• IUIISISAI^r •

DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

OTHER BOOKS BY DR. SNOWDEN

THE MEANING OP EDUCATION
TWELVE GATES

Jesus As Judged
By His Enemies
A Study of the Criticisms and Attacks
Made on Jesus by His Enemies

BY
JAMES H. SNOWDEN

"For their rock is not as our Rock,
Even our enemies themselves being judges."
— Deut. 32. 31.

THE ABINGDON PRESS
NEW YORK CINCINNATI

Copyright, 1922, by
JAMES H. SNOWDEN

Printed in the United States of America.

The Bible text used in this volume is taken from the American
Standard Edition of the Revised Bible, copyright, 1901, by Thomas
Nelson & Sons, and is used by permission.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Judgment of the Enemy ... 7
H. A False Worshiper  15
m. "Can Any Good Thing Come
Out of Nazareth?"  22
IV. Whence Hath This Man These
Things?  29
V. Is Not This the Carpenter?  36
VI. How Knoweth This Man Letters? 44
VH. A New Teaching!  51
Vni. Strange Things  57
IX. Eating and Drinking with Publi
cans and Sinners !  65
X. Jesus as a Lawbreaker  71
XI. A Grave Charge  79
XII. A Trampler on Tradition  87
Xin. The Demand for a Sign  94
XIV. Whither Will This Man Go? ... 101
XV. An Incomparable Speaker  108
XVI. Have Any of the Rulers Believed
on Him?  119
XVII. A Witness to Himself  126
XVTH. Who Art Thou?  133

6 TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XIX. Whom Makest Thou Thyself?. . 141
XX. A Doer of Miracles  148
XXI. The World Is Gone After Him. . 156
XXII. Unconscious Obeisance  164
XXIII. A Betrayer of Innocent Blood ... 173
XXIV. No Fault in This Man  181
XXV. He Stirreth Up the People  190
XXVI. What Shall I Do with Jesus? .... 199
XXVII. His Blood Be on Us!  207
XXVIII. The King of the Jews  216
XXIX. A Saviour Who Could Not Save
Himself  226
XXX. Truly the Son of God  236

CHAPTER I
THE JUDGMENT OF THE ENEMY
An ancient song of Israel declared, of the
surrounding heathen, that "Their rock is not as
our Rock, even our enemies themselves being
judges." It is a strong case that can be sur
rendered to the judgment of enemies, and such
was the case of Israel as they boldly submitted
their God to comparison with the gods of the
heathen and left the decision to the heathen
themselves. Jesus Christ triumphantly stands the same
test. He had his enemies in his earthly life, and
they had many things to say about him and
against him. More than three score of these
sayings are scattered through the Gospels. They
form a remarkable body of testimony that is of
the greatest value.
It is proposed in this series of studies to ex
amine a number of these sayings and see what
light they throw on the person and power of the
Lord Jesus Christ. We begin with an evaluation
of the judgment of the enemy, including under
this term the opponents of Christ in his day and
of Christianity in our day and also our personal
opponents.

8 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
1. The enemy is a man with his full human
rights. We are usually disposed to regard him as
a wholly hostile and untrustworthy person, so
blinded in his judgment by prejudice and par
tisanship, hatred and malice, that any testimony
he may offer is at once to be rejected and
spurned. Such judgment, however, is itself
prejudiced and unfair.
It should be laid down as a preliminary princi
ple that our opponent on any occasion is a man
of like passions with ourselves. Friend and foe,
however widely and bitterly they may be
separated, have much in common, and the find
ing of this common ground is the first step to
ward their understanding one another and
possible reconciliation. They may both be
honest and sincere, and yet each be missing the
point of view of the other and thus be "clashing
like ignorant armies in the night." It is impor
tant, therefore, that they approach each other in
the spirit of simple human confidence and
respect and hold that they are both trying to
reach the truth.
This attitude may in itself clear up the situa
tion and put both sides in more pleasant and
promising relations. The enemy has a right to
state his case and to receive fair treatment.
The "scribes and Pharisees," who were the
typical and persistent enemies of Jesus, were

JUDGMENT OF THE ENEMY 9
often sincerely religious, and Jesus always
treated them fairly and often kindly, though
sometimes severely. His patient and tender
treatment of doubt was one of the most remark
able and beautiful features of his ministry. Even
when he was reviled he reviled not again, and
under the falsest and most malicious charges and
slanders he opened not his mouth.
We need to exercise the same spirit toward
those who are, or seem to us to be, in opposition
to Christ or to ourselves. We are often inclined
to impute to them only bad motives and call
them hard names. But they are men even as we
are and may be as honest in their views as we
are in ours.
It will help us as well as them and may enable
us to get together for us all to stand on the broad
ground of our common humanity and respect
one another's rights and views. Bludgeons and
bitter blows, whether material or verbal, will not
help us to settle questions with those that differ
from us. We have a right to our convictions, but
they have the same right to theirs, and we
should leave wide room for them to differ from
us. DI. The enemy may have some truth on his
side that we have missed on our side. Every
human mind is partial and imperfect in its
working and results, and therefore while we see

10 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
our side, another side is hidden from us which
may lie open to the vision of our opponent. In
stead, therefore, of wholly opposing his position,
we should endeavor to reach his point of view
and see what he sees in the hope that we may
thereby gain some new light and broader vision.
In every great controversy, whether scientific,
political, or religious, both sides have contrib
uted something to the final outcome. It is
almost never the case that all the truth and
right are on one side and all the error and wrong
on the other. Orthodox and heterodox, conserv
ative and liberal, believer and unbeliever, often
unconsciously work together toward some mid
dle point or higher view and common end.
We should therefore be on our guard against
undiscriminatingly opposing the enemy, lest we
be found opposing the truth itself. An apparent
enemy may be a friend in disguise, doing the
cause we think he opposes a valuable service.
We shudder yet at the name of Voltaire as an
arch enemy of Christianity, but possibly he did
a good work in opposing the kind of Christianity
that confronted him.
Many of the supposed foes of Christianity are
really clearing away from it abuses and poison
ous excrescences that have grown up around it.
They are not the opponents of Christ so much
as of his mistaken or false followers.

JUDGMENT OF THE ENEMY 11
We often may not fully know even our best
friend until we hear what his enemies have to
say about him; their prying fingers may have
found some crack or crevice in his character that
we have missed; or we may not know how pure
and true he is until he stands in the searching
light of their hostility or is subjected to the acid
test of their hatred.
His enemies, even the bitterest, got some
glimpses of Jesus that his own disciples failed to
catch; and many of their judgments are among
the most penetrating and splendid testimonies
to him. Unconsciously they put upon his brow
some of his brightest crowns. The Gospels would
be rifled of some of their finest treasures if these
sayings were blotted from their pages.
His enemies being judges, Jesus Christ was
not as other men but looms above them sub
limely as the greatest and most mysterious
Figure of the world. And ever since his day
some of the grandest eulogies upon him have
been uttered by unbelievers. We may well be
thankful for the testimony of the enemy.
DX The enemy may be a powerful factor in
establishing and spreading the gospel. Hostile
attacks lead believers to investigate and con
firm and propagate the truth.
The enemies of Jesus often established more
surely the facts in his life. His trial before the

12 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
Sanhedrin, prejudiced and unfair and malignant
as it was, brought out his character and purpose
and spirit as almost nothing else in his life did:
in that gloom he shone as a white star. The
precaution the Jews took to prevent any fraud
in connection with his resurrection is one of the
bulwarks of that fact to this day. The persecu
tions of the Christians in the Roman Empire
were a powerful cause for the spread of Chris
tianity, so that it became a proverb that "The
blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church."
Fire and sword could not stop the Reformation:
they only spread it.
The attacks of unbelievers upon Christianity
to-day are still often a potent means for its
establishment: they lead believers to study into
its origin and history more deeply and to apply
it more widely and thoroughly. The scholars
who are supposed to be attacking and destroying
the Bible have repeatedly turned out to be its
ablest defenders and truest friends. Christianity
would not be where it is to-day had it not been
for the work of its real or supposed enemies.
They have helped to make it as the storm makes
the oak.
IV. The enemy may become a friend. The
line between friend and foe is not a fixed gulf
across which no one can pass, but interchanges
between the two sides are constantly taking

JUDGMENT OF THE ENEMY 13
place, especially from foes to friends. The enemy
may come to see that he misunderstands Christ
and may turn to him in sympathy and faith.
Some of the Pharisees became followers of
Christ, and the bitterest and most powerful of
all, Paul, became his greatest apostle. All the
friends of Christ were once his enemies, and his
progress through the world is accomplished by
winning his enemies to his side.
The Emperor Constantine began by trying to
crush Christ, and ended by raising his cross
above his own eagles. Many a man has set out
to criticize and oppose Christianity and ended
by embracing it; many a soul has entered a
religious meeting to scoff and remained to pray.
Our objective, then, in our approach to the
enemy should not be to defeat him, to prove
that we are right and he is wrong, but to win
him as a convert. This principle should govern
our relations to those outside the official bounds
of Christianity at home, and is applicable and
fruitful on the foreign missionary field.
So the enemy may be of great value to Chris
tianity. He is a man with his rights, to be
treated with toleration and respect, with some
truth in his view which we should strive to gain,
often an indirect agent in establishing and
spreading religion, and not a foe to hate but a
possible friend to win.

14 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
In the blazing focus of the criticism and
hostility of his enemies Jesus Christ stands
illuminated and tested, and nowhere else does
his character shine out in purer worth and more
splendid beauty.

CHAPTER n
A FALSE WORSHIPER
The enemies of Jesus appeared early. Before
he had crept out of his cradle, and was still
a helpless infant in his mother's arms, they
made a desperate effort to destroy him. His
mother, presenting her Babe for consecration in
the Temple, heard the ominous prophecy,
"Behold, this child is set . . . for a sign which
is spoken against."
His first enemy was a mighty monster of
iniquity. Herod the Great was king in Jerusalem
when the Wise Men from the East appeared in
the city inquiring for the newborn King of the
Jews. The suspicious king instantly scented
danger in the announcement, and the same good
news that brought joy to shepherds and Wise
Men sent trouble up into the palace and threw
its royal occupant into a panic of fear.
Something had to be done to remove this
possible rival, and the wily despot concocted a
cunning plan to crush the infant in its very
cradle. He sent for the Wise Men and with a
pious air said to them, "Go and search out
exactly concerning the young child; and when
15

16 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
ye have found him, bring me word, that I also
may come and worship him." Professed worship
was upon his lips, but murder was in his heart.
When he found that the Wise Men had
slipped away without giving him the desired in
formation and that his plot was thus thwarted,
he sent soldiers down to Bethlehem and thrust
a sword through every cradle in which was a
male child under two years of age. A great cry
of anguish swept out over the hill town at this
monstrous act of wholesale murder. Yet even
this far-flung net of destruction failed to catch
its intended victim, for the holy Child had
escaped. I. Herod was right in his premonition of the
significance of this birth and the importance of
this Child. It is true that he only caught at the
name, "King of the Jews," as the announcement
of a possible rival, but he was on the right track
in suspecting danger to his throne, and the
danger was far deeper and wider than he knew.
The birth of that Babe marked a new epoch
in the world's history; the clock of the calendar
of the centuries then struck a new hour. Jesus
represented and embodied principles that were
destined in time to undermine and overthrow
every throne of despotism. He was the first
great Democrat, and he came to teach and in
augurate the brotherhood of man and give the

A FALSE WORSHIPER 17
people their rights. As he has walked down
through the ages despotic thrones have toppled
over and representative government has sprung
up. The Herods have been stripped of their
arbitrary power and have been growing fewer in
number, as Christendom broadens over the
world. And yet Jesus did not directly attack Herod
or say a word against Caesar. He brought no
sword to rip up the existing order of the world.
On the contrary, he paid taxes to the Roman
government and was loyal to it. Nevertheless,
he quietly introduced principles of human
equality and popular rights, brotherhood and
peace, that silently but surely undermined
Caesar's throne and in time has reconstructed
the political fabric of the world. So the first
enemy of Jesus was right in his interpretation of
the significance of his advent into the world,
though he was dreadfully wrong in his method
of meeting it.
H. Herod stands for those who misunder
stand the purpose and blindly if not wickedly
oppose the progress of Jesus in the world. We
are not rid of despotism when we have sub
stituted an elective president for a hereditary
king. Old evils have a way of coming back under
new names, and abuse of power and corruption

18 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
may spring up in a republic as well as in an
empire. The "machine" and the "boss" may be
as arbitrary and oppressive, corrupt and wicked,
as any Herod of old. Capital and greed may
crowd in upon the rights of the people and de
fraud them as unjustly and ruinously as the
robber barons of mediaeval times. These corrupt
political combinations and leaders and special
interests are as truly enemies of the principles
of Jesus Christ as was any persecuting Caesar.
There are businesses also, such as the liquor
traffic, that are as afraid of Jesus Christ as was
Herod in his consternation. They know that his
church is against them, and though they may
make a pretense of paying it outward respect,
and may even ostentatiously contribute to its
support, yet secretly they fear it and use every
means in their power to thwart its work and
purpose. There are men and interests so tyran
nical and selfish that they stop not short of
murder and would even slay Christ to gain their
ends; at least, they are trampling upon and
trying to destroy his principles and spirit that
they may remove him from their selfish and
wicked path.
III. Herod stands as the forerunner and
representative of all false worshipers of Christ.
"That I also may come and worship him" was
the hypocritical plea under which he masked his

A FALSE WORSHIPER 19
murderous purpose. He feigned loyalty to the
King he would have assassinated. He bent his
knee, but held a dagger in his hand. A kiss was
upon his lips, but treachery in his heart.
A long line of successors have followed Herod
into the presence of Jesus, outwardly declaring
that they also are come to worship him, but
secretly working as enemies of his cause. Kings
and other high personages have posed as "de
fenders of the faith," who have disgraced it in
their lives. Some scholars in their investigation
of the Bible and of religion have shown a spirit
of prepossession and unfriendliness that has
done damage to the cause they were supposed
to support. Even ministers have stood in the
pulpit and disseminated doubt and practically
destroyed the very gospel they pretended to
preach. And what a multitude of supposed worshipers
have sat in the pews of the Christian Church and
yet dishonored Christ. Some have deliberately
used the church as a cloak of respectability and
a means to success. Time was when the very
name of Christ was a danger, and his cross
pierced those who were brave to bear it: then
hypocrites shunned it, and the church consisted
of sifted and tried souls. But now Christianity
has become respectable and popular; its cross is
carved in ebony or set in gold as a fashionable

20 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
ornament, and church membership is a card of
introduction into the best society or a certificate
of character inviting confidence in business.
As a consequence the sanctuary may be
thronged with worshipers some of whom are as
palpable hypocrites as Herod. They sit rev
erently and conform to all the outward rites of
the church, but inwardly they may be full of all
manner of uncleanness and their lives are a
living disproof of their profession. The most
powerful enemies of Christ to-day are not those
outside, but those inside, the church. The un
worthy lives of his professed followers are the
greatest weakness and hindrance of his kingdom.
Every unfaithful Christian so far belongs to
Herod's party and is thrusting his sword through
the cradle of Christ or crucifying him afresh.
IV. Yet Herod with all his cunning plot and
despotic power could not touch a hair of the
head of the newborn King. As easily could he
have struck down Caesar from his throne or
crushed the great globe of the earth flat as he
could have harmed that Babe. God stood within
that shadow of hatred "keeping watch above
his own."
Thus the first enemy of Jesus was thwarted in
his unholy plot and purpose, and this was
prophetic of the failure and folly of all those
that seek to destroy this Child. The cross could

A FALSE WORSHIPER 21
not crush him, death could not extinguish his
spirit, the Roman Empire with all its persecut
ing power could not stop him, but silently and
irresistibly he has stepped through the centuries,
instilling his spirit and establishing his kingdom.
And so will he continue his march of mercy and
might until he hath put all enemies under his
feet and is crowned Lord of all.

CHAPTER HI
"CAN ANY GOOD THING COME OUT OF
NAZARETH?"
This was the disparaging reply that Nath
anael made to Philip when he announced, "We
have found him, of whom Moses in the law . . .
did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."
Nathanael was a pious man, "an Israelite in
deed, in whom is no guile," but his first attitude
toward Jesus was that of opposition, growing
out of prejudice against the town from which he
came, and therefore he must be included for a
moment among the enemies of Jesus, though he
presently became his loyal friend and disciple.
Nathanael's prejudice against Nazareth may
have been due to the fact that he himself was
frdm the rival town of Cana, or it may have been
his simple incredulity that so great a character
as the promised Messiah could come from so
small and obscure a place. Prejudice against
Jesus on account of his humble origin was not
confined to Nathanael, but existed in Nazareth
itself and was intense and bitter up in Jerusalem,
where "the chief priests and Pharisees" trium-
22

GOOD THING OUT OF NAZARETH? 23
phantly refuted and rebuked Nicodemus by the
challenge (John 7. 52), "Search, and see that
out of Galilee ariseth no prophet."
I. Thus the first hostile judgment that fell
upon Jesus was that of prejudice against his
origin. An obscure hill town up in a provincial
district was no fit place for a prophet to come
from. The village was not even mentioned in the
Old Testament, and would all the glowing
visions of the prophets and great hopes of the
nation find their fulfillment in so obscure and
despised a place? Would not Jerusalem, as it sat
on its historic hill, crowned with its marble
Temple, with its blazing gold roof, in which
thronging worshipers witnessed the magnificent
ritual of gorgeously robed priests, and perfumed
incense bore prayers to heaven, be the worthy
recipient of so great an honor? But that the
Messiah should appear up among the hill towns
and fishing villages of Galilee — who could be
lieve it? The proud priests and Pharisees,
deeply insulted at the suggestion, scornfully
resented it, and Nathanael himself, a pious
citizen of Galilee, could not at first credit it.
The Jews of Jerusalem were much given to
priding themselves on their birth and city and
holding themselves superior to the common herd
of men. "We have Abraham to our father," was
their haughty claim, and they disdainfully

24 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
looked down upon and despised those who were
not of their ancestral aristocracy. And so they
were in an ill mood to receive a provincial
prophet and at once branded him as an impossi
bility, if not an impostor.
This principle of judgment is everywhere prev
alent and powerful in the world. Notorious is the
rivalry of towns and cities and countries by
which the citizens of one arrogate to themselves
superior eminence and dignity over another.
Especially does the metropolis look down
upon the provinces, the city upon the town and
village, and even the village upon the country.
Men think to measure themselves by the magni
tude of the city to which they belong, and a resi
dent of New York or Chicago swells up into
large self-esteem in his relations with the rural
dweller. It is hard for us to think that anybody
of importance can come from a rival city or a
country town. We are the people, and anyone
that aspires to be somebody must be one of us.
The aristocracy of birth and blood works in
the same way, and the aristocracy of wealth, es
pecially of the newly rich, often breeds a coarser
and more vulgar spirit of assumed superiority
and contempt for the common crowd.
And so men are often judged by the place they
come from, or their ancestral connections, or
their bank account, or the clothes they wear,

GOOD THING OUT OF NAZARETH? 25
and those who are rising from the common level
to conspicuous heights at first meet with rejec
tion and may be dismissed with a sneer.
H. But these artificial distinctions and bar
riers cannot long withstand genuine worth and
power and are often quickly swept away. Nature
will not submit to such standards and makes
short work with them. God is against them.
John the Baptist, himself an insurgent against
social and religious conventionalities as he
preached out in the wilderness in a rough coat
bound around him with a leather strap, poured
contempt upon them as he told the proud priests
and Pharisees, boasting of their Abrahamic de
scent, that God could raise up better men out of
stones and dirt.
And how often has this been almost literally
done as men have come up out of the lowest
strata of society and have occupied the seats of
the mighty! Out of the primal elements of
humanity have emerged men of superior and
even supreme worth and power, as out of the
molten heart of the globe volcanoes pour forth
irresistible floods of lava and pile up great
mountains. Nearly all the molders of human thought and
makers of history have originated close to the
ground and have sprung from its soil. The most
noted birthplace in Scotland is that of Burns: it

26 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
is a humble stone cottage with a thatched roof
and a stable in one end of it. The most cele
brated birthplace in England is that of Shake
speare, and again it is a plain cottage in a country
village. Lincoln was born in a log hut in the
wilds of Kentucky, Mohammed was the son of a
camel driver, and Confucius of a soldier. It
would seem that when Nature wants to mold a
great man she goes back to the soil and mixes
him out of virgin clay untainted by degenerate
heredity. The aristocracies of birth and wealth furnish
few of the prophets and leaders of the race. The
city is mostly ruled by the rural regions. Boys
with fresh blood and virile grit come up from the
country to the city and take possession of it:
soon they are transacting its business and living
in its palaces. Democracy has a way of assert
ing itself and shows its contempt for privilege
and precedent. The sneers of the upper classes
are answered by voices from the great deep, and
men of real worth and power triumphantly come
to their own.
III. Jesus himself was the supreme exemplar
of this truth. He came, not from proud Jeru
salem, but from humble and despised Nazareth.
Nathanael thought he was therefore an impos
sible Messiah, and the priests and Pharisees
were sure no prophet could come from such an

GOOD THING OUT OF NAZARETH? 27
origin, but "he could not be hid." His inherent
worth, his human and divine power, asserted
itself with the might of omnipotence.
All Jewish contempt and opposition and the
whole weight of the Roman Empire could not
keep him down. He rose to his true rank and
power with the irresistibleness of the cosmic
force that pushes up mountains and holds
planets in their orbits. Artificial dignities and
boastful claims were swept from his path like
straws before the wind. He walked up to Jeru
salem and stirred the whole city with his pres
ence. Priests and Pharisees and Roman gov
ernors and soldiers could avail nothing against
him. He walked through the Roman Empire
and lifted it off its hinges. He has come down
through the centuries, and thrones and despot
isms and false distinctions of birth and blood and
wealth and fashion have been trampled under
his feet.
His gospel means an end to class privileges
and artificial aristocracies, and a democracy of
human souls. He has answered the sneer at his
humble origin by making all such sneers despi
cable and lifting all human life to the level of
brotherhood. IV. Philip gave a beautiful answer to Na-
thanael's prejudice: "Come and see." He did
not argue with him and try to convince him of

28 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
his error: this would probably only have driven
Nathanael deeper into it. He would then have
defended it, and all his antagonism to Nazareth
as a rival town or an unworthy place for the
Messiah to come from would have been aroused.
But he could not well decline this simple reason
able invitation to come and see for himself. This
instantly disarmed his prejudice and put him in
a candid and receptive mood.
The result was most gratifying to both Philip
and Nathanael. The skeptic became converted,
all his prejudices melted away in the presence of
Jesus like mist in the morning sun, and Na
thanael became a fast friend and faithful disciple
of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is generally the wisest way of dealing
with the criticisms and opposition of the enemies
of Christ. Argument is not the best weapon with
which to meet their attacks. It stirs up contro
versy, deepens prejudices and enmities, and often
only convinces both sides of their own convictions .
Personal experience of Christ will dissolve
doubts of and disarm opposition to him. "Come
and see" is still our best answer to his enemies.
If we can lead them into his presence, his
gracious personality, his "sweet reasonableness
and light," his forgiving power and peace will
win them from being enemies and transform
them into friends.

CHAPTER IV
WHENCE HATH THIS MAN THESE
THINGS?
Jesus preached twice in the synagogue of
Nazareth and on both occasions was received
with sneers and rejected with unbelief and
scorn. His enemies were of his own town and
even of his own household, and this must have
been one of the bitterest drops in his cup of
disappointment and trial. In the most literal
sense "he came unto his own, and his own
received him not."
It might be thought a heavy score in the
account against him that he was rejected by the
people of the very town in which he had been
brought up, with whom he had lived as neigh
bors and companions for thirty years and who
therefore knew him best. Jesus himself felt the
point and the poignancy of this charge, and ex
plained it on the proverbial principle that "No
prophet is acceptable in his own country."
I. A year or two before these events, Jesus
had closed his carpenter shop and gone south
into Judaea, whence marvelous stories had
floated back on the tide of returning pilgrims of
his wonderful works in cleansing the Temple and
29

30 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
performing miracles and appearing as the Mes
siah. His arrival would set all tongues gossiping
and create a tremendous sensation in the sleepy
old town. His preaching in the village synagogue
at first fulfilled expectations as all wondered at
the gracious words that fell from his lips.
But presently wonder became tinged with
envy and suspicion and then turned into enmity
and burst in an explosion of wrath. "Whence
hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty
works? Is not this the carpenter's son? is not
his mother called Mary? and his brethren,
James, and Joseph, and Simon, and Judas? And
his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence
then hath this man all these things? And they
were offended in him."
This was the catalogue of charges they drew
up against him. They emphasized his lowly
birth and noted with statistical particularity
each member of his humble family. Comparing
his profession of Messiahship with his pedigree,
they said the two did not match. A carpenter's
son could never be a prophet. Because they
knew him so well they thought he could never
amount to much. He was simply one of them
selves, and how could he be the Messiah?
Men are often disposed to measure others by
themselves, and think a mistake has been made
when one of their own number rises to distinc-

WHENCE THESE THINGS? 31
tion. A man becomes famous elsewhere, but
when he comes back to the town and mingles
with those among whom he once was a boy they
wonder by what accident or luck one no better
than themselves has attained to such eminence.
It is still true that "no prophet is acceptable in
his own country."
Those who are close to greatness do not
always appreciate it, as those who live in the
Alps are seldom susceptible to their sublimity.
The Nazarenes were blind to their most illus
trious citizen, but all the ages have concentrated
their gaze upon him, and it is only his name
casting its light upon that obscure mountain
village that has rescued it from oblivion, as a
sunbeam, falling on a mote, makes it luminous
and conspicuous.
H. The only disparagement these citizens of
Nazareth and neighbors of Jesus could utter
against him was that he was of a humble family
on the same level with themselves. They knew
nothing that cast the slightest shadow of dis
honor on his early character and life. But as
was often the case with the charges of enemies
against Jesus, they turned out to be crowns of
honor rather than stigmas of guilt or shame.
That Jesus was born in a carpenter's family
and had humble but honest human relatives is
nothing against him, but is a mark of honor.

32 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
These relations are the ties that knit him into
the race of men and make him bone of their
bone and flesh of their flesh. This is the origin
whence sprung his humanity, as true and neces
sary and precious a side of his nature as is his
divinity. Because he had such a mother and
such brothers and sisters, he can bear the burden
of our sin and bring us back into the fellowship
of the Father and can be touched with the feel
ing of our infirmities and be our Saviour and
Friend. III. "Whence hath this man these things?"
The question sounded a deeper note than these
Nazarenes knew. They did well to wonder that
such a Man should spring from their midst and
ask whence he obtained his wisdom and power.
The question still challenges us and can find
no sufficient answer from a purely human origin.
Jesus Christ cannot be explained in terms of
human heredity. We always look back along
the line of a man's ancestry to find his explana
tion, the origin of this trait or that special apti
tude, and generally can trace the several streams
that have blended in his being to their ancestral
fountains. It is true that at times nature seems
to spring a surprise and produces an inexplicable
genius, such as Shakespeare; yet we believe
that human heredity will account for all the sons
of men.

WHENCE THESE THINGS? 33
But we cannot bring the person of Jesus
Christ within the bounds of this principle. He
has in him elements that are too original and
powerful to be thus derived; they overleap all
human limits and could have had their origin
only in some deeper and divine Fountain. The
humble family of Nazareth and all the strands
of heredity that wove the wonderful Jewish race
could never have produced this perfect and
marvelous Pattern of humanity. That old
Hebrew root, rich as it was and still is in great
human personalities, could never unaided have
blossomed into this fine Flower of character that
is still the praise of the ages.
IV. Neither can Jesus Christ be explained by
his teachers, by the schools and thought and
aspirations of his time. He was brought up in
the synagogue and school of his village and was
a thorough student of the Old Testament, the
rich and splendid literature of his race, which he
assimilated into his very blood and life. He
observed its ordinances, preached its doctrines,
quoted its sayings, trusted its promises, and
fulfilled the glowing visions of its prophets.
Nevertheless, these seeds will not account for
the fruit of his person and life. The soil is too
shallow and barren to bear so wonderful a
harvest. His teachings are too original and
powerful to be explained by the traditions_ofjhe_

34 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
Pharisees or even the visions of the prophets.
It is true that many of his sayings can be traced
in germ back through the writings and saymgs
of other prophets and teachers; but these germs
will not explain the new depth and power of
meaning that he breathed into them.
Shakespeare appropriated and absorbed many
lines and passages from earlier writers, but these
writers do not explain Shakespeare. He gathered
all such light into the focus of his own brain and
there made it blaze in such vividness and power
as exhibited a higher order of genius. So Jesus
Christ gathered into himself all the light of the
Hebrew prophets, but he alone raised it to such
power that it became the Light of the world.
V. And, once more, Jesus Christ cannot be
explained by his environment; he did not issue
out of the peculiar conjunction of events in his
time. Great men often appear to be the product of
their age. They arise in answer to a call for such
men and are created by the very demand they
supply. Washington was the product of the Rev
olution, and Lincoln of the Civil War. Grant
would have died in obscurity had it not been
for the opportunity of Donelson and Vicksburg.
So, it has been contended, Jesus Christ was
the product of his age. It was a time of fading
faith and growing oppression, and he happened

WHENCE THESE THINGS? 35
to arrive at the pregnant juncture when a reli
gious genius was needed to revive the dying
hopes of men and give them a new religion. He
is the outcome of all the conflicts and failures
and aspirations of his time, "a splendid column
of spray sent up by the collision of east and west,
of Judaism and the farther East, of prophetism
and gnosticism."
Again the explanation is inadequate, the
effect is too vast for the alleged cause. No doubt
the circumstances of the time did converge to
ward the appearance of Jesus Christ. Hebrew
preparation, Roman peace, and heathen failure
and despair were elements in the soil out of which
he sprang. All things appear in their proper
place in the divine plan, and "when the fullness
of the time was come, God sent forth his Son."
But the time of the coming of the Son did not
make the Son. The Man of Nazareth is too
large and deep in his personality and power to
be explained by such origins; he overleaps all
such limits, and still the question confronts us,
Whence hath this man all these things? We
must look up, and not down and around, for the
answer. As we cannot explain the green grass
without the blue sky, and the blossoming earth
without the shining sun, so we cannot explain
Jesus Christ without his divinity in which dwells
the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

CHAPTER V
IS NOT THIS THE CARPENTER?
Yes, that is just who it was. The question
was asked by his townsmen in derision and
scorn, as though it would place a stigma upon
Jesus that would forever discredit him as a
prophet, but the designation has ever since been
worn by him as a mark of honor.
It is a startling fact, which even after eighteen
hundred years has not lost its wonder, that the
Saviour of the world was a carpenter. This is
not what the Jews expected, and it is not what
we would expect. They looked and longed for a
Messiah who would come as a royal conqueror,
wearing purple robes and marshaling great
armies to break the iron rule of Rome and raise
them to political power and splendor. We would
look for a great scholar or statesman with wis
dom and eloquence to move the world. But
God's ways are not as our ways, and his Son
came neither as the one nor as the other, but
as a carpenter.
This question is the only gleam of light we
have from the life of Jesus from the twelfth to
the thirtieth year of his age. Of this long period,
comprising more than half his life, not a word is

IS NOT THIS THE CARPENTER? 37
recorded to tell us what he was doing except
this word "carpenter." But as an artist with a
single sweep of his brush will sometimes draw
the outline of his picture, so this word paints in
outline the life of Jesus during this period. It
sketches the life of one who did not separate
himself from his fellow men, but knit himself
into the humblest human relations. It shows us
a common toiler, working at a humble trade and
living contentedly in honest poverty.
There is color enough in this word to paint a
complete picture of the outer life of Jesus. It
is worth more than all the apocryphal Gospels
that are full of absurd stories of his youth. "We
may indeed be thankful," says Farrar, "that the
word remains, for it is full of meaning and has
exercised a noble and blessed influence over the
fortunes of mankind."
What are some of the lessons of this pregnant
designation of Jesus, given him by his enemies?
I. First, we see that Jesus engaged in useful
work. He was a producer, as the word trans
lated carpenter literally means. There were
more and better houses in Nazareth, or more
plows and ox-yokes on the surrounding farms
because he lived and toiled. We are sure that
his trade was well learned and that everything
that left his shop displayed the most thorough
and finished workmanship.

38 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
He who could build a star and sweep the
orbit of a planet, whose hand had left its finish
ing touch on every grass blade and dewdrop,
could also lay off his angles and strike his circles
true, and he could mortise timbers or shape ox-
yokes so that they would render the best service
and would last. His work never needed to be
done over after him; he left no loose joints to
be tightened up, or rough places to be smoothed
down. He put in full time and did as good work
when alone as when in the presence of his
employer. Every one knew that he could be
trusted, and his work bore an unsurpassed
reputation and commanded the highest prices.
All this was a true part of his ministry by
which he helped to save the world from cold and
hunger; and it was a fitting preparation for that
spiritual carpentry by which he was to join hu
manity together and build a kingdom that
would stand forever.
We need more of this spirit of faithful service
in useful lines in these days when there is so
much slovenly work done in every trade and
profession, and so many are contributing
nothing to the wealth and welfare of the world.
There are many men and women that are non-
producers and mere consumers. They are not
doing anything that is useful to others, but are
simply living in idleness and pleasure. They

IS NOT THIS THE CARPENTER? 39
consume food and clothing and luxuries, they
require many others to serve them, but they
never serve others. The world is never the
richer for their having lived in it by a grain of
wheat or a nobler thought.
Every one ought to test his life by the stand
ard of productiveness for human welfare. "Sure
good," says Ruskin, "is first in feeding people,
then in dressing people, and lastly rightly pleas
ing people with arts, or sciences, or any other
subject of thought." "The thistle that grows in
thy path," says Carlyle, "dig it out, that a blade
of grass, or a drop of nourishing milk, may grow
there instead. The waste cotton shrub, gather
its waste white down, spin it, weave it: that in
place of idle litter there may be folded webs, and
the naked skin of man be covered."
H. Second, we see that Jesus was content to
stay in the ranks of common toilers. His reputed
father was a carpenter, and he continued in the
same trade. He did not strive to enter the law,
which was the most influential profession among
the Jews. He did not hunt around for some
easier and more rapid way of making money, but
contentedly toiled on.
There is a great deal said in these days about
"getting on in the world," by which it is meant
that young men should get off the farms and out
of the trades into the professions and offices, and

40 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
that everybody should get rich. The feeling is
created and sown in the very air that a boy is
worth nothing unless he means to be, and gives
promise of becoming, a great capitalist or states
man or professional man. "Success" is an
emphatic word in our vocabulary.
Now, it is undoubtedly true that everyone
should endeavor to develop his powers to the
fullest measure in useful service, and this is a
worthy ambition. But this cry of "getting on in
the world" generally sets up false ideals and
hopes and works great harm. It is physically
impossible that all should get on in the sense
intended. Not all young men can become pro
fessional men, for the great mass of them must
work on farms and in trades. We cannot all get
rich, for there is not enough wealth to go around.
So the gospel of success begets hopes which in
many cases must be disappointed.
But, worse still, it sets up a false standard of
manhood. It measures worth by wealth, and
puts position above disposition. But the truth
is that men in getting up in this sense often go
down. The true standard of manhood is something
immeasurably better than wealth and some
thing that every one can attain. "I believe,"
says Charles Kingsley, "that a man might be, as
a tailor or as a carpenter, every inch of him a

IS NOT THIS THE CARPENTER? 41
saint, a scholar, and a gentleman." A saint, a
scholar, and a gentleman: these are the qualities
that constitute a true man, and every man,
whatever his station in life, can have them.
Jesus was as truly a saint, a scholar, and a
gentleman while making plows and ox-yokes as
while preaching the Sermon on the Mount. In
stead of keeping up this everlasting cry of
getting on in the world and teaching it to our
children, let us know that most of us must stay
where we are, and that in the humblest station
we can develop the highest manhood and every
one of us be a saint, a scholar, and a gentleman.
HI. What, now, is the relation of the church
of to-day to Jesus the carpenter? or, What is the
relation of the church to workingmen, of whom
Jesus was one? The painful fact must be admit
ted that there is a chasm which appears to be
growing between the church and the working
classes, especially in the cities. The causes for
this separation are complex and lie partly on
both sides. But we ought to be most concerned
with the causes that lie, not on the side of the
workingmen, but on the side of the church.
The main cause on the part of the church is
the caste spirit of wealth and fashion and pride
that is creeping into it. Costly churches are
built in which only well-to-do and rich people
are expected or even permitted to worship. It is

42 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
a literal and would be a ludicrous, were it not
such a shocking, fact that if Jesus were to appear
unknown in his carpenter's clothes in some
churches in which he is worshiped to-day, he
would be given the cold shoulder and might
even be shown the way out. The church that
was founded by a Carpenter whom the common
people heard gladly and whose gospel was first
preached by fishermen, that began by leveling
all human distinctions and gathering in the poor,
has begun the process of sifting out the upper
classes and is in danger of becoming the exclu
sive possession and privilege of the rich.
Workingmen instinctively feel this and are
publicly saying it. And so, while the churches
are running after and welcoming people of means
and social standing who come with gloved hands
and spotless linen, the workingmen are passing
them by in crowds.
This charge does not lie equally against all
churches, nor only against rich churches: the
same spirit may be in any church, and it may be
in yours and in mine. If we by any means, or air
of treatment, make any distinctions among
people by which it will be more easy and agree
able for some to worship in our church than for
others, if we begin any process of sifting out
what we are pleased to consider the better
classes, we are guilty of deadly sin against the

IS NOT THIS THE CARPENTER? 43
very cross of Christ. And if we make a church in
which Jesus the Carpenter would not be just as
welcome as Christ the glorified, he will repudiate
us with wrathful indignation, as he did the
church of the Pharisees, and publicans and
harlots shall go into the kingdom of God before
us.

CHAPTER VI
HOW KNOWETH THIS MAN LETTERS?
Having been rejected in his native village,
how was Jesus received up in the cosmopolitan
city? As in Nazareth, so in Jerusalem,"the Jews
marveled" at his teaching, and met it with the
wondering exclamation, shading into the dis
paraging criticism, "How knoweth this man
letters, having never learned?" "What college
has he been to, that he should teach us?"
Jesus had never been to either of the two
famous colleges in Jerusalem through which the
scribes passed and had received no instruction
outside of the village school and synagogue. He
had come up from despised Nazareth, sunk in
provincial illiteracy and boorishness, and was
teaching with evident popularity and power in
Jerusalem, the university town and intellectual
center of the Jews. How could this be?
The Pharisees and scribes pinned their faith
to book learning. In their view, everything
worth knowing in religion had been thought out
and written down by them "of old time," and
nothing remained to do but to repeat this over
and over again. Any originality of thought or
44

KNOWETH THIS MAN LETTERS? 45
variation from the old orthodoxy was viewed as
a dangerous heresy to be ruthlessly suppressed.
Jesus astonished them because he had none of
their professional learning, and yet he spake as
never man spake.
I. A high place must be given to the learning
of the schools. If we were to disparage colleges
and universities, libraries and laboratories, the
very stones would cry out against us. Our highly
complex civilization is largely built on technical
knowledge and professional skill. It is absurd
to suppose that just any man off the street could
go into a steel mill and manage it, into a hospital
and perform a surgical operation, or into a
court room and conduct a law case. Men must
be trained for these skilled services, and the
professional school is the normal place to obtain
such training.
But a danger attends such learning. Its
tendency is to become conventionalized, pro
fessionalized, fossilized. It may become filled
with pride and grow exclusive and intolerant to
ward all who cannot show an official diploma.
Presently it may be found rejecting and ob
structing new light, and, if not marveling, then
sneering at a new teacher, "How knoweth this
man letters, having never learned?"
Illustrations of this occur in every line of life.
It often happens that great inventions and

46 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
achievements in any given field come from those
who are outside its official circle. The greatest
invention in the production of steel is the Besse
mer process of decarbonizing molten metal by
blowing air through it. It was discovered inde
pendently by William Kelley, an American, and
Henry Bessemer, an Englishman. Neither of
these men was originally a steel maker, and both
of them were "treated like impertinent meddlers
by the steel men of America and Europe." They
were jeered at: "How can these men make steel,
having never learned?"
So in every kind of business there are men
who are breaking into it from outside its trained
class and official circle, and these are often the
men of initiative and enterprise who revolu
tionize it and astonish the world. Who taught
Robert Burns to write poetry? What college did
he attend? None whatever. Yet that humble
plowboy turned clods and daisies and "The
Cdtter's Saturday Night" into poetry that will
never lose its charm. Learned and ilHterate alike
read his well-thumbed pages and never stop to
inquire what college he attended.
II. There are two kinds of men in every line
of achievement: those who are officially and
artificially trained for it, and those who have the
root of the matter in them by natural endow
ment, a gift or talent for it.

KNOWETH THIS MAN LETTERS? 47
There are two kinds of fountains. One is the
artificial. It may have a marble basin and a
richly decorated iron or bronze stand, fed by an
underground pipe through which water is forced
from a reservoir supplied by a pump. The other
is the natural fountain, a big spring that gushes
from the living rock at the base of a hill, sur
rounded with grasses and ferns and over
shadowed by great oaks, or pines. It has its
roots deep in the hill or mountain and is fed by
rains falling on far summits. The artificial
fountain plays only when it is turned on and
emits river water, tepid and insipid, sewer-
contaminated and fever-infected. The natural
spring flows the year round and gurgles forth
cool sparkling water, clear as crystal and pure
as the unflecked sky. The artificial fountain is
useful in its way, but it is the living spring that
feeds the meadows and vitalizes the world.
Now, the professionally trained man may be
an artificial fountain: the thing has been put
into him. The man of native gift is the natural
spring: the matter bubbles and boils out of him
and he cannot help it. The one is a man of rules
and precedents; the main question with him is:
Is it according to the books and rules of the pro
fession? He is in danger of becoming profession
alized and fossilized, pompous and pretentious,
with a narrow official air and pride, suspicious

48 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
of anything outside his range of vision, bigoted
and blind toward any new fight.
The man of native gift is likely to be un-
trammeled by traditional rules and regulations,
free from class prejudice and pride, hospitable
toward innovation and progress, and works
things out in his own way and puts on them the
stamp of his originality and individuality. This
man does not need to go to artificial fountains
in schools and books, for he has a well of water
within himself springing up into new life. The
man of artificial rules is useful in his way, but it
is the man of native gift and power that pours
forth living streams and keeps the world green.
III. Now Jesus was not an artificial fountain
but a living spring. He did not have his religious
experience forced through him by schools and
books, but it gushed up within him and was a
living well in his own heart. The Pharisees and
scribes were highly artificial fountains that sent
forth only what had been pumped into them;
but Jesus sent forth his own stream of expe
rience and teaching.
Of course Jesus did not despise books and
learning, creeds and catechisms : he knew these
things and used them; only they were not his
masters but his servants. He read them and
then corrected them and brought them up to
date. He even boldly contradicted "them of old

KNOWETH THIS MAN LETTERS? 49
time." His main authorities were not books and
schools, but experience and life.
Where does the poet go for his poetry? To
spelling books and grammars and dictionaries?
No, these would not make a poet in fifty years.
He goes to nature and life, to the trees and grass
and sky and to the human life that beats around
him, and he simply puts down what his poetic
eye sees. So Jesus went for his knowledge of
religion not to books about religion, but to reli
gion itself as experienced in his own soul.
For his knowledge of God the Lord Jesus did
not go to books of theology about God, but he
went to God himself, and in fellowship with the
Father he learned the secret of his character and
will and ways. "My teaching is not mine," he
explained to the Jews, "but his that sent me."
His knowledge of faith was not derived from a
psychological analysis of faith, or from what
others said about it, but from the faith he
exercised in his own heart. His knowledge of
immortality was not deduced from speculative
hints and hopes, but from his actual experience
of eternal life. This deep, fresh, inner fountain
of experience was the secret of his marvelous
teaching, though he had never been taught.
IV. We can and ought to have the same kind
of religious knowledge. We have so many
schools and books and hear so much about the

50 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
importance of creeds that we are in danger of
confusing these means with religious life. Im
portant as books and creeds are, their tendency
is to turn us into artificial fountains so that only
that which has been poured into us will come out
of us.
Infinitely more important it is that we have
a well of water springing up in our hearts. We
can have direct knowledge of God through faith
and obedience, just as Jesus had. "If any man
willeth to do his will," he said, "he shall know
of the teaching whether it is of God." Then our
religious life will not be forced through us, in
sipid and stale out of books and creeds, but it
will gush out of us in streams of living water.

CHAPTER VII
A NEW TEACHING!
"What is this?" the unfriendly Jews asked
after hearing Jesus. "A new teaching!" they
exclaimed. Jesus Christ, then, was himself a
teacher of new theology. He did not keep to the
old paths of the scribes and Pharisees, but boldly
struck out into new paths. He revised and re
wrote the religious creeds of his day and started
this process of ever bringing religion up to date
down through the centuries.
It is true that there is a changeless element in
the changing forms of religion. The fundamental
principles of religion do not change, but only our
understanding and application of them. The
new astronomy interprets the same heavens as
the old astronomy, but in a truer way, and the
new science of medicine is only the old science
corrected and made to fit the facts more closely.
It is the same old tree, but the blossoms are new
every spring. It is the same gospel we preach
from age to age, but its interpretation and ap
plication are ever new.
On the occasion when this exclamation was
uttered Jesus had cast out unclean spirits and
had made his teaching new in three respects.
51

52 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
I. He taught with new authority. The scribes
and Pharisees also taught with authority and,
in fact, authority was their chief stock in trade,
but it was of a very different kind from that of
Jesus. Theirs was the authority of official per
sons and traditional doctrine. Their teaching
was crystallized into an authoritative creed
which every one was required to believe and no
one was permitted to doubt. All the thinking
had been done, and nothing was left to do but
simply to accept it.
This kind of authority passed over into the
Christian Church and came to its full blossom
and went to seed in the Roman hierarchy. The
Pope will kindly do all our thinking for us and
leaves us small margin in which to do any for
ourselves. His authority is infallible and final
in matters of religion, and we must submit to
his teaching or be cast into outer darkness.
Modern science has undermined such au
thority. Its truth-seeking spirit bids us go
straight to the facts and find out the truth for
ourselves. What others have discovered and
thought may help us, and we have a right to use
their results, but we must test every spirit for
ourselves and know the truth at first hand.
Experience is the main path to knowledge. If
we would know the truth of a doctrine, we must
try it for ourselves and not simply take another's

A NEW TEACHING! 53
word for it, though it be the word of some great
authority or prophet of old.
But who was the first to use this scientific
method of finding the truth? Jesus Christ. He
knew the Father in immediate personal expe
rience and his appeal to men was, "Come and
see." He never attempted to do another's
thinking for him, but always referred him to the
facts. When John sent disciples to ask Jesus if
he were the Messiah, Jesus did not give a dog
matic answer to the question, but sent some
further facts to John and told him to work out
the matter for himself. The authority that
Jesus used was the authority of truth.
This was a new teaching in his day, and it is
a teaching much needed in our day. Whatever
means we are to use in the way of records and
great names, historic creeds and confessions —
and such means are necessary— we are to go
through these to Christ himself and to God and
thus gain personal experience of the truth; and
on this authority only are we to rest.
H. Jesus taught with new adaptation of the
truth. We have no record of the sermon
preached on this occasion, but we can judge it
by its effects: it stirred up unclean spirits; there
fore it hit them, it was adapted to the audience
and to the needs of the hour.
The teaching of the Pharisees and scribes had

54 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
small relation to existing human conditions and
needs; it was a monotonous droning away on
abstract theological and ecclesiastical questions
that were of no use and interest, and therefore
the people went to sleep under it.
Jesus began to preach to the people truth
that went home to their hearts and lives and
therefore they heard him gladly. His preaching
was like a fresh breeze or breath of spring over
the parched and barren fields of rabbinical
teaching. But did Jesus adapt his teaching to the larger
conditions of his day? Did he have anything to
say on the Roman empire with its oppression,
on social unrest and on slavery? He did not go
at these questions with violent means of revolu
tion, but he did approach them along the line of
evolution. On the question of the Roman yoke he taught
the people to render unto Caesar the things that
were Caesar's and unto God the things that
were God's, and this put a principle down under
that Roman tyranny that finally toppled it over.
He refused to decide a lawsuit between two
brothers, but he said, "Beware of covetousness,"
and thereby put his finger on the root of all our
social unrest and indicated its cure. He did not
abplish slavery by one stroke, but he let loose
a spirit of brotherhood that slowly banished it.

A NEW TEACHING! 55
Jesus Christ was a tremendous preacher to
the times and to all times. He adapted his teach
ing to immediate personal needs and to far
pohtical and social problems; and thus he
stands central in the centuries, so that in every
age men, as they hear his gospel, exclaim, "A
new teaching!"
It is our business to effect this constant re
adjustment of his truth so that it will fit our
day. There is no personal need or social prob
lem it will not meet and satisfy or solve, only
it is left to us to adapt and apply it.
III. Jesus taught with new efficiency. He not
only stirred up the unclean spirits with his
sermon, but he also cast them out by his power.
The Pharisees and scribes, the doctors of
divinity of the day, had grown impotent to heal
or to do anybody any good. But through that
same land and people Jesus walked and scat
tered works of healing, forgiveness, comfort, on
every side. His gospel was no mere fine theory
but a practical power. It cast out evil spirits,
healed the sick, opened blind eyes, and raised
the dead. No wonder that the people were
astonished and exclaimed, "A new teaching!"
And the words he uttered there were seeds
that have been cast over the world and are
sprouting on every shore. Jesus Christ reached
his hand through the centuries to Rome, stopped

56 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
its gladiatorial shows, and emptied its vast
Coliseum. He breathed his doctrines of the
worth and rights of the individual man and the
brotherhood of all men through the world and
thereby withered slavery and finally blew its
Jast remnant out of Christendom. These same
principles undermined despotism and tempered
and transformed monarchy into democracy, and
thereby gave birth to our modern representative
governments. And still his hand is present and potent in our
modern life, stirring up social unrest into dis
satisfaction with and rebellion against old unjust
conditions, and yet tempering it with reason and
right and rebuilding our social structure into a
new brotherhood of humanity. The greatest
thing we can do is to live the gospel and thus
give it new efficiency in the world.
Thus Jesus Christ taught with new authority,
the authority of experience; with new adapta
tion, fitting the gospel to individual needs and
social conditions; and with new efficiency, mak
ing it do the work of healing and saving men and
society and starting processes that will trans
form this world into the kingdom of God. We
are sent into the world to do the same works
that he did, and therefore we are to know and
teach the gospel with the same authority,
adaptation, and efficiency.

CHAPTER VIII
STRANGE THINGS
On this occasion Jesus was preaching in a
house in Capernaum. The people crowded into
the house and around it, blocking up the doors
and the very street. The Pharisees and scribes
sat around, cold and critical, watching their
chance to entrap Jesus.
Four men drew near, carrying on a bed a
helpless paralytic whom they were bringing to
the great Healer. When they could not get in
by the door they climbed up on the roof, tore a
hole through the light structure and let their
man right down at the feet of the Physician.
Jesus forgave the paralytic his sin and sent him
home carrying the very bed that had carried
him. The people dispersed, some criticizing and
others wondering, but all amazed, saying, "We
have seen strange things to-day." What had
they seen?
I. First, they had seen strange earnestness.
The Pharisees and priests had become so con
ventionalized and cold in their religion that all
the heat had been frozen out of them and they
showed little warmth of human sympathy with
57

58 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
their fellow men in distress. The priest and
Levite passed by on the other side of the road
from the wounded Jew whom the good Samar
itan saved.
The four men that came bearing their helpless
friend to Jesus on a bed were moved by a zeal
that must have seemed strange if not ignobly
servile to the Pharisees and scribes. The four
friends, however, were not thinking of their own
dignity, but of their neighbor's need. Their
burning hearts urged them on. It would have
been easy for them to have found in the throng
that blocked up the door an excuse to stop. If
they had not had much interest in their helpless
friend or much faith in Jesus, if they had found
their task troublesome, if they had not really
wanted to go in, they could readily have per
suaded themselves there was reason enough for
staying out. But they were bound to get in, and
they got in. Nothing could stop such earnest
ness as drove them on, though the roof had to
come off.
The meaning is that we can do what we want
to do. Where there's a will there's a way.
Before a will bent on its purpose, before a heart
driven by intense earnestness, doors may be
blocked up, but roofs will come off. If we do not
want to go to church or prayer meeting, we will
see lions crouching at the door; but if we want

STRANGE THINGS 59
to go, we shall be there. All our spiritual life and
religious work should take on a deeper tone and
more strenuous endeavor.
We are too often playing at religion. Any
ordinary obstruction will stop us, whereas we
should have such persistence and might as will
tear the roof off to clear the way to Christ and
his service.
H. The second strange thing seen that day
was a new method in religious work. The
Pharisees and scribes were confined to the tradi
tional ritual which could not be infringed upon
or changed to meet an emergency, but these
four men were confronted with the practical
problem of getting their impotent friend before
the Physician.
The ordinary method would have been to take
the man in through the door. The extraordinary
method followed was to take the man up on top
of the house, tear a hole through the roof, and
let him down. The people probably had never
seen this thing done before, and it was a strange
thing to them and must have offended the
critical Pharisees.
We should be ready and apt to adopt new
methods in our church work and Christian
service. We are ever in danger of becoming so
wedded to the old ways that we think they can
not be changed without sacrilege. The history

60 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
of the church is full of this spirit. We know that
in this country such changes as lining out a
hymn two lines instead of one at a time, puttmg
stoves in the church, and using organs in praise
were resisted and fought as though they had
been blasphemies. Churches have been torn all
to pieces over whether the choir leader should
use a tuning fork to catch the pitch or not. We
may smile at these things, and yet fall into the
same mistake ourselves. The old ways may have
been good, but when a better way may be had
we are to drop the old and use the new.
The simple principle to follow is that of
highest efficiency. A new method is not to be
adopted simply because it is new. If these four
men could have got their friend in through the
door, it would have been folly for them to have
climbed up on the roof. We are never to tear off
the roof simply for the sake of doing a strange
thing. Sensational eccentricities and freaks are
to be kept out of the church. The methods of
the side show are not seemly in the sanctuary.
Yet, on the other hand, we are to beware of
being too tightly bound down by order and
conventionality, dignity and good taste. The
devil is never afraid of our dignity, and good
taste never saved a soul. Too much order may
be death. It is beautiful, but it is the beauty of
an ice crystal.

STRANGE THINGS 61
We should be ready to do anything in the
church that will do the most good. Ordinarily
let us come in through the door, but when it is
necessary or best in order to heal men, let us
come down through the roof, even though it
creates a sensation and people say it is a strange
thing. in. The third strange thing seen on this
occasion was the discomfiture of the ecclesiasti
cal authorities. The Pharisees and scribes were
the doctors of divinity in the church. They rep
resented orthodoxy and authority. Any de
parture from their traditions was a dangerous
heresy, to be put down. They were waiting to
catch Jesus, and the moment he said, "Man, thy
sins be forgiven thee," they thought they had
him in their trap. Instantly they began to say,
"Who is this that speaketh blasphemies? Who
can forgive sin, but God alone?" It was nothing
to them that a man had been healed: a point in
their theology had been violated.
Intense excitement ran through the crowd.
The Pharisees had Jesus in a corner. He had
been caught, so to speak, in the act. The church
now had him in its grip and was about to brand
him as a blasphemer. His hour was come.
Sure enough, it was come, for Jesus suddenly
turned the tables on the Pharisees and threw
them into confusion. As proof of his power over

62 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
the man's sin he showed his power over the
man's body, and at his command the paralytic
got up and walked off with his bed.
Then the people were amazed at the strange
thing. They had been accustomed to seeing the
Pharisees having everything their own way, with
no one daring to utter a word of dissent. But
here they were suddenly discomfited and dis
credited by this marvelous young Teacher. The
church had been contradicted and refuted, the
church had been shown to be wrong and stand
ing in the very way of salvation, and the dis
closure shocked the people as a strange thing.
This same strange thing has often happened
since and may easily happen again. We rev
erence the church as a source and means of truth
and righteousness, and it is proper that we
should. We expect the church to be right, and
it generally is. But the church is human in its
administration and on particular points and
occasions it may be wrong. It has sometimes
stood in the way of truth and righteousness.
We are not, then, to worship the church or
stand up for its infallibility, but we have a right
to test its wisdom. The Word of God is our
standard, and Christ is our only Master. It
would be a strange thing if the church were not
sometimes wrong.
IV. The fourth strange thing seen that day

STRANGE THINGS 63
was a forgiven sinner and healed man. The four
friends brought the paralytic to Jesus for the
healing of his paralysis, but Jesus at first took
no notice of his disease; he looked at a much
deeper matter and said to him, "Man, thy sins
be forgiven thee." He passed through the outer
tissues of the man's trouble into the inner core
and cause of his whole condition. It was a
strange thing to hear him say this, for men
thought he ought to begin with the outer trouble
or disease and work inward.
It is still a plausible theory that we ought to
begin with men's physical and social needs, give
them better employment and higher wages and
more sanitary houses, and then develop in them
a better moral and spiritual fife. But this theory
reverses the relations of cause and effect, and the
place to begin is at the fountain in the heart,
out of which are all the issues of life.
It was a strange thing for Jesus to begin with
sin and presume to forgive it, for what authority
had he to do this? "Who can forgive sins, but
God alone?" exclaimed the hostile Pharisees,
and they were right in their theology. Their
only mistake was in their application of it : they
did not see that Jesus was the Son of God, their
own promised Messiah, with full power to for
give sin.
Jesus has this power, and his work down

64 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
through all these centuries proves that he has
it and countless witnesses bear testimony that
he has forgiven them.
He started with sin in the heart, yet he did
not stop there, but sent his healing virtue
through all the nerves of the paralytic and stood
him up on his feet and sent him walking to his
home. A pure heart will send its strength and
bloom and beauty through the whole life as
healthy bones and blood shoot splendor into the
eyes and plant roses in the cheeks.
Within the walls of the church men are to be
healed of their sins and out of its doors they are
to come walking on their own feet to set in order
the home and the community and the state and
the whole world. If the church does not do this
work, it is not in the same business with Jesus
Christ, and has no right to his name.
If such things as these are done in the church,
people will not think it a dull and unprofitable
place, but will find it the center and source of
their greatest interest and fullest life and will
crowd into it. Strange things are what we all
want to see. If the Spirit of God is poured out
upon our churches they will throb with new life
and all the people will be amazed and glorify
God.

CHAPTER IX
EATING AND DRINKING WITH PUB
LICANS AND SINNERS!
This was one of the dreadful charges brought
against Jesus by the Pharisees and scribes —
dreadful in their view, but one of the crowns
which they thought they pressed on him full of
thorns and which have become crowns of honor.
Jesus had just called Matthew from his table
where he sat carrying on his business of collect
ing the Roman taxes, a business which was re
garded as unpatriotic and treasonable by the
Jews, so that the very name of publican or tax-
gatherer threw them into a frenzy of fury. We
know not how much the humble and hated
publican knew of Jesus, but of him it is nobly
recorded that "he forsook all and followed him."
In the estimation of the Pharisees and scribes
Jesus could not have done a worse thing than
call one of these despised men as his disciple, and
from a worldly point of view it did seem a fatal
blunder. But it is written, and time and again has it
been proved, that not many wise and mighty and
noble are called, but that God chooses the weak
65

66 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
and base and despised things of the world to
"bring to nought the things that are"; and this
was illustrated in the case of Matthew, for this
despised taxgatherer turned out to be one of the
immortal biographers of his Master and his
hand has helped to shape the centuries.
I. Matthew celebrated his calling as a dis
ciple of Jesus by giving a feast to which "many
publicans and sinners" were invited. By the
word "sinners" as thus coupled with publicans
is meant those of ill-reputation, social outcasts.
Matthew evidently thought that being called
as a disciple of Jesus was an occasion of joy, one
of the happy turning-points and gladdest hours
of his life, and so he signalized it with this
festival. And either by a suggestion from Jesus
or by an instinct of his own as to the kind of
people that would be welcome there, he turned
from the rich and self-righteous and self-satisfied
to those who would be more receptive of the
glad news Jesus had to give. Matthew held this
feast in his own house, doubtless in the court
open to the public view, and so passersby could
look in upon it and note the nature of the
gathering. II. It was at this point that "scribes and
Pharisees," whose eyes were everywhere peering
into the manners and morals of people to see
that they conformed to their own traditions,

PUBLICANS AND SINNERS 67
"when they saw that he was eating with the
sinners and publicans, said unto his disciples,
How is it that he eateth and drinketh with
publicans and sinners?"
We must imagine that these words were
spoken with proud lips and scornful eyes and in
contemptuous tones. These self-righteous reli
gionists were dreadfully shocked and scandalized
at the scene and stigmatized it with their deepest
condemnation. Now, there is a way in which we may meet
and mingle with people of low reputation and
immoral fives that merits repudiation and re
buke. When one associates with such people so
as to descend to their own level and be one with
them in spirit and companionship, he puts him
self into their class and under their condemna
tion. But this was not the nature of the fellowship
Jesus held with these people, and the Pharisees
and scribes knew this. He associated with them
only as a good man or woman may mingle with
bad people, even the worst in the slums of a
city, on the broad ground of human kinship in
order to gain their confidence and lead them up
into a better life.
Jesus mingled freely with all classes and con
ditions of people, and yet he was no more
contaminated by them than is the sunlight that

68 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
mingles with murky fog or with the slime of a
swamp. His real spirit and motive in meeting
such people were never misunderstood by the
Jews, not even by the scribes and Pharisees;
they knew his personal purity, and their objec
tion rested on quite other grounds. Their real
ground of objection to publicans and sinners was
that these people had not conformed to their
traditional ceremonies and were outside of their
religious caste.
III. Jesus boldly smashed through these cere
monial traditions and counted them of none
effect in his relations with God and with men.
His standards of judging men were moral and
spiritual and not material and ritualistic. He
associated with people on the broad grounds of
humanity and not on the narrow exclusiveness
of caste. His religious rites were not a thorny
hedge to shut people out, but a door of hospi
tality to let them in. And so he ate with
publicans and sinners notwithstanding the fact
that they had not accepted the domination of
the priests and performed the rites of the
Pharisees. The caste spirit has been erected by many
religions and among many races into a wall of
separation to keep people apart. It has divided
humanity into warring factions and sown the
world with discord and bitterness.

PUBLICANS AND SINNERS 69
The same spirit takes the form of separation
of the rich from the poor, the upper from the
lower classes, the smart set in society from the
unfashionable, the learned from the illiterate,
and of other distinctions that do riot rest on
inherent worth. Many are the classes that scorn
to recognize one another.
Jesus trampled on all such false distinctions
and exhibitions of the caste spirit and met men
on the ground of common humanity. His demo
cratic spirit came out in his social relations, and
in the universality of his human sympathies he
would eat and drink with all men.
IV. This action of Jesus went still deeper
than social good will. He believed there was
worth in all men, even in "publicans and sin
ners." His very business in the world was not
to call the righteous but sinners to repentance,
and why, therefore, should he not go to them
and meet with them? Let these sinners be ever
so degraded and outcast, yet he saw in them the
possibility of redemption and of good.
As the jewel polisher can catch the glint of a
diamond in a rough, dull stone that an un-
practiced eye would think a common pebble and
a careless hand would cast away, so Jesus with
his divine insight could discern a diamond in the
rough in every human soul, a possible saint in
every sinner.

70 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
He ate with publicans and sinners because of
their possibilities, and eating and drinking with
them was one of his means of approaching them
and winning them to his fellowship. No man
was so deeply sunk in the flesh that he could
not hope to lift him into the spirit. Many were
the sinners of every class and grade that were
attracted by his gracious personality and power
and transformed into his likeness.
It has ever been and is to-day one of the
glories of Jesus Christ that he does eat and
drink with sinners, the worst of them, not that
he may go down to their depth, but that he may
lift them up to his height. And the same spirit
that he manifested should also mark us in our
social relations. We should go down to all levels
and be all things to all men that we may win
their confidence and do them good.

CHAPTER X
JESUS AS A LAWBREAKER
In this scene (Matt. 12. 1-14) Jesus appears
as a lawbreaker. One of the points at which he
came into frequent collision with the Pharisees
was the Sabbath. They pretended to guard the
day with the most ostentatious piety and
affected to be scandalized by his treatment of it
as sacrilegious and lawless. They had over
loaded it with rules and spun restrictions around
it until its rest had become a terrible bondage.
Jesus boldly broke through these traditional
regulations and made room in the day for
liberty and life. Yet while destroying these hu
man additions to the day he did not destroy the
day itself, but observed its rest, conserved its
sacredness, and perpetuated its obligation.
I. On this particular Sabbath Jesus and his
disciples were passing through a grainfield. The
paths and roads ran through the fields in this
fenceless country, and there was nothing unu
sual in their doing this. The disciples were hun
gry and began to pull off heads of wheat and, rub
bing out the grains in their hands, to eat them.
The act was lawful (Deut. 23. 25) and would be
innocent in any country and on any day.
71

72 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
But some Pharisees observed it, and this was
their chance. They pounced upon the act as
unlawful on the Sabbath. "Why do ye that
which is unlawful to do on the Sabbath day?"
It was a very small point, but the controversial
ecclesiastic can often see a mote when he cannot
see a mountain.
The command to do no work had been spun
out by the Pharisees into a thousand petty
prohibitions. "Grass was not to be trodden, as
being akin to harvest work. Shoes with nails
were not to be worn, as the nails would be a
'burden,' and a 'burden' must not be carried.
A tailor must not have his needle about him
toward sunset on the Friday, for fear the Sab
bath should begin while he was yet carrying it."
In the same way, "plucking grain was wrong
because it was a kind of reapmg, and rubbing off
the husks was a sin because it was a kind of
threshing." These were "the traditions of the elders" with
which the scribes "made the commandment of
God of none effect." These were the "heavy
burdens and grievous to be borne," which they
laid "on men's shoulders but they themselves"
would "not move them with one of their
fingers," for they resorted to all sorts of sub
terfuges to evade them.
This is what religion runs into when it keeps

JESUS AS A LAWBREAKER 73
the letter and loses the spirit. Such regulations
made it impossible to keep the Sabbath and
smothered its rest under burdens heavier than
daily toil. Doing too much may have the same
effect as doing nothing.
The danger lurking in all religious ordinances
is that they will grow so tight and hard that they
will constrict the life out of religion itself. We
must beware of adding human regulations to
divine institutions. It is easy for us to mix up
our own conscience with God's commandments.
The Sabbath is a day of rest and gladness, and
we must not add to its restrictions until it be
comes a burden grievous to be borne. This has
been done in some communities and homes until
the day was dreaded and the children were glad
when it was gone.
H. Jesus met the objection with parallel
cases. He put himself on common ground with
his critics where they had to agree with him.
The objection implied ignorance of their own
Scriptures. Had they not read of David, how
when he was hungry he went to the tabernacle
and ate the shewbread, an act that was unlawful
and sacrilegious for any but the priests? If
David on the ground of hunger could override
the law of the tabernacle, could not his disciples
on the same ground pluck and eat grain on the
Sabbath? This argument enlisted David on the

74 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
side of the disciples, and the Pharisees were
silenced, for they did not dare question David.
In the same line, Jesus asked them if the
priests did not work on the Sabbath in the
Temple, and yet were guiltless. Might not One
greater than the Temple do the same?
The principle of these cases is that lower needs
must give way to higher necessities. Even if it
had been admitted that plucking grain to satisfy
hunger was a violation of the rest of the Sab
bath, yet hunger was a higher necessity than
rest and had to have its way. The presence of a
higher law always overrides a lower. Gravita
tion must yield to chemical affinity, and
chemical affinity to vital energy. Ceremonies
must always stand out of the way of humanities.
III. Jesus now penetrated deeper into the
matter and laid open the basal principle of the
Sabbath. "But if ye had known what this
meaneth, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, ye
would not have condemned the guiltless." On
another occasion (Matt. 9. 13) Jesus quoted this
same Scripture to the Pharisees and they were
continually missing its point. Its application in
this connection is that the Sabbath is a day of
mercy adapted to the needs of man and not a
hard ordinance to which the needs of man must
be adapted.
Jesus expressed the same thought in the say-

JESUS AS A LAWBREAKER 75
ing, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not
man for the Sabbath." The day fits into human
needs. It matches man as the air fills the lungs
and the light matches the eye. The Sabbath is
a mercy to man in that it gives him rest from
toil. Were it not for its gracious presence and
protection, the wheels of industry would never
cease to turn and life would become an endless
round and grind and toil, as in heathen coun
tries. The day is also a beneficent minister to the
higher needs of man. He needs rest from the
excitement and worry of life; he needs to be still,
that he may look into his heart and see what
manner of man he is; above all, he needs wor
ship, forgiveness for sin, and fellowship with the
Father and eternal life. The day was made to
match these needs and it fills them full.
IV. The scene now shifts from the cornfield
to the synagogue. As is ever the case, there
were several classes of people there.
Jesus was there, as his custom was, to worship
and teach and heal. The service was always
made better by his presence, for he came with
his heart full of the Spirit and his hand full of
blessing. Next, there was a man there who had
a withered hand. His infirmity perhaps had
drawn him thither in the hope of receiving heal
ing in the sanctuary where Jesus was.

76 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
There are always withered hands and bur
dened hearts in the church, though we cannot
always see them. The church ought to have
wide room and warm welcome for all afflicted
ones, and it ought to have power to draw them
in and to heal them.
Lastly, the scribes and Pharisees were there to
watch Jesus "that they might accuse him."
They were critics and fault-finders. Their sinis
ter eyes gleamed with the hope of finding evil.
"Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day?"
(Matt. 12. 9) was their point of attack. It might
be that Jesus would dare to heal the withered
hand on the Sabbath and they would catch him
in the very act.
Blind to all good and watching only for evil,
what a malicious spirit was that to have rankling
in the heart in the very house of God! The
carping, fault-finding, evil-hunting spirit is bad
enough anywhere, but it is at its worst in the
church. V. To the captious question of the Pharisees
Jesus made a conclusive reply. In the first case
he appealed to Scripture; in this case he ap
pealed to reason. He proposed to them the case
of a man that had one sheep (implying relations
of more than ordinary value and affection) and
it falls into a pit on the Sabbath : if he be a man
of humane instincts will he not lift it out? The

JESUS AS A LAWBREAKER 77
case was so reasonable that Jesus was willing to
submit it to his most hostile critics.
No reply from the Pharisees is recorded, and
perhaps they simply maintained that silence
that gives mistrusting consent. They were
afraid of the logic of this Man.
Then Jesus followed up his question with the
crushing application and conclusion, "How
much then is a man of more value than a sheep !
Wherefore it is lawful to do good on the sabbath
day." The fact that Jesus uttered this senti
ment as an exclamation is itself a wonderful
tribute to the worth of man. An exclamation is
a thought that strains the expressive power of
language until it explodes. The worth of man so
crowded upon the consciousness of Jesus that
he could not express it in a proposition, but
broke out into an exclamation.
The gospel exalts the worth of man and is
raising the level of its estimation all over the
world. The Pharisees would have treated a man
with less consideration than they would a sheep,
but Jesus rescued religion from such inhumanity
and subordinated its ordinances to human wel
fare. The Pharisees were silenced by the argument
of Jesus, but they were not convinced, for the
conviction they were seeking was not the con
viction of the truth, but the conviction of Christ.

78 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
Having cleared the way, Jesus was now ready
for action. There stood the man with the
withered hand waiting for healing. "Stretch
forth thy hand. And he stretched it forth; and
it was restored whole, as the other." By that
act Jesus broke the Sabbath of the Pharisees,
but he kept the Sabbath of the Lord. The Sab
bath should be a day of healing with us. It
should bring us into the sanctuary where Jesus
is, that he may heal our withered hands and
troubled hearts.

CHAPTER XI
A GRAVE CHARGE
Jesus Christ was charged by his enemies
with being a drunkard! Could falsehood have
gone further, or malice reached a lower depth of
infamy? In this respect, however, Jesus stands
not alone.
Almost all the prophets and great characters
of humanity have had the grossest charges
hurled at them. Socrates was accused of per
verting the youth of Athens, Luther had scan
dals circulated against him, and Washington and
Lincoln were objects of the bitterest vitupera
tion. The poisoned arrows of human envy and
enmity have ever loved a shining mark.
It is Jesus himself who reports this charge.
"For John the Baptist," he said to the Jews,
"is come eating no bread nor drinking wine; and
ye say, He hath a demon. The Son of man is
come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold,
a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of
publicans and sinners. And wisdom is justified
of all her children" (Luke 7. 33-35).
Thus so little was Jesus affected by the scan
dalous accusation, so sure was he of his spotless-
ness and his future vindication, that he himself
79

80 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
reported the charge and thus caused it to be
recorded in the Gospels and sent down through
the centuries. The sunbeam is never afraid of
being soiled by fog and smoke and does not
endeavor to avoid them, but shoots straight on
its way and slips through them unsullied.
I. The first point to be noted in this charge
was the inconsistent and fickle attitude of these
critics. Jesus illustrated their spirit and be
havior by the whimsical conduct of capricious
children in their play. When such children were
solicited with a lively air, they refused to dance,
and when the gay music was turned to a sad
minor dirge they refused to weep. Nothing
would suit them; they were bound to be con
trary. This fickleness, Jesus declared, explained the
conduct of the Jews in their reception of John
the Baptist and of himself. John came as an
ascetic, and they would not have him, but
charged him with having a demon, a popular
way of explaining any real or apparent madness.
Jesus, as if to meet their objection, came
mingling in their social life, and they said he was
a drunkard. Come as they might, the prophets
of God were bound to be rejected by such people.
Nothing could please them because they would
not be pleased. There was a deep antagonism
in their hearts against all the messengers and

A GRAVE CHARGE 81
messages of God, and, if not for one excuse then
for another, they would reject them.
It is always easy to find fault when we will
not be pleased. The preaching may be varied to
meet the most fanciful and finical tastes, but it
will never suit if there is secret opposition in the
heart. It is no trouble for men to find excuses
for not receiving the gospel if they do not want
to obey it; any pretext will then be good enough.
In whatever light Christ is presented to them
they will turn away, for the real root of their
actions is that they will not have this man to
reign over them.
II. The charge of these Jews against Jesus
was the perversion of a basis of fact. "The Son
of man is come eating and drinking": that was
the fact which Jesus himself admitted; "and ye
say, Behold, a gluttonous man and a wine-
bibber": that was their inference and perver
sion. They were not in a condition of mind to
see the facts sharply and state them accurately,
but they mixed them up with their own mental
states, they colored them with their own preju
dice and enmity; and thus they turned a sober
and pure life into a scandal andi painted the
whitest character of history in? the blackest
colors. -
This is in accordance with the* psychological
law that we see things, not as they are, but as

82 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
we are; that is, we necessarily perceive things
through our own mental states as through a
colored lens that tinges all the light that streams
through it. This, however, does not relieve us
from responsibility, for we are responsible for
our mental states or disposition of mind and
heart as much as for our separate judgments.
It is this evil light within us that is the source
of much of the error and falsehood and vitupera
tion among men. There is generally a basis of
fact in these things; rarely is a lie ever "cut out
of the whole cloth," but a patch of truth is
taken and set in false connections and dyed in
deceptive colors, and it is this element of fact
that gives a lie its semblance of truth and its
power to do harm.
A perfectly innocent word or act may thus be
perverted until it wears the aspect of the gravest
misconduct. Political slander and social gossip
feed on this perversion of fact, turning a grain of
truth into a mountain of suspicion and misrepre
sentation. It is our duty in judging others first
to clear our own minds of any sinister motive or
evil disposition in order that we may see clearly
and judge justly.
III. The basis of truth in this charge against
Jesus was that he came "eating and drinking":
that is, he entered freely into the social life of
men. He was not a hermit hiding himself in the

A GRAVE CHARGE 83
wilderness, nor an ascetic, denying himself the
comforts of life and indurating himself to harsh
physical conditions.
John the Baptist was such a recluse and
ascetic, as he lived in the desert aloof from men,
clothed in a rough robe of haircloth and eating
locusts and wild honey. Such men have their
place in the world, at least at times, and they
have rendered service as prophets of protest
against a luxurious and pleasure-loving age.
But Jesus did not belong to this type. He was
a social man, living a full human life and
mingling freely with all sorts and conditions of
men. He not only retired into solitude for medi
tation and prayer, but he also sailed on the lake
with fishermen, walked the country roads,
preached in the villages and was familiar with
the streets of the metropolis.
He opened his ministry by entering into the
joys of a wedding festival, he sat at Matthew's
feast, and attended a fashionable social function
at the house of a wealthy Pharisee. He ate the
customary food of men and wore their clothing,
just as he spoke their language. He was em
phatically a man among men, sharing their joys
and sorrows and entering into their daily
experiences. Jesus thus knit himself into all human rela
tions and conditions and was in all points tried

84 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
as they were, and was thereby enabled to win
their sympathy and to save them from their
sin. It was this normal and many-sided but pure
life of Jesus that these Jews perverted into their
wicked charge that he was a man of dissolute
habits and disreputable associations. Their
wicked charge remains only as evidence of their
evil hearts, but his life remains as our pattern
and praise.
We also should live in the world, entering
freely into its many-colored life, enjoying its
pure comforts and pleasures, living in it as the
happy children of God, and yet keeping our
selves unspotted from its evil.
IV. "And wisdom is justified of all her chil
dren," was the concluding remark of Jesus to
the charge of the Jews. John and Jesus, though
so different in their methods, were both right.
Wisdom is varied in its manifestation and has
many children. All truth is one, and yet it may
be unraveled into many strands, as the white
sunlight may be untwisted into all colors. All
prophets do not come clothed in the same dress
and speaking the same accents. God himself
speaks at sundry times and in divers manners.
His wisdom is "manifold" (Eph. 3. 10), many-
colored, richly-variegated, as the Greek word
means.

A GRAVE CHARGE 85
In nature God speaks through sunshine and
through storm, through burning suns and
through globes of dew. In revelation he speaks
through shepherd and king, prince and peasant,
prophets and apostles, through scholars and
fishermen, and in these last days by his Son
through whom streams the brightness of his
glory. His messages come to us as history and as
prophecy, through proverb and poetry, as simple
gospel and as sublime epistle. They come to us
at times glowing warm and tender with love, and
again they are edged with wrath and shoot the
lightning of retribution.
They may reach us through the gorgeous
ritual of the stately cathedral, or through the
unadorned service of a plain meeting house.
They may wear the garb of the Westminster
Confession or of the Thirty-nine Articles. They
may be tinged with the accents of Calvin, or of
Luther, or of Wesley. They may be delivered to
us by Episcopalian bishop, or Presbyterian
preacher, or Methodist exhorter, or Salvation
Army captain.
There is room in the kingdom for differing
gifts and varied forms. No one creed or church
has a monopoly of God's wisdom, and all these
manifold forms are broken lights of him. All his
messages and methods are necessary and good,

86 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
each beautiful in its time and justified of his
children. With so many voices speaking to us, we can
not innocently miss the message of life. And
having received our message, we ought not to
claim that it is the only and exclusive form of
truth, but let divine wisdom speak to other
souls as it will. For "God fulfills himself in
many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt
the world."

CHAPTER XII
A TRAMPLER ON TRADITION
"Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition
of the elders? for they wash not their hands
when they eat bread" (Matt. 15. 2). The ques
tion thus put to Jesus by the Pharisees and
scribes does not seem to raise any vital point or
portend any serious consequences; rather, it
seems quite trivial and innocent; yet it is the
spark of fire that kindled into white heat the
whole issue between him and them; it is the
gleam of the dagger with which they meant to
pierce his heart.
I. The Pharisees and scribes had overlaid the
teachings and rites of the law of Moses with an
immense mass of minute refinements and re
quirements of their own. However at first these
may have been intended to guard the law, they
gradually hid and smothered the law and took
its place as something infinitely more important.
These traditions acquired an authority far ex
ceeding that of the Scripture. "It is a greater
offense," said the Mischna, "to teach anything
contrary to the voice of the rabbis, than to
contradict Scripture itself." "The Bible was like
water, the Traditions like wine, the Commen-
87

88 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
taries on them like spiced wine." These restric
tions were spun around faith and conduct until
they regulated life at every point and in its most
trivial details.
The washing of the hands, to which the Phari
sees referred in their question to Jesus, was not
the ordinary cleansing of the hands, but a
ceremonial requirement of the most complicated
kind. Before eating, the hands had to be washed
by an elaborate process involving many precise
ways of holding them and pouring water on
them and letting it drain and drip off them,
which had to be most carefully and rigidly
observed. There were twenty-six rules for this rite in the
morning alone, and to violate or neglect any one
of them was declared to be a sin as bad as
adultery or murder and worthy of death!
II. It is easy to see what would become of the
spirit of religion when caught in such a system:
it would be constricted to death. The outer
material form gradually buried and crushed the
inner spiritual reality. More and more care
and importance were attached to mechanical
forms and acts and less and less to spiritual
states and deeds.
Not only so, but the mechanical form came to
be used as a deliberate means to kill off spiritual
life and as a mask to hide all manner of wicked-

TRAMPLER ON TRADITION 89
ness. While the Pharisees were so punctilious
and ostentatious in observing their own tradi
tional inventions and were ready to persecute
and even put to death anyone who dared to
neglect them, they were robbing widows, refus
ing to support their parents, and reveling in all
manner of iniquity. They were like sepulchers,
outwardly white but inwardly full of dead men's
bones. This has ever been the tendency of ceremonial
religion. History has repeated itself at this point
again and again. While Christianity started as
a simple spiritual system, yet it soon revived the
process of elaborating the outward form and
gradually grew into the most splendid spec
tacular system the world ever saw. The Temple
at Jerusalem which Jesus swept away is out
shone by Saint Peter's in Rome, that surpasses
it many fold in material glory.
And still is it true that as the outer form
grows in complexity and richness the inner spirit
is likely to wane in purity and power. Ritualistic
religion can hardly escape the tendency to put
the shadow in place of the substance, to insist
upon and trust in the outer form while the inner
life grows worldly and proud, unspiritual and
sensual. III. What did Jesus say in answer to this
apparently innocent question as to the practice

90 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
of his disciples? It seemed to be only a trivial
matter of personal habit, but he discerned its
true import and far-reaching consequences. It
was a critical moment with him; he stood facing
a temptation as perilous as that which assailed
him in the wilderness. He must either yield to
these Pharisees, or stand up squarely against
them. His kingdom was at stake, and he faced
the Pharisees as boldly as he had faced the
devil. "And he answered and said unto them, Why
do ye also transgress the commandment of God
because of your tradition?" He then charged
them with having set aside and violated one of
the Ten Commandments of Moses, even the one
bidding them to honor father and mother, with
their cunning devices, again denounced them for
having "made void the Word of God because of
your tradition," and quoted Isaiah against
them. Then calling the multitude he cried out,
as if to all the world, "Hear, and understand:
Not that which entereth into the mouth defileth
the man; but that which proceedeth out of the
mouth, this defileth the man." Not that which
is outside a man and passes into his body can
do him any spiritual harm; but that which is
inside and comes out of his heart.
Thus Jesus boldly broke with the Pharisees
and trampled upon their human traditions. He

TRAMPLER ON TRADITION 91
would have none of their petty rules and regula
tions as a necessary condition of living a reli
gious life.
It is true that he observed and instituted
simple ordinances himself, but these were only
means to an end and not the end itself. His
kingdom did not consist in meat and drink, ordi
nances and ceremonies, images and incense and
all the gorgeous spectacle of the stately temple
or cathedral, but in righteousness and peace, a
pure heart and a right life.
The answer he gave that day was a turning
point in his career. It shattered the whole
Pharisaic system and made him a terrible
heretic. From that hour he was a doomed man
in their eyes. So deeply were they wounded, so
open was their resentment, that the alarmed
disciples said to Jesus, "Knowest thou that the
Pharisees were offended, when they heard that
saying?" Jesus well knew the price he would have to
pay, but he calmly answered, "Every plant
which my heavenly Father planted not, shall be
rooted up." He was teaching, not simply for
that time, but for all time, and foresaw the
final victory.
IV. Tradition has its place in religion, as in
all things else. It stores up the accumulated
experience and wisdom of the past and hands it

92 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
down to us as our precious inheritance. The
race would never get forward if every generation
had to begin at the beginning.
The Bible is simply so much tradition: it is
the religious experience of the chosen people as
recorded and interpreted for us by prophets and
apostles. As such it is of immense value to us,
saving us from fighting our way up out of
heathenism and planting our feet on the sum
mits of Christian truth and attainment won by
illuminated and holy men.
Jesus himself used tradition. He did not cast
away all that had been done by Moses and
Isaiah and begin anew, but he adopted and
adapted their materials; he introduced his reli
gion, not by revolution, but by evolution.
Nevertheless, tradition has its limits and
dangers. It is to be used as so much valuable
material for further building, but not as a fixed
and finished structure. It furnishes us with
seeds and roots, but these are not to be kept
from sprouting: they are to be made grow into
their proper flower and fruit.
When tradition is used as a bond to bind our
brains and constrict our hearts, when it becomes
an artificial system of human invention and not
a vital breath of the Spirit, then we are to break
through and trample upon it that we may win
our liberty and right to grow.

TRAMPLER ON TRADITION 93
Tradition must always be tested by truth and
life. It is only one of many means to an end
and never the end itself; and that end is the
kingdom of God within us, or an inner well of
experience ever springing up into fresh life.

CHAPTER Xin
THE DEMAND FOR A SIGN
"The Pharisees and Sadducees came, and
trying him asked him to show them a sign from
heaven" (Matt. 16. 1). Here the enemies of
Jesus presented themselves before him wearing
the mask of honest inquiry after the truth. They
feigned themselves anxious to have all doubts
swept from their minds by one convincing
demonstration, and then they would yield to
Jesus as their Messiah.
I. But whatever their outward appearance of
sincerity, their mutual relations were against
them. For the first time Pharisees and Saddu
cees combined against Jesus.
These two parties were mutual enemies. The
Pharisees represented Jewish orthodoxy and
patriotism, holding strictly to traditional Juda
ism and abhorring the Roman yoke, and the
Sadducees were liberals and Roman adherents,
holding loosely to orthodoxy and standing in
with the Romans and enjoying worldly place
and power. The bigoted Pharisees were as
furious in their fanaticism against the Sadducees
as they were against the Romans, viewing them
as despicable heretics and traitors.
94

THE DEMAND FOR A SIGN 95
But on this occasion we find these two parties
united in their attack on Jesus. The Pharisees
were against Jesus because he trampled on their
traditionalism, and the Sadducees were against
him because they feared he would endanger
their relations with the Romans and cause them
to lose their offices. A common enmity thus
made them friends.
Religion, like politics, sometimes makes
strange bedfellows. Men of the most diverse
interests and tastes and even of mutual enmity
will unite to oppose a minister or a movement
they dislike or fear.
H. The motive, also, of these enemies was
wrong and incapacitated them for seeing the
truth. They came tempting Jesus. Their object
was not to know the truth, but to wreak their
vengeance; not to understand the teaching, but
to entrap the Teacher.
This motive made it psychologically impossi
ble for them to be honest in their inquiry. Then-
feigned sincerity was only a mask on their faces
and behind it lurked bitter enmity and even
murder. An open mind and sincere spirit is the neces
sary condition of knowing the truth in any field,
but especially in religion. No amount of evi
dence will convince one who will not be con
vinced.

96 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
Faith in Jesus Christ is largely a matter of
personal disposition and mood, humility and
teachableness, and a sense of spiritual need. A
bigoted mind and proud, worldly heart will be
impervious to the kind of evidence and influence
that brings a soul into harmony and fellowship
with him.
Ill These hypocritical inquirers further dis
closed their real spirit by their demand for "a
sign from heaven." Jesus had already performed
miracles and they had seen some of them and
acknowledged their genuineness. They had seen
him heal a withered arm and cast out evil
spirits, and had been forced to frame some
theory for his miraculous power.
Still they were not satisfied. These works be
longed to the earth and did not rise to the
highest level of the miraculous. They believed
that even devils could do such things. Why
would he not give them signs in the sun and
moon like Joshua, or fire from heaven like
Elijah, or turn the sun back in its course like
Isaiah? Let him show that the very stars would
madly leap from their spheres at his bidding and
they would believe on him !
Thus men whose hearts are not in sympathy
with truth may seek further evidence to per
suade them of what they will not believe. Dives
in the parable thought that his brethren, who

THE DEMAND FOR A SIGN 97
would not believe Moses and the prophets,
would yet believe a ghostly messenger from the
lost. Many men still think they would believe
if they were vouchsafed some startling prodigy
on the earth or in the heavens.
But the trouble in such cases lies not in the
evidence but in the state of mind and heart that
will not see the truth. We can see only what we
have affinity with, only what our natures will let
us see, and when we have blind eyes no out
burst of light, though it emblazon the heavens,
will make us see.
IV. Jesus answered the inquiry of these
Pharisees and Sadducees out of their own expe
rience. He began with them on the ground right
under their feet and led them on to a convincing
conclusion. They were weather experts and could discern
the signs of the sky. A red evening sky meant
fair weather the next day, but a red morning
sky meant foul weather that day. They were
shrewd at interpreting the meaning of these
signs; "but ye cannot discern the signs of the
times." They were keen-eyed and expert in the
region of sunshine and cloud and rain, but were
undiscerning and dull in the region of the moral
and spiritual. Were there not signs enough
around them in the decadence of their religion
and in the bondage of their country to open

98 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
their eyes to their need of such a Teacher and
Saviour as Jesus was?
It is often the case that we are looking up into
heaven for a sign when signs more significant
than would be a blinding light from the sky are
written all around us. God is in the ordinary
course of events as truly as in extraordinary
happenings. The daily rising of the sun and the
nightly march of the stars are as stupendous a
sign and proof of his presence and providence as
it would be if the sun were turned back in its
orbit or the stars were to leap from their courses.
The whole web of events that make up our
human world discloses a pattern of divine pur
pose, and every single thread is spun of divine
law and love. The world rightly seen is not an
opaque screen to hide God from us, but it is his
transparent garment, or it is his very breath and
will in which we live and move and have our
being. We need no signs of multiplied loaves or
hushed stormy sea or halting sun or dead raised
to life: we only need opened eyes to see the
ordinary world and it will blaze before our dis
cerning vision with the presence and purpose
and splendor of God.
Men are often expert at reading the signs of
the weather, or of the markets; they are keen
and shrewd in business, or profound in their

THE DEMAND FOR A SIGN 99
knowledge of nature; they may unravel the sun
and untwist the light from the farthest star, and
yet be dull and blind to the great moral and
spiritual verities of life. We need ever to pray
that our eyes may be opened that we may see
wondrous things.
V. Jesus "sighed deeply in his spirit" at this
demand of his enemies and said, "An evil and
adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and
there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign
of Jonah." It caused him a pang of sorrow to
see men so deeply astray in their spiritual under
standing and demands, so blinded by their own
falseness. No such sign as they asked would be
given them, for it would do them no good. No
other sign would be given them than that of
Jonah, and this sign was his preaching of re
pentance. This shows us the valuation Jesus put upon
his own miracles: they were not the vital factors
in his ministry; they would not convert or even
convince men. He used them, for they had their
place, but he used them sparingly and kept them
in the background. Had they been essential to
the gospel, they would have been perpetuated
down through the centuries; but they were em
ployed only temporarily and then withdrawn.
The true and convincing and perpetual sign
of the Saviourhood of Jesus Christ is his message

100 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
and ministry, his character and teaching, his
forgiveness and healing, his truth and trust,
goodness and gentleness and love, his sympathy
and service and sacrifice. The great fact about
him is not that he rose from the dead, but that
he was what he was before and after he had
risen, and that he is the same yesterday, to
day, and forever.
Jesus himself is the great sign God has given
us that he has sent his Son into the world. Our
great need is to get into sympathetic relations
with him and see him as he is. If we believe not
him, neither would we believe though the sun
dropped from the sky or one rose from the
dead.

CHAPTER XIV
WHITHER WILL THIS MAN GO?
The boldness of Jesus in breaking with their
traditions had now brought the growing sus
picion and opposition of the Pharisees and
scribes to a head, and they determined to seize
him. Petty officers were sent to arrest him when
he was present in Jerusalem at the Feast of
Tabernacles (John 7), and the appearance of
these policemen led Jesus to say to the Jews,
"Yet a little while am I with you, and I go unto
him that sent me. Ye shall seek me, and shall
not find me: and where I am ye cannot come."
These strange words drew from the Jews the
wondering exclamation, "Whither will this man
go? . . . will he go unto the Dispersion among
the Greeks, and teach the Greeks?"
I. Thus Jesus warned the Jews that he was
going away from them and would leave them
behind. They were the chosen people who had
been trained for generations to receive the
promised Messiah. Moses and the law, prophet
and priest, temple and sacrifice, had been given
to them as school masters to educate them into
such spiritual preparation that they would be fit
scholars for the coming Teacher or good soil
101

102 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
into which to drop the precious Corn of Wheat
that was to produce the Bread of Life for the
world. But the children of a rich inheritance often
fail to appreciate their privilege. The superior
means and opportunities bestowed upon them
swell them into pride in themselves and haughti.
ness over less richly gifted ones, blind them to
their dependence and their duty, and lead them
to misuse their inheritance and turn it into a
means of destruction to themselves.
The Jews illustrated these fatal tendencies
above any other people in the world. Carried up
to the highest mount of spiritual privilege, their
pride blinded them to their glorious opportunity
and cast them down to the lowest depth of ruin
and dishonor.
Yet their blindness could not stop the shining
of the Light of the world. Jesus, their own Mes
siah, could not let the wheels of his chariot be
blocked by their unbelief. If he could not go on
with them, he must go on without them. The
path of his duty and destiny was plain. The
cross stood with outstretched arms just before
him, but beyond it opened the gates into the
City of God and home of his Father, and
through those portals he would pass, though his
unfaithful people could not follow.
The same fateful law still operates in every

WHITHER WILL HE GO? 103
field of life. Our inheritance will not save us if
we are false to it; we may turn our very privilege
to a curse, and Christ will leave the proud and
disobedient behind in his onward march.
II. "Whither will this man go?" was the
question that kept working in the mind of the
Jews. They felt that he must go somewhere,
that he had in him powers and destinies that
would carry him beyond the ordinary into the
unexpected and great. "Will he go unto the
Dispersion among the Greeks, and teach the
Greeks?" Unwittingly they hit upon the very truth.
The Dispersion was the body of Jews then
scattered abroad in the Gentile world, and these
Jews wondered if Jesus might go to them and
thereby teach the Greeks themselves. They
despised all Gentiles, as a less favored breed, and
yet they could not have been wholly blind to the
intellectual superiority of the Greeks. Might it
be possible that this strange Prophet would
leave them and go to Athens and Corinth and
teach those brilliant people? Already they felt
their special privileges slipping out of their own
into other hands.
This is ever the fate of inheritance misused
and of privilege turned to pride. The inheritance
is scattered, and the special privileges and op
portunities pass to others. This is often sadly

104 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
illustrated in the second generation of those
who have suddenly become rich, and sooner or
later special classes are put down and their
power distributed among the people.
The judgment was frequently flung in the face
of the proud, self-righteous Jews that publicans
and harlots, the most despised and degraded
classes, would pass into the kingdom of God and
they themselves be shut out, and this judgment
still awaits all those that are unfaithful.
III. "Will he teach the Greeks?" This is
just what he did. The gospel could not be bound
by Jewish unbelief and unfaithfulness, and im
mediately crossed the narrow confines of the
Holy Land into the regions round about.
No sooner had it passed the border than it
was among the Greeks, then the most gifted
people of the world. Paul himself, the first
apostle to the Gentiles, was born in a Greek
city and was at home in the Greek language
and literature and civilization. He passed
through Asia Minor, populous with Greek cities,
into Europe, and was soon standing in Athens
and Corinth, and in these commanding centers
of Greek culture and art was preaching the
gospel of Jesus Christ. He commented upon the
many religious altars in Athens and quoted
Greek poets and adapted the gospel to the
Greek mind.

WHITHER WILL HE GO? 105
It is true that some hearers scoffed, but
others believed, and the gospel took root and
began to grow on that soil. And what a rich soil
it was and what fruitage it bore ! In a short time
a circle of Greek Christian churches shone like
points of light around the eastern Mediter
ranean, and these were the first victories that
led to the conquest of the Roman Empire.
Mightier still were the contributions of the
Greeks to the spread and development of the
gospel. It was largely on Greek soil and wholly
in the Greek language that the New Testament
was written. This most wonderful book in all
the literature of the world began when Paul put
his pen to parchment in Corinth to write his First
Epistle to the Thessalonians, and it was ended
in a Greek city when John finished his Gospel.
Thus the Jews were denied the privilege of
putting a single book into the New Testament
in their own language, and this immortal honor
went to the despised Greeks. The Greek tongue,
then the universal language of the world and the
most beautiful language ever written, with its
marvelous flexibility and facility for expressing
every shape and shade of thought, and its mellif
luous fluency and music and charm, became
the wings that carried the gospel far and wide
over that ancient world and brought it down to
us.

106 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
The Greeks also made important theological
and philosophical contributions to the develop
ment of the gospel and became powerful advo
cates and eloquent preachers of it. Thus the
Jews spoke better than they knew when they
said, "Will he go among the Greeks and teach
the Greeks?" Verily, he did teach the Greeks
and through them has taught the world.
IV. "Whither will this man go?" Still the
question confronts us and still it is fraught with
immense possibilities. Jesus Christ, having gone
from the Jews to the Greeks, went on to the
Romans, and by similar steps passed down
through the centuries and out over the world.
He marched through the mighty Roman Em
pire and brought every part of it more or less
under his influence until a Christian emperor
sat on its throne. He threaded German forests,
and crossed Russian steppes, English moors, and
Scottish highlands. He leaped the Atlantic and
seized the Americas. He has been in the van in
every enlargement of the world through ex
ploration and discovery and through the spread
of population.
Whither is he going to-day? He is striding
across the scorching plains of India, invading
the populous provinces of China, seizing Japan
and all the islands of the sea, and penetrating
the vast forests and densest jungles of Africa.

WHITHER WILL HE GO? 107
He is going everywhere around the globe, and
no mountain fastness or obscurest valley or re
motest island can escape his presence. All conti
nents and climates, tropic heat and arctic ice,
all racial lines and social classes, are indifferent
to him — he is after human hearts and will go to
the ends of the earth for a single soul.
¦This Man has in him boundless powers, a
mighty passion of love, and he will go whither
soever he will. Yet his divine sovereignty is
limited by human free agency, and the main
personal question with us every one is whether
he will come unobstructed and welcomed into
our hearts, or leave us in our unbelief and pass
on.

CHAPTER XV
AN INCOMPARABLE SPEAKER
When the officers of the Sanhedrin sent to
arrest Jesus came back without him but with the
report, "Never man spake like this man," they
pronounced upon him a eulogy that still shines
as a bright jewel in his crown. What are some of
the points in which Jesus stands unique and
unapproachable among men as a speaker?
I. His speech was marked by simplicity.
Specialists invent technical terms to express
their ideas and thus develop a vocabulary that
may be unintelligible to the uninitiated reader
or hearer.
Theologians have been much given to framing
terms that are not understood by the common
people. This theological language creeps into
the pulpit and colors its sermons, and often
darkens them with obscurity. Great preachers
have been distinguished by their freedom from
such terms and by their simplicity of style. To
strike home to people through their own speech
is an art that almost amounts to genius.
Jesus was preeminent in this art. His sermons
were free from learned words and abstruse argu
ments, and were expressed in the vernacular of
108

AN INCOMPARABLE SPEAKER 109
everyday life. He had no religious cant, such as
the Pharisees used, but spoke in the language of
the home and the street. He talked about reli
gion just as men talked about farming and fish
ing, so that the common people heard him gladly.
It takes a trained intellect to understand
Plato or Leibnitz, but a peasant or a child can
understand Jesus; and this simplicity has been
a powerful factor in sending his words over the
world. n. The speech of Jesus was marked by
popular effectiveness. Great thinkers are rarely
good speakers. Immanuel Kant could not speak
five words in public, and some of the most
famous scholars would be dumb before an
audience. Professor James, the most popular
psychologist of our day, was exceedingly bril
liant and eloquent with his pen, but he stumbled
with his tongue.
Jesus was a great speaker in the sense that he
was tremendously effective with a popular audi
ence. He drew great crowds that hung upon his
lips. The people thronged after him, and when
he stopped on the seashore the gathering multi
tude soon crowded him off the beach into a boat,
while it filled the vast amphitheater of the hills.
One secret of his power was his gift of popular
exposition and illustration of religious truth. He
drew his illustrations out of the lives and expe-

110 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
rience of his hearers. Field and forest and flower,
fishing net and lost coin and bread were turned
into preachers of his gospel and became lumi
nous and eloquent with religious truth. This
brought his teaching home to every one's busi
ness and bosom, and such teaching drew the
people as a powerful magnet, and such teaching
always will draw.
III. The teaching of Jesus was marked by
originality. Most men simply repeat and re
iterate what others have said and has become
the common stock of knowledge. Practically all
our thoughts are quotations from other minds;
they were born in other brains and cradled in
other hearts; we simply inherit and absorb
them. A really original mind that creates new
truth and kindles a great intellectual fight in the
world is exceedingly rare, perhaps not more than
one in a hundred or even a thousand years.
Jesus was preeminently an original teacher.
Although the germs of his teaching can be found
elsewhere, yet he was strikingly original in his
independence and intuition. The Pharisees were
fossilized traditionalists, repeating over and
over again what had been said by them "of old
time" and never daring to say anything of them
selves. Jesus boldly repudiated this traditional
system and taught truth on his own authority.
He did not hesitate to correct Moses and to set

AN INCOMPARABLE SPEAKER 111
himself above the prophets. His independence
of spirit was magnificent, and he was thus the
pioneer and paragon of all those that would
think for themselves.
His originality was most deeply manifested in
his intuitional insight into truth. He did not get
his truth from others, not even from Moses and
the prophets; did not deduce it by logical
processes, constructing elaborate arguments to
prove the truth; but he simply declared it.
There is very little of what we call reasoning in
the speech of Jesus, but there is a great deal of
announcement. He looked directly into the
heart of truth and then simply reported what
he saw.
He did not reason about God: he knew God
and spoke of him out of his personal experience
of the Father. He did not speculate about im
mortality and gather hints and hopes of it after
the manner of the Greek philosophers; but he
knew the other world as he knew this world and
spoke with the certainty and confidence of an
eyewitness. Jesus did not have to go back to Moses or to
any other teacher to learn about religion: he
was himself a fountain of religious experience
and knowledge, and his highest authority was,
"We speak that we do know, and testify that
we have seen."

112 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
This original experiential knowledge of reli
gion, as contrasted with derived and traditional
knowledge of it, is one of our greatest religious
needs. IV. The teaching of Jesus was marked by
reality. Much of our religious speech is infected
with unreality in the form of exaggeration,
heated imagination, personal bias and partisan
ship, self-conscious coloring or conceit, and
especially of cant, which consists in saying
things which have become orthodox and conven
tional, but which we do not really know and
feel. Jesus was free from all unreality. He never
taught anything because it was orthodox, or be
cause his hearers believed it and expected him
to say it; he never uttered a word for effect. All
his speech was marked by transparent sincerity
and earnestness, and this gave a tone of reality
to his teaching. His hearers felt that what he
was saying was the simple truth and there was
no escaping it.
Another fact in his teaching that gave it
reality was his constant appeal to the experience
of his hearers. He did not bring down to them
as out of heaven some high truth of a strange
and foreign aspect which he tried to impose upon
them, but he brought his truth right up out of
their own hearts and lives. "What man of you"

AN INCOMPARABLE SPEAKER 113
does not know this, or would not do this? was
a favorite form of appeal with him. He showed
his hearers that what he was urging upon them
in religion was just what they were doing in
their own fields and homes.
Our preaching is in constant danger of slipping
off the earth and escaping up into the air, where
as we should keep it down on the ground and
make our religion as real as our business and
bread. V. The speech of Jesus was marked by sin
cerity. Human speech is a very subtle medium
of expression and is quick to catch the faintest
coloring of the soul. If there is any insincerity,
deception, selfish or sinister purpose in the
heart, however deeply it may be hidden and
deftly it may be concealed it will affect the voice
and ooze through the very features of the face.
No one can long be one thing in his heart and
another thing with his tongue. "I cannot hear
what you say," says Emerson, "for what you
are." "No man," says Dr. Denny, "can give at
once the impression that he is clever and that
Christ is mighty to save." He may show himself
clever or Christ mighty, but he cannot do both.
But when heart and voice are one the whole
soul flows out in an undivided stream. Tongue
and eye and facial expression tell one story and
speak the total power of the man.

114 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
The same words may be uttered by two
speakers with the widest difference in power,
and this difference is rooted back in the souls of
the speakers : the one may be a little soul, divided
with insincerity and seamed with selfishness,
and the other is a big soul, unified and molten
with a single glowing thought and purpose.
Speech comes out of such a soul, as the stream
of molten metal out of a furnace, and burns its
way into the hearts of hearers and fills them full,
as the metal fills the molds.
Jesus was a great soul unified with absolute
sincerity. With him heart and tongue, thought
and words were one, and his speech came out in
a solid glowing stream that flowed, mighty as a
river yet gentle as a rivulet, into the hearts of
his hearers and out over the world.
Sincerity is a necessary condition of power in
any kind of speech, but especially is it necessary
in preaching the gospel.
VI. The speech of Jesus was marked by
symmetry. It was balanced and sane, running
to no extreme and holding all parts of a subject
at poise around its true center.
Most men are more or less one-sided and ill-
balanced, running to one extreme or another,
putting too much emphasis on one point or
shading off another. So it comes to pass that we
have contending parties and schools, conserva-

AN INCOMPARABLE SPEAKER 115
tives and radicals, on all subjects, each with its
own little fragment or angle of the truth, and all
clashing in general contradiction and confusion.
Hence also we have eccentric men and cranks
who lose balance and fly off at all kinds of
tangents. "How a man will do," says Horace
Bushnell, "when he engages only in some one
reform, acting from his own human force; the
fuming, storming frenzy, the holy rage and
tragic smoke of his violence, how he kindles
against opposition, grows bitter and restive be
cause of delay, and finally comes to maturity in
a character thoroughly detestable — all this we
know. But Christ, with all the world upon his
hands, and a reform to be carried out in almost
everything, is yet as quiet and cordial, and as
little in the attitude of bitterness or impatience*
as if all hearts were with him, or the work
already done: so perfect is the balance of his
feeling, so intuitively moderated is it by wisdom
not human."
Standing at the center of all truth in calm
poise, he held all elements in their perfect pro
portion and balance and judged righteous judg
ment. VH. The speech of Jesus was marked by
universality. All men are subject to the limita
tion of their age, race, and thought. Plato was
Greek, Luther was German, and Lincoln wa§

116 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
American. No man can jump out of his own skin
or escape out of the envelope of the age in which
he was born. Paul was a Jew in the texture of
his thought down to the last line he wrote.
Jesus Christ did escape these limitations and
belongs equally to all ages and all classes and
conditions of men. He was no parochial school
master, but, standing on the shores of Galilee,
the earth was his amphitheater and humanity
his audience. He did not tie himself up to any
temporal condition or theory, scientific, politi
cal, social or religious, but he uttered universal
truths that are just as true and as adapted to
our conditions to-day as they were adapted to
the day in which they were uttered. His essen
tial teachings can never go out of date and
become obsolete, because they contain no tem
poral but only universal elements.
His teachings are also universal because they
speak to the universal needs of men. Specialists
always speak to a limited class of men or to a
special fraction of man. The metaphysician and
scientist speak to the intellect, the poet to the
imagination, the artist to the aesthetic emotions;
and thus Kant and Darwin and Shakespeare and
Angelo touch each one only a fractional man.
Especially do these men fail to pierce to the
deepest needs of the soul and pour healing and
life into its wounds.

AN INCOMPARABLE SPEAKER 117
Christ speaks to the total man. He touches
the problems with which the metaphysician
deals, enlists the interest of the student of na
ture, kindles the imagination of the poet, and
draws from artistic genius its most glorious
masterpieces of art. But especially does he reach
our great practical needs, our sin and suffering
and sorrow, and give us healing and life.
Because of his universality in the range of his
audience and in the width and depth of his
message it will ever be true that never man
spake like this Man.
Vin. Finally, never man spake like this Man
in power. The test of words is deeds. Speech
that does not do anything is simply so much
troubled air. "God said, Let there be light: and
there was light" : that is the kind of speech that
counts. Many men have spoken, but how few men
have wrought? All really great speakers have
been great doers. They spoke, and shaped their
words into swords and shields and empires, into
fortune, fame, and immortality. Greek orators
spoke, and Asiatic hordes staggered back in
confusion from their coasts. Roman generals
spoke, and a world empire rose around the
Mediterranean shores. Luther spoke, and the
grip of papal despotism was broken. Napoleon
spoke, and the Alps fell flat and the boundaries

118 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
of empires oscillated on the map. Lincoln spoke,
and the fetters of the slave were shattered.
But there were some words these men of might
could not speak. They could not speak pardon
to a guilty soul and peace to a troubled heart.
Jesus Christ spoke, and the stormy sea grew
still and the dead rose from their graves. He
spoke, and the burden of guilt dropped off human
hearts and souls were cleansed into purity and
peace. He spoke, and the Kingdom of God began
to rise in the world. He spoke, and old empires
were lifted off their hinges and the stream of
the centuries was thrown into a new channel.
He still speaks, and at his bidding ministers
and missionaries go forth to preach his gospel,
and churches, schools, and hospitals arise in
every land. He speaks, and our whole civiliza
tion is being troubled and transformed with a
new spirit that will yet cast out its evils and
build it into the City of God.
All these points combine to prove the verdict
of the Jewish officers that "Never man spake
like this man." Such a Speaker has something
to say to us that we should all hear and give to
it our most earnest and loving heed. We cannot
turn a deaf or indifferent ear to this Man and
be as good as ever. In the Day of Judgment his
words will rise up against us and condemn us.
But,hearing him now,his words are spirit and life.

CHAPTER XVI
HAVE ANY OF THE RULERS BELIEVED
ON HIM?
The officers who were sent to seize Jesus but
returned without him, saying, "Never man
spake like this man," received a cold reception
and a haughty rebuke.
I. "Are ye also led astray?" demanded the
Pharisees and scribes. "Hath any of the rulers
believed on him, or of the Pharisees? But this
multitude that knoweth not the law are ac
cursed." The whole speech breathes the air of proud
contempt and scorn for these men. What right
had they to any opinion on a religious subject
which the rulers, especially the Pharisees, had
not sanctioned? They were simply petty menials
who had no other duties or rights than to accept
the dictates and do the bidding of their su
periors. The word "multitude" which the Pharisees
applied to them was a term of contempt, mean
ing the mob or vulgar rabble. Such a crowd was
to be ruthlessly put down and kept down. That
such men should be permitted to think and
119

120 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
speak on their own account was against all
tradition and precedent.
Yet here were these petty officers presuming
to tell the Pharisees what they thought of "this
man," and even to declare their belief in his in
comparable greatness as a speaker and to hint
that he passed human limitations and rose into
the divine. Such presumption was intolerable
and must be rebuked and stopped. Let these
vulgar fellows be made to understand their place
and keep respectful silence in the presence of
their superiors. Nobody has a right to believe
or say anything until the rulers and Pharisees
have spoken.
Such was ecclesiastical authority in that day,
and such has it ever tended to be. Place and
power of all kinds are apt to make men over
bearing and despotic. "Authority intoxicates
and makes men giddy, proud and vain"; and
"man, proud man, dressed in a little brief
authority, plays such fantastic tricks before high
heaven, as make the angels weep."
But of all the different kinds of authority none
seems to make men more haughty and imperious
than ecclesiastical office. The hierarchical form
of church government, developing into prelacy
and culminating in the logical climax of the
papacy, has illustrated this tendency. The early
Christian Church gradually lost its democratic

HAVE THE RULERS BELIEVED? 121
spirit and forms and grew into a monarchical
system that matched and rivaled that of the
Roman empire. It usurped the right of private
judgment and began to impose its dictates upon
belief and conduct, finally setting upon these the
seal of its infallibility.
It thus deprived the people of liberty of
thought and bound the human brain with its
dogmas. It became the greatest despotism of
history and shackled the minds and consciences
of millions of men and of nations.
The same tendency lurks in us; there is a
little Pope in every one of us, and it is often
hard for us to let others who differ from us think
as they will.
H. Yet these rulers and Pharisees could not
keep these menial servants down. They heard
Jesus speak and were irresistibly captivated
by the sincerity and truth and power of his
speech and personality so that they could not
but testify to the authorities that sent them to
arrest him. "Never man spake like this man."
This was the early budding of private judg
ment, a bit of original thinking, the perception
of their own minds, the conviction of their con
sciences. They had come into contact with Jesus
at first hand and lost their sense of subjection
to the rulers and Pharisees. Something of his
Spirit passed into them and quickened their

122 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
minds and hearts so as to stir them into inde
pendent action. Despised and trodden upon as
belonging to the ignorant and accursed "multi
tude," they suddenly stood upon their own feet,
faced the Pharisees and defied their authority.
There was something brave and splendid in
their action that day, and it was prophetic of the
rise of the multitude against despotic authority
and power that has been the great phenomenon
of modern times. Though this spirit of ecclesi
astical despotism fastened itself upon the Chris
tian Church and bound it as with bands of iron,
yet there was always in the common people a
sense of its injustice and a feeling of resentment
and revolt against it.
This lay concealed and silent for centuries
and only occasionally found expression in some
leader or scholar who stood up as a protest
agamst it, until the hour struck when Luther
thundered the truth of liberty into the ears of
Europe. Then high and mighty prelates and
Popes sneered at the "accursed multitude," who
presumed to rise agamst their superiors, and
launched their anathemas at them, but their
power was shorn. Then men began to stand up
and think and act for themselves. The same
waves of revolt against ecclesiastical tyranny
dashed up against the thrones of kings and they
began to crumble and fall.

HAVE THE RULERS BELIEVED? 123
And so Popes and kings have not been able to
keep the "accursed multitude" down. The com
mon people have come to a sense of their rights
and power and are exercising them in all fields.
Out of the great deeps of humanity rise the most
powerful movements in the progress of the race.
No idea becomes big and potent until it lays
hold of the people and gets their power be
hind it.
And all this unfettering of the people and
arousing them to a sense of their right and
might has been largely due to the speech and
Spirit of the same "Man" that inspired these
petty servants and made them brave to defy the
rulers and Pharisees.
HI. Not only could the rulers and Pharisees
not keep the multitude from using their own
judgment and believing on Jesus, but they could
not keep the same spirit from invading their own
circle and infecting their own members.
At this point Nicodemus spoke up in defense
of the new prophet. "Doth our law," he in
quired, "judge a man, except it first hear from
himself and know what he doeth?" The inquiry
was perfectly fair and is an illustration of how
reasonable Christianity is in its whole teaching
and spirit. Its invitation is, "Come and see,"
and it simply asks for a chance to make its pre
cepts and promises good.

124 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
But this frankly reasonable inquiry only
threw these bigoted Pharisees into a more
terrible rage, and they turned upon Nicodemus
with the bitter sneer, "Art thou also of Galilee?
Search, and see that out of Galilee ariseth no
prophet." Thus revolt against their despotism
was breaking out in their own number, the new
prophet was gaining sympathy if not converts
among themselves, and it was already coming
to pass that rulers and Pharisees were believing
him. And verily Jesus Christ has gained converts
among the rulers of men from that day to this.
Paul, another ruler of the Jews, and one of the
greatest men of his age and of all ages, soon
laid his splendid powers at the feet of Jesus and
preached the faith he had once sought to de
stroy, and other great scholars and eloquent
preachers in the early centuries followed in the
same path. The gospel worked its way up from
the peasant's cottage into the palace, and in
three centuries a Christian emperor sat on the
throne of Rome.
Jesus Christ has had influential rulers among
his followers in every age, and in modern times
many of the greatest leaders in every field of life,
scholars, scientists, historians, poets, generals,
statesmen, have humbly confessed him as their
Lord.

HAVE THE RULERS BELIEVED? 125
No religion or movement could last that did
not stand the test of reason and scholarship;
thinkers rule the world in the long run, and this
ancient sneer of the Pharisees, "Hath any of
the rulers believed on him?" has been answered
by a great chorus of wise men in all ages who
have loyally believed on and followed him.

CHAPTER XVH
A WITNESS TO HIMSELF
"Thou bearest witness of thyself; thy wit
ness is not true" (John 8. 13). The Pharisees
flung this charge at Jesus. Is it a true principle
of criticism and does it discredit him?
I. It is not a true principle of criticism and
does not discredit him.
Witnessing to one's self is necessary and
enters largely into life. One must pass judgment
on himself. However he may escape the judg
ment of others he cannot escape his own con
science. He may deceive others, but deep in his
own soul he knows his own truth or falsity,
guilt or innocence. He is a direct inner witness
to his own states and acts and knows the truth
about them as no other human being can know.
It is true that one may in a degree pervert
his own judgment of himself; it is subject to all
the subtle influence and coloration of self-in
terest, prejudice and passion. Yet if he is an
honest witness, if he has a soul of sincerity and
truth, he guards against these disturbing ele
ments and sees straight and clear; and though
he is prejudiced and even deeply depraved he
126

A WITNESS TO HIMSELF 127
still cannot be wholly blind to the truth about
himself and knows his own guilt or innocence.
There are certain tests which others apply and
which he can apply to his self-judgment, such
as its consistency, candor, sincerity, and con-
gruity with concurrent facts and subsequent
consequences. When self-judgment stands these
tests it is accepted as of high value.
One not only can and must bear witness to
himself in the secrecy of his heart, but it is
expected and often demanded of him that he
bear this witness publicly. All investigators,
thinkers, teachers, who wish to impart truth and
influence men must publish their thoughts and
give their reasons for them. It is expected of
every man that when vital issues of life arise he
proclaim his stand, and this is a form of bearing
witness to himself.
And when a man falls under any charge or
suspicion, great importance is attached to what
he says about the matter himself. He is ordi
narily expected, if brought to a judicial trial, to
go on the stand and tell his own story. It is
usually counted against a man when he refuses
to do this. But if he goes on the stand and
gives witness to himself that is clear and con
sistent and congruous with all known facts, he
greatly strengthens his own case.
And so the fact that a man bears witness to

128 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
himself is not a just ground of criticism against
him, but, if his witness bears the proper tests,
it counts in his favor, and his witness is accepted
as true.
II It was necessary that Jesus should bear
witness to himself. He came from the Father
bearing a message of supreme importance to
men. How else could he get his message before
the world except by bearing witness to it him
self? If Moses and Isaiah and Plato and all the
prophets and thinkers of the world have illumi
nated it and moved it forward by publishing
their own thoughts and thus bearing witness to
the truth they held, must not the Son of God
himself address the world in the same way and
bear the same witness?
And as Jesus was himself the burning focus
and power of his own message he had to disclose
his personality and heart and let men see what
he was. He therefore declared such fundamental
truths as, "I and my Father are one"; "He that
hath seen me hath seen the Father" ; "I am the
light of the world: he that followeth me shall
not walk in darkness, but shall have the light
of life"; "I am the bread of life"; "I am the
door"; "I am the way, the truth and the life";
"If any man would come after me, let him
deny himself, and take up his cross and follow
me."

A WITNESS TO HIMSELF 129
These central vital truths had to be pro
claimed by Jesus, or they never would have
found entrance into the world. If other men
had to utter their messages, much more was it
necessary that he should tell the truth about
himself. The supreme witness to the truth had
to speak and to stand in the burning center of
his own message, or he would have been un
faithful to the truth and to the world.
in. Jesus bears all the tests of the truth of
his self-witnessing. He had direct inner knowl
edge of the truths he declared. "Even if I bear
witness of myself, my witness is true; for I
know whence I came, and whither I go."
He spoke out of his personal kinship and
fellowship with the Father. He was no second
hand reporter, repeating rumors he had heard
about God, and he was no mere theorizer spin
ning his own subjective web of speculation
about the Infinite and the Absolute, but he
could calmly say, "We speak that we do know,
and bear witness of that we have seen."
Applying all our tests to his testimony, we
find it bears them perfectly at every point. It
is consistent from beginning to end. When
challenged, "Who art thou?" he instantly an
swered, "Even the same that I said unto you
from the beginning." He had no retractions or
corrections to make, no revision of his state-

130 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
ments was needed to harmonize them, but they
all joined nicely together and made one system
of truth throughout.
His teachings bear the inimitable marks of
reality. One cannot read them and feel that
they are the inventions of fiction writers or the
slow growths of legend or myth, but they
breathe the air and speak in the tones of simple
verity. The sincerity and candor and honesty of Jesus
also shine out through all his speech and spirit.
He has none of the arts of a special pleader, has
nothing to conceal, but is perfectly frank and
open. His self-evident truth and honesty, purity
and sensitiveness to right, serenity and sanity,
self-control and balanced judgment, clear vision
and simple speech, are the background of his
witness to himself, the convincing proof that he
is telling the truth.
"Happy is he that condemneth not himself in
that thing which he alloweth." Jesus Christ had
this sure approval of his own white soul, and we
can trust such a Man, even when he tells us that
he is the Son of God and Saviour of the world.
IV. Yet he was not a one in his witness, but
could call majestic confirmation to his word.
"Yea and if I judge," he said to the Pharisees,
"my judgment is true; for I am not alone, but I
and the Father that sent me. I am he that

A WITNESS TO HIMSELF 131
beareth witness of myself, and the Father that
sent me beareth witness of me."
How has this confirmation by the Father been
given? It was given to Jesus in the inner assur
ance of his own fellowship with the Father; it
was given at his baptism in the voice that spoke
from heaven, declaring him to be God's own
Son; it was given during his ministry in the
many wonderful works that flowed from his
hands and in his gracious words of healing and
comfort, forgiveness and salvation; it was glori
ously manifested in the great sign God gave him
in raising him from the dead; and it was given
him when at his ascension he went back to his
Father and his heavenly glory.
And down through all the centuries God has
confirmed the witness of Jesus Christ to himself
and is still confirming it with seals that blaze
before the world. His march of mercy and might
through the ages, the works of healing that are
flowing from his hands, the growth of the
church, the spread of missions, the increasing
infiltration of his Spirit into all our modern life
— what are these but signs and seals that God is
setting to the teaching of Jesus Christ that his
witness is true?
It is plainly evident that the human Jesus is
not alone in this world: some mightier Power is
back of him, holding him up and bearing him on,

132 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
as the earth is held in its orbit and is illuminated
by the mighty attraction and glorious splendor
of the sun; and this Power is God in him. All
these works confirm his words, "I am he that
beareth witness of myself, and the Father that
sent me beareth witness of me."

CHAPTER XVIII
WHO ART THOU?
The Pharisees were deeply and increasingly
perplexed and puzzled with the problem of the
person of Jesus.
I. At first they disparaged and despised him
as an unlettered provincial from Galilee and
ridiculed the claim that he was a prophet. But
they soon found that he could not thus be put
down and had to be reckoned with.
Then they tried to suppress his teaching and
beat off his followers by their official authority
and power, agreeing that "if any man should
confess him to be Christ, he should be put out
of the synagogue," pouring all their scorn on
incipient disciples and threatening them with
the direst penalties.
But still he taught and found increasing favor
with the people and still he wrought works that
confounded them.
They had to account for him in some way and
framed various theories to explain his person
ality and power. They charged him with being
a deceiver and a blasphemer. A favorite theory
put forth by them on more than one occasion
was that he had a devil or demon. They believed
133

134 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
that an evil spirit or demon could take posses
sion of a human soul and speak and act through
it, and thus they attempted to explain the power
of Jesus. Dreadful as the theory was, it was yet
a forced confession from them that he could not
be explained in simple human terms and had to
be connected with the invisible world.
Even in their own view, prejudiced and
blinded as it was with hostility and hate, he
overleaped the limits of human personality and
drew his knowledge and power from a super
natural source. But all their theories sooner or
later broke down and left them in helpless and
hopeless confusion.
II. At length the Pharisees stood before Jesus
utterly baffled and bewildered and with pathetic
perplexity exclaimed (John 8. 25), "Who art
thou?" It is a question of the greatest interest. We
are always interested in persons more than in
things. Much as we wonder at a great natural
phenomenon, such as a new star flashing out in
the sky, much more do we wonder at a great
personality that blazes forth in our human
world. When a great man passes out of the
world it is often debated for generations who he
was, what was his true character and the real
value of his work. We are just beginning to find
out who Lincoln was and what was Washington.

WHO ART THOU? 135
The world is not yet done wondering at
Napoleon, and it has taken a long time to settle
Cromwell's place in history.
The question "Who art thou?" rises to its
supremest interest in the person of Jesus Christ.
For nineteen centuries it has been growing in
magnitude until it has overshadowed all others.
No matter what view is taken of him, Jesus has
become the central Figure of the world. History
has been shaped by his hand. His name fills
libraries, and we cannot date a letter without
paying a tribute to him.
Controversy over his person passed from his
enemies among the Jews to his friends in the
church. The early church was divided over con
flicting theories, some theologians going to one
extreme and denying his divinity and others to
the other extreme and denying his humanity; but
the church catholic settled down on the middle
ground and affirmed he was of complex personal
ity, embracing both human and divine natures.
The modern world is not less interested and
still gives various answers. Every possible at
tempt is still made to cast Jesus Christ in a
human mold. Theories are constructed to ac
count for him by heredity and by the peculiar
juncture of affairs in his time. But he invariably
escapes such limits into the illimitable and
absolute.

136 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
It is impossible to account for the vast shadow
he has thrown across these twenty centuries by
one of human stature standing back there in the
first century. We must there find a taller Figure,
even One who transcends the human and rises
into the divine.
III. What answer did Jesus himself give to
this question? Instantly he answered, "Even
the same that I said unto you from the begin
ning." The answer at first sight seems vague and un
satisfactory. Why did he not give them a
positive and plain assertion of his divinity that
would have been final? Because he had plainly
told them more than once already, and they be
lieved not his witness. Would they believe if
he were to tell them again?
How often must Jesus Christ tell us a thing
before we believe him? When, after healing a
man on the Sabbath, Jesus said, "My Father
worketh hitherto and I work," John (5. 17)
says, "For this cause therefore the Jews sought
the more to kill him, because he not only brake
the sabbath, but also called God his own Father,
making himself equal with God."
There can be no question that on various
occasions Jesus did with the greatest positive-
ness and plainness declare his divinity and his
equality with God. The whole character of

WHO ART THOU? 137
Jesus in its absolute purity and honesty is
pledged to his divine Sonship; and if we believe
him on any point, we must believe him on this.
Later on in this same conversation with the
Jews he calmly said, "Before Abraham was, I
am," and thereby lifted himself above the tem
poral into the eternal and sat down on the throne
with God. Plainer testimony from holier lips we
could not have.
IV. This answer of Jesus is in itself an in
stance and proof of his truthfulness. He told
the Jews the simple fact about himself in the be
ginning and had nothing different to tell them
in the end. He had nothing to add to or take
from his first message. He was not trying to
impose on them a fiction or falsehood and there
fore did not have to patch up a new story with
every change in the situation.
Only truth is consistent with itself, and fears
no surprise or unexpected turn of affairs, but
falsehood must ever be on the lookout for some
sudden irruption that may throw it into confu
sion. A lie sooner or later runs up against a fact
which it will not fit, and must then invent
another lie to make things hang together.
We should only tell such things in the first
place as we can tell in the last place, even when
we stand before the bar of God. Jesus always
told the simple truth, and we can trust him in

138 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
all his precepts and promises, even in those
that determine our destiny in time and in eter
nity. V. This answer also implies and proves the
unchangeableness and finality of the teaching of
Jesus. What he says now is even the same that
he said in the beginning.
Great changes have swept over the world
since his day. The world has been turned upside
down a hundred times. Great empires have
risen into splendor and fallen into dust. Reli
gions by the score have vanished. Whole
families of sciences have perished, and a hundred
new ones have been born and grown into giant
power. Theories that were once held as axio
matic have been exploded as childish. Books
have fallen into oblivion as snowflakes into the
sea. Men are ever changing their plans, modi
fying their views, reconstructing their sciences,
rewriting their books.
If it were possible for any great teacher of the
past to return, would he reassert his former
teaching? Would Newton still hold to the emis
sion theory of fight, and Ptolemy reaffirm that
the earth is the center of the solar system?
Would Plato still teach that sickly infants
should be exposed in the mountains to perish?
If we could ask them, "What are your views as
to the world and life?" would they answer,

WHO ART THOU? 139
"Even the same that we said unto you from the
beginning"? No, these great minds would say,
"In the light of your wider knowledge we must
correct our mistakes and revise our views."
But if this test were applied to Jesus Christ
and he were asked, "In the light of all these
immense changes and progress in human knowl
edge, what now are your teachings on the great
questions of life?" his answer would be, "Even
the same that I said unto you from the begin
ning." "What," we might exclaim, "have all the
researches of science, the investigations of
Newton, the discoveries of Darwin and the
speculations of Spencer, that have wrought such
revolutions in human thinking, not changed
your gospel?" "Not a word," would be the
answer. "But," we might persist, "have not all the
assaults of skeptics, the scoffs of infidels, and
new theologies of advanced thinkers changed at
least one word?" "Not a jot or tittle," would be
the answer.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day,
and forever, and what he said in the beginning
he says still. We change our views and rewrite
our books and reconstruct our whole civilization,
but Jesus Christ calmly says to the twentieth
as he said to the first century, "Heaven and

140 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
earth shall pass away, but my words shall not
pass away."
The old gospel still lives and not a word of it
has perished. Christ alone has words of eternal
life, and in following him we shall receive the
promised reward in this world and at last an
eternal crown, even the same that he said unto
us from the beginning.

CHAPTER XIX
WHOM MAKEST THOU THYSELF?
Every man does in some degree make him
self. What he thinks he is and desires and strives
to be enters vitally into his growth and realiza
tion. Jesus himself was subject to this law, and
grew toward what he believed himself to be.
The Pharisees, therefore, struck a deep secret in
his character when they challenged him, Whom
makest thou thyself? The question grew out of
a prolonged controversy (John 8. 31-59) in
which the Pharisees thrust at Jesus with many
sharp interrogatives, and he in turn gave them
frank but masterful replies that told them and
told all the world in varied terms who he is as
defined and determined by himself.
The passage is an autobiography of the inner
life and divine relations and nature of Jesus
Christ. I. Jesus declares his sinlessness. "Which of
you convicteth me of sin?" was his triumphant
challenge. In a world of sin, enveloped in its
clouds of evil and beaten upon by its storms and
lightning flashes of hate, he yet was unspotted
in the whiteness of his own holiness. As the sun
light is unsullied by the murky atmosphere
141

142 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
through which it slips, and unstained by the
slime on which it falls, so did he pass through
this sinful world in unsoiled purity.
What is the proof of this? First, the testimony
of his own enemies. This challenge was issued to
his enemies in the very heat and passion of their
hatred, and yet they answered him with never a
word of accusation. Had they known aught
against him, they would at this moment when
he exposed himself to them have struck back
with some keen and convincing charge.
Next is the witness of his friends. His dis
ciples lived in intimate companionship with him
for three years and saw him when he was off his
guard, ate and slept with him, listened to his
private conversation and heard his very prayers,
and they testify, "We beheld his glory, glory as
of the only begotten from the Father."
We have the witness of Christ's own con
sciousness. In proportion as the soul grows
white is it sensitive to its own sin, and Jesus,
admittedly the purest soul the world has ever
known, never felt any slightest self-accusation
disturb his perfect serenity and peace. His
character stands out in his recorded life without
flaw and is the praise of the ages. All witnesses
and tests agree as to his sinlessness, and this fact
is the first answer to the challenge, "Whom
makest thou thyself?"

WHOM MAKEST THOU THYSELF? 143
H. Jesus is the truth. "I say the truth," he
declared to the Pharisees.
Truth is a primary element of character and
virtue of life, for it is the bond that holds char
acter together in its integrity and is the neces
sary basis of all social trust and life. "God who
cannot lie" is one fundamental attribute of the
Eternal, for without this element at the root of
his being the universe would be false to the core
and would fall to pieces.
Jesus knew the truth and lived the truth.
There was no element of exaggeration, misrepre
sentation, deception, partisan coloring or any
kind of unreality in his words, but they fit and
reflected reality as the placid lake mirrors the
blue sky. What he said first he said last, and
never needed to change or adjust his words so
that they would hang together in perfect co
herency. He not only spoke the truth, but he could
calmly say, "I am the truth," the embodiment
of truth, the truth alive and in action. And
therefore he was the norm of all truth, the stand
ard to which it must conform, the principle by
which it must grow, and the ideal toward which
it must strive.
Such a Teacher has something to say to us of
infinite worth, and can be trusted in his every
word, even when he tells us our destiny or

144 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
declares that heaven and earth shall pass but
that his words shall not pass away.
III. Jesus in this controversy with the Phari
sees emitted several deep flashes of light into his
relations with the Father. "I speak the things,"
he said, "which I have seen with my Father";
"I came forth and am come from God"; "I
honor my Father"; "I seek not mine own glory";
and "I know him, and keep his word."
Some of these sayings look back into his
eternal relations with God, and others of them
relate more directly to his human relations with
the Father. They may be summarized in the
saying, "I know him, and keep his word."
Jesus knows the Father in the intimacy of
faith and fellowship. As a human father and son
of fine kinship and fellowship know each other
perfectly, their unspoken thoughts penetrating
each other and blending their souls in sensitive
unity, so, only in an infinitely deeper way, the
divine Son knows the eternal Father.
Jesus also knows the Father through obe
dience. Because he knows his Father he keeps
his word, and because he keeps his Father's
word he knows him. Obedience is the great
teacher of truth in all the lines of life, and it is
a bond that binds every true son to his heavenly
Father. Because Jesus thus knows the Father he can

WHOM MAKEST THOU THYSELF? 145
reveal the Father to us and say with sure and
calm confidence, "He that hath seen me hath
seen the Father."
IV. Jesus rose to the highest revelation of his
being when he declared his relation to Abraham.
The Pharisees were deeply puzzled when he
declared, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see
my day; and he saw it, and was glad." How
could one not yet fifty years old utter such a
saying? Jesus solved the mystery by his profound say
ing, "Before Abraham was, I am." Here he
lifted himself out of the temporal sphere of being
into the eternal; by one mighty stride he stepped
out of time and space into the timeless and in
finite world.
Such a saying falling from the lips of a mortal
man would be instant evidence and proof of
unbalanced judgment.
But no one would suggest such an explanation
in the case of Jesus. Whatever may be said of
him, he never loses his poise and balance, his
sanity is never doubted, and his sublimest say
ings seem perfectly rational and natural as
coming from him.
In this saying there can be no question that
he asserts his transcendence of human nature
and his true deity. Here is a glimpse at least of
his omniscient consciousness in which the limits

146 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
of time and space fade out and he comprehends
the centuries in one timeless pulse of thought
and flash of vision. It is because of this divine
relation with God that he can show us the
Father and is mighty to save.
V. This saving power of Jesus Christ is
brought out in his own saying in answer to the
Pharisees on this occasion: "If a man keep my
word, he shall never taste of death."
Keeping the word of Jesus Christ as the Son
of God is equivalent to keeping the words or
laws of God himself, and these laws are pure life.
Sin is lawlessness or disobedience to the laws of
life, and by its very nature turns these laws into
means of death.
The same sunlight that builds up a living
plant tears down one that is dead: the same
train that carries its passengers in speed and
safety to their destination crushes him who
stands upon its track. So the same words or
laws of life that conserve and enrich the life of
one that obeys them necessarily destroy the life
of one that tramples upon them.
The words of Jesus are the eternal laws of life,
and in keeping of them there is the great reward
of life more abundant, richer and sweeter, and
everlasting. This is the meaning of his saying
that one that keeps his word shall never taste of
death: not of mere physical death, which may

WHOM MAKEST THOU THYSELF? 147
be birth into larger life, but that death of soul
which is the penalty and self-destruction of sin,
and from which the soul is delivered into eternal
life through fellowship with Christ.
Thus in answer to the challenge, "Whom
makest thou thyself?" Jesus declared himself to
be sinless, truthful, intimate with God, eternal,
and a Saviour of men.

CHAPTER XX
A DOER OF MIRACLES
The question as to whether Jesus worked
miracles has from the beginning been a critical
one in the history of Christianity. There have
always been those that stumble at any ex
traordinary variation from the regular course of
nature and hold that miracles, once a chief evi
dence of Christianity, have now become its most
serious burden and hindrance.
But believers in the Gospels and in the
divinity of Christ hold that his miracles are sup
ported by proper and sufficient evidence and are
the natural, if not necessary, manifestation of
his divine person and power.
Did the priests and Pharisees, whose hostile
judgments we are considering, express them
selves on this question? They did so express
themselves on several occasions.
In the beginning of the ministry of Jesus,
Nicodemus, one of their number, though he was
not an enemy and in time became a friend of
Jesus, opened his famous night interview with
the young Nazarene prophet by declaring,
"Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come
148

A DOER OF MIRACLES 149
from God; for no man can do these signs that
thou doest, except God be with him."
Near the end of his ministry Jesus became
engaged in a controversy with the Pharisees in
Jerusalem over the man born blind whose eyes
he had opened. They knew this well-known man
and saw him after his vision had been restored
and tried to extract from him by their heckling
examination some admission that would invali
date the miracle, for they were keenly conscious
of its damaging effect upon their cause. The
Pharisees fell out among themselves over the
case. "Some therefore of the Pharisees said, This
man is not from God, because he keepeth not the
sabbath. But others said, How can a man that
is a sinner do such signs? And there was a divi
sion among them."
The same question arose among the Pharisees
in connection with the raising of Lazarus from
the dead. That miracle produced a profound
effect in Jerusalem, and they saw its dangerous
consequences to them. "The chief priests there
fore and the Pharisees gathered a council, and
said, What do we? for this man doeth many
signs. If we let him thus alone, all men will
believe on him: and the Romans will come and
take away both our place and our nation."
I. It is thus evident that the miracles of Jesus
were well known to his enemies and were in-

150 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
vestigated by them and gave them the most
serious concern and alarm. They did not rest
on the mere sensational rumors that were float
ing around about them, but in the case of the
restored blind man they examined and cross-
examined both him and his parents. The Phari
sees saw that these signs were making a deep
impression on the people and were drawing
many after Jesus as his disciples; such wonderful
works were even in danger of precipitating a
religious and political revolution that would at
tract the attention and call forth the action of
the Romans, who would come and cut up the
whole trouble by the roots by eradicating the
pestiferous Jewish nation; and thereby these
Pharisees and priests would lose their "place,"
which was their chief concern. They suddenly
realized that Jesus was sweeping everything be
fore him and that they were doing nothing
effective to stop him. This is what led them to
exclaim, "What do we? for this man doeth many
signs. If we let him thus alone, all men will
believe on him: and the Romans will come and
take away both our place and our nation."
We thus have in this testimony of these priests
and Pharisees their witness to the fact that
Jesus was working miracles that were creating
widespread popular faith in him and causing
excitement that they thought might get beyond

A DOER OF MIRACLES 151
their control and result in national disorder and
peril to themselves. They did not deny his
miracles, but frankly admitted them and
acknowledged their impotence to stop their in
fluence. His enemies being judges, these miracles of
Jesus were not done in a corner but under the
light of the fullest publicity and they put their
own seal on their reality.
H. It may be said, however, that the belief
of the Pharisees and priests in miracles has little
value because such belief was common in their
day and alleged miracle workers were plentiful,
and therefore that such testimony only estab
lishes the existence of traditional credulity and
superstition as to miracles, which now rather
discredit than support such belief.
But this contention will not stand. Miracles,
whether real or only alleged, were not common
occurrences among the Jews and accepted as a
matter of course. They are scarce events even
in the Old Testament, and had long ceased with
the passing of the prophets. It is expressly said
of John the Baptist that he "did no miracle,"
and there is no record of a miracle-working
prophet or even pretender in the time of Christ.
Even Jesus was parsimonious in the use of
such signs, performing them rarely and keeping
them in the background and sometimes regard-

152 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
ing them as hindrances rather than helps in his
ministry. The impression often entertained that
'miracles abound in the Bible and that they just
dripped from the fingers of Jesus is wholly
wrong. They are surprisingly few in number,
which fact is one evidence of their genuineness,
for had they been inventions or myths they
would have been plentiful enough to satisfy the
most pious curiosity.
The Jews, then, were not fed on miracles to
the point of satiation, so that it was easy for
them to believe in them and almost any pious
pretender could delude them. No, they had not
seen any wonders wrought by any other prophet
than Jesus, and their belief in his miracles was
not due to expectation and credulity in connec
tion with such things.
III. On the contrary, the hostile attitude of
the priests and Pharisees to Jesus made them
skeptical of his miracles and would have led
them, had it been possible, to deny their reality.
To concede his mighty works was to give him
the strongest attestation and credentials in their
power, setting their own seal on all his claims.
They well knew the effect any such acknowledg
ment would have on his standing with the
people. To admit the miracles was to admit the
logic and conclusion of Nicodemus: "We know
that thou art a teacher come from God."

A DOER OF MIRACLES 153
We would have expected, then, that the
Pharisees would have resorted to every means of
discrediting the miracles, casting doubt on them
or denying- their reality. On one occasion they
did try to throw on him the odium of casting out
devils by the power of Beelzebub, thus putting
him in complicity with the devil himself.
But on this occasion they did not dare do this.
The miracles of Jesus, now near the end of his
ministry, had become too well known and too
certainly established. The opening of the blind
man's eyes, and especially the raising of Lazarus
from the dead, had excited wide interest and
wonder in Jerusalem. If the priests and Phari
sees were to deny or seek to discredit these
miracles, they would expose themselves to public
refutation and ridicule.
They knew better than to run this risk, and
therefore, in spite of their hostility to Jesus and
in the face of the danger of strengthening his
claims and of increasing the growing popular
faith in him, they made the almost despairing
admission, "What do we? for this man doeth
many miracles." On no other ground than the
reality of these works can we account for this
acknowledgment of his enemies.
Thus the priests and Pharisees did the very
thing they feared they were doing in this admis
sion: they strengthened faith in Jesus and they

154 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
sent down to us their testimony in the reality of
his mighty works. His enemies being judges, he
did do things transcending human power. Those
who were bent on destroying him yet felt their
impotence in his presence, and in this utterance
they again crowned him with divinity.
IV. The testimony of these enemies of Jesus
to his miracles is not of such an incidental nature
that it could be dropped from the narratives
without impairing their integrity; for it is so
interwoven into their texture that it is an essen
tial part of their structure. The whole interview
of Nicodemus with Jesus would be left without
an explanation of his visit if his opening remark
were exscinded that Jesus was proved by his
miracles to be the Son of God.
In a similar way the entire narrative of the
raising of Lazarus from the dead will have to be
removed from the New Testament if the result
ing admission of the Pharisees that "this man
doeth many miracles" is rejected.
More conclusive still is the case of the opening
of the eyes of the man born blind. This narrative
bears marks of being a record of sober reality
and has none of the indications of invention and
legend. It is detailed in its account, violates
none of the proprieties of the occasion, and
gives us the conviction that it is based on fact.
Yet the Pharisees, after vainly trying to extort

A DOER OF MIRACLES 155
from the restored man some admission adverse
to the miracle, were driven to acknowledge its
reality, and then attempted to break its force.
Thus the testimony of these enemies of Jesus
to his miracles cannot be removed by the simple
process of dissecting them out of the narrative
while leaving the incidents themselves in the
record. Their testimony is so inextricably inter
woven with the entire web of the narrative that
we must accept it or else reject the whole story
of these controversies; and yet the controversies
of Jesus with the priests and Pharisees are
among the most trustworthy portions of the
Gospels. There are other and stronger reasons for be
lieving in the miracles of Jesus as normal and
necessary manifestations of his divine person
and mission. But the testimony of these enemies
adds the peculiar weight of their unwilling wit
ness in which they are compelled against their
own interest to declare: "This man doeth many
miracles."

CHAPTER XXI
THE WORLD IS GONE AFTER HIM
The morning of the triumphal entry of Jesus
into Jerusalem opened with promise. The
beauty of the scene furnished it with a fitting
setting. It was the springtime and a mass of
fresh color lay palpitating on the landscape. The
vivid green grass, embroidered with early
flowers, carpeted the valleys, the dark green of
the olive vineyards covered the hillsides, the air
was balmy and fragrant, along the eastern hor
izon ran the blue line of the Mountains of Moab5
and over it all flashed the splendor of a Syrian
sky. From the summit of the Mount of Olives the
city broke upon the view. It sat like a jeweled
crown on the brow of Mount Zion. In the fore
ground rose the marble walls of the Temple of
stainless whiteness with its gilded roof that
flamed in the sunlight, a mass of snow and gold;
and in the background stretched the streets and
squares of the city and upon it lay the spell of a
thousand years of patriotic and sacred associa
tions. Jesus himself rode upon a colt gayly capar
isoned with the many-colored robes of his
156

WORLD IS GONE AFTER HIM 157
disciples, and the roadway itself was bestrewn
with greenery and the garments of the people,
while the multitudes sent their hosannas rolling
out over the hills and valleys. It was a joyous
hour and it seemed that Jesus was about to
receive his rightful coronation. Everybody for
once seemed happy.
I. Yet Jews were there that were never
known to be happy in the presence of Jesus
when he was receiving any service and honor.
"The Pharisees" — how constantly do they turn
up on every such occasion to obtrude their objec
tion and opposition — "The Pharisees therefore
said among themselves, Behold how ye prevail
nothing; lo, the world is gone after him."
Bitter envy and enmity breathe out their evil
spirit and hissing hate in these words. We can
easily imagine the tightly compressed, scornful
lips and close-set grinning teeth that contemp
tuously spat them out. But again they never
spoke truer words and the centuries have set
upon them their triumphant seal.
"Behold how ye prevail nothing." For a
moment a sense of their impotence came upon
them and filled them with furious rage. They
had exhausted their utmost cunning and power
in throwing in his path every obstruction, sowing
the air around him with prejudice and suspicion
and scandal, bringing against him every false

158 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
charge, and were at this very hour concoctmg
against him a plot of murder.
Yet all their machinations and malice had
proved in vain. Jesus stood amidst their rage
and fury as a white tower of purity and calmness
and immovable strength. He held on his way as
little impeded by their opposition and hatred as
is a river by the rocks in its bed or as a sunbeam
by the motes in the air. No wonder such quiet
yet irresistible might pressed sharply home upon
their consciousness and conscience their impo
tent opposition and caused them to exclaim,
"Behold how ye prevail nothing."
The reason for their failure was that their
cause was not based on truth and right, but upon
a false conception of the Messiah and false
ambitions and hopes. Their fault and weakness
was their old trouble of passionately desiring a
worldly conqueror and refusing to see in the
meek and lowly Jesus their promised Saviour.
They were blinded by their bigotry so that they
could not see their own Christ when he was
walking and working mighty signs among them.
Their attempts to stop him were based on
falsity, and no lie in the long run can prevail.
II. It is remarkable what tremendous and
persistent efforts have been made to arrest the
career of Jesus that have yet not prevailed.
Herod thought to do this when he thrust a

WORLD IS GONE AFTER HIM 159
sword through every cradle in Bethlehem, but
he did not succeed or touch a hair of the holy
Babe. The Jews concentrated all their opposi
tion and hatred into their assault on Jesus when
they nailed him on the cross. But even the
crucifixion was impotent to halt Jesus, and he
came back, to the consternation of the Jews,
mightier than ever.
Paul tried his hand at stopping Jesus by
erecting barriers of swords in his path and
attempting to stamp out his name in death, but
he was himself strangely arrested in his career
and began to preach the very faith he had sought
to destroy.
Rome poured ten dreadful persecutions on the
name of Christ and tried to drench and drown
out Christianity in blood; it burned Christians
as torches in Nero's garden or tore them to pieces
in the arena, but all these flaming robes and
fiery crowns of martyrdom prevailed nothing.
Other persecutions have attended the march
of Jesus down through the centuries even to our
day, notably in Russia, but still they are im
potent agamst the Name that is above every
name. Steadily and irresistibly as the sun rises
above the horizon, pushing its way through
smoke and clouds and storm, so has Jesus risen
above the centuries, and his Name endureth to
all generations.

160 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
III. Skeptical and critical opponents have
also thought to arrest the Name and influence
of Jesus. Celsus tried hard to do this as early as
the second century, and Voltaire near the middle
of the eighteenth century predicted, "Ere the
beginning of the nineteenth century Christianity
will have disappeared from the earth"; and he
boasted that while it took twelve men to start
Christianity he would show the world that one
man could stop it.
In our own day, also, there are opponents
of Christianity, some of them being critical
scholars, and others social radicals, and still
others anarchists, who think they can under
mine his gospel and uproot his kingdom out of
the world.
But against all these currents and attacks of
opposition Jesus Christ holds on the quiet tenor
of his way. He does not strive nor cry, his voice
is not heard in public clamor on the street, but
silently as sunshine and wind wear down moun
tains, or irresistibly as the glacier pushes its way
toward the sea, does Christ move on against
opposition so that his very enemies must be
forced to confess or think among themselves,
"Behold how ye prevail nothing."
IV. While driven to admit their own impo
tence the Pharisees were also constrained to
acknowledge the great success of Jesus in draw-

WORLD IS GONE AFTER HIM 161
ing the people to himself. "The world is gone
after him," they exclaimed, this being the im
pression made upon them by the throngs that
followed Jesus on his triumphal entry into
Jerusalem.
In this also they spoke better than they knew.
The world hungered for such a Teacher and
Saviour as Jesus was even in that day more than
for the worldly conqueror the Pharisees desired.
Its desire was yet largely dormant and its tongue
was dumb, but deep down in its heart it had a
yearning for a Prince of Peace.
The world has had enough empires built with
swords on human bones and blood. Alexander,
Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon, the Kaiser
(mark the anticlimax!) — the world hopes it has
seen the last of this line. For humanity has a
deep-seated hunger for order and justice in broth
erhood, deliverance from the slavery of sin and
emancipation into the liberty of the sons of peace.
Jesus has no sword, but he comes to found a
kingdom based on truth and trust, divine
Fatherhood and human brotherhood, that ap
peals to all men to come unto him out of all the
sin and strife of the world and find peace and
rest. His personality has attractive power to
draw the world, his cross is the symbol and proof
of his sacrifice and service for the redemption of
humanity.

162 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
V. And the world has gone after him in ever-
increasing numbers.
At first his followers were twelve, then they
grew into a multitude on the day of his tri
umphal entry so as to excite the astonishment
of his enemies, and on the day of Pentecost they
suddenly swelled to three thousand.
Steadily his Name made its way through the
Roman world, leaping at one bound from Asia
to Europe, causing pagan faiths to wither before
it, until it became dominant, and in three hun
dred years a Christian Caesar sat on the throne.
Down through the centuries the world has
gravitated to him by some irresistible attraction.
The wise men from the East were the fore
runners of a long and widening train of wise men
from all quarters of the world. The three thou
sand of Pentecost became a hundred millions in
fifteen centuries and by the twentieth century
these had grown to six hundred millions, or more
than a third of the population of the globe.
Admittedly large numbers of these are nominal
Christians and are counted only because they
live in Christian lands, but after all proper re
duction has been made it is still a considerable
part of the world that has gone after Jesus
Christ. And this following of Christ is greatly en
hanced in weight and influence when quality

WORLD IS GONE AFTER HIM 163
rather than quantity is considered. For Chris
tendom is incomparably the best part of the
world, in spite of its shadows and storms of war;
and in general Christ attracts the choicest
spirits from among men.
Jesus Christ is winning the world. His cross,
towering o'er the wrecks of time, is becoming a
central magnet among men. His personality is
so pure and persuasive and powerful as to draw
increasing multitudes after him. He has some
thing in his hand and heart that appeals to men
and satisfies their deepest needs and most
earnest yearnings.
The Christian centuries are yet young, and
with God a thousand years are as one day. Jesus
took a long look and leap into the future when
he predicted that if he be lifted up he would
draw all men unto him. Christian missions are
yet only setting up their outposts around the
globe. The world cannot permanently remain
blind and dumb to the vision and appeal of
Jesus, and there will yet go up a great shout,
"The kingdom of the world is become the king
dom of our Lord and of his Christ."

CHAPTER XXII
UNCONSCIOUS OBEISANCE
The enemy may bear witness by what he does
not less than by what he says. That actions
speak louder than words has such a weight of
authority in its favor that it has grown into a
proverb. And all the more weighty is such wit
ness when it is unintended and unconscious.
The scene of this action was at the gate of the
garden of Gethsemane where Jesus with his
disciples had gone to spend the night before the
crucifixion in retirement and prayer. While he
was deeply hidden in the shadows of the olive
trees and the disciples were slumbering, and he
was burdened with such a mysterious weight of
sorrow as pressed drops of blood out of his brow>
a crowd containing the traitorous Judas as guide
and Roman soldiers and priests and Pharisees
and the rabble of the city appeared at the gate
to arrest him.
I. The flaring torches of the soldiers pene
trated the garden and Jesus knew what was at
hand, and without waiting for the soldiers and
his enemies to come to him, he went out to them
and asked, "Whom seek ye?" When they
164

UNCONSCIOUS OBEISANCE 165
answered, "Jesus of Nazareth," he instantly
replied, "I am he."
We are struck with the calm straightforward
ness and bravery of this confession. A guilty
man would have fled deeper into the shadows
and endeavored to hide and escape from the
officers; and even an innocent man might have
thought it was not incumbent on him to put
himself in the way of his enemies.
But Jesus had nothing to conceal or fear,
much less he had no thought or instinct of con
cealing himself; and so in his innocence and
sincerity and unaffected fearlessness he went
forth out of the garden and announced himself
as the Nazarene they had come to arrest.
Absolute innocence was the peace and protec
tion of his soul, and he knew that however
armed men under the guidance and instigation
of bitter enemies might come against him they
could do him no real harm. A sword might cut
his body in two, but it could no more sever
asunder his spirit than it could saber the sun
light to pieces.
Innocence is ever the best protection to the
soul, for it is an armor no fiery dart can pierce,
and it inspires a man with calm and unaffected
but fearless confidence.
Jesus never concealed his true personality and
mission and ever spoke the simple truth at any

166 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
cost or peril. To the woman of Samaria who
spoke of the coming Messiah he calmly said,
"I that speak unto thee am he." And always
he comes out before the whole world and de
clares that he is the Son of God and the Saviour
of all men.
II. At this word from Jesus the soldiers and
priests and Pharisees and also Judas and the
rabble "went backward, and fell to the ground."
Was there ever a more striking instance of un
conscious obeisance, a truer witness to the
grandeur and majesty of the personality of the
Nazarene? Let the letters stand out in living
light in this record that his enemies, Judas the
traitor, bitter priests, and proud Pharisees, and
even stolid Roman soldiers, at his presence went
backward and fell to the ground. What was the
secret of this unwitting obeisance?
We may first ascribe it in a degree to the
lurking sense of guilt of these priests and Phari
sees themselves. However conscientious they
were in their opposition to Jesus, and we must
allow that in their deep traditionalism and con
servatism they did consider that he imperiled
the whole orthodoxy and institution of Judaism,
yet they must also have had many misgivings of
conscience as they came in contact with the
Nazarene and heard his words and witnessed his
works and felt the sincerity of his spirit and the

UNCONSCIOUS OBEISANCE 167
purity and loftiness of his character. At times
the whips and stings of his sharp words against
them must have gone into their souls.
Their worldliness was the real ground of their
opposition to his spiritual teaching and king
dom, and this at times must have been disturbed
by their better sense of truth and duty. Perhaps
there were moments and finer moods in their
experience when conscience made itself heard
and troubled them with a sense of guilt. Any
such realization would be an inner weakness
that would endanger their security; a state of
unstable equilibrium that might on some sudden
slip throw them into a state of fear and panic.
The unexpected appearance of Jesus at the
gate of the garden in his calmness and bravery
may have precipitated this sense of guilt and
helped to fell them to the ground. Their strength
gave way and they collapsed.
Judas especially would be subject to such a
sudden breaking down of both body and soul
under the burden and burning fire of his accusing
conscience. "Conscience," says George Eliot, "is harder
than our enemies, knows more, accuses with
more nicety." One may be ever so strong and
brave, and yet conscience may secretly under
mine his strength and smite him down at any
unexpected moment. Many a guilty man, sud-

168 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
denly confronted with his victim, has given way
and fallen down in confession. Any secret sin or
unfaithfulness in a man is so much concealed
weakness that, like the rotten heart of the oak,
will send him crashing down in a storm. Only
he is a strong man who can say:
"My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure."
On the other hand, the familiar passage in
Shakespeare is as true psychology as it is sound
ethics :
"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."
III. Added to this sense of insecurity on the
part of these enemies of Jesus, caused by their
accusing consciences, was the effect upon them
of the overpowering majesty of his personal
ity- We cannot clearly picture this, because we
have no portrait or personal description that
enables us to visualize him in an image. But as
the soul carves the face and creates the body as
the proper garment and expression of itself, his
personality must have shone out of his appear
ance in impressive power. The starry radiance
of his eyes, the lofty majesty stamped upon his
countenance, the transparent sincerity and

UNCONSCIOUS OBEISANCE 169
purity and peace of his soul, the calmness and
poise of his person and manner, all combined
into a total personality that put a subtle and
irresistible spell upon all those that came into
his presence.
Even human persons may have their souls so
kindled and raised to power as to cause their
faces to glow and produce strange effects. Thus
the face of Moses as he came down from com
munion with God on Sinai shone, and of Daniel
Webster it is recorded that for several hours
after the delivery of his great oration at the
dedication of the Bunker Hill Monument his
countenance wore an indescribably grand ex
pression that amazed those that came into his
presence. So was Jesus at this crisis in a degree trans
figured. His enemies did not consciously analyze
and could not have explained the strange power
he had over them, but unconsciously and irre
sistibly they went backward and fell to the
ground. They were instinctively awed into such
reverence that they could not but render him
this unconscious obeisance.
So likewise Pilate at the trial of Jesus was so
impressed with his calmness and self-evident
innocence that he "marveled"; and poor Judas
was so overcome by the majestic appearance of
the Master whom he had betrayed that he paid

170 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
him the terrible tribute of bis self-inflicted
retribution. In many ways have men rendered Jesus this
unconscious obeisance. Many of his bitterest
enemies have written tributes to his truth and
grace and greatness that have crowned him with
rank and dignity and power above that of his
human kind. Hardly has any infidel or scoffer
let loose against him arrows of denial or depre
ciation of his goodness or even of his divinity
without unwittingly dropping some word of
appreciation that has done him unconscious
honor. And have not the centuries both before and
after his birth paid him tremendous unconscious
obeisance? What means this fact that his birth
has been made the base line of our calendar so
that all events are dated in their relation to him
backward or forward through all the centuries?
The most significant and overshadowing fact in
the morning newspaper is just the four figures
that give the year of its publication. All the
centuries are looking down upon that page and
stamping it with the imprimatur of Jesus Christ.
We do not know when an event happened and
what is its meaning and connection in the gen
eral course of the world until we bring it into
relation to him.
The whole world is thus ever going backward

UNCONSCIOUS OBEISANCE 171
and falling at the feet of Jesus. Every book and
article and letter that has been written against
him by the very date it bears renders him this
unconscious obeisance.
Not only so; but he has so impressed his per
sonality upon our civilization and interwoven it
into all our laws and literature, speech and
habits and thoughts that we can no more escape
from his presence and influence than we can
escape from the grip of gravitation or from the
atmosphere we breathe. Whether willingly or
unwittingly, the world in wide and profound
ways is ever going backward from the person
ality of Jesus and falling down before him.
Personalities are the master forces of the
world. It was by the power of personality that
Demosthenes swayed Athens, Caesar mastered
Rome, Paul drove the wedge of the gospel into
Europe, Luther created the Reformation, Napo
leon dominated the kings of his day and
Lincoln liberated a fettered race. Before such
men the world is always going backward and
falling to the ground, and the kind of men that
thus put their spell upon the world and master
and mold it determines the kind of world in
which men five.
The central Figure and dominating Person
ality in the world to-day is Jesus Christ. Very
far is he yet from having put all things under

172 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
him. The world has not yet made him really
King, but more and more he is mounting into
power, and more and more widely and sincerely
is the world bowing before him in conscious or
unconscious obeisance and obedience.
This increasing centrafity of his Person is the
most hopeful fact in the world to-day.
Either willingly or unwillingly must we all at
last render obeisance to him. "Kiss the son; lest
he be angry; and ye perish in the way."

CHAPTER XXIII
A BETRAYER OF INNOCENT BLOOD
It is a fact as startling as it is sad that we find
one of the enemies of Jesus uttering these testi
monies within the sacred circle of the twelve.
Back in the ministry in Galilee Jesus had put
to his disciples the ominous question, "Did not
I choose you the twelve, and one of you is a
devil?" And the night of the arrest just preced
ing the base treachery of Judas, at the institu
tion of the Lord's Supper in the upper chamber
Jesus made the sorrowful announcement, "One
of you shall betray me, even he that eateth
with me."
Thus within this narrow inner circle irradiated
by the white light of the personal presence and
holy character of Jesus there was one black spot,
a betrayer and traitor! At least one tare was
growing up within that little garden of wheat
that was selected and planted by the Master and
was under his personal cultivation and care.
There need be small surprise, then, if such
tares are found in the wider field of the church
and the kingdom in the world. Never was there
a church so pure that it did not contain some
unworthy members if not false professors.
173

174 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
From that upper chamber, out of its precious
privacy and intimacy, Judas went straight to
the Pharisees and led them with the soldiers to
the gate of the garden, where Jesus was enduring
his mysterious agony and whence he came out
before them.
Judas pointed Jesus out and betrayed him
with a kiss and saw him seized and led off to his
trial. He seems to have been present at the trial
before Caiaphas and he saw Jesus condemned
and taken away to Pilate.
He knew that this was the sure beginning of
the end, and forthwith conscience awoke with
terrible power and seized him with an over
whelming sense of guilt and remorse, and ex
claiming, "I have sinned in that I betrayed
innocent blood," he threw down the thirty pieces
of silver he had received as the price of his
treachery as though they burned his hands like
coals of hell-fire, and went and hanged himself.
Apparently, the very rope refused to bear such
a burden and broke under the weight of his
guilty body so that "falling headlong, he burst
asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed
out" (Acts 1. 18).
I. This testimony of Judas is of special weight
because of his relation to Jesus as one of the
twelve. He had for three years enjoyed the rare priv-

BETRAYER OF INNOCENT BLOOD 175
ilege of membership in this chosen inner circle.
During this considerable period he was in daily
companionship and intimacy with Jesus. He
heard him deliver his pubfic discourses and saw
his wonderful works. He heard the Sermon on
the Mount, listened to all his gracious words on
the revelation of the Father, heard the parables,
saw the bread multiplied as it was distributed
among the five thousand, saw Jesus walking on
the sea, and witnessed the healing of many sick
and lame and blind and demonized people.
More precious still was the privilege of being
present when the Master gathered his disciples
around him for private instruction and confi
dential fellowship. He was admitted into all
these intimacies and was also made treasurer of
the little company and carried the bag, so that
special trust was exercised in him.
It was in these circumstances and under all
this light that Judas knew Jesus. He saw him
daily in companionship in which he had the
most direct and intimate knowledge of him. If
there had been any slightest spot or speck on
Jesus, it would have come out in this white light.
If there had been any insincerity or selfishness
or suspicion of wrongdoing during these years,
Judas was in a position to know of it.
Here, then, we have the testimony of an
enemy who had all the inside privilege of a

176 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
friend and knew the facts far more clearly and
certainly than they could be known by the open
enemies of Jesus. Yet he testified, "I have
sinned in that I betrayed innocent blood."
And so Jesus was innocent, this friend turned
enemy being the judge and witness. A man who
had the fullest and freest opportunity of know
ing the truth and was also under the greatest
pressure to find fault with Jesus in order to
justify himself was yet forced to confess by his
own conscience that he was wrong and that
Jesus was spotlessly pure. It would be hard to
find or imagine testimony that is better
grounded and is fortified by such a confession
forced out of the witness agamst his personal
interest. II. This confession of Judas illustrates the
power of conscience to extort from the guilty
soul a confession agamst the strongest restrain
ing motives.
How did it come that Judas, having gone so
far in his fatal course, did not persist in it to the
end? He had no hope of retrieving his error and
saving Jesus from his fate by his testimony to
his innocence. The fatal deed was now done and
there was no undoing it. The Moving Finger
had written, and not all his wit could lure it
back to cancel half a line, nor all his tears wash
out a word of it. Why this sudden and irre-

BETRAYER OF INNOCENT BLOOD 177
sistible eruption of conscience? This is part of
the mystery of the psychology of sin.
No doubt the base treachery of Judas had
been a long and slow growth. It was no instant
impulse that precipitated an unpremeditated
step, but a deeply considered and settled plan.
That "bag" he carried had worked on his
avarice and his greedy fingers had clutched it
with increasing avidity. It was Judas, among
others, that objected to the act of Mary in spill
ing the precious ointment on Jesus as a mark of
respect and devotion, saying that it might have
been sold for three hundred pence and given to
the poor: "not because he cared for the poor;
but because he was a thief, and having the bag
took away what was put therein."
So his avaricious, thieving nature had long
been at work, and he now saw a further chance
and profitable opening for making money by
betraying the Master to his enemies for thirty
pieces of silver.
But no sooner was the act done than he began
to realize its awful nature and consequences. It
had hitherto clothed itself in an attractive garb
as a thing easy to do and quick and profitable
in its pay; but now it suddenly started up be
fore his awakened and alarmed conscience as a
sheeted ghost or fiery demon from the pit, come
to seize him and hurry him off to judgment.

178 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
The whole horrid nature of the act was stripped
naked and it frightened and tormented him with
its fearful aspect and accusing voice; and it was
too much for him; he gave way before it in a
panic of fear and remorse, and in the agony and
helplessness of his guilty soul he could not hide
nor excuse his crime, but sealed his own doom
with the forced confession, "I have sinned in
that I betrayed innocent blood."
This is an instance of the power and fury of an
awakened conscience as dramatic and tragic as
that of Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth; and it
adds all its weight and intensity to the truth of
the testimony of Judas to the innocence of
Jesus. He now realized anew this innocence. As he
glanced back through those eventful three years
in which he associated with Jesus in company
with the twelve, he saw him shining like a white
star amidst his disciples and through all the
machinations and malice of the Jews.
Against this dark background the innocence
of Jesus stood out in spotless purity and splen
dor; and however his own interest and safety
might have constrained him to deny the truth
and cast aspersions upon his former Master, he
could not do otherwise than offer this decisive
witness in his favor.
ni. The final act in the tragedy of Judas is

BETRAYER OF INNOCENT BLOOD 179
a further element in the confirmation of his testi
mony. The moment his conscience awoke and
gripped him his soul abhorred the silver he had
received as the price of his treachery. He now
loathed the very thing he had loved and that
had lured him to his fate, and it plagued him
with an intolerable sense of his guilt, stabbing
his soul to the heart. He tried to give it back to
the priests, but they now turned against him
with cold-blooded callousness and scorn as they
taunted him, "What is that to us? see thou to
it." The very enemies of Jesus that had used
his false disciple as a tool to do their work now
despised him and contemptuously cast him off.
Then he threw the blood-stained silver down
on the floor of the temple and went and cut
short his wretched life at the end of a rope.
The priests, who were more guilty than Judas,
now affected great piety in the disposal of the
silver, saying it would defile their treasury to
use it and devoted it to the purchase of a potter's
field, known afterward as "The field of blood,"
where pauper Jews dying in Jerusalem were
buried: thus many men who are flagrantly
wicked in great things profess punctilious piety
in small things.
This action of Judas sets the final seal of his
own blood on his testimony to the innocence of

180 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
Jesus. In some strange way he felt that his own
blood was the only atonement he could offer for
the innocent blood he had betrayed. However
false his soul, in this last utterance we have from
his lips we are sure he told the truth.
Of all the testimonies offered to Jesus by his
enemies, that of Judas in some ways is the
strongest. He knew the truth in the matter as
no other enemy could know it; his conscience
awakened to an overwhelming sense of the
enormity of his guilt and forced from him a con
fession in the face of all his self-regarding in
terests; and he sealed his testimony with his own
self-shed blood.
His course and end stand out on the pages of
the Gospels as a startling witness of an enemy to
Jesus and as a solemn and tragic warning
against the sin of associating with Jesus Christ
in the light of our Christian knowledge and
privileges and then turning agamst him in un
faithfulness. Such betrayal is disloyalty to the
truth and grace of God in Christ and is fraught
with the most serious consequences in the
degradation and self-condemnation of the soul
and in its final doom.
No soul can be disloyal to the innocent Christ
and be as good as ever. Such unfaithfulness to
the beauty of his holiness will react unfavorably
and fatally upon the guilty soul itself.

CHAPTER XXIV
NO FAULT IN THIS MAN
This is the clear voice and decisive verdict
that rings out above all the confusion and fury
of falsehood and hatred that raged around the
trial of Jesus.
This trial was a complex affair and passed
through many stages. Being the culmination of
a propaganda of malice and murder, it had no
essential principle of fact and truth binding it
into consistency, but was a surging wave of mad
emotionalism that was driven hither and thither
by any gust of expediency or passion that
seemed to promise any means and hope of reach
ing its wicked end.
Jesus after his arrest was first taken before the
former high priest, Annas, then before Caiaphas
and the Sanhedrin in an irregular trial at night,
which was followed by a more regular trial be
fore the same tribunal in the morning.
He was then arraigned before Pilate, the
Roman governor, as the Sanhedrin could not
finally pass sentence of death. Pilate, after hear
ing the case and privately examining the
accused, sent him to Herod Antipas, tetrarch of
Galilee, then present in the city, on the ground
181

182 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
that Jesus was a Galilaean, thus hoping to rid
himself of the troublesome matter.
Herod, after vainly trying to get some miracle
from Jesus, returned the case to Pilate, who was
at length forced to render a verdict and passed
sentence of death.
I. The light of the trial at this point falls
intensely on Pilate himself. He was the Roman
governor of Judaea with his capital at Caesarea,
but with his residence during the feasts up at
Jerusalem, probably in Herod's palace. He was
unscrupulous and corrupt, tyrannical and cruel,
and exasperated the Jews into fanatical rebellion
by repeated acts of sacrilege and violence. The
most momentous event of his governorship,
though perhaps to him the most trivial, was this
trial. He doubtless looked on Jesus as a con
temptible Jew, possessed of a harmless delusion;
yet had it not been for his accidental association
with that Jew we never would have heard of
Pilate. He stepped into the presence of Jesus, as
a mote floats into a sunbeam, and in that light
stands revealed forever.
He showed some disposition to deal fairly with
his prisoner and made some feeble attempts to
release him; but in the end he played the part
of an unjust judge and a coward, and "Suffered
under Pontius Pilate" is the indelible stigma
that has been affixed to his name.

NO FAULT IN THIS MAN 183
II. When the Jews brought Jesus in the gray
light of the morning to Pilate's judgment hall
they would not enter lest they should be defiled:
for men may be intensely refigious at one point
while engaged in the deepest wickedness at
another; especially they may be punctilious in
the observance of petty outward points of cere
mony while disregarding and trampling upon
the weightiest inward matters of moral prin
ciples. Pilate therefore came out to them and, having
observed the prisoner, inquired, "What accusa
tion bring ye against this man?"
This was certainly an important point, and
yet the Jews had not only failed to supply it, but
were indefinite and evasive when called upon
for it. "If this man were not an evildoer," they
said, "we should not have delivered him up unto
thee." But such a plea as a basis of judgment was
not in accordance with Roman ideas of law, and
the governor attempted to throw the case back
into their hands by telling them to take the
prisoner and judge him according to their own
law. This was Pilate's first device to shift his own
responsibility and get rid of Jesus; and from
this point on it is pitiful to see him tossed about
in his indecision and cowardice, impaled now on

184 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
one and now on another horn of the case, vainly
trying to escape and yet mercilessly driven on
by the murderous mob to a fatal decision.
Pilate now saw that he must look into the
case, and he went back into the palace and
called Jesus for a private interview. The Jews
by this time had presented charges to the effect
that Jesus was perverting the nation, forbidding
to pay taxes to Caesar, and declaring himself a
king — charges that were false but that they
knew would be effective with Pilate, alarmmg
his fears for his own safe standing at Rome.
Pilate began the interview by inquiring into
this point. "Art thou the King of the Jews?"
"Sayest thou this of thyself, or did others tell it
thee concerning me?" was the searching ques
tion with which Jesus replied. If the question
of Pilate was a sincere expression of personal
interest, Jesus could do much more for the
inquirer than if it were a mere repetition of
current rumor.
This question also goes to the root of our reli
gious faith and life and stamps it as experimental
and vital, or as traditional and superficial.
Pilate answered with the contemptuous reply,
"Am I a Jew?" With what bitter contempt and
scorn must he have uttered these words. Jesus
now sketched the outline of his kingdom, and
Pilate, catching at the word "king," repeated

NO FAULT IN THIS MAN 185
the inquiry, "Art thou a king then?" Calmly
Jesus answered, "Thou sayest that I am a king."
Puzzled and awed by the strange prisoner who
declared that "Every one that is of the truth
heareth my voice," Pilate exclaimed, "What is
truth?" an utterance that was evidently the
pessimistic sneer of a man of the world who had
lost all sense of the reality and value of truth.
Without waiting for a reply to his question
Pilate hurried out from the presence of Jesus
and presently he announced to the Jews, "Ye
brought unto me this man, as one that pervert-
eth the people : and behold, I, having examined
him before you, found no fault in this man
touching those things whereof ye accuse him."
Twice he made this declaration, and it stands
written in indelible words in these records to
this day.
HI. What is the value of this verdict? This
depends on the impartiality and justice of the
judge and on the evidence he had before him.
Did Pilate know the facts in the case? When
the matter came before him it seemed to him at
first glance to be a Jewish religious squabble of
no importance, and he thought to dismiss it by
remanding it back to the Jewish fanatics to
settle it among themselves.
But when he found this could not be done, he
was forced to look into it and he took unusual

186 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
pains to learn the facts in the matter. He not
only questioned the Jews and demanded that
they present their charges and evidence, but he
took Jesus with him into his palace where he
questioned him closely in a private interview.
This must have been an unprecedented and
extraordinary procedure with this Roman gov
ernor and gave him an opportunity to observe
Jesus narrowly and judge him intimately. This
Roman judge was trained in the law and he
exercised his legal authority and far more than
his usual care to discover the facts and truth
about Jesus.
And what was the attitude of Pilate toward
the case? Did he have any partisan and personal
interest in the decision he would make? Had
his relation to the case been that purely of a
Roman judge, with his deep inbred sense and
habit of Roman law and justice, he would
doubtless have endeavored to be unpartisan and
just. But he had a strong personal interest in
the case that tended powerfully to sway the
scales of justice in his hand.
When the Jews cunningly framed their
charges so as to accuse the prisoner of forbidding
to pay taxes to Caesar and of declaring himself to
be a king, they put a powerful partisan pressure
on Pilate and raised a great fear in his heart.
Should he decide in favor of Jesus and against

NO FAULT IN THIS MAN 187
the Jews he would lay himself open to the charge
of treason against Rome; and no more dreadful
fear could be planted in Pilate's mind. A little
later in the trial when Pilate was trying to find
a way of releasing Jesus the Jews flung this very
charge full in his face: "If thou release this man,
thou art not Caesar's friend: every one that
maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar."
Pilate now saw he was in a desperate situa
tion. The murderous mob was at his throat,
the tiger already had a taste of his cowardly
blood, and he had not the courage to take his
stand boldly on the ground of justice and de
clare the prisoner innocent and free. All the
partisan interests and personal fears of the
Roman judge conspired to force from him a
verdict of guilty and hand the prisoner over to
the mob.
Yet in the midst of all this fury and fear he
was compelled by his Roman instinct of truth
and justice to utter in tones that have come
thundering down through all these centuries
the bold judgment, "I have found no fault in
this man!" By the seals of full and proper
evidence in the case and of a verdict forced out
of a partisan judge who was trying to escape
such a conclusion, this decision is stamped with
the highest authority and the greatest weight,
and it shines out like a star in the gloom and

188 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
storm of all the unfairness and falsity of this
trial. IV. "No fault in this man!" So this is the
outcome of all this attempt to fasten a grave
crime on Jesus of Nazareth, and a Roman judge
with full knowledge of the case blows it away
with one breath of his mouth! What other
verdict could he have justly rendered? No wit
nesses could be found that would agree on any
charge against Jesus. Many other charges were
brought agamst him, and of these some were
false, and others, such as that he was a trampler
upon tradition and consorted with publicans
and sinners, only enhanced the courage of his
mind and the sympathy of his heart and the
splendor of his character.
And how many other witnesses of his works
could have added their testimony to the verdict
"No fault," and have swelled it to a mighty
chorus? The man healed of a withered hand, the
palsied man who was enabled to take up his bed
and walk, the many people who had been healed
of diseases and evil spirits, the disciples who had
lived with him in intimacy, the multitudes who
had heard the Sermon on the Mount and re
ceived bread on the grassy shore of the lake, —
would not all these and many others have joined
with tears and shouts of joy in this testimony?
And has not the same testimony come rolling

NO FAULT IN THIS MAN 189
down through the ages, gathering volume with
every century? Is not Christ's own question,
"Which of you convicteth me of sin?" yet an
unanswered challenge?
It is true that some critics have tried to pick
faults in the character or teaching or program
of Jesus, but these critics have never proved
their case nor won any considerable assent to
their allegations; rather such attempted detrac
tions, like these ancient charges, have confirmed
faith in him and redounded to his honor and
glory. The friends of Jesus ask for no favors at this
point, and he himself must submit to the keen
est and most hostile criticism; but after nineteen
hundred years of searching publicity the world
in the light of to-day affirms and confirms the
verdict, "We find no fault in this Man."

CHAPTER XXV
HE STIRRETH UP THE PEOPLE
"He stirreth up the people," was the charge
brought by the Jews agamst Jesus before Pilate.
As the charge meant that Jesus was inciting the
people to riot and rebellion against the Roman
power, it was an effective bit of political dem-
agoguery. Rebellion against Rome was just
what the Jews wanted, but they knew this
charge would catch the ear of Pilate, and any
false accusation was a good enough stick with
which to beat the Galilaean.
The charge was false, but, like so many of the
things said against Jesus by his enemies, it was
true in a deeper sense than they meant or knew.
Jesus did stir up the people mightily. He walked
up and down Judaea, the crossroads of the world,
shattering old traditions and letting loose ideas
that were destined to shake the whole world.
Great crowds followed him, immense excitement
often attended his work; but these were only
local symptoms of a commotion that soon swept
across the borders of that little country and
widened out around the globe
I. Jesus Christ was incomparably the great
est world-shaker that ever trod the earth.
190

HE STIRRETH UP THE PEOPLE 191
Alexander the Great penetrating the East and
battering down old political and social fabrics,
Caesar sweeping his sword around the Mediter
ranean shore, Napoleon trampling Europe to
pieces under his tread — these all were outdone
by this humble Carpenter. Rome crushed him
on its cross, but he soon put one of his followers
on its throne and stopped its gladiatorial shows.
The most impressive ruin of ancient Rome is the
Coliseum, the mighty and mournful symbol of
pagan pleasure-seeking madness and cruelty. It
was the hand of Jesus that quenched the flow of
blood in that arena and emptied those vast tiers
of seats of their shouting multitudes.
Later down the centuries, it was Jesus Christ
who stirred up Europe in the great movements
of the Middle Ages. The crusades set all Europe
in commotion, and the Reformation was a tre
mendous stirring of the people, breathing into
them a new spirit and inciting them to throw
off the bonds of papal despotism and supersti
tion and have freedom of faith and life.
The Reformation, however, was only a part
of a still wider movement against autocracy; it
led on to the rise of democracy against unlimited
monarchy. Cromwell's commonwealth in the
seventeenth century was the logical consequence
of Luther's reformation in the sixteenth. The
same spirit that rose against the Pope was sure

192 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
to rise against the King Freedom in the church
was bound to lead to freedom in the state.
Hence arose our modern constitutional king
doms and republics, and these came because
Jesus Christ had stirred up the people.
In still later times the people again were
stirred up; next, against slavery. The logic of
human freedom as worked out in the Reforma
tion and democracy was incomplete as long as
some men owned other men. The fact that the
masters had white and the slaves had black
skins did not matter, for underneath their white
and black skins they both had red blood. The
institution of slavery was very old and deeply
intrenched in human interest, prejudice and
passion, and it fought savagely for its life; but
Jesus stirred the people up powerfully against
it, and it had to go.
Next came the turn of the American liquor
traffic, another evil that was inveterately rooted
in human appetite and greed. No voice was
lifted against it until the voice of Jesus began to
get a hearing and through one hundred years he
kept stirring up Christian and public opinion
against it, until its doom was sealed and em
bodied in the Constitution, where "it is written"
— and will so stand until thirty-six States can
be found that will write it out.
A long line of related social laws is now crowd-

HE STIRRETH UP THE PEOPLE 193
ing into our statutes, and they are being written
there by Christian pubfic opinion, which is only
another way of saying that they are being writ
ten by the hand of Christ. Equal suffrage, the
protection of the child, sanitary laws in factories
and tenements, restriction of monopolies, and
many forms of social betterment plainly are the
outcome of the same logic that created the
Reformation and set free democracy in our
modern world.
II. And what was the Great War but the
mighty outbreak and uprush of the same spirit?
It was at bottom a war of ideas and ideals, of the
modern Christian against the ancient pagan
world, of democracy against despotism, of free
spirit against brute force, of Christ against the
Kaiser. The spirit of Jesus had so far permeated
the whole world far outside the warring powers
that German ideas and ideals had become an
anachronism which the twentieth century would
not tolerate. The whole sea of humanity was
stirred up to its depths over this recrudescence
of militarism, and it poured a flood of wrath in
upon it to drown it out in blood.
The stormy sea has not yet subsided, and it
may take a long time for its angry waves to sink
into rest and again lie smooth and smiling under
the sun, but a majestic Voice stirred up that
storm of resistance against tyranny, and the

194 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMLES
same Voice will yet speak the word, "Peace, be
still." So it is literally true that from the days of his
earthly ministry to the present hour Jesus has
stirred up the people with a power and passion
never equaled by any other. He is the greatest
world-shaker this old world has ever known.
in. What means does Jesus use in this
world? The people may be stirred up by various
means to various ends. The Jews sought to stir
up Pilate and the people against Jesus by ap
pealing to their prejudice and hatred, and this
is a very popular and potent method of stirring
them up to this day. Alexander and Caesar and
Napoleon stirred the people up with their
swords; but Jesus had no sword and forbade one
to his disciples. He had but one means, and the
Jews themselves hit upon it in their charge:
"He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout
all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place."
"Teaching" — that was the means, and the
only means, by which Jesus stirred up the people
and caused all this commotion in the world. He
simply let loose ideas among men, and these
have come rolling down through the centuries,
upsetting thrones and rearranging the map of
the world, uprooting old institutions and re
shaping all civilization.
Nothing is so charged with subtle and irresis-

HE STIRRETH UP THE PEOPLE 195
tible might as an idea. It may be as invisible
and seem as light and impotent as air, but it has
in it power more explosive and titanic than
dynamite. It can diffuse itself everywhere like
the atmosphere and insinuate itself into all
crevices and cracks and silently dissolve into
dust the hardest rock of opposition. Men may
laugh at it as they did at the idea of Columbus
or at the ideal of freedom for the black man, but
it will override them as ruthlessly as an
avalanche. A potent idea in time pervades all men's
thinking and feeling and molds and tempers
them into its way and will. It fascinates the
imagination and captivates the heart. Let a
great idea get loose among the people, and it
will stir them up as nothing else can. The school
teacher is the most powerful man in the world,
and Jesus Christ was and is the greatest School
teacher this world ever has seen.
IV. What was the teaching of Jesus that so
stirred up the people? It was the whole gospel
of his redemption, but it can be summed up in
two words — divine Fatherhood, human brother
hood. The one bound men in kinship to God,
and the other bound them in kinship to one
another. The one brings salvation from sin
through atonement and penitence and pardon
and makes all men dependent on and obedient

196 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
to God; the other makes all men dependent on
one another, regardful of one another's rights,
willing to extend to one another a helping hand
and able to live together in mutual peace and
love and joy. The one sets the cross on Calvary
as the expression of the Father's love, and the
other bids all men look unto it in common de
pendence and be saved.
These two ideas are big enough and potent
enough to stir up the people of the whole world.
They have in them dynamic to shake down old
evils and make all things new. It was these
ideas that emptied the Coliseum, caused the
Reformation, created modern democracy, struck
the shackles off the slave, uprooted the liquor
traffic. It is these ideas that are rewriting so
much of our modern legislation and that won
the Great War itself.
During all these centuries Jesus has been
standing in the midst of the nations, teaching
them that God is the Father of their spirits and
that all they are brethren, and has thus stirred
up a series of commotions that have shaken the
world, from center to circumference.
V. And this work still is going on. The unrest
that yet fills the world is stirred up by unfulfilled
ideas and ideals. In fact, fermentation is bound
to stir the world up more profoundly than ever.
Modern political ideas that are struggling to

HE STIRRETH UP THE PEOPLE 197
find expression in every continent and country
and that head up in the League of Nations can
not be put down but will press toward their
goal with cumulative power. The Occident is
all in commotion, and the vast Orient is in the
travail of the birth of republics and modern in
stitutions. We need look for no world rest in this genera
tion; and the future need not expect it. Rest
for this disjointed world, so full of unsolved and
explosive problems and perils, is the last thing
we should expect or desire. For rest is stagna
tion, and stagnation is death. Life is active and
aggressive, full of vigor and vim and victory.
The fact that the world is one vast seething
fermentation is itself a hopeful fact, for this is
evidence that a spirit is working in it that is
verily the Spirit of God, making all things new.
The church needs stirring up along with the
world. It settles down into peace and quiet and
crystallizes into formalism and traditionalism at
its peril. In his own day Jesus gave most of his
attention to stirring up the church, for it had
passed from life unto death and was already
robed in its grave clothes.
It is a healthy sign when the church is in a
state of earnest discussion and activity, pro
vided, of course, that it is not pervaded by
factional and bitter controversy. Difference of

198 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
view may broaden wisdom, and emulation may
increase zeal. Denominational rivalries are not
all wrong or wasted energy, but may have in
them the seeds of wholesome competitive
progress. The great need of this hour, as of every hour,
is the pouring out of the Spirit in pentecostal
plenitude and power upon the church. When
this gift has been received the church will be
deeply and vitally stirred up and will move for
ward in new service and be mighty in word and
deed.

CHAPTER XXVI
WHAT SHALL I DO WITH JESUS?
Pilate had to do something with Jesus: there
was no escaping a decision and disposal of his
case; and this same necessity is forced upon us.
I. Pilate resorted to every device his Roman
knowledge of the law and wit could contrive to
escape this responsibility. He soon saw that the
Jews had brought Jesus before him with a
sinister motive to work out their own plot and
vengeance and that Jesus was really innocent of
any legal charge.
He first tried to put the Jews off with his
declaration that he found no fault in the man.
But this deliverance only stirred the Jews up to
greater fury and urged them to prefer other and
more serious charges to the effect that Jesus
was instigating sedition among the people
throughout Judaea and Galilee.
Pilate caught at the word "Galilee" and re
manded the case to Herod Antipas, tetrarch of
Galilee, then in the city. He may have flattered
himself that he was luckily rid of the trouble
some tangle, but it soon came back into his
hands more complicated and formidable than
ever. 199

200 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
The Roman governor now tried to take ad
vantage of the custom of releasing a prisoner at
the feast and suggested that he release unto the
Jews either Barabbas, a notorious robber, or
Jesus, evidently thinking that they would cer
tainly choose for this favor so innocent and
harmless a man as Jesus rather than so dan
gerous a criminal as Barabbas. But again he was
disappointed and met with a hoarse cry from
the mob for Barabbas.
At this point Pilate was at the height of his
perplexity and helplessly inquired, ' 'What then
shall I do unto Jesus which is called Christ?"
It was then that a still more dreadful and alarm
ing cry came up into his ears from the mob as
they roared, "Let him be crucified." "Why,
what evil hath he done?" demanded the Roman
judge, who had now lost his courage and self-
control and sense of justice and was at the mercy
of the mob.
It was then that Pilate resorted to the vain
device of washing his hands in water and
declaring, "I am innocent of the blood of this
righteous man: see ye to it."
Once more he made an effort to release Jesus
by declaring that he could find no crime in him,
but now the Jews raised the most fearful cry
he had yet heard, "If thou release this man,
thou art not Caesar's friend." This was too much

WHAT SHALL I DO WITH JESUS? 201
for Pilate, who was frightened at the thought
of losing his own place under charge of treason
with its sure fate, and he now took the final and
fatal step of unjustly and falsely deciding
against Jesus and sending an innocent man to
his doom.
Thus Pilate was tossed from one to another
horn of the case and was relentlessly driven to
find an answer to his pathetic question, "What
shall I do unto Jesus?"
I. As Pilate was forced that day to make
some decision and disposal of the case of Jesus,
so has the same necessity been forced upon the
ages ever since and it inescapably confronts us
to-day. There are many historical characters and
questions with respect to which we do not need
to take a position. The facts may not be before
us so as to justify such a decision, or even if they
were they do not personally involve our con
science and require a decision from us.
One may take a neutral attitude towards the
teaching and character and death of Socrates,
or on the authorship of the "Letters of Junius,"
or on multitudes of such questions. One may
say: "I have not gone into such matters and I
take no partisan or positive stand on them. Put
me down as noncommittal and neutral.'
But there are other questions that assume a

202 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
personal relation to us, and while we judge
them they also judge us. They serve as a
test of our ethical standards and nature and
determine our character as an acid may test
gold. The question as to whether we should tell the
truth or maintain personal honor and purity
cannot be set aside as not involving us or as
permitting a neutral attitude. Such a question
forces us to a personal decision, and we can no
more escape it than we can escape the grip of
gravitation. Any attitude we take or anything
we say with respect to it will be a decision one
way or the other.
John Stuart Mill once wrote a pamphlet in
which he said in effect that workingmen are
liars. Afterward, when running for Parliament
and while addressing an audience of working-
men, the pamphlet was handed up to him and
he was asked if he wrote it. "I did," he instantly
answered, and so honest and brave was his reply
that the crowd cheered him.
A cowardly politician would have endeavored
to evade the question by some excuse or device
to the effect that he was not sure that he had
written it, or that if he had he did not mean it.
But Mr. Mill would tolerate in himself no
equivocation on the point, did not in his per
plexity, like Pilate, try to extricate himself from

WHAT SHALL I DO WITH JESUS? 203
the dangerous situation, but boldly avowed the
truth, and his splendid courage won the applause
of his audience and also their votes and his
election. We are often confronted in life with these
personal questions and situations in which we
may feel ourselves tossed about upon the horns
of perplexity or caught in a trap from which we
cannot escape and must take action that will
put us on record and stamp us as loyal and
fearless in our support of truth, or as unfaithful
and cowardly.
HI. Jesus Christ falls into the category of
persistent and present questions that demand a
personal attitude and answer. He is not simply
a historical character and problem, but a present
reality and personal test. As the incarnation of
his Father and the representative of God in the
world he has come walking down through the
ages, facing every generation and asking, "Who
do men say that I am?"
This question divided Judaea and Galilee in
the days of his flesh. Some gave one answer and
some another, and thus it cleft asunder his own
people by a great gulf that separates them to
this day.
The same question has come down through
the centuries, marking off the church from the
world and splitting the church itself into advo-

204 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
cates of various views of his person and into
many denominations.
History has revolved around the person of
Christ more than that of any other human being,
and great controversies and vast libraries of
literature have grown out of it.
We are born into the atmosphere of this ques
tion, and it is interwoven into the whole web
and texture of our civilization so that there is
no escaping it. Practically every one living in a
Christian land is confronted with it with such
point and persistency that he must and does
take his attitude and stand for or agamst Christ.
There are certain historical facts and aspects
of the question that involve a degree of historical
knowledge, and these questions must be decided
in the light of historical truth. But there is also
a direct moral relation that every one sustains
to Christ that tests his ethical affinities and
decisions and puts upon him the responsibility
of action.
The general question, "Who do men say that
I am?" assumes the sharply personal form,
"But who say ye that I am?"
And so Pilate's question, "What shall I do
with Jesus?" comes home to us and requires us
to make some disposal of him in his personal
relation to us. We are under the necessity of
judging him according to our affinities with his

WHAT SHALL I DO WITH JESUS? 205
teachings and character and ideals and demands
and we will thereby fundamentally stand with
him or against him. At this point we are forced
to cast our vote with reference to Jesus Christ.
"Like you this Christianity or not?
It may be false, but will you wish it true?
Has it your vote to be so if it can?"
IV. Pilate's disposition of Jesus deeply af
fected his life and destiny. By turning against
him and delivering him to his enemies he proved
recreant to his position and responsibility as
judge and to his own conscience, and he turned
coward and thereby condemned and degraded
himself. He saved his position as Roman gov
ernor, but he lost his own soul. And the deep
damnation of his action has forever branded him
with the indelible stigma, "Suffered under
Pontius Pilate."
Our personal disposition of Jesus will inev
itably have its effect upon our moral and
spiritual fife. If we dispose of him after the
manner of Pilate, this attitude and act will react
upon us as it stamps us as being disloyal to his
personal character and holy ideals and saving
power and sets us in antagonism to his spirit
and demands.
Our judgment of Jesus is automatically re
active: as we judge him, so are we judging our
selves, and we also incur his judgment of us. In

206 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
rejecting him we are rejecting eternal and holy
truth, and such action must go deeply into char
acter and life. "If any man hear my sayings,"
said Jesus, "and keep them not, I judge him
not: for I came not to judge the world, but to
save the world. He that rejecteth me, and re-
ceiveth not my sayings, hath one that judgeth
him : the word that I spake, the same shall judge
him in the last day."
This simply asserts the necessary psycho
logical effect upon the soul of either the recep
tion or the rejection of truth. All truth puts this
test to the soul, but spiritual truth is especially
penetrating and decisive in its self-judgment or
automatic action.
Jesus Christ is the incarnation of the truth of
the holy and loving God as to sin and salvation
and this truth works its own reward or retribu
tion. We are forced to take some attitude and
action with reference to him. "Whom say ye
that I am?" is his question that pierces through
the centuries and penetrates the consciousness
and conscience of each one of us; and "What
shall I do with Jesus?" is a pointed inquiry that
every one of us must and does answer.

CHAPTER XXVn
HIS BLOOD BE ON US
Another utterance that unconsciously ex
pressed immensely more than was consciously
mtended. Pilate had performed his vain ritual
of washing his hands before the clamorous Jews
at the trial of Jesus and had declared, "I am
innocent of the blood of this righteous man: see
ye to it." But that very blood was on him then;
and not all the multitudinous seas through all
succeeding ages have been able to wash out its
stain. "See ye to it," said Pilate as he tried to roll
his responsibility off upon the Jews. "And all
the people answered and said, His blood be on
us, and on our children."
Little did they realize that history was listen
ing to and recording this utterance to send it
down through all the centuries and that they
were unconsciously declaring their own tragic
doom in these fateful words.
I. The self-blinding power of prejudice and
hatred is seen in this saying. The Pharisees and
priests knew the falsity of the charges they had
brought against Jesus and the perjured testi
mony they had purchased against him. The real
207

208 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
cause of their attack upon him was not anything
they had alleged, but it was their opposition to
him as one who rejected their religious doctrines
and spirit and who stood in the way of their
worldly and selfish spirit and plan in regard to
the earthly kingdom in which they were am
bitious to be chief in place and power.
Any false accusation that would put Jesus in
a bad light before Pilate was suited to their
purpose, and their allegation that he was a wily
agitator stirring up rebellion and endangering
Pilate's own position was a good enough stick
with which to beat their victim, or device to
catch him in a fatal trap.
Urged on under the blinding fury of their evil
purpose and passion, they were ready to take
any step that promised to carry them nearer to
their end; and when Pilate tried to wash all
guilty complicity off his hands and pass the
whole burden of responsibility over to them, so
eager were they to get his consent to their de
mands that they took this responsibility wholly
upon themselves in the fateful words, "His
blood be on us, and on our children."
They were willing to agree to any terms and
incur any consequences to compass their end,
and invited this awful doom upon themselves,
and were even willing to roll it down upon their
children. Nothing should stand between them

HIS BLOOD BE ON US 209
and their objective; no reason or right or dread
ful fate should stay them one step in their guilty
course. No doubt they believed themselves conscien
tious and right in their action; but this very
conscientiousness was the outgrowth of their
own self-willed determination to put out of the
way the Man that stood in their path. Such a
perverted and blinded conscience is itself a
deeper degree of guilt and will work out a more
tragic retribution.
History is full of instances in which men have
defiantly or lightly, or even mockingly, declared
their willingness to bear the consequences of
their evil plots and plans, and the court of time
has infallibly kept the record and ruthlessly
exacted the penalty.
It is one of our most fatal powers that we can
so tamper with our conscience that we can get
it to consent to and sanction anything we want
to do and even dare to invite its worst conse
quences upon ourselves and upon our children.
"If therefore the light that is in thee be dark
ness, how great is the darkness!"
H. How has this self-invited doom been ful
filled? First, in what the Jews missed by reject
ing and crucifying their own Messiah. Who can
tell what would have happened if his own people
had received him? What, then, would have been

210 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
the turn of affairs in connection with the life of
Jesus, and what would have been the course of
events down through the Christian centuries
and what would be the position and fortune of
the Jews to-day?
No one can unfold the possibilities that would
have followed their action had they received
and embraced their own Messiah. But the
consequences would have been stupendous and
might have revolutionized all subsequent his
tory. The Jews had been trained to receive the
Messiah, and had they fulfilled their mission by
accepting him and serving him, his kingdom
would have been established through some other
way than that of the cross. The Jews as a peo
ple would then have been the heralds of the
gospel and the light-bearers of the world to
spread rapidly along every shore and across
every continent and sea the good news of re
demption and the light of God's universal
love. This light shining out over the world in in
creasing effulgence would have fallen first upon
them to illumine and transfigure them among
the nations. Their race would have had the
immortal honor of possessing and giving to the
world the Messiah and Saviour and they would
have shared in his glory as motes shine splendid

HIS BLOOD BE ON US 211
in the sunbeam. They would have been a
chosen and peculiar and exalted people in the
world to this day, and all nations would pay
them honor.
All this, and we know not what more, they
forfeited when they rejected Jesus and boldly
cried out, "His blood be on us, and on our chil
dren." It is on them, and one part of the price
they are paying and doom they are bearing is
the glory that might have been theirs but was
forever lost.
IH. The negative form of this fate has been
attended with a sorer positive judgment that
has come upon the Jews. They said, "His blood
be on us, and on our children," and the world
has taken them at their own word and visited
upon them centuries of condemnation. The
Jews have been the tragedy of history. Cap
tivity and sorrow had attended them from the
beginning of their checkered career, but their
sorrows came to a crisis soon after their cruci
fixion of their Messiah.
Rebellion lifted its obstinate head against
Rome until the wrath of the Emperor Titus was
aroused and he took decisive measures against
these pestiferous people. Roman legions sur
rounded their capital and swept in slaughter
through its streets and leveled its walls and
plowed up its very foundation stones.

212 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
Thus was literally fulfilled the prophecy
uttered against the city by the Nazarene its
haughty priests and Pharisees despised and
crucified and who prayed that his blood might
be upon themselves. Already the fate they in
vited was coming to pass.
The destruction of their capital was followed
by the dispersion of the Jews, and they went out
from their homeland never to know another, and
ever since they have been wanderers over the
earth and pilgrims and strangers in every land.
They have found their way over all continents
and seas and islands, and while they have been
sojourners everywhere they have really found a
home nowhere. Though they learn to speak the
language and observe the customs of other races
and do business with them, yet are they always
racially distinct and peculiar, and a deep and
almost impassable gulf separates them from the
people with whom they dwell. They have
acquired physiological and psychological racial
characteristics that everywhere mark them as
though they had been branded with a hot
iron. Fate has been notoriously unkind and cruel
to them. From the time of their rejection of
their Messiah they have been objects of un
popularity and obloquy, prejudice and hatred,
persecutions and pogroms, torture and death.

HIS BLOOD BE ON US 213
Their history has been marked by injustice and
cruelty and stained with blood beyond that of
any other people and is about the saddest
and most tragic page in all the records of the
world. For nineteen hundred years these manifold
sufferings have been poured upon them. They
have been driven out of some countries and in
others they have been shut up in the ghettos of
cities or in circumscribed pales. Law and custom
have been outrageously unjust to them, and
often they have had no rights that Christians
felt bound to respect.
Their wails and the cries of their children have
filled Europe and Asia from the Rhine to the
Indus and their blood has been shed without
mercy. Not only through the Middle Ages were
they subjected to ruthless persecutions, but in
our day pogroms have broken out in Russia and
Poland and even in Germany, in which hundreds
and thousands have been massacred.
Their sufferings through all these centuries
have been the pathos of the world, and even in
our own country, where they are not subject to
persecution and enjoy full liberty, they are yet
viewed with a degree of prejudice and un
popularity. As Christians and as members of the common
brotherhood of our race we can have no sym-

214 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
pathy with this persecution of the Jews. They
are people of our own humanity and blood and
are entitled to the same rights as other men. To
visit these injustices and outrages upon them as
retribution for their national sin in crucifying
Jesus is a monstrous perversion of justice and
right. We should resist with all our might such
unfounded and inhuman prejudice and propa
ganda. Nevertheless, it is a plain matter of fact that
the unhappy fate of this people in no small
degree has been due to their ancient sin. Had
they not committed that crime, it is possible
that such persecutions would not have been
inflicted upon them by Christian peoples. Un
doubtedly, multitudes of people have held them
guilty of the wickedness of crucifying the
Saviour of the world and have deliberately
joined in persecuting them in punishment for
the act; and their own self-invited judgment
has not been forgotten but has been fulfilled,
"His blood be on us, and on our children." And
there is no denying that there is some ground
for this judgment, for there is such a thing as
racial solidarity and responsibility in relation to
evil which these Jews themselves acknowledged.
It is still possible for us to bring the blood of
Jesus on ourselves. In so far as we reject and
are disloyal to his spirit and truth and do despite

HIS BLOOD BE ON US 215
to his grace we do in our day, according to our
fight and opportunity, just what the Jews did
in their day and we crucify afresh the Son of
God. We bring on ourselves a grave burden of
guilt when we set ourselves against his truth and
love and saving grace; and we may transmit an
evil inheritance to our children.

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE KING OF THE JEWS
On the top of the cross over the head of Jesus
was a board whitened with gypsum, bearing in
black letters the inscription, "The King of the
Jews." Pilate wrote this legend, probably as an
exasperating insult to the Jews, a last deadly
stab at them and a cunningly malicious way of
getting even with them for their obstinate re
fusal to accede to his plan to release Jesus;
and when they saw it they were enraged and
interceded with him to change it. But the
Roman governor, having recovered some of his
courage, met them with the cold refusal, "What
I have written, I have written."
Pilate wrote better than he knew and gave
another unconscious testimony to Jesus. He
may have had some dim discernment of the
moral greatness, if not of the supernatural
nature, of the strange Nazarene and thus wrote.
More likely, however, it was written in jest and
as an insult; yet like many another word spoken
in ridicule, it has turned out to be one of the
greatest truths of the world; and while the
inscription itself does not extend the kingship
of Jesus beyond the Jews, yet by analogy it may
216

THE KING OF THE JEWS 217
be broadened out over the world. And so over
that furious mob that surged around the cross
on which Jesus hung in dying agony was lifted
this inscription that proclaimed him a king.
I. Christ was and is a king indeed, but not
the kind of a king the Jews wanted. A king had
been their age-long hope and burning ambition,
but the king they wanted was an earthly ruler
and conqueror who would come in the greatness
of his strength, crushing other nations under his
mighty march and exalting the Jews in power
with Jerusalem as the splendid capital and
mistress of the world. They did not object to a
Caesar: all they objected to was a Roman Caesar,
and what they wanted was a Jewish Caesar with
themselves enthroned beside him. The keen
irony of Pilate's inscription lay in the fact that
he saw what kind of a king they wanted and put
them in a pitiable position by publishing and
exploiting as their king the very Nazarene they
hated and were crucifying.
But the world has had kings enough of this
kind. They have ruled the world long enough
and have made sorry work of it. They have
built kingdoms and empires of human bones and
blood and drenched the world with tears. Hu
manity has long since begun to cry for relief
from and to throw off the shackles and burdens
of such despotism.

218 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
The world is now rapidly outgrowing such
antiquated and oppressive instruments of class
government and tyranny and is marching for
ward into the freer air and wider liberty of
democracy. Thrones and crowns have of late
come crashing down, and parliaments and peo
ples have been rising into power. The king is
passing and the common man is coming and
has arrived.
The kingship of Jesus is not inconsistent with
this democracy, for he does not rule by blood
and iron but by reason and right and goodness;
and he raises all his followers to the rank of
kings by crowning them with self-control and
righteous character and inner fiberty.
Christ's kingdom is not of this world; it does
not come with thrones and crowns, pomp and
pageantry, but with truth and love; it is not
material but spiritual; not outer but inner; it is
not imposed upon men from without by force,
but it grows up within men in willing hearts. It
is the rule of right, the fiberty of love, and the
peace of brotherhood. The worst master we can
have over us is an evil disposition within us, and
Christ is King over us when we have the king
dom of God within our souls.
II. The inscription was written in Hebrew
and Latin and Greek, and this fact was deeply
significant. All the people present could read

THE KING OF THE JEWS 219
one or another of these languages, and the
universality of Christ's kingship was thus sym
bolized. The Hebrew or Aramaic was the language of
the common people. Kings have hitherto raised
themselves above their human kind, and com
mon folk might look upon them with awe as they
rolled by robed in scarlet and gold in some
spectacular procession of state, but they could
not hope to be invited into their presence and
fellowship. Christ as king gives all human
beings access to his person and entrance into
the privilege of his companionship and service.
In his kingdom there are no privileged or spe
cial classes, but all are kings and priests unto
God. Jesus appeals to the common mind and the
humblest people by recognizing their worth and
essential equality in the great brotherhood of
men and family of God. He is not king over
them to whip them into slavery and exploit
them in his service, but he lifts them up and
crowns them with the honor and splendor of
pure character and noble living.
The gospel of his kingdom has been a per
vasive and powerful factor and spirit in under
mining despotic thrones and raising the level of
the common people by breathing into them the
spirit of liberty. Wherever Jesus is king the

220 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
masses catch the vision of higher ideals and
begin to appreciate their worth and rights and
live a freer and fuller and richer life. Because
he understands them and honors them and
speaks to them in their own speech the common
people hear him gladly.
The gospel of Christ is being translated into
the languages of many of the peoples of the
world so that they can read it in their own
tongues and understand and interpret it for
themselves. It is no longer locked up in learned
or dead languages, but it speaks so that every
one can hear it in his own speech. And the good
news of the kingdom should be so published and
preached and lived that every one can under
stand and feel its appeal and be moved to
accept and serve Jesus as king.
III. The inscription as written in Latin may
stand as symbolizing Christ's kingship over men
of leadership and power. The Romans were then
the rulers of the world, and by their political
genius and administrative ability, backed up by
their legions, they had gathered the whole West
ern world under their eagles. From Caesar's
golden throne in the Eternal City roads radiated
out in every direction to the rim of the empire
that ran like an iron band around the Mediter
ranean world, hemming it in and holding to
gether, and within this vast area and over these

THE KING OF THE JEWS 221
multitudes of people of many races and tongues
Caesar ruled supreme, and at the wave of his
hand legions marched and millions of human
beings obeyed.
This system of law and order, mastery and
might, incarnated in the Roman Empire and in
the Latin language, was transmitted to succeed
ing ages as Rome's contribution to civilization,
and much of it endures in and underlies and is
built into our civilization to-day.
Christ speaks to such men of leadership and
power and appeals to them to enter his kingdom.
He is not a weak sentimental man, as he has
often been portrayed by the painters, who have
depicted him with drooping figure, pale anemic
face, long hair parted in the middle and falling
down over his shoulders, dreamy eyes, alto
gether an effeminate creature with a sweet and
clinging disposition. And some literary artists
have produced similar portraits of him, such as
Renan's "sweet Galilaean vision," and Tolstoy's
purely passive Christ.
But Jesus was and is no such weak man: he
is a strong man with masterful personality be
fore whose majestic mien Roman soldiers went
backward and fell upon the ground. Not only
did his lips drop dew and honey, but also out of
his mouth issued lightnings to smite and scorch
hypocritical priests and Pharisees. He was every

222 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
inch a king in majesty and might, the Lion of
the tribe of Judah as well as the Lamb of God.
Such a Saviour appeals to men of vigor and
vim, leadership and heroism, adventure and
valor, and such men have ever flocked to his
banner. In the days of his flesh he attracted
Roman soldiers and officers, and soon his gospel
found its way into the palace of Caesar and then
presently a Christian Caesar sat on the throne of
Rome. Down through the centuries he has at
tracted many kings and knights and nobles,
soldiers and generals, legislators and statesmen,
pioneers and discoverers, captains of industry,
and leaders and heroes in every field of activity
and achievement. Prince of Peace though he is,
he is also the Captain of our salvation and is
found on the battlefield of every war for liberty
and right. He is superlatively the strong Man
of the world.
The kingship of Jesus is also being extended
through and under and over the kingdoms of
this world. While his kingdom is not of this
world, yet it penetrates and assimilates them
and more and more will it infuse his spirit into
them until there will go up a great shout, saying,
"The kingdom of the world is become the king
dom of our Lord and of his Christ : and he shall
reign for ever and ever." The Latin inscription
on the cross foreshadowed this great day.

THE KING OF THE JEWS 223
IV. The Greek inscription on the cross may
be taken as symbolizing the kingship of Jesus
over intellect and culture. The Greeks were the
thinkers and artists of the ancient world. They
developed a genius for thought and beauty, as
the Hebrews did for religion and the Romans
for power. In the palmy days of Athens there
was an outflowering of intellectual and artistic
ability in that city such as the world has never
since seen equaled in splendor.
The Greek intellect searched widely and pro
foundly into the nature of the world and life and
destiny and produced literary masterpieces that
are the models and admiration and inspiration
of our universities to this day; and the Greek
sense of beauty wrought itself out into architec
ture and statuary the very ruins and broken
fragments of which are now guarded as precious
treasures. The Greeks also perfected a language which in
wealth of vocabulary and flexibility of form
made it the most facile and forcible and beauti
ful instrument of human expression in its day
and which yet remains as one of our richest and
most efficient means of culture.
It was especially fitting that the inscription on
the cross should be written in Greek, for in that
tongue the New Testament was written and the
kingship of Jesus was first preached throughout

224 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
the ancient world; and we still read the original
New Testament in this tongue to-day.
As Christ appeals to men of power, so does he
appeal to people of culture. He called himself
the Truth and he bore the name and fulfilled the
office of Teacher and he put primary emphasis
on knowledge as a means of eternal life. And so
he is the Light of the world and has no affinity
with the darkness of ignorance and obscurant
ism. Christian faith insists on searching all
fields of truth and feeds on this sustenance from
whatever source it is drawn.
The Wise Men came to worship the infant
Jesus, and the wise men of the world have ever
since been coming to the same Saviour. The
greatest of scholars, scientists, philosophers,
poets, painters, musicians have laid their
precious products at his feet. Culture is not the
salvation of the world, and people of the highest
intellect and finest taste will find satisfaction
and fullness and fruition of spiritual life only as
they acknowledge the Greek inscription on the
cross of Jesus and bow before him.
Hebrew and Latin and Greek, there is room
and welcome around the person and in the king
dom of Jesus for all races and tongues, classes
and conditions of men. The illiterate may come
and find the simple saving gospel, and the
strong and the cultured may come and find their

THE KING OF THE JEWS 225
special needs met and satisfied. Pilate knew not
this, and yet unconsciously he prophesied it that
day he wrote over the cross of Jesus the inscrip
tion, "The King of the Jews," in Hebrew and
Latin and Greek.

CHAPTER XXIX
A SAVIOUR WHO COULD NOT SAVE
HIMSELF
One of the very brightest crowns his enemies
unconsciously placed on the brow of Jesus was
their jeer as he hung upon the cross: "He saved
others; himself he cannot save." Both of these
statements were true, but in a different sense
from that which these priests and Pharisees in
tended, and to this day they blaze out as the
very splendor of the cross.
I. "He saved others": so declared these
bitter enemies, speaking better than they knew.
This truth is written broadly and brightly all
over the ministry of Jesus. His wonderful biog
raphy is compressed into one marvelous shining
line: "who went about doing good." He was
doing good and saving others in his thirty silent
years as when he was about his Father's busi
ness in the Temple and during all the years he
worked as a carpenter building houses or making
ox-yokes and thereby helping to shelter and feed
the world and save it from exposure and hunger.
When he entered upon his public ministry,
what could better describe his work than that
he was saving others? Was not this the very
object of his mission? Did not God so love the
226

HE COULD NOT SAVE HIMSELF 227
world that he gave his only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in him should not perish
but have everlasting life? Was it not a faithful
saying that Christ Jesus came into the world to
save sinners?
Many were they who could have testified to
the truth of this saying uttered as a bitter sneer
by the priests and Pharisees. There was Nico
demus, who came to Jesus by night and held
that wonderful interview with him in which this
master of Israel had his eyes opened to the
spiritual birth and life in a way that was salva
tion to him : he could have said to these enemies :
"What you are saying so derisively about that
Man up on the cross is true; he did save others,
for he saved me."
And the woman of Samaria, who met Jesus at
Jacob's Well and heard that whole marvelous
discourse about the spirituality of worship and
had her own life exposed and heard from the
mysterious Stranger, when she spoke to him of
the coming Messiah, the astonishing disclosure,
"I that speak unto thee am he," and who then
hurried into the city calling out, "Come, see a
man, which told me all things that ever I did:
is not this the Christ?" — she could have added
her witness to these scoffing words, "It is true
he saved others, for he saved me."
And so the long roll could be called of those

228 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
whom Jesus had saved and who could have
testified to the fact these enemies of Jesus
scoffingly but truthfully proclaimed. That blind
man whose eyes he had opened; that paralytic
who was carried to him on his bed and then
carried that same bed back home; those ten
lepers whom he had cleansed; that demoniac
out of whom he had cast a legion of devils; that
outcast woman whom he had forgiven, at the
same time causing her accusers to slink away
guiltily ashamed from his presence; that Roman
centurion whose little daughter he -had restored;
that woman bowed down with an infirmity of
eighteen years who straightened up at his word;
the five thousand whom he had fed on the grassy
shores of the lake; the great multitude of un
named people whom he had healed and forgiven
— what a mighty chorus of testimony could they
have offered to the truth of the saying, "He
saved others."
There were still others who could have given
more intimate evidence. The eleven disciples
whom he had associated with him in his ministry
in daily fellowship; Matthew the publican;
Peter the profane fisherman; and John the be
loved disciple — with what depth of conviction
and warmth of emotion could they have testified
on this subject! And Martha and Mary, whose
house was home to his tired feet and heart;

HE COULD NOT SAVE HIMSELF 229
especially Mary, who sat rapt in his presence
and anointed him with the precious fragrant
spikenard — what intimate and loving witnesses
would they have proved could they have spoken
to that jeering crowd! Most remarkable and
convincing of all, in the presence of that mock
ing mob, would have been the testimony of the
penitent thief hanging by the side of the central
Sufferer, "He saved others, for even now he has
saved me."
And the same testimony would come rolling
down through all these centuries, gathering into
its ever-increasing volume the voices of the three
thousand saved on the day of Pentecost, the
converts added daily to the first church in Jeru
salem, and then the multitude of voices echoing
around the Mediterranean shore; the testimony
of martyrs expiring in the flames or perishing in
the Roman arena as they were torn to pieces by
the lions; the widening circle of converts in the
Roman Empire as it became pervaded with
Christian faith and a Christian emperor sat upon
its throne; and the swelling flood that has
poured down through these ages until to-day
more than a third of the human race is at least
nominally Christian: all these voices whom no
man could number would unite in a great shout
that would go up around the world, "He saved
others, for he saved us."

230 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
The unselfishness of Christ's mission shines
out in this bitter sneer. Though the priests and
Pharisees meant it not, yet they were saying a
supremely splendid thing about Jesus when they
declared that he saved others. He came not to
be ministered unto, but to minister. He was the
true Good Samaritan of this world. His con
sciousness was not of himself but of others; he
was concerned not with his own comfort, but
With the wounded world.
Let the glorious fact be blazed through the
world that Jesus Christ saved others, his very
enemies being judges; this was his blessed mis
sion; he has fulfilled it in wide and wonderful
ways, the ages resound with testimony to this
truth, and he is saving others on an immensely
larger scale to-day.
II. "Himself he cannot save": this was
another sneer more bitter than the first, and yet
also an unconscious truth more glorious than
the first unwitting eulogy.
This taunt in the sense intended by the
enemies of Jesus was not true. They meant by
it that he was helpless upon the cross and was
powerless to come down and save himself. "If
thou art the Son of God," they mockingly de
manded, "come down from the cross."
And so they thought they at last had Jesus in
their power where he was as impotent as the

HE COULD NOT SAVE HIMSELF 231
thieves hanging by his side to break away from
the spikes that nailed him to the cross and
where they could insult and mock him and wag
their heads and rail at him, saying, "Ha! thou
that destroyest the temple and buildest it in
three days, save thyself, and come down from
the cross."
Yet in this, also, they were utterly wrong.
They knew not whom they were taunting with
these vain words. Jesus had resources they little
suspected, though they had seen enough of his
works to know better. At the garden gate, had
he not said to the rash disciple who had whipped
out his sword and wounded a servant of the
high priest, "Thinkest thou that I cannot be
seech my Father, and he shall even send me
more than twelve legions of angels?"
He who caused Roman soldiers to go back
ward and fall upon the ground and stilled the
stormy sea and raised the dead, could he not
have unsheathed the sword of his power or un
loosed the lightnings of his wrath and have
slain all those jeering enemies with one stroke
or flash? As far as physical might was con
cerned he had resources of which they little
dreamed and could have saved himself by de
stroying them.
JJJ. But in a deeper sense he could not save
himself. There were invisible moral restraints

232 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
upon him, fine spiritual bonds stronger than
steel that bound him and rendered him impotent
in a way they could little understand.
He was under the obligation of his redemptive
love and plan and purpose to save humanity.
His infinite love had led him to devote himself
to this mission far back in the mysterious coun
sels of eternity when he entered into covenant
with his Father and became the Lamb slain from
the foundation of the world. It was then that
he devoted himself to this service in the
declaration: "Lo, I am come;
In the roll of the book it is written of me:
I delight to do thy will, 0 my God."
Having set his seal to this covenant and
pledged his truth and love to its fulfillment,
Jesus would not break it in the hour and agony
of his atoning sacrifice. He said he would drink
this cup, and now he was urged by his whole
nature to drain it to its bitterest dregs. He had
obligated himself to pay this price, and now he
would not prove recreant to his word.
The very truth of God, who cannot lie, held
him in its unbreakable grip. The iron spikes
that nailed him to that cross were in themselves
as spider threads to his power: it was the word
of his truth and the mighty love of his heart
that bound him to that wood with links in-

HE COULD NOT SAVE HIMSELF 233
finitely stronger than iron that could not be
broken. Little as they knew it his enemies spoke
eternal truth when they declared, "Himself he
cannot save."
IV. What would have resulted if Jesus,
breaking his word and thwarting his love, had
saved himself? Consequences infinitely deeper
and more dreadful than human imagination
could conceive would have followed.
The whole plan of redemption would have
been undermined and overthrown on the spot.
All the preparations for the coming of the Mes
siah would have been frustrated, all the work of
Jesus would have been rendered vain, all his
gracious words would have been nullified, all
the hopes he had excited would have proved
baseless delusions, and the atonement he was
offering would have been cut short. The angels'
song at his birth would have been hushed and
the world would have had no good news of
salvation; the kingdom of heaven he came to
establish would have floated off as wreckage on
the stream of time, and his very name would
have dropped into the sea of oblivion and been
utterly forgotten.
Deeper and still more terrible results would
have followed. All the promises of God would
have turned to falsity, a fie would have issued
from the lips of the Eternal, and the great white

234 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
throne of God would have cracked asunder and
rolled from its base. All the light of God's
Fatherhood and love would have gone out in
infinite darkness and left us as infants crying in
the night; this planet would have plunged to
its doom and become a wandering world; the
stars of moral order and stability would have
shot madly from their spheres, and the whole
spiritual universe would have collapsed in
wreck and chaos.
Let us forever thank and praise God that
Jesus saved others, but that himself he could not
save. This will be his eternal glory and the ever
lasting song of the redeemed.
V. Saving oneself is the curse of this world.
This is the essence of selfishness which is the
essence of sin. It was this lure that led Eve to
make her fateful choice and that tempted Jesus
in the wilderness.
Every sin that has ever been committed has
had for its object and motive some form of sav
ing the self. It is this fatal aim and endeavor
that has thrown the world out of joint and set
every man against his brother. It has sown the
world with the seeds that have brought forth all
the bitter harvests of strife and suffering and
wounds and woes that have plagued it from the
beginning of time. It is this that burdens and
strains the social order to the point of rupture

HE COULD NOT SAVE HIMSELF 235
and at times breaks out in social convulsions and
great wars. If there is any one thing from which
we should pray and strive to be delivered, it is
from the curse of saving oneself.
But saving others is the salvation of the world.
It is Christ's own work of redemption, and as
we acquire the same spirit and live the same life
it will expel the poison of selfishness from our
souls, heal all our wounds, and give us health
and holiness and happiness. It will cure the ills
of the social order and compose it into harmony
and love and peace.
The glory of Christ on the cross in saving
others, even the penitent thief hanging by his
side, and refusing to save himself, will forever
be bis brightest crown; and as we acquire and
exhibit the same spirit it will also be our most
glorious crown forever.

CHAPTER XXX
TRULY THE SON OF GOD
A Roman centurion, captain of the company
of soldiers having charge of the crucifixion of
Jesus, although not hostile to him in the same
sense and degree as were the priests and Phari
sees, yet may be numbered among those who
spoke better than they knew on this fateful
occasion and unconsciously put another and
supreme crown on his brow.
No sooner had Jesus uttered his expiring cry
than this soldier exclaimed, "Truly this was the
Son of God." We must not make too much of
this utterance as though the centurion meant by
it all that we mean in our Christian faith when
we declare that Jesus is indeed the Son of God.
Nevertheless, he uttered a great truth that the
inspired record caught up out of all the babel of
that jeering crowd and sent it echoing down
through the ages; and into these words Chris
tian faith has ever since poured the largest
meaning. I. The Roman centurion was impressed by
the behavior of Jesus on the cross with a sense
of his extraordinary personality. He was used
to conducting crucifixions and had learned to
236

TRULY THE SON OF GOD 237
look with callous indifference on the agonies of
dying victims as they lingered through hours
and sometimes even days of slow torture. It did
not move him to pity or impress him as anything
of exceptional character to see a fellow man in
this dreadful extremity. Some men he had
heard cry out against and curse their execu
tioners and hurl back impotent insults at the
mocking mob, and others he had seen endure
the prolonged agony with stoical silence.
But there was something about this Jew on
this day that caught the attention of this Roman
officer and grew upon his interest. There was
that strange and puzzling inscription over the
top of the cross, "The King of the Jews" : what
did that mean? whose hand wrote it and why
should it be there? Possibly the enigmatical
legend seemed to the centurion to gleam with
a mysterious fight that appeared to mean more
than was intended.
The first thing that Jesus did when the sol
diers were about to nail him on the cross was to
refuse the usual stupefying mixture of wine and
gall that was given to victims to benumb their
sense of pain. Jesus would not submit to any
such alleviation of his suffering, and this must
have struck the centurion as strange; probably
he had never before seen this anaesthetic de
clined.

238 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
Stranger things still followed. The centurion
must have heard the remarkable prayer of Jesus
for his enemies, "Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do." This was totally
different from the terrible oaths he had often
heard coming from criminals on the cross. The
touching interview of the Man on the cross with
his mother in which he commended her to his
disciple must have deeply affected the Roman:
he had never known the hard crust of that age
to bear such a tender blossom before. More
remarkable still was the conversation that took
place among the thieves and Jesus, and the
amazing conversion of one of these thieves and
the promise made to him that he would enter
paradise that day.
Then the centurion heard the last expiring
cries of Jesus, "It is finished," and "Father, into
thy hands I commend my spirit." The head of
Jesus then fell forward and all was still. An
earthquake shook the hill on which the crosses
stood and terror seized the soul of the stern
Roman. And through all these scenes and say
ings the mysterious Man on the cross exhibited
such a sublime spirit of patience and endurance
and charity and forgiveness as the centurion had
never seen before.
It was all these things taken together that
drew from him the wondering exclamation,

TRULY THE SON OF GOD 239
"Truly this was the Son of God." Though we
may not know just how much he meant by this
utterance, yet it is evident that he thought
Jesus was altogether unique and quite tran
scended any other victim he had ever seen suffer
and die upon a cross.
H. Is not this utterance a fit climax and
explanation of the whole life of Jesus as we now
see it portrayed in the Gospels? A long and wide
preparation preceded his coming, and the ages
grew into readiness for him as the spring pre
pares the way for the sprouting of the seed. His
birth became a new center of the world around
which all things began to revolve. Angels sang,
shepherds worshiped, a new star blazed out on
the bosom of the night, and Wise Men came
from afar with gifts to adore him. In his tempta
tion he stood impregnable and master against
Satan and drove him back defeated into the
darkness whence he came.
In his teaching he spake as never man spake,
rolling down from the Mount the Sermon whose
music is still filling the world. In his mighty
works he stilled the sea and fed the multitudes
and raised the dead. He preached a heavenly
kingdom of forgiveness and love and started it
out in widening circles around the world. He
burst the rocky jaws of the tomb and came
forth as the Lord of fife and the Master of death.

240 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
He gave his great commission to his disciples
and sent them forth to teach and baptize all
nations and pledged his presence with them to
the end of the world.
How can we account for this Man? History
and evolution, heredity and the sporadic blos
soming of human ability cannot explain him.
No earthly fountain or stream could shoot up
such a splendid jet of genius rising so far above
its source. After we have exhausted our human
means of explanation he still transcends all our
theories and the only adequate account of him
is, "Truly this was the Son of God."
III. A specially striking feature of the char
acter of Jesus is his universality. Every human
being is born and grows within the envelope of
his age and race and country, and never wholly
escapes these limitations. A man of the first or
the tenth or the fifteenth century could not get
his head up into the nineteenth or twentieth
century; and a child of an Oriental race cannot
become Occidental in instinct and temperament.
Heredity stamps itself upon every atom of the
blood. The nearest approach to universality is
seen in men of supreme genius, such as Homer
and Shakespeare, who produce works of art
that touch the universal human heart and have
general circulation in the world. But even these
men are circumscribed in their range, and their

TRULY THE SON OF GOD 241
works must not be carried too far from home or
they will lose their audience, or time will render
them obsolete.
But Jesus was and is the universal man. It is
true he had some marks of his age and race
upon him. His human knowledge was of his
time, and he was a son of his race. Yet he
overleaped all these boundaries and limitations.
Though he sprang from the Jewish people, yet
he is not a Jew and the world is hardly conscious
of his lineage. He is the Son of man; the typical
and representative, the ideal and perfect Man,
who is equally at home among all the sons of
men. Hi's character has none of the peculiar marks
or qualities of any particular race, but has that
breadth and balance, poise and power, that
make it the model and paragon of all peoples:
it is compounded of all virtues and graces mixed
and blended in perfect proportion. And so age
can never wither him or custom stale his in
finite variety. He speaks on universal themes
in immortal words that will never grow old.
His teachings meet and satisfy the religious
demands of the twentieth as of the first century
and can never lose their perennial music and
charm. He draws the men of every race to his
side in affection and trust, devotion and
service.

242 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
Compared with him the greatest geniuses are
local characters and parochial schoolmasters.
He looms over the world as the one universal
Man who represents and typifies humanity and
is at home in all ages and lands and among all
peoples. "Truly this was the Son of God."
IV. Christendom is Christ writ large. It
dates its calendar from his birth and organizes
itself around him as its center. The Christian
centuries are his lengthened shadow. This fact
is a tremendous confirmation of his divine
personality and power. He said he would be
with his disciples unto the end of the world, and
the world so far matches his promise. The face
of the world, as it is being stamped by the ideals
of the highest and finest civilization, is beginning
to correspond with the image and superscrip
tion of Christ as the coin with the die.
It is true that there are yet many blots and
shadows on the world; it is still in the twilight
even in Christian lands. But the Sun has not
yet fully risen; it has only swung above the
Eastern horizon, and long time must elapse be
fore it can ascend to the zenith and flood the
world with midday splendor. But the dawn has
reddened the East and given promise of the day.
Standing in the frame of these twenty cen
turies Jesus Christ is seen to be larger than any
figure of our human kind, and we can only

TRULY THE SON OF GOD 243
understand him and catch some glimpse of his
real nature as we exclaim, "Truly this is the
Son of God."
V. The utterances concerning Christ of many
modern thinkers and scholars who are either un
believers or are only broadly Christian in their
sympathies are a remarkable testimony to his
person and work and show how far even the
greatest skeptics are compelled to go in their
appreciation if not their adoration of Jesus.
Immanuel Kant, one of the profoundest of
modern thinkers, when some one in his presence
instituted a comparison between his moral
teachings and those of Jesus, said : "One of those
names, before which the heavens bow, is sacred,
while the other is only that of a poor scholar
endeavoring to explain to the best of his
abilities the teachings of the Master." Johann
Fichte wrote: "Till the end of time, all the
sensible will bow low before this Jesus of Naz
areth, and all will humbly acknowledge the
exceeding glory of this great phenomenon. His
followers are nations and generations."
Jean Paul Richter calls Jesus "the purest of
the mighty; the mightiest of the pure, who with
his pierced hands raised empires from their
foundations, turned the stream of history from
its old channels, and still continues to rule and
guide the ages." David Friedrich Strauss con-

244 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
fessed that Jesus "among the improvers of ideal
humanity stands in the very first class, and re
mains the highest model of religion within the
reach of our thought; and no perfect piety is
possible without his presence in the heart."
Rousseau, instituting a comparison between
Socrates and Jesus, concludes : "If Socrates lived
and died like a philosopher, Jesus lived and died
like a God." Renan ends his Life qf Jesus with
these words: "Whatever may be the surprises
of the future, Jesus will never be surpassed. His
worship will grow young without ceasing; his
legend will call forth tears without end; his
sufferings will melt the noblest hearts; all ages
will proclaim that, among the sons of men, there
is none born greater than Jesus."
Carlyle declared: "Look on our divinest
symbol, Jesus of Nazareth, and his life and his
biography and what followed therefrom. Higher
has the human thought not yet reached: this is
Christianity and Christendom, a symbol of
quite perennial, infinite character, whose sig
nificance will ever demand to be anew inquired
into and anew made manifest." And John
Stuart Mill left in one of his posthumous essays
this testimony to the world: "Religion cannot
be said to have made a bad choice in pitching
on this manias the ideal representative and guide
of humanity; nor, even now, would it be easy,

TRULY THE SON OF GOD 245
even for an unbeliever, to find a better transla
tion of the rule of virtue from the abstract into
the concrete than the endeavor so to live that
Christ would approve our life."
Charles Lamb once said to a company of
friends: "If Shakespeare should enter the room
we should all rise; if Jesus Christ should enter,
every one would kneel."
What are these skeptical and liberal thinkers
— and the fist could be indefinitely extended —
doing but exclaiming more or less consciously,
"Truly this was the Son of God"?

Our study of these judgments of the enemies
of Jesus is concluded, and the total impression
they leave on the mind is that they were forced,
in spite of their hostility, to bear witness to the
unique and transcendent character of Jesus.
Even their bitterest charges often turn out to
be unwitting compliments The very vices they
allege against him are virtues in our sight. All
their hostile judgments are unconscious crowns
of honor. His enemies being judges, he stands
exalted and supreme among the sons of men.
At times they rose toward the highest view of
his personality and almost passed into the
vision and victory of faith. Taken together,
these judgments comprise a powerful body of

246 JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
testimony that is a valuable confirmation of
faith in Jesus as the Son of God.
If these judges with their imperfect fight and
unfriendly attitudes could go so far and say so
much, how much clearer should be our vision
and how loyal should be our sympathies and
how victorious should be our faith and service
as we stand in the presence of this same Jesus
of Nazareth? There is one utterance out of all
these judgments that can sum up our study and
express our confident faith:
TRULY THIS WAS THE SON OF GOD.

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