jSpv lif IP I USxetverFjSs? YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THE LIBRARY OF THE DIVINITY SCHOOL STUDIES OF THE MAN CHRIST JESUS STUDIES OF THE MAN CHRIST JESUS BY ROBERT E. SPEER SECRETARY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS AUTHOR OF * STUDIES IN THE GOSPEL OF LUKU, ' "STUDIES >¦ THE BOOK OF ACTS " "One mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." — z tim. ii. 5, a. V* New York Chicago Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company Publishers of Evangelical Literature Copyright, 1896, by Fleming H. Reveia Cokpanv. PREFACE This little book lays no claim to originality. It grew out of a study of the Gospels inspired by Bushnell's Character of Jesus Forbidding His Possible Classification with Men. The longing of our time to know more per fectly the character of " the man Christ Jesus," while not losing the vital faith of His deity, is prompting ever more and more such study. These studies were undertaken with no thought of making this little book, but for the sake of the college students who gather each summer at Northfield, and to whom the picture of Jesus presented here proved helpful, both strengthening faith in His real deity, and increasing admiration for His perfect and glorious humanity. Later these studies were reviewed with a group of British stu dents at Keswick, and with little companies at Rutgers and Bryn Mawr colleges. They are published now at the »squest of some, not so much for general reading as for the use of Bible classes, especially of college students, and for others who love to discover ever fresh angles from which, in their own study of the Gospels, they may view the sweet face of Jesus. The references throughout are to the Revised Version. ,The bibliography of the life of Christ is too well known ;to need mention here. The student should, however, have his attention called specially to Bushnell's Character of Jesus and Young's Christ of History, which should be studied with these lessons. Of other books, those quoted in the studies will prove helpful. The studies are broken as they are into short chapters and sections to make them more easy of use in classes. Of such a study as this there is a. twofold fruit: (i) A reason for the Christian faith. Jesus Himself is the great apologetic. There is no prejudice against Him. His beauty and sincerity are acknowledged by all. We are on common ground with Unitarian, agnostic, infidel, and atheist in praising His loveliness. Have they any right to . part company with us as we see how lovely He was, and 7 8 PREFACE draw the inferences from the perfection of His loveliness? For Jesus was such a man that He must have been more. He was " the man Jesus," but He was " the man Christ Jesus "—the one anointed and sent, the heaven-born. An understanding study of Him excludes Him from the class of natural phenomena. Whoso begins with the acknow ledgment, This was a righteous man," cannot stop short of the confession, " Surely this man was the Son of God." (2) An example for the Christian life. Such a study pre sents the full " Imago Christi." It reveals Jesus as He revealed the Father. Each new trait seen in Jesus is a new obligation incurred. "If I had not come and spoken unto them," He said of the Jews, " they had not had sinr but now they have no excuse for their sin " (John xv. 22). What is shown us in Christ is shown for our appropria tion. " What things ye see and hear in me, do," were the words of His greatest follower, but they are His words. Increasing knowledge of Jesus requires increas ing imitation of Jesus.- The study of His life is perilous to the insincere. For those who long to be like Him it is both duty and delight. All study of Jesus demands a reverent use of the ima gination. We are sometimes told — the suggestion comes from different quarters — that the province of imagination in religion is limited; but surely religion is the proper sphere for the freest exercise of imagination. In a true sense, as Bushnell contends in a fine essay, our gospel is a gift to the imagination. And in Modern Painters Mr. Ruskin asks, " What are the legitimate uses of the ima gination ; that is to say, of the. power of perceiving with the mind things which cannot be perceived by the senses? its first and noblest use is to enable us to bring sensibly to our sight the things which are recorded as belonging to our future state or invisibly surrounding us in this. It is given us that we may imagine the cloud of witnesses in heaven and earth and sea as if they were present — the souls of the righteous waiting for us ; that we may con ceive the great army of the inhabitants of heaven, and dis cover among them those whom we most desire to be with forever ; that we may be able to vision forth the ministry of our God beside us, and see the chariots of fire on the mountains that gird us round ; but, above all, to call up the scenes and facts in which we are commanded to believe, and be present, as if in the body, at every recorded event of the history of the Redeemer " (Frondes Agrestes, $9, Section II.). PREFACE 9 We do not enough picture to ourselves the earthly life of Christ as a real, human life. There is no little uncon scious Docetism in Christian thought still. We must believe, however, that our Lord took upon Himself our human nature in a real sense, or the incarnation would not be a real incarnation ; Jesus could not have been tempted in all points as we are, and He could not have wrought out for us a salvation in any such vital sense as can alone constitute a salvation. But for the discussion of the per son and nature of Christ the reader should study Du Bose's Soteriology of the New Testament. Paul settles the matter for us : " There is one God, one mediator also between God and men, Himself man, Christ Jesus " (i Tim. ii. 5). Let us look upon His life as the life of the Son of man. Let it live again before us. Trans port it into modern times, conditions, and forms. Do anything reverent to break the shackles of formalistic and unscrutinized conception, that we may see Him as He was, and follow Him until, when " He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him ; for we shall see Him as He is " (1 John iii. a). CONTENTS I PAGK The Early Life of Jesus 15 II His Plans and Methods of Work I. He undertakes to organize on earth the king dom of God 28 II. His plans were immense and revolutionary. . . 32 III. His project covered ages of time 33 IV. The originality of His plan 34 V. The audacity of His plan 37 VI. He began with, and worked from, the poor. . 40 VII. He set for Himself, reached, and placed be fore others a perfect standard 43 VIII. His ability to impart spiritual ideas. .' 47 IX. He knew and touched the personalities of men. 50 X. In the prosecution of His work He was chari table, but no liberal 51 XI. He was never anxious for His success 53 XII. He was easy of approach, but held Himself completely independent, superior to human intercessions and judgments 57 XIII. He was never caught off guard, never vexed, disconcerted, hastened, or irritated 62 XIV. His management of men 67 11 12 CONTENTS PAGE XV. His little personal ways, so human, yet so faultless 69 XVI. The generous freeness and selflessness of His deeds 72 III Some Active and Passive Traits of His Character I. Sincerity 75 II. Simplicity 7.7 III. Humility --. 79 IV. His unselfishness and personal dignity 82 V. His love and generosity toward those who were alien or hostile to Him ^-. 87 VI. Tenderness 89 VII. The perfect calm and evenness of His life .... 94 VIII. His broad human knowledge and interest in nature 99 IX. The universality of His character. 105 X. The perfect balance of His character. 119 IV The Testimony Borne to Him by the Different Relations into which He Came I. The testimony of need to His power to supply. 131 II. The testimony of nature to His right to com mand 134 III. The testimony borne to Him by His attitude toward woman 135 IV. He was free from the superstitions of His time and the current distortions of the reli gious life - 137 V. He called forth the instinctive obedience of others " 142 VI. The impressions He produced upon others . . 145 VII. The better He was known, the greater was His acknowledged superiority 150 CONTENTS 13 V Other Extraorcinary Characteristics of Christ, Most Easily Explicable by the Belief in His Divinity PAGE I. He presents the perfect ideal of friendship . . . 161 II. His piety was unrepentant, and yet sustained. 169 III. The strength and strangeness of His emotions. 181 IV. His superhuman knowledge 198 V. He recognized and asserted His own unique ness 201 VI. His prayerfulness 213 VII. His venturesome prophecies 217 VI His Bearing at His Trial and Death 221 VII The Significance of the Man Christ Jesus.. 233 Questions for the Study of Bible Classes . . 246 THE EARLY LIFE OF JESUS «S THE EARLY LIFE OF JESUS Of the early life of Jesus very little is known. He never referred to it Himself, and two of the four Gospels are silent regarding it. He must have known, of course, the place of His birth, but He never spoke of it. One of the objections made to the validity of the claims He put forth was that He was not born in that part of the nation where, as a matter of fact, He was born ; but neither He nor His disciples ever corrected the erroneous impression that prevailed (John vii. 41, 42, 52). He never mentioned, in the records- of His life which are preserved, the won derful stories of the manner of His birth which are told in the gospels of Matthew and Luke; nor is any allusion made to it in the other writ ings of the New Testament. All that we are told directly of His life, from the time the family settled in Nazareth, after the visit to Egypt and the death of Herod, until His appearance in public life about thirty years later, we are told by the Gospel which was written chiefly for Gentiles, and which represents the oral gos pel preached by the Apostle Paul, who may or may not have made use of this material in his preaching. It surely does not appear in his epistles. The information supplied in this way 17 1 8 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS is confined to two statements concerning the de velopment of Jesus, one of which precedes, while the other follows, the story of a visit He made to the Temple at the age of twelve (Luke ii. 40-52). We know, however, that He made His home with the humble people who were known as His father and mother (Matt. xiii. 55) in a little coun try village in the province of Galilee, and there grew up (Luke iv. 16). There are few places better than such a village for the strong and true development of a life. Its interests are not so pretentious and extensive as those of city life, but they are deep and thoughtful. In such surround ings the power of true vision and honest action is not discouraged as in a city by the conven tional conceptions which obscure the truth, and the life of personal irresponsibility which leads to the toleration of that which is questionable or wrong. No rugged prophet was ever produced by city life. In the simple social life of a coun try town, with its sympathy, its purity, its kindli ness, its blunt honesty, Jesus grew up, an inte gral part of the community life as no boy is in a city. He was from the beginning, evidently, an ob servant boy. He studied the life of His town, and He took special delight in the unending beauty of mountain and river and sea, and the vast instruction of plants and flowers, of sky and cloud, of bird and beast. His home was one of the best class of the sim ple homes of the poor. It preserved, evidently, the primitive godliness of the nation. His pa rents (Luke ii. 48) were of the most devout spirit (Matt. i. 19 ; Luke i. 46-55), free from the big otry which reigned in Judea, and not contami nated by the laxity of Galilee, whidi was to Juda- THE EARLY LIFE OF JESUS 19 ism "the court of the Gentiles," and which presented the temptations of foreign life as intro duced by the Gentile traders on their constant visits, and by a large foreign community in the Decapolis. It was nevertheless the province " of generous spirits, of warm, impulsive hearts, of intense nationalism, of simple manners, and of earnest piety " (Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, vol. i., pp. 223, 225). Jesus was the eldest child in the family. He had four brothers, James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas (Matt. xiii. 55 ; Mark vi. 3), and at least two sisters (Matt. xiii. 56). Joseph, His mother's husband, seems to have died before Jesus entered upon public life, and He may have been called upon even in His youth to share with His mother the cares of the home (John ii. 12). If Eders- heim's view of the opinions of James and Jude and of the relationship of Simon Zelotes to Jesus be correct, then in His own home circle Jesus must have felt the influence of the three purest Jewish tendencies: the earnestness of the Shammaites represented in James, the buoyancy of the Mes sianic watchers represented in Jude, and the fer vor of the nationalist idea represented in His cousin, Simon the Zealot (Luke vi. 15). Stronger than all such influences, however, must have been the force of His mother's example and teaching. Everything indicates that she was one of those rare women whose glory it is to prepare a noble life, losing themselves in it, and desiring to be glorified only in its usefulness (Heb. xi. 40). Jesus did not have what was regarded as a liberal education, — the Pharisees of Jerusalem counted this a reproach (John vii. 1 5),— but what educational advantages Nazareth afforded were doubtless placed at His disposal. There was, of 30 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS course, a village school, to which He was prob ably sent after he had reached the age of six (Geikie, The Life of Christ, p. 173) ; but much of His training He must have received at home from His mother. Early in life He learned to read and write. He must have been an eager scholar, for besides Aramaic, which was the vernacular of the Jews (Mark v. 41), and Greek, which was widely used, especially in Galilee, and which He Himself used in His teaching, He also mastered Hebrew — a dead language in His day, but the vestment of the Old Testament Scriptures, of which He was a close and earnest student. Up to his tenth year it was held that the Bible should be the exclusive text-book of a Jewish boy ; from ten to fifteen the Mishnah should be the chief text-book ; and after the age of fifteen the higher theological discussions were open to him. Jesus' public life, when He had no oppor tunity whatever for study, showed a mastery of all branches of a Jewish boy's education, which was proof of careful training in His early days. Even if His family had not been very poor, Jesus would probably have learned a trade. It was a good Jewish custom. Jesus followed the trade of Joseph and became a carpenter (Mark vi. 3). Justin Martyr says He made plows and yokes, and we must believe, from the character of His later work, that they were very excellent plows and yokes which were turned out from His shop. Wandering along the Sea of Galilee or over the hills; watching the blue sky, the springing flowers, the husbandman and the shepherd; in the shop of Joseph, in the home of Mary, and in the school of Nazareth, Jesus spent His child hood. " And the child grew, and waxed strong, THE EARLY LIFE OF JESUS 21 filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him " (Luke ii. 40). At the age of twelve came an experience, the story of which is the only direct information we have of all the sweet life of these thirty years (Luke ii. 41-51). He was taken to Jerusalem to attend the Passover. Strictly, He did not be come a " son of the law " until the age of thirteen, but the legal age was often anticipated by a year or two. Upon becoming a "son of the law," the young Jew began regularly to observe the ceremonial law and to attend the three great fes tivals. It was therefore a solemn epoch in Jesus' life. Moreover, this was probably Jesus' first visit to Jerusalem since He was taken there as a babe from Bethlehem. For the first time the boy from Nazareth of Galilee, with its freedom and sweet air and sky, and the liberal, loving life of Mary's home, was brought into contact with the formalized religious life of His nation: the Holy City of David, kept scrupulously free from all ceremonial uncleanness ; and the mighty, in violate Temple, thronged now with the tens and hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who, from many lands and many thousands of cities, had come up to worship at Jerusalem. It must have been a wonderful sight to Jesus, and have quick ened all the pulses within Him. Yet, though He was a country boy, the strange sights had no fas cination for Him— not even the historic places made famous by the stories with which His mother had made His heart swell with the pride of His famous nation in the twilight of the Sab bath evenings in Nazareth. His boyish medita tions had already carried Him beyond the outward show, and He spentHis days at the Temple listen ing to the doctors. So interested was He in what 22 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS He heard that He remained behind when the rest of the party left Jerusalem on their way home. When they sought Him, He was found in the midst of a group in the Temple, earnestly asking questions of the learned men, who at the Pass over came out of the Sanhedrin and taught the people colloquially, and as earnestly explaining to them His own boyish opinions, to their amaze ment and delight ; for there was about Him noth ing forward or impertinent, but only the intense eagerness of a child to whom God had given serious vision, and from whom a wise mother had withheld folly. When they sought Jesus, Joseph and Mary were surprised to find Him so engaged. They had taken it for granted that He was among the other children of their caravan. He had evi dently kept to Himself, in the years at Nazareth, the grave thoughts and questions which the fas cination of the Temple, and the wise and not un kindly doctors, had encouraged Him to express. When His mother, with some reproof, asked Him for an explanation of His conduct, He re plied that He did not think it was necessary to make a search for Him ; that He might have been expected to be in His Father's house, about His Father's business. It was a strange reply, one which His parents did not understand. But He went at once with them back to Nazareth, where He was subject to them, though His mother kept in mind and heart His strange con duct and words at Jerusalem, and wondered at His unlikeness to other boys who had gone up with them, and who had spent their time in see ing the wonderful sights of the great city. In Nazareth He seems to have resumed again the old life, though year by year He must have THE EARLY LIFE OF JESUS 23 shown the growth which ended in His appear ance as the One whom the Baptist heralded. His religious life was deepening, broadening, strengthening, gathering volume and fullness, ris ing up into the infinite comprehension of His first cublic utterances. He evidently spent much time in the little synagogue of Nazareth, whose •?abbi knew Him, and where He probably had access to rolls of the Old Testament Scriptures, which neither Joseph nor He had money to buy for use in their own home. He was one of the readers or expositors at the Monday, Thursday, and Sabbath services in the synagogue, and when He came back to Nazareth, at the beginning of His public life, was at once invited to read and explain some passage of Scripture (Luke iv. 16). His growth after His first visit to Jerusalem was as quiet and symmetrical as before. He " ad vanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man" (Luke ii. 52). This is a most attractive picture of a young life. It is represented as perfectly normal and quiet. The silly apocryphal accounts of Jesus' childhood given in the Arabic Gospel of the In fancy {The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. viii., pp. 405 ff.) are wholly foreign to the spirit of the au thentic story. Yet the temptation to introduce overstatements and exaggerations is irresistible to all who write an account of such a childhood, except those who, as personal witnesses, are tell ing a story of fact. Even Josephus introduces such elements into his account of the child hood of Moses (Works, book ii., chap, ix., §§ 6, 7). But Jesus, beginning life, as the gospels rep resent, as a. perfect child, yet began it as a perfect child : 24 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. " He comes, but not in regal splendor drest— The haughty diadem, the Tyrian vest ; Not armed in flame, all glorious from afar, Of hosts the Captain, and the Lord of war "— but as a simple Galilean child. That the influences which surrounded Jesus' childhood, and His early training in the freedom of open air and the liberty of a loving home, will explain some of the features of His life and conduct, will be plain ; but whether they in any way account for Him will be more manifest after a study of His plans and methods of work, the traits of His character, His bearing and the bear ing of others toward Him in the relations of life, His extraordinary personality, His conduct in the persecution which ended in His unjust death, and His posthumous influence. HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK »5 II HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK Formal organization He magnificently neg lected. "Are you a society?" was asked of George Macdonald's Robert Falconer when he worked among the poor in London. " No ; why should we be anything? We are an undefined company of people who have grown into human relations with each other naturally through one attractive force — love for human beings. When we die, there will be no corporate body left be hind to simulate life." Christ erected no ma chine. He dealt with persons, life. As Young points out : " He originated no series of well- concerted plans; He neither contrived nor put in motion any extended machinery ; He entered into no correspondence with parties in His own country and in other regions of the world, in order to spread His influence and obtain cooper ation. Even the few who were His constant companions, and were warmly attached to His person, were not, in His lifetime, imbued with His sentiments, and were not prepared to take up His work in His spirit after He was gone. He constituted no society, with its name, design, and laws all definitely fixed and formally estab lished. He had no time to construct and to or ganize—His life was too short— and almost all 27 28 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS He did was to speak. He spoke in familiar conversation with His friends, or at the wayside to passers-by, or to those who chose to consult him, or to large assemblies, as opportunity offered. He left behind Him a few spoken truths— not a line or word of writing — and a certain spirit in carnated in His principles and breathed out from His life ; and then He died." Yet He worked with an aim. He had a work " given " Him by the Father (John v. 36 ; xvii. 4), and He wrought at this work with a plan, and in accordance with clear principles. What were His plans? In what methods did His prin ciples express themselves? I. He undertakes to establish on earth the king dom of God, or to make men conscious of As existence and character. This was His message (Mark i. 14 ; Luke ix. 1 1). He was understood to be the spokesman of the kingdom (Luke xvii. 20). "Consider the reach of this undertaking, which, if He was only a man, shows Him to have been the most extrav agant, even the wildest, of all human enthusiasts. Contrary to every religious prejudice of His time and nation, to all His training, education, and surroundings, He starts what He calls the king dom of God, His purpose including a new moral creation of the race — not Jews alone, but the whole human race. Upon this single fact Rein- hard erects an argument for His extrahuman character " (Bushnell, The Character of Jesus, PP- 34> 3^)- A view of some of the surface char acteristics of this kingdom makes His design appear yet more remarkable. 1. It is the establishment of a new and spiritual relationship centered in Himself, a brotherhood HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 29 of lovers, each loving as He had loved (John xiii. 34, 35). Mere acceptance of the truth of His message could not constitute men His disci ples. If it could, the kingdom of Christ would be full of devils who believe and tremble. Per sonal love and devotion, the acceptance of Christ as Lord and Sovereign, make men His. His disciples say, " To us to live is Christ " (Phil. i. 21); " We are ambitious to be well-pleasing unto Him" (2 Cor. v. 9). In this Christianity differs from all other religions, which are rooted in methods, books, or doctrines. It rests on a person. Mohammed holds in Islam the place of Moses in Judaism, not of Christ in Christianity. His religion is the religion of a book. Buddha professed no more than to have discovered a way in no wise related to himself. His religion is the religion of a method (Gore, The Incarnation of the S,on of God, pp. 7-10). But no reverence for a b. 00k or pursuit of a method which does not end in a person can make men Christians. Detach Christ from His system, and it is no longer His system. His doctrine was a self-assertion. His books are a biography. His method is a per sonal friendship. " I am the way, and the truth, and the life," was one of His master words, re peated in various forms, all asserting His central and commanding position (John xiv. 6 ; xii. 26, 3»; xi. 25). He was His religion. Whosoever entered it entered Him ; whosoever refused Him refused life and citizenship in the kingdom (John v. 40). In an appalling metaphor He declared, " Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, ye have not life in yourselves. He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. 30 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS For My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood abideth in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father ; so he that eateth Me, he also shall live because of Me" (John vi. 53—57). 2. This new relationship takes precedence of all human ties, even the closest (Luke ix. 57-62 ; xi. 27, 28). His statements are unhumanly un compromising in this. A human teacher would have left loopholes for human weakness (Luke xiv. 25-27). He Himself met this test. The Master is not above His servants (Mark iii. 31-35)- . Now in declaring such a doctrine, a commu nism of love supreme over all bonds, a human teacher would have destroyed the family and other divinely sanctioned human ties. Plato has done so in his Republic, § 457 : "The law, I said, which is the sequel of this, and of all that has preceded it, is to this effect: . . . that the wives of these guardians are to be common, and their children also common, and no parent is to know his own child, nor any child his parent." Not so Jesus. His first miracle was wrought at a wedding. His last words from the cross to John made a home for His mother. 3. It includes all sexes, ages, classes. His apostles were men. Women loved and ministered to Him (Luke viii. 1-3). Simeon and the widow of fourscore and four years, Anna, first took Him in their arms and recognized Him (Luke ii.). His followers were young men, and He loved children (Mark x. 13). He did not ap peal, however, to the party feeling of age or sex. If He called rich men (Luke xix. 2), He told a Pharisee who entertained Him to call the poor HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 31 whenhe made a feast (Luke xiv.13). "Blessed are ye poor," were the words of One among whose disciples were shortly Barnabas, Joseph of Ari- mathea, Mark's mother, and Mnason, owners of property. Old systems regarded the deformed as under a curse (John ix. 2). His invitation in cluded the maimed, the lame, and the blind (Luke xiv. 13). Of the self-righteous alone He spoke with bitterness (Matt. xxi. 31 ; v. 20). His teach ing " was no private doctrine, designed for a nar row circle of the initiated ; nor was it a scholastic or scientific doctrine, designed for the scholarly and the cultured. It was a message of univer sally intelligible import, designed for all classes of people, rich and poor, young and old, if they would but hearken and receive it" (Wendt, The Teaching of Jesus, vol. i., p. 151). So wide were His sympathies that Pharisaic pride complained (John vii. 48, 49 ; Mark ii. 16, 17). To this universal adaptiveness He appealed as an evidence of the prophecy-fulfilling charac ter of His coming (Luke vii. 22). " Was He exclusive ? Did ever man or woman come near Him and He turn away? Did He not go among all ranks and into every society? Did He not go to the houses of great men and rulers, of Pharisees, of poor men, of publicans? Did He not frequent the Temple, the market place, the synagogue, the sea-shore, the haunts of outcasts and harlots? Was He not found at feasts and at funerals? Wherever men and women were to be found, there was His place, and there is ours" (Hughes, Religio Laid, pp. 34, 35 ; John vi- 37)- 4. His fondness for children suggests the pe culiar test of character He chose (Matt, xviii. 1- 6). Presumably, for such an enterprise, an un- 32 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS dertaking so gigantic, He would need the most virile spirit. He demands instead that His dis ciples become like little children. 5. He held out no meretricious inducements to enter this kingdom (Matt. v. 11,12; x. 22 ; John xv. 19-21). Those who accepted His offers should have joy (John xv. n); but it would consist, not in new external surroundings, nor in a share in a communistic division of other men's earnings, but in the opportunity to serve others, and in a new state of heart. To a disappointed hint of Peter's, " Lo, we have left all, and have followed Thee," Jesus did reply, "There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sister*, or mother, or father, or children, or lands, for My sake, and for the gospel's sake, but he shsjl receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and chil dren, and lands," but He added significantly, " with persecutions" (Mark x. 28—30). II. His plans were immense and revolutionary. Freedom through the truth was His offer (John viii. 31, 32). The truth and the freedom both centered in Himself (John xiv. 6 ; viii. 3.6). He proposed to give men eternal and abundant life (John x. 10, 28). He proposed to be tbis life (John vi. 51, 53-57). He would displace darkness with light (John viii. 12). He would be this light (John ix. 5). He came to save the world (John xii. 47) by drawing it to Himself (John xii. 32). Human governments and gov ernors were as playthings in His way (Matt. xvii. 24-27 ; Luke xiii. 32). He openly declared that His plans were not human (John xviii. 36 ; vi. 38). And His plans were revolutionary. The Jews HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 33 asserted that if Pilate should let Him go he would show lack of friendship for Cassar, whose empire was imperiled. The charge was malicious but true ; for He certainly taught doctrines which involved the renovation of the world and the readjustment of social relations. His teaching has not yet borne its full fruit. The Sermon on the Mount is still a prophecy, but no later prophecy has cor rected or displaced it. Christ's " thought, after two thousand years, needs no revision. His conceptions of God, of man and human society, are ultimate conceptions ; intellectual power can not go beyond them, can never even master their entire content. His spirit has upon it the mark of finality, His character is the full impression upon humanity of the moral perfection of the Deity. The ultimateness of Christ's thought and the finality of His spirit differentiate His tran scendence from that of the greatest and best of mankind, and ground His being in the Godhead in a way solitary and supreme" (Gordon, The Christ of To-day, p. 128). III. His project covered ages of time. He counted upon a temporary eclipse as the condition of an eternal shining (John xii. 24). He declared that His story would be told in strange lands and tongues, and provided in His plan for the years required for this (Matt. xxiv. 14 ; Mark xiv. 9). In bold assertion He faces the antagonism of the centuries (Matt. xvi. 18). He looks over the ages to the days of His tri umph at the end (Matt, xxiv., xxv.). He doubted not that " Thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs," 34 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS and this purpose was His own (Matt, xxviii. 18-20). Alexander and Napoleon have planned world wide empires, but their plans necessitated their continued life. Jesus anticipated the growing power of His kingdom centuries after His death. " It is not human, we may safely affirm, to lay out projects transcending all human ability, like this of Jesus, and which cannot be completed in many thousands of years, doing it in all the airs of sobriety, entering on the performance without parade, and yielding life itself to it as the inau gural of its triumph. No human creature sits quietly down to a perpetual project — one that pro poses to be executed only at the end or final har vest of the world. That is not human, but divine " (Bushnell, The Character of Jesus, pp. 38, 39).. Thinking much at His work in Nazareth of Abraham and Moses, and their great and per manent influence, Jesus may have ventured in His dreams to hope to accomplish as much ; but would any devout young Jew dare to declare such dreams, and yet vaster dreams, in full day unless he were more than a devout young Jew? IV. The originality of His plan. Think first how rare is true originality. "I am a part of all that I have met," declares Ulysses. And Goethe says, "Much is talked about originality; but what does originality mean? We are no sooner born than the world around begins to act on us; its action lasts to the end of our lives, and enters into everything. All that we truly call our own is our energy, our vigor, our will. If I cov'd -numerate all that I really owe to the great men who .have preceded HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 35 me, and to those of my own day, it would seem that very little is really my own." Yet Jesus' scheme of a kingdom of souls is un deniably original. Other elements of His teach ing are scarcely less so. " 1 cannot discover in these essential characteristics of the Christian religion any filiation, any human origin," says Guizot. And Lecky declares : " Nothing can, as I conceive, be more erroneous or superficial than the reasonings of those who maintain that the moral element in Christianity has in it noth ing distinctive or peculiar. It is quite certain that the Christian type differs not only in degree, but in kind, from the pagan one." From whom could Jesus have learned His doctrine or borrowed His project? Not from foreigners. His isolation as a young man is a pledge of this. Not from Jews. His contem poraries regarded His teaching as original. Schleiermacher points out that " of all the sects in vogue, none ever claimed Jesus as represent ing it ; none branded Him with the reproach of apostasy from its tenets." Moreover, there was no one from whom Jesus could have plagiarized His project. " The idea of changing the moral aspect of the whole earth, of recovering nations to the pure and inward worship of the one God, and to a spirit of divine and fraternal love, was one of which we find not a trace in philosopher and legislator before Him " (Channing). Hebrew prophets had looked forward, with a more or less definite faith, to a golden age to come. Jesus defined the character of this age, and asserted it to be His purpose soon or late to produce it. There is reason, therefore, for Reinhard's argu ment, in which he formally reviews all the great lawgivers, kings, statesmen, heroes, philosophers, 36 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS founders of states, and defenders of nations, all the teachers of morals and the prophet founders of religions, and " discovers as a fact that no such thought as this, or nearly proximate to this, had ever before been taken up by any character in history; showing also how it has happened to every other great character, however liberalized by culture, to be limited in some way to the in terest of his own people or empire, and set in opposition or antagonism, more or less decided ly, to the rest of the world. But to Jesus alone, the simple Galilean carpenter, it happens other wise ; that never having seen a map of the world in His whole life, or heard the names of half the nations on it, He undertakes, coming out of His shop, a scheme as much vaster and more diffi cult than that of Alexander as it proposes more ; and what is more divinely benevolent! This thought of a universal kingdom cemented in God — . . . the rustic tradesman of Galilee pro pounds even this for His errand, and that in a way of assurance as simple and quiet as if the immense reach of His plan were, in fact, a matter to Him of no consideration " (Bushnell, The Character of Jesus, pp. 35, 36). The originality of His conception is the more remarkable when, laying aside for the moment our knowledge of Jesus as divine, we think of it as put forward not merely by a mechanic, but by a Jew. He belonged to the most centripetal of races. Yet compare Him with the flower of the race of opposite tendency, the race from which His project might have been expected to come. " Not one among the ancients rises above the limits of his own nationality to such a degree as Socrates ; he himself wished to be regarded, not as a Grecian merely, but as a cosmopolitan. HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 37 And yet even Socrates was essentially Greek ; his whole character, his moral nature not excepted, had unmistakably a Greek impress, and stood in immediate relation to the manners and customs of his country. And this holds true also of the piety of Socrates, which, notwithstanding its pe culiar nature, had still for its basis the national traditions, and in no sense possessed the univer sal character of Christianity " (UUma.nn,The Sin- lessness of Jesus, p. 68). V. The audacity of His plan. i. His countrymen knew Him only as an un educated villager (John vii. 15), yet He proposed to readjust the relations between men and God. His design was stupendous. " Regard the be nevolence of it, the universality of it, the reli gious grandeur of it, as a work readjusting the relations of God and His government with men, the cost, the length of time it will cover, and the far-off date of its completion. It is in this scale that a Nazarene carpenter, a poor, unedu cated villager, lays out His plans and graduates the confidence of His undertakings" (Bushnell, The Character of Jesus, p. 38). An obscure peas ant proposes to illumine a darkened world. 2. He launched His whole plan at the outset, with no fear, no tentative statement to test the temper of the popular mind. " Now Jesus Christ our Lord was in the true and very highest sense of the term a social reformer ; yet He freely pro claimed the whole of His social plan before He began to realize it. Had He been merely a ' great man ' He would have been more prudent ; He would have conditioned His design; He would have tested it ; He would have developed 38 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS it gradually; He would have made trial of its working power; and then He would have re fashioned or contracted or expanded it before finally proposing it to the consideration of the world. . j . There is no proof, no distant inti mation of a change or of a modification of His plan " (Liddon, The Divinity of Our Lord, pp. 116, 117). He did, of course, develop its adaptation. Maurice points out the growing circles of His influence, as described in the Gospel of Luke: household, family, Nazareth, Galilee, the whole nation, the world. The essential features of His plan, however, were proclaimed from the first, and underwent no change. 3. His boldness went almost to the limit of madness in His choice of assistants and execu tors. The trained and influential men of His nation He wholly overlooked (John vii. 48). He was devoutly glad not to be hampered with them (Matt. xi. 25). Of His twelve most intimate as sociates, only one was a Judean, and he proved worse than a failure. The eleven others were from the province from which no prophet was to be expected (John vii. 52), unschooled, toil-bur dened, heavy-spirited men. When He left them, they seemed wholly unfit, even after long train ing, to be trusted with any enterprise other than a fishing expedition, above all a spiritual enter prise. But He- had chosen them, and He be queathed His movement to them, and these were some of the instructions He gave them : " I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven : and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven : and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven " (Matt. xvi. 19). After His resurrection He renewed these instructions : " Whosesoever sins ye forgive, they HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 39 are forgiven unto them ; whosesoever sins ye re tain, they are retained" (John xx. 23). Could presumption go further if Jesus was only man? Could a Peter forgive the sins of a Seneca? 4. The scope of His scheme was universal. " He speaks as a being related to the whole human race ; a narrower sphere than the world never enters His thoughts," says Channing. He had come, He declared, " not to judge, but to save the world" (John iii. 17 ; xii. 47) ; "to seek and to save that which was lost " (Luke xix. 10). " I am the living bread which came down out of heaven," He openly told the Jews: "if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever : yea and the bread which I will give is My flesh, for the life of the world" (John vi. 51). It was a world's darkness that He pitied and in tended to banish : " I am the light of the world : he that followeth Me shall not walk in the dark ness, but shall have the light of life " (John viii. 12). He declared on another occasion that He had sheep who did not belong to the Jewish fold, whom He proposed to combine with those sheep in the fold of Israel who could hear His voice in one great flock, which would be under His leadership (John x. 16). His last instructions to His disciples, in which He charged them to ignore all geographical lines and keep in mind the uni versal bearings of His scheme, added nothing to the clearness with which He had already set forth His purpose and His wishes (Mark xvi. 15 ; Acts i. 8). Mr. Curzon's sneer at the missionary enterprise, in Problems of the Far East, on the ground that it rests insecurely on a detached statement of Christ's, is wholly superficial. The essential feature of His project was its universal ity. Take this feature away, and its whole <:har- 40 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS acter is altered. Christ Himself would disown it. An ethnic mission He would have scorned as He scorned the national narrowness of the Jews (John iv. 9 ; viii. 48, 49). The Son of God lived and died for a world, as it was a world's conviction and a world's faith for which He wrought and prayed (John xvi. 8; xvii. 21, 23). VI. He began with, and worked from, the poor. He was always respected by them, but nevet became a popular demagogue. Like the miner's son brought forth amid the bustle of a market-day at Eisleben, He was born among the poor (Luke ii. _ 7), and grew up as a tradesman and a tradesman's son (Mark vi. 3 ; Matt. xiii. 55). He took delight in the company of the poor, even the evil poor. Though holy and pure, the Son of the wealthy God, He sought the company of the wretched, the unholy, the impure (Mark ii. 15). This intimacy was cited as a reproach against Him (Luke v. 30-32 ; vii. 34). The people reciprocated His liking (Luke xv. 1,2). Human leaders cajole the people, as sociating with them professionally, but finding life's interests elsewhere ; or, if themselves sprung of the people, often and soon develop tastes which remove them from their class, and thence forth only " work " the people as their tool. Jesus, however, was one of them, and stayed among them, choosing from them His intimate associ ates. In His public work He drew them irresistibly (Matt. iv. 25; xix. 2; Luke xi. 29, Greek; iv. 42; v. 1, 15; vi. 17, 18; viii. 40; xi. 37; xiv. 25). He had a message which they wished to HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 41 hear (Luke xix. 47, 48; xxi. 38), and to which, chough with heavy and blind response (John vii. 31, 49), and with fitful but vigorous loyalty (Matt. xxi. 45, 46), they answered. This response of the people He might have utilized if He had wished to crush the usurpers who sat in Moses' seat (John vi. 14, 15 ; xii. 12-19). Unlike other reformers, who have used for personal gain and advancement the forces they have aroused, Jesus ignored or discouraged them. He stood boldly for the poor and their cause (Luke vi. 20). He reviled with withering bitter ness those who locked the kingdom of heaven against them (Matt, xxiii. 13). He cared for them lovingly (Mark viii. 3), but He exposed their own sin and evil and selfishness (Matt. xv. 8, 9, 10 ; John vi. 26), and never allowed them to become a sect or a party. Jesus worked for these people, was regarded in a friendly way by them, perhaps at -times because He attacked those whom they were not displeased to see as sailed ; but He cannot be said ever to have been popular with them. His unity with the people and His separation from them were equally won derful. They did not understand Him. They did feel, however, in some true sense, that He was something to them (John xii. 9-19) ; and though one hour they joined in the shout, " Cru cify Him ! " the next they smote their breasts at the sight of their crime (Luke xxiii. 48). No other human reformer has taken such an attitude toward the people. Plato deemed it right to despise men whose employment did not permit them to devote themselves to their friends and to the state. According to Aristotle, all forms of labor which require physical strength are degrading to a freeman. Cicero declared, 42 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS "The mechanic's occupation is degrading. A workshop is incompatible with anything noble." Christ came as a mechanic, and identified Him self with the plain people. Other social reform ers have begun at the apex of the pyramid. Christ began at the base. Others had despised the poor ; they were the appendages and drudges of society. No one had thought of beginning with them ; all hope seemed to he in the regen eration of the higher classes. Jesus was the poor man's philosopher (Bushnell, The Character of Jesus, pp. 39-42). He laid His foundations below all influence, speaking to the responsive heart of the common people (Mark xii. 37), and His power has both survived and increased. We are com ing to His method. One generation shows such a change that if Alton Locke were written to-day we should call it snobbery. So Christ's democ racy grows. The quaint anonymous poem "Jesus the Car penter " well illustrates the poor man's sympathy with the poor Son of the rich God, who chose Himself to be a tradesman. " * Isn't this Joseph's Son? ' Aye, it is He. ' Joseph the carpenter ' — same trade as me! I thought as I'd find it, I knew it was here, But my sight's getting queer. " I don't know right where as His shed might ha' stood, But often, as I've been a-planing my wood, I've took off my hat just with thinking of He At the same work as me. " He warn't that set up that He couldn't stoop down And work in the country for folks in the town, And I'll warrant He felt a bit pride like I've done At a good job begun. HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 43 "The parson he knows that I'll not make too free, But on Sundays I feel as pleased as can be When I wears my clean smock and sets in a pew And has thoughts not a few. " I think of as how not the parson hissen, As is teacher and father and shepherd of men, Not he knows as much of the Lord in that shed Where He earned His own bread. " And when I goes home to my missus, says she, ' Are you wanting your key? ' For she knows my queer ways and my love for the shed (We've been forty years wed). " So I comes right away by mysen with the Book, And I turns the old pages and has a good look For the text as I've found as tells me as He Were the same trade with me. " Why don't I mark it? Ah, many says so! But I think I'd as lief, with your leave, let it go. It do seem that nice when I fall on it sudden, Unexpected, you know." VII. He set for Himself , reached, and placed before others a perfect standard. Who accuses Him of shortcoming? Mr. Huxley's attempt was pathetic. "The highest thing we have to say of Jesus," says Wendt, " is .that with Him teaching and life were perfectly blended. His teaching rested on His own inner experience ; His works and sufferings, on the other hand, were a vivid representation and grand at testation of His teaching. Thus He was more than a mere teacher of a new religion ; He was at the same time the perfect representative of the religious relationship to God which He taught. In this inward harmony of holy teaching and liv- 44 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS ing, He moved in the presence of His disciples, and we can well comprehend that, from the short space of time during which they were with Him, although they were able to understand and hold fast only a little of the contents of the teach ing which struck them at first as something so new and strange, yet they retained the indelible impression of having seen and experienced in their midst in human appearance the perfect rev elation of God" {The Teaching of Jesus, vol. ii., p. 397). This impression John records (John i. 14-17). But Jesus not only exemplified His own stand ard ; He demanded that all His followers should do so (Matt. v. 48; Luke vi. 36). There are political leaders who never stoop to immediate dishonesty or wrong-doing themselves, who never theless know that their followers do so stoop, and that such stooping is necessary to their success, and to the retention of any followers at all. Not so Jesus. He had no care whether His conditions would render Him disciple-less. His tests were fearful. Inward perfection was worth the sacrifice of hands or eyes (Matt. v. 29, 30). The disciples were to be preachers. Their chief business would be to speak ; yet He warned them against the slips of speech from which they could not hope to be free (Matt. xii. 36). No reproach can rest on the sincerity or integrity of such a leader as this. Complete personal devo tion to God was His standard for Himself. Utter personal devotion to Himself as God's rep resentative, and to the kingdom of God which He was organizing, was His standard for His disciples. Everything was to be surrendered for this. " Whosoever he be of you," He said, " that renounceth not all that he hath, cannot be My HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 45 disciple" (Luke xiv. 33). So He called John and James and Simon from their nets, and Levi from his tax-table- (Luke v. 10, 11, 28). The best was worth the surrender of all good. A poor widow He commended, though, with un mitigated rashness of love, she had cast absolutely all her living into the Treasury of the Temple (Luke xxi. 4). Excellence was worth perpetual self-crucifixion : " Whosoever would save his life shall lose it ; but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake, the same shall save it " (Luke ix. 24). "What is a man profited," He asked, "if he gain the whole world, and lose or forfeit his own self?" (Luke ix. 25). He called men to the enthusiasm of the highest and best through what He named "the narrow door" (Luke xiii. 24). This was the door, and on its threshold there were no qualifications or compromises : " If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me" (Luke ix. 23). When disciples in large numbers began to gather around Him, and the temptation was strong to modify His doctrine, to accommodate His teaching and demands to a lower standard, Jesus was firm and faithful. Under similar cir cumstances, Mohammed gave way, made com promises, abated the rigor of his morality and the demands of his doctrine. But when the temp tation was presented to Jesus, He sought for yet sterner statements of His message. His fan was in His hand, and He mercilessly winnowed the chaff from the grain. A multitude whom He had fed followed Him for more loaves and fishes, glad to serve such a King. He met them with a revelation of their materialism, challenged their faith with the most trying address He had 46 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS yet delivered, created great unrest and dissatis faction, which finally issued in open murmuring and desertion ; and when His own disciples sug- gestedthat He'was going too far, He turned upon them with a fresh statement of difficulties, designed to make clear who were and who were not prepared for what He called His baptism, and resulting in the withdrawal of all but the twelve whom He had chosen to be with Him, and to whom He now turned with the sad question, " Will ye also go away? " and met their protestations of fidelity with the disquieting charge, that one of them was a devil (John vi.). He was especially vehement in His hatred of lies. Every lie, He declared, was of the devil, and every liar a child of the devil. There were no " justifiable lies " in His ethics (John viii. 44). Impurity He abhorred. There is no record of His ever having met a leper, the very incarnation of the conception of uncleanness (Lev. xiii. 45, 46), whom He did not heal (Matt. viii. 2, 3 ; x. 8 ; xi. 5 ; xxvi. 6 ; Luke xvii. 12). " Blessed are the pure in heart," He cried on the Galilean hills : "for they shall see God" (Matt. v. 8). He blushed for very shame at the coarseness of hu man nature when the woman taken in adultery was brought before Him, and He stooped down to hide His shame, and wrote on the ground (John viii. 1-11). He gave sin no quarter. His mission here was to war against it, and to overcome it in His humanity, that humanity might war against it, and overcome it in His divinity. To have compromised in His struggle with lies and uncleanness and sin would have been to betray humanity and to play false with God. One flaw, one slip, one faintest inclination toward defect, and the whole mission would have HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 47 been marred, and Jesus would have lost forever the world He came to save. VIII. His ability to impart spiritual ideas to dull, ignorant, prejudiced people. He was preeminently a teacher. This is one of our first glimpses of Him (Matt. iv. 23). Luke summarizes His ministry as a work of doing and teaching (Acts i. 1). On this faculty He laid emphasis (Matt. xiii. 52 ; xxviii. 19, 20). There was need among His own disciples for such teaching (Matt. xv. 15, 16 ; John xiv. 8, 9 ; Luke xxiv. 25, 26). His work was continual dis cussion (John vi., vii., viii.). Notice how, in these chapters, Jesus leads on the open-minded to full faith, and sets before those of hostile, fleshly heart the plain fact, put in innumerable ways, that spiritual truth requires a spiritual vision. Jesus succeeded by teaching in the simplest and most human ways. He sought to combine the greatest clearness with the briefest compass, avoiding always " all considerations and circum stances which, though neither multiplying nor lim iting the general principles to be taught, would in any degree obscure them" (Wendt, The Teaching of Jesus,vol.i.,p. 1 31). He teaches thus by example, as, " after giving the exhortation not to resist one that is evil, He subjoins the example of how to act if struck by anpther on the right cheek, or if robbed by him of a coat through form of legal process " (Matt. v. 39-41). He teaches also by object-les sons (John xiii. 1-20), and as frequently by com parisons, illustrative similes (Mark x. 15; Matt. x. 16 ; xiii. 27 ; Luke xiii. 34), or similes extended 48 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS into parables (Mark iv. 33, 34) ; recognizing the truth that " Truth in closest words shall fail When truth embodied in a tale Shall enter in at lowly doors ; " Which they may read who bind the sheaf Or build the house or dig the grave, Or those wild eyes which watch the wave In roarings round the coral reef." His teaching was constantly from the things He saw, signs of the high realities (Matt. vi. 28). What suggested the figures in Matthew v. 14; John iii. 8; iv. 10, 34, 35; vi. 35; vii. 37, 38; viii. 12; xv. 17? Sometimes this symbolic teach ing was direct and intentional (Mark ix. 33—37), and sometimes indirect (Mark viii. 14-21). As in this last case, He asked questions constantly (Matt. xiii. 51 ; xvii. 24—27 ; xxii. 15—22); or, as in John iv. and vi., constantly hinted more than His auditors were able at the time to apprehend, and so led them on toward the large truth which lay beyond His hints. He constantly and unweariedly taught, not afraid of wasting time or truth on barren souls. Meeting a poor woman by a well-side, He at once begins a conversation, and leads her on from truth to truth, till the larger light breaks over her (John iv. 1-26). All interruptions He uses for the purposes of His teaching. They never disconcert Him (John xiii. 25, 36; xiv. 5, 8, 22). Even on social occasions He turned the conversation to the deeper themes (Luke xi. 37- 40), but He did it always in a perfectly genuine and natural way. He could do this (1) because of the vigor of His spiritual perceptions. He HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 49 saw truth ever, and the things of which He spoke were wholly real to Him (John v. 19, 20). He did not speculate, or speak perfunctorily, as one whose profession it was to preach. To lead men into light was His life. (2) His teaching was self-revelation. He was the truth He taught. To speak was to teach the eternal vitalities (John viii. 1 2 ; xiv. 6). His followers were properly called " disciples," learners. And it is no wonder that Nicodemus declared, voicing what was evidently, at the time, the conviction of his class, " We know that Thou art a teacher come from God." " Teacher " was His popular title, and to-day even those who do not accede to the claim of His supreme divinity look up to Him as the great Teacher, " that un exampled Rabbi." As a teacher, He combined constructive strength with the most complete mastery of the destructive processes of the Socratic method. Nowhere is this more beautifully shown than in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John, where, in verses 26-40, a dialogue with the people, He lays bare the mercenary character of their disci- pleship, and mercilessly attacks the search for "fodder," upon which, like beasts, they have set out, and concludes with the direct and unmis takable assertion of truths, which He frankly tells them they would not understand because they were unwilling to meet the conditions of under standing. In verses 41-51, in an open answer to secret murmuring of the Jews, He offers His secret with sublime tact to any man who has the spiritual illumination to respond to Him, taking thus the best road to the heart of any open-minded man present, throwing Himself on that man's candor and courage; and in verses 52-59 He 50 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS clinches His appeal to such a man by yet more open and bold assertion, at the risk of alienating yet more the many who had no capacity to re spond. He did not teach at random only. He knew the hearts of men, and who those men were who were His. IX. He knew and touched the personalities of men. Piercing the crust, and laying bare the heart, He spoke directly to the sanctities of life. To Him men were souls having bodies, not bodies having souls. Compared with them, tra ditions and institutions were as nothing (Matt. xii. 6, 12 ; Mark ii. 27). His glance shot right through to the inner thought of His hearer (John iii. 2, 3). "The Lord's answers to questions will be found generally to reveal the true thought of the questioner, and to be fitted to guide him to the truth which he is seeking. Nicodemus im plied that he and those like him were prepared to welcome the Lord's teaching. This appeared to him to be of the same order as that with which he was already familiar. He does not address the Lord as if he were ready to welcome Him as 'the Christ,' or as ' the prophet.' On the other hand, the Lord's reply sets forth distinctly that His work was not simply to carry on what was already begun, but to recreate. The new king dom of which He was founder could not be comprehended till after a new birth" (West- cott, Bible Commentary, "St. John's Gospel," p. 48; cf. Matt. xix. 20-22). Motive and spirit lay open before His gaze (Luke xii. 13-15). Even in the midst of con troversy, He was ready to recognize ingenuousness HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 5 1 (Mark xii. 34). He knew human nature (John ii. 25). Accordingly, He gave His aid with dis crimination and real helpfulness (John iv. 46-53). His emphasis is ever on the inner life. The personal will, He declares, is the seat of evil, and its spring (Mark vii. 14-23). He aims to reach this. For this reason He deals with men indi vidually (Mark vii. 33 ; viii. 23), and forms per sonal friendships with Peter and John, with Laza rus, Mary, and Martha, and with many more. His disciples never lost their amazement at His insight into the character and feeling of those who were brought close to Him. He read their thoughts constantly ; but each revelation of them selves which His insight enabled Him to make to them proved to them a fuller revelation of Him self (John xvi. 17-19, 29, 30). X. In the prosecution of His work He was chari table ever, but He was no liberal. There is a vital distinction here. " Charity holds fast the minutest atom of truth as being precious and divine, offended by even as much as a thought of laxity. Liberality loosens the terms of truth, permitting easily, and with care less magnanimity, variations from it ; consenting, as it were in its own sovereignty, to overlook or allow them ; and subsiding ere long into a licen tious indifference to all truth and a general de fect of responsibility in regard to it. Charity extends allowance to men ; liberality to falsities themselves " (Bushnell, The Character of Jesus, PP- 52. 53)- . . , Nothing can surpass Christ's loving charitable ness (Luke ix. 49-56), but He is no conscience- 52 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS surrendering liberal (John viii. 44, 55). Charity's only barrier is clear opposition. " There is," it says, "an antagonistic and irreconcilable position ; but he who has not gone as far as that, who is not against us, is for us (Luke ix. 50). No doubtful or hesitant, searching or questioning soul can be counted our foe." But liberality will have no barriers at all. "There can be none against us," is its voice ; " for, rather than have opposi tion, we will waive the absolute claims of our position. Agreement or general truce is more to be desired than truth with conflict. There is room for all." Liberality cannot say what Christ does say : " He that is not with Me is against Me " (Matt. xii. 30). His charitableness and fidelity to principle are shown side by side in John viii. 7, n, where, while dealing gently with the woman, He reserves all judgment and does not lower His standard. The spirit of Jesus is so often cited in defense of a disloyally compromising or hon-combatant attitude in the struggle for truth that we need to insist on His strong, unhesitating impeachment of falsehood, error, and duplicity (Matt, xxiii.; xi. 20-24). He did not belong to a "peace at any price" party. "Truth at any price" was His motto (Luke xii. 51 ; Matt. v. 29, 30). In this, as in all things, Jesus kept His balance. There was no popular laxity in His doctrine (Luke xiii. 23, 24) ; yet there was no bigoted excess (Mark ix. 41—43). If, on the one hand, He set an excruciatingly high standard and imposed most painful conditions, on the other, He declared that at the last men would be as signed their places on a basis of judgment so just, so loving, so tender, that no cne could rightly complain (Matt. xxv. 34-46) The election of HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 53 righteousness and the universalism of love were not inconsistent to Him (Matt. xi. 27, 28). We ourselves are too liable to error to tread with overmuch boldness in this path. Indigna tion at the motes of error in the eyes of our brothers too often blinds us to the beams of false hood in our own. Paul's advice is sound (Rom. xiv. 22). " Deal meekly, gently, with the hopes that guide The lowliest brother straying from thy side ; If right they bid thee tremble for thine own, If wrong the verdict is for God alone. " Strive with the wanderer from the beaten path, Bearing thy message meekly, not in wrath ; Weep for the frail that err, the weak that fall ; Have thine own faith, but hope and pray for all." Even with us, however, it is better to err on the side of losing peace than on the side of los ing truth (Rom. xii. 18). Peace is not always possible, and war is better than truth betrayed, or fellowship with lies. XI. He was never anxious for His success. Always " He speaks as one who is sure of the compactness and faultlessness of His design. i-Ie is certain that no human obstacle can balk its realization. He produces it simply, without effort, without reserve, without exaggeration. He is calm because He is in possession of the future, and sees His way clearly through its tangled maze " (Liddon, The Divinity of Our Lord p. 117). It is this that makes His life so con fident, so seemingly careless. He never quarrels with events. He simply meets them in no haste, and with no desire that they should be otherwise. 54 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS He does not seek or make opportunities for speeches or deeds. He simply accepts such as come. Even when the tide sets heavily against Him, He keeps calmly on His course. His dis ciples tell Him that the most powerful class in the nation are offended at Him ; it gives Him no uneasiness (Matt. xv. 12-14). His statement of His doctrine proves distasteful; He does not modify it to make it acceptable; He seems at times even to accentuate its objectionable features (John vi. 41-59), regardless of the effect of such a course upon His popularity, or upon the num bers of His followers, and with the purpose even of repelling those who had no sympathy with Him or with the life of spirit. When He preached His first sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke iv. 16-30), the people at first "bore witness to the gracious words" which He spoke to them; but as He proceeded, they were filled with indig nant wrath at His rejection of His countrymen, to which He gives added point by citing the ex amples of the two great prophets. He saw the effect His words were producing, but He only broadened His hint as to His mission to the Gentiles. Thereupon they thrust Him out with| violence ; but He calmly passed through their angry ranks, so impressing His enemies by the dignity of His bearing that they had not courage to stop or harm Him. There is a yet finer illus tration of His disregard of the formal conditions of success in John vi. 60-66. The disciples had stumbled at the difficulty of accepting life only through the communicated humanity of the in carnate Son ; so He proceeds to state the con ditions of discipleship yet more clearly, (1) (verses 62, 63) because the passion, resurrection, and ascension will prove a yet greater stumbling- HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 55 block to them, and (2) because they would have to bear (verse 64) the trial of treachery revealed in the midst of them, which would seem to be in consistent with His claims (Westcott, Bible Com mentary, "St. John's Gospel," pp. 109, no). Apparently careless of misrepresentation and misinterpretation, Jesus never wrote a word. Like Socrates, He preferred writing on living hearts to writing on dead sheepskins. His careless confidence in His own powers was shown in the way He constantly risked much on His ability to secure apparently impossible results, when He might have avoided risk by making some provision for possible failure (Luke ix. 1 3- 17; Mark ix. 19). What if He had failed in these cases to satisfy the expectations He had unnecessarily aroused? In the midst of gathering gloom, conscious of approaching betrayal and death, He calmly as sures Peter of the eternity of His Church (Matt. xvi. 18, 19), and from the beginning to the end keeps unshaken faith in the certainty of His tri. umph (John xii. 32 ; xvii. 20, 21). "Fully con scious that the world is against Him, scoffed at, despised, hated, alone, too, in His cause, and without partizans that have any public influence, no man has ever been able to detect in Him the least anxiety for the final success of His doctrine." His question as to the popular opinion of Him (Matt. xvi. 13-21) is asked, apparently, not so much for information as to the world's attitude toward His claims as to serve as a text from which He proceeds to indicate to His followers that His success will come through a renuncia tion of Him and His claims, culminating in His death. " He is never jealous of contradiction. When His friends display their ignorance and 56 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS incapacity, or even when they forsake Him, He is never ruffled or disturbed. He rests on His words with a composure as majestic as if He were sitting on the circle of the heavens. Now the consciousness of truth, we are not about to deny, has an effect of this nature in every truly great mind. But when has it had an effect so complete? What human teacher, what great philanthropist, has not shown some traces of anxiety for his school that indicated his weak ness, some pride in his friends, some traces of wounded ambition when disputed or denied? But here is a lone man, a humble, uneducated man, never schooled into the elegant fiction of an assumed composure, or practised in the con ventional dignities of manners, and yet finding all the world against Him, the world does not rest upon its axle more firmly than He upon His doctrine" (Bushnell, The Character of 'Jesus, p. 59). When Pilate assumes power over Him, He calmly declares his impotence (John xix. 10—12), but asserts that He is the King of the eternal kingdom of truth. ^ This confidence of Jesus is explicable only on the supposition of an exceptional relation to God. In a peculiar sense, He was doing God's will, which He knew was in the end sure to triumph (John iv. 34, v. 30, vi. 38; Heb. x. 7). His will was identified with God's. Obedience and duty, in our human terms, grown into divine sympathy and love in Him, were the key-words of His life (Phil. ii. 5-8 ; Heb. v. 7, 8). Through this obedience He wrought out what we enter into through obedience (Rom. v. 19 ; Heb. v. 9). Obedience is not all ; it is" much, however — bet ter even than sacrifice (1 Sam. xv. 22), and Jesus deemed it love's best expression (John xiv. 15). HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 57 ' The longer on this earth we live, And weigh the various qualities of men, Seeing how most are fugitive Or fitful gifts at best of now and then, Wind-wavered, corpse-lights, daughters of the fen, The more we feel the high, stern-featured beauty Of plain devotedness to duty, Steadfast and still, nor paid with mortal praise ! But finding amplest recompense For life's ungarlanded expense In work done squarely and unwasted days." In such love of duty, and duty-doing for love's sake, there is no fear even with us (i John iv. 18). This was the teaching of Christ's example as truly as of His words, in George Macdonald's summary, " First, that a man's business is to do the will of God; second, that God takes upon Himself the care of the man; and third, there fore, that a man must never be afraid of any thing " {Robert Falconer, part iii., chap. Ii.). XII. He was easy of approach, but held Himself completely independent, superior to human in tercessions and judgments. Even as a child He showed an independence, respectful and childlike, born of some conscious ness of His divine relationship (Luke ii. 48, 49). When He had entered upon His work, this inde pendence could not be surrendered even to the claims of family relationship (Mark iii. 31-35). Some have thought that this assertion sometimes went quite far, as in John ii. 4, " Woman, what have I to do with thee?" addressed to His mother. But there is no tinge of severity or reproof in the term "woman." The address is courteous, even tender : " Leave Me to Myself, mother; let Me follow My own course." 58 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS He was always accessible. His disciples seldom hesitated to approach Him, or to interrupt or even contradict Him (Mark i. 35-37 ; John xiii. 35, 36 ; xiv. 4, 5, 8 ; Matt. xvi. 21, 22). The poor and the sinful drew near Him unhindered and with confidence (Luke vii. 37, 38 ; viii. 43, 44). He responded to their-needs (Mark ix. 15, 22 ; John xi. 3, n). Yet He was superior to their judg ments, and the judgments of all. 1. It was known that He was a man of sym pathy and of power, and these were frequently sought and appealed to. Such appeals Jesus de clined to answer unless they were the product or the promise of faith (Mark ix. 22-25). He held the wealth of His sympathies in the leash' of His understanding of man's nature and the only right ways of permanently helping it. 2. He never took the trouble to justify con duct of His liable to misunderstanding. (1) A human teacher would have justified his sleep in the hour of his disciples' peril, and in reply to their sharp and fear-filled rebuke (Mark iv. 37- 41). (2) A human friend would have justified his delay in coming to the aid of Lazarus (John xi. 3, 6, 21, 32). It may be, as Westcott main tains, that the words of Martha and Mary, ex pressing the conviction that if Christ had been with them their brother would have been saved, " are a simple expression of faith and love, with out any admixture of complaint. Martha does not say, ' If Thou hadst come ;' she does not even emphasize the pronoun; she thinks only of a necessary absence." But all the more, then, if the sisters were not reproachful, would a human friend have tried to justify conduct likely to seem, to the other friends of the sisters, reproach- able (John xi. 37). Why had not Jesus, the HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 59 opener of the eyes of the man born blind, known of the need of Lazarus even before the messen gers were sent? Why had He delayed until too late? He made no defense. 3. At one time Peter strongly deprecated Jesus' dark view of the future, and with earnest and sympathetic devotion entered his protestations (Mark viii. 31-33). Turning away from Peter that He might have him, as Satan's representa tive, behind His back, He spoke with no per sonal bitterness, but with sharp rebuke for the principle or tendency of mind of which He said Peter "savored." 4. He never asked any one's advice. It was almost never proffered to Him, and was almost invariably rejected when it was. Jesus was His own and only adviser. Other leaders or reform ers have had some friend or friends on whom to lean for help and advice and the supply of the needed balance. Jesus had none ; He needed none (John ii. 24, 25). 5. He never asked any one his opinion of Him, save Simon Peter; and then He asked only to make the question a stepping-stone in His teaching. The human leader is not above praise. Jesus was sublimely superior to the opinions of men about Him (John viii. 2 1-30 ; vi. 60-65). He took no pains to correct wrong opinions which were founded on ignorance or •mistake, although they did Him grave injustice (John vii. 52). On the other hand, "no latent wish was in His heart to conceal any circumstance connected with His origin, His past history, or His present position, from the fear that it might be unfavorable to His reputation and success" (Young, The Christ of History, p. 84). 6. He never asked any one to pray for Him. So THE MAN CHRIST JESUS In Gethsemane's gloom He wished His friends to be near ; so He said, " Tarry here." And He needed their sympathies; so He said, "Watch with Me."- But He needed their aid less than they needed it themselves ; so He bade them pray not for His, but for their own safe-keeping (Matt. xxvi. 36-46). And even here, in the garden of suffering, He received no help from His disciples, whom He had asked to be near. " When the world was most in need of a loyal Master, and when loyalty cost an unspeakable price, Christ was true; when the Master was most in need of friendship, and when friendship was made easy and almost inevitable by the ten der solicitation of the sublime sufferer, the dis ciples were false " (Gordon, The Christ of To-day, p. 130). Apart from the prayer He taught His disciples, the only thing for which He ever asked His dis ciples to pray was that more laborers might be provided for the great and ready harvest (Matt. ix. 37, 38). It was not what He needed; it was what they needed that was always in His mind, even in His last hours (Luke xxii. 31-33). And when the women of Jerusalem followed Him to Calvary, as He and Simon bore His cross — the woman heart instinctively trusting and loving Him, though men were blinded and led astray— and wept for Him with loud lamentations and great sobbing, He bade them give their sympa thy to those who needed it, upon whose heads their husbands had laid the curse of innocent blood (Luke xxiii. 27, 28). The significance of this will be apparent from a comparison of it with the persistent pleadings of the Apostle Paul for the prayers of the churches in his behalf. 7. His indifference as to the effects of His HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 6l teaching has been indicated as one of the expres sions of His confidence in His rectitude and suc cess. It is an evidence also of His independence. Ae was unconcerned whether His teaching hurt or not. He wished to hurt all that was hurtable by it (Matt. xv. 12-14). He was doing His Father's will and could leave all with His Father. His judgment and not that of man concerned Him (John viii. 44-55 ; John xviii. 11). Paul learned this secret (1 Cor. iv. 3, 4). 8. He never hesitated, therefore, to warn His disciples of the unpopularity of His cause, and to set before them the hard conditions of entrance upon it (Luke ix. 23, 57-62), of adherence to it (Matt. xxiv. 9; John xv. 18, 19; xvii. 14), of judgment by it (Matt. vii. 21). 9. He was not affected by the social prejudices of the day. At a time when the antagonism to Him had not hardened into the purpose of mur der, and the influential men of the nation were listening to His teaching and examining His claims and watching His growing movement with an interest that might yet be turned to His sup port, and it was accordingly most undesirable that He should in any unnecessary way cross their prejudices, "Christ singles out Levi the publican, calls him as an apostle, and goes to his house to feast with a large company of other publicans. The great people remonstrate with Him angrily. Such an act outrages all their notions of the orthodox conduct of a prophet. Christ replies simply that He has come to call sin ners, not the righteous, to repentance " (Hughes, The Manliness of Christ, p. 105). With the same independence of popular opinion, He accepted the invitation of Simon the Pharisee to dine at his house, though His peasant and proletariat 62 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS followers were likely to condemn His acceptance of the patronizing hospitality of the rich. But He went nevertheless, and "the story of the woman, a sinner, who gets into the room and anoints Christ's feet, and the use which He makes of the incident— to bring home to Simon's mind, with the most exquisite temper and courtesy, but with the most faithful firmness, his shortcomings as a host, and his want of true insight as a man — are among the finest illustrations we have of His method with the great and powerful of His nation " (Hughes, The Manliness of Christ, pp. 106, 107). Who was this independent man who felt able to ignore the opinions of men about Him, who slighted the most cherished traditions, and over rode the social prejudices of classes which looked down upon Him as a peasant, and His followers as despicable and boorish? He had no wealth, no political authority, no military support; h«i was a youth without name and without family position, but He looked down on all the petty conventional movement of the day, and treated it and the petty conventional men who moved in it as their Master. XIII. He was never caught off guard, never vexed, disconcerted, hastened, or irritated, or shown, by some sudden revelation, to be other than He seemed and claimed to be. 1. He was ever perfectly self-possessed, even when His conduct was challenged and brought under criticism (Matt. xxi. 23-27). In response to a loud challenge of His authority, He quietly asked what the opinion of His questioners was HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 63 as to the character of the mission of John the Baptist. Was it human or divine? Fear for bade their choice of one alternative. The other i/ivolved an acknowledgment of His claims ; for J ohn had expressly borne witness to Jesus as the Mighty One who should come after him and thor- . oughly try the true from the false. His testimony, therefore, if of God, closed the case. The appro priateness of this thrust of Jesus is the more evi dent when we remember that these questioners had made careful inquiries as to the authority of John, and might be presumed to have a matured opinion (John i. 19-28). 2. He never retracted anything. Much of His speech was wholly extemporaneous, called out by sharp personal discussion and debate, when His life was even threatened (John x. 30-34). Though He was often pressed thus, He never let slip any exaggerations or misstatements which He had afterward to modify or correct or retract. The consistency of His character found expression in perfect consistency of utterance and manifesta tion (John viii. 25). 3. He made no alterations in His plans or pur poses. Von Moltke is said to have lain down to sleep in one of his campaigns, with orders given for all his troops based upon the knowledge of his enemy's plans and movements. During the night the enemy changed his movements, and Von Moltke was awakened to give new orders in accordance with the changed conditions. On hearing of the enemy's change, however, Von Moltke simply said, " Portfolio No. 4." He had already prepared complete orders to meet the change which he foresaw might be made. Jesus had no alternative plans to be determined by circumstances. No circumstances could arise 64 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS to which His projected plan was not already ad justed. 4. He was able to turn every occurrence to a personal, spiritual purpose effectively, without flat, professional moralizing. He was speaking .once of judgments impending, and certain per sons, partly desiring to be heard, perhaps partly desiring to illustrate His truth, told Him of the great judgment which had fallen upon the Gali leans. It was a startling bit of news, if He had not heard it ; but instead of being diverted by it, or using it as His informers had intended, He turned the moral of it upon them (Luke xiii. 1-5). It was His habit to lead on always to a spiritual principle even from most unpromising beginnings (John iv. 7-10 ; vi. 24—27 ; Matt. xvi. 6-12). 5. No one ever equaled Him in the dignity and quiet authority of His disputation. He would crush an opposition by a simple question. He indulged in no passionate tirades, such as men use to silence antagonists whom they cannot or will not take pains to answer. Once He burst forth into a fearful denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees; but this was only after all His efforts to awaken in them any response to His divine intimations, any longing after the freedom and love of God, had failed, and was in the na ture of a final judgment and farewell. Moreover, the intense anger of this denunciation contained no element of envy or hatred or fear or temper. It was passion, but the passion of an innocent and true soul (Matt, xxiii.). Even in the heat of great controversy He. was as calm as the Galilean Sea asleep. The Pharisees and Herodians early compacted against Him (Mark iii. 6), and, after long waiting, perfected a plan of attack (Mark xii. 13-17). They proposed to Him a question HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 65 which would force Him, they thought, upon one horn or the other of a deadly dilemma. The question seemed ingenuous, as the Herodians at the time appear to have been on bad terms with the Roman governor (Luke xxiii. 12). Jesus did not avoid the issue. He gave them a clear answer that left them no nearer than they were before to any entanglement of Him with the authorities, or impeachment of Him before the people. And they looked at one another in blank astonishment. When the Sadducees, coming next, propose their conundrum, Christ meets them on their own scriptural ground, and, pass ing by their silly riddle, attacks their skepticism regarding immortality by evidence which even they accept, finding proof for them even in their Pentateuch (Mark xii. 18-27). ¦^¦n^L then, in the twinkling of an eye, the whole antagonistic temper which the perfidy and obtuseness of His assailants had been hardening, softens and is laid aside, as He catches the gleam of true char acter, and even embryonic response, in the heart of the sincere scribe (Mark xii. 28—34). 6. He was surprised only by the hardness of heart of those who should have believed (Mark vi. 6), and the dullness of spiritual sympathy even in those whom He had personally trained and loved (Mark xiv. 37-42). But His surprise was the daughter, not of ignorance— of failure to understand the conditions governing His work- but of His keen knowledge of what it was to which men were strangers. ¦ He did not wonder at what men suffered; He wondered at what they lost. 7. Though poor, hunted, despised, and ap parently defeated, He was not cast down, nor did He ever break amid life's little worries and 66 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS vexations. " Observe Him in what may be called the common trials of existence ; for if you will put a character to the severest of all tests, see whether it can bear without faltering the little common ills and hindrances of life. Many a man will go to his martyrdom with a spirit of firmness and heroic composure whom a little weariness or nervous exhaustion, some silly prej udice or capricious opposition, would for a mo ment throw into a fit of vexation or ill nature. Great occasions rally great principles, and brace the mind to a lofty bearing, a bearing that is even above itself ; but trials that make no occa sion at all leave it to show the goodness and beauty it has in its own disposition. And here precisely is the superhuman glory of Christ as a character — that He is just as perfect in little trials as in great ones. In all the history of His life we are not able to detect the faintest indication that He slips or falters. And this is the more remarkable that He is prosecuting so great a work, with so great enthusiasm, counting it His meat and drink, and pouring into it all the ener gies of His life. For when men have great works on hand, their very enthusiasm runs to impatience when thwarted or unreasonably hindered ; their soul strikes fire against the obstacles they meet ; they worry themselves at every hindrance, every disappointment, and break out in stormy and fanatical violence. But Jesus, for some reason, is just as even, just as serene, in all His petty vexations and hindrances as if He had nothing on hand to do. A kind of sacred patience in vests Him everywhere. . . . He is never dis heartened, never fretted or ruffled" (Bushnell, The Character of Jesus, pp. 29, 30). There was a twofold reason for this. (1) He HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 67 knew that His plan, and all the conditions in which it was to be worked out, were alike under the perfect control of God, whose will He had come to do. (2) Time held no power over Him. It could bring no stage in His plan's development too soon, and could unduly retard none. The " hours " were adjusted for Him ; the calendar of all life had been arranged with this in view, and His soul rested in this liberty (John ii. 4 ; vii. 6 ; xii. 23 ; xiii. 1 ; xvii. 1). And this confident, composed man was not old and experienced, sobered by the remembrance of many errors, and calm with the tranquillity which old age brings. He was little more than a youth, preaching His movement alone, unsupported by the great or the rich of the nation, and doomed, as He well knew, to a hideous and ignominious death. XIV. His management of ?nen. He knew what to do even with an Oriental throng (Luke ix. 14 ; Mark viii. 6). And when He seated these multitudes, it was part of His loving thoughtfulness to choose a place where there was abundance of grass (John vi. 10). His knowledge of character and His practical skill and wisdom in the control of men were shown in His arrangement of the Twelve when He divided them into pairs (Luke vi. 13-16; Matt. x. 2-4) : facile, impulsive, outspoken Peter, and calm, conservative, cautious, Scotch Andrew ; elderly, sober James, and the bright, light-footed, lovable lad, John. " For as of old, when, two by two, His heroed saints the Saviour sent, 68 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS To soften hearts like morning dew, When He to shine in mercy meant, " He loves when youth and age are met, Fervent old age and youth serene ; Their high and low in concord set For sacred song, joy's golden mean." Slow-witted, heavy, but honest-hearted Philip, and quick-minded, alert Nathanael, now named Bartholomew ; clear-headed, ready of apprehen sion, careful, conscientious, scientifically scrupu lous, doubtful Thomas, and Matthew, of fearless and immediate faith, who rose up at the first call and followed, never wavering or questioning; stern, uncompromising James, a man of conduct and morals, impatient at the faith that was fruitless and the doctrine that was dead, and Thaddeus, also called "Judas, not Iscariot," "a man of definite, clear, sharply cut convictions," eager for definitions, " the man of practice and the man of faith;" Simon the Zealot, who counted Christ everything, and served Him with the same self- obliterating zeal which had marked him in the days when he belonged to the sect whose name clung to him, and Judas, who was a disciple for selfish ends, wary, calculating, commercial — the man of zeal, and the man of unenthusiastic coidness (R. E. Thompson's sermon, The Send ing of the Apostles Two by Two). His skill was shown not less clearly in His training of the Twelve. As soon as they were able to stand alone, He threw them on their own responsibility. Until after His second circuit in Galilee (Luke viii. i) Jesus kept the apostles with Him. Shortly after, however, He sent them off in the pairs He had arranged to work by them- HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 69 selves (Matt. x. 5. See at length Brace's Train- it ig of the Twelve). XV. His little personal ways, so human, yet so faultless. 1 . His use of His eyes ; His look. Mark's Gospel, bearing on its face the evi dences of Simon Peter's vivid recollections pre served in it, speaks repeatedly of Jesus' use of His eyes (Mark iii. 5, 34 ; v. 32 ; viii. 33). Why Peter remembered so well the power of that clear, discerning gaze Luke suggests (Luke xxii. 61). When Peter impersonated Satan, losing all savor of God, that gaze was turned away from him as Jesus put him behind His back. But on a later, eventful night, as the cock crowed the second time, it was turned full upon him, and pierced through Peter like a white-hot sword. Mrs. Browning brings out the power of it : " The Saviour looked on Peter. Aye, no word, No gesture of reproach ! The heavens serene, Though heavy with armed justice, did not lean Their thunders that way! The forsaken Lord looked only on the traitor. None record What that look was ; none guess ; for those who have seen Wronged lovers loving through a death-pang keen, Or pale-cheeked martyrs smiling to a sword, Have missed Jehovah at the judgment call ; And Peter from the height of blasphemy — ' I never knew this man '¦ — did quail and fall, As knowing straight that God, and turned free And went out speechless from the face of all, And filled the silence, weeping bitterly." The eyes of an honest man are even now as the judgment of God. What must the gaze of the 70 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS eyes of the Son of God, stainless and pare, have been? 2. His use of His hands ; His touch. There was a gracious power of soothing and of healing in that touch. He took Peter's wife's mother by the hand, and lifted her up from her bed of fever and pain (Mark i. 31). The peo ple knew the magic of His touch, and besought Him to lay His hands upon the deaf (Mark vii. 32, 33) and to touch the blind (Mark viii. 22, 23) ; and He put His fingers into the ears of the deaf man, and he heard, and He took hold of the blind man by the hand, and he saw. On loathsome lepers, even, He laid His holy hands, and they were clean (Matt. viii. 1-3). The very dead rose up from their biers at His touch of life (Luke vii. 14, 15), and souls came back from the gates of death (Mark ix. 27). Mothers brought their little ones to Him, that He should lay His hands on them and pray, but He did more. He even took them in His arms and blessed them, laying His hands upon them (Matt. xix. 13, 15; Mark x. 16). What heart, remembering His look and His touch, has not longingly joined in the child's hymn : " I wish that His hands had been laid on my head, That His arms had been thrown around me, And that I might have seen His kind face when He said, ' Let the little ones come unto Me.' " At no more suitable time can we remind our selves that Christ discovered child life. He made it significant and sacred. He pointed out its nearness to the life of God, and found nothing better as a metaphor of Himself and His spirit than the life of a little child (Mark ix. 36, 37). HIS PLANS AND METHODS OF WORK 71 For children He had only love, the gentle touch of His hand, and holy reverence and respect, see ing in them the true representatives of the king dom which is peace and joy. How He felt toward them, and what He taught by them, the dear Scotch poem of "The Maister and the Bairns " best tells : " The Maister sat in a wee cot house Tae the Jordan's watters near, An' the fisherfolk crush'd an' croodet roon The Maister's words tae hear. " An' even the bairns frae near-han streets Kept mixin' in wi' the thrang, Laddies and lassies wi' wee bare feet, Jinkin' the crood amang. " An' ane o' the twal' at the Maister's side Ris up an' cried alood : ' Come, come, bairns, this is nae place for you. Rin awa' hame oot o' the crood.' " But the Maister said, as they turned tae go, ' Lat the wee bairns coom tae Me. ' An' He gaithert them roon Him whaur He sat, An' lifted ane up on His knee. " Aye, He gaithert them roon Him whaur He satf An' He straikit their curly hair, An' He said to the wunnerin' fisherfolk Wha croodet aroon Him there : " ' Send na the weans awa' frae Me, But raither this lesson learn, That nane'Il win in at heaven's yett [gate] Wha is na as puir's a bairn.' " An' He that has taen us for kith and kin, Tho' a Prince o' the far awa', Gaithert them roon Him whaur He sat, An' blisset them ane an' a'." 7« THE MAN CHRIST JESUS XVI. The generous freeness and selflessness of Hit deeds. He never minded personal lack (Luke ix. 58). When, having no leisure so much as to eat, He was about to withdraw into a desert place to rest, He abandoned at once all thought of rest at the sight of the multitudes as sheep not having a shepherd (Mark vi. 31—34). So thoughtless of His own wants was He that His friends regarded Him as deranged (Mark iii. 20, 21). He had been at Jerusalem, where He had gone apart from His brethren, and where He was scorned by the Pharisees because of His Galilean origin, and was regarded by some as a demoniac (John vi. 20, 21, 48, 52; viii. 48, 52). Knowing the impression He had made at Jerusalem, and see ing His conduct since, His friends concluded that He was " beside Himself " ; they knew He was not possessed of an unclean spirit, as the scribes openly charged, but they doubted His sanity, and came to remove Him forcibly (Mark iii. 22). He quietly worked on. When His aid was sought, He demanded faith in the seeker, but often, with the abandonment of a divine love, He wrought for the relief and blessing of others (Matt. xv. 32 ; John v. 6). He defined Himself as servant and minister of men (Mark x. 45 ; Luke xxii. 27). Buddha's boast was, " I am no man's servant." He sought not His own will (John iv. 34 ; v. 30 ; viii. 29). He freely gave Himself in a ser vice that demanded and ended only with His death. He fulfilled thus the end of His life, and bore evidence of His origin from God, the divir- unselfishness, the royal Giver. SOME ACTIVE AND PASSIVE TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 73 Ill SOME ACTIVE AND PASSIVE TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER We can rightly appreciate these traits in Jesus only as we measure our own lives against them. If He was but a man, we ought, with the devel oped powers and capacities, the larger helpful ness of our day, to be better men than He. The uniqueness of His perfections becomes truly sig nificant when contrasted with our common wretchedness of flaw and failure. I. Sincerity. " He possessed," says Liddon, " that one in- dispensable qualification for any teacher, espe cially for a teacher of religion. He believed in what He said without reserve, and He said what He believed without regard to consequences." This was the very breath of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. vii. 1-5), and of His constant public utterances (Luke xi. 29, 32 ; xvi. 14, 15," xx. 19; Mark vii. 1-15; John viii. 31-59). Now " it is easy to denounce the errors of those who oppose us ; but it is difficult to be al ways outspoken with those who love us, or whose services may be of use to us, and who may be alienated by our outspokenness. Now Jesus Christ does not merely drag forth to the light of day the hidden motives of His powerful adversa- 7S 76 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS ries that He may exhibit them with so mercilessly implacable an accuracy in all their baseness and pretension. He exposes with equal impartiality the weakness or the unreality or the self-decep tion of [His friends or] others who desire to espouse His cause. He solemnly bids men to count the cost before building the tower of dis- cipleship (Luke xiv. 25-28). He is on the point of being deserted by all, and an apostle protests with fervid exaggeration that he is ready to go with Him to prison and to death. But instead of at once welcoming the affection which dictated this protestation, He pauses to show Simon Peter how little he really knew of the weakness of his own heart " (John xiii. 37, 38). He never flatters nor disguises nor conceals. He sincerely mani fests Himself. His words to Pilate fitly describe the whole tenor and spirit of His life (John xviii. 37). " He simply and constantly sets forth the truth in its limpid purity. Such was His moral attitude throughout. Sincerity was the main spring of His whole thought and action." " When I trace the unaffected majesty which runs through the life of Jesus," declared Chan ning, "and see Him never falling below His divine claims amidst poverty and scorn in His last agony, I have a feeling of the reality of His character which I cannot express. I feel that the Jewish carpenter could no more have conceived /and maintained this character under motives of imposture than an infant's arm could repeat the deeds of Hercules, or his unawakened intellect comprehend and rival the matchless works of genius." But is Jesus sincere if He is not divine? If His statements declare that He is supremely and truly divine, then we must accept the claim, or TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 77 pronounce Him insincere, or, as His friends charged, "beside Himself," demented. If, on the other hand, His statements involve no such claims, then He was insincere in not correcting the wrong impression they made upon those who had a right to know the truth, and who charged Him, " Thou, being a man, makest Thyself God." We cannot endure the thought of His friends. He was then either divine or insincere. If we believe in His sincerity, we must also accept His divinity or show where He repudiated the con struction placed on His words by His hearers, a construction of necessity utterly abhorrent to a merely good man's thought. A sane and sincere Christ would not have been surpassed in honesty and sincerity by Barnabas and Paul at Lystra, • who pleaded with the people not to count them as other than men of like passions with themselves (Acts xiv. 14-18). II. Simplicity. One who knew Thomas Chalmers well wrote of him, " In simplicity he was a child. By sim plicity we do not mean the simplicity of the head ; of that he had none ; but we refer to a certain quality of heart and of life which gives a direct ness to all actions, and a certain beautiful un consciousness of self — an outgoing of the whole nature that we see in children. D'Alembert speaks of it in Fenelon as a characteristic of him. It is a quality which renders the possessor dear to others. Sincerity may be hard, harsh, unlov able. Simplicity is more than sincerity. It affects neither virtue nor truth. It is never occupied with itself. It seems to have lost this ego of which one is so jealous." Fenelon's own 78 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS definition of simplicity was " that grace which frees the soul from all unnecessary reflections upon itself." Now it was the wonder of Christ's simplicity that it was a selfless self-assertion. His mission here was to reveal God through Himself, to assert Himself ; and yet He did this selflessly, simply, declaring His divinity, but with divine simplicity and humility and self -suppression. He disavowed all credit for His deeds (John v. 19, 30; viii. 28), His speech (John vii. 17, 18; xii. 49 ; xiv. 10), His mission (John vii. 28 ; viii. 42). His doctrine was not less marked by simplicity. The lowest liked to hear His direct and refresh ing words (Luke xv. 1). He denounced hypoc risy in such a way as to lead men to be sure that He would be straightforward and candid and simple (Luke vi. 41, 42). He made His religion a child's religion in its simplicity of spirit, and did it with the simplicity of a child (Luke x. 21 ; ix. 47, 48). He made it plain that He did not re gard the belief He invited as a thing possible only to the keen-minded, the intellectually trained, a reasoned assent to a formal statement of His work and person, useful as such statements might be. The faith He asked was a loving trust in Himself (Luke x. 41, 42). " Jesus, with no elaboration or careful logical development or conception of abstractions, told people directly in a manner level to their under standings what they wanted, what they must do and be, to inherit eternal life, and their inmost convictions answered to His words. His doc trine was not so much a doctrine as a biography, a personal power, a truth all motivity, a love walking the earth in the proximity of a mortal fellowship. He spoke what went forth as a feel ing and as a power in His life, breathing into all TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 79 hearts. To be capable of His doctrine only re quired that the hearer be a human creature want ing to know the truth " (Bushnell, The Character of Jesus, p. 54). Simplicity, however, was more than a charac teristic of His doctrine. It was an atmosphere and spirit of His life. He put His great truths with great simplicity (John iii. 16 ; v. 30 ; vi. 29 ; viii. 47 ; xiv. 2 ; xvii. 3) because His truth was Himself. His personal simplicity accordingly expressed itself in all His teaching (John xiv. 6 ; viii. 38). In Him was no darkness or obscurity at all. But was Jesus simple if He was not divine? Did He not show the most cunning and unscru pulous duplicity, whether with the guilt of con scious deception or the innocence of irresponsible dementia, if He was not divine ? If it is alleged that, instead of these repulsive conclusions, the records are untrustworthy, then the foundations of all human testimony are undermined. III. Humility. " I believe," says Mr. Ruskin, in Modern Paint ers, "the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do not mean by humility doubt of his own power, or hesitation of speaking his opin ions ; but a right understanding of the relation between what he can do and say, and the rest of the world's doings and sayings. All great men not only know their business, but usually know that they know it, and are not only right in their main opinions, but they usually know that they are right in them, only they do not think much of themselves on that account. Arnolfo knows that he can build a good dome at Florence ; Al- 80 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS bert Diirer writes calmly to one who has found fault with his work, ' It cannot be done better; ' Sir Isaac Newton knows that he has worked out a problem or two that would have puzzled any body else ; only they do not expect their fellow- men therefore to fall down and worship them, They have a curious undersense of powerless- ness, feeling that the power is not in them, but through them, that they could not do or be any thing else than God made them, and they see something divine and God-made in every other man they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly, in credibly merciful." A humility even deeper than this — deeper be cause of the height from which He had to stoop, and the claims which it was necessary for Him to advance and maintain, and which He put forth not only without destroying, but even t> the deepening of His self-abasement — marked Jesus Christ. He was one, as the writer of Ecu Homo truly describes Him, " naturally contented with obscurity, wanting the restless desire for dis tinction and eminence which is common in great men, hating to put forward personal claims, dis liking competition and ' disputes who should be greatest,' finding something bombastic in the titles of royalty, fond of what is simple and homely, of children, of poor people, occupying Himself so much with the concerns of others, with the relief of sickness and want, that the temptation to exaggerate the importance of His own thoughts and plans was not likely to master Him ; lastly, entertaining for the human race a feeling so sin gularly fraternal that He was likely to reject as a sort of treason the impulse to set Himself in any manner above them. Christ, it appears, was this humble man." TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 8l " He was anxious that His miracles should not add to His reputation (Luke viii. 51). Again and again He enjoined silence on those who were the subjects of His miraculous cures (Matt. ix. 30; xii. 15, 16; Mark i. 43, 44). He would not gratify persons whose motive in seeking His company was a vain desire to satisfy curiosity in seeing proofs of His power'' (Mark viii. 1 1, 1 2, or as more vigorously related in Matthew xvi. 1-4). Pride or self-sufficiency — anything but humility — would have dictated a different answer. Re peatedly the people demanded evidence which He could have given, but which He did not, pre ferring the loving personal confidence of the few to the noisy political adhesion of the many (John vi. 30-36). So true was His humility that His assertion of it seems itself humility (Matt. xi. 29 ; xx. 26-28 ; Luke xxii. 27), but this was because the verbal assertion was so far surpassed by the testimony of the life. The scene described in John xiii. 1-20 was characteristic of His whole private and public ministry. The apostles had quarreled as to which should be first. Going into the room where the supper had been prepared, no one was willing to abandon the claim to precedence by performing for the others the menial act of hos pitality and service, the washing of their feet. When Jesus came in, He found them seated in sulky silence, each unwilling to acknowledge him self the servant of all, all feigning unconscious ness of the neglected duty. With no word, but a sad heart, Jesus, having loved His own, arose from supper and laid aside His garments and Himself bathed the disciples' feet, wiping them with the towel wherewith He was girded, show ing them the presence in their Lord of a humility &2 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS the servants lacked (Dods, The Gospel of St. John, vol. ii., ch. vi., Expositor's Bible). It is no wonder that Matthew was impressed with the fulfilment in Christ's life of the prophecy of Isaiah xiii. 1-4 (Matt. xii. 17-20). Nor is it to be wondered at that the Father loved this Son whose humility expressed itself in such perfect obedience (John vii. 16 ; viii. 26). Nor is there any shorter road for us into His presence and favor. " Wouldst thou the holy hill ascend And see the Father's face? To all His children lowly bend And seek the lowest place. Thus humbly doing on the earth What things the earthly scorn, Thou shalt assert the lofty birth Of all the lowly born." But was Jesus humble if He was not divine? Can He be a man, and as a King bid us to be lieve in Him, live by Him and for Him, die for Him, and yet be humble? "If He is God as well as man, His language falls into place and becomes intelligible ; but if you deny His divin ity, you must conclude that some of the most precious sayings in the gospel are but the out break of a preposterous self -laudation ; they might well seem to breathe the very spirit of another Lu cifer "(Liddon, The Divinity of Our Lord, p. 199). IV. His unselfishness and personal dignity. For the dignity of selfishness or self-importance He had no thought. He cared nothing for Him self, spared Himself not at all. He loved His enemies, and sought to serve them (Luke vi. 31- TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 83 35). The words in which He urged such conduct upon His disciples, however, and the life in which lie exemplified it, were alike marked by a lofty dignity not always accompanying the attempt at self-denial. This combination of unselfishness and personal dignity is seen : 1. In His own assertions. He did not His own will, but He did the will of a King (John vi. 38). He sought not His own pleasure, but it pleased the eternal God to walk with Him as a friend and companion (John viii. 29). He sought not His own glory, but God made His life a per fect and glorious revelation of His own beauty (John viii. 50). 2. In His surrender of home and friends to become a wanderer (Luke ix. 58). " Foxes had their rest and the birds their nest In the deserts of Galilee ; Thy couch was the sod, O Thou Son of God, In the deserts of Galilee." He was very poor. When He died, lae seems to have had but the one suit of clothes. He borrowed money to use for an illustration (Matt. xxii. 19; Mark xii. 15), and had none for the payment of taxes for Himself and Peter (Matt. xvii. 24-27). He was fed by a loving company of followers (Luke viii. 2, 3). " What a Messiah to the eyes of the flesh was this One, who lived on the bounty of men ! But what a Messiah to the eyes of the spirit was this Son of God, living by the love of those whom His love had made to live!" (Godet). Yet, though poor, He never begged — save to ask a Samaritan woman for a drink of water (John iv. 7). He rather gave like a king (Mark viii. 2-8). 3. In His love of loneliness (Matt. xiv. 23, 24 ; 84 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS Mark i. 35-38). Small and selfish souls seldom like to be alone with nature. She rebukes them. Her magnificent breath of abandon, beneficence, and dignity appals them. 4. In His avoidance of demonstration, noise, popularity, the shouts and partizanship of the mob. He enjoined silence upon a leper He had healed (Luke v. 1 4-1 6). He concealed His iden tity from the man who had lain by the Bethesda pool (John v. 13). He desired the story of the transfiguration kept secret (Luke ix. 36 ; Mark ix. 9). He took His disciples into the desert to escape the crowds (Mark vi. 32). A deaf man with an impediment in his speech He cured, and bade him to tell no man (Mark vii. 36, 37). 5. In His freedom from fear. His enemies never terrorized Him (Luke iv. 19, 20). Selfish men are cowards. 6. In His superiority to political manipulation of the populace. He never availed Himself of the advocacy of the mob. Paul was willing to play upon the factional dissensions between Phar isees and Sadducees (Acts xxii. 1, 6). Jesus was not willing to set class against class (Luke xx. 19 ; xxii. 2 ; Mark xiv. 1, 2). He might have roused a whirlwind of passion among the women follow ing His cross (Luke xxiii. 27). 7. In His self-restraint. He never lost con trol of Himself, either through a wrong self-for getfulness or a wrong self-assertion. There was always a reserve. What He was not and did not do were almost as wonderful as what He was and did (Lukeix. 51-56; Matt. iv. 1-11). " He might have reared a palace at a word Who sometimes had not where to lay His head.- Time was when He who nourished crowds with bread TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 85 Would not one meal unto Himself afford. He healed another's scratch ; His own side bled, Side, feet, and hands with cruel piercings gored. Twelve legions girded with angelic sword Stood at His beck, the scorned and buffeted. Oh, wonderful the wonders left undone, And scarce less wonderful than those He wroughtl Oh, self-restraint, surpassing human thought, To have all power, yet be as having none ! Oh, self-denying love that thought alone For needs of others, never for its own ! " 8. In His constant readiness to sacrifice Him self and His own needs for others (John iv. 6, 7, S1^; Rom. xv. 3). It is not easy for one to combine the humility of self-effacement with large personal power and great personal dignity. We are dignified, and we become cold, formal, self-esteemed. We are anxious to serve others wholly, and we become officious and supernumerary. But Christ com bined them always, just as, in His greatest act of humiliation and service, when He washed His disciples' feet, He never lost for one moment anything of the majesty or consciousness of His divine dignity (Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, vol. ii., p. 398). The Lord God had laid the sword of the knighthood of the divine dignity on the unselfish shoulder of Jesus of Nazareth, and the glory of that investiture never departed from Him. " It is the same King's Son," says Van Oosterzee, " who to-day dwells in the palace of His Father, and to-morrow, out of love to rebellious subjects in a remote corner of the kingdom, renouncing His princely glory, comes to dwell among them in the form of a servant, limiting of His own free will the prerogative of His original rank, which He has never laid aside, and is known only by 86 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS the dignity of the look and the star of royalty on His breast, when the mean cloak is opened for a moment, apparently by accident." Or, in the fine words of Warfield, in The Ex ample of the Incarnation, " We see Him among the thousands of Galilee, anointed of God with the Holy Ghost and power, going about doing good, with no pride of birth, though He was a king ; with no pride of intellect, though omnis cience dwelt within Him ; with no pride of power, though all power in heaven and earth was in His hands ; or of station, though the fullness of the Godhead abode in Him bodily; or of superior goodness or holiness ; but in lowliness of mind esteeming every other one better than Himself, healing the sick, casting out devils, feeding the hungry, and everywhere breaking to men the bread of life. We see Him everywhere offering to men His life for the salvation of their souls ; and when at last the forces of evil gathered thick around Him, walking alike without display or dismay the path of suffering appointed for Him, and giving His life at Calvary that through His death the world might live." Now it was believed in Jesus' day, as Young remarks {The Christ of History, p. 72), and "it is still very widely believed, that high self-estima tion is essential to dignity of character." But of a character of greater dignity than Jesus there is no record in history, and yet He was only a young man at the time of His death. In a coun try and among a people where age had always been regarded with peculiar veneration and re spect, and young men had been taught to be in subjection to the elders, and totally surrendering any of the dignity which comes from pompous and vaiD self-estimation and assertion, Jesus was TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 87 still regarded with profound respect, though His life was one long act of humble and unselfish service.V. His love and generosity toward those who were alien or hostile to Him. 1. This is shown in His attitude toward the Samaritans, between whom and His nation there were no dealings (John iv. 9). This hostility was bitter and ancient. It was bitter. Among the later rules of the Jews it was declared, " To eat the bread of a Samaritan is as eating swine's flesh." It was ancient, traceable to the Assyrian colonization of the land (2 Kings xvii. 24), and the consequent antagonism of the colonists to the Jews at the time of the return (Ezra iv. ; Neh. vi.), which led to the erection on Mount Gerizim of the rival temple. The hostility endures to this day. Yet all Christ's conduct toward Sa maritans was marked by especial kindness (Luke ix. 51-56; xvii. 12—19). -^e chose a Samaritan to typify the spirit of Christian charity, and made the name a title of honor forever (Luke x. 25- 37). This kindliness of treatment was the more remarkable because of the hateful taunt, " Thou art a Samaritan " (John viii. 48). The Jews re garded Him as a Samaritan, a traducer of their traditions, an enemy of the national hopes and ideals, a mad, uncontrolled, wilful enthusiast. He paid no attention to this charge. He would not even recognize the slur upon another people. A man's defense, the human reply, would have been to surpass the Jews in denunciation of the Samaritans. This was the way Peter acted (Matt. xxvi. 69-74). 2. His love for His enemies is shown also in 8& THE MAN CHRIST JESUS His conduct in the hours that tried His soul. He healed the man whom His disciple had mutilated (Luke xxii. 50, 51). He forgave those who slew Him (Luke xxiii. 34). Such conduct He enjoined on His disciples (Matt. v. 43-45 ; xviii. 22 ; Matt. v. 24, 46, 47). And they learned :he lesson He had taught in word and deed (Acts vii. 60). Uhlhorn ( The Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism, p. 209) gives later instances: "A Palestinian Christian named Paulus prayed, be fore he received the death-stroke, that God would lead all the heathen to faith and salvation ; and he forgave the judge who had condemned him, and the executioner who carried the sentence into effect. Pionius, a martyr in Samaria, was heard supplicating, from the flames of the pyre, for the emperor, for his judges, and for all the heathen. When an audible amen was on his lips, the flames smote together above him, and ended his life." Yet Jesus was perfectly free in offending peo ple when His mission, if He would faithfully fulfil it, made it necessary for Him to do so. He dauntlessly assailed traditional and paralyz ing formalism (Luke vi. 6— n). He affronted the moral prejudice which blinds men to the right choice of logical alternatives (Luke v. 21-24). He made a terse and unconciliatory reply to th<* miracle-hunger of the day (Luke xi. 29). He pronounced a fearful impeachment of the reli gious leaders of the time (Matt, xxiii.), and in His controversy with them at the Feast of Taber nacles He denounced them as the devil's chil dren, as the sons of him who from the beginning was a murderer and the father of all lies (John viii. 43, 44). Jesus could not avoid giving offense in this way. The final conflict between Him and the adversary was and is a conflict between truth TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 09 and falsehood. Now Jesus hated falsehood, all lies, absolutely all— even "justifiable lies" — with an utter hatred. It will be found, accordingly, that for Him to have been silent on these occa sions, when His plain speech seems almost harsh and bitter — as it indeed was against falsehood — would have been to incur the suspicion of com promise with, or connivance at, the lies He so fiercely denounced. Consistency, honor, truth, obliged Jesus to do and say things which un avoidably created offense. Truth and right met falsehood and wrong. Between these there is eternal war. Over the tumult of the war, how ever, those who " had ears " could always hear " His sweet voice calling." VI. Tenderness. What is it? Miss Mulock, in John Halifax, Gentleman, speaks of it as " that rare thing, ten derness — a quality different from kindliness, affectionateness, or benevolence ; a quality which can exist only in strong, deep, undemonstrative natures, and therefore in its perfection seldomer found in women than in men." But this does not define it. If it were not hard to define it would not be so prominent a trait in the char acter of Jesus, this tenderness, the bending of a high mind and great strength to sympathy with small things, weak things, and the adaptation to helpfulness in love. But we know it, and we love it. " We long for tenderness like that which hung About us lying on our mother's breast ; A selfless feeling which no pen or tongue Can Draise aright, since silence sings it best ; 90 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS A love as far removed from passion's heat As from the dullness of its dying fire ; A love to lean on when the failing feet Begin to totter and the eyes to tire. In youth's brief heyday hottest love we seek, The reddest rose we grasp ; but when it dies, God grant that later blossoms, violets meek, May spring for us beneath life's autumn skies ; God grant some loving one be near to bless Our weary way with simple tenderness." Tenderness is an expression of love, and ig sweetest and most evident in love in the act of forgiving. And so one of the finest expressions of tenderness in Christ's life is found in the scene where he lays emphasis on love as the spring of outward service, and by an act of for giveness makes plain that man's love to God is proportionate to the sense he has of God's love in forgiveness (Luke vii. 47-50). His life was wholly a life of tenderness. We see it : 1. In His quick thought for others (Luke viii. 49, 50). As the ruler of the synagogue was on the point of asking help for his daughter, his servants brought him word of the futility of any such request: his daughter was already dead. Jesus, having overheard, forestalled the man's doubt by saying at once, " Fear not. Let not these tidings disturb you. She shall be saved" (Mark v. 35, 36). 2. In His love for little children (Luke xviii. 15-17 ; Mark x. 16). An old blind preacher in a meeting for little children began his prayer at the opening of the meeting, " Compassionate Jesus, who, when Thou wast down here, didst say so many sweet things to little children and of little children, bless in Thy loving way these Thy loved little ones." Jairus may have known of His love for little ones (Mark v. 23). Human TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 91 teachers had overlooked the child. Heathenism had no place in its thought or care for child life. Stobaeus said, "The poor man raises his sons, but the daughters, even if one is poor, we ex pose." Jairus appeals fearlessly for "my little daughter." Quintilian said, "To kill a man is often held to be a crime, but to kill one's own children is sometimes considered a beautiful action among the Romans." " Pliny speaks coolly of those who hunt for the brains and marrow of infants, probably for superstitious or medicinal purposes." The famous apothegm in Terence's " Heauton-timoroumenos," " Homo sum ; hu- mani nihil a me alienum puto," was uttered by a father who rebuked the mother for sparing her child instead of destroying it when born. Christ gave the child a place in the thought of men, secured the recognition of the sanctity of its life, and brought it blessing by being Himself a child. (Brace, Gesta Christi, ch. vii.) " Yet sure the babe is in the cradle blest, Since God Himself a baby deigned to be, And slept upon a mortal mother's breast, And steeped in baby tears His deity." We have not altogether learned Christ's lesson. Mrs. Browning's " Cry of the Children " is but one of many reminders of this. Our own cities are full of them. In New York, during one week in June, 1893, there were 792 deaths — only 82 in private houses, nearly 500 in the close tenement districts. Over two thirds were little children, 181 under one year of age, 316 under five years of age. Eighty-two of these children died of pneumonia ; two died statedly of starva tion, but bad and insufficient food helped the rest. 3. In His kindly attitude toward the Samaritans. 92 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS On every occasion He showed utmost tenderness toward them (John iv. ; Luke ix. 51-56 ; x. 25- 37)- 4. In His sympathy with widows. The pe culiar sadness of the widow's position touched Him. His mother was probably a widow dur ing His active ministry. For one of them He wrought a mighty miracle unsolicited (Luke vii. 11-15). His deed on this occasion was not done primarily to exhibit His divine power or to attest His mission. It was the overflow of His tender sympathy. Even in anticipation of His work of mercy, He comforted the widow by a word of hope. In His parables, He used a widow as illustration of the importunity of prayer (Luke xviii. 1-7), and a poor widow supplied Him with the noblest example of liberality (Luke xxi. 1-4). 5. In His sympathy with the lonely. Jairus, the man who met Him after the transfiguration, and the widow of Nain were able to appeal specially to His love and helpfulness, because in each case an only child was involved, whose loss meant an empty and desolate home (Luke viii. 41, 42; ix. 38; vii. n-15). He was alone in the world, yet not alone, and He loved to save others from loneliness. 6. In His care for the poor. There was a strange and true pathos in the undeserved title of Coxey's famous army, " The Army of the Commonweal of Christ." Christ's blessing was on the poor (Luke vi. 20). He belonged to the commonwealth of the lowly. He was moved with compassion for the poverty-stricken throngs (Matt. ix. 36 ; Mark viii. 1-3). Men of influence who came to Him, He strove to set at work for the poor (Luke xviii. 22). Other religions have TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 93 glorified the pride of poverty to its embitterment and harm, or to the destruction of manliness and industry. But the Christianity of Christ, since it came and wherever it has been, has lifted and blessed the honest poverty of men, to the sweeten ing of life and the strengthening of honor and homes. True notions of values in this matter on one hand, and charity and humanitarianism on the other, have sprung from the gospel. The poor had been scorned and neglected before. Christ made a place for them. Celsus found fault with Christianity on this ground. " Let us hear," he says, "what kind of persons these Christians invite. Every one, they say, who is a sinner, who is devoid of understanding, who is a child, him will the kingdom of God receive." Plato had deemed it right to despise the poor and laboring classes. Jesus identified Himself with these classes (Matt. xxv. 44, 45). He makes conduct toward them the standard of judg ment at the last. Rich and poor He declared to stand alike on an equality before God. Rich soul and pauper's soul go to the same God. The same God waits to greet both. The rich can claim no advantage. " Stranger, however great, With lowly reverence bow : There's one in that poor shed, One by that paltry bed, Greater than thou." 7. In His passion for healing the sick and the wretched. The people brought great throngs to Him, and He healed them (Mark i. 32-34) ; but, not content with this, He went about in all Gali lee, healing all (Matt. iv. 23). Later He made another tour through ci^_3 and villages seeking 94 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS for the sick and diseased, and compassionately healing all (Matt. ix. 35). He gladly abandoned the search for rest and quiet when He had op portunity for healing (Matt. xiv. 13, 14). Nor did He always wait to be entreated (John v. 6 ; ix. 1-7). Happy were the days when a loving voice fell upon sore hearts, asked : "Art thou weary, art thou languid ? Art thou sore distressed ? " and added : " Come to Me, and coming be at rest." 8. In His remembrance of His mother in His last agony (John xix. 26) ; in His faithful love of those whom He could help (Mark x. 21 ; John xi. 5) ; in His heartbroken cry over Jerusalem (Matt, xxiii. 37) ; in His teaching of the Twelve (Matt. xx. 24-26) ; in His last words with them (John xiii. 33-35 ; xiv. 1-3 ; xv. 20, 21 ; xvi. 5- 7) ; in His relations with John and Peter (John xiii. 23 ; Mark xvi. 7). He was the true ideal of chivalry, " free, meek, and gentle as a lamb " (John i. 29). In His loveliness of perfect deeds He showed Himself to be the infinite tenderness of God, and so showed the Father whom He came to reveal (John xvii. 4, 8, 25) to be the God cf tender ness infinite. VII. The perfect calm and evenness of His life. "The impression made on us by the appear ance of Christ is that of perfect repose, calm self-possession, serene self-reliance. Yet it was a repose consistent with a rich, deep, inexhausti- TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 9$ ble enthusiasm. His nature was all serenity and g;entleness (i Kings xix. 8-15). Nothing was done by Him without a purpose or thoughtlessly. Everything which He began was accomplished with assurance, and inevitably attained its object. He ever kept His soul in serene and full self- possession. Even in the most trying circum stances He maintained mental repose and perfect self-control" (Ullmann, The Sinlessness of Jesus, pp. 64, 65). 1. His patience was never broken, nor His re pose ever ruffled. He never lost His temper or His ability to reply wisely, calmly, and unselfishly (Luke xi. 53, 54 ; xxiii. 28, 29). He was never disconcerted by interruptions (Luke v. 18-26), even when a palsied man on his bed was let down through the roof before Him in the midst of His discourse. The Father was helping Him to finish His work, and, having confidence in His Father, He was never disturbed or disappointed. So Charles Lamb wrote of his grandmother : " For she had studied patience in the school of Christ ; Much comfort she had thence derived, And was a follower of the Nazarene." 2. The quiet, unostentatious evenness of His life is shown in the way He sought solitude in His success (Mark iii. 9, 10; Luke v. 15, 16). Great social power is ever fed from the springs of holy solitude. " If chosen men could never be alone In deep mid-silence, open-doored to God, No greatness ever had been dreamed or done." Jesus was not weak because He was gentle and calm. " It has been the impression of the world generally that patience, gentleness, readiness to 96 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS suffer wrong without resistance, is but another name for weakness. But Christ manages to con nect these non-resisting and gentle passivities with a character of the severest grandeur and majesty." Indeed, in the stormier experiences, the " sterner stress," where His strength stood out in bold out line against the background of opposition, the unbroken restfulness and peace of His spirit are seen to better advantage (John viii. 27-30' , 31-39). He knew the secret of strife, " Of toil unsevered from tranquillity." 3. He foresaw His own death and spoke of it to His disciples with complete calmness (Mark x. 33> 34! xiv. 8, 18). 4. In the last bitter experiences of His life He bore Himself with even composure. Before the Jewish tribunal, He reminds the court of the proper forms of procedure (John xviii. 23), de:- manding that the evidence should be heard, the testimony for the defense to be regularly pre sented first, and He at once called the servant who smote Him as one who had heard Him, and asked him to testify as to the words he had heard Him say, and to refrain from unjust vio lence. In the scenes that followed, " as a lamb before the shearers is dumb, so opened He not His mouth " (Luke xxiii. 8 ; John xix. 9). Ob serve in Mark's account His passive quietness (Mark xv. 15-38). A common robber is pre ferred to Him, and He is subjected to what Horace called the "horrible scourge," a fitting prelude to crucifixion, "the aim being to make the crime as odious as possible by prefixing pain to pain, infamy to infamy. Such a prospect would doubtless act as a deterrent on the servile and selfish, and he must have been a man with- TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 97 out feeling who could unwaveringly have endured ft. At any time the effects must have been hor rible, but when justice missed its mark, and pun ishment fell on the pure, the innocent, the noble, on a delicate and high-strung sensibility, they must have been terrible in the extreme" — super latively so with Jesus. Yet He never flinched. He was dressed in a cast-off robe, and acanthus thorns, with long deadly spikes, were crushed over His brow, and coarse soldiers, spitting on Him and bowing down in mock subjection, made sport of Him (Luke xxiii. n; John xix. 1-5 ; Matt, xxvii. 27-31). Worn by abuse, His delicate frame stumbled under the burden of the cross (John xix. 17 ; Mark xv. 21). He refused a drug which might have deadened His pain (Matt, xxvii. 34), and died with a cry of victory on His lips (Luke xxiii. 46), never for one moment in all the bitter shame and suffering having lost the perfect composure of His spirit, which He possessed in perfect patience (James v. 7-11). 5. Even in the midst of all this He kept full consciousness of His mission, and in the deaden* ing agony of the cross continued to open to men the kingdom of heaven (Luke xxiii. 43). Peace was His last gift. Peace was His spirit to the end (John xiv. 27). No man could take His, disciples' joy from them (John xvi. 22) ; no man could take His joy from Him (Heb. xii. 2). AH that Daniel's " Epistle to the Countess of Cum berland " says of the man of calm and governed. spirit was true of Him, and more : " He that of such a height has built his mind And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame Of his resolved powers, nor all the wind 98 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong His settled peace, or to disturb the same— What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may The boundless wastes and wealds of man survey! " And with how free an eye doth he look down Upon these lower regions of turmoil! Where all the streams of passion mainly beat On flesh and blood ; where honor, power, renown, Are only gay afflictions, golden toil ; Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet As frailty doth, and only great doth seem To little minds who do it so esteem." 6. But composure, evenness, may be said to be a negative virtue, the fruit often of torpidity or absence of spirit, of disinclination to do strong and brave deeds or encounter peril. But Jesus was a man of most delicate sensitiveness, high spirit, incessant activity, and, so far from lacking courage, it is precisely in His courage and the display of it that His composure of spirit is most manifest. The courage of Christ's self-restraint has been suggested already as one of the highest types of courage. It is the courage of com posure. Both it and the composure of fearless activity we see in Christ : in His calm pursuit of His even way when His enemies are plotting against Him (John vii. 1, 13, 25, 26 ; xi. 55-57 ; xii. 9-1 1 ; Luke xiii. 31-33) ; in the boldness of His replies (Matt. xv. 1-3) ; in His quiet, fearless conduct in the face of personal assault (John vii. 44; x. 31, 32, 39, the words of the last verse marking the power of Christ's personal majesty as contrasted with the excited impotence of His adversaries) ; in His cool carelessness of the dan ger involved in His movements (John xi. 8, 16) ; in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matt. xxvi. 49- 56), where, when " all the disciples left Him and TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 99 fled," with twelve unsummoned legions at His call, He stood calm and composed, alone, yet serene and without fear. VIII. His broad human knowledge and interest in nature. He gazed on nature with a child's fresh vision, and saw " Magic as of morn Bursting forever newly born On forests old, Waking a hoary world forlorn With touch of gold." 1. He loved to watch the weather — sunrise (Mark i. 35 ; John xxi. 4) and sunset (John vi. 15—17; Luke vi. 12; xxi. 37). He knew the weather lore of His day (Luke xii. 54, 55 ; Matt. xvi. 2, 3). " Evening red and morning gray Sends the traveler on his way ; But evening gray and morning red Sends the traveler wet to bed." " Red sky at night is the sailor's delight ; Red sky in the morning is the sailor's warning. " 2. He studied nature, and found her a never- failing source of illustration and appeal. He deemed her the " garment of God." Plants and trees He watched and taught from. To him "The meanest flower that blows did give Thoughts that did often lie too deep for tears." The lilies taught the lesson of trust (Luke xii. 27) ; the fig-tree the lesson of expectancy, the duty of having our faces to the future, not the past IOO THE MAN CHRIST JESUS (Mark xiii. 28) ; the mustard-tree and the wheat and tares the comprehensiveness and the perver sion of the kingdom of God (Matt. xiii. 31, 32, 24-30) ; the bramble and thorn the law of hered ity and character (Luke vi. 43, 4^4) ; tne spring ing wheat the law of growth (Mark iv. 28) ; the scattered grain, springing up diversely, the truth of spiritual receptivity or irresponsiveness (Matt. xiii. 16-23). He loved the trees; why should they not love Him? " Into the woods my Master went, Clean forspent, forspent ; Into the woods my Master came, Forspent with love and shame. But the olives they were not blind to Him, The little gray leaves were kind to Him, The thorn-tree had a mind to Him, When into the woods He came. " Out of the woods my Master went, And He was well content ; Out of the woods my Master came, Content with death and shame. When death and shame would woo Him last, From under the trees they drew Him last ; 'Twas on a tree they slew Him last, When out of the woods He came." Nature gave Him her secrets. Little flowers saw nothing to distrust in Him, and whispered the messages with which God had charged them. He received what we pray for in vain : " Flower out of the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, Hold you here in my hand, root and all, little flower ; But if I could understand what you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is." 3. He watched the lightning flash and saw in it TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER ioi a symbol of the suddenness of His coming (Luke xvii. 24). What sounded to others as thunder He understood as a clear voice from the Father (John xii. 28-30). 4. He knew the ways of the husbandman (Mark xii. 1). The sower supplied Him with a parable of evangelization (Luke viii. 4-8) and a parable of life (Mark iv. 26-29) I and tne vine yard and the vine-dresser gave Him illustrations of the law of production (Matt. xii. 33), of the rule of service which demands use or removal (Luke xiii. 6-9), and of the life of fellowship and fruitfulness (John xv. 1-6). 5. He was peculiarly alive to natural sugges tions, to the metaphors of life. A gust of wind in the empty street or the waving of a vine in its branch suggested the imagery under which He expressed the mode of the Spirit's activity (John iii. 8). The water of Jacob's well supplied a figure of speech for eternal life (John iv. 10). The loaves with which He fed the thousands on the shores of Gennesaret were type of the living bread, His flesh which He gave for the life of the world (John vi. 27, 35, 54-56). His vast promise in John vii. 37, 38, when He stood and cried on the last, the great day of the Feast of Tabernacles, derived its significance and aptness from the fact that the omission of the libation from Siloam's soft-flowing waters on this day pointed the worshipers to the coming of the true and living waters when the Messiah should ap pear. The great candelabra in the Court of the Women, symbolic of the divine light which guided Israel through the wilderness, suggested His divine assertion, " I am the light of the world '" (John viii. 12). Shepherd life suggested a parable of the Father's love (Luke xv. 3-7), and the sight 102 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS of the shepherds and their flocks on the hills about Jerusalem prompted the parable of the Saviour's fulfilment of the true ideals of shepherd and fold alike (John x. 1-18). The sweet words spoken on the way from the upper room to Gethsemane, " I am the true vine," were suggested perhaps by the sight of the fires in the vineyards on the sur rounding hills, where in the spring, just at hand, the husbandmen were burning the pruned branches, and by the odors of the burning branches wafted over the brook Kidron; perhaps by the vision -of the great golden vine on the temple shining luminously under the radiance of the paschal moon, and accounted by all Jews the richest or nament of the temple (John xv. 1-10). 6. He had watched the construction of houses. As a carpenter, He had doubtless helped to make good houses Himself. He knew the importance of right building (Luke vi. 48, 49). The homely ways of the household He knew also (Matt. xiii. 33 ; Luke xv. 8-10 ; xiv. 34, 35). 7. Human nature and its ways were as open to Him as trees and plants and the life of men. His parables show His complete touch with life. He knew it (Luke xiv. 15-24; xv. 11-32; xvi. 1-8 ; xviii. 1-5). He understood men's motives (Luke xvi. 14, 15 ; xx. 23, 24). His eyes shot human character through, and He loved to watch it and to help it (Luke ix. 47; xi. 17). His knowledge came not from a study of historic ex amples, nor from a large acquaintance and expe rience among men of diverse types and in chang ing circumstances; it was intuitive. He knew human nature, its elements and its operations (Mark ii. 8; John ii. 24, 25). 8. Allusion has already been made, however, to Christ's knowledge of men. It is His sympa- TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER IOJ thy with the world that is especially suggested here. He loved the open-air .life. For this reason it is so hard to put Him in modern set ting. Only the canvas of the open sky and val ley and field and hill and sea was large enough for the picture of Him. He' constantly taught by the seaside. The fisherfolk were His friends and first disciples (Mark ii. 13 ; iii. 7 ; iv. 1 ; v. 1, 21 ; vi. 32, 48 ; vii. 31 ; viii. 10). Mark's Gospel is the Gospel of the Christ of the sea and of the villages of Galilee (Mark vi. 6; viii. 27). Mark notes the occasions when Jesus entered houses as though exceptional to His general mode of life (Mark i. 29 ; ii. 1 ; iii. 1, 20 ; vii. 24 ; ix. 33). He loved the mountains also, and constantly with drew to them for meditation and strength, there doubtless " Hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Not harsh nor grating, but of ample power To chasten and subdue." The Gospel of Matthew is the Gospel of the mountains and their great righteousness (Matt. iv. 8 ; v. 1, 14 ; xiv. 23 ; xv. 29 ; xvii. 1 ; xviii. 12 [cf. Luke xv. 4]; xxi. 1, 21 ; xxiv. 3, 17 ; xxvi. 30 ; xxviii. 16 ; Psa. xxxvi. 6). He constantly withdrew to the hills ; thither He went when He would have been made king, when the news of the Baptist's death was brought to Him, for the transfiguration, for the last command. After a whole night on the mountains He chose the Twelve and gave the proclamation of the king dom in the Sermon on the Mount (Luke vi. 12) ; and from a mountain-top He went back to the Father who sent Him (Acts i. 12). And He went often out into the fields and desert places 104 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS (Mark ii. 23) to fight out His battles (Mark i. 12, 13) and to pray (Mark i. 35), hallowing. thus for ever " Those holy fields Over whose acres walked those blessed feet Which eighteen hundred years ago were nailed For our advantage to the bitter cross." He frequented also the woods and groves. Geth- semane was a favorite haunt. On this account Judas felt sure He would be found there that fatal night (John xviii. 3). Now it is not surprising that a good man should love and study nature, for the love of nature and nature's society is a sign and fruit of unselfishness. And it is to be expected that a religious man should love nature, though many religious men are disinclined to believe that God is nature's King and Lord. We should expect, therefore, that Jesus, whose life was religion and unselfishness, would be a lover of the world which His Father made and pronounced very good, and which, next to His Son and His Spirit, is the best prophet He has ; but we cannot but be sur prised that one whose life was so practical, so strong, so social, should keep so fresh His sym pathies with the world, and find time to enter so deeply and so freely into its fellowship. But even Jesus' love of the open air and the country life and the warmth of the sun on sea and moun tain .gave way to the stern work and stress of life and suffering. He went out of Jerusalem every evening of the last week (Mark xi. 19), but He returned in the morning and did His work, and met His death, not as a recluse dragged into publicity, not as a student remote from human life, but as a man among men. So must we, if He is our Lord. TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 105 ' As once toward heaven my face was set, I came unto a place where two ways met. One led to Paradise and one away ; And fearful of myself lest I should stray, I paused that I might know Which was the way wherein. I ought to go. The first was one my weary eyes to please, Winding along thro' pleasant fields of ease, Beneath the shadows of fair branching trees. ' This path of calm and solitude Surely must lead to heaven, ' I cried, In joyous mood. ' Yon rugged one, so rough for weary feet, The footpath of the world's too busy street, Can never be the narrow way of life.' But at that moment I thereon espied A footprint bearing trace of having bled, And knew it for the Christ's, so bowed my head, And followed where He led." IX. The universality of His character. " The difficulty which we chiefly feel in dealing with the character of Christ as it unfolded itself before men arises from its absolute perfection. On this very account it is less fitted to arrest ob servation. A single excellence unusually devel oped, though in the neighborhood of great faults, is instantly and universally attractive. Perfect symmetry, on the other hand, does not startle, and is hidden from common and casual observ ers. But it is this which belongs emphatically to the Christ of the Gospels ; and we distinguish in Him at each moment that precise manifestation which is most natural and most right " (Young, The Christ of History, p. 217). 1. Jesus was a man of profound depth of thought, but He was a man of great simplicity also, no recluse. He astounded His hearers with His wisdom (Mark vi. 2), but He frequented Io6 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS weddings (John ii. i, 2) and feasts (Luke v. 29; vii. 36) to such an extent that He was called " a gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners " (Luke vii. 34). He made no severance between doctrine and life. He taught doctrine, but it was a doctrine of hfe. John xiv. 6 was a summary of it. He declared that the final judgment would be decided by test of conduct (Matt. xxv. 31-46), but it was conduct resting on and springing from a faith. If, on the one hand, He scorned the idea that faith is merely assent to the truth of a message or to the testimony of the senses, He would, on the other hand, have been the last to tolerate the thought that the doctrine is immaterial if only the life is sincerely and consistently given to it. If a man's light is darkness, he is not free to love and do the deeds of darkness. Nay ; how great is that darkness! He would have denied the separation of a " form of sound words " from a transfigured and transfiguring life. "The words which I speak unto you are spirit and life " (John vi. 68). 2. He was a man of action, energetic, intense. The people agreed that He surpassed even John the Baptist, the very embodiment of force and vigor (Matt. xiv. 2). They even expressed the conviction that if He was not the Christ, the real Christ could not surpass Him (John vii. 31). Yet He was never overburdened or hastened, never did things in the stress of work He was sorry for afterward, never slipped or went to ex cess, never had to retrace and apologize or correct. He would not be a party to the savage discipline of the Samaritans suggested by John (Luke ix. 52—55). The expression of His energy in action was restful and flawless. 3. He was a man of feeling, sentiment, which TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 107 He was never afraid to express (John xi. 36 ; Mark x. 2 1 ). If Herod suspects that He is John risen from the dead (Luke ix. 9), He will with draw from Herod's dominion, but His love will not let Him withdraw from those in need (Matt. xiv. 12-14). But His feeling never degenerates into sentimentality. It is always clear, high- toned, and pure. Contrast it with the sentimen tality, which at heart was dishonesty, of Judas (John xii. 1-9). 4. He was not only a great thinker ; He was a great teacher. He combined the rare gifts of strong, original thought and virile, luminous, penetrating expression of thought. He appears with both gifts fully developed ; there is no visible growth. At apparently His first appearance as a public teacher in Jerusalem (John vii. 14, 15), the Jews marveled at Him. He had of course surprised the simple Galileans (Luke iv. 22). But here, at the heart and head of the nation, He was an object of wonder and amazement. He showed Himself to be master of the literary methods of the time. The greatest teachers were as children to Him (John vii. 46). Pharisees and doctors flocked to hear Him (Luke v. 17). His methods of teaching were full of an undying charm. His kindergarten methods were irresisti bly fresh and attractive (Luke ix. 47, 48), and the people never tired of His teaching (Mark x. 1 ). In Timceus Plato says, " Now that which is created must of necessity be created by a cause. But how can we find out the Father and Maker of all this universe? or when we have found Him, how shall we be able to speak of Him to all men?" (Jowett, Plato, vol. ii., p. 523). Jesus made Him known to babes. His plain, frequent, accurate- endlessly suggestive statements of His eternal 108 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS and infinite doctrine (John xvii. 8) endure to this day as the greatest words ever spoken in our world. 5. Yet if He could speak in this gracious and commanding way (Luke iv. 22, 32), He was also a man of immovable taciturnity. He was able to say nothing (Luke xx. 8 ; Mark xv. 2-5). The silences of Jesus are as significant almost as His sayings. Much He judged us unable to bear, and kept it to Himself (John xvi. 12). He is a greater man who, knowing great truths whose time has not come, holds them in his heart and is consumed by them, than he who launches them before' their time and consumes men with them. 6. He had an infallible discernment of times. He was not an opportunist, but His opportunities never escaped. He never hurried that He might not be too late ; He never went ahead of time. Does Lazarus die? He appears on the scene at what evidently, in some hidden plan, is the right moment (John xi. 4, 6, 7, 17, 40). Does a con trary tempest threaten the safety of the little company in the boat on the sea? At the oppor tune moment He comes walking over the water to their relief (John vi. 18, 19). He had com plete confidence in His discernment of His "hour " (John vii. 30 ; viii. 20) ; and He did not shrink when the clock whose face He alone saw, and whose hands He had been watching, struck the closing hour of His day. (Luke ix. 51; John xiii. 1). 7. He combined alsr traits of character most difficult of combination, as Ullmann points out. {a) He was dependent, and yet independent. He carried all resources within Himself, and yet He craved human love and sympathy. "He who had not where to lay His head required in TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 1 09 His outward life the aids and assistance of friend ship ; while in His inner life He stood in need of the love of His own. He drew John nearer to His heart than the rest (John xiii. 23). He re joiced in the submission of the woman which was a sinner (Luke vii. 37-50). He desired heartily to eat of the Passover with His disciples ; " not the ordinance in general, "but this particular Passover (Luke xxii. 15), since it was to be His last on earth, and, indeed, since He was now solemnly abrogating the ordinance, the last Pass over which should be celebrated in the world under divine sanction." He wanted His closer disciples to be near Him, and to sympathize and watch with Him in His last soul-agony (Matt. xxvi. 38 ; Mark xiv. 23). Yet He was perfectly independent : " independent of the voice of the multitude ; independent of the enthusiasm and prompting of His disciples ; independent even when face to face with the bitter criticism and scorn of His antagonists ; independent of all save God and His conscience " (Liddon, The Divinity of Our Lord, p. 171) He was sovereign and sufficient to Himself. " The need of the sympathy of others never became to Him dependence upon others. He could say to the apostles, 'Ye did not choose Me, but I chose you ' (John xv. 16). Nor did He merely say this ; He always acted upon it. For always, in relation to everything that was highest, He appeared in the character not of one who received, but of one who gave, and, indeed, it was He who, Himself entirely free, was the first to make His fellow-men partake of true freedom. In His most heavy and decisive trials He relied upon Himself alone. In Geth- semane, where the disciples slept, on the cross, when they forsook Him, the independence and 110 THE MAN CHRIST JE6US dignity of the Shepherd was revealed who remained unmoved when the sheep of the flock were scattered (Matt. xxvi. 31). In order to attain to the dominion which He exercised, He did not, like others, require to make use of means external to Himself. On the contrary, every agency by which He- worked was within Himself." His self-reliance was natural, springing from the hidden source of His divine life (John v. 26). The government was upon His shoulders (Isa. ix. 6). " But in this self-reliance, in which Jesus, as altogether free and altogether holy, stood out from the world whose sin He so deeply felt, He nevertheless did not show Himself exclusive and unsympathizing toward the sinful and guilty. On the contrary, it was just as one wholly self- dependent that He gave Himself to the world." From this self-dependence He looked out upon a world in which nothing was alien to Him, no need, no sorrow. His first text was a proclama tion of this (Luke iv. 18). This text He at once translated into action (Matt. xi. 4, 5). He ful filled the prophet's vision of the ideal servant and friend of men (Matt. xii. 18-21), and His constant cry was, " Come unto Me. I will give you rest" (Matt. xi. 28). {b) He combined action and endurance, doing and suffering. This was the union of positive power and self-restraint, of " Being and suffering (which are one)." "Action and endurance were united at every period of His life. There was displayed by Him at all times a sublime and heroic energy and a calm, patient endurance. These combined to form a character absolutely unlike any other. The life of Jesus appears in the first instance to TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER HI have been essentially one of action, at least as far as it meets the public eye." Peter gives ut terance to this impression (Acts x. 38) ; and Jesus Himself spoke of His constant diligence while it was day (John ix. 4). Here again He is example for men of the truth of R. Tarphon's saying, " The day is short and the task is great, and the workmen are sluggish and the reward is much, and the Master of the house is urgent." And He even defined His whole life and mission by the word " work " (John xvii. 4). " In ac complishing this work, His will was constantly and invariably directed toward one end, and in every position into which He enters we see that ruling power by which great souls like His exer cise an influence over all susceptible minds which seems almost magical." " At the same time, we must not overlook the fact that the actual work of Christ was ever ac companied by suffering. His very entrance upon the work prescribed to Him by God arose from a sympathy with sinful humanity ; and this sym pathy, which was never for a moment absent from His spirit, was the cause of that peculiar vein of melancholy which ran through His whole nature." His weeping over the death of Lazarus — what was this but His intense suffering under His conflict with sin, and in view of the real and present effects of sin, finding expression in tears of sympathy? (John xi. 35-38). Witness also the great, heartbroken cry (John v. 40), " Ye will not come to Me, that ye may have life." " The accomplishment of His work involved a constant conflict with sin (Mark i. 13; viii. 33). This conflict He experienced at every step, and its assaults caused Him the keenest physical suffer ings." He came to fight, and to set men fight- 112 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS ing, sin. He came to give a sword, not peace, and to cast fire upon the earth (Luke xii. 49, 50). It must be so. " Everything fertile in results," says Renan " is rich in wars." The conflict was deadly, and it " distracted " Him, He said. It resulted at last in the painful death of the cross, and the deeper sorrow of the soul at the thought that all His sorrows were inflicted by those He came to save (John i. n). "Throughout all this struggle, which as man He felt most keenly, He possessed His soul in unwearied patience, never murmuring or complaining, but in all things com mitting Himself to God as His servant who must be made perfect by suffering." We can trace the inward, struggle in John xii. 23-28, where the visit of the Greeks foreshadowed the coming judgment on Israel, and suggested the means by which it would be brought about. He did not pray to escape. He only asked, " Bring Me safely out of this dreadful conflict. I do not ask to be kept from it. Let Me carry life through it to the cross." " Thus all He did was at the same time so much endured ; His actions were His sufferings too. And not less true is it that His sufferings were also actions. What He en dured was at the same time the work He had to do. For although all that He suffered came to Him from without, still it did not remain without Him, as it were something external to Himself, because He entered upon every trial by voluntary choice, with the fullest consciousness that He was submitting Himself to a divine appointment, and with full acquiescence in the divine will (John xii. 27 ; xviii. 1)." And His actions were the mightiest of the actions of men because His sufferings were the TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 1 13 deepest. As Ugo Bassi declared, in his " Sermon in the Hospital " : " And now what more shall I say? Do I need here To draw the lesson of this life, or say More than these few words, following up the text : The Vine from every living limb bleeds wine ; Is it the poorer for that spirit shed? The drunkard and the wanton drink thereof ; Are they the richer for that gift's excess? Measure thy life by loss instead of gain ; Not by the wine drunk, but the wine poured forth ; For love's strength standeth in love's sacrifice, And whoso suffers most hath most to give. " " Thus at every step of the life of Jesus, action and suffering, heroic power to do and to endure, act and react upon each other, permeating and transfusing one another, never existing apart, but ever in combination ; and it is in this view that His character presents that inward harmony which made men see in Him, as distinguished from a sinful world, the Righteous and Holy One " (Ullmann, The Sinlessness of Jesus, pp. 72-73)- {c) He combined majesty and humility. His life was an unbroken act of lowly sacrifice and self-denial (Matt. xi. 28-30), typified in the supreme act of love before the end (John xiii. 4, 5). Speaking of His whole life, He declared, " I am in the midst of you as one that serveth " (Luke xxii. 27). Thus by His constant words and His consummating act of love He bore "testimony to the truth that He regarded the perfection of life as consisting in the abasement of love." He left this impression on men. The dignity of the divine Lord was not more real to the early Christians than the lowliness of the 114 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS Friend of sinners (2 Cor. x. 1). "Though He was from eternity God equal with the Father," Paul wrote, " yet He did not account His divine state a desirable thing to be tenaciously grasped, a prize to be jealously retained ; but, on the con trary, stripped Himself of its glories, and, with an infinite stoop of condescension, took the form of a slave " (Phil. ii. 5-8). He was the meek and gentle Jesus, the " man of sorrows," a lamb dumb before its shearers, led even to slaughter without complaint, reviled, and reviling not again. "The best of men That ere wore earth about Him was a sufferer, A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit, The first true gentleman that ever breathed." " And yet, from beneath the covering of abase ment and reproach which veiled His glory for a season, there shone forth at all times the light of a kingly soul, and His words as well as His ac tions express an inner consciousness which we must either not understand at all or understand as a consciousness of infinite superiority. . . . How mighty was the influence of the majesty of His personal appearance, and how universally was that influence felt ! " The fallen disciple felt it, and went out into the darkness weeping bitterly (Luke xxii. 61). The Sanhedrin's police stood before His teaching powerless (John vii. 46). The excited accusers who sought to have Him stoned confessed its power (John x. 31). The caitiffs sent to arrest Him in the garden fell over one another in their haste to retreat from His presence (John xviii. 6). A malefactor on his cross " rec ognized in his fellow-sufferer his divine Deliverer and his King" (Luke xxiii. 40-42). TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER IIS His words were not less majestic than His bearing (Luke iv. 16-21 ; John xviii. 37). There was neither in these nor in His conduct any incapacity or lack of force (Matt. vii. 29). In Matthew xxiii. He showed that He possessed and could use the most terrific power of speech, and an irresistible energy of denunciation and rebuke. Indeed, the fierceness of that outburst is sometimes counted a defect in Christ, a re proach upon His gentleness. But Milton replies to this, in his "Apology for Smectymnus " : " For in times of opposition, when against new heresies arising or old corruptions to be reformed, this cool, impassionate mildness of positive wisdom is not enough to damp and astonish the proud resistance of carnal and false doctors, then (that I may have leave to soar awhile, as the poets use) Zeal, whose substance is ethereal, arming in complete diamond, ascends his fiery chariot, drawn by two blazing meteors figured like beasts, but of a higher breed than any the zodiac yields, resembling those four which Ezekiel and St. John saw : the one visaged like a lion to express power, high authority, and indignation; the other of man to cast disdain and scorn upon perverse and fraudulent seducers ; with them the invincible warrior, Zeal, shaking loosely the slack reins, drives over the heads of- scarlet prelates and such as are insolent to maintain traditions, bruising their stiff necks under the flaming wheels. Thus did the true prophets of old combat with the false ; thus Christ Himself, the fountain of meek ness, found acrimony enough to be still galling and vexing the prelatical Pharisees. But ye will say, these had immediate warrant from God to be thus" bitter, and I say, so much the plainer is it found that there may be a sanctified bitterness Il6 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS against the enemies of the truth" (quoted by Bush nell, The Character of Jesus, p. 74). The breadth and depth of Jesus' character are shown in this union of meekness and power, and the nature of the union, for "the majesty of Jesus consisted in this, that His high soul bowed in deep humility before God ; and the perfect humility of Jesus consisted in this, that it was the humility not of the sinner who, oppressed by a sense of utter unworthiness, abases himself be fore God, but that of one who retained all the while the high consciousness of perfect fellowship with God " (Ullmann, The Sinlessness of Jesus, P- 74)- Majestic and powerful He was ; yet how glad are we that He fulfilled chivalry's ideal of gentle meekness! " Tho' that He was worthy, He was wise, And of His port as meek as is a maid; He never yet no villainy ne said ; In all His life unto no manner wight, He was a very gentle, perfect knight." {d) He combined joyousness with a seriousness which has seemed to most men sadness. Words which are unutterably impressive in their solemn and chastened seriousness He speaks of as designed to produce joy (John xv. 11). He embodies a prayer for His disciples' joy in the great and solemn supplication which is to the Christian heart as the very Holy of Holies (John xvii. 13). All these last words of His were marked with an inexpressible sadness of joy (John xvi. 20- 22, 32). There are not wanting occasions when the transitions from joy to sadness and from sad ness to joy are evident (Luke xix. 38, 41 ; Matt. xi. 20, 25). TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 117 Jesus " is never said to have laughed, and yet He never produces the impression of austerity,. moroseness, excessive sadness, or being ever un happy. We could not long endure a being whose- face was never moved by laughter or relaxed by humorous play ; yet we have sympathy with Christ, for there is somewhere in Him an ocean. of deep joy, and we see that He is, in fact, only burdened with His sympathy for us to such a degree that His mighty life is oppressed and overcast by the charge He had undertaken" (Bushnell, The Character of Jesus, p. 20). There was no contradiction in Jesus' mind be tween sorrow and joy. He knew that there was- a heavy sorrow which was the basis of sympathy, and the necessary condition and preparation for joy — such joy as should not be transitory. Out of the extremity of His own sorrow wa? the joy of a new life to come to the world. 8. This universality of Christ's personality, like the universality of His plans, is the more marvelous because He was truly a Jew. No one ever accused Him successfully of lack of Jewish- sympathy or understanding, or of being wholly hostile to the Jewish system, as the charge was- brought against Stephen (Acts vi. 13, 14). Cer tain accusations were made against Him, based on a misstatement of His words regarding the destruction of "this temple" (John ii. 19-21), but they broke down (Mark xiv. 58, 59). But He was not narrow, however, with the narrow ness of the Jewish range of vision of His day. Even the Jews of the Dispersion were out of this range (John vii. 35). The suggestion that He might go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks was the climax of irrationality to the Pharisees in one who claimed to be Messiah Il8 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS His universal terms were enigmatical to them. Yet He kept on His way, free from Umitations, mani festing not this or that type of excellence, but the life. " In Him" was life, and the life was the light of men " (John i. 4). " Not the light of the Jews only," says Theophylact, " but of all men ; for all of us, in so far as we have received intellect and reason from the Word which created us, are said to be illuminated by Him," and we approach to His likeness in character in proportion as the universal light of the Life irradiates our souls. Jesus " gathered up in Himself what apper tains to all humanity in every age and in every nation. This is one of the principal character istics by which Jesus is distinguished from all the great spirits of antiquity, even the greatest of -them. However profound in thought these men may have been, however comprehensive in ac tion, they still bear, all of them, the impress of their own peculiar nationality, they still mirror back the age in which they lived ; and this is ¦true not only of their life in its outward form, but also of their deepest and inmost nature. Even Socrates knew no higher virtue than a free obedience to the law of his country and a faithful observance of the customs of the fathers. Their noblest enthusiasm was aroused by the interests of their fatherland, and the highest deed they could achieve was to die for it. They grew out of the spirit of their people and their times. So, too, the effect they wrought on age and nation was determined by the measure in which they .gave that spirit a fitting and noble expression. But Jesus was the realization of the ideal of hu manity ; and thus He was the first who, setting out from His own people, was not confined in His working within its limits. He embraced the TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER jig whole human race in the circle of His love ; for it He sought to live and He dared to die " (Ull- mann, The Sinlessness of Jesus, pp. 68, 69). X. The perfect balance of His character. In Him all virtues were correlated. No one overbalanced its correlative or was pushed to ex tremity of exaggeration. " He joined," as Chan ning says, " strong feeling to self-possession, an indignant sensibility to sin and compassion for the- sinner, an intense devotion to His work and calmness under opposition and ill success, a universal philanthropy and a susceptibility to- private attachments, the authority which became the Saviour of the world and the tenderness and -gratitude of a son." 1. He was lovingly merciful and inflexibly just. He combines these qualities in His instruc tions to His disciples (Matt. v. 48 ; Luke vi. 36).. Equity is safe with Him ; so is repentant sin. 2. He was incarnate truth and incarnate love (John xiv. 6 ; Rom. v. 7, 8) — truth in which is summed up all that is absolute and eternal, love- in which is summed up all that is abidingly at tractive and beautiful. 3. He was firm, but not obstinate (John xiii. 1-11). Peter objected to Christ's washing his- feet. Jesus rejoined that "the meaning of the act would be understood only afterward when Christ had been glorified. Peter takes up the thought of hereafter. Nothing, he would argue, can ever alter my position in regard to my Lord. That is fixed eternally. ' Thou shalt never wash my feet — no, not while the world lasts.' He assumed that he could foresee all; hence his reverence takes the form of self-will, just as in 120 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS the corresponding incident in Matthew xvi. 22, where also his self-willed reverence for Christ brings down a stern reproof. Christ meets him -with a declaration of the necessary separation which must ensue from the want of absolute sub mission" (W estcott, Bible Commentary, " St. John's Gospel," p. 191). "Peter," He said, "the first condition of discipleship is self -surrender." Here, as always, Jesus was immovably firm, but it was the reasonable firmness of wisdom and love. He never surrendered a point nor abandoned a plan ; yet He never creates the impression of other than a gentle, sympathetic, considerate man. 4. He was calm and self-contained, but not indifferent (Mark iv. 37-41). When He was waked from His sleep in the boat on Gennesaret, what Wyclif calls " the great peaceableness " of the sea He calmed was not more tranquil than He, and yet its living, speaking waters were not more active and responsive. The story of the healing of the woman with an issue of blood shows also the calm self-poise which never hard ened into indifferentism (Luke viii. 43—48). 5. He was unselfish, but never wasteful or patronizing. He endeavored to save the ener gies of His disciples and His own by seeking to avoid the over-insistent multitude (Mark vi. 31). He reserved His praise of the Baptist till his dis ciples had departed (Matt. xi. 7). His unselfish ness was always wise and discriminating, never offensive or careless. The apparent hardness of His reply to the Syrophenician woman is under stood in this light as a check of test upon His ever ready helpfulness, softened wholly by His hopeful words, "first be filled," implying clearly enough that there were others to be filled also, and by His subsequent deed of love (Mark vii. TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 121 24-30). He gave Himself and all His energies, not with vulgar abandon, but with wise, obedient, and loving discrimination. 6. He was helpful, but not officious. Officious- ness is the proffer of assistance on improper terms, or insisting upon its acceptance by those who have no sense of their need of it. Jesus gave no such help. He was anxious to aid every need, but only on right terms (Mark ix. 23, 24). His lament was that men would not come to Him for life. He would force life upon no one. 7. He was strong, but not rough ; vigorous, but always gentle. In manly fashion He went always straight to the root of things, but He was always most tender in His treatment of the weaknesses exposed (Mark ix. 33-37), unless they were grounded in bad wills hopelessly beyond cure (Matt, xxiii.). Our definitions of "gentleman" need revision in the light of Christ's character. The adjective is an essential part of the word, and should hold its original meaning. At best it is superfluous. Manliness, understood in the terms of Him who called Himself " the Son of man," is sufficient. But our manliness is too often a world's remove from that childlikeness which He declared was the glory of man's char acter, and to which, rather than to coarse strength and self-assertion, the rewards of primacy and leadership belonged. 8. He was feminine, but not effeminate. We see His unsurpassed delicacy and tact in the story of the woman with the issue of blood. Her disease was a shame to her, rendering her Leviti- cally unclean. So He did not call her forth from the crowd till she was healed, and could without fear or shame declare it all past, and herself healed, free, and whole (Luke viii. 41-56). His 122 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS womanly tenderness was scarcely less apparent when, a few hours later, He addressed the little maid, Jairus's daughter, in her own tongue, and with motherly solicitude provided at once for the child's needs. But He was never thought of as effeminate ; He was charged rather with display ing the fiery energy of Beelzebub. 9. He was innocent and yet forceful. This is a rare but divinely necessary combination. How rare is indicated by the popular fallacy that only those who have had personal experience of sin and evil can denounce and intelligently antagonize it. As though God would be a greater and better God if He had once been a devil! He who knew no sin, and in whose mouth no guile had ever been found, knew better than this, and proved otherwise by His own example. {a) The purgings of the Temple (John ii. 1 3-1 7 ; Matt. xxi. 12-14). In ^e Temple of the Jews in Jerusalem, in the midst of the prerogatives and vested privileges of the powerful classes of the nation, alone, stood a Galilean peasant with a scourge in His hand, and money-changer and priest fell back before the flash of His blazing eye and the wrath of His innocence, and obeyed Him {As Others Saw Him, chap. i.). His dis ciples looked on Him with awe, remembered that it was written, "The zeal of Thine house shall eat Me up, " and beheld the words fulfilled be fore their eyes in the overpowering energy and irresistible fearlessness of the Son roused to the defense of His Father's house. {b) The denunciation of the Pharisees (Matt. xxiii.) is explicable only on the ground of His innocence of character. We can understand His words only as we "conceive them bursting out as words of indignant grief from the surcharged TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 123 bosom of innocence ; for there is notJrin^so bitter as the offense that innocence feels when stung by hypocrisy and a sense of cruelty to the poor." {c) His interview with the woman taken in adultery (John viii. i-n). The bringing of the woman to Jesus was an evidence of His spotless purity and innocence, and also of His equity and trustworthiness. This was not the motive of the accusers of the woman, but such testimony their conduct bore. At the thought of their coarse in decency Jesus hung His head in shame, blushing for the depths to which men could descend. And when, with the blush of indignant but sorrow-burdened innocence, He challenged any pure man among them to begin the legal punish ment, they shrank away and stole off, from the eldest, the man of fullest experience, whom con science smote hardest, down to the youngest, until, as Augustine says, " two were left, the un happy woman and Compassion incarnate." There was no law-destroying sentiment then, surrender ing the absolute and eternal standards of purity and righteousness. If innocence was compas sionate, it was not false to the laws of God and of life. He simply sent the woman away, with no words of forgiveness, but only of suspended sen tence. {d) The appearance of the innocent victim at the entrance of the garden the night of the be trayal, with the simple words of identification and self-surrender, smote the company of soldiers, Temple police, and priests with consternation and terror (John xviii. 4-8). 10. He was courageous, but never rash or foolhardy. His courage is shown clearly in what has been already said of His absolute lack of fear, in the daring magnitude of His plan, in 124 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS His scorn of all low means of attaining its triumph, in His hatred of lies, in His daring to be narrow where men were broad, and broad where men were narrow, in the unconventional freedom of His life ; but He never rashly threw away His cause or any opportunity of doing it permanent benefit, nor ever wasted His life. n. This balance of character Jesus showed not less in His teaching than in His conduct. " His message combines those moral contrasts which give permanency and true force to a doc trine, and which the gospel alone has combined in their perfection. So as teacher Jesus was tender, yet searching. He won the hearts of men by His kindly sympathy and humanity, while He probes to the quick their moral sores. He is uniformly calm, yet moved by the fire of repressed passion. He is stern, yet not unlov ing, and resolute without sacrificing the elasticity of His sympathy, and genial without condescend ing to be the weakly accomplice of moral mis chief and weakness. He pursues and exposes the latent evil of the human heart through all the mazes of its unrivaled deceitfulness without sully ing His own purity, and without forfeiting the strong belief in the present capacity of every human being for goodness. He knows what is in man, and yet, with this knowledge, not only does not despair of humanity, but respects it and enthusiastically loves it" (Liddon, The Divinity of Our Lord, p. 171). The significance of the universality of the character of Christ cannot be overestimated. " The more closely He is drawn to other worlds, the more fresh and susceptible is He to the humanities of this. The little child is an image of gladness which His heart leaps forth to em- TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 1 25 brace. The wedding, the feast, and the funeral have each their cords of sympathy in His bosom. At the wedding He is clothed in congratula tions, at the feast in doctrine, at the funeral in tears ; but no miser was ever drawn to his money with stronger desire than He to worlds above. Men undertake to be spiritual and they become ascetic ; or, endeavoring to hold a liberal view of )he comforts and pleasures of society, they are soon buried in the world and slaves to its fash ions ; or, holding a scrupulous watch to keep out every particular sin, they become legal and fall out of liberty ; or, charmed with the noble and heavenly liberty, they run to negligence and irre sponsible living : so the earnest become violent, the fervent fanatical, the gentle waver, the firm turn bigots, the liberal grow lax, the benevolent ostentatious. Poor human infirmity can hold nothing steady. Where the pivot of righteousness is broken, the scales must needs slide off their balance. Indeed, it is one of the most difficult things which a cultivated Christian can attempt, only to sketch a theoretic view of character in its true justness and proportion, so that a little more study or a little more self-experience will not re quire him to modify it ; and yet the character of Christ is never modified even by a shade of recti fication. It is one and the same throughout. He makes no improvements, prunes no extrav agances, returns from no eccentricities. The bal ance of His character is never disturbed or re adjusted, and the astounding assumption on which it is based is never shaken even by a suspicion that He falters in it" (Bushnell, The Character of Jesus, pp. 21, 22). Such a rounded and complete character can be explained only as the Evangelist John explains 126 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS it. He to whom it belonged was the love of God incarnate. Such a character could spring only from a love "that could enter into all the distinctions of human life ordained of God, and feel sympathy and compassion for them all, and at the same time could rise above them and enfold all humanity in its wide embrace — a love resting with confidence in God, and at the same time prompting to ceaseless activity on behalf of men; in itself free and independent, and at the same time giving itself as a ministering servant to all. It imparts strength to do and to endure. It bears the stamp equally of majesty and hu mility on its consecrated brow. It is this love that impresses on all that flows from Jesus die character of religion, and elevates what we call moral to the level of holiness. Hence it is that while in Jesus piety never obtrudes itself, yet everything that He did becomes in His hands an expression and sign of piety ; hence, more over, the whole manifestation of Jesus does not convey to us the idea of a character merely religious, or possessing only the highest moral qualities, but rather of morality and religion in perfect combination — in a word, the idea of holiness. The character of the Lord Jesus pre sents to us the harmony of a life which, in action as well as in suffering [in all the traits of its per fectly balanced beauty], was ever equally pene trated with the Spirit of God, which has its source in the perfect love of God, and realized itself in the highest love to man, and in an entire self-sacrifice for the salvation of the human race." He was, as Hase strikingly describes Him, " the harmony of all powers and capacities, the perfect love of God represented in purest humanity." "Truly we may say," continues Ullmann (to TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER 1 27 whom we are indebted for so much that has been helpful in this chapter and the preceding), " with one now glorified, who made the portrait of Jesus his deep and lifelong study, ' For the very idea of such a character one might well let himself be branded or broken on the wheel; and the man who would laugh or mock at it is certainly mad. He whose heart is in the right place must even lie low in the dust, and worship, and rejoice.' Unquestionably the moral image of Jesus, even if regarded as nothing more than an idea, is the noblest and dearest possession of humanity ; a thing, surely, for which a man might be willing to live or to die. For this idea is the noblest to which, in religion or in morals, the mind of man has ever attained. It is the crown and glory of the race ; it is the holy place in which the moral consciousness may find refuge from the corruption of every-day life. The man who would know ingly stain or becloud this idea would be a blas phemer against the majesty of the divinely be gotten human spirit, in its fairest and purest manifestation" (Ullmann, The Sinlessness of Jesus, PP- 77) 7§). All other manifestations are marked by flaw and failure— " But Thee, but Thee, O Sovereign Seer of Time, But Thee, O poet's Poet, wisdom's Tongue, But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love, O perfect Life in perfect labor writ, 0 all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest, — What if or yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, What least defect or shadow of defect, What rumor, tattled by an enemy, Of inference loose, what lack of grace, Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's or death's, — Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, Jesus, good Paragon, Thou Crystal Christ? " And now for all this, the balance of His char- 128 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS acter, its perfectness, His holiness, His fullness of divine love, His strength, His beauty, we must supply some account. Are these human? If so, where are they found elsewhere? Their absence cannot be due to the absence of need for them. Repeat them if they are human. If not, we must repeat them still. It is life's one work, God's supreme will. THE TESTIMONY BORNE TO HIM BY THE DIFFERENT RELATIONS INTO WHICH HE CAME 139 IV THE TESTIMONY BORNE TO HIM BY THE DIFFER ENT RELATIONS INTO WHICH HE CAME I. The testimony of need to His power to supply. If the representations of the Gospels as to Christ's ability and readiness to give help and relief to those in need are true, they are perfectly explicable. But if they are not true, the detail, explicitness, and sober earnestness of their narra tion, and the confidence reposed in them by multitudes of unsuperstitious men, are inexpli cable. According to these representations, physical sickness fled to Him for relief (Luke vi. 17-19). Moral enslavements and mental disorders sought His aid (Matt. xvii. 14). Fathers sought Him for the sake of their sons, and mothers for the restoration of their daughters (Matt. xv. 22). Devils, and men who gave every evidence of being on more intimate terms with devils than is beneficial for sane and balanced men, acknow ledged the fascination of His control over them (Mark i. 24; Luke viii. 28). His nearness brought a strange hope to the blind, a ray of light that deepened into a stream and a flood (Mark x. 46, 47). A favorable attitude on His 131 132 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS part toward a blind man's plea is construed at once by the multitude as a sign of promise, an occasion of congratulation to the blind man (Mark x. 49). Masters sought Him for their servants' sakes (Luke vii. 3). He was the Mecca of all loving hearts desiring life and healing for their friends (Mark i. 32, 33). So great was His reputed power that men asked only the privilege of laying a trembling finger on the hem of His garment, or of catching for an instant the tassel of His mantle (Mark vi. 56 ; Luke viii. 44). There Was no disease so deadly or hopeless that they hesitated to bring it to Him (Matt. iv. 24). No one stayed away through fear that He would refuse or that His power was exhausted. Deaf and dumb men were led to Him (Mark vii. 32). Men blind from their birth (John ix. 1), men lunatic from childhood (Mark ix. 21), even the dying (Mark v. 23) were not regarded as beyond His power. And this opinion of Him was not confined to one community, where He might have been able to deceive a few people of the same superstitious simplicity by some simple tricks and lucky coin cidences. The same reputation grew up about Him everywhere, through all Syria (Matt. iv. 24, 25), even in Jerusalem and in Phenicia (Luke vi. 17; Mark vii. 24—26). Not to press any other point, it is clear that Jesus made upon people this impression that He Ivas able to do whatsoever He would, and that He would do all the things which a Son of God would be expected to do, and without the doing ¦of which we should be obliged to doubt whether any man was the Son of God; " It may sometimes strike us that the time THE TESTIMONY BORNE TO Hill 1 33 which He devoted to acts of beneficence and the relief of ordinary physical evils might have been given' to works more permanently beneficial to the race. Of His two great gifts, the power over nature and the high moral wisdom and ascen dancy over men, the former might be the more astonishing, but it is the latter which gives Him His everlasting dominion. He might have left to all subsequent ages more instruction if He had bestowed less time upon diminishing slightly the mass of evil around Him, and lengthening by a span the short lives of the generation in which He lived. The whole amount of good done by such works of charity could not be great, com pared with Christ's powers of doing good; and if they were .intended, as is often supposed, merely as attestations of His divine mission, a few acts of the kind would have served His pur pose as well as many. Yet we may see that they were in fact the great work of His life ; His biog- graphy may be summed up in the words, ' He went about doing good.' His wise words were secondary to His beneficial deeds; the latter were not introductory to the former, but the former grew occasionally and, as it were, acci dentally out of the latter. The explanation of this is that Christ merely reduced to practice His own principle. His morality required that the welfare and happiness of others should not merely be remembered as a restraint upon action, but should be made the principal motive of action ; and what He preached in words He preached still more impressively and zealously in deeds. He set the first and greatest example of a life wholly governed and guided by the passion of humanity " {Ecce Homo, pp. 202, 203). 134 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS II. The testimony of nature to His right to com mand. We are accustomed to come to miracles through Christ rather than to Christ through miracles. This course He Himself invites as the highest and truest (John xiv. 10, ii). But it is certain that Jesus is represented to have wrought mira cles, signs in the forms of time and space of the eternal and infinite life out of which He came, and which it was His purpose to manifest to men, that they might be led through them into the life which was in Him and which He was (John xx. 21); and from these representations, believing them, we may draw our inferences and learn of Him. Whatever else the disciples may have inferred from His miracles, they were im pressed with the peculiar sympathy with nature which they showed Him to possess (Mark iv. 41). In such sympathy there is nothing strange in itself Thoreau knew and was known by nature. Other men have entered into the hidden life of the world in what are called " unnatural " ways. But the degree of Jesus' intimacy with the un seen was so close, and the extent of His control and power so great, that nature's response to Him becomes an enigma save on the supposition of His divinity. " The conscious water saw its Lord, and blushed " (John ii. 7-9). Consider that Confucius, Zoroaster, Sakya Muni, and Mohammed claimed to work no miracles. Consider that the miracles attributed to them are puerile, e.g., "The moon, after going seven times round the Kaaba, saluted him [Mohammed], entered his right sleeve, and, slip ping out at the left, split into two halves, which reunited after having retired to extreme east and THE TESTIMONY BORNE TO HIM 135 west." Then consider that Jesus claimed power unlimited (Matt, xxviii. 18; John xiii. 3), and that no miracle is attributed to Him which is not reasonable and right, most human, most divine. III. The testimony borne to Him by His attitude toward woman* He admitted women to the circle of His dis ciples, and accepted their aid (Luke viii. 2, 3 ; xxiv. 10). He wholly neglected conventional limitations in His dealing with them (John iv. 27). Talking with a woman was against the custom of the doctors. They said, " A man should not salute a woman in a public place, not even his own wife;" and that it was "better that the words of the law should be burned than delivered to women." One of the thanksgivings in the daily service of the synagogue is, "Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hast not made me a woman " (Westcott, Bible Commentary, "St. John's Gos pel," p. 74). He was constantly helpful to women who were in need (Luke xiii. 11). He used them in His teaching invariably as illustrations of noble qualities (Luke xviii. 1-8), and commended their loving service of God (Luke xxi. 1-4). He took some women into the closest circle of His friends (John xi. 5). There seems to have been a long and intimate friendship between Him and the sisters of Lazarus (Luke x. 38). Women expressed their love for Him and their trust in Him (Mark xiv. 3 ; Luke vii. 36-50) ; and at the end women followed His steps to the * Cf . article by the Rev. George F. Greene, in Christian Thought, vol. xi., No. I, pp. 13-30. 136 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS cross, and chanted after Him their dirge of lamentation, recognizing, many of them, in Him the Friend and Redeemer of woman (Luke xxiii. 27). He had treated them as equals and given them a foremost place in His kingdom. This was a new attitude toward woman. Plato represents a state as wholly disorganized where slaves are disobedient to their masters and wives are on an equality with their husbands. Aristotle characterizes women as being of a lower kind, declaring "both a woman and a slave may be good, though perhaps of these the one is less good, and the other is wholly bad." Socrates asks of his friends, " Is there a human being with whom you talk less than with your wife ? " Other religions have slurred woman. It was given to Buddha in his candidacy for the buddhaship that he should never in the great wheel of trans migration be born in hell or as vermin or as a woman. Mohammed's example is an odorous illustration of the influence of Mohammedanism. " A Voice from a Harem, " in the Nineteenth Century Magazine, August, 1890, cries, "The duty that man owes to his fellow-creature is hardly ever mentioned in our religion." "The very heaven of the Koran is a paradise condi tioned on the eternal degradation of woman hood." The code of Manu, the highest reli gious authority among Hindus, says, "Women have no business with the text of a sacred book." A Brahman is to " suspend reading the Veda if a woman come in sight." "Though unobservant of approved usages," it declares, " or enamoured of another woman, or devoid of good qualities, yet a husband must constantly be revered as a god by a virtuous wife." Yet we see in our day the spectacle of a THE TESTIMONY BORNE TO HIM 1 37 woman's revolt against Christianity as the en slaver of woman. In contrast with its treatment Mrs. Stanton exclaims, "The pages of Roman history are gilded with the honor shown to woman." A strange court is this to which to appeal from Christianity. The censor Metellus once said in the senate, " Could we exist with out wives at all, we should all rid ourselves of the plague they are to us. Since nature, how ever, has decreed that we cannot dispense with this infliction, let us bear it manfully, and rather look to the permanent conservation of the state than to our own transient satisfaction." Liba- nius was not struck with the superior treatment of women among the Romans ; he was amazed at the character of woman Christianity had de veloped. " Of all the odd fancies which have in the past thirty years seized upon enthusiastic and aspiring women," says the Spectator, September 12, 1 89 1, "we know of none so odd and so melancholy as this idea, that if only they could be rid of Christianity and its prejudices, they would in some more or less complete degree be set free from bondage." What women are in our Christian world Christ has made them, and whatever they have not which they ought to have, or are not which they ought to be, they will secure or become only with His help and through the wider acceptance among men of His teaching and will. IV. He was free from the superstitions of His time and the current distortions of the religious life. He was not participant in the orthodox Jewish prejudice against the Samaritans. It is no slight 13^ THE MAN CHRIST JESUS thing for a man to be free from all the race feuds of his people, the less slight if there is religious feeling or prejudice involved. Yet other finer souls of His day must have shared this free cos mopolitanism with Him. But Jesus breaks com pletely with the current religious opinions and judgments to which, the better and more patriotic a Jew was, the more he would adhere, from which surely he would separate last. It is to be held clearly in mind that Jesus was not a renegade Jew. No charge was brought against Him such as was brought against Paul (Acts xxiv. 5, 6). Indeed, Pilate insisted on re garding Him as the supreme, typical Jew, and would not refrain from nailing over His cross the title " The King of the Jews " ; and what the chief priests objected to was not that He was still regarded as a thorough Jew, but the pretension of authority contained in the inscription (John xix. 21). As a man Jesus, of course, was placed under the limitations which surround human nature. He was a member of a family and a race, He came at a definite time in history, and was obliged to take His place as a member of a nation, and submit to a definite historical setting. He had a body with its physical conditions, a mind with its mental endowments, disposition, temperament. But He was not fettered or biased or cramped by these, or warped in notion and judgment and ideal. He was free {a) from current inadequate con ceptions of providence. When He was speak ing once to many thousands, who had gathered together insomuch that they trode one upon an other (Luke xii. 1), certain people who were pres ent and had just heard the news excitedly told THE TESTIMONY BORNE TO HIM 1 39 Him of some wretched murders committed by Pilate, expecting doubtless that He would wel come the tidings as illustrative of the truth of judgment of which He had been speaking. The communication was made with the idea that the Galileans who had been murdered were great sinners, and that their violent death was what men would call a judgment upon them. " Do you poor children of superstition," said Jesus, " think that because of this awful calamity which befell them they were specially great sinners? I tell you, Nay : but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish " (Luke xiii. 1-5 ; cf. John ix. 1-5). {b) From distorted notions of Sabbath obser vance. On a Sabbath day He healed in one of their synagogues a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, was bound together, and could in no wise lift herself up. The ruler of the synagogue was outraged at this desecration of the day. He did not dare to rebuke Jesus directly, but he struck at Him over the backs of the people. Jesus answered, addressing His words to the class of dead formalists of which this ruler was the representative, " Ye hypocrites! you merely pretend to defend the law of the Sabbath in order to arouse enmity against Me. Shall the sanctity of the Sabbath allow you to save a beast's life or promote its comfort, and forbid the deliverance and the healing of men ? " (Luke xiii. 10-17). {c) From materialistic notions of worship. The woman by Jacob's well in Samaria asked Him whether Jerusalem or Gerizim was the proper place of worship. He brushed aside at once the rival claims of the two temples by showing the Spirit of truth, the new revelation of a universal religion, high and clear of all superstitious quar- 140 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS rels as u, place and form of worship, a religion of spirit contrasted with the literalism of Judaism, a religion of truth contrasted with the falsehood of Samaritanism (John iv. 20-24). The Sermon on the Mount is full of illustra tions of Jesus' freedom, His bold emancipation from all the narrow, enslaving, literalizing views of His day. His words cut constantly across current opinions. He gives a new interpretation of the command not to kill (Matt. v. 21-26). He strikes at current views of divorce (Matt. v. 27-32). He assails the prevalent forms of re ligiosity and hypocrisy (Matt. vi.). In parable and open statement He held up to scorn the Pharisaic narrowness and suspicious ness (Mark xii. 10-12). His perfect freedom from bonded traditionalism the Pharisees made a charge against Him ; and He replied by asserting His contempt for their formal and lifeless man nerisms and mummeries, by which they made clean hands a substitute for clean hearts, and the altar of devotion a cover for covetousness (Mark vii. 1-23). He constantly asserted reality as against tradition (Mark vii. 8, 13), and denounced all substitution of profession and pretense for life and vision as hypocrisy and vanity (Mark vii. 6, 7)- The twenty-third chapter of Matthew is an other just such proclamation of freedom, of life, of protest against sepulchers lying over the gates of life, and spiritless men having stewardship of the revelation and appeal of God. The Jews came to speak of Him at last as Elias (Luke ix. 8), indicating thereby their conception of Him as a great religious and moral reformer, a stern rebuker of vice, and a condemner of the deaden ing fashions of the day (1 Kings xviii. 18; xxi. THE TESTIMONY BORNE TO HIM 141 19, 20 ; 2 Kings i. 8). Yet Jesus was a Jew, and acted as such (Luke xxii. 7, 8), and was appealed to as a Jew, and responded to such appeals (Luke vii. 4-6). Christ's superiority is revealed in this superior ity to His time, its views and limitations. " Lord Bacon, a man of the highest intellectual training, was harmed by superstitions which were too child ish to be named with respect, and which clung to him despite of all his philosophy even to his death. . . . While Socrates, one of the greatest and purest of human souls, a man who had at tained to many worthy conceptions of God hid den from his idolatrous countrymen, is constrained to sacrifice a cock to ./Esculapius, the uneducated Jesus lives and dies superior to every superstition of His time ; believing nothing because it is be lieved, respecting nothing because it is sanctified by custom (Matt, xxiii. 16-23). Even in the closing scene of His life we see His learned and priestly associates refusing to go into the judg ment-hall of Caiaphas, lest they should be cere monially defiled and disqualified for the feast (John xviii. 28), though detained by no scruples as regards the instigation of a murder! While He, on the other hand, pitying their delusions, prays for them from the cross, ' Father, forgive them ; for they know not what they do ' " (Bush nell, The Character of Jesus, p. 52). Yet Jesus does not swing over to the other ex treme and boast Himself an untrammeled liberal. He did not make capital for a destructive move ment out of His advance beyond the narrowness of His time and nation and His freedom from it, He bade men whom He had helped to go to the Temple and act as good Jews. Least of all did He ever destroy without offering to reconstruct, 142 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS or disparage the past and His contemporaries that His own name and place might be more con spicuous. He was free from the evil and the imperfection of His time that He might show in Himself the good and the perfection of all time. V. He called forth the instinctive obedience of others. As a teacher of right and duty, He of course emphasized obedience in His teaching (Luke xvii. 7~to;; and the greatest illustration of faith He found was in a centurion who assumed His perfect power and right to exact obedience even of the hidden forces of life and death (Matt. viii. 5-22). He commanded discipleship on all, conceiving of it as a personal allegiance to Himself. He assumed that the most right, most natural-, most proper course was for men to yield complete obedience to Him, and they instinctively obeyed. Only two declined His call when it was person ally presented to them (Matt. xix. 21 ; Luke'ix. 59), and in each of these cases His words were rather tests of character than definite commands. To Andrew and Peter He called over the sea, "Come ye after Me" (Matt. iv. 18, 19). To Matthew He said, " Come, follow Me," and " Fol low Me " to Philip (Matt. ix. 9 ; John i. 43). And all these rose and followed, fishermen leaving their nets, and the tax-gatherer his table with its toll. Obedience He regarded as the character istic mark and test of discipleship (John x. 27 ; xiv. 15; xv. 14). He exacted obedience, whatever the cost. Wealth might not stand in the way (Matt. xix. 21) ; sure struggle and bitterness might not deter THE TESTIMONY BORNE TO HIM 143 (Luke xii. 51-53); neither father nor mother, wife nor children, business nor love, might have precedence over His call (Matt. x. 37 ; Luke ix. 59, 62; xiv. 15-24). His disciples always obeyed His instructions absolutely. They sometimes raised questions. Peter suggested that it was not likely they would catch any fish if they let down their net once more after a fruitless night's work (Luke v. 4, 5), but he obeyed without delay. The disciples pointed out that the journey to Bethany to the home of Lazarus would involve great personal risk and danger, but their thought was of Jesus, not of themselves ; and when they saw Jesus was bent on going they thought of no other course of action than accompanying Him (John xi. 8, 16). They obeyed the most astonishing commands. They fell in at once with His plan for feeding the five thousand when there was nothing in sight with which to feed them (Luke ix. 14-16). Two of them went to prepare the last supper on the chance of meeting a man with a pitcher of water who would give them his house (Luke xxii. 8-13) ; and two went to find a colt for His use in the triumphal entry on the strength of His assur ance that they would find one tied in a certain village which the owner would allow them to take (Luke xix. 30-35). Simon actually went down to the sea to catch a fish on the promise of Jesus that he would find a coin in its mouth (Matt. xvii. 27). He always issued His orders as one born to command. Ten lepers cried to Him for help, and He gave them healing with a word of com mand (Luke xvii. 12-14). He bore Himself in the Temple as a King or a King's Son, and all men obeyed (Markxi. 15-17). The chief priests 144' THE MAN CHRIST JESUS and scribes were afraid of Him (Mark xi. 18). He spoke constantly in the imperative mood : " Go tell John " to John's disciples (Matt. xi. 4) ; " Tell no man " to His own (Matt. xvii. 9) ; " Re turn to thy house " to the healed man among the Gerasenes (Luke viii. 39) ; "Abide ye here, and watch," to His chosen friends (Mark xiv. 34). And He closed His life with some stupendous orders (Matt, xxviii. 18-20; Mark xvi. 15). For these great orders He had prepared them by His training. During His life He had sent them out with the divine sanctions at their com mand (Matt. x. 12-15) He bade the apostles go out on an untried errand, for which we should think special preparation would have been abso lutely necessary, with all such preparation ex pressly forbidden, but with instructions to carry the threats and the pleas of God ; and they went obediently. The Seventy were sent on even more trying conditions (Luke x. 1-16). They probably went before Jesus into Samaria. Now the more scrupulous Jews would not eat with Samaritans, saying, " He that eateth a morsel belonging to a Samaritan is as though he had eaten swine's flesh." Jesus bade the Seventy to eat what was set before them (Luke x. 7). They went forth in obedience, attempted to use the power given to them, and reported the results with unrestrained joy (Luke x. 17). Yet Jesus was never regarded as dictatorial or imperious. He drew men (John xii. 32 ; John iii. 13-17 ; Mark ii. 13). His teaching commanded the confidence of men; His love warmly at tracted them. No one, therefore, resented His commands. Every one naturally assented. Though He treated those who came to Him as belonging to Him, and so spoke of them (John THE TESTIMONY BORNE TO HIM 145 xvii. 6 ; xviii. 36), and assumed toward them a supreme authority and exceptionless superiority, no one seemed surprised or offended. Objec tions to Him seem to have been based on His origin and family, and on preconceptions, mis interpretations, or misrepresentations, which He was at no pains to remove unless they were enter tained by men who sincerely desired light. Jesus Himself was ever the natural leader and King of men. No one ever asked His disciples why they had Him for their Master, though they often inquired as to the reasons for His conduct (Matt. ix. n). His disciples addressed Him generally as " Master," and He was pleased with this title, and encouraged its use. " Ye call Me, Master, and, Lord," He said : " and ye say well ; for so I am " (John xiii. 13). A few days before He had instructed them not to call one another " Rabbi," or to allow others to call them by this title; "for," He said, "one is your teacher, and all ye are brethren. Neither be ye called masters : for one is your master, even the Christ " (Matt, xxiii. 8, 10). Though He was the veryservant and slave of men, He was yet their Lord and, Emperor. VI. The impressions He produced upon others. 1. Admiration for His goodness and purity. One of His companions in death expressed to the other his conviction as to Christ's innocence. This was a testimony wrung from a sufferer. A sufferer's judgment of goodness is valuable. Fear of God at such times is.natural, but not a favor able judgment of man (Luke xxiii. 40, 41). The centurion whose special duty it was to watch the fulfilment of the sentence, and who was accord- 146 THE MAN CHRIST TESUS ingly stationed immediately in front of the cross, where he heard the last word of Jesus— evidently not an inarticulate cry, but a word full of mean ing—" It is finished. Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit," recognized in the voice and the whole bearing of Jesus a personal manifesta tion of character, and responded to it, declaring aloud, in devout praise of God, " Certainly this was a righteous man, God's very Son " (Luke xxiii. 47 ; Matt, xxvii. 54). 2. Astonishment. Men were astonished at His originality and authority (Matt. vii. 28), at the fact that His origin and training would not account for Him (Matt. xii. 23; xiii. 54-57), at His sagacity and vigorous enthusiasm (Mark vi. 2), at the unusual things He showed them (Luke v. 26), at the majesty of God as it was displayed in Him (Luke ix. 43). Their astonishment at times knew no bounds (Mark vii. 37), rising into eager, excited demonstration (Mark ix. 15) even though He had wrought no immediate miracles to arouse it. His very appearance at times was an amazement to them. 3. Dumb wonderment and marveling. He would patiently endure a long controversy, calmly meeting each fresh assault, and then He would sweep everything before Him — the people struck dumb by His honest subtlety, His keen dialectic, His genuine candor (Luke xiv. 6 ; Matt. xxii. 46). Sometimes the wonderment would break forth into open admiration at the shrewdness of His disputation (Mark xii. 37) or the culture of His discourse (John vii. 15), as well as at the splendid victories He won over sickness (Luke xi. 14). 4. Shame. In a synagogue in Perea the ruler of the synagogue and his supporters were put to shame by the defense which Jesus gave of THE TESTIMONY BORNE TO HIM 1 47 His conduct in healing a woman on the Sabbath (Luke xiii. 17). His purity and sincerity put to shame impurity and insincerity (John viii. 9). 5. Hope and confidence. The nearness of (esus was counted an opportunity for blessing and help not to be lost (Luke xviii. 37, 38). Wherever He went rumors were spread abroad of His illimitable ability to aid (Luke iv. 36, 37), and men counted Him at least a risen John or a returned Elijah, or one of the old prophets come back to earth (Luke ix. 18, 19). 6. Fear and hatred. In the country of the Gerasenes the people, holden with a great terror at the sight of the untamable man sane and quiet at Jesus' feet, and recalling the fearful sight of their maddened herds, besought Him to go away out of their country (Luke viii. 37). In the hearts of others His loving help, calling even the dead back to life, and His comfort of the deso late, produced a solemn and awful fear (Luke vii. 16). Among others His very goodness pro voked prejudice and hatred and ill will, which became thus a testimony to His true nobility (Luke vi. 11 ; Mark iii. 1, 2, 6). His foes sank their minor differences, and combined in the face of their common enemy, who upheld spiritual truth in opposition to the secularist faction of the Herodians and the ceremonial formality of the Pharisaic party of tradition. During all the last year of His life His enemies plotted to compass His death. His assertion of the spirituality of the uses to which He felt the Temple should be put (Mark xi. 18), His declaration of His com plete obedience to God (John vii. 28-30), the raising of Lazarus (John xi. 53)— these, and much else about Him in character and conduct which we deem most admirable, only provoked I4» THE MAN CHRIST JESUS the wrath and hatred of the leaders of the peo. pie, and drove them on to their fatal rejection of Israel's one hope. 7. But on both friends and foes He exercised a strong, fascinating influence. Going up to Jerusalem, the disciples who followed Him, as He walked on ahead with His face set like a flint toward the Holy City where He was to be cruci fied, looked at one another in amazement, while the people who came after them were filled with a strange fear. They were moved by the thought of the approaching crisis and the solemn words He had spoken of the persecutions which were to be a part of the disciples' life ; but it was Christ Himself, with His tense, white face, and the far-- away look as of one who saw already the land that is afar off, that drew them after Him with strange fascination (Mark x. 32). They left all for Him (Luke xviii. 28) ; they were grieved at His gloomy forebodings, but they could not leave Him (Matt. xvii. 22, 23). He cast a spell of fascination over His foes as well (John vii. 46). The people generally were completely under His influence if He had wished to exert it so. The complaint of the jealous zeal of the disciples of John shows what an attraction He possessed (John iii. 26). The world went after Him, de clared the rulers (John xii. 19). The first time this influence was brought to bear upon men they yielded to it. The first disciples were made with out effort, without miracles, without teaching, by the practical interpretation of a phrase, " Behold, the Lamb of God ! " and the inner comprehen sion of a character felt from the first moment as a fascination and a satisfaction (John i. 35—51). At His first words to them these men put aside THE TESTIMONY BORNE TO HIM 1 49 their own aspirations and preconceptions, and cast themselves upon Him, willing to wait His time, and trusting till He should show Himself more clearly. 8. Many loved Him with a deep and consum ing love. The first missionary to the Gentiles, the man whom Jesus had healed in the country of the Gerasenes, could not go away from His presence, but sat at His feet drinking in eagerly the words of his great friend (Mark v. 15, 18). In His love Jesus had a greater mission for the man, and He sent him ahead of Him to prepare the way for His later work (Mark vii. 31 ; viii. 10). Even when clinging to Jesus meant peril and perhaps death, men followed (John xi. 16). Some could not summon sufficient courage to pronounce openly for Jesus during His life, but the thought of His suffering and agony drew even these out into open association with His cause (John xix. 38, 39). Regarding these impressions three things should be said: (1) Observe that the people and the rulers regarded Jesus with no uncritical spirit. There was careful weighing of His claims, and in each case the judgment, when considered in all its lights and bearings, whatever it may have been in itself, was a testimony to His greatness and goodness. Close and earnest arguments arose about Him. The facts of His life and character were rigidly scrutinized, and eager factions were at least partially convinced that they must differ entiate Him from men (John vii. 12, 40-47 ; x. 19-21). The swell of other influences overcame them, but what claims of His were even tempo rarily acknowledged by a few were acknowledged 150 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS not blindly, unless in the case of some of the Gal ilean visitors at the last Passover, but after study and scrutiny. (2) The impression He made and the position He was accorded were due to the influence of His character, His words and deeds. No ex ternal circumstances played into His hands. Even conditions which the people found fault with His Messianic claims for not having fulfilled were met by Him, though, through the ignorance of the people and His neglect to inform them, He derived no advantage from their fulfilment. What Jesus got, therefore, in the way of acknowledged superiority and uniqueness He got, not because of fortunate combinations of circumstances, but in spite of the lack of such advantages as He was properly entitled to. (3) Moreover, He was quite careless as to what the popular opinion of Him was, or what feelings He aroused. He often went off quietly to pray after some of the mighty works which left men aghast, scarcely believing the" evidence of their senses (Luke v. 16). He kept His personality above His acts. He knew that it was more im portant that the Son of God should be true to His divine nature than that the people should acknowledge that He was the Son of God ; yet this was no motive to Him. He acted as He did, not because the Son of God should so act, but because He was the Son of God. VII. The better He was known, the greater was His acknowledged superiority. " Human characters are always reduced in their eminence and the impressions of awe they have raised by a closer and more complete ac- THE TESTIMONY BORNE TO HIM 151 quaintance. Weakness and blemish are discov ered by familiarity. Admiration lets in qualifiers ; on approach the halo dims a little. But it was not so with Christ. With His disciples in closest terms of intercourse for three whole years, their brother, friend, teacher, monitor, guest, fellow- traveler, seen by them under all the conditions of public ministry and private society, where the ambition of show or pride of power, or the ill nature provoked by annoyance, or the vanity drawn out by confidence, would most certainly be reducing Him to the criticism of persons most unsophisticated, even, He is yet visibly raising their sense of His degree and quality ; becoming a greater wonder and holier mystery, and gather ing to His person feelings of reverence and awe at once more general and more sacred. Familiar ity breeds a kind of apotheosis, and the man be comes divinity in simply being known " (Bushnell, The Character of Jesus, pp. 60, 61). Observe it in His friends. 1. His mother. As a boy, she sought Hini anxiously when He was absent from her company (Luke ii. 44, 48). As the boy grew, her faith in Him grew. When He began His ministry she knew Him and trusted Him. When a need arose at the wedding in Cana, she simply stated it to Him (John ii. 3). His reply was disap pointing", but it left the faith which rested in Him absolutely unshaken. " Nowhere else, perhaps," says Westcott, " is such trust shown. Whether divine help was given through Him or not, so much at least could be provided, that if the right moment came all should be ready for His action." " Whatsoever He bids, do," she commanded the servants (John ii. 5). She left all to Christ, trust ing Him. As the months passed by she came to 152 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS trust Huii sore and more, and at the end stood near His cross till, at His bidding, she went away to the house of John, and so was saved by His thoughtfulness the vision of the end when, with a loud cry that would have torn her heart, He gave up His spirit and lay down to rest in the Father's arms (John xix. 25-27). 2. John the Baptist. We cannot be sure that John knew Jesus before the baptism, though it is most probable that he did, and art has ever repre sented them as boys together. John's declaration of unworthiness to perform the rite of baptism upon Jesus when He presented Himself would im ply that he had some knowledge of Him (Matt. iii. 14). His words, in John i. 31-33, " I knew Him not," need not mean more than that he did not know Him as Messiah. They probably met as boys and young men, and doubtless talked together of the hope of Israel. Having known Him as a friend, John at once recognized in Him at the baptism much more, and his respect for Him and realization of His transcendent unique ness grew steadily. He recognized in Him at the beginning more than the apostles were willing to put in their final confession of faith the night of the betrayal (John i. 29, 34, 36 ; iii. 28, 29 ; xvi. 30). His admiration and devotion grew so that he desired nothing but his own disappear ance in order that all his fame and reputation might be transferred to Jesus (John iii. 30). His last words from prison were indicative, not of faithlessness or disappointment, but of impa tience. He felt that the Lord was ready for a larger work than He was doing (Matt. xi. 2, 3). 3. Simon Peter. Simon willingly abandoned his business to follow Jesus (Mark i. 16, 17). The Lord's discovery of his need, and the revelation THE TESTIMONY BORNE TO HIM 1 53 of His personal insight into his life when He " found " Simon in the depths of his soul, and gave to the irresolute, impulsive man the pro phetic name of Rock, firm, steadfast, bound him fast to Jesus (John i. 42). In his first public profession (John vi. 67-69) he declared his un willingness to leave the One who only had the words of eternal life and in whom the spirit of holiness was revealed. Life and holiness Peter had found in Jesus. In his next confession he had risen to a faith in the public office and theo cratic person of the Lord (Mark viii. 29). But he was not so in awe of Him that he was afraid to rebuke Him, and to challenge the accuracy of Christ's forecasts of the future (Matt. xvi. 22), and he was not above asking questions regarding the expected rewards (Matt. xix. 27). As the personal revelation of Jesus proceeded, he soon came so into awe of Him that he sought in si lence through John the information he desired re garding the betrayer (John xiii. 24), and thought his own life worthless in comparison with the joy and horior of sharing Christ's lot (John xiii. 37) ; and so strong became Christ's spell over him that after the revelation of his own weakness a look from Jesus sent him out into the night with bitter tears (Luke xxii. 61, 62). 4. The woman at Jacob's well. Jesus first met the woman on the common ground of simple human friendliness, and made a request which involved a recognition above that which she ex pected, and "conceded to her the privilege of conferring a favor " (John iv. 7). The strange ness of the request startled her. Something lay behind it. What was it? the woman asked (John iv. 9). Jesus proceeded to suggest that a discern ing soul would have seized this opportunity to se- 154 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS cure the living water (John iv. 10). His answer was confusing. She saw the stranger was hint ing at some truth which was not within her grasp, and she felt after it gropingly (John iv. n, 12). Jesus went on, disregarding the form of her ques tions, to hint at the vast value of the water He could give (John iv. 13, 14). The woman could not follow the thoughts which He opened before her with such mysterious outreach, but she wanted such water as He offered (John iv. 15). She had come from suspicion through doubt to con fidence. Ready for His revelation, Jesus makes it by revealing her past (John iv. 16-18). "I begin to see that Thou art a prophet," she replied (John iv. 19). The Lord's words hinted mighty things to her. Perhaps in Him the connection of man with God had been authoritatively restored. If so, then the great national controversy could be settled, which is God's mountain — Gerizim or Jerusalem? (John iv. 20). To the opened heart Jesus revealed the spirituality of religion (John iv. .21-24). In some way these words of Jesus led the woman to feel that He must be more even than a prophet. Such teaching could come only from one who rose above prophets. For such a one she was looking (John iv. 25). Could this be He? That question Jesus answers for her : " I am He " (John iv. 26). And at once the woman went off to her village to declare her faith in the Messiah who had come (John iv. 29). But the woman did not stop here ; she and her countrymen rose to a faith in Christ as the Saviour of the world (John iv. 42). " Lord, what a change within us one short hour Spent in Thy presence will prevail to make!" 5. Popular opinion. Jesus was first recog nized as Rabbi (John i. 38) ; then among a little THE TESTIMONY BORNE TO HIM 1 55 circle as Messiah (John i. 41) ; then by a few as Son of God and King of Israel (John i. 49) ; next as Saviour of the world by a group of peo ple who, a few hours before, had been complete strangers to Him (John iv. 42) ; then among the multitudes in Jerusalem there were openly ex pressed suspicions that He was the Christ (John vii. 26, 31). At the Feast of the Dedication a wider faith sprang up (John x. 42), which recog nized Him as King (John xii. 13); only, under the skilful management of chief priest and ruler, to lead Him to death lest the whole "world" should become infatuated with Him (John xii. 19; xi. 47, 48; Mark xv. 10, 11). 6. His own family. His brothers were evi dently men of strong, narrow feelings, true Jews, jealous of their brother as Joseph's brothers were of him, yet with natures capable of spiritual sympathy. At the outset they declared Jesus beside Himself (Mark iii. 21). This feeling soon disappeared, however. They openly expressed their interest in Him (Luke viii. 19, 20). Their faith in Him strengthened, but it grew slowly (John vii. 3-5). Though they had no full belief in Him, did not sacrifice to absolute trust in Him all the fancies and prejudices which they cher ished as to the Messiah, they soon came to have a form of personal pride and interest, not deny ing His mighty works, yet not afraid to advise, and urging Him to show Himself on the large national stage at Jerusalem. A few months later we learn that they had openly declared themselves among His disciples (Acts i. 14). Perhaps the solemn influences of His death won them ; per haps it was His resurrection (1 Cor. xv. 7). Lightfoot thinks James was converted by this vision of the risen Lord. The names of Jesus' brethren are last on the list of disciples who I5& THE MAN CHRIST JESUS gathered in Jerusalem after the ascension, indi cating, perhaps, that they had been but recently added to the little company of Christians. In any event, James and Jude were reached and greatly changed since the day they bade Jesus go up to Judea and do some miracles, and, with humility of spirit, in their epistles they make no allusion to their family relationship to Him (Jude i ; James i. i ; ii. i). 7. The disciples. They learned His lessons very slowly, but month by month their confi dence in Him grew. After the walking upon the sea they worshiped Him as truly the Son of God (Matt. xiv. 33), but they little understood what a Son of God was. Titles never described Christ to them; Christ described all His titles. At the end they professed faith in His omnis cience, as they had already done in His omnip otence (John xvi. 30). Yet even then they fee bly comprehended His nature. They grew not so much in understanding of Him. At the end of His ministry they still grievously failed to grasp His meaning (John xiv. 5, 9, 22, 28, 29). Their growth was in confidence, in love, in trust, in that sympathy which He named faith. He seemed to expect and claim this growth of ap preciation with increasing acquaintance, and made companionship with Him the ground of their witness to Him (John xv. 27). The scribes and teachers said, " Do as we teach, not as we do." Only those were competent to testify of Him who had been near enough to detect all the flaws, and their message was to be the story of what they had seen even more than of what they had heard (1 John i. 1-4). Peter made such knowledge of Jesus the essential qualifica tion for apostleship (Acts i. 21, 22), and so also did Paul (1 Cor. ix. 1). THE TESTIMONY BORNE TO HIM 1 57 This growth of respect with knowledge may be seen also in the views of His enemies; the growing respect showed itself in growing hate. At first they looked on Him as some new fa natic (John v. 16). The healing of a man on the Sabbath led to the first open declaration of hostility, based upon the alleged violation of the Sabbath law (Matt. xii. i, 2). They had ignored Him at first, but He grew too great for that treatment, and an antagonism sprang up which became abiding. This was caused not so much by any one miracle as by what " the Jews " saw was an obvious principle of action on the part of a novel and altogether unprecedented leader who was too dangerous to be neglected. Then " the Jews " who were present at Capernaum murmured at His teaching, which the multitudes had drunk in with hungry longing (John vi. 41, 52). Next they marveled at His singular ac complishments as a public speaker, and wanted to know where He gained His opinions (John vii. 15). Shortly after this a company of Temple police was sent to arrest Him, but when they heard Him they were so deeply impressed that they returned without Him, unable to overcome the spell of His remarkable eloquence (John vii. 46). Then His greatness and the significance of His claims grew on " the Jews," and they recog nized the fatal bearing of His teaching and prin ciples on the national ideals, and sought to stone Him (John viii. 59). Next He advanced openly His claims of identity with God, and the infuri ated "Jews" took up stones again (John x. 31). Even, at the end numbers deserted to Him intel lectually, but were afraid to confess because of the threats of excommunication made by the Pharisees (John xii. 42). Though firmly set upon His death, they shrank in fear from attempt- 158 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS ing it, and finally hired one of His friends to break the spell and betray Him (Luke xxii. 3-6). Even then, when with soldiers and police they went to take Him, and He appeared at the gate of the garden and quietly asked whom they sought, they were so overcome with fear when they recognized Him that they crowded back in consternation and panic, and fell reeling to the ground (John xviii. 6). And when at last the chief priests had had their way, and Jesus of Nazareth, the true King of the Jews and the King of truth (John xix. 36-38), had been slain like a criminal, all the multitudes that had come together to the sight were filled with remorse and shame ; and through the heavy darkness that had settled down over the earth, and with the last cry of the innocent and tortured sufferer in their ears, returned to their homes smiting their breasts in partial realization at least of what their sense less rage had done, and of the eternal stain they had assumed as their own and their children's (Luke xxiii. 48). In proportion as we understand the state of Jewish life, character, and opinion in Jesus' day shall we value the testimony of increasing respect in which He was held by those whose increasing respect showed itself in ever more deadly hostil ity and hatred, bearing witness to the light by manifesting the opposition and bitterness of dark ness. And so still, the better Jesus is known the more He is respected and loved ; and those who know Him best are most ready, with one who conditioned his faith in His resurrection upon the evidence of personal knowledge and close scrutiny, to say, " My Lord and my God." OTHER EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTER ISTICS OF CHRIST, MOST EASILY EX PLICABLE BY THE BELIEF IN HIS DIVINITY «S9 OTHER EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS Of CHRIST, MOST EASILY EXPLICABLE BY THE BELIEF IN HIS DIVINITY I. He presents the perfect ideal of friendship. We are just beginning to appreciate Jesus the friend. We shall appreciate Him more and more as our ideals of friendship rise to His. To describe truly this ideal would be to write a life of Jesus and to produce a Gospel that would blend the four we possess. " Friend of sinners " was His divinest name. He has taught great masses of men what it is to love with the friend ship-love. It was thus that He revealed the heart of that Father whose name is friendship- love. The classic book on this subject is Trum bull's Friendship, the Master Passion. Only some of the traits of the friendships of Jesus can be suggested here. i. Unselfishness. It was for His friends that He thought. When He was called out to the gate of the Garden of Gethsemane by Judas and the band that had come for His arrest, His first care was to protect His friends who were within at first, but who came out at once and closed round Him. For them He spoke. " If ye seek Me, well, here I am, but let these go their way " 161 1 62 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS (John xviii. 8, 9). In many a so-called human friendship a man has dragged his friend down with him in ruin. Jesus gave His life for His friends, not for those only who were possessed by the friendship-love for Him, but for His enemies even, whom He still loved with the love of a friend (John xv. 13; Rom. v. 8). He willingly incurred the greatest personal danger for His friend Lazarus (John xi. 2, 8). In His great prayer He made but one request for Himself (John xvii. 1, 5) ; all the rest was for His friends. And on the cross His last thoughts were for others, even His enemies (Luke xxiii. 34), His fellow-sufferers (Luke xxiii. 43), and His mother (John xix. 26, 27). 2. He was not restricted in His friendships by social limitations. He was wholly free from the prejudice of caste. He chose His friends with out hesitation from the ostracized classes. Our societies and fraternities are made up of people of similar tastes and standing. Christ chose for His friends those whose needs were met by His supplies. When He spoke of the loving wel come given the prodigal son, great throngs of publicans and sinners drew up close to Him, knowing that He spoke it for them and that they had found a friend (Luke xv. 1, 2). "Friend of publicans and sinners" was the sneer of the Pharisees (Matt. xi. 19). Men insist that it is impossible to love the unlovely, that love cannot be forced or bidden, that love is controlled by gravity, and we "fall in." The love that is "fall en into " may be fallen out of ; the love that is born of will is the true abiding love. " A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love," were the words of Him who loved the unlovely, even us who were lost in trespasses and sin, and EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 1 63 in whom there was no beauty that He should desire us. There was nothing in men that could lead Christ to "fall in love" with them. H«. beheld our needs, and He said, " I will love the world," and He loved us seeing in us nothing attractive at all, save such faint resemblance to Himself as was quickened by His love. And so He became friend of sinful women— Mary Mag dalene and the harlots ; and of impulsive, fickle, stupid, selfish, blustering, distrustful men — Peter and Philip and Judas and John and James and Thomas ; and, last of all, of us also. 3. He was an unswerving friend. He loved His own to the uttermost limit of love, and to the end (John xiii. i). The treachery of Judas and the denials of Peter did not remove them from the list of His friends (Matt. xxvi. 47-50 ; Mark xvi. 7). Peter's refusal to be regarded as one of His disciples might have been construed as removing him, but Jesus includes him still. There can be no such thing as a dead or aban doned friendship. He that has loved with the friendship-love loves still. It is not possible for such love to change. Convictions, emotions, tastes change, but while God is God, love of friends changes not, cannot change, till God denies Himself. The disciple whom Jesus loved was the loved disciple ever, even when the agony of the crucifixion might have been expected to dull and deaden all such love (John xix. 26 ; xxi. 20). And so of the Twelve whom He chose to be with Him as His friends, He lost not one save the son of perdition (John xvii. 12); and even that loss was an illustration of the fulfilment of the prophecy that the most familiar friend would prove false to his friend, who would still prove true (John xiii. 18 ; Ps. xii. 9). The treason 164 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS proved Judas's friendship false, and Jesus' true to Judas, and to the eleven whose friendship to Him proved true at last. " They sin who tell us Love can die. With life all other passions fly ; All others are but vanity. In heaven ambition cannot dwell, Nor avarice in the vaults of hell ; Earthly, these passions of the earth, They perish where they had their birth. But Love is indestructible ; Its holy flame forever burnetii ; From heaven it came, to heaven returneth. Too oft on earth a troubled guest, At times deceived, at times oppressed, It here is tried and purified, Then hath in heaven its perfect rest ; It soweth here with toil and care, But the harvest-time of Love is there." Jesus' doctrine of friendship was this : once a friend always a friend. If the friendship ceases or breaks, it never was a friendship. " Loved once " means never loved or love forever. " And who saith, ' I loved once '? Not angels — whose clear eyes love, love foresee, Love through eternity, And by To Love do apprehend To Be. Not God, called Love, His noble crown-name casting A light too broad for blasting! The great God, changing not from everlasting, Saith never, ' I loved once. ' " Oh, never is ' Loved once' Thy word, Thou victim Christ, misprized friend! Thy cross and curse may rend, But, having loved, Thou lovest to the end. This, man's saying — man's. Too weak to move One sphered star above, Man desecrates the eternal God-word Love By his No More and Once. EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 165 " How say ye, ' We loved once '? Blasphemers! Is your earth not cold enow, Mourners, without that snow? Ah, friends! and would ye wrong each other so? And could ye say of some whose love is known, — Whose prayers have met your own, Whose tears have fallen for you, whose smiles have shone So long,—' We loved them once'? " Say never ye loved once. God is too near above, the grave beneath, And all our moments breathe Too quick in mysteries of life and death, For such a word. The eternities avenge Affections light of range. There comes no change to justify that change, Whatever comes, Loved once! " And yet that same word ONCE Is humanly acceptive. Kings have said, Shaking a discrowned head, ' We ruled once ;' dotards, ' We once taught and led.' Cripples once danced i' the vines, and bards approved Were once by scornings moved ; But love strikes one hour — love! Those never loved Who dream that they loved ONCE." 4. Jesus was a faithful friend. There was never any adulation or flattery in His words to or about His friends. When John sent his disciples from prison with the question of impatience, meaning to suggest to Jesus the desirability of a more speedy and direct public declaration of Himself as Messiah, Jesus sent back no word of rebuke or praise to John ; but the moment John's disciples had gone He burst forth into commen dation and defense of John. The people might infer from the visit that John had wavered in his faith ; so Jesus proceeded to clear him of that charge (Matt. xi. 7). Then He coupled John with Himself (Matt. xi. 18), and told, of his greatness (Matt. xi. 11), declaring that John was 1 66 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS the greatest man that had ever lived, and con trasting with that greatness, and the rugged loy alty to God of the forerunner, the childish cavil ing of that generation. After the stern rebuke of the cities which had rejected His preaching, to which He was led on, He recurs at the close, perhaps, to the thought of John lying weary in his dun geon, and speaks tenderly of the rest to be found in Him, and offers to all the strength and re pose in God's service which He knew God in His grace was giving to His imprisoned friend (Matt. xi. 20-30). While He was thus free from anything like adulation or sweet-phrased flattery, He was absolutely faithful in telling His friends the truth, though it was painful truth. A great throng which He addressed as " My friends " He warned to fear Him who, after He had killed, had power to cast into hell (Luke xii. 1, 4, 5). A young man came running to Him once with youthful enthusiasm, and Jesus at once conceived a friendship for him; but seeing in him the sore of covetousness, He honestly laid His finger on it, and the young man shrank back from life unwilling to pay the price (Mark x. 17- 22). He told Simon that Satan had asked for the apostles to test and try them, and to winnow the chaff from the grain. One had failed under the test, had surrendered his heart to Satan (John xiii. 2). Peter's impulsive disposition put him in greater danger than the rest, while the victory would be certain to make him a strength and support to others. All this Jesus as a true friend told Peter in advance (Luke xxii. 31-34). It is very easy to say pleasant things to a friend ; it is hard to inflict those faithful wounds which are the highest test and the most painful task of love. EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 1 67 5. Tenderness. The miracles of Jesus were not wrought by a mechanical word of power. The element of sympathy, of tenderness, entered largely. The sufferings and diseases of men were taken away not by destruction, but by His own mysterious appropriation of them. He took them upon Himself (Matt. viii. 17). The power which healed others went out of Him (Luke viii. 46). All this deep sympathy of life, which brought Him into such close relations with men, deepened into a holy tenderness in His friend ships. Only in this way can we understand such scenes as those at the home in Bethany and the grave of Lazarus (John xi. 11, 33-38). The last night of His hfe He tenderly hashed the feet of each disciple, including Judas, at the supper which was to be His last with them ; expressing so His love and care, and desiring to teach them so the true secret of greatness, found in lowly and loving service of others (John xiii. 1-20). After His resurrection He sent a special word of re membrance to Peter, who would be feeling most deeply and dismally the shame of his threefold denial of his friend (Mark xvi. 7). 6. Community of possessions. Kingsley tells the story of two monks who lived together for many years in a cave, growing to love each other with an ever deeper and more friendlike love. Wearying at last of the monotony of their life, one of them suggested to the other that they should have a quarrel as was the fashion in the world without. " But about what shall we quar rel? " asked the other. " We will take this stone and put it between us, and I will say, ' This stone is mine,' and you say, ' This stone is mine,' and so we will quarrel." The stone was placed be tween them. " This stone is mine," said one. l68 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS " I think the stone is mine," the other gently re plied. " If the stone is thine, take it," said the one who had proposed the quarrel. A friend has no pleasure save in sharing all with his friend. Jesus shared all with His friends. He shared His money (John xii. 6). They had a common bag, borne by the one best capable of handling the small financial affairs of the band, and who gave way, as most men do, to the temptations which came to him through that for which he was best fitted. He shared His know ledge. All that He had learned from the Father He told to His friends, keeping from them no secrets (John xv. 14, 15). The time of His sec ond coming, which they desired to know, He told them He did not know Himself (Mark xiii. 32). He shared His life. He had the great love, than which no love is greater, that leads a man to lay down his life for his friends (John xv. 13). 7. Molding influence. Many of our friend ships, so called, are for the pleasure of them. The friendships of Jesus were formed for the good He would be able to do through them for others. James had evidently been a man of rough edges, of a vigor almost violent; but his epistle shows the molding, softening influ ence of Jesus. A few passing expressions of deep and lowly reverence disclose his tender love of his friend, "throned high in the back ground of his thought." And throughout the epistle, in little things, in standards of judgment, in views of life and character, we see the tender and sympathetic reverence he feels for Jesus, and the loving place he assigns Jesus' judgments and Jesus Himself in his heart. Jude came to Jesus late in life probably; was perhaps influ enced most by Him after He was gone ; but his EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 1 69 epistle, brief as it is, reveals clearly the influence the friendship of Jesus had upon him. He calls himself the " slave of Jesus Christ." Writing to those "kept for Jesus Christ," he speaks with pride and love of "the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ," and beseeches those to whom he writes to look for " the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ " ; and he closes with one of the finest ascriptions in the Bible (Jude 24, 25). Simon Peter, the irresolute, impulsive, undisceming, out spoken, self-willed, boastful, rough fisherman, was transformed by this friendship into the discern ing, sensitive, trustful, resolute, tender disciple who wrote the First Epistle of Peter, whose first nine verses are as widely removed from the spirit and tone of Peter's early life, before he came under the influence of the friendship of Jesus, as the east is from the west. Do we have such purposes and fruits, such ideals and realizations, in the life of friendship as Jesus had? Ought we not to have? II. His piety was unrepentant, and yet sustained. All men admit that He was a holy and pious man and wrought good among men. But He Himself claimed that He made no mistakes or errors in this effort to help men, that He came to do God's will, and that He unfailingly did it, never doing one thing that did not please God (John vi. 38 ; viii. 29). Philip, the evangelist, is to men an object-lesson of unquestioning obedi ence because he once willingly obeyed the divine whisper of guidance (Acts viii. 26, 27). " 'Twas silent all and dead Beside the barren sea, Where Philip's steps were led— 17© THE MAN CHRIST JESUS Led by a voice from Thee. He rose and went, nor asked Thee why, Nor stayed to heave one faithless sigh." Jesus declared that such compliance with the will of God was His constant life. He declared that His whole being was in ab solute harmony with the being of the Father, and that the Father was personally present with the Son (John viii. 29). He openly demanded, "Which of you convicteth Me of sin?" (John viii. 46). As He put the question, it was an ap peal to His hearers to point to one flaw in Him or His life, in His acts or words, and was ac cordingly only an appeal to a human standard. But He meant to assert far more than this.- He was declaring His own sinlessness. " When we read this question the feeling forces itself upon us that its author must have been a person of a moral character most peculiar ; a feeling greatly strengthened by the recollection , that He who spoke these words was one who in His whole life presents to us a picture at once of purest truthfulness and most divine humility. Every man, too, must be fully convinced that he has no right to make these words of simple greatness his own, and that for him to apply them to him self, and in the face of the most unanswerable facts, and with the clamant voice of conscience sounding in his ear, would only prove him a vain fool or a miserable self-deceiver Least of all could this happen within the sphere of Chris tian life, where the idea of divine holiness was so clearly stamped, the moral law carried to such a height of perfection, and the claims of conscience so highly respected ; least of all in a community from the midst of which we hear that same apos tle who has preserved to us the saying of Jesus EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 171 exclaim, 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us ' " (1 John i. 8) (Ullmann, The Sinlessness of Je sus, pp. 95, 96). Notice who wrote this charge of universal sin : the holiest disciple of all, " a faithful apostle of Christ, and a veteran," as Bengel calls him. Notice the force and breadth of it: "We have all the abiding reality of sin. If we say we have not, we are but misleading ourselves, self-deceived and self-involved in our pride, and the truth is not in us. And we have not alone sin in the abstract, but definite per sonal sins. We are sinful in our present condi tion as the result of past sin. If we deny it we are worse than liars ; we make Him a liar. Our life is a practical negation of that doctrine and person who are absolute truth, for the ' imagina tion of our own sinlessness is an inward he.' " "It is certainly a fact of the highest signifi cance that, in opposition to this attestation of universal sinfulness which every one without ex ception must indorse, there is One who steps forth from the ranks of humanity and exclaims, 'Which of you convicteth Me of sin?'" (Ull mann, ibid.). And the personal claim involved in this challenge Jesus put forth constantly. He declared that in their hatred of Him the Jews ful filled the Scripture, which He appropriated as applying to Himself, "They hated Me without a cause" (John xv. 25). It had no justification at all. -It was pure hatred of innocence. 1. Now no heathen ever made such a claim as this of Christ's. Witness Horace: "Nam vitiis nemo sine nascetur ; optimus file est qui min imis nascetur ; " Simonides : "Elvai dvSpa ayaObv ddivarov teal ovk avdp&miov, dXXh Oebg fiovog tovto l%ei rb yepag ; " Confucius : " In letters I 172 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS am perhaps equal to other men ; but the charac ter of the perfect man, carrying out in his con duct what he professes, is what I have not yet attained to." And all the Jews of Jesus' day were conscious of sin. They felt called on to protest that He too was a sinner (John ix. 24). Their protestation is an added indication of the extraordinary character of the claim to sinless ness which He openly put forth. 2. But Jesus is remarkable not only for claim ing perfect sinlessness, but also for the mainte nance of His piety in neglect of the means for its maintenance which men have ever found in dispensable. Human piety springs from perfect repentance. This was what John demanded when he came as the forerunner : " Repent ye ; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand " (Matt. iii. 2 ; Luke iii. 2, 3). It was " the baptism of repentance unto remission of sins" that he preached. Jesus Himself rigorously preached the same doctrine (Matt. iv. 17; Luke xiii. 3; Matt. xi. 20-24). On Pentecost Peter pro claimed repentance as the condition of remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost (Acts ii. 38) ; and Paul esteemed it a thing not to be re pented of, as it opened the gates of salvation (2 Cor. vii. 9, 10). Holy men are men of the deepest and most constant repentance, combined with an over whelming sense of personal unworthiness. Isa iah, the greatest of all the prophets before John the Baptist, saw the glory of the Lord in the Temple in the year that King Uzziah died, while the pillars rocked to and fro and the house was filled with smoke, and he cried out in agony, " Woe is me ! for I am undone ; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS I 73 seen the King, the Lord of hosts" (Isa. vi. 5). Simon Peter saw on the shores of Gennesaret the Holy One of God, and he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, " Depart from me ; for I am a sin ful man, O Lord " (Luke v. 8). Every vision of truth or of God is a vision of our own sinfulness. And he is the holy man who, repelled by his own sin, seeks with sole longing the beauty and the holiness of God. " Those who have lived aearest to God and have known most about Him and have been most visibly irradiated by the light of His countenance have been foremost to acknowledge that the burden of remaining im perfection in them was intolerable, and have re pented in sackcloth and ashes." And those who have served God with greatest power have gained the strength and passion for their service from the sense of their unholiness and infidelity, and their longing to atone in fervent and repentant love, and to ease conscience in the open confes sion of sins detested. So Paul, in Myer's fine poem: " Also I ask, — but ever from the praying Shrinks my soul backward, eager and afraid, — ' Point me the sum and shame of my betraying ; Show me, O Love, Thy wounds which I have made I " ' Yes, Thou forgivest, but with all forgiving Canst not renew mine innocence again. Make Thou, O Christ, a dying of my living ; Purge me from sin, but never from the pain.' " So shall all speech of now and of to-morrow, All He hath shown me or shall show me yet, Spring from an infinite and tender sorrow, Burst from a burning passion of regret. " Standing afar, I summon you anigh Him ; Yes, to the multitudes I call and say, ' This is my King! I preach and I deny Him— Christ! whom I crucify anew to-day.' " 174 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS Even Strauss admits, "In all those natures which were only purified by struggles and violent disruptions (think only of a Paui, an Augustine, a Luther) the shadowy color of this remains for ever, and something hard and severe and gloomy clings to them all their lives ; but of this in Jesus no trace is found." For Jesus is not like the others. He admits no imperfections in Himself. He proclaims a perfect message, and identifies Himself with the message and with God, from whom He declares He has received it. He is never repentant, never asks pardon for His sins, prays only for the forgiveness of the sins of others, and yet His piety stays ever fresh and sweet and ingenuous. " Piety without one dash of repentance, one ingenuous confession of wrong, one tear, one look of contrition, one request to heaven for pardon — let any one of mankind try this kind of piety," says Bushnell, " and see how long it will be ere his righteous ness will prove itself to be the most impudent conceit! how long before his passions, sobered by no contrition, his pride, kept down by no repentance, will tempt him into absurdities that will turn his pretenses to mockery! " Jesus began with an impenitent, unrepentant piety, and though it was subjected to tests of indescribable severity, He kept it unsullied, unstained to the end. Each day of His life even deepens our admiration of Him, our confidence in His spotless and holy purity. Even though we might have questioned His wonderful assertion at the outset, we dare not at the close, but only say reverently, with the centurion, " Surely this was a righteous man." Even F. W. Newman must say (the wonder is he dare say so little), "That Jesus was intended for head of the human race in one or more senses EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS *75 would be a plausible opinion ; nor should I feel any repugnance against believing His morality to be, if not divinely perfect, yet separated from that of common men so far that He might be to us a God just as every parent is to a young child." 3. But Jesus not only presumes to lead a sin less and unrepentant life ; He professes to for give sin and sinners, and those who feel the weight -of their sins accept His word for it that their sins are forgiven. Four men, in their ear nest zeal for a friend's recovery, lower him on a bed through the roof of the house in which Jesus was, " and seeing their faith, He said, Man, thy sins are forgiven thee" (Luke v. 20-26). A poor sinful woman tenderly expressed her love by performing duties which His host of the Pharisees had neglected, and He met her love with the words, "Thy sins are forgiven " (Luke vii. 48). Even His words from the cross, " Father, forgive them ; for they know not what they do " (Luke xxiii. 34), seem not so much a prayer as a declaration, on the part of Him who had power to forgive sins, of both His power and His will ingness to forgive to the uttermost. The Jews at least fully understood the significance of these claims of Christ to be able to forgive sin. "Who is this that speaketh blasphemies?" they said. "Who can forgive sins, but God alone? " (Luke v. 21). "Who is this that even forgiveth sins? " (Luke vii. 49). One thing more needs to be added. He de clared by clear implication that the love of men for God is proportionate to their sense of God's forgiveness (Luke vii. 47) ; in other words, that love springs from repentance — deepest love from deepest repentance. Yet He Himself affirms that 176 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS perfect love exists between Himself and the Father (John xiv. 31 ; xv. 9, 10; xvii. 21, 23), that they are indeed one (John x. 30), and this without His ever having felt for one moment the need of repentance or confessed any sin. 4. The character of Christ's piety appears yet more remarkable when we remember that He made no progress in His spiritual life. There was the life in Him ever, and there was no room for progress, because He had reached the goal —was, indeed, Himself the goal (John xi. 25). It is not so with men. Holy men are men of growth. Life without growth is death. We rise by repentance, stepping upon ourselves left be hind. So far as life is true for us, it is perpetual advance upon and beyond ourselves. " I hold it truth, with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things " — and that that is the only way they do rise. " Heaven is not reached by a single bound, But we build the ladder by which we rise From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, And we mount to its summit round by round. " We rise by the things that are under our feet, By what we have mastered of good and of gain, By the pride deposed and the passion slain And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet." 5. The impression that He was a sinless and holy man was made upon many of diverse types of character, of course upon all who really grasped the conception of Him, "the very idea of such a Being excluding the possibility of conceiving Him as sinful." Herod thought Jesus was John EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 1 77 the Baptist risen from the dead (Mark vi. 14), and John he knew to be " a righteous man and a holy " (Mark vi. 20). Pilate after two exami nations declared to the people that he found no political fault in Jesus, nothing that could be made ground of His condemnation (Luke xxiii. 4, 14). At the end of the farcical trial, when he gave way before the threat to accuse him at Rome (John xix. 12), he openly but vainly said, " I am innocent of the blood of this righteous man " (Matt, xxvii. 24). Pilate's wife, troubled with dreams of the lowly sufferer, sent word to her husband even while sitting on the judgment- seat, saying, " Have thou nothing to do with that righteous man " (Matt, xxvii. 19). The centuri on who watched His death and cross was deeply impressed with the same truth. " Certainly," he declared, " this was a righteous man " (Luke xxiii. 47). Note also the testimony of those who had been most closely associated with Him, espe cially Judas. " Long and most confidential inter course," says Ullmann, " had given him the most intimate knowledge of his Master; hence if he could have found anything reproachable in His life he would without doubt have brought it for ward in order to quiet his conscience in view of the consequences of his treachery, and to palliate his crime." And Judas would have seen any thing reproachable. He had borne the bag ; any pecuniary weakness — we shudder at the thought — would have been known to him. He made the practical traveling arrangements, act ing as business agent. Any weakness in Jesus — and in precisely such circumstances do weak nesses reveal themselves — would have fallen under his eye; any selfishness, any raggedness of temper, any little half-pardonable hastiness or 178 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS indiscretion of spirit. But Judas saw nothing which he could use as justification for his treach ery, and so heavy did his dark deed hang upon his soul that he returned the money to the priests, crying, " I have sinned in that I betrayed inno cent blood" (Matt, xxvii. 4), and went out and hanged himself; his confession the first voice telling the chief traitors what would be with ever more thundering emphasis the verdict of humanity. We must combine with these testimonies the opinion of the faithful apostles who survived Him. Their first preaching asserted His stainless- ness. " The Holy and Righteous One," they call Him in loyal and complete admiration (Acts iii. 14); or "the Righteous One" (Acts xxii. 14; 1 Pet. iii. 18). Paul declared him to be the very incarnation of the divine and sinless and infinite life (1 Tim. iii. 16). The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews asserts that, though He under stood and felt the full force of the motives which were presented to draw Him into sin (Heb. iv. 15), He still remained entirely apart from it, un sullied by its stain, inwardly and wholly devoted to God and His purity (Heb. vii. 26, 27). Peter, recalling His hatred of deceit, His guilelessness, His temptation to strong and insolent words, and His lamb-like silence, wrote, He "did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth: who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, threatened not" (1 Pet. ii. 21-25). He was "a lamb without blemish and without spot" (1 Pet. i. 19). John never tired of speak ing of Him as "the righteous," "Jesus Christ the righteous" (1 John ii. 1; iii. 7); and Paul sums up the general testimony succinctly in his declaration, " Him who came to no acquaintance EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS I 79 with sin He made to be sin on our behalf" (2 Cor. v. 21). Thus spoke those who " Caught the gracious eye Of Him, the sinless Teacher, who came for us to die." Even among the people so clear was the ap prehension of His purity that the voice of slan der was never raised against Him. " Francis of Assisi, Vincent de Paul, and many of the sweet est and purest saints of earth did not escape the pestilent breath of slander ; yet though He lived in familiar intercourse with publicans and harlots, His worst enemies never dared to breathe suspi cion on the spotless innocence of Christ" (Far- rar, The Witness of History to Christ, p. 83). 6. And yet the piety of Christ was not obtru sive. It is of Him we think, the pure and sinless, rather than of His "purity and sinlessness. As Ullmann says, " In Jesus piety never obtrudes itself, yet everything that He did became in His hand an expression and sign of piety ; hence, moreover, the whole manifestation of Jesus does not convey to us the idea of a character merely religious or possessing only the highest moral qualities, but rather of morality and religion in perfect combination ; in a word, the idea of holi ness." In spite of His spotless holiness He was ever accessible and near. The testimony of need and want and love is given abundantly to the win- someness of a life made winsome, made to com mand the confidence of all by its absolute free dom from all taint, from all the corrosion which breaks the attraction of a soul and its capacity to help. The attractiveness of Jesus bears evi dence to the loveliness of His life (Mark x. 13; 180 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS Luke viii. 44). " His holiness made Him an utter stranger in such a polluted world. His grace kept Him ever active in such a needy and afflicted world." 7. Now with all these claims by Himself for Himself, by others for Him, if we will not in, simplicity lend confidence to them, we must de clare Jesus either a fanatic or a hypocrite. In the former case He was self-deceived, with infe rior moral discernment, and though a sinner, was ignorant of the fact. But such a supposition is contradicted utterly by His character, by its per fect balance, by the testimony to His sinlessness and holiness of those who knew Him and fol lowed Him. If we accept the other alternative, then we must believe that He was conscious of transgressing the divine law constantly and wretchedly, and yet expressly denied it. " But who is there," asks Ullmann, " that would' be ready to undertake the defense of such a posi tion, and to maintain that He, who in all the circumstances of His life acted from the purest conscientiousness and who at last died for the truth upon the cross, was after all nothing but an abject hypocrite? How could it be that He, of whom even the least susceptible must confess that there breathed around Him an atmosphere of purity and faith, should have fallen into an antagonism with Himself so deep and so deadly? Since, then, by abandoning ourselves to our own conjectures, we would only land in irreconcilable contradictions, let us yield our faith to the simple assurances of the most honest and intelligent wit nesses of the truth. We come into the posses sion of many of the highest spiritual blessings only by a free act of confidence, — that is, by faith, — and only thus can we retain them. And EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 151 surely He whose whole life rests upon the prin ciple of the fullest trust in humanity deserves this trust from us. For it was only the assured con viction that human nature— kindred to God even when alienated from Him and involved in sin- was still capable of good that could move Him to labor for the moral renovation of the race. It was His unfailing faith in the ultimate triumph of good in the world that gave Him strength to persevere unto the end, often amid circumstances in which bitter experiences seemed to foretell the ultimate failure of His gracious purposes. As no one, in pursuing schemes of philanthropy, ever encountered such fierce opposition as He did, so no one ever had better reason to despise man kind. And yet He preserved even to His dying breath a faith in the indestructible element of divinity in humanity, as no one had ever done before. Even upon the cross to which men had nailed Him He did not despair of man, and His dying prayer bore a wondrous testimony to this undying faith. In that same spirit of confidence with which He came to seek us must we seek Him. If He, the High and Holy One, never lost sight of the godlike that yet remains in hu man nature, surely it becomes men, who are by Him restored to God, to recognize and hail with joy the divinity which was manifested in His most glorious life ; nor will they indeed fail to do this so long as there exists within them any, even the faintest, susceptibility to what is holy " {The Sinlessness of Jesus, pp. 106, 107). III. The strength and strangeness of His emotions. Now and then we meet a strong man who has control over his emotions in the way of repression 1 82 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS and to some little extent of simulation also, but generally there is a large range of involuntary and uncontrolled emotions which are true and unconscious revelations of the inner life, which they express and manifest or betray. From these uncontrolled, often unconscious, revealings it is not difficult to distinguish the voluntary and intentional expressions of the life which are both prompted and bound by the will. In Jesus there was no contradiction between the voluntary and the involuntary, the unconscious and the con trolled. All the manifestations of His inner life were reliable and true, and they constantly in crease our awe of Him and our sense of His majesty and mystery. They betray nothing that is not strong, strange, and superhuman, even in its humanity. To Jesus things did not sustain the same rela tions among themselves or to life which they seem to us to sustain. Their proportions were different. He responded to what we should call small or trivial, while what we call great and momentous He seems often to have regarded as of little consequence. This was not due to any absent-mindedness or lack of sympathy with what He saw and touched. He was most deli cately sensitive to all influences. Neither He nor His Father was that God to whom " Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar His sacred, everlasting calm." i. He responded at once to need. Physical need always appealed to Him. We do not won der at this as a heathen would, having grown so accustomed to the philanthropy which was born of the Christian faith. But Jesus was a leader EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 1 83 here. He felt for human need (Matt. ix. 36 ; xv. 32). He was moved with compassion by the vision of it (John v. 6). He felt as deeply for the spiritual wants of men. He had compas sion on the people who were as sheep having no shepherd, and He began to teach them (Mark vi. 34). He was unable to bear unmoved the sight of the lonely widow moving out of the city of Nain with her only son before her on the bier (Luke vii. 13). 2. His appreciation of the truths and graces which He found others to possess was excessive. A centurion's simple iaith in the sovereignty of God He declared was unsurpassed in Israel (Luke vii. 9). A confession of Simon's which went beyond any faith theretofore expressed called forth the enthusiastic reply, " Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah : for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven. And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven : and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in hea ven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Matt. xvi. 17-19). At the end of His life He greeted the gentle word of a thief, who was crucified with Him, with an immediate assurance of a loving wel come that day into Paradise (Luke xxiii. 41-43). 3. His grief and astonishment at the spiritual blindness of others were intense. He marveled at the conduct of men who shut their eyes to what was most real and present to Him. The hard ness of their hearts filled Him with a sad anger and grief (Mark iii. 5). They wilfully resisted 1 84 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS His intimations, His open declarations, and so His intense desire to help them was thrown back into an attitude of indignant but surprised antag onism, a perplexed and baffled sympathy "over the callousness of their hearts." He marveled also at the unbelief of those whose lack of faith cost them the priceless blessings which He was scattering wherever believing hearts would re ceive them (Mark vi. 6). " He had no experi mental acquaintance with such an unreasonable state of mind," says Cardinal Cajetan, " and there fore His wonder was real." This may seem inconsistent with the clear and accurate insight into the human heart which He possessed, but just in proportion to reason is the surprise occa sioned by unreasonableness. The prophets attrib ute to God surprise at the unreasonableness and obliquity of sin. The nearer the divine, the greater the amazement at men's want of sympathy with divinity At the request for a physical sign while He Himself, the living and infinite sign, stood before them, He sighed deep ly in His spirit, literally " groaned up inwardly " from the depths of His spirit, the inner commu nion alone furnishing a sphere in which He could adequately express His surprise (Mark viii. 12). Twice He broke forth in lamentations over the blindness and impenitence of Chorazin and Beth- saida (Luke x. 13-15; Matt. xi. 21-24). The condition of these Galilean towns, from one of which at least three of His apostles came (John i. 44), lay near His heart, and He publicly mourned over it and pronounced His solemn " woes " from time to time, as the thought of His rejected assistance recurred to Him. The last night of His life, while sitting peacefully at supper with His disciples and talking quietly to EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 1 85 them, He was suddenly "troubled in the spirit" (John xiii. 21). The thought of the coming trea son, whispered to Him by the Spirit, darkened His soul. And in the spirit, the highest region of life, Jesus was troubled, appalled at the approach of the great spiritual catastrophe by which He was to be slain and one of His own apostles was to sell his soul. The divine ingenuousness of Jesus' emotions is well sho wn here. A man having such knowledge as this of his coming betrayal, desiring to retain the confidence and obedience of his followers, and knowing that the end could not be avoided, would have muffled the appearance of emotion. Forewarned, he would have composed himself to meet the end in silence To the nature of Jesus, however, duplicity was a stranger. Why did Jesus weep before the grave of Laz arus? When He saw Mary weeping, and the Jews also who came with her, " He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled." Literally He "troubled Himself," checking His first instinct, which was to exert His divine power at once, and bringing Himself into complete sympathy with the sorrow He came to relieve. And then Jesus wept. Why? From indignation at the hypocritical mourning of the Jews? Moved by the sight of such deep sorrow? In wrath at the temporary triumph of death? Was it not because of the loneliness in which He stood, no one un derstanding Him, no one understanding the life which He represented, which He was, no one having sympathy— full and understanding sym pathy—with the great world of life and spirit which encircled and invited, and which in Him had come near? Did He not weep for the death of the people, for their deadness tc tf»8 life and light of God? (John xi. 33-38). 1 86 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 4. The emotions of Jesus are not less signifi cant when viewed as to their source. Sometimes they spring from acquired knowledge (Matt. ix. 36 ; Luke vii. 9). At other times they result from a perfect spiritual sympathy or discrimina tion (John i. 47 ; v. 42). Sometimes they rest upon absolute knowledge (John vi. 61 ; xiii. 11, 21). 5. The emotions of Jesus are of greatest in* terest, however, as we study them in His own spiritual life. {a) Of His emotions in the wilderness during the temptation we know nothing. We do know, however, that it was a fiery trial in utter loneli ness, the wild beasts His only companions, save as angels ministered unto Him (Mark i. 12, 13). The fearful experiences of these days. have al ways appealed powerfully to the imagination and emotion of the Church. The writer of Not on Calvary even regards the real redemptive work of Christ as done in the wilderness rather than on the cross! {b) He met the news of the death of John the Baptist, the greatest man of all time before Jesus (Matt. xi. n), and the one who best understood Him (John i. 29, 33, 34), with no expressions of open grief, but with a serious and solemn calm ness which is the greatest emotion (Matt. xiv. 1 2-14). Perhaps partly for the sake of prudence, His hour having not yet come, He withdrew into the wilderness. Jesus was willing to forego, however, the pleasure of solitude at such a time of apprehension and sorrow, that He might be of practical aid to the multitudes who flocked to Him, and on whom He had compassion. {c) The knowledge of the ravages of sin in the world caused Him constant sorrow. When He EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 1 87 healed the deaf man who had an impediment in his speech, He looked up to heaven and groaned, " sorwide withynne," as Wyclif says, at the sight not of the one sufferer only, but of the innumer able woes with which sin has bathed itself in ret ribution (Mark vii. 34). {d) His love for Jerusalem, as the representa tive of the nation, was intense. Twice He apos trophized the city, bewailing its refusal of its true King and the miseries which its blindness would bring upon it. In Perea, as He was " on His way through cities and villages, teaching, and journeying on unto Jerusalem " (Luke xiii. 22), the visit of some Pharisees called forth the first outburst of lamentation over the obduracy of the city, even when the poetry of its presence did not excite emotion (Luke xiii. 34, 35). Dur ing the last week of His life this love and longing for Jerusalem broke forth again. It was on the way from Bethany. " The procession advanced. The road descends a slight declivity, and the glimpse of the city is again withdrawn behind the intervening ridge of Olivet. A few moments and the path mounts again ; it climbs a rugged ascent, it reaches a ledge of smooth rock, and in an instant the whole city bursts into view " (Stan ley, Sinai and Palestine, chap. iii.). And when Jesus saw the city He " wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known in this day, even thou, the things which belong unto peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes " (Luke xix. 41-44)- He was the bridegroom of no mortal heart, but He wept at His rejection by the bride He came to win: "Jerusalem, O Jerusalem!" 6. He had an overwhelming consciousness of the presence of God. Brother Lawrence and other men have acquired a measure of this con- 1 88 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS sciousness by long discipline and experience. It was given to Jesus without measure ; His whole life was full of it. " The Father hath not left Me alone," said He (John viii. 29). In the midst of great throngs He turned easily to God, to whom He would speak as to one near at hand. One of His most sweet and winning prayers was spoken thus (Matt. xi. 25, 26). We see this best, however, in His high-priestly prayer (John xvii.). Pastor Harms was brought to faith in Christ by reading this prayer— His prayer of consecration and fellowship, rising into the flood- burst of a full revelation, speaking of a con sciousness of God explicable only on the ground of a knowledge of God never attained by man, a prayer so solemn, so holy, so full of an awe- breathing divinity that we stop before it in won der to ask, " Can these be the lips of a man speaking? Is not this rather the palpitating heart of the very God laid bare? " 7. He had from the beginning a weird con sciousness of His approaching death. He fre quently spoke of it to His disciples (Luke ix. 22-27, 31, 43-45; xviii. 31-34). But He evi dently often thought of it when He did not speak of it, and the knowledge of it tinged His conduct at times with a strange and awful sad ness. When He and His disciples were in the way going up to Jerusalem, He pressed on in advance with high resolve toward the final scene of the great struggle. He foresaw all that was coming, and through the heavy shadows He beheld " the joy that was set before Him." As He thought on it His white face grew whiter, the transfiguration look would come back, the lines of His face were tense, and His step quick ened, while the delicate but unwearying frame EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 1 89 drew itself more firmly together and bore yet more unmistakably the majesty of the divine glory. The disciples were amazed, while those who followed regarded Him as unearthly. As He strode along their reverence deepened into awe, under which they trembled and were afraid. Often He hinted at the coming end of the drama. Andrew and Philip brought some Greeks to Him in the Temple ; they wished to see Him (John xii. 20-28). His answer was a foreboding of His own death ; it involved far more than the admission of the Greeks to His presence. The extension of the gospel to the world, of which the Greeks were the representatives, rested on His death and His rejection by His own people. To a true nature foreknowledge intensifies sor row, but when Jesus knew that the hour was come when He was to depart out of the world to the Father, in the knowledge of His disciples' suffering He forgot His own (John xiii. 1). Though Jesus knew of His approaching death and lived under the shadow of it, He was ever of quiet and peaceful spirit, more intent on com forting others than seeking comfort for Himself. 8. In no human experience has there ever been such suffering as Jesus passed through in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matt. xxvi. 36-46). It is not strange that the hearts of Christian men turn always in hush and humility to this scene when " 'Tis midnight, and on Olive's brow The star is dimmed that lately shone. •"Tis midnight ; in the garden now The suffering Saviour prays alone. " 'Tis midnight, and, from all removed, The Saviour wrestles lone with fears ; Even that disciple whom He loved Heeds not His Master's erief and tears." 190 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS This is one suggestive feature of this experi ence. The disciples are weary and exhausted, worn out by what they have passed through. Though the pressure upon Him has been incal culable, Jesus is still strong enough to enter this awful conflict. It was a true agony (Luke xxii. 44)- " 'Tis midnight, and for others' guilt The Man of Sorrows weeps in blood." The physical signs betokened the strength of the inward struggle. "In the Garden of Gethsem- ane," says Stroud, " Christ endured mental ag ony so intense that, had it not been limited by divine interposition, it would probably have destroyed His life without the aid of any other sufferings; but having been thus mitigated, its effects were confined to violent palpitation of the heart accompanied with bloody sweat. Dr. Millingen's explanation of the bloody sweat is judicious. ' It is probable,' says he, ' that this strange disorder arises from a violent commotion of the nervous system turning the streams of blood out of their natural course, and forcing the red particles into the cutaneous excretories ' " {The Physical Cause of the Death of Christ). The whole occasion of this remarkable expe rience was within Jesus. He was free to go away from Jerusalem if He wished. He was not yet under arrest. There was no sign of any deadly opposition. His disciples were round about Him, and only a little while before great multitudes had hailed Him as the King of Israel (John xii. 12-15). He was the most composed and peaceful person present at His crucifixion ; but in the quiet seclusion of the olive-yard, alone save for His friends, He endured such intense EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS I9I suffering as no man ever had the sensibility to undergo. Why was this? We may dismiss at once the suggestion that Jesus was shrinking from death because He was young, as Stalker suggests, and desired to live and visit nations beyond the bounds of Palestine, and because to have " the light and warmth of life quenched in the cold waters of death must have been utterly repugnant to Him." We cannot believe Jesus to have been lacking in the courage which hun dreds of His disciples have displayed ; the thought is wholly repugnant to us. He was doubtless appalled by the thought of what the Jewish peo ple were about to do, murdering their Messiah, and by the same act plunging the nation in the grave of the suicide. His intense sensibility of the damning sin about to be committed in the crucifixion of the one perfect Being who had lived in the world undoubtedly made the suffer ing of this night almost unendurable. What can be more fearful to a holy soul than the absolute rejection of holiness? But though Jesus' agony finds partial explanation in this way, does not the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews suggest the fuller explanation in his words, " Who in the days of His flesh, having offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and having been heard for His godly fear though He was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which He suffered"? (Heb. v. 7, 8). Jesus feared that He would not live through this awful night and the physical strain to which He was subjected, in order that He might finish His work upon the cross. What He feared was not death on the cross, but death before the cross. He longed to complete, not to I92 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS escape, His mission, and God heard Him and brought Him through the deep waters as one who was red in His apparel and had trodden the wine-press alone. Triumph crowned the agony of the Saviour. " He that hath in anguish knelt Is not forsaken by His God. " 'Tis midnight, and from ether plains Is borne the song that angels know ; Unheard by mortals are the strains That sweetly -soothe the Saviour's woe." From this scene of unfathomable suffering Jesus went out, by it attested to be the Son of the Highest if "the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain," and the Captain of the salva tion of that humanity of which He called Him self the Son, and which was shown by Him to be capable of exaltation to the highest, which had in turn found its greatest glory in the abase ment of the incarnation. 9. What was His mien as He marched to Calvary? Some have supposed that He walked like a conqueror, and that the journey looked so like a triumphal procession as Jesus, bearing His cross, went forth that the cross was taken from Him and laid on Simon of Cyrene. But the effects of the scourging and the bitter trials through which He had passed more probably left Him too weak to assume the dignity of an earthly conqueror, for which, in any event, He had no taste, and the implication of Mark's account is rather that He was led with lowly aspect and too weak from the abuse heaped upon Him to bear the weight of His own cross (Mark xv. 20- 22). Still there was upon His face a divine EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 1 93 composure and an appeal to the sympathy and love of men so strong and sweet even in this hour that a great company of women, not. blinded by high-priestly bigotry, followed Him and bewailed and lamented Him (Luke xxiii.. 27). But He was master of Himself, and once again looked with compassion over the multi tude, now more than ever as sheep without a shepherd, and showed at once both His solici tude for them and His glad and holy joy that the Shepherd could lay down His life for the sheep (Luke xxiii. 28). 10. In His death He showed no fear or falter ing, but only a steady and sublime fortitude. Emotions of sorrow and unrest gave place to the exultant but self-contained gratulations of victory and peace and power. It is true that He cried out in the midst of the three hours of darkness, " My God, My God, why didst Thou forsake Me? " (Mark xv. 34). But was not the forsak ing a thing of the past? Does Mrs. Browning quite catch the meaning in " Cowper's Grave "? " Deserted! God could separate from His own essence rather ; And Adam's sins have swept between the righteous Son and Father ; Yea, once ImmanueL's orphaned cry His universe hath shaken. It went up single, echoless, ' My God, I am forsaken!' " It went up from the holy lips amid His lost creation, That, of the lost, no son should use those words of desolation ; That earth's worst frenzies, marring hope, should mar not hope's fruition." Was not the cry a cry of victory? If He was left alone, no word of it escaped His lips till He 194 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS was with God again. It was an awful experi ence through which He passed, if in any sense God forsook Him in it. No wonder that the world shrouded itself in night. But these words tell more of His immense sense of relief, of free dom, of communion so close, so sweet, that His final words, " Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit " (Luke xxiii. 46), are a simple, near transference of Himself to God, a lying gently down in His arms as a little child, wearied with the day, sinks soft to sleep. And He was at rest in Him to whom He did not need to go, because, as He said, in some true sense, "The Father hath not left Me alone " (John viii. 29). Was the inner life revealed in these emotions of Jesus the life of a man? Do men feel so? Surely we comprehend His emotions only as we understand that He saw as in God. His vision of the world was as He saw it reflected in His Father. Every glance of His rested on the Fa ther's face. This was John's explanation of His life (John i. 1 ) : 6 Adyoc i\v irpbg rbv Osov. The face of the everlasting Word was ever directed toward the face of the everlasting Father. There is such a vision. Happy are they who see all things not in themselves, but in the face of God, who have met and learned the secret of him whose " Name was heavenly Contemplation. Of God and goodness was his meditation ; Great grace that old man to him given had, For God he often saw from heaven's height. All were his earthly eyes both blunt and bad, And thro' great age had lost their kindly sight ; Yet wondrous quick and pursuant was his spright, As eagle's eye that can behold the sun." With no such loss of lower sight, all the doors EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 1 95 of Jesus' soul were open toward the unseen and eternal city, and the source of His human emo tions was a superhuman view of things and per sons, nature and life, space and time, in their inner and true qualities and relations. With that marvelous spiritual insight which made him one of the greatest prophets of his time, Browning draws the picture of some such life as this, only different, in "An Epistle Contain ing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish." Whether a true interpretation of the life of Laz arus after his resurrection or not, Browning's picture still appeals to us as a true psychological study of the result of the application of the di vine standards and relations to human -interests and life. " The man's own firm conviction rests That he was dead (in fact, they buried him) — That he was dead and then restored to life By a Nazarene physician of his tribe : — 'Sayeth, the same bade ' Rise,' and he did rise. ' Such cases are diurnal,' thou wilt cry. Not so this figment! — not, that such a fume, Instead of giving way to time and health, Should eat itself into the life of life, As saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones, and all! For see how he takes up the after-life. The man— it is one Lazarus, a Jew, Sanguine, proportioned, fifty years of age, The body's habit wholly laudable, As much, indeed, beyond the common health As he were made and put aside to show. Think, could we penetrate by any drug, And bathe the wearied soul and worried flesh, And bring it clear and fair, by three days' sleep! Whence has the man the balm that brightens all? This grown man eyes the world now like a child. Look! if a beggar, in fixed middle life, Should find a treasure, . . . I96 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS So here— we call the treasure knowledge, say, Increased beyond the fleshly faculty — Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth, Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven: The man is witless of the size, the sum, The value in proportion of all things, Or whether it be little or be much. Discourse to him of prodigious armaments Assembled to besiege his city now, And of the passing of a mule with gourds— 'Tis one ! Then take it on the other side, Speak of some trifling fact — he will gaze rapt With stupor at its very littleness (Far as I see), as if in that, indeed, He caught prodigious import, whole results ; And so will turn to us, the bystanders, In ever the same stupor (note this point) That we too see not with his opened eyes. Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play, Preposterously, at cross-purposes. Should his child sicken unto death — why, look For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness, Or pretermission of the daily craft! While a word, gesture, glance from that same child, At play, or in the school, or laid asleep, Will startle him to an -agony of fear, Exasperation, just as like. Demand The reason why — ' 'Tis but a word;' object — ' A gesture ' : he regards thee as our lord, Who lived there in the pyramid alone, Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, being young, We both would unadvisedly recite Some charm's beginning, from that book of his, Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst All into stars, as suns grown old are wont. Thou and the child have each a veil alike Thrown o'er your heads, from under which ye both Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match Over a mine of Greek fire, did ye know! He holds on firmly to some thread of life — (It is the life to lead perforcedly). Which runs across some vast distracting orb Of glory on either side that meager thread, Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet — The spiritual life around the earthly life : The law of that is known to him as this, EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 197 His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here, So is the man perplext with impulses Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on, Proclaiming what is right and wrong across, And not along, this black thread through the blaze— ' It should be ' balked by ' here it cannot be. ' And oft the man's soul springs into his face As if he saw again and heard again His sage that bade him ' Rise,' and he did rise. Something, a word, a tick o' the blood within, Admonishes ; then back he sinks at once To ashes, who was very fire before, In sedulous recurrence to his trade Whereby he earneth him the daily bread ; And studiously the humbler for that pride, Professedly the faultier that he knows God's secret, while he holds the thread of life. Indeed, the especial marking of the man Is prone submission to the heavenly will — Seeing it, what it is and why it is. 'Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last For that same death which must restore his being To equilibrium, body loosening soul, Divorced even now by premature full growth : He will live— nay, it pleaseth him to live — So long as God please, and just how God please. He even seeketh not to please God more (Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please. Hence, I perceive not he affects to preach The doctrine of his sect, whate'er it be, Make proselytes, as madmen thirst to do : How can he give his neighbor the real ground, His own conviction? Ardent as he is — Call his great truth a lie, why, still the old ' Be it as God please ' reassureth him. I probed the sore as thy disciple should : ' How, beast,' said I, ' this stolid carelessness Sufnceth thee, when Rome is on her march To stamp out, like a little spark, thy town, Thy tribe, thy crazy tale, and thee at once? ' He merely looked with his large eyes on me. The man is apathetic, you deduce? Contrariwise, he loves both old and young, Able and weak, affects the very brutes And birds— how say I? flowers of the field- As a wise workman recognizes tools 198 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS In a master's workshop, loving what they make. Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb : Only impatient, let him do his best, At ignorance and carelessness and sin — An indignation which is promptly curbed: As when in certain travel I have feigned To be an ignoramus in our art, According to some preconceived design, And happed to hear the land's practitioners, Steeped in conceit, sublimed by ignorance, Prattle fantastically on disease, Its cause and cure — and I must hold my peace!" Only Jesus showed that He was more than man by His ability to adapt Himself to the lim itations which the incarnation imposed. IV. His superhuman knowledge. The evangelists all represent Jesus as moving among men with a knowledge of their needs aftd their characters that was accurate and full. They suggest often a mysterious knowledge, which they allege He possessed, of matters not in the scope of ordinary powers. He is reputed to have known that a certain fish in the sea would have a piece of money of a certain denomination in its mouth (Matt. xvii. 27); that an ass and a colt never ridden would be tied at a certain place, and would be allowed to go with His disciples (Mark xi. 2). He knows who out of a great crowd has touched Him with the touch of faith (Luke viii. 47). He is declared to have possessed a know ledge not alone resulting from His taking care ful note of peculiarities of action and character manifested to the eye of those around Him,— such knowledge as any man possesses in a mea sure,— but itself intuitive, a fruit of that broad knowledge which He had in knowing God. He EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 199 knew in Himself, in His own self-consciousness, not needing to reason inferentially or to seek the testimony of His outer senses (Mark v. 30). He knew in His spirit, in virtue of it and by means of it seeing through all veils and mists (Mark ii. 8). He saw things as they really were. Mate rialisms were transparent to Him; so were the spiritual inwrappings of the most self-involved hearts. John exhibits this attribute of complete human knowledge most fully, and dwells on it as ex plaining Christ's action at critical times. He describes His knowledge both as relative, ac quired {yiyvaoKuv), and absolute, possessed {elS&vai). " In some cases the perception seems (1) gained naturally (John vi. 15); (2) at others as the result of a peculiar spiritual insight and sympathy (John ii. 24, 25 ; v. 42 ; x. 14). The absolute knowledge is shown (1) in connection with divine things (John iii. 11 ; v. 32; vii. 29; viii. 55; xi. 42; xii. 50); (2) with the facts of the Lord's being (John vi. 6 ; viii. 14; xiii. 1, 3 ; xix. 28) ; (3) and also in relation to that which is external (John vi. 64, 71 ; xiii. n, 18; xviii. 4) " (Westcott, Bible Commentary. "St. John's Gos pel," p. 46). So full was Christ's knowledge that only on rare occasions did He ask anything as if all were not clear before His eyes. He asked how many loaves the disciples had with which He might feed the people (Mark viii. 5). He asked where Lazarus had been laid (John xi. 34). He came to a fig-tree that was barren: "If haply He might find anything thereon" (Mark xi. 13). In the main everything seemed plain to Him, even the thoughts of men, and their past lives (John iv. 2q). The words with which He first 200 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS addressed Simon were a revelation to Simon of His knowledge of his soul's longing : " Thou art Simon: thou shalt be called Rock" (John i. 42). " Rock? " The bystanders would look at one another and smile. The fickle, unreliable Simon a rock? But Simon knew that he had at last been found by one who was fit to be his Master, who knew his needs, and would make him what He called him. His words to Nathan ael (John i. 48, 49) point to some secret thought or prayer of his, by knowing which and promis ing the fulfilment of which the Lord showed Himself and His insight into the heart of man to be divine. "All things," He declared, "have been delivered unto Me of My Father " (Luke x. 22). And His completeness of knowledge He consummated in a completeness of sacrifice ; among all things knowing the best thing, the joy of self-sacrifice for men (John x. 15). His closest disciples, who surely were the most competent judges, confirmed His claim to full ness of knowledge. He had known, on on5 occasion, and answered an unexpressed thought of theirs (John xvi. 19). This seemed to them certain evidence that all was open before Him : " Now we know that Thou knowest all things. ... By this we believe that Thou earnest *wth from God" (John xvi. 30; xxi. 17). Christ knew because of what He was. Know ledge lay in Him. To express knowledge was to reveal Himself, for in Him were hidden all treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. iii. 3). All things were naked and open to His eyes (Heb. iv. 12, 13). "We may conjecture," says Hooker, "how the powers of that soul are illuminated which, being so inward unto EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 201 God, cannot choose but be privy unto all things which God maketh, and must therefore of neces sity be endued with knowledge so far forth uni versal."V. He recognized and asserted His own uniqueness. i. Nowhere does He do this more clearly than in the Sermon on the Mount. The tone is of direct self-assertion. In it Jesus does not speculate about God and our relations and du ties " as a school professor drawing out conclu sions by a practice on words, and deefhing that the way of proof; He does not build up a frame of evidence from below by some con structive process such as the philosophers delight in; but He simply speaks of God and spiritual things as one who has come out from Him to tell us what He knows." It is the voice of one speaking with authority, as the people observed, and not as the scribes (Matt. vii. 28, 29). The important declarations of the sermon are prefaced with the words, " I say unto you," as much as to say, " Listen ! I, who have authority, who am not a teacher of other men's opinions, who am unique and separate among you, a new guide to you, say this" (Matt. v. 18, 26, 28 ; vi. 2, 5, 16, 25, 29). He does this especially when contrasting the new teaching with the old, or with current interpretations of the old, as much as to say, "With larger light, clearer apprehen sion, I take issue with what you have been taught, and declare to you another and a larger doctrine." He does this regarding the interpre tations of the sixth and seventh commandments (Matt. v. 21, 22, 27, 28), prevalent ideas of di- 202 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS vorce (Matt. v. 31, 32), oaths (Matt. v. 33, 34), retaliation (Matt. v. 38, 39), the relations of men to their enemies (Matt. v. 43, 44). He speaks as one who knows the purposes of God and is commissioned to speak as His repre sentative (Matt. vi. 14, 15). He goes so far as to make promises in God's behalf which are most sweeping (Matt. vii. 7). He speaks in the imperative mood (Matt. vi. 25., 33), and singles Himself out as an unusual personage with relations most vital and impor tant to Jewish life and faith (Matt. v. 17). "I am come to fulfil." He claims a large mission. " He is to fulfil not the Messianic predictions alone, but the whole of the earlier revelation. He is to make perfect the law and the prophets, not only by accomplishing in His own person the types and prophecies relating to the Messiah, but also by establishing a ' kingdom of heaven ' for which the old covenant was a preparation, and giving to the moral commands of the law a fuller significance as precepts to be observed forever in the Church " (Matt. v. 17-20). More than this, He even places Himself at the end of the world and declares that then all things turn upon Him, that His decision will be final at the judgment of men. The attitude taken toward His declarations will be the great test and dis tinction of character, and all wrong attitudes and disobedient souls will be swept away as unstable huts on the sandy banks of storming torrents (Matt. vii. 21-27). Even in the Beatitudes, to which the stoutest deniers of Christ's claims take no exception, His unique assertiveness appears. He declares bless ing like a king scattering his favors, promising the kingdom of God as though its disposition EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 203 were in His hands. Reproach suffered- for His sake, He says, is of greater glory, and holds in its bosom promise of larger honor and reward than all the crowns of earth can afford. He establishes new standards with what would be careless thoughtlessness were His words not the spontaneous outburst, the overflow of an uplifted soul which had come forth from God and spoke for God (Matt. v. 3-12). Surely they err who believe they accept the Sermon on the Mount, and yet rob Christ of His divinity. 2. John the Baptist Jesus regarded as the greatest man who had ever lived; yet He ac cepted John's homage and worship, and quoted regarding him the words of Isaiah's prophecy : " Behold, I send My messenger before Thy face. Who shall prepare Thy way before Thee." (Luke vii. 27, 28). At the same time He added that he who was but little in the new order was greater than John. On the other hand, John could find no terms too strong in which to de clare his sense of Christ's superiority, and his joy at the privilege which was given him "to nominate a successor who was far greater than himself." " There cometh after me," he cried, " He that is mightier than I, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and un loose" (Mark i. 7, 8). As he beheld his own followers desert him to join Christ, and saw the multitudes flocking to Him, he rejoiced that his mission was accomplished. The solitary one had come : let Him increase (John iii. 22-30). 3. Jesus was sufficient to Himself. He did not need the support of the multitude. He 204 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS preferred to withdraw and be alone, save as He was among the people to serve them; service over, He sought solitude. It was not the self- sufficiency of carelessness or of pride or of sin or of personal unsociability, but of a lofty and di vine uniqueness that could find adequate society only in the silent fellowship of God (Mark i. 35 ; Luke vi. 12 ; Mark vi. 46, 47 ; John vi. 22). He was willing ever to forego the desire for solitude that He might be of use, but He needed nothing that society could supply. He was its Lord"; He gave. In the loneliness of His unmatched spirit He needed not that any man should sup port Him. He was the Son of man. He stood alone. 4. He defined His work in terms of God's activity. As in His doctrine He declared God was speaking (John xiv. 10), as in His life He declared that men saw God (John xiv. 9), so in His working He declared God was at work and responsible for all (John v. 19; Luke viii. 39). " God anointed Him with power," Simon Peter declared to Cornelius (Acts x. 38), "and He went about doing good; for God was with Him." 5. He made the most astounding assertions about His person and work. He met a criticism of the Pharisees upon His disciples' lax obser vance of the Sabbath by a statement which cul minated in the declaration, " I say unto you, that one greater than the Temple is here " (Matt. xii. 6). In pronouncing a condemnation on certain scribes and Pharisees who sought a sign, He claimed to be greater than Jonah and Solomon (Matt. xii. 41, 42), and He aroused the indig nant fury of certain Jews in Jerusalem by saying that Abraham had rejoiced to see His day, and EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 205 adding, "Before Abraham was, I am" (John viii. 56-59). He spoke even more plainly than this. To the Pharisees of Jerusalem He said during His visit to Jerusalem at the Feast of Tabernacles, " Our lives are wholly at variance. Your whole being in its true principles is of the lower, the sensual life, which is really death; flesh of flesh are you. I am from above ; My life, tastes, judgments are from heaven. Ye are the children of the visible, the unenduring order of the world which passeth away with its lusts. I am the Son of the Eternal ; I bring in the new order, even the spiritual, of which I am the door" (John viii. 21-23). His words, He declared, should endure forever (Mark xiii. 31). He exhausts metaphors in the ' assertion of His unique and preeminent relation to life and those who would have life : " I am the door" (John x. 9); "the good shepherd" (John x. 1 1) ; " the light of the world " (John viii. 12); "the bread of life "(John vi. 35); "the living bread which came down out of heaven : if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever : yea and the bread which I will give is My flesh, for the life of the world" (John vi. 51); " the way, and the truth, and the life " (John xiv. 6) ; " the true vine ; apart from Me ye are fruitless, powerless in prayer, powerless utterly " (John xv. 4, 5, 6); "the resurrection, and the hfe : he that believeth on Me, though he die, yet shall he live : and whosoever liveth and believeth on Me shall never die" (John xi. 25, 26). There are no bounds to His assurances. He will wholly satisfy all life (John iv.i4;yii. 37, 38), vanquish and destroy death (John ii. 19), draw all men to Himself (John xii. 32), rising triumphant over the triumph of evil in His death. 206 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS Life is to be found in Him alone (John xiv. 6). There is no life save in Him (John xv. 6). He is Himself life— the pure life for the lives of men (John v. 26 ; vi. 47). No one can control His life (John x. 18) ; He sways it and all omnipo tence (John xiv. 14). Considering these claims of Christ's, from which there can be no escape that does not end in humanity's suicide, Channing seemed to rise to the full Christian faith : " I confess when I can escape the deadening power of habit, and can receive the full import of such passages as the following: 'Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you vest ' (Matt. xi. 28) ; ' The Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost ' (Luke xix. 10) ; ' Everyone therefore who shall confess Me before men, him will I also confess before My Father in heaven' (Matt. x. 32); 'Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me and of My words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when He cometh in the glory of the Father, and of the holy angels' (Luke ix. 26); 'In My Father's house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you' (John xiv. 2)— I say, when I can succeed in realizing the import of such pas sages, I feel myself listening to a Being who never before and never since spoke in human language. I am awed by the consciousness of greatness which these words express, and when I connect this greatness with the proofs of Christ's miracles, I am compelled to speak with the cen turion, 'Truly this was the Son of God'" (Channing's sermon, The Character of Christ). 6. Jesus claims a partnership with the Father which involves His deity. From the Father He declares He came (John viii. 42), sent by Him, EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 207 with the Father's absolute power (John viii. 29) ; the Father sustaining such relations to the Son that to honor the Son is to honor the Father (John v. 23) ; to love the Son is to love the Father, and the condition of the Father's love and in dwelling (John xiv. 23) ; to believe on the Son is the doing by each man of the Father's work for him and the fulfilment of His life-purpose for him (John vi. 29) ; so that the deeds of the Son are the Father's deeds (John viii. 28), the words of the Son the Father's words (John viii. 28 ; xii. 49), so that the only door to the Father is through the all-representing Son (Matt. xi. 27), that those seeing the Son have seen the Father (John xiv. 9), and that knowing the Son is knowing the Father (John xiv. 7). Jesus well-nigh exhausts the possibilities of language in asserting and de scribing His mission from the Father (John iii. i7» 34 ; iv. 34 ; v. 24, 30, 36, 37, 38 ; vi. 29, 38, 39, 44, 57; vii. 16, 18, 28-30, 33; viii. 16, 18, 26, 29, 42 ; ix. 4 ; x. 36 ; xi. 42 ; xii. 44, 45, 49 ; xiii. 20; xiv. 24; xv. 21 ; xvi. 5; xvii. 3, 8, 18, 21, 23). Father and Son, the eternal God and Jesus of Nazareth, " the man Christ Jesus," were thus repeatedly and explicitly asserted by Jesus to be allied in the bonds of a divine unity: "I and the Father" (John viii. 16); "I and the Father are one " (John x. 30). The Jews of His day did not misunderstand Him. They construed correctly the clear words in which He phrased the great truth, and they sought to kill Him be cause He " called God His own Father, making Himself equal with God " (John v. 1 7, 1 8). " We have a law," they told Pilate, " and by that law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God" (John xix. 7). "Thou, being a 208 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS man," they said to Jesus, " makest Thyself God " (John x. 33). ' This was precisely what Jesus did ; He made Himself God. He assumed that a belief in Him flowed naturally from a belief in God, that Chris tianity was the logical result of a consistent the ism (John xiv. 1), and to His judgment He would admit no qualification or waiver (John viii. 16). Men should not juggle with these words of Christ's; they should deal squarely with them, not paring all the plain meaning away. Then- necessary consequence is unmistakable. Given the sanity and the goodness of Jesus, and it must follow that in some honest sense He was the Son of God. 7. His unique lordliness was displayed in His calm, masterful words in the " upper room " and on the way to Gethsemane. Philo writes, in ref erence to Numbers xxv. 12, " God gave to Phin- ehas the greatest blessing, even peace, a blessing which no man is able to afford." Jesus gave peace, and such peace as the world could not give : " My peace, the peace of which I am Lord and source, a peace not fading like the world's gifts, but deepening and swelling evermore.'' What He had said to them that memorable evening was spoken that they might have peace. "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be feai - ful. In the world ye have tribulation : but be of good cheer ; I have overcome the world " (John xiv. 27; xvi. 33). 8. The agony and pain of death did not de stroy this sense of lonely superiority. It was no feigned thing. He was superior to all and alone. As He hung upon the cross God was nearer to Him than were the multitudes who stood about, EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 209 and He spoke to Him as face to face, and even in the hour of death opened the doors of the kingdom of God to a penitent thief, while He prayed pityingly that God would forgive those who, with no knowledge of their awful crime, were putting Him to death (Matt, xxvii. 46; Luke xxiii. 34,43,46). The other words from the cross reveal the same distinct uniqueness (John xix. 26, 27, 28, 30). 9. And all this was as natural to Him as child- likeness is to a child. We should be surprised at His assumption of any other tone. The Lord spoke with a lordly voice. In hearing Him, as Channing says, "we feel that a new being of a new order of mind is taking part in human affairs. There is a native tone of grandeur and authority in His teaching. He speaks as a being related to the whole human race. A narrower sphere than the world never enters His thoughts. He speaks in a naturally spontaneous style of accom plishing the most arduous and important changes in human affairs. This unlabored manner of expressing great thoughts is particularly worthy of attention. You never hear from Jesus that pompous, swelling, ostentatious language which almost necessarily springs from an attempt to sustain a character above our powers. He talks of His glories as one to whom they are familiar. . . . He speaks of saving and judging the world, of drawing all men to Himself, and of giving everlasting life as we speak of the ordinary pow ers which we exert." His uniqueness did not suddenly dawn upon Him. He did not forget ever the character He had assumed, and now and then fail in His main tenance of it. It was not a uniqueness attained, and therefore it could never be a uniqueness lost 2IO THE MAN CHRIST JESUS or marred. It was natural in Jesus just as it would be unnatural and impossible in any one else. Our separation from that which is low is a matter of struggle issuing in victory only after many and painful defeats, in which we fall back and must begin again. The common experience —is it, after all, the necessary one ?— is this : " I count this thing to be grandly true : That a noble deed is a step toward God, Lifting the soul from the common sod To a purer air and a broader view. " We hope, we aspire, we resolve, we trust, When the morning calls us to life and light ; But our hearts grow weary, and ere the night Our lives are trailing the sordid dust. " 10. Jesus' strong consciousness of God, which was characteristic of Him and shows the emo tional depths of His life, testifies also to the truthfulness of the claims put forth to an unpre cedented relationship to God. A deep know ledge of God was part of His claims : " I know Him; because I am from Him, and He sent Me " (John vii. 29). The Son was ever able to turn to the Father, regardless of surrounding throngs (Matt. xi. 25, 26), and such passages as fill the high-priestly prayer show how deep was His sense of the Father's nearness : " Lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, Father ; " " All things that are Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine ; " " Now come I to Thee ; " " Even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in us " (John xvii. 1, 5, 10, 13, 21, 23, 26). And this was no illusion or self-deception of an enthusiast who was filled with the elation of a theosophical dream. As Channing says, " The EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 211 charge of an extravagant, self-deluding enthusi asm is the last to be fastened on Jesus. Where can we find traces of it in His history? Do we detect them in the calm authority of His pre cepts, in the mild, practical, beneficent spirit of His religion, in the unlabored simplicity of the language in which He unfolds His high powers and the sublime truths of religion, or in the good sense, the knowledge of human nature which He always discloses in His estimate and treatment of the different classes of men with whom He acted? The truth is that, remarkable as was the character of Jesus, it was distinguished by noth ing more than by calmness and self-possession." In the midst of distractions, the dullness of His disciples, the hostility of " His own," the appa rent failure of His mission, He preserved unbro ken composure, lived in the divine fellowship, and left the benediction of its peace to His followers. Nothing interrupted His perfect self-satisfaction, His perfect vision of God, His quiet, unirritated confidence. How widely different is all this from our experience of irregularity, of alternate vision and disappointment ! Men must say, as Brown ing says in " Cristina " : " Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows! But not quite so sunk that moments, Sure tho' seldom, are denied us, When the spirit's true endowments Stand out plainly from its false ones, And apprise it if pursuing Or the right way or the wrong way, To its triumph or undoing. " There are flashes struck from midnights, There are fire-flames noondays kindle, Whereby piled-up honors perish, Whereby swollen ambitions dwindle, 212 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS While just this or that poor impulse, Which for once had play unstifled, Seems the sole work of a lifetime That away the rest have trifled." How utterly foreign this is to the atmosphere and spirit of Jesus! Mrs. Browning's sonnet, "Work and Contemplation," represents His spirit: " The woman singeth at her spinning-wheel A pleasant chant, ballad, or barcarole. She thinketh of her song, upon the whole, Far more than of her flax ; and yet the reel Is full, and artfully her fingers feel With quick adjustment, provident control, The lines, too subtly twisted to unroll Out to a perfect thread. I hence appeal To the dear Christian church, that we may do Our Father's business in these temples merk Thus swift and steadfast, thus intent and strong ; While thus, apart from toil, our souls pursue Some high, calm, spheric tune, and prove our work The better for the sweetness of our song." It was thus the Son did the Father's business. No man ever did it as it was done by Him, the only Son of God, the only Son of man. "If I were already convinced," wrote Mr. F. W. Newman, "that this Person was a great unique, separated from all other men by an im passable chasm in regard to His physical origin, I (for one) should be much readier to believe that He was unique and unapproachable in other respects ; for all God's works have an internal harmony." But surely the .argument is more powerful if turned about. If in all respects of His life and character Jesus was unique and un approachable, it is less difficult to conceive that He must have had unique origin and stand in EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 213 inner relation, not less than in outward manifes tation, removed from men. Is it not significant of the world's unconscious sense of the validity of these claims that Jesus has yet ever been regarded as the ideal of humil ity? Could a man who called himself God be deemed humble? Yet Jesus has always been to all the embodiment of lowliness, the quiet man, and meek. The heart of man instinctively recog nized in Him the humility of the incarnate God. VI. His pray erf ulness. Jesus' consciousness of God is in nothing more fully expressed than in His prayerfulness. Prayer was the natural atmosphere of His life. Even in the midst of a throng He would at once express an inward satisfaction in an outward thanksgiving (Matt. xi. 25, 26). The Father seemed ever to be near, and Jesus was accus tomed to speak to Him as He would speak to one of His own disciples (John xii. 27; Luke xxiii. 46). His disciples seem to have been im pressed with this recognition of the nearness and ]ove of God. They knew the spot where the five thousand were fed as " the place where they ate the bread after the Lord had given thanks" (John vi. 23), and they remarked upon His habit of thanksgiving, of "blessing" in prayer (Matt. xv. 36 ; Mark viii. 6 ; Luke ix. 16 ; Matt. xxvi. 26, 27 ; Luke xxii. 17-19; xxiv. 30). The first impressive feature of His prayerful ness is its love of solitude. There are three kinds of solitude — the solitude of time, the solitude of place, and the solitude of spirit. Jesus knew all of these. He was accustomed to spend the night in prayer £Luke vi. 12). He would rise long 214 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS before day and pray in the faint morning light (Mark i. 35) ; and at the sunset hour, " When evening shuts," and the world by its gathering darkness testifies , to the solitariness of the living spirit, He loved to pray (Mark vi. 46, 47 ; Matt. xiv. 23). His two prayers of deepest power were uttered the one before midnight at the Temple gates (John xvii.), and the other just after midnight in Geth- semane (John xviii. 2). Jesus availed Himself not less of the solitude of place for His prayers : mountain (Luke vi. 12 ; Mark vi. 46 ; Matt. xiv. 23), deserts (Luke v. 16 ; Matt. xiv. 13), and the gloom of gardens (John xviii. 2). But the soli tude of spirit is greater desolation than solitude of time or place. What human spirit has not tasted its most sweet and bitter' loneliness in the midst of unknown multitudes? Jesus, too, was never more alone than when crowds surrounded Him (Matt. xi. 25 ; John xi. 42 ; Matt, xxvii. 46 ; Luke xxiii. 46). The disciples noticed this power of abstraction, and the far-away, lonesome look that came upon His face. " It came to pass," we read in their story of Him, " as He was pray ing alone, the disciples were with Him" (Luke ix. 18). Their presence did not disturb His sol itude. The intimacy of the relation which He claimed to sustain to God was in keeping with the con stancy of His prayerfulness. In all the exigencies of His life He turned to the strength of prayer's fellowship instinctively. The great events of His life were preceded by prayer: such miracles as His walking on the sea and stilling the tempest (Matt. xiv. 23-35), feeding the four thousand EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 215 (Matt. xv. 36), healing the lunatic boy (Mark ix. 14-29), raising Lazarus (John xi. 41, 42), feed ing the five thousand (John vi. 11 ff.) ; such out goings of power as His upholding of Peter upon the sea, and the healing of multitudes at Gennes aret (Matt. xiv. 23, 31-36). The people con nected His prayers with helpful influences, and brought little children to Him " that He should lay His hands on them, and pray " (Matt. xix. 13). The choice of the Twelve and the Sermon on the Mount were preceded by a night of prayer (Luke vi. 12, 13), and Peter's great confession was made after the disciples had seen Him engaged in prayer alone (Luke ix. 18, 20). The transfiguration was a phenomenon of prayer (Luke ix. 28-36). Such prayers of anticipation are common. Facing a great crisis, men turn instinctively to a power without themselves, desiring help against the hour of need. When the crisis is past, they lean once more contentedly upon their own strength and discernment. Jesus, however, fol lowed the great events of His life by prayer : the feeding of the five thousand (Matt. xiv. 23), the remarkable Sabbath spent in Capernaum, with its miracles and deep impressions (Mark i. 32, 35), the healing of a leper, the symbol of impurity, in a Galilean town (Luke v. 16), His baptism (Luke iii. 21, 22). The sorrows of His life were met in prayer: the misunderstanding and materialism of the people (John vi. 15), the awful prospect of the murder of God's Son by the nation which God had trained to be the first to recognize and obey His Son, His own physical weakness and moral strain (Matt. xxvi. 36-46), the prospect of self-sac rifice and the bitter-sweet conditions of His com ing dominion (John xii. 28), the triumph of death 2l6 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS over those He loved, and the failure of His friends to understand His triumph over death (John xi. 41, 42), His agonizing end (Luke xxiii. 46). Much of His prayer was for others than Him self. Simon Peter, whose needs He well knew, was a constant object of His prayer (Luke xxii. 32) ; and on His cross He prayed for His mur derers (Luke xxiii. 34), in true commentary on Luke vi. 27, 28. Such was His confidence in His prayers that He even gave thanks publicly for God's goodness in hearing Him before any answer had come (John xi. 41, 42). In some strange way His soul was stirred in prayer. When Heprayed " yet more strainingly " the blood-drops stood out in sweat upon His brow (Luke xxii. 44), and it was " as He was praying " that " the fashion of His countenance was altered " (Luke ix. 29). His prayers were as simple, too, as those of a little child (Matt. xi. 25-27 ; John xi. 41, 42 ; Luke xxiii. 34, 46), and as submissive, wholly free from all self-will and pride (Matt. xi. 26 ; xxvi. 39. 42, 44)- The busier He was the more earnestly He seems to have given Himself to prayer (Mark i. 35 ; Luke iv. 42 ; John vi. 15) ; but He was ready at any time to forego for the sake of service the privilege of silence and communion which He so greatly valued (Matt. xiv. 14). His disciples were greatly impressed by His habit of prayer, and they requested Him to give them instruction that they might be able to pray (Luke xi. 1). There is no record of any request of theirs to be taught how to work miracles or cures, or how to preach and teach; but they coveted His prayerfulness, and desired from Him such lessons as the disciples of John the Baptist had received from their faithful master. EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 21 7 VII. His venturesome prophecies. He foretold with much explicitness and detail the fall of the Holy City. To deny this is to dis credit all that is told us regarding Him (Matt. xxiv. 3-28 ; Luke xxi. 20-28). Of the destruction of the Temple He spoke with special clearness (Luke xxi. 5, 6 ; Mark xiii. 2), knowing that it would be the death-blow to more than a national and provincial worship. He foresaw and foretold the horrors of His own death, from which human history was to start anew, and which was to pour into the veins of the race the life-blood of His own humanity (Luke xxii. 36, 37 ; ix. 22-27, 3l> 43-45 ; xviii. 31-34). He foresaw and foretold also the sweep of the influence he was setting in motion, never to be checked or impeded until it merges at last in the full glory of His personal triumph (John xii. 32). Despised and rejected of men, He was yet, He declared, the eternal center of humanity. It would gather at last about Him. He was the divine dreamer, the visionary of the ages. A poor, hunted Galilean peasant come from a carpenter's humble home, followed about, not by the rich and great, but by a diminishing crowd of artisans, who sluggishly struggled to apprehend the first principles of His teaching, He yet declared that the story of a woman's love in breaking an alabaster cruse and pouring its ointment over His head would be told through out the world (Mark xiv. 3-9). He even asserted that the consummation of God's plans for this world waited upon the world-wide proclamation of His gospel (Matt. xxiv. 14), and the discipling of the nations who were to be baptized into the name which He, Jesus the Nazarene, and Go^ 2l8 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS and the Spirit of God had in common (Matt. xxviii. 19, 20). And when at His trial the high priest said to Him, " I adjure Thee by the living God, that Thou tell us whether Thou be the Christ, the Son of God," He replied, "Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Henceforth ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven" (Matt. xxvi. 63, 64). Like imagery He used to His disciples when He drew for them the vivid picture of the judgment, when He, the Son of man, should come in His glory, and all the angels with Him, and should sit on the throne of His glory, and before Him should be gathered all nations to be judged by Him, their King (Matt. xxv. 31—46). Did ever man dare to speak thus? But not only was Jesus the master Prophet; He was Himself the great prophecy, the state ment of God in terms of space and time, the promised one, the promise of what man may be and in the vast grace of God is to become. Simeon's heart beat hard within him as the old man received the child into his arms, and behold ing the unveiling of God, the revelation of God's infinite purpose for man, he cried aloud (Luke ii. 29-32): " Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart, O Lord, According to Thy word, in peace ; For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, Which Thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples ; A light for revelation to the Gentiles, And the glory of Thy people Israel." And as he handed the child back to His mother, he called Him " a sign," the hint, the prophecy of God, God's salvation for man, His gift of Himself. EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS 2 19 Slowly this great prophecy is realizing itself. Through storm and stress men are coming to the sense and the love of it, and see in its far-off glory their hope and goal. Every development of juster ideas, all increasing love for the things that are lovely and true and pure and honorable and of good report, even the wrath of evil and wrong, the swelling tide of good, and the deepening wick edness of sin, are but the signs of His coming. He rules His world still. In a sense other than Lowell meant his words are true : " Slowly the Bible of the race is writ, And not on paper leaves or leaves of stone ; Each age, each kindred, adds a page to it — Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan. While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud, While thunder's surges burst on cliffs of cloud, Still at the prophet's feet the nations sit." Yes, at the Prophets feet! HIS BEARING AT HIS TRIAL AND DEATH VI HIS BEARING AT HIS TRIAL AND DEATH Our Lord's trial and condemnation were wholly irregular and unjust. Immediately after His ar rest He was taken to a midnight meeting of the faction most bent upon His death, at " the booths of the sons of Hanan," the rendezvous of the party of Annas (John xviii. 12-24). Here Jesus was alone, surrounded by deadly enemies, at the dead of night, in the quarters of His captors. Instead of a just trial to which He was entitled, He was subjected to an irregular examination designed to extort evidence which could be used against Him in the subsequent arraignment before the Sanhe- drin. In the midst of these circumstances, ar ranged doubtless to intimidate Jesus, the high priest, who was not above taking part in these illegal proceedings, asked Jesus of His disciples and His doctrine. Jesus ignored the question about His disciples, and answered him, " I have spoken openly to the world; I ever taught in synagogues, and in the Temple, where all the Jews come together ; and in secret spake I nothing. Why askest thou Me? ask them that have heard Me, what I spake unto them: behold, these [standing here] know the things which I said." Their answer was a blow in the face. Jesus at once challenged the smiter to testify ; He reeog- 223 2 24 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS nized in him a hearer. Evidence, not violence, was wanted. His examination did not yield His examiners the results desired, so it was brought to a conclusion, and Jesus was sent to Caiaphas for the regular examination before the Sanhedrin. The course of Jesus' trial had been thus far in violation of the recognized Jewish tradition for the trial of cases. A false prophet could be tried only by the Great Sanhedrin. It was scarcely more lawful when He was arraigned in the very early morning, doubtless before it was light, in the house of Caiaphas. Jewish procedure in such cases required that the witnesses should be ex amined separately and strictly, and conviction could be reached only on the agreement of two witnesses, who, in cases of blasphemy, were to be rigorously examined as to the exact language used by the accused. No such agreement was reached in the case of Hierarchy v. Jesus (Mark xiv. 56-59), even though His prosecutors, who were also the court of judgment, sought witness against Him to put Him to death (Mark xiv. 55). We are not accustomed to regard this search as one of the functions of a judge and jury nowadays set for the fair trial of an accused man. In capital cases the Jewish traditional code required wit nesses to be especially charged as to the possible consequences of their testimony, and cautioned as to the solemn responsibility of bearing witness against a life. There was no such calm and just procedure in this case. In capital cases all was arranged to give the accused the benefit of any doubt, and so the votes for acquittal were called for first. In this case, all evidence falling to pieces, the high priest rose dramatically and ad dressed Jesus, and upon His reply, bent relent lessly, not upon a fair trial, but upon the destruc- HIS BEARING AT HIS TRIAL AND DEATH 225 tion of the accused, he rent his clothes and said, " What further need have we of witnesses ? What think ye? " And they all voted for death (Mark xiv. 61-64). Did any member of the Sanhedrin think this was a fair trial? In capital cases, further, the trial could take place only by day. If a judgment of acquittal was reached it could be announced on the day of trial. A sentence of condemnation, however, could not be given till the next day. There should be no unseemly haste. Hence cases of this character could not be tried on the eve of a feast or a Sabbath. In all these particulars the trial of Jesus was in vio lation of the established Jewish practice. Even on the way to execution it was specified that op portunity should be given the accused, as many as five times, to bring forward fresh pleas or proof of his innocence. But no such consideration was shown to Jesus. Vengeance, not justice, dictated the course of His prosecutors. The civil trial was scarcely more regular. Pi late was apparently expecting the coming of the chief priests and their prisoner ; for, though it was early, not much later than five o'clock in the morning, when they came to the Praetorium, he came out at once and asked for the specific charge which was made against Jesus. The Jews were not a little discomfited by this demand. They had counted upon ready compliance with their desires. " If this man were not an evil-doer," they said, " we should not have delivered Him up unto thee " (John xviii. 30). When Pilate, who was not in a conciliatory mood, pressed his demand for formal accusation, three charges emerged from the general clamor that arose : that Jesus had forbidden the payment of the Roman tribute, that He set Himself up for a king, and that He per- 326 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS verted the nation (Luke xxiii. 2). The first of these was a deliberate falsehood, as they well knew, Jesus having expressly approved the Roman tribute (Mark xii. 17), in answer to a public question. The last was true in a sense. Jesus did pervert the nation from the evil ways of the chief priests and Pharisees. But these charges Pilate passed by, and decided to examine Jesus on the other, which was not, as the others were not, the charge upon which Jesus had been tried by the Sanhedrin. Of course Pilate found Jesus innocent, and acquitted Him ; but he was a coward, and he had a bad record, and the foes of Christ were impla cable. As each charge broke down they invented a new one. Pilate sneered at the charge of evil- doing (John xviii. 30), and they accused Jesus of sedition. This charge Pilate pronounced ground less (John xviii. 33, 39). Then they alleged a religious and capital offense against their own law. After Pilate had convinced himself of Christ's perfect innocence of all crime in the interview which followed this charge, he openly sought to release Him (John xix. 7-12) ; and then the Jews played their last card and threatened to lodge information against Pilate at Rome (John xix. 12). This brought the end. No crime of any sort was proved against Christ, and He was not condemned for any. His judge, in delivering Him to death, pronounced Him innocent (Matt. xxvii. 24). What a travesty of justice was this! To make the mockery worse, before He had been groundlessly condemned He was treated as it was lawful to treat only condemned men. " I have found no cause of death in Him," said Pi late : " I will therefore chastise Him and release HIS BEARING AT HIS TRIAL AND DEATH 227 Him " (Luke xxiii. 22). So Pilate scourged Him and brought Him out bloody and exhausted, with the words, " Behold, I bring Him out to you, that ye may know that I find no crime in Him " (John xix. 1, 4). Did a judge ever choose a more novel way to show his belief in the innocence of a prisoner? Scourging was a part of the sentence of crucifixion. Its infliction now was brutal, un just, and arbitrary. How did Jesus bear Himself during these try ing experiences? Could forbearance and love, any character human or divine, stand such a test as this? This was the humanity Jesus came to save. Was it not showing that it was not worth saving — was, indeed, fit only for the fellowship forever of that evil, unrighteousness, and sin which it was so openly expressing, and which Jesus came to slay? He came to reveal the Father in the heart of man. Was that' a fit place for the Father? Would not Jesus have been justified in pouring out the vials of the wrath of God upon this impious alliance of Gentile and Jew to murder the Holy One of God, humanity's Son and life? How did He conduct Himself? 1. First of all, He was very quiet, speaking almost not at all. Before the Sanhedrin He de clined to say a word in reply to the perjured witnesses (Matt. xxvi. 62, 63). When before Pi late the chief priests accused Him of many things, and Pilate asked Him, "Answerest Thou noth*, ing? " He no more answered anything (Mark xv. 3-5). When He was taken before Herod, whom He despised, whom He had called " that fox " (Luke xiii. 32), and the sated rou6 hoped to see Him do some miracle and questioned Him in many words, He looked steadily on the adulterei and answered Him not one word (Luke xxiii, 228 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 8-1 1 ), while chief priests and scribet,, wholly ig nored by Him, stood by vehemently accusing. Yet once again, when for the third time Pilate took Him within the palace, awed by the thought that He might perhaps be some messenger from the Hebrew Jehovah, and earnestly asked Him, " Whence art Thou? " He gave him no answei (John xix. 7-9). He had offered Himself to Pi late as the King of the truth, and had been an swered with a sneer (John xviii. 37,38). He had told the disciples not to waste their pearls ; He would not waste His (Matt. vii. 6). Why was Jesus, the central object in this drama, so silent? Why did He not offer some defense? He had swayed the people before with an eloquence which the very police of the Temple declared had never been equaled. To have pleaded with this mob or in these courts would have been the mark of a weak spirit. There was nothing for a divine spirit to do but be still and look with awe and silence upon this death-scene of a nation. 2. He preserved His composure and dignity in the midst of constant insult. When, acting in accordance with proper procedure, refusing to be intimidated, He suggested the expediency of call ing witnesses at the preliminary hearing before Caiaphas, He was struck in the face by one of the officers, who said, " Answerest Thou the high priest so? " (John xviii. 22). Jesus replied with calm dignity, asserting His right to fair treatment and paying no heed to the high priest. He acted as the Christ. In almost similar circumstances Paul showed how a man would act (Acts xxiii. 2-5). When Pilate, for the last time, sought to release Jesus, and expressed surprise at His re fusal to speak to him in view of his power either to release or to crucify, Jesus answered with the HIS BEARING AT HIS TRIAL AND DEATH 229 same dignity as before, making it plain that it was Pilate and the Jews who were on trial before Him, not He before them. " Thou wouldest have no power against Me, except it were given thee from above : therefore he that delivered Me unto thee hath greater sin" (John xix. 10, n). The pris oner passed judgment on the religious court where He had been tried, and the judgment of men agrees with His condemnation. He indicted the high priest who had prostituted spiritual power to compass the death of an innocent man, who had missed the great privilege of his office of recog nizing the Messiah when He came, and who had surrendered the spiritual independence of the people (John xix. 16). 3. If Jesus did not speak much, wnen He did speak it was with unqualifying plainness. He was silent when He might have spoken before Caia phas; but when the high priest, finding that no testimony was available for His condemnation, asked Him point-blank, " Art Thou the Christ? " He spoke when He might have been silent. Openly and boldly He replied, "I am" (Mark xiv. 61, 62) ; and He was at once convicted on His own testimony. Likewise before Pilate, to the question, " Art Thou the King of the Jews? " He gave practically the same succinct answer, " I am " (Mark xv. 2). 4. He displayed no interest whatever in Pilate's efforts to release Him. He doubtless rather pitied the bullying weakness of the man. To Pilate's first half-kindly suggestion that he was prepared to listen favorably to Him, He made no reply, greatly to the astonishment of the governor, who was not accustomed to such superiority (Matt. xxvii. 13, 14) ; and He was perfectly passive to ward Pilate's repeated efforts to induce the Jews 330 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS to accept His release (John xviii. 38, 39 ; Luke xxiii. 20; John xix. 4, 12). 5. He bore Himself throughout with a simple and unfaltering majesty. He did not disavow the title of King ; He claimed to be " the Christ, the Son of the Blessed," and He acted as the kingly Christ. He rose supreme above the whole scene. His kingdom was not of this world. The blinded priests of an insignificant nation and a petty Roman governor could not destroy it. He -came to bear witness to the truth ; He was satis fied with this opportunity of fulfilling His mission (John xviii. 33-38). He said little, but He said enough, and no words of His ever bore clearer testimony to the truth or revealed more fully the majesty of His divine life than the uncomplaining patience and self-possession and composure of His conduct under the hideous treatment to which He was subjected, when, after His condemnation before Caiaphas, the men who held Him, in the pretense that He was a dangerous character, spit in His face, mocked Him, and beat Him, and, blindfolding Him, struck Him and reviled Him : " Prophesy unto us, Thou Christ : who is he that struck Thee?" (Matt. xxvi. 67, 68; Luke xxii. -3-65); when Herod, with his soldiers, set Him at naught and made sport of Him and sent Him back through the streets of Jerusalem arrayed in mock -royal attire, and became the friend of Pilate again through this sport — cursed be such friend ships! (Luke xxiii. 11, 12); when, in the hope doubtless of showing the people how harmless and inoffensive He was, Pilate had Him arrayed in a purple garment and crowned with a crown •of thorns, and stood Him before the people with the jeering remark, "Behold, the man! " (John xix. 1-5) ; when, after the surrender of Pilate, the HIS BEARING AT HIS TRIAL AND DEATH 23 1 whole band of the governor's soldiers took Him, stripped Him, put on Him a scarlet robe, with the crown of acanthus thorns still piercing His brow and staining His face crimson like His robe, and, giving Him a reed for a scepter, played with Him as a mock king, spitting upon Him and seizing His scepter from His hand and smiting Him on the head with it, driving the thorns' cruel spikes deeper into His brow ; when at last they led Him away to Calvary, stripped of His robe but still wearing His crown (Matt, xxvii. 26-31). "Behold, the man! " was Pilate's jeer. That is what all the ages have been doing since, and the vision has grown more and more glorious. As they have looked, the crown of thorns has become a crown of golden radiance, and the cast-off robe has glistened like the garments He wore on the night of the transfiguration. Martyrs have smiled in the flames at that vision, sinners have turned at it to a new life, little children have seen it and have had awakened by it dim recol lections of their heaven-home, and toward it the souls of men yearn ever. Out of all this agony of abuse and injustice Jesus was led to crucifixion. He met death as He had met the heialds of it — like a God sacri ficing Himself for His people. Without complaint or murmur, with no weeping or weakening,1 with composed dignity, He walked calmly out to Calvary and Calvary's cross, and died there for men. " It was visibly the death-scene of a tran scendent love. He died, not as a man, but rather as some one might who is mysteriously more and higher. So thought aloud the hard-faced soldier : 'Truly this was the Son of God,' as if he had said, ' I have seen men die ; this is not a man. They call Him Son of God ; can He be'less? ' " 232 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS There are depthless lessons here for life and faith. Channing gives expression to one of them : " I know not what can be added to heighten the wonder, reverence, and love which are due to Jesus. When I consider Him not only as pos sessed with the consciousness of an unexampled and unbounded majesty, but as recognizing a kindred nature in all human beings, and living and dying to raise them to a participation of His divine glories, and when I see Him under these views allying Himself to men by the tenderest ties, embracing them with a spirit of humanity which no insult, injury, or pain could for a moment repel or overpower, I am filled with wonder as well as reverence and love. I feel that this character is not of human invention, that it was not assumed through fraud or struck out by enthusiasm ; for it is infinitely above their reach" (Works, p. 310). A deeper lesson Paul draws : " We thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died ; and He died for all, that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who for their sakes died " (2 Cor. v. 14, 15); and Peter, too, reverently stands before this vision and says, " Christ also suf fered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow His steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth: who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously [in contrast with the unrighteous judgments of high priests and Roman governor] : who His own self bare our sins in His body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteous ness ; by whose stripes ye were healed " (1 Pet. ii. 21-24}. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 233 VII THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MAN CHRIST JESUS i. In Him there came, as He Himself said, a new life into the world to abide in it and transform it. His influence did not die with His departure. It began. As Rousseau says : " After the death of Jesus Christ twelve poor fishermen and artisans undertake to instruct and convert the world. The success was prodigious; all the Christians ran to martyrdom, all the people ran to baptism. The history of these first times was a continual prodigy." Those who had been with Him or who believed they had seen Him in heaven went everywhere proclaiming Him (Acts viii. 4 ; Rom. x. 16-18; Col. i. 23). The most powerful man among them declared that it was his great am bition to tell of Christ to whatever nations there might still be which had not heard of Him (Rom. xv. 20, 21). And the influence of Jesus did not cease with these early years when the first out burst of enthusiasm had lost its impulse. The attempts of men to account for this influence and locate it in careful systems of doctrine changed from generation to generation. The forms in which it manifested itself from age to age differed, but the living Christ has changed only in the en larging human conception of His meaning. He Himself is the same yesterday, to-day, and for- 235 236 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS ever. Nothing has conquered Him. "The gospel possesses," said Napoleon, "a secret virtue, a mysterious efficacy, a warmth which penetrates and soothes the heart. . . . The gospel is not a book ; it is a living Being with a vigor, with a power, which conquers everything that opposes." Almost all that is- great and good Jesus intro duced into our life, or it gained such impulse from Him that He is practically its creator for us. " The immense fund of altruistic feeling " which He introduced Mr. Kidd believes to be the sole secret and sanction of our civilization and progress {Social Evolution, chap. vii.). In any event, it is He who is teaching men humility. In the words of the Church of England -collect for the Sun day before Easter, " He took upon Him our flesh, and suffered death upon the cross, that all man kind might follow the example of His great hu mility." He has taught men love. Love brought Him and was revealed in Him (John iii. 16). "The brief record of those three short years," says Lecky, "has done more to soften and regenerate mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers, and than all the exhortations of moralists." His last command was a command to love with such love as He had Himself shown for men (John xiii. 34, 35). " He who stooped from heaven to the humiliations of the cross opened in the heart of redeemed man a fountain of love and compassion." He has taught men purity and philanthropy as fruits of love. In the Roman empire His influence checked licentious ness and cruel sports. Telemachus in His name brought the gladiatorial butcheries to an end. So high was the standard of life taught by His* dis ciples that the very mention of moral lapse was discouraged (Eph. v. 3). His influence brought THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MAN 237 in a new legislation in favor of the prisoner, the outcast woman, the mutilated, and the poor (Brace, Gesta Christi, p. 1 07 ). "For the first time the stern and noble features of Roman law took on an unwonted expression of gentle, humanity and sweet compassion, under the power of Him who was the brother of the unfortunate and the sinful." He began the emancipation of the slave. His followers became known as " the brothers of the slave." He had said nothing about the wrong of human slavery, but from every word and act of His sprang the influences which for centuries battled with the supposed rights of man to prop erty in man. "Through the vista of history," said Chrysostom, " we see slavery and its pagan theory of two races fall before the holy word of Jesus, 'All men are the children of God.' " " We owe the Church," declared Mazzini, " the idea of the unity of the human family, and of the equality and emancipation of souls." " My historical studies," said Mr. E. A. Free man, "have made me more and more sure that this thing which we call Christianity cannot be human." And what is Christianity but the in fluence of Jesus? 2. The life which Jesus brought He Himself was. His influence in the world has been only His self-realization. All that He has wrought was in Himself. He was all that He has done. In Him all holy ideals meet ; from Him all holy activities flow. All that we have discovered Jesus to be in these or other studies it is God's purpose to do in the world, to make that humanity whose Son and goal Jesus was. " The end to which all things are working is the production of the spir itual man. Who and what the spiritual man is we may not all agree ; but 1^ believe him to be the 23$ THE MAN CHRIST JESUS man in whom God has personally reproduced Himself, and who is therefore God's Son; and I believe Jesus Christ to be that man, and I be lieve Jesus Christ to be the revelation of the true meaning and the realization of the true destina tion of every man; and that in Him, as the personal incarnation and reproduction of the personal God in our personal selves, we and the whole creation shall come into our divine inheri tance" (Du Bose, The Soteriology of the New Testament, p. 171). The most diverse types of mind have recog nized in Jesus this perfect ideal. Niebuhr says, " The feeblest intellect must see the strangeness of supposing that the holiest of men was a deceiver, His disciples either deluded or liars, and that deceivers should have preached a holy religion of which self-denial is the chief duty." Strauss calls Him " the highest object we can possibly imagine with respect to religion, the Being without whose presence in the mind perfect piety is impossible. Never at any time will it be possible to rise above Him, or to imagine any one who should ever be equal with Him." De Wette says, " The man who comes without preconceived opinions to the life of Jesus, and who yields himself up to the impression which it makes, will feel no manner of doubt that He is the most exalted character and the purest soul that history presents to us. He walked over the earth like some nobler being who scarce touched it with His feet." Renan cried, " Between Thee and God there is no longer any distinction. The most beautiful incarnation of God— God in man ! " And in his last book this was his final word about Jesus: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MAN 239 " One fundamental thesis to which I cling more firmly than ever is that not only did Jesus exist but that He was great and beautiful, a thousand fold more real than insipid earthly greatness, than insipid earthly beauty." John Stuart Mill said, " There is no better rule than so to live that Christ would approve vour life." ' Johann von Miiller, a skeptical historian, acci dentally taking up the New Testament, and find ing Christ the explanation of history, wrote, " In all my study of the ancient times I have always. felt the want of something, and it was not until I knew our Lord that all was clear to me ; with Him there is nothing that I am not able to solve." As Browning says : " I say the acknowledgment of God in Christ, Accepted by the reason, solves for thee All questions in the earth and out of it." Congreve, " the high priest of the English Com- tists," said, " The more truly you serve Christ, the more thoroughly you mold yourselves into His image, the more keen will be your sympathy and admiration." Goethe called Him " the divine man, the saint, the type and model of all men." Schelling admits, " None before Him after such a manner has revealed to man the infinite." Richter exclaims, "Being the holiest among the mighty, and the mightiest among the holy, He has lifted with His pierced hands empires off their hinges, has turned the stream of centuries out of its channel, and still governs the ages." Hennel says, " While no human character in a40 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS ¦the history of the world can be brought to mind which, in proportion as it could be closely ex amined, did not present some defects disqualify- Vig it for being the emblem of moral perfection, we can rest with least check or sense of moral incongruity on the imperfectly known character of Jesus of Nazareth." Theodore Parker declared, " He unites in Him self the sublimest precepts and divinest practices, thus more than realizing the dream of prophets and sages; rises free from all prejudice of His age, nation, or sect ; gives free range to the Spirit of God in His breast ; sets aside the law, sacred and true, honored as it was, its forms, its sacri fices, its Temple, its priests ; puts away the doctors of the law, subtle, irrefragable, and pours out a doctrine beautiful as the light, sublime as heaven, and true as God. . . . Try Him as we try other teachers. They deliver their word, find a few waiting for the consolation who accept the new tidings, follow the new method, and soon go be yond their teacher, though less mighty minds than he. Though humble men, we see what Socrates and Luther never saw. But eighteen centuries have passed since the sun of humanity rose so high in Jesus ; what man, what sect, has mastered His thought, comprehended His method, and so fully applied it to life? " Even the Jew turns toward Him. A priest in Boston recently spoke of Him as "that unex ampled Rabbi. " AncTRabbi Kohler, in opening the Jewish Congress in Chicago in 1 893, exclaimed, " Jesus, the keeper of the poor, the friend of the sinner, the brother of the sufferer, the comfort of the sorrow-laden, the healer of the sick, the up- lifter of the fallen, the lover of men, the redeemer of women. We claim Him as our own." THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MAN 241 Even Napoleon, trained in a very different school from all these, representative of a totally different temperament, well acquainted with man and the character of human influence, confessed, "Between Him, and whoever else in the world there is no possible term of comparison." " I know men, and Jesus Christ is not a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires and the gods of other reli gions. That resemblance does not exist. There is between Christ and all other religions whatso ever the distance of infinity ; from the first day to the last He is the same, always the same, majestic and simple, infinitely firm and infinitely gentle." " He turned once at St. Helena to- Count Montholon with the inquiry, ' Can you tell me who Jesus Christ was?' The question was declined, and Napoleon proceeded, ' Well, then, I will tell you. Alexander, Cassar, Charlemagne, and I have founded great empires, but upon what did these creations of our genius depend? Upon force! Jesus alone founded His empire upon love, and to this very day millions would die for Him. ... I think I understand something of human nature, and I tell you all these were men and I am a man. None else is like Him. Jesus Christ was more than a man. ... I have in spired multitudes with such a devotion that they would have died for me, . . . but to do this it was necessary that I should be visibly present, with the electric influences of my looks, of my words, of my voice. When I saw men and spoke to them I lighted up the flames of self-devotion in their hearts. . . . Christ alone has succeeded in so raising the mind of man toward the unseen that it becomes insensible to the barriers of time and space. Across a chasm of eighteen hundred 242 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS years Jesus Christ makes a demand which is, above all others, difficult to satisfy. He asks for that which a philosopher may often seek in vain at the hands of his friends, or a father of his children, or a bride of her spouse, or a man of his brother. He asks for the human heart. He will have it entirely to Himself. He demands it unconditionally, and forthwith His demand is granted. Wonderful! In defiance of time and space, the soul of man with all its powers becomes an annexation to the empire of Christ. All who sincerely believe in Him experience that remark able supernatural love toward Him. This phenom enon is unaccountable ; it is altogether beyond the scope of man's creative powers. Time, the great destroyer, is powerless to extinguish the sacred flame ; time can neither exhaust its strength nor put a limit to its range. This it is which strikes me most. I have often thought of it. This it is which proves to me quite conclusively the divinity of Jesus Christ " (quoted by Liddon, The Divinity of Our Lord, p. 150). 3. The man Christ Jesus is one of the strong est evidences of the reliability of the Gospels. It would be more irrational to suppose that four unlettered men, none of whom had had the ad vantages of a formal education and only one the liberalizing influences of travel, one a tax-gatherer, another the personal servant of a retired fisher man, the third a wandering physician, and the fourth a man of great native ability, but without training or what passed for culture in his day, could, with or without connivance, invent such a' picture even from real and trustworthy sugges tions, than to accede at once to the truthfulness of their doctrine and the reliability of their story, and to believe in the reality of the Jesus they THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MAN 243 depict. Granted His reality, He is the demon stration of His own deity. 4. Why, then, do men disbelieve in Jesus? Why do they admire Him or profess to accept the truthfulness of His message, but refuse to surrender themselves to His enthusiasm and mastery? Why did men refuse to believe in Him while He was here? This was the expla nation of John (John xii. 37-40), whose judg ment among the disciples is the most valuable, and who wrote his Gospel to show how un reasonable unbelief is (John xx. 31): "Though He had done so many signs before them, yet they believed not on Him : that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report? And to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed? For this cause they could not believe, for that Isaiah said again, He hath blinded their eyes, and he hardened their heart ; Lest they should see with their eyes, and perceive with their heart, And should turn, And I should heal them." Isaiah's discerning analysis of the ground of un belief commended itself to John. Faith is sym pathy ; it springs from responsiveness to the holy and divine. Unbelief is apathy ; it results in the atrophy of the capacity to respond. " Ye believe not," said Jesus, "because ye are not of My sheep. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me" (John x. 26, 27). Nothing is more fatal than sin to the sympathy which is life. The lack of such sympathy id the 244 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS fruit of sin, the sin of pride or fear orjself or flesh. To convict the world of this sin and to conquer it Christ sent His Spirit after Him. "And He, when He is come," He said, "will convict the world of sin." Why? " Of sin, because they believe not on Me " (John xvi. 8, 9). 5. This was the man Christ Jesus, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, Saviour, Redeemer, Lord, and King. But, whatever He Was, He is meaningless for us save as we enter into our inheritance in Him. Did He give Himself unweariedly to the organization and extension of Ihe kingdom of God, counting such work as Hjs very meat and drink? Did He hold to His work in the face of the scorn and abuse of those who should have been the first to recognize the netv day? Free from all anxiety and care, did He still patiently and lovingly bend to His task, lay ing His foundations among the lowly and the poor wherever men were not so wise as to be wiser than God? Was He charitable and gentle, sincere and simple, humble and unselfish, gener ous and forgiving, tender and kindly and sym pathetic toward the httle interests of human life? Did He hold Himself free from all narrowness and bigotry, and free for all service and helpful ness? Did He treat every man, and, even more, every woman, and the leper and the slave as the children of the Father whose rain falls alike on the evil and the good? Was He clean of all superstition and compromise and limitation ? Did He love with a love that failed not, and live a life which never knew a stain? Why? For our sakes He lived thus, leaving us an example, that we should follow in His steps ; and the glory of a perfect human character, that by it we might understand His nature. But this is not all. " The THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MAN 245 moral attributes of Christ may be, as I believe they are, the only open path to a true apprecia tion of His nature," says Gordon {The Christ of To-day, p. 58) ; " but it must be affirmed that Christ is something more than His exalted ethical character." Christ is far more. If He were only this our faith were vain. Christ is the world's life. Passing centuries, however many their number, could not erect an exalted ethical char acter into the Christ of to-day and forever, and the study of that character is largely profitless save as it leads men and nations to hear the voice of Jesus as on the last day, the great day of the feast, He stood and cried, saying, " If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of the depths of his life shall pour torrents of living water." QUESTIONS FOR THE STUDY OF BIBLE CLASSES These should be assigned in advance, and the student should be expected to do original work upon them. i. What is known of the early life of Jesus? 2. What was the significance of His first visit to Jerusalem? 3. What verse most aptly describes the char acter and spirit of the kingdom of God? 4. What was the relation of this kingdom and its claims to personal aspirations and relation ships? 5. What was the condition pf admission? 6. What was the scope of membership? 7. To what motives did Jesus appeal in invit ing men to join His kingdom? 8. What provision did He make for the future development of His project? 9. Is there any evidence that He was free from anxiety as to its fate after His death? 10. What was the most original and striking feature of His plan? 11. Wherein did the boldness of His plan consist? 12. When did He forego the opportunity to use the people for His political advantage? 13. What moral standard did He set befor" His disciples as to conduct and speech? 246 QUESTIONS FOR BIBLE CLASSES 247 14. What were His characteristics as a teacher? 15. Give instances of His exceptional know ledge of human nature. 16. What was His attitude toward movements with which He disagreed? 17. What importance did He attach to the un popularity of His doctrine or criticisms upon it? 18. Give instances of His habit of encouraging expectations which it would have been disastrous if He had been proved unable to meet. 19. What was His attitude toward God's will? 20. How did He receive reproof or criticism of His conduct? 21. Was He ever surprised? 22. Did He ever modify any expressions of judgment or opinion? 23. What were the special characteristics of each of the twelve men He made His closest companions? 24. What did He call these men collectively or any of them individually? 25. Note the passages which refer to His use of His eyes and hands. 26. In what ways did He show Himself to be an unselfish man? 27. When did His sincerity lead Him to make replies which seem ungracious? 28. Illustrate His simplicity. 29. When did He forbid publicity or refuse to give signs? 30. Did He ever show fear? Was He ever afraid? 31. What significant things did He refrain from doing or saying? 32. How did He treat His enemies? 33. What is tenderness? Wherein did Jesus show it? J48 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 34. What special word or treatment had H« for the poor? for children? for widows? for the bereaved? 35. .What were the elements and evidences of Christ's courage? 36. Was He a patient man or impatient? 37. Illustrate His knowledge of the weather and nature. 38. What traits of character were combined in Him? 39. Was He a happy man? 40. Was He a meek man? 4 1 . When were sick or disabled people brought to Him to be healed? 42. When did sick or disabled people come of their own accord? 43. When was He invited to homes to heal the sick? 44. Did He ever refuse such invitations or decline to give help? 45. Did He ever give help or healing un solicited? 46. What is a miracle? 47. What friendships did He form with women? 48. What place have* women in His teaching? 49. Did He ever speak harshly to or pass harsh judgment upon a woman? 50. What was His view of the Sabbath? 51. Wherein did His conceptions of worship and religion differ from the prevaihng concep tions? 52. What current opinions and practices did He assail in the Sermon on the Mount? 53. Was He ever disobeyed? 54. Was He ever obeyed when obedience must have been blind? QUESTIONS FOR BIBLE CLASSES 249 55. What impressions did He produce upon others ? 56. Could these have been due to deception? 57. What do we know of Jesus' relations to His own family? 58. What were the steps in the development of Peter's opinion of Jesus? 59. How was the faith of the woman of Sa maria created? 60. What characteristics of friendship did Jesus illustrate in His friendships? 61. Can a friendship die? 62. What is piety? 63. Is it separable from humility and repen tance? 64. Did Jesus claim to be sinless? 65. Did others corroborate His claim? 66. Of what emotions of Jesus are we told? 67. Are they normal? 68. What is your understanding of Gethsemane ».nd of the cry in Mark xv. 34? 69. Did Jesus ever show supernatural know- lfdge? When? . 70. What was His opinion of Himself, of His origin, of His character, of His work, of God and His relation to God? 71. What did the Jews understand Him to claim for Himself? 72. What did He have to say of the future? 73. What is prophecy? 74. What were the remarkable features of His conduct at His trial and death? 75. State in writing in fifty words your opinion of Christ. 76. State in writing in fifty words His influence upon you and the circle of hfe you see. 1 1 Printed in the United States of A me~ica YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 9002 05130 1852 llilll ¦ill ;v'-^