BS 
 
 "2A i>0 
 
 Tito 
 
 
 Jesus 
 
 AND THE 
 
 Men about Him 
 
 j 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 Shelf. 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
JESUS 
 
 AND THE 
 
 MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 BY 
 
 B 
 
 CHARLES F. DOLE 
 
 • » 
 
 ^ c OPYRIGHr % 
 
 V DEC 121888 
 
 32.90%; 
 
 ^shingtO^ 
 
 BOSTON 
 Geo. H. Ellis, 141 Franklin Street 
 
 1888 
 
 / 
 
Dfe 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 
 
 BY GEORGE H. ELLIS, 
 
 1888. 
 

 <9 
 
 To the men and women everywhere who hope for a 
 church more real, more broad, more noble than any that 
 now exists, this little book is offered, with the purpose of 
 setting forth under the guise of familiar types of character 
 the eternal principles which make religion precious to the 
 heart of man. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 There is constant need of object lessons and 
 parables, even for the most thoughtful minds, in 
 enforcing moral truths. From whatever point of 
 view we consider the figures in the New Testament 
 story, they furnish most interesting types to describe 
 precisely such men as we see to-day. Whatever, 
 also, any one thinks of certain dogmatic or historical 
 questions about Jesus, there is practically no name 
 or word so clear or that carries such wealth of mean- 
 ing as when we tell men of the Christ life and the 
 Christ ideal. The characters presented in the follow- 
 ing pages are here used purely for this practical or 
 ideal purpose, as so many pictures or object lessons, 
 to make truth the more simple and beautiful. The 
 author, indeed, has ceased to be very deeply interested 
 in questions of mere historical criticism. Larger and 
 more important subjects demand the thought of the 
 world. Men need to know that a beneficent God 
 manifests himself in human life now no less than 
 when Jesus walked in Galilee. Men need to have 
 preached to them what Paul used to say, — that "as 
 many as are led by the Spirit of God are sons of 
 God." Men's faithlessness is not concerning the 
 
6 PREFACE 
 
 past or about matters which may never be proved. 
 Their most fatal want of faith touches the present. 
 It is whether this world is so truly God's world that 
 it is safe and only safe to do business, to treat neigh- 
 bors, and to manage the State by the Golden Rule. 
 Men wait to see the real and ever new miracles of 
 faith, hope, and love. Show men these perfectly 
 practicable miracles, already worked in certain divine 
 lives, worked afresh in myriads of lives, and doubt 
 and fear shall flee from the earth. The author pro- 
 foundly believes in this kind of miracle or manifes- 
 tation of God. He would be very glad if this little 
 book might help any one else thus to believe ; 
 namely, that this world, here and now, is God's world, 
 in which it is therefore well for the man who follows 
 wherever Love bids. The author's thanks are espe- 
 cially due to his friend, Mr. George S. Merriam of 
 Springfield, the author of " A Living Faith," who 
 revised the manuscript, and encouraged him to offer 
 it to the public. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. John the Baptist, the Ascetic, ..... 9 
 
 II. NlCODEMUS, THE PHARISEE, 24 
 
 III. Nathanael, the Pure in Heart, .... 38 
 
 IV. Peter and John the Disciples, 52 
 
 v. Jesus the Master, ... 68 
 
I. 
 
 JOHN THE BAPTIST, THE ASCETIC. 
 
 JERUSALEM stands on hills considerably more 
 than two thousand feet above the level of the 
 Mediterranean. The valley of the Dead Sea lies 
 fourteen hundred feet below the Mediterranean. 
 From the gate of Jerusalem to the valley, in fifteen 
 miles, you descend half the height of Mt. Wash- 
 ington. Here, between the gardens and vineyards 
 of Jerusalem and the deep, gloomy valley, was 
 the wilderness of Judea, with bare limestone rocks 
 and caves and haunts of robbers, a forenoon's 
 walk out of the city. Among the valleys of this 
 rough district were occasional little oases, where, 
 about a spring or mountain stream, palm-trees 
 grew. The fertile spots in the valleys w r ere the 
 home of communities or brotherhoods of pious 
 men, called Essenes. There were, perhaps, never 
 more than four thousand of them in the whole 
 country, some of whom lived in the towns. But 
 
10 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 their singular example carried a weight of influ- 
 ence beyond their numbers. In a time of wars, 
 when every man was a fighter, they would not be 
 soldiers, or even manufacture arms and weapons. 
 When human slavery was generally practised, they 
 would have no slaves. In a land of vineyards, 
 they would drink no wine. In entering the order, 
 one promised "that he would honor God, practise 
 righteousness toward men, do harm to no man, 
 either of his own accord or at the command of 
 others ; that he would always hate the wicked and 
 assist the righteous ; that he would show fidelity 
 to all men, especially to those in authority ; also, 
 to love the truth and expose liars, to keep his 
 hands and his conscience pure from unlawful 
 gains." Keeping these rules, restraining bodily 
 passions and appetites, bathing their bodies in 
 cold water, devoting a portion of each day, be- 
 sides hard work, to prayers, psalms, and hymns, 
 partaking of their noon and evening meal to- 
 gether, as a sort of communion service, they be- 
 lieved that the spirit of man was purified and 
 brought close to the mystery of the divine light, 
 that visions and prophetic foresight of things to 
 come might be looked for, or that the art of heal- 
 ing the sick could be learned. 
 
 \ 
 
JOHN THE BAPTIST II 
 
 It was in this wilderness of Judea that the re- 
 markable person appeared whom the world knows 
 under the name of "John the Baptist," or, better, 
 "the Baptizer." We are able to distinguish but 
 the bare outline of a heroic figure, — " the voice 
 of one crying in the desert.' ' We know hardly 
 anything of the details of his life. If his father 
 was a priest, John was not the stuff that priests 
 were made of. The precise ceremonial of out- 
 ward things, the slaughter of sheep and oxen, the 
 looking after the tithes and the offerings, the noisy 
 feasting multitudes, the gorgeous temple, crowded 
 with curiosity seekers, with booths and tables in 
 the great spaces where men bought and sold and 
 quarrelled, the endless routine, doing things as 
 they had always been done, keeping the old relig- 
 ious customs intact which did not make people 
 either holy or happy, — this life of a priest must 
 have revolted many an earnest soul. You may 
 suppose John some day to have met a kinsman 
 from one of the Essenes' villages. "Come with 
 us," the older man says to the younger. " You 
 were not meant by God for a priest, to superin- 
 tend the butchery of cattle, to wring the tithes 
 from the poor. This town life is a sham. Come 
 with us, then, and try our simple life, — pure air, 
 
12 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 clear running water, the fruit of the earth, honey 
 from the bees, with the company of good men, with 
 worship and the intercourse with the Almighty." 
 John was the man to hear such kind of appeal. 
 At any rate, he went to live in the desert where 
 the Essenes were. He doubtless went in and out 
 of their villages, knew their manner of life, and 
 practised their rigid morals. 
 
 Why did not John stay with the Essenes and 
 become one of them ? The Essenes were pure 
 and harmless people, but they had no mission to 
 be helpers and saviors. On the contrary, they 
 feared to endanger their own purity by mixing 
 with men and going into crowds. You may liken 
 them to the early Puritans who came to this coun- 
 try. They did not want the wicked world to fol- 
 low them here. They wanted to keep pure by 
 themselves. Their mission was merely to live. 
 They had their own souls to save. They were not 
 here to help others to live ; and tho they were 
 humane, strict, and devout, and tho they loved 
 one another within the brotherhood, they had no 
 kindling and missionary love for mankind. 
 
 Now, no eager, passionate, large nature could 
 have been content to stay with the Essenes. 
 These Essenes' communities had existed for gen- 
 
JOHN THE BAPTIST 1 3 
 
 erations, — virtuous, serene, religious, — but the 
 world did not seem to be growing any better for 
 them. All that they did was to keep things as 
 they were, being as conservative as the priests in 
 the temple. No reformation came from them. 
 On the contrary, they carried off into the desert 
 the very men needed in towns and cities to build 
 up a more virtuous and religious town life. Sup- 
 pose John saw this : it was obvious that there was 
 no room for many people to become Essenes, 
 even if that life had been able to satisfy ever 
 one. Besides, the circumstances of the times 
 brought pressing need of more than the Essenes 
 were doing. 
 
 John's age was not only the most memorable 
 in history, but, what is rare, men suspected that 
 it was memorable. It was memorable compared 
 with anything that had gone before, for its riches, 
 splendor and luxury, the bustle and din of wide 
 commerce. The boy John had watched the mer- 
 chants' caravans climbing the hills. He had 
 looked on at the building of palaces and castles. 
 He had most likely seen the great race-course at 
 Jericho, where heathen games were played. He 
 had been shocked at the new theatre within the 
 holy city. He had wondered at the massive mar- 
 
14 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 ble buildings of the temple. He had heard as a 
 boy of the great doings and the unlimited ex- 
 penses of the Herods, who had girdled the land 
 with forts, and built new cities with foreign names, 
 and filled them with foreign people. 
 
 The times were memorable, too, for vice and 
 oppression. The terrible Herod the Great had 
 died, perhaps in the year in which John was born. 
 The tales of his grinding taxes, of the murder of 
 his own sons, of men and women spirited away 
 from their homes to his palaces and dungeons, 
 were in every one's mouth. No one knew where 
 his spies and informers were not. The new brood 
 of Herods had come, if possible, smaller and 
 meaner. Over all stood the dreaded power of 
 Rome. Even in the temple halls the eagles of 
 Rome had been suspended. Roman legions were 
 seen from time to time marching up to Jerusalem 
 or across the land to guard the borders of the 
 empire against the Parthians. Unscrupulous Ro- 
 man governors made themselves rich, and rich 
 provinces poor. Altogether, it seemed as if the 
 world grew worse. Vices and foreign customs 
 spread : it seemed as if people had never suffered 
 more unbearable evils. 
 
 Along with all this, there was a wonderful ex- 
 
JOHN THE BAPTIST 1 5 
 
 pectation of coming change. It was not in Judea 
 alone. Men are said to have talked of it in Egypt 
 and at Rome. The present age was hurrying on, 
 men said, to its close. This vague sense of com- 
 ing change, this prevalent discontent and popular 
 unhappiness, predisposed men to religion. All 
 manner of superstitions were credited. There 
 seems to have been a revival of what we to-day 
 call Spiritualism, — a readiness to believe in appa- 
 ritions and the manifestations of the supernatural. 
 In Rome there was a strange interest in occult 
 things and Oriental religions. Palestine was full 
 of people supposed to be possessed with demons. 
 Men both feared spirits and were prepared to see 
 them in the dusk of the night, as in the rumor 
 after the crucifixion of Jesus that many spirits of 
 the dead appeared to people in the city. Alto- 
 gether, there was a strange sensitiveness, uneasi- 
 ness, and restlessness of the popular mind, ill at 
 ease with the world as it was, in hope and fear of 
 what might soon be,— the fated end of the world 
 or the golden age and the kingdom of God. 
 There had been growing among the Hebrews for 
 centuries a prophetic hope, like what the slaves 
 at the South are said to have had. "Some 
 time yet," true men had said, " the eternal laws 
 
l6 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 will vindicate themselves " ; as we say to-day 
 even more surely when we add, " That which 
 ought to be must be." 
 
 In the midst of these anxieties, rumors, antici- 
 pations, dread, the word went up to the capital 
 that a strange man was just out of the city in 
 the wilderness, preaching the kingdom of God. 
 People did not know who he was. They described 
 him by his dress and appearance, — his leathern 
 girdle and camel's hair shirt, with the face and 
 clothing of a hermit, whose meagre fare was what- 
 ever came to hand, honey or locusts. People 
 went in crowds to see him. We should have gone 
 if we had been in Jerusalem. 
 
 John's word was perfectly simple, — " The king- 
 dom of God is at hand." What possessed him to 
 believe so ? Little did he reck of the centuries 
 of blood that have come and gone, from his time 
 till now. Nevertheless, he said what was true. 
 A new faith, a new spirit, a new and higher order 
 of men were about to appear. John only dimly 
 apprehended what he meant when he said, " Lo, 
 the kingdom of God," as the heart of youth in all 
 ages but vaguely knows what it looks forward to. 
 
 What sort of sermons did John preach ? They 
 were what we call almost strictly moral sermons. 
 
JOHN THE BAPTIST 1 7 
 
 There were soldiers on the march who came to 
 hear him. He did not tell them to stop being 
 soldiers, as the Essenes would have said, but to 
 stop their pillage and be content with their pay. 
 He did not tell men to leave their homes and live 
 in the desert as he did, but, staying where they 
 were, to share their food and their extra garments 
 with those who had none. He did not tell the 
 publicans, as you would have supposed, to give 
 up collecting taxes for Herod, but he bade them 
 to stop extorting more than was due. He broke 
 out, however, in indignation against the money- 
 loving citizens of Jerusalem, the priests and Phar- 
 isees, the men of good families, and called them 
 "the breed of vipers." It was because he had na 
 confidence in their sincerity. But he did not bia 
 them to forsake all and follow him, as Jesus 
 bade certain men to do : he only said, " Repent, 
 and show that you have repented by what you 
 do." There was a motive of fear behind this 
 preaching. The new kingdom of God would 
 make short work of the sinners. It was as tho 
 the just king were expected to come suddenly to 
 assume his throne. He would banish and de- 
 stroy the wicked people out of the land. No one 
 then thought of any other way of disposing of 
 
1 8 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 them. Bad men, hearing such preaching, trem- 
 bled to think what would happen to them if they 
 were caught in their sins. Altogether, it was 
 healthy preaching, tho without any fine spiritual 
 uplift. It was adapted to a sensual and supersti- 
 tious people, like the sermons of certain noted 
 revivalists, who make bad, dishonest, greedy peo- 
 ple thoroughly frightened. There need be no fear 
 that such people will be frightened too much. 
 
 The only form or ceremony which John pre- 
 scribed or used was baptism. The people were 
 accustomed to frequent ceremonial washings. 
 The Essenes appeared to have baptized them- 
 selves religiously every day. John was simpler. 
 He said, almost in so many words, Why baptize 
 yourselves over and over ? Be baptized once for 
 all. Be clean, and then stop doing the things that 
 make you unclean. If John had used any words 
 or formula of baptism, it would have been such a 
 formula as this: "I baptize you in token of re- 
 nouncing your sins, and of the kingdom of God." 
 Here at the Jordan Jesus came to take this 
 baptism. He must have been one of those pow- 
 erfully moved by the preaching of John. He 
 most likely found his disciples among those who 
 had listened to John. Everywhere, people were 
 
JOHN THE BAPTIST 1 9 
 
 set to thinking and reading the old scriptures. 
 There was a lifting of the moral standards. 
 When Jesus should begin to preach, people would 
 be eager to hear more. 
 
 John's preaching, however, left a great blank. 
 After you had repented of your sins, what then ? 
 After you had given away your surplus of food 
 and your spare cloak, there would be a reaction. 
 The kingdom of God had not yet come. You 
 merely waited till it should appear. Meantime, 
 life was hard as before ; meantime, temptations 
 abounded to do as others did. It was not evi- 
 dently God's world yet. How could you be con- 
 tent before God's world should come, while it 
 still seemed mostly the devil's world? 
 
 John's own character and example illustrated 
 the difficulty. He did not even come into the 
 abodes of men himself, but they had to go out 
 to him. He dressed like a fugitive ; he lived an 
 unnatural life. Men admired him, but few could 
 imitate such a life. It was forbidding to most 
 men. Besides, tho strict, noble, and fearless, John 
 lacks warmth and breadth of nature. He seems 
 a man who expects God, not a man who has 
 found God. It is not God's world yet that he 
 lives in, but he waits for God's world to come. 
 
20 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 " There is a gospel/' he says, but he is not able 
 to tell you what it is. This does not constitute 
 a gospel. Men will soon be tired of hearing it. 
 It will keep John's stern face to the front, but it 
 makes no sunshine in his face. This is the char- 
 acter of the ascetic temperament always. The 
 ascetics tell you how you can contrive to get an 
 exceptional vision of God. They have their cere- 
 monial or their austere manner of life, which, if 
 you will enter upon, will possibly let an occa- 
 sional sight of God into your soul. But God does 
 not habitually belong in their world. God's light 
 does not naturally shine upon them. You must 
 go out of the world to find God. The real king- 
 dom of God has not yet come ; but you may 
 make shift as you can, while you wait for it. As 
 for common people who live ordinary lives and 
 do nothing exceptional, there is no immediate 
 gospel for them in this world. Their gospel is 
 yet to come. 
 
 It is some faint survival of this ascetic idea 
 that we still see in the thought that a church is 
 holy ground, apart from the world at large, which 
 does not yet belong to God. In church you may 
 find God exceptionally, as you do not find him 
 elsewhere. It is the same faint survival of the 
 
JOHN THE BAPTIST 21 
 
 old asceticism that preserves Lent. Here is a 
 little period when you go out of the world and 
 retire to the desert to hear John preach the doc- 
 trine of repentance. You fast and live excep- 
 tionally, and you may catch sight of God, who 
 does not yet belong in the whole horizon of your 
 life. The kingdom of God still waits. Whereas 
 the only true gospel that fills a man's soul is that 
 of one who can say: " Lo ! the kingdom of God 
 is here. It is within you. This life is God's. 
 Now are ye the sons of God. Live then here and 
 every day, not in Lent alone, not in the desert, 
 but in every place, as the child of God." The 
 ascetic John did not see that. The ascetic spirit 
 never sees it. Therefore, the reformation of John 
 could not live, much less create a religion. 
 
 John's end is very pathetic. Close to one of 
 the pools on the Jordan, where John was wont to 
 baptize, they say, rose a palace of the mean and 
 low-lived Herod, John's opposite in character, 
 station, and method of life. He had put away 
 his wife, the daughter of a king, to take the wife 
 of his brother. John called sin by its shortest 
 name. Word was brought the king that this 
 intrepid prophet dared to denounce him in the 
 presence of the populace, with whom already he 
 
22 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 was sufficiently unpopular. The king swooped 
 down from his fortress, and bore John away to 
 the frontier castle of Machaerus bevond the Dead 
 Sea. Rumor was that even Herod did not dare 
 at first to put John to death, but let his disciples 
 come and go to visit him in prison. It was from 
 here that he sent men to learn of Jesus, "Art 
 thou he that should come ? " But the wicked 
 woman could not forgive John for attacking her. 
 Every one remembers the story of the revel in 
 the castle, the graceful dancing girl, and Herod's 
 insane promise, and the executioner despatched 
 to John's solitary cell. Where now was the com- 
 ing kingdom of God that this faithful man had 
 proclaimed ? Where now was the righteous God 
 who ruled the earth ? Did the prophet despair, 
 or doubt the fact of righteousness ? Did his 
 faith die at last, as the light of this world was 
 cut off ? No : that was never the manner of 
 the prophets. They were in the hands of God. 
 Should the soldier despair of his cause, because 
 his turn came to die ? No : the Almighty reigned. 
 The kingdom which had not come would yet come 
 to the longing eyes of men. 
 
 It is the fashion nowadays to laugh at the folly 
 of the ascetic life. Let those who laugh at it be 
 
JOHN THE BAPTIST 23 
 
 sure that they have something nobler. Who now 
 cares for Herod, whom Galilee looked up to and 
 feared ? The man who tried to live for himself 
 did the world nothing but harm, whereas the man 
 who lived for God still lives in his pure influ- 
 ence over every soul of Christendom. John's life, 
 which seemed to fail, succeeded. He won a place 
 among the great names of history. He bore a 
 part in bringing in the reign of justice and peace 
 among men. He serves God yet as a pure and 
 brave memory in the souls of men. 
 
II. 
 
 NICODEMUS, THE PHARISEE. 
 
 " I ^HE story is that Jesus had come up to Jeru- 
 -*• salem to the Passover feast. In some poor 
 and cheap part of the city, such as the lower class 
 of pilgrims frequented, in a little, bare, upper 
 chamber, you may think of him as receiving oc- 
 casional guests. Here occurs the perfectly dra- 
 matic picture of an interview between the peasant 
 rabbi from Galilee and Nicodemus, a member 
 of the Jewish Sanhedrim, or senate of seventy. 
 The Jewish senator, leaving his spacious house, 
 his face muffled, with perhaps a single slave in 
 attendance, threading the dark, narrow streets, 
 the Passover moon filtering its light from above 
 into the crevices of the city, knocks at last at the 
 humble house, and inquires in low tones for a 
 certain Jesus lodging there. He is shown up into 
 the low room, possibly crowded already with 
 Jesus' poor countrymen and disciples. There 
 
XICODEMUS 25 
 
 this Pharisee of rank stands in his fine robes and 
 broad phylacteries, with inquisitive, intellectual 
 face, to study the strange new prophet, whose 
 truth-loving eyes in turn penetrate his visitor and 
 read his character. A cheap lamp, such as they 
 furnish in lodging-houses, burns dimly as these 
 two representative men talk together into the 
 night; and the disciples, tired of hearing, fall 
 asleep, stretched on the floor. So much for the 
 picture. 
 
 The Pharisees, to whom Nicodemus belonged, 
 were the religious leaders of the time, as their 
 name probably suggests. They were the Puritans 
 among the Hebrews. They aimed to maintain 
 and teach the holy law. They even went beyond 
 the law, holding that there was a considerable 
 body of teaching that had come down by tradi- 
 tion from Moses. This traditional law partly ex- 
 plained and partly re-enforced the written laws. 
 You may roughly liken it to the English common 
 law, which grows out of and depends upon the 
 rulings of the courts. So the Pharisees counted 
 as sacred whatever they had inherited from an 
 older time, till they had accumulated a mass of 
 rules touching every part of their lives, — about 
 food and drink, about marriage, about the Sab- 
 
26 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 bath and what could or could not be done upon 
 it, about the tithing of anise and pepper-corns, 
 about washings and the purification of dishes. 
 
 The Pharisees also taught a strict and benevo- 
 lent morality : " Let thine house stand open in 
 the streets, and let the poor be the children of 
 thy house." " Speak little, do much, and receive 
 all men with a friendly countenance." " Judge 
 every man according to the scale of justice." 
 "Judge not thy neighbor, till thou standest in his 
 place." " Count thyself with the oppressed and 
 not with the oppressors." " Listen to reviling 
 words, and answer not again." " Do all from the 
 love of God." And, summing up the law, " Do 
 nothing to thy neighbor which is hateful to thy- 
 self." The Pharisees were strenuous believers 
 in the doctrines of future rewards and punish- 
 ments, and of the immortality of the soul, being 
 opposed to the materialistic tendency of the 
 times, and of the richer party of Sadducees. 
 
 The Pharisees were not men who professed 
 the law, but were unwilling or afraid to do what 
 the law bade. On the contrary, they were pa- 
 triots and martyrs. When, not long after Jesus' 
 death, an attempt was made to put up a heathen 
 image in the temple, thousands of people threw 
 
NICODEMUS 27 
 
 themselves before the governor, and cried, "We 
 are willing to die." The war that led to the 
 destruction of Jerusalem was essentially a relig- 
 ious war, which the Jews might have escaped if 
 they had not been willing to die for what they 
 held to be right. Such was the characteristic tem- 
 per of the Pharisees, who constituted and guided 
 public opinion for three hundred years. Not 
 very numerous, forming an exclusive society of 
 almost six thousand men, to which, however, the 
 poorest Hebrew citizen might have access by 
 fulfilling its strict conditions, the Pharisees were 
 everywhere looked up to. They numbered among 
 themselves, if not the most wealth, the best 
 families in the land. In the synagogues of the 
 country towns you would have seen their devout 
 women among the most regular attendants and 
 trustworthy supporters. The chief teachers were 
 Pharisees, such as the renowned Hillel, whom 
 Jesus may have seen when he came up as a boy 
 to the temple, and his famous grandson, Gamaliel, 
 Paul's teacher, perhaps the greatest man of Jesus' 
 contemporaries. Paul himself was of a Pharisee 
 family. Jesus was undoubtedly educated by 
 Pharisee teachings in the synagogue at Nazareth. 
 Nicodemus is an excellent specimen of his 
 
28 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 order. The common fashion of belittling his 
 character is not warranted by the story, which 
 makes him appear a rather superior man. How 
 many of the upper class, deacons of rich churches 
 with reputations to be talked about, or doctors of 
 divinity, graduates of the university, can we 
 count, who would go out of their way to look up 
 an unlearned and humble teacher? How many 
 well-to-do people are we sure of, who would rec- 
 ognize Jesus if he were to appear to-day ? But 
 Nicodemus skulked to Jesus' lodging under cover 
 of night, some one says. How many, we ask, 
 would have ventured to go at all, while as yet 
 the rest of his very respectable party looked upon 
 Jesus with extreme suspicion, when he was not 
 an authorized teacher, when evil rumors came 
 that he broke the laws and disregarded the Sab- 
 bath and consorted with low people ? The story 
 later on gives two further very creditable glimpses 
 of Nicodemus. One is in the presence of the 
 full Sanhedrim. They were excitedly discussing 
 the dangerous and radical tendencies of Jesus' 
 life and teachings. They honestly thought that 
 Jesus was imperilling existing institutions. They 
 had sent men to arrest him, who, being im- 
 pressed with his teaching and the hold that he 
 
NICODEMUS 29 
 
 had upon the people, returned without him. Then 
 Nicodemus is said to have risen to demand justice 
 for Jesus, reminding his angry associates that 
 their law condemned no man without a hearing. 
 Now, not one man out of ten has either the self- 
 possession or the courage to stand thus alone 
 against the crowd, not of another class, but the 
 best men of his own class. The example of the 
 American Congress, or any political convention, 
 witnesses to this. 
 
 Once more, after the crucifixion, when most of 
 the chosen disciples had run away, Nicodemus 
 appears as one of the few who brought ointments, 
 a hundred pounds' weight, — a very generous and 
 costly gift. He came himself, the story goes : 
 other rich men would have been content, if they 
 did anything, to send their servants. Of course, 
 such a man never voted for the crucifixion. Per- 
 haps he would not be present where it seemed 
 useless to raise his voice against the mad ma- 
 jority. 
 
 We have said enough to show that Nicodemus's 
 character, if not of the highest type, was unusually 
 high. We take him to represent nearly the best 
 moral material that you see anywhere. His was 
 a candid and truth-loving mind, willing to see 
 
30 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 both sides of a question, — not a common thing 
 in this world. He was not blindly prejudiced by 
 the traditions of his order. As men go, he was 
 remarkably appreciative, — a man of ideals, in- 
 terested in the loftiest subjects, eager for relig- 
 ious illumination from any genuine source. You 
 would have trusted Nicodemus as a fair judge 
 and an honorable citizen. You would never have 
 appealed in vain for the poor, for the support of 
 the temple, for a subscription to help the Jews in 
 Rome to build their new synagogue. We should 
 be proud to have the like of Nicodemus, so ear- 
 nest and cultured, come to live in our street, and 
 glad to hear that so reputable and religious a 
 man had taken seats in our church. We should 
 like to have all the men in a Christian church as 
 honest, trustworthy, conscientious, and benevo- 
 lent as this Pharisee is represented to have been. 
 Nicodemus stands as the representative of the 
 best that the Pharisees could produce. Why was 
 it not enough ? Give us a world of men as con- 
 scientious, earnest, and religious-minded as Nico- 
 demus, — why would not this be a good enough 
 world for any one ? Level men up to Nicodemus's 
 standard, and what is the use trying in this life to 
 level men any higher ? Wherein, then, do we find 
 
NICODEMUS 3r 
 
 Nicodemus unsatisfactory to our moral sense ? 
 " You must be born again/' or from above, says 
 Jesus, as tho he had said, " You have not begun 
 yet to live." What is this lack in Nicodemus, that 
 when we met him on the street, upon the level of 
 common men, we had not felt, but which in the 
 presence of Jesus we vaguely recognize ? Nico- 
 demus's lack was precisely what Jesus intimated 
 He had plenty of moral and spiritual capacity. 
 He wanted moral and spiritual life. It is as 
 when you see a fine log of oak. The log is 
 splendid material for warmth and heat, but it 
 needs the kindling touch of the fire. This is 
 what Nicodemus did not possess. He neither 
 blazed himself, nor was it in him to make any one 
 else blaze. The man of the Pharisee type is 
 cold and cautious, even in his charitable duties. 
 You cannot make a fire with a single log or 
 coal, tho of the best. It will not ignite. You 
 must put logs and coals together. So with men. 
 There is a certain close contact of man with his 
 brother man that we call " the sense of human- 
 ity." Men as individuals will not ignite. You 
 must bring them into a certain kind of sympa- 
 thetic relation together. Nicodemus stood out- 
 side of this new relation of brotherly humanity. 
 
32 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 It is possible to give alms to the poor without 
 touching the hands of the poor, like the prince 
 who tosses coins to the crowd from his carriage. 
 It is possible to do public service in such a spirit, 
 as tho you were only serving yourself, without 
 feeling the popular pulse. We send such men to 
 our legislatures and to Congress, who perform 
 their public service with no sense of a common 
 humanity thrilling them and commanding alle- 
 giance. Nicodemus was the best of that kind of 
 men. 
 
 Another thing. You must have the free air 
 draw through your pile of logs to make a fire. 
 That is, you must be disposed, in that relation of 
 utter willingness and obedience, to let the divine 
 will do what it may with you. What you are here 
 for is to give heat and light. Let the air come, 
 then, to the wood. Let the wood, being here on 
 purpose to blaze, catch the flame and be fanned 
 with the wind. But the Pharisee had covered his 
 life over as with ashes, with deadening rites, con- 
 ventions, observances, and rules, till you could 
 hardly get at the real man with a breath of fresh 
 air. Did the Pharisee ask, " How can I help my 
 poor brothers ? " No : he asked, " How much is 
 it the custom to give, or what do the others give?" 
 
NICODEMUS 33 
 
 Did he ask, " How can I make the most of the 
 Sabbath ? " Never! He asked instead, "What 
 things must I refrain from doing, so as not to run 
 any risks ? " Did he ask, " How shall I come 
 directly to the heart of the Eternal ? " He did 
 not see the Eternal at all ; but he pored over the 
 letter of sacred books as a miserable makeshift 
 for seeing the face of God. The Pharisee did 
 not think that the log was to burn and give heat 
 and light : he did not think that all that life was 
 for was to put log upon log and give the flame 
 breathing space through them ; but he thought 
 that the logs were to be preserved as they were. 
 He forgot that the stanchest oak logs, if you bury 
 them, will go to decay. 
 
 The seamy side of Pharisaism explains itself. 
 It was started as a system of Puritanism ; but no 
 system of Puritanism was ever started that did 
 not run out at last into sham, self-complacency, 
 hypocrisy, moral deadness, spiritual pride. Puri- 
 tanism is an attempt to keep yourself intact, in 
 some form or other to save your own souls, or, 
 if you please, to have moral culture for your- 
 selves and the families of people like you. As 
 soon, however, as any virtuous set or congrega- 
 tion of people withdraw themselves from hearty 
 
34 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 sympathy with other less virtuous or more igno- 
 rant people about them, the dry rot of self-com- 
 placency sets in to destroy them. Men were not 
 meant to live, even in select communities any 
 more than as individuals, apart from the others. 
 There was never yet a man or a set of men who 
 thought of their own superiority and prided them- 
 selves on their virtue or their religion over com- 
 mon men, who had heat or light enough to help 
 other men to be warm or to see. It is as tho the 
 oak log cried out, " See what good wood I am ! " 
 It does not warm you to say that. The only 
 thing that you ask of the oak log is that it shall 
 catch fire ; and when it has caught fire, then and 
 not till then will it have kindling power to make 
 other wood less firm and solid blaze too. 
 
 The Pharisees, moreover, because they aimed 
 to preserve everything as it was, were constitu- 
 tionally timid. The system was constituted so 
 as to prevent change or movement. " See," they 
 said, " we have a high standard. We have at- 
 tained it with difficulty. Any shock might tumble 
 us to destruction." The Pharisees did not have 
 any deep faith in their institutions or their relig- 
 ion. Men never have any real faith who are 
 afraid that something may hurt the truth, so that 
 
NICODEMUS 35 
 
 you must handle it carefully, — as tho a man were 
 afraid that he would break his limbs if he stirred 
 to use them ! 
 
 The Pharisees believed, indeed, in a vague 
 way, in the coming kingdom of God ; but they 
 did little or nothing to bring it in. They merely 
 waited, as tho it had nothing to do with men 
 in this world. They were content to keep up 
 their petty organization of six thousand families ; 
 they were glad to make occasional wealthy pros- 
 elytes from their Gentile neighbors ; but as for 
 devoting their lives to make this world over into 
 the kingdom of God, they did not catch the idea. 
 That was what Jesus meant, when he told Nico- 
 demus that he was like a man who had yet to be 
 born in order to be alive. What was the well- 
 to-do Nicodemus doing to make this a better 
 world ? Was there any light and gladness where 
 Nicodemus walked, such as a son of God ought 
 to carry? Did a spirit of joy and health go from 
 him to kindle men's souls ? Were his courage 
 and generosity contagious to seize other men 
 by ? No : he was not awake. He had no spark 
 of enthusiasm. His God was far off, not a living 
 God here to-day. He touched men with no fine 
 uplifting sense of the common humanity. A 
 
36 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 thousand men as good as Nicodemus would not 
 have saved Jerusalem, or banished its poverty, or 
 lifted men out of their degrading vices. A dozen 
 men, not nearly so good as Nicodemus, who 
 nevertheless caught the fire of the Christ's love 
 and the Christ's faith, could do more for the re- 
 generation of the city than all the Pharisee sect. 
 You feel this the moment that Jesus and Nico- 
 demus meet. In Jesus' presence Nicodemus is 
 a lay figure. It is not the stature of a well 
 and real man. It is a sick man, no doubt with 
 rugged constitution, who may be made well 
 again, but who hardly stands up at all in com- 
 parison with Jesus' overflowing health and bound- 
 less life. Imagine the new possibilities that 
 Jesus set before Nicodemus ! Imagine what 
 such a man as that might have risen to be and 
 to do ! 
 
 We have spoken with no reference to a mere 
 historical retrospect. Nicodemus's story is the 
 type of what is to-day in Boston or New York as 
 truly as in Jerusalem. We have spoken idly, if 
 we have not shown that the Pharisee type is here. 
 Neither have we spoken in any disparagement 
 of this type at its best. It is of the best moral 
 fibre that we know. It takes Christ's name to 
 
NICODEMUS 37 
 
 swear by. It takes the Christian ritual and cere- 
 monies, and fine words to pray in. But no bap- 
 tism or holy names or words make it Christian. 
 The kindling baptism of "the Spirit of Christ/' a 
 vision of the Christ's ideal, the Christ-like love 
 that offers all upon the altar of the divine human- 
 ity, the breath of the life of God on the soul, 
 alone can redeem our modern Pharisaism and fill 
 Nicodemus's being with joy and hope. 
 
III. 
 
 NATHANAEL, THE PURE IN HEART. 
 
 /^ ALILEE, Jesus' home, was the northern 
 ^-^ division of Palestine, being roughly two 
 days' journey from Jerusalem through the inter- 
 vening district of Samaria. It was more populous 
 and fertile than Judea. In Jesus' time it was full 
 of villages. The hillsides were terraced with 
 gardens. Considerable towns — Capernaum, Ti- 
 berias, and others — were clustered about the 
 lake. A varied commerce was carried up to 
 Jerusalem and to Egypt, across the desert to 
 Damascus, or over the ridge of the Lebanon 
 range to the Tyrian coast, where you might have 
 seen ships from the Nile, from Rome, from Tar- 
 sus, and from Athens. Large towns lay among 
 the hills over the lake and the Jordan valley to 
 the east. There were strong castles, palaces, 
 race-courses, theatres, — the marks of a rich and 
 pleasure-loving class. But most of the swarm- 
 
NATHANAEL 39 
 
 ing population lived meagrely, being heavily taxed 
 and oppressed. The Galilean people were a 
 mixed race. There were towns of Greek names 
 where you would have heard Greek commonly 
 spoken. There were people, like Herod's family, 
 from the old Edomite or Idumean tribes, the he- 
 reditary enemies of the Hebrews. There were 
 Syro-Phcenicians from the coast, like the woman 
 who came to Jesus to be healed. There were 
 also villages where the Hebrews were the leading 
 people. Cana, Nathanael's home, was one of 
 these villages. No one knows precisely where 
 the little village was, — probably within ten miles 
 or an afternoon's walk from Nazareth. It was the 
 same Cana where Jesus, early in his public life, 
 attended a wedding. Indeed, there is an old 
 tradition that Nathanael was the bridegroom on 
 that occasion. 
 
 The moral condition of Galilee in Jesus' time is 
 said to have been bad. The influx of foreigners 
 with strange customs and foreign rites had been 
 going on at least since Alexander the Great and 
 his successors had overrun the country. Con- 
 tinual wars had wrought their natural demoraliza- 
 tion. An unusual tide of luxury, upborne by the 
 wearying toil of the multitudes, now lifted its un- 
 
40 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 sightly waves. The wonder is how, in such times 
 as these, with alluring vice in front and despair 
 dogging men's steps behind, any virtue or faith 
 survived. The fact is, however, that there seems 
 never to have been a higher level of character or 
 a more earnest and trustworthy people than you 
 find throughout Palestine in this very period. 
 The rise of John the Baptist and the ready hear- 
 ing that he commanded, the high-minded men, 
 such as Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and 
 Gamaliel, the friends who almost everywhere 
 await Jesus and rally to his side as disciples, the 
 devout women who believe in him, glimpses of 
 figures of the true-hearted, once seen, but hardly 
 again, — the Roman centurion w T ho had built a 
 synagogue, the centurion who stood by the cross, 
 the dying robber who out of his pain recognized 
 Jesus, — these facts bespeak an undercurrent of 
 wholesome vitality that no temptations could se- 
 duce nor despair and doubt kill ; as when in the 
 height of a fever, while the disease rages over the 
 body, the skilled physician is aware of the little 
 red globules in the blood, which, if they are vital 
 enough and if they are not too few, will con- 
 quer the fever. Such are the vital germs in a 
 party, in an army, in the supporters of every 
 
NATHANAEL 41 
 
 good cause, often unseen, unthanked, wonder- 
 fully provided by God when the time comes, on 
 the proper proportion of whom hangs success. 
 Would to God it could be given to us to be 
 counted by the Great Physician in that class of 
 the saving life-germs, the true-hearted and sound, 
 whom the fever, smoulder or burn as it may in 
 the blood of the nation, cannot subdue ! 
 
 They say that a naturalist, given one or two 
 bones, will construct the creature to which they 
 belonged, and, if you please, draw a rough pict- 
 ure of what he looked like. So out of two or 
 three bare facts we can make out what kind of a 
 man Nathanael was. We make him out, in the 
 first place, to be a simple, ordinary man of the 
 great middle class, with a bit of a plot of land 
 outside the village, with a few olive-trees and 
 grape-vines, and a little house built of mud or 
 stones of the field in a narrow street of the town. 
 We think of him as hardly older than Jesus, — 
 thirty years more or less, — with a wife and little 
 children, perhaps, in the tiny home in Cana. 
 You would not have seen anything peculiar 
 about him, as he drove his oxen in and out of the 
 town gate, to distinguish him from other plain 
 men. " Merely an average citizen/' you would 
 
42 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 have said. But it is these average citizens, as 
 we call them, of the great middle class that 
 nearly everything good comes from. It is pre- 
 cisely in this class that you find most abundantly 
 these vital germs of the national blood that we 
 spoke of. These vital germs of the true-hearted 
 do not, probably, flourish so well among the 
 well-to-do, or prosperous class. They exist, but 
 they are apt to be thinner, less vital, and fewer. 
 There is some fatal tendency at work to kill them 
 out, as tho they had a harder time to live. In 
 
 7 J 
 
 the great revolution in England, in the days of 
 Cromwell, and over and over in the history of 
 our country, it was the men of the middle class, 
 the mere average citizens, who not only gave the 
 muscular force and the sinews of war, but the 
 brains, the courage, the persistence, and the virtue, 
 — yes, the men of mark to be leaders and states- 
 men. Nathanael came of what Nature calls her 
 best stock, — of a noble mother, we may be sure ; 
 of pure, honest, faithful parentage. Who wants 
 anything higher than that ? Nathanael was one 
 of the men who went to hear John the Baptist, 
 and was doubtless baptized. Not that he spe- 
 cially needed to repent and lead a new life, but 
 because, like Jesus, if baptism was good for 
 
NATHAXAEL 43 
 
 others, it was good for him to do whatever he 
 wanted others to do. 
 
 It is a puzzle to know what any one committed 
 to the old-fashioned doctrine of total depravity 
 would make of what Jesus says of Nathanael, — 
 " an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile." 
 Jesus had barely seen Nathanael. The latter 
 did not know Jesus - at all or that he had ever 
 seen him. He was suspicious of the Nazareth 
 people, who had no great reputation. But Jesus 
 instinctively recognized him at once as his kind of 
 man. 
 
 Jesus' theory of human nature was quite dif- 
 ferent from that of the theologies. He held no 
 doctrine whatever that men are all born corrupt, 
 as tho a physician were to teach, because he finds 
 average men out of health, that men were all born 
 with disease in their blood. But Jesus held, as 
 the analogy is everywhere else, that some men at 
 least are born well, with health in their veins. 
 He took Nathanael to be such a man, — a really 
 healthy, simple, sound, moral nature ■ in short, one 
 of the people whom we think of as naturally 
 good. We think of him as growing up in the 
 midst of a corrupt population, where a boy saw 
 and heard all manner of profane, vulgar, and 
 
44 JESUS AXD THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 vicious things ; but he had no affinity for such 
 things. His natural tastes and sympathies were 
 clean, and whatever was not clean did not cleave 
 to him. We think of him growing up in the 
 midst of a trading community, where a boy saw 
 and heard of the tricks of the trade. He heard 
 it said that a man could not succeed and be 
 honest ; but it was not a temptation for Nathanael 
 to go into any business where a man was expected 
 to lie. At the same time we do not think of 
 Nathanael as any less a thorough boy. We think 
 of him as no timid or cow r ardly youth, but out- 
 spoken and fearless. It did not occur to him, 
 however, that he was doing anything else than 
 what was his nature. His wonder would have 
 been that bovs or men could bear to soil their 
 hands or their souls, when any one was so vastly 
 happier to be clean. His wonder would have 
 been that men could bear to be stingy, when it 
 was so vastly pleasanter to be obliging ; that 
 men could be foolish and quarrel instead of 
 the easier thing, being good-tempered ; that men 
 could hate each other, when so much wretched- 
 ness wanted to be borne with and cured. We 
 think of Nathanael as a man whom others came 
 to for help and advice, perfectly trustworthy, 
 
NATHANAEL 45 
 
 whom you would have left your treasures with if 
 you went on a journey, or appointed in your will 
 to be executor and guardian. 
 
 One is reminded of the life of Abraham Lin- 
 coin. He bore some of the marks of his rude 
 frontier life. Nevertheless, without being as 
 faultless as some smaller gems of his type, he 
 strikes one as the type of man like Nathanael, 
 being essentially a large, generous, well-born, 
 wholesome nature. It was no temptation to Lin- 
 coln to take more than belonged to him, to ask 
 great fees, to think of his salary instead of his 
 work. It would have been as unnatural for such 
 a man to accept bribes as it is unnatural for the 
 mastiff to betray his master. What a confidence 
 we have in such a man in those respects in which 
 his goodness is simply his nature ! There is no 
 danger or strain of temptation in those respects. 
 The man cannot be made to take what is not his, 
 to tell a lie, to desert his friends, to disappoint 
 love, or to give up a cause. It is as tho you had 
 your road-bed laid on one of Nature's causeways, 
 bedded in the granite rock, beyond the risk of ac- 
 cident. Thank God that he makes such men, 
 who do not have to struggle to be good, being 
 born of a large pattern ! How we admire them ! 
 
46 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 How beautiful their simple, natural superiority 
 seems to us ordinary people, born with mixed 
 nature, with doubtful tendencies ; born with sad 
 streaks of meanness or timidity, with our sight 
 not perfectly true, with baser passions, with in- 
 stincts that catch hold of the good, but also with 
 lower animal instincts to which evil things cling 
 Yes ; and who, when we do what is right, are apt 
 to plume ourselves on it, as tho it were anything 
 out of the common for a man to do right. And 
 then we see one of these Nature's noblemen, sin- 
 cere, unaffected, simple-hearted, who does " good 
 as the bees make honey," because it is man's 
 true nature to do good. We are ashamed that 
 we should ever think what we do extraordinary, 
 as tho a soldier were to think it extraordinary 
 that he does not run away, or an engineer were 
 to ask praise for running his engine. 
 
 We said that there is every analogy why Nature 
 should produce men born to goodness, for she 
 gives us men born to everything else. She gives 
 us men born to visions of art, natural geniuses. 
 She gives to some a native power of memory. 
 She gives born athletes. She gives us born 
 mathematicians like Colburn and musicians like 
 Beethoven. She raises men up to whom it is 
 
XATHAXAEL 47 
 
 natural to think and study, to ask questions and 
 find answers. Why should she not give us men 
 and women born with pure thoughts, with native 
 generosity, with instinctive virtue and justice, with 
 courage, with large, quick sympathies, who would 
 rather serve than be served ? Nature undoubt- 
 edly does this. "O heart of man naturally 
 Christian ! " says one of the old writers. 
 
 The truth is, this native goodness sets the 
 standard of what a man ought to be. Nathanael's 
 type is not an exceptional type, but it is the 
 normal type, such as every man ought to conform 
 to ; as tho, when Nature produced a perfectly 
 shaped and healthy human body, she were to say: 
 " See ! That is my pattern for all human bodies. 
 Model by that. Call that the rule, and call all 
 the bodies that fail of the standard misshapen 
 or diseased." 
 
 Men see the great athlete go by, and hundreds 
 of youths set to work to make their bodies like 
 his. They are ashamed of puny limbs and limp 
 muscles. Men see the natural scholar, — an Agas- 
 siz, for example, — and a whole university is stirred 
 to build ordinary minds up to the model of w r hat 
 a clear, vitalized, well-equipped mind should be. 
 So when men see the normal tvoe of a Nathaniel, 
 
48 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 — frank, thoroughly open, pure in heart. There 
 is the mark of what every man ought to be. You 
 cannot bear to be sordid and greedy in such a 
 presence. All about Nathanael there is a proc- 
 ess of levelling upward, precisely as when boys 
 live on the same street with the athlete. 
 
 We see the difference now between Nathanael 
 and Nicodemus. We respected Nicodemus, and 
 had to pronounce him, as men go, an unusually 
 satisfactory man \ but he strikes us as an artificial 
 man, not simple and natural like the stalwart vil- 
 lager, who, as seems probable, had never even 
 joined the Pharisee sect, and most likely found 
 their ceremonies and rules irksome. Nicodemus, 
 we take it, would have given liberally to the new 
 synagogue, but he would have wanted to know 
 first what the others gave. He would have gone 
 to call on Jesus, preferring to go under cover of 
 night ; but Nathanael would have given his heart 
 with his money. It would hardly have occurred 
 to Nathanael that he was taking a risk, to do what 
 was right or to stand by his friend. Nathanael 
 did not even know that his life was precious. 
 
 There is a possible sense of discouragement to 
 us ordinary people at the sight of pure natural 
 goodness, as the ordinary scholar sometimes 
 
NATHANAEL 49 
 
 despairs at the sight of the men who seem to 
 learn without effort. We have certain compensa- 
 tions, however. In the first place, the ordinary 
 scholar, even if he cannot attain to the ease of 
 the other, can succeed in doing everything that the 
 other does. As while you would prefer Nature's 
 solid road-bed for your track, yet, if you choose, 
 you can make a road-bed of your own over the 
 bogs or across the ravine. You can make it solid 
 above risk of its giving way. There is nothing 
 that art, skill, cost, patience, may not do for your 
 ordinary nature. You have known men, observ- 
 ing the laws, build up weak bodies into splendid 
 athletic condition. You have known common 
 scholars to outrun the natural scholars. So vou 
 have known faulty, seamy natures built up into 
 moral vigor and elasticity. The fact is that 
 Nature works to help us, and not the other way. 
 Nature is always saying to the feeble and imper- 
 fect thing, Try to live ; try to grow • move up to 
 the standard. Her currents of life wait to flow 
 through you as soon as you obey. For the differ- 
 ence between one man and another is not so 
 much a difference in nature, as tho there were 
 different varieties of men, — for there is only one 
 common nature, — but the difference is, as it 
 
50 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 were, in nutrition ; that is, in the vitalizing of the 
 nature, one man being more alive than the other. 
 " Be more alive, " Nature says, " and I will make 
 you strong." 
 
 Besides, the element of self-consciousness is 
 not altogether evil when once it is restrained to 
 modesty. There is a sense of satisfaction and 
 enjoyment in supplementing Nature, as of the 
 engineer who enjoys building the somewhat diffi- 
 cult bridge more than laying the ordinary road- 
 way. Nathanael, who did not feel our tempta- 
 tions, had not the joy in resisting that we may 
 feel who have honestly built up our trestle-work 
 to the point where we stand secure under the 
 throb of the passing train ; as the man who has 
 always lived on the hills is not so happy as he 
 who has lived in the smoky air below, and then 
 comes to the hills ; as certainly no one enjoys 
 health more than he who has conquered it out of 
 the teeth of disease. 
 
 So with moral health, man's only normal state. 
 We may well be filled with shame not to possess 
 it. We may see the ridiculousness and pitiable- 
 ness of harboring pride or superiority over men 
 who have less health than we, as tho one conva- 
 lescent should look down on others or despise 
 
NATHANAEL 5 I 
 
 the sick ; but we have a righteous sense of joy, 
 thankfulness, and ecstasy that we are at last on 
 the highway of health. Even Nathanael, who 
 had never needed a physician or knew what sick- 
 ness was, might not be so glad ; and he might be 
 no more modest than we are, who know what it 
 is to have been morally weak, and now catch the 
 perfectly delightful hope of being strong and well, 
 as the children of God. 
 
IV. 
 
 PETER AND JOHN THE DISCIPLES. 
 
 JESUS' friends are often thought of as poor 
 people. But they did not belong to the 
 class to whom you have to give alms. They 
 were merely poor as the average citizen of Gali- 
 lee was poor. There was leisure for gossip, for 
 lessons in the synagogue, for a holiday to hear a 
 new prophet on the Jordan. We do not' believe 
 that they had to work so hard or so many hours 
 a day as the poor work among us. Indeed, pov- 
 erty was not so dreadful an enemy in the mild 
 climate of Palestine as it is in the vast Christian 
 cities of England and America, where cold adds 
 its terrors. Among Jesus' disciples were two 
 pairs of brothers from Bethsaida, one of the fish- 
 ing villages on the shore of the lake of Tiberias. 
 Tiberias was a little fresh-water lake, about fifteen 
 miles long and six wide, through which flowed 
 the Jordan River. Here was the scene of most 
 
PETER AND JOHN 53 
 
 of Jesus' public work. Here, where the cara- 
 van road left the lake at Capernaum, was Jesus' 
 favorite resting place. Near by was the beauti- 
 ful plain of Gennesaret, with its almost tropical 
 growth of fruits. Across the lake to the east were 
 bare, precipitous hills, where Jesus found solitude. 
 You could climb from the level of the lake to 
 the mountains upon the west and north, and per- 
 haps see on the blue of the Mediterranean the 
 packets that passed from Tyre to Joppa, Caesarea, 
 or Alexandria. The fish of the lake of Tibe- 
 rias were well-known articles of commerce, being 
 salted and exported. Considerable numbers of 
 families with their hired men were supported 
 by the business. Their fishing boats dotted the 
 surface of the lake. 
 
 One of the stones is that Jesus made the 
 acquaintance of the young fishermen by the Jor- 
 dan, where they had gone to hear John the Bap- 
 tist. It would seem by another account that he 
 found them at their work, — according to one Gos- 
 pel, fishing; by another, cleaning their nets by the 
 sea. Luke says that Jesus, being pressed by 
 the crowd, asked permission of Simon to use his 
 boat from which to speak the better to the people 
 thronging the shore. Of Jesus' twelve apostles, 
 
54 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 strangely little is known ; in the case of Simon the 
 Cananean, Thaddeus, and Bartholomew, hardly 
 more than the bare mention of the name. The 
 two pairs of brothers, James and John, Peter and 
 Andrew, stand closest to Jesus, tho neither James 
 nor Andrew has any well-defined identity apart 
 from the better known brothers, John and Peter. 
 These two appear almost inseparable from Jesus. 
 He is more affectionately attached to them than 
 the others. He takes them and James into his 
 privacy, as in the garden of Gethsemane. Know- 
 ing them, you know what the best of the disciples 
 were. 
 
 It was not uncommon in Judea for a teacher to 
 gather about himself a little company of attached 
 followers. This had been the case with John 
 the Baptist, whose devoted friends followed him 
 to the fortress where he gave up his life. The 
 claims of personal friendship and discipleship 
 overrode even the claims of the family, much 
 more the interests of a man's business. 
 
 Peter, and it would seem John also, were young 
 married men, and were partners in the fishery. 
 They gave up their trade and left their homes to 
 follow Jesus. To understand how Jesus could 
 have found men willing for his sake to relinquish 
 
PETER AND JOHN S5 
 
 everything, one must remember the extraordinary 
 expectations with which people's minds were filled. 
 The end of the old world was drawing near. The 
 pain, the poverty, the misfortune, the national 
 disgrace, the wicked oppression, would cease. 
 There would be a new king. Justice would at 
 last be done. If there was as much as a chance 
 that these startling events were at hand, what was 
 the fishing business by the lake that it should 
 bind a man down to turn his life into shekels 
 when soon life and death would be at issue ? The 
 disciples could hardly have made up their minds 
 at once that Jesus, a Nazareth man, was the 
 Prince whom people looked for; but there was 
 that in Jesus' bearing and manner of teaching — 
 he was so sincere, disinterested, and authoritative 
 — that when he said, "Come," it seemed wrong 
 not to come. Do you not know that there are 
 men with a quality of power, insight, and dignity 
 that it is hard to refuse ? Do they ask help, we 
 give it to them. Do they ask money, we are 
 stirred to contribute. Do they ask people's lives, 
 as such men did ask lives in the great Civil War, 
 men are moved to volunteer. So with Jesus' 
 royal personality, whom humble men instinctively 
 obeyed, from which the rich young ruler, when 
 he had refused, turned away sorrowful. 
 
$6 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 We do not understand that we have in Peter and 
 John any exceptional quality of men, that they so 
 readily became Jesus' disciples. On the contrary, 
 all that we find about the twelve convinces us 
 that they stand as types of average men of de- 
 cidedly common moral character. They were dull 
 men, extremely slow to comprehend their Master's 
 teaching, wanting to have even parables ex- 
 plained. They were superficial, with an eye for 
 outward success, numbers, crowds, popularity. 
 They were narrow and ungenerous. They did 
 not like it that some one not of their own number 
 should be healing in Jesus' name. They would 
 have liked to call fire down on a Samaritan vil- 
 lage that did not receive them. They were 
 jealous of each other and quarrelsome. James 
 and John appear scheming to secure the prom- 
 ise of the prime minister's place in the new king- 
 dom. What shall we get, says Peter, to pay 
 us for leaving all? It is the same men who 
 haggled over the price of their fish at the lake, 
 envious if another boat had better luck. What- 
 ever you make of the story of Peter trying to 
 walk on the sea, it stands as a reminiscence of 
 the conceit of a small, self-confident nature. 
 Another familiar story exhibits something in 
 
PETER AND JOHN S7 
 
 Peter of a spirit of worlclliness more offensive 
 and greedy, we suspect, than the mere words 
 convey, that provokes Jesus to turn on him and 
 say, "Get thee behind me, Satan." People often 
 speak of Thomas as the type of the sceptic, but 
 it is not the truth-loving sceptic, the earnest in- 
 quirer : it is only the common, stupid sceptic, 
 who doubts as easily as he believes. One of the 
 twelve was Judas, — a man, we suspect, money- 
 loving, weak, and over-shrewd rather than bad. 
 Remembering his piteous remorse and bitter 
 death, we cannot think of him as much worse 
 by nature than the eleven, who to a man ran 
 away in the hour of their Master's distress, as the 
 best of them could not keep awake through the 
 time of his anguish ; and then, in the trial, Peter, 
 the boaster, who had said that he would never 
 desert his Lord, steals in to look on, and before 
 Jesus' face denies that he knew him, while a few 
 hours later it is left to Joseph and Nicodemus 
 and a few women to care for the Master's body. 
 To the date of the crucifixion there is next to 
 nothing told of these disciples, except the fact 
 that they were disciples, to stir our admiration or 
 respect. There is not one of them that shows 
 the moral fibre of Nicodemus. There is not a 
 
58 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 particle of evidence that there is a Nathanael 
 among them. If Peter and John had had honor 
 and lands and position, think you, were they the 
 men to sacrifice all for Jesus ? They do not im- 
 press us so. It was comparatively easy and safe 
 to follow Jesus, or they would not have done it. 
 
 It is not, of course, strange that Jesus should 
 have loved poor and humble men, for there are 
 poor men — Nathanael, for example — who are 
 extraordinary in character; but these men were 
 ordinary in character, cowardly, untruthful, jeal- 
 ous, selfish, narrow-minded, the very kind of men 
 whom you would suppose Jesus would find it im- 
 possible to bear and associate with. Any one of 
 our American congregations ought, you say, to 
 produce in a moment twelve better men to make 
 apostles out of, that could be depended on, of 
 more insight and moral elevation, of large chiv- 
 alry, who would have died with Jesus. And yet 
 Jesus loved these ordinary men. What did he 
 find in them to love, or to think that he could 
 make into the quality of apostles? It is as tho 
 to the unpractised eye there were shown speci- 
 mens of gold-bearing earth or rock. The un- 
 practised eye, expecting to see nuggets of pure 
 gold, is disappointed at this mere ordinary-look- 
 
PETER AND JOHN 59 
 
 ing earth or rock. But the miner knows its value. 
 " See," he says, " there are grains of gold in that 
 earth, there are veins in the rock. It is extremely 
 precious," the practised miner says. His imagi- 
 nation leaps forward and sees the great bars of 
 pure gold that by and by, after the washing and 
 the crucible, will be made out of this very or- 
 dinary seeming earth. So with this ordinary 
 human nature. Looked at roughly, you do not 
 see anything noble in it. The world scoffs at it. 
 We do not want to see this common sand. 
 "Give us nuggets and bars and the clear-cut 
 coin from the mint," says the voice of the 
 world. " Nay," says the Christ, " give us this 
 ordinary human nature, with the gleam of the 
 gold of God that shines in it. What does it 
 matter that it has dross and alloy, since the pre- 
 cious value is in it besides ? " 
 
 Jesus' teaching is never that human nature is 
 ruined and worthless ; on the contrary, human 
 nature is lovable. Jesus is always spying out 
 something genuine in men. Making allowances 
 for bad defects and a good deal of selfishness, 
 Jesus knew that the disciples had a spirit of 
 honest loyalty. Their nature was mixed; but it 
 was not altogether for themselves that these men 
 
60 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 had left their business and homes, and risked 
 all to follow him. Stupid as they were in ap- 
 preciating their Master, they believed in him 
 and loved him. They really meant it when they 
 promised to die with him. Their impulses and 
 feelings, tho so far only emotional, at times rose 
 to the level of heroism. These rude men had 
 also a glimmering sense of ideals. It was be- 
 cause Jesus' character towered above them that 
 they reverenced him. They were men of patri- 
 otic mould, who caught visions of the new Israel 
 that w r as to be. Without clear insight of religion, 
 they had religious aspirations. Above all, they 
 had a sense of duty. They meant to do right. 
 You could appeal not in vain to their consciences. 
 You could even rebuke them, and they would 
 bear it, knowing that it was for their good. They 
 had the excellent quality of persistence, or hold- 
 ing out. They had been tested in all these re- 
 spects. Other men had also enrolled themselves 
 as Jesus' disciples, and had become tired or dis- 
 couraged, and had given him up ; but the twelve 
 had held on. No mere adventurers or time- 
 servers or self-seekers would have stayed with 
 Jesus. The disciples' qualities of faithfulness, 
 loyalty to a leader, personal affection, religious 
 
PETER AND JOHN 01 
 
 aspiration, patriotism, conscience, obedience to 
 ideals, — you are almost tempted to call these 
 rare qualities. In the form of the pure, refined 
 nugget of gold they are rare ; but mixed in the 
 dross and alloy they are very frequent, being 
 qualities of average human nature. They are 
 the qualities of the great middle class, — we mean 
 middle class not in means, but in morals, who are 
 neither rich nor poor in moral character. Alto- 
 gether below them are the poor, the only really 
 poor in this world, in whom these average qualities, 
 the gleams of the divine gold, are scant and thin, 
 lost in the bulk of the dross. God pity the 
 morally poor, the sad unfortunates who seem not 
 to have it in them to be faithful, in whom stir no 
 aspirations for holy and beautiful things, who 
 do not even admire the Christ when they see him ! 
 These only are poor. Be sure God does pity 
 them. Be sure, wherever one grain of the true 
 gold is hidden, there is love enough in the uni- 
 verse to redeem it. This divine gold has a magic 
 affinity to find its like and to gather every particle 
 to itself. 
 
 We liken Jesus to a soldier who has mustered 
 in a company of recruits. It is not necessary that 
 these be picked men, ready to make officers of ; 
 
62 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 it is not necessary that they should have had 
 experience in drilling or in the field, or that they 
 should be stronger or braver than common. All 
 that is necessary is that they shall be average 
 men, of ordinary qualities of strength, endurance, 
 intelligence, courage, and morals. They must not 
 have the average lowered by shirks and bounty- 
 jumpers. The trained soldier who enlisted these 
 men foresees that they will be awkward, that they 
 will be homesick and weary and sometimes wish 
 that they had not come, that they are liable to 
 panic and rout. But he also foreknows, so be 
 he has average material, that he will weld these 
 men into thorough soldiers, hardy, fearless, and 
 patient, who will march to the cannon's mouth at a 
 word, who will die together, if need be, like Wash- 
 ington's veterans at Valley Forge. So Jesus took 
 the average human nature such as he could get. 
 If he could not do his work with such stuff as 
 common men are made of, if his principles would 
 not serve average human nature, if his truths 
 were only good for saints and philosophers, they 
 were not good for this world at all. " Give me 
 average men," Jesus said, " and I will make my 
 invincible soldiers before whom the kingdom of 
 evil will fall." 
 
PETER AND JOHN 63 
 
 There is one quality which makes disciples 
 which we have so far omitted. It is docility, or 
 willingness. Jesus could not have done any- 
 thing without it. As we have seen, there was 
 moral material to be had considerably better 
 than Jesus found in his disciples ; precisely as, 
 when a recruiting agent went into a town in the 
 time of the war, there would be the material for 
 soldiers left in the town after he had gone away 
 better than much which he took. There would 
 be men of splendid natural capacity, who did not 
 sympathize with the war or who were too busy 
 with their private affairs. What distinguishes the 
 recruits is that they have enlisted, whereas perhaps 
 better men stay at home. 1 They have committed 
 themselves to obey orders and do a soldier's 
 work. So Jesus' disciples, being ordinary men in 
 other respects, were different from other ordinary 
 men or even better men by nature, in that they 
 had committed themselves, while they were with 
 Jesus, to be taught and to obey. 
 
 This is where the great mistake is made about 
 what it is to be a Christian. There is nowhere 
 a hint that a Christian pretends to be better than 
 other men. He often is not naturally so good. 
 Much less is there a hint that he professes to be 
 
64 JESUS AXD THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 perfect. He is simply an enlisted man. He is 
 pledged to a certain ideal of life, to be a learner. 
 Show him what the Christ bids, he will at least 
 move toward doing it. Show him what the will 
 of God is, and he will try to accept it. Show 
 him what the spirit of the Christ is, it is what he 
 wants to exhibit. Duty says, " Storm the fort " : 
 the enlisted man will try, tho he may lay down his 
 life in the breach outside ; or, if sudden panic 
 seizes him, he may be depended on, at the 
 voice of his captain, to rally to the colors again. 
 This definition of Christianity is the same essen- 
 tially, whether we take the modern and even 
 radical interpretation or the old-fashioned inter- 
 pretation. Whatever is right, the Christian is 
 pledged to try to do it. What is true, the Chris- 
 tian is pledged to try honestly to find out. What 
 ought to be, the Christian is enlisted to make 
 that real. 
 
 It is easy to see why Jesus made so much of 
 discipleship. The need in the war was soldiers, 
 enlisted men. It was idle merely to say that you 
 sympathized with the national cause while you 
 were spending your time in making money for 
 yourself. It was idle to show that you had the 
 courage and physique for a soldier, unless some- 
 
PETER AND JOHN 65 
 
 how you co-operated to help the soldier's cause. 
 Indeed, there is a certain deterioration in quali- 
 ties, however excellent, unless they are put out to 
 discipline. " I have an ear for music and a natu- 
 ral voice," some one says, "and I will not take a 
 master." It is almost certain that that fine natu- 
 ral voice goes to waste or ruin. " I have not 
 much voice," some one else modestly says, "but 
 I will take the best master there is. I will bear 
 his criticism. I will practise his rules." Pres- 
 ently, this common voice grows clear and sweet 
 and strong. For Nature is against all self-com- 
 placency : Nature is always pushing men to take 
 masters and get discipline, — that is, discipleship. 
 Nature urges us all to obey rules. " Obey rules, 
 or you perish," she says. Nature is always organ- 
 izing men to work together, to join the school or 
 university, to enlist and co-operate, to obey orders. 
 The man who enlisted rose from the ranks 
 and came home a hero. The man who stayed at 
 home to take care of himself died, and no one 
 cared for his loss. So with the disciples. The 
 noble young man in the story would not enlist, 
 and no one ever hears of him again. But Peter 
 and the rest, rustics and fishermen, rose from the 
 ranks to apostleship, martyrdom, and immortality. 
 
66 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 The same happens daily. The youth of to-day 
 vows the eternal old vow of the Christ : " Show 
 me the right, and, so help me God, I will do it." 
 So all the world's heroes come. Failing that vow, 
 men's lives run out into ignominy. 
 
 One thing more. We have left a whole half of 
 the disciples' lives untouched. Something hap- 
 pened to them after a while, — except to poor 
 Judas, who fell out and lost himself. The schol- 
 ars who plodded over the dusty routine came at 
 last to a point where they caught the secret of the 
 Master. They could do what he did. They had 
 got out of the fogs about the base of the moun- 
 tain ; and, as the whole wonderful prospect that 
 he had told them of burst upon them, they became 
 new men and masters, too. The very men who 
 had run away from the Roman spears, raised to a 
 new power, braved crucifixion themselves. Their 
 selfishness, purged away, left the sterling gold of 
 love. Their faith became invincible. So much 
 for what Jesus could do with average men. "It 
 is not essential," Jesus said, " to purchase choice 
 oak to build the fire." The world can be warmed 
 and lighted without the superior quality of Nico- 
 demus and the Pharisee sect. Bring on mere 
 average wood and pile it on the hearth. That 
 
PETER AND JOHN 6j 
 
 was discipleship ; namely, the willingness to give 
 one's self up for the world's heat and light. But, 
 while the superior oak piled by itself neither 
 warmed nor lighted a soul, this mere average 
 wood, — yes, with crooked sticks and inferior 
 fibre, that yet gave itself to the service of the 
 great household, — catching at last the holy flame 
 of Christ, blazed and burned and shone, and the 
 world thanked God and blessed it till the cold 
 oak itself began to catch the heat. 
 
V. 
 
 JESUS, THE MASTER. 
 
 JESUS' town of Nazareth was small and un- 
 important. It is not mentioned in the Old 
 Testament ; and, except for the Gospels, its name 
 would never have been preserved. It was about 
 twenty miles from the Lake of Tiberias on the east 
 and the Mediterranean on the west. Rounded 
 limestone hills, four or five hundred feet high, rise 
 above the valley where the town lies. From one 
 of these hills you can see the Mediterranean and 
 Mount Carmel and the great plain of Galilee, — 
 the scene of many a battle, — the Samaritan hills 
 beyond, and Mount Hermon, always snow-cov- 
 ered, more than fifty miles to the north. Jeru- 
 salem lay beyond the Samaritan country about 
 seventy miles, or three days' journey. The coasts 
 of Tyre and Sidon under the shadow of Mount 
 Lebanon were less than three days' journey in 
 the opposite direction. Between these limits, 
 
JESUS 69 
 
 north and south about the length of Massachu- 
 setts, and east and west from the Mediterranean 
 to the country across the Jordan, about the width 
 of Massachusetts, was comprised probably all that 
 Jesus ever saw of the world we live in. Entering 
 the gate of Nazareth, you would have seen narrow 
 streets, with low houses, each built around a 
 court-yard where the domestic animals could be 
 driven at night or in war. The plain building of 
 the synagogue would have perhaps been the 
 most conspicuous object. The inhabitants of the 
 town were small farmers and tradespeople. They 
 spoke in the somewhat harsh Galilean dialect, by 
 which a citizen of Jerusalem would have detected 
 a native of the country. The Nazareth people 
 had no reputation which would have led any one 
 to expect a rabbi or prophet among them. On the 
 contrary, they appear in the narrative of the Gos- 
 pels to have been specially narrow-minded and 
 fanatical. It was at Nazareth, Jesus' home, where 
 they would have taken his life. In this obscure 
 Jewish village, Jesus grew up, the eldest son, as 
 it appears, of a considerable family, to the un- 
 eventful life of a carpenter. 
 
 Let us see the reading and education which he 
 had. Besides the books that make the Old Testa- 
 
JO JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 merit and the Apocrypha, one might have found 
 in Nazareth the so-called v Book of Enoch/' the 
 "Psalms of Solomon," and a few other manu- 
 scripts, such as fed the popular Messianic expec- 
 tations. Of nearly all other books, especially of 
 Greek or Latin literature, Jesus would have known 
 nothing. Of the science of nature, he gleaned 
 only what the watchful observer discovered for 
 himself of the flight of the sparrow or the lilies of 
 the valley. Of the life of the great, of the 
 world's politics, of the vast power beyond the sea 
 in Italy, whose legions passed by to fight the 
 Parthians on the frontier, of her famous svstem 
 of laws, this young Galilean could have had only 
 the most meagre intelligence. 
 
 Jesus lived at Nazareth, it would seem, till he 
 was thirty years old. People thought of him as 
 the carpenter or the carpenter's son. So humble 
 had his life been up to this time that Nathanael, 
 a citizen of Cana, only two hours' walk from 
 Nazareth, seems not to have heard of him. What 
 had he been doing these thirty years ? What 
 had he been silently thinking about ? What mar- 
 vellous secret had he caught, that he should sud- 
 denly appear with the strange figure of John the 
 Baptist at the Jordan, — that, when John's life 
 
JESUS 71 
 
 was quenched, Jesus should take his place, with 
 John's boldness, but with a new and original ease, 
 dignity, and authoritativeness ? It is not certain 
 that Jesus' public life lasted more than a year. 
 Suppose it was three years. It ended in ignominy ; 
 and yet Jesus' career marks an epoch in the 
 history of the world. Wherein does this unique- 
 ness of Jesus consist ? What had he to contrib- 
 ute that the world needed or that other men did 
 not have ? 
 
 Was he unique in the wonderful things which 
 he did, in certain supernatural powers of which 
 the world has made great account ? But just such 
 wonderful things are told of others. Substan- 
 tially, everything that the world has accounted 
 marvellous in the story of Jesus is to be found in 
 the stories of Elijah and Elisha, even to the raising 
 of the dead ; but the world is hardly interested in 
 Elijah and Elisha. In fact, people do not believe 
 in Jesus to-day as they once did, because he is 
 reported to have worked miracles; but, when they 
 believe the miracles, it is because they first believe 
 in Jesus. Was Jesus unique, then, in the new 
 truths which he brought ? We can hardly find 
 a single teaching of Jesus that has not its coun- 
 terpart in the words of earlier men. His most 
 
72 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 beautiful law, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
 thyself," he only quotes. The belief in immor- 
 tality, associated with him, was perhaps as general 
 among the Jews of Jesus' time as it is to-day. 
 
 The storv also was of other sinless men, — 
 Enoch, for example. There had been blameless 
 men, friends of God and prophets, in whom the 
 world has seen no fault. Jesus himself had 
 praised Nathanael as such a blameless man. 
 Neither did Jesus seem directly to accomplish 
 anything. The marvel is to account for such re- 
 sults as we see to-day in his name, with only a 
 year or two of the preaching of one who did not 
 strive nor lift up his voice in the streets. Yet we 
 all feel the fact of Jesus' uniqueness. When we 
 praised the noble and austere character of John 
 the Baptist, we felt a lack in him as soon as Jesus 
 appeared. When we were about to praise Nico- 
 demus, the picked man of the Puritan or Pharisee 
 sect, the appearance of Jesus dwarfed Nicodemus. 
 When we found Nathanael, a man of pure natural 
 goodness, there was that in Jesus which marked 
 him as a distinctly higher type. 
 
 It is as well to acknowledge that there are some 
 things which you cannot explain. What was it in 
 Jenny Lind's voice that entranced her generation? 
 
jesus 73 
 
 It was a human voice, not an angel's. She sang 
 the same old notes that others had sung. She 
 invented nothing ; but her name is immortal in 
 the annals of song. Girls to-day live in the hope 
 of doing what Jenny Lind did. The fact is, God's 
 world is full of such surprises. Flavors, fra- 
 grances, harmonies, or proportions, a beautiful 
 face, a sweet voice, the works of genius, the com- 
 mon daily fact of love, the aspirations of faith, 
 man's hope of immortality, — all touch upon mys- 
 tery that no science can more than name. So of 
 Jesus' life. 
 
 Jesus' characteristic ideas are perfectly familiar. 
 He held, first of all, that God was the most real 
 fact in the universe. No one was so near as God. 
 His presence simply wrapped you around. Your 
 spirit only had life through the breathing of the 
 spirit of God revealed, in every sky and star. Of 
 power, truth, or thought, you are only a channel 
 or vehicle to carry and transmit. The one fact 
 of God explains and unifies everything. Man has 
 nothing that belongs to him exclusively. His life 
 is simply to do whatever the divine will bids. 
 According to Jesus, the law that bound all was 
 love. Love was the highest thing. Love was the 
 life of the great Father of all, and, by conse- 
 
74 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 quence, of his children. Trust the dictates of 
 love, then, wherever it led you. Follow it, though 
 it bade sacrifice and martyrdom. Giving up all 
 for love's sake, losing life if you must, yet keeping 
 love, you kept the life of God. 
 
 There are certain striking and memorable 
 passages that always convey these ideas, — the 
 beatitudes, for example, and especially the words : 
 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
 see God " ; " Love your enemies " ; " For he 
 maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the 
 good " j " It is more blessed to give than to 
 receive " ; "God is a Spirit, and they that worship 
 him must worship him in spirit and in truth." 
 Jesus found men everywhere selfish ; that is, 
 seeking first to save their own lives. He saw 
 that the secret of life was the opposite. For this 
 was a universe in which God reigned. He, then, 
 who would give his life to serve God — i.e., to 
 speak the truths and do the deeds of God — 
 should find life ; precisely as each little cell of 
 the vine finds its own life by passing onward the 
 life of the vine, not by stopping and clogging 
 its flow. What makes the whole vine grow will 
 make every branch. grow. First, then, serve the 
 life of the whole, and the whole will take care of 
 
jesus 75 
 
 you, its parts. Thus Jesus said, speaking out 
 of his experience, " My meat is to do the will of 
 him that sent me." 
 
 These ideas traverse the New Testament; but 
 they are all found in the Old Testament, not to 
 speak of other scriptures. Characteristic as they 
 w r ere of Jesus, he had not altogether cleared them 
 (as no man of his age could have cleared them) 
 of the prevailing superstitions of the time, in 
 which every Jewish child was brought up. Nev- 
 ertheless, Jesus did what others had only partially 
 done or talked of doing. He put his ideas into 
 practice, and did. not simply contemplate them, 
 like the Pharisees. He lived as though the good 
 God was real. He did not say that matter was 
 evil, like the Essenes; but he consistently enjoyed 
 God's beautiful world. He held his life as not 
 his own. He treated men as brethren, loved them 
 as himself, gave himself utterly to the service of 
 the great brotherhood. What God showed as 
 true, he spoke without fear. What God showed 
 to be right, he actually did. He tried to bring 
 about the ideal kingdom of peace which others 
 had dreamed of. He said to men, — if not in 
 so many words, yet substantially, — " Let us join 
 hands together, and make the good times real." 
 
j6 JESUS AXD THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 All this was new. The prophets and John the 
 Baptist had been as fearless as Jesus, perhaps as 
 obedient ; but they had spoken of God's world as 
 yet to come. Jesus said that God's world was 
 here already. It was a new attitude, — easv, un- 
 constrained, and gladsome. There had been in 
 all ages quiet instances of peace-loving, just, 
 and guileless souls like Nathanael ; but it had 
 not occurred to them to do anything more than 
 to live their pure lives. The temptation was 
 to get away from the sinners ; but Jesus held 
 that his life belonged to the sinners. He lived 
 for the sake of bringing about a change in the 
 social order, so that men should cease to be sin- 
 ners. That was what he made disciples for. 
 There was nothing morbid, ascetic, or gloomy in 
 this man, with whom God was now present, who 
 lived above the fear of death, who stood for the 
 coming age of gold. 
 
 In the famous battle above the clouds at Chat- 
 tanooga, while men fought uncertainly in the mist 
 below, the advance guard of the attacking force 
 climbed high enough to seize the higher lines in 
 the enemy's rear. The battle was not yet fin- 
 ished. The advance guard would yet have to 
 lay down their lives ; but, if that higher point 
 
jesus 77 
 
 were won, the cause was assured. So with Jesus' 
 conquest of evil. Down in the mists below, the 
 prophets and ascetics had fought a doubtful bat- 
 tle with evil on its own level. But Jesus had 
 gained a vantage-ground, from which the nature 
 of the conflict was altered. Let men once seize 
 this elevation, and there would hardly need to be 
 any more waste of life. One man here was bet- 
 ter than a hundred fighting on the level below. 
 What could not twelve, or a company of true men, 
 do from this higher vantage-ground, where already 
 the very sight of the sacred flag of brotherly love 
 put the evil forces to flight ? 
 
 Jesus' method or secret has become a sort of 
 proverb. It is not enough that you have in a 
 family, a community, a parliament, average, well- 
 intentioned men like Peter and John. They will 
 be voted down, or persuaded to evil, or craftily 
 bought. It is not enough that you have quiet, 
 patient men like Nathanael, here and there one, 
 who cannot be persuaded or purchased. It is not 
 enough that you have the stern voice of a prophet 
 denouncing evil. But give us one man of utter 
 disinterestedness, who pities the guilty while he 
 loves the oppressed, — committed body and soul 
 to serve the whole family or the whole nation, — 
 
j8 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 who treats everything from the point of view 
 of love, and such a man becomes an invincible 
 leader. 
 
 Another thing. Men had been used to go by 
 laws and rules, as they mostly go now. You 
 could hold on to your technical private rights. 
 You could be ungenerous ; you could act in dis- 
 trust toward your neighbor; you could cut off 
 your disobedient child with a shilling ; you could 
 be hard, unforgiving, and proud ; you could in- 
 sist upon the exact terms of the contract. Jesus 
 swept all these excuses away, when he asked of 
 each and all, " How about your spirit 1" " Was 
 your act or word in the right spirit ? " It is a 
 new standard when any one recognizes this ideal 
 of the right spirit. How our egotism wriggles 
 and twists to get away from the kindly hold of 
 that sort of conviction ! " But," our egotism says, 
 "it was the law, and I ought to have my rights, 
 and the other had injured me"; or "I only did 
 as others." And then we lift up our eyes and 
 catch the wonderful standard, so subtle and yet 
 so imperative, — the spirit of Christ. 
 
 The steel needle, so far as it is only of steel, 
 will not point true to the north. It will point 
 wherever you lay it down. Magnetize the steel, 
 
jesus 79 
 
 if you want it to point to the north. So men's 
 lives, so far only as they are of good material, 
 will not necessarily hold true to the life of God. 
 But Jesus' life was magnetized and possessed. 
 The life and forces of God played through it. It 
 gave itself utterly to their motion. Whither the 
 spirit pointed, there it went. It is not merely 
 the goodness of the excellent material that the 
 world wants. It wants vitalized goodness. It 
 wants men like Jesus alive and awake in every 
 city, village, and household. It wants not merely 
 kindly-intentioned people, but people magnetized 
 to a purpose, vitalized with love, committed to 
 the Christ's kind of life. 
 
 Here is the secret of all unity among men. 
 Vitalize men with the spirit of Christ, and such 
 men will think and act together. The magne- 
 tized material points the same way. What does 
 the voice of God bid us do for the love of man ? 
 Christ's way is the way that every soul asking 
 this question instinctively takes. In the hour 
 that I ask this question, I join hands with the 
 true and noble of all lands and ages. In the 
 hour that we ask this question together, we are 
 as one man in our sympathy, we have a common 
 worship. 
 
80 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 
 
 We wondered how Jesus without any education, 
 such as men count education, could have printed 
 his name on the most civilized nations forever. 
 One of his marvellous sentences carries his se- 
 cret. "If thine eye be single,"' he says, "thy 
 whole body shall be full of light." It is the 
 quality of learning, the seeing from the level of 
 the hilltop, that makes any one wise. To the 
 single eye of love, mysteries and enigmas are dis- 
 closed, the lines of human strife are straightened, 
 the simple conditions of right and wrong are 
 made clear. Did you never try to answer your 
 baffling questions with this quality of sight ? Did 
 you never cease to ask, What is expedient? or 
 What is wise ? and ask instead, What does broth- 
 erly love bid ? or, How would I like to be served ? 
 
 Finally, what gives our ordinary lives inspira- 
 tion and comfort ? Jesus' vitalized goodness, we 
 answer, goes by contagion, as the flame kindles 
 in the dry fuel. Like the old story of the beacon- 
 fires that blazed from burning Troy, from head- 
 land to headland about the zEgean Sea carrying 
 good tidings to ten thousand homes, so the fire 
 of the Christ's light plays and kindles from cen- 
 tury to century through history till it bursts out 
 in a million homes. When do we see one soul 
 
JESUS 81 
 
 caught by this flame, when does one thor- 
 oughly pure and vitalized life touch us with its 
 warmth, when do we ever draw together and 
 take for an hour the motion of the spirit of God 
 that leaps to seize us, that we do not have re- 
 vealed what it would be to give our lives wholly 
 up, Christ-fashion, to the beautiful will of God? 
 For the type of Jesus is the coming type of the 
 true man everywhere, — a living, vitalized man, a 
 just, friendly, brotherly man, of wide, quick sym- 
 pathies, of incandescent faith and hope. Take 
 our lives then, Spirit of the living God, make 
 them thine own ! Show us what is Christ-like, 
 we will try to do it. Show us the visions of the 
 kingdom of God, we will live to make them 
 real. We commit ourselves to thee, to be taught 
 and to obey. 
 
In the love of truth and in the spirit of Jesus 
 Christ, we join for the worship of God and the ser- 
 vice of man. 
 
 We believe in one God, the Father eternal, whose 
 righteousness, wisdom, and love rule the worlds. 
 
 We believe in the holy spirit of cheerfulness, 
 charity, and peace, which we would win and maintain. 
 
 We believe in truthfulness, honesty of conduct in- 
 tegrity of character, wise and generous giving, purity 
 of thought and life. 
 
 We believe that we owe our lives to the service of 
 our kindred, our neighbors, the state, and mankind. 
 
 We believe that obedience to duty is the way of 
 life, and no one can do wrong and not suffer harm. 
 
 We believe that no real harm can befall the right- 
 eous in life or death. 
 
 We believe in the imitation of Jesus Christ, and all 
 God's heroes, teachers, martyrs, saints, and bene- 
 factors. 
 
 We hold to the brotherhood of those who love and 
 serve man, and we hope for the Life Everlasting. 
 

 
Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces 
 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 Treatment Date: June 2005 
 
 PreservationTechnologies 
 
 A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATIOI 
 
 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
 Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
 (724) 779-21 1 1 
 
p 
 
 <r 
 
 a 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 014 397 255