■ 
 
 L*> 
 
 :* r ~\f 
 
 I 
 
 tilt*, .*•> I I « ■ - 
 9V ■ ■ 
 
 Bfl 
 
 ■ . 
 *.V Eft ■ 
 
 ■ 
 
 ■ ■ r 
 
 H 
 
 
 *i* 
 
 ^^H 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 Si HH 
 
 ^m 
 
 ess 
 
 
 m 
 
 m 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 Chap. Copyright No*. 
 
 Shelf. 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
JESUS CHRIST 
 BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 
 

 JESUS CHRIST: 
 
 His Person— His Authority— His Work. 
 
 I. 
 
 Jesus Christ before His Ministry. 
 
 
 Si. 25. 
 
 II. 
 
 Jesus Christ During His Minis- 
 
 
 try. (In press.) 
 
 III. 
 
 The Death and Resurrection of 
 
 
 Jesus Christ. [In preparation.) 
 
JESUS CHRIST 
 
 BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 
 
 BY .» 
 
 EDMOND STAPFER 
 
 II 
 
 PROFESSOR IN THE FACULTY OF PROTESTANT 
 THEOLOGY AT PARIS 
 
 Erauslateti bg 
 LOUISE SEYMOUR HOUGHTON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS f j ^v 
 1896 
 
 
 \ 
 

 Copyright, 1896, 
 By Charles Scribner's Sons. 
 
 SmbrrsitD }§rrse : 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 " JESUS CHRIST : his Person, his Au- 
 thority, his Ministry," — such is the 
 title of a work which I purpose to write. 
 In the first volume, which I now publish, 
 I shall endeavor to relate the life of Jesus 
 before his ministry. 
 
 Of the time which passed over him until 
 his thirtieth year we know only so much 
 as the evangelists Matthew and Luke have 
 preserved for us. But it is not from the 
 facts which they bring to light that I shall 
 draw the pages which follow. To their 
 touching narratives of the childhood of 
 Jesus it seems to me that there is nothing 
 to add, and from them nothing to subtract ; 
 and the deep poetry which breathes in 
 these marvellous stories defies all criticism. 
 
VI PREFACE 
 
 To touch them is to spoil them. More 
 than that, my aim is not to repeat the 
 little that we know about the youth of 
 Jesus; it is to seek for that which has 
 not been told us. 
 
 The early Christians, surprised at the 
 sobriety of the gospel narratives, tried to 
 make up for the silence of history, and 
 composed the apocryphal Gospels of the 
 Infancy. I am attempting a study of this 
 sort, but I have no intention of writing a 
 work of pure imagination, like that of the 
 authors of the antique legends. I would 
 fain say what must have been the life of 
 Jesus until his thirtieth year, by deducing 
 from known facts some facts unknown, 
 and permitting myself only to observe and 
 to relate. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 Preface v 
 
 Introduction ix 
 
 Chapter 
 
 I. The Childhood of Jesus .... 3 
 
 II. Early Beliefs 19 
 
 III. Jesus at Twelve Years of Age 39 
 
 IV. First Impressions and Experiences 57 
 V. Studies and Reading 75 
 
 VI. Jesus and the Pharisees ... 93 
 
 VII. Jesus and the Essenes .... 109 
 
 VIII. Jesus and John the Baptist . . 121 
 IX. The Messianic Ideal of Jesus at 
 
 Thirty Years of Age .... 137 
 
 X. The Originality of Jesus . . . 161 
 
 Conclusion 175 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 TTOW could Jesus have believed him- 
 self and proclaimed himself the 
 Messiah ? 
 
 In the first half of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, when historical criticism, with its 
 severe and certain methods, addressed it- 
 self to the Gospels for the first time, the 
 question was answered : Jesus never be- 
 lieved himself to be the Messiah. He 
 owed his career only to the enthusiasm 
 of excited disciples, who, after the death 
 of their Master, attributed to him in good 
 faith acts which he had not done and 
 words which he had not spoken. 
 
 But this solution of the question quickly 
 became antiquated. Criticism kept on in 
 its work, and forty years of patient and 
 
X INTRODUCTION 
 
 conscientious labors have compelled the 
 impartial historian to refuse this explana- 
 tion. It has been demonstrated with the 
 most rigorous certainty that Jesus gave 
 the most surprising witness that he be- 
 lieved himself to be really the Messiah 
 expected by his people, and that he 
 announced himself as such. 
 
 Next came Renan's explanation. Jesus 
 first preached the pure religion of the 
 Spirit, — love to God and love to man, the 
 reign of charity and happiness by a uni- 
 versal brotherhood ; and then, carried 
 away by his success, he permitted himself 
 to be called Son of David, that is, Mes- 
 siah ; and, little by little, by a sort of 
 unconscious deceit, and under the do- 
 minion of an illusion of which he was 
 only in part the dupe, he believed in his 
 own Messiahship. He persuaded himself 
 that the apocalyptic hopes of his people 
 would soon be realized in his own person . 
 and he died the victim of this holy and 
 religious madness. 
 
INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 To Renan, Jesus is to be explained in a 
 single word, — charm. He thought that 
 this word solved the enigma of his life. 
 He charmed the multitudes, — his disciples, 
 women, the sick, — and he ended by charm- 
 ing himself. The pious and gentle Rabbi 
 was before all things a charmer, and every- 
 thing becomes clear when we see deeply 
 into all that this word "charm" includes. 
 If he spoke, his words charmed. In the 
 early months of the Galilean ministry his 
 words were precepts full of gentleness, 
 exquisite words that consoled, delight- 
 ful parables which enchanted the mul- 
 titudes. By charm his cures are to be 
 explained, for he incontestably did per- 
 form cures. Contact with his person, the 
 sound of his voice, his face as well, every- 
 thing about him was charming, every- 
 thing was of exquisite gentleness and 
 suave kindness. 
 
 Then came the evil days. Envy and 
 hatred pursued him as they always pursue 
 those who succeed and are greatly loved. 
 
xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 Then Jesus, by a natural reaction, felt his 
 confidence in himself increasing. Pene- 
 trated as much with the enthusiasm which 
 he continued to breathe as with the oppo- 
 sition to himself which continually became 
 more pronounced, he had the simplicity to 
 believe himself the Messiah, and, giving 
 himself up to this idea even to martyrdom, 
 he was crucified and died. 
 
 But the memory which he left behind 
 remained, with its ever-growing charm, — 
 for death always magnifies and transfigures. 
 Such a memory, the circumstances being 
 favorable, must inevitably beget for him 
 disciples, give him a Church, conquer the 
 world for him. 
 
 The starting-point of the triumphs of 
 the invisible Christ was the hallucination 
 of Mary Magdalen, one of the women who 
 had most loved him. Her devotion was 
 such that she believed that she saw him 
 again, and insisted that she had seen him. 
 Now, at that period a resurrection from 
 the dead appeared to be a highly pos- 
 
IN TR OD UC T10N Xlll 
 
 sible thing. Mary Magdalen's exclama- 
 tion, " He is risen from the dead ! " soon 
 became every one's word, and the Christian 
 Church was founded. 
 
 This explanation — " charm " — is evi- 
 dently the only one which may be accepted, 
 and is in fact that of those of our contem- 
 poraries who are not Christians, — and they 
 are legion, — for there is no half-way, the 
 dilemma is inexorable ; and Renan, in spite 
 of the scientific imperfections of his book, 
 has rendered a very great service to sci- 
 ence. He has shown that the problem 
 that concerns Christ is entirely a psycho- 
 logical problem. The question is, to know 
 what was taking place in the soul of Jesus. 
 He called himself the Messiah. That is 
 proved ; it is certain. How did he reach 
 that point ? Was he crazy, — yes or no ? 
 Such it seems to us is the sole alternative 
 which henceforth forces itself between be- 
 lievers and unbelievers. The question 
 appears to us absolutely clear and precise. 
 It can only be solved by a third supposi- 
 
XIV INTRODUCTION 
 
 tion. Renan has very clearly shown this, 
 and herein lies the entire scientific value 
 of his work. 
 
 To this question, Was he mad, — yes or 
 no ? we shall try to reply, and we shall en- 
 deavor to do it purely as a historian. Our 
 plan is to observe, to ascertain the facts, 
 and to make them known. We shall not 
 draw from them the dogmatic consequences 
 which they may bear. Our task is simply 
 that of the historian. 
 
 Do we, then, hope completely to solve, 
 by this purely historic method, the eternal 
 question of the Christ? For everybody 
 in general, no ; for it is possible to reach 
 only partial results, or rather only one 
 result, — he was not mad ; a wholly nega- 
 tive result, which leads at once to another 
 question, What, then, was he ? And this 
 second question is unanswerable by the 
 historian, because the documents which 
 might solve it are wanting. 
 
 This penury of documents will always 
 be the cause of a continual return to the 
 
I NT ROD UCTION XV 
 
 examination of Christ's character. Pure 
 science can never exhaust it. To this 
 question, What, then, was he ? it is no 
 longer for history to reply, for it cannot. 
 We enter here upon a moral question. If 
 Jesus was not led away by a monstrous 
 illusion, he spoke truly ; if he spoke truly, 
 he was what he said he was, — the Mes- 
 siah, the Saviour of men, the Son of God. 
 In this reply, the moral character of the 
 historian becomes involved. He is no 
 longer on the ground of demonstrated 
 facts and historic verifications, but upon 
 that of religious faith and personal con- 
 viction; and a religious belief cannot be 
 scientifically demonstrated. 
 
 The believer says : Jesus will never be 
 explained by science, because he is the 
 Revelation of God himself, and incompre- 
 hensibility is one of the most certain marks 
 of his divinity. The pure historian will 
 always say: Jesus is not explained by 
 science, because the documents are want- 
 ing, and we have not sufficient data con- 
 
XVI IN TR OD UC Tl ON 
 
 cerning him to solve the enigma of his 
 appearance by historic methods. But this 
 dilemma does not embarrass the believer. 
 It is enough for him to know that no 
 scientific demonstration is opposed to his 
 faith, for he asks not of science to estab- 
 lish his faith, to prove it, to show it to be 
 true. Faith is not to be demonstrated ; it 
 simply affirms itself, simply shows itself 
 under pain of ceasing to be faith and be- 
 coming what is called sight, — that is, 
 either a sensible or an intellectual cer- 
 titude. For in questions of faith there 
 can be neither sensible nor intellectual 
 evidence, but only moral evidence. At 
 bottom the believer and the non-believer 
 are divided only upon one point. To the 
 second, moral evidence does not suffice; 
 to the first (and we are of this number) 
 it does suffice. 
 
JESUS CHRIST 
 
 HIS PERSON, HIS AUTHORITY, HIS WORK 
 
 Part jftrgt 
 
 JESUS CHRIST BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 
 
THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS 
 
 JESUS was brought up at Nazareth. In 
 the middle of the eighth century of 
 Rome, about 1890 years ago, 1 this was 
 the name 2 of a small town hidden away 
 among the hills of Galilee, and making 
 part of the Roman province of Syria. It 
 was twenty-five leagues north of Jerusa- 
 lem, and eight or nine hours' walk from 
 Capernaum. 
 
 Its general aspect was dull and mean. 
 Nazareth was a cluster of cubical houses 
 without character or elegance, built in 
 terraces in the hollow of an amphitheatre 
 of rocky hills. Irregularly disposed, they 
 formed a confused medley of small white 
 
 1 It is impossible to fix the exact date. The first 
 ten or twelve years of Jesus' life must have lain be- 
 tween the years of Kome 750 and 765. 
 
 2 According to the best manuscripts, the correct 
 Greek transliteration of this word is Nazara ; but we 
 retain the name Nazareth, consecrated by usage. 
 
4 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 flat-roofed dwellings, threshing-floors and 
 wine-presses. Here were pits hollowed out 
 of the ground ; there tombs hewn out of 
 the rock. The fig-tree, the olive, the cac- 
 tus grew everywhere, and now and then, 
 between the houses, a tiny field of wheat. 
 
 The streets were rough and uneven ; and 
 the lanes, narrow, crooked, and steep, were 
 often crossed by streamlets from the ra- 
 vines in the hills north of the town. 
 
 We are told that Nazareth contained 
 three or four thousand inhabitants. This 
 estimate is certainly excessive. Judging 
 by the small area which it covered, Naza- 
 reth was a mere village. It is true that in 
 the Orient men and beasts can huddle them- 
 selves into a very small space; but we 
 cannot credit more than fifteen hundred or 
 two thousand inhabitants to a village 
 which had only one sjmagogue, one foun- 
 tain, and one public square. 
 
 The fountain is still there. Springs do 
 not change. That of Nazareth is to-day 
 what it always was, — the gathering-place 
 of the women and young girls, who come 
 twice a day to draw the water needed for 
 the household. 
 
 Let us imagine ourselves in the first 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 5 
 
 century. Here they come, with alert step; 
 and among them Mary, the wife of Joseph 
 the carpenter, carrying her empty water- 
 jar crosswise on her head. She waits for 
 her turn, chats with her companions, fills 
 her pitcher, and goes away, with the grace- 
 ful, flexible step which is that of all the 
 women of her country. Her dress consists 
 of wide trousers which leave bare the lower 
 part of the leg, and a robe with open sleeves 
 which leave her arms also exposed. A few 
 coins gleam among the braids of her hair. 
 When Jesus, her eldest son, has grown a 
 little older, he will come with his mother 
 and will help her to fill and carry her 
 pitcher. Later he will come alone, to 
 spare Mary all fatigue ; and, to quote from 
 the simple-hearted chronicler of 1187 : Au 
 missel de cele fontaine lavait Nostre Dame 
 les drapels de coi ele envelopet Nostre Sei- 
 gneur. De cele fontaine envoiait querre Nos- 
 tre Dame par Nostre Seigneur, quant il fut 
 un peu grant, et il y aloit volontiers. 1 
 
 1 "At the stream from this fountain Our Lady 
 washed the linen in which she wrapped Our Lord. 
 To this fountain Our Lady sent Our Lord to bring 
 water, when he was a little grown ; and he went will- 
 ingly/' — La Citez de Jerusalem. 
 
6 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 Mary returns home. Her house is low 
 and square, with a court before it and a 
 terrace on the roof. Let us enter. We 
 are in a large room without windows, and 
 filled with all sorts of utensils. The door 
 is wide, and by day is always open, and 
 the brilliant light of the Orient enters in 
 floods. There are no tables, but there are 
 rugs, and on the walls are hung a few 
 garments, robes and veils. 
 
 The dwelling is narrow, and the family 
 numerous. Joseph and Mary have at 
 least seven children. There are, to begin 
 with, five sons: the eldest bears the name 
 Jehoshua, and the others are Yakob, 
 Joseph, Youda, Shimeon, — that is, Jesus, 
 James, Joseph, Jude, and Simon. As to 
 the daughters we know neither their 
 names nor their number; but Joseph and 
 Mary have at least Wo. 1 These nine 
 people, perhaps more, all live in the one 
 room of this house ; and this room serves 
 for all purposes. 2 Here Joseph works at 
 his carpenter's trade; here all the family 
 
 1 " His sisters." Mark vi. 3. 
 
 2 "The one room." This was the usual condition; 
 but it is very possible that Joseph and Mary had a 
 house of two or three rooms. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 7 
 
 sleep; they all take their meals here, and 
 here also Mary does the cooking. 
 
 The walls of this poor dwelling are not 
 of stone, not even of brick. They are 
 made of sun-dried clay. An outer stair- 
 case gives access to the roof, which forms 
 a terrace, the floor of which, a mixture of 
 chalk and sand with small pebbles and 
 ashes, has become a sort of hardened soil 
 which shows here and there a sparse vege- 
 tation. In summer, on fine starlight 
 nights, all the family sleep here, each one 
 rolled in his blanket, for the heat of the 
 common room is insupportable, and the 
 swarming insects make it almost intoler- 
 able to stay there. 
 
 An inventory of Joseph's household 
 goods would show, first of all, a carpenter's 
 bench like our own, and its tools; a 
 kitchen furnace with two places, a sheet 
 of iron for roasting wheat or baking bread ; 
 a few leathern bottles, some wooden bowls, 
 one or two earthen pitchers, some goblets 
 and cups; and that is all. Joseph and 
 Mary have no plates, no forks or spoons. 
 The beds are mere pallets, rolled up 
 every morning and placed upon an ele- 
 vated plank running along the walls. A 
 
5 JESUS CHSIST 
 
 few mats and cushions upon which people 
 squat after the oriental fashion, and a 
 great chest, complete the furniture. Dur- 
 ing the warm season this chest holds the 
 rugs and blankets. Besides these articles 
 Joseph and Mary possess a lamp, a bushel, 
 a broom, and a mill. The lamp is very 
 tall, and stands on the floor. It is made of 
 clay, has two or three wicks, and burns 
 oiL The bushel serves as a measure, a 
 drawer, and a bag. Turned bottom up- 
 ward on the floor, it takes the place of the 
 table which is not there. Sometimes they 
 place the lamp upon it when they wish to 
 raise the light and iUuminate the whole 
 Boom. 
 
 As for the mill, it is for hand use ; and 
 every morning Mary, with the help of one 
 of her daughters, must turn the crank and 
 grind the grain needed for the day's 
 bread. 
 
 It is noon, the hour of the principal 
 meal. Before sitting down to table, the 
 whole family wash their hands. This 
 ablution has a religious character, and it 
 would be more exact to say they purify 
 their hands. At a later day Jesus will 
 declare these purifications useless, and will 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 9 
 
 no longer practise them ; but he is now a 
 child : he submits to the regulations of his 
 pious parents, which are those of the Law 
 of his people. 
 
 Before squatting down in oriental 
 fashion, Joseph gives thanks, and Jesus, 
 the eldest child, repeats a part of his 
 prayer. At the close of the meal another 
 thanksgiving will be pronounced. 
 
 Each one has a loaf before him. It is 
 a sort of flat round cake which serves also 
 as plate, and on which each puts his 
 portion of butter or of cheese. Further- 
 more, there is a dish on the bottom of the 
 upturned bushel; and each one at table, 
 after having broken his bread, dips his 
 morsel in the dish before eating. 
 
 What is there in this dish? Usually 
 curdled milk or a porridge made of barley 
 or wheat. In addition to butter and 
 cheese there are also eggs, honey, and 
 parched grain. These form the ordinary 
 food of the carpenter's family. Meat is 
 scarce and dear. If any is bought on 
 feast days, it is beef, mutton, or kid. In 
 summer a few grapes and figs complete the 
 dinner. Sometimes, in the season, there 
 are locusts. If so, the children must have 
 
10 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 gathered them. They are prepared by- 
 reducing the body to a powder, which is 
 mingled with flour to make a sort of cake, 
 very much appreciated. 
 
 In the goblet, which is passed around 
 the circle, each one drinking in turn, 
 there is sometimes water mingled with 
 wine ; but the ordinary drink of the family 
 is a sort of small beer made of wheat and 
 fruits, and called shechar. 
 
 The meal ended, each resumes his work 
 until evening, when another meal, even 
 more frugal than the earlier one, again 
 brings the family together. 
 
 They were poor in the house of the 
 Nazareth carpenter, but they did not suffer 
 from poverty,, for among Jews of that 
 time the word " poverty " was never synony- 
 mous with "indigence" or "want." The 
 requirements of life were very few, and 
 needs created by modern civilization were 
 unknown. Such conveniences as we are 
 accustomed to did not exist, and Joseph, 
 Mary, and their children suffered no priva- 
 tion. Things which we could with diffi- 
 culty do without, comforts which have 
 become necessary to us, were not in the 
 least missed by the carpenter and his 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 11 
 
 family, for they knew nothing about them 
 and felt no need of them. 
 
 What were the first religious notions 
 received by the child Jesus ? Very early 
 he knew by heart certain verses of the 
 Bible. As soon as he began to speak, his 
 mother made a point of repeating to him 
 verses of the Law; and first of all she 
 taught him those which proclaim the unity 
 of God and the election of Israel : " Hear, 
 O Israel, the Lord thy God is One Lord. 
 Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
 thy heart and with all thy soul and with all 
 thy might." 1 "The Lord did not set his 
 love upon you nor choose you because 
 ye were more in number than any people, 
 for ye were the fewest of all peoples ; but 
 because the Lord loveth you." 2 When the 
 child could repeat these two verses per- 
 fectly, his mother taught him others. 
 After a while she put into his hands strips 
 of parchment upon which were written 
 the words which he knew by heart. Thus 
 he finally came to know his letters, and, 
 repeating these verses often with his little 
 playmates, he soon learned to read. 
 
 1 Deut. vi. 4, 5. 
 
 2 Deut. vii. 7. 
 
12 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 The day came when his mother explained 
 to him the meaning of the words he was 
 repeating. She told him of God and of 
 the creation. She related to him the 
 glorious history of the past, — Abraham 
 willing to offer up Isaac; Jacob and the 
 ladder of light; Moses and the burning 
 bush; the coming up out of Egypt and 
 the passage of the Red Sea; David and 
 his victories; Judas Maccabseus and the 
 triumph of national independence. Jesus 
 early knew all these marvellous stories of 
 the Old Testament. The commandments 
 of Jehovah, his promises, his warnings, 
 were graven on his mind in ineffaceable 
 characters. 
 
 His family was assuredly very pious, 
 adhering closely to the strictest Judaism, 
 for every year his father and mother made 
 part of the little caravan of Nazarenes who 
 went up to Jerusalem to celebrate the 
 Passover; and James, the next younger 
 brother of Jesus, remained in manhood, 
 even after his conversion to Christianity, a 
 rigid and austere Jew, practising a narrow 
 and minute piety, careful to omit no rite and 
 to observe all the purifications. Without 
 question this was due to impressions re- 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 13 
 
 ceived in infancy in a home which was very 
 orthodox and closely bound up in the 
 national hopes. The piety of Jesus was 
 no doubt of another character; and there- 
 fore it early began to distress his mother 
 and brothers. The day was to come when 
 they would try to hold him back, to keep 
 him with them ; would even go so far as to 
 suspect him of insanity. From all this we 
 may conclude with certainty that the most 
 scrupulous attachment to pharisaical ob- 
 servances, and an entire submission to all 
 the prescriptions of the Law, were the 
 fixed rule of daily life in the carpenter's 
 house. 
 
 When Jesus was six years old, his parents 
 sent him to school. That of Nazareth 
 was held in the synagogue, the audience- 
 room serving for schoolroom during the 
 week. 1 The schoolmaster was the per- 
 sonage who had charge of the building and 
 of the manuscripts of the Sacred Books, 
 and watched over the orderly conduct of 
 the service on the Sabbath days. 
 
 1 This was the custom in the villages. In cities 
 and large towns (and perhaps Nazareth was of this 
 number) the school probably occupied a building 
 contiguous to the synagogue. 
 
14 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 Jesus attended this school until he was 
 ten or twelve years old. At this age he 
 knew how to read, write, and calculate. 
 He then became a "Son of the Com- 
 mandment; " that is, he began to be sub- 
 ject to the discipline of the Law. Every 
 morning and evening he must recite the 
 Shema, 1 a few verses of which he had 
 known since infancy; for every morning 
 and night, over the whole extent of Pales- 
 tinian territory, the Jews hastily muttered 
 these verses as one tells one's beads. 
 Jesus never approved of these " vain repe- 
 titions." The day came when he formally 
 condemned them. But at twelve years of 
 age he recited the Shema like every one 
 else; and these nineteen verses certainly 
 became the subject of his first religious 
 reflections. 
 
 To this must be added what he learned 
 on Saturdays (the Sabbath) at a synagogue 
 service designed especially for children. 
 It was a sort of catechizing to which Mary 
 had been especially advised to send him 
 regularly. Therefore, next to his mother, 
 
 1 The Shema contains nineteen verses, Deut. vi. 4-9 ; 
 xi. 13-21 ; Num. xv. 37-41. The name comes from the 
 first word, Shema, which means Hear. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 15 
 
 it was the schoolmaster who first initiated 
 him in the reading of the Old Testament. 
 
 Thus passed the early years of Jesus. 
 What impressions must have been made 
 upon his soul by his home, his parents, his 
 brothers and sisters, the family life in 
 which he had been so happy ! How often 
 he must have recalled them to mind at a 
 later time : the paternal home, the " father 
 who gave good things to his children," 1 
 the little village boys with whom he had 
 played at marriages and burials, when he 
 amused himself with them in imitating 
 the village wedding-dances or in uttering 
 the lamentations of the hired mourners 
 who attended funeral services, — what 
 sweet and peaceful memories of the time 
 when he had only to let himself be loved ! 
 
 Such was the placid and humble child- 
 hood of him who holds the first place in 
 the history of humanity, and who has exer- 
 cised a decisive influence upon the destinies 
 of the world ; of him whose work is, without 
 contradiction, the most remarkable which 
 the annals of the past have bequeathed to 
 our meditation ; and whose life divides the 
 history of our race into two parts which 
 nothing can ever blend together. 
 1 Matt. vii. 11. 
 
II 
 
 EARLY BELIEFS 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 EARLY BELIEFS 
 
 HPHE child believes upon authority; he 
 accepts all that his teachers tell 
 him. He is surprised at nothing, and 
 never dreams of raising a doubt concern- 
 ing such affirmations as are given him as 
 indisputable truths. At a later time he 
 examines his early beliefs; perhaps he 
 abandons them, and if he keeps them it 
 is as changed into deliberate personal con- 
 victions; but he must have begun with 
 unquestioning submission, and if he was 
 brought up by believing parents he ac- 
 cepted all their religious teachings, and 
 clung to them in all good faith. 
 
 This was certainly the case with Jesus. 
 Brought up in a pious family, he believed 
 what every young Israelite of that time 
 believed. The faith of his childhood, 
 simple, artless, confident, was that of 
 Joseph and Mary, that of the pious circles 
 
20 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 of Galilee at that time. It is made known 
 to us by the Jewish books of that epoch, 
 and by some of the representative char- 
 acters whose memory has been preserved 
 to us. 
 
 We can know then with sufficient accu- 
 racy what Jesus believed in his child- 
 hood, and what were the beliefs which he 
 received on authority and for which he 
 was not in the slightest degree respon- 
 sible. 
 
 What did Joseph and Mary teach their 
 son when he began to grow up and under- 
 stand things ? 
 
 The two eldest, Jesus and James, must 
 have received the same religious educa- 
 tion; and that which later James became 
 and remained until the end of his life may 
 show us what that education was, for his 
 nature was essentially conservative. We 
 have said that even after becoming a Chris- 
 tian he retained an ineffaceable stamp of 
 Judaism. In many respects he remained 
 what he had always been. All his life 
 James energetically defended the Jewish 
 law and privileges. He was very faithful to 
 the temple and the synagogue; he never 
 ceased to expect the glorious Messiah of the 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 21 
 
 Pharisees, and was in his own person an 
 ascetic, half Ebionite, half Essene. Legend 
 adds to these authentic characteristics the 
 statements that he was holy before his 
 birth; that he never drank wine nor fer- 
 mented liquor, never shaved his head nor 
 anointed himself with oil; and that he 
 passed his time always on his knees in 
 prayer, — a fancy picture, a few lines of 
 which may be historic ; nor is it assuming 
 too much to draw from it the conclusion 
 at which we have already arrived, that the 
 family of the carpenter of Nazareth was in 
 all probability one of profound and ardent 
 piety. 
 
 But can we create anew the atmosphere 
 of this family life in which Jesus lived, at 
 that age when one accepts everything and 
 recoils from nothing? Can we say what 
 was the current of ideas and facts, of 
 beliefs and practices, in which James per- 
 mitted himself to be carried along, and 
 against which Jesus was one day to 
 struggle ? 
 
 Two facts govern here, — the expectation 
 of a glorious Messiah, and the doctrine 
 that the fulfilling of the Law justified man 
 before God. Joseph and Mary taught 
 
2-2 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 Jesus that he must be very scrupulous in 
 the practice of the rites, and very faithful 
 in looking for "the Consolation of Israel." 
 
 Now, these two beliefs were precisely 
 those upon which Jesus at a later time 
 struck out new and entirely original ideas, 
 — ideas which became the very ground 
 of the opposition which he aroused and 
 its reason for being. 
 
 Underlying these beliefs, if one may so 
 speak, in the very depths of the child's 
 soul, there was a primitive religious teach- 
 ing, common to all Jews of his time with- 
 out exception, which Mary must have 
 given to her son somewhat on this wise. 
 She taught him, first of all, to believe in a 
 single God who is the only true God, 
 creator of heaven and earth; who chose 
 the people Israel to be his own preferred 
 people, and who would one day — a day 
 not far off — give Israel the supremacy 
 over all nations. These were certainly 
 the first religious notions which the child 
 received. 
 
 That his people were the chosen people 
 there was no room to doubt, for there was 
 a book which said so, — the Torah, dictated 
 by God to Moses from the first word to 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 23 
 
 the last. More than that, Jerusalem 
 was the centre of the world, and all 
 other countries surrounded Palestine, 
 which showed that Palestine was the 
 u Holy Land," and that the Jews were 
 destined to rule over all peoples. 
 
 The earth was a very large flat disk, 
 around which revolved the sun, the moon, 
 and the stars, and God was up above the 
 sky; that is, in heaven, beyond the blue 
 surface which we see over our heads. 
 From thence he ruled the world and its 
 inhabitants. 
 
 The child learned also that the world was 
 in two parts, — the land of Israel and that 
 which was not the land of Israel. Men 
 were divided into two classes, — Jews and 
 Gentiles; that is, those who are "within " 
 and those who are "without." Beyond 
 the land occupied by the Gentiles, the 
 child was told, lay the sea, whose vast 
 extent no one knew. 
 
 In heaven were all the righteous people 
 who had hitherto lived. Abraham was 
 the highest of them all. An everlasting 
 feast was carried on, and the best people 
 were at the table, "lying in Abraham's 
 bosom." 
 
24 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 Besides this, in heaven was the throne 
 of God, surrounded by hundreds of legions 
 of angels, each in his own rank. The high- 
 est, those who were nearest the Almighty, 
 were the archangels. All of them sang 
 the praises of God. Some of them were 
 also his messengers to man; for God, who 
 dwelt in light inaccessible, could enter 
 into relations with a sinful world only by 
 means of intermediaries. Now and again 
 men saw angels, who appeared to them 
 sometimes in dreams, sometimes when 
 they were awake. They watched over and 
 protected good people, and carried their 
 prayers to the throne of God, and were 
 therefore true guardian angels. Every 
 one had his own, who made known to 
 God the dangers which threatened him 
 over whom he was watching, and im- 
 plored for him divine aid. When a good 
 man died, angels came and carried him 
 to heaven. If his piety had been great, 
 he was laid in the very bosom of Abraham, 
 and shared with him the everlasting feast. 
 There were angels who remained always 
 in heaven to contemplate the glory of 
 God or pray for men. Angels had played 
 an important part in the history of the 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 25 
 
 chosen people. It was they who built the 
 ark and gave the Law to Moses, and it was 
 they who always guarded the Temple 
 treasure. More than that, every natural 
 force had its angel, — the rain, the dew, 
 the wind, the fog, the hail, the fire, etc. 
 Every one was sure of all this. Only the 
 Sadducees did not believe in angels. 
 
 There was also another invisible world, 
 called the Kingdom of Darkness, or King- 
 dom of Satan. This was the name of its 
 prince, who ruled with the permission of 
 God. This Satan, who was also called 
 Asmodeus, Belial, Beelzebub, Devil, was 
 a very real and living personage, who 
 tormented men and led them into evil. 
 He had innumerable hosts of demons 
 under his orders, invisible and maleficent 
 spirits, by whom people were constantly 
 surrounded. For this reason the de- 
 mons were sometimes called "the pow- 
 ers of the air." They usually wandered 
 in deserts and uninhabited places, espe- 
 cially such as were arid. 
 
 These demons were the cause of nearly 
 all disease. They also made men fall into 
 sin. And indeed there was a very close 
 relation between moral evil and physical 
 
26 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 evil. It sometimes happened that a demon, 
 or even the chief of demons, Satan, took 
 entire possession of a person, body and 
 soul. The wretched man might even be 
 the pre}^ of several demons at the same 
 time. It was always possible to expel 
 them. God had given to pious men, 
 especially to Doctors and Rabbis, the power 
 to cast out demons. They alone knew 
 how to heal; and for this they had 
 their well-defined procedure, — laying on 
 of hands, prayers, fasts, etc. Each one 
 had his own, and for this reason the Rabbis 
 were to be held in the greatest respect. 
 
 These healings were called "signs;" 
 that is, marks of the presence of a supe- 
 rior power which was beneficent, or rather 
 of the one superior beneficent power, that 
 of God. There were also "signs" which 
 were the tokens of the presence of a supe- 
 rior evil-working power, or rather of the 
 one superior evil-working power, that of 
 the Devil. 
 
 These divers potencies, these invisible 
 "powers," unceasingly made their presence 
 known, and therefore nothing extraordi- 
 nary, unfamiliar, extravagant, was impos- 
 sible. Many had seen these signs, these 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 27 
 
 miracles, and everybody desired to see 
 them. " The Jews ask for signs ; " 1 and 
 Joseph and Mary, like every one else, cer- 
 tainly believed in the supernatural under 
 the strangest forms, — for example, inspirits 
 which had never had bodies, or in angels 
 of fire, of water and of wind, that is, in an 
 invisible world which in all places and at 
 all times made known its presence and its 
 activities. 
 
 It is difficult for us at this day to picture 
 to ourselves the exact state of mind which 
 holds beliefs of this kind. If, for example, 
 we are told of a sudden cure taking place 
 in our own time, however surprising it 
 may be, we always explain it by the action 
 of natural forces, known or unknown. It 
 is nature which has acted; this we do not 
 for an instant doubt. If any one told us 
 that a resurrection from the dead had 
 taken place among our contemporaries, 
 even if we had seen it ourselves, we should 
 immediately explain it either by a lethargic 
 slumber or in some other way; but even 
 if we could not explain it, we should not 
 for a moment admit that a true resurrection 
 had taken place in our own time, — that is 
 
 1 1 Cor. i. 22. 
 
•28 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 to say, that life had returned to a body 
 actually dead. In short, at the present 
 day we always, without hesitation, seek 
 for a natural explanation of everything 
 that seems to be a miracle ; and if we do 
 not find such an explanation, we do not 
 affirm with any less certainty that it does 
 exist. 
 
 In the time when Jesus was growing up 
 it was entirely the other way. Though 
 one might not at once admit, and find it 
 perfectly easy to admit, the most surprising 
 miracle, — the resurrection of a dead per- 
 son, for example, — asking for proofs of 
 the fact, at least no one was very exacting 
 as to the proof, for there was nothing im- 
 possible in the prodigy itself. Everything 
 was possible, absolutely everything, no mat- 
 ter what. In our day we declare every- 
 thing that is out of the natural order of 
 things to be a priori impossible. Perhaps 
 we are wrong; perhaps we are too much 
 carried away with the notion of the immu- 
 tability of natural laws, and it is highly 
 possible that the future may bring a cor- 
 rective to the inflexible rigor with which 
 we reject all that does not appear to us to 
 be conformable to the known order of the 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 29 
 
 universe. But for the time, thus it is; 
 and therefore we find some difficulty in 
 representing to ourselves the effect which 
 a miracle had upon the mind of an inhabi- 
 tant of Palestine in the first century. The 
 science of medicine did not exist. Empiri- 
 cal remedies were the only ones employed, 
 and every one had his own. Resurrection 
 from the dead was held to be a perfectly 
 possible and even a very probable thing. 
 
 The firm persuasion of the speedy 
 appearance of the Messiah belonged to this 
 order of supernatural beliefs. Without 
 the slightest doubt the parents of Jesus 
 had told their son that there would be in 
 the very near future a sudden revolution 
 which would be marked by the appearance 
 of a Deliverer. The present was a time 
 of great calamity. The nation was in 
 humiliation, and under the Roman yoke 
 the people felt severely the loss of that 
 liberty which the Maccabees had formerly 
 conquered for them. 
 
 The great events of that glorious epoch 
 were certainly often related to the child 
 Jesus, and contrasted with the present sad 
 condition. Nothing more was to be ex- 
 pected of man, but everj^thmg might be 
 
30 JESTS CHRIST 
 
 expected of God. They were living in 
 the last times: and the words Ma ran 
 atha, 1 which Paul has preserved in their 
 original form, must often have been 
 sounded in the child's ears. 
 
 What if the Messiah is already born? 
 they would say. For he is to remain 
 hidden until the day of his manifestation. 
 However, there will be signs at the last 
 moment. Elias will first appear: then 
 will come the Messiah, who will be only 
 a man. but a superior man. an ideal being, 
 the Anointed of the Lord, the King of 
 Israel. He will be a prophet, and will 
 commit no sin. His days will be days of 
 consolation. While awaiting him, we must 
 lead a pious and austere life, with strict 
 attention to the Pharisaic observances. 
 
 When the world to come should begin, 
 the good would have a new body, and the 
 wicked would be eternally punished. Jeru- 
 salem, which would have become the capi- 
 tal of the world, would be all of gold, 
 cypress, and cedar. A perpetual Sabbath 
 would be celebrated in the Temple, and the 
 kings of the earth would prostrate them- 
 selves before the Jews. 
 
 1 " The Lord is at hand." 1 Cor. xri. 22. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 31 
 
 This era of prosperity would be estab- 
 lished only after a series of terrible woes, 
 which would form the transition between 
 "the present age " and "the age to come." 
 For this reason the humble folk, the vil- 
 lagers, looked forward with great fear to 
 the coming of the Messianic era. The 
 fiery-tongued Pharisaic preachers used to 
 come and tell them of frightful calamities, 
 the conflict between Gog and Magog, 
 famines, wars, earthquakes. "But," they 
 would add, and these words brought com- 
 fort again to the suffering and the poor, 
 "after that, righteousness will reign. 
 God, who has laid the burden of life upon 
 the lowly, cannot have done it without 
 intending to make compensation." Let 
 them observe the Law and the traditions ; 
 they would thus acquire merits which 
 would confer upon them rights before 
 God, and then the last should be first. 
 And the humble folk would resume their 
 tasks with patience after this glimpse of 
 future triumph, this vision of the eternal 
 Jerusalem. 1 
 
 1 Here we simply set forth the current ideas of the 
 populace concerning the expected Messiah. Farther 
 on, in the chapter entitled " Studies and Reading," we 
 
32 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 To learn to obey the Law one must 
 study it. But the Law was not the only 
 divine book. All the writings bequeathed 
 by the past were such; and one should 
 read the history of the nation, and meditate 
 upon the prophecies in the volume entitled 
 "The Prophets." There were, besides, 
 other books very important for those to 
 read who wish to be informed concern- 
 ing "that which is soon to come to pass." 
 Finally, the traditions of the fathers were 
 themselves divinely inspired. But the 
 Law was before all the others. To expect 
 the Messiah and practise the Law, — here 
 in two words was the whole duty of the 
 believing Jew. 
 
 The practice of the Law was essential 
 to justification before God. The moral 
 
 shall give a fuller account of the Messianic ideas of 
 the Jews of that period, according to their sacred 
 books, and we shall again return to the subject in the 
 chapter entitled "The Messianic Ideal of Jesus at 
 Thirty Years of Age/' These distinctions are essen- 
 tial to the understanding of the development of Jesus' 
 ideas on this important subject; for there was in his 
 experience, first, his childish beliefs, the artless notions 
 prevalent among the people ; second, what his own 
 reading taught him ; and finally, the notions which he 
 received at thirty years of age, when he became con- 
 vinced that he was himself the expected Messiah. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 33 
 
 life inhered solely in legal prescriptions. 
 To love one's neighbor was no doubt 
 important; but it was precisely as impor- 
 tant to give the tithe of one's harvest, to 
 abstain from eating pork, and not take 
 more than the permitted number of steps 
 on the Sabbath day. 
 
 It is easy to understand that Jesus 
 must from the first have felt the need of 
 recoil from this position ; and the breath of 
 resistance with which from the first day 
 his teachings were inspired had perhaps its 
 origin in the narrow and petty character of 
 the prescriptions to which he had sub- 
 mitted in his early home, and to which his 
 brother James gave himself with the most 
 rigorous obedience. For in his parents' 
 house Jesus must above all things have 
 learned to perform the rites, to recite the 
 Shema, not to omit a single purification, 
 to have the sacred fringes on his mantle 
 and the phylacteries on his arms. It is 
 extremely probable that Joseph and Mary 
 submitted, though certainly with true 
 piety and profoundly religious feeling, to 
 all the minutiae of Pharisaic devotion. 
 The Pharisees had regulated everything, 
 and every one knew what was his duty in 
 
 3 
 
34 J£SUS CHRIST 
 
 the matter of walking, standing still, 
 working, resting, eating, sleeping, jour- 
 neying. 
 
 We picture to ourselves Joseph and 
 Mary as two simple-hearted, trustful 
 Galileans, doing everything that the 
 Scribes ordained because they sincerely 
 believed that God himself had thus 
 ordained. They inculcated in their chil- 
 dren a respect for religious belief and 
 practice, the regular and assiduous accom- 
 plishment of ritual duty, and submission in 
 all which went beyond that. They believed 
 without discussing and without under- 
 standing, waiting in faith for him who 
 would " exalt the humble and cast down 
 the proud. " They belonged to the humble ; 
 they had been taught that poverty was a 
 merit, that the lower classes alone were 
 true patriots, that wealth was a sin, and 
 that the rich were impious because they 
 were rich. 
 
 Such was the strange mixture of truth 
 and error with which the soul of the child 
 Jesus was first imbued. 
 
 Did he at once reject the error by that 
 profound and unerring intuition which he 
 had all his life? We do not doubt it for 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 35 
 
 a moment. If he submitted to the rites 
 and observed them as he ought to have 
 done at the age when a child should sub- 
 mit, he was, first of all, obeying his God, 
 that Father whose " things " always occu- 
 pied him ; and the disquietude into which 
 his conduct in the Temple was one day to 
 plunge the minds of his parents was cer- 
 tainly only one incident in the disquietude 
 which from that day forward he was often 
 to cause them by the independence of 
 mind which he early showed in the face of 
 manifest error. No doubt he believed in 
 angels and demons. He believed that the 
 Law was dictated by God, and he at first 
 believed that the Messiah would reign on 
 earth; but he never admitted that the 
 performance of rites makes man right with 
 God, and that legal purifications can take 
 the place of conversion. 
 
 The religious instruction which was 
 imposed upon him by authority awakened 
 in his soul a great desire, an imperative 
 need, to think things out for himself, to 
 form his own convictions; in a word, to 
 study by every means which God might 
 put within his reach, and to occupy him- 
 self with "the things of his Father," while 
 
36 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 still remaining an obedient and respectful 
 son. For he felt something within him- 
 self which transcended and dominated all 
 this religion of his parents, something 
 which protested, which understood what 
 they did not understand. He felt him- 
 self to be superior to them. What was 
 about to take place in the soul of this 
 child? 
 
Ill 
 
 JESUS AT TWELVE YEARS 
 OF AGE 
 

CHAPTER III 
 
 JESUS AT TWELVE YEARS OF A&E 
 
 'T V HE man who does a great work and 
 strongly influences his time is always 
 aided by circumstances. He is often 
 indeed, as it were, created by them. 
 Genius, however great, does not suffice to 
 him who initiates a movement ; it is also 
 necessary that the moment when genius 
 can put forth its full powers shall be pre- 
 cisely the moment in which he lives. 
 Luther, born a hundred years earlier, 
 would not have made the Reformation, 
 and Napoleon was served by events even 
 more than by his own genius. 
 
 Jesus was not an exception to this com- 
 mon law. When he was born, the time, 
 to use the picturesque expression of the 
 Gospel, "was fulfilled." Judaism had 
 completed its religious evolution, and 
 Paganism had reached the limit of its 
 speculations and experiments. What the 
 
40 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 first century needed was a great social and 
 religious renovation. 
 
 It was inaugurated by him whose youth 
 we are trying to describe ; and among the 
 number of the events which taught him, 
 enlightened him, hastened the efflorescence 
 of his religious consciousness, we must 
 place in the front rank the scene that St. 
 Luke has preserved to us, which took 
 place when the child was twelve years 
 old. 
 
 Every year Joseph and Mary made the 
 journey to the Holy City for the Feast of 
 the Passover, joining the little group of 
 pious folk of Nazareth who held to the 
 strict accomplishment of the Law. To 
 take Jesus with them as soon as he was 
 twelve years old was considered by his 
 parents an imperative duty. The child 
 had certainly been prepared by his mother 
 for the coming of this great day. To 
 leave home ; to see Jerusalem and the Tem- 
 ple; to be initiated into the sacred rite of 
 the Paschal Lamb, for which his parents 
 had such great respect, and for which they 
 made such sacrifices, — how often had he 
 not looked forward to it ! 
 
 The route which the little caravan took 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 41 
 
 was from this time forth traversed by 
 Jesus every year. Besides the Feast of 
 the Passover, that of Tabernacles and still 
 others must have drawn him to Jerusalem ; 
 and therefore it comes to pass that this 
 road, which still exists, is of all the roads 
 of Palestine that which Jesus most often 
 traversed. 
 
 On quitting Nazareth the little band of 
 worshippers turned their steps toward the 
 Jordan valley, for they must not pass 
 through Samaria. They therefore went 
 toward the southeast, and after having 
 crossed the great caravan route between 
 Egypt and Damascus, they passed Shunem, 
 the home of Elisha's Shunamite 1 and 
 Jezreel, 2 crossing the valley of that name. 
 From Jezreel the travellers went to Beth- 
 shan, also called Scythopolis. 3 This was 
 the first stage. 
 
 Nine hours of walking lay between them 
 and Nazareth; the Jordan valley opened 
 before them. Here they halted, set up 
 their tents, and passed the night. Scytho- 
 polis was a great fortified town, filled with 
 
 i 1 Kings iv. 8-37. 
 
 2 Now Zerin. 
 
 3 Now Beisan. 
 
4 '2 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 heathen buildings, temples, theatres, places 
 of amusement. It overlooked the river 
 from an eminence of a hundred metres. 
 
 On the morrow the pilgrims, who had 
 been most careful not to enter the city so 
 as not to incur uncleanness by contact 
 with heathen, resumed their march, fol- 
 lowing the valley, which was covered with 
 rich pasturage and crossed by many brooks. 
 They passed Succoth 1 and Archelais, 2 an 
 entirely new city lately built by Archelaus, 
 Herod's son. 
 
 This second stage was of about twelve 
 hours. Again the caravan camped in the 
 fields to avoid entering a heathen town. 
 On the third day, in about four hours, 
 they reached Phasaelis, also a new town, 
 for it had been founded by Herod the 
 Great in honor of his son Phasael. In four 
 hours more they were in Jericho. 
 
 From Jericho to Jerusalem was only a 
 six hours' journey, and this had to be left 
 for the fourth and last day. This final stage 
 of the journey was rendered extremely 
 difficult by the stifling heat, due to the 
 depression of the Jordan valley. For the 
 
 1 Now Sqout, 
 
 2 Now Kerbet-Makherut. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 43 
 
 valley is in fact shut in between two 
 ranges of hills, and the temperature some- 
 times becomes intolerable. It is true that 
 it was now springtime, about Easter, and 
 precisely the season when the journey 
 could be made under the least unfavorable 
 circumstances. 
 
 Let us add that the road was not safe. 
 From Jerusalem to Jericho and all along 
 the Jordan valley attacks of robbers were 
 frequent, and the men of the Nazareth 
 party were certainly all armed. By day, 
 when the travellers had nothing to fear, 
 they sang the Pilgrim Psalms, 1 and we 
 can picture to ourselves Jesus, at the even- 
 ing halt, helping Joseph to set up the 
 tent, while Mary prepared supper, and all, 
 before retiring, reciting Psalm cxxi., which 
 was the hymn for the close of day, — 
 
 I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, 
 From whence cometh my help. 
 My help cometh from the Lord, 
 Who made heaven and earth. 
 He will not permit thy foot to stumble : 
 He who keepeth thee will not slumber. 
 Behold, He will not slumber nor sleep 
 Who guardeth Israel. 
 
 1 Psalms cxx.-cxxxiv. 
 
44 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 The Lord is thy keeper : 
 
 The Lord is thy shade on thy right hand. 
 
 The sun shall not smite thee by day, 
 
 Nor the moon by night. 
 
 The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil : 
 
 He will preserve thy soul. 
 
 The Lord shall preserve thy going out and 
 
 thy coming in 
 From this time forth and for evermore. 
 
 Jericho, the city of palm-trees, was a 
 charming city, the first in which our 
 pilgrims could take a little rest, for it was 
 the only one not infested with Gentiles. 
 The whole surrounding country was cov- 
 ered with palm groves mingled with 
 gardens and cultivated fields. 
 
 Between Jericho and Jerusalem they 
 first crossed a wide, arid, stony plain, 
 somewhat like a desert. Then the road 
 ascended rapidly, and forced its way be- 
 tween two almost vertical walls of gigantic 
 rocks. The road, the remains of which still 
 exist and are easy to follow, continued to 
 ascend, and becoming steeper and steeper 
 was at times nothing less than a veritable 
 staircase hewn out of the rock. All around 
 were bare and fissured heights. From 
 time to time, in a yawning gulf far below, 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 45 
 
 was seen the torrent of Kidron, silvery as 
 a thread of foam. 
 
 After this toilsome march by wild and 
 steep paths which justify the expression 
 "go up to Jerusalem," they arrived at 
 Bethany, one of the villages best loved by 
 Jesus, and the acquaintance of which he 
 made now for the first time. 
 
 Jerusalem was near at hand; but it 
 could not yet be seen, being hidden by 
 the Mount of Olives. Just this hill to 
 climb, and within ten minutes after leav- 
 ing Bethany, suddenly the plain unrolled, 
 revealing the splendid panorama of the city 
 crowned by its gigantic Temple. 
 
 They from Nazareth stood still and 
 gazed. There, first of all, was the height of 
 Mount Zion ; next that of Moriah, crowned 
 with the walls which encircle the sanctu- 
 ary. The majestic scene was new to Jesus. 
 The city seemed like an almost impreg- 
 nable place. A thick and high wall, fur- 
 nished with sixty towers, completely 
 surrounded it. Within the enclosure 
 appeared a mass of flat-roofed buildings 
 closely huddled together. It was like a 
 multitude of small cubes of white stone 
 standing out against the blue sky, at 
 
46 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 unequal altitudes, for the city is built 
 upon hills. 
 
 The panorama which the child Jesus had 
 before Ms eyes was the very one which he 
 to have on Palm Sunday, five days 
 before his death: and he was standing on 
 the spot where he would then weep over 
 the city and its peoj)le. Did he think on 
 that Palm Sunday of his childish impres- 
 sions, and of that other day which also 
 preceded by a very little the Paschal Feast, 
 when, twenty-one years before, this sacred 
 place had appeared before him for the first 
 time? At last he was looking upon the 
 Temple, which he had so often pictured to 
 himself, with its golden roof sparkling in 
 the sunlight! 
 
 But they must keep on to the end of 
 their journey. The path descended ob- 
 liquely. They went through the valley of 
 Gethsemane, crossed the Kidron. and five 
 minutes later entered the city by the 
 Sheep Gate, the very gate by which Jesus 
 was to go out on that Thursday night 
 which was the last before his death. They 
 were all singing the One Hundred and 
 Twenty-second Psalm. " Our feet shall 
 stand within thy gates. O Jerusalem!" 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 47 
 
 These poor folk from Nazareth must 
 have very much resembled the pilgrims of 
 the present day who come from the heart 
 of Russia or elsewhere to kneel in the Holy 
 Sepulchre, whose simple and ardent piety 
 provokes smiles among those who are 
 surfeited with the emotions of the Holy 
 Places. Their devotion certainly repro- 
 duces in its essential features that of the 
 Galileans of the early time. 
 
 The latter did not lodge in the town, for 
 the number of its inhabitants, which in 
 general was from sixty to eighty thousand, 
 was increased at feast-times to unheard-of, 
 incredible proportions. They were there- 
 fore obliged to camp outside upon the 
 Mount of Olives. 
 
 The garden of "the Oil-press," where 
 Jesus was arrested, belonged to a friend, 
 who had there a farmstead serving as coun- 
 try-house. Who knows whether the habit 
 which he formed later of always passing 
 the night outside of the city, upon the 
 Mount of Olives, did not date from his 
 childhood, springing from time-honored 
 relations of his family with some inhabi- 
 tant of this place? 
 
 However this may have been, Joseph, 
 
48 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 Mary, and the child made no delay in 
 going to the Temple. To do this they 
 were compelled to make a considerable 
 ascent, for it was situated on one of the 
 hills enclosed by the wall of the city. 
 
 The Temple, above all other things, 
 fixed their attention. It resembled a for- 
 tress, for a formidable wall of defence 
 surrounded it on all sides. Joseph, Mary, 
 and the child, accompanied, no doubt, 
 by other Nazarenes, "their kinsfolk and 
 acquaintance, " 1 entered the enclosure by 
 a great arched gate, and found themselves 
 in an immense court, with porticos run- 
 ning around the inner side of the walls. 
 
 In the midst Jesus saw venders, money- 
 changers, and buyers inveighing against 
 one another; for the first time he heard 
 the insulting remarks of Sadducees and 
 the vociferations of Pharisees. Impassible 
 Roman soldiers were mounting guard just 
 as Turkish soldiers do to-day; and all in 
 one moment the child had before his eyes 
 
 1 Luke ii. 44. These relatives may have been 
 Zebedee and Salome, father and mother of James 
 and John. We believe, although these questions of 
 relationship are difficult to solve, that Salome was 
 Mary's sister, and that James and John, the sons of 
 Zebedee, were cousins-german of Jesus. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 49 
 
 a view of the profanation of the Holy 
 Place, the narrowness and hatred of the 
 religious parties who directed the nation, 
 and the oppression of the foreigner who 
 held it in custody under a yoke of iron. 
 His religious and patriotic feelings were 
 at once excited and wounded. It was the 
 first contact of Jesus with the priests, 
 who looked down upon the poor pilgrims 
 coming to offer their ardent devotion, — 
 Galileans, who spoke with so displeasing an 
 accent, and, worse still, Nazarenes from 
 a village out of which nothing good could 
 come. 
 
 The pilgrims, however, crossed the great 
 court without pausing ; they were in haste to 
 pass through the Beautiful Gate, and enter 
 the enclosure into which none but Israelites 
 might come. Here Mary remained. It 
 was the Court of the Women; they were 
 not permitted to go farther. Joseph and 
 Jesus went on into the court called "Of 
 Israel," the place reserved for men. Be- 
 fore them was the Platform of the Bene- 
 dictions, from which the priest blessed the 
 assembled people. Behind it arose the 
 smoke of the great altar of sacrifice, 
 and, still beyond, the door of the Holy 
 4 
 
50 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 Place, which only the priests might enter. 
 Father and child bowed themselves and 
 worshipped. 
 
 But the pilgrims had come not merely 
 to see; they had come to celebrate the 
 Passover. Jesus already knew what fes- 
 tival this was ; he knew every one of the 
 details of the solemnity about to take 
 place, and the great memories which it 
 celebrated had long been familiar to him. 
 
 Joseph's first care was to procure a lamb 
 for the sacrifice. This was easy; they 
 were for sale everywhere. But the price 
 was high for one in his circumstances. At 
 the birth of Jesus his mother was able to 
 offer only the turtle-doves of the poor; and 
 no doubt the carpenter of Nazareth had 
 been laying aside, for months past, the 
 money necessary for the purchase of the 
 lamb. The animal chosen, Joseph carried 
 it on his shoulders to the Temple, fol- 
 lowed by the child. At the entrance of 
 the Court of the Priests he handed it 
 over to those who conducted the sacrifice. 
 They took it from him and offered it upon 
 the altar, a blast of the trumpet giving 
 the signal for the sacrifice. 
 
 We may imagine the child's emotion, 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 51 
 
 the questions that he asked, and all that 
 passed in his soul at the sight of this 
 sacrifice. 
 
 The animal was flayed and drawn. Its 
 entrails and its fat were thrown upon the 
 fire. Joseph lifted up the carcass and car- 
 ried it away to prepare, with Mary's help, 
 the sacred feast. The animal was roasted, 
 and not boiled. Not one of its bones was 
 broken, and all that might not be eaten 
 was to be burned in the fire. 
 
 In earlier days it had been the custom 
 to partake of this feast standing, with 
 staff in hand, ready for departure, thus to 
 reproduce in all its details the scene of 
 the departure from Egypt on the night of 
 deliverance. But this custom had long 
 since fallen into disuse. Every one was 
 seated, in oriental fashion, on cushions and 
 carpets. The sacred feast was celebrated 
 after a ritual order. Four times the cup 
 made the round of the table. After the 
 first round bitter herbs were brought to be 
 eaten with the unleavened bread. These 
 bitter herbs, steeped in vinegar, were a 
 reminder of the sufferings formerly endured 
 in Egypt. 
 
 At this moment Jesus, according to cus- 
 
52 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 torn, asked Joseph the meaning of all that 
 was passing before his eyes. He repeated 
 the question twice, and his father replied 
 with the story of the exodus from Egypt, 
 closing his narrative with the words : " We 
 ought to praise, celebrate, honor, and mag- 
 nify Him who did these great and marvel- 
 lous things for our fathers, and led them 
 from bondage to liberty, from sorrow to 
 joy, from darkness to a great light. Let 
 us then say 'Hallelujah! Praise the 
 Lord! ' " At these words the whole family 
 sang Psalms cxiii. and cxiv. Then the 
 meal went on, and after the fourth and 
 last cup those present sang Psalms cxv., 
 cxvi., cxvii., cxviii. This was the end. 
 
 The memory of this evening left an in- 
 effaceable impression upon Jesus' mind. 
 Of all the rites of his people the Paschal 
 Feast was certainly that one to which he 
 was the most attached. He found a great 
 sweetness in celebrating it year after year 
 with those whom he loved; and the even- 
 ing before his death he said to his apostles, 
 "With desire I have desired to eat this 
 Passover with you before I suffer." 1 
 
 The next day was the first and great 
 
 1 Luke xxii. 15. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 53 
 
 day of the feast, which had been begun 
 the evening before by the Paschal Feast, for 
 the Jews did not count the day from mid- 
 night to midnight, as we do, but from six 
 in the evening until six in the evening of 
 the next day. It was not permitted to 
 work on either of these days. 
 
 On the next day but one they offered in 
 the Temple a sheaf of the new harvest. 
 During the seven days of the festival every 
 one ate unleavened bread. On the last day 
 it was still obligatory to be present. It was 
 expressly forbidden to depart from Jerusa- 
 lem before the seven days were completed. 
 
 When all had been done, Joseph and 
 Mary set off with the Nazareth caravan. 
 We know what happened. "The boy 
 Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and 
 his parents knew it not, but supposing 
 him to be in the company, they went 
 a day's journey; and they sought him 
 among their kinsfolk and acquaintance." 1 
 
 So it came about that they had gone as 
 far as Jericho, and perhaps farther, with- 
 out being disturbed by the absence of 
 Jesus. " When they found him not, they 
 returned to Jerusalem seeking for him." 2 
 
 1 Luke ii. 44. 2 Luke ii. 45. 
 
54 JESUS CHRIST BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 
 
 With hearts torn by anguish they there- 
 fore retraced their steps up that steep, 
 dangerous, rocky road which lies between 
 Jericho and Jerusalem, and which they 
 had passed over with Jesus only eight days 
 previously. 
 
 " And after three days they found him 
 in the Temple, sitting in the midst of the 
 doctors, both hearing them and asking 
 them questions. And all that heard him 
 were astonished at his understanding and 
 his answers. And when they saw him 
 they were astonished : and his mother said 
 unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt 
 with us ? Behold, thy father and I sought 
 thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, 
 How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye 
 not that I must be in the things of my 
 Father? And they understood not the 
 saying which he spake unto them. And 
 he went down with them, and came to 
 Nazareth, and was subject unto them; and 
 his mother kept all these sayings in her 
 heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom 
 and stature, and in favor with God and 
 men." 1 
 
 1 Luke ii. 47-52. 
 
IV 
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS AND 
 EXPERIENCES 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS AND EXPERIENCES 
 
 /^\N their return to Nazareth Jesus began 
 to learn his trade under Joseph's 
 direction; for he was the eldest, and he 
 must toil to aid his parents in bringing up 
 his younger brothers and sisters. A child 
 of twelve was at that time, in the East, 
 as well developed, physically and intel- 
 lectually, as a child of fifteen is to-day 
 in our western, modern world. Jesus 
 would later be called "the carpenter's 
 son;" 1 and people would see him accom- 
 panying his father, sharing his severe toil, 
 and early learning to feel himself a respon- 
 sible being. 
 
 After a time Joseph died; everything 
 leads us to believe that it was not long 
 after this, for he is no longer spoken of, 
 and Jesus, the carpenter's son, becomes 
 "the carpenter." 2 
 
 1 Matt. xiii. 55. 2 Mark vi. 3. 
 
58 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 He therefore went on with the paternal 
 calling, and soon became the support of 
 his mother and the head of the family. 
 For long years, he worked at this most 
 laborious of trades, being, no doubt, the 
 only carpenter in the village. He would 
 put roofs upon new houses and mend the old 
 ones. Clothed in the humble garments of 
 the working-man, — a simple woollen tunic, 
 and a turban upon his head, — he went about 
 his work, squaring beams, wielding the 
 hatchet and axe, directing the men who 
 helped him, returning home at evening to 
 eat the bread and hard-boiled eggs which 
 his mother had prepared before taking from 
 the wall the pallet and coverlid in which 
 his weary limbs would gain a few hours 
 of rest. 
 
 A few indications permit us to divine 
 something of what he was among his own 
 people, in the bosom of his family. 
 
 When in the upper chamber not one of 
 his disciples was willing to wash the feet 
 of the others, he, the Master, took upon 
 himself this humble office. From this we 
 may conclude that readiness to serve and 
 to do acts of service must have been a 
 feature of his character in childhood. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 59 
 
 Another indication is his love of medita- 
 tion and prayer. When we see him, from 
 the beginning of his public life, passing 
 entire nights in prayer, are we not catch- 
 ing a glimpse of a long habit ? Had not 
 prayer been in his youth "the breath of 
 his soul"? 
 
 A third indication which forces itself 
 upon us is tolerance, charity. In one of 
 his first public preachings he spoke of lov- 
 ing one's enemies, of pardoning those who 
 harm one, of giving without hoping to 
 receive again. Who will dare to say that 
 these precepts were not inspired in him by 
 the sweet and vivid memory of the love 
 which he had shown to every one at 
 Nazareth ? And finally, the solicitude with 
 which he concerned himself with his mother 
 in his dying moments, and his twofold 
 utterance, "Behold thy son!" "Behold 
 thy mother!" 1 speak plainly enough of 
 the tenderness with which he had always 
 surrounded her. 
 
 Thus Jesus increased in wisdom and 
 stature, and in favor with God and 
 men ; 2 he passed from childhood to youth. 
 He reached the age when the attention 
 
 1 John xix. 27. 2 Luke ii. 52. 
 
60 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 awakes; he put questions to himself; he 
 observed what he saw, he reflected upon 
 what he heard. Immediately after his first 
 journey to Jerusalem, whatever may have 
 been his manual labors, he began to occupy 
 himself with "the things of his Father." 
 The Chazzan, 1 his mother, and perhaps, 
 also, some ruler of the synagogue had, 
 until this time, been his only religious 
 teachers. They no longer sufficed for 
 him. To occupy himself with " the things 
 of his Father " must have been, as his 
 attitude in Jerusalem showed, to interro- 
 gate the Doctors and ask them questions. 
 From this we conclude with certainty 
 that he studied the religious parties 
 of his people, and that his curious and 
 questioning gaze took in everything which 
 claimed religious authority. 
 
 Observation was an important factor in 
 the education of Jesus. For example,- it 
 was to observation that he owed his entire 
 practical theory of life. What he had not 
 seen he did not know. He had not seen 
 great capitals, great empires; he certainly 
 never quitted Palestine, and he had only 
 
 1 This was the name given to the functionary in 
 charge of the synagogue and of the holy books. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 61 
 
 an imperfect notion of the Roman Empire 
 and the power of "Caesar." No doubt, it 
 may be said that when he describes kings 
 as personages clothed in fine apparel, who 
 live in palaces, with many slaves to do 
 their bidding, going in their behalf to 
 summon the people whom they have invited 
 to dinner, 1 he used this childish language 
 simply to put himself on the level of his 
 hearers. None the less is it certain that 
 he had never seen a king, and that he 
 knew no other sovereign than the tetrarch 
 Herod Antipas. He therefore could speak 
 of the great ones of earth only by hearsay. 
 
 But whatever he had seen he knew. He 
 had a gift of penetration, a power and 
 keenness of vision, which were of extraor- 
 dinary intensity; and the profundity of 
 observation which the least of his parables 
 presupposes is truly prodigious. He had 
 seen everything in Nazareth, and was 
 unaware of nothing which went on in that 
 village. 
 
 The habits of men and of beasts ; the 
 manner of life of the animals in the woods, 
 the fields, on the farms; the relations of 
 laborers and proprietors ; the price of vari- 
 
 1 Matt. xi. 8 ; xviii. 23; xxii. 2 ft. ; etc. 
 
62 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 ous commodities ; the habits of villagers ; 
 the fold in which the flocks are gathered 
 by night ; the shepherd who seeks the stray 
 sheep; the hen calling her chickens to her; 
 the necessity of a careful choice of ground 
 for building ; the time required for a grain 
 of mustard seed to become a great tree; 
 the destiny of different handfuls of seed 
 cast by the sower, some lost for divers 
 reasons, the rest dying in good ground in 
 order to live again; the making of bread; 
 the difference between old wine and new ; 
 the way to mend clothes, and the impor- 
 tance of washing the inside as well as the 
 outside of a dish, — he was familiar with 
 them all, and nothing in daily life was 
 foreign to him. 
 
 He carried this gift of observation and 
 of learning by observation, above all things, 
 to the religious customs which prevailed 
 around him. He certainly never attended 
 the schools of the rabbis in Jerusalem, 
 that of Hillel or that of Shammai. He 
 was never seen among their pupils. He 
 was a carpenter. The people of Nazareth 
 knew him as such; and later, when men 
 heard him speak, they marvelled precisely 
 because he knew so many things and had 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 63 
 
 so much wisdom, though he was only " the 
 carpenter.'" 
 
 But there is a long way from these facts 
 to the conclusion that Jesus had not stud- 
 ied. It is certain to us that from his 
 tenth to his fifteenth year he studied, in 
 the school at Nazareth, the traditional law 
 and the minute regulations of Israelitish 
 life. He was too well acquainted with 
 them for anything else to have been pos- 
 sible; and, besides, every young man who 
 intended to sound these things even for a 
 little way carried on such studies. No 
 doubt Jesus possessed neither parchments 
 nor diplomas; he was autodidact, that is 
 to say, self-taught. But he was a Rabbi ; 
 he was called Rabbi Jehoshua Natserieh, 
 that is, Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth. Now, 
 this was a sort of profession, — a career 
 into which it was necessary to be initiated 
 by the acquisition of a certain amount of 
 knowledge. Though any one might call 
 himself Rabbi, he could nevertheless only 
 do it in good earnest after preparing him- 
 self for his work. 
 
 A Rabbi was a personage whom people 
 consulted, who healed the sick, had dis- 
 ciples, pronounced aphorisms and max- 
 
04 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 ims. What had been the studies of 
 Jesus? Certainly none which followed a 
 well-defined programme, terminating in 
 examinations which confer a title or a 
 degree. Such studies, examinations, cer- 
 tificates, were the affair of the Doctors of 
 the Law. The Rabbi was more free; in 
 fact, he was entirely free. Rabbi was a 
 name given by the people to whoever 
 took the ascendant over them and rendered 
 them services. But one could only gain 
 this ascendant, and the authority which 
 conferred upon a man the honor of being 
 called Rabbi, after having acquired a cer- 
 tain knowledge ; and this knowledge Jesus 
 certainly had. He knew too well the 
 strength and the weakness of the parties 
 of his time not to have very narrowly 
 observed these parties, and lived with 
 them in closest contact. 
 
 Every Sabbath day after the Synagogue 
 the pious men of the town came together 
 to read and meditate, to discuss and argue. 
 Who will believe that Jesus, after his 
 fifteenth year, never went to this school of 
 the Rabbis, where they gave themselves 
 up to a thorough study of the Scriptures, 
 beginning with Leviticus, passing in re- 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 65 
 
 view the entire Torah, and after that the 
 Prophets ? Jesus certainly was present at 
 the meetings of this nature which must 
 have been held in Nazareth. The proof 
 that he frequented the places where the 
 Scribes carried on their arguments is found 
 in the fact that he learned their method of 
 reasoning. 
 
 It was by arguments like theirs that he 
 demonstrated that the resurrection of the 
 dead is taught in the Pentateuch ; 1 that he 
 answered the Sadducees, who denied a 
 future life, 2 and asked how the Messiah 
 could be at the same time the Son of 
 David and his Lord. 3 The rabbinical 
 exegesis was familiar to him, because he 
 learned it by hearing the Doctors expound- 
 ing the Law and the Prophets. We may, 
 then, hold it as certain that Jesus prepared 
 himself for his ministry by a very serious 
 and attentive study of and acquaintance 
 with the Judaism of the schools. 
 
 He did more ; he learned to speak. The 
 splendid habit of public speech which he 
 
 1 Matt. xxii. 31, 32; Mark xii. 26, 27; Luke xx. 
 37, 38. 
 
 2 Matt. xxii. 23 fE. ; Mark xii. 18 ff. ; Luke xx. 27 ff. 
 
 3 Matt. xxii. 45 ; Mark xii. 37. 
 
 5 
 
66 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 had from the very first argues a prepara- 
 tion which was not a matter of a day. 
 This preparation was so complete that 
 during his ministry he always gave to his 
 words the most admirably finished form, 
 so finished that all trace of effort has dis- 
 appeared. We can discover none; not 
 even in his parables, the structure of which 
 is so perfect. It is therefore impossible to 
 say here what was the nature of Jesus' 
 preparation ; but it is none the less certain 
 that he did prepare himself. If at a later 
 time he was often compelled to improvise, it 
 is evident that he had learned how to do it. 
 
 Jesws, then, like every other man, had 
 made his preparation, — with the aid of 
 circumstances he had created for himself 
 tests and struggles which he must have 
 fought out. He profited by all the methods 
 of self-instruction which God had put 
 within his reach. His character, his mind, 
 his intelligence, his whole soul were in- 
 cessantly growing during these eighteen 
 years. He lent an ear to the lessons given 
 by the events of the day, patriotic or reli- 
 gious ; he became aware of the hostility of 
 men, and was taught by it. 
 
 I hold it also to be highly probable that 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 67 
 
 Jesus passed some time in Jerusalem dur- 
 ing the eighteen years that lay between 
 him and public life. He must have con- 
 tinued to go up to the Paschal feasts ; he 
 perhaps went to other feasts. That of 
 Tabernacles was very popular, and his 
 desire to learn, the ardent interest which 
 he felt in the "things of his Father," the 
 memory which he kept of his first visit to 
 Jerusalem, his first sight of the Temple, 
 — all lead me to believe that his steps 
 were often turned toward the holy city; 
 for it is difficult to believe that after 
 returning to Nazareth, at twelve years of 
 age, he never again left it. But his absences 
 were never long; he never made distant 
 journeys, and Nazareth was certainly his 
 constant place of abode. For thirty years 
 he had before his eyes the meagre and nar- 
 rowhorizon of his own village. For thirty 
 years he lived amicl its cottages, threshing- 
 floors, wine-presses. For thirty years he 
 looked upon those mountains whose most 
 minute outlines had been familiar to him 
 from his tenderest infancy. The features 
 of this landscape were graven on his 
 memory in lines never to be effaced. 
 Here, among these shrubs and roses, he had 
 
68 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 received his first impression of the world, 
 and felt his soul awake to a sympathy with 
 nature which had been always growing 
 stronger. In the brilliancy of the red anem- 
 ones, which he called lilies, he had seen the 
 resplendent glory of his Father: and upon 
 these silent hills he had felt his presence 
 and had passed long nights in prayer. 
 
 Among acts preparatory to his public 
 life we must include prayer, the hours 
 spent with his Father. He knew how to 
 "close his door" and "pray to the Father 
 who seeth in secret: " but it was especially 
 upon the heights which encircle the vil- 
 lage that he found solitude and isolation. 
 There is, perhaps, not one of the hills near 
 Nazareth upon which he has not prayed. 
 We have already remarked that if during 
 his ministry he loved to withdraw to the 
 mountain and pass sometimes the whole 
 night there alone with the Father, he cer- 
 tainly did it. and often, during the long 
 and fruitful years of his preparation. 
 
 There is one of the heights overlooking 
 the village which must often have attracted 
 him. 1 From hence is seen one of the finest 
 
 i Xow Jebel-es-Sikh, 5J2 metres in height. Naza- 
 reth itself is 273 metres above the sea, and 100 metres 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 69 
 
 views in all Palestine, and it is beyond all 
 doubt that Jesus often looked upon it. 
 This height is at the north ; it is the most 
 elevated of the immediate environs of 
 Nazareth. At Nazareth the view is very 
 much shut in; but here, on the contrary, 
 the panorama is immense. At the south 
 are the mountains of Samaria, beyond 
 which may be pictured the dark and unat- 
 tractive Judea. On the west lies the 
 Carmel range, the double peak dominating 
 Megiddo, and in the distance, stretching 
 out to infinity, the blue waters of the 
 Mediterranean. At the northward may 
 be seen the mountains of Jafed, melting 
 away into the sea ; and in the farthest dis- 
 tance the snow peak of great Hermon. 
 Then, turning to the east, the eye is fixed 
 by the rounded and graceful forms of 
 the mountains of the land of Shechem and 
 Mount Tabor. 
 
 Such was the view which Jesus looked 
 upon. From that hill, on the side toward 
 the sunrise, after a night of deep thought 
 and prayer, he would catch a glimpse of 
 the Jordan valley, which was later to 
 
 above the plain of Esdraelon. At the summit of 
 Jebel-es-Sikh is found the little Waly of Nebi Ishmael. 
 
70 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 be the scene of his activity, and beyond 
 the river, Perea with its high plains ; while 
 all around him, at his very feet, was spread 
 a prodigious wealth of rich vegetation, and 
 lands of such fertility that they were com- 
 pared with Paradise. 
 
 In this nature Jesus unceasingly saw the 
 face of his Father. He had known this 
 Father, and loved him with all his heart, 
 all his soul, all his strength, and all his 
 thought, from the day when his pious 
 mother taught him to lisp his name; and 
 after having found his Fatherhood in the 
 Old Testament, in the marvellous story of 
 the deliverances of his people, he found it 
 again on the solitary heights which over- 
 look Nazareth. 
 
 Descending 1 from the hill, he found it 
 again, everywhere and always, in that 
 nature which encompassed him. It re- 
 flected the invisible world; it was as if 
 transparent, and the serene and benevolent 
 face of the Father appeared to him through 
 all things. The labors of the country, the 
 habits of animals, the slow development 
 of plants, the arduous task of shepherds 
 and laborers, — eveiwthing interested and 
 attracted him, everything served as mate- 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 71 
 
 rial for instruction, everything was to him 
 a proof of the incessant activity of the 
 heavenly Father and his infinite love. 
 There was in it, to him, a perpetual rev- 
 elation, which preserved him from the hard 
 and dry Rabbinism of his contemporaries. 
 He collected facts, accumulated experi- 
 ences, of which he was later to open the 
 inexhaustible treasure to those whom he 
 would teach. 
 
 Finally, in his hours of solitude, the 
 question of his destiny formulated itself: 
 Why am I in the world? What is my 
 mission? What is to be my life? He 
 asked his Father; he occupied himself 
 with the things that concerned Him. The 
 Synagogue had revealed to him the exist- 
 ence of a multitude of religious questions, 
 and had not answered one of them. He had 
 read the Prophets, and the mission of his 
 people had been revealed to him. But 
 one question included all the others, and 
 forced itself upon him: Who would be 
 the Messiah? When would he appear? 
 What work would he accomplish? Thus 
 passed eighteen years, and he arrived 
 slowly, but surely, at the unalterable con- 
 viction, " The Messiah! I myself am he ! " 
 
V 
 STUDIES AND READING 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 STUDIES AND READING 
 
 T3EADING was certainly one of the 
 principal sources of Jesus' education. 
 It is not difficult to divine what books 
 he knew and pondered. First of all must 
 be named the Old Testament. The one 
 which he read was less complete than our 
 own. It consisted of two volumes. The 
 first, called "The Law," included the five 
 books attributed to Moses. They had a 
 more particularly sacred character than all 
 the others; and every one believed, as we 
 have already had occasion to say, that God 
 himself had dictated their contents to the 
 Hebrew Lawgiver, word by word. The 
 second volume, called "The Prophets," 
 contained the following books, in the 
 order given : Part First, — Joshua, Judges, 
 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings. 
 Part Second, — Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 
 Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 
 
76 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, 
 Zechariah, Malachi. 
 
 The other books which we find in our 
 Old Testament to-day were not yet gathered 
 into a sacred collection. They were none 
 the less considered as having come from 
 God; for every writing bearing the name 
 of one of the great men of the past was 
 held to be divine. Jesns certainly never 
 had the modern notion of a closed, defini- 
 tively fixed canon. He read the Book of 
 Daniel with the same veneration as those 
 of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and yet this book 
 was not in the collection which inclnded 
 the writings of Isaiah and Jeremiah. But 
 Daniel had been one of the most remark- 
 able seers of the Exile, and his book con- 
 tained revelations of capital importance. 
 
 The same was the case with the Psalms. 
 In the time of Jesus these were simply the 
 Hymn Book of the Synagogue; but this 
 collection of sacred songs was considered 
 by the whole people as divine; it was 
 sometimes named in connection with the 
 Law and the Prophets; men added "and 
 the Psalms." 1 On the other hand, there 
 are certain books like Ezra, Nehemiah, 
 
 1 Luke xxiv. 44. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 77 
 
 Esther, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, 
 which Jesus never quoted; and there are 
 some among the number of whose existence 
 he was probably always unaware. 
 
 The first book which he knew was cer- 
 tainly the Law, because this was the work 
 most respected by the people, and because 
 he heard it read in the Synagogue every 
 Sabbath day. For that matter, the Syna- 
 gogue was, without any doubt, his first 
 religious school and his first inspiring 
 influence. He had early begun to attend 
 it with all his veneration and childish 
 piety. He continued, as a young man, to 
 be present at its services ; and never, dur- 
 ing his whole life, did he fail to take part 
 in the Synagogue worship. 1 The sermons 
 which he heard there every week — for reg- 
 ular sermons were preached there — aroused 
 him to thought, provoked him to reflec- 
 tion. It would happen that these sermons, 
 which were explanations of the text, were 
 contradictory; and Jesus would assimilate 
 one thing, reject another, ask himself how 
 he himself would have explained such a 
 passage; above all things recoiling from 
 the scholasticism which was the canker 
 of Judaism in his time. 
 
 1 "As his custom was." Luke iv. 16. 
 
78 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 The Synagogue of Nazareth, where he 
 was one day to read a fragment from 
 Isaiah, 1 was a very large rectangular build- 
 ing. In the interior there were four 
 columns on each side; at the end an ele- 
 vated semicircular rostrum, upon which 
 were seated the readers and the Scribes. 2 
 A great chest contained the sacred manu- 
 scripts, and in front of it was a small pul- 
 pit. The hall was furnished with benches, 
 the seats in the first rows and on the plat- 
 form being paid for. These were the 
 seats of the wealthy. Joseph and his sons 
 would have places on one side of the hall, in 
 the free seats ; Mary and her daughters on 
 the other side, — - for the sexes were always 
 separated. The women were veiled, and 
 the men kept on their turbans. 
 
 When the sermon began, a person who 
 had been selected beforehand mounted the 
 platform and recited the Shema and the 
 Shemone Esre; 3 the congregation, stand- 
 ing, responded with a loud Amen at the 
 
 1 Luke iv. 17. 
 
 2 These were the architectural features of all 
 synagogues, and consequently of the synagogue of 
 Nazareth. 
 
 8 For the Shemone Esre see my work "Palestine 
 in the Time of Jesus Christ," 5th ed., p. 375 ft 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 79 
 
 close of each prayer. No doubt Jesus had 
 more than once been called to repeat these 
 two prayers. 
 
 After this the Law was read ; that is to 
 say, about fifty verses of the Pentateuch. 
 The Chazzan, a sort of sacristan, had taken 
 from the chest the case containing the 
 sacred texts ; and seven men read, by turn, 
 three or four verses apiece, in monotonous 
 and nasal tones. Every three years the 
 entire Pentateuch was thus read through. 
 Between his twelfth and thirtieth years 
 Jesus must have heard it read six times in 
 the Synagogue of Nazareth. Each verse 
 was read in Hebrew, the original language, 
 and immediately translated into Syriac; 
 for the people of Nazareth did not under- 
 stand Hebrew. 
 
 In his childhood Jesus understood it no 
 more than the others, and he was obliged 
 to learn it when he undertook to make a 
 private study of the text. It is probable 
 that he never spoke it fluently, for not 
 one of those utterances of his which the 
 Gospels have preserved in their original 
 text is in Hebrew. They were all uttered 
 in Syriac, his mother tongue; he never 
 used any other in conversation, and even 
 
80 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 when he quoted from the Old Testament, 
 he quoted it only as translated into Syriae. 
 
 When the reading was finished, one of 
 the readers made an oral comment, an 
 exposition, or a sort of homily. As a 
 child Jesus long accepted as a matter of 
 authority, with no thought of questioning 
 them, these interpretations, of which the 
 Talmudic commentaries may give us an 
 idea. Most generally they were trivial and 
 unintelligent remarks, forced reconcilia- 
 tions, puerile observations. 
 
 This commentary finished, the individual 
 who had recited the opening prayers read 
 a passage from the Book of the Prophets. 
 Every three verses were translated by an 
 interpreter; finally, the benediction was 
 pronounced, and the assembly dispersed. 
 These various readings and recitations 
 were alternated with the singing of Psalms, 
 and three deacons gathered the gifts of the 
 worshippers for the poor. 
 
 One of the first steps in the self-educa- 
 tion of Jesus was certainly to borrow, 
 during week days, the roll of the Torah, 
 in order to read over again the passage 
 commented upon the previous Sabbath. 
 Thus he became thoroughly acquainted 
 
BEFORE HIS MINIS THY 81 
 
 with the history of his people, and the 
 stories in the Mosaic books became very 
 familiar to him, — the Creation, the Fall, 
 Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all 
 the patriarchs, Moses and his mighty 
 deeds; then, in the collection of the 
 Prophets, David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha 
 were his favorite heroes. 
 
 He had his favorites among the writing 
 prophets. He seems not to have enjoyed 
 them equally. Isaiah appears to have been 
 the author of his choice, and perhaps the 
 Psalms alone were more familiar to him 
 than this prophecy. It is probable that he 
 succeeded in procuring copies of the Scrip- 
 tures for himself, which he would not need 
 to return to the Synagogue after having 
 become acquainted with them ; for the very 
 poorest, if they were pious, procured for 
 themselves sheets of parchment, upon which 
 they copied, or caused to be copied by some 
 obliging Scribe, the texts which they most 
 cared to read often. The handwriting of 
 these manuscripts which Jesus read, after 
 having had them copied or copying them 
 himself, was precisely that of our Hebrew 
 Bibles to-day. 
 
 The Law was to him the Word of God ; 
 
B2 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 neither more nor less. In his eyes this 
 word was the ground of authority. He 
 
 : put a single critical question with 
 
 regard to it. For him, everything that 
 
 emtten was entirely authentic and 
 
 dons. It all came from God; it was 
 .-.11 rrae. Tie nrai-al:. "I: is ::::ra " was 
 for him the synonym for u G : 1 said. ' ' And 
 .-: he felt that in very many respects this 
 Word was surpassed in his own case by 
 his conscience, by an unerring, secret, and 
 immediate intuition of truth which he 
 bore within hi m . He presented this unique 
 phenomenon, that he was at the same time 
 obedient tc the Word of God and superior 
 to it. Take, for example, a passage from 
 his Sermon on the Mount : "Ye have heard 
 that it aid to them of old time, Thou 
 
 shalt not kill , and whosoever shall kill shall 
 be in danger of the judgment. But I say 
 unto you tha : : ne who is angry with 
 
 his brother shall be in danger of the judg- 
 ment. " : He accepted, therefore, the com- 
 mandment "Thou shalt not kill; " he did 
 not reject it, but he explained it, and sL 
 that it implies hatred and wrath; he rose 
 from the act : the sentiment which 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 83 
 
 tates it. This exegesis appeared to him 
 legitimate. He affirmed that his way of 
 seeing is the true interpretation of the text, 
 and at the same time it was he who spoke, 
 and he knew it well ; for he thus speaks : 
 "But /say unto you, — /." 
 
 If, now, we study this interpretation 
 given by Jesus, in itself, we see that it 
 separates that in the Law which is eternal 
 from that which is temporary; and we 
 shall show, later, that in this he was only 
 applying a method which was always his, 
 a method which he always made use of 
 in all circumstances, — " Abolish nothing , 
 fulfil everything." 
 
 We have said that it was especially 
 Isaiah and the Psalms which inspired him. 
 It was in them, indeed, that he found uni- 
 versality, that he learned that all men are 
 brothers, that God is the father of all 
 men ; that he discovered that worship which 
 is of no time nor fatherland, — worship in 
 spirit and in truth, independent of rites and 
 formulas, which he was ever afterward 
 to preach. The Books of Jeremiah and 
 Hosea also made a part of his favorite 
 reading. He loved to repeat sentences 
 drawn from one or another of these 
 
84 JE8U8 CHRIST 
 
 prophets: for example, this: "I desire 
 mercy and not sacrifice."' 1 
 
 The prophets also spoke to him of a res- 
 toration in the future, a glorious era soon 
 to come, a final redemption which would 
 be the triumph of Jehovah: and his faith 
 in himself and in an exceptional mission 
 awakened and grew strong, comparing 
 these visions with the wretchedness which 
 surrounded him. this future happiness 
 with the woes of his time and people, and 
 feeling within himself the growth of a reli- 
 gious and moral strength which surpassed 
 that of the best among his contemporaries. 
 
 Desirous of studying more closely the 
 Messianic hopes of his time, he had recourse 
 to those who had specially treated the sub- 
 ject; in particular two Apocalypses much 
 valued by his contemporaries, — the Book 
 of Daniel and that of Enoch. 
 
 He was led to study them by the reli- 
 gious and political condition of his nation. 
 Continual seditions agitated the people, and 
 kept alive the hope of a speedy deliverance. 
 Of this profoundly disturbed situation 
 Nazareth certainly felt the reflex influence. 
 Men must have talked politics in the small 
 
 1 Hosea vi. 6. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 85 
 
 village square on Sabbath days on coming 
 out of the Synagogue; they must have 
 eagerly questioned every one who had come 
 from Jerusalem during the week, asking 
 them, "What news is there? Has any 
 zealot risen? Has the Procurator com- 
 mitted any new crime?" One day some 
 one told Jesus that Archelaus had been 
 deposed by the Romans, and that they had 
 reduced Judea to the rank of a province ; 
 another day he learned from the lips of 
 some ardent patriot of the uprising of 
 Judas the Gaulonite. He had revolted 
 and refused to pay the tax. Ought one 
 to pay it? Yes, or no. Some said we 
 ought not, for God alone is our Master, 
 and to pay it is to consent to servitude and 
 recognize the power of the Romans. But 
 Judas, said others, was put down by the 
 Procurator Coponius; ought they not to 
 see in his defeat the finger of God, who 
 wills that we should render unto Csesar 
 the things that are Caesar's? Jesus lis- 
 tened to all these impassioned discussions. 
 He learned that the death of agitators was 
 certain, but he also learned that such 
 a death was sought after by them as a 
 triumph, and that enthusiasts made it their 
 
86 jzscs ;^3:'t 
 
 glory to have no care for life, provided 
 they could defend to the last the sacred 
 cause, — the cause of God. 
 
 In the last analysis all minds were agi- 
 tated with the Messianic hope. In every 
 line of the Old Testament they saw the 
 announcement of the future kingdom; they 
 calculated the period of the Messiah's 
 coming: and their calculations brought 
 them precisel" :: the troubled ticiT in 
 which they were living. The Messiah is 
 about to appear ! was the uni veisal cry. 
 
 We can unci erat an :".. :lrLr:::T. that Jeans 
 would wish to be familiar with the Books 
 of Daniel and Enoch. Daniel was the work 
 of all others most widely read and vener- 
 ated by Jews of the first century. 1 Huh 
 book impressed him strongly. It summed 
 up the opinions of the best theologians : I 
 the preceding centuries. It gave a true 
 philosophy of history, and, subordinating 
 everything to the Jewish people, saw in 
 the succession of empires only the accom- 
 plishment of the will of God with regard 
 to his chosen people. 
 
 In the Book of Daniel Jesus read for 
 the first time the name u Son of man. by 
 
 1 Josephns, Ami. x. 1 1 V 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 87 
 
 which he at a later time chose to designate 
 himself. He found there, also, the pre- 
 diction of the universal empire of the 
 righteous, and the clear and positive affir- 
 mation of the resurrection from the dead. 
 
 The Book of Enoch, in its turn, made 
 these predictions more definite. Jesus did 
 not read it in the form in which we possess 
 it, for this book is composed of fragments, 
 and more than one of them is later than 
 Jesus Christ. But it is easy to distinguish 
 these ; and the Palestinian origin of many 
 passages certainly anterior to Christianity 
 is to-day beyond all dispute. 
 
 Jesus read those passages which are 
 apparently of Essenian origin. The author 
 expects a last assault of Gentile — that is, 
 Syrian — power. This assault, repulsed 
 by God, will be followed by a judgment. 
 The fallen angels and faithless Jews will 
 be cast into the pit. A new Jerusalem 
 will be built by God, and pious Israelites 
 will there receive the homage of the Gen- 
 tiles. Then will appear the Messiah. He 
 is represented under the image of a white 
 bull. All the Gentiles will pray to him, and 
 will be converted to the true God. 
 
 To the reading of these books Jesus per- 
 
88 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 haps added that of the Psalms of Solomon, 
 — a collection composed about sixty-three 
 years before his birth. In it he found the 
 announcement of the kingdom of God, and 
 the perpetuity of this kingdom in the house 
 of David. A king descended from David 
 should be raised up by God to destroy the 
 enemies of Israel and drive out the Gen- 
 tiles from Jerusalem. This king would be 
 righteous; he would be the Anointed of 
 the Lord, full of the Spirit of God, and 
 pure from all sin. 
 
 Did Jesus know any other works, lost to 
 us, of the very existence of which we are 
 ignorant, which spoke of the glorious 
 things which the Jewish people would 
 perform, and of the eternal kingdom which 
 God would set up in a near future ? It is 
 lawful to suppose so ; for if any one was 
 eager to become acquainted with all pre- 
 dictions and search out their meaning, if 
 any one was able to draw from them the 
 fragments of truth which they contained, it 
 assuredly must have been Jesus. 
 
 Still we cannot but notice how remote 
 from his thought was all the strange, fan- 
 tastic, exaggerated side of these apocalyptic 
 visions. What a distance between his sim- 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 89 
 
 pie, popular teachings, figurative no doubt, 
 but with figures always quiet and cohe- 
 rent, and the books of his people, with their 
 tissues of false and fantastical symbolism ! 
 
 In these books everything is allegorical ; 
 and, indeed, in the time of Jesus allegory 
 was used by everybody in all cases. But 
 there is not a trace of this sort of metaphor 
 in his own teachings, and it is certain that 
 he alone of all his people was distinctly 
 repelled by this pretentious allegorism. 
 In the matter of allegory he had only 
 parables, — a sort of comparison, of which 
 one of the greatest merits is that it is mar- 
 vellously natural and simple, while in the 
 Book of Enoch, for example, all is strange, 
 exaggerated, complicated. The advent of 
 the Messiah is there predicted, with all 
 the tremendous and terrifying events which 
 are to come with him. Cataclysms succeed 
 one another, each more extraordinary than 
 the preceding; but Jesus, who was famil- 
 iar with these high-flown descriptions, re- 
 mained always independent of them. 
 
 His exegesis of the Old Testament itself 
 has a sobriety and discernment which sin- 
 gularly cut loose from the exegesis of his 
 time. The Doctors and Scribes excelled 
 
90 JESUS CHE 1ST BEEOEE HIS MINISTRY. 
 
 at finding in the Scriptures what was not 
 there. The Law was for them the object 
 of the most subtle interpretations. In the 
 Prophets and the Psalms they discovered 
 a great number of characteristics referable 
 to the Messiah, and claimed that they 
 recognized him in all parts of the Scrip- 
 tures. Now, it does not appear that 
 Jesus was ever led astray by these so- 
 called discoveries. Upon this point he 
 distinctly separated himself from those 
 who had been his guides. 
 
 Without reserve he admired the sublime 
 poetry of the Psalms and the magnificent 
 disclosures of Isaiah. These books, and 
 others like them, were the principal ali- 
 ment of his piety, and his support day by 
 day. Isaiah was one of his masters: but 
 nothing indicates that he found in his 
 writings anything which was not there, or 
 that he accepted the subtle explanations 
 and forced exegesis of his contemporaries. 
 Nothing indicates that Jesus ever under- 
 stood the Scriptures otherwise than in 
 their veritable sense, recognizing the Mes- 
 siah where he is clearly announced, and 
 refusing to discover him where he certainly 
 is not to be found. 
 
VI 
 JESUS AND THE PHARISEES 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 JESUS AND THE PHARISEES 
 
 T T is generally admitted that among the 
 Jews in the time of Jesus Christ there 
 were three sects, — the Pharisees, the Sad- 
 ducees, and the Essenes. But when Jose- 
 phus makes this statement, he completely 
 misrepresents Palestinian Judaism in the 
 first century. Of these three categories of 
 religionists, certain Essenes of strict ob- 
 servance were the only sectaries. It may 
 be said that the Sadducees also formed a 
 party, but it was of very trifling moment. 
 The priests of Jerusalem, the pontiffs in 
 the Temple, alone preferred Sadduceeism. 
 They were only a small, uninfluential 
 group, confined to the sanctuary. 
 
 As to the Pharisees, far from being sec- 
 taries, they were the nation itself. They 
 represented the general condition of reli- 
 gious minds in Palestine in the first cen- 
 tury. Every pious Jew was, if one may 
 
94 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 use the expression, modelled after the 
 Pharisees. The Pharisees had taken pos- 
 session of the synagogues. They directed 
 the teachings there given; and hence 
 whoever among the Jews was seriously 
 concerned with religion, whoever had any 
 piety, was of the number of the Phar- 
 isees. It may be said, in consequence, 
 that Jesus also, in his youth, was under 
 Pharisaic influence. 
 
 The opposition which is always assumed 
 between Pharisaism and Christianity rests 
 in part upon the celebrated invective, eight 
 times repeated, "Woe unto you, Scribes 
 and Pharisees, hypocrites," etc. 1 But 
 Jesus said these words exactly as a 
 preacher of our days might say from his 
 pulpit, " Woe unto you, proud and hypo- 
 critical Christians, who make a point of 
 attending the services of the Church, and 
 yet are formalists, not practising during 
 the week what you hear on Sunday! " No 
 doubt modern preachers are in the habit of 
 expressing themselves in more moderate 
 terms ; but, the form apart, they continually 
 say similar things to their hearers. Who 
 would conclude from this that all Chris- 
 
 1 Matt, xxiii. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 95 
 
 tians are of this sort ; that the preacher who 
 thus speaks is their adversary, and that 
 they are his irreconcilable enemies? No 
 one. Yet from the invectives of Jesus 
 men have concluded that all Pharisees 
 were hypocrites; and the word "Phari- 
 see " has become a synonym for the word 
 "Jesuit." Many are the historical errors, 
 received as indisputable truths, which rest 
 upon misunderstandings of this sort. 
 
 Let me attempt to show the true char- 
 acter of Pharisaism in the time of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 The Pharisees and the Essenes — of 
 whom we shall speak in the next chapter 
 — represented two sides of the same ten- 
 dency which Jesus thoroughly knew, toward 
 which he felt himself in many respects 
 drawn, and from which he borrowed not a 
 little. Far from considering Pharisaism, 
 as a whole, dangerous, and all Pharisees 
 enemies, he had a number of them among 
 his friends; he often ate with them, and 
 at a later day his Church was very largely 
 recruited from among the Pharisees. 
 
 The Talmud distinguishes several classes 
 of Pharisees, and only one among the seven 
 which it mentions was the object of the 
 merited reprobation of Jesus. 
 
96 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 The work of the Pharisees, as a whole, 
 and apart from a few regrettable excep- 
 tions, consisted in spiritualizing Judaism 
 by detaching it from the Temple, the 
 sacrifices, and the whole sacerdotal ritual. 
 This part of the Jewish religion was in 
 the hands of the Sadducees, — rich aristo- 
 crats who lived in the Temple and by the 
 Temple, and, so to speak, never left the 
 Temple; whose influence over the people 
 was naught, and who were to be found 
 only at Jerusalem. With the Sadducees 
 the rite alone was of importance. They 
 were the incarnation of the narrowest 
 formalism, and concerned themselves not 
 at all with ideas and beliefs. Jesus never 
 felt anything but aversion, and even a 
 profound and legitimate repugnance for 
 Sadduceeism. The Sadducees returned it 
 to him with interest, and at bottom they 
 were his only real enemies. It was these 
 formalists without piety, these aristocrats 
 without either faith or good faith, who 
 condemned him to death. Jesus never 
 opposed them in words. He imitated the 
 Pharisees, their ancient political foes, who 
 in the first century had long stood aloof 
 from them; thev thinkinsr. not without 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 97 
 
 reason, that these sceptics, who had the 
 habits without the convictions of religion, 
 were at once despicable, and without 
 danger to true Judaism. 
 
 Furthermore, during his entire youth 
 Jesus knew nothing about the Sadducees. 
 His visits to Jerusalem were too infre- 
 quent and too brief for it to be possible for 
 him to come into relations with them. 
 
 The Pharisees, as we have said, were 
 masters of the synagogues. There they 
 spiritualized Judaism, a work of which 
 Jesus certainly approved; and when the 
 latter said, with Hosea, in the name of 
 Jehovah, "I desire mercy, and not sacri- 
 fice," he adopted one of their favorite 
 maxims. During the early part of his 
 ministry Jesus had intimate and frequent 
 relations with this class of Pharisees, 
 who were not, I admit, the entire body, 
 but who, I believe, formed the great 
 majority of it. Very few of them, it is 
 true, had the courage to approve him 
 openly; but more than one of them had 
 secret relations with him. One came to 
 him by night; 1 another warned him that 
 Herod desired to kill him ; 2 some of them 
 
 i John iii. 1. 2 Luke xiii. 31. 
 
 7 
 
98 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 were not afraid to invite him to their 
 houses, and receive him at their tables. 1 
 
 The day was to come, however, when 
 there would be a rupture between Jesus 
 and the Pharisees. This day would be 
 one of the most solemn of his life. We 
 shall speak of it in detail when we study 
 the ministry of Jesus Christ. The Phari- 
 sees would at length go so far as to concert 
 together to compass the destruction of 
 Jesus. If some among them remained 
 true to him, they hid themselves, and not 
 one of them dared to undertake his defence 
 at the time of his trial. It is even very 
 possible that in the Sanhedrin which con- 
 demned Jesus there were a few Pharisees, 
 although the majority were evidently 
 Sadducees. 
 
 If the Pharisees, as a whole, were the 
 moderate party, much beloved by the peo- 
 ple, resisting the corruption and impiety 
 of the Sadducees ; if Jesus was one day to 
 counsel men to do all that they said, — 
 "The Scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses' 
 seat : all things, therefore, whatsoever they 
 say unto you, these do and observe," 2 — 
 
 1 Luke xi. 37. 
 
 2 Matt, xxiii. 2. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 99 
 
 he would nevertheless add that they acted 
 otherwise than they taught, "They say 
 and do not," and he was the irreconcilable 
 adversary of that which is to-day called 
 Pharisaism. 
 
 From all these facts I think we may 
 conclude that during the years which pre- 
 ceded his public life Jesus studied the 
 Pharisaic doctrines closely and with much 
 sympathy, and that, far from having been 
 from the first the adversary of the Phari- 
 sees, he began by being their friend. He 
 heard them preach the love of God and of 
 one's neighbor, deprecate bloody sacrifices, 
 proclaim the imperious duty of obedience 
 to the Law in order to be perfect in this 
 world and to receive the reward of the 
 kingdom of heaven. How should he not 
 have approved of them, — he who was to 
 give precisely this teaching in the earlier 
 days of his ministry? 
 
 It must not be forgotten that the Phari- 
 saic doctors had gained much in spirituality 
 during the time immediately preceding the 
 Christian era. Hillel had undertaken to 
 defend the moral law against the corrup- 
 tion of the times, to replace the Temple 
 worship with a more spiritual adoration, 
 
100 JESUS C HEIST 
 
 and to sum up the whole Law in the love 
 of God and one's neighbor. It was a 
 Pharisee who declared that to love one's 
 neighbor as oneself was "more than all 
 whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." 1 
 Jesus would one day blame the hypocriti- 
 cal Pharisees ; but the other Pharisees also 
 blamed them. Although many did, in 
 fact, make an external devotion a means 
 of influence over the people, the Talmud 
 condemned this: it rejected the "painted " 
 Pharisees, as it called them, — the double- 
 faced men who affected to be true Pharisees 
 and were not. 
 
 It may even be affirmed not only that 
 Jesus associated with Pharisees before his 
 ministry, but that in a sense he was one 
 of them. In fact, the Pharisaism of the 
 time was, as we have shown, the true 
 Judaism, the authentic and loyal Judaism. 
 And Jesus was a Jew by birth, by belief, 
 by innermost conviction, by all that he 
 had received in the strictly orthodox sur- 
 roundings in which he had grown up. 
 And what did he at first purpose to do? 
 He purposed, with the best among the 
 Pharisees, to spiritualize the old Mosaism, 
 
 1 Mark xii. 33. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 101 
 
 to fulfil it, by bringing it out from the 
 narrow rut in which the Sadducees were 
 Stirling it. Therefore we see him imme- 
 diately adopt, and all his life preach, 
 the fundamental belief of the Pharisees, 
 namely, the resurrection of the body. It 
 was one of their essential dogmas, and in 
 affirming it the Doctors of the second 
 Temple had made an important innova- 
 tion, for which it is difficult to find justi- 
 fication in the written Law. Jesus did as 
 they did ; and so certain is it that he held 
 this doctrine from the Pharisees, that we 
 find him making use of the arguments of 
 the Pharisees to justify himself, 1 citing the 
 Torah as they did, and replying to the 
 Sadducees as the Pharisees might have 
 done. 
 
 What, then, was definitely the attitude 
 of Jesus in face of Pharisaism? Was he 
 a Pharisee in youth, only to abandon the 
 party at a later day ? Certainly not. We 
 have just shown in what sense it may be 
 said that Jesus was a Pharisee; but he 
 never belonged to any party, to any school ; 
 he never gave up his independence, and 
 never accepted the party cry of any one. 
 1 Matt. xxii. 23 f£. 
 
102 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 He was amenable only to his Father and 
 himself. 
 
 Not that he isolated himself, and would 
 learn nothing that his contemporaries 
 might have been able to teach him. All 
 that we have hitherto said tends to prove 
 the contrary. If Jesus belonged to no 
 party, no party was a stranger to him. 
 He knew, studied, understood them all. 
 Let us rather say he had assimilated them 
 all, with a penetration whose power and 
 depth cannot be too much admired; and 
 with regard to each of them he fulfilled all 
 and destroyed nothing. 
 
 The day would come when he would use 
 this expression to characterize his attitude 
 toward the Law. It may be applied to his 
 attitude toward all parties and all doctrines 
 of his time. Still more, the word is one 
 which reveals that which was the con- 
 stant method of Jesus. And yet the term 
 "method" is not exact, for it supposes a 
 predetermined system consciously applied 
 to men and things ; while with Jesus it was 
 the very essence of what for want of a 
 better term we will dare to call his genius. 
 Everywhere and in all things, whether 
 with regard to the Old Testament, to 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 103 
 
 Moses and the prophets, with regard to 
 the religious parties which surrounded 
 him, Pharisees or Essenes, or with regard 
 simply to such a detail as the adoption of 
 the term "Son of man " or the rule for the 
 observance of the Sabbath, or with regard 
 to what was to be understood by the King- 
 dom of God, the advent of the Mes- 
 siah, the Judgment, the age to come, he 
 accepted, comprehended, penetrated, as- 
 similated them all, and at the same time 
 transformed, renewed, regenerated, created 
 them all anew. He made the partition 
 between that which passes away and that 
 which remains, that which is perishable 
 and that which is eternal; he preserved 
 the seed and let fall the husk. 
 
 Jesus therefore kept a complete inde- 
 pendence with regard to all the parties of 
 his time. Never, in any place, do we see 
 him enrolling himself under any banner 
 whatsoever ; and it was certainly thus dur- 
 ing that long portion of his life which is 
 not known to us. Scrupulous observer of 
 the beliefs of his people and their religious 
 traditions, conservator of the past, he trans- 
 formed and spiritualized it, while before 
 all else remaining himself. It is therefore 
 
104 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 not exact to say that he was subject to the 
 influence of the religious parties of his 
 time, for he was- subject to nothing, and he 
 never accepted any doctrine ready made. 
 He was often in sympathy with the ideas 
 that surrounded him. but he never per- 
 mitted himself to be led away by them. 
 His sympathy helped him to understand 
 them, but it never blinded him. He 
 examined, he judged all these ideas, and 
 either rejected or adopted them. Neither 
 conservative nor revolutionary, he yet was 
 both, bringing about the greatest revolu- 
 tion of history while conserving the past, 
 but making it entirely new. 
 
 Such. then, was the unique feature 
 which made the invariable character of 
 the line of conduct followed by Jesus with 
 regard to every idea, principle, belief, 
 institution which presented itself to him 
 for examination. He retained its perma- 
 nent element, and rejected the element 
 that was transitory. He tore off the en- 
 velope and kept the contents. With sure 
 and swift glance he distinguished that 
 which is eternal from that which is tran- 
 sitory, taking no notice of the latter, and 
 proclaiming the absolute value of the 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 105 
 
 former. I repeat : whether the subject were 
 the Law, the Temple, the sacrifices, the 
 prophets, the Pharisees, the Essenes, al- 
 ways, everywhere, without a single varia- 
 tion, thus he acted. 
 
VII 
 
 JESUS AND THE ESSENES 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 JESUS AND THE ESSENES 
 
 A FTER Pharisaism comes Essenism. 
 Jesus could not have done other 
 than study these strange sectaries, and in 
 many respects he must have felt himself 
 drawn toward them. No doubt he asked 
 himself if there was not something here, 
 — a suggestive line of conduct, an initia- 
 tion to receive, in view of his coming work. 
 Among the Essenes, side by side with 
 impossible caprices and veritable extrava- 
 gances, there was an elevation, a moral 
 grandeur, which could not fail to impress 
 Jesus. 
 
 He has been pictured as leaving Nazareth 
 and going to study the Essenian practices 
 in the convents of the oasis of Engedi. 
 We shall be on our guard against these 
 descriptions, in which there is more imagi- 
 nation than reality. But one fact remains : 
 
110 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 Jesus knew the Essenes well, and prac- 
 tised Essenism to a great degree. 
 
 Let us transport ourselves to the first 
 century. Let us walk along the shores of 
 the Lake of Tiberias and through the vil- 
 lages of Galilee. We shall meet men in 
 white garments, whose life is pure and who 
 are much loved by the people. They are 
 believed to have the gift of prophecy and 
 of miracles, and every one attaches great 
 importance to their words and actions. 
 They enjoy an authority which the Scribes 
 never succeed in gaining. 
 
 They systematically abstain from pol- 
 itics, and carefully separate that which 
 belongs to Caesar from that which belongs 
 to God. They love solitude and prayer, 
 but at the same time are active and zealous. 
 Their preferences lead them among the 
 poor and the sick. Of the greatest sobriety, 
 they partake of only a single dish at a 
 meal. It is their custom to go from place 
 to place, surrounded by disciples, and one 
 member of the little group carries the com- 
 mon purse. For that matter, they live 
 only on what is given to them, and being 
 little concerned with the material details 
 of life, they feel no anxiety for the mor- 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 111 
 
 row. They carry with them neither gold 
 nor silver, neither wallet nor provisions, 
 nor a change of garments. They count 
 upon finding brethren in the houses which 
 they may enter, to supply them with what- 
 ever they may need, and they perceive by 
 the manner in which their salutation of 
 peace is received, whether the house they 
 have entered is or is not occupied by 
 friends. 
 
 Many of them renounce marriage, the 
 better to consecrate their lives to their 
 work; but marriage is by no means for- 
 bidden them. Models of virtue, of probity, 
 of disinterestedness, they disapprove of 
 slavery, they never take oath, and forbid 
 their disciples to do so, confining them- 
 selves to saying yea, yea, or nay, nay; 
 and their word is more respected than the 
 oaths of other men. Finally, they celebrate 
 in common a religious meal of a sacred 
 character. 
 
 Many Essenes occupy themselves in 
 preaching and healing diseases. They also 
 baptize and permit their disciples to bap- 
 tize. A certain number perform miracles, 
 and they acquire a great reputation by 
 their supernatural cures. They apply 
 
112 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 themselves more particularly to casting 
 out demons, and they are held to be most 
 successful in the practice of exorcism. 
 
 One of their fundamental beliefs is the 
 near appearance of the kingdom of God, 
 and they make this announcement the 
 foundation of their preaching. They call 
 it the kingdom of heaven (Malchiith-hash- 
 shamayim). They say that men must pre- 
 pare themselves for this event, and that 
 Judaism is on the verge of a terrible crisis, 
 after which will come the times of the 
 Messiah. To hasten the arrival of this 
 blessed time men should sell their goods 
 and give the money to the poor. They 
 themselves have put in practice this pre- 
 cept; they have sold their goods, which 
 were unrighteous riches; and they have 
 this advantage over the Pharisees that 
 what they say they do, while the Pharisees 
 say and do not: therefore the Essenes 
 accuse the latter of being hypocrites. 
 
 To recall these details is to show at once 
 that which nascent Christianity had in 
 common with Essenism; and to say that 
 Jesus did not practise Essenism, especially 
 in the beginning of his ministry, and when 
 he was in relations with John the Baptist, 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 113 
 
 whose words and mode of life offered 
 many points of resemblance to those of the 
 Essenes, is to deny the very evidence. 
 
 But it would be a grave mistake to 
 undertake to explain Jesus by saying he 
 was an Essene; for he no more belonged 
 to this party than to any other. He was 
 always at an incomparable height above 
 Essenism, and he treated it as he treated 
 Pharisaism, with entire liberty and com- 
 plete detachment. If he adopted certain 
 of their customs and even of their ideas, 
 which is undeniable, he separated himself 
 squarely from them upon that which was 
 the very foundation of their purpose. 
 
 The customs of Essenism were his own 
 customs, and he could not do otherwise 
 than love the virtues, the morality, the 
 disinterestedness of the Essenes ; but those 
 whom he resembled in outward practice, 
 those who went here and there, preach- 
 ing the kingdom of God and surrounding 
 themselves with disciples, held doctrines 
 against which Jesus constantly protested. 
 Their incessant concern was to avoid by 
 exterior purifications the uncleannesses for- 
 bidden by Moses, and to practise Levitical 
 purity in all its austere rigor. Hence their 
 
114 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 bathings, their ablutions, their baptisms, 
 which Jesus did not immediately reject, 
 perhaps, but which he early repudiated. 
 
 The fourth gospel tells us this in a pas- 
 sage which is certainly historic, and to 
 which we shall return in speaking of John 
 the Baptist. Jesus at first baptized, it 
 says ; x then he himself left off, but per- 
 mitted the disciples to baptize. 2 But it 
 is probable that he did not long permit 
 them to do it. All that took place at the 
 beginning, when his ministry and that of 
 John the Baptist were still mingled with 
 one another. But discussions about bap- 
 tism arose, of which the Evangelist John 
 has preserved the echo; 3 and then Jesus 
 entirely and completely separated himself 
 from these practices. 
 
 Besides, true Essenes, consistent Es- 
 senes, those who were convinced of the 
 impossibility of subjecting themselves to 
 all the exigencies of the Law, did not re- 
 main in the world. They retired into 
 monasteries built on the west of the Red 
 Sea. In the oasis of Engedi they lived 
 
 1 John iii. 22. 
 
 2 John iv. 1, 2. 
 
 3 John iii. 25 ff. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 115 
 
 upon dates, a pure aliment, and plunged 
 into pure water several times a day. 
 Poor dreamers, given to mystical and 
 esoteric speculations, they avoided the 
 stains of the body, and believed that thus 
 they avoided those of the soul. They 
 were never more severely condemned than 
 by Jesus, who cried, "Not that which 
 goeth into a man can defile a man, but 
 that which cometh out of a man." 1 Jesus 
 certainly adopted nothing but their out- 
 ward customs; in all other respects he 
 always stood aloof from them. 
 
 With regard to Essenism, his conduct 
 was the same that it was in regard to all 
 other things, — destroying in order to ful- 
 fil. During his ministry he retained only 
 a superficial resemblance to the Essenes. 
 Here again, here more than elsewhere, he 
 kept only that which abides, and energet- 
 ically cast away all that is perishable and 
 outworn. He kept of Essenism only the 
 moral life which animated it, and let fall 
 the coarse husk which enveloped its 
 idea and kept it imprisoned in the nar- 
 rowest and most superannuated legalism. 
 
 1 Mark vii. 14, 15. The entire chapter is the 
 condemnation of Essenism. 
 
116 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 Furthermore, other thoughts occupied 
 him. The Essenes preached the kingdom 
 of God and announced the Messianic times. 
 but they never spoke of the person of the 
 Messiah. With Jesus this was the matter 
 of supreme interest. The Messiah was 
 about to appear! Who could he be? 
 
 Was it, then, in one of his hours of 
 retreat upon the Jebel-es-Sikk, that for 
 the first time the sublime thought came to 
 him, " What if I were the Messiah ! What 
 if I should accomplish the expected 
 work! What if I were the One sent by 
 the Father! Oh, to overthrow Satan's 
 throne, — to vanquish sin, sorrow, and 
 death!" Was not that a call which he 
 heard? Was it the divine call? Per- 
 haps. Was the hour marked by the Father 
 about to strike, and to strike for him ? 
 
 Yet a little while and he was to make 
 the acquaintance of the extraordinary man 
 under whose influence he would pronounce 
 the definitive Yes. John the Baptist was 
 to have the signal honor, the imperishable 
 glory, of revealing Jesus to himself, of 
 helping him to hear God, of forcing upon 
 him the conviction: "I am the Messiah, 
 and the hour for action has come." The 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 117 
 
 Father's hour was to strike at the never 
 to be forgotten moment of his baptism. 
 John the Baptist was on the banks of the 
 Jordan ; he was moving the people ; he was 
 about to move the very soul of Jesus. 
 
VIII 
 JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST 
 
 r ~PHE only lasting influence which was 
 exerted upon Jesus was that of 
 John the Baptist. Certainly he also was 
 to be surpassed some day; but just here, 
 above all things, in separating himself 
 from John, Jesus kept the best that the 
 latter had given him; and through his 
 whole life he retained a remembrance of 
 John full of gratitude and admiration. 
 Behind Luther was Staupitz; and there 
 are few men who have exerted a great 
 influence who have not had their pre- 
 cursors. 
 
 As Jesus drew near to his thirtieth year, 
 he heard about this young and pious 
 ascetic, full of ardor, who was called John 
 the Baptist, and whose moral and religious 
 influence had in a short time become re- 
 markable. Jesus immediately had a very 
 clear intuition that he had much to learn 
 
122 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 from this man, and, quitting Nazareth with 
 a few disciples, his relatives or his friends, 
 he set out to see and hear him. 
 
 John — or, more correctly, Johanan — 
 was on the banks of the Jordan, at the 
 boundary of the wilderness of Judea as 
 one comes from Galilee, in a sequestered 
 valley, covered with a vigorous vegetation, 
 in the midst of tamarisks and willows. He 
 was preaching there, in words of a rough 
 and aggressive eloquence which exerted a 
 strange influence. People came in crowds 
 to hear him. 
 
 At first Jesus mingled with the crowd 
 and listened like the others. He heard 
 John pronounce long discourses, impas- 
 sioned and fiery,, the principal theme being 
 the oft repeated words, "Repent, for the 
 kingdom of heaven is at hand!" 1 No 
 miracle accompanied these words. John 
 did no miracles, and made no pretension of 
 doing any. It is not said that sick people 
 were brought to him or that he busied 
 himself with healing. He was concerned 
 only with a moral regeneration. Never- 
 theless, he performed one religious act, 
 though only one, — baptism. Those among 
 1 Matt. iii. 2, and parallel passages. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 123 
 
 his auditors who desired moral regeneration 
 and confessed their sins were led by him 
 to the river Jordan. There he baptized 
 them; that is to say, he effected a com- 
 plete immersion of their whole body in the 
 water. It was his only rite. 
 
 This baptism was not a mere sign, 
 designed to make an impression on the 
 multitude, but also a preparation and con- 
 secration for the kingdom of God, which 
 was imminent. It created a bond between 
 all John's disciples. It testified to the 
 renunciation of the former life, entrance 
 into a new life, and, above all, the ardor 
 of the Messianic hope. John was con- 
 vinced that the hour of Jehovah was about 
 to strike. 
 
 John was a Universalist. While contin- 
 uing to be a Jew, he foresaw and preached 
 a reaction against the narrowness of cer- 
 tain Pharisees. He said, " God is able of 
 these stones to raise up children unto Abra- 
 ham," l which was the same as saying that 
 one could be the son of Abraham without 
 descending from Abraham. 
 
 All this Jesus saw and heard. The 
 impression that he received from it was 
 
 1 Luke iii. 8. 
 
124 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 very profound. That which first struck 
 him was that John was not an ordinary 
 anchorite. For he was not concerned with 
 his own sanctification, but solely with the 
 sins of his nation. Next he was impressed 
 by the conviction with which the soul of 
 John was filled, that he had a mission to 
 accomplish, that he held it from God alone, 
 and that only he could do it. Jesus was 
 not long in arriving at the certainty that 
 the prediction of the second coming of 
 Elias made by the Scribes had received its 
 accomplishment in the person of John the 
 Baptist. "This is he," he said, "who is 
 Elias that was to come." 1 Upon this 
 important point he never wavered ; 
 to the end of his life he was persuaded 
 that John had been the personification of 
 Elias. This is the more remarkable since 
 John himself refused to be taken for Elias, 
 and declared that he was not Elias. 2 We 
 do not know whether or not Jesus was 
 aware of this denial by John the Baptist. 
 In any case, he retained his opinion. 
 
 Very soon he felt himself entirely won 
 over; everything in the person and work 
 
 1 Matt. xi. 14, and parallel passages. 
 
 2 John i. 21. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 125 
 
 of this remarkable man inspired him with 
 confidence. From the place of hearer he 
 passed into that of friend. He entered 
 into relations with John, and their associa- 
 tion at once became very close and very 
 affectionate. Jesus loved his substitution 
 of a private rite for legal ceremonial; he 
 loved his preaching, which harmonized so 
 well with all that he himself experienced. 
 
 John spoke against rich priests, against 
 prevaricating Pharisees, against formalist 
 Doctors of the Law, — against the whole 
 official community, asleep in a false and 
 delusive security. He expressed with un- 
 equalled boldness and courage that which 
 Jesus had long been thinking. 
 
 Jesus found in John's utterances all that 
 was best in Essenian doctrine, and he found 
 in them nothing of that which had dis- 
 pleased him in that doctrine. John the 
 Baptist had certainly known and studied 
 Essenism; he borrowed much from it, 
 even going so far as to advocate a sort 
 of community of goods ; x but he had 
 never desired to be of their number. He 
 was too independent and too original to 
 affiliate himself with a sect and an estab- 
 
 i Luke iii. 10, 11. 
 
126 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 lished order. He indignantly repelled the 
 formalism and legalism of the Essenes. 
 In his view, baptism was to be administered 
 only once, — "one baptism; " this also be- 
 came the Christian doctrine. 1 
 
 Jesns loved and admired this free 
 Essene, detaching himself from cloistered 
 Essenism, issuing from his retreat out of 
 the fulness of his compassion for perishing 
 souls, and uttering his magnificent cry of 
 alarm and hope ! 
 
 Listening to John the Baptist, Jesus 
 took lessons in preaching and in popular 
 oratory; his ideas about the kingdom of 
 God and the good news to come began to 
 ripen. Everything here was instructive 
 and suggestive; we can understand the 
 great emotion which took possession of 
 him, and how he was impelled to say, 
 "This is Elias that was to come." 
 
 At last Jesus took the decisive step. 
 He asked for and received baptism. He 
 was urged to this by divers motives, easy 
 
 1 Eph. iv. 5. Nevertheless, in the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, "baptisms" are spoken of in the plural 
 (vi. 2), and the author appears to consider it quite as 
 important for those who would approach God to 
 have the body washed in pure water as to have the 
 heart and conscience purified from all evil (x. 22). 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 127 
 
 to understand. In the first place, he 
 desired to show his entire adherence to 
 John's work. More than this, he desired 
 to take his place also among the insignifi- 
 cant and humble ones who were breaking 
 with the past, declaring that the time was 
 fulfilled, and a new era about to begin. 
 And finally, Jesus had decided to preach 
 like John, to leave Nazareth and go up 
 and down the country, saying, like the 
 Baptist, "Repent, for the kingdom of 
 heaven is at hand." Therefore he must be 
 baptized. 
 
 This act which he purposed, this humili- 
 ation which he was about to impose on 
 himself, taking his place in all simplicity 
 and love of sinners in the ranks of those 
 who confess their faults, was to receive at 
 once a magnificent reward. At the precise 
 moment when he was coining up out of the 
 water his Messianic dignity was revealed 
 to him. In fact, his baptism marks the 
 awakening of his Messianic consciousness. 
 What he had already foreboded was now 
 affirmed. The question which for some 
 time he had been asking himself, " Might 
 it be I ? " received its answer. The inward 
 crisis through which he was passing came 
 
128 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 to its acme and reached its end. He heard 
 the voice of God saying to him clearly, 
 "Thou art my well beloved son." The 
 voice resounded to the depths of his soul. 
 Jesus heard God. We cannot for an in- 
 stant doubt it ; for from this sacred hour 
 his conviction was not to be shaken. It 
 was an absolute certainty; nothing could 
 thenceforth weaken it. 
 
 He had come to the point where he 
 could say, "I am the Messiah," because, 
 feeling himself the child of the Father, he 
 experienced an irresistible desire to realize 
 among men this divine sonship. The 
 development of his moral consciousness 
 had brought him to this definite convic- 
 tion, to a certitude which to him bore the 
 marks of absolute evidence. 
 
 But what kind of Messiah was he to be ? 
 What work was he to accomplish ? This 
 question he put to himself, and went on 
 to seek for its answer. More and more 
 convinced that in listening to the Baptist 
 and carrying on a work like his he would 
 be in the right way, he immediately began 
 to imitate John. After receiving baptism, 
 he in his turn conferred it. The few 
 disciples whom he had brought from 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 129 
 
 Nazareth, and who also had been bap- 
 tized, did the same thing, and the banks of 
 the Jordan were covered with baptizers. 1 
 
 It was not long before a new light shone 
 into the soul of Jesus. Asking himself 
 what kind of Messiah he should be, and 
 what his work, he began to understand, 
 though not yet able to answer his own 
 question, that John's preaching no longer 
 sufficed for him, and that he must carry 
 John's work farther. He perceived that, 
 with all his greatness, John was still the 
 man of the past, and of a past which he 
 could not break with. The Baptist's infe- 
 riority became apparent to him. He was 
 compelled to leave him behind; certainly 
 John could never go to the end of the way. 
 In his predictions of the work and office of 
 the coming Messiah there were features 
 which Jesus could not accept. John could 
 not and would not break with the tradi- 
 tional notion of the Messiah. He looked 
 for a king of glory ; he was always talking 
 of a Judgment, of vengeance, and a reign 
 of iron. 
 
 But the idea of a Messiah reigning by 
 force inspired in Jesus an invincible repug- 
 
 i John iii. 22-26 ; iv. 1, 2. 
 
130 JESUS CERT ST 
 
 nance. He must work this out; he must 
 ask his Father, he must spend forty days 
 in the desert ; and though he did not yet 
 know what would be the outcome of this 
 struggle, he well knew one thing, — that 
 he should not issue from it the Messiah 
 whom John persisted in preaching. 
 
 No longer feeling himself in accord with 
 John, his first care was to baptize no 
 longer. Nevertheless he permitted his dis- 
 ciples to baptize, 1 — a slight indication 
 which well reveals the hesitations of his 
 soul. 
 
 But he must put an end to these hesita- 
 tions ; he must examine John's ideas con- 
 cerning the Messiah, and he must ask 
 himself seriously what sort of Messiah he 
 himself ought to be. He must enter upon 
 a conflict and achieve a victory which 
 the Baptist could neither enter upon nor 
 achieve. 
 
 It is of the agonizing and terrible con- 
 flict which preceded the victory that we 
 have now to speak. Jesus, having given 
 up baptizing, and knowing that he was the 
 Messiah, felt that the question of questions 
 was being put to him with ever-growing 
 
 1 John iv. 1, 2. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 131 
 
 urgency, "What kind of Messiah shall I 
 be? " And so he retired to the desert, and 
 the temptation began. 
 
 The day would come when Jesus would 
 pronounce the final opinion concerning 
 John: "Verily I say unto you, Among 
 them that are born of woman there hath 
 not arisen a greater than John the Baptist : 
 nevertheless, he that is but little in the 
 kingdom of heaven is greater than he." 1 
 That is to say: I admire him still; I sub- 
 tract nothing from my early admiration of 
 him ; I deny nothing of our long associa- 
 tion and our close intimacy. John is 
 Elias; he is my forerunner. Among the 
 sons of the men of the past there has not 
 been born one greater than he. He is more 
 than a prophet. But he would not see 
 in me the Messiah whom he himself an- 
 nounced. He is lower than the least of 
 my disciples. He is not of the kingdom 
 of God, for he has found in me an occa- 
 sion for scandal. 
 
 Jesus then parted from John, but he 
 
 never forgot him. The vision of the desert 
 
 where he had gone to see and hear this 
 
 man was never effaced from his memory. 
 
 i Matt. xi. 11. 
 
132 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 A few days before his death he was still 
 speaking to the Pharisees of John's bap- 
 tism, and his preaching made such an 
 impression upon him that to the very close 
 of his life bits of phrases and some of the 
 favorite expressions of the Baptist appeared 
 here and there in his own discourses. 1 
 
 He was therefore always grateful to 
 him; but while he felt the greatness of 
 John the Baptist, he also felt most vividly 
 all in which he was wanting. 
 
 John the Baptist belonged entirely to a 
 past which must inevitably disappear. He 
 had preached only a moral reformation, 
 based upon the ancient theocracy of Israel, 
 and he always clung too closely to ritual. 
 Jesus, on his part, had discerned the eter- 
 nal element in the Baptist's preaching 
 and work, and when he applied to him his 
 ordinary method he perceived that John 
 was sewing new cloth upon old garments, 
 putting new wine into old and worn-out 
 wine-skins, which were ready to burst. 2 
 
 1 Matt. xii. 34 ; xxiii. 33 ; etc. 
 
 2 Some persons will no doubt think that there is 
 more than this to say about the Baptist ; they will cite 
 to me, for example, that utterance of his, reported in 
 the fourth Gospel, "Behold the Lamb of God, which 
 taketh away the sins of the world." I reply to these 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 133 
 
 John the Baptist, on his side, kept his 
 disciples, and they remained independent 
 of the Christian movement. 1 
 
 persons in advance that my intention has not been to 
 write a complete monograph on the Forerunner, and 
 that I had no occasion to say what John the Baptist 
 may have thought of Jesus at one or another moment 
 of his life. I had simply to ask what Jesus thought of 
 John the Baptist. 
 
 1 Matt. ix. 14 ; Mark ii. 18 ; Luke v. 33, xi. 1 ; John 
 iii. 25 ; Matt. xiv. 12 ; Acts xviii. 24 ff ., xix. 2 ff . 
 
IX 
 
 THE MESSIANIC IDEAL OF JESUS 
 AT THIRTY YEARS OF AGE 
 
CHAPTEE IX 
 
 THE MESSIANIC IDEAL OF JESUS AT THIRTY 
 YEARS OF AGE 
 
 IMMEDIATELY after the revelation of 
 the baptism the temptation began. 
 He was the Messiah! But others had 
 believed themselves to be the Messiah and 
 had been mistaken! The great "Hope of 
 Israel " had thrown many of his contem- 
 poraries into frenzy. Was he to be one of 
 these ? Was he in his turn to be the sub- 
 ject of a tremendous illusion? And if he 
 was not mad, was he not to become so ? 
 
 The minds of his compatriots were 
 becoming excited, their imaginations in- 
 flamed; the great word " Messiah " had led 
 astray more than one ill-balanced mind. 
 Some had dared to appropriate it to them- 
 selves, and they had ended in insanity. 
 And now he in his turn had received the 
 dreadful heritage. He was to follow in 
 
138 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 the same way ! The temptation, the danger, 
 were supreme. 
 
 He would avoid the danger, and triumph 
 over the temptation. But for this he must 
 undergo a great conflict. It was to be 
 an inward battle, from which he was to 
 come off conqueror. The Gospel stories 1 
 have brought down to us its sublime and 
 magnificent echo. 
 
 For indeed the temptation was not an 
 isolated and momentary experience. It 
 extended over all that part of Jesus' life 
 which immediately followed his baptism. 
 The Evangelists assign to it a duration 
 of forty days. The number is symbolical, 
 like the whole narrative. During forty 
 days, and no doubt a much longer time, 
 Jesus had been asking himself what kind 
 of Messiah he should be. The picturesque 
 narrative of the Evangelists admirably de- 
 scribes the conflict through which his soul 
 was passing, and the struggles which he 
 underwent. 
 
 For some time past he had been gradually 
 assuming an attitude of growing reserve 
 with respect of the "Hope of Israel." 
 Before his baptism, during the years of 
 
 i Matt. iv. 1 ff. : Luke iv. 1 ff. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 130 
 
 solitude spent at Nazareth, the thought 
 had presented itself to him: What if I 
 were the Messiah! It had pursued him; 
 he had sought to avoid it, and he had 
 waited with a prudence that cannot be too 
 much admired, — waited because he dis- 
 trusted himself. Now he knew he was the 
 Messiah, and he could no longer escape 
 the struggle. It came. It was terrible; 
 it was a gigantic battle, out of which he 
 came forth conqueror. His conscience was 
 its battlefield; his triumph in it such that 
 the temptation never again assailed him. 
 
 Over what did he triumph ? Over false 
 ideas, over the erroneous notions of his 
 contemporaries, over all that he had be- 
 lieved and expected in common with his 
 entire people. 
 
 At this point we must be precise, and 
 state what was the " Messianic Idea " which 
 the Jewish Apocalypses had taught him as 
 the truth itself, — ■ what was this wild hope, 
 this dazzling dream, whose vision had been 
 haunting his nation for so many years. 
 Next we must ask what he did with it 
 during those days of conflict in the desert ; 
 and we shall see that, faithful to his con- 
 stant method, he had rejected one part of 
 
140 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 it and preserved another. Here again he 
 abolished nothing, he fulfilled everything. 
 
 What, then, had he up to this time 
 believed, in common with all his fellow- 
 countrymen, and what was taking place in 
 his soul at the precise moment when he had 
 just learned that he was the Messiah ? 
 
 He had believed that the Jews were a 
 privileged people, whose privilege it was 
 to have God himself for king. 1 Every 
 day he recited these words of the Shemone 
 Esre: "Be King over us, Thou alone, O 
 Lord!" 2 Like all the pious men of his 
 time, he had certainly often said that God 
 was the only King of Israel. 3 The Jewish 
 people were therefore the kingdom of God ; 
 but they had fallen into the power of the 
 Gentiles, "sinners," "the wicked," and 
 the kingdom of God was not what it was 
 intended to be. When the Romans were 
 driven out, the true kingdom of God would 
 be established. 
 
 It was an ideal for the future. God, the 
 King, had for a time given over his rights 
 to the Gentiles, but the time was at hand 
 
 1 Psalter of Solomon, xvii. 1, 61. 
 
 2 Eleventh Benediction. 
 
 8 See Josephus, Ant. xviii. 1, 6, and Wars, ii. 8, 1. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 141 
 
 when this state of things would cease. 
 Daniel had affirmed it in his prophecies; 
 therefore his book was pondered more than 
 any other, and we have already said that 
 during long years it had certainly been the 
 object of Jesus' constant study. The 
 future kingdom would be universal, 1 
 Daniel had said; and Jesus believed what 
 this book taught. Again, Daniel said that 
 the Gentile kingdoms should disappear, 
 and the sovereignty should be exercised 
 by pious and believing Jews, who would 
 have at their head a mysterious personage 
 come down from the skies, to be the head 
 of the new Israel, ruler of the world. All 
 peoples of the earth would be subject to 
 the Jews. 2 This idea of Daniel had so 
 thoroughly penetrated the minds of the 
 Jews of the first century that, as we have 
 shown, all the Apocryphas and Pseud- 
 epigraphs which Jesus read, 3 in all proba- 
 bility clearly taught it. 4 
 
 1 Dan. vii. 14. 2 Dan. vii. 13-28. 
 
 8 At least those which were composed before his 
 day ; but the date of some of them is still undeter- 
 mined, and these may be posterior to Christ. In every 
 case (and this is the essential thing) they express 
 ideas which were popular in the time of Jesus. 
 
 4 1 Mace. ii. 57, iv. 46, xiv. 41 ; 2 Mace. vii. 9, xiii. 
 
142 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 The advent of this kingdom would in- 
 augurate the coming age, and would man- 
 ifest itself by a Judgment which would 
 precede its establishment. John the Bap- 
 tist had come, and had preached this with 
 the ardor and conviction of a Seer. He 
 was not mistaken. For he had said, 
 First the Judgment; and this Judgment 
 was imminent. 1 It would be marked 
 by the defeat of the Gentiles and the 
 supremacy of the Jews. Not only did 
 Jesus believe that John the Baptist was 
 not mistaken; he was persuaded that he 
 was the Elias who was to have come, and 
 that he himself, Jesus, was the Messiah. 
 He thought, then, that the history of his 
 people and of the world was just at the 
 moment when the travail pangs of the 
 Messianic epoch were to begin, since Elias 
 was already there, and the Messiah was 
 already born. He must, in fact, be born 
 before the Messianic Judgment, and not 
 after it. 2 
 
 4 ; Judith ix. 12 ; Eccl. v. 26, xlvii. 13 ; Baruch iv. 23, 
 v. 2-4, xxv. 49 ; Wisdom iii. 8, v. 16 ; the oldest frag- 
 ment of the Book of Enoch xc. 29-42, xci. 12, 17; 
 Similitudes xxxix. 1-8, 5-51. 
 
 1 Matt. iii. 10-12 ; Luke iii. 7-9 ; see also Luke xix. 11. 
 
 2 Syb. Orac. iii. 652-656 ; Psal. Sol. xvii. 24, 26, 27, 
 31, 38, 39, 41, etc. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 143 
 
 Now, what was about to take place ? A 
 last assault of the Gentiles against the Mes- 
 siah. But they would not be victorious; 
 that was impossible. On the contrary, 
 they would be all but blotted out by a 
 terrible Judgment; the survivors would 
 be converted and the dispersed Jews 
 brought back again. Thus were all the 
 acts of the great drama fixed in a rigorous 
 order. 
 
 When all the scenes which have just 
 been described should have been carried 
 out, then, and then alone, would the king- 
 dom of God be founded. Its seat would 
 be Palestine, and from there it would 
 extend itself over the whole world. The 
 earth would be entirely subject to the 
 children of Israel. An era of supreme 
 felicity would begin: the ground would 
 be of surprising fertility; men would be 
 rich and happy, and would live a thousand 
 years ; women would bring forth children 
 without pain; the harvesters would no 
 longer suffer weariness; there would be 
 no injustice committed among the elect 
 people ; all men would be holy, and their 
 life a perpetual worship. It would be the 
 Palingenesis, the Renewal of all things. 
 
144 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 As to the exact epoch when the Palin- 
 genesis was to begin, all were not in accord. 
 Some made it coincide, as we have just 
 said, with the Messianic Kingdom; others 
 placed it later, in what they called Aolam- 
 aba, the age to come. Traces of this 
 divergence are to be found in the Xew 
 Testament. Sometimes it is said that the 
 Kingdom shall be founded in the present 
 age, in the actual world : 1 at others it is 
 placed in the age to come. 2 In any case, 
 one of the characteristics of the Palin- 
 genesis would be the Resurrection of the 
 dead, accompanied by a final, universal 
 judgment, the result of which would be, 
 for some, condemnation and torment in 
 Gehenna: for others, life eternal and re- 
 wards in the kingdom of God. 
 
 This teaching Jesus had received ; he was 
 now called to judge of it. It was necessary 
 that he should divide between the true 
 and the false, and take, as Messiah, a 
 definitive attitude with respect to these 
 Messianic beliefs which every one accepted 
 as indisputable verities. 
 
 He also would proclaim the kingdom of 
 
 1 Luke xix. 11 ; xxiv. 21. 
 
 2 Matt. xxiv. 3 ; Mark xiii. 4. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 145 
 
 of God, and he would call it the kingdom of 
 heaven (Malekat hash-shamayim). In this 
 he would simply imitate his contemporaries, 
 with whom the two expressions were abso- 
 lutely synonymous, and who used the 
 second simply to avoid pronouncing the 
 sacred name of Jehovah, or even the names 
 Elohim and Adonai. 1 Jesus would do the 
 same. He would also consider the king- 
 dom as to come. He would say, "The 
 kingdom of heaven is at hand." In the 
 Sermon on the Mount, from which we must 
 date the precepts of the first part of his 
 ministry, all the rewards promised to those 
 who are worthy of the kingdom are reserved 
 for them in the future. "You shall be 
 filled; you shall laugh ; they shall see 
 God," etc. He would teach his disciples 
 to say " Thy kingdom come." 3 The king- 
 dom of heaven was therefore not yet come. 
 
 1 We say the same in French , — " Heaven keep me 
 from it ! " " Would to Heaven that," for " God keep 
 me from it ! " " Would to God that " ; and the word 
 " heaven " in the expression " kingdom of heaven " 
 never signified the abode of the blessed after this life. 
 Let us add that this expression, " kingdom of heaven," 
 was very happily chosen, since "the Father is in 
 heaven," and his kingdom to come must come down 
 to be established on earth by the Messiah. 
 
 a Matt. v. 4 ff. ; Luke vi. 21 ft 
 
 3 Matt. vi. 10; Luke xi. 2. 
 10 
 
146 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 We have not here to ask if at a later 
 day, in the midst of his ministry, Jesus did 
 not announce the kingdom as present. 1 
 At the time which we are considering, the 
 time of the Temptation, all the evidence 
 shows that in the mind of Jesus the king- 
 dom was still to come. Nothing indicates 
 that he did not connect this kingdom to 
 come with a second coming of his own, a 
 glorious coming, by which he should es- 
 tablish the kingdom of God on the earth. 
 
 Up to this time Jesus had, at least to all 
 appearance, rejected nothing of what his 
 contemporaries taught. What, then, was 
 the temptation? What was the victory 
 achieved by him in the terrible conflict in 
 which he triumphed ? 
 
 The Gospels expressly distinguish three 
 conflicts and three victories. In the first 
 Satan counselled Jesus to make stones into 
 bread; that is to say, to live for himself, 
 make things subservient to him, seek his 
 own gloiy. The temptation was formi- 
 dable because it accords with what the 
 Jewish Messiah was expected to be; he 
 was to be a Master and a King : to come to 
 his throne through blood, if necessary, and, 
 
 i Matt. xii. 28 ; Luke xi. 20. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 147 
 
 in any case, to seat himself upon a veritable 
 throne. Jesus repelled such a thought, 
 He declared that he would not seek to be 
 served, but, on the contrary, he would 
 serve. Here he had a clear notion of true 
 greatness, and he, first of all, gave it to the 
 world. This truth, to-day so elementary, 
 that the great man is not he who is served 
 but he who renders service, was first 
 affirmed by Jesus in his words and in his 
 life. "Whosoever would become great 
 among you let him be your servant." 1 
 
 By triumphing over this temptation 
 Jesus conquered a place which he will 
 always keep, and which a multitude of his 
 precepts attest. He opposed to the pop- 
 ular ideal another ideal, — that of renuncia- 
 tion and sacrifice, that of obedience to the 
 Father, whatever might be his will. 
 
 But now comes the second temptation. 
 Satan said to him, " Throw thyself from a 
 pinnacle of the Temple," — that is to say, 
 dazzle the world, fascinate it by your 
 genius, overawe it by your power; for 
 the Jewish Messiah was expected to domi- 
 nate and awe. Now, Jesus had read and 
 reread Apocalypses full of transparent alle- 
 
 1 Matt. xx. 26 1, and parallel passages. 
 
148 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 gories and obvious imagery whence it was 
 to be drawn that the expected Liberator 
 was, in fact, to use constraint and even vio- 
 lence, and put his enemies beneath his feet. 
 Ah ! this temptation much allured him : to 
 dazzle by prodigies, to command belief by 
 sensible or intellectual evidence, to be 
 the undisputed master of the humble, 
 for whom he feels himself full of such an 
 infinite compassion, and thus to serve 
 them! 
 
 He repelled it; he would have no other 
 weapon than words, no other prestige than 
 persuasion, no other talisman than love. 
 He would reign only over hearts. The 
 kingdom of God should be spiritual, in- 
 visible, purely moral. It should be wher- 
 ever repentance and a new birth of the soul 
 were found. There should be no sudden 
 and startling appearance, as the Jews 
 would have it, but the slow and blessed 
 action of the mere word of the Messiah; 
 for it was not exterior reforms that would 
 save the world. It was first of all necessary 
 that hearts should be changed ; after that 
 exterior reforms would come" of themselves 
 as a natural consequence. The Messiah 
 would work no magical transformation. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 149 
 
 Here, for the second time, Jesus put 
 himself in absolute opposition to the ideas 
 of his time, and, far from permitting him- 
 self to be led away by the Messianic beliefs 
 of his people, he resisted them. It should 
 be the meek, the gentle, who should inherit 
 the earth; and at the time when he pro- 
 claimed with greatest energy his kingdom 
 and his Messianic dignity, he made no 
 allusion, not the slightest, to the allegories 
 with which the Apocalypses of his people 
 were filled. 1 He did not even make use 
 of allegorical language; his speech was 
 always simple, unpretentious, popular. 
 
 This was not all : he had a third victory 
 to achieve. In a dazzling vision Satan 
 showed him all the kingdoms of the world 
 and their glory, for his people were ex- 
 pecting a political power. And then 
 Jesus asked himself if it ought not to be 
 thus with his kingdom; for he loved his 
 people, and ardently desired that they 
 might be delivered from the Romans. 
 Should he then mingle politics and religion ? 
 Never. He would separate them. He 
 absolutely repudiated all political preten- 
 
 1 Save the evident allusions to the allegories of 
 Daniel. Mark xiii. and parallel passages. 
 
150 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 sions. He would not have a terrestrial 
 kingdom ; to think of it was a suggestion 
 of Satan. He would accept one sole king- 
 dom, — the divine kingdom of the love 
 which would go whithersoever his Father 
 might judge good. Might it be even to 
 martyrdom? He knew not. Did he see 
 a cross uprising at the end of the pathway 
 of life ? Not yet. But if such should be 
 the will of the Father, he was ready; and 
 when the day should come he should per- 
 ceive the accursed tree, he would more 
 than ever insist that he was the Messiah. 
 At the present hour he as yet knew noth- 
 ing of this; on the contrary, he firmly 
 hoped to deliver his people by some other 
 means. 
 
 Jesus, then, was about to offer himself 
 as the Messiah promised by the prophets. 
 The latter had announced that a divine 
 messenger would come to establish the 
 reign of Jehovah at Jerusalem and upon 
 the earth. He was this divine messenger; 
 he was the Son of the Father who is in 
 heaven, and he would realize his kingdom 
 by asking for faith in himself. If the 
 Jews rejected him, if they wrought his de- 
 struction, he would carry, even to the cross, 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 151 
 
 his unshaken trust in his Father and in 
 his work. Even in the face of death he 
 would still be convinced that he should 
 one day return in the clouds to judge 
 the living and the dead. His work 
 would be the sublime coronation of proph- 
 ecy; he would realize the national hopes, 
 he would be the hero of those Jewish 
 Apocalypses whose reading had nourished 
 his youth. 
 
 It was thus without enthusiasm or ex- 
 citement, but after long deliberation, with 
 ripe reflection, that he took upon himself 
 to carry out the Messianic work, for he 
 had transformed it. 
 
 The temptation was ended, and he had 
 decided to undertake the conversion of his 
 people. But though he was ready even 
 for death itself, in thus undertaking it he 
 knew not that his mission would one day 
 require this of him. He was simply the 
 spiritual and moral Messiah; he was not 
 yet the suffering and crucified Messiah. He 
 would serve ; his kingdom should be estab- 
 lished in men's hearts ; he would accomplish 
 only a religious work. On these three points 
 he had achieved a victory. He came forth 
 unscathed from this triple conflict; and 
 
152 JESUS CHfilST 
 
 his triumph put him in possession of a new 
 grandeur, a sublime strength, which noth- 
 ing could abate. The Jewish Messianic 
 idea vanished, swallowed up in his three- 
 fold victory. 
 
 Yet let us not misconstrue Jesus' true 
 thought. If his kingdom was purely spir- 
 itual, if he separated politics from religion, 
 it was not that Jesus had not a profound 
 sympathy with the national hope of his 
 people. He cherished the hope that the 
 nation would understand that the kingdom 
 was solely religious, and yet that it could 
 be at the same time the national kingdom 
 predicted by the prophets, and which they 
 all expected. He hoped to found in the 
 heart of his nation, by pacific means, by 
 persuasion and love, a kingdom whose 
 head — himself — would be acclaimed by 
 the Pharisees. No doubt he had no 
 notion how the Romans could be done 
 away with without the employment of 
 force; perhaps, like his contemporaries, 
 he counted upon a miraculous intervention 
 of the Heavenly Father. But it is evident 
 that he chose twelve apostles because he 
 looked forward to the national restoration 
 of the twelve tribes, and in consequence 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 153 
 
 the foundation of a kingdom on earth, — in 
 this sense a visible kingdom. He afterward 
 said to Peter, " now in this time ; " : promis- 
 ing him a brilliant and public reward in 
 the present time as well as in the age to 
 come. 
 
 I will go farther, and say that this hope 
 did not leave him even when his death was 
 certain. He did not oppose the request of 
 the sons of Zebedee, 2 nor did he deny that 
 he should one day be enthroned in glory, 
 with his apostles beside him. His martyr- 
 dom was no doubt to precede this glorifica- 
 tion ; but there would be seats on his right 
 hand and on his left, and his Father would 
 bestow them. When in Gethsemane he 
 said, "Father, if it be possible, let this 
 cup pass from me," 3 this prayer had no 
 meaning if it did not signify that he hoped 
 against all hope that his kingdom would be 
 founded without the cross: incomparably 
 more must he have hoped this in the 
 days of his temptation, saying to himself, 
 My people may recognize and welcome me. 
 And he said this to himself until the end, 
 
 1 Luke xviii. 30 ; Matt. xix. 27-29. 
 
 2 Matt. xx. 20 ff., and parallel passages. 
 
 3 Matt. xxvi. 39, and parallel passages. 
 
154 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 always believing in a possible change of 
 feeling. 
 
 Jesus, then, always thought that he might. 
 be recognized as the national Messiah and 
 religious Liberator. To the last day he 
 tried hard to gain the Jews, and cherished 
 the deathless hope that his people would 
 escape the catastrophe of the year 70 by 
 submitting themselves to him. 
 
 Therefore he gave himself entirely to 
 this work, in which he displayed an inde- 
 fatigable activity. He was not yet saying, 
 "The Son of man has come to give his 
 life," for he believed that he had come to 
 found his kingdom in his lifetime, to found 
 it by his merciful and holy activity. But 
 he did say, " The time is fulfilled." 1 The 
 kingdom was imminent ; it was even already 
 present in the person of its head. 
 
 From the beginning he himself had the 
 first place in the kingdom, for he was 
 "he who should come;" but he did not 
 yet preach himself ; he preached only " the 
 Gospel of the kingdom," and in no partic- 
 ular broke with the Pharisees. The rup- 
 ture with them — that is, with Judaism, for 
 we must remember that the Pharisees 
 
 i Mark i. 15. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 155 
 
 were the true Judaism — was not to come 
 until later. For the moment he magnified 
 Judaism, he fulfilled it by remaining in 
 the great current of the best Pharisaic 
 ideas ; that is, by preaching a large spirit- 
 ualization of the kingdom of God, as is 
 shown by the Beatitudes of the Sermon on 
 the Mount, 1 by the sermon at Nazareth in 
 which he cites Isaiah, 2 by the parable of 
 the Sower, 3 by his reply to the emissaries 
 of John the Baptist, 4 in a word, by the en- 
 tire first part of his ministry. But if he 
 did not as yet preach his own person, he 
 was none the less convinced, from the time 
 of his baptism, that he bore in his person 
 the realization of the "Hope of Israel." 
 
 Since he was the Messiah, he must one 
 day return to judge the world ; and during 
 his entire public life he affirmed the Judg- 
 ment to come with the same vigor, the 
 same unalterable conviction. He closed 
 the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, 
 in the first part of his ministry, by declar- 
 ing that in the last day he would say to 
 those who had not done the will of the 
 Father, "Depart from me, I never knew 
 
 1 Matt. v. 3 ft. 2 Luke iv. 16 ff. 
 
 8 Matt. xiii. 4 ft. 4 Matt. xi. 2 ff. 
 
156 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 you;" 1 and in one of his last parables, 
 when he was about to die, when his cross 
 and its ignominy were distinctly before 
 him, he declared, with the same certitude, 
 that he should one day preside at the 
 solemn assizes in which all humanity would 
 be judged. 2 Returning in his glory in 
 the clouds of heaven, he would sit upon a 
 throne, and put some on his right hand, 
 others on his left. It is impossible to 
 minimize the immense force of this testi- 
 mony which Jesus gave to himself. 
 
 He insisted upon his Messianic authority 
 all his life. His confidence in himself, the 
 conviction with which he spoke of him- 
 self and asserted himself, never weakened. 
 Quite the contrary, he was never more 
 positive than in the hour when the cross 
 confronted him, — that is to say, the hour 
 when overwhelming defeat appeared to 
 himself to be inevitable. 
 
 Later, men would explain this : councils 
 would bring new elements to the doctrine 
 of Jesus concerning himself. It is for 
 theologians to ask whether these new ele- 
 ments which the Church has contributed are 
 simply a logical, inevitable, necessary de- 
 
 1 Matt. vii. 23. * Matt. xxv. 31 ff. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 157 
 
 duction from what Jesus has said of his per- 
 son, or whether, on the contrary, they are 
 only a deplorable deviation from it. There 
 was to grow up a doctrine of the Trinity, 
 of three Gods who are each God and yet 
 constitute only one God. This defiance 
 to good sense was to be still more accen- 
 tuated. It would come to be taught that 
 one substance could be transformed into 
 another without losing the properties which 
 reveal it to our senses ; finally, a Christian 
 Pantheon would come to be created, and a 
 secondary order of worship, in which saints, 
 angels, virgins, and martyrs would take in 
 popular devotion the place of God himself, 
 and of his Son. 
 
THE ORIGINALITY OF JESUS 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE ORIGINALITY OF JESUS 
 
 T li 7E have endeavored to show in Jesus, 
 as a man of his time, a Jew grow- 
 ing up in the midst of the religious be- 
 liefs of his contemporaries, studying them, 
 assimilating or rejecting them, alwaj^s 
 independent of them, and yet obliged to 
 reckon with them. But not one of the 
 great personalities of history may be en- 
 tirely explained in this way, and Jesus 
 less than any other. If he was not an 
 exception to the general law which ordains 
 that every man shall be determined by his 
 race, his environment, and the age in which 
 he is born, no more was he an exception 
 to that other mysterious and hidden law, 
 according to which there is in every great 
 individuality a deep, hidden force which 
 remains beyond the pale of all appreciation. 
 If a Shakespeare, a Luther, a Napoleon 
 have their own originality, and are not to 
 be entirely explained by heredity, environ- 
 11 
 
162 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 ment, and the time in which they lived, 
 much less is Jesus. 
 
 In what consists the originality of Jesus ? 
 What is its very essence ? To this ques- 
 tion we think the impartial historian must 
 unhesitatingly answer: The very clear 
 and full consciousness of a union with 
 God, which nothing in the past had ever 
 troubled, and which nothing troubled in 
 the present. The Old Testament taught 
 him about God; nature disclosed him to 
 him, and he saw him in the Old Testament 
 as in nature. But this exterior vision was 
 as nothing compared with the permanent 
 inward vision which illuminated his soul. 
 Between God and him there was a constant 
 and mysterious interchange ; God was his 
 Father, he was his Son, and this com- 
 munion was alive, and was never dis- 
 turbed. At a later day theologians might 
 speak of two natures. Let us leave the 
 theologians to themselves. The reality of 
 history speaks to us in nobler language 
 than theirs; and if we remain upon the 
 territory of facts, we see in Jesus the 
 supreme revelation of God upon earth. 
 The longings of ancient humanity were 
 realized in him; its religious pilgrimage 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 163 
 
 was ended; it had tried all the religions 
 of Paganism, and now he had appeared in 
 whom it could rest. There is nothing 
 beyond the religious consciousness of Jesus, 
 and man can conceive of nothing. 
 
 Without doubt there have been vision- 
 aries, mystics, illuminati, who also have 
 possessed God, lived in him, lost them- 
 selves in him; but their own personalit}^ 
 disappeared, while with Jesus the con- 
 sciousness of God was never apart from 
 his consciousness of himself. The more 
 he felt God in and with him, the more 
 evident became his own personality, the 
 stronger his assurance that he was himself 
 man, such as man should be, the true man, 
 the Son of God. The more he possessed 
 God the more he possessed himself; and it 
 was because the consciousness which he 
 had of his own value was never separated 
 from his consciousness of God that he 
 could say, "Come unto me," "Believe in 
 me." It was thus that he attained to faith 
 in his divine mission, and to the conviction 
 that he was in the world for its salvation. 
 His faith in his Messianic vocation and 
 his faith in his own perfect holiness were 
 nothing else than a consciousness of his 
 
164 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 union with God, or faith in his own 
 Divinity. 
 
 Let us try to be exact. If Jesus had 
 these convictions, there are only two 
 possible suppositions, — those which we 
 pointed out in our Introduction. Accord- 
 ing to the first, he was the victim of a 
 strange and prodigious delusion when he 
 believed himself to be in constant relations 
 with God, in delusion when he had faith 
 in himself, in delusion when he permitted 
 himself to be acclaimed as Messiah ; and he 
 died the victim of this mad mistake. It 
 is thus, we have said, that Renan under- 
 stood Jesus. His exquisite charm, hav- 
 ing first seduced the multitudes, ended by 
 seducing himself, and, intoxicated with 
 success, he ended at last in madness. 
 
 The other alternative alone seems to us 
 possible; and that in the name of facts 
 impartially observed, for we would here 
 give simply a historical verification. We 
 believe that it was the inward development 
 of his moral consciousness which led Jesus 
 to declare himself the Saviour of the world. 
 His vocation did not come to him from 
 without; it was not events which made 
 Jesus the Son of God. for the events can 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 165 
 
 only be explained by the consciousness 
 which Jesus had of being the Son of God. 
 
 Not long ago we wrote the words " per- 
 fect holiness of Jesus." It is impossible to 
 prove directly his perfect holiness, for 
 documents are wanting, and the life of 
 Jesus is too little known. But it can be 
 proved that he always had a consciousness 
 of integrity, and that he was never known 
 to repent. It is therefore permitted to 
 affirm that there was nothing culpable in 
 his life, for this may be legitimately inferred 
 from these two facts. This is why we 
 defined as holiness his perfect union with 
 God, his constant and unalterable feeling of 
 the entire approval of Him whom he called 
 the Father ; in a word, the consciousness of 
 a cloudless integrity. The peace of his soul 
 was never disturbed; he regretted noth- 
 ing, was ashamed of nothing, was guilty of 
 nothing. 
 
 But he knew our temptations ; he must 
 have conquered them, and his victories were 
 not achieved without suffering. Jesus had 
 a very vivid and profound feeling with 
 regard to sin. The story of the tempta- 
 tion in the desert shows him to us as 
 struggling against evil just such as it pre- 
 
166 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 sents itself to us. He had been haunted 
 by the dream of an easy success ; he had 
 known what was the intoxication of pride, 
 he had divined the allurements of the 
 flesh. But he had never yielded for so 
 much as an instant; his efforts had always 
 been victorious, and he had never weakened 
 in his incessant conflict. Therefore we 
 never find in him the slightest feeling of 
 moral powerlessness. And yet it is the 
 best among the children of men who al- 
 ways feel themselves the most weak : the 
 most advanced in the right way who be- 
 lieve themselves to have taken only the 
 first steps ; those who are nearest to reach- 
 ing the goal who fear they may never 
 attain it. Such was the experience of men 
 like St. Paul, Pascal, St. Cyran, Adoiphe 
 Monod. The ideal appeared to them ever 
 higher and more distant, their will without 
 strength, and their conflict without success. 
 With Jesus there was nothing of the 
 kind. He was sure of himself, sure of 
 God, sure of his own holiness. His soul 
 bore no scars, for it had never received 
 a wound, never suffered a moral defeat. 
 Strange fact, which manifests itself with 
 an incontestable historic verity, he knew 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 167 
 
 not what it was to feel himself pardoned 
 and restored. He had never trembled in 
 humiliation at the secret and overwhelm- 
 ing memory of a moral fall. There had 
 never been an interval between his will 
 and his duty, and the plaints of great 
 saints had never rent his soul. The good 
 which he willed, that he did ; the law that 
 he gave to himself, that he fulfilled; the 
 ideal which presented itself to him he 
 realized; and yet his ideal of holiness, of 
 uprightness and love, his ideal of moral 
 perfection, is the highest that ever was. 
 
 Is it possible to define the character of 
 Jesus ? We cannot arrive at such a defini- 
 tion by showing that all good qualities are 
 to be found united in him. If we could 
 show this, we should only have made more 
 impossible the description of his character. 
 For if he had good qualities of the most 
 opposite kinds, and, in consequence, all 
 characters, then he had none at all, — which 
 is impossible. A person without charac- 
 ter would be an abstraction with neither 
 interest nor life. Nothing is so tedious as 
 the story of so-called perfect persons, in 
 works of the imagination. But Jesus is 
 
168 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 the most interesting, the most captivating 
 personality in history. We always come 
 back to him ; the enigma of his person and 
 life is always before ns. He therefore had 
 a character, an individuality of clearest, 
 most well-defined outlines. 
 
 Nevertheless, it seems to us that though 
 a complete definition of the character of 
 Jesus is impossible, there are yet two 
 characteristics which dominate all others. 
 
 The first is this: The faculties of his 
 soul were always alert. His reason was 
 always firm and enlightened; his heart 
 always open to all sympathies, his will 
 always of a heroic energy. The exterior 
 world was never closed to him ; he always 
 had his eyes open to all that surrounded 
 him, and at every moment he gave himself 
 without reserve. This is the first feature 
 which strikes us in the character of Jesus. 
 
 The second is self-collectedness. He 
 loved retirement and solitude because there 
 he found the Father, who "is in secret;" 
 and we have said that he was the first to 
 put in practice his precept, "When thou 
 prayest, shut thy door." 1 In consequence, 
 we find in him neither the thoughtless 
 
 1 Matt. yi. 6. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 169 
 
 enthusiasm which anticipates the hour of 
 duty, nor the cowardice which lets pass 
 the moment for doing it. He was always 
 ready; but he awaited the decisive hour, 
 that which he called " the hour appointed 
 by the Father." There was therefore in 
 him inward harmony, deep coherence, and, 
 at the same time, dramatic progress. 
 
 During his ministry he was never guided 
 by external fatalism ; everything was with 
 him the product of a free decision. Noth- 
 ing ever broke down that decision, noth- 
 ing ever made it flinch. His life was the 
 greatest drama of history, and, at the same 
 time, the most perfect, — a moral drama, 
 whose sole factor, personal and always 
 active, was his heroic will. 
 
 These seem to us to have been the two 
 dominant features of Jesus' character. 
 They were complementary to each other, 
 and constituted his personality. We have 
 already made them manifest when defining 
 his holiness. Jesus shows us, on one side, 
 man such as he ought to be, whose moral 
 stature is complete, the man who is a true 
 Son of God ; and on the other side a deep 
 and never-troubled union with God, com- 
 plete harmony between the Father and the 
 Son. 
 
170 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 We have endeavored in the preceding 
 pages to separate the fignre of Jesus from 
 the theological and dogmatic notions which 
 were formulated by the Church at a later 
 day. The task was difficult, perhaps im- 
 possible; in any case, we cannot pursue 
 it farther. Jesus, during his ministry, 
 declared that he was the object of the 
 Christian religion, — that the faith, the love, 
 and the worship of believers ought to be 
 concentrated upon him. Later the Church 
 would say: Jesus said that we must be- 
 lieve on him because he was this or that. 
 We leave on one side these becauses, and, 
 faithful to the method which we imposed 
 upon ourselves, we confine ourselves to 
 setting forth the facts, — the historic facts 
 which alone are beyond all dispute. Now, 
 if any fact is certain, it is that Jesus de- 
 clared that he would reconcile earth with 
 heaven ; that he would restore the sinner, 
 console the afflicted, give eternal life. 
 Here is his originality, and it is undeni- 
 able; here is also his power. Men may 
 show us, if they will, that all Christian 
 morals were already to be found in Hel- 
 lenic morality ; it is none the less certain 
 that Greek philosophy remained sterile, 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 171 
 
 and that Christianity has 'transformed the 
 world. 
 
 Without doubt, Jesus Christ was born 
 at a propitious day and hour. We have 
 said that Luther, born a hundred years 
 earlier, would not have been Luther; any 
 precursor of the Reformation who died 
 obscure might, perhaps, have been as great 
 as he, if he had been born in the same time 
 as he. It matters not, for the personality 
 of Jesus towers far above all that he can 
 have owed to his time and his environ- 
 ment. Here is one proof among a thou- 
 sand, and it also is from facts. The notion 
 of sin is closely connected with the ap- 
 pearance of Jesus. Christ carried war into 
 the hearts of men by awakening there a 
 purely moral sense, — the sense of sin ; and 
 to awaken it he laid no stress upon the 
 duality of mind and matter. The most 
 characteristic feature of Christian doctrine, 
 the most profound cause of its action in 
 the world, comes from its notion of holi- 
 ness. A thirst for purity and perfection 
 appeared upon the earth with Jesus. No 
 doubt he did not create it. The notion of 
 holiness is a Hebraic notion; nevertheless, 
 it is only from the time of Jesus Christ that 
 
172 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 men have carried on an interior struggle, 
 have gone down into themselves and dis- 
 covered in their souls hidden treasures and 
 unknown springs, — ■ an immense fact, inex- 
 plicable by the mere preaching of holiness 
 upon the lips of the Christ, and to be ex- 
 plained only by the moral perfection of the 
 person of Jesus. If men like St. Paul, 
 St. Augustine, Luther, Pascal, have not 
 chosen for themselves the defilements and 
 degradations of the world; if they hun- 
 gered for the ideal, were athirst for holi- 
 ness ; if they smote upon their breasts and 
 implored the pardon of God with tears, — 
 it was because Jesus had shown them what 
 is the perfection which God requires. If, 
 finally, Jesus brought about the most for- 
 midable crisis in human history, it is be- 
 cause he was perfectly holy. The Jewish 
 conscience has become the conscience of 
 humanity itself. All its promises, all its 
 hopes, all its aspirations were realized in 
 Jesus. He was the normal man, man such 
 as he was intended to be. There was no 
 weakness in his life, and none will ever be 
 discovered there. The tradition of sin was 
 vanquished, and it is he who conquered it. 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 JESUS is ready, and about to begin his 
 ministry. He is about thirty years 
 old; 1 he is definitively leaving Nazareth, 
 deciding to establish himself in Caper- 
 naum, a large city on the border of the 
 Lake of Tiberias. He will dwell in a 
 house which will become his own. From 
 it he will travel about in Galilee, and will 
 gather around him numerous disciples. 
 His first preaching will be the pure and 
 simple repetition of the call of John the 
 Baptist : " Repent, for the kingdom of God 
 is at hand." 2 
 
 Let us try to picture him to ourselves as 
 he was then. His dress is composed of 
 two garments, the tunic and the mantle. 
 His tunic is of linen, fitted to the body, 
 with sleeves, and reaching to the feet; his 
 
 i Luke iii. 23. 2 Matt, hi. 2. 
 
176 JESUS C HEIST 
 
 mantle is white, striped with brown or 
 dark blue; 1 it is wide and floating when 
 he walks, but he often binds it close to 
 his waist with a girdle. His feet are shod 
 with leather sandals, fastened with thongs, 
 and made of the skin of the camel or 
 hyena. He has a staff in his hand, and 
 on his head a turban, without which he is 
 never seen. He removes it only at night, 
 and puts it on every morning; he wears it 
 in the house and in the synagogues; he 
 prays with covered head. Fastened under 
 the chin by a cord, it falls down on either 
 side over his shoulders and his tunic. 
 
 With regard to the exterior aspect of 
 Jesus, his face, we have no information. 
 We should be glad if the traditional pic- 
 ture were historic; it would be difficult 
 to picture Jesus to ourselves under any 
 other form. Nevertheless, this traditional 
 type is purely conventional. The writ- 
 ings of those who knew Jesus, the writings 
 of the apostles, never give any informa- 
 tion as to his exterior aspect. The most 
 ancient Fathers who speak of him — Jus- 
 
 1 These were the usual colors ; but it is possible 
 that Jesus had adopted the white garment of the 
 Essenes. 
 
 • 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 177 
 
 tin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen — all af- 
 firm that he was small of stature and 
 plain of face. Let us hasten to add that 
 this assertion rests on nothing historical, 
 but is an a priori conclusion, drawn from 
 Isaiah's description of the servant of Je- 
 hovah : 1 " There is no beauty in him that we 
 should desire him," "He has no form nor 
 comeliness," etc. These passages, it was 
 said, are prophetic: they must therefore 
 tell us exactly how Jesus looked. 
 
 The Gnostic heretics of the second cen- 
 tury, whose witness is as ancient as that 
 of the Fathers whom we have just named, 
 sketched the face of Jesus, and asserted 
 that in these pictures they reproduced a 
 portrait made by Pilate himself. Accord- 
 ing to them, Pilate was so much struck 
 with the face of Jesus at the time of his 
 judgment, that even while proceeding with 
 his interrogatory he at once sketched his 
 picture. This entirely fabulous assertion 
 is reported by Irenaeus and Hippolytus. 
 One of the pictures representing the pre- 
 tended sketch by Pilate was placed by 
 Alexander Severus in his Oratory, beside 
 the portraits of Abraham and Apollo. 
 
 1 Isa. lii., liii. 
 12 
 
178 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 Eusebius, in the fourth century, says 
 that there are in Palestine several portraits 
 of Jesus Christ, and even his statue; but 
 we do not know under what form he was 
 there portrayed. However, at this epoch 
 they began to represent Jesus as the per- 
 fect type of physical beauty. This asser- 
 tion rests no more than the other upon 
 historic data, but, like that, takes its 
 origin from a passage in the Old Testa- 
 ment. According to this passage, there 
 applied to Jesus Christ, he must have been 
 "the fairest among the sons of men." 1 
 
 About this time we find legends appear- 
 ing. According to them, Luke was a 
 painter, and made a portrait of Jesus. 
 King Abgar of Edessa possessed this por- 
 trait, which Jesus himself had sent him. 
 The veil of St. Veronica had also pre- 
 served the imprint of the face of Christ. 
 Finally, an ecclesiastical writer of the 
 eighth century undertook to describe Jesus 
 Christ, but without other guide than his 
 imagination. 
 
 In the twelfth century was fabricated a 
 so-called letter of Lentulus to the Roman 
 senate, describing the exterior aspect of 
 
 1 Psalm xlv. 3. 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 179 
 
 Christ; and in the fourteenth century 
 Mcephorus Calixtus also made a descrip- 
 tion of Jesus. Finally, was invented the 
 letter which Pilate wrote to Herod when 
 sending Jesus Christ to him. 
 
 From that time the type of Christ was 
 fixed, — a young man with abundant curl- 
 ing hair and undivided beard, resembling a 
 young god, full of grace and strength. 
 Some features of this portrait, relatively 
 recent, and invented out of whole cloth, 
 may be authentic. The Jews wore the 
 beard undivided and the hair long; it is 
 therefore exact to say that it was thus with 
 Jesus. But we know nothing more than 
 this; and the simple fact that Judas was 
 obliged to kiss him in order to point him 
 out shows that when he was with the 
 twelve apostles nothing distinguished him 
 from any one of them, — neither his height, 
 nor his garments, nor his face. The moral 
 perfection of his soul certainly appeared 
 in the habitual expression of his features, 
 and shone in his glance ; but this fact does 
 not warrant a precise conclusion as to the 
 face of Jesus, since those who knew him 
 not might take him for one of the twelve 
 and not for the Master himself. 
 
180 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 Let us return, in closing, to some of the 
 questions which we put in our Introduc- 
 tion; and first, let no one say any more 
 about the charm of Jesus. To explain the 
 enigma offered by his life by saying he 
 was a charmer is notoriously insufficient. 
 That there emanated from his person a 
 very great charm is not to be doubted, 
 provided we give this word a very ele- 
 vated meaning ; but even then it seems to 
 us to be very ill chosen. Doubtless no 
 one dreams of characterizing as charm- 
 ing his precepts which call for self-sacri- 
 fice, devotion, and obedience, or of finding 
 a charm in the spectacle of Jesus putting 
 the first of his precepts into practice, and 
 giving the example of submission and 
 renunciation. It would be better worth 
 while to give up the word, and when 
 Christ is in question, never to use it. 
 
 We also asked, How did Jesus come 
 to announce himself, and to believe him- 
 self to be the Messiah? In the preced- 
 ing pages we have tried to answer this 
 question in part, and in particular to 
 show that there was no trace of madness 
 in Jesus. On the contrary, that in him 
 which is most striking, the more closely 
 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 181 
 
 one studies him, is his possession of him- 
 self, his clear-sightedness, his complete 
 freedom from illusion. If he perceived 
 that Jewish theology was taking the wrong 
 way, that the doctrine of a Messiah who 
 should seek his own glory, astonish the 
 world by his miracles, and rule all the 
 nations of the earth, was false, — it was 
 because he never felt in the least degree 
 the influence of the beliefs of his people, 
 and because, far from being led away by 
 the ideas of his time, he struggled against 
 and conquered them. 
 
 It appears, then, that Jesus, by himself 
 alone, in the midst of a hostile world, con- 
 ceived the idea of a universal salvation 
 achieved by a purely spiritual work. And 
 he said to himself, in advance, that though 
 he were met by outbreaks of hatred, though 
 he were not understood, though he suc- 
 cumbed in the struggle, he should be none 
 the less convinced, to the very end, that he 
 had made the right choice, and should die 
 with the approbation of his own conscience 
 and the approval of God. 
 
 And now let us pursue our task; and 
 may God give us time and strength to go 
 on with it to the very end. We have to 
 
182 JESUS CHRIST BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 
 
 speak of Jesus during Ms ministry. After 
 that, in a third volume, we shall describe 
 his trial, his death, his resurrection. 
 Henceforth we shall not need to conjec- 
 ture, for there are existing sources. We 
 have already borrowed from them at times. 
 What is their value ? The answer to this 
 question will be the object of our first 
 study in the following book. 
 
: •" ed using the Bookkeeper process- 
 Neutralizing agent Magnesium Oxide 
 Treatment Date: July 2005 
 
 PreservationTechnologies 
 
 A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 
 111 Thomson Parte Owe 
 Cwfceny Township, PA 16066 
 
/STjd/ 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 ii 1 iiiii in i ii hi in- ii urn mi in 
 
 0014227 611 2