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 ITY OF ILLINOIS LIB 
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THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 

 
The MAN 
 NOBODY 
 KNOWS 
 
 cA “Discovery of the “Real Fesus 
 @y BRUCE BARTON 
 
 q 
 
 1 
 { 
 
 
 
 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP ~ ‘Publishers 
 by arrangement with The Bobbs-Merrill Company 
 
CopyricuT, 1924, 1925 
 By THE Bosss-MeErritt CoMPANY 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
} IN 
 ci) 
 
 ~ 
 W 
 
 “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s 
 business?” 
 
 764338 
 

 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 z 
 
 een | 
 Y~r"ii 
 *Tir 
 Ay IV 
 7 AVI 
 “VII 
 
 Tue EXECUTIVE 
 Tue Ovutpoor Man . 
 Tue SocraBLE Man . 
 
 His METHOD . 
 
 ‘His ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 Tue FouNpDER OF MoperN BUSINESS . 
 
 Tue MASTER . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 32 
 57 
 89 
 124 
 159 
 193 
 

 
HOW IT CAME TO BE WRITTEN 
 
 THE little boy’s body sat bolt upright in the 
 rough wooden chair, but his mind was very busy. 
 
 This was his weekly hour of revolt. 
 
 The kindly lady who could never seem to find 
 her glasses would have been terribly shocked ‘if 
 she had known what was going on inside the 
 little boy’s mind, 
 
 “You must love Jesus,” she said every Sun- 
 day, ‘and God.” 
 
 The little boy did not say anything. He was 
 afraid to say anything; he was almost afraid 
 that something would happen to him because 
 of the things he thought. 
 
 Love God! Who was always picking on peo- 
 ple for having a good time, and sending little 
 boys to hell because they couldn’t do better in 
 a world which he had made so hard! Why 
 didn’t God take some one his own size? 
 
 Love Jesus! The little boy looked up at the 
 
HOW IT CAME TO BE WRITTEN 
 
 picture which hung on the Sunday-school wall. 
 It showed a pale young man with flabby fore- 
 arms and a sad expression. The young man had 
 red whiskers. | 
 
 Then the little boy looked across to the-other 
 wall. There was Daniel, good old Daniel, 
 standing off the lions. The little boy liked 
 Daniel. He liked David, too, with the trusty 
 sling that landed a stone square on the forehead 
 of Goliath. And Moses, with his rod and his 
 big brass snake. 'They were winners—those 
 three. He wondered if David could whip Jeff- 
 ries. Samson could! Say, that would have been 
 a fight! 
 
 But Jesus! Jesus was the “lamb of God.” 
 The little boy did not know what that meant, 
 but it sounded like Mary’s little lamb. Some- 
 thing for girls—sissified. Jesus was also “meek 
 
 23 
 
 and lowly,” a “man of sorrows and acquainted - 
 with grief.” He went around for three years 
 telling people not to do things. 
 
 Sunday was Jesus’ day; it was wrong to feel 
 
 comfortable or laugh on Sunday. 
 
 %. 
 
HOW IT CAME TO BE WRITTEN 
 
 The little boy was glad when the superin- 
 tendent thumped the bell and announced: “We 
 will now sing the closing hymn.” One more 
 bad hour was over. For one more week the 
 little boy had, got rid of Jesus. 
 
 Years went by and the boy grew up and be- 
 came a business man. 
 
 He began to wonder about Jesus. 
 
 He said to himself: “Only strong magnetic 
 men inspire great enthusiasm and build great 
 organizations. Yet Jesus built the greatest or- 
 ganization of all. It is extraordinary.” 
 
 The more sermons the man heard and the 
 more books he read the more mystified he be- 
 came. 
 
 One day he decided to wipe his mind clean 
 of books and sermons. 
 
 He said, “I will read what the men who knew 
 Jesus personally said about him. I will read 
 about him as though he were a new historical 
 character, about whom I had never heard any- 
 thing at all.” 
 
HOW IT CAME TO BE WRITTEN 
 
 The man was amazed. | 
 
 A physical weakling! Where did they get 
 that idea? Jesus pushed a plane and swung an 
 adze; he was a successful carpenter. He slept 
 outdoors and spent his days walking around 
 his favorite lake. His muscles were so strong 
 that when he drove the money-changers out, no- 
 body dared, to oppose him! 
 
 A kill-joy! He was the most porta dinner 
 guest in Jerusalem! The criticism which proper 
 people made was that he spent too much time 
 with publicans and sinners (very good fellows, 
 on the whole, the man thought) and enjoyed 
 society too much. ‘They called him a “wine bib- 
 ber and a gluttonous man.” | 
 
 A failure! He picked up twelve men from 
 the bottom ranks of business and forged them 
 into an organization that conquered the world. 
 
 ~ When the man had finished his reading he ex-- 
 claimed, “This is a man nobody knows. 
 
 “Some day,” said he, “some one will write a 
 book about Jesus. Every business man will read 
 it and send it to his partners and his salesmen, 
 
HOW IT CAME TO BE WRITTEN 
 
 For it will tell the story of the founder of mod- 
 ern business.” 
 
 So the man waited for some one to write the 
 book, but no one did. Instead, more books were 
 published about the “lamb of God” who was 
 weak and unhappy and glad to die. 
 
 The man became impatient. One day he said, 
 “T believe I will try to write that book, myself.” 
 
 And he did. 
 

 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 

 
THE MAN 
 NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE EXECUTIVE 
 
 It was very late in the afternoon. 
 
 If you would like to learn the measure of a 
 man, that is the time of day to watch him. We 
 are all half an inch taller in the morning than at 
 night; it is fairly easy to take a large view of 
 things when the mind _is rested and the nerves 
 are calm. But the day is a steady drain of small 
 annoyances, and the difference in the size of 
 men becomes hourly more apparent. The little ° 
 man loses his temper; the big man takes a firm- 
 erhold.. 
 
 It was very late in the afternoon in Galilee. 
 
 The dozen men who had walked all day over 
 
 L 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 the dusty roads were hot and tired, and the 
 sight of a village was very cheering, as they 
 looked down on it from the top of a little hill. 
 Their leader, deciding that they had gone far 
 enough, sent two members of the party ahead 
 to arrange for accommodations, while he and 
 the others sat down by the roadside to wait. 
 
 After a bit the messengers were seen return- 
 ing, and even at a distance it was apparent that 
 something unpleasant had occurred. ‘Their 
 cheeks were flushed, their voices angry, and as 
 they came nearer they quickened their pace, 
 each wanting to be the first to explode the bad 
 news. Breathlessly they told it—the people in 
 the village had refused to receive them, had 
 given them blunt notice to seek shelter some-— 
 where else. 
 
 The indignation of the messengers communi- 
 cated itself to the others, who at first could 
 hardly believe their ears. ‘This back-woods vil- 
 lage refuse to entertain their master—it was un~ 
 thinkable. He was a famous public character 
 in that part of the world. He had healed sick 
 people and given freely to the poor. In the 
 
 2. 
 
THE EXECUTIVE 
 
 capital city crowds had followed him enthusi- 
 astically, so that even his disciples had become 
 men of importance, looked up to and talked 
 about. And now to have this country village 
 deny them admittance as its guests— 
 
 “Lord, these people are insufferable,” one of 
 them cried. “Let us call down fire from Heav- 
 en and consume them.” 
 
 The others joined in with enthusiasm. Fire 
 from Heaven—that was the idea! Make them 
 smart for their boorishness! Show them that 
 they can’t affront us with impunity! Come, — 
 Lord, the fire— 
 
 There are times when nothing a man can say 
 is nearly so powerful as saying nothing. Every 
 executive knows that instinctively. To argue 
 brings him down to the level of those with whom 
 he argues; silence convicts them of their folly; 
 they wish they had not spoken so quickly; they 
 wonder what he thinks. The lips of Jesus tight- 
 ened; his fine features showed the strain of the 
 preceding weeks, and in his eyes there was a 
 foreshadowing of the more bitter weeks to come. 
 He needed that night’s rest, but he said not a 
 
 3 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 word. Quietly he gathered up his garments and 
 started on, his outraged companions following. 
 It is easy to imagine his keen disappointment. 
 He had been working with them for three years 
 
 . would they never catch a true vision of 
 what he was about? He had so little time, and 
 they were constantly wasting his time. ... He 
 had come to save mankind, and they wanted 
 him to gratify his personal resentment by burn- 
 mg up a village! 
 
 Down the hot road they trailed after him, 
 awed by his silence, vaguely conscious that they 
 had failed again to measure up. “And they 
 went to another village,” says the narrative— 
 nothing more. No debate; no bitterness; ne 
 futile conversation. In the mind of Jesus the 
 thing was too small for comment. In a world 
 ‘ where so much must be done, and done quickly, 
 the memory could not afford to be burdened 
 with a petty slight. 
 
 “And they went to another village.* 
 
 Kighteen hundred years later an importand¢ 
 4 
 
THE EXECUTIVE 
 
 man left the White House in Washington for 
 the War Office, with a letter from the Presi- 
 dent to the Secretary of War. In a very few 
 minutes he was back in the White House again 
 bursting with indignation. The President 
 looked up in mild surprise. 
 
 “Did you give the message to Stanton?” he 
 asked. | 
 
 The other man nodded, too angry for words. 
 
 “What did he do?” 
 
 “He tore it up,” exclaimed the outraged citi- 
 zen, “and what’s more, sir, he said you are a 
 fool.” 
 
 The President rose slowly from the desk, 
 stretching his long frame to its full height, and 
 regarding the wrath of the other with a quizzical © 
 glance. 
 
 “Did Stanton call me that?” he asked. 
 
 “He did, sir, and repeated it.” 
 
 “Well,” said the President with a dry laugh, 
 “IT reckon it must be true then, because Stanton 
 is generally right.” 
 
 The angry gentleman waited for the storm 
 
 5 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 to break, but nothing happened. Abraham Line 
 coln turned quietly to his desk and went on with 
 his work. It was not the first time that he had 
 been rebuffed. In the early months of the war 
 when every messenger brought bad news, and 
 no one in Washington knew at what hour the 
 soldiers of Lee might appear at the outskirts, 
 he had gone to call on General McClellan, tak- 
 ing a member of the Cabinet with him. Official 
 etiquette prescribes that the President shall not 
 - visit a citizen, but the times were too tense for 
 etiquette; he wanted first hand news from the 
 only man who could give it. 
 
 The General was out, and for an hour they 
 waited in the deserted parlor. They heard his 
 voice at last in the hall and supposed of course 
 that he would come in at once. But the “Young 
 Napoleon” was too filled with his own impor- 
 tance; without so much as a word of greeting 
 he brushed by, and proceeded on his haughty 
 way up-stairs. Ten minutes passed—fifteen— 
 half an hour—they sent a servant to remind him 
 that the President was still waiting. Obviously 
 
 6 
 
THE EXECUTIVE 
 
 shocked and embarrassed the man returned. 
 The General was too tired for a conference, he 
 said; he had undressed and gone to bed! 
 
 Not to make a scene before the servants, the 
 Cabinet member restrained himself until they 
 were on the sidewalk. ‘Then he burst forth, de- 
 manding that this conceited upstart be removed 
 instantly from command. Lincoln laid a sooth- 
 ing hand on the other’s shoulder. “There, 
 there,” he said with his deep, sad smile, “I will 
 hold McClellan’s horse if only he will bring us 
 Victories.” 
 
 Other leaders in history have had that supe- 
 riority to personal resentment and small annoy- 
 ances which is one of the surest signs of great- 
 ness; but Jesus infinitely surpasses all. He 
 Knew that pettiness brings its own punishment. 
 ihe law of compensation operates inexorably to 
 
 eward and afflict us by and through ourselves. 
 
 ‘The man who is mean is mean only to himself. 
 
 The village that had refused to admit him re- 
 
 quired no fire; it was already dealt with. No 
 
 miracles were performed in that village. No 
 7 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 sick were healed; no hungry were fed; no poor 
 received the message of encouragement and in- 
 spiration—that was the penalty for its boorish- 
 ness. As for him, he forgot the incident im- 
 mediately. He had work to do. 
 
 Theology has spoiled the thrill of his life by 
 assuming that he knew everything from the be- 
 ginning—that his three years of public work 
 were a kind of dress rehearsal, with no real 
 problems or crises. What interest would there 
 be in such a life? What inspiration? You who 
 read these pages have your own creed concern- 
 ing him; I have mine. Let us forget all creed 
 for the time being, and take the story just as 
 the simple narratives give it—a poor boy, grow- 
 ing up in a peasant family, working in a car- 
 penter shop; gradually feeling his powers ex- 
 panding, beginning to have an influence over 
 his neighbors, recruiting a few followers, suffer- 
 ing disappointments and_ reverses, finally 
 death. Yet building so solidly and well that 
 
 death was only the beginning of his influence! 
 
 8 
 
THE EXECUTIVE 
 
 Stripped of all dogma this is the grandest 
 achievement story of all! In the pages of this 
 little book let us treat it as such. If, in so doing, 
 we are criticized for overemphasizing the human 
 side of his character we shall have the satisfac- 
 tion of knowing that our overemphasis tends a 
 little to offset the very great overemphasis 
 which has been exerted on the other side. Books 
 and books and books have been written about 
 him as the Son of God; surely we have a rev- 
 erent right to remember that his favorite title 
 for himself was the Son of Man. 
 
 Nazareth, where he grew up, was a little town 
 in an outlying province. In the fashionable 
 circles of Jerusalem it was quite the thing to 
 make fun of Nazareth—its crudities of custom 
 and speech, its simplicity of manner. “Can any 
 good thing come out of Nazareth?’ they asked 
 derisively when the report spread that a new 
 prophet had arisen in that country town. The 
 question was regarded as a complete rebuttal of 
 his pretensions. 
 
 The Galileans were quite conscious of the city 
 
 9 
 
 ne ~ . 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 folks’ contempt, but they bore it lightly. Life 
 was a cheerful and easy-going affair with them. 
 The sun shone almost every day; the land was 
 fruitful; to make a living was nothing much toa 
 worry about. There was plenty of time to visit, 
 Families went on picnics in Nazareth, as else. 
 where in the world; young people walked to. 
 gether in the moonlight and fell in love in the 
 spring. Boys laughed boisterously at their 
 games and got into trouble with their pranks. 
 And Jesus, the boy who worked in the carpenter 
 shop, was a leader among them. 
 
 Later on we shall refer again to those boy- 
 hood experiences, noting how they contributed 
 to the vigorous physique which carried him tri- 
 umphantly through his work. We are quite un< 
 mindful of chronology in writing this little book. 
 We are not bound by the familiar outline which 
 begins with the song of the angels at. Bethlehem 
 and ends with the weeping of the women at the 
 cross. We shall thread our way back and forth 
 through the rich variety of his life, picking up 
 this incident and that bit of conversation, this 
 
 10 
 
THE EXECUTIVE 
 
 dramatic contact and that audacious decision, 
 and bringing them together as best to illustrate 
 our purpose. For that purpose is not to write 
 a biography but to paint a portrait. So in this 
 first chapter we pass quickly over thirty years 
 of his life, noting only that’ somehow, some- 
 where there occurred in those years the eternal 
 miracle—the awakening of the inner conscious- 
 ness of power. 
 
 The eternal miracle! In New York one day 
 a luncheon was tendered by a gathering of dis- 
 tinguished gentlemen to David Lloyd George. 
 There were perhaps two hundred at the 
 tables. The food was good and the speeches 
 were impressive. But what stirred one’s imag- 
 ination was a study of the men at the speakers” 
 table. ‘There they were—some of the most in- 
 fluential citizens of the present-day world; and 
 who were they? At one end an international 
 financier—the son of a poor country parson. 
 Beside him a great newspaper proprietor—he 
 came from a tiny town in Maine and landed in 
 New York with less than a hundred dollars, A 
 
 Il 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 little farther along the president of a world-wide 
 press association—a copy boy in a country news- 
 paper office. And, in the center, the boy who 
 grew up in the poverty of an obscure Welsh 
 village, and became the commanding statesman 
 of the British Empire in the greatest crisis of 
 history. 
 
 When and how and where did the eternal 
 miracle occur in the lives of those men? At 
 what hour, in the morning, in the afternoon, in 
 the long quiet evenings, did the audacious’ 
 thought enter the mind of each of them that he 
 was larger than the limits of a country town, 
 that his life might be bigger than his father’s? 
 When did the thought come to Jesus? Was it 
 one morning when he stood at the carpenter’s 
 bench, the sun streaming in across the hills? 
 Was it late in the night, after the family had 
 retired, and he had slipped out to walk and ~ 
 wonder under the stars? Nobody knows. All 
 we can be sure of is this—that the consciousness 
 of his divinity must have come to him in a time _ 
 of solitude, of awe in the presence of Nature. 
 
 12 
 
THE EXECUTIVE 
 
 The western hemisphere has been fertile in 
 material progress, but the great religions have 
 all come out of the East. The deserts are a 
 symbol of the infinite; the vast spaces that di- 
 vide men from the stars fill the human soul with 
 wonder. Somewhere, at some unforgettable 
 hour, the daring filled his heart. He knew that 
 he was bigger than Nazareth. 
 
 Another young man had grown up near by 
 and was beginning to be heard from in the larg- 
 er world. His name was John. How much 
 the two boys may have seen of each other we do 
 not know; but certainly the younger, Jesus, 
 looked up to and admired his handsome, fearless 
 cousin. We can imagine with what eager in- 
 terest he must have received the reports of 
 John’s impressive success at the capital. He 
 was the sensation of that season. ‘The fashion- 
 able folk of the city were flocking out to the 
 river to hear his denunciations; some of them 
 even accepted his demand for repentance and 
 were baptized. His fame grew; his uncom- 
 promising speeches were quoted far and wide. 
 
 13 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 The business men of Nazareth who’had been up 
 to Jerusalem brought back stories and quota- 
 tions. There was considerable head-wagging as 
 there always is; these folk had known of John 
 as a boy; they could hardly believe that he was 
 as much of a man as the world seemed to think. 
 But there was one who had no doubts. A day 
 came when he was missing from the carpenter 
 shop; the sensational news spread through the 
 streets that he had gone to Jerusalem, to John, 
 to be baptized. 
 
 John’s reception of him was flattering. Dur- 
 ing the ceremony of baptism and for the rest of 
 that day Jesus was in a state of splendid exulta- 
 tion. No shadow of a doubt darkened his en- 
 thusiasm. He was going to do the big things 
 which John had done; he felt the power stirring 
 in him; he was all eager to begin. Then the 
 day closed and night descended, and with it 
 came the doubts. The narrative describes them 
 as a threefold temptation and introduces Satan 
 to add to the dramatic quality of the event. In 
 our simple story we need not spend much time 
 
 14 
 
THE EXECUTIVE 
 
 with the description of Satan. We do not know 
 whether he is to be regarded as a personality or 
 as an impersonalization of an inner experience. 
 The temptation is more real without him, more 
 akin to our own trials and doubts. With him or 
 without him, however, the meaning of the ex- 
 perience is clear. 
 
 This is its meaning; the day of supreme as- 
 surance had passed; the days of fearful misgiv- 
 ing had come. What man of outstanding ge- 
 nius has ever been allowed to escape them? For 
 how many days and weeks do you think the soul 
 of Lincoln must have been tortured? Inside 
 himself he felt his power, but where and when 
 would opportunity come? Must he forever ride 
 the country circuit, and sit in a dingy office 
 settling a community’s petty disputes? Had he 
 perhaps mistaken the inner message? Was he, 
 after all, only a common fellow—a fair country 
 lawyer and a good teller of jokes? Those who 
 rode with him on the circuit testify to his ter- 
 rifying moods of silence. What solemn thoughts 
 besieged him in those silences? What fear of 
 
 15 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 failure? What futile rebellion at the narrow 
 limits of his life? 
 
 The days of Jesus’ doubt are set down as 
 forty in number. It is easy to imagine that 
 lonely struggle. He had left a good trade 
 among people who knew and trusted him—and 
 for what? To become a wandering preacher, 
 talking to folks who never heard of him? And 
 what was he to talk about? How, with his lack 
 of experience, should he find words for his mes- 
 sage? Where should be begin? Who would 
 listen? Would they listen? Hadn’t he perhaps 
 made a mistake? Satan, says the narrative, 
 tempted him, saying: “You are hungry; here are 
 stones. Make them into bread.”—The tempta- 
 tion of material success. It was entirely unnec- 
 essary for him to be hungry ever. He had a 
 good trade; he knew well enough that his or- 
 ganizing ability was better than Joseph’s. He 
 could build up a far more successful business 
 and acquire comfort and wealth. Why not? 
 
 Satan comes in again, according to the narra- 
 tive, taking him up into a high mountain and 
 
 16 
 
THE EXECUTIVE 
 
 showing him the kingdoms of the world. “All 
 these can be yours, if you will only com- 
 promise.’ He could go to Jerusalem and enter 
 the priesthood; that was a sure road to distinc- 
 tion. He could do good in that way, and have 
 the satisfaction of success as well. Or he might 
 enter the public service, and seek political lead- 
 ership. There was plenty of discontent to be 
 capitalized, and he knew the farmer and the 
 laborer; he was one of them; they would listen 
 to him. 
 
 For forty days and nights the incessant fight 
 went on, but once settled, it was settled forever. 
 ‘In the calm of that wilderness there came the 
 majestic conviction which is the very soul of 
 leadership—the faith that his spirit was linked 
 with the Eternal, that God had sent him into the 
 world to do a work which no one else could do, 
 which—if he neglected it—would never be 
 done. Magnify this temptation scene as greatly 
 as you will; say that God spoke more clearly to 
 him than to any who has ever lived. It is true. 
 But to every man of vision the clear Voice 
 
 17 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 speaks; there is no great leadership where there 
 ) is not a mystic. Nothing splendid has ever been 
 ' achieved except by those who dared believe that 
 L something inside themselves was superior | to cir- 
 } cumstance. ‘To choose the sure ‘thing i is treason 
 to the soul. . . . If this was not the meaning of 
 the forty ASA in the wilderness, if Jesus did not 
 have a real temptation which might have ended 
 in his going back to the bench at Nazareth, then 
 the forty days’ struggle has no real significance 
 to us. But the temptation was real, and he con- 
 quered. The youth who had been a carpenter 
 stayed in the wilderness, a man came out. Not 
 the full-fledged master who, within the shadow 
 of the cross could cry, “I have overcome the 
 world.” He had still much growth to make, 
 much progress in vision and _ self-confidence. 
 But the beginnings were there. Men who looked 
 upon him from that hour felt the authority of 
 one who has put his spiritual house in order, and 
 knows clearly what he is about. 
 
 Success is always exciting; we never grow | 
 
 tired of asking what and how. What, then, were 
 18 
 
THE EXECUTIVE 
 
 the principal elements in his power over men? 
 How was it that the boy from a country village 
 became the greatest leader? 
 
 First of all he had the voice and manner of 
 the leader—the personal magnetism which be- 
 gets loyalty and commands respect. ‘The be- 
 ginnings of it were present in him even as a boy. 
 John felt them. On the day when John looked 
 up from the river where he was baptizing con- 
 verts and saw Jesus standing on the bank, he 
 drew back in protest. “I have need to be bap- 
 tized of thee,” he exclaimed, “and comest thou 
 to me?” The lesser man recognized the greater 
 
 stinctively. We speak of personal magnetism 
 jas though there were something mysterious 
 about it—a magic quality bestowed on one in 
 a thousand and denied to all the rest. This is 
 not true. ‘The essential element in_ personal 
 
 magnetism is a. ¢ consuming. “sincerity—an_ 01 over- 
 whelming f aith in the importance of.the-work 
 one_ ne has ‘to. ‘do. Emerson said, ““What you are 
 finders so loud I can’t hear what you say.” | 
 
 d Mirabeau, watching the face of the young 
 19 / 
 
 capa eI POA 
 
/ 
 
 5 
 % 
 x 
 
 . tion.” There was in Jesus supremely that / 
 “quality of conviction. é 
 
 THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 Robespierre, exclaimed, “That man will go far; 
 e believes every word he says.” 
 
 Most of us go through the world mentally 
 divided against ourselves. We wonder whether 
 we are in the right jobs, whether we are making 
 the right investments, whether, after all, any- 
 thing is as important as it seems to be. Our 
 enemies are those of our own being and creation. 
 Instinctively we wait for a commanding voice, 
 for one who shall say authoritatively, “I have 
 the truth. This way lies happiness and salva- 
 
 Fiven very successful people were moved by 
 it. Jesus had been in Jerusalem only a day or 
 two when there came a knock at his door at 
 night. He opened it to find Nicodemus, one of 
 the principal men of the city; a member of the 
 Sanhedrin, a supreme court judge. One feels 
 the dramatic quality of the meeting—the young, 
 almost unknown, teacher and the great man, 
 half curious, half convinced. It would have been — 
 easy to make a mistake. Jesus might very 
 
 20 
 
THE EXECUTIVE 
 
 naturally have expressed his sense of honor at 
 the visit; have said: “I appreciate your coming, 
 sir. You are an older man and successful. I 
 am just starting on my work. I should like to 
 have you advise me as to how I may best pro- 
 ceed.” But there was no such note in the inter- 
 view—no effort to make it easy for this notable 
 visitor to become a convert. One catches his 
 breath involuntarily at the audacity of the 
 speech: 
 
 “Verily, verily, I say to you, Nicodemus, 
 except you are born again you can not see the 
 kingdom of Heaven.” And a few moments 
 later, “If I have told you earthly things and you 
 have not believed, how shall you believe if I tell 
 you heavenly things?’ 
 
 The famous visitor did not enroll as a disciple, 
 was not invited to enroll; but he never forgot 
 the impression made by the young man’s amaz- 
 ing self-assurance. In a few weeks the crowds 
 along the shores of the Sea of Galilee were to 
 feel the same power and respond to it. ‘They 
 were quite accustomed to the discourses of the 
 
 21 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 Scribes and Pharisees—long, involved argu- 
 ments backed up by many citations from the 
 law. But this teacher was different. He quoted 
 nobody; his own word was offered as sufficient. 
 He taught as “one having authority and not as 
 the scribes.” Still later we have yet more strik- 
 ing proof of the power that supreme conviction 
 can carry. At this date he had become so large 
 a, public influence as to threaten the peace of the 
 rulers, and they sent a detachment of soldiers 
 to arrest him. They were stern men, presumably 
 immune to sentiment. They returned, after a 
 while, empty-handed. 
 
 “What's the matter?’ their commander de- 
 manded angrily. “Why didn’t you bring him 
 in?” 
 
 And they, smarting under their failure and 
 hardly knowing how to explain it, could make 
 only a surly excuse. 
 
 “You'll have to send some one else,” they 
 said. ““We don’t want to go against him. Never 
 man so spake.” 
 
 They were armed; he had no defense but his 
 
 22 
 
THE EXECUTIVE 
 
 manner and tone, but these were enough. In 
 any crowd and under any circumstances the 
 leader stands out. By the power of his faith in 
 himself he commands, and men instinctively obey. 
 
 This blazing conviction was the first and 
 greatest element in the success of Jesus. The 
 second was his wonderful power to pick men, 
 and to recognize hidden capacities in them. It 
 must have amazed Nicodemus when he learned 
 the names of the twelve whom the young teacher 
 had chosen to be his associates. What a list! 
 Not a single well-known person on it. Nobody 
 who had ever made a success of anything. A 
 haphazard collection of fishermen and small- 
 town business men, and one tax collector—a 
 member of the most hated element in the com- 
 munity. What a crowd! 
 
 Nowhere is there such a startling example of 
 executive success as the way in which that or- 
 ganization was brought together. Take the tax 
 collector, Matthew, as the most striking in- 
 stance. His occupation carried a heavy weight 
 of social ostracism, but it was profitable. He 
 
 23 
 
 aoa 
 wa 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 was probably well-to-do according to the sim- 
 ple standards of the neighborhood; certainly he 
 was a busy man and not subject to impulsive 
 action. His addition to the group of disciples 
 is told in a single sentence: 
 
 “And as Jesus passed by, he called Matthew.” 
 
 Amazing. No argument; no pleading. A 
 smaller leader would have been compelled to 
 set up the advantages of the opportunity. “Of 
 course you are doing well where you are and 
 making money,” he might have said. “I can’t 
 offer you as much as you are getting; in fact 
 you may have some difficulty in making ends 
 meet. But I think we are going to have an in- 
 teresting time and shall probably accomplish a 
 big work.” Such a conversation would have 
 been met with Matthew’s reply that he would 
 “have to think it over,” and the world would 
 never have heard his name. 
 
 There was no such trifling with Jesus. As he 
 passed by he called Matthew. No executive in 
 the world can read that sentence without ac-~ 
 knowledging that here indeed is the Master. 
 
 24 
 
THE EXECUTIVE 
 
 He had the born leader’s gift for seeing 
 powers in men of which they themselves were 
 often almost unconscious. One day as he was 
 coming into a certain town a tremendous crowd 
 pressed around him. ‘There was a rich man 
 named Zaccheus in the town; small in stat- 
 ure, but with such keen business ability that he 
 had got himself generally disliked. Being cu- 
 rious to see the distinguished visitor he had 
 climbed up into a tree. Imagine his surprise 
 when Jesus stopped under the tree and com- 
 manded him to come down saying, “To-day I 
 intend to eat at your house.” ‘The crowd was 
 stunned. Some of the bolder spirits took it 
 upon themselves to tell Jesus of his social 
 blunder. He couldn’t afford to make the mis- 
 take of visiting Zaccheus, they said. Their 
 
 _ protests were without avail. They saw in 
  Zaecheeus merely a dishonest little Jew; he saw 
 in him a man of unusual generosity and a fine | 
 sense of justice, who needed only to have those | 
 piace revealed by some one who understood. 
 So with Matthew—the crowd saw only a de-, 
 25 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 spised tax-gatherer. Jesus saw the potential 
 writer of a book which will live forever. 
 
 So also with that “certain Centurion,’ who 
 is one of the anonymous characters in history 
 that every business man would have liked to 
 meet. The disciples brought him to Jesus with 
 some misgivings and apology. They said, “Of 
 course this man is a Roman employee, and you 
 may reprove us for introducing him. But really 
 he is a very good fellow, a generous man and a 
 respecter of our faith.” Jesus and the Centurion 
 looking at each other found an immediate bond 
 of union—each responding to the _ other’s 
 strength. Said the Centurion: 
 
 “Master, my servant is ill; but it is unneces- 
 sary for you to visit my house. I understand 
 how such things are done, for I, too, am an 
 executive; I say to this man ‘Go’ and he goeth; 
 and to another ‘Come,’ and he cometh; and to 
 my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he doeth it. There- 
 fore, speak the word only, and I know my serv- 
 ant will be healed.” 
 
 Jesus’ face kindled with admiration. “I have 
 
 26 
 
THE EXECUTIVE 
 
 not found anywhere such faith as this,” he ex- 
 claimed. This man understood him. Both were 
 executives. They had the same problems and 
 the same power; they talked the same language. 
 
 Having gathered together his organization, 
 there remained for Jesus the tremendous task 
 of training it. And herein lay the third great 
 element in his success—his vast unending pa- 
 tience. The Church has attached to each of the 
 disciples the title of Saint and thereby done 
 most to destroy the conviction of their reality. 
 They were very far from sainthood when he 
 picked them up. For three years he had them 
 with him day and night, his whole energy and 
 resources poured out in an effort to create an 
 understanding in them. Yet through it all they 
 never fully understood. We have seen, at the 
 beginning of this chapter, an example of their 
 petulance. The narratives are full of similar 
 discouragements. 
 
 In spite of all he could do or say, they were 
 persuaded that he planned to overthrow the 
 Roman power and set himself up as ruler in 
 
 27 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 Jerusalem. Hence they never tired of wrang- 
 ling as to how the offices should be divided. 
 Two of them, James and John, got their mother 
 to come to him and ask that her sons might sit, 
 one on his right hand and one on his left. When 
 the other ten heard of it they were angry with 
 James and John; but Jesus never lost his pa- 
 tience. He believed that the way to get faith 
 out of men is to show that you have faith in 
 them; and from that great principle of executive 
 management he never wavered. 
 
 Of all the disciples Simon was most noisy and 
 aggressive. It was he who was always volun- 
 teering advice, forever proclaiming the staunch- 
 ness of his own courage and faith. One day 
 Jesus said to him, ““Before the cock crows to- 
 morrow you will deny me thrice.” Simon was 
 indignant. ‘Though they killed him, he cried, he 
 would never deny! Jesus merely smiled—and 
 that night it happened. ... A lesser leader 
 would have dropped Simon. “You have had 
 your chance,” he would have said, “I am sorry 
 but I must have men around me on whom I can 
 
 28 
 
THE EXECUTIVE 
 
 depend.” Jesus had the rare understanding 
 that the same man will usually not make the 
 same mistake twice. To this frail, very human, 
 very likable ex-fisherman he spoke no word of 
 rebuke. Instead he played a stroke of master- 
 strategy. “Your name is Simon,” he said. 
 “Hereafter you shall be called Peter.” (A 
 rock.) It was daring, but he knew his man. 
 The shame of the denial had tempered the iron’ 
 of that nature like fire; from that time on there 
 was no faltering in Peter, even at the death. 
 The Bible presents an interesting collection 
 of contrasts in this matter of executive ability. 
 Samson had almost all the attributes of leader- 
 ship. He was physically powerful and hand- 
 some; he had the great courage to which men 
 always respond. No man was ever given a finer 
 opportunity to free his countrymen from the 
 oppressors and build up a great place of power 
 for himself. Yet Samson failed miserably. He 
 could do wonders singlehanded, but he could not 
 organize. Moses started out under the same 
 handicap. He tried to be everything and do 
 29 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 everything; and was almost on the verge of fail. 
 ure. It was his father-in-law,-Jethro, who saved 
 him from calamity. Said that shrewd old man: 
 “The thing that thou doest is not good. ‘Thou 
 wilt surely wear away, both thou and this people 
 that is with thee, for this thing is too heavy for 
 thee, for thou are not able to perform it thyself 
 alone.” 
 
 Moses took the advice and associated with 
 himself a partner, Aaron, who was strong where 
 he was weak. ‘They supplemented each other 
 and together achieved what neither of them 
 could have done alone. 
 
 John, the Baptist, had the same lack. He 
 
 \_-ecould denounce, but he could not construct. He 
 
 drew crowds who were willing to repent at his 
 command, but he had no program for them after 
 their repentance. ‘They waited for him to or- 
 ganize them for some sort of effective service, 
 and he was no organizer. So his followers 
 drifted away and his movement gradually col- 
 lapsed. The same thing might have happened 
 to the work of Jesus. He started with much less 
 30 
 
THE EXECUTIVE 
 
 reputation than John and a much smaller group 
 of followers. He had only twelve, and they 
 were untrained simple men, with elementary 
 weakness and passions. Yet because of the fire 
 of his personal conviction, because of his mar. 
 velous instinct for discovering their latent ~ 
 powers, and because of his unwavering faith and 
 patience, he molded them into an organization 
 which carried on victoriously. Within a very 
 few years after his death, it was reported in a 
 far-off corner of the Roman Empire that “these 
 who have turned the world upside down have 
 come hither also.” A few decades later the 
 proud Emperor himself bowed his head to the 
 teachings of this Nazareth carpenter, trans- 
 mitted through common men. 
 
CHAPTER IT 
 THE Ovutpoor MAn 
 
 To most of the crowd there was nothing un- 
 usual in the scene. That is the tragedy of it. 
 
 The air was filthy with the smell of animals 
 and human beings herded together. Men and 
 women trampled one another, crying aloud their 
 imprecations. At one side of the court were the 
 pens of the cattle; the dove cages at the other. 
 In the foreground, hard-faced priests and 
 money-changers sat behind long tables exacting 
 the utmost farthing from those who came to 
 buy. One would never imagine that this was 
 a place of worship. Yet it was the Temple— 
 the center of the religious life of the nation. 
 And to the crowds who jammed its courts, the 
 spectacle seemed perfectly normal. 
 
 That was the tragedy of it. 
 
 Standing a little apart from the rest, the 
 
 32 
 
THE OUTDOOR MAN 
 
 young man from Nazareth watched in amaze- 
 ment which deepened gradually into anger. It 
 was no familiar sight to him. He had not been 
 in the Temple since his twelfth year, when 
 Joseph and Mary took him up to be legally en- 
 rolled as a son of the law. His chief memory 
 
 of that previous visit was of a long conversation _ 
 
 with certain old men in a quiet room. He had 
 not witnessed the turmoil in the outer courts, 
 or, if he had, it made small impression on his 
 youthful mind. é 
 
 But this day was different. For weeks he 
 had looked forward to the visit, planning the 
 journey with a company of Galilean pilgrims 
 who tramped all day and spent the nights in 
 their tents under the open sky. To be sure some 
 of the older ones muttered about the extortions 
 of the money-changers. A woman told how the 
 lamb which she had raised with so much devo- 
 tion the previous year, had been scornfully re- 
 jected by the priests, who directed her to buy 
 from the dealers. An old man related his ex- 
 perience. He had brought down the savings of 
 
 33 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 months to purchase his gift, and the money- 
 changers converted his provincial currency into 
 the temple coin at a robber’s rate. Other pil- 
 grims had similar stories, but after all they were 
 old people, prone to complain. The journey 
 and the sacrifice were worth the cost. One must 
 expect to pay for so great a privilege. 
 
 So the young man may have thought the night 
 before; but to-day he faced the sordid reality, 
 and his cheeks flushed. A woman’s shrill tones 
 pierced his revery like a knife; he turned to see 
 a peasant mother protesting vainly against a 
 ruthless exaction. An unruly animal threatened 
 to break through the bars, and a part of the 
 crowd fell back with cries of terror. A money- 
 changer with the face of a pig leaned gloatingly 
 over his hoard. . . . The young man had picked 
 up a handful of cords from the pavement and 
 half unconsciously now was braiding them into a 
 whip, watching the whole scene silently. 
 
 And suddenly, without a word of warning, he 
 strode to the table where the fat money-changer 
 sat, and hurled it violently across the court. The 
 
 34 
 
THE OUTDOOR MAN 
 
 startled robber lurched forward, grasping at his 
 gains, lost his balance and fell sprawling on the 
 ground, Another step and a second table was 
 over-turned, and another, and another. ‘The 
 crowd which had melted back at the start began 
 to catch a glimmering of what was up, and 
 surged forward around the young man. He 
 strode on, looking neither to right nor left. He 
 zeached the counters where the dove cages 
 stood; with quick sure movements the cages 
 were opened and the occupants released. Brush- 
 ing aside the group of dealers who had taken 
 their stand in front of the cattle pens, he threw 
 down the bars and drove the bellowing animals 
 out through the crowd and into the streets, strik- 
 ing vigorous blows with his little whip. 
 
 The whole thing happened so quickly that the 
 priests were swept off their feet. Now, how- 
 ever, they collected themselves and bore down 
 upon him in a body. Who was he that dared 
 this act of defiance? Where had he come from? 
 By what authority did he presume to interrupt 
 their business? The crowds gave way again at 
 
 35 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 the onslaught; they enjoyed the tumult as a 
 crowd always does, and they hated the priests 
 and robbers; but when it came to answering for 
 the consequences, they were perfectly willing to 
 leave it to him. 
 
 And he was willing they should. He stood 
 flushed and panting, the little whip still in his 
 hands. His glance swept scornfully over the 
 faces, distorted by anger and greed. 
 
 “This is my authority,” he cried. “It is writ- 
 ten, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer 
 for all the nations,’ but ye have made it a den 
 of robbers.” 
 
 Stung by his taunt, his accusers hesitated, and 
 in their moment of hesitation were lost. The 
 soldiers turned their backs; it was nothing 
 that they cared about. But the crowd burst 
 forth in a mighty cheer and rushing forward 
 bore him out of the Temple, the priests and the 
 money-changers scurrying before him. ‘That 
 night his action was the talk of the town. 
 
 “Did you hear what happened in the Temple 
 to-day?” 
 
 36 
 
THE OUTDOOR MAN 
 
 “Not a man of them dared stand up to him.” 
 
 “Dirty thieves—it was coming to them.” 
 
 *“What’s his name?” 
 
 “Jesus. ... used to be a carpenter up in 
 Nazareth.” 
 
 It is a very familiar story, much preached 
 upon and pictured. But almost invariably the 
 pictures show him with a halo around his head, 
 as though that was the explanation of his tri- 
 umph. The truth is so much simpler and 
 more impressive. There was, in his eyes, a 
 flaming moral purpose; and greed and oppres- 
 sion have always shriveled before such fire. But 
 with the majesty of his glance there was some- 
 thing else which counted powerfully in his favor. 
 As his right arm rose and fell, striking its blows 
 with that little whip, the sleeve dropped back 
 to reveal muscles hard as iron., No one 
 who watched him in action had any doubt that 
 he was fully capable of taking care of himself. 
 No flabby priest or money-changer cared to try 
 conclusions with that arm. 
 
 37 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 There are those to whom it will seem almost 
 irreverent to suggest that Jesus was physically 
 strong. They think of him as a voice, a pres- 
 ence, a spirit; they never feel the rich contagion 
 of his laughter, nor remember how heartily he 
 enjoyed good food, nor think of what his years 
 of hard toil must have done to his arms and back 
 and legs. Look for a minute at those first thir- 
 ty years. 
 
 There was no soft bed for his mother on the 
 night he entered the world. He was brought 
 forth in a stable, amid animals and the animal- 
 like men who tended them. He was wrapped 
 in rough garments and expected, almost from 
 the beginning, to look after himself. When he 
 was still an infant the family hurried away inte 
 Egypt. On the long trip back, some years later, 
 he was judged old enough to walk, for there 
 were younger children; and so, day after day, he 
 trudged beside the little donkey, or scurried into 
 the woods by the roadside to find fuel. It was 
 a hard school for babyhood but it gave him a 
 hardness that was an enormous asset later on. 
 
 38 
 
THE OUTDOOR MAN 
 
 Early in his boyhood Jesus, as the eldest son, 
 went into the family carpenter shop. The 
 practise of carpentry was no easy business in 
 those simpler days. Doubtless the man who 
 took a contract for a house assumed responsi- 
 bilities for digging into the rough hillside 
 for its foundations; for felling trees in the 
 forest, and shaping them with an adze. In after 
 years those who listened to the talk of Jesus by 
 the Sea of Galilee, and heard him speak cf the 
 “man who built his house upon a rock” had no 
 doubt that he knew what he was talking about. 
 Some of them had seen him bending his strong 
 clean shoulders to deliver heavy blows; or 
 watched him trudge away into the woods, his 
 ax over his shoulder, and return at nightfall 
 with a rough-hewn beam. 
 
 So he “waxed strong” as the narrative tells us 
 —a phrase which has rather been buried under 
 the too-frequent repetition of “the meek and 
 
 99 
 
 lowly” and “the lamb.” As he grew in stature 
 and experience he developed with his personal 
 skill an unusual capacity for directing the work 
 
 39 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 of other men so that Joseph allowed him an 
 increasing responsibility in the management of 
 the shop. And this was fortunate, for the day 
 came when Joseph stood at the bench no longer 
 —having sawed his last board, and planed it 
 smooth—and the management of the business 
 descended upon the shoulders of the boy who 
 had learned it so thoroughly at his side. 
 
 Is it not high time for a larger reverence to be 
 given to that quiet unassuming Joseph? ‘To 
 Mary, his wife, the church has assigned a place 
 of eternal glory; and no thoughtful man can 
 fail to be thankful for it. It is impossible to 
 estimate how great an influence has been ex- 
 erted for the betterment of woman’s life by the 
 fact that millions of human beings have been 
 taught from infancy to venerate a woman. — 
 But with the glorification of Mary, there 
 has been an almost complete neglect of 
 Joseph. ‘The same theology which has painted 
 the son as soft and gentle to the point of weak- 
 ness, has exalted the feminine influence in its 
 worship, and denied any large place to the 
 
 40 
 
THE OUTDOOR MAN 
 
 masculine. This is partly because Mary lived 
 to be known and remembered by the disciples, 
 _ while nobody remembered Joseph. Was he just 
 -an untutored peasant, married to a superior 
 woman, and baffled by the genius of a son whom 
 he could never understand? Or was there, un- 
 derneath his self-effacement, a vigor and faith 
 _ that molded the boy’s plastic years? Was he a 
 happy companion to the youngsters? Did he 
 carry the youngest, laughing and crowing on his 
 shoulders from the shop? Was he full of jokes 
 at dinner time? Was he ever tired and short- 
 tempered? Did he ever punish? To all these 
 questions the narrative gives no answer. And 
 since this is so—since there is none who can re- 
 fute us—we have a right to form our own con- 
 ception of the character of this vastly significant 
 and wholly unknown man, and to be guided by 
 the one momentous fact which we do know. It 
 is this. He must have been friendly and patient 
 and fine; he must have seemed to his children to 
 be an almost ideal parent—for when Jesus 
 sought to give mankind a new conception of the 
 AT 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 character of God, he could find no more exalted 
 term for his meaning than the one word 
 Father.” 
 
 Thirty years went by. Jesus had discharged 
 his duty; the younger children were big enough 
 for self-support. The strange stirrings that had 
 gone on inside him for years, setting him off 
 more and more from his associates, were crys- 
 tallized by the reports of John’s success. The 
 hour of the great decision arrived; he hung up 
 his tools and walked out of town. 
 
 What sort of looking man was he that day 
 when he appeared on the bank of the Jordan 
 and applied to John for baptism? What had 
 the thirty years of physical toil given him in 
 stature and physique? Unfortunately the Gos- 
 pel narratives supply no satisfying answer to 
 these questions; and the only passage in ancient 
 literature which purports to be a contemporary 
 description of him has been proved a forgery. 
 Nevertheless, it requires only a little reading be- 
 tween the lines to be sure that almost all the 
 painters have misled us. ‘They have shown us 
 
 42 
 
 P 
 
THE OUTDOOR MAN 
 
 a frail man, under-muscled, with a soft face—a 
 woman’s face covered by a beard—and a benign 
 but baffled look, as though the problems of liv- 
 ing were so grievous that death would be a wel- 
 come release. | 
 
 This is not the Jesus at whose word the dis 
 ciples left their business to enlist in an unknown 
 cause. 
 
 And for proof of that assertion consider only 
 four aspects of his experience: the health’ that 
 flowed out of him to create health in others; the 
 appeal of his personality’to women—weakness 
 does not appeal to them; his lifetime of outdoor 
 living; and the steel-like hardness of his nerves. 
 
 First, then, his power of healing. 
 
 He was teaching one day in Capernaum, 
 in a house crowded to the doors, when a com- 
 motion occurred in the courtyard. A man 
 sick in bed for years had heard reports of his 
 marvelous power, and persuaded four friends to 
 carry him to the house. Now at the very en- 
 trance their way was blocked. The eager listen- 
 ers inside would not give way even to a sick 
 
 48 30" 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 man; they refused to sacrifice a single word, — 
 Sorrowfully the four friends started to carry 
 the invalid back to his house again. 
 
 But the poor fellow’s will was strong even if 
 his body was weak. Rising on his elbow he in- 
 sisted that they take him up the stairway on the 
 outside of the house and lower him through the 
 roof. They protested, but he was inflexible. It 
 was his only chance for health and he would not 
 give it up until everything had been tried. So 
 at length they consented, and, in the midst of a 
 sentence the teacher was interrupted dramat- 
 ically; the sick man lay helpless at his feet. 
 
 Jesus stopped and bent down, taking the 
 flabby hand in his firm grasp; his face was 
 lighted with a wonderful smile. 
 
 “Son, thy sins are forgiven thee,” he said. 
 “Rise, take up thy bed and walk.” 
 
 The sick man was stupefied. “Walk!” He 
 had never expected to walk again. Didn’t this 
 stranger understand that he had been bedridden 
 for years?) Was this some sort of cruel jest to 
 make him the laughing-stock of the crowd? A 
 
 44 
 
THE OUTDOOR MAN 
 
 bitter protest rushed to his lips; he started to 
 speak and then halting himself, he looked up— 
 up to the calm assurance of those blue eyes, the 
 supple strength of those muscles, the ruddy skin 
 that testifed to the rich red blood beneath—and 
 the healing occurred! It was as though health 
 poured out of that strong body into the weak 
 one like electric current from a dynamo. The 
 invalid felt the blood quicken in his palsied 
 limbs; a faint flush crept into his thin drawn 
 cheeks; almost involuntarily he tried to rise and 
 found to his joy that he could! 
 
 “Walk!’ Do you suppose for one minute 
 that a weakling, uttering that syllable, would 
 have produced any result? If the Jesus who 
 looked down on that pitiful wreck had been 
 the Jesus of the painters, the sick man would 
 have dropped back with a scornful sneer and 
 motioned his friends to carry him out. But the 
 health of the teacher was irresistible; it seemed 
 to ery out, “Nothing is impossible, if only your 
 will power is strong enough.” And the man 
 who so long ago had surrendered to despair, 
 
 45 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 rose and gathered up his bed and went away, 
 healed—like hundreds of others in Galilee—by 
 strength from an overflowing fountain of 
 strength. 
 
 One day later, as Jesus walked in a crowd, a 
 woman pushed forward and touched his gar- 
 ment; and by that single touch was cured. The 
 witnesses acclaimed it a miracle and so it was; 
 but we need some definition of that word. He 
 himself was very reticent about his “miracles.” 
 It is perfectly clear that he did not interpret 
 them in the same way that his followers did, nor 
 attach the same importance to them. He was 
 often reluctant to perform them, and frequently 
 insisted that the individual who had been healed 
 should “go and tell no man.” And on one cele- 
 brated occasion—his visit to his home town, 
 Nazareth—the narrative tells us clearly that the 
 miraculous power was powerless, and for a very 
 interesting and impressive reason. ‘The people 
 of Nazareth were his boyhood acquaintances and 
 they were skeptical; they had heard with cynical 
 scorn the stories of the wonders he had per 
 
 44 
 
THK OUTDOOR MAN 
 
 formed in other towns; they were determined 
 not to be fooled; he might deceive the world, 
 which knew him only as a teacher; but they 
 knew him better—he was just Jesus, their old 
 neighbor, the son of the local carpenter. So of 
 that visit the gospel writers set down one of the 
 most tragic sentences in literature. “He could 
 do there no mighty work,” they tell us, “because 
 of their unbelief.’ Whatever the explanation of 
 his miraculous power may be, it is clear that 
 something big was required of the recipient as 
 well as the giver. Without a belief in health on 
 the part of the sick man, no health was forth- 
 coming. And no man could have inspired that 
 belief unless his own health and strength were so 
 ‘perfect as to make even the impossible seem 
 “easy. 
 
 | Men followed him, and the leaders of men 
 have very often been physically strong. But 
 ‘women worshiped him. ‘This is significant. 
 ‘The names of women constitute a very large 
 proportion of the list of his close friends. They 
 were women from widely varying stations in 
 
 47 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 life, headed by his mother. Perhaps she never 
 fully appreciated his genius; certainly she was 
 not without her periods of serious doubt as we 
 shall discover later on; yet her loyalty to his best 
 interests, as she conceived them, remained true, 
 and she stood tearful but unwavering at the foot 
 of the cross. ‘There were Mary and Martha, 
 two gentle maiden ladies who lived outside Jeru- 
 salem and in whose home with Lazarus, their 
 brother, he enjoyed frequent hospitality; there 
 was Joanna, a rich woman, the wife of one of 
 Herod’s stewards—these, and many others of the 
 type which we are accustomed to designate as 
 “ood” women, followed him with a devotion 
 which knew no weariness or fear. 
 
 The important, and too often forgotten, fact 
 in these relationships is this—that women aré 
 not drawn by weakness. The sallow-faced, thin: 
 lipped, so-called spiritual type of man may 
 awaken maternal instinct, stirring an emotion 
 which is half regard, half pity. But since the 
 
 _ world began no power has fastened the affection 
 
 of women upon a man like manliness. ‘The men 
 48 
 
THE OUTDOOR MAN 
 
 who have been women’s men in the _ finest 
 sense, have been the vital, conquering figures of 
 history. 
 _ The other sort of women came into contact 
 with him, too—women of less fortunate expe- 
 rience and reputation—whose illusions regard- 
 ing men were gone, whose eyes saw piercingly, | 
 and whose lips were well-versed in phrases of 
 contempt. As he taught in the Temple, one of 
 them was hurried into his presence by a vulgar 
 crowd of self-righteous Scribes and Pharisees. 
 She had been taken in the act of infidelity, and 
 according to the Mosaic law she could be stoned 
 to death. Shrinking, embarrassed, yet with a 
 look in which defiance and scorn were mingled 
 too, she stood in his presence, and listened while 
 their unclean lips played with the story of her 
 shame. What thoughts must have raced through 
 her mind—she who knew men and despised them 
 all, and now was brought to judgment before 
 aman! They were all alike, in her philosophy; 
 what would this one do and say? 
 
 To her amazement, and the discomfiture of 
 
 49 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 her critics, he said nothing. He “stooped down, 
 and with his finger wrote on the ground, as 
 though he heard them not.” ‘They craned their 
 necks to see what he wrote and continued to 
 taunt him with their questions: 
 
 “Moses says stone her; what do you say?” 
 
 “Come now, if you are a prophet, here’s a 
 matter for you to decide.” 
 
 “We found her in the house of So and So. 
 She is guilty; what’s your answer?” 
 
 All this time he had not once looked at the 
 woman’s face, and he did not look at her now. 
 Slowly he “lifted himself up,” and facing the 
 evil-minded pack, said quietly: 
 
 “He that is without sin among you let him 
 first cast a stone at her.” 
 
 And again, says the narrative, he stooped - 
 down and wrote on the ground. 
 
 A painful silence fell upon the crowd; he con- 
 tinued writing. Writing what? Some have ven- 
 tured the conjecture that he traced names of 
 people and places that brought a blush of shame ~ 
 to men in that crowd. That may be so, but it 
 
 50 
 
THE OUTDOOR MAN 
 
 is more impressive to think that he wrote noth- 
 ing of significance; that he merely busied his 
 finger in the sand, not to add to her discomfiture 
 by looking in her eyes. He wrote—and one by 
 one the thick-lipped champions of morality drew 
 their garments around them and slipped away, 
 until the court was empty except for him and 
 her. Then, and only then, his glance was lifted. 
 
 ‘Woman, where are those thine accusers? 
 Hath no man condemned thee?” he inquired, as 
 if in surprise. 
 
 Amazed at the sudden turn of affairs she 
 could hardly find her voice. 
 
 ‘No man, Lord,” she murmured. 
 
 “Neither do I condemn thee,” he answered 
 simply. “Go, and sin no more.” 
 
 From the moment when the noisy vulgar 
 throng had broken in upon him, he was com- 
 plete master of the situation. Those were men 
 not easily abashed, but they slunk out of his 
 presence without waiting for his command. 
 And she, who knew men so much more truly 
 than men ever know each other, felt his mastery, 
 
 51 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 responded to his power, and spoke to him rev- 
 erently as “Lord.” 
 
 All his days were spent in the open air—this 
 is the third outstanding testimony to his 
 strength. On the Sabbath he was in the syna- 
 gogue because that was where the people were 
 gathered; but by far the greater part of his | 
 teaching was done on the shores of his lake, or 
 in the cool recesses of the hills) He walked con- 
 stantly from village to village; his face was 
 tanned by the sun and wind. Even at night he 
 slept outdoors, when he could—turning his back 
 on the hot walls of the city and slipping away 
 into the healthful freshness of the Mount of 
 Olives. He was the type of outdoor man whom 
 our modern thought most admires; and the vig- 
 orous activities of his days gave his nerves the 
 strength of steel. 
 
 He stepped into a sailboat with his disciples 
 late one afternoon, and, being very tired, lay 
 down in the stern and was almost immediately 
 asleep. ‘The clouds grew thicker and the sur- 
 face of the lake which had been quiet a few 
 
 52 
 
THE OUTDOOR MAN 
 
 minutes before, was broken into sudden waves. 
 ~The little boat dived and tossed, and still he 
 
 slept. His disciples had grown up on the 
 shores of that lake; they were fishermen, accus- 
 
 _tomed to its moods and not easily frightened. 
 
 But they had never been out in such a storm as 
 
 this. It grew fiercer; water began to come in 
 
 over the side, every moment seemed to threaten 
 destruction. At last they could stand the strain 
 no longer; they went to the stern and woke him. 
 He rose without the slightest suggestion of 
 hurry or alarm. A quick glance was enough to 
 give him a full understanding of the situation. 
 He issued a few quiet orders and presently the 
 menaced boat swung round into the smoother 
 waters of safety. Call it a miracle or not—the 
 fact remains that it is one of the finest examples 
 of self-control in all human history. Napoleon 
 said that he had met few men with courage of the 
 “two oclock in the morning variety.” Many 
 
 “men ean be brave in the warmth of the sun and 
 
 amid the heartening plaudits of the crowd; but 
 to be wakened suddenly out of sound sleep, and 
 53 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 then to exhibit instant mastery—that is a type 
 of courage which is rare indeed. 
 
 Jesus had that courage, and no man ever 
 needed it more. In the last year of his public 
 work the forces of opposition took on a form 
 and coherency whose significance was perfectly 
 clear. If he refused to retreat or to compromise, 
 there could be but one end to his career. He 
 knew they would kill him, and he knew how they 
 would kill him. More than once in his journeys 
 he had passed the victims of the justice of that 
 day, writhing, tortured beings nailed to crosses 
 and waiting piteously for release. Sometimes 
 they wilted for days before the end. The mem- 
 ory of such sights must have been constantly 
 with him; at every sunset he was conscious that 
 he had walked just one day nearer to his own 
 ordeal. 
 
 Yet he never faltered. Calmly, cheerfully he 
 went forward, cheering the spirits of his dis- 
 ciples, and striking those fiery blows against 
 hypocrisy and oppression which were to be 
 echoed by the hammer blows upon his cross. 
 
 54 
 
THE OUTDOOR MAN 
 
 And when the soldiers came to arrest him, they 
 found him ready and still calm. 
 
 The week of his trial and crucifixion takes up 
 a large portion of the gospels. For that week 
 alone we can follow him almost hour by hour; 
 we know where he ate and slept, what he said 
 and to whom; we can trace the gathering storm 
 of fury which finally bore him down. And this 
 is the magnificent thing to remember—that 
 through all that long torture of imprisonment, 
 court trials, midnight hearings, scourgings, loss 
 of food and loss of sleep, he never once ceased to 
 be the master. _His accusers were determined. 
 They thronged the courtyard before the palace, 
 clamoring for his blood, yet even they felt a mo- 
 mentary awe when he appeared before them on 
 the balcony. 
 
 Even Pilate felt it. The two men offered a 
 strange contrast standing there—the Roman 
 governor whose lips were so soon to speak the 
 sentence of death, and the silent, self-possessed 
 ex-carpenter—accused and doomed—yet bear- 
 ing himself with so much majesty, as though he 
 
 55 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 were somehow beyond the reach of man-made 
 law, and safe from the hurt of its penalties. In 
 the face of the Roman were deep unpleasant 
 lines; his cheeks were fatty with self-indulgence; 
 he had the colorless look of indoor living. The 
 straight young man stood inches above him, 
 bronzed and hard, and clean as the air of his 
 loved mountain and lake. Pilate raised his 
 hand; the shouting and the tumult died; a death- 
 ly stillness descended upon the crowd. He 
 turned and faced the figure at his side, and from 
 his coarse lips there burst a sentence which is a 
 truer portrait than any painter has ever given 
 us. The involuntary testimony of the flabby 
 cynical Roman in the presence of perfect 
 strength, perfect assurance, perfect calm: 
 “Behold,” he cried, “the man!’ 
 
CHAPTER ITIt 
 THE SocIABLE MAn 
 
 A wickKeEp falsehood has come down through 
 the ages. 
 
 It reappeared in an English book as recently 
 as last year. The author, in describing a visit 
 to the high spirited Lord Fisher, tells of finding 
 him less jovial than usual. Obviously something 
 was weighing on his mind, and after a while he 
 revealed it. 
 
 “You know that Pilate was succeeded as Gov- 
 ernor of Jerusalem by Lentulus,” he remarked 
 in dull tones. .. . The new Governor gave a 
 minute description of our Savior, concluding 
 with the statement, “Nobody has ever seen him 
 laugh.” 
 
 With that wretched remark Lord Fisher 
 lapsed into meditative silence. He wanted to be 
 reverent; he had been well grounded in the 
 
 57 
 
x 
 
 THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 traditions of his church and class; he would do 
 his duty as a Christian and an Englishman, no 
 matter what the cost. But to worship a Lord 
 who never laughed—it was a strain. Lord 
 Fisher made no pretense about that. 
 
 The quotation from Lentulus is a forgery, 
 penned by an unknown impostor in a later cen- 
 tury; yet how persistently it has lived, and with 
 what tragic thoroughness it has done its work. 
 How many millions of happy-minded folk, when 
 they have thought of Jesus at all, have had a feel- 
 ing of uneasiness. ““Suppose,” they have said, “he 
 were to enter the room and find us laughing and 
 enjoying ourselves! When there is so much 
 suffering and sin in the world, is it right to be 
 happy? What would Jesus say?... ” | 
 
 With such compunctions cheerful folk have 
 had their brighter moments tinctured. The 
 friendliest man who ever lived has been shut off 
 by a black wall of tradition from those whose 
 friendship he would most enjoy. Theology has 
 reared a graven image, and robbed the world of 
 the joy and laughter of the great companion, 
 
 58 
 
THE SOCIABLE MAN 
 
 It is not hard to understand when you re- 
 member the character of the early theologians. 
 They lived in sad days; they were men of intro- 
 spection, to whom every simple thing was sym- 
 bolic of some hidden mystery; and life, itself, a 
 tangle of philosophic formule. 
 
 Baffled by the death of Jesus, they rejected 
 the splendid truth, and fashioned a creed in- 
 stead. Lambs were put to death in the Temple, 
 as a sacrifice for the sins of the worshipers; 
 ergo, Jesus was the Lamb of God. His death 
 had been planned from the beginning of the 
 world; the human race was hopelessly way- 
 ward; God knew that it would be and nothing 
 would turn Him from His vindictive purpose 
 to destroy it but the sacrifice of an innocent Son. 
 
 . .. Thomas Paine remarked truly that no 
 religion can be really divine which has in it any 
 doctrine that offends the sensibilities of a little 
 child. Is there any reader of this page whose 
 childish sensibilities were not shocked when the 
 traditional explanation of the death of Jesus 
 was first poured into his ears? Would any 
 
 59 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 human father, loving his children, have sen- 
 tenced all to death, and been persuaded to com- 
 mute the sentence only by the suffering of his 
 best beloved? 
 
 Small wonder that the Jesus of such a doc- 
 trine was supposed never to have laughed! 
 
 The Gospels tell a different story. But the 
 writers were men of simple minds, and naturally 
 gave greatest emphasis to the events which im- 
 pressed them most. Since death is the most dra- 
 matic of all the phenomena of life, the crucifixion 
 and the events immediately preceding it are set — 
 forth in complete detail. The denunciation of 
 the Pharisees (as startling to the disciples as the 
 denunciation of the United States Senate by a 
 barefooted philosopher would be to us); the 
 arrest by the soldiers at night; the trial before 
 the Sanhedrin; the hushed moment of the ap- 
 pearance on the balcony of Herod’s palace; the 
 Jong sad struggle out to Calvary, and the hours 
 of agony on the cross—these were the scenes 
 that burned themselves indelibly into their 
 memories, and all the sunny days preceding 
 
 60 
 
THE SOCIABLE MAN 
 
 faded into less importance. The life of Jesus, 
 as we read it, is what the life of Lincoln would 
 be if we were given nothing of his boyhood and 
 young manhood, very little of his work in the 
 White House and every detail of his assassina- 
 tion. All of the four gospels contain very full 
 accounts of the weeping which attended the 
 crucifixion—the final miracle; John alone re- 
 membered the laughter amid mach the first one 
 was performed. 
 
 It was in the little town of Cana, not far from 
 Nazareth; and Jesus and his mother had been 
 invited to a wedding feast. Often such a cele- 
 bration continued several days. Everybody was 
 expected to enjoy himself to the utmost as long 
 as the food and drink lasted—and it was a point 
 of pride with the bride’s mother that both food 
 and drink should last a long time. 
 
 Enthusiasm was at a high pitch on this occa- 
 sion when a servant entered nervously and whis- 
 pered a distressing message to the hostess. The 
 wine had given out. Picture if you will the poor 
 woman’s chagrin! This was her daughter’s 
 
 61 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 wedding—the one social event in the life of the 
 family. For it they had made every sort of 
 sacrifice, cutting a little from their living ex- 
 penses, going without a new garment, neglect- 
 ing a needed repair in the house. After it was 
 over they could count the cust and find some 
 way to even up; but until the last guest had 
 gone, no effort should be spared to uphold the 
 family’s dignity in the neighborhood. ‘To this 
 end the poor woman had planned it in her proud 
 sensitive fashion; and now, at the very height 
 of success, the whole structure of her dreams 
 came tumbling down. The wine had given out. 
 
 Most of the guests were too busy to note the 
 entrance of the servant or the quick flush that 
 
 mounted to the hostess’s cheek. But one ~ 
 
 woman’s sight and sympathy were keener. The 
 mother of Jesus saw every move in the little 
 tragedy, and with that instinct which is quicker 
 than reason she understood its meaning. She 
 leaned over to her son and confided the message 
 which her friendly eyes had read: 
 “Son, the wine is gone.” 
 62 
 
THE SOCIABLE MAN 
 
 Well, what of it? He was only one of a score 
 of guests, perhaps a hundred. There had been 
 wine enough as it was; the party was noisy and 
 none too restrained. Let them quiet themselves, 
 say good-by to their hostess and get off to bed, 
 They would feel much better for it in the morn- 
 ing. ... Or, if they persisted in carrying on, 
 let the relatives of the hostess make up the de- 
 ficiency. He was only a guest from another 
 town. Doubtless the woman’s brothers were 
 present, or, if not, then some of her neigh- 
 bors. They could easily slip out and bring back 
 wine from their own stores before the shortage 
 was commented on. ... Why should he be 
 worried with what was none of his affair? 
 
 Besides, there was a precedent in the matter. 
 Only a few weeks before when he was tortured 
 by hunger in the wilderness, he had refused to 
 use his miraculous power to transform stones 
 into bread. If the recruiting of his own strength 
 was beneath the dignity of a miracle, surely he 
 could hardly be expected to intervene to pro- 
 long a party like this.... “My friends, we 
 
 63 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 have had a very pleasant evening and I am sure 
 we are much indebted to our hostess for it. I 
 think we have trespassed as far as we should 
 upon her generosity. I suggest that we wish the 
 happy couple a long and prosperous life, and 
 take our way home.” ... Surely this is the 
 solemn fashion in which a teacher ought to 
 talk. 
 
 Did any such thoughts cross his mind? If 
 they did we have no record of it. He glanced 
 across at the wistful face of the hostess—already 
 tears sparkled under her lids—he remembered 
 that the event was the one social triumph of her — 
 self-sacrificing life; and instantly his decision 
 was formed. He sent for six pots and ordered 
 them filled with water. When the contents of 
 the first one was drawn, the ruler of the feast 
 lifted his glass to the bridegroom, and the be- 
 wildered but happy hostess: “Every man setteth 
 on first the good wine,” he cried, “‘aand when men 
 have drunk freely, then that which is worse; but 
 thou hast kept the good wine until now.” 
 
 The mother of Jesus looked on in wonder, 
 She had never fully understood her son; she did 
 
 64 
 
THE SOCIABLE MAN 
 
 not ask to understand. He had somehow saved 
 the situation; she did not question how. And 
 what was sufficient for her, is sufficient for us. 
 The whole problem of his “miracles” is beyond 
 our arguments, at this distance. We either ac- 
 cept them or reject them according to the make: 
 up of our minds. But if they are to be accepted 
 at all, then surely this first one ought not to be 
 omitted. It often 2s omitted from the comments 
 on his life, or at least passed over hastily. But 
 to us who think first of his friendliness, it seems 
 gloriously characteristic, setting the pattern for 
 all the three years that were to follow. “I came 
 that ye might have life,” he exclaimed, “and 
 have it more abundantly.” So, at the very out- 
 set, he makes use of his mighty power, not to 
 point a solemn moral, not to relieve a sufferer’s 
 pain, but to keep a happy party from breaking 
 up too soon, to save a hostess from embarrass- 
 ment. . . . See, the ruler of the feast rises to 
 propose a toast... hark to the discordant 
 strains of the neighborhood orchestra . . . look, 
 a tall broad-shouldered man towers above the 
 crowd . - . listen, hear his laugh! 
 65 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 The Jewish prophets were stern-faced men; 
 there are few if any gleams of humor in the 
 Old Testament from beginning to end. It was 
 the business of a prophet to denounce folks for 
 their sins. Go to the Boston Public Library and 
 look at their portraits. You are moved by their 
 moral grandeur, but rather glad to get away. 
 They are not the kind of men whom you would 
 choose as companions on a fishing trip. 
 
 John the Baptist was the last of this majestic 
 succession of thunderers. He forsook the cities 
 as being wicked beyond any hope, and pitched 
 his camp in a wilderness beside the banks of the 
 Jordan. For clothes he wore the skins of ani- 
 mals; his food was locusts and wild honey. He 
 indulged in long fasts and vigils, from which he 
 emerged with flaming eyeballs to deliver his un- 
 compromising challenge. “Repent,” he cried, 
 stretching out his gaunt arm toward the thought- 
 less capital, “repent while you still have time. 
 God has given up hope. His patience is ex- 
 hausted; He is about to wind up the affairs of 
 the world.” Many people flocked out to his 
 
 66 
 
THE SOCIABLE MAN 
 
 eamp and his fiery language burned through to 
 consciences that were overgrown with a very 
 thick crust. 
 
 Fresh from the carpenter shop came Jesus te 
 stand and listen with the rest. To what degree 
 was he influenced? Did he, too, believe that the 
 world was almost at an end? Did he see himself 
 cast in a role like John’s, a voice in the wilder- 
 ness, crying destruction? ‘There is some evi- 
 dence to make us think so. He went away from 
 John’s camp and hid himself in the woods, and 
 there for forty days and nights he fought the 
 thing through. But at the end his mind was 
 made up. His place was among his fellows. 
 For a time his preaching bore a decided resem- 
 blance to John’s. He, too, talked of the immi- 
 nence of the Kingdom of Heaven and warned 
 his hearers that time was short. . But little by 
 little the note of warning diminished; the ap- 
 peal to righteousness as a happier, more satisfy- 
 ing way of living increased. God ceased to be 
 the stern, unforgiving judge, and became the 
 loving, friendly Father. He, himself, was less 
 
 67 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 and less the prophet, more and more the com- 
 panion. So much so, that John—imprisoned 
 and depressed—began to be tortured by doubt. 
 Was this Jesus really the man whom he had 
 hoped would carry on his work? Had he, John, 
 made a mistake? What were these rumors that 
 came to him of Jesus’ conduct—his presence at 
 parties, his failure to keep the stipulated fasts, 
 the unconventional habits of his followers? 
 What did such unprophetic conduct mean? 
 John sent two of his disciples to watch and to 
 ask. And Jesus, knowing how wide was the dif- 
 ference between their attitude and his, refused 
 to argue or defend. “Go and tell your master 
 what you have seen and heard,” he said. “The 
 sick are healed, the blind receive their sight and 
 the poor have the gospel preached to them... . 
 It is true that I do not fast, nor forego the 
 every-day pleasures of life. John did his work 
 and it was fine; but I can not work in his way. 
 I must be myself ... and these results which 
 you have seen . . . these are my evidence.” 
 He loved to be in the crowd. Apparently he 
 68 
 
THE SOCIABLE MAN 
 
 attended all the feasts at Jerusalem not 
 merely as religious festivals but because all the 
 folks were there and he had an all-embracing 
 fondness for folks. We err if we think of him 
 as a social outsider. To be sure it was the 
 “poor” who “heard him gladly,” and most of his 
 close disciples were men and women of the lower 
 classes. But there was a time when he was quite 
 the favorite in Jerusalem. The story of his days 
 is dotted with these phrases. ... “A certain 
 ruler desired him that he should eat with him.” 
 .... They desired him greatly to remain and 
 he abode two days.” .... Even after he had 
 denounced the Pharisees as “hypocrites” and 
 “children of the devil,” even when the clouds of 
 disapproval were gathering for the final storm, 
 they still could not resist the charm of his pres- 
 ence, nor the stimulation of his talk. Close up 
 to the end of the story we read that a “certain 
 chief of the Pharisees desired him that he would 
 dine at his house.” 
 
 No other public character ever had a more in. 
 teresting list of friends. It ran from the top of 
 
 69 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 the social ladder to the bottom. Nicodemus, the 
 member of the supreme court, had too big a 
 stake in the social order to dare to be a disciple, 
 but he was friendly all the way through, and 
 notably at the end. Some unknown rich man, 
 the owner of an estate on the Mount of Olives, 
 threw it open to Jesus gladly as a place of re- 
 tirement and rest. When he needed a room for 
 the last supper with his friends he had only to 
 send a messenger ahead and ask for it. ‘The re- 
 quest was enough. A Roman centurion was 
 glad to be counted among his acquaintances; the 
 wife of the steward of Herod, and probably the 
 steward himself, contributed to his comfort. 
 And in the last sad hours, when the hatred of 
 his enemies had completed its work and his body 
 hung lifeless from the cross, it was a rich man 
 named Joseph—a rich man who would have 
 sunk into oblivion like the other rich men of 
 all the ages except for this one great act of 
 friendship—who begged the authorities for his 
 body, and having prepared it for burial laid it in 
 a private tomb. 
 70 
 
THE SOCIABLE MAN 
 
 Such were his associates among the socially 
 elect. What sort of people made up the rest of 
 his circle? All sorts. Pharisees, fishermen; 
 merchants and tax collectors; cultivated women 
 and outcast women; soldiers, lawyers, beggars, 
 lepers, publicans and sinners. What a spectacle 
 they must have presented trailing after him 
 through the streets, or covering the side of the 
 green slopes of the mountain where he delivered 
 his one long discourse! How they reveled in the 
 keen thrust of his answers, when some smart 
 member of the company tried to trip him up. 
 What heated arguments carried back and forth; 
 what shrewd retorts, what pointed jokes! He 
 loved it all—the pressure of the crowd, the clash 
 of wits, the eating and the after-dinner talk. 
 When he was criticized because he enjoyed it so 
 much and because his disciples did not fast and 
 go about with gloomy looks, he gave an answer 
 that throws a wonderful light upon his own con- 
 ception of his mission. 
 
 “Do the friends of the bridegroom fast while 
 the bridegroom is still with them?’ he de- 
 
 71 
 
 ie 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 manded. “Not a bit of it; they enjoy every 
 moment of his stay. I am the bridegroom; these 
 are my hours of celebration. Let my friends be 
 happy with me for the little while that we are 
 together. There will be plenty of time for sol- 
 emn thoughts after I am gone.” 
 
 This was his own picture of himself—a bride- 
 groom! ‘The center and soul of a glorious exist- 
 ence; a bringer of news so wonderful that those 
 who received it should be marked by their radi- 
 ance as by a badge. Of course he disregarded 
 the narrow code of the Pharisees. 
 
 “You shall walk only so far on the Sabbath,” 
 said the Code. He walked as far as he liked. 
 
 “These things you may eat and these you shall 
 not,” said the Code. 
 
 “You're not defiled by what goes into your 
 mouth,” he answered, “but by what comes out.” 
 
 “All prayers must be submitted according to 
 the forms provided,” said the Code. “None 
 others are acceptable.” 
 
 It was blasphemy to him. His God was na 
 Bureau, no Rule Maker, no Accountant. ‘“‘God 
 
 %2 
 
THE SOCIABLE MAN 
 
 is a spirit,” he cried. “Between the great Spirit 
 and the spirits of men—which are a tiny part of 
 His—no one has the right to intervene with 
 formule and rules.” 
 
 He told a story which must have outraged the 
 self-righteous members of his audience. He said 
 that a certain man had two sons. The elder, a 
 perfectly proper and perfectly uninteresting 
 young man, worked hard, saved his money, and 
 conducted himself generally as a respectable 
 member of society. But people were gloomier 
 rather than happier when he came around. He 
 never once gave way to a generous impulse. 
 
 The younger son was a reckless ne’er-do- 
 well, who took his portion of the estate and went 
 into a far country where he led a wild life and 
 presently was penniless and repentant. In that 
 mood he proceeded to work his way back to his 
 father’s house. The father had never ceased to 
 watch and hope; he saw the boy coming a long 
 way down the road, ran to him, threw his arms 
 around his dusty shoulders, kissed his forehead, 
 and bore him in triumph to the front door. 
 
 73 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 “Bring a fatted calf,” he cried. “Make a 
 feast; call the neighbors in to celebrate. For 
 this my son which was gone has come back; he 
 was dead to decency and idealism. Now he has 
 cleaned up his thinking and is alive again.” 
 
 There were high doings in that house that 
 day, and every one enjoyed them except the 
 older son. He was sullen and self-pitying. 
 “Where do I come in?” he exclaimed. “Here 
 I work and save and have never had a good 
 time. This irresponsible youngster has had 
 nothing but good times and now, when he 
 comes home after having run through his 
 money, they give him a party. It’s wrong.” 
 
 The father did not defend the younger son, 
 but he rebuked the elder. That was what hurt 
 the smugly complacent members of the audience 
 to whom Jesus told the story. The implication 
 was too plain. “There are two ways in which 
 aman may waste his life,” the story said in ef- 
 fect. “One is to run away from your responsi- 
 bilities, causing sorrow to your parents and 
 hurt to your associates, killing your finer na- 
 
 74 
 
THE SOCIABLE MAN 
 
 ture. That is wrong, and a man must repent 
 of such conduct and change his: life if he is to 
 be received again into his Father’s house. 
 
 “But the other thing is equally wrong. God 
 is a generous Giver, and selfish getting is sin. 
 God laughs in the sunshine and sings through 
 the throats of birds. They who neither laugh 
 nor sing are out of tune with the Infinite. God 
 has exercised all his ingenuity in making the 
 world a pleasant place. ‘Those who find no 
 pleasure and give none offer Him a constant af- 
 front. However precise their conduct, their 
 spirits are an offense. . . . Woe to you, Scribes 
 and Pharisees. You are painfully careful to 
 give exactly one-tenth of your incomes to the 
 Temple, figuring down to fractions of pennies. 
 But you neglect the weightier matters of the 
 law—the supreme obligation to leave the world 
 a little more cheerful because you have passed 
 through.” 
 
 This was his message—a happy God, wanting 
 His sons and daughters to be happy. 
 
 Jesus grew tremendously sure of himself as 
 
 75 
 
THK MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 his ministry progressed. No passages in all lit- 
 erature are more scathing than his denunciations 
 of the cheerless, self-righteous Pharisees. They 
 smarted under the sting, and the crowds laughed 
 at their discomfiture and cheered the young man 
 who dared to call himself the greatest of the 
 prophets and still proclaimed that life is a gift 
 to be enjoyed, not a penance to be served. All 
 achieving characters have a sublime disregard of 
 criticism. “Never explain; never retract; never 
 apologize; get it done and let them howl,” was 
 the motto of a great Englishman. It might well 
 have been the motto of Jesus. “No man can ex- 
 pect to accomplish anything if he stands in ter- 
 ror of public opinion,” he said in substance. 
 “People will talk against you no matter how you 
 live or what you do. Look at John the Baptist. 
 He came neither eating nor drinking and they 
 said he had a devil. I come both eating and 
 drinking, and what do they call me? A wine 
 bibber and a gluttonous man!” 
 
 He must have told it as a joke on himself and 
 on John, though the Gospels do not say so. In- 
 
 76 
 
THE SOCIABLE MAN 
 
 deed we must often wonder how much of his 
 humor has been lost to us by the literal minded- 
 ness of his chroniclers. How about that inci- 
 dent, for example, at the pool of Bethesda? The 
 pool was in Jerusalem near the sheep market 
 and was supposed to have magic properties. 
 Hundreds of sick people were left along the 
 edges to wait for the moment when the waters 
 would be stirred by the visit of an angel from 
 Heaven; whoever managed to get into the water 
 first, after the stirring, was healed. Passing by 
 it one afternoon Jesus heard the whining voice 
 of an old fellow who had been lying there for 
 thirty-eight years. Every time the pool stirred, 
 he made a half-hearted effort to jump in; but 
 there was always some one with more determina- 
 tion, or more helpful friends. So the old chap 
 would drop back on to his couch and bemoan his 
 hard luck. He was bemoaning it on this day 
 when Jesus stopped and looked at him with a 
 whimsical smile. 
 
 “Wilt thou be made whole?” Jesus demanded. 
 
 The old man was instantly resentful. What 
 
 T7 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 an absurd question! Of course he wanted to be 
 made whole! Hadn’t he been trying for thirty- 
 eight years?) Why annoy him with such an ims 
 pertinence? 
 
 The smile on the face of Jesus broadened. He 
 knew better. Enjoying poor health was the old 
 fellow’s profession. He was a marked man in 
 those parts; in the daily grumblings, when the 
 sufferers aired their complaints, he was the prin- 
 cipal speaker. Nobody had as many pains as 
 he; no other symptoms were so distressing. Let 
 these newcomers take a back seat. His was the 
 only original hard luck story. He had been 
 there for thirty-eight years. 
 
 The keen eyes of Jesus saw deep into the souls 
 of men. There was a twinkle in them now: 
 
 “Get up,” he said briskly, “and walk.” 
 
 The old chap spluttered and grumbled, but 
 there was no resisting the command of that pres- 
 ence. He rose, discovered to his own amazex 
 ment that he could stand, rolled up his bed and 
 moved off. A reverent hush fell on the assem; 
 bled crowd, and before they could find their 
 
 78 
 
THE SOCIABLE MAN 
 
 voices Jesus, too, was gone. ‘The disciples were 
 too deeply impressed for comment; they 
 dropped back a respectful distance and Jesus 
 walked on alone. Suppose they had followed 
 closer? Wouldn’t their ears have been startled 
 by something suspiciously like a chuckle? . . . 
 It was a good joke on the old chap. He imag- 
 ined that he’d had hard luck, but his real hard 
 luck was just beginning. . . . No more of the 
 pleasure of self-pity for him. . . . What would 
 
 his folks say that night when he came walking 
 
 in?... What a shock to him in the morning 
 when they told him that he’d have to go to work! 
 
 The shortest verse in the New Testament is 
 “Jesus wept.” That tragic note in his story the 
 Gospel record has carefully preserved. How we 
 wish it might also have told us what occurred on 
 the night after the chronic old grumbler was 
 healed. Did Jesus stop suddenly in the middle 
 of the supper, and set down his cup, while a 
 broad smile spread across his wonderful face? 
 
 If he did the disciples were probably puzzled— ~~ 
 
 they were so often puzzled— but surely we have 
 79 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 the reverent right to guess what was in his mind, 
 as he pictured the home-coming of that cured 
 old man. On that evening surely Jesus must 
 have laughed. 
 
 Some one has said that genius is the ability to 
 become a boy again at will. Lincoln had that 
 type of genius. Around his table in Washing- 
 ton sat the members of his Cabinet silenced by 
 their overwhelming sense of responsibility. It 
 was one of the most momentous meetings in our 
 history. ‘To their amazement instead of ad- 
 dressing himself directly to the business in hand, 
 Lincoln picked up a volume and began to read 
 aloud a delightful chapter of nonsense from 
 Artemus Ward. 
 
 Frequent chuckles interrupted the reading, 
 but they came only from the President. 'The 
 Secretaries were too shocked for expression! 
 Humor at such an hour—it was well nigh sacri- 
 legious! Heedless of their protesting looks, 
 Lincoln finished the chapter, closed the book 
 and scanned their gloomy faces with a sigh. 
 
 “Gentlemen, why don’t you laugh?” he ex- 
 
 80 
 
THE SOCIABLE MAN 
 
 claimed. “With the fearful strain that is upon 
 me night and day, if I did not laugh I should 
 die; and you need this medicine as much as I.” 
 
 With that remark he turned to his tall hat 
 which was on the table and drew forth what Sec- 
 retary Stanton described as a “little white 
 paper.” 
 
 The “little white paper” was the Emancipa- 
 tion Proclamation. 
 
 Stanton could scarcely restrain his impulse to 
 stalk out of the room. No one of his Cabinet 
 really understood Lincoln. He was constantly 
 scandalizing them by his calm disregard of con- 
 vention, and his seemingly prodigal waste of 
 time. The friends and advisers of Jesus were 
 similarly shocked. How could any one with such 
 important business allow himself to be so casual- 
 ly interrupted! (One of the surest marks of 
 greatness, of course, is accessibility and the ap- 
 pearance of having an unstinted allowance of 
 time. “Extreme busyness is a symptom of de- 
 ficient vitality,” says Stevenson. ) The disciples 
 were extremely busy, Judas most of all. He 
 
 81 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 was the treasurer of the group, harassed because 
 expenses ran high and there was no certainty of 
 to-morrow’s income. Jesus brushed away such 
 petty worries with a smile. 
 
 “Consider the lilies of the field,” he exclaimed, 
 “they toil not neither do they spin, yet Solomon 
 in all his glory was not arrayed like one of 
 these.” ‘That was all very poetic, very nice, but 
 it did not fool Judas. He knew that you can not 
 get anywhere in the world without money and 
 it was his job to find the money. The other dis- 
 ciples had similar worries. They wanted to get 
 it clear as to their relative positions in the new 
 Kingdom; they were concerned because out- 
 siders, not properly initiated into the organiza- 
 tion, were claiming to be followers of Jesus 
 and doing miracles in his name. ‘They fretted 
 because there was so much work to be done and 
 the days too short for doing it. 
 
 But he towered magnificently above it all. 
 Wherever he went the children flocked. Pomp 
 and circumstances mean nothing to them. They 
 are neither attracted by prominence nor awed 
 
 82 
 
THE SOCIABLE MAN 
 
 in its presence. Their instinct cuts through all 
 outward semblance with a keen swift edge; une 
 failingly they comprehend who are real and who 
 are not. With a knowledge which is the ac- 
 cumulated wisdom of all the ages they recognize 
 their friends. 
 
 So they swarmed around, climbing on his 
 knees, tugging at his garments, smiling up into 
 his eyes, begging to hear more of his stories. It 
 was all highly improper and wasteful in the dis- 
 ciples’ eyes. With bustling efficiency they has- 
 tened to remind him that he had important ap- 
 pointments; tried to push eager mothers back. 
 
 But Jesus would have none of it. “Suffer the 
 little children to come unto me!” he commanded. 
 And he added one of those sayings which should 
 make so clear the message of his gospel. “They 
 are the very essence of the Kingdom of Heav- 
 en,’ he said, “unless you become like them 
 you shall in no wise enter in.” Like them... 
 like little children ... laughing... joyous 
 
 . unaffected . . . trusting implicitiy ... 
 with time to be kind. 
 83 
 
! 
 THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 To be sure he was not always in the crowd. 
 He had his long hours of withdrawal when, in 
 communion with his Father, he refilled the deep 
 reservoirs of his strength and love. ‘Toward the 
 end he was more preoccupied. He knew months 
 in advance that if he made another journey to 
 Jerusalem his fate would be sealed; yet he never 
 wavered in his decision to make that journey. 
 Starting out on it, his mind filled with the ap- 
 proaching conflict, his shoulders burdened with 
 the whole world’s need, he heard his name called 
 out from the roadside in shrill unfamiliar tones. 
 “Jesus ... Jesus... thou son of David... 
 have mercy on me.” 
 
 It was the voice of a useless blind beggar, 
 . . - At once the disciples were upon him, com: 
 manding silence. Couldn’t he see that the Mas. 
 ter was deep in thought? Who was he to inter: 
 rupt. ... Keep still, blind man .. . get back 
 where you belong... . 
 
 But frantic hope knows no reserve. It was 
 the poor fellow’s one possible chance. .. . He 
 cared no more for their rebuke than they for his 
 
 84 
 
ae 
 THE SOCIABLE MAN 
 
 ° 
 need. Again the shrill insistent voice: “Jesus, 
 thou son of David, have mercy on me.” 
 
 Jesus stopped. 
 
 “Who called my name?” 
 
 “Nobody, Master ... only a blind beggar 
 »..a worthless fellow... Bartimeus... 
 nobody at all . . . we'll tend to him.” 
 
 “Bring him here.” 
 
 Trembling with hope he was guided forward. 
 The deep rich eyes of the Master looked into 
 those sightless eyes. ‘The mind which had been 
 buried in the greatest problem with which a 
 mind ever wrestled, gave itself unreservedly to 
 the problem of one forlorn human life. Here 
 was need; and he had time... . 
 
 Something more than a hundred years ago a 
 sermon was preached in St. John’s Church, New 
 York, which dealt very severely with the frail- 
 ties of poor human nature, and put forth, with 
 unctuous assurance, the promise of eternal pun- 
 ishment for a large proportion of the race. 
 Among the worshipers was a gentleman of un- 
 fortunate reputation but keen mind, whose name 
 
 85 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 lingers unforgettably in our history. As he left 
 the church a lady spoke to him: 
 
 “What did you think of the sermon, Mr. 
 Burr?” she asked. 
 
 “T think,” responded Aaron Burr, “that God 
 is better than most people suppose.” 
 
 That was the message of Jesus—that God is 
 supremely better than anybody had ever dared 
 to believe. Not a petulant Creator, who had lost 
 control of his creation and, in wrath, was deter- 
 mined to destroy it all. Not a stern Judge dis- 
 pensing impersonal justice. Not a vain King 
 who must be flattered and bribed into conces- 
 sions of mercy. Not a rigid Accountant, check- 
 ing up the sins against the penances and strik- 
 ing a cold hard balance. Not any of these... 
 nothing like these . . . but a great Companion, 
 a wonderful Friend, a kindly indulgent, joy-lov- 
 ing Father... . 
 
 For three years Jesus walked up and down 
 the shores of his lake and through the streets of 
 towns and cities, trying to make them under- 
 stand. Then came the end, and almost before 
 
 86 
 
THE SOCIABLE MAN 
 
 his fine firm flesh was cold, the distortion began. 
 
 He who had cared nothing for ceremonies and | 
 
 forms was made the idol of formalism. Men hid 
 themselves in monasteries; they lashed them- 
 selves with whips; they tortured their skins with 
 harsh garments and cried out that they were fol- 
 lowers of him—of him who loved the crowd, 
 who gathered children about him wherever he 
 went, who celebrated the calling of a new dis- 
 ciple with a feast in which all the neighborhood 
 joined! “Hold your heads high,” he had ex- 
 claimed, “you are lords of the universe... 
 only a little lower than the angels . . . children 
 of God.” But-the hymn writers knew better. 
 They wrote: 
 
 “Oh to be nothing, nothing” 
 and 
 “For such a worm as I.” 
 
 His last supper with his disciples was an hour of | 
 
 solemn memories. Their minds were heavy with 
 foreboding. He talked earnestly, but the whole 
 87 
 
 » 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 purpose of his talk was to lift up their hearts, to 
 make them think nobly of themselves, to fill 
 their spirits with a conquering faith. 
 
 “My joy I leave with you,” he exclaimed. 
 
 “Be of good cheer,” he exclaimed. 
 
 Joy ... cheer ... these are the words by 
 which he wished to be remembered. But down 
 through the ages has come the wicked falsehood 
 that he never laughed. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 His Meruop 
 
 Many leaders have dared to lay out ambitious 
 programs, but this is the most daring of all: 
 “Go ye into all the world,” Jesus said, “and 
 preach the gospel to the whole creation.” 
 Consider the sublime audacity of that com- 
 mand. To carry Roman civilization across the 
 then known world had cost millions of lives and 
 billions in treasure. To create any sort of re- 
 ception for a new idea or product to-day in- 
 volves a vast machinery of propaganda and ex- 
 pense. Jesus had no funds and no machinery. 
 His organization was a tiny group of unedu- 
 cated men, one of whom had already abandoned 
 the cause as hopeless, deserting to the enemy. 
 He had come proclaiming a Kingdom and was 
 to end upon a cross; yet he dared to talk of con- 
 -quering all creation. What was the source of 
 89 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 his faith in that handful of followers? By what 
 methods had he trained them? What had they 
 learned from him of the secrets of influencing 
 men? 
 
 We speak of the law of “supply and demand,” 
 but the words have got turned around. With 
 anything which is not a basic necessity the sup- 
 ply always precedes the demand. Elias Howe 
 invented the sewing machine, but it nearly rusted 
 away before American women could be per- 
 suaded to use it. With their sewing finished so 
 quickly what would they ever do with their 
 spare time? Howe had vision, and had made 
 his vision come true; but he could not sell! So 
 his biographer paints a tragic picture—the man 
 who had done more than any other in his gen- © 
 eration to lighten the labor of women is forced 
 to attend the funeral of the woman he loved in 
 a borrowed suit of clothes! Nor are men less 
 stubborn than women in opposition to the 
 new idea. ‘The typewriter had been a demon- 
 strated success for years before business men 
 could be persuaded to buy it. How could any 
 
 90 
 
HIS METHOD 
 
 one have letters enough to justify the invest- 
 ment of one hundred dollars in a writing ma- 
 chine? Only when the Remingtons sold the 
 Caligraph Company the right to manufacture 
 machines under the Remington patent, and two 
 groups of salesmen set forth in competition, was 
 the resistance broken down. 
 
 Almost every invention has had a similar bat- 
 tle. Said Robert Fulton of the Clermont: 
 
 “As I had occasion daily to pass to and from 
 the shipyard where my boat was in progress, I 
 often loitered near the groups of strangers and 
 heard various inquiries as to the object of this 
 new vehicle. The language was uniformly that 
 of scorn, sneer or ridicule. The loud laugh often 
 rose at my expense; the dry jest; the wise cal- 
 
 culations of losses or expenditures; the dull 
 
 repetition of ‘Fulton’s Folly.’ Never did a 
 single encouraging remark, a bright hope, a 
 warm wish cross my path.” 
 
 That is the kind of human beings we are— 
 wise in our Own conceit, impervious to sugges- 
 tions, perfectly sure that what’s never been done 
 
 91 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 never will be done. Nineteen hundred years ago 
 we were even more impenetrable, for modern 
 science has frequently shot through the hard 
 shell of our complacency. ... “Z'o the whole 
 creation.” . . . Assuredly there was no demand 
 for a new religion; the world was already over- 
 supplied. And Jesus proposed to send forth 
 eleven men and expect them to substitute his 
 thinking for all existing religious thought! 
 
 In this great act of courage he was the suc- 
 cessor, and the surpasser, of all the prophets 
 who had gone before. We spoke a moment ago 
 of the prophets as deficient in humor; but what 
 they lacked in the amenities of life they made up 
 richly in vision. Each one of them brought to 
 the world a revolutionary idea, and we can not 
 understand truly the significance of the work of 
 Jesus unless we remember that he began where 
 they left off, building on the firm foundations 
 ‘they had laid. Let us glance at them a moment, 
 starting with Moses. What a miracle he 
 wrought in the thinking of his race! The world 
 was full of gods in his day—male gods, female 
 
 92 
 
HIS METHOD 
 
 gods, wooden and iron gods—it was a poverty 
 stricken tribe which could not boast of a hundred 
 at least. The human mind had never been able 
 to leap beyond the idea that every natural 
 phenomenon was the expression of a different 
 deity. Along came Moses with one of the tran- 
 scendent intellects of history. “There is one 
 God,” he cried. What an overwhelming idea 
 and how magnificent its consequences. ‘Taking 
 a disorganized crowd of folks who had been 
 slaves in Egypt for generations—their spirits 
 broken by rule and rod—Moses persuaded them 
 that God, this one all-powerful God, was their 
 special friend and protector, fired them with 
 faith in that conviction and transformed them 
 from slaves to conquerors! 
 
 Moses died and the nation carried on under 
 the momentum which he had given it, until there 
 arose Amos, a worthy successor. 
 
 “There is one God,” Moses had said. 
 
 “God is a God of justice,” added Amos. 
 
 That assertion is such an elementary part of 
 our consciousness that we are almost shocked by 
 
 93 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 the suggestion that it could ever have been new. 
 But remember the gods that were current in 
 Amos’s day if you would have a true measure 
 of the importance of his contribution—the gods 
 of the Greeks, for example. Zeus was chief of 
 them, a philandering old reprobate who visited 
 his wrath upon such mortals as were unlucky 
 enough to interfere in his love affairs, and threw 
 his influence to whichever side offered the larg- 
 est bribes. His wife and sons and daughters 
 were no better; nor was the moral standard of 
 the God of the Israelites very much superior 
 until Amos came. He was a trading God, ready 
 to offer so much victory for so many sacrifices, 
 and insistent upon his prerogatives. It was the 
 high privilege of Amos to proclaim a God who 
 could not be bought, whose ears were deaf to 
 pleadings if the cause was unfair, who would 
 show no discrimination in judgment between the 
 strong and weak, the rich and poor. It was 
 a stupendous conception but Amos persuaded 
 men to accept it, and it has remained a part of 
 our spiritual heritage. 
 94 
 
HIS METHOD 
 
 Years passed and Hosea spoke. His had not 
 been a happy life. His wife deserted him; 
 heartbroken and vengeful he was determined to 
 cast her off forever. Yet his love would not let 
 him do it. He went to her, forgave her, and 
 took her back. Then in his hours of lonely 
 brooding a great thought came to him! If he, 
 a mere man could love so unselfishly one who 
 had broken faith with him, must not God be 
 capable of as great, or greater forgiveness, 
 toward erring human beings? ‘The thought 
 fired his imagination; he stood up before the na- 
 tion and proclaimed it with burning zeal—a God 
 so strong that he could destroy, yet so tender 
 that he would not! 
 
 One God. 
 
 A just God. 
 
 A good God. 
 
 These were the three steps in the development 
 of the greatest of all ideas. Hundreds of gen- 
 erations have died since the days of Moses, of 
 Amos and Hosea. The thought of the world on 
 almost every other subject has changed; but the 
 
 95 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 conception of God which these three achieved 
 has remained in control of men’s thinking down 
 to this very hour. 
 
 What was there for Jesus to add? Only one 
 thought, but it was so much more splendid than 
 all which had gone before that it has altered the 
 current of history. He invited frail bewildered 
 humanity to stand upright and look at God face 
 to face! He called upon men to throw away 
 fear, disregard the limitations of their mortality, 
 and claim the Lord of Creation as Father. It 
 is the basis of all revolt, all democracy. For if 
 God is the Father of all men, then all are his 
 children and hence the commonest is equally as 
 precious as the king. No wonder the authori- 
 ties trembled. They were not fools; they recog: 
 nized the implications of the teaching. Hither 
 Jesus’ life or their power must go. No wonder 
 that succeeding generations of authorities have 
 embroidered his Idea and corrupted it, so that 
 the simplest faith in the world has become a 
 complex thing of form and ritual, of enforced 
 observances and “thou shall nots.” It was toe 
 
 96 
 
HIS METHOD 
 
 dangerous a Power to be allowed to wander the 
 world, unleashed and uncontrolled. 
 
 This then was what Jesus wished to send to 
 all creation, through the instrumentality of his 
 eleven men. What were his methods of train- 
 ing? How did he meet prospective believers? 
 How did he deal with objections? By what sort 
 of strategy did he interest and persuade? 
 
 He was making the journey back from Jeru- 
 salem after his spectacular triumph in cleansing 
 the Temple, when he came to Jacob’s Well, and 
 being tired, sat down. His disciples had stopped 
 behind at one of the villages to purchase food, 
 so he was alone. The well furnished the water- 
 supply for the neighboring city of the Samari- 
 tans, and after a little time a woman came out 
 to it, carrying her pitcher on her shoulder. Be- 
 tween her people, the Samaritans, and his peo- 
 ple, the Jews, there was a feud of centuries. To 
 be touched by even the shadow of a Samaritan 
 was defilement according to the strict code of 
 the Pharisees; to speak to one was a crime. The 
 woman made no concealment of her resentment 
 
 97 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 at finding him there. Almost any remark from 
 his lips would have kindled her anger. She 
 would at least have turned away in scorn; she 
 might have summoned her relatives and driven 
 him off. 
 
 An impossible situation, you will admit. How 
 could he meet it? How give his message to one 
 who was forbidden by everything holy to listen? 
 The incident is very revealing: there are times 
 when any word is the wrong word; when only 
 silence can prevail. Jesus knew well this pre- 
 cious secret. As the woman drew closer he made 
 no move to indicate that he was conscious of her 
 approach. His gaze was on the ground. When 
 he spoke it was quietly, musingly, as if to him- 
 self: 3 
 
 “If you knew who I am,” he said, “you would 
 not need to come out here for water. I would 
 give you living water.” 
 
 The woman stopped short, her interest chal- 
 lenged in spite of herself; she set down the 
 pitcher and looked at the stranger. It was a 
 burning hot day; the well was far from the city; 
 
 98 : 
 
HIS METHOD 
 
 she was heated and tired. What did he mean 
 by such a remark? She started to speak, checked 
 herself and burst out impulsively, her curiosity 
 overleaping her caution: 
 
 “What are you talking about? Do you mean 
 to say you are greater than our father Jacob 
 who gave us this well? Have you some magic 
 that will save us this long walk in the sun?’ 
 
 Dramatic, isn’t it—a single sentence achiev- 
 ing triumph, arousing interest and creating de- 
 sire. With sure instinct he followed up his 
 initial advantage. He began to talk to her in 
 terms of her own life, her ambitions, her hopes, 
 knowing so well that each of us is interested first 
 of all and most of all in himself. When the dis- 
 ciples came up a few minutes later they found an 
 unbelievable sight—a Samaritan listening with 
 rapt attention to the teaching of a Jew. 
 
 He prepared to go but she would not allow 
 it. Running back to the city she summoned her 
 brothers and relatives. 
 
 “Come,” she cried, ‘and see a man who told 
 me all things that ever I did.” 
 
 99 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 They followed her out to the well—these prej- 
 udiced, reluctant men and women who, an hour 
 before, would have thought it incredible that 
 they should ever hold conversation with one of 
 their traditional enemies. Suspiciously at first 
 but with steadily ascending interest they lis- 
 tened to his talk. It is said that great leaders 
 are born, not made. ‘The saying is true to this 
 degree, that no man can persuade people to do 
 what he wants them to do, unless he genuinely 
 likes people, and believes that what he wants 
 them to do is to their own advantage. The secret 
 of Jesus’ success was an affection for folks 
 which so shone in his eyes and rang in his tones, 
 that even the commonest man in a crowd felt in- 
 stinctively that here was a friend. ... The 
 afternoon shadows lengthened while he talked. 
 Other citizens, attracted by the gathering, made 
 their way out to the well and added themselves 
 to the audience. It came time for the evening 
 meal; again he prepared to go. They would not 
 hear of it. He must be their guest, meet their 
 neighbors, tell them more, persuade them further! 
 
 100 
 
HIS METHOD 
 
 “They besought him to abide with them; and 
 he abode there two days.” 
 
 Some years later a tired pilgrim arrived in the 
 up-to-date and perfectly self-satisfied city of 
 Athens. He arrived on foot because he had no 
 car-fare. His shoes were sadly worn and his 
 clothing unkempt and covered with dust. One 
 would say that these disadvantages were enough 
 to disqualify him for success in a town so smart 
 and critical, but he had other handicaps more 
 fundamental. He was too short and thickset to 
 be impressive; his eyes had a decided squint; al- 
 together he was not at all the kind of man who 
 commands respect before a crowd. ‘That he 
 should come to the most sophisticated center of 
 the ancient world and expect to make an im- 
 pression was extraordinary. ‘The principal busi- 
 ness of the clever gentlemen of that city was 
 standing around the market-place, there to 
 “hear or to tell some new thing.” 'They were the 
 joke-makers and fashion-setters of their era. 
 They originated new ideas; they did not buy 
 them from the provinces. And as for investing 
 
 Le 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 in a new religion—they had hundreds of reli- 
 gions, some new, some fairly new, some old, but 
 all entirely unused. 
 
 A. fine appreciative atmosphere for the for- 
 eign visitor named Paul. See him trudging 
 along through the suburbs and up toward the 
 center of the town. Poor little chap; wait until 
 the wise ones catch sight of him; they will cer- 
 tainly make a fine afternoon’s sport! 
 
 Straight on he marched until he reached Mars 
 Hill, the Broadway and Forty-second Street 
 - corner of town. A few of the clever ones gath- 
 ered about, moved by the same cynical curiosity 
 which would have prompted them to look at a 
 sword swallower or a three legged calf. The 
 critical moment had come. Paul must say some- 
 thing, and no matter what he said, it would be 
 wrong. Suppose he had begun in the usual way: 
 “Good morning, gentlemen, I have something 
 new in the way of a religion which I’d like to 
 explain, if you'll give me just a minute of your 
 time.” A boisterous laugh would have ended 
 his talk . . . a new religion . . . what did they 
 care about that? 
 
 102 
 
HIS METHOD 
 
 But Paul knew the psychology of the crowd. 
 
 “Men of Athens, I congratulate you on hav- 
 Ing so many fine religions.” Nothing in that to 
 which any one could take offense. The sophisti- 
 cated pressed up a little closer; what was the 
 chap driving at, anyhow? “I’ve traveled about 
 quite a bit and your assortment is larger and 
 better than I have seen anywhere else. For as 
 J passed up your main street I noticed that you 
 not only have altars erected to all the regular 
 gods and goddesses; you even have one dedi- 
 cated to the UNKNOWN GOD. 
 
 “Let me tell you an interesting coincidence, 
 gentlemen. This God whom you worship with- 
 out knowing his name, is the very God whom I 
 represent.” 
 
 Can you see the crowd? Cynical but curious; 
 eager to turn the whole thing into a joke, yet 
 - unwilling to miss a chance to hear the latest. 
 Paul stopped short for a moment and voices 
 called out demanding that he go on. It appears 
 later in the narrative that after his talk was over 
 “some mocked, and others said, ‘We will hear 
 
 103 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 thee again of this matter.’” It was not a com- 
 plete victory such as his Master had achieved at 
 Jacob’s Well; but the audience which had con- 
 fronted Paul was hostile, and his initial success 
 so cleverly won, that this story deserves a place 
 beside the one which we have just related. 'To- 
 gether they help us to understand the great 
 mystery—how a religion, originating in a de- 
 spised province of a petty country, could so 
 quickly carry around the world. It conquered 
 not because there was any demand for another 
 religion but because Jesus knew how, and taught 
 his followers how, to catch the attention of the 
 indifferent, and translate a great spiritual con- 
 ception into terms of practical self-concern. 
 
 Surely no one will consider us lacking in~ 
 reverence if we say that every one of the “prin- 
 ciples of modern salesmanship” on which busi- 
 ness men so much pride themselves, are bril- 
 hantly exemplified in Jesus’ talk and work. 
 The first of these and perhaps the most im- 
 portant is the necessity for “putting yourself in 
 step with your prospect.” A great sales mana- 
 ger used to illustrate it in this way: 
 
 104 
 
HIS METHOD 
 
 “When you want to get aboard a street car 
 which is already in motion, you don’t run at it 
 from right angles and try to make the platform 
 in one wild leap,” he would say. “If you do, 
 you are likely to find yourself on the floor. No. 
 You run along beside the car, increasing your 
 pace until you are moving just as rapidly as it 
 is moving and in the same direction. ‘Then you 
 step aboard easily, without danger or jolt. 
 
 “The minds of busy men are in motion,” he 
 would continue. “They are engaged with some- 
 thing very different from the thought you have 
 to present. You can’t jump directly at them 
 and expect to make an effective landing. You 
 must put yourself in the other man’s place; try 
 to imagine what he is thinking; let your first re- 
 mark be in line with his thoughts; follow it by 
 another with which you know he will easily 
 agree. Thus, gradually, your two minds reach 
 a point where they can join without conflict. 
 You encourage him to say ‘yes’ and ‘yes’ and 
 ‘that’s right’ and ‘I’ve noticed that myself,’ until - 
 he says the final ‘yes’ which is your favorable 
 decision.” 
 
 105 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 | Jesus taught all this without ever teaching it. | 
 aes one of his conversations, every contin 
 between his mind and others, is worthy of the 
 attentive study of any sales manager. Passing 
 along the shores of a lake one day, he saw two 
 of the men whom he wanted as disciples. Their 
 minds were in motion; their hands were busy 
 with their nets; their conversation was about 
 conditions in the fishing trade, and the prospects 
 of a good market for the day’s catch. To have 
 broken in on such thinking with the offer of 
 employment as preachers of a new religion 
 would have been to confuse them and invite a 
 certain rebuff. What was Jesus’ approach? 
 
 “Come with me,” he said, “and I will make 
 you fishers of men.” | 
 
 Fishers . . . that was a word they could un- 
 derstand ... fishers of men... that was a 
 new idea . . . what was he driving at . . . fish 
 ers of men... it sounded interesting... 
 well, what is it, anyway? 
 
 He sat on a hillside overlooking a fertile 
 country. Many of the crowd who gathered 
 
 106 
 
HIS METHOD 
 
 around him were farmers, with their wives and 
 sons and daughters. He wanted their interest 
 and attention; it was important to make them 
 understand, at the very outset, that what he had 
 to say was nothing vague or theoretical but of 
 direct and immediate application to their daily 
 lives. 7 
 “A sower went forth to sow,” he began, “and 
 when he sowed some seeds fell by the wayside 
 and the fowls came and devoured them up. . . .” 
 Were they interested ... were they? Every 
 man of them had gone through that experience 
 . . . the thievish crows ... . many a good 
 day’s work they had spoiled. . . . So this 
 Teacher knew something about the troubles that 
 farmers had to put up with, did he? Fair enough 
 . - . let’s hear what he has to say.... 
 
 It would be easy to multiply examples, taking 
 each of his parables and pointing out the keen 
 knowledge of human motives on which it is 
 
 based. In a later chapter we shall have some- 
 
 thing more to say of these parables—the most 
 powerful advertisements of all time.) For our 
 107 
 
 i, 
 4, af 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 present purpose the examples already given are 
 enough. They show how instantly he won his 
 audiences. With his very first sentence he put 
 ‘himself in step with them; it was invariably a 
 thought in line with their own thinking, easy for 
 even the dullest to understand, and shrewdly 
 calculated to awaken an appetite for more. 
 Every salesman knows the value of being able 
 to sense an objection and meet it before it is ad- 
 vanced. Jesus knew that far better. He went 
 one night to dine with a prominent Pharisee. 
 His presence in any house attracted strangers 
 who found it easy under the less rigid conven- 
 tions of those days, to make their way into the 
 room, where they could watch him and listen. 
 Thus, while the Pharisee’s dinner was in prog- 
 ress, a certain woman of unfortunate experience 
 crept into the room and kneeling down by Jesus 
 began to bathe his feet with precious ointment 
 and wipe them with her hair. Jesus knew what 
 ‘that outburst of unselfishness meant to an over- 
 burdened spirit, and accepted the tribute with 
 gracious dignity, even though its emotional 
 108 
 
HIS METHOD 
 
 warmth must have been embarrassing. But all 
 the time he was perfectly well aware of the 
 thoughts that were passing through the self- 
 satisfied mind of his host. 
 
 “Ah,” said that cynical gentleman to himself, 
 “if he were a prophet he would have known that 
 this woman is a sinner, and would have refused 
 to let her touch him.” 
 
 He might have been tempted to put his 
 thought into words, but he never had a chance. 
 Quick as a flash Jesus turned on him: 
 
 “Simeon, I have somewhat to say to thee.” 
 
 “Teacher, say on.” It was a half concealed 
 sneer. 
 
 “There was a man who had two debtors,” said 
 Jesus. “One owed him five hundred shillings 
 and the other fifty. Neither could pay and he 
 forgave them both. Which of them, do you 
 
 think, will love him most?” 
 
 Simon sensed a trap, and moved cautiously. 
 
 “T imagine the one who owed him the most,” 
 
 said he, and wondered what was coming next. 
 
 “Right,” said Jesus. “Simon, seest thou this 
 
 - woman?” 
 109 
 
 ; 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 Simon nodded. He began to wish the cons 
 versation had not started. 
 
 “When I came into your house, you gave me 
 no water for my feet,’ Jesus continued with 
 that extraordinary frankness which cut straight 
 to the heart of things. “But she has washed my 
 feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. 
 You gave me no kiss, but she has not ceased to 
 kiss my feet. You poured none of your ex- 
 pensive oil on my head, but she has taken her 
 precious ointment, which she could ill-afford, 
 and anointed me.” 
 
 Simon squirmed in his seat. It was not com- 
 fortable to be reminded before a crowd of his 
 delinquencies as a host. He had invited this “‘in- 
 teresting” ex-carpenter because it was quite thé 
 fad to invite him. But the whole atmosphere 
 had been one of condescension—the unspoken 
 intimation was, “Here’s a good dinner; now go 
 on and amuse us with your ideas.” ‘There had 
 been none of the niceties; the rich are so well 
 accustomed to being inconsiderate! 
 
 The dining-room was silent; every eye was 
 
 110 
 
HIS METHOD 
 
 turned upon the Teacher; the poor woman still 
 knelt at his feet, embarrassed that her action 
 should have caused so much comment, wonder- 
 ing if the incident was to end in a rebuke. Jesus 
 did not look down at her; he was not yet through 
 with Simon. 
 
 “She is like the debtor who owed the five hun- 
 dred shillings,” he said. “Her sins which are 
 many are forgiven, for she loved much. To 
 whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.” 
 And then with a glance of infinite tenderness: 
 
 “Thy sins are forgiven,” he said to her simply. 
 “Thy faith has saved thee; go in peace.” 
 
 It is easy to imagine that the conversation 
 rather dragged during the remainder of the 
 meal. Even very supercilious and self-assured 
 gentlemen hesitated to expose themselves to the 
 thrusts of a mind which could anticipate crit- 
 icisms before they were uttered, and deal with 
 them so crisply. 
 
 On other occasions he won his case with a sin- 
 gle question—one of the best weapons in the 
 whole armory of persuasion and all too infre- 
 
 111 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 quently employed. How often a blundering ad- 
 vocate allows himself to be dragged into futile 
 argument, when by throwing the burden back 
 on to his opponent’s shoulders he could attain an 
 easy mastery. Jesus seldom argued. ‘The rec- 
 ord of his questions is a fruitful study for all of 
 us who, in our every-day affairs, must deal with 
 other minds. Let us recall two of those ques- 
 tions. 
 
 The Pharisees set a trap for him. One Sab- 
 bath day they hunted up a man with a withered 
 hand and deposited him in the Temple where 
 Jesus would be sure to pass. Then they waited. 
 If Jesus healed him, it would be a breach of the 
 Code, which forbade any activity on the Sab. 
 bath. They would have that to recall when the 
 crisis came. Jesus sensed the test and met it 
 without hesitation. 
 
 “Stand forth,” he said to the poor chap. 
 
 The bigoted formalists pushed in close. This 
 was their moment. They had dug the pit clev- 
 erly and now he was about to fall in. The soft 
 light went out of Jesus’ eyes, the muscles of his 
 
 112 
 
HIS METHOD 
 
 jaw grew tense, he looked “round on them with 
 anger,” as he demanded: 
 
 “Is it lawful on the Sabbath day to do good 
 or to do harm? To save a life or to kill?” 
 
 He waited for an answer but none came. 
 What could they say? If they replied that the 
 law forbade a good deed, their answer would be 
 repeated all over town. The crowd of common 
 folks who followed him were his friends, not 
 theirs—only too glad to spread a story which 
 would cast discredit on the proud defenders of 
 the law. The Pharisees had sense enough to 
 recognize that fact, at least. They “held their 
 peace,” and sullenly slipped away. 
 
 On another day it was his own disciples who 
 learned how he could compress a whole philos- 
 ophy into a well-directed interrogation. ‘They 
 were by no means free from the frailties of or- 
 dinary human nature. They fussed about little 
 things—arguing among themselves as to who 
 should have preeminence; wondering how their 
 bills were to be met, and just where the whole 
 enterprise was coming out. 
 
 113 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 He brought them up short with a question. 
 
 “Which of you by being anxious can add a 
 single day to his life?” he demanded. “And if 
 you can’t do this simple thing, why worry about 
 the rest? Consider the ravens; they don’t sow 
 or reap; they have no store-houses or barns, and 
 yet God takes care of them. Don’t you suppose 
 that you are of more value in his sight than a 
 flock of birds?’ 
 
 How trivial seemed their concern and contro- 
 versy after a question like that! 
 
 In all the three years of his public work there 
 was not one moment when he failed to be com- 
 plete master of the situation. He was accessible 
 to anybody—in the market-place, in the temple 
 and on the main streets—fair game for the keen 
 and clever. It became quite a recognized sport 
 to match wits with him. /Pharisees tried it; 
 Scribes tried it; “a certain lawyer” tried it. Al- 
 ways they came off second best. At length the 
 very chiefs of the priests came one afternoon. 
 Lesser antagonists had gone down; now the 
 leaders themselves would take the matter in 
 
 114 
 
HIS METHOD 
 
 hand. They would demolish this presumptuous 
 upstart; by the splendor of their presence and 
 their offices, they would awe him into line. 
 
 “By what authority do you do these things,” 
 they demanded bruskly, “and who gave you 
 this authority?’ 
 
 If they expected him to yield an inch they re- 
 ceived the surprise of their lives. His retort was 
 instantaneous. 
 
 “Tl ask you a question,” he exclaimed, “and 
 if you answer it, then I'll tell you by what au- 
 thority I work. Answer me now, what about 
 John; was his work in baptizing inspired by 
 Heaven or by men?” 
 
 They caught their breath. Their heads came 
 together; excited and disturbing whispers were 
 exchanged. What should they say? If we an- 
 swer that John had come from Heaven, he will 
 say, “Well, why then didn’t you believe him?” 
 If we say, that he came from men, this crowd of 
 fools will tear us to pieces, because every last 
 one of them believes that John was a prophet. 
 What shall we do? Better tell him we don’t 
 
 115 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 know; better get out of here as quickly as we 
 can. 
 
 “We don’t know,” they muttered. 
 
 “All right,” said Jesus serenely. “You don’t 
 answer my question. Neither will I answer 
 yours.” 
 
 It was a perfect triumph. Amid the jeers of 
 the delighted crowd they gathered up their fine 
 robes and went away. 
 
 ( You would think as you read the narratives 
 - that the wise ones would have been wise enough 
 to let him alone. Even a child having burned 
 its fingers once, knows enough to avoid the fire. 
 But their jealousy and anger drove them back 
 again and again; and every time he was too 
 much for them. In the very last week the ~ 
 “Pharisees and Herodians” gathered together a 
 picked delegation of sharp wits and sent them 
 with what looked like an absolutely fool-proof 
 bomb. They started in with flattery; after all 
 he was a simple fellow from the provinces—a 
 few kind words and his head would be turned. 
 Then they would catch him off his guard. 
 “Teacher, we know that you speak the truth,“ 
 116 
 
HIS METHOD 
 
 they said, “and that you don’t care anything 
 about the authority or office which a man holds. 
 You treat them all alike, and speak your mind 
 bluntly because you get your thoughts direct 
 from God. 
 
 “Now, tell us, is it lawful to give tribute unto 
 Cesar or not?” 
 
 Very clever, gentlemen, very clever indeed. 
 If he answers that it isn’t lawful, you will have 
 the record of his reply in Herod’s hands in an 
 hour; and instantly he will be under arrest for 
 propagating rebellion against the Roman pow- 
 er; if he answers that it 7s lawful, he will lose his 
 popular following. Because the people hate the 
 Romans, and dodge the taxes at every turn 
 ° « . very, very clever. 
 
 He looked at them with frank contempt, as 
 if to say, “Do you really think I am quite as 
 simple as all that?” 
 
 “Somebody lend me a coin,” he exclaimed. An 
 eager listener dug into his pocket and produced 
 it. Jesus held it up where all could see. 
 
 “Whose picture is that?’ he demanded. 
 “Whose name?” 
 
 117 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 They began to be uneasy. The shrewdest 
 suspected that the path was leading toward the 
 precipice, yet there was no escape. They must 
 answer. “Cesar’s,” they replied. 
 
 “Very good,” said he ironically. “Render 
 unto Cesar the things that are Cesar’s and 
 unto God the things that are God’s.” 
 
 Another repulse for the best legal talent in 
 the city . . . another good laugh for the crowd 
 
 . another story to tell in the taverns, in the 
 - Temple court, in the market~place . . . wher- 
 ever the common folks crowded together. ... 
 Says the narrative describing the defeated ques- 
 tioners: “they marveled greatly at him.” ... 
 and in another place ... “and no man after 
 that durst ask him any question.” Every objec- 
 tion had been turned back upon the objectors; 
 every trap had sprung upon the fingers of those 
 who set it. No argument was left for them ex- 
 cept the final one which is always a confession 
 of failure. They had the brute force on their 
 side. They could not stand against his thinking 
 but they could, and did, nail him on the cross. 
 
 118 
 
HIS METHOD 
 
 Not in time, however. Not until his work was 
 finished. Not until he had trained and equipped 
 a force which would carry on with double power 
 because of the very fact of his death. . . . Every 
 year in our country there are thousands of con- 
 ventions—political, charitable, business. Most 
 of them are a waste. They are conducted on 
 the false assumption that over-selling and ex- 
 aggeration are potent forces—that the energies 
 of men respond most powerfully to promises of 
 easy victory and soft rewards. The great leaders 
 of the world have known better. 
 
 Gideon, for example. When he called for vol- 
 unteers to fight the Midianites, thirty-two thou- 
 sand responded. Gideon looked them over crit- 
 ically. He knew the conflicting motives that 
 had brought them there—some from mere love 
 of adventure; some because they were afraid to 
 be taunted with cowardice; some for plunder; 
 some to get away from their wives. He deter- 
 mined to weed them out at once: 
 
 “Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him go 
 home to-night,” he proclaimed. 
 
 119 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 The next morning twenty-two thousand had 
 vanished. Only ten thousand remained. 
 
 Still Gideon was unsatisfied. He hit upon a 
 stratagem. Down the hillside and across a little 
 brook he led the whole band. It was a hot 
 morning; the men were thirsty and tired; and 
 Gideon, standing on the bank and watching, had 
 a shrewd idea that character would show itself 
 under the strain. Sure enough, of the ten thou- 
 sand, a vast majority knelt down and pushed 
 their faces into the cool clear water, taking long 
 refreshing draughts. But a few were too eager. 
 They caught up the water in their hands, dashed 
 it into their faces, and hurried across to the other 
 bank, restless to be on! 
 
 Only a handful; only three hundred. But 
 Gideon kept them and sent the rest home. Bet- 
 ter three hundred who could not be held back 
 from the battle than ten thousand who were 
 merely half-heartedly ready to go. 
 
 With the three hundred he won. 
 
 That higher type of leadership which calls 
 forth men’s greatest energies by the promise of 
 
 120 
 
HIS METHOD 
 
 obstacles rather than the picture of rewards— 
 that was the leadership of Jesus. By it he tem- 
 pered the soft metal of his disciples’ nature into 
 keen hard steel. The final conference with 
 which he prepared them for their work is thrill- 
 ing in its majestic appeal to courage. Listen to 
 the calm recital of the deprivations and dangers: 
 
 Get you no gold, nor silver, nor brass in your 
 purses. 
 
 No wallet for your journey; neither two 
 coats, nor shoes nor staff. 
 
 Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst 
 of wolves. 
 
 Beware of men: for they will deliver you up 
 to councils and in their synagogues they will 
 scourge you; yea and before governors and 
 kings shall ye be brought for my sake. 
 
 He that loveth father or mother more than 
 me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son 
 or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 
 And he that doth not take his cross and follow 
 after me is not worthy of me. 
 
 He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he 
 that loseth his life for my sake shall find it. 
 
 121 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 Watch the faces and the figures. See the 
 shoulders straighten, the muscles of the lips 
 grow hard. There is power in those faces that 
 will not be withstood—power born of the most 
 transforming appeal which ever fell on human 
 ears. The voice of the speaker was stilled at the 
 cross, but the power carried on. It withstood 
 prisons and scourging; ship-wreck and weari- 
 ness; public condemnation and the loss of per- 
 sonal friends; chains, and the roar of lions and 
 the flames. James was the first to die. Herod 
 Agrippa killed him. His brother John, impris- 
 oned for years on the stony island of Patmos, 
 suffered martyrdom amidst frightful torture. 
 Andrew died on a cross whose pattern bears his 
 name to this day. Simon Peter insisted that he - 
 be crucified head downward, deeming himself 
 unworthy to suffer in the manner of his Lord. 
 Nero stilled the voice of Paul by beheading him; 
 but the spirit of Paul which had proclaimed that 
 “‘we are in all things more than conquerors,” be- 
 gan at that moment to have its larger influence. 
 
 Just a few brief years and every member of 
 
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HIS METHOD 
 
 the original organization was gone, but the 
 “blood of the martyrs was the seed of the 
 church.” . The Master’s training had done its 
 work. 
 
 The great Idea prevailed. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 His ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 HE was, as we say, “many sided,” and every 
 man sees the side of his nature which appeals 
 most to himself. 
 
 The doctor thinks of the great physician 
 whose touch never failed, who by some mystery 
 preceded modern science in its still imperfect 
 knowledge of the relation of the spirit to health. 
 The preacher studies the Sermon on the Mount 
 and marvels that truths so profound should be 
 expressed in words so clear and simple. The 
 agitator remembers only that he denounced the 
 rich; and the communist that his disciples car- 
 ried a common purse. Lawyers have written in 
 praise of his pleading at his trial; and the liter- 
 ary critics of every age have cheerfully acknowl- 
 edged his mastery. 
 
 I am not a doctor, or lawyer or critic but an 
 
 124 
 
HIS ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 advertising man. As a profession advertising 
 is young; as a force it is as old as the world. The 
 first four words ever uttered, “‘Let there be 
 light,” constitute its charter. All Nature is 
 vibrant with its impulse. The brilliant plumage 
 of the bird is color advertising addressed to the 
 emotions of its mate. Plants deck themselves 
 with blossoms, not for beauty only, but to at- 
 tract the patronage of the bee and so by spread- 
 ing pollen on its wings, to insure the perpetua- 
 tion of their kind. 
 
 The spacious firmament on high, 
 
 And all the blue ethereal sky, 
 
 And spangled Heavens a shining frame, 
 Their great Original proclaim. 
 
 It has been remarked that “no astronomer can 
 be an atheist,” which is only another way of say- 
 ing that no man can look up at the first and 
 greatest electric sign—the evening stars—and 
 refuse to believe its message: “There is a Cause: 
 A God.” I propose in this chapter to speak of 
 the advertisements of Jesus which have survived 
 
 125 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 for twenty centuries and are still the most potent 
 influence in the world. 
 
 Let us begin by asking why he was so suc- 
 cessful in mastering public attention and why, 
 in contrast, his churches are less so? ‘The an- 
 swer is twofold. In the first place he recognized 
 the basic principle that all good advertising is 
 news. He was never trite or commonplace; he | 
 had no routine. If there had been newspapers 
 in those days, no city editor could have said, “No 
 need to visit him to-day; he will be doing just 
 what he did last Sunday.” Reporters would 
 have followed him every single hour, for it was 
 impossible to predict what he would say or do; 
 every action and word were news. 
 
 Take one single day as an example. The four 
 gospel narratives are not chronological. ‘They 
 are personal records written after his death, not 
 diaries in which entries were made every night. 
 Thus we can not say of most of the incidents: 
 “This happened on such and such a day.” 'The 
 four stories repeat and conflict and overlap. In 
 one place, however—the ninth chapter of Mat- 
 
 126 
 
HIS ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 thew—we have a detailed account of a single 
 day’s work. One of the events was the calling 
 of Matthew himself to discipleship; hence we 
 have every reason to suppose that the writer’s 
 memory of this particular day must have been 
 more than usually reliable. Let us look at the 
 twenty-four hours’ schedule; see how it bristles 
 with front-page news. 
 
 The activity begins at sunrise. Jesus was an 
 early riser; he knew that the simplest way to live 
 more than an average life is to add an hour to 
 the fresh end of the day. At sunrise, therefore, 
 we discover a little boat pushing out from the 
 shore of the lake. It makes its steady way across 
 and deposits Jesus and his disciples in Caper- 
 naum, his favorite city. He proceeds at once to 
 the house of a friend, but not without being dis- 
 covered. The report spreads instantly that he \ 
 is in town, and before he can finish breakfast a © 
 crowd has collected outside the gate—a poor 
 palsied chap among them. 
 
 The day’s work is at hand. 
 
 Having slept soundly in the open air he meets 
 
 127 
 
+ 
 
 THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 the call with quiet nerves. ‘The smile that car- 
 ried confidence into even the most hopeless heart 
 spreads over his features; he stoops down toward 
 the sufferer. 
 
 “Be of good cheer, my son,” he cries, “your 
 sins are all forgiven.” 
 
 Sins forgiven! Indeed! The respectable 
 members of the audience draw. back with sharp 
 disapproval. “What a blasphemous phrase,” 
 they exclaim. “Who authorized him to exercise 
 the functions of God? What right has he to de- 
 cide whose sins shall be forgiven?” 
 
 Jesus sensed rather than heard their protest. 
 He never courted controversy but he never 
 dodged it; and much of his fame arose out of the 
 reports of his verbal vietories. Men have been 
 elected to office—even such high office as the 
 Presidency—by being so good-natured that they 
 never made an enemy. But the leaders who are 
 remembered are those who had plenty of critics 
 and dealt with them vigorously. 
 
 “What’s the objection?” he exclaimed, turn- 
 ing on the dissenters. ‘““Why do you stand there 
 
 128 
 
HIS ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 and criticize? Is it easier to say, “Thy sins be 
 forgiven thee,’ or to say, ‘Arise, take up thy bed 
 and walk? ‘The results are the same.” DBend- 
 ing over the sick man again he said: “Arise, take 
 up thy bed and go unto thine house.” 
 
 The man stirred and was amazed to find that 
 his muscles responded. Slowly, doubtingly he 
 struggled to his feet, and with one great shout 
 of happiness started off, surrounded by his ju- 
 bilant friends. ‘The critics had received their 
 answer, but they refused to give up. For an 
 hour or more they persisted in angry argument, 
 until the meeting ended in a tumult. 
 
 Can you imagine the next day’s issue of the 
 Capernaum News, if there had been one? 
 
 a, 
 
 PALSIED MAN HEALED 
 JESUS OF NAZARETH CLAIMS RIGHT TO 
 FORGIVE SINS 
 PROMINENT SCRIBES OBJECT 
 “BLASPHEMOUS, SAYS LEADING CITIZEN. 
 “BUT ANYWAY I CAN WALK,” HEALED MAN 
 RETORTS. 
 
 129 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 Front page story number one and the day is 
 still young. 
 
 One of those who had been attracted by the 
 excitement was a tax-collector named Matthew. 
 Being a man of business he could not stay 
 through the argument, but slipped away early 
 and was hard at work when Jesus passed by a 
 few minutes before noon. 
 
 “Matthew, I want you,” said Jesus. 
 
 That was all. No argument; no offer of in- 
 ducements; no promise of rewards. Merely “I 
 want you;” and the prosperous tax-collector 
 closed his office, made a feast for the brilliant 
 young teacher and forthwith announced himself 
 a disciple. | 
 
 x * # 
 PROMINENT TAX COLLECTOR JOINS 
 NAZARETH FORCES 
 MATTHEW ABANDONS BUSINESS TO PROMOTE 
 NEW CULT 
 x * # 
 GIVES LARGE LUNCHEON 
 130 
 
HIS ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 Front page story number two. 
 
 The luncheon itself furnished the third sensa- 
 tion. It was not at all the kind of affair which 
 a religious teacher would be expected to ap- 
 prove. Decidedly it was good-natured and 
 noisy. 
 
 No theological test was applied in limit- 
 ing the invitation.. No one stood at the entrance 
 to demand: “What is your belief regarding the 
 birth of Jesus?” Or, “Have you or have you 
 not been baptized?” ‘The doors were flung wide, 
 and, along with the disciples and the respectable 
 folks, a swarm of publicans and sinners trooped 
 in. 
 
 “Outrageous,” grumbled the worthy folk. 
 “Surely if this teacher had any moral standards 
 he never would eat with such rabble.” 
 
 They were shocked; but he was not. That he 
 had condemned himself according to their for- 
 mula worried him not a whit. His liking for 
 folks overran all social boundaries; he just could 
 not seem to remember that some people are nice 
 people, proper people, and some are not. 
 
 131 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 *“Come, come,” he exclaimed to the Pharisees, 
 “won't you ever get over nagging at me because 
 I eat with these outsiders? Who needs the 
 doctor most—they that are well or they that are 
 sick? 
 
 “And here’s another thing to think about,” he 
 added. “You lay so much stress on forms and 
 creeds and occasions—do you suppose God cares 
 about all that? What do you think he meant 
 when he said: ‘I will have mercy and not sacri- 
 fice? -Take that home and puzzle over it.” 
 
 DEFENDS PUBLICANS AND SINNERS 
 A 
 
 JESUS OF NAZARETH WELCOMES THEM AT LUNCH 
 , Me J 
 
 REBUKES PROMINENT PHARISEES 
 * * * 
 ““CREEDS UNIMPORTANT, HE SAYS. “GOD WANTS 
 MERCY NOT SACRIFICE.” 
 
 A fourth big story. You may be sure it was 
 carried into hundreds of homes during the next 
 132 
 
HIS ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 few weeks, and formed the basis for many a long 
 evening’s discussion. 
 
 As the meal drew to its close there came a 
 dramatic interruption—a ruler of the city made 
 his way slowly to the head of the table and stood 
 silent, bowed by the terrible weight of his grief. 
 That morning he had sat at his daughter’s bed- 
 side, clasping her frail white hand in his, watch- 
 ing the flutter of the pulse, trying by the force 
 of his longing to hold that little life back from 
 the precipice. And at last the doctors had told 
 him that it was useless any more to hope. So he 
 had come, this ruler, to the strange young man 
 whose deeds of healing were the sensation of the 
 day. 
 
 Was it too late? ‘The ruler had thought so 
 when he entered the door; but as he stood in 
 that splendid presence a new thrilling conviction 
 gripped him: 
 
 “Master, my daughter is even now dead,” he 
 exclaimed, “but come and lay your hand on her 
 and she will live.” 
 
 Jesus rose from his seat, drawn by that splen- 
 
 133 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 did outburst of faith and without hesitation or 
 questioning he started for the door. Ali his 
 life he seemed to feel that there was no limit 
 at all to what he could do, if only those who 
 beseeched him believed enough. Grasping the 
 ruler’s arm he led the way up the street, his 
 disciples and the motley crowd hurrying along 
 behind. 
 
 They had several blocks to travel, and before 
 their journey was completed another interrup- 
 tion occurred. 
 
 A woman who had been sick for twelve years 
 edged through the crowd, eluded the sharp eyes 
 of the disciples and touched the hem of his gar- 
 ment. “For she said within herself, if I may but 
 touch his garment, I shall be whole.” ... What — 
 an idea. . . . What a Personality his must have 
 been to provoke such ideas. . . . “My daughter 
 is dead, but lay your hands on her and she will 
 
 3? 
 
 live.” . .. “T’ve been sick for twelve years; the 
 doctors can do nothing, but if I only touch his 
 coat I'll be all right.” . . . How can the art- 
 ists possibly have imagined that a sad-faced 
 
 134 
 
HIS ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 weakling could ever inspire such amazing ideas 
 as these! 
 
 The woman won her victory. By that touch, 
 by his smile, by the few words he spoke, her faith 
 rose triumphant over disease. She “was made 
 whole from that hour.” 
 
 Again he moved forward, the crowd pressing 
 hard. The ruler’s residence was now in plain 
 sight. The paid mourners, hired by the hour, 
 were busy about the doorway; they increased 
 their activities as their employer came in sight 
 —hideous wails and the dull sounding of cym- 
 bals—a horrible pretense of grief. Quickening 
 his stride Jesus was in the midst of them. 
 
 “Give place,” he cried with a commanding 
 gesture. “The maid is not dead but sleepeth.” 
 
 They laughed him to scorn. Brushing them 
 aside he strode into the house and took the little 
 girl by the hand. The crowd looked on dum- 
 founded, for at the magic of his touch she 
 opened her eyes, and sat up. 
 
 Front page stories five and six. A woman 
 sick twelve years, and healed! A child whom 
 
 135 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 the doctors had abandoned for dead, sits up and 
 smiles! No wonder a thousand tongues were 
 busy that night advertising his name and work. 
 “The fame thereof went abroad into all that 
 land,” says the narrative. Nothing could keep — 
 it from going abroad. It was irresistible news! ) 
 
 He was advertised by his service, not by his 7 
 sermons; this is the second noteworthy fact. No- 
 where in the Gospels do you find it announced 
 that: 
 
 Jesus of Nazareth Will Denounce 
 The Scribes and Pharisees in the 
 Central Synagogue 
 To-night at Eight O’Clock 
 Special Music 
 
 His preaching was almost incidental. On only 
 one occasion did he deliver a long discourse, and 
 that was probably interrupted often by ques- 
 tions and debates. He did not come to establish 
 a theology but to lead a hfe. Living more 
 healthfully than any of his contemporaries he 
 spread health wherever he went. Thinking 
 
 136 
 
HIS ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 = 
 
 more daringly, more divinely, he expressed him- 
 self in thoughts of surpassing beauty, as natur- 
 ally as a plant bursts into bloom. His ser- 
 mons, if they may be called sermons, were 
 chiefly explanatory of his service. He healed a 
 lame man, gave sight to a blind man, fed the 
 hungry, cheered the poor; and by these works 
 he was advertised much more than by his words. 
 The church, which covets advertising and re- 
 ceives little, is much more fruitful in such good 
 works than the man on the street suspects. Most 
 of our colleges were founded under its inspira- 
 tion; most of our hospitals grew out of, and are 
 supported by, its membership; the ideals that 
 animate all civic enterprises are its ideals; and 
 its members furnish to such movements the most 
 dependable support. More than this, the day 
 by day life of any genuine pastor is a constant 
 succession of healings and helpings, as any one 
 who has been privileged to grow up in a minis- 
 ter’s family very well knows. ‘The door-bell 
 rings at breakfast-time; it rmgs at dinner-time; 
 it rings late at night—and every ring means that 
 
 137 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 some one has come to cast his burden upon the 
 parsonage. A man comes blinded by his greed 
 or hatred or fear—he opens his heart to the pas- 
 tor, and goes away having received his sight. A 
 parent whose child is dead in selfishness, comes 
 leading the child by the hand. And sometimes 
 the preacher is able to touch the withered veins 
 of conscience, and life becomes normal and 
 wholesome again. A man out of work, whose 
 family is hungry, knocks timidly at the parson- 
 age door. And somehow, from the parson’s few 
 loaves and fishes, the other family is fed. 
 
 These are Jesus’ works, done in Jesus’ name, 
 If he were to live again, in these modern days, 
 he would find a way to make them known—to 
 be advertised by his service, not merely by his 
 sermons. One thing is certain: he would not 
 neglect the market-place. Few of his sermons 
 were delivered in synagogues. For the most 
 part he was in the crowded places, the Temple 
 Court, the city squares, the centers where goods 
 were bought and sold. I emphasized this fact 
 once to a group of preachers. 
 
 138 
 
HIS ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 “You mean that we ought to do street preach- 
 ing,’ one of them exclaimed. 
 
 But street preaching is not at all analogous to 
 what Jesus did. The cities in which he worked 
 were both small and leisurely; the market was a 
 gathering place where everybody came at some 
 time—the transfer place for all merchandise and 
 for ideas. Where will you find such a market- 
 place in modern days? A corner of Fifth Ave- 
 nue? A block on Broadway? Only a tiny frac- 
 tion of the city’s people pass any given point in 
 the down-town district on any given day. A 
 man might stand and preach for years at Fifth 
 Avenue and Thirtieth Street, and only one in a 
 hundred thousand would ever know that he 
 lived. 
 
 No; the present day market-place is the news- 
 paper and the magazine. Printed columns are 
 _the modern thoroughfares; published advertise- 
 ments are the cross-roads where the sellers and 
 the buyers meet. Any issue of a national maga- 
 zine is a world’s fair, a bazaar filled with the 
 
 products of the world’s work. Clothes and 
 | 139 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 clocks and candle-sticks; soup and soap and cig- 
 arettes; lingerie and limousines—the best of all 
 of them are there, proclaimed by their makers 
 in persuasive tones. ‘That every other voice 
 should be raised in such great market-places, 
 and the voice of Jesus of Nazareth be still—this 
 is a vital omission which he would find a way to 
 correct. He would be a national advertiser to- 
 day, I am sure, as he was the great advertiser of 
 his own day. To the minds of those who hurry 
 through the bristling pages, he too would send 
 his call: 
 
 What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the 
 whole world and lose his own soul; or what shall 
 aman give in exchange for his soul? 
 
 This would be his challenge in every news- 
 paper and magazine; and with it would be cou- 
 pled an invitation to share in the joyous enter- 
 prise of his work. 
 
 A very successful publisher has a rule that ne 
 photograph shall ever be printed in his news- 
 papers unless it contains human beings. You 
 
 140 
 
HIS ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 and I are interested most of all in ourselves; 
 next to that we are interested in other people. 
 What do they look like? How old are they? 
 What have they done and said? With unerring 
 instinct Jesus recognized and used this trait in 
 human nature. One of the most revealing of all 
 verses to those who would understand the secret 
 of his power is this: “All these things spake 
 Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and with- 
 out a parable spake he not unto them.” A para- 
 ble is a story. He told them stories, stories about 
 people, and let the stories carry his message. He 
 might have adopted very different methods— 
 many teachers and would-be leaders do. He 
 might have dealt in generalities, saying: 
 “When you are going about your business, be 
 as kind as you can. Be thoughtful of the other 
 travelers on the highways of life. Take time to 
 look for those who have fared less fortunately; 
 lend them a helping hand whenever you can.” 
 I say he might have uttered such generalities. 
 But if he had, do you suppose that they would 
 ever have been remembered? Would the dis- 
 141 
 
THK MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 ciples have recorded them? Would our age ever 
 have heard his name? He was far wiser in the 
 laws and habits of the human mind. Instead of 
 the commonplace phrases written above, be 
 painted this striking picture: 
 
 A certain man went down from Jerusalem to 
 Jericho and fell among thieves. 
 
 There’s your illustration and your head-line! If 
 you had lived near Jerusalem or Jericho; if you 
 often had occasion to use that very road, 
 wouldn’t you want to know what happened to 
 that unfortunate traveler? 
 
 “They stripped off his raiment,” the parable 
 continues, “and wounded him, and departed, 
 leaving him half dead.” Pretty soon a priest 
 came by and seeing the victim said to himself: 
 “That’s a shameful thing, the police ought to do 
 something about these outrages.” But he crossed 
 over carefully and passed by on the other side. 
 A certain respectable Levite also appeared. 
 “His own fault,” he sniffed, “ought to be more 
 careful.” And he too passed by. Then a third 
 
 142 
 
HIS ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 traveler drew near, and stopped—and the whole 
 world knows what happened. . . . Generalities 
 would have been soon forgotten. | But the story 
 that had its roots in every-day human experience 
 and need, lives and will live forever. It con- 
 denses the philosophy of Christianity into a half 
 dozen unforgetable paragraphs. | The parable of 
 the Good Samaritan is the greatest advertise- 
 ment of all time. 
 
 Take any one of the parables, no matter which 
 —you will find that it exemplifies all the prin- 
 ciples on which advertising text books are writ- 
 ten. Always a picture in the very first sen- 
 
 tence; crisp, graphic language and a message 
 so clear that even the dullest can not escape ite 
 
 Ten Virgins Went Forth To Meet 
 A Bridegroom 
 
 A striking picture and a striking head-line. 
 The story which follows has not a single wasted 
 word: 
 
 _ Five of the Virgins were wise, and five were 
 foolish. 
 
 4 
 
 143 
 
 Aiea eee Sse 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 They that were foolish took their lamps, and 
 took no oil with them: - 
 
 But the wise took oil in their vessels with their 
 lamps. 
 
 While the bridegroom tarried, they all slum- 
 bered and slept. 
 
 And at midnight there was a cry made, Be- 
 hold the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet 
 him. 
 
 Then all those Virgins arose, and trimmed 
 their lamps. 
 
 And the foolish said unto the wise, “Give us 
 of your oil for our lamps have gone out.” 
 
 But the wise answered, saying, “Not so; lest 
 there be not enough for us and you; but go ye 
 rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.” 
 
 And while they went to buy, the bridegroom 
 came; and they that were ready went in with 
 him to the marriage; and the door was shut. 
 
 Afterward came also the other Virgins, say- 
 ing, “Lord, Lord, open to me.” 
 
 But he answered and said, “Verily, I say unto 
 you, I know you not... ” | 
 
 Watch, therefore, for ye know neither the day 
 nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh. 
 
 Illustrate that with a drawing by a distin- 
 guished artist; set it up according to the best 
 modern typography; bury it in a magazine with 
 
 144 
 
HIS ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 a hundred other pages—will it not stand out? 
 Will it not grip the attention of even the most 
 casual, and make itself read? 
 
 Here is another one: 
 
 What Happened To The One Lost Sheep 
 
 What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if 
 
 he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety 
 and nine in the wilderness, and go after that 
 ~ which is lost, until he find it? 
 
 And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his 
 
 _ shoulders rejoicing. 
 
 And when he cometh home, he calleth his 
 friends and neighbors, saying unto them, “Re- 
 joice with me; for I have found my sheep which 
 
 _ was lost.” 
 
 
 
 I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in 
 
 heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more 
 _ than over ninety and nine just persons which 
 
 need no repentance. ... ” 
 
 If you were given the task of advertising to 
 
 _ the world that God cares enormously for one 
 _ human life—no matter how wayward and wrong 
 the life may be—how could you phrase a mes- 
 - sage more memorable than that? Yet how sim- 
 
 145 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 ple; how sincere; how splendidly crisp and 
 direct. Benjamin Franklin in his autobiog- 
 raphy—that first great American “success 
 story” —tells the process through which he went 
 in acquiring an effective style. He would read 
 a passage from some great master of English, 
 then lay the book aside and attempt to repro- 
 duce the thought in his own words. Comparing 
 his version with the original, he discovered 
 wherein he had obscured the thought, or wasted 
 words, or failed in driving straight to the point. 
 Every advertising man ought to study the para- 
 bles of Jesus in the same fashion, schooling him- 
 self in their language and learning these four big 
 elements of their power. 
 
 1. First of all they are marvelously con- 
 densed, as all good advertising must be. 
 Charles A. Dana, once issued an assignment to 
 a new reporter on the New York Sun, directing 
 him to confine his article to a column. The re- 
 porter protested that the story was too big to be 
 compressed into so small a space. 
 
 “Get a copy of the Bible and read the first 
 
 146 
 
HIS ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 chapter of Genesis,” said Dana. “You'll be sur- 
 prised to find that the whole story of the crea- 
 tion of the world can be told in 600 words.” 
 
 It is an axiom in many magazine offices that 
 the introduction to almost any article can be cut 
 by the editor without sacrificing anything of real 
 value. Even experienced writers almost invari- 
 ably write something before they begin to say 
 anything. Advertising writers are compelled to 
 greater condensation, but they too are guilty of 
 much waste in words. How often you must 
 read and read before you discover just what it 
 is that the advertiser wants you to do. Jesus had 
 no introductions. A single sentence grips your 
 attention; three or four more tell the story; one 
 or two more and the application is driven home. 
 When he wanted a new disciple he said simply 
 “Follow me.” When he sought to explain the 
 deepest philosophic mystery—the personality 
 and character of God—he said, “A king made a 
 banquet and invited many guests. God is that 
 king and you are the guests; the Kingdom of 
 Heaven is happiness—a banquet to be enjoyed.” — 
 
 147 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 Two men spoke on the battleground of Get- 
 tysburg sixty years ago. The first delivered an 
 oration of more than two hours in length; 
 not one person in ten who reads this page 
 can even recall his name; certainly not one in a 
 hundred can quote a single sentence from that 
 “masterly effort.’”’ The second speaker uttered 
 two hundred and fifty words, and those words, 
 Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, are a part of the 
 mental endowment of almost every American.’ 
 
 Many noble prayers have been sent up to the 
 Throne of Grace—long impressive utterances. 
 The prayer which Jesus taught his disciples con- 
 sists of sixty-eight words, and can be written on 
 the back of a post-card. Many poems and 
 essays have been penned by writers who hoped 
 that they were making a permanent place for 
 themselves in literature; but the greatest poem 
 ever written consists of one hundred and eighty- 
 eight words. It is the Twenty-Third Psalm. 
 
 Jesus hated prosy dullness. He praised the 
 Centurion who was anxious not to waste his 
 time; the only prayer which he publicly com- 
 
 148 
 
HIS ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 mended was uttered by a poor publican who 
 merely cried out, “God, be merciful to me a sin- 
 ner.” A seven word prayer, Jesus called it a 
 good one. A sixty-eight word prayer, he said, 
 contained all that men needed to say or God to 
 hear. What would be his verdict on most of our 
 prayers and our speeches and our advertise- 
 ments? 
 
 2. His language was marvelously simple—a 
 second great essential. ‘There is hardly a sen- 
 tence in his teaching which a child can not under- 
 stand. His illustrations were all drawn from the 
 commonest experiences of life; “a sower went 
 forth to sow’; “a certain man had two sons’; 
 ‘a man built his house on the sands”; “the king- 
 dom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed.” 
 The absence of adjectives is striking. Henry 
 Ward Beecher said once that “to a large extent 
 adjectives are like leaves on a switch; they may 
 _make it look pretty, as a branch, but they pre- 
 vent it striking tinglingly when you use it. 
 
 “T recollect a case in which my father at a 
 public meeting was appointed to draw up an 
 149 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 article,” Beecher continued. ‘He had written 
 one sentence: ‘It is wrong.’ Some one in the 
 meeting got up and moved in his enthusiasm 
 that this be corrected, and that the sentence 
 read: “It is exceedingly wrong.’ My father got 
 up and said, in his mild way, “When I was writ- 
 ing out this resolution in its original shape that 
 was the way I wrote it, but to make it stronger, 
 I took out the “exceedingly.” ’ ”’ 
 
 Jesus used few qualifying words and no long 
 ones. We referred a minute ago to those three 
 literary masterpieces, The Lord’s Prayer, The 
 Twenty-Third Psalm, The Gettysburg Address. 
 Recall their phraseology: 
 
 Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be 
 
 thy name 
 
 * * # 
 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want 
 ee & 
 
 Four score and seven years ago 
 * * x 
 Not a single three-syllable word; hardly any 
 two-syllable words. All the greatest things in 
 150 
 
HIS ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 human life are one-syllable things—love, joy, 
 hope, home, child, wife, trust, faith, God—and 
 the great advertisements generally speaking, are 
 those in which the most small words are found. 
 
 83. Sincerity glistened like sunshine through 
 every sentence he uttered; sincerity is the third 
 essential. Many wealthy men have purchased 
 newspapers with the idea of advancing their per- 
 sonal fortunes, or bringing about some political 
 action in which they have a private interest. 
 Such newspapers almost invariably fail. No 
 matter how much money is spent on them, no 
 matter how zealously the secret of their owner- 
 ship is guarded, the readers are conscious that 
 something is wrong. They feel that the voice of 
 the editor is not his own.| The public has a sixth 
 sense for detecting insincerity ; they know in- 
 stinctively when words ring true. 
 
 It was the way Jesus looked at men, and the 
 life he led among them that gave his words 
 transforming power. What he was and what he 
 said were one and the same thing. Nobody could 
 stand at his side for even a minute without being 
 
 151 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 persuaded that here was a man who loved peo- 
 ple and considered even the humblest of them 
 worthy of the best he had to give. There is no 
 superstition more deadening to a writer than the 
 idea that he can “write down” to his readers. No 
 man was ever big enough to build an enduring 
 success on the basis of insincerity; but many 
 comparatively small men, like Peter the Hermit 
 or Billy Sunday, fired with conviction, have 
 been able to create and sustain a very consider- 
 able influence. 
 
 Jesus was notably tolerant of almost all kinds 
 of sinners. He liked the companionship of the 
 rough and ready folk who were entirely outside 
 the churches; he was tender toward unfor- 
 tunate women; he had a special fondness for 
 James and John whose ungovernable tempers 
 had given them the title of “Sons of Thunder”; 
 he forgave the weakness of Peter who denied 
 him; and was not resentful at the unbelief of his 
 near relatives and his native town. But for one 
 sin he had no mercy. He denounced the insin- 
 cerity of the Pharisees in phrases which sting 
 
 152 
 
HIS ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 like the lash of a whip. They thought they had 
 a first mortgage on the Kingdom of Heaven, 
 and he told them scornfully that only those who 
 become like little children have any chance of 
 entering in. 
 
 Little children know no pretense. They are 
 startlingly frank. ‘They look at the world 
 through clear eyes and say only what they think. 
 No writer, no orator, no salesman, exercises any 
 large dominion in the world unless he can hum- 
 ble himself and partake of their nature. 
 
 “Though I speak with the tongues of men and 
 of angels and have not love, I am become as 
 sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal,” wrote 
 Saint Paul. 
 
 Much brass has been sounded and many cym- 
 bals tinkled in the name of advertising; but the 
 advertisements which persuade people to act are 
 written by men who have an abiding respect for 
 the intelligence of their readers, and a deep sin- 
 cerity regarding the merits of the goods they > 
 have to sell. 
 
 153 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 4, Finally he knew the necessity for repeti- 
 tion and practised it. One of the sons of Presi- 
 dent Garfield was traveling with him through 
 Ohio, when the President was addressing county 
 fairs. At the close of the day he asked his boy — 
 what he thought of his speeches. The boy was 
 embarrassed by the question: 
 
 “Why ... why they were fine, dad,” he 
 stammered, “but I felt awfully uncomfortable 
 part of the time. You repeated yourself so 
 often; once you said the very same thing in dif 
 ferent words four times over.” | 
 
 Garfield slapped the boy’s shoulder with a 
 hearty laugh. 
 
 “So you thought your old dad was running 
 out of ideas, did you?” he cried. “Well, I don’t 
 blame you; but there’s a method in his madness. — 
 To-morrow when I reach that passage in my 
 talk, you watch the audience. The first time I 
 make the point, you'll see by their faces that a 
 few folks near the platform get it. But further 
 back there will be noise and commotion; people 
 will be turning their heads to find out who has 
 
 154 
 
HIS ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 just driven up, or what sort of a hat Mrs. Jones 
 has on, and they won’t hear me at all. When I 
 repeat it the first time a few faces in the middle 
 of the crowd will show a response; on the third 
 go, [ll make still more converts, and on the 
 fourth trial they'll all have a notion of what I 
 am talking about. But it takes four shots to 
 land them all; experience with all sorts of audi- 
 ences has made me sure of that.” 
 It has been said that “reputation is repeti- 
 tion.” No important truth can be impressed 
 upon the minds of any large number of people 
 by being said only once. ‘The thoughts which 
 Jesus had to give the world were revolutionary, 
 but they were few in number. “God is your 
 father,” he said, “caring more for the welfare 
 of every one of you than any human father can 
 possibly care for his children. His Kingdom is 
 happiness! his rule is love.” ‘This is what he had 
 _to teach, but he knew the necessity of driving it 
 
 home from every possible angle. So in one of 
 his stories God is the ‘shepherd searching the 
 wilds for one wandering sheep; in another, the 
 : 155 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 Father welcoming home a prodigal boy; in an: 
 other « King who forgives his debtors large 
 amounts and expects them to be forgiving in 
 turn—many stories, many advertisements, but 
 the same big Idea. 
 
 Because the advertisements were unforgete 
 table, the Idea lived, and is to-day the one most 
 powerful influence on human action and 
 thought. To be sure the work of the advertise- 
 ments is far from complete. The Idea that God 
 is the Father of all men—not merely of a spe- 
 cially selected few—has still to penetrate some 
 creeds, and to establish its dominance in society. 
 More or less unconsciously a lot of us share the 
 feeling of the French nobleman in St. Simon’s 
 immortal story who was sure that God would 
 “think twice before damning a person of his 
 quality.” Said the Duchess of Buckingham to 
 the Countess of Huntingdon, in a delicious lete 
 ter: 
 
 I thank your Ladyship for the information 
 concerning the Methodist preachers; their doc- 
 trines are most repulsive and strongly tinctured 
 
 156 
 
HIS ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 with impertinence and disrespect toward their 
 superiors. . . . It is monstrous to be told you 
 have a heart as sinful as the common wretches 
 that crawl on the earth. This is highly offensive 
 and insulting, and I cannot but wonder that 
 your Ladyship should relish any sentiments so 
 much at variance with high rank and good 
 breeding. 
 
 In spite of all the Duchesses of Buckingham, 
 however, the Great Advertisements continue to 
 make progress. Monarchies are succeeded by 
 democracies, building their governments on the 
 firm foundation that men are free and equally 
 entitled to a chance at the good things of life. 
 The privileged protest and the agitator de- 
 nounces, but unmistakably the world is becom- 
 ing every day a fairer, juster and happier living 
 place for the great majority of its inhabitants. 
 
 And whoever feels an impulse to make his 
 own life count in this grand process of human 
 betterment, can have no surer guide for his ac- 
 tivities than the advertisements of Jesus. Let 
 him learn their lesson, that if you would teach 
 people you first must capture their interest with 
 
 157 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 news; that your service rather than your ser- 
 mons must be your claim upon their attention; 
 that what you say must be simple, and brief, and 
 above all sincere—the unmistakable voice of true 
 regard and affection. 
 
 “Ye,” said he, “are my friends.” 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 Tur FounpDER oF MopERN BUSINESS 
 
 WHEN Jesus was twelve years old his father 
 and mother took him to the Feast at Jerusalem. 
 
 It was the big national vacation; even peasant 
 families saved their pennies and looked forward 
 to it through the year. ‘Towns like Nazareth 
 were emptied of their inhabitants except for the 
 few old folks who were left behind to look after 
 the very young ones. Crowds of cheerful pil- 
 grims filled the highways, laughing their way 
 across the hills and under the stars at night. 
 
 In such a mass of folk it was not surprising 
 that a boy of twelve should be lost. When Mary 
 and Joseph missed him on the homeward trip, 
 they took it calmly and began a search among 
 the relatives. 
 
 The inquiry produced no result. Some re- 
 membered having seen him in the Temple, but 
 no one had seen him since. Mary grew fright 
 
 159 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 ened: where could he be? Back there in the city 
 alone? Wandering hungry and tired through 
 the friendless streets? Carried away by other 
 travelers into a distant country? She pictured a 
 hundred calamities. Nervously she and Joseph 
 hurried back over the hot roads, through the 
 suburbs, up through the narrow city streets, up 
 to the courts of the Temple itself. 
 
 And there he was. 
 
 Not lost; not a bit worried. Apparently un- 
 conscious that the Feast was over, he sat in the 
 midst of a group of old men, who were tossing 
 questions at him and applauding the shrewd 
 common sense of his replies. Involuntarily his 
 parents halted—they were simple folk, uneasy 
 among strangers and disheveled by their haste. 
 But after all they were his parents, and a very 
 human feeling of irritation quickly overcame 
 their diffidence. Mary stepped forward and 
 grasped his arm. 
 
 “Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us?” she 
 demanded. “Behold thy father and I have 
 sought thee sorrowing.” 
 
 160 
 
FOUNDER OF MODERN BUSINESS 
 
 I wonder what answer she expected to receive, 
 Did she ever know exactly what he was going to 
 say: did any one in Nazareth quite understand 
 this keen, eager lad, who had such curious mo- 
 ments of abstraction and was forever breaking 
 out with remarks that seemed so far beyond his 
 years? 
 
 He spoke to her now with deference, as al- 
 ways, but in words that did not dispel but rather 
 added to her uncertainty. 
 
 “How is it that ye sought me?’ he asked, 
 “Wist ye not that I must be about my father’s 
 business?” 
 
 His father’s business, indeed, as if that wasn’t 
 exactly where they wanted him to be. His 
 father owned a prosperous carpenter shop in 
 Nazareth, and that was the place for the boy, as 
 he very well knew. She was on the point of say- 
 ing so, but there was something in his look and 
 tone that silenced her. She and Joseph turned 
 
 and started out, and Jesus followed them—away 
 
 ! 
 | 
 | 
 
 ——E——— 
 
 from the temple and the city back to little 
 Nazareth. 
 161 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 His hour of boyish triumph had not turned 
 his head. He knew how thorough must be his 
 preparation for any really successful work. A’ 
 building can rise high into the air only as it has 
 sunk its foundations deep into the earth; the part 
 of a man’s life which the world sees is effective 
 in proportion as it rests upon solid work which 
 is never seen. Instinctively he knew this. For 
 eighteen years more he was content to remain in 
 that country town—until his strength was at its 
 summit; until he had done his full duty by his 
 mother and the younger children. Until his 
 hour had come. 
 
 But what interests us most in this one re- 
 corded incident of his boyhood is the fact that 
 for the first time he defined the purpose of his 
 career. He did not say, “Wist ye not that I 
 must practise preaching?” or “Wist ye not that 
 I must get ready to meet the arguments of men 
 like these?’ The language was quite different, 
 and well worth remembering. ‘“‘Wist ye not that 
 I must be about my father’s business?” he said. 
 He thought of his life as business. What did he 
 
 162 
 
FOUNDER OF MODERN BUSINESS 
 
 mean by business? To what extent are the prin- 
 ciples by which he conducted his business ap- 
 plicable to ours? And if he were among us 
 again, in our highly competitive world, would his 
 business philosophy work? 
 
 On one occasion, you recall, he stated his rec- 
 ipe for success. It was on the afternoon when 
 James and John came to ask him what promo- 
 tion they might expect. They were two of the 
 most energetic of the lot, called “Sons of Thun- 
 der,” by the rest, being noisy and always in the 
 midst of some sort of a storm. ‘They had joined 
 the ranks because they liked him, but with no 
 very definite idea of what it was all about; and 
 now they wanted to know where the enterprise 
 was heading, and just what there would be in it 
 for them. , 
 
 “Master,” they said, “we want to ask what 
 plans you have in mind for us. You're going to 
 need big men around you when you establish 
 your kingdom; our ambition is to sit on either 
 side of you, one on your right hand and the other 
 on your left.” 
 
 163 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 Who can object to that attitude? If a man 
 fails to look after himself, certainly no one will 
 look after him. If you want a big place, go ask 
 for it. ‘That’s the way to get ahead. 
 
 Jesus answered with a sentence which sounds 
 poetically absurd. 
 
 “Whosoever will be great among you, shall be 
 your minister,” he said, “and whosoever of you 
 will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.” 
 
 A fine piece of rhetoric, now isn’t it? Bea 
 good servant and you will be great; be the 
 best possible servant and you will occupy the 
 highest possible place. Nice idealistic talk but 
 utterly impractical; nothing to take seriously in 
 a common sense world. That is just what men 
 thought for some hundreds of years; and then, 
 quite suddenly, Business woke up to a great dis- 
 covery. You will hear that discovery proclaimed 
 in every sales convention as something distinctly 
 modern and up to date. It is emblazoned in the 
 advertising pages of every magazine. 
 
 Look through those pages. 
 
 Here is the advertisement of an automobile 
 
 164 
 
FOUNDER OF MODERN BUSINESS 
 
 company, one of the greatest in the world. And 
 why is it greatest? On what does it base its 
 claim to leadership? On its huge factories and 
 financial strength? They are never mentioned. 
 On its army of workmen or its high salaried 
 executives? You might read its advertisements 
 for years without suspecting that it had either. 
 No. “We are great because of our service,” the 
 advertisements cry. “We will crawl under your 
 car oftener and get our backs dirtier than any of 
 our competitors. Drive up to our service sta- 
 tions and ask for anything at all—it will be 
 granted cheerfully. We serve; therefore we 
 grow.” 
 
 A manufacturer of shoes makes the same 
 boast in other terms. “We put ourselves at 
 your feet and give you everything that you can 
 possibly demand.” Manufacturers of building 
 equipment, of clothes, of food; presidents of 
 railroads and steamship companies; the heads of 
 banks and investment houses—all of them tell 
 the same story. “Service is what we are here 
 for,” they exclaim. They call it the “spirit of 
 
 165 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 modern business”; they suppose, most of them, 
 that it is something very new. But Jesus 
 preached it more than nineteen hundred years 
 ago. 
 
 One afternoon in a Pullman car the late 
 George W. Perkins was talking about the rea- 
 sons why men succeed and fail. 
 
 “TI am amazed by some of the young men who 
 ask me to use my influence to get them better 
 positions or increases in salary,” he said. “Such 
 an attitude on their part shows an absolute fail-— 
 ure to understand the fundamentals of success, 
 In all the years that I was with the New York 
 Life Insurance Company I never once asked 
 what my salary was to be, or my title. None of 
 us who made that Company ever wasted time 
 over such questions. We had a vision of extend- 
 ing the Company’s service throughout the world, 
 of making it the finest, most useful institution 
 of its kind. We made it that, and it made us 
 rich.” 
 
 That sounds sensible—good business sense. 
 But how does this sound? | 
 
 “If you’re forever thinking about saving your 
 
 166 
 
FOUNDER OF MODERN BUSINESS 
 
 life,” Jesus said, ‘“‘you’ll lose it; but the man who 
 loses his life shall find it.” 
 
 Because he said it and he was a religious 
 teacher, because it’s printed in the Bible, the 
 world has dismissed it as high minded ethics but 
 not hard headed sense. But look again! What 
 did Perkins mean if it wasn’t that he and his 
 friends buried themselves in their great under- 
 taking, literally lost their lives in it? And when 
 they found their lives again, they were all of 
 them bigger and richer than they had ever sup- 
 posed they could be. Would such success have 
 come to them if they had been careful about 
 themselves? “We mustn’t overdo this thing,” 
 they might have said. “This is a good Company 
 and deserves to grow, but every man must look 
 out for his own interests. Just what is there 
 going to be in it for us?” With such an atti- 
 tude they might have moved up to well paid 
 positions; but never to outstanding success! 
 
 What did Henry Ford mean, one spring 
 morning, when he tipped a kitchen chair back 
 against the whitewashed wall of his tractor plant 
 and talked about his career? 
 
 bate 167 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 “Have you ever noticed that the man who 
 starts out in life with a determination to make 
 money, never makes very much?” he asked. It 
 was rather a startling question; and without 
 waiting for my comment he went on to answer 
 it; “He may gather together a competence, of 
 course, a few tens of thousands or even hundreds 
 of thousands, but he’ll never amass a really great 
 fortune. But let a man start out in life to build 
 something better and sell it cheaper than it has 
 ever been built or sold before—let him have that 
 determination, and give his whole self to it—and 
 the money will roll in so fast that it will bury 
 him if he doesn’t look out. 
 
 “When we were building our original model, 
 do you suppose that it was money we were 
 thinking about? Of course we expected that it 
 would be profitable, if it succeeded, but that 
 wasn’t in the front of our minds. We wanted to 
 make a car so cheap that every family in the 
 United States could afford to have one. So we 
 worked morning, noon and night, until our mus- 
 cles ached and our nerves were so ragged that it 
 
 168 
 
FOUNDER OF MODERN BUSINESS 
 
 seemed as if we just couldn’t stand it to hear 
 any one mention the word automobile again. 
 One night, when we were almost at the breaking 
 point I said to the boys, ‘Well, there’s one con- 
 solation,’ I said. ‘Nobody can take this business 
 away from us unless he’s willing to work harder 
 than we’ve worked.’ And so far,” he concluded 
 with a whimsical smile, “nobody has been willing 
 to do that.” 
 
 What did Theodore N. Vail mean when he 
 said that only once in his life did he set out with 
 the deliberate intention of making money—that 
 all the rest of his fortune had come from work 
 which so gripped him that he forgot about the 
 money? ‘The one occasion to which he referreu 
 was his trip to South America where he found a 
 mine that did prove profitable, and doubtless 
 still is. He made that trip because he had lost 
 all his money in an effort to establish a big cen- 
 tral heating plant in Boston—to give people 
 better warmth, as he had already helped to give 
 them better communication. The heating plant 
 failed, and he paid its debts with the South 
 
 169 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 American mine. But the bulk of his fortune 
 came from the achievement for which he will al- 
 ways be remembered—the establishment of the 
 American Telephone and Telegraph Company. 
 To that great enterprise he gave everything he 
 had—‘“‘threw his life into it,” as we say—“‘lost 
 his life in it,” as Jesus said. And it gave him 
 back larger and richer life, and a fortune and 
 immortality. | 
 
 “Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile,” 
 said Jesus, “go with him twain,” 
 
 Which means, I take it, “do moré than is re- 
 quired of you, do twice as much.” Another 
 startling bit of business advice. Where will a 
 man ever get, you ask, if he delivers twice as 
 much as he is paid to deliver? The answer is 
 that unless he’s a fool he will probably get to and 
 stay at the top. I remember once traveling 
 from Chicago to New York on the Twentieth 
 Century Limited. We were due in the Grand 
 Central Station at nine-forty, a nice leisurely 
 hour, and three of us who were traveling to- 
 gether decided to make a comfortable morning 
 
 170 
 
FOUNDER OF MODERN BUSINESS 
 
 of it. We got out of our berths at a quarter 
 after eight, shaved and dressed and half an hour 
 later were making our way back to the dining- 
 car. 
 
 A door to one of the drawing-rooms was open, 
 and as we walked by we could hardly keep from 
 looking in. The bed in the room had been made 
 up long since; a table stood between the win- 
 dows, and at the table, buried in work, was a 
 man whose face the newspapers have made 
 familiar to every one. He had been Governor of 
 New York, a Justice of the Supreme Court, a 
 candidate for the Presidency of the United 
 States, and was—at the time—practising law 
 and reputed to be earning much more than a 
 hundred thousand dollars a year. 
 
 My companions and I were young men; he 
 was well along in middle life. We were poor 
 and unknown; he was rich and famous. We 
 were doing all that was required of us. We 
 were up and dressed and would be ready for 
 business when the train pulled in at a little be- 
 fore ten. But this man, of whom nothing was 
 
 171 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 actually required, was doing far more. I 
 thought to myself as we passed on to our leisure- 
 ly breakfast, “That explains him; now I under- 
 stand Hughes.” 
 
 I have several times been in the offices of J. 
 P. Morgan and Company after six o’clock in 
 the evening. I remember vividly the mental 
 picture which I once had of what such a private 
 banking house must be—the partners coming 
 down in limousines at eleven and leaving at three, 
 after having given their nonchalant approval to 
 a million dollar deal. But on the occasion of 
 one of the visits to which I refer the offices were 
 closed. The clerks, and assistants and even the 
 elevator men had gone, leaving only night- 
 watchmen. Night-watchmen, and some of the 
 partners. There seem to be always lights in the 
 partners’ offices no matter what the hour. Of 
 the office force it is required that they travel the 
 one mile which lies between nine o’clock in the 
 morning and five o’clock at night. But the 
 partners travel the second mile; have always 
 traveled it all their lives; and are partners be- 
 cause they have. 
 
 172 
 
FOUNDER OF MODERN BUSINESS 
 
 Here is another business principle, seemingly 
 equally impracticable. 
 
 Remember the words of the Lord Jesus how 
 he said, “It 1s more blessed to give than to re- 
 ceive.” 
 
 We came perilously near to losing those words. 
 They are not recorded in any one of the four 
 Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all 
 forgot them. “All very nice to talk about giv- 
 ing instead of getting,” thought Matthew per- 
 haps. “It may work in religion, but it’s no good 
 in the tax collecting business.” “A splendid 
 thought,” John may have said to himself, “a 
 very noble sentiment, but not quite practical in 
 the fishing industry.” Maybe they imagined 
 that the Master had made a mistake, or that 
 they had heard him incorrectly. At any rate 
 they all passed over the saying. But Paul did 
 not. He who had abandoned a social position 
 and an assured career for the service of the Gali- 
 lean, he who had given more than any of them, 
 he heard the words and remembered. He under: 
 stood. 
 | 173 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 Are they empty words? Do they bring 
 destruction upon a business which regards them 
 seriously? Is a man a fool to let them be a guid- 
 ing influence in his life? I talked one day with 
 H. G. Wells after his Outline of History had 
 appeared. I said: 
 
 “You have stood upon a mountain and viewed 
 the whole panorama of human progress. You 
 have seen the captains and the kings, the princes 
 and the prophets, the scientists and the adven- 
 turers, the millionaires and the dreamers—all 
 the billions of human atoms that have lived and 
 loved and struggled their little hour upon the 
 earth. In this vast army what heads rise above 
 the common level? Among all those who have 
 fought for fame, who have actually achieved it? 
 What half dozen men among them all deserve to 
 be called great?” 
 
 He turned the question over in his mind for a 
 day or two, and then gave me a list of six names, 
 with his reasons for each. An extraordinary list! 
 
 Jesus of Nazareth 
 
 Buddha 
 
 174 
 
_ FOUNDER OF MODERN BUSINESS 
 
 Asoka 
 
 Aristotle 
 
 Roger Bacon 
 Abraham Lincoln 
 
 Think of the thousands of emperors who have 
 battled for fame; who have decreed themselves 
 ‘Immortal, and fashioned their immortality into 
 ‘monuments of brick and stone. Yet there is 
 only one emperor, Asoka, on the list; and he is 
 there not because of his victories but because he 
 voluntarily abandoned war, after his success, 
 and devoted himself to the betterment of his mil: 
 lions of subjects. Think of the hosts who have 
 struggled for wealth, fretting over figures, 
 denying their generous instincts, cheating and 
 grasping and worrying. Yet no millionaire is 
 on the list, excepting again Asoka. Who sat on 
 the throne in Rome, when Jesus of Nazareth 
 hung on the cross? Who ruled the hosts of 
 Persia when Aristotle thought and taught? Who 
 was King of England when Roger Bacon laid 
 the foundations of modern scientific research? 
 
 175 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 The tumult and the shouting dies, 
 The captains and the kings depart. 
 
 And when the historian, looking over the field 
 where they contended for the prize, seeks for 
 something which has endured, he finds the mes- 
 sage of a teacher, the dream of a scientist, the 
 vision of a seer. “These six men stood on the 
 corners of History,’ said Wells in his pic- 
 turesque way. “Events hinged on them. ‘The 
 current of human thought was freer and clearer 
 because they had lived and worked. ‘They took 
 little from the world and left it much. They did 
 not get; they gave; and, in the giving, gained 
 eternal influence.” 
 
 In our own country, in Monticello, in Vir- 
 ginia, an American statesman lies buried. He 
 was Secretary of State, Minister to France, 
 President of the United States; yet his epitaph 
 makes reference to none of these honors. It 
 reads: 
 
 Here was buried 
 Thomas Jefferson 
 Author 
 of the Declaration of American Independence 
 176 
 
FOUNDER OF MODERN BUSINESS — 
 
 of the Statute of Virginia 
 for Religious Freedom 
 and Father of the 
 University of Virginia 
 The offices that he held are forgotten on the 
 stone, as they will be eventually forgotten by all 
 but the historian; he desired to be remembered 
 only by what he gave. And he has his wish. 
 Somewhere in his H'ssays Emerson has a sen- 
 tence to this effect: “See how the mass of men 
 worry themselves into nameless graves, while 
 here and there a great unselfish soul forgets 
 himself into immortality.” A fine thought, 
 finely phrased; but Jesus thought it first. 
 So we have the main points of his business 
 philosophy: 
 _ 1. Whoever will be great must render great 
 service. 
 2. Whoever will find himself at the top must 
 _be willing to lose himself at the bottom. 
 3. The big rewards come to those who travel 
 the second, undemanded mile. 
 Judas would have sneered at all this. Nota 
 bad fellow at heart, he had the virtues and the 
 177 . 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 weaknesses of the small bore business man. He 
 was “hard-boiled,” and proud of it; he “looked 
 out for Number One.” It was no easy job being 
 treasurer for a lot of idealists, Judas would have 
 you know. He held the bag and gave every cent 
 a good tight squeeze before he let it pass. When 
 the grateful woman broke her box of costly oints 
 ment over Jesus’ feet the other disciples thought 
 it was fine, but he knew better. “Pretty wastex 
 ful business,” he grumbled to himself. The big 
 talk of the others about “thrones” and “kings 
 doms” and “victory” did not fool him; he could 
 read a balance sheet, and he knew that the jig 
 was up. So he made his private little deal with 
 the priests, probably supposing that Jesus would 
 be arrested, reproved and warned not to preach 
 in Jerusalem again. “I will get mine and re- 
 tire,” he said to himself. Said Jesus, “I, if I be 
 lifted up (on the cross; that is to say, if I lose 
 my life) will draw all men to me.” Each made 
 his decision and received his reward. 
 
 We have quoted some men of conspicuous suc- 
 cess, but the same sound principles apply to 
 
 178 
 
FOUNDER OF MODERN BUSINESS 
 
 every walk of life. / Great progress will be made 
 in the world when ‘we rid ourselves of the idea 
 that there is a difference between work and re- 
 _ligious work. We have been taught that a man’s 
 daily business activities are selfish, and that only 
 the time which he devotes to church meetings 
 -and social service activities is consecrated. Ask 
 any ten people what Jesus meant by his “F'a- 
 
 b 
 
 _ther’s business,” and nine of them will answer 
 “preaching.” ‘To interpret the words in this 
 narrow sense is to lose the real significance of 
 his life. It was not to preach that he came into 
 the world; nor to teach; nor to heal. These are 
 all departments of his Father’s business, but the 
 business itself is far larger, more inclusive. For 
 if human life has any significance it is this—that 
 God has set going here an experiment to which 
 all His resources are committed. He seeks to 
 develop perfect human beings, superior to cir- 
 cumstance, victorious over Fate. No single kind 
 of human talent or effort can be spared if the 
 experiment is to succeed. The race must be fed 
 and clothed and housed and transported, as well 
 179 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 as preached to, and taught and healed. Thus all 
 business is his Father’s business. All work is 
 worship; all useful service prayer. And who- 
 ever works wholeheartedly at any worthy calling 
 is a co-worker with the Almighty in the great 
 enterprise which He has initiated but which He 
 tan never finish without the help of men. 
 
 It is one thing to talk about success, and quite 
 another thing to win it. Jesus spoke of crowns 
 and died on a cross. He talked of his kingdom, 
 and ended his days amid the jeers and taunts of 
 his enemies. “He was in all points tempted like 
 as we are,’ says the Epistle to the Hebrews. We 
 have read it often, heard it read oftener, but we 
 have never believed it, of course. . . . The con- 
 ception of his character which Theology has 
 given us makes any such idea impossible. He 
 was born differently from the rest of us, Theol- 
 ogy insists. He did not belong among us at all, 
 but came down from Heaven on a brief visit, 
 spent a few years in reproving men for their 
 mistakes, died and went back to Heaven again. | 
 A hollow bit of stage-play. What chance for 
 
 180 
 
FOUNDER OF MODERN BUSINESS 
 
 _ temptation in such a career? How can an actor 
 _ go wrong when his whole part is written and 
 learned in advance? 
 
 It is frightfully hard to free the mind from 
 the numbing grip of ancient creeds. But let us 
 make the effort. Let us touch once more the 
 _ high spots in this finest, most exalted success 
 _ story, considering now the perils and crises of 
 
 — SUuCCeSS. 
 
 He was not at all sure where he was going 
 when he laid down his tools and turned his back 
 on the carpenter shop—unless we can believe 
 this, his struggle ceases to be “in all points”’ like 
 our own; for each of us has to venture on Life 
 - as on to an uncharted sea. Something inside him 
 carried him forward—the something which has 
 whispered to so many small town boys that there 
 is a place for them in the world which lies be- 
 yond the hills. He went to John to be baptized 
 and for a while John’s influence molded him. 
 _ He, too, retired into the wilderness and there met 
 the first crisis of his career. When he emerged 
 _ he had formed his own plan for his work; asceti- 
 181 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 cism and denunciation, he knew, were not the 
 role for him. 
 
 His first success was swift beyond all ex- 
 pectations. Out of the Temple, shrieking and 
 cursing, went the money-changers, while the 
 crowd cheered his name to the echo. That night 
 the whole city was stirred by the story. When 
 he left, at the end of the feast, and went back 
 into his own north country, he found that his 
 fame had preceded him. Crowds flocked to hear 
 him talk; news of his deeds of healing traveled 
 ahead of him everywhere. His vision of his work 
 began to take definite shape. He would restore 
 the self-respect of the people, abolishing the rule 
 of formalism, and establishing a fresh, glorious 
 conception of the Fatherhood of God, and the 
 brotherhood of man. It all seemed so natural, 
 so easy, there in the warm sunshine of Galilee 
 with the responsive faces of the multitude turned 
 eagerly toward him. The year or year and a 
 half that followed were filled with the joy of in- 
 creasing reputation and success. Apparently 
 there was not a single cloud in the sky. 
 
 182 
 
FOUNDER OF MODERN BUSINESS 
 
 But there were people in Jerusalem with 
 whose private affairs his ideas would seriously 
 interfere. He was not left long in doubt as to 
 their attitude. Incensed at his cleansing of the 
 Temple, they sent their spies into the north 
 country to report his movements and made ev- 
 ery effort to turn the crowds away. Perhaps at 
 first he had hope of winning even his enemies to 
 his teaching—so altogether simple and satisfy- 
 ing his gospel seemed to him. If so, the hope 
 soon vanished. Opposition crystallized; it made 
 itself felt in every audience he addressed, in 
 every town he visited. Reluctantly he had to face 
 the fact that the time was coming when he must 
 compromise or fight. It was with this realiza- 
 tion that he faced a second and a greater crisis. 
 
 He had crossed the lake one day in a little 
 boat to get away from the crowds; but they 
 were too quick for him. Running around the end 
 of the lake, and gathering recruits as they ran, 
 they waited for him at the landing place—more 
 than five thousand strong. He was tired, and 
 wanted a chance to rest and think. But here 
 
 183 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 were the people, pathetically eager, and he “had 
 compassion on them.” So he sat down among 
 them and went on with his teaching until the day 
 was almost over. ‘Then, at last, the disciples 
 came, hardly concealing their tired petulance, 
 and demanded that he send them away. 
 
 “But they have made a long trip and have 
 been with us all day without food,” he replied, 
 “We must feed them before they go.” 
 
 The disciples regarded him with blank amaze- 
 ment. | 
 
 “Feed them—on what?” they demanded. “We 
 have no money, and even if we had there are 
 more than five thousand in the crowd!’ 
 
 Jesus apparently did not hear them. 
 
 “Have them sit down,’ 
 “Gather up whatever food you can find and 
 
 > 
 
 he commanded. 
 
 bring it here to me.” 
 
 Doubtingly, but too well trained to argue, the 
 disciples did as they were told. They arranged 
 the crowd in companies of fifty and a hundred, 
 collected the little supply of food which the more 
 prudent members had brought. and laid the col- 
 
 184 
 
FOUNDER OF MODERN BUSINESS 
 
 lection at his feet. He lifted his eyes to heaven, 
 blessed the food, ordered it redistributed and 
 somehow the people ate and were satisfied. 
 
 Just what happened in the moment when the 
 food was laid before him is an impenetrable 
 mystery; but there is no doubt at all as to what 
 took place afterward. It was the event for 
 which the people had waited, the unmistakable 
 sign! Moses had fed their fathers on manna in 
 the wilderness; here was one who likewise called 
 on Heaven, and supplied their wants. Surely 
 he was the son of David, long foretold, who 
 would overthrow the rule of their conquerors 
 and restore the throne to Jerusalem! / 
 
 Joyously they shouted the news back ma 
 forth. The day of deliverance had come; the 
 tyranny of the Romans was about to end. ‘Their 
 enthusiasm carried them to their feet—fifty in 
 this group, a hundred in that; almost as if by 
 magic they found themselves organized. ‘They 
 were an army and had not realized it. Right 
 there on the field they were enough to outnum- 
 ber the garrison in Jerusalem; but they were 
 
 185 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 only a nucleus of the host that would gather to 
 their banners, once their southward march was 
 formed. If they were five thousand now, they 
 would be fifty thousand, perhaps a hundred 
 thousand then. A wild enthusiasm seized upon 
 them; shouting his name at the top of their 
 voices they surged forward toward the little hill 
 where he stood—_ 
 
 And then— 
 
 He had foreseen their purpose, and even while 
 they were perfecting their plan, doubt had raged 
 through his spirit with the force of a tempest. 
 Why not accept their nomination? Why not 
 be their king? It would mean an alteration in 
 his program, to be sure—a surrender of his 
 vision of spiritual leadership. And yet it might 
 not be such a surrender, after all. Solomon had 
 been king, and a great spiritual leader; David 
 had been king and had written the nation’s high- 
 est ideals into his Psalms. He himself was bet- 
 ter balanced than David, wiser than Solomon— 
 why not? 
 
 It was as splendid a picture as ever stirred the 
 
 186 
 
FOUNDER OF MODERN BUSINESS 
 
 pulses of an ambitious man. For only an in- 
 stant Jesus allowed his eyes to rest on it. 
 Then he saw the other picture—the vast dumb 
 multitudes of men, his brothers and sisters, the 
 blind being led by the blind, their souls squeezed 
 dry of vision and hope by the machinery of for- 
 malism. He saw generations born and die in 
 spiritual servitude which nothing could end ex- 
 cept the Truth that he had come to declare. To 
 put himself at the head of this army of fanatical 
 patriots would be perhaps to risk his life and his 
 message with it. But worse than the possibility | 
 of failure was the probability of success. To be 
 king of the Jews would mean a lifetime spent in 
 the defense of his throne and title, a lifetime of 
 bloodshed and intrigue, while his message re- 
 mained unspoken. Living, he would give his 
 people only a semblance of national life; dying, 
 he would leave them to be re-enslaved by the 
 Roman power. And the Truth which he had 
 come to declare, which was capable of continuing 
 its work of emancipation throughout the world 
 so long as time should last, would be traded for 
 187 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 a glittering crown and an empty name. In a 
 flash he saw it all and made his decision. Kven 
 as the multitude surged forward, he gave a few 
 crisp orders to his disciples and disappeared. 
 
 The Gospel story puts the dramatic climax 
 into a single sentence: 
 
 Jesus, therefore, perceiving that they werc 
 about to come and take him by force to make 
 him king, withdrew again into the mountain 
 himself alone. 
 
 In that hour of crisis he proved his right to be 
 the silent partner in every modern business; to 
 sit at the head of every directors’ table. ‘There 
 is no mere theorizing in his words; he speaks out 
 of what he himself has proved. If he says that 
 a man’s work is more eternally important than 
 any title, he has a right to speak. He himself 
 refused the highest title. If he says that there 
 are things more vital than merely making 
 money, let no one question his authority. He 
 was handed the wealth of a nation and handed 
 it back again. Idealist he is, but there is noth- 
 ing in the whole hard world so practical as his 
 
 188 
 
FOUNDER OF MODERN BUSINESS 
 
 ideals. ‘There is a success which is greater than 
 wealth or titles,” he says. “It comes through 
 making your work an instrument of greater 
 service, and larger living to your fellow men and 
 women. TJ'his is my Father’s business and he 
 needs your help.” 
 
 He told one business story which should be 
 published every year in all magazines of bus- . 
 iness, all trade papers, all house organs. It con- 
 ‘cerned a certain rich man whose enterprises 
 prospered beyond all his expectations. His land 
 “brought forth plentifully,” so much so that he 
 said to himself: “What shall I do, because I have 
 no room where to bestow my fruits?” 
 
 — And he said: “This will I do; I will pull down 
 my barns and build greater; and there will I be- 
 stow all my fruits and my goods.” 
 
 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, thou hast 
 much goods laid up for many years; take thine 
 ease, eat, drink and be merry.” 
 
 But God said, “Thou fool, this night thy soul 
 shall be required of thee.” 
 
 The poor fool had regarded his business as 
 nothing but a means of escape from business. 
 | 189 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 He had hoarded his wealth, denying every gens 
 erous impulse; spent his health, forfeiting every 
 chance for wholesome enjoyment; sacrificed the 
 joy of living for a selfish satisfaction that he 
 hoped was coming when he had made his pile. 
 And Fate laughed in his face. He thought he 
 had provided for every contingency, but the one 
 great Event which is always unexpected came, 
 like a thief in the night and found him unpres 
 pared: i. 405: 
 
 With that business anecdote should be pub: 
 lished another, which is also a tragedy. It cons 
 cerns the little hotel in Bethlehem, “the inn.” 
 
 The mother of Jesus of Nazareth knocked at 
 its doors and could not come in. It might have 
 sheltered the greatest event in human history, 
 and it lost its chance. 
 
 Why? Why was Jesus born ina stable? Bes 
 cause the people in the inn were vicious oF 
 hostile? Not in the least. The inn was full, 
 that was all; every room was taken by folk who 
 had affairs to attend to and money to spend. It 
 was busy. 
 
 196 
 
FOUNDER OF MODERN BUSINESS 
 
 There was no “room in the inn.” 
 
 Men’s lives are sometimes like that inn. 
 
 You know a man whose heart is broken be- 
 cause his son is a fool. Yet deep within himself 
 he knows that the fault is his own. All through 
 the formative years of the boy’s development, 
 he never gave him any time. Not that he didn’t 
 love the boy; but he was busy. There was no 
 room for family life; and his son is a fool. 
 
 You know men whose health is gone; men | 
 whose taste for reading and music and art is 
 gone. Men who have literally no interests in 
 life beyond the office which has become a mere 
 treadmill whereon their days are ground away. 
 
 In the process of being successful they have 
 ‘sacrificed success. Never once forgetting them- 
 selves they have forgotten everything else. This 
 is not Jesus’ idea of what a life should be. He, 
 who refused to turn aside from his business to 
 become a king, was never too busy to turn aside 
 for a sick man, a friend, a little child. He never 
 forgot that one night his mother had stood on a 
 threshold where there was no welcome. 
 
 191 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 The threshold of the little inn in Bethlehem, 
 It was so busy that the greatest event in history 
 knocked at its doors 
 
 —and could not come in. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 THe MASTER 
 
 So WE come up to the end. To the final tests 
 of a man’s living— 
 
 How does he bear disappointment? 
 
 How does he die? 
 
 For two years it seemed almost certain that 
 Jesus would prevail. He himself was sure of it. 
 We have marked the dramatic success with 
 which his work began. We have watched the 
 erowds flock about him in the market-place; we 
 have heard the cheers that greeted his victories 
 over shrewd antagonists, and the murmured awe 
 when a sick man rose and walked. Reports of 
 his triumphs preceded him everywhere so that 
 men competed for the honor of being his host, 
 and there was friendliness in his audiences that 
 made almost anything seem possible. And why 
 not? If, by accepting his message, men could be 
 
 193 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 lifted up, transformed into sons of God, heirs 
 of eternity, why should any be so stubborn or sa 
 foolish as to oppose? Surely such Truth must 
 conquer. 
 
 If you read the story carefully you can see 
 how his tone and manner grew in confidence. In 
 hours of exalted communion he stood face to 
 face with God, felt his own sonship, knew that he 
 could lift the hearts of men as no other had ever 
 lifted them. The knowledge thrilled him with 
 ecstasy. “I am the Way,” he cried, and he called 
 on his friends to free themselves, to cast their 
 burdens upon the Lord, to believe more, rejoice 
 more, expect more of God. Those who listened 
 in’ those days were profoundly impressed. Even 
 the most callous yielded grudging admiration. 
 “Never man so spake,” said they. As for the 
 multitude, its enthusiasm would brook no half- 
 way measures. They would take him by force 
 and make him king. 
 
 Then came the change. 
 
 His home town was first to turn against him. 
 Picture, if you will, the enthusiasm with which 
 
 194 
 
THE MASTER 
 
 he planned his visit to it. Nazareth was little 
 and despised, a jest among the wits of the day. 
 
 It had produced no great men, been the scene 
 of no historic achievement. Jesus knew all this. 
 Those familiar streets and faces were often in 
 his memory. When he healed a sick man in 
 Capernaum, it pleased him to think that the re- 
 port would be carried back to Nazareth. When 
 he drove the plunderers from the Temple he 
 
 realized that, in the fame which had come to 
 
 him, his home town would have a share. “Jesus 
 
 of Nazareth,” the world called him, linking its 
 
 name with his. He had lifted the little village 
 
 out of obscurity. And now, in the height of his 
 glory, he was going back. 
 
 Did he arrive in the dusk and slip almost un- 
 
 noticed through the streets to his mother’s house? 
 
 | 
 | 
 
 
 
 Perhaps she was in the kitchen, and hearing that 
 footstep which she could never mistake, she ran 
 and threw her arms around his neck. 
 
 “Jesus,” she cries, patting his cheek and look- 
 
 ing up at him with glistening eyes, “Jesus, my 
 boy, my boy!” 
 
 i 
 i 
 : 
 
 ” 
 
 195 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 Hearing the name his brothers and sisters 
 come hurrying from other parts of the house, 
 All sorts of reports have drifted back—almost 
 unbelievable reports. Every day the gossips of 
 the village have stopped them to ask whether a 
 letter or a message has come. 
 
 “Seems to be doing great things,” said the 
 gossips with ill-concealed envy. “Hope he doesn’t 
 try to go too far,” they said in tones which re- 
 vealed all too clearly their real hope that he 
 would go too far, and come to grief. 
 
 Against cynicism and innuendo his brothers 
 had stood their ground proudly. He was doing 
 great things, they insisted; the reports were not 
 a bit exaggerated. Some day he would come 
 back and show them all; they would wish then 
 that they had believed. . . . And now he was 
 back. Healthy he looked, and confident; but 
 not otherwise different. ‘They were a bit disap- 
 pointed and he felt it. They hardly knew what 
 it was, but they had expected that he would be 
 somehow bigger, or better dressed, or tagged 
 with some outward sign of authority... . With 
 
 196 
 
THE MASTER 
 
 forced enthusiasm they bustled about, asking 
 him questions, praising his good looks; but 
 through it all, ran a note of restraint. 
 
 “Come now, you must get to bed early,” his 
 mother may have said. “They will all be want- 
 ing to see you at the synagogue to-morrow.” 
 
 So he went up to the room, his old room, alone. 
 The home coming was not quite what he had 
 dreamed. ‘They loved him; they were proud 
 of him, but they doubted—that was clear 
 enough. And they dreaded the test that must 
 come next day. , 
 
 He awoke refreshed and heartened. Some 
 
 neighbors dropped in after breakfast, for the 
 ) report of his arrival had spread quickly through 
 the little town. When he and his mother reached 
 the door of the synagogue a crowd was waiting 
 outside. They returned his greeting with a mix- 
 ture of regard and curiosity, and pushed 
 promptly through the door behind him, filling 
 the little room full. There was much whisper- 
 ing and craning of necks. He made his way to 
 _ the front of the room, picked up the roll of the 
 : 197 
 
THK MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 prophet Isaiah, turned around toward them and 
 smiled. 
 
 Instantly all his illusions vanished. Instead 
 of sympathetic understanding there was only 
 cynicism on those faces. The old woman, his 
 neighbor, whom he had planned to heal, was 
 sitting prominently in front. She was willing 
 to take a chance on anything, for she had been 
 a long time sick; but her look was less a hope 
 than a challenge. The substantial men of the 
 town settled solidly in their appointed seats, and 
 
 dared him with their hard eyes to try his tricks” 
 
 on them! “You may have caused a stir in 
 
 99 
 
 Capernaum,” they seemed to say, “but little 
 
 old Nazareth isn’t so slow. We know you. 
 
 You're no prophet; you’re just the son of 
 
 Joseph the carpenter, and you can’t fool us!” 
 
 Slowly he opened the roll and in tones that 
 stirred them in spite of themselves he began to 
 read: 
 
 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me 
 Because he anointed me to preach of good tid- 
 ings to the poor, 
 198 
 
THE MASTER 
 
 He hath sent me to proclaim release to the cap- 
 
 / 
 
 tives, 
 And recovery of sight to the blind; 
 
 To set at liberty them that are bruised, 
 _And proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. 
 
 He closed the book and handed it back to the 
 
 -attendant. “This day hath this Scripture been 
 fulfilled in your ears,” he said simply. ‘There 
 
 /Wwas an ominous silence in the synagogue. “The 
 
 eyes of all were fastened upon Him.” He knew 
 
 / what they were thinking; they wanted him to do 
 
 : 
 
 some mighty work such as he had done in Caper- 
 
 naum. But he knew also the uselessness of try- 
 
 ing. The scorn, the ignorant self-sufficiency 
 
 were miracle proof. They would never receive 
 
 him; never be proud of him. ‘They merely 
 
 wanted him to exhibit himself and they hoped 
 
 that he would fail. “No prophet is acceptable 
 
 in his own country,” he said to them sadly. 
 
 “Elijah did his greatest works in a foreign city; 
 
 _ Elisha could accomplish nothing big until he got 
 beyond the borders of his home.” With a look 
 _of soul-weariness he turned to leave. 
 
 199 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 Then the storm broke. All the pent-up envy 
 of the little town for one who has dared to out- 
 grow it, gathered itself into a roar. They) 
 surged forward hurrying him through the main 
 street to the edge of a precipice where they 
 would have thrown him over. But the wrath 
 which had been sufficient to conceive his destruc- 
 tion grew suddenly impotent when he turned 
 and faced them. They shrank back, and before 
 they could reform their purpose, he had passed 
 through the midst of them and was on his way. 
 In his ears sounded the buzz of malicious com- 
 ment, but he was too heart-sick to look back. 
 From henceforth Capernaum became “his own 
 city.” Nazareth, the home of his youth, the 
 dwelling place of his boyhood friends and neigh- 
 bors, had given its verdict. 
 
 He had come unto his own, and his own re- 
 ceived him not. 
 
 His brothers deserted him. We ought not to 
 blame them too much, perhaps. No man is a hero 
 to his valet; and the near relatives of any great 
 man, who have lived with him through the fa- 
 
 200 
 
THE MASTER 
 
 miliar experiences of every-day life, must be al- 
 ways a little mystified by the world’s worship. 
 The brothers of Jesus had been witnesses of his 
 defeat, and were left behind by him to bear the 
 ignominy of it. How the sardonic laughter must 
 have rung in their ears! How endlessly the wits 
 must have cracked their jokes about that morn- 
 ing in the synagogue. ... These home town 
 sneers were bad enough, but the reports that 
 came back from other towns threw the simple 
 unimaginative family into a panic. It was said 
 that he made seditious speeches; that he claimed 
 to have a special relationship to God; that he ut- 
 terly disregarded the code of the Pharisees and 
 
 _ denounced them openly before the crowds. Such 
 
 conduct could mean only one thing. He would 
 get himself into jail, and his relatives with him. 
 
 Hence the members of his family who should 
 
 have been his best helpers spent their energy in 
 
 the effort to get him to go farther away from 
 
 - se < 
 
 home. Once when the feast of tabernacles was 
 
 being celebrated in Jerusalem, they urged him 
 
 to “go up” to “depart hence” and taunted him, 
 201 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 saying that if he could really do all that he 
 claimed, the place for him to make his reputa- 
 tion was at the capital. Anything to get him 
 out of Galilee. They were all unsafe while he 
 stayed near them—so they thought. 
 
 “For even his brethren did not believe in him.” 
 
 He was teaching one day in Capernaum to a 
 crowd that hung spellbound on his words, when 
 suddenly an interruption occurred. A messen- 
 ger pushed through the audience to tell him that 
 his mother and brothers were outside and in-— 
 sisted on speaking to him right away. A quick 
 look of pain shot across his fine face. He knew 
 why they had come; they had been sending him 
 / threats of their coming for weeks. They had 
 made up their minds that he was just a little bit 
 out of his head, and they were determined to 
 shut him up in an asylum before his extrava- 
 _ gances should ruin them all. He drew himself 
 up to his full height and pointing to his disciples 
 turned to the messenger: 
 
 “My mother and brethren?” he repeated. ““Be- 
 hold these who believe on me, they are my mother 
 and my brethren.” 
 
 202 
 
THE MASTER 
 
 They were indeed his real kindred and many 
 times they proved themselves worthy of the 
 name; but even their devotion could not entirely 
 remove the hurt. When later he had his brief 
 hour of triumph, when the crowds flung their 
 garments into the streets before him and shouted 
 their “hosannas,” even then his heart must have 
 been sore at the thought that in all that multi- 
 tude there was not one of the brothers for whom 
 he had sacrificed so much of his youth. A warm 
 hand-clasp from one of them would have meant 
 more than all the high homage of the multitude. 
 But they were far away, still ashamed of the re- | 
 lationship, still regarding him as well meaning 
 but not quite sane. 
 
 His best friend died doubting him. 'To that 
 friend, John the Baptist, he owed his initial suc- 
 cess. John had introduced him to the people; 
 his first disciples had come because John pointed 
 him out as a greater prophet than himself. The 
 two men were entirely unlike in character and 
 method. John was austere, harsh, denunciatory 
 <—a lonely spirit, dwelling apart. Jesus was 
 
 203 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 cheerful, friendly, never happier than when in ¢ 
 crowd. John laid down for his disciples a rigid 
 program of ceremonies and fasts; Jesus disre- 
 garded forms and encouraged his disciples to 
 disregard them. He recognized that he and 
 John must do their work in different ways, but 
 it had not occurred to him that their differences 
 would ever loosen the bond of friendship. He 
 was cut to the quick, therefore, when two mes- 
 sengers came from John with a wistful, doubt- 
 ing question: 
 
 “Are you really a prophet, as I told vedi 
 that you are?” John asked. “Instead of fasting 
 you banquet. Instead of calling on men to ab- 
 jure pleasure, you share their pleasures. Are 
 you the hope of the world, as I believed you to 
 be, or must we look for another?” 
 
 Very tenderly, but sadly, Jesus sent back his 
 reply: “Go tell John what you have seen and 
 heard,” he said, “how the blind see, lepers are 
 cleansed and the poor have the good news 
 preached to them.” 
 
 It was a wonderful answer, but did it convince 
 
 204 
 
THE MASTER 
 
 his friend? A few weeks later, in the dungeon 
 of Herod’s castle, John paid the last great pen- 
 alty for his idealism and courage. Jesus, when 
 he heard of it, “withdrew into the hills alone.” 
 His closest friend and first adherent had gone 
 out—a, sacrifice to the selfishness of a social 
 order which he himself was fighting. In that 
 heart-breaking event he saw an omen for him- 
 self. They who had been strong enough to mur- 
 der John would one day destroy him also. It 
 was a bitter blow to his visions of success. When 
 he returned from the hills there was a new se- 
 riousness in his face, a harder note in his teach- 
 ings. He saw at the end of his path the shadow 
 of the cross. And his heart was heavy because 
 ‘the friend who ought to have understood him 
 best, had misunderstood him and died in doubt. 
 
 The people deserted him. When last we 
 caught a glimpse of them they were cheering his 
 name beside the lake, seeking to force him to be 
 their king. He eluded them and retired into the 
 mountain to think and pray. It must have been 
 _a@ dramatic moment when he reappeared. Only 
 | 205 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 a single “Yes” was needed and they would have 
 lifted him on their shoulders and borne him i 
 triumph to the city gates. Hushed and expect- 
 ant they waited for his answer—and what an 
 answer! “I am not come to restore the kingdom 
 to Jerusalem,” he cried. “Mine is a spiritual 
 mission; I am the bread of life. You have 
 cheered me because I fed you in the wilderness, 
 but I tell you now that what I have come to give 
 you is myself, that by knowing me you may 
 know your Father.” 
 
 They could not have been more stunned if he 
 had struck their leaders across the face. What 
 did he mean by this senseless mysticism, this talk 
 about “the bread of life’? Hadn't they seen him 
 heal the sick and conquer the Pharisees in debate 
 —were not these signs that he was the leader, so 
 long promised, who would rout the Romans and 
 restore the throne of David? And now, when 
 the hour was ripe, when they were ready to 
 march, why this language which nobody could 
 understand ? ) 
 
 “The Jews therefore murmured concerning 
 
 206 
 
THE MASTER 
 
 him, because he said ‘I am the bread that came 
 down from Heaven.’” It was sacrilege or non- 
 sense, one or the other. In either event it proved 
 him an unsound leader. Gentiles might continue 
 to follow him, if they chose, but his company was 
 clearly no place for a self-respecting Jew. 
 Silently the cautious people slipped away, and 
 afterward denied that they had ever had any- 
 thing to do with him. Those who were more 
 daring, or devoted, continued with him through 
 the rest of the week, and on the Sabbath 
 crowded into the synagogue where they knew 
 that he would speak. The days had given him 
 time to reconsider and compose his thoughts; 
 _perhaps now he would make a reasonable reply 
 _to their hopes. But there was no compromise in 
 his message that day. Again he repeated his 
 seemingly senseless talk about the “bread of 
 life.” It destroyed the last hope of those who 
 had looked to him for the deliverance of Israel. 
 “These are hard sayings,” they protested, “who 
 can understand them?” And then the note of 
 _ tragedy. 
 207 
 
 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 “Upon this many of his disciples went back 
 and walked with him no more.”* 
 
 The tide had turned. He realized it clearly 
 though the disciples could not. At every op- 
 portunity he sought to build up in them an in- 
 creased sense of their responsibilities. He must 
 “go into Jerusalem,” he told them, “and suffer 
 many things of the elders and chief priests and 
 scribes, and be killed.” They could not, would 
 not believe it. Peter, hot-headed and enthusi- 
 astic, took him aside and rebuked him for what 
 seemed a temporary loss of courage. “Be it far 
 from thee, Lord,” he exclaimed; “this shall 
 never be unto thee.”” Generous loyal words, but 
 they revealed an utter failure to appreciate the 
 real situation. All hope of a revived and regen- 
 erated nation was gone; his one chance now for 
 permanent influence was in welding his little 
 group closer together, and sealing their union 
 with his blood. 
 
 For the first time in his public work he for- 
 sook Palestine and led his wondering but still 
 dutiful followers into the foreign cities of Tyre 
 
 208 
 
THE MASTER 
 
 and Sidon. The journey gave him a chance to 
 be alone with the twelve; and it was, in a small 
 way, a repetition of his earlier triumphs. These 
 foreign folk were friendly without ulterior mo- 
 tive. They cared nothing about the establish- 
 ment of a throne in Jerusalem, or the possibility 
 of profit for themselves from his political tri- 
 umph. They came to hear him because his words 
 thrilled them, because they felt their better 
 selves touched and made vibrant by the wonder 
 of his life. 
 
 He hated to leave these kindly strangers. 
 Much more he dreaded the thought of another 
 trip through Galilee. What a graveyard of high 
 hopes it was! Every road, every street corner, 
 almost every house and tree was alive with 
 memories of his success. Now he must pass each 
 one again, conscious that it might be the last 
 time, his heart weighed down with the thought 
 of high purposes that had brought no response, 
 and sacrifices seemingly in vain. Small wonder 
 that he cried out against Chorazin and Beth- 
 saida and even his own loved Capernaum, the 
 
 209 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 cities for which he had done so much. “Woe 
 unto you,” he cried in his leneliness, “for if the 
 mighty works which were done in you had been 
 done in Tyre and Sidon they would have re- 
 pented long ago, in sack-cloth and ashes.” 
 
 But neither Bethsaida nor Capernaum had ears 
 for him any longer. Some new novelty had 
 taken hold of the public imagination. He had 
 had his day; nothing more was to be expected 
 from him....So the spring and summer 
 passed, and autumn came, bringing the feast of 
 tabernacles, which he determined to celebrate 
 in Jerusalem. It was a suicidal resolve. The re- 
 port of his dwindling influence had been carried 
 to the Temple clique which was emboldened by 
 the information. 'There were spies in every 
 erowd that listened to him; the echo of his small- 
 est act flew to the capital; he could not hope to 
 arrive outside the city walls without imminent 
 danger of arrest. All this he knew but it did 
 not weigh against his resolve. ‘This might be his 
 last feast. 'There would be visitors from all 
 over the world, some of whom would surely take 
 
 210 
 
THE MASTER 
 
 the seed of his message with them back to their 
 homes. He must be true to his calling at what- 
 ever cost. So he went. 
 
 We catch one glimpse of him on the Temple 
 steps, surrounded by a partly curious, partly 
 antagonistic crowd. It was his chance to recap- 
 ture a little of the popular favor, to speak a 
 placating word that might open the way to rec- 
 onciliation; but no such thought entered his 
 mind. The time for defiance had come. “I 
 have offered you the truth,” he cried, “the truth 
 that would make you free.” And when they ' 
 shouted that they were sons of Abraham and 
 hence already free, he replied that they were na 
 children of Abraham, but “children of the devil.” 
 
 They would have killed him then and there, 
 but their courage failed. After all he had still a 
 considerable following, and it was better to wait, 
 Give him rope and he would tangle himself in- 
 extricably. very speech was alienating some- 
 body. When the time was ripe they would seize 
 _him—perhaps at the next feast, if in the mean- 
 time he had not entirely discredited himself and 
 
 211 
 
THK MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 disappeared. So they argued among themselves, 
 and he went back once more into his Galilee. 
 Just for a moment, in the next spring, there | 
 seemed to be a renewed popular interest. The 
 crowds flocked around in the old familiar way; 
 the disciples noted it joyously. “The multitudes 
 come together to him again,” they exclaimed and 
 at once their hopes were busy with new visions 
 of his success. But dismay followed fast. 
 Against their ardent protest he carried them off 
 into close retirement. They were restless, lone- 
 ly, distressed at the high handed fashion in which 
 he turned away supporters. Was it necessary to 
 be so harsh with the Pharisees? After all there 
 were many estimable men among them whose 
 contributions would have been very helpful. 
 Why should he have ridiculed them out of his 
 company? Why tell people that their precious 
 ritual was less acceptable to God than the cry 
 for mercy of an untaught publican? Why slight 
 their ready hospitality in favor of an outcast like 
 Zaccheus. His little group of friends were still 
 groping for a clear vision of message and pur- 
 _ 212 
 
THE MASTER 
 
 poses when for the last time he led them down to 
 Jerusalem and the final feast. 
 
 The one week of his life which everybody 
 knows is the last week. Hence we pass over it 
 in this little book. It began with the triumphant 
 shouts of “hosanna’’; it ended with the blood- 
 thirsty cries of “crucify.” Between the first 
 morning of triumph and the last hours of mor- 
 tal agony it witnessed his finest verbal victories 
 over his opponents. Never were his nerves more 
 steady, his courage higher, his mind more keen. 
 Deliberately he piled up the mountain of hatred, 
 knowing that it would kill him, but determined 
 that there should be no doubt through the ages 
 as to what he had stood for, and why he had to 
 die. Every man who loves courageous manhood 
 ought to read these final chapters at least once / 
 a year. Any attempt to abridge or paraphrase 
 them would result in failure or worse. We pass 
 over them in reverent silence, stopping only for 
 a glimpse of the three most wonderful scenes. 
 
 First the final supper on that cool, quiet 
 Thursday night. He knew that he should never 
 
 213 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 meet with the disciples around the table again. 
 
 All the memories of the three great years must — 
 
 have crowded into his mind as the meal pro- 
 gressed. How often they had sat together under 
 a, tree beside the lake, sharing the fish that their 
 own nets had caught. How they had enjoyed 
 that first meal at Cana, when he turned the 
 water into wine. What a glorious afternoon it 
 was when he fed five thousand, and the shouts 
 
 af gladness echoed back and forth among the 
 hills. And this was the end. His relatives had 
 
 wd 
 
 turned their backs on him; his home town had — 
 
 scorned his advances; his best friend had died 
 doubting; the people had turned away, and his 
 enemies were about to triumph—is there any 
 
 other leader who would have stood forth un-— 
 broken by such blows? What was his attitude? — 
 Complaint? Fault finding? Weak railing at ‘ 
 his own misfortunes or the wilful wickedness of — 
 
 men? See, he rises in his place. He speaks, this — 
 
 proud young man who had refused to be a king — 
 and now is to die with common thieves. And 
 
 these are his words: 
 214 
 
THE MASTER 
 
 Let not your heart be troubled ... 
 I have overcome the world. 
 
 There is nothing in history so majestic! 
 Already one of his disciples had slipped away 
 to betray him. That very night the soldiers 
 would take him, bind him, throw him into 
 prison. The priests and Pharisees whom he had 
 taunted would have their turn to taunt him now. 
 He would be harried through the streets like a 
 hunted thing, the butt of every corner loafer’s 
 jest. { All this he anticipated, and with the vision 
 of it fresh before his mind, he lifted his head and 
 looked beyond, into the far distant ages. “Be 
 of good cheer,” he said to them, in tones whose 
 splendor thrills us even now. “I have overcome 
 the world!” , 
 
 They went out into the garden where so many 
 of their happy hours had been spent. The very 
 air was fragrant with their most sacred con- 
 fidences. Under this tree they had gathered for 
 worship, while the setting sun gilded the towers 
 of the city; in the waters of that brook they had 
 found refreshment; to left and right of them the 
 
 215 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 very stones cried out in heartrending reminder 
 of the days that were gone. Even at that hour 
 it was not too late for him to have saved his life. _ 
 Suppose he had said to himself: “I have de- 
 livered my message faithfully, and it is no use. 
 Judas has gone already to bring the soldiers; 
 they will be here in half an hour. Why should 
 I stay and die? It is only eighteen miles to 
 Jericho, bright moonlight and down hill all the 
 way. Our friend Zaccheus will be glad to see 
 us. We can reach his house by daylight, rest to- 
 morrow, cross the Jordan and do useful work ~ 
 the rest of our lives. The disciples can fish; I 
 can open a carpenter shop, and teach in a quiet 
 way. I have done everything that could be ex- 
 pected of me. Why not?’ 
 
 It was all perfectly possible. The rulers in 
 Jerusalem would have been glad to be rid of him 
 on such terms. He might so easily have con- 
 tinued on down the hill to peace and a comfort- 
 able old age—and oblivion. It was the last great 
 temptation and decisively he dismissed it. He 
 walked a little ahead in silence, followed by the 
 
 216 
 
THE MASTER 
 
 eleven—for Judas was with them no longer— 
 and coming to a quiet place, left them while he 
 went away for his last hour of high communion 
 with his Father, God. 
 
 A few minutes later he returned to find them 
 sleeping. Even so short a vigil had proved too 
 heavy for their feebleness. In the hour of his 
 greatest need there was no help from them. 
 Again he went away, his spirit torn with agony. 
 He was young, thirty-three; he did not want to 
 die. He cried out to God that the cup might pass 
 from his lips; that he might have time to sweep 
 away the charges of blasphemy and evil which 
 his enemies had heaped upon him; time to build 
 up the fragile stuff of his little band on whom 
 the whole future of his message must depend; 
 time to round out the full measure of his years 
 and influence. So he prayed, and coming back, 
 found them again asleep. 
 
 This time he did not disturb them. The high 
 tide of his revolt had subsided; the courage 
 which had never deserted him throughout the 
 three years cleared his soul, steadied his muscles. 
 
 217 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 “If it be not thy will that this cup pass from 
 me,” he prayed again, “then, Father, thy will be 
 done.” 
 
 It was the victory chant after the battle. 
 With the calm peace of the conqueror he could 
 make ready for the end. He had not long to 
 wait. The soldiers were already at the entrance 
 of the garden. From his vantage point on the 
 side of the hill he could mark the progress of 
 their torches across the brook and up the path. 
 The clang of their arms rang jarringly through 
 the trees; rough exclamations smote the evening 
 air like profanity in a temple. He waited until 
 the armed men stumbled into his presence and 
 then, rising, stood before them. 
 
 “Whom seek ye?” he demanded. + 
 
 Startled, awed, they could only mumble his — 
 name. 
 
 “Jesus of Nazareth.” | 
 
 “TI am he,” he answered proudly. 
 
 They had expected angry denunciation, pers ; 
 haps resistance; these they understood and could 4 
 cope with. But such calm, such dignity were © 
 
 218 | 
 
 oe > 
 . eer: 
 
THE MASTER 
 
 beyond the boundaries of their experience. In- 
 voluntarily they gave way and, rough veterans 
 as they were, some of them “fell to the ground.” 
 It was a tribute, silent but magnificent. 
 
 “T told you,” he repeated calmly, “that I am 
 he.” And then, his thought rebounding at once 
 to those who had shared his triumphs and his 
 sacrifices through the years, “If therefore ye 
 seek me let these others go their way.” But he 
 had no need to think of the disciples’ safety. AI- 
 ready they had made their swift escape—the last 
 of the deserters— 
 
 —first his home town 
 
 —then his best friend 
 
 —then his relatives 
 
 —then the crowd 
 
 —finally the eleven. 
 All who had stood at his side had gone and left 
 _ him to face his fate alone. 
 
 On a barren hill beyond the city walls they 
 nailed his perfect body to the cross. Two rob- 
 bers were crucified with him. It was over. The 
 tabble had sickened quickly of its revenge and 
 
 219 
 
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 scattered; his friends were hiding; the soldiers 
 were busy casting lots for his garments. There 
 was nothing left of the external influences which 
 fire men’s imaginations or grip their loyalty, 
 Surely the victory of his enemies was complete; 
 he could do no miracle there, hanging on a cross, 
 
 And yet— 
 
 “Jesus.” It was the voice of one of the rob- 
 bers. “Jesus,” he says painfully, “remember 
 me, when thou comest into thy kingdom!” 
 
 Read that, oh men, and bow your heads. You 
 who have let yourself picture him as weak, as 4 
 man of sorrows, uninspiring, glad to die. There 
 have been leaders who could call forth enthu- 
 siasm when their fortunes ran high. But he, 
 when his enemies had done their worst, so bore 
 himself that a crucified felon looked into his dy-~ 
 ing eyes and saluted him as king. 
 

 

 
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 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
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