossible it was for average hu- 
 manity to rise to this ideal height, that He took lower 
 ground, and adjured men if they could not believe Him for 
 His word's sake at least to believe Him for His work's sake. 
 Perhaps in taking this ground Christ also foresaw that in 
 
THE MIRACLE-WORKER 129 
 
 the long run, tried by the judgment of the ages, miracles 
 were more likely to retard His cause than to serve it. It is 
 an obvious reflection that the very element in His ministry 
 which helped His cause most among His contemporaries has 
 with later generations become more and more a stone of 
 stumbling and a rock of offence. The modern student of 
 Christianity, bred in the schools of an exact science, will 
 often find himself wishing that the " miraculous element " in 
 the Gospels could be eliminated. It is a vain wish, because 
 the " miraculous element " not merely runs through the 
 Gospels, but is the great cohesive force that binds them into 
 unity. We have to take things as we find them. The main 
 point is not whether the recorded miracles are absolutely 
 exact historic statements, but whether they are sincere state- 
 ments. There can be no doubt on this point. Men reported 
 what they honestly believed themselves to have seen and 
 known. If we can be sure of this the rest is a matter of 
 relative indifference. Truth is an essence, not a form. The 
 form may be capable of various interpretations ; essential 
 truth speaks in one uniform accent which never appeals in 
 vain to the man of sincere temper. 
 
 It may be remembered, however, that Christ Himself never 
 attached the value to miracles which His followers did even 
 in His own lifetime. He treated them as purely subsidiary 
 to His teachings, as accommodations of His method to meet 
 the weaknesses of human nature. In the conclusion of one 
 of His greatest parables, that of Dives and Lazarus, His con- 
 viction of the abiding inutility of miracles as a means of con- 
 version is stated with great force. Most men, in regretting 
 their scepticism concerning an unseen world, would be ready 
 to say that nothing would convince them so completely as a 
 real apparition, coming to them across the gulf of silence 
 and the grave. To see a ghost, and to be sure that we saw 
 9 
 
130 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 it, would be proof positive, we think, of u world of life 1 
 beyond the illusion of the grave. Death would then be 
 meaningless to us, extinction incredible, annihilation an ab- 
 surd impossibility. And we think, further, that one such 
 solemn experience as this would be efficacious to change 
 our whole scheme of conduct with a thoroughness which all 
 the wisdom of the philosophers and the prophets could not 
 achieve. Christ contradicts the truth of these familiar specu- 
 lations, and declares them illusions. He who will not hear 
 Moses and the prophets would not believe though one rose 
 from the dead. The man who cannot or will not attain to 
 goodness under the normal conditions of human life would 
 never do so under abnormal conditions. In course of time 
 the most acute impression of terror wears off; or if it be 
 often repeated, it is with an ever-lessening impression, till at 
 last it ranks with the normal, and as such is easily despised. 
 This was a train of thought which Christ often applied to 
 His miracles. He saw that as men became used to them 
 they became indifferent to them, and even forgot them. 
 Hence He refuses to base His claim on miracles. He leaves 
 men to think what they will of them ; the greater question 
 is what they think of Him ? When, therefore, theology de- 
 mands an absohrte faith in miracles as the first condition of 
 faith in Christ, it is acting in direct opposition to His spirit. 
 If we only believe in Christ because of the miracles which 
 He wrought, we do not really believe at all. He Himself 
 encourages us to put miracles in a subsidiary relation to 
 Himself ; for it is not as a miracle-worker that Jesus has 
 won the hearts of humanity, but as the Lover of Souls, who 
 is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. 
 
 The case may be summed up thus, then. There can be 
 no doubt that Jesus believed that He wrought miracles, and 
 that this belief was shared by His disciples, His friends, and 
 
THE MIRACLE-WORKER 131 
 
 even by His enemies. The reports of these astounding acts 
 are conditioned by the mental characteristics of the time. 
 They vary in credibility, and we are at liberty to distinguish 
 the degree of credibility in each. They differ from the com- 
 mon acts of the necromancer, and even the miraculous acts 
 of the prophets, in this — that they were never wrought for 
 selfish or revengeful, but always for benignant ends. They 
 fit into the scheme of Christ's mission by illustrating His 
 own unselfishness and benignity of spirit, and hence were of 
 potent sendee in promoting His authority over men. On 
 the other hand, He Himself always treated them as sub- 
 sidiary to His main work, which was to save and redeem the 
 souls of men. Their accidental character strengthens the 
 conviction of their authenticity. Their abiding value is that 
 they illustrate the temper of Christ, and through Christ the 
 temper of God toward man. Finally, where they are most 
 confounding to the reason, we have to remember that we 
 have a most imperfect apprehension of the personality of 
 Christ, and are therefore unable to judge the effects of that 
 overwhelming personality upon others. 
 
 These considerations must guide us, and always be in our 
 minds as we now follow the story of Jesus to its tragic and 
 sublime close. With His return from Jerusalem to Caper- 
 naum, the full scheme of His ministry is developed. He 
 henceforth treads a path more lofty than was ever scaled by 
 mortal. His life abounds in incidents such as are found in 
 no other human life. To great multitudes He is known to 
 the end only as the Miracle- Worker ; to an elect few, whose 
 numbers slowly multiply, as He Himself desires to be known 
 — a Eedeemer in whose hands lay the spiritual destinies of the 
 world. 
 
CHAPTEK X 
 
 THE NEW SOCIETY 
 
 We now find Jesus fully launched upon His career as a 
 Man with a Mission. His whole time and strength are 
 henceforth absorbed in continual public teachings and acts 
 of mercy, which often leave Him no leisure so much as to 
 eat. His wanderings from town to town obey no definite 
 programme, although they are governed by a general pref- 
 erence for the shores of Galilee. When we remember how 
 vast has been the influence of these busy years upon the 
 fortunes of the world, it is surprising to find how circum- 
 scribed was the geographical area of Christ's ministry. 
 Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Magdala, towns closely identified 
 with some of His most remarkable words and acts, lie closely 
 together in the northern reach of the Lake of Galilee. Tibe- 
 rias, the only surviving town upon the lake, He is supposed 
 never to have entered ; although it must be confessed that 
 the reasons given for this tradition are entirely inadequate. 
 The little town of Nain, lying close to the older town of 
 Endor, between Mount Tabor on the north and the moun- 
 tains of Gilboa on the south, Christ entered but once, and 
 this was the nearest approach to the great plain of Esdraelon, 
 famous for its associations with Gideon and Saul, Elijah and 
 Ahab, and some of the more momentous of Israelitish battles. 
 In the last year of His life He penetrates northward as far 
 as the Koman town of Caesarea Philippi and Mount Hermon, 
 which was undoubtedly the Mount of Transfiguration ; but 
 the great city of Damascus, plainly visible from the slopes 
 
 132 
 
THE NEW SOCIETY 133 
 
 of Hermon, the oldest city in the world, which was metro- 
 politan even in the time of Abraham, Christ never visited. 
 He appears at one time to have made a brief missionary 
 journey to the northern seaward towns, including Sidon and 
 Tyre, but the important southern towns of Joppa and Gaza 
 were unvisited. Samaria and Jericho He knew, for these 
 were important cities easily accessible on the way to Jerusa- 
 lem ; but Bethlehem and Hebron, towns which lie but a little 
 south of Jerusalem, the first of which was full of sacred as- 
 sociations, are not named in the record of the Gospel minis- 
 try. The entire area thus defined is about one hundred 
 miles from north to south, with a breadth rarely exceeding 
 twenty or thirty miles ; yet in this narrow theatre the great- 
 est events in human history were transacted. 
 
 The greatest event of all in these years was the establish- 
 ment of what may be called the New Society. We have seen 
 that immediately on His return from the baptism at Jordan, 
 Jesus began to call disciples, which was an act entirely in 
 accord with Jewish precedent. It was a common thing for 
 a famous Rabbi to surround himself with neophytes, whom 
 he instructed in his own peculiar tenets ; but we soon find 
 Jesus greatly enlarging this process, and giving it an entirely 
 new definition and significance. If one were asked to state 
 what single feature in the career of Christ is so distinct and 
 original as to separate Him from all other teachers, no 
 doubt a variety of replies would suggest themselves to the 
 mind. One might name His enthusiasm for humanity, an- 
 other His complete devotion to truth, and yet another the 
 manner of His death. But each of these replies would soon 
 be found inadequate, because we should readily discover 
 similar features in the careers of other great teachers and 
 reformers. Buddha also was distinguished by an intense 
 love of humanity, Socrates by an invincible devotion to 
 
134 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 truth, and many martyrs have endured a painful death with 
 an equal courage and tranquillity. We have to look deeper, 
 and we find the only adequate answer to the question in this 
 singular feature of Christ's ministry, that He founded a New 
 Society with Himself as Centre. His true Gospel was not 
 in anything He said ; it was Himself. The most divinely 
 original of all His acts and teachings was contained in a 
 single phrase — " Follow Me." In uttering this phrase He 
 established within the life of the world His own life, as a 
 new centre of gravity and cohesion, and He thus made per- 
 sonal loyalty to Himself the vital force which was to trans- 
 form the whole organism of Society. 
 
 "We may measure the audacity of this act by a few quite 
 obvious comparisons. Thus, for example, in saying, "Fol- 
 low Me," Jesus said what no Hebrew prophet had dared to 
 say. The prophet was a personage of unique authority and 
 influence, who was capable of exercising a vital control over 
 the national destinies. He was peculiar to Hebrew history, 
 and was indeed born out of the moral intensity of the He- 
 brew race. His supreme mission was to bring human so- 
 ciety into conformity to the will of God. He appeared at 
 intervals, coming now from the court and the Temple, now 
 from the sheepfold and the desert, but always securing an 
 authority and reverence such as kings seldom knew. He 
 was prepared to set himself, and often did set himself, in 
 solitary antagonism against a whole nation — arraigning, 
 judging, and condemning it. But sublime as was the self- 
 confidence of the prophet, he never dared to suggest himself 
 as the centre of a new society. He declared truth, but he 
 suppressed himself. Neither Moses, Elijah, nor John the 
 Baptist ever imagined that by creating a general and pas- 
 sionate sense of loyalty to themselves they could change the 
 whole structure of society round about them. But Jesus did 
 
THE NEW SOCIETY 135 
 
 imagine this, and boldly suggested Himself as the source 
 and authority of a new life out of which a new world would 
 spring. 
 
 We have already mentioned the great name of Socrates. 
 Few writers on the life of Jesus have been able to avoid the 
 parallel suggested by the life of Socrates, nor is there any 
 good reason why they should, since the resemblance between 
 Socrates and Christ is in many ways remarkable. We find in 
 Socrates a noble jealousy for truth such as Christ would have 
 ardently approved. We see Socrates calling disciples round 
 him, even as Christ did ; explaining truth to them with an 
 infinite patience, enabling them to realize that to know the 
 truth is the only freedom ; himself meanwhile bearing in- 
 dignity and scorn, poverty and hardship, with the complete 
 philosophic indifference of one to whom the only real life is 
 the life of the spirit. But there the parallel ends, except in 
 so far as the death of Socrates reveals those Divine qualities 
 of fidelity and courage which make all martyrs one. Socra- 
 tes never said, "Follow me." He valued loyalty to the ideas 
 he formulated, but passionate allegiance to himself he neither 
 desired nor demanded. Christ, on the contrary, demands 
 not so much intellectual conviction as personal loyalty. He 
 never speaks of truth after the impersonal manner of Socra- 
 tes ; " / am the Truth," is His great formula. The counsels 
 of Christ upon life and conduct greatly transcend in cogency 
 and truth all that has come to us from the noblest philo- 
 sophic minds of Greece and Rome, and he who follows these 
 counsels can hardly fail to attain a high level of philosophic 
 peace and virtue. But Christianity is not primarily a phil- 
 osophy, and its real bond is not so much truths held in com- 
 mon as a common loyalty to its Divine author. Its initia- 
 tory rite is love : " Simon Peter, lovest thou Me ? " Its bond 
 of unity is love : " I am in the Father, and ye in Me : He 
 
136 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love 
 him, and will manifest Myself unto him." Its inspiration 
 for every species of right conduct is love : "If ye love Me, 
 ye will keep My commandments." The voice of Christ, hi 
 its appeal to the human race, perpetually reiterates this call 
 to adoring loyalty, and it is by the force of this loyalty to 
 Himself that Christ expected to create, and has created, a 
 new society. 
 
 There is an old saying to the effect that the Roinan went 
 to the priest for his religion, but to the philosopher for his 
 morality, and substantially this is a fair representation of 
 the thought of the ancient world. Religion is thus seen as 
 altogether divorced from conduct. Philosophy is also seen 
 as a system of ethics which is destitute of religious sanction. 
 The most that it aimed to do was to furnish a wise plan of 
 life, based upon considerations of utility. But it is obvious 
 that a man may attain a high degree of philosophic wisdom, 
 without attaining fine emotions, or even at the expense of 
 fine emotions. He may be wise without being moral, learned 
 without being kind, sagacious without being loving or lov- 
 able, a scholar or a sage without possessing a single attrac- 
 tive quality which would make us deplore his death. Thus, 
 the inconsistencies of Seneca afford one of the saddest ironies 
 of history, and our admiration of the wisdom of the philos- 
 opher is constantly tempered by our scorn for the flatterer 
 of Nero, intent on ease and luxury even while he preaches 
 the beauty of virtue and the pleasures of poverty. But the 
 career of Seneca affords a theme for reflections far more 
 humbling than any that sprung froin the exercise of irony. 
 It illustrates the impotence of the highest kind of intellec- 
 tual wisdom of itself to produce perfection of character. Had 
 the philosopher been able to redeem society from corrup- 
 tion, society had surely been redeemed long before the days 
 
THE NEW SOCIETY 137 
 
 <>f Christ, for the intellectual world bad long sat at the feet 
 of the philosophers. And had Jesus offered the world noth- 
 ing but a Divine system of philosophy, His failure had not 
 been less complete than theirs. But Christ approached the 
 vast problem of the regeneration of the world from a totally 
 different standpoint. The weapon which He proposed for 
 this tremendous task was the power of a new affection. 
 
 "We live by admiration, hope and love," 
 
 is a familiar line of Wordsworth's, which, put into slightly 
 more definite language, means that we are ruled by our emo- 
 tions and affections. Christ proposed Himself as worthy of 
 the most sacred affection man could feel. Religion and 
 morality, no more divorced, were united and incarnated in 
 Him. To love Him therefore became synonymous with a 
 love of truth, virtue, and piety ; and in the degree that this 
 love was sincere and deep, men became units in a new so- 
 ciety whose supreme aim was the reproduction of His tem- 
 per and His spirit. 
 
 No doubt the method which Christ thus deliberately 
 adopted for the creation of a new society is surprising, and 
 in any other teacher it would be both offensive and inade- 
 quate. Socrates would certainly have hesitated to suggest 
 his own life as the pattern of universal life. Seneca was so 
 far from admitting such a thought that he has confessed in 
 language both pitiable and pathetic that the most he could 
 claim for himself was that he " wished to rise to a loftier 
 grade of virtue. But," he added, " I dare not hope it. I am 
 preoccupied with vices. All I require of myself is not to be 
 equal to the best, but only to be better than the bad." This 
 may be the language of undue self-depreciation, but it is a 
 kind of language well understood among men. The best 
 
138 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 and wisest of men will scarcely claim to be all that he de- 
 sires to be. The purest of human teachers is only too con- 
 scious of error, infirmity, and fault, and this consciousness is 
 his torture. But Jesus never admits in Himself the ordinary 
 weaknesses of human nature. He is bold enough to challenge 
 the Pharisees to convict Him of sin. The tormenting dis- 
 parity between an ideal of conduct and its accomplishment, 
 common even with the best men, He never felt. His whole 
 nature was wrought into such fine moral harmony that the 
 usual discords between faith and practice were annihilated. 
 Alone among the sons of men He appears complete in vir- 
 tue, and hence He alone can dare to say, without fear of re- 
 buke or ridicule, " Follow Me." 
 
 If the force of personal loyalty be deemed inadequate for 
 the creation of a new society, we may well ask what other 
 motive can be suggested as superior or more practicable ? 
 There are two motives on which men have relied, or at least 
 have built great hopes, viz., the love of truth and the enthu- 
 siasm of humanity. But it is obvious that neither of these 
 motives have ever shown themselves potent with the mass of 
 humanity. There is nothing that the average man holds in 
 greater scorn than abstract truth, and human selfishness ef- 
 fectually limits the action of what is called the enthusiasm of 
 humanity. Simon Peter was certainly not a lover of his 
 race ; he was a man full of the bitterest Jewish prejudice, and 
 totally destitute of the enthusiasm of humanity. Nor was he 
 a man enamored of abstract truth ; he was blunt, literal, prac- 
 tical, as little of a philosopher as man could be. He had, 
 indeed, too little of the philosophic mind even to appreciate 
 or comprehend the surpassing range of thought which Christ 
 revealed in His public ministry and daily conversations. 
 But Peter was deeply susceptible to fine emotion, and above 
 all to the Divine emotion of love. He could make sacrifices 
 
THE NEW SOCIETY 139 
 
 for a person which he would never dream of making either 
 for humanity or for an abstract truth. And in this Peter 
 fairly represented the general temper of mankind. The men 
 who will suffer for an idea are few ; but almost any man will 
 suffer for an idea if that idea appeals to him in the person of 
 one whose grace and truth have power to charm the heart- 
 It must be remembered, too, that while the ancient philos- 
 ophies were a kind of university culture never intended to 
 appeal to any but the select few, Jesus made His appeal to 
 all kinds and conditions of men. His message was meant to 
 reach the toiler in the fields, the fisherman at his nets, the 
 artisan at his bench, the beggar in his rags. Nay, more ; 
 people ostracized as wholly bad, the pariahs of society, the 
 foolish, the perverted, and the despised, the bandit and the 
 robber, the wayward daughter of pleasure, the heavy-eyed 
 bond-servant of vice — these also Avon His regard, and won it 
 in especial measure by the very sadness of their lot. It is 
 an axiom of all true reform, that the reformer must begin 
 with the very lowest strata of society if he is to succeed at 
 all. If the panacea which he wishes to apply to society is 
 impotent to heal the more degraded members of society, it 
 will be impotent altogether. It is relatively easy to introduce 
 a higher standard of life and thought into the more intelli- 
 gent and delicately nurtured classes of a community ; but of 
 what avail is this if reform leaves untouched the vicious and 
 the criminal classes, thereby confessing its despair of them ? 
 But what motive of reform can be suggested, at once so cath- 
 olic and so potent that it shall appeal equally to all classes 
 of a community ? The reply of Jesus is love, and love not so 
 much for a Truth as for a Person. At the call of love men 
 and women constantly show themselves ready to refashion 
 their lives, to part with habits as dear to them as their own 
 flesh, to open their hearts to an entirely novel set of sen- 
 
140 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 sations, to adopt a kind of life, the very laws and system of 
 winch have been hitherto unknown to them. If yon can 
 create a noble attachment between a good man and a man far 
 from good, that attachment will prove the salvation of the 
 Aveaker man. The constant influence of a high example will 
 draw him upward. He will learn to live his whole life with 
 constant reference to the approval of his friend. He will 
 wish to be like him, and will be able to conceive of nothing 
 better as possible to him than the attainment of such a like- 
 ness. And this motive has this supreme advantage — that it 
 can and does act irrespectively of all disparities of mind or 
 social condition. Intellectual or social equality is not neces- 
 sary to an adoring friendship, since goodness and love speak 
 a language of their own, equally intelligible to the rich and 
 to the poor, the wise and the ignorant, the evil and the 
 just. 
 
 It was beside the Sea of Galilee that this cosmic process, 
 which in time created a new world, began to declare itself. 
 It began with the calling of the Apostles, but it soon ex- 
 tended itself to a great number of disciples. At a glance, at 
 a sign, at a word, men forsake their habitual tasks, renounce 
 their means of livelihood, and follow Jesus. They know well 
 that such an association with Christ means hardship, priva- 
 tion, and every kind of worldly sacrifice. They will be 
 harshly criticized in their homes, jeered at in the streets, and 
 denounced in the synagogues. Others will till their fields, 
 others will seize with eagerness upon the business they have 
 forsaken, and they will be effectually ousted from a place of 
 social competence which they have won by long, laborious 
 years of industry and exertion. But of these things they do 
 not so much as think. The sons of Zebedee leave their fish- 
 ing-boat without a murmur ; Matthew rises from his desk, and 
 resigns his worldly task without a second thought. They 
 
THE NEW SOCIETY 141 
 
 are supremely happy ; they are inebriated with the joy of 
 being with Jesus. The}* ask nothing of the world, for the 
 world has nothing left that it can give them. In many a 
 hamlet of the Galilean hills the strange conduct of some son 
 or brother is discussed in sorrow or incredulity. He has 
 gone a day's journey to the Lake, and has not returned, but 
 surely he will return to-morrow. It can hardly be, except 
 upon the theory of sudden madness, that all the things that 
 have been most to him in life have ceased to interest him, 
 because a new Teacher, of whom many speak ill, has charmed 
 him by His speech. But the morrows dawn and wane, and 
 he has not returned. News comes that he has been seen 
 here and there, footsore and weary it may be, but none the 
 less elated in his comradeship with Jesus. The hearts that 
 ache for his return slowly learn that Christ has suddenly be- 
 come more to him than father or mother, wife or child or 
 kindred. Vain for weary eyes of earthly love to scan the 
 lake for the returning sail ; it comes not, and it will come no 
 more. And still beside this lake, where at early dawn the 
 eye may recognize Simon and Andrew his brother returning 
 from their night of toil, and dragging the net to land full of 
 great fishes ; where dark-eyed children such as Jesus blessed 
 still play upon the shore, and the very silence of the tur- 
 quoise waters and the empty beach, seems full of mystery — 
 still, beside this lake the glamor of the Presence lingers, the 
 voice of Him who spake as never man spake yet vibrates on 
 the silence, and the awestruck heart feels that if Christ did 
 indeed repeat His call to-day, that call would prove irresisti- 
 ble as of old, nor could all the later wisdom of the world 
 stand proof against its magic. 
 
 The society thus inaugurated was a real society, and 
 not one in name alone. It consisted of two circles, the apos- 
 tles and the disciples. In the first circle the traces of delib- 
 
142 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 erate organization are clear and definite. Its basis was 
 communistic and benevolent. A common purse provided for 
 the simple needs of the brotherhood, and the governing 
 principle of the common life was the service of humanity. 
 There was thus presented to the world the new and admir- 
 able spectacle of a company of men entirely freed from 
 worldly aims, reconciled to poverty and hardship, animated 
 by a common confidence and joy, and employed in tasks 
 which added to the store of human happiness. If the wider 
 circle of the disciples was not in like manner wholly separ- 
 ated from worldly life, yet it was governed by the same 
 spirit. The disciple as well as the apostle called Christ 
 Master, and was prepared to set aside all earthly claims for 
 His sake. A cold wisdom may find much fault with such 
 a scheme of action, and may ask what justification can be 
 offered for the wholesale breaking of those ties, and the re- 
 nunciation of those duties and obligations by virtue of 
 which civil society exists ? But the more pregnant aspect of 
 the case is that the new society thus formed was the embryo 
 of the Christian Church. These men and women, in setting 
 aside all earthly obligations in order to serve Christ, affirmed 
 the vital principle, that henceforth in the very centre of the 
 world's life there was implanted another life, full of new re- 
 lationships, claiming precedence over all existing laws, and 
 linked together by adoring loyalty to Christ. And incredible 
 as it seemed that such a society should last, yet it has lasted 
 even to the present day. Throughout the centuries, and 
 even in the periods of the greatest laxity and corruption, the 
 Church of Christ has never failed to attract to itself men and 
 women who have sacrificed all worldly hopes for Christ's 
 sake, without a single pang of self-pity. They have held the 
 prizes of life but dross for Christ's sake, as Paul did. They 
 have found their deepest joy in friendship with people not of 
 
THE NEW SOCIETY 143 
 
 their kin, not their equals either in social condition or in in- 
 tellect, who nevertheless were dear to them because they 
 shared a common sentiment toward Christ. They have even 
 gone to the ends of the earth to impart to peoples naturally 
 repulsive and unnaturally degraded, the sentiment of love 
 for Christ which they themselves felt, and they have died as 
 martyrs sustained only by the ecstacy of that love. The New 
 Society which Christ inaugurated has proved itself capable 
 of prolonged life — or rather, we should say, incapable of 
 death ; and the principle of adoring loyalty to Himself from 
 which it sprang has proved itself more efficacious in the re- 
 newal of mankind than all the wisdom of the world's 
 philosophies. 
 
 One other feature of this movement must be noticed, be- 
 cause without it the whole movement would be unintelligible. 
 It is not in human nature to follow an example of impossi- 
 ble perfection. Some belief in one's self, or at least in 
 human nature as a whole, is needed before any strenuous 
 effort can be made to attain superior virtue. Jesus took 
 pains to affirm His faith in the perfectibility of human 
 nature. If He revealed Himself as perfect, it was to show 
 men the way of perfection. He deliberately counselled men 
 to be perfect " even as your Father in heaven is perfect," an 
 impossible command unless we recollect that perfection is a 
 matter of degree, and that the lily may be as perfect in its 
 fine adjustments as the oak, the dewdrop as fair and exqui- 
 site a miracle as the star. If Jesus presented the spectacle 
 of a unique perfection, yet after all the constituent elements 
 of that perfection were elements found in human nature it- 
 self. When a great musician like Dvorak writes his " Sym- 
 phony to the New World," he is not ashamed to take famil- 
 iar melodies, and even negro songs as the basis of his 
 music ; but he uses them with such breadth and mastery 
 
144 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 that they attain a dignity altogether unsuspected. Even so 
 Christ used the common strings of human nature, but 
 touched them with a master's hand. Divine as was the 
 music which fell upon men's ears, yet there ran through it 
 familiar notes, the golden threads of common melody, old and 
 sweet as human love, and faith, and hope themselves. Thus 
 men saw in Christ themselves as they might be. He was 
 man in His apotheosis, but still man. His faith in human 
 nature was so great that He spoke of Himself as an Exam- 
 ple, and taught men to hope that they might attain to the 
 mind that was in Him, and hereafter be for ever where He 
 was. Adoration in itself would have had no permanent up- 
 lifting power ; adoration joined with endeavor and with hope 
 is the mightiest of all forces in the growth of character ; and 
 the redemption which Christ achieved for man is the achieve- 
 ment of a new hope and endeavor kindled in man's own 
 bosom, and fed by adoring love. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 ONE OF THE DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 
 
 An ordinary biography seldom attempts more than the 
 general description of the thoughts and purposes of a human 
 life. An exact diary is wanting, for there are few lives that 
 can endure the test of a faithful diary. Such a record soon 
 becomes a wearisome and ungrateful task, and a sense of 
 triviality weighs upon the mind. But the life of the Son of 
 Man contains a long series of events, each one of which is of 
 undying interest to humanity. The diary of that life con- 
 tains nothing trivial, insignificant, or unworthy. The days 
 of the Son of Man are revelations and epitomes : revelations 
 of what human life can be in its highest dignity and grace ; 
 epitomes of the kind of thoughts, tempers, and acts which 
 make human life Divine. 
 
 The story of a single day in a memorable life, if faithfully 
 told, would certainly do more to explain that life than any 
 general description of its progress. Can we discover in the 
 Gospels any such specimen days in the life of Jesus ? The 
 looseness of the Gospel chronology , the Gospels being, as we 
 have seen, rather the scattered memorabilia of Christ, drawn 
 from many sources, than detailed monographs upon the life 
 of Christ, render such a task difficult. Nevertheless, on two 
 occasions in St. Matthew's Gospel we have what purports 
 to be the diary of a single day. One is a day devoted to 
 public instruction, the other a day devoted to philanthropic 
 toil. Let us follow Christ through these two days of His 
 earthly life. In doing so we shall perhaps obtain a clearer 
 10 145 
 
146 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 picture of what that public life was like, what were its 
 duties, its toils, aud its triumphs, than is possible in any 
 general study of the Gospels. 
 
 In the thirteenth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel we have 
 what purports to be the story of a single day of public in- 
 struction beside the Lake of Galilee. No fewer than seven 
 of the most striking parables of Christ are included in the 
 teaching of this single day. St. Mark, in narrating the 
 teaching of this same memorable day, even adds another 
 parable, and concludes with an account of the storm on the 
 lake which subsided at the word of Christ. It is extremely 
 improbable that all these great parables were uttered on the 
 same day. It is far more likely that they represent a 
 course of teaching beside the lake. The common ethical 
 idea, which gives a certain unity to these seven parables of 
 the sower, of the wheat and tares, of the grain of mustard- 
 seed, of the leaven, of the hid treasure, the pearls and the 
 fisherman's net, would naturally suggest their association in 
 a single category. The memory of one hearer, or group of 
 hearers, would supply one parable; other hearers would 
 supply other parables ; and it would seem to no one an out- 
 rage of historic truth that these teachings, so similar in form 
 and spirit, should be represented as the sections of one con- 
 tinuous discourse. If the Gospels are, as we suppose them, 
 the recollections of many minds compiled by writers eager 
 to secure information from any source that seemed authentic, 
 it would undoubtedly appear to such writers a convenient 
 and harmless device to group together, as apparently the 
 teachings of a single day, parables which are strikingly alike 
 in spirit and design, and which were certainly uttered in the 
 same place and to the same audience of Galileans. 
 
 But however we may determine this question of literary 
 criticism, the thirteenth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel does 
 
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST 147 
 
 unquestionably give us a singularly vivid picture of a day in 
 Christ's life, and of the method of His teaching. Christ was 
 at this time the guest of one of His adoring friends in Ca- 
 pernaum, perhaps of Simon Peter, or of Chuza, the steward 
 of Herod, whose wife Joanna we have mentioned already as 
 one of that loyal band of women who were among His earliest 
 adherents, and "ministered unto Him of their substance." 
 In the East the business of the day begins at sunrise, and 
 with the first light of day Jesus would rise and seek the 
 shores of the lake He always loved. In those meditative 
 hours when the spirit of poetry is abroad, and the world, 
 bathed in dew and sunlight, seems new created, His mind 
 received those images and formulated those ideas which lent 
 such lyric charm to the teachings of the day. The fisher- 
 man, returning from his night of toil, discerned that solitary 
 figure on the bench, and little knew that while he drew his 
 nets to land he was furnishing the watchful eye of Jesus 
 with immortal images which were destined to delight the 
 world through many generations. The sower or the plough- 
 man, laboring on the fragrant furrow, knew not that in the 
 rude simplicity of his rustic toil were hidden metaphors and 
 pictures through which the eternal ideas of human piety and 
 truth were to find interpretation. Nature, equally uncon- 
 scious of her office, in these hours was also contributing her 
 wisdom to the mind of Jesus. The purple anemone, which 
 gave the fields the aspect of some intricately patterned Per- 
 sian carpet, suggested to Him the exquisite comparison be- 
 tween the raiment of the lily, woven on the looms of God, 
 and the artificial glories of Solomon. The nesting birds, 
 happy in their frugal life, pointed the contrast with the un- 
 easy, vain, and careworn life of man. The wide simplicity 
 and restfulness of that bright morning world breathed the 
 eternal question, old as human thought, and often asked with 
 
148 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 a sense of torture and despair by those who chafe beneath 
 the burden of existence, 
 
 " And what is life that we should moan, 
 Why make us such ado ? " 
 
 Presently the spell is broken and the sacramental hour of 
 thought is at an end. From Capernaum itself, and from 
 many a neighboring town and village, throngs of folk ap- 
 proach, disrespectful of the privacy of Christ, in the urgent 
 need they have for such gifts as He can give them. In the 
 crowd are aged men, the weight of whose infirmities seems 
 dissolved in the rapture of a novel happiness ; blind men, led 
 by expectant friends and relatives ; sick men, carried on their 
 beds or sleeping carpets ; women, dressed in the traditional 
 robes of blue and white, bearing children in their arms ; 
 Pharisees with their broad phylacteries bound on arm and 
 forehead ; perhaps a passing patrician of Herod's court 
 clothed in purple, or a group of merchants, mounted on their 
 silent camels, stained with travel ; and certainly, on the fringe 
 of the increasing crowd, conscious of their dreadful mutila- 
 tions and their outcast shame, lepers, with half-covered faces, 
 uttering their miserable complaint, " Unclean, unclean." The 
 enthusiasm of this motley crowd is extraordinary. The 
 women even thrust their children forward to the knees of 
 Jesus that He may bless them. And already nearing sails 
 upon the lake announce other visitors from Tiberias or the 
 wild shores of the country of the Gadarenes ; and, hidden 
 by the folding of the hills, groups of pilgrims hasten down 
 the long descent of the road that joins Cana and Nazareth 
 with Galilee. Pressed upon by the tumultuous crowd, Jesus 
 retires upon the lake. A friendly fisherman beckons Him to 
 his boat, and He enters it and sits down to teach the multi- 
 tude that now throngs the shore. To this strange congrega- 
 
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST 119 
 
 tion Christ speaks in language entirely adapted to their 
 needs. With an infinite condescension, with what proves an 
 infinite wisdom too, He speakes in parables which the 
 youngest or least keen of wit can understand. Small won- 
 der that these sayings of His were remembered with a per- 
 fect accuracy ; they were indissolubly linked with images at 
 once simple and familiar. There was no one in all this 
 various crowd who had not seen the things of which He 
 spake ; nay, in the unchanging East, where, as by the touch 
 of a magician's wand, life has stood arrested for two thou- 
 sand years, he who wanders through the places Jesus trod 
 may still discern the very things He saw. They saw, as we 
 still see, on these Galilean hills, the shepherd dividing the 
 sheep from the goats at sunset ; the sudden rain-storm flood- 
 ing the narrow gorge with a torrent, which in a moment 
 sweeps away the house that stands upon the sand ; the 
 plougher who, with his hand ujion the plough, dares not 
 look back, because he has but one hand to guide the cum- 
 brous implement, while the other holds the ox-goad, or the 
 " prick," against which the impatient beast kicks in vain ; the 
 birds of the air, even then devouring the good seed behind 
 the sower's basket, or the tares mingling with wheat, or the 
 new corn already burnt up by the sun that beats upon the 
 shallow soil. Not only Nature but the crowd itself furnished 
 Christ with parables ; for the grave merchant on his camel 
 had the pearls of price concealed within his bosom ; and the 
 net which gathered every kind of fish, both good and bad, 
 lay upon the shore. So He talked with them, and the long 
 day was but as one delightful moment to the listeners. 
 Then, as night falls, the boat hoists its sail and stands out 
 into the lake ; and He, wearied with His toil, falls asleej) 
 upon a pillow which some kind hand has placed for Him in 
 the " hinder part " of the little ship. 
 
150 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 Such is the picture of a day in the life of Christ which 
 was devoted to the work of public teaching : " One of the 
 days of the Son of Man." 
 
 If, however, we turn to an earlier chapter of St. Matthew's 
 Gospel — the ninth — we find from the first to the twenty-sixth 
 verses an account of a day in Christ's life much more varied, 
 and even more impressive in the sense it gives us of the in- 
 tense and yet deliberate energy with which He lived. Among 
 many things in Christ's mode of thought strikingly at vari- 
 ance with ordinary Oriental ideas is His habitual conception 
 of life as labor and endeavor. He speaks of work as com- 
 posing the rhythm of the universe : " My Father works, and 
 I work." He describes Himself as working while it is tor 
 day because the night comes when men cannot work, and 
 counsels His disciples to live in the same strenuous spirit. 
 He speaks in yet intenser language of Himself as straitened 
 till His work is accomplished. And in one of His most 
 memorable parables, that of the laborers in the vineyard, 
 He composes what is really a noble idyll and encomium of 
 work, blaming men for the niggard spirit which takes work 
 only as a means of material reward, instead of rejoicing in a 
 love of work for its own sake. This conception of the dig- 
 nity of work is quite at variance with the common languor of 
 Oriental thought and life. In lands of great fertility, blessed 
 with abundant sunlight, work really occupies but a small 
 part of daily life. In such lands the ordinary needs of life 
 are soon and easily satisfied, and hence, if the Oriental has 
 always been a dreamer it is because the nature of his life af- 
 fords him ample time for reverie. But the life of Christ is 
 in striking contradiction to the habits of His countrymen. 
 It is a continuous expenditure of energy, " unresting and un- 
 hasting." It leaves one breathless with the sense of multi- 
 plied and various interests, which made one day in such a 
 
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST 151 
 
 life more than a year in the lives of ordinary men. St. Mat- 
 thew gives ns the record of such a day, and in this case 
 we cannot doubt that the incidents which he enumerates 
 really happened in a single day. We cannot doubt for this 
 most excellent of reasons, that the day was the most 
 memorable of all the days in Matthew's own life, for it was 
 on that day that he received his call to the apostleship. 
 Here, then, is an absolutely truthful and minute record of a 
 series of events, each one of which must have made a deep 
 impression on the mind of the narrator, because they were 
 for him an amazing introduction to a new and unexampled 
 kind of life. 
 
 Let us follow this daj in the life of Jesus ; it may serve 
 as "an epitome of the entire Galilean ministry. 
 
 It begins, as usual, with the earliest light, when Jesus, 
 practically expelled from the country of the Gadarenes, 
 where His presence has excited panic and dismay, " enters 
 into a ship and passes over, and comes into his own city " of 
 Capernaum. He immediately goes to the house of one of 
 His friends, and the circumstance that on this occasion He 
 appears to have taught in the house rather than by the lake- 
 side, may perhaps indicate that it was the winter season. 
 His arrival was not unexpected. Various doctors of the law 
 and Pharisees " out of every town of Galilee, and Judea, and 
 Jerusalem," had already assembled in the hope of hearing 
 Him. The scene may be pictured thus : The house in which 
 He taught was the residence of some one of superior social 
 station ; possibly of Chuza, the steward of Herod. It was a 
 square structure, with a flat roof protected by a battlement, 
 containing a court}'ard, round which ran a covered gallery, 
 from which the various upper rooms opened. This gallery, 
 lit by the mild winter's sunshine, was the pleasantest place 
 in the house, and it was here that Christ sat to address the 
 
152 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 audience which already thronged the courtyard below to suf- 
 focation. At His side, or in one of the upper rooms, con- 
 tiguous to the covered gallery, sat the Pharisees and doctors 
 of the law, eager and critical of all He said. Suddenly His 
 discourse is interrupted by a terrible commotion at the gate- 
 way of the courtyard. A group of people, bearing a para- 
 lytic man upon his pallet, or some roughly extemporized 
 stretcher, is endeavoring to force a way into the densely 
 crowded courtyard. This proves impossible, and when the 
 tumult has subsided Jesus continues His discourse. But 
 these eager friends of the suffering and helpless man are not 
 so easily discouraged. Every Eastern house has an outside 
 staircase leading to the roof, and it soon appears that the 
 custodians of the paralytic, repulsed at the gateway of the 
 courtyard, are ascending the stairway to the roof. It is a 
 matter of a few moments only to remove the tiles from the 
 roofing of the gallery, and through the opening thus made 
 there presently appears the dreadful spectacle of the para- 
 lytic, slowly lowered on his pallet to the very feet of Jesus. 
 Jesus is much moved by the faith and enterprise which thus 
 disregards every obstacle in order to reach Him, and with a 
 word He heals the man. This healing act is performed be- 
 neath a multitude of curious eyes ; it is unquestionably suc- 
 cessful. The man who a moment before was incapable of 
 the least movement, takes up his bed and walks. 
 
 This miracle of healing is related by three of the Evan- 
 gelists, from which we may judge that it made a deep im- 
 pression on those who witnessed it, and was regarded by the 
 Evangelists themselves as typical. Typical it certainly was 
 of the pure and catholic humanity of Christ, for there was 
 nothing in this palsied man to distinguish him from a mul- 
 titude of fellow-sufferers, and nothing in his subsequent 
 career, so far as we know, to justify a Divine interposition 
 
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST 153 
 
 on his behalf. We are accustomed, in noticing the extraor- 
 dinary turns of events by which great men became what they 
 were, to think that at least it is not incredible that God 
 should make His will manifest in episodes of action and ex- 
 perience which were fruitful of good for the entire human 
 race. If we may say it with reverence, may we not conclude 
 that it was worth God's while to interfere with the placid 
 normal course of human life in the vision that made Saul of 
 Tarsus an apostle, or in the thunderstorm which made 
 Luther a reformer? But this is, after all, to assume that 
 God is a respecter of persons. Christ, in establishing a re- 
 ligion of humanity, taught an entirely contrary view of God's 
 relations to man. God's method of saving the world is not 
 a method which saves first the best and cleverest people, but 
 the ignorant equally with the clever, the humblest equally 
 with the highest. In one of His most famous parables 
 Christ pushed this truth to an extreme point when He taught 
 that it Avas the duty of the man who gave a feast to invite 
 the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind before all other 
 persons, for the strange reason that they could not recom- 
 pense him. But strange as the counsel seems, yet it is a 
 definition of Christ's own spirit. That spirit is admirably 
 shown in this act which heals a man who cannot recompense 
 Him by the genius that sets the world aflame, or even by the 
 social influence that gives Sclat to His ministry — a man 
 wholly poor and inconsiderable who can requite his Healer 
 with nothing but gratitude. 
 
 This humane act was not completed without controversy. 
 Christ's address to the man is couched in extraordinary lan- 
 guage. He practically treats the man's infirmity and his sin 
 as one, and even hints that his infirmity may have had its 
 root in sin. This should scarcely have astonished the Phar- 
 isees and doctors of the law, for it was a view of human suf- 
 
154 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 fering peculiarly Jewish. Without attempting to discuss a 
 question so abstruse, we can scarcely doubt that spiritual 
 and physical malady are often more closely allied than we 
 suspect. Few men who have ever studied life with a physi- 
 cian's eye would dispute that the morbidly delicate nervous 
 system not seldom owes something to the follies and indis- 
 cretions of youth ; that half the diseases to which flesh is 
 heir arise from some direct contravention of natural laws ; 
 that sickness is often the account that Nature sends to a 
 debtor who has wasted his substance in riotous living ; and 
 perhaps, if the physician dared to speak the whole unpalat- 
 able truth to his patient, he would say, " It is not medicine 
 you want, but a new conception of life, the freedom from un- 
 natural strain, the conquest of unruly appetite." But it is 
 one thing to hold a theory, another thing to see it pushed to 
 its logical result. A theory so treated has often the effect of 
 irony. When Christ asks, " Whether is it easier to say, Thy 
 sins be forgiven thee ; or to say, Arise and walk? " the Phar- 
 isees feel that He is being ironical at their expense, and the 
 last thing a pedant can forgive is irony. Thus the first act 
 in this memorable day is to provoke in many minds that 
 spirit of envenomed controversy, which, slowly gathering 
 force, was destined finally to plan and execute the tragedy 
 of Calvary. 
 
 This was the event of the early morning ; the programme 
 of the day was far from finished. The assembly in the house 
 of Chuza breaks up in something like tumult and certainly 
 in discord. As Christ leaves the house He sees Matthew 
 sitting at the seat of custom, and summons him to the apos- 
 tleship. Matthew had, perhaps, witnessed the healing of the 
 paralytic, and had gone back to his business deeply thrilled 
 by what he saw. How poor and mean his occupation must 
 have seemed when such marvels were happening at his door : 
 
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST 155 
 
 what wonder that he feels the call of Christ an honor, and 
 instantly obeys ! In his gratitude he at once makes a feast, 
 and invites Christ to be his guest. To his table that day 
 there naturally crowded many of his personal friends, en- 
 gaged like himself in the work of tax-gathering, and " the 
 publicans and sinners " sat down to meat with Jesus and His 
 disciples. This promiscuity was deeply offensive to such of 
 the Pharisees as had followed Christ to Matthew's house. 
 Forgetting that they also were guests, they ask with an un- 
 pardonable rudeness, " Why eateth your Master with pub- 
 licans and sinners ? " Christ's reply is a touching and dig- 
 nified exposition of His whole ministry. He reminds them 
 of what had already come to be a cardinal principle in His 
 ministry, that He went first not to those who needed Him, 
 but to those who needed Him most. He was like an honest 
 physician who went not to those who were whole, but to those 
 who were sick. Some of John's disciples, who appear to 
 have been present, shocked perhaps by the prodigality and 
 joyousness of the feast, interpose with a question about fast- 
 ing. Christ replies with another question, " How should the 
 children of the Bride-chamber fast while the Bridegroom is 
 with them ? " He affirms once more the joyousness of His 
 ministry, and its complete emancipation from ascetic scruples. 
 He does more — He defines it as something Divinely new, 
 which has no need for Jewish sanctions, and cannot be joined 
 to the frayed, worn-out fabric of Jewish tradition. " No man 
 putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that 
 which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the 
 rent is made worse." Then once more the course of teach- 
 ing is interrupted by one of those appeals to His pity which 
 Christ never disregarded. A certain ruler, crushed with sor- 
 row, fresh from the chamber of mortality, importunes Him 
 in language in which faith surely touches its noblest climax 
 
156 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 — "My daughter is eveu now dead, but come and lay Thy 
 hand upon her and she shall live." And Jesus arose and 
 followed hiin, and so did His disciples. 
 
 And now once more an extraordinary scene unfolds itself. 
 Through the narrow streets of Capernaum the whole con- 
 course pours to the house of the afflicted ruler. Even as it 
 passes wonders happen. A poor woman, wrought into an 
 ecstasy of faith, touches the hem of Christ's garment in the 
 throng, and is made whole. The evening is now falling. At 
 the door of the ruler's house the paid mourners are assem- 
 bled, chanting the beauty or grace of the dead child in a 
 melancholy pa?an ; the flute-players pour shrill music on the 
 evening air ; within the house, amid tears not mercenary but 
 real, already the body of the child is washed and anointed, 
 and wrapped in the finest linen for the last journey to what 
 the Hebrew exquisitely described as, " The house of meet- 
 ing," or " The field of weepers." To this crowd of mourners 
 Christ addresses one word — "The maid is not dead, but 
 sleepeth." "Whether the child was indeed dead as the father 
 supposed, or asleep in some deep trance which simulated 
 death, as the words of Jesus would certainly imply, is a 
 question that need not be discussed. The beauty of the 
 scene is not in the restoration of the child, but in the pity 
 and lmnianitj r of Christ. Upon the bed of death the fair 
 child lies, with folded hands : Christ unlocks these rigid 
 palms, and takes her by the hand, and calls upon her to 
 arise ; and behold the closed lids lift, the eyes are fixed on 
 Him in a glance of happy awe ; and, fresh and composed as 
 one awakened from a wholesome slumber, the child arises, in 
 all the glow of youth and health. 
 
 With this act the day closes ; for the further incidents re- 
 lated in this chapter cannot be definitely identified as hap- 
 pening on this day of Matthew's call. But how wonderful 
 
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST 157 
 
 is the impression of benignant energy produced by the mere 
 recital of these events ! Within the brief compass of a win- 
 ter's day we have three gracious deeds of healing : two acute 
 controversies, first with the Pharisees and then with John's 
 disciples, each in turn producing expositions of Christ's 
 thought of the highest value and significance ; and finally we 
 have an act involving the gravest of responsibilities, the 
 choice of an apostle. Not one selfish thought or act intruded 
 on it ; it was a day lived utterly for others. Nor was it a day 
 apart ; save in its close sequence of miraculous acts, it is 
 but a sample day in the working life of Christ. Perhaps we 
 should not even treat it as exceptional in respect of miracles. 
 If we are prepared to trust the Gospel records at all, we can- 
 not but perceive that the unreported life of Christ must have 
 been even more crowded with acts of healing than the re- 
 ported. " When the even was come," says St. Matthew — it 
 was an evening in this same town of Capernaum — "they 
 brought unto Him many that were possessed with devils, and 
 He cast out the spirits with His word, and healed all that 
 were sick." What a life of strain and infinite activity was 
 this, which found itself always in contact with human mis- 
 ery, always ready to respond to the instinct of pity, and amid 
 these toils of an infinite benignity still able to conduct a hun- 
 dred controversies and to enunciate supreme truths, for the 
 discovery of one of which an ancient sage would have counted 
 an entire life of meditation an easy price. But such was the 
 daily life of Christ, and it is small wonder that those who 
 can reflect on these things see on these illumined shores and 
 fields of Galilee the footprints of One whom they must needs 
 call Divine. All questions of what may justly constitute a 
 miracle fade before such a vision ; the true and ever-living 
 miracle is the Divine Benignity of Christ. 
 
CHAPTEK XII 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 In the meantime, amid this constant stress of public work, 
 there was a private life of Jesus, which was lived apart from 
 the world and was uninvaded by its tumults. Completely as 
 Christ lived for others, yet He reserved those rights in Him- 
 self, which are among the most sacred and important since 
 they guard the secret and guarantee the growth of person- 
 ality. He often sought to be alone. He sometimes fled from 
 the multitude He had attracted. The company of His disci- 
 ples was not always agreeable to Him. A passion for retire- 
 ment sometimes led Him into solitary places, at other times 
 to the houses of adoring friends. The public man too often 
 cherishes a passion for publicity, which is barely distinguish- 
 able from vanity, though it may possibly be an almost noble 
 form of vanity ; but of such a passion Jesus shows no trace. 
 His conduct is a striking lesson in that kind of self-reserva- 
 tion which is absolutely necessary to all men, but especially 
 to the public man, because without it character deteriorates, 
 and the springs of thought are unconsciously impoverished. 
 
 The private life of Jesus may be traced in the nature of 
 His friendships. Though He called twelve apostles it would 
 appear that He did not admit them to an equal intimacy. 
 This distinction of favor in a small society essentially demo- 
 cratic was a source of much heart-burning and jealousy. 
 Perhaps it did something to alienate the loyalty of the one 
 Judean apostle of the group, Judas of Kerioth, and in doing 
 this laid the train for that violent explosion of revenge in the 
 
 158 
 
THE PRIVATE LIFE OF JESUS 159 
 
 heart of a disappointed man, which culminated in treachery 
 and betrayal. But it was a course of action inevitable in the 
 nature of the case. There were thoughts and hopes in the 
 mind of Christ which could scarcely be confided to the entire 
 group of apostles. The general relation of Christ to His 
 apostles was that of a master to his scholars, a prophet to 
 his neophytes. He explained to them His parables, and 
 opened to them the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. His 
 chief aim was to prepare them as missionaries of His truth. 
 But the original thinker needs a warmer atmosphere than 
 this in which his thought may expand. He needs the quick 
 and sympathetic comradeship of minds that will discern his 
 thoughts almost before they are clear to himself. The gulf 
 which divides an admiring from an intimate friendship is very 
 wide. The intimate friend is he to whom a man can disclose 
 himself with entire freedom, with a happy consciousness that 
 love will make good the laciuue of his speech, and will even 
 permit him that sociable silence which is more interpretative 
 than speech. Such intimate friends Jesus found in Peter 
 and John, and, in a less degree, in James. For Peter es- 
 pecially He cherished a warm affection, which even the great- 
 est faults of character were powerless to dissolve. When He 
 had anything of importance to communicate it was His cus- 
 tom to take these three disciples apart, and talk the matter 
 over with them. He permitted them great freedoms. Peter 
 felt no scruple in rebuking his Master for what seemed to 
 him sad and foolish fears about the future. He also ac- 
 corded them special privileges. They alone were admitted 
 into the chamber where the child of Jairus lay dead. They 
 alone were with Him on the snow-clad brow of Hermon when 
 He was transfigured. And in all these episodes we see Jesus 
 very conscious of His need of friendship, sensitively eager to 
 avail Himself of its peaceful pleasures, and constantly with- 
 
160 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 drawing from the clamor of a public life to taste its consola- 
 tions. 
 
 Christ's friendship with women was even more remarkable. 
 We have already seen that in Capernaum and its neighbor- 
 hood there was a group of women " who ministered unto Him 
 of their substance." Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's 
 steward, was the chief of these ; an unknown woman, bearing 
 the lovely Jewish name of Susanna, or "the lily," was 
 another. It has been suggested that Chuza may have been 
 the centurion who besought Jesus in Cana of Galilee to heal 
 his son, in which case Joanna would have abundant cause to 
 show the liveliest gratitude to Christ. But deserving as these 
 names are of immortal recollection, there is one other name 
 which eclipses theirs in interest — that of Mary of Magdala. 
 Magdala lies in a bend of the lake upon the green plain of 
 Gennesaret, at a distance of about two miles from the town 
 of Tiberias, and at about double that distance from Capernaum. 
 In the days of Christ it was wealthy and prosperous, the 
 home of springs which were much valued for dyeing processes, 
 the haunt of doves which were bred for the purposes of Tem- 
 ple offerings. Many boats anchored in its placid bay ; and 
 in the little town the sound of the loom was never still. The 
 shell-fish found around the shores of Magdala were especially 
 valued for the purple dye they yielded — " the whelk's pearl- 
 sheeted lip " which gave the famous Tyrrhene dye used in 
 the rich dresses of the great was of the same species. Mary 
 was, perhaps, the daughter of some wealthy dyer or manu- 
 facturer of Magdala. She appears at least to have been the 
 mistress of her own movements, and able to follow Jesus to 
 Jerusalem. Until the day when Jesus entered Magdala her 
 life had been a misery, and a torture. She was afflicted with 
 some obscure form of hysteric disease, which the popular 
 phrase of the time, applied to all mental derangements, de- 
 
THE PRIVATE LIFE OF JESUS 161 
 
 scribed as " possession of the devil." But from that day a 
 new life opened for Mary of Magdala. She became the he- 
 roine of an ideal affection. The world held for her but one 
 name and one person. The common error, which has done 
 her the gross injustice of making her name the synonym of 
 an odious form of vice, is founded on a total misconception 
 of her history. The title Magdalene is undoubtedly derived 
 from Magdala, and she is called Mary Magdalene merely to 
 distinguish her from the other Marys of the Gospels. So 
 far is she from deserving the odium of vice, that everything 
 in her history points to a nature of extreme sweetness and 
 purity, and a character of much nobility. Hereafter we shall 
 see the unexampled part she plays in the triumph of the new 
 religion ; and it will then become of great importance to rec- 
 ollect her real character. At present we see her only as one 
 of the closest friends of Jesus. 
 
 Along the lake shore, then, there had sprung up a sister- 
 hood of sweet and gracious souls whose bond was devotion 
 to their Lord. He abode in their houses, He accepted gifts 
 from them, and they accounted themselves amply repaid by 
 the joy of His society. They gave Him that peculiar sym- 
 pathy and highly idealized affection which, to a sensitive and 
 lofty nature, are the very spikenard and the frankincense of 
 love, rare and precious indeed, and seldom found by even the 
 most fortunate. 
 
 In the list of the women friends of Jesus the name of 
 Mary of Bethany can never be omitted, although her oppor- 
 tunities of association with the Master were perhaps more 
 limited because Christ spent much less time in Judea than 
 in Galilee. Mary of Bethany appears to have supplied an 
 element of intellectual sympathy, always rare in friendships 
 between man and woman, and especially rare among the 
 women of the East. She was a woman of fine discrim ma- 
 il 
 
162 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 tion, keen in mind as she was warm of heart, and fitted to 
 follow with comprehension the loftier thoughts of Jesus. 
 That Christ did make her His confidant is indicated in the 
 phrase of St. Luke, " Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and 
 heard His word." St. Luke draws a contrast between Mary 
 and her sister Martha, which is clearly unfavorable to 
 Martha, and he relates a saying of Christ's which appears to 
 be a gentle irony on Martha's character. But the very man- 
 ner of Christ's speech reveals the terms of intimacy on 
 which He stood with both sisters, for irony, however gentle, 
 is a weapon dangerous to friendship, unless the friendship 
 be peculiarly secure and intimate. Martha loved Christ as 
 sincerely as her sister, but with a kind of affection more prac- 
 tical and less tinged with mystic rapture. Both sisters were 
 in the secret of Christ's movements, for at the time of their 
 brother's sickness they were able at once to communicate 
 with Him in the region beyond Jordan where He was preach- 
 ing. In this home at Bethany Christ's happiest hours were 
 spent. It was from this house that He set out on the great 
 day when He passed over the Mount of Olives in triumph, 
 and entered the Golden Gate of Jerusalem amid the accla- 
 mation of the multitude. It was to this house He returned 
 when the day was over. And, as if to show how imperish- 
 able was the memory of this home, which had so often been 
 the haven of His weariness ; how tender His recollections of 
 the faithfulness and love which had eased the burden of His 
 toilsome days, and soothed His last hours ; it is near the 
 house of Mary that He takes His eternal farewell of earth : 
 " He led them out as far «.s io Bethany, and He lifted up His 
 hands, and blessed them ; and it came to pass while He 
 blessed them, He was parted from them and carried up into 
 heaven." 
 
 Bethany remains for ever sacred in the annals of love and 
 
THE PRIVATE LIFE OF JESUS 163 
 
 friendship, but we can hardly doubt that there were many 
 other homes that knew something of the secret of Christ's 
 private life. A pleasant air of hospitality pervades a large 
 portion of the Gospels. If the Jew ever rose above the pet- 
 tiness of race antipathy and dogmatic rancor, it was in the 
 exercise of those rites of hospitality which among all Eastern 
 peoples are esteemed the most sacred and gracious of all 
 duties. It is certainly among Eastern peoples, and those 
 alone, if we except certain savage tribes, that a true sense of 
 social brotherhood exists. The exclusive family circle and 
 the barred door are things peculiar to the jealous civiliza- 
 tions of the West. But in the East the path is made easy 
 for the stranger and the wanderer by a dignified hospitality 
 which treats a guest rather as the temporary master of the 
 house than as a passing visitor. Thus we find even Phari- 
 sees receiving Christ into their homes, and making feasts for 
 Him ; and if, at these feasts, sometimes the spirit of contro- 
 versy broke out, it was usually subdued by the traditional 
 sense of courtesy due to a guest. It would be an error to 
 deduce from such a saying as " The foxes have holes, and 
 the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not 
 where to lay His head," that the life of Christ, during His 
 public ministry, was in any real sense an outcast life. He 
 had, indeed, no secure and settled home, but He had many 
 homes. "We often find Him at the tables of persons of some 
 social distinction ; oftener still at the tables of those whose 
 wealth attracted social odium ; and it was one of the re- 
 proaches brought against Him by the more austere, that He 
 was too careless of His company, and that His progresses 
 were everywhere attended by joyous feasts and social gather- 
 ings. But probably the houses of the poor knew most of 
 Him. In the darkening eve He would draw near the door 
 of some poor fisherman of the lake, or some artisan of Beth- 
 
164 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 saida or Magdala, and enter in, and join the family in the 
 simple meal of bread and olives and rough country wine. 
 He would gather the children round His knees and bless 
 them, and use His matchless power of parable to sow the 
 seeds of goodness in their tender hearts. Friends and neigh- 
 bors would drop in, and form a wondering group around 
 Him as He talked. The night sped on winged feet — ah ! all 
 too swiftly for these listeners who heard One speak " as 
 never man spake." Then came the evening prayer, the final 
 blessing, the last lingering word of counsel or of comfort to 
 some newly-won disciple ; and on a score of memories there 
 is inscribed an image and an idyll which is never more 
 effaced. 
 
 But the life of Christ reveals a yet more sacred kind of 
 privacy. Hospitality, indeed, secured for Him a refuge from 
 the pressure of the crowd, but there were times when He 
 needed a refuge from man himself. This asylum of a deeper 
 peace He found in Nature. However man may disapprove 
 the theory of a cloistered life, yet the silence and seclusion 
 of the cloister do represent a real need for all men of medi- 
 tative mind. He who has no periods of silence soon finds 
 himself unfitted for a life of public speech by mere paucity 
 of ideas. For ideas only come to growth in silence. Or, if 
 this judgment seem too severe, may we not say that ideas are 
 like the flowers that would soon lose their perfume without 
 the dews of night, and that meditation may be thus described 
 as the renewing dew of thought? Especially is this true of 
 the great mystic and poetic ideas through which in all ages 
 religion has expressed itself. When Elijah found the real 
 revelation of God in " a still, small voice," he expressed the 
 eternal truth that the world must be stilled around us before 
 the sense of God is deeply felt. Christ constantly acted on 
 this profound intuition. While in no way encouraging the 
 
THE PRIVATE LIFE OF JESUS 165 
 
 ideal of a cloistered life, but rather rebuking it by the very 
 nature of His own daily ministry, He did show in His ex- 
 ample the need and use of meditation. When in Galilee He 
 often sought the mountains that surround the lake, and re- 
 joiced to be alone among them. When in Jerusalem the 
 Mount of Olives was His leafy cloister, where, sometimes 
 early in the morning, sometimes late at night, He retired to 
 pray. Prayer and meditation were the daily rule of life for 
 Him. When the end comes it finds Him praying in that 
 very garden which had so often been the witness of His soli- 
 tude, the shrine of His devoutest thought, and the altar of His 
 supplications. 
 
 The prayerfulness of Jesus is no doubt a mystery. It 
 might be argued that no one needed the help of prayer so 
 little, since He claimed to dwell in the very bosom of God. 
 But such a conclusion arises from a total misconception of 
 what prayer really means. Prayer, according to the defini- 
 tion given to us by Christ, is not so much the asking for 
 some definite good which we suppose we need, as the at- 
 tempt to lift our souls into the Divine atmosphere. It is 
 thus the language or the expression of the soul. Reason 
 may suggest, and with admirable logic, that it is absurd to 
 suppose that the entire predetermined course of human 
 events should be set aside by the prayer of an individual, 
 who is but an infinitesimal atom in the congregated life of 
 man. Christ's reply is that the use of prayer is not to de- 
 flect the will of God for our own supposed good, but to rec- 
 oncile ourselves to that will as the highest good. 
 
 " Whate'er is good to wish, wish that of heaven; 
 But if for any wish thou dar'st not pray, 
 Then pray to God to cast that wish away." 
 
 Piety might suggest, with a logic not less lucid, that if God 
 
166 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 does indeed know what is good for us, it is foolish to impor- 
 tune Him for what He will not fail to give. But this con- 
 ception reduces the universe to a mere bureaucratic govern- 
 ment, whereas Christ regarded it as a household or a family. 
 The child may be well assured of the settled benignity of his 
 parent, but that child would be very sullen and unlovable 
 who had no requests to make of the parent. The requests 
 of the child, so constant and perhaps so unreasonable, are, 
 nevertheless, so many expressions of faith and trust, and are 
 the alphabet of the affections. So Christ took pains to 
 teach, in two singular parables, that God loves to be impor- 
 tuned by His children, even as a good parent does. The 
 man who opens the door at midnight to his friend does so 
 from no spirit of generosity, but simply to get rid of him. 
 The unjust judge, who at last deals with the widow's wrongs, 
 does so from no sense either of sympathy or justice, but 
 merely to escape her importunity. The meaning of Christ 
 appears to be, that if men would devote the same energy of 
 desire to spiritual good which they give to temporal they 
 would find a response beyond all their hopes. Generosity 
 or judgment wrung from the bad by importunity may seem 
 an unsafe and doubtful analogue to apply to God ; but it at 
 least suggests that the Divine benignity when importuned 
 Avill act with a superior readiness and grace, and that the 
 value of importunity is the intensity wh' h it communicates 
 to the human spirit. " If ye being evil," and therefore often 
 grudging and ungenerous, "know how to give good gifts 
 unto your children, how much more shall your Father in 
 heaven give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him ? " 
 
 But we are not left to parables, from which various and 
 even opposite deductions may be drawn, to learn how Christ 
 regarded prayer. St. Luke tells us that, " as He was pray- 
 ing in a certain place, when He ceased one of His disciples 
 
THE PRIVATE LIFE OF JESUS 167 
 
 said unto Him, Lord, teach us to pray." The occasion was 
 perhaps some quiet devotional meeting among the hills or 
 olive-gardens, when the disciples listened with a sacred awe 
 to the voice of Christ in prayer, and their uplifted hearts 
 coveted so great a gift. Christ grants their request by fram- 
 ing for them the noble form of supplication which we know 
 as the "Lord's Prayer." He meant it as a model, and yet it 
 may be said that no acknowledged model has ever been so 
 generally neglected. We may at once justify the melancholy 
 truth of this statement by comparing the clauses of this Di- 
 vine prayer with the common human temper and modes of 
 supplication. At the root of most prayer lies the old pagan 
 conception of gods, either malevolent or careless, who have 
 to be propitiated ; but this prayer commences with a note of 
 joyous confidence in God, "Our Father, who art in heaven." 
 Human prayer most frequently applies itself to the request 
 for some benefit apparently essential to the earthly life and 
 present happiness. This prayer contains but one petition 
 for an earthly good, and this boon the very least that can be 
 asked, " Give us this day our daily bread." Even among 
 men of excellent virtues the act of prayer is usually dissoci- 
 ated from any antecedent claim of character ; but in this 
 prayer character is made the antecedent of all true supplica- 
 tion, for in asking the forgiveness of sin the claim is urged, 
 "For we also forgive everyone that is indebted to us." 
 Finally, if we divide the clauses of the Lord's Prayer into 
 groups, we find that the first four clauses are passionate as- 
 pirations, not for any human good but for the complete tri- 
 umph of the Divine will in earth and heaven ; the fifth alone 
 touches on the temporal and earthly life ; the three follow- 
 ing petitions are for spiritual blessings only, the forgiveness 
 of sin, and the victory over evil and temptation ; and then 
 the prayer closes with pure ascription and doxology, the 
 
1G8 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 soul soaring, as it were, beyond its own loftiest desires into the 
 clear empyrean, from which God's kingdom is seen as actual 
 and eternal. Thus the Lord's Prayer is something more than 
 a model prayer ; it is a definition of the principles of prayer. 
 The words in which St. Luke describes the occasion of its 
 utterance admit another interpretation. " As He was pray- 
 ing in a certain place " may very possibly refer not to a 
 semi-public, but to a private act of prayer, in which Christ 
 was surprised by His disciples. St. Luke seems to indicate 
 that " the place " was in the neighborhood of Bethany ; per- 
 haps some grove of palms attached to the house of Mary, or 
 some retired spot on the adjacent slopes of Olivet. There 
 the disciples came seeking Him, and saw Him kneeling, and 
 stood in reverent silence at a distance, waiting till His act of 
 devotion was accomplished. When they presently asked 
 Him to teach them how to pray, the request was prompted 
 not only by the sacred spectacle they had witnessed, but by 
 a passionate curiosity as to the nature of Christ's own prayer. 
 For what had He besought Heaven in those silent supplica- 
 tions ? What words were on the lips that never spake save 
 in accents that were new and beautiful to human ears? 
 Christ's reply is to repeat aloud the prayer that He has al- 
 ready breathed in silence. It is thus that He Himself 
 prayed, in a series of profound wishes, through which the 
 human will seeks to merge and lose itself in the Divine Will. 
 One clause alone may have been interpolated as an accom- 
 modation to a human frailty He never felt — the petition for 
 the forgiveness of sins. But in all other respects the prayer 
 may in truth be the Lord's own Prayer — the sacred litany 
 of a soul in all things obedient to the will of His Father, 
 often uttered in those private hours when at morn or eve He 
 found His oratory in the palm groves of Bethphage or among 
 the silent hills of Galilee. 
 
THE PRIVATE LIFE OF JESUS 169 
 
 Sucli was tlie private life of Jesus. The loneliness of the 
 mystic's mind, which turns as by the instinct of the cage- 
 less bird to the solitudes of Nature, is counterbalanced in 
 Christ by the genial affections of the man. From those pro- 
 found and constant meditations, in which veil after veil 
 seemed lifted from the universe, until the human and 
 Divine spirit met indissoluble, and found themselves one, 
 Christ returned to the beaten roads of human life, not with a 
 lessened but a quickened interest in man. The higher He 
 soared above average humanity the more eager was He that 
 humanity should accompany Him in His flight. H the in- 
 effectual strength of man is ever to essay that great experi- 
 ment, it can only be by the same means. Certainly that 
 experiment will never be achieved by mysticism alone, for 
 the inevitable effect of mysticism is to produce aloofness 
 from the world, and to attenuate almost to nothingness the 
 bonds that hold men to a life of social intercourse. There- 
 fore the friendships of Christ's private life have a spiritual 
 as well as a human significance. The love of God ought 
 never to exclude the love of man. The private life of Christ 
 reveals each in equal perfection, and the one as perpetually 
 interfused with the other. The true motto of such a 
 life may perhaps be best found in the familiar verse of 
 Coleridge — 
 
 " He prayeth best who loveth best 
 All things both great and small, 
 For the dear God who loveth us, 
 He made and loveth all." 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE FALLING OF THE SHADOW 
 
 The presence of John's disciples at the feast which 
 Matthew the publican made in Capernaum once more intro- 
 duces to our history, and for the last time, the name of 
 John. It is little wonder that these men, who subsisted in a 
 constant state of hunger, looked on the prodigal profusion 
 of Matthew's feast with astonishment and perplexity. Fast- 
 ing, always a feature of Jewish religious practice, they had 
 carried to unheard-of lengths. Among the stricter Jews it 
 was no uncommon thing to devote two whole days in every 
 week to a total abstinence from food. These were public 
 fasts ; but the religious devotee, devoured by his passion for 
 austerity, added a general rigor of life which forbade any 
 concession to appetite, beyond such as was absolutely need- 
 ful to existence itself. These half-starved fanatics of the 
 desert might well marvel at a kind of life which was a per- 
 petual marriage-feast. Their thoughts turned with angry 
 sympathy to their great leader, already deserted by the pop- 
 ulace, and reduced once more to "a voice crying in the 
 wilderness." Gloom was fast settling upon that strenuous 
 and noble mind. The first enthusiasm of John's successful 
 propaganda had already waned, and his words had been ful- 
 filled; he had decreased as Jesus had increased. There 
 was preparing a great tragedy, fatal to himself, and of deci- 
 sive influence on the life of Christ. "We may trace the first 
 falling of the shadow on the mind of Christ to that hour 
 when the news reached Him of the death of John. 
 
 170 
 
THE FALLING OF THE SHADOW 171 
 
 He who stands upon the summit of the Mount of Olives 
 sees to the eastward a prospect full of grandeur and sterility. 
 Immediately in the foreground is a bare and dreadful coun- 
 try, falling rapidly to those gloomy gorges where Elijah 
 found a refuge, and broken by a single green oasis, the palm 
 groves and balsam gardens of Jericho. Rising above the 
 landscape are the mountains of Moab, deeply fissured and 
 wonderfully colored with a hundred hues of pink and car- 
 mine, melting into deepest purple. They form a vast bastion 
 above the waters of the Dead Sea, which is as an amethyst 
 enclosed in a setting of coral. Northward lies the Jordan 
 valley, in which the sacred river can be traced, less by the 
 gleam of silver in its windings than by the broad band of 
 green that marks its course. It was to the eastward of the 
 Jordan, close to its juncture with the Dead Sea, at a place 
 called iEnon, the site of which is lost, that John conducted 
 the last acts of his public ministry. What happened to 
 bring his ministry to a sudden close we cannot ascertain. 
 It is certain, however, that he incurred the anger of Herod 
 Antipas, or his suspicious curiosity, which was not less for- 
 midable. Perhaps some strong words of John, uttered to the 
 multitude, were reported to the tyrant, whose spies were 
 everywhere. Herod at this time was residing in the vast 
 fortress of Machperus, which stands at a height of nearly 
 four thousand feet above the Dead Sea. In the heart of this 
 enormous fortress and arsenal he had built himself a stately 
 palace, in which he imitated not merely the luxuries but the 
 infamies of the most corrupt of Roman emperors. To this 
 prison-palace John was brought. In its secret dungeons the 
 final act of his heroic life was consummated. 
 
 The story of the Herods is of great importance in the long 
 drama of Jewish history. Herod the Great, the founder of 
 the race, in some respects deserved his fame. It was he who 
 
172 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 built the Temple, transforming what was little more than a 
 provincial sanctuary into the most splendid of religious edi- 
 fices. For six-and-forty years vast regiments of workmen, 
 under the guidance of a thousand priests, toiled to raise a 
 building more magnificent than Solomon had ever dreamed 
 of, rich with every kind of precious stone, roofed with gold, 
 adorned with countless colonnades and porticos, vast 
 enough for ceremonies which attracted all nations, and beau- 
 tiful enough to become the envy of the world. It is scarcely 
 an exaggeration to say that not even the greatest buildings 
 of antiquity, the Acropolis in its severe perfection, or Nero's 
 Golden House in its most fantastic splendor, ever equalled 
 this prodigious monument raised by the genius of the Idu- 
 mean prince. But, so far as Herod was concerned, the 
 Temple was a monument not of piety but of policy and 
 pride. At heart he cared nothing for religion. He system- 
 atically browbeat and insulted the priests. He changed the 
 priesthood at will, and once proclaimed a youth of seventeen 
 High Priest, Those who saw the national religion suddenly 
 emerge into the magnificence of world-wide fame ; who wan- 
 dered through that maze of marble with astonished eyes ; 
 who heard the silver trumpets of the priests call to prayer, 
 even as the muezzin calls to-day from the Mosque of Omar 
 — sole and alien relic standing on the enormous site where 
 Herod's Temple once rose vast and arrogant ; those, in fact, 
 for whom all these glories were prepared, felt them to be an 
 insult and a sarcasm. They had no grateful thoughts of 
 Herod. They knew him to be ostentatious, cruel, vengeful, 
 superstitious, dissolute, and unscrupulous. He was stained 
 with the blood of a hundred murders. He knew neither 
 shame nor pity when his passions were aroused. His life 
 was full of guilty intrigues, culminating ever and again in 
 acts of turpitude which even the base abhorred. As if to 
 
THE FALLING OF THE SHADOW 173 
 
 sliow Iris irony, lie had built close to the Temple itself thea- 
 tres and amphitheatres, which to the Jews appeared mon- 
 strous sinks of all iniquity. When Christ spoke in frank 
 depreciation of the Temple perhaps He remembered who 
 had built it, and His Avords should scarcely have surprised 
 or offended men who in their hearts had cursed the name of 
 Herod many times, knowing full well what little cause they 
 had to be proud of a Temple built by an insolent usurper 
 who had trampled the priesthood in the mire, a tyrant 
 who had stained himself with the blood of the just and 
 good. 
 
 The vices of Herod the Great were reproduced in Herod 
 Antipas, but they were unaccompanied by any genius or 
 strength of character. He performed with meanness and 
 calculation the kind of crimes to which Herod the Great had 
 lent the glamor of arrogance and daring. It may not be true 
 that " vice loses half its stain " when allied with great man- 
 ners, or with the defiant scorn of some " archangel ruined " ; 
 but it is at least true that the vices of the coward are doubly 
 odious. Herod Antipas was in all things a coward. He 
 preferred the stealth of the assassin to the boldness of the 
 open foe. He bribed and cajoled where the founder of his 
 race would have beaten his antagonist with many stripes. 
 With a hatred of the Jews not less deadly than that of any 
 of his race, he feared the people. Thus we find that his con- 
 duct to John, like his conduct to Christ at a later date, unites 
 the two worst features of all that man counts most detestable 
 — timidity and cruelty. Like all his race he was the play- 
 thing of his passions. Even among the most degenerate 
 Romans of the days of Nero it would be hard to parallel the 
 profligacies of these Idumeans. They had carried intermar- 
 riage to such a point that all the ordinary demarcations of 
 decorum were effaced. Chastity, loyalty, and good faith were 
 
174 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 terms unknown to them. Disreputable escapades, adulteries, 
 divorces, incestuous alliances characterized their life among 
 themselves. The scandal of these things had come to its 
 height during the days when John baptized at iEnon. Philip, 
 the brother of Antipas, at one time destined to the tetrarchy, 
 had been disinherited, and lived at Borne as a private citizen, 
 to the intolerable chagrin of Herodias, his wife. While upon 
 a visit to his brother, Antipas had submitted to the intrigues 
 of Herodias, and had ended by carrying her off. He had 
 married her, not even taking the trouble to divorce his wife. 
 She was his niece as well as his sister-in-law. She returned 
 with him to Judea, claiming full queenly honors from a race 
 who could not but regard her as doubly an adulteress. Per- 
 haps in these open conferences beside the Jordan some one 
 asked John's opinion of this scandal ; but at all events John 
 was not the man to conceal his opinions. What less could 
 he do, whose whole life was dedicated to a great reform of 
 manners, than denounce one whose lust and perfidy were the 
 talk of every tongue ? Under pretence of hearing John for 
 himself the stealthy Idumean invited John to visit him, and 
 the request was a command. At the close of some long day 
 of teaching we see John, in the midst of armed men, riding 
 slowly from the fords of Jordan up the wild denies that led 
 to Macha?rus. From that prison-palace he is destined to 
 emerge alive no more. 
 
 Nevertheless it would seem that for a time Herod treated 
 his prisoner with respect and even deference. The main ob- 
 ject of Herod was achieved in the summary suppression of 
 John's public ministry. Beside the Jordan, preaching to ex- 
 cited crowds, John's influence was a menace and perhaps a 
 danger to the power of Herod. Hence it was a stroke of po- 
 litical astuteness to arrest him. But Herod had no wish to 
 act harshly by his captive. He treated him as a person of 
 
THE FALLING OF THE SHADOW 175 
 
 distinction ; and ' in the case of one whose power over popu- 
 lar thought was still very great, good manners became also 
 good policy. He was even curious to understand the nature 
 of John's message, and it says much for the force of John's 
 character that he had little difficulty in establishing a com- 
 plete ascendancy over the mind of his captor. Herod kept 
 John beside him, says St. Mark, rather as a prisoner on pa- 
 role than as a criminal, "and when he heard him he did 
 many things, and heard him gladly." It is difficult to imag- 
 ine what sort of pleasure Herod found in John's society, ex- 
 cept the barren pleasure of curiosity. But the implication 
 of St. Mark's words is that Herod did actually for a time ac- 
 cept John as a kind of spiritual director. He heard John 
 gladly for his eloquence, he executed some external reforma- 
 tions in the manners of his court, he even felt sincere appre- 
 ciation of his prisoner's character. But on one point he was 
 obdurate ; he would permit no interference with his adulter- 
 ous and half-incestuous marriage. Yet that was the one 
 point on which John was bound to speak. He had already 
 spoken in language that could neither be retracted nor for- 
 gotten. Night after night when the revelries of the court 
 were at an end, and silence had fallen on the vast and gloomy 
 fortress, Herod would send for his great prisoner, would pro- 
 fess himself eager to discuss a hundred points of speculative 
 truth, would even listen with a kind of cringing awe to John's 
 lofty moral teachings ; but always in the end the conversa- 
 tion broke upon a single sentence, " It is not lawful for thee 
 to have her." And so Herod came to see at last that his 
 quarrel with John was more deadly than it seemed ; that it 
 could not be healed by cajoleries and flatteries ; that it was 
 the old irreconcilable dispute, the eternal conflict between 
 vice and virtue. 
 
 During the early part of his captivity John still exercised 
 
176 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 the functions of the leader of a parly. His disciples were 
 still with him, and he was able to direct their movements. 
 But in spite of Herod's lenience he must have known himself 
 in >m the first a doomed man. Day by day, as he gazed from 
 this craggy height of Machserus over the widespread pros- 
 pect of the Judean desert, with Jerusalem and the hills of 
 Hebron to the south, the Jordan valley and the green palm 
 groves of Jericho to the north — scenes familiar to him from 
 his boyhood, and made doubly dear to him by the toils and 
 triumphs of his ministry — the conviction grew upon him that 
 he would tread these scenes no more. A cloud of despond- 
 ence settled on his mind. It seemed to him that he had lived 
 in vain ; perhaps at times he was ready to say with a later 
 sage that men were not worth the trouble he had taken over 
 them. His disciples themselves could not conceal their sad- 
 ness and perplexity. Some remained disconsolate beside the 
 fords of Jordan, others had wandered into Galilee ; all were 
 dejected. In these dreary days even John's faith was par- 
 tially eclipsed. The news that came to him of Christ's joy- 
 ous progresses in Galilee filled him with alarm and doubt. 
 Had he been mistaken after all in recognizing Jesus as the 
 long-desired Messiah ? The most acute pain that John ever 
 knew was tasted in the pang of such a question. He sent a 
 deputation to Jesus, asking, " Art Thou He that should come, 
 or look we for another ? " The answer he received should 
 have assured him that the convivial feasts in Galilee which 
 had so offended his disciples were by no means the chief 
 feature of the new ministry which had filled Galilee with an 
 intoxicating joy. "Go," said Jesus, "and show John again 
 those things which ye do hear and see : the blind receive 
 their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and 
 the deaf hear, the dead are raised up and the poor have the 
 gospel preached to them. And blessed is he whosoever shall 
 
THE FALLING OF THE SHADOW 177 
 
 not be offended in Me." The message no doubt reached 
 John, but there is no record of how it was received. One 
 would like to think that John died with a recovered faith in 
 Him whom he had called the Lamb of God, but there is 
 nothing to suggest it. When darkness settles on a great 
 mind it is usually impenetrable. From the lonely height of 
 Herod's fortress John believed himself to be looking on the 
 battlefield of a lost cause. Perhaps in the sadness of these 
 gloomy sunsets he came to sigh for death, and his last thought 
 was the thought of Elijah : " It is enough : now, O Lord, 
 take away my life ; for I am not better than my fathers." 
 
 The Angel of Death did not long resist John's impor- 
 tunity. The winter wore away in Macha?rus, the spring 
 came, and with it the anniversary of the death of Herod the 
 Great, and of the succession of Antipas to the tetrarchv. 
 This was the opportunity of Antipas to arrange a great feast. 
 Herodias was present at the feast, with Salome, her daugh- 
 ter by the husband whom she had disgraced and forsaken. 
 Whatever lenience John had won from Herod, it is certain 
 that Herodias hated him. Perhaps this very lenience had 
 been a frequent subject of dispute between them, for Herod- 
 ias, free from all compunction in her vices, would despise 
 Herod for the weakness that even dallied with good while 
 it held fast by evil. In any case John's bold rebuke was an 
 affront offered less to Herod than to her. The dishonored 
 woman never pardons a reference to her dishonor. In pro- 
 portion to her knowledge of her sin is the frantic desire to 
 have it treated as though it had not been. Thus the world 
 has seen again and again the strange spectacle of women who 
 persuade themselves that their vice does not exist because it 
 is unremarked. If Herodias had ever seen John, which it is 
 nearly certain that she must have done, she had read in his 
 very face the uncontrolled abhorrence which he felt for her ; 
 12 
 
178 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 and his frequent interviews with her paramour were a source 
 of alarm as well as insult. But now her chance of vengeance 
 had arrived. In the wild excess with which the banquet 
 ended, it was suggested that Salome should execute one of 
 those grossly pantomimic dances usually left to courtesans 
 and the paid servants of corruption. Salome proved herself 
 a fit daughter of such a mother. She was the descendant of 
 priests and princes ; she was to become a queen ; but she 
 had no scruple in violating her modesty to serve the purpose 
 of the vilest intrigue. For, from first to last, the account of 
 what happened bears the aspect of deliberate intrigue. Be- 
 fore the first movement of the dance was made the price was 
 settled between mother and daughter, and in their hands 
 Herod was but a green withe. They knew what to expect. 
 The half-intoxicated king, soon stung to madness by the 
 libertinism of the hour, exclaimed with an oath that the de- 
 graded girl should receive any reward she chose to ask. 
 The instant response was, " Give me the head of John the 
 Baptist." Sobered now, and conscious of the pit of infamy 
 into which he had plunged, the king would have disputed the 
 request ; but it was too late. A stronger man might have 
 set aside his oath, counting it better kept in the breach than 
 the observance ; but strength was not to be expected from 
 Herod. Reluctantly he gave the sign. Beneath the sacred 
 Paschal moonlight, in the courtyard of the prison, John 
 bowed his neck to the sword of the Boman soldier. The 
 horror of the scene was consummated when the blood- 
 stained head was brought in upon a dish, and given to 
 Salome, who promptly laid it at her mother's feet. 
 
 It is some satisfaction to those who still retain amid all 
 discouragements a faith in the inherent justice of things to 
 know that Herod never shook himself free from the horrors 
 of this night. The ghost of John haunted him. When the 
 
THF FALLING OF THE SHADOW 179 
 
 news of Christ's ministry in Galilee came to him lie exclaims 
 in terror, "It is John whom I beheaded." The guilty 
 woman, for whose sake he slew a prophet, became his 
 Nemesis. From that day defeat and ruin dogged his foot- 
 steps. A detestation of his deed, which knew no reconcile- 
 ment, spread through all the land. The town and fortress 
 where John had died became a place abhorred. And still 
 amid its ruins, where not one stone is left upon another, the 
 solitary traveler thinks he hears the dying cry of John, and 
 the wail of the tortured ghost of Herod, crying in vain for 
 " all the perfumes of Arabia," to cleanse the bloodstained 
 hands. 
 
 The effect of this tragedy upon the mind of Christ was 
 very great. Overwhelmed and saddened, He at once retired 
 into a desert place for prayer and meditation. The second 
 year of His ministry was now drawing to a close. Hitherto, 
 in spite of controversy and dispute, His course had been 
 happy and successful. A new world, full of amity, benevo- 
 lence, and peace, seemed actually to have sprung up at His 
 word. The entire regeneration of society by means of truth 
 and charity seemed possible. The world, equally with Him- 
 self, seemed enamored of this dream of a reconstructed social 
 system, a golden age. How could it be that man by his per- 
 versity should ever bring himself to reject prospects so en- 
 chanting ? It seemed a thing impossible. But in these days 
 of grief and solitude a more sombre truth revealed itself. 
 The mask was torn away, and the deep malevolence of human 
 nature confronted Him whose faith in human nature had 
 hitherto been so great. It was not by words, but by blood 
 alone that mankind could be healed. For the first time the 
 certainty of His own martyrdom became impressed upon 
 His mind. Henceforth He speaks much of the Cross, and 
 draws pictures, intolerably painful to His friends, of the 
 
180 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 things that the Son of Man shall suffer at the hands of evil 
 men. He proclaims that that man is unfitted to reform 
 society who is not prepared to die for it. The true reformer 
 is not baptized to his work, save by the baptism of His own 
 blood. It is an agonizing moment when this severe truth is 
 first perceived, because it implies that the highest qualities 
 of benevolence are in themselves impotent to turn the course 
 of human nature. But Jesus learned that truth thoroughly 
 in the desert where He meditated on the death of John. 
 Henceforth He speaks as one for whom a violent death is 
 reserved and predetermined. 
 
 The death of John indirectly provoked a spirit of violence 
 against Christ Himself. The pastime of making martyrs has 
 in all ages proved contagious, perhaps upon the principle 
 that the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done. 
 A great personal popularity is composed of many elements, 
 but the most important is the general conviction that it is 
 impregnable. If once this conviction is challenged a bold 
 malice may readily contrive a blow so shrewd that hence- 
 forth a road is left open for the pernicious energy of every 
 malcontent. Popularity depends on reputation, reputation 
 on opinion, and opinion on imagination. The death of John 
 not only shocked the popular imagination : it disturbed 
 opinion. Men saw that in spite of Herod's fear of the peo- 
 ple he had dared to ignore and flout them in killing their 
 hero, and behold nothing had happened. There had been 
 no revolt, no national protest even ; the news had been re- 
 ceived in silence. Who could have thought that he who, 
 but two years before, had seemed the arbiter of a nation's 
 destiny, could be so easily annihilated ? And if John, why 
 not Jesus ? From that hour there grew in many minds the 
 dangerous thought that Jesus might be easily overthrown 
 when the hour was ripe, and that no popularity could save 
 
THE FALLING OF THE SHADOW 181 
 
 Him from an assault planned with skill and executed with 
 sufficient promptitude and boldness. 
 
 For John himself we need not lament. What better fate 
 can happen to a hero than to leave the stage of action in the 
 moment when his work is done ? The most tragic page in 
 the life of many a man of genius has been that which tells 
 the melancholy history of waning influence, gradual deser- 
 tion, superseded methods and ideas, and unwilling resigna- 
 tion to a new spirit of the time. The magnanimity of mind 
 which had at first frankly recognized the superiority of 
 Jesus might not always have endured the strain of a situa- 
 tion fruitful in elements of popular humiliation. Had John 
 lived he might have found himself forced into hostility to 
 Christ, or at least into that mean and odious rivalry which 
 was manifest in his disciples. He might have more and 
 more misjudged a message and a ministry so utterly at 
 variance from his own. The price of any act of supreme 
 self-abnegation is great, but it is less onerous if it can be 
 paid at once, in one full tribute. It is when the price is 
 wrung out drop by drop, through years of suffering, that the 
 noblest heart may fail of worthiness. From this intolerable 
 ordeal John was saved. He left the world before the corro- 
 sion of defeat had time to leave a stain upon his spirit. He 
 bequeathed to men an example of unique magnanimity, per- 
 fect virtue, and matchless fortitude. Well might Jesus, who 
 Himself pronounced his elegy, exclaim that among them 
 that are born of women there had not risen a greater than 
 John the Baptist. 
 
 The entire relations between John and Jesus afford a 
 noble exposition of the art of friendship. There is both 
 truth and beauty in a certain famous anecdote of two great 
 men who loved each other, " and agreed in everything but 
 their opinions ; " for friendship is based not on coincidence 
 
182 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 of opinion, but on moral appreciation. If the friendship 
 between John and Jesus rose superior to all jealousy and 
 acrimonious dispute, it was because it was thus based upon 
 moral appreciation. John might misread the ministry of 
 Jesus, but never the Divine beauty of His character. And 
 doubtless also there came to him the solemn and tranquil- 
 lizing thought that before very long they would be reunited 
 in death, and would be inheritors of the same eternal peace. 
 He who is subdued by such a thought will often ask himself 
 whether any kind of opinion is worth a single angry word ? 
 He will put a check upon his tongue, feeling how poor and 
 mean are all disputes when confronted with, the immense 
 and catholic reconcilements of the grave. The best achieve- 
 ment of the life of John was not in any influence he had 
 wielded, any task that he had done ; it was that he had been 
 the Friend of Jesus, and had kept the chivalry and faith of 
 friendship perfect to the last. 
 
CHAPTEK XTV 
 
 A GREAT CRISIS 
 
 The certainty of death either stupefies or invigorates the 
 human mind. He whose days are numbered will either shut 
 himself up in the seclusion of a bitter melancholy, or apply 
 his heart to the great wisdom of using the time that is left 
 to a loftier purpose. To the honor of human nature it may 
 be said that the certainty of death more frequently invigor- 
 ates than stupefies. In the really great mind it produces 
 the sense of infinite tranquillity. The worst is known, and 
 henceforth terror is disarmed. The bitterness of death is 
 past, not in the pang of dying, but in its contemplation. 
 The hero who falters on his trial, and is torn by a hundred 
 fears, rarely fails to recover his composure when his con- 
 demnation is achieved. In His retirement to the wilderness 
 after the death of John Jesus knew His real Gethsemane. 
 There the true tears of blood were shed, and the law of sac- 
 rifice accepted. He returns to His ministry w T ith the glow 
 of this mystic ardor of sacrifice upon Him. Henceforth His 
 speech strikes bolder notes : knowing the worst that man 
 can do, and not fearing it, He counts the world a conquered 
 foe ; and in all His actions there is a certain tenderness of 
 farewell, and a Divine composure, which pierce His disciples 
 to the heart, and at times make them afraid of Him. 
 
 From the time of John's death we find the enemies of 
 Christ growing bolder. Hitherto they had been sullen and 
 suspicious rather than actively vindictive ; now, for the first 
 time, there are signs of organized and relentless opposition. 
 
 183 
 
184 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 Let us recount who these enemies of Jesus were. First, 
 both in number and influence stood the Pharisees. It is un- 
 just to describe the Pharisees in terms of entire contempt, 
 because some of the best as well as the worst of men, were 
 Pharisees. Nicodemus was a Pharisee ; so also was Saul 
 of Tarsus ; and it has even been claimed that some of the 
 members of Christ's own family were Pharisees. The Phar- 
 isee, if he could have separated himself from the belittling 
 influence of a narrow view of life, would have deserved the 
 gratitude of the world, for he believed with intensity in the 
 moral government of God. But he interpreted that govern- 
 ment entirely in his own favor. He regarded the mass of 
 his own nation much as a proud Brahmin regards persons 
 of a lower caste. The implicit speech ever on his tongue 
 was, " Stand thou aside, I am holier than thou ! " He was 
 above all things a zealot. He stood for the least jot and 
 tittle of the law. He wasted his life in acquiring a kind of 
 learning which really rendered him absurd. His contempt 
 for any foreign culture, and indeed for all new ideas, was 
 rancorous in the extreme. In a word, he was a violent 
 reactionary of the irreconcilable type, who had nourished in 
 himself, as a kind of virtue, the temper that creates inquisi- 
 tions, and for a word will break men on the wheel. 
 
 The Pharisees included all kinds of people ; they were, in 
 fact, a society or confraternity eager to obtain adherents who 
 should propagate their views. The Sadducees, on the other 
 hand, were aristocrats. Theirs Mas a community of blood 
 rather than belief. Their faith in any kind of Divine gov- 
 ernment was very weak. They rejected the doctrine of a 
 future life. They were rich, and were content to live the 
 present life in epicurean fashion. They were content with 
 the Pvoman domination and astute enough to turn it to their 
 own advantage. They despised all fervor and enthusiasm 
 
A GREAT CRISIS 185 
 
 much as the churchmen of the eighteenth century did. Th< 
 question of Messiahship did not interest them ; they had 
 long since relegated it to the limbo of inscrutable conun- 
 drums. One may ask, What quarrel then could such men 
 have with Jesus ? They quarreled with Him not as a Mes- 
 siah, but as a reformer, and the spokesman of the poor 
 Mere " views " ou speculative truth they could afford to tret 
 with scorn ; but their supercilious disdain broke down before 
 doctrines that sowed the seeds of social revolution. It may 
 be interpreted either to their favor or their disfavor that they 
 took no active part in the conspiracy against the life of 
 Christ. They had not enough belief in any truth, or any 
 seeming truth, to persecute an error. But not the less they 
 wished Christ ill, and were well pleased to see others do the 
 work which they were too indifferent or too proud to do 
 themselves. 
 
 To these powerful parties were added three others. The 
 Herodians represented the astute worldly policy of Herod, 
 and perhaps his lax views of conduct. "Beware of the 
 leaven of Herod " said Jesus, thus challenging their enmity. 
 The Herodians, in so far as they had any definite programme, 
 sought to Romanize completely Jewish life and thought. 
 They were politicians, who desired before all things to stand 
 well with the ruling power. The scribes and lawyers so 
 often mentioned in the controversies of Christ, constituted a 
 professional class of great influence. The scribes were re- 
 sponsible for the preservation of the national literature, doc- 
 tors and professors of theology, who in an intensely religious 
 nation soon acquired great authority. The lawyer was, as 
 the term implies, a professor of Jewish jurisprudence ; but 
 as that jurisprudence was founded on religious sanctions he 
 was also deeply learned in theology. If no sweeping con- 
 demnation can be passed upon the Pharisees, neither can it 
 
186 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 on the scribes and lawyers, and for the same reason. They 
 included both good and bad men ; the thoughtful student, 
 the bitter pedant, the unscrupulous practitioner. It was to 
 a man, who is described by one Evangelist as a scribe, by 
 another as a lawyer, that Jesus said, " Thou art not far from 
 the kingdom of God." But it is easy to see that this class 
 as a whole would have good ground for making common 
 cause against Jesus. They could not but feel the prejudice 
 of learning against an untaught Galilean ; they could not 
 but regard His whole mission as presumptuous in the ex- 
 treme. The success of that mission was a menace to their 
 authority and privileges. They formed a corporation or 
 trades union of formidable power. It would have been con- 
 trary to human nature if such men had not indulged in that 
 acrimony of feeling, that tendency to aspersion and contemp- 
 tuous criticism, which the authorized practitioner always 
 feels toward the unauthorized even in the most indulgent 
 systems of society. 
 
 But we may take much wider ground than this. No one 
 ever studies Jewish history without feeling that the Jew is 
 the great enigma of creation. An innate perversity of na- 
 ture, driving him at times by what seems an ineluctable de- 
 cree to the wildest excesses of fanaticism and folly, is the 
 one outstanding characteristic of this strange creature of 
 which we may be sure. A sort of insane genius at times 
 rules his conduct, compelling in almost equal degrees won- 
 der and disgust. He is impracticable, childish, absurd, and 
 yet at the same time capable of the loftiest thoughts and 
 deeds. Of that masculine and sober judgment which knows 
 how to govern well, and so to build up national power, he 
 shows no trace. We see him wearing out by complaint and 
 importunity all who have ever tried to govern him, until we 
 share the exasperation he never fails to create ; and then he 
 
A GREAT CRISIS 187 
 
 suddenly compels our admiration by the heroic stoicism with 
 which he endures the fearful martyrdoms which he, and no 
 other, has brought upon his race. He knows not how to 
 avert these calamities; they appear to be his fate. With 
 the most righteous cause to plead, he either pleads it at the 
 wrong time or in the wrong way, so that redress is made im- 
 possible. He is humble when boldness is required, astute 
 when plain speech alone can serve him, subtle when the 
 hour for subtlety has passed. There is something barbar- 
 ous in him, some strain of the Egyptian brickfield, which 
 has never been eliminated. Gentle, humble, almost cringing 
 as he may appear, yet the embers of the deadliest rage burn 
 in him, and they are easily fanned into a flame. And it is 
 over questions of speculative truth or falsehood that his rage 
 burns hottest. Political subjection he can bear, but an in- 
 sult to some cherished theological idea exasperates him into 
 madness. Indignities and bitter insults leave him unmoved ; 
 but hidden in that strange heart, which no one has ever yet 
 explored, are sublime ideas, and even pedantries, for which 
 he will shed his blood or exterminate his brethren. The 
 contradictions of his character are infinite ; who shall meas- 
 ure either the nature of his love or his antipathies ? One 
 thing only is seen with clearness by the student of the life 
 of Christ : it is that Christ never had a chance with such a 
 nation. It was impossible they should receive Him. He 
 was an offence to them in all His thoughts, His words, 
 His acts. He stands so utterly opposed to Jewish life that 
 it is painful even to think of Jesus as a Jew. 
 
 For the worst of these characteristics the Temple was re- 
 sponsible. The race that had produced a David, a Solomon, 
 an Isaiah, that even in the days of Christ could boast a 
 Hillel, full of gentleness and charity, and the model of all 
 that a sage should be, must have had some great qualities 
 
188 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 of mind and heart. It had, and we see these finer qualities 
 reappearing in the ardor and simplicity of characters like 
 John's and Peter's. But it was the Jerusalem Jew who 
 really ruled the nation. It was he who was narrow, bitter, 
 intolerant, and impermeable to new ideas. The Temple, 
 which overshadowed all the city, also overshadowed all the 
 nation. It was the centre of just that kind of fanaticism 
 which is encouraged in the mosques of Mohammed, and in its 
 method of subtle intrigue and espionage it recalls the secret 
 chambers of the Inquisition. If we may anticipate the 
 course of history, we may recollect that it was not until the 
 Temple was finally destroyed that Christianity found room 
 to spread its roots. But in the days of Christ the Temple 
 was supreme, and its destruction seemed impossible. Here 
 all the bigotry and obstinate perversity of Jewish character 
 were entrenched. The scribes and doctors of the law who 
 dogged the steps of Christ throughout His Galilean ministry 
 had received their training in its courts, and had taken the 
 mandate of espionage from its officials. And so, as we now 
 follow the controversies which fill the latter days of Christ, 
 we see perpetually that behind them all the influences of the 
 Temple are at work. These men pester Him with questions, 
 try to entrap Him in His talk, and work out His downfall 
 with a stealthy and indefatigable hatred. Blind to all that 
 is admirable in His teaching, blinder still to all the beauty 
 of His character, bigots by nature, spies by choice, incapable 
 of real argument, insensible to either truth or reason, these 
 Temple Jews sow the seeds of dissension wherever they are 
 found, and make it the business of their lives to contrive His 
 defamation and His death. 
 
 What were those controversies? The first was one to 
 which ample reference has been already made — the contro- 
 versy over ritual and tradition. It was no new controversy ; 
 
A GREAT CRISIS 189 
 
 it had been conducted for many centuries by the noblest and 
 most enlightened of Hebrew minds. Had not the greatest 
 of all Hebrew prophets declared in words which held the 
 true germ of Christianity itself, that God was weary of the 
 multitude of sacrifices and burnt offerings : " Bring no more 
 vain oblations, incense is an abomination unto Me ; the new 
 moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away 
 with : it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting ; your new 
 moons and your appointed feasts My soul hateth " ? Had 
 not one of the best of Hebrew kings broken the brazen ser- 
 pent of Moses, when he found it was an object of supersti- 
 tious reverence, and said with scorn, "It is Nehustan — a 
 piece of brass " ? But in spite of the noble iconoclasm of 
 Hezekiah, and the spiritual testament of Isaiah, ritual and 
 tradition remained the idols of the Jewish mind. Respect 
 for tradition, and the minute observance of ritual, everywhere 
 passed for piety. In vain had the Sermon on the Mount 
 been preached ; it had enlightened none but a few simple 
 Galileans. In vain had a hundred great teachings on con- 
 duct been uttered ; orthodoxy was still considered of more 
 value than virtue. Christ saw clearly that it was by such 
 perversions of the spirit that nations perish. When He re- 
 turned from His retreat it was to preach with yet more 
 clamant emphasis the gospel of Isaiah. "Well did Esaias 
 prophesy of you," He cried, " This people draw nigh unto 
 Me with their mouth, and honoreth Me with their lips, but 
 their heart is far from Me." It was not by the washing of 
 hands, but by the cleansing of the heart that men pleased 
 God. It was the heart that harbored all these evil passions 
 from which murders, adulteries, and fornications spring. 
 And then followed one of those epigrams upon the Pharisees 
 which could be neither forgiven nor forgotten : What are 
 they, He cried, but " blind leaders of the blind ? And if the 
 
190 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 blind lead the blind they shall both fall into the ditch ! " It 
 is not surprising that the Pharisees were " offended " when 
 they heard this saying. It struck at the root of all that 
 pedantic formalism which they had created in place of relig- 
 ion, and it covered them with ridicule. Henceforth this 
 controversy is to wax more and more acute, till in the heat 
 of His indignation Christ exclaims, "Woe unto ye scribes 
 and Pharisees, hypocrites ! Ye serpents, ye generation of 
 vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell ? " Here is 
 surely the very voice of the slain Forerunner ; not in vain 
 had Jesus meditated on the death of John, for He comes 
 back from His retirement to utter in words of flame the very 
 declamations of the Baptist. 
 
 From this controversy there naturally sprang another upon 
 Christ's own freedom of life. Here the hatred of the zealot 
 for what seemed laxity, of the conventionally respectable for 
 what seemed disreputable, of the orthodox formalist for what 
 seemed heresy, mingled in a common focus of vengeful dis- 
 gust. "What could be thought of one who treated the Sab- 
 bath, that tyrannous fetish of Jewish piety, with the freedom 
 of a pagan and freethinker ? How could the Jew, suppliant 
 in the still narrower fetish-worship of respectability, bring 
 himself to think without anger of the kind of persons with 
 whom Christ deliberately associated? What could the 
 orthodox formalist think of one who disregarded all cere- 
 monial acts, even the washing of hands before meat, as 
 though He sought to give offence, and to pour ridicule on 
 the scruples which good men held sacred ? To an enlight- 
 ened mind these questions appear trivial, but they are not 
 trivial in narrow pietistic societies. The Pilgrim Fathers, 
 and the straiter sects of Puritans, afford us relatively modern 
 examples of the kind of scruples which may render life in- 
 tolerable to a man of unconventional habits. It is no un- 
 
A GREAT CRISIS 191 
 
 usual thing even in our time to find offences against decorum 
 treated with a harsher punishment than offences against 
 virtue. Jesus offended the etiquette of Judaism at every 
 point. The Sabbath law He disregarded, and when chal- 
 lenged replied with irony, referring His antagonists to the 
 example of David who ate the shew-bread, or to the casuis- 
 tries — in this case merciful — which they used to justify the 
 rescue on the Sabbath-day of the ass which had fallen into 
 the pit. He defended His association with the poor and dis- 
 reputable on the most offensive of all grounds, that they 
 were more disposed to good than the respectable ; the harlots 
 and publicans entered into the Kingdom of God, while the 
 children of the Kingdom were cast out. The stricter Phari- 
 see sanctimoniously turned his face to the wall to avoid the 
 very sight of a woman ; Jesus was surrounded with women, 
 some of whom had borne indifferent characters. All classes 
 of society avoided the publican like a plague ; Jesus had 
 even made a publican one of His disciples. Jewish life was 
 lived in a sort of social seraglio, with a hundred devices to 
 prevent all contact with the world ; Christ lived in the open 
 air, met all men freely, and took life in gladness of heart. 
 Here were disparities indeed, and they were irreconcilable. 
 
 These were serious offences, calculated to arouse a host of 
 foes ; but a far more serious offence was Christ's virtual 
 abrogation of the law of Moses. The various statements of 
 Christ about the Mosaic law appear contradictory. At one 
 time He declares He has not come to destroy the law but to 
 fulfil it ; at another time He opposes to the great authority 
 of Moses His own yet greater authority : " But I say." 
 The explanation lies in the rapid expansion of Christ's spir- 
 itual ideas, and in His increasing consciousness of His own 
 relation to God as a Son. He could not be wholly hostile to 
 a religious system which marked a most important stage in 
 
192 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 the spiritual evolution of mankind. But His ministry has 
 gone but a very little way before He perceives that the law 
 of Moses is incommensurate with His expanding spiritual 
 ideas. He who had so soon climbed beyond the Baptist on 
 those heavenly steeps which command the widening vision 
 of truth, finds Himself before long at an altitude from which 
 Moses himself seems dwarfed. He is looking down upon a 
 finished and outdated economy, and He begins to speak with 
 the accent of superiority. An instance of this temper is af- 
 forded us in the series of events which followed immediately 
 upon the death of John. It was undoubtedly at this time 
 that Christ fed the multitude, but astonishing as the story is, 
 it is less astonishing than the discourse which He bases on 
 it. It was natural that the Jewish mind, saturated with the 
 spirit of historic allusion, should link this miracle with the 
 story of the manna with which Moses fed the people in the 
 wilderness. Jesus accepts the challenge thus boldly offered 
 Him. " What sign shewest thou that we may see and be- 
 lieve thee ? " is the question of the people. " Our fathers 
 were fed with bread from heaven ; what dost thou work ? " 
 The reply of Jesus was so extraordinary that it must have 
 left His hearers breathless with surprise. "I am the bread 
 of life," He answered ; " he that cometh to Me shall never 
 hunger, and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst." 
 "Were some newcomer into the arena of philosophy or politics 
 calmly to announce that all the wisdom of the past was 
 elaborate folly, all the etiquette of debate a cumbrous ab- 
 surdity, we can imagine the anger and derision which such a 
 challenge would excite. But such an illustration affords but 
 a superficial picture of the kind of rage with which the Jew 
 received these statements of Jesus. The presumption of the 
 speaker seemed intolerable, His arrogance unpardonable. 
 Even His disciples murmured, and said, "This is a hard 
 
A GREAT CRISIS 193 
 
 sa} T mg ; who can hear it ? " Nor did the qualification which 
 Jesns attached to it — that it was transcendental not literal — 
 help matters. What was clear to every mind was that Christ 
 had made for Himself a claim so tremendous that if it could 
 be allowed the sceptre had been wrested from the hand of 
 Moses once and for ever ; if it could not be allowed — and 
 who indeed could allow the claim in one whom men knew 
 as the Son of a carpenter at Nazareth ? — the affront offered 
 to the national religion was too deliberate for forgiveness. 
 
 Thus a fourth great controversy began upon the person of 
 Christ. He refuses to be ranked with John the Baptist, 
 with Elijah, or even with Moses. His daily addresses to the 
 people become full of mystic references to Himself. He 
 claims an intimate and special mandate from heaven. He 
 feels God moving and breathing in Him, so that His own 
 words and acts are indistingiiishable from the words and 
 acts of God. He perceives His nature wrought to such per- 
 fection that it is merged in the very life of God, and is part 
 of the unimaginable Divine perfection. St. John tells us in 
 specific language that the Jews sought to kill Him, not only 
 because He had broken the Sabbath, but because He had 
 said " that God was His Father, making Himself equal with 
 God." They might have remembered that even their own 
 poets and prophets had spoken of God as a Father, and that 
 parentage must imply some similarity, and even a real iden- 
 tity, of nature. They might have turned to their own scrip- 
 tures, and have found the Divine charter of the human race 
 in the great saying that God had created man in His own 
 image, and after His own likeness. But these truths ap- 
 peared transcendental, and therefore of no accurate signifi- 
 cance to the ordinary mind. Men in general show them- 
 selves indifferent to questions of their origin and destiny, 
 and forego their heavenly birthright, if such exists, without 
 13 
 
194 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 a pang. When this is the case, the attempt to claim what 
 they reject appears a presumption and a blasphemy. More- 
 over, Christ made the claim in terms so definite that men of 
 ordinary mind were startled, and men of conventional piety 
 were shocked and horrified. " The Son can do nothing of 
 Himself," He said, " but what He seeth the Father do ; for 
 whatsoever things God doeth, these also doeth the Son like- 
 wise." This could only mean that Christ spoke and acted 
 for God. He and the Father were one. The life of God, 
 hidden in eternal secrecy, was projected on a screen, so to 
 speak ; and men saw that very life lived before their eyes. 
 The unutterable was uttered ; the formless and unthinkable 
 took form ; the true Shekinah, symbol of all sacred mystery, 
 stood revealed in a man. 
 
 " Strange delusion of the God-inebriated idealist ! " ex- 
 claims the rationalist. " Its very sublimity should have 
 saved it from attack, and certainly from contempt ; for it is 
 by such fine excesses that human nature transcends its 
 bounds, and scales the heavens ! " But if it were delusion, 
 it is a delusion that has deceived successfully the whole 
 world. Those who study the actual life of Christ cannot 
 count these claims extravagant. On nothing is mankind so 
 well agreed as that the life of Christ gives the only concrete 
 expression the world has ever witnessed of the Divine benig- 
 nity and purity. If Jesus was not afraid thus to make Him- 
 self equal with God, God need not have been ashamed to 
 become the equal of Jesus ; for if God can be conceived as 
 living in the limits of this mortal life at all, He would cer- 
 tainly have lived as Jesus lived. How we may define the 
 nature and the limits of divinity as interpreted in Christ is 
 of small moment, when we recollect the testimony of the 
 greatest minds that it is only through Jesus that they can 
 conceive of God at all. But it was scarcely to be expected 
 
A GREAT CRISIS 195 
 
 of the Jew that he receive this witness of Christ to Himself 
 without resentment. No visible perfection of conduct could 
 dissipate the sense of blasphemy in such words as these. 
 No Divine beauty of character could atone for them. He 
 was the true Light, but the Light shone in darkness, and the 
 darkness comprehended it not. 
 
 From the moment when Christ returned from His retreat 
 after the Baptist's death, those controversies gathered round 
 Him, ever widening their dimensions and increasing in in- 
 tensity. Already His ascension into heaven had begun. 
 More and more He soars into ideal heights, where the wing 
 of human thought beats the difficult air in vain. His own 
 disciples pass through many phases of doubt, of thrilling 
 awe, of trembling faith. They see by gleams and flashes the 
 windings of a road that is perilous with darkness. Even in 
 His beloved Capernaum doubt and disaffection sow their 
 fatal seeds. The lake He loves contents Him no more ; 
 Chorazin and Bethsaida are places which He hereafter 
 doomed to sorrow for their misappreciation of the wonders 
 wrought in them. He turns to the pagan populations with 
 a sense of relief. It is at this time that He makes His only 
 journey into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. He perceives 
 more and more clearly that the Gentile mind is less hostile 
 to Him than the mind of His own countrymen ; that the 
 Jews will prove His destruction, and that the Gentiles will 
 atone to Him hereafter for the wrongs wrought upon Him 
 by the natural children of the Kingdom, who know not their 
 King. Profound prevision ! Even so has it been. Not in 
 Jerusalem, but in Antioch, and Ephesus, and Borne, are the 
 foundations of the future Kingdom laid secure ; and with 
 the death of Jesus the Jew disappears from history. By 
 one sign only do we know him, his invincible hostility to 
 the greatest of his race ; and, merged into the life of many 
 
196 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 nations, adopting their ideas and putting on the raiment of 
 their civilization, this invincible hostility remains unaltered. 
 Surely the saddest journey Jesus ever took was this exodus 
 into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. But it was the way His 
 Gospel was to travel : ever westward, leaving the East to its 
 slumber and its ruin ; calling on a new world to redress the 
 balance of the old, till at last paganism accepts with joy the 
 gift rejected by the Jew, and after three centuries of conflict 
 and of martyrdom the Roman eagles fall before the new 
 symbol of the Cross of Christ. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE AFFIRMATION OF GOD'S BENIGNITY 
 
 The district in which Jesus now found Himself presented 
 strong contrasts to the district He had left. It was almost 
 entirely pagan, and the Jewish population was sparse. Tyre 
 was a great maritime city, distinguished by its wealth and 
 luxury, which had repeatedly aroused the ire of the Hebrew 
 prophets. Sidon also was a metropolis of commerce, abound- 
 ing in the days of Christ with many splendid monuments of 
 Greek and Roman art. It was among the rock-sepulchres 
 of Sidon that there was recently discovered the sarcophagus 
 of Alexander the Great, which is the noblest and most per- 
 fect specimen of Greek sepulchral art which the world pos- 
 sesses. Both cities were delightfully situated. Tyre is ap- 
 proached from the east by wild mountain passes of Alpine 
 dignity and grandeur. Sidon reposes under the immediate 
 shelter of the mountain heights of Lebanon. The plain that 
 lies between Lebanon and the sea is of inimitable richness 
 and fertility. Along this plain Christ traveled, looking for 
 the first time on the impressive spectacle of a pagan life, full 
 of frivolity and pleasure, and unrestrained by those gloomy 
 elements of fanaticism which appeared wherever the Jew 
 prevailed. It was a land of pleasure, fanned by the soft 
 Mediterranean breezes and the mountain airs of Lebanon ; 
 cheerful, too, with the hum of prosperous toil : a land of 
 streams, and groves, and fairy gardens, of palaces and villas, 
 filled with a gay and eager race, whose energy in commerce 
 had drawn the spoils of Europe and of Asia to their shores. 
 
 197 
 
198 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 Not yet bad that day come, long ago foretold by the Hebrew- 
 prophet, when " they shall break down the towers of Tyrus, 
 and make her like the top of a rock ; it shall be a place for 
 the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea ; they shall lay 
 thy pleasant houses, thy stones and thy timbers in the midst 
 of the water ; and the sound of thy harps shall be no more 
 heard." Besieged in turn by every conqueror from Shal- 
 manesser to Alexander, and often laid in ruins, Tyre still re- 
 tained her dignity, and was, with the exception of Jerusalem, 
 the most imposing city Christ had ever seen. 
 
 What were the thoughts of Jesus as He passed through 
 this region, filled with people of a strange tongue, whose 
 whole method of thought and life was so different from any 
 that He had seen in Galilee ? We have but one incident to 
 guide us. A certain Syro-Phcenician woman came to Him be- 
 seeching Him to exercise His marvelous power in curing her 
 daughter of one of those forms of hysteric disease so com- 
 mon in the East. She was a purely pagan woman and an 
 alien. Matthew gives an almost vindictive sharpness to this 
 fact by calling her " a woman of Canaan." The disciples, 
 including Matthew himself, were offended by the importunity 
 with which she followed Christ, and were far from realizing 
 that need speaks a common language. Here, then, was 
 an excellent opportunity for Christ to put into practice 
 the new conviction which had filled His mind that 
 henceforth His path of conquest lay among the Gen- 
 tiles. It is true that He had already shown Himself 
 well disposed to Roman officials, but these, by right of con- 
 quest, had become in a sense members of the Jewish nation. 
 The case of this woman was wholly different. She belonged 
 to a race which the Jew had been commanded to destroy, 
 and the corruptions of the old idolatry still flowed in her 
 blood. If she possessed any religion at all, it was probably 
 
AFFIRMATION OF GOD'S BENIGNITY 199 
 
 some base admixture of old idolatrous superstition with the 
 more modem paganism of Greece and Rome. 
 
 The words which Jesus uses to the woman are ironical and 
 enigmatic. He knows precisely the kind of thoughts which 
 are in the minds of His disciples, and He apparently adopts 
 them for His own, in order to expose their meanness and 
 absurdity. It is a method of instruction often used by the 
 great ironists, who have sometimes mimicked the language 
 of an antagonist with such fidelity that they have been ac- 
 cused of teaching the very errors which they denounced. 
 But as it is only the illiterate who can take the ironies of a 
 Swift for serious propositions, so it is only the undiscrimi- 
 nating who will fail to see that in this incident Jesus is 
 adopting language not His own, in order to reveal the pov- 
 erty of thought and sympathy in His disciples. Briefly 
 paraphrased the conversation is as follows : " I am not sent 
 but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel," He remarks. 
 " This is what you think of Me and of My mission. So be 
 it ; let us see how far this definition can be pressed in the 
 presence of this woman, and her need. I will say to her 
 what you would say, and what you would wish me to say : 
 ' Woman, trouble me not ; My charity is not for you ; it is 
 not meet to take the children's bread, and cast it unto dogs ! ' 
 You are not ashamed of such a sentiment ; have you no 
 shame or surprise when you hear Me utter it ? But let us 
 hear Avhat the woman herself will say to this illiberal doc- 
 trine." And with a quick glance of triumph the woman 
 makes her retort, giving back irony for irony, wit for wit. 
 " Truth, Lord," she cries, " yet the dogs eat of the crumbs 
 which fall from their masters' tables ! " Humility can hardly 
 sink lower, faith can hardly rise higher. " woman, great 
 is thy faith," Christ replies ; " bo it unto thee even as thou wilt. 
 And her daughter was made whole from that very hour," 
 
200 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 If Jesus had desired some corroboration of tins new idea 
 which had filled His mind of the superior worthiness of the 
 Gentiles to receive His message, He found it in this inci- 
 dent. This entire mission in the coasts of Tyre and Sidon 
 confirmed Him in this belief. He found everywhere a recep- 
 tiveness of mind to new ideas, strange and welcome, after 
 the hostile intractability of His Jewish critics. When the 
 hour comes for Him to take farewell of Galilee, the happy 
 memories of these days amoug the pagans still glow in His 
 mind. " If the mighty works that have been done in Caper- 
 naum, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they had repented 
 long ago in sackcloth and ashes," He exclaims in sad re- 
 proach. Henceforth the hated doctrine of the substitution 
 of the Gentiles for the Jews as the new custodians of spirit- 
 ual ideas, takes definite and final shape. He speaks of Him- 
 self in terrible language as sent that " They that see might 
 not see, and that they that see might be made blind." He de- 
 scribes the Jews as the leaseholders of a vineyard to whom 
 the real owner sends various servants to collect the rent, and 
 last of all his own son ; but they are all s±ain in turn, so that 
 the owner of the vineyard lets out his vineyard to " other 
 husbandmen which shall render him the fruits in their sea- 
 sons." Nor does He always conceal His meaning under 
 parables. He describes Himself as a stone rejected by the 
 builders, which is taken by other builders with a juster 
 knowledge of its worth, who make it the head of the corner 
 in the new temple of humanity which is growing into shape. 
 And in language yet more positive and menacing He boldly 
 declares to the Jews, "The Kingdom of God shall be taken 
 from you, and given unto a nation bringing forth the fruits 
 thereof." Dangerous words indeed, full of provocation ; but 
 how truly wonderful in their foreknowledge of the future ! 
 But a few short years have passed, and to the Jews of a 
 
AFFIRMATION OF GOD'S BENIGNITY 201 
 
 great city of this very coast Paul makes a public declara- 
 tion which settles the course and fortunes of Christianity for 
 all future generations. "It was necessary that the word of 
 God should first have been spoken unto you ; but seeing ye 
 put it from you, and judge yourself unworthy of eternal life, 
 lo ! we turn to the Gentiles." 
 
 Such Avords on other lips than Christ's would no doubt 
 suggest the spirit of retaliation. It is, however, a very dif- 
 ferent motive which guides the thoughts of Christ. It is the 
 enlarged, and constantly enlarging, sense of the benignity of 
 God. The more Christ learns of humanity the more does 
 He discern that it is w< >rthy of the Divine love. These Gen- 
 tiles, hated of the Jew, treated as spiritual pariahs incapable 
 of Divine truth, nevertheless prove themselves kindly, faith- 
 ful to what they know of good, ready to be taught, and quick 
 to respond to new ideas. To realize this involved a radical 
 recoustruction of the old spiritual cosmogonies. It could not 
 be that races so capable of good were foredoomed to destruc- 
 tion. What sort of God could that be who ruled the uni- 
 verse upon such narrow principles ? Certainly not the God 
 whom Jesus worshipped. Hence the need for a new defini- 
 tion of God which should accord with the manifest facts of 
 life. The tribal God was henceforth impossible, and the 
 Jehovah of the Jew was, after all, a tribal God. Such a God 
 belonged to an age of spiritual barbarism, which was happily 
 drawing to its close. The catholic qualities of good in man 
 suggested a catholic goodness in God. Before the Gentiles 
 could be evangelized it was necessary to affirm that they had 
 a real claim on God, not inferior to the claim of the sons of 
 Abraham, and that that claim was allowed. It was under 
 the compulsion of this reasoning that Jesus now began to 
 teach in language more definite than any He had yet used 
 the catholic benignity of God. 
 
202 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 We have the best means of studying this doctrine in a 
 series of great parables, which may be collected under the 
 general title of the parables of the Divine Benignity. They 
 were uttered at various times, and in many places, but they 
 have a common objective. They were in every case directed 
 against the Pharisees, who were the constituted guardians of 
 the old cosmogony, teaching in season and out of season the 
 doctrine dear to Jewish pride, that the Jew alone had cov- 
 enanted claims on God. 
 
 The first series may be called the parables of Hospitality. 
 St. Luke narrates two of these in a single chapter, as being 
 uttered at one time, when Jesus was eating bread in the 
 house of one of the chief of the Pharisees. The first is quite 
 simple, It is a sketch drawn from the life of the proud and 
 presumptuous man, who being called to a marriage feast, imme- 
 diately chose the best seat for himself. He is but one guest 
 among many, and his conduct is equally destitute of cour- 
 tesy and consideration. Other guests, not inferior to him- 
 self, but of a humbler mind, take the lower seats at the long 
 table, at the head of which the bridegroom sits. But mat- 
 ters are speedily readjusted by the interference of the bride- 
 groom himself. The humble guest at the end of the table, 
 sitting with the menials of the household, is beckoned to a 
 place beside the bridegroom, and the Pharisee is punished 
 for his arrogance by being requested to take the lower seat. 
 The effect of this anecdote is greatly heightened when we re- 
 member that the Pharisees were peculiarly sensitive on mat- 
 ters of etiquette, always claiming the place of honor at feasts, 
 and arranging the places of their guests with a strict regard 
 to the dignity of each. What Jesus means to imply is that 
 they have treated the whole subject of religion in the same 
 spirit of offensive arrogance. They have claimed to be the 
 chief friends of God. They have scorned the poorer guests 
 
AFFIRMATION OF GOD'S BENIGNITY 203 
 
 of God, for whom the broken crusts of truth were good 
 enough. They have made God such an one as themselves, 
 attributing their own meanness of mind to Him, who allows 
 their claim. Christ represents God as acting with a consid- 
 eration for the humbler children of His bounty which the 
 Pharisee never felt. The scorned are honored, the lowly are 
 uplifted, the abased are exalted, those who claim nothing are 
 given the best. And these poor people, in whom we see the 
 Gentile nations, are thus honored, because they are worthy 
 of honor. They alone have behaved well ; their humility and 
 good manners are their titles to dignity. The Bridegroom 
 thus becomes the spokesman of that God, ever loving and 
 benign, who causes His sun to rise upon the evil and the 
 good, and is no respecter of persons. 
 
 This anecdote is followed by a plain discourse which en- 
 larges this idea of the Divine benignity. The natural prin- 
 ciple of human hospitality is social intercourse between 
 equals. Men invite their equals to their tables, perhaps 
 their superiors, but rarely their inferiors. Yet there were 
 many exquisite axioms in Jewish ethics which forbade this 
 spirit of exclusiveness. The men to whom Jesus spoke 
 might have remembered their own legend that Job lived in a 
 house that was built four-square, with a door at each side, 
 always open, that the traveler coming from whatever quarter 
 might find Avelcome. One of the counsels of Jewish wisdom 
 was, " Let the house be open toward the street, and let the 
 poor be the sons of thy house." Even so God's hospitality 
 was prepared for all peoples. That is not a real hospitality 
 which is arranged upon a scheme of social equivalents. The 
 guest knows too well that for every mouthful he may eat he 
 must make return. He is really effecting an exchange in 
 which every farthing will be counted. Though no bill is 
 presented with the last course of the banquet, yet the bill 
 
204 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 will come in due time. Such is the prevailing principle of 
 that social hospitality which is no hospitality at all, but 
 merely an exchange of meals. " When thou makest a feast," 
 says Jesus, " call the poor, the maimed, the halt, the lame, 
 the blind, for they cannot recompense thee." Hospitality is 
 but another word for benignity. 
 
 This discourse, which commends itself to every man of 
 gentle manners and charitable heart, passes by a natural 
 transition into another parable in which a sterner note is 
 struck. There is little left to implication here ; the parabolic 
 form is but the thinnest of disguises. A certain man makes 
 a great supper, and invites to it those whom he has cause 
 to account his friends. Then a strange thing happens ; none 
 of these friends desire to come. They all begin with one 
 consent to make excuses, and these excuses are described 
 with a touch of mingled irony and humor. Not one of them 
 is valid : this is the point which Christ elicits, because in 
 this is the sting of His rebuke. The man who had bought 
 a piece of land might have gone to look at it another day ; 
 he who had bought a yoke of oxen might have proved them 
 at his own time ; and the excuse of the man who could not 
 come because he had married a wife was purely farcical. 
 They were subterfuges, covering a concealed dislike. They 
 were so many deliberate insults, all the more offensive be- 
 cause they were disingenuous. Then the master of the 
 house, being angry, sends his servants out into the highways 
 and the hedges to bring in the homeless and the hungry. 
 They are told even to explore the lanes and byways of the 
 city to discover the miserable. These come with a joyous 
 and half-incredulous alacrity. Strange guests for a rich 
 man's house ; but their rags conceal nobler hearts than beat 
 beneath the robes of those reluctant friends, who mocked and 
 chattered at a distance. Never was there feast more joyous 
 
AFFIRMATION OF GOD'S BENIGNITY 205 
 
 than this, where an unexpected hospitality is repaid by hon- 
 est gratitude and love. Benignity finds its reward in this 
 precious gift of affection from the despised. The inference 
 cannot be mistaken. God no longer calls the Pharisees His 
 friends. The world shall come and eat of the feast which 
 they rejected. The form of invitation henceforth shall be, 
 " Him that cometh I will in no wise cast out." From the 
 East and the West, from the North and the South, there 
 shall crowd those that are not the children of Abraham, and 
 shall sit down at the banquet which is spread to inaugurate 
 the new Kingdom. The grim Jehovah, created out of Jew- 
 ish pride and exclusiveness, vanishes with the smoke of use- 
 less sacrifices and propitiations ; and instead there reigns the 
 universal Father, who gathers all His children to His knees. 
 The parables of hospitality have associated with them the 
 parables of Sympathy. The parable or incident of the Good 
 Samaritan is the finest exposition of social sympathy which 
 Christ ever delivered, and we pay it the noblest possible tri- 
 bute when we say that it is endorsed by the universal con- 
 science of mankind. But it is much more than an exposition 
 of social sympathy. Once more, as in the parable of the 
 guests at the marriage feast, Christ selects for praise a man 
 whose fine behavior affords a striking contrast to the bad be- 
 havior of the Jew. From his lowly seat in society he is 
 called to the place of honor because he deserves honor for his 
 unaffected benignity of nature. He has learned what the 
 Levite and the Priest have never so much as guessed — that 
 the essence of all piety is to do good, asking no return. If 
 God is well pleased with him, it is because this man's nature 
 is in accord with the nature of God. It is so that God cares 
 for the wounded, the neglected, the unhappy, with a catholic 
 benevolence. If this man, being evil, knows how to give 
 good gifts of wine and oil, charity and thoughtfulness, to one 
 
206 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 who has no claim upon him save his need, how much more 
 shall the Heavenly Father give good gifts to them that ask 
 Him? Or, to put the truth in yet more positive form, if 
 man can thus be sympathetic for his brother in misfortune, 
 how much wider is the sympathy of God ? It is character- 
 istic of Jesus that He habitually interprets God's nature by 
 all that is best in man's. He does this specifically in the 
 Lord's Prayer, when He bases man's hope of Divine forgive- 
 ness on man's willingness to forgive his brother. The river 
 cannot rise above its source ; man's virtue cannot be superior 
 to his Creator's. To be perfect as God is perfect is the sub- 
 lime hope of human life. The good and benevolent man is 
 thus the replica of God. The dewdrop may carry in its 
 bosom the perfect image of the star ; light, whether gath- 
 ered to a point on the surface of the dewdrop, or diffused 
 through boundless firmaments, is the same. Human nature 
 itself is thus God's witness ; and whenever we see in another 
 some special kindness or virtue we may say, "Love is of 
 God, and God is love." 
 
 But chief of all the parables of sympathy is the parable of 
 the Lost Sheep, or, as it should be called, the parable of the 
 Seeking Shepherd. In this miniature drama man again be- 
 comes the exponent of God. " What man of you, having an 
 hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the 
 ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is 
 lost, until he find it ? " The appeal is made to the average 
 of men and women, yet here is a catholic instinct of humanity 
 so strong that Christ confidently challenges it. " What man 
 of you would not do this ? " He asks. Things that are lost 
 always appear to be of more value than things that have 
 never been in peril of loss. The bereaved mother eternally 
 persuades herself that the child that died was the flower of 
 the flock, and for the son who has gone astray the, father 
 
AFFIRMATION OF GOD'S BENIGNITY 207 
 
 will entertain a strong and pitiful passion of love not excited 
 by the child whose life has been a pattern of obedient virtue. 
 The question proposed by Christ is really this : Shall God 
 be content that any one should be for ever lost? If the 
 human shepherd will undertake incredible exertion to re- 
 cover one lost sheep, shall the Divine Shepherd of Souls be 
 less magnanimous, less determined in His effort to save 
 men, or less successful ? The exquisite conception of God 
 as the Shepherd was as old as the twenty -third Psalm. The 
 corresponding conception of man "as a sheep was equally 
 familiar : " All we like sheep have gone astray," is Isaiah's 
 summary of human transgression. They have not gone 
 astray as wolves, through incurable barbarism of the blood, 
 but as sheep through heedlessness, folly, and lack of knowl- 
 edge. Man is therefore to be pitied for his waywardness. 
 There is no need to punish one who punishes himself so 
 thoroughly. The last thought of the good shepherd is to 
 punish the strayed sheep ; when he finds it, tears of pity fill 
 his eyes, and he lays it on his shoulders with the tenderest 
 of hands, and carries it in his bosom. It is so that God 
 feels for man. Heaven is sad while one soul with a right to 
 heaven is missing. God will leave the safely folded sheep 
 and go out to seek the lost " until He find it." Far as it has 
 strayed, it is not beyond recovery, and the only limit to re- 
 covery lies in the ability of the shepherd to recover it. 
 Things that are impossible with man are possible with God ; 
 and though seon after aeon pass before the last strayed sheep 
 of God is found, yet the Good Shepherd will certainly go on 
 seeking " until He find it." Such is the parable of Christ, 
 and was ever the truth of the Divine benignity taught 
 with more exquisite felicity of metaphor, or with tenderer 
 grace ? 
 
 And then, almost without metaphor, the Divine benignity 
 
208 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 receives its crowning statement in the immortal story of the 
 Prodigal Son. This story is miscalled the story of the 
 Prodigal Son; it is really the parable of the Benignant 
 Father. It is the father who from first to last takes the eye 
 in this heart-moving human drama. Neither son is worthy 
 of him ; the moral distance between him and them is made 
 intentionally wide. The elder brother is virtuous enough, 
 but he has all the vices of conventional virtue : pride, nar- 
 rowness, self-esteem, pharisaism, complete destitute of no- 
 bility or grace of character. The younger brother is vicious, 
 but he has some of the virtues of the vicious : rash and im- 
 petuous generosity, love of friends, warmth of temperament, 
 boyish daring, and delight in life. But in the father's con- 
 duct there is no flaw. He treats both sons with faultless 
 magnanimity. He gives them their rights, and more than 
 their rights. He opposes to the levity of his younger son 
 and the insults of his elder a temper of infinite sweetness and 
 reasonableness. He is disappointed in each, but there is no 
 harshness on his lips. He might justly have been indignant ; 
 but he is only hurt and grieved. He sees the course which 
 the faults of each will take, and knows that they will cure 
 themselves. From the hour when the younger son disap- 
 pears into the far country the father knows that he must 
 come back. The prodigal drags "the lengthening chain" 
 that binds him to his home. When at last he returns there 
 is no recrimination on his father's lips. The boy's sins and 
 follies are not so much as named. He is treated as an 
 honored guest for whom the feast is prepared and the best 
 robe reserved. The rebuke that is addressed to the grudging 
 elder brother is couched in terms of dignity and tenderness. 
 The force and depth of that infinite affection which composes 
 fatherhood is revealed at every stage of the drama ; for while 
 each son in turn forgets the duties of his sonship, the father 
 
AFFIRMATION OF GOD'S BENIGNITY 209 
 
 never for an instant forgets tke duties of his fatherhood. It 
 is but a narrow literalism which makes this large-hearted 
 parable a rebuke of the Pharisees, an affirmation of the 
 claims of Gentile nations whom the Pharisees despised. No 
 doubt this was a lesson which Jesus meant to be observed ; 
 but the parable stands f< >r something much wider and loftier. 
 It is the perfect exposition of the Divine Benignity, the final 
 revelation of the Fatherhood of God ; and it has become to 
 all Christian thinkers through all generations the " master 
 light of all their seeing." 
 
 " Likewise I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of 
 the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth," said Jesus. 
 This is the noble refrain of the parables of the Seeking Shep- 
 herd, and of the Benignant Father. The angel choir that 
 sang of peace and goodwill over Bethlehem is answered by 
 the full chorus of a joyous heaven, moved to rapture over the 
 reclamation of a single human soul. Never did music so 
 lofty or so astonishing salute human ears. Hitherto the 
 heavens had seemed to man not benignant but malignant. 
 The terror of the God lay heavy on the human mind. The 
 greatest of Greek dramatists can only conceive of God as the 
 President of the Immortals, pursuing man with the ardor of 
 a cruel huntsman. Even Job, swayed between resignation 
 and resentment, cannot subdue the thought that he is the 
 sport of a Divine malice, and he cries in the bitterness of his 
 soul, " Thou scarest me with dreams and terrifiest me through 
 visions." Man is the eloquent inartyr of an almighty malig- 
 nity. The powers enthroned in the heavens are in deathless 
 antagonism with him. In all elementary religions the same 
 thought is expressed. iEschylus does but utter what the 
 meanest savage feels when he heaps propitiations on the 
 altar of his devil-god. Jesus abolishes this terror of the 
 gods with a word. The veil is lifted from the heavens, and 
 
 14 
 
210 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 the hierarchies of power are revealed as a confraternity of 
 pity. They are on the side of man, and the very joy of God 
 is joy in man's well-being. A benignant God whose love is 
 free and catholic as that catholic sunlight which lighteth 
 every man who comes into the world, rules over all, and 
 henceforth the earth shall learn this new litany of wor- 
 ship, " Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy 
 name." 
 
 The Benignant God thus revealed by Jesus Christ has 
 never been dethroned. The old terror has come back from 
 time to time, but the human heart, strengthened by the word 
 of Christ, and still more by His example, has been insurgent 
 to it, and has more and more been victorious over it. The 
 hateful narrowness of seels has sought to belittle Christ's 
 Divine conceptions, and they have often been obscured in 
 clouds of acrid logic. Men have sometimes treated these 
 conceptions as the vandals of every generation have treated 
 forms of art whose dignity and sweetness tliey could not un- 
 derstand. The fresco glowing with its messages of poetry 
 and of beauty has been obscured under coats of whitewash ; 
 but happily the colors are imperishable. They still pene- 
 trate through all surface disfigurements, as the sublime figure 
 of Christ may still be discerned in the mosque of San Sophia 
 behind the color-wash with which the Turk lias attempted to 
 destroy the emblems of a faith he has displaced. Some day 
 perhaps a Christian conqueror will enter Constantinople, and 
 then this figure of Christ, which has waited patiently through 
 eight centuries of shame, will step out to greet him. Some 
 day, it may be, in like manner the temple of theology will be 
 purged from the equal desecrations of centuries of spiritual 
 barbarism. And then, too, the portrait Jesus drew of God 
 will be again revealed in all its pristine purity. The infinite 
 benignity of God will again be understood as the first and 
 
AFFIRMATION OF GOD'S BENIGNITY 211 
 
 last word of all religion. The gospel of Christ will then be 
 summed up in one supreme definition : " No man hath seen 
 God at any time ; but the only begotten of the Father, full 
 of grace and truth, He hath revealed Him." 
 
CHAPTEK XVI 
 
 MISSIONARY ENTEEPRISE 
 
 The parable of the Seeking Shepherd may be said to contain 
 the germ of all missionary enterprise. Its dominant note is 
 that if men are to be brought into the fold of God, they must 
 be sought. They are both unwilling and incapable of seek- 
 ing the fold for themselves, as the lost sheep is. A general 
 declaration of ethical truth, however lucid and persuasive, is 
 of no avail. "Were it argued, for example, that the wide 
 publication of the Gospels was sufficient in itself to impreg- 
 nate the whole world with Christian ideas, the immediate 
 retort would be that truth needs something more than pub- 
 licity before it can be generally accepted. It needs to be 
 enforced by living examples and the enthusiasm of the living 
 voice. We are apt greatly to exaggerate the influence which 
 literatures and their authors exercise upon the world. There 
 is nothing that men in general regard with such complete in- 
 difference as books. Declarations of truth, whether made 
 on the forum or in the press, rarely touch more than a few 
 scattered units of society. If the great mass of human crea- 
 tures are to be affected by these declarations they must be 
 importuned to listen. Hence truth never succeeds on any 
 large scale without the spirit of active propaganda. It is 
 not the Koran which explains the triumph of Mohammed, 
 but the propagandist fire which he kindled in a multitude of 
 ardent followers. Certainly it is not the Gospels which first 
 drew attention to Christ, since His Church had already taken 
 firm hold upon the world long before the Gospels were gen- 
 
 212 
 
MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 213 
 
 erally known. The real source of triumph lay hi the energy 
 of individuals who went out to seek the lost, everywhere 
 compelling men to listen by the novelty of their message and 
 the enthusiasm of their lives. It is this truth which makes 
 Christ's picture of the Seeking Shepherd the fertile inspira- 
 tion of all missionary enterprise. 
 
 Christ appears on two occasions to have organized His 
 followers for deliberate missionary effort. In the first in- 
 stance He sends forth the Apostles only, and the peculiarity 
 of their mission is that they are not to "go into the way of 
 the Gentiles," nor into any city of Samaria, but to the " lost 
 sheep of the house of Israel." In the second instance we 
 find a significant alteration of plan. It is no longer the 
 Apostles alone who are sent, but seventy disciples specially 
 selected for the work. The limitation of the mission to the 
 children of Israel is withdrawn ; these later Evangelists are 
 to go "into every city and place whither He Himself would 
 come." This is in accord with the wider view of His mis- 
 sion which possessed the mind of Christ after His visit to 
 the pagan populations of Tyre and Sidon. The question 
 naturally suggests itself, Why did not Christ remain among 
 these pagan populations who had received Him with a joy- 
 ous alacrity never manifested by His own countrymen ? The 
 answer is that such a decision would have manifested a spirit 
 of resentment against His own countrymen which Christ was 
 incapable of feeling. The more bitterly the Pharisees were 
 opposed to Him the more necessary did it seem to affirm His 
 claims in Jerusalem, which was the very citadel of Phari- 
 saism. The man of heroic temper inevitably chooses a dif- 
 ficult course in preference to an easy one. Danger in itself 
 is a powerful element of attraction. Moreover, Christ fore- 
 sees that the hour will soon come when He Himself will be 
 withdrawn, and this makes it the more necessary that His 
 
214 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 followers should have some preliminary exercise in the sort 
 of work which will devolve upon them at no distant date. 
 Hence the second mission is organized upon a wider scale 
 than the first. It is meant as a reply to the Sanhedrin who 
 are already devising His death. To the seventy members of 
 the Sanhedrin Christ opposes seventy disciples filled with 
 the spirit not of hatred but of love, moved by the instincts 
 not of obscurantism but of catholic charity. They are, so to 
 speak, the Sanhedrin of the New Kingdom — a Sanhedrin of 
 saints. Two by two they go forth, filled with guileless en- 
 thusiasm, the advance guard of an innumerable army which 
 has never since ceased to carry on its conquering propa- 
 ganda. 
 
 It is clear that these missionary enterprises were among 
 the most deliberately organized of all Christ's acts. Indeed 
 it may be claimed that nowhere else do we find any evidence 
 of deliberate organization at all. Christ did not think it 
 necessary to leave any working plan for the establishment of 
 His Church. His institutions are limited to two — baptism 
 and the Lord's Supper. His doctrines themselves were not 
 reduced to axiomatic form, nor was any effort made to pre- 
 serve them in writing. Apparently nothing was more re- 
 mote from the mind of Christ than that which is the first in- 
 stinct in the minds of all great teachers and reformers, viz., 
 to organize firmly doctrines and institutions which shall be 
 their perpetual memorial. But the sending out of the sev- 
 enty is prefaced by very definite instructions. There is put 
 into the hand of each a code of conduct and behavior drawn 
 up by the Master Himself. How deeply impressed Jesus 
 Himself was with the importance of this step we may judge 
 by two incidents. In what were almost His dying moments 
 His mind goes back to the first missionary journey of the 
 Twelve, and He says to His sorrowing disciples, "When I 
 
MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 215 
 
 sent you without purse and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye any- 
 thing ? " In the last recorded speech of all, before Jesus 
 vanishes for ever into the heavens, His mind is still glowing 
 with the ardor of the propagandist : " Go ye unto all the 
 world, and preach the Gospel to every creature." If from 
 such suggestive incidents anything can be deduced, it is that 
 the thought dearest to the heart of Christ was missionary en- 
 terprise. 
 
 What was the nature of this code of instructions placed 
 in the hands of these first missionaries ? If it be, as we take 
 it to be, the one deliberate attempt of Christ in practical or- 
 ganization, it must needs be regarded as a statement of prin- 
 ciples. What were the principles which Christ enunciated 
 as indispensable not merely to this particular mission, but to 
 all similar enterprises conducted in His name throughout the 
 ages? 
 
 The document commences with a prologue stating the 
 grounds on which the work is undertaken, and one significant 
 detail of the new organization in relation to the disciples 
 themselves. " The harvest truly is great, but the laborers 
 are few," says Jesus. The capacity and readiness of man- 
 kind in general to receive the new truth is thus taken for 
 granted. Nothing that has happened by way of blind preju- 
 dice and envenomed opposition has shaken Christ's belief in 
 the good qualities of human nature. Men are ripe for the 
 harvest ; they are as corn ready to fall before the sickle. 
 God has taken care to sow the Divine seed in human hearts ; 
 it is for man now to gather the first fruits. Amid a thousand 
 debasements human nature in general remains virtuous. It 
 has its roots in God, and the surprising fact is not that man 
 is so bad, but that he is so good. He who sees nothing but 
 the gross depravity of human nature is disqualified for all 
 missionary enterprise because he is destitute of hope. Faith 
 
216 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 - in man and man's capacity for good must precede any serious 
 attempt to make him better. But there are no doubt many 
 grounds for dejection in attempting such a task, and this de- 
 jection is most sensibly felt by the solitary worker. The 
 missionary, of all men, by the very nature of his task, needs 
 the stimulus of comradeship. Nothing sustains him so well, 
 nothing invigorates him so deeply, as the sense of confrater- 
 nity. Therefore Christ, with an admirable wisdom, sends 
 out His missionaries two by two. The principle of brother- 
 hood in work is thus affirmed. The enthusiast, more liable 
 than most men to fits of depression, to brooding painful 
 thoughts, and in periods of triumph to self-applausive pride, 
 needs some one near him who shall regulate his egoism, cor- 
 roborate his message, console his fears, animate his droop- 
 ing courage, and in all things give what he himself receives, 
 the stimulus of social intercourse. To the propagandist soli- 
 tude is a fruitful source of temptation and disablement ; but 
 the force of all propagandas is vastly increased by the warmth 
 and ardor of a corporate life among their members. So we 
 see these men depart upon their appointed ways, talking as 
 they go of the things nearest to their hearts, and illustrating 
 in their love for one another the essential brotherhood of 
 that New Kingdom which they represent. 
 
 If we now turn to the code of instructions itself, the first 
 thing that arrests the mind is the counsel of non-resistance. 
 In the significant phrase of Christ they are sent forth "as 
 lambs among wolves." Perhaps no doctrine that Christ ever 
 taught has been more fruitful of controversy than this doc- 
 trine of non-resistance. Yet a very brief study of Christ's 
 teachings on the subject, if it be careful and intelligent, is 
 sufficient to make His meaning tolerably clear. It must be 
 remembered that almost all Christ's sayings on non-resist- 
 ance were uttered in the form of proverbs, and the essence 
 
MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 217 
 
 of a proverb is that it overstates a point, and rejects qualifi- 
 cations, for the sake of calling attention in emphatic fashion 
 to some particular truth. Thus when Christ says, "Eesist 
 not evil ; but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, 
 turn to him the other also," it is an overstatement, made for 
 the sake of emphasis. The meaning is that it is better to 
 be twice insulted than to do one wrong by requiting violence 
 with violence. When Christ says that if a man shall by ille- 
 gal means deprive you of }'Our coat, "let him have thy cloak 
 also," it is an overstatement, the meaning of which is, that it is 
 better to endure a wrong than to assert a right in a spirit of re- 
 sentment and retaliation. When Christ says, " Give to him that 
 asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee, turn not 
 thou away," it is again an overstatement, the obvious meaning of 
 which is that it is better to give to every one than to no one, 
 to be unwisely generous than not to be generous at all 
 These enigmatic sayings inculcate a certain spirit and tem- 
 per ; they do not lay down a literal law of conduct. They 
 do not mean that the disciple is never to remonstrate against 
 injustice, never to take advantage of the just and rightful 
 laws which are the protection of society, for obviously this 
 would imply an encouragement to injustice, which in the 
 long run would prove fatal to society. Christ Himself pro- 
 tested against the injustice of His arrest, and rebuked the 
 officer of the High Priest's court who struck Him, saying, 
 " If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil ; but if well, 
 why smitest thou Me ? " And as one reads these words of 
 Christ, as reported by St. Matthew, their meaning is made 
 absolutely clear by the nature of the context. They form an 
 indictment of the vindictive spirit of the Mosaic law, which 
 exacted an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth ; and they 
 are a protest against the spirit of retaliation. The loss of 
 property by unjust exaction is a less evil than the loss of 
 
218 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 spiritual peace in the effort to recover it ; and the endurance 
 of wrong is a less injury than the injury wrought upon the 
 soul by the angry passion of resentment invoked for its re- 
 dress. This is the true meaning of Christ's law of non-re- 
 sistance, and it defines its scope in such a way that it is no 
 longer a hard saying to men of wise and generous temper. 
 
 This law is now applied to the career of the Christian 
 propagandist. Insult and outrage will await these disciples 
 in the execution of the great task entrusted to them. Wrong 
 will be inflicted on them for which no casuistry can discover 
 the smallest element of justification. Their wisdom will be 
 in a complete freedom from resentment. By enduring the 
 wrong they will only strengthen their case, and will win ad- 
 ditional respect. The persecuted man is always stronger 
 than his persecutor. There is what Milton finely calls " an 
 irresistible might" in weakness which in time wears down 
 the fiercest enmity of persecution. These men are sent forth 
 as lambs among wolves ; but the meekness of the lamb in 
 enduring wrong survives the cruelty of the wolf in inflicting 
 it. The beatitude of the martyr is a real beatitude : " Blessed 
 are they that are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for 
 theirs is the kingdom of heaven." They are not only blessed 
 in the composure of their own spirits under suffering, but 
 their cause is helped forward by the impression which that 
 composure makes on others. And so it has always been. 
 Not by force nor by might have the greatest causes tri- 
 umphed ; but by the conquering fortitude and tranquillity of 
 those who have endured the loss of all things for their sake. 
 Loss is thus the surest gain, and martyrdom the weapon of 
 the most effectual victory. 
 
 The second instruction which Christ gives to these seventy 
 missionaries is a counsel against all worldly preparations. 
 They are to carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes. Here 
 
MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 219 
 
 again Christ intentionally overstates the case, for the pur- 
 pose of calling attention to a particular truth. That truth is 
 the peril of worldly sagacity in its application to spiritual 
 propagandas. Worldly sagacity is not totally condemned ; 
 St. Matthew amplifies this instruction with the significant 
 words, " Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as 
 doves." But worldly sagacity, if allowed unrestricted li- 
 cense, is deterrent of enthusiasm. Had Paul, in his great 
 missionary journeys waited for a complete organization of 
 resources, he would never have started at all. The conquer- 
 ing army creates its own resources by its conquests. Great 
 movements cannot wait on questions of finance and commis- 
 sariat. Those who see the final triumph of some benevolent 
 crusade, when it is fully equipped with all the means of 
 victory, and elaborately organized, frequently assume that it 
 has possessed these means from the first. Nothing can be 
 further from the truth. Crusades usually begin in the ardent 
 hearts of solitary enthusiasts, and the material means of suc- 
 cess are elicited in the degree of the enthusiasm. No benevo- 
 lent crusade was ever justified by worldly sagacity. Its 
 deadliest enemy would have been the astute organizer of 
 victory, unwilling to stir an inch till its machinery was per- 
 fected. A resolute and ardent faith achieves triumphs of 
 which worldly sagacity never dreams. Christ, in uttering 
 this couusel, enunciates a folly which has repeatedly proved 
 wiser than the wisdom of the world. He will permit these 
 men not the least preparation for their journey. They are 
 to go with empty purses, and with but one suit of raiment. 
 They are to cast themselves boldly on the people as pious 
 mendicants. They are to stay at no hostelries ; and their 
 very destitution of money is meant to ensure this end. It is 
 enough for the disciple if he be as the Lord, who had no 
 place where to lay His head. Perhaps Christ had already 
 
220 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 seen in Judas the kind of evil wliicli financial prudence 
 works, and He is determined that in this new society money 
 shall play no part at all. There is at all events nothing that 
 can tempt the worldly man in such a life, and there is every- 
 thing to repel him. Where there are no funds to be treasured 
 there will be no Judas ; where abject poverty is made a law 
 of life the gate is made so strait that none but pure enthusi- 
 asts will seek to enter it. 
 
 The enthusiast also has his faults, among which is a tend- 
 ency to discourtesy. Moving at a high level of thought him- 
 self, conscious of ideal aims, living at a great heat of heroic 
 temper, he is apt to despise ordinary men. He does not 
 care to associate with them, and soon drifts into habits of 
 lonely fanaticism. Christ had seen more than enough of the 
 fruits of this temper in the disciples of John. No man can 
 obstain from social intercourse without damage to his own 
 nature. Christ therefore puts His missionaries on their 
 guard against such perils by a third counsel of courtesy and 
 hospitality. They are not to show themselves churlish and 
 unsocial ; in every city and village they are to welcome the 
 kindness of those who would entertain them. They are not 
 to assume airs of superiority ; they are to eat such things as 
 are set before them with thankful hearts. They are to be 
 perfectly courteous in their treatment of all men. "When 
 they enter a house they are not to omit the customary salu- 
 tation — " Peace be to this house." They will lose nothing 
 by such courtesy ; the worst that can happen is that they 
 will have breathed a pious wish in vain, in which case their 
 salutation will " return to them again." There may appear 
 but minor morals in the conduct of a propagandist, but minor 
 morals have more to do with the happiness of society than is 
 commonly imagined. Great talents, or the consciousness of 
 a superior mission, do not absolve men from the laws of 
 
MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 221 
 
 courtesy. The fine axiom that rank imposes obligations ap- 
 plies to the aristocracy of Christ's kingdom as well as to the 
 arbiters of earthly society. 
 
 Moreover, there is in this counsel the indication of a cer- 
 tain method of instruction by means of which truth is to be 
 diffused. Apparently Christ does not expect from these 
 men public orations and addresses. They are rather cate- 
 chists than orators. Much of their work will be done in 
 quiet personal conversations, which afford excellent oppor- 
 tunities for the statement of doubts and the discussion of 
 difficulties. This, as we have seen, was an essential feature 
 of Christ's own method. Public orations are of great value 
 to societies already well disposed to the reception of truth ; 
 1 mt they are of little service among an alien and hostile popu- 
 lation. Here more personal and intimate methods of instruc- 
 tion come into play. Men must first feel the charm of 
 friendship before they feel the force of truth. They must 
 be approached one by one ; they must be seduced into inter- 
 est and attention by a patient treatment of individual difficul- 
 ties. This is the work of the catechist, and these men were 
 the first catechists of Christianity. It is significant that in 
 the earliest missionary crusade conducted by the Apostles 
 the instruction was to preach ; the word is omitted in the 
 instructions for this second mission. Perhaps one of the 
 most common injustices visited upon missionaries by popular 
 criticism is that they cannot preach and have no gift of 
 oratory. We should recollect that the missionary is still a 
 catechist, as these men were, in the great majority of in- 
 stances. His chief work is done not in the market-place 
 but in the homes of the people. And if it were possible 
 to differentiate between the two methods and their results, 
 it might be found that the kingdom of God owes more 
 to the humble labor of the catechist than to orations in 
 
222 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 the theatre of Ephesus or on the splendid slopes of the 
 Acropolis. 
 
 A fourth instruction gives great weight and solemnity to 
 the whole enterprise. One of the most frequent thoughts of 
 Jesus was that there was vested in Him an inevitable power 
 of judgment. Men were judged, or rather judged themselves, 
 by their attitude toward Him. He supplied the solvent or 
 the test which dissolved society into its element. Wherever 
 He came a process of sifting or discrimination began. The 
 evil withdrew from Him, the good were attracted. He spe- 
 cially warns His disciples against the folly of supposing that 
 a new truth can establish itself without opposition ; He has 
 come not to bring peace but a sword. Every new idea is a 
 sword, every reform a battle ; and around every great re- 
 former there gathers the great Armageddon of irreconcilable 
 moral differences. He applies this truth now to the work 
 entrusted to these eager propagandists. Enthusiasm dis- 
 solves into mere emotion unless it includes certain elements 
 of sternness. The enthusiast is the appointed judge of his 
 time, and he must be prepared to do his work with firmness. 
 If in any city their message is not received, they are to turn 
 from that city, and to wipe its very dust off their feet as a 
 witness against it. It is foolish to waste pains upon a soil 
 wholly intractable and barren. It is still more foolish to 
 lament unduly over such a fact. The true success of all re- 
 form lies in a wise adaptation of means to ends. If it 
 happened with them, as it had happened with Him, that 
 Judea rejects what Tyre and Sidon receive with glad- 
 ness, let them follow the line of the least resistance and 
 sow their seed in a soil that will yield the readiest har- 
 vest. There is a false heroism, a kind of Quixotism, 
 prone to spend its energies on the impossible, by which 
 the enthusiast is frequently seduced ; Christ inculcates the 
 
MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 223 
 
 spirit of that saner, if less striking, heroism which measures 
 energy by opportunity. The spiritual Don Quixote, like his 
 great prototype of romance, is really half insane, and what 
 in him passes for heroism is but wasteful folly after all. 
 Jesus sees the peril of undisciplined enthusiasm. He speaks 
 not as a fanatic, but with the profound wisdom of the great 
 administrator, who knows that in a long campaign there must 
 be defeats as well as victories. The brave man, however, 
 knows how to coin victory out of defeat, and Christ would 
 have His followers share that rare intrepidity of spirit which 
 leaves the lost battlefield with dignity to seek another where 
 triumph is assured. 
 
 Such is the plan of propaganda drawn up by Christ for 
 the seventy disciples. We have no means of knowing the 
 route they took, the cities they visited, or the length of time 
 devoted to their adventurous crusade. Some details of their 
 journey, are preserved. They appear to have exercised the 
 same kind of power over forms of hysteric mania which 
 Christ Himself possessed. They were able to heal the sick. 
 They attracted general attention by their spirit of benevo- 
 lence. A joyous ecstasy characterized all their words and 
 movements. They returned to Jesus full of natural elation 
 over what they had seen and done. Jesus Himself rejoiced 
 in their success as the success of the simple and the humble. 
 In that hour His soul poured itself out in pious thankfulness 
 that God who had hid these things from the wise and pru- 
 dent, had revealed them unto babes. Kings and prophets 
 had desired to see a kingdom founded on principles of pure 
 benevolence, and had not seen it ; what the wise had dreamed 
 in vain, and thought impossible, had now taken form and 
 shape in the triumph of the simple. He read in these things 
 the sublime augury of the future. Alread}' He saw Satan 
 falling as lightning from heaven — the immense overthrow and 
 
224 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 ruin of the hierarchies of evil. In this magnificent phrase 
 He pre-dated the final hour of time, and saw as accomplished 
 what in reality had but commenced. Yet the phrase was 
 true, as it is true that he who looks upon the seed already 
 sees the triumph of those sequences of law by which the 
 harvest is produced. To the prophetic mind time does not 
 exist, and the end is as the beginning. In that hour Jesus 
 knew that He had found the weapon of universal conquest. 
 By men like these, humble and devoted, loyal to a Captain 
 whom they deemed invincible, His truths would be spread 
 through every land, and the meek would inherit the earth. 
 And so in every age we see awful and benignant figures 
 moving on the roads of martyrdom : resolute confessors of 
 derided truths enduring opposition with fortitude and equa- 
 nimity ; the sons of charity compassing the world with pil- 
 grimages of a tireless pity. The flames of noble ardor lit 
 in the bosoms of these simple Galileans has never left the 
 world. Often half extinguished by the rancour of polemics, 
 or reduced to smouldering embers by the apathy of faithless 
 generations, the flame has burned on, breaking out from time 
 to time in unexpected radiance. The ancient legend which 
 asserted that while the sacred fire burned upon the altar of 
 the Vestal Virgins Rome would stand, has its counterpart in 
 the actual facts of Christianity. Christianity is propagandist 
 < >r it is nothing ; and it can only perish by the loss of that 
 Divine ardor which Christ Himself breathed into it when 
 He sent forth His disciples to teach all nations, secure in 
 the conviction that He was with them alway, even to the 
 end of the world. 
 
CHAPTEK XVII 
 
 THE EVENT AT C.ESAKEA PHILIPPI 
 
 We now follow the footsteps of Jesus in His last north- 
 ward journey before He steadfastly sets His face to go to 
 Jerusalem. It is difficult to resist the impression of rest- 
 lessness and even aimlessness in these last wanderings 
 into pagan or semi-pagan territory. It is a new and 
 strange quality in the actions of Christ, as a rule so de- 
 liberate and serene ; but there is much to explain it. More 
 than ever conscious of the breadth and significance of 
 His mission, He finds His message everywhere met with 
 increasing hostility and foresees the hour when Galilee 
 itself will finally reject Him. Young and full of ardor, 
 He perceives the shadow of death which is slowly gather- 
 ing on His path. He has heard but the prelude of ma- 
 ture manhood, and in those resonant chords a requiem is 
 mingled. To familiarize the mind with this new thought of 
 martyrdom is difficult indeed, for Jesus had none of that 
 half-morbid and half-heroic appetite for death which thou- 
 sands of martyrs have displayed. He is full of a healthy 
 love of life, and when at last the hour strikes we find Him 
 praying that if it be possible the cup may pass from Him. 
 He needs time to familiarize His mind with these awful pos- 
 sibilities, hours of solitude and meditation, and not less op- 
 portunities of tender monologue with His disciples, in which 
 He may make His own thoughts clear by ascertaining theirs. 
 For a time the charities and intellectual energies of His 
 public life are suspended. We read of but one act of heal- 
 15 225 
 
22G THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 bag on this journey, of but one public discourse. He travels 
 1 >v the Lake of Merom and the springs of Jordan, silent and 
 absorbed in the vision of His own destiny; He already feels 
 the sacrificial fillets bound upon His brow. Other journeys 
 had been memorable in their effects upon the world ; this 
 was memorable in the revelation of the things which con- 
 cerned Himself. 
 
 Csesarea Philippi, the ancient Paneas, the modern Banias, 
 was the limit of the journey. It was a city magnificent for 
 situation, and scarcely less magnificent in itself. It pos- 
 sessed a famous grotto, dedicated after the Greek fashion to 
 the worship of Pan ; from the red sandstone cliff which over- 
 hung the town the Jordan itself rushed forth in clear and 
 limpid springs ; dominating both the cliff and the city rose 
 the temple of white marble which Herod had erected in 
 honor of Augustus. The ancient pagan Nature-worship is 
 still attested by many Greek inscriptions on the surface of 
 the rock. The city itself has been described as a "Syrian 
 Tivoli." Here there met the eye of Christ all the signs of 
 that luxurious pagan life which He had already seen in Tyre 
 and Sidon, but upon a nobler scale of grandeur and refine- 
 ment. Splendid villas rose amid the olive orchards and the 
 groves of oak ; a vast castle, comparable with the greatest 
 works of mediaeval Europe, crowned the heights. Jewish 
 life was scarcely represented here. It was Rome herself, 
 guided by her invariable instinct for sites of natural beauty 
 and superb effects of architecture, that had planted her im- 
 perialism in this lovely spot. Northward of the city rose 
 the snowclad heights of Hermon, as Monte Rosa overhangs 
 the plains of Lombardy. Here the Holy Land terminated ; 
 it was the final outpost of the inheritance of Jacob ; and 
 here one of the greatest scenes in the life of Jesus w r as 
 transacted. 
 
EVENT AT C^SAREA PHILIPPI 227 
 
 The scene commences with a question on the part of 
 Christ which significantly marks the inward current of His 
 thoughts. "By the way," as they drew near to Ctesarea 
 Philippi, Jesus asked His disciples, "Whom do men say 
 that I am ? " It was an interrogation which He had often 
 addressed to His own consciousness. Perhaps He now 
 sought corroboration of these inward thoughts, as friend 
 may from friend, seeking to compare the verdict of His own 
 consciousness with theirs. Whatever consciousness Jesus 
 had of Himself it was clearly a gradual and a growing con- 
 sciousness. We have already seen how He passes by de- 
 grees from the conception of His ministry as a ministry to 
 the house of Israel to the wider conception of it as a minis- 
 try to the Gentiles too ; from His conception of Himself as 
 the Son of Man to the loftier conception of Himself as 
 dwelling in God, and therefore in a special sense the Son of 
 God ; and He is finally to overpass both these spacious 
 limits and recognize Himself not as the Saviour of a race, or 
 of races, but of the whole world. It would seem as though 
 veil after veil were silently withdrawn from His spirit as His 
 perception of Himself becomes almost daily clearer. As He 
 grows into the consciousness of His true relation to God He 
 passes in the same degree into the true consciousness of 
 Himself. His thoughts 
 
 " Through words and things 
 "Went sounding on a dim and perilous way," 
 
 and it is surely no irreverence to suppose that in this pro- 
 cess there should be moments of hesitation, amazement, and 
 doubt. Even on the Cross doubt was with Him, and the 
 agony of His spirit, refusing to be silenced, found expression 
 in the great cry, " My God, My God, why hast Thou for- 
 saken Me? " All His intuitions point to one almost unut- 
 
228 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 terable verdict, but how insecure is the verdict of intuition 
 amid the clamorous materialisms of life ! It is for Him 
 now to repeat the question of Nicodemus, " How can these 
 things be ? " Can man be caught up into the blaze of Deity 
 and yet be unconsumed ? And being man, and still in the 
 flesh, Christ turns to His friends for sympathy, but scarcely 
 for enlightenment. Whom do men in general say that He is ? 
 Whom do they — the disciples — say that He is ? They have 
 beheld His glory, as the glory of the only-begotten, full of 
 truth and grace ; is it in them to corroborate in any way His 
 groAving consciousness of Himself ? And, alas, for the in- 
 competence of human judgment, they can but reply, " Some 
 say John the Baptist ; some, Elias ; some, one of the 
 prophets ! " And yet in this feeble and even absurd reply 
 there is one element that strikes the mind at once. These 
 men cannot forbear witnessing to some ineffable quality in 
 Christ, which, by the poverty of language, can only be de- 
 scribed as the quality of supernaturalism, for in each of 
 these confessions He is compared not with the living, but 
 the dead. He is to them as one of the great dead come to 
 life again, as one of the master-spirits of the world reincar- 
 nated. It is a tribute to the immortal element of mystery in 
 Jesus which they had felt and which the world has always 
 felt. And then comes the bold reply of Simon Peter : 
 " Thou art not one of these, but one infinitely greater ; Thou 
 art the very Christ." 
 
 At last it seems as though Christ had gained the long- 
 desired corroboration of His own inmost thoughts ; and yet 
 Peter is not less wrong than the rest in his estimate of 
 Christ. "The Christ"— but what Christ? Clearly the 
 Christ of common Jewish tradition, a patriot, a deliverer, a 
 soldier, a governor of men, a builder of empire, a second 
 Soiomon, a greater David. That is the Christ of Peter, and 
 
EVENT AT C^SAREA PHILIPPI 229 
 
 of all the disciples. We liave but to remember many pages 
 of the subsequent history to see that their conceptions never 
 rose above this level ; the story of how they contested with 
 each other on places of authority in the new kingdom ; of 
 Judas, the disappointed patriot who throws the cause up in 
 disgust ; of Peter, the desperate patriot, who buys a sword 
 that he may die fighting for his Master. Y^hen Jesus re- 
 plies to Peter that he must tell no man of Him the meaning 
 is clear : Christ forbids Peter to proclaim such a Christ- 
 hood as this. And then He proceeds to teach these men 
 how vain their dream is by showing them that " the Son of 
 Man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, 
 and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after 
 three days rise again." The Christhood that comes through 
 suffering and death, and which, by being triumphant over 
 death, rules men always to the end of the world, is the spirit- 
 ual Christhood Jesus outlines. But the conception is at 
 once too spiritual and too sublime for Peter. He is grieved 
 and indignant, and takes Christ aside that he may remon- 
 strate with Him. Nothing in the actions of this lovable 
 and impetuous man brings him nearer to the human heart 
 than this, for he does what all men of quick temper and 
 ardent feeling would have done. But not the less his error 
 is disastrous. Unknown to himself, he plays the part of 
 devil's advocate, renewing the temptation in the wilderness 
 with the empty promise that if Jesus will but be a Christ 
 after Peter's pattern all the kingdoms of the world and the 
 glory of them shall be His. And therefore Christ addresses 
 to this beloved disciple the most terrible and crushing words 
 He ever spoke to any human creature : " Get thee behind 
 Me, Satan, for thou savorest not of the things of God, but 
 the things that be of men." And then, with this noble 
 sternness still vibrating in His voice, He calls the people to 
 
230 THE LIFE' OF CHRIST 
 
 Him, and addresses to them a truth which He has long- 
 since accepted for Himself : " What shall it profit a man if 
 he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? " 
 While He speaks perhaps He sees upon the heights of this 
 Roman city a Cross standing black against the midday sky, 
 and a sudden intense prevision of His own ends assails 
 Him. " Whosoever will come after Me, let him take up his 
 cross and follow Me," He cries. This is the predestined 
 road of all Messiahship, this the end at which the Christ s of 
 truth and love arrive. These men can tell Him nothing 
 after all ; He alone knows Himself. For an instant He has 
 leaned on others for corroboration of His own consciousness 
 of Himself, and they have miserably failed Him. The soli- 
 tary ineffable witness of His own spirit alone can sustain 
 Him ; the last veil is lifted from His heart, and He sees 
 Himself foredoomed to die as man before the world shall 
 recognize Him as God. 
 
 This conversation occured upon the way to Csesarea 
 Philippi, probably when the band of disciples already stood 
 almost at its gate. Peter, who is generally credited with the 
 reminiscences which pass under the name of St. Mark, 
 records it against himself with a merciless magnanimity. St. 
 Matthew, however, gives another version of the incident, 
 which leads us to suppose that the conversation was con- 
 tinued in Ca'sarea Philippi itself. It is at least likely 
 that so grave a theme was not summarily dismissed. 
 Peter especially would have cause to seek its re- 
 newed discussion. Through the bitter dreams of that sad 
 night the words of Christ would haunt him. Perhaps 
 Christ, ever full of a peculiar tenderness for Peter, gave His 
 erring disciple the opportunity of once more affirming his 
 faith, and this time without the reservations of timidity and 
 ignorance. But however this may be, St. Matthew records a. 
 
EVENT AT GdESAREA PHILIPPI 231 
 
 saying of Christ's to Peter which has been a rock of offence 
 indeed to all readers of the Gospels through many genera- 
 tions. In this second conversation, if such it was, Peter not 
 only accepts Christ as the Messiah, but adds, " Thou art the 
 Son of the living God." Christ replies with a play on 
 words, which is almost lost in the process of translation. 
 The city of Csesarea Philippi, founded on a rock and grow- 
 ing like a superb flower of stone out of the living rock, sug- 
 gests a metaphor, " Thou art Peter, that is a stone," says 
 Jesus. " Thou art indomitable as this very rock on which 
 this city rises. From thy lips has come a great confession 
 which shall also be as the rock for durability. Upon it I 
 will found My Church. Here, at Caesarea Philippi, a rock- 
 built city, shall the first course in the masonry of the tem- 
 ple of Eternal truth be laid, and the gates of hell shall not 
 prevail against it. Through all the ages shall thy name, 
 Peter, or the Rock, be associated with the firm foundation of 
 My Church : and thy confession, which gives Me an author- 
 ity never claimed by John, or Elijah, or the prophets, 
 shall be the everlasting Rock of ages on which it shall be 
 built." 
 
 Enigmatic as these words are, yet they are, however, pre- 
 cise and clear compared with those that follow. For, ac- 
 cording to St. Matthew's version, Christ then goes on to say 
 to the man whom He had but yesterday addressed as Satan, 
 "And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of 
 heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be 
 bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth 
 shall be loosed in heaven." Yet these words also are capa- 
 ble of a simple explanation. Jesus was now speaking as a 
 Jew, in language which no Jew could misunderstand. The 
 Jewish Rabbi was credited with a power of binding and 
 loosing, in the sense of prohibiting and permitting. In all 
 
232 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 matters relating to the etiquette of sacrifice, or to cases of 
 compensation under the Mosaic law, the Rabbi claimed a 
 supreme judicial power. In spite of the Pharisaic insistence 
 on the strict letter of the law, to its last jot and tittle, the 
 Rabbis judged the cases that came before them on their 
 merits, inflicting or moderating punishment as they thought 
 lit. What Christ really does is nothing more nor less 
 than to invest Peter with the power of the Rabbi. He indi- 
 cates that with this formal establishment of His kingdom the 
 power of the ancient Rabbi to bind or loose is at an end. 
 As if to compensate Peter for his great humiliation, Christ 
 now shows him that he is a member of a new fraternity more 
 august and more enduring than the Judaism which he has 
 renounced. That is the real meaning of Christ's words. 
 The best proofs that they do not cover, and were not meant 
 to imply, any sacerdotal theory of absolution, is that Peter 
 never made the least pretension to such authority ; and even 
 if he had it would not have been permitted for an instant in 
 a society so democratic as the early Church. So far was 
 Peter from becoming the spiritual autocrat of this Church, 
 that the balance of authority lay not with him, but with 
 Paul, an apostle who had never seen Jesus in the flesh, and 
 to whom Christ had never spoken. It is Paul who threatens 
 excommunication on those who disagree with him, but Peter 
 never once indulges in such language. Those, therefore, who 
 found extravagant theories of priestly authority and absolu- 
 tion upon these words of Christ to Peter, have to solve a 
 problem to which history affords no solution ; viz., how it is 
 that Peter never claimed this power, never exercised it, and 
 tamely let the primacy of Christianity pass from his hands 
 to the unauthorized and abler hands of Saul of Tarsus? 
 
 Jesus passed a whole week in Ca?sarea Philippi in pro- 
 found meditation. The conversations recorded by the Evan- 
 
EVENT AT C7ESAREA PHILIPPI 233 
 
 gelists are no doubt typical of many similar discussions be- 
 tween Him and the disciples. Wandering through these 
 groves and olive gardens, as Socrates had wandered in the 
 olive gardens on the Eleusinian road, surrounded by his 
 friends, Jesus uttered His inmost thoughts in mystic lan- 
 guage. A mounting ecstasy possessed His mind, the sacred 
 and the sad inebriation of the pre-doomed martyr. The dis- 
 ciples as they watched Him were filled with awe and con- 
 sternation, alternating with strangely thrilling moments of 
 insight and belief. It was in these olive gardens of Gesarea 
 Philippi that the thought of His Deity was born. Dear as 
 He was to them in all the intimacies of familiar friendship, 
 yet there were moments when they trembled at His touch, 
 His glance, His words. It had been so once before, when 
 He had come to them across the darkness of the Galilean 
 lake, and they had cried out in terror, believing Him to be a 
 spirit. Before their eyes the human seemed dissolved ; the 
 poor appanage of flesh and blood withdrew like a veil, leav- 
 ing the wonder of the soul uncovered. And, as if to con- 
 firm these astonishing impressions, at the end of the week 
 there happened an event that seemed especially designed for 
 the strengthening of their faith in this Divine element in 
 Jesus, which they had so vaguely apprehended. " He bring- 
 eth them up into a high mountain apart, and was transfigured 
 before them." 
 
 The mountain thus described was Hermon, the only high 
 and isolated mountain in the neighborhood of Cresarea Phil- 
 ippi. Hermon is a mountain of a triple peak, the one snow- 
 clad mountain in Palestine. It dominates the entire land, 
 and is visible even as far south as Jerusalem itself. It was 
 toward evening when Jesus approached it, and St. Luke tells 
 us that he went there to pray. This would be in accord with 
 all His habits. The solitude and serenity of mountain seen- 
 
234 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 ery appealed deeply to Him, and whenever He would be 
 alone He fled to tlie mountains as to a natural sanctuary. 
 The scene that now met His eyes may perhaps be best de- 
 scribed from the recollections of recent travelers, who agree 
 in their descriptions of the exquisite beauty and almost 
 unique grandeur of this mountain range. 
 
 Let us picture, then, Hermon itself in all that strange pomp 
 of sunset which nowhere reaches such a fine excess as in the 
 East. From immemorial time it had been a sacred mountain 
 not only to the Jew, but to the Phoenicians and the Greeks 
 who had been before them, and to many primitive races Avho 
 had preceded these. On its lower slopes many shrines and 
 temples rose, sometimes crowning rocky steeps, sometimes 
 hidden in deep ravines ; and the memory of these many 
 sanctuaries was in the mind of Peter when later on he sug- 
 gested that they should build three tabernacles here, as the 
 memorials of a perpetual worship. As Jesus and his three 
 favorite disciples climbed these lower slopes the first solemn 
 obsequies of day were being celebrated. A rose-colored fire 
 burned upon the triple peaks, deepening into ruby, and pass- 
 ing by a score of swift gradations into violet and purple. 
 Far to the southward lay the Sea of Galilee, like an ame- 
 thyst in its delicate setting of golden hills. Over the vast 
 eastern plain a long "pyramidal shadow slid," swallowiug up 
 the city of Damascus and its belts of verdure : " it was the 
 shadow of the mountain itself stretching away for seventy 
 miles across the plain." Soon the four pilgrims reached the 
 region of the snow, and the gorgeous colors of the sunset 
 die away in the deathlike pallor. The stars appear, hanging 
 like lamps above the snowy peaks, and before the darkness 
 has time to fall the moon shines out in dazzling splendor. 
 Still the pilgrims ascend, till the air grows difficult, and 
 sleep falls upon them. The three disciples wrap themselves 
 
EVENT AT CjESAREA PHILIPPI 235 
 
 eacli in his cloak and lie down to rest. Jesus goes on alone, 
 thrilling with the elation not only of the scene and hour, but 
 oi His own ecstatic thoughts. Over Herinon gathers a cap 
 of dazzling mist, and now the mountain, washed with moon- 
 light, glows like silver, and the deep midnight silence reigns. 
 Suddenly the disciples wake, startled with a sense of mingled 
 joy and terror. They behold Jesus clothed with the glory 
 of this wondrous moonlight, so that His face shines, and 
 "His raiment is white as the light." Bemused and won- 
 derstruck they hear as it were the murmur of distant voices 
 in Divine discourse. The nature of their own conversations 
 with the Lord in Ca3sarea Philippi is recollected, and it 
 seems to them they hear the very voices of Moses and Elias. 
 Before they can speak, before they can approach the dazzling 
 apparition of their Lord, the cloud from the brow of Her- 
 mon rolls down like a sheet of light, and from the cloud. a 
 voice appears to say, " This is My beloved Son, in whom I 
 am well pleased ; hear ye Him." A shock of terror seizes 
 them, and they fall upon the ground, and hide their faces. 
 The frail appanage of flesh and blood, which they had al- 
 ready seen as the veil through which the Divine Soul of Jesus 
 had shone forth, is quite dissolved. The cloud rolls lower, 
 and overwhelms them too. They grope for One who seems 
 already taken from them, and received in the temple of the 
 Highest. Then the cloud passes, and they see no man but 
 Jesus only. Wonder, awe, and joy fill all their thoughts. 
 They are no longer masters of themselves, and Peter, ever 
 the spokesman of their thoughts, can only feel the holiness 
 of the place and hour, and suggest the building of three tem- 
 ples on the mountain. They dare not even speak of what 
 they have seen and heard to their fellow-disciples. TVTien at 
 last the day breaks and they descend the mountain it is with 
 sealed lips they go ; but deep in each heart is the thrilling 
 
236 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 knowledge that tliey have stood close to the gate of heaven 
 as Jacob did, and have seen in Jesus the first full gleam of 
 that incredible divinity, which they will disclose hereafter to 
 a wondering world. 
 
 If we may thus seek to give this extraordinary scene its 
 natural setting, it is not because it can be explained away by 
 any circumstances of the place and hour. The awfumess of 
 midnight on a mountain in its known effect of quickening 
 imaginative thought; the sudden descent of a cloud from 
 Hermon, commented on by many travelers ; the moonlight 
 bathing the mystic figure of the solitary Christ, and making 
 it appear etherealized and transfigured : all these are intel- 
 ligible features of the scene, but they afford no explanation 
 that is adequate and final. The truth is that we leave the 
 plain ground of rational inference here, as the disciples left 
 the roads of Ctesarea Philippi when they ascended Hermon, 
 and we enter on a realm of vague and sacred mystery. One 
 thing at least is clear : a story so incredible to human un- 
 derstanding could not have been invented by these men of 
 Galilee. Why should they invent a tale, of the utmost con- 
 sequence in the history of their Master, which they were for- 
 bidden to relate ? If they had perceived its real importance 
 why should they have represented themselves not as vigilant 
 spectators of the scene as we should expect, but as bemused 
 and but half awake, with the implication that what they re- 
 lated as sober fact was after all but a sort of waking dream ? 
 Or, we may ask again, was it possible for such men to invent 
 a story so exquisite and wonderful, that it would excite sur- 
 prise and admiration in the writings of the highest genius? 
 Even had they attempted a deliberate invention, there was 
 nothing in Jewish legend to suggest this scene. It is of the 
 nature of a myth that it can be easily traced, as a rule, to 
 some germ-cell of tradition ; but here tradition affords no 
 
EVENT AT CjESAREA PHILIPPI 237 
 
 clue. A Messiah might, indeed, have been conceived as 
 having some spiritual affinity with Moses and Elijah, but 
 never as conversing with them on the painful theme of His 
 ignominious death. Moreover, the three Evangelists who 
 narrate this story do so without a shade of difference in their 
 language. They each represent the disciples as stupefied 
 I iv what they saw. They each represent the spiritual drama 
 they beheld as transcending all their habitual thoughts of 
 Christ, so that no one can be more surprised in reading their 
 narration of the scene than were they in witnessing it. We 
 may perhaps say that something natural really happened to 
 which they gave a supernatural meaning ; but this only 
 brings us back to the original difficulty of then* entire in- 
 competence to invent these very features which make the 
 scene so astonishing. At this point rational criticism ceases, 
 for a while it may suggest a doubt, it cannot afford an ex- 
 planation. 
 
 But if we read the story in - the light of all that had oc- 
 curred in Ciesarea Philippi, we see it as a final sequence in 
 a chain of causes. Jesus comes to this remote city for the 
 purpose of a spiritual retreat. His days are passed in 
 prayer and sacred ecstasy. He is engaged in profound 
 meditation on the mystery of Himself. He has reconciled 
 Himself to the purpose of a sacrificial death, and is thus 
 emancipated from the tyranny of death. The result of this 
 emancipation is a great access of spiritual life. The body 
 can no longer contain these energies of the spirit He 
 knows Himself an emanation of God ; in the " abyssmal 
 depth of personality " a voice speaks, assuring Him of im- 
 mortal triumph over all His earthly foes. Filled with these 
 lofty thoughts, already nearly emancipated from the normal 
 limitations of time and space and sense, He goes to Hermon 
 at midnight, gathering His soul up in one intense effort of 
 
238 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 communion with the infinite. What happened on Hermon 
 was the outward projection of these inner experiences. He 
 finds Himself able for an instant to enter into that spiritual 
 world which lies around the little earthly life. If man is in- 
 deed a spirit, such an experience, at least in some rare and 
 singular instance, should not be impossible to him. It was 
 certainly known to St. Paul, who speaks of a period of 
 ecstasy so intense that he knew not whether he was in the 
 body or out of the body. But Jesus had already overpassed 
 the boundaries of the human and knew what it meant to live 
 habitually in the unseen. He had merged His will com- 
 pletely in the Divine will. As man " dies not wholly but by 
 the death of the will," so he lives not as a spirit save by the 
 death of the will. In the hour that man's will is perfectly 
 subdued to God's, man becomes as God. This hour Jesus 
 knew on Hermon. He has become pure spirit, for whom 
 earth is no more a prison ; and He can converse with 
 spiritual presences, and stand undismayed in the splen- 
 dor of that eternal world, which is the world of His real 
 nativity. 
 
 " To any man," says a great writer, " there may come at 
 times a consciousness that there blows through all the artic- 
 ulations of his body the wind of a spirit not wholly his, that 
 another girds him and carries him whither he would not." 
 On Hermon Jesus is ivplifted by such a wind of the Spirit. 
 In the sudden momentary dissolution of all material bonds 
 He pre-dates the experience of death. He foretastes the " in- 
 expressive lightness " and the freedom of a spirit that has 
 survived the pang of separation from the body. Like the 
 cloud on Hermon, He floats for an instant iar above the 
 gross material world upon a tide of splendor. He is as the 
 angels of God ; he is kin with those pure intelligences who 
 dwell in the temple of the infinite. The transfiguration is 
 
EVENT AT C^SAREA PHILIPPI 230 
 
 thus the visible symbol of the triumph of the spiritual na- 
 ture of man over the physical. 
 
 The impression which this extraordinary scene made on 
 the disciples was deep and permanent. It was true they did 
 not speak of it ; it is yet more strangely true that they even 
 appear to have forgotten it amid the horrors of the closing 
 tragedy. It is not in human nature to maintain itself for 
 long at the rare height of its noblest hours. But those 
 hours are not forgotten, though they may appear to be so ; 
 they are as a thrilling music heard at intervals below the 
 surface trivialities of life, they are as a brighter thread of 
 color woven into the grey texture of the commonplace. More 
 than thirty years later Peter recorded his impressions of this 
 wonderful and sacred night on Hermon. He had learned to 
 estimate it rightly. He knew it then as the greatest moment 
 he had ever known. " For," said he, " we have not followed 
 cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the 
 power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eye- 
 witnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the 
 Father honor and glory, when there came such a voice to 
 Him from the excellent glory, This is My beloved Son, in 
 whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from 
 heaven we heard, when we were with Him in the holy 
 mount." 
 
CHAPTEE XVIII 
 
 THE FAREWELL TO GALILEE 
 
 The greatest crisis of Christ's life was now over. The 
 Transfiguration marks the beginning of a period of exulta- 
 tion which is only closed with His death. The idealist and 
 poet of the Galilean Lake, uttering parables and aphorisms 
 which irresistibly attract all minds, no more exists. The 
 infinite sweetness of His temper is modified by the encroach- 
 ment of stern and terrible thoughts. He has passed outside 
 human nature ; He moves henceforth at a great height above 
 it. His relations with His disciples are often strained, and 
 the old familiar intimacy has given place to awe. His 
 brethren doubt His sanity, and even go so far as to declare 
 that He is mad. There are indeed exquisite moments when 
 He speaks and acts once more as a poet, and these occur to 
 the end ; but they daily become more infrequent. An im- 
 mitigable flame of Divine ardor consumes Him. He ex- 
 presses His thoughts with new and alarming energy. He 
 lias clothed Himself in the raiment of the Judge, who boldly 
 arraigns and condemns the existing forms of society. The 
 solemnities and pomps of a day of final judgment hang like 
 a lurid cloud over all His thoughts, and He pictures Him- 
 self as seated in the heavens or coming with great power 
 and glory to conduct the final assize of the human race. 
 
 Let us briefly recapitulate the position of affairs when 
 Jesus descends from the snowy heights of Hermon, and sets 
 His face steadfastly toward Jerusalem. In Jerusalem itself 
 He has had no success, and He knows now that all attempts 
 
 240 
 
THE FAREWELL TO GALILEE 241 
 
 which He may make to win the subborn city are foredoomed 
 to failure. It is the appointed theatre of His martyrdom ; 
 there He will be taken by the elders and the scribes and put 
 to death, for it cannot be that a prophet shall perish out of 
 Jerusalem. Galilee itself has greatly cooled toward Him. 
 Capernaum and Bethsaida, places for which He had a special 
 love, receive Him with such indifference or disdain, that He 
 is driven to denounce them. From one district bordering on 
 the Lake He has been expelled, the whole population be- 
 seeching Him to depart out of their coasts. Nazareth itself, 
 dear to Him by a thousand memories of childhood and 
 youth, has long since affirmed its complete contempt for 
 Him. Even Samaria is now hostile to Him. Enemies have 
 multiplied, and they are no longer confined to the scribes and 
 Pharisees. His words are watched, His deeds are canvassed, 
 His every movement is reported to those eager to find a pre- 
 text for destroying Him. Herod, encouraged by the ease 
 with which he has swept John from his path, desires to kill 
 Him. Hitherto His great security had been the favor of the 
 populace. The dread of precipitating some insurrectionary 
 movement which would provoke retaliation from the Romans 
 had held the hands of His enemies. A terrible dilemma 
 now meets Him. If He would keep the favor of the people 
 He must declare Himself a king ; if He rejects the part they 
 would assign Him, He at once alienates the popularity which 
 is His sole protection against the priestly inquisition at Jeru- 
 salem. He is in the most hopeless of all positions — that of 
 a revolutionary leader who has failed. It alters nothing in 
 the situation to say that He has deliberately failed. He may 
 have the best of reasons for such conduct, but they are not 
 reasons which the populace will respect or understand. The 
 mob asks boldness in its leaders ; it will forgive, or even ad- 
 mire, an unscrupulous ambition. But the one thing which a 
 16 
 
242 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 mob will riot forgive is some honorable scruple in a leader 
 which prevents him from accepting the fruits of victory ; this 
 they can only regard as absurd timidity or deliberate be- 
 trayal. In such a case the estranged and disappointed 
 friend becomes the most revengeful enemy ; and this Jesus 
 found in that day when the populace itself demanded His 
 crucifixion at the hands of Pilate. 
 
 This was the position which met Jesus on His return from 
 Cpesarea Philippi. He would have been impervious to all 
 ordinary human emotion if He had not felt it deeply. No 
 sadder thing can happen to a great teacher than to revisit 
 the scenes of some conspicuous success, and to find himself 
 forgotten. The least vain or selfish of men may fondly hope 
 that the good which he has done will be gratefully remem- 
 bered. It seems incredible to him that all the infinite ex- 
 penditure of tenderness and love, of energy and thought, 
 which he has lavished on his work should have left so little 
 mark. And perhaps the way in which such a teacher meets 
 such hours of disappointment affords the severest and there- 
 fore the completest test of the greatness of his character. 
 Jesus not merely survives the test, but comes out of it 
 triumphantly. He looks with tears upon a recreant Caper- 
 naum, but they are tears not of weakness, but of pit}*. His 
 composure is complete, and it takes a new form of almost 
 unearthly tranquillity. With all the emblems of defeat 
 around Him He speaks of a peace He has which the world 
 can neither give nor take away. His sublime confidence in 
 Himself rises in the degree of the scorn which the world 
 pours upon Him. So far is He from moderating His claim 
 to obedience that He announces it afresh in terms that seem 
 wildly extravagant. He who had once tolerantly welcomed 
 as disciples men of little faith now demands an absolute 
 faith which rejects all conditions. Men must love Him more 
 
THE FAREWELL TO GALILEE 243 
 
 than wife or child, mother or father. They must follow Him 
 instantly, and not even return to then- homes to bury the 
 dead. He who looks back with even one reluctant glance is 
 not worthy of Him. All the claims of nature, all the bonds 
 of social duty, are dissolved ; He alone presents a truly sa- 
 cred claim. Not for nothing does man transcend human 
 nature and soar beyond it ; henceforth he moves upon a 
 lonely height where few can follow him. From the night of 
 the Transfiguration Jesus is alone, and evermore alone. In 
 hours of sweet relenting, the cloud of glory is withdrawn, the 
 heights of solitary rapture are forsaken, and He is again 
 pure man, weeping beside a grave, or offering His bosom to 
 the weariness of a beloved disciple ; but how brief the re- 
 spite ! He appears, He is lost : with a kind of terror the 
 disciples see the transfiguration of the human into something 
 higher perpetually renewed, the vanishing of the familiar, the 
 expanding of the flame of deity — their Christ ever more and 
 more withdrawn from them, till His voice reaches them out of 
 some unearthly height, in a language that is hard to under- 
 stand. " And," says Peter, in his one recorded reminiscence 
 of these terrible and thrilling hours, " they were in the way 
 going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus went before them ; and 
 they were amazed, and as they followed they were afraid." 
 
 This exaltation of mind, which never left Jesus after His 
 return from Hermon, may well have seemed insanity to those 
 who had hitherto regarded Him only as an amiable idealist 
 and poet. There can be no doubt that some of these sayings 
 which inculcated an absolute rejection of all claims of the 
 natural life for His sake did contain a germ of peril which 
 bore disastrous fruit. They have become the sanction of 
 monasticism. Leaving home and kindred for the sake of 
 Christ has been used as the synonym of a cloistral life. The 
 praise of those who had rejected marriage for the Kingdom 
 
244 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 of God's sake, lias been construed into the praise of celibacy. 
 A seed of asceticism was thus sowed in the early Church 
 which no passage of time has been competent to sterilize. 
 The meaning of Christ is, however, perfectly clear. Wrought 
 into a Divine ecstasy by the passion of sacrifice, He is right 
 in insisting that those who would follow Him must them- 
 selves be prepared for the greatest sacrifices. The crowds 
 who listened with delighted minds to the discourses of the 
 Lake need to be assured that an age of martrydom is near. 
 He alone is the appointed Judge of men, and men who share 
 this terrible belief will naturally count the loss of all things 
 light to win His favorable verdict. It is necessary to put 
 this truth with passionate vehemence that it may win atten- 
 tion at all. No reformer succeeds by asking little of men ; 
 the more extreme is his demand the more likely is it to meet 
 with obedience. The finest natures find a joy in sacrifice 
 more inebriating than the fullest joys of pleasure and indul- 
 gence. To renounce earthly joy is in itself a higher joy. 
 Christ thus speaks in language which reveals profound ac- 
 quaintance with the human heart. What is insanity to the 
 base is the loftiest reason to the noble. It is true that such 
 language cannot be used without risk, but the risk must be 
 taken for the sake of the wider good it purchases in the re- 
 invigoration of the most unselfish instincts of the human 
 heart. That Christ never meant to inculcate an ascetic life 
 is clear from the nature of His own life, which pursued its 
 course of friendly sociality even to the foot of Calvary. 
 What He did desire was to communicate to others His own 
 spiritual exaltations, and to make them feel what He had 
 felt — that renunciation was the supreme joy. When Peter, 
 filled with astonishment at these teachings, replied that at 
 least he and his fellow-disciples had left all things for 
 Christ's sake, Christ's reply is that he had lost nothing by 
 
THE FAREWELL TO GALILEE 245 
 
 his bargain. He liad been more than compensated in the 
 world of new affections he had found, and in the world to 
 come he would win eternal life. 
 
 This exaltation of mind was necessary to Jesus for the 
 consummation of His work. The saying that "whom the 
 gods would destroy they first make mad " may surely have a 
 higher meaning than that which is commonly attributed to 
 it : may it not stand as a debased version of that Divine 
 inebriation of the spirit which alone can invigorate the mar- 
 tyr to approach the hour of his agony with fortitude ? In 
 proportion to the gathering signs of defeat the reformer 
 needs to be borne aloft on some wave of sublime self-esteem, 
 to rely utterly upon himself, to be so assured of the truth of 
 his position that he is insensible to reproach, defection, and 
 calamity. Never was there a great teacher who faced a 
 situation so full of the material for despair as that which 
 met Christ in Galilee. The Lake itself, notorious for its 
 sudden changes, was the apt symbol of this fickle people, 
 who had seen a hundred miracles and had forgotten them. 
 The Pharisees, taking advantage of Christ's absence, had 
 sown everywhere the seeds of innuendo, suspicion, dis- 
 affection. Perhaps it was this very image which was in the 
 mind of Christ, when He drew T His daring picture of the evil 
 one who came by night and sowed the tares amid the good 
 seed of the Kingdom. His disciples, in spite of all His in- 
 timate conversations with them, were utterly adverse to His 
 journey to Jerusalem. They were full of gloomy prognosti- 
 cations, which they took no pains to conceal. It was indeed 
 hard to know where He could turn for safety ; in the 
 tetrarchy of Herod armed men awaited Him, in Jerusalem the 
 unanimous malice of the priests. One course was indeed 
 open ; He might resign His mission. The world could give 
 Him nothing ; He might have disappeared among the 
 
246 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 mountains as Elijah did, seeking to cultivate in perfect soli- 
 tude the high and separated life of the religious mystic. But 
 resignation is the last weapon of the weak, and it hurts 
 most the hand that uses it. It is the tacit confession of in- 
 competence to deal with difficulty. The solitude it wins is 
 more often peopled with regrets than fruitful in new incen- 
 tives to a new strenuousness of spirit. Christ cannot take 
 such a course, because it would mean the disavowal of Him- 
 self. He can pursue His way though no disciples follows 
 Him ; and His exaltation begets in Him a temper of heroic 
 courage. When the Pharisees try to play upon His fears, 
 they find Him absolutely fearless. With unctuous insincer- 
 ity they come to Him, professing a regard for His safety, 
 and saying, " Get thee out and pass hence, for Herod will 
 kill thee." His reply breathes the spirit of indomitable 
 defiance. "Go ye, and tell that fox," He says, "Behold I 
 cast out devils, and I do cures to-day and to-morrow, and 
 the third day I shall be perfected. Nevertheless I must 
 walk to-day and to-morrow, and the day following ; for it 
 cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem." 
 
 This exaltation expresses itself at times in language which 
 implies a sense of destiny. He speaks as a fatalist of the 
 more devout kind, for whom all human events are but God at 
 work. He is impressed with the conviction that He is the 
 central figure of a Divine drama, full of inevitable sequences. 
 He will die, but not by accidental violence, for there are no 
 accidents in the Divine order. His life and death have long 
 since been arranged to the minutest detail in the council 
 chambers of the Almighty. Event after event, as it un- 
 folds, with all its sordid aspect of conspiracy or its tragic 
 agony of rejection and repulse, is but the vehicle of destiny. 
 Things are so because they cannot be otherwise. The ordi- 
 nary man is permitted a wide latitude in the ordering of his 
 
THE FAREWELL TO GALILEE 247 
 
 life, because his movements are of no great importance to 
 the world ; but not so the extraordinary man, who is set for 
 the rise and fall of the world itself. To His unbelieving, 
 narrow-minded brethren Christ remarks with sarcasm, 
 " Your time is always ready " ; but of Himself He says, 
 "My hour is not yet come." He is as one who passes 
 through a hostile army, whose swords hang suspended over 
 Him, but cannot fall, because the hands that hold them are 
 frozen in an iron trance. No man lays hands on Him, be- 
 cause His hour has not yet come. He speaks often of a 
 high and solitary path which He must tread where none can 
 follow Him. His language is grossly misapprehended. It 
 is thought at one time that He is meditating suicide. " Will 
 He kill Himself ? " is the whispered comment of the Jews. 
 The strange fortitude of the mystic and the fatalist may well 
 prove incomprehensible to ordinary men. Perhaps some 
 sympathy is due to those who listened to these lofty say- 
 ings. The ordinary experience of humanity afforded no clue 
 to them. They were an unintelligible music floating down 
 to them as from the clouds. They were the sad and thrill- 
 ing utterances of a mind deranged. Genius and heroism 
 have often seemed the voice of madness to the feeble and 
 the commonplace. 
 
 One fixed idea is constantly expressed in these moods ; it 
 is that Jerusalem is His appointed goal. The vision of a 
 culminating contest with the scribes and Pharisees never 
 leaves Him, and that vision has for background the Holy 
 City. Up to this time the superb metropolis of His nation 
 has afforded Him no attractions. The splendor of the 
 Temple has repelled Him, the character of the people has 
 disgusted Him. Nowhere has He been received with so 
 little sympathy and tolerance ; nowhere has such stolid in- 
 credulity and brutal scorn awaited Him. Yet now, almost 
 
248 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 in spite of Himself, tlie bare thought of Jerusalem fascinates 
 and thrills Him. His disciples, with a true worldly wisdom, 
 would fain remain in Galilee, where at least they have 
 achieved some honor and acceptance, and are not made to 
 drink those waters of contempt which Jerusalem invariably 
 offered to all Galileans. They would even have preferred 
 the pagan provinces to Jerusalem. But their remonstrances 
 were in vain. Jesus saw with terrible distinctness all that 
 would happen to Him at Jerusalem, and yet He could not 
 keep away. From these far Avails He heard the challenging 
 trumpets of His destiny, and it was not in Him to refuse the 
 challenge. He is in haste to be gone ; He is straitened in 
 spirit till this last act of His life is accomplished. It is at 
 this point that Jesus parts company with the average re- 
 former of society. He displays none of that sagacity which 
 teaches the reformer to reserve his energies, to be oppor- 
 tunely pliable to circumstance, in order that in the end he 
 may win his victory. He is henceforth the pure enthusiast, 
 dedicated to supreme sacrifice, rather than the reformer who, 
 with a more moderate enthusiasm, weighs his means and op- 
 portunities. And out of this intense emotion there is born a 
 new feeling for Jerusalem itself, of which the past has given 
 no sign. He sighs for it as the noble sigh for the bed of 
 heroic death. He longs to cast Himself upon the stony 
 bosom of this mother who discards Him. His soul sud- 
 denly breaks out in an exclamation of profound love and 
 pity, utterly incomprehensible to the Galileans, who had 
 every cause to hate the Holy City. " O Jerusalem, Jeru- 
 salem," He cries, "which killest the prophets, and stonest 
 them that are sent unto thee ; how often would I have gath- 
 ered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood 
 under her wings, and ye would not." 
 
 As if to warn His Galilean converts against that kind 
 
THE FAREWELL TO GALILEE 249 
 
 of gross misjudgment of heroic lives which counts all suffer- 
 ing defeat, Christ devotes His last discourse in Capernaum 
 to the discussion of untempered judgments. A report has 
 reached Capernaum of some sanguinary massacre in Jeru- 
 salem, in which certain Galileans have perished by the 
 swords of the Roman soldiery, even while in the act of sacri- 
 fice. Are they to be counted " sinners above all the Gali- 
 leans, because they have suffered such things ? " Perhaps 
 they were fanatics ; perhaps simple uncalculatmg enthusi- 
 asts, who had taken no pains to conceal their anger at the 
 presence of the Eoman eagles in the Temple of David. They 
 would henceforth be accounted martyrs, and possibly with 
 justice. But if they were to be judged at the tribunal of a 
 worldly prudence they were not martyrs, but fools. If the 
 Pharisees, who invariably associated every calamity with 
 secret wrongdoing, measured such lives, they would declare 
 these men to be sinners above all men, because they had 
 suffered a doom that few men met. Christ warned His Gali- 
 lean friends against these superficial judgments. The solu- 
 tion of the mystery of pain is not so simple. It is nothing 
 either for or against a man that he endures great misfortunes. 
 The heroic never reach then- fame except by paths of blood, 
 by misfortune and catastrophe. It is a strange theme for a 
 last discourse in Galilee, and yet it is full of solemn signifi- 
 cance as regards Himself. The time will come when the 
 news will reach Capernaum of a far worse tragedy enacted in 
 Jerusalem. His friends will hear the fatal tale of One whom 
 they regarded almost as a God vilely crucified as a felon. 
 Let them then beware of untempered judgments. Let them 
 make room in their minds for the thought of an heroic life, 
 which becomes heroic by its suffering. Human life is but a 
 noisome sty where no perception of the nature of the heroic 
 life exists. Thus does Jesus warn them ; thus does He 
 
250 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 stand before them, garlanded, as it were, for sacrifice ; and 
 though they know it not, His last word is spoken and they 
 will see His face no more. 
 
 By what route Jesus left Galilee we have no means of de- 
 termining. It is scarcely probable that He would pass 
 through Nazareth ; and the likeliest course would be by 
 Endor and Nain, and so southward to the district of Sama- 
 ria. One discourse, uttered either immediately before or 
 during this journey, and one incident which certainly oc- 
 curred on the way to Jerusalem, confirm the impression of 
 the sterner thoughts which uoav filled His mind. 
 
 The discourse is the extremely enigmatic one about the 
 salt and the sacrifice. " For every one shall be salted with 
 fire," says Jesus, " and every sacrifice shall be salted with 
 salt." The words manifestly refer to the injunction of the 
 Levitical law : " And every oblation of the meat-offering shalt 
 thou season with salt, neither shalt thou suffer the salt of 
 the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat-offer- 
 ing." He who offered a meat-offering to God without salt 
 offered a putrid sacrifice, and hence this command. But 
 salt was a precious and expensive thing to the Oriental, as it 
 still is, and there was a sensible temptation to grudge the 
 salt, and thus to insult God by a sacrifice which involved no 
 self-denial. Jesus points out that piety without self-denial 
 is worthless. To the really religious man religion is every- 
 thing ; he will pluck out his eye, he will cut off his hand, he 
 will submit to any self-discipline in order to present the 
 living, unblemished, and perfect sacrifice of himself. In 
 other words, sacrifice is the salt of life, the fire of life, the 
 cleansing and the consecrating element of life. Perhaps 
 Jesus meant also to imply that there is a certain vital salt of 
 integrity and sincerity that gives tone and zest to character, 
 and that when this is gone the man has lost his savor, and 
 
THE FAREWELL TO GALILEE 251 
 
 there is no health in him. But enigmatic as the language 
 is, there can be no mistake about its meaning in respect of 
 the disciples. They are traveling to the hour of supreme 
 sacrifice, and nothing but absolute sincerity can sustain them. 
 The pleasant pilgrimages of a popular and welcomed min- 
 istry are at an end. Henceforth they will walk on roads of 
 fire, leading each in turn to his distant scene of martyrdom. 
 The utmost sacrifices they have made in following Christ are 
 but trivial compared with that flame of sacrifice which they 
 must now enter ; and he who shrinks from the severity of 
 the cleansing agony is no longer worthy to be called a dis- 
 ciple. Awful words indeed to fall upon the startled ears of 
 these Galileans ; yet it was by these words that the world 
 was roused from slumber. Strange as it may seem, yet it is 
 true that the religion which makes things light for man is a 
 religion instinctively rejected. The religion that scourges 
 man most heavily is the one religion that attracts him. 
 
 The incident which occurred in this journey is the familiar 
 one of the rich young ruler who desired eternal life. Here 
 at last was what appeared an almost visible perfection of life 
 and character. The youth claims that he had kept all the 
 commandments from his youth, and Christ does not contest 
 the claim. He has lived a life of separated and fastidious 
 virtue. He is manifestly high-minded, sincere, and capable 
 of great enthusiasms. There is a noble restlessness and ar- 
 dor in his nature which cannot be satisfied with formal vir- 
 tues. He knows " the large and liberal discontent " of the 
 true idealist who sighs for the impossible. He desires noth- 
 ing less than perfection. Here is a nature that seems pre- 
 destined to apostleship. Jesus loves him at sight ; never 
 had one approached Him so akin in spirit. Yet Christ per- 
 ceives instinctively that this ardent nature has not been 
 salted with the salt of sacrifice. He has missed the supreme 
 
252 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 joy of renunciation. Jesus, answering his inmost thought, 
 says, " You desire perfection : behold the price of perfection 
 is renunciation. Sell all that thou hast, and give it to the 
 poor, and perfection shall be yours. Cut the last mooring 
 that binds you to the world and all its pleasant things, and 
 in that instant the soul shall find its wings and soar into the 
 empyrean of life." But the price is too great. The words 
 of Jesus seem extravagant and harsh. He was " sad at that 
 saying, and went away grieved, for he had great posses- 
 sions." Jesus loved him, and yet he went away. In that 
 very fact his true character was exposed. He was after all 
 but a sentimentalist ; the true heroic fibre was not in him. 
 
 From this hour we may trace in Jesus the growth of a 
 sterner temper. His denunciations of the rich become more 
 vehement. The tests by which He tries men become more 
 uncompromising. He has entered on that last heroic stage 
 of enthusiasm, reached by few, when the world has practic- 
 ally ceased to exist. " I am from above, ye are from be- 
 neath ; ye are of the world, I am not of this world," is the 
 reproach He hurls against His enemies. The doubts and 
 dejections known to all reformers are incapable of assailing 
 this lofty temper. " The slings and arrows of outrageous for- 
 tune " are scarcely felt. The enthusiast moves through the 
 brutal strifes of life like those legendary knights whose 
 frames were wrought of such ethereal stuff that swords 
 pierced them in vain, for the wounds closed instantly, im- 
 mortally resisting mortal weapons. If the enthusiast knows 
 many pains, he also carries the unfailing antidote of pain in 
 his own veins. And so we see Jesus passing to His final 
 battlefield, scarcely as man, for He has exceeded the limits of 
 the human ; already immortal, for He is superior to death ; and 
 the Gospel of Beatitude now gives place to the final and alarm- 
 ing Gospel of Sacrifice, and victory through sacrifice alone. 
 
CHAPTEE XIX 
 
 THE UNCHASTE 
 
 We have already seen that, throughout the life of Jesus 
 nothing is more evident than the sympathy which He felt 
 for persons who cowered under the stigma of social dishonor, 
 and in the closing period of His ministry this sympathy be- 
 comes increasingly intense. But it was more than sym- 
 pathy, as a vague emotion of pity ; it was sympathy with a 
 moral basis. If Jesus showed a special and consistent ten- 
 derness toward persons whose faults of life were manifest, it 
 was because He drew a sharp distinction between sins of 
 frailty and sins of temper. Moreover, the distinction which He 
 drew was always to the disadvantage of the latter. The Phar- 
 isees were certainly more odious to Him than the publicans and 
 harlots. His dislike of the elder brother is as plain as His 
 lenience of feeling toward the prodigal. His most terrible 
 denunciations were addressed not to bad people of notorious 
 laxity of life, but to conventionally good people whose mor- 
 ality was irreproachable. The commonplace distinctions be- 
 tween virtue and vice did not exist for Him ; or, if they did, 
 they were so modified by His acute perception of the vices 
 of the virtuous and the corresponding virtues of the vicious, 
 that they were no longer reconizable. 
 
 Hardly anything in Christ's public ministry wrought Him 
 such harm as this peculiar and unpalatable view of sin. 
 Men saw Him constantly surrounded by persons of evil repu- 
 tation, and they drew their own conclusions. They expected, 
 at least, from a teacher of religion an active support of conven- 
 
 253 
 
254 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 tional morality ; Christ often spoke as the enemy of that moral- 
 ity. The distinction between venial and mortal sin is a con- 
 venient invention, with a good deal of sound reason to sup- 
 port it. Average society is certainly not prepared to treat 
 the covetous or ill-tempered man on the same terms as the 
 thief or the murderer, although it is perfectly plain that 
 without covetousness the thief would not exist, without ex- 
 plosions of angry and revengeful feeling crimes of violence 
 would not occur. Nor would society account it just to treat 
 an imagined act of impurity as a real one. It is one thing 
 to defile the theatre of the mind with an obscene drama ; 
 quite another to guide the life upon vicious principles. So, 
 again, a great deal of callous cruelty and greed may co-exist 
 with an outwardly correct moral life ; but who would con- 
 tend that a man of harsh or avaricious temper deserved that 
 kind of reprehension which society visits upon the person of 
 profligate behavior? But that was precisely the contention 
 of Christ. Sins of temper appeared to Him far more disas- 
 trous than sins of frailty. In His alarming system of spir- 
 itual pathology, the first resembled a paralysis of vital or- 
 gans, the second an attack of fever. Any man may contract 
 a fever, and after dreadful wanderings in the realms of delir- 
 ious imagination may emerge again into the light of sanity. 
 He may lie blind and helpless at the mercy of the flame that 
 consumes him, but he may still retain his goodness of heart, 
 his sense of right, and even his real passion for integrity, 
 But in the growth of evil tempers there is no crisis and no 
 cure. They involve not a temporary obscuration of moral 
 faculties, but their destruction. They are like paralysis, a 
 decay of vital organs. Frailty of the flesh is curable ; cor- 
 ruption of the spirit incurable. Hence the sin of the Phari- 
 see appeared to Christ far more odious and hopeless than 
 the sin of the harlot; and if it were possible for society 
 
THE UNCHASTE 255 
 
 to weigh grain by grain the evil of human lives in the scales 
 of an exact justice, Christ's diagnosis would be found 
 correct. 
 
 The historian of Jesus may, however, justly tremble as he 
 proceeds to examine these principles, for they are revolution- 
 ary in the highest degree. We may have the clearest proof 
 that a man of thoroughly inhumane temper, in the course of 
 a long life of unscrupulous avarice, inflicts far greater evils 
 on society than he could have done by any personal breach 
 of chastity. Nevertheless some obstinate and indignant scra- 
 pie forbids the thought that avarice is a sin of equal turpi- 
 tude with unchastity. We may be perfectly aware that a 
 man of austere personal virtue may so conduct his business 
 that in the long run it becomes a far direr engine for the 
 overthrow of innocence than if he had succumbed to the frail- 
 ties of the flesh ; but we shrink from expressing such con- 
 clusions, for the honorable reason that we fear lest others 
 should suppose that we treat lightly forms of sin which in- 
 volve much open shame and ruin. We are afraid, and justly 
 afraid, lest we reduce sins of personal impurity to the level 
 of excusable weaknesses. But Christ would not have given 
 a new morality to the world had He acted on these fears. It 
 was surely part of the Cross which He bore for men that He 
 was constrained to handle and examine things unspeakably 
 repugnant to Him, in the same spirit that the great physician 
 dissects the roots of a horrible disease that he may find its 
 remedy. The first step in all true science is analysis. 
 Christ was bound to analyze the human heart before He 
 could unfold His scheme of redemptive pathology. With an 
 infinite and delicate science, possibly only to One who was 
 Himself sinless, He applied the probe to the deepest secrets 
 of the human heart. He embodied His discoveries in the 
 great principle, that " out of the heart proceedeth evil thoughts. 
 
256 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blas- 
 phemies ; these are the things which defile a man." All sin 
 is thus primarily sin of the will. Whether or no it becomes 
 incarnated in the actions is a matter of secondary importance. 
 He who looks upon a woman with impure eyes has already 
 sinned with her in his heart. Outward rectitude of life af- 
 fords us no guarantee of inward purity. Rectitude of life 
 and inward baseness may co-exist as in the Pharisee ; or on 
 the other hand, a frail virtue does not imply a total inca- 
 pacity for good. Motive must be measured as well as deed. 
 The direction of the will is of even greater importance than 
 the nature of the conduct ; for the conduct may be but an 
 aberration of the will. A profound and difficult science in- 
 deed to explain to sinful men, and no wonder that it aroused 
 alarm ; yet without it, the incomparable purity and loftiness 
 of Christ's own mind had not been comprehended. 
 
 But we are not left to the subtleties of spiritual science to 
 learn these truths ; two great stories give them reality and 
 moral force. One of these dramas occurs in the house of 
 Simon the Pharisee ; the other in the courts of the Temple 
 itself. 
 
 The story of " the woman who was a sinner " presents cer- 
 tain internal difficulties which are not easy of solution. It 
 is related thrice, and the scene appears to have been Beth- 
 any. The probability is that there were two anointings of 
 Christ, one by this woman in the house of Simon the leper, 
 and' another by Mary in the house of Lazarus, and these sep- 
 arate stories are confused in the Gospel narratives. St. Luke, 
 in his effort to reduce the memorabilia of Jesus to clearness 
 and order, has perhaps carried the process of editing too far, 
 and has combined in one narrative features common to each 
 incident. "We have seen already that he has combined sep- 
 arate parables that were similar in theme and based on a 
 
THE UNCHASTE 257 
 
 common ethical ideal. The process as applied to this story 
 has disadvantages, but St. Luke certainly clears up some 
 points left in doubt by the other narratives. He indicates 
 unmistakably that Simon was no friend to Christ, and it is 
 he who tells us that this woman was a woman of light repu- 
 tation. One singular omission — dictated possibly by scru- 
 ples of delicacy — we find in each version ; we do not know 
 the woman's name. The tradition which has called her Mary 
 may, however, be correct, for this was the commonest of Jew- 
 ish names. But it is quite certain that tradition is misin- 
 formed in naming her Mary Magdalene, as we have already 
 seen. On the other hand, if the two anointings took place 
 in Bethany, nothing would be easier than to confuse them, 
 and this may account for the name of Mary being given to 
 this unknown woman. 
 
 "The scene, as it is painted by St. Luke, is extraordinarily 
 vivid. The banquet at which Jesus is present is a formal 
 and perhaps splendid function, arranged in honor of One 
 who has become famous and is the idol of the hour. Simon 
 belongs to that class of men who are always ready to pay 
 court to any kind of success, without in the least sympathiz- 
 ing with it, or even comprehending it. At the tables of such 
 men all sorts of popular heroes are welcomed — the success- 
 ful statesman, the triumphant soldier, the latest poet, the 
 newest religious teacher. They are valued for one thing only 
 — that they have been able to escape the trammels of medi- 
 ocrity. They pass through the whispering rooms, honored 
 in the degree of their fame or notoriety ; flattered to-day and 
 forgotten to-morrow ; exhibited to gratify the vanity of their 
 entertainer, but never really treated as guests ; and sharply 
 criticized even by those who load them with noisy adulation. 
 Simon was such a social entertainer, but he was not a host. 
 He felt no real respect or reverence for Christ. He was too 
 17 
 
258 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 clumsy or too careless even to conceal his real contempt for 
 Christ under the forms of ordinary courtesy. And there are 
 also signs that the whole occasion was part of a stratagem to 
 entrap Christ, to place Him in a false position, and to com- 
 promise both His reputation and His influence. 
 
 The means by which this piece of astute malignity was to 
 be achieved was a woman. She could scarcely have been 
 present but at the invitation of Simon himself. She came 
 for a specific purpose : it was her trade to attend such ban- 
 quets, bringing with her fragrant oils and essences to auoint 
 the hair and brow of the guests. At formal banquets of this 
 kind it was the custom of the Romans to introduce then fair- 
 est slaves, and Simon, in his pride of wealth, was merely imi- 
 tating the manners of the conquerors of his country. For 
 the woman herself he felt nothing but contempt. She was a 
 woman " who was a sinner," a beautiful daughter of shame ; 
 but that was her own affair. It was not his duty to attempt 
 her reclamation, still less to shield his guest from what he 
 himself would have considered the degradation of her touch. 
 It was enough for him that her beauty was conspicuous, and 
 that it added some charm and distinction to his banquet; 
 who and what she was in her private life was nothing to 
 him. But, he cynically reflected, by her means he could con- 
 trive a situation deeply compromising to his guest. It would 
 be her duty to anoint the head of Jesus ; every one would 
 see her play her part; if Jesus were indeed a prophet 
 He would know what manner of woman it was that touched 
 Him, and would resent lier touch ; if not, Simon's banquet 
 would long be remembered for its complete exposure of the 
 prophetic claims of Christ. So far it is easy to follow the 
 thoughts of Simon — the thoughts of a hard, proud, cynical 
 man of the world ; of a Pharisee who can stoop to any mean- 
 ness to humiliate an antagonist whoni he both hated and de- 
 
THE UNCHASTE 259 
 
 spised ; of a born plotter accustomed to the devious ways of 
 intrigue, and incapable of any generosity of feeling when 
 once his rancor is aroused. 
 
 But all these crafty calculations are destined to be over- 
 thrown by something which lies quite outside the scope of 
 Simon's gross imagination. This woman,' full of gaiety, and 
 loveliness, and youth, draws near the long divan on which 
 the guests recline, to fulfil the duties of her calling. She is 
 all smiles ; she knows her beauty, she is conscious of the ad- 
 miration it attracts, she is glad to find herself conspicuous, 
 and there is no thought of shame or sadness in her mind. 
 She approaches Christ with careless grace, and behold she 
 stands suddenly arrested as by some unknown force, silent 
 as a statue, with all her smiles frozen on her mouth. Who 
 could suppose that this woman, whose sad experience of life 
 went far beyond her years, would be thus affected, abashed, 
 and overwhelmed before Simon's humble Guest? Who 
 could suppose that she, famous for her beauty, should sud- 
 denly dissolve in love and tears before this Nazarene, in 
 whom there is no beauty that He should be desired ? Who 
 could imagine that, without a single word said by Christ, her 
 hands should begin to tremble at their task, and that she 
 should shudder with a sense of guilt ? Yet so it was. His 
 clear, calm, loving eyes rest upon her in surprise, in pity, in 
 comprehension of her character and mode of life. She is 
 humiliated and rebuked, yet so tenderly that the torture of 
 her pain is almost blissful. She is abashed, she is thrown 
 into confusion, and the great deeps of her heart are breaking 
 up. What does it all mean, this distress, this bitter shame, 
 this soft flame of love which passes through her, dissolving 
 and transforming all it touches? And in an instant she 
 knows, and falls as one stricken with a mortal wound at the 
 feet of Jesus. She is a sinner, and this Man is One who has 
 
260 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 never known the stain of sin. Simon and his guests, the 
 feast, the occasion, the attention she attracts — all are for- 
 gotten, and she would fain hide herself from the mute inter- 
 rogation of that gentle and majestic face. She is washing 
 the feet of Christ with tears, and wiping them with the hairs 
 of her head. The Eternal Child, who sleeps in every 
 woman's heart, is alive once more, and she feels the child's 
 exquisite humility, and passionate desire of love and pardon. 
 She makes no confession of her sin, but her tears are her 
 confession; and while she sobs in pure abandonment of 
 grief, she 
 
 " in the darkness o'er her fallen head, 
 Perceived the waving of His hands that blest." 
 
 And then amid the silence of the room the voice of Jesus 
 speaks : " Simon, I have somewhat to say to thee." And 
 Simon, not knowing what to think, but still full of pride and 
 scorn, replies, "Master, say on." 
 
 The discoiirse which follows is an exposition of that 
 alarming spiritual pathology which has been already out- 
 lined. Christ points out that there are sins of love, and sins 
 of lovelessness ; Mary illustrates the one, and Simon the 
 other. Mary was a sinner ; but if we recall again the signifi- 
 cant analogy of the lovely female slave in a great Eoman 
 household, we can readily imagine that Mary was far from 
 being brutalized by a coarse excess of vice. Perhaps no one 
 had taught her better ; none had pointed her to a loftier way 
 of life ; she had done in thoughtless love of admiration what 
 a thousand others did, and on all sides she saw a state of 
 things which not only did not rebuke her conduct, but en- 
 couraged it. And, evil as her mode of life was, yet it had 
 not killed the possibilities of tender and affectionate feeling. 
 People do not alter their entire natures in a moment, and the 
 
THE UNCHASTE 261 
 
 profound sentiment of love that fills the heart of Mary in 
 the presence of Christ indicates that the natural capacity of 
 love was strong in her. Let us say the worst we can of such 
 a life as hers, yet we must admit that she had not been male- 
 volent, nor cruel, nor harshly selfish in her sins. But Simon, 
 proud of a superior decorum, had never been anything but 
 cruel and loveless in his temper. He had employed this 
 woman, simply as a useful inferior creature, to fix an insult 
 on his guest. He had spoken no word of kind and grave re- 
 buke to her, nor had thought it his duty, pious as he claimed 
 to be, to seek to save this lost sheep of the house of Israel. 
 His harshness of temper had betrayed itself in his treatment 
 of his guest. His mind was so filled with malice, so fixed 
 upon the diabolic climax of his plot, which was the public 
 anointing of Jesus by a woman of notorious ill-fame, that he 
 had violated the elementary rites of courtesy and hospitality 
 themselves. There was no water for the feet ; no kiss of 
 welcome. Jesus is made to understand that though He may 
 be tolerated as the idol of the hour, He must not presume 
 upon the friendship of His host. But Mary, coming as a 
 hireling to the feast, had shown a far more magnanimous 
 heart than the giver of the feast. Soiled and foolish as she 
 may have been, yet the reverence for goodness has not died 
 in her, and the freshness and poignancy of her emotions are 
 not dulled. If we may picture Jesus coming wayworn and 
 dusty to her doors, to eat with her, as He had often ate with 
 publicans and sinners, we may be sure that His welcome 
 would have been sincere and genuine. In the house of the 
 woman who was a sinner there would have been water for 
 His feet, and He would have met with those manifold and 
 delicate attentions by means of which Mary would have 
 shown that sinner as she was, yet she felt the honor of His 
 presence. It had often been so : sinners received Him 
 
262 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 gladly, while the reputedly religious showed Him at best but 
 a cold and grudging hospitality. Therefore it is upon the 
 temper of Simon and men like him that Jesus comments. It 
 shows a bad heart, as Mary's conduct shows a good heart. 
 There is an atoning power in love which covers many faults, 
 but the worst of all faults is lovelessness. Lovelessness is 
 the ruin of the world. It is by men like Simon that the 
 worst wrongs are inflicted on society. In depth and obdur- 
 acy his sin is far worse than the worst of Mary's, and he 
 had greater need to wash the feet of Jesus with tears than she. 
 
 Some idyllic grace lingers in the story of Mary ; the per- 
 fume of her ointment has indeed filled the world. But in 
 the second story which illustrates Christ's treatment of the 
 unchaste, evil is seen in its most repulsive aspect. A woman 
 is brought to Him, against whom the proof of adultery is ab- 
 solute. Against this sin society in all ages has indignantly 
 arrayed itself, because it is a sin which loosens the very 
 foundations of the social order. The law of Moses gave its 
 verdict against it with relentless emphasis : " She shall be 
 stoned to death." If there was any question on which Christ 
 might have been expected to side with the Pharisees, this 
 was the one. There seemed to be no possibility of escape. 
 How could a great religious teacher avoid condemning an 
 offence that is so odious in itself and so socially disastrous? 
 For every conceivable reason, especially those reasons con- 
 nected with public morality, with His own reputation, and 
 with His religious mission, it seemed absolutely necessary 
 that He should condemn this woman. Yet Christ will not 
 do so. 
 
 One reason for this reluctance is plain in the nature of the 
 narrative. The whole scene was pre-arranged ; it was one 
 of the many spiteful plots of the Pharisees to put Him in 
 the wrong and compromise Him. They begin by stating 
 
THE UNCHASTE 263 
 
 what the law of Moses is, and then ask, " But what sayest 
 thou ? " assuming that Christ will contradict Moses, and 
 thereby give them a pretext for bringing Him before the San- 
 hedrim. So much is incontestable, and Christ would have 
 been justified in answering, " Every public man has the right 
 to defend himself against a base and malicious plot. You 
 claim to be the followers of Moses ; go then to Moses, but 
 do not make Moses a partner in a plot which is meant to 
 gratify your revenge against Me. Who made me a judge or 
 a divider over you ? " Or He might have taken yet higher 
 ground, and have exposed the whole incident as a kind of 
 wicked farce. They, the leering eager knaves, had no real 
 abhorrence for this woman's sin. She and her sin were 
 nothing more than pawns in the game of partisan hatred in 
 which they were engaged. Had they been good and pious 
 men, genuinely shocked and pained by the iniquity which 
 they had witnessed, Christ might have spoken with them ; 
 but had they been such men they would never have dragged 
 this poor humbled creature into His presence at all. Or, 
 again, Christ might have claimed that a great teacher has a 
 right to his silences. It is not every question than can be 
 answered wisely, and there are times when silence is expedi- 
 ent. But the fact remains that the case cannot go by de- 
 fault. The thing is done ; Christ is face to face with this 
 wretched woman ; and as He stands there in the early sun- 
 light which floods the Temple court, this spectral evil, this 
 horror of the world's hungry and unsatisfied carnality con- 
 fronts Him. Like the toad within the heart of stone, as one 
 of our great poets tells us, lust sits in the very centre and in- 
 most knot of being, 
 
 "Aye, and shall not be driven out, 
 Till that which shuts him around about 
 Break at the very Master's stroke." 
 
264 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 But Christ is the very Master, and cannot refuse the task. 
 And so at last Christ both speaks and acts. He stoops and 
 writes upon the ground, ashamed of the shamelessness both 
 of the accusers and the accused. And then He speaks, but 
 in language so strange and searching, so revolutionary too, 
 that after many centuries the world has failed to comprehend 
 it. " He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first 
 
 stone I condemn thee not. Go, and sin no 
 
 more." 
 
 The moral antithesis is the same as in the previous story. 
 Great as is the sin of this woman, yet is it greater than the 
 bitter malignancy of feeling in the hearts of these men who 
 are her accusers ? But Christ carries His spiritual pathol- 
 ogy a stage further still. He lays down a new law, that only 
 the sinless have the right to punish sin. This is a revolu- 
 tionary principle indeed. The philosopher will at once re- 
 tort, and not only the philosopher, but the man of average 
 common sense, " But we must take society as we find it, and 
 if you wait till you can find a man without sin to be the ex- 
 ecutioner of sin, justice would never get done at all." Jus- 
 tice — but is it justice or injustice when the guilty punish the 
 guilty ? And as for codes of law, is it not true that they are 
 framed in falsity, since they display little sense of what is 
 truly sinful, and consequently strike hardest at those who 
 least deserve punishment, and afford a manifold escape for 
 those who most deserve it? Ideal justice can only be ad- 
 ministered by those who are themselves just ; purity alone 
 is competent to judge impurity ; but since in the general cor- 
 ruption of society the absolutely just, the immaculately pure, 
 are hard to find, such acts of punishment lie beyond the 
 competence of men. 
 
 Does Christ mean us to imply, then, that upon the whole 
 the judicial system of society is a failure, because society 
 
THE UNCHASTE 265 
 
 could exist better without judicial punishment than with it ? 
 This certainly appears to be Christ's meaning. He had al- 
 ready taught the same doctrine in terms of startling em- 
 phasis, when He counselled His disciples not to take advan- 
 tage of the law even in a just cause. Before we'condemn 
 such counsel as anarchic it is at least worth inquiring 
 whether punishment really achieves the one end that can 
 justify it, which is the reclamation of the criminal. Clearly 
 we do not make a man less a thief by sending him to gaol, 
 or our enemy less our enemy by summoning him before the 
 magistrates. On the contrary, prison usually makes the 
 thief more of a thief, and the punishmed enemy is yet more 
 our enemy. If Christ, therefore, counsels forgiveness in- 
 stead of punishment, it is because forgiveness is more likely 
 to succeed as a remedy for evil than force. Punishment, 
 even though it be never so just, and never so fairly admin- 
 istered, has never once in the history of the world proved a 
 cure for sin ; on the contrary, the ages marked by the utmost 
 severity of their penal codes have always been the ages when 
 crime was most abundant. Through many generations Is- 
 rael stoned the adulteress, in obedience to the law of Moses ; 
 but they could not stone adultery out of the human heart. 
 Why not give love a chance, then ? Why not try to soften 
 the heart of the sinner by pity rather than harden it by ret- 
 ribution ? Why not say to this poor woman : " It was all 
 so sad, and mad, and bad, and you know it as no other can. 
 Your heart burns with the sense of infinite degradation. 
 You are so humbled that it would not be difficult to die. 
 But instead of accepting death, which indeed cuts the knot 
 in all this coil of shame, go home and do this yet more dif- 
 ficult thing : live, repent, and sin no more." That is Christ's 
 remedy, and it is a real remedy. Her accusers may stone 
 her, and leave the dishonored body huddled in its blood be- 
 
266 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 neatli the pitiless sunlight, hut they will uot have stoned the 
 adultery out of her protesting heart. Forgive her, and a 
 new woman is created in her, who goes away to sin no more. 
 To treat her thus is to redeem her ; to treat her in any other 
 way, to deepen her degradation and confirm her ruin. 
 
 And in yet one other thing Christ revolutionizes our no- 
 tions of justice. He is quick to recognize that this woman, 
 odious as she may seem, is nevertheless a victim. The sin 
 she did was only hers in part, but the punishment is to be 
 hers alone. How significant of that false morality which 
 rules the world is the action of these men, who are so eager 
 to stone a guilty woman, but have no word to say about the 
 guilty man ! Him they exculpate, her they treat as beyond 
 all pardon ; and such is still the practice of society. But 
 Christ, by His conduct, reverses this partial verdict, shifts 
 the centre of gravity, puts the crown of infamy on the right 
 brows, and stands beside this crushed and cowering crea- 
 ture as the implacable avenger of the wrongs of women. He 
 says in effect, " You have brought me a fallen woman ; where 
 is the fallen man ? You have brought me a wronged woman ; 
 where is he who did the wrong ? Are ye indeed unfallen ? 
 With God there is no respect of persons, still less of sexes. 
 Let him that is without sin of thought or act cast the first 
 stone." The effect of that speech was terrible and immedi- 
 ate. Hardened as these men were, yet they could not but 
 admit what all rational men admit if they will reflect — that 
 the only equitable basis of society is that which puts men 
 and women on precisely the same moral terms. Christ in- 
 vited them to stand beside this woman, if they dared ; to lift 
 up their eyes to meet His searching glance, if they could ; 
 and to answer whether in their hearts they could say that 
 justice would be done in the death of this woman while the 
 \yorse criminal went unscathed. And they could not reply. 
 
THE UNCHASTE 267 
 
 " They which heard it, being convicted by then- own con- 
 science, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even 
 unto the last ; and Jesus was left alone, and the woman 
 standing in the midst." 
 
 The Pharisees were not men used to giving up an argu- 
 ment without a struggle. In many a previous encounter 
 with Christ they had stood their ground with thorough Jew- 
 ish obstinacy, and had been too proud to own themselves 
 defeated. But there are times when argument is of no avail, 
 because it is not a mental but a moral crisis which over- 
 whelms men. They are overtaken by the fierce lightning of 
 Heaven, and have no time to run for shelter. The light that 
 shines upon them is so vivid, so searching and tremendous, 
 that their whole life is illumined by it, and they are forced 
 to see what they least desire to see. When a great modern 
 dramatist would depict these hours of intense self-revelation 
 he does so by a series of highly imaginative symbols. The 
 wretched man who has wasted his life in extravagance and 
 vanity hears upon the mountain-side wailing voices of little 
 children, which cry to him, " We are thoughts : thou shouldst 
 have thought us ! " Withered leaves sweep past him on the 
 accursed air, inurinurmg, " We are watch-words : thou 
 shouldst have planted us ! " Music, full of ineffable regret, 
 sighs on his ears, " We are songs : thou shouldst have sung 
 us " ; and the very dewdrops on the mountain-side are tears 
 of pity that were never shed. It was the peculiar power of 
 Christ to make men feel these keen regrets, not by elaborate 
 images, but by single words. He speaks so quietly that 
 men think it is their own hearts that speak. He suggests 
 conclusions which we imagine are our own. He does so in 
 this case, and no one can study Christ's treatment of the un- 
 chaste without feeling how right He is. Even the Pharisees 
 felt it. They realized that the woman they had accused had 
 
268 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 become their accurser ; the Christ they would have snared 
 had become their judge. Their silent departure from the 
 scene, each with bowed head and fearful heart, was the ad- 
 mission that the new principles of justice enunciated by 
 Christ were the only true principles. The songs they might 
 have sung, the thoughts they might have thought, they heard 
 that day upon the lips of Christ, and they knew them for the 
 loftiest truth that man can know. 
 
 Sooner or later the world must accept these revolutionary 
 principles of Christ, if society is to live. Christ spoke too 
 early by two thousand years. He Himself admitted that He 
 had much to say which the world could not bear as yet. In 
 spiritual vision, as in physical vision, "there is a gradual 
 adaptation of the retina to various amounts of light." We 
 must not despair because this process is so gradual that it 
 appears almost imperceptible. It is a dangerous error to 
 remit any social idea of Christ, however startling, to the 
 category of "charming impossibilities." As the world 
 learns, by the constant failure of its judicial codes, the folly 
 of punishment as a means of repressing crime, it may come 
 to see that forgiveness is a better remedy. As it reaps the 
 fearful aftermath of war, it may become suspicious of the 
 doctrine that armed force is necessary for the welfare of so- 
 ciety. As it is confronted more and more with its own in- 
 justices, it may prefer a general amnesty to wrong to meth- 
 ods of government which create fresh wrong for every wrong 
 they crush. Finally, illumined and enriched through its 
 illusions, the world may come to see that love alone is the 
 one vital principle by which society can thrive. Two thou- 
 sand years of experiment and error will then seem a light 
 price to have paid for that golden age which will begin when 
 man at last is brought to realize that " love worketh no ill to 
 his neighbor ; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE FULLER EXPOSITION OF SOCIAL TRUTHS 
 
 The final portion of the ministry of Jesus may be traced 
 with tolerable accuracy. He left Galilee in the October of 
 the last year of His life, in order to be present at the Feast 
 of Tabernacles in Jerusalem, remaining in Jerusalem until 
 the Feast of Dedication, which took place in December. He 
 then departed into Perea, returning to Bethany, at the risk 
 of His life, in order to raise Lazarus from the dead. Imme- 
 diately after this event He retired to the secluded district of 
 Ephraim, which lay about fifteen miles north of Jerusalem. 
 " Jesus walked no more openly among the Jews, but went 
 thence into a country near to the wilderness, into a city called 
 Ephraim, and there continued with His disciples." A brief 
 journey through the familiar districts of Samaria and Galilee 
 followed. In the beginning of April He arrived at Bethany, 
 and six days later He was crucified by the order of Pontius 
 Pilate. 
 
 The crowning significance of this final section of Christ's 
 life is curiously attested in the construction of the Gospels. 
 If we take the Transfiguration as marking the sublime pref- 
 ace to the closing scenes, we find that the greatest teachings 
 of Christ happened after this event, and from this point we 
 have a narrative of much greater fulness and detail. To the 
 acts and teachings of this last six months Matthew devotes 
 one-third of his entire Gospel, Mark nearly one- half, Luke 
 more than one-half, and John no less than three- fourths. 
 Each evangelist thus betrays his consciousness that it was in 
 
 269 
 
270 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 the climax of His life that Christ was host known. All that 
 had gone before was preliminary and prelusive. His thoughts 
 now take a final form, His views of the world and society are 
 vindicated by experience, His verdicts are decisive. 
 
 These last utterances of Christ are mainly concerned with 
 Himself and His redemptive mission ; with the fuller expo- 
 sition of social truths ; and with the idea of a final judgment. 
 We may postpone the consideration of the first of these top- 
 ics, because the narrative of the last days is its completest 
 exposition ; and of the last, because the social teachings are 
 naturally precedent of the teachings upon judgment. By the 
 social teachings of Christ we mean those counsels which 
 aimed at a fresh construction of society. It was with such 
 teachings that Christ opened His career. The whole Ser- 
 mon on the Mount is an impeachment of society. His own 
 life and conduct is a yet stronger impeachment. He is 
 brought into contact, at every point in His ministry, with two 
 systems of society, the Jewish and the Roman, each of which 
 He finds is composed of elements which are hostile to human 
 happiness. The one is based upon religion, yet so com- 
 pletely misinterpreted religion that its whole spirit is harsh 
 in the extreme ; the other is based upon a frank materialism, 
 in which the spirit of religion has no part. Each had suc- 
 ceeded in establishing a tyranny under which man was 
 crushed. The Roman especially had built up a world-wide 
 tyranny, which his own truest philosophers were powerless 
 to resist. The very power of protest had been silenced. A 
 weight of horrible monotony oppressed the entire ancient 
 world. The life which we see at a distance as so gay and 
 splendid was in reality full of that peculiar dreariness which 
 attends the loss of high ideals. Wise men felt that the whole 
 social system was in decay, without being able to put their 
 finger on the root of the disease ; common and ignorant men 
 
EXPOSITION OF SOCIAL TRUTHS 271 
 
 felt it equally, and suffered in silence. Christ read the prob- 
 lem with a clearer eye. He combined in Himself the quali- 
 ties of the mystic and the man of action. As a mystic He 
 possessed that rare faculty of detachment from the world, by 
 means of which a sober and impartial judgment of the world 
 is rendered possible. As a man of action, equally compas- 
 sionate and daring, He was bound to propose remedies for 
 an evil that oppressed His own spirit. What were these 
 remedies which He proposed ? 
 
 They were three ; the first of which was the re-establish- 
 ment of society not upon a basis of individual assertion, but 
 of social service ; not on pride, but humility ; not on the hope 
 of immediate or gross reward, but on the exceeding great re- 
 ward which virtue finds in its own exercise, and the felicity 
 which is its crown in after worlds. He swept with one com- 
 prehensive glance the whole Roman civilization, and said to 
 His disciples " So shall it not be among you." At the apex 
 of that civilization stood Ca?sar, deranged by the " vertigo of 
 omnipotence " ; at the base lay crushed a multitude of slaves, 
 impotent and hopeless. No one lived a life of reasonable 
 simplicity or wise contentment. Ostentation and ambition 
 ruled the world. Rome had turned the world into a theatre 
 and a camp : an alternate arena of vanity and cruelty ; and 
 that appeared to be the one result which her social system 
 had achieved. All men were infected with the mania of 
 greatness, power, and the love of wealth. Proconsuls, satraps, 
 panders, marched across the world, each with his dream of 
 sudden fortune, banquets, triumphs, adulation, and perhaps 
 a throne. The very slave hoped to reach by his servility a 
 goal he could not gain by manly virtue. And yet, amid the 
 roaring vortices of this Maelstrom of materialism, men had 
 sense enough to know that they were whirled upon an end- 
 less circle of disgust and weariness. No one was happy, and 
 
272 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 most conspicuous in misery was Ciesar himself. No one 
 could be happy until the spirit of social service supplanted 
 this mad, insensate passion of social ambition. " So shall it 
 not be among you ; but whosoever will be great among you, 
 let him be your minister ; and whosoever will be chiefest, 
 shall be servant of all. For even the Son of Man came not 
 to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a 
 ransom for many." 
 
 The second remedy was human brotherhood. There can 
 be no doubt that Christ seriously contemplated the recon- 
 struction of society upon principles of pure benevolence. We 
 have already seen how strong was this conviction on the part 
 of Christ in His treatment of the unchaste ; but it was illus- 
 trated in many other ways, and from time to time was enun- 
 ciated with a startling energy of phrase. When Peter asks 
 if he is to forgive his brother seven times, Christ replies that 
 he is to forgive him "until seventy times seven" — that is, 
 without limit. Men are not to judge one another lest they 
 be judged. The Mosaic law had failed to build up a virtuous 
 society, arid so had all law. It was a fallacy, therefore, to 
 suppose that a severe administration of even just law was a 
 panacea for the diseases of society, since legal systems were 
 unable even to afford a real protection to society. The one 
 guarantee of social hajopiness was love, manifesting itself in 
 a widely diffused sense of brotherhood. To love one's neigh- 
 bor as himself meant the keeping of the law, since he who 
 loved his neighbor would be incapable of the spirit of covet- 
 ous and envy, and yet more incapable of crimes wrought 
 against the property, the person, or the peace of his neigh- 
 bor. 
 
 But from what source did nine-tenths of all the social 
 crimes of the world spring? Christ answered unhesita 
 tingly, " Either from the desire of wealth, in the narrowness 
 
EXPOSITION OF SOCIAL TRUHTS 273 
 
 of aim which it induces ; or from the possession of wealth, 
 in its frequent sterilization of natural sympathies ; or from 
 the misapplication of wealth, as an engine of pride, oppres- 
 sion, and vainglory, and a means of luxury which enervated 
 and destroyed the soul." Christ found by experience that 
 wealth, as a rule, was a fearful obstacle to the reception of 
 His gospel. There were many notable exceptions ; quite 
 enough to deter Christ from any general denunciation of 
 rich men as a class. An unqualified denunciation of wealth 
 is impossible to the sober thinker who perceives how often 
 it is won by admirable qualities, used with a wise modera- 
 tion of personal desires, and applied to the general good of 
 the community. But there can be no doubt that a society 
 governed by a love of wealth is capable of any crime. Nor 
 can there be much doubt that wealth more often proves a 
 curse than a blessing to its possessor, because it fosters a 
 sense of irresponsibility, it isolates its possessor from the 
 ordinary experience of life, it constitutes a new caste, full of 
 arrogance ; and, in the degree that it is sought with vehem- 
 ence, and held with greed, it kills the finer sentiments. 
 Therefore Christ's third remedy for the diseased society in 
 which He moved was to enforce the truth that wealth had 
 duties as well as privileges. He did not contemplate the 
 abolition of wealth, although all His teachings advocated a 
 simple mode of life ; but He insisted that the only way by 
 which the rich man could save his soul alive was by sharing 
 his wealth. The drastic revolutions which strip men of 
 their wealth never leave the world the better for their 
 violence, because in the end all that they effect is a transfer- 
 ence of wealth from one class to another ; from a class 
 which misused its privileges of yesterday to one that will 
 assuredly misuse the same privileges to-morrow. The only 
 rational and lasting revolution is achieved when wealth is 
 18 
 
274 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 held in stewardship from God, for the general good of men ; 
 and wealth is never perilous to its possessor, or is in peril 
 from the violent resentment of the destitute, until it recol- 
 lects its privileges alone, and ignores its duties. 
 
 These conclusions Christ expressed, as was His manner, 
 in parables. We have three of these ; one is the difficult 
 parable of the unjust steward ; another the parable of the 
 talents ; the last the parable, or rather the great spiritual 
 drama, of Dives and Lazarus. In these stories we have 
 the fullest exposition of the social principles which Christ 
 inculcated. 
 
 The parable of the unjust steward is difficult because it 
 appears to be an encomium uttered upon a thoroughly cun- 
 ning and unscrupulous man. The steward has been un- 
 faithful to his trust, for he has wasted the goods of his lord. 
 Ruin threatens him, and he sees no means of averting it, 
 until he hits upon an expedient equally novel and astute. 
 He is a clever rogue, and his actions are described with a 
 kind of humor which would be greatly relished by men of 
 the world. Seeing nothing but beggary before him, he pro- 
 ceeds to ingratiate himself with his master's debtors, by re- 
 mitting their obligations upon his own authority. He closes 
 the account of the man who owes a hundred measures of oil 
 by writing off half his debt, and the man who owes a hun- 
 dred measures of wheat has his bill made out for four score 
 measures only. He acutely argues chat by such a welcome 
 compromise he will make these men his friends ; and they 
 will also be friends completely in his power, because they 
 have become partners in his own fraud. When he is ex- 
 pelled from his position these men must needs receive him 
 into their houses. They dare not refuse hospitality to one 
 who has bought their silence, who holds the proof of their 
 dishonesty, and is prepared to expose them if they prove re- 
 
EXPOSITION OF SOCIAL TRUTHS 275 
 
 calcitrant. In plain language the man is a thief, and in 
 league with thieves ; but his scheme is so astute that, when 
 it becomes known, his master himself cannot refuse that kind 
 of admiration which honest people often feel for the man- 
 oeuvres of the brilliant rogue. His lord commended the un- 
 just steward for his wordly wisdom ; his sense of humor 
 being so tickled by the cleverness with which he had 
 been cheated that he was reconciled to the loss he 
 suffered. 
 
 This story seems unpromising material enough for the 
 basis of any kind of moral teaching ; but we must recollect 
 that the rule already laid down for the interpretation of pro- 
 verbs applies to parables also, viz., that in such utterances a 
 point is overstated, and all qualifications are rejected, in 
 order to put emphasis upon some particular truth. The 
 point on which Christ lays stress is the worldly wisdom of 
 the man. He had the sense to forecast the future and pre- 
 pare for it. He was free from that peculiar besetment of the 
 rich — the belief that wealth will last forever. He even had 
 some sense of the value of generous deeds, although he ex- 
 pressed it by doubtful means ; for by timely acts of kind- 
 ness he makes friends for himself against the day of calam- 
 ity. In these things the rogue acts with superior acumen 
 and insight ; he is wiser in his generation than the children 
 of light. Christ appears to say : " If a man who is thus 
 thoroughly unscrupulous has the prudence to act with a 
 view to the future, how is it that the professed children 
 of light live with so little thought of that more solemn future 
 which they name Eternity ? How is it that they use their 
 wealth without a single serious thought of that judgment of 
 wealth, as a trust and stewardship, which will come in the 
 hour when they meet their God ? " The stewardship of 
 wealth is thus the keynote of the parable. The word Mam- 
 
276 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 mon, which Christ uses, is a Syrian word which means 
 wealth ; and He says men cannot both serve God and Mam- 
 mon. Men must break with God before they can serve 
 Mammon. And the crying evils of these great civilizations 
 which Christ condemned was that they were based on the 
 love of wealth. Conventional piety did nothing to restrain 
 this love. The Jew and the Pagan alike treated wealth as 
 the perquisite of his own happiness, not as a means of pub- 
 lic good. In one way only could this evil be cured : the rich 
 man must see his present life in relation to Eternity. He 
 must count himself the steward of wealth : and if an unjust 
 steward could regulate his conduct by the vision of the 
 future, how much more should the good steward act with a 
 constant reference to the final judgments of God ! In other 
 words, only as wealth is seen in the light of eternal things, 
 with all the solemn implications of the brevity of this life, 
 and the need for doing good in a life that is so brief, can 
 wealth be safely held, and become not a means of selfish 
 pleasure, but a noble self-discipline to its possessor ; not a 
 curse to society, but a blessing, and a means of good. 
 
 The same note is struck again, but with more decision, in 
 the great parable of the talents. The ceutral idea on which 
 the parable is based is that man, whatever be his social 
 state, is the depository of a Divine trust. The Kingdom of 
 Heaven is like a man who went into a far country, leaving 
 his property to be administered by his servants. Man is 
 thus the vicegerent of God ; and time and talent, genius and 
 power, every form of human gift and opportunity, form part 
 of the wealth of God which is adventured in man. The one 
 supreme business of man in the theatre or mart of human life 
 is to be the faithful custodian of the trust reposed in him. A 
 society conducted on such principles could not fail to be a 
 wisely ordered, harmonious, and happy society, because each 
 
EXPOSITION OF SOCIAL TRUTHS 277 
 
 of its units would contribute his quota of energy and effort 
 to the common store ; a society conducted on any other 
 principles is bound to sink by its own selfishness, and to cor- 
 rupt by its contempt of individual responsibility. 
 
 But this is not all. Contempt of individual responsibility 
 often springs from a morbid sense of the littleness of human 
 life itself. Why struggle to do great things for a world that 
 is only ours on the terms of the insecurest tenancy, a world 
 which in any case we quit so soon ? This was the argument 
 of the man with the one talent. He did not deem human 
 life worth a struggle ; he was a deserter from the ranks of 
 labor ; he hid his talent in the earth, assuming that the 
 world could have no just cause of complaint against him 
 simply because he abstained from toils which were distaste- 
 ful to him. But he who thus evades the arduous conscrip- 
 tion of life is not only an enemy of society, but his own 
 worst enemy. He is his own worst enemy, because it is 
 labor which develops character, and he who refuses from any 
 selfish cause this means of development soon deteriorates. 
 Life without duties is not life at all. He who does the hum- 
 blest duty faithfully has in the same instant proved his right 
 to live, and even to live eternally. For the most striking 
 thing in this parable is Christ's teaching of the immortality 
 of all capacity. Christ lifts the curtain from the after-world 
 only to reveal that world not as rest or finality, but as a state 
 of constant and immitigable progress. The stress of being 
 and of effort is not relaxed at death, but is given fresh scope. 
 Man does not pass into repose at death, but into a new world 
 of unresting and unceasing activities. The duties which are 
 duties here will be duties there. The life which the good 
 man has lived here will be essentially the life which he will 
 live there. There is absolute continuity of life, and absolute 
 identity of character in this world and the next ; the only 
 
278 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 difference being that tlie after-life is lived upon a higher 
 plane, and is made capable of nobler service. The good 
 servant has not reached his goal ; he has only sighted a 
 diviner goal. He has not finished his work ; he has only 
 entered on a loftier stage of it. He has not completed his 
 programme of activity with his last breath ; he has only 
 passed out of his apprenticeship, and fitted himself for the 
 new responsibility of being ruler over many things. He 
 steps into heaven as a soldier steps from the ranks to receive 
 his company, as the reward of faithful service on the field. 
 He has done well only that he may do better. The reward 
 of all his toil is that he may be promoted to yet harder toil, 
 and this is the reward which he himself most covets. 
 Heaven is thus not attainment, but a constantly enlarging 
 faculty of attainment ; it is to enter into the joy of God, that 
 joy of a glad and infinite energy, perpetually spent but never 
 exhausted, because it grows and thrives upon its own im- 
 mortal ardors. 
 
 The bearing of this lofty doctrine upon social life is very 
 evident. Society may be defined as a cooperative scheme of 
 human happiness. It is the bank of effort into which every 
 human creature pays his energies, from which he draws his 
 dividends. The man who spends his life not in duties, but 
 in pleasures, is a recusant from this fraternity of toil. The 
 indolence of the few, supported by the labor of the many, is 
 a constant menace to the social order. Inequality of circum- 
 stance Christ accepts ; but not inequality in the incidence of 
 labor. The Eoman system of society, which was based upon 
 a scorn of labor ; which exhibited patrician life in all its 
 stately languors as the perfect life ; which drained the veins 
 of all the world to support a few in wealth far beyond their 
 needs ; was a system absolutely false, full of peril to all, and 
 doomed to utter failure. Christ substituted for it a coopera- 
 
EXPOSITION OF SOCIAL TRUTHS 279 
 
 tive scheme of social welfare, in which every unit of society 
 bore his part. The greater the ability, the station, or the 
 wealth, the greater was the obligation and responsibility for 
 the welfare of society ; and thus the parable of the talents is 
 a programme of that only true society in which each member 
 takes his share of the common burden according to his sev- 
 eral ability. 
 
 The third great parable in which Jesus expressed his 
 social idea is that of Dives and Lazarus. It is a double 
 spiritual drama, the first part of which passes on earth, the 
 second in the after-world. 
 
 The first part of the drama depicts for us the life of a rich 
 man, spent in a sort of splendid isolation, a fastidious seclu- 
 sion, into which the " still, sad music of humanity " is not 
 allowed to penetrate. Dives is not a bad man ; he is such 
 an one as the young Ruler himself, grown a little older, more 
 than ever convinced of the advantages of wealth, and deter- 
 mined to make the most of those advantages. Christ does 
 not accuse him of any grossness of conduct, beyond a some- 
 what inordinate attention to the pleasures of the table. It is 
 not so much as hinted that he had won his wealth by any 
 dishonest or dishonorable means. It is quite possible that 
 it was his by inheritance, and that he had never known any 
 other life than that of sober order, solid comfort, and sus- 
 tained splendor. Nor was he a man distinguished by any 
 special harshness of temper toward the poor. It is not said 
 that Dives did not feed the beggar at his gate ; the inference 
 is that Dives did feed Lazarus, for the beggar would not have 
 been found daily at his doors, " desiring the crumbs that fell 
 from the rich man's table," unless some fragments of the 
 sumptuous feast were flung to him. Traditional exegesis 
 has done injustice to Dives in making his name the synonym 
 of a cruel and heartless brutality toward the poor ; on the 
 
280 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 contrary, Dives appears to have been the type of the pros- 
 perous Pharisee ; a narrow good man, faithful to his religion, 
 precise and mechanical in discharging its obligations, tithing 
 himself of all that he possessed, distributing alms daily — a 
 trifle ostentatiously perhaps — and never for an instant sus- 
 pecting that he was not a man of admirable qualities, and 
 even an example of good conventional citizenship. What, 
 then, was his sin? It was deliberate destitution of social 
 love and sympathy. It was not destitutien of personal affec- 
 tion ; he had loved his kinsfolk and his brethren, and in the 
 after-world loves them still with a solicitude which is his 
 torture. But he had no elementary sense of what it is that 
 constitutes the brotherhood of man. He possessed the worst 
 vice of the aristocrat, the desire to widen as far as possible 
 the golf that yawned between himself and the common peo- 
 ple. He was charitable to them ; but it was with the galling 
 condescension of the superior to the inferior. Lazarus might 
 be fed from his table, so might the dogs ; but if any one had 
 hinted to him that Lazarus had human claims upon him he 
 would have deemed it an intolerable affront. He loved those 
 who loved him ; within the limits of his own social order he 
 manifested many pleasant and engaging qualities ; but the 
 idea that Lazarus was entitled to anything more than the 
 crumbs which fell from his table was an impertinence. With 
 these crumbs and fragments of his daily feast he paid in full 
 his social obligations to the beggar, or so he believed ; any 
 closer personal relation seemed unnecessary. Day by day 
 kind and faithful hands bore the cripple to his accustomed 
 place. There through the long day he lay in miserable de- 
 formity, the comrade of the dogs ; at night he was carried 
 back to his rude hovel ; and this trite drama of unpitied 
 poverty had gone on for years. But in all those years Dives 
 had never spoken to him ; there was a great gulf between 
 
EXPOSITION OF SOCIAL TRUTHS 281 
 
 them. He had taken him, and his want and beggary, for 
 granted; it was no affair of his. The barrier of a cruel 
 social ostracism rose between them, and the sin of Dives was 
 that he had never passed that barrier to speak a word of 
 kindness to the beggar, and had never once perceived the 
 essential and Divine fact of his human brotherhood with 
 him. 
 
 There is a great gulf between Dives and the beggar, says 
 Jesus; but it is a gulf which Dives himself has made. 
 Through mere pride of nature, or that baser sort of pride 
 which springs from great possessions ; through egoism which 
 develops into arrogance, and fastidious love of isolation which 
 rapidly becomes contempt for ignorance and misfortune; 
 through unchecked faults of education, through the force of 
 selfish social traditions, through the mere sense of self-im- 
 portance nurtured and inflamed by relative affluence — through 
 these, and many similar causes, men are apt to drift away 
 from any real brotherhood with the race. The least that one 
 can ask of wealth is that it should moderate the sense of 
 disparity between itself and poverty by noble manners, fine 
 courtesy, and the gracious temper which disdains to take ad- 
 vantage of the vain distinctions of superior rank and birth. 
 But Dives had done his best not to abridge but to cultivate 
 these disparities. Christ shows us that these disparities go 
 far deeper than even Dives had supposed. They are dispari- 
 ties of soul as well as circumstance. The soul of the beggar 
 has grown silently and nobly in the hard disciplines of life ; 
 but the soul of Dives had withered in his sumptuous ease. 
 And when the curtain lifts upon the after-world, this great 
 gulf, whose first line of cleavage may be traced in the earthly 
 conduct of the rich man, has become unfathomable. Lazarus 
 cannot pass that gulf to comfort Dives even if he would ; 
 Abraham cannot pass it. It would have been so easy to 
 
282 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 bridge that gulf of menacing disparity on earth : a single 
 kind word, the hand of Dives laid but an instant in the hand 
 of Lazarus, would have done it ; but now nothing human can 
 achieve it. Dive sees far off the shining throngs of those 
 who are now the equals of the angels, and Lazarus among 
 them. He sees the city of God, " along whose terraces there 
 walk men and women of awful and benignant features, who 
 view him with distant commiseration " ; but they are as high 
 above him as he once deemed himself high above Lazarus. 
 They may commiserate, but they cannot help him. He who 
 wilfully puts a gulf between himself and the good, the hum- 
 ble, and the poor, finds hereafter that the gulf is wider than 
 he knew. In drifting out of touch with the poor and hum- 
 ble he has drifted out of touch with God. 
 
 The problems of the state of Dives in the after-world be- 
 long rather to the teachings of Jesus upon judgment than to 
 His purely social teachings ; yet Christ makes it clear that 
 the vision of the after-world is necessary to the right inter- 
 pretation of all social duty. This is Christ's consistent 
 thought in each of these great stories. It is the prudent use 
 of life with a view to treasure in the heavens that is the theme 
 of the first story ; the continuity of life, surviving through 
 eternal destinies, that is the theme of the second ; while in 
 the last the life of Dives is not rightly comprehended till it 
 is suddenly transported to a loftier stage, where it moves 
 amid the dreadful pomp and solemn pageant of "a world to 
 come. The conclusion is irresistible, and it is one upon 
 which all subsequent history has set its seal — viz., that it is 
 by spiritual means alone that social reformations can be 
 worked out. Man in his elementary state is merely an ani- 
 mal with a larger brain ; able, by his very power of reason, 
 to practice a superior cunning in procuring the means of his 
 material pleasures. He is not, indeed, without his altruistic 
 
EXPOSITION OF SOCIAL TRUTHS 283 
 
 instincts, but these instincts are feeble at the best, and are 
 rapidly eliminated in the struggle for existence. Nothing 
 can persuade him that wealth is not the chief object of ex- 
 istence so long as he sees his life as ended by the grave ; 
 nothing can turn him from the quest of wealth, nor make 
 him conscious of the degradation of the quest, so long as he 
 believes his little earthly life the only life he has. It is the 
 vision of the after-world alone that lends a true perspective 
 to the earthly life. And so we find that the new society 
 which Christ designed first took shape in the hearts of men 
 subtly quickened and exalted by the great conviction that 
 they moved hourly toward a world that faded not away, which 
 was out of sight. The first Christians could surrender all 
 they had, and live in cheerful communism, simply because 
 the vision of a world to come had taught them to hold of 
 small account the prizes of the present world. Great con- 
 fraternities in every age, practicing the widest charities, and 
 exhibiting the noblest spirit of renunciation, have maintained 
 themselves by the ardor of the same lofty and liberating 
 thought. The benefactors, the educators, the strenuous re- 
 formers of the human race, have, with scarcely an exception, 
 been men deeply penetrated by the sense of an eternal life. 
 The seed of social ethics fructifies alone in spiritual expe- 
 rience. To be good and kind, to be consistently charitable 
 and self-sacrificing, men need more than a vague enthusiasm 
 of humanity, which seldom survives for long the obduracy of 
 the foolish and the baseness of the ungrateful. They need 
 to know that these are virtues which God demands from 
 man, because they are His own virtues, and that both their 
 sanction and reward are with God, who desires that man 
 should be perfect as He is perfect. The eternal struggle of 
 the world is between the material and the spiritual. It is 
 vain to hope for spiritual reconstruction without spiritual de- 
 
284 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 liverance. The one abiding sanction of social ethics is a 
 spiritual conception of human life ; and this is to say that 
 Christianity alone can liberate society from the corruption 
 of its selfishness, because Christianity alone can supply the 
 spiritual force which is requisite for this deliverance. The 
 life of Dives is not comprehended until the curtain lifts on 
 an unearthly scene, amid whose dread solemnities we over- 
 hear the outcry and debate of his astonished soul ; nor is the 
 general life of man other than a fragment and a riddle till it 
 is seen in its relation to Eternity. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE TEACHINGS UPON JUDGMENT 
 
 The social teachings of Christ, taken simply as counsels 
 for the present life, do much to invigorate human self-respect, 
 and to impart a new dignity to human life. They are utili- 
 tarian in the highest degree, in the sense that they afford a 
 practicable scheme of general happiness. But the history 
 of mankind shows that utilitarianism seldom has any deep 
 or prolonged effect upon human conduct. Utilitarianism 
 may advance arguments incomparably lucid and cogent in 
 themselves, yet they will be disregarded simply because men 
 in general are governed rather through their imagination than 
 their reason. An ideal of truth or virtue, which the imagi- 
 nation may clothe with a Divine nimbus, is of far greater 
 effect in influencing conduct than the clearest motives of self- 
 advantage which may be enunciated by the reason. 
 
 Christ was perfectly aware of this truth, and therefore He 
 never based social duty on utilitarian motives alone. The 
 great philosophers of antiquity, who had really taught almost 
 all that He Himself taught on good social conduct, had in- 
 variably based their counsels on utilitarianism, and for that 
 very reason they had failed. It is not enough to tell men 
 that this or that course of conduct is wise ; they must be as- 
 sured that it is right. The man most in error is usually 
 conscious enough of his unwisdom ; what he lacks is the con- 
 viction that he is wrong, and also some powerful motive 
 which will enable him to do right. Christ found this mo- 
 tive in the nature of God. A gracious and benignant God, 
 
 285 
 
28G THE LIFE OF CHRIST . 
 
 presiding over the world and its affairs, would certainty de- 
 mand benignant acts and tempers in His creatures. And as 
 certainly He would judge and punish contrary acts and tem- 
 pers. Hence there grew up in the mind of Jesus the sublime 
 thought of a constant and a final judgment, by means of 
 which God would punish the obstinately wicked, reward the 
 good, redress all wrong, and compensate the victims of injus- 
 tice for the pains and sorrows they had suffered at the hands 
 of evil men. 
 
 This was to the Jew no novel thought ; but it had shared 
 the fate of all sublime thoughts which have become familiar 
 or scholastic, in being debased by a thousand trivialities of 
 interpretation. On the eastern side of Jerusalem yawned 
 the gorge or valley of Jehosophat, where it was supposed the 
 final judgment of the world would take place. At a given 
 hour, fixed in the counsels of the Most High, the valley 
 would expand miraculously to afford room for the uncounted 
 multitudes who would then throng to the verdicts of the last 
 assize. The neighboring gorge of Hinnom, once the scene 
 of abhorred sacrifices to Moloch, now the detested crema- 
 torium of all the offal of the city, and known as Tophet, or 
 the place of fire, was the appointed prison of the impenitent. 
 The valley of Gehinnom became by a contraction Gehenna, 
 or hell, and is so spoken of by both Jews and Mohammedans 
 to the present day. What would happen in this last assize 
 was a subject of eternal and often childish dispute among 
 the Rabbis. They all held that the righteous would then 
 enter into life eternal, but opinions were greatly divided as 
 to the fate of the wicked. Some held that the wicked would 
 then be annihilated in the flames of Gehenna ; others that 
 they would " go down to Gehinnom, and moan and come up 
 again." Some imagined the spirits of all Israelites as con- 
 fined in these flames of Gehenna, to be released at the word 
 
TEACHINGS UPON JUDGMENT 287 
 
 of tlie Messiah, who was the appointed Judge of all things ; 
 others described hell as being itself extinguished in a final 
 restitution of the world to God — " There is no Gehinnom in 
 the world to come " was a familiar Jewish saving. Yet 
 another school of teachers pictured the sheath of the sun as 
 withdrawn in his last days, so that a mighty conflagration 
 swept the world, from which the righteous only would emerge, 
 purified and made mortal in this bath of flame. It will be 
 seen from the nature of these extraordinary beliefs that 
 while the Jewish mind dwelt much upon the theme of judg- 
 ment, there was the widest diversity of teaching as to its 
 processes, especially in relation to the wicked. Gehenna is va- 
 riously conceived as purgatory, as a prison-house of tor- 
 ture, and as a pit of annihilation ; the Judgment itself as 
 the vindication of the Jew. and as the general assize of the 
 world. 
 
 Now it is of great importance to remember that when 
 Christ spoke of judgment He used the natural language of 
 His time, which was perfectly familiar to the Jew. How 
 far may we accept this language as the language of His own 
 mind? How far did He adopt popular symbols of speech 
 as an accommodation to the comprehension of His hearers ? 
 These are questions difficult to decide, and perhaps no final 
 decision can be reached. When Christ speaks, in one of 
 His earlier parables, of the tares of the field being burned up 
 in the day of harvest, He certainly prefigures the total an- 
 nihilation of wickedness and the wicked in terms that scarcely 
 admit dispute. " The Son of Man shall send forth the angels, 
 and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that 
 offend and them that do iniquity, and shall cast them into a 
 furnace of fire." When He speaks in the same parable of 
 the righteous shining forth " as the sun in the kingdom of 
 the Father," there is a clear echo of the legend that in the 
 
288 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 last day the sheath of the sun would be removed, pouring 
 healing flame upon the blessed and consuming flame upon 
 the evil. Nor can we doubt in what sense He used the word 
 hell, since hell was the common sjmonym of that Gehenna, 
 in whose ceaseless fires the pollutions of the city were con- 
 sumed. Gehenna to the Jew was a fearful and a noisome 
 spectacle ; yet it had its cheerful aspect too, since its flame 
 was cleansing flame, by whose deadly yet benignant energy 
 the health of the city was ensured. But the truth is, that 
 Christ's deliberate thought ought not to be deduced from the 
 popular symbols He emplo}*ed, which are always capable of 
 various interpretation. If Christ used these symbols it was 
 because He knew that they conveyed instant images to the 
 mind of great suggestiveness and force, and in this sense 
 they were an accommodation to the comprehension of His 
 hearers. In the same manner, when we say that the sun 
 rises or sets we use a symbolic phrase which is scientifically 
 untrue ; yet we use it without scruple, although we know that 
 it is incorrect, because it conveys most readily the image of 
 what we mean. So Christ used familiar Jewish terms on 
 judgment without defining the degree of their accuracy or 
 inaccuracy. He knew that they were variously interpreted, 
 yet He used them because they conveyed His general mean- 
 ing with vividness and force, and for the purposes of a popu- 
 lar discourse this was enough. But the use of these phrases 
 was constantly corrected by His more deliberate, delicate, 
 and discriminating utterances upon judgment, precisely as 
 science corrects our popular descriptions of natural phenom- 
 ena. We must therefore turn to these if we would know the 
 mind of Christ. We must examine the principles of judg- 
 ment, not the pictures only ; and we must do so with the 
 clear understanding that no word of Christ's is of private in- 
 terpretation. All that He taught must be consistently re- 
 
TEACHINGS UPON JUDGMENT 289 
 
 viewed in the light of His own character and by the measure 
 of His own temper. 
 
 The phrases used by Christ, then, in the expression of His 
 thoughts on judgment, may be set aside, not indeed as unim- 
 portant, but as unessential. It is almost impossible to as- 
 certain that the word " eternal " referred to eternity in the 
 strict sense ; certainly it was used with many shades of 
 meaning by the Jewish Rabbis. It is equally difficult to de- 
 cide what meaning the Jews attached to the word Gehenna, 
 or hell, as a spiritual symbol. Upon the whole it may be 
 said that the Jews did believe in some form of eternal pun- 
 ishment, and that Christ, in using the phrase, used the com- 
 mon theological language of His time ; but it was so vaguely 
 denned that it covered many doctrines and ideas. How 
 unwilling the Jew was to attach to the phrase those dreadful 
 ideas of endless torture, which sprang from the harsher mind 
 of mediaeval Christendom, is curiously indicated by a custom 
 which still survives, of which the writer himself was once a 
 witness. An old man was brought from the town of Safed, 
 " the city on a hill " of which Christ spake, to die beside the 
 waters of Tiberias. Immediately before death his neck was 
 broken by another man, who thus became his scapegoat and 
 accepted the burden of his sins. When this man came near 
 the hour of death, he in turn would surrender himself to the 
 hand of the slayer, and his sins would in like manner fall 
 upon another. The meaning of this extraordinary custom, 
 according to local tradition, appeared to be that in the end 
 of the world there would be but one man who would pass 
 into hell, the sin of the whole world, by these reiterated acts 
 of transference, being summed up in him alone. A sublime 
 idea which, however painfully expressed, does credit to the 
 charity of the human heart ! It is so that man constantly 
 moderates the logic of the reason by the logic of the heart ; 
 19 
 
290 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 and in the Jewish doctrine of punishment, which Christ ac- 
 cepted, there were many such modifications, which make it 
 so difficult to attach exact meanings to such phrases as Hell 
 and Everlasting Punishment, that it would be folly to build 
 any definite doctrine upon them. 
 
 But if we turn from words and phrases to principles we 
 find Christ speaking with perfect clearness of thought and 
 firmness of definition. Thus, in one of His earlier parables, 
 He describes two servants, of whom one knew his lord's will 
 and one did not. They are both unfaithful servants, but they 
 are not equally unfaithful. The one who knew his lord's 
 will and did it not is beaten with many stripes; the other, 
 who knew not his lord's will and did things worthy of stripes, 
 is beaten with few stripes. This saying is undoubtedly 
 meant as a reference to the Gentile nations ; and it is char- 
 acteristic of St. Luke, who was himself a Gentile and always 
 eager to collect all the words of Christ which were favorable 
 to the Gentiles, that he reports it while St. Matthew omits 
 it. And it is a very significant saj-ing, too, when we remem- 
 ber that one of the most popular descriptions of the judgment 
 of the world in the valley of Jehosophat represented the 
 Gentiles as arguing in vain with God, who will hear none of 
 their pleas, but drives them from Him into hopeless punish- 
 ment. Christ, with a single word, clears the judgment of 
 God from all these elements of rancor or vindictiveness by 
 showing that punishment is proportioned to offence with the 
 nicest accuracy. Extenuations are allowed, and even wel- 
 comed, by the Judge who willeth not the death of the sinner, 
 but rather that he should turn and live. Ignorance of truth 
 does not wholly exculpate or justify the growth of error, but 
 it excites pity, it moderates rebuke, it is a plea for mercy. 
 This conclusion, whose justice none can question, was here- 
 after to become, in the lips of St. Paul, an eloquent apology 
 
TEACHINGS UPON JUDGMENT 291 
 
 for the Gentiles, who, being without law, were to be judged 
 as without law ; and it is still the consolation of pious minds, 
 oppressed with the problem of what God may do with the 
 heathen peoples who know Him not. "Whatever God does 
 will be just, says Christ ; so just that the criminal himself 
 will acquiesce with the justice of the Judge. There are no 
 wholesale condemnations ; every case will be tried with an 
 infinite delicacy of discrimination ; and in every case the 
 punishment which God decrees will be proportioned with 
 exactitude to the offence. 
 
 Another principle of after-judgment is the principle of 
 compensation. This was an habitual thought of Christ. It 
 is expressed in the Sermon on the Mount, as a principle that 
 subtly works through .all the fortunes of this present life. 
 The poor and the meek, those who mourn and those who are 
 persecuted, are by no means neglected or forgotten by the 
 heavenly Judge ; they find things made up to them in the . 
 tranquillity or joy of their own spirits. The disciples them- 
 selves, when they speak half-regretfully of the sacrifices they 
 have made for their Master's sake, are assured that even in 
 the present world they will gain far more than they have 
 lost. The doctrine is used as a weapon of terrible irony 
 and rebuke against the rich, who are told that they have had 
 their consolations in this life and need expect nothing in the 
 life to come. And it is used with even more startling force 
 in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, where it is assumed 
 that Lazarus had some right to compensation in another 
 world for the sorrows and indignities which he had endured 
 in this. The influence which these thoughts have exercised 
 upon the world has been enormous. Christianity found its 
 earliest converts among the drudges of society ; among those 
 who were, like Lazarus, familiar with disease and beggary ; 
 and the idea of compensation was like a silver chime of hope 
 
292 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 heard through the darkness of a long night and heralding 
 the dawn. But they would never have believed it true if the 
 instincts of the heart had not affirmed it just. The man who 
 is disinherited of all the joy and ease of life does not need 
 to be persuaded that he has a claim on God for compensa- 
 tion. He can afford to wait if he can believe that God is not 
 unmindful of him. He can accept his lot with fortitude, 
 with admirable tranquillity, with a sense of superiority to 
 destiny, if he can believe that the long arrears of pain will 
 be overpaid some day in the inalienable felicity of heaven. 
 The patience of the poor, that inimitable patience which en- 
 dures in silence the infliction of a thousand wrongs, has 
 owed itself through many centuries to this hope. " God will 
 make it up to us, for God is just," is the unspoken comfort 
 of the meek, who see life pass before them like a pageant 
 from which they are excluded ; and Christ confirms the 
 thought. They have had their evil things, and now they 
 will be comforted. They have lain with the dogs at the gate 
 of Dives, and now they will lie in Abraham's bosom. Im- 
 poverished and despised, none have regarded them ; but now 
 God Himself will gather them in His arms and heal the 
 wounds of life at a touch and wipe away the tears from off 
 all faces. 
 
 " There is life with God, 
 In other kingdoms of a sweeter air ; 
 In Eden every flower is blown." 
 
 Another principle which rules all Christ's thoughts of judg- 
 ment is that punishment is not penal only but remedial. 
 Never was there more monstrous misconception than that 
 which pictures man as eternally punished, because this 
 would mean in effect the eternal existence of evil — a thought 
 which Christ refused to contemplate. The sole end of pun- 
 
TEACHINGS UPON JUDGMENT 293 
 
 ishment, when not administered by the cruel, is amendment 
 or reclamation ; but a punishment which is eternal either 
 means that the sinner is incapable of reclamation, or that his 
 punishment runs on long after his offence is purged. Christ 
 never once uses any language that would lead us to suppose 
 that hypotheses so intolerable as these had ever crossed His 
 mind. He speaks of the unfaithful servant as beaten with 
 few or many stripes, but He certainly does not speak of him 
 as endlessly beaten. He speaks in the Sermon on the Mount 
 of one who is in danger of hell-fire through his contempt for 
 his brother ; and then, by a slight change of metaphor, rep- 
 resents the same person as a debtor cast into prison, from 
 whence he is not liberated till he has paid " the uttermost 
 farthing "; but the inference is absolutely clear that in the 
 moment when the last fraction of the debt is paid, the man 
 will certainly come out of hell or prison. And in the solemn 
 close of the great spiritual drama of Dives and Lazarus, 
 Christ does distinctly represent the punishment of Dives as 
 remedial, for already he is a better man in hell than he was 
 on earth. He has indeed made great moral and spiritual 
 advances since the days when he fared sumptuously, and 
 cared for nothing but the pleasures of his own fastidious 
 luxury. He has become humble, wise, magnanimous ; hum- 
 ble enough to appeal to Lazarus for help ; wise enough to 
 know that Lazarus is a spirit moving at a higher range than 
 his, who may warn his brethren of their peril, though he 
 himself cannot ; magnanimous enough to think of his breth- 
 ren before himself, and to pour out his soul in agonized en- 
 treaty that something may be done to keep them from the 
 anguish he endures. These are not the characteristics of a 
 soul so evil that it cannot be reclaimed ; nor can it be con- 
 ceived that a punishment that has already wrought such 
 changes in the sufferer will not reach its limit, and at last 
 
294 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 achieve its purpose in the full purification of the soul. 
 Against conceptions so deliberate and defined as these it 
 would be a childish folly to weigh an adjective or a phrase 
 of doubtful meaning. The punishments of judgment were so 
 awful that they justified the use of the most impressive symbols 
 which the mind could fashion ; but uppermost in all Christ's 
 thoughts is the conception of all such punishments as dis- 
 ciplinary and remedial, and it is hard to see how any other 
 theory of punishment can be consistent with the elementary 
 principles of justice, to say nothing of that doctrine of the 
 benignant Fatherhood of God, which was the keystone of all 
 Christ's teaching. 
 
 But Christ has done much more than enumerate certain 
 principles of judgment; He declared Himself to be the 
 Judge ; and it therefore becomes necessary to review all His 
 teachings upon judgment in the light of what we know of 
 His own character and temper. He conceived Himself as 
 departing from the world for a season, and returning in 
 great power and glory amid the clouds of heaven ; as coming 
 suddenly, in an hour when no one looked for Him ; as seated 
 upon a throne, surrounded by His apostles, judging the 
 twelve tribes of Israel ; as calling all nations to His feet, 
 and dividing the evil from the good, as a shepherd divides 
 the sheep from the goats. Such grandiose and daring 
 visions naturally suggest to the critic who can see Jesus only 
 as a human teacher, a mind swept from its balance and on 
 the verge of madness. But we must remember that in ;ill 
 the Jewish legends of Messiahship the Messiah is a Judge. 
 It was at the call of the Messiah that the valley of Jehoso- 
 phat would be transformed into a vast theatre of judgment. 
 It was in Jerusalem that He would reign ; yet not the old 
 and narrow Jerusalem which David built, but a new Jerusa- 
 lem indeed, miraculously expanded, stretching from Joppq, 
 
TEACHINGS UPON JUDGMENT 295 
 
 to Damascus, soaring liigh among the clouds, the neighbor 
 of the morning stars, whose gates should be entire and per- 
 fect chrysolites, whose windows should be precious gems, 
 whose very walls should be built of stones of silver and 
 crowned with battlements of gold. This visionary city of 
 impossible Miltonic splendor, 
 
 " With alabaster domes and silver spires 
 And blazing terrace upon terrace, high 
 
 Uplifted," 
 
 was to become the new and last metropolis of the entire 
 earth. Rome herself, and all the millions of her empire, 
 was to come hither for the Day of Judgment, in the hour 
 when the Messiah put the trumpet to His lips. Such were 
 the dreams and visions of Rabbinic lore, and thus again 
 Jesus spoke familiar language to the Jew when He spoke of 
 Himself as Judge. Bat in a day when these extravagant 
 pictures of the Messiah as a Judge filled all minds, nothing 
 is more astonishing than the moderation of His language. 
 For He claims to know neither the day nor the hour of 
 judgment — that is a secret hidden in the mind of God. He 
 discourages discussions on the subject, and tells His dis- 
 ciples that it were wiser to seek themselves to enter in at the 
 strait gate than to indulge in speculations as to how many 
 shall be saved. And finally He frees this idea of the Mes- 
 siah as a Judge from all these half-puerile, half-sublime, but 
 wholly material conceptions which had gathered round it, 
 and affirms it as a spiritual idea. It is not in the valley of 
 Jehosophat but at the tribunals of Eternity that men shall 
 be judged ; not by their obedience to the law of Moses, but 
 to the diviner law of love ; and the end of this great assize 
 will not be the abasement of the Gentile and the exaltation 
 of the Jew, but equal justice to the whole world, irrespective 
 of either race or creed. 
 
296 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 It is in the twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel 
 that we have the fullest exposition of these ideas. All that 
 Christ had taught of social duty in the parables of the Tal- 
 ents, of the Unfaithful Servants, of the Good Samaritan, of 
 Dives and Lazarus, is now summed up in one great deliber- 
 ate picture of the final Judgment. The Son of Man is the 
 Judge, no wrathful Titau, no grandiose Messiah throned on 
 clouds whose "restless fronts bore stars," no soldier- vindi- 
 cator, 'i with dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms," but a 
 Shepherd. He is mild but firm, gentle yet unspeakably au- 
 gust. He bears the marks of wounds and sickness ; His 
 lips have thirsted and his heart has hungered ; and beneath 
 the robes of light which He now wears can be discerned the 
 rags of One who was a beggar, stained with the foulness of 
 a prison. It is as though Lazarus himself came to judge the 
 world, and Christ asks such questions as Lazarus might 
 have asked of a world that had neglected him. " I was an 
 hungered ; who gave Me meat ? I was thirsty ; and who 
 gave Me drink ? I was a stranger ; and who took Me in ? I 
 was naked ; and who clothed Me ? I was sick ; and who 
 visited Me ? I was in prison ; and who came unto Me ? " — 
 is the strange appeal which the Judge makes to this silent, 
 awe-struck audience. And then begins a singular debate, 
 suggested possibly by those profane contentions which the 
 Rabbis represented as happening when the Gentiles stood 
 before the throne of God, and found their pleas rejected. 
 The righteous reply that it is impossible that they should 
 have done any act of kindness to the Judge, for when knew 
 they Him to be hungry, or thirsty, or sick, or naked ? It is 
 true that they have often performed such acts for the lowly 
 and the impoverished, but it does not occur to them to make 
 a boast or a plea of these common charities of life. The 
 beautiful reply of the Shepherd-Judge is that since He is 
 
TEACHINGS UPON JUDGMENT 297 
 
 the Son of Man, humanity itself stands represented in Hirn. 
 Acts of kindness done to the least of these " His brethren," 
 were done to Him. Unseen and unrecognized He had moved 
 amid the throngs of men, looking on them through the eyes 
 of beggarmen and lepers, hungry for the word of kindness 
 which was never spoken. This saying arouses the resent- 
 ment of the unrighteous, who think themselves unfairly 
 treated. How could they be supposed to recognize a King 
 in rags ? How could they be accused of inhospitality to a 
 King they did not know ? If they had indeed known that it 
 was their King who knocked on that forgotten day upon the 
 door and asked for bread that was refused ; if the least hint 
 had reached them that the man lying at the gate and full of 
 sores was the Shepherd-Judge Himself disguised in a leper's 
 rags — who so quick to help as they ? And again the beau- 
 tiful reply comes : " Inasmuch as ye did it not to the least 
 of these, ye did it not to Me." Their very plea of extenuation 
 is their plainest condemnation. It is not by ostentatious, 
 but by simple, unknown, and almost unconscious acts of 
 kindness, that the true spirit of men is revealed. The good 
 have done good, not thinking it remarkable ; the evil have 
 been hard of heart, not supposing that it was observed : 
 can be more striking than the exquisite surprise of the one, 
 the overwhelming consternation of the other, when it ap- 
 pears that these unremembered acts of life afford the data 
 by which they will be judged. Once more we see the cen- 
 tral thought of all Christ's teaching laid bare : that it is by 
 love that men are justified before their Maker ; by loveless- 
 ness they judge themselves unworthy of the love of God. It 
 is the Shepherd who Himself loved the sheep who is the 
 Judge ; the book which lies open before Him is the book of 
 human heart ; the tribunal where men are gathered is the 
 Court of Charity. 
 
298 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 This was the last parable which Jesus spoke, and in a very- 
 real sense it is the summary of all His teaching. It is cer- 
 tainly the summary of all His thoughts on judgment. The 
 general principles on which He based His ideas of judgment 
 we have already seen ; this is the revelation of the spirit of 
 the judgment. It is love that reigns supreme in every word 
 and act. The Shepherd-Judge shows Himself eager to dis- 
 cover the good in men which they themselves have forgotten ; 
 and in making charity the one test of character He assures 
 every kind heart of acquittal in the day when the secrets of 
 all hearts shall be revealed. This is far from beiug a doc- 
 trine acceptable to men, who perversely imagine that creeds, 
 forms of faith, and rigid virtues alone can justify man before 
 his Maker. So little have men learned of the true spirit of 
 Jesus, that even at the present hour the great majority of 
 Christian teachers would hesitate to say that a charitable life 
 is the only true religion, or at least would regard such a 
 statement as perilous and misleading. But this is the dis- 
 tinct teaching of Jesus in His final parable. And it is in 
 entire consonance with His own life. He habitually meas- 
 ured men by their power of love. If in His frequent de- 
 scriptions of judgment He sometimes used the phrases com- 
 mon to His time which sound harsh and dreadful, we must 
 construe them by all that we know of His own life and char- 
 acter and temper. If we can assure ourselves that Jesus 
 Himself would never have inflicted hopeless torture on any 
 living soul, we may dismiss these phrases as delusive. If 
 we can further assure ourselves that the perfect love of God 
 will control every verdict of the Divine judgments upon men, 
 we know as much as it is needful we should know. Man 
 has reached the furthest point of both faith and knowledge 
 when he can affirm of these solemn processes of judgment 
 " All's law, yet all's love," 
 
TEACHINGS UPON JUDGMENT 299 
 
 It is little wonder that such profound and novel teachings 
 should have changed the course of human history. The 
 thought of a final judgment, often clothed in solemn and 
 alarming imagery, always appealing to the vital instincts of 
 the conscience, has done much to purify and elevate the life 
 of men, to open to them a sublime range of vision to invigo- 
 rate their endeavors after virtue and perfection. It has no 
 doubt been abused at various times, and has assumed a dis- 
 proportionate significance. The Dies Lxe — that hymn of 
 dreadful ecstasy, which rang so long and loud, like a clash 
 of trumpets, through the churches and the shrines of Chris- 
 tendom, often drowned the softer accents of the Good Shep- 
 herd. But it at least roused men to a sense of immutable 
 responsibility to God, and filled them with wholesome fear 
 lest they should fail in duty to their brethren. No reform 
 of manners can ever be achieved without a quickening of the 
 general conscience ; and no motive known to man has had 
 such efficacy in the quickening of conscience as the convic- 
 tion that the lifting curtain of the grave reveals a throne of 
 judgment, where every man must answer for the deeds done 
 in the body. Jesus, by His teaching, wrought into the con- 
 sciousness of Europe this imperishable truth. A hush of 
 fear and awe fell upon the nations, as the judgment-seat of 
 Christ possessed those heavens, whence the gods of Home 
 and Greece had fled. Upon the waking West there fell the 
 burning light of Christ, as the sun shone upon the statue of 
 Memuon, throned 
 
 " beneath the Libyan hills, 
 Where spreading Nile parts hundred-gated Thebes." 
 
 "When the first flame-arrow of the dawn smote this silent 
 statue, a music thrilled from the sonorous stone, like the 
 snapping of some hidden string, and this was thought to be 
 
300 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 the voice of Memnon liailing liis motlier, the New Day. So 
 the burning ray of Christ fell upon a world sunk deep in 
 night, and the string that clanged and broke through all Eu- 
 rope was materialism. Men woke from sleep to find them- 
 selves the heritors of a more spacious universe than they 
 had ever dreamed. The day had come, and from lip to lip 
 ran the new and animating message, "It is high time to 
 awake out of sleep. The night is far spent, the day is at 
 hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and 
 let us put on the armor of light. For the Lord is at hand ! " 
 
CHAPTEK XXn 
 
 THE RAISING OF LAZARUS 
 
 From His wanderings in Perea Jesus is called to the 
 neighborhood of Jerusalem by the news of the sickness and 
 the death of His dearest friend, Lazarus of Bethany. He 
 returns to Bethany with the definite purpose of restoring 
 Lazarus to life. The career of Jesus as a miracle-worker is 
 now to close in one astounding and consummating act. His 
 last parable lifts the curtain of the world to come, and re- 
 veals man as a creature of infinite destinies ; His last great 
 act of miracle is to recall from that unseen world one who 
 has already met its solemn judgment and entered on its new 
 and unimaginable life. 
 
 The raising of Lazarus is generally esteemed the greatest 
 miracle of Christ ; it would be more correct to describe it as 
 His most deliberate miracle, of which we have the most de- 
 tailed description. In itself it is not more remarkable than 
 the restoration to life of the son of the widow of Nain, re- 
 lated by St. Luke ; or of the daughter of Jairus which was 
 considered so authentic, that it is recorded in each of the 
 synoptic Gospels. Nor are these previous miracles less de- 
 tailed, unless we use detail as the synonym for mere ampli- 
 tude of phrase and narrative. The great feature of this last 
 miracle is its deliberation ; in all other respects it is neither 
 more or less astonishing than previous miracles. We may, 
 of course, except the frequent miracles of healing. These 
 may be explained in some degree by "the subtle co-opera- 
 tion of two imaginations and two wills," and even to the 
 
 301 
 
302 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 rationalist they are not incredible. It is when we are con- 
 fronted with the raising of the dead that all ordinary expli- 
 cations fail us. Here the most devout mind may be forgiven 
 occasional pangs of incredulity. 
 
 The narrative is full of special difficulties which no man 
 of intelligence can ignore. The most serious of these diffi- 
 culties is the silence of the synoptic Gospels. How is it 
 that John alone relates an event of such importance ? But 
 we may ask with equal relevance, how is it that John does 
 not relate the raising from the dead of Jairus's daughter ? 
 Or, how is it that only Luke relates the touching and inimi- 
 table story of the restoration to life of the only son of the 
 widow of Nain ? Of all the earlier miracles of Jesus these 
 were by far the most astounding, and were of equal signifi- 
 cance ; we should expect therefore that whatever things the 
 biographer of Jesus would omit, these would be precisely 
 the things that could never be omitted. But the Evangelists 
 did not obey the ordinary canons of biography. The mod- 
 ern biographer would certainly begin his work by collecting 
 the most remarkable incidents in the career of his hero, be- 
 cause he would know that he could satisfy the public taste 
 and judgment in no other way. But the Evangelists found 
 the whole life of Jesus so remarkable that they felt no need 
 of such discrimination. Each related the events that he best 
 remembered, or which were best attested by the general 
 memory. Moreover, there was a good reason why John 
 alone should record the miracle of Lazarus, which does not 
 apply to the earlier Evangelists. John is especially the his- 
 torian of the Judean ministry, and of the Passion. Three- 
 fourths of his entire Gospel, as we have seen, is devoted to 
 the last six months of the life of Jesus. He is therefore the 
 natural historian of Lazarus, and it is possible that he shared 
 the friendship of the house at Bethany in a degree not known 
 
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS 303 
 
 to Matthew or Peter. If we are to proceed upon the princi- 
 ple that only those incidents in the life of Jesus are authen- 
 tic which are attested by more than one Evangelist we must 
 dismiss Luke's story of the widow of Nain as well as John's 
 story of the raising of Lazarus ; and it is manifest that this 
 narrow principle, rigidly applied, would delete from the 
 Scriptures many of the acts and words of Jesus which the 
 world holds most lovely, most significant, and most precious 
 as the food of faith. 
 
 A less serious, but not unimportant, difficulty is that in 
 the final trial of Jesus nothing is said of this stupendous act 
 which almost immediately preceded it. But the same thing 
 may be said of a hundred wonderful and benignant acts in 
 the life of Christ. We may ask with equal surprise where 
 were the blind men whose eyes Christ had opened, the lame 
 men whom he had cured, that not one of them was found in 
 the hall of Caiaphas to bear witness to his Benefactor ? Two 
 notable miracles of this class had been wrought under the 
 hostile eyes of the priests themselves in Jerusalem ; yet 
 neither the paralytic of the Pool of Bethesda, nor the man 
 blind from his birth whom the priests had excommunicated, 
 appear either as witnesses or friends in the last tragic scenes, 
 when the fall storm of ruin broke upon their Healer. The 
 explanation is that Jesus was not tried as a false Messiah, 
 but as a political offender. The aim of the priests was to 
 prove that He had perverted the nation, because upon this 
 charge alone could they secure His death. Therefore they 
 had ceased to weigh the evidence for or against His miracles ; 
 they had become a matter of indifference. Lazarus himself, 
 had he appeared before the Sanhedrim, would have been 
 quite incapable of deflecting a course of judgment ahead v 
 predetermined, or of altering by any appeal or evidence that he 
 could offer a verdict which purposely ignored such evidence, 
 
304 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 But difficulties based upon the silence of the synoptic 
 Gospels, or the absence of Lazarus from the trial of Jesus, 
 are trivial compared with the difficulties which arise from the 
 nature of the narrative itself. The plain question which 
 must be met is, Is the story true ? It would be foolish to 
 reply that the question is irreverent and inadmissible, be- 
 cause the whole story challenges criticism, and John shows 
 no disposition to evade this criticism. The apostles them- 
 selves, in the far more important matter of Christ's own 
 resurrection, never imagined that their statements would be 
 received without examination. St. Matthew himself relates 
 that even in that last sublime moment, when Jesus vanished 
 into the heavens, " some doubted " ; and St. Paul argues at 
 length the possibility of resurrection with the Corinthian 
 converts. Blind faith is as foolish as blind incredulity. All 
 phenomena, whatever the ultimate verdict passed upon them, 
 must first of all be examined at the tribunal of the reason. 
 It is scarcely wonderful that a phenomenon so astounding as 
 this should have been examined with unusual severity, or 
 that men should have sought any kind of plausible invention 
 which should relieve the reason from accepting a story which 
 contradicts at every point all the known familiar facts of 
 human experience. 
 
 Is this story an invention ? John certainly shows himself 
 in his Apocalypse capable of sublime powers of invention, 
 but they are precisely those powers which are least capable 
 of sober narrative. If we may use the term, the Apocalypse 
 is distinguished by a certain noble insobriety of thought and 
 phrase ; it is a gorgeous dream, behind whose veils move 
 the forms of Nero, as the Beast, and his victims, as invinci- 
 ble protagonists, struggling on a stage that is set among the 
 clouds amid the marvels of infinity. But it would require a 
 mind of very different quality, infinitely more exact and deli- 
 
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS 305 
 
 cate, to invent such a narrative as this. With what an ex- 
 quisite touch are the characters of the two sisters rendered ! 
 They live, they move ; then- thoughts are beautifully natural 
 and spontaneous ; they excite the liveliest pity and a breath- 
 less interest. Nor are they copied from the earlier portraits 
 of St. Luke. It is Mary now who remains disconsolate and 
 crushed ; it is Martha, rilled with faith, who declares herself 
 convinced that Jesus is the Son of God. The character of 
 Thomas is also rendered with an equal fidelity to what we 
 know of him already, yet with the addition of new elements, 
 which would certainly not have occurred to a writer of fiction. 
 Thomas, hitherto the man of divided mind, is now the hero, 
 who casts aside his hesitations, and is prepared to die with 
 Christ. The various emotions of Christ Himself ; His words 
 when the message of the anxious sisters reaches Him in 
 Perea ; His debate with the disciples ; His conversation with 
 Martha ; His outburst of sorrow at the grave ; His prayer at 
 the doorway of the tomb — all these things are conveyed with 
 a realism, with a firmness and fidelity of touch, surely not 
 possible to fiction. We may omit from consideration the 
 culpability that would attach to John for passing off as his- 
 tory what was really fiction, and the condemnation of his 
 whole Gospel which such a charge involves, if it be proven. 
 Whether he was morally capable of inventing such a story is 
 not the question ; but certainly he was intellectually incapa- 
 ble. Whatever course our thoughts may take upon the 
 nature of the story, it is beyond dispute that John believed 
 himself to be narrating something that had actually hap- 
 pened, and he narrates it with a close attention to the 
 sequence and probability of history, which would be impos- 
 sible in deliberate invention. 
 
 Is the story a parable ? This is the ingenious suggestion 
 of those who desire to maintain reverence for Christ while 
 20 
 
306 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 denying His miraculous power. The story of the blind man 
 who witnessed before the priests, " This one thing I know, 
 that whereas I was blind, now I see," is a parable on the 
 saying, " I am the Light of the "World." The raising of 
 Lazarus is a parable on the greater saying, " I am the Besur- 
 rection and the Life." But this is again to credit John with 
 delicate powers of invention, of which his other writings show 
 no trace. Moreover, there is not the least suggestion of the 
 parabolic form in the narrative. When Jesus narrates a 
 parable we are never left in doubt as to His intention. How- 
 ever vivid and real may be the picture which He draws, it is 
 so clearly differentiated from sober history that the dullest 
 mind is not likely to confuse the two. No one has ever yet 
 confused Shakespeare's account of J Hamlet, or Goethe's 
 dramatic portraiture of Faust, with Carlyle's biography of 
 Frederick the Great or Macaulay's history of William of 
 Orange. They are totally unlike ; one is ideally and dra- 
 matically true, but the other is historically true. There is an 
 entire difference of method which is self-evident even to the 
 mind least accustomed to literary distinctions. The same 
 difference is found here, and it is strongly marked at every 
 point. We have a circumstantial narrative of the events 
 which led Jesus to return from Perea to Bethany ; of His 
 own thoughts and the thoughts of the disciples ; of the hopes 
 and feelings of the bereaved sisters who await the coming of 
 Christ ; besides an exact portraiture of the sisters themselves, 
 who are already known figures in the Gospel history. The 
 only ground for this suggestion seems to be that since Christ 
 once framed a parable about a beggar who was called Laz- 
 arus, this story may be a continuation of the parable, since 
 it also concerns a man called Lazarus ! The suggestion is 
 puerile in the extreme and is unworthy of its authors, as it is 
 unworthy of the attention of any thinking man. 
 
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS 307 
 
 The difficulties become yet greater when it is suggested 
 that what happened at Bethany was an elaborate drama ar- 
 ranged by the collusion of the friends of Jesus, and with the 
 tacit approval of Jesus Himself. For we may ask what need 
 was there to plan a false miracle, when already even the ene- 
 mies of Jesus had believed that they had witnessed true 
 miracles ? Jesus was already credited with the power of 
 raising the dead. The stories of Jairus's daughter and of 
 the son of the widow of Nain were widely known. It could 
 add nothing to His reputation to perform a similar act at 
 Bethany. Besides, if this narrative is to be treated as his- 
 tory at all, it is clear that the miracle was wrought in the 
 presence of numerous spectators, among whom were many 
 Jews from Jerusalem, who were intensely hostile to Christ. 
 They would surely know whether Lazarus were really dead 
 or not. They were not likely to be deceived by a plot which 
 wrapped the still living Lazarus in grave-clothes, gave him a 
 mock funeral, and arranged his grave as the theatre of a 
 clumsy fraud. We are told that many Jews, when they saw 
 the act that Jesus did, believed on Him ; and the first ques- 
 tion of the Pharisees when they subsequently called a coun- 
 cil to plan His death, was, "What do we? For this man 
 doeth many miracles. If we let Him thus alone all men will 
 believe on Him, and the Romans shall come and take away 
 both our place and nation." Had the friends of Jesus been 
 capable of arranging a sham miracle, arguing that the end 
 justified the means, the last place they would have chosen 
 would have been the immediate neighborhood of Jerusalem, 
 the last audience they would have invited to the scene would 
 have been the acute and hostile Jews of Jerusalem, and the 
 last actors in the drama would have been persons so well 
 known as Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. 
 
 But criticism cannot stop at this point. Even if it were 
 
308 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 possible to accept this explanation and to pardon the ill- 
 judged zeal of the friends of Jesus, we have to ask what we 
 are to think of Jesus Himself as the chief actor in this drama 
 of deceit? Either He was successfully imposed upon by 
 His friends, and thought He had raised the dead when He 
 had not, or He connived in their deliberate fraud and pre- 
 tended to restore life to a man who was not really dead at 
 all. In either case the character of Christ is gone. He be- 
 comes a charlatan who imposes on Himself and others. The 
 purity, the loftiness, the sincerity of His character has re- 
 ceived a stain which is indelible. The worst fate that the 
 Sanhedrim can visit on Him is deserved : for He is mani- 
 festly one who " deceived the people." Nor is extenuation 
 possible. It is little short of blasphemy to plead, as M. 
 Eenan does, that " in this dull and impure city of Jerusalem, 
 Jesus was no longer Himself ; His conscience had lost some- 
 thing of its original purity ; He suffered the miracles opinion 
 demanded of Him rather than performed them." Surely it 
 is a siugular obtuseness of both mind and conscience which 
 forbids the inventor of such a theory from discerning that 
 the entire ministry of Christ has crumbled into ruin, if such 
 things be true. Nor does the narrator of the story stand in 
 much better case than Jesus Himself. John must have been 
 aware of the fraud. Even if it could have been successfully 
 concealed from the multitude, it must have been fully known 
 to that inner circle of Christ's friends to whom John be- 
 longed. He knew when he lay upon the bosom of Jesus at 
 the Last Supper that he lay upon the bosom of a man who 
 had deceived him. He knew when he wrote the great pro- 
 legomena of his Gospel, declaring Jesus the Eternal Word, 
 that he made that immeasurable claim for an impostor. He 
 knew when he painted the closing scenes of tragedy through 
 which Christ passes with superb innocence to a Cross from 
 
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS 309 
 
 which He forgave others, that He was not innocent, that He 
 deserved His fate, that He Himself needed forgiveness from 
 a world He had misled. And he knew when he denounced 
 Judas that he was denouncing the one disciple who had taken 
 a sane and rational view of Jesus. But it is needless to un- 
 wind further this tangled skein of impossibilities and absurdi- 
 ties. As the story of the raising of Lazarus is clearly not 
 an invention or a parable, so it cannot have been a triumph 
 of collusion. Of all the theories put forward by the critic- 
 apologists of Jesus, this is the most unworthy, the most ab- 
 surd, and the least tenable. 
 
 Let us turn, then, to the story itself, as a piece of authen- 
 tic history, and examine it for ourselves. 
 
 It commences with a singularly lifelike sketch of the con- 
 duct of Jesus and of His disciples. He is practically an ex- 
 ile in Perea, warned out of Judea by the violence of His ene- 
 mies ; yet no sooner does the news reach Him of the sick- 
 ness of His friend than He immediately resolves upon return. 
 The disciples are naturally averse from encountering this 
 peril. They understand from the enigmatic words which 
 Jesus first uses that Lazarus has been sick and is recovering ; 
 he is asleep and will do well. Jesus alone knows the real 
 truth, which He presently reveals, telling them plainly that 
 Lazarus is dead. The disciples naturally see in this a good 
 reason for not returning to Judea. If Lazarus is dead it can 
 serve no purpose for Christ to expose Himself to certain 
 peril, for He can do no good at Bethany. They count as 
 obstinacy the resolve to return, and Thomas alone plays the 
 hero, crying in a passion of noble, despairing love, " Let us 
 also go, that we may die with Him." It has occurred to 
 none of them that Jesus may have formed the design of rais- 
 ing Lazarus from the dead. But in the mind of Jesus this 
 design is already settled. He communicates it by degrees 
 
310 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 to His disciples. He tells tliein that He goes to awake Laz- 
 arus out of sleep ; that He is glad for their sakes that He 
 was not present when Lazarus died ; that what He is about 
 to do is for the encouragement of their belief. In the two 
 previous instances of restoration from the dead, it is notice- 
 able that the shadow of death had scarcely fallen before it 
 was withdrawn. The child of Jairus was scarcely dead when 
 Jesus entered the house, and her soul yet hovered on the 
 borderland of life. The dead man at the gate of Nain was 
 but a few hours dead ; for in the East burial follows instantly 
 upon decease. There was at least some room in both these 
 cases for the suspicion that death was not real, and Christ's 
 own words about the child of Jairus suggest that she was in 
 a trance. Perhaps the disciples, ever prone to unbelief, had 
 encouraged these suspicions in themselves ; and this is why 
 Jesus laid stress upon the reinvigoration of belief which will 
 come to them in the act He is about to do in the cavern- 
 grave of Lazarus. He will not leave Perea till the certainty 
 of the actual death and funeral of Lazarus is put beyond 
 question. For two days — days of silence and awful medita- 
 tion, he remains "in the same place where He was." With 
 doubtful and astonished eyes the disciples watch Him, pale 
 with the ecstasy of His own thoughts, withdrawn in the sol- 
 emn hope and agony of prayer, passing in and out among 
 them as a spirit, His heart far away in the grave of Lazarus, 
 His soul pleading with His Father for the restoration of the 
 man He loved. Then, on the third day, His voice calls them 
 at the dawn. In a kind of stupor they arise and follow Him, 
 and know not, as they pass along the desert road, that they 
 march in the triumphal procession of One who is the Resur- 
 rection and the Life. 
 
 In the meantime, at Bethany, other scenes are happening 
 which afford an equally vivid glimpse into the characters of 
 
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS 311 
 
 the bereaved sisters. Both sisters share the futile and now 
 inexpressibly painful conviction, that if Jesus had been there 
 Lazarus had not died. They cannot understand His strange 
 delay. They supposed that the moment He had heard of the 
 sickness of His friend He would have hastened to his couch ; 
 for the knew Him well enough to know that He would scorn 
 danger at the call of love. They wait in vain, scanning with 
 tearful eyes the long road that winds downward from Beth- 
 any to Jericho and the distant fords of Jordan. Their 
 messenger returns with not so much as a hopeful word from 
 Jesus. Mary, crushed and broken-spirited, watches in the 
 cool of the eve from the palm-clad slopes of Bethany for the 
 Friend who does not come. At last the morning breaks 
 when all is over. The grey light falls upon the rigid face of 
 Lazarus. The irretrievable calamity has come. There is 
 nothing left but the last sad rites, the long farewells, and 
 then the dead man, on his open bier, is carried to his tomb, 
 and the stone is rolled across the doorway. All thought of 
 help from Jesus is now at an end. They can only think of 
 Him with the tender, sad resentment of women disappointed 
 in their hero. They, no more than the disciples, have the 
 least thought that all this bitterness of loss and of delay is 
 but the darkened stage on which will enter, at His own hour, 
 the Prince of Life. 
 
 If any spark of hope yet burned, it was in the bosom of 
 Mary. We find her a little later on possessed of a great 
 store of ointment of spikenard, very precious, with which she 
 anointed the feet of Jesus. Was this the ointment which she 
 had purchased for the last anointing of her brother ? The 
 final act in the sad drama of a Jewish death was the anoint- 
 ing in the tomb. It was for the purposes of anointing or 
 embalmment that the women came to the tomb of Christ 
 Himself on the morning of the third day. But there are 
 
312 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 features in this narrative which suggest that this last anoint- 
 ing of the body of Lazarus in the tomb had been postponed, 
 as though in obedience to some fugitive, incoherent, half-in- 
 telligible hope that there was yet something to occur that eye 
 had not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived. 
 Well might Mary sit still in the house, listening with awe to 
 these vague whispers of her heart, which she dared not com- 
 municate to her less imaginative sister. She held the vase 
 of precious spikenard in her trembling hands. She knew 
 the sombre duty that the hour demanded of her, and yet she 
 could not do it. Her mysterious reluctance was not based 
 on reason. That Lazarus was truly dead she could not 
 question. She herself had looked upon and shared all those 
 significant and sad rites which attend a Jewish funeral. 
 She had seen the body wrapped in the finest linen, the hair 
 cut, and salt sprinkled on the silent breast. She had seen 
 the sacred cloths which had contained the copy of the law 
 which the dead man had used, laid with him on the bier, or 
 wound around the body. She had seen his friends enter one 
 by one, to stoop above the corpse, and take their leave of it, 
 with the touching benediction, " Depart in peace." She had 
 heard the chorus of the dead sung, his funeral oration ut- 
 tered either in the house or on the way to the tomb, and the 
 wailing of the death-flutes was ever in her ears. She had 
 stood trembling in the doorway of the cavern, and had seen 
 in the dim and awful gloom that white-robed eifigy, prone 
 and silent, that was once a living man. And yet she could 
 not bring herself to think that the drama of her grief and 
 loss was really over. She shrank from the performance of 
 an act which locked the last door upon reluctant hope. Un- 
 embalmed and unanointed Lazarus slept within his tomb, 
 and Mary kept her precious ointment of spikenard against 
 another burial. 
 
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS 313 
 
 Then at last Jesus comes — alas ! too late, think both the 
 sisters. The news flies from lip to lip that already He has 
 been discerned, surrounded by His Galilean friends, moving 
 slowly up the long hill-road that leads to Bethany. Martha, 
 with her characteristic energy, is on her feet at once, and 
 goes out to meet Him. It is she, once so cumbered with her 
 household cares that she made but a restless listener to 
 Christ's discourses, who now rises to the loftiest heights of 
 faith. She cannot forbear the tender natural reproach, 
 " Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died ; " 
 but it is followed instantly by a confession of adoring faith, 
 not less remarkable than Peter's at Csesarea Philippi : " But 
 I know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God 
 will give it Thee." Mary soon joins her sister, repeating 
 her reproach ; she is dissolved in tears and can scarce speak 
 at all. The mourners for the dead are with her, beating on 
 their breasts, weeping, and uttering cries of clamorous grief. 
 Jesus is overwhelmed before this outburst of sorrowful re- 
 proach and agonized lamentation. He cannot bring Himself 
 to enter the house where Lazarus has died. He thinks of 
 all the happy hours spent beneath the roof of this hospitable 
 house, now made desolate, and He weeps with those who 
 weep. He overhears the whisper of the crowd, half-ironical, 
 half-appreciative, " Could not this man, who opened the eyes 
 of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have 
 died ? " But amid all this dismay of the mourning crowd, 
 all the tender agitation of His own mind, He holds to His 
 deliberate purpose, of which He alone knows the secret. He 
 asks to see the grave. The Jews suppose that He would 
 fain weep there for the man He loved. He reaches it, and 
 asks that the stone may be rolled away. Even then the 
 sublime conjecture is not born in the hearts of the onlookers, 
 that a thing miraculous and unimagined is about to happen. 
 
314 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 Martha herself protests against what seems a vain and pain- 
 ful act of desecration. She shrinks from the too lively pic- 
 ture which her sad imagination paints of this sacred corpse, 
 unanointed, unembalmed, soiled with all the dishonors of 
 the grave, suddenly dragged forth into the insolent light of 
 day. But even while she speaks her heart stands still in 
 mute suspense and dreadful expectation. Jesus stands in 
 the doorway of the cavern-tomb and prays. His voice swells 
 into a deepening note of triumph : " Father, I thank Thee 
 that Thou hast heard Me, and I know that Thou nearest Me 
 always." For a moment there is silence that may be felt, as 
 of a waiting world. Then, in a loud voice, He cries, " Laz- 
 arus, come forth ! " And in the tomb there is a stir, a move- 
 ment, a sudden shock of life ; and in the crowd a breathless 
 horror. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and 
 foot with grave-clothes, and his face was bound about with a 
 napkin. Jesus saith unto them, " Loose him, and let him go." 
 It is in vain to seek for explanation of an act which tran- 
 scends all human reason and experience. The difficulties of 
 belief are great, but assuredly the difficulties of disbelief are 
 greater still. Were reason and experience our sole guides, 
 we should have no choice but to disbelieve ; but what are 
 reason and experience but finite instruments, incapable of 
 measuring forces which are infinite ? What is man himself 
 but a creature incompletely fashioned, set amid the rushing 
 splendors of a universe, which baffle and amaze him, and 
 perpetually affirm his own incompetence of apprehension? 
 We have also to recall that impression of abnormal and sub- 
 lime power in Jesus, which haunts the mind from the begin- 
 ning of His history ; the sense of expanding deity which 
 filled His friends with awe ; the growing energy of spiritual 
 life, piercing through the folds of flesh like a powerful flame, 
 until at last the body and its limitations seem dissolved in 
 
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS 315 
 
 some higher potency of life. The miraculous energies of 
 Jesus, ever growing stronger, are conditioned by the spiritual 
 energies of His existence, which also are in the process of a 
 daily growth. He who had already called Himself the Life 
 does but complete His definition of Himself, when He de- 
 clares at the spoliated grave of Lazarus, " I am the Resur- 
 rection and the Life." 
 
 Measured in the scales of human reason, dissolved in the 
 crucible of human experience, man must evermore affirm this 
 act impossible, and therefore quite incredible ; judged by 
 what we know of Christ, the act is both possible and credi- 
 ble. Man may be forgiven his obstinate and mournful 
 doubts, when he reflects upon the long uniformity of decay 
 and dissolution ; the silence that weighs upon the grave ; 
 the voiceless void into which all the units of the human race 
 sink, one by one, extinguished. But if the story of Jesus is 
 historical at all, that story does unquestionably present us 
 with One who was not as ordinary men, from whom we may 
 expect actions which are not found in ordinary experience 
 It is the verdict which we pass on Christ Himself which 
 must govern all the lesser verdicts which we pass upon His 
 actions. Browning's question — 
 
 • ' Can a mere man do this ? " 
 
 admits of but one reply. Browning also, in his great analysis 
 of this very story, gives the clue to the one way in which it 
 can be received : 
 
 "So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too — 
 
 So, through the thunder comes a human voice 
 
 Saying, ' heart I made, a heart beats here ! 
 Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself ! 
 
 Thou hast no power, nor may'st conceive of mine ; 
 But love I gave thee, with myself to love, 
 
 And thou must love me who have died for thee ! ' " 
 
31G THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 In other words, it is according to the measure in which we 
 see the Divine in Jesus that His miracles become credible. 
 It is not the miracle that proves Him Divine ; it is His di- 
 vinity that proves the miracle. 
 
 On that sacred night at Bethany it was not Lazarus alone 
 who was recovered from the grave, but the world itself. The 
 gates of death rolled back, and the human race beheld itself 
 incredibly ransomed and redeemed from destruction. The 
 feast of life and hope was spread in those chambers, erst- 
 while filled with the symbols of immutable decay, hung with 
 the mournful trappings of corruption. The words spoken in 
 Bethany have reverberated through the world. Besides a 
 million graves the mourners of the dead have heard the gen- 
 tle and commanding Voice which has declared " I am the 
 Resurrection and the Life ! " A beautiful Hebrew legend 
 describes the grave as the place where two worlds meet and 
 kiss. Two worlds met at the grave of Lazarus : the world 
 of the flesh, dishonored, humiliated, reconciled to the shame 
 of inevitable death ; the world of the spirit, delivered from 
 all mortal trammels, throbbing with a deathless energy, con- 
 scious of the potency of life eternal. At the kiss of Christ 
 the new sweet vigor of immortality poured itself into the 
 frozen veins of a world that lay upon its bier. The scene is 
 commemorated, is re-enacted, beside every grave where eyes, 
 blind with tears, are suddenly illumined by the vision of the 
 spirit which hovers pure and glad above the mortal raiment 
 it has cast aside. But one more act was needed to assure 
 the world that it was not deceived by fancied hopes ; it was 
 that Jesus Himself should put off the body of corruption, 
 and should appear as One alive for evermore. This also 
 was to come ; and with it came the last and noblest defini- 
 tion of life itself : " I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in 
 me. 
 
CHAPTEK XXHI 
 
 THE LAST RETREAT AND THE RETURN 
 
 " If ye believe not Moses and the prophets, neither will 
 ye believe though one rose from the dead," said Jesus, at the 
 close of the great spiritual drama of Dives, and His words 
 found a sad vindication in the events which immediately fol- 
 lowed His miracle at Bethany. The theorist, better ac- 
 quainted with the movements of the philosophic mind than 
 with the coarse characteristics of average human nature, 
 would certainly suppose that in raising Lazarus Jesus com- 
 pleted the edifice of His fame. Henceforth He should have 
 been sacred and inviolable. The world should have turned in 
 awe and gratitude to One possessed of such astounding pow- 
 ers. Never again should it have been possible to question 
 His authority, or the reality of the spiritual universe which 
 He revealed. Again and again men have declared that all 
 they needed to attain absolute faith in the existence of a 
 spiritual universe is that one should be raised from the dead. 
 They would be content with even less ; with an authentic ap 
 parition, with a ghost, with some bright phantom, gliding 
 upward from the grave, whom the sense should recognize as 
 identic with the human form that had known the pangs of 
 dissolution. But the close observer of ordinary human na- 
 ture knows too well that these are but the fond illusions of 
 the sentimentalist. Men in general are invincibly hostile to 
 the miraculous. The best authenticated ghost-story leaves 
 no impression on the general mind. The possessor of ab- 
 normal powers excites not gratitude, but detestation, which 
 
 317 
 
318 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 soon translates itself in active methods of repression. The 
 alchemist and the necromancer have always lived hunted 
 lives. History assures us in a thousand instances that men 
 refuse to tolerate in others extraordinary powers which they 
 themselves do not possess ; and the possession of those 
 powers, whether real or false, have often proved fatal to their 
 possessors. 
 
 In view of these truths of observation, we need scarcely 
 be surprised to find that the miracle at Bethany, so far from 
 helping Christ with His inveterate foes, really intensified 
 their hatred, and precipitated His own death. The miracle 
 was much discussed, and Bethany became the shrine of 
 many pilgrimages. In the Temple courts and the bazaars of 
 Jerusalem little else was talked about. Day by day the road 
 to Bethany was thronged with hosts of curious visitors, who 
 sought the cavern-tomb where Lazarus had been interred, or 
 even looked upon the man raised up by Christ, and listened 
 to his tale. No one doubted that the miracle had really 
 taken place, not even the priests and Pharisees themselves. 
 But to these bitter zealots, the truer the tale, the mere difficult 
 either to discredit or suppress it, the stronger grew their 
 animosity to Jesus. They soon became thoroughly alarmed 
 by the growing agitation of the popular mind. It seemed as 
 though Jesus would triumph after all, and they were well 
 aware that His triumph would mean their downfall. Some 
 broader considerations of policy mingled with these petty 
 fears. The nation itself existed in a state of difficult equilib- 
 rium. The least popular disturbance might prove fatal to 
 the last remains of nationality, by provoking the Eomans to 
 measures of retaliation. Among a people profoundly fanat- 
 ical any agitation of the general mind was to be deprecated, 
 for it was certain to find an issue in some kind of revolu- 
 tionary movement. Hence personal hatred and political ne- 
 
LAST RETREAT AND RETURN 319 
 
 cessities worked together for the overthrow of Jesus. Laz- 
 arus himself was in danger ; St. John tells us that the chief 
 priests sought to kill him. How much more ardently would 
 they seek to kill the Man who had raised him from the dead, 
 in the hope that by such a crime they would crush a move- 
 ment that had now become a peril to the whole existing 
 order of society? 
 
 It is of importance to understand this policy of the priests 
 because it affords us the key to all the subsequent events in 
 the career of Jesus. Hateful as it appears when thus baldly 
 stated, yet it is a policy common to politicians and diplomat- 
 ists, who govern men by astuteness rather than by principle, 
 or whose only fixed principle is the dogged conservatism 
 which defends at all costs an existing order. To such men the 
 greatest of all perils is the spread of new ideas. If in such acts 
 of suppression wrongs are wrought, they are defended as neces- 
 sary to the safety of the nation. Acts of cruelty and injustice 
 to individuals are justified by the welfare of the greatest num- 
 ber. Political necessity is pleaded for the sacrifice of heroes. 
 We have no reason to suppose that the great governors and sol- 
 diers who have carried out crusades of extermination, at the 
 bidding of reactionary Governments, nor indeed the individ- 
 uals who composed such Governments, were themselves men 
 of abnormal cruelty ; nor need we accuse the Jewish priests 
 of an extraordinary wickedness. They simply reasoned as 
 the members of the Inquisition reasoned — themselves often 
 men of admirable virtues — when they supposed they did 
 God service in the barbarous suppression of all heretics. 
 No power known to man is so capable of turning men of 
 virtue into wolves and tigers as the plea of political or re- 
 ligious necessity. Henceforth, to the close of Christ's life, 
 He is the victim of this supposed necessity. The question 
 of the wisdom, truth, or value of His message will no more 
 
320 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 be discussed in the conclave of the priests. He must be 
 crushed, aud the only question is by what means. 
 
 The exponent of this policy was Caiaphas, the supreme 
 Pontiff of the Jewish faith. Immediately upon the news of 
 the miracle at Bethany, the Sanhedrim was summoned. The 
 Sanhedrim was a kind of sacred college, analogous to a con- 
 clave of cardinals of the Roman Church, meeting usually in 
 a chamber of the Temple, but on special occasions in the 
 house of the Pontiff himself. Let us picture this august 
 gathering. On the very evening of the day of the miracle, 
 or at latest on the following day, messages were sent to the 
 various members of the Sanhedrim, who were informed that 
 a question of urgency was to be debated. One-third of the 
 assembly consisted of priests, one-third of elders who repre- 
 sented the laity, and the rest of scribes and lawyers. Each 
 was a person of dignity ; all were wealthy. The greatest 
 figure in this ruling hierarchy was Annas, or Hanan, a for- 
 mer Pontiff, who had been deposed by the Romans. He had 
 nevertheless maintained his authority, though out of office, 
 and upon him, more than on any other man, rests the odium 
 of the death of Jesus. Caiaphas was his son-in-law, and a 
 much weaker man than Hanan. It was notorious that Hanan 
 was the power behind the pontifical throne, Caiaphas being 
 in all things his obedient mouthpiece. 
 
 Caiaphas had already resolved upon his policy. Although 
 he was in truth but nominal High Priest, yet he was regarded 
 with the utmost reverence for the sake of his office. When 
 he entered the Sanhedrim all eyes were fixed on him as the 
 infallible representative of God. He wore uj^on his breast 
 the sacred symbols of his office : the Urim and the Thuni- 
 mim, two precious stones of dazzling splendor, sacredly pre- 
 served from the days of Aaron, one of which signified Light 
 and the other Bight. It was believed that the power of 
 
LAST RETREAT AND RETURN 321 
 
 prophecy still existed in the High Priest, He was the ap- 
 pointed channel of the infinite wisdom of God, the mouth- 
 piece of the secret counsels of heaven. John distinctly cred- 
 its him with this power of prophecy ; but he describes it as 
 involuntary, and in this case as used against himself. 
 Caiaphas himself makes no such pretension. He came to 
 the council rather to browbeat its members than to instruct 
 them. The meeting began with desultory conversation. 
 One by oue the members expressed their perplexity, their in- 
 competence to suggest a course of action. But one fear was 
 in every breast, and it is on this fear that Caiaphas adroitly 
 plays. Terror of the Eomans, who have already curtailed 
 the privileges of the priesthood, who openly covet the wealth 
 of the Temple, who are notoriously ready to seize any excuse 
 for spoliation, is a fixed idea in every mind. Caiaphas, when 
 he rises to speak, puts the case with brutal frankness. The 
 one way to retain priestly privilege is to conciliate the Ro- 
 mans. Crush the offender, is his only policy. It is no time 
 to debate the miracles of Jesus when His very existence is a 
 peril and a threat. Even though it be conceded, for form's 
 sake, that He has done nothing worthy of death, yet it is ex- 
 pedient He should die, rather than that the whole nation 
 should perish. A death the more or less is of little conse- 
 quence when the interests of the nation are involved ; the fu- 
 ture will pardon a crime so patriotic, and will praise rather 
 than denounce the men who compassed it. Aud amid the 
 agitation of every kind of base fear, in the moral blindness 
 and passion of the moment, this infamous counsel passes for 
 inspired wisdom. "From that day forth they took counsel 
 together for to put Him to death." 
 
 Some friend, possibly Nicodemus, acquainted Jesus with 
 the proceedings of this secret conclave. It is difficult to fix 
 the exact date of this meeting, but it was probably about a 
 21 
 
322 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 month before the death of Christ, in the end of February or 
 the beginning of March. The synoptic Gospels convey the 
 impression that during this month this Sanhedrim was in 
 constant session. John states that the determination to ar- 
 rest Jesus was already taken. All the accounts agree that if 
 Jesus was not instantly arrested, it was not from lack of will 
 on the part of His enemies, but lack of opportunity. They 
 feared the people, and were by no means sure that a public 
 arrest would not foment the very tumult which they wished 
 to suppress. Yet they had every reason to complete their 
 policy without delay, for the Passover was near, when there 
 was a constant liability to public uproar from the crowded 
 condition of Jerusalem. In the meantime Jesus Himself 
 solved these perplexities of the Sanhedrim by disappearing 
 from the neighborhood of Bethany. He not merely knew 
 how He was to die, but when ; it was meet that the perfect 
 sacrifice and oblation of Himself should be made at the Pass- 
 over, which was the day of national sacrifice. In all the sub- 
 sequent history the initiative of events is with Him. The 
 impression left upon the mind is of One who moves with a 
 deliberate majesty toward His end ; who lays down a life 
 that is not taken from Him ; who is the victim truly, but the 
 Victor-victim. 
 
 Jesus retired into the town of Ephraim, of which nothing 
 is known, save that it was near the desert, and about sixteen 
 miles from Jerusalem. Of all the holy sites in Palestine, 
 none would be more truly sacred, were it discoverable, than 
 this little toAvn of Ephraim. Gethsemane itself has no more 
 thrilling memories than this unknown town, where the last 
 quiet days in the life of Christ were spent. It is possible 
 that Jesus was unaccompanied in this retreat ; or since John 
 alone mentions Ephraim, we may conjecture that Christ took 
 with Him only His favorite disciples, as in the case of the 
 
LAST RETREAT AND RETURN 323 
 
 Transfiguration on Mount Hermon. We can but draw an 
 imaginary picture, and there is but one topographical feature 
 that may serve to guide us. Ephraim was certainly in the 
 desert of Judea, that desert where the ministry of Jesus 
 had commenced, where the Divine call had come, and 
 the vision of the kingdoms of this world had been seen 
 and rejected. The morning of His public life opened in 
 these sterile grandeurs of the wilderness ; here also came 
 the evening. Before the culminating acts in the lives of the 
 great heroes of faith and endeavor, one often notices a kind 
 of silence, the thrilling pause before the curtain lifts upon 
 the final scene. Such a silence Jesus knew in Ephraim. He 
 was able to collect His thoughts, to review His life, to esti- 
 mate both its inner significance of purpose, and its outward 
 symmetry of event. Among these barren hills, to which the 
 spring brought little beaut}-, we may picture Jesus wander- 
 ing, lost in self-communion. He no longer needs to ask, 
 " Whom do men say that I am ? " His own soul gives in- 
 dubitable answer that He is the Son of the Highest, ap- 
 pointed to a destiny of divinest sacrifice. The tempter, who 
 had once spoken among these solitudes in accents of com- 
 mingled irony and seduction, appears no more ; the Prince 
 of this World has come, and has found nothing in Him. 
 The eternal silence of the scene is no longer frightful ; it is 
 the silence of mighty forces resolved into harmony. And 
 He also is tranquil ; His own soul is silent with the pity and 
 the patience of the sheep that is dumb before its shearers. 
 He has reached the climax of the heroic soul, after which 
 the world has no word left that it can speak — " Though he 
 slay me, yet will I trust Him." The peace of God which 
 passeth understanding, because it is not known through the 
 understanding, but lies like a fragrance on the heart, is His, 
 and nothing earthly can deprive Him of it. The hills of 
 
324 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 Epliraim witnessed not the despair of Jesus, but His victory. 
 He had failed as the world counts failure, but it was a defeat 
 which was greater far than victory. Transfigured now, not 
 by outward agencies but by His own Divine Idea, He moves 
 amid these bloomless hills, and when He leaves them it is 
 with the perfect knowledge that the march of death has visi- 
 bly begun. 
 
 Yet it was at this time, perhaps in this place, that a re- 
 quest was made to Christ, which shows how little were His 
 own thoughts shared by those who loved Him best. There 
 came to Him the mother of James and John, full of ardent 
 Messianic hope, and desiring that her sons should sit upon 
 the right and left hand of Christ in the new kingdom which 
 was to be established. We may trace this request to the 
 new vigor of belief which had been kindled by the raising 
 of Lazarus. It appears strange that such a request should 
 have been made of One who was a fugitive, for whose arrest 
 the order was already given ; but it is not strange if we rec- 
 ollect the effect upon the general mind which the miracle at 
 Bethany had produced. How could this simple Galilean 
 woman suspect that He who had raised another from the 
 dead should Himself die by violence ? How should she im- 
 agine in her zeal and love that He who had saved others 
 should have no power to save Himself ? And if the request 
 was presumptuous, yet the presumption was amply atoned 
 for by the love and faith which inspired it. 
 
 The mother of John and James was no ordinary woman. 
 She had followed Christ from Galilee ; henceforth she fol- 
 lowed Him to the end ; for the last glimpse we have of her 
 is at the Cross, where she stands afar off, with Mary Magda- 
 lene. On that tragic day she knew the meaning of the 
 words which Christ addressed to her now. With eager zeal 
 this woman who has been so true to Him pleads for her 
 
LAST RETREAT AND RETURN 
 
 QO! 
 
 sons, asking nothing for herself, and Jesus answers them 
 rather than her : " Are ye able to drink of the cup that I 
 shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I 
 am baptized with?" They say unto Him, "We are able." 
 And then with infinite gentleness Jesus shows them that it 
 is not the cup of royal welcome He will drink, but the cup 
 of death. The son of Man has come not to be ministered 
 unto but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. 
 In the very place where He had once refused the kingdoms 
 of the world, He refuses them again. And of the startled 
 group that listen to Him there is but one who has the least 
 glimpse of what He means, and this is the woman herself. 
 In that dreadful day when all the disciples have forsaken 
 Him and fled, she alone followed Him to the Cross. They 
 who had boasted their ability to drink the cup of shame will 
 have refused it ; she will have drunk it to the full, mingling 
 with it the tears and sighs of a broken heart. Not in this 
 instance only, but through all His life, women gave to Jesus 
 a fidelity and love incomparably finer than men ever gave 
 Him. It was they who gave Him back to the world, they 
 who built the edifice of Christianity itself. And it is neither 
 James nor John who sits beside Him in His kingdom, but 
 they who ministered of their substance to His earthly needs, 
 knew Him by the learning of the heart, were faithful to Him 
 through all reproofs of time and circumstance, and were first 
 in the Garden on the morning when His soul awoke. To 
 that throne from which He rules the world Jesus was con- 
 ducted by a sisterhood of women, among whom let us com- 
 memorate one who in the darkest hour saw crowns upon His 
 brow this humble woman who lives only in her children's 
 
 names. 
 
 The part which women played in the life of Jesus, and 
 especially in its closing scenes, was to receive one more 
 
326 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 signal illustration at the close of this retreat at Ephraim. 
 While Jesus thus explains once more to His disciples the 
 nature of His mission, the question whether He will come to 
 the feast is being eagerly debated in Jerusalem. It had be- 
 come a truly national question. John, with a singularly 
 vivid touch, pictures the priests, and the great crowd of pil- 
 grims themselves, " as they stood in the Temple," exchang- 
 ing surmises and prognostications — "What think ye, that 
 He will not come to the feast ? " Next to the activities of 
 the life of Christ nothing is so remarkable as its inactivities. 
 The chart of destiny lies in His hands, and nothing human 
 can hasten or retard its appointed processes. His life moves 
 like a river to the sea, but it is a river that has not only 
 foaming rapids, but many a pool of stillness where no cur- 
 rent is perceptible. At His own time He leaves Ephraim, 
 having eaten the last sacrament of silent self-communion. 
 Perhaps He waited for His Galilean -friends to join Him, 
 that He might travel with them to the Passover, as He had 
 done before. All that is certain is that He went through 
 Jericho, where He once more affirmed the breadth of His 
 sympathies by dining with Zaccheus. From Jericho a 
 long and toilsome road, climbing several thousand feet 
 through a parched and hideous country, leads to Jerusalem. 
 By this road He traveled, reaching Bethany on the eve of 
 the Passover, and at Bethany Martha and Mary made Him 
 a final feast. 
 
 It was a commemoration feast in honor of the raising of 
 Lazarus. Lazarus sat at the head of the table, but his sis- 
 ters were not with him. Martha, with her characteristic 
 thought for others, served ; Mary, full of her own thoughts, 
 and already meditating in her heart a beautiful purpose, 
 stood aside, and watched the feasters. Outside the open 
 doors the bright spring evening drew toward dusk, and the 
 
LAST RETREAT AND RETURN 327 
 
 stars were slowly lit ; within, the stars of hope and love 
 shone, and a solemn joyonsness was felt. Every glance and 
 act of Lazarus struck a note of wonder. Behold he ate, lie 
 drank, he talked, whose lips had breathed the last sigh, 
 whose eyes had looked into the face of Death ! Who shall 
 describe what these guests thought of him who was their 
 host ?— with what a shudder they regarded him, with Avhat 
 an awful deference they spake with him, who had known 
 what no mortal man had ever known before ! On the im- 
 aginative mind of Mary, all these thoughts drew a frieze of 
 fire — pictures confused and terrible, like the pictures in a 
 dream ; the realities of death and of the tomb, mingling with 
 what seemed almost the unreality of this human festival. 
 And then it was that the beautiful purpose took fashion in 
 her heart. She bethought her of that precious spikenard 
 bought for the anointing of her brother, and she can think 
 of nothing better than to break it on the feet of Jesus, 
 wearied with the toilsome pilgrimage from Jericho. The 
 gift, not thought too precious for the dead, is surely not too 
 costly for the living. The bliss of love possesses her : the 
 uncalculating, fine extravagance of love, which puts no meas- 
 ure to its self-abandonment. Some thought, it may be, of 
 that earlier anointing of the Lord in Bethany was in her 
 mind ; and she would fain not do less for Jesus than one 
 who was a sinner did. Impurity has made its offering, and 
 has been absolved ; when purity brings its sacrifice shall 
 Jesus be offended ? And so, with swift step she passes to 
 that chamber where she had wept her ineffectual tears over 
 the brother who was dead ; she takes the costly ointment 
 from its place ; she comes back and breaks the vase over 
 those sacred feet that had bruised the head of Death, she 
 anoints them with reverent hands and wipes them with the 
 hairs of her head. " and the house was filled with the odor 
 
328 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 of the ointment." It was an act of exquisite grace and feel- 
 ing. Mary is, like all women, a poet in her emotions, and 
 her deed is one that thrills the hearts of all who feel. It is 
 an act so beautiful that Christ foresaw it would belong to 
 the sacred idylls of the world : wherever His gospel should 
 be preached through all the world this thing should be told 
 as a memorial of Mary. 
 
 But the scene is not achieved without ungenerous criticism. 
 There is one man who can see in it nothing beautiful or 
 touching. It is for him nothing better than a foolish scene 
 of sentiment. It is also an extravagance hateful to a man of 
 parsimonious temper. There can be little doubt that the 
 disciples themselves at the moment felt with Judas. In a 
 later scene, when betrayal was openly discussed, they did 
 not dissociate themselves from him ; they each exclaimed in 
 terrified humility, " Is it I who shall do this thing ? " They 
 would think, " What may be pardoned in a sinner, is not 
 pardonable in a saint. It was natural for a woman used to 
 the extravagance of a luxurious evil life, to be extravagant in 
 her repentance ; but Mary should know better. She should 
 order her life by a colder sense of responsibility, of decorum, 
 and of duty. She might have sold this ointment for three 
 hundred pence, and have given it to the poor." Judas has 
 especial cause for such a thought, for he is the treasurer of 
 the little band. There is no need to give too great credence 
 to John's bitter declaration that the man was a thief. It is 
 easy to read a, man's whole life in the light of a single mon- 
 strous sin, and to say that what he became at last no doubt 
 he always was, though his vices were concealed. Judas cer- 
 tainly spoke no more than what the others thought ; at all 
 events, no one rebuked him with a word of protest. And 
 his speech, whether it were an acted lie or not, had all th 
 plausibility of virtue and good sense. Jesus Himself might 
 
LAST RETREAT AND RETURN 329 
 
 surely be imagined as preferring charity to the poor to any 
 act of honor done to himself. He who had spoken so touch- 
 ingly of the beggar at the rich man's gate, would surely 
 rather see the beggar fed than Himself made the object of a 
 senseless waste. Let Judas bear what blame he may for a 
 speech that was harsh, and unsympathetic with the poetry 
 of the scene ; yet after all it was but the kind of speech com- 
 mon on the lips of narrow, good men, who rank as an ad- 
 mirable virtue what is called a practical and economic tem- 
 per. Judas may have spoken rashly, and have displayed a 
 narrow mind ; but we may at least give him credit for hav- 
 ing spoken honestly, and all the more should we show this 
 charity to one whose name became hereafter loaded with so 
 great a weight of odium. 
 
 "To what purpose is this waste?" is the comment of 
 Judas, and the indignant thought of his fellow-disciples. 
 The beautiful reply of Jesus is, in effect, a defence of senti- 
 ment. Economic considerations, and even social duties, are 
 not the first things in human life : room must be left for the 
 play of fine emotions and the instincts of the heart. In the 
 commerce of a true affection gifts are exchanged, because af- 
 fection needs some tangible expression of itself. How un- 
 gracious would it be to forbid such acts because they cannot 
 claim utility, and how impoverished would human life be- 
 come were it governed on utilitarian principles alone ! Love 
 thrives upon its own redeeming irrationalties. It is divinely 
 wasteful ; it is abandonment or nothing. It 
 
 " Reeketh not itself to please, 
 Nor for itself hath any care, 
 But for another gives it ease, 
 
 And builds a heaven in hell's despair." 
 
 There is a kind of noble extravagance in human love, without 
 
330 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 which the poet, the hero, the martyr would never reach their 
 goals ; for what do these great lovers of truth and of their 
 fellow-men do but break the alabaster vase of life itself that 
 the world may be filled with an immortal perfume ? And 
 then, with one heart-thrilling touch, Jesus gives the right 
 significance to this act of Mary's. What she does is against 
 His burying, as though she anointed one already dead. 
 When in six short days these captious friends of His see 
 Him hanging slain upon the Cross, will they grudge Him 
 Mary's spikenard, or think that she had loved Him too well ? 
 The worst torture of bereavement to many a mourner is the 
 memory of unkindness to the dead, of niggardly returns of 
 tenderness, and grudged and scant emotions ; but none has 
 ever yet regretted that the dead have been too lavishly or too 
 well loved. The wasted spikenard will not seem wasted 
 then. What kind of man is he who would seek to alienate 
 to the service of the poor, however worthy or deserving, the 
 last gift of human hands to One who gave His life for men ? 
 The poor themselves would disdain such base enrichment, 
 and would count the thought an insult. 
 
 To Judas himself the words were of sad significance. A 
 little later Jesus employs the very word that Judas used in 
 plausible reproach, and He employs it against Judas himself. 
 Of all those whom God has given Him Jesus has lost but 
 one — "the son of perdition," or the son of waste. He who 
 was so anxious over the waste of Mary's ointment, had no 
 eyes to see that it was he himself who was wasting. And it 
 was through that very incapacity for tender sentiment, the 
 exhibition of which in Mary had so much offended him, that 
 the heart of Judas ran to waste. But Judas had no suspi- 
 cion of the truth about himself. He found no hint of warn- 
 ing in the dignified rebuke of Christ. As he and his fellow- 
 disciples left the house of Mary that night, no doubt they 
 
LAST RETREAT AND RETURN 331 
 
 renewed the discussion on the midnight road, and each felt 
 that the protest had been merited. Silence settled on the 
 house of Mary ; but beneath that roof One slept not. 
 Through the hours of darkness He who had loved these 
 men through all their errors, and would love them to the 
 end, knew the pang of love misunderstood. The lofty nature 
 never is interpreted aright by the nature that is less lofty 
 and magnanimous. One thought alone brought balm to the 
 wounded heart of Jesus, sleep to the wearied eyes : the time 
 was near when all misunderstandings would dissolve, and 
 from these hearts, baptized in grief, the flower of perfect love 
 would spring at last. The day was coming when they would 
 see Him risen from the dead, and in that day they would 
 know Him as He was, and love Him with a leathless adora- 
 tion. For that day He could afford to wait. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 THE ENTEY INTO JERUSALEM 
 
 When Jesus awoke next morning it was with complete 
 composure. His disciples, refractory as they had been to 
 His teaching the night before, had returned to their alle- 
 giance, and manifested no resentment. It is an affecting 
 characteristic of these men that with all the narrowness of 
 their intellectual apprehensions there was joined that peculiar 
 nobility of temper which endures rebuke without cherishing 
 offence. They doubted the wisdom of their Master, they 
 criticized His conduct, but they never failed to follow Him. 
 On this day they were to follow Him through one of the 
 most exciting scenes of His career. It was a scene that 
 seemed in such complete contradiction to the gloomy fore- 
 casts of defeat to which Jesus had accustomed them, that 
 they might be excused if now, at last, they thought the king- 
 dom of an outward triumph had already come. 
 
 We have already had occasion to note the extraordinary 
 excitement which agitated the whole of Palestine at the 
 period of the annual Passover celebrations. The spirit of 
 patriotic and religious ardor ran like a flame throughout the 
 land. There was no populous city, no remote hamlet, that 
 did not furnish its contingent to what was practically an as- 
 sembly of the entire nation. These innumerable bands of 
 pilgrims marched upon Jerusalem from every quarter, sing- 
 ing the ancient Psalms of Israel, encouraging in one another 
 a joyous ecstasy full of eager hopes of some great national 
 
 deliverance, to which the past history of their race, and es- 
 
 332 
 
THE ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM 333 
 
 pecially the history of the Passover itself, gave vigorous 
 sanction. Nor was it only from Palestine itself that this im- 
 mense concourse was drawn. It included Jews and prose- 
 lytes of every nation, who made their pilgrimage to the 
 sacred shrine much as Christians of every creed still make 
 an Easter pilgrimage to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, 
 or the followers of Mohammed journey in countless thou- 
 sands year by year to Mecca. It has been calculated that 
 not fewer than a million strangers thus gathered in Jerusa- 
 lem at the time of the Passover. Camps sprang up outside 
 the walls of Jerusalem ; contiguous villages, like Bethany, 
 were crowded to overflowing ; every road leading to the city 
 was thronged with pilgrims, who daily increased in numbers 
 as the solemn day drew near. In these circumstances we 
 find the explanation of what was now to follow in the life of 
 Jesus. His name and fame spread like the broadening rip- 
 ples of a wave throughout this excited multitude. Bethany 
 no longer afforded Him seclusion ; it had become a suburb 
 of Jerusalem. From lip to lip there passed the story of the 
 raising of Lazarus, the rumored marvels of the Galilean min- 
 istry, the many proofs of Messiahship which He had given. 
 The interest of the Feast was centred not in the Temple but 
 in Him. The very opposition He had met made Him the 
 more notorious. And it produced, as was natural, a counter- 
 feeling — a strong desire on the part of thousands to do Him 
 some honor, to accord Him some ovation that should be 
 worthy of His fame. 
 
 How far Christ Himself was aware of this movement in 
 His favor does not appear with any clearness in the narra- 
 tives of the Evangelists. If His previous career may be 
 taken as the index of His thoughts, we should certainly have 
 expected Him to reject any intended ovation, as He had re- 
 jected the proffered crown in Galilee. And there was the 
 
334 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 strongest reason of expediency why He should reject it. The 
 priests, whom He knew to be His deadliest enemies, had 
 hitherto entirely failed to manufacture any charge against 
 Him which would ensure His condemnation. They could 
 not put a man to death for merely doing good. Nor could 
 they charge One with disaffection to the Roman Government 
 ■ — the only really capital offence — who had shown Himself 
 consistently courteous to the Romans and respectful of their 
 authority. Regarded merely as a policy, no policy could 
 have been finer than that which Jesus had hitherto pursued. 
 He had moved at a great altitude above all political conten- 
 tions, and He was well aware that the scornful tolerance of 
 Rome gave amnesty to every kind of religious or philosoph- 
 ical faith, so long as it did not involve an active interfer- 
 ence in politics. But to enter Jerusalem as an acclaimed 
 Messiah was to renounce the privileges of a political non- 
 combatant. It was to play directly into the hands of His 
 enemies. It was to afford them good ground for that capital 
 charge which hitherto they had sought in vain to substan- 
 tiate. It was, in fact, nothing more nor less than to make 
 His own death a certainty, except uj^on the quite improbable 
 hypothesis that the whole nation would support Him in a 
 successful revolution against the Roman power. 
 
 How it did come to pass, then, that Jesus now permitted 
 Himself to take a step so fatal to Himself, and to the con- 
 tinuance of His mission ? We may set aside at once the 
 theory that Jesus in this case permitted Himself to be over- 
 borne by the zeal of His friends, for that was a kind of weak- 
 ness of which He was incapable. We may also dismiss the 
 suggestion of a sudden thirst for popular fame, to which He 
 had hitherto shown Himself utterly indifferent and even 
 scornful. The true explanation lies in His own profound 
 conviction that His life was near its close. To a dying man, 
 
THE ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM 335 
 
 or a man foredoomed to death, all human things have dwin- 
 dled to a point and are equally significant or insignificant. 
 It can matter nothing whether the populace applauds or con- 
 demns, since nothing can alter the ineluctable decrees of des- 
 tiny. Ever since the sacred days of ecstasy and renunciation 
 passed at Osesarea Philippi, Jesus had known His death a 
 certainty ; and how strong this conviction was even at the 
 present hour is shown in a reply which He gives to certain 
 Greeks who desire to see Him. To these men, filled with 
 the spirit of homage toward a popular idol, Jesus replies that 
 He is as a corn of wheat which must needs fall into the 
 ground and die before it can bring forth fruit. So far is He 
 from being deceived into proud hopes of earthly success by 
 this late acclamation as the Messiah, that He is never so 
 much aware as now of the hollowness of popularity. And 
 for that very reason He can permit Himself to taste a cup 
 which now has no intoxication for Him. He can accept a 
 homage which does not inaugurate, but closes a career. ^ And 
 He can rejoice too, with a solemn satisfaction in which no 
 pride is mingled, that for one brief hour, before He leaves 
 the world, the claim to Messiahship which He has always 
 made, stands vindicated. Consolations, endearments, praises, 
 which might prove perilous in the heyday of life, may be 
 permitted in its sunset. 
 
 It was with these solemn self-communings that Jesus be- 
 gan the last week of His life on the morning following the 
 feast in Bethany. He had been anointed for His burial, and 
 in the house of Lazarus had entered the shadow of death 
 from which Lazarus had escaped. It would have been in ac- 
 cord with all His habits if He had risen early, to meet the 
 sunrise with prayer and meditation among the palms of 
 Bethany, and so we may picture Him. But He could not 
 Ion" hide Himself from the crowd. As He returned to the 
 
336 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 house of Lazarus, the camps of pilgrims were awake, the 
 long caravans were once more in movement, the whole coun- 
 tryside was astir. Children watched Him with wondering 
 eyes, groups of strangers discussed Him as He passed, and 
 murmurs of admiration greeted Him on every side. His 
 disciples, as they came from the various houses where they 
 had slept, and ranged themselves beside Him, shared the 
 general exultation. They watched Him with minds divided. 
 His cheerful conversation at the morning meal reached them 
 unheeded ; they were listening to the growing clamor in the 
 street. About noon He gave them an order at which their 
 hearts leaped. They were to go to a certain man in an ad- 
 joining hamlet, probably a friend to the Galilean movement, 
 and tell him that their Master wished to borrow his ass. 
 Suddenly the purpose of Christ became clear to them ; He 
 intended riding into Jerusalem. They departed on their er- 
 rand, their fear of the Sanhedrim melting when they saw the 
 favor with which the crowd received them. Probably they 
 passed the word as they went that Jesus was about to enter 
 Jerusalem, and the excited multitude began to line the road 
 in the hope of seeing Him. So in a few moments a great 
 popular triumph was arranged, and when Jesus left the house 
 of Lazarus it was to find the world awaiting Him. 
 
 The first part of His journey was accomplished on foot, 
 and unaccompanied by His disciples. Had a scornful Ro- 
 man looked upon that scene, he might well have asked of the 
 eager crowds, " What went ye out for to see ? " There is lit- 
 tle doubt that Jesus wore that day, as He did throughout 
 His ministry, the simple raiment of a Galilean peasant. 
 This included the ordinary turban of pure white, wound 
 about the head, with folds which fell upon the neck and 
 shoulders as a protection from the sun. On his feet were 
 sandals. His inner garment was close-fitting, " without seam, 
 
THE ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM 337 
 
 woven from the top throughout," the work of some Galilean 
 loom. Over this was worn an outer garment of plain blue, 
 with fringes of white thread at the four corners. The phy- 
 lacteries, small rolls of parchment bound in ostentation on 
 the arm or forehead of the Pharisees, we may be sure He 
 did not wear. Even these simple garments were worn and 
 faded with much travel and exposure. But Kingship over 
 men dwells not in royal robes, but in royalty of person ; and 
 there was none that day who did not feel the simple dignity 
 of Jesus. He came, attended by the swelling approbation of 
 the crowd. The road He took was the road that still exists, 
 winding round the shoulder of Olivet, amid groves of figs 
 and palms, until suddenly across a wide abyss Jerusalem is 
 seen, rising like a city painted on the clouds. At some point 
 in this road the disciples met their Master with the borrowed 
 ass, on which He now rode through an increasing multitude. 
 From Jerusalem itself, or from the camps of pilgrims outside 
 the western gates, another multitude pressed forward to meet 
 Him. Cries of Hosanna filled the air, with some the heart- 
 felt tribute of pious lips to His authority, with others merely 
 the expression of a wish for His good fortune or good luck. 
 The old joyous enthusiasm which had made his earlier Gali- 
 lean journeys a continual bridal procession seemed renewed, 
 but on a vaster scale, and under the shadow of Jerusalem it- 
 self. Palm-boughs, gathered from the gardens round Jeru- 
 salem, began to strew the way ; and those who had not these 
 to offer, laid their outer garments in the road. Never was 
 there scene of such enthusiasm ; never was there crowd so 
 infatuated with a sublime idea. To those tumultuous 
 throngs it seemed that the knell of Rome had rung. The 
 long and often disappointed dream of Jewish nationality was 
 coming true. The golden age had dawned, for at last a Jew- 
 ish King was riding to His capital in triumph. Amid this 
 
338 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 tumult of delight, which swept away all sober sense, no one 
 was any longer capable of seeing things in plain and lucid 
 outline : all swam through a dazzling mist ; all caught the 
 glamor of imagination. And least of all did the multitude 
 perceive the growing sadness on the face of Jesus ; least of 
 all could any in these shouting throngs suppose that the 
 Man to whom they did such honor was riding to His death. 
 The most affecting incident in this triumphant progress is 
 narrated by St. Luke alone. The road from Bethany to 
 Jerusalem winds round the shoulder of Olivet, along the 
 edge of a deep valley, so that no view of Jerusalem is pos- 
 sible till more than half the journey is completed. Fertile 
 gardens clothe these slopes of Olivet, with here and there an 
 almond-tree, in spring-time covered with its blossoms of del- 
 icate pink, and in the days of Christ many palms, which 
 have long since disappeared, lifted their fan-shaped heads 
 from this mass of foliage, or lined the road. The general 
 effect even to-day is one of complete seclusion and of rural 
 peace, with no hint whatever of the neighborhood of a great 
 metropolis. At the distance of about a mile and a half from 
 Bethany the road abruptly bends to the right, a narrow 
 plateau of rock is reached, and with a startling suddenness 
 the whole city is revealed. Nowhere perhaps in all the 
 world is there to be attained a view of a metropolis so com- 
 plete in itself or so dramatic in the suddenness of its revela- 
 tion. The peculiar feature of Jerusalem is that it is a city 
 set upon a hill, or rather on an isolated bastion of rock, sur- 
 rounded on three sides by profound and savage gorges ; and 
 at no point is this distinctive feature so plainly recognized 
 as from this point of view upon the road to Bethany. Im- 
 mediately opposite is the vast Temple area, occupied by the 
 solitary dome of the Mosque of Omar. The grey walls of 
 the city "rise from an abyss," and behind them, dome on 
 
THE ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM 339 
 
 dome, turret on turret, tower on tower, swells the long broken 
 line of the city itself. Toward evening the effect is magical. 
 Bathed in hues of brightest gold and deepest purple, raised 
 at an aerial height above these gorges full of gloom, the city 
 seems insubstantial as a city seen in dreams, ready to dis- 
 solve at any moment at the falling of an enchanter's wand. 
 At such a moment the mind can comprehend the picture 
 drawn in the Apocalypse of a new Jerusalem, let down from 
 heaven, adorned as a bride for her husband, glowing with 
 precious jewels and purple raiment : for Jerusalem appears 
 indeed at such an hour a city " let down from heaven," rather 
 than belonging to the earth ; and it was perhaps some mem- 
 ory of sunsets on Jerusalem seen from this plateau of the 
 Mount of Olives which inspired the gorgeous fantasies of 
 John. 
 
 It was at this point in the road that the procession of the 
 Galileans halted ; and if, amid the ruins of the city and the 
 desolation of its suburbs, the view even to-day retains pow- 
 erful elements of grandeur, how much more magnificent must 
 it then have appeared on that day when the eyes of Jesus 
 rested on it ? Where now the Mosque of Omar rises, in the 
 centre of so vast a space that it seems itself dwarfed and in- 
 significant, there then stood the Temple, filling every corner 
 of the area with its multiplied and splendid colonnades, with 
 its superb and lofty edifices, which crowded to the very edge 
 of the abyss, and rose from it like a glittering apparition. 
 The whole city was planned upon a scale of almost equal splen- 
 dor. On every hand mansions of marble rose out of gardens of 
 exquisite verdure ; terrace upon terrace the city climbed, till 
 in the northwest it was crowned by the porticoes of Herod's 
 palace ; a vast aqueduct spanned the valley, and from the 
 Temple to the upper city stretched a stately bridge ; while 
 the walls themselves, built of massive masonry and appar- 
 
340 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 ently impregnable to all assault, suggested a city " half as 
 old as Time," and meant to endure in undiminished strength 
 and glory amid the thousandfold contentions and disruptions 
 of the pigmy race of man. It was thus that these countless 
 throngs of pilgrims thought of the sacred city, thus they 
 viewed it with the ardent eyes of pride and love ; nor was 
 there anything in all they saw to check the exaltation of 
 their thought. Jerusalem, beautiful for situation, the joy of 
 the whole earth, would endure for ever, when Home itself 
 had vanished like a mist. Here should the tribes, not alone 
 of Israel, come up to worship, but the alien races of mankind, 
 eager to participate, however humbly, in the covenanted 
 privileges of the Jew. If God had humbled the imperial 
 city by permitting the Roman occupation, it was only for a 
 time, and the hour was near when this tyranny would pass. 
 Nay, that hour had already struck ; the King of the Jews 
 was coming to His own ; for the first time in many dreary 
 years they dared to use the forbidden word "Blessed be the 
 King, who cometh in the name of the Lord" ; and with all 
 the ardor of patriots and fanatics this applauding multitude 
 pictured the city falling without a blow, and surrendering it- 
 self with shouts of gladness to the sceptre of the Nazarene. 
 Yain hopes, fond illusions, not shared by Him whom they 
 acclaimed ! Where all was hope and pride and triumph, He 
 alone was not elated ; He alone saw the city with the proph- 
 et's brooding eye ; and as the procession halted on this rock 
 plateau, from which the whole vast panorama lay unfolded, 
 an utter sadness fell upon His heart. From hill and tower 
 the splendor faded, and He saw the shadow of irreparable 
 disaster deepening into darkest night. "And when He was 
 come near, He beheld the city, and wept over it," says St. 
 Luke. Nor was it the outburst of a nature of exquisite sen- 
 sitiveness, wrought into a passion of hysteric tears by the 
 
THE ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM 341 
 
 excitement of the scene, or by any painful thought of per- 
 sonal defeat. We could understand such thoughts, for the 
 hour of triumph often has its tears. But these tears were 
 the tears of the prophet-patriot weeping for his race. He 
 saw with all too clear a vision the goal to which events were 
 moving. He had sought to recreate in Israel the old and 
 pure ideals of a theocracy, and He had failed. Had the Jew 
 accepted these ideals, had the race chosen of God to be the 
 depository of all spiritual truth been content with its mis- 
 sion, then had it endured in peace and triumph. But Jeru- 
 salem, in seeking to outrival the material Empire of the Ro- 
 mans, had rejected the things that belonged to her peace, and 
 had hidden her eyes from her true mission. Sooner or later 
 the inevitable collision must come, and the kingdom of clay 
 must be broken by the kingdom of iron. The pride, the ar- 
 rogance, the worldliness, the ambition of the priesthood, at 
 once foolish and intrepid, was working out the national ruin. 
 And He could have prevented that ruin. A priesthood 
 deeply impregnated and invigorated by His teaching would 
 have dwelt secure in the efficacy of spiritual ideas, and would 
 have ruled the world not by force of arms, but by the force 
 of truth. But Jerusalem had chosen that worst part, which 
 she must now expiate till the " the last syllable of recorded 
 time." And so, to the consternation of His followers, Jesus 
 wept what must have seemed to them tears of weakness in 
 the very hour when courage was most needed to affirm of 
 Himself what they affirmed of Him, that He was a King be- 
 fore whom Jerusalem would kneel. He wept over the city, 
 and from His lips broke forth the words, all too faithfully 
 fulfilled in later days, and in the lifetime of many who now 
 heard them with indignant wonder : " For the days shall 
 come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about 
 thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every 
 
342 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy chil- 
 dren within thee ; and they shall not leave in thee one stone 
 upon another, because thou knewest not the hour of thy vis- 
 itation ! " 
 
 And then the procession swept on again, but it was in 
 diminished triumph. A chill had fallen on the temper of the 
 multitude, as though an icy wind had issued from the gener- 
 ous sunlight. The crowd swept down the hill, past the Gar- 
 den of Gethsemane, and crossed the valley of the Kedron, to 
 that Golden Gate which led directly to the Temple ; but the 
 nearer it approached the Temple the more evident was the 
 discouragement among the people. It is St. Matthew who 
 indicates by a single subtle touch this change in the temper 
 of the populace, which is unintelligible until we recollect the 
 tears of Jesus and the prophecy of desolation which He had 
 uttered against the city as He drew near to it. As far as the 
 rock plateau beside the road where Jesus halted, all had been 
 tumultuous enthusiasm. The expulsion of the Romans from 
 the sacred city seemed so near and certain that all restraints 
 of fear had been relaxed, and with one accord the crowd had 
 called Jesus King, and so had been guilty of sedition. But 
 now they no longer dare to utter a word so perilous. Jeru- 
 salem itself, imperturbable and frowning, with its guarded 
 gates, where the Roman soldiers stood in stolid scorn, may 
 have dismayed them ; the fear of the priests, who were known 
 to be in opposition to Jesus, may have dismayed them yet 
 more, especially as they thronged into the Temple courts 
 where they were supreme ; but most of all they were dis- 
 mayed by the words and conduct of Christ Himself. The 
 whole city was moved to meet them ; from bazaars and Tem- 
 ple courts the multitude thronged forth, and from the walls 
 and roofs a thousand eyes looked down. " Who is this ? " 
 cried the people, with that inflection of superiority and scorn, 
 
THE ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM 343 
 
 never so bitter as on the lips of a Jerusalem Jew in address- 
 ing Galileans. And the Galileans no longer dare to answer, 
 1 "This is the King who coineth in the name of the Lord." 
 They are no longer willing to commit themselves to so rash 
 and daring an assertion about One who has wept in the mo- 
 ment of His triumph, and has uttered woes when He should 
 have uttered the trumpet-cry of the victorious captain. 
 " This is Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee," is their 
 tame reply. They may safely call Him this, but they will 
 yield Him no more regal title. They are glad, perhaps, to 
 slink away into the less public quarters of the city, fearful 
 of their own rashness, conscious of their own folly ; Jesus 
 has quenched all their patriotic ardor with His own tears. 
 And He has sown with His words the seeds of disappoint- 
 ment and resentment, which will spring up rapidly into re- 
 venge ; for who so revengeful on his leader as the patriot 
 who thinks himself deluded or betrayed, or made ridiculous 
 by the folly of one whom he had thought a hero ? It is, 
 after all, nothing strange in human nature that this same 
 crowd who began the week with Hosannas should conclude 
 it with cries of " Crucify Him ! " 
 
 Yet this entry into Jerusalem was far from the fiasco it 
 appears to be, if we have regard to these considerations 
 alone. It is certain that the authority of Christ never stood 
 so high on this memorable day. The Pharisees themselves 
 complain with truth that the world has gone after Him. He 
 enters the Temple once more to cleanse it of its traffickers in 
 gold, as He had done at the commencement of His ministry. 
 Bitter chagrin reigns among the priests, who perceive more 
 clearly than ever that a public arrest is impossible. Yet at 
 the end of the day Jesus stands almost alone. St. Mark, 
 who says nothing of this second cleansing of the Temple, 
 adds one vivid touch to his narrative which conveys a deep 
 
344 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 impression of the solitude of Jesus when the day neared its 
 close : " He looked round about upon all things " in the 
 Temple, in a grieved, majestic silence, as one who takes fare- 
 well of a familiar scene. One thing only in the long day 
 left a sense of pleasure in His mind. The Hosannas of the 
 crowd terminated at the Temple courts ; but the little chil- 
 dren, more eager than their elders, and innocently daring, 
 had followed Him into the Temple itself with joyous accla- 
 mations. It was fitting that He who had made a little child 
 the type of all that was adorable, should receive the last trib- 
 ute of adoration which human lips would ever give Him from 
 a crowd of little children. He looked round about on every- 
 thing ; but in that array of many pictures which had filled 
 the day, none was so sweet and fair as the picture of these 
 babes and sucklings, out of whose mouths God had ordained 
 sincerer praise than the brethren of His own flesh would 
 yield Him. Through the silence of the evening their voices 
 still made music for Him ; and it was with these childish 
 voices echoing in His heart that He left the Temple, and 
 went out into the sunset, to travel back to Bethany, which 
 was to be His home until the better home of God received 
 Him into its eternal hospitalities. 
 
CHAPTEK XXV 
 
 THE GREAT RENUNCIATION 
 
 Even yet Jesus might have been saved from the malevo- 
 lence of His enemies. We may recall what has been said in 
 an earlier chapter upon the immense popularity which He 
 had achieved by resisting the exactions of the priests, and 
 the second cleansing of the Temple must have greatly rein- 
 forced that popularity. In spite of waves of timidity which 
 swept over the fickle populace, Jesus remained a popular 
 idol. A definite proclamation of leadership or kingship 
 from His lips would certainly have rallied to Him a host of 
 followers. It was precisely this contingency which the San- 
 hedrim most dreaded. Jerusalem at Passover-time resembled 
 a vast arsenal, crammed with combustible material, which a 
 single spark of fanaticism might explode. It was natural 
 that the priests should recognize in Jesus their most danger- 
 ous countryman, and there was genuine political astuteness 
 in the argument of Caiaphas that the peace of the nation de- 
 manded His death. But it was also abundantly clear that 
 this policy had no chance of successful execution unless 
 Jesus could be detached from His followers. Long ago His 
 arrest had been ordered, and yet no man dared to lay a hand 
 upon Him for fear of the people. He came and went as He 
 willed, in spite of threats and warnings. It was the old 
 story of a jealous oligarchy fighting for its life against a 
 democratic movement which it hated, and feared even more 
 than it hated. 
 
 The principle of fanaticism, strong in all Oriental peoples, 
 
 345 
 
346 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 manifested its most alarming energy in the Jew. We must 
 take full account of this fanaticism of Jewish character in 
 estimating the existing situation in Jerusalem. At first sight 
 nothing could seem more unlikely than that there should 
 have been the least chance of success in a Jewish rising 
 against the Roman power. Yet a few years later, in the 
 May of G6, such a rising was successful. An exasperated 
 nation is capable of a reckless daring which seems incredible 
 to the historian. It was so in 6(3, when Jerusalem rose 
 against a despotism it could no longer endure, and the le- 
 gions of Eome were crashed by the violence of an unarmed 
 mob. In a few weeks Jerusalem was evacuated by the Ro- 
 mans, the town of Antonia was burned, its half-starved de- 
 fenders were massacred, and the revolt spread through the 
 whole of Palestine. With such a page of history before us, 
 it is impossible to doubt that had Jesus boldly declared a 
 revolution on His entry into Jerusalem, the movement might 
 have been attended with success. The Roman garrison was 
 small, and the Roman authority had suffered seriously at 
 the hands of Pontius Pilate. Herod, who was residing in 
 Jerusalem at this time, was not unwilling to foment a revolt 
 which might serve his own ambitious ends. The million 
 Passover pilgrims present in the city, all of whom were fa- 
 natically attached to the idea of Jewish nationality, afforded 
 material for the revolt. Never did Jesus come nearer to 
 grasping the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them 
 than in this last week in Jerusalem. At a single word, at 
 once bold and decisive, the banner of a national insurrection 
 would have been unfurled ; and, when we think of the aston- 
 ishing success of a Mahomet, who shall say what triumph 
 might not have awaited a resolute and ardent Liberator ? 
 
 That word was not spoken, but the key to the situation is 
 that the priests could not know that it never would be 
 
THE GREAT RENUNCIATION 347 
 
 spoken. On the contrary, they fully expected it ; and not 
 without reason. The boldness of Jesus in defying their au- 
 thority argued a similar boldness in inaugurating a campaign 
 against the Roman usurpation. They saw Jesus pass in 
 triumph through the Golden Gate, they saw their own choir- 
 boys of the Temple rushing to His side and receiving Him 
 with plaudits. Had not Jesus already offended them be- 
 yond forgiveness by the bold nobility of His religious teach- 
 ing, they would perhaps have been ready to support Him. 
 But they recognized in Him a revolutionary more dangerous 
 to them than to the Romans. They had no wish to help 
 into power a Dictator who would certainly turn His power 
 against themselves. Hence at this critical moment they 
 were bound to make common cause with the Romans. Cse- 
 sar appeared to them a less terrible despot than Jesus. 
 Ctesar at least protected their privileges and their wealth, 
 which Jesus would have destroyed. By some means Jesus 
 must be isolated from His followers : this seemed the one 
 practicable plan of action. He must be made to appear 
 ridiculous to them. He must appear to have betrayed their 
 hopes. Was it possible to counteract His popularity with 
 such a stroke of strategy ? They knew His exquisite sim- 
 plicity of mind. They knew that, in spite of His formidable 
 genius, He often spoke or acted like a dreamer or a child. 
 Things hung in such a delicate poise that a single injudi- 
 cious word might prove fatal to His movement, and be the 
 making of theirs ; and so they set themselves to play on His 
 simplicity, in the hope that He Himself would precipitate a 
 ruin which they, with all their malice, were unable to 
 achieve. 
 
 How deep the alarm was among what may be called " the 
 party of order," how bitter the hatred, may be judged from 
 the nature of the combination formed for the execution of 
 
348 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 tlieir plot. We have already seen that between the Herodi- 
 ans, the Pharisees, and the Saddncees, the strongest animos- 
 ities prevailed ; but we now find them acting together. The 
 plot is to entrap Jesus into some injudicious speech about 
 the capitation tax, imposed on the nation by the Romans. 
 This was a tax bitterly resented by the entire population, 
 not only because it affirmed the political subjugation of the 
 nation, but because it destroyed the sacred theocratic prin- 
 ciple of Jewish history. To pay tribute to Cresar was to 
 acquiesce in his authority, and to disclaim the authority of 
 God, as the Eternal King of Israel. It excited the same 
 kind of agitation which the imposition of ship-money ex- 
 cited among the Puritans. This strange people, who ac- 
 tually had to be restrained by law lest they cast too large a 
 portion of tlieir wealth into the Temple treasury, resisted to 
 the death the payment of the very moderate tax of a single 
 drachma per head to the imperial exchequer. They even 
 had violent religious scruples about handling the imperial 
 coinage at all, going so far as to drop it into water, as if by 
 accident, that it might be cleansed before they touched it. 
 There was, perhaps, no single subject upon which all parties 
 were so thoroughly agreed as the hatefulness and iniquity of 
 this taxation, and it was clearly impossible for any patriotic 
 leader who did not share these views to expect the least 
 chance of success. Even the Herodian himself, mere time- 
 server as he was, felt much as Naaman felt when he en- 
 tered the house of Eimmon ; his position was so rad- 
 ically false that he could conciliate rebuke only by abject 
 apology. 
 
 It argues a deep sense of the originality of Christ's char- 
 acter that these men should have supposed that on such a 
 matter the views of Jesus should have differed from those of 
 His countrymen. They proposed to submit to Him the 
 
THE GREAT RENUNCIATION 349 
 
 question of the rightfulness of tribute, with the definite ex- 
 pectation that He would reply in a way that would probably 
 be so novel as to offend all parties. The Pharisees them- 
 selves, knowing how Christ regarded them, with much astute- 
 ness kept in the background. They sent some of their dis- 
 ciples, probably young men, who could play the part of 
 inquirers after truth ; and with them were certain Herodians 
 who could not be suspected of favoring the idea of Jewish 
 independence. The aim of this adroit deputation was to 
 make it appear that there has arisen among themselves a dis- 
 cussion on the rightfulness of tribute, which they now brought 
 to Jesus for settlement, according to the general custom which 
 recognized the eminent Rabbi as the arbiter of all disputes. 
 Hostility to Jesus was carefully veiled, so that if possible He 
 might be taken off His guard. They approach Him with the 
 utmost suavity, with the anxious air of perplexed but honest 
 persons, who find themselves in difficulties. " Master," they 
 say, " we know that Thou art true, and teachest the way of 
 God in truth, neither carest Thou for any man, for Thou re- 
 gardest not the person of men. Tell us, therefore, what 
 thinkest Thou ? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar or 
 not?" A question so plainly put can hardly admit of any 
 but a plain and definite reply, they think. And they can 
 imagine but two replies, either one of which would be fatal 
 to Jesus. If He decides that the tribute is not lawful, which 
 means that it is a patriotic duty to resist it, He at once de- 
 clares Himself a revolutionary leader, and will be liable to 
 arrest by the Roman authorities. If He declares that it is 
 lawful, and must be accepted without resistance, He will at 
 once alienate His own followers. No third reply seems pos- 
 sible ; and yet the question is put with a certain ill-concealed 
 trepidation, which suggests that however fortified by logic 
 were the minds of these men, yet they were haunted by a 
 
350 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 just suspicion of the formidable genius of Jesus, and of His 
 novel methods of thought. 
 
 This suspicion was well-grounded. A mind of great sim- 
 plicity often proves itself too much for the logician, and that 
 very simplicity of Christ, on which they hoped to play, 
 proves itself the one incalculable element which wrecks their 
 plot. The crowd waits for His reply, for this scene was en- 
 acted in the Temple, under conditions of the widest publicity. 
 They wait in breathless silence, for every one feels this to be 
 a crucial question. Some are already angered at the tears 
 of Jesus over Jerusalem, and at His dismal prophecies of its 
 destruction. Others, who took part in the triumphal march 
 from Bethany, are eager to forget what seems upon reflection 
 a moment of hysteria in Jesus, and to believe of Him what 
 their own patriotic hopes would lead them to believe. With 
 the Pharisees themselves there may have been a stronger 
 disposition to rally to His side than is at first apparent. 
 History teaches us conclusively that no human character, no 
 human movement, can be painted in plain black or white ; 
 they are a thousand delicate gradations between hostility and 
 loyalty, crime and virtue. The man who engages in a plot 
 often does so with hesitations which he keeps to himself : 
 reservations and saving clauses which he dare not publish. 
 It is certain that in that matter of the cleansing of the Tem- 
 ple the Pharisees were on the side of Christ. It is certain 
 also that if they could have imagined Him strong enough to 
 affirm the national idea they would have supported Him, for 
 there was not one of them who was not a zealot for that 
 idea. They would even have pardoned His invectives against 
 themselves, upon the principle that a party must not be too 
 fastidious in the use of the instrument by which its ends are 
 gained. The case may be very briefly put. The Pharisees 
 were willing to join with the priests in the overthrow of 
 
THE GREAT RENUNCIATION 351 
 
 Jesus, ou the supposition that He was a dangerous impostor. 
 They were at oue with the priests in recognizing the national 
 peril which His popularity involved. But that popularity 
 was only perilous in the degree of its misdirection. If it 
 could be utilized for the ends of a national deliverance, if 
 they could assure themselves that a national insurrection was 
 likely to succeed, they would have been willing to accept 
 Jesus as an instrument, to be kept or discarded as circum- 
 stances might decide. Hence the truce signed between them- 
 selves and the Herodians, with whom they were at daggers 
 drawn. Hence also in this adroit combination against Jesus 
 there was the proviso that the combination might act for 
 Jesus instead of against Him, if things should unexpectedly 
 turn out in favor of the conspirators. 
 
 So the crowd waits for the reply, the unspoken thought in 
 each mind being that the national destinies are at stake. 
 That reply comes at last Avith the swiftness of a flash of 
 lightning. " Hypocrites," Jesus cries, " why do ye tempt 
 Me ? " He asks to see the tribute money, the common 
 drachma, stamped with the eSa.gj and titles of the reigning 
 Caesar. " Whose image and superscription is this ? " He 
 asks. "It is Caesar's," they reply. "Render them unto 
 Caesar the things which are Caesar's ; and unto God the 
 things that are God's," is His decision. It is, as they had 
 more than half expected, the reply of a dreamer and a child, 
 with something of that rare profundity which is the last art 
 of simplicity. It is a reply which has the singular demerit 
 of offending all parties. "What is to be feared from so simple 
 an enthusiast ? thinks the Herodian. What is to be hoped ? 
 thinks the national party. As for the crowd itself, the fatal 
 sentence rung in every mind, " Render unto Caesar the things 
 that are Caesar's." It is true that it is qualified by the loftier 
 sentence, "And unto God the things that are God's;" but 
 
352 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 crowds do not respect nor remember qualifications. To 
 them it seems, and not without reason, that Jesus has trifled 
 away His chances of a crown. His words fall upon them in 
 raillery, and derision directed against themselves is the un- 
 pardonable sin of oratory with a mob. In any case, even 
 those best disposed toward Him feel that He is guilty of an 
 evasion. He has not given a direct reply, either because He 
 dare not or He could not. His friendship with the Gentiles, 
 His many reported acts of courtesy toward Roman officials, 
 are remembered against Him. He becomes a suspect in the 
 eye of every patriot. That extraordinary outburst of rage 
 which filled the courts of Pilate but a few days later with a 
 mob that clamored for His crucifixion, is easily explained 
 when we remember these things. Their preference for Bar- 
 abbas, a man under sentence of death for sedition, becomes 
 intelligible. Jesus had not dared to be seditious, and Bar- 
 abbas had. He had led His followers to the hour of struggle 
 only to laugh at them, to tell them that it was all a mistake, 
 to retreat in the moment when the trumpet should have 
 sounded the assault. He was no patriot ; He was not even 
 courageous ; He was but a crazed enthusiast. Through that 
 great tumultuous city, whispered on the lips of disappointed 
 friends, shouted by angry patriots, discussed with frantic 
 bitterness by thousands upon thousands of excited pilgrims, 
 spread the fatal news, " He has counselled us to pay tribute 
 to Caesar.' - ' And then and there began to swell the hoarse 
 cry, " Crucify Him, for He is not fit to live ! " 
 
 The reply was certainly not free from the spirit of raillery, 
 and yet it was in no sense an evasion. It was rather a lucid 
 exposition of the principles which were to guide His follow- 
 ers in their relation to the State, and which did control the 
 action of His Church through all its earlier eras. The Jew 
 was in reality an anarchist, who was opposed to any form of 
 
THE GREAT RENUNCIATION 353 
 
 civil government. Jesus, on the contrary, recognized in civil 
 government an administration of the Divine order. Man is 
 not an individual only, but a social unit. Civil government 
 expresses this social unity in human life. It does certain 
 things for the whole community, and in its name, for which 
 the whole community must pay. CsBsar had certainly done 
 something for the Jew, for the Roman power was the one 
 unfluctuating force which provided social security amid the 
 endless feuds and bitter rivalries of Judea. The contention 
 of the Jew was that all civil force was infamous. Taxation, 
 which was the symbol of this force, was therefore infamous. 
 Christ saw the world with wider vision, and with truer in- 
 sight. Social order is bound up with civil government ; tax- 
 ation is the price which the individual pays for that order ; 
 and it would be absurd to argue that taxation may be op- 
 tional, or that the units of society can accept the advantages 
 of social life without submitting to the burdens they impose. 
 The tithe paid to God is in reality not a more religious act 
 than the tax paid to Caesar ; each is in its way the admission 
 of a Divine order which imposes corresponding obligations. 
 This still leaves the difficulty of a corrupt or tyrannical 
 civil government to be considered. Is it at no time and 
 under no circumstances right to resist an evil government ? 
 St. Paul may no doubt be quoted as counselling complete 
 subservience : " The powers that be are ordained of God. 
 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordi- 
 nance of God." But St. Paul may also be quoted as suc- 
 cessfully resisting the civil power when it was guilty of pal- 
 pable injustice ; for who so keen as he to claim his rights as 
 a Roman citizen, to insist upon both justice and respect from 
 civil magistrates, and even in the last resource to appeal tc 
 Caesar himself for redress ? The real point of Christ's reply 
 is in its second clause. He who renders unto God all that 
 23 
 
354 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 God claims, will soon discover that his allegiance to Cae- 
 sar has its limits. This was the crowning offence of 
 Christianity to the Roman, that it transferred the supreme 
 allegiance of man from Caesar to God. It set up, in effect, a 
 higher tribunal, and made it final. Rome discovered to her 
 consternation that the early Christian life obeyed a new 
 centre of gravity : that while the Christian was willing 
 enough to pay his tax to Caesar he would not pay his con- 
 science ; that while he behaved as the best of citizens in his 
 outward demeanor, yet he reserved rights in himself which 
 the jealousy of Caesar could not touch ; and all the great 
 persecutions directed by Rome against the new faith sprang 
 from the profound irritation of this discovery. This saying 
 of Christ's rightly understood is therefore the declaration of 
 a real spiritual liberty. It inaugurated the eternal struggle 
 of the rights of the human conscience against those who con- 
 fuse civil jurisdiction with spiritual jurisdiction. The mere 
 question of taxation seemed to Christ trivial; the larger 
 question was the nature of that obedience which man should 
 »ive to God. Christ's kingdom was pre-eminently a king- 
 dom of the truth, and not of this world. It is little wonder 
 that in this hour of excited patriotism His words were not 
 understood ; but no words have been more potent in direct- 
 in"- human thought, as we may see if we care to trace the 
 principles which guided the development of early Christian- 
 ity. For, without a single effort at insurrection, even under 
 provocation of the most infamous injustice, the first Chris- 
 tian communities spread a subtle flame of insurrection 
 through all the Western nations ; without becoming revolu- 
 tionists, they achieved the greatest revolution in history ; 
 avoiding anarchy, and any course that led to anarchy, the 
 old order of society dissolved before the novel force they in- 
 troduced ; seeking no power, they became all-powerful ; and 
 
THE GREAT RENUNCIATION 355 
 
 the whole secret of their extraordinary triumph was that 
 they did dutifully the two things which Christ commanded 
 them to do : they gave to Caesar the things which were due 
 to him, they also gave to God the things which were God's. 
 
 After this discussion in the Temple, so pregnant with 
 meaning and result, because it marks the great renunciation 
 of Christ, His final and deliberate rejection of the Jewish 
 crown, the other discussions of this memorable day appear 
 of little moment. Yet they are of some importance as show- 
 ing how concerted was the attack made upon Him. It would 
 seem as though His foes, with some unconscious instinct of 
 a final scene in the great drama now close at hand, ranged 
 themselves against Him for a last encounter with the best 
 weapons which their ingenuity and malice could devise. No 
 sooner do the Herodians and Pharisees leave the stage than 
 the Sadducees appear. They are governed by the same pol- 
 icy of detaching Jesus from His followers, by putting Him 
 in the wrong with them. They propose a coarse question 
 about the resurrection in its relation to marriage, which is 
 manifestly insincere since they themselves do not believe in 
 any resurrection. It was not only a question coarse in it- 
 self, but it had been debated coarsely by the Rabbis, whose 
 refinements of casuistry had no parallel refinements of taste. 
 The reply of Jesus is beautiful in its simplicity and truth. 
 Marriage, as He conceives it, is not an accommodation of the 
 flesh, but the eternal sacrament of the spirit. In the resur- 
 rection flesh is dissolved for ever ; men and women no longer 
 marry or are given in marriage, but "are as the angels of 
 God in heaven." 
 
 " The earthly joys lay palpable — 
 A taint in each distinct as well ; 
 The heavenly flitted, faint and rare, 
 Above them, but as truly were . * 
 
 Taintless — so, in their nature best." 
 
356 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 And evermore the pure soul, to whom marriage is the unity 
 of will and spirit, will say with the dying Pompilia of 
 Browning's great poem — 
 
 "Oh, how right it is ! How like Jesus Christ 
 To say that." 
 
 From the vision of a heaven denied and belittled by the 
 grossest realism the eyes of the multitude are turned for one 
 clear instant to the heaven of the spirit, where fleshly bond- 
 ages and pleasures are alike forgotten. For the first time 
 there dawns irpon the Jewish mind, still filled with gross- 
 ness as in the days when their fathers followed Moloch and 
 worked abominations in the groves of Ashtoreth, a true con- 
 ception of heaven and its taintless life ; and it is uttered 
 with the thrilling note of One who already stands upon its 
 threshold, and awaits its opening door. 
 
 Replies so lofty as these, teachings of such astonishing 
 lucidity and penetration, should have silenced opposition ; 
 but the reverse appears to have been the case. There was 
 still another question to be asked, designed like all the rest 
 to draw from Jesus some reply that should put Him at odds 
 with the popular conceptions of religion. It was an old 
 question, and one which He had repeatedly answered ; but 
 there was a certain deadly astuteness in pressing it upon 
 Him now, because in all this vast crowd of pilgrims there 
 was not one who was not a fanatical upholder of the Mosaic 
 law. It was to keep the law of Moses that they had as- 
 sembled from every corner of the world ; to keep that law 
 perfectly in the daily ordering of life was the supreme aim 
 of every pious Jew. But this aim, noble as it might appear 
 in itself, had been degraded by an inconceivable littleness of 
 mind, which spent itself on every kind of puerile casuistry. 
 The Rabbis had invented more than six hundred precepts, 
 
THE GREAT RENUNCIATION 357 
 
 each one of which was binding. The whole formed a chain, 
 which was no stronger than its weakest link ; for he who 
 failed in one precept failed in all. Some of the Kabbis had 
 so confused moral principles with external observances, that 
 they actually taught that the keeping of the law was synony- 
 mous with a proper attention to fringes and phylacteries, and 
 that he who diligently observed these merely sumptuary 
 edicts might " be regarded as one who had kept the whole 
 law." "Which, then, was the great commandment?" And 
 Jesus answers, as He has often answered, that there is but 
 one great commandment — to love God with the full consent 
 of heart and soul and mind ; and if there is a second com- 
 mandment, it is that men should love their neighbors as 
 themselves. The reply is really nothing more than a pene- 
 trating paraphrase of the Decalogue, which begins with the 
 word " God," and ends with the word " neighbor." It is a 
 paraphrase so noble and enlightened that at any other time 
 it would have won applause ; but to this fanatical multitude, 
 in this hour of popular excitement, it seemed the careless 
 speech of a freethinker, who in His heart despised the law. 
 And so it did but serve to perplex and alienate yet further 
 those ready to swear allegiance to Him as a political Mes- 
 siah. It was the last act in His great renunciation. He 
 had submitted Himself in turn to the inquisition of the He- 
 rodians, the Sadducees, and the Pharisees, and in each case 
 had so answered as to cast His vote for His own death. He 
 had refused the crown of Israel, and with His own hands 
 had woven the Crown of Thorns. 
 
 As if to mark His own sense of the irreparable breach be- 
 tween Himself and His nation, Jesus follows these replies 
 with open and terrible denunciations of the rulers of the peo- 
 ple. He describes them as hypocrites, as fools, as blind 
 guides; he accuses them of the peculiarly odious form of 
 
358 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 avarice which exists by the spoliation of the widow ; of that 
 utter lack of moral perception which attaches more value to 
 the niceties of ritual than to justice, mercy, and faith ; of a 
 bitter propagandist spirit which will stoop to any meanness 
 to secure a convert ; of hostility to truth, hatred of light, in- 
 competence to recognize Divine messengers and ministries ; 
 and, finally, He sums up their characters in one scathing 
 epigram : they slay the prophets and then build their sepul- 
 chres ! Yet even in this storm of denunciation softer notes 
 are heard. The lips that had breathed so many blessings 
 trembled with Divine pity when they uttered these reluctant 
 curses. " 0, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the 
 prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often 
 would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen 
 gathereth her chickens together under her wings, and ye 
 would not! Behold your house is left unto you desolate." 
 There is no mistaking the accent of finality, of farewell, that 
 breathes in these words. He will see Jerusalem no more, 
 save with the dimmed eyes of One who is driven as a culprit 
 through its streets ; His work is done. Not for a single in- 
 stant, either in His triumph or His controversy, does His in- 
 timate knowledge of Himself, and of the end to which He 
 travels, waver. The ordinary characteristics of the martyr — 
 the struggle against circumstances, half-frantic, half-heroic ; 
 the fluctuating moods ; the dismay of failure, the triumph of 
 recovered hope — none of these things are found in Him now, 
 nor at any later time. His fortitude, His meekuess, His 
 daring, have set the pattern of all martyrdom; yet they pos- 
 sess qualities of their own which no martyr has displayed. 
 He remains throughout complete Master of the situation. 
 Those who think to play on his simplicity do but afford Him 
 opportunity for the complete display of Himself. He utters 
 no word He would retract ; none that the world does not find 
 
THE GREAT RENUNCIATION 359 
 
 pregnant and vital ; none that is not essential to His mission. 
 Never is Jesus so truly great, so much the victor, as in this 
 moment when the coils of a great conspiracy seem most se- 
 curely fastened on Him. 
 
 One last episode of this day of controversy and renuncia- 
 tion niay be noted. Wearied with these discussions and 
 with the tumult of opinion they provoked, Jesus turns from 
 the crowd, and seeks an interval of quiet in one of those col- 
 onnades of the Temple, which lead to the Court of the 
 Women. We gather from St. Matthew that His disciples ac- 
 companied Him ; and they, alarmed and pained by what He 
 had said about the approaching desolation of the holy 
 " House," call His attention to the massive grandeurs of the 
 Temple, which in truth appear imperishable. But His eyes 
 are turned not upon the glories of the Temple, but toward a 
 certain widow, manifestly indigent, who is approaching the 
 Shapharoth, or trumpet-shaped boxes which were placed un- 
 der the colonnades to receive the free-w r ill offerings of the 
 people. The woman possesses but two "Perutahs," the 
 smallest of all coins, ninety-six of w r hich made the denar, 
 whose value was about sevenpence. And it is all her living; 
 all that she possesses for the needs of the day ; yet without 
 scruple she casts it into the treasury. And at the sight of 
 this real munificence, for the true measure of all generosity 
 is the degree of sacrifice which it involves, the eye of Jesus 
 kindles. There are still in the world the truly pious, who 
 are incorrupt amid all the corruptions of religion. There are 
 still those for whom piety is neither ritual nor ostentation, 
 but sacrifice and faith. From among those, the humble and 
 the good, shall His kingdom be built up. This woman has 
 that " upright heart and pure " which God prefers before all 
 temples built with hands. It is she who gives the true meas- 
 ure of that innate nobility and piety, svhich is the hope of the 
 
3G0 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 human race, and its truest glory. She is the living exposi- 
 tion of His great saying that to love God and man is the sum 
 and essence of all sincere religion. And so, with one quiet 
 word, He drops a crown upon those unsuspecting brows, and 
 invests this humble woman with a glory which shall survive 
 all the glories of this Temple, built by a man for whom re- 
 ligion was subservient to intrigue, and served by priests for 
 whom gain was godliness. From that hour Jesus enters the 
 Temple no more. How eminently characteristic of Him it is, 
 that His last act in leaving the Temple is to recognize the 
 beauty of a pure and quiet heart ! It is the final affirmation 
 of that great truth which gave the lofty keynote to all His 
 teaching: "God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him, 
 must worship Him in spirit and in truth." 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 THE TRAITOR 
 
 Through the deep shadows of the now nearing end one 
 sinister figure has arrested every eye — Judas of Kerioth. On 
 no human head has such a cloud of infamy descended : in 
 all human history there is no man who has been regarded 
 with such complete abhorrence. His entire biography is in- 
 cluded in a dozen sentences, yet so vivid is each touch that 
 the effect is of a portrait etched in " lines of living fire." The 
 Evangelists cannot conceal their detestation when they speak 
 of him. Jesus Himself says of him that it had been better 
 had he not been born. The most merciful of men have 
 judged him guilty of inexpiable crime. Not unnaturally this 
 deadly unanimity of reprobation has provoked protest and 
 apology, and it may be freely admitted that there are some 
 elements in the character and conduct of Judas which de- 
 serve a much more impartial judgment than they have 
 received. 
 
 Judas was the only disciple who was not a Galilean. He 
 came from the South, where the spirit of Judaism was much 
 stronger than in the North, and much more intolerant. When 
 and where Jesus met him we cannot tell, but it was probably 
 in the neighborhood of Jerusalem. The unwritten chapters 
 in the history of Judas may be easily supplied from what we 
 know of the movements of the time, and of the relations of 
 Christ with His other disciples. There was certainly an 
 earlier and different Judas, who possessed some striking 
 characteristics of mind and spirit, or he would never have 
 
 361 
 
362 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 been deliberately selected by Jesus for the toils and honors 
 of the Apostolate. It is natural that John, never himself 
 conspicuous for charity, should speak of him in the bitterest 
 terms, for he was deeply penetrated by a horror of his crime ; 
 but the action of Christ in calling Judas to the Apostolate 
 must be weighed against the virulent denunciation of his fel- 
 low-disciple. Somewhere in the past, which can only be con- 
 jectured, we may discern a youthful Judas, growing up in the 
 devout adherence of the Jewish faith, conscious of unusual 
 powers and distinguished by a sombre heat of enthusiasm, 
 tilled with patriotic ardor and deeply moved by the Mes- 
 sianic hope. In due time this youth finds himself in the 
 presence of Jesus of Nazareth. He listens to a voice which 
 stirs his heart as no human voice has ever stirred it. He 
 feels the eye of Jesus resting on him in solicitation and inti- 
 mate appeal. The current of his life is turned instantly, and 
 he leaves all to follow this new Divine Teacher. His sacri- 
 fice is more complete than even John's or Peter's, for he 
 leaves his own country and submits to the national odium 
 which attaches to all things Galilean. But it is probable 
 that he was never quite at home among his comrades. He 
 was an alien, and an alien who claimed superiority. He was 
 just the sort of man to resent the kind of primacy claimed by 
 Peter and James and John. He was disappointed to dis- 
 cover that he was not admitted into the more intimate circle 
 of discipleship. He was left outside the house of Jairus 
 while the three favorite disciples were admitted; he remained 
 iu Gesarea Philippi when they ascended Hermon with their 
 Lord ; and he, the proud child of a pure Judaism, was less 
 able to bear this neglect than the Galilean disciples. Some 
 dignity he did obtain ; he became the treasurer for the small 
 community ; but that was not what he wanted. And so there 
 grew up in the heart of this man that kind of rankling envy 
 
THE TRAITOR 3G3 
 
 common to those who think their claims neglected and their 
 genius despised ; who fill subordinate positions when they 
 believe themselves fitted for the highest prize of leadership ; 
 who have made great sacrifices for a cause, without any cor- 
 responding gain or even praise. When Jesus, very early in 
 His ministry, said that Judas had a devil, was it not this 
 devil of jealousy and envy which He discerned in Him? 
 History certainly teaches us that jealousy is capable of the 
 most diabolic crimes, and especially the crimes of treachery 
 and revenge. 
 
 The statement made by John that Judas was a thief, to 
 which reference has been already made, must be dismissed 
 as unproved. It is not corroborated by the other Evangelists. 
 It is, indeed, suggested by Peter in the brief account of the 
 'Apostolate which he gives at the first meeting of the Chris- 
 tian community after the Eesurrection. Peter states that 
 < this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity," 
 but the phrase is ambiguous. "The reward of iniquity" 
 probably means the money which he took for the betrayal of 
 Christ ; although, in view of the unlikelihood of Judas being 
 able to acquire land in the short time which elapsed between 
 the compact with the priests and the arrest of Christ, it may 
 be construed as a reference to a course of fraud which had 
 extended over some years. On the other hand, we have to 
 consider how unlikely it was that Jesus would have per- 
 mitted a known thief to remain a disciple, and to become the 
 treasurer of the funds of the community. Jesus Himself at 
 no time made this accusation, and it is entirely inconsistent 
 with His character that He should have endured such a crime 
 in silence. He who rebuked Peter and called him Satan 
 could hardly have allowed Judas to pass unrebuked. We 
 have also to remember that the relations of the other disci- 
 ples with Judas appear to have been very friendly to the 
 
364 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 last. They agreed with him in his protest against the ex- 
 travagance of Mary. They made no complaint against him 
 to Jesus. They sat with him at the Last Supper, and gave 
 no hint by their conduct that they even suspected him of 
 perfidy. Judas was certainly with them, not only at Beth- 
 any, but in the triumphal entrance into Jerusalem. He re- 
 turned with them to Bethany after this event, for it is speci- 
 fically stated that "the twelve" were with Jesus on that 
 memorable evening. When we consider the degree of jeal- 
 ousy which had always existed among the disciples ; the 
 protests which were raised against the arrogance of the sons 
 of Zebedee ; the strifes for pre-eminence, and all the spirit 
 of criticism which these strifes engendered, it is certain that 
 if Judas had been a deliberate thief we must have heard of it 
 long before. That he was parsimonious we know ; that he 
 had a tendency to avarice we may suspect ; and that John, 
 writing after the event which cast a lurid light on the char- 
 acter of the man, should have exaggerated these tendencies 
 into a deliberate charge of theft is not unintelligible, when 
 we notice the rancor with which he speaks of Judas, and 
 remember that John had already shown himself specially 
 capable of bitter and narrow judgments. But the solitary 
 word of John is not sufficient to give authority to a charge 
 so incredible. We must therefore regard his words as the 
 exaggeration of a mind capable of violent repulsions, and 
 strongly influenced by the crowning infamy of his unfortunate 
 fellow-disciple. 
 
 "When was this act of monstrous treachery first designed 
 in the mind of Judas, and what were the causes ? We may 
 conclude, without much fear of contradiction, that it was the 
 final sequence in a long process of irritation, disgust, and 
 weariness at the course which events were taking. The re- 
 buke which Jesus had addressed to all the disciples in the 
 
THE TRAITOR 365 
 
 house of Mary would fall with special weight ou Judas, be- 
 cause it was he who had protested agaiust the waste of the 
 ointment. His hopes were rekindled on the next day by the 
 unexpected triumph of Jesus ; but no one would more resent 
 than he the tears of Jesus over Jerusalem, and a man of his 
 temperament would judge them tears of weakness. It was 
 with a mind divided he reviewed the events of this great day. 
 Jesus had accepted homage as a king, and yet had made 
 kingship impossible by the offence which He had given to 
 all parties. To the hard, practical mind of the man of 
 Kerioth this would appear as criminal trifling with great op- 
 portunities. It would seem almost deliberate betrayal on 
 the part of Jesus, who had led His disciples to the point of 
 ecstatic expectation, only to disappoint them; and in the 
 dark, resentful mind of Judas the angry thought took shape 
 that He who betrayed deserved betrayal The events of the 
 subsequent day deepened his disappointment and resent- 
 ment. They made it clear to him that Jesus never would 
 and never could head the national party. With a singular 
 perversity his Master had chosen that very moment when 
 diplomacy was most needed to attach the people to Himself, 
 to insult the Pharisees, ridicule the Sadducees, offend the 
 patriots, and finally to denounce the most influential parties 
 iu the nation in terms more bitter than even John the Baptist 
 had ever used. What was to be hoped for such a cause led 
 by such a leader ? Judas could see no hope. The cause he 
 had served so long, amid many personal slights, had uo 
 future. Jesus would certainly be killed sooner or later, and 
 iu the general disaster His disciples would be involved. The 
 farce of an impossible Messiahship could not be sustained 
 more than a few days at the most ; but there was yet time 
 for those who had the requisite sagacity to make their peace 
 with the priests. So Judas reasoned, and it is the reasoning 
 
366 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 of a man thoroughly disillusioned, weary of the part he 
 plays, anxious to save something out of the wreck of his per- 
 sonal fortunes, and keenly conscious in all his astute debate 
 of personal grudges to be avenged, and wounded self-love 
 that cries for reparation. 
 
 On the evening of the day when Jesus made His great re- 
 nunciation, Judas sought the chief priests, and made his 
 covenant of blood with them. A singular phrase used by St. 
 Luke, and repeated by St. John, gives us a vivid glimpse of 
 the condition of mind of the unhappy man : Satan had en- 
 tered into him. He was in truth a man demented. His 
 jealous passion had swollen into such force that he was no 
 longer capable of sober reason. He was mad with resent- 
 ment, anger, and despair : the dream of his life was shat- 
 tered, and the spirit of revenge had become his only guide. 
 This is certainly the most charitable, and it is the most 
 probable view, of his subsequent behavior. From the mo- 
 ment when he seeks the priests to the bitter last act of the 
 appalling tragedy, we are dealing with a madman, capable 
 of a madman's cunning, and passing through paroxysms of 
 frantic rage to the final paroxysm of frantic grief and inef- 
 fectual remorse. 
 
 This view of his conduct is sustained by what we know of 
 his interview with the priests. As we must dismiss John's 
 accusation of deliberate theft as unproved, so we must dis- 
 miss the theory that the master motive in his betrayal of 
 Jesus was love of gain. The thirty pieces of silver which 
 the priests agreed to pay him for his treachery was a con- 
 temptible price for the kind of service Judas was prepared 
 to render them. An avaricious man would not have sold 
 himself for naught after this fashion. Nor would an avari- 
 cious man have flung the money down at the feet of the 
 priests in the hour when his plot was consummated. Avarice 
 
THE TRAITOR 3G7 
 
 is the coldest of all vices. It is impervious to passion, and 
 is not liable to the tumult of emotion which rilled the last 
 hours of Judas. Had avarice been the master motive of 
 Judas, he would not only have insisted on a far larger bribe, 
 which he well knew the priests would have gladly given him, 
 but his subsequent history would have been quite different. 
 He would have remained unmoved by the tragedy he had 
 provoked ; he would have congratulated himself that he had 
 escaped the general disaster ; he would have gone about with 
 a brazen brow, would have settled down in Jerusalem in a 
 position of ease, and would have sought further advantage 
 from a priesthood which lie had already laid under eternal 
 obligations. He did none of these things. His whole con- 
 duct shows that it was not money but revenge which he 
 desired. He was ready to accept money, but it was only be- 
 cause the bribe made the compact sure. It was the pledge 
 that the priests would not fail to fulfil their part of the bar- 
 gain. To inflict a deadly blow upon a Master who had 
 slighted, reproved, and disappointed him ; to prove his 
 capacity which had been unrecognized by the harm that he 
 could do ; to achieve at all costs the ruin of a cause he had 
 renounced — these were the real motives of Judas, and money 
 could have been no more than a secondary consideration 
 amid the clash of thoughts and passions so diabolic. 
 
 The action of the priests in entering into compact with the 
 unhappy man is made intelligible by those difficulties of 
 their position to which allusion has been already made. 
 Judas found them in session, discussing the old insoluble 
 problem of what they were to do with Jesus. They dared 
 not arrest Him publicly. They had not dared to do it on 
 His return to Bethany, and still less was it possible after the 
 triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Nor were they willing that 
 the Romans should arrest Him as a preacher of sedition. 
 
368 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 This would have precipitated the very revolution which they 
 dreaded. The inflammable fanaticism of the populace would 
 have been at once ignited by the spectacle of their hero in 
 the power of the oppressors of their country. All His faults 
 would have been forgiven ; the only thing remembered would 
 have been that He was a Jew, that He Avas a Prophet, and 
 that He had given good cause for being hailed as the Mes- 
 siah. Revolt would have broken out, Jesus would have been 
 snatched from the hands of the hated Gentiles, and the 
 streets of Jerusalem would have run with blood. The words 
 used by St. Luke give an accurate description of the situa- 
 tion : the priests " were glad " when they saw Judas, and 
 " covenanted to give him money," because he promised to 
 betray Jesus into their hands, " in the absence of the multi- 
 tude," or " without tumult." He was precisely the sort of 
 tool they had long desired to find, and desired in vain. They 
 had never anticipated the good fortune of detaching one of 
 Christ's own apostles, and making him the instrument of 
 their revenge. Here was a man who knew the habits of 
 Jesus, and was still in the confidence of his Master. By his 
 means Jesus could be secretly arrested. They could strike 
 their blow before it was expected, and with a complete guar- 
 antee of its success. The populace would know nothing 
 till they heard of His condemnation ; and although they 
 might have risen against the Romans, they would hardly 
 dare to rebel against the priests. If, in the end, it became 
 necessary to deliver Him into the hands of the Romans 
 that He might be put to death, His position would be to- 
 tally altered by their previous condemnation. He would 
 then appear not as a martyred patriot but as a dangerous 
 blasphemer. So, on that fatal night, Judas found himself 
 welcomed with an effusion little expected, and full of gratifi- 
 cation to his jealous vanity. At last he would play a part, 
 
THE TRAITOR 369 
 
 and a great part, before the world. At last his abilities 
 would be recognized, and his revenge satisfied. He would 
 be applauded as the man who had appeared in a moment 
 full of peril to save his country from disaster ; and not once 
 did it occur to his excited mind that he was the mere tool of 
 men more cunning and unscrupulous than himself. 
 
 It has often been suggested that the deliberate betrayal of 
 Jesus was merely an intrigue on the part of Judas to force 
 the hand of Jesus. The theory has plausibility. It is quite 
 possible that he may have imagined that, in the event of His 
 arrest, Jesus would prove Himself quite able to take care of 
 Himself. It was hardly credible that One who had worked 
 so many miracles should hesitate to work one more miracle 
 on His own behalf when He knew that His life was in dan- 
 ger. The overwhelming consternation of Judas when he 
 finds that Jesus is ruined beyond remedy is significant of 
 some such thoughts as these. The man who plans a great 
 conspiracy often finds too late that he has created a force 
 which he cannot control. He finds himself swept into ex- 
 cesses which he deplores, and pleads, not untruthfully, that 
 these excesses were furthest from his intention. A Kobes- 
 pierre made the same excuse for his reign of murder, a Louis 
 XIV. pleaded the same extenuation for the long train of na- 
 tional disasters which followed the revocation of the edict of 
 Nantes. But the general judgment of mankind refuses to 
 accept these apologies. Judas knew perfectly well that the 
 priests desired the death of Christ. He knew when he took 
 their bribe that he was making himself an accessory to that 
 death. He had no right to calculate that his plot might 
 miscarry, while he took every means to make it a success. 
 He had no justification for the hope that Christ might extri- 
 cate Himself from the coil of circumstances which he him- 
 self created. Nor have we the least indication that Judas 
 24 
 
370 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 was at any moment guilty of this self-delusion. He had 
 come to a point when he did not wish his Master to succeed, 
 because he thought Him incapable of succeeding in the one 
 manner which he himself approved. The spirit of spite and 
 revenge is a sufficient explanation of his actions. He had 
 passed beyond the range of sober calculation, and equally 
 beyond a lurking faith in plausible contingencies. He had 
 become a bitterer foe of Jesus than the priests themselves, 
 because he hated Him with all the rancor of the apostate. 
 His subsequent remorse afforded no contradiction of this 
 state of mind. The worst conspirator may feel some re- 
 morse when he sees the full consequences of his conduct, 
 without for an instant disputing the logic of events. Char- 
 itable writers, fascinated by the problem of analyzing a char- 
 acter of much subtlety, may make the excuse for Judas that 
 he was a diplomatist who sought to serve his Lord by 
 crooked means, and fell into the pit which he himself had 
 dug ; but Judas makes no such apology for himself. 
 
 Nor can it be pleaded that Judas merely acted as a disap- 
 pointed enthusiast. All the disciples were disappointed en- 
 thusiasts, but only he sought revenge on Christ by betraying 
 Him. It is sometimes said that the sin of Peter in denying 
 his Lord was scarcely less than that of Judas in betraying 
 Him ; but the sins were totally different in quality and na- 
 ture. Any man, under the extreme pressure of danger or 
 temptation, may deny the convictions that are really dear to 
 him ; but there is a gulf as wide as the world between such 
 denial and deliberate betrayal. The most heroic of men in 
 some hour of utter darkness may sign his retraction of a 
 truth as Cranmer did, and afterward may nobly expiate his 
 crime as Cranmer did, by thrusting his unworthy hand into 
 the martyr flame ; that is weakness of the will, it is fail- 
 ure of courage, but it is not deliberate betrayal. But in 
 
THE TRAITOR 371 
 
 all the closing acts of Judas it is the deliberation of his 
 wickedness that is so dreadful. Every step is studied, every 
 move is calculated. He works out his plot with a steadfast 
 eye, an unflinching hand. He will not stir till he is sure of 
 his compact ; he studies with astute intelligence the hour 
 and place of his crime ; all is as planned and orderly as the 
 strategy of some great battle. Had he broken utterly from 
 Christ in the moment when he went over to the side of the 
 priests, we might at least have pitied him, and, in part, re- 
 spected him. We might have numbered him with those 
 misguided patriots who burn the idols they had once adored 
 from motives which are tortuously honest. But Judas does 
 not take this course. It is an essential part of his hideous 
 compact with the priests that he must play the part of the 
 loyal friend of Jesus to the last. He moves upon his road 
 toward tragic infamy without compunction, without one back- 
 ward thought, without a single pang of pity or of old affec- 
 tion. The most vivid touch in the appalling picture is the 
 smile with which he asks his Master, who has just declared 
 His knowledge that He will be betrayed — " Lord, is it I ? " 
 Judas knows in that moment that Christ is perfectly aware 
 of his conspiracy, and yet he says, "Is it I ? " He is so 
 sure of success, so confident that it is no longer in the power 
 of the heavy-hearted Galilean to thwart his scheme, that he 
 can mock Him with the insult, "Is it I?" Morally cold, 
 intellectually astute, and now filled with the deliberate mad- 
 ness of revenge, it is little wonder that the world has dis- 
 cerned in this hard, impenetrable wickedness of Judas a sin 
 beyond forgiveness, in which no germ of renovating good 
 can be discerned. 
 
 It must be left to moralists to determine how far any dep- 
 ravation of the human heart is final, how far any sin is be- 
 yond forgiveness ; but certainly the sin which all just men 
 
372 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 find most difficult of condonation is perfidy. There is a pe- 
 culiar meanness in perfidy at which the gorge rises. The 
 plighted word broken, the solemn vow betrayed, the concealed 
 disloyalty of the foe who still plays the part of friend, com- 
 pose a kind of sin more perilous to the foundations of society 
 than vice itself. It is a sin which strikes at the root of all 
 collective life, by making all human intercourse impossible. 
 Society exists by virtue of an exigent and delicate sense of 
 honor in its members. He who is called a gentleman is not 
 such by the merit of a superior education, nor superficial re- 
 finement of manner, nor elaborate acquaintance with the 
 usage of society ; but rather by a lively sense of honor, a 
 delicacy of conscience and of mind, a sensitiveness to self- 
 blame, a scrupulous standard of personal integrity, and an 
 overmastering passion for an unsullied mind and life. Honor 
 forbids a man the least falsity of word or act ; it rises above 
 all considerations of personal advantage ; it is deeply sus- 
 picious of such advantage, even when it is most justified ; it 
 is a spirit of relentless self-judgment and self-discrimination 
 brought to bear on the entire purpose and conduct of life. 
 And it is because men recognize in honor the fine flower of 
 all virtue, that they are more sensible of the infamy of crimes 
 of dishonor than of crimes of passion. Perfidy to a friend, 
 to a cause, to a country, thus becomes the offence which men, 
 in proportion to their own sense of honor, find it most diffi- 
 cult to forgive. And there can be little doubt that Jesus 
 shared these feelings. He knew how to distinguish, and 
 did distinguish sharply, between the sin of Peter and the sin 
 of Judas. There is an exquisite tenderness in Christ's man- 
 ner to Peter, even while He reveals to the surprised disciple 
 the cowardice of which he will be guilty ; but Jesus cannot 
 regard Judas with tenderness. His charity is exhausted be- 
 fore a crime so dreadful. He feels that remonstrance or re- 
 
THE TRAITOR 373 
 
 buke is alike impossible. He sees the unhappy man posting 
 to his doom amid such a whirl and clamor of every furious 
 passion that no wiser voice can now reach him, or recall 
 him to himself. And so Christ marks His sense of the irre- 
 trievable crime of Judas in a single sentence : " The Son of 
 Man goeth as it is written of Him ; but woe unto that man 
 by whom He is betrayed ! It had been good for that man if 
 he had not been bom." 
 
 If Judas was utterly insensible to this plain warning and 
 rebuke of Christ, it must be remembered that Peter was 
 equally insensible to the same kind of warning. Yet here, 
 again, we feel that we are comparing things not strictly com- 
 parable. It was natural that Peter should not admit the pos- 
 sibility of weakness in the coming trial, because he had hith- 
 erto given no sign of such weakness. He had always figured 
 as the strong man among the disciples, and he was conscious 
 of no disloyal thought. But with Judas the case was differ- 
 ent, because he knew himself already guilty of the charge 
 which Jesus brought against him. He was not only a traitor, 
 but a detected traitor. Jesus makes it clear to him that his 
 plot has already failed. Judas prepares an ambush for a 
 victim who knows his every movement. An ordinary con- 
 spirator would have recognized the futility of his plot, and 
 would have felt the absurdity of his own position. But Judas 
 was not an ordinary conspirator ; he was a man intoxicated 
 by rage and vanity. Vanity enraged is a kind of madness, 
 and is, indeed, the frequent cause of madness. Argument is 
 wasted on the man who crowns himself with straws and 
 thinks himself a king. Throughout the closing scenes in the 
 history of Judas, it is such a creature who confronts us. He 
 is at once dreadful, pitiable, and absurd. He listens with a 
 mocking smile of superiority to words which would have 
 humbled any sane man into the dust. His impudent ef- 
 
374 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 frontery knows no bounds. And yet there is a vein of dia- 
 bolical astuteness in all his reasoning. He perceives what 
 no other disciple can perceive — that Jesus means to die. 
 Some instinct tells him that Jesus will allow Himself to be 
 betrayed. And it matters nothing to him whether Jesus 
 steps into the mesh prepared for Him blindly or with open 
 eyes, so long as he himself gets the credit for His downfall. 
 Hence the rebuke of Christ, which would have brought any 
 ordinary traitor to his knees, has no effect on Judas. He 
 smiles his evil smile, and goes upon his way, too blind with 
 vanity, too drunk with self-complacency to comprehend his 
 own dishonor or discern the fate to which it leads. 
 
 Yet through all the thoughts of Judas there runs a vein of 
 sad sincerity. This becomes most apparent in the sequel of 
 his history. It is a man filled with the deadly sincerity of 
 hatred who makes the compact of betrayal with the priests ; 
 it is a man filled with the agonizing sincerity of remorse who 
 appears before them when the plot on which he set his heart 
 has succeeded but too well. He had been the hireling of 
 priests who despised him while they used him ; but he is not 
 so base as they. His violent hatred grows respectable be- 
 side their cold and calculating craft. He has acted like a 
 madman, for whom allowance may be made ; but they have 
 acted as deliberate murderers. He has planned his personal 
 vendetta with a deadly earnestness ; but they are merely as- 
 tute politicians, with whom self-interest is dominant. Judas 
 sees now, with horror unspeakable, that he has been mistaken 
 in his estimate of Jesus. His consternation, like his previous 
 hatred, knows no bounds. He hears only the preliminary 
 examination of Christ before the priests, but that is enough 
 to convince him that he has betrayed innocent blood. The 
 blood-money which he has taken he dare not keep. He 
 rushes to the Temple, frantic with despair, and flings the ac- 
 
THE TRAITOR 375 
 
 cursed bribe at the feet of the priests, and makes his agonized 
 confession. The reply of the priests reveals a depth of evil 
 not found in the tortured heart of Judas. "What is that to 
 us? " they cry. " See thou to it." And then the first pangs 
 of mortal agony begin in Judas. He cannot survive his own 
 self-contempt. He cannot regard his sin as capable of par- 
 don or retrieval. It is not in him to make truce with him- 
 self, to patch up the past, to rehabilitate his own self-respect. 
 The madness of ignoble vanity gives place to the almost no- 
 ble madness of intolerable self-accusation and despair. He 
 will not live to see the end of Jesus. He will make 
 the only reparation in his power by dying on the 
 same day when his betrayed and martyred Lord shall die. 
 "And he cast down the pieces of silver in the Temple, and 
 departed, and went out, and hanged himself." 
 
 Suicide is a crime, and yet there are circumstances in 
 which it almost rehabilitates a character, and does something 
 to atone for the errors of a lifetime. There are occasions 
 when it is less base to die than to live. Judas would have 
 been tenfold more odious had he lived, contented in his in- 
 famy, prospering on his crime, and insensible to all reproach. 
 He at least gave proof of genuine repentance in the manner 
 of his death. He died from horror of his own iniquity. He 
 deserves therefore to be judged with more charity than is 
 usually extended to him. It is the finger of Pity, not of 
 anger and contempt, that should trace his epitaph. On the 
 same day when Judas died the spirit of Jesus descended into 
 Hades, and perhaps it is not a baseless vision of the poet 
 which pictures 
 
 " Tormented phantoms, ancient injured shades, 
 Sighing began downward to drift and glide 
 Toward Him, and unintelligibly healed, 
 Lingered, with closing eyes and parting lips." 
 
376 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 Let us consider with what words the spirit of Jesus 
 would greet that wailing ghost of Judas, wandering 
 through the populous gloom of Hades, before we venture 
 on his epitaph. 
 
CHAPTER XXVn 
 
 THE LAST SUPPER AND THE ARREST OF CHRIST 
 
 It was probably on the Wednesday of this week that 
 Judas made his compact with the priests. This day Jesus 
 spent in retirement in Bethany. Some of the long dis- 
 courses reported by St. John may have been uttered on this 
 day. Nothing could have been more natural than that Jesus 
 should have spent this last quiet day of His life in intimate 
 revelations of His own mind and spirit to His disciples. He 
 had many things to say to them, and He knew that His time 
 was short. In these discourses He communicates to His 
 disciples the last testament of a spirit conscious of depart- 
 ure. For such an act of solemn valediction there could be 
 no more suitable spot than the home of Bethany, which had 
 so frequently afforded Him a peaceful refuge from those 
 public contentions and debates which were now concluded. 
 
 There are several reasons to support this conclusion, the 
 chief of which is that it is extremely unlikely that all the 
 elaborate discourses reported in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and 
 sixteenth chapters of St. John's Gospel could have been de- 
 livered in the brief space occupied by the Last Supper, 
 which was crowded with incidents and teachings of its own. 
 We may also recollect Christ's invariable method of drawing 
 His analogies direct from Nature ; and not from a general 
 memory of Nature, but from those particular effects which 
 lay close to His hand. The exquisite discourse about the 
 vine is as suggestive of immediate contact with Nature as 
 those passages of the Sermon on the Mount which describe 
 
 377 
 
378 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 tlie birds of the air and the lilies of the field. Let us picture 
 Jesus, then, as spending this last quiet day at Bethany in 
 the open air with His disciples. With the vineyards spread- 
 ing round Him, now putting forth their earliest leaf, Jesus 
 speaks of Himself as the Vine, and of His disciples as the 
 1 tranches, as He had long before spoken beside the Sea of 
 Galilee of His words as good seed that sprung up among the 
 weeds. Peace is the prevailing note of this day at Bethany. 
 All the bitter feuds and controversies of Jerusalem are for- 
 gotten in the deep felicity of One who has overcome the 
 world, and is saying His farewell to it. 
 
 On this Wednesday evening the Passover began. It com- 
 menced with the moment when the first three stars were 
 counted in the sky, and ended with the appearance of the 
 same three stars on Thursday evening. It was during this 
 period that Jesus made those preparations for the Passover, 
 which are inimitably reported in the synoptic Gospels. He 
 sent two of His disciples, identified by St. Luke as Peter and 
 John, into Jerusalem to secure a room where he might cele- 
 brate the feast. There can be little doubt that the proprietor 
 of this room was a friend if not a disciple. It has been sug- 
 gested that he was the father of Mark himself, who resided 
 in Jerusalem, to whose house Peter came long afterward 
 when he was delivered at midnight from his prison. How- 
 ever this may be, the instant obedience of the man to the re- 
 quest of Jesus proves him a sympathizer with the Galilean 
 movement. In the meantime Judas, as the acting man of 
 business for the little band, would have gone to the market 
 to purchase a Paschal lamb for the intended supper. On 
 the afternoon of Thursday the Temple was a scene of solemn 
 and sad excitement. The evening sacrifice took place at 
 half-past three. In the gloom of the Temple the voices of 
 the Levites were heard reciting in mournful cadence the 
 
LAST SUPPER AND ARREST 379 
 
 pathetic regrets and confessions of the eighty-first Psalm. 
 Then the great ceremonial of the Passover itself commenced. 
 A long blast of silver trumpets proclaimed that the lambs 
 provided for the feast were being slain. Each worshipper 
 slew his own lamb, and after making the offering to the 
 priests, prescribed by the Mosaic law, took the lamb away, 
 that he might eat it in his own house with his relations and 
 friends. While the blood of the lamb which the priests had 
 publicly slain was poured into a golden bowl, the supplicat- 
 ing strains of another Psalm filled the air ; it was that very 
 Psalm which the children had chanted in the Temple on the 
 day when Jesus entered it in triumph : 
 
 " Save now, I beseech Thee, Lord ; 
 Lord, I beseech Thee, send now prosperity ! 
 Blessed be He that cometh in the name of the Lord ! " 
 
 Amid such scenes Judas moved, with the two disciples whom 
 he most detested, on that memorable afternoon. Through 
 the crowded street the three men would then pass, bearing 
 the slain lamb to that upper chamber where the feast would 
 be consummated. A little later, in the waning afternoon, 
 Jesus left Bethany, and entered the city which was to be His 
 altar and His tomb. 
 
 It must be recollected that the Paschal Supper was not a 
 public but a family festival. It was also in a sense a New 
 Year's celebration. The Mosaic law ordained that the month 
 of the Passover should be " the beginning of months," and 
 that the people should " take to them every man a lamb, ac- 
 cording to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house." 
 We cannot doubt that Jesus recollected these familiar facts, 
 and they now gave peculiar significance to His action. For 
 in this hour He heard the first stroke, not of a New Year, 
 but of a new Era. He felt that the old was passing, giving 
 
380 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 place to new. And also in the act itself His relation to His 
 disciples has undergone a subtle alteration. He is no longer 
 the Master only ; He is the Head of a family. Henceforth 
 a bond more affectionate than that of friendship is to unite 
 Him with them. In the act of eating the Passover together 
 they have become a household, the children of a common 
 birth and destiny, of whom Jesus is the Head. It is thus 
 that the apostles speak of Christ as the Head, and of the 
 little bands of converts as members of the family of God, 
 and of the household of Faith. 
 
 Among all the closing acts of Christ there is none so sug- 
 gestive, and none so important, as this, because it really de- 
 scribes the institution of the Church. On the eve of His de- 
 parture from the world He acts in such a way as to make his 
 disciples feel that henceforth they are indissolubly joined 
 with Him, in a relation much more intimate and sacred than 
 they had ever known before. All the words of Christ, both 
 immediately before and at this Paschal Feast, reveal the 
 growth of this idea. St. Luke reports Christ as saying to 
 His disciples, "With desire I have desired to eat this Pass- 
 over with you." But why should this desire be strong in 
 Him ? Jesus had not celebrated the Passover with His dis- 
 ciples hitherto ; or, if He had, we do not know it. Perhaps 
 in the course of His active ministry He had felt Himself so 
 far a recusant from Jewish faith and practice that He had 
 abstained from all participation in the Passover celebrations ; 
 although this is unlikely when we recollect His habitual ap- 
 preciation of all that was best in Judaism. But, at all events, 
 He had never gathered His disciples round Him as members 
 of a household bound together by the sweet solemnity of 
 common sacrifice. He desires to do so now, because by such 
 an act He affirms their unity with each other and with Him. 
 His last discourses are expositions of this unity. He con- 
 
LAST SUPPER AND ARREST 381 
 
 ceives His disciples as no longer living separate lives, but 
 grafted into Him, as the branch is grafted into the vine. 
 The same idea occurs in the final prayer, immediately before 
 He goes forth to Gethsemane. He prays " that they all may 
 be one ; as Thon, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they 
 also may be one in us— that they may be one, even as we are 
 one." This is the true sentiment of the Last Supper. It ex- 
 plains, and it alone adequately explains, those deeply mys- 
 tical words about His blood and His flesh, round which the 
 controversies of embittered centuries have raged. He is not 
 content to leave behind Him admiring disciples as was Soc- 
 rates. He does not conceive Himself as a mere Teacher, be- 
 queathing His wisdom to the world. He wishes to bequeath 
 Himself. He wishes to create an organism in which He 
 shall survive, when He is far away from the world. And so 
 far as outward form goes, what can be more symbolic of this 
 purpose than a final scene in which He shall appear as the 
 Head of a Family, whose members are as His own flesh 
 and blood, loyal to Him in the intimacy of a common life, 
 devoted to Him by a participation in His own nature? 
 
 Let us follow the events of this memorable afternoon and 
 evening in their order. In the late afternoon of Thursday Jesus 
 and His twelve disciples come to the upper room reserved for 
 them in the house of Mark's father, and the Paschal Feast 
 commences immediately on their arrival. The room in which 
 they gathered was a long room, containing a divan which ran 
 round three sides of it, with a table in the centre, on which 
 the Paschal lamb, the bitter herbs, the unleavened cakes, and 
 the cups of wine were duly set forth. We read of a conten- 
 tion among the disciples as to who should be the greatest, 
 and this undoubtedly refers to a dispute about the places 
 which they were to occupy at the table. We have already 
 seen that it was a common Jewish custom to arrange the 
 
382 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 guests at a feast in the order of their dignity, and the disci- 
 ples manifested those petty jealousies which such a custom 
 was certain to produce. If Jesus followed the usual order 
 of the Paschal Supper, He would sit not at the centre of this 
 horseshoe table but at one of its wings, and as each guest re- 
 clined upon his left side, it would happen, as we are told, 
 that the head of John lay clone to his Master's bosom. On 
 the other side of Jesus was Judas. This is clear from the 
 fact that Jesus hands the sop to Judas, and from the subse- 
 quent conversation, which appears to have reached the ear 
 of John alone. We may picture then John, Christ, and 
 Judas seated at the left extremity of the horseshoe table, 
 the other disciples in the order which they were left to set- 
 tle among themselves, reclining round the table, and Peter 
 at the extremity of the right wing, and almost opposite his 
 Master. 
 
 The Paschal ceremony commenced with the blessing of 
 one of the cups of wine, which was then handed round among 
 the disciples. It was customary after the wine had been 
 drunk for the head of the family to rise and wash his hands, 
 and this custom suggests to Jesus one of the most exquisite 
 episodes of the evening. The strife as to precedence must 
 have occurred at the commencement of the Supper, and it 
 therefore seems probable that Jesus would take the earliest 
 opportunity of rebuking a temper in His disciples which had 
 so often been a source of grief to Him. Such an opportu- 
 nity came now. He rises from the table, as the disciples 
 suppose to fulfil the ceremonial act of the washing of hands. 
 But to their surprise He returns with a towel girded round 
 His loins, and a basin of water in His hands, and begins to 
 wash the feet of the disciples. He would begin naturally 
 with Peter, who sat at the end of the table immediately op- 
 posite to Him, and Peter becomes the spokesman of the gen- 
 
LAST SUPPER AND ARREST 383 
 
 eral surprise. The washing of feet was a task usually left 
 to slaves, and the towel girded round the loins of Jesus was 
 the symbol of servitude. Peter feels that his Master is de- 
 graded by appearing in this capacity of a slave. All his 
 generous instincts are instantly aflame, and to them is added 
 a noble jealousy for the honor of his Lord. He cannot per- 
 mit himself to lie at ease on the divan while his Lord stoops 
 to wash his feet. He springs up, crying, " Thou shalt never 
 wash my feet." Jesus replies with tenderness that Peter 
 can have no part with Him unless he submits to the act 
 which He proposes. It is in reality a new order that is 
 being instituted — the Order of Humility. Christ explains 
 at length what this new order means. Those common ideas 
 of dignity which are the fruit of the patrician views of life 
 inculcated by the Komaus are at once mean and false. If 
 Peter is not willing to perform the most menial act of serv- 
 ice for those whom he deems his social inferiors he can 
 have no part in the propaganda of Christianity. Christi- 
 anity will stoop that it may conquer. It will be proud to 
 wear the towel of the slave, as the Roman patrician is proud 
 to wear the insignia of his superior order. Never was 
 worldly pride so exquisitely rebuked ; for what disciple can 
 hesitate to do acts which his Master does not scruple to per- 
 form? And, in an instant, Peter realizes all his Master's 
 meaning, and with characteristic ardor cries, "Lord, wash 
 not my feet alone, but my hands, and my head." 
 
 In this brief address to His disciples there is one phrase 
 which must have been heard with consternation. He says 
 — perhaps when He came to Judas, and washed the feet of 
 the man whose treachery was already accomplished — " Ye 
 are clean, but not all." This ominous remark is received in 
 silence ; but, as subsequent events show, it pierced the heart 
 for which it was intended. From that instant Judas, in 
 
384 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 spite of all his effrontery, is uneasy. John is scarcely less 
 uneasy. He feels what all the disciples feel, the presence of 
 some hostile element at the feast. When Jesus takes His 
 place at the table once more, John is filled with sad conjec- 
 ture. Peter, who sits immediately opposite him at the wing 
 of the table which corresponds with his own, beckons John 
 to ask his Master what is the meaning of these dreadful 
 words. These two disciples see distinctly what is not seen 
 by the other disciples, further removed from Christ in a 
 room where the dusk has now begun to gather — the gravity 
 and sadness of their Master's aspect. They hear the low- 
 breathed word of Jesus, " Verily I say unto you, one of you 
 shall betray Me." John, lying on the bosom of his Lord, 
 whispers, " Lord, who is it ? " St. Matthew represents Judas 
 himself as whispering, " Lord, is it I ? " and the whisper 
 travels round the table, each uttering the same sentence, per- 
 haps in fear, more probably in protest. There are moments 
 when the bravest man doubts his courage, when the best 
 man is suspicious of his virtue, and this is such a moment. 
 Something like moral panic spreads among the disciples. 
 They strain forward to read the expression on the face of 
 Christ, and Peter, unable to speak from the violence of his 
 emotions, still beckons John with vehement gestures to get 
 some categorical reply from Christ. The moment in the 
 ceremony has now come when it was customary for the head 
 of the family to take the sop, which consisted of a morsel of 
 the Paschal lamb, a piece of unleavened bread, and some bit- 
 ter herbs, and hand it to the member of the household who sat 
 upon his left hand. Judas must have occupied this place, 
 and we may thus picture what ensued. John whispers his 
 question into the ear of Christ, " Lord, who is it ? " Jesus 
 replies, also in a whisper, " He it is, to whom I shall give a 
 sop, when I have dipped it." Instantly the sop is handed to 
 
LAST SUPPER AND ARREST 385 
 
 Judas, and with a horror-struck gesture John calls Peter's 
 attention to the betrayer. It is specifically said that the 
 general company of the disciples saw no special significance 
 in this action. They could not do so, for they had not heard 
 Christ's low-breathed word to John. Nor did Judas himself 
 understand at first that Jesus had thus publicly exposed him 
 as the betrayer. It would almost seem as though Jesus did 
 all He could to spare the feelings of the miserable man. He 
 whispers to him, " What thou doest, do quickly." He desires 
 that Judas shall quietly withdraw and spare Him and the 
 disciples the pain and profanity of a scene in an hour so sa- 
 cred. And then Judas understands. He knows himself ex- 
 pelled from the brotherhood ; and although his expulsion is 
 accomplished with such delicacy that his fellow-disciples 
 suppose Jesus has simply sent him on some errand con- 
 nected with the affairs of the community, not the less a 
 deadly rage burns in his heart. He rises hastily and rushes 
 from the guest-chamber ; and, says St. John, with one of 
 those intense touches which lays bare the heart of all the 
 secret tragedy of the man and of the hour, " It was night." 
 
 The Paschal meal now proceeded to its close, and some of 
 those highly mystic sayings of Christ reported by St. John 
 may have been uttered now. If it is likely that the apologue 
 about the vine and the branches was spoken on the previous 
 day among the vineyards of Bethany, it is almost certain 
 that the immortal fourteenth chapter of St. John's Gospel 
 was uttered now. St. John, in the order of these discourses, 
 adopts the principle common to the Evangelists, and especi- 
 ally noticeable in St, Luke, of combining such teachings of 
 Christ as seemed mutually relevant, But the fourteenth 
 chapter of St. John's Gospel is an exquisite valediction that 
 could be spoken at no time so fittingly as at the Supper it- 
 self. The hearts of these men were now deeply troubled, 
 25 
 
386 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 and it was such peaceful words that they needed as an anti- 
 dote to trouble. The declaration of Jesus that He is about 
 to leave them, the remonstrance of Thomas that they know 
 not what His words portend, the curious request of Philip 
 that He would show them the Father, the pathetic reproach 
 of Christ that He had been so long with them, and yet they 
 had not known Him — all these are surely parts of a conver- 
 sation at the Paschal Supper. And then, in the midst of this 
 conversation, a new and profoundly significant idea possesses 
 the mind of Christ. The Paschal Feast ended with the 
 blessing of a third cup of wine, which was passed round the 
 table as the other cups had been. It is of this cup that 
 Jesus now says, " Drink ye all of it, for it is My blood of 
 the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission 
 of sins." And in the same instant He takes a piece of the 
 unleavened bread, and blesses it, and breaks and says, 
 " Take, eat, this is My body." It was at this moment that 
 the Paschal Feast truly ended, and the affecting rite of the 
 Last Supper took its place. Jesus, with a single pregnant 
 word, changed a national into a personal commemoration. 
 His disciples were henceforth to eat bread and drink wine, 
 not remembering the past of a nation whose history was 
 closed, but remembering Him, in whom all nations found 
 their history. The most solemn rite of Judaism thus gave 
 birth to the most solemn rite of Christianity, by means of 
 which through all time men and nations were to affirm their 
 allegiance to Him who had become the Head and Saviour of 
 the human family by the perfect sacrifice and oblation of 
 Himself. 
 
 We need not discuss the tangled theologies of the Euchar- 
 ist. The idea which was in the mind of Christ is so simple 
 that the wayfaring man, though a fool, can scarcely fail to 
 understand it. Let us again recollect that when Jesus held 
 
LAST SUPPER AND ARREST 387 
 
 he Paschal Feast with His disciples it was with the deliber- 
 ate intention of constituting Himself the Head of a family. 
 He wished to bind these men to Himself by some closer 
 bond than mere discipleship. It is but an extension of this 
 idea to conceive them as nourished by His own flesh and 
 1)1 >od. The child is thus nourished on the life of the par- 
 ent, and is as the parent's self ; so He, as the Head of the 
 family, desires these men to be Himself reincarnated. By 
 Avhat symbol can this idea be expressed so lucidly as by 
 that which Jesus used? The bread, passing into their 
 bodies, and assimilated into their life, is the symbol of His 
 own life, which nourishes theirs. The wine, mingling in 
 their blood, is the wine of life, drawn from His own veins, 
 and poured into theirs. And, by using the simple elements 
 of bread and wine as the symbol of His idea, He ensured 
 that it should never be forgotten. Henceforth these men 
 would never eat bread without thinking of Him, nor drink 
 wine without remembering His death. He had used almost 
 the same words long before, after the feeding of the multi- 
 tude, when He had called Himself the Bread of Life, and 
 had said, " M}' flesh is meat indeed ; My blood is drink in- 
 deed." He had been careful then to guard His words from 
 misinterpretation, by declaring that they were mystic and 
 not literal : " It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profit- 
 eth nothing ; the words that I speak unto you, they are 
 spirit, and they are life." If He did not repeat the cpialifica- 
 tion now, it was because He deemed it unnecessary. He 
 never dreamed that these men, gross as they often were in 
 apprehension, could misunderstand Him to such an incred- 
 ible degree as to take Him literally. And incredible it must 
 still seem, did we not know of what dense stupidity the hu- 
 man mind is capable, that men should deprive this last pa- 
 thetic scene of all its poetry and grace, all its piety and spir- 
 
388 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 itual significance, by hardening it into a dogma, utterly 
 repellant to the reason, and equally repellant to the delicate 
 instincts of the spirit, for which seas of blood have been 
 shed, and crusades of bigoted intolerance waged through so 
 many generations. Remembering these things, the lover of 
 his race will almost regret that Jesus ever spoke words so 
 perilously beautiful ; and yet, if he be also a lover of Jesus, 
 he will recognize that in these words the very soul of Jesus 
 exhaled its divinest perfume and breathed its tenderest mes- 
 sage to the world. 
 
 We may now resume what appears to be the probable 
 order of events. Jesus has taught the disciples the final 
 lesson of humility at the beginning of the Feast, after the 
 blessing of the first cup. He has deeply alarmed them by 
 the distinct statement that one of them will betray Him. He 
 has dismissed Judas with a word, breathed into his car, 
 which but one of the disciples heard ; and John and Peter 
 alone have recognized Judas as the traitor. He has com- 
 forted the eleven with the immortal words, "Let not your 
 hearts be troubled ; ye believe in God, believe also in Me. I 
 go to prepare a place for you." This exquisite discourse is 
 closed by the solemn prayer in which Christ commends Him- 
 self and His disciples to the Father : " I have glorified Thee 
 on the earth ; I have finished the work which Thou gavest 
 Me to do. I have manifested Thy name unto the men which 
 Thou gavest Me out of the world. I pray for them which 
 Thou hast given Me. And all mine are Thine, and Thine are 
 mine ; and I am glorified in them." The prayer is followed 
 by the singing of a Psalm, which was certainty one of those 
 prescribed in the ritual of the Passover. We cannot tell 
 with accuracy which Psalm was chosen, but it was probably 
 the one hundred and eighteenth, with its courageous words 
 so appropriate to such an hour, " The Lord is on my side : I 
 
LAST SUPPER AND ARREST 389 
 
 will not fear what man can do unto me;" and its noble close, 
 " give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good ; His mercy 
 endureth forever." If we may transpose a single sentence 
 from the fourteenth chapter of St. John's Gospel to the 
 seventeenth, we complete the unity of the whole scene. 
 "Arise, let us go hence!" is the signal of departure, and 
 could scarcely have been uttered before the final prayer. It 
 should follow the prayer, and then, in the words of St. John, 
 " When Jesus had spoken these words He went forth with 
 His disciples over the brook Kedron." 
 
 One more episode is recorded which is full of pathos. It 
 was after the hymn had been sung, and on the way to the 
 Mount of Olives, that Jesus declared that all should be of- 
 fended in Him that night, and that the Shepherd would be 
 smitten and the sheep scattered. The words are perhaps an 
 echo from the Psalm which had just been sung : " All nations 
 compassed me about ; they compassed me about like bees ; 
 Thou hast thrust sore at me that I might fall." On one dis- 
 ciple's ear these words fell not so much in warning as in ac- 
 cusation. Peter, who has recognized the traitor, who is filled 
 with horror at his perfidy, who has armed himself with a 
 sword, suspecting some midnight violence, cannot bear to 
 think that his Master suspects him of disloyalty. He replies 
 with generous vehemence : " Although all shall be offended, 
 yet will not L" It is intolerable that Jesus should suppose 
 him such an one as Judas, and he is stung to the quick by 
 the thought that Jesus can imagine ill of him. But Jesus 
 knows His disciple better than he knows himself. " Verily 
 I say unto thee, that even in this night, before the cock crow, 
 thou shalt deny Me thrice." To this prophecy, so painful 
 and so incredible, Peter replies with yet more vehement pro- 
 testation : "If I should die with Thee, I will not deny Thee 
 in any wise ; " and the whole band of the disciples, attracted 
 
390 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 by the dispute, gather round Peter, and each lifts his hand 
 and utters a vow of heroic allegiance to the death. Jesus 
 does not reply again. In painful silence the little group 
 moves down the steep hill to the brook Kedron ; they cross 
 it, and come to the olive-garden which is called Gethsemane. 
 And there, for the first time, the composure of Jesus seems 
 to give way. He begins to be sore amazed and very heavy. 
 "With the most tender thoughtfulness He hides this sorrow 
 from the disciples. He leaves them under the olive-trees 
 near the gate of the garden, and Himself goes further into 
 the shadow of the trees that He may pray. The disciples, 
 worn out with fatigue and agitation, are soon asleep. But 
 Jesus prays on, His soul now shaken with an agony which 
 produces a sweat of blood. The first horror of death is upon 
 Him, the first dreadful pang of dissolution is foretasted. He 
 prays that if it be possible the cup may pass from Him, for 
 now that death is near, through all His members there is 
 mutiny, an indignant opposition of every atom of His being 
 to man's direst foe, an infinite repugnance to the tyranny of 
 death. And yet the spirit triumphs over the shrinking flesh. 
 The last battle is fought and won when He cries to God, 
 "Nevertheless not what I will, but what Thou wilt." From 
 this moment the Divine calm of Jesus is unbroken. It is He 
 who wakes the disciples who should have been His guard ; 
 He who first discerns on the opposite side of the valley an 
 armed band approaching ; He who first declares that the 
 hour has come, and the betrayer is at hand. Flight was still 
 possible, but no thought of flight is in His mind. He goes 
 forth to meet His enemies. He surrenders to them rather 
 than is taken by them. The words spoken long since are 
 now visibly fulfilled : He lays down the life which no man 
 could take away from Him. 
 
 The arrest of Jesus had been planned with deadly skill, 
 
LAST SUPPER AND ARREST 391 
 
 When Judas left the house of Mark he went at once to the 
 priests, eager to complete his task. He probably knew from 
 the conversation at the Supper that Jesus meant to go to 
 Gethsemane for prayer and meditation, and no place could 
 be better suited for his purpose. Perhaps it was this knowl- 
 edge, as well as the knowledge that Christ had read his 
 heart, which drove him so hurriedly from the table. He 
 knew thai; this midnight visit to Gethsemane gave him a 
 chance that might never come again. The priests were 
 equally conscious of their opportunity. It is probable that 
 they at once communicated with the Roinan cohort which 
 was detailed for the duty of keeping public order in the 
 Passover week. They may even have communicated with 
 Pilate himself, representing that a dangerous revolutionary 
 was abroad, whose arrest was necessary to the public safety. 
 It was certainly a band of Roman soldiers who arrested 
 Jesus, and this accounts for the odious act of Judas in 
 betraying Him by a kiss. There was no one in the band 
 sent for His arrest who knew Him, and it was necessary to 
 identify Him. Judas, as he led the soldiers toward the re- 
 cesses of the olive-garden, "gave them a token," saying, 
 "Whomsoever I shall kiss, the same is He." And so he 
 kissed Him : not timidly, or as a formal act, but, as the word 
 leads us to infer, with effusion and many times. It is in this 
 moment that Judas appears truly despicable. It is in this 
 moment also that Jesus appears in all the dignity of moral 
 heroism. As if to show Judas how unmeaning was that kiss 
 of identification, He identifies Himself ; " saying, Whom seek 
 ye? And they answered, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith 
 unto them, I am He." And then occurs the saddest episode 
 in all this night of sorrow. In the very moment while Jesus 
 pleads that His disciples may not be arrested with Him, 
 utter panic seizes them, and they all forsake Him and flee. 
 
392 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 So He passes alone, but still majestic, through the moonlit 
 garden, across the Kedron, and along the opposite slope to 
 the house of Hanan. The work of Judas is complete, and 
 He has earned his wages. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 THE TRIAL OP JESUS 
 
 Jesus was taken immediately upon His arrest to the Louse 
 of Annas, or Hanan. This circumstance alone is sufficient 
 to identify Hanan as the chief mover in the plot which led to 
 the overthrow of Christ. He had long thirsted for vengeance 
 on the Man who had dared to attack the system of legalized 
 extortion by means of which he and his family had acquired 
 enormous wealth. In all probability it was he who had con- 
 ducted the negotiations with Judas. His malice and his en- 
 mity were now gratified. What the united Sanhedrim had 
 been unable to achieve by legal means he had accomplished 
 by unscrupulous stratagem. Judas was the first to inform 
 him that Jesus was now safely delivered into his hands 
 "without tumult." He, in turn, informs Caiaphas, and the 
 members of the Sanhedrim are hastily assembled. Thus, at 
 dead of night, with no attempt to observe legal forms, the 
 mock trial of the Nazarene commenced. 
 
 But no sooner does the examination of Christ begin, than 
 it is quite evident that there will be great difficulty in proving 
 any serious charge against Him. Jesus is Himself fully con- 
 scious of the strength of His position. When He is ques- 
 tioned concerning His teachings He replies boldly that His 
 teachings have been sufficiently public for all the world to 
 know their import. If they desire to know what these teach- 
 ings were Jerusalem can supply a thousand witnesses. The 
 boldness and justice of this reply fills the priests with angry 
 amazement. They see the prisoner, for whose arrest they 
 had so long plotted, slipping through their hands, and in 
 
 393 
 
394 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 their anger they permit Him to be struck upon the mouth by 
 one of their own officers. They are the more angry because 
 they already stand committed to Pontius Pilate. When 
 Pilate placed at their disposal the Roman guard for the ar- 
 rest of Christ, it was with the distinct understanding that a 
 dangerous revolutionary was to be arrested, and Pilate is not 
 the kind of man to accept a ridiculous position without re- 
 sentment. Already they foresee those difficulties with Pilate 
 which afterward occurred. Pilate will certainly demand 
 some conclusive evidence of crime before he will pronounce 
 a sentence of death which they are incompetent to execute. 
 But what proof of guilt have they to offer? They seek 
 eagerly for false witnesses, who may say something to in- 
 criminate their prisoner; but to their dismay the testimony 
 of each of these men proves worthless. The worst that the 
 most abandoned of these bribed ruffians can say is that Jesus 
 had once threatened the destruction of the Temple. At last, 
 in despair, Caiaphas appeals to the prisoner Himself. He 
 adjures Him by the living God to declare whether He is in 
 truth the Christ, the Son of God. And from those smitten 
 lips the reply rings clear and loud, " Thou hast said," which 
 was the strongest form of affirmation. With what seems to 
 them insensate folly, with what seems to us deliberate ac- 
 quiescence in a fate which He felt foreordained, Christ con- 
 demns Himself. Once more we will see how truly the ini- 
 tiative of events is from first to last in His own hands ; for 
 had Jesus not spoken He must have been acquitted. The 
 question is at once put to the Sanhedrim, " What think ye ? " 
 The answer is unanimous, "He is guilty of death." And 
 then, as if to show how little of a court of justice this tribu- 
 nal was, the malice of its members breaks all bounds, and 
 the hall of Caiaphas becomes a scene of insult, violence, and 
 degraded rage. " Then did they spit in His face, and buffeted 
 
THE TRIAL OF JESUS 395 
 
 Hrrn ; and others smote Hiin with the palms of their hands, 
 saying, Prophesy, thou Christ, who is he that smote Thee? " 
 Nothing in the history of Jesus, nothing perhaps in the 
 history of the world, is so appalling as this scene in the 
 house of Caiaphas. Jesus was after all the true Son of the 
 Jewish Church, the Divine flower of her life, the perfect fruit 
 of her teaching, and yet it was this very Church which slew 
 Him. In the little Jewish synagogue at Nazareth He had 
 learned all that He knew of the Hebrew Scriptures. His 
 first boyish excursion had been to the Temple at Jerusalem, 
 where the doctors of the law had treated Him as a prodigy. 
 His teachings were full of quotations from the Hebrew Scrip- 
 tures, and He often declared that He came not to destroy the 
 law and the prophets, but to fulfil them. His career had 
 been characterized by the utmost benevolence. In this dis- 
 astrous hour, when many false witnesses came — hirelings 
 and informers of the Sanhedrim, the paid creatures of Hanan 
 and Caiaphas — ready to swear anything for money, it was 
 impossible to prove anything to his discredit. His life had 
 been lived in the honest daylight, and there was nothing hid- 
 den in it of which he was afraid, no record that could leap 
 to light to shame Him. The Court of Caiaphas was the su- 
 preme tribunal of the national religion, and yet a glance is 
 sufficient to assure us that it is not a court of justice, but a 
 conclave of conspirators. Hatred, envy, and cruelty cast 
 baleful shadows on every brow. It is a league of wolves 
 against the Lamb. It is a hideous assembly, paralleled by 
 that majestic and appalling vision of Satan and his fallen an- 
 geis which the genius of Milton has made immortal ; for even 
 so Hanan towers amid the gloom of that disastrous night — 
 
 . . . ' ' His face 
 Deep sears of thunder had intrencht, and care 
 Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows 
 Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride 
 Waiting revenge." 
 
39G THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 AhJ that shout of rage which filled the air when Jesus called 
 Himself the Son of God tore indeed "Hell's conclave," and 
 " frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night." This was the 
 final goal to which avarice, lust of power, and pride of ortho- 
 doxy had conducted the greatest priesthood in the world, to 
 whom had been committed the custody of the divinest truths. 
 Upon the benches of this proud ecclesiastical assembly sat 
 no longer men, but so many incarnate hatreds, thirsting and 
 foaming for their prey, compared with whom the host which 
 followed "the archangel ruined" appear almost as angels of 
 light. That power of acute spiritual analysis, which had led 
 Jesus so often to declare sins of temper more deadly in their 
 ultimate effects than the worst vices of the flesh, now stood 
 justified. The clearest spiritual observers have never failed 
 to recognize this truth, and thus a Dante thrusts Pride into 
 the same hell with Impiety, while he is content to scorch the 
 profligate in a cleansing flame through whose clouds voices 
 are heard which pray not in vain to that Lamb of God who 
 taketh away the sins of the world. The brutalities of big- 
 otry far exceed the worst brutalities of passion ; and this we 
 see in that hideous movement of revenge which hurls the 
 whole Sanhedrim like a pack of wolves upon a defenceless 
 prisoner. 
 
 The examination of Christ, if such it may be called, in the 
 house of Caiaphas could not have taken long. John, through 
 his acquaintance with Caiaphas, the exact nature of which 
 we do not know, had been permitted to accompany his Mas- 
 ter into the Hall of Judgment. It is astonishing to find that 
 this disciple, who but a few hours earlier had lain on Jesus' 
 bosom at supper, and had received His confidences, now 
 makes no attempt to shield Him from indignity, and offers 
 no word of testimony on His behalf. The cowardice of 
 Peter has been the text of innumerable sermons, yet the 
 
THE TRIAL OF JESUS 397 
 
 cowardice of John was much more despicable, because he 
 must have witnessed the brutal attacks made upon his Lord. 
 He who was so eager to call Judas a thief appears to have 
 had no consciousness of the paltriness and infamy of his 
 own behavior. Had Peter seen the blows that fell upon his 
 Lord, he might have been saved from his denial, for the man 
 who had already drawn a sword to defend Jesus from arrest 
 would never have consented to stand dumb and helpless in 
 such a scene of violence. But Peter saw none of these 
 things. Probably he did not recognize the seriousness of 
 the situation. He imagined that Christ would soon be ac- 
 quitted, and he sat in the outer court among the servants, 
 waiting for news. His strong, sanguine temperament could 
 not believe that the worst was about to happen, and this is 
 the explanation of his conduct. He is determined to give no 
 kind of information about hiinself or his Master which shall 
 compromise a movement which he imagines is but tempor- 
 arily arrested. He acts with the blundering astuteness of a 
 simple-minded man, with a kind of false sagacity which ex- 
 cites pity rather than contempt. When he is accused of be- 
 ing a disciple he promptly denies it. When one of the 
 kinsmen of Malchus accuses him of being in the Garden 
 with Christ, he denies again. When he is told that his very 
 speech proves him a Galilean, he denies yet again, and this 
 time with oaths and curses. And it is at this crisis that 
 through the grey of dawn there is heard the crowiug of a 
 cock, and it is as though a bell of judgment called him to 
 the court of conscience. A horror too deep for words falls 
 upon the mind of Peter. It was at this moment, according 
 to St. Luke, that the doors of the Judgment Hall were flung 
 back and Jesus came forth bound and bruised, and looked 
 on Peter. Violent emotion overwhelmed the unhappy man, 
 and he rushed away from the glance of those reproachful 
 
398 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 eyes, and wept bitterly. And while Peter thus wept, hotter 
 tears of rage and shame flowed from the eyes of another 
 miserable disciple. When Caiaphas rose from the seat of 
 judgment Judas cried in horror, " I have betrayed innocent 
 blood.'.' He had heard the mock trial of Jesus, had seen 
 Him condemned and insulted, and he Avas terrified at the 
 part which he had plaj-ed. His eye also had caught the 
 eye of Jesus as He went out to die, and he sank before its 
 glance in abject horror. Let us not seek to mitigate the of- 
 fence of Peter or of Judas in this dreadful scene ; yet there 
 was one disciple who behaved worse than either, upon whom 
 the world has visited no censure. That disciple was the 
 man whom Jesus loved, who claimed friendship with the 
 priests that he might see his Lord condemned, and stood in 
 shameful silence ; who heard false witness uttered, and was 
 tongue-tied by his cowardice ; who saw cruel blows struck, 
 and attempted no interference, and made no protest ; who 
 did and endured these 'things, and knew not himself a cow- 
 ard, nor wept remorseful tears with Judas, nor tears of 
 sacred penitence with Peter. 
 
 It was now about seven o'clock in the morning. A pro- 
 cession was formed of the priests and their followers, in the 
 midst of which Jesus walked bound. The procession moved 
 rapidly to the house of the Roman governor. Even now the 
 priests were by no means sure of success. The conduct of 
 the disciples had allayed their dread of a popular rising ; 
 for if the closest friends of Jesus forsook Him in His hour 
 of need, what chance was there that the multitude would 
 rally to Him ? But they were deeply conscious of the ille- 
 gality of their proceedings, and in doubt as to what view 
 Pilate might take of them. They had conducted a private 
 inquisition, in which all the forms of justice had been out- 
 raged ; but they knew that Pilate would insist upjon a public 
 
THE TRIAL OF JESUS 399 
 
 examination, at which definite evidence would be demanded. 
 They also knew that the charge of blasphemy would have no 
 weight with Pilate. He would treat the whole affair as a 
 squabble of fanatics whom he despised, and the violent pro- 
 ceedings of which they had been guilty would excite his 
 scorn and offend his sense of justice. Their uneasiness is 
 revealed in the first words which they exchange with the 
 Roman governor. When Pilate appears in the Pretorium 
 he naturally asks what accusation they have to make against 
 the prisoner. They reply with the transparent evasion that 
 if Jesus had not been a malefactor they would not have de- 
 livered Him up to the Roman jurisdiction. The instant re- 
 tort of Pilate is that if they have already found Jesus to be 
 a malefactor there is no need for his jurisdiction. Let them 
 take Him away and judge Him according to their law. This 
 is precisely the course of action which they had foreseen as 
 possible with Pilate, and it means the defeat of all their plot. 
 They might convict Jesus upon the clearest evidence of blas- 
 phemy, but the law which permitted them to put a blas- 
 phemer to death had long ago been in abeyance. And it 
 was the death of Jesus, and nothing less, that they desired. 
 With a truly diabolic craft they therefore invented on the 
 spot a new charge, of which no one had heard until that mo- 
 ment. They accused Jesus of perverting the nation and of 
 forbidding the people to pay tribute to Caesar. The charge 
 was absolutely false, as they well knew. Within the hearing 
 of some of them, and but a few days before, Jesus had pub- 
 licly sustained the right of Ca3sar to demand tribute. It was 
 moreover a peculiarly perilous charge to make, because if it 
 had been true it would at once have rallied all the national 
 party to Christ's side. But it served the purpose of the mo- 
 ment, which was all that they expected it to do. Pilate 
 could not show himself indifferent to a charge of treason ; he 
 
400 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 dared not summarily dismiss a prisoner against whom such 
 a charge was made. He at once entered into the Judgment 
 Hall, and ordered Jesus to be sent to him, that he might 
 publicly examine Him. 
 
 The character of Pilate deserves close consideration and 
 attention. We are at once conscious of a total change of at- 
 mosphere when we pass from the house of Caiaphas to the 
 Pretorium of Pilate. Instead of raving priests smiting Jesus 
 from the very judgment-seat with brutal blows, we have a 
 calm and astute man of the world, the servant of a nation 
 whose supreme watchword was Order. By contrast with 
 Caiaphas and Hanan, Pilate is almost a splendid figure. He 
 is, at least, impressive by virtue of a certain masculine dig- 
 nity and restraint. Any one familiar with the faces of the 
 Roman emperors may easily picture Pilate, for thevtype of 
 face was common. We recognize at once in the square jaw, 
 the firm mouth, the harsh brows, the soldier accustomed to 
 the exercise of authority, and utterly relentless in the use of 
 it. As Pilate understood the business of life, the chief duty 
 of man was to render unquestioning obedience to might 
 rather than to right. For him questions of abstract right 
 and wrong were not worth the breath spent upon them. The 
 world was a place of practical aims and energies, in which 
 the strong man alone succeeded. Not in any bad or corrupt 
 sense, but nevertheless in a very real and true sense, Pilate 
 was of the earth, earthy, and represented the spirit of a 
 practical and brilliant worldliness. 
 
 Such a man would naturally feel a strong aversion to 
 all questions of religion ; and yet this is remarkable when 
 we recollect that at this time among the most intelligent of 
 his countrymen there was a profound curiosity about these 
 very questions. At this same hour there was alive in Eome 
 one of the greatest of philosophers, Seneca, who could say 
 
THE TRIAL OF JESUS 401 
 
 of himself that " his mind revelled in the spectacle of that 
 which is divine, and, mindful of its own eternity, passed into 
 all that hath been, and all that shall be, throughout all ages." 
 Behind all the hard practicality of the Roman mind there 
 had always throbbed a soul in search of God, and later on 
 an Epictetus could counsel his countrymen " to wish to win 
 the suffrages of your own inward approval, to wish to appear 
 beautiful before God ; " and a Marcus Aurelius could write 
 of the divinity in man and define the true end of life as " a 
 pious disposition and social acts." We can imagine with 
 what interest and sympathy Seneca would have conversed 
 with Christ ; but Pilate was no Seneca, and cared as little 
 for the speculations of the Roman thinker as he did for the 
 vexed theologies of the Jewish priests. With all that was 
 finest and noblest in the Gentile mind, its search for God 
 and its efforts to unlock the secrets of eternity, he had no 
 sympathy ; and still less would he be able to discover any 
 point of intellectual contact with the mind of Christ. Placed 
 as governor over a strange and fascinating people, whose re- 
 ligion was the loftiest in the world, and had its root in a 
 remote antiquity, there is nothing to show that he had even 
 taken the slightest pains to understand it. It is clear that 
 he had never heard the name of Jesus till the day when He 
 stood before him as a prisoner. If the legend be true that 
 Procla, his wife, was a student of the Jewish Scriptures, he 
 would regard her strange taste as a piece of harmless ped- 
 antry. As for him, he read no books : they were the amuse- 
 ment of the idle. He prided himself upon being a practical 
 man of affairs, who had more important matters to engross 
 his mind. He regarded the Temple and all its sacred rites 
 much as a contemptuous English resident might regard the 
 temple of a gorgeous superstition beside the Ganges. In a 
 word, he had no interest in religion, no desire for truth, no 
 26 
 
402 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 curiosity about religious phenomena. He was Pilate, hard 
 pressed by the government of a refractory province, anxious 
 to raise his taxes without tumult, sedulous of keeping his 
 peace with the Emperor, and careful for nothing but his own 
 power, his own interest, his own advancement in life. And 
 it was this man, realist and materialist in all his thoughts 
 and conduct, who was now to judge One in whose Divine 
 idealism the world of all the future spoke. 
 
 Some sympathy is due to a man placed in a situation so 
 difficult, and it must be conceded that Pilate makes an honest 
 effort to understand his prisoner, and to act justly toward 
 Him. He goes at once to the root of the matter, and asks 
 Jesus if He really claims to be the King of the Jews ; for it 
 would seem that in the hasty charge of treason invented by 
 the priests it had been alleged that He had received homage 
 as a King. Here, and here alone, a fragment of real evidence 
 was introduced, for it was incontestable that Christ had en- 
 tered Jerusalem but a week before amid general acclamation 
 as a King ; and Pilate at once fixes upon this fact as incrim- 
 inating. Jesus replies with another question : " Sayest thou 
 this of thyself, or did others tell it thee of Me ? " Pilate re- 
 torts with contempt that ho is not a Jew. He desires a plain 
 answer to a plain question : " What hast Thou done ? " The 
 very form of the question indicates his hesitation to receive 
 as evidence the angry accusations of the priests. But the 
 reply of Jesus only increases his perplexity. Jesus avows 
 Himself a King, but not of this world. To this end was He 
 born, and for this cause had He come into the Avorld, that 
 He might bear witness to the truth. " What is truth ? " asks 
 Pilate ; not in jest, as Bacon would persuade us, but in real 
 porplexity. The words of Jesus seem to him ingenious 
 trifling, and yet he feels that they cover something that lies 
 beyond the penetration of his worldly sagacity. The con- 
 
THE TRIAL OF JESUS 403 
 
 viction rapidly forms itself in his mind that this is no dan- 
 gerous revolutionist, but a poor, distraught enthusiast. How 
 can he order the crucifixion for sedition of One whose mind 
 is absolutely destitute of political ideas ? What has Rome 
 to fear from this amiable dreamer, with His delusion of im- 
 aginary kingdoms ? Pilate begins to be angry. He is sus- 
 picious that the priests desire to make a jest of his judgment, 
 and to cover him with ridicule. He goes out to the Sanhc- 
 drists and says brusquely, "I find no fault at all in Him." 
 The words can have but one meaning : they are a complete 
 acquittal. 
 
 But Pilate had not reckoned with the rapid groAvth of the 
 agitation among the people. A multitude now fills the open 
 courtyard, and Pilate has good reason to know how rapidly 
 a storm may rise among a people so fanatical. For the first 
 time he recognizes with dismay the peril of the situation, 
 and it is at this point that his temper changes. No man 
 knew his duty better : having publicly acquitted Christ, he 
 should have released Him instantly. But the weakness of 
 Pilate's character, as it was the weakness of the later Roman 
 policy itself, was a love of expediency. In the decay of Em- 
 pire diplomacy usually takes the place of that straightforward 
 honesty, staking all upon the die, by which Empire is at first 
 established. The soldier in Pilate is now hindered by the 
 diplomat. A hundred men-at-arms might easily have swept 
 the rabble from the Pretorium ; but Pilate knows well that 
 such a display of force would be duly reported to the Em- 
 peror as an outrage and a massacre, with every kind of ex- 
 aggeration which malice could invent or falsehood support. 
 From that moment the interests of Christ, which are the 
 interests of justice, become of less importance to him than 
 his own interests. He looks upon the howling mob with an 
 indecision in his eye which they are quick to mark. They 
 
404 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 become "the more fierce," shouting insult and accusation, 
 and in the tumult of words Pilate at last distinguishes one 
 word which appears to offer him political salvation. " He 
 has stirred up all the people, beginning from Galilee to this 
 place," cry the priests. The complete ignorance of Pilate of 
 all Christ's previous history is manifested in the question 
 which he now asks, " Is Jesus, then, a Galilean ? " When 
 the priests affirm, with that scorn which never failed them 
 when they mentioned Galilee, that Jesus is in truth a Gali- 
 lean, Pilate sees his way. If He be a Galilean, he is in 
 Herod's jurisdiction, and to Herod let Him go. Herod is in 
 Jerusalem, and the Idumean will better understand than he 
 the complications of a charge which appears in the main ec- 
 clesiastical rather than civil or political. So once more 
 Jesus is delivered up to the priests, and now, guarded prob- 
 ably by Roman soldiers from the violence of His own coun- 
 trymen, He is taken to the palace of Herod. 
 
 One would fain draw the veil over the scene which ensued, 
 for human nature itself suffers degradation in it. If we may 
 feel sympathy with Pilate we can feel none with Herod. 
 Herod receives Jesus with offensive suavity. He has long 
 desired to see Him, and his attitude is one of base and cruel 
 curiosity. Jesus has no significance for him except as a re- 
 puted thaumaturgus. He overwhelms Him with fluent chat- 
 ter; asks Him many questions; and even expects Him to 
 work some act of necromancy for the amusement of his court. 
 He supposes that Pilate has sent him a superior sort of jug- 
 gler, and he is so grateful for the friendly intentions of the 
 Roman governor that that day a long standing quarrel be- 
 tween them is healed. But Jesus marked His understand- 
 ing of the man by a complete majestic silence. He, like 
 another martyr, who knew his trial a mockery, " lifted up his 
 face, without any speaking." It was a dreadful silence ; it 
 
THE TRIAL OF JESUS 405 
 
 grew and spread like a cold sea. It is all the more signifi- 
 cant when we compare the scene which had occurred in the 
 High Priest's house, and at the tribunal of Pilate. Jesus 
 was not silent in the presence of the priests : to them He 
 spoke boldly of His life, His claims, His hopes. He was 
 not silent before Pilate; He felt so much of pity, perhaps 
 even of respect, for the troubled Governor, who was at least 
 anxious to act justly, and save Him from His foes, that He 
 explained to him more fully than to any other what He 
 meant by His kingship and His Kingdom. But to this man, 
 sentimentalist in religion, sensualist in life, utterly base and 
 rotten to the core, Jesus answers not a word. He knew that 
 He stood in the presence of the murderer of John, and He 
 knew that with such a man all sincere appreciation of religion 
 was impossible. He knew that it was farcical to expect jus- 
 tice from him. And so Christ is silent — an indignant silence, 
 a terrible and freezing silence ; dumbness surcharged with 
 anger, rebuke, reproach beyond all capacity of words, more 
 thrilling than the cry of trumpets, more awe-inspiring than 
 the crash of ruined nrnianients. And at last, even Herod 
 becomes conscious of what that impenetrable silence means. 
 A scorn, as cruel as his previous curiosity, takes possession 
 of his thoughts. Lips are thrust out, and bright eyes gleam 
 with malice as they catch the eye of Herod. He will not 
 even take the trouble to condemn One so forlorn and impo- 
 tent. And yet in his scorn there is a kind of terror which 
 soon finds expression in acts of an unpardonable brutality. 
 He knows too well that those calm and dreadful eyes read 
 the secret of his levity, his insincerity, his concealed abhor- 
 rence of all things virtuous and pure. The moment he finds 
 how impossible it is to befool Jesus, how yet more impossi- 
 ble to break down His dignity, the real Herod stands re- 
 vealed ; " then Herod and his men of war set Him at nought 
 
406 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 and mocked Him, and arrayed Him in a gorgeous robe, and 
 sent Him again to Pilate." 
 
 Once more Jesus stands before Pilate. The stratagem of 
 sending Him to Herod, from which Pilate hoped so much, 
 has failed. Pilate, in seeking to evade responsibility, has 
 made his position a thousand-fold more difficult. Even now 
 he might have saved the situation by prompt military action ; 
 but he is less disposed than ever to attempt decisive meas- 
 ures. He begins to realize that he has made the mob his 
 master ; yet he still imagines that he can circumvent its mal- 
 ice by a superior astuteness. He confronts the mob with a 
 firmness he is far from feeling, and again repeats the reasons 
 why he has acquitted Christ. " Ye have brought unto me," 
 he says, " this Man, as One that perverted the people ; and 
 behold I, having examined Him before you, have found no 
 fault in this Man, touching these things whereof ye accuse 
 Him : no, nor yet Herod ; for I sent you to him, and lo, 
 nothing worthy of death is done unto Him. I will therefore 
 chastise Him and release Him." The words produce an ef- 
 fect exactly opposite to that which Pilate had intended. The 
 priests at once interpret them as a confession of surrender, 
 and not without reason, for if Pilate really thought his pris- 
 oner innocent, it was both absurd and unjust to chastise Him. 
 This proposed chastisement is plainly a concession to the 
 mob, and he who can concede so much can be forced to con- 
 cede more. Thrice Pilate repeats his offer, only to find him- 
 self treated on each occasion with increasing derision. He 
 commits the fatal error of arguing with the mob, asking 
 them, as if they were the judges, " Why, what evil hath He 
 done ? " Even the Roman guard, which lined the courtyard, 
 must have pitied Pilate in that moment, and have asked, 
 with wondering scorn, why the master of many legions 
 should hesitate to use the sword in defence equally of justice 
 
THE TRIAL OF JESUS 407 
 
 and his own dignity. In his extreme perplexity one more 
 expedient suggests itself to Pilate. It is customary at the 
 Passover to release some notorious prisoner, and Jesus may 
 be released on this ground. He makes this proposition to 
 the mob, as a happy solution of all the difficulty. But again 
 he has miscalculated. It would seem that a certain political 
 offender, perhaps a leader of popular revolt, with the singu- 
 lar name of Jesus Bar-abbas, then lay under sentence of 
 death in the Ptoman prison. Perhaps the proposition to re- 
 lease Jesus as a Passover prisoner suggested the release of 
 this other Jesus, for until that moment his name had not 
 been uttered, nor had the custom of releasing a Passover 
 prisoner been alluded to. However this may be, it is clear 
 that some one suggested the release of Jesus Bar-abbas, and 
 in a moment the idea is taken up by the whole multitude. 
 Jesus Bar-abbas instantly achieved a popularity, at which no 
 one would have been so much surprised as himself. With 
 one voice the multitude cries, " Release unto us not this Man, 
 but Bar-abbas " ; not the Jesus of Galilee, whose kingdom is 
 not of this world, but this other Jesus, who better compre- 
 hends the means by which kingdoms are created. 
 
 In all this singular controversy the priests have had the 
 upper hand, and at every turn Pilate has found himself out- 
 argued, out-manoeuvred, and humiliated. He now retires 
 again into the inner Hall of Judgment, and it is there that 
 he receives a warning of the dreadful crime, now imminent, 
 which his weakness will achieve, as though heaven itself had 
 vouchsafed direction to him in his perplexities. He is no 
 sooner set down upon the judgment-seat than his wife con- 
 veys to him a message, which sends a shiver of superstition 
 through his laboring mind. " Have nothing to do with this 
 just Man," she says, "for I have suffered many things this 
 day in a dream because of Him." Perhaps she, in the early 
 
408 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 dawn when Christ was first brought bound into the Judg- 
 ment Hall, had found means to look upon His face ; perhaps 
 she, a reputed student of the Hebrew Scriptures, knew some- 
 thing of His career and claims ; and in that interval, when 
 Jesus had been sent to Herod, she had slept, and had dreamed 
 dreams which were full of horror, from which she awoke with 
 a strong presentiment of peril for her husband in his contact 
 with One so holy and so awful. Pilate would receive her 
 message with a troubled brow. A faith in dreams and omens 
 was almost a part of a Roman's education, and the greatest 
 soldiers had not been free from the superstitious awe which 
 they inspired. Yet what could he do ? And, as he thinks, 
 some faint memory of a striking Jewish custom, of which 
 perhaps his wife had once informed him, recurs to his weary 
 mind. According to the Mosaic law, when a man was found 
 slain the people of the nearest city were called upon to dis- 
 avow the murder ; and this they did by slaying an heifer, 
 and washing their hands over it, and saying, "Our hands 
 have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it. Be 
 merciful, O Lord, and lay not innocent blood unto Thy peo- 
 ple of Israel's charge." Once more Pilate thinks he sees a 
 way through the intricacies of the problems which beset him. 
 He also will wash his hands before the people, and thus 
 avow himself innocent of the blood which they are resolved 
 to shed. He will thus obey the warning of his wife's dream, 
 for he will have nothing to do with this just Man. He will 
 thrust the whole responsibility of the judicial murder, which 
 he now regards as inevitable, upon the priests and the mob. 
 But he finds it hard to believe that his diplomacy has failed 
 He will make yet one more attempt to save a prisoner whom 
 he greatly prefers to release, if release be possible. He ap- 
 pears once more before the multitude, and renews his offer 
 to release Jesus as a Passover prisoner. But in the brief in- 
 
THE TRIAL OF JESUS 409 
 
 terval, while he has been absent, the priests have strained 
 every nerve to influence the people in favor of Jesus Bar- 
 abbas. With a tumultuous and appalling unanimity they 
 now demand the prisoner for sedition, and when Pilate, 
 weakly arguing with them, asks, " What shall I do then with 
 Jesus, which is called Christ ? " they reply with one accord, 
 " Let Him be crucified." And then Pilate solemnly performs 
 the most dramatic act of this tragic and momentous morning. 
 "When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but rather 
 a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands be- 
 fore the multitude, saying, 'I am innocent of the blood of 
 this just person ; see ye to it.' Then answered all the peo- 
 ple and said, ' His blood be on us, and on our children.' " 
 
 All the wisdom of Pilate seemed that day to be turned to 
 folly, and so it was to the end. He had washed his hands 
 before the people, and yet his own conscience was not at 
 ease, nor was the crowd satisfied. He had calculated that 
 the people would be impressed by the spectacle of a Roman 
 judge making use of a solemn Jewish rite, to declare his dis- 
 avowal of a crime which they seemed resolved to commit ; 
 but they treat it as little better than a vain theatrical display. 
 In his despair he recurs to his former policy. He has been 
 weak too long ; at last he will be strong. He will scourge 
 Jesus and let Him go. Whether the crowd likes it or not 
 this shall be the sole punishment of Jesus, for crucify Him 
 he will not. The soldiers, weary of a scene which has been 
 throughout an insult to their arms, aching to strike some 
 blow, they care not on whom or for what cause, rush eagerly 
 upon the task of scourging Jesus. They are in no mind to 
 make distinctions ; Jesus is a Jew, and they hate all things 
 Jewish. And so, let us hope not with the connivance of 
 Pilate, they not only scourge Him, but mock Him. They 
 plait a crown of thorns and put it on His head in derision 
 
410 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 of His kingship ; they put a reed into His hand for sceptre, 
 and they cover the wounds which they have made with a 
 purple toga. It was so that Jesus was presented to the peo- 
 ple when the scourging was accomplished. Surely this was 
 enough, thought Pilate ; even the most vindictive crowd can 
 demand no more. So sure is Pilate of his position that he 
 now can dare to mock the priests, before whom he has 
 quailed for so long. He tells them to take Christ away and 
 crucify Him, well knowing that they have no legal power to 
 do so. The priests retort with a new charge against Christ, 
 the third they had made that day, and the last. They de- 
 clare that He had made Himself the Son of God, and Pilate, 
 remembering his wife's dream, is now shaken with a great 
 terror. He makes yet one more attempt to interrogate his 
 prisoner, but now Christ answers nothing. " Speaketk Thou 
 not unto me ? Knowest Thou not that I have power to cru- 
 cify Thee, and I have power to release Thee ? " asks Pilate 
 in insulted dignity. Never was vainer boast, for events had 
 shown that Pilate's prerogative of life or death could not be 
 enforced against the will of a hostile mob. With gentle 
 irony, with sublime pity and magnanimity, Christ conveys 
 this truth to Pilate by replying, "Thou couldest have no 
 power at all against Me except it were given thee from above : 
 therefore, he that delivered Me unto thee hath the greater 
 sin." Pilate himself thrills with the magnanimity of that 
 reply. The Man crowned with thorns, whom he has permitted 
 not only to be scourged, but to be basely mocked, can pity him, 
 can even seek to find extenuation for his crime. More than ever 
 Pilate desires His release, for he has not alone a wrong to 
 his own conscience which cries for reparation, but a wrong 
 done to Christ. But it is now too late. The ominous cry 
 begins to rise, " If thou let this Man go thou art not Caesar's 
 friend. "Whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against 
 
THE TRIAL OF JESUS 411 
 
 Caesar." And before that threat Pilate's courage finally col- 
 lapses. He dare not risk accusation to Caesar for the sake 
 of Christ. He is once more the man of the world, with 
 whom self-interest is supreme. Jesus must die that Pilate's 
 reputation may be saved. He hastily, and with words of 
 mockery which cover his own shame, gives the brief order 
 that Jesus shall be crucified. Jesus submits in perfect si- 
 lence ; had He spoken, surely His last word to Pilate would 
 have been, " What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole 
 world and lose his own soul ? " 
 
 Thus ended the trial of Jesus Christ. It was from first to 
 last a travesty of justice. Not one of the charges urged 
 against Him was proved. He had been thrice declared ab- 
 solutely innocent by the man who finally condemns Him. In 
 the course of the trial we see Him brought into close con- 
 tact with the entire priestly hierarchy, with a King, and with 
 a military Governor who represents all the might of Koine. 
 He is superior to all. They each in turn serve as foils to 
 throw into relief His dignity and purity. His fortitude and 
 courage, His self-restraint and magnanimity, are conspicuous 
 throughout. No one can mistake the fact that He goes to 
 His death in perfect innocence. As little can we fail to see 
 that He goes triumphantly ; the victim indeed, but to the 
 last the Victor- Victim, 
 
CHAPTER XXIX . 
 
 THE DEATH OF JESUS 
 
 The priests and the Jewish mob had themselves demanded 
 the crucifixion of Jesus. Had they been capable of the least 
 reflection they would have understood the insult which they 
 affixed upon the whole Jewish nation by the demand ; for 
 crucifixion was a form of death reserved only for the most 
 servile. It was not strictly a Roman form of punishment at 
 all, and in her purer and prouder days Rome would have 
 disdained to employ a means of death so gratuitously brutal. 
 Rome had borrowed it from the East, probably from the 
 Phoenicians, the most corrupt and cruel of all the races who 
 have raised themselves to empire. She reserved it for the 
 East, as if to affirm her undying contempt for peoples whom 
 she regarded as unworthy of any reverence. The Cross was 
 thus the symbol of national shame and degradation. No 
 Roman, however vile, was crucified. It was a death so cruel 
 in itself, so dishonoring and shameful, that Rome reserved it 
 for those whom she regarded as the vermin of the human 
 race, who were too obnoxious to claim the privilege of part- 
 nership in her social order. But on this disastrous day it 
 seemed as if the whole Jewish race were bent on national 
 suicide. In order to compass the death of Jesus the priests 
 had openly avowed that they had no king but Caesar. Pa- 
 triotism itself had perished in the paroxysm of rage against 
 a person. The ideas for which the nation had fought and 
 struggled with a splendid obstinacy through so many years 
 of subjugation, were in a moment thrown away. And it is 
 
 412 
 
THE DEATH OF JESUS 413 
 
 the same kind of madness which we discern in the demand 
 for the crucifixion of Jesus. It matters nothing to the peo- 
 ple that the Cross is the symbol of national degradation, and 
 that for a Jew, however guilty, to die by such a death, is an 
 insult to the whole nation ; it is the death which they them- 
 selves demanded for their noblest Son. That they may the 
 more effectually dishonor Jesus they are willing to dishonor 
 the entire race ; nor can they see, in this madness of revenge 
 that it is not Jesus only, but the nation itself, that is put to 
 an open shame. 
 
 It was about nine o'clock in the morning when the final 
 order was given for the execution of Jesus. The place of 
 execution is minutely described to us as Golgotha, or the 
 place of a skull, a small hill near the city, and immediately 
 beyond its gates. There is but one place discoverable in 
 modern Jerusalem which entirely fulfils the descriptions of 
 the Evangelists. It is a green hill, with a precipitous lime- 
 stone cliff, which bears an unmistakable likeness to a human 
 skull. It is at a point where great roads converge, open and 
 public, so that it would be possible for a great concourse of 
 people to assemble, each of whom would be able to see all 
 that occurred upon the hill itself, and to read the inscription 
 which Pilate wrote above the Cross. The hill rises immedi- 
 ately outside the Damascus Gate, which in earlier times was 
 called the Gate of Stephen, because tradition asserts that the 
 first martyr suffered death in its immediate vicinity. To this 
 day the hill is known among the Jews as the Hill of Execu- 
 tion, and it is said that he who passes it breathes to himself 
 the strange words, " Cursed be He who destroyed our nation 
 by aspiring to be its king." At the foot of the hill is a gar- 
 den, in which a rock sepulchre has lately been discovered, 
 certainly dating from the days of Herod, and almost certainly 
 the tomb in which the body of Jesus lay. 
 
414 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 It was to this liill that the sad procession now passed. 
 First of all marched the centurion charged with the execu- 
 tion of the sentence, who bore aloft the tablet on which the 
 offence of Jesus was described, " This is Jesus, the King of 
 the Jews." Next followed the soldiers, carrying the instru- 
 ments of execution, and behind them came Jesus Himself 
 bearing the Cross. Two other prisoners doomed to the same 
 death accompanied Him : a refinement of derision on the 
 part of Pilate, addressed to the Jews rather than to Jesus, 
 whom he wished to insult not only by the inscription on the 
 tablet, but by making their King the companion of thieves in 
 His death. The whole multitude followed behind, conspicu- 
 ous among whom were some of the friends of Jesus, and 
 many women who wept aloud, and smote their breasts, after 
 the custom of mourners at a Jewish funeral. Immediately 
 outside the Damascus Gate, the procession halted, for Jesus 
 was now at the ascent of the hill, and could no longer bear 
 the Cross. A man coming in from the country, known as 
 Simon of Cyrene, was hastily impressed for this duty by the 
 Roman soldiers, who had too great a scorn of the Cross to 
 offer the Sufferer the least help in sustaining it. The plateau 
 of the hill was soon reached. The Sufferer was then bound 
 upon the Cross, which was raised, and fastened into the 
 cavity prepared for it. Heavy nails were driven through the 
 hands and feet of Jesus, and the horrible torture of the cru- 
 cifixion began. 
 
 The peculiar feature of death by crucifixion was its igno- 
 miny. It was a form of death with which it was impossible 
 to associate the least idea of dignity ; its associations were 
 altogether sordid and depraved. The fact that a man dies 
 by public execution may be jaainful to remember, but it is 
 not necessarily dishonorable or shameful. Socrates was 
 executed, but it was under circumstances which did not make 
 
THE DEATH OF JESUS 415 
 
 personal dignity impossible. Many martyrs have died upon 
 the scaffold and at the stake ; but while men may have been 
 disgusted at the barbarity of the means of death employed, 
 none have felt them to be inherently shameful. The common 
 form of Jewish execution was by stoning ; but barbarous as 
 this death was, yet is was so little shameful that there had 
 been those who still were heroes in Jewish memory in spite 
 of the nature of their death. But crucifixion involved a kind 
 of shame beyond shame : indelible, odious, and utterly re- 
 volting. Among civilized nations who allow the penalty of 
 death for capital offences, it is generally agreed that the 
 means of death employed should be swift. Justice is con- 
 tent with the fact of death, and does not demand torture. 
 But in crucifixion the pangs of dissolution were prolonged 
 and public. It was no unusual thing for a criminal to hang 
 upon his cross for several days, expiring at last from sheer 
 exhaustion. The modesty of death itself was violated in this 
 prolonged public exhibition of a dreadful agony. Exjwsed 
 to a pitiless sun, racked with a furious thirst, often derided 
 by the passers-by, liable to the attacks of vultures while yet 
 consciousness survived — it was so that men died upon the 
 Cross, under every aggravation of atrocity. It was little 
 wonder, therefore, that the Cross was regarded with a pecul- 
 iar abhorrence. It was the symbol of an infamy so complete 
 that even pity was alienated : of a dishonor so dire that the 
 mind refused its contemplation. 
 
 The truly astonishing thing in the death of Jesus is that 
 by the manner of His dying He utterly destroyed these evil 
 associations of the Cross, and replaced them with ideas of 
 inexhaustible beauty and significance. He died with a dig- 
 nity which triumphed absolutely over the indignity of the 
 Cross. The gibbet of the slave lost its shame from the mo- 
 ment Christ was nailed upon it. That which had been loath- 
 
416 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 some became honorable, that which had been hated became 
 reverenced and loved. We could the better understand this 
 apotheosis of the Cross if it had been slow ; but the marvel- 
 lous thing is that it was immediate. Those who themselves 
 saw the Cross on Golgotha with sickening horror and revul- 
 sion, lived to boast of the instrument of death which they 
 abhorred. Instead of speaking with bated breath of this 
 dreadful ignomy inflicted upon One whom they loved, the 
 Apostles called attention to it, and sought to fix the eyes of 
 the world upon it. St. Paul made the Cross his boast ; he 
 preached not only Christ to the Gentiles, but Christ crucified. 
 He did so with the full knowledge that the Cross was an of- 
 fence, and a stumbling-block to the Gentiles, who counted 
 him a fool in such glorying. No man was readier than he 
 to take the line of the least resistance in his effort to conquer 
 the Gentile mind ; but in this instance he deliberately chal- 
 lenged its utmost prejudice. How can we account for this 
 extraordinary attitude of thought ? How can we account for 
 the strange success which it achieved ? What explanation 
 can we give of this total reversal of prolonged tradition, 
 which turned infamy to glory, and clothed the gibbet of the 
 slave with an imperishable sanctity and splendor ? The only 
 possible reply is that Jesus changed every association of the 
 Cross by the way in which He died upon it. Such Divine 
 grace and dignity revealed themselves that day on Golgotha, 
 that henceforth the Cross of Christ became the central fact 
 of human history, and being thus lifted up, Christ drew all 
 men unto Himself. 
 
 Every act of Jesus in these last hours is significant. That 
 majestic deliberation, which we have remarked in all the 
 closing acts of His life, did not fail Him now. He has 
 passed from insult to insult, ever confronted with the tortur- 
 ing facts of human baseness ; He has seen Himself betrayed, 
 
THE DEATH OF JESUS 417 
 
 denied, and forsaken by those who had once loved Him ; He 
 has been in turn the victim of the envy of the priests, the 
 mockery of Herod, and the weakness of Pilate ; He is ex- 
 hausted not only by these wounds made in His heart, but by 
 lack of food, and a long night of physical and mental agony ; 
 yet He is never so much a conqueror as on the way to Gol- 
 gotha. To the women who bewail Him, and smite upon 
 their breasts, He has one sternly tender word : " Weep not 
 for Me, but for yourselves, and for your children, O ye 
 daughters of Jerusalem ! " When there is offered to Him, 
 by these very women, who were members of a charitable as- 
 sociation whose work it was to soothe the pains of the dy- 
 ing, a cup of strong wine mingled with myrrh, He refuses it, 
 because He knows that it is meant to deaden His conscious- 
 ness under the approaching agony. He will .meet death 
 clear-eyed, and with complete self-possession. He has acted 
 throughout as One who surrenders life, because the work of 
 life is finished, and so He will act to the last. No plea for 
 mercy has escaped Him ; no merciful mitigation of His pain 
 can be accepted now ; heroic to the last, He will meet death 
 with an unflinching will. We may say perhaps that it was 
 with this refusal of an anodyne that the transformation of 
 the Cross began. Pity changed to awe when men beheld 
 not only the calmness, but the aspect of resolution with 
 which Christ faced His end. His words, uttered from the 
 Cross itself, deepened this impression. The Roman soldiers, 
 accustomed to the frantic curses of those whom they cruci- 
 fied, heard with startled ears the quiet voice which prayed, 
 " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." 
 He had already triumphed long before the end came. Be- 
 fore the eyes of all who watched Him, save those deadly en- 
 emies whom no knowledge could enlighten, the Cross slowly 
 changed to an altar; infamy became idyllic; shame was 
 27 
 
418 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 turned to glory. When, in the end of the day, the Roman 
 centurion himself exclaimed, " Truly this was the Son of 
 God," he did but sum up a series of impressions which were 
 destined to create the same astonishment and faith in the 
 whole world, as the story of the death of Christ became more 
 widely known. 
 
 In the meantime the enemies of Christ were far from 
 happy. Nothing is so bitter to a persecutor as to see his 
 victim elude him after all, by those nobler qualities of nature 
 of which he cannot be deprived. They became more and 
 more conscious of the effects of His dignity upon the multi- 
 tude. Perhaps they regretted the publicity of the death they 
 had themselves designed, when they saw the opportunity it 
 afforded for the revelation of Christ's inmost character. It 
 is quite certain that they were also uneasy on other grounds. 
 The tablet which had been carried before Jesus to the place 
 of execution was now nailed upon the Cross. An immense 
 concourse had assembled between Golgotha and the Damas- 
 cus Gate, and each read with astonishment the words, " This 
 is Jesus, the King of the Jews." It was an insult to the 
 entire nation, and was bitterly resented. And it was impos- 
 sible to foresee what form this resentment might take. Had 
 the multitude really believed that the true Messiah was being 
 crucified by the act of the Romans, there is little doubt that 
 a rescue would have been attempted. The Roman soldiers 
 at the Cross were few, and would have been unable to resist 
 the mob. In frantic consternation the Sanhedrists now 
 rushed to Pilate, and implored him to change the form of 
 the words to " He said, I am the King of the Jews." But 
 Pilate, glad of an opportunity of insulting safely men from 
 whom he had already endured such great humiliations, re- 
 plies curtly, " What I have written, I have written." He is 
 indifferent to any threat of rescue ; perhaps in his heart he 
 
THE DEATH OF JESUS 419 
 
 would have welcomed it. The baffled priests can think of 
 no better device to lessen the effect of the title which is writ- 
 ten on the Cross than to mock Jesus. Yet even their mock- 
 ery is the fruit of fear. " He saved others, Himself He can- 
 not save," they cry ; but even while they speak some think 
 that they hear Jesus crying for Elijah to come and save Him, 
 and there is a general expectation of some miracle of strange 
 deliverance. So little does crime believe in itself, so little is 
 injustice confident or content in its achievements ! But to 
 Jesus, let us hope, these bitter insults were inaudible ; the 
 last agony had already commenced. Between Him and them 
 the silence of the tomb was already beginning to interpose, 
 and all the voices of the earth sounded dim, and vague, and 
 unintelligible. 
 
 Yet not all voices. Beside Him hung a man who suffered 
 the pangs of the same death without the same consolations. 
 This man now begins to speak in broken accents to the dy- 
 ing Lord, and his words seem to imply that he was not 
 wholly unacquainted with the history of Jesus. It may be 
 that already he had heard the words of One who was the 
 Friend of publicans and sinners. Beside the Sea of Galilee, 
 within the streets of Jerusalem, or far away on the coast of 
 Tyre and Sidon, he had stood on the fringe of some great 
 multitude, and had heard strange words about a Kingdom, 
 which he did not understand and soon forgot. But the face 
 of Christ he did not forget, nor the tender pleading of His 
 voice ; and now, by a strange irony of destiny, he finds him- 
 self hanging beside One whose voice had already stirred 
 strange chords in his miserable heart. He perceives clearly 
 that some unjust fate has overtaken Jesus. He does not for 
 an instant think of Him as a comrade in guilt. He himself 
 suffers duly the reward of his deeds, but Jesus can have 
 done nothing amiss. What the Kingdom is that Jesus spoke 
 
420 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 about on that half-forgotten day : what is the meaning of 
 that strange writing placed above His head, he does not 
 know ; but he conceives a sudden passion to be always 
 where Jesus is. He is afraid of death, and he would cling 
 to One for whom death seems to have no terror. He is 
 sinking into the great darkness, and he would steady him- 
 self upon the hand of One stronger than himself. So the 
 man prays his simple, ignorant, pathetic prayer, " Lord, re- 
 member me when Thou comest into Thy Kingdom." And 
 Jesus replies, " To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise." 
 "With this solitary trophy of His grace, like a flower placed 
 in the hand of the dead, Jesus will enter the dark abysses of 
 the under-world. And He, who came not to call the right- 
 eous, but sinners to repentance, is content that it should be so. 
 Yet again, before the end, the voice of Jesus is heard in 
 definite command. St. John tells us that he and the mother 
 of Jesus stood near the Cross, and the probability that His 
 mother would be near Him at the last, and, if there at all, 
 would be in the company of some disciple, is so great that 
 Ave need attach little weight to the fact that the Synoptics 
 omit the circumstance. Joseph was long since dead, and 
 Mary had long regarded Jesus as the head of her humble 
 household. Perhaps she had found little comfort in the 
 other members of her family, who were openly hostile to 
 Jesus. She was now about to be left doubly alone in the 
 world. On her, even more than on her Son, fell the full 
 horror of the Cross. Who indeed henceforth would care to 
 associate with this broken-hearted woman Avhose Son had 
 died the death of a slave, and to whom could she turn foi 
 consolation? Jesus now completes that lesson of spiritual 
 relationships, as the only real relationships, which Mary had 
 once found so hard to understand. His mother and His 
 brethren were those who did His will, He had then said ; 
 
THE DEATH OF JESUS 421 
 
 and they who forsook all to follow Him would not fail to 
 find mothers, and brethren, and sisters, who were theirs by 
 a tenderer tie than the bond of birth and blood. So it was 
 to be through all time ; spiritual affinity was to supply the 
 place of blood relationships, to supersede them, to create a 
 finer ecstacy of love, and by the novel force of these affini- 
 ties the Church was to grow into existence. And so Jesus, 
 not only with a natural thoughtfulness for one whose life 
 was left unto her desolate, but with a profound vision of the 
 new society which would spring up from His teachings, now 
 turns to His mother, and says, " Woman, behold thy son " ; 
 and to John he says, " Behold thy mother." And in that 
 hour all the offence of John was pardoned. Jesus obliter- 
 ated the memory of the Hall of Caiaphas when He gave His 
 mother to the custody of John. 
 
 These scenes could only have occurred in the early stages 
 of the crucifixion, when the power of thought and conscious- 
 ness was complete. Slowly deep clouds began to gather in 
 the soul of Jesus as the supreme moment of dissolution drew 
 : ear ; and, as if Nature herself sympathized with the tragic 
 hour, at the same time a great darkness began to gather over 
 the whole land. We might interpret this darkness as sym- 
 bolic only — the subjective emotion of Christ cast into ob- 
 jective form— did not the whole narrative support the state- 
 ment that a real physical phenomenon occurred. Darkness 
 frequently precedes an earthquake in the East. In such 
 hours it is as though the course of Nature were arrested ; an 
 appalling silence reigns ; the world seems to cower before 
 some impending blow ; and ever higher moves a bastion of 
 blackest cloud, till the sun is blotted out and day is over- 
 whelmed in untimely night. Such a dreadful night now fell 
 upon Jerusalem, and in a yet deeper gloom the soul of Jesus 
 groped its unfriended way. Broken words fell from Him. 
 
422 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 Once He cried that He thirsted, and a Roman soldier, no 
 longer capable of mockery, hastened to offer Him a sponge 
 soaked with rough country wine. His mind turned instinc- 
 tively to those Scriptures of His nation which had so long 
 been the stay and inspiration of His thought. Passages of 
 the twenty-second Psalm came to His lips : " My God, my 
 God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? Why art Thou so far 
 from helping Me ? . . . I am a reproach of men, and 
 despised of the people. . . . All they that see Me laugh 
 Me to scorn . . . they shoot out the lip, they shake the 
 head, saying, He trusted on the Lord that He would deliver 
 Him ; let Him deliver Him, seeing He delighted in Him." 
 So in the darkness the solemn recitation went on, above the 
 heads of the terrified soldiers and the quailing crowd. Some 
 thought He was delirious with thirst, and again a soldier 
 offered Him drink ; others that He cried on Elijah to deliver 
 Him, There was as yet no sign of imminent death. The 
 voice that cried through the gloom was clear and strong. 
 Suddenly there was a change, wholly astonishing to his ex- 
 ecutioners. A great and terrible cry rang from the Sufferer's 
 lips. Some who listened heard Him say, "Father, into Thy 
 hands I commend My spirit." Others heard Him say, "It 
 is finished ! " In the same moment the first vibration of the 
 earthquake shook the hill. The crowd ran hither and thither, 
 terrified and maddened by the dreadful darkness. They saw 
 with horror the graves in the adjoining burial-ground shat- 
 tered and wrenched apart. From Jerusalem itself rose ter- 
 rible cries of panic, and a rumor spread that the Temple it- 
 self was riven by the earthquake. Golgotha was deserted, 
 save by the Boman guard, who dared not leave their post. 
 When at last the darkness lifted, they came nearer to the 
 Cross, determined to break the legs of the dying men and 
 make an end of a scene which had now become even to their 
 
THE DEATH OF JESUS 423 
 
 hardened nerves unbearable. They then saw that Jesus was 
 dead. It was as though the world itself had become the 
 darkened bier of the dead God ; and so the centurion felt it 
 when he cried, " This is the Son of God." 
 
 Jesus died of a broken heart. The terrifying cry which 
 all had heard marked the moment of a fatal rapture of the 
 heart. When a Roman soldier thrust his lance into the side 
 of the dead Christ it pierced the lung and then the pericar- 
 dium, and from the wound flowed blood and water. John 
 alone witnessed the phenomenon. It made so deep an im- 
 pression on his mind that in extreme old age he spoke of 
 Christ as One who " came by water and blood ; not by water 
 only, but by water and blood." John saw something sym- 
 bolic in this phenomenon ; the modern reader sees rather a 
 dreadful witness to the agony which Christ endured. From 
 the moment when the Last Supper ended no food had passed 
 the lips of Christ, and every moment had been crowded with 
 intolerable agony. The physical pain which He endured 
 was but part of this accumulated torture ; in His betrayal, in 
 the outrages heaped upon Him by the priests, in the tremen- 
 dous storm of execration which broke upon Him from every 
 side, in the horror of this exhibition of the diabolism of hu- 
 man nature, in His sense of the weight of all human sin 
 which pressed upon Him, in His desertion not only by man 
 but by God, wave after wave of agony swept over Him, until 
 the torn and wounded heart could endure no more. He suc- 
 cumbed not to physical injuries, but to the violence of His 
 own emotions. And in this was the proof that God had not 
 deserted Him. By what seems almost a miracle to the Ro- 
 man soldiers His sufferings were mysteriously abridged. 
 Six brief hours of suffering had brought that sweet release 
 of death which in ordinary crucifixions came only after many 
 hours, and even many days. 
 
424 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 Terror still reigned in Jerusalem. Under ordinary circum- 
 stances few tilings can be so appalling as the long, sickening 
 heave of the earth when the seismic wave passes through it, 
 and the ghastly darkness added to the general terror. A 
 sense of national guilt now linked these phenomena with the 
 death of Jesus. It was as though God Himself smote the 
 city for its wickedness. The darkness seemed the symbol of 
 the face of God withdrawn. The earthquake worked its 
 direst havoc in the Temple buildings themselves. We are 
 told that in the instant when Christ expired the veil of the 
 Temple, a heavy curtain covering the Holy of Holies, 
 which could only be moved by the united strength of many 
 priests, was rent in twain. Josephus and other contempo- 
 rary writers have recorded the fact that about this time the 
 Temple gates rolled back of themselves, and the middle and 
 chief light in the Golden Candlestick was extinguished. It 
 is more than probable that this is a direct reference to the 
 earthquake which wrought such alarming devastation in the 
 Temple on the day when Jesus died. In such a moment the 
 priests would not forget the words of Him whom they had 
 slain : that the day would come when not one stone of the 
 Temple would be left upon another. Already, it would seem 
 to them, the death of Jesus was aveuged. They had feared 
 Him living ; they feared Him yet more in the moment of His 
 death. 
 
 In the ordinary course of things the dead Body would 
 have been left upon the Cross until the vultures had destro}*ed 
 it ; but this last indignity was not to be. Perhaps the priests 
 were anxious to remove at once the dreadful witness of their 
 crime ; it is at least certain that they raised no objection to 
 the burial of Jesus. One of the secret followers of Jesus, 
 Joseph of Arimathea, together with Nicodemus, at once went 
 to Pilate, and obtained permission to remove the Body. The 
 
THE DEATH OF JESUS 425 
 
 Garden at the foot of Golgotha belonged to Joseph, and in 
 the limestone cliff at the north of the Garden he had already 
 built for himself a sepulchral chamber. To this chamber the 
 Body was borne. Nicodenms had brought with him myrrh 
 and aloes, with which the Body was anointed ; it was then 
 wrapped in linen grave-clothes and laid in the Tomb. It 
 was now evening, and the next day was the Sabbath. Haste 
 characterized all the actions of the friends of Jesus. The 
 embalmment itself was hasty, for the evident intention was to 
 complete it when the Sabbath was past. Amid the evening 
 light — for the darkness had now passed — the women who 
 had loved Christ best stood dissolved in tears and watched 
 the last sad and sacred rites. The stone which ran in a 
 groove before the open doorway of the vault was then rolled 
 into its place. At the same moment a band of soldiers ar- 
 rived, with instructions to seal the stone and to keep guard 
 over the sepulchre, lest the Body should be desecrated or re- 
 moved. The friends of Jesus then left the Garden, and the 
 silence of the night fell upon the scene. 
 
 Thus Jesus died ; young, beloved, adored, yet rejected and 
 despised by all but a few of His own countrymen. The de- 
 feat of the Galilean movement seemed complete. The most 
 that His friends could hope was that His memory, sanctified 
 by death, would haunt a few minds for a few years, like a 
 sacred dream. It would then slowly fade away, as the 
 memory of the dead must fade, however well-beloved, and at 
 last dissolve. Here and there, for some brief years, a man 
 or woman would speak of Him with tenderness, would recall 
 His aspect or His words, but the life of the great strenuous 
 world would roll on, and at last obliterate all traces of His 
 name. He had passed like a bright apparition on the dusty 
 roads of life, and had gone never to return. All the hopes 
 He had encouraged seemed falsified and empty. Of all the 
 
426 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 happy throngs whom He had gathered to His side, no single 
 man was found capable of leadership, with a spirit or a 
 genius to continue His work, nor was there the least sign of 
 any rallying force in the movement which He had begun. 
 He was one of those whose names are "writ in water," one 
 more of that sad company who win affection by their very 
 failure, which perhaps they would not have won by conspicu- 
 ous success. At His grave Regret might sit, mourning hopes 
 denied, visions unfulfilled, purposes unaccomplished. His 
 very death was such as to destroy all faith in human pro- 
 gress. Once more iniquity had triumphed over righteousness, 
 and wickedness had trampled on the pure and good. Long 
 years would pass before another dared attempt the task in 
 which He failed ; for such a story was deterrent to enthusi- 
 asm, such a death affirmed the folly of expecting too much 
 from average human nature. These were the thoughts of 
 the friends of Jesus on this fateful night. It was for them 
 a night of despair and grief that knew no remedy. Among 
 the enemies of Jesus more sombre thoughts prevailed, in 
 which victorious malice was predominant. Never again 
 would they hear that voice whose calm authority rebuked 
 their sins. Hanan slept satisfied with his success : Pilate 
 had already turned his mind away from a series of events 
 which he remembered with disgust. Already Jesus was for- 
 gotten, and the world which He had sought to force into a 
 loftier groove still kept its ancient course of fraud and folly, 
 wrong and crime, and so would continue to the end, when 
 the human race itself would cease through mere weariness of 
 life and disgust at its futility. And so it might have been 
 if the life of Jesus had really ended at the Cross. But in 
 the silence of that awful night Divine forces were at work in 
 the Tomb where Jesus slept. The Night had closed upon 
 the world indeed ; but there was a Morning close at hand. 
 
THE DEATH OF JESUS 427 
 
 And with that morning there would come for Christ and for 
 the world " another era, when it shall be light, and man will 
 awaken from his lofty dreams and find — his dreams still 
 there, and that nothing is gone save his sleep." 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 
 
 Before the Resurrection of Jesus can be at all discussed 
 we must be assured that He was really dead. A popular 
 theory of the earlier rationalism was that Christ swooned 
 upon the Cross ; that the simulation of death was so com- 
 plete that it deceived everybody ; and that in this state of 
 swoon or trance He was laid in the Tomb, where after three 
 days He revived and awoke. The theory has long since been 
 discarded because its inherent difficulties are insuperable. 
 It is incredible that the Roman soldiers, accustomed to pub- 
 lic executions, should have acknowledged for dead One who 
 was not dead ; that Joseph of Arimathea, in his sacred task 
 of anointing the wounded Body, should have had no suspi- 
 cion that the death was not real ; that the priests should not 
 have assured themselves that He whom they laid in the 
 guarded sepulchre was quite beyond their malice ; that in 
 fact all these persons, including Pilate himself, should have 
 connived at a mock burial, or have acquiesced in it through 
 ignorance. The soldiers were certainly astonished that Jesus 
 had expired so soon, but they made the fact of death doubly 
 sure by the lance-thrust which penetrated the lung and the 
 pericardium. The priests were suspicious that the Body 
 might be stolen, and they were uneasy at the rumor that 
 Christ had said that He would rise again ; but they never 
 doubted that He was really dead. The disciples, in their 
 utter grief and dismay, bore witness to the same conviction. 
 On the night when the Holy Corpse was taken from the 
 
 428 
 
THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 429 
 
 Cross and laid in the tomb of Joseph, there was not a single 
 person who was not fully assured that Jesus of Nazareth was 
 dead. 
 
 This fact, which we may accept as historic and indubita- 
 ble, has an important bearing on the condition of mind which 
 characterized the disciples. If we could assure ourselves 
 that they had any reason, however ill-grounded, to sup- 
 pose that the death of Christ was an illusion, we might 
 argue that the idea of resurrection arose from this illusion, 
 and that they brought themselves to see that which they de- 
 sired to see. The visions of Christ which they afterward 
 believed they saw might then be attributed to a predisposi- 
 tion of mind, subjective emotion producing what passed for 
 objective phenomena. We may admit at once that such a 
 theory has a certain plausibility. In the moment which fol- 
 lows the decease of some beloved person the sense of his 
 presence as still near the mourner is often overwhelming. 
 The accents of the familiar voice still linger in the porches of 
 the ear, the magnetism of his presence still sends waves of 
 vibration through the heart. We have to ask ourselves, how- 
 ever, whether such sensations are not the fruit of some vague 
 or intense belief in something immortal in man ; whether our 
 nerves would quiver with the sense of the ghostly nearness 
 of the dead, unless we had accustomed ourselves to think of 
 the spiritual life of man as separable from his physical or- 
 ganism. In other words, we must first of all assert immor- 
 tality and spiritual existence of the dead before we imagine 
 them as near us. Men who hold no such creed, and regard 
 death as finality and annihilation, are not disturbed by such 
 tender fancies. 
 
 Were the disciples predisposed to such a belief ? There 
 is everything to prove the exact contrary. Jesus had often 
 spoken to them of His death and resurrection, but they had 
 
430 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 regarded neither as possible. They perhaps believed and 
 hoped that He who had wrought so many miracles would 
 certainly redeem Himself from the Cross ; but in the hour 
 when Jesus died, all hope died in them. They were no 
 longer a united band ; the confraternity was broken up. 
 Dismay reigned supreme, and they were in despair. They 
 went to their own homes, nor was there any one disciple 
 cajjable of offering the least encouragement to the scattered 
 flock. For a long time they had been lifted beyond them- 
 selves, and beyond traditional Jewish ideas, by the superior 
 idealism of Jesus ; but with His death they sank at once to 
 the level of ordinary Jewish thought. And in ordinary Jew- 
 ish thought, it must be recollected, the idea of a spiritual 
 personality in man which survives death scarcely so much as 
 existed. The spirit returned to God who gave it, and was 
 reabsorbed in Him. Death was the last refuge, the house 
 of sleep, where the wicked ceased from troubling and the 
 weary were at rest. Man, in the end of his days, laid him- 
 self down with the dust of vanquished generations, and was 
 no more seen. The idea of resurrection, openly derided by 
 the Sadducees, was held with extreme vagueness even by the 
 most pious minds of the nation. So, then, we may conclude 
 that there was nothing to predispose the disciples to any 
 faith in Christ's Resurrection. They believed His soul at 
 rest with God, far from the care and strife of earth, which 
 He would nevermore revisit. They were incapable of creat- 
 ing the vision of the Risen Christ, and when at last that 
 Vision swam before their eyes, they doubted the witness of 
 their senses, and regarded it with terror and misgiving. 
 
 It was late on Friday evening when the final disposition 
 of the corpse was made in Joseph's Tomb, and the Roman 
 guard arrived to begin the tedious duties of their night 
 watch. The idea of the Sanhedrists in arranging this strict 
 
THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 431 
 
 guard around the Tomb was evident. If by any means the 
 Body of Jesus were removed, and secreted by the disciples, 
 it would be easy to create a legend that, like Elijah, He had 
 ascended into heaven in a chariot of fire, and His prophetic 
 claims would be resuscitated. But the disciples were far too 
 broken-spirited either to invent or to accomplish a plot so 
 daring. The night passed, and no one came near the Tomb. 
 The next day was the Sabbath, and again complete silence 
 reigned in the Garden. The soldiers passed the d&j as 
 they could ; jesting, it may be, with ribald satire at the folly 
 of the Jews, and of Pilate, in setting them a task so foolish, 
 or perhaps gambling sullenly on a rough-drawn checker, 
 such as may still be seen incised in the Pavement, or Gab- 
 batha, outside Pilate's house. The night of the Sabbath 
 came at last, and they fell asleep, wearied with the tedium 
 of an empty day. Toward morning a renewed shock of 
 earthquake ran through the Garden, and they woke in terror, 
 to discover that the massive stone at the entrance to the 
 Tomb was displaced. They rushed at once into the city, 
 full of alarm at an event so unexpected, and fearful of the 
 consequences to themselves. Not one of them appears to 
 have looked into the sepulchre, nor suspected it was empty. 
 
 The first person to enter the Garden was Mary Magda- 
 lene, and close behind her followed certain other women, 
 bent upon a common task — the complete embalmment of 
 their dead Master. They knew that the Tomb was closed 
 with a massive stone, and they had speculated sadly, as they 
 drew near, how they, with their feeble strength, could roll 
 away the stone. There still remains in Jerusalem, at what 
 is called the Tomb of the Kings, one of these stones intact. 
 It resembles a millstone, and was rolled in a deep groove to 
 its place before the low entrance to ihe Tomb. It was vet 
 dark when Mary entered the Garden, and to her intense sur- 
 
432 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 prise she saw that the stone was either rolled back in its 
 groove, or lay shattered before the now open entrance to the 
 sepulchre. Mary's immediate thought was that the Body of 
 Jesus had been stolen. Startled, and trembling with a great 
 fear, she turned and ran at once to find John and Peter. 
 She met the two disciples not far from the Garden, and told 
 them that the Body of Jesus had been taken away. The 
 two disciples, equally alarmed, at once began to run toward 
 the Garden, and found, as they supposed, a spoliated 
 sepulchre. 
 
 In order to comprehend what next occurred we must have 
 before us an exact picture of the Tomb itself. Let us pic- 
 ture, then, a smooth limestone rock, like a wall, at the end 
 of the Garden, in which was hewn a low doorway leading to 
 the three cavities prepared for the reception of the dead. It 
 is specifically said that up to this moment neither John nor 
 Peter knew the Scripture that Christ must rise again from 
 the dead ; that is to say, the idea of a resurrection had not 
 occurred to them. The first impression on the mind of John 
 was that the Body was still there. Standing in the low 
 doorway of the sepulchre, in the dim light, he saw the gleam 
 of something white in the hculus where the Body of Jesus 
 had been laid, and he naturally supposed that the Body was 
 undisturbed. But Peter, less reverent and more daring, now 
 entered the sepulchral vault itself, and saw something more 
 than John had seen. " He seeth the linen clothes lying, and 
 the napkin that was about His head, not lying with the linen 
 clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself." The im- 
 pression created by these words is that Jesus had quietly 
 awakened out of sleep and had disappeared ; but it will be 
 seen at once that this would have supplied no proof of a 
 resurrection, but rather the reverse. If this was all that 
 Peter had seen, he might have believed that Jesus had in- 
 
THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 433 
 
 deed swooned upon the Cross, and bad been buried while in 
 a trance, from which He had awakened in the moment when 
 the earthquake had displaced the stone before the door, and 
 had then stepped forth into the grey dawn, to be seen no 
 more of men. Or he might even have believed that Jesus, 
 thus wonderfully released from the Tomb, was at that mo- 
 ment in Jerusalem, and with what winged feet would he have 
 left the Garden to seek his wronged and liberated Lord ! Or, 
 again, there was nothing in the spectacle of these grave- 
 clothes lying in their places to suggest even that Jesus was 
 alive at all. The Body might merely have been removed, 
 and if, as was probable, it had been removed by the reverent 
 hands of Joseph or of Nicodemus, the grave-clothes would 
 have been replaced. But what Peter saw was something 
 wholly different. He saw the grave-clothes lying fold for 
 fold, as though the Body still reposed beneath them ; he saw 
 the white turban in the hollowed niche at the end of the 
 stone loculus, as if the head of Jesus still rested there, and 
 he was instantly aware that nothing in the Tomb had been 
 disturbed. Everything appeared as if the Body were still 
 there, and yet the body had gone. Etherealized and spiritu- 
 alized, that Divine Body, now free from the limitations of 
 physical law, had passed through its cerements, had floated 
 upward, light as ah*, had become a form celestial. It was 
 that discovery which overwhelmed the mind of Peter. "With 
 a silent, awe-struck gesture he called John to look, and John 
 followed him into the vault. The same astounding inference 
 seized upon the mind of John. Fold for fold the grave- 
 clothes lay, precisely as they had been left on that bitter 
 Friday evening when the corpse of Jesus had been laid to 
 rest within the loculus, yet the Body was not there. No 
 hand had touched the Tomb. No sleeper had awakened in 
 horror and dismay to rush forth into the reassuring light 
 28 
 
434 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 of day. Spirit-free and clothed with immortality, Jesus 
 had passed through all material obstructions, and was alive 
 in His new celestial nature. Then these two disciples saw 
 and believed. 
 
 This was the moment when the truth of a Resurrection 
 was born, and yet, it will be observed, at present it was only 
 a sublime inference, beset by many doubts and difficulties. 
 No one had seen the Risen Jesus ; all that was certain was 
 that He was not in the Tomb. Peter and John at once left 
 the Garden in an ecstasy of hope. They left behind them 
 one Avatcher, who was destined to supply the first positive 
 affirmation of their hopes. This woman was Mary Magda- 
 lene. 
 
 It does not appear that the two disciples communicated 
 their thoughts to Mary, or indeed held any conversation with 
 her. Perhaps they hardly noticed her. In the sudden 
 shock of wonder and of joy which they experienced they 
 were as men in a dream. They could hardly believe their 
 own belief. An awe-struck silence lay upon their lips. 
 Mary, bowed in bitter weeping, scarcely observed their de- 
 parture. Had the two disciples informed Mary of their 
 astounding discovery, and of the inference which thej^ drew 
 from it, there would be some ground for the suggestion that 
 Mary was now prepared to see what she afterward affirmed 
 she saw. A highly imaginative woman, already assured that 
 a miracle had occurred, might have persuaded herself that a 
 further miracle did occur. There are many instances in hu- 
 man history of persons who have persuaded themselves that 
 they have seen what they expected to see, and their credulity 
 scarcely offends us because it is allied with truly pious emo- 
 tions, and is quite unconscious of deliberate fraud. But the 
 narrative is conclusive in its evidence that Mary had at this 
 moment no suspicion of the truth which had already pos- 
 
THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 435 
 
 sessed the minds of John and Peter. She had given but 
 one hasty, terrified glance at the Tomb. It was empty, and 
 her sole thought was that the Body of Jesus had been stolen. 
 She sat at some little distance from the doorway of the vault, 
 weeping bitterly. It was dreadful for her to think that the 
 Tomb had been profaned. Was Jesus to find no rest even 
 in death ? Who knew what even now might be happening 
 to the sacred Body over which she had shed such tears of 
 passionate lamentation ? Jewish law ordained that the body 
 of a criminal should be buried in a place of infamy, and it 
 seemed but too likely that the tireless enemies of Jesus had 
 robbed the Tomb that they might heap this further degrada- 
 tion on the dead. Ah, if she could but find the Body, she 
 herself would rescue it from insult. She would bear it away 
 to some place of safe interment ; she would guard it as Riz- 
 pah guarded her dead sons, and God would doubtless give 
 her strength for an enterprise so sacred. These were the 
 thoughts of Mary. So far was she from even hoping to see 
 Jesus alive once more, that in her heart she was designing a 
 fresh interment of the Lord she loved, where He could sleep 
 in peace, safe from all His enemies. 
 
 The gust of new-born morning shook the trees, and passed 
 like a long sigh across the Garden, and Mary looked up. 
 The light was now growing clear, and a sunbeam lay across 
 the doorway of the Tomb. It seemed to her as though two 
 shining angels sat in the vault, and a soft whisper floated to 
 her, "Woman, why weepest thou?" She replies with the 
 thought which lies so heavy on her heart : " They have taken 
 away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him." 
 In the same instant a light footstep, drawing nearer through 
 the dewy silence of the Garden, arrests her ear. One stands 
 beside her whom she takes to be the gardener, and He re- 
 peats the question, "Woman, why weepest thou? Whom 
 
436 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 seekest thou ? " She scarcely lifts lier head to answer for a 
 second time a question so full of torture. Shaken with sobs, 
 she makes her agonized reply, " Sir, if thou have borne Him 
 hence, tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take 
 Him away." The woman who made this appeal was surely 
 not one whose mind was capable of creating in an instant the 
 phantasm of a Risen Christ, "a resuscitated God." It is a 
 cry of poignant grief, of courageous despair. The figure at 
 her side utters one word — "Mary!" It is uttered with a 
 well-remembered accent which recalls Galilee, Jesus, ended 
 madness, passionate love, a thousand hopes and fears, the 
 beautiful and tragic history of a lifetime ! One word leaps 
 to her lijDs, one word alone is possible, uttered in overwhelmed 
 and rapturous surprise, "Eabboni, Master! " For one brief 
 moment she has not been able to reconcile the tumult of her 
 thoughts : her mind trembles on its balance, as if the old 
 madness had returned, but in a strange delirium of joy. The 
 Image that lives in her mind, to the exclusion of all other 
 images, is of Jesus on the Cross, pallid, blood-smeared, 
 dreadful, disfigured out of all knowledge by the hand of 
 Tragedy, which has buffeted and bruised Him. This Jesus 
 was not the Jesus she had seen on Calvary ; it is another 
 Jesus, yet the same, Whom she had seen in Magdala, with 
 all the morning shining in His eyes ! It is the Jesus of 
 Galilee and the lakeside, the Jesus of the lilies and the open 
 fields, standing in the silent dawn with perhaps the gathered 
 lilies in His hands, fresh, young, smiling, the Jesus of the 
 Garden, whom she had mistaken for the gardener. Words 
 no longer have significance for her; in dumb ecstasy she 
 falls upon her knees, and stretches out her hands to touch 
 the sacred feet. She hears as one beyond hearing, suddenly 
 translated into a strange new w@rld where silence is as 
 speech, the Divine murmur of a voice above her, saying, 
 
THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 437 
 
 " Touch Ma not, for I am not yet ascended to My Father ; 
 but go to My brethren and say unto them, I ascend unto My 
 Father and your Father, and to my God and your God." 
 The vision lingers for an instant longer, but Mary dares not 
 look on it again. Mysterious hope and healing flow into her 
 wounded heart, leaving it enraptured. She rises from her 
 knees with the glad cry upon her lips : " I have seen the 
 Lord, and He has spoken with me," and she hastens from 
 the Garden that she may pour her story into the ears of 
 John and Peter. Henceforth the Garden lies deserted. 
 Nevermore shall He be seen among its flowers ; vainly shall 
 the groups of awe-struck friends gather round its gates and 
 watch for some faint glimpse of Him whom Mary saw. 
 Bat on its fragrant ah the message lingers — "He is not here : 
 He is risen " ; and in the hour when Mary found her God, the 
 world found its redemption and its faith. 
 
 Mary was not believed. Even Peter and John would feel 
 that it was one thing to believe that Christ had mysteriously 
 vanished from the Tomb, and quite another to represent Him 
 as still visible to human eyes, still capable of communicating 
 His wishes and His love to human hearts. Perhaps they 
 felt some jealousy, too, that, if such a vision were vouchsafed 
 at all, it had not been vouchsafed to them. Into these feel- 
 ings we need not enter, but the general incredulity among 
 the disciples is a very striking feature in the narrative. A 
 very plausible assumption, often put forward as an explana- 
 tion of the Resurrection, is that from the moment when 
 Mary's story gained currency there would be an irresistible 
 tendency to supplement it with other and similar stories. 
 Each man who had loved Jesus would at once begin to imag- 
 ine that he had seen Him. The whole band of the disciples 
 would be " on the watch for new visions, which could not fail 
 to appear." A strange sound, a shadow, a gust of wind, al- 
 
438 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 most anything would be enough to suggest to an excited 
 fancy that Jesus had addressed them, or had for an instant 
 glided near them. But the entire body of evidence is against 
 these suppositions. The disciples complied against their 
 will in a belief in the Kesurrection, rather than connived in 
 it. They sat with closed doors, anxious and fearful, and 
 when, in the twilight of the same day, the form of Jesus 
 floated into the room, and His voice addressed them, they 
 were "terrified and affrighted." Two disciples, who on the 
 same day were upon the road to Emmaus, talked of nothing 
 as they went but the tragic death of Jesus, and received a 
 vision of Him as they sat at supper with intense surprise. 
 One of the Apostles himself, Thomas, called Didymus, openly 
 expressed his incredulity. There was, therefore, as we might 
 expect, the greatest division of opinion among the friends of 
 Jesus. We are even told that forty days later, when the vis- 
 ions had become numerous, and Jesus had openly appeared 
 to many disciples at once, "some doubted." The vision of 
 Mary, as the first and most beautiful of many reported vis- 
 ions, no doubt exercised a wide influence on the minds of the 
 disciples ; but it excited quite as much hostility as credence. 
 To say that the " delicate susceptibility " of Mary — or, in 
 coarser language, " the passion of one possessed " — created 
 the Divine shadow which hovers still above the world, is to 
 speak with a total disregard of facts. It is significant 
 that St. Paul, who studied the whole story with the keen 
 analysis of a man in whom hostility slowly melted into faith, 
 does not so much as mention Mary Magdalene. Let us 
 honor her as the one who first received the revelation ; but 
 it is foolish to say that Christendom owes its faith to the ex- 
 quisite poetic fancy of a loving and hysteric woman. The 
 world is not so easily deceived. Conviction in such a case 
 could only come by a long series of cumulative proofs, in 
 
THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 439 
 
 which every link was tested, every statement questioned ; and 
 this spirit of criticism, by which men doubt their doubts 
 away, this rational incredulity which is the only guarantee 
 of truth, certainly existed from the first amongst those who 
 were the chief actors in the drama. When John included 
 Mary's story in his Gospel, it was, in a sense, a reversal of 
 his previous opinions ; an acknowledgment of a truth which 
 he had once denied, and had accepted only with reluctance 
 and after sober judgment. 
 
 The sacred idyll grew apace. One incontestable fact was 
 clear to all — the Body of Christ had finally disappeared. 
 Had it indeed been stolen by either friend or foe it was im- 
 possible that the fact could have been long concealed. The 
 foes of Jesus had the strongest reasons for discovering what 
 had really happened. Men like Joseph and Nicodemus had 
 reasons hardly less urgent. It became evident to all that a 
 myth was growing up that staggered human reason. This 
 myth could have been shattered in an instant had a single 
 person come forward to reveal where the body was secreted. 
 No one revealed the secret, because there was no secret to 
 reveal. Day by day suspicion melted into faith and adora- 
 tion. The last Apostle to be convinced was Thomas. Eight 
 days after the first rumor of a Resurrection was bruited 
 abroad, this disciple, hitherto incredulous, saw his Lord 
 under circumstances which left no room for denial. In the 
 interval he had doubtless applied all the ingenuity of a mind 
 radically sceptical to the solution, or rather the dissolution, 
 of those beliefs among his friends, which appeared to him 
 tainted with the virus of insanity. In the dimness of the 
 Garden, amid the half-lights of dawn, a luminous shadow 
 had appeared, which bore a resemblance to Jesus ; upon the 
 road to Emmans, in the gathering night, a Stranger, bearing 
 the same extraordinary resembla^c •, had spoken with a voice 
 
440 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 that seemed like Christ's. Not upon such accidents as these 
 would Thomas base his faith. He would be content with no 
 gentle phantom, outlined for a moment on the air, in soft 
 lines of light. On the eighth night there appeared to 
 Thomas, as he sat in the upper room with the disciples, not 
 a phantom, but the very Man Christ Jesus. He saw the 
 wound-marks in the hands, and feet, and side. He heard 
 the remembered voice speak to him in words of tenderest af- 
 fection and reproach. The soul of Thomas breathed all its 
 faith and love in one ecstatic cry, " My Lord, and my God ! " 
 From that hour the perfect fellowship of the Apostles was 
 established. Eleven men, each convinced in his own way of 
 a truth which made a mock of reason and experience, were 
 to go forth into a hostile world to preach what seemed an in- 
 credible delusion ; and, what is more amazing, to win the 
 world to their beliefs. 
 
 Among these disciples a unanimous desire to return to 
 Galilee was soon expressed. It would, perhaps, have been 
 more natural had they shown a disposition to linger in the 
 scenes, now made intensely dear and sacred, where their 
 faith had been so miraculously new-born. It is not enough 
 to say that this sudden exodus to Galilee was caused by the 
 hatred which they felt for that city where Jesus had endured 
 such hideous wrongs and insults. No doubt such a motive 
 existed, and was operative, and to it was added the fear of 
 the Sanhedrim. But a far more potent motive was the con- 
 ception they had now attained of what the risen life of Jesus 
 meant. They did not imagine Him as a Divine Phantom 
 still hovering round the Tomb. Such an imagination would 
 have presented no extraordinary features, for it is common 
 in the poetry and the folk-lore of the world. But these men 
 imagined Christ as having taken up again for a little time 
 the active duties of human existence. He is no ghost ; He 
 
THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 441 
 
 lias come to thein in His own proper personality and iden- 
 tity. He has been known to them in the breaking of bread, 
 in the old wise kindliness and tranquillity of temper, in the 
 use of familiar metaphors and forms of speech, and also in 
 the perfect knowledge He displays of their past history, their 
 hopes and their adventures, their secret thoughts and doubts. 
 Even physically He is unchanged. He bears upon His per- 
 son the scars of Calvary, calls attention to them, and invites 
 Thomas to thrust His hand into His side. Some transfigur- 
 ing change has passed over Him, but He eats and drinks 
 and acts as though He were still one of themselves ; as 
 though He had but been away upon a brief journey ; 
 as though He had quietly resumed life at that point where 
 its threads had been dropped ; as though, indeed, the visible 
 dissolution on the Cross, the anointing and the burial, were 
 but episodes, quite unreal, and long since left behind. He 
 is " the same Jesus " ; and yet different in this, that for Him 
 the physical limitations of life are utterly dissolved. 
 
 It was because they thus thought of Christ that they felt 
 no inclination to linger at His tomb, nor did they ever return 
 to it. They went into Galilee because it seemed to them 
 that the scenes where the earthly ministry of Jesus had com- 
 menced were the scenes in which His wider spiritual ministry 
 should also be inaugurated. Besides this, they believed that 
 Jesus Himself had appointed Galilee as the sacred trysting- 
 place of love and faith. He desired to meet the men He 
 most loved among the scenes He most loved. Besides the 
 lake where they had first received their call they were to ex- 
 perience a new dedication to their work, and where their 
 loyalty had first been kindled they were to take the vows of 
 a more assured allegiance. And so it was. There came a 
 morning when no fewer than seven of the disciples found 
 themselves upon the Sea of Galilee. They were returning 
 
442 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 from a night of fruitless toil, and as the day broke they saw 
 upon the shore a well-remembered Figure, standing by a 
 newly-kindled fire. The boat was now close to shore, and 
 the Figure was discerned by all of them. Once before on 
 that very lake Jesus had entered into Simon's boat, and had 
 given him certain instructions which resulted in a great 
 catch of fish. Something of the same kind happened now. 
 The Stranger told the tired and disappointed fishermen to 
 cast the net on the right side of the ship, and they immedi- 
 ately found themselves struggling with a great draught of 
 fish, which they secured with difficulty. Memory in Peter 
 suddenly became insight. With a startled cry, " It is the 
 Lord ! " he flung himself overboard and swam to land. 
 When the other disciples had arrived they were gravely wel- 
 comed. The Stranger took bread and gave them ; and now 
 the memory of all was thrilled. Even so had Jesus acted 
 at the Paschal Supper. That Avas the Supper of Death, this 
 was the Breakfast of New Life. The night of sorrow was 
 closing round them then ; but now the morning bathed the 
 lake, and the day of hope had opened. They dared not 
 speak for awe and joy ; even Thomas, who was with them, 
 had no question which he dared to ask. They waited for 
 the Giver of the feast to speak, and when the meal was over 
 Jesus spoke. Peter, who had thrice denied, was gently 
 drawn into a three-fold utterance of his love. He heard no 
 more with fear the solemn prophecy of the things he should 
 endure for Christ. The baptism of death which he had once 
 refused was now restored to him, and he knew himself for- 
 given. The conversation was prolonged. The seven men 
 had the closest opportunity of studying Christ attentively. If 
 any doubt yet lingered in their minds : if in the brevity of 
 the previous appearances of Christ there was room for some 
 suspicion of self-deception ; there could be none now. For 
 
THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 443 
 
 some hours they sat with Him they loved upon the shores 
 of Galilee, heard His voice, ate and drank with Him as in 
 the old sweet days of human fellowship, and were assured 
 that His triumph over death was absolute and supreme. 
 The sacred idyll which was destined to renew the world now 
 received its final touch. The lake which had seen the open- 
 ing of His early ministry saw its close ; and on the spot 
 where His Gospel was first preached the Divine miracle of 
 His risen and eternal life was finally affirmed. These things 
 happened " that men might believe that Jesus was the Son 
 of God, and that believing they might have life through His 
 Name." 
 
 We may attack, if we will, the ability of these men to 
 judge aright phenomena which called for the sharpest criti- 
 cism, but we can scarcely attack their sincerity. There can- 
 not be the slightest doubt that they believed that Jesus did 
 literally and truly rise again from the dead. Henceforth 
 this statement became the very core and root of all their 
 message to the world. No vehemence of ridicule or persecu- 
 tion was able for an instant to shake their testimony. It is 
 a palpable evasion to declare that " for the historian the life 
 of Jesus finishes with His last sigh." On the contrary, the 
 life of Jesus really begins three days after His dying sigh 
 was breathed. By every parallel of history the Galilean 
 movement should have ended at the Cross. Jesus should 
 henceforth have been remembered only as a hero and a 
 martyr. If His story was to take any hold upon popular 
 imagination, it should have been as the story of One Mho 
 had gloriously failed. On the contrary, the Apostles 
 preached a Jesus who had triumphantly succeeded. They 
 never speak of Him as dead, but as One. alive for evermore. 
 We may call this, if we will, a kind of sublime hallucination. 
 But we have then to ask whether it is probable that the en- 
 
444 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 tire course of human history could have been altered by an 
 hallucination? The mind that suffers from hallucinations is 
 a mind no longer sane. Can we possibly imagine a band of 
 madmen able to subdue Europe to a faith in an insane delu- 
 sion? The hypothesis is absurd. Human nature certainly 
 shows itself capable of gross delusions, but no instance can 
 be given of whole nations, through a long course of time, ac- 
 cepting a delusion with such thorough faith, that they have 
 been willing to discard for its sake their traditional faiths and 
 pieties, reconstruct their philosophies and social ethics, and 
 build anew the entire structure of their life from the base 
 upward. Yet this is what has happened. For all the West- 
 ern nations, who are the custodians of all that is loftiest in 
 human thought and government, and the representatives of 
 all that is most efficient in human energy, the Resurrection 
 of Christ has become a fundamental truth. The world re- 
 dated its existence from the moment when a group of simple 
 Galileans asserted that their Master had risen from the dead. 
 But it is said, it is not necessary to use so harsh a word 
 as hallucination. All that these idyllic stories were meant to 
 convey is that there is a certain resurrection of the wise and 
 good into an immortality of influence. Jesus did rise again, 
 but not physically ; not even spiritually in any definite and 
 personal sense ; His influence survived, and from the Tomb 
 He stretched out His hand to touch and mould anew the 
 whole human race. But if the Resurrection chapters of the 
 Bible are nothing more than an allegory of influence, why 
 invent narratives full of circumstantial detail, and who among 
 the Galileans were capable of these exquisite inventions? 
 And, besides this, is it likely that any doctrine of the immor- 
 tality of influence should have had the least inherent power 
 to change the whole current of human thought as we know 
 the doctrine of Christ's Resurrection did ? The immortality 
 
THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 445 
 
 of influence can be used as a synonym of the Resurrection 
 only by a palpable abuse of language, winch men so full of 
 the critical and philosophic spirit as the Greeks and Romans 
 would have been quick to recognize. For when man speaks 
 of life, he means one thing only — conscious life. When he 
 speaks of Risen Life, he means one thing only — renewed 
 and conscious life in all its force of identity and personality. 
 When he speaks of Eternal Life, he means eternal conscious 
 personality, potent and efficient in all its acts, beyond the 
 bare efficiency of earthly life. So clearly is this the meaning of 
 the Scripture writers that none other is possible ; for if the 
 Resurrection can be reduced to a mere allegory of influence, 
 the entire life of Jesus may be as easily reduced to a poetic 
 allegory of charity and love. 
 
 If men came to accept the Resurrection as a truth, it was 
 because they saw it as the necessary complement of the his- 
 tory of Christ. Jesus began His ministry with the doctrine 
 of the Fatherhood of God, which implies that man is a par- 
 taker in the Divine Nature. Man is not a creature of the 
 dust, not the mere paragon of animals, but a Divine emana- 
 tion, in which God expresses Himself. The ministry of 
 Jesus is announced with the old prophetic formula, "The 
 Spirit of the Lord is upon Me." A little later comes a won- 
 derful definition of God : " God is a Spirit." A yet more 
 wonderful discovery follows, He also is a Spirit; before 
 Abraham was He was, and the physical form of Jesus of 
 Nazareth is but a temporary incarnation. Another stage of 
 thought is reached in the sublime saying, " I and the Father 
 are one." It is the identity of His own spirit with the God 
 who is Spirit, and the discovery of his own deity. If these 
 things are true it is no more a thing incredible that Jesus 
 should rise from the dead. Men who have been deeply con- 
 scious of their own inner life have found themselves able to 
 
446 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 say that " death is an almost laughable impossibility, and 
 the extinction of personality (if so it were) the only true life." 
 The man who has once attained this vivid realism of his own 
 spiritual nature will find no difficulty in believing in the 
 Resurrection of Christ. He will rather see it as the neces- 
 sary vindication, not alone of Christ, but of man himself. It 
 is materialism alone that is entirely dead to such a truth ; 
 and the battle of the Resurrection has always been fought 
 out, and must evermore be waged between the materialist on 
 the one hand, who sees life as a form of matter, and the 
 spiritualist, who sees all human life as an expression of spirit. 
 If the world has come to believe in the Resurrection of 
 Christ, it is because the spiritual instinct in man feels such 
 a resurrection necessary. Man needs vindication against 
 the tyranny of time, and dust, and death. Jesus supplied 
 that vindication. The power of the Resurrection is not that 
 it was personal only, but representative. Man rose in Christ, 
 and Christ became the first fruits of them that slept. And 
 so His own great words to Mary are, " I ascend unto My 
 Father and your Father, and to my God and your God." 
 
 Through forty days of spiritual existence, manifest at in- 
 tervals to those who loved Him, Jesus prepared His disciples 
 to receive this truth. The last scene of all occurred at Beth- 
 any. In the evening coolness He led them out to the neigh- 
 borhood of that home where love had once anointed Him 
 for burial, and of that tomb where He had once showed His 
 mastery over death. " And He lifted up His hands and 
 blessed them. And it came to pass, while He blessed them, 
 that He was parted from them and carried up into Heaven. 
 And they worshipped Him, and rehired to Jerusalem with 
 great joy, and were continually in the Temjrie, praising and 
 blessing God." They had learned the final lesson which 
 fitted them to be the Apostles of the world's eternal hope. 
 
THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 447 
 
 Henceforth Jesus was to them more alive and more beloved 
 than He had ever been. Through all the dawns and nights 
 that lay between them and martyrdom they heard His ad- 
 vancing footstep, caught the clear whisper of His voice, and 
 felt the glow of His immediate Presence ; and never was this 
 finer intimacy of the soul so deep as in the hour when they 
 died for Him. They did not wish Him back again, because 
 they knew that He had never gone away. No regrets 
 mingled in their love for Him. The Bridegroom was still 
 with them, and life, in spite of all its outward deprivations, 
 became once more a bridal feast. In after ages great dis- 
 putes arose which worked disruption in this tender amity, 
 and turned the marriage feast to mourning. Why should 
 we consider these, when we may share the bridal festival of 
 faith and love ? Why dispute on forms of dogma while the 
 poetry of faith may still be ours, as it was theirs who were 
 content to know that Christ was with them alway, as the 
 Lover and the Friend ? It is enough if we shall so read the 
 story of the Man Christ Jesus that we may believe that He 
 is God, " not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but 
 taking of the Manhood into God." And there is a creed at 
 once wiser and simpler even than the creed of Athanasius, 
 in which Doubt itself puts on angel- wings — 
 
 "Thou seemest human and divine, 
 
 The highest, holiest manhood, Thou : 
 
 Our wills are ours, we know not how ; 
 
 Our wills are ours, to make them Thine." 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 THE TRUE SITE OF CALVAEY 
 
 The reasons for rejecting the tradition that the Church of 
 the Holy Sepulchre stands upon the site of Golgotha may be 
 briefly stated. 
 
 The site certainly does not corresjiond with the descriptions 
 of the Evangelists, that it was "nigh unto the city," and it 
 seems unlikely that it ever could have done so. It was not 
 until the third century that the Empress Helena visited Jeru- 
 salem with the avowed purpose of building a church upon the 
 site of Golgotha. In the meantime Jerusalem had suffered 
 great vicissitudes. It had been utterly destroyed and rebuilt; 
 and for a period of three generations, from A. D. 130, by the 
 order of the Emperor Hadrian, no Christian had been per- 
 mitted to live within it. It is tolerably certain, therefore, that 
 if Golgotha had been where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre 
 now stands, there would have been no one lef who could have 
 placed its identity beyond dispute. It seems probable that 
 the Empress was deceived, either by the ignorance or the con- 
 nivance of her informants, who were only too anxious to oblige 
 her, and were naturally desirous that an important church 
 should be erected within the bounds of what then constituted 
 the City of Jerusalem. 
 
 It will be said, however, that the same causes which led to 
 error in this case, would be equally effective in rendering the 
 identification of any other site impossible. But it will appear 
 at once that in the general ignorance it was quite possible that 
 the real site should have been overlooked. Moreover, there 
 were good reasons why at this time the site of Golgotha should 
 29 449 
 
450 APPENDIX 
 
 have been forgotten, apart from those reasons incidental to 
 the thorough demolition of the city. It would be natural to 
 assume that the place where Christ died would be so dear and 
 sacred to the early Christians, that by no possibility could the 
 knowledge of its locality be lost. But this is to reason from 
 our modes of thought rather than from theirs. It was not 
 upon the death and burial of Christ that early Christian thought 
 brooded, but upon the eternal mystery and wonder of His new- 
 risen life. The picture of His last shame and agony was oblit- 
 erated by the overwhelming and joyous assurance that He was 
 alive for evermore. Men looked not to the spot of earth where 
 He had suffered, but to the heavens, from which He might de- 
 scend at any moment in great power and glory. Not thinking 
 of Him as dead, it would be natural that they should exercise 
 no care to preserve the tradition of the place where He had 
 died. The sudden passion for identifying Holy Sites took the 
 early Christians by surprise. No one had thought it needful 
 to jDreserve the necessary data, and in the years immediately 
 following Christ's death, no one had desired to do so. But 
 something had to be done to meet the demand, especially 
 when it was supported by so powerful a personage as the Em- 
 press, and it might very easily happen that a site might be in- 
 dicated at hazard, which was the wrong site, while the true site 
 escaped notice, and found no advocate. 
 
 By the same process of reasoning it is evident that when 
 once a site had been selected, either right or wrong, and a 
 great church had been erected on it, which in course of time 
 attracted pilgrims from every quarter of the world, there 
 would be good reasons why the tradition should remain un- 
 contested and undisturbed. Where no one doubted the tra- 
 dition, no one would seek to disprove it, and every year would 
 add to its authority. When it is said that the continuous tra- 
 dition of sixteen centuries is not to be lightly set aside, we 
 agree; but the remark has far less force than it appears to 
 have, when Ave remember that mere lapse of time is quite as 
 effective in giving authority to a wrong tradition as a right 
 
APPENDIX 451 
 
 one. A statement supported by the faith of many centuries 
 certainly apj>ears to have a better claim to credence than a 
 statement of yesterday; yet there is no inherent reason why 
 this should be so. A critical mind will attach but subsidary 
 importance to the length of time during which a statement has 
 been accepted as truth, because errors as well as truths pos- 
 sess an equal power of longevity. The really important ques- 
 tion will be which of the two contending parties has the best 
 right to be believed, as being the best equipped for the task 
 of discrimination; and in this case, the one party is deeply in- 
 terested in pleasing a powerful personage, and the other in 
 getting at the real truth ; the one is the priest of a credulous 
 age, and the other the discoverer of a scientific age. 
 
 As regards what is known as " Gordon's Calvary," the green 
 hill immediately outside the present Damascus gate of Jeru- 
 salem, there is a body of evidence which to me seems conclu- 
 sive. (1) It certainly fulfils the topographical indications of 
 the Gospel writers. It is outside the gate, and it is near to 
 the city. It is a place where a great concourse could assem- 
 ble. The road that winds about its base would afford the oji- 
 portunity for the " passers by " to rail on any one who suffered 
 crucifixion. And, while some imagination is necessary, and 
 perhaps some degree of preconception, there can be no mis- 
 take that the face of the hill does bear an extraordinary re- 
 semblance to a human skull, from which its name may have 
 been derived. (2) It is more than curious that this hill should 
 be known even among modern Jews as the "Hill of Execu- 
 iton;" and the curse uttered by the Jew at this spot, on one 
 who ruined the nation " by aspiring to be its king," must have 
 some historic significance. Christ manifestly answers this de- 
 scription, and it would be eminently characteristic of the un- 
 dying rancor of the Jewish mind that His name should be still 
 cursed on the spot where He died. (3) The small garden at 
 the foot of the hill, with the tomb in it, closely corresponds 
 with the Gospel narratives. We are specifically told that there 
 was a garden on or close to Golgotha, and in it was a tomb 
 
452 APPENDIX 
 
 in which no man had lain. All authorities agree that this 
 tomb is of the Herodian period. It is also unfinished. One 
 only of its burial cavities is complete, and it would be natural 
 to infer that one only has been used. These coincidences are 
 in themselves so close and extraordinary that they have the 
 effect of proof upon a rational mind. 
 
 Personal convictions, of course, count for little, but I may 
 add that the more closely I examined " Gordon's Calvary " and 
 the adjoining tomb when I was residing in Jerusalem, the 
 more overwhelming became the impression that these were in- 
 deed the actual scenes of the death ; nd burial of Jesus. I 
 visited them at first without the least preconception in their 
 favor, and in the company of those who regarded them with 
 entire incredulity. What I saw convinced me of the truth of 
 Gordon's hypothesis; and after going over all the arguments 
 for both sides in detail and at leisure, my conviction has been 
 greatly strengthened. And when I remember all the cruel 
 strife associated with Godfrey and Louis, which has been waged 
 around the reputed Holy Sepulchre; all the bitter feuds be- 
 tween Latin, Greek, and Armenian which still dishonor and 
 pollute the shrine; all the meretricious splendor with which 
 it is invested, and the jostling crowds who mingle with a su- 
 perstitious reverence for gold and marble an utter detestation 
 of each other: I am glad to think that the hand of God has 
 hidden the true Calvary from the eye of man through all these 
 centuries, that it might become possible, in an age of purer 
 faith, for the devout pilgrim to stand beneath the open sky 
 and see the earthly altar of the Lord, and to kneel at His 
 tomb, amid such surroundings as Christ Himself loved — the 
 perfume and meditative silence of a garden. 
 
 For the full discussion of this subject, I would refer my 
 readers to the writings of Dr. Eobinson, Sir Charles Wilson, 
 and Mr. Haskett Smith. In the July number for 1901 of the 
 Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund, there is a 
 careful article by the Kev. Francis Gell, M. A., Horn Canon of 
 Worcester Cathedral. 
 
Date Due 
 
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 PRINTED 
 
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