LYMAN ABBOTT. D.D.

DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

The Life of Christ

BY

THE REV. LYMAN ABBOTT, D.D.

AN AID TO THE STUDY
OF

THE GOSPEL HISTORY OF JESUS CHRIST

Rotary of^»
YAiii)mNnrscH0OL^ S& Haven, C^

THE BIBLE STUDY PUBLISHING CO.,
21 BROMFIELD STREET,
BOSTON, MASS.

Copyright, 1894 and i8g$,
by The Bible Study Publishing Company.

Contents.

Publisher's Preface
Author's Preface .

CHAPTER I. — Introductory : The Divine Christ
Lesson 2 * (see also Chapter II).
CHAPTER II. — The Birth of Jesus Christ . . .
Lesson 2.
CHAPTER III. — The Education of Jesus . . .
Lesson 3.
CHAPTER IV.— John the Baptist 
Lesson 4.
CHAPTER V. — The Beginnings of Christ's Ministry
Lesson 5.
CHAPTER VI. — The Beginning of the Kingdom .
Lesson 6.
CHAPTER VII. — The Challenge 
Lesson 7.
CHAPTER VIII. — Christ as a Conversationalist .
Lesson 8.
CHAPTER IX. — Christ's Definition of His Mission
Lesson 10.
CHAPTER X. — "A Day with Jesus" 
Lesson zi.
CHAPTER XI. — Elements of Hostility to Jesus .
Lesson 12.
CHAPTER XII. — The Sabbath Question ....
Lesson 13.
CHAPTER XIII.— The Seed of the Church . . .
Lesson 14.
CHAPTER XIV. — The Sermon on the Mount . .
Lesson 15.
CHAPTER XV. — Elements of Christ's Popularity
Lesson 16.
CHAPTER XVI. — The Evolution of the Kingdom
Lesson 17.
CHAPTER XVII. —Signs of Christ's Messiahship .
Lesson i3.
CHAPTER XVIII. — The Commission of the Twelve
Lesson 19.
CHAPTER XIX. — The Bread of Life ...
Lesson 20.

*The lesson numbers under the chapter titles refer to The Bible Study Union
Lessons on The Gospel History of Jesus Christ.

IV

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XX. — A Period of Seclusion 
Lesson 22.
CHAPTER XXL — The Transfiguration 
Lesson 23.
CHAPTER XXII.— Jesus in Jerusalem 
Lesson 24.
CHAPTER XXIII. — Christ's Ministry in Jerusalem, continued
Lesson 26.
(For comments on Lesson 25, see next Chapter.)
CHAPTER XXIV. — Various Incidents and Teachings
Lesson 25.
CHAPTER XXV. — The Perean Ministry 
Lesson 27.
CHAPTER XXVI. — The Perean Ministry, continued .
Lesson 28.
CHAPTER XXVII. — Five Parables 
Lesson 29.
CHAPTER XXVIII. — The Resurrection of Lazarus .
Lesson 30.
CHAPTER XXIX. — Sundry Incidents and Teachings .
Lesson 31.
CHAPTER XXX. — The Last Journey to Jerusalem .
Lesson 32.
CHAPTER XXXI. — Approaching Jerusalem
Lesson 33.
CHAPTER XXXII. — The Triumphal Entry
Lesson 35.
CHAPTER XXXIII. — The Challenge . . .
Lesson 36.
CHAPTER XXXIV. — Days of Conflict
Lesson 37.
CHAPTER XXXV. — The Greeks Coming to Jesus
Lesson 38.
CHAPTER XXXVI. — Prophecy of the Second Coming
Lesson 39.
CHAPTER XXXVII. — The Last Supper ., .
Lesson 40.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. — The Last Discourse . . .
Lesson 41.
CHAPTER XXXIX. — Gethsemane 
Lesson 42.
CHAPTER XL.— The Court of Caiaphas ...
Lesson 43.
CHAPTER XLL— The Trial before Pilate ....
Lesson 43.
CHAPTER XLII. — The Crucifixion 
Lesson 44.
CHAPTER XLIII. — The Resurrection Morning . .
Lesson 45.
CHAPTER XLIV. — ¦ Further Resurrection Appearances
Lesson 46.
CHAPTER XLV. — The Lesson of the Resurrection .
Lesson 47.

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Publisher's Preface

One of the fundamental principles of The Bible Study Union
is that Sunday-school lesson helps should never be of such a
character as to take the place of the personal study of the Bible
itself in the preparation of the lesson. The tendency of helps
which do this is to drive the Bible out of the Sunday-school, and
to make the opinions of men about the Bible, rather than the
Bible itself, the basis of instruction. One evil result of such
helps appears in the practical disuse of the Bible in many Sunday-
school classes at the present time. For use in the Sunday-school,
the Bible without note or comment is much better than the best
possible notes and comments without the Bible.
It is equally true, as stated by the author of The Bible Study
Union Lessons in The Andover Review for October, 1892, that
" we need all the help we can get in studying the Bible ; we can
not have too much of it, provided it is really help ; " that is, if
it is of such a character that it helps to a* better understanding
of the sacred text, but does not take the place of that text as the
basis of study. Much such help can be gathered from historical
and geographical works, from commentaries on the gospels, and
from the various lives of Christ, of which we now have such rich
abundance. The Manual, published in connection with The Bible
Study Union Lessons, is designed to afford a large measure of such
help. It is because the accompanying Life of Christ, by Dr. Abbott,
is of this character that we gladly republish, it from the columns
of The Outlook as revised by himself, for use in connection
with the lessons on The Gospel History of Jesus Christ* It is
very comprehensive and suggestive, and throws much light on
many points in the history of our Lord. Dr. Abbott has especial

VI PUBLISHER'S PREFACE.
fitness for the preparation of such a work. He has already
written one Life of Christ, which has commanded an extensive
sale ; has prepared excellent popular commentaries on each of
the gospels ; and has written several series of comments on the
International Lessons from the gospels, in The Christian Union,
now called The Outlook. The present work, though based on
the outline of the Life of Christ as found in The Bible Study
Union course, is really the treasure-house into which he has
gathered the results of his long-continued studies on this most
important subject. It cannot fail to be very useful to any who
wish for a better understanding of the life of our Lord, and espe
cially to those who study it in the lessons of The Bible Study Union.
We wish particularly to call attention to Dr. Abbott's statement
in his preface, that he alone is responsible for any views which he
may express in this volume. We do this in justice to the author
and to the editor of the lessons, and to the Lesson Committee of
The Bible Study Union. THE BIBLE STUDY PUBLISHING CO.
Boston, September, 1894.

Author's Preface

This is not, properly speaking, a Life of Christ. During the last
half-century many such Lives have been written, from a great
variety of points of view and with widely different characteristics.
Not to go beyond the more popular and better known, and those
which treat the theme in the spirit of a thoroughly Christian faith,
the lay student of the Bible wilh find valuable aid to his study of
the Gospels in Stalker, an admirable compend ; Farrar, imagi
native, emotive, and pictorial; Edersheim, a treasure-house of
information concerning Jewish life and literature ; Geikie, not less
scholarly in its presentation of Greek and Roman contemporaneous
life ; Weiss, thoughtful, suggestive, reverent, though to the English
mind somewhat free in its dealing with some debatable questions ;
Andrews, the best extant book of reference on questions chrono
logical arid topographical. From these and other kindred sources
I have freely drawn in these papers, without attempting to rival or
compete with them.
For a number of years I have prepared a paper for " The
Outlook" (formerly " The Christian Union") on the subject of the
International Sunday-school Lessons. This year the International
Committee chose as their theme the Life of Christ. A comparison
of their selected Scripture with that of The Bible Study Union made
it quite evident that the course selected by the latter Committee
was much the more complete and comprehensive. I therefore
adopted the latter as the basis for my Biblical articles this year.
Like their predecessors, these papers assume that the reader has
access to other sources of information — in commentaries, in the
various Lives of Christ, and in the Quarterlies and Manuals espe
cially prepared for Sunday-school teachers' use. Assuming some

Vlll AUTHOR S PREFACE
prior study of the Scripture lesson with such scholarly aids, the
object of these papers is synthetic rather than analytic ; it is to
present in a single picture the incident or teaching suggested for
our contemplation, and to suggest, not all the lessons that may be
drawn from it, but that lesson which is most central and is at once
most upon the surface and most at the heart of the narrative. In
brief, the object of these papers is not so much to add to the
reader's knowledge of the facts as to increase his appreciation of
the spirit of the Gospel narrative.
Two remarks ought perhaps to be added : First, that neither The
Bible Study Union Committee nor the authors or editors of its
lessons are in any way responsible for the views embodied in or
supposed to be implied by these papers. The papers do not pass
under the eye of that Committee, or any member of it, prior to
publication, but are reprinted, without revision, except my own,
from the pages of " The Outlook." Second, that they are written
by one who believes heartily and sincerely in what is infelicitously
termed " the supernatural." My whole religious faith is founded on
and vivified by my faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the
Saviour of mankind. It is because I have this faith, and desire to
impart it to and strengthen it in others, that these papers are
written. It is also proper to add that in the preparation of these
papers I have felt free to make use, without direct reference or
quotation, of my "Jesus of Nazareth" (Harper & Brothers), and
of a series of sermons preached in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, in
the winter of 1888-89, and published in the " Christian World
Pulpit " of London. LYMAN ABBOTT.
Brooklyn, N. Y., July, 1894.

The Life of Christ

CHAPTER I.— INTRODUCTORY: THE DIVINE
CHRIST
John i., 1-18; Luke i., 26-38

Before taking up the life of Christ, it is desirable that
the student should clearly understand why he is studying
that life. I believe it is because that life answers the two
profoundest questions which any one ever has to ask him
self : First, What is man ? Secondly, Who is God ?
1. What is man ? Before it is possible for one to ac
complish anything, he must form some plan according to
which he will work. Some ideal is a necessary prerequi
site to any achievement. What will I make of myself ?
Before I can answer this question I must ask and answer
another : What is true manhood ? What ought I to wish
to be ? This is the first and most fundamental question of
religion. Not, Is there a God ? Not, Is there a salvation
from sin ? But, Is there any ideal to which man may
aspire, to which also he may patiently and hopefully direct
his endeavors? For until this question is answered, he
cannot answer the others. He cannot know what sin is
until he has known what is the ideal, falling away from
which constitutes sin. He cannot know whether there is
a God who has anything to do with him until he knows
something about himself.
This first and fundamental question Jesus Christ answers.
What is human nature ? The Gospel replies : Jesus Christ
is the embodiment of true human nature ; whoever fails
to come up to the standard of Jesus Christ fails to come
up to the standard of a true manhood. Depravity is not

2 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
natural, but, as Horace Bushnell has well said, unnatural,
contra-natural. It is the true nature of man to be a child
of God, and what is meant by a child of God the life and
character of Jesus Christ declare to us. We are to follow
him because he is the ideal of humanity ; we are to study
him that we may know what that ideal is. It is one of
the remarkable features of his life and character that he
has historically furnished an ideal for so great a variety of
individuals — for the ancient and for the modern; for the
Occidental and for the Oriental ; for the philosopher and
for the laborer ; for the soldier, the statesman, the poet,
the preacher, the workingman ; for man and for woman.
Augustine and Luther in the pulpit, Havelock and Howard
in the camp, William of Orange and Gladstone in the
statesman's office, Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton
in the hospital, the merchant in his counting-room and
the mother at her cradle, have all found the ideal for their
life, the pattern for their imitation, in Jesus Christ.
Not, indeed, in following even him in any exact and
servile imitation, not in trying to do the things he did in
the way in which he did them, not in being an itinerant
minister, or indeed a minister at all, because he was a
preacher without a settled home — not thus ' do we follow
him. If this were following Christ, he could be a model
for only the few. We follow him when we learn what his
spirit was, and are inspired by that spirit ourselves ; when
we show in our lives the patience, the courage, the long-
suffering love which he showed in his, and solve the prob
lems of our day and generation by applying to them the
principles which he inculcated and applied. This must be
our first duty, and this our first desire, in studying the life
of Jesus Christ — to see what life may mean, and ought to
mean to us.
2. The other great question I believe he also answers —
Who is God ?
The preface to John's Gospel is the fitting preface
to our study of this incomparable life. God has always
been a Word. That is, he has always been a speaking,
self -manifesting, self-revealing God. God is love ; and
love always, and by the very necessity of its nature, puts
forth life for the sake of others. God has thus always
been manifesting himself in nature, in poets and prophets,

INTRODUCTORY : THE DIVINE CHRIST . 3
in heroes known and unknown. Especially has he mani
fested himself in and through the one chosen people of
Israel, whose genius fitted them for the special manifesta
tion of divine righteousness. At last, when the prepara
tory work was done, and the fullness of time had come, he
manifested himself in one unique and transcendent human
life. The Word which had always been speaking of the
.divine glory " was made flesh and dwelt among us."
In Jesus Christ God and man are reconciled. Not as
by some extraneous act done for both God and man by
some third person; they are reconciled in Jesus Christ
primarily because Jesus Christ is a true man, and the true
man always is and must be divine ; because, on the
other hand, Jesus Christ is the supremest manifestation of
God to man, and that supremest manifestation can be no
otherwise than in a human life. We study, then, the life
of Christ that we may understand the life of God. What
Jesus Christ was in the three short years of his public
ministry, that God is in his infinite and eternal relations
to the children of men. Jesus Christ is God adumbrated
that we may look upon him. He is the image of God made
finite that we may comprehend him. He is not the mani
festation of one phase of God, as of his mercy, with an
other phase — his wrath — to come by and by ; he is the
manifestation of the whole moral attributes and qualities
of the infinite, the eternal, and the otherwise unknown.
Therefore it is that through him we have access to the
Father. When we look above us or about us or within
us, and wonder who is He that made the world, that rules
mankind, that inspires the individual soul, the answer is
always the same : He is such an one as Jesus Christ was,
for Jesus Christ was God manifest in the flesh.
We study, then, this life of Christ, in the second place,
that we may know who God is. What Paul declared to
the Athenians, that this life still declares to us : " Whom ye
without understanding worship, him declare I unto you."
I ask the readers of these papers, as they read them, and
as they read with care the successive passages of Scripture
upon which these papers are founded, always to ask them
selves these two questions : What is man ? and Who is
God ? and for the answer to these questions look to this
unique and incomparable life.

CHAPTER II.— THE BIRTH OF JESUS CHRIST
Luke ii., 1-20

It must be conceded by the candid student of the Bible
that the story of the miraculous birth of Jesus is not as
well authenticated as the story of his resurrection, and
that the same importance is not attached to it by the sacred
writers. Two only of the Gospel narrators mention his
birth. It is never referred to by Christ himself in any of
his reported discourses, and it is never directly referred to
in any of the evangelical missionary sermons recorded in
the Book of Acts, nor in any of the Apostolic epistles. It
is not strange, therefore, that devout and reverential men
have doubted the truth of this story ; and certainly it
would be a mistake to attach to this supernatural birth the
same importance that is attached to the resurrection.
For the latter is the foundation of historical Christianity,
and is made so by the prominence given to it both in the
evangelical narratives and in the discourses and epistles
of the Apostolic writers. At the same time the candid
objector must also recognize the fact that his real objection
to this narrative is that it introduces into history so much
of what is termed the supernatural. It is because the
event is extraordinary, because it cannot be accounted for
on naturalistic principles, because dreams and angelic
visions are unknown in our time, or at least discredited,
that this chapter in the life of Christ, with its accompany
ing " overture of angels," as it has been beautifully termed
by Henry Ward Beecher, is looked upon with doubt by
the skeptical mind. Now, these papers on the life of
Christ are written, as I have already said, from the point
of view of one who believes in the supernatural, and it
would be idle to attempt in a parenthetical paragraph to
maintain against objectors this point of view. It must suf
fice here to say that I believe that God is in nature and in
4

THE BIRTH OF JESUS CHRIST 5
human life, and that in Jesus the Christ he entered into one
unique human life in order to reveal himself to mankind ;
and it does not seem strange to me that such an entrance
should be unique. I believe that angelic spirits and the
sainted dead are not far removed from us, but all about
us ; it does not, therefore, seem strange to me that some
vision should be afforded of their presence in the birth-
hour of the Son of God. The method of the divine
incarnation and the simplicity of the Gospel narrative both
of Matthew and of Luke seem to me inconsistent with the
idea that these narratives are either mythical additions or
the creations of a wonder-working fancy. Let the reader,
then, whatever may be his philosophical predilections, try
for a moment to take this point of view, and, with this
faith in the supernatural as a present and perpetual reality,
read the simple story of Jesus's birth.
A peasant youth and maiden are betrothed. The man
a carpenter by trade, a Nazarene by residence, an upright
but cautious if not timid soul, of little repute in his com
munity, and belonging to the poorest of the peasantry ;
the maiden a woman of quick impulses and resolute will,
devout, God-fearing, familiar with the Scriptures of her
people, and possessing a patient, heroic mother-love, which
has made her a true type of womanhood and motherhood
throughout the ages.1 Both youth and maiden live in the
hope of the coming of that Messiah who was to redeem
Israel from its bondage and re-establish the kingdom of
God upon the earth. They live in an age when angelic
visitations seemed not incredible. To her, as yet uumar-
ried, comes from an angel the annunciation of her mother
hood, and that the child to whom she should give birth
should be the long-waited-for Messiah. Only a mother
can at all conceive what this angel message meant to Mary.
Only a mother can at all realize how sublimely simple was
the faith which, despite the certainty that the fulfillment
of this message would subject her to darkest and crudest
suspicion, received it with the quiet and accepting faith :
" Behold the handmaid of the Lord ; be it unto me accord
ing to thy word."
1 For Scripture references justifying these conclusions respecting the character
of Joseph and Mary, see (Joseph) : Luke ii., 24 ; Matthew L, 19-24 ; ii., 14-21, 22 ;
John vi., 42. (Mary) : Luke i., 39 ; Mark iii., 21-31 ; John xix., 25 ; Luke i., 38 ;
ii., 19-51 ; i., 46-55-

6 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
With a different sort of faith, less profound, less truly
comprehending the deep significance of the hour, did the
shepherds on the plain receive the message which came to
them. One can imagine them half-dozing on the hillside
and startled by the sudden appearance of a messenger,
who comes they know not whence, with a strange light in
his garments which gives them a sense of the supernal.
But stranger than the apparition is the message of the
unknown. This is not merely that the Messiah is born,
but that the evidence of his Messiahship is that they shall
find the babe lying in a manger. We may be quite cer
tain that they did not understand the significance of that
message then, since its significance has hardly been under
stood even now. The sign which was to attest the Mes
siah was his lowliness. The evidence of his divinity was
the degree of his self-abasement. Love enters life at the
very bottom and takes upon itself the hardest conditions.
Since the Messiah came to minister, not to be ministered
unto, since he came to proclaim as a Gospel message, It
is more blessed to give than to receive, since he came to
reveal a God whose whole nature is summed up in the one
word love, since he came to be a divine sacrifice, not a
receiver of sacrifices from mankind, the sign of his Mes
siahship was the lowliness of the home in which he was
installed. By a different messenger God intimated the Gospel of
his Son to the pagan world. Whether from ancient
Hebrew prophecies borne into the East, or from their own
native discontent with existing conditions, or from pro
phetic words uttered by pagan prophets, it is not, perhaps,
easy to determine, but certain it is that Eastern nations
had an expectation of a deliverer whose coming should
revolutionize the world.1 Among the devout souls of the
East none were more devout than the disciples of Zoroaster.
It is not improbable that the remarkable conjunction of
Jupiter and Saturn which occurred at this time first
attracted their attention and led three of the Magi of
Persia to travel westward in search of the Messiah whose
birth they believed this conjunction had presaged. Thus,
in the very hour of the Messiah's birth, witness was borne
1 See my "Jesus of Nazareth," p. 71.

THE BIRTH OF JESUS CHRIST 7
to the double truth that Nature rightly studied leads to
Christ, and that God, whose love is broader
Than the measures of man's mind,
gives the message of his mercy to pagan nations by meth
ods which pagan nations are able to receive.
But the reception of the Messiah was not all with won
dering and welcoming faith. In the vain attempt to put
the infant King of Israel to death, by the slaughter of the
Hebrew children, was presaged, even in the earliest
months of his life, the hostility which the Christ was to
encounter, and which was to bring him to a seemingly
untimely death ; and which, in all the subsequent history
of the Church, was to do battle against him and his cause
— a witness that goodness is not a natural and simple
growth under favoring skies, but a fight of faith against
willful, determined, and murderous opposition.
With this simple grouping together of these events, I
must leave the student to meditate on the significance of
these varied receptions of Israel's King : By the receptive
Mother ; by the wondering shepherds ; by the seeking
Magi ; and by the hostile Herod.

CHAPTER III.— THE EDUCATION OF JESUS
Matthew, chapter ii. ; Luke ii., 21-52

Science, which endeavors to explain everything by that
which is seen and understood, offers 'two explanations to
account for the mystery of character : one, inheritance ;
the other, environment. These two are insufficient to
account for the character of Jesus the Christ. We know
comparatively little, it is true, of either Joseph or Mary —
what little we do know has been indicated in Chapter
II. — but we know this : that nothing remarkable appears
in the character of Joseph ; and although Mary, the
mother of Jesus, was a remarkable woman, there is noth
ing in her character adequate to account for that of her
son. She clearly had no conception of his mission.
Believing him to be a prophet, she was anxious to have
him inaugurate his ministry by a miracle. Finding him
threatened by a conflict with the Pharisees, she feared that
his zeal was running into fanaticism, and, with her other
children, tried to break through the crowd that was about
him and get him away, but tried in vain. This is not a
case in which the genius of the father or mother accounts
for that of the son. Nor do we find in his ancestry any
indications of extraordinary spiritual genius. Two geneal
ogies of him are given, but we do not find in either of
them any hint of the future greatness of the child. We
look in vain in the records of these names for any of the
great prophets — Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah ; in vain for any
of the great reforming kings — Jehoshaphat, Josiah, Heze-
kiah. The only "great name in the genealogy is that of
David. With that solitary exception, the names are those
of persons otherwise almost wholly unknown.
There is as little in the environment of the child to ac
count for his character. The Gospels, indeed, give us but
one incident of his youth, but from other sources we are
able to form a tolerable picture of the influences under
8

THE EDUCATION OF JESUS 9
which his childhood was spent. The house, built of sun-
dried brick and thatched with straw, contained probably but
a single room, which served for kitchen, bedroom, sitting-
room, and workshop. If the weather permitted, the house
wife built a sort of camp-fire outside for cooking. There
was neither chimney nor window ; the light came in through
the door, or through a slit in the wall made narrow so as
to exclude the rain. Art and literature were unknown.
A literal interpretation of the command, "Thou shalt not
make unto thee any graven image," prevented all art
except such as was contained in geometrical or arabesque
patterns. The only literature the house could have con
tained would have been some fragment of the Bible, or
the commentary of some scribe thereon. The devout
Puritan would sooner have allowed the literature of Vol
taire and Rousseau in his home than the devout Jew
would have permitted that of Greece or Rome. The only
evening illumination came from a smoking lamp put upon
a bushel turned upside down to serve as a light-stand, and
in the daytime the house was so dark that if the house
wife lost a coin she must light a candle to search for it.
The only school was one connected with the village syna
gogue, and here probably Jesus learned to read, using
the Old Testament Scriptures as his reader. Possibly
he also learned a little arithmetic. Science was unknown,
and writing was done by scribes who carried their ink
stand and parchment with them, and could be hired for a
small coin to do one's writing for one. Only once did
Jesus go to a school where the higher education was taught.
This was in Jerusalem, whose temple was surrounded with
the booths of men learned in the law, and which was thus at
once temple and university. The boy was but twelve years
of age, but he was attracted, not by the barbaric splendor
of the temple, the magnificence of the music, or the great
processions, but by this one opportunity of his life to learn.
something more than his synagogue teacher, or even his
pious mother, could teach him. He strayed from his
parents into the class-rooms of this university to ask ques
tions, not, as tradition has sometimes represented, pertly
teaching the doctors, but seriously inquiring that he might
learn what he hoped they might communicate. Three
days at this university was all the higher education he ever

IO THE LIFE OF CHRIST
had. Then his parents came back for him, and he was
carried away to work again at his father's bench.
There was as little, too, in the general atmosphere of
the age as in the special instructions of the school and the
family to minister to such a character as that of Jesus.
There were three great schools of thought, but from neither
could he have learned much save as he reacted against
them : the Essenes, the hermits, monks, of the first cen
tury, who, believing that the world was wrong, withdrew
from the world ; the Sadducees, the materialists and un
believers of the first century, who had no faith in anything
except success, and considered no price too great to pay
for it ; and the Pharisees, the Puritans of the first century,
who believed in righteousness and in God, but in a God
who enforced righteousness by external enactments, and in
a righteousness which consisted in formal obedience to
those enactments, down to the minutest particulars. Not
from the Essenes, the ascetics of the first century, did
Jesus learn to mix with men ; not from the Sadducees that
God is our Father and heaven our home ; not from the
Pharisees the law of liberty ; not from all three combined
(who worshiped only Judaism and abhorred all else) did
he learn the two great lessons of his ministry — the father
hood of God and the brotherhood of man.
How little either inheritance or environment did for
Jesus those who are least willing to recognize any super
natural element in life freely acknowledge.
The historical conditions amid which he [Jesus] appeared do
not adequately explain how he became the teacher of a better
form of religion than that in which he had been educated, and
how he created a new epoch in the history of religion. These
conditions were substantially the same, so far as we can discern,
for multitudes of his contemporaries ; but he alone of all these
multitudes showed any fitness for this enterprise. The fact can
be explained logically only by falling back on the hypothesis
that he was a great religious genius, or by crediting him with a
great personal endowment and native force of character. Of no
man in history could it less be said than of him that he was the
creature of his age ; and as little could it be said of that period
of time that it would have been much the same and have formed
a turning-point in religious history had he not appeared.1
1 " Natural History of the Christian Religion," by Dr. William Macintosh
(P. 73).

THE EDUCATION OF JESUS II
So says Dr. William Macintosh in his " Natural History of
the Christian Religion," which is an endeavor to account
for Christianity on naturalistic principles. More briefly,
and therefore more effectively, Henry Ward Beecher has
said the same thing : " Only the lower natures are formed
by external circumstances. Great natures are freely de
veloped by forces from within."
This " personal endowment and native force of char
acter," this "great religious genius," this "force from
within," is the element in human life which science may
recognize but can never accurately measure, because it is
the divine element. Let it be freely recognized that
times produce men. It must also be freely recognized
that men produce times. If Luther is a product of the
Reformation, the Reformation is also a product of Luther.
If Shakespeare is a product of England, England is also a
product of Shakespeare. The geniuses which flash upon
the world at certain epochs, sometimes revolutionizing the
world's thought and sometimes leading it gently and skill
fully on in steady development, are not to be accounted
for by either inheritance or environment. They are the
prophets and messengers of God; in them the divine
voice speaks. All true genius has a supernatural, or, if
the reader prefers, a superhuman, element in it. Genius
is inspiration. I will leave to others of subtler intellect to
make nice discriminations between the inspiration of the
Hebrews and that of other people. To me God is always
in his world, and the unknown element in human character
is not more than the known, but more evidently than the
known, a divine element. That the genius, the inspira
tion, the divinity of Jesus Christ worked in a human soul,
molded in the first century as that soul would not have
been molded in the nineteenth, and subject to limitations
in the first century which would have been different in the
nineteenth, need not be questioned. Enough to point out
that Jesus was what he was, not made so by qualities
inherited from themother, nor by influences wrought by the
education of his youth, either formal or general, but by
that force from within which is God.

CHAPTER IV.— JOHN THE BAPTIST
Luke i., 5-25, 57-80; iii., 1-18; Matthew iii., 1-12; John i., 19-36

In the history of religion two very distinct and some
what antagonistic tendencies have been observable. One
class of minds are inclined to look at life from the stand
point of God, the other class of minds from the standpoint
of man. If this statement seems vague, let the reader
consider its meaning from the illustrations which follow.
Both classes of religious teachers have in mind the same
great end, namely, bringing the soul of man into fellow
ship and unity with God. But they approach this problem
of the spiritual life from different directions and in a dif
ferent spirit. The one class seek to bring God down to
man ; they undertake to mediate between God and man.
In theology they are Calvinistic or Augustinian, and their
endeavor is as teachers to reveal the character and law
and government of God. In church life they are ecclesi
astical ; they become priests and sacramentarians through
the temple, the altar, the sacrifice ; they seek to bring the
divine life into the souls of men. This class is in danger
of overexalting the symbol, though sometimes that symbol
is a ceremonial and sometimes it is a creed. To believe
the creed or to accept the ceremonial is the condition of
receiving the divine life.
The other school approaches the same problem, but from
the other direction. They attempt to lift man up to God ;
their fundamental doctrine is that God is a righteous per
son, and that it is possible for man to become at one with
God only by becoming a righteous person. They dwell,
therefore, chiefly on law and duty, they put little stress
on creeds and ceremonies, and even in time abolish them
altogether. In theology they are Arminian, holding in
philosophy to the freedom of the will, and in religion to
the possibility and the necessity of fulfilling the laws of
righteousness. They are preachers, rarely or never priests.

JOHN THE BAPTIST 1 3
If the necessity of their profession makes them both
priests and preachers, the latter function is the one which
seems of first importance to them. The pulpit is more
than the altar ; the sermon is more than the sacrifice. The
danger into which this school is liable to fall is that of
making religion a merely ethical system, of making right
eousness a series of laws external to man, of making obe
dience formal rather than spiritual, and, perhaps chief dan
ger of all, of spurring men on to great endeavor withour
equipping them with commensurate spiritual endowment.
Both of these tendencies are clearly discernible in Old
Testament history. One is seen in the priesthood, the
other in the prophetic order. The priesthood laid stress
on the temple, the feasts, the ceremonies, the sacrifices.
Their notion of religion comes to its culmination in the
Book of Leviticus, which modern criticism has shown to
be the product of a post-Mosaic age, the ripened result of
a priestly system which had been in operation for centu
ries. The prophetic order, on the other hand, attached
little value to sacrifices and ceremonies, and sometimes
scouted them altogether. The spirit of this order is well
interpreted in the first chapter of Isaiah, a prophet whose
temper somewhat resembles that of Martin Luther. Occa
sionally a great genius arises, like the second Isaiah, who
combines both messages in one, laying all the stress which
the prophets have laid on the necessity of righteousness
and character, and all the stress which the priests have
laid on the inflowing of a divine life into the souls of men.
To this order of prophets — that is, to this class of minds,
for the prophets were not an ecclesiastical order — belonged
John the Baptizer, the second cousin of Jesus. His
appearance recalled that of Elijah, whom he resembled
alike in the suddenness of his public apparition, in the
sternness of his message, in his simple habits, and in his
uncouth appearance. He wore a rough garment of camel's
hair about his person, and lived for the most part on the
locusts which even to this day are caught and ground up,
serving the poorest class of peasants with a substitute for
flour, and on wild honey, which was often found in the
crevices of the rocks and in holes in the trees. He had
been educated, probably, for the priesthood, to which his
father belonged, but, disgusted with the corruptions of the

14 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
Church, like Luther, he had come out from it. His mes
sage was a repetition of that of the first Isaiah, of the
prophet Amos, and of the prophet Micah. In the
intensity of his zeal, the sincerity of his speech, and
the unfeigned horror of a righteous conscience against
the formal and fictitious religion, he had all the strength
of the ancient prophets. His message was like this :
What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and
to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? When
the multitude thronged about him, attracted by his
rugged features and yet more rugged preaching, he told
them that they were not to think themselves better than
the pagans because they were children of Abraham ; God
could raise up out of the stones children of Abraham more
amenable to the divine influence than they were. When
a delegation from the Sanhedrim came down to inquire
into his ministry, he repudiated all other authority than
that which the mere truth of his utterance possessed ; but
when the people, stirred by his words, desired to know what
they should do to flee from the wrath which he prophesied,
he had at first no other message to give them than that of
the first Isaiah, " Wash you, make you clean, put away the
evil of your doings from before my eyes." He had no
message for them of divine help.1 In this respect his
preaching was a preparation for the more hopeful and in
spiring message of the Christ. He seems, however, to
have prepared himself by his preaching for that better mes
sage. Before Christ's baptism he was a preacher of the
law ; after Christ's baptism he became a preacher of the
Gospel.2 If, as is probable, his preaching, recorded in
John's Gospel, occurred about the Day of Atonement, his
figure, " Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the
sin of the world," could not have been misunderstood by
the people. Both he and his auditors must have had in
mind the scapegoat on which the sins of the people were
symbolically laid on the great Day of Atonement, and by
which they were borne off into the wilderness to be known
no more.8 Thus John the Baptizer is the last preacher of
the law and the first herald of the Gospel, and therefore
greater than the greatest in the history of the past, yet less
than the least in the Church of the future.4
1 Luke iii., 10-14. s Leviticus, chapter xvi.
2 See John i., 29-36. 4 Matthew xi., n.

CHAPTER V;— THE BEGINNING OF CHRIST'S
MINISTRY
Matthew iii., 13-17 ; iv., 1-11 ; Mark i., 1-11

The spirit and method of Jesus, as he afterwards
said publicly, radically differed from those of his cousin
John the Baptizer, but their great end was the same — a
spiritual reformation founded on righteousness and in
spired by faith in God. When, therefore, Jesus emerged
from the obscurity in which he had been living to enter
upon his work, his first act was to seek out his cousin John
and identify himself with this already perilously dis
credited teacher. He connected his work, which was so
soon to supersede that of his predecessor, with the work
that was to be superseded by insisting that John should
baptize him, by selecting his first disciples from those of his
cousin John, and by allowing, if he did not encourage, them
to continue the ceremony of baptism. Caution might well
have counseled Jesus to begin his new movement without
entangling alliances with what had gone before. Con
science might have re-enforced the argument of caution.
Can John's method, it would have asked, save the world ?
"No," Jesus would have said. "The man who shuts him
self out from the world can never reform it. John comes
neither eating nor drinking. I shall come eating and
drinking." Do you believe that his demand of repentance
is sufficient to save the world ? " No," Jesus would have
said, " repentance is not sufficient ; there must be faith —
faith in God, unity with God, receiving life from God — or
the soul will fail to fulfill its own dream of righteousness."
Nevertheless Jesus identified himself with John, for John
had raised' a great moral issue — on the one side corruption
and a spurious religion, on the other an earnest though in
effectual protest against it ; and Jesus began his ministry
by identifying himself with the protestants and so repeating
the challenge of John to the forces already arrayed against

l6 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
righteousness. The baptism of Jesus was like the act of
Luther when he flung the papal bull into the flames in the
market-place at Wittenberg.
From his baptism, from this open and public confession
of his faith in righteousness, this open and public chal
lenge to unrighteousness, he went up into the wilderness to
ponder on his future life, and by meditation and prayer,
with wrestling, to prepare for it. What shall his life be ?
How shall he meet its problems ? How shall he deal with
its questions as they confront him ? Forty days he pon
dered these questions, eating little — probably nothing more
than he could gather of the wild honey from the rocks, or
the locusts, the wilderness food of his cousin John. One
wonders what went on in those forty days of soul-ques
tioning, in which all life lay dimly outlined before him.
The questioning over, the devil came to him to tempt
him — not, we may be sure, as art has sometimes repre
sented him, with horns and hoofs. A devil with horns
and hoofs is no devil. Who would not say to such an one,
" Get thee behind me, Satan " ? He came to Christ as he
comes to us, robed as an angel of light, with cunningly
devised suggestions, the evil of which only the clear spirit
ual insight of a soul wholly consecrated to God's service
could detect.
He was hungry. Command these stones that they may
be made bread : why not ? Because he had come into
life that he might be subject to human conditions, and to
use his supernatural power for himself was to violate the
very condition of his incarnation. But more than that is
involved in this temptation and in Christ's reply. For this
suggestion was that he should minister to the desires
rather than to the deeper needs of men. What men desire
is bread — that which ministers to the bodily ease and com
fort ; in brief, civilization. Speak, said the tempter, and
let the streams give forth their gold, and the rocks their
coal, and the prairies their bountiful harvest, and let all the
mountain streams run leaping down the mountains and
turn the busy wheel of industry, give men food for the
stomach and occupation for the ear and the eye, and men
shall rise up and call thee blessed. " No," Christ replies,
" it is not bread alone which man needs ; but every mani
festation and revelation of God. I will not seek the way

THE BEGINNING OF CHRIST'S MINISTRY 17
to men by their animal nature. I will touch them in the
brain, in the heart, in the spirit. I will seek my way,
though it be long and dreary, to my kingdom by lifting
men above the earth and the earthly." Christianity is not
civilization, and does not come through civilization. Chris
tianity first ; civilization afterwards. The ministry to the
spirit first ; the ministry to the body subsequently.
Then comes the second suggestion. Stand in imagina
tion on the loftiest pinnacle of the lofty temple. Behold
the priests joyful in the courts below and the city thronged
with multitudes gathered on this festal day. Now fling
thyself down from this pinnacle ; be borne up in angel
hands ; let not thy foot dash against a stone ; so, by
appealing to men's wonder and admiration, win thy victory
by one great successful exhibition. How often in the his
tory of the Church has this temptation been repeated !
What mean these great cathedrals, these magnificent pro
cessions, this sumptuous religion, these insignia of eccle
siastical power ; what these sermons striving to stir men
by pictures of an imagined heaven and an imagined hell,
except this — that the Church has yielded to the temptation
to make quick passage to a kingdom of God by exciting
men to fear and admire God rather than by inspiring them
to love him ? Not so will Christ win his way to the world's
homage. He cares not for bowing heads and bended
knees ; only for loyal hearts touched with the spirit of his
own deep love.
Then comes the third temptation. He is in the pro
phetic mood peculiar to a great poetic soul. He seems
to himself to stand on the tip of a high mountain with
all the kingdoms of a world spread out before him : Greece
with her temples and her philosophy, Rome with her pal
aces and her armies, the Orient with her resplendent
dreams and legends. All this, says the tempter to him,
may be yours, but do not be too quick to challenge the
world to mortal combat ; you cannot conquer it in a single
day. Fight fire with fire. Is Rome corrupt ? When you
are in Rome you must do as the Romans do. Use worldly
policies to vanquish the world. How often has that temp
tation been repeated to moral reformers, statesmen, preach
ers, priests, ecclesiastics of every description ! So to Na
poleon the Great the tempter said, " Serve me, and I will

18 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
give thee the kingdoms of the earth and the glory thereof ;"
and he gave him St. Helena. So to Napoleon III. he
said, " Bow down to me, and serve me, and I will give thee
the kingdoms of the world and the glory thereof ;" and he
gave him Chiselhurst. The last and the most delusive
temptation of the devil is to compromise with moral evil ;
but when that temptation comes before the pure soul of
Jesus, instinctively and with a flash of indignation comes
the answer, " Get thee behind me, Satan ; for it is written,
Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt
thou serve. No worldliness shall be in my religion ; no
compromise with evil in my uncompromising battle against
it. It may slay me, but I will rise again."

CHAPTER VI.— THE BEGINNING OF THE
KINGDOM
John L, 19-51 ; ii., 1-11

Jesus compares his kingdom to a grain of mustard-seed,
which is itself the least of seeds, but when it is grown
becomes the greatest of herbs. In the theme suggested
for to-day we see this least of seeds before it is planted
and has begun to grow. This is the spring which has
since become the river of God, this the germinant begin
ning of that Christianity which has since overspread two
continents and is gradually permeating a third with its
transforming power.
The reader of " Marcella " will recall that remarkable
chapter in her experience in which she is brought to the
consciousness that humanity cannot save itself :
" Nobody could live in hospital, nobody could go
among the poor, nobody could share the thoughts and
hopes of people, like Edward Hallin and his sister, with
out understanding that it is still here in the world — this
grace ' that sustaineth ' — however variously interpreted ;
still living and working as it worked of old among the
little Galilean towns, in Jerusalem, in Corinth. To Ed
ward Hallin it did not mean the same, perhaps, as it
meant to the hard-worked clergymen she knew, or to Mrs.
Jervis. But to all it meant the motive power of life —
something subduing, transforming, delivering — something
that to-night she envied with a passion and a yearning
that amazed herself."
It is the revelation of this grace, as "something sub
duing, transforming, delivering," which constitutes the
secret of Christianity. John the Baptist was not a prophet
of this grace. He was a prophet of the Law. When a
delegation from the Sanhedrim came to inquire if he was
the Messiah whom Hebrew prophets had foretold, and
who would subdue, transform, deliver, he answered, No !
19

20 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
He was not even a prophet of that Messiah. He was only a
Voice crying in the wilderness, and bidding men prepare
for him. When the people, their consciences touched by
John the Baptist's fearless denunciation of their sins,
asked for a remedy, he could suggest none except that
they should be generous and just and humane. He had
a passion of righteousness, but no message of help or hope
to a people who, vaguely desiring or eagerly craving it, yet
could not achieve it.
To him came his cousin to be baptized. John had
known Jesus before; but it had never occurred to him
that this Jesus was the Messiah. " A prophet is not with
out honor save in his own country." In the hour of bap
tism the truth was flashed upon him. Whether the Holy
Spirit took on the form of a dove and descended, or a dove
descended and was accepted by John as a symbol of the
Holy Spirit, or the Spirit descended as a dove descends,
the figure being in the Evangelist's record, not in any out
ward and visible sign, and whether the voice from heaven
spake audibly or only to the soul of John the Baptist, it is
not very material to discuss ; enough to say that the spirit
ual nature and power of the Helper and Saviour of men were
now for the first time perceived by the Hebrew prophet,
and no sooner perceived than declared. He knew how
eagerly the Jewish people were looking for this revealer of
grace, this bringer of power. He knew how all eyes and
hearts would turn to him. There is a pathos in his declara
tions, " His shoe-latchet I am not worthy to unloose," and
" He must increase, but I must decrease." This is a
realization never easy to be borne, perhaps least easy to
be borne by one who is conscious of his own divine mis
sion. But John seems not to have hesitated for a day, but
straightway to have sent his own followers to the new
Master whose glory was so soon to dim his own.
Two circumstances must have made this course of John
the more difficult. The spirit and method of Jesus differed
radically from his own. John possessed the Hebrew spirit.
He was a Puritan before the days of Puritanism. His
method of meeting temptation was to flee from it. He
shunned the haunts of men ; lived in the wilderness ; pro
tested against social corruption by withdrawing altogether
from society. But this was not Christ's method. He

THE BEGINNING OF THE KINGDOM 21
went into society ; joined not only in its religious cere
monials but in its social life. He looked without protest
on the children dancing in the market-place ; ate not only
with the scrupulous and orderly, but with the publicans
and sinners, and began his ministry, when he left the
preacher from the wilderness, by attending a wedding-
feast, whose festivities far transcended those usual in our
time, and by adding to them a generous and unexpected
contribution to the wine when the stock was exhausted.
It would have been strange if this did not puzzle John, for
it has puzzled some modern Christians who might be sup
posed to have understood better than did John the princi
ples and spirit of Jesus, but who have, nevertheless, either
frankly deprecated this act of their Master, or less frankly
attempted to explain it away.1
Partly, perhaps, because of this diversity in method and
spirit, John's faith in Jesus seems to have been very far
from a clear and positive conviction. It is true that he
pointed his own disciples to Jesus as " the Lamb of God
that taketh away the sin of the world." But he never
followed Jesus himself. He continued a separate ministry,
baptizing not as a symbol of allegiance to Jesus as the
Messiah, but only as a pledge of repentance from sin.
And when later he was imprisoned by Herod in the
Castle of Macheerus, his perplexity at the course of Jesus
so grew that he sent two of his disciples to inquire whether
his cousin were really the Messiah. He seemed to say,
" I know you cannot be a false pretender ; I know you too
well for that. But have I been mistaken in thinking you
the Messiah ?" So evident, indeed, is this later perplexity
of John that Strauss, who seems to think that Bible char
acters have an immunity from the contradictions and per
plexities which beset ordinary mortals, supposes that John's
testimony to Jesus must have been invented at a later
date and attributed to John for controversial- purposes.
If from John the Baptist we turn to his disciples, their
faith seems to have been neither clearer nor stronger than
his. They go to see Jesus ; they are impressed by his
personality ; but they do not appear to entertain at all
1 By the invention of the two-wine theory, which has no standing with modern
scholars, and is refuted, if additional refutation were necessary, by the substan
tially unanimous testimony of all who are familiar with the life and customs of
the East.

22 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
the idea that he is the Messiah ; nor do they attach them
selves to him and become his followers until a considerably
later period. They remain with him a little while — how
long we cannot tell — and then return to their Galilean
home and their fishing, where some months later Jesus
finds them and calls them to follow him.
John believes Jesus to be the Messiah ; but does not
follow him. John's disciples go to confer with him, and
are impressed by his personality; but they do not follow
him. And Jesus himself, turning his back on the ministry
of John at the river Jordan, and stopping his own ministry,
which is already beginning to be accompanied by more
converts than that of his predecessor, goes off to Galilee
to enjoy himself and add to the enjoyment of others at a
wedding-feast, while his first pseudo followers leave both
John and Jesus and return to their fishing.
This is a strange beginning for a religious life which is
to overspread and conquer the woild. But Jesus is not
in haste. He will leave Peter and Andrew and James
and John time to think over what they have seen and
heard. The kingdom of God is a growth ; and growth is
a gradual process from small beginnings.

CHAPTER VII.— THE CHALLENGE
John ii., 13—25; iii., 1-2 1

If John the Baptizer or his distiples thought, as has
sometimes been thought since, that Jesus lacked in virile
courage, that he expected to conquer evil without offering
it battle, that the only might he would put forth would be
the " irresistible might of meekness," the act by which in
Jerusalem he initiated his public ministry1 should have
sufficed to correct the misapprehension.
John, bold as he was, had never gone up to Jerusalem
to challenge the priesthood there. Denouncing the cor
ruption of his time, he had remained apart from it. Out
spoken and fearless, he was still a recluse. • Himself the
son of a priest, perhaps a traditional reverence for the
priesthood combined with an innate aversion to the crowd
ed city and an unconscious prudence to keep him out of
the immediate vicinity of the powerful priestly clique
which controlled the miscalled Holy City. But neither
traditional reverence nor considerations of personal pru
dence ever had the slightest effect on the course of Jesus.
His reverence was for spiritual realities ; he had none for
shams. And to prudential considerations of a purely per
sonal character he appears to have been wholly indifferent.
Returning from his brief holiday in Galilee, he went
directly to Jerusalem, and there began his public career by
an act of unmistakable defiance to the Jewish hierarchy.
The Jews flocking to Jerusalem from all quarters of the
globe, especially at the Passovers, required oxen, sheep,
and doves for their sacrifices, and conveniences for ex
changing their foreign money for the Jewish coins, which
alone were received for Temple tribute. The marketmen
had gradually drawn nearer and nearer the Temple, until
1 1 agree with Ewald, Edersheim, and others in thinking that John correctly
puts the expulsion of the traders from the Temple at the beginning of Christ's
ministry. Whether there was a second expulsion at the close of his ministry
need not be considered here. 23

24 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
at last they had ensconced themselves in its outer court.
This magnificent porch, called the Court of the Gentiles,
because no Gentile was allowed to pass beyond its inner
gates into the more sacred inclosures beyond, had become
a market-place, where the lowing of cattle, the bleating of
sheep, the cooing of doves, and the chink of the money
changers dispelled all thoughts of worship, and made all
public instruction, to which this court was naturally
adapted, quite impossible. The bargaining spirit of the
Hebrew was not exorcised by the atmosphere of the
Temple ; and this market-place, like most Oriental ex
changes of the present day, was the scene of overcharges,
false representations, scarcely concealed frauds, and per
petual haggling and dispute. Nor was this all. The
family of Annas controlled the priesthood, of which Annas
was at times the nominal and always the real head. This
desecration of the Temple was carried on with his approval
and for his profit. So large a share did he and his family
have in the trafficking that the market was known as the
Bazaar of Annas j1 the profits of the transactions, which
legally belonged to the Temple, were seized upon by him
and his dependents. In a word, what in modern language
is called a " ring " had control of the Temple, used its
outer court as a market-place, practically coerced all pil
grims to purchase in this market-place, and grew rich by
an illegal spoliation of the people and profanation of the
Temple. It is probable that Jesus had often been in
Jerusalem before, had seen this desecration, and had
shared the indignation of the common people — an indigna
tion apparently wholly powerless to remedy the wrong.
But, according to the Jewish habit of thought, wrongs
which there was no legal power to correct, a prophet, com
missioned of God, might correct without using any forms
of law. On this eventful day, Jesus, entering the Court
of the Gentiles, stooped, gathered from the floor some of
the rushes with which it was strewed as a litter for the
cattle, wove out of them a quite harmless whip, and then,
advancing upon the traffickers, with flaming eye drove
them from the courts which they had so long profaned.
It was perhaps because John was present at this scene that
1 See Edersheim, " Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah," Vol. I., p. 372.

THE CHALLENGE 25
afterwards, in the Island of Patmos, when he saw One with
eyes aflame, feet like brass, and a voice like the sound of
many waters, it reminded him of Jesus — not improbably as
he appeared in this memorable scene. " Conscience does
make cowards of us all ;" and the traffickers, knowing that
their occupation was illegal, knowing better than the peo
ple knew how corrupt was the traffic they were carrying on
knowing the deep, popular discontent, and surprised by
the suddenness of the onslaught and the moral power of
the indignant prophet, made no stand, but fled without
resistance or remonstrance.
When later they did remonstrate, Jesus made no attempt
to pacify them. " You are destroying this Temple," he
replied ; " and I will build it up again." When men divert
a temple from its legitimate use as a place of public wor
ship and public instruction, and convert it into a means for
self-aggrandizement, satisfied ambition, social enjoyment,
or party strife and party victory, they destroy it. It ceases
to be a temple. It becomes a market-place, a public
forum, a social club, a party camp. This was what the
hierarchy had done to the Temple at Jerusalem. And
Christ would, by his death and resurrection, rebuild what
they had destroyed. Christianity is Judaism risen from the i
dead. ' Whenever ecclesiastics expel the spirit of faith and
hope and love from a religious service or a religious organi
zation, they destroy its religious character. Whenever
prophets bring back in new forms that spirit, they rebuild,
though in new structures, the temple which apostasy has
destroyed. This — not merely a prophecy of his resurrec
tion, still less of the literal overthrow of Herod's Temple
by Titus — appears to me to be involved in Christ's some
what enigmatical declaration, " Destroy this temple, and in
three days I will build it again." The challenge of his
words was as unmistakable in its defiance as the challenge
of his deed. From that day to the tragical end the hier
archy was the implacable and mortal enemy of the Man
who had brought upon it public disgrace, threatened it
with the loss of its ill-gotten gains, and espoused against
it the cause of the common people.
To rebuke a single person, face to face, requires some
times a courage as great, though of a different order, as to

26 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
withstand a mob. The former task is especially difficult
for the kindliest natures, for men of true and tender sym
pathy, who incline to regard all men at their best, and
whose love makes them reluctant to inflict pain and seem
to quench the nascent but irresolute inclination toward a
higher life.
The Pharisees, that is, the Puritans of the first century,
were divided, though not sharply, into two classes — the
mere ceremonialists, and the men of a real though not
profound morality. One of the latter school, Nicodemus
by name, as profoundly affected as a man of such a type
could be by the strong personality of Jesus, came to him,
after the expulsion of the traders from the Temple, for a
^ quiet conference. To understand the conversation which
ensued, which John alone has reported, the reader must
bear in mind that the doctrine of the " new birth " was a
perfectly familiar doctrine to the Pharisee.1 He held
that when a pagan became a Jew, and so a worshiper of
the true God, he must be baptized as a symbol of the
change ; in this baptism all old faiths were washed away ;
he emerged from the baptism a " new creature ;" he was
said to be " born again ;" he took on a new name ; and so
radical was the supposed change that some rabbis taught
that all old relationships were abolished, and that he might
virtuously marry his own sister if he chose. Nicodemus
frankly recognized in Jesus a new prophet, and asked him
as to his teaching. And Jesus answered as frankly that it
was not new teaching he or any Jew needed, but a new life.
The Jew as well as the pagan needed to be born again;
needed to be baptized ; needed xto have his old concep
tion of righteousness washed away ; needed a new concep
tion to take its place. When Nicodemus attempted to
turn aside the point of this teaching by a sneer, Jesus
responded by an expression of surprise that he, a teacher
of Israel, and perfectly familiar with the doctrine of the
" new birth," should pretend not to understand it when it
was applied to himself. You also, he said, need to receive
the Spirit of God, need by its indwelling to be made a
" new creation," need to have faith in that grace which
transforms and delivers, and in Him who brings it as God's
free gift to man.
1 See Edersheim, " Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah," Vol. I., p. 384.

THE CHALLENGE 27
As, by his expulsion of the traders and his subsequent
interpretation of it, Jesus challenged the ecclesiasticism
which substitutes ceremonialism for worship, so, by his
pointed and unmistakable declaration to Nicodemus, he
challenged the traditionalism which substitutes opinion for
life. These two have been the chief enemies of the Christ
in the world : the one offering a worship which is no worship,
and the other a righteousness which is no righteousness ; the
one robbing all worship of its reality, and the other all
obedience of its virtue, by that insincerity which is com
mon to ceremonies which are without self-surrender, and to
both' deeds and creeds which are without faith.

CHAPTER VIII.— CHRIST AS A
CONVERSATIONIST 2
John iii., 22-36 ; iv., 1-42

It may at first seem strange to us, as it evidently did
seem strange to Christ's disqiples, that, after moving all
Jerusalem by his bold attack upon the traffickers in the
Temple, and after ^reaching to throngs on the banks of
Jordan, where more flocked not only to listen but to be
baptized than had come to John's preaching, Jesus should
seemingly turn his back upon this work, and be next found
spending his time in a quiet conversation with an heretical
and much-divorced woman. But if we study Christ's life
at all thoughtfully, we can hardly fail to note that he dealt
with individuals at least as much as with assemblies, and
that conversation was the method of his instruction rather
than oratory. The story suggested for our reflection to
day illustrates both his method and his power as a conver
sationist. Wearied with his journey, he sits down to rest by the
side of a great well, or cistern, with steps leading from the
well-curb to the water below. The women come out from
the neighboring villages, with their water-pots on their
heads, to draw the water for their houses. As he sits there,
a woman comes from the village with her water-pot. He
opens the conversation with what is the surest road to a
woman's heart — he asks her for a favor. " Give me a
drink," he says. She draws back astonished. "You, a
Jew, ask me, a woman of Samaria, for a drink of water ?"
By a transition so natural that perhaps we may never have
thought that there was a transition even, he turns instantly
from material to spiritual things : " If you knew who it is
that is talking with you, you would have asked me for
living water." She answers with a sarcasm: "Art thou
1 The most important feature in lohn iii., 22-36 is John the Baptizer's testimony
to Jesus as the Christ, and to this I have already referred in Chapters IV. and VI.
28

CHRIST AS A CONVERSATIONIST 29
greater than our father Jacob ? Give me this living water,
that I come no more here to draw, weary and tired." He
surprises her with a summons that brings the story of her
life instantly to herself: "Go, call thy husband." "I
have no husband." " Thou sayest truly thou hast no
husband : thou hast had five husbands." She parries the
thrust with a change in the conversation. " You are a
prophet, I see. Where should we worship — in Jerusalem
or in this mountain ?" A less skillful conversationist would
have pushed his apparent advantage- — pressed heavily that
which he had brought to bear on her conscience ; but not
so Christ. Christ allows her to change the topic. He
has brought to her own conscience the sense of her sin,
and he allows her to change the topic. The time is coming
when God will be worshiped neither here nor in Jerusalem.
God is a Spirit, and they that worship him in spirit and in
truth, they are his worshipers, wherever they may be. She
forgets her errand — forgets that she has come for water ;
forgets Christ's thirst ; forgets everything ; and hurries
back to the city — ordained in this brief conversation to be
a prophet and missionary, and to be the first to preach
the Gospel of a Messiah in the Samaritan city.
The first thought that must strike us in this narrative
is, as I have already said, Christ's use of conversation as a
method of spiritual instruction. I can find in the Four
Gospels but five true Discourses ; the rest are conversa
tions, or begin as conversations, though they become mono
logues. The two greatest teachers of all time, Christ and
Socrates, taught chiefly by conversation. There is no way
to a human heart so direct ; and yet none that we treat so
lightly, if not contemptuously. The writer gets , no re
sponse from voice or face. The orator gets a feeble
response from a few speaking faces in the audience. But
in conversation two souls are opened to each other, and
their inner lives intermingle. He who teaches through con
versation knows what is received, what rejected, what
progress in imparting truth is made. In conversation lies
the best and deepest part of our influence ; and yet we
treat it in so careless and casual a manner that we scarcely
think what we are doing, still less what we might do with it.
Not less important to note as characteristic of every
good conversationist, as pre-eminently characteristic of

30 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
Christ, is his broad and catholic sympathies. We open
the Gospel of John, and in the third chapter we read the
story of Christ's conversation with the Jewish Rabbi. He
is on the same plane with the Jewish Rabbi, talks in the
metaphors which that Rabbi understands, has an apprecia
tion of his soul-life, and enters into it. We turn the page.
We come to a conversation with a woman of Samaria,
ignorant, degraded, sinful, not even a Jew, with no appar
ent community — social, intellectual, or moral — between
them, but a great gulf fixed ; and yet he has sympathy
with her. We turn a few pages further on in this same
Gospel, and we" find him entering into conversation with
enemies. We turn a few pages more, and we find him
sitting at the last table with his disciples, friends, and com
panions, filled with their thoughts, their perplexities, their
interrogatories ; but in every case alike — with the Jewish
Rabbi, with the Samaritan woman, with the hostile Jew,
with the friendly disciples — in sympathy, in touch — what
we call tact.
Tact — what is it ? The touch of one soul with another
soul — sympathy. I can talk music a little with the musi
cian, for I am fond of music ; less of art with the artist,
for I know that less ; about theology with the theologian,
if he is not too far removed from me theologically ; but if
I cannot talk with the car conductor, or the brakeman, or
the driver, or the hod-carrier, or the day-laborer in my cellar
or in my country place, it is because my sympathies are
narrow, because, somehow or other, I fail to have that
largeness of sympathy which enters into every human life.
We see, too, that Christ's sympathies were as quick as
they were catholic. He had sympathy with all men, and
he had quick, responsive sympathy. His soul was recep
tive as well as distributive. He was as quick to receive
impression as he was to give it forth. The musician plays
on the keys of the organ. They are inert, and answer to
his touch. But when the speaker plays on a human soul,
he must be keys as well as fingers — he must respond as
well as move. The speaker plays on the hearer only as
the hearer plays on the speaker. He enters the heart of
his auditor only as his auditor enters his heart. So there
is no flash of thought, question of perplexity, sorrow, trouble,
anywhere, that flings itself out unto Christ that he does not

CHRIST AS A CONVERSATIONIST 3 1
instantly meet. Intellectual genius in this certainly, but
something more than that — quick, ready, responsive,
answering sympathies, love for all men, love that instantly
answers to every human need— longs to alleviate it.
Because he had this quick and catholic sympathy he
drew men out. He made them express themselves ; often
times against their will evoked their doubts, evoked their
sins, evoked their difficulties. Men open to him their
souls, and tell him what there is of their doubts and dis
beliefs. They fling open the door of their hearts and show
themselves to him. This is a rare power — this power of
drawing men out of themselves — worth more than oratory,
more than rhetoric, more than eloquence, more than the
skill of the poet, more than the skill of the preacher — this
power to get into men's and women's hearts and lives, and
enter their secret souls and bring "out their natures. He
knew what was in man, it is said ; and more than once,
we are told, he saw them doubting among themselves, and
phrased his answer to their doubting. It is said that this
was supernatural knowledge, and perhaps it was ; yet there
was that in him which saw the shadow on the face, which
quickly got the impression of another's answering thought,
intuitively and instinctively, and, by that power of sym
pathy which cannot be defined or interpreted, perceived
the inward life and met it.
He had, too, that gift — what shall I call it ? — poet-gift,
prophetic gift, spiritual gift ? — which belongs to men who
always live in the" eternal world, and see how everything
physical is a symbol of the eternal. Most of us do not.
We are living in the earthy life, and if we undertake to say
anything on the subject of religion to a comrade, we have
to go out and drag it in ; and when we do that we destroy
the value of the word which we have spoken. Truth can
not be brought into the court of a man's conscience as a
criminal is by a policeman. But when a man so lives in
the eternal that everything physical suggests the eternal,
the transition is not strange to others because it is not
strained to him. So, to Christ, a drink of water suggests
the water of life. So, when men come asking him to show
another miracle — feeding thousands with bread — he speaks
instinctively, simply, naturally, of the bread of life.
We may have quick and catholic sympathies, power to

32 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
draw men out, and something even of a poetic gift, and be
what men call good conversationists, and yet carry only
entertainment and good fellowship with us. But Christ did
more than that. Conversation with him was always the
means and instrument of a noble, a divine ministry.
It is often said that Christ never declined an invitation.
He went to all men, to all homes, into all company, into
all society. It is true. But wherever he went he carried
his message of the love of God. He sat at the table, and
when he saw men crowd for the best places, he told them
a parable, and bid them not do so. He went with his
friends to sit down at the table, and, there being no one to
wash their feet, no one willing to take the servant's duty
on himself, he girded himself with the towel, washed their
feet, and thus taught them a lesson of purity and humility.
He turned the humblest and least incidents of life into
moral lessons. He was always — if one may say so — master
of the conversation. He was not carried by its drift
wherever it might happen to go, but, like a skillful helms
man having his hand on the helm, guided it in what direc
tion he would have it to go. He did not do this by battle.
You may look in the Four Gospels in vain for a debate in
which Christ ever took part. He answered questions, but
he never fenced. Not by standing for one opinion against
another, not by combating, but through the power of sym
pathy, of touch, of the truth of which he was always and
everywhere the Minister and Prophet, he carried the truth
into the hearts of men.

The Life of Christ

CHAPTER IX.— CHRIST'S DEFINITION OF HIS
MISSION
Luke iii., 18-20; iv., 14-31 ; John iv., 46-54

John the Baptizer's courageous denunciation of the
flagrant iniquity of Herod had led to his arrest and im
prisonment, and this had removed the only danger which
Jesus feared — the danger of an apparent rivalry between
his ministry and that of John. He had already left the
Jordan when it was reported that more were coming to
his preaching and his baptism than to John's. Now that
all danger of a possible denominational strife between the
disciples of the two prophets was removed, he took up
John the Baptist's message, and began to preach, " The
kingdom of God is at hand." His preaching was very
simple but very powerful. Perhaps it would be more cor
rect to say very simple and therefore very powerful. He
spoke to the common people in their vernacular, using
illustrations drawn from their common life, yet never
descending from the high plane of noble spiritual instruc
tion. He used no arts of elocution or rhetoric ; ordina
rily sat when speaking ; was not, therefore, a dramatic
speaker. His addresses contain no eloquent passages
such as a school-boy may declaim, nor are his sermons
included among what are commonly called the great liter
ary classics of ancient time. He was not scholastic — bor
rowed no power from the treasure-house of the past ; nor
hierarchical — he used not the power of a priestly class.
His eloquence lay less in his method than in the contents
of his message. 33

34 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
The world had reached its lowest ebb ; government was
despotic; labor enslaved; the common people hopelessly
ignorant ; the prophets had died out of Israel, and the scribes
had taken their place. Public taxation was public rob
bery, and if one man, more fortunate than his fellows, man
aged to amass a little property, his only way of saving it
was to bury it in the ground, and so keep it from the tax-
gatherer. The common people lived in that hopelessness
which is sometimes mistaken for content, and looked back
to an imagined golden age because, except as faith in Old
Testament prophecy inspired an otherwise seemingly
groundless hope, they had no future to look forward to.
To this age and occasion Christ came with the extraor
dinary message that the kingdom of God was at hand.
The nature of his preaching is illustrated by the one ser
mon of which we have a very brief report in the fourth
chapter of Luke. He went into the synagogue of the
village where his boyhood had been passed. His reputa
tion as a reformer had preceded him from Judea, and he
was invited to address the villagers from the sacred desk.
The roll containing the book of Isaiah was handed to him ;
he turned to and read the following passage :
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed
me to preach the gospel to the poor: he hath sent me to heal
the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and
re overing of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are
bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
"This promised year," he said to them, "has arrived.
I am the Deliverer, and this is my mission. But you are
mistaken if you think that this deliverance is coming only
to Israel. The pagan as well as the Israelite shares in the
love and is to receive the good gift of the heavenly Father."
Race-prejudice was far greater in that day than it is in
this, bad as it is now ; and it was intensified by religion,
which since Christ has done something to mitigate it.
Christ, in attacking this prejudice, endeavored to avoid em
bittering it, by illustrating the catholicity of God's grace
by familiar stories from Old Testament history; but the
endeavor was vain. The people, who had at first listened
with pleasure to the prophet's words, were filled with wrath
at his implication that God is the God of the heathen as well
as of the Jew ; they rose in a body and would have killed him

CHRIST'S DEFINITION OF HIS MISSION 35
had he not escaped from their hands. Facing the mob with
that grandeur which at times filled onlookers with awe, he
passed through the angry throng and went his way.
We, in this nineteenth century, can hardly realize what
it is to live without hope ; with no expectation of a better
future hereafter ; under a despotism never to be lightened ;
under a taxation never to be other than spoliation ; under
a social system affording no chance for education or per
sonal development. The American must go abroad to the
peasantry of Russia or Egypt or India or China to get any
conception of the mental and moral hopelessness of the
common people in the Roman Empire, and especially in
its provinces, in the first century. The message of Christ
to this people was a message of hope : glad tidings to the
poor — better opportunities, a larger distribution of wealth,
more diffused and universal comfort ; comfort to the
broken-hearted — hope at the open grave, flowers for crape,
and the smile of an anticipated meeting mingled with the
tears of a present separation ; deliverance to the captives —
the breaking of the scepter of despotic authority, the
translation of government from a military to an industrial
and social organization, and the emancipation of industry
itself, first from the bondage of slavery, then from the
bondage of feudalism, finally from the bondage involved
in the modern wages system ; the recovering of sight to
the blind — hospitals, asylums, charitable provisions of
various kinds for the unfortunate, the weak, the incompe
tent — and recovering of sight to the mentally blind, in the
establishment of universal systems of popular and public
education ; liberty to those that are bruised — the emanci
pation of body, soul, and spirit from all the bruising man
acles which despotism has fastened upon humanity : this
was the mission of Christ — the mission which he fulfilled
while he lived ; the mission which he left to his followers
as their heritage ; the mission which the Church has been,
however imperfectly, fulfilling in the rjenturies which have
rolled by since this sermon at Nazareth was preached.1
We cannot go behind Christ's own definition of his mis
sion. Nor can we substitute therefor, subtract therefrom,
nor add thereto, without wrong to him and to ourselves.
JFor historic illustrations of the fulfillment of this mission see Dr. R. S.
Storrs's " Historic Evidences of Christianity " and Charles S. Brace's " Gesta
Christi."

36 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
He came, according to his own definition, not to form a
church organization, though the church was to be the
instrument for the execution of his work ; not to establish
a theological system, though truth was also to be the
instrument of his work ; but to establish the kingdom of
righteousness and peace upon the earth, righteousness in
place of injustice, peace in place of war ; to establish the
kingdom of God upon the earth, and that is the kingdom
of liberty, of righteousness, and of peace. Nothing is true
Christian theology which does not directly or indirectly help
to fulfill this mission as Christ has defined it ; and no
society is a true Christian church, nor a part of the true
Christian Church, which is not endeavoring to fulfill the
mission which Christ in this first sermon declared to be
his mission, and which, in his farewell words, after his
resurrection, he gave to his disciples, following in his foot
steps and inspired by his spirit, to fulfill.

CHAPTER X.—" A DAY WITH JESUS "
Mark i., 16-45; Luke v., 1-11

In our study of the life of Christ, attracted by the more
romantic and striking features of his character, we are apt
to pass by in ignorance the more prosaic, though not less
essential, virtues. By many students of the Gospel his .
industry and energy are probably but little considered.
Renan, in his picture of the Galilean ministry of Christ,
gives an impression of a purely idyllic life, a sort of per
petual picnic and continuous ovation. So profoundly has
the inward peace of the Master impressed itself on the
minds of his disciples that few realize that this peace
was maintained in the midst of a life of ceaseless activity,
continual conflict, almost unbroken external excitement.
It is quite safe to say that no man ever accomplished so
much in so brief a public life as was accomplished by Jesus
Christ between his baptism and his crucifixion. Luther's
personal ministry lasted something over a quarter of a cen
tury; John Wesley's, about seventeen years; Jesus Christ's,
a little over three years. During these three years he
personally preached in all the principal towns and cities of
Palestine. He traveled hundreds of miles on foot. He
carried on innumerable reported and unreported convefsa-
tions with individual inquirers and individual critics. He
acted as physician, healing probably hundreds who came
to him .for help, ministering to them with his own hands.
He selected companions to be his immediate disciples, to
learn from him his principles and promulgate them after
he had gone ; and he so imbued them with those principles
and with his spirit that, instead of being scattered by his
death, they were brought more closely together, and formed
an organization which has since, in different forms, ex
tended over and, by its spiritual influence, dominated the
entire civilized world. Wherever he went he was thronged
by crowds, sometimes enthusiastic and admiring, some-
37

38 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
times demanding help which always cost him vital energy,
sometimes hostile and even threatening personal violence.
The houses of his friends furnished him no real opportunity
for repose, for the clamorous crowds flowed into them,
overrunning all barriers. If he crossed the Lake of Gen-
nesaret, seeking a little quiet in the comparatively deserted
hills on the opposite shore, the multitude followed after
him, some by boats and some on foot. If he left Palestine
altogether, and sought to escape the throng in a pagan com
munity, he found that his reputation had gone before him
and he could not be hid. Apparently he had only two
resources tor repose. He seems to have been fond of the
water, and sometimes to have sailed out upon the lake and
there secured a little exemption from the crowd. Once so
weary was he that the tossing to and fro of the boat in a
tempest, sufficiently severe to affright stout-hearted sailors,
failed to disturb him. His other resource was to wait until
the world was wrapped in sleep and then go up on some of
the hills, among which he passed most of his life, and secure
for solitude, meditation, and prayer a little time from the
hours which man generally gives to slumber.
The Scripture suggested for our study to-day is mainly
occupied with giving a picture of one day in the life of
Jesus. It is not unreasonable to suppose that this day was
but one of many equally full of service.1
The Sea of Galilee, a lake in size and shape somewhat
similar to Lake Luzerne in Switzerland Loch Lomond in
Scotland, or our own Winnipesaukee, was in the time of
Christ the center of a teeming and busy population. No
less than six cities of considerable size were crowded along
thirteen miles of coast-line on its western and northwestern
shores ; its waters furnished employment for hundreds of
fishermen ; lying on the direct caravan route between the
East and the Mediterranean shore, it was the center of a
busy trade ; it was the watering-place of the wealthy and
the fashionable at certain seasons of the year ; and on the
hillsides around were cultivated vineyards, and in the
fertile plains the farmer turned the furrow and dropped his
seed. Here, therefore, were gathered representatives of
every class, and their vocations furnished the material for
1 The student who can do so is recommended to read Delitzsch's " A Day
with Jesus Christ."

" A DAY WITH JESUS 3Q
every type of parable : the merchantman seeking goodly
pearls, the net cast into the sea, the sower sowing his
seed, the vineyard with its unfruitful tree, the guests in
vited to a royal marriage feast. Cast out from Nazareth,
Christ came down to Capernaum, one of the principal
cities upon this lake, and made it his home, so far as he
could be said to have any home. The disciples of John
the Baptizer, who had for a little while gathered about him
on the banks of the Jordan, had gone back to their peasant
occupations. Jesus Christ was alone.
It was apparently upon a Friday that he finds four of
these men, after an all-night fishing expedition, washing
their nets on the shore of the lake. He begs the loan of
one of their boats, pushes it out a few feet from the shore,
and, sitting down in it, talks to the people gathered in a
natural amphitheater upon the beach. His sermon over,
he turns to Simon and bids him push out into deeper water
and throw his nets again. It was hardly to be expected
that a fisherman who had toiled all night in vain would
take directions respecting his own craft from the son
of a carpenter. But there was something in the person
ality of Jpsus Christ which overrode all such prejudices.
Simon followed the direction, and the net was filled to
breaking. This is the time, strangely inopportune it would naturally
seem, which Jesus chooses in which to call on these four
fishermen to leave their work and attach themselves to
him; but Jesus was accustomed to choose times which
afforded a test of character. The four fishermen stand
the test ; they leave their catch of fish, their nets, their
boats, with some of their comrades, attracted by no other
promise than this, that they shall be successful in catching
men. Not till some time after, it must be remembered,
did these disciples come to a settled faith in Jesus as
the promised Messiah, and not till after his death and
resurrection did they haye any true conception of what his
Messiahship meant.
The next day — certainly within a day or two after — Jesus
enters into the synagogue at Capernaum, and repeats there
his message that the kingdom of God is at hand. The power
of his glad tidings, which evokes all that is manliest and
divinest in his auditors, and fills them with a new hope for

40 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
themselves and their fellows, is felt by the audience, who
recognize the fact that here is a preacher of a different
sort from that of the hair-splitting, technical, scholastic
scribes. A lunatic in the synagogue, whom the people of
that age believed to be possessed of an evil spirit, inter
rupts the service ; the Master cures him with a word.1
The lunatic in that age was looked upon, not, as now,
with sympathy, but with reprobation, and Christ's response
to the interruption of the service, not by an angry rebuke,
but by a merciful remedy, probably quite as much as the
remedy itself, surprised the people.
The service over, Jesus goes with his four disciples to
the home of Simon Peter, who was married, and whose
mother-in-law lay sick in the house. In the simple science
of that day fevers were classified as " little " and "great."
Luke, a physician, characterized this as a great fever ;
that is, one of the most serious and aggravated type.
Simon appeals to the Master for help ; it is granted ; and
the woman, without passing through any period of conva
lescence, straightway arises and ministers to the household.2
Sunset is a sign for the commencement of the greatest
social activity in Palestine, and at sunset the obligation of
Sabbath rest comes to its close. As the sun goes down
behind the western hills, a motley crowd begins to besiege
the house of Peter. Hither come the helpless paralytic,
the unhappy epileptic, the blind groping their way, the
lunatic in his half-consciousness of disease ; hither
invalids borne by others on their mattresses, or parents
bringing their children, or children supporting their aged
and infirm parents ; hither also a great crowd drawn by
curiosity to see and hear this rabbi and physician, whose
words and works have filled the city with his fame. To
them all Christ ministered. Nor was it till night had
spread its curtains over the whole scene that the crowd
dispersed and left Jesus to repose. Sorely must he have
needed it, for at every touch he felt virtue go out of him.
Every struggle with disease or death, or the greater evil of
1 It is not possible in a paragraph to discuss the problem of demoniacal pos
session. For reasons which 1 have stated in my " Jesus of Nazareth," Chapter
XIII., I believe not only that there really was, but that there really still is, such
a phenomenon.2 In this incident one may, without undue fancifulness, see a type of Christ's
spiritual cure : he not only banishes the disease, but he inspires health and
strength for newness of life.

"a day with jesus" 41
sin, cost him effort, and the more effort because in all dis
eases and death he saw at once the symbol and the conse
quence of sin. So apparent was this cost to the Master
that his disciples looking on him instinctively applied to
him the words of the ancient prophet, " Himself took our
infirmities and bare our sicknesses." The nervous ex
haustion of the day was too great to permit sleep, and,
rising early in the morning, he sought repose in solitude
and prayer, away from the haunts of men.
Such was one day ef Christ's life. Such the industry,
the energy, the enthusiasm, the self-sacrifice of his service.

CHAPTER XL— ELEMENTS OF HOSTILITY TO
JESUS
Mark ii., 1-22

It is a great mistake to suppose that Jesus's ministry
was at its commencement one of unhindered popularity.
If, as I believe to be the case, he began his public ministry
with the expulsion of the traders from the Temple, his life
was from the very beginning one of conflict with a bitterly
hostile and powerful faction. The Scripture recommended
for to-day and for next Sunday suggests some of the special
criticisms which this faction brought against him. So far
as past sin was concerned, he seems to have uniformly
ignored the sacrificial system of the Jewish people. Upon
their repentance he pronounced the penitents forgiven with
out ever requiring them to make any sin-offering for the
past. Of course he was accused of blasphemous assump
tion in thus claiming to forgive sins without any ceremonial
and priestly atonement for them. He called his disciples
not merely from the peasant class, not merely from those
ignorant of Jewish theology and tradition, but also from
the publicans, that is, the tax-gatherers, and they had been
morally as well as ceremonially unclean. He not only
preached to the poorest, the lowest, and the most outcast,
but he accepted their invitations and sat down to eat with
them. No wonder that he was accused of ignoring social
distinctions, and even of disregarding the moral law. He
simply and quietly ignored many, if not most, of the cere
monial regulations upon which the Jewish religious teachers
laid so much stress. He ate with unwashed hands — that
is, with hands that were ceremonially unclean. Neither
he nor his disciples paid any attention to the fasts which
Jewish tradition had prescribed, and which were regarded
as at once the test and the sign of piety. And he used
himself, and recommended to others, a liberty on the Sabbath
day which seemed to the Pharisees utterly subversive of
42

ELEMENTS OF HOSTILITY TO JESUS 43
the Mosaic law. No wonder that they accused him of set
ting that law at defiance. But we must look beneath these
accusations to get at the real secret of the hostility to Jesus
Christ, and in this paper I propose to suggest some of the
elements of that hostility which are to be borne in mind
by the student in considering the criticisms reported in the
second chapter of Mark.
In the first place, then, Christ set himself against the
established order in Church and in State. The few were
rich, the many poor ; the few learned, the many ignorant.
He undertook to reverse this condition — to make the
many rich, the many wise ; and the few who were at the
top did not like it then, have not liked it since, and prob
ably will not like it to the end of time. He paid no defer
ence to wealth, and wealth likes to be deferred to ; none
to wisdom, and wisdom demands deference. Neither
wealth nor wisdom seemed to him of any value unless they
were used for the enrichment and the enlightenment of
others : and the doctrine that wealth and wisdom are val
uable only as means for serving the poor and the ignorant
is always resented. In brief, Christ led the great demo
cratic movement which has gone through history from
that time to this, leveling all institutions that have at
tempted to withstand the uprising of humanity. He taught
that the whole human race is to be redeemed and made
worthy to be called the children of God ; that man — not
the Jew-man, nor the rich man, nor the wise man, nor the
well-bred man, but man as man — is to be transformed,
educated, enfranchised, enriched, until the whole human
race shall be one great brotherhood ; and the established
order hated him for this teaching.
This established order was intrenched behind and allied
with a superstitious conception of religion akin to idolatry.
Piety was confounded with temple-worship ; religion with
reverence for the priesthood ; faith with belief in tradi
tional theology. Christ did not, except in defense of his
teaching, attack temple-worship, the priestly order, or the
traditional theology, for in doing this there was danger
that he would seem to be attacking piety, reverence, and
faith. But indirectly he attacked this superstitious sub
stitute for religion by teaching explicitly that practical
obedience is better than temple sacrifice, that worship of

44 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
the Father is not confined to the Temple, but is possible
in every place, and that, not to reverence a priesthood or
obey a tradition, but to do righteously and to love one's
neighbor, is religion. All the conventional religionism of
that day re-enforced the established order in its hostility
to a prophet whom the Scribes doubtless sincerely believed
was destroying religion because he was effectually destroy
ing the material symbols with which religion had been so
long confounded.
For it is true that Christ did undermine the religious
forms of his day. It is impossible to teach men that they
have direct access to their heavenly Father without dimin
ishing their reverence for a priest whom they have regarded
as an essential mediator ; impossible to teach them that
practical obedience, not ceremonial observance, is the true
test of piety without weakening the hold which the hier
archy has upon them ; above all, impossible to teach men
to think for themselves without weakening the authority of
those who have assumed to do their thinking for them. It
has always been the aim, conscious or unconscious, of tra
ditionalism to prevent men from thinking for themselves
and to require them to accept ready-made thought forged
for them in some other man's mind. Christ's teaching
was revolutionary, not so much because he attacked tradi
tionalism directly — though he sometimes did that — as
because he incited men to think. He flung out apho
risms to them which set them thinking ; taught them
in parables and riddles and enigmas that compelled
them to think. Whenever a prophet comes into the
world with this as his fundamental message, that every
man is by nature a child of God, and has diiect access to
his Father, and, being a child of God, has an inalienable
right to study life for himself and find out the truth which
it has for him, he is counted a dangerous heretic by all
those who believe that access to God is the privilege of an
aristocratic few, and power to think the power of an aris
tocratic few. Those who believe that men are children
and are to be kept in leading-strings always have risen
against such teachers and always will.
To these elements of hostility must be added that race-
prejudice which assailed Jesus with mob violence in his
first sermon at Nazareth. The two bitterest prejudices of

ELEMENTS OF HOSTILITY TO JESUS 45
humanity are those of race and those of religion. It
would not require more courage to tell a mob of Anarchists
in their hall at Chicago that men of wealth were of more
worth than themselves, not more courage to commend the
virtues of Chinamen to an audience of sand-lotters in San
Francisco, not more courage to praise the virtues of the
African to an audience of Southern fire-eaters, than it
required for Jesus Christ to commend the pagan centurion
or the half-pagan Samaritan to an audience of Jews. All
that which men often mistake for zeal and for patriotism
rose in wrath at this challenge to Jewish narrowness and
bigotry. Race-pride, theological prejudice, superstitious reverence,
organized selfishness — these four forces united then, and
have co-operated ever since, to withstand the work of
Christ in the world. For that work cannot be carried to
its completion, and the whole of humanity united in one
brotherhood and lifted up into one fellowship with the
Father, but that pride will be humiliated, prejudices
shamed, superstitious reverence shocked, and organized
selfishness disappointed and defeated. To follow Christ
is to enlist in the long campaign against these four ene
mies of human progress.

CHAPTER XII.— THE SABBATH QUESTION
John, chapter v.; Mark ii., 23-26; iii., 1-6

The hostility to Jesus Christ centered chiefly upon two
points — his claims concerning himself, and his practice and
teaching respecting the Sabbath. It was not until a later
epoch in his ministry that his claims respectirg himself
were at all understood by the priesthood, or even by the
common people. It was, therefore, his practice and teach
ing respecting the Sabbath which at this period of his
ministry was made the especial occasion, though, as I
attempted to show in the last chapter, not the real cause,
of the bitterest hostility to him.
The origin of the observance of one day in seven as a
day of sacred rest is lost in the mists of antiquity. It cer
tainly dates, however, from the earliest period of Jewish
history, and the law for its observance was regarded as so
fundamental to the Jewish commonwealth as to be incor
porated in the Ten Commandments, which constitute the
constitution of the Hebrew State. This law was, indeed,
something quite different from that which Puritanism has
attempted to make of it. The Fourth Commandment does
not require, either directly or indirectly, any religious obser
vance upon the seventh day of the week. It does not call for
any worship, either public or private. It is wholly taken
up with prohibiting toil. Like most of God's laws, this
statute was a gift. For this commandment prohibiting
all secular toil in one day out of the seven came to a nation
just emerging from slavery and dwarfed and degraded by
servile drudgery. It is true that this prohibition was
enforced by very severe penalties ; but it is also true that,
the toil being prohibited, the individual was left entirely
free to spend his leisure time in whatever way he chose.
Personally, I believe that the Fourth Commandment is in
this respect a wise model for modern legislation to follow.
The laborer has a right to be protected in his enjoyment of
, 46

THE SABBATH QUESTION 47
one day's rest. That protection being afforded to him, he
has a right, so far as his fellow-citizens are concerned, to
do whatever he likes with that one day of rest, provided
his employment of it does not violate the rights of his
fellow-laborers. But Judaism, like modern Puritanism, was not content
with the Mosaic statute. The day, originally observed as
a day of gladness in the Temple and of festal scenes at
home,1 was made by Pharisaic regulations a day burden
some and well-nigh intolerable. It ceased to be a day of
freedom and became one of bondage. The rules for its
observance, as they are to be gathered from the Talmud,
seem to us ludicrous. They forbade walking upon the
grass with heavy shoes on the Sabbath, because that
would be a kind of threshing ; catching a flea, because that
would be a kind of hunting ; eating a newly laid egg on
the first day of the week, because, presumptively, it had
been prepared by the hen in the course of nature on the
seventh day. A little less irrational, but hardly less bur
densome, were some of the traditional regulations implied
in the Gospel narratives, such as prohibiting the sick from
coming to a physician on the Sabbath ; prohibiting a man
from carrying the cushion or mattress on which he
reclined ; prohibiting men, if walking through a grain-field,
from plucking the ears of grain and eating them as they
walked — as if, in our day, a boy should be prohibited from
picking an apple from the ground in an orchard and eat
ing it on the Sabbath. Nevertheless, the Sabbath was
with the Jew, as it is with the Roman Catholic, a day of
festivity. From seasons of fasting the Sabbath was always
exempted. The best dinner of the week in the pious
Jew's house was served on the Sabbath. " Meet the Sab
bath with a lively hunger ; let thy table be covered with
fish, flesh, and generous wine," is one of the Talmudic\
aphorisms. Against the social and festive aspects of this day Christ
never uttered a protest. It is evident from the account in
the fourteenth chapter of Luke that he did not hesitate to
attend on the Sabbath a dinner-party of considerable social
pretension.2 At a time when the issue is so sharply drawn
1 See Psalms xcii., cxxii.; Lev. xxiii., 2, 3 : Psalm xiii., 4 ; Neh. viii., 9-13.
2 See Luke xiv., especially verses 1, 7, and 12.

48 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
between the Puritan Sabbath — that is, a Sabbath fenced
round with legal prohibitions — and what is termed the
Continental Sabbath, which, as it reappears on our shore
Americanized, is no Sabbath at all, it is difficult to speak
frankly and freely without being subject to misunder
standing. Notwithstanding this hazard, I must frankly
say that I can see no ground, either in the practice or the
teaching of Jesus Christ or in the subsequent teaching of
the Apostles, for the notion that there is anything incon
sistent with the Christian use of the Christian's rest-day
in such social fellowship and enjoyment as are not incon
sistent with an advantageous use of its spiritual opportu
nities and do not make the day one of burdensome toil
and labor to others. On the other hand, there is no indi
cation that Jesus engaged in secular work on the Sabbath
or encouraged his disciples so to do. This accusation
would certainly have been brought against them if there
had been any ground whatever for it. But not even Jew
ish tradition contains any such accusation. On the con
trary, Jesus habitually attended the synagogue services on
the Sabbath with his disciples, and they apparently con
tinued so to do after his death. And although the day
was changed, a weekly Sabbath, imported from Judaism
into Christianity, became as characteristic of the primitive
Christian Church as it had been of the precedent Jewish
Church. But Christ did repel, with some indignation, the notion
that this day, sacred to rest, and therefore to liberty, was
to be kept sacred by minute, harassing, and burdensome
regulations. He not only healed the sick on this day, but
he seems even to have taken pains to do this healing in
such a way as to set Jewish tradition at defiance. For
he healed the paralytic, not only on the Sabbath, but in
the synagogue and in connection with a religious service ;
and he treated the Pharisaic criticism of this act almost
with contempt. The sick man at the pool of Bethesda he
not only healed, but he bade him bear his mattress on his
shoulders, in direct violation of the letter, though not of
the spirit, of a traditional command, embodied in Old Tes
tament history, against all bearing of burdens on that
day.1 Called to account by the Pharisees, Jesus Christ
1 Neh. xiii., 19 ; Jer. xvii., 21, 22, 27.

THE SABBATH QUESTION 49
replied that God'sirest was the type which man was to
follow in his resting. Religion never requires love to
cease its activities. " My Father worketh hitherto, and I
work," is not an exceptional1 justification for the only
begotten Son of God, but a principle by which every Son
of God may determine what work is legitimate and what
illegitimate on the world's rest-day.  When his disciples
were chided for plucking the ears of grain and eating them
as they walked through the grain-field, Christ announced
another principle equally comprehensive. "The Sabbath,"
he said, " was made for man, and not man for the Sab
bath ; therefore the Son of man is lord also of the Sab
bath." This also is not to be interpreted merely as a
declaration that the Messiah has a right to modify the
Mosaic law. That would be a non sequitur. The decla
ration is that, since the Sabbath was made for man, and
is his instrument, he is at liberty to use it with freedom,
only always keeping in mind the ends for which this gift
has been bestowed upon him.
These teachings do not merely furnish a solvent for
many religious perplexities ; they involve a principle of
wider application. v Christ comes, not like frost, to freeze
men up, but like sunshine, to set them free. The three
most sacred ceremonials of the Jewish religion are circum
cision, sacrifices, and the Sabbath law. Christ abolished
circumcision ; set men free from the law of sacrifices ; and
the Sabbath, which man had made a day of bondage,
Christ converted into a day of liberty.

CHAPTER XIII.— THE SEED OF THE CHURCH1
Mark iii., 6-19

Jesus Christ and his Glad-Tidings were received with
great popular enthusiasm. The people were eager to hear
this new message of hope. One man could not unaided
carry it throughout the Holy Land. Had Jesus Christ
possessed no foresight, had no prophetic vision suggested
to him the necessity of providing some organization which
should carry on his work and repeat his message after he
was gone, had he never intended to make it a world-wide
message, but only a provincial one, still it would have been
necessary to secure some co-laborers. From the disciples
who accompanied him in his ministry he selected twelve
to be especially near to him, to receive his inspiration and
his special instructions, to preach his Gospel in the vil
lages while he preached it in the larger cities, and to carry
on this ministry in a wider sphere after his death and
resurrection. This purpose of his was not apparent at
first, but if we take the whole history of his relation to the
Twelve, from his first calling of them to his last missionary
commission before his ascension, it is clear that his pur
pose included nothing less than this. Concerning the
commission which he gave to these disciples while he was
still with them, and the later commission when he was
about to leave them, I shall have something to say here
after. In this paper I confine myself to some observations
respecting the principles upon which Jesus apparently
selected the Twelve, and their personal character.
It must be confessed that it is difficult to ascertain with
any accuracy, from the accounts which have come down to
us, the principles upon which Christ's selection of the
Twelve was made. We know that some volunteers offered
1 For fuller treatment of this theme the student is referred to Chapter XVI in
my " Jesus of Nazareth," and to my " Commentary on Matthew," Chapter X
"Supplemental note on the Twelve Apostles, their lives and characters."
5°

THE SEED OF THE CHURCH 5r
to join this band and were refused, and in some instances
the ground of the refusal is sufficiently plain.1 We know
also from Christ's own words2 that the Twelve were not
those who accidentally attached themselves to Jesus ; they
were carefully selected by him from a far greater number
of adherents. But, with perhaps three exceptions, there
does not appear in their history anything remarkable
about these men except their attachment to Jesus. From
his Gospel we judge that Matthew possessed a systematic
and orderly mind, for he more than any other Evangelist
has arranged the sayings of Jesus in a somewhat systematic
manner ; Peter proved to be an eloquent evangelist ; John
possessed remarkable spiritual insight, and became in his
later years a prominent leader in the Church. But, with
these exceptions, no one of the Twelve occupied any very
important position in the Church after Christ's death ; for
James, the brother of Christ, who became a leader in Jeru
salem, was not one of the Twelve, nor was Paul, who became
the great missionary to the heathen. With the exception
of Judas Iscariot, the Twelve were Galileans, selected from
the peasant population of Palestine ; in the main, simple-
minded men, without social advantage, wealth, culture,
remarkable insight, or heroic temper. Excepting John,
there does not seem to have been among them a single
man who could for a moment rank with Moses or David
or Isaiah, or, indeed, with any one of the great Hebrew
prophets. Yet we must remember that the story of their lives has
not been preserved for us ; for the Gospels are the narra
tive of the life of Christ, and only incidentally of the lives
of his followers, and the Book of Acts is less the his
tory of individuals than the history of the Church in its
formative period. Moreover, we are likely to be misled
by the common statement that they were illiterate men.
This means little more than that they were all laymen,
untrained in the rabbinical literature of their time. This
illiterateness was their best preparation to receive without
prejudice that new spiritual life which Jesus Christ had
come to impart. In a similar manner, the founders of the
Reformation were not scholastics, nor were the leaders in
the great Methodist movement taken from the theological
'Luke ix., 57-62; Mark v., 18, 19. 2 John xv., 16.

52 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
and ecclesiastical schools of the eighteenth century. Illit
erate though they were, they were not without that aspi
ration which is the best preparation for a true prophetic
work. Four of them Jesus found at the Jordan, attracted
by the preaching of John the Baptist. A fifth was evi
dently looking with them for the coming of the Messiah.1
Two of them certainly, Philip and Peter, were familiar
with the Greek language. The latter was a man of con
siderable means, lived in his own house, and thought he
had given up a good deal to follow Christ. The father of
James and John was able to keep hired servants, and to
carry on his fishing operations on a somewhat extensive
scale ; and John had such relations with the High Priest
as gave him, at a critical period in Christ's history, easy
access to the palace.2
But if the disciples had open and unprejudiced minds,
they do not appear to have possessed remarkable moral or
spiritual genius. Peter and John do not show any indica
tions of greatness of character prior to Christ's influence
upon them. John, sharing with the other disciples their
expectations of a temporal kingdom, ambitiously seeks a
first place in it ; passionate by nature, he would destroy by
fire the Samaritan village which refuses its hospitality to
his Lord ; and, when he joins the band, possesses, with his
brother James, a nature which earns for them from Christ
the sobriquet of Sons of Thunder.8 If John acquires his
gentleness and tenderness from his intercourse with Jesus,
Simon Peter acquires his courage from the same source.
The incidents recorded by the Gospel in his career indicate
a man by nature ardent, impulsive, unstable, untrustworthy.
No one of the disciples could more truthfully have said
than he, " By the grace of God I am what I am." 4
We are, perhaps, liable to do these disciples some injus
tice by contrasting them not only with their Master, but
with our naturally clearer understanding of his mission and
his meaning ; nevertheless it is certain that they were often
obtuse and unreceptive, so much so at times as to draw upon
1 If, as is generally supposed, Nathanael is to be identified with Bartholomew.
s See John 1., 36-49 ; xii., 20 ; Acts viii., 30 ; x., 24, et al. ; Luke iv., 38 ; Matt.
xix., 27 ; Mark i., 20 ; John xviii., 16.
3 Matt, xx., 20-24; Mark ix., 38; Luke ix., 54; Mark iii., 17.
4 Matt, xiv., 28-30; John xiii., 6-9: John xviii., 10, with Matt, xxvi., 56;
John xviii., 15, 17, 25-27 ; Acts x., 47, 48 ; Gal. ii., n-13.

THE SEED OF THE CHURCH 53
them his rebuke. Their prosaic natures stumbled over his
poetical sayings. When he cautions them against the
leaven of the Pharisees, they imagine that he is afraid of
being poisoned ; when he warns them of approaching spir
itual conflict, they innocently produce two swords to show
that they are armed ; when he tries their faith by asking
what shall be done to feed the five thousand, Andrew
can think of nothing but the five loaves and two small
fishes at hand; when he promises them a spiritual mani
festation such as the unspiritual cannot receive, Thaddeus
stumbles over the declaration with the question, " How wilt
thou manifest thyself to us, and not unto the world ?';
when he tells them that he is going to the Father, Thomar/
replies, " We know not whither thou goest ; and how can
we know the way ?" These are not the utterances of quick-
minded, spiritual, receptive souls. Spiritually as well as
intellectually, they belong to the " plain people."
They were not even selected from the most moral of the
community. Prominent among them was a despised tax-
gatherer ; less prominent, another whose previous identi
fication with some one of the numerous turbulent factions
which kept Palestine in a perpetual ferment earned for
him the title of the Zealot. A third, Simon Peter, pos
sessed the Oriental vices of profanity and falsehood, which,
despite his long companionship with Jesus, revived, after
he thought they were conquered, to overwhelm him with
shame and confusion in the crisis-hour of his life. In
short, in the selection of his apostles, as in the selection
of the larger body of disciples from which they were chosen,
Jesus seems to have acted upon the principle announced
by himself, " I am not come to call the righteous, but
sinners to repentance." That even his powerful influ
ence was not always sufficient to give victory to the better
nature is made evident by the tragic story of Judas Is-
cariot.1 The mission which he gave to these disciples will be
considered hereafter. It must suffice here simply to note
the fact that in calling them to be his immediate disciples,
the witnesses of his life, death, and resurrection, and the
preachers of his Gospel both during his life and after his
death, there is nothing in the Gospel account to indicate
» Matt, x., 4 ; Luke vi., 15 ; Mark xiv., 66-71.

54 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
that he conferred upon them any especial ecclesiastical
authority.1 He established no hierarchy, he gave them no
authority over one another, and none over the Church ;
he prescribed for them neither ritual, creed, nor order of
service; and he did not authorize them, certainly not in
any utterance recorded in the Gospels, to appoint succes
sors. Paul, who was not one of the twelve, and did not
receive ordination from the twelve, claimed to be equally
with them an Apostle, because equally with them, though
in a different way, a witness to the resurrection of the
Master. There was, however, one absolute condition of member
ship in this little band, and one mission which it was to
discharge. This condition was absolute faith in and loy
alty to their Master ; this mission was to bear testimony
to him. Whatever he said they were to receive ; whatever
he commanded they were to obey. When the rich young
ruler desired to join them, it was made a condition that
he should reduce himself to their condition of poverty.
When Peter protested that Christ should not wash his
feet, Christ refused any explanation of his action, simply
replying : " If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me."
When James and John asked for office, he refused to make
any promise whatever, save the promise of sharing with
him in service and sacrifice. In this spirit of loyalty they
were to be his heralds. They were sent, not to preach a
new standard of morality, nor to reaffirm an old standard,
but to preach that the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
They were the forerunners of a king, the prophets of a
Messiah, witnesses to the Christ.
1 Some of my readers will think this statement inconsistent with such declara
tions as Matt, xvi., 18, 19 : xviii., 18, and John xx., 22, 23. But, in my judgment,
whatever authority is conferred by these utterances is conferred upon all the
disciples of Christ. For the reasons for this opinion I must refer the student to
my Commentaries.

CHAPTER XIV.— THE SERMON ON THE
MOUNT1
Matthew v., vi., and vii. ; Luke vi., 20-49

The notion that the Sermon on the Mount is a collection
of logia of Jesus Christ, uttered at different times and on
different occasions and brought together by Matthew,
seems to me wholly incongruous wilh the structure' of the
discourse itself. This sermon is an ordination sermon,
delivered after the selection of the Twelve to be the chosen
companions of the Master, and his prophets and heralds.
It is delivered primarily to the Twelve, secondarily to a
great congregation which has flocked up the hillside and
surrounds the speaker and this nucleus of his future Church.
It is the most complete and comprehensive statement
which Christ has afforded of the principles of the kingdom
of God which he had come to establish upon the earth.
He begins this sermon with a note of blessing. Four
teen hundred years or more before, Moses had gone up
into another mount to take the law from God — a mount
sterile but grand, around whose top the lightning was
playing, around which the music of the thunder was heard,
while all was cloud-enfolded. Now, on a grassy slope, in
the broad sunlight that streamed from the heavens above,
the only music the music of the singing birds that flew
through the air, and to which he pointed as an illustration
of his Father's care, the new laws of. the new kingdom were
imparted. The first word of this discourse was like the
sunlight and like the singing of the birds — a word of bene
diction. The first word of that discourse was a word of
the awful grandeur of Jehovah.
Christ begins his discourse, then, by declaring the con
dition of happiness ; and that condition is all bound up,
according to Christ, in one word. We chiefly think they
1 This lesson-paper is a reprint of one of a series of sermons on the Life of
Christ given in Plymouth Church in 1888 and 1889, and published in the "Chris
tian World Pulpit," and now revised for this volume.
55

56 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
are blessed that have. Christ , says they are blessed that
are. Not condition, acquisition, situation, give happiness,
but character. And every phase of character brings its
own peculiar blessing with it. Blessed are the poor in
spirit : easy it is for them to yield allegiance to the God
whose kingdom I have come to proclaim — easy for them
to enter through the door of repentance, which is hard for
the high-spirited. Blessed are the meek : not the man
who grasps, not the man who is determined to get all he
can and keep all he gets, not the man who is strenuous
for his rights, but the man of meek and bearable disposi
tion, is the man who really enjoys what this life has to
furnish men. Blessed are the peacemakers : not the war
riors of wrath whom the world exalts, not the men who
have flung themselves into battle and fought for ambition
or even for patriotism, but the men who, by conscious
endeavor or the unconscious influence of their character,
are cementing together men in one great brotherhood of
love — they are blessed, they are to be called the children
of God. Blessed, not the great scholars and theologians
who have studied the tomes and battled in the controver
sies of the centuries that they may find out who and what
is God and tell us, but the pure in heart, in whose souls
there is no lustful thought, whose translucent natures lie
before God as the placid lake before the stars in the
heavens, and reflect God in the quietude and placidity of
their nature.
Blessed is character — this is Christ's first note. How
shall this character be obtained ? The most common
method of making character has been to square it to cer
tain laws and regulations previously framed. This was
Pharisaism in the first century, Legalism in the Middle
Ages, Puritanism in these later days. To lay down a law
of conduct, and then try to adjust character and life to
that law of conduct — this is the conception of righteous
ness which to-day in America, after eighteen centuries of
Christ's teaching, a great many men entertain. What is
the law of truth? "I will go just so far as that law
requires me, and no further." What is unselfishness ? "I
will hold my hand from whatever form of selfishness law —
moral law, God's law — prohibits, but no further." " No !"
says Christ; 'unless your righteousness exceeds the

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT 57
righteousness attained by any such method as this, you
cannot even come into the kingdom of God." And he
illustrates this proposition by five illustrations. What is
the law for the regulation of passion — Thou shalt not kill ?
thou shalt not use thine arm to do a wrong to thy neigh
bor's life or his person ? " No !" says Christ. " He that
is angry with his brother without a cause is a murderer.
Character that does not go deep enough to control the
ebullient passion within is no character that carries blessed
ness with it." "You have heard that it hath been said,
Thou shalt not commit adultery; but I tell you that the
man who simply holds his passion so far in check has not
the blessedness I speak of. The evil thought nesting in
the imagination carries not only stain but wretchedness
with it." " You have heard that it hath been said, Thou
shalt not forswear thyself ; thou Shalt not take the name
of the Lord thy God in vain ; thou shalt not overstep this
reasonable rule of reverence ; but I say unto you more than
that : Thou shalt not swear by heaven, nor by earth, nor
by thy head ; for whatsoever hath in it more than simply
yea and nay, simplest profession of simplest affirmation or
denial, comes of evil — comes, that is, of the secret sense of
personal distrust." " You have heard what is the law that
is to regulate us in the punishment of offenders. You
have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye and
a tooth for a tooth." Men have in our time reviled this
as a cruel code. No ; it was a merciful one ; for it restrains
men from following their natural impulse, which is always
to make vengeance exceed the wrong to be revenged.
One man calls his neighbor a liar ; in return the neighbor
strikes a blow; thereupon the other neighbor strikes a
heavier blow, and each blow leads to a heavier blow than
the other. The law of Moses restrained men from such
vengeance. But Christ says, " This law of restraint, An
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, this holding your
self back from an even-handed punishment of wrong-doing,
is not enough. I tell you to cure evil by love." You can
not make yourself right by trying to square your conduct
or your life to an outer rule or regulation. If you try to
do it, you will not be happy. Let any man with passion in
him try to hold his hand back from wrath, or with lustful
imagination in him try to live a pure life, or with hate in

58 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
his soul try to square his life to the golden rule of con
duct — he will not be happy. The blessedness that Christ
promises is the blessedness of a soul filled with that divine
impulse of love which was in Christ himself.
There is one motive that perhaps more than any other
leads us to attempt righteousness. It is the approbation
of our fellow-men. And Christ says (this as the third
point in his sermon) : " It is not enough that you do that
which other men think is right, and because other men
think it to be right. You are generous. Is it because
you are really liberal of heart, or because men will see
what you give ? You pray. Is it because you really
desire to commune with your Father, or do you desire not
to be thought undevout ? You fast. Is it because your
soul is really so burdened with sin that you cannot eat, or
do you wish to be counted as religious ?" It is not wrong
to subscribe that men may honor you ; but when you have
paid your five cents, or your fifty dollars, and got the
approving glance of your fellow-men, you have paid for the
goods, and the goods have been delivered to you : it is a
commercial transaction — that is all. There is only one
way of happy, blessed living. It is the way of a man
whose whole soul is consecrated to the service of God in
service of his fellow-men.
So Christ says, in the fourth place : " Be not double-
minded " — for this is the meaning of the word rendered
" Be not careful." Do not go into life thinking, " I shall
spend so much time for food, raiment, and earthly forces,
and so much for God and the service of my fellow-men."
Give yourself to the life of love, in the store, in the kitchen,
in the office, in the street, wherever you are. Count life
a place in which you are to show how much you can im
part, not how much you can get. Bestow, and even as
you give men will give back to you — freely, liberally,
largely, according to the measure wherewith you give ;
and your heavenly Father will provide for all that you
have need of. " Shall I be rich ?" Perhaps not. Have
you need of riches ? " Shall I live in a brownstone front ?"
Perhaps not. Do you need to live in a brownstone front ?
" Shall I be more famous than my neighbor ?" Perhaps
not. Do you need to be more famous than your neighbor ?
But he who consecrates his life to the service of humanity

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT 59
receives back from the open hand of man, because back
from the open hand of God, all that he needs for this
life, and the blessedness that comes through love. Love
giving generously receives in return joyfully.
This is well, says some one, for those who are made with
this temperament, but how for me ? I have not a peace
ful temperament. How shall I make myself a peacemaker ?
I have not the pure temperament. How shall I control
the lustful imagination ? I have not the equable tempera
ment. How shall I restrain my passion ? I can hold my
hand from striking my neighbor, but how my heart from
hating ? And Christ answers finally that question : " Ask,
and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock,
and it shall be opened unto you."
I remember, as a boy, sitting by the fireside of a little
country inn, up near Dead River in Maine, and hearing
some men discuss the Sermon on the Mount. Rough
fellows they were ; and one of them, scoffing at Chris
tianity, said, " Thou shalt love thine enemy — nonsense !
It is not in human nature." He was rjght. It is not in
human nature ; but it was in Christ's nature, and it is in
the divine nature. And it is in the divine nature to
impart it through Christ to those who claim it.
The close and climax of this sermon is the promise of
Christ that any man, seeing this as something better than
human nature, and desiring, can get it, not by kneeling
and praying for it, and expecting it to be poured into him,
but by following the word and the example and the teach
ing of the Master. ' Not, by saying, " Lord ! Lord !" but
by doing the will of the Father which is in heaven.
How shall we live happy lives ? By being worthy men
and women. How shall we be worthy men and women ?
Not by trying laboriously to conform our lives to any law,
human or divine ; not by trying to do what men will praise
us for, or even, I might almost say, what God will praise
us for, for the sake of such praising ; but by seeking to be
worthy to be called the children of God, by giving ourselves
with undeviating, unflinching, unaltering consecration to
this one purpose of making other men wiser, better, hap
pier than they would have been but for our existence ; and
by seeking in this way and by this process to come nearer
every day to Him who says of Himself, " God is love."

CHAPTER XV.— ELEMENTS OF CHRIST'S
POPULARITY
Luke vii., 1-58; viii., 1-3

Jesus Christ was one of the most popular preachers in
history. Without advantages which often confer a facti
tious popularity upon the preacher, without a great cathe
dral, fine music, a fashionable following ; without any of
the other, and what we may call accidental, advantages
which often legitimately add to the popularity of great
preachers ; without the use of rhetorical, elocutionary, or
dramatic arts, and certainly without any of those vices
which sometimes make a public speaker dishonorably pop
ular ; without pandering to the people's pride and preju
dice — Jesus Christ attracted great throngs wherever he
went. Once the people tried to crown him king; more
than once he deliberately put this popularity away from
him, by declaring to the crowds that gathered to listen to
him that to listen was nothing without obedience, and
that to obey was impossible without self-sacrifice. The
chapter which has been selected for our study to-day both
gives evidence of his popularity and gives some illustra
tions of it. I propose in this article first to consider what
were some of the elements of that popularity, and then to
point out how the incidents in this chapter furnished illus
tration of those elements.
In Jesus Christ's teaching, religion and philanthropy —
that is, reverence for God and practical love of and ser
vice for man — were inseparably joined together. This
has by no means been always the case in the history of
the world. Its temples have not always been fountains of
charity and kindness. It is true that the laws of Moses
abounded with philanthropic precepts, but it is also true
that the Pharisaic Church had forgotten this aspect of
the Mosaic law. The usual treatment of disease illus
trates the inhumanity of man in Palestine in the first cen
tury. Disease was habitually regarded as a curse of
60

ELEMENTS OF CHRIST'S POPULARITY 6 1
God, and alienated the sufferer from human sympathy.
The blind man was supposed to be suffering for his
own or his parents' sin ; the leper was an outcast, and
the pious rabbi declared that he was to be stoned if he
drew near to men ; the lunatic was left to wander friend
less and alone among the tombs. At such a time as this
Christ came to preach and practice a philanthropic relig
ion. He told the fishermen how to cast their nets that
they might get a great catch of fish ; he fed the hungry
people", too famished and faint to return to their homes
after a day's preaching ; he interrupted the synagogue
service to heal the paralyzed ; he reached forth his hand
to touch the unclean leper and make him whole ; he
stopped the funeral upon the street to restore the only son
to his mother, and she a widow.
Nor was this sympathy confined to those who were
physically suffering. The Pharisees belonged to a class
and spoke to a class. Jesus Christ came from the common
people and spoke to the common people. Long before
Burns he taught that " A man's a man for a' that." He
declared that the rich man who cared not for the suffering
poor was worse than the beggar that lay at his door ; that
the successful man who accumulated wealth for his own
self-indulgent pleasure was a fool ; that the publican
seeking to be delivered from sin was more acceptable than
the Pharisee who boasted of his righteousness ; that to do
righteously in daily life was better than to be punctilious
in temple sacrifices. He practiced what he preached,
gathered his disciples from the common people, lived
among them, shared their life.
The unphilanthropic and class religion of the Pharisees
was ascetic. To the one fast of the Mosaic law they had
added a number of others. The devout Pharisee fasted
on the fourth day of the month, because on that day Neb
uchadnezzar had captured Jerusalem ; on the fifth day of
the month, because on that day the Temple had been
burned ; on the seventh day of the month, because on that
day the Jewish Governor of Jerusalem had been murdered ;
on the tenth day of the month, because on that day Jerusa
lem had been besieged by the Chaldeans ; on the fifth day
of each week, because on that day Moses went up to the
Mount for the Law ; and on the second day of each week,

62 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
because on that day Moses brought the Law down from the
Mount. Thus religion sat in sackcloth and ashes. Men
were taught that to be religious was to be sad of visage
and thin of flesh. Christ swept all this away. Save in that
great wrestling with temptation in the wilderness, he him
self never fasted ; he counseled his disciples not to fast, and
he told them, if they did, to keep their fasting secret. He
came, as he himself said, eating and drinking ; and though
men railed at him as a, wine-bibber and a drinker, he still
went on eating and drinking. He compared God's king
dom to the rejoicings of a marriage-feast; welcomed the
return of the sinner in the parable, not with penances, but
with feasting, music, and dancing ; welcomed the coming
of the publican into his companionship, not with a fast
for the sins of the past, but with a feasting because those
sins were abandoned. Pharisees were shocked to find the
teacher of religion put aside all the conventional and
funereal aspects which they had identified with the religious
life, but the common people liked joy better than sorrow,
and welcomed a minister who came with gladness in his
heart and a song on his lips.
If religion in the first century was largely ascetic, it was
still more rigorous and burdensome — a religion of petty
rules and regulations. Religion as taught by the Pharisees
seemed to be perpetually saying to mankind, " Thou shalt
not." A striking illustration of this restrictive character is
afforded by the laws respecting cleanness and unclean-
ness. A great variety of objects were declared unclean ;
so many that there was always danger that one should
pollute himself in the daily contacts of life. Out of this
grew an elaborate ritual of washing, prescribed to the last
detail. Not less restrictive and burdensome were the
regulations respecting devotion. The prayers must be re
peated in a certain manner, and with certain gestures and
postures, or all was in vain. This whole notion of religion
as a restriction Christ resolutely and vigorously condemned.
He called his disciples unto freedom, and he exercised the
freedom himself to which he summoned them. He touched
the unclean leper when he might have healed him by a
word ; raised the dead boy from the bier by the hand,
when he might have called him back to life as he did Laza
rus, by a single command ; disregarded the elaborate laws

ELEMENTS OF CHRIST'S POPULARITY 63
respecting ablution ; and when asked by his disciples for a
form of prayer, gave them a prayer as brief as it is beauti
ful, and as simple as it is comprehensive, which he did not
make a form, though we have since made it so.
Couple with this his disregard of traditional theology,
his simplification of the religious life, his comprehension of
it all in the one word Love, his inspiration of hope in
hearts dulled by despair, and his teaching that God is the
Father of the whole human race from whom every child
may receive help and hope. His sympathy for men was so
broad and deep that neither class nor ceremony, nor the lack
of either, nor even personal sinfulness, could debar the soul
from that sympathy. In these things we get a suggestion of
some of the elements in the character and teaching of this
new prophet, whose ministry filled the people with enthu
siasm and the Pharisees with amazement and indignation.
The five incidents in the Scripture passage suggested
for our study for to-day illustrate the breadth of- this sym
pathy of Christ. It overleaped all barriers' of race. When
the Jews came to intercede with Jesus for a Roman cen
turion, whose servant, dear to him, was sick, they pleaded for
this pagan, saying, '' He is worthy because he loveth our
nation, and has built us a synagogue." But Christ, perceiv
ing in the centurion's appeal for help - " I am not worthy
that thou shouldest come under my roof ; say only a word,
and my servant shall be healed " — the evidence at once of
his humility and his faith, declared that, though he was
a Roman, he was the superior of the Israelites who had so
patronizingly commended him. In Paris, when the funeral
passes down the street, the bystanders stop and doff their
hats until at least the hearse has gone by. In Palestine
they fall into the train and swell the procession to the
grave. Strange was the meeting between the two bands
outside the city of Nain : the one, a band of mourners fol
lowing the bier to its grave, swelled by " much people "
who had joined the procession ; the other, the incoming
band of Christ and his disciples, full of the joy of the
anticipated kingdom which he had come to proclaim. But
the forces of that kingdom were not so great but that he could
stop in the highway, approach the bier, speak to the dead
who lay upon it, and turn the funeral procession into one
as joyous as that which it had met. Some attempt had

64 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
apparently been made to create a rivalry between the dis
ciples of John and of Jesus. The methods of the two
prophets were, as I have already pointed out, radically
different ; and John, shut up in the Castle of Machaerus
and beginning to despair, sent his disciples to learn whether
this Jesus whom he had baptized was really the Messiah
or not. The unstinted eulogy which Christ pronounced in
the ears of all the people upon John the Baptizer afforded
to them a new illustration of the sympathy of this prophet,
who could see the heart of a great truth behind unwise
methods of expression and imperfect plans of reform. To
the generous spirit which perceives the good, no matter
how roughly it may be clothed, the heart of the common
people always responds. Most striking of all these illus
trations is that afforded by the incident of his anointing
by the woman " which was a sinner." Notwithstanding
eighteen centuries of Christian teaching, there are few of
Christ's disciples who have any word of sympathy or hope
for a fallen woman. Who has not longed to know what
were the words of Jesus Christ which brought the peniten
tial tears to this woman's eyes and inspired her hands to
essay the sacred office of anointing ? Those words have
been lost, but the incident remains, one of the most pathetic
in Scripture, to show the depth, the tenderness, and the
comprehensiveness of Christ's sympathy, which welcomed
the touch of the sinful as well as of the ceremonially un
clean, if perhaps thereby forgiveness and healing might
be imparted. It was a novel sight in Palestine to see
women accompanying a religious teacher, ministering to
him and received by him into the circle of his disciples ;
for Pharisaism scoffed at womanhood. To teach religion to
a woman was regarded as hardly better than to teach it to
a pagan ; to receive women into the infant Church on terms
of approximate equality with men was to shock all the prej
udices of the best society, but it was also to arouse all the
enthusiasm which lay dormant and awaiting resurrection in
the hearts of the peasantry.
Thus the same acts which excited and united all the
class elements of hostility in a bitter campaign against the
Christ, by their appeal to that in man which is deeper
than ceremonial or convention, aroused in the hearts of
the common people an enthusiasm for this prophet of faith
and hope and love.

CHAPTER XVI.— THE -EVOLUTION OF THE
KINGDOM
Luke viii, 4-15; xi., 14-36; Matt, xii., 46-50; xiii., 1-53

It is a mistake to say, as sometimes has been said, that
Jesus Christ, or that Paul, was an evolutionist, for the word
evolution is one of modern origin, and indicates a purely
modern form of thought. But I believe it is profoundly
true that the teachings both of Jesus Christ and of Paul
are not only consistent with the modern doctrine of evo
lution, but are best interpreted by using that doctrine as a
clue in the study of those teachings. By the doctrine of
evolution, as applied to spiritual truth, I mean that the
kingdom of God does not come suddenly, with observa
tion, and by a series of miraculous interventions ; but
gradually, by an orderly process, from small beginnings to
large results, from lower and simpler forms to forms that
are higher and more complex. If any one supposes that
the doctrine of evolution means that this growth, either in
the physical or the spiritual realm, is without opposition,
antagonism, disappointments, deteriorations, decay, I think
he misunderstands the doctrine of evolution. However
this may be, it is clear that this growth, as Christ inter
preted it, has to meet such opposition and has to suffer
such disappointments.
Whether the parables which are collected in the thir
teenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, to which also
one should be added from the fourth chapter of Mark,1
were all spoken at one time by Jesus Christ, and consti
tuted practically one discourse, or were spoken at different
times and have been gathered together by Matthew
because they have one and the same theme running
through them and connecting them, it is not important
here to inquire ; they certainly are thus connected by one
1 Mark iv., 26-29. OS .

66 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
theme, and it is with that theme that we have to do to-day.
That theme is the evolution of the kingdom.
The kipgdom of God, then, as Christ interprets it to us
in these parables, is like a seed cast into the ground which
groweth secretly, the sower knoweth not how. This is the
first truth in these parables. Whether in the individual,
in the church, or in the community, spiritual life is a
growth. It did not in the Bible burst full-orbed upon
humanity at Mount Sinai. The doctrine of the Trinity
was not revealed in the creation when God said, " Let
us make man in our image." The consummation of
the moral law is not embodied in the Ten Commandments,
which forbid the grosser infractions of the social order.
The revelation of God in Christ Jesus is clearer than the
revelation on Mount Sinai, and the ideal of human life in
the example of Christ Jesus is a higher ideal than that
contained in the Ten Commandments. The Bible is the
history of the growth of a seed ; the history of a dawning
light. The light is clearer in the Psalms of David than in
the laws of Moses ; in the prophecies of Isaiah than in
the Psalms of David ; in the teachings of Christ than in the
prophecies of Isaiah. That which is true of the Bible is
true of the individual soul. It does not come into the per
fection of spiritual life at conversion ; it is to grow both
in grace and in knowledge, to learn more of God and of
life, to be both wiser and better as it is older. And that
which is true of the individual is true of the Church : for its
ideal it is to look, not backward, but forward ; it is to run a
race, and the goal is before it. The nineteenth century is
wiser and better than the sixteenth, and the sixteenth cen
tury was wiser and better than the fourth. It is true that
Jesus Christ is always the ideal both of the individual and
of the Church, but it is also true that both the individual
and the Church are to grow up into Christ Jesus, and are
to continue to grow until they come to a perfect manhood
in his likeness.
And this growth is accomplished by human endeavor;
it comes of seed-sowing. The common statement that
time cures all things is not true. Time cures nothing.
Time only gives us an opportunity to do something for the
sick and the sinful. It is only as the sower went forth to
sow in the first century, it is only as other sowers have

THE EVOLUTION OF THE* KINGDOM 67
gone forth in the centuries which have followed, holding
the same seed in their hand and casting it into the furrow,
that the harvest of righteousness can grow. And how it
grows depends alike upon him who sows and him who
receives, upon the seed and the soil.
Nor is this growth of the kingdom without opposition.
There are evil seeds as well as good ones ; enemies to
righteousness as well as friends of righteousness. There
is an evolution of wickedness as well as of virtue ; a prog
ress of decay as well as of growth, and the end of that
progress is death. So, as the world grows wiser and better,
it also grows wiser and wickeder. Genius furnishes instru
ments for war as well as for peace ; selfishness assumes
new and more skillful forms ; oppression, vanquished in
one guise, reappears in another. Not only are there tares
in every wheat-field, but the same sun and the same rain
minister to both, and both grow together. Is the world
growing better ? Yes ! and also worse ; for better and
worse go together side by side.
. The growth of this kingdom is not to be measured by
the littleness of its beginnings. Who could have guessed
Christianity by looking into the manger at Bethlehem, or
the Reformation by seeing Luther studying the chained
Bible in his monastery, or Methodism from the little
band of derided students at Oxford, or New England, and
the greater New England overspreading the Northwest,
from the Mayflower? The seed indeed is the least of
all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest among
herbs. Because this growth is twofold, because it must meet
with hostility, therefore agitation is the condition of it.
Like a seed in the ground is the kingdom of God, but it is
also like yeast in the flour. The Prince of Peace comes
bringing a sword and calling for war. Virtue and truth have
nothing to fear from agitation. Agitation is the sign of
life. It is always falsehood which seeks to repress free
discussion. It is always iniquity which demands to be let
alone. But the end of this battle will be worth all that it costs —
all that it costs to the individual of self-sacrifice, all that
it costs to the community in blood and treasure. Protest
antism paid none too high price in the bloody persecutions

68 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
of the seventeenth century for liberty of thought. The
Puritan was well paid for his expatriation ; the free and
united Nation is worth the price we paid for it in the Civil
War. Liberty, righteousness, purity, truth — these are in
deed treasures hid, but worth to him who discovers them
all that he has ; bought oftentimes only at a great price,
but never at a price too great.
In God's kingdom the process of seed-sowing and the
process of harvesting are one. Spring and autumn over
lap one another and constitute a strangely commingled
season. The plow which opens the furrow, the hopper
which drops in the seed, the hoe which cultivates the
grain, and the cradle which gathers it, work as one instru
ment. To change the figure, time, like a great net, is
gathering us all in together to the eternal shore, small and
great, good and bad, living and dead. When the growths
are finished, when the wheat has come to its head, and the
tares also, when men have made their choice between the
earthly and the heavenly treasure, when the processes of
time for good and for evil are completed, then will come
the judgment with its tremendous issues, the good gathered
into vessels, the bad cast away.

CHAPTER XVII.— SIGNS OF CHRIST'S
MESSIAHSHIP
Mark iv., 35-41 ; v., 1-43; Matt, ix., 27-34

There are three ways in which we may approach the
miraculous events recorded in the New Testament. We
may assume, with Robert Elsmere, that " miracles do
not happen." In that case we of course dismiss these
events altogether from the narrative, or endeavor to account
for them by some naturalistic interpretation, as by sup
posing that, under the influence of Christ's teaching of the
five thousand, those who had provisions gave to those who
had none, and so all were supplied. Or we may say, with
Huxley and Renan, that the question whether these events
really took place is a question to be determined by histori
cal evidence, but that, the events being extraordinary, the
evidence must also be extraordinary. We may then pro
ceed to examine that evidence, leaving our decision as to
Christ's character and his claims upon us to be determined
by that examination. This may be called, perhaps, the
scientific method — scientific, though not really philosophi
cal, since it leaves out of view the most important factor,
namely, the character of Jesus Christ himself. If Chris
tian believers generally pursued this method, I am inclined
to think that they would reaph Mr. Huxley's conclusion
respecting the miracles — the Scotch verdict, " not proven."
It is true that the historical evidence is so clear and
cogent that it would be quite convincing as to any ordinary
events ; but these events are so extraordinary that a
scientist who considers the evidence without taking account
of the extraordinary character of Jesus Christ and the
revelation he professed to bring to man, might well doubt
whether the historical evidence established the remarkable
phenomena. There is a third, and I believe a much more
rational, method of approaching this question. Let me try
to state it.
The student pursuing this method opens his New Tes-
69

70 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
tament and reads the four Gospels. What first and most
impresses him in this story is, not the remarkable inci
dents known as miracles, but the remarkable man concern
ing whom this story is told. It is clearly no fancy por
trait. The evidence of its historical reality, which I cannot
go into here, is such as to satisfy the most incredulous
that Jesus Christ lived, and that he was such a man and
lived such a life as is here portrayed. Nor is the portrait
idealized. It is clear that these Galilean peasants were
alike incapable of inventing or of embellishing the story.
There are, on the contrary, considerable indications that
they failed to understand their Master, and have marred,
not improved, the picture by their treatment of it. The stu
dent then begins to study this unique life and character. He
finds that this Jesus Christ was himself the central object of
his teachi ig. Whatever theory the student may form as
to the inherent nature of this remarkable man and his
relation to the Eternal Father, he cannot doubt that Jesus
claimed to come from the Father, to be the Father's well-
beloved Son, to have come into the world to manifest the
Father, and to bring to sinful men a revelation of the
Father's love and gracious help. Is it possibly true that
the great Unknown has revealed himself to men in this
one unique human life ? that Jesus Christ is not only a
revealer of truth by his words, but a revelation of a Person
by his life ? The more the student studies this character
the more he believes in an affirmative answer to this ques
tion. He at last assumes it, as at least a hypothetical
answer. He forms, let us say, the hypothesis that God,
whom philosophy and much of religion have regarded as
the Unknown, if not the Unknowable, has manifested him
self to men in his works and in the noble deeds and in
spired thoughts of the great and good of all ages, and in
the aspirations, coming we know not whence, in our own
souls in their highest experiences, and has also revealed
himself pre-eminently in this Jesus of Nazareth ; that the
hope of the world for such a revelation, itself the impulse
of all true worship, which is a seeking after God, has its
fulfillment in this Jesus of Nazareth ; that, in a word, he
is the Christ. With this hypothetical faith he re-reads the
Gospels again. The miracles, upon this hypothesis, no
longer seem extraordinary to him. It would rather be

SIGNS OF CHRIST'S MESSIAHSHIP 71
extraordinary if there were none. It does not seem
strange to him that from such a man power should scintil
late in forms of manifestation not without remote resem
blances in manifestations of power by other sons of God,
but unparalleled in the history of mankind, as this Man is
unparalleled among the sons of men.
Still further pursuing this train of thought, he asks him
self, What is a miracle ? Discarding all theological and
modern definitions, he goes to the Gospels themselves to
see what miracles, as there recorded, are. He finds four
words used to designate them ; namely, Works, Wonders,
Powers, and Signs — the latter being the translation of the
word sometimes transliterated miracle. A miracle, then, is a
work generally of beneficence, calculated to arouse wonder
in the beholder, manifesting power more than human, and
serving as a sign of divine authority. If there was such a
man as Jesus Christ, if he was a unique revelation of God,
if he came to" bring to sinful men a message and a ministry
of forgiveness and of cure, how could it be that there
should not be miracles, thus defined ? how possible that
he should not do works of love, wonders 'to that age and to
all ages, manifesting the power which resided in him, and
serving to all men as a sign that he was. what he claimed
to be?
Dropping for a moment the impersonal form and express
ing my own faith : I believe in the miracles because I
believe in Jesus Christ, not in Jesus Christ because I
believe in the miracles. The foundation of my faith in
the Gospels is not the works He did, but He Himself; and
I believe the works because I can believe anything good
and great of Him. In short, accepting His own alterna
tive, I believe that He was in the Father and the Father in
Him : I do not believe Him merely for the works' sake.
Let me, then, ask the reader for a moment to try to
take this point of view. Let him accept, simply as a
working hypothesis, this Christian faith, that " God was in
Christ reconciling the world to himself," that the Unknown
is Love, and that this Unknown, infinite in love, has come
to earth that in a human life he might manifest that love
to men, and lift them out of themselves, and bring them
to the Father. If the reader once accepts this hypothesis,
does it seem impossible to him that such an One should

72 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
manifest his power in works of love that awaken the
wonder of his friends ; that he should still the tempest,
should quiet, calm, cure the lunatic ; should conquer dis
ease, should even open the gates of death and call back
the dead to life again ? If he was the Son of God, if he
had a message worthy of such an authentication, why
should we think it impossible that the needed authentica
tion should be given ?
For the message needed authentication. Consider the
two great burdens which the world of men had long borne,
and from which they could get relief only by an authen
ticated revelation.
Long had the world stood before death appalled and
sorrow-stricken. In vain it had endeavored to look be
yond the sod — it could see nothing. Its noblest prophets
and noblest apostles could tell it nothing. There was a
"vague hope of some future life- — nothing more. Even Soc
rates, noblest philosopher of Greece, could offer to his
disciples, as they gathered at his dying bed, no better com
fort than the direction, " Go, search Greece for a charmer;
it is a wide world ; and perhaps somewhere you will find
some one who will give you comfort and consolation."
And the other burden was even greater and harder to be
borne — the sense of an irreparable past, the sense of an
evil done that could not be undone, the sense of a great
gap between the soul and God that could not be bridged.
In the temples of pagan religions everywhere you find
the same cry of men — that cry which comes to us from
India in her song : " O Varuna, have mercy ! O Varuna,
have mercy !" And no answer from Varuna ; no song of
triumph from the temple. For the history of paganism
has been always the same — humanity floundering in the
slough of despond, with never a song on its lips and never
a gleam of hope on its brow.
Now there comes to the world One who says, " I can
answer your problems. I can tell you what there is after
death : a land of glory and an angel throng. I can tell
you whether God will have mercy on you : he is a for
giving Father." This messenger does not tell us what he
thinks, nor what he hopes. He brings his message, so he
says, from the heavens. He knows that there is a glory
beyond the grave. He knows that there is a hand of God

signs of Christ's messiahship 73
outstretched to lift this burden on our back that is sinking
us in this slough of despond.
It is not enough for us to have the intuition of a poet
guessing that there is a hope beyond the grave when we
stand before the grave in which our best beloved lies. It
is not enough for us to have a Jewish poet guessing that
there is a mercy in the great Father when we are bowed
down beneath the burden of an irreparable past, and know
not what God can or will do for us. We need an assur
ance that will speak to us of life and hope. And this
Messenger, that brings this word out of the unknown,
brings an authentication of his divine authority. He comes
clad with a power that shows itself despite him. The mob
parts before him, awed by the majesty of his presence ;
the very hem of his garment, heals. He works no wonders
merely to stir men's admiration ; but power flashes from
him as electric sparks from the Leyden jar.
Whether a prophet eighteen centuries ago stilled a tem
pest, cured a lunatic, raised a widow's son, are not in them
selves important questions ; but it is transcendently impor
tant that we should know that in these Lessons we are
studying the life of one surcharged with divinity and bring
ing to us and to all the world an authoritative revelation of
pardon and of hope.

CHAPTER XVIII.— THE COMMISSION OF THE
TWELVE
Mark vi., 1-6; Matt, ix., 35-38; x., 1-42; xi., 1

In a previous chapter1 1 have spoken of Christ's selection
of the Twelve, of the principles upon which he selected
them, and of their personal character. To these Twelve
he gave two commissions — one while he was still living
with them, the other just before his ascension. It is with
the first of these commissions that we have to do to-day.
The demands on his time had become so great that he
could no longer respond to them unaided. His disciples
had been with him certainly for over a year ; he sent them
forth two by two to heal and to preach in the villages, while
he confined his ministry to the larger cities.2 It is a mis
take to suppose, as it has sometimes been supposed, that
the methods which Christ prescribed for the Twelve in
this provincial ministry in Galilee are authoritatively im
posed upon the Church for all time. Methods adapted to
one age and condition maybe very ill-adapted to another
But there are certain fundamental principles involved in
and implied by the directions which Christ gave to the
Twelve in this their first missionary circuit, which, if not uni
versally applicable, certainly throw light upon the methods
to be pursued and the work to be done by the disciples of
Christ in all ages and in all countries.
In the first place, then, we observe that Christ selected
men for the specific work of preaching the Gospel. Not
all who believed in him were to become preachers. Some
he forbade to do so, telling them to return to their homes
and go on with their daily life. Others he commanded to
leave their daily vocation and devote themselves wholly
to the ministry. The example of Christ is, therefore, an
authority for the statement that it is legitimate to appoint
1 Chap. XIII. - Compare Luke ix., 6. with Matt, xi., 1.
74

THE COMMISSION OF THE TWELVE 75
special men for the special work of the pospel ministry.
It is true that Christ laid upon all men the duty of pro
claiming their principles, but he did not leave the procla
mation of those principles dependent upon such chance
occasions as men occupied in other professions might find.
On the contrary, from the many disciples who loved and
honored him, he selected a few upon whom he laid the
duty of making the preaching of his Gospel their life-work.
But he did not organize these men into a priestly Order.
They were prophets, not priests. The distinction ' is im
portant. The priests of Judaism were the children of a
particular tribe, and the descendants of a particular family
in that tribe. No one could perform priestly functions
who was not in the order of priestly succession. These
priests were supported by regular, formal, and established
contributions ; were directed to conduct the public wor
ship ; were intrusted with all the sacrificial ceremonies of
the Jewish Church ; had the exclusive right of passing
beyond the rail which separated the court of the priests
from the outer courts ; were in a true sense representatives
of God to the people, and mediators between the people
and God. But there also grew up in Palestine under the
Old Testament another order — the prophetic order. These
prophets belonged to no line of succession ; to no special
tribe or family ; received no consecration, no anointing ;
were set apart by no ceremony ; ministered in no temple ;
were not separated from the laity by rail, or wall, or garb ;
never offered sacrifices. They were not priests, they were
laymen. Their function was not to mediate between the
people and God, but to teach the people truth about God,
duty, life. Now, Christ appointed no priesthood. The
priesthood is a Jewish, not a Christian, office. There was
no line of succession provided for in the old prophetic
order, and none hinted at .in Christ's prophetic order; no
authorized and established support given to the prophets,
and none ,to the Apostles ; no hierarchical authority, no
sacred and exclusive duty, laid upon the Hebrew prophets ;
none upon the Christian Apostles. They were simply
twelve ordinary folk, gathered by their Master, first to
learn of him, and then to repeat upon the housetop what
they had heard in the ear. To my mind it is impossible
to reconcile the notion of a continuing priesthood with the

76 1 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
teaching of Jesus Christ. Under the Jewish system only
the priest could enter the sacred precincts of the Temple,
only the High Priest the Holy of Holies where God was
supposed to dwell. This was wholly foreign to the teach
ing of Jesus Christ. He taught that God is the universal
Father, that we are all God's children ; that there need be
no mediator between the Father and his child ; that no
altar-rail can separate between the arms of the Everlasting
Love and the poor and the needy whom God loves ; that
there is need neither of priest nor of bloody sacrifice to
open a door to the heart of God that his children may
enter in. The very Gospel which the Apostles were ap
pointed to preach was that all this belonged to an ancient
order, that the time was ripe for teaching that every man
is a child of God, and that for every man the way is opened
to the heart of his heavenly Father.
This prophetic apostolic order was made wholly depend
ent upon the voluntary subscription of the people for its
support. The Twelve were to take no money in their purse,
no provisions, not even two garments ; they were to go
from house to house, trusting the hospitality of those to
whom they ministered, and trusting to them alone. Doubt
less there are disadvantages in a dependent ministry, but
the dangers are incomparably less than the dangers in an
independent ministry. In spite of the dependence of the
Protestant clergy on the voluntary free-will offerings of the
congregation, I venture to affirm that there are no ministers
in the world and no class of men in America who are more
thoroughly and conscientiously independent of public opin
ion than the Protestant ministers in these United States.
They are more ready to oppose the current sentiment of
their congregation than are lawyers to antagonize the
prejudices of their clients, or doctors the prejudices of
their patients, or merchants the prejudices of their cus
tomers, or politicians the prejudices of their constituents,
or even newspaper editors the prejudice's of their readers.
And in no Established Church in the world are the preach
ers more frank and courageous in their utterances than are
the ministers in the unestablished churches in free America.
The ministry which Christ thus organized was an itiner
ant ministry. The Twelve were to travel two by two,
from town to town, preaching the Gospel. Subsequently

THE COMMISSION OF THE' TWELVE 77
a similar appointment was made of seventy to fulfill a simi
lar mission in Perea. They also constituted an itinerant
ministry ; they also were to travel from town to town carrying
the good news of the kingdom. It does not, I think, follow
from this that the ministry of the Church of Christ is always
to be itinerant, but it does follow that it is always to be an
aggressive and missionary ministry. No organization is a
Church of Christ which does not go forth to teach those
that are without "the Glad-Tidings of Christ's Gospel. He
who bade his disciplesi follow him declared of himself that
he came to seek as well as to save that which was lost.
He compared his kingdom to a wedding-feast whose host
sent his messengers out into the highways and the hedges
to compel the poor to come in and partake of it. Missions
are not an incident of the Christian Church. The Chris
tian Church exists for the sake of missions ; missionary
activity is the very end of its being.
And this ministry of the Twelve was to be a philan
thropic ministry. Preaching and healing were to go together.
The same love which ministers to the spirit will minister
to the body. We cannot divide man into departments and
treat the physical organism as though it were independent
of the spiritual, and the spiritual as though it»were inde
pendent of the physical. The modern church, which feeds,
and clothes, and medicates, and teaches, and preaches, is
ministering in the spirit of the Master, provided it never
forgets that the spiritual is more important than the intel
lectual, as the intellectual is more important than the
physical ; that, in other words, the animal is for the social
and the social is for the spiritual ; or, again, in Christ's
own words, that " the life is more than meat and the body
more than raiment."
Such are some, by no means all, of the universal prin
ciples illustrated in Christ's, first commission to the first
heralds of the kingdom of God.

CHAPTER XIX.— THE BREAD OF LIFE
Mark vi., 30-56; John vi., 22-71

The popularity of Jesus Christ reached its climax in his
feeding of the five thousand on the eastern shore of the
Sea of Galilee. The people in their enthusiasm would
have crowned him as their king in spite of himself, and
compelled him to lead them in an attack upon their Roman
oppressors. Immediately following this event, Christ
preached a sermon in the synagogue at Capernaum which,
from its theme, is known as the Sermon on the Bread of
Life. It produced a very remarkable effect: it put an end
to his popularity. Those who had followed him with
enthusiasm abandoned him, and so great was the falling
off that he turned sadly to his twelve familiar friends and
asked them if they also were going to leave him. The
popularity which he thus put away never revived. Indeed,
this sermon at Capernaum was substantially the end of his
popular ministry in Galilee. Immediately after preaching
it he retired, with his twelve friends, first to Phoenicia and
afterwards to the vicinity of Caesarea Philippi, and occu
pied himself in giving them private instructions respecting
their conduct in the future kingdom. It was as though
the effect of his sermon had been to confirm his convic
tion that the kingdom of God was not to be set up on the
earth in his lifetime, and that he must make haste to
instruct others to carry on the work after he was gone.
When we read this discourse in the light of the subse
quent history, it is somewhat difficult to see why it should
have produced the effect which it did produce. The gist
of the sermon was that his disciples must feed on him —
must, as he expressed it, eat his flesh and drink his blood —
or they could have no life in them. The figure is strange
and enigmatical at the best, and our difficulty of interpret
ing it is still further enhanced by two considerations. A
year and a half or two years after this discourse Jesus
instituted the Last Supper, where he repeated in words as
78

THE BREAD OF LIFE' 79
well as in act the same figure, and almost immediately
thereafter was put to a cruel death. We read this dis
course at Capernaum in the light of this subsequent his
tory, and cannot fail to modify our interpretation by reason
of that history. There is, indeed, ground for so doing.
It may well be said that the discourse was prophetic, that
Christ had in mind these events, and that we are to have
them in mind also. Nevertheless, the first canon of inter
pretation of any address is that we must understand how
the auditors would have understood it, even though we see
a larger meaning than they saw. It is not easy for us,
instructed by later history, to understand how the unin-
structed auditors at Capernaum would have understood
this discourse. Moreover, the discourse is not only read
in the light of subsequent history ; the report of it was
written in the light of that history. There is small reason
for supposing that John has given us a verbatim report of
this discourse. The ancient historians were accustomed
to give in the form of direct discourse what is really their
abstract, and often their interpretative abstract, of the origi
nal. Indeed, this is not infrequently the custom of modern
historians. Numerous illustrations of it may be found in
Macaulay. It is inherently probable that John pursued
this course. The Sermon on the Bread of Life, as it is
reported in his Gospel, can easily be read in five or six
minutes. It is hardly probable that the discourse took no
longer time than that in the delivery. Presumptively,
therefore, we have a report of this sermon or address
written out after the light thrown upon it by the Last
Supper and the crucifixion ; presumptively, the interpreta
tion of that discourse afforded by those events has colored
John's report of the original.
Bearing these facts in mind, and recognizing a conse
quent difficulty of any absolute and complete interpreta
tion, let us consider what, in view of all the circumstances,
is the central truth in this Sermon on the Bread of Life.
i . I think we may dismiss with very little consideration
the notion that Christ's words are to be taken literally ;
that his flesh and blood were literally eaten and drunken
at the Last Supper, and that they reappear miraculously
whenever the bread and wine are blessed by the priest in
our own time. We may dismiss this theory, widely as it

80 THE LIFE OF CHRIST1
has been entertained, because Christ says explicitly and in
terms that such literal eating, if it were possible, would be
of no advantage. " You are not to eat," he says, " as
your fathers did eat manna and are dead;" and, again, "the
flesh profiteth nothing." This is literally true. There is
no reason to suppose that the flesh and blood of Jesus of
Nazareth differed in any respect from that of other mortals,
and that if it were possible to partake of them it would be
of any benefit to body, soul, or spirit of the partaker.
2. It seems to me, too, that we may also dismiss with
out much more discussion the notion that Christ means
simply that we are to accept his teachings, that we are, to
use the modern form of his own figure, to imbibe those
teachings. It is true that the Hebrew rabbis commonly
used in Christ's time a metaphor similar to that which
Christ used here. " To eat of my bread " was with them
a popular phrase equivalent to "partake of my doctrine."
But it would seem that Christ labored to show that he
meant something more than this. He does not tell his
disciples that they must eat of his bread, but that they
must eat of him, and, that there may be no misunderstand
ing, that they may see clearly that he means something
more than imbibing his teachings or eating of his bread,
he adds that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood.
And yet, that they may understand that this is a metaphor
not to be taken literally, he closes his discourse with the
declaration that it is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh
profiteth nothing.
Let us, then, look for a moment at the metaphor itself ;
at its philosophical suggestiveness. When we eat bread or
drink wine, what happens? The bread that we eat, the
wine that we drink, is digested and converted into animal
tissue; it becomes flesh, nerve, bone, blood. It ceases to
be something apart from us, and becomes a part of our own
organization. In a somewhat analogous manner is the
process of intellectual nutrition carried on. The child
commits to memory a page out of a book, but it remains
something extraneous to the child ; it is something apart
from him ; it is something which he has committed to
memory and can recite ; but it does not charige his opinions,
qualify his judgment, influence his will, or affect his action.
In the higher reading and culture all this does take place.

THE BREAD OF LIFE 51
The student no longer merely commits the author to
memory ; he imbibes his author ; he catches the spirit of
Shakespeare, or Browning, or Wordsworth ; he gets his
favorite author's view of life. Or, is it a philosopher he is
studying, he becomes himself Hegelian or Kantian. He
has done something more now than merely learn a book ;
he has modified his intellectual character by digesting and
assimilating — we are compelled to use the metaphor — the
author on whom he has fed.
Now, a similar process is possible spiritually. The most
transcendent influence in the world is that of personality.
One may be brought under the influence of another and
overmastering personality, so that his own is modified,
transformed, or possibly subjugated. He thinks of life
differently ; he forms new resolutions ; he pursues new
courses of conduct. To feed on Christ is not merely to
learn what he has had to say ; it is not merely to obey him
as a soldier obeys a general. It is to so absorb him, so
catch his spirit, so be molded and influenced by his life,
as to be " a new man in Christ Jesus." If partaking of the
sacrament helps this, then partaking of the sacrament is
one method of feeding on Christ. If reading the Gospel
helps this, then reading the Gospel is another method of
feeding on Christ. But neither partaking of the sacrament
nor reading the Gospel constitutes a feeding on Christ,
unless the result is a new and more Christlike spirit in the
spirit of the man, a new and more Christlike life lived by him.
It is not easy to state what relation Christ's Passion
and death has to thus feeding on him. But it is not neces
sary here to consider this question. We are endeavoring
to see how Christ's auditors would have understood this
sermon, and they knew nothing of his coming Passion and
death. But when they learned that the kingdom of God
was a life of loyalty to God ; that to inherit that kingdom
'"was to enter upon such a life as Christ was then living ; that
the change must be in them, not in their government or
their wealth or their social circumstances ; that he was lead
ing them, not to a political domination, but to a righteous
self-control, not to new conditions of life, but to a life
itself new ; and that he himself, in his loneliness and poverty,
illustrated the life to which he invited them, they drew
back and followed him no more.

CHAPTER XX.— A PERIOD OF SECLUSION
Mark vi., 24-28; viii., 1-26; Matt, xvi., 13-28

It has become evident that the Jewish nation is not
ready for the revelation of the kingdom of God. Rejected
by his own countrymen at Capernaum, foreseeing more
plainly than ever the immediate issue of his mission in his
own impending death, Jesus Christ turns away from the
multitude, and, followed by his few faithful friends, seeks
retirement, that in a period of seclusion he may give them
instruction in the principles of his kingdom — instruction
by which they may be guided after his death. The period
with which we have to do in the next two chapters of this
series is this period of seclusion. "If he goes into any of
the cities, he still endeavors to remain unknown ; when a
deaf and dumb man is brought to him, he takes him aside
from the multitude before he opens his ears and loosens
his tongue ; when, in the city of Bethsaida, a blind man is
brought to him, it is not till he has led him outside the city
walls that he bids him see ; and alike upon the subjects of
his healing and upon his disciples he enjoins secrecy,
though for the most part seemingly in vain. So marked is
this change in his ministry, so evident is his effort during
these six months of exile to secure retirement and to live
unnoticed, that his brethren taunt him with his conceal
ment, and dare him to show himself openly to the world if
he be indeed the Messiah that he claims to be." x To some
significant incidents in this period of seclusion our atten
tion is especially drawn in the Scripture lessons suggested
for this and the succeeding week.
From Galilee Jesus first retreats to the coast of Tyre
and Sidon. His object was not missionary labor, but rest
and an opportunity for quiet conference with the Twelve.
His aim was analogous to that of the ministry in the mod-
'Mark ix., 30; vii., 33: viii., 22-36; vii., 36; viii., 26; John vii., 2-5. See
Chapter XXIII. in my ,r Jesus of Nazareth." 82

A PERIOD OF SECLUSION 83
ern " retreat." But his fame had preceded him, and he
could not secure the seclusion he desired.1 A Syro-Phceni-
cian woman forced her way into the Master's presence
and implored his aid for her suffering daughter. We mis
read the story of Christ's life by denying to him those
flashes of humor, that incisive but delicate irony, that
humanistic spirit which belongs to all the greatest moral
teachers. To suppose that Jesus in the spirit of his own
disciples looked upon this woman— upon any child of God
— as a dog and repulsed her contemptuously, his contempt
vanquished only by her importunity, is to do singular dis
honor to his name. Christ neither intended to repel this
mother, nor, in fact, did so. He interpreted his language
by the tones of his voice and the expression of his face.
It is not difficult for imagination to conceive the picture :
she throwing herself at his feet imploring his help; the dis
ciples with their narrow Jewish bigotry, impossible to pen
etrate by any sympathy for a heathen woman, no matter
what her distress; and his ironical rebuke of their narrow-
mindedness by his seeming participation in it, a seeming be
neath which her quick motherly intuition easily saw the real
divine sympathy. " But, my woman, " he says, " it is not proper
to take the bread from these children " (he designates them
with a glance or with a gesture as he speaks), " and cast it
to the pet dogs, even the pet dogs of the household." She
catches his spirit and perceives her understanding of him
by her response. "That is true, Lord," she says, "for the
pet dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from the table of
their masters. There is enough for both, and they feed
from that which the children cast away or passed by in
indifference. " 2 The lesson taught to his disciples, the revela
tion of the catholicity of his spirit and of the Gospel made
to them by a satire which even their dull hearts could
hardly fail to apprehend, he grants the mother's request,
and then, all hope of retirement in Phoenicia being taken
1 Mark vii., 24.
2 The grounds for the interpretation which I here give to the incident of the
Syro-Phcemcian woman the student will find explained in full in my Commen
tary on Matthew, Chapter XV. I believe it to be borne out, not only by the
general character of Christ, but by a careful study of the original Greek. I pass
by the feeding of the four thousand because its significance is not different from
that of the feeding of the five thousand heretofore described. There is some
question whether there are not two accounts of the same incident, though, for
the reasons stated in my Commentary on Mark, I agree with Alford in thinking
that there were two feedings.

84 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
away, goes back to Galilee, thence to depart again to seek
seclusion anew in the vicinity of Cassarea Philippi.
North of Galilee, at the head waters of the Jordan, about
four miles east of Dan, which was the northernmost town
of Palestine, was this city named in honor of Augustus
Caesar and of Herod Philip, the tetrarch, who made it the
site of his villas and palaces. Here stood side by side
the bust of Caesar Augustus and the shrine of Pan ; here
side by side were maintained the two most common forms
of idolatry, the worship of political power and the worship of
the forces of nature ; here, free from the intrusion of public
clamor and popular adulation, equally distasteful to him,
the Master found the opportunity for quiet conference with
the Twelve. And from this seclusion he set his face
steadfastly toward Jerusalem, toward Gethsemane and
the crucifixion, to complete his earthly mission by his pas
sion and his death.1 Here he made his first distinct
declaration of his Messiahship to his disciples, character
istically calling forth from them their belief in him as the
Messiah, and then confirming it. " Whom do men say that
I, the Son of man, am ?" he asks ; and they said : " Some
say that thou art John the Baptizer, some Elijah, and some
Jeremiah, or one of the prophets." He said unto them :
" Whom say ye that I am ?" One can imagine the moment
of hesitation in which they look one to the other question-
ingly, and then the boldest of them utters the faith which
has grown into their hearts so gradually that they are
scarcely conscious of it : " Thou art the Messiah, the Son
of the living God."
Christ's confirmation of this article of their faith appears
to me to have been strangely misapprehended, nor have I
space here to enter into the grounds for the different inter
pretation which indeed I can only briefly suggest.2 Not
on Simon as an individual does Christ build his Church,
nor on Simon and his successors, for of successors he gives
no hint either here or elsewhere ; nor on the doctrine of
the divinity of Jesus Christ, for this common Protestant
interpretation robs the play upon words in Christ's
1 For graphic description of Caesarea Philippi, now known as Paneas or Ba-
nias, see George Adam Smith's " Holy Land," pages 473-479.
2 For a fuller statement of this interpretation, and the grounds for it, see my
" Signs of Promise," Sermons 9 and 10, and my Commentary on Matthew xvi
13-19-

A PERIOD OF SECLUSION 85
response of all their significance. What Christ says is
this : " By this living faith in me as the living Messiah,
you, Simon, impulsive, changeable like a wave of the sea,
are converted into Peter, a rock. And upon this rock, this
character thus divinely transformed by a renewing of the
Holy Spirit through faith in me as the Messiah, I will
build my Church. That Church is founded, not on a man,
nor on a hierarchical succession, nor on an intellectual
dogma, but on a transformation of character through an
indwelling Christ.1 To every soul thus transformed by
the renewing of his spirit Christ gives the key of the
kingdom of heaven — not a key to let men into a future
heaven, still less a key to Peter as a porter, giving
him power to receive or to exclude from the celestial
city, but the key as a symbol of authority in the
Christian life, the key of God upon the earth. Not au
thority to loose and bind, or to designate who shall be
loosed or bound, in heaven, but authority to loose (that is,
permit) and bind (that is, prohibit) upon the earth — au
thority to regulate one's own conduct, not as coerced by
laws of an external authority, but as guided and inspired
by the spirit of liberty within. This power of the keys,
which has been made an excuse for spiritual despotism, is
really a Magna Charta of liberty in the kingdom of God
for all the disciples of Christ. " I understand, then, the
promise of the keys to be made to Peter as the possessor
of a living faith in Jesus as the divine Messiah, and
through him to all who by a like faith are endued with a
like strength of character, not natural, but God-given, and
I would paraphrase it thus : To my disciples I will give
authority in their spiritual life so that they shall no longer
be bound by rules and regulations like those of the Phari
sees or of the Mosaic code ; but whatsoever, under the
inspiration of a living faith in me, they shall prohibit them
selves, God will prohibit, and whatsoever, under that in
spiration, they shall permit themselves, God will permit ;
for they shall have the mind of the Spirit."
1 See, in confirmation of this view, Peter's own interpretation in 1 Pet. ii., 4-6.

CHAPTER XXL— THE TRANSFIGURATION
Luke ix., 28-36; Matt, xvii., 14-27

It is not until Christ has been rejected by the common
people, and not until his immediate disciples have recog
nized him as the Messiah, not because of any manifest
glory or popular acceptance, but despite popular rejec
tion, and because of his own personal character and benefi
cent work, that Christ makes that revelation of this secret
mystery of his life afforded by the Transfiguration. It
then comes in as the outward and visible confirmation of a
faith which is based upon a spiritual foundation of faith
and love.
The notion that the story of the Transfiguration is the
story of a dream may be dismissed without much argument
at the outset. If it was dreamed by one of these witnesses,
and afterwards narrated by him, it is hardly credible
that the narrative would have been received against the
testimony of the other two ; and a concurrent dream is as
much out of the order of nature as a supernatural visitation.
Like some other hypotheses that assume the honorable
title of "rational," this one is peculiarly contrary to reason.
If, however, we accept what is certainly a common view
of the spirit world, I know not how this episode can be
interpreted at all. It can only be regarded as an event
wholly miraculous ; equally out of the order of nature and
of the supernatural. That common view of the spirit world
is nebulous at best, but it may be briefly stated thus :
Death is a sleep ; at death the soul goes into a semi
conscious condition and lives in some far off Lotus-land of
dreams ; the body waits in the grave the summons of the
last trump ; in a thousand years or a thousand centuries,
whenever time shall have finished its cycle and the end
shall have come, the body will rise from its resting-place
and become that soul's future habitation ; the scattered
portions of human bodies taken up by grass and grain and
86

THE TRANSFIGURATION 87
incorporated in infinite forms of vegetable and animal life
will be brought together by the command of God — for
nothing is too difficult for the Almighty — and then the
long-broken current of life will begin again.
These ashes, too, this little dust,
A Father's care shall keep,
Till the last angel rise and break
The long and dreary sleep.
On this notion of death and resurrection we must imag
ine that Moses and Elijah were especially called from long
sleep in death for this special interview ; what became of
them after their premature resurrection, whether they
waited in loneliness for their companions or whether they
went back to their long sleep, I shall leave those to guess
who adopt a hypothesis so crowded with difficulties —
rational, interpretative, and moral — as this heart-breaking
and wholly unscriptural hypothesis seems to me to be.
As I read the New Testament, there is to the believer
no break in the continuity of life ; no " long and dreary
sleep ;" no waiting for a future and far-off resurrection ;
no " happy land, far, far, away ;" no further use for this
lame, blind, deaf, ailing, sick body after it is laid away in
the grave ; no conceivable use in preserving it by embalm
ing, or stone sarcophagus, or iron casket, or closed tomb.
It is the soldier's tent ; his campaign is over ; he is at
home ; and the sooner it is made over into some new and
valuable thing the better. It is the immigrant's wagon ; he
has reached his destination ; the wagon has served its pur
pose, but its journeys have come to an end ; knock it to
pieces and turn its material to good account. Of the
resurrection of this body, corrupt, decaying, evanescent,
the Bible gives no hint; on the contrary, it repudiates it in
strongest terms. When the death-angel appears to the
disciple, saying, " Follow me," the chains fall off from the
long-fettered soul ; he carries not a link of them away to
encumber his future freedom. Whether Swedenborg's
fancy of a spiritual body is true I know not. Having no
faith in him as a prophet, his revelations seem to me but
the imaginings of a fine and poetic soul. But, true or
false, the resurrection is accomplished when life is ended,
and the soul and the breath leave the body forever at the
same moment. Thank God' it is so ! Thank God my

OS THE LIFE OF CHRIST
mind is not to be forever fettered by the conditions
imposed upon it by an easily wearied brain, nor my heart
checked in its aspirations by a body gross and sensuous
and earthy.
As little authority is there for the notion of the " happy
land, far, far away." The Bible never so represents it.
The heavenly Jerusalem is a holy city let down to the
earth. Heaven is at hand. If it has geographical limits
of any sort, earth is not beyond them. What powers of
soul-flight to the other and far-off worlds the soul may
possess, who can tell ? What explorations it may make
into secrets of the universe into which telescope and spec
troscope pry in vain, who may guess ? The stars may be
other continents whither the emancipated wander, as here
we travel through foreign countries carrying our bodies
like heavy and cumbersome baggage. But whatever other
lands may be opened to the winged spirits, the earth is not
closed to them. Whatever other companionship may be
theirs, the companionship of earth is .not denied them.
They are all ministering spirits ; we may live and walk in
the midst of them. If our ears were adjusted to such
delicate music, we might hear their songs ; if our eyes were
not so gross and sensuous, we might perceive their now
invisible forms. When the prophet touched the eyes of
the young man, and he looked up, he saw the horizon full
of the horses and chariots of the Lord encamped around
Elisha ; they were not then summoned from a far-off land
for his protection. When Elisha recalled the wandering
spirit of the boy to the dead body, it had not far to travel
to return to its earthly tent. When Christ called with a loud
voice, " Lazarus, come forth !" the spirit was within hear
ing and could obey. When Christ hung on the cross, with
the dying thief beside him, he was able to say, " This day
shalt thou be with me in Paradise." No long interval of
weary centuries was to be first wasted in useless sleep. When
Paul, imprisoned at Rome, looked forward with longing to
the hour of his liberation, it was not that he might find
Job's couch, " where the wicked cease from troubling and
the weary are at rest," but that he might " depart and be
with Christ, which is far better." That there are pas
sages in the Bible which seem to point to a great and uni
versal resurrection at some far-off period, I frankly con-

THE TRANSFIGURATION 89
cede ; but that this is its general teaching I vigorously and
earnestly deny. All its teaching is pictorial. It all speaks
of that which to us is incomprehensible. Any clear, defi
nite, and accurate conception of the spirit world is impos
sible ; but the picture of a long rest, a soul living unclad
or asleep, or waiting in some reception-room of heaven for
its habiliments, presents far more difficulties to the rever
ent student of Scripture than the view which holds that
the Judgment Day has already dawned ; that the dead are
passing in a continuous procession from earth to God's
judgment bar ; that death and the resurrection are simul
taneous ; that the separation between earth and heaven is
a narrow partition, and death is but the swinging of the
door ; and that the dead are living, more truly living than
we, and living often close at hand : so close that we are
surrounded by them as by a cloud of witnesses ; so close
that the evil spirits breathe into our souls pestiferous im
aginations and blasphemous thoughts ; so close that we
have need to arm ourselves not merely against flesh and
blood, but also against the prince of the power of the air,
against wicked spirits in high places ; so close, too, that
mothers still keep watch and ward over their children, and
the friend still serves, by subtle influences, as guide and
inspiration of his friend. Oh, mother, laying down at last
your weary burden, and only too glad to lay it down but
that you cannot bear to be separated from the children
whose strength is so small and whose need is so great,
who ever told you that you are to be separated from them ?
They shall be separated from you ; but you shall not be
separated from them.
Accepting this conception of the spirit world — as a world
all about us, as a world in which we live, as a world from
which we are separated only by our own dullness of sense
and heaviness of vision — the story of the Transfiguration
ceases to be a strange episode, a breaking in upon nature
and the supernatural; rather it will seem strange that
many a follower of Christ has not known a like experience
of communion with the sainted and risen dead.
Christ was accustomed to retire from the haunts of men,
even from the companionship of his own disciples, and
spend all night in prayer among the hills of Galilee. Of
these secret and sacred communings this story of the

90 - THE LIFE OF CHRIST
Transfiguration gives us our only glimpse. These nights
of prayer were nights of communion ; nights in which the
obscurity of sense was cleared away, and the half-enfran
chised soul saw and communed with the souls that were
wholly freed from the dimness and darkness of the flesh,
and, most of all, with the Father whom no eye of flesh ever
has seen or ever can see. And on the one occasion when
his three friends were permitted to share his place of prayer
with him, they caught also the inspiration of his spirit, and
beheld two of the cloud of witnesses that were watching
over them — that are ever watching over us.
If, however, this incident thus interpreted affords us a
new sense of the reality and the presence of the spirit
world, it also guards us against going out of the activities
of an earthly existence to indulge in reveries and dreams
concerning the invisible. Their presence may well serve
as an inspiration ; their ministry may be real and helpful ;
but we may not turn aside from present duty for converse
with them. If ever any of us are inclined to listen to the
voices of the voiceless dead, the one voice which speaks to
us out of the cloud — and the only voice — is, " This is my
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased ; hear ye him."
If we are ever inclined to turn our longing eyes toward this
impalpable world, and seek for some materialized form of
the invisible dead, we may well remember that the glimpse
of the lawgiver and the prophet was but a glimpse, and
that when the disciples' eyes were open they saw no one
save Jesus only. If we are inclined to abide on the Mount
of Vision, and substitute spiritual ecstasy for practical duty,
we shall do well to recall the throng that waited at the foot
of the Mount for Jesus's return, bringing power of healing
for the demoniac boy, and to remember that the poor we
have always with us, and that the hours of inspiration are
meant to equip us with a larger sympathy, a broader human
love, and a profounder curative and healing faith as a
preparation for the work of casting the devil out of those
who abide in the valley.

CHAPTER XXII.— JESUS IN JERUSALEM
John vii., 1-52 ; John viii., 1-59

In studying the life of Christ, and in comparing the dis
courses in John's Gospel with those in the Synoptic Gospels,
the reader must remember that many of the discourses re
ported in John were delivered in Jerusalem, while those in
Matthew and Mark were for the most part delivered in
Galilee, to which Luke adds some which were delivered in
Perea. Comparing Palestine with Europe in the seven
teenth century, Galilee may be said to be the Germany,
Judea the Italy,, of the Holy Land. In Galilee Christ was
surrounded with a simple-hearted folk who were inclined
to welcome much of his message. In Jerusalem he was
surrounded by the adherents of a hierarchy who were bent
on his destruction.- In Galilee his auditors believed in
laws of righteousness, and welcomed a rabbi who taught
them that to obey is better than sacrifice. In Jerusalem
his auditors were people whose commercial and social as
well as religious life was bound up with the Temple, and
to whom ceremonial law seemed far more important than
the Ten Commandments.
His hostile critics deny his right to teach because he is
not a graduate ; they attempt to arrest him for teaching
without authority, but his moral power overawes the officers
and he is not taken ; they scoff at his teaching because he
is a Galilean ; they endeavor to bring him into collision
with the law of Moses by bringing in a woman convicted
of adultery to condemn or to acquit; they interrupt him
in his teaching with continual questionings, and when they
find themselves unable to outwit him, they follow question
ing with abuse, and abuse with proffered violence. All
this is to be borne in mind in interpreting the discourses
recorded in the seventh and eighth chapters of John, of
which here I can give but the briefest epitome.
The law of Moses is primarily a law of righteousness.
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92 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
Men who are murderers at heart are not obeying that law
because they are rigid ceremonialists. They think they
will know the Messiah when he comes, but they neither
know him, nor his origin, nor his destiny. He comes to
bring to humanity the spirit of the divine life, the spirit of
obedience, which is religion, and that spirit they will not
receive. He who doe's receive it walks in the light because
the light is in himself. He who has this light in himself
will recognize in Jesus the Messiah, and will receive the
witness which the Father has given of his Messiahship.
He who has this spirit will be emancipated from bondage
—bondage to sin, bondage to the letter of the law. It is
to bring this emancipation about by bringing this illumi
nation that the Son has come to the world. The true chil
dren of Abraham are those who possess Abraham's spirit.
They who do the deeds of malice and hate are not children
of Abraham, but children of the devil. They who possess
this spirit of light and life are immortal ; they cannot die.
They see with vision what Abraham saw by faith — God
revealing himself to humanity, for Jesus the Messiah is the
consummation of that long historic revelation which began
with the voice that called Abraham out of heathenism.
So these discourses, which I have treated here as one,
the object of which is to teach the liberty and life of the
spirit to a people who are in bondage to the letter, reach
their consummation in the enigmatical but sublime decla
ration, a declaration which binds the Old and the New
Testament together in one book of revelation, " Before
Abraham was, I am."

The Life of Christ

CHAPTER XXIII.— CHRIST'S MINISTRY IN
JERUSALEM, CONTINUED
John ix., 1-41 ; x., 1-42

(For comments on Lesson 25, see next chapter)
The chronology of this portion of Christ's life is involved
in obscurity. I believe, however, that the ministry re
ported in John vii., 10 — x., 39, was one continuous ministry
of about three months' duration in Jerusalem, immediately
after which Christ departed to the region beyond Jordan
(John x., 40-42), the record of his ministry there being
given alone by Luke. In this chapter, therefore, I do not
follow the order of The Bible Study Union Lessons. (See
next chapter.)
Christ's Judean ministry was one of continuous storm.
Twice he was mobbed, once an attempt was made to arrest
him, more than once secret plans for his assassination were
formed. It is doubtful whether any of the evangelists except
John were with Jesus during this time ; at all events, it is he
alone who gives us an account of it. In our last chapter we
saw the mob gathering with stones in their hands to stone
Jesus. He hid himself, it is said, and escaped. In this
chapter we come to another illustration of the same spirit
of enmity, though here it takes the form of the judicial trial.
Passing along the street one day, he sees a man blind
from his birth ; anoints his eyes with clay and spittle,
which in ancient times were believed to possess curative
properties, and bids him go, wash in the pool of Siloam.
He goes, and finds his sight restored. The healing creates
great public interest. It is brought to the attention of the
Sanhedrim ; they seize upon the fact that the healing was
done upon the Sabbath day, and a judicial investigation
follows. The parents appear, and, when summoned before
the court, evade its questioning, for it has already been
93

94 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
determined that whoever acknowledges Christ as the Mes
siah shall be excommunicated ; and, while it is doubtful
whether this sentence practically involved all the penalties 1
implied in the Talmud, and actually involved in excommu
nication by the Church of Rome at a later day, it is certain
that the excommunicated was practically cut off from social
intercourse and largely from all those commercial enter
prises which involved association with others.
The man himself, summoned and put upon oath, at first
himself avoids any issue with the court. Whether the man
who cured him is an impostor or not, he will not under
take to say. But he repeats unhesitatingly the story of
his cure ; then, aroused to anger, taunts the court, stands
bravely up for his convictions, affirms his faith that the
man who cured him is no impostor, but truly a man of
God ; and suffers the penalty in the dreaded ban of ex
communication pronounced against him. One cannot but
wish to know what later became of him. So far as the
account indicates, he was left by Christ to bear the penalty
of his fidelity to his convictions — one of the earliest, if not
the very earliest, of the Christian martyrs who suffered
persecution for Christ's sake. If we believe, as I do, that
we have in this chapter the record of an eye-witness, it is
peculiarly valuable because it gives an account of the only
one of Christ's miracles which was subjected to a judicial
or quasi judicial investigation ; and, as the result of that
investigation, the reality of the cure could not be denied,
and the only way in which a hostile court could break its
moral effect was by driving into social exile the witness
whose testimony could not be contradicted.
The healing of the blind man and the judicial investiga
tion of the miracle were followed by a double parable in
which a familiar figure drawn from the Old Testament
prophets was made first to indie ite the attitude of Christ's
disciples, then to indicate his own nature and office.
"Whoever," says Christ, "enters into my fold, becomes a
shepherd of the sheep." Each shepherd has his own sheep,
each disciple his own pupils, who will hear only his voice,
respond only to his influence. But he tint would be a
prophet of God must first himself come to God by Christ,
1 For description of the effect of the anathema, as stated in the Talmnd, see
Edersheim's " Life of Jesus," Vol. 11., p. 1S3.

CHRIST S MINISTRY IN JERUSALEM  CONTINUED 95
first enter into the fold through the one only door. Who
soever puts himself before Christ, whosoever claims prece
dence before him, or sets him one side as the Pharisees
did, are thieves and robbers. They rob men of the life
which Jesus Christ has come to bestow.1
Then Christ makes a new application of the same figure.
He is himself the supreme Shepherd, the Good Shepherd
who gave his life for the sheep. He lays that life down at
will ; he will at will take that life up again. Bringing these
two parables together, as the Master does, they teach at once
the supreme authority of Christ, and what has been well
called the " liberty of prophesying" of all Christ's disciples.
This parabolic teaching is speedily followed by another
discourse concerning Himself, the significance of which
neither was nor well could be misunderstood. A hostile
crowd surround him and demand that he say plainly whether
he is the Messiah or not. He does not give a categori
cal answer to that question ; but he does answer plainly
what is his mission and what his power. He gives to
his followers eternal life, and no man can rob them of it ;
because the Father is greater than all, and he and his
Father are one — one, clearly (otherwise there is no signifi
cance in the argument), in power and authority, not merely
in will or desire. So, clearly, the mob understand him, for
they take up stones to stone him for blasphemy. With
that marvelous presence of his he overawes and halts
them ; cites to them their own Scriptures, that the prophets
of God are sons of God, and asks them a question which
they cannot answer, why they charge him with blasphemy
because he has claimed to be the Son of God. If — this
is the gist of the argument — he to whom the Spirit of God
comes is made a partaker of the divine nature and a child
of God, then he who is not of this world, but is sent into
it by the Fither to reveal the Father to the world, cannot
be guilty of blasphemy in calling himself a son of God.
Again the mob seek to lay hold of him ; again he es
capes from their hands, and turns his back upon Jerusalem
as he has already turned his back upon Galilee. He has
still a ministry to complete in the region beyond Jordan,
and then the time will be ripe for his passion and death.
1 For the reason of this interpretation of the parable I must refer the reader to
my Commentary on John.

CHAPTER XXIV.— VARIOUS INCIDENTS AND
TEACHINGS
Luke ix., 5 [-62 ; x., 1-24

The ministry of Christ may be roughly divided into four
sections : the first, his ministry in Galilee, recorded by
Matthew and Mark most fully, though also in part by
Luke and John ; the second, his ministry in Judea, occu
pying about three months and recorded only by John ;
the third, his ministry in Perea, or the region beyond the
Jordan, referred to in John x., 40-42 — another period of a
little over three months, from some time in December to
the first of April, the teachings and incidents in which are
recorded almost exclusively by Luke ; and, finally, the
passion and death in Jerusalem, recorded by all four of the
Evangelists, Matthew giving the fullest account of the
public teachings, and John the only account of the private
teachings to the Twelve.1
In connection with his report of the Perean ministry,
Luke adds some incidents which evidently belong else
where, but which in The Bible Study Union Lessons are
put where Luke has put them.
It is as Jesus is going up to his Passion in Jerusalem
(Luke ix., 51) that a Samaritan village refused him that
hospitality to refuse which in the Orient is a distinct in
sult. In the spirit of the Hebrew Psalmist, who counts
the enemies of God his enemies, and hates them with a
perfect hatred, John would call down fire from heaven to
destroy the inhospitable Samaritans. But the spirit of
Christ is not that of the Hebrew Psalmist. He would
have his disciples love with a perfect love, not only those
who hate them, but those even who treat despitefully their
Master. It is possibly on this journey, but more probably during
1 Of course Christ was in Judea on other occasions, notably at the very out
set of his ministry, and before it had really commenced as that of a public
prophet and teacher. John ii., 13— iv., 42. See Chapters VII. and Viii.
96

VARIOUS INCIDENTS AND TEACHINGS 97
his ministry in Galilee, that three would-be disciples offer
themselves to him. The first, self-confident and impetu
ous, declares himself quite ready to follow wherever Christ
would lead, but apparently halts and draws back when he
learns the poverty of the Master and the self-sacrifice
involved in fpllowing him. One cannot be a follower of
Christ if he refuses the cross. A second, promising but
procrastinating, will follow Christ after he has buried his
father. But Christ has no faith in the promise of a man
who postpones discipleship to a future day — no matter
what may be the apparent reason for the postponement.
A third, irresolute and hesitating, finds himself drawn in
two directions, towards the Master and back towards his
home. But he who halts between two purposes — he who,
having put his hand to the plow, even looks back, is not
ready for discipleship. There is no passage in the New
Testament more significant than this passage in which
Christ is portrayed as rejecting applicants for admission
to his army.
Possibly in Jerusalem, more probably in the region about
or beyond the Jordan, he utters his parable of the Good
Samaritan This parable has been so effective as to cre
ate in our minds entirely new associations with this word
Samaritan. To understand its original significance we
must remember that the Samaritan was both an apostate
and a heretic. He belonged to a mongrel race ; he had
proved himself traitorous to Israel in more than one time
of war ; he had separated himself from Israel and the tem
ple worship — was both heretic and schismatic. All the
prejudice felt in our time by the Anglo-Saxon against the
negro or the Indian, by the Northern loyalist against the
Southern secessionist, and by the Protestant against the
Jew or the Roman Catholic, was felt by the Israelite against
the Samaritan. Christ's direct and immediate teaching is
that practical goodness is better than sound doctrine,
national fellowship, or purity of blood. He teaches this,
it is to be observed, not by an argument, but by an appeal
to the instinctive sentiment of mankind, and thus indirectly
he teaches that those instincts and sentiments may be
trusted, and that no philosophy can be sound which does
not take account of and harmonize with them.
Just outside of Jerusalem is the village of Bethlehem,

98 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
where reside dear friends of Jesus — Mary and Martha and
their brother Lazarus. We shall come again upon them
in Christ's life. Luke records one simple and significant
incident connected with this home. Christ, wearied, we
may assume, with the perpetual battling in Jerusalem —
for this incident properly belongs in his Judean ministry —
retreats from the threatening and hostile city to the seclu
sion of this home for rest. Both the sisters love him, and
each seeks to serve him after her peculiar fashion : one
by bustling about with great assiduity to get a supper
worthy of the Rabbi ; the other by sitting quietly at his
feet, bringing her questions and drinking in his instruc
tions. The teacher, wearied with dull disciples and a hos
tile mob, wearied with endeavoring to compel the one to
listen and to enable the other to understand, does not care
for the elaborate supper — a very simple repast would serve
him quite as well — but finds a refreshment which every
true teacher can understand in the presence of one appre
ciative, sympathetic, and responsive listener.
The commission of the seventy almost unquestionably
belongs to the Perean ministry. Their mission is much
like that of the Twelve appointed in Galilee ; but they
were seventy instead of twelve, for the territory was larger
and the time shorter. They were not forbidden from
entering into any Gentile city, for in Perea Gentile and
Jew were associated together in the same cities; their
ministry was not confined to the unwalled towns, and no
instruction respecting persecution was given to them, as
serious persecution was not to be expected until after their
mission had come to an end. Otherwise the spirit, and to
some extent the letter, of their instructions is the same as
that of the commission to the Twelve.

CHAPTER XXV.— THE PEREAN MINISTRY
Luke, chapters xi. and xii.

Palestine in the time of Christ was divided geographi
cally into four sections : Galilee, on the north, which we
may call the New England of Palestine ; Samaria, in the
center, occupied by a mongrel population, to which Christ
did not to any extent minister ; Judea, on the south, under
the control of the hierarchy, centered at Jerusalem ; and
Perea, so called from the Greek v/ordpera (beyond), that
is, the region beyond the Jordan. This is a wild and
romantic region even now, but little visited by travelers to
the Holy Land, who practically regard the Jordan as its
eastern boundary.
But in Christ's time this was a populous and prosperous
district, its hills famous for pasturage and the cattle for
their size and fatness. Along the river Jordan the ruins
of 127 villages have been counted, and the flourishing
cities in its northern portion gave to that section the name
of Decapolis (Ten Cities). The population of Perea was
not homogeneous. Israelites and Gentiles were here inter
mixed, living side by side in the same towns and villages.
In this semi-pagan community the sheep of Israel were
truly wandering sheep — in the estimation of the haughty
Judean, lost sheep. To this era of Christ's ministry
belong most of the teachings contained in Luke, chapters
x.-xvi. It is here, probably, that in the parable of the
Good Samaritan he rebukes pride of caste and race, and in
the parable of the Rich Fool and of Lazarus the pride of
wealth ; here that he teaches, in the three matchless para
bles of the fifteenth chapter, that the grace of God goes
out after the wandering and the lost ; here, attendant upon
the feast of the wealthy Pharisee, he rebukes social dis
play and urges a true Christian hospitality ; and here, as
in Galilee and in Jerusalem, but more than in Galilee and
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IOO THE LIFE OF CHRIST
less than in Jerusalem, he has occasion to denounce the
pride and hypocrisy of Pharisaism.
Our next three chapters will be taken up with this Pe
rean ministry, to which also belongs the commission of the
seventy, referred to in the last chapter.
Prayer has been taught by the Pharisees and by John
the Baptist as a ritual. In the teaching of the former, its
value depended upon the accuracy with which the pre
scribed rite was followed. The simple-minded disciples,
imagining their Master's vigil to be like those of the Phar
isees, and like those of the Christian monks at a later
epoch — repetitions of prescribed formularies — asked him
to teach them what those formularies are. He rep'ies, in
substance, that to pray acceptably is to carry to the Father
the desires which are actually in our heart, and he groups
together in one incomparable prayer the common desires
and petitions of humanity. We are not to regard this,
however, as the Lord's ideal of devotion. That is fur
nished us by the intercessory prayer which John has report
ed as uttered by the Master at the close of his last con
ference with his disciples. (John, chap, xvii.)
Prayer is to be measured, not by the forms of the words
used, but by the leality and intensity of the desire. This
is the significance of importunity, which is worse than
meaningless when it is not the natural expression of genu
ine eagerness. The ground and argument for prayer are
found in our own intercourse with one another. Any
conception of God and his government which regards him
as so bound and hampered by his own laws, or even by
his own foreknowledge, that he cannot feel and respond to
the heartfelt desires of his children, is false. Man is made
in God's image, and if we are able to commune one with
another, and affect one another by our spiritual life, much
more may we commune with the Everlasting Father, and
have influence with him.
He meets in Perea the same hostile elements which he
has met in Galilee, though here they are more intense and
more hostile. He does not yield to them ; on the con
trary, he declares that Nineveh and the Queen of Sheba
will rise up in judgment against the nation of Israel and
condemn them because their privilege has been greater
than that of the age to which Jonah and that of the age to

THE PEREAN MINISTRY 101
which Solomon spoke. He denounces the Pharisaism
which is scrupulous respecting externalities and indiffer
ent regarding the spirit ; which pretends to revere the
prophets of the past, yet continues to exemplify the spirit
of those who maltreated the prophets. He discerns the
secret which they hide behind pietistic garments, and
shames them by disclosing their covetousness. He points
out to the people the folly of covetousness : the man who
thinks only how he can accumulate, and not how he can
use, he condemns. Men admire what they call this man's
success, which they measure by the greatness of his gran
aries, but God calls him fool. And He repeats in slightly
different forms and slightly different connections the same
teachings which he has given to the people in Galilee — the
value and the blessedness of the filial trust in a heavenly
Father's care — a trust which rests upon and cannot exist
without simple, single-hearted, earnest consecration.

CHAPTER XXVI.— THE PEREAN MINISTRY,
CONTINUED
Luke, chapters xiii. and xiv.

In grouping together the teachings and incidents in
the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of Luke, the editor
of The Bible Study Union Lessons follows the evangelist.
It is not by any means certain, however, that these frag
ments of history belong chronologically in the order indi
cated by Luke ; nor even that they all belong in the Perean
ministry, though that is probable. Without attaching im
portance to the order, I content myself with pointing out
certain general lessons inculcated in these passages. For
a certain moral co-relation may be found in them, and in
this fact is an indication that they belong to the same
epoch in Christ's history.
In Perea, then, as in Galilee and in Judea, Christ meets
the enemy of spiritual religion, Pharisaism or legalism. It
shows itself in different forms, for it has not only many
masks but many aspects ; but it is at heart ever and
always the same.
It sometimes appears as a self-righteous spirit, and inter
prets with unshrinking audacity the events of current his
tory as " special providences,'' but always so as to flatter its
own pride. Wicked Galileans ! cries the Perean Pharisee,
or they would not have been slain by Herod's sword.
Wicked Judeans ! or they would not have been killed by
the falling of Siloam's tower. And the silent conclusion
is, Pious Pereans ! who have not been adjudged worthy of
such a fate. We may be sure that the Galilean Pharisee
had a different interpretation for the first disaster, and the
Judean Pharisee for the second. But Christ puts all under
the same condemnation— the condemnation of fruitless J
lives. The life that is not fruitful in love awaits destruc
tion. Why should it cumber the ground ?
In Perea, as in Galilee and Judea, the Sabbath question,
as it is sometimes called, the ceremonial question as I

THE PEREAN MINISTRY  CONTINUED 103
should prefer to call it, is presented. Christ does not
wait for his adversaries to raise it ; he raises it himself.
He is teaching in the Synagogue on the Sabbath, and pub
licly, one might almost say ostentatiously, heals a paralytic.
This calls down on him the rebuke of the ruler of the
Synagogue, who argues, in true Pharisaic fashion, that the
healing was quite unnecessary. Christ replies with the
unanswerable argument that to loose a paralytic from her
bonds is a diviner work than to loose an ox or an
ass from his stall to water him. No day and no place
is too sacred for works of humanity. " The Sabbath was
made for man, not man for the Sabbath."
The Pharisee is continually trying to escape the questions
of practical religion by substituting for them questions of
abstract theology. The scholasticism of modern times and
of the Middle Ages is only a survival of a rather milder
form of the same spirit in the first century. The Pharisee
does not ask, What shall I do to be saved? still less,
What can I do to save others ? but; Are there few that be
saved ? What are our most modern questions about the
elect an'd the heathen but a new form of this question ?
And to the theoretical question Christ always gives a
practical answer. Few ? That is my business, not yours.
For you, the business is to put your whole energy on your
own life and duty ; it calls for it all ; and do it now, because
when once the Master of the house is risen up, and hath
shut to the door, you may seek to enter in, and find it too
late. I should like to believe that the door of hope eternally
stands open. But I confess myself unable to reconcile my
wish with this teaching of the Master.
The Pharisee is always a coward ; always trying to
accomplish by indirect means what he has not the manli
ness to attempt openly and avowedly. It is exactly like
the Pharisee, modern and ancient, to come persuasively to
an unwelcome teacher and counsel him to depart— quietly.
Herod is after him, and will kill him. Anything will do
for a Herod that will serve to get rid of a too plain and
outspoken teacher. "Go tell that fox!" Ah! he saw
that they were at one with Herod, had perhaps gotten
their message from him, and were as foxy as their master.
Keen was the word, and it cut deep. Sometimes a word is
needed which has such an edge to it.

104 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
The Pharisee is very susceptible to public opinion. He
delights to honor the preacher whom the public is honor
ing. He leaves the prophet to fight his battle alone ;
when he wins, comes out to honor him ; when he fails,
comes out to curse him. Just now Christ is popular ; so
one of our Pharisees makes him a great supper. And, by
the way, observe that Christ did not object to social
festivity on the Sabbath day. But what a miserable pre
tense at honoring Christ this is ! — which neglects his laws,
disregards his instructions, repudiates his spirit, and asks
him to a feast where guest clamors and pushes against
guest for the most honored seat. Something suggestive
of this in some modern churches, sometimes — is there not ?
For eighteen centuries Christ's ideal of a social party has
been before the world. And still in Christendom a Christ-
patterned party, though not unknown, is rare. For the most
part we invite our own set — those who have invited us and
to whom we owe something, or who can invite us in turn.
It is very characteristic of Pharisaism to be very devout
— in prospect. Just now, with Christ homeless and a
wanderer, there is no great blessing in attaching one's self
too closely to his fortunes ; but one may, with prudence,
with hands clasped and eyes upraised, enjoy great antici
pations of blessed communion with him in heaven. Re
ligion is always admirable in the martyrdoms of the past
and in the glories of the future — but just now ! excuse me :
I have my property to attend to, and I my business, and I
my wife. But — there is no glory in the future for him who
does not count the cost and pay the cost in the present :
who does not count loyalty to the Master and his cause
more than property or business or wife herself. The spirit
of self-sacrifice is the savor of a Christian character.
Without it he who calls himself a Christian is but a Phari
see — salt without savor, not fit even for the dunghill.
Strange is the contrast of this scorn for the Pharisee,
with his self-righteous conceit, and his scholastic theologiz-
ings, and his foxy cunning, and his thinly disguised self-
honor, and his pious benediction on goodness and facile
self-excuse for not practicing it — strange the contrast with
the next chapter's tenderness and compassion for the wan
dering and the lost, who may yet, perhaps, be reclaimed
even in and from their despair.

CHAPTER XXV II.— FIVE PARABLES
Luke, chapters xv. and xvi.

The student of the five parables suggested for our con- -
sideration in this course in the Life of Christ will not
expect, in this course of study, to make a careful and pains
taking study of any one of these parables. All that he
can do will be to collate and compare them and see what
general teaching is inculcated, what system of grace and
of admonition, by the group, taking them in their entirety.
So taking them, the first lesson which must impress
itself upon us is the meaning which Christ attaches to the
word "lost." The sheep in the first parable, the piece of
silver in the second, the son in the third, are lost ; — yet they
* are all found. A lost race is not a race beyond hope of
recovery ; a lost soul is not a soul beyond the possibility
of redemption. Perhaps the best definition of lost from
the Christ point of view is "not yet found." Christ is
coming to seek and to save that which is lost ; and that
which is lost has not changed its essential nature. The
wandering sheep is still a sheep — not a wolf ; the piece
of silver has still the impress of the king upon it, obscure
but not destroyed. The boy is still the father's son,
though an erring and a sinful son. The lost man has
broken away from the brotherhood, as the sheep from the
fold ; has gone away from God, and is no more of value to
Him, as the piece of silver which the owner cannot find.
The lost son is lost to his brother and his father, but also
lost to himself, and because no longer a true son, no longer
a true man. And yet, if this sheep is brought back he will
fit in with the fold ; if this money is recovered it will be of
value ; if this son returns to his father he will be clothed
and in his right mind. This is the threefold meaning of
these two words " lost " and " found," ever to be borne in
mind by us in our endeavor to understand the mystery of
redemption. Sin is not natural, it is contra-natural. The
i°5

106 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
natural place of the soul is in fellowship with God, the
natural life of the soul is the life of divine service.
Bearing this great and fundamental truth in mind, we
may find in a comparison of the first three parables some
suggestion of further truths. The first two may be called
Calvinistic, for they represent God coming after the sin
ner ; the third may be called Arminian, for it represents
the sinner coming after God. Thus the three must be
taken together in order to understand the change wrought
in redemption. In fact, the soul never comes back to God
except as God" comes after the wandering squl. Again,
looked at as a representation of human duty, the first two
represent the duty of the Church to seek after the lost —
the third, the duty of the Church to welcome the returning
sinner with a full, free, and unreproachful pardon. To
disbelieve in the possible restoration of the most outcast
is to disbelieve the gospel of these three parables. To
shut the door of hope upon the vagrant is to play the part
of the elder brother — to be a Pharisee.
There are some other suggestions in the comparison of
these three parables, less vital and important. In the first,
the shepherd loses one sheep out of a hundred ; in the
second, the woman one piece of silver out of ten ; in the
third, the father one son of the two. " Thus," says Trench,
"we find ourselves moving in ever narrower and so in-
tenser circles of hope and fear and love, drawing in each
successive parable nearer to the innermost center and
heart of the truth." We may perhaps also see successive
grades and depths of sin represented. In the wandering
sheep, the sin of mere'careless ignorance and indifference ;
in the lost coin, rolled away into some dark and noisome
corner of the room, the sin of separation from God, isola
tion, and consequent vice ; in the son, deliberately turn
ing his back upon his father and demanding his portion
to spend according to his own self-will, the sin of willful
disobedience, lawlessness, open revolt.
Still continuing this comparison, we must see in all
three parables the lesson, taught in different forms, of the
possibility of recovery and therefore the reasonableness of
hope, no matter what the error, the selfishness, or the
willful revolt may have been. In all, too, the joyfulness of
religion ; the truth that the Gospel of Christ comes, not as

THE FIVE PARABLES 107
an added burden or an added law, but as a new hope and
a new inspiration ; the truth that the joy is not for the vir
tuous and innocent alone, but for the repentant also ; the
further truth that as by their sin they have added to the
sorrow of heaven and earth, so by their penitence they
can add to the joy and songfulness of God's universe.
If we now turn to the other parables, great as is the
contrast between these of warning and those of grace, yet
there is in them a common teaching. They are united in
one system of doctrine by the one word " love." The
three gospels of grace have for their theme the love of
God ; the two gospels of warning, love in man. The first
three set forth love as the ground of our hope ; the second
two set forth love as the nature of duty. The first three
appeal to the highest sentiments, the last two to prudential
considerations. The first three are parables of the gos
pel ; the last two, parables of the law. The unjust steward,
from motives of worldly shrewdness, gives his lord's estate
with a free hand to the tenants under him, and so, by
means of the unrighteous mammon, makes friends for him
self among the tenants. If this is shrewd policy for the
steward, who is dispensing his lord's estate without his
lord's authority, how much more is it shrewd policy for the
steward to whom the lord has intrusted that estate that
he may distribute it among his tenants ! This is the lesson
of the first parable; and the second is like unto it. This
often misunderstood parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus
is meant to "take us, as it were, by storm, and once for
all, out of the customary and earthly way of regarding life,
and awaken us, once for all, to serious, to religious thought,"
by its dramatic representation of the general worthlessness
of that which, from the worldly point of view, we are wont
to value most highly. In dealing with the imagery of the
parable, borrowed from and adapted to the then current
and popular conceptions of the future life, we have too
often forgotten the central and indisputable lesson afforded
by the contrast between the envied rich man, faring sump
tuously every day, whose only sin is his indifference to the
wants of his fellow-men, and the last word of whose biog
raphy is that he "was buried," and the poor man, despised
and outcast, who hardly had a burial awarded to him,
save as it was necessary to rid the street of his corpse,

108 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
but who was borne by the angels to Abraham's bosom.
The fuller and more detailed lessons implied, if not
explicitly taught, in these parables must be left for a more
minute study of them. Here we must content ourselves
with summing all up in these two sentences :
The sole hope of man is in God's love.
The whole duty of man is to show Godlike love to his
fellow-men.

CHAPTER XXVIII.— THE RESURRECTION OF
LAZARUS
John xi., 1-54

The significance of John's account of the resurrection of
Lazarus as an evidence of Christ's divine mission and
authority has always been felt and acknowledged alike by
the believer and the unbeliever in historic Christianity.
Thus, Spinoza declared that, " could he have persuaded
himself of the truth of the raising of Lazarus, he would have
broken in pieces his whole system, and would have embraced
without repugnance the ordinary faith of Christians." In
considering this story, therefore, the student must first
consider, though necessarily briefly, the reasons for believ
ing that the narrative is that of an eye-witness, and next
the character and credibility of the eye-witness. There
are really but three alternative hypotheses respecting this
narrative : (1) That it grew up as a myth out of some slight
pre-existing material, assuming its present form in the second
or third century, and embodied with other material in a
gospel edited from pre-existing material at that date. (2)
That the death and resurrection of Lazarus were apparent,
not real ; the resurrection being a contrivance of the friends
of Jesus to give eclat to his anticipated entry into Jerusalem,
and that either he himself was deceived, or lent himself to
the deception in a moment of fanatical enthusiasm. (3)
That the events occurred as narrated by John ; in which
case we are left to draw our own conclusions from them,
for — a fact to be considered more fully presently — John
draws no conclusions himself.
The second of these hypotheses we do not think it neces
sary for us here to discuss. It is, indeed, suggested by
Renan, and defended by him with what will strike the
Anglo-Saxon reader as characteristic Parisian morality.
That Jesus either lent himself to a deception or that he
was himself deluded by a skillfully contrived scheme of
109

110 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
his friends — a scheme in which Mary and Martha must
have had a principal part — I may assume will seem entirely
incredible to readers of these papers. The first hypothesis,
when advocated by Strauss, seemed not wholly unreason
able. Fifty years ago it was doubtful whether the Fourth
Gospel was written in its present form before the third
century. It is true that even then the weight of external
evidence was in favor of an earlier date, but the question
was hotly debated, and it was truly debatable. Recent
discoveries, however, have settled that question beyond
the possibility of a doubt. The lately discovered manu
script of the Gospels1 carries the composition of the
Fourth Gospel back to as early a date as 150. Tatian's
" Diatessaron," the earliest Harmony of the Gospels, has
been brought to light within the last few years. This
harmony was published as early as 150, and was pre
pared by Tatian, who was born about the year 100. It is
not credible that the Gospel came into existence in his own
lifetime, and yet was accepted by him as John's Gospel.
The discovery and publication of the " Diatessaron " thus
makes it reasonably certain that the Fourth Gospel was
written arid published before the beginning of the second
century — that is, within seventy years after the death
of Christ, and during the lifetime, or certainly within a
very few years after the death, of the Apostle John. If,
then, we are to suppose that the Fourth Gospel was not
written by John, or at his dictation, or by some one
embodying his narratives and reports, we must suppose
that already in John's lifetime there had risen a man of
rare mystical genius who was able to palm off upon the
Christian Church as John's Gospel a narrative with the
composition of which John had nothing to do, and that
this rare mystical genius has so absolutely perished from
history as to leave no trace behind. This seems to me an
incredible hypothesis. I think it is quite safe to say that
now all external evidence is in favor of the belief that the*
Fourth Gospel was written by the Apostle John. The
only argument against such authorsh'p is the supposed
incongruity between that Gospel and the Apocalypse, an
incongruity which I believe can readily be accounted for
if we suppose that the Apocalypse was written while John
'For an account of this see The Outlook for December 15, 1894.

THE RESURRECTION „0F LAZARUS III
still possessed the narrow and intense Hebrew character,
while the "Gospel was written after age, experience, and
the teachings of life had rendered him more catholic, and
had given him a truer conception of Christ's mission and
character. If, then, we assume that John wrote this narrative, we
have in it the testimony of an eye-witness to certain facts.
Whether John was critical or not critical, whether he was
superstitious or rational, whether he was scientific or
unscientific, has nothing to do with the credibility of his
narrative. It would have a great deal to do with his con
clusions from the narrative, but he draws no conclusions.
It would have a great deal to do with his opinions respect
ing the narrative, but he expresses no opinions. He does
not even say that any miracle was wrought, or that a dead
man was raised from the dead. He simply tells his readers
what he saw and heard, and leaves them to draw their own
conclusions. " He was with Jesus beyond Jordan ; word
came to them that Lazarus was sick ; Jesus remained where
he was two days ; then he told the disciples that Lazarus
was dead ; when they reached Bethany they found a scene
of mourning ; the friends had come, according to Jewish
custom, to console the sister's family ; both sisters stated
impliedly and reproachfully that Lazarus was dead ; when
they arrived at the grave, one of them said that he had
been dead four days, and that corruption — though this
apparently was only her presumption — had already com
menced. Christ directed the stone to be rolled away,
commanded in a loud voice, ' Lazarus, come forth,' and he
came forth, bound in his grave-clothes. A scientific com
mission could not have reported the facts with more abso
lute impartiality. The writer expresses no opinion what
ever respecting the occurrence. This is not the method
of an idealist who has invented the occurrence for the pur
pose of glorifying his Master, or of a dogmatist who has
written it to prove a doctrine ; it is the language of a pre
eminently honest, fair-minded, and impartial witness. And
upon this narrative the great mass of readers and students
have come to but one conclusion — that to which both friend
and foe came at the time — that it was a genuine resurrec
tion of the dead, a great and notable miracle." 1
> Quoted from my Commentary on John, Chapter XI.

112 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
There are three accounts of resurrection from the dead
wrought by Christ. The first is that of the daughter of
J.ilrus, who had just died as Christ was approaching the
house. The second is that of the son of the widow of
Nain, who was being borne to his burial. The third is
that of Lazarus, who had been dead for four days. The
first mi^ht perhaps be explained away by supposing that
the girl had fallen into a faint. Even the second might be
regarded as a case of suspended animation. But the third
is inexplicable upon any so-called naturalistic hypothesis.
If one supposes, as many apparently do, that death is really
the cessation of existence, and thit there is no personal
life beyond the grave, these stories of resurrection must
necessarily seem incredible. But the question, If a man
die, shall he live again ? is precisely the question on which
the New Testament, with its accounts of resurrection,
throws a great flood of light. To suppose that he cannot
live again is a purely gratuitous assumption. Let us, on
the contrary, suppose that deaih is simply the separation
of the spirit from the body, that the spirit is not remote,
or, at least, not necessarily remote, from its previous habi
tation, then there is nothing incredible in supposing that
the spirit may return again to the body which it has left,
and, if the body has not already begun to disintegrate,
may reanimate the body.
I have left myself no space to consider here the spiritual
significance of this wonderful narrative. It must suffice
to say, in a sentence, that he who believes in the resurrec
tion narrative of the New Testament will believe with the
poet — All souls are Thine :
We must not say
That those are dead who pass away ;
From this our world of flesh set free,
We know them living unto Thee.

CHAPTER XXIX.— SUNDRY INCIDENTS AND
TEACHINGS
Luke xvii., 11-19; xviii., 1-14; Mark x., 2-16

The dates of the incidents and instructions which the
author o£ The Bible Study Union Lessons has grouped to
gether for our study to-day are very uncertain. It is prob
able, indeed I think indubitable, that the instructions
respecting the end of the world contained in the close of
the seventeenth chapter of Luke are to be identified with
those given by Christ in Jerusalem during the Passion,
and more fully repeated in Matthew, chapter xxiv. The two
parables respecting prayer, that of the unjust judge and
that of the Pharisee and the publican, may belong at any
time in Christ's ministry, but as they are narrated only by
Luke, and only Luke gives any considerable account of
the Perean ministry, it is not unreasonable to suppose that
they belong in that epoch. The instructions respecting
divorce and those respecting little children are also gen
erally attributed to the same time and place. The only
fact throwing any light on the occasion of the incident
respecting the ten lepers is in the statement that it occurred
as Jesus was going to Jerusalem and passing along the
borders of Samaria and Galilee — that is, from the west to
the east,- toward the Jordan, a route, in going to Jerusalem
from Galilee, frequently taken by the Jews for the purpose
of avoiding Samaria.
When a leper was cured, before he could be restored to
society he was required to show himself to the priest, make
an offering, and be officially pronounced cle,an. Thus
Christ's command to the lepers implied a promise of cure ;
and their acceptance of the command was an indication
of remarkable trust in his word. I do not think that we
are to suppose that the nine were wholly ungrateful for the
cure which was wrought in them. They were commanded
by the Jewish law to present themselves to the priest,- and
113

114 THE LIFE 0F CHRIST
this command had been reinforced by the word of Christ.
Literal obedience required that they should proceed at
once to Jerusalem without delay and without turning back.
Moreover, they may not unnaturally have thought that there
was some hazard of losing the cure if they did not proceed
to the priest. This would not have been a very reasonable
fear, but superstition is not reasonable. The contrast be
tween the one leper who returned and the nine who did
not is that between the love which disregards the letter of
the law in order to manifest gratitude, and the obedience
which adheres to the ritual but disregards the impulses of
love. The Jews adhered to the law and forgot their bene
factor ; the Samaritan returned to thank the benefactor,
and for the time forgot the law ; and Christ commended
the latter.
As in the parable of the neighbor coming at midnight
to his friend's door and asking for food, and again in the
parable .of the unjust steward (Luke xi., 1-13 ; xvi., r-8),
Christ illustrates the accessibility of God to prayer by a
strange contrast. Is prayer of any real use ? Is it only a
kind of spiritual gymnastics by which we exercise our
selves ? This question has been often repeated, and the
most orthodox divines have sometimes taught, or seemed
to teach, that prayer cannot really influence God. Thus
Professor Allen, in his life of Jonathan Edwards, says of
that great divine : " He had already put himself on record
to the effect that the object of prayer is not to change
God's will, but suitably to affect our own hearts and so
prepare us to receive the blessings we ask." A similar view
of prayer will be found presented at very considerable
length and urged with considerable eloquence in one of
Theodore Parker's sermons. Now, Christ's parable re
plied to this philosophy by a striking illustration. We are
able to affect one another ; not merely by giving new
information, throwing new light, urging new and before
unrecognized considerations, but by the direct influence of
soul on soul. The intensity of desire itself influences. It
influences even the most obdurate and hard-hearted. That
is not a true philosophy which refuses to take account of
the actual facts of life, and it is an actual fact of life that
spirit influences spirit and the desire of one soul moves
the will of another. If so in human relations, why not

SUNDRY INCIDENTS AND TEACHINGS 1 15
also and much more in the relationship between the human
soul and God ?
The kind of character which draws near to God, the
kind of desire that has influence with him, is illustrated
in the other parable. The Pharisee of this parable is by
no means a bad man. He would represent pretty well a
reasonably high standard of the religious life as it is held
to-day. His life is conformed to the moral law. He is
scrupulous in his observance of religious rites, and he
gives liberally to the support of the Church. But he is
satisfied with himself, and does not really desire anything
of God, unless it be God's approbation, still further to
inflate his self-conceit. And he does not draw so near to
God as the outcast, ashamed of himself, standing afar off,
and feeling a great need of divine mercy.
There is no place here in a paragraph to treat the diffi
cult and perplexing subject of divorce and Christ's instruc
tions respecting it. I can only remind my readers that it
is always a mistake to treat Christ's -instructions as if they
were statute laws. They are the expression of great prin
ciples, and still more of a divine spirit. In the time of
Christ, both in Palestine and in Rome, the husband might
dismiss his wife without any trial, as with us one may dis
miss a domestic. Moses only provided that he should
give her a statement of the reason why she was dismissed,
that she might not suffer under unjust suspicions. I do
not affirm that if Christ were living in our day he would
recognize the right of society, by regular judicial proceed
ings, to decree a divorce for any other ground than that
of adultery, but it is not clear that he might not do so.
Only by implication can any rules for incorporation in
civil legislation be deduced from Christ's instructions here,
which are addressed to the individual under a very different
civilization than our own. But the duty for the individual
is plain. It is always that of patience, gentleness, for
bearance, long-suffering. The rushing into separation as
a quick and easy escape from connubial infelicity is clearly
against the spirit of Christ's teaching.
It is clearly impossible, also, to go at any length into
an exposition of the passage of Christ's blessing" little
children. I cannot see that it throws any light on infant
baptism, though the propriety of infant baptism has some-

Il6 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
times been deduced from it. But, on the other hand, it
seems clearly to teach that little children belong in Christ's
kingdom, irrespective of any parental faith, and certainly
irrespective of any act of parental consecration. For it is
not stated that the children whom Christ blessed were
brought by their parents, much less were blessed for their
parents' sake. The little child is God's by reason of his
birth and his childhood. Our sin is the greater if, by our
false teaching or our evil example, we lead him away from
God, or interpose any obstacle between him and God.

CHAPTER XXX.— THE LAST JOURNEY TO
JERUSALEM
Mark x., 17-45 > Luke xviii., 18-34

The earthly career of Jesus of Nazareth is now drawing
to its tragical close. He has preached the Gospel in Gali
lee, and the twelve disciples have carried the message of
the kingdom as its heralds to all the smaller villages ; but
Galilee, though at times it seemed to enthusiastically re
ceive its Prophet, had no inclination for a Gospel so catho
lic as to include in its blessings the whole world, and so
spiritual as to seek its results only through self-sacrifice.
By a sudden change of popular feeling, by no means un
common in history, the people had passed from endeavor
ing to crown Jesus as their king to abandoning him when
he spoke of sacrifice in the synagogue at Capernaum. He
had preached the Gospel in Judea, so far as we have any
record, chiefly, if not exclusively, in its capital. Here his
disciples could render him no aid. There is, indeed, little
indication that the twelve Apostles were even habitually
with him. John alone has given any extended report of
this period of his ministry — John, whose fidelity and quiet
courage no peril was able to daunt. Rejected by Jeru
salem, he had preached the Gospel in Perea — the region
beyond Jordan. Here seventy apostles, commissioned for
the purpose, had carried the message of the kingdom
throughout this larger district, with its scattered and di
verse populace. Here, too, he was listened to with inter
est, but not accepted as the Messiah. The time of instruc
tion had now come substantially to its close. Jesus,
knowing full well the fate that awaited him, set his face,
as one of the evangelists has it, steadfastly toward Jeru
salem. His disciples followed him, afraid and amazed.1
They believed, what was, indeed, true, that he was going
to Jerusalem to fulfill the last act of preparation and receive
1 The incident in Luke ix., 51, is not there placed in its chronological order.
117

Il8 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
his coronation. It is true that Christ told them, in per
fectly explicit terms, that he would be delivered to the
Gentiles, insulted, abused, crucified; but this they could
not believe. Christ was a perpetual enigma to his most
intimate friends. They could not and did not understand
him. When he spoke parables, they understood him liter
ally ; when he spoke in plain and unenigmatical language,
they thought he was speaking in parables. So, despite
strange sinking of the heart, amazement, fear, dark fore
bodings,1 they followed after him; too awestricken to
inquire his meaning, too full of their own notions respect
ing the kingdom of God and the conditions of its success
to be able to receive and understand his prophecies.
So it was not altogether strange that two of his disciples,
taking their mother with them to reinforce their request,
came to ask of him high office in the kingdom when it
should be established. It was not very noble, this attempt
to steal a march on their comrades, and no wonder the
ten were displeased when they heard of it. And yet their
displeasure indicated that in them also there was some
thing of the same greed of place and power. If Christ
foresaw the details of his crucifixion, if he knew that he
was to be crucified between two thieves, one on his right
hand and one on his left, there must have been something
infinitely pathetic to him in this request from two faithful
and dear friends that they might occupy these places of
honor in his glory — for his cross is his glory. Certainly
they did not know what they asked. One can but wonder
whether afterwards they did understand it, when they
looked upon the three crosses, under the shadow of the
great darkness.
If his own most intimate disciples so little understood
the immediate future, it is not strange that others did not
understand it. It is in the light of this history that we
must interpret the story of the Rich Young Ruler. This
young man was an officer in a Jewish synagogue. He be
longed presumptively to the better party of the Pharisees —
those who believed that to love God with all one's heart
and one's neighbor as one's self is indeed the summary of
the law. He had certainly been affected by the fame of
Jesus's teaching, and it is reasonable to suppose that he
1 Markx., 32.

THE LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM 119
had been moved by the teaching itself. That he was very
much in earnest in his purpose, and really stirred to a
humble loyalty, is indicated by the facts stated by Mark,
that he came running, and kneeled to Jesus in the public
road. That there was some real sincerity in him is evi
dent from the fact that Jesus, looking on him, loved him.
But he had no conception — who did at that time ? — that
the kingdom of God was a kingdom of patience, suffering,
self-sacrifice, martyrdom. This truth Christ put before
him tersely in the simple direction to sell all that he had
and enter the little band of twelve, on precisely the same
conditions on which they had entered it — for they had
given up all to become his followers. And yet, that they
shared the rich young ruler's misapprehension, and shared
also his expectation of an earthly and immediate recom
pense for a temporary sacrifice — which they had faith
enough to make, but he had not — is indicated by Peter's
somewhat egotistical question, " Lo, we have left all, and
followed thee ; what then shall we have ?"
To my mind, there is scarcely any epoch in the life of
Christ, not excepting Gethsemane and the Passion itself,
more full of pathos than these last days, when Jesus was
surrounded by friends who would not and could not under
stand him. He, full of a deepening sorrow, presently to
break forth in tears over Jerusalem ; they, full of an increas
ing gladness, presently to break forth in shouts of Hosanna
in the triumphal procession,

CHAPTER XXXI.— APPROACHING JERUSALEM
Mark a., 46-52; Luke xix., 1-28; John xi., 55 — xii., II

As Jesus approaches Jerusalem on his last journey thither,
he falls in with the crowds who are thronging to the Holy
City for the Passover celebration. The Galileans, in order
to avoid passing through heretical and inhospitable Sama
ria, often crossed the River Jordan a little below the Sea
of Galilee, passed down the eastern bank, and, recrossing
the Jordan not far from Jericho, approached Jerusalem
from the east. Into this pilgrim throng Christ and his
disciples, coming to Jerusalem from Perea, naturally
entered. The murmurs of the multitude, sometimes grow
ing into shouts and hosannas, were not sufficient to deafen
the ears of Christ to the cry of need. Despite the protests
of the throng, who thought it an impertinence that the King
coming to his coronation should be disturbed by a blind
beggar, he stopped, called Bartimeus to him, and gave him
his sight. By one of those common inconsistencies in
such a crowd, the very people who had first rebuked the
beggar and told him to still his cry, when Christ halted and
called for Bartimeus, turned to him jubilant, saying, " Cheer
up, rise, he calls thee." One who believes that Jesus
Christ is, in little things as in great, the manifestation of
God, will see in this incident an illustration of the truth
that the hosannas of praise are never so loud as to prevent
the Father from hearing the cry of his suffering children
for pity.
The fame of the coming King has gone on before him, and
curiosity as well as enthusiasm attracts multitudes to the
highway along which he is passing. Among those thus
attracted is a tax gatherer, who is hated in the community,
as all tax-gatherers were in that age, most of them not with
out good reason, since under the tax system an honest tax-
gatherer was an impossibility. He is short of stature, and he
desires to avoid, perhaps, the jeers and jostling of an inimi-

APPROACHING JERUSALEM 121
cal crowd, so he climbs a fig-tree, whose low, wide-spread
ing, horizontal branches make it easy to find a seat there.
The astonishment of the crowd is not less than his own
when Christ stops, looks up into the tree, bids him come
down, and invites himself to be the tax-gatherer's guest.
His choice is justified by the result; the moral sentiment
of Zaccheus is crystallized into a resolve by the presence of
the Master ; he struggles to his feet and declares his peni
tence and his purpose of reform : " Behold, Lord, the half
of my goods I will give to the poor ; and if I have wrong
fully exacted aught of any man,T will restore fourfold."
This is a kind of repentance which the dullest can com
prehend arid the least evangelical applaud.
As we shall see later, the disciples and the people were
alike possessed of the idea that Christ was going up to
Jerusalem to deliver Israel from the Roman yoke and to
become the King of his people ; and so thoroughly pos
sessed of this idea were they that nothing which Christ
could say sufficed to dispossess them of it. The parable
of the ten pounds is in construction analogous to the
parable in Matthew of the ten talents, but its scope and
purpose are different. The primary object of the parable
in Matthew, addressed solely to Christ's disciples, is to
teach the necessity of fidelity and the truth that property
is a trust, not a personal possession. The primary object
of the parable in Luke, which is addressed to all the people,
is to teach that the kingdom of God will not immediately
appear ; incidentally, how God's servants are to prepare for
his appearing, and what is to be the nature of his reckon
ing with them.
Reaching Bethany, Christ stops there, that he may spend
the Sabbath quietly with his friends Mary and Martha and
Lazarus.1 The sisters serve a supper to Christ at which
he, and presumably the twelve disciples, and perhaps other
guests, sit down. The love and joy in this household to
which Christ has so recently restored the brother, who is
also the head of the household — Simon, the father, being
either dead or an exile because of his leprosy2 — makes the
1 The chronology is uncertain. I follow here the order adopted by The Bible
Study Union Lessons. See my Commentary on Matthew, xxvi., 6, for a dis
cussion of the question of chronology. For a consideration of the reasons for
believing this anointing to be different from that reported in Luke vii., 36-50,
see my Commentary on John, xii., 1-11, preliminary note.
2 Matt, xxvi., 6, 7 ; Mark xiv., 3.

122 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
occasion a very sacred one. The ointment of pure spike
nard, which we may suppose had been procured for
anointing the body of Lazarus, is too sacred, in the sister's
thought, for common use, but not too sacred for the
anointing of her Master and her Lord ; so what she had
purchased to express her affection for her brother, she now
bestows as a token of affection to him who had given her
brother life again. To the sordid heart of Judas Iscariot
expenditure merely for the expression of affection seems a
waste. Christ sharply rebukes him for his protest. "Let
her alone," he says; "why trouble ye the woman ? she
hath wrought a good work upon me ;" and he declares that
the anointing is prophetic and preparatory for his own
death and burial.
And still neither Mary nor Martha nor Lazarus, nor the
Twelve, not even John with all his insight, can understand
that in one short week the prophecy of this anointing will
find its fulfillment at the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.

The Life of Christ

CHAPTER XXXIL— THE TRIUMPHAL - ENTRY
Mark xi., 1-14 '

I cannot approach the triumphal entry of Christ into
Jerusalem with a feeling of triumph. Palm Sunday appears
to me almost the saddest Sunday in the year. The din of
the heedless multitude crying, Hosanna to the Son of
David-, is forgotten as I look upon Christ in a passionate
flood of tears in the midst of the rejoicing populace. Let
me ask the readers of this chapter to try to look upon this
scene as Christ looked upon it, to share his reflections, to
sympathize with his grief. Twice it is said of Jesus that he
wept. At the grave of Lazarus, surrounded with exclama
tory and even artificial grief, tears silently welled up in his
eyes and coursed down his cheeks. On the Mount of
Olives, surrounded with enthusiastic multitudes, he broke
into a passion of what seemed to the onlookers to be uncon
trollable grief, strange because of the contrast to the noisy
rejoicing of the people.1
If Jesus Christ had ever hoped, as he may well have
done in the outset of his ministry, that Israel would under
stand its past history, its divine mission, and its possible
glorious future, that hope had died out of his heart. Re
jected by Galilee, by Jerusalem, by Perea, it was clear that
the kingdom of God was to come, not by the fidelity of
Israel and in its glory, but despite the opposition of Israel
and over its ruins. The message of Israel to the world
was plain : the message which the Christian Church has
since interpreted, though in halting and broken sentences.
That God is love, that in love he has created and rules the
world, that love is the law he has laid down for -all his chil-
1 In John xi., 35, the verb is SaKpva) (dakrud), to shed tears silently in Luke
xix., 41, the verbis k\o.i(i> (filaio), to weep audibly.
123

124 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
dren, and that by love he would redeem them and bring
them into oneness of life and purpose with himself — this
was the message of the Old Testament prophets, from the
days of Moses to those of John the Baptist. And what in
many portions and in divers manners God spake unto the
fathers by the prophets, he was now speaking by his Son.1
But Israel had not accepted the message of the prophets,
and would not accept the message of the Son. And it
was clear to the spiritual vision of Christ that the message
must be given to a new people, that the kingdom of God
must be taken from the Jews and given to a nation that
would bring forth the fruits thereof.2 Loving his people,
longing for their redemption, and foreseeing their doom,
he went up to Jerusalem for the very purpose of putting
before the people, gathered in the Holy City on this their
Holy Week, the truth which he dreaded but from which
he could not escape. The people had clamored for a
mighty miracle which would demonstrate his right to their
confidence. What he had refused to popular clamor he
had granted to sorrowing love. The resurrection of Laz
arus had convinced even the rulers of the Sanhedrim of
Christ's supernal power, but it had not made them more
willing to accept his divine authority, nor more amenable
to his sacred influence. On the contrary, its only effect
was to intensify and concentrate their opposition to him.
It stirred them up to self-reproach, not for rejecting Christ,
but for their failure to neutralize his influence. " What
are we doing ?" they said to one another. " Do we not
see that this man is doing many miracles ? and if wre do
not bestir ourselves the people will believe on him, and the
Romans will take away our offices from us." s For at this
time the Jewish officers held their places by sufferance of
Rome, whose policy it was to sustain the local authorities
in the conquered provinces for the sake of pacifying the
people and preventing local insurrections. If the priest
hood once lost the confidence of the people, they would
lose the support of the Roman Government. For they
would have nothing to give in exchange for that support.
From Jericho Christ came to Bethany, the village of
Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus. Here he
spent the Sabbath. Here the supper was given by the
!Heb. i., i,i 2 Matt, xxi., 43. s John xi., 47, 48.

THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY 1 25
sisters in his honor, to him and the twelve; and here he
received the prophetic anointing referred to in our last
chapter. And hence, on the first day of the week, he
started for the Holy City. It did not need a prophet's
vision to perceive that he would be greeted as King and
Messiah by the populace. It did not need a prophet's
vision to perceive that the Temple authorities would put him
to death if they could. Their purposes were no secret.
Christ foresaw what the issue would be : on the one side an
ignorant popular enthusiasm, unorganized, misconceiving
his mission and misdirected in its zeal ; on the other, an
implacable, powerful, and crafty faction, skillful in inflaming
popular prejudice, and backed by the power of the Roman
Government, with which it was in corrupt partnership.
But he definitely resolved to meet the issue ; because he
definitely foresaw that only by his martyrdom could he
inspire the world with his spirit and give to it his life.
Knowing that this short-lived triumph is the beginning of
the end, that he is marching to his death amid the plaudits
of the multitude, and that they are preparing, not only for
his death, but for the doom of the nation, he calmly gives
the directions to his disciples to make ready for a trium
phant entrance into the city which is to crucify him.
But his disciples do not share his vision. They believe
that at last they are to have their way ; that their Master
is going to proclaim himself King and set the nation free
at once from Roman and from priestly domination. Their
enthusiasm1 knows no bounds. Some go before; some
follow after ; some, hearing of the approach, come out from
Jerusalem to meet the procession. One enthusiastic fol
lower takes off his burnoose and binds it on the colt to
form a saddle for the King. Others cast their burnooses
before him that he may ride upon a cloaked and gar
mented highway. Others climb the trees and cut down
branches to strew before him ; still others gather leaves
and rushes for the same purpose. Then, by a spontaneous
movement, the crowd catch up the great Hallel chanted
at the Paschal feast, and sing it in anti phonal strains :
Save, now, I beseech thee, O Lord ;
Response. O Lord, I beseech thee, send now prosperity.
Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord ;
Response. We have blessed you out of the house of the Lord.

126 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
God is the Lord which hath shewed us light ;
Response. Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto ihe horns
of the altar.
Thou art my God, and I will praise thee ;
Response. Thou art my God, I will exalt thee.
All together. O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good ; for
his mercy endureth forever.
So, singing, shouting, running before, following after,
strewing cloaks, rushes, palm-branches in the way, the
increasing procession climbed the hill and came in sight
of the Holy City. The people saw the great Temple shin
ing in the sun, and crowds hastening out from the city
gates to meet the King and add their greetings to those
that sounded across the intervening valley from the crown
of the hill.
But Christ saw a far different spectacle. With prophetic
vision he saw the Roman soldiery laying siege to the beauti
ful city ; he saw the trenches cast up about it, and the bat
tering-rams encircling it, and the crucifixes with the Jewish
prisoners hanging on them, and the walls crumbling beneath
the assaults of the ballistse, and the city given up to sack and
flame and cruel outrage, and the Temple a heap of ruins,
and the Roman banners flying in the very Holy of Holies.
The contrast was too great to be borne, and he broke out
into a passionate outcry of grief : " If thou hadst known,
even thou, yea, even in this thy day of mercy, what would
tend unto thy peace ! But it is hid from thine eyes."
O blind and slow of heart to believe ! Strange blind
ness — strange, but common. For still the world is full of
men who cannot discern the signs of the times ; who mis
read shame for glory, and glory for shame ; who think that
great ' cities, warehouses, railroads, are the symbol of
national glory and the guarantee of national strength and
perpetuity ; who do not know that the Mayflower was a
grander vessel than the modern ocean greyhound ; and a
Puritan village, with its quiet life of heroism and self-
denial, was more glorious than a modern Babylon, with its
life of luxury and self-indulgence ; and that the strength
and perpetuity of a nation lie in its fidelity to its message
and its mission and the heed it gives to its prophets.
One more effort Christ made to teach his disciples the
worthlessness of this vociferous enthusiasm. It was on the

THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY 127
following day. They came to a fig-tree, full of promising
leaves, but with no fruit upon it. If I read the narrative
aright, he did not curse the tree ; he foretold its inevitable
future. He saw that death which had already taken hold of
it, and said, " No one will ever eat fruit of thee." And the
next day the visible signs of decay showed themselves even
to the disciples. The fruitless vineyard was to the reader
of the Hebrew prophets a familiar analogue of an apostate
nation.1 But the disciples could not, for they would not,
understand. We shall see in • succeeding chapters how
Christ reiterated this simple message, and how the disciples,
not less than the populace, refused to receive it. Not till
they heard his death-cry, " Father, into thy hands I com
mit my spirit," and saw his head drop upon his breast,
did they believe that he must die that the world might live ;
and not even then did they believe that Judaism must die
in giving birth to Christianity. TIsa. v., 1-7.
Remark. — Whether there was a second cleansing of the Temple is not cer
tain. The act has already been treated in these papers, in the order in which it
is placed by John. See Chapter VII. of this Life.

CHAPTER XXXIII.— THE CHALLENGE
Mark xi., 20 — xii., 12; Matt, xxi., 20 — xxii., 14

The ecclesiastics of Jerusalem recognized in the tri
umphal entry of Jesus Christ into the Holy City a chal
lenge to their authority. If we are to suppose that there
was, as is indicated by the synoptic narratives, a second
cleansing of the Temple, the challenge was not merely
indicated, it was very vigorously offered. They found
themselves assailed in the very citadel of their power, the
Temple itself, and they challenged the challenger. " Who
givest thee authority to do these things ?" they indignantly
demanded. The indignation was not assumed ; it was
real ; it was the indignation of ecclesiastics whose assump
tion of an exclusive right to speak and act in the name of
the Lord has been rudely called in question. Christ
answered their demand by making one on them : " What
was the authority of John the Baptist ?" They were clever
enough to discern the dilemma. They dared not deny his
authority — to do so would be to weaken their own, since
all men counted John as a prophet ; nor affirm it, for they
had treated John's message as cavalieily as they treated
Christ's. They shrank from the test ; and' Christ, with a
hero's contempt for cowards, refused to discuss with them
the question of his authority.
We are not to regard this as a simple politic ruse to get
the better of troublesome but unscrupulous opponents.
Christ's question was vital ; it goes to the root of this
problem. What is the test of authority in matters of relig
ion ? If authority depends, as the ecclesiastics of all ages
would have us believe, on special appointment, neither
John nor Jesus was the authorized bearer of a divine
message. For though John was the son of a priest, there
is no indication that he was ever inducted into the priest
hood ; and Jesus not only never received any ecclesiastical
ordination or recognition of any description, but it was
128

THE CHALLENGE 129
cast in his teeth that he had never had any theological
training.1 But if the possession of a divine spirit and of
the power to utter divine truth so as to convict men of sin
and awaken them to righteousness is a sufficient demon
stration of authority to utter such message, then both John
and Jesus had, in the results of their ministry, their creden
tials given to them. It was impossible to deny Jesus's
authority without denying not only that of John the Bap
tist, but also that of the long line of Hebrew prophets, who
were without ecclesiastical position, ordination, recogni
tion, or appointment of any kind. Ecclesiasticism had
not yet reached a point such that even the Jewish priest
hood could venture to make such a denial — which would
claim authority for Zedekiah the priest and deny it to
Jeremiah the prophet, recognize it in Caiaphas and refuse
to see it in Christ.
The challengers silenced, Christ in turn challenges them.
The Temple was built in a series of courts, one within
the other. The outermost court, that of the Gentiles, was
open to all the people, regardless of their social condition,
ecclesiastical character, race, or religion. It was the intel
lectual and religious exchange of Jerusalem, the meeting-
p'ace of all the people. Here Christ took up his position,
and here in public teaching he challenged the scribes, who
claimed a monopoly of truth, and the priesthood, who
claimed a monopoly of worship. He embodies this chal
lenge in three parables : simple stories, by which he not
only catches and enchains the attention of the multitude,
but so veils his ultimate purpose that they do not see the
application of the story until it is ended — and then they
cannot get away from it. Once at least he puts a question
to them at the close, by the suddenness of his question
elicits their answer, and then shows them what they have
said, and how it bears upon themselves.
Of two sons, one of whom promised obedience and dis
obeyed, the other of whom refused obedience and obeyed,
which is the better ? Which will you choose for your son,
Profession or Practice ? Practice, of course. Yes ! What,
then, will you say of a people which is prodigal of profes
sion and barren of practice ; which is continually saying,
I go, sir, and never going ?
1 John vii., 15.

130 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
A man had a vineyard which he let out to a tenantry.
But when he sent his servants to collect the rent, which
was payable in kind, the tenantry beat the servants; and
when finally he sent his son to call them to a reckoning,
they killed the son. What will the owner do to them ?
What ought he to do ? " Miserable fellows ! miserably
will he destroy them, and let out the vineyard to honest
tenants," cries some one in the throng. "Surely!" replies
Christ. " And you have yourself uttered the doom of this
nation. The kingdom of God will be taken from it, and
given to a people that will bring forth the fruits of the
kingdom." But they cannot endure this application of
the principle, though they have themselves declared its
justice. "God forbid!" they cry; and yet courage and
truth always find response in a multitude, and the priest
hood dare not lay hands on Christ for fear of the multitude,
who see in him a prophet of Jehovah.
The third story is a new adaptation of a parable which,
in a different form, Christ has used before.1 A king gives
a wedding feast. His subjects are in revolt against him,
and treat his invitation contemptuously. Some scoff at the
invitation ; some mob the heralds who bring the invitation.
The king sends out his army and subjugates the province
and punishes the mob. A second invitation is not treated
so cavalierly. But of those who come some are loyal and
true, some are not ; and one man ventures to show his
contempt for the king by coming to the feast in his com
mon laborer's apparel. That this was not because he was
too poor to pay proper respect to his host is clear from
the fact that when he is called to account he has no de
fense to offer. He is bound hand and foot and thrust out
into the night.
Loyalty, love, service, are individual matters. A loyal
nation will not save an individual from the effects of his
own disloyalty; a disloyal nation will not involve in its
own condemnation the loyal individual. The children's
teeth will not be set on edge because the fathers have eaten
sour grapes. The son who says, " I go, sir," and goes not ;
the tenantry who forget that their possessions are a trust
1 For the reasons for believing that this is not a mere different report of the
parable of the Wedding Feast in Luke xiv., 15-24, see my Commentary on
Matthew, ch. xxii., 1-14, preliminary note.

THE CHALLENGE 131
arid use them for themselves ; and the individual who pro
fesses his loyalty by accepting the king's invitation, but
shows his contempt for the king by making no personal
preparation to be worthy of the king's companionship, are
all alike condemned. The Jewish priesthood are under
this triple condemnation. They have professed much loy
alty to Jehovah ; but they are not doing Jehovah's work of
sowing the seeds of righteousness in the world. They
have taken his gifts of light and liberty and truth, and have
not recognized them as trusts, but, in contempt of God
and man, have shut out the pagan world from partici
pation in them. They have chanted, without comprehend
ing, the ancient Psalm :
Who shall ascend into the hill of Jehovah ?
Or who shall stand in his holy place?
He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart ;
Who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity,
And hath not sworn deceitfully.
He shall receive the blessing from Jehovah,
And righteousness from the God of his salvation.
They have thought they could come into the Temple and
the companionship of God without divineness of character,
and could see God and sit at his table without being pure
in heart.
By these parables Christ prepares the way for still more
explicit teaching, soon to follow, in denunciation of priestly
false pretense.

CHAPTER XXXIV.— DAYS OF CONFLICT
Matt, xxii., 15 — xxiii., 37

Christ's gentleness and meekness were certainly not the
fruits of timidity or irresolution. It would not be easy to
find in history an instance of a reformer more beset by
conflicting forces, agreed in nothing except hostility to
him, or one meeting the attacks of various foes with more
sangfroid, parrying their thrusts with more skill, or more
evidently worsting them in the encounter. In the last
day of conflict, described most fully in Matthew, the
result of the strange conspiracy between Pharisees, Sad
ducees, and Herodians is to expose their plots and subject
them at the end to what is perhaps the most scathing
philippic in literature.
With much semblance of flattering respect, some of the
Pharisees, commingling with the Herodians, submit a
question respecting the tribute. The Herodians were
apostate politicians and supporters of the Roman Govern
ment. They came to the front in presenting this ques
tion : " Is it lawful to pay tribute to Caesar ?" If Christ
answered Yes, he inflamed against himself the popular
prejudice of a people to whom tribute was doubly odious,
first as a tax imposed on a race who have never been very
ready to part with their money, and second as a badge of
the political bondage of a people naturally haughty and
independent. If he answered No, the use his interlocutors
would have made of his reply is indicated by the false
charge they preferred a little later concerning him to
Herod : " We found this fellow perverting the nation and
forbidding to give tribute to Caesar." It did not take
great sagacity to see through their device ; but how to
meet it was not so clear. Christ called for a coin of the
realm, asked them whose image and superscription it bore,
and when they answered, " Caesar's," responded with the
saying, ever since famous, " Render unto Caesar the things

DAYS OF CONFLICT 133
that are Caesar's ; and unto God the things that are
God's." In accepting the benefits of Caesar's govern
ment — among other benefits his coinage — they bound
themselves to loyalty to that government. The same
principle bound them to loyalty to God's government.
And they were disloyal to both.
Then the Sadducees made their experiment. They were
the unbelievers and materialists of Palestine. They in
vented and brought to him a story of a woman with seven
successive husbands, and asked Christ triumphantly to
whom she would belong in the celestial sphere. His answer
has always seemed to me as inconsistent with the notion of
a hades in which disembodied spirits wait for a future
resurrection, or of " a long and dreary sleep " to be followed
by some far-away general resurrection, as it is with the
doctrine that " death ends all." " I am the God of Abra
ham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. God
is not the God of the dead, but of the living." Then
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob are and were living — neither
sleeping the last and fatal sleep', nor a long sleep in which
life is as it were suspended, nor dwelling in some imper
fect form of life to be perfected by a future resurrection.
They are living ; living now ; and full of life, not half liv
ing. ' As to the problems which we endeavor to carry over
into the other world from this, the answer to them all is
that we " know not the power of God." We understand
present forms of life ; but not the forms of the life to come.
The Pharisees brought to him the third question. Phari
saism had robbed the simple religion of the prophets —
doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly before
God — of its simplicity, by dividing Judaism into schools and
sects. Instead of concentrating their life's energies on the
one work of fulfilling God's law in life and in character,
they frittered their energies away in profitless debates.
Among other questions they debated was this : Which is
the greatest of the commandments ? One laid stress on the
moral, another on the ceremonial, law; one on the sacri
fices, another on the Sabbath, a third on ritualistic regula
tions concerning prayer and fasting, a fourth on ablutions,
and so on, with many variations. To Christ there came
some of these Pharisees, demanding that he declare him
self. To which school did he belong ? Which did he

134 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
regard as the chief commandment ? Much as now a con
gregation might demand of a preacher, Tell us frankly, are
you Baptist or Pedobaptist ? Independent or Episcopa
lian ? Calvinist or Arminian ? Trinitarian or Unitarian ?
Christ's reply sets all such schools and sects aside. There
is but one commandment — love. The consecration in love
of the whole nature to God ; the service in love, through all
the life, of humanity — this is the whole duty of man.
The critics of Jesus Christ retiring from their interviews
discomfited, he addresses them a question respecting the
Messiah whom they are expecting. " Whose son is he ?"
" The son of David ;" in the royal line ; and coming— this
is the natural deduction — to reinstate the kingdom of
David. What, then, do they make of David's inspired
recognition of his lordship and his supreme and mystical
priesthood ? 1 Clear!}', in David's inspired thought of the
Messiah, there was some one more than a successor to
David, something in his anticipated reign of more than a
mere reinstatement of David's authority. The Pharisees
cannot answer ; their conception of the Messiah and his
reign they cannot reconcile with the prophetic motif, which
continually reappears, in melodic fragments, in the Old
Testament, from Moses to Malachi. Official interpreters
as they are of the Old Testament, they cannot reconcile
their conceptions of the Messiah and his reign with any
intelligible conceptions of the Old Testament prophecy.
Then Christ turns to his disciples and to the multitude,
and, pointing to the self-constituted religious leaders of
the people, launches into that philippic against them re
ported in the twenty-third chapter of Matthew. It is
directed, not against the Herodians, the corrupt politi
cians, not against the Sadducees, the materialists and
infidels, but against the Scribes and Pharisees, the leaders
of Jewish orthodoxy. Limits of time and space forbid any
interpretation of this address, but a few words may be said
respecting the general spirit. We may read it as a lament :
Alas for you, Scribes and Pharisees! The original words
may perhaps bear this construction, but it does not seem
to me consonant with the structure and tone of the address.
We may read it as a pure invective ; a volcano of wrath
untempered by love. But this does not consist with its
1 See Psa. ex., to which Christ refers.

DAYS OF CONFLICT 135
close, " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, . . . how often would I
have gathered thee as a hen gathereth her chickens under
her wings, and ye would not !" I believe that its method
is rebuke, but its end is love. Christ has come to seek
and to save the lost. He who recognizes himself and is
recognized by the world as a sinner does not need rebuke ;
he needs counsel, hope, courage. He knows already that
the way of transgressors is hard, but he knows not how to
find a t>etter way, or lacks the courage to make the effort.
To the publicans, the harlots, the drunkards, in short, the
recognized " sinners," Christ does not speak in words of
condemnation. He shows them a way of escape, and
reaches out a hand to help them to take it. But the man
who thinks he is virtuous because he is religious, who
devours widows' houses and satisfies his conscience with
long prayers, who pays tithes of mint and anise, and so
compromises for omitting judgment, mercy, and faithful
ness, whose religious zeal is all expended in making prose
lytes, so that he has none left for making character, who,
in short, is incased in an armor of self-conceit, can be
saved only by being humiliated. He must be disrobed
and unmasked before the public; must be made to see
himself as others see him ; must be told to his face what
others have said behind his back, and told it in public that
he may be humiliated. The self-conceited man can be
saved only as his self-conceit is punctured. If the reader
will compare the fifteenth chapter of Luke with the twenty-
third chapter of Matthew, he will get some light on the
question when the follower of Christ should preach the
Law and when the Gospel ; whom he should encourage
and whom he should rebuke.
With the close of this chapter the battle between Christ
and Judaism comes to its close. He has openly denounced
the loveless religion which holds sway in Jerusalem. Its
humiliated and embittered leaders are strengthened in their
purpose and renew their plans of revenge.

CHAPTER XXXV.— THE GREEKS' COMING TO
JESUS
Mark xii., 41-44 ; John xii., 20-50

In coming from last week's lesson to this week's we
seem almost to pass from one teacher to another. Christ's
instructions in the Temple, as they are reported by Mat
thew, are perfectly clear. There is no misunderstanding
their import or their connection. Christ's soliloquy — for it
is hardly more than that — as reported by John in this
chapter is mystical in its spirit, and the connection of its
parts is far from self-evident. There are, I think, two rea
sons for this contrast. In the first place, we must all
recognize that a great variety of thought and style is not
uncommon in men of the greatest genius. Between such
a sweet summer idyl as "As You Like It " and such a
tragic character-study as " Hamlet " there is quite as
great a difference — of another kind, of course — as between
the Sermon on the Mount as reported by Matthew and the
Sermon at Capernaum as reported by John. The differ
ences between certain sermons of Henry Ward Beecher
are not perhaps as great, but are scarcely less striking.
But the genius of a great man is not imparted to his re
porters ; and when we are dependent on reporters for all
that we know of his addresses, we must expect just what
we find in the case of Jesus — very great differences between
those aspects of his teaching presented by such a mind as
that of Matthew and those indicated by such a writer as
John. Each reports what strikes him, or, to use Cole
ridge's phrase, " finds him." In addition to this, it is not
at all unreasonable, nor at all inconsistent with any ra
tional doctrine of inspiration, to suppose that each reporter
has given us, not a verbatim report, but one translated
and interpreted in the reporter's language ; that, accord
ingly, we have the discourses of Jesus Christ, to some ex
tent, interpreted as well as reported by the four Evangelists.
Moreover, it is not improbable that John knew the sub-
136

THE GREEKS' COMING TO JESUS 137
stance of the other three Gospels, wrote after they were
written, and in order to supply, not merely certain incidents
and instructions, but also certain phases of character,
which they had failtd to indicate.
John, then, writing after the destruction of Jerusalem
and the missionary progress of Christianity in Greece and
Rome, looks back to the teachings of Jesus in the Temple,
and recalls the incident which at the time the Apostles
did not and could not understand, but which the subse
quent flocking of the Gentiles to the Christian Church
interpreted. At this very hour, when the Herodians, the
Sadducees, and the Pharisees were making common cause
against Christ, when the chief priests and the scribes were
counseling how they might slay him, when Judas had already
planned the treacherous betrayal of his Master — at this
very hour certain Greeks who had come up to the feast to
worship, heathen who had accepted Jehovah as the true
God, and in so far had accepted the Jewish religion, came
to one of Christ's disciples and sought an introduction to
their Master. Christ saw in this incident the beginning of
the fulfillment of the ancient prophecy: " Arise, shine ; for
thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon
thee. . . . And Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings
to the brightness of thy rising." 2 This prophecy forms at
once the inspiration and the theme of his monologue, I
might almost say his soliloquy.
This advance guard of the Gentiles is the witness that
the hour in which Judaism rejects the Christ begins the era
of his acceptance by the Gentile world. Judea rejects him
that Greece and Rome and Germany and Great Britain and
America may accept him. Thus his rejection is his triumph ;
his death is his victory ; his crucifixion is his exaltation.
This is the law of life. Death minibters to life ; is its pre
cursor, is its necessary condition. The egg must be broken
that the bird may fly ; the seed must die that the plant
may live. So in the evolution of life each order perishes
in giving birth to a new order ; each civilization seems to
fail that not only upon but out of its ruins a better civiliza
tion may be constructed. The decline and fall of the
Roman Empire is the birth and development of a new
European Empire, the end of which is not yet.
1Isa. Ix., 1,3.

I38 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
So each leader dies in order that he may lead. His
principles and his spirit are disseminated more widely after
his departure than before. Being dead he not only speak-
eth, but speaketh with a voice more persuasive and far-
reaching. The blood of the martyr is the seed of the
Church, a seed which death's breath wafts over a conti
nent, whereas before it was confined to the immediate con
gregation and the local discipleship. The ministry of the
martyred Huss has been a thousand-fold more influential
than that of an unmartyred Huss could have been.
Thus does death minister to life. The Christ must die
that he may live ; must be humiliated that he may be
exalted ; must depart that he may abide forever. Such a
departure does not bring darkness, but light. It is itself
illuminating. Not to see the glory in self-sacrifice, in
death, in the cross, is to be blind. To see it and follow it
is to go into ever clearer light, to receive ever clearer
vision. It is to become a child of the light ; born of light ;
possessor of the same glory. For it is by reflecting as
from a mirror this image of the Lord that we are changed
into the same image, from glory to glory.1 The man who
cannot see this glory, or, seeing, does not aspire to possess
it and does not follow after to attain it, need not be judged
by another ; he is self-judged. Life and light have come
into the world, and he will have none of them. He is self-
blinded, self-condemned, and self-punished.
Something like this seems to me the monologue of
Christ, inspired by the coming of the Greeks to see him.
12Cor. iii., 18, New Version.

CHAPTER XXXVI.— PROPHECY OF THE
SECOND COMING1
Matt., chaps, xxiv. and xxv.

The disciples, like most pious Jews, I might almost say
like most pious people even now, confounded religion with
its instruments and symbols. Religion was identified in
their minds with Jerusalem, the Temple, the priests, the
sacrificial system. So we identify religion with our churches,
our liturgies, our prayer-meetings, our creeds. It is difficult
for a Roman Catholic to comprehend how one can be
religious and not reverence the host ; for an Episcopalian
to recognize the religion of one who does not appreciate
the service ; for a Puritan to believe one is religious who
does not care for a prayer-meeting; for a Calvinist to think
that religion can survive if the Calvinistic creed should
suffer demolition. It was, in like manner, almost impos
sible for a devout Jew to believe that religion could survive
if the Temple and its system were destroyed. This was
the charge against Stephen, that he blasphemed — that is,
spoke against religion — because he asserted that the Tem
ple would be destroyed and the customs of Moses changed.2
When, therefore, Christ told the disciples that the Temple
would be so utterly destroyed that not one stone would be
left upon another, awestruck, they identified this destruc
tion of the Holy City with the end of the world and
that revelation of- the Messiah on which their hopes of a
greater city and an imperial dominion depended. When,
cried they, will Jerusalem be destroyed ? and the present
dispensation of pagan authority end ? and thou reveal thy-
1 The limitations of space forbid entering in these articles into debatable
questions in interpretation. Some scholars regard Matthew xxiv. as a prophecy
fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem. This view and the grounds for it will
' be found well stated by Mr. Barnes in his Commentary ; the grounds for the
view here taken will be found in Alford's Greek Testament and in my Com
mentary on Matthew.
2 Acts vi., 14. This was also the charge against Christ himself. See Matt.
xxvi., 61. 139

140 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
self ? These questions were poured in upon Christ eagerly
by men who regarded them all as different forms of the same
question. Christ's answer bids them distinguish ; assures
them that the end of Jerusalem is not the end of the world,
nor to be accompanied by that revelation of himself which
they impatiently urge upon him.
Be not deceived, he says ; there must be wars, and perse
cutions, and false doctrine, and apostasies, and the procla
mation of the Gospel throughout the world before the end
can come (chap, xxiv., 4-14). When, therefore, you see the
Roman flags flying on the holy hill, do not think the day of
Israel's vindication has arrived, nor believe when men shall
tell you that the Messiah is at hand. Flee from the doomed
city to the mountains (chap, xxiv., 15—26). For when the
Messiah is revealed there will be no room to doubt. That
revelation will be sudden and self-evidencing, like the glare
of the lightning when it lights up the whole heavens (chap.
xxiv., 27). Not till after this long period of tribulations,
wars, persecutions, false doctrine, apostasies — not without
such signs that they who dread the Messiah's coming will
be compelled to recognize him — will be the revelation of
his kingdom. And this Jewish race,1 though exiled and
scattered, shall not pass away till that revelation is ful
filled (chap, xxiv., 28-35). Coming suddenly, it will come
as a day of judgment ; it will come, finding men not looking
for it, nor prepared for it; it will find them in their usual
employments, and its measurements of character will be as
surprising as its advent (chap, xxiv., 36-44). It will find
men judging themselves and each other by their power to
acquire and to control ; counting those men great who
have great wealth and exercise great mastery. It will
bring to bear a new standard of judgment: one which
will count him only faithful and wise who uses his
power and possessions to serve others, and will condemn
him who has used the one tyrannically to smite his
fellow-servants, or the other in self-indulgence to drink
with the drunken (chap, xxiv., 45-51). It will find the
professed virgins of the bridegroom waiting for his coming.
But some of them will have fancied that they can obtain in
one instantaneous conversion grace for life, death, and
eternity ; while others will know that they must pray, Give
1 Generation in verse 34 is properly race.

PROPHECY OF THE SECOND COMING 141
us day by day our daily bread ; will know that to light the
lamp is not enough, it must be kept trimmed and burning ;
will know that to be Christ's one must abide with Christ.
These will go in with the bridegroom to the supper, those
will be left without (chap, xxv., 1-13). This day of the
Lord will find degrees of faithfulness even among the faith
ful servants; and their future station and service will be
awarded accordingly. For it is fidelity in little things
which demonstrates capacity for greater service ; while he
who thinks that he is virtuous simply because he is not
corrupt, and imagines that he is entitled to acquittal be
cause he fancies he has done no harm, will learn that ts
be useless is to be guilty (chap, xxv., 14-30). For we
are put into life that by love we may serve one another ;
and the test of life, as it will be revealed in that great day,
will not be creeds,' ceremonies, professions, or even con
scious service of Christ:, but the possession of a spirit like
his, which feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, and visits
the stranger, the sick, and the captive.
I have assumed in this interpretation that in these chap
ters Christ does foretell a real Second Coming of Himself
to the earth. There are several canons to be observed in
interpreting an enigmatical address like this : for all
prophecies are in some measure enigmatical. First, we
may consider how the immediate auditors understood it.
It is evident from abundant indications that the disciples
understood that Christ foretold a Second Coming, and in
the anticipation of that Coming they, and the generations
immediately following, constantly lived. We may consider
how the speaker must have expected to be understood.
Any one who is familiar with the current beliefs of Christ's
time will find it difficult to see how the disciples could
have understood this discourse otherwise than as a prophecy
of his real and apparent Second Coming. We may try to
divest ourselves of all prepossessions and take the words
of the address in their most natural meaning. It is cer
tain that one who thus reads these chapters will get as his
first impression that of a prophecy of a Second Coming
and a Final Judgment. It requires considerable ingenuity
of interpretation to find in them any other meaning. We
may look at the discourse as a whole and see what was its
moral lesson, and interpret the discourse by the apparent

142 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
object of the speaker. The moral lesson of this discourse
, is several times repeated : " Watch, for ye know neither
the day nor the hour when the Son of man cometh."
But if he is not coming, there is no pertinence in this ex
hortation to watch. The Second Adventists appear to me
to have fallen into an error in endeavoring to ascertain the
day and the hour, which Christ declares are unknown even
to the angels.1 Their opponents have fallen into a like error
in declaring sometimes that there is no such day, some
times that it is past, and sometimes that it is far away in
the future. In either case there is no significance in the
command, Watch. The one have erred by giving a literal
"trrteTpTetatidfTTo prophecies which are poetical and pic
torial, addressed to the imagination and to be interpreted
by the imagination. The other have erred by practically
erasing those prophecies from their Bible altogether. That,
as the Old Testament epiphanies were a preparation for
the New Testament epiphany, so the New Testament
epiphany is a preparation for an epiphany yet to come ;
that the Church is to turn its face toward the future and
live in expectation ; that its attitude is to be as far removed
from that of prying curiosity on the one hand as from that
of skeptical indifference on the other ; that it is to watch
for the coming without undertaking to determine what
the Master has left undetermined, How and When the
Coming will be — this seems to me the clear teaching of
this great discourse. 1 Matt, xxiv., 36 ; Mark xiii., 32.

CHAPTER XXXVIL— THE LAST 'SUPPER
Mark xiv., 12-26; Luke xxii., 24-30; John xiii., 1-30; Matt, xxvi.,
26-30

As in the house of Simon the Pharisee the villagers
gathered in the courtyard and looked on and listened
while Christ sat at supper with his host and his friends,
so we gather in an outer court that we may look on at this
Last Supper and listen to these last words of the Master
to his friends. The sun had sunk behind the hills. The
twelve had gathered in an upper chamber prepared for
them. In the East even to-day places at the table are as
signed according to the rank of those who sit at it. Each
man has his proper place. Before the supper began, the
twelve wrangled with one another as to who was entitled to
the best place at the table. One can almost see Jesus
pacing the room, or standing looking out through the
darkening window, while the unseemly quarrel goes on.
He says no word ; lets the fire burn itself out ; and when
at last they have adjusted it, takes his seat, John at Jesus's
right hand leaning upon his bosom, Judas at. Christ's left
hand, Christ leaning upon him.
Christ took his seat, pronounced the blessing, began the
supper, still said no word of rebuke. In the East the feet
are not shod, asjwith us, with shoes ; they are sandaled ;
and it is as much al matter of decency to wash the naked
feet before the meal as with us to wash the hands. It is
a part of the hospitality of the host to provide water and a
servant who shall wash the hot and dusty feet before the
meal begins. The disciples in their quarrel for precedence
never had thought of that, and, with their feet still soiled,
sat, or rather reclined, in Oriental fashion, at the supper-
table. Then Christ arose, still said nothing, laid off his
outer cloak, took a towel, wrapped it round his waist,
took a basin and a ewer of water which the host had pro
vided for the purpose, poured water in the basin, and,
H3

144 THE LIFE 0F CHRIST
going to one end of the table, began to wash the disciples'
feet. They were silent ; they dared not speak, and he did
not. No word from any one until he came to Peter, who
could not endure it, and broke the painful silence. " Thou
shalt never wash my feet," he said. " If I wash thee not,"
replied Christ, "thou hast no part with me." The disci
ple must accept Christ's rebuke, since Christ's love chooses
to inspire it. His sovereignty brooks no questioning.
Peter yielded, though not without one more ineffectual
remonstrance. "If my feet, why not my face and my
hands ?" he said. Christ finished the washing, interpreted
the lesson involved, and sat down again.
But he could not talk with freedom, for there was one
traitor in the room, and the sense of the wickedness of that
traitor paralyzed the tongue that nothing but intolerable
crime could paralyze. He resolved that the traitor should
leave the room before the last sacred conference was had.
" One of you here at this table," he said, " shall betray me."
They were filled with consternation ; but they could not
forget th^ir unseemly controversy ; they could not forget
that feet-washing; they could not at once resent the impu
tation ; no ! the lesson was too recent and was burned too
deeply in their hearts; and so, instead of denying, they
questioned. " Lord, is it I, is it I ?" went round the room.
Peter beckoned to John, lying on Christ's bosom, to "find
out who it was that should betray;" and John, turning to
Jesus, said, "Lord, who is it ?" But still Jesus answered
not; he could not betray evtn the secret of the betrayer.
It was customary in the Eist, ard particularly in the Pas
chal service, for the administrator of the service to dip a
morsel of bread in a cup and piss it to his friends. Jesus
simply Slid : " He to whom I shall give this s-^p, when I have
dipped it, will betray me." But he will give it to them all.
He only said what he had said before. Then he dipped
it and handed it first to Judas, who must have been close
at hand to have received it from the very hand of Jesus.
Judas knew what the rest did not know. Thunderstruck,
angered, wrathful at the exposure of a secret which he
supposed was locked up in his own breast, he breathed out,
stammeringly, " Is it I ?" Quietly Christ replied to him,
"Thou hast said;" and then — the traitor still sitting
there — uttered openly the words, and with vigor : " What

THE LAST SUPPER 1 45
thou doest, do quickly." The angered traitor left the
room ; angered because he thought he had been exposed
before them all, not comprehending the love that even to
the last covered his sin and left his purpose undisclosed
to the other eleven.
- In the Paschal supper there was a ritual prescribed,
partly by Jewish custom and partly by the old-time law.
As the father sat with his children around the table and
passed the bread to them, they were bid to ask, What
meaneth this ? and then he was to say to them, " This
bread is the unleavened bread that was broken in the
wilderness ; this lamb is the lamb that was slain in Egypt ;
this wine is the wine of the covenant which God made wilh
your fathers." When they came to this ritual in the
supper that night, Christ changed it. As he passed the
bread to them, he said, not, "This is the unleavened bread
which your fathers ate in the wilderness," but, "This bread
is my body broken for you." P s he passed the cup, he
said, not, " This cup is the cup o. the covenant which the
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob made to your children
in Egypt," but, " This cup is the new covenant in my
blood which is shed for you ;" and then he added the last
dying request — the only request he ever made of his fol
lowers — " This do in remembrance of me."
I am not going to enter here into a doctrinal discussion
of the significance of the Lord's Supper. Yet I pause a
moment to note what singular growths have come out of this
very simple incident. We have required that men should
be members of a church before they can sit down at this
Supper. But these twelve were not members of a Chris
tian church. No Chris' ian church had been organized.
We have required that they should assent to a creed wi'h
certain fundamental articles. These twelve had assented
to no creed, to no fundamental articles. We have required
th it they should be baptized. There is no adequate evi
dence that any one of these had ever received any kind of
baptism, and only an indication that four of them had been
baptized by John, not one of them baptized into the Chris
tian Church, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost. We have made it a Church ordinance, to be
administered only in the church and by a priest or minis
ter. But the Paschal Supper was a family, not a Church,

146 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
celebration, and the Paschal lamb was slain, not by the
priest, but by some member of the family, usually the father.
The Lord's Supper as Christ instituted it was a simple,
social meal. The only condition he attached to his invita
tion was a loving memory. He would have only loyal ones
sit at that Paschal table. He would have only those that
had sworn to follow him to the death. Not even his
mother sat with him ; and the traitor was exiled from the
table before the bread was broken or the cup was passed.
Then the one — the only, the last, the dying — request of
Christ was given to his friends : " Do this in remembrance
of me." If they had built some great monument, how we
would have traveled longingly that we might look upon it !
But had it been built, the rain and the wind and the frost
would have eaten into it, and obliterated and destroyed it.
Had he said, " Build me some fine cathedral that shall stand
as a memory to me," how we would have poured our contri
butions that somewhere in this world there might be a
central temple, over which the cross on which he hung
should stand throughout the ages I But the cathedral
would have passed into the hands of men corrupted by
ambition, and belittled by narrowness, and hardened by
dogmatism. He made his monument of loving hearts.
Only this do : sometimes sit down together ; sometimes
remember that last occasion when I grasped the hands of
those I loved, looked into their faces, and heard their voices ;
sometimes sit at a supper-table, eat and drink and think
of me. Christ longs to be remembered, as love always
longs to be remembered. He wanted not his grave to be
obliterated from the earth and trodden under foot of men,
as if it were an indifferent thing ; he wanted not his name
to be blotted out of human memory or his personality to
be forgotten from throbbing hearts. He commands us in
many things, he guides us in many things, he gives us
opportunity to serve his children, his poor, in many ways ;
but there is only one personal request he makes of us —
that, from time to time, at some supper-table, with simply
bread and wine, we shall, as they that love him have
throughout all ages, perpetuate his memory, and show that
we care for his person.

CHAPTER XXXVIIL— THE LAST DISCOURSE
John xiii., 31-35, and xiv., xv., xvi., xvii.

. With reverent reluctance I approach the sacred hour
in which Christ, gathering the faithful eleven about him,
discourses to them of the most sacred experiences in the
divine life, and in the only recorded prayer of any length
opens his heart to them in opening it to his Father. If
space permitted, I should prefer simply to print this
discourse and prayer, in perhaps slightly different form
from that of our English Bible ; but I must content my
self with endeavoring in an abbreviated paraphrase to
indicate its great truths, conscious how imperfectly I under
stand Him, and how imperfectly I must interpret even my
own understanding.
The shadow of impending death was falling upon the
group. At last even they began io comprehend. With
but the vaguest hope of immortality, with a half-pagan
faith in a Hades in which the dead waited in shadowy
forms for a future resurrection, death could not but be to
them, what, alas ! it still remains to most of us, the great
separation. Jesus, with that genius of sympathy so char
acteristic of" him, begins by entering into this " horror of
a great darkness " which is beginning to settle down upon
them. But he enters bearing the light of a bright hope.
Do not think, he says, that this beautiful world is the
only abode of the living. God has in his universe many
dwelling-places. I am going to prepare a dwelling-place
for you, and will return again and take you to myself to be
with me. And do you not at last begin to understand who
I am ? — the revelation of the Father, the One in whom he
dwells and by whom he is made known to you. No longer
shall I be with you on the earth ; but another Strength-
giver shall be at your side to answer to your call.1 He
1 Comforter is strength-giver. The original, " Paraclete," means one who
comes at another's call. 147

148 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
will ever dwell with you ; unseen by the world and there
fore by the world unknown ? but not to you unknown ; for
he will dwell within you. And in Him I shall be with you,
the life of your life. How ? That I cannot explain to
you; only this I can say, If you love me, you will keep my
commandments ; and if you love me and keep my com
mandments, you will know this experience of the indwell
ing of the Divine Spirit. He will bring you light, peace,
courage, and joy.
I in Him, He in me, we in all my disciples — this will
make them all one ; a vine — each disciple a branch kept
alive by dwelling in me, kept in unity with the other
branches because they all thus dwell in me. Thus I shall
still dwell in the world, incarnate in my disciples, who are
my Church, and who, however different their religious
forms, are one in their love and loyalty and their fellowship
with me. The life of this Chur h is love, and its fruit is
love — the consciousness of my love, and of my Father's
love, and the spirit of love toward one another ; love as I
have illustrated it, love that lays down life for others, love
in self-sacrifice. But this love the world does not and will
not understand. It has repaid my love with hate. It will
repay yours with hate. Do not imagine that love always
kindles love, nor be amazed when hate and bitter persecu
tion come.
I am going away, and you are, I see, filled with sorrow.
But it is for your benefit I am going. If I were in the body,
you cou d not receive that higher inspiration which comes
from a bodiless, invisible, spiritual Presence. The Spirit
will come : He will make the world see that it was sinful,
or it would not have rejected such an One as I ; He will
make the world understand righteousness, for after I am
gone it will begin to study my character, as it will not and
cannot while I am here; He will make the world under
stand the principles of divine judgment, for it will see
what value to put on the religion which builds synagogues
and conducts sacrificial services, but crucifies Love. And
He will be your Teacher ; and you will be wiser for my
going, and will understand me better. Your sorrow will
become a bitter anguish ; I know that; but it will be the
anguish of travail, out of which will be born a new-created
world. For sorrow is the mother of joy. So sorrow and joy

THE LAST DISCOURSE 1 49
will go together in your life : sorrow in the world, joy in
me. But be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.
If reverence hesitates to interpret Christ's most sacred
discourse, it may well hesitate still more to interpret his
prayer. I shall here only suggest to the reader two or
three reflections concerning it.
What is commonly known as the Lord's Prayer is not a
true interpretation of Christ's spiritual desires for his dis
ciples. The Twelve came to him early in his ministry for
a ritual. He gave them a prayer which, with wonderful
simplicity and brevity, summed up the common desires, I
will not say of humanity, rather of the devout Jew. These
were desires for the coming of the kingdom, for daily bread,
for forgiveness of sin, for guidance in a safe and peaceful
life, and for deliverance from the Evil One. But when
in this last interview with his disciples he poured out his
own heart in prayer for his disciples, his petitions took on,
not only a different form, but a different character. He
does not pray for the coming of the kingdom, for it has
already come ; it is in the hearts of his loyal followers.
He does not ask for daily bread ; he cares very little for
comfortable maintenance here below. Nor for forgiveness ;
his disciples are already forgiven, reconciled unto the
Father, their sins blotted out, and they in filial fellowship
with their God. He does not ask for a safe and peaceful
guidance from all temptation ; on the contrary, he says
expressly that he does not desire to take his loved ones
out of the world — the hating, persecuting, tempting world.
There is but one petition common to both prayers — the
prayer of the devout Jew and the prayer of the Lord for
his own — the petition, Deliver us from the Evil One. Thus
this prayer begins where the earlier prayer ends; and it
goes on to present three other petitions for the disciples
throughout all time : Sanctification and consecration unto
and in the truth ; the perfect unity of love, in God and
with one another ; and spiritual appreciation of and partici
pation in the glory of the Father and the Son — the glory
of love, service, and self-sacrifice, the glory manifested in
the passion and death of the Christ.

CHAPTER XXXIX.— GETHSEMANE
Mark xiv., 32-52

Christ's last discourse to his disciples ended, he left the
room where they had been gathered and went with them
out of the Temple gate — the same he had entered four
days before in triumph — crossed the brook Kedron, and
found in one of the gardens which covered the slope of
the Mount of Olives a quiet retreat. We may well believe
that it was a favorite spot with him, and one where he was
accustomed to seek, sometimes absolute solitude, some
times that opportunity for quiet converse with his disci
ples which the crowded city refused him. The moon was
at its full, and its rays, struggling through the heavy foliage
of the vines and olive-trees which constituted the roof of
his rural sanctuary, filled it with those shadows which at
once add to the solemnity and minister to the sorrow of such
an hour. The garden was probably known to Judas as a
probable place in which to find Jesus ; the events of the
night justify this supposition. Christ guarded ag?iinst sur
prise. Taking his three most trusted friends, he bade them
watch as sentinels while he, withdrawing from them, gave
himself to prayer. Often in Galilee had he left them sleep
ing in their burnooses upon the ground, or in some hospi
table hamlet, while he went up to one of the neighboring
hilltops to pray ; but never before had it been necessary to
protect his devotions from hostile intrusion. What would
have occurred, what change in the course and effect of his
ministry would have been produced, had they been faithful
to their trust and warned him of the traitor's approach,
who can tell ? Certain it is that, humanly speaking, Christ's
arrest at that time, and all the events which followed, were
due to their failure to keep watch while their Master prayed.
I note the fact, leaving the reader to reflect upon its sig
nificance and to consider whether its analogue is not to be
!5°

GETHSEMANE 151
found more than once in the subsequent history of the
Christian Church.
I shall make no attempt in this paper to penetrate the
sacred reserve which the simple Gospel narrative has
thrown about that hour of prayer. Into the scene from
which the beloved disciple was excluded we may well hesi
tate to enter. But enough of that hour of mystery and strug
gle has been recorded to made a few reflections clear —
reflections worthy our frequent pondering, simple and self-
evident though they be. The sufferer looked forward with
clear vision and inexpressible dread upon the awful events
of the morrow. His was not a stoic's nature ; it was sen
sitive to the physical pain, and still more to the storm of
hate and execration which was to break upon him, and to
the personal shame and indignity which he was to endure.
"Father," he cried, "if it be possible, let this cup pass
from me." It was possible ; he knew that it was possible ;
but possible only by the abandonment of his life purpose ;
and that he would not abandon. Apparently he had but
to choose to escape and the way of escape would be opened
to him. For even with the guards closing around him, he
said to Peter : " Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to
my Father and he shall presently give me more than twelve
legions of angels ?" But, as a captain will not desert his
sinking ship, nor a general his defeated army, in order to
save himself, even though treachery has brought wreck to
the one or ruin to the other, so Christ would not desert
humanity, nor seek escape by any method which did not
bring deliverance to the whole race. Shrink as he might
from the hour of crucifixion, he never thought of escaping
it by recreant flight. Always his prayer came back to the
one culminating petition : " Thy will, not mine, be done."
This is more than resignation. To be resigned is to
accept, without complaining, the inevitable will of God.
Christ prayed that God's will might be accomplished. His
supreme desire was that his own desire might not counter
vail his Father's wiser, stronger purpose. Gethsemane
gives a sublime but awful interpretation to the so often
carelessly uttered petition, " Thy will be done on earth as
it is in heaven." It is in turn itself interpreted by the
lines of Faber :
God's will is sweetest to him when
It triumphs at his cost.

152 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
The struggle was real ; but in a soul whose supreme desire
is to know and do God's will, the issue of such a struggle
is never doubtful.
Twice Christ comes to his disciples. Is it for their
sympathy ? or is it to ascertain whether they are watching ?
Does his careful love admonish him to take these precau
tions that they may not share his arrest and peril ? The
first time he awakes them. The second time he leaves
them sleeping undisturbed. At length he sees from his
shadowed retreat the light of torches gleaming across the
intervening valley, and hears the measured tread which
tokens the advance of soldiers. Even now he might have
escaped and 'left the slumberous disciples to their fate.
But this does not even seem to occur to him. He goes
forth hurriedly, awakens his recreant watch with a sentence
whose reproach they could never have forgotten — " Sleep
on now, and take your rest ;" and then, with a word of
warning which thoroughly arouses them and drives all
sleep from their heavy eyes, " The Son of man is betrayed
into the hands of men; arise, let us be going: behold,
he is at hand that doth betray me," he leaves them to
come to their startled senses, pushes by them, and by the
eight who from their sleep on the ground a little beyond
are struggling into consciousness, and puts himself between
his friends and the temple guard led by the traitor Judas.
The latter greets his Master with a kiss, but even his
effrontery can find no response to the rebuke which reveals
to all Christ's understanding of the traitor's treachery.
The guard, startled by the sudden apparition, and yielding,
as more than once before mobs had yielded, to his divine
dignity, fall backward before him. The disciples, inspired
by a tardy loyalty and a false expectation of a supernatural
deliverance, are eager to follow up the advantage and
effect a rescue. Peter does not wait for permission — his
sword flashes out of his scabbard in a futile and foolish
act of resistance. Christ forbids all violence, bids Peter
put up his sword, asks of his captors but one favor, that
his disciples be suffered- to depart unmolested, then sur
renders himself into the guards' hands, and is bound and
led away. Judas, with a shamed and heavy heart, accom
panies the band to the court whose condemnation of Christ
is his own severe condemnation. Of the eleven disciples

GETHSEMANE 153
nine flee away. Hiding in the dark shadows of the trees
and beneath the overhanging houses of the streets, two of
them furtively creep after the prisoner and his guard. They
are Peter and John, determined to see the final issue of this
fearful night.

CHAPTER XL.— THE COURT OF CAIAPHAS
John xviii., 12-24; Mark xiv., 55-72 ; Luke xxii., 66-71;
Matt, xxvii., 3-10

It was not far from four o'clock in the morning of the
seventh day of April, in the thirty-fourth year of the Chris
tian era, when the Sanhedrim convened in the council
chamber adjoining the Temple for the most momentous
state trial history has ever recorded.1 The court sat in a
semicircle. In the center sat the high priest. If he was
robed on that night as he was on ordinary great trials, he
wore a blue turban interwoven with gold, a blue robe with
a girdle of purple, scarlet and gold embroidery about his
waist, with onyx stones for buttons, and with a breastplate
rich and radiant with jewels. Two scribes sat at the two
ends of the semicircle- — one to take down the testimony
for the accused, the other the testimony for the prosecu
tion. No lawyers were allowed for the defense ; the ac
cused must defend himself. He stood before them, pale,
emaciated, weary with the night's watching, but strong
with that calm dignity before which only an hour earlier
the guard had fallen backward to the ground ; before
which only a few hours later Pilate, the Roman, was to
tremble. In the sixteenth century, at the time when the Pope of
Rome claimed the allegiance of the English people, it was
made a capital offense for any man in England to attempt
to divert the allegiance of the English people from the
English King. So, centuries before, it had been made a
capital offense for any man to attempt to divert the alle
giance of the Jewish people from Jehovah, who was their
King. It was because of this law that it was a capital
offense to practice witchcraft or sorcery, or to prophesy in
1 There had been a preliminary informal and quite irregular examination of
the prisoner at the house of Annas. It was here that Peter's denial ot his
Master took place. From this examination Christ was conducted to the coun
cil chamber for the formal trial. '54

THE COURT OF CAIAPHAS 155
the name of any other God than Jehovah, or to pretend to
work miracles in the name of another, or to speak in God's
name what God had not ordered to be spoken, or to prac
tice idolatry, or to urge the people themselves to practice
it.1 It was under these statutes in the Old Testament
that Jesus Christ was put on trial: Although the historians
have kept no accurate record of the indictment, it is easy
for us to frame it. We have only to go to subsequent
rabbinical authorities and see what charges they have
brought against him.
"Jesus, son of Joseph, thou art accused of having con
spired against the government and endeavoring to usurp
the crown of Israel ; confess thy crime, and acknowledge
thyself guilty of treason. Charges are also made against
thee that thou hast deceived and imposed upon the people,
making them believe all manner of superstitions, and tell
ing them that thou canst work miracles,, and that the whole
world of demons and spirits is under thy control. Thou
knowest it is strictly forbidden in the law of Moses to
resort to enchantments or divinations, or to consult with
spirits ; now, therefore; take heed, give glory to God, Lord
God of Israel, and plead guilty to the charges made against
thee. If thou hadst merely slandered the banner-bearers
of Israel and endeavored to break the pillars of our religion,'
we could have extended to thee pardon, hadst thou re
pented — truly, sincerely repented before God and Israel ;,
but as thou hast repeatedly said to the people, ' No man
knows the Father but the Son, and to whomsoever the Son
will reveal him,' such a heresy cannot be pardoned, but
must be expiated by severe punishment — even by death.
Thou knowest it is recorded in the Bible, ' And there shall
not arise any prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord
shall know face to face.' Art thou greater than Moses,
the father of all prophets ? Canst or didst thou give us a
better or a clearer knowledge of our heavenly Father ?
Thou, who wast conceived in sin and born in iniquity,
darest to call thyself the Son of God, and lead the people
astray, and persuade them to worship thee, as if thou wert
indeed of the Almighty. Oh, blasphemy ! blasphemy !
Thou art a false prophet, and, according to the sacred law
1 See Exod. xxi, 20; Lev. xx., 1-5; Deut. xiii.; xvii., 2-5; xviii.. g-22:
Lev. xix., 31.

156 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
of Moses, thou hast forfeited thy life — thou must suffer the
punishment of being stoned. Hast thou anything to offer
for thy defense ? If so, state it without restraint at once,
and bring forward such proof as thou mayst have to sus
tain thine assertions of innocence."
This indictment, which I transfer to these pages from a
modern Jewish life of Christ,1 is not a historical represen
tation of the indictment actually presented in the Court of
Caiaphas, but it may be assumed to be a true transcript of
its essential charges and to be conceived in its spirit.
It is easy for us also to imagine the evidence gathered
against him. It could be proved that he had claimed to
be king ; that he had proclaimed laws as a lawgiver ; that
he had set himself above those of olden time, saying, " It
has been said to you of olden time, but I say unto you ;"
that he had entered Jerusalem riding in triumph as a king,
and that when men had cried out before him, " Hosanna,
hosanna, to him that cometh in the name of the Lord,"
and he had been called upon to rebuke them, he had
refused so to do. It could be proved that he had worked
miracles in his own name, though* no prophet had ever
done so ; that he had prophesied in his own name, and
had claimed even to forgive sins in his own name. And
yet such had been the reserve of Jesus that it could not
be proved that he had claimed distinctively divine char
acter. We know now what his claims had been in the
secret councils of his own disciples ; but these were then
to the public unknown. Evil spirits had undertaken to
bear testimony, but he had silenced them. The men he
cured would have borne testimony, but he forbade them.
With a wise caution born of foresight he had guarded
against this hour. Witness after witness was brought —
false witnesses, too, perjured witnesses ;, but in their testi
mony they agreed not with one another. There was, indeed,
that traitor Judas, who might have been summoned to
tell what had been spoken in the secret councils, but under
the Jewish law one witness was not enough to condemn to
death, and Judas Iscariot's testimony unsupported by
other testimony would have been without avail.
The morning sun was creeping up the east. The golden
glory of the coming day was flooding the council chamber.
1 Goldstein's " Life of Jesus of Nazareth."

THE COURT OF CAIAPHAS

^57

The priests and scribes began to fear that their victim
would escape them, and that they would be unable to bring
such testimony as would sustain a conviction of blasphemy
even in that, packed tribunal. At last the High Priest ven
tured on a bold experiment. He put Jesus Christ himself
on the witness-stand. He administered the Jewish oath :
" I adjure thee by the living God that thou tell us whether
thou art the Son of God." Jesus interposed his remon
strance : "If I tell you," he said, "you will not believe.
If I question you, you will not answer. If I should prove
my innocence, you would not let me go." Still the High
Priest persisted : " I adjure thee that thou tell us by the
living God whether thou be the Messiah." Jesus might
have refused to answer, but he did not. " Thou shalt see,"
he said, "the Son of man coming in the clouds of glory to
judge the world. The relations between me and you will
be reversed. You will stand before my judgment bar. I
will sit upon the judgment throne." The priest again per
sisted in his demand : " Art thou indeed the Son of God ?"
Jesus answered with a clear, ringing, simple statement : " I
am." One may imagine the hush that fell upon the court
and the crowd outside looking in through the windows for
the moment, as the High Priest rent his clothes, which the
High Priest was accustomed to do on conviction of blas
phemy and in token of his judgment, as the English judge
puts the black cap on his head when he pronounces sen
tence of death. And the whole court, waiting not for the
secret ballot required by the Jewish law, cried out : " He
is guilty of death, he is guilty of death !"
Our Christian faith, that faith which the great Evangeli
cal Church of Christendom holds, in the divine character
of Jesus of Nazareth, does not depend upon any interweav
ing of texts of Scripture nor upon any doubtful deductions.
In this supreme and awful moment of his life, when he
stood face to face with death, under the solemn sanction
of his oath, when he was under the highest obligation to
sweep away misconstructions and misapprehensions if they
existed — in that great hour he swore, before that court and
high heaven, that he was the Son of God and the Judge of
humanity. If he was not God's well-beloved Son, he was
rightly adjudged guilty of blasphemy.
Says Judge Greenleaf, Professor in Harvard Law School

158 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
at the time of his death : " If we regard Jesus simply
as a Jewish citizen, and with no higher character, his con
viction seems substantially right in point of law, though
the trial was not legal in all its forms. For, whether the
accusations were founded on the first or second commands
in the Decalogue, or on the law laid down in the thirteenth
chapter of Deuteronomy, or that in the eighteenth chapter
and twentieth verse, he had violated them all by assuming
to himself powers belonging alone to Jehovah ; and even if
he were recognized as a prophet of the Lord, he was still
obnoxious to punishment, under the decision in the case of
Moses and Aaron, before cited. It is not easy to perceive
on what ground his conduct could have been defended
before any tribunal, unless upon that of his superhuman
character. No lawyer, it is conceived, would think of
placing his defense on any other basis." 1
This is the ground of our faith in Jesus as the Divine
Son of God. In this supreme hour of his life, when the
claim meant death to himself, when, if it were false, it
meant falsity running through all human history and to all
time, he claimed divinity under the solemn sanction of his
oath and in the presence of eternity. There is no room to
build a tomb to Jesus of Nazareth beside the tomb of Con
fucius of China, Buddha of India, Socrates of Greece. He
was either less than a philosopher or more than a man.
He was either the Son of God or to be acquitted of bias- '
phemy only by being regarded as an enthusiast. He was
either undeserving of our confidence or entitled to the
highest loyalty and allegiance that human hearts can give
him. 1 " Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists ; with an Account
of the Trial of Jesus." By Simon Greenleaf, LL.D.

CHAPTER XLL— THE TRIAL BEFORE PILATE
John xviii., 28-38; xix., 4-16; Luke xxiii., 6-12; Matt, xxvii., 15-31

Jesus had been pronounced worthy of death by the Jew
ish tribunal. But they could not execute their sentence.
It was necessary to secure the ratification of it from Pilate,
who was at once Governor and Judge of Judea.
The Temple at Jerusalem was built upon a broad plat
form of rock overlooking the deep ravine upon the east,
and separated by another deep ravine from the palace, once
of Solomon, now of Herod, upon -the west. Close adjoin
ing this Temple there had been built by Pilate a great
tower, with four walled towers at its four corners. It was
at once a Roman garrison and a Roman Governor's palace.
Its broad halls were almost as wide as the Jewish streets,
and its abundant rooms furnished a resting-place for five
hundred soldiers, besides the rooms for the Roman Governor.
At about six o'clock in the morning of the 7 th of April in
the year of our Lord 34, Pilate, resting in his palace in this
tower of Antonia, was aroused by turbulent sounds in the
street below. He was used to the turbulence of the Jewish
people. Their passions, their superstitions, their patriot
ism, and their prejudices had been aroused by the priest
hood to insurrection against the Roman authority, and
once and again he had entered into conflict with that same
priesthood, stirring up that same people, and had been
compelled, by fear of their violence, to withdraw, humil
iated and defeated., from the controversy. He hastened
down, stepped out on to the broad space that led directly
into the Temple courts, down which more than once the
Roman soldiery had issued to quell disturbances in the
courts of the Jewish Temple, and there saw a great multi
tude, already growing into a mob. It filled the broad
court of the Temple and ran out into the streets that led back
to the Temple courts, and men were hurrying from differ
ent parts of the city to increase it. Before him stood a
!S9

160 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
few of the priesthood, whom he hated, and in their midst
a single figure, pale, wearied with the night's watching,
with some of the signs of the ignominy and shame that
had already been heaped upon him. His hands were
bound behind his back; but something in his face and
figure, something in the soul that looked through his eyes,
made itself felt even in the heart of the hard, unemotional
Roman. The Governor asked the priesthood what they
wanted. " We have found this fellow guilty," they said,
" and we have condemned him to death. We ask authority
to execute the death sentence." " Take him," said Pilate,
" and judge him according to your law." "We have done
so already, but it is not permitted to us to execute death
sentence, and he is worthy of death. If he were not guilty,
we would not have condemned him." " I am not so sure
of that," said Pilate. "What has he done?" The very
refusal of Pilate to ratify unquestioningly the sentence
which the Sanhedrim had pronounced against Jesus raised
an issue which the priesthood were unwilling to raise, and
yet of which they made effective use. The people of
Judea were restless under the yoke of pagan authority,
wrathful that the authority had passed from their hands
into the hands of a hated pagan, angered that they could
not carry into instant execution, without appeal to a foreign
power, the sentence of their own supreme court, maddened
that in the very moment of their triumph their way was
apparently blocked. It was easy to lash such a people
into a threatening mob. The priests, too, had prepared
themselves for this exigency. They knew that Pilate
would condemn no man for blasphemy, and they proceeded
with a new accusation. " We have found this fellow,"
they said, " perverting the people. He has claimed to be
a king. He has set himself up against Caesar. We de
mand his death."
It is not difficult for us to imagine with what evidence
they endeavored to sustain this new accusation. He had
claimed to be a King ; had assumed all the prerogatives
of royalty ; had demanded absolute and supreme allegi
ance from his followers ; had promulgated laws ; had
announced himself the supreme and final Judge of man
kind ; had organized in the heart of Caesar's province the
germ of an imperishable community ; had marched into

THE TRIAL BEFORE PILATE l6l
Jerusalem attended by a multitude which hailed him " King
of the Jews." His little body-guard (were armed with
swords, and his arrest had been finally accomplished only
despite violent resistance. ,It is true that the legislation
which Jesus had promulgated was for the government of
the individual, not for the regulation of a political com
munity ; that he had steadfastly refused to arbitrate in
civil disputes, or to act as judge in enforcing civil law ;
that first among the precepts for the government of his
spiritual community was that of unconditional non-resist
ance ; that he had repeatedly cautioned the enthusiastic
multitude that his kingdom was not of this world, and would
not immediately appear ; and that the resistance which a
single misguided follower had offered to his arrest was
instantly rebuked, and its evil effects miraculously cured.
The charge that Jesus forbade to give tribute to Caesar was
not only wholly false, but in direct contradiction to the
facts. But, by misrepresenting much that Jesus had said,
adding something arid suppressing more — a method not
unknown to modern priestcraft in ecclesiastical controver
sies — it was not difficult to present a case that really
demanded of the Procurator offic'al investigation. He
therefore assumed jurisdiction of the case, summoned Jesus
within the fortress for a quieter examination, and asked
him for an explanation of these charges. Jesus would not
defend himself before a dishonest tribunal. But to the
Procurator, ignorant alike of the character and mission
of Jesus and really perplexed, Jesus readily vouchsafed
the explanation he requested, in a few brief but sig
nificant words, whose meaning a paraphrase may help
to make clear. He was a King, but he was no preacher
of sedition. He had formed no purpose of interfering
with the government of Rome. He had no need to call
witnesses. His accusers were bis witnesses. Who had
brought this accusation against him ? The Jews. If it
had been preferred by a Roman centurion, it might have
been worthy of examination. But when was it ever known
that the Jewish priesthood complained to their Gentile
government of one who sought the political emancipation
of the nation ? None knew better than Pilate how restive
were the people under the Roman yoke. The voices of
the mob before the judgment-seat crying out for Jesus's

1 62 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
blood were unwitting witnesses of his innocence. He was
a King, but his kingdom was not of this world — was not
formed on the principles nor maintained by the methods
of political empires. If it had been, then surely from
among the hundreds who only four days before had accom
panied him to Jerusalem, hailing him as their monarch,
some would have been found ready to defend his person
with their lives. Not to found a new dynasty, not to frame
a new political organization, had Christ come into the
world, but to bear witness to the truth. His subjects
swear allegiance only to the truth — to 'Jesus, be ause Jesus
is the truth. And they only to whom truth is of higher
worth than all else comprehend his voice and participate
in his kingdom. Pilate, half pityingly, half contemptuously,
replied with his famous question, " What is truth ?" To
this Roman realist, knowing only kingdoms that are built
by the sword and cemented by blood, this conception of
an invisible kingdom of truth seemed but the baseless
vision of a religious enthusiast. But though he lacked
moral, he did not lack political, penetration. It was clear
this Galilean rabbi was no rival to the Caesars. The sus
picions which he had from the first entertained of the
motives of his old-time enemies were confirmed, and from
this brief interview he returned to the accusers of Jesus
to announce his judgment of acquittal.
Then commenced the battle which waged for certainly
an hour or more, and ended as all such battles between
unscrupulous persistence and cowardly compromises must.
Consider the three figures in this battle : the priesthood,
resolute, earnest, determined, clamorous, inciting the gath
ering mob that they might wrest from the unwilling judge
the condemnation which they could not expect from his
conscience or his judgment ; the prisoner, calm, unmoved,
silent through all the false accusations, interposing to
them nothing but a solemn and witnessing silence ; and
Pilate — man of the world; Roman, who believed neither
in God nor in immortality; whose moral sense had in it no
religious inspiration, behind it no religious sanction ; whose
only support in an hour of trial was the sense of honor that
is so much vaunted and is so feeble ; a man who would
have resented with wrathful indignation the charge of
cowardice, and yet proved himself a coward ; not inhuman ;

THE TRIAL BEFORE PILATE 1 63
not cruel ; not meaning to be apostate ; not conscious of
the great crime he was really about to commit. Let us
not misjudge him. He was a judge. There stood before
him one whom he regarded as a mild, harmless religious
enthusiast. Prejudice had been aroused against him.
Should he let this rnan go, there would certainly arise a
riot in Jerusalem, the rumor of which might reach the
Court of Rome, and might bring trouble upon him, cer
tainly would bring trouble upon the nation. Should he
execute him — only one more harmless enthusiast out of
existence. No great harm done. So he reasons ; and, so
reasoning, palters with the mob. His quick ear catches
the suggestion that this man is a Galilean. He sends him
across the ravine to Herod, hoping thus to get rid of him.
He appeals to the patriotism of the people. " Your King !
shall I crucify him ?" He endeavors by various devices
to appeal to the sympathies of a mob that have no sym
pathies. One thing he does not do. He does not say to
that gathering mob, "Though the heavens fall, justice
shall be done. Though he that stands before me is but a
weak enthusiast, without friends, though his execution can
do no harm, and his deliverance may do much injury, still
I wilLdo justice, come what may." And when, at last, the
high priests hiss in his ears, " This man made himself a
king ; and he that lets a claimant to the throne go free is
no friend of Tiberius Caesar," he resists their demand no
longer. When his imagination calls up the picture of that
most jealous and cruel monarch on the throne of the
Caesars, when he remembers that his own place may be
swept from under him at the demand of this same priest
hood, enforced by this same mob, he washes his hands of
responsibility and delivers the innocent One to death.
"And they took Jesus and led him away."

CHAPTER XLII.—THE CRUCIFIXION
Mark xv., 21-41 ; Luke xxiii., 26-49 i John xix., 17-37

Among all the dreadful deaths which the cruelty of man
has invented wherewith to express his thirst for human
unhappiness, his greed of revenge and hate, none surpasses
in cruelty crucifixion. Even in the hard and cruel age to
which it belongs, even among the unsympathetic, cold,
and remorseless Romans, it was accounted cruel beyond
all reason and measure, reserved for slaves, for specially
obnoxious criminals, or for those who were the victims of
malice in remote provinces. The victim of the crucifixion
was nailed to the cross, sometimes partly nailed and partly
tied to it. Then he was left to hang there, no vital organ
affected, only wounds in the hands and feet, the hot sun
beating down upon his naked head and body, impossible
to move, hDt, feverish pains running through every nerve,
currents of blood flowing with almost bursting rapidity in
the arteries, no power of cooling the fevered brow, no
power to move the anguished body. So he hung, always
for hours, often for days, before death mercifully came to
release him, unless the wearied executioners, fatigued by
the watching, broke the legs or pierced the side of the
criminal, and so gave him escape from his torture. It was
to this death Christ was condemned, by the clamor of
the very people whom he had come to save, by the clamor
of the very nation whom he loved with all the patriotic
devotion of one who was by birth and by education a Jew,
with all the sympathetic love of a human heart that beat
with love as never human heart has beat before or since,
with all the larger love that was enshrined in a heart divine.
From Pilate's judgment-seat the procession moved for
ward to the place of execution. Three prisoners marched
with it, guarded by a Roman soldiery under the command
of a Roman centurion. Each of the condemned bore, as
was the custom of the age, his cross. Jesus, wearied with
164

THE CRUCIFIXION 1 65
the night's watching — never, from other indications of the
Gospel, it would appear, physically strong — seems to have
sunk beneath the weight of his cross. The soldiers seized
upon a peasant coming into the city, impressed him into
their service, and made him carry the cross for the Naza-
rene. It was accounted afterwards for his honor in the
Church ; and the sons of this Simon that bore the cross of
Jesus to Golgotha were known in the subsequent history
for that simple involuntary service of their father.
There was in Jerusalem at this time an organization of
women, the germ of those subsequent philanthropic organ
izations which have been formed to mitigate the sufferings
of humanity. Delegations and representatives of this
society were accustomed to come to the place of execution
when Jews were condemned to death, to mourn for the
condemned, and to do what little in them lay both to com
fort and alleviate. Some of these women followed the
procession which wound slowly down the hill toward the
place where the execution was to take place. In accord
ance with the custom of the Orient, they beat upon their
breasts, tore their garments and tneir hair, and showed all
those ostentatious signs of sorrow so characteristic of that
age, but which Christ with difficulty could endure. He
turned to them and said, "Weep not for me, but weep for
yourselves, and for your children." Christ's crucifixion is
not to awaken in us pity for the crucified.
They reach the place of execution. The anaesthetic
agents known in our time were not, indeed, then known ;
but something like them had been invented to dull the
senses and alleviate pain in the hours of great agony. These
womet had brought some wine mingled with myrrh for that
purpose.1 If Christ would but take it, the bitterness of
death would be at least lightened in these last hours. They
offered it to him. He recognized in the bitter myrrh the
object for which it was given him, shook his head, and
turned away. He would not enter the gates of death with
dulled senses.
The cross was laid upon the ground. He, silent and
unresisting, was laid upon it. Nails were driven through
the hands and feet ; and then the cross was raised to its
1 See Edersheim's " Life of Christ," II., sgo ; Lightfoot's " Horae Hebraiacae " '
on Matt, xxvii., 34, and John xix., 29.

1 66 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
place with a wrench that sent agony tingling through the
veins and nerves of the body and that wrung from him a
cry for mercy, not for himself, but for others : " Father,
forgive them; for they know not what they do."
The Roman soldiers sat down at the foot of the cross.
One of them took some dice out of his pocket. Another pro
duced abottle of cheap sour wine. Then, beneath the shadow
of the cross, with the blood trickling down from the burn
ing arms and feet of the Crucified, they drank and gambled
for the garment of the One who died to save them.1
The hill where the crucifixion took place was upon one
of the highways that led to Jerusalem, and pilgrims passing
stopped to look at the scene, then joined with the chief
priests in their taunts to the dying One. Two brigands —
sharers, probably, in that insurrection which Barabbas had
set on foot — were crucified, one on either side of Christ.
One of them joined in the taunts of the multitude ; the
other, touched by something in the power and presence of
the dying One, rebuked his companion, then turned to
Jesus with the cry, "Jesus, remember me when thou comest
in thy kingdom," and received the answer, "To-day shalt
thou be with me in Paradise."
Among the groups about the cross was one standing a
little apart — John, the most loving, and also the most
courageous, and Christ's mother, watching to the last, un
able to relieve, but unable to go away till all was over. In
broken accents Christ addresses them. " Mother," he
said, " Mother, look ! thy son. Son, look ! thy mother."
It was enough. From that day forth the disciple whom
Christ loved became the guardian of the mother whom
Christ loved.
It was between twelve and three o'clock in the after
noon when murky and waterless clouds began to overcast
the horizon and fill all the air with that strange, mysterious,
and awful silence which presages an earthquake. The
birds hushed their singing and fled to their nests. The
lamps were lighted in the Temple at Jerusalem. The dark
ness grew so dense that men and women hurried to
their homes, wondering what was to come. In this hour
!The "vinegar" referred to in John xix., 29, etc., is the fcsca or mixture of
sour wine or vinegar and water which the Roman soldiers were accustomed to
drink. See Thayer's " Lexicon of New Testament " under o£os (oxos).

THE CRUCIFIXION 167
of darkness the Father seemed to have left his well-beloved
Son, and when this sense of intolerable desolation came
over him, it wrung from his lips the cry, " Eloi, eloi, lama
sabacthani " — My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me ? Yet even then he did not forsake his God. It was
not "God, God!" but "My God, My God!" Still he
clung to the Father who seemed for the moment even to
his shattered faith to have flung him off. The burning
fever that scorched his brain and parched his lips wrung
from him the cry, "I thirst." One of the bystanders,
probably one of the soldiers, ran, and, dipping a sponge in
the sour wine they were drinking, lifted it to his lips ; but
some of the others, callous to the last, scornfully inter
vened. They pretended to misunderstand his prayer as
a cry to Elijah for help. "Let him alone," said they;
" let us see if Elijah will deliver him."
But at the same moment came the deliverance from his
Father. He perceived the answer, and cried with a loud,
strong voice, " It is finished." And then, as though in that
very hour of entreaty to his Father he heard the Father's
response, he breathed forth his final prayer, " Father, into
thy hands I commit my spirit," his head dropped upon his
bosom, and he was gone. A little later the Roman soldiers
came that way with orders to hasten the death of the three
condemned. They broke the legs of the two malefactors.
To their surprise, Jesus was already dead ; but one of
them, to make sure of it, with brutal celerity characteristic
of the Roman, plunged his short spear into the crucified
side, and out gushed blood and water to bear its conclu
sive witness to the reality of his death.
Ge'rome's picture of the crucifixion represents the sol
diery and the chief priests returning to the city, and only
the shadows of the cross are seen upon the ground. I
seek here, not to paint the crucifixion, but simply to point
to the shadows which it casts. Velasquez represents the
crucifixion of Jesus in the hour of death. The head has
fallen forward, and the long hair fallen over the face veils
the features from our sight. So here, with hesitating pen,
I seek to represent our dying Lord — his anguish veiled,
his love revealed, in this his supreme self-sacrifice for love's
sake.

CHAPTER XLIII.— THE RESURRECTION
MORNING
Mark xvi., 1-8 ; John xx., 1-18 ; Matt, xxviii., 1-15

The disciples were heartbroken at the death of Christ.
They had never understood his prophecies of either his
crucifixion or his resurrection. Nor is this strange. Christ
was accustomed to talk to them in parables and metaphors.
He was a poet. They were plain, prosaic men who could
not understand metaphors. His intensity of nature, his
spiritual vision, his transcendent teaching, often puzzled
and perplexed them. When he meant to be taken literally,
they thought he was talking parables. When he was talk
ing parables, they took him literally. He cautioned them
against the leaven of the Pharisees. They thought it was
because they had no bread. He told them that the time
of conflict was coming and they must be prepared for it.
They produced in exultation a couple of swords. When
he told them that the kingdom of God was at hand, they
expected his coronation and enthronement, and asked for
the best places on his light hand and on his left. On the
other hand, when he told them that he was going away,
and they knew whither he was going and the wry, they re
plied that they did not know. When he said, "A little
while and ye shall not see me, and a little while and ye
shall see me," they said to one another, "What is this little
while ? We cannot understand what he is talking about."
So when he told them that the Son of man would be cruci
fied, and would be raised from the dead again the third day,
they thought that this was one of his metaphors, his par
ables. They did not comprehend it.
His death, therefore, left them without hope. The
women weeping at the tomb had love for him still, but no
hope of his reappearance and little faith in his Messiahship.
We had trusted, said the disciples, that this had been he
168

THE RESURRECTION MORNING 169
which should have redeemed Israel. This is the language
of men who trust thus no longer. Faith was dead ; hope
was dead ; only love lived : and love without faith and
hope is anguish.
The incidents of the resurrection morn it is not alto
gether easy to bring together into a connected narrative.
No one evangelist gives more than a partial account of
the resurrection events, and there are naturally discrepan
cies between these partial and incomplete narratives. But
there are no contradictions — that is, no statements by one
writer irreconcilable with the statements of other writers—
and no differences, I believe, after a careful study of the
narratives, which might not be readily harmonized if we
knew all the facts.
Several women (the exact number is not known) go early
in the morning of the first day of the week to the stpulcher.
Their purpose is to complete the anointing of the body of
their Lord, which was left incomplete when darkness over
took the sad group on Friday night' How they can get into
the tomb is a perplexity to them, for the door is closed by
a heavy stone which they have not the strength to roll
away. When they reach the tomb, behold, the stone has
been rolled away. They enter into the sepulcher; an
angelic messenger there assures them that Christ is risen,
and bids them go and tell the disciples, and especially
Peter, of the fact. They hasten with their news, but the
disciples do not believe them. Mere women's tales this
story of a resurrection appears to the fishermen disciples.
Two of them, however, are sufficiently stirred by the story
to return with one of the women to the grave. When they
reach the sepulcher and look in and see that it is empty,
and see that the grave-clothes are still there, not left in
disorder, but neatly folded and put in place, there flashes
into the intuitive mind of John the meaning of Christ's
prophecies ; and he saw, it is said, and believed. Mary,
overwhelmed with grief at the helplessness of their sit
uation; Mary, who has not yet taken in the truth of
the resurrection, and thinks that the Lord's tomb has
been robbed and the Lord's body borne away to some
dishonored grave, remains weeping, and is accosted by
some one whom she believes to be the gardener until he
pronounces her name in the familiar accents of her Master.

170 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
This identifies him, and she hastens back to Jerusalem to
confirm the tidings before brought of the resurrection.1
Meanwhile the soldiers have made their report to the
chief priests, and have been bribed to start the story which
is subsequently found in Jewish traditions, that the grave
has been rifled by the disciples — a story which, however,
has no standing to-day even in the tribunals of skepticism.
Here we break off the narrative of the resurrection morn,
to continue the story next week of the subsequent incidents
between the resurrection and the ascension.
1 This incident, given fully in John xx., n-18, is probably the one briefly
referred to in Matthew xxviii., 9, 10.

CHAPTER XLIV.— FURTHER RESURRECTION
APPEARANCES
Luke xxiv., 13-53; J°hn xx., 19-29

The appearances of Jesus Christ to the women and the
discovery Gf the empty tomb by Peter and John had kft
the disciples in great perplexity. What to make of it all
they did not know. The notion of a real resurrection was
" too good to be true." The soul does not readily adapt
itself to so great a change as was involved in the transition
from the despair of Friday night to a faith in a Messiah
whom even death could not vanquish. Moreover, as yet, it
must be confessed, the report was not sufficiently authen
ticated. Peter and John had found the grave empty ; but
it might have been robbed. Mary thought she had seen
Christ ; but she first thought him to be tne gardener, and
first thoughts are sometimes the most trustworthy. An
angel had told the women that Christ had risen; but an
angel's message reported by women did not suffice — can
we wonder ? — to satisfy the Apostles. Simon Peter said
that Christ had appeared to him : this was the best evi
dence the others had ; but Simon Peter was impulsive,
ardent, the reverse of cool-blooded and judicial. Could
his judgment be depended on ? Partly to discuss the events
of the past, the present extraordinary conditions, and their
plans and purposes for the future, that Sunday evening ten
of the disciples met in an upper chamber in Jerusalem.
Was it, I wonder, the same chamber where they had that
last sad meeting with their Master? The doors were
closed, for they justly apprehended some further attack
upon them. Judas Iscariot knew their place of meeting,
and, if Judas had already committed suicide, it is by no
means certain that the others knew of it. They had had
more important matters to think about since they had last
seen him on that fateful night.
While they were conferring in whispered voices, awe-
171

I72 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
stricken, fearful, divided between fear and hope, dreading
the Jews, not impossibly suspicious even of one another,
since one had already proved a traitor, there came a knock
ing at the door. It was opened, with what caution we can
guess, and there stood two eager and breathless disciples.
They brought a strange story to confirm the reports of
Simon Peter and the women. They had been going that
very evening out to Emmaus, a village of Judea about seven
miles distant, when a stranger fell in with them. They
were talking over the events of the past few days — who
could think or talk of anything else ? — when a stranger
joined them and asked them what they were talking about.
They told him frankly how they had loved Jesus, how they
had hoped he was the Messiah, how he had been put to
death and their hopes had died with him and been buried
in his tomb. The unknown expressed surprise that they
so little comprehended the ancient prophecies, and as they
walked he interpreted those prophecies to them. Of all
the strange silences of Scripture none is stranger to me
than this, that neither of these disciples made a record of
that conversation and preserved it for future use. What
an interpretation of the Old Testament that hour's converse
must have given ! When they reached their destination,
said these two disciples, the stranger was going on, but
they persuaded him to accept their hospitality. He did
so ; the three sat down to the table together ; and as he
took the bread and broke it and blessed it, they saw in him
the person of their Lord. But no sooner had they recog
nized him than he disappeared as mysteriously as he had
appeared; and they, not even waiting to sleep, had hastened
back to Jerusalem to bring their confirmation of Christ's
resurrection to the others.
While the group were discussing this report, suddenly
Jesus appeared among them. How he entered they could
not tell. He pronounced on them the benediction of
peace, the customary Jewish salutation. He calmed their
fears, assuring them that he was no apparition ; and, to
add assurance to his words, he bade them feel his hands
and feet and wounded side, and asked for food, and ate
before them all. Then he repeated, in substance, his
interpretation of the Old Testament, showing them that
his passion and death, so far from being a defeat, was a

FURTHER RESURRECTION APPEARANCES 173
fulfillment of the ancient prophecies. Had they compre
hended the Scripture, they should have anticipated the
crucifixion. I am glad Thomas was one of the Apostles, and I am
glad he was not there that evening. For Thomas was a
natural unbeliever. He had plenty of loyalty, but no faith.
He was a plain, practical, prosaic man. He was not — one
can easily imagine him saying this to himself — he was not
a woman to mistake a gardener for a ghost ; nor a Peter to
jump at conclusions because they agreed with his ardent
desires ; nor a John to confound the creations of his imag
ination with the conclusions of his reason. He prided
himself on holding that " seeing is believing," and, when
the disciples reported that they had seen the Lord, re
sponded curtly that he would believe when he had put his
fingers in the nail-prints and thrust his hand in where the
spear had been thrust. If that early church had acted on
the principle on which some modern defenders of the faith
would have us act, they would have excommunicated this
unbeliever immediately. But, fortunately for us, they held
that nothing is infidelity but unfaithfulness ; and this loyal
soul — loyal despite his skepticism, loyal to the Master
though he despairingly believed him dead — they welcomed
as a brother, though he not only doubted, but even stoutly
refused to believe in, the resurrection. Fortunate for us,
I say, because when the disciples met in the same upper
chamber a week later, and Thomas met with them — possibly
with a faint glimmer of a hope that the Master would
appear to him and put an end to his doubts — He did so
appear, and vanquished them by seeming to yield to them.
But Thomas did not wait to thrust his finger into the nail-
prints or his hand into the side. Love conquered skepti
cism — it is always love, not argument, that conquers skep
ticism — and he fell at his Master's feet with a fuller
testimony to his divine Messiahship than had ever come
from the lips of even Peter or John.
The fact of the resurrection needed no further witness.
It was only left to teach its lessons.

CHAPTER XLV— THE LESSON OF THE
RESURRECTION
John xxi., 1-17; Matthew xxviii., 16-20; Luke xxiv., 50-53

The disciples were convinced that death had not extin
guished the life of their Master, nor ended his mission ;
but they were still in perplexity. By his successive reap
pearances he revealed the reality of his life ; but he lived
in another, though a seemingly contiguous, world, and came
and went mysteriously, always disappearing as suddenly and
strangely as he appeared. But he did not take command,
and without a commander this little band felt themselves
helpless. Galilee was their home ; in Galilee they had
spent the most joyous hours of their companionship with
him ; to Galilee he bade them return ; and to Galilee they
went. Peter's restless spirit forbade him to wait in inac
tivity for he knew not what. " I am going to resume my
fishing," he said. " We will go with thee," said the others.
Fishing, as conducted by these Galilean fishermen, is not
sport. It is hard work. On this occasion they toiled all
night, and caught nothing. In the early gray of the morn
ing they saw a figure on the shore. The Unknown called
out to them : " Have you anything to eat ?" " No !" they
shouted across the water. " Cast the net on the right side
of the ship, and ye shall find." They took the hint, cast
the net, and found it so full of fish that they could not draw
it into the boat. The remembrance of that morning when
the Master had similarly enabled them to follow a night of
useless toil with a great catch of fish 1 flashed on the mind of
John, and he exclaimed to Peter, " It is the Lord !" Peter
sprang into the sea and swam ashore, leaving the others to
follow in their boat, dragging the net with them. The
Unknown had kindled a fire and was cooking some fish on
the coals ; he had some bread as well, and invited the tired
'Luke v., 1-7.
174

THE LESSON OF THE RESURRECTION 175
and hungry fishermen to breakfast with him. They knew
him ; yet, in their awe, dared not question him. Breakfast
over, there ensued that ever-memorable colloquy between
Christ and Peter. " Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me
more than these ?" " Yea, Lord; thou knowest I have an
affection for thee." " Feed my lambs. — Simon, son of
Jonas, lovest thou me ?" " Yea, Lord ; thou knowest I have
an affection for thee." " Shepherd my sheep. — Simon,
son of Jonas, hast thou affection for me ?" And Peter, it is
said, was grieved because the third time Christ said, Hast
thou an affection for me ? and he answered, humbly but
earnestly, " Lord, thou knowest all things ; thou know
est I have an affection for thee." Jesus said to him, " Feed
my little sheep."? I do not know where one can find a
more beautiful illustration of the nature of Christ's forgive
ness — no reproaches for the past, no penances, no proba
tion, no degradation of rank ; only a new issuing of the old
commission. Love and service — these are the witnesses
of repentance ; Christ asks no others and will take none
less. A little later he met the eleven again on One of the hill
tops of Galilee, and renewed the commission to all. " Go
ye," he said, " and disciple all nations, baptizing them into
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost ; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I
have commanded you; and, lo, I am with you every day
unto the end of the world." 2 Once again he meets them
— in the locality of Bethany, Luke tells us — declines to
tell them when the kingdom of God will come in power and
manifested glory, but bids them go forth to bear witness
to him throughout the world, and is then taken up and
received by a cloud out of their sight, to appear no more.3
The lesson of the resurrection is very plain, and hardly
needs the subsequent history of the early Church to em
phasize it. Christ has interpreted it by his repeated com
missions : " Feed my sheep ;" " Disciple all nations ;" " Ye
shall be my witnesses." We are not to remain at the cross
gazing at it. We are not to remain at the tomb weeping.
1 Two different Greek words are rendered love in both the old and the newt
versions— unfortunately, because an understanding of the difference is abso
lutely vital to an understanding of the conference.
3 Matt, xxviii.. 16-20.
3 Luke xxiv., 50-53 ; Acts, i., 1-11.

176 THE LIFE OF CHRIST
We are not to go back to Palestine for a Christ, and seek
the living among the dead. We are not to stand gazing up
into heaven, or looking forward into the future, wondering
when and how he will come again. We are not to waste
our time in idle disputations about the nature of his resur
rection body — how he could ascend into heaven with flesh
and blood? or,if the resurrection was of the " spiritual body,"
what became of the body of flesh and blood? We are to
take the message of the Easter day — Christ is risen ; we
are to find in it the evidence that he is indeed the Messiah
for whom the world has so long been waiting ; we are to
see in these two events — the crucifixion and the resurrec
tion — the evidence of his love and of his power ; and then
we are to go forth to bear witness in all the world to both
the love and the power, to make disciples of all nations, to
teach them who Christ is and what Christianity means,
and to feed them on the words, the life, the real and living
presence, of the Son of God, the Saviour of mankind.

THE END