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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY
The Historic Christ
In the Faith of To-day
The Historic Christ
IN
The Faith of To-day
BY
WILLIAM ALEXANDER GRIST
New York Chicago Toronto
Fleming H. Revelb Company
London and Edinburgh
Copyright, ion, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago : 123 N. Wabash Ave.
Toronto : 25 Richmond St., W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street
CONTENTS
i.
n.
in. IV. V.
I.
II.
III. IV. V.
INTRODUCTION
THE FAITH BEHIND THE GOSPELS
BOOK I
THE DAYS OF THE PREPARATION
The Presupposed Ideal of the Gospels
From the Ideal to the Historic Christ
The Voice in the Wilderness .
Jesus is Baptized by John
The Temptation of the Son of God
BOOK II
THE ANNUNCIATION OF THE KINGDOM
The Morning Star and the Sun of Righteousness
The First Months of Jesus' Ministry
Jesus' Message of the Sovereignty of God
The Miracles of Jesus .....
The First Breach between Jesus and Judaism
PAGE 32
42 50
58
73
86
96
109122.
BOOK III
THE SCHOOL OF JESUS
I. The New Apostolate
II. The Ideal Life of the New Kingdom — The Ordination Discourse
on the Mount
III. The Ethic of Discipleship in the Reign of God
IV. The Training of Evangelists in Two Missions
BOOK IV
THE BEGINNING OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN
JESUS AND THE HIERARCHY
I. The Examination and Defence of Jesus ....
II. The Egoism of Jesus
III. The Peraan Vision
IV. The Raising of Lazarus 5
135
146156167
181193
207215
Contents
BOOK V
THE REJECTED KING
CHAP. J PAGE
I. The Feeding of the Multitude 231
II. The Mysticism of Jesus and the Disillusionment of the
People 242
III. Despised and Rejected of Men 255
IV. Peter's Confession at Cssarea Philippi 265
V. The Messiah's First Announcement of the Passion . . . 277
BOOK VI
SELF-DEDICATION UNTO DEATH
I. The Transfiguration 287
II. The Disciples of the Messiah 299
III. The Church of the Messiah 311
IV. The Days of His Analepsis 325
V. The Ministry of Ransom 338
BOOK VII
THE ROYAL PROGRESS AND MESSIANIC
STRUGGLE
I. Through Jericho to Bethany 351
II. The Triumphal Entry ........ 364
III. The Passing Day of Grace 375
IV. Attack and Counter-Attack 387
BOOK VIII
THE LAST DAYS OF THE PASSION
I. The Greeks Desire to See Jesus 403
II. The Apocalypse of Jesus 416
III. The Last Supper 431
IV. The Valediction 446
BOOK IX
THE FINISHED WORK
I. The Hour and the Cup 45g
II. The Way of the Cross 471
III. Jesus Rises and Appears 485
IV. The Regnant but Veiled Christ 499
INTRODUCTION
THE FAITH BEHIND THE GOSPELS
INTRODUCTION
THE FAITH BEHIND THE GOSPELS
I. One of the elements of modern religious life to be greatly
prized is a widespread desire to learn all that can be known of
Jesus of Nazareth. Every attempt to meet this need of a reliable
representation of the facts about Jesus must be based upon pro
longed criticism of the historical sources, combined with recurrent
contemplation of His Person. The Gospels must be appraised,
or they will never be appreciated. Evasion of free inquiry, either
on the pretext of the sanctity of the books or the majesty of their
subject, excites a corrosive suspicion that the history cannot be
trustworthy. Even now an opinion is abroad that we cannot be
sure of the truth of the Gospels ; and with it mingles an impatience
at endless, abstruse inquiries which lead nowhere. From all sorts
and conditions of men there comes a loud demand for frankness
from competent scholars. While there can be only a limited num
ber of men intellectually equipped for dealing with the recondite
problems arising out of the Synoptical and Johannine literature,
there is a growing multitude who feel themselves held by the soul's
quest for Jesus Christ. The following study, therefore, aims at
showing how one of the multitude who seek for this supremely
important knowledge, having been guided by an honest, earnest
impressionism, has gained the satisfaction of a reconstructed con
ception of the world's greatest, most loving and Divine Teacher.
Jesus is no spent force; He is still luring men forward by His
gracious, strong personality. The rigorous criticism to which the
Gospels have been subjected has resulted in a vindication of their
substantial historicity. Phcenixlike a new thought of Jesus rises
from the fires of criticism, and we see this indestructible Person
more clearly than any generation since the time of the Apostles.
How He lived and died, what He believed and taught, can be
discovered with greater certainty and lucidity by reason of the
work done by scholars and critics. 9
10 Introduction
2. It should never be forgotten that the objective of all study
of the New Testament is to see Jesus and to reproduce His image
for others. The peril of all historical research, however, is that
the goal may be forgotten through the interests inherent in the
processes. The beauty and perfection of living things are seen
best, not in the laboratory, but in the open air. They who desire
to get the best out of the Gospels must cultivate this open-air
mood — an attitude at once impressionable and responsive. If the
present can be explained only through the past, the past can be
understood only by the present. Knowledge of human nature to
day is the guide for every student of the past. Even in the tasks
of criticism, some of the instruments of research must be sought
outside the library ; gifts of sympathy, imagination, and knowledge
of affairs are as necessary as scholarship for the treatment of the
Gospels. Critical results are often errant and crude because
the humanness of the story has been neglected, and the evangelists
have been regarded as types and personifications of theological
tendencies. There are difficulties, uncertainties, obscurities and
discrepancies in the Gospels : these, however, may be over-em
phasized; for it must be admitted that, if such defects were all
cleared away, the impression Jesus has made upon the minds of
men would not be materially modified. Some difficulties there
are, which inhere in the naturalistic bias of the inquirer, rather
than in the subject itself. After scholarship and criticism have
been given freest exercise, a spiritual reconsvi-uction of the mate
rials is necessary; and for this the student must be qualified by a
certain moral affinity with Jesus Himself. We deprecate no criti
cism of the Gospels, however ruthless ; but we deem contemplation
of Christ as equally necessary in every attempt to discover Him
afresh. And for this task which has been laid upon our age, all
thoughtful persons are qualified in part ; for the character depicted
in the Gospels embodies the Ideal which is latent in the constitu
tion of human reason. The fuller our knowledge of Jesus Christ
becomes, the more does it appear that He answers objectively and
historically to that moral idealism which exists in embryo in every
intelligence. 3. One of the defects charged against the Gospels is their sub
jectivity. They give us, it is said, men's thoughts and feelings
about Christ rather than a trustworthy photograph of Him. It
is true, Jesus can be seen only as He was mirrored in other minds ;
The Faith Behind the Gospels 11
and the tone and colour of those minds affect their representations
of Him. But all written history must plead guilty of this char
acteristic of subjectivity; the most scientific historians can but
write as they think and feel. Such anthropomorphism is inex
tricably bound up with all knowledge. The logic of modern
Pyrrhonism undermines all science before it completes the circle
and passes over into dogmatism. The admission that the Gospels
were produced in harmony with the laws of human thought may
be made ungrudgingly; the authors, whoever they were, could
but give us their reflection of the Master. We read but once
of His writing, and that was in the dust ; the only authorship He
aimed at was of " living epistles " — the changed characters of
men. And at first the disciples seem to have cherished no design
of writing about Him; they cannot be thought of as contem
porary diarists or literary artists; they were not reporters. So
far as they were concerned, the Gospels were an afterthought.
The glorified Christ of the Apostles was not only the antecedent,
but also the raison d'etre of the Gospels. It was the faith author
itatively expressed in the Epistles that made the writing of the
Gospels a necessity; it became an obligation upon the Church to
recount the facts which created the apostolic faith; and in their
turn those later writings became the noblest apologia for the
Apostles' Creed. The remarkable propaganda that followed the
Crucifixion created the spiritual atmosphere in which alone the
Gospels could be produced. It is worthy of note that, in an
incredibly short time, the Apostles passed from cowardice to
invincible courage, from despondency to triumphant faith. They
boldly ascribed to Jesus a heavenly or ideal preexistence, teach
ing that He had passed from a heavenly state into human history
through the gate of birth ; that, after a period of preparation and
humiliation, He offered Himself as a sacrifice, and finally rising
from the dead ascended into Heaven, where, from the throne of
Divine Power, He pursues a mediatorial ministry as Redeemer.
We do not recapitulate these beliefs in any dogmatic manner;
our purpose is historical — to review the primitive faith that in
spired the writing of the Gospels. Of this faith Harnack writes :
" On the one hand, it was so simple that it could be summed up
in a few brief sentences, and understood in a single crisis of the
inner life. On the other hand, it was so versatile and rich that
it vivified all thought and stimulated every emotion." x To this
1 The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, Moffatt's
trans.
12 Introduction
it must be added that the first Christians also believed that
Christ Jesus would shortly return in apocalyptic splendour ; that,
in preparation for this consummation, the glorified Christ was
calling men to be heirs of salvation, and by dwelling within their
spirits He was constituting them into an ecclesia. This faith
could not be dissolved by philosophic speculation; it became the
root of a new social-ethic, which is " both individualistic and
socialistic." Its two watchwords were repentance and faith,
signifying man's detachment from the " world " and his attach
ment to God. Further, the rule and pattern of the Christian
life consisted, for the most part, in apostolic remembrances of the
conduct and teaching of Jesus. It is an historic fact that the
propaganda of this new faith resulted in the regeneration of a
great part of the human race. The realization of these move
ments of the Spirit of Jesus gave birth to the impulse to collect,
sift and edit all authentic memories of the wondrous ministry
that lay behind these phenomena.
4. To those who are accustomed to set the " simple Gospels "
in contrast with the dogmatic teachings of the Epistles, it will
seem paradoxical to attribute a formative influence upon the
Gospels to St. Paul: yet, while the passing fashion of thought
may depreciate the spiritual value of the Pauline writings and
deprecate their masterful influence upon the Church, history
affirms that this gifted and earnest apostle was the first to present
the faith in Jesus as a Universal Religion. St. Paul's exposition
of the mind of Christ and of the world-wide significance of
Redemption made the Gospels necessary, and we cannot but wish
that he had been one of the Twelve. His epistles are often
described as scholastic and theological, remote in theme and
treatment from the personal piety of Jesus. A brief summary
of St. Paul's allusions to Christ, however, acts as a corrective
of this misapprehension, and shows that he was not indifferent
to the actual history of Jesus. The twenty years that elapsed
between the reputed Resurrection and the beginning of the literary
activity that created the New Testament were abridged by an
ardent evangelism based upon the facts of Christ's ministry.
In order to illustrate the relationship of the Epistles to the
Gospels, we may select the letter to the Galatians, which, by
reason of its dogmatic and controversial character, forms an
antithesis to the lucid, sublime simplicity of the Synoptics. This
The Faith Behind the Gospels 13
Pauline tract on Christian Liberty presupposes a generation of
evangelical activity, while it represents the new problems of a
subsequent age (53 a.d.) ; in its record of St. Paul's visit to
Jerusalem, it carries us up the stream to within five years of
Christ's Crucifixion (34 a.d.), and relates how the Apostle had
personal intercourse with James, Cephas and John. These three
men carried in their memories the fullest knowledge of the Min
istry of Jesus. The facts of those three memorable years had
been burnt into their lives, and could not be erased in half a
decade; the acts, words and looks of the Master were still fresh
in their minds, and as they conversed with St. Paul their reminis
cences formed their theme and matter. This little concrete fact
of the Apostle's experience imparts great cogency and convinc
ingness to every allusion he makes in his letters to the historic
Jesus. 5. While Jewish, Greek and Latin influences beat in upon the
new religion, and helped to fashion its external form, there was
at the heart of it a primitive deposit of apostolic memories of
Jesus which constituted Its central, Hving cell. The environment
explains nothing until assumption is made of the presence of a
mysterious life-force. At the heart of the Primitive Church
there wrought the faith in Jesus — a new dynamic, effectual alike
as an ethic and as a pure theosophy. A few examples culled
from the great authentic writings of St. Paul will justify this
postulate. The address to the community " in God," in the
earliest epistle to the Thessalonians (c. 51 a.d.) arrests our
attention by its remarkable coordination of the name of Jesus
with the name of the Father. That a strict Jew should collocate
these names without fear of infringing the rigorous monotheism
of his race — and he a writer of great dialectical skill and specu
lative insight — is a phenomenon that attests the boundless in
fluence of Jesus. Had some Greek author associated Jesus with
the Deity, our surprise would have been less ; but that this erudite
Jew, who had learnt of the Man of Nazareth from the Galilean
fishermen, should not shrink from linking with the Godhead
One who, a few years before, had been crucified as a malefactor —
this, indeed, is an astonishing tribute to the greatness of Jesus.
Further, it is evident that the Apostle did not leave his converts
at Thessalonica without adequate instruction concerning the Man
whom he ranks with God: he writes to them as persons fully
14 Introduction
conversant with the Divine pattern given by Jesus, and as those
who wait for the Son of the living and real God from Heaven,
" whom He raised from the dead, Jesus our rescuer from the
wrath to come." And since St. Paul also quotes " a word of the
Lord " (iv. 17) for confirmation of his own teaching about the
second advent, it may be inferred that he was acquainted with
the disciples' accounts of the logia of Jesus. Between the epistles
to the Thessalonians and the great classic letters addressed to
Galatia and Rome, there is no doctrinal discrepancy. " God
appointed us not to wrath, but to possess salvation through our
Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us that, whether we wake or
sleep, we should live along with Him." It is relevant to our
purpose to note that the ethical echoes of Jesus in the Pauline
epistles are both numerous and important, although to trace them
here would take us too far afield. When the Apostle exhorts his
readers to " stand firm and hold to the traditions that you have
been taught by word or by letter from us," there is reason to
suppose that the body of apostolic teaching referred to was
constituted by the accepted accounts of Jesus Christ.
6. Since it is of great importance that the gap between the
close of Christ's early ministry and the writing of the Gospels
be filled, we may pass from the traces of St. Paul's knowledge
of the traditions and the " law of Christ " back to the crisis of
the Apostle's inner life when the Lord from Heaven subdued
his fierce enmity and laid upon him the obligation to be a mis
sionary. Lord Lyttleton affirmed that the " conversion and
apostleship of St. Paul alone, duly considered, is of itself a
demonstration sufficient to prove Christianity to be a divine reve
lation." The latest calculation of this event supposes it to have
happened within six or seven years of the Crucifixion, but prob
ably it ought to be placed within eighteen months of that event ;
and it is worthy of note that so great an authority as Harnack
places it in the same year as the Crucifixion. This general
recognition of the early date of St. Paul's conversion gives added
weight to what is said as to the substantial trustworthiness of
apostolic traditions about the Ministry of Jesus. But our em
phasis is now to fall upon the historic fact that Jesus absolutely
mastered the potent personality of St. Paul — that is to say,
henceforth the Apostle exulted in being the bondslave of Christ
Jesus. So absolute became the sway of Christ over St. Paul's
The Faith Behind the Gospels 15
mind, that his very life was merged in the experiences of Jesus :
the Apostle claimed to have died with Christ, to have been raised
with Him; and out of this mystical subjugation emerged a will
of tremendous force, an intellectual greatness of the highest
type, and a rare spiritual enthusiasm. By his own confession,
we learn that the mainspring of his thought, emotion and activity
was Christ in him. The mind of St. Paul became the mirror
of Jesus Christ. The ground of the Apostle's appeal to the
Corinthians " was the gentleness and forbearance of Christ " ;
the formula of adjuration used by him was, " As the truth of
Christ is in me." He strove to be loyal in intellect and heart to
Christ Jesus while he boldly assayed the great task of interpreting
the mind of his Lord to the Greek-speaking world. This apostle
emancipated the infant church from sectarian and national limita
tions : he discerned and preached the universality of Christ. The
suspicion that St. Paul diverted the stream of Christianity, and
changed a simple ethic into a supernatural gnosis, is not borne
out by the Gospels. If it is true that the Church has been
dominated by Paulinism, it is likewise true that the mind of
St. Paul can only be explained through the Historic Christ.
The modern representation of the teachings of Jesus and Paul
as antagonistic is false. The Gospels themselves were fashioned
under the influence of the Apostolic Faith; but Paulinism was
created by the facts which are recorded in the Gospels. While
the Epistles come first as literature, the Gospels possess historical
priority. The writers of the New Testament wrote with their
eyes fastened upon Jesus. They occupied different points of
view; they brought varied qualifications to their task, and yet,
from their twenty-seven books, there emerges one, vital, con
sistent representation of Jesus as the Incarnate Son of God.
BOOK I
THE DAYS OF THE PREPARATION
CHAPTER I
THE PRESUPPOSED IDEAL OF THE GOSPELS
I. There can be no authentic biography of Jesus; the mate
rials for writing it do not exist. The Gospels, however historic,
do not attempt to give us scientific history; they are transpar
ently dogmatic, written to justify and propagate an Ideal of
Jesus which constituted the inmost cell of the Christian Church
and the protoplasm of a new theology. The prosaic disciples of
Jesus did not despise history, but they treated the external
history of their Master as the shell of a Divine Revelation; the
bare facts of the ministry of Christ were of value in their eyes
simply because they shadowed forth the personality of their
Lord. If the suspicion hovers over our minds that the modern
conception of Jesus is the product of philosophic speculation and
romanticism, we shall fail utterly to appreciate the Gospels; for
these writings of the first and second century are saturated with
a lofty, catholic idealism which originated in the oral reports of
Jesus. Those who adventure to set forth the origins of Chris
tianity have to steer cautiously between the Scylla of an idealism
which has no pragmatic base and the Charybdis of a naturalism
which discredits all transcendence of the Spiritual. When we
succeed in escaping in some measure the preconceptions and
prejudices of our modern time, and turn with open, frank, dis
cerning eyes to the Faith that lay behind the Gospels and the
ideas diffused through their pages, a sentiment of wonder grows
in our minds that the accumulated wealth of philosophy, poetry
and history extending over nineteen centuries has not carried us
one step higher than the Pauline and Johannine conception of
Jesus Christ. There are scholars who suspect that this Ideal
is semi-mythical, and that it arose from the romantic exaggera
tions of hero-worship; they believe that, when historical criti
cism has swept away the Aberglaube and dogmatic incrustations
and got down to the natural truth of the Gospels, there will
remain only the figure of a good man, who has been strangely
overrated. The worth of this judgement must be gauged at
19
20 The Days of the Preparation
the conclusion of a critical study of the Gospels; we make no
valuation of it at this point. But we do protest against the
method of adopting this suspicion at the beginning as a canon
of criticism, and proceeding to cut down the Figure of Jesus to
the proportions of an ordinary man. Whatever may be the final
results of our studies in the life of Jesus, it is demanded of us
to give an early recognition of the general Ideal of Jesus Christ
which was the dogmatic presupposition and final cause of the
entire New Testament. Even were this explicit acknowledge
ment of the dominating and formative influence of the Christ-
ideal upon the Gospels to result in a lessened belief in their
historicity, we should nevertheless be bound to make it, as for
us it is the key of the New Testament. We do not, however,
assent to the position that the presence of dogmatism in the minds
of those who selected and propagated the accounts of Jesus'
work undermines all historical reliability in the traditions trans
mitted through them.
2. One of the dangers of our age, both in industry and
scholarship, is over-specialization and the corresponding loss of
balance and proportion in the minds of men. Whether by an
unconscious suppression of facts through mental preoccupation,
or through absorption in certain aspects of the Gospels and the
exclusion of others, the fair vision of the whole is often lost
and the judgement relatively impaired. There is often more
justice in naive impressionism than in a partial criticism. In
making an estimate of a character, a book, or a picture, attention
to the whole ought to precede the special observation of parts;
the tout ensemble must be apprehended before the value of de
tails and special features can possibly be seen. The realm of
music affords an illustration of this truth — a judgement based
merely upon the ear's appreciation of passing sounds is of little
worth ; the true musician either possesses a prophetic intuition of
the whole or acquires a first general impression of the work into
which the phrases, movements and symphonies must be integrated.
If he cannot hold all the parts together in his mind, he will
be unable to judge them separately. This principle applies to
the criticism of the Gospels; the parts must be viewed through
the whole, and in its turn the view of the whole will be re
constituted by increased knowledge of all the parts. Now the
attempt to gain a general impression of the whole scope of the
The Presupposed Ideal of the Gospels 21
Gospels, brings us back upon the Christ-ideal which dominates
them throughout; there are not four different and inconsistent
Christs, but one Ideal created by the character of Jesus. This
is the unifying conception of all the heterogeneous traditions
that have been compiled by the four evangelists. The resultant
unity of the general impression of Jesus is due neither to the
collusion of the writers nor to the suppression of their indi
vidualities; and it does not depend upon the inerrancy of their
records, nor upon any mechanical harmony or correspondence.
It is possible to lose one's way amid the minutiae of modern
research — to fail to see the wood because of the trees; but if
we approach the Gospels with honest impressionism, although
the diversities, discrepancies and graver defects of these books
are known, yet the imagination is filled with the Figure of one
great majestic Man. The broken lines and seams are as the
leaded frame of a lattice window through which looks out upon
us the calm, noble, wonderful face of Jesus. The simple faith
of the uncritical multitudes all through the last nineteen cen
turies assures us of the resultant unity of the Gospels; there
is no irreconcilable disagreement between St. Mark's realistic
sketch of the Carpenter of Nazareth and St. Luke's gracious
idealized portrait of the Lord and Saviour; between the Master
depicted in the framework of Jewish Messianism by St. Matthew
and the Son of God described by a fourth evangelist in the
gentle radiance of the Logos philosophy.
3. That ruthless criticism, which reduces these four books
to a tangle of uncertain traditions derived from obscure and
unknown sources, only increases our wonder at this unified
Ideal. An apprehension of the nature of this resultant unity
of the Gospels — a preliminary contemplation of this idealized
synthesis of all the records in the one Christ-character — orientates
the mind to the apostolic point of view, and aids in an under
standing of the purpose of these writings. Those who are so
enamoured of the purely inductive method as to protest against
this way of beginning our study of the Ministry of Jesus, should
remember that not only must the novice always begin by a
tentative acceptance of axioms and principles, but also that most
discoveries and advances have been preceded by foreglances
and anticipations of unities and ideals which to mere dry-as-dust
pedants must have seemed poetic and fanciful. The seer an-
22 The Days of the Preparation
ticipates the goal which can only be attained afterwards by
slow pedestrian efforts and much weariness. At the very be
ginning of New Testament research, it is necessary to reach
a hand through the years and conceive some general idea of
the whole. The constitutive value of this Christ-ideal is ad
mirably illustrated by the testimony of a Christian convert in
China, who stated that at first the doctrines of our religion had
appeared to him as the outlines of vague dreams and cloudy
shadows, but when once he gained a general knowledge of
the Christ, every incident and detail of the Gospels fell into its
place and became luminously intelligible. The Gospels must be
judged by this Ideal, and, on the other hand, this Ideal must be
continually corrected and amplified, and must grow in definite
ness and acquire ever new wealth of content, by persistent in
vestigation of the records of the Ministry of Jesus. This double
play of the mind ought to find scope in all our studies of the
Gospels and should help us in forming a fresh synthesis of all
the parts. We call attention to this presupposed Ideal of the
Gospels, not for dogmatic purposes, but that we may use it as
a part of our apparatus criticus in the subsequent examination
of the records of Christ's Ministry; and if in our course we
should find this Ideal unverifiable, we shall not hesitate to
abandon it.
4. The Christ-ideal, as the name itself implies, is a sub
limation of the Jewish Messianic hope which through the cen
turies has assumed many protean forms. This idea that Jesus
was the Messiah was the central cell and morphological unit
of the apostolic faith; in St. Paul's language he was the Second
Adam, a title justified by the claim of Jesus to be the Son of
Man. History and faith are blended in this conception of Christ
— the earthly history made the faith possible ; but the Ideal could
only have been fashioned by abstraction from mundane details,
and a concentrated attention upon the inner life of Jesus. The
belief in the Resurrection of Jesus gave the standpoint which
made such faith-vision feasible. Such was the insight of the
Apostles, that even while they used the traditions of Jesus' Min
istry to illustrate their evangelic thesis, they virtually swept aside
the mere accidents of time and place and seized upon the spiritual
personality of Jesus as a veritable revelation of God. Ancient
and modern speculation are at one in believing that living
The Presupposed Ideal of the Gospels 28
beings disclose their true nature in the end of their development.
The final cause, last in the order of time, is first in the order
of Nature. The evolutionist of the twentieth century agrees
with the Aristotelian principle that the true nature of a thing
can be understood only when the development is ended. However
interesting the beginnings may be, the real purpose of an organ
ism must be sought in its fullest and maturest phase. He only
can understand what was implicit in the beginning who has seen
and felt what became explicit in the finished course. Thus, until
we have stood at the Cross and beheld Jesus in death — nay,
until we have pondered the mystery of His reputed Resurrection
—we are not competent to judge of His birth. The experience
of many a student of the Gospels is that the mind is forced, to
return again and again upon its own postulates and assumptions
in order to modify them by its maturest cognitions. If one
adopts a naturalistic standpoint, he is soon forced into the
dilemma of abandoning either his own preconceptions or the
Gospels. 5. The Christ-ideal is the revelation of the Perfect Man, after
whom all races have instinctively inquired. Confucius had given
the Chinese his conception of the Sage and the Princely Man,
portraying the ideal harmonies of character: Plato had also
described, with almost prophetic insight, the Good-Man and the
fate which would befall him in a world such as ours; and in
our own Elizabethan age the poet Spenser pierced to the heart
of knight-errantry and set forth for his generation a type of
fine English manhood, which, however, " with all that was ad
mirable and attractive in it, had still much of boyish incom
pleteness and roughness. It had noble aims, it had generosity,
it had loyalty, it had a very real reverence for purity and re
ligion; but it was young in experience of a new world, it was
wanting in self-mastery, it was often pedantic and self-conceited,
it was an easier prey than it ought to have been to discreditable
temptations." 1 We might enumerate other ideals which have
been flung forth from the poetic and religious imagination; but
they must be acknowledged to fall short of the length, breadth
and depth of the Christ-ideal. The Son of Man embodies the
complete consciousness of Perfect Manhood; this Ideal Brother
identified Himself in all essential experience with His brethren;
1 Dean Church, Life of Spenser.
24 The Days of the Preparation
He confessed ignorance of times and seasons; He evinced a
transitory uncertainty of what the Father's will might be as He
approached the hour of His tragedy in His final struggle with
evil; He was tempted — tempted in all things, as we are; He re
sorted to prayer as His protection and inspiration; He remained
without sin — innocent, holy and undefiled. There is neither nar- •
rowness nor looseness, neither pedantry nor imperfection in this
Pattern Man ; the Apostles described Him as the Second Adam and
Representative of the human race, and as the Begetter of a
new type of manhood in the world. St. Paul treated this Ideal
as the formative principle of personal religion and the constitu
tive bond of the Christian Fellowship : " Let this mind be in
you, which was also in Christ Jesus." As our minds master
this Ideal, they are subdued by its inherent beauty and grandeur;
they are drawn out of the vortex of animal impulse and passion,
and transformed by an inward power of new life. Amid all
uncertainties and mutations of thought, the Christ-ideal abides
as the mind's permanent possession: it exists as a real fact
in our world of thought; upon it the mind may build, as upon
a rock, in the midst of the restless sea of speculation.
6. This Christ-ideal, however, cannot be attributed to the
originating power of the human imagination; the Platonic idea
of " the Good," embodying the essences of Beauty, Symmetry
and Truth, sprang from the idealizing faculty in the poet-philos
opher's mind; but the Second Adam, or Son of Man, is the
Ideal of one who actually lived and wrought in our human world.
Whatever influence the mythicizing tendency exerted in its
formation, the Christ-ideal can never be looked upon as the
pure product of legend. Some have supposed that, Athena-like,
the Christ-ideal sprang fully armed from the brain of St. Paul;
but such a suggestion is irrelevant to the facts of history. There
is no sufficient hiatus left in the post-Crucifixion days to account
for a mythical Christ; the history is too closely linked for any
facile interpolation of a mere imagination, however splendid.
We are not dealing with some pale, vague, bloodless creation
of human fancy; for this presupposed Ideal of the Gospels is
rooted in the soil of human history. In writing thus of the
Christ-ideal we are neither yielding to the pressure of senti
mental fancy nor indulging in the extravagant phantasies of
history. Mere idealism has, again and again, proved its impo-
The Presupposed Ideal of the Gospels 25
tence in the battlefield of life — ineffectual as a force levelled
against the fierce passions; therefore the highest ideal to com
mand our heart's allegiance must be based upon some historical
realization. When Arthur's knights set out in quest of the
Holy Grail, they unwittingly fought against the interests of
their own order, and made it impossible to attain to the king's
beneficent ideal. The inspiration of the Christ-ideal is of per
manent potency because it is based on the faith that the Logos
had been made flesh. In the account of St. Paul's heavenly
vision the glorified Christ affirms, " I am Jesus, whom thou -
persecutest." However imperceptible to our gross vision the
subtle stages of transition through which the impression made
by Jesus passed before it could be presented as the Ideal and
climactic Revelation of God to man, we are assured that the
actual historic Jesus gave the originating impulse to this faith,
that the impression He made upon the hearts and minds of His
intimate followers constituted its real nucleus. But, while a par
tial account of the rise of the Christ-ideal is the simple one that
Jesus created it by His ministry in Galilee and Judea, to this
we must add the frank recognition of an influential mingling
of fact and opinion in the colouring medium and bias of the
general mind of the Church. Such an admixture was inevitable, ¦
and must have begun at the first disciple's response to the call
of Jesus ; and when He was withdrawn, the memory of what He
had been and the faith in a continuing relationship with Him
in His glory wrought together in the matrix of apostolic thought.
How much was due to historic fact and how much was con
tributed by subjective conditions, may not now be determinable;
we but know that the Christ-ideal was rooted in facts of his
tory, and that the oral tradition of the work and teaching of
Jesus passed into Scripture before the glow and throb of actual
life had died away. The Gospels visualize Jesus and place us
in the maelstrom of antagonism in which He lived; we see the
forces that overthrew Him, and were afterwards defeated by
their own success. The idealization which necessarily followed
the belief in His Resurrection has not so utterly transformed the
historic reflection of the Person of Jesus as to make the Gospels
unhistorical. The perspective was widened from the arena of
Judaism to the theatre of the cosmos by St. Paul and St. John ;
but the central Figure is historic, and can be relied upon as a
true delineation of the manner of life pursued by Jesus of
26 The Days of the Preparation
Nazareth. Instead of undermining the historicity of our Gos
pels, the criticism of the past fifty years has served to make
their honesty, realism, and credibility more apparent than ever
before. 7. Our identification of the Christ-ideal presupposed in the
Gospels with the historic Jesus whose impression upon the
disciples' minds was transmuted through an experience of His
abiding influence, now leads us to inquire what it was in His
ministry that prompted such idealization. The Christian re
ligion was not produced in a vacuum by the isolated action of
Jesus ; enough has been said to show that the Christ-ideal sprang
in part out of the reaction of other minds upon the impression
of Jesus. Naturalism strives to account for Christianity by rep
resenting it as the confluence of many streams, attributing it to
such varied conditions as the supremacy of the Roman Empire,
the universal peace of that time, the general diffusion of Greek
ideas and language, and the mingling of all the varied thoughts
and influences of East and West. Historians recognize that it
was the end of one age and the beginning of another; that the
fulness of time had come. But all these intellectual forces — the
crasis of East and West, the intermingling of the ethical ideas
of Judaism, Greece and Rome, and the upspringing of the new
humanity such as is betrayed by Virgil — fail to explain the rise
of the Christian religion. There was needed the action of some
mighty personality in history to fuse these forces into a living
whole, and to fire the Ideal with enthusiasm for holiness. Such
was the achievement of Jesus of Nazareth; He perfected the
essential ideal of all religions; He focused and embodied the
Light which lighteth every man; and, by so doing, He himself
became the historic conscience of the race. Naturalism affirms
that Jesus was the Child of His age, country and race ; but when
we examine the Ideal presupposed in the Gospels and the narra
tives they offer to verify that Ideal, we come face to face with
an element of transcendence in His character. The impression
He made cannot be treated as due to ordinary hero-worship;
in order to fit Him into the procrustean frame of Naturalism,
we must first eliminate some of the characteristic features of
His self -consciousness. Having sought to measure the forces
of heredity and race-culture together with the social, political
and religious environment of Jesus, we are led to attribute to
The Presupposed Ideal of the Gospels 27
Him a mastery and moral authority able to assimilate and mould
these mingled influences to His own victorious Ego. There
is no escape from this idea of transcendence in the character of
Jesus, if we are to treat the Christ-ideal fairly; we are drawn
into the vortex of mystery and confronted by the fact that Jesus
made the impression He did upon the minds of the Apostles,
in part at least, by His amazing egotism. Without involving
ourselves prematurely in dogmatic definitions, we may acknowl
edge that one of the profoundest characteristics of Jesus was
His consciousness of a filial relationship with God. It might
have been imagined that the unique Divine Sonship belonged
exclusively to the Christ-ideal and was due to the idealization
which had gone on ; but from the Gospels we learn that this was
no posthumous title, since Jesus Himself was accused, during
His earthly ministry, of saying: " I am the Son of God." x Even
Keim accepts as authentic in St. Matthew the Johannine aerolite,
" No Man knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to whom
soever the Son willeth to reveal Him." And it remains a matter
of historic fact that Jesus was condemned by the high-priest as
worthy of death, because He made God His own Father. Such
Divine consciousness as Jesus realized may have been due to
the infusion of the Spirit of God into His soul in the experiences
of His moral life — that is, we may ascribe to it an ethical rather
than a metaphysical value; but we wish to point out, as most
important in any consideration of the Christ-ideal, that the title
of the Son of God was not the result of the disclosure of His
real nature by the Resurrection; it was claimed repeatedly by
Jesus in the days of His flesh.
8. The duality of this Christ-ideal is customarily described
in the epithet, " The Divine Humanity of Jesus " — a characteri
zation that has the merit of recognizing that Christ is at once the
centre of both human and Divine relationship. The integrity
of manhood was not impaired in Him, or He would cease to be
the Pattern, or Archetypal Man. Although in the apostolic
letters the standpoint of the Resurrection throws the emphasis
necessarily upon the exalted form of this glorious Being, the
reality of His previous historic and phenomenal existence is
assumed: the humiliation preceded His Analepsis, or assumption
into Glory. In the Gospels, the " likeness of sinful flesh " 2 in
'Matt, xxvii. 40-43. 2Rom. viii. 3.
28 The Days of the Preparation
His earthly state is accentuated in a manner which shows that
He was born of a woman under the law and participated in our
common human nature. His dissimilarity from us consisted in
His complete subordination of all animal impulses to the higher
life which we term the Spirit of God in Him. We fall and rise
again; our very lapses make us feel the quenchless thirst after
a higher type of moral life, but that of which we catch glimpses
as an ideal and sinless plane of life is assumed to have been
undeviatingly realized in the experience of Jesus. A yet greater
emphasis falls upon the reality of the Divine Spirit in the
Christ-ideal — " God's Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made
of the seed of David according to the flesh, and marked out
as Son of God with power according to the Spirit of Holiness
in consequence of His Resurrection from the dead." * That
which constituted the higher nature of Jesus and made Him so
uniquely the Son of God was the indwelling of the Spirit of God.
The Resurrection itself is not understood to have constituted
His right to be thought of as God's Son; but it was the dis
closure of His nature that showed Him to be Divine. In His
previous fleshly state, He was the Son of God in virtue of His
perfect Character, but the glory of His nature was hidden. The
Archetype and essential Ideal of manhood is perfectly embodied
in Christ Jesus, and His differentiation from us is that He lived
in fullest reciprocity with the Heavenly Father from His birth,
while we seem to be born far from our nature and only attain
unto a fluctuating realization of it after varying struggles. The
modern problem is to give due recognition to the two factors
in this dualistic ideal, and to formulate a rational conception of
the process. Are we dealing with a successful instance of the
apotheosis of a man, or with an incarnation of a God? Is it
the humanizing of Deity, or the deification of Humanity? Is
it a sonship by adoption, such as all believers are attaining unto,
or of an eternal nature and right? The modernist tendency is
toward simplification by getting rid of all dualism and identifying
the humanity of Jesus with His divinity. Controversies about
the two natures are out of touch with the present mood of
speculation ; Jesus is the Son of God because He is so truly the
Son of Man. There is an inherent attractiveness in this con
ception of the deification of Jesus; it seems simpler; it makes
prominent the identity between Jesus and other men; it brings
1Rom. i. 4.
The Presupposed Ideal of the Gospels 29
an inspiration to all who receive the Sonship of grace; and is
not to be ruled out as ipso facto impossible. Probably the
metaphysical problem is utterly beyond the range of our thought,
and it is well to lay stress on the ethical and religious phases of
Christ's Person and their values. At the same time, we do
justice to the apostolic Ideal only when we attribute to Christ
a state of preexistence with its concomitants of personal voli
tion and choice; the New Testament is full of the idea of an
incarnation rather than of the conception of deification; the
anaplerosis which followed the Resurrection was preceded some
thirty years previously by a process of kenosis, or self-emptying.
It may yet be decided that the Pauline interpretation of the pre
existent Mind of Christ is a matter of purely speculative value,
not possessing the value of Revelation; that it is a question for
Christian philosophy to determine whether the preexistent Christ
was Ideal only, or a Personal Reality; but the matter of imme
diate importance and relevance is that Jesus made such an over
whelming impression upon His followers, that, though familiar
with all the details of His ministry and the phenomena of His
human nature, they came to believe that He had come from some
higher sphere into our earthly history with a mission to reveal
God and save man. For many minds the correct attitude toward
this problem must honestly be agnostic; many others will hold
that the matter is still sub judice; to others again, since pre-
existence seems implied in the recorded claims of Jesus and was
undoubtedly a feature of the apostolic Christ-ideal, the theme will
seem closed to speculation and open only to faith. In order to
begin our historical studies of the Gospels without hampering
prejudices, it may be stated that the process of deification incurs
all the difficulties attendant upon the dogma of the Incarnation:
neither can be in harmony with the presuppositions of Natural
ism; and whether true or not, the Pauline and Johannine con
ception of the Incarnation of a Divine Person is full of ethical
and religious inspiration.
9. Whatever modifications may take place in the frame-work
of Christian philosophy, the Christ-ideal will live on with the
historic Jesus at its centre ; for it is a value- judgement of supreme
importance ; it is pregnant with ethical inspirations in the personal
piety of life; it is a formative principle in the growth of the
Church, and it will play an important part in the reconstruction
30 The Days of the Preparation
of religious thought. We have termed it " the pre-supposed
Ideal of the Gospels " ; for it not only gives the standpoint
whence the authors might compile their accounts of Jesus, but
it is the thesis they set out to prove through the medium of
history. We think that no merely human genius could have
combined into one living whole the seemingly incongruous attri
butes and experiences narrated in the Gospels, but believe that
the Ideal was so described in literature because it was first real
ized in Life. Not only is the character of the Divine-Humanity
of Christ beyond invention so that it became the Ideal only by
being a Fact, but it proves to be the light which gives unity to
the various and sometimes discrepant materials of the Gospels.
We do not deprecate criticism of the Gospels, though it be never
so thorough; at this stage there need be no frantic appeals
to dogmas of verbal or plenary inspiration in order to shield the
Christ-ideal : it may be assumed that we are all simply truth-
seekers. But when criticism has done its utmost, room must
be given for the exercise of constructive imagination; having
convinced ourselves of the heterogeneity of the traditions, their
obscure and often doubtful sources, their anonymous editorship,
we shall the more urgently demand a breath of real imagination,
and a flash of historical insight, to restore the disintegrated
picture of Jesus. " Come from the four winds, O breath, and
breathe upon the slain, that they may live." In the natural
process of criticism, certain marked traits of human nature are
placed in opposition to the uniqueness and transcendence of the
Christ-ideal ; but, however often it may be disintegrated, phcenix-
like this Ideal will rise again out of its ashes. Jesus has entered
into human history and will never leave it; He has at least
bequeathed to the world an ineffaceable Ideal of Himself. One
of George Eliot's scientific friends once pointed out that the
myriad lines and scratches on an old mirror, caused by the care
less attempts to clean it, confused and running across each other,
would all appear grouped and drawn into concentric circles
whenever a lighted candle were held close to the glass. In like
manner the radiant light of the Christ-ideal has been kindled by
Jesus, and as we hold this light the myriad discrepancies and
incoherencies of the Gospels are drawn into a new symmetry and
vital unity. The image of Christ once received into man's mind
becomes the touchstone of the very Gospels wherein it is por
trayed. The result of our renewed inquiry into these Scriptures
The Presupposed Ideal of the Gospels 31
will demonstrate that there is a real living Person behind the
Christ-ideal, and hence, however often dissolved, the Ideal is
recreated by His abiding inspiration. Jesus belongs to History,
and must therefore be the perpetual subject of historical in
quiry ; but from the time-form of the Man of Nazareth emerges
the Christ-ideal that is eternal. Faith's certainty of this Ideal
emancipates the mind to pursue its investigations without mis
giving, and a free inquiry refreshes our sense of the trustworthi
ness of both the realism of the Gospels and the idealism implicit
in their composition.
CHAPTER II
FROM THE IDEAL TO THE HISTORIC CHRIST
I. The Apostolic faith in the Christ-ideal was indissolubly
bound up with the Jesus of History ; the passage from the one to
the other was along the line of personal experience, and was not
the result of a philosophizing instinct in the Church leaders. Our
attempt to retrace their path shows them to have been guided
by a logic of life; while describing their theological Christ they
kept their fingers on the actual pulse of history. The Ideal
Person whom they had learned to love and trust had come to
them through the gates of human birth, and they viewed the
earthly history of Jesus as a little parenthesis in the eternity of
the Logos-Son. Philosophers have ever stumbled in making the
transition from an eternal calm to Time's stormy lake; the gulf
between these two conceptions seems bridgeless. The Apostles
sought no road in philosophy; their faith found a way from the
preexistent Ideal of Christ to the tragic sphere of history in
the ethic of Divine Love. The doctrine of the Divine Incarna
tion was attained, not by speculation, but by a leap of faith — by
direct intuition, by Reason's insight into the inner meaning of
Jesus from the standpoint of the Resurrection. The New Testa
ment is experimental rather than speculative; the writers have
aimed at supplying ethical and religious needs rather than in
tellectual curiosity. The passage of the Son into our world was
an ethical act of self-emptying — the pattern of humility in the
Godhead. The incarnation of the Logos is described meta
phorically as the pitching of a tent among us (icfKifvoaffev),
while a third writer poetically writes of Jesus as the " effulgence
of God's glory " (a7mtVa0-.ua. rij? doSf/i). The problem of a
dual consciousness in the Cosmic Logos and the Babe of Bethle
hem did not come within the range of speculation ; in their belief
in the Resurrection the Apostles found a disclosure of the true
nature of Jesus ; henceforth He was to them a Divine Man. He
is set forth in this atmosphere of faith not simply as a prophet,
82
From the Ideal to the Historic Christ 33
but as the Word-incarnate; not as the chief of saints merely,
but as a Saviour ; not only as a martyr, but as a ransom.
2. Although it is no part of our task to give any sketch of
the merely external history of Jesus, or of the times in which He
lived, we may roughly suggest the background of His ministry
by a few allusions to facts and factors of that age. The uni
versal Christ-ideal sprang out of the dry ground of history when
civilization was concentrated under the rule of Caesar. The
Gates of Janus were closed; Alexander's ambition to Hellenize
the world was being rapidly realized under Rome itself; the
ideas and language of Greece had become the medium of in
tellectual commerce throughout the world. In Alexandria, Philo
had sought to reconcile Plato with Moses; Herod the Great
strenuously toiled to Hellenize Judaea. Yet with all the intense
activity, even the pomp of Rome cannot hide the lassitude that
had fallen upon the higher intellect; in the world of action the
heroic age was past, and in the realm of thought eclecticism had
taken the place of creative power. There is no fear of confusing
the Person of Jesus with His environment; the Christ-ideal is
easily distinguishable from the flora and fauna of its geographical
and historical setting. When we turn to the Gospels, we see
that the spell of Jesus possessed the writers; they saw no light
save that which shone from His face: hence, there are no soft
shadings and gentle nuances in the background; the representa
tions of the Pharisees are crude and severe, and the evangelists
entirely omit all reference to the Essene pietists and mystics, —
sects from whose wells even Jesus may have drunk. Our feeling
for historic detail and our love of the picturesque are keener
than theirs : " Many of us have felt that we would give all our
books if we could but see with our own eyes how a single day
was passed by a single ancient Jewish, Greek or Roman family;
how the house was opened in the morning; how the meals were
prepared; what was said; how the husband, wife and children
went about their work; what clothes they wore, and what were
their amusements." * Yet it is to be gravely doubted if any
increase in our knowledge of these external things will throw
very much light upon Jesus. " The New Testament must still
be studied largely by light drawn from itself." 2 The growth of
1 Mark Rutherford, The Revolution in Tanner's Lane, p. 238.
' Dr. T. H. Moulton, Grammar of New Testament Greek, p. 20.
34 The Days of the Preparation
the Roman Empire, however, affected the life of Jesus in many
ways ; the danger He had studiously to avoid in His Ministry was
lest His movements should be taken for Jewish recalcitrancy
against Rome; and yet we see that His death on the Cross was
a Roman punishment. It is, however, one of the ironies of
history that Rome's triumph of universal sovereignty was shared
with that Hellenism which " swept victoriously in Asia, and
established itself on all the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean."
Such were some of the factors which Providence used to prepare
the conditions necessary for the birth of the universal, ethical
Religion which emerged in the apostolic faith in the Christ-ideal.
While Jesus was by birth a Jew, there is nothing narrow, national
or archaic in His figure in the Gospels. The very barrenness of
Jewish politics and erudition forced the attention of Jesus into
other and deeper channels. From the lowest deep Jesus sprang
upward to the highest; and the focusing of His work upon the
Godward relationship of man gave the whole world into His
embrace. He could claim to be the World's Light; into that
flaccid age He brought the exhilaration and buoyancy of a new
dawn. 3. When we come to deal with the actual narratives of the
Gospels which describe the mode of Christ's entrance into our
world, we have to emulate Plato's skilful carver in cutting where
the joint is; that is, we have to discriminate between symbolism
and reality, opinion and faith, legend and history, certitude and
feasibility. The nativity stories seem to have been translated
from primitive Aramaic songs; whether mythical or historical,
they illustrate the Church's faith in Christ Jesus. That both
St. Paul and St. John omit all allusion to the miracle of the
Virgin Birth, is at least evidence that the stories which relate it
were not deemed by them to be integral parts of the Divine
Revelation. The controversy over these narratives is not yet
ended ; but, should it ever come to pass that Jesus will be thought
of as the natural son of Joseph and Mary, it will still remain true
that the Word was made flesh. In an age such as ours, devoted
to natural science and the comparative study of ethnic religions,1
the story of Christ's parthenogenesis, found in two of our Gos
pels, was bound to be coordinated with similar wonder-tales, such
as those relating to Buddha's advent, to Plato's descent from
* Rhys Davids , Buddhist Birth-Stories, p. 64,
From the Ideal to the Historic Christ 35
Apollo, and to the divine birth of Augustus. Myths like these,
rooted in hero-worship, give plausibility to the argument that the
New Testament stories are purely legendary ; although it is pos
sible to turn the edge of this criticism by saying that all such
legends found in classic and pagan literature serve to demonstrate
the yearning of all nations for the coming of a Divine Friend.
However treated, these wonder-tales of the Gospels remind us
that the mystery of personality is not dissolved by reckoning
only the physical factors of generation. Like water-lilies on the
surface of a lake, which have roots winding down into hidden
depths, so are the souls of men. Whenever Plato found his
dialectic unequal to the delineation of great transcendental truths
about human life, he resorted to imagination and projected great
poetic myths to shadow forth his vision ; and should it ever come
to pass that the stories of the Gospels shall be discredited as
matters of fact, they will still retain their place as the poetic
insights of the higher imagination into the mystery of the In
carnation. 4. A place must be given in our reading of the Gospels to
the play of a constructive impressionism, which is both as legiti
mate and as useful as historical criticism. Sloughing off all
naturalistic presuppositions, we turn again as children to read
the poetry of a Divine Incarnation. Joseph, the putative father
of Jesus, appears in dim outline as an upright Jew, belonging
like Mary to a spiritual Israel; tradition stamps him as middle-
aged, and gives out that he died before Jesus reached manhood.
Mary, a cultivated, gentle maid, imbued with the sublime hopes
of her race, has taken her place in Christendom as the highest
type of womanhood, crowned with the graces of chastity, love
and maternal sacrifice. Before the consummation of her es
pousals the power of the Most High overshadowed her as the
Shekinah, and announced that she should miraculously conceive
and bear a Son who should fulfil the prophetic role of the
Messiah. With a noble simplicity, Mary responded : " Behold,
the bondmaid of the Lord! Be it unto me according to Thy
word ! " The successive steps in this Divine drama are set forth
in rhythmic speech, which is at once flooded with exalted passion
and held back with exquisite restraint. With perfect, if uncon
scious art, the evangelist describes the meeting of Mary with
Elizabeth her kinswoman, when the leap of the unborn babe
36 The Days of the Preparation
within the priest's aged wife evoked a song of joy over the
Mother of her Lord, and Mary responded in " the most magnifi
cent cry of joy that ever issued from a human breast." Later,
Zacharias breaks through the brooding silence of months with his
Benedictus, " because of the tender-mercy of our God, whereby
the day-spring from on high hath visited us." The actual chron
icle of the Birth is bare and unadorned, although it is character
ized by simple dignity and pathos; the Virgin Mother was un-
tended in her travail, and the new-born child was laid in a
manger. The contrariety of such a scene to all the gorgeous
dreams of popular Messianism, seems a strong presumption in
favour of its historicity; while, on the other hand, the silence of
Mary herself about this miracle when her Son bad reached
manhood makes against the credibility of a miraculous concep
tion. We dare not dogmatize upon the one view or the other;
for, while the thought of the Virgin Birth harmonizes with the
conception of the Christ-ideal entering into history, the two
accounts in St. Matthew and St. Luke are difficult to reconcile
with each other. Those who accept the miracle of the Birth do
so, not because Nature's processes are too slow, but because they
perceive in Jesus a new beginning in history. The substance of
man was dyed with hues of hereditary guilt, and, in order that
the entail of evil might be cut off, the Second Adam is thought
to have come by Virgin Birth. Those who reason that Christ
would assume the body of ordinary generation and cleanse it
by the fires of His sinlessness, will need to remember that, in
matters of Revelation, as also in the discovery of Nature's laws,
we are not competent to judge a priori of what shall be; — we
can only " think God's thoughts after Him."
5. One of the results of criticism is to show that the evangel
ists were saved from extravagances of fancy by their clear
apprehension of the Christ-ideal; while they were not scientific
historians, the character they aimed at describing was in itself
their strongest motive for veracity. Any laxity in their feeling
for truth would have led them into a boundless realm of puerility
and superstition. St. Luke's brief and modest preface does not
stamp every incident as ipso facto historical, but it does show a
typical instance of honest research. We are able to discriminate
between the wonder-tales and the genuine records of the ministry
of Jesus, and upon examination it becomes apparent that the
From the Ideal to the Historic Christ 37
former have but little vital connection with the development of
Christ's public work, and are precious principally because of
their noble symbolism. The story of the massacre of the Inno
cents and of the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt, is not
incredible in the light of Herod's character; but there seems no
room for it in the sequence of events described by St. Luke. Still
as symbolism we may use the narrative as the artist has done
in the picture named " Anno Domini," where a procession of
soldiers, philosophers, statesmen, priests and musicians is arrested
as the infant Jesus and His mother are led athwart the path;
for thus truly was the Child Jesus drawn into connection with
all the world. The faith of the Christian Church does not rest
upon these tales, however; and to treat them as the basis of our
religion is to stand the pyramid on its apex. " The Gospel "
preceded the Gospels; these latter writings were a consequence,
not a cause, of the Church's experience. And no narratives of
miracle, nor doctrines of preexistence and Incarnation, must be
permitted to loosen our hold upon the true Humanity of Jesus.
While the Ideal Christ is represented as a strong swimmer, who,
having plunged into Lethe, steps out upon the shores of Time
as other human beings, and occasionally recalls only faint memo
ries of preexistence, the Pauline doctrine of Kenosis enables
us to study the life of Jesus as though He were simply man, so
long as we remember that the true development of manhood de
pends upon reciprocity with God — for man becomes man only
as he receives God ; and the Divine Spirit was as the atmosphere
in which the Man Jesus lived and moved and had His being.
6. In treating of the transition from the Ideal to the His
toric Christ, the imagination may be legitimately used to gather
the frail hints and suggestions accessible to us, and to focus the
lights and shadows that hang over the silent years of Jesus. Dim
as the figure of Joseph is, the man himself must have played
an important and authoritative part in the early training of
Jesus; for while between that homely carpenter and the Boy,
there would be no unfilial sentiments, yet it could not but be that
Joseph at times was puzzled by the thoughts and fancies, frank
ness and reserve of Jesus. Even Mary, if we judge from allu
sions in the Gospels, failed to understand her Son. We read of
four brothers : James, Joses, Judas and Simon, and two unnamed
sisters, who belonged to the family at Nazareth. These are some-
38 The Days of the Preparation
times thought of as step-brothers or cousins, although, apart
from the ascetic sentiment of ecclesiastics, we have little reason
for the assumption that they were not the children of Mary.
During the youth-time of Jesus, many a misunderstanding might
have occurred between Him and His brethren; and in Christ's
saying about a prophet not failing to receive honour save in his
own country, there may have lurked a reminiscence of loneliness
and of lack of appreciation. At one period of His ministry, the
members of His own family took Him to be beside Himself.
We can conjecture the probable course of His education from the
" Mishna " which, although not edited till a.d. 220, suggests
the curriculum through which Jewish boys had passed for cen
turies. Before he was six years of age the father would teach
Him to recite many of the Proverbs and Psalms, and explain
to Him the history and meaning of the rites and customs be
longing to their nation. Then Jesus would attend an elementary
school, or " house of the Book," where He acquired the rudiments
of culture. The Jews of that time must have been mostly
bilingual, although Mahaffy's statement is extreme when he
writes, " Though we may believe that in Galilee and among His
intimates our Lord spoke Aramaic, and though we know that
some of His last words upon the Cross were in that language,
yet His public teaching, His discussions with the Pharisees, His
talk with Pontius Pilate, were certainly carried on in Greek." *
The range of Palestinian culture was limited by Jewish prejudices
against other nations, yet it would be impossible to accentuate
too strongly the elevating and refining influence of the Hebrew
Scriptures upon the mind of Jesus; He was early responsive
to the lofty ideas springing from the root-faith in God's Father
hood which give such distinction to the Psalms. The stern
Hebrew conscience was joined in Him with a keen sensibility
to all that was grand and beautiful. He was thrilled by the
austerity of the Law ; fired by the imagination of the prophets ;
and melted by the devotion of the Psalms. Nature and the
Scriptures were His daily food: through them there came to
His Spirit the voice of the Heavenly Father. At twelve years
of age, Jesus was invested with the ethical responsibilities of
Jewish citizenship and celebrated this assumption of the manly
toga by a solemn, joyous participation in the Feast of the Pass
over. The statement that " the Child grew and waxed strong,
* Hellenism in Alexander's Empire, p. 130.
From the Ideal to the Historic Christ 39
becoming full of wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him," 1
adds but little to our knowledge, though it suggests the Greek
like symmetry of His character. There is no hint of abnormality,
or eccentricity in the youth of Jesus; the apocryphal legends of
Him may be rejected as puerile and absurd. The story, in Luke,
of the visit to the temple, marks a religious crisis in the soul of
the growing boy, and a momentary collision of the filial instinct
which turned heavenward with the habitual obedience to parental
authority. St. Mark's explicit statement that Jesus was a carpen
ter,2 suggests that He would feel the distressful antagonism be
tween His vague yearnings for illimitable ideals and the narrow
routine of a Jewish handicraft; and this would be a discipline in
self-mastery. Since He was not enrolled as a pupil in any college
of the Scribes, the title " Rabbi " must have been applied to Him
in courtesy and recognition of His skill in teaching: for however
lacking in scholastic drill, Jesus drew from an inexhaustible
spring of inward wisdom. In walks around Nazareth, He har
vested sheaves of rich poetic observation; in His attendance at
the synagogue, He may have begun to acquire His matchless
skill in dialectics; and in His annual pilgrimages to the capital
He would glean knowledge by converse with Hellenists from
Rome, Athens, Alexandria and the cities of Asia. He absorbed
the intellectual heritage of His time, together with the limitations
which belonged to contemporary thought; hence the necessity
of distinguishing in His later teaching between the essential and
the accidental, between the timeless Word of God and its tem
poral vehicles of expression. In the noblest literature of Greece,
the highest thought is mingled with matters grotesque and some
times revolting, but in the teaching of Jesus we find unique
purity and sustained elevation; whatever intellectual errors may
belong to the Gospels, there are no moral lapses. Throughout
the life of Jesus there. was an ethical continuity; the noble self-
sacrifice of the public ministry had grown from roots in the life
at Nazareth. It may be suspected that the decease of Joseph
early threw upon Him the obligation of maintaining the home
by His toil in the carpenter shop, and perhaps shut out from
His youthful thoughts the Jewish desire of marriage; the tree
which bore such fruit of altruism at Calvary was the transplanted
self-denial of obscure years : He may have been one of those
JLuke ii. 40, 52; cf. Judg. xiii. 24.
1 Mark vi. 3, tIktov.
40 The Days of the Preparation
" which have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the
kingdom of heaven."
7. But all our efforts to discover how the Christ-ideal grew
up in our history only show us how impenetrable are the clouds
that encircle the personality of Jesus. We cannot speak of Him
as though He were the simple product of His environment; the
increasing knowledge of His time and place in history leaves
Him still the Great Enigma to Naturalism: to us He is God's
Ideal, projected into the plexus of human relationships. Jesus
appears to have sustained uninterrupted and full obedience to
the Will of God in all its successive disclosures, and through this
reciprocity with the Divine Spirit He realized the crown of
perfect Humanity. It is well-nigh impossible for us to think of
Him as being the subject of gross temptations; struggles He
passed through severer far than such as are known to us, but
they were not the products of selfishness and lust. He kept
Himself unsullied ; it is no wonder, therefore, that His Birth was
imagined to be miraculous. As He grew up, few of the in
fluences that beat upon His soul were more potent than the
incoherent, political and apocalyptic ideas of popular Messianism.
At certain junctures of His experience, He must have felt re
sponsiveness to the monarchical ideal of the Psalms which shone
in the Hebrew imagination as a glowing picture — all gold and
crimson. But over against this He contemplated an ideal lost
sight of by most of His contemporaries — the deutero-Isaiah's
conception of the suffering Servant of Jehovah. Until His Bap
tism, Jesus may have remained unconscious of His predestined
vocation, except for His vague feelings of latent power; but
when the crisis came He had to choose between these two ideals.
Although sensitive to His nation's need, He did not mar His
work by prematurity, but waited in quiet strength and self-
repression for the irresistible imperative of His Father's call.
He did not hurry into hazardous situations and by unbalanced
zeal imperil the sacred cause of Truth ; but He set a wise restraint
upon all the immature fervours and heats of youth, aiming only
to do the Sovereign Will of His Father. In the shadowy back
ground of those silent years we see the dim figure of Jesus the
Carpenter living a life of strenuous toil and disciplinary self-
repression— at times lonely, yet not unjoyous ; a devout, prayerful
and meditative man. There need be no faint-hearted fear that
From the Ideal to the Historic Christ 41
Jesus is thus conceived of too humanly. In making our passage
from the Apostolic Ideal to the Historic Jesus of the Gospels,
we have sought only to avoid unnecessary dogmas in preparation
for the subsequent examination of all the facts and factors in
Christ's public ministry; some questions that meet us at the
very beginning cannot be answered until we reach the end.
CHAPTER III
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS
i. " We have come to the last days, and a new succession of
ages dawns. The Virgin returns, and a new race is ready to
descend from the lofty heavens." 1 This remarkable prediction
reflects the universal expectation of some momentous change
in the world's history. The genius of Greece was well-nigh
spent; Rome had subdued the nations and made the Mediter
ranean its imperial lake; the fulness of the time had come; the
old age was to terminate, a new one was to begin. In Palestine
the foolish internecine quarrels of the Asmoneans had resulted
in the complete vassalage of the Jews, first to Pompey, and then
to Csesar. While Herod the Great had sought to ingratiate
himself by the rebuilding of the temple, he had assiduously
paganized Jewish life; he covered the land with magnificent
buildings in Greek and Roman styles of architecture ; even within
the walls of Jerusalem he established a theatre, wherein were
exhibited the sanguinary horrors of gladiatorial contests ; and, as
a final insult to the nation which he governed, he had caused the
golden image of an eagle to be set up over the gate of the
temple. Herod's death did not bring emancipation to Israel,
for the dispute between Archelaus and Herod Antipas caused
the chains of servitude to be fastened more securely upon this
high-spirited people: at last, all remaining vestiges of autonomy
were swept away. Judaea sank into the state of a petty Roman
province, and the procurator, generally a governor of equestrian
rank, was responsible to the legate in Syria, or directly to Rome,
whither at a later date Vitellius sent Pilate for trial. Fiery
patriots arose, one after another, to lead the forlorn hope of
revolt; but the only result of these frequent risings, besides the
immediate bloodshed, was to increase the rigour of the Roman
government. What a strange, sad, heroic history Israel has had !
Enslaved by Egypt, crushed and exiled by Assyria, at the mercy
'Virgil's Eclogues.
42
The Voice in the Wilderness 43
of Persia, overrun by Greeks, and now subjugated by Rome!
But the paradox of her history had always been that fondest
hopes of liberty sprang up at those times when succour seemed
most improbable. The prophets declared that Jehovah would
have His day, and bring deliverance and triumph to His down
trodden people. The subsequent centuries have shown that
the soul of Israel can never die. At the time of John's appearing,
the Jewish people were full of hopes and presentiments of the
coming of some great deliverer.
2. Great men are God's best gifts to nations, and the world's
greatest men are discoverers of the ideal and prophets of right
eousness. Prophets like Isaiah and John the Baptist enrich all
nations. There is a wise instinct which makes the Chinese, even
while seeking to possess the arts and sciences of the West, refuse
to reckon our mechanicians and inventors as comparable with
the sages and princely characters of their own antiquity. The
pioneers who lead the advance in morals and religion do more
for mankind than all others; and among the greatest prophets
of this Higher Humanity Jesus ranked John the Baptist. It
is not easy, however, for us to form a true judgement about
this great man since our historical data are but a few fragments.
We see that the work of John was part-cause of the Christian
religion; or, more correctly, we infer that the revival of Israel's
Spirit by the preaching of John created an important tributary
to the great movement that formed the Christian Church. Not
at once, but after some years, the work of John was absorbed
by Christianity, and carried forward to ends he never anticipated.
It is easily understood why Josephus should be silent about
John's belief concerning the coming of the Messiah; but our
Gospels are doubtless correct in representing him as speaking
of himself as the herald of another. We must, however, refuse
any conventional acceptance of this title for John which hides
the greatness of his character and work. Theologians have too
resolutely subordinated John's ministry as a mere preparation
for the work of Jesus, and as a consequence we are in danger of
missing the reality of John's career. Just as one can suck the
life and meaning out of facts by, let us say, applying the " law
of average," so, by subjecting John's life to the dogmatic rule
that he went before Jesus, only to prepare the way, we come
at length to reduce the great prophet to a shadow. Our own
44 The Days of the Preparation
minds will be enriched by fully recognizing the intrinsic greatness
of John's manhood. As we shall set forth later, his work did
not cease when Jesus began to preach; John was first in time,
though he himself perceived the spiritual priority of Jesus; and
John's appeal stirred the dying pulse of conscience in the nation.
and did much to prepare the atmosphere in which the movement
of Jesus might grow; and yet John's school was separate from
that of Jesus, and continued so down to the age of Apollos. On
the other hand, misunderstanding is increased tenfold by any
attempts to. place John above Jesus, and by insinuations that
" the baptism unto repentance " was the origination of Chris
tianity. 3. Although the impression made by John the Baptist upon the
Jewish nation was evidently very great for a time, only a few
facts are recorded concerning him. Josephus sums up his min
istry in a sentence : " John exhorted the Jews to practise virtue
and to be righteous toward each other and pious toward God,
and to assemble for baptism." x St. Luke has preserved the
fullest account of him; he was of priestly descent on both sides;
and his parents, Zacharias and Elizabeth, lived in " a city of
Judah in the hill country." Whether we ascribe little or much
value for history to the song of Zacharias, it must reflect the
early thought and emotion stirred in Christian circles by the
memories of John. His birth was about the year 6 b.c, and
came to be regarded as the signal that Jehovah was preparing
to fulfil His covenant-promise with Abraham, the issue of which
accomplishment would be the moral and political redemption of
Israel. The song, which is moulded upon Old Testament
prophecies, represents John to be the Preparer of Jehovah's
way foretold in the oracles of the deutero-Isaiah and Malachi.2
The third evangelist speaks of his boyhood after the Old Testa
ment manner just as he does about Jesus : " the hand of the
Lord was with him," and " the child grew and waxed strong
in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his showing unto
Israel" (dvaSeigeao? avrov). The angel Gabriel is said to
have prophesied of his Nazarite discipline : " He shall drink no
wine nor strong drink, and He shall be filled with the Holy
Ghost, even from His mother's womb." 3 With these slender
1Ant., xviii., v. 2. 'Isa. xl. 3-5; Mal. iii. 1; iv. 2.
8 Luke i. 15, 39, 66, 80.
The Voice in the Wilderness 45
materials, and our reasonable conjecture that the youth would
make annual visits to Jerusalem to share in the great festivals
at the temple, we must construct our mental picture of John
until the time of his public ministry. His (l^ennfjp fare was
locusts and wild honey; his raiment was a cloak of camel's hair
bound about with a leathern girdle. It is possible that John was
influenced in early life by the Essenes, whose^^wbi|r5were on
the west of the Dead Sea. Through his father s wish the boy,
after Zacharias's death, or perhaps before, may have been
placed among these pious and laborious ascetics, who made up
for losses by death in their celibate community by adopting
children, and admitting those who renounced the world. In such
a school John might have learnt that austere purity that was
so prominent a characteristic of his manhood. But the negative
desire of tlie Essenes to withdraw from evil could not have
engendered in John's mind the conviction of a Divine commission
to reform Israel. Whoever may have been John's tutors — and
perhaps he was schooled chiefly by the Divine Spirit in his
solitude, his days were regulated by devotion to the high things
of the soul ; and from the few sentences recorded of his preach
ing, it may be inferred that he read and brooded over the oracles
of prophecy until his mind was fired by the old ideals.
4. St. Matthew alludes vaguely to the beginning of John's
ministry — " in those days " ; but the third evangelist defines,
with utmost elaboration, many of the events that synchronized
with it, and we judge that " the showing of John unto Israel "
took place about a.d. 28, Fain would we trace the crisis which
transformed the solitary devotee into a great prophet; but his
call is simply stated without comment, " the word of God " 1
came to him in the wilderness. His previous life had been a
preparation for this crisis : the spiritual struggles of the hermit
culminated in an experience of Divine possession; a fire began
to burn in his soul ; he could no longer remain silent — the whole
man became a voice — a shout of warning — God's trumpet in
Israel. The voice of prophecy had been silent for centuries:
it was as though the shocks of adversity had exhausted the very
fountain of inspiration; and the place that the prophet had left
vacant was occupied by scribes, lawyers, Pharisees. It was said
that " from the time that the temple was destroyed, the gift of
1 Luke iii. f>vfa &<*•
46 The Days of the Preparation
prophecy was taken from the prophets and given to the wise."
The age of John was a period when the schools of the Sadducees
and Pharisees flourished; the Sadducees were aristocratic scep
tics, political cynics and opportunists ; among the Pharisees there
were some men of enlightenment and ideas; but the greater
number of them were narrow souls and rigorous pedants. Stu
dents gave themselves up to wearisome trifling, and invisible
chains were placed upon the living conscience. It was an age
of the letter, and the spirit was being stifled. Instead of falling
like some fertilizing pollen upon men's minds, the sayings of the
fathers and learning of the past fell like sterilizing blight upon
men's intellects. Away in the desert John escaped this deadening
influence, and long-continued faithfulness to God resulted in
growing sensitiveness to the touch of the Divine Spirit; he was
prepared to be the channel of new inspiration and revelation.
Breadth of culture, erudition, and fertility of ideas are precious
things in the equipment of men for great work, but they do
not constitute prophecy; a prophet must be formed by profound
intuition into the Divine counsel, and by the resistless feeling
that God is driving him to announce the truths stamped on his
soul. Like John, his ideas may be few and elementary; but he
is God's thrall, and must utter God's message. Though no sign
came from Heaven, the mind of John was seized and held
captive by the conviction that the " kingdom of heaven " was
imminent. He had not discarded the political mould into which
the Messianic ideal was cast ; but he saw that before any political
dream could be realized, Israel must be subjected to a great
purification. The axe was laid at the root of the tree of
national life; and if the tree was to be spared, it must bring
forth the fruits of repentance. John anticipated a theophany of
magnitude and grandeur, whereby Divine judgement would be
inflicted upon evil persons, and salvation be gained by those who
repent. As to Amos, so to John, Jehovah's Day was to be one
of retribution and terror for the guilty, and his task as a prophet
was to make ready for the advent of the Divine Sovereign. The
key-word of all the Baptist's preaching was " repentance " —
metanoia, which signified self-detachment from evil and direc
tion of the mind and will upon God. This message was hurled
forth with the force of moral certitude and winged with noble
enthusiasm. Jewish society cherished the prejudice that descent
from Abraham gave an inherent right to participate in the
The Voice in the Wilderness - 47
Divine Kingdom. John, however, made it plain that race-feeling
was no reasonable ground of assurance ; for society must ulti
mately rest on conscience. As for the blood-tie, God could
dispense with it, and, if it were necessary, could raise up children
to Abraham from the stones of the desert. John gave no evi
dence of constructive power, such as Moses exercised, to form
a nation from tribes of slaves ; his mission was totally different —
to awaken a degenerate nation out of their dogmatic slumber;
to turn the hearts of men away from a false patriotism, and
to induce them to anticipate the reign of God by moral reform.
He would rectify the social inequalities by the practice of com
munity in dress and food, and imitation of the voluntary poverty
of the Essenes. He rebuked the restless greed for riches shown
by the tax-collectors, and inculcated upon the soldiers whose
consciences were touched the restraint of all violence and out
rage; and, to the astonishment of traditionalists, he neither re
fused these classes his baptism nor demanded of them the
renunciation of their profession. Only when approached by the
proud, self-satisfied Pharisees did he burst forth in wrath and
invective. He had no statesman's programme; his message was
one of elementary ethics ; its permanent value lay in the unfalter
ing enunciation of the fundamental dictates of conscience as the
true basis of the new theocracy. To preach so rudimentary a
message as this may have been the mission of a precursor, or
herald; yet at times of national decadence through the collapse
or putrefaction of customary religious beliefs, there is no other
way to the resurgence of hope and vigour than that of falling
back upon this simple Divine rema, or Word, which inspired
John. 5. One feature which impressed John's contemporaries more
than any other was his use of baptism : this symbolic act touched
the imagination of Israel and won for him the title of "the
Baptist." This rite is not to be hastily identified with the
ablutions of the Essenes any more than with the Indian practice
of bathing in the Ganges; John himself signified by it the pre
paratory initiation of the penitent into the covenant community
of Jehovah; and it fitly symbolized the need of the individual's
regeneration. When the Pharisee-critics disputed concerning
his authority to baptize men, he affirmed with simple dignity that
God sent him to baptize with water. Our uncertainty whether
48 The Days of the Preparation
baptism was by immersion or effusion, only indicates that the
rite was not affected in its meaning and value by external modes.
Slight verbal variations in the evangelist's descriptions of this
rite are not without interest — " a baptism of repentance for
remission of sins," and a "baptism unto (si repentance";
its objective aim was the Divine pardon, and its inward or
subjective intention was the death of self to sin and consecration
to a new life. The desert prophet could not attach to this rite
the symbolism of Christ's death and resurrection, as St. Paul
did; yet in principle, John's baptism meant the same twofold
spiritual experience — death to sin and life unto righteousness.
6. The third evangelist describes one of the results of the
Baptist's preaching. All the people were set musing whether
John himself might not be the expected Messiah; but in answer
to their inquiries, he disclaimed all pretensions to the office of
Jehovah's anointed, and differentiated his baptism from that
spiritual effusion which the true Messiah was destined to ad
minister. In the Fourth Gospel, a similar inquiry is made by
deputies from the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem; but so different in
spirit and aim is it in its triple form, that we do not think it
refers to the same incident. He will let neither friends nor
foes think that he is the Christ, or Elijah, or the prophet
Jeremiah: he describes himself simply as a voice crying in the
wilderness; and when his own authority is called in question,
he boldly announces that the true Messiah is standing in their
midst, though they know Him not, and on the following day
points out Jesus as the Coming One. If this representation of
the Fourth Gospel be regarded as lacking the authority of
history, we have still the Synoptic tradition that the coming of
the Messiah was the burden of his prophecy. Jehovah's King
dom was about to be established, and John utters an imperious
call for Israel to make ready by righteousness. The utterances
attributed to the Baptist delineate the unknown Messiah as some
mighty personality of regal dignity, whose shoes John feels he
would be unworthy to unloose. His ministry is to be one of
judgement: He comes to His threshing-floor with "the fan in
His hand," and He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable
fire. We wonder how John could ever have identified the Gentle
Nazarene with such a majestic and terrible office! Yet even
through the rifted clouds of judgement he caught glimpses of
The Voice in the Wilderness 49
the permanent sway of peace and right. He perceived that, be
sides being a political ideal, the Messianic Kingdom also em
braced the moral order of the world, and was the potential soul of
the sensuous phenomena of the material realm. Jehovah, how
ever, was still a righteous Sovereign outside man, before whom
man must bow in penitence; the Kingdom was still external,
though based on moral laws, so that naught that defileth or
maketh a lie can enter it. The sublimity of this ideal is patent to
all, but it was limited by John's nationalism, and its defect lay in
its external transcendence; for the prophet was conscious that
only one who could baptize with the Spirit could make it imma
nent in man. The Fourth Gospel accurately appraises John's
character and ministry — " a man sent from God to bear witness
to the Light " ; but he was not the Light.
7. A thrill of religious revival passed through the land, and
representatives of all classes flocked to the Jordan to confess
their sins and be baptized. Had John desired it he might easily
have been accepted as the Messiah, although there were critics
who accused him of being possessed by a demon. But neither
flattery nor censure could cause John to swerve; he was free
from the last weakness bf many noble men ; no egoistic ambition
tainted his mission ; he was filled by a true enthusiasm for right
eousness. In many moods he recalled to men's minds the im
pressive figure of Elijah, and Jesus spoke of him afterwards
as the Elias that was to come. This picturesque and rugged
Man of God awoke a temporary response in Israel: a spirit of
hope breathed over the people; but after the lapse of a few
months, the moths that fluttered around this burning, lamplike
character grew dissatisfied, and the movement ebbed, leaving
another school or sect behind. Once again the sky grew dark,
and John lived long enough to see the waning of the enthusiasm
he had kindled with such hope.
CHAPTER IV
JESUS IS BAPTIZED BY JOHN
I. The real life of eyery personality is surrounded by thick
clouds and darkness; nevertheless, if its central light be strong
enough, the obscurity is shot through with revealing lines and
tints, and in the case of the highest, noblest humanity, the mist
becomes a nimbus of glory. But when we seek to read the
inner processes of the life of Jesus, the difficulty we experience
in understanding any experience but our own is intensified by the
very light that reveals Him. And yet, since our secret is made
plain in His Enigma — the purpose and meaning of our manhood
being set forth most completely in Him — we are urged forward
in attempts to understand Him, even at the peril of losing our
way amid limitless conjectures and illusions. Jesus alone shows
us the perfect norm of our nature; He is most natural; but
the very completeness of His personal development makes Him
seem to us, who are so imperfect, a Supernatural Man. The
New Testament, however, makes it plain that He attained this
fulness of human life by passing through all the stages and
processes of man's growth. An erratic tendency of present-day
thought is to look back to the beginnings of life in order to
discover the real nature of things ; but the only correct judgement
must be based on " ends," not upon " origins." The wonderful
" Key of Evolution," which has unlocked so many mysteries
of life, fails to open the secrets of man's moral personality;
the best and highest qualities in man are elicited from poten
tiality into actuality only through intercourse and association
with others. Jesus shows us how the pleroma of humanity can
be attained only when man is in conscious reciprocity with God.
The secret of the youth and manhood of Jesus was that He
grew in conscious relationship to the Heavenly Father : this' was
not only the metaphysical ground of His Life, it was also the
chosen attitude of His Will. We all have occasional visitations
of the filial moods — vague susceptibilities awakened, then slum
bering amid the sequent conditions of sense. But with Jesus
this spiritual consciousness was no rare mood; it was, rather,
50
Jesus is Baptized by John 51
the permanent attitude of His Will. This filial spirit was the
supreme attainment of humanity; not only a human endeavour,
but also a gift of Divine Grace. His mature character is the
product of the reciprocal operations of the Divine and human —
the final result of His efforts, struggles, and concentrated pursuit
of moral and spiritual ideals: yet even so, His human aspira
tions were Divine inspirations, transmuting all personal passion
and desires into the fine gold of a surrendered will. In the
Baptism and subsequent temptation-period, one of these moment
ous crises in the experience of the Son of Man is preserved for
our instruction and illumination.
2. In the Gospel of the Hebrews, Mary and the brothers of
Jesus are reported to have proposed that Jesus should go forth
to the Baptism of John, and in reply Jesus repudiated any
necessity for doing so, as He had no consciousness of sin. What
ever truth may underlie this statement, it appears credible that
some conversation between Mother and Son must have preceded
His determination to submit to this ritual of repentance; and
if we imagine that Jesus already foresaw that He was now to
abandon His occupation to take up a public ministry, He must
have made known His purpose to the members of His family,
and transferred to a younger brother the responsibility in which
His seniority had involved Him. The great change about to
take place in the life of Jesus had been foreshadowed by pre
sentiments of His high calling; and in the sacred colloquies
between Mary and her Son, there must have been scintillations
from the dark ground of mystery in which His life was rooted.
Is there any parallel in the " confidences " between Augustine
and Monica told in the " Confessions " of the former ? " She
and I stood alone, leaning at a certain window which overlooked
the garden of the house which we occupied in Ostia on the
Tiber; where, withdrawn from the crowd, we were recruiting
from the fatigue of a long journey before our voyage. We
then conversed alone very sweetly ; and ' forgetting those things
which were behind and reaching forth unto those things which
are before,' we were inquiring between ourselves, in the presence
of the Truth, which Thou art, of what nature the eternal life
of the saints would be, ' which eye hath not seen nor ear heard,
nor hath it entered into the heart of man.' " x At least it is
1 Aug. Conf., bk. ix., ch. x.
52 The Days of the Preparation
certain that the family of Mary of Nazareth did not escape
the thrill of expectancy and hope occasioned by the voice of
John. 3. The differences between the narratives of the Baptism
have caused many difficulties that cannot be easily dispersed.
St. Matthew reports that John at first sought to prevent the
submission of Jesus to the rite, on the ground that his relative
from Nazareth was superior to himself. "Assisted by his pro
phetical endowment, he read the heart of this man, and recognized
that there no consciousness of guilt interrupted the communion
between Him and His God." * St. John's Gospel sets forth the
Baptizer as saying, " I did not know Him myself ; but He who sent
me to baptize . . . said to me, ' On whomsoever thou shalt see
the Spirit descending and resting upon Him, the same is He who
baptizes with the Holy Spirit.' " In view of St. Matthew's repre
sentation, the Baptizer's ignorance of Jesus must be thought to
relate, not to His person, but to His office as the Messiah. There
have been some who, from an early period, believed that neither
Jesus nor His friends knew that He was the Messiah before
Elias anointed Him for the office.2 It would relieve dogmatists
of no little embarrassment, if from St. John's testimony the
inference might be made that the Baptist bore witness to the
Messiah without administering the rite of baptism unto repent
ance. But when we push through all discrepancies and seek
to make a synthesis of the details recorded, it is almost beyond
doubt that, when Jesus came to John to be baptized, the Baptist
recognized Him, and because of his reputation for purity, or
by divination of the spotless character of this member of the
penitent Israel, he hesitated to perform the rite until Jesus
persuaded him of its propriety. The subsequent or accompany
ing scene will be framed differently, according to one's pre
possessions. But it is probable, in the highest degree, that the
symbolism of the descending dove and heavenly voice means
that, in some manner convincing to both, Jesus became the
subject of a fresh Divine anointing, and John, as well as He,
had the sure intuition that the Man of Nazareth was the Chosen
One, or designated Messiah.
1 Weiss, The Life of Christ, vol. i., p. 320, English Ed.
'Dialogue with Trypho, viii., 3, no, English Ed. Justin.
Jesus is Baptized by John 53
4. According to St. Luke, Jesus at this time was about thirty
years of age; in keeping with the propriety of Hebrew feeling,
Jesus may have waited till He reached the minimum limit for
the beginning of the Levitical ministry 1 ; although the evangelist's
phrase ( ooffei erwv tpiaxovra ) is an elastic one, permitting
a margin of uncertainty. By definitely stating that Jesus came
after all the people had been baptized, the evangelist suggests
that His inauguration as Messiah took place in the presence of the
disciples of John after the great crowds had departed. The
ordinary and formal confession of sin might have been sub
stituted by a frank unfolding of the mind of Jesus, so that
instinctively, as He talked, John felt that, however much others
needed purification, Jesus at least could receive no new grace
from his hands. The man who had so sternly rebuked the pride
of the Pharisees in their Abrahamic descent, became lowly and
gentle in the presence of Jesus, saying : " I have need to be
baptized by Thee ! " Perhaps it was the first time in his ex
perience that John was daunted, and made to feel himself the
moral inferior of another. This discernment and penetration
into character is no mere fancy. Again and again, a man of
great scholarship has been impressed by the greater dignity of
some acquaintance who has no claim to learning that comes from
books; sometimes a doctor knows intuitively that the silent or
slow-speaking patient who has laboured with his hands is a
greater personality than himself. Contact with Jesus made most
men feel His spiritual transcendence, and the noble Prophet
of the Desert could not escape from this impression. But the
greater souls are ever ready to learn of the less; and in seeking
to be baptized by His kinsman, Jesus evinced a willingness to be
guided by his teaching. However diffident John felt, he was
for the time the instructor of Jesus, and he probably suggested
that He should go into the wilderness and follow an ascetic rule
of life preparatory to the next step. Listening to the Baptist's
message concerning the imminence of the Kingdom of God, Jesus
must have felt His heart burn within Him, though He may not
have fully realized the certainty that He was the elected Messiah.
His future was as yet undefined ; He was waiting for the Divine
call. 5. The motive assigned for His baptism is somewhat vague —
"thus it behoves us to fulfil all righteousness." The least sig-
aNum. iv. 3.
54 The Days of the Preparation
nificance that can be given to this is that it appeared to Him
right — it was the Divine Will; therefore, He gladly conformed.
Attempts to emphasize the freedom of Jesus from sin, and conse
quent immunity from the need of confession and pardon, tend
sometimes to encourage the illusion that He never experienced
the usual weaknesses and failings that beset men in this life.
While it would be most incongruous to attribute to Him gross
sin or animalism, it must not be forgotten that all virtue, even
the virtue of Jesus, is the result of resistance and struggle.
Even the Son of Man had to exercise constant choice between
higher and lower alternatives of means and motives ; and though
all the circumstances of our probation were not mirrored in
His preparation, yet He was tempted — tempted in all points
as we are. And while it seems to many a going beyond our
real knowledge to say that never once was Jesus betrayed into
making choice of any but the best means to His ends, we need
not hesitate to say that it is exceeding the bounds of sound
judgement to aver that because He was man He must have
fallen. We only know that Jesus had the appetites, passions
and sensibilities of our common humanity; and the result of
His vigilant struggle was that, when He went forth to be
baptized He had completed the subordination of all these natural
feelings and tendencies to His life-purpose of doing God's Will.
At the Jordan, as in the Garden, He could say : " Not My
will, but Thine be done " ; but this perfect obedience He had
learned by the things He suffered. As the question of His
sinlessness must be discussed in connection with later stages
of His life, His baptism need be treated only as an act of self^
identification with the Jewish race. He joined in the national
movement initiated by John, and thus gave expression to His
feeling that He was one with the world — a Brother of all man
kind. The Pharisees resented John's universal call to peni
tence and baptism, regarding it as a signal humiliation of their
order ; Jesus deemed it a part of righteousness to comply. Bap
tism was the ritual expression of inward purification; it sym
bolized renunciation of self-will, and the entrance upon a new
life of preparation for God's Reign. In the case of Jesus, submis
sion to baptism gave concrete form to the renewed dedication of
Himself to the Kingdom of the Father, and at the same time
showed His whole-souled sympathy with the needs and emotions
of the people. It was a spiritual palingenesis; even Jesus was
Jesus is Baptized by John 55
born of water and of the Spirit. He who made the little child
a symbol of discipleship, became Himself in manhood as a little
child — lowly and pure.
6. The outward baptism by John, however, was subordinate
to the momentous spiritual crisis now reached in the inner
experience of Jesus: concomitant with it was the theophany
witnessed by both actors in this ceremony. As Jesus rose up
from the water, the skies appeared to open and God's Spirit
descended, while a voice rang in their hearts testifying that He
was the beloved Son — the Son in Whom the Heavenly Father
delighted. The evangelists cite various forms of this Divine
testimony; the first two adopting the deutero-Isaiah's description
of Jehovah's Servant,1 the third quoting from the Psalms 2 ; but
a partial account of this confusion may be that the ambiguity
between " son " and " servant " in Greek had no place in the
Aramaic sources of their traditions. St. Luke accentuates the
objectivity of the dove's appearance, although in the earlier
gospels the dove might be taken as a simile. It is possible that
literary metaphor had been transformed by repetition till it
seemed a part of the actual occurrence. Dogmatism, either of
doubt or of belief, is excluded by appreciation of the mystery
of Nature and Spirit: the visible universe is the symbolism
of an invisible order; and it is possible the Creator's thought
might be suggested by the phenomenon of the dove, as it is
equally possible that to the imagination of John the gentle brood
ing character of Jesus might be fitly pictured as the dove of
the Holy Spirit hovering over Him. The essential fact of this
experience is that God's Spirit actually rested upon Jesus; into
Him there passed an effluence or emanation from the Divine
Fount, which caused His life to unfold new energies and gracious
ministries. The Spirit of God is God Himself, streaming forth
and resting in beneficent activity upon chosen agents, endowing
them with mighty inspiration and illumination. The realm of
human life is full of mystery, and personality is developed by
receptivity and reciprocity, not by isolation and exclusion. To
those who think of Jesus as the Child of the Spirit, whose
" ego " was the Divine Logos, it may seem difficult to explain
the need of this spiritual effusion. These correlative factors
in the life of the Son of Man (typical man) are spoken of by
"Isa. lxii. i. 2Ps- ii. 7.
56 The Days of the Preparation
St. John as the seed and the chrism (ffnip/xa and xP^s^a) or
anointing of the Divine Spirit. The seed contains the life-force
and definite type which regulates the form of growth ; the Divine
chrism educes and nourishes the inward principle. Although
men seem to stand in quasi-independence of God, yet they are
utterly dependent upon the Divine power to uphold them: so,
likewise, Jesus was separate from, and yet most intimately de
pendent upon, the Heavenly Father. To Him, and to all who
follow Him, there come repeated new-births and increasing reve
lations. After a long period of loyalty in obscure and monot
onous toils, there came this outpouring of the Divine Spirit —
the uprising in His soul of a Divine power which augmented His
natural energies. He had been growing and gaining deepened
insight as the years rolled by, acquiring enlarged capacity for
His ministry ; and now in a supreme moment, when all His native
gifts and faculties were prepared to receive it, there came this
pentecostal advent of the Spirit of God in fulness unknown
before, sweeping into the interior recesses of His nature, and
giving Him in a moment the crown of Perfect Manhood. " Thee
o'er thyself I therefore crown and mitre." * God's perfect idea
of Manhood was born in Him; He realized in Himself the
Divine Sonship of humanity. That is His difference from us;
we only partially attain the goal: but of Him the Father in
heaven could testify, " This day have I begotten Thee." The
quiet years of His life at Nazareth had resulted in the accumula
tion of forces which, at the Divine touch, burst forth in flame,
irradiating His person as the Messianic Son of God. John knew
Him now as the Object of Divine approval ; while Jesus Himself
felt the Father's smile alight upon Him. Though God's Spirit
had wrought within Him all through the years, He now became
the subject of a new, special effusion of spiritual power; and in
His exultation, no movement of self disturbed or put to flight the
love of Grace and Truth.
7. The open skies suggest that with piercing vision He now
read the Divine decree, and knew Himself to be the fulfilment ol
the promise spoken in prophecy and psalm. His call had come;
He knew that He was the Divine Son. One of Swedenborg's
pregnant fancies was that, in intercourse with men, angels'
thoughts are transmitted through the moulds of earthly memory,
1 Purg., xxvii., 142.
Jesus is Baptized by John 57
and should one actually be caught up to hear their higher speech,
like St. Paul, he would find such Heavenly wisdom incommun
icable.1 And it was in the mould afforded by memory of ancient
oracle that the communication now came to Jesus and John of
the voice from the riven heaven. The Man of Nazareth came
into full consciousness that in a unique manner He was the be
loved Son of God; the fuller meanings of His ever-dominant
Spirit of filial submission effloresced in His mind and heart ; and
it was new in Jesus, just as the flower is new when, after growing
and budding, it at last pushes through its calyx and consummates
itself. The term " Son " is no metaphor of physical or meta
physical fact, but the moral truth of the perfect manhood of
Jesus. Never before had Jesus realized all the meaning of the
Divine Fatherhood; and, being man, the consciousness of Son-
ship had ebbed and flowed in the tides of His life: henceforth,
the fulness of His filial relationship poured into all the experiences
of His life. Sonship was a fact woven into every act; a faith
which inspired His every thought; a realized idea which, like a
fountain, poured out in pure streams in His emotions. The
Spiritual endowment Jesus received at baptism gave a trans
parency to the material media of life ; He saw the " ideas " of
God which sought to embody themselves ; while a citizen of earth
He was conscious of Heaven, and looked immediately on the
works of His Heavenly Father. In all His subsequent experi
ences the Spirit could not be quenched by the flesh, and to His
penetrating insight the ideal ground of life lay clearly disclosed.
The full explication of this baptism of the Spirit had, however,
to be realized through the new temptations that assailed Him as
He struggled to apprehend the meaning and duty of the Messiah.
Before passing to that memorable struggle, we may note that
there was no self-sufficiency in Jesus; we must not imagine
Him to have carried in Himself from the beginning all that He
became; He lived the true life of man, and in certain crucial
moments received accessions of power such as all men may
obtain; and, when ripe for the crisis, He was anointed with the
Holy Spirit, and passed through all later experiences in perfect
correspondence with this Divine Person.
1 Heaven and Hell, p. 256.
CHAPTER V
THE TEMPTATION OF THE SON OF GOD
i. The place and importance of the baptism of Jesus in the
preparation for His active ministry were apprehended very dis
tinctly by our earliest evangelist. It was the investiture of Jesus
with spiritual royalty and the authentication of the Divine Son-
ship realized in His humanity. We have already learned caution
in speaking of the mysteries of personality, since, in our own im
perfect stage of manhood, we form a true conception of personal
life only by a process of idealization; we project the traits we find
essential in our own souls, and imagine them in their perfected
and balanced harmony in a typical man. Jesus is represented
in the Gospels and in the Epistles as realizing the true spirituality
of manhood ; He is the Spirit-anointed man — the one Spirit-filled
character of universal history. The Christ of St. Paul is the
risen, victorious and regnant Spirit ; He has accomplished all the
stages of this historic pilgrimage across our world ; " He has been
determined as the Son of God with power, according to the spirit
of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." But the Gospels
give us glimpses of the struggles and conflicts that preceded this
glorification; in their pages we see the warrior Son of man
fighting towards the final vanquishing of defeat and death. The
Spirit of holiness that so signally attested the Divine Sonship
of Jesus was at once an endowment and an attainment. The
anointing of His Manhood by the Spirit of God was the fruition
of thirty years of resolute obedience, and made the spiritual side
of his complex nature paramount over the flesh. This divine
chrism did not relieve Jesus of the common burden and struggle
of our life ; for there were still factors of evil in His environment
to be resisted unto blood; and within His own consciousness the
demands of the flesh had to be controlled by a conscience which
had become the perfect instrument of the Spirit of God. As, by
the baptism unto repentance, Jesus sympathetically avowed His
identification with a race of sinners and became historically bound
up with the solidarity of universal man, so by the Divine anoint-
58
The Temptation of the Son of God 59
ing and attestation of filial relationship with the Heavenly Father
He lifted mankind into reciprocity with the life of God.
2. Our consciousness of sin and of incompleteness in the
realization of God's ideal of man prevents us from attaining to a
total comprehension of the fellowship of Jesus with God. The
office of Messiah is sometimes treated as implying divineness of
character; but we shall fail to understand such union between
God and man so long as we approach the fact metaphysically or
merely speculatively. If, however, we contemplate it ethically and
humanly, we shall receive fuller and fuller light upon the per
son of Jesus. What we term the divinity of Jesus does not involve
emancipation from human trial ; it does not leave us with only a
docetic Christ; it is the expression of the truth that Jesus of
Nazareth received the Spirit of God into His life by moral choice,
and wrought out His destiny as the Son of God. Whatever gifts
of mind or of genius may have formed the birthright of Jesus,
we must conceive of His moral excellences as secured humanly
in accordance with the conditions that encircle the true nature of
man. When we use the term " humanly," however, it must not
be imagined that we imply severance from God ; man becomes
man only by his interaction with the Divine Spirit, even in Jesus
the holiness realized through personal effort was due to God's
working in Him to will and to do all righteousness. The exact
relationship of God's Spirit to man's spirit is barely definable ; in
fact, it is almost inscrutable. We know that man must win his
personality by efforts of will ; he has to use his will when it is only
a potentiality within him; and yet all the time it is God's Spirit
entering into him and constituting that which we denote by the
word personality.
One of the notes of modern thought is the renewed emphasis
upon this fundamental affinity for Himself with which God
has endowed man. Man is capax dei: the uniqueness of Jesus
is that God became human in Him ; His divinity must be thought
of as something of which human nature was capable of be
coming at its highest. But this Divine Sonship, although uni
versally potential, can be actually developed only by voluntary
fellowship with the Father. The power to realize this ideal comes
through a spiritual anointing from above, such as Jesus received
at the Jordan. He is the miracle of history, since He alone has
embodied perfectly the Logos of God ; and only by becoming par-
60 The Days of the Preparation
takers of the Spirit transmitted by Jesus can we attain any meas
ure of resemblance to Him. Few, if any, will venture to deny
that Jesus carried human nature to its highest pitch of moral
grandeur; and it is this pitch of elevation that shows us the per
fection of qualities belonging both to God and man — love and
holiness. There is no suggestion in all this that such thoughts
dispel the mystery concerning Jesus ; the problem of preexistence
and the mode of the Kenosis which constituted the initial step
in this historic Incarnation are left untouched; we seek but to
apprehend the meaning of the Divine anointing that Jesus re
ceived when He responded to John the Baptist's appeal. Al
though to some our accentuation of this crisis of the Holy Spirit's
descent upon Jesus will seem to clothe the dogma of His Divinity
in clouds, yet it is along this line of thought that the mind will
perceive the humanness of that in Him which appears most super
human. Jesus ever wrought as man in the might of the Divine
Spirit. 3. The descent of the Holy Ghost upon Jesus was not intended
to result merely in a paroxysm of emotion; rather did it signify
a Divine equipment for the work of His ministry. It came as a
summons from Heaven; it thrust new obligations upon Him; it
cleaved His life asunder: henceforth, He could not resume the
simple narrow duties of a village artizan. For years He had
been preparing for this epoch; although with marvellous self-
restraint He had waited for the voice which should lay a Divine
imperative upon all His powers and consecrate Him for His
life's mission, and at last it had come. But, according to three
evangelists, the call He heard at the Jordan not only imposed a
mighty task; it also strangely created new temptations. Be
lieving Himself set apart as the Messiah, Jesus had to think out
clearly in His own mind the true nature and functions of His
office. The Spirit of God which had anointed Him drove Him
into the wilderness by an irresistible impulse. " When Heaven
is about to confer a great office on any man," said Mencius, " it
first exercises his mind with suffering, and his sinews and bones
with toil. It exposes his body to hunger and subjects him to
extreme poverty. It confounds his undertakings. By all these
methods it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature, and supplies
his incompetencies." J These words of the remote Chinese sage
1 Mencius, bk. vi., pt. ii., xv. 2.
The Temptation of the Son of God 61
aptly describe the preparation that Jesus must perforce pass
through, ere He can take up the duties of His exalted office.
But fascinating though the subject of the Temptation has
proved, there is a perilous facility, in treating of it, that one
may fall into self-contradiction, irreverence and futility. Let us
at once avow our belief in the reality of the Temptation, while
suspending judgement concerning the mode. " Evil did not
lure him. There was no stamp of moral defaillance on that clear
brow." 1 If such words could be said of the beloved Elmslie, with
far intenser meaning and certainty may we apply them to Jesus.
The Story of the Temptation reads almost as though it were a
parable into which Jesus precipitated the moral trial of His in
ward life. It is so inherently, spiritually true that it could be in
terpreted as summing up, in the figure of forty days, the pro
longed struggles of a whole life ; or, indeed, it might be read as an
apologue of universal history. But while this is so, there is a
certain probability that Jesus would pass through a severer ordeal
than ever before as He stepped from the Jordan into the desert.
The evangelists, whencesoever they obtained their Temptation
tradition, used it as a great moral lesson for all men, rather than
as throwing any fresh light upon the history of Jesus Christ. In
St. Mark's bare narrative, the Temptation is represented as
going on all through the sojourn in the desert; while St. Matthew
states that the three temptations were presented to Jesus after the
completion of the forty days; and both these ideas are found in
St. Luke's account, wherein the three temptations are presented
as the climax of a long-continued struggle. St. John makes no
mention of this moral conflict; and, by his enumeration of the
sequence of the days, he almost excludes the possibility of this
long struggle in the wilderness. Such an exclusion is avoided
by supposing that the deputation from Jerusalem to the Baptist
occurred several weeks after the authentication of Jesus as the
Messiah. The omission of the Temptation from this Gospel was
due to the dominating aim of the evangelist, which ever guided
his selection of incidents : — " these things have been written that
ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that
believing ye may have life in His name." 2
4. Those who interpret the Temptation story as a parable,
escape the special difficulties arising out of the demonology belong-
1 Professor Elmslie, D.D., by Sir W. Robertson Nicoll.
2 John xx. 3of .
62 The Days of the Preparation
ing to its Jewish framework. Judgement may be suspended over
a matter so obscure as the personality of Satan and his demon
emissaries; we know too little of the world of spirits to be able
to indulge in dogmatic denial, or positive affirmation. The ra
tionalism which hastily denied the credibility of Satan's existence
and influence upon men has fallen out of vogue, and scholars
are now turning with scientific calmness to the investigation of
spiritualistic phenomena. While men who pass through certain
moral experiences will not lightly reject belief in devils as a
primitive superstition, it is to be remembered that the Gospel of
God's grace is independent of belief in the personality of Satan.
Jesus accepted Jewish ideas of psychology and of demoniacal pos
session, just as He adopted the astronomical beliefs of His age.
At least it is open to discussion whether, in His various sayings
about demons and their chief, Diabolus, and in His direct address
to the evil spirits in cases of exorcism, He spoke authoritatively
and with special trustworthy insight into the nature of evil, or
whether He was not limited in this matter, as in others, by Jew
ish contemporary thought. Admitting, then, the legitimacy of
agnosticism in this sphere, our attention is directed all the more
intensely upon the mysterious dualism in man's life, and the
tragic struggle between the flesh and the Spirit which even Jesus
could not escape. And it is a fact of the biography of Jesus that,
in the forces resident in the lower and therefore evil suggestions
which visited Him, He imagined or actually perceived the assault
of a personal enemy. An illustration of this is given in connec
tion with Simon's confession at Caesarea Philippi. When Jesus
began to speak of His approaching Passion, the impetuous dis
ciple took hold of Him and remonstrated, " This shall never be to
Thee ! " But Jesus turned with lightning-like rebuke, " Get
thee behind Me, Satan." 1 In the unwitting exclamation of His
blundering follower, Jesus felt the allurement proffered by a
ruthless and malignant foe— a Satanic suggestion to evade the
Cross and seize an earthly throne. No visible devil was there ; but
in the shock between the temptation which fell in with the in
stincts of the flesh and the stern imperative of conscience, Jesus
felt the presence of His enemy.
5. It does not seem credible that this Temptation story is
a mythus of the Church, as some have imagined; for the Apos-
'Mark viii. 32, 33; Matt. xvi. 22, 23.
The Temptation of the Son of God 63
tolic Church was fully convinced that Jesus was Divine — not only
the subject of religious faith, but also the object of worship; and
it is improbable that His worshippers would invent a fictitious
temptation. The natural tendency of fancy, where it was unre
strained, would surely be to lift Jesus out of the conditions of
human frailty, and to clothe Him with attributes of unassailable
holiness and wisdom. That such a tradition of temptation should
be told of Jesus, is a presumption in favour of its truth; for it
could not have been along this line that romance would work in
setting forth the Christ. There is ground for the verdict that it
is from Christ Himself that the narrative comes; and He prob
ably gave it to the disciples in much the same form as that in
which we have it here.1 St. Luke represents the Lord Jesus
as the subject of continued assaults of evil. At the end of this
trial in the desert the devil leaves Him only until another con
venient season comes, and at the close of His ministry Jesus said
to His disciples, " Ye are they who have continued (all through)
with Me in My temptations " (iv toiinsipaGjxoii jxov.y How
hard these sharp, recurrent crises of temptations were, may be felt
in the exultant anticipation of His voctory over the tempter's final
siege of His will — " the prince of this world cometh, and hath
nothing in Me." 3 Such allusions to the dark passages of Christ's
inner experience make it seem plausible that all the temptations
were summed up in a parabolic form for the instruction of His
disciples.4 While the temptations were real, the narrative is full
of symbolism, Satan himself, the stones, the wing of the temple,
the high mountain, are parts of the framework of the parable.
It is, however, inherently probable that Jesus did actually meet
and wrestle with evil immediately after His baptism; the leaven
of John's asceticism may have helped to confuse the issues pre
sented by His own call; and for many days Jesus wandered in
the wilderness amid the wild beasts, struggling to clarify His own
conception of the nature of the Messianic work to which He
1 Plummer, Inter. Com. St. Luke. 2 Luke xxii. 28.
'John xiv. 30.
* Professor W. M. Ramsay expresses his belief that the story of the
Temptation is parabolic. "The authority obviously is the account given
by Himself to His disciples; and we are told that 'without a parable
spake He not to them.' How far the details partake of the nature of a
parable, intended to make transcendental truth intelligible to the simple
fishermen, we cannot precisely tell, and no man ought to dogmatize. But
no one can doubt as to the essential truth that lies under the narrative,'
the Education of Christ, p. 31ft.
64 The Days of the Preparation
was divinely summoned. The populace looked for a Christ who
would be their King; John foretold the coming of the Christ in
judgement; but it was given to Jesus to think out and realize
the second Isaiah's ideal of the Suffering Servant who should
become very high. And it could not but be that such a revolu
tion as this implied, was only attained after resolute and pro
found thought combined with self-renunciation.
6. Was it then possible for Jesus to sin ? The bare suggestion
comes to many a mind with a shock as something daringly ir
reverent. Our difficulty lies in the fact that Jesus has passed out
of the category of historical statement into an abiding spiritual
relationship with all men. He is not now one of the saints ; He is
divine. There is, therefore, an inherent difficulty in stripping
our minds of beliefs which, in many instances, have grown after
struggle with doubts, and which have been influenced by experi
ence. It requires no little intellectual agility to get back to the
Jesus of history, and see plainly the steps of His preparation.
Yet this is demanded of us in our effort to reconstruct His
earthly life; we must, for a time, look at Jesus not as an object of
worship, but as Himself a subject of religious development. Even
those who conceive of Him as simply human, and look upon the
doctrine of His Divinity as an ecclesiastical figment, are not able
to imagine that one who has given the world its highest ideal
of holiness was Himself drawn aside by lust. Jesus was un
doubtedly insensible to the squalid charms of low vices; on the
other hand, His temptations, however refined, were real ones,
and were repelled in human ways. Inasmuch as we value His
humanity, we dare not say that He could not sin (non potuit
peccare) ; but since He was made perfect through suffering, He
was able not to sin (potuit non peccare). Only as He learned
sympathy in the school of moral trial could He become fitted to be
the Great High Priest of Humanity. However different from
us in degree, still His life was essentially, perfectly human,
and the tests to which He submitted touched Him in a living
way at the very citadel of his consciousness. With this assur
ance of His genuine humanity, we must rest satisfied; the mys
tery of His personality forces us to be reticent; it is impossible
for us to boldly answer " Yes " or " No " to the question con
cerning His peccability; nor should we be forced or allured into
greater definiteness, so long as our knowledge remains so very
The Temptation of the Son of God 65
limited. In dealing with the temptation of Jesus, we have to
face the two perils that meet us whenever we seek for an in
tellectual presentation of the Incarnation — viz., Docetism on the
one hand, which reduces the struggle to a mere make-believe ; and
Naturalism, on the other, which insists upon eliminating the
Divine Spirit from the phenomena of Christ's experience. It was
a real conflict with evil in which Jesus engaged: whatever the
form of the trial, He knew that He was wrestling with a force
that was in antagonism to God. The tests to which He submitted
strengthened His righteous will and consummated His moral
union with the Divine. Noble souls are not immune from the
liability to be tempted : the paradox of ethics is that elevation of
purpose intensifies the trial, even while it releases the soul from
bestial impulses; but the self-indulgent man scarcely feels
aught of painful effort in choosing his way. Soul-culture in
volves a corresponding development of susceptibility to pain.
Love is the highest, noblest spring of action, which sums up the
whole hierarchy of good motives ; yet, it is love itself that becomes
a temptation to adopt morally ambiguous means in order to
secure the well-being of the beloved. It is clear, then, that the
elevation of the Manhood of Jesus did not free Him from the
struggle with evil; in the wilderness He began a contest that
ended on the Cross; Jesus dealt with evil in its essential prin
ciple as a world- force at variance with the will of God; and
before He could achieve the reconciliation of God and the world,
He had to bring His own humanity into complete harmony with
the Divine Will.
7. The Spirit of God driveth (sxf3aXXsi) Him into the wilder
ness to be tempted of the devil: the struggle was full of pas
sionate intensity; and through the symbolism Jesus used to set
forth this experience, we dimly discern the giddy heights of emo
tion and dazzling ambitions that visited His soul at this crisis.
The temptation may have begun with a contest between the ascetic
ideal which He received from John and the dictates of His own
judgement. The call of the Spirit to the Messianic office intro
duced a new factor into the serene depths of the Mind of Jesus ;
instantly the fires that had slumbered within Him leapt up. But
to adjust Himself to His destiny, He had to conquer all uncer
tainties and fight against all the promptings of the flesh. Doubt
less, anticipations of His Messiahship had flitted across His mind
66 The Days of the Preparation
in the previous years; but now the clear, certain call had come
about which He could never doubt again. " Such transitions are
ever full of pain : thus the eagle, when he moults, is sickly, and to
attain his new beak must harshly dash off the old one upon the
rocks." x The ancient prophets had sometimes felt, under the
thrill of Divine inspiration, as if a Spirit had clutched them by
the hair and carried them on strong pinions through the vast
abysses of air. This inebriation of soul is due to those alien ele
ments that struggle against the better self; and the conqueror's
calm can be gained only through hours of storm and discord.
The agony of Jesus may have been caused, in part at least, by
His prior, partial acquiescence in the popular notions of a war
like Messiah, which clashed with the new conception, which came
at His complete anointing with God's Spirit, of a mighty spiritual
work which He had to undertake. Jesus had to determine, by
His own free choice, which of these opposing ideals He would
henceforth pursue ; and in the struggle He realized that it was the
decisive, though not the final, battle of true humanity against all
that is lower than the highest. The conventional notion of the
Messiah had in it elements of greatness, but it was limited, na
tional and military; the ideal that Jesus set up was universal,
humane and just. This was the definite choice of alternatives
which Jesus made on the very threshold of His public ministry.
The dovelike spirit that descended upon Him neither dissolved
nor reconciled these antagonisms: rather did it throw them into
severe and lucid antithesis, so that the election of one meant
the absolute rejection of the other. Vague premonitions may
have come to Jesus, as He made His choice of His purely spiritual
mission, of that antagonism which would be aroused against Him
in those various sects and parties which prided themselves upon
their patriotism.
8. The Heavenly voice at the Jordan-side testified of the
Divine filiation of Jesus; and the temptations that visited His
mind turned upon His consciousness of being the Son of God;
the first being a subtle suggestion that He should authenticate
this Divine relationship by an arbitrary and egotistic exercise
of power. He may at first have sought to imitate John's example
of fasting, and the pangs of hunger may have been actually felt
by Him, thus giving occasion for the temptation to work a miracle.
1 Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, chap. vii.
The Temptation of the Son of God 67
The idea of Divine Sonship is one of the distinctive gifts of the
Christian religion; it had been vaguely apprehended by other
teachers, but Jesus realized it in his own consciousness, and
communicated it to the world by His life. He did not depart from
the norm of human nature and set up a quasi-independence of
God, but He simply lived out the life of faith in the Heavenly
Father. God gives life, and life at its highest can be imported
and sustained only by the word of God. " Man shall not live
by bread alone, but by every word that issues from the mouth of
God." Being tempted to presume upon His consciousness of
Divine Sonship, Jesus adopted the attitude of true manhood as
one who received everything through the grace of the Heavenly
Father. He was loyal to the ideal of humanity; He preferred
the Cross to a faithless escape from suffering. Swift were the
alternations of triumph and renewed conflict in the life of
Jesus; the spiritual rapture of a Divine anointing gave place
to an experience of agonizing trial. It has been suggested
that, having become conscious of the call to be the Messiah, the
suggestion came to Him that miraculous power was needed to
substantiate His claim to that office; but He refused to ask for
such a charisma. The form of the temptation will be interpreted
variously by different minds, but certain essential features in
Christ's manner of repelling it are clearly enough defined for all.
Jesus demonstrated His trust in the sovereignty of God; that
man's life in the Divine reign is not physical alone, but spiritual,
needing to be nourished with the word of God. The true spirit
of the anointed man is seen in that He who subsequently satis
fied, the hungry multitudes, now voluntarily submitted Himself
to the pangs of hunger, trusting absolutely to the providence of
the Heavenly Father.
9. The triumph over one form of temptation occasions a re
action from which springs a further trial; — having refused to
distrust the goodness of His Father, He is next urged to make an
irrational display of trust. Faith is in danger of being lured to
ward the gulf of fanaticism ; He is tempted to expect from God
an abnormal and extra-human display of Providence. While He
is absorbed in the thought of the Messianic mission to which He
is called, the suggestion arises that He should inaugurate His
movement by the ostentation of over-faith — illustrated by the
notion of plunging from some giddy height of a temple-wing. A
68 The Days of the Preparation
higher voice, however, counselled refusal to do aught that would
violate the ordered course of human life, or endanger the spirit
of filial submission to God's known laws. " Thou shalt not tempt
the Lord thy God." Thus we see that even this Son of God was
tempted to leap into the Pharisaic abyss of spiritual pride. Had
Jesus yielded, He could never afterwards have said, " I am the
way, the truth, and the life." Before He could teach the laws
of the Kingdom, He realized them by perfect obedience ; — having
Himself walked in the way of God, He became able to discover it
to man. From the very beginning, Jesus refused a religion based
on miracle ; the reign of God in man consisted not in physical, but
in moral power — in righteousness and peace. His victory over
this subtle temptation shows His acquiesence in the limitations
and conditions of true humanity. Jesus definitely refused to
lift Himself out of the normal state of man's dependence upon
God, and also rejected every suggestion that the Son of God
might presume upon the fact of the Heavenly Father's love for
Him. Jesus sought and realized the true ideal of the life of man.
io. Yet another temptation, placed second by St. Luke, was
the world's enticement to seek a kingdom based on ambition and
pride — that is, to establish the Messianic reign by following the
popular expectation. The Kingdom which John heralded as " at
hand," was conceived by the Baptist as a renascent Israel — God's
Kingdom, and therefore righteous ; but its form was material, its
scope national, and its rule despotic. The visionary sweep of
such sovereignty invested in an earthly Zion had attractions for
all dreamers; and besides, it harmonized with many of the an
cient oracles read in the sacred books. One of the first demands,
then, upon the thought of one who believed Himself called to
be the Messiah, was for the formulation of Israel's true relation
to the Gentiles. Could the Messianic rule over all nations be
won save by violence ? Herein was evinced the marvellous origi
nality of Jesus: Judaism has had other claimants to the Mes
siahship, but no other like Him. Realizing Himself to be the
Spiritual Son of God, He sought to avoid all earthly seff-
exaltation, and to secure His Kingdom by love and sacrifice. The
choice of this ideal was not made without agony and doubt; the
Temptation story reveals the inward conflict through which Jesus
passed. He saw that outward pomp and military parade, alike
with supremacy won by physical miracle, were essentially false,
The Temptation of the Son of God 69
contrary to the mind of God: perhaps the struggle was in the
effort to see this, rather than in the rejection of the lower method
when it had once been seen. Through His spiritual anointing,
Jesus had become conscious of His kingly qualities and predes
tined sovereignty; but, as He reflected upon the external role of
Messiahship suggested by John, He saw it was an unsubstantial
mirage; the only real and abiding Empire of the Spirit must be
founded on love and sacrifice. The life that Jesus elected to pur
sue had no meretricious display; it was simply the life of faith,
and hope, and love. We cannot say that Jesus foresaw the fact
of the Cross ; but, in principle and method, He made in the desert
His choice of the sacrificial way that was ultimately realized in the
Tragedy of Calvary. Jesus made the absolute renunciation of
self, beating down the appetites of the fleshly nature, crushing
all the proud, rash impulses that were contrary to God's appoint
ments, and rejecting all personal ambition. His meat and drink
were to do the Will of God. " I think I understand somewhat of
human nature," Napoleon is recorded to have said, " and I tell
you all these [warlike heroes] were men and I am a man, but not
one is like Him; Jesus Christ was more than man. Alexander,
Caesar, Charlemagne, and I founded great empires; but upon
what did the creations of genius depend? Upon force. Jesus
alone founded His Empire upon love, and to this very day mil
lions would die for Him." When the Holy Spirit descended upon
Jesus, He was precipitated into a struggle against all the prompt
ings and suggestions that sprang from the Spirit of His age.
But the dove triumphed over the fierce, malignant forces of the
world, and " Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into
Galilee."
BOOK II
THE ANNUNCIATION OF THE KINGDOM
CHAPTER I
THE MORNING STAR AND THE SUN OF
RIGHTEOUSNESS
I. Jesus of Nazareth and John the Baptist were contempo
raries; yet while the ministry of Jesus began under the sanction
of the great Baptizer, the latter became eclipsed by the spiritual
splendour of Christ's abiding work. Lovers of paradox, however,
still speak of John as the master, and of Jesus as his disciple.
Their relationship and the mutual influence of the one upon the
other are difficult to estimate, because He who came after John
was before him. The tradition embodied in our Gospels repre
sents the Baptist's work as introductory and subordinate to the
ministry of Jesus : one baptized with the Spirit, the other with
water. The incoherences of the Gospel narratives have provoked
unimaginative critics to stigmatize them as historically unreliable.
Had it not been for the testimony of Josephus to the profound
impression made by John upon Israel, it is probable that the New
Testament records would have been treated as a mist of popular
rumour and untrustworthy products of the cycle of legends which
Venus, the morning star, has evoked in many lands. For the
New Testament resolutely treats John as the forerunner of the
Light of the World, the herald of a greater luminary ; indeed, he
himself is said to have acknowledged the superiority of Jesus,
and to have testified, " He that cometh after me is mightier than
I." Josephus, however, prevents the critics from treating John
as a mythological personage, convincing them that a concrete,
real history lies behind the Gospel tradition, although he makes no
mention whatever of the Baptist's Messianic hopes and predic
tions. This omission on the part of the Jewish historian is natu
rally sufficient, in the view of many, to negate all the affirmations
of the Gospels. However, we ought to be grateful to Josephus
for reassuring us concerning the historicity of John's appearance ;
and thus it ought not to be wholly impossible to reconstruct, out
of the materials given, some fair conception of the Baptist's per
son and work. In attempting this task, though never so briefly,
73
74 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
our method must be one of impressionism, using the imagination
to collect the disjecta membra which survive all criticism and in
tegrate them anew into the framework of the whole. But while
Jesus may be remembered by the work He did apart from John,
the Baptist takes his place in our mental picture of the past,
because of his connection with the beginnings of the ministry of
Jesus. 2. Any attempt to understand the relationship between John
and Jesus necessitates consideration of certain chronological data
presented in the Gospels. Even if it were true that philosophy may
ignore history, no student of the Christian religion can do so;
for the ideas that dominate the New Testament came to men, not
as naked abstractions, but clothed and dramatized in the events
and experiences of real human lives. While it may be impossible
to attain to chronological accuracy, still the delicate and difficult
task of examining details and weighing historical evidence will
result in a clearer apprehension of the great moments of evangelic
history. Our general aim is to set out in bold relief the chief
facts relating to the work of Jesus and John, and then to group
our materials so that the sequences and acts assume an intelligible
order. The majority of readers, however, feel but slight interest
in the minutiae of research: they ask only for results; and we
shall seek to meet this expectation as succinctly and clearly as
possible. It is singularly unfortunate that St. Luke's sixfold at
tempt to define the date of John's appearance is rendered ineffec
tual through our ignorance as to whether he intended the fif
teenth year of Tiberius to be counted from the death of Augustus,
or from their association as joint-rulers. After an examina
tion of the evidence, Sir William Ramsay has concluded that
John appeared announcing the coming of Christ in the later
months of the year a.d. 25, while some have dated the ministry
of John about a.d. 27; and now Colonel Mackinlay offers good
reasons for placing it as early as April in the same year as that
suggested by Ramsay. The discussion still ranges between a.d. 25
and 27 ; happily the terminus a quo is of less importance than the
order of sequence in the development of John's preaching minis
try. The rumours of the Baptist's work may have synchronized
with the awakening of new spiritual movements in the mind of
Jesus; — may, in fact, have occasioned the changes in the life of
our Lord. The Carpenter is conscious of that Wind of God
The Sun of Righteousness 75
which bloweth where it listeth, and at the inward prompting of
the Spirit He goes out to join the penitents by the Jordan-side.
3. It has already been suggested that the ascetic ideal of
John together with the popular Messianism of that age caused
Jesus to be plunged into prolonged mental struggle, as the
Spirit led Him into a universal, spiritual and more genial con
ception of truth and of the Divine purpose. The next step is to
try to understand the subsequent relationship between John and
Jesus. Were we dependent solely upon the two first evangelists,
we might imagine that Jesus waited until John was put in prison
before He began an independent mission, since they say, " Now
after that John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee preach
ing the Gospel of God ;" * but the Fourth Gospel gives us to
understand that both ministries proceeded side by side for some
time.2 St. Luke's account of Christ's answer to the inquiry that
John sent from Machaerus, also discloses a considerable pro
gramme of work already accomplished.3 With characteristic
laconicism, St. Mark compresses into a single sentence all he has
to say of the associated ministries of Jesus and John. For a
time the Baptist's renown eclipsed the unobtrusive beginnings of
Christ's work : still, it is evident that for a season they carried on
separate, yet connected, missions in proximity to each other,
which led to the notable dispute about fasting between their
respective disciples.* The conviviality of Jesus, so offensively
exhibited at the feast in Levi's house, may have given occasion
for this public remonstrance, and, if this were so, several months
had elapsed since Jesus began to preach. After the initial steps
in Galilee, Jesus returned south to the Passover ; ° then tarried
awhile in Judaea, where a propaganda of baptism was carried on
at ^Enon. The Baptist was far too magnanimous to feel envy;
his disciples, however, did not restrain their jealousy. The
Pharisees, foreseeing by this time that Jesus was destined to be a
worse enemy to them than John himself, fanned the flame by
invidious comparisons. Jesus was grieved by this petty rivalry,
and to put an end to it turned to go north again. The episode
of the plucking of the corn on the Sabbath-day, which occurred
on this journey, while it foreshadows the final breach of Jesus
'Matt. iv. 12; Mark i. 4. 'Luke vii. 18-23.
2 John iii. 22-30. 'Matt. ix. 14-17.
"John iii. 22-30.
76 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
with contemporary orthodoxy, is precious to the chronologist,
as giving a fixed point in the sequence of Christ's ministry. Al
though the first-fruits had been offered at the recent Passover, the
corn-harvest had not yet been gathered in; and, as no mention
is made of John's incarceration, we must suppose that he was
still at liberty, although it must have been but a brief while —
a few days at most — that remained for the continuance of his
preaching. Thus, from those various data, we infer that the
first six months of the ministry of Jesus overlapped the last six
months of the work of John the Baptist.
4. The message of both these great preachers was summed
up in the annunciation of the imminence of " the Kingdom " ;
but while in some measure they had a common aim, they used
different methods and formed distinct communities. The con
ventional belief is that John conceived of himself simply as the
forerunner of Jesus; but, if this were so, he ought not to have
continued his work independently. The Gospels narrate the most
explicit testimonials of John to Jesus, representing him to have
borne witness to the incontrovertible sign of the Spirit received
at His baptism; the fourth evangelist, in particular, declares
that the Baptist pointed Jesus out to the multitudes as the Lamb
of God, testifying also that although He was subsequent in time,
He was marked by spiritual priority. It is astonishing, there
fore, that John, instead of ceasing his separate ministry, con
tinued as he had begun, and so formed a definite school char
acterized by ascetic discipline and a distinct liturgy ; 1 and years
after the Crucifixion — even during the apostolate of St. Paul —
the disciples of John remained a sect ignorant of the baptism of
the Holy Spirit.2 The later developments of the school of John
with which Apollos became connected may be explained easily
enough; but even the phenomena of John's personal ministry
tend to dislocate traditional views of his movement. As the
morning star heralds the dawn, so the Baptist led the way for
Jesus, and historically we see that the work of John was sub
ordinate to that of his great Successor. At the same time the
facts recorded seem to show that, while John was a forerunner,
he yet conceived of his own work on independent lines. In
spite of this difficulty, it would be an egregious error to re
nounce the fragmentary traditions of the Gospels as unhistorical ;
1 Luke xi. 1. ! Acts xix. 2-3.
The Sun of Righteousness 77
rather might we deem their very incoherence to be due to the
evangelists' fidelity to the facts of history and the spiritual
order. It is clear that John announced Jesus as God's servant,
and threw his aegis over the beginnings of His ministry; it is
equally plain that the Baptist did not think of himself as super
seded by Jesus. If, with this perception in our minds, we proceed
to indicate the probable sequence of the important events, using
without hesitancy the suggestions derived from the idealized
history in St. John's Gospel, we shall be able to form a con
ception of the work done between the feasts of the Tabernacles
and of the Passover; and we shall admire more and more the
greatness of John, who, seeing the growing fame of Jesus and
feeling that his own star was setting, kept his mind unclouded,
and free from ignoble suspicions and jealousies.
5. When Jesus came forth from the wilderness temptation,
He possessed at last a clearly developed understanding of His
Spiritual ministry, and a will of adamant after the conflict.
Although His watchword was verbally identical with John's, His
idea of the Kingdom was denationalized — human, spiritual and
universal. Jesus has stripped Himself of the asceticism inculcated
by John's example; He mingles with men socially, convivially,
without fear of defilement. History has truly gauged the value
of the two ministries : John came baptizing with water, but Jesus
baptized men with the Spirit. It is a superficial and untrust
worthy judgement that seeks to reverse these values, and at
tributes to John a greater influence because of his priority in
time. To the Baptist belongs the honour of reviving the role
of the prophet after it had lapsed for four hundred years, and
his strenuous moral appeals aroused the sleeping conscience of the
nation. Jesus, however, brought a larger, more spiritual ideal
into our world; He made it possible to fulfil the Divine idea of
humanity ; He caused men to know God as their Father, and im
parted a truly filial spirit to His followers. This statement is far
from exhausting the significance of Christ's mission; but it is
sufficient to show that the. difference between Jesus and John was
not merely one of words — rather of Spirit, aim and achievement.
John baptized men unto repentance, seeking to detach them from
sin and turn their hearts to God; Jesus anointed men with a
Divine Spirit, augmenting the energies of right will in man's in
ward life.
78 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
6. The Synoptists give full acknowledgement of the incentive
and sanction given by John the Baptist to Jesus ; but the fourth
evangelist, notwithstanding the haze of idealism that shimmers
over his gospel, enables us to descry the historical fact that Jesus
exercised a potent influence upon the stern mind of His fore
runner, causing at least a temporary deflection of John's thought
from its customary orbit. The intercourse between the two
prophets, whether it took place before or after the Temptation,
imparted a new quality to the preaching of the Baptist; a new
gentleness stole into John's character. As he contemplated Jesus,
the oracles concerning Jehovah's Suffering Servant rose before
his remembrance, and in a moment of triumphant insight he was
caught out of himself and inspired to declare, " Behold the Lamb
of God ! " Subsequent theological reflection charged this ec
static exclamation with meanings that made it seem impossible
that John should have given it utterance. It should be remem
bered, however, that while we interpret the figure of the Lamb
through the Cross, John himself may have applied it to Jesus
because of His gentle, innocent, patient, enduring Spirit, which
became manifest from the first. Since the disciples of Jesus
Himself failed so utterly to realize the function of sacrifice in the
mission of their Lord until the Crucifixion had been accom
plished, it does seem incredible that John the Baptist should
have outrun them all in his forecast of Christ's self-sacrificial
ministry. But we know too little of the personal influence of
Jesus upon John, and too little of the mystery of inspiration,
to say that John could not have conceived of Jesus as the Lamb
of God. There is a Divine Spirit which has access to human
minds, which sometimes bears them forward in prophecy, im
parting flashes of insight into the very heart of life's mystery,
and which gives to the spoken word a completeness of meaning
that the speaker himself could only imperfectly have appre
hended. Thus, as every interpreter of Shakspere knows full
well, are we able to read into a great poet's language ideas and
meanings that he never foresaw. The seer's vision may be
limited by his age and standpoint, but the ray of light seen
and pointed out by him has no detachment from its source; it
blends with all the other rays, and, if followed back, it leads
the eye to the very centre and source of light. The gentleness,
patience and innocence of Jesus distinguished Him from all other
men known to John, and so he designated Him as the Lamb of God.
The Sun of Righteousness 79
John saw in Him a beam of the Eternal Beam ; a ray of Divine
lustre which leads up to the fountain-head of all Spiritual Light —
the self-sacrifice of perfect love. The language he used was not
new, though he spoke freshly of what he perceived; it was bur
dened with meanings and ideas of Israel's past and, like all the
words of inspiration, insight and genius, conveyed infinitely more
than the speaker may first have intended. Hearing John thus
proclaim Jesus to be the Lamb of God, two of his disciples were
attracted to Him, and followed Him with the belief that He
would be God's Messiah. Having found in John a clear radi
ance as of the morning star, they now saw in Jesus all the glory
of the rising sun. The Baptist, in all probability, gave a generous
consent to the transferred discipleship of Andrew and John,
seeking thus to help forward the aims of Jesus. Andrew sought
out his brother Simon, and introduced to Jesus the most force
ful personality of the disciple circle. Jesus, on His way north
ward, called Philip to accompany them, and Philip brought Na-
thanael. But we must not attribute to this first acquaintance the
whole significance that attaches to their later discipleship; they
had as yet no thought of abandoning their avocations, for at
times they separated from Jesus to pursue their duties in connec
tion with their homes and families; yet probably the events of
later years never erased the first tender affections that this con
tact with Jesus aroused in their hearts.
7. In order that we may trace the subsequent relationship and
mutual influence of these two great prophets of Israel, we shall
be forced to refer, though never so briefly, to events that must
be treated of more fully in succeeding chapters ; but such repeti
tion will be a light tax, if it enables us to see in clear light the
two great epoch-making characters, Jesus and John. The two
ministries are speedily differentiated by the miracle said to have
been performed at Cana of Galilee. John has won the fuller
appreciation of the modern mind, because he was no thaumatur-
gist. One of the earliest undertakings of Jesus of Nazareth was
the systematic visitation of all the synagogues of Galilee. He
may have foreseen that, sooner or later, these places of instruc
tion would be shut against His teachings; but, by taking early
advantage of them, He made His message of the imminence of
God's Sovereignty verbally familiar to all the religious-mindad
Jews of His time.
80 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
Although our data of this part of Christ's ministry are so
slender, we perceive He made no servile imitation of the Bap
tist's methods; He conceived and carried out His own plan;
He imposed no stern regimen upon His followers; and, as a
consequence of their conviviality and ceremonial laxity, not
only was the antipathy of the Pharisees aroused, but an anxiety
about it was shown by the ascetic disciples of John. When the
matter is brought to the attention of Jesus, He almost gaily
compares His relation to His disciples to the gladdening pres
ence of a bridegroom with " the sons of the bridechamber " ; He
also lays down the principle of religious sincerity in life : fasting
is the ritual of mourning, and grief can be expressed only upon
occasions of sadness. Already we discern, beneath His expan
sive mood of joy, the unswerving strength of a disciplined leader,
and with resolution He differentiates His movement from John's
as something strong and new, which demands corresponding ex
pressions and institutions. The Baptist's asceticism belonged to
the old dispensation ; Jesus inaugurated a new era, whose preemi
nent characteristic is a fresh feeling for humanity — a larger social
righteousness. There is no profit in patching an old garment
with unfulled cloth: the rent will only be made worse by such
attempts; and no one will put new wine in old wineskins, since
these would only burst and waste the wine. These parabolic
utterances show clearly that, while Jesus restrained Himself in
courtesy and affection toward John, yet He was fully aware of
His own distinct and independent mission. Jesus had mastered
His own thoughts and plans; there was no mark of immaturity
in these early sayings; His doctrines were assured in His own
mind, and He knew that He had something fresh and original
to contribute to the weal of mankind. It is also plain that He con
ceived of His own office in a unique way; He was no servant
standing on the" same plane of consciousness as the prophets be
fore Him, and as John the Baptist; He is the Anointed Son; He
is the joy-creating Bridegroom.
8. About the time of the first Passover of Christ's ministry
Jesus returned southward and took up His position at ^Enon,
near to John's centre, and His disciples baptized many converts
after the manner of John himself. Such proximity aroused com
parisons and contrasts between the two schools and their re
spective rites of purification. The discussion was natural, and
The Sun of Righteousness 81
may have commenced without any strong feeling ; but there were
those around who were but too ready to point their arguments
with jealousy, and it was said of Jesus, " all men come to Him."
When the dispute was communicated to John, he evinced no
pique or meanness ; his answer consisted in the enunciation of the
principle that, in all man's service for God, he " can receive noth
ing except it hath been given him from Heaven."
" All service ranks the same with God :
If now, as formerly he trod
Paradise, his presence fills
Our earth, each only as God wills
Can work : God's puppets, best and worst,
Are we ; there is no last nor first." *
It may be that someone had told the Baptist of the claim of
Jesus to be the Bridegroom, and in answer he recalls his own
testimony to the greatness of Jesus ; he is among those who re
joice at the sound of His voice, and exclaims, " He must increase,
but I must decrease." 2 John kept his mind unclouded by jeal
ousy; he had neither begun nor continued his ministry at the
prompting of personal ambition ; he was willing to be " a voice " —
no mere echo, but the stern voice of Israel's conscience. John
bore witness of the dovelike spirit which he perceived resting on
Jesus ; he pointed to Him as God's Chosen Lamb, and magnani
mously acknowledged that He was greater than himself. The
morning star envies not the rising sun, but is content to fade
away in the radiance of a gracious dawn. Jesus said of him
after he had gone, " He was the lamp that burneth and shineth,
and ye were willing to rejoice for a season in his light." 3 When
it came to the knowledge of Jesus that the malignant Pharisees
were striving to promote jealousy between John's disciples and
His own, He at once left ^Enon to go back to Galilee.
9. It was probably while Jesus was travelling northward, or
very soon after, that Herod swiftly cut short the mission of the
Baptist. Since Strauss preferred the story as it is related by
Josephus,* we may quote it at first hand from that historian:
" Now when many others came in crowds about him because they
were greatly pleased by hearing his words, Herod, who feared
lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into
* Browning, Pippa Passes. J-Tohn £#•
* John iii. 20-30; iv. 1-3. Ant-> xvm-» 52,
82 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
his power and inclination to raise rebellion (for they seemed to
do anything he might advise), thought it best by putting him to
death to prevent any mischief he might cause and not bring
himself into difficulties by sparing a man who might make him
repent of it when it should be too late. Accordingly, he was sent a
prisoner, out of Herod's suspicious temper, to Machaerus, and
there put to death." The Gospels say nothing of the political
caution, but relate the story of a personal grudge. Herod Antipas
was a licentious king: he lured his niece, Herodias, the wife of his
own half-brother Philip to his own court. John is said to have
reproved Herod " for all the evil things he had done," and to
have boldly forbidden Herod's incestuous marriage, saying : " It
is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife." The imprison
ment seems not to have been so absolute but that John's dis
ciples could visit him. Shut up in Machaerus, it was inevitable
that the Baptist's thoughts should revert to Jesus, and at every
interview with his disciples John would ask concerning the work
of this younger contemporary. In the gloom of Machaerus, the
gentler ideas of the dove and the Lamb passed away, and gave
place to austere thoughts of the day of Jehovah's judgement.
Thus overshadowed by these sombre conceptions, John listened
with repugnance to the tales of the convivial habits of Jesus, and
may have asked himself of what use would be the miraculous
gifts shown by Him, if He became the boon companion of dis
reputable publicans and sinners. It seemed to the prisoner that
Jesus was dallying with His Divine Mission; or perhaps He was
only a subordinate agent in the preparation ; and in his doubt he
sent his disciples to ask his Nazarene Kinsman, " Art Thou the
Coming One, or ought we to expect another ? "
io. John the Baptist's question demands a glance at the
tangle of Messianic hopes and preconceptions which belonged to
that age. Sometimes the characteristic expectation that influenced
so many Jewish writers is spoken of as though it were a single,
simple phenomenon belonging to all Jews and conceived of by all
alike ; whereas the ideal assumed protean guises, and was moulded
afresh by successive preachers. How it originated, how it sus
tained a patriotic optimism, and was strained of its lower elements
and charged with the prophetic feeling of righteousness, can be
perceived only by those who have studied the Old Testament in
the light of its historical development. John was deeply influ-
The Sun of Righteousness 83
enced by the teachings of older prophets, and the predominant
characteristics of his preaching were fiery denunciations of sin
and anticipations of judgement, although the hope of a baptism
of the Holy Spirit was woven like a thread of gold in this dark
background. Even a prophet's teaching may be marked by incon
sistencies ; in John's case we perceive a struggle to hold together
incompatible ideas. Some critics fall into the facile error of
making a prima-facie rejection of all evangelical elements in
John's message to his age. Glancing backward, we perceive that
some of the Baptist's predecessors had foretold the establishment
of the Kingdom as though its only King were the invisible God ;
while others had spoken of agents predestined to bring in the
divine reign of a " prophet like unto Moses," of " that prophet,"
of Elias or of Jeremiah; and some there were who anticipated
the reign of a visible king. In St. John's day, there sometimes
mingled with popular Messianism thoughts of a vague escha
tology that sprang out of prophetic intuitions of the world's
moral state and of Divine Judgement. Such thoughts as these
were a part of the spiritual inheritance of John, and contributed
the formulae in which he could express his own flashing ethical
insights. By a vision at the Jordan-side he became convinced
that Jesus was divinely designated to be the Messenger of the
Covenant — " the Great Refiner," x John styled Him " the Coming
One" (o epx6}ievos),2 and conceived Him to be the Preparer of
God's reign, whose chief function would be to separate the
wheat from the chaff, and to inflict judgement upon the impeni
tent. John neither offered new ideas for the constitution of the
Kingdom nor formed any programme beyond the elementary con
ception that the Lord's Day of Judgement would be followed by
a final restitution (dnoKaraar affii) .3 The gloom of Machaerus
was sufficient to efface John's gentler mood, which intercourse
with Jesus had induced, and to make him revert to the sterner
ideal of prophecy. The bold spirit of John was chafed by cap
tivity, and was as a mountain-eagle beating its wings against the
prison-bars. Yet the most exquisite anguish he felt at this time
seems to have been caused by the silence and non-intervention of
Jesus. There came no Message ! There was no attempt to de
liver! Nay, worse still, John's disciples brought reports that
Jesus had become the boon companion of immoral men and
'Mal. iii. i. 2Matt. xi. 3; Luke vii. 19.
'Acts i. 6.
84 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
women! John's sorrow, however, was no narrow, self-centred
thing, but arose from the seeming contradiction by Jesus of the
ideal of Him which the prisoner had cherished in harmony with
ancient prophecy.
il. "Art Thou the Coming One, or ought we to expect an
other?" John's question was asked by his disciples before all
the people. Some of those who heard it would be ready to repeat
it as discrediting Jesus' ministry, and even to the friends of Jesus
it may have brought a passing doubt. The Master calmly con
tinued His discourse; perhaps He kept the messengers with Him
all that day. At last He answered, " Go your way and tell John
the things which ye do hear and see : the blind receive their
sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, and
the dead are raised up, and the poor have good tidings preached
to them. And blessed is he who shall find no occasion of stum
bling in Me." 1 It need not vex us that we are uncertain whether
Jesus spoke the language of metaphor, or literally recounted the
physical miracles of His ministry ; with Him, at least, the spiritual
was ever supreme, and extraordinary occurrences were of little
worth, if they failed to meet and to promote the mind of faith.
These gentle ministries had already been narrated to John, and
had left him impatient; yet they constitute Christ's only answer
to men's prejudices and doubts. Had John known it, he was but
repeating the old temptation that Jesus should mould His career
to the popular, political expectations of a materialistic age. The
answer of Jesus hints the pain He felt at being misunderstood;
but this was a part of the price of spiritual superiority. He
transcended His contemporaries — even John — and stood for hu
manity, the Peer of all the ages. He had to tread the wine
press alone. " For none so lone on earth as he
Whose way of thought is high and free,
Beyond the mist, beyond the cloud,
Beyond the clamour of the crowd,
Moving, where Jesus trod,
In the lone walk with God." 2
12. It would be pleasing for us to know that the answer of
Jesus gave light to the sad prophet in his dreary confinement ; but
the Gospels only relate that the tragedy of violent death soon
'Matt. xi. 4-6. 2Dr. Walter Smith, The Bishop's Walk, pt. iii.
The Sun of Righteousness 85
ended the career of John. St. Mark states briefly that, on Herod's
birthday, Salome by her brilliant dance secured the rash promise
of the King, which was fulfilled by the execution of John the
Baptist.1 The mourning disciples " came and took up the corpse,
and laid it in a tomb," then went and told Jesus. From this we
infer that, if no reconciliation of John with the course pursued by
Jesus had taken place, still there was no antagonism aroused.
When the question had been answered, one of Jesus' own disciples
may have called John a reed, an undecided man ; but the Master
defended him: the Baptist was no reed shaken by the wind, no
smooth-tongued, well-dressed courtier, but one of the greatest
of the prophets ; although he was less than the least of those who
are born into the Kingdom of Heaven. The defect in John's char
acter was its violence : since his clarion call to prepare for the
Kingdom, many had thought to bring in that Divine Reign by
strategy and force. As Jesus described the Baptist, he was the
Elijah of his time; and to him, as to the mighty Tishbite, the
lesson had to be taught that Jehovah was not in the tempest,
earthquake or fire, but in the still small voice of love. Since,
therefore, a spirit of childlike grace has in it a diviner element
than is revealed by the vehemence of passion, the greatest mem
ber of the old prophetic order was characterized by Jesus as in
ferior by spiritual birthright to the child of the New Kingdom.
In God Himself, there is a holy resentment against sin ; but man
is too imperfect to show any adequate imitation of this Divine
wrath. Jesus could be austere in the presence of pretence of any
kind, but He was strangely pitiful of human failings, and chose
the way of gentleness and self-sacrificing love to establish His
Kingdom. JMark vi. 1^-30.
CHAPTER II
THE FIRST MONTHS OF JESUS' MINISTRY
i. The attempt to understand the mutual relations of John
and Jesus necessarily resulted in an anticipation of, and cursory
allusion to, events whose importance demands further attention.
It will help toward an understanding of the whole work of Jesus,
if we first make a synopsis of the inaugural months, and subse
quently consider special aspects of His message, works, and re
lationship to His contemporaries. A breath of Divine inspiration
was at that time passing over men's minds; the gaunt, rugged,
stern man of the desert, with his austerities and rebukes, was a
portent of change. His message sounded a mysterious crisis;
the womb of time was felt to be big with Divine Judgement, and
the Jewish people were moved with hopes and fears, believing
that the day of Jehovah was imminent. Unlike some of the
Oriental races who cherish dreams of a golden age which has
vanished in a dim antiquity, Israel bore the morning star of
Hope on her forehead, looking ever to the future for the nobler
dispensation of God's providence. While they clothed Moses in
legendary splendours so that, as Heine remarks, the mountain
of Sinai is but a pedestal for the man who stood above the clouds
and talked face to face with God, yet they dared to expect the
coming of One greater than Moses himself. The traditions of
David's reign were glorious in the minds of all patriotic Jews,
and yet they believed a Son of David should achieve even greater
renown for their race. Prophecy, poetry and patriotism were
fused by the mighty genius who personified the nation as the
Servant of Jehovah, and predicted that when the Servant was
overcome, exiled, oppressed, he should renew his strength like
the eagle, and transmute the failure of the race into spiritual
triumphs. This noble hope awoke many echoes in the genera
tions that followed, and thrilled the Jewish race with vivid ex
pectancies of Divine visitations. Such tales of past greatness
and predictions of a glorious restoration, with historic memories
of heroic struggles for freedom, nestled in the heart of Israel
86
The First Months of Jesus' Ministry 87
as sleeping instincts waiting to spring into activity whenever
some great man appeared in the nation.
2. History shows that nations, like individuals, pass through
periods of sleep; but during such times they often gather new
energies for a further advance. When God's tocsin rings out,
the dead levels are broken by the inrush of new forces; the
thoughts of men appear to boil and ferment as though penetrated
by a powerful leaven; the apathy that has weighed upon the
heart like the frost of winter is thawed, and hot emotions are
sent out like streams of lava. Such transitions from quiescence
to storm, from stagnation to intensest activity, are frequently
characterized by revolutionary terrors. When these birth-times
arrive, God sends forth epoch-making men — teachers, founders of
religion, anointed leaders — like Elijah, Confucius, Mohammed.
Men like these are high-priests of the soul; they stand on the
boundaries of the invisible as interpreters and Messiahs; often
they become iconoclasts, who sweep away the false gods and
illusions of their people; and yet at crucial moments they dis
appoint even those who hail them as leaders. When John came
in Judaea, he stirred the conscience and heart of the Jewish race,
and there were many who were willing to accept him as the
Messiah ; but with marvellous humility John pointed to Jesus as
a greater Leader than himself, as one divinely predestined to
bring in the Reign of God. Jesus appears to have felt the
temptation offered by the political expectations of His race, but
refused to take part in the fostering of revolution.
3. Externally there was but little in the lowly appearance
of Jesus to account for the immeasurable influence of His Life;
perhaps few great men have presented less temptation to the
popular imagination for hero-worship than this Carpenter of
Nazareth. We have seen how rapture and agony blended in
His experience of the Divine call ; how, driven by the Spirit, He
wrestled with His new thoughts and high projects: but in the
discipline of the years that had gone, will and character had
been tempered so that He emerged from this struggle with His
vision of the Father unblurred and an aim that never wavered.
The transcendence of such a character as this has been the
riddle of all successive time. Shall we call Him God or man?
In seeking to understand the Gospels, it is well that our first
88 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
aim should be to learn all that they record of Jesus without
theorizing about His Person; although, as we proceed, we are
forced by the teaching and action of Jesus to consider Who and
What He was. We shall be permitted to assume, from our
general acquaintance with the Gospels, that Jesus was a man
anointed and filled by a Divine Spirit, without, however, offering
a definition of this conception. Two opposite temptations meet
the students of this problem : they are prone to think of God as
the Subject of the phenomena of Christ's earthly life, or they
fall into a loose habit of treating the Divine Sonship of Jesus
as a rhetorical or poetical metaphor. The true method of treat
ment is that of ethical insight rather than of metaphysical anal
ysis. As a great agent in the world's history, Jesus said certain
things and performed certain acts ; and these have a great ethical
value. In treating the inaugural period of His ministry, it will
suffice to remember that He was ethically one with the Will of
God — He lived consciously in reciprocity of thought and obedi
ence with the Heavenly Father — and that He gave Himself up
to follow the leading of the Divine Spirit. His manhood was
like ours in its dependence and submission; unlike ours only in
its perfect sinlessness and victorious triumph over all forms of
selfishness. He ministered to men as the social and loving Man,
and without ostentation or noise inaugurated the spiritual reality
of the Reign of God. Dr. Knowling, in commenting on the
Acts, states the unlikeness of Jesus to His contemporaries in a
striking manner : " As we consider the characteristics of such men
as Theudas and Judas, it is difficult to suppose that the age which
produced them could have produced the Messiah of the Gospels.
He is, in truth, the Anti-christ of Judaism. Instead of giving
Himself out to be somebody, Jesus is meek and lowly of heart ;
instead of stirring revolt in Galilee, a burning furnace of sedition,
His blessing is upon the peace-makers; instead of seeking a
kingly crown, like Judas the Gaulonite, He withdraws from those
who would take Him by force, and make Him a king; instead
of preaching revolt and license in the name of liberty for merely
selfish ends, He bade men render unto Caesar the things that are
Caesar's ; instead of defiantly bidding His followers to be in sub
jection to no man and inaugurating a policy of bloodshed and
murder, He bade them remember that while One was their
Master and Teacher, they all were brethren." 1
'Expos. Gk. Test., Acts v. 57, in loco.
The First Months of Jesus' Ministry 89
4. It is hardly likely that any critic will dispute the testimony
of the New Testament, that "the sum and substance of the
apostles' message to their fellow-countrymen " was that " Jesus
is the Christ " ; but it may be questioned whether this title was
conferred upon Him by over-zealous adherents, or whether He
adopted it Himself. One of the intellectual temptations follow
ing upon the emancipation of the mind from the fetters of tra
ditional orthodoxy is to suppose that the Messianic role was
ascribed to Jesus by others, and was not claimed by Himself —
hence to consider His Christhood as external and non-essential.
After a reexamination of the Gospels I am convinced, however,
that although Jesus refrained from making any pronounced claim
to this title during the first months of His ministry, yet He
acquiesced in its application to Him, and implied His right to it
from the beginning. But this admission necessitates a reiteration
of Knowling's statement, that Jesus was more like the Anti-christ
of Judaism : the Christ He claimed to be differed radically from
the Christ of popular imagination. He found the Christ-ideal
steeped in the politics of a narrow patriotism, and He lifted it
on to the plane of ethical and spiritual life, infusing into it the
formative power of His own filial consciousness of man's God-
ward relation. That Jesus should have acquiesced at all in
a title so misleading must have been the consequence of His
insight into the real needs and spiritual aspirations that were dis
closed even by the most illusive hopes of the popular Messianism.
He looked upon it as the shell of a spiritual truth. Just as He
told His disciples that John the Baptist was Elias (the only Elias
for that age), so He knew that He Himself was the true Messiah
— the only real Messiah God would send in that age. He was the
desire of all nations. For Him and for us the truth of this
Messianic ideal lay in the perfect consciousness of His Divine
Sonship. Not being able to apprehend Jesus' higher point of
view, but cherishing, long after they became acquainted with
Him, the dream of a political Christ, the disciples were repeatedly
disappointed in their Master, and at His Crucifixion they were
subjected to the most cruel disillusionment. The belief in His
resurrection, however, revived the idea of His Messiahship, but
in a form more akin to His own conception, though still coloured
by Jewish eschatology ; they saw that His Messiahship consisted
in His princely and soteriological relations with all mankind.
When Christians now read the prophecies of the Messiah's com-
90 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
ing, and of the New Testament faith that Jesus fulfilled them, they
instinctively drop all the temporalities and accidents of national
ism, and regard these oracles as expressions — noble with ignoble
blended — of the soul's deep, universal, vague yearnings for Divine
deliverance and succour. That is, we interpret the Mind of
Christ through His own " Beatitudes," rather than through the
distorting media of passionate Jewish patriotism and local preju
dices. 5. The Method of Jesus, in quietly deposing the reigning
ideals and setting up in a position of universal supremacy the
conception that He realized in His own life, is one of the amazing
disclosures made in the Gospels. He proceeded, from the time
of His return from the wilderness temptation, along the simple,
unpretentious lines of human goodness. Such an inauguration
of the Kingdom, being altogether without violence and apocalyptic
splendours, offended even John the Baptist, and left him unsatis
fied. Nevertheless, those opening months of Christ's ministry
marked a new beginning in human history. Tacitus tells of a
legend that beyond the land of the Suiones the sun gives forth
audible sounds in its rising, " sweeter than lutes and songs of
birds " ; and in sober fact, the work of Jesus constituted a day-
spring from on high which filled the spiritual atmosphere of men's
lives with gracious and stirring harmonies. Having once de
liberately discarded all conventional dreams of what the Messiah
should do, Jesus never wavered in His course, never retraced the
steps of His purpose, never swerved from His own ideal, nor
ever permitted popular clamour to divert His simple ministry
of human goodness. He showed no natural impatience to secure
the people's attachment; He calmly went about doing good; He
renounced all worldly ambitions; and in spite of the Baptist's
solicitation, firmly detached Himself from all political Messianism,
being content to exemplify the true character of the Divine Son.
That ministry was not fashioned by outward circumstances; it
was performed under the compulsion of the Spirit. The Fourth
Gospel reflects, quite truly, we believe, these characteristics of
self-possession and autonomy. Jesus resisted all pressure toward
premature action, and waited for " the hour " of Divine appoint
ment ; then at its signal, recognized at once in His sensitive spirit,
He moved forward with stately yet simple dignity toward His
goal. For lucidity of treatment we draw the inaugural months
The First Months of Jesus' Ministry 91
of the Messiah's ministry apart from the later period; but no
one should infer that there is any real " break " in the continuous
development of His mission ; from the beginning Jesus was dom
inated by a spirit of self-sacrifice and of Divine Sonship, which
the tragedy of the Cross only threw into high relief. Thus,
as we glance over the whole finished work, we become sympa
thetic with the special view of the fourth evangelist, who " re
gards the whole work of Christ as one, as the complete fulfilment
of the Divine Counsel."
6. How, then, did Jesus appear to those first followers in that
new, gracious dawn? They looked at Him through the mist of
Messianism, and yet they saw that His face had caught a glorious
radiance, and their own hearts leapt toward Him. In the Fourth
Gospel we find the story of the wedding at Cana of Galilee, which,
whether treated as history or legend, presents a symbolic frontis
piece for the record of Christ's ministry. Many questions relat
ing to the historical criticism of the Gospels remain as yet un
settled; and it remains open to the reader either to make the
naive assumption that all the incidents related are substantially
veracious, or to weigh all available evidences and suspend judge
ment wherever the data are inadequate. I confess that I cannot
bring my mind to acquiesce lightly in the theory that the fourth
evangelist indulged in the free invention of incidents for the
illustration of his theme, " that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God." In such narratives as those of the miracle at Cana and
of the raising of Lazarus, we take it for granted that he had
some basis of fact to work upon. In the first-named story, there
are details that are hard to understand: especially is it difficult
to apprehend the exact ground of Mary's expectation that her
Son would meet the sudden demand for wine; and this difficulty
is but accentuated by the attitude and reply of Jesus. Had Mary
only sought from Jesus the exercise of His tact and ability to
extricate the host from embarrassment, it would have seemed
natural; but the evangelist makes it appear that she wanted
Him to perform a miracle. Taking the story as it stands, that
it may make its own impression upon our minds, we may note
that the unexpected arrival of Jesus with five friends perhaps
helped to produce the failure of the bridegroom's wine supply.
Whatever the nature of Mary's expectation concerning her Son,
she manifests a trust in His sympathy and power. In His
92 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
answer, He disclaims any further right of fleshly relationship
to control His conduct, and indicates that the initiative must
henceforth come from a Divine source. By His presence at the
wedding and His miracle, when so recently He had refused to
satisfy His own hunger, Jesus appears to us as socially winsome
and sympathetically powerful: — a bright and joyous personality.
" Without wine there is no joy," runs the Jewish saying J ; and
this gives the key to the story — Jesus is the Joy-giver at life's
feast ; water changes to wine at His word ; nature is transfigured
by His grace. The gladness of His mind was not, however, the
spontaneity of nature's harmony and fair proportions ; it was dis
tinctively an ethical beatitude, the resultant of temptation mas
tered, of self-conquest, of sorrow faced and transformed. His
serenity is not the beautiful bloom of nature ; nor is it even the
superb scorn of Stoicism; it is the fine achievement of moral
effort : it is at once a Divine endowment and an ethical attainment.
Jesus was able to replenish the world's wasted store of life's
wine, because already He had trodden the wine-press alone.
Through meditation and heroic resolve, He plucked the grapes
of wisdom and meditation; He had won perfection through suffer
ing: hence, although He is the Joy-bringer, He offers men no
cheap happiness, as many demagogues have done; He imparts
His beatitude to such as learn of Him to be meek and lowly
in heart — a lesson learnt only by bearing His yoke. Jesus as
sumed no " airs," practised no religious asceticism, boasted of no
spiritual ecstasies; He came into men's lives as simply and
grandly Human.
7. The fourth evangelist, who has done more than any other
to give men an adequate conception of Christ's inaugural ministry,
places the incident of the cleansing of the temple in this period ;
but we think this order is topical, and due to the fact that in it
the author found something concerning the purification of Divine
worship that supplied a doctrine as necessary as that illustrated
by the miracle at Cana. We follow Tatian in placing the temple-
cleansing incident at the last Passover, and seek no harmony by
the duplication of this vehement protest. Jesus appears to have
taught and healed in Capernaum, and then to have used the first
months of His ministry in visiting the synagogues of Galilee. We
accept the suggestion of the late Dr. Bruce, that "there was
1 Quoted by Westcott, in loco.
The First Months of Jesus' Ministry 93
such a thing as a systematic synagogue ministry," * although this
fact is too inadequately apprehended by most readers of the Gos
pels. " He preached in their synagogues throughout all Galilee,
and cast out devils." This was the deliberate policy of Jesus,
planned by Him in all probability in His wilderness meditations ;
hence He would not dally, but, having preached in Capernaum,
He presses on to other places : " Let us go into the next towns,
that I may preach there also ; for to this end came I forth." We
shall perceive, as we go on, far more of plan in the successive
phases of Christ's mission than is often suspected by casual
readers ; the particular spheres and styles He adopted, the forms
and developments, are not due solely to the popular demands ; nor
are they determined by the exigencies and contingencies that
arise apart from His foresight. Jesus really appears to have
planned His life's work so that He should touch every class,
and yet prevent all unwise diffusion of effort, by giving special
attention to the preparation of selected disciples. His design
of accomplishing the early visitation of most of the synagogues
was justified by events ; for, after a few months, those congrega
tions evinced such hostility to Him that it would have been almost
impossible to have gone through the synagogues in the second
year. This being so, several months of Messianic ministry must
be intercalated between the departure from Capernaum and the
return. Instead of imagining that St. Mark intended to represent
Jesus as coming back to Capernaum after a few days,2 let the
punctuation be slightly changed and read, " And when He en
tered again into Capernaum, after some days it was noised that
He was at home." He had gone away secretly 3 and had come
back so unobtrusively, that not until several days had passed did
it become generally known that He had returned. The months
between these two points of time were filled with incessant labours
of preaching and healing; but fewer details and definite facts
are recorded of this first phase of His ministry than of any other.
John the Baptist was looked upon by most as still the centre of
the new movement, and for the most part the message of Jesus
seemed the reiteration of the warning that " the Kingdom " was
at hand. Gradually, however, popular attention was attracted to
Jesus, and the differences between His message and method and
those of John the Baptist became clear to all. His miracles
* With Open Face, chap, iv., p. 80. 2 Mark ii. 1.
3 Mark i. 38.
94 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
impressed men, and constrained them to consider both the char
acter and claims of the worker.1
8. Of Christ's preaching generally, it may be said that it
reflected His inmost Spirit and life. His sayings were simple,
earnest and direct, and His discourses gleamed with pregnant
aphorisms and beautiful similes. His manner had none of the
clamorous stridency of the political agitator; He was quietly
didactic. The Baptist's preaching was vehement and tumultuous
as a mountain torrent ; the sayings of Jesus were sparkling, limpid
and spontaneous as a fountain springing amid rocks. His dis
courses seemed too natural to be premeditated, and breathed the
aroma of religious poetry. During the years of His silence, He
had accumulated treasures of highest wisdom, which, after being
dammed back so long, shot forth at last in a crystal spring of
purest religious thought. He refreshed the hot, tired hearts of
the people : as they listened they detected a note of true distinction
in His speech, and said of Him that He spake not as the scribes,
but as one having authority. " Two weighty qualities " in His
utterances were " popular intelligibility " and " impressive preg
nancy." He used copious examples, parables, proverbs, and sen
tentious sayings, aiming always at expressing His thought with
the greatest clearness in the briefest compass.2 Whether He had
ever wrestled with intellectual doubts, or whether He had acquired
His mastery of language by earlier attempts, is not known; we
only know that, from the beginning of His Messianic ministry
He moved in a circle of Spiritual Light, and the intuitions of His
sensitive heart have proved the trustworthy revelation of God to
myriads of men ever since. Perhaps we are more acutely con
scious of life's mysteries and sorrows today than men were in
Palestine, but across the abyss of incertitude the words of Jesus
make a pathway of Light. Those who abandon this way in
evitably lose themselves amid the dark labyrinths of speculation,
and we find them striving to re-erect the fallen gods of fatality
and chance, and make them pleasing by the shimmer of poetic
thought and musical diction. We think the Galilean will conquer
all such renaissance of paganism, and His words will continue
to reverberate in the inmost sanctuary of man's soul with the
ring of spiritual truth. This joyous, loving, social Messiah
JMark i. 21-34, 35-45; ii- 1-12.
2 Wendt, T. J., The Teaching of Jesus, p. 148 (Eng. trans.).
The First Months of Jesus' Ministry 95
wedded His speech with works of power, and by the symbolism
of His miracles sought to make His ultimate purpose plain: He
banished fever and paralysis, and evoked in sensitive hearts a
power of healing faith. He brought the evangel of Divine for
giveness and deliverance for the thralls of unloving egoism and
evil lusts.
CHAPTER III
JESUS' MESSAGE OF THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD
i. While we distinguish between the inaugural and the later
mission of Jesus, it must be remembered that His message was
identical throughout, although different circumstances evoked
an ever fuller and richer unfolding of its spiritual content. As
already remarked, the Synoptists give but the slightest hint of
Christ's work in Galilee prior to John's imprisonment; it is the
second visit which they make prominent by their statement that
" after John was given up, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming
the Gospel of the Sovereignty of God." It is not improbable that,
as we have conjectured, the removal of John brought emancipa
tion to Christ's ministry, which was henceforth characterized by
greater intensity and boldness. This second period of work in
Galilee comprised events that transpired from the time that Jesus
left iEnon to the return to the capital at the unnamed feast, and
in our mental picture it must be framed between the famous
cornfield episode and the informal trial of Jesus at Jerusalem.
We can only enumerate the succession of some of the most im
pressive events of this period, such as the preaching of Jesus by
the seashore,1 the choice of the Twelve instituting the new apos
tolate, the teachings on the Mount, the healing of the centurion's
servant, the raising of the widow's son at Nain, and the inquiry
of John sent from the prison of Machaerus which elicited Christ's
programme of His own ministry. When this second period in
Galilee began, Jesus still had the entree of the synagogues, as
the clerical hostility had not yet become pronounced. The record
of His work shows that it was a continuation and an extension
of the glad evangelism with which He began; He preached to
the populace, gave special instruction to chosen followers, healed
the sick and cast out devils.2 It is neither within our scope nor
is it our design to treat of each incident : " if they should be
written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not
1 Mark iii. 7f . 2 Mark i. 34 ; Matt. iv. 23.
96
Jesus' Message of the Sovereignty of God 97
contain the books that should be written." Our immediate aim
is to apprehend the definite message of Jesus to His age concern
ing the " Reign of God," and, while leaving much of its spiritual
content for treatment when we show Christ's special relationship
to His disciples, to point out in this place that this " Watchword
of the Kingdom" defined the aim of Jesus in the world, and
provided a unifying principle for all His various teaching.
2. Few, if any, will now dispute that our translator's phrase,"
" the Kingdom of God," sums up one of the dominating concep
tions of the Mind of Jesus. It would be mere pedantry on our
part to exclude the word " kingdom," which has found a lodge
ment in all New Testament literature ; yet it is well to remember
that the chief idea of the Greek word is not the constitution or
the territory, but rather the Reign of God. St. Matthew prefers
the phrase, " the sovereignty of Heaven " ; but the other Synop
tists uniformly elect as their expression — " the sovereignty of
God." x Various explanations have been offered for St. Mat
thew's preference — e.g., that it expressed more accurately the
Aramaic term used by Jesus, or that reverence prompted the use
of an impersonal term instead of the name God, or thirdly, because
it denoted the Heavenly nature and goal of Christ's ideal. But
this last " reference to the transcendental character of the object
so designated " evinces a lack of familiarity with Jewish phrase
ology. Dalman tells us that the phrase " the Sovereignty of
Heaven " is tantamount to " the Sovereignty of God " ; though " it
does not thence follow that all trace of the thought, that in the
phrase the dwelling-place of God was being named instead of Him
who was there enthroned, must have been obliterated." 2 How
ever, it will aid us in our search for the spiritual content of
Christ's dominating idea to remember that, save for two inci
dental references,3 the Synoptic term for " the Kingdom " is in
the Fourth Gospel entirely supplanted by a different phraseology.
But upon careful examination we find that while St. John uses
a different set of terms, yet by " life " and " eternal life " he
means essentially the same thing as the Synoptists when they
write of the Sovereignty of God. It is not incredible that Jesus
Himself may have passed freely from one set of phrases to
1 paxsiteia. in Bibl. Gk. is the abstract noun of nipiog, and not of fiaaiMvc.
' Dalman, The Words of Jesus, p. 92.
8 John iii. 55 ; xviii. 36.
98 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
another to connote various aspects of one reality; and since St.
Mark identifies the entrance into life with admission into the
reign of God, this conjecture becomes more plausible. The evan
gelists' choice of alternative phrases may have been determined
as much by their own predilections as by the frequency of Christ's
own repetition of them. Hence, " eternal life " radically means
participation in the theocracy; and it is substantially the same
thing, whether it be the entrance into the theocracy or into
eternal life that is spoken of. A further example of the liberty
of the apostles' choice of terms is found in their preference for
the word " ecclesia " in the Epistles, which also denotes a the
ocracy — God's Sovereignty realized in an organized fellowship.
Such variations in New Testament terminology, when rightly
apprehended, free the mind from all slavery to words. By waiv
ing such terms as " Kingdom " and " Church," and using the
phrase " eternal life," St. John saves us alike from the mechanical
views of ecclesiasticism and from identifying God's Sovereignty
with contemporary phases of socialism. While the Kingdom must
seek expression in organized communities, it is essentially spiritual
— touching the inward and eternal life, which is God's gift to man
in Christ; it is God's reign over man's whole life, and the
Churches are of value as they mediate this Divine Sovereignty.
3. One of the most fruitful sources of perplexity is the
mingling in the Gospels of elements of prophecy with the formulas
of Jewish apocalypse. The latter have appeared to many modern
scholars as due to the misunderstanding by the disciples, of
their Master's teaching, which in their reports became incrusted
with Jewish dogmatism. On the other hand, some look upon
those apocalyptic elements as survivals which the Mind of Jesus
itself failed to slough off. But it is possible that these are
imaginative and emotional expressions of certain great spiritual
ideas which demand poetic and moral insight in us, and can never
be interpreted at the foot of the letter. Perceiving this, we shall
possess a clue to the tangle of ideas concerning the times and
modes of the coming of God's Reign. Jesus spoke of the Sov
ereignty of God as " at hand," or " drawing near," as already
in the world, or as coming some day in judgement and glory,
while in His parables He sketches the processes of a gradual
development. Such contrarieties of expression were not due to
Christ's vacillation, nor to the incompleteness of His thought;
Jesus' Message of the Sovereignty of God 99
they suggest rather certain distinct stadia in the evolution of this
moral ideal in the actual history of men. The Sovereignty of God
was near indeed; it was already in the midst of Jesus and His
disciples; it is spiritual and within man; it will leaven society,
and it will be consummated in the final parousia. Our Lord spoke
of it as a state of the heart attainable here and now ; it was the
new dispensation to be looked for and participated in by all His
disciples: but again He described it as an eschatological order,
an ideal of judgement and of felicitation belonging to the future
age (td pivffrr/pia trj? flaffiXeiaS rov Osov). We must under
stand these as representing different phases of one great spiritual
concept in the Mind of Jesus, signifying in their several stages
the realization of the earthly and Heavenly mission of Jesus. In
subsequent chapters we shall seek to show something of the
variegated wisdom of this great unifying thought of Jesus and the
manifoldness of its application to human life : at this point it is
our aim to mark simply that by this watchword Jesus gave pre
eminence to the honour of His Heavenly Father, showing that
the will of God ought to be man's supreme Law. The Sover
eignty of God is no gleaming, cold abstraction, but a veritable
sun, sending out rays of spiritual and ethic truth applicable to
human life under all conditions.1
4. This evangel of the Divine Sovereignty, then, is not some
ghostly idea, wholly divorced from the history of the past; it is
Israel's imperishable ideal of a theocracy transfigured by the
Mind of Jesus. In His thought the two Jewish conceptions of
" the Divine Lordship " and " the future age " coalesced and pro
duced a new ideal destined to be the consolation of the entire
world. Therefore, while the Sovereignty of God, like the new
Jerusalem, comes down from the lustrous heavens, it is also a
shoot from the dry stock of Judaism. The theocratic conception
of the Jewish mind contained the seed of a universal faith,
although before Jesus took up this ideal its fine gold of prophecy
was mingled with the alloy of political ambitions. The Kings of
Israel were called the "anointed of Jehovah"; and when the
majesty of Israel's princes was trampled in the dust, an ex
pectancy sprang up in Jewish minds that some Great " Anointed
One " should come and restore the fallen kingdom. " In no part
of the Old Testament does the Messiah appear as Himself the
1 Mark vi. 34, *dl fyptiaTO iiS&iTK£iv airrovg tro'Kkd.
100 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
agent of redemption in virtue of His own proper power. The
real Redeemer is God; the Messiah is the new King of the re
deemed people." 1 In the preaching of John the Baptist, there
was a spiritual revival of the idea of an Israel independent of
fleshly descent from Abraham and made morally fit to realize
God's Reign ; but even John clothed his message in national forms.
Jesus delivered this spiritual faith of the Divine Kingdom from
its ancestral limitations and political swaddling-clothes. While
John pointed Jesus out as the divinely appointed Vicegerent of
God's purpose, he failed to understand His mission, confusing
it with a narrow nationalism — patriotic and noble, but not com
patible with the catholicity of Christ's Humanity. If John failed,
it is hardly imaginable that his contemporaries should have showed
truer insight; hence it happened that, for the most part, the
Jewish people looked for an earthly Messianic king. The land
seethed with revolt against Roman rule, and the hardy soldiers
of the Empire were always ready to swoop down upon the be
ginnings of any political movement and crush its leaders. Unless
we hold in view these conditions of Jewish and Roman life in
the Palestine of Jesus' time, we shall not understand His silences,
reserves and final boldness of utterance. A premature pronounce
ment upon His Messianic title would have stirred the enthusiasm
of thousands of incipient rebels, and His movement would have
been quenched in blood. And yet, as we trace the unfolding of
His purpose and life, we find nothing in the end that was not
implied in the beginning; the plan of His ministry, while super
ficially puzzling, even to so high a type of man as the Baptist,
evinces the highest spiritual sagacity. Jesus was guilty of a
sublime inconsistency; for, while He attached Himself to the
popular expectation, He renounced all political and material am
bition; He took up John's message that the Reign of God was
at hand, but into it He breathed the inspiration of His own unique
Sonship. He adopted the old prophetic watchword, but He gave
to it a new meaning, stripping from the ideal all the accidents of
national ambition.
5. With startling egoism Jesus differentiated His ministry in
its relation to the Reign of God from the work of all predecessors.
He was the door of the theocracy. Questions are often asked
about the finality of the teaching of Jesus. The answer to such
1D. Costelli, quoted by Dalman.
Jesus' Message of the Sovereignty of God 101
questions must be largely determined by the self-consciousness of
the Christ; He claimed that Moses and the Prophets had spoken
of Him; He was the object of Israel's predictions and hopes, and
He predicted the coming of no other, although He foretold His
own return in glory. If we accept these features of His teaching,
we must believe that Jesus Himself had an ultimate and final
value for the Kingdom of God. He placed Himself in connection
with the truths of the Old Covenant, not like Confucius in his
relation to more ancient sages, as a transmitter simply, but as the
fulfiller of the truth of the old order and creator of a new dis
pensation. Jesus was very reverent, yet His thought was essen
tially revolutionary. He refused to spend time in patching the
old garment of Judaism ; nor, to use His companion-figure, would
He pour the wine of His new teaching into old dry skins, which
would assuredly have burst in the fermentation which would in
evitably follow. It is easy to overlook the greatness of Jesus,
because of the very symmetry and harmony of His character:.
hence, in respect to His veneration for the old and His gracious
tact in speaking of His forerunners, many writers miss the radical
change He deliberately wrought in the thoughts of His disciples.
John was the Elias who closed the old dispensation — the last of
the prophets and the herald of the Anointed Son. The law and
the Prophets continued until John, since that the Reign of God
is preached.1 The coming of Jesus constituted a new epoch;
His ministry produced a great disruption, and made a boundary
line in the world's history. He Himself said, " The time is
fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God approaches." 2 " It was not
merely the content of the conception which forms the kernel
of our Lord's teaching that was new and original, but also His
application of the term, despite the fact that the phrase selected
originally belonged to the religious vocabulary of the Jews.
The theocracy about to make its entrance into the world was
something more than a gratifying realization of the hopes en
tertained regarding it ; it was a creative force bringing new ideas
in its train." 3
6. The Angel of the Annunciation is reported to have fore
told that the new Son of David would restore the Kingdom.
And when we trace the steps of the Messiah's ministry, from
1 Luke xvi. 16. 3 Mark i. 14.
* The Words of Jesus, p. 139-
102 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
His renunciation of worldly kingship in the wilderness right on
to the tragedy on Calvary, it becomes apparent that all His acts
and words were directed and controlled by His absorption in the
realization of the Divine Sovereignty in man's life. It provided
the motive for His itineration, and gave the theme of all His
preaching, (fis Ssi . . . oti si? rovro dnearaX/xai.^) The
meaning Jesus attached to the old watchword came to Him in
His consciousness of Divine Sonship ; the Father reigned in His
own soul, and He delighted to represent the Sovereign as
" Father." There are critics who deprecate the transference of
emphasis from the teaching to the Person of Jesus, yet as a matter
of fact there is no divorce possible between these two; His ethic
was but the unfolding of His own inward consciousness. The pre
eminence given to the Christ in the Apostolic Age did not involve
any suppression of the supremacy of the Kingdom which Jesus
had taught. As we follow out the ministry of Jesus, it will
become ever plainer that the Kingdom was mediated through
the consciousness of Jesus. The peculiar insistence upon His
own Messiahship, in the later months of His ministry, was not
due to the abnormal development of egoism, but to the removal
of restraints that had sealed His lips at the beginning. He had
evaded all popular allurements to the exercise of temporal power,
and had refused to be made the people's King; but when His
Spiritual Mission could no longer be imperilled by crude mis
understandings, He calmly asserted His claim to supremacy.
Before Pilate, He asserted His Kingship — " for this end have
I been born, and for this end am I come into the world, that
I might bear witness to the truth." 2 Again in the judgement-
hall Jesus said, " My Kingdom is not of this world, then would
my ministers strive that I should not be given over to the Jews,
but now is my Kingdom not from hence." In making such
claims to sovereignty, Jesus did not usurp any function that had
not been given to Him; royal dignity had been committed to
Him as the Son of Man. We cannot interpret such claims as
the deposition of the Heavenly Father; Jesus spoke and acted as
God's representative in the world of men. He felt Himself to be
a projection of the Divine Will into our history; He was the
Son of God, God's alter ego. While through His words there
came a Divine declaration, we read the Divine fiat in all that He
*Luke iv. 43. 2John xviii. 37.
Jesus' Message of the Sovereignty of God 103
was and did and suffered; in Him the Divine Reign was estab
lished; but this involved the annulment of all that was contrary
to God's Will ; it cost conflict, agony and tragedy, and issued in
Redemption. 7. The idea of God's Sovereignty which Jesus established
bears some relation to the great order of the universe ; it is not
a detached dream, or a new Jerusalem built in the clouds; it is
in vital connection with all the works of God. In the Cosmos,
or order of Nature in time and space, God has manifested the
supremacy of His mighty Will. Jesus possessed and breathed
forth a poetic as well as a religious view of Nature; the lilies
of the field, the wild birds of the air, the clouds, winds and all
the myriad parts of Nature were looked upon by Him as under
the immediate control of the Heavenly Father. His view was
that the whole constituted a providential order ; and some take it
for granted that science has acted upon this naive faith of Jesus
as the Hammer of Thor. But while the Great Teacher threw
His consciousness and thought of the world into the language of
a prescientific age, and used earth and sky, bird and flower,
as confirmatory of His own trust in the Sovereign Will of the
Father, we shall do no more than justice in admitting that the
fundamental thought of Jesus concerning the Reign of God has
done more than any other doctrine of antiquity to aid the human
mind in its task of unifying phenomena under the idea of Law.
The power of human understanding is not commensurate with
the vastness and mystery of Nature, and in the span of man's
life Nature's order often bears little semblance to justice. But it is
in the crown of the great processes of organic evolution — in
the human soul — that we find a clue to the meaning of God's
Reign. " The injustice of Nature," says Maeterlinck, " ends by
becoming justice for the race; she has time before her, she can
wait, her injustice is of her girth. But for us it is too over
whelming, and our days are too few. Let us be satisfied that
Force should reign in the universe, but Equity in our heart." *
History, in spite of its lapses and enigmas, shows a marked
dramatic tendency toward the denouement — spiritual, voluntary
surrender to the Will of God — in which state men cease to be
slaves and become sons of the theocracy (oi viol rrji Rasikslai).
In broken and partial ways Israel's prophets had conceived of
1 The Buried Temple, p. 55.
104 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
Jehovah as reigning in nature and history ; but Jesus penetrated
to the heart of this conception and universalized its application —
boldly defined the aim of this Divine Sovereignty to be the salva
tion and eternal life of men. The seeming injustice that
Maeterlinck attributes to the brevity of man's participation in
Nature's order is balanced and rectified by the thought of Jesus
that in His Father's house are many mansions. The " providen
tial " order set forth in Christ's conception of God's Kingdom
is not irrelevant to the scientific view of Nature; it is a deeper
insight into the Spirit which creates Nature, and it is an ideal
which can only be realized in history through the voluntary co
operation of man. Repentance is the rule of admission into
the new theocracy — the detachment of the will from evil and the
attachment of the inner personality to God in spiritual surrender.
8. Although the apocalyptic language ascribed to certain
passages of the teaching of Jesus in regard to the Sovereignty
of God is inherently distasteful to the modern mind, we must
recognize that such a manner of speech enabled Jesus to set
His ideal free from the trammels of nationalism. The depth
and tenacity of the political hope among the Jews revealed them
selves among the disciples, even on the way to Calvary; for
they quarrelled, in their tragic failure to understand Jesus, about
their respective merits to the highest places in the Kingdom.
And even more remarkable is the fact that, after the resurrection,
they questioned their Lord concerning His intention to restore
the Kingdom to Israel. The originality of Christ's spiritual
ideal placed Him in a pathetic isolation throughout His ministry.
Jesus viewed the idea of God's Sovereignty in the light of His
own regenerating ethic and, while recognizing it to be a real
factor in this age, gave it a further eschatological reference, (iv
tg3 xatpm rovrca and iv rep aiwvi tg3 ipxoftsvcp.) 1 The for
giveness of sins is a present grace of God's Sovereignty, and
it is also a pledge of the eternal life. The " life," however, which
will be consummated at the end of the age is a principle possessed
now by all who receive the Reign of God. ( r) avvrsXsai rov
diwvoi- — Matthew.) The proclamation of this evangel caused
confusion in minds enslaved by Jewish preconceptions. The
Pharisees inquired when this Reign would come, imagining that
it was contingent upon a visible constitution in Palestine. Jesus
'Mark x. 30; Luke xviii. 30; Matt. xii. 32.
Jesus' Message of the Sovereignty of God 105
replied that it had come already — without pomp and undated
by outward signs (ov jAsrd 7taparrip'r)gswi). " If I by the Spirit
of God cast out demons, then the Kingdom of God has already
come upon you."1 Neither isolation nor misunderstanding,
neither temptation nor antagonism caused in Jesus aught of
vacillation or incertitude. His doctrine, His noble ethic, His
healing miracles, His undoing of death, His own self-sacrifice,
were the expression of this dominating enthusiasm for the King
dom. This Spiritual idealism burned at white heat in His
mind. It was an eschatological ideal coloured with Jewish
apocalypse, and it was equally prophetic and moral with its
application in the present.
9. Further analysis of its content shows that the ethic of
Heavenly citizenship 2 ( nolirsvfxa ) could find expression only
in the terms of filial relationship. The citizen is a son; the
Sovereign is the Father. The essence of God's gift of eternal
life is inward righteousness ; the perception of this Divine Sover
eignty is conditioned by one's birth from above, while entrance
into it in the symbol of baptism involves renunciation of self-will
and the reception of a quickening spirit from God. Outward
possessions are hindrances ; for it is easier for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the
Kingdom. Penitent publicans and repentant harlots are eligible
for spiritual citizenship, while self-righteous Pharisees are re
jected. This theocracy is the summum bonum: for its sake it
is wise to sacrifice everything that hinders one's attaining unto
it; a maimed life in the Kingdom is preferable to sensuous ease
outside. In the parables of Jesus, this state is represented as
the pearl of great price — the hidden treasure of inestimable
value, for which it would be reasonable to abandon everything
else. But in their daily lives the Sons of the Kingdom are
called upon to bear a cross, to drink a bitter cup, and to be
baptized with suffering; in a word, each one reproduces the life
of his Lord. On the other hand, within this Kingdom the curse
of the world is transmuted into beatitude, and such experiences
as poverty and hunger become sources of joy. Its laws are ful
filled by love, although the character of this love is marked by
sweet severity, and the gate and way of it are described by Jesus
as strait and narrow. In the theocracy the sole standard of
'Matt. xii. 28; Luke xvii. 20. * Phil. iii. 20.
106 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
greatness is sacrificial service; and obedience to the Will of the
Heavenly Father is the one proof of membership.
io. Although such a conception of the Kingdom will be
acknowledged as beautiful, noble and strenuous, it is judged by
some to carry in itself the peril of unbalanced subjectivity. Men
must live their lives in the robust faith that the external, and
seemingly trifling concerns of the natural order have moral
value. If emphasis upon the inner springs of action should issue
in stoic scorn, then faith will rightly be condemned as other
worldly. Tolstoy is an example of religious individualism tend
ing to theoretic anarchy. The whole teaching of Jesus, however,
contradicts the dream of the eremite; the theocracy is a moral
community. While love must have God for its supreme Object,
Jesus teaches us that he who loves not his brother cannot love
the unseen God. The cross-bearing He inculcated is not an end
in itself; it is for the ransom of souls; and the ministry He
demands has for its aim the service of mankind. The Messiah
predicts a final judgement, and the criterion of Christ will be
the measure of our philanthropy. Jesus identified Himself with
the lowliest ; and, inasmuch as we help them, we minister to Him.
The criticism has sometimes been made that the Society of Jesus
had no economic relevance to the actual conditions of life.
Our modern social democrats admire, yet pity Him, as an un
practical dreamer — " a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in
the void His luminous wings in vain." " Jesus stood and stands
alone, supreme over all other great religious reformers in every
thing that concerns the heart and the affections. But His in
tellectual grasp did not extend beyond the requirements of a
single epoch." x The adequate answer to this criticism can be
given only in our subsequent treatment of the whole teaching
of Jesus. Meanwhile it may be pointed out that Jesus could
not have dealt with politics, literature, art and education in those
days without at once arousing the vengeance of the Roman
power; and even could He have evaded its vigilance, any direct
treatment of these important matters would have resulted in the
enslavement of His timeless ideal of the Kingdom in the bonds
of temporary and fugitive modes of human opinion. His seeming
detachment from the circumference of life arose from His
fidelity to the central principle of eternal life. Jesus did not
'Mazzini's Collected Esays, vol. v., p. 365.
Jesus' Message of the Sovereignty of God 107
scorn the objective side of life, but in the common facts He
read an ideal significance; He accepted His nation's history as a
channel of Divine revelation, and even imperilled His own
spiritual conception by attaching it to the Jewish Messianic hope.
Jesus did not advocate medical reforms or improved methods
of sanitation, yet His miracles of healing declared the high value
He put on physical health. He did not declare that democracy
was the only legitimate form of government; nor did He evince
an elementary acquaintance with the dire problems of political
economy: yet, by His whole treatment and estimate of human
life, He stamped as inherently evil every institution that en
slaves the soul or degrades the individual. The relation of the
theocracy to the outward order may be difficult to define ; it may
be hard to reconcile the antitheses of duty such as self-renuncia
tion and self-realization; but the ideal of God's Sovereignty
affords a regulative and creative principle of the best types of
life ; while by breathing into the world's heart His own Spirit,
Jesus has done more than any other reformer to alleviate the
ills of man's state, and to fill the life of His followers with positive
good. n. To sum up the various fragments of Christ's mighty con
ception, which have been but meagrely treated in the foregoing
paragraphs, it may be said that Jesus represented the Kingdom
of God as both present and militant, as future and triumphant.
Modern authors have made manifest the contrariety of opinion
concerning these two phases of our Lord's teaching. Well
hausen, for example, throws emphasis upon the deep and beauti
ful sayings about love and life, duty and faith toward God,
and discards the apocalyptic elements as "the old garments of
Judaism " ; the younger Weiss adopts a view diametrically op
posed, and makes the Parousia the most central and characteristic
part of the teaching of Jesus, and leaves little if anything to
relate the Kingdom to the actualities of the age. But if we
accept the general accuracy of the Gospels, there need be no
conflict between these different aspects ; we see that Jesus some
times taught that God's Reign had already come as a present fact,
and also as a mighty factor in the producing of a new age.
The two stadia are connected by the simple law of development.
His Kingdom is as a mustard-seed growing in the midst of men,
though the process be never so imperceptible. In man's attempt
108 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
to embody the new order in appropriate institutions and activities,
evil and good will be inevitably blended; until the time of
harvest, wheat and tares will grow together. Although these
processes of development are gradual and of a spiritual character,
there will be certain crises when Messiah will come in new
accessions of power. While the feet of Jesus were planted on
the firm ground of present actualities, His eyes penetrated the
mists of the future, and in His vision the ultimate realization of
His ideal was assured. He predicted a plurality of advents;
one parousia was to be seen by some of His hearers before they
died,1 while another divine event is undated even in His own
thought.2 One advent will cause distress to the nations, and yet
for His disciples it will be as a redemption (dno\vrpooaii).s
The perspective of the future development of the Kingdom may
have been blurred even in the vision of Jesus; but the goal
gleamed afar in glorious certitude, and is set forth in the
language of Jewish apocalypse. The attainment of a sound view
of the teaching of Jesus which we are seeking, depends upon
our looking steadily at His central principle while we grasp
all the phases and applications of it in one whole. If we insist
upon stripping away all the apocalyptic utterances as non-essential
to the conception of Jesus, His doctrine is reduced to a torso —
a beautiful fragment, which must be completed in our imagina
tion. In the Gospels themselves, the realities of the Present are
never allowed to melt into dreams of the Ideal; nor does Jesus
ever lose His certainty of the future realization of His fair
Ideal as He looks upon the struggling, conflicting experiences
of the present time. His faith demanded the future; the con
sistency and impressiveness of His teaching depend upon the
Parousia; He convinces us that the processes of renovation which
were initiated by Him in Galilee must be completed beyond the
bounds of mortal life.
'Matt. xvi. 28; Mark ix. 1. *Mark xiii. 32.
"Luke xxi. 25, 28, 31.
CHAPTER IV
THE MIRACLES OF JESUS
I. The preeminence of Jesus among men was acquired not
only by the recognized authority of His teaching, but also in part
by the remarkable character of His works. Whatever may be the
modern feeling toward miracles, there can be no suppression
of the fact that a miraculous element is inextricably blended with
the narratives of our Gospels ; and every attempt to separate the
teaching of Jesus from these extraordinary activities reduces
each Gospel to tattered fragments of tradition, which in the
critical process have been deprived of vitality and cogency.
" Go and report to John what you have seen and heard : the
blind regain their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed,
the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the glad tidings
preached to them." If it be objected that in these words Jesus
was simply using an oriental habit of figurative speech, which
must not be taken prosaically, our reply must be that, whether
this saying be metaphoric or literal, the belief in the occurrence
of miracles is not an embellishment, but a part of the very
ground-plan of the Gospels. There is a criticism which, starting
from the postulates of Naturalism, traverses the ground like a
destroying fire, and leaves behind a trail of desolation. For
this reason, if for no other, believers in the Gospels must them
selves take up the legitimate task of criticism, and discriminate
with uttermost frankness between the possible exaggerations of
tradition and the core of historic fact. If we study the Gospels
afresh with this purpose, it becomes apparent to us that the
ancient writers lived under the influence of totally different
conceptions of nature from those which influence modern thought.
The scientific view of the world groups all phenomena into
uniform classes, and explains them by universal laws. The revo
lution in thought brought about by such a conception was illus
trated by a conversation I once had with a Confucian scholar in
China. In explaining a passage in the Chinese classics to me,
he recited, with naive belief in its actual occurrence, an An-
109
110 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
dromeda-like legend, but instead of a Perseus coming to the
victim's rescue, the sea-monster who ravaged a whole district
and took toll of the most precious life was propitiated by a
scholar, who, recognizing that there was a spirit, or ling, in all
things, wrote a classic aphorism, and threw it into the water.
The ravenous fish swallowed the writing and became a thrall
to the wisdom of the sages, no more seeking to be satisfied by
human sacrifice. Only after repeated interrogation could I be
convinced that the myth was taken by my friend with most
prosaic literalness. That Chinese scholar strangely enough
helped me to understand John Henry Newman when he said,
" I think it is impossible to withstand the evidence which is
brought for the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius at
Naples, or for the motion of the eyes of the pictures of the
Madonna in the Roman States. ... I firmly believe that the
relics of the saints are doing innumerable miracles and graces
daily. I firmly believe that before now saints have raised the
dead to life, crossed the seas without vessels, multiplied grain
and bread, cured incurable diseases, and stopped the operations
of the laws of the universe in a multitude of ways." But for
most men, to try to adopt such a mental' attitude in the twentieth
century would be to sin against reason, to fight against the light
of our age. And further, if the mighty works of Jesus be co
ordinated with ecclesiastical legends and classic myths, the mod
ern thinker will inevitably become incredulous of all miracles.
There must be discrimination between the miracles of Jesus and
the Aberglaube of legend, and such a primary differentiation is
justified by our idea of Jesus Himself.
2. While we are repelled by the over-positiveness of those
who declare that " miracles do not happen," the change of
standpoint in viewing the phenomena of nature and history makes
it incumbent upon us to explain how we can share in the
scientific enlightenment of the age, and still accept the miraculous
stories of the New Testament. There is room, however, even
in the twentieth century, for humble agnosticism on the one
hand and devout belief on the other; for, while science has
driven back the shadow of the Great Unknown an inch or two,
the cloud of mystery still encircles us. It is a fascinating con
ception that Nature is a closed system of matter and force
operating according to mechanical laws without diminution or
The Miracles of Jesus 111
increase of energy. "We have frequently seen," says Mr.
Balfour, " in the history of thought that any development of
the mechanical conception of the physical world gives an impulse
to materialistic speculation. Now, if the goal to which, con
sciously or unconsciously, the modern physicist is pressing, be
ever reached, the mechanical view of things will receive an
extension and a completeness never before dreamed of. There
would then in truth be only one natural science — namely,
physics; and only one kind of explanation — namely, the dy
namic." x Within such an imaginary circle miracle would be
impossible, and so indeed would be human will; the strict con
servatism of energy results only in physical necessity, and is in
compatible with freedom unless we postulate dual and discon
nected realms of action. The same writer goes on to say, " I
believe that the very completeness and internal consistency of
such a view of the physical world would establish its inadequacy.
The very fact that within it there seemed no room for Spirit
would convince mankind that Spirit must be, invoked to explain
it." But, when we reckon with all the factors, we perceive
that Nature is not self-subsistent ; it is related to thought, pene
trated with Reason, as is shown by the discovery of its " laws " ;
and its phenomena are grouped into an intelligible order. There
are still vast curves that sweep far out beyond our range of
vision; and it is only by an act of faith that we can complete
the circle of Nature. Its order expresses harmony, beauty and
purpose, although no science has yet been able to set forth
the end of this vast system. There is no rest for the sole of
one's foot save in a spiritual interpretation of Nature; no new
or refined materialism can obliterate altogether from our minds —
" The sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things."2
1 A. J. Balfour, Essays and Addresses, p. 321. In the same address
("The Nineteenth Century") the writer says, "I believe that the very
completeness and internal consistency of such a view of the physical world
(i.e. the mechanical view) would establish its inadequacy" (pp. 331-2).
2 Wordsworth.
112 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
Where, then, shall we find a point for reconciliation of these
two necessary conceptions in the modern Christian mind — the
Reign of Law and the miraculous operation of Jesus in our
world? The transition from one realm of thought to the. other
is often accompanied by a sense of shock and a feeling of
incoherence. The Rev. D. S. Cairns points out that the two
realms can be viewed as co-existent and harmonious from the
standpoint of teleology. Having quoted great authorities in
science to show that morphology is wedded to teleology, he
says : " Having thus granted that all evolutionary process con
verges upon some supreme end, we cannot arbitrarily arrest
the further inquiry as to the nature of this end," and arrives
at the conclusion by a legitimate chain of reasoning that the
world-process which science forecasts leads up to the ultimate
ideal of a perfect form of human society.1 " The Gospels also
teach us that all God's Providences converge upon a universal
end, which is nothing else than the most perfect form of Society,
a union of God and Humanity in the ' Kingdom of God.' " The
narrower teleology of individual providences can be integrated
harmoniously in this wider teleology of the Kingdom of God, and
room is given for the individualism of Christ's Gospel. The elab
oration of this argument might be a valuable achievement in
another place, but here all we have sought is a hint as to the
point of view that may be occupied by one who strives to be
loyal to the Gospels, while he accepts as inevitable the scientific
spirit of the age. The materialist seems to me to be like a
gambler who at first insists upon playing with two dice, matter
and force, and then surprises us by turning out three sixes;
by sleight of hand or unconscious trick, he has introduced a
third die called mind. But if we recognize the fact that mind
is the prius of matter and force, and the cause of all order, we
shall have no difficulty in acknowledging from the beginning a
Hidden Purpose which has controlled all the myriad lines of
development that converge upon the Ideal of Jesus — the Sover
eignty of God in the world. If, then, we are brought to accept
this spiritual point of view, much of our involuntary antagonism
to miracles will melt away.
3. Our view of personality will shed light and influence upon
our attitude toward the miracles of the Gospels. Our distinc-
* Christianity in the Modern World, p. 239.
The Miracles of Jesus 113
tions between natural and supernatural are relative to the plane
of vision ; the higher necessarily appears supernatural to that
which is below; but, if viewed from the apex, all things except
sin and evil would be natural. Man in his present state is only
imperfectly personal ; within him is found a mind which should
rule the body: he is of nature, and yet something there is in
him above nature which " that democratic old monster," termed
by St. Paul " the flesh," waits to pull down. In our personalities
lie undeveloped potencies, and we are acutely aware of an
inward disproportion: hence, if we call our present state
natural, then the realization of our own ideal would be super
natural. If, then, there appeared in our history a perfect per
sonality who actualized all human potentialities, and who was
in such harmony with the will of God as to be truly the Divine
Son, it might be expected that much of His activity would
appear to us supernatural. Recollecting our own general im
pression of Jesus, we expect an elevation and distinction in His
works which shall be congruous with our ideal of perfect person
ality. Kahler, however, warns us against the dogmatic assump
tion that we understand Christ's Nature : " The inner course of a
sinless development is as inconceivable to us as life on the Sand
wich Islands to a Laplander. How can we, who are so different
from Him in the very roots of our being that we need to undergo
a new birth in order to acquire an element of likeness to Him,
pretend to apply human measures to His development, its stages
and course ? " x It is only by the idealization of what is best
within our own personalities that we can approximate to any
understanding of the life of Jesus. But while we recognize the
note of transcendence in the Person of Jesus, we do not imagine
Him to have been outside the scope of Nature's laws and forces.
The phenomena of His outward life are conceived by us as
harmonious with the true order of the universe, when viewed
from the highest point of intelligence. The miracles reflect the
wisdom and love of a perfect humanity. We use the term
miracle to signify an unusual act above our capacity to perform,
but which must be accordant with the laws and energies of
God's whole universe. Miracle would be impossible if our
standpoint were materialistic or thoroughly pantheistic; but in
view of our spiritual interpretation of the world and our belief
'Quoted from Somerville's Cunningham Lectures, St. Paul's Concep
tion of Christ, p. 38.
114 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
in the transcendence of perfect personality it becomes quite
credible. The miracles of Jesus are not arbitrary and capricious
violations of the laws of the universe; they are rather parts of
a wider and higher system. From the standpoint of the unique
and preeminent character of Jesus, the miracles of the Gospels
are natural; that is, they are harmonious with the Divine order
of the world. Apart from the personality of Jesus, such events
as the change of water into wine, the multiplication of loaves
and fishes, and the raising of the dead, would be incredible; we
should deem them the gross superstitions of inaccurate ob
servers, or the legends of hero-worship. I frankly confess that,
if the raising of the widow's son at Nain were attributed to
Apollonius of Tyana, I should disbelieve it; but such is the
impression made upon us by Jesus that we judge it credible as
an expression of His pity and power. We do not accept the
dictum that " however one may think concerning a miracle, it is
impossible for historical science to believe in Christian miracle
and to deny the non-Christian " ; for we have recognized the
overwhelming importance of the Personality of Jesus, Whose Will
was in absolute oneness with the Will that maintains the universe.
Such an idea of Jesus must not be taken as a proof of historical
accuracy in all the narratives of the Gospels; but it serves to
disarm us of embarrassing prejudices, which otherwise would
prevent us from treating these writings with sufficient earnestness.
4. When we read carefully these miracle narratives, we dis
cover certain naive and incidental touches which assure us of
the bona-fide character of the evangelists. For example, the
hypothesis invented by the enemies of Jesus, that He cast out
devils by the power of Beelzebub, shows beyond contradiction
that He was successful in curing lunacy and mysterious nervous
disorders. Again, being vexed by the rude inhospitality of the
Samaritans at a village through which Jesus passed, the disciples
desired Him to call down fire from Heaven to destroy them.
This incidentally reveals two important things: first, that the
disciples themselves believed in the power of Jesus to perform
wonderful works; second, that, if the miracles of the Gospels
had depended upon the inventiveness of over-fond disciples, they
would have given stories of quite a different character from those
recorded in the New Testament. As for Jesus Himself, although
He did not repudiate the ability ascribed to Him of working
The Miracles of Jesus 115
miracles, yet He disparaged their value as evidences of truth, and
often refused " signs " when they were demanded by men
morally unprepared to receive His doctrine. His relatives fain
would have had Him display His power to overawe men into be
lief : " If Thou do these things, show Thyself to the world "; and
His enemies sneered at Him on the Cross, " He saved others ;
Himself He cannot save." Thus it is placed beyond dispute
that the contemporaries of Jesus, both His friends and His
enemies, believed that He possessed and sometimes exercised the
power of performing miracles; they may have been inaccurate
observers, confused in their notions of causes and effects, prone
to unconscious exaggerations ; but it is incontrovertible that they
believed in the reality of the miracles. We have passed the
uncritical age when any claim can be made that the Gospels are
inerrant; but in the acutest tests to which they may be subjected,
the truthful intention of the witnesses must carry some weight
even against modern prejudices. It is plain that the ministry
of Jesus was not in word alone, but also in deeds of surpassing
wonder. 5. The thought of the miracles having congruity with the
Person of Jesus is helpful but inadequate; and as the reason
will not rest in the inexplicable, men propose various hypotheses
to account for the wonderful ministry of Christ. It has been
suggested that, within the limits of His manhood, Jesus pos
sessed the attributes of the Deity ; omnipotence and omniscience
belonged to Him, and found expression in such miracles as the
feeding of the multitudes and raising of the dead. If, however,
we take the whole of the records in the Gospels as our testimony,
this assumption that omnipotence and omniscience were attributes
of JesUs is not justified, and it involves us in logomachy and
unending speculations. A more simple and yet more luminous
explanation of miracles is surely to regard them as due to Christ's
union with God. It is not necessary, at this stage of our inquiry,
to make an exhaustive analysis of this unique characteristic of
the consciousness of Jesus that He was one with the Father ; for
the present purpose it need only be considered as a moral
harmony ; Jesus felt an immediate dependence upon God's Spirit,
and the deliberate and determined end of His life was to do the
Will of Him that sent Him. His earliest recorded word is,
"Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?"
116 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
His dying exclamation was, " Father, into Thy hands I commend
My Spirit." If we pass to the less perfect experiences of other
men, we find that their power over Nature reposes upon some
kind of intellectual harmony between themselves and the Divine.
This is the meaning of Lord Bacon's saying, " that man masters
Nature by first obeying it." The power of the scientist to
control and direct his experiments toward a reasonable issue
depends upon his interpretation of laws and forces which express
the mind of the creative Spirit. But, in the life of Jesus, we
find a perfect realization of moral union with God; He read the
expressions of the Divine Will with unique accuracy, and found
His highest joy in obedience. It was His meat and drink to
do that Will. The miraculous energy of Jesus had its source
in this union of His Will with God's Will. He Himself spoke
of the resurrection of Lazarus as an answer to prayer,1 and, as
Prof. P. Gardner has pointed out, prayer is the nerve and centre
of this union — " the divine idea of the surrender of the will of
man to the Will of God." Nicodemus acknowledged the mighty
works of Jesus, and inferred that God was with Him.2 St. Luke
records that " the power of Jehovah was present with Him to
heal," 3 and affirms that the miracles of Jesus were wrought by
" the finger of God." All the heights and depths of the human
ideal were unveiled in Jesus; His moral union with the Father
secured to Him the pleroma of the Divine Spirit. Doubtless
Jesus shared in the unscientific illusions of His age; but all His
works were stamped with the greatness of His moral character,
and His unique activities were signs that God's Sovereignty was
established in His Spirit. He Himself spoke of His " works "
as imitations of the Father's ministry ; " My Father worketh
even until now, and I work." Although we can no longer accept
Pascal's thought, that " the truth of a doctrine is to be judged
by the miracles wrought to support it, and the reality of the
miracles is to be judged by the doctrine," yet we look upon " all
that Jesus began both to do and to teach" as one whole. Cor
roborations of His teaching came in His works of healing, and
the sin of the Jews in rejecting their Messiah was correspondingly
augmented by the fact that they beheld His life. The Master
Himself, however, judged the evidential value of His miracles
to be conditioned by the moral disposition of the witnesses. He
refused to be thought of as a mere magician : " He sighed deeply
1John xi. 22. "John iii. 2. 3Luke v. 17.
The Miracles of Jesus 117
in His Spirit, and saith, Why doth this generation seek after a
sign? Verily I say unto you, There shall no sign be given unto
this generation." x Yet while He refused to indulge a prurient
and an insatiable thirst for signs, still He knew that to such
as were morally fit, His mighty works would be tokens of His
redeeming Will and attestations of His power on earth to forgive
sin. 6. Before proceeding to make a brief synopsis of Christ's
miracles, it may be well to remind ourselves that the sine qua
non of all of them was faith, either as exercised by the sufferer
or vicariously manifested in the friends. Unbelief obstructed
the flow of His healing power : " He could do no mighty work
there, save that He laid His hands upon a few sick folk and
healed them. And He marvelled because of their unbelief." 2
Jesus understood the power of faith over mind and body, and
by His union with God He evoked this moral activity in men's
souls, and made them members of the Kingdom of Life. Faith
is a great psychic force in the realm of personal life; and
whether awakened or mediated by an idol, a spring, a picture of
the Madonna, it can be utilized for the cure of diseases, as it
has been at Lourdes and at " Bethshan." Jesus was a great
psychic force in our world; He deliberately took up the duty of
awaking the faith of men, setting forth His own Person as
the legitimate object of faith. The belief He claimed for His
words was to dominate the conduct of His followers, and thus
their faith was not merely a hypnotic response to the magnetic
power of His Personality, but rather a moral obedience to His
doctrine. But while He presented Himself in this manner, He
ever aimed at revealing the beneficent power of God and at
leading men to the Father. In the actual performance of His
miracles, He did not confine Himself to one particular method:
there were times when He uttered only a word of command,
or laid His hand upon the sick person, or took up the symbols
of clay and His own saliva to touch the blind eyes and silent
tongue.3 But whatever His methods, His sole aim was to estab
lish a reciprocity of faith between the sufferers and Himself, and
so to exert upon them all the Divine force resident in His own
Person. 'Mark viii. 12. 2Mark vi. 5-6.
8 Mark vii. 31-37; viii. 2-26.
118 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
7. The miracles are all illustrative of the Kingdom that Jesus
set up in the midst of men; they were not mere wonders, but
" signs " of Divine grace, and for many minds proofs of a new
creative force in the world's history. The prophet's anticipation
was realized in Him : " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, be
cause He anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor; He
sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of
sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to
proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." Jesus shared the
popular ideas about disease, and attributed many afflictions to the
presence of demons in men. He rebuked the evil spirits who
usurped the throne of human reason, and sought to silence their
strange impulse to proclaim His Messianic title. Mental pathol
ogy is even yet hedged about by mystery, and dogmatic denials
of demon-possession pass beyond the limits of ascertained knowl
edge. Even were there no such cases now, it would not disprove
the demonology of the New Testament; since, at certain crises
of history and under peculiar conditions of life, phenomena
•might arise quite different from what may come to pass at other
times and in other places. Should it be that men may ultimately
treat the New Testament hypothesis of " possession " as merely
a temporary mode of thought, it will scarcely be doubted that
Jesus wielded a remarkable healing power over minds vexed by
aberrations and madness. Such a change in point of view would
only accentuate the important distinction between the material of
Christ's Revelation and the transitory forms of its expression.
The expulsion of the evil spirit at Capernaum and the restoration
of sanity to the demoniacs of Gadara, notwithstanding all the
inconsistencies and discrepancies in the records, show us the place
given by Jesus to health and reason in His understanding of
God's Kingdom. " He came," says Dr. Hort, " as the Anointed
King's Son to His own inheritance, to deliver a holy land and a
holy people from invaders and usurpers, and to bind up the
breaches and severances which they had wrought. Sometimes
the intruders are diseases or disablements, sometimes they are
sins, sometimes they are unclean spirits, in whose working disease
and sin are inextricably blended. But in all cases the expulsion
is called an act of saving or salvation; and it follows on that
homage to the rightful Sovereign above, and to Him whom He
has sent, which is called faith." 1 With this power to dispossess
' The Way, The Truth, The Life, p. 102.
The Miracles of Jesus 119
men of evil spirits Jesus also had ability to impart His own pure
spirit to those who believed in Him. Even leprosy, that most
obstinate and malignant of diseases, yielded to His Will. He
bore men's diseases, and when their wills joined with His, blind
ness passed into vision, and paralysis gave place to renewed
health. Such was the influence of Jesus that involuntarily He
cured a believing sufferer, and at His word the centurion's son,
or servant, lying many miles away, was made whole.
8. While modern telepathy and hypnotism have tended to
dissipate the rationalistic prejudice against Christ's healing min
istry, no psychical research has been able to soften the shock
of dismayed incredulity produced by the narratives of His power
to raise the dead. The return of a soul from the realm of the
dead, with an authentic message of continuing life, might be
theoretically esteemed as contributing to man's well-being ; but, as
a matter of fact, few persons could be convinced of the reality
of such a miracle save upon the most intimate and personal evi
dence. However strong, therefore, the evidences for the alleged
cases of resuscitation in the Gospels, there will be felt even in
devout minds a movement of insubordination to so great a miracle.
The only credentials that will satisfy our understanding are
those that we find in our impression of the person, aims and
moral ascendency exhibited in the character of Jesus. The Gos
pels ascribe three instances of resurrection to the exercise of
His power. In the case of Jairus' daughter, however, the critic
may legitimately object that Jesus Himself declared that the
maid was not dead, but was sleeping, and that it is arbitrary
to say that He used the term sleep as a metaphor. The second
instance is that of the restoration of the widow's only son,1 but
some critics deem St. Luke's statement to be insufficient without
other support. The third instance is that of the raising of
Lazarus 2 after he had lain in the tomb four days — an event
which,, according to St. John, became the turning-point in the
tragedy of Christ's public ministry. Those who dispute the
authority of the Fourth Gospel are not likely to retain belief
in this stupendous miracle; and some even of those who believe
that it was written by the aged disciple, are inclined to treat
the story of Lazarus as a parable. Of the extreme difficulty,
even for those who believe in the miracles of Jesus, in finding
'Luke vii. n-15. 2 John xi.
120 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
a place for the interpolation of the Lazarus narrative we shall
offer suggestions in the subsequent treatment of the Gospel
chronology; here it may be noted that this- miracle is often felt
to be a burden rather than a support for faith. The direct evi
dence for the historicity of these three narratives is too slender
to convince anyone who does not already believe in Jesus; but,
where " faith " exists, these miracles are " signs " of the re
newal and enlargement of man's life effected by the Mission of
Jesus. Physical death is but an incident in the spirit's continuing
life; God is the God of the living, not of the dead. In the
Kingdom of God there can be no annihilation. Jesus came to
save the souls of men, to restore life, to remove all evils that
impair man's vitality, and to give the more abundant, eternal
life. It was fitting, therefore, that besides healing diseases, weak
nesses, losses of sight, and restoring the balance to the insane
mind, He should also show His complete mastery over death
by undoing death's work.
9. To complete this condensed synopsis of Christ's miracles,
there must be some allusion made to the nature-wonders which
find a record in the Gospels. What can be said of the stories of
the sea, the remarkable draughts of fishes, and the feat of walk
ing upon the waves; and of the creative marvels of the multi
plication and transformation of food-stuffs? The naturalistic
trend of modern speculation has driven men to adopt various
expedients, such as the suggestion that the traditions of Christ's
life gathered these marvels in the processes of oral transmission,
or that perfectly natural phenomena have been metamorphosed
into miracles. For example, in the miracle of walking on the
sea, the nucleus of fact is that as the Master came swiftly around
the bend of the lake it appeared in the twilight as though He
came to the storm-tossed men across the waters. Thus we have
that gracious parable of Christ's approach to His Church when
ever she is threatened by the storms of persecution. Again, the
Lord's curse of the barren fig-tree reads like a parable rather
than the literal occurrence of such an incident. Many also
treat the multiplication of the loaves and fishes as an exaggerated
account of the magnanimity evoked by Jesus, under whose in
spiration the crowds were lifted beyond the prudence of selfish
ness. Concerning such interpretations we may fearlessly say
that, should they come at last universally to be accepted, the
The Miracles of Jesus 121
dignity and value of the Person and Work of Jesus would not
thereby be impaired. If many devout minds hesitate to accept
such plausible suggestions, it is not from timidity, but from the
naive feeling which haunts them still, that the literal interpreta
tion may be more true to the facts. After all that criticism has
done, and in spite of our own inherent distaste for the marvellous,
our impression of the fulness and variety of the life of the Son
of Man makes even the most stupendous of the Gospel miracles
appear credible in our eyes. There is nothing incongruous with
our idea of Jesus that, in occasional single acts, He reminded
men of the divine operations ever going on throughout Nature,
and showed as by lightning flashes the presence of God working
in and through Himself. Even the most marvellous " signs "
emanated from compassion, and served to demonstrate the view
of Jesus that Nature is subservient to the production of human
personality. He shows us that Nature is not indifferent as to
whether our intentions be good or evil; the miracles of Jesus show
the alienation of Nature from man annulled, and matter itself
reconciled to Spirit as means to end. In His hands the lower
elements of the world became media for nourishing, preserving
and expanding man's life; and by His care for the earthly life
He sought to elicit a nobler life of loving obedience to the
Sovereignty of God. As Dr. Hort says again, " Every word
of His in public or private, every action, every look and gesture,
was a lesson in the life. His acts of life-giving in the lower
sphere were the foundation of His life-giving in the higher
sphere. Everything which entered into earthly life became the
image and vehicle of a divine grace, a spark of the eternal life."
The miracles of Jesus were acted prophecies and parables of the
salvation of the Kingdom of God; for in recognition of, and
surrender to the Divine Reign, all lower joys and inferior neces
sities found new meaning, and touched by a higher principle of
life the material things effloresced in spiritual realization and
acquired sacramental values. We do not yet know the whole
order of things we call Nature; to take in all her phenomena,
our senses will require further extension of grasp; but already
we perceive such mysterious capabilities in Nature's relation to
Spirit, that we easily believe new potencies would be evoked by
the operation of a morally perfect Will, such as Jesus attained
unto in His public ministry.
CHAPTER V
THE FIRST BREACH BETWEEN JESUS AND
JUDAISM
i. Our attempt to trace the beginnings of the ministry of
Jesus has resulted in a fuller appreciation of the tremendous
authority of His Person. No psychology has yet explained the
origin and nature of the overwhelming influence wielded by Jesus
upon His contemporaries. The noblest Humanitarian ideal ever
offered to the world is found in Jesus; and yet, having said this,
we are conscious of a further mystery in His Person. Compari
sons instituted between Him and other religion- founders and
social reformers, or moral philosophers, do not explain Jesus :
neither do they alone demonstrate the preeminence of His teach
ing; they show rather that He differs from all others — that there
is something transcendent in Him. While we have sought to
give the fullest recognition to the influence of John the Baptist
upon the incipient stages of our Lord's work, we are convinced
that the ascetic prophet did not kindle the torch of Jesus; at
most, he can only have precipitated the aspiring purpose of the
Carpenter of Nazareth into definite action. When Jesus came
forth from the desert, there was in His conduct a distinct effort
to prevent any appearance of rivalry between John and Himself —
a certain self-suppression out of deference to John's seniority
and priority in the prophetic succession. Although He took up
the identical message announced by John, yet He breathed into
it an entirely new meaning. His thoughts were full-orbed ;
whatever may have been the character of His intellectual and
spiritual discipline, Jesus evinced an already attained maturity
and pleromatic wisdom from the time that He began to teach
and preach in Galilee. The note of excellence in His teaching,
felt through all the imperfect medium of written tradition, is its
self-convincing quality. The sayings of Jesus establish them
selves in the reason; they are like light flashing forth inherent
truthfulness and inspiration. But this authority was not only the
chief characteristic of His message about the Kingdom ; it was
also exhibited in a majestic ease and calmness in His exercise
122
The Breach Between Jesus and Judaism 123
of healing power. At His word, or touch, men recovered from
their diseases. But even though conduct be considered as three-
fourths of life, we can only look upon it as the exhibition of a
character or personality. The influence of Jesus while it per
vaded all His speech and action, was resident in, and emanated
from, the indefinable quality of His Person. He threw a spell
over men's minds; the Galileans turned toward Him with an
instinctive recognition of His leadership. One would fain lift
the veil, and see how Jesus acted upon men in His earlier years.
We wonder if He drew them, as by a powerful magnetism, in
that period of His silence. It may be, however, that this spiritual
mastery over men was not attained until He received the Baptism
of the Holy Spirit. Brief and fragmentary as are the Gospel
records, we can see that Jesus excited the wonder, admiration,
doubt, approval and then envy of the people. At first He at
tracted men generally; soon He drew to Himself a few persons
with special affinities and potentialities ; and then, alas ! He be
gan to repel certain men of distinction, and to excite their fear
and dislike. He sifted men; He cleaved them asunder; He
judged them involuntarily; they could not be neutral in His
presence: those who were not for Him were against Him; those
who were not against Him were for Him.
2. Already we have treated of the twofold message of Jesus
concerning God's Reign and man's repentance; but behind these
dominant thoughts, and breathing through them, we may now
trace certain implied or expressed claims which drew men to fol
low Him, or stung them into revolt from His spiritual regnancy.
Even if we accede to the position that Jesus made no explicit
annunciation of His Christhood at the beginning of His mission,
it is patent to all readers of the New Testament that the first
disciples were drawn to Him by the simple fact that His authori
tative bearing impressed them with the idea that He could be
no other than God's Anointed. Something in His carriage,
speech and action, created a widespread, incipient belief that He
was the fulfiller of Israel's profoundest hopes. Although with
hope there was doubtless a fear, which made its presence felt
upon occasions, that He might not be all that His friends assumed.
Jesus was Himself responsible for engendering this belief in His
Messiahship ; for the claim, if verbally unexpressed, was virtually
made in His unique assumption of authority. Emerson com-
124 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
plained that the writings of historical Christianity " dwell with
noxious exaggeration about the Person of Jesus." *¦ If the lan
guage which describes Christ to Europe and America "paints
a demi-god, as the Orientals or the Greeks would describe
Osiris or Apollo," then as students of history this so-called " first
defect of historical Christianity " must be attributed by us to
Jesus Himself. He is the fons et origo of this apotheosis ; there
fore, it is in vain that we seek to escape this tendency to deifica
tion of the Founder of Christianity by appealing to Jesus Him
self rather than to the churches. It is impossible to treat the
Gospels as historical evidence in this matter, and yet reduce Jesus
to the role of a prophet — to make Him out to be simply the
pioneer of faith, or the first interpreter of the laws of the Spirit.
Some distinguished and not irreverent critics have represented
Jesus Himself as undergoing a mental change in the later part
of His career, so that His ministry is cleaved asunder as by a
momentous revolution; by His Messianic pretension He breaks
away from the prophetic succession and leaps upon a throne, as
Dr. Martineau 2 described the transformation ; His message was
at the beginning one of self-abnegation, but in the end it was
one of self-proclamation. Renewed and persistent study of the
Gospels convinces one that this representation of a rupture in
the movement of Christ's ministry and inward thought is based
upon inadequate recognition of the implications of His earliest
teaching and conduct; there is, in fact, the most vital continuity
and the profoundest identity between the earlier and later phases
of His work. From the first annunciation of the Kingdom, Jesus
presented Himself not merely as the Interpreter of the Law,
but as its Lord. Not only did He boldly treat the Rabbinic tra
ditions as provisional or mere temporary accommodations, but
with unexampled daring He put aside some of the literal obliga
tions of the Law itself by showing the deeper Spirit that lay
beneath the letter. Should it be pointed out that an Isaiah also
could show a like freedom, as for instance when he said, " To
what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith
the Lord: I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat
of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks or of
lambs, or of he-goats," etc., we at once differentiate between the
function of the older prophets to interpret the Divine Order of
'Address to the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, 1838.
2 Life, vol. ii., 241.
The Breach Between Jesus and Judaism 125
life, and the fact that Jesus asserted Himself to be the supreme
expression of the Divine Order and the Revelation of a final
authority in all matters of spiritual life. This representation of
the self-assertion of Jesus is based, not upon a few selected
proof-texts of uncertain authority, but upon the whole trend
and character of His ministry from its beginning to its close.
Whether or not we are able to explain the uniqueness of Jesus;
whether or not we have found a theory that can combine all the
phenomena of His life, and set forth the moral and metaphysical
grounds of His relationship with the Heavenly Father, — as his
torical students we are bound to be true to the facts, though they
be incomprehensible to us. Our special undertaking at this stage
is not, however, to propound theories about Him, but to take
full cognizance of those facts of His ministry which brought
about His rupture with the Scribes and Pharisees. It may be
that we shall finally have to fall back upon the simple assumption
— which cuts the Gordian knot — that in the Person of Jesus God
has acted in a unique and climactic manner for the consummation
of His redemptive self-revelation. Meanwhile, we observe that
one of the features of Christ's ministry which shocked the clerical
mind of that age, and resulted in controversy, conflict and trag
edy, was the assertion by Jesus of an authority which seemed
to encroach upon the prerogatives of Jehovah.
3. It was inevitable that the appearance of a great Spiritual
Authority, such as Jesus claimed to be, should divide and sift
men. While refusing to assume the military dictatorship which
the popular imagination assigned to the Christhood, the Lamb
of God was the Spiritual Warrior of humanity; He flung down
the gage of battle and entered into conflict with all the evils and
sins that afflict and disorder society. He made it plain that there
is no compatibility between His Kingdom and sin ; the sin of the
world was the enemy of God's Sovereignty. It was in His
special treatment of this problem of sin that there were disclosed
the serious differences between Jesus and the theologians and
ecclesiastics of that age. His whole view of sin in its origin
in the evil heart and rebellious will, and in the scope of its
malignant opposition, can only appear in the completion of our
study, when the contrast of His righteousness with the world's
enmity to God has been looked at from the standpoint of the Cross.
The note of His teaching which distinguished it from all that
126 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
had gone before was its intense inwardness; while Jesus recog
nized as fully as any moralist or social reformer the dire objective
ills of life, His emphasis fell almost exclusively upon the sub
jective and central motive of all human conduct. With Him it
was largely a question of the will; and in this we shall find
the principle of His differentiation in the treatment of sinners.
There was ever a strange gentleness in His dealing with the
poor, weak victims of passion and lust, and a contrary sternness
in His view of the sins of the mind, such as pride and insincerity,
so palpably manifest in the attitude of the Pharisees towards Him
self. When we take the whole ministry of Jesus as a complete
act of God in human history, we see the validity of the apostolic
view of His work as the definite Divine dealing with sin as an
enemy to the Kingdom, and something that had to be faced and
overcome by the champion of the righteousness and trustworthy
order of God in the world. We mention this larger view in order
to prevent an unbalanced emphasis upon a vital but fragmentary
insight which must now be set forth. At the beginning of His
ministry, Jesus proclaimed a full remission ( atpsGii) of men's
sins, which carried with it the impulse to start anew. The for
giveness of sins was one of the first conditions essential to the
establishment of God's Sovereignty. His annunciation of this
evangel did not spring from light-heartedness, or from a senti
mental and superficial optimism which looked upon sin as nega
tive, shadowy and unreal. Jesus never lacked in ethical serious
ness. " For from within, out of the heart of men, evil thoughts
proceed — fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, covetings,
wickednesses, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, railing, pride,
foolishness." 1 Forgiveness, therefore, was not easy ; although
so freely proclaimed, it was bestowed at great cost. It is the
miracle of miracles ! The scribes were so far right in their
criticism of Christ's evangel that forgiveness must be the pre
rogative of God only, for they recognized in it something of a
mystery. Even Jesus Himself expressed His consciousness that
there was that in the forgiveness of sin which made it more
difficult to pronounce absolution than to speak the healing word
to the victim of palsy.2 The demonstration of His power over
physical disease left the scribes unconvinced of His authority to
forgive sins ; to them such announcement savoured of blasphemy.
Such a message of acpsaii carried implications of authority
' Mark vii. 21, 22. 2 Mark ii. 1-12.
The Breach Between Jesus and Judaism 127
which they were not willing to ascribe to Jesus. Herein lay
the first cause of alienation between Jesus and the religious
leaders of the people; and their criticism of His assumption of
Divine authority must evoke sympathetic response in all minds
that are prepossessed by a purely humanitarian conception of
Jesus. 4. Our next step must be an attempt to explain briefly the
nature of the ceaseless strife between Jesus and the Pharisees.
Dr. Stalker x has rightly reminded us that the Prince of Peace
was a great controversialist, and that the evidence of this phase
of His ministry looms far more largely in the Gospels than is
often recognized. The characteristic of modern thought is re
conciliation; we are seeking for a new synthesis of all the partial
truths and broken insights of men. This fact, together with the
hurtful history of many a past controversy in the Christian
Church, has naturally resulted in widespread deprecation of
theological conflict. But the note of authority which we find in
Christ's character inevitably expressed itself in a strong antago
nism to all that was alien to His way of thought. The " Gentle
Jesus " of our hymns must not usurp the true portrait in the
Gospels of a Perfect Character. There is always a capacity for
fierce anger in a perfectly developed soul. Sympathy must never
be cultivated at the expense of principle. Dr. Forsyth 2 has fitly
said, " There is a worse thing than the temper and abuse of
controversy, and that is the mawkish sweetness and maudlin
piety of the people who are everybody's brothers and can stand
up to none." The Kingdom which Christ came to establish was
of righteousness and peace, but not peace without righteousness.
When one recalls the genius of Pharisaic Judaism with its ever
lasting insistence upon external ceremonies, which so often issued
in the neglect of the weightier matters of the law, he sees that
such a One as Jesus could not possibly escape controversy with
its representatives. The vital and spiritual principle of true
religion was at stake : therefore, Jesus did not hesitate to become
the aggressor in this conflict; and disputes arose out of three
definite questions of traditional religious life — viz. the weekly
fasting, the rites of purification, and the rules of the Sabbath.
But these outward forms only provided the terms of the contro
versy ; the real point at issue was, with Jesus, the very spirit and
1 Imago Christi, p. 285. 2Rome, Reform and Reaction, p. 15,
128 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
aim of man's recognition of his multiform relations to God. He
saw clearly, more clearly than His adversaries, the infinite value
of a living, free spiritual religion; and to this ideal Pharisaic
conservatism was as hostile, in the view of Jesus, as the very
demons who usurped possession of men's reason and bodies.
But if the evil which confronted Him was as a strong man armed,
Jesus entered into the controversy with the consciousness that
a strength was inherent in Him to bind the strong man and
spoil his house. He had brought a new wine that could not be
contained in the old, dried, cracked skins of external ceremonial.
In the instance of the dispute about purification — the washing of
hands, etc. — Jesus saw that the peril lay in an external rite which
had lost its symbolic meanings.1 Again in the matter of fasting,
Rabbinic tradition had supplemented the one great fast of the
Day of Atonement, inculcated in the Torah, by weekly abstinence
on Mondays and Thursdays ; but the result of this multiplication
of fasts was to rob them of their spiritual value, to minister
to religious vanity and insincerity, and to foster the radically
false idea of bartering merit with God. To form a correct
and ample conception of Jesus, therefore, we must reckon with
this strong, controversial element in His ministry, and acknowl
edge that from the beginning He showed a wonderful prescience
concerning His real foes, and took up an uncompromising atti
tude of opposition to formalism, while in the course of the con
flict He evinced marvellous calmness, certainty and authority.
5. The differences between Jesus and contemporary Judaism
found their acutest and most vehement expression in the par
ticular dispute about the Sabbath-day. The Jewish views of the
Sabbath are so well-known that it is needless to reiterate them;
the bewildering thing in the Gospels is that Jesus should seem
to undermine the orthodox Sabbatarian ideal. His freedom from
conventional restraints may easily be misunderstood and carica
tured. Let it be accepted as a certitude that while Jesus reso
lutely attacked external and conventional usages, He never once
thought of annulling the Sabbath itself. The Sabbath institution
rested upon the distinct teaching of the Torah, and Jesus accepted
it as a part of the Divine economy for the teaching and salvation
of men. He sought to detach the essential from the accidental ;
He waved aside Pharisaic prejudices concerning it, but His
'Mark vii. 1-23.
The Breach Between Jesus and Judaism 129
synagogue ministry itself is a refutation of the idea that He
abrogated the Divine right and human obligation expressed in
the institution itself. At first Jesus hoped to win the Pharisees
to the acceptance of His point of view; and in His justification
of His disciples, when they plucked the ears of corn on the
Sabbath-day, He showed that He was possessed of a new dialec
tic, and could furnish strong and cogent arguments in defence
of His own views and conduct. The mind of Jesus disclosed
itself as able to penetrate to the core of all intricacies and seize
upon the central and abiding principle or general notion which
had expressed itself in symbols and rites. He could also rapidly
arrange His acquired stores of Old Testament learning and
marshal His thoughts in an ordered and convincing manner.
There was also a quality of supreme daring in His free Spirit,
although at no point did He give place to license. " The Sabbath
was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath: so that the
Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath." After meditating
upon the title, " Son of Man," I cannot apply it indiscriminately
to all men ; it is peculiar to Jesus, because of His unique human
ity ; it breathes His Messianic self-consciousness, and bespeaks an
authority which awes the spirits of men into surrender to Him.
When other men possess the energy, decisiveness, and authority
of personality combined with the clear spiritual vision and philo
sophic grasp of general principles, together with an ethic both
broad and exalted as that of Jesus, they may claim to be even
lords of the Sabbath; in the meantime let us acknowledge that
He is the Son of Man, and worthy to be called " our Lord."
6. If this representation of the history be correct, then the
conflict between the Pharisees and Jesus arose from a diametrical
opposition of temper and spirit. It was not simply that they
were jealous of the growing influence of Jesus, of the popularity
won by His healing miracles; it was rather the collision of
tempers, which could find no point for reconciliation. The
system of Pharisaism too often hardened its votaries into an
attitude which sacrificed humanity to ritual — into an arid, in
tellectual dogmatism which was the bondage of the Spirit. Jesus,
however, in whom we find elements of transcendental authority
was essentially humanitarian in His outlook and practice, and
would not for one moment tolerate the abandonment of the
humble pieties and domestic duties in the name of a creed or
130 The Annunciation of the Kingdom
ritual. The culmination of such a controversy could not be de
layed very long, and it was destined to cut short Christ's syna
gogue ministry and to make it advisable for Him to seek a
different sphere of activity. As we read St. Mark's narrative of
the healing of the man with the withered hand,1 the thought is
suggested that the Pharisees had planned and prearranged the
scene in the synagogue, in order to bring matters to a crisis and
make Christ's breach with Judaism as public and glaring as
possible. It was such a challenge as Jesus could not hesitate to
accept, and, with characteristic and terrible directness which
attests His intellectual power, He threw the whole controversy
upon the Pharisees by His stern question, " Is it lawful on the
Sabbath day to do good, or to do harm? to save a life, or to
kill?" A touch of imaginative sympathy recreates the scene,
and we see transacted over again the strange duel, and feel
the thrill of overwhelming emotion in Christ's question. It was
a moment of stress and strain, an hour of storm, a tremendous
battle between two ideals of religion. There could be no com
promise. Jesus gave up the hope of winning His opponents, and
turned round to look on them with anger and grief at their
invincible hardness, which they misnamed religion. The miracu
lous restoration of the man's withered hand on that Sabbath-day
brought about the definite rupture of Jesus with the religious
authorities in Galilee. " This event, according to Mark, was the
parting of the ways. The religious leaders decide to get rid of
Jesus by the help of the Herodian government; while Jesus, on
the other hand, begins to constitute His followers into an organi
zation which was destined to develop into the Christian Church.
He no longer preaches in the synagogues, save once (and that
unsuccessfully) at His own home at Nazareth, and for the re
mainder of His ministry His main efforts are directed toward
preparing His disciples for the trials that are in store for Him
and them." 2
7. The breach between Jesus and the Pharisees was widened
by His disregard of conventional class distinctions. This strange
Messiah shocked all His narrow-minded contemporaries by the
social abandon He exhibited; they could not understand such
pity and love. In His eyes there shone an appealing grace which
' Mark iii. 1-6.
s Professor Burkett, The Gospel History and its Transmission, p. 69.
The Breach Between Jesus and Judaism 131
strangely moved the hearts of all who were ostracized by the re
spectable classes. He showed no scorn or hauteur toward the
vicious, the vagrants, and the diseased; He came to seek and
save. The classic instance of His bonhomie and bohemian
habits is that of the farewell feast which followed the call of
Matthew.1 Seeing that His Synagogue Mission .must be termi
nated, Jesus deliberately set Himself to win the excommunicated.
Such companionship caused no embarrassment in Jesus; but the
Pharisees were shocked by this further outrage upon conven
tional ideas of life; they failed to understand His religion of
Perfect Love; there was engendered in their minds, as they
looked on, a sour suspicion, and they stigmatized Him as " the
friend of publicans and sinners." He did not blush at being
" caught " in the company of fallen men and women, but uttered
the apologia pro vita sua, " They that are whole have no need of
a physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the right
eous, but sinners." When He heard that His followers were
upbraided for not observing the fasts, He said that as the Bride
groom was with them, they could not mourn. He looked upon
His critics and foes, as one might look upon naughty, quarrelsome
children who were at cross-purposes, discontented with their
games of mock funerals, and unwilling to join in play at wed
dings. Of John they said " he hath a devil ! " Of Jesus, " Be
hold ! a glutton and a wine-bibber ! " The common people, how
ever, felt His goodness; and although there was naught of
boisterous mirth in His social, genial temper, they perceived His
tenderness for all weak things. At last this popularity forced
Him to make retreats into solitude, and compelled Him to seek
privacy by wandering far from Galilee.2
' Mark ii. 13-17; Matt. ix. 9-13.
'Luke iv. 42; v. 1; viii. 40; Mark i. 37.
BOOK III
THE SCHOOL OF JESUS
CHAPTER I
THE NEW APOSTOLATE
i. Renan's Life of Jesus was a triumph of literary art, and
at the same time a pathetic disclosure of the limitations of natural
genius when it attempts to treat of the Realm of the Spirit.
Romanticism failed to plumb the spiritual depths of the New
Testament. There are qualifications other than those possessed
by the literary artist, requisite even for a partial understand
ing of Jesus of Nazareth. However much it may savour of pre
sumption to adopt the Pauline principle that spiritual things must
- be spiritually discerned, there is true philosophy in the affirmation,
" Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of
God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know
them, because they are spiritually judged." x The Galilean peas
ant of the French litterateur's fancy — dreamy, poetic and un
practical, with a fine genius for religion, and an intellectual vein
which was exhausted in the invention of idyllic parables as He
walked by the lake — may be pleasing to the imagination of the
literary mind; but such a picture has little correspondence with
the historic facts of the four Gospels. A picturesque present
ment of the Nazarene Carpenter as a moral and social re
former, or as a politico-religious revolutionist, does not ade
quately reflect the record of facts. Equally deficient in propor
tion and symmetry is the recent humanitarian view of Jesus which
restricts His operation to that of spiritual exegesis. We have now
reached a point when we must recognize fully the supreme place
of Jesus in the role of prophecy and interpretation of the laws of
the Spirit, and we should do Him grave injustice did we make no
differentiation between Him and other religion-founders. Jesus
demands a category by Himself; for, while He delighted to
identify Himself with all mankind, He claimed both implicitly
and explicitly to be unique and transcendent. He was conscious
of being something more than a great Teacher, or the pioneer of
spiritual discovery ; He was a great actor in the drama of human
history. Even though we can formulate no theory of His person
1 1 Cor. ii. 14.
135
136 The School of Jesus
that will cover all the facts, it is at least necessary that we should
acknowledge both the consciousness of the Primitive Church of
the Lord's place in her experience and the character of His own
self-consciousness. Of the modern Humanitarian view of Jesus,
it must be said that the cloud still rests upon the sanctuary; its
advocates have not beheld the full reality. Just as in Africa
there is a high mountain almost always covered by mist, so that
travellers come near without once discerning its magnitude,
so have some scholars approached the historical Person of the
Gospels without perceiving His vastness. Sometimes the lifting
of the mist for a brief interval has only resulted in filling the
mind of the beholder with doubt, and fear of optical illusion ; and
similarly, if one strives to communicate one's glimpses of the
transcendent Christ to those intellectualists who have never seen
the lifting of the cloud, one will be adjudged the victim of hallu
cination. Nevertheless, " That which was from the beginning,
that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our
eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the
Word of Life . . . that which we have seen and heard declare
we unto you also." x
2. In the previous chapters, some insight has been gained
into the august Spirituality of Jesus' conception of the Reign of
God; now it devolves upon us to show how He applied all the
powers of His anointed Manhood to give this Empire of the
Mind an objective, organized embodiment on earth. The Gospels
disclose not only the reveries of a poetic religious genius, but
also the statesmanship of a Kingdom-founder. Jesus did not
adopt the method of philosophers for the promulgation of a new
system; He wrote no dream of an ideal republic; He followed
no lines laid down by others ; yet, that He had a clearly con
ceived plan of action, and sought to carry it out as opportunity
afforded, there can be little doubt. Vast though His conceptions
and projects were, there was neither diffuseness in His expres
sions nor vagueness in His action ; the thunder-clap and lightning-
flash of Revelation had not left His mind blinded and huddled
in ecstatic helplessness. As soon as He emerged from the
obscurity of private life, He struck out the definite lines upon
which He had resolved to execute His mission. Although He
belonged to the narrowest and proudest of nationalities, Jesus
laid His hand upon the universal principles implicit in the theo-
'I John i. 1-4.
The New Apostolate 137
cratic ideal, and set them forth as the governing ideas of a univer
sal society in which men should be bound — not by blood-ties but
by spiritual affinities. Although many centuries have passed since
He called His first disciples, the true aim of Jesus has scarcely
dawned upon the popular intelligence, and even the churches
which call themselves by His name see but dimly the goal He
set before them. While the ideal of Jesus was transcendent, it
was rooted in the common earth; His Messiahship relates to the
aeon that shall succeed this, yet it also bears directly upon the
present conditions of life. The eschatology of Jesus will come
under our notice at a later stage; here we may consider the
fellowship He designed to constitute in this present aeon, — a
koinonia based upon the consciousness that God Himself lives
in community with men as the Heavenly Father. Jesus sought
to beget in men's minds a realization of Divine filialty, and to
associate us in a brotherhood wherein love and self-sacrifice shall
prevail over all the selfish instincts of natural life. This was
Christ's interpretation of the Reign of God on earth ; this was the
movement He initiated ; it was the dominant aim of His life, and
today we recognize it as identical with the innermost, Divine
purpose of human History.
3. Jesus deliberately rejected the popular and prevailing no
tions of the Messianic office, and even the prophetic dreams of
temporal power and glory which He read in the inspired litera
ture of His race ; He looked upon the allurements of world-rule
and the specious suggestions springing from the people as temp
tations full of Satanic malignancy. It required indomitable
courage to refuse all the popular expectations of the age — a
courage only less remarkable than the exquisite wisdom needed
for the choice of the unexpected yet right means to His exalted
ends. Facile, indeed, would have been an errant choice, and mere
cleverness would have stumbled blindly amid the alternatives
proffered; but in faith Jesus chose the true way of Jehovah's
Suffering Servant — of renunciation and of patient endurance.
But while as the Author of faith He trod the wine-press alone,
His task was not simply that of His personal salvation ; for, had
He walked the sorrowful way without followers, He could not
have founded the Kingdom ; His faith in the future was justified
by the fire-kindling character of the love He cast upon the earth;
His certainty of success lay in the attraction He wielded in
138 The School of Jesus
alluring others into imitation of Himself. One less divinely wise
would have sought adherents first of all from the wealthy and
educated classes — from the aristocratic priesthood and the in
fluential Pharisees. But had Jesus aimed at this, His movement
would have been throttled by pedantry and prejudice. There
was marvellous penetration needed to discover at the beginning
that God uses the weak things of the world to confound the
mighty; even after the lapse of centuries our own glimpses of
the Divine reason of this method are seldom sustained by a
correspondent faith in practice. The election Jesus made of
lowly, labouring men, who, though possessing but little learning,
were yet zealous and capable of noble enthusiasm, proves that to
gether with an unparalleled excellence of judgement He cher
ished a temper uniquely free from clogging earthliness. The
whole method adopted by Jesus was characterized by a startling
originality. We do not accept the estimate of nationalistic
thinkers that the " intellectual grasp " of Jesus was essentially
parochial and limited to His own age ; rather do we believe that
His vision embraced the unevolved processes of the widening
range of human life. He planted the germs of the Kingdom of
God, and He chose certain men to be His agents in this spiritual
husbandry. He projected the evolution of a higher type of
humanity — an evolution which, from the plane of present achieve
ment, will appear as revolution. Having enunciated His Gospel
of the Kingdom in a general way, He next drew to Himself an
inner circle of disciples, whom He could personally train and
charge with His own splendid passion of idealism and love. Each
step in the execution of His plan was marked with a wisdom
which recognized the necessity for immediate reticence, and for
the graduated instruction of His chosen pupils.
4. Various and discrepant are the narratives that relate how
Jesus called His disciples, and the seeming contradictions can be
marshalled with such imposing force that the very credibility of
the Gospels seems shaken. St. John represents Jesus as having
won the adherence of Andrew, Simon, the unnamed disciple —
perhaps John, Philip and Nathanael — before He returned from
His baptism into Galilee. St. Matthew however, reports, as
though it was the first meeting, that while Jesus walked by the
Galilean lake, He saw Andrew and Simon, and bade them follow
Him; that the sons of Zebedee also were similarly called. St.
The New Apostolate 139
Luke gives the call of Peter in a different connection. Having
used the boat of Peter and Andrew for his rostrum, Jesus caused
the brothers to launch out and let down their nets ; the marvellous
draught of fishes surprised Simon into a confession of sin, and
the response of the Master was a call to discipleship. Another
incident is the call of Levi, the son of Alphaeus, from the cus
tom house; it remains, however, an unsettled question whether
this man ought to be identified with Matthew, whose call is related
in the First Gospel. Again, how difficult it is to bring anything
like harmony into the three catalogues of the Twelve Disciples!
Nathanael has to be identified with Bartholomew, Matthew with
Levi, James (the son) of Alphaeus with James the Less, while
Judas of James must be one and the same with the disciple vari
ously named Lebbaeus and Thaddaeus, who must be distinguished
from Judas Iscariot. Some readers treat the different narratives
as varying traditions of one call; but it is quite reasonable to
imagine that the disciples were gradually initiated into the new
life, and to suppose that the call was repeated at succeeding stages
of their instruction. Whatever uncertainty may exist about this
matter, it is plain that Jesus could not be satisfied by a promiscu
ous evangelism, but that He sought specially qualified pupils who
might be trained for future work. The lists of names differ,
but it is possible that some of the less distinguished of the Twelve
might be supplanted in popular traditions by some of the more
prominent members of the Seventy Peraean evangelists. The
intimate trio — Peter, James and John — are clearly drawn in the
Gospels; but the outer circle of the Twelve is portrayed much
less vividly. They all proved vacillating and slow pupils, and
their loyalty to Jesus was much marred by coarse ambitions.
Only very gradually could their gross expectations be trans
muted into an intelligent appreciation of their Master's aims.
Judas Iscariot must have exhibited a potentiality of goodness
at the beginning; his later career can only be explained as a
type of moral degeneration. Matthew not only gave Jesus an
opportunity of meeting the ostracized classes (publicans and
sinners), but he is credited with having made the first notes of
the Lord's logia. Of Andrew, Philip and Thomas we know
but little, and of others, variously named, we know nothing;
and then of that wider circle who were manifestly responsive to
Christ's teaching and prepared to go forth as missioners of the
Kingdom, we know not even their names.
140 The School of Jesus
5. Our frequent indiscriminate use of the term "disciple"
confuses the popular perception of the distinction which Jesus
Himself made between the Twelve and ordinary believers. As
the name of " apostles " came to be appropriated by the Twelve,
the word disciple began to lose some of its definiteness and
exclusiveness; and today it is vain to seek a pedantic change
of common usage. However, in order to understand the method
of Jesus and the beginnings of the Christian Church, it is neces
sary to take account of the distinct office and mode of life to
which the Twelve were chosen. The Twelve were called to be
strict imitators of the poverty of Jesus, and they were com
manded to abandon their ordinary avocations — first to learn of
Jesus, then to propagate His Gospel. Whether persons are
chosen and called to follow a similar mode of life now, may be
subsequently considered; here we may note that it was not every
man that was deemed capable of following the way of Jesus ; the
Master Himself understood the inherent distinctions in men's dis
positions, and plainly demanded a resolute and courageous tem
per in those who were to attempt the hard tasks of discipleship.
There was no hindrance in being uncultured, or in lacking
rank or wealth; the absolutely essential qualification was a po
tentiality of moral sacrifice. St. Paul was able to write of five
hundred believers who had known the Lord in the days of His
flesh; but Jesus chose only twelve disciples. There would have
been an element of absurdity in the adoption of the title of
" followers " by men who still pursued their worldly avocations
and cherished their legitimate ambitions of earthly success. The
chief aim of Jesus was to win the allegiance of a band of men who
would heroically follow Him and imitate His absolute renuncia
tion of the world. The Master is not to be conceived of as
a philosopher like unto Socrates ; He never adopted the role
of a rabbi, whose task was simply to teach impersonal doctrines of
religion. The men He called were designated to be pillars of a
spiritual community — apostles of Light to the whole world; they
were not a monastic body separated from the race, but they were
charged by Jesus to leaven the whole community of mankind
throughout the world. From the beginning of His mission,
there were gradations and nuances in believers' approximations
to the disciple-ideal set up by Jesus. The most rudimentary belief
in Jesus imparted a fine moral energy to the character ; a faith no
greater than a grain of mustard-seed produced incalculable ethi-
The New Apostolate 141
eal consequences ; still it must be remembered that, from the few
disciples chosen by the Lord to be the official ministers of the new
Kingdom, there was demanded a complete renunciation of ordi
nary pursuits — of the attractions and prizes of this present life.
They were not sworn to celibacy or asceticism, but they were set
apart for the vocation of apostles and were directed to live by
faith in God and to bear themselves with gentleness and forbear
ance toward men. Unless this special character of the disciple
be remembered, the Gospels must seem to present an exaggerated
moral ideal, and all attempts to harmonize it with modern Chris
tianity will savour of unreality. The utmost frankness is de
manded of us, in order to clear the air of cant and to avoid the
pitfalls of hypocrisy : all men are not chosen to be apostles and to
go forth in poverty to evangelize the world; if there were many
called, only a few were chosen. Had it been otherwise, and had
the call to this life of utter renunciation of all external posses
sions and aggrandizement been made universal, then we should
have been forced to acknowledge that Jesus was the supreme
anarchist of history. The new apostolate formed by Jesus
was necessarily narrow and somewhat exclusive, so that the
Twelve should become mediators of a universal Gospel. Such
rigorous discipleship was a means to an end; and that end was
the constitution of a theocratic community which should per
meate and intersphere all the communities and nations of the
world. 6. Appeals to the Gospels will, we think, confirm this general
statement of the nature and purpose of Christ's institution of dis
cipleship. The abruptness and imperiousness of the special
" calls " recorded, may be rather the characteristic of the brief
accounts than of the incidents themselves, although it would
be quite a mistake to explain away all semblance of command
in the manner and tone of Jesus. In the various cases recorded,
we may justly imagine a course of preliminary instruction to
have been given by Jesus; for example, the two disciples trans
ferred from the Baptist's school listened to the Master's doc
trine a considerable time before they were called upon to take
final leave of their mundane occupations. The period of pre
liminary training may have differed in various cases; but in
every one of the Twelve, notwithstanding the failure of Judas,
Jesus may be supposed to have made proof of the pupil's temper
142 The School of Jesus
and spirit before He made His final imperious appeal, " Follow
me." In the case of the Galilean fishermen the call was given at
the moment when their craft appeared most profitable ; yet at the
bidding of Jesus, they left all and followed Him. Their obedi
ence demonstrated the existence, in those simple and rough men,
of a moral susceptibility to the grand and heroic ideal of Jesus.
To one rash aspirant to the difficult office of discipleship Jesus
uttered the forbidding words, " The foxes have holes, and the
birds of the heaven have nests : but the Son of Man hath not where
to lay His head." Should the occasion arise, then allegiance to
the Lord must take, precedence even of family duties ; for spiritual
changes bring new bonds of affinity which go deeper than rela
tionships of flesh and blood ! x The Great Teacher was explicit
about the hardness of the disciple's . life ; and He refused to
tolerate the temper that vacillates : a hesitating, uncertain, doubt
ing man is no more qualified than is the ploughman who looks
back fitted for his task of making the furrow straight. Hence,
it was a peremptory condition of the apostolate that each new
member should renounce, for the sake of Jesus, everything that
the world esteems as gain. Behind such a call for moral hero
ism we discern our Lord's full trust both in God and man;
our life depends ultimately upon the Father's will; the disciple
might, therefore, cast himself without anxiety upon the hospitality
of the people to whom he carried the Word of Truth. Jesus
clearly foretold that His Apostles would be cruelly persecuted;
still the world's hostility was provoked, not by the disciple's
poverty, but by his uncongenial message.
7. One of the important special aims of the Master's minis
try was to instruct and discipline the characters of those whom
He chose to propagate the Reign of God ; and the ordination of
the Twelve for the new apostolate constituted a momentous
crisis in the development of His plan. St. Luke represents Jesus
Himself as fully cognizant of the epoch-making influence of His
final choice of the Twelve, recording how He prepared for this
election by spending the previous night on some mountain in
prayer. Hitherto Jesus had only issued incidental invitations for
excursions of varying duration, although in most cases His ap
peal for the companionship of these men fell upon their hearts
with the force of command. The very phrase now used by St.
* Luke ix. 57-62 ; Mark iii. 32-35.
The New Apostolate 143
Luke is significant of the preeminent importance of a step which
required a preparatory night of vigil : " He continued all night in
the prayer of God." (rif npoaevxy rov ®sov.) The interior
truth needed investiture in outward organization; the outward
was to be the symbol of the Spirit and idea. The choosing of
the Twelve is the first step in Christ's programme, the carrying
out of which was designed to give form and body to the hidden
community of Light. The Reign of God must be made mani
fest in the external order, and the Truth must be mediated for the
popular mind. No touch of undue haste or premature action
characterized His ministry; He moved forward with the majestic
certainty of one who was sure of the Will of the Eternal. The
reference made by the Evangelist to His praying all through
the night sheds a clear light upon the continual personal practice
of religion by the Lord Jesus. " And when it was day, He sum
moned His disciples " — the large circle of well-disposed learners
who had come out to Him — thus using the term " disciples " in
the laxer way, " and of them He elected twelve, whom He also
named apostles." The designation of " apostles " may have been
given at a later time; the conjunction (xtxi), "marks the naming
as a separate act from the election." Jesus then descended from
the summit to some level place, where He found a great crowd
of learners and a multitude of people awaiting Him. St. Luke
clearly distinguishes three groups — the Twelve who were or
dained to be apostles, the larger outside circle of believers who
loved to receive His instruction, and an interested, curious multi
tude, eager both to see and hear.
8. This distinction between disciples and other hearers was
first made by Jesus Himself : " and when He was alone, they
that were about Him with the twelve asked of Him the parables :
and He said unto them, Unto you is given the mystery of the king
dom of God ; but unto them that are without, all things are done
in parables : that seeing they may see, and not perceive," etc. In
response to the inquiry of the young man about the true religious
life, Jesus simply demanded that he should keep the command
ments; but when urged further by the confession that from his
youth he had kept these, Jesus enunciated the way of the perfect
life : " Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and come and
follow Me." That was the highest call to absolute renunciation ;
but, be it remembered, Jesus never thought of summoning every
144 The School of Jesus
passer-by to follow this " way." Count Tolstoy, in spite of his
grand simplicity and magnanimity, errs in that he treats this
" call " as universally applicable. But we are not all qualified to
be apostles, any more than all are inspired to be poets; most
men will confess that they have neither the strength nor the
courage to enter upon such absolute self-denial. The Master
Himself warned His friends against any rash, inconsiderate
abandonment of the prizes of the world; everyone should sit
•down and count the cost before he begins to build on this plan.
Jesus never aimed at pulling down Caesar's throne or at banish
ing the institutions of civilized life — of law, literature, art and
government ; He plainly said, " Render unto Caesar the things
that are Caesar's and unto God the things which are God's."
Under Divine Providence, a great civilization has grown up in
our world, and in it is mixed much of good and much of evil.
This civilization has assimilated a great deal of the idealism of
Christianity, and the attitude of the Church toward it cannot be
one of blank anarchism. In our midst are men endowed with
great commercial abilities, who easily acquire wealth. Now while
Jesus uttered many grave warnings about the danger of riches,
and the difficulty a rich man finds in entering the Kingdom of
God, He did not command that every rich man should make
himself poor, any more than He taught His disciples to court
persecution. On the other hand, Jesus did actually call certain
men to a life of utter renunciation ; the Twelve were so called :
the obligation of poverty was laid upon St. Francis; and those
who really obeyed became the salt of the earth — the Light of the
World. There is, however, a universal call that all men should
destroy self-will by spiritual surrender to the Reign of God
in their inmost hearts, and that amid all outward conditions the
One spirit and temper of the Lord Jesus Christ should be culti
vated by men everywhere.
9. The great dominating motive of the mission of Jesus was
to make the Reign of God a reality among men; and He early
saw that such a project could be accomplished only through the
mediation of an organic community. The dream of a mystical,
invisible church, be it never so beautiful, is totally inadequate;
if the Kingdom of God was to become something more than a
cult of theosophy, it had to be translated into actual relationships
and visible institutions. Since our spirits are clothed with flesh,
The New Apostolate 145
mind must communicate with mind through the symbolism of
speech and the sacraments of action. A true theocracy must be
clothed in an external order; and it must develop, just as any
other organism, according to the laws of life in material and
spiritual environment; although it will be fed from an invisible
Divine Fountain. Jesus possessed that practical wisdom which
the old Chinese philosopher, Lao-Tsze, had lacked — of statesman
ship to form a society upon which He could stamp His ideal.
The bond of this society was love to Himself, and from those per
sons who were drawn into this spiritual attachment He chose
Twelve, " whom also He named apostles," designating them to be
the executors and organs of His spirit — evangelists of the Reign
of God. The apostle John, in his first epistle, describes this
theocratic community as a fellowship of love, wherein men live
as brothers under the sovereignty of the Heavenly Father. The
fine gold of Christ's ideal, however, soon became dimmed by
the envyings, jealousies and strife of men who carried the temper
of the world into the ecclesia. Still, this fact ought not to prevent
us from perceiving the true aim and ideal of Jesus, and the ways
He sought to carry out His plan. While recognizing all the
changes that have taken place in the relation of the Church to
the world, we cannot but regret that so few in this age hear
and respond to the call of complete self-renunciation; for those
who would succeed to the apostolate of the Twelve must follow
Jesus, just as did those early disciples, who imitated even the out
ward life of their Lord. Doubtless, the ministers of all the
churches today fulfil important duties and contribute greatly
to the general weal of the communities in which they live ; but the
Reign of God needs men who will follow Jesus even to the re
linquishment of all that the civilized world esteems so highly
in regard to wealth and comfort. He calls a few in every age to
be apostles — imitators of Himself — and a few such citizens of the
Divine Kingdom communicate to society the pungent, preserving,
transforming qualities of righteousness; they are like a city set
on a hill, or a lamp throwing its illumination over the home, or
a light of the world shedding a purifying radiance in the midst of
the surrounding darkness. Meanwhile there comes to all the call
to strive to realize more thoroughly the pure ethic of love taught
by Jesus ; the vision disclosed on the Mount should inspire us who
still walk in the valley to seek first the Reign of God by the
practical, daily application of the principles of His righteousness.
CHAPTER II
THE IDEAL LIFE OF THE NEW KINGDOM—THE
ORDINATION DISCOURSE ON THE MOUNT
i. The election of the Twelve to the New Apostolate was an
event of tremendous importance in the ministry of Jesus, and the
connection of what is commonly known as " The Sermon on the .
Mount," with the ordination of the Twelve, suggested by St.
Luke, is inherently probable. The very momentousness of this
discourse has made it inevitable that no small part of the criti
cism and controversy of our age should be focused upon it.
Many believers of keen ethical insight have shown a tendency
to throw overboard the creeds and dogmas of ecclesiastical
theologians, if only they may hold fast to St. Matthew's record
of this Sermon as the true charter of the Church. But the
existence of variant reports of this discourse in the Gospels of
SS. Matthew and Luke has given rise to the most thorough
going criticism of the text and hypotheses of its origin and trans
mission. It surprises no observer of present-day modes of
thought that some extremists conclude that no Sermon on the
Mount was ever delivered by Jesus. St. Matthew, it is sug
gested, appears to have compiled the reputed logia of Jesus which
were floating in the early Church without concerning himself
deeply about such questions as authenticity, or the time and
locality of their deliverance. The Evangelist is not blamed for
loose habits of editing; for, however strict the rules of author
ship and of publishing today, the first century was free from such
restraints ; and further there is a certain timelessness in the Word
of Truth. A more conservative school of critics thinks that, in
editing the traditional Sermon which had been transmitted to the
Church through several channels, the Evangelist indulged his
tendency to group kindred matter, and so incorporated with it
sayings which St. Luke has placed in different and perhaps cor
rect connections.1
1 Gore, The Sermon on the Mount; Hastings' D. B. ext. vol., p. iff.
146
The Ideal Life of the Kingdom 147
2. Although the controversies concerning the Sermon on the
Mount are raging still with unabated zeal, we shall not plunge
into the labyrinth by vainly attempting to trace the capillaries of
criticism in a single paragraph; but neither shall we forego our
right of stating our resultant impressions of the two versions
given in the Gospels. We may frankly acknowledge that we iden
tify the discourse delivered on the plain, which St. Luke has
recorded, with the Sermon on the Mount, in St. Matthew.
Resorting again to the method of impressionism, we have been
induced to believe that a long discourse on the ideal life, under
the Sovereignty of God the Father, was delivered by Jesus when
He chose the Twelve.1 Such a deliverance could not fail to have
been worthy of the epoch-making event which gave occasion for
it; and it must have made a corresponding impression upon the
receptive minds of those who listened, so that the oral trans
mission of those great sayings was secured a large degree of ac
curacy. The various reports ultimately converged upon two main
lines of traditional deposits which were translated from Aramaic
into Greek and finally found imperishable expression in the com
pilation of two of the Gospels. Lest there be those who fear that
in such a process the genuine utterances of Jesus might be sub
jected to essential change, the admission of Strauss may be
recalled : " The discourses of Jesus like fragments of granite
could not be dissolved by the flood of the oral tradition, but were,
perhaps, not seldom torn from their natural connection, floated
away from the original strata, and landed, like fragments of rock,
in places where they do not really belong." 2 However, a com
parative study of the four Gospels enables one to conjecture
with a large degree of probability the rightful places for many
" fragments " which St. Matthew has attached to the great Ser
mon. The " pattern prayer," for example, was probably taught,
as St. Luke says,3 in response to a definite request after the
disciples had seen the Master Himself praying. Singularly
enough, St. Matthew repeats the saying about divorce 4 at a
later stage, and represents it as Christ's answer to the Pharisees
who came to tempt Him,5 while the logia about salt and light,
about reconciliation with an adversary, the two masters, the
ravens and lilies, and the petitions for a loaf, fish and egg, are
'Luke vi. 12-20. 3 Luke xi. 1-4.
' Strauss, Life of Jesus, Eng. Ed., p. 342. 4 Matt. v. 31, 32.
0 Matt. xix. 3-9. Cf . Luke xvi. 18.
148 The School of Jesus
all given in different connections in St. Luke's gospel; — such
interpolations in St. Matthew do not obliterate the marks of a
progressive movement in the Speaker's thought; and in spite of
the heterogeneous elements imbedded in it, there is little doubt
that St. Matthew's record embodies the trustworthy tradition of
a real discourse once spoken by Jesus.
3. After a night of prayer and the formation of the Twelve
into a new apostolate, Jesus in the early morning descended
the mountain-side till He came to a level place ; and here, await
ing Him or coming to find Him, He met a Galilean multitude,
who were attracted by His rumoured Messiahship and fascinated
by His miracles. The greater number would not be unkindly
disposed, but there were probably present also certain Pharisees
and Scribes, who had discovered an incipient hostility toward
Jesus. The identification of the mountain with Hattin, at the
northwest of the Lake, is a matter of interest, but certainly not of
vital importance. The design of Jesus was to teach His disciples
the true Way of life. St. Luke specifically states x that " He
lifted up His eyes on His disciples and said, Blessed are ye poor,"
etc. While St. Matthew places on record that " the multitudes "
listened, yet the primary purpose of the discourse was the in
struction of the Twelve. It could not have been a merely fortu
itous congregation ; the multitudes may have dimly felt the ap
proach of a crisis, and while they could not have anticipated the
character of the Discourse He would deliver, they had probably
come on purpose to hear some authoritative and definite state
ment about the Kingdom. But while we would not describe the
Sermon on the Mount as esoteric, it is necessary to remember that
Jesus had in view not so much the needs of the mixed multitude
as the special requirements of the disciples He had chosen. Al
though He lifted up the ideal beatific life in language exquisitely
clear and simple, yet only those minds attuned to sympathy with
Jesus could possibly enter into the significance of His doctrine.
The veil of popular Messianism rested upon the hearts of the
multitudes so that they could not understand the spirituality of
this Christ. Unless we apprehend the true nature of this Dis
course and the occasion of its deliverance, we shall be tempted to
explain away the stupendous moral demands of Jesus and to
weaken the force of His logia by attributing the rigorous dis-
' Luke vi. 20.
The Ideal Life of the Kingdom 149
cipline inculcated to the extravagance inherent in all popular
oratory. The teaching of this ordination charge was specially
designed for the enlightenment of the Twelve; henceforth Jesus
gave His attention to their instruction, that they might be edu
cated in the mysteries of the Kingdom of God.
4. The Sermon on the Mount has been described as " the
installation of the true people of God on earth by the proclama
tion of the only righteousness conformable to the holy nature of
God, which should characterize the true members of His King
dom in opposition to the formal righteousness inculcated by
the traditional teachings of the example of the doctors." The
Beatitudes not only form the prologue; they sum up the Teach
er's thesis — the blessed life of the citizen of the Kingdom of
Heaven.1 There follows from this felicitous introduction a clear
enunciation of the disciple's function in the world ; 2 and a clear
definition of the relation of the new Reign to the Old Covenant 3
treating the external commands of the Decalogue in antithesis to
the inner motives and life of the disciple.* The next sayings
relate to almsgiving or practical righteousness,5 to the true
nature of prayer,6 to fasting7 and to trust in God,8 all of which
are to be regulated by the principle of making the supreme aim to
be the realization of God's Reign. Rash judgement of one's
fellow-men is forbidden ; " and God's paternal relation to us is
made not only a motive of prayer, but also a basis for loving
reciprocity between men.10 And the whole discourse is concluded
by solemn exhortations and warnings which are gathered up in
a striking parabolic epilogue.11 Beneath all the supposed gaps
and irrelevancies one can trace a real unity of thought in suc
cessive stages of development. Instead of looking upon the
abrupt transitions as proofs of free editorial compilation, we may
adapt Browning's defence of his poetry : " I know that I don't
make out my conception by my language; all poetry being a
putting the infinite within the finite. You would have me paint
it all plain out, which can't be; but of various artifices I try to
make shift with touches and bits of outline which succeed if they
' Matt. v. 1-12 ; Luke vi. 20-26. * Matt. vi. 5-8.
'Mart. v. 13-16. 'Matt. vi. 16-18.
"Matt. v. 17-20. "Matt. vi. 19-34.
4 Matt. v. 21-48 ; Luke vi. 27-36. ' Matt. vii. 1-5.
'Matt. vi. 1-4. 10 Matt. vii. 1-12; Luke vi. 31, 37-42.
" Matt. vii. 13-27; Luke vi. 43-49.
150 The School of Jesus
bear the conception from me to you. You ought, I think, to
keep pace with the thought, tripping from ledge to ledge of my
' glaciers,' as you call them ; not stand poking your alpenstock
into the holes, and demonstrating that no foot could have stood
there." 1 The records, although fragmentary, abridged and vari
ant, will not permit us to indulge in the illusion that the Sermon is
merely a mosaic of logia compiled without relation to the natural
and living body of Christ's teaching. It is not a mosaic, but a
cathedral built by the Master-mind of Jesus; the Beatitudes
constitute a richly ornamented porchway and entrance into the
sanctuary of Truth; all down the aisles there are chapels and
shrines, where retreat for prayer and meditation may be secured.
Looking at this structure from an external point of view, it seems
to reach up into the highest sky of religious poetry; but the es
sential design is not apprehended until we grope down the steps
to the cloisters where the air strikes cold and damp, and where
in .reflection the mind perceives that the whole building is
erected on the plan of the Cross. Here, at the very foundations
of all Christ's teaching, we escape the arid disputes of false
learning, and our minds become impregnated with the Master's
Spirit of sacrificial love.
5. In their treatment of Christ's teaching, scholars have often
imitated those soldiers who divided His seamless garment, and,
choosing those parts which fall in with their preconceptions, they
have alternately set Him forth either as a sage or as a prophet.
The enthusiasm of the one appears to them incompatible with
the calm, deep, comprehensive thought of the other. Probably
renewed examination of the whole body of the teaching of Jesus
will disclose a deeper unity than is sometimes suspected, in which
the unlike elements are comprehended. The Preacher of the
Sermon on the Mount is one with the Seer who poured out his
soul in the great Apocalypse; and as we meditate upon the pro
found and beautiful sayings of the former, we shall discern lines
of convergence upon the person of the Speaker. Jesus is never
simply a philosopher: even in His most detached and axiomatic
truths we catch the accent of personal authority; He Himself is
the Truth. Since the fifth century b.c, Judaism had become al
most wholly legalistic in its method ; but externalism, whether
under the guise of Confucian propriety or of Jewish law, fails
1 Collingwood, Life of Ruskin, i. 199.
The Ideal Life of the Kingdom 151
to change man's heart. Jesus, seeing this, turned away from the
hard and narrow routine of Pharisaism and adopted the plan of
imparting new inspiration to men by lifting up the ideal. Jesus
thus characterized His own teaching as Spirit and Truth. We
emphasize this mark of Christ's teaching because if the Sermon
on the Mount were only a more detailed form of moral legislation,
it would keep us in bondage as minors, and would hang upon the
free spirit as a burden. Jesus did not merely formulate new
rules ; He laid down principles of life which require to be inter
preted and applied by the Divine Spirit within man.
6. One of the fashions of criticism has been the attempt to
discover parallels for the sayings of Jesus in the old Hebrew
Scriptures, or in the remains of Rabbinic writers, in Greek philos
ophy or Buddhist exhortation, which seem to some readers to
rob Jesus of all originality. And yet it in nowise detracts from
the freshness and beauty of the Beatitudes, or from the truth of
the Golden Rule, to trace their counterparts in other literatures
outside the Gospels. If the sayings of Jesus or of any other
possess vitality, naturalness and sincerity, the discovery of dupli
cates will not prevent us from attributing the quality of originality
to the speaker. The dewy freshness and translucence of the
Beatitudes remain unaffected by our remembrance of correspond
ing thoughts in the Hebrew Psalms. One of the problems of
modern criticism is whether St. Luke's version or St. Matthew's
should be considered the more authentic translation of the Ara
maic original. Should it happen that St. Luke's record comes
to be preferred still we shall ever owe a debt to the evangelist who
saves us from falling into an unbalanced literalism. While
Jesus may have uttered His Beatitudes in the shorter form of
St. Luke's Gospel, it is self-evident to our consciences that St.
Matthew has caught the inner meaning of the Master's teaching.
On the other hand, it is not forbidden us to suppose that Jesus
may have treated His Beatitudes as texts, and repeated them
in varying ways. The question as to the proper number of the
Beatitudes, whether four or eight, is not easily answered; those
sayings concerning the meek, the merciful, the pure and the
peace-makers may have been spoken at different times, although
St. Matthew followed his literary instinct in adding them to
the four recorded by St. Luke. Again, the antithetic " woes "
in the Third Gospel may be parts of the original sermon, or may
152 The School of Jesus
have been integrated with it in the process of oral transmission.
A parallel is sometimes drawn between the giving of the Mosaic
Law and the " installation " Discourse of Jesus ; but such a com
parison only emphasizes the contrast already referred to between
the Spirit of the old and the new. Jesus lifted up the ideal of
life in the Kingdom of God to inspire His disciples to heightened
aspiration and endeavour: He laid stress on love rather than
legalism; He wooed His pupils with persuasive ideals; He did
not* enact a new legislation.
7. This " ordination " Discourse was Christ's annunciation of
true happiness, secured by the practice of true righteousness.
The word translated ^andpioi (blessed) was probably the
Hebrew term ashre used in so many psalms, which the lexicons
define as " to go straight out," " to prosper," " to be rightly con
stituted." On the lips of Jesus it described the progressive and
happy condition of one whose chief end of life is to do God's
Will. Like Marcus Aurelius at a later time, Jesus transferred
the source of happiness from the external circumstances to the
inward life of man : hence, in the Reign of God, the most unblest
in outward lot may be the most blessed in spirit and reality.
Happiness follows as an effect from its cause, and belongs equally
to the present state and the future. This will be regarded as but
a pious fiction invented to keep up one's courage, if we resort
to the calculation of " compensations " : its truth depends wholly
upon one's attitude to God. The happy poor are those who in
adversity and want realize their dependence upon God, and
through their poverty acquire a new wealth of soul. Our ob
servation of life and reading of history show that God's most
faithful servants are not, as a rule, drawn from the affluent; too
often it is found that riches induce in their possessors a quasi-
independence which alienates the mind from God. Jesus, how
ever, here gives no command to reduce one's self to outward
poverty any more than He enjoins us to create mourning or
court persecution. But under the Sovereignty of God mourning —
i.e., all sadness and sorrows caused by bereavement, loss or
penitence — may be transmuted into beatitude, since by it the torn
heart is made sensitive to Divine consolations. The meek are
akin to the poor, God's lowly ones ; the Hebrew word ( D'lJX ) is
rendered either " poor " or " meek." Our English connotation of
the word " meekness " is often a soft, yielding temper with a
The Ideal Life of the Kingdom 153
tendency to weakness; but Christ's ideal of meekness was an
heroic character based on humble submission before God and self-
abnegation among men. In Jesus Himself we find the best type
of Biblical meekness : that equipoise of moral qualities which
results from a right standing before God. He was able to say:
" Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and
lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls." Among
the ancient Greeks and the English of modern times, the self-
assertive, active and heroic qualities have secured admiration,
while paradoxically Jesus attributes triumph and earth's inherit
ance to those who possess meekness. The true joy of possession
never accompanies pride, and victory belongs truly only to self-
sacrifice. 8. In the fourth Beatitude, we pass from the passive to the
more positive traits in the characters of those who belong to the
Kingdom of God; happiness is-ascribed to the man who cherishes
an earnest longing after righteousness. There is an affinity be
tween this saying of Jesus and the Pauline doctrine of justifica
tion by faith; the Apostle translated the ethic of Jesus into the
category of jurisprudence; the "faith" or "hunger" contains
in itself the germinant principle of all righteousness. The longing
for right — an appetite that refuses to remain unsatiated, the
resolute pursuit of righteousness in all life's manifold relation
ships — will be rewarded with repletion. In the character of God
the Father the correlate of righteousness is mercy, and both these
qualities must be reproduced in the subject child of the Divine
Reign. When Jesus said, " Blessed are the merciful, for they
shall obtain mercy," He made the receptivity of God's grace to be
conditional upon man's active exercise of a Godlike temper.
A callous indifference to suffering was the mark of paganism,
even at its highest. Aristotle took but little account of pity in
his catalogue of the springs of human action: such an emotion
was treated as a disturbing factor in the sunny, strong serenity of
the Greek temper; but Jesus, by His word and example, intro
duced a new tide of compassion, which has proved one of the
mightiest forces in all subsequent progress. His altruism gave a
new sensitiveness to human conscience. " The public mind has
become so intolerant of the sight of misery or wrong of any kind
that, as the conditions of the life of the excluded masses of the
people are gradually brought under discussion and come into the
154 The School of Jesus
light, this feeling of intolerance slowly gathers force, until at last
it finds expression in that powerful body of opinion or sentiment
which has been behind all the great social and political reforms of
our time." J The next Beatitude is conjoined with purity of
heart — a state of mind essential to the perception of God. Such
purity is not merely the absence of moral stain : nor must it be
restricted to signify a prohibition of sensuality; it denotes sim
plicity — a singleness of aim issuing in undivided allegiance to the
rightful Master of the soul; it is no mere negation, but a holy
fire. The Beatific Vision is as much a natural consequence
as a supernatural reward : it is the consciousness of God's pres
ence which accompanies a participation in the Divine character.
The outward senses are duplicates of inward, spiritual faculties:
as soon as the cloud lifts above the sanctuary, the inner eye at
tains its direct and sure vision of the Divine. Plotinus formu
lated the condition of all such spiritual perception : " He must
become Godlike who desires to see God." In order to know Him
and to recognize His approaches to the soul, there must be moral
affinity and sympathy between Subject and Object.
9. Both active and passive states of the citizen of God's
Kingdom are described in the seventh and eighth Beatitudes:
such an one makes peace and patiently endures persecution and
calumny for righteousness' sake. Christ is the Prince of Peace;
His great work in our world has been to reconcile God and man.
Strife and discord are contrary to the Divine Reign, whether
they be exhibited in the Church or in the world's organizations
of society and nations. The Peace of God which passes under
standing is, however, no facile acquisition; it is something that
must be sought after and gained by moral effort: it is both the
gift of God's grace and the moral achievement of man. Yet even
he who makes peace carries a sword; he is often misunderstood,
and incurs the reproach of those whom he essays to bless. Still,
they who bear contumelies and persecution for righteousness'
sake have the blessing of knowing that they are diffusing God's
peace in the world.
10. No separate beatitude has been pronounced by Jesus upon
Love; but our surprise at this omission is removed by the re
flection that all the virtues blessed are but facets of the one dia-
1 Kidd, Social Evolution, chap vii., 190, 191.
The Ideal Life of the Kingdom 155
mond of Christlike love. These eight beatitudes describe the ideal
character of the new theocracy; they reveal the stature of the
manhood of Jesus — His experiences crystallized into these eight
words. His holy mind was distilled in perfect speech. There are
those who pronounce the ideal of Jesus incomplete; — it is too
other-worldly: it lacks those harder, sterner, more heroic quali
ties that have ever made the deepest impress upon civilization;
Jesus has given no beatitude to those civic and political virtues
which ought to characterize man's relations to the state, and
which set forth the ideal of public duty. According to such
critics the ideal of Jesus is too soft, too spiritual, and bears no
adjustment to the stern conditions of our modern world. We
shall seek to answer this criticism in the following pages; here
we may simply point out that the subjectivism is spiritual, the
individualism of Jesus is compatible with the true universalism
of humanity, and that the emphasis upon the inward state of man's
life is balanced by the unifying conception of God's Reign.
Other sages have deemed the blessed life as possible only for
a few — excluding slaves, paupers and victims of disease; but
Jesus declares that all alike may win true happiness by seeking
it not in external possessions, but within the soul itself, when
it becomes the subject and son of the Divine Sovereign and
Father. As though He would accentuate this inwardness of
beatitude, St. Luke records that Jesus pronounced antithetic
woes against wealth, satiety, laughter and worldly reputation.
Jesus condemned the very things that Aristotle had deemed neces
sary conditions of the blessed life, condemning them not arbitra
rily and without reason, but on the ground that they tend to
make man forget his absolute dependence upon God's bounty.
Such paradoxes can be understood only when man's life is viewed
in relationship to God: in the Kingdom of Heaven the Divine
strength is made perfect in our weakness. While the right use of
wealth and the diffusion of glad laughter might extend God's
Reign, these material conditions are also often made obstruc
tions to man's full recognition of God's Sovereignty and
Fatherhood.
CHAPTER III
THE ETHIC OF DISCIPLESHIP IN THE REIGN OF
GOD
i. Jesus cannot be said to have differentiated between ethics
and religion. In His teaching these two things are one, or at
least they run into each other with such fine nuances as defy
attempts at delimitation. The Sacred Books of the East prohibit
us from saying that morality and religion are theoretically in
separable; but in the Gospels, true religion expresses itself
always in the ethical life. In the Chinese Analects it is shown
that Confucius, after the manner of a modern Positivist, actually
began a divorce of this nature; the sage was more concerned
about morality than about the rites of religion, and he de
fined man's correct behaviour thus, " To give one's self ear
nestly to the duties due to man, and while respecting spiritual
beings, to keep aloof from them." Gautama, the Indian saint, ad
vanced still farther on this way; for, however pure and noble
the pessimistic ethic of Buddha may have been, it is no slander
to characterize it as fundamentally atheistic. Although God has
not at any time left Himself without witness, these great teachers
failed to attain the clear vision of Him ; and, since the contempo
rary religious beliefs were corrupt in their eyes, they sought to
base their ethical systems on the ground of existent social rela
tionships. In fine contrast with their method, Jesus frankly built
upon the lofty monotheism of His race. The " ordination "
Discourse, uttered after the designation of the Twelve to the
Apostolate, consisted in the clearest annunciation of the prin
ciples of life which must guide the subjects of God's Sovereignty.
The ethic inculcated by Jesus was differentiated from the sys
tems alluded to by its dependence upon man's acknowledged re
lationship to God, and likewise from both contemporary Judaism
and ancient Mosaism by the intense realization that this God
is man's Heavenly Father.
2. Before exploiting this fundamental and architectonic idea
of God's paternal relation with man, we may glance at a more
156
The Ethic of Discipleship 157
momentous question than that concerning the connection of ethics
and religion — viz. whether it is possible for us to accept the
ethic of Jesus as authoritative and final. Writers * of the school
of John Mill charge the teaching of Jesus with incomplete
ness; and, while offering respectful homage to the Galilean
Sage, they complain that His doctrine is too negative and too
remote from the issues of modern life to give adequate guid
ance. According to them, the ethic of Jesus lacks the note of
finality, because it fails to give due place to the duties of public
life and to communicate the definite direction we all long for
amid the labyrinths of the civilization which is vaguely mis
named " Christian." Such a criticism as this receives strong
support from the popular perception of the immense disparity
between the Sermon on the Mount and the actual code of morals
guiding the conduct of the average professing Christian in his
public and business life. If this criticism be valid, if Jesus can
not give us the authoritative and final Word of Life in all
emergencies, then let us acknowledge His limitations, and set
ourselves to discover a more adequate guide for our modern
world; but before acquiescing in these accusations, it is surely
wise to consider the exact nature of Christ's teaching, and also
to reflect what was possible in the circumstances of His mis
sion. The recollection of what we have repeatedly pointed out,
that the Sermon on the Mount was primarily designed for the
special instruction of the Twelve, will draw the sting from the
frequently uttered opinion that very few, if any, of those who call
themselves Christians actually try to live according to these
sublime logia. And next, it is easily discerned that Jesus could
not have spoken in any definite and satisfactory manner about
the Jews' relation to the state without seeming to encourage that
political and revolutionary Messianism which would have in
volved Him in the fatal vengeance of Rome within six months of
His beginning public work. Besides, had He spoken what was
a propos in that age, concerning the citizen's particular duties
to the state, His teaching would have been an anachronism in the
twentieth century. The one method of escaping the charge of
political incendiarism in that first century, on the one hand, and
1 Mill, Essay on Liberty, People's Ed. II., p. 29. " Christian morality
so-called has all the characteristics of a reaction; it is in great part a
protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive;
passive rather than active; innocence rather than nobleness; abstinence
from evil rather than energetic pursuit of the good."
158 The School of Jesus
of irrelevance to the needs of succeeding epochs on the other,
was that adopted by Jesus of lifting up an ideal rather than a new
code — of dealing with principles rather than with definite rules,
of speaking in the Eternal Spirit rather than to perishing flesh.
And renewed study of His teaching has ever served to elicit fresh
guidance for man, and also to demonstrate His Lordship over
every age. The further vindication of adequacy and authority
of Christ's ethics will be found in each succeeding step of this
study of His ministry. The marvel of Christ's plan, and the
execution of it which steadily grows upon the mind with increas
ing understanding, is the perfect wisdom He exhibited at every
stage. 3. The teaching of Jesus has many facets, and can never be
exhausted from one standpoint: hence, while the theme of the
Sermon on the Mount may be defined as the Blessed Life, or
the Perfect Righteousness, the unifying idea of this ethical dis
course may with equal truth be described as the Kingdom of
Heaven. But then the governing conception of that Divine Reign
in the mind of Christ was the Fatherhood of God. A few of the
sayings of Jesus, chosen almost at random, will demonstrate the
formative influence, the persistence and penetrative energy of
this thought : " Let your light so shine before men, that they may
see your good works and glorify your Father in Heaven." " Be
ye sons of your Heavenly Father, for He causes His sun to rise
on the good and on the evil, and His rain to fall on the righteous
and the unrighteous." " Be merciful even as your Father is
Merciful." x " Be ye therefore perfect even as your heavenly
Father is perfect." Alms must be given without ostentation as
before the Father in heaven. Prayer is to be made to God as
" thy Father " who hears and answers. Only a fool would ex
pect an answer, as Heinrich Heine said, unless there be the con
trolling idea of the Divine Fatherhood in the mind. According to
Jesus God is trustworthy, " for your Father knows what things
you need even before you ask Him." Such recurrence of the
Divine name in the Mountain Discourse cannot be attributed to
the accident of a meagre vocabulary ; it is the designed reiteration
of a Master Teacher, who desired to stamp this conception of
God upon the minds of His disciples forever; to be their inspira
tion — the motive of all goodness and the consolation of every sor-
'Luke vi. 36.
The Ethic of Discipleship 159
row. He would have them seize this fresh revelation experimen
tally, and deduce from it all legitimate inferences. This conscious
ness of the Fatherhood of God is like the circumambient and
universally diffused atmosphere in which alone the ideal of the
Blessed Life may be realized. And yet, according to the teach
ing of Jesus, approximation of character to the Divine likeness
is the essential condition of true knowledge of God : mere words
convey but little of such truths as these ; they are learned morally
and experimentally: only by living in correspondence with the
Father can the intellect come at length to master this spiritual
revelation. 4. The consciousness of the Divine Fatherhood was the neces
sary antithesis implicated in the filial Spirit of Jesus. It seems
not to have been gained by intellectual processes ; it was something
given in the very ground of His Humanity. Priority and pos
teriority belong equally to the eye and to the light; there could
be no light without the seeing eye that may be touched by the
undulations of ether, and, from the evolutionary standpoint, no
eye could have been developed without the outward stimuli falling
upon the sensitive pigment-spot. The inevitability of this logical
circle demonstrates the existence of some comprehensive potency
which originates and conditions all subjective and objective inter
actions such as these. In some such manner may we speak of the
filial consciousness of Jesus; in it is also given the reality of
Divine Paternity : neither of these terms can be postulated with
out the other. And these correlatives of Fatherhood and Sonship
constituted the root-conception of the entire ethic of Jesus; all
His teaching on moral and social relationships grew with the in
evitability of a biological law from these radical ideas. The
Reign of God, as He was known to Jesus, necessarily draws men
into a brotherhood ; it creates love by love, and thus brings about
the fulfilment of all law. For the culture of such a catholic
virtue aspiration and effort are demanded; and yet we know
love cannot be commanded: it must unfold spontaneously under
the radiance of Christ's conception of God. The idea of the
Divine Fatherhood is the sun of our inward sky, and, like the
Greenland sun, it never sinks below the horizon. Our socialist
reformers will yet learn that no efforts to make the sentiment of
brotherhood practical and regulative can possibly succeed apart
from a participation in Christ's consciousness of God. The ethic
160 The School of Jesus
of perfect reciprocity is paradoxical, and impossible for all who
live on the accepted plane of modern civilization with its end
less competitions and rivalries. The maxim of non-resistance
to evil, the injunction to turn the other cheek to the smiter, and
the bare suggestion of returning good for evil, are in contradic
tion to the instincts and common sense of men : hence, even
church-members hasten to empty all such rules of their positive
meaning. And yet the common opinion that Jesus lifted up an im
possible standard is one of the credentials which attest its
imperishability. Jesus took knowledge of that in man which
is like the penumbra of the Infinite, and gave a corresponding
extension to His religious ethic. Had His teachings been less
spiritual or less exalted, His sovereignty over conscience would
have come to an end — i.e. the mind would have been driven to
look for another King. The ideal Jesus gave was an exact replica
of His own inward life, and it abides as the world's exhaust
less inspiration to aspire after the perfect life.
5. The poignancy and burden of the problem which rests upon
the Christian conscience, however, is that the ethical ideal of
Jesus seems incompatible with the actual institutions and customs
of human society.1 Therefore, if we sit at the foot of the letter
and treat the Sermon on the Mount as a new code imposed upon
us by an external authority, we shall either be impelled toward
anarchy, or compelled to abandon the ethic of Jesus as irrelevant
to the actualities of our world. In one of his Irish dramas, Mr.
Yeats gives the result of a man's attempt to model his life on the
teaching of Jesus as a mania for tearing up and destroying every
thing. The doctrine of non-resistance leaves no margin for
militarism; the inculcation of unlimited forgiveness undermines
the whole of our judicial and forensic institutions. The answer
to this objection is twofold: the Sermon is an ideal and not a
code; it was addressed specially to men designated for the new
' E. G. Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. ii., p. 139. " A candid
examination wiil show that the Christian civilizations have been as in
ferior to the Pagan ones in civic and intellectual virtues as they have
been superior to them in the virtues of humanity and of chastity." The
same writer affirms that the new faith was greatly aided by a decline of
patriotism. " The relations of Christianity to the sentiment of patriotism
were from the first very unfortunate. While the Christians were, for ob
vious reasons, completely separated from the national spirit of Judaea, they
found themselves equally at variance with the lingering remnants of Ro
man" patriotism." Vol. ii., p. 140.
The Ethic of Discipleship 161
apostolate, and was not for miscellaneous application. Ad
mirably noble as the conduct, character and personal influence of
Count Tolstoy are, and persuasive though his literary style may
be, yet his -method of interpretation carries one back into an
unspiritual and servile state when a rule must be carried out
whether it be understood or not. Legislation must never be too
far advanced beyond popular feeling, or it will be silently de-
potentiated of authority by persistent disobedience; an ideal, on
the contrary, while it creates the sense of failure, helps to bring
out of man's travail a new birth to the moral will. The puz
zled disciple asks, " Lord, shall I forgive seven times ? " and the
answer is given, " Yea, till seven times seventy." " If I am smit
ten, am I to turn the other cheek? " " If one rob me of my coat,
ought I to reward his theft by a gift of yet another garment?"
Those who treat the Sermon on the Mount as an external legis
lative authority will be forced to answer these queries in the
affirmative. But if this " ordination " Discourse be a reflection
in imperfect speech of Christ's Ideal, we shall not be bound by
the outward letter as by an outward chain, but we shall be drawn
into approximations and conformities by its spirit. Jesus leaves
room for the exercise of reason and conscience; He speaks to
His disciples not as to slaves, but as to sons of the Heavenly
Father led by the Spirit of God. In this Divine Brotherhood of
the Kingdom each disciple must judge whether both the good of
an offender and of society may not demand correction. There are
instances where non-resistance, literally carried out, would aug
ment malignant evils: because of the fraternal bond the wicked
wishes of criminals and madmen must be resisted and those who
purpose evil must be restrained. Brotherhood esteems the good
of all, and if necessary will subjugate the individual ends to the
wider goal of the Kingdom.
6. But while the Sermon on the Mount transfers the emphasis
from the external rule to the inward principle, and makes the
motive love rather than law, it also throws an intense illumina
tion upon the inward life of man, and interrogates the secret
thoughts and emotions which are hidden from all save Omni
science. The world's lawmakers have been content to forbid out
ward acts of murder, adultery and theft ; but Jesus, although He
emancipates us from the bondage of the law, draws us under the
radiance of an ideal that lays bare the essential nature of sin,
162 The School of Jesus
showing that hate carries in itself the guilt of murder, and the
cherishing of a fleshly desire is the seed of adulterous acts. No
mere cult of external propriety could satisfy Jesus ; He set Him
self to purify our life at its springs. The very loftiness and
rigour of this Ideal testify to the infinite value of man's life
in the eyes of God. The invisible part of man's life receives
an accentuation in the teaching of Jesus, such as was requisite
to balance the tendency, of sects as wide asunder as Pharisee and
Confucian, to lay stress almost wholly upon the ceremonial aspects
of life and conduct. In the heart of man lies coiled that main
spring which gives power to all the intricate movements of life.
But this declaration by Jesus of the essential value of those hidden
sources of power and motive in the secret hearts of men gave no
sanction for minimizing the importance of external activities.
There is no unbalanced subjectivity in the ethic of Jesus. He
does not sever the root from the flower: in the flower, which
like a beautiful censer flings its incense on the breeze, Jesus
sees the virtue and meaning of the root-life, and He remembers
more constantly than most teachers that the beauty and perfume
of the bloom are drawn from the hidden root.
7. In this " ordination " Discourse, as in all parts of Jesus'
teaching, there is traceable the enthusiasm for humanity which
did so much to give shape to His Ministry. Neither the cloud
of flesh nor the alienating sin in man could hide from His eyes
the real, intrinsic value of the soul. Jesus speaks as though the
potentiality of Divine Sonship is in everyone : by voluntary sur
render to the sovereignty of God man is born from above and is
made a conscious subject of the Heavenly Kingdom. And Jesus
sums up the principle of community life in the Golden Rule:
" All then that you would have men do to you, do also to them
yourselves ; for this is the law and the prophets." Every man is
to be treated as a brother : " Why look at the splinter in thy
brother's eye, and mark not the beam in thine own eye ? " There
is the note of timelessness in such teaching ; it belongs equally to
every age; and when Kant, our great Copernicus of modern
thought, came to express the fundamental ethical principle of his
philosophy, he only gave a variant of Christ's great saying : " So
act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that
of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means
only." All the social wrongs, commercial evils, and frightful in-
The Ethic of Discipleship 163
equalities of our modern states will be remedied only through
the realization of this principle of reciprocity. In private life
and in public affairs, in domestic duties and in the large trans
actions of commerce, in the administration of civic justice and in
the fulfilment of international relations, Christ's principle of
brotherhood needs to be applied. Inherent in the Ideal of the
Kingdom of God is the thought of the " common good " unto which
all our egoisms and personal interests have to be subjugated. The
teaching of Jesus throws into bold relief and perfect equipoise
the two contrasting and yet complementary ideals of perfect per
sonality and a righteous society — the soul and the Kingdom: the
individualism inseparable from Christian ethics is bound up with
a thoroughgoing collectivism. It is an instance of reckless con
fusion to identify the Sermon on the Mount with modern schemes
of socialism ; but, in making this necessary distinction, it may not
be overlooked that Jesus gaye to the world the ultimate ideal
and goal of all social progress. But before we make attempts to
adopt the outward forms of Brotherhood in a universal republic
and in vast cooperative schemes of economic life, there must be
a larger realization of the Spirit of Jesus, and a fuller, in
ward and individual surrender to his authority. In view of
the great drift of modern thought and movements toward
modified forms of socialism, it is of utmost importance that
Christians should acknowledge the ultimacy and relevance of
the Ideals of Jesus concerning the individual and the Kingdom,
and also the fact that reconstructions of society must derive from
His perfect religion their motive and dynamic. Unless the lead
ers of social reform find in Jesus their ideal and inspiration, they
will only bring about costly and futile revolutions, and instead
of terminating economic tyrannies, industrial wars and con
ditions of slavery, they will but substitute one class of oppressors
for another.
8. But while we advocate the most extended application of
the principles of the Sermon on the Mount, it is well to emphasize
yet again that it was spoken primarily to the disciples ; and there
can be no question concerning the practicableness of the Ideal or
the applicability of the principles of this teaching among those
who acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus. As if He had modelled
His discourse upon the exhortations and comminations of Deu
teronomy, Jesus concluded His teaching on the Hill with an im-
164 The School of Jesus
pressive warning : there are two ways, the narrow and the broad,
leading to life and death, and men must choose where they will
walk. The Divine judgement of men will be determined, not by
their words, but by their deeds. The lives and destinies of those
who receive the words of Jesus as their chart, and of those who
deliberately reject them, are represented in the parable of the
two buildings that were tested by storm. The epilogue leaves
no hearer in doubt that Jesus enunciated His sublime ideal for
the guidance of all who desire to become His disciples. Precious,
indeed, have been these great " sayings " to the churches through
out the centuries, recalling men again and again from distorted
forms of ecclesiasticism and orthodoxy to the ethic of grace and
truth. 9. Our treatment of the Sermon on the Mount, though pro
fessing to be brief and fragmentary, must direct attention to the
vital relation of the Speaker to His words. We have shown the
theological basis of Christ's ethics, and now account must be
taken of the Teacher's personal integer. The Ideal we have
sought to understand is but the transcript of the pure and lofty
soul of Jesus Himself. In Him the Ideal had become the Real ;
knowledge and being in His experience were one; He knew
the Truth and lived it; His conscience was pure and His
vision clear. The intenser the light the darker will be the
shadows thrown by aught that obstructs it; since, then, the
radiant whiteness of Christ's Ideal casts no shadow of confession
of personal guilt, there must be attributed to Him a unique, moral
inerrancy. " When He had made purification of sins, [He] sat
down on the right hand of the majesty on high ; having become by
so much better than angels, as He hath inherited a more excellent
name than they." There is a partial truthfulness in the opinion
that men of all moral religions might adopt the ethics of Jesus
without abandoning their adherence to Buddhism or to Moham
medanism ; but this is not wholly correct. Many of the logia of
Jesus bear the stamp of universality ; they are self-authenticating :
thought has been precipitated in perfect speech, so that even in
repeated translation they retain some inimitable quality of genius
and an exquisite freshness. There are sayings which must have
survived all the disintegrating forces of time by reason of an
inherent imperishability — such, for example, as " Consider the
lilies of the field, how they grow! they toil not, neither do they
The Ethic of Discipleship 165
spin: yet, I tell you, even Solomon in all his grandeur was not
robed like one of these." And yet for the most part we trace
the motive for the transmission of the words of Jesus to the
attachment of His disciples for Him. Since the Master did
not write His discourses, they would gradually have passed
from men's memories, had not the soul-compelling faith in His
Person made men eager to record His words and acts. It was the
faith of St. Paul and St. John that gave an adequate motive for
recording the Sermon on the Mount. St. John, indeed, has given
no place for this discourse; and further, the addresses of Jesus
in the Fourth Gospel have been so tinctured with the Evangelist's
mind that they bear little resemblance to the crystalline sayings of
the Sermon on the Mount. And yet it is only when we adopt
the apostolic point of view of St. John, that Jesus Himself is
the Truth, that we begin to appreciate the full beauty and
cogency of this " ordination " Discourse.
io. The contrast is sometimes made between the Sermon on
the Mount and the orthodox creeds ; this signifies that the ethics
of the Gospel are preferred to doctrines of theology, that morals
count for more than faith. Such a dialectic, however, is due to
lack of lucidity. If our account of the Sermon on the Mount be
correct, there can be no real separation between faith in Jesus
and the following of His teaching. The creeds are historic sym
bols which resulted from the struggle of early Christians to hold
the totality and proportion of the Revelation of God in Jesus.
When we deal with ultimate values, we discover that persons
count more than thoughts ; the chief wealth of ideas lies in their
disclosure of the conceiving mind. The Truth of revelation is not
a system of abstract reasoning, but the relationship of actual
Persons: science is an attempt, more or less successful, to inter
pret the symbols by which the Creator communicates with His
creatures and His children. While the Sermon on the Mount
preserves the words of Jesus, the Lord Himself is the " Word " of
Supreme value. The true secret of the Mountain Discourse lies
not in the ethical altitude or literary beauty of detached sayings,
but in the Speaker's own Personality. The authority of the ethic
of Jesus is not that of abstract reasoning : it is personal ; through
out the Sermon, He places Himself in the midst of His teaching
asthe chief motive of the righteous life in the theocracy. Jesus
definitely claimed to speak as the Fulfiller of the Law and the
166 The School of Jesus
Prophets. The truths of the moral universe passed through
His life with self-convicting authority ; He realized them livingly.
Over against the authority of the Decalogue, Jesus uses the
antithesis, " But I say unto you." We observe that the Beatitude
of the Persecuted turns upon the sufferer's attitude to Jesus; if
he submits " for His sake," then shall he rejoice. This recalls the
Old Testament disclosure of God's motive for self -revelation and
redemption in Israel — " for mine own sake " ( 'JSJW ) -1 Behind
the phrase lies the living character; God could act no otherwise
since He is what He is. It was no accident that led Jesus to
use this very phrase to define the motive of discipleship in the
Kingdom. He declared Himself to be man's Final Judge:
" Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord . . . And then
I will profess unto them, I never knew you : depart from Me, ye
that work iniquity." 2 Behind the Sermon was the Teacher's
life; and, while His words contained much of highest moment,
the most determinative thing for the disciples lay in the impact
upon their minds of Christ's regal, authoritative Personality. In
a previous chapter, we found a ground of credibility for His
miracles in our impression of His Person : so now we reach the
position that His ethical teaching demands to be interpreted in
the light of His Person, and can only be applied through the
dynamic of an enthusiasm created in the soul by His personal
influence. His works and words alike are but the outshining of
the Truth and Grace that were embodied in His Spirit.
1 Isa. xliii. 25 ; Jer. xiv. 21 ; Ezek. xx. 9, 14, 22.
2 Matt. vii. 22, 23.
CHAPTER IV
THE TRAINING OF EVANGELISTS IN TWO
MISSIONS
I. The training and equipment of the Twelve constituted one
of the primary motives of our Lord's ministry. Beyond this
inner circle, which was destined to become the Apostolate, were
other adherents to whom the name " disciples " could be applied
only in a much looser way: they believed in some manner that
Jesus was the Christ sent of God to establish the Heavenly
Kingdom; and the Master sought to make even their faith
instrumental in propagating His Evangel. Outside of this com
pany of " believers " were the mixed multitudes from whom
fresh converts were drawn from time to time. At the beginning
of His public work, our Lord necessarily made His appeals to
the miscellaneous groups who gathered, wherever He went, to
see His miracles and listen to His interesting discourses. It
was during the initiatory evangelization of the multitudes that
Jesus planned and executed His synagogue visitation; and this
was followed by attempts to reach the people of ill-repute,1 the
irreligious and excommunicated, for which purpose Matthew
appears to have been chosen. As the weeks and months passed
by, the audiences that gathered wherever Jesus went were sifted
and divided; the professional classes passed into incipient hos
tility; crowds wavered and waited to follow the most profitable
course that might open ; but in every congregation there appeared
a circle of really attached friends, who sought every opportunity
of hearing Him whom they had come to regard as Messiah;
and at the heart of this little company of friends was a limited
number of earnest disciples from whom Jesus ultimately chose
His Twelve Apostles. The ordination of these men marked a
distinct change in the character of His ministry. He still felt
a great, tender pity for the people : " When He saw the multi
tudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they
were distressed and scattered as sheep having no shepherd."
'Dr. Bruce, With Open Face, p. 112.
167
168 The School of Jesus
Yet He could not fail to see that the itinerant evangelization of
Galilee had been attended by comparatively meagre results, and,
lamenting the impenitence of the people, He foretold the coming
destruction of their national life and their dispersion. To com
plete our mental picture of Jesus' ministry during this itineration,
we must conceive of Him as dependent upon the charity of
friends: — a band of faithful women, in particular, served Him
in regard to His temporal wants.1 At times Jesus gave utter
ance to His longing for labourers, and urged His hearers to pray
God to thrust out reapers into the harvest field.2 Hence it came
about that the Master withdrew Himself more and more from
the popular and indefinite role of the Preacher, in order that
He might become the Teacher of definite disciples. He would
take His apostolate of Twelve and a few other ardent adherents
into desert places, climb the mountains with them, or make
sudden excursions across the lake, so that they might have
opportunities of receiving the fuller instruction He had for
them. This narrowing of His sphere of work and concentra
tion upon the task of training His disciples afford an object
lesson to the Church. Society is like a great pyramid, broad
at the base, but, as we ascend the higher planes of life, it
becomes narrrower and yet more narrow; the intellectual and
ethically cultivated are comparatively few, and at the apex
is the Church, the most highly organized society of the spiritual
friends of Jesus. Those who stand at the highest point are
few in number; they exist, however, as mediators of the new
life for all: it is no weakness to be numerically small,
since, from that point of contact with Christ, currents of life
are communicated down through all the planes, and the
whole body of humanity is plenished from its moral and
spiritual apex. Jesus saw plainly that a small, elect, well-
instructed, profoundly attached company of disciples might
be launched as the apostolate of Universal Religion, and
might mediatorially accomplish the world-wide diffusion of the
Faith. 2. The discipline of the disciples was not exclusively a mat
ter of mental instruction; the knowledge Jesus imparted was of
that moral and spiritual order which can be mastered in action
' Luke viii. 1-3 ; ix. 7-9 ; Mark vi. 14, 16.
' Matt. ix. 35, 38 ; Luke x, 2,
The Training of Evangelists 169
only. Those men were not trained as thinkers; they were to
be agents of a Universal Evangelism ; they had to receive, under
stand and communicate a message from God, and they were also
to embody that message in a new fellowship. The aim of Jesus
was to stamp each one of them with His own mind, to project
His spirit into their souls, so that when He was withdrawn from
visible, fleshly association with men they might carry forward
the establishment of the Reign of God. There was no academic
remoteness in the methods of Jesus ; He knew that the best school
is that wherein men may practise what they learn. The Twelve
could never become apostles by merely listening; having learned
somewhat of Him, they must begin to teach. Jesus kept in view
not only the evangelization of the masses, but also the adequate
discipline of the evangelists. He was seeking to train these men
for the future, and at the same time to give to Galilee another
opportunity of acknowledging Him as the Messiah. It seems
natural to suppose that the Mission of the Twelve in Galilee
must have taken place toward the end of the Personal Ministry
of Jesus in that province, although Weiss imagines it to have
been before He visited the capital at the unnamed feast. Only
a tentative account can be given of the sequence of events ; still
it seems probable that the Mission of the Twelve took place
at the termination of Christ's third visit to Galilee, at the time
when the avowed hostility of Scribes and Pharisees and the
aroused interest of the dangerous Herod made it imperative
that Jesus should avoid a premature ending of His life. The
topical affinities of the subject of the Mission of the Twelve,
however, justify our anticipation of events and the displacement
of an outstanding incident such as the Lord's celebration of the
unnamed feast. We may imaginatively insert in this strenuous
ministry of miracles and preaching in Galilee, as occurring before
the 'Twelve were sent forth, the deliverance of the seaside Dis
course of the parables, the calming of the storm on the Lake,
the healing of the demoniac, the cure of the woman suffering
from an issue of blood, and the restoration of Jairus' daughter.1
The fresh remembrance of this remarkable ministry would give
the needed background for the Message of the Kingdom of God
which the Twelve were now commissioned to carry through
Galilee. 'Luke viii. 1-3; Mark iv. 1-34; Matt, xiii.; Mark iv. 35ft.; Luke viii.
22-39.
170 The School of Jesus
3. An important question must now be raised as to there
having been one mission or two; whether, besides the Twelve,
Jesus also sent forth the Seventy. St. Luke alone has preserved
an account of two distinct missions. The silence of the earlier
evangelists concerning the tour of the Seventy has prompted
the suggestion that " the good doctor " confused various reports
of one mission, and made mistaken inferences. The reasons for
such an error were, first, the different order of sequence in his
apostolic sources, and the extended record of logia in St. Mat
thew's Gospel x relating to the mission without any parallel or
duplicate in St. Mark. Some critics do not hesitate to attribute
the typical number of seventy to St. Luke's universalism, of
which that number is a symbol. But I confess it is most difficult
for a moderate judgement to acquiesce readily in the surmise
that St. Luke, whom Sir William Ramsay places among the
historians of first rank, should have indulged in fabulous inven
tions in the interests of his symbolism. Further, acquaintance
with the mission field prohibits one from treating as traditional
reduplications all resemblances in a narrative full of incident.
While we do not feel it incumbent upon us to explain all the
remarkable omissions from the Gospels, we may recall the frag
mentary character of these compilations, and at the same time
venture the conjecture that, since the Twelve were actively en
gaged in Galilee when Jesus sent the Seventy into Peraea and
Judaea, it is but natural that the two Gospels emanating most
directly from the Apostolic Circle should omit the account of a
second mission. Correspondence between the commission and
charges relating to these two notable enterprises may be due to
natural confusions; for we know St. Matthew never hesitated
to group the logia of Jesus according to their topical character
istics, though he knew they were spoken at different times; and
there is nothing improbable in the speculation that Jesus may
have repeated to the Seventy some of the instructions He had
given to the Twelve.
4. Surprise has been provoked by the restriction of the first
apostolic propagandism to Jewish territory; yet, upon reflection,
even in this may be discerned the sagacity of true statesmanship.
The first foundations of God's new Sovereignty must be laid in
that society which has been specially trained ; within this circum-
'Matt. x. 2-42; Mark vi. 7-13.
The Training of Evangelists 171
scribed area must be found the fulcrum whence a universal
lifting force should be exerted upon mankind. Had Jesus
straightway sent the Apostles into the highways of the Gentile
world, the diffusion of the effort would have slackened its in
tensity, and the result would have been nugatory. Under the
guiding Will of God, Israel had become the mediator of monothe
ism for the nations ; and Jesus now sought to organize a spiritual
Israel, by which He might ultimately win a world-wide com
munity. If we adopt St. Luke's narrative of the second mission
as historical, then Jesus must be represented as planning also
the evangelization of Samaria and of the people of the province
beyond the Jordan. But the appointment of the Seventy was
not made until the Feast of the Tabernacles; the commissioning
of these evangelists may have spread over many days, Jesus
sending some out one day, and another band of men later,
repeating His instructions to the several groups. That there
should have been seventy men capable and willing to engage
in such an enterprise, is not discordant with the facts recorded
in the other gospels. Many were called to be disciples besides
the Twelve; and while some refused the high vocation, there
were probably those ready to accept the call. We must avoid
the error of imaginatively transferring the fixed ecclesiastical
orders of later days to the ministry of Jesus ; besides the Twelve,
there were many who attached themselves to the little company
of disciples for a time : some adherents might find occasions for
following Jesus a few days at a time, and then return to their
regular avocations. That the Master found a band of loyal
supporters in His itinerations might be inferred from the fact
that there were a hundred and twenty who companied with the
Twelve, and so were accounted eligible for nomination to take
the office vacated by Judas at a later date.1 The names and
characters of the Seventy are not recorded; their temper and
feeling may be gauged, however, by the known tests that Jesus
addressed to other candidates for the discipleship. St. Matthew
and St. Luke record the Master's feeling of the urgent need of
labourers, and the figure of the harvest used by Him indicates
that He looked upon the populace as ready for the evangel of
God's Reign. While His own Personal Ministry in Galilee had
proved disappointing, He did not abandon His quest for suitable
disciples, but, wooing His followers with gracious words and
'Acts i. 15-26.
172 The School of Jesus
acts, He sent forth such as were worthy, that they might
cast the fire of a great love upon the earth.
5. These two missions constitute important stadia in the Life
of Jesus, although it is most difficult to supply the chronological
connection. We imagine that having sent out the Twelve two
and two, Jesus Himself left Galilee and passed southward toward
Jerusalem. To us it appears totally inconsistent with the under
lying purpose of such a mission to suppose, as Bishop Ellicott
did, that the Twelve returned from their mission " not more
than two days afterwards." The disciples must have carried on
their evangelism not for a few days merely, but for many weeks.
Holding to our conjecture that the Mission of the Twelve was
inaugurated at the end of Christ's third visit to Galilee after His
return from the unnamed feast, He being conscious of dangers
threatening His own Person, left Galilee and went to Jerusalem
for the Feast of the Tabernacles. From the capital and its
neighbourhood, Jesus sent out the Seventy to prepare His way
in the towns and villages of Peraea. He had promised the Twelve
that they " should not have gone through the cities of Israel till
the Son of Man be come " ; 1 this may be interpreted literally
as an agreement to come back to Galilee after a few weeks, or
it may be treated as an apocalyptic utterance to be fulfilled only
in a spiritual manner. Professor Briggs throws out the sug
gestion that Jesus did return to Galilee and met the various
evangelists at different places, and passing from group to group
encouraged them in their mission.2 Such traditional fragments
as have been preserved of Christ's Personal Ministry during
these weeks may be found imbedded in St. John's Jerusalem
narrative and in the " great interpolation " of St. Luke's gospel.
The very confusion of chronology may result in part from the
overlapping of events and the widening ramifications of this new
evangelism. It is surely a mistake to attribute the movements
of Jesus to accident or chance; the progress of His ministry,
from its start to the close, was marked by an intelligent, far-
reaching and preconceived plan. See how, at the mid-point of
His public career, emissaries of the Messiah's Kingdom were
contemporaneously proceeding throughout Galilee, Peraea and
Judaea! The land was covered with a network of evangelism;
while Jesus kept constantly in touch with the missioners, passing
'Matt. x. 23. 2New Light on the Life of Jesus, p. 35.
The Training of Evangelists 173
from city to city, maintaining their attachment to Himself and
heartening them in their toils. Probably most readers of the
Gospels underestimate the amount of work Jesus accomplished
in a few months ; the plan of it all is missed in the abridged and
broken records that have survived. But as it dawns upon us
what it meant to initiate so great an enterprise as the establish
ment of God's Kingdom — to encounter the serried prejudices,
unreasonable misconceptions and hostile conservatism, and yet
in spite of every obstruction, in eighteen months to fill the land
with messengers of a Spiritual Messianism — we become amazed
that even Jesus was able to accomplish so much in so short a
time. Men were not wholly unprepared: happily every age has
a " seed " or " remnant " who wait for a leader and are ready to
respond to a call for moral heroism; and though there be many
who slumber when the clear summons rings forth, still a few
will be found who catch the first gleam of light on the hill-tops,
and who will feel in their souls the leap of nobler aspiration at
the lifting up of the Ideal of Jesus.
6. Uncertainties concerning time, place and sequence of utter
ance ought not to divert attention from the central significance
of the directions Jesus gave alike to the Twelve and the Seventy.
The wonder is that any men should have felt prompted to follow
a life of altruistic hardship. The secret lay in the spell of love
by which Jesus had won their fealty. For His name's sake they
were to endure the hatred of men, and to esteem all ties of
flesh as subordinate to the bond of love between them and Him
self. Although these messengers of the Reign of God had their
own cherished ambitions and confused fancies of thrones and
crowns, still the chief motive in their mission was their attachment
to Jesus. He baffled their natural expectations of Messianic
rule and brusquely rebuked their materialism ; yet they persisted
in connecting Him with the prophetic hopes of their nation, and
at His bidding they took up poverty and trial as burdens to be
borne for Him. There were others who fain would have fol
lowed Him, but their courage was not equal to the rigorous
conditions of discipleship laid down by Jesus. The method of
the Master was not that of a new philosophy; His first aim
was not to promulgate a system of ideas; His religion was of
being and doing, and was not sicklied over with the pale hue
oi intellectualism : yet He so identified Himself with " the Truth,"
174 The School of Jesus
that He could without egoism call men in His own name, and
then launch them forth as ambassadors of the Reign of God.
He was the avatar of the Heavenly Ideal, and at His bidding
common men accepted the discipline and restraint of a spiritual
militarism; and not all at once, but gradually, they were trans
formed by Him into heroes of faith.
7. The ethical spirit pervading Christ's instructions to these
first Christian missionaries is identical with that with which
Gautama imbued his followers ; but in their message and equip
ment of power the disciples of Jesus are far removed from the
pessimism of Buddhism. How quaint the simplicity of these
men who were commissioned to announce the Kingdom of God!
They were to make no preparation for their journey — to take
nothing save a staff; or, as St. Luke says, not even a staff —
no bread, no wallet, no money, no other coat than the one they
were wearing, and only one pair of sandals. They were to be
characterized by absolute simplicity. Upon entering a city they
were to seek no luxurious abode, but only hospitality; and when
invited to a home, they were to salute their hosts with the simple
formula, " Peace be to this house ! " They were to act upon the
principle that the labourer is worthy of his hire, and they were
to rely upon the good-will of those who received their evangel.
The Life of Jesus was their pattern. But they were to cherish
no illusions : their message would act upon society as a fire and
a sword ; fierce opposition would be aroused, yet they were to be
as fearless as good soldiers in the fight, and as wise as serpents
and harmless as doves. The children of peace will welcome the
heralds of the Kingdom; but the sons of strife will tear them
as ravening wolves. Those evangelists had but a meagre equip
ment; they were without erudition and social influence; their
chief qualification was that they knew, believed in, and loved
the Lord Jesus. Dr. Sanday says, " They were not to attempt
to teach . . . but the announcement which they were to make
by word of mouth was limited to the one formula with which
both John and Jesus had begun : ' The Kingdom of Heaven is
at hand.' " x The declaration of this evangel, however, must
have necessarily provoked inquiries, and the message would ex
pand into a testimony of what things they had seen and heard
of Jesus. Even at this early date, there must have begun to
' Matt. x. 7.
The Training of Evangelists 175
flow a stream of tradition concerning Jesus which would mingle
with the memories of thousands of listeners. And so these two
missions created a crucial test of Israel's moral fitness to receive
the new Kingdom, and Jesus charged His disciples to shake the
dust of those cities that rejected them from their sandals as a
symbol of Divine disapproval : this was the action of no personal
pique or petty spleen, but a solemn protest against those who
made " the great refusal."
8. Having detached His disciples from all material aids and
external comforts, Jesus proceeded to invest . them with the
charismata of His spiritual Messianism, charging them to heal
the sick, cleanse the lepers and cast out demons. Although the
commission to raise the dead in St. Matthew is found in the best
codices, we think it must have been an early gloss, since it does
not seem likely that the Master would delegate such a stupendous
power to immature disciples. We understand but little of the
thaumaturgy of the New Testament; that it was morally con
ditioned and depended upon the exercise of faith is definitely
stated. It is widely felt today, however, that we live on the
bounds of a wonder-realm, which remains untraversed save by a
few lonely pilgrims. It is irrefutable that the first propaganda
of the Religion of Jesus was accompanied by preternatural phe
nomena and faith-healing, and the Lord Himself explicitly
affirmed that the exorcism of evil spirits was a sign that the
Kingdom had come nigh. St. Mark records that the Twelve
executed their commission, preaching that men should repent,
casting out devils and healing the diseased. While St. Matthew
accentuates the healing ministry of this evangelism, the emphasis
of Jesus fell upon preaching : " As ye go, preach." The dis
ciples thus passed from the school to the great laboratory of the
world. If it be that they but half-understood their own message,
still the recital of their beloved Master's teaching and example
would correct the materialism stirred by the watchword of the
theocracy. No record remains of the results achieved by the
itineration of the Twelve; but it is stated that the Seventy re
turned from their mission elated and excited at their success.
9. The study of this passage of evangelic history throws a
flood of light upon the early propagandism of Christianity; the
motive of these missionaries was enthusiasm for Jesus; because
176 The School of Jesus
of the impression He made upon them the most rigorous re
nunciation became easy, and endurance of hardship for His sake
was to them a source of joy. Their message implied a lofty
spiritual faith, and was destined to work out into the organization
of a new society. The movement was initiatory and experi
mental, for it lacked the full-orbed revelation of the Divine
Sacrifice of Jesus Christ. In our modern applications of Christ's
Charge to His Missionaries, we must discriminate between the
abiding Ideal of discipleship and the letter of the rule. Although
few will now advocate a literal imitation of the external life
of those evangelists, all will approve every reproduction of their
absolute sincerity and whole-hearted love. But a wrong is done
to the ordinary priests, clergy and ministers of modern churches
by identifying them with the apostles and disciples of that first
period, since, without grave qualifications, no one can reckon
the churches of Europe and America as identical with the simple
organization of that earliest society of the followers of Jesus.
Our churches have evolved from that protoplasmic period amid
influences and conditions only partially Christian,1 and no one
supposes that they are based unreservedly upon the ideals and
principles of the Sermon on the Mount and the instructions given
to the Twelve and the Seventy. Very few of the ministers of the
organized churches would make profession of complete renuncia
tion; for the most part, they cling to interests and ambitions
that are natural and legitimate. Still, within these same churches
there are a few who hear and obey the call to imitate their
Lord; and while they do not conform in every detail to these
missionary instructions, they strive to embody the ideal of self-
renunciation : they bear the Cross daily; their lives exhale the
aroma of complete consecration, and they are the salt of the
1 " When the Church was founded, there was no new world created, as
a stage for Christians to act upon. They were still to be men, each with
a different face and figure and character. . . . Life was with them to be
no poetical dream, but, in its main circumstances and conditions, exactly
as commonplace, as real, as long, as each of us finds it. Their Christian
principles were not to be like propositions of Euclid or legal formulae,
things to be thought of by themselves and paraded on certain occasions;
but they were to work in and under the everyday realities of life, high and
low ; to hide themselves in all feelings and actions, to possess and in
form character, to leaven insensibly whatever stirs and warms men's
hearts. They were not meant for a gala robe, but for a working-day
dress, and that for no fancy labour, but for the rough and dusty encoun
ters of this (outwardly) very matter-of-fact and unromantic world." R,
W. Church, Essays and Reviews, p. i20f.
The Training of Evangelists 177
earth and the light of the world. We have seen that the method
of Jesus consisted not only in preaching to the multitudes, but also
in calling a few disciples to heroic service, and imparting to
them the treasures of His teaching. Likewise, in this age of
contrasting luxury and need, and of social disintegrations and
reconstructions, the Lord's summons may come again to chosen
individuals to give up everything for His name's sake. For
those who receive no such call, the personal problem remains to
determine how, amid life's ordinary routine, one may inwardly
realize and outwardly exemplify the Spirit of Christ.
BOOK IV
THE BEGINNING OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN
JESUS AND THE HIERARCHY
CHAPTER I
THE EXAMINATION AND DEFENCE OF JESUS
i. In St. John's Gospel, the events and discourses of Jesus'
life are grouped around the great Jewish feasts which occasioned
several of the recorded visits made to the capital by Him and
His disciples. It is, however, difficult to introduce an order of
sequence and connection into the narrative of the Fourth Gos
pel ; for the guiding aim of the writer was to prove and illustrate
the sublime thesis of the new faith that Jesus was the Son and
Word of God; and, in executing this task, he grouped his
materials independently of chronology, so that it is uncertain
now whether he may not have referred to the same feasts in
the various parts of the Gospel. " Can we be sure," asks Dr.
Briggs, " that the three Passovers mentioned were all different
Passovers? Can we be sure that the narrative of St. John's
Gospel is chronological? Tatian did not think so, for he puts
the cleansing of the temple and the interview of Jesus with
Nicodemus at the last Passover. The Synoptists all place the
cleansing of the temple at the last Passover; and that is, for
many reasons, the most probable time of its occurrence. Jesus
would not have forced the issue between Himself and the San
hedrim, at the beginning of His Ministry in Jerusalem, when,
even according to John, He prudently postponed the crisis as
long as possible." x If there be such doubt about the Passover
mentioned, it will surprise no one to meet with endless uncer
tainty concerning the undefined feast of chapter five. It has
been agreed severally that this festival must have been a Passover,
or the Pentecost, or the Tabernacles: yet, further, it has been
identified with the Day of Atonement, also with the Feast of
Dedication, while several modern scholars believe it to have
been the Feast of Purim. Dr. Westcott 2 has found in the dis
course " a remarkable illustration in the thoughts of the Festival
of Trumpets." At this feast the miraculous giving of the Law
1 New Light on the Life of Jesus, p. 53.
2 John v. 1, 3, Additional Notes, p. 93.
181
182 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
with the sound of the trumpet was celebrated, and " on this day,
according to a very early Jewish tradition, God holds a judge
ment of men." Whether it was. Purim in the spring (March)
of the second year of Christ's Ministry, or in the autumn (Sep
tember) at the Feast of Trumpets, or one of the other Jewish
festivals, does not affect the clear evidence that the cure of the
impotent man at the Pool of Bethesda, and the defence of this
Sabbath miracle, constitute a great crucial moment in the Mes
sianic Epiphany of Jesus. It was the beginning of a struggle
— a struggle between Jesus and the hierarchy which did not
close till it culminated in the tragedy of the Cross.
2. The unsolicited miracle on the Sabbath-day at Bethesda
was an unmistakable challenge by Jesus of the pretensions of the
hard, superficial religiosity of orthodox Judaism. It is un
doubtedly a matter of surprise to us, that neither Josephus nor
any writer of New Testament times has mentioned the institution
of this Pool of Healing, with its preternatural associations; but
then readers have long since learned that the silence of certain
ancient authors cannot be treated as a disproof of positive state
ments found in others. The Fourth Gospel alone records this
miracle; but the fact that St. John supplies us with accounts of
so many trustworthy incidents does somewhat prepare the mind
to accept narratives of which he is the sole witness. Of miracles
generally, we have said that the impression of Jesus is so unique
that in the records of His works we find naught incompatible
with His character ; and in regard to this particular miracle, there
seems no vestige of fictitious invention. At Bethesda Jesus
appeared as the Friend of diseased humanity — as one commis
sioned by God to heal the bodies of men, and so make manifest,
even in the physical realm, the operation of God's Sovereignty.
But while the incident is full of attractiveness in that it gives a
disclosure of the native benignancy of Jesus, it has a value totally
different as throwing light upon His attitude toward the estab
lished religion. With great boldness He repudiates the external
formalism of Judaism, and boldly affirms by His action an in
dependence of ceremonial restraints. Jesus became the aggres
sor, and deliberately set at defiance the Sabbatarianism of the
age. There was no urgency in this man's case; a day's delay
would have mattered little to one who had suffered thirty and-
eight years, and Jesus might have promised to cure him after
The Examination and Defence of Jesus 183
sunset had the man solicited Him. But we cannot even proffer
the man's request as an apology; the simple fact is, that Jesus
was in the habit of doing these things on the Sabbath-day. It
appears as a part of a settled plan ; we cannot soften the aggres
sion by treating it as an accident, or undesigned breach of the
law, for Jesus was only repeating in Jerusalem what He had
deliberately done in other places. From the many-sided Min
istry of Jesus, it is easy to omit some important feature ; but any
such omission results in a misconstruing even of other features
which are acknowledged. Many there have been who delight
in the gentleness and humility that drew to His side the sinful
and sick who sought forgiveness and healing; but they seem to
forget that Jesus was strong as well as wise, daring as well as
compassionate, stern as truly as He was tender. He did not
shrink from making public protests against that hard spirit in
Judaism which menaced the noblest instincts of humanity. He
shunned all false compromises, and avoided mixing the wine
of His new teaching with the dogmatism of rabbinism. Some
teachers there are who, to make peace with well-known preju
dices, mix the new and the old; but Jesus refused to dilute His
doctrines by any infusion of accepted error; He would not
tincture the white light of His ethical teaching with the hues
of popular thought. The hardness and superficiality of legalism
were warping the better mind of Israel; the wells of humanity
were poisoned by an ostentation of religious ceremony and a
scrupulosity that encouraged hypocrisy. Because of these things,
Jesus chose the Sabbath-day for the miracle at Bethesda, and then
proceeded to accentuate His violation of the Law by command
ing the healed man to take up his pallet and carry it away.
The prophet Jeremiah had said,1 "Thus saith the Lord; take
heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the Sabbath-day, nor
bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem; neither carry forth a
burden out of your houses on the Sabbath-day." But when the
deep, true religion of Israel was in danger of being obliterated
by materialism; when piety was menaced by pedantry, and
humane feelings were trampled upon by traditionalists in their
worship of the letter, — then Jesus asserted authoritatively the
dignity and power of the Son of Man over outward rites and
temporary symbols. He might have told the healed man to wait
till the Sabbath was past before he carried away his mattress;
'Jer. xvii. 21, 22.
184 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
but the Lord Jesus deliberately set Himself to loosen the rigidity
of the Sabbath laws. He forced Himself upon the attention of
the Sanhedrim as a rival authority : hitherto the occasional oppo
sition He had encountered had come from the jealous provincial
rabbins; but henceforth He was to be subjected to the sleepless
espionage and dogged by the relentless hostility of the highest
religious authority of the capital city.
3. Jesus' visit to Jerusalem, during the unnamed feast, con
stituted a crisis in His Ministry; the conflict which had begun
in Galilee was now transferred to Jerusalem. At this period
the latent prejudice and dislike of Jewish officials crystallized
in definite hostility; and there emerged a policy of antagonism
which had for its goal the destruction of the Son of God. Such
opposition to One whom posterity has vindicated as the avatar
of moral goodness, and whom multitudes have worshipped as
divine, — an opposition pursued by men who were patriots, and
represented national religion, who were not satisfied till Jesus
was crucified, — seems at times almost inexplicable; so that an
intelligible account of its origin and growth is difficult to attain.
In treating of problems of Divine predestination and human free
will in relation to the Crucifixion of Jesus, the mind beats its
wings against the iron bars of the universe, and we come at
length to recognize limitations of thought which no finite intel
lect can overcome. And yet it ought to be possible to present a
rational account of the history of the conflict between the author
ities of Judaism and Jesus — to discover the motives, impulses
and plans of those who hounded Him to death, since these are
the phenomena of traceable history. The stories that Xenophon
and Plato tell concerning the trial and death of Socrates show
how conservative and narrow men, without being wicked, may
so fear the disintegrating influence of a great sage upon the
community that they come at last to look upon his death as need
ful for the continuance of the state. The official representatives
of Judaism were men of patriotic feeling, and observant of all
the strict rules of their religion; but they were constitutionally
unable to appreciate the free, broad humanity of Jesus, who
claimed to be the Christ. Narrow traditionalists as they were,
they could not help looking with suspicion and dislike upon the
originality and spontaneity of the Nazarene Teacher: then, too,
He was not only alien in temper and genius from themselves,
The Examination and Defence of Jesus 185
but He deliberately threatened to dissolve the institutions of their
nation and the privileges of the ruling class. " For this cause
did the Jews persecute Jesus, because He did these things on
the Sabbath." l
4. The narrative of the Bethesda miracle is too familiar to
be recapitulated; and its homiletic purport may be passed by.
We may pause, however, to remark upon the surprise every
reader feels that the healed man should have turned informer;
but instead of attributing this act to malignancy or cowardice, it
may be supposed that its latent motive and aim was to provide
the Healer with an opportunity of defending the seeming breach
of the Sabbath, and so to make allies even of the remonstrants
themselves. Passing from the incident to the discourse which
follows, we are all struck by the total contrast it affords to the
form of Christ's teaching in the Synoptic reports. The causes
of two such different styles of address may have been in part
the versatility of Jesus, also His discrimination of differences of
mental calibre and training in the popular audiences of Galilee
and the professional classes of Jerusalem; then, too, we need
not fear to acknowledge the idiosyncrasies and distinctive bias
of each of the evangelists. Although Xenophon gives a much
plainer, matter-of-fact account of Socrates than Plato, we find
substantial historicity and congruity in both writers. Whether
the present form of the Fourth Gospel be due to the revision
of the Johannine tradition by one versed in Alexandrian philoso
phy, or whether it be the peculiar style of St. John himself, the
conviction prevails among many that the accounts are substan
tially genuine, and that at points we touch imperishable frag
ments of the Master's speech — fragments which, boulder-like,
have refused to be disintegrated or dissolved in the molten mass
of the author's brooding thought. There is no fundamental,
convincing reason against the general Christian belief that this
profound, theosophical apologia may represent one of the poles
of Christ's thought, as the Sermon on the Mount may equally
represent another. " It is a different Christ that is here repre
sented, it is said. But this is a difficulty decisively set aside by
Christendom, which has always found it easy to form one con
sistent portrait from the four accounts." 2 He who, according
to the Synoptic Gospels, justified the exercise of a beneficent
' John v. 16. 2 Dods, The Bible, Its Origin and Nature, p. 187.
186 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
humanity on the Sabbath-day by recalling the incident of David's
eating the shew-bread, and by suggesting the analogy of pity's
instinctive impulse to lift a fallen animal out of a pit, to a
different audience might well have drawn a parallel between
the Heavenly Father's ceaseless activity during the Sabbath
which follows the ineffable days of creation and His own healing
ministry on earth.
5. The momentous significance we attach to the inquiry to
which Jesus was subjected at this time in Jerusalem, is derived
from the fact that it was the first authorized and authoritative
investigation into His conduct and claims. His inquisitors be
longed to the privileged Sanhedrim; they may have formed a
standing committee of the national council, and the occasion
may have assumed the character of a semi-formal process of
examination. It was no casual, incidental dialogue which sprang
up unforeseen and passed without consequences; the challenge
flung down by the act of Jesus was taken up by the hierarchy
officially, and followed by an ecclesiastical inquiry. Our feeling
of the probability that this view is correct is heightened by the
harmony and illumination such an hypothesis introduces into
the succeeding months of Christ's career. Until this crisis, it
had remained an open possibility that He might win the approval
and sanction of the central authority of Israel; for the San
hedrim had looked at first not unsympathetically upon John the
Baptist, and had even sent a deputation to ask if he were the
" Coming One." It could not be ignored that, although John
disclaimed all such pretensions for himself, he designated Jesus
as the Divinely commissioned man to establish the New Kingdom.
Those officials had observed the ministry of Jesus and had
slowly apprehended the fact that there was something in the
movement initiated that could never be grafted into Judaism;
they felt that Jesus had begun a spiritual revolution, and to
their astonishment He came even to Zion itself and compelled
widespread attention by His deliberate performance of this
miracle of healing on the Sabbath. The Sanhedrim could not
ignore such a challenge, and they exercised their political and
religious prerogatives to demand from Jesus some explanation.
In this fifth chapter of St. John, therefore, we may read the
defence or apologia offered by Jesus to the inquisitorial com
mittee of the Sanhedrim. The occasion constituted not only a
The Examination and Defence of Jesus 187
crisis in the development of the Ministry of Jesus, but a great
national opportunity in the providential history of Israel. Dr.
Westcott says,1 " Now the conflict begins which issues in the
Passion. Step by step faith and unbelief are called out in a
parallel development. The works and words of Christ become a
power for the revelation of men's thoughts. The main scene of
this saddest of all conceivable tragedies is Jerusalem. The crises
of its development are the national festivals. And the whole
controversy is gathered round three miracles."
6. The record of this examination is marked by the author's
peculiarities of thought and expression; the gyrations which
belong to his style tend to conceal the successive movements :
hence, one is apt to miss the unexpected turns of dialogue and
subtle transitions of thought, especially as the answers of Jesus
are preserved without the particular questions that evoked them.
But even in this inquiry, Jesus is the Master of His interrogators ;
He leads them where they would not willingly go, and transfers
their thought from the externals of ecclesiasticism to the realm
of faith and experimental truth. The theme is not capable of
facile and superficial discussion; Jesus moves in worlds unreal
ized by His hearers, and His words are pregnant with trans
cendent truths. The light of His self-disclosure prevents us
from accepting the judgement that He was simply a socialist,
born before the age was ready for Him. Such a representation
is no more true than that which turns Him into " the high-priest
of property and smug respectability." In our consideration of
the Sermon on the Mount and of the commission of the Twelve
and the Seventy, we discovered Christ's distrust of wealth and
His advocacy of a simple life for those who establish the King
dom of Heaven; but we must not treat half-truths as whole
ones, nor emphasize with unbalanced extravagance merely one
phase of His work to the exclusion of other parts. Our task
is to seek the inmost secret of His life, and through that to
comprehend His manifold ministry, although such a quest may
lead us into paths of thought oft discredited by those who are
content to know Jesus as a great revolutionist, anarchist or
agitator. In an investigation of His work conducted by the
authorized representatives of the national Jewish religion, Jesus
might justifiably lay bare the underlying postulates and ultimate
truths of His relation to God and the world.
'Dr. Westcott, John's Gospel, chap, v., Introductory Note.
188 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
7. The examiners of Jesus asked, first of all, by what author
ity He annulled the old Sabbatic laws and traditions. The pass
ing breach of Sabbath regulations may seem a trifling and flimsy
pretext for the malignant opposition henceforth shown towards
Jesus; but, as one reflects upon the integral and vital nature
of the Sabbatic institution in Judaism, it becomes clear that the
hieratic officials did not overestimate the gravity of the challenge
offered by the miracle at Bethesda. Jesus deliberately aimed a
blow at the elaborate and petty puerilities of an external religion
which had become oppressive to humanity, and which displaced
the first principles of true religion. He fought for the emanci
pation of the spirit of man from the thraldom of pedantic legal
ism. Just as, on the Mount, Jesus had set forth man's righteous
ness as the imitation of Divine philanthropy, so now, in reply to
His questioners, He claims that His own works are modelled
upon the ceaseless ministry of the Heavenly Father. But this
vindication of His miracle afforded another charge against Him
— viz. that He called God His Father, and so made Himself equal
with God. The horror of these Sanhedrists at what they con
sidered His blasphemy only led Jesus to reiterate His Divine
Sonship ; — not as common to all men, for with quiet dignity He
enumerates the prerogatives of God to raise the dead, to impart
life, and claims that like powers have been delegated to Himself.
Judgement of men — a function of the old theocratic Kingship —
has been committed to the Son, so that men should honour Him
as they do the Father. To refuse to honour the Son is to with
hold that tribute from God who sent Him. When the vastness
and solemnity of these Messianic pretensions led His hearers to
murmur their scepticism and disapproval, instead of abating His
high claims, Jesus reaffirms them with the pendant warning that
the alternatives of external life and a judgement of condemna
tion hinge upon men's acceptance or rejection of His Revelation.
8. The enunciation at this point of Christ's Ministry of a
doctrine of the Resurrection, has excited a suspicion that the
hand of a redactor has wrought upon the apostolic tradition,
hardening and materializing the words of Jesus into a narrow
dogma of " the last things." Critics of this school imagine that
the quickening of the dead referred originally to the moral and
spiritual impulse which Jesus was conscious of imparting; that
the figure of a resuscitation has been too literally interpreted by
The Examination and Defence of Jesus 189
minds at a lower plane of thought than that occupied by Jesus.
In all such questions as these, the judgement must be potently
influenced by culture, environment and mental bias. Experience
teaches us that it is as difficult to refute the dogmas of ultra-
spiritualism as those of materialism; in all such cases the appeal
is necessarily subjective. Those who approach these matters
with the assumption that Jesus differed in no essential way from
other human beings — that He was Divine only as all men are
Sons of God — are driven, by the inherent logic of their premises,
to exclude all actions and attributes that could not be exercised
by other good men. Not only the Jesus of St. John, but also
the picture of Him in the Synoptics, must be adjudged imaginary
and exaggerated beyond all credence by those who consciously
or unconsciously make their naturalistic prejudices the standards
of criticism. Our only answer to such criticism is that the Jesus
of the Gospels cannot be reduced to such dimensions as are de
manded by naturalism, until we entirely deny the trustworthi
ness of the only writings that supply the materials wherewith a
mental picture of Him can be formed. Over against this criticism
of antipathy must be set our belief that even in the Fourth
Gospel are found memories which could have come only from
some apostolic witness. There are sublime affirmations in this
narrative of His trial which reverberate in the moral reason as
truth alone can do. It did not, for example, lie within the com
pass of human invention, in the Primitive Church, to suggest
that Divine judgement was delegated to Jesus because He was
the Son of Man. Jesus derived His authority for judging men
from God Himself, and asserts that His aim in exercising this
Divine prerogative is to do the Will of God.
9. Those incredulous inquisitors interrupted Jesus with clam
orous demands for His credentials, and scornfully taunted Him
with testifying of Himself. At length, when the Babel of in
vective, doubt and menace subsided, the Master disclaimed all
desire that His words should be accepted without sufficient
testimony. He reminded them of their deputation to John—
that burning and shining lamp around which they had swarmed
like moths for a brief while, and that John had borne witness
of Him as One divinely designated for a great work in Israel.
Jesus next pointed to the works which He did— miracles of heal
ing and moral transformations: these were evidences that the
190 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
Heavenly Father had sent Him. As for Himself, the only testi
mony that is valid and cogent for His own heart is that which
God gives Him in His inmost consciousness. This last allusion
to evidence so intangible as that of an inner voice of the Spirit
excited their scorn, and they retorted that they had neither heard
the voice of God nor at any time had they seen His form.
This Sadducean jibe was treated by Jesus as the confession of
spiritual blindness and deafness, and this defect was due alone
to their refusal to have the Word of God dwelling in their minds.
Had they cherished a genuine love of truth, they would have
been morally prepared to accept Him as God's sent One. When
they professed to prefer the oracles of eternal life in the Scrip
tures to the dubious testimony of an unauthorized teacher, Jesus
replied that those very Scriptures bore witness concerning Him
self: He was the eternal Word; the historical revelation to
Israel led up to God's manifestation in His Son. "All this re
vealing history, with the varying experience of God's people
under His hand, and the various redemption institutions which
kept alive the knowledge of God already won; all that through
which God made His presence felt and His attitude known,
prepared for and culminated in the consummate revelation made
in Christ." x Finally, Jesus puts His examiners upon their trial
and diagnoses the fatal malady of their souls. Instead of being
animated by sincere love of God, they were seeking repute and
honour from men ; the perverting blinding mistake of their lives
was worldliness. Had He come in His own name, using the meth
ods of the world, they would have received Him ; but they had re
jected Him because He came in the name of His Father. It
was not necessary, however, for Jesus to accuse them of un
belief; for Moses himself, in whom they so ardently professed
to believe, was their accuser before God, since the whole trend of
revelation from the great Lawgiver onward had converged upon
Jesus. io. This examination of the conduct and claims of the Christ
drew forth His great apologia, which is charged with the ideal
ism and spirituality of the perfect Man. We can only testify
that such knowledge and certainty as Jesus manifested appear
to us as founded upon the direct abiding vision of His Spirit.
He possessed an interior and lively apprehension of the realities
' Dr. Dods, The Bible, Its Origin and Nature, p. 77.
The Examination and Defence of Jesus 191
of the Spirit: the words of Louis de Ponte recur to the mind
as we think of Jesus : " As the body has its five exterior senses
with which it perceives the visible and delectable things of this
life, and takes experience of them, so the Spirit, with its faculties
of understanding and will, has five interior acts proportionable
to these senses, . . . with which it perceives the invisible and
delectable things of Almighty God, and takes experience of them ;
from which springs the experimental knowledge of God, which
incomparably exceeds all the knowledge that proceeds of our
reasonings, as the sweetness of honey is much better known by
tasting a little of it than by using much reasoning to know it." J
Too often in man's life the material aspect of phenomena shuts
out the spiritual; but the earth and sky were translucent to
Jesus; He saw in the world the works of the Heavenly Father,
whose operations never cease; He contemplated God sustaining
the universe and quickening dead things into living forms. There
are others besides Jesus who catch glimpses of the ultimate ideal
ism of our world; but the sordid selfishness, the commonplace
traditions and the dusky impurity of our hearts, make an im
penetrable mask which hides the Divine Presence. Jesus, the
unique Son of God, lived ever in perfect, moral harmony and
filial intimacy with the Father, so that a constant ray from the
Spiritual Sun smote upon His inner vision. Beholding so clearly
the works and purposes of the Father Jesus joyously subordi
nated all His activities to the Divine Plan, and accounting Him
self God's executor in our history, He pursued a double mission —
to beget in men the higher life of the Spirit and to judge the
world. Jesus avowed that His authority and power were de
rivative, and that the successive steps of His Ministry were
determined by His intuitive knowledge of the Will of God.
The Life of Jesus in our world is a miniature copy of the Life
of God in the universe. He sought to emancipate men from
every bondage, whether of sin or of religious legalism, and to
establish in every life the autonomy of the Spirit.
n. Apart from all interpretations of this Johannine theosophy,
as some term it, the incident of this miracle and examination
of Jesus stands out in His Ministry as a crucial moment^-the
parting of ways. The future attitude of the hierarchy toward
Jesus is summed up by the - Evangelist as an intention to kill
* De Ponte, Meditations on the Mysteries of the Holy Faith, vol. i., p. 59.
192 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
Him. Henceforth, the conflict between Jesus as the Messiah of
the Spirit and the rulers of Judaism in their bondage to the
letter must go on until the Cross is reached. Jesus may have
won some secret friends in the Sanhedrim, but they were too
few to affect materially the course of the conflict. At a pre
liminary examination, the authorities could only warn Him against
the dangerous issues of His Ministry; but in their minds a
silent judgement was pronounced against Him with a determina
tion to bring about His death. The only way for Jesus to escape
such a doom was by compromise or by the surrender of His
Messianic pretensions; but neither alternative could He adopt.
History has taken up the judgement of the Sanhedrim upon Jesus,
and the hostility meted out to Him is the severest sentence of con
demnation ever passed upon itself. The censure passed upon
Jesus has gibbeted His inquisitors for all generations. " He
came unto His own, and His own received Him not."
CHAPTER II
THE EGOISM OF JESUS
I. The struggle with the hierarchy became pronounced and
definite in the middle part of Christ's Ministry, and at this point
our chronology is altogether tentative. From the unnamed feast
to the winter Festival of the Dedication affords a period of several
months; while a great part of the Gospel records may rightly
belong to this interval of time, yet all certainty of time-sequence
is lost to us. A general characteristic of our Lord's Ministry
during these months, however, was manifestly a growing emphasis
of egoistic claim ; and this fact supplies a test-principle by which
to judge the appositeness of many of the incidents, and to give
them a presumptive place in the ground-plan of the ministry
in St. Mark. The course of events in St. Luke's gospel, while
agreeing with St. Mark's order at the earlier and later stages,
is interrupted by the great interpolation 1 — a composite mass of
incidents collected by the author from eye-witnesses and fugitive
memoirs and related without chronological sequence. The sol
emn introduction of this interpolation has led many to suppose
that it covers the last three or four months only of our Lord's
life, and records slow progress towards Jerusalem ; 2 but careful
analysis suggests that it contains fragmentary accounts of at
least three separate journeys toward the capital.3 Even more
difficult still is the task of finding links and connections between
the material of the Fourth Gospel and the Synoptics, and it is
only by ignoring the theological scheme of St. John and trans
ferring parts of his record, according to inherent probabilities,
that his reminiscences can be fitted into the Marcan framework
at all. Our method of procedure may appear to some altogether
too subjective for reliance: however, we make no pretensions
to certitude, but are content to test its validity by the inherent
probability of the results.
'Luke ix. 51-xviii. 31. 2 Plummer, in loco., chap, ix., 5lff.
' a Wieseler, Chron. Syn., iv., Eng. Ed., pp. 289ft.
193
194 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
2. We have discovered no authoritative facts to aid us in
deciding the vexed question of the unnamed feast; it may have
been the Purim in the spring, or it may have been the time of
Pentecost, about June. In either case we should place the
miracle of feeding the five thousand in the following spring,
so that there was an interval of many months, giving adequate
time for the Galilean tour of the Twelve which Jesus so solemnly
commissioned them to execute.1 Professor Briggs,2 however, has
contributed the valuable suggestion that, having given this com
mission, Jesus journeyed southward, taking with Him the " Sons
of Thunder," James and John, who had friends at Jerusalem,
sending them back again to resume their evangelism after the
feast. If, as the same writer conjectures, there were frequent
visitations to Jesus by the various groups of disciples all through
the mission period, the Lord must have kept in touch with all
of them, affording the occasional encouragement and stimulus
they would need; and, further, such coming and going of the
several disciples would account for various streams of oral testi
mony relating to the ministry of this period, and for confusions,
overlappings and omissions in our surviving Gospels. We must
remind ourselves, too, that although topical interest led us to
connect the two missions in our discussion, yet it was probably
not until the Feast of Tabernacles in the autumn of the second
year that Jesus sent seventy evangelists into Peraea. At the close
of this later feast, the enmity of the hierarchy to Jesus became
so threatening that He left the temple and sought temporary
concealment — perhaps at Bethany.3 During the Feast of Taber
nacles Nicodemus was constrained, by his feeling of justice, to put
in a plea for a more temperate hearing of the claims of Jesus,
and thus drew upon himself a suspicion that he favoured the
Galilean pretender.4 Whether the secret interview which Nico
demus sought with Jesus by night be placed before or after this
incident, may be left to the reader's judgement; although it may
be pointed out that the effect of his intervention in the San
hedrim gave a reason for courting obscurity in any personal
dealings he might have with Jesus; and the character of our
Lord's words to the timid senator is singularly harmonious with
His egoistic tone and claims at the later period.
'Cf. Luke ix. 6; Mark vi. 30, 31. sCf. John viii. 59; Luke x. 38.
* New Light, pp. 44, 47. * John vii. 50.
The Egoism of Jesus 195
3. From the unnamed feast and miracle at Bethesda to the
memorable happenings at the Maccabean Feast of the Dedication,
there can be traced an intensified emphasis upon the spiritual
nature of the Kingdom on the one side and a growing boldness
of accentuation upon the centrality claimed for His own person
on the other. In a swift and brief review of many incidents,
we shall pass by important truths and inferences in order that
we may dwell upon the steps leading up to the climax of Christ's
self-disclosure, — tracing the deepening note of personal authority
claimed by Jesus, and the resultant struggle growing ever sterner,
until at last the blind man is formally excommunicated by the
Pharisees, because Jesus gave him his sight. While in Galilee,
Jesus had for the most part contented Himself with announcing
the Kingdom ; in Judaea He transferred the weight of His teach
ing to the setting forth of Himself as the King. The new the
ocracy was to be independent of earthly and temporal conditions :
it could bear no likeness to the reign of Herod or of Caesar; its
territory is in the soul, and man's citizenship in it possessed him
of everlasting life. Notwithstanding His high claims, Jesus had
to create a new conception of Kingship — of one who saves and
instructs His people. " And I cannot help thinking, Socrates,
that the form of the Divine Shepherd is even higher than that
of a King." x Jesus announced the elevation of the Son of Man
both at the Feast of Tabernacles and in speaking to Nicodemus ; *
" when He should be lifted up," men would recognize His author
ity. The late master of Balliol has written : " The ancient Stoics
spoke of a wise man, perfect in virtue, who was fancifully said
to be a king; but neither they nor Plato had arrived at the con
ception of a person who was also a law." But Jesus sought to
impress His Personality upon His disciples, so that He Himself
might be the inspiring and constraining power and law of their
lives. Not in support of any theological dogma or church would
we trace this phase of His Ministry, but simply that we may
perceive the force and character of the Person behind all the
creeds and institutions of the Church. ' Our examination of the
incidents and doctrines of this period may involve a certain
amount of repetition ; but there will be no redundancy if we are
helped to understand the central, authoritative place in the King
dom of God claimed by the Lowly Nazarene. The fact of this
1 Plato's Statesman, Jowett's trans., p. 275.
'John iii. 14; viii. 28,
196 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
royal pretension on the part of Jesus was fully recognized by the
late Sir J. R. Seeley : " As with Socrates argument is everything
and personal authority nothing, so with Christ personal authority
is all in all, and argument altogether unemployed. As Socrates
is never tired of depreciating himself and dissembling his own
superiority to those with whom he converses, so Christ perpetually
and constantly exalts Himself. As Socrates firmly denies what
all admit, and explains away what the oracle had announced — viz.
his own superior wisdom; so Christ steadfastly asserts what
many were not prepared to admit — viz. His own absolute superi
ority to all men, and His natural title to universal royalty." 1
4. Even the episode connected with His brothers' reproof,2
which Renan rightly characterized as " a small historical treasure,"
discloses to us the amazing egoism of Jesus. These " brethren of
the Lord " may have been real brothers, or half-brothers, or only
cousins, since in the East the term " brother " is used in the loosest
fashion; but we think it not improbable that these men were the
sons of Mary, and that they had been brought up in the home
of Jesus. The natural prejudices engendered by familiarity
caused them not merely to discredit His Messiahship, not only
to grudge Him the merit of superiority, but also to impugn His
sanity. Still, the miracles of Jesus had at last made an impression
on their gross understandings, and they come urging Him to go
up to the Feast of the Tabernacles, and there dazzle and win the
influential citizens by a display of His power. Who that has
read the life of Schiller has not smiled at the Duke of Wurtem-
berg's proposal to help the young poet to improve his literary
style? Yet such proffered patronage, however ludicrous, is not
to be compared with the vanity of those brothers of Jesus who
would have counselled Jesus that their own ambitions might be
realized ! In their little cave of family prejudice and pride, they
lived thinking the shadows to be real, while their great Brother
stood on the mount and swept far horizons with vision all un-
dimmed by local feelings and national expectations. On no
lines of earth-born ambition did Jesus move, but He followed
the directivity of the Holy Spirit in His own pure heart. Neither
the advice nor the implied reproach affected His designs: with
grave, subdued irony He answered that His time had not come;
but they, being what they were, incurred no hatred from the
1 Ecce Homo, p. 89. a John vii. 1-10.
The Egoism of Jesus 197
world, and so might go up to Jerusalem at any time. That
Jesus should have seemed to say that He was not going up to
the festival has caused no little perplexity ; 1 but, for ourselves, we
are sure that He practised no duplicity, and that is enough. The
recurrence of that allusion to His time * once again conveys the
impression that Jesus was conscious of the supernatural provi
dence regulating the course of His Ministry, so that He ever
moved along the way marked out with unwavering and un-
hasting tread. As we retrace His steps in history, we discover
the clear unfolding of a wondrous plan in which the graduated
assumption of Messianic authority and the processive unveiling
of His own Ego played a part as important as His verbal in
struction and His gracious works. Although He would not allow
His brothers in the flesh to push their private schemes of aggran
dizement through Him, He had really set His face toward Jerusa
lem, as there, He felt, it was fitting that He should declare
Himself once again; but He resolutely shunned uninstructed
enthusiasm and designed to travel with two or three friends,
" as it were in secret."
5. Travelling thus along the Samaritan route, Jesus sent
messengers to secure Him a place of rest at one of the villages
— perhaps Engannim, the Fountain of Gardens. At this season,
however, race prejudices were active, and seeing that Jesus was
going to Jerusalem, the Samaritan villages refused to receive
Him. It is evident that the disciples themselves attributed their
own notions of Messianic dignity to their Master, and, being
angry at the insult offered, they now urged Him to call down
fire from heaven to consume the inhospitable people. Whether
the answer recorded was really spoken by Jesus or not, it gives
an appropriate explication of His mind : " Ye know not what
manner of spirit ye are of; for the Son of Man came not to
destroy men's lives, but to save them."_ So far was such a con
ception of Christ's Ministry beyond the highest thoughts of the
disciples, that it appears most probable that He Himself enun
ciated the soteriological idea of His service to men. If this be
so, the transcendent egoism, which characterizes the middle stage
of the progress of Jesus, is conjoined with the widest humani
tarian altruism. The lifting up of Jesus was a means to one of
1 Commentators suggest that oik ought to be oma.
' 6 naipb; 6 k/i6g.
198 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
the divinest of ends — the reconciliation of man with God. And
it is not irrelevant to reflect that this incident discovers to
us also the mind of the disciples, that it can be easily conjectured
the type of wonder-works which they would have been prone
to suggest; also what the character of the Gospel records would
have been had they sprung from fictitious inventions of the
followers of Jesus.
6. The delay of Jesus to make an appearance at the beginning
of the feast had aroused disappointment and evoked discussions
concerning His claims and character. Some said, " He is a
good man," but others replied, " No, He is leading the multitudes
astray." At the time of this Feast of the Tabernacles, opinion
about Jesus was still in a state of transition; the hierarchy had
not yet sought openly to influence the pilgrims to assume hostility
toward Him. We may pause at this point to comment upon the
criticism of St. John's record of this visit, — that the author
or redactor has changed the historical Son of Man into a theo
logical ideal. Some do not hesitate to charge upon St. John's
gospel a distorted and unreliable account of Jesus, softening the
accusation by attributing the transformation in part to the lapse
of time between the occurrence of events and the writing of
them down. We feel the justice of Dr. Dods' reply to this:
" Too much may very easily be made of the distance in time
between the events and their record. A second generation is
sometimes spoken of as if it arrived all at once, and in a day
displaced and abolished the first generation, like changing guard
at a military post, or like the sudden displacement of day by night
in the tropics. But many persons who had seen Jesus in Jerusa
lem and Galilee must have survived till the end of the century;
many must have been of an age to check the romancing of the
evangelists, if such there was, by their own knowledge." x Great
as are the differences between the Synoptics and the Fourth Gos
pel, they need not be exaggerated; and, as a matter of fact, the
common intelligence of the reader has found no fatal incongruity
between the earlier and later portraits of Jesus. The glowing
heat of apostolic mysticism has not blurred the outlines of the
Son of Man; St. John's Incarnate Logos is one with the Jesus
of St. Mark. It is too often forgotten that the Synoptic Gospels
were written because men believed in the Pauline Christ, with
* Dods, The Bible, Its Origin and Nature, p. 183.
The Egoism of Jesus 199
whom the Johannine Lord is identical. The account given by
St. John, of the Divine Son's self-disclosure at the Feast of the
Tabernacles, affords an historic and rational basis for the sublime
Christology propagated within a few years of the Crucifixion.
If the claims and affirmations put into the mouth of Jesus at this
feast be substantially correct — and St. John's witness is rendered
the more probable in that these things are implied in the whole
presentation of Jesus in the other three gospels — then St. Paul's
doctrine of Christ is historically explicable and trustworthy as
articulating the self-consciousness of Jesus.
7. The arrival of Jesus aroused into dire activity the antago
nism of both priests and Pharisees. One feels that none but
a contemporary could have borne witness to an alliance so
pregnant with fateful issues as that which drew Sadducees and
Pharisees together. At first the Sanhedrim appointed officers
to arrest Jesus at some fitting opportunity, but His increasing
popularity made the men afraid. Nicodemus remonstrated with
the other counsellors : " Doth our law judge the man before it
hear Him and know what He doeth ? " The true nature of the
struggle which was in process between Jesus and the rulers was
uncomprehended by the common people, and some were shocked
when they heard Jesus charge His enemies with seeking His
death, attributing such suspicions to melancholia. Opinions were
divided, and momentous questions sprang to men's lips as they
listened to Jesus: "Who art Thou?" "Whence art Thou?"
"Whither goest Thou?" "Will He kill Himself?" There
were those who inclined to think that Jesus must be the herald
of Messiah's coming, and others queried if the Messiah Himself
could do greater miracles than those Jesus wrought. It was
the season of debate: men were agitated and tossed by doubts,
as the waves of the sea in a storm ; they could remain scornfully
indifferent no longer; they felt that the moment was nigh when
they would be compelled to take sides for or against Him. It
was essentially and necessarily a period when Jesus must give
full disclosure of His real claims. This change in men's attitude
to Him forced Jesus to adjust Himself to the new conditions,
and we observe in the record a displacement of the winsomeness
of His early manner by the consciousness of majestic authority.
He saw the inevitable issue of the hierarchy's hostility to Himself
and began to allude in a veiled way to His death. His teaching
200 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
at this juncture was no dead creed, no abstract reasoning about
existence; it was, rather, the unfolding of a life, of absolute
obedience to the Will of the Father : men morally unready could
not receive His Truth, but in minds prepared it wrought emanci
pation from sin. Jesus felt this need for moral preparation in
His hearers, and plainly told the leaders of Israel that they re
jected Him because fleshly habits and ambitions had perverted
their judgement.
8. The culmination of egoism was reached on the last great
day of the feast, when Jesus stood and cried, " If any man thirst,
let him come unto Me, and let him drink that believeth in Me:
as saith the Scriptures, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
water." A little later Jesus declared to His amazed hearers,
" I am the Light of the World." Allusions to the ceremonial
symbolism of the feast must not obscure the magnitude of these
metaphors. Jesus recognized that man's life is a pilgrimage,
sometimes through an inferno, sometimes up the steep mount of
cleansing; but He offers Himself as the satisfaction for soul-
thirst, and as the light of man's way. The mystery of His claims
was further deepened by the saying, " Before Abraham was,
I am." Egoism such as this would seem incredible if it were
not that all the implications of the Gospels authenticate these
claims. One " aerolite from the Johannine heaven " 1 is found
imbedded in the Synoptics : " All things have been delivered to
Me by My Father, and no one understands the Son but the
Father. Nor does anyone understand the Father but the Son,
and he to whom the Son may choose to reveal Him. Come unto
Me all ye who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest,"
etc. The metaphysical postulates lying behind these utterances
may elude our grasp, but we must not therefore let slip the
reality of this overflow of the consciousness of Jesus. He had
identified Himself so intimately with the eternal Truth of God,
that His own life had a royal and central meaning for the whole
Kingdom of God. His hearers interpreted the words of Jesus
as blasphemy, and took up stones to cast at Him ; they were thrust
upon the horns of this dilemma: either the Truth was in Him,
or He was guilty of blackest profanity. The Sanhedrists looked
upon Jesus as a blasphemer; the disciples accepted Him as the
Master of their lives. 1 Matt. xi. 27-30 ; Luke x. 22.
The Egoism of Jesus 201
9. Among the incidents which exerted but slight influence
upon the external development of Jesus' Ministry, and yet which
throw considerable light upon His personal claims, we may give
an eminent place to the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus.
Its connection with the Feast of Tabernacles may appear slender
or wholly arbitrary, but there is at least a topical interest and
link in the self-disclosure of Jesus at the feast as the Water of
Life and the Light of the World, and, in the secret night inter
view with the timid counsellor, as the Life-Giver. He taught
Nicodemus that only such as are born from above can enter
into the Kingdom of Heaven. The possibility of such second
birth for man rests upon the operation of the Divine Spirit,
which is perpetually breathing upon us like a holy wind. At
His touch, if only man wills to respond, the mind bursts through
its chrysalis sheath and becomes the percipient of a new heaven
and a new earth. Jesus claims to speak with the authority of
personal experience; His own vision was clarified and certified
at His baptism, and the heavens were opened to His soul. But
" if you have not believed earthly things relating to man's spirit-
birth, how will you believe Heavenly truths which can be medi
ated only by one who has looked upon God face to face ? " A
parallel utterance is found in the apocryphal scriptures : " And
hardly do we divine the things that are on earth, and the things
that are close at hand we find with labour; but the things that
are in heaven, whoever yet traced out ? " 1 Jesus, however, pre
sents Himself to Nicodemus as the Mediator of a new life with
new senses of the Spirit: by being lifted up, He will bring
quickening and knowledge to men just as the elevation of the
brazen Serpent mediated life and health to Israel. The Evan
gelist treats this saying as an allusion to the Cross, a possible
reference at the middle part of Jesus' Ministry; but Jesus may
have thought of His own inward uplifting into the sure conscious
ness of things of the Spirit, and of the boon He bestows upon
all who give Him preeminence in their lives. " Whosoever be
lieveth may in Him have eternal life."
10. This mysterious Egoism of Jesus is indissolubly associ
ated with His teaching concerning a new philanthropy realizable
in the Reign of God — an aspect of thought illustrated in the
answer of Jesus to another learned inquirer about the eternal
'Wisdom ix. 16.
202 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
life. In response to Jesus' interrogation concerning the law, the
questioner summed up the teaching of the Old Covenant in two
words — love to God and love to one's neighbour,1 and then said,
" Who is my neighbour ? " The story of the Good Samaritan is
Christ's answer, and in it He teaches that humanity counts more
than orthodoxy; that the eternal life is love, and belongs equally
to Samaritans and to Jews. Jesus overleapt all barriers of race,
and inculcated a love as deep and catholic as the nature of man
kind, thus restoring the true balance to the religious and ethical
life. Jesus taught that religion consists not only in pious exer
cises, but also in an ennobling service of others. Humanitarian-
ism, sometimes thought of as the discovery of modernism, formed
a vital part of the religious ideal of Jesus; but the motive and
impulse to the truest philanthropy will ever spring from attach
ment to the central Person of Christ Jesus. One of the perils
of Christian thought is that of losing wholeness of vision through
the need of emphasizing particular aspects. The renewed study
of the Gospels restores the balance to faith; the mind beholds
how in them the philosophy of the Logos is vitally bound up
with the historic life of the Son of Man, and contemplates in
Jesus Himself the perfect equipoise between the inner and outer
life of man : He is " the root and offspring of David, and the
bright, the morning star." The idealism of the Gospels is not
abstract, vague and uncertain; for in Jesus the ideal is realized
and embodied: the disciples did not pursue wandering marsh-
fires, nor gave they their lives to propagate an airy dream born
of speculative fancy; they were attached to the highest, concrete
moral reality of history — the one Perfect Personality of our
world. The Supreme Christ and Son of God of the Johannine
record is linked with the Son of Man in the midst of lowly
human surroundings portrayed by St. Luke; the Light of the
World shines in the narrow sphere of Jewish society.
n. The claim of Jesus to this central position and power
made at the Feast of Tabernacles appears incidentally in St.
Luke's account of what occurred in the house of Simon the
Pharisee. Since Jesus received none of the customary acts of
courtesy and welcome at Simon's house, the suggestion arises
that the invitation may have been part of the plan of Pharisaic
espionage to which Jesus was subjected at that time. The tale
'Deut. vi. 3; Lev. xix. 18.
The Egoism of Jesus 203
of the abandoned woman is full of exquisite tenderness, so that,
as Gregory said, one is more inclined to weep over it than to
preach about it. This passionate, erring woman must have heard
Jesus speaking at some earlier time, and now she purposed to
anoint Him with her precious unguent; but while standing be
hind Him, her heart was caught in a storm of conflicting emo
tions, and she could only bedew His travel-stained, unwashed
feet with the rain of her tears, kissing them fervently, as again
and again she sought to dry them with her loosened hair. Per
ceiving His host's censorious thoughts, Jesus related the parable
of the Pardoned Debtors ; then, by a sudden Socratic questioning,
elicited from Simon his own self-condemnation. The depth of
Jesus' emotion flowed forth in rhythmical speech as He con
trasted Simon's discourtesy with the profound reverence and
love shown by the woman. " Forgiven are her many sins, be
cause she loved much; but he to whom little is forgiven, loveth
little." Again there is implied the unique power of Jesus to
absolve human sin; and the story reveals that it seemed natural
to Himself to be made the object of an overwhelming love and
gratitude. And yet the companion story of a scene in the home
of Lazarus at Bethany shows that this transcendent, self-con
sciousness of Jesus was associated with extreme simplicity of
personal habit; for, when Martha was cumbered with household
duties and vexed with her sister's inaction, Jesus soothed her by
saying that one dish would have been enough: where He was
guest, hospitality need not be lavish if it be sincere.
12. There was something of climactic significance in the
self-revelation of- Jesus through His work and teaching at the
Dedication Feast about the time of the winter solstice. The night
approached when the Son of Man would cease to minister in
human ways; Jesus already began to feel straitened for His
baptism. As the disciples were entering the temple with Him,
they saw a blind man and inquired whether this affliction was
due to the fault of the parents or to some mysterious, prenatal
sin. " Neither," said Jesus ; " the man is destined to be an object
of Divine mercy; God's work is to annul evil." He offered no
theoretic solution of the problem of evil : faith in God's goodness
made it clear that suffering itself is part of the Providential
discipline of life. In defiance of all Jewish conventions on the
Sabbath-day Jesus took clay and anointed the eyes of the blind
204 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
man, sending him to wash in the waters of Siloam. This act
occasioned a renewal of the old controversy, as Jesus doubt
lessly intended; some witnesses argued that a man who violated
the Sabbath could not be from God, while others reasoned that
such signs as these could not spring from an evil heart. It
appears as if Jesus proposed to strike a decisive blow at Jewish
prejudices, knowing that the authorities had resolved to excom
municate all who confessed Him to be the Messiah. The healed
man expostulated with the official leaders of Judaism, who
angrily criticized both him and his Healer : it was strange, he said,
that they did not know Jesus, since if He were an impious and
disobedient man as they represented, God would not hear His
prayer and use Him to open blind eyes. This shrewd logic only
intensified the hostility to Jesus, and His opponents punished the
man by formal excommunication. By thus sentencing the ad
herents of Jesus to religious ostracism, they declared their an
tagonism to the Reign of God initiated by their Foe. Finding
this involuntary sufferer of His movement, the Master revealed
to him that He was the Son of God in the world, and then He
publicly announced that although rejected by the leaders He
was indeed the Shepherd of God's flock. The official repudiation
of His central claim only elicits a fresh revelation that He is the
Door, and that through Him the souls of men shall be led into
Divine pastures. The pastoral figure, consecrated in Israel by
prophet and psalmist, is taken up by Jesus; He claims to be the
Fair Shepherd, who lays down His life for His flock. Israel
of the Spirit would know His voice and follow Him, although
through Him the falsity of the leaders of the nation would be
disclosed. In Christ's white Presence men divide into two classes
— those who are for Him, and those who are against Him.
Sternly He declares that the priests are but hirelings, who flee
at the approach of danger, while the Pharisees who excom
municated the healed man were as wolves that tear God's flock.
Then the vision of Jesus broadens out beyond the Jewish race,
and He declares, " Other sheep have I which are not of this
fold: them also will I bring, and there shall be one flock and
one shepherd." While the three parables spoken at this feast
describe the Reign of God in the terms of pastoral life, the
central, and dominating figure in each is that of the Fair Shep
herd. The official leaders of Judaism plainly perceived this fact,
and threatened Him with stoning: as the builders of old re-
The Egoism of Jesus 205
jected the corner-stone of the temple, the Pharisees and priests
now repudiated the claims of Jesus.
13. The august claims of Jesus have been advanced here in
no partisan spirit, nor in the interests of any special theory
concerning His personality, but rather that we may hold in
synthetic imagination all the phases of the life of that Catholic
Man. Such sublime egoism as we perceive in the Gospels may
still prove a stone of stumbling and rock of offence ; but the fact
itself that Jesus actually made these transcendent claims must
neither be glossed over nor suppressed, in order that we may fit
His stature to any scheme of Naturalism. It is simply true that
Jesus — the lowly Man of Nazareth — made lofty pretensions to
the love, reverence and loyalty of men and women such as
Socrates, Gautama, Mohammed, and all the wisest of our teachers
would instinctively shrink from making. Jesus surpassed them
all in the magnitude of His self-consciousness. Some will attrib
ute this egoism to the growing fanaticism of Jesus; and yet,
what clear sanity shines out in His recorded sayings ! When
the woman said, " Blessed is the womb that bear Thee, and the
breasts which Thou hast sucked," He made answer, " Yea, rather
blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it." 1 Jesus
Himself was unaware of any incongruity between His own trans
cendent claims and His teaching of the supremacy of the Heav
enly Father. He never speaks as a rival of the Father, but as
the loyal Son. The reconciliation of these opposite poles of
His teaching can be found only in the acceptance of His media
torial office in our world. Jesus is the centre of human history,
and He claims so much from man in order that He may lead
the soul into the consciousness of the Divine Father. In the
Name of Jesus, men are to meet together, and in that same Name
make their appeals to God; and for His sake, the Father will
answer. Jesus speaks ever as one who knows that God has
given all things into His hands, and yet He lived ever as one who
held nothing for Himself. His emphasis upon His own Person
falls not upon the mere flesh and blood of His individuality, but
upon the life-force which was in Him and which was a ganglion
in the network of all spiritual relationships. The defects of all
dogmatic treatises that deal with Christ's Person are apparent
to all; and yet it must be admitted that the mind of the Church
'Luke xi. 27.
206 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
has seized upon the vital, essential note of the transcendence of
Jesus. Probably the mystery of His Person will abide, a dark
centre of light, until we have solved problems relating to our
own personalities; but while owning the sense of mystery, we
ought also to acknowledge all the facts belonging to the actual
history of Jesus. He is bound up with us all, and touches the
profoundest deeps of universal humanity; He seems to speak
and act as one possessing the common soul of One mighty
organism — man.
CHAPTER III
THE PER^AN VISION
i. During the Feast of the Dedication, Jesus enunciated the
cherished purpose of His mighty heart, and at the same time He
gave an explicit announcement of the catholic and reconciling
significance of His own Person : " Other sheep I have which are
not of this fold: them also I must lead and they shall hear My
voice; and there shall be one flock and one shepherd." From
the middle period of the Ministry of Jesus, one detects a deepen
ing of the tragic note; there comes into the record the stress of
a feeling that Jesus was conscious of a moral compulsion carry
ing Him in a direction adverse to popular wishes. Jerusalem be
came His goal; however often He might be repelled from the
capital, He was constrained to turn His face toward it again.
The main tradition of the Synoptics distributed the Ministry
of Jesus over Galilee and adjoining districts ; and, were it not for
a few hints 1 to the contrary, it might be inferred that Jesus
spent all His time in the northern province, and then came to
Jerusalem for the last week of His life. St. John, however —
and this is no small. part of the value of His Gospel — enables
us to correct this misapprehension, showing us that Jesus went
up to Jerusalem for the Feasts of Obligation, and perhaps for
minor festivals as well. It almost appears that even St. Luke
was led astray by this Marcan scheme of distributing the evan
gelic materials, and finding a series of fresh traditions outside
the common source recording parts of our Lord's Ministry at
Jerusalem or on journeys hither, imagined that they must all
belong to the last solemn progress towards the capital. Really
the great interpolation is a composite mass of historic frag
ments, whose chronology is uncertain, marked by obscure con
nections and abrupt transitions, and yet by a tour de force welded
into a seeming unity by the Synoptic notion that Jesus spent
all His time in Galilee and the northern parts, going to Jerusalem
only at the end of His Ministry. The emphasis upon the Gal
ilean ministry in the Petrine tradition is explicable on the ground
'Mark v. 1-20; vii. 31.
207
208 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
that the controversies of the Jewish capital would have little
interest for Christian communities outside Palestine. It must,
however, have been a joy to St. Luke, imbued as he was with
Pauline universalism, to discover a Peraean tradition of the
wider evangelism initiated by Jesus Himself, although the Evan
gelist knew but vaguely that Persea was a territory beyond
Jordan. In pursuit of His great pastoral plan, we learn that
Jesus first sent forth the Seventy with the evangel of the
Kingdom; then followed these heralds in person. Although re
mote from the capital as were the places visited, Jesus never
escaped from official espionage, but was followed by the sleepless
vigilance of hostile Pharisees. At times He was forced into
fierce polemic, and His voice grew hard and stern ; but the deep
ening shadows bear witness to the light which was obstructed,
and the severity of His rebukes throws into relief the revela
tion of a new grace and tenderness. It was the period when the
graduated self-disclosure of His .altruistic egoism drew near to
its climax.
2. Kingly authority was implicit in the action of Jesus in
sending forth the Twelve and the Seventy as ambassadors of
the Reign of God, and in charging them to reproduce the miracles
of His personal ministry. Such an extension of His appeal was
no undesigned, unforeseen contingency, but was a part of His
original project of evangelization covering both Peraea and
Samaria. As He was borne along toward the high-water mark
of popular responsiveness, the mind of Jesus was pervaded by
a sense of the fateful moment in the struggle against Satan's
power: a moral presentiment glowed within His consciousness
clear as a beacon fire. As he passed from village and town
along the route He had marked out, He was rejoined by small
groups of returning evangelists, who exulted in that their mis
sion exceeded all expectations. Even the demons had been
subject unto them, and poor victims of madness and hysteria
had been recovered through the power of Jesus' name. Such
results, however, had not surpassed the faith cherished by the
Master Himself, for in His own striking, imaginative phrase
He had seen Satan hurled like lightning from His throne and
falling ' as a star from heaven. Jesus was not alluding to some
'fl-eadVra: The action of the participle coincides in time with iBe&povt
(Luke x. 18).
The Persian Vision 209
premundane fall of the Arch-angel through pride, but was affirm
ing His exultant certitude of the ultimate conquest of the world
by Righteousness and Love. In His view a more potent cause of
joy than all the wonder-working was the fact of their per
sonal acceptance with God, and that their names were reg
istered in Heaven. St. Luke places, in this connection, the
unique burst of ecstasy which St. Matthew has juxtaposed with
the woes pronounced against the cities of Galilee : " In that very
hour He exulted in the Holy Spirit, and said, I acknowledge to
Thee, O Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, that Thou hast
concealed these things from the wise and prudent, and hast re
vealed them to babes." To Jesus it was a provocation of purest
happiness that God had chosen these " babes," unlearned and
simple men, in preference to intellectual and aristocratic leaders;
it signified the Divine rejection of caste and class distinctions.
Throughout His Ministry, Jesus repudiated the arrogant and ex
clusive claims of the schools; reason was God's gift, not alone
to priests and Pharisees, but also to peasants and fishermen. In
such a sense as this we may characterize our Lord " as the great
democrat " ; — in His eyes the person even of an unlearned and
landless hind was sacred, and ought never to be treated as a
thing, or as mere means to an end. While official and learned
classes looked upon His followers as mere babes, ignorant and
helpless in all important affairs, Jesus rejoiced that their mission
had been sealed by God; that, through faith in Himself, they
had been invested with mysterious gifts of the Spirit. The ideal
socialism of Jean- Jacques Rousseau can only be realized in the
Kingdom of God, which Jesus identified with the true Religion
of Humanity ; he sought " to find a form of society according
to which each one uniting with the whole shall yet obey himself
only and remain as free as before." Although Jesus thus asserted
the independence of His movement of human intellectualism, it
must not be imagined that He spurned the employment of
reason : " He offers every word He speaks to the judgement of
reason, and in every word assumes that reason is able to judge
of truth presented to it." 1 Jesus was no obscurantist, though
He rejoiced that the men who loved Him ingenuously were for
the most part unsophisticated and childlike, for sincerity is more
necessary even than learning in matters of moral judgement.
The battle He had entered upon could never be won save by
' Professor Gwatkin, The Knowledge of God, vol. i., p. 4.
210 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
spiritual might; it was not simply a conflict with Pharisees and
lawyers, but with the very spirit of evil enthroned in the world;
and yet such was Jesus' faith, the victory was virtually won;
Lucifer was already falling as lightning.
3. The complexities of the literary problem baffle all quests
for certitude, and it is only tentatively that we can distribute
the incidents and logia of this middle period. Increase of oppo
sition but elicited a fuller assertion of Christ's authority. While
attending the two last feasts, He had incurred such hostility
that leading men had vehemently denounced Him as being a
Samaritan, as being possessed with a devil, or as being mad ; and
this blasphemy is repeated as He heals a dumb demoniac.1 To
the charge that His feats of exorcism were inspired by Beelzebub,
Jesus simply affirmed that His miracles were wrought by " the
finger of God." As the conflict raged with growing intensity,
Jesus urged men to take sides; cowardice and neutrality were
rebuked by the Divine Power, so openly manifested in Him.
Even the evidence of His healing works was rejected by the
scribes and Pharisees ; but when they demanded some other kind
of sign from Heaven, Jesus declared that the Divine appointment
of His Ministry was clear to all whose inward vision was un-
darkened by prejudice and impenitence. Their enmity to Jesus
made them inhuman; instead of rejoicing in the man's new
found possession of speech and sanity of mind, they sought to
throw a dark distrust over the whole work of Jesus, and to
alienate from Him any who might feel the attraction of His
beneficence. Their error passed from the region of intellect;
it became a black perversion of their hearts. The very character
of this duel between Jesus and professionalism made neutrality
a crime; in such a struggle not to make a choice resulted in
alliance with His enemies.
4. The invitation of Jesus to breakfast with a Pharisee on the
Sabbath-day appears as an incident in the planned espionage to
which He was now systematically subjected. Jesus, however,
accepted it, and entering the house from the polluting contact
of the outside crowd, He sat down to meat without washing
His hands — a rite which tradition had made binding. The omis
sion was not due to forgetfulness, but was a deliberate protest
JMark iii. 19, 27; Matt. xii. 22-30; Luke xi. 14-17.
The Persean Vision 211
against a Pharisaic tendency to magnify trivialities at the ex
pense of humaneness. The astonishment of His host was too
apparent to pass without remark; but the severity of Jesus
in commenting upon it seems almost like a breach of good
manners. As though he realized this, the Evangelist tacitly
reminds his readers that Jesus was no ordinary guest, but that
He was "the Lord" (6 Kvpioi). The Master perceived that
the Reign of God in the hidden life was imperilled by the
formalism and pedantry of the schools. His address, there
fore, was not due to the rustic discourtesy of one ignorant of
social etiquette ; it was the defence of the essential rights and
moral principles of humanity by its Lord. When Jesus, by asso
ciation of ideas, went on to castigate the scribes, who not only
added to the burdens of men, but also exhibited the homicidal
temper of their fathers, who had slain the prophets, a lawyer
remonstrated at the fiery philippic against his class (nal
¦f]p.ds vflpzgsis ). It was not that Jesus resented their hostility
to Himself as an individual, but in His Person they opposed the
Kingdom of God and all the humanities. Such denunciations
reveal the vehemence and stress of the conflict; it had reached
a stage at which it could no longer be concealed by suave speeches.
The mind of Jesus was strong and tense with passionate purpose,
and the opposition which could not be masked reminded Him of
the fate of the prophets; He caught a glimpse of His own ad
vancing doom, and it kindled in Him an heroic temper which
shook itself free of all the proprieties of conventional life. His
words fanned the flame of hate against Him, and henceforth the
scribes and Pharisees lay wait for Him as men that sought to
entrap a wild beast (Bfjpsvffai).
5. Another incident illustrative of the struggle going on be
tween Jesus and the authorities has been saved by St. Luke ; ' it
occurred probably during the Peraean mission, while most of the
disciples were still at work in Galilee. Although both in Judaea
and Galilee Jesus was banned from attending the synagogues,
He was able to join in the weekly worship in the remoter regions
of Peraea. At one of these assemblies, Jesus one Sabbath-day
observed a woman bent and bound as if a malignant demon held
her enthralled ; calling her to Him, He laid His hands upon her,
and she was immediately recovered from the infirmity. The
' Luke xiii. 10-17.
212 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
ruler of the synagogue was one of those foolish men who, when
clothed in a little brief authority, forget the instincts of humanity:
he remained unaffected by the woman's exuberant gladness, and
went so far as to rebuke the people for coming to be healed on
the Sabbath. Such brutal lack of sensibility stirred Jesus to
indignant reproof; even an ox is watered on the holy day: what
fanaticism, then, to object to the restoring of one who had
suffered eighteen years ! Before this scathing exposure, His
adversaries cowered in silenced hate; but the common people
rejoiced " over all the glorious things that were being done by
Him." Upon yet another Sabbath the scene was dramatically re
iterated, with changes of the personce in the various parts, the
recipient of Christ's marvellous grace of healing being a man
suffering from dropsy. In this latter case there appears to have
gone on some intrigue and collusion to arrange a scene, so that
damaging evidence might be heaped up against Jesus.1
6. The deepening gloom of this conflict afforded the Evangel
ist a background for the new evangel of Divine Pity and For
giveness. If it were proved that the gracious parables of this
section of St. Luke's gospel really belong to an earlier Galilean
ministry, it would not detract from the historical value of this
artistic representation of the Light of the World. Jesus not only
anticipated the fall of Satan, in the vivid imagery of His
Peraean vision, but He revealed also that the secret of the triumph
of Right in our world is to be won by an evangel of redemption.
The central mission of the Son of Man, as defined by Himself,
was to seek and save the lost. This is the damning omission of
non-Christian philosophy; the teachers of the world wrote and
taught as though only refined and cultured minds could respond
to exalted sentiments and lofty doctrines of ethics: but Jesus
made a point of addressing His transcendental Gospel of love to
men who were stigmatized as " the lost." It is not surprising
that His enemies murmured the insinuation that His sympathy
with outcasts sprang from a root of evil in His own character.
But " with all their ingenuity of hate and malice, never once did
they dare to prefer against Him any moral charge, and insinua
tions such as that ' this man receiveth sinners and eateth with
them ' fell harmless upon Him." 2 Familiarity with this phase of
1 Luke xiv. 1-6.
8 P. Carnegie Simpson, The Fact of Christ, p. 29.
The Perjean Vision 213
Christ's teaching makes us dully acquiesce ; but when we see how
the missionary's appeal to " the lost " is an offence even today
to non-Christian civilizations, we begin again to recover the sense
of absolute originality in Jesus. The helots of society, the
worthless, the degraded, have not only missed the true way of
life, but they inflict a loss upon God Himself. The loser of the
foolish, helpless sheep, of the piece of silver, and of the prodigal,
in each instance represents God. But man viewed from God's
standpoint is reclaimable, and however society may safeguard
itself by stern conventions, the lost and the fallen may be re
covered and reinstated in the Kingdom of God. These parables
of Jesus are no futile pictures of vague sentimentalism ; rather
do they exhibit the set purpose of a Divine redemption; they
articulate the evangelic order of Divine Sovereignty. All is Love
and all is Law. The enunciation of this evangel in the speech
of Jesus and its embodiment in immortal acts, discovered to man
the might of God's Kingdom and of Satan's overthrow.
7. The progressive revelation of the real mission of Jesus was
accompanied by the graduated announcement of His authority.
He was conscious of being possessed by the Divine Spirit; and
not only did He speak with absolute certitude, but He even
identified Himself with the truth He taught. Such authority
might easily be misconstrued and misrepresented; and it is cred
ible that Herod, learning of the impression Jesus was creating,
may have spoken some menace: whether he did so or not, some
of the Pharisees pretended to warn Jesus that Herod designed
to kill Him. But Jesus was not to be intimidated either by
rumours of the crafty tetrarch, or by the overt hostility of those
who watched for His fall ; in a prophetic strain He announced His
own intention of working in Peraea " today and tomorrow " —
i.e. a short time longer : then He would return to Jerusalem to
receive a prophet's doom. The Ministry of Jesus proceeded
along predestined lines ; He was no unwilling victim, led unseeing
to the shambles; He foresaw the end, and could not be hurried
into panic. Slowly He was prepared as an instrument passing
through successive stages of refinement, " and the third day " said
Jesus, " I am perfected." He had no fear of " that fox " (Herod) ;
for He says, with blasting irony, John's death at Machaerus was
an exception — Jerusalem was murder's home. The Peraean vision
of Lucifer's lightning-like fall was not incompatible with the
214 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
fore-view of the final scenes of His Ministry. The self-conscious
ness of His authority was only one element in the preparation
of His complete humanity ; although He was aware of the dogging
presence of spies and enemies, never once was He betrayed into
an act which could be charged against Him as a moral fault.
8. The readiness of men to misconstrue His authority by
making it something political or legal, opened up alluring visions
to the throne of temporal power. Any lack of certitude on the
part of Jesus as to the real character of His authority would
have entrapped Him in stultifying errors; but the clear, un-
deviating assertion of an authority purely spiritual on the part of
Jesus comes out in His answer to a man who appealed to Him
to arbitrate in some dispute with a brother over some property.
" Man," said Jesus, " who made Me a judge, or divider over
you ? " The conflict between the Jews and Jesus was precipi
tated by His refusal to exercise the authority of a political
Messiah; they despised Him as a mere dreamer of ideals. The
authority of Jesus was understood by Himself to be the illumining
power of His Truth, the force of right over wrong, the influence
of Pity disclosed in Godlike humanity. He wielded the authority
of the Physician over the sick, of the Good Shepherd over wan
dering sheep, of the Saviour over the sinner. Jesus took up the
prophetic ideal of the Jews; purged it of the stains of racial
hate, freed it from the narrowness of nationalism, and made it
as wide as Humanity. And at every stage of the world's evangel
ization, His followers do well to avoid the misinterpretation of
His authority: Christian missions cannot be supported by gun
boats; nor should converts be protected by the missionary's as
sumption of temporal power. Jesus fought against the material
ism of His age, and announced that what counts with God is not
a formal or traditional piety, but the spring of true humanity
in the heart. The conflict was severe ; already Galilee had re
jected Him; Jerusalem had excommunicated Him; and now, in
Peraea, His enemies sought to urge Him into panic ; but He fore
saw that the struggle was predestined to end at Jerusalem, and
that His own tragic fate would secure the realization of His
vision of Satan falling from Heaven as lightning.
CHAPTER IV
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS
I. We shall venture to transpose the miracle of the raising of
Lazarus, withdrawing it from its place among the closing scenes,
and placing it in the middle period of Christ's Ministry. But, be
fore stating our reasons for such a contravention of popular
opinion, it appears needful to pass certain introductory remarks
upon the character of the miracle and its possibility; since, if
such a recall of a dead man to life actually occurred, it must be
looked upon as the supreme instance of Christ's marvellous
power. To recapitulate our previous " findings " in the study
of miracles, which are frankly acknowledged to be the burden
of faith today, we see that they fit in with the impression made
by the Personality of Jesus; in fact, they contribute toward the
forming of that impression of Jesus as man's Helper and Healer,
and afford us parables of His Ministry in the realm of spirit.
These miracles are answers to prayer, — the outflow and con
sequence of the uniting of the Soul of Jesus with the ultimate
Divine Power which produces the world of Nature. The ra
tionale of Christ's miracles lies, as Dr. Sanday says,1 " within the
bounds of personality, of character and of will ; " and " miracle is
not really a breach of the order of Nature ; it is only an apparent
breach of laws that we know in obedience to other and higher laws
that we do not know." It is most presumptuous dogmatism to
identify God's whole world-purpose with the laws or uniformities
of Nature known to us, and then deny the transcendent and con
trolling activity of His will. Impelled by the desire to include
everything in one symmetrical system of philosophy, Spinoza
adopted the course of identifying God with Nature and denying
all Divine transcendence, concluding that " a miracle, whether
contrary to or above Nature, is a sheer absurdity." And yet so
impressed was he with the stupendous grandeur of the account of
the raising of Lazarus, that he said if he could be assured of its
historical truth he would burn all his manuscripts. The philos
opher's instinct was correct; this miracle is supremely offensive
' The Life of Christ in Recent Research.
215
216 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
to rationalism. Jairus' daughter may be suspected to have fallen
into a trance, the son of the widow of Nain might have been the
victim of premature obsequies: but the representation of the
death of Lazarus leaves no room for the conjecture that he may
simply have swooned. With regard to the criticisms directed
against the historicity of this tale, it cannot be treated as a
variant report of the parable of Dives and Lazarus ; while, of the
critic who suggests that it is a free invention of the second cen
tury, we exclaim, " Ephraim is joined to idols. Let him alone! "
2. But if the raising of Lazarus be historical, how comes it
that the earlier evangelists make never the slightest allusion to
it? Our answer to this pertinent inquiry may be prefaced by
repeating once more the oft-forgotten reflection that the silence
of one ancient author must never be looked upon as a virtual
refutation of the positive statement of another writer. Even
when an omission yields the greatest surprise and is deemed
inexplicable, it can never be treated as adequate disproof. In
our sketch of the natural history of the Gospels we found reason
for believing that the main stream of evangelic tradition found
entrance into the early writings without material modification ; we
accept as probable the patristic belief that St. Mark owed his
account to the report of the Apostle Peter. That Simon Peter
should omit the story of this miracle, suggests that he was not
among the witnesses of it ; for had that impetuous leader of the
Disciple Circle been with Jesus in Peraea, surely he would have
forestalled Thomas' brave pessimism, and have been the one to
say, " Let us go with Him, though we die ! " Such absence is
explained if the Peraean ministry was concurrent in part with the
disciples' Galilean mission; although some of them had returned
to accompany their Lord, Simon Peter may have been still en
gaged in the mission in the north. It cannot be said that St.
Mark left this story out of the Gospel " because it did not fit in
with his doctrinal scheme," for it is in completest harmony with
the august and imperial figure of the Wonder-worker given by
the earliest evangelist. Dr. Westcott has sought to lessen the
adverse impression made by St. Mark's omission by suggesting
that " for us the incident, as an external fact, has naturally a
relative importance far greater than it had for the evangelists.
For them, as for the Jews, it was one of many signs J and not
'John xi. 47.
The Raising of Lazarus 217
essentially distinguished from them. The entry into Jerusalem
was the decisive event in which the issue of all Christ's earlier
works was summed up. This, therefore, the Synoptists record.
For St. John, however, the raising of Lazarus was, as the other
miracles, a "spiritual revelation. It fell in then with his plan,
so far as we can discern it, to relate it at length, while it did
not fall in with the common plan of the Synoptic Gospels, which
excluded all record of work at Jerusalem till the triumphal
entry." x
3. One of the frankest and most fair-minded of critics has
said that " the discrepancy between the Fourth Gospel and the
Synoptic narrative — i.e. St. Mark's gospel — comes to a head in the
story of the Raising of Lazarus." 2 After a cursory review of the
problem of the Fourth Gospel, this writer concludes that the work
is not history of matters of fact, but a Christian philosophy, cast
in an historical form. Such a generalization as this, wherever it
is accepted, makes all discussions of particular incidents utterly
valueless; and yet such a phase of criticism is more difficult to
meet than any definite attacks upon the historicity of the miracle
at Bethany, for it expresses an attitude of mind, a mood and
mental atmosphere, rather than an argument. Perhaps the best
antidote for this poisonous scepticism may be found in the warn
ing implied in a somewhat remarkable confession of a distin
guished scholar3 in The Expositor (April, 1908), who, coming
to the study of St. John's gospel, as he tells us, after two years'
exploration of Philo, the Talmud and The Apocrypha, began with
the axiom that St. John was not to be regarded as an historical
authority, and ended with the conviction that the axiom was
" condemned as an improbable fiction." " The more I learn of
pre-Christian and non-Christian Judaism, the more forcibly I was
convinced that his gospel was, in letter and in spirit, a true pic
ture of our Lord as He appeared to a disciple who was capable,
pro virili parte, of understanding Him." A strong presumption
for the historical value of this gospel arises as we proceed to com
pare it with the Synoptics ; for by it the earlier traditions may be
supplemented and corrected — so, at least, it appears to us; and,
moreover, St. John seems to give us the antecedents of many of
the Synoptic representations. After what we have said about the
1 In loco.
2 F. C. Burkitt, The Gospel History and Its Transmission, p. 221.
8 J. H. A. Hart, M.A.
218 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
relationship of St. Paul to the evangelists in the " Introduction," it
will bring no surprise that Professor Bacon finds a Pauline in
fluence in the Fourth Gospel ; 1 and yet it cannot be readily ad
mitted that the Apostle of the Gentiles is the creative genius of
this gospel, for its author- was too original and profound to be
dominated by any other than the Lord Christ. After all that
advanced criticism has achieved, " the beloved disciple " of the
Fourth Gospel may be as reasonably identified with the fisher
man of Galilee, as with an idealized figure of St. Paul. Although
Peter and John were described as " unlearned and ignorant," 2
such adjectives mark a caste distinction rather than an intellectual
state, and simply show that the two disciples were outside the
magic circle of the academic and professional classes. That St.
John was a fisherman in nowise determines that he must have
been uneducated ; St. Paul shows us that a tent-maker might be a
scholar in Jewish life, and the practice of a trade did not in those
times debar one from acquaintance with letters. But sometimes the
Fourth Gospel is described as " philosophical " and " spiritual " ;
and if these adjectives are not employed to diminish the degree
of historicity attached to the book, they are sometimes used to
set forth the author's remoteness of thought from the rudimentary
stages occupied by the Galilean fishermen as they are reflected in
the Gospel narratives. It has to be remembered, however, that
John was, in the School of Jesus, among the earliest of the dis
ciples ; that he received the Spirit of Christ, and that he was sub
jected to the stern, purifying discipline of exile in Patmos. For
these reasons, therefore, we refuse to accept the a priori assump
tion that the Fourth Gospel cannot be a narrative of facts, but
must be conceived of as an historical romance ; and we claim that
each incident must be studied independently and in all its rela
tionships as the possible account of an eye-witness.
4. Coming, then, to the narrative of the Raising of Lazarus,
we are face to face at once with the objection that the dialogue
between the sisters and Jesus is thoroughly Johannine in its mys
tical tone, and that it is impossible to separate the facts from the
philosophy. In a word, instead of supposing that this long dia
logue was accurately remembered so long after its occurrence,
it must be accepted as largely imaginative, although its invention
1 Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1907.
3 aypap/iarol nal Idiarat (Acts iv. 13).
The Raising of Lazarus 219
would be governed by the author's historical idea of Jesus. The
admission must be made ungrudgingly that our evangelist does
not write a colourless history, nor simply repeat, in the style of
Herodotus, whatever was told him; but everything in the store
house of his memory has been brooded over and steeped in the
haze of his characteristic thought of Christ. Over against this,
however, must be placed our recognition of the indelible im
pression which such a miracle must have made upon the mind of
a witness, and of the fact that the leading ideas of the dialogue
are congruous with the whole picture of the unique personality
of Jesus. While we are fully aware of the unconscious modifica
tions which affect things carried a long time in one's memory, and
of the inevitable tendency of one's reminiscences to become
blurred in their outlines as the years recede, still with equal
psychological truth it may be said that there come to men experi
ences that strike down so deeply into their nature that they can
never be radically changed in the memory, but the main features
stand out imperishably in the perspective of the years. A cer
tain corroboration of St. John's narrative arises from the fact
that his vivid portraiture of the different characters of the
family at Bethany corresponds with the representations of St.
Luke. The individuality of Martha is depicted with innate
truthfulness ; she is the practical woman, with mind alert, even in
the hour of bereavement, when Mary sits absorbed in brooding
grief. Verisimilitude shines out in the remonstrance of the timid
disciples at the thought of returning to Judaea, where Jesus had
been recently threatened with stoning, as also from the despond
ence and noble loyalty of Thomas. Unconscious touches of na
ture are scattered -undesignedly over the narrative; we seem to
overhear the sisters' oft-repeated regret that Jesus had not come
before : then, how convincing is the alarm of Martha at the sug
gestion of exposing the body of her brother after it had begun to
decay! There is also a simple dignity in the restraint of the
narrative, which is never once imperilled by over-emphasis or
exaggeration; here are no conjectures about the deceased, no
rhetoric about the sorrow, and no word about the welcome and
rapture the resurrection evoked. The Evangelist has left it to
the modern poet to ask, " Where wert thou, brother, those four
days?" He has anticipated no answer. If we reject the his
toricity of this narrative, we must postulate the existence of some
great unknown artist in the primitive Church, who could create
220 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
living characters in a book of fiction, write with balanced dignity
and unaffected pathos, and never once slide into exaggeration
nor indulge in fruitless fancies or speculations. Even the most
advanced critic must feel it almost as difficult to conjure up this
hypothetic literary artist as it would be to believe that John, the
Beloved Disciple and quondam fisherman, wrote the book. We
have remarked upon the cong'ruity of the narrative with the
impression of Jesus possessed by the Church ; and to this should
be joined the reflection that, if He actually owned the authority
( iSovaia) He professed, then the raising of Lazarus is as
adequate an expression of it as any miracle recorded in the
Gospels. 5. No one fails to see that the author intends his readers to
believe that the raising of Lazarus had a potent and determinative
influence upon all the events that followed. It is the hinge upon
which the final catastrophe turned, since it occasioned the calling
of the Sanhedrim and the precipitation of the fatal word through
Caiaphas which gave shape to subsequent intrigues and dramatic
intensity to the pursuit of one object by the counsellors — viz., to
kill Jesus and Lazarus with Him. We have observed that the
Marcan tradition affords the ground-plan of the Synoptics, and a
very little attention to chronology makes the reader acutely con
scious of the difficulty of finding a place in this framework for
the stupendous Miracle at Bethany. Most of the scholars who
accept the historicity of St John's story simply cut the Gordian
knot, and assume that the miracle was transacted within the
last four months of Christ's Ministry. And yet at what interval
in St. Mark's narrative, from the Transfiguration to the Messianic
entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, can any room be found
for the raising of Lazarus ? In the Fourth Gospel the successive
steps in the drama appear to be so clearly articulated and to
follow each other with tragic swiftness to the close, that readers
have felt but little temptation to attempt a transposition of events.
Professor Burkitt curtly concludes that there is no room for this
miracle in the historical framework preserved by St. Mark.
" Must not the answer be, that Mark is silent about the Raising
of Lazarus because he did not know of it? And if he did not
know of it, can we believe that, as a matter of fact, it ever oc
curred ? For all its dramatic setting it is, I am persuaded, impos
sible to regard the story of the Raising of Lazarus as a narrative
The Raising of Lazarus 221
of historical events." x But if the problem is simply one of time
and place, and the mind is free from a priori impressions "about
the impossibility of the miracle, we may at least consider the
transposing of the incidents before accepting this desperate nega
tion as the only escape from a perplexing dilemma.
6. As already stated, little reliance should be placed on the
chronological terms of the Fourth Gospel; for it is dominated
throughout by a theological plan. The writer's aim is to set
forth the Incarnate Word as the Source of Life, the supporting
Bread which comes down from Heaven, the Light of Life and
the Revelation of Divine Love ; and he has chosen the discourses
and miracles in order to illustrate these various aspects of the
Logos-Son. Some will judge that such an arbitrary placing of
the incidents must detract much from the historicity of the nar
ratives; and yet we do not refuse St. Matthew's account of the
life of Jesus because he has been influenced perceptibly by topical
affinities. We are justified, however, after recognizing St. John's
ideal presentment of the Incarnate Christ, in treating the ma
terials of this gospel as integrable in a synthesis, or tentative
chronology, which shall include the special contributions of all the
Gospels. In regard to the particular story of Lazarus, a fresh
consideration of slight indications in the narrative itself makes
it at least plausible that the subsequent events of Christ's Minis
try covered more than a year instead of only four months. The
emphatic and repeated mention of Caiaphas as the high-priest
that year is supposed to imply that he offered Jesus as the Pass
over Lamb within the next four months; we regard the sinister
accentuation, however, as falling simply upon the name of the
high-priest who wielded such a malign influence at that time.
From the Synoptics we learn that, after the middle of Christ's
Ministry, great popular disappointment was felt and was fol
lowed by a determined secession. But the narrative of the
Raising of Lazarus gives no evidence of Christ's waning influence ;
at that time His influence over the common people was so great
and still increasing, that the Sanhedrim feared lest the whole
nation should be caught in the contagion of enthusiasm. The
criticism that there is no room for the Raising of Lazarus within
the Synoptic framework if the story be placed in the narrative of
the few last months, appears a just one, and it seems likewise
' The Gospel History, p. 223.
222 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
true _ that to locate the incident at the termination of Christ's
Ministry leaves no room for such an ebbing of popular feeling
toward Jesus as the Synoptists report. The proper place of the
miracle is found when we suppose it to occur immediately before
the second and middle Passover of Christ's Ministry; and such
a transposition is not merely the result of guesswork, but an
inference deduced from the narrative itself. That the Passover
immediately following the Raising of Lazarus was not the final
one may be presumed from the absence of Jesus in the days of
purification and possibly from the feast itself. We learn that
the Jews sought for Him in vain and asked one of another,
" What think ye, that He will not come to the feast ? " l In
order to escape the hostility of the Sanhedrim and the excite
ment of the people St. John tells us that Jesus " departed thence
into the country near to the wilderness, into a city called Eph
raim." The attempts to identify this town have not been success
ful ; but the mere detail of topography is of less moment than the
certainty of the Master's absence from Jerusalem at the time of
the Passover, or during the days when pilgrims went up to purify
themselves. But the final Passover it could not have been; for
at that Jesus was present, and on the previous Palm Sunday He
had made His public entry into the city, and on succeeding days
He carried on His Ministry in the precincts of the temple. No
question could have been raised then as to His coming — neither in
the aorist nor in the future tense; but such uncertainty as to
whether Jesus would arrive or not, was quite natural at the time
of the previous Passover,2 for Jesus was then at some desert
place, where He fed the multitudes. It is interesting to note that
Professor Briggs makes the transposition of these two events, but
retains the idea that both occurred in the last few months before
the last Passover ; 3 but it does not seem feasible or probable that
two comparatively long journeys 4 should have been made, that
the feeling of the people toward Jesus should be utterly changed,
that many of the most important miracles should be crowded to
gether, and all the momentous teaching from the sublime sayings *
at the tomb near Bethany to the parousia discourse of the
Passion-week, should have been crowded into the last four
'John xi. 56, iTfii) not ileiiaerai; although the aorist might be used for the
future. 2 John vi. 4.
3 C. A. Briggs, New Light, p. 153.
*Mark vii. 24-31; vii. 27.
The Raising of Lazarus 223
months of Christ's Ministry. If we make the transposition of the
two miracles — the Raising of Lazarus and the Feeding of the
Multitudes — and interpolate the Johannine story into the his
torical framework of St. Mark, we must extend the time a whole
year. By so doing we shall secure those intervals devoted by
the Master to the special training of the Twelve, and find a cer
tain balance and harmony in our reconstructed picture of His
Ministry. 7. Our justification for such tentative changes in the chron
ological plan of St. John's gospel is that they make room for the
Raising of Lazarus, and enable us to think of the story as his
torical and so integrate its contribution into our impression of
Jesus. At least, we are able to review St. John's narrative of this
miracle without latent or insurgent prejudice against its credi
bility; and this we shall now proceed to do. While Jesus was
pursuing His Peraean Mission, a message reached Him from
friends at Bethany : " Lord, behold he whom Thou lovest is sick."
We know but little of Christ's private intercourse with friends;
at most our materials are but fragmentary reminiscences of Him.
Perhaps our most reverent imaginings concerning the inner his
tory of the heart of Jesus might be profitably suppressed; and
yet in the interests of His perfect humanity, the suggestion may
be pardoned that toward Mary of Bethany He felt a peculiarly
tender affection. It was, however, a part of His cross to forego all
thought of domestic felicity; all private affections were volun
tarily subordinated to the wider claims of His public love for the
humanity in every individual. To the bearer of the sad mes
sage Jesus gave an answer that seems superficially discordant
with the facts : " This sickness is not unto death ; it is for the
glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it."
Jesus felt that His work in Peraea was too important to be
abruptly abandoned at the appeal of private friendship; He was
guilty of no lack of tenderness, but He trusted Himself to the
inner guidance of the Spirit of God, and after praying for His
sick friend the inward prompting came to return to Bethany.
In these days, when telepathy is a recognized part of psychic
phenomena, there should be no incredulity concerning the state
ment that Jesus knew that Lazarus had " fallen asleep." In the
deepest experiences of prayer, the soul realizes a perfect junction
of the planes of consciousness described as higher and lower,
224 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
or spiritual and material; and, knowing this, we think it not at
all improbable that Jesus received the conviction that the Father
should enable Him to recall Lazarus from that realm into which
death is one of the entrances. But when He proposed to go to
Bethany, the disciples who were with Him were alarmed and
sought to dissuade Him : " Rabbi, the Jews sought but recently
to stone Thee ! And art Thou going thither again ? " Jesus once
again reiterated His absolute trust in the Divine plan; and since
His life was marked out as a day of twelve hours, He had no fear
of stumbling, and no enemies could harm Him till His hour had
come. The ambiguity of Jesus' metaphor of sleep for the fact of
death having been defined, Thomas, perceiving the unwavering
resolution of Jesus, stoically exclaimed, " Let us go too, that we
may die with Him ! "
8. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she came out
to meet Him, while Mary sat unheeding in the house. The greet
ing offered by the dead man's sister was a lament that He who
had power to heal the sick had not been at Bethany : " Lord,
hadst Thou been here, my brother would not have died." Ac
cording to St. John, Jesus answered and said, " I am the resur
rection and the life : he that believeth in Me, though he were dead,
yet shall he live : and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall
never die." All former hints and disclosures of His authority are
thus summed up in the highest claim ever made by man ; and after
the passing of many centuries, and with all the light that can be
thrown upon the words of Jesus, our understandings are too
limited to sound the fulness of meaning implied in this utterance.
Scepticism concerning its authenticity springs spontaneously in
many minds ; for it is sometimes hard to believe that the Man
Jesus really made such claims. The best antidote for this con
temporary rationalism that besets us as an atmosphere is found
in reflection upon the fact of the influence of Jesus in all the
succeeding ages. Had He actually anticipated His own post
humous and immortal achievements in the experiences of be
lievers and in the history of Christendom, He could not have
spoken a more accurate prophecy. Our instinctive repugnance to
the supernatural ought not to be treated as a serious objection to
a doctrine of transcendence; rather should it be held in check,
that the mind may judge without prejudice. Should it come to
be understood that this claim is the Johannine illation from the
The Raising of Lazarus 225
operation of Christ's influence, still there can be little doubt that
Jesus Himself originated impressions which made it possible to
attach this stupendous egoism to Him. And supposing Jesus
really were all that is claimed here, His self-affirmation of the
truth might cut across all the prejudices of Naturalism, and yet it
would have been inevitable that He should make Himself known.
After all, I know not if the highest reason does not reveal itself
in the most naive faith. Jesus demonstrates that He is in touch
with the whole human race; He penetrates into the subliminal
abysses of personality ; He raises and quickens the souls of men.
Martha supposed that Jesus spoke of a remote resurrection be
longing to the cycle of Jewish eschatological ideas prevalent at
that time ; but she advanced from Judaism to a form of Christian
belief by acknowledging that Jesus was the Messiah through
whom all their national and spiritual hopes were to come to pass.
Dr. Hort states the case with his characteristic luminous sugges-
tiveness : " On the one side were the jealous individual attach
ment which claimed the Lord only for herself and her brother, and
the confidence in His power to prevail with God which assumed
that His advocacy would be set in motion in like manner by indi
vidual friendship rather than by all-embracing allegiance to the
Father's Will ; on the other was the languid expectation, accepted
passively from the prevailing creed that in some distant time her
brother should rise again, and the inability to be satisfied with a
promise too widely detached from the sorrowful present to
affect deeply the sense of death within. Both sets of feelings
were purified and enlarged together. The personal attachment
was expanded into a faith which could recognize the individual
heart's Lord as the Universal Lord: the torpid expectation was
quickened into a living hope by becoming rooted in a personal
faith."1 9. At the Master's bidding Mary was called, and, seeing her
rise, the mourners followed, thinking that she was going to the
grave to weep there. Falling at the feet of Jesus, the stricken
woman repeated her sister's lament, " Lord, hadst Thou been here,
my brother would not have died ! " Her grief and the cries of
the mourners smote the sensitive heart of Jesus with sore trouble.
The Evangelist uses a phrase describing Jesus as indignant
(iveppipijffaro r<p irvsv/iart) • but the enigmatic word implies
1 Hort, The Way, The Truth, The Life, p. 117.
226 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
that the Master was almost carried beyond Himself by emo
tion, and to maintain His self-control He was forced to repress
His Spirit. Beholding Him weep, the bystanders marvelled at
Him and debated how it was that He could open the eyes of the
blind man, and yet not have been able to save a friend beloved as
Lazarus. The divinity we attribute to Jesus at least implies that
the character of God was mirrored in His life, although this
should not diminish our feeling for His deep, true humanness.
At the grave-side, Jesus made men know that the Divine Will
permitting the experience of death is in sympathy with the heart
of man. At His command to roll away the stone from the cave,
Martha was filled with dread at the thought of exposing death's
marred image; but, with insistent gentleness, Jesus waved her
apprehensions aside, repeating that if she would only believe she
should see the glory of God. " Father," He exclaimed, " I thank
Thee that Thou art wont to hear My prayers. I know that Thou
dost continually hearken unto Me when I call upon Thee; but now
I address Thee thus because of the multitude present, that they
seeing that Thou hast granted My desire, may believe and be per
suaded that Thou hast sent Me." No histrionic posing is here;
only a love so mighty that He would fain lift the witnesses to
the high level of believing prayer. Then in a loud voice He
called, " Lazarus, come forth ! " The dead man heard and rising
came forth, wrapt about with grave-clothes. Jesus bade them
loose him of his cerements and let him go. Thus simply and
without elaboration the story of this august miracle is recited.
Lazarus brings no message from beyond the bourn, and the author
omits all description of the scene as the resuscitated man steps
back again into the old sweet life of Bethany.
io. This miracle was designed to reveal the glory of God and
of the Son. Whatever we may think of St. John's coordination
of these names, there stands behind it the fact of a mysterious
ethical harmony between Jesus and God. We have felt the com
pulsion of history to acknowledge the colossal egoism of Jesus;
but now, by the side of that phenomenon of His life, or at the
back of it, we must place His own repeated confessions that all
His power was derivative. The transcendent claims of Jesus to
supreme authority among men can never be divorced from His
recurrent testimony of its derivation from the Father. His
miraculous energy was always ethically conditioned; the Power
The Raising of Lazarus 227
He wielded was the Will of God flowing through the self-con
scious volition of a perfect man. It is no solution of the problem
of Christ's Personality to connect the ideas of harmony with the
Heavenly Father and subordination in ethical purpose, but both
these are factors to be acknowledged in every balanced statement
of the problem. We suspect that the clues of many profound
things are present in this story of the Raising of Lazarus. A
light is flung upon the meaning of the fact of sickness and pain in
the providential subjection of all experiences to one supreme aim
— the glory of God ; the specific exhibition of Divine glory in the
sphere of history is the manifestation of the Son, in the realiza
tion of His purpose to communicate life, to make suffering sub
servient to a sympathy and power to uplift man. This miracle
of resurrection was at once an answer to the prayer of Jesus
and a concrete example of the work He proposed to accomplish
among men. Jesus is the Mediator of a life which lifts man above
an animal existence; and He completes the life He imparts by
the quickening moral influence of His own immortal Personality.
n. As a Revelation of the Father and the Son, the Raising of
Lazarus consummated a long train of events in the Ministry
of Jesus, and swept many into active belief in Him as God's
Anointed ; other witnesses, however, went away and told the news
to His enemies. A council was hastily summoned to consider
what should be done with Jesus. The chief priests and Pharisees
decided that he ought to be killed; but a few among them, like
Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, protested, " What are we
doing? For this man doeth many signs." The anger against
Jesus could not be assuaged; the hostile authorities only re
plied, " If we let Him go on so, all will believe in Him ! " Some
councillors expressed the dread lest Jesus should excite the
populace to an abortive rising, and so afford a pretext for Rome
to strip the Sanhedrim of the last vestiges of its power. But
with malignant cynicism Caiaphas, who was high-priest that year,
pointed out that Jesus, if left alone for a time, would inevitably
transgress against the supremacy of Rome, and that then He
might become a sacrifice for the nation ; rudely ironical, the Sad
ducean priest formulated his Machiavellian policy : " You know
nothing at all. You do not calculate that it is for your advantage
that one man should die for the people, instead of the whole
nation perishing." Thus it may be said that the Raising of
228 The Conflict Between Jesus and the Hierarchy
Lazarus lost Jesus His own life. We cannot but think that the
policy of laisser-faire, advocated in this session of the Sanhedrim,
first brought the Cross into view, and gives the true antecedent to
Christ's repeated utterances about His coming fate; also, it seems
a corroborative demand for a longer time than four months
(sixteen months gives ample time) for the working out of such
a scheme to its consummation. The high-priest who shaped this
policy was a stern, clever, ambitious man ; in his view, Jesus was
but a pawn on the chess-board of contemporary history, and
even Rome might be subordinated to Jewish ends. The Evangel
ist sees, however, that Caiaphas is held in the grip of a Power
greater than that of earthly states : a spirit of prophecy speaks
through him, and carries his words far beyond his conscious
thought; Jesus was indeed to die, not only for the nation,
but for all the children of God that are scattered abroad, that
they might be gathered into one.
BOOK V
THE REJECTED KING
CHAPTER I
THE FEEDING OF THE MULTITUDE
i. Presuming upon a tentative acceptance of the suggested
transference of the Raising of Lazarus from the termination to
the mid-point of His Ministry, we shall see that the course of
Jesus in the subsequent months was in part determined by the
unconcealed hostility of the Sanhedrim. Caiaphas had astutely
inflamed this hatred of Jesus, and then had captivated the judge
ment of the leading councillors by his malignant policy of laisser-
faire: they adopted a waiting attitude, pursuing Jesus with vigilant
espionage, hoping that this unauthorized Rabbi would speedily
commit Himself in word or deed, so that He might be accused
of treason against Roman suzerainty. The peril of Jesus at this
time lay not in Himself, but in the restless patriotism and political
Messianism of many of His adherents and admirers ; for, however
careful the watch He set upon His own lips, who was able to
control and restrain the rashness and wild schemes of these fol
lowers? The time had not yet come for His full self-manifesta
tion ; the minds of His disciples needed further education and the
substitution of His spiritual ideas for their materialistic national
ism, hence it was necessary that He should find privacy and
leisure for this work of preparation. Feeling that His mission
itself was in danger lest His chosen followers should be precipi
tated into some reckless intrigue or revolt, Jesus left the neigh
bourhood of Jerusalem, going first " into a country near to the wil
derness, into a city called Ephraim, and there continued with His
disciples." 1 Our knowledge of the topography of this itineration
is as slender as it is uncertain, but mention may be made of
Robinson's suggestion that the place designated may have been
Ophrah, a town four miles northeast of Bethel, about fourteen
miles from Jerusalem. This conjecture has the support of
Josephus, who has written of a small fort at the north of Judaea,
called Ephraim and connects it with Bethel.2 The characteristic
of the teaching of Jesus henceforth is that of increasing ex-
'John xi. 54-57. 'Jewish War, iv. ix. 9.
231
232 The Rejected King
plicitness and emphasis upon the Messianic yet spiritual nature of
His vocation. Until this period He had refrained from all public
avowals of His Messiahship, having sought from the beginning
to transform the ideals cherished alike by His disciples and the
people. His use of the title " Son of Man " and His own ex
pressed consciousness of Divine Sonship had made it possible
for Him to adopt the wavering belief that He Himself was to
fulfil the prophetic oracles relating to the Messiah, without sanc
tioning the general misunderstanding of the Messiah's work.
2. Although the people attributed to Jesus the authority of a
great rabbi, the leaders of national life treated Him as one
excommunicated ; and largely in consequence of this, as also the
result in part of His longing for privacy, the Master was forced
into a life of wandering. If it be not too bold we would transpose
to this period His journey through Samaria and the memorable
meeting and dialogue with " the woman at the well." 1 It was
probably at noonday, not as some suppose at evening, when Jesus
rested near the city of Sychar. If the great hours of life are
those which register the uprising of noble thoughts, when the
world becomes translucent, and waves of profound feeling roll
over one's soul, then this must be adjudged one of the great hours
in the Ministry of Jesus. While fact and interpretation are inex
tricably mingled in St. John's record, and many go so far as to
doubt its historicity, yet not only does the dialogue run counter to
every natural anticipation of what should have been likely, but
there seems to be no adequate motive for the free invention of
this story. The simplest theory is that it is true. There is no
need to trace out all the windings of thought in Christ's con
verse; it is familiar to everyone. We note, as characteristic
of the Master's behaviour, that He passes with swift ease from
an ordinary request for a draught of water to utterances which
stir the sleeping conscience of the woman. When she seeks to
escape the embarrassment of reflections about her own life by
allusion to the contemporary controversy between Samaritan and
Jew, the Great Rabbi throws out the truths which have orbed
themselves with perfect lucidity in His own mind, and which, in
the measure of their acceptance, destroy forever the old narrow
prejudices of Judaistic orthodoxy. While He acknowledges His
Jewish birth, He abnegates the bitter pride of race and claims to
¦John iv. 1-42.,
The Feeding of the Multitude 233
belong to the spiritual family of man ; in a sense He Himself was
the flower of the Hebrew Spirit, but such efflorescence was the
birth of a new, broad humanity. Truly His words " seem to
breathe the Spirit of other worlds than ours — of worlds whose
course is equable and pure."
" Believe me, woman, the hour is coming
When neither at Jerusalem, nor in this mountain,
Shall you worship the Father.
But the hour is coming and now is
When the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth:
For such indeed the Father seeks to be His worshippers.
God is Spirit :
And they that worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."
In this saying the true Spirit of all religions has crystallized into
a perfect, pellucid and profound philosophy of spiritual worship ;
it is a logion which will live so long as man endures. By His
direct connection of His claim to be the Messiah with this uni
versal Religion of Humanity, Jesus purifies, elevates and univer
salizes the Jewish ideal, so that it affects alike the interests of
every nation. Although His Personal Ministry was for the most
part restricted to the Jews, His occasional contact with Samaritans
forever forbids the ascription of Jewish exclusiveness to Him.
By Jesus' concentration upon the " lost sheep of the house of
Israel " He conserved all that was precious in a great historical,
providential preparation ; but the very intensity of His Humanity
was the irresistible germ of world-wide catholicity. His enemies
descried this motive force in His teachings, and accused Him
ironically of being a Samaritan, and sardonically inquired, " Will
He go unto the dispersion among the Greeks and teach the
Greeks?"1 3. After sojourning two days among His Samaritan in
quirers, Jesus travelled northwards into Galilee ; and although the
Passover — the second Passover of His Ministry — was drawing
near, He dared not return to Jerusalem. His intention was not
to resume His public preaching, but to rejoin His missionary
disciples and take them away from exhausting toils to rest, re
cruit and receive further instruction.2 It must be recalled that
these apostles had been carrying out their mission to evangelize
'John vii. 35. R.V. "Mark vi. 30, 3i-
234 The Rejected King
the two hundred cities and villages of Galilee all this time, making
occasional excursions southward to their Rabbi, then returning
again to their missionary itineration. St. Mark relates that the
Twelve discharged their commission, and rejoined Jesus upon His
coming back to Galilee ; that the kind eyes of the Master perceived
signs of weariness, and He therefore bade them " come apart
privately in some desert place and rest." While the account given
by the third evangelist agrees in placing this retreat immedi
ately after the return of the Twelve, it suggests a different rea
son for the retirement to the neighbourhood of Bethsaida Julias.
Reading between the lines of St. Luke's gospel, we infer that the
Galilean evangelism, with its watchword of the Kingdom of God,
had spread abroad the fame of Jesus and had excited the brave
populace with hopes that He would become their political leader
and deliverer. Controversies were aroused concerning Him ; some
said He was a prophet, either Elijah or John the Baptist returned
to life ; and a feature of greater peril in this movement was that
Jesus involuntarily became the centre of plots and political in
trigues which would be favoured by the zealots among his own
disciples ; hence " there were many people coming and going, and
they had no time even to eat." Such developments not only justi
fied the sagacious forecast of events made by Caiaphas, but they
aroused dangerous inquiries in the palace : " Herod was seeking
to see Jesus, saying, ' John have I beheaded ; but who is this, of
whom I hear such things ? ' " For these reasons also Jesus
sought to escape publicity by going to the other side of the lake,
embarking perhaps at the western shore and steering north
east; but His design was detected and the good-natured, excited
people prevented Him from realizing it.
4. In discussing the Raising of Lazarus, it was said that no
evidence was available to show that the popularity of Jesus
had begun to wane ; but the accounts of the " Feeding of the five
thousand " afforded proof that the climax of popular enthusiasm
was marked by this incident. The people had not yet caught the
spirit of their rulers toward Jesus ; their belief in His Messiahship
had become a swollen torrent; the utterance of their proffered
loyalty was as the sound of many waters; but Jesus refused
to be what they wanted — a political demagogue: henceforward
the waves of enthusiasm subsided, and except for one occasion
of passing excitement, the feelings he had stirred moved sound-
The Feeding of the Multitude 235
less and slow as through a darkening wood. We have four ac
counts of the great meal in the desert, and this is proof of the
deep impression made by the incident; but an honest attempt
to find out what occurred and " diminish into clearness " the
discrepant narratives brings us to a Marcan tradition and a
later Johannine account. These two narratives are distinct and
independent; there is no reason for doubting that St. Mark re
ports St. Peter's sermon based on the occurrence, combining with
the report, inferences and modifications due to interpretation ; St.
John, on the other hand, was an eye-witness, and it may be that
he wrote to correct certain misapprehensions of the familiar inci
dent, although it remains equally credible that his gospel was
" worked over " by some Christian scribe who, while imbued with
the teaching of the Alexandrian school, cherished a high estimate
of the Marcan tradition of Christ's Ministry. But that the
Fourth Gospel gives no mere transcription of the Synoptist's
narrative becomes apparent to the reader through the graphic
and vivid portraiture of the whole scene, and also in the delicate
touches belonging to the veracity of an eye-witness — rarely imi
table by the artist. That the incident should be so distinctly recol
lected after the lapse of many crowded years was due to the
crucial importance felt to belong to it: since it marked both the
culmination and breakdown of the popular enthusiasm for Jesus,
it could not be lightly forgotten. Modern observers of the com
plex movements of present-day Judaism may gain some insight
into the excitement Jesus had aroused by His Message of the
Reign of God from the controversies raging around the Zionist
propaganda begun by the late Dr. Herzl.
5. Familiar acquaintance with the average churchman leads
one to suppose that there are many naive believers who cling to
the dogma of the inerrancy of all the books included in this
sacred Canon of Scripture. It is probably inevitable that such
men shall view with alarm and suspicion the attempts to sift
the Gospels and to distinguish between the original fact and
later accretions and traditional modifications. But while we
deprecate such misunderstanding, we must accept the task of our
age to dig down to the real foundations of the truth. Should there
be a temporary displacement of a stone here and there by an
errant criticism, subsequent toilers will rectify such mistakes:
meanwhile, it is well to remember that the Four Gospels are not
236 The Rejected King
the foundation of the Church, but Christ Himself. In this work
of investigation, a margin must be allowed for involuntary bias
and the influence of the mind's preconceptions. Those who
cherish a naturalistic philosophy will be predisposed to judge the
narrative as unhistorical, although some even among these will be
sufficiently impressed by the fourfold narrative as to admit that
some actual occurrence must lie behind the Gospel legend. For
ourselves, there is no reason for departing from our method
of impressionist study, reading the narratives as we would other
ancient literature, tracing amid the discrepancies the firm lines of
an original, apostolic tradition so far as we are able, and keep
ing in view, as our guiding light, the total impression Jesus has
made upon our minds. Still, it is incumbent upon us to analyze
the four accounts, remembering that a comparison of the several
gospels has shown us before, that the traditions concerning
Jesus could not escape the modifications which proceed along with
oral transmission; also the ineradicable tendency of the mind to
over-emphasize and exaggerate the striking aspects of human
experiences. Personally, we feel no antipathy to miracles; the
august and unique character of Jesus makes credible the primi
tive belief that He performed acts remarkable for their power
and beneficence. On the other hand, while giving full credence
to this transcendence in the person and conduct of Jesus, it is
impossible to shake off the heritage of a scientific era to practise
economy in regard to miracle, and to believe that even in His
works of exceptional power Jesus observed the rule of laws and
forces which belong to higher Nature as yet undiscovered by us.
In regard to the " Feeding of the five thousand," the ordinary
Christian belief that Jesus achieved a stupendous miracle may be
the correct view; it is the view created by an acceptance of the
story as it is told in each of the gospels; and, for many devout
readers, it is the only possible interpretation. So long as this
belief remains sincere and unforced, no one would persuade others
to discard it; but it should be recognized that, in the experience
of not a few Christian thinkers, it has come to pass that only
by a coercion of the reason could this conception of the miracle
be retained. Throughout a long period of analysis and comparison
of the narratives of this meal in the desert, many considered, that
there was no alternative other than to accept the miracle as it is
related, or to reject the account as unhistorical. Slowly and
surely, however, as they have traced the marks of modification
The Feeding of the Multitude 237
of original traditions in our Gospels, their judgement has been
led to the verdict that in the original apostolic tradition, as it
was preached by Peter and John, there was no affirmation that
Jesus performed a miracle of creation. This abandonment of the
natural impression, that a great miracle occurred, is not based
upon a priori grounds of impossibility; for such is the writer's
idea of Jesus that imagination is not staggered by the notion that,
to meet a grave emergency, His power might be exercised to
create baked loaves and cooked fishes ; but renewed and repeated
study of St. John's account of the feeding of the people has led
me to think that this apostle, whose primary motive in writing
was to convince men that Jesus was the Son of God, did not
intend to convey the idea that Jesus performed a great miracle of
creation. Were it not for the statement that the twelve baskets
of broken pieces were " from the five barley loaves," St. John's
account might be read without inferring the transaction of a
miracle by Jesus. The suspicion of a redactor's touch in this
phrase, who designed to assimilate St. John's account with the
Church's current acceptation of a miracle, is confirmed when,
as we read the discussion which follows, we observe the com
plete exclusion of any sign that bore resemblance to the Hebrew
manna tradition that ""He gave them bread out of heaven to
eat." Further, the notice that the Passover was near prohibits
the supposition that thousands of pilgrims would be journeying
without ample provision of food : though the apostles might have
come all unprovided for a sojourn in a desert place, the crowds
would scarcely be so empty-handed as to necessitate a miracle.
6. The chief features of the Marcan narrative are as fol
low: In order to secure the privacy and rest needed by Jesus
and His disciples at the termination of their mission they sailed
across the lake to a rendezvous on the eastern side. This attempt
to escape the crowds was frustrated, for the people followed them
along the shore, so that a multitude met them as they disem
barked. The Master's pity was excited, for they seemed as sheep
having no shepherd ; and He taught them many things ; so long as
He discoursed, the people showed no inclination to break away.
The disciples, however, were more concerned for temporal things,
and suggested to Jesus that the crowds should be sent away, that
they might buy food in the neighbouring hamlets and villages.
The Master, instead of dismissing the people, made the disciples
238 The Rejected King
bring out their scanty provisions (five loaves and two small fishes),
and, having blessed these, He gave them to the disciples to dis
tribute to the great multitude who now sat in orderly companies
on the grass. A miracle is clearly implied, and the result was that
all were completely satisfied. In the Johannine account, the cir
cumstances related by the Synoptists as leading up to this incident
are omitted ; the Evangelist introduces his story with characteristic
abruptness and indifference to chronology. The multitudes are
said to have followed Jesus because of the " signs " He did, even
climbing the mountain where He sat with His disciples. It was
the Passover time, and many of the Jews who were going up to
Jerusalem interrupted their journey by listening awhile to the
new Rabbi. According to St. John, it was Jesus Himself who
first referred to the hunger of the people. To appreciate the
story fully, it must be remembered that Jesus stood on a higher
spiritual plane of thought than any of the disciples. They were
thinking of a crown and of an army, and, as though Jesus would
fain have them perceive the impossibility of realizing their ma
terialistic dreams, He suggests ironically the greatness of the
commissariat necessary to maintain an army, asking of Philip,
" Whence are we to buy bread that these may eat ? " Andrew,
however, once the disciple of John the Baptist — recalling perhaps
the miracle attributed to Elisha,1 when with twenty loaves of
barley and fresh ears of corn in his sack, he fed a hundred men —
mentions that a lad was there with five barley loaves and two
fishes. Being ever prone to act symbolically as He was to speak
in parables, " Jesus knew what He would do." All the day He
had sought to nourish the crowd with His Spiritual Bread; and
now He would bind them as with a sacrament, by giving them the
few loaves with which His disciples were furnished: besides, it
would be to the Twelve a lesson in magnanimity and faith, and
would help them in future days to trust in the good-nature and
justice of their listeners. There was no need of a miracle; for,
as soon as the scanty store of Jesus had been distributed, so that
all should eat of His bread, the multitudes would fall back upon
their own Passover provisions, and would at least catch enough
of the Master's charity as to share with those who might be un
provided for. St. John rightly terms this a " sign " ; and though
we invoke no appeal to miracle, it was a " sign " replete with
beauty and ethical meaning. When the late Professor Godet
' II Kings iv. 42-44.
The Feeding of the Multitude 239
asks " how so simple a fact should have produced in the multitude
such a state of exaltation that that very night they sought to get
possession of Jesus to proclaim Him King," he fails to appreciate
the previous growth of popular enthusiasm which was now ready
to seek to express itself at any moment.
7. It is not difficult to conceive how an incident of such a
character, and marking by its happening a climax and crisis in
Christ's Ministry among the people, should have been subtly
transfigured by the alchemy of primitive Aberglaube into a stu
pendous miracle. The men who believed in the Resurrection of
Jesus had come to see in Jesus a Person charged with Divine
power and glory; and they were prone to translate the remark
able, natural phenomena of His Ministry into miraculous displays
of His veiled divinity. Another tendency operative in the early
Church upon the original evangelic deposit of eye-witnesses was
that of reading into the Ministry of Jesus the fulfilment of the
oracles of the Old Testament — not only of viewing Him as the
realization of all previous types, but also of seeking, in the
subsequent tradition of His work, parallels to all the chief events
of the Old Covenant. Just as the deliverance of the Sermon on
the Mount corresponds to the giving of the Law at the institu
tion of the Jewish nation, so many would treat a story of the
feeding of the multitudes as the counterpart of the maintenance
of Israel with manna in the wilderness. Such a method of treat
ing a narrative of miracle cannot be confined to this one incident ;
it will be applied to many others, and in the process the facts of
Christ's Ministry are in danger of being dissolved into a mist of
uncertainty. While we admit the perilous possibility and lament
that we are not living in happier ages of naive belief, we dare
not refuse to take up the task laid upon us by the Ruler of His
tory; we have to face historical problems, to dig down through
all dogmatic accretions, until we touch the true foundation which
is Christ the Lord. If we be accused of " rationalizing " a Gospel
miracle, our justification must be found in St. John, whose
record of the subsequent challenge flung down by the Jews 1
leaves no room for any miracle of creating bread. This being
so we dare not conceal our " finding." The search for truth must
always be perilous; yet since truth itself is more precious than
rubies, we cannot be deterred by apprehensions of mistake: an
arduous quest may be more profitable than any easy attainment,
'John vi. 301.
240 The Rejected King
8. The real point and value of this incident in the progress of
Jesus lie, however, not in the question whether He performed
a miracle, but in the momentous issues which hung upon His
treatment of the enthusiasm He aroused in the five thousand
men. The record of St. John supplements the Marcan nar
rative, and in spite of all discrepancies they produce together the
verisimilitude of reliable history. In contrast with the usual im
pression, the details and characters of the incident are drawn with
sharper outline in the Fourth Gospel than in the Synoptics.
As a rule, St. John represents the " signs " of Jesus to have
failed in carrying conviction to the people, while St. Mark shows
how by His works Jesus stirred a great popular enthusiasm ; but,
in the sequel of the feeding of the five thousand, the fourth
evangelist is much more explicit and illuminating. In the Marcan
story, the conduct of Jesus is clearly set forth, but the motive
of it is unrecorded : writing long after, St. John supplies us with
an explanation. The earlier evangelist states that when all were
satisfied, " immediately He compelled the disciples to embark
and cross over before Him to the opposite side to Bethsaida, until
He dismissed the crowd; and, after taking leave of them, He
went up into the mountain to pray." But this abrupt, imperious
behaviour is fully accounted for, as we read in St. John, of the
dangerous excitement of the multitude, who were exclaiming that
" this is really the prophet who is to come into the world," and
were goading one another on to seize Jesus and force Him to be
their King. The Galileans were an alert, proud, patriotic people,
and zealous haters of Rome; they were destined, in the final
struggle for independence, to sacrifice a hundred and fifty thou
sand youths, who died willingly in fighting for liberty. Jesus read
the spirit of these men, and refused to lend Himself to the for
warding of their political designs; when He saw the disciples
inclining to support the scheme of crowning Him, He sharply
commanded them to embark and withdraw to some other place.
Since our main interest is to trace the historic development of the
earthly Ministry of the Rabbi of Nazareth, so that we may under
stand how He came to be believed in as a Divine Person, we
must allow no controversy about the miraculous meal in the
desert to divert attention from the momentous crisis that marked
this mid-point of His public work. So great was the political
agitation in which Jesus was momentarily entangled, that, had
He not acted with instant decision, the leaders of the movement
The Feeding of the Multitude 241
in collusion with the disciples would have forcibly seized
(dpnaZsiv) His Person and have compelled Him to head their
march to Jerusalem. Sternly resolute, Jesus ordered the Twelve
away, and turning His back upon the incipient revolutionists He
went up into the mountain to pray. He refused to be either the
demagogue or the tool of political intrigue and rebellion; — not
that He had a doubt about His fitness to be King, but because He
held His higher Kingship as something infinitely above the popu
lar conception. The people longed for the advent of David's Son ;
they wanted a national hero, cherishing a patriotic ideal of free
dom from foreign domination. The swell of ancient prophecies
reverberated in their imaginations, and they forgot the ideal of
the Suffering Servant of Jehovah. Jesus Himself designed the
foundation of a Spiritual Kingdom ; the people, although missing
the meaning of His highest message, were attracted by His mani
fest power. They interpreted His claims upon the allegiance
of His followers by their own political preconceptions ; and, while
puzzled by His frequent thwarting of their expectations, they
were for the time convinced that He was " the Coming One "
spoken of in Scripture. At times they wondered at His vacilla
tion, for they desired Him to strike a blow for national liberty;
His spiritual teaching mystified them; but one of the results of
the Mission of the Twelve may have been to spread a belief that a
change was imminent; the very watchword of the missionaries
concerning the Kingdom was felt to be the signal of the begin
ning of insurrection. Among many of the disciples who staked
everything upon this attempt to force the hand of Jesus may have
been Judas Iscariot, and his fanatical disappointment at the im
practicability of the Master may have led to the moral deteriora
tion which ended in treachery. But, having withdrawn from
the excited crowds, Jesus spent the night in lonely vigil and
spiritual communion, feeling as He meditated there on the moun
tain, that the time had come to disillusion the people of their false
Messianism once and forever, even though the issue might be
the renunciation of Himself as one who seemed a futile dreamer.
CHAPTER II
THE MYSTICISM OF JESUS AND THE DISILLUSION
MENT OF THE PEOPLE
I. The political designs of the multitude were swiftly balked
by Jesus in the dismissal of the Twelve, and His own retirement
to the solitude of the Mountain. The gross distortion of His
mission, not only by the excited crowds, but even by His own
intimate disciples, must have produced a double accentuation of
that feeling of isolation which Jesus experienced so often in the
very midst of the swarming crowds. He was a lonely, uncom-
prehended Man, removed far from the superstitions and idols of
an unspiritual people by His abiding insights into the heart of
Nature, of Man and of God. His escapes into solitude were
probably the only occasions when He was able to rid His soul
of the sting and smart of loneliness. Saddened, indeed, must
Jesus have been, as He reflected that night upon the nearness of
the danger that Caiaphas had predicted — that His movement
would assume a political character, and entangle Him in the fine
meshes of Roman law We shall miss something of His greatness,
unless we take account of the forces of that wild and fanatical
maelstrom of Jewish patriotism which, had He wavered for a
single moment, would have swallowed up His little society in a
tumult of revolution and bloodshed. It is difficult for us to con
ceive of the fitness of Jesus to assume the leadership of military
adventure; but, to contemporary Jews, it apparently seemed a
feasible project. Cromwell and Gordon demonstrate that men
of a deeply religious nature may be successful soldiers; that the
mystical temper may be allied to habits of intense practicalness.
A fair recognition of all the facts of the Ministry of Jesus pre
vents any attempt at cataloguing Him among dreamers or en
thusiasts, at labelling Him as of sanguine or melancholy tempera
ment. Attention to one set of facts may leave the impression that
Jesus was a meditative, poetic religious genius; but then arises
another set of phenomena into view which compels us to acknowl
edge His vigorous, far-seeing and sagacious mind; besides that,
m
The Mysticism of Jesus 243
St. Mark represents Him as a spiritual athlete, putting forth all
His strength to accomplish a definitely planned mission for estab
lishing God's Reign on earth. The completeness of His humanity
tends to conceal, from the unprepared mind, the greatness of
Jesus as Man; the consequence of this has been a fragmentary
vision of Him, so that in successive ages different aspects of His
life have been emphasized almost to the exclusion of other phases
equally real. Hence, every mind fashions its own Christ, but no
one has yet seen Him as He is: still, our idea of Jesus is our
greatest knowledge; it is just so much of the Mind of the Master
dwelling in our minds. Nevertheless, having corrected the im
patience of our partial vision, we may venture to give special at
tention to the mysticism of this Rabbi ; for Jesus was the spiritual
kinsman of those seers of all ages and climes who have felt the
touch of the Spirit as the most momentous fact of their experi
ences. Such souls have ever been like flowers exhaling a deli
cate and beautiful perfume and imparting a distinct " feel " to the
atmosphere around. In the varied life of our great Master, we
trace recurrent alternations of activity and quiescence — of ener
getic ministry and of quiet prayer, which were as the diastole
and systole of the heart's action; for even Jesus would have
been unable to maintain His beneficent expenditure of life-
force, had He not received periodic replenishment of Spiritual
life. 2. " It was already dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them."
In these words the Evangelist implies that the disciples awaited
Him at a certain rendezvous ; but, finding that He did not arrive,
they resumed their interrupted journey across the lake. The
rowers, however, made but little progress, their efforts all being
frustrated by a storm of wind, which swept down upon the water.
The relative positions of the struggling disciples and their Lord,
keeping vigil on the Mount, are symbolic of the Church in every
age. Suddenly the baffled disciples were affrighted, thinking they
saw a ghost. The phrase (ini rijS SaXaffffTji)1 leads naturally
to the suggestion that Jesus appeared "by the sea"; for this
preposition is used with the genitive sometimes to express vicinity,
hence " at the sea " might be equivalent to saying " on the shore."
The disciples, not realizing their nearness to land, and not ex
pecting Jesus to overtake them now, fancied, as they saw His
•John vi. 19.
244 The Rejected King
form dimly moving in the uncertain light, that it was an appari
tion on the water, and were superstitiously alarmed. A very
slight modification of the oral tradition of this story would give
a miraculous turn to the narrative; but, however the incident
may be interpreted, it leaves unmodified the Church's faith in
Christ. One who believes in the historical reality of His sinless
life finds no difficulty in believing also that Jesus might transcend
the ordinary law of gravitation, if it were necessary for the
realization of some high purpose, but if it seem unnecessary to
invoke a miracle the mind seeks for a natural explanation. Per
ceiving the alarm of His disciples, Jesus called out to them not to
be afraid. St. Matthew relates that Peter at once recovered from
his superstitious fears, and besought Jesus to permit him to walk
on the sea to meet Him. While this is manifestly congruous with
the known character of that disciple, there are many who regard
the incident as a mythical adjunct illustrating the fluctuating
moods of a typical man among the first followers of Jesus.
Readers will decide the point according to their several judge
ments ; but, whether looked upon as literally true or as symbolical,
the treatment of this incident does not affect one's conception
of Jesus. A psychological touch is given by the fourth evangelist,
who says, " Then they were ready to take Him into the boat, and
immediately the boat was at the land for which they were mak
ing." St. Mark, who treats the entire scene as supernatural,
relates that at that instant the wind dropped, " and they were sore
amazed in themselves; for they understood not concerning the
loaves, but their heart was hardened." This last statement affords
an incidental guarantee of this Evangelist's good faith; although
the apostles had come to be regarded as the pillars of the Church
by the time he was writing this gospel, still he never attempted
the least concealment or extenuation of their natural faults and
failings in the period of their probation. It is easily credible
that a reminiscence of Simon's own confession of mental obtuse-
ness and spiritual hardness lurks in this Marcan recital of the
story. 3. The next dynamic moment in the sequel to the feeding of
the multitude was the discourse in the synagogue, on the mystic
Bread, related alone by St. John. Were we to judge the value
of the Fourth Gospel by this contribution alone, aiding us as it
does to understand the new turn of events in the Ministry of
The Mysticism of Jesus 245
Jesus, we should ascribe to it the highest historical insight into
the psychology of the facts related by the Synoptists, — that hence
forth the popularity of Jesus perceptibly waned. On the morn
ing following the strange feast on the hill, the people were aston
ished that Jesus could not be seen, since, on the previous evening,
they had seen the disciples embark in the only boat off the north
eastern shore, and leave their Rabbi behind. During the night,
however, the furious storm had driven in some boats from
Tiberias, and many of the people took advantage of these to cross
back to the other side. Coming to Capernaum, they were sur
prised to learn that Jesus had arrived before them and was in
the synagogue. At once they went to Him with the many-voiced
inquiry, " Rabbi, when earnest thou hither ? " For the under
standing of what followed it must be recognized that the mood
of Jesus had changed since the previous day. He had seen
His whole mission imperilled by the persistent misconception of
His Messianic role, and had come to the determination to make
it impossible that anyone should henceforth imagine that He
cherished any design of securing temporal power. During His
midnight vigil, great clearness had come to Him as to the irrecon
cilable antagonism between the popular Messianism and His own
spiritual ideal, and He perceived that He could not transform the
thoughts of His age beyond His immediate circle of disciples.
The clarified vision revealed to Him the arrival of the crucial
hour of His Ministry, and unhesitatingly He resolved to strip
away from men's minds all illusions about Himself. In any other
life, we should characterize the taking of such decision as the
preeminent expression of moral courage. About Jesus, however,
we hesitate to use such language, lest we should even remotely
seem guilty of the absurdity of patronizing by our eulogies One
who rises so much above our ordinary standards of conduct.
Hitherto the populace had responded to the spell of His dominat
ing personality; but the people could not appreciate the highest
phases of His work, and all too evidently they had misinterpreted
the mission of the disciples. Now the moment had come for a
clear, bold, unmistakable definition of His purely spiritual aim in
the world. The great prophetic ideal of Messianic kingship was
now to be freed from the swaddling-bands of national pride and
prejudice, and Jesus was to show that the true King belongs to
the whole race, and that He must nourish the world by the sacri
fice of Himself. His auditors were of various parties ; some were
246 The Rejected King
Galilean zealots, ready to follow the lead of anyone who would
set up the standard of the Davidic dynasty; some were hostile
Jews, carrying out their scheme of espionage, and insinuating their
contempt by scornful epithets flung at " this fellow " ; some were
wavering adherents who had been impressed by the work of Jesus
and did not know what to think ; and a few were His own most
intimate disciples.
4. Once again the peculiar difficulty in using the Johannine
writings for historical ends confronts us: the sayings of Jesus
are mingled with the reflections of the Evangelist; while in the
Synoptics the logia shine with a clear-cut light, here the profound
thoughts of Jesus are fused and sometimes blurred in the shim
mering radiance of John's theosophy. Still, with a little attention
we discern the real sayings of Jesus like points of starry light
in the Milky Way. The recorded dialogue in this sixth chapter
may be steeped in the hues of the writer's characteristic style;
and yet it not only retains the traces of historic verisimilitude,
but it also gives us clues which make the first Galilean apostasy
historically explicable. In the Capernaum synagogue that day,
Jesus deliberately employed such metaphors as could not fail to
be misunderstood and lead to irritation; He provoked a con
troversy that was bound to issue in grumbling and strife, and
even in renunciation of Himself as an impracticable dreamer.
He takes the feeding of the multitude, and treats it as a parable
in action, setting forth symbolically the real spiritual relation that
He sustains to the world. We touch here a characteristic mode
of thought used by Jesus; to Him the visible realm and rela
tionships are revelations of the invisible realities. Behind the
Maya of phenomena there is a trustworthy Reality of eternal
goodness; and the material aspects of life are as shadows flung
by the soul. Jesus claimed to bring a Divine provision for
mankind's spiritual hunger. The legend of the manna, which
played so important a part in the national store of metaphor
should have supplied His hearers with a key to His mysticism.
The metaphors of eating and drinking the truth were familiar
to Jewish readers: hence one wonders at their total inability to
understand Jesus. Wisdom invites her children, " Come, eat ye
my bread and drink of the wine which I have mingled." x " They
that eat me shall yet be hungry, and they that drink me shall
'Prov. ix. 5.
The Mysticism of Jesus 247
yet be thirsty." J " Thou gavest Thy people angels' food to eat
and bread ready for their use didst Thou provide from Heaven
without their toil. . . . For Thy nature manifested Thy sweet
ness toward Thy children." 2 Jesus applied these figures to
Himself, calling Himself the Bread of Life — man's food from
Heaven. Passing from metaphor to symbol, Jesus at last set
forth His flesh and blood as the soul's meat, betraying darkly, for
the first time in public, His divination of the necessity of giving
His personal life to satisfy the world's need. Such symbolism
cannot be interpreted with prosaic literalness ; it must speak many
meanings to the minds of men ; coordination with similar sayings
may help the understanding; for example, Ezekiel was told to
eat the roll of prophecy, and one of the psalmists wrote, " How
sweet are thy words unto my taste, yea sweeter than honey unto
my mouth." One of the Rabbinic sayings concerning the Mes
sianic hope was, " In the coming age they neither eat nor drink,
but the just sit with crowns on their heads and are nourished
with the brightness of Divine Majesty." Yet another was,
" Such as was the first Saviour, so will be the last ; as the first
Saviour caused manna to fall for Israel, so the last Saviour
will also cause manna to descend for them once more, for
it is written, ' There shall be abundance of corn in the
land.' "
5. Jesus Himself laid down the first principle of sound herme-
neutics : " It is the Spirit that giveth life ; the flesh profiteth noth
ing; the sayings which I have spoken to you are spirit and life."
He deprecated that unimaginative literalism which fails to pass
behind the metaphors to the spiritual realities of His teaching.
Men do not live by bread alone; they hunger for truth, justice
and love. Our life is not nourished by material acquisitions; it
feeds on the more subtle aliments of hope, faith, beauty, thought
and righteousness. The living Bread from Heaven must com
prise all these separate aliments ; and if Jesus be that Bread, then
are these given in Him. Often His disciples have regarded
His teaching as being the Bread He gave, but a profounder
insight apprehends that the greatest gift of Jesus to our world
has been His own Personal Life. His sayings were indeed as
fountains of living water, and yet words be they never so noble,
1 Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 19-21.
2 Wisdom xvi. 20. Cf . St. Paul's nvev/iariKbv /3pa/ia : nvev/mTiKOv irdpa.
248 The Rejected King
and even deeds though they be sublime, are but symbols of the
soul from which they emanate. We all crave after the ultimate
Reality, and this cannot be less than personal : our own souls are
fed by the love, the thoughts, the very ego disclosed in recipro
cated relationships. The Truth for which the intellect craves
is no abstraction, no creed however logical, but the actuality of
the Divine Life: we long for God — for the living God. The
Righteousness after which the heart hungers is no empty " cate
gorical imperative," but the harmony of Divine and human wills.
The flesh and blood which Jesus offered were the symbols of His
Ego or Life; these can be assimilated by meditation, obedience
and responsive love : the metaphors of eating and drinking must
be translated into the spiritual functions of thought and will.
Jesus addressed His thoughts to the future as much as to His
actual audience; through the language of profound mysticism
He spoke to all generations, but His immediate aim was to show
forth the essentially spiritual character of His mission, and so
make impossible the recrudescence of all false dreams about His
Messiahship. Once again we trace the astounding egoism of this
meek and lowly Man ; He calls Himself the Son of Man, and He
is most truly human; in His veins is the red, warm tide of
creature-life: yet all the while the title is perceptibly laden with
the aroma of prophecy; it is pregnant with Messianic implica
tions. He claims to speak as the " sealed of God " ; and He is
sealed not by a water baptism only, but also by a Heavenly
chrism, — sealed by the demonstration of Divine approval and en
dowment of power. Four times He reiterates His unique affirma
tion to have come down from Heaven, thus mystically articulating
His abiding original possession of the consciousness of God. His
life, He says, with all its various expressions of thought and ac
tion, with its subsequent sacrifice and anticipated resurrection,
is the living Bread given to nourish the inner spiritual conscious
ness of mankind. Jesus asserts, in this discourse, that He is the
Mediator of eternal life; also the true Object of contemplation
and faith, and the Divinely given sustenance of the soul. To
eat this Bread from Heaven is no physical act of participation in
the Communion-Sacrament ; it is to believe on Jesus, to experience
the drawing of His Spirit, to assimilate His habit of thought and
temper ; and only those who thus believe, and are inwardly taught
of God, may be spoken of as feeding on the Bread of God. And
of them it is said, they are secured against the dissolving power
The Mysticism of Jesus 249
of death, for they are heirs of the thrice-repeated promise of the
resurrection.1 6. In some measure every sincere teacher gives not only
thoughts, but also his soul to his pupils, and preeminently in the
case of Jesus every word He uttered contained the communica
tion of His Life. His words were essentially the overflow of His
sincere thought, and however fragmentary our records of His
speech, His sayings breathe the totality of His Spirit; whatever
criticism the Gospels may yet undergo the logia of Jesus are as
genuine coins struck from His inmost experience, stamped with
the image and superscription of His unique consciousness. While
in other realms of teaching the demand upon the personality of
the teacher will be with proportionate diminution as the methods
and matter are more formal and mechanical, it is an inviolable
law of the Spirit that he who would teach and help others in
things pertaining to the soul must give himself as a sacrificial
meal for others. Jesus complied with this law so completely that
the world has fed upon Him ever since; His own veritable say
ings and their echoes in other minds, His personal example and
sacrifice have been found to be the real Bread from Heaven,
and sources of perennial inspiration to the nobler spirit of man.
We have been nourished by that great mind and heart of His
in all high thinking and generous enthusiasms; and through the
Ideal mediated by Him, mankind has been saved from dismal
abysses of materialism and from the despotism of chaos and night.
But if the words of Jesus had been doctrines of ethics and
metaphysics, they might have passed without demur by His
listeners, who would not have stumbled at His theories had they
not first been offended by His personal claims. His audience
passed speedily from a mood of surprise and of inquiry to one of
murmuring and hostility. As men listened, they supposed that
Jesus Himself claimed to come from Heaven, and, deeming that
the facts about His birth were simply human and unmarked by
aught unusual, they judged it impossible that He could have de
scended into this human state from a place of Heavenly trans
cendence. 7. It is beyond- dispute that, in His teaching of the mystic
Bread, are implications of a personality which cannot be exhausted
"Wendt and Reuss treat this idea of resurrection as secondary and
due to the redactor.
250 The Rejected King
by the titles of rabbi, sage or prophet. There is no escape from
the tremendous dilemma thrust upon us by the claims implicit in
this 'Johannine record, whether they were made by Himself or
invented by others : " Assuming that the stupendous claim ascribed
to Him is false, one would think it must have disordered His life
with insanity if He made it Himself, and the accounts of His
life if others invented it." x Behind the claim to be the Bread of
Life which cometh down from Heaven, lies the whole mystery of
Christ's consciousness, and no final explanation of that conscious
ness has yet been given. The words of Jesus would have passed
as fleeting breath and found no resonant echoes after His death,
had there not been a life of such a character that through it men
became sure of God. The words of Jesus breathed forth the
supreme ideal of Humanity, but it was the Life which Jesus
lived which made His logia immortal; and that Life was the
manifestation of such a Personality as God Himself dare not,
cannot, obliterate. Whatever processes of idealization and in
tellectual transformation have gone on in the transmission of the
Jesus-ideal through the centuries, He makes men conscious still
of the Father- Spirit of the universe. When, however, we go
back to the apostolic records and seek to find their interpretation
of the Consciousness of Jesus, the centuries seem to slip away;
for, whatever changes have taken place in our philosophic modes
of thought and terminology, the idea of Jesus is for the most part
identical with the experience of men today. Jesus made the
apostles sure of God ; He gave to them the idea and understanding
of the Father's Presence. " The Word became flesh and taber
nacled among us, and we beheld His glory — glory as of the
only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." To really
eat the Bread of Life from Heaven does not equate itself with
an intellectual acceptance of the apostolic formula of the In
carnation; it means, rather, that we should pass through a like
spiritual experience, and receive into our own inmost life the
conscipusness of Jesus. Such was the influence of Jesus and the
consequence of His Ministry in the lives of the apostles, that they
were driven as by inspiration to conceive of Him as One who
had lived in a state of Preexistent glory, but, out of love for
humanity, had laid aside His beatific divinity and become one of
us by being born as a little child. To some minds this apostolic
theory comes as an adequate and as an authoritative interpre-
1 Gwatkin, The Knowledge of God, vol. i., p. 120.
The Mysticism of Jesus 251
tation; but there are others to whom it is a burden of mystery;
they admit that it may be true, but they have no assurance. Now,
supposing it is true is it of supreme importance that we shall ac
knowledge this Incarnation-formula? Does Jesus really mind?
No, the matter of preeminent moment in the mind of Jesus
was that men should participate in His own consciousness of God
and of Humanity, that they should eat of the Bread which cometh
down from Heaven. Whatever weight may be given to the in-
tellectualization of Christianity by St. Paul, that apostle was
nourished on that mystic Bread, and was able to say, " I live, yet
not I, but Christ liveth in me." To eat of that Bread — to feed on
that consciousness of Jesus, implies at least that we shall know
God by intuition as " our Father," that we shall love men as
Jesus did, that we shall think His ideals, cherish His aims, will to
do His will. While participating in this experience it may be
that many honest minds will oscillate in perplexity and inde
cision concerning the relative and external views of Jesus Christ ;
but they will know the real and inner life of Jesus and be His
intimate disciples. Thus once again was verified the statement
made by Jesus that He sought to make His earthly Ministry
an imitation of what His Heavenly Father did; as in the tradi
tion God gave manna, and in fact ever gives the true Bread
from Heaven, so the Son gives Himself — that is, His con
sciousness and very life, to men as the Bread of the Spirit. The
revealing Reason, the Logos, or life-imparting Spirit, is for ever
coming down from above, stealing in upon us like the light, and
flooding our souls with nobler impulses. The mystery of the life
of Jesus we have not fathomed, but we perceive that He summed
up the Divine Ideal of manhood, and drew the sea of life in which
our personalities are merged into His own experience as the Son
of Man; and through Him we are fed by a larger eternal life
which goes far out beyond our finite individualization, — by a
great Social Spirit which integrates all the units into one vast
organism of redeemed humanity.
8. Believing that this discourse embodies not only the reflec
tions of the Evangelist, but also the actual memories he retained
of the thoughts of Jesus, it will not surprise one to find in it a
veiled allusion to His future sacrifice. If Caiaphas had already
defined the policy of the Sanhedrim towards Jesus as we suppose,
then it is natural that fore-glimpses of the final tragedy should
252 The Rejected King
begin to appear in the speech of Jesus. " The Bread which I
will give is my flesh for the life of the world." Since Jesus
subsequently gave His body to be crucified, it is inevitable that
these words should be interpreted as Christ's anticipation of the
Cross by which His glory, grace and truth were to be diffused
throughout the world. In the light of that final tragedy this
record reads like a passion-discourse, and it becomes connected
with the supper He shared with His disciples at the end. Con
sciously, or unconsciously, Jesus adopted the old Semitic idea of
eating the sacrifice and sharing the life of the tribal god, the
Bread sent down from Heaven in Himself could only be given
to the whole world by His voluntary sacrifice. He gave them this
Bread by giving Himself. Those who would enter the Reign of
God had to forego all thoughts of a holy war against the Roman
oppressor, the obligation was laid upon them to assimilate the
mind of Jesus, — to absorb His ideas, learn His affections, feel
His enthusiasm for humanity, — to appropriate Him, as it were
to eat His flesh, so that His human ideal may live in them
again. 9. Strange as it may seem, this mystic discourse, tinctured
already with the blood-red hues of His anticipated Passion, was
the means deliberately adopted by Jesus to disillusion the people
of their false notions of His Messiahship and to sift out the grain
from the chaff in His movement. Many of His auditors had
pursued Him from the east side of the lake, bent upon forcing
Him to be their King. Such men listened in utter bewilder
ment; the rarefied atmosphere of the Spirit He breathed ex
hausted them and left them nerveless and inactive : even the
disciples of the inner and outer circle were pained and stricken
with despondency as Jesus cast a blight upon all their earth-born
hopes and ambitions; while the spies and enemies who belonged
to the ruling classes felt their hatred intensified, and knew not
whether to rejoice or lament that Jesus had dashed to the ground
the popular enthusiasm He had kindled. Under the influence of
His lofty idealism the prevalent Messianism with its concrete no
tions of a national restoration was dissipated as a wreath of
smoke. Jesus had forced upon His disciples the dilemma of
choosing between two exclusive ideals, — the low one of national
ambition which He could never stoop to realize, or the spiritual
one of Jehovah's Suffering Servant. The people had asked
The Mysticism of Jesus 253
for a strong hand and a sharp sword ; but Jesus seemed to them
to be offering only the words of an idle dream. At last the
turning point was reached in the movement which had gathered
around Jesus; now the common people who had hitherto be
lieved in Him went over to the side of the authorized religious
leaders of the nation : Jesus had become a stone of stumbling and
a rock of offence. " Many drew back and walked no longer with
Him." The bitter disappointment infected the spirits of the
Twelve and it seems not improbable that at this crisis dis
loyalty first touched the zealous Messianist named Judas. Seeing
the cloud on the face of Iscariot, Jesus felt the poignant pathos of
a lonely and discredited Leader; for a while it seemed as if His
most intimate disciples might be caught in the popular revulsion
of feeling ; seeing them divided He said to the Twelve, " You will
not leave me too ? " To their abiding honour they showed that
love and loyalty can live through the storm of personal disap
pointment and popular ill-will. Although they could not fore
see all that might be involved in their decision to stand by Jesus,
they could not fail to feel the sting of scorn as their enemies threw
their jibes at the Master. This, together with their own sense of
keenest disappointment, imparted a touch of heroism to their
choice. The greater number of the Twelve voluntarily chose
obloquy with Jesus as more greatly to be preferred than all the
world's honour without their Lord. It is only too evident from
the record of later incidents that these disciples had not entered
into the grandeur of Christ's ideals, to them His teaching was
vague and for the present inapprehensible; yet in answer to the
question Jesus had asked, Simon Peter said, " Lord, to whom can
we go? Thou hast words of eternal life. And for our part we
have believed and know that Thou art the Holy One of God."
Whether St. John anticipates in this answer the confession made
by Peter at Caesarea Philippi, and has foreshortened the time of
suspense between this Capernaum crisis and the epoch which
stands out in the Synoptics, cannot be lightly determined. It
may be that the fourth evangelist takes the liberty of inserting, at
this crucial point in his narrative, a confession of Peter during the
flight which followed as a consequence upon the Galilean apostasy.
But while the causal nexus between the two incidents might
justify a slight foreshortening of perspective in the narrative, it is
still within the range of credibility that Simon might repeat His
confession a second time, that Jesus Himself might deliberately
254 The Rejected King
elicit a repetition of this avowal of faith for the benefit of all the
Twelve. This, however, is a question of secondary moment, the
great outstanding and determinative fact is that in this first
hour of trial, when the popular attitude swung round from one
of favour to one of antagonism, the Twelve maintained their
outward loyalty to Jesus although they could not as yet under
stand Him.
CHAPTER III
DESPISED AND REJECTED OF MEN
I. As the fourth evangelist summarises in the concluding
verses of his sixth chapter a process of vacillation, suspense and
division, which probably extended over a period of several weeks,
we may use the Synoptics to supply the actual incidents and de
tails which lay behind St. John's general statement. By thus
making our respective narratives supplement each other's deficien
cies there will be acquired a clear conception of the emergence
of a stubborn unbelief, malignant questionings and resolute hos
tility to Jesus, which issued at length in the national rejection
of Him as a mere Pretender. The crisis described in our last
chapter took place at Capernaum, His adopted city. Early in
His Ministry Jesus had chosen this town as the chief centre of
His Galilean evangelism, and it is evident that its populace had
at first been favourably impressed by Him ; but as we have seen,
when Jesus deliberately refused the political leadership which the
people desired to thrust upon Him, and made it unmistakable
that the Messiahship He claimed was an unqualified Spiritualism,
the disappointed people abandoned Him as an ineffectual
Dreamer. Notwithstanding this revolution of popular opinion
about Him, instead of withdrawing at once and altogether
from Galilee, Jesus seized the following days, while men were
pausing before taking the next step of avowed animosity, for
an extended tour through many of the places where the Twelve
had publicly announced that He would come. Jesus knew that
ere long other towns would follow the example of Capernaum,
but meanwhile a last opportunity was afforded for a further
appeal to those who were still oscillating between belief and
unbelief. With swift decisiveness, and before any prevenient
notice of obstruction could be carried to the towns and villages
around, Jesus renewed His itineration. According to St. Mark,
this tour was made forever memorable by His miracles; the
255
256 The Rejected King
people brought out all their sick to Jesus, and even they who
could but touch the fringe of His cloak were healed.1
2. It was probably at this time that Jesus made His last visit
to Nazareth (q ndrpiS avrov), although by St. Mark the ac
count is placed before the Mission of the Twelve, while St. Luke's
beautiful narrative of what occurred forms a kind of frontispiece
of the Ministry of Jesus. Those who accept the Lucan placing
of this incident as chronological will find, in this compulsory
departure from Nazareth, a partial explanation why Jesus after
wards made Capernaum His chief centre. But, in our concep
tion of the trend of events in the life of Jesus, the visit to
Nazareth fits in most naturally with the itineration that followed
the Capernaum schism. While the oracle read by Him announces
an ideal programme of the Messiah's mission, the rejection of
Him by the irritated Nazarenes is typical of what now happened
throughout Galilee and Judaea. The longing to revisit the scenes
of His youth and the home of His childhood swept over His
soul when He was repudiated at Capernaum, just as' the longing
for a draught of the water of the well of Bethlehem overwhelmed
the heart of David in the hour of adversity. Such a sentiment
is characteristic of the naturalness of Jesus, and is easily under
stood. While the third evangelist places the incident at the
threshold of the ministry, yet by his mention of the mighty works
done in Capernaum, which had aroused the jealousy of the
people at Nazareth, he makes it well-nigh impossible to accept
this very early occurrence of the rejection of Jesus; but then,
on the other hand, why did Jesus leave His own village so long
unvisited? We can only infer that, from the attitude of His
own family, who had soon regarded Him as the victim of frenzy,
Jesus had rightly gauged the native hostility of neighbours and
home-friends to any recognition of His spiritual authority. But
He could not go away from Galilee without once visiting the
place " where He had been brought up " ; 2 therefore, He came to
it now with mingling hopes and fears. It is evident that ex
communication from the synagogues in Jerusalem did not prevent
His joining in public worship in the provinces, although it had
long ago been made impracticable to continue His synagogue
ministry in any systematic manner : hence, He came, as was His
'Mark vi. 53-56.
2 Mark vi. 1-6; Matt. xiii. 53-58; Luke iv. 16-30.
Despised and Rejected of Men 257
wont, to the meeting-house at Nazareth. There was manifest
excitement because of His presence; for, while it was known
that He had assumed the status of a rabbi, and by His teaching
and remarkable powers of healing had won universal fame, it
was also equally well known that He had become a companion
of " sinners," and had again and again violated the laws of the
Sabbath. Besides, not long before, members of His disciple-
band had probably delivered in this village their Lord's message
of the Kingdom : so curiosity to see Him would blend with irrita
tion at His renown, and many in the synagogue would recall
memories of their acquaintance with Him when He was with
them as a carpenter, while they would cherish disapproval of
what, in their conservatism, they would deem His arrogance
and domination.
3. The chazzan handed to Jesus the roll of the prophet Isaiah,
and all ' listened as He read from the Hebrew text and then
translated into Aramaic ; it would be noticed, too, how He broke
off the reading at a clause reverberant with the joy of jubilee,
and omitted the line which spoke of the " day of vengeance."
" The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
Therefore He has anointed me to preach glad tidings to the poor,
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of
sight to the blind,
(To set the oppressed at liberty),
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." '
Having rolled up the scripture and handed it back again, Jesus
began to give His interpretation of the prophecy, and a strained
hush of expectancy fell upon all the listeners as they watched
Him with eager intentness ( r/ffav drsvL^ovrsi). "This
day," said Jesus, " is the Scripture fulfilled in your ears ! " His
voice was calm, grave and singularly winsome, and must have
set the chords of many hearts vibrating with involuntary re
sponse. Here at Nazareth, in the home of His childhood, and
the scene of His years of toil, He made the claim to fulfil all
the essential meaning of the Messianic oracle He had read ; and
here, as well as in Capernaum, this self-disclosure becomes the
touchstone of character. The first impressions in His favour
made by His persuasive and gracious utterance gave place to
vulgar prejudices against the Carpenter ; He was too well known
'Isa. lxi. 1-2.
258 The Rejected King
to them, and His brothers and sisters were humble folks, still
living in the village : perhaps they were in the synagogue, and it
seemed preposterous that Jesus should possess such authority.
They were scornful at His daring application of a sublime proph
ecy to Himself, and were alienated from Him by stupid feelings
of jealousy and anger. One thing only would satisfy them;
they had heard of His miracles: let Him, therefore, convince
them by some startling display of power. And how could He
do them any good morally, when the very leaders of the national
religion had rejected His claims? And so they thought, Physi
cian, heal thyself ! But a mere intellectual assent resulting from
sensational displays would be morally worthless, and Jesus offered
no sign. He may have said, as Weiss thinks He did, at this
time : " No man can come to Me, except the Father which sent
Me draw him : and I will raise him up at the last day." J St.
Mark states that " He could not work any miracle there beyond
laying His hands upon a few sick people and healing them."
The graphic account by St. Luke, of the attempt to kill Jesus,
may be the result of a confusion of the Nazareth tradition with
a story of the violence which had been exhibited in Jerusalem.2
" There must be here," says Weiss, " an intermixture of Johan
nine reminiscences in the tradition of Luke." Jesus Himself
marvelled at the strong expressions of unbelief which were shown
at Nazareth. He felt Himself more and more isolated, and He
recalled that in ancient times Elijah and Elisha had achieved their
greatest triumphs outside Israel. " He came unto His own and
His own received Him not." The passion of His life was to
identify Himself with the people; but so intensely selfish, so
driven by gross materialism and religious bigotry were they,
that they could give no place to a mind which moved ever on a
plane of equable purity and universal benevolence. He was com
pelled to tread the path of life alone and to become a spiritual
-exile. 4. It was becoming more and more difficult to continue the
ministry in Galilee ; for the waning of popular affection for Jesus
gave opportunity to the malignant espionage of sleepless and
vindictive enemies from Jerusalem.3 The occasion of complaint
came through the disciples — these quondam fishermen and peas
ants, who, feeling little the importance of the artificial ceremonies
'John vi. 44-46. 'John viii. 59. sMatt. xv. 1-20.
Despised and Rejected of Men 259
of Pharisaism, openly disregarded the washing of their hands
with the fist ( xvy/irj ) before meals. This trivial ceremony was
the mark of a religious caste, and as such was accounted by the
Pharisees as a graver matter than the exercise of ordinary kind
ness. Their remonstrance, however, elicited from Jesus a scath
ing indictment of contemporary Pharisaism for preferring the
traditions of men to the commandments of God. The religion
of Jesus, personally realized and authoritatively taught by Him,
was inspired by filial consciousness toward God, and issued in
virtue and benevolence in all human relationships. Jesus saw the
danger lest inquisitive research and erudite orthodoxy should
take the place of the eternal principles of religious morality, and
laid down the axiom that, if the principle of kindness collided
with some rule of religious ritual, the latter must be swept aside
as the brain-spun cobwebs of religious convention. Jesus dis
dained a whispered controversy with His foes; boldly He ap
pealed to the reason and conscience of the common people, say
ing, " Nothing can make a man unclean by entering him from
outside: nay, what makes a man unclean is that which issues
from him." Impurity is a defilement of the soul, not a matter
simply of physical pollution: meats and unwashed hands matter
little when considering moral values, and with a sweep of His
hand Jesus cast Pharisaic formalism into the limbo of worn-out
superstitions. His speech was like a sharp sword cleaving
asunder the futilities of artificial thought and laying bare the
realities of life, and the enemies of Jesus seemed paralyzed for
the time as by some lightning-stroke. At a later stage of the
argument, Jesus said, " Every plant which My Father has not
planted shall be rooted up. Leave them: they are blind guides.
And if a blind man lead a blind man, both of them shall fall
into a ditch." The stern deliberateness of this castigation of the
Pharisees showed that Jesus Himself deemed a point had been
reached which made the reconciliation of this sect impossible.
Knowing that He had failed to win Israel, Jesus felt a great wave
of sorrow and breathed out a lamentation — not a curse, but a cry
of spiritual disappointment —
" Woe to thee, Chorazin ! Woe to thee, Bethsaida !
For had the powerful deeds performed in you been performed in
Tyre and Sidon,
They had repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
Yet I tell you, Tyre and Sidon shall find it more tolerable on the day
of judgement than you,
260 The Rejected King
And thou, Capernaum, shalt thou be exalted as far as heaven ? thou
shalt. be thrust down to hades !
For had the powerful deeds performed in thee been performed in
Sodom,
It would have lasted until this day.
Yet I tell you, the land of Sodom shall find it more tolerable on the
day of judgement than thou! "
5. " He was despised and rejected of men ; a man of sorrows,
and acquainted with grief." Greatness must often be misunder
stood, yet frequently one of the hidden notes of greatness is the
very longing for sympathy which intensifies the pain of being
rejected. The agony through which Jesus passed at this period
has never yet been totally conceived by any man ; it may well be
that the hour of His final tragedy was more easily borne than
the season of suspense. Although aware that the hour had not
yet come for His complete sacrifice, He perceived that it would
be impossible to continue His work in Israel; one plan alone was
practicable — to devote Himself henceforth to the training of the
Twelve. " Now He rose and went away " beyond Galilee north
ward into Gentile regions. His subsequent wanderings may have
extended over many weeks, or even months; for He visited the
mercantile cities on the Syrophcenician coast, crossed the Damas
cus road (we have no disproof of His having entered the ancient
city He had come so near) ; next passing the Lebanon range,
he returned southward through Decapolis on the eastern side
of the Lake. A question neither unimportant nor uninteresting
arises, Whether Jesus made one or two prolonged journeys
northward? St. Mark gives account of two; but this is sus
pected of being a literary reduplication occasioned by the mis
understanding of a confused and variant tradition of the incident
of feeding the multitudes. This theory is credible, since it cannot
be denied that the Evangelist might err; and yet it is by no
means impossible that Jesus should a second time succour a
hungry crowd of listeners. We admit to the feeling of a preju
dice against a recurrence of this incident; and the facility with
which a reduplicated tradition might grow up is apprehensible
by all who observe the modifications that take place in oral trans
missions. Against this instinctive prejudice we must place the
circumstantial differences in the two accounts: the time was
different; the place also was not identical, since once they were
within easy reach of places where provisions could be purchased,
but the second time they were remote from all towns. In the
Despised and Rejected of Men 261
first narrative the people are said to have been with Jesus one
day; in the later incident they are represented as having com-
panied with Him three days; lastly, it is not beneath notice that
each narrative has its own word for the basket used ( xoqnvov.
txavpis), a difference which might arise from the different
shapes of basket made in different localities. We also recollect
that, in one of the gentle reproaches Jesus uttered when His
disciples misunderstood Him, He recalled to their memories both
incidents of feeding. Taking all these trifling details together,
they certainly have weight for judgement, and incline us to
believe that St. Mark has preserved a literal and true account
of the order of events at this time ; ' and, if so, the repeated in
cident of feeding a multitude breaks the wanderings of Jesus, so
that we think of two separate journeys into Gentile lands. Two
such flights give an air of reality to the accusation made by
Celsus : 2 "In company with your disciples, you go and hide
yourself in different places " ; for it is not likely that outsiders
would divine the real motives of Jesus.
6. The juxtaposition of contrasting incidents in our Gospels,
though often undesigned, sometimes lends an added pathos to
the record of Christ's Ministry; at this juncture, for example,
the affecting appeal of the Syrophcenician woman follows the
story of the Galilean rejection of Jesus. Like some exile from
His native land, Jesus sought privacy and rest in heathen terri
tory: as though He were suffering from the depressing reaction
of recent exciting experiences, " He went into a house and wished
no one to know He was there." 3 His fame, however, had spread
abroad, even among the Gentiles of the north, so that His pres
ence could not be kept private ; and very soon a woman in need
found Him out, and besought Him to heal her little daughter,
who was possessed by a demon. Jesus at first ignored the peti
tioner, and then, when her importunity forced Him to speak, His
answer seemed like a cruel repulse, which no verbal ingenuity
can explain ; and yet, when we conceive the dilemma into which
Jesus was thrown, His words lose their obscurity. Sometimes
it is forgotten that Jesus found a part of the problem of human
life to consist in learning what the Divine Will really is ; we ought
to bear in mind the fact that even Jesus gained no exemption
'Mark viii. io; Matt. xv. 32-39- 2 Origen against Celsus, bk. i., ch. 65.
8 Mark vii. 24.
262 The Rejected King
from the task of choosing between alternative possibilities. At
this period of His Ministry it is feasible that the Jewish rejection
of His claims might have stirred the doubt if it might not be
best to appeal directly to the Gentiles. Even as He was wrestling
with this perplexity the Syrophcenician woman may have stood
before Him as the representative of the Greeks, and, like the
Macedonian of St. Paul's vision at Troas, uttered the cry of
heathendom, " Come over and help us." The reiterated plaint
of this poor woman vexed the disciples, and they urged their
Rabbi to send her away. Jesus told her the thought which had
been working in His mind that His Ministry was to Israel.
Upon hearing this she fell at His feet with entreaties ; but seeing
this, Jesus quoted a Jewish proverb, as though He were pursuing
a mental argument quite as much as holding dialogue with the
woman, " It is not meet to take the children's bread and cast
it unto the dogs." Repellent as the saying seems to us, the
Master's tone evidently left the woman's trust in His goodness
unquenched, and with ready wit she replied, " Yes, Lord : yet
the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs." It is not
surprising that the woman's faith should triumph over Jesus'
seeming reluctance, and as a consequence He sent her away
with a promise that her petition should be granted.
7. Although Jesus received the spiritual monition that His
Father gave permission and power to heal both the Syrophcenician
girl and the deaf-mute in Decapolis, He did not account this a
Divine commission to pursue an extended ministry among the
Gentiles. As the first sense of perplexity which sprang from
the pain and disappointment at the Galilean rejection passed
away, He perceived that this period of wandering was an oppor
tunity long desired of giving special attention and instruction to
the Twelve. At the same time a tour with Jesus through heathen
districts could not but serve as a survey of missionary ground,
and the Master sought to prepare His disciples for the recognition
that the Reign of God was for the Gentiles as well as for the
Jews. Providentially confined to the House of Israel though
His personal ministry was, His parables and general teaching
show that Jesus anticipated a world-wide extension of His move
ment. The disciples may have dully acquiesced in the thought
that the Gentiles should some day come as converts to Zion ; but
already Jesus had planted in their minds the germs of His
Despised and Rejected of Men 263
spiritual and universal faith. There may have been not a few
contingencies in the subsequent history of Christianity which were
wholly unforeseen by Jesus; but there can be little doubt that
He deliberately planned the establishment of a Kingdom as broad
as Humanity; and though He saw that His own life must be
terminated with all the tragic accompaniments of crucifixion,
His faith in the Father, in the Divine origin of His movement,
made Him certain that the work He had begun could not end.
He was no Utopian dreamer, deluding Himself with false hopes ;
He clearly anticipated His own death, and foretold times of perse
cution for His followers; still, He was sure of the harvest, and
definitely set Himself to the task of preparing the minds and
spirits of the disciples for the coming spiritual revolution. Some
things He uttered were probably not understood at the time, but
He knew that they would sleep in the memories of His hearers
and awake with power in days to come.
8. Presuming that St. Mark's version is correct, we must
imagine Jesus to have followed a circuitous route and got back
again to some place east of the Lake. Here the people flocked
to hear Him once more, and after preaching to them for three
days, Jesus met the emergency of hunger by repeating the gracious
incident of the feeding of the multitudes. After this He entered
into the boat and came to the unidentified region of Dalmanutha,
or Magadan. Having returned to Israel once more, He became
the subject of temptation ; for, hearing of His arrival, Pharisees
and Sadducees came to put Him to the test. Pfleiderer has
looked upon this as the germ of the temptation story. It was an
ill omen that sects, mutually embittered against each other,
should sink all jealousies and ally themselves against Jesus.
They wanted a sign from the sky — some portent that would
quench all their doubts; probably they were ignorant that such
doubts as they had were due to moral rather than to intellectual
causes. Jesus sighed heavily in spirit at this renewed symptom
of their antagonism, and refused all other signs than that which
Jonah gave to ancient Nineveh — the prediction of judgement and
call to repentance.1 He was deeply wounded by this fresh dis
play of invincible hostility, and abruptly departed from the place,
'"Matt. xii. 40, is a gloss which formed no part of the original say
ing, but was introduced very naturally, though erroneously, by the author
of our present Gospel."— Sanday, Bampton Lectures, 1893, p. 433-
264 The Rejected King
hurrying His disciples into the boat to go to Bethsaida — whether
the town of that name on the west, or one on the northeast of
the Lake is uncertain. The incident is surrounded by obscurity,
although it may be inferred from what followed that the plausible
address of the Pharisees and Sadducees, with their political and
external ideas of Messianism, had made but too much impression
upon the susceptible disciples. The Master's sudden change of
plan so disturbed them that they forgot to purchase bread. St.
Mark, ever alert in garnering even trifling reminiscences of Jesus
and the disciples, records the fact that they had only a single loaf
with them. It was not of this, however, that Jesus spoke when
He warned them, " See and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees
and the leaven of Herod ! " x He was preoccupied with the
graver implications of the recent discussion, and was anxious to
tear out of their hearts the last remains of the Jewish dream of
a political restoration. They could not understand, however, that
He was oblivious of material needs for the time, and with childish
literalness said, " It is because we have no bread ! " Their
spiritual dulness vexed Him for a moment, for what did their
scarcity of provision matter, when twice within recent months
they had seen the multitudes fed at His instigation and example;
and Jesus asked, " Do you not yet understand ? " The question
lays bare the quivering nerve of Jesus; He was stung by the
sense of spiritual isolation. Yet we dare not blame His disciples
for their failure to understand Him, since, though many centuries
have elapsed, we, too, have but ineffectually apprehended His
high ideals. Then, on the disciples' side, there possibly lurked
no little disappointment, for things were not happening as they
had hoped. Another journey northward was needed, so that He
might privately repeat the instruction He had been giving and
prepare them more fully for their future work. Enlightenment
came to them gradually as to the blind man whom Jesus healed.
At first it was a blurred vision of men like walking trees; only
with the Master's repeated touch could perfect clearness be
gained. The burden of His disciples' intractability may have
pressed upon Jesus almost as heavily as the guilt of the hostile
Pharisees. He sorrowed that Israel was rejecting Him, for
He was conscious of being the touchstone of the nation's life;
through Him God was offering the alternatives of life and
death — of inward spiritual renewal, or of historic retribution.
1 Mark vii. 13-21 ; Matt. xvi. 4-12.
CHAPTER IV
PETER'S CONFESSION AT CCESAREA PHILIPPI
I. An incident which occurred on this second journey north
ward constituted a momentous crisis in the history of the Twelve,
and in the graduated disclosure of the claims of the Lord Jesus.
After weeks of wandering Jesus and His disciples approached
the beautiful city of Caesarea Philippi. Many writers have de
scribed the noble architecture and natural beauty of this city of
a famous name; but, for most of us, its charm lies principally
in the visit of Jesus to this neighbourhood ; and the value of all dis
coveries about this city would be augmented, did we but know that
Jesus passed through its gates. His greatness as an historic char
acter throws a lustre on any place with which He was connected.
The passage of His life which links itself with Caesarea Philippi
can only be understood, however, on the condition that the reader
shall, as far as possible, disembarrass his mind of conventional
ideas of the Divinity and Messiahship of Jesus. Fresh impres
sions of the historic man are of infinitely higher value than
foregone dogmatic conclusions. Instead of beginning where
Athanasius left off, we would fain go back in thought to the
troubled transition period of the disciples' training, and look
upon Jesus with their wondering, inquiring eyes and awakening
faith. Many might be found to confess that, while they have
resolutely sought to contemplate Jesus simply as a great man
in history, they have been impelled by the logic of their successive
admissions to return again to the mysterious formulas of the
creeds as setting forth more adequately than naturalism the
manifold impressions made by Jesus. Still, it is probable that
every effort to renew the historical impression of His complex,
mysterious Personality, carries the mind a little nearer to the
reality. The life of Jesus developed with answering fulness to
the stimuli of human environment ; He was at no time insensible
to the appeal of national affairs, although throughout His crowded
life He retained a profound consciousness of the governing in
fluence of His Heavenly Father. In conventional presentments of
265
266 The Rejected King
Jesus, He has been described as though He lived in an impene
trable sphere, where He was psychologically free from the influ
ences of earth. While, however, it is perceived with increasing
clearness that He was no common man, but a unique Personality,
still He was not detached from laws which rule the soul's growth :
it was in the maelstrom of great affairs that His Ministry took
shape. Deep called unto deep, and the pressure of other minds
and incidents upon Him evoked a deepening, definitive sense of
His mission and a clarifying vision of the Way of Sorrow which
led to its fulfilment. This recognition of these external factors
in our Lord's life does not lessen our appreciation of the autonomy
He displayed; He could not be coerced into any loss of self-
mastery, and yet the very genius of His career was that it was
worked out in fullest reciprocity with all the factors operant in
the plexus of human relationships.
2. For Jesus Himself, as also for the disciples, these were
weeks of sad questioning and trial. The very vehemence of His
subsequent rebuke of Simon's suggestion, that it would not be
needful for the Christ to suffer, indicates that it was the specific
temptation which he had wrestled against during this Wander-
leben. He had not failed to perceive, from an early period of
His Ministry, that He must go counter to the popular Messianism,
still, when it actually came about that both Judaea and Galilee
rejected Him as a mere pretender, He was keenly sensitive to
the humiliation. He was wounded with disappointment in the
house of His friends, and His Ministry became overshadowed
with presentiments of evil. He wavered not an instant in His
loyalty to the Ideal given to Him, but His own stability of pur
pose gave Him no immunity from natural grief. This popular
rejection of His claims gave Him, however, the long-looked- for
opportunity of instructing His disciples. And during this period
of wandering we must imagine His frequent retirement to places
where the disciples might listen to Him without distraction.
His special themes were the nature of God's Reign and the
Spiritual ministry of the Messiah, varied by occasional warnings
against the leaven of the Pharisees. In Dante's biography, we
see how the banishment from Florence, against which the poet
raged in wounded patriotism, gave both the leisure from high
politics and the spiritual discipline needed to enable him to write
his vision of the Soul's pilgrimage through Hell, Purgatory and
Peter's Confession at Caesarea Philippi 267
Paradise. Similarly, the exile of Jesus gave to His great soul
a new discipline of suffering, and prepared Him for new insights
into the significance of His own mission. The content, applica
bility and value of the ideas most intimately possessed by the
mind are not fully known until they have been exploited in all
possible variations of experience; until sorrow as well as joy
comes to the soul, one does not know with adequacy the potency
and resource of his own intuitions. In this shadowed passage
of Christ's Ministry, while He found opportunities for instructing
His disciples, He was entering more deeply into the heritage
of His own thoughts, acquiring new insights, and bracing His
will to meet the enlarged demands upon His initiative and en
durance. Even prior to this period He had caught fore-glimpses
of the ultimate trials through which He must pass ; and now at
every crisis the words of Caiaphas, which in all probability had
been reported to Him, would leap to remembrance with added
weight of meaning. Jesus did not flinch, however, from the
tragic issues of His mission as the deepening shadows closed
upon Him: while appeals came to Him to make concessions
to the popular Messianism, He maintained a steadfast mind. His
meat and drink was to do the Father's will, and since He had
received the chrism of the Spirit this conscience had been His
pole-star — fixed and luminous; and thus guided He never wav
ered as He saw the road narrowing down into one long avenue
at the end of which He already perceived the dim shadow of
the Roman Cross.
3. If we could be sure that St. John's account of the crisis
of uncertainty and of the decisive choice made by the apostles
is identical with the record of experiences of these weeks of
trial which culminated at Caesarea Philippi, considerable enlight
enment would be thrown upon the method and amount of liberty
employed by the respective evangelists. As already indicated,
we incline to treat the Johannine account a as a succinct summary
of a real apostolic reminiscence of the fluctuations of belief going
on among the people at this period, and of Simon's bold Mes
sianic confession on behalf of the disciples. If this surmise be
correct then St. John's narrative affords us a valuable historic
supplement to the Petrine tradition found in St. Mark. The
general view is that the Petrine tradition is told in its earliest
'John vi. 64-71.
268 The Rejected King
form in St. Mark, and that the author of St. Matthew has given
only another version of the accepted narrative. It may be noted
in passing that it is fallacious to imagine that one historical
writing must be more correct than another because it is the
earlier version. It is common knowledge that a later historian
has often a better chance of giving a true representation of a
variously reported occurrence. It ought not to be assumed that
St. Matthew is less reliable than St. Mark, even should it be
proved that the first-named evangelist used the work of his
forerunner. With this general precaution we pass to observe that
both these two evangelists are agreed in representing that the
incident which took place near the city of Caesarea Philippi, was
the culmination of a process and the turning-point in the ministry
of Jesus Christ.1 While in St. Luke's narrative the quality of
vivid and graphic portraiture is characteristically weakened in
comparison with St. Mark's account, still, the third evangelist.
appears to me to give the true psychology of the moment; and
this he does, perhaps accidentally, in an introductory sentence
which, in its superficial inconsistency, suggests the frayed ends
of a literary suture. " As He was praying alone, the disciples
were with Him." Although He was with His disciples, yet
He was alone in so. far as their thoughts were remote from His.
Jesus ever stood in closer relation to His Heavenly Father than
to His human friends. His mood was one of quivering intensity
and eager interrogation. He was engaged in mystic dialogue
with the Divine Spirit; perhaps the disciples observed His lips
moving as one who spake with an unseen friend, and they knew
that even as they walked toward the city, He prayed. Yet as He
turned a frequent wistful gaze upon them, they must have an
ticipated the disclosure of some new thing in the ministry of
their Lord. Thus, by juxtaposition of all four narratives, we
get a complex, vivid impression of a culminating moment in
the history of the disciples ; we catch the sense of stress and
strain, of trial and uncertainty, of proximity to Jesus in the
flesh and remoteness in feeling, of vacillation and doubt crossed
by flashes of sympathy; and in the Mind of Jesus, too, there
was going on a high debate; He was wounded by the sudden
desertion of the fickle crowds; He was weighing alternative
rights and duties which seemed in conflict; He was seeking to
know the will of His Father, and He was anxious about the
'Mark viii. 27ft; Matt. xvi. 13ft.
Peter's Confession at Caesarea Philippi 269
understanding and loyalty of His disciples. " As He was pray
ing alone ... the disciples were with Him."
4. And what was the thing that loomed so tragically upon
His inward vision and thrilled His soul so strangely? It was
the outward form of the Cross — made, as one has said, of
collision and paradox, — which was destined to give the final shape
and contour to His dedicated spirit of complete surrender to the
will and purpose of the Heavenly Father. The self-giving which
had hitherto characterized His Ministry was now to be touched
into absolute sacrifice of self. In a general manner Jesus had
apprehended the whole body of ethical truth and spiritual re
lationship in the temptation which met Him at the beginning of
His public life ; but, as light is manifested only when it impinges
upon an object, so the inner implications and practical issues of
truth are perceived only when it is applied to the concrete prob
lems of life. After His collisions with the authorities and
leaders of national life, Jesus could not but foresee the inevitable,
grim results of His struggle against the falsehood and formalism
of His age. From the Mountain so exceedingly high, whereon
He had in spirit repelled the Satanic suggestion to pursue a
political ideal, Jesus may have seen in the far distance the
possibility of suffering such as ever confronts the true Servant
of God; but then, in subsequent months, the winding path of
His experience as He pursued His tasks was not unattractive
and void of gracious episodes : now, however, He had come to
a point of elevation, — the green pastures and still waters were
all passed by, — and looking forward and downward He saw a
dreary, hard road, at the end of which there stood the shameful
gallows. The world's greatest benefactors have been its suffer
ers — men and women who have dedicated their lives to noble
enthusiasms and worthy ends. The element of spiritual value
in such remediable suffering is not the blind, brute endurance
of unescapable physical afflictions, but the voluntary sacrifice
of self in varying degrees for the good of nations. The Hebrew
prophets were martyrs of righteousness, who by their loyalty
to Jehovah formed a spiritual Israel — a real Church within the
nation. No one will imagine that the fidelity unto death of
Socrates, in his resolute quest for truth, has been without be
neficent effect in the intellectual progress of the world. And as
we think- of Galileo, Dante, Milton, and a host of others,
270 The Rejected King
we perceive that suffering has been an unescapable condition
of intellectual and spiritual advancement. At the head of these
roadmakers of history stands Jesus, who declared " I am the
Way," — unique in greatness, preeminent in suffering. With their
indisputable claim to greatness, we cannot but detect at times,
in the lives of Jeremiah and all who are represented by the
tremendous dramatic character of Job, a certain querulous in
terrogation and complaint: so that we are more than half in
clined to accept the Greek notion of a Nemesis working at times
slowly and secretly, at times openly and climactically, in aveng
ing some hidden wrong or turbulent pride in its victims. " For
a message, newly sent from snow-crowned Parnassus, hath
darted like a flash, bidding us do all to track the unknown man.
Deep in the woodland wild he roams, 'mid caves and rocks, e'en
as a bull forlorn and wretched on a path of woe, seeking to
shun the oracle spoken at earth's centre; but it lives on for aye
and hovers round him ever." x The uniqueness of the Sufferings
of Jesus lay in His marvellous freedom of all consciousness of
personal sin, so that He did not regard His inflictions as bearing
aught of punishment for Himself. Having already fought the
inward battle and conquered all self-will, this Man of Sorrows
now looked forward to a fate of unexcelled ignominy, not
indeed without inward tremors and tense excitement of spirit,
but with unwavering courage and moral conviction of Truth
and Right.
5. But the work that Jesus had to do depended upon His dis
ciples as well as on Himself; the end in view was not merely
one of self-discipline, but also the training of the Twelve : hence,
He suddenly awoke from His reverie, and startled His gloomy,
vacillating followers with the inquiry, " Who do men say that I
am ? " We have learned already that the apparent egotism of
Jesus was but the mask of noblest altruism: such a question
sprang not from the common disease of vanity, but from His
consciousness of Himself as the revelation of God's Reign in
the world. How far this question was simply an introduction
to the more pertinent one that followed, and how far it arose
from a real desire to know what men were saying about His
work, cannot be decided with any exactitude. Jesus certainly
could not have been indifferent to the attitude of the people, since
1 CEdipus the King, by Sophocles, trans, by E. P. Coleridge,
Peter's Confession at Caesarea Philippi 271
their tone of speech about Himself was clearly indicative of
their moral relationship toward God. He knew that many were
keenly disappointed in that He refused to be the Messiah of
political hopes ; but now He learned from His disciples that there
were still a number of thoughtful people who believed Him to be
a great prophet like John the Baptist, Elijah or Jeremiah; that,
while the Pharisees and leaders of the national life ascribed to
Him some devilish inspiration, some of the people believed that
He was divinely commissioned as a Messenger of truth. But
this reply from His disciples evoked a more direct appeal:
" But you — who do you say that I am?" It was a moment of
supreme importance in the discipline of the Twelve — a fact
manifest in the emotion betrayed by the Master. He had stripped
from their minds, or had sought to strip from their minds, every
vestige of the popular delusion about His Messianic functions;
and now He thrust upon them the suggestion that He is the
Messiah in a deeper, nobler and more spiritual way. Jesus longed
to have them believe in Him, since the Kingdom of God hinged
upon this faith; and until they had acknowledged Him to be
the true Christ, it was impossible to make them understand what
work He had to do. In the momentary silence which followed,
their very hearts were searched with the vibrant appeal; there
was no escape from the constraint of this solemn interrogation.
However long the silence seemed, it really endured only a few
moments : then Simon, touched by the exaltation of the Master's
mood, spoke as one in ecstasy, " Thou art the Christ," adding,
maybe, St. Matthew's phrase, " the Son of the living God." It
was a Divine revelation to the man — a flash of intuition, which
drew into itself the best thoughts, feelings and experiences of
the past two years. The lowly origin of the Carpenter, the
familiarity of daily intercourse, the shocks of disappointment,
the delay of hopes making the heart sick, the haughty repudia
tion of Jesus by the authorized teachers of Israel, and the ebbing
tide of His popularity in Galilee, might have almost justified a
fisherman's inability to decide this momentous question. But, in
spite of all doubts and dread uncertainties, there was that in
Simon's soul which leapt up in answer to the Master's word,
— leal-heartedness and a sudden sense of the greatness of the
Reality in Jesus ; — impelled by this Spirit, he trampled down all
doubts, all prudent cautions and reservations, and burst out in
enthusiastic confession of faith and loyalty. St. John, if he
272 The Rejected King
records the same moment, gives a variant report, but a confession
essentially identical with that in the Synoptics, " For our part
we have believed and know that Thou art the Holy One of God."
6. We make no unprovable claim that our Lord's recorded
reply reproduces His very words; but who can doubt that this
impassioned eulogy breathes the passionate gratitude which filled
the heart of Jesus at that moment?
" Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona !
For flesh and blood did not reveal that to thee;
It was My Father who is in heaven.
And I tell thee,
Thou art Peter; and on this rock I will build My community,
And the gates of hades shall not prevail against it.
I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,
And whatsoever thou shalt prohibit on earth shall be prohibited in
heaven ;
And whatever thou shalt permit on earth shall be permitted in heaven."
Only the nausea of endless controversy could suggest that this
text is an ecclesiastical invention; for, while it gives the im
pression of naturalness on the lips of Jesus and harmonizes with
our general notion of His character, it seems utterly beyond the
scope of apostolic imagination. The mere juxtaposition of Jesus'
swift rebuke of Simon's subsequent remonstrance with this glow
ing eulogy, is sufficient to vindicate the Gospels from all accusa
tions of unveracity and romance; but this matchless tribute of
praise and the stern censure are recorded because Jesus actually
uttered them. This encomium is the overflow of the Master's
joyous appreciation of faith; it is not the artificial product of
theological reasoning; it is patently the spontaneous, glad recog
nition of the disciple's assured faith. We wonder not to detect
the thrill of ecstasy in the answer of Jesus, for the whole purpose
of His Ministry had been to lead His followers up to this faith.
His cause was now assured ; His Church should be built upon the
character created by this confession; He no longer doubts the
capacity and reliability of the men whom Simon represented:
but to Simon himself, as the confessing apostle, He promises the
keys of His community and the power of legislating for His
Church. It is but just to the claims of some distinguished
scholars to acknowledge that the clause relating to the building
Peter's Confession at Caesarea Philippi 273
of His Church (nai inl ravrr) ry nirpnt oixodo^aco fxov rr\v
exxXtjeiav) is regarded as a late interpolation in St. Matthew,
or as evidence of the late date of his gospel. No author before
Tertullian refers to it; and such an omission, by advocates of
the Petrine authority of the Roman Church, is well-nigh un
accountable if the clause be authentic. Wendt ventures to recon
struct the passage thus : " Happy art thou, Simon Bar-Jona.
Thou art Peter, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against
thee." Another distinguished scholar writes, " It is not a ques
tion of whether Jesus gathered a circle of intimate companions,
whom He trained to propagate His ideas, or of how far He
anticipated a future career for them which would involve His
memory and spirit as their religious authority. The question is
whether, with His belief in His own speedy return and the
evident limits by which His outlook was beset, Jesus could have
laid down the details of an ecclesiastical structure x which pre
supposed a settled and expanding future; in a word, whether
Jesus, the religious Idealist, the prophet, the martyr, was also
the religious organizer." It is sufficient at this point to state
what we shall seek to prove in a subsequent chapter, that Jesus
did look forward to the future, and prepare for its needs by
consciously laying the foundations of His Church.
7. The fact of tremendous moment upon which stress must
be laid is that Jesus accepted the terms of Simon's confession;
and thus, while He repudiates the popular conception of the Mes
sianic work, He claimed explicitly to be the true Messiah. Baur,
in his historical survey of the origins of Christianity, lays em
phasis upon this Messianic idea in the teaching of Jesus and in
the growth of the Church as central, organic and conservative
in the new Religion. He says, " Had not the Messianic Idea,
the idea in which Jewish hopes had their profoundest expression,
fixed itself on the Person of Jesus, and caused Him to be regarded
as the Messiah, who had come for the redemption of His people,
and in whom the promise to the fathers was fulfilled, the belief
in Him could never have had a power of such far-reaching in
fluence in history." 2 There are not a few who believe it would
have been wiser had Jesus discarded a title marked by ambiguity
and limitation. But Jesus did not cut Himself off from the
'Matt. xvi. 18; xviii. I5f.
* The First Three Christian Centuries, vol. i., p. 37, Eng. Ed,
274 The Rejected King
historic past. He came to fulfil, not to destroy; He saw the
Divine preparation in the election and discipline of Israel, and
sought to conserve and complete all that " the Law and the
Prophets " had begun. The reproach of the Jews fell upon Him
not because He called Himself the Messiah, but because He
definitely and insistently repudiated the accepted interpretation
of the Messianic office. It was no new claim that He suddenly
sprang upon His unprepared disciples; at Caesarea Philippi He
only drew into explicit utterance what had been implied from
the beginning of His Ministry. There was nothing novel in
the application of this name to Jesus, for the disciples had fol
lowed Him because they hoped it was He who should be the
Messiah. But the true inwardness and originality of Simon's
confession lay in the faith that Jesus was the true and only
Christ, in spite of His renunciation of political and temporal
power. The silence of Jesus during all the previous months
about His Messiahship was due to no uncertainty in His own
mind, but to the danger involved in any premature emphasis
upon a title so full of political significance in that age. It was
one of the things that the disciples could not bear until they had
passed the crisis at Capernaum which resulted in the rejection
of Jesus by the leaders of the people. But the time had come
for the breaking through of all reserve, for the declaration of
the full self-consciousness of Jesus. How utterly immune from
fanaticism He was in making this claim becomes apparent as we
study the meaning He put into it.
8. The self-disclosure of Jesus was graduated and fitted to
meet the advancing intelligence and moral growth of His dis
ciples. By His teaching Jesus had made the purely national
ideal of the Messiah the vehicle of a mighty spiritual claim to
be King over men's minds and hearts. As He appropriated the
title, He transformed its content by associating it anew with the
Isaianic conception of the Suffering Servant of Jehovah. As
Prince Gautama in India had received the ideal-title of the
Buddha — " the enlightened One " J — so Jesus received this national
1 " But here is the difference between Buddhism and Christianity.
There is no trace of Messianic prophecies in India. The expectation of
a Buddha has never been traced in pre-Buddhistic writings. All we can
say is that the idiomatic phrase of 'the blind will see, and the lame will
walk,' existed in the ancient language of India, and was adopted by the
Buddhists like many others." Max Miiller, Physical Religion, app. xv.
Peter's Confession at Caesarea Philippi 275
title of " the anointed One," and by His teaching and life gave it
a connotation as broad as humanity. In claiming to be the Mes
siah, Jesus did but explicate the official consciousness in His self-
chosen name — the Son of Man ; and it is by the correlation and
interpenetration of these two titles that we read aright the mean
ing of each. As Son of Man Jesus identified Himself with our
race ; yet as His disciples grew more and more impressed by His
transcendence, uniqueness and preeminence, they chose to call
Him the Son of God. Israel had been regarded as Jehovah's
Son; and, in applying this name to Jesus, the disciples gave an
implied recognition to the fact that in Him all the spiritual value
of the chosen race was embodied. In confessing Jesus to be the
Son of God the disciples spoke, not as schoolmen, but simply as
enthusiastic believers in their Lord Jesus, expressing thus their
ineradicable conviction that He was divinely sent to bring in the
Reign of God. And in every succeeding age, as men have sought
some formula of confession, to answer the question Jesus asked
at Caesarea Philippi, they have been forced back again and again
upon the inspired language of the Galilean fisherman : " Thou art
the Christ, the Son of the living God." After passing through
the whole gamut of speculation concerning the mystery of His
personality, and after unconsciously reproducing all the succes
sion of insights and errors which have been tested by the Church
Councils, men confess that for them Jesus is the Son of Man
and the Son of God. Although we are indebted not a little to
Simon Peter for his brave loyalty and inspired intuition at
Caesarea Philippi, it must not be imagined that he and his fellow-
disciples were emancipated at once from the thraldom of con
ventional opinions; they had to work out their own salvation in
subsequent trials, fighting doubts, vacillations and the despondency
of temporary defeat. Still, it remains true that the minds of these
disciples had been caught up by the breath of Divine inspiration,
and they were given a revelation of the real office of Jesus as
the Spiritual Messiah of our race. This glorious intuition was
simply the fore-gleam of that enduring illumination attained
unto through the experience of the chrism of the Holy Spirit;
and when the Pentecost had fully come, the disciples entered into
the heritage of this faith, which had been so slowly acquired.
And in face of the strong humanitarian naturalism of modern
thought, we see not how we can abandon the historicity of this
revelation of the Christhood of Jesus and yet retain the dis-
276 The Rejected King
tinctive and dynamical faith of the Christian religion. Once
admit that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah and, unless His
sanity be denied, this admission carries with it an indubitable
proof of His transcendence, and a whole series of implications
belonging to faith in the supernatural.
CHAPTER V
THE MESSIAH'S FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE
PASSION1
i. The consciousness of Jesus that He was the Messiah,
whether due to intuition or the result of study of the Old Testa
ment and meditation upon the prophecies, shows that He believed
Himself to fulfil the chief end of Israel's Divine election: — the
purpose wherewith God had chosen Abraham was realized in
Jesus of Nazareth. This claim to be the Messiah was an ex
pression of the continuity of Divine revelation in the history of
mankind, and a disclosure of the mediatorial significance of
Christ's person. When the implications of this claim to be the
Messiah are thought out, we find ourselves in possession of a
philosophy of history, and learn, too, that St. Paul's argument
concerning the Divine " Prothesis " was logically involved in the
self-consciousness of Jesus. " This is the true theodicy, the
justification of God in history. The human spirit is capable of
being reconciled with the course of past and present history
only when it sees that that which has happened and which is
daily happening has been and is, not only not without God, but
in an essential sense the work of God Himself." 2 In Hebrew
thought and hopes, the Messianic ideal was national and limited ;
but in the mind of Jesus the national ideal effloresced into a reali
zation of the Divine idea or plan in the whole of humanity.
In calling Himself the Messiah, therefore, Jesus of Nazareth re
nounced not only the marring selfishness of individualism, but
also the national delimitation of the ideal. As the Son of Man
He perceived the Spirit and purpose of God in all men, and said,
" Lo, I am come to do thy will, O God ! " The seeming egoism
in the repeated claims of Jesus to be the Messiah sprang from
this law of obedience to the Divine Will. We have seen that it
was with infinite carefulness that He trained His disciples, strip-
'Mark viii. 31; ix. 1; Matt. xvi. 21-28; Luke ix. 22-27.
' Hegel, Philosophy of the State and of History, An Exposition by G. S.
Morris, p. 306. 277
278 The Rejected King
ping their minds of popular misconceptions, in which even John
the Baptist shared, and yet so preparing them that in the hour
of disappointment and disillusionment Simon avowed their belief
that He was, nevertheless, the true Messiah of God. But the
eulogy that reveals the Master's joy in this confession is fol
lowed by a prohibition of any immediate annunciation of His
office by the disciples. He would fain avoid any premature
step which might revive popular belief in His political power and
precipitate the hostility of the Pharisees into open violence. The
next stage in the instruction of His disciples consisted in explain
ing the suffering which God's Anointed was called upon to pass
through. From this time, as the two first evangelists show, a
momentous change came into the character of Christ's teaching.
He began to teach and show what things were about to befall
Him.1 There was a danger that in the following days Simon
and His companions might lose the fine spiritual vision of the
Ideal ; and then, remembering only that the Master had accepted
the Messianic ideal, they might become obsessed by materialistic
hopes and fond dreams of imperial glory. Such false optimism
would impart a new boldness to their demeanour ; but if this began
to appear, Jesus at once repressed it by teaching that the Messiah
was to be rejected and killed. Herein is seen the wonderful
originality of Jesus. In an age immersed in popular delusions
concerning the restoration of the Davidic dynasty, He alone
perceived the meaning and application of the gracious, sad
prophecy that Jehovah's Servant must suffer and die.
2. With almost prophetic insight Plato had described the
conflict between justice and injustice in the world, between truth
and popular delusions, issuing in a destiny of suffering for
anyone who realized the perfect ideal of justice: "They will tell
you that the just man who is thought unjust will be scourged,
racked, bound — will have his eyes burnt out; and at last, after
suffering every kind of evil, he will be impaled." 2 Jesus, too,
has learned this strange, sad lesson ; and, having surrendered His
own will to the Father's, He was willing to suffer as well as
teach, to die as well as heal; and He now began to prepare His
disciples for this end. Inquiry is sometimes made as to when
Jesus Himself first gained a clear prevision of the final tragedy ;
* Mark, nal f/ptjaro diddoitstv; Matt., airo rdre rjpS-aro 'Irjaobi ieutviieiv, K. T. /.,
2 Plato, Jowett's trans., bk. ii., 361.
First Announcement of the Passion 279
to this we have no conclusive answer. During His temptation
in the wilderness, as He paused awhile on the threshold of His
Ministry, He saw clearly the alternative ideals of a political
Messiahship such as was demanded by the populace, and a
spiritual ministry of pure goodness in absolute obedience to the
Divine Will. Voluntarily, Jesus preferred this and rejected that;
and, instead of relying upon the favour of the fickle people, He
went to His work saying, " Uphold me by Thy free spirit." We
do not think that He saw all the events which were to happen
at the end of His Ministry, although, through the absence of
chronological arrangement in the Gospels, and through the
natural proneness of the evangelists to interpret sayings and
deeds in the light of the latest developments, contrary views on
this matter are inevitable. Had He foreseen the Passion and
the Cross as certain from the beginning, there would have been
a histrionic or docetic character in His earlier attempts to per
suade the Jews to accept Him as their Spiritual Messiah. There
was a great difference between the first and the last parts of His
Ministry. At the beginning the gracious form of the Son of
Man moves in a golden light of morning; we seem to perceive
a radiant joy in His presence as He walks with His disciples
among the Galilean hills; at the end the sky is darkened, and
the scene is that of a winter's stormy night, and He appears
as the Man of Sorrows. The one abiding principle of His Min
istry was His voluntary subjection to the will of His Heavenly
Father. Any presentiment or prophetic anticipation of a tragic
end, which may have sometimes shadowed His thought, belonged
rather to His subliminal consciousness and not to His wakeful
and surface self. It appears as though He really grasped the
thought of His passion and death at the time of His withdrawal
from Galilee into heathen territory, when He felt so keenly dis
appointed with those who had listened to His teaching. It
seemed to Him that a great turning-point had come to Jerusalem ;
and when, by-and-by, He draws nigh and sees the city, He weeps
over it, because its citizens had let pass a glorious opportunity.
Even at the very end, He appears to have imagined that it might
still be possible for His Father to spare Him the bitter cup ; and
this prayer of His in Gethsemane clashes somewhat with His
clear forecast of His death made six months before. But while
in the development of a drama, the process has a beginning, a
middle, and an end, and the progress is always clearly seen from
280 The Rejected King
stage to stage, the development of a soul's actual history is
marked by many irregularities of movement, subtleties and ap
parent contradictions; for life is larger than logic, and often
presents phases that are hard to reconcile. Hence it is not
improbable that at some place near Caesarea Philippi, and at a time
separated but a little from the moment of Peter's Confession,
Jesus gave a clear and precise statement that He should suffer
and die a violent death. This prediction will afford some readers
a decisive proof of His possession of supernatural knowledge;
although, when we recall the struggles and conflicts Jesus had
passed through, and if we believe that Caiaphas had already given
his diabolic counsel that one should die for the nation, we find it
not unnatural that Jesus should have foreseen the violent nature
of His approaching death and the real authors of it — " the elders,
and the high-priests and the scribes." What intensity of bitter
ness must have been added to our Lord's sense of failure
by the fore-knowledge that He would be murdered by the legiti
mate representatives of the whole Jewish nation !
3. St. Mark makes it plain that this announcement of His
approaching Passion was uttered, not once only, but again and
again, so that His disciples should cherish no lingering doubts.
He spoke of His death as necessary : " The Son of Man must
(8 si) suffer much, and be rejected and be killed, and after
three days rise again." Was this necessity an external inevitable
ness or a supernatural compulsion? Theologians are tempted to
read a doctrinal significance into the word " must " ; for ourselves,
it implies the moral compulsion Jesus realized in His own soul
to be faithful unto the end. He felt that He must go forward
even unto death, not as an obstinate fanatic, but as one who was
determined to obey His Heavenly Father. The necessity lay
primarily in -God's Will, and secondarily in the contradiction and
antagonism to that Will offered by sinful men. It is of highest
importance to observe the natural and close connection between
the disciple's confession that Jesus was the Christ of God, and
this declaration that as Messiah He must suffer and die at the
hands of the national leaders of Israel. Simon was shocked
by what seemed to him a grievous mood of pessimism, and
taking hold of Jesus he began to chide Him, saying : " God for
bid ! this never shall befall Thee ! " But the impetuous remon
strance is checked by a stern and terrible censure :
First Announcement of the Passion 281
" Get behind Me, Satan ! Thou art a hindrance to Me !
Thy mind is not on the affairs of God, but on the affairs of men 1 "
Simon's headlong words stirred a tumult in the breast of the
Son of Man, and tempted Him over again to choose an easier
way than that of the Cross : hence the startling and vehement
rebuke, which seems to us scarce merited by the impetuous,
errant disciple. At the same time the condemnation was intended
not merely for this one man, but for all who imagined that the
Messiah could not fail and suffer and die; and as Jesus uttered
it, He turned and looked upon all the company. The unrivalled
supremacy of Jesus makes us diffident in speaking of the struggles
He passed through ; and yet the Gospels show clearly that He had
to fight and agonize with temptations until" the eve of His Cruci
fixion. He had to deal not only with the hostility of the rulers
and Pharisees, but the still more difficult solicitations of His
own friends. Evidently the ardent dissuasions of worldly-
minded disciples made it harder for Jesus to refuse the allure
ments of a low and material Messianism.
4. Wherefore ought Messiah to suffer and die? Notwith
standing His swift censure of Simon's remonstrance, Jesus Him
self had to find some answer to this inquiry. The full meaning
of this sacrifice was probably unfolded only in a gradual manner
as He stepped forward to meet the Cross. The first clear fact
about this moral necessity was found in the universal law of
sacrifice that conditions every advance in the higher history of
man. St. Mark states J that Jesus called the multitude and began
to inculcate this principle upon them ; but this seems like a con
fusion of the original scene, as Jesus at this time was making a
private journey, and devoting Himself especially to the instruc
tion of the Twelve. The logion itself carries conviction of its
authenticity: "If any man is minded (SiA.cz) to come after Me,
let him disown himself (anapvijodsBGO eavTov)a.nd let him take
up his cross and follow Me. For whoever is minded to save his
life shall lose it; but whoever shall lose his life for My sake
and the Gospel's shall save it. For what profit is it for a man to
gain the whole world and forfeit his life? For what could a
man give in exchange for his life? For whoever is ashamed of
Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of
' Mark viii. 34-38.
282 The Rejected King
him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed when He comes in
His Father's Glory with the holy angels." And He said to
them, " Truly I say to you, that there are some of those standing
here who shall not taste death until they see the coming of God's
reign in power." With characteristic leniency toward the dis
ciples, St. Luke omits the Lord's censure of Simon, and, by in
troducing the word " daily," makes the cross-bearing refer to the
common experiences of ethical life. But whatever the exact
phraseology may have been, it is evident that Jesus treats His
passion and death as a supreme instance of a universal moral
law ; He died to live. Only by suppressing the selfish and lower
impulses can man gain advance in his nobler and higher nature.
There is an infinite value in the soul which makes a struggle
against the lower nature a moral obligation. The pagan ideal
of self-culture does not carry life to such a height as Christ's
law of self-sacrifice. Then, too, sorrow enters into every life as
a Divine discipline, and in following Jesus this discipline is not
relaxed; it is intensified. The Master's repugnance to self-in
dulgence, however, never led Him into a doctrine of asceticism.
In following Him, men pursue no artificial quest for suffering;
but crises will come to them when the pain to be endured shall
be as that borne by a man who carries the cross by which he
is to die a death of fearful shame. Besides the inward struggle
to be faithful to God's will, Christ's disciples would suffer
antagonism from the world. There is ever a conflict going on
between the spirit of Truth and the spirit of the world; reason
will clash with tradition, spirituality of aim with men's self-
glorification ; and in this strife the followers of Jesus must evince
a moral heroism that will not shrink even from martyrdom.
Thus did Jesus associate His sufferings and death with the
experiences shared by His disciples, and as the patient Servant
of God He interpreted all these things as processes whereby God
is cleansing and elevating the lives of men.
5. But, even in this coordination of Christ's sufferings with
the heroic sacrifices made by His followers, we come upon a
feature which differentiates Him from all others; for their
trouble and cross-bearing are due to their resolution to come
after Him. Should the phrase " for My sake " be eliminated from
this passage, the idea it expresses occurs too habitually in Christ's
teaching for us not to see in it a supreme motive for self-
First Announcement of the Passion 283
sacrifice in the disciples' attachment to His person. Confession
of His Messiahship will inevitably lead them to pain, struggle
and death; but this does not prevent Jesus from claiming this
confession. He claims more than any other ; He speaks not only
as prophet and martyr, but as Messiah and Lord. He calls men
to renounce mere earthly felicity and success, in order that they
may follow Him, although obedience to His call would bring
perpetual cross-bearing. The character of His Person gives a
preeminent value to His death. He is the author and finisher
of our faith. If these words were spoken in the hearing of the
crowd, none of them would follow Him farther under the de
lusion of gaining temporal profit. There are other features in
His voluntary endurance of pain and death which will, however,
disclose themselves to us as we trace the farther progress of
His Ministry.
6. Connected with this first announcement of His Passion is
the exultant certitude of His Resurrection. It is not to be
wondered at that many should surmise that this triumphant
anticipation was created and interpolated after the faith in His
Resurrection had possessed the Christian Church. However,
these words are apparently as authentic as the prediction of His
death ; and if we credit the one it is questionable if we have any
right to reject the other. For myself, I confess if the Lord did
rise from the dead, it is no difficult thing to believe that He fore
saw His Resurrection. Jesus was bound to ask, if death was
inevitable, what then would become of Himself, and what in
fluence would His death ultimately wield for men. It seems plain
enough that Jesus anticipated a final triumph; and this it was
that deceived the disciples. There are two other difficulties which
meet us as we consider this matter : Would not the clear prevision
of His Resurrection rob suffering of all its bitterness? Our only
answer is, Yes, indeed, were the suffering only physical ; but we
find in the Passion of Christ a spiritual anguish which is un
paralleled, and therefore inscrutable to our understanding. But
if Jesus thus .so clearly foretold His Resurrection on the third
day, how is it that the prediction occurred to no one of the dis
ciples at the time of His death? So far as can now be known,
they were so. entirely obsessed by dreams of His world-triumph
as the Jewish Messiah, that His anticipations of death and resur
rection after Simon's first horror must have been treated as
284 The Rejected King
metaphors, or vague figures of speech, whose meaning they could
only dimly guess at. While we feel all the force of these
natural difficulties, and wonder how the evangelists failed to
perceive the objections that were bound to arise, it is our belief
that Jesus actually saw the light beyond the tomb, and spoke of
His Resurrection and apocalyptic glory.
BOOK VI
SELF-DEDICATION UNTO DEATH
CHAPTER I
THE TRANSFIGURATION
i. The momentous confession of Simon at Caesarea Philippi,
together with the glorification of Jesus on the Mount, constitutes
one of the watersheds of His Ministry; and from this elevation
the mind glances forward to the self-sacrifice of the Cross. But
since criticism must precede all our attempts to reconstruct the
broken image of Christ's Ministry, it may be at once acknowledged
that the exceptional character of this incident of the Transfigura
tion has necessarily provoked considerable scepticism about its
historicity; and not a few Christian scholars have sought refuge
in the notion that it is a piece of imaginative symbolism. Once
again Buddhist literature affords a parallel with the Gospel story ;
just as Shakyamuni passed through his temptation under the
Bodhi-tree without being overawed or injured by the fierce hatred
of the evil spirits, so he is also said to have passed through a
transfiguration similar to that of Jesus. " And the Tathagata's
body appeared shining like a flame, and he was beautiful above
all expression. . . . The Blessed One said, There are two
occasions on which a Tathagata's appearance becomes clear and
exceeding bright: In the night, Ananda, in which a Tathagata
(' Perfect One ') attains to the supreme and perfect insight, and
in the night in which he passes finally away in that utter passing
away which leaves nothing whatever of his earthly existence to
remain." J This parallel in the story of Gautama has shaken the
faith of many in the New Testament incident; but the late
Prof. F. Max Miiller pointed out that such duplications might
just as reasonably be treated as corroborations of Christianity:
" If I do find in certain Buddhist works doctrines identically the
same as in Christianity, so far from being frightened, I feel
delighted; for surely truth is not the less true because it is be
lieved by the majority of the human race." Gautama was one
1 " The Sacred Books of the East " : The Mahaparinibbanasuttanta, iv.
47-52; The Book of the Great Decease, vol. xi.
287
288 Self-Dedication unto Death
of the unconscious prophets of the Gospel; and his life and
teaching, both in form and substance, in spite of the radical
defect of all Buddhism, was a veritable foreshadowing of the
Divine Ideal.1 The Story of the Transfiguration must be tested,
as the records of other miracles, by the laws of historical evi
dence, and the supreme presumption for belief will be found in its
inherent harmony with our general impression of Jesus. Like
Simmias, we feel all the difficulties, but we dare not allow these
to prevent us from making full inquiry into all the evidences
accessible. " I feel myself (and I daresay that you have the
same feeling) how hard, or rather impossible, is the attainment
of any certainty about questions such as .these in the present
life. And yet I should deem him a coward who did not prove
what is said about them to the uttermost, or whose heart failed
him before he had examined them on every side. For he should
persevere until he has achieved one of two things: either he
should discover or be taught the truth about them; or, if this
be impossible, I would have him take the best and most irref
ragable of human theories, and let this be the raft upon which
he sails through life — not without risk, as I admit, if he cannot
find some word of God which will more surely and safely carry
him." 2 The Divine Word which shall prove our guide amid the
perils of the historical investigation of the Gospels is, as we have
already proved, the actual impression made upon the mind by
Jesus in all that we certainly know of Him.
2. Some rationalists of a by-gone day, sensitive to the cumula
tive presumptions of truth in the threefold repetition of the
Transfiguration narrative,3 made a rather bizarre suggestion
that the story arose from a meeting between Jesus and two white-
robed Essene friends on a mountain at night. Subsequent criti
cism connected the scene with the oracle of the coming of a
prophet " like unto Moses," making out that in this association
Jesus would be mythically assimilated to his great forerunner
1 " I must confess that I was startled also when I read for the first
time that at the incarnation of Buddha, ' a great light appeared, the blind
received their sight, the deaf heard a noise, the dumb spake one with an
other, the crooked became straight, the lame walked,' etc. But on more
careful consideration, I soon found that this phrase, as it occurs in Bud
dhism and Christianity, had its independent antecedents in the tradition
both of Judaea and of India." Max Miiller, Physical Religion, p. 392.
tPheedo, 85, Jowett's trans.
•Mark ix. 2-13; Matt. xvii. 1-13; Luke ix. 28-36.
The Transfiguration 289
by becoming the subject of a glorious illumination. Even ortho
dox divines have inferred from St. Luke's mention of the dis
ciples being heavy with sleep, that the scene must have been
" visionary." God might use a dream of the three disciples as a
medium of revelation, just as in the dim dawn of Israel's history
Jacob had been awakened to the Divine mystery by a dream.
Should this dream-theory gain a wide acceptance, it would be
inferred that since one identical vision filled the minds of the
disciples, Jesus may have wielded a hypnotic influence and sugges
tion over them, the bright visitants from the celestial world being
but the visualized forms of Christ's own thoughts. Yet it may
be that, after long and careful examination of all the criticisms
and hypotheses, the mind will swing back to the belief that,
however inexplicable the incident, it really occurred as described
in the Gospels. One strong presumption against its historicity
is the omission of this narrative from the Fourth Gospel. This
story would have given some support to Abbe Loisy's unproved
hypothesis, that " the Johannine Christ is presented as a trans
cendent Being, who is not of this earth, and who seems to speak
and act only to satisfy the terms of His definition, to prove that
He is God and one with God." x There may be an allusion, how
ever, to this incident in the assurance which underlies the whole
Gospel, " And we beheld His majesty, majesty such as the only Son
has from the Father full of grace and truth." Moreover, it is not
incredible that memories of this glory blended in later years with
the Patmos visions of St. John. Our uncertainty concerning the
real authorship of the Second Epistle of St. Peter prevents us
from laying much stress upon the testimony found in it of the
Transfiguration; although, if we accept Professor Ramsay's
suggestion 2 that the author was a pupil of Peter's, who repro
duced his master's teaching in new and later circumstances, the
definite allusion to the glorification of Jesus acquires great weight
as historical evidence. The self-effacing author writes, " We
were admitted to the spectacle of His majesty. For He received
from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a
voice to Him from the excellent glory, This is My Beloved Son, in
whom I am well-pleased : and this voice we heard out of heaven,
when we were with Him in the holy mount." 3 The force of this
1 Autour d'un petit livre, pp. 90, 91. Quoted by Rev. Vincent McNabb,
O. P., Expos. Times, January, 1907.
* The Church in the Roman Empire, pp. 492, 493. s II Peter i. 16-18.
290 Self-Dedication unto Death
testimony is heightened in that it follows the well-known pro
testation that believers did not follow cleverly devised myths.
Still, those who are compelled to look upon the story as a gracious
legend, alike with those who treat it as historical, may find in
it great lessons and spiritual meanings, although they lose its
significance for the Mind of Jesus Himself.
3. In adopting the position that the account of the Trans
figuration is historically trustworthy, we neither dismiss the
difficulties belonging to it nor escape the obligation of offering
some interpretation either as a natural or as a preternatural
occurrence. We cannot lift it bodily beyond the range of his
torical criticism by merely terming it an idealization of some
natural phenomenon; it has to be judged according to the canons
of all literary and historical compositions. It is quite true that
the first reporters of this scene were without the scientific train
ing which would be demanded in modern literature ; and there can
be little question that had a Gibbon or a Strauss related the
incident, it would have taken a different form. And yet the
differences which would mark a twentieth-century account might
not result altogether from increased intellectual acumen, but in
part they would spring from changed presuppositions. There is
strong probability that the first oral testimony of the Transfigura
tion came from the three who are said to have participated in
it; and whatever may have been their failings as witnesses,
Professor Paul Wernle's words are applicable to them at this
point as much as at any other : " The apostles were animated by
a lofty self-consciousness. They felt themselves to be the repre
sentatives of Jesus. They were continuing His work; as am
bassadors for Christ they were ambassadors for God." x That
this sense of solemn responsibility was transmitted to the evan
gelists is shown by the frank, earnest preface to the Third
Gospel with its statement of the writer's method and aim. Some
times the prohibition given to the three disciples against any pre
mature communication of this marvellous incident until Jesus
had died and risen again is treated as though it meant that they
never gave any authoritative account of it. But if, as suggested,
the story be fictitious, in what school did the artists learn their
sobriety and restraint which give so much of the air of matter-
of-factness to this invention? What possible motive could there
1 Beginnings of Christianity (Eng. trans.), vol. i., p. 119.
The Transfiguration 291
be for fabrication and for a prohibition which could have no
application whatever? It is easier to accept the mystery than
to repudiate its historicity.
4. Whether the phenomena of the Transfiguration were
objectively real or of the nature of a vision, must be decided
on the grounds of internal evidence, although we strenuously
resist any suggestion that the term " vision " connotes unreality.
Analysis of the most ordinary sensuous perception results in a
discovery of factors and processes which are as subjective as the
play of faculty implied in describing the phenomena of spiritual
vision. It is no easy task to draw a line of demarcation between
sensuous and spiritual experience; and any clear-cut separation
of subjective and objective factors in the mind's apprehension of
phenomena is forbidden by enlightened psychology. There seem
to be realms of consciousness where the familiar distinctions be
tween matter and spirit fade away; where it appears that a
kindling and fusion of sensuous and spiritual activities take place.
Thus, for example, in the conversion of Saul of Tarsus it must
ever remain a controvertible point whether the vision should be
described as subjective or objective; still, no such ambiguity
affects the explicit affirmation of St. Paul : " Last of all, as unto
one born out of due time, He appeared to me also." The eye
never sees what the mind is unprepared for. It may be that the
range of vision, even of sensuous perception, is marvellously
increased by the activity of faith. The three disciples had passed
through a period of preparation, and the vision of His glory
came only after they had confessed their faith that Jesus was
the Messiah. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and at times
it lifts the veil, and we become conscious of a real, personal,
Divine presence, and the mind is conscious of enlarged spiritual
capacity. To change the figure, the tides of the great ocean
of Divine life in which we live sweep into the little creeks of
human personality, and if our souls be not drugged with sensual
ism we awaken to glorious and inspiring vision. If, then, we
give provisional acceptance of the term " vision," we do not imply
the operation of hysteria or of hallucination; nor do we suppose
that the objective reality was absent in the Transfiguration of
our Lord.
5. Passing from introductory discussions concerning the man
ner of approaching such a narrative as this, we have next to trace
292 Self-Dedication unto Death
the definite steps in the sublime experience of Jesus which culmi
nated in His glorification. The first two evangelists state that
it was six days after the conversation of Jesus near Caesarea
Philippi concerning the Messiah's sufferings ; but the third affirms
eight days — perhaps six nights and two additional days; — and
this difference suggests that St. Luke may have had access to
some other source than that found in St. Mark's gospel. Jesus
took Peter, James and John up to a mountain " apart alone " ;
these three men constituted the inner circle of the disciple-band
by reason of their special aptitudes and responsiveness to Christ's
disclosures. The Master acted in accordance with the principle
of Divine election, choosing men endowed with certain qualities
and gifts that they might mediate the revelation for others.
And just as Confucius foresaw the probable fate of Tsze-Lu (the
Simon of his disciples), so Jesus may have anticipated the
courses of service and of martyrdom which would open for
these three men. While He followed the inward guidance of
the Spirit's voice, He was also yielding to His natural desire for
human sympathy. For a long time He had been seeking to train
His disciples for a more advanced reception of spiritual truth,
and the success He had attained in this brought Him nearer the
goal of His Ministry. The Transfiguration marks a crisis in
His own inward history ; it had a greater meaning and value for
Himself than it could possibly have for the disciples. In this
fact lies the secret of the difficulty all expositors have realized
in dealing with this incident ; they have felt its intrinsic grandeur,
and yet have garnered but a slender sheaf of spiritual lessons in
their treatment of it. The truth is, surely, that the Transfigura
tion was designed for the preparation of Jesus Himself, and only
secondarily for a revelation to the disciples. The transaction
between the Heavenly Father and the Son must remain mysteri
ous to us, since we fall short of the standard of manhood shown
in Christ; for all who desire to penetrate its secret there must
be asked " a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge
of Himself, the eyes of their understanding being enlightened."
The context of the incident in the Gospels is very significant;
the story lies in a framework of passion-discourses; it is pre
ceded and followed by Christ's own personal predictions of
suffering, death and resurrection. The Transfiguration was the
preparation of Christ for His exodus. On that mountain, Jesus
laid Himself like another Isaac on the altar, and He knew that
The Transfiguration 293
the sacrifice would be demanded. The very glory of the event
contains a hint of the struggle which had been going on in His
mind. Jesus was no impassive hero of a romantic history; He
was a Soul in the agony of a momentous spiritual transaction.
The hour had come when He was to make a voluntary dedication
of Himself for a sacrifice than which history knows no sublimer ;
and this self-consecration was destined to be met by a distinct
communication of Divine approval. St. Luke observes that it
was while Jesus was praying that the fashion of His countenance
was changed. Such repeated allusions to the Master's prayers
in the Third Gospel look like someone's authentic recollections
of the habitual communion of Jesus with His unseen Father.
Although it is characteristic of St. Luke to mention this ex
ercise, it must not be imagined that the Evangelist has ven
tured a pious invention. The fragmentary records of His ejacu-
latory praises and petitions reveal Him to us as the true Son of
Man conscious of His dependence upon the Divine Will. During
His wanderings He had wrestled with the dark spectres of the
mind, seeking for the guidance of His Heavenly Father. That
this was no docetic experience is manifest in the vehemence of
His censure of Simon's unconscious temptation of the Christ.
In effect the disciple had said, Why not live and triumph? Al
though this interrogation was clothed in all the sophistical plausi
bilities of self-love, Jesus had stripped away its disguises and
showed it to be a Satanic solicitation to renounce the Divine
appointment, devoting Himself whole-heartedly to a complete
obedience to the Will of the Heavenly Father. The stress and
strain of a prolonged struggle had left its mark upon Him, and
His retreat to the Mountain with the three disciples expressed
His craving for the sympathy both of friends and of God. He
would fain have had the men watch while He prayed. He had
already divined that His Passion was necessary for the estab
lishment of the Divine Reign on earth, and now He longed to
understand the Father's purpose in this predestined doom.
6. Tradition has identified the scene with Mount Tabor; but
it is possible that Jesus had led His disciples to some height
of the Hermon range, although the representation of a crowd
waiting at the foot of the hill suggests Galilee as the more
probable place. The main features of the story, however, are
quite unaffected by uncertainty concerning the locality. As if
294 Self-Dedication unto Death
in rehearsal of the drama of the Passion, the disciples were
heavy with sleep. Suddenly they became conscious of a wonder
ful change in Jesus : " He was transfigured before them." St.
Matthew says that His face shone as the sun; St. Luke, that
His raiment became white and flashed like lightning; St. Mark
graphically describes how His garments glittered like the sun
shine on shields,1 being exceedingly white — passing all whiteness
caused by art of man. The Jewish rabbis had said that one of
the attributes lost through Adam's fall was a glory of countenance
which reflected God's Presence. It creates a false antithesis
to say that the brilliance of Christ's Person was due either to a
Divine power acting upon Him or to the outshining of His own
moral excellence : the true characteristic of this metamorphosis
is the reciprocity of the Divine and the Human in Jesus. The
transcendent experiences of Jesus can be dimly penetrated by us
with the aid of analogies and approximations to such phenomena
in other lives. The soul seeks for self-expression; but its desire
is often hindered from fulfilment by the complex influences
of ancestry and conflicting passions ; were all obstructions re
moved the true character of every life would flash out through
the flesh. The sorrow of the past months may have clouded
the countenance of Jesus; the schism He had watched had
graven heavy lines upon His face. Great thoughts and noble
enthusiasms, however, tend to transfigure even the outward
person. We are all familiar with the colloquial expression about
the " lighting up " of the human face in moments of exalted
feeling. The change in Jesus was an objective experience,
visible to the disciples. Since He lived so wholly in the realm
of Spiritual realities, we do not dare attribute to Him the exercise
of mesmerism ; the vision of the disciples was neither engendered
by sleep nor due to the spell of a beautiful illusion cast over them
by Jesus. Those, again, who ascribe the vision to the disciples'
imagination are scarcely faithful to the facts; for, until after the
Crucifixion, even those three disciples were " slow of heart " and
mentally incapable of glorifying the Messiah who was dedicating
Himself to the Cross. Nay, it was simply a real experience of
inward and outward beatification through which Jesus passed.
As He was praying about His Passion, He entered into the
ecstasy of oneness with the Heavenly Father; in the heart of
Jesus all the holy resolutions of a life-time were encouraged
'Cf. Mace. vi. 39.
The Transfiguration 295
and strengthened, as the fashion of His countenance became
changed. 7. There is nothing irrational or inherently incredible in
the supposition that, as the disciples struggled with their drowsi
ness, they were hypnotized and perceived the projected images
of their Master's mind; yet, on the other hand, after seeking to
gain a fair impression of the whole incident, it seems to many
more rational to believe that the Transfiguration was accom
panied by an actual communication between the living and the
dead. " Behold, there were talking to Him two men who were
Moses and Elias." In accounting for this visitation of two rep
resentatives of the old dispensation, some have dissolved its
reality altogether. It is simpler and truer to say that there are
no dead in God, and the heirs of immortality cannot but feel
an interest in the drama of Redemption, and a concern for the
Sacrifice which sub specie temporis was to be offered at Jerusa
lem. If we frankly accept the doctrine of immortality of the
soul, it would give no difficulty to us to believe that two beatified
spirits should return to the scenes of their earthly work at a
time when revelation was consummated by Jesus : nay, it would
in nowise seem incredible, had we been told that with these two
Old Testament saints appeared also many of the sages and
prophets of other lands who in their earthly pilgrimage sought
to justify the ways of God to man. Our Lord set Himself in
vital relationship to the Divine inspiration that had created in
Israel's history a lofty monotheism and a pure ethic, and that
had foreshadowed types and vaticinations of a future expansion
of revelation. Again and again He had taught that Moses and
the Prophets had spoken of Him, and that He had come in the
fulness of time to make perfect all the partial disclosures of
God's purposes. Jesus ever evinced a profound feeling for
the unity of history ; He regarded Himself as at once the flower
of Judaism and the seed of a new Israel of the Spirit. Believing
in this feeling of historical continuity as a constituent factor in
the Mind of Jesus, we hold in our thought, consciously or
unconsciously, all the implicates of the subsequent apostolic
revelations of His Person. Moses and Elias represented the
two main streams of Divine Revelation — the Law and the
Prophets; that they should visit Jesus in the course of His
Ministry, may signify that they acknowledged His supremacy
296 Self-Dedication unto Death
and yielded to Him the keys of the Word of God. While the
glorious light was radiating from His face, these two immortal
spirits conversed with Jesus of His exodus, which He was about
to accomplish in Jerusalem. This stately and solemn announce
ment of their theme is pregnant with the consciousness of a
Divine predestination.1 Once again it may be repeated, the
Passion idea dominates the Transfiguration; it seems as if the
fuller meaning of His approaching exodus was now revealed
to Jesus Himself, and looking beyond the incident of death
Jesus knew that He would die to live again in the splendour of
a permanent Transfiguration. It is at least open to conjecture
that at this time Jesus first perceived that the Sacrifice He had
resolved to make was more than martyrdom; that it was, as
St. Paul afterwards declared, a propitiatory death. Just as at
His baptism in His vicarious confession and penitence, Jesus had
received a " Divine investiture " for His preparatory ministry, now
at the great turning-point of His life the Heavenly Father girded
His Son afresh for fiercer conflicts and greater triumphs.
8. When the disciples perceived Moses and Elias departing,
Peter exclaimed, "Rabbi, it is beautiful (xaXov) to be here.
Now let us make three booths, one for Thee and one for Moses
and one for Elijah." St. Luke says " he did not know what he
was saying " ; while St. Mark describes him as answering blindly
through fear. How inherently true to character, and indirectly
an evidence of veracity, is this incidental touch in this narrative
of mystery ! It was not the first or last time that Simon's speech
outstripped his understanding. Was he, we wonder, crudely
imagining that this Mount should become a new Sinai, whence
Jesus should issue fresh laws for the Messianic Kingdom? But
even as he spoke, a luminous cloud overshadowed them, and a
voice was heard, " This is My chosen Son : hear Him." The
phrase " My Chosen " was redolent with memories of the Servant
of Jehovah — the prophet, martyr and deliverer predestined to
minister universal hope for humanity.2 The light-filled cloud
may have been one of the moving mists playing on Hermon's
snow-capped heights and shot through with the glory of Jesus;
or it may have been, as some imagine, the Shekinah-cloud of the
Old Covenant appearing again. The voice may have been as
the roll of thunder, or as a whisper of the Spirit ; to the hearers
'Luke ix. 30, 31. 2Isa. xiii. 12,
The Transfiguration 297
it was intelligible as a preternatural testimony of the Sonship of
Jesus and of the approval of the Heavenly Father ; its reverbera
tions sounded on through all their lives. For the lonely Jesus
it was a moment of ecstasy and glory; although rejected by
the Jews, the dark hour was illumined by this foretaste of coming
triumph and the immediate assurance of Divine approval. His
humiliation was touched with exultancy ; His sorrow was trans
figured by the testimony of the Father. Through the coming
months of darkness and trouble, this Divine witness of His
acceptance could never be forgotten; by it He would be encour
aged and strengthened for the Cross. And for the disciples there
had rung out an unmistakable Divine imperative; to the Christ
they should listen and offer obedience. They were affrighted
and fell on their faces ; but Jesus coming to them, touched them
and said, " Arise, and be not afraid " ; " and lifting up their
eyes they saw no one save Jesus only."
9. As they were descending the Mountain in the morning,
Jesus sealed their lips, saying, " Tell the vision to no man until
the Son of Man be risen from the dead." Again the mysterious
words about " rising from the dead " dashed their incipient hopes
and vague imaginings to the ground ; for already they had begun
to dream of conquests and not of the Cross. Upon receiving
this prohibition against any premature divulgence of the vision,
they discussed among themselves the grave implications of the
Master's speech, and then turned to ply Him with questions about
His Messiahship and the predicted advent of Elias. Had this
been a fictitious narrative, surely Jesus would have been made
to point to the visitation on the Mount as the fulfilment of
Elijah's anticipated coming; but, instead of this, the oracle is
applied to John the Baptist. " Elias indeed cometh first and
restoreth all things ! But I say unto you Elias is already come,
and they did not recognize him, but did unto him whatever
they willed. So shall the Son of Man also suffer from them."
These words show that the Glory of the Mount had not dimmed
the Master's foresight of His coming doom. Herod's murder
of John showed the spirit of the age; men still thirsted for the
blood of God's Servants. In His baptism Jesus had entered into
the oneness of humanity, and had taken up the race-burden of
guilt; and now He would fain share with His brethren the
Father's approval of the Son of Man, and for this desired
298 Self-Dedication unto Death
participation of men in His own filial experience He dedicated
Himself even unto death. And the hour of His most utter
self-renunciation and of His mental acceptance of the Cross,
was the culmination of the Glory of His Divine Sonship. In
the crisis of His self-dedication He was met by a new theophany,
in which the steps of His Passion were lighted up with a full
revelation of the Father's purpose, and as He felt the glow and
gladness of this infusion of Divine Grace He was transformed
in the ecstasy. Thus we think of Him on the dark background
of history, transfigured by His holy enthusiasm for righteousness,
by His unfaltering obedience to the Will of the Heavenly
Father, and by His self-sacrificing love for the world.
CHAPTER II
THE DISCIPLES OF THE MESSIAH
i. Biography leads the reader through scenes fully as varied
as those surveyed by travellers in Europe and Asia; there are
heights of commanding impressiveness and lowlands with alter
nate fertility and sterility; we pass mountains and steppes, great
torrents and placid streams. Even the life of Jesus is character
ized by alternations such as these; there are great moments and
crises followed by weeks crowded indeed with incidents, but
incidents of a less determinative influence in shaping the course
of things. Accepting tentatively our proposed chronology of
events, we have the impression of having crossed a lofty mountain-
range; from the Raising of Lazarus to the Transfiguration we
have passed from height to height; the events have been all
charged with passionate living and tragic consequences ; and Jesus
has appeared to us, not as a passive dreamer, but as a mighty
Actor in the drama of history — spiritual in His aims, delivering
His soul of great thoughts and noble ethics, but also wielding a
potent dynamical influence within the circumscribed limits of His
Ministry. Utterly delusive are all those descriptions of Jesus which
give the impression that He was only a gentle, poetic visionary;
fuller recognition of the balanced conception of His life presented
in the Gospels enables us to perceive that, while He was deeply
sympathetic and could weep for human suffering, He was also
strenuously revolutionary, awing men by the terror of His frown,
and hurling the thunderbolts of angry scorn at all hypocrisy and
inhumanity. But now we are to descend from the heights of
crucial and climactic experiences, that we may review the passage
of events on the common levels of Christ's Ministry; and for
this purpose we shall group a series 1 of related incidents which
show to us once again that the emphasis of His teaching fell
upon the centrality and dominance of His own Person Our un
prejudiced study of the Gospels has resulted not only in an irre-
'Matt. viii. ig-22; xvii. 2-xviii. 35; xix. 13-30; Mark ix. 33-x. 31; Luke
ix. 46-48, 57-62; xviii. 18-30. 299
300 Self -Dedication unto. Death
sistible return from the extreme negative position of early hostile
criticism to a belief that these books are substantially trustworthy,
but it has also helped to focus attention upon the ultimate mystery
of the Person they describe. Tremendous as may be the im
portance of the ethical teaching of Jesus, still the one un
surpassable thing in the Gospels is the historical character of the
Master Himself. Professor H. M. Gwatkin boldly says, " The
firmest Christian must allow that Jesus of Nazareth added noth
ing to Micah's summary of human duty — except, he will say,
power to act on it." x We have already found that under the
influence of His instruction two movements of thought had been
followed by the disciples: gradually they had been forced to see
that He was not a Messiah after the manner of popular Jewish
hopes ; on the other hand they had been slowly convinced that all
the prophetic hopes of the Old Testament converged upon Him
as the Spiritual Messiah of the whole human race.
2. It is a tribute to the triumph of His personal influence that,
while Jesus abnegated all political functions of an external reign,
He yet secured the loyal adhesion of the disciples to His real
Messiahship. He shattered the material dream of His nation by
accentuation of the supreme importance of the ethical and in
ward life; and yet He claimed the national title, breathing into
it a universal meaning. This being clear, it remains to examine
next what He set before Himself and the disciples as the allotted
task of the Messiah. Already we have reviewed His repeated,
solemn declaration that it was necessary for Him to suffer and to
be killed by Israel's legal representatives; but the prediction of
His own Resurrection and His grateful acceptance of Simon's
confession that He was no other than the Messiah, force us to
conclude that He did not regard death as the end either of His
person or of His cause. The first message of Jesus had con
cerned the advent of the Reign of God; in this, He conceived,
would be realized the purpose of the Heavenly Father. He
soon found, however, that the Divine prothesis had to be wrought
out amid the cross-currents of perverse human wills. He was
so keenly disappointed at Jerusalem's rejection of a great oppor
tunity for spiritual reconstruction, and openly lamented His
failure to impress the city by His Personality; we cannot but
wonder what course the evolution of Redemption would have
1 The Knowledge of God, vol. ii., p. 43.
The Disciples of the Messiah 301
followed had the Holy City received Him as its spiritual king.
But the tide of Divine Purpose could not be driven back by
the opposition of men; it was bound to advance, and if diverted
from its original channels it would flow in wherever it might and
create for itself new currents in history. Reflected clearly in the
Gospels we find the graduated steps of Jesus in preparing a band
of disciples who should form a new Spiritual fellowship, and He
promised to commit unto them the keys of the Kingdom of
Heaven. But this presentation of the purpose of Jesus has been
severely criticized. Some writers with a strong naturalistic
bias have made out that it was impossible that Jesus should
speak beforehand of His Resurrection; while others, without
questioning the Church's faith in our Lord, have questioned or
denied the possibility of His having designed any establishment
of an organized society of His followers. Thus the Rev. James
H. F. Peile, in his Bampton Lectures, says : " When we inquire
whether Jesus contemplated the founding of what we mean by a
Christian Church, we must honestly admit that there is nothing
to prove it in His extant discourses; nor are we called upon to
believe that after His Resurrection He revealed, to His apostles,
in discourses which have not been handed down to us, the
details of the organization by which the Gospel was to be spread
and maintained in the world. He appears to have been content
with the Jewish Church, in which He was born, as a frame
work for Spiritual Religion. The author of the conception of the
Church, as we know it, was, humanly speaking, not Jesus but
Paul." x This cautiously expressed opinion cannot be met by a
categorical denial, since so much can be said in support of it,-"
we can only meet it with a question as to what Jesus designed
His disciples to be and to do, if they were not to constitute a
new fellowship. After leading them to the confession of His
Spiritual Messiahship and seeking to prepare them for His death,
did He not woo their allegiance and strive to ensure their con
tinuance as disciples? As we have pointed out before, a close
study of His Ministry discloses far more of plan and fore
sight than some imagine. It is not to the point to say Jesus did
not intend a politico-ecclesiastical organization, such as the
Church subsequently became; He at least intended that His dis
ciples should begin the realization of God's Kingdom, and for this
end it was needful that they should constitute a spiritual society.
1 The Reproach of the Gospel, 1907, p. 140.
302 Self-Dedication unto Death
As He journeyed from the Mount of Transfiguration back into
Galilee, it was this aim that dominated His mind, appearing even
in incidents which tended to frustrate His efforts to breathe His
own purpose into the souls of His disciples.
3. On the day following the Transfiguration, before ever
Jesus could rejoin the other nine disciples, they were subjected
to a test which humiliated them with a sense of impotence and
failure. The transition from the apocalypse of mountain glory
to an exhibition of passionate misery in the valley is so sudden
that we are not sure whether the juxtaposition of such contrast
ing scenes is due to art or to chronology. In the Mission of
the Twelve the evangelists had apparently exercised miraculous
powers of healing and of exorcism; and now, when they were
besought to restore an afflicted boy to health, they were unable
to do so. A number of scribes had followed Jesus northward
with the father of the demoniac boy, and when they witnessed
the ineffectualness of the disciples' faith they began to dispute
about the authority of their Master Himself. Suddenly Jesus
was seen approaching, and whether it was the coincidence of His
arrival with the controversy about Him, or that something of the
majesty of His Transfiguration still lingered about His person,
" immediately all the people seeing Him were utterly amazed."
The poet Virgil noted that " often when a tumult has arisen, and
the low rabble rages in excitement, . . . then if they, perchance,
see a man dignified by piety and services, they are silent, and
stand with ears pricked up while he sways their souls with words
and soothes their passions." x Jesus spoke an enigmatic, sad re
buke : " O faithless generation ! how long shall I be with you ? " 2
He was still intently brooding upon His approaching exodus,
and wounded by the faithlessness alike of the disciples and of the
crowd. He demanded a certain spiritual susceptibility and loyalty
in men so closely connected with Him. His double-edged rebuke
cut also across the perversity of the scribes, who in their material
ism sought only for an outward sign. The father of the boy
alone appears to be thinking of the sufferer, and with a touch of
pardonable impatience exclaims, " If Thou canst do anything, pity
and help us ! " As to the phrase, " if Thou canst," said Jesus,
" all things are possible to him that believeth." With pathetic
1 The iEneid, bk. i.
' Mark ix. 19, wpb$ t>/*dc, in relations with you.
The Disciples of the Messiah 303
entreaty the father answered, "I believe: help me (even) in my
unbelief." Jesus had no wish to begin again the exciting and
ineffectual scenes of His healing wonders, but His compassion was
stirred, and seeing the increasing crowds running toward Him,
He hastened to speak the word of power which restored the boy.
Once again the Evangelist represents this triumph of faith as the
rebuke of the unclean spirit. At present we treat the demon-
ology of New Testament diseases as but a part of the frame
work of the Gospel narratives ; if ever we are able again to accept
the hypothesis of " possession " as psychologically true, new point
and definiteness will be found in our Lord's conflict with the
world of evil. St. Luke remarks upon the popular astonishment
at this demonstration of the majesty of God. The enthusiasm
for Jesus which had died down was fanned again just as a
smouldering coal bursts into flame at a passing breath of
wind. 4. Jesus shrank from anything like a renewal of popularity,
and, desiring to continue His private instruction of the Twelve,
He travelled south as quietly as possible, purposely avoiding the
more frequented thoroughfares. This journey served again to
show the utter . disparity between the anticipations of Jesus and
the ambitions of His disciples. " For He was teaching His
disciples and saying to them that the Son of Man is delivered into
men's hands and they shall kill Him, and when He is killed, after
three days He shall rise again." Reading in their faces the
gloomy perplexity occasioned by His prediction, Jesus solemnly
enjoined His disciples to " lay up these words in your ears." In
each repetition of this " word of doom," we trace a graduated
advance in the revelation of His Passion. He had already spoken
of its necessity, and now He adds the fatal affirmation that " the
Son of Man is delivered into men's hands." x Was He referring
to the treachery of Judas already divined, or to the unfolding
steps of His Father's purpose? However rigidly historical our
examination of the Ministry of Jesus, it seems impossible to fore
close all theological interpretations of His sacrifice as we follow
His steps to the Cross. The oppressive sense of swift-coming
doom in the language of Jesus corroborates our supposition that
the rulers had made their plans before He had made the excur
sion to the north of Palestine. The utter mystification of the
' Mark ix. 31, pres. indie.
304 Self-Dedication unto Death
disciples is reflected in the Evangelist's language : " they under
stood not this saying, and it was something veiled from them,
insomuch that they perceived it not ; and they were afraid to ask
Him about this saying." x The alienation of the disciples from
their Lord must be a real reminiscence, for no writer would ever
dream of inventing an experience which seems damaging to the
claims of Jesus and injurious to the reputation of the apostles.
We touch an actual memory of a bewilderment which tended to
pass into antagonism to such vaticinations of their Rabbi. It is
far from impossible, also, that the disciples were secretly and
treacherously encouraged by the Pharisees to fall back upon the
popular belief in a materialistic, political Messianism. These per
plexed men thought that when Jesus openly declared Himself
to be the Christ and undertook the Messianic role of " the resti
tution of all things," the rulers and the people would be won to
espouse His cause, and all His dreary fears of doom would
evaporate as mists before the rising sun. Meanwhile a suspicion
that the Master was the victim of a painful hallucination under
mined their confidence ; " they were afraid to ask Him about this
saying " — afraid to provoke Him again to rebuke them as He had
done when Simon had uttered his remonstrance. They walked
apart from Him and talked in subdued voices of the future,
encouraging one another in the hope that a brighter day would
soon come, when their Master would shake Himself free from
His gloom. If Jesus had wished that the nine disciples should
remain in ignorance of His recent Transfiguration — which is a
matter of uncertainty — it was inevitable that broken and whis
pered hints of that apocalypse should fall from the favoured
three ; but while they kindled afresh the hopes of ultimate triumph,
they also aroused rivalries in hearts whose worldliness seemed
invincible. Thus, as they conversed, the natural joy of comrade
ship gave place to mutual jealousies and fears lest justice might
not be done to them in the future restoration of the Kingdom.
Instead of meekness, love and a desire to prefer one another,
these old-time disciples were as keen as their modern successors
upon making selfishness the supremely efficient factor; they still
eagerly sought after a secular gospel. Their . attempts at re
straint at times broke down, and the whispered bickerings gave
way to loud and angry reprcaches, so that as Jesus looked back
at them He perceived their quarrelsome mood and felt an ac-
JMark ix. 32.
The Disciples of the Messiah 305
centuation of their estrangement from Himself. He saw, with
poignant distress, that all His teaching had failed to effect any
radical change in their hearts ; still, in their loyalty to their mis
understood Lord, He found a pledge that they would even yet
become ambassadors for God, able to continue the work He had
begun. 5. As soon as they reached Capernaum, however, their
thoughts were diverted to other claims and problems by a ques
tion put "by some officials to Simon as to whether Jesus would
pay a certain tax.1 The contrast between the present conditions of
social and political life and those which existed in the time of
Jesus creates a little difficulty in understanding the attitude of
the Master to the state. It is sometimes said that Jesus was
a revolutionary, a democrat, or a social reformer; but such
names, while they express a part of the truth, convey quite a
wrong conception of the role that Jesus played in history. As
a matter of fact, this Syrian Jew possessed no political power,
and He discouraged the popular Messianism which craved for it ;
He was all but indifferent to the external framework of the
state, and accepted the government of the time, both Roman and
Jewish, without any expressed wish to overthrow it. On the
surface of it, this indifference of Jesus to the state appears to
Englishmen a radical defect ; but upon investigation, we discover
that any other attitude on the part of Jesus would have doomed
His movement to certain failure. He gave no easily applied
rules that we can apply to our modern social and political prob
lems ; His teaching dealt with the inmost principles and motives
of all human conduct. His individualism created a real uni-
versalism ; His indifference to temporary phases of government
allowed Him to be the abiding Lord of history. Jesus imparted
a spirit to the world which creates an insatiable craving for
reform, and also makes possible the accomplishment of every
projected advance in civilization. To return to the incident at
Capernaum, we perceive that, notwithstanding an exalted self-
consciousness as the Messiah, He was quite willing to submit to
the usual demands of government. It may have been the capita
tion-tax which Augustus had imposed upon the Jews, or more
probably it was the temple didrachm.2 If this were the customary
1 Matt. xvii. 24-27.
"About one shilling and three pence.
306 Self-Dedication unto Death
time for collecting the temple-tax, in the month of Adar (Feb
ruary-March), then Jesus had only about another five weeks to
live, although it is possible that the Shelihim were demanding the
tax left unpaid at some previous time, which was long over-due.
While Jesus used the occasion for teaching His disciples sub
mission to civic and religious authorities, He paradoxically used
it also for the reiteration of His personal claim to be the Son of
God. " What think you, Simon : from whom do the kings of
the earth receive tribute, from their sons or from strangers ? "
" From strangers," replied the disciple. " Then the sons at
least are free," said Jesus. Still, while He emphasizes His mys
terious superiority to the temple, He claims no exemption from
the tax, but directs His disciple to pay it. The reputed miracle
of catching the fish with a stater in its mouth reads like a
proverbial saying, taken too prosaically by a later generation.
The only deduction to be made from it is that the funds of Jesus
were exhausted, and that Simon had to resort to his fisherman's
net in order to meet the need. The incident affords a touching
illustration of the poverty of Jesus, and reminds us that through
out His Ministry He was dependent on the benevolence and hos
pitality of friends — of good women, who followed Him, and of
strangers. Jesus was as indifferent to money as He was to
government; wealth to Him seemed a matter of unimportance,
save that it often constituted a grave moral danger. " How hardly
shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven."
Christ's teaching about riches shows that though less prevalent,
perhaps, than today, mammon-worship was even then a powerful
influence in human relationships. The disciples, although for
the most part poor men, evinced by their disputes about their
rights and positions in the Kingdom of the Messiah a suscepti
bility to the glamour of wealth and power; hence it may be
inferred that they would never have attributed poverty to their
Lord, had it not been an indisputable, actual characteristic of
His Ministry. And this note of poverty, although free from the
features of degradation which accompany it in our times, makes
it more amazing that men should confess belief in His Messiah-
ship. What a tremendous personal power Jesus must have
wielded over the minds of His disciples, in order to revolutionize
all their conventional opinions of life and greatness, so that though
intimately acquainted with His human poverty, they were led at
last to reverence Him as Divine!
The Disciples of the Messiah 307
6. Coming into " the house " of His abode in Capernaum, J
Jesus suddenly confused and shamed His disciples by inquiring
what they had disputed about along the way. At least, it seems
more probable that Jesus should ask this than that the disciples
should broach the subject, as St. Matthew records. Though at
first abashed, one of the Twelve presently said, " Who is the great
est (in the Kingdom of Heaven) ? " The repeated recurrence of
this dream of a political revival in Israel among the disciples
themselves, even after Jesus had reiterated the prophecy of His
passion and death, only shows the stubborn tenacity and fanatical
materialism against which He struggled throughout His Min
istry. From the moment that they had first followed Him, Jesus
had consistently taught that God's Reign belongs to the inward
life of man; that all its outward manifestations must spring
from the surrender of the will to a Divine Purpose, and this
common obedience will bind men in a fellowship of fraternal
love. Life itself is greater than its external conditions; true
greatness must be the magnitude of rendered service. While
the answer of Jesus is variously reported, the reminiscence of
the scene that followed is too intrinsically harmonious with
His known character to be obscured. Jesus took a little child
and placed him in the midst of those ambitious men. St. Mark
states that He clasped the little one in His arms. " I tell you
truly," He said, " unless you turn and become like little children,
you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoso then shall
humble himself like this little child, he is the greatest in the
kingdom of heaven." The qualities of the child commended by
Him are those which lie on the surface — trustfulness, willing
ness to forgive, ready inclination to help others, and the grace
of perfect naturalness. These are certainly not the character
istics emulated by the ordinary man. " We must be singularly
different from the common race of men, or singularly dull,"
says a Bampton Lecturer,2 " if we do not realize that our actions
and thoughts are governed by a jealous sense of property — a
relentless insistence on personal rights and personal dignity,
which are injurious alike to our own moral development, and to
our usefulness as members of a society." With this child nes
tling in His arms, Jesus rebuked the hardness, egoism and jealousy
of the disciples. " In antiquity the virtues that were most
1 Mark ix. 33.
' J. H. F. Peile, The Reproach of the Gospel, p. 102.
308 Self-Dedication unto Death
admired were almost exclusively those which are distinctively
masculine. Courage, self-assertion, magnanimity, and, above all,
patriotism, were the leading features of the ideal type; and
chastity, modesty and charity, the gentler and the domestic
virtues, which are especially feminine, were greatly under
valued." x
Jesus taught the paradoxes of Christianity : — weakness is some
times stronger than might; outward shame nobly borne becomes
true glory; the bondage of God's service is a nobler emancipa
tion of the will than any political freedom can impart; by dying
to the lower self man is regenerated from above. Having given
the ideal and type of discipleship, Jesus began to inculcate
gentleness toward children and identified their cause with Him
self : " He who receives a little child like this in My name re
ceives Me, and he who receives Me, receives not. Me but Him
that sent Me " — a characteristic saying blending the inimitable
dignity with the gracious humility of Jesus. This Teacher takes
up the cardinal virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance and
justice, taught before by the sages of Greece, and breathes into
them a sweet reasonableness of love; He adopts the five great
principles of Confucian ethics — benevolence, rectitude, propriety,
knowledge and sincerity, infusing into them a new childlike
simplicity and the warm glow of inward life. But while we
emphasize the teachings of Jesus, we recognize that His direct
aim was not to present a balanced system of morals, but to trans
form the temper of His disciples, that they might be minded to
deny themselves and take up the Cross.
7. John listened to this doctrine with a troubled conscience,
recalling with a feeling of consternation an occurrence in which
the disciples had played anything but a childlike part. Although
he was a " Son of Thunder," John was more than ordinarily
susceptible to the higher teaching of Jesus, and evinced a teach
ableness that endeared him to the Master. He was less im
petuous than Simon, but still of a fiery temper; and yet in this
very confession of his fault may be traced the beginnings of an
utter transformation of character. The incident John referred
to probably occurred while they were engaged on the mission
in Galilee, some months before.2 One day they had seen a
' Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. ii., p. 361.
2 Mark ix. 388.
The Disciples of the Messiah 309
stranger casting out demons in the name of Jesus, and they
had imperiously forbidden the unknown exorcist to use their
Master's name. Such a phenomenon serves to show how wide
and deep an impression Jesus had made in spite of all opposition.
John's prohibition may have sprung from a disciple's jealousy
of a spiritual prerogative rather than from zeal for his Lord's
honour. In reply, Jesus laid down the rule by which men may
be tested, " He who is not against us is for us." It recalls,
however, another occasion when this rule was stated in a reverse
and more rigorous form, " Whoever is not with Me is against
Me; and whoever gathers not with Me, is scattering." But this
latter had been spoken in regard to men openly hostile to Jesus,
who attempted to turn popular rejoicing at a beneficent healing
miracle into a blasphemous suspicion that Jesus had wrought
the cure of the dumb man by the aid of the devil — " by Beelzebub
He casteth out devils." This was no intellectual errancy, but
rather the perversion of conscience, and for this sin of inward
antagonism to Jesus, which never hesitated to call His goodness
evil, there was no hope. On the other hand, there ought to
be a tolerance for all merely external disagreements, and every
encouragement must be given to the incipient faith of the
ignorant. Faith may begin in a blind, confused feeling of con
fidence in Christ's goodness and power, but it will grow to
dauntless heroism in His Service. The unknown exorcist may
have used the name of Jesus ignorantly as a magic spell, but
it was not likely that he would quickly turn against One whose
name he revered.
8. St. Matthew represents the conversation of that day as
ending when Jesus enunciated the principles of His new com
munity, but St. Mark makes it terminate with an uncompromising
demand for loyalty in His disciples even unto death. They
were to be salted with fire in the tragic events which were at
hand, and Jesus pleads with them to " be at peace with one
another." The successive stages of the journey from Caesarea
Philippi to Capernaum had given the Master opportunities for
renewing His teaching about the Kingdom of God and the
character of its members. He had so far succeeded that, while
He had contradicted all the popular notions of the Coming One,
yet His disciples were impelled to confess that He was no other
than the true Messiah. After this confession, however, the
310 Self-Dedication unto Death
special task of Jesus was to assimilate the disciples to His
own moral type: hence, He calls upon them to renounce all
selfishness and take up the Cross. They were not to imitate
the haughty pride and jealousies of the scribes and Pharisees,
but were to become childlike in heart, so that the Divine Spirit
might rule their thoughts, emotions and wills. Jesus had given
them a new conception of God through which they were to in
terpret His Kingdom. By example He taught them, showing
Himself to be willing to forego His own rights, and, although
a Son, to pay tribute as a slave. The transformation of the
disciples depended upon a full-hearted loyalty to Himself; by
their love for Jesus those men might practise the perfect ethic
of the Kingdom of God. No careful adjustments of outward
restraints and nice artifices of deportment could help them very
much; the life Jesus demanded was to be characterized by the
spontaneity, freshness and grace of childhood : " I tell you truly,
unless you turn and become like little children, you shall not
enter the kingdom of heaven."
CHAPTER III
THE CHURCH OF THE MESSIAH
i. It is in every way credible that, at this period when Jesus
was dedicating Himself to an act of sublime sacrifice, His own
thoughts and purposes should break forth like a long-suppressed
fire into the intensity and luminousness of a self-revealing flame.
Jesus designed the institution of a Church, and discoursed, it
may be, while the child remained in the midst of the disciples,
concerning the constitution and inward rule of this New Society.
But since sober and devout scholars have doubted if Jesus ever
conceived of the existence of the Christian Church as a distinct
community separate from Judaism, it may be taken for granted
that the subject of His teaching about the Church is involved
in perplexity. On two occasions only is the term " church " *
reported to have been spoken by Jesus; and since, of the four
evangelists, only one attributes this word to the Master, doubt
has arisen concerning it. Again, it is said that the vivid im
pression made by Jesus upon the minds of His disciples that He
would come again speedily to sum up all things, precludes the
belief that He planned a distinct organization of His followers
into a community.- The upspringing of such doubts brings no
disproof that Jesus said to Simon, " On this rock I will build
My Church." Our foregoing study of His Ministry has con
vinced us that Jesus was no futile dreamer, but that He was a
powerful Leader of men — the self-conscious Founder of a new
Spiritual Community in the world. However immense the con
tribution of St. Paul to Christianity, the idea of the Church
was not due to him, but to Christ. That He did not plan the
actual ecclesiastical organizations which exist today, does not
prove that He contemplated no future for His disciples, and
gave no rules for the new fellowship. The Reign of the Heavenly
Father, which was the fundamental idea in Christ's mind, could
be realized only through a community historically conditioned.
While it is correct to think of this Kingdom as spiritual and
subjective — as " righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy
'Matt. xvi. 18; xviii. 17, tadr/ala.
311
312 Self-Dedication unto Death
Ghost" — it is also equally true, that Jesus Himself set forth
the establishment of this Kingdom as a concrete, organic reality,
small indeed in its beginnings, but destined to attain to vast
dimensions as a spiritual society. The conception of a Church
was not a strange thought in Israel. The history of God's Reve
lation to His people had created the idea of an ecclesia which
combined the ideal and the empirical aspects of the Divine King
dom — that is, of a Church separate from the nation, and com
posed of a " remnant " of spiritual people bound together by the
covenant of Jehovah. This historic fact is itself a refutation
of the supposition that it was inherently impossible for Jesus
to conceive of a Church separate from the Jewish nation. He
who sought to conserve the continuity of Revelation might most
naturally adopt an idea so well adapted to the results of His
own ministry. And in the later stages of His career Jesus sought
to breathe into His disciples a definite consciousness of fellow
ship, to promote the esprit de corps of an ecclesia. Until this
time, these disciples were simply a group of men attached to
Jesus and persuaded that He was the Messiah; but now the
Master set Himself to mould this common affection for Himself
into a mutual bond among them. He inspires them with a defi
nite consciousness of unity, so that they already constituted the
beginning of His Church in the world. Their obsession by
ideas of the august splendour of a Davidic, national revival really
menaced the society of Jesus : hence He unremittingly sought to
supplant this politico-ethical dream by His own conception of
spiritual triumph to be won through passion and sacrifice. Jesus
was encouraged by the fact that they had survived the first shock
of disappointment, and had continued loyally to serve Him as
disciples, when all the representative leaders of the nation had
openly rejected Him. Having, then, so effectually taught His
disciples the lesson of humility through the child, Jesus began
to show the nature of the fellowship that He was creating. .
2. The general thought of our time wavers in uncertainty as
to whether emphasis must be laid upon the socialism of Jesus, or
upon His individualism: in His teaching the pendulum swings
from the one side to the other with a regularity that has baffled
many.1 However, that men can read the Gospels and still
'Admirably treated in Jesus Christ and the Social Question, by Francis
Greenwood Peabody.
The Church of the Messiah 313
hesitate concerning this, is itself evidence that the socialism and
the individualism are both present, and that there is no real
contradiction between them. The claims of Jesus to be the Son
of Man, to be the Resurrection and the Life, to be the Succourer
of all who feel spiritual needs, imply in their profound mysticism
the underlying unity of the race, and also that the racial life
is organically summed up in Him. The mysticism we generally
attribute to St. Paul is latent in the teaching of Jesus. The Christ
will not be historically complete until all individuals of the race
are integrated in His Body. No one ever felt the unity of the
race more profoundly and persistently than did Jesus of Naza
reth. Nevertheless, the society of Jesus could only be consti
tuted by spiritually renewed individuals. His words about " one
of these little ones " reveal a deep personal feeling, which enabled
Him to sweep aside all the mere accidents of wealth and rank,
and to think alone of every man as a human soul. The whole
teaching of Jesus is pervaded by the thought of God's ineffable
grace toward every erring son of man. The Good Shepherd
leaves the ninety and nine of His flock safely folded, and goes
to seek the one strayed sheep. It is He, and not the silly
wanderer, who feels most deeply its loss; and in its recovery,
He has keener joy than the safety of all the others had given
Him. It is not the Father's will that one of these " little ones "
should perish. Jesus knew that Messiah's mission was to
accomplish this Divine purpose of salvation. The " fold " into
which this Shepherd King would bring men is the Kingdom of
God. This very attempt to penetrate the thought of this strong,
beautiful individualism swings the mind back again to renewed
emphasis upon the community; for as the Divine Regnancy is
acknowledged, men are filled with a fraternal sentiment for their
fellows. Jesus is Himself the Rock upon which this fellowship
must be established; love to Him is the bond between all its
members. " For," said He, " where two or three are gathered
together in My name, there am I in the midst of them." There
is a marvellous modernity in this phase of His teaching; and
we are learning afresh that the only true Socialism must de
pend upon thoroughgoing Christian individualism. Such in
dividual allegiance to Christ can work out only in social ethics,
and will give brotherhood in place of mutual animosities,
cooperation for competition, and altruism instead of selfish
ness.
314 Self-Dedication unto Death
3. Jesus did not hesitate to place His cause in the hands of
men who were loyally attached to Himself. Were we to con
template these apostles only after the Ascension, we should
indeed perceive the results of their training in the School of
Jesus, by which they were prepared for the equipment of the
Holy Spirit, but we should miss the lessons of the time of their
uncertainty and spiritual immaturity. They were not great men
in the ordinary sense; they were representative of the common
man, possessing neither wealth nor learning, but they were quali
fied for discipleship by their genuine desire for goodness and
truth. With one exception, they .maintained a strict moral in
tegrity, and, guided by the simple principle of faith in Jesus,
they escaped the intrigues of professional religionists and defied
opposition. We see them as they really were; for although St.
Luke sometimes omits or softens down their occasional blunders,
they are not idealized, but are portrayed with realistic veracity.
At first their characters were marred by touches of worldliness
and selfish ambition; they were often culpably stupid or slow
of understanding, and all too little appreciative of the Master's
spiritual aims: still, in spite of these inevitable defects, they
cherished a generous enthusiasm for Jesus, which saved them
from ignoble apostasy, and afforded inspiration for service in
His Kingdom. It may be that their intellectual and spiritual
limitations — for they were men of narrow outlook and devoid
of philosophical tendencies — were a qualification for transmitting
without substantial change the evangelic deposit committed to
them. In Jesus they came to find the Word of Life, and as
sowers they went forth scattering this truth-seed into the fur
rows of the world; and the harvest resulting from their labours
is the Christian Church.
4. In instituting the apostolate of this Fellowship, Jesus exer
cised a searching discrimination of character, together with a
sure prevision of the work they were to do. According to St.
Luke, He found seventy besides the Twelve who were willing
to act as His heralds of the New Kingdom; and alongside the
immediate purpose of evangelism in their mission, Jesus planned
a training of these witnesses for a broader propaganda in the
future. While He earnestly desired to build His Church on the
rock-character of a faith-confession of His Messiahship, He
did not accept every volunteer, but demanded from the can-
The Church of the Messiah 315
didate some touch of spiritual heroism. Had we forejudged
His movement without the data of the Gospel narrations, we
might have surmised that His chosen agents would have been
men of learning and rank ; but history corrects such a presupposi
tion, showing the professional class of scribes to have been coldly
formal, not only insusceptible to the moral idealism of Jesus, but
bitterly opposed in temper and aims. Both foresight and neces
sity threw Jesus back in trust upon the ordinary people; the
Chosen Twelve were common men, fishermen and peasants.
However, even among the scribes there were some bright ex
ceptions; and one of this nobler sort having listened to the
unconventional, profound teaching of the Master, was caught in
a wave of -enthusiasm.1 "Lord," he exclaimed impulsively, "I
will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest." One writer judges
the young man's offer somewhat morosely. " In the man's flaring
enthusiasm Jesus saw the smoke of egotistical self-deceit " ; but we
ought not to reproach him for a recognition of Jesus' inherent
greatness, which meant at least a temporary renunciation of
class prejudice. Jesus pointed to the penury and hardship in
volved in such discipleship : " The foxes have dens, and the birds
of the air resting-places, but the Son of Man hath not where to
lay His head." This was virtually saying to him, " You are look
ing for a political Messiah, but I am only a poor man; you
demand the privileges of a caste, but I offer only the reward of
a good conscience." To follow the Son of Man was to court the
odium of schism, and to strip himself of the pride of his re
ligious order, and the man, with all his good impulses, could not
rise to the moral level of Christ's heroic test.
5. A contrast to this impetuous volunteer is given in the
case of the man whom Jesus called, and who made filial piety
a pretext for his refusal. " Lord, permit me first to go and
bury my father," an oriental way of saying that until his father
died his first duty was with him. Dr. A. Plummer thinks that
the man's father was in extremis, or had just died, since to put
off Jesus indefinitely would have been unworthy trifling. But
more familiarity with Eastern modes of thought and speech
would diminish all sense of strangeness in this man's excuse.
Ordinarily, the voice of God comes to us through the relationships
and affections of family life, and only in cases of extraordinary
'Matt. viii. 19-22; Luke ix. 57-60.
316 Self-Dedication unto Death
election to some solemn office does the Divine imperative clash
with common duties.1 The answer of Jesus implies that the
man had come to a moral crisis in his life, and that his special
peril lay in the engrossing interests of social and family ties.
He was thinking simply of the death of the body; but far more
to be dreaded is the moral death of the soul, in which experience
man's higher nature is degraded, and affections designed for God
are often changed into guilty lusts. Then there is still another
kind of death — one to be desired; and this results from renun
ciation of the world — a death to all that is base and evil; for
this is dying to live. " As for thee, let the dead bury their dead,
put aside all subordinate calls then, and come, follow Me."
It is always of interest to observe the reproduction of the
thoughts of Jesus in our modern writers ; and at this point many
will recall Hegel, of whom Professor E. Caird has written, " To
him, therefore, the great aphorism, in which the Christian ethics
and theology may be said to be summed up, that ' he that saveth
his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life shall save it,'
is no mere epigrammatic saying, whose self-contradiction is not
to be regarded too closely; it is rather the first distinct, though
as yet undeveloped, expression of the exact truth as to the nature
of Spirit." 2 Again, " What Christianity teaches is only that the
law of the life of the Spirit — the law of self-realization through
self-abnegation — holds good for God as for man, and, indeed, that
the spirit that works in man to ' die to live ' is the Spirit of God."
" Nor can this be a merely natural process — i.e. a process in
which the opposition melts away without being heard of. Rather
it is a process which begins with a distinct consciousness of in
dependence to be renounced, of opposition to be overcome, and
which involves, therefore, an ' explicit surrender ' — a conscious
reconciliation of the opposition." The " explicit surrender," how
ever, cannot be made to an abstract idea; only to the Messiah
or King of the conscience, will the soul bow in fealty. Christ
demanded not only a detachment from the world, but also an
attachment to Himself. We have dwelt upon this philosophical
exposition of the law of sacrifice at this point because it describes,
in the language of the twentieth century, the constitutive ethic of
the Christian Church.
' One commentator quotes Augustine : " Amandus est generator, sed
prxponendus est Creator."
1 Professor E. Caird's Hegel, pp. 212, 218.
The Church of the Messiah 317
6. A third example of Christ's rigorous exclusion from the
apostolate of all double-minded and unreliable candidates is re
corded by St. Luke — from the apostolate, not from the ecclesia
or kingdom. It is a mischievous confusion to assume that He
intended every man -to become an apostle ; all men are called to
enter the Kingdom, but only a comparatively small number was
elected to the apostolate. This third candidate for discipleship
was like the first we have described, in that he offered himself,
and like the second, he desired to delay on account of duty to
his friends. " I will follow thee, Lord, but first let me bid fare
well to them that are at my house." The wish to bid good-bye
impresses us as an amiable and natural sentiment; but Jesus
divined some flaw in the man's resolution, and warned him
against double-mindedness. " No man having put his hand to
the plough and looking back, is well fitted for the kingdom of
God." " He who cares for his work," said an ancient writer,1
" and would plough straight furrows must no more look wist
fully after his comrades, but must put his soul into his task."
Jesus had the gift, which has belonged to most leaders, of read
ing character ; He knew what was in man. He strove to repress
rash enthusiasm, to brace up the hesitating man to effective
resolution, to draw the divided mind into unity with the Divine
Will. A parallel to this treatment of men is found in the
Analects of China; Confucius met the rash boldness of his
most energetic disciple with the sobering counsel that he should
first consult with his father and elder brother, while he urged a
slower and more timorous pupil to carry out his teaching at
once.2 High purposes demand the whole-hearted service of those
who execute them.
7. The Divine election of a man to this apostolate of the
Messianic Kingdom was " an election to the Cross and to the
cry, ' Eli, Eli, lama Sabacthani.' " Jesus was calling men to share
His own Divine Mission; but only those who were dedicated
to the loyalty of belief in His Messiahship were fitted for such
a work. The claim of Jesus upon the apostles was absolute;
He could brook no rivals; they were called to give Him the
supreme place in their hearts, and for His sake they were to be
ready to suffer and die. " There is no absolute death, but in all
death the means of a higher life." We must die to live.
1 Hesiod, Works and Days, Op. 443. ' Analects, bk. xi., ch. xxi.
318 Self-Dedication unto Death
And those men who responded to His call shared in the
conscious dignity of His mission; they ultimately became His
ambassadors, and were bound together into a corporate life
forming a new koinonia. They failed, indeed, at first to appre
ciate His lofty aims, and so they could not in the beginning
comprehend their own destiny; but after His Resurrection they
were endowed with truer spiritual vision of the vocation into
which the Master had led them. This group of disciples came
at last to assimilate Christ's consciousness of God; they were
drawn into organic union by the magnetic currents of His love,
and were trained by Him for a world-wide mission. Philosophers
and poets had dreamed of a golden age in a dim, half -forgotten
antiquity, but Jesus took up the bold hope of the prophets of
a glorious kingdom, yet to be realized.11 Oriental sages had rep
resented all things as moving in recurrent cycles; the Jewish
prophets believed in a rectilinear movement toward a definite
goal, and in their writings we find the beginnings of a sound
philosophy of history.2 Jesus definitely set out to fulfil the dreams
of the inspired prophets and instituted the fellowship of His
disciples as the beginnings of the Messianic Kingdom. Into this
ecclesia He threw the fire of His love — a fire which transmutes
the fuel it meets into its own substance; and from this love has
sprung the creative energy of a new progress. The dynamic
connection of man's uplift with the Person and teaching of Jesus
is too apparent to be denied. The ecclesia, therefore, may be
truly described as created by the enthusiasm of Jesus : for it He
gave His life as a ransom. Within this community the law
of life is the imitation of Himself in an inward and vital way.
When we consider, therefore, the end Jesus had in view, we
cease to wonder at His rigorous demand for moral heroism;
His rejection of all who were lukewarm or vacillating is ex
plicable, and His call for self-renunciation and appeal for pas
sionate attachment to Himself are seen to have been inevitable.
Jesus was preparing the Body of His perpetual incarnation —
1 " I can hear a faint crow of the cock of fresh mornings, far, far, yet
distinct." Meredith, The Empty Purse, p. 45.
" Then are there fresher mornings mounting East than ever yet have
dawned." Meredith, Poems and Lyrics, p. 150.
2 " Prophecy is the philosophy of history. Prophecy is history become
conscious, — history expressing its own meaning. But prophecy is not the
philosophy of ordinary, but of Jewish history." A. B. Davidson, Old
Testament Prophecy, p. 98.
The Church of the Messiah 319
beating out the instrument of His universal spiritual activity.
And the self-consciousness of the Master in these graduated steps
of His advancing mission can scarcely be denied by those who
admit the Gospels as historical.
8. We have found frequent occasion to observe, in the course
of this study of Christ's Ministry, that He sought to focus His
ethical doctrines into one life-determining fealty to Himself.
His explanations of this remarkable claim show that Jesus did
not set Himself to be the substitute for God, but that He is the
way to the Heavenly Father. Were we to ignore this relation
ship between Jesus and the Father Christianity would simply
mean the recrudescence of idolatry; if He be not the way to
God, then His religion resolves itself into man-worship. The
claim of Jesus to be man's rightful Lord gives point and definite
ness to the ethical teaching of our noblest modern philosophers
that man can realize his true life only by self-surrender. This
idea of Divine transcendence posits the only adequate authority
capable of making the voice of conscience imperative and effect
ual. It involves a separation of God from man, indeed, but a
separation which evolves into ethical reunion. Whether the life
of Jesus justified this tremendous personal claim or not, can only
be judged of by those who study to understand its facts and im
plications. Early in His Ministry He elected Twelve disciples,
and at the time of their ordination He enunciated the ultimate
principles of moral and religious life; and in doing so, He
freely abandoned the letter of the Mosaic law for a triumphant
explication of its inmost spirit. It has been said that " He appears
to have been content with the Jewish Church, in which He was
born, as a framework for Spiritual Religion " ; ' and it is true
that, after His Resurrection, the disciples piously observed the
old forms of Judaism, as though the New Spirit could continue
to express itself in the old conditions. When Jesus delivered
His Mountain discourse, He may not have clearly foreseen the
final severance of His society from Israel, since He then hoped
that the nation would give due acknowledgement of His spiritual
authority; but the experience of the subsequent months had
brought about the breach between the national representatives and
Himself, and He could not but see that the rejection of the
Messiah made it inevitable that a complete severance would
1 Peile, The Reproach of the Gospel, p. 140.
320 Self-Dedication unto Death
take place between His disciples and Judaism. It is thought by
some that Jesus was too much prepossessed by the belief in His
speedy Second Coming to give any thought to the external in
stitutions of a Church; and yet it is indubitable that He Himself
foretold that the new wine of His teaching would burst the old
wineskins. To prevent, therefore, the disintegration and scatter
ing of His disciples, Jesus sought to infuse into them the con
sciousness of an organic life, of which He was to be the abiding
bond and inspiration.
9. The early parables of the mustard seed and the leaven show
that Jesus did most certainly foresee the growth of His religious
community, and in the later months of His Ministry the uncon
cealed antagonism of the authoritative representatives of Judaism
made it plain that His Church must be independent of the temple
and synagogues. It was not the plan of Jesus to force any
premature severance, but with wise prevision He designed to
prepare His disciples for the unescapable issue. In His indi
vidual followers He had sought to induce a habit of humility,
conjoined with a temper of heroic daring: by their common
allegiance to Himself, they formed a fellowship, and into this
society Jesus breathed a legislative wisdom. Jesus was fully
aware that misunderstanding would arise in a society of imperfect
men; tares would grow up with the wheat, and perils would
spring from the personal ambitions of His disciples. Foreseeing
these, the inevitable incidents of any new society's developments,
He could not but seek to forewarn and forearm His followers.
Should one member of the fraternity give offence to another,
the offended brother is instructed by Jesus to seek out the
offender alone and endeavour to win him to repentance; if he
fails in this purpose, two or three of the brethren shall remon
strate.1 In a case of irreconcilable antagonism, the whole com
munity ought to be informed; then, if the recalcitrant refused
to obey the will of the ecclesia, he must be treated as having
cut himself off from fellowship. Jesus Himself is thus credited
in the Gospels with having laid the ground-plan of the internal
discipline of this new society and to have solemnly committed
to the apostolate the power of remitting or retaining sins. The
right of punishment was delegated to the disciples by Jesus —
not the chastisement of private faults, but of public offences.
' Matt, xviii. 15-20; Luke xvii. 3.
The Church of the Messiah 321
This disciplinary power of binding and loosing by the apostolate
is sanctioned in Heaven. The keys that were first promised
to Simon, when He confessed Jesus to be the Messiah, are now
given to all the disciples. The organization of the Church was
at this stage simplicity itself ; the common bond among the mem
bers was loyalty to Jesus, and the natural leaders were the
Twelve who had been trained by our Lord Himself. These apos
tles, however, were to be the organs of the spirit of the ecclesia ;
they must remember that they are brothers of all the members, and
that the true test of greatness lies in the humble service they
render to others. It was the collective action of the Church
that possessed the binding power, and not the inherent authority
of the officials. Jesus warns His disciples against self-assertion
and claims of superiority, against the use of titles — even the
simple appellation of rabbi, since they are all alike children of
the Sovereign Father. Their powers- are moral and spiritual,
bearing no resemblance to distinctions of rank and dignity
which prevail in the world; let them agree with one another in
prayer, and they should wield limitless influence, since God would
certainly answer petitions made in the name of Jesus. While
it may truly be that we have mingled apostolic inferences with
the actual instructions of Jesus, it cannot, I think, be doubted
that the Master Himself indicated the lines of the future devel
opment of His Church.
io. Such a Spiritual Society necessarily constituted an im-
perium in imperio — a coherent organization, which could be
coterminous with the nation or with the whole race, and yet
was not dependent upon, nor derived from, existing forms and
institutions of civilization. It was to be the organized expression
of the Kingdom of God. The fundamental ethic of this ecclesia
is a spiritual socialism or brotherhood. Just as John had been
indirectly reproached by the larger tolerance of Jesus, so Simon
was at this time impressed by the new conception of magnanimity ;
in response to his inquiry if a disciple ought to forgive a brother
seven times, Jesus inculcates the spirit of unlimited clemency.1
The exclusion of an incorrigible offender from the fellowship
must not be prompted by personal rancour, for men can only
secure God's forgiveness by forgiving those who offend them.
Jesus enforced this practical ethic of forgiveness by a striking
* Matt, xviii. 2if.
322 Self-Dedication unto Death
parable. A debtor once received his sovereign's remission of an
immense debt — of the almost inconceivable sum of two millions
four hundred thousand pounds — and then went and maltreated
a fellow-slave, who owed him a paltry sum of twenty pounds,
and threw him into prison. When the over-lord heard of this
gross inhumanity, he revoked his own act of pardon and incarcer
ated the wretched oppressor " until he should pay all that was
due." " So," said Jesus, " shall My Heavenly Father do to you,
unless you cordially forgive everyone his brother." (The very
enormity of the first debt and triviality of the other suggests the
homiletic reflection that such is the contrast between man's
immeasurable debt to God and the little wrongs which we do
each other. This brotherly and placable temper does not min
imize the true evil of sin, but it distinguishes, as with a sharp
sword, between the wrong-doer and the evil done. It is not the
yielding softness of weakness that Jesus inculcates, but the
powerful control of the disciple's activity by the rule and Spirit
of His Lord.)
ii. We have so far endeavoured to restrict our review of
the Church to the primitive stage of Christ's own originating act,
to His definite and simple rules for its internal discipline, and
for the conduct of the individual members; but it is obligatory
upon us to make some passing reference to the Church's relation
to the world. Professor Paul Wernle treats Christ's emphasis
upon the need of individual regeneration as the noblest part of His
teaching. " His work was to awaken the individual to love, and
to make the individual realize his responsibility towards his
brother; and thus Jesus did a work which beyond all others
was for eternity; and still today He calls us back from the
distracting maze of programmes and panaceas for the reform
of the world, to the reform of our own selves, which is the
reform which is chiefly needed." x Against this view Professor
E. Caird has reminded us that Hegel at one time regarded Chris
tianity " as a moral failure, just because it did not combine with
any specific national institutions, so as to produce a living de
velopment of national character." " How light in the scale,"
said the great German, " weigh the whole ' means of grace '
worked by the Church, backed by the most full and learned
explanations, when the passions and the power of circumstances,
1 Wernle, Beginnings of Christianity, p. 82,
The Church of the Messiah 323
of education, of example, and of the government, are thrown
into the opposite scale! The whole history of religion, since
the beginning of the Christian era, combines to show that
Christianity is a religion which can make men good only if they
are good already." x According to Origen, Celsus also urged
that men should " take office " in the government of the country
if that is required for the maintenance of the laws and the
support of religion. But when the modern critic charges against
Christianity, that it makes its moral appeal only to those who
are good already, we exclaim that Celsus, centuries before Hegel,
had made it an accusation against the Church that it appealed
almost exclusively to those who are morally worthless. " Every
one, they say, who is a sinner, who is devoid of understanding,
who is a child, and, to speak generally, whoever is unfortunate,
him will the Kingdom of God receive. Do you not call him a
sinner, then, who is unjust, and a thief, and a house-breaker,
and a prisoner, and a comimitter of sacrilege, and a robber of
the dead? What others would a man invite, if he were issuing
a proclamation for an assembly of robbers?"2 Of the two
critics we think Celsus the clearer-headed, and yet these counter
charges are neutralized by each other: perhaps our best answer
to both is to place their criticisms in juxtaposition, as above.
We refuse to admit that Christ's teaching is adverse to genuine
patriotism, even though this charge be repeated by thinkers of
the repute of Hegel, Mazzini and Lecky; we believe, on the
contrary, that Christianity creates the noblest patriots, although
the real scope of the ethic of Jesus is not national but universal ;
and the Church, so far as it is loyal to its Founder, possesses
an expansibility potentially as broad as the human race. Not
only did Jesus refuse to be a political Messiah; He declined
also the judicial functions of a merely social reformer. St. Luke
narrates how, when asked to interfere in a dispute about property,
Jesus said to the disinherited brother, who engages our sympathy,
" Man, who made Me a judge or a divider over you? " 3 On the
other hand, the very spirituality and rigorous individualism of
Jesus made Him universal; even those humanitarians who com
plain of His indifference to social problems have drunk deep
draughts of inspiration from His timeless teaching. This true
Messiah pressed back beyond the external symptoms of disorder
* Hegel, by E. Caird, p. 25.
* Origen against Celsus, bk. iii., chap. lix. 3 Luke xii. 13-15.
324 Self-Dedication unto Death
to the causes of disease in the heart, and the aim of His Personal
Ministry and of His Church was to regenerate the springs of
action within man. It is therefore a mistake to adjudge His
Church as unsocial, unpatriotic and unconcerned about the in
stitutions of the state. The time is at hand when men will
be astonished at the potentiality, range, and applicability of the
teaching of Jesus in all that concerns human life.
12. It is hardly possible to pass from this subject of the
Messiah's Church without allusion to the unhappy divisions,
jealousies and rivalries that have torn it into many sects. A gulf
separates us all from the community planned by Jesus long ago.
The societies which have appropriated His holy Name are given
over too much to the dominance of men whose motives are
found in worldly selfishness and in insatiable ambition. Often
times the political element in the Church has utterly stultified
the religious principle. It was, perhaps, inevitable that the note
of primitive simplicity should disappear from the Church as it
became knit to the complex forms of civilization. The ideal can
seldom be realized in the actual conditions of human history;
the world's alloy was bound to be blended with the fine gold
of Christ's teaching. There is an innate stubbornness in the
material in which life seeks to express itself; and yet one feels
that the Spirit of the Church's Founder might have been more
faithfully followed. Amid all the legitimate expansions and
schemes of organization, the supreme aim of the disciples ought
ever to have been to express the mind of the Master. In His
poverty, humiliation and self-sacrifice we discern the true char
acteristics of discipleship. The love of titles, the ambition for
governing and sectarian partisanship have not only tended to
destroy the Spirit of brotherhood, but have also introduced an
alien character into the communion of Christ's brethren: hence,
neither inwardly nor outwardly has the Church maintained that
loyalty to the Messiah which alone can create catholicity and
preserve its truth. The reform of the churches and their reunion
can come only as we press back upon the Spirit of Christ, and
throw off all institutions and ceremonies that prove themselves
incompatible with His teachings concerning the Fatherhood of
God and brotherhood of man.
CHAPTER IV
THE DAYS OF HIS ANALEPSIS
I. The Marcan construction of evangelic history has served
as our general ground-plan of the Ministry of Jesus, but we have
not hesitated to modify this by adopting suggestions arising out
of the study of the Fourth Gospel, nor, seeing the lack of one
fixed chronology, have we yielded to natural scruples against
breaking up the lengthy interpolation which is found in St. Luke.1
In his classical preface the third evangelist frankly records his
own method and aim in his researches and in his literary effort ;
and, consequently, he has made it impossible to deny the sub
stantial historicity of his portrait of Jesus without impugning
his veracity. But while St. Luke thus supplies an anticipatory
refutation of Strauss's idea that the Gospels grew from the
activity of a myth-creating imagination, he does not make it
incredible that the materials he gathered might be moulded and
composed into a whole under the influence of some masterful pre
conception. The third evangelist may have first learned of Jesus
from St. Paul, and the desire and design to write the narrative
of His Ministry may have sprung from the dominating con
viction that Jesus of Nazareth was the Lord of the Apostolic
Churches. While he was too honest to introduce into his gospel
aught that he knew to be fictitious, or that was inharmonious
with his own impression of the life of Jesus, it was inevitable
that in the course of his narrative he should throw into prom
inence those aspects of the work of Jesus which convinced him
that the Man of Nazareth was indeed the Lord preached by
St. Paul. It is but fair to criticism, however, to admit that the
faith in the Lordship of Jesus was due rather to spiritual ex
perience than to historical evidence; and St. Luke, having re
ceived this conviction from his Spiritual Father, set out to find
confirmation of the same in the extant traditions and oral testi
monies of eye-witnesses. It does not follow, however, that the
Evangelist forced and bent the accumulated materials of his narra
tive into a mould foreign to the thought and teaching of Jesus
'Luke ix. 51-xviii. 31.
325
326 Self-Dedication unto Death
Himself. By seeking to gain a clear unbiassed impression of
Jesus from all the writings relating to His Ministry, we have
been compelled to believe that He Himself did actually and re
peatedly claim to be the Messiah and Master of men, even while
He was engaged in transforming the popular ideas of Messiah-
ship. Thus, as we found in our " Introduction," behind St. Paul,
who taught St. Luke to know the Lord, stood Jesus Himself —
a most real historical Person, intensely human and undeniably
transcendent. Those critics who depreciate the validity of St.
Luke's gospel because the Evangelist derived his Christianity
from the Apostle of the Gentiles, might do well to ponder the
careful judgement of Professor P. Wernle : " Facts prove that St.
Paul knew Jesus in spite of all — yes, he knew Him better than
all his predecessors. What he brought to the Greeks was no
mere product of his imagination, but the real Jesus, with His
promise, His claims, and His redemption." x Both St. Paul and
his pupil illustrate the truth that the true perspective of things
can be seen only at a certain distance. It is seldom that a
contemporary immediately perceives in a comprehensive manner
the true drift and meaning of current events.2 We can, there
fore, readily understand how this evangelist, looking back upon
the historic events of the Ministry of Jesus from the coign of
vantage of Pauline Christology, should interpret as a whole the
period of Christ's self-dedication to the Cross, and group to
gether a mass of incidents relevant to this concentrated determina
tion of Jesus to offer Himself at Jerusalem.
2. Hence, in speaking of the period of the Analepsis, the
unity given to the events grouped under the term is due not so
much to chronological sequence as to the point of view occupied
by the Evangelist. The affirmation affixed by St. Luke as an
introduction to his " great interpolation " might at first lead many
to imagine that the whole of the subsequent chapters relate to
one, slow, Messianic progress towards the capital. Dr. A.
Plummer,3 for example, assumes that this was so; that the
* Beginnings of Christianity, vol. i., 267.
2 In One of Our Conquerors, Meredith says of one called upon to
recite the incidents of his journey: "The little man did not know that
time was wanted to make the roadway or riverway of a true story, unless
we press to invent; his mind had been too busy on the way for him
to clothe in speech his impressions of incidents at the call for them."
* Inter. Crit. Com., in loco.
The Days of His Analepsis 327
journey lasted several months, treating the several allusions to
various journeys in this intercalated section as simply showing
that Jesus frequently stopped to preach at different places, while
He was pursuing His last journey to Jerusalem.1 Others, how
ever, after prolonged and repeated examination of this famous
passage, have come to regard it as a compilation of events and
teachings distributed over many months and happening in differ
ent places, believing that in the account itself are found allusions
to several distinct journeys, while the last return to the capital 2
began much later than the date to be ascribed to some of the
incidents in this part of the gospel, and that only a few weeks,
instead of months, before the close of His earthly ministry did
Jesus finally take His departure from Galilee. Although an
arbitrary and unnecessary alteration of the sequence of events
related in our Gospels must be deprecated, yet as soon as the
attempt is made to form some chronological plan of the ministry,
it becomes a plain necessity to transpose some of the incidents
and sayings. The natural hesitation to incur such responsibility
in dealing with the Lucan interpolation is lessened by the dis
covery that the Evangelist was determined as much by his gov
erning idea of Jesus as by the chronology of his story in grouping
his materials. Should it still be objected that so careful an
historian as St. Luke is supposed to have been would not be
likely to transgress all laws of chronology by " massing " irrele
vant and disconnected materials, it can only be suggested in
answer, that the Evangelist may have gathered the whole of this
part of his gospel from sources apart from the main current
of tradition, and that he saw that any attempt to distribute his
new materials over the Marcan plan would only confuse and
obscure the movement of events, more even than would be
done by a bodily insertion of all his freshly discovered materials
as a separate section of his gospel. But St. Luke was no bald
chronicler, slavishly sitting at the foot of the letter and repeating
what had been delivered to him by eye-witnesses and ministers
of the Word; this pupil of St. Paul's had his own insights and
original contributions of thought. As he pondered over the
period which we have described as that of Christ's self-dedica
tion, St. Luke perceived that our Lord was incessantly thinking
of the tragic exodus He was about to make at Jerusalem, that
whatever interruptions and delays might cross His path, His
'Luke ix. 51; xiii. 22; xvii. 11. 2 Luke xvii. 11.
328 Self -Dedication unto Death
ruling motive was henceforth to accomplish His Messianic mis
sion in Jerusalem. St. Luke has described, in solemn and stately
words, the inward purpose and outward demeanour of " the
Lord " : " When the days were being fulfilled of His analepsis,
He set His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem." This evangelist
intended that all his readers should look at the deepening gloom
of tragedy in the light cast by the triumph of the Ascension,
which was for himself the master-light of all his seeing.1
3. The Hebraistic phrase, that " Jesus set His face fixedly
towards Jerusalem," shows that His thought had outrun experi
ence and clearly grasped the goal; — that He apprehended the
Cross. And all the Gospels agree in setting forth the calm
deliberation and autonomy of Jesus as He drew near to the end ;
with unresting yet unhasting steps He moved toward the fulfil
ment of His Mission. The intensity of His own purpose and
emotion reveals itself in the stern determination of His counte
nance. In every great life there are moments when all the
faculties and attributes of personality become concentrated in
powerful and sometimes prophetic activity; these are the self-
revealing moments when all the passion and intention of the
soul blaze forth in dynamical speech and eloquent action. At
such dramatic periods, the soul throws its own flash-light upon
the unknown future; to adopt the simile of a modern novelist,
it is like a boat on lake Como at night, from the prow of which
a small lantern casts its arrow of light upon the darkness ahead;
sometimes such vaticinations of the unknown are pathetically
futile, like the curiosity of man attacking God's impenetrable
mysteries, fluttering into the darkness a few inches only to
be swallowed up again in new gloom. But what impresses us
in Jesus, as He forecasts the tragic future, is His tone of assur
ance and of mastery. The arrowy light of His Intelligence shot
ahead so that He knew the gloom and terror of the immediate
future, yet He appears scarcely to have thought of any possibility
of escape. From the first foreword concerning His Passion,
there steals into the narratives of His Ministry a note of deepen
ing intensity : the triumphant certitude of His language, however,
implies that the mystery predestined for Him is no longer im
penetrable ; He sees the Cross ; and yet, beyond the midnight of
sorrow, He already discerns the white dawn of the Resurrection.
'Acts i. 6-11.
The Days of His Analepsis 329
This conception of our Lord is not, as some have thought, a pure
idealization of the actual Mind of Jesus. Not only St. Luke,
but also the other evangelists, relate that whenever He spoke of
the darkness which threatened to quench the light of His life,
He added that His immediate failure was to be followed by
glorious triumph. Some readers of His life, proceeding from
a dogmatic belief in His Divinity rather than from historical
inquiry, have assumed that Jesus foresaw in clear and definite
outline, the nature of the final crisis at the time of His struggle
in the wilderness; but in this study we have been led to think
that Calvary was hidden at the beginning ; that, although He had
keenly felt the pain of tearing Himself away from the popular
Messianism, He still cherished the hope that Israel would receive
His message, and that Jerusalem might become the centre of a
great, world-embracing Spiritual Religion. The Baptist is rep
resented to have described Jesus as the Lamb of God which
taketh away the sin of the world; and if he really used this
language, he either spoke ecstatically, without understanding all
the deep sacrificial implications of his words, or he was describ
ing, in Isaianic terms, the innocence and gentleness of Jesus.
John's own subsequent doubts and questioning show that he did
not enter with any vital understanding into the necessity of
Christ's suffering. The idea of the consummating sacrifice of the
Lamb of God, though latent in the title ascribed to Jesus, had not
yet been explicitly apprehended even by Jesus Himself. The Son
of Man walked by faith and not by sight : hence, at the beginning,
He was inspired by the ideal of God's Reign; but He had not
then realized the terrible cost to Himself of its establishment. It
appears that the first Galilean period of His Ministry had been
marked by gladness and hope, and the people had seemed
ready to respond to His high ideals. Soon, however, the Phari
sees and Sadducees perceived that in the teaching of Jesus there
was a dangerous, anarchic principle which would sooner or later
subvert and shatter their own order: hence, they spurned His
claims as intangible and unrealizable dreams. The Pharisees
dogged His steps with jealous vigilance, angry and envious
that the populace should be attracted by His gracious speech and
many miracles. His open rupture with these accredited officials
and teachers led the people to discredit Him, so that soon after
He was rejected by them also. Then He who had breathed forth
His thought of the Kingdom in idyllic beatitudes began to pour
330 Self-Dedication unto Death
out His soul in the lamentation of a terrible disappointment.
In this mood Jesus had gone forth as an exile into heathen
territory; there He faced the problem of His failure, and sought
not only to instruct His disciples concerning the way of sorrow,
but also to prepare their minds for the shock of approaching
disaster. Jesus did not underestimate that sleepless hostility of
the established authorities; He learned that the hour of His
triumph must be preceded by one of doom. God's Love had
planned man's redemption; man's hate invented the Cross; but
Jesus foresaw that even the tragedy of Crucifixion would be
instrumental in carrying out the Divine Purpose. He read the
meaning of His Ministry through His consciousness of the
Heavenly Father; and when He came to realize the necessity
( Set) of the passion, His heart and will were given up in
self-dedication, and He set His face toward Jerusalem.
4. Wieseler interpreted the analepsis to mean His " acceptance
among men " ; but assuredly the term is pregnant with fuller
significance than that: the minimum of meaning we descry in it
is an allusion to Christ's assumption into heavenly blessedness.
This attempt, on St. Luke's part, to bring the self-dedicatory
passages of our Lord's life under the burning focus of the light
of a climactic and glorious denouement is due not merely to the
historian's backward glance over the perspective of the past
months, but also to the foresight and prediction of Jesus. His
eyes were often fixed on a glory that lay beyond the Cross ; before
He had evoked the disciples' confession of His Messiahship at
Caesarea Philippi, Jesus had begun not only to contemplate the
necessity of His Passion, but also to view it as a means to an
ulterior end. Thus we find Him maintaining an even trust in
His Father in the darkest passages of experience ; and repeatedly
He affirmed that failure was His way to triumph. Jesus became
too intimate with the world's sin and sorrow to move amid scenes
so sad with a light heart. One of the practical issues of His
Ministry was to make Him acquainted with the inevitable lot
of suffering; but, as the shadowing presage of doom fell upon
His soul, He made an irrevocable surrender to the Father's Will ;
and while straitened by the oppressive sense of that baptism of
blood, He passed in faith to a strong, clear vision of His ultimate
victory. Yet while the foretaste of triumph was given to Him,
Jesus never overlooked the dark passage which led to the goal;
The Days of His Analepsis 331
but, knowing that death could but prove an entrance into life,
He went steadily forward without allowing Himself to be para
lyzed by morbid fears. Jesus possessed the foresight of perfect
faith. Not only is the future hidden from most men, but because
of their lack of faith in the Father they suffer ills which never
come, and taste many times over the bitter pangs of death.
Christ's vaticinations of His Resurrection were not born of
superior mental perspicacity merely; nor even of Divine fore
knowledge, but rather of His absolute faith in the goodness of
the Father. The prediction of His Resurrection is too easily
explained by those who assume that Jesus exercised Divine omnis
cience ; while the difficulty of such definite anticipations of future
events is enormous in the eyes of those who would reduce Him
to the stature of ordinary men, and regard such sayings as
due to the light thrown back upon the half-remembered words of
Jesus from the Church's later faith. There are two doubts which
alternately assail the mind: the one a common doubt today of
the Divinity of Jesus, and the other a profounder doubt of His
humanity. " As soon as men had time to collect their thoughts
about Christ and begin to put them in a systematic form, they
were more inclined to doubt the manhood which had lived among
them than the deity they had spiritually known." x For our
selves, we know but one safe path for thought — the resolute
recognition of all the phenomena of Christ's Ministry, whether
they seem so human as to hide His Divinity, or whether they
appear to pass beyond the limits of man's life. It ought ever
to be kept in mind, however, that Jesus was not only human,
but more human — more perfectly man than any other teacher the
world has ever known. It is we ourselves that are abnormal;
He is the true norm. And being man, Jesus could not escape
the incidence of pain and struggle, but through suffering and
unswerving obedience to the Divine Will He was made perfect.
The history of the closing weeks of His Ministry shows that His
was no effortless obedience; it throws also, into great clearness,
the intensity of His emotional and spiritual life. He set Himself
to accomplish a definite mission — some of the implications and
issues of which are yet to be considered by us — fixing His
face, with mighty self -constraint, toward Jerusalem. St. Luke
indicates that the key of His life must be found in the Ascension
—those weeks of suffering, of inward struggle, of slow martyr-
' Gwatkin, The Knowledge of God, vol. ii., p. 82.
332 Self-Dedication unto Death
dom were to be understood only from the viewpoint of the
analepsis. 5. One of the characteristics of the Four Gospels is their
inextricable blending of elements usually assumed to be incom
patible — the Divine with the human, the supernatural with the
natural, the transcendent with the mundane. It gives no shock
of surprise to the reader, therefore, to find the mysterious
analepsis of Jesus brought into close connection with the days
of Christ's Passion; to find the anaplerosis linked together with
the self-emptying of the Son; to perceive the glorification of
Christ set forth as the goal of the humiliation. We pass, without
any feeling of abruptness from St. Luke's anticipation of the
Ascension, to the historical last journey of the Master to Jerusa
lem. The route from Capernaum to Jericho is still a debated
question. " He departed from Galilee and came into the coasts
of Judaea beyond Jordan." 1 It would seem that Jesus travelled
eastward along the boundaries of Galilee and Samaria; avoiding
all entrance into Samaritan territory, He reached Peraea and
turned southward. There occurred an incident on this journey
which exhibited, all too painfully, the ingratitude of those who
received the beneficent healing of Jesus.2 A company of ten
lepers met Him with appeals for help, and when, in obedience
to His command, they went toward Jerusalem to show themselves
to the priests, they discovered in themselves a new movement of
health and recovery. It was so marvellous a case of healing in a
disease usually obstinate in resisting all remedies, that it appears
all the more surprising that any lack of gratitude should have
occurred. Only one of the healed men returned, a Samaritan,
and " magnifying God with a loud voice, he fell on his face,
at the feet of Jesus, giving Him thanks." " Were the ten not
made clean ? " said Jesus, " Where are the nine ? Is there no
one to return and do honour to God except this foreigner ? Rise
and go : thy faith hath saved thee."
6. As we saw, Jesus had been forced, by the resolute hos
tility of His enemies, to suspend His public work and to devote
Himself to the private instruction of His disciples ; but when He
came into the regions of Peraea He felt free to begin to teach
openly again. This resumption of His public work appears to
'Matt. xix. 1. 2 Luke xvii. 11-19.
The Days of His Analepsis 333
have occasioned a temporary revival of His popularity; and
resurgence of the appreciation of Jesus by the people was demon
strated in the crowds which accompanied Him, and culminated
shortly in His triumphant entry into Jerusalem. His former
brief visit to Peraea — interrupted, as we think, by the miracle
at Bethany — had made an indelible impression upon the popu
lace ; and the kind of reception now given to Him may be inferred
from the story of the mothers coming to Jesus with their babes.1
He had evidently impressed them as the Gracious Son of Man.
But the disciples, deluded once again with false hopes of the
Messianic Kingdom, felt that their Master was suffering a loss
of dignity, and under the impulse of worldly ambitions attempted
to repulse the women, bringing upon themselves the rebuke of
their Lord. Perhaps it was the chivalrous tenderness shown
toward those women that gave some Pharisees the occasion they
were waiting for to seek to entangle Jesus into an expression
of His disregard for Jewish laws. " Is it right," they asked
"for a man to divorce his wife?" At that time the facility of
divorce led to grave results; for a mere whim, caprice, or
sensual desire was frequently made the ground of separation
between man and wife. At a counter-interrogation, the Phar
isees quoted the Mosaic law 2 on the matter ; then Jesus uttered
His original dictum, " Moses wrote this ordinance with a view
to your stubbornness of heart," 3 and referred back to the law
implicit in creation as against any dissolution of the union of
man and wife. In speaking thus of Moses, Jesus but accepted
the contemporary belief about the authorship of the Pentateuch.
Later on, in a house where He was lodging, He said to His
disciples, — " Whosoever shall divorce his wife . . . and marry
another, commits adultery." The exception made in the case of
fornication may have been spoken by Jesus, but it was not His
habit to qualify His bold, original and arresting statements by
specifying exceptions. Justice demands that if fornication be
made a ground of divorce, the same law should be applicable
to the husband as to the wife. Jesus did not intend to bind
men with particular rules; He laid down principles which may
be interpreted and applied with exactitude only where His own
Spirit dwells. As a matter of fact, it may be that separation
would often be preferable to a union that prolongs misery and
' Luke xviii. 15-17- . ' Deut. xxiv. I.
3 Matt. xix. 3-12; Luke xvi. 18.
334 Self-Dedication unto Death
urges mutual provocation. Jesus showed superb courage and
freedom in thus teaching that the external, Mosaic code was but
a temporary, provisional economy corresponding to the imperfect
stage of man's moral development. His aim was to emancipate
the conscience from laws which had been made intolerable by
subtle refinements and sophistical additions. With simple direct
ness He penetrated . to the core of legalism and enunciated a
few rational principles for human guidance; for He had per
ceived that the gossamer threads of Pharisaic sophistry were
more enslaving to the soul than outward chains. Not long
before, it is true, Jesus had shown His respect for Judaism by
sending the lepers to the priests to perform the legal rights of
cleansing; now, with unprecedented boldness He waived the
Mosaic legislation and annulled the binding power of ancient
Judaism. Jesus was too great to be concerned about a super
ficial consistency. He felt that it was necessary to destroy the
outward bondage of the letter, in order that the conscience should
be ruled by higher principles. He was the Messiah of a New
Covenant — the Teacher of a law written upon the fleshly tablets
of the human heart. But in teaching that the whole dispensation
of the law was but a parenthesis in an evangelic theodicy, He
was offending the whole established order of Judaism, and thus
advanced another step in His self-dedication to the Cross in the
days of His analepsis.
7. During these days of the transient revival of His popular
ity, when the disciples were once more encouraged to hope for
the attainment of political power, there came an opportunity of
winning a wealthy and influential adherent to their movement,
who, had Jesus chosen, might have done much to turn aside the
opposition of the established authorities.1 A rich man knelt with
every token of reverence before Jesus, and asked, " Good Teacher,
what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" To the surprise of
all, Jesus seemed to repel the conventional title — seeking, we
suppose, to turn back the man's mind to reflect more profoundly
on his own ideal of moral good. The reference to the Decalogue,
as the way of eternal life, was characteristic of Jesus' way of
meeting man at some point of his personal knowledge and ex
perience. With self-complacency the inquirer made the super
ficial yet ingenuous boast that he had kept these laws from his
1 Luke xviii. 18-30; Matt. xix. 16-29; Mark x. 17-30.
The Days of His Analepsis 335
youth. Attracted by the man's evident sincerity, Jesus defined
the moral ideal as perfect love, and instructed him to sell all
his property, and to distribute the proceeds among the poor;
then to take up the Cross and follow Him. The mind of Jesus
was still preoccupied with the thought of His approaching doom,
which could not be evaded if He went on to Jerusalem, and
He calls this candidate for discipleship to share His own fate.
At this reply the man's face fell; he was disappointed and went
away with a heavy heart, not being able to make such absolute
renunciation. The Twelve may have shown, by their looks, that
they thought the Master had thrown away a great opportunity
through want of tact; and Jesus, looking round on them, ex^
claimed, " How hard it is for those who have property to enter
into the Reign of God ! " Seeing that His disciples failed to
comprehend, He added, " How hard it is for those who put their
trust in riches to enter into the Reign of God ! " Poverty itself
can be no prize; its value lies in its power to beget dependence
upon God and to engender a lowliness of temper in intercourse
with men. Wealth is dangerous in its seductions to trust in
outward things. Most men are betrayed by false values; but
the mind of Jesus searched to the heart of all possessions with
unrivalled clarity and penetration. All who follow Him will lose
their pathetic illusions about the worth of wealth, and will come
to learn that the poor can enjoy God all the better for being
unhampered and unhindered by outward possessions.
8. The first feeling of disappointment speedily gave place in
Simon's breast to a self-righteous boast, " Lo, we have left all
and followed Thee." Said Jesus, " I tell you truly, there is no
man who leaves house, or brothers, or sisters, or mother, or
father, or children, or lands for My sake and for the gospel's
sake, without receiving a hundredfold now in this time, houses,
and brothers, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands,
with persecutions ; and in the age to come life eternal. But many
who are first shall be last, and the last first." In St. Matthew's
gospel, Peter is represented as asking pointedly what reward the
disciples will have, and Christ's answer is cast into the mould
of the popular Messianic hope. This is followed 1 by the parable
of the Vineyard, in which the labourers all receive one wage of
a denarius, irrespective of the hours of their employment. Thus
'Matt. xx. 1-16.
336 Self-Dedication unto Death
Jesus taught that men cannot trade and barter with God, nor
insult the Sovereignty of His Love by envying the well-being of
others. Men ought not to reckon their services for God on a
commercial basis, as though they were hirelings. The upspring-
ing of this hope of earthly rewards contrasted with His own
Spirit of self-sacrifice; and from His words we judge that
Simon's question jarred upon His own mood of self-dedication.
Still, Jesus was too magnanimous to allow the wound in His
own heart to obscure His recognition of the sacrifices made
by the disciples: hence, He combined with His warning against
commercial religion a promise of magnificent reward for genuine
fidelity to His cause. In following Him the spiritual gains out
weigh all losses ; poverty is transmuted to spiritual wealth, perse
cution to blessedness, and the loss of friendships is recompensed
with new relationships, even while His disciples suffer persecu
tions. On the way to the Cross, Jesus encouraged His disciples
with promises of limitless bliss; and as He sets His face toward
Jerusalem He dispenses thrones and gifts as a conqueror; but
the " thrones " in His Mind were symbolic of spiritual sway, and
not of material splendour. Here again the radiance of the
analepsis fell on the via dolorosa.
9. Through the reminiscences of this last journey toward the
City of Doom, there runs one unifying hope of the Resurrection
and of His assumption into some glorious life of the Spirit.
Living right in the midst of those experiences, the disciples were
but dimly aware of the true trend of His Ministry; but when
at last they witnessed His Ascension, they perceived the real
synopsis of the past three years. If we take away the crowning
event of the Resurrection, then the Cross is shorn of its glory,
and stands amid the hopeless ruins of history as the dread
symbol of defeat. The analepsis transfigures the gloom and ex
plains the Divine telos of the whole. The set face of Jesus,
turned so resolutely toward Jerusalem, is lighted with the tri
umphant energy of invincible hope. Apart from this vision of
the goal, the events of His life appear chaotic and confusing, and
His conduct and words become tinged with a semblance of
" subtlety and finesse." Illusive as were the dreams of the King
dom which dominated the Mind of Jesus in His early Galilean
ministry, they exercised an educative influence upon Him and
led Him through suffering to perfection. Delusions end in dis-
The Days of His Analepsis 337
appointment; but illusions find a fulfilment more profound than
at first anticipated. Jesus' first illusive hope of the Kingdom
passed into the clarified vision of a nobler triumph. The suffer
ing He realized acquired the significance of spiritual sacrifice,
and " He has linked it with the laws of the universe and with
the Invisible Mind of God." If for a moment His ideal were
submerged amid the clash of hostile wills, it was soon lifted
up again in a glorious realization, so that all the world might see.
The analepsis terminated the earthly ministry, and inaugurated
the Messiah's Heavenly session; to this point all the lines of
past history converge, and from this focus springs the noblest
inspiration for the future.
CHAPTER V
THE MINISTRY OF RANSOM
I. However slowly the Messiah pursued His journey toward
the capital, He had long since determined to face His enemies
and endure the utmost suffering the leaders of the nation might
devise. Sustained by this unwavering resolution, the prevailing
mood of Jesus was one of ecstasy and moral exaltation, clashing
painfully with the earth-born aims of the disciples. As they
walked along the road, the aloofness of Jesus from His com
panions was perceptible in the feelings of constraint and dis
satisfaction. He was absorbed in His contemplation of the
Cross, while they were preoccupied with the thought of earthly
thrones. The expression of set determination in the Master's
face amazed the Twelve; they could not understand Him, but
followed with fear. Such, at least, is St. Mark's graphic de
scription of the occasion : " Now," says the Evangelist, " they
were on the road going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus went in front
of them. And they were in dismay, while some who followed
were in fear." x They vaguely felt that something in His mood,
which was betokened in His look and demeanour, menaced their
ambitions and endangered all their hopes. They were but un
comfortable companions for Jesus then, and, as a mental aliena
tion between Himself and them pressed upon Him, they fell
behind Him as men overawed. It was as though they divined,
in His rapt ecstasy and solemn carriage, a mysterious, prophetic
activity which lifted Him away from His human associates.
The imagination of Jesus was surcharged with momentous
realities of the Spirit, while the disciples were chained to the work
of the senses ; they grovelled still in the materialism of their age.
But presently the lonely Messiah was oppressed by the strained
relations between Himself and the men He loved, and He sought
to convey to them something of His own high thoughts. He
" took the Twelve aside privately " 2 and told them once again
of the death which lay before Him, adding fresh details to the
' Mark x. 32-34. ' Matt. xx. 17,-19.
838
The Ministry of Ransom 339
repeated prediction : " Lo, we are going up to Jerusalem ; and
the Son of Man shall be delivered to the high-priests and scribes.
They shall sentence Him to death and deliver Him to the Gentiles
to mock and scourge and crucify. Yet on the third day, He
shall rise again." The definiteness, minutiae and precision of this
prophecy will impress many minds with a natural doubt whether
such a saying can be attributed to Jesus at all. If it be taken
for granted that such prediction is an a priori impossibility, then
we must deem the evangelists guilty of a wrong artifice in
graduating the disclosures of the Passion attributed to Jesus.
There is such verisimilitude in the advance from vague presenti
ment to definite prediction, from the bare affirmation of inevitable
suffering to the full forecast of all the details of His doom, that
if the anticipations be not regarded as veritably spoken by Jesus,
they will assuredly be interpreted as culpable misrepresentations.
Personally, we accept the historicity of these graduated vaticina
tions of the end, and we believe that the Master Himself re
iterated His predictions with greater detail and fulness at the sev
eral crises of His self-dedication. The phenomena of the Old
Testament will not allow us to strip the prophets of all predictive
foresight; although not their chief or sole function, it is
irrefutable that those inspired men were often seers of future
events. And this extraordinary gift belonged to Jesus; He was
pneumatically sensitive both to the current events and to the
inevitable developments of the movements of His time ; He fore
saw and, we believe, foretold with detailed accuracy, the issues
of His personal ministry, judging all things in the light of His
goal. 2. The spasmodic revival of His popularity in Peraea did not
deceive Jesus, although it misled the disciples; in the heat of
the excitement the Messiah was not once diverted from His
resolute pursuit of self-sacrifice. Had He been as other men
and drawn His incentives from selfish ambition, He would have
sought to retain the good-will of the people, even at the cost
of compromise, as the means of a more facile founding of His
Kingdom. The disciples were disappointed again and again that
Jesus was so unworldly and unpractical that He allowed such
opportunities of confirming His moral influence over men to
slip away unused. It may be frankly assumed that most teachers
desirous of founding a new order would have readily accepted
340 Self-Dedication unto Death
advances made by representatives of the professional classes;
but Jesus, as the Gospels show, repelled the learned, wealthy and
influential men of His nation by harsh demands of renunciation.
Such absolute fidelity to an ideal seems too impracticable for
this world of compromise; it was, consequently, inevitable that
Jesus should fail and become the martyr of His faith. This
Messiah may be truly described as the conscience of Humanity;
He was tremulously sensitive to all the infidelities and sins of
men; therefore to Himself He must be true, whatever the cost
might be. Having preached His lofty idealism to others, He
dared not deviate from His own standard of faith. He lived
the faith He taught; His own pure ideal was made incarnate;
and, by this very contrast, He condemned the selfishness of men.
Thus, we have come to a point in the Ministry of Jesus when,
to understand His own profound sayings concerning His suffering
and sacrifice, we must enter imaginatively into the mind of Jesus,
recalling His claim to autonomy, even while He submitted to
outward and physical violence. The mere incident of bodily pain
was the least part of the Passion of Jesus ; His most real anguish
sprang from His quivering consciousness of the world's wrong.
3. Other men might interpret the Crucifixion as the igno
minious failure of religious idealism, but Jesus made such defeat
itself the instrument of executing His purpose in the world.
The dark shadow of the Cross which fell on His pathway never
once made Him waver, or wish to turn back. He trusted too
fully in the Heavenly Father to doubt the issue of obedience to
the Divine Will, even when death itself confronted Him. This
personal faith in God's justice- grew into a definite assurance
that the Father would not leave the Son in Hades. But it must
not be imagined that this moral certitude saved Him from the
fluctuations of emotion and trials of will. For instance, the good
conscience He kept before His Father was itself a cause of offence
to the disciples He loved so profoundly, and became an occasion
of mutual misunderstanding. The clash of antagonistic ideals
made this misunderstanding an unescapable issue. On the one
hand, Jesus Himself found the mirror of His own history in the
fate of the gentle, strong martyr of the deutero-Isaiah's prophecy.
There He learned that " it pleased the Lord to bruise Him " :
hence, He faced the approaching tragedy with a deliberate,
calm dignity and resolute self-immolation. On the other hand,
The Ministry of Ransom 341
the disciples shared the popular prepossessions of the Messiah's
Davidic revival of political and military conquest: hence, they
looked for a time when Jesus should be King and execute judge
ment on the earth. But such hopes as these, which had sprung
first from the sentiment of patriotism, and which the great
prophets had raised into a moral ideal for the nation, were
illusory ; for at this time, although Jesus accepted the confession
of Messiahship, He looked forward to a public and dreadful
death, knowing that already the national authorities had de
termined to deliver Him to the Romans. But this foreseen fate
was not looked upon by Jesus Himself as a mere misfortune,
or evil chance arising from an uncontrolled conflict of world-
forces, but as a sacrifice made necessary on moral grounds and
integrated into the Divine and providential order of history, and
destined to become the focus of a new Christian Weltansicht.
In seeking to understand the attitude and Mind of Jesus in view
of His swift-coming doom, it is needful that His personal re
ligious consciousness and ethical principles shall be remembered,
since these constituted the media through which He himself
interpreted the events of life. First, therefore, His prevision
of death must be brought into connection with His consciousness
of the Heavenly Father ; then it must be related to His spiritual
interpretation of God's Reign as realizable in the inward, moral
life of the good man; thirdly, it must not be overlooked that
to the Mind of Jesus physical death was as a sleep and an
introduction into fuller life. Hence it came about that His
voluntary acceptance of His death focused into one concentrated
blaze of splendid light all the ideas and emotions cherished in
the Ministry of Jesus. His sacrifice gave new accentuation and
meaning to the doctrines taught by Him. So much, at least,
may be acknowledged alike by those who in theological matters
are conservative and those who represent the advanced school
of liberalism.
4. As Jesus uttered His clear, distinct prediction of swift-
approaching doom on this last journey, the disciples deemed
Him to be the victim of a dreadful hallucination. The light He
offered was as darkness to men who were still morally unpre
pared: hence, His words made so adequate impression corre
spondent with their momentous meaning. To the eyes of chil
dren the stars are simply points of light pricked out on the
342 Self-Dedication unto Death
plane-surface of the sky, though by-and-by they will understand
them to be mighty worlds moving through illimitable space.
And yet it cannot but appear strange, and to many incomprehensi
ble, that after companying with the Master so long, those dis
ciples could remain almost to the end free from all presentiments
of coming disaster. An instance of their obsession and conse
quent imperviousness to the clearest forecast is afforded by the
ambitious sons of Zebedee, or by their mother, who sought to
secure from Jesus a promise of future remembrance and par
ticular favour. According to St. Matthew,1 the mother came to
Jesus with the request, " Say that these my sons shall sit one
on Thy right hand, and one on Thy left hand in Thy reign."
These ideas of a materialistic Messianism clung to the disciples
like the famous robe smeared with the curdled blood of Nessus,
and poisoned all their thoughts of Jesus. Yet such irrepressible
hopes of a temporal restitution of Israel increase the marvel of
the personal spell of Jesus, that in spite of these preconceptions
which ruled the disciples, when confronted by the hostility of
the authorized representatives of Judaism, He could yet win
their faith that He was the Messiah. Hitherto, James and John
had shared with Simon the closest intimacy with Jesus, and
the intervention of Salome, who appears to have been a sister
of the mother of Jesus, savours too much of intrigue. If the
mother voiced their petition, the answer of Jesus was directed
to the two disciples : " You know not what you are asking. Are
you able to drink the cup that I am to drink? or to be baptized
with the baptism that I am baptized with ? " And they say to
Him, " We are able." Jesus said,
" The cup that I drink, you shall drink:
And the baptism that I am baptized with, shall you be baptized with.
But to sit on My right hand or on My left hand is not Mine to grant;
It is for those for whom it has been made ready."
At that time Jesus would fain have had His disciples think of
suffering rather than of triumph, and He recalled to their minds
His oft-reiterated teaching about cross-bearing and dying, con
necting His own experience with what they also must pass
through — a coordination that should not be lost when we recog
nize the transcendent merit of the sacrifice of Jesus. The self-
confident assertion that they were able to endure all things,
1 Matt. xx. 2of.
The Ministry of Ransom 343
suggests to us that they spoke with the overweening assurance
and defective understanding of children knowing not the mean
ing of the " cup " and the " baptism." Although Jesus declares
that the offices and rewards of His reign are distributed by
Divine predestination, we feel that His thoughts are altogether
remote from theirs. In this disclaimer of the prerogative to
grant royal favours from Himself, we perceive His consistent
lowliness, which was always linked with His conscious dignity,
and trace the unswerving continuance of a surrendered will.
5. When the other disciples learned of this somewhat un
scrupulous attempt to over-reach themselves by wresting a secret
promise from the Master, they were naturally indignant. The
dispute which followed was terminated for the time by the
declaration of Jesus, that greatness in God's Reign must be
determined by the measure of service men render — a standard
diametrically opposed to the despotism of earthly kings. " But
whoever would become great among you must be your servant,
and whoever would be first among you, must be slave of all.
For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve,
and to give His life a ransom for many." This is the rule of
Jesus, and however harmonious it may be with the higher reason
in man, it is in contradiction to all the ordinary impulses and
desires for self-aggrandizement. Such words are admitted to
possess an indisputable originality and to reflect the lofty mind
of the Speaker, but generally they are treated as inapplicable
to the affairs of this world. No laboured argument is required
to convince men that this rule does not obtain in our modern
civilization — not even in the Christian churches; nor can we, by
any sophistry, bring the ordinary behaviour of men into line
with this teaching. Its applicability depended upon the power of
Jesus to breathe a new temper into the hearts of His disciples —
a spirit which would slay all ambitions save that of rendering
service to others. Only in so far as our natural tempers are
subdued by the gracious influence of Jesus, will this rule be
observed in the conduct of life. Some of Dora Greenwell's
thoughtful reflections concerning' a life-giving supernaturalism
seem to us to express this truth with great lucidity and force:
" Christianity," she says, " is supernatural alike in what it gives
and what it claims ; it begins and ends in miracle. The Christian
life, for instance, appears a very simple one; yet it is in truth
344 Self -Dedication unto Death
an impossible one, as the humblest Christian knows, except under
the conditions of supernatural life and supernatural aid." Again,
" Our blessed Lord's deep sayings, His mighty and merciful
deeds, seem natural, and just what belongs to the occasion,
and yet everything in these writings transcends the accustomed
level of humanity. I say everything, for the raising of Lazarus
and the turning of water into wine are as possible to the natural
powers of man, as much within his unaided reach, as is the
morality of the Sermon on the Mount, or the pure, fervent
charity of the Epistles." This devout writer likens the New
Testament to a mountain region, where the common objects are
transfigured and where a sense of remoteness is linked with an
instinct of familiarity : " Through all I have a sense of something
which is foreign to the present order of life, foreign to it and
yet friendly, as if it belonged to some region towards which
man is travelling, but at which he has not yet arrived." J
6. This logkon about the ransom-service is self-evidently
genuine ; no one but Jesus could have uttered it. The importance
and value of this saying, in treating of the inward consciousness
and purpose of the Ministry of Jesus, cannot be exceeded; it
sums up the motives and aims of His life and explains His
voluntary acceptance of death. All that is known about Jesus
demonstrates the fact that He spent Himself wholly in the service
of humanity. The giving up of His life was a continuing process,
and not simply a single incident; a ministry of self-sacrifice
was perfected and crowned in His act of final surrender. In
the course of this attempt to depict the manifold aspects of
His life we have alluded again and again to the gracious beauty
of the Personal Religion of Jesus; but this saying of His now
carries the thought beyond His human piety to His conscious
performance of mighty spiritual action on behalf of mankind.
The germ of Pauline Christianity is in this single saying. The
cultivation of a devout life, of His own ethical and religious
ideas, was but a small part of the mission of Jesus; from the
beginning at the Jordan-side until this last journey to Jerusalem,
He had given the service of His life, and now He is preparing
to give His life in the service of a ransom. Thus He Himself
attributed to His death an efficacy not found in life; in His
own thought it appeared as a sacrifice which, if we may use
1 Two Friends, pp. 131, 132.
The Ministry of Ransom 345
St. Paul's terms, had the value of propitiation. This remarkable
word, " ransom," said to have been used by Jesus, ought not to
be treated as though it were spoken by a scientific theologian;
it is poetry — a metaphor struck from the mind at white heat.
The language of Jesus lives and burns; His words are winged
with imagination; but it must never be supposed that His actual
meaning was narrower than His impressive speech. Jesus had
been thinking of the various modes of service which may be
.rendered by members of His Kingdom ; then, by a natural transi
tion, He passes to the thought of His sufferings and death, affirm
ing that the Messiah's greatest service to the race lies in His
giving His life as a ransom, that by this service "many" will
be delivered. Jesus had learnt the mysterious secret of His
tory, that the world's true advancement is secured by suffering,
pain and sacrifice. Although we avoid the pedantic aim of
extracting every possible meaning from our Lord's metaphor,
we dare not follow the reaction which denies all serious meaning
to it; at least, it must be admitted that Jesus attributed to His
death an efficacy to release men from inward bondage. We do
not now discuss whether the emancipating force of His sacrifice
is due to moral influence or to some profounder action inex
plicable apart from mysticism; our emphasis falls rather on
the authenticity of the word " ransom," and its implication that
the Truth which should make men free was made known in Jesus'
death. Had not Caiaphas said " it was expedient for one man
to die for the nation " ? Jesus now takes up the word of cynic
ism and breathes into it this great idea of ransom; He would
not only die for men, but He would set them free to realize the
Reign of God.
7. Jesus Himself pointed out that an analogy existed between
the " ransom " He would offer and the sacrificing service de
manded from His disciples. They had hitherto thought chiefly
of a kingdom of rewards, while He had instructed them con
cerning a Reign of altruism. His own anticipation of crucifixion
leads Him to inculcate the duty of cross-bearing upon them.
Since Jesus laid such emphasis upon the affinity between His
own experience and theirs, we ought not to hesitate to recognize
at least a partial reproduction of His martyrdom in the lives of
His followers. This analogy should be fearlessly exploited, in
all its length, breadth and depth, by those who seek the meaning
346 Self-Dedication unto Death
of the ransom made by Jesus. The Master promised that His
disciples should be taken up into the fellowship of His sufferings :
" The cup that I drink, you shall drink, and the baptism that I
am baptized with, shall you be baptized with." The fact that
we find in human experience not a few instances of the purifying
and ennobling influences of pain; that we often meet notable
examples of vicarious suffering and sin-bearing, and that civiliza
tion and individual character are alike improved by self-denial
and sacrifice, helps us to apprehend some of the experiences
of Jesus. But when we have frankly acknowledged this analogy,
we are further impelled to reflect upon differences and contrasts
between the ordinary passages of human life and the Passion
of Jesus. Though He Himself might lawfully speak of the
Crosses of the disciples, still even the martyrs themselves have
shrunk from describing their death as a " ransom." And while
we render the amplest recognition of Christ's own stress upon
the fact that He is one with our race in its emotions and
activities, we must also own that, in the preeminence of His
sorrow and supreme value of His death, Jesus stands alone.
" The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church " ; but
neither Tertullian nor any other has dared to affirm that it is a
" ransom " : hence, we are compelled to admit that Jesus attributed
to His own death a value and an importance which have never
been assigned to the death of any other martyr. The sublime
motive of this " ransom " was to bring men to the Father. In
some degree Jesus coordinated His own with His disciples'
sufferings; but His disciples confess that they are willing to be
sacrificed " for His sake," and so acknowledge His Lordship
and uniqueness. The personal equation can never be omitted
from the experiences of Jesus: hence, His Passion is differen
tiated from the kindred sufferings of His followers by the value
and character of His Person. A certain note of universality
belongs to His sacrifice of Himself; He acted for God and He
represented all men; His death has wrought mightily as a
ransom — an emancipating force in our race.
8. Weeks and even months prior to His Crucifixion, Jesus
resolved to make this sacrifice ; voluntarily and with self-determi
nation He set His face toward this goal. He became not only
the victim of sacrifice, but also a sacrificing Priest. The domi
nating principle of His action and His Passion was love for
The Ministry of Ransom 347
the Father and for His brethren. Those who define the ransom
as a price paid to God for man's forgiveness blaspheme the
Father, and no one in these days dreams of saying that it was
paid to the devil ; while, to personify sin and make it the object
of such ransom, empties the Master's word of reality. Jesus
did not deal with ethical abstractions; He lived and acted in
the realm of persons. This great key-word connotes deliver
ance, and the inward and moral intention of the ransom must
be inferred from the whole drift of His teaching. The message
of grace dominated all His preaching; He came for the remission
of sin — to emancipate men from a vitiated heredity, from en
vironing debasement and from evil habits. The profoundest
words of Jesus were broadly human, not juridical; ethical, not
ceremonial ; of grace, not of law. He spoke much of forgiveness,
love, peace, freedom, the way, the truth and the life; and if we
place His word " ransom " in the midst of this constellation of
ideas, it will neither be hardened into theological dogma nor
evaporated as a " mere figure of speech." Analogies may be
rightly drawn from legal institutions and sacrificial ceremonies;
but if the metaphors of Jesus be treated as though they are
terms of science rather than of religious imagination, we lose
their beauty and meaning. A note of triumph rings in this
term " lutron " ; for it breathes the assurance that He shall see
the travail of His soul in turning many to righteousness. The
ransom-service of Jesus was a sacrificial life, crowned by His
deliberate, voluntary acceptance of an ignominious death; and
the prophetic word has been verified and justified by history:
for, in dying, Jesus gained a great, spiritual emancipation for
mankind.
BOOK VII
THE ROYAL PROGRESS AND MESSIANIC
STRUGGLE
CHAPTER I
THROUGH JERICHO TO BETHANY
i. With considerable diffidence and readiness to receive cor
rection, we have made a serious chronological transposition of the
Johannine representations of the visits of Jesus to Jerusalem
during the Feast of Tabernacles, and of His great miracle at
Bethany, tentatively placing the events before the crucial incident
of feeding the multitudes when the people wanted to compel Him
to be their King. At the risk of an accusation of wearisome re
iteration, but with the hope of clarifying our survey of the remain
ing days of Jesus, we refer again to this rearrangement of the
materials given in the Gospels, as exhibiting an ordered develop
ment of this earthly ministry, throwing light on the motives of
Jesus, and on the reasons for the official rejection of Him as the
claimant of Messiahship. The best justification of such at
tempted adjustments of chronology is found in the resultant
enhancement of intelligibility in the records. The transpositions
that we have ventured upon in the course of this study result at
least in a certain dramatic fitness — though this has not been our
guiding principle — helping us to perceive, in the Ministry of
Jesus, a beginning, middle and end, whereby the final passages are
thrown into bold relief. Very impressive and significant are the
fulness, prominence and detail attaching to the close of His
work, as represented in the Gospels. The contrast between the
meagreness of the knowledge of His earlier work and the com
parative fulness of that of the later, can be explained only by
the stupendous value found in the Passion by the first witnesses.
Professor Burkitt reminds us, " On the very shortest estimate the
length of the ministry must have extended to about four hundred
days, and I doubt if our Gospels contain stories from forty
separate days. So the nine-tenths at least of the public life of
Jesus remains to us a blank, even if we were to take every
recorded incident ' as historical and accurately reported.' " * Of
the three years' history we have only the outlines : " there are
1 The Gospel History and its Transmission, p. 20.
351
352 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should
be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could
not contain the books that should be written." That only one-
tenth of the public life of Jesus is recorded at all makes it appear
all the more significant that the final phase of His Ministry
should be represented with such amplitude of detail. It is no
satisfactory explanation of this unequal emphasis upon the clos
ing scenes, to attribute it solely to the more vivid remembrance of
what was latest in Christ's public life; the accentuation of this
part of His life at least witnesses of the increased importance
attached by the apostles to the concluding tragedy which began
with His resolute journey toward Jerusalem. This incidence of
emphasis upon the last days of our Lord is not peculiar to one
evangelist; it is, rather, the common characteristic of all the
writers of the New Testament, and represents the prevailing
attitude of primitive Christian thought. It is incumbent upon us,
therefore, to set forth as clearly as possible the successive steps
in this period of the consummation of that work that Jesus had
planned to accomplish in the world ; seeking, as we do so, to dis
cern His controlling thought as He approached, with clear fore
knowledge and autonomy, toward His predestined doom.
2. It has already become plain that, while the renewal of
Jesus' public ministry in Peraea, with its consequent revival of
popularity, had excited afresh the vain hopes of the disciples,
Jesus Himself was reminded at every step that the road He had
entered upon must end in death. His route lay across the Jordan
and through the city of Jericho, which the family of Herod had
made beautiful again. This city of ancient fame was about
eighteen miles from the capital; between it and Jerusalem was
Bethany, on the slopes of Olivet, and about two miles from
Jerusalem. From St. John's statement x that Jesus came to
Bethany six days before the Passover, it may be inferred as
probable that He reached Jericho on a Thursday, and spent the
night in the house of Zacchaeus. If we had to depend on St.
Mark's gospel alone, there would be no alternative to the sug
gestion that from Jericho Jesus travelled to Jerusalem in one day,
entering the capital amid the plaudits of excited pilgrims, and
that after a hurried visit to the temple He came back to Bethany
the same evening. In this matter, as also in several others, we
'John xii. I.
Through Jericho to Bethany 353
derive a more correct impression from the Johannine record.
Further, the first two evangelists place the Supper and Anointing
at Bethany two days prior to the Crucifixion, but St. John relates
that it happened several days before. The Marcan arrangement
is probably due to the topical connection between Mary's lavish
gift and Judas's treachery. " The truth is, that it happened as
John relates; and Matthew and Mark, following perhaps the
catechetical practice, bring the story of what befell at Bethany
into juxtaposition with the Betrayal." J Although the chrono
logical sequence is confused in this way, a very distinct im
pression is made upon the reader's mind that Mary's beautiful
devotion gave the occasion for exposing Judas's avarice, and
precipitated the final act of treachery that led to the arrest of
Jesus. This is but a single instance of St. John's intentional modi
fications of the Synoptic accounts, and the examination of these
so-called discrepancies convinces us that the fourth evangelist
aimed not only at supplementing the earlier records with facts
drawn from his own mental repertory, but also at correcting the
existing accounts wherever he thought them to err. If this im
pression of the fourth evangelist's design be true, then he must
have been an authority qualified for such a work by being, what
he claimed to be, an eye-witness of the things whereof he writes.
Without losing sight of the Johannine difficulties, it may be said
that a comparative examination of the Gospels often results in a
growing respect for the historical accuracy and insight of this
writer of what has sometimes been termed the Spiritual Gospel.
3. The task of harmonizing the discrepant accounts of
Christ's entrance into and departure from Jericho has always
presented grave difficulties. St. Mark represents Him to have
healed the blind son of Timaeus when He was leaving the city;
St Luke places this miracle in the story of His entrance into
Jericho; while St. Matthew still further complicates matters by
affirming that He healed two blind men as He departed. These
discrepancies have sometimes been used to impugn the veracity
and reliability of the Gospels; but at most they do but prove
fcfct <S»ese writings ought to be read with critical caution. The
evangelists themselves were liable to err, while their materials had
very probably become confused in the process of transmission.
In this particular instance it seems as if St. Matthew himself had
* Rev. D. Smith, In the Dayt of His Flesh, Intro, p. xix.
354 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
been unwittingly led, by a similitude between two instances of
miraculous healing of the blind, into a confused reduplication.1
St. Luke has placed on record his own methods of patient investi
gation ; and without minimizing the authority of the Marcan nar
rative, with its graphic realism, we think that the third evangelist
places the healing of Bar-Timasus in its correct time-sequence.
Having thus decided upon our own treatment of this discrepancy,
we are prepared to review the facts relating to Christ's journey to
Jericho with the culminating display of His healing power. The
Master Himself was not, as we have seen, deluded by the
temporary resurgence of popular enthusiasm in Peraea; He had
become cognizant of the dread events that were soon to happen.
However, as He drew near to Jericho, the crowd around Him
resolved itself into a huge procession, and as the rumour ran
ahead, the citizens were caught in the contagion of excitement
and came out to meet Him. While such a movement intensified
Christ's own feeling of spiritual isolation, it fired anew the am
bitions of His disciples, and they probably congratulated them
selves upon having anticipated, more correctly than He, the
attitude of the populace toward Him. We cannot but wonder
how they must have looked upon a possible collision with the
Roman power. It may be that these untrained bands of Mes-
sianists were relying upon some great demonstration of super
natural power. If Moses had led the tribes of Israel out of
Egypt, it seemed credible to the disciples and to others that Jesus,
who undoubtedly possessed miraculous gifts, would humiliate the
Roman soldiery with a display of the power of God. There can
be little doubt that imagination ran wild for a time, and the
whispered hopes and conjectures of the disciples and friends of
Jesus may have threatened an inevitable fulfilment of the course
of events outlined by Caiaphas.
4. Jericho, with its foreign buildings and pagan morals, may
have been as unattractive to the temper of Jesus as the city of
Caesarea Philippi, and He had probably no intention of remaining
there more than a single night. As He came within sight of it
there occurred this final instance of His miraculous power of
healing, which multiplied the people's excitement tenfold. Being
the Passover season, the beggars, who seem in the East to be
ubiquitous, were looking forward to their annual harvest of alms,
'Cf. Matt. ix. 27 with Matt. xx. 30.
Through Jericho to Bethany 355
and were lining all the roadsides up to Jerusalem. One of their
number, a blind man, the son of Timaeus, hearing the confused
roar which accompanies the movements of a great crowd, and
learning that Jesus of Nazareth was approaching, conceived the
strange hope that he might now be healed of his blindness. It is
probable that this hope was born of the remembrance of a story
about the miraculous restoration of sight in the case of a man at
Jerusalem who was born blind. As Jesus approached, therefore,
Bar-Timaeus shouted, " Son of David ! Jesus ! Pity me ! " This
clamorous appeal found no sympathy with the crowd; they cal
lously bade the blind man be silent, but he cried out the more.
When Jesus heard, He halted and called for the man. At once
the mood of the fickle people changed; they said to the beggar,
" Courage: arise; He calls thee." It has been judged superfluous
that Jesus should ask what the man wanted, but acquaintance
with Eastern beggars would give point to such a question ; for not
many of them desire the total cure of a disease that excites pity
and secures a regular revenue. Bar-Timaeus was whole-heartedly
explicit in his request, " Rabboni, that I may receive my sight."
"Go your way," said Jesus; "your faith has saved you." The
grateful man at once joined the crowds around Jesus, evoking
a chorus of praise as he glorified God. The incident itself be
tokens a change in the mood of Jesus : hitherto He had rebuked
the demoniacs when they acclaimed Him the Messiah, and He
had commanded that His disciples should be silent about this
title ; but now He no longer deprecates the use of the Messianic
title, " Son of David." Whether the blind man meant much or
little by this name, does not alter the important fact that for
Jesus Himself the time for silence had gone ; His hour had come.
That He made no reference to the title signified an implicit ac
knowledgement of its fitness, and thus His last miracle virtually
verified His Messiahship in the eyes of the people.
5. Rumours of the healing of the man passed with lightning
like rapidity among the crowd, and gave a thrill of increased
excitement to Christ's followers. In consequence of the great
ness of the throng, one man, Zacchaeus, a commissioner of taxes
(dpxitsXeovr/S) in Jericho, being of small stature, ran ahead of the
procession and climbed into a fig-sycamore tree.1 Jesus may have
noticed the little man dodging on the outskirts of the crowd and
* Luke xix. i-io.
356 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
then climbing upon the tree; He appreciated an earnestness that
dared to defy propriety; and He may have divined the hidden
and better nature of this rich man. When He came to the tree,
Jesus stopped, and in cordial, friendly tones said, " Zacchaeus,
make haste and come down : this day I must abide in your house."
Christ's saying about the foxes and birds having their respective
dens and nests, while the Son of Man had not where to lay His
head, was hardly applicable to this period of revived though
short-lived popularity ; for in Jericho that afternoon, many doors
would have been gladly opened for Him had He desired: but,
to the surprise of all around, He invites this oppressive agent of
the Roman tax-farmers to become His host. To the strict Jews
this repeated instance of Christ's good-will toward persons who
were ostracized by the respectable and patriotic classes was an
offence ; but to us it reveals the large, genial tolerance and ethical
optimism of Jesus. Such incidents help us to understand how He
came to make the indelible impression of being the greatest of
all lovers of humanity. This impression may be wholesomely, re
vived as we enter upon a review of some of the last scenes and
dissertations of Jesus, for we have been gradually forced to
conceive of Him as a great, strong personality wielding super
natural or extraordinary powers — as one who scarcely disguised
an unsurpassable egoism and claim to tremendous authority by
His tremulous and gentle pity. There is a danger, however,
that in correcting the prevailing conception of the mildness of
Jesus, the mind may swing into an unbalanced emphasis upon His
self-conscious greatness and masterful self-possession: hence, it
is conducive to our impression of the symmetry of His humanity
to consider His genial friendliness for Zacchaeus. The tax-
gatherer was himself startled by His condescension and was
caught out of the callosity of mammon-worship and oppressive
greed, and lifted into a passion of repentance. The frankness
and magnanimous confidence of Jesus awoke his moral nature
from its long sleep, and opened the springs of righteousness and
truth in his soul. While Jesus was sitting at his table, Zacchaeus
solemnly announced the resolve to give half of his ill-gotten
wealth to the poor, and to requite, with a fourfold reparation,
those whom he had defrauded by extortionate demands. Jesus
knew probably as much as our modern psychologists know of
the potentialities of moral passion and the fine force of idealism
hidden in the ordinary man — hidden often by vice and crime —
Through Jericho to Bethany 357
and sharing the joy of those angels who watch for man's re
pentance, He gave utterance to a never-forgettable logion which
follows fitly upon the word about ransom : " Salvation has come
to this house today, seeing that he also is a Son of Abraham.
For the Son of Man came to seek and save what has been lost."
6. While we have given ample recognition to the Messianic im
plication of this self-chosen title, " Son of Man," we have yet found
its content to be predominantly human and fraternal rather than
official. The description of the special purpose of His mission
must be commensurate with the breadth and catholicity of the
Name by which Jesus designates Himself ; that Name implies that
the range of His proposed activity must be coextensive with the race.
This definition of the Messiah's function in the world is so strik
ingly luminous and comprehensive that it harmonizes wholly with
our impression of the Personality of Jesus. No mind but His was
capable of propounding such sublime soteriology. It is the speech
of one who breathes the ampler, purer air of the Spiritual World ;
and without overweighting it with later dogmas of the Church,
it must be acknowledged that it was well-nigh inevitable that men
should infer that the Speaker half-implied that He had come into
our world from some preexistent state. Whether this be really so
or not, the saying has become the keyword of the mission of
the Son of Man : from the beginning to the end it is all of a piece ;
the unmalleable materials of His human experience are fused into
one perfect ministry of seeking and rescuing the lost. Men,
some or all of them, seemed to Jesus to be like wandering, silly
sheep in perilous places — like lost coin, useless when withdrawn
from currency; like the prodigal spending himself in bestial and
slavish indulgences, which leave him ever more unsatisfied.
Such states have their gradations and, as in Dante's Inferno, every
deep opens into a yet lower depth. Such a conception may be
at variance with the shallow optimism of an age that has almost
lost the sense of sin. Externally man's history may present a
great upward movement; in the sweep of universal perspective
sin appears to the evolutionist a mere shadow, a negation, a tem
porary missing of the mark. But then the truest passages of
human experience can never be understood by an outside view ; in
all thought, emotion and action we have to reckon the psycho
logical, ethical and personal values. History can only be inter
preted from within. The common mistake about evolution arises
358 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
from the assumption that perceptible morphological processes
cover the whole of human experience. But since the belief in
free-will, even if it be illusory, clings to our minds with such
stubbornness, we have to treat the sense of choice as the central
cell of personality, and to read life from this inward point of
view. The underlying assumption of man's self-conscious activity
is that the soul believes itself to be accountable before God. If,
then, the attitude of the will to God determines life, sin is not
simply a negative thing, a missing of the mark; it is, in its es
sence, an antagonism to God. Wherever this enmity with God
exists, man may be truthfully described as lost. Of " original sin,"
Pascal says : " Certainly nothing shocks us more than this doc
trine; and yet, without this most incomprehensible of all mys
teries, we are an unintelligible enigma to ourselves. This is the
master-key to the intricacies and perplexities of human existence.
So that, however inconceivable this mystery may be, man without
it is still more inconceivable." The recluse of Port Royal ac
cepted the verdict of Jesus concerning our moral condition.
He says, again : " If man had never become corrupt, he would
have enjoyed truth and happiness with certainty; and if a man
had always been corrupt, he would have had no idea of truth or
of happiness. But unhappy mortals as we are ... we have
the idea of a happiness which we can never reach ; there glimmers
before us the image of truth, but we grasp falsehood only ; we are
incapable alike of absolute ignorance and of complete certainty:
these are sufficient indications that we were once in a state of
perfection, ' or designed for that state, from which we are un
happily fallen.' " x An unexpected supporter of this mysterious
dogma is found to-day in G. K. Chesterton,2 who finds in it the
only explanation of man's present state, and derives from it the
dynamic principle which is to destroy all oppressions and evils.
But while many agree with Jesus in His description of man as
" lost," He has no rival in His own tremulous sensitiveness to the
loss sustained by God ; in most of us conscience is only faintly
responsive to the reality of its own ethical insights ; but Jesus
felt the full measure of the loss. In His own gracious speech,
just as the shepherd misses the wandering sheep, as the woman
grieves for her lost coin, and the father agonized over his son
who was a prodigal, so the Son of Man compassionates the
" lost " and seeks to save them. In part the nature of the salva-
' Pascal's Thoughts. ' Orthodoxy.
Through Jericho to Bethany 359
tion Jesus gave may be inferred from His treatment of Zacchaeus ;
He evoked the upspringing emotion and urging thought of genu
ine repentance; He renewed the lost manhood from within, rob
bing the man of no jot or tittle of freedom and responsibility.
Such is the new moral endowment which was to be universalized
through the anticipated Cross; by dying for men He made ac
cessible to all the new life which came to Zacchaeus.
7. On the morrow — probably on Friday — Jesus bade a final
farewell to Jericho, and resumed His fateful journey toward
Jerusalem. St. Luke accurately depicts the mood of the fol
lowers of Jesus at that time, " they thought that the Kingdom of
God should immediately appear." x Those who identify the
Parable of the Pounds with that of the Talents, or who suppose
that St. Luke misplaces an address given later in St. Matthew,2
lose by their supposition a great interpretative word of the Mas
ter's thought; — a word which proves to us that Jesus did not
misconstrue His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, whatever the
disciples anticipated. The third evangelist, however, appears to
have mixed together two distinct traditions of resembling para
bles. Jesus may have had in His thoughts the story of Herod's
visits to Rome when, in spite of the Jewish embassy which was
sent to plead against his misdeeds, Augustus granted the kingdom
to him.3 " A certain nobleman," said Jesus, " went into a far
country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return." It may
be that the Creator of the parable said of the nobleman that be
fore departing he distributed ten pounds among ten servants,
that they might trade therewith during his absence. Two dis
tinct lines of thought may intersect each other in a teacher's mind
and express themselves in dual but intertwined parables ; or they
may become mingled in the confused memories of the listeners.
The marvel is that we have received such correct reports of so
large a part of the teachings of Jesus. The visits of Herod and
of Archelaus to Rome become typical in the sayings of our Lord
of His anticipated journey or exodus. In the case of Archelaus,
" his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him, saying,
We will not have this man to reign over us " ; this, too, became
typical of the remonstrance that the Jews would make to Pilate
a week later, " Write not the King of the Jews." The brief
'Luke xix. n. 'Matt. xxiv. 3.
8 Jos., Ant., xvii., 8, 1-9, 3, 11, 4; B. J., ii., 6.
360 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
resurgence of popular feeling in favour of Jesus does not, for a
single moment, blur His clear prevision of the unmitigated op
position of the established authorities. The " journey into a
far country " is parabolic of the Messiah's approaching exodus ;
for His death, though marked by outward violence, was freely
undertaken by Jesus Himself. Widely different, indeed, from all
the disciples' conjectures would be the actual manner in which
Jesus would accede to His throne! Still, just as the nobleman
returns as the acknowledged king to reward and punish the doings
of citizens and servants, so Jesus also was assured that He would
come again; and even if this expected parousia were exclusively
spiritual, it must express itself in the visible course of history.
Whether the denunciation and punishment of those in the parable
who rejected the nobleman's claim be or be not designedly predic
tive of the fall of Jerusalem we may find in that disaster a
dreadful fulfilment of this parabolic saying.
8. We have already stated that we accept St. John's correc
tion of St. Mark's final hexameron, and may proceed on the
assumption that, instead of completing the entire journey to
Jerusalem in one day Jesus and His disciples halted for the night
at Bethany. The Jewish Sabbath being reckoned from evening
to evening, it was necessary that He should leave Jericho early
on Friday, in order that Bethany might be reached in the after
noon. Allowing for a noonday rest the journey of about sixteen
miles would take from six to seven hours. St. John definitely
corrects the Marcan tradition that the Supper at Bethany took
place only two days before the Passover, stating that it occurred
six days before the great feast. " That is apparently," says Dr.
Westcott,1 " on the 8th Nisan. If . . . the Crucifixion took
place on the 14th Nisan, and if, which seems to be less certain,
that day was a Friday, the date given by St. John falls on the
Sabbath. It must then be supposed that the feast took place in
the evening after the close of the Sabbath. If the Passion fell
on Thursday, for which strong reasons can be adduced, the ar
rival at Bethany took place on Friday. In this case the Sabbath
was kept a day of rest, and followed by the feast. On either sup
position the entrance into Jerusalem was made on the Sunday,
the next (natural) day." The difficulty about the days is not
greater than our perplexity about Simon the leper, who he was,
and what relationship he sustained to Christ's well-known
1In loco.
Through Jericho to Bethany 361
friends. Some have identified him with the Pharisee-host of the
same name; ' others have regarded him as the father of the sisters
and of Lazarus. In this latter case, Jesus may have healed him ;
or, he being deceased, his son would naturally act as host. An
other alternative hypothesis is that Lazarus and his sisters had
simply hired the house of Simon the leper for this feast, on the
ground that it was more commodious than their own. Passing
from this debated point to the question of a resemblance between
this and the Lucan story of an anointing of Jesus, we can but
express astonishment that any critics have ventured, on such
slender data, to identify the penitent woman of the town with
Mary of Bethany. There is no trait in Mary's character, no
single act or word of hers, to justify the suspicion that her
gentle, contemplative spirit had been stained by an immoral life.
Next to Mary, the Mother of Jesus, we think of this sister of
Lazarus as the very type and symbol of pure, modest womanli
ness. The motif of St. Luke's story is different ; — the respective
scenes are utterly unlike, the interlocutors are not the same,
their criticisms fit into their respective narratives, but cannot
be identified by any ingenious reasoning; nor can the parable of
the earlier incident be twisted into a eulogy of Mary. But, then,
a further perplexity arises from the discrepancies between the
accounts of the first two Gospels and the narrative in St. John.
The latter states that Mary anointed the Master's feet ; the other
evangelists affirm that she poured the pure nard over His head.
Once again, it can only be suggested that the later writer desired
to correct a misconception which had become crystallized in the
early tradition of the incident; and this would account for his
twice-repeated allusion to the feet of Jesus.2
9. However irreconcilable such a discrepancy may be, leaving
us to choose one as the alternative of the other, yet following out
our impressionist method we are constrained to believe in the
substantial genuineness of these two traditions. The evangelists
agree in setting forth the exquisite sacrament of personal homage
and sacrificing devotion performed by Mary. Lazarus is spe
cially mentioned as being one of the company at the table ; but the
recorders do not emulate the art of fictionists and unseal his silent
lips to satisfy our curiosity. With Jesus Himself we're the
Twelve, and perhaps other guests. "Then took Mary a pound
'Luke vii. 36f. 2John xi. 2; xii. 3.
362 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of
Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair : and the house was filled
with the odour of the ointment." Such an act sprang from an
imagination fired by great passion; it bespoke the originality of
conception born of love; and it was too full of a woman's best
grace to be appreciated by coarse selfishness and cold calculation.
Yet one feels that the disciples might have cordially approved an
act which was the anointing of One they believed to be the Mes
sianic King. For how many of that company, we wonder, was
Judas the spokesman, when he objected that the costly gift that
had been lavished upon Jesus might have been sold for three
hundred denarii (about £10), and this sum distributed among
the poor? Long years after, in recording this story, the fourth
evangelist wrote as though the subsequent history had disclosed
the dishonesty of Judas : " Now he said this, not that he cared for
the poor, but because he was a thief; and because he pilfered
what was put into the purse of which he had charge." For the
justification of this charge we know nothing beyond Judas's
supreme act of treachery. So far as the other disciples were
concerned, such rude ebullition of grudging economy sprang from
poverty and from the lack of those refined ardours which swayed
Mary's soul. The suggestion that the spikenard had originally
been purchased for the brother's grave is not free from objec
tions, although it would account for Mary's possession of the
costly ungent. But it may have been that this family at Bethany
owned considerable property, so that Mary robbed no one by her
splendid extravagance. The Master understood her devotion,
and threw over her the shield of his approval to defend her
from the uncouth reproach of Judas. " Let her alone ! Why
molest her? She hath done a beautiful deed for Me. For you
have the poor always with you, and whenever you like, you
can do them good ; but Me you have not always. She hath done
what she could ; she hath anointed My body in anticipation of the
burial.1 And I tell you truly, wherever the Gospel shall be
preached through the whole world, this woman's act shall be also
told in remembrance of her."
io. Mary needs no other defence. Three hundred denarii
distributed among the poor would have been a worthy charity,
1 Dr. E. A. Abbot has suggested that fj may have slipped out after airf/:
" or is it your wish that she should keep it for My embalming? "
Through Jericho to Bethany 363
but it would not have filled the whole world with the perfume
of love, as Mary's act has done.1 It requires the passion and
romantic imagination of Francis of Assisi to appreciate this
beautiful deed in any adequate way. There is a false economy
which advises a penury in devotion on the pretext of alms
giving. Sympathy for the poor, however, did not lead Jesus to
lift utility above the instinctive munificence of self-sacrificing
love. The spirit of Mary's act made it seem to Jesus as the anoint
ing of His body for the tomb. As, just previously, He had com
pared Himself to a nobleman going away to receive the gift of a
kingdom from his over-lord, so now at the Supper-table He
speaks again of death as the mode of His departure. When the
disciples were looking for His coronation apart from any dan
gerous journey, He was anticipating His funeral rites and colour
ing every passing incident by this His predominant thought. In
making Mary's anointing of Himself the preparatory rite of His
burial, He spoke as though He foreknew that the circumstances
of His death would preclude the customary obsequies. Yet once
again He signifies that His decease will not be the end of His
cause. As the nobleman came back to claim his kingdom, so
would the Messiah come to His inheritance. In harmony with
this anticipation of a great future, Jesus now predicts that the
demonstration of Mary's love is destined to be declared wherever
the Gospel shall be preached. He also perceived that His own
body will be broken as the alabaster-box ; but when it is shattered
the perfume of life — His Gospel — will fill the world. With
graphic skill St. Mark draws over against the gracious woman
the dark sinister figure of the loveless Judas. Henceforth the
shadow of a traitor falls across the pathway of Jesus. Such a
man could not breathe freely in the aroma of love ; the utter un-
worldliness of Jesus and Mary precipitated the feelings of discon
tent and disappointment which had begun with the schism at
Capernaum. The woman lavished her love-gift upon her Lord;
but Judas, stung into revolt by this futile idealism, went out to
plan the darkest act of treachery known in history. " Then Judas
of Kerioth, who was one of the Twelve, went off to the high-
priests to betray Him to them."
1 See Stopford Brooke's Christ in Modern Life, ser. xviii. art. Ex
penditure.
CHAPTER II
THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY
I. While we have accepted the Marcan ground-plan of
Christ's public work, as outlining the general scheme of the
Synoptics, we have not hesitated to treat it elastically, inserting
not only the " great interpolation " of St. Luke's gospel, but also
the Johannine account of the Judaean ministry. We further
modify the chronology of St. Mark by lengthening the duration
of Christ's public life; had we only the data supplied by the
Synoptic Gospels, we might infer that the ministry lasted little
more than one year, but this impression is corrected by St. John,
who mentions three different Passovers in the course of our
Lord's itineration. A possible method of criticism adopted by
men lacking in imagination and sympathetic insight, or endued
with philosophical prejudices, is to place the two main tradi
tions — the Synoptic and the Johannine — in bald antagonism so
that the credibility of both is undermined at the start. A more
effectual and natural method, however, appears to be that which
aims at combining scientific attention to detail with a frank im
pressionism, which seeks for a probable synopsis of events rather
than for a mere destruction of the credibility of our witnesses.
Having already pointed out the evident intention of the fourth
evangelist to supplement and correct the Synoptic tradition, it
gives us no shock to find some important incidents entirely omitted
from his gospel. But it surprises and pleases the reader to ob
serve that, in spite of such omissions the Fourth Gospel often
enables us to see the true order of the events related only by the
Synoptists. For example, the earlier evangelists had received and
recorded a form of tradition which ran the story of the journey
from Jericho to Bethany into the account of Christ's entry into
Jerusalem, so that in reading their narratives it is easy and
natural to fail to observe the sign of an interruption in the jour
ney from Jericho to Jerusalem.1 Had not St. John, therefore,
stated definitely that Jesus remained at Bethany that night, in-
' Matt. xxi. i ; Luke xix. 29.
364
The Triumphal Entry 365
stead of going on with the other pilgrims to the capital, we should
have inferred, from the Marcan narrative, that Jesus pursued
His journey to Jerusalem on the same day, and it would have
seemed that the triumphal entry ended in an anti-climax — that,
having looked around on the temple, Jesus at once returned
quietly to Bethany. But when the various traditions are set
side by side, an impression is made upon us that St. John's ac
count gives us first-hand impressions and memories of an eye
witness. Jesus, we believe, halted at Bethany and spent one or
two nights with His friends in that place, where He was enter
tained at supper, probably on the evening following the Sabbath,
when there occurred the anointing which we have just consid
ered;1 then, on the following morning (of Palm Sunday), He
entered Jerusalem amid the plaudits of an excited throng of
pilgrims. 2. We have no account of the manner in which Jesus spent the
last Sabbath before His Crucifixion; probably it was passed in
quietude and meditation, since He was in great need of rest,
physically and mentally. Having come once again into Judaea,
He might acquiesce in the ban of excommunication which took
away His right to attend the synagogue service. At some time
during the evening, Jesus may have privately informed His dis
ciples of His intention of riding into the city the next morning
upon an ass; and, if so, they would discuss the significance
of this project. It was not the plan of entry that popular imagina
tion had conceived; but then, however lowly the animal of the
Master's choice, His deliberate resolve to go in this way at least
betokened that a momentous change had come over Him ; instead
of seeking privacy, He was courting a new kind of publicity.
Even Judas, if he heard of this plan, might have bridled his
anger, at least for a time, until he saw what would result from
this Messianic demonstration through Jerusalem. The disciples
had been compelled to abandon the thought that Jesus would
resort to the sword in order to subdue the Roman usurpation in
Palestine : it might, however, enter into their imaginations that He
would put forth His supernatural powers for the overthrow of
all enemies and for the restitution of the kingdom. Although it
may seem almost unintelligible to us, that the disciples should be
absorbed in dreams of power after months of reiterated instruc-
1 Vide Caspari, Chron., Eng. tr., 217.
366 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
tion by Jesus Himself that He was going to Jerusalem to die:
still, it is the same gospels which record these detailed anticipa
tions of His Passion that also describe the disciples as im
pervious to such predictions, and represent them as acting as
though Jesus had never breathed a syllable about His approach
ing end. Is it possible to find any rational interpretation of
such singular inconsistency in the same narratives? The answer
is that only the historical reality of the same inconsistency in
the behaviour of the disciples can explain such contradictions:
hence, we are compelled to seek some explanation in the minds
of these men to account for their self-delusion. Christ's fore-
announcements of His Passion were not, in themselves, so unin
telligible; but it would seem that the disciples resolutely shut out
all such thoughts from their minds as incompatible with His
Messiahship. It is easy to understand how it came to pass that
with this disbelief they refrained from asking Jesus questions
upon the matter. Peter and his companions were afraid of in
curring another rebuke such as Jesus had spoken in the vicinity of
Caesarea Philippi; but, although silent, these followers were
mentally antagonistic to all such predictions. As we have seen,
one of the effects of this grave discrepancy between their
thoughts and the Master's, was that of occasional alienation from
our Lord, even while they loved Him. Hence we find that the
only solution of this problem in the Gospels is to believe that they
actually reflect the difficulty which agitated the disciples them
selves. Certainly no members of the Primitive Church would
invent an imaginary estrangement between our Lord and His
disciples, so utterly discreditable to the latter. While we dread to
adopt those facile evasions of real difficulties in our Gospels, it
does appear to us as not psychologically improbable that the dis
ciples were, at this period, cherishing a mood of mingled belief
and unbelief ; that, while they confessed Jesus to be the Messiah,
they rejected His predictions as the delusions of disappointment.
Judas alone of the Twelve seems to have been clear-sighted
enough to apprehend a probable catastrophe, and he was feeling
increasing hostility to One who claimed the title and yet dis
claimed the role of a Messiah. Prudence dictated the advisa
bility of awaiting the issues of the project to enter Jerusalem
in a public though peaceful way; but already he had con
ceived the malevolent idea of making profit out of His Master's
failure.
The Triumphal Entry 367
3. The resuscitation of the popular enthusiasm for Jesus now
culminated in a brief hour's triumph, which recalls a passage
from the prophecy of Zechariah: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter
of Sion ! shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem ! behold thy
King cometh unto thee ; vindicated and victorious, meek and rid
ing upon an ass, and a colt, the foal of an ass." x Probably few
incidents in Christ's Ministry give more surprise than this of the
Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem; it betrays Christ's abandon of
all His accustomed reserve ; and to many it savours of a histrionic
device for bringing about an apparent fulfilment of ancient
prophecy, which seems incongruous with our impression of Him.
Something in the retrospective recital of this event — in its tone
and colour — may be due to the early habit of tracing corre
spondence between the oracles of the Old Testament and the
events of Christ's life. The fourth evangelist plainly states that
His followers did not at once understand the significance of these
correspondences ; to quote his words, " His disciples did not
understand these things at first ; but when Jesus was exalted, then
they remembered that these things had been written of Him, and
that they had acted thus to Him." 2 Such appears to be a fair ac
count of one of the processes of thought concerning Jesus which
went on in the Apostolic Church. The remembrance of Old
Testament prophecies did not create imaginary incidents in the
traditions 6f His life; but, on the other hand, the incidents which
had actually occurred recalled in subsequent reflection prophetic
and literary anticipations distributed throughout the ancient
Scriptures. And yet when once the tendency to seek for such
analogies had arisen, it became inevitable that it should result
in an exaggeration of resemblances, and also that sometimes
correspondences would be imagined where they did not really
exist. The evangelist known to us as St. Matthew evinces
a strong liking for such supposed prophetic quotations, some of
which are exquisitely apt and beautiful, while others seem forced
and mechanical. An instance of the Evangelist's felicitous use of
the Old Testament is found in his application to Jesus of the
Isaianic sentence, " Himself took our infirmities and bare our
diseases " ; while an illustration of the tendency to force unreal
parallels is found in the second chapter, when he quotes as
prophetic the ambiguous saying, " He shall be called a Nazarene."
In St. Matthew's application of Zechariah's oracle as something
'Zech. ix. 9, Prof. G. A. Smith's trans. 2John xii. 16,
368 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
fulfilled in Christ's entrance into Jerusalem, we have an interest
ing though unconscious disclosure of the moulding influence of
this preconception that such correspondences are an important
part of Revelation. For instance, the second and third evangelists x
mention, in this connection, only " the colt " (ndoXov), as though
they sought to evade the ridicule which the mention of an ass
would excite among Gentiles ; but St. Matthew, writing under the
influence of Zechariah's word of prophecy, states boldly that the
disciples brought " the ass and the colt, and put on them their
garments, and he sat on them." One is not astonished that
Strauss should have found in this a provocation of satire and
ridicule.2 It can only be supposed that the mistake sprang out of
the Evangelist's negligence of the law of parallelism in Hebrew
poetry, which made him construe the rhythmic refrain as the
prophet's allusion to a second animal. " Meek and riding on an
ass, and on a colt, the she ass's foal." More serious, however,
than such a lapse or misinterpretation is the Evangelist's assump
tion that what appeared in prophecy must have reappeared in the
actual career of Jesus. It would, however, be a repetition of a
like arbitrary and ill-judged reasoning, if from this error we
inferred that there were no correspondences at all. Such a deduc
tion is as fallacious as that sometimes made from the fact that
analogies may be traced between the Gospels and the myths of
Hercules, Perseus and Cadmus — that such parallels prove the
Gospels to be fictitious and historically worthless. We have to
remind ourselves once more, that there is no such short and easy
method of dealing with ancient narratives; that, in treating the
New Testament, each book, each incident, must be weighed and
judged on its own merits, and on the evidences forthcoming. In
like manner each supposed fulfilment of prophecy in the life of
Jesus must be treated on the ground of its intrinsic probabilities
and on circumstantial evidence. In relation to the general
question of correspondences, we recall the statement of St. Luke
concerning the risen Christ : " These are My words which I
spake unto you, while I was yet with you, how that all things
must needs be fulfilled which are written- in the law of Moses
and the prophets, and the psalms concerning Me. Then opened
He their mind, that they might understand the Scriptures;
and He said unto them, ' Thus it is written, that the Christ
'Mark xi. 7; Luke xix. 35.
* Strauss, The Life of Jesus, pt, ii., chap, x., p. no.
The Triumphal Entry 369
should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day,
etc' " *
4. Whatever antipathy may be cherished toward such corre
spondences in general, when we turn our attention to this particu
lar instance — Christ's public entrance into the capital City — we
cannot fail to feel the inherent probability of some such demon
stration in the historic development of events at this concluding
stage of His Ministry. It fits into the natural sequence of those
memorable occurrences of the last week; it constitutes a fitting
final appeal to the conscience and spirit of the Jews of Jeru
salem ; it precipitates the hostile action of the national representa
tives; and the event itself is one of those large, striking unfor
gettable things in a history which could hardly be distorted in any
report of it, and which would meet with public refutation if,
not having occurred, it were a fictitious invention interpolated
into the oral tradition of Christ's life. Any suggestion that He
deliberately planned a scene to fulfil a remembered prophecy
causes a sense of shock, as something morally questionable ; it is
incongruous with our first general impression of His character.
While, however, we have found His Ministry utterly void of the
spirit of intrigue, we have not found it to be without plan and
designed order in its development. The public life of Christ is
characterized by the spontaneity, freshness and childlike guile
lessness of a preeminently pure personality. But while free of all
dark designs and cold, political calculations, there can be little
doubt that He cherished definite plans and aims. He actually
claimed, at first implicitly and then articulately and unmistakably,
to be God's Anointed — i.e. the Messiah; and there can be no
doubt, both in this conception itself and in the functions of His
office, that He was very materially influenced by the spiritual
teaching of the Old Testament. But there was nothing of the
slavish literalism of rabbinical pedantry in His treatment of the
Scriptures; in Christ's Ministry, hermeneutics proved to be a
spiritual science of wondrous breadth and liberty. No part of
His previous teaching prepares one to suspect that He would em
phasize minute correspondences between His Ministry and the
forecasts of the prophets. Not upon such flimsy " proofs " did He
ever base His Messianic convictions, but the consciousness that
He was called of God for a mighty work was suffused with large
JLuke xxiv. 45, 46.
370 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
thoughts and unique filial intimacy with the Heavenly Father.
The correspondences Christ realized in His thoughts were not
matters of trifling externality, or of petty detail; but rather of
those grand ideals of truth which had been present, in varying
grades of clearness, in the intuitions of all His Spiritual fore
runners. The wish of many readers to evade an impression that
He Himself mechanically adjusted His actions to fit in with
prophecy, has led them to imagine that He was weary, and that
under the guidance of self-preserving instinct often exhibited
in Nature, He may have sought to save up His strength in order
to face the exhausting experiences of a later day. This fancy
is little more than an artifice for self-deception; for reflection
reminds us that Jesus knew Zechariah's prophecy too well to have
been unconscious of the correspondence of His own action with
the description of the Advent of the Prince of Peace. It cer
tainly does not fall in with our impression of Jesus to say that
He did this thing in a fit of absent-mindedness under the prompt
ing of fatigue.
5. The explanation which most closely approximates to the
truth is that Jesus determined this manner of entrance into
Jerusalem in the spirit of one who perceives and loves the innate
symbolism of all things. Notwithstanding His Hebrew training,
He was Greek-like in the symmetry of His nature: as the title
" the Son of Man " implies, His humanity was catholic ; and in
Him, to the Spirit of prophecy were joined all the fine sensibilities
of the artistic temperament. We imagine that, had our world
been unmarred by evil and sorrow, the life of the Son of Man
would have expressed itself in the form of absolute beauty. The
parables of Jesus reveal the artist's power over form as clearly as
they show the prophet's spiritual and moral insight. Our rever
ence for the Person of Jesus ought not to repress all reference to
the human gifts of mind He exercised. The prevailing tones of
His spoken thought were of ethical elevation, of human feeling
and of intellectual clarity ; those who listened must have been im
pressed by the atmosphere of comprehensive wisdom and moral
calm which enveloped His thought. But while Jesus often spoke
as Wisdom Incarnate, He sometimes delivered Himself as the
apocalyptic seer, when His words were vehement with moral pas
sion, boldly picturesque in their imagery, and pregnant with the
concentrated thought of an original mind. In what we have al-
The Triumphal Entry 371
ready stated concerning the correspondences between the Old
Testament and the facts of His own Ministry, we have touched
upon the symbolic trend of His thought. We know of no other
who, having read the prophetic delineation of the Messiah — " 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 those in prison, and to give
sight to the blind," — and, having felt the whole meaning of such
symbolic language, would have ventured to declare of him
self, " This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." To the
Mind of Jesus all Nature was vocal of the glory and goodness of
the Heavenly Father ; the flying birds and waving corn-fields, the
changeful sky and the affairs of men were all bathed in the
translucent atmosphere of religious poetry. The common daily
bread was the sacramental symbolism of that immaterial nutri
ment which God imparts to the souls of His children. Light
was to Him neither a corpuscular discharge nor the undulations
of a mysterious ether; it was the image of spiritual luminosity
which the Divine Fountain pours forth in revelation. Such sus
ceptibility to the expression of outward form, and this feeling for
the inherent symbolism of Nature, account, we think, for His ap
propriation of the imagery of Zechariah's famous prophecy of the
coming of the King to the daughter of Zion. The horse was
the recognized symbol of war; the ass, a symbol of a mission
wholly pacific. Hence Jesus resolved to show His claim to be
the Prince of Peace by riding into Jerusalem upon an ass.
Such a demonstration would be interpreted as Messianic by all
who were spiritually prepared ; but no one could mistake it for a
political or military announcement. The Christ who had uttered
His wisdom in gracious parables, who had announced the fall of
Satan as lightning from Heaven, now makes His Messianic ap
peal to Zion in the symbolism of Old Testament prophecy. Rid
ing into the city as the Prince of Peace, Jesus once more com
bined those strange contraries of lowliness and majesty, recon
ciling meekness with royalty; making the very humility of His
Progress express the glorious egoism of One conscious of being
the appointed Messiah.
6. Passing from the interesting problem of the motives
and purpose of Jesus, to actual history, we surmise that the
owner of the ass's colt to whom the disciples applied was a secret
372 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
or an avowed friend. Since it was the first day of the Passover-
week, the road would be thronged with pilgrims, and the report
that the Galilean Prophet intended to make a public official entry
into the city would create intense excitement. The Galilean pil
grims would infer that some great change had appeared in Jesus
Himself since He left them months ago; that His idealism and
seeming vacillation were giving place to a practical and bold
policy of publicly claiming Messianic honour in Jerusalem. It
is evident also that the disciples participated in the changed
feeling toward Jesus, whether because of something He had said
in regard to this demonstration, or in spite of His predictions of
a coming catastrophe, we know not ; but a new reverence appears
in their relation to Him; they place a cloak over the foal, while
others throw their garments in the road as a carpet for the beast
He rode upon. The enthusiasm spread, and the people are
represented as having strewn His path with branches of trees,
while others came from the city bearing fronds of palm in their
hands. With carping criticism some have ridiculed the idea of
spreading branches in the road as offering incredible obstructions
and dangers; and yet the orthodox custom in Russia, in funeral
processions, is to spread the route with branches of fir. As
a matter of fact, this detail in the narrative has the verisimilitude
which can only be given by historic truth, or by artistic skill.
Upon the excited throngs there fell again the power of Christ's
personality; and as the contagion of enthusiasm spread, the peo
ple acclaimed Jesus as Messiah.
" Hosanna !
Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord!
Blessed is the kingdom that comes, our father David's kingdom !
Hosanna in the highest ! " '
7. Even before they had reached the brow of the hill, some of
the Pharisees, annoyed by the. abandon of popular feeling, mur
mured that Jesus was inciting the people to a new profanity.
" Teacher," they said, " rebuke Thy disciples." " If they should be
silent," answered Jesus, "the stones will cry out." However limited
and defective the disciples' actual understanding of the aims of
their Master, at least they showed a moral susceptibility to the
inherent grandeur of His personality. It is not impossible that
the three who had witnessed His Transfiguration had dropped
incidental hints of the glory they had seen, and if so, the vague
' Ps. cxviii. 25, 26 ; St. Luke substitutes iSt-a for Hosanna.
The Triumphal Entry 373
rumours of that Mountain Revelation would excite a mood of
intense expectancy. As Jesus entered the capital the walls re
echoed the shouts of acclamation, and to all who favoured His
cause it seemed as though He were about to win the City of
Zion. All their inherited dreams and hopes of national great
ness flamed up into one brief hour of passionate expression.
But the very intensity of the popular excitement made the in
effectual issue of Christ's demonstration seem the clearest revela
tion of His impotence. Through the obscurity of that day's
occurrences it is clear and beyond doubt that the apparent futility
of His Messianic manifestation created a cruel disappointment
for all the zealots among His followers. It is true that St.
Matthew represents Jesus as proceeding at once to cleanse the
temple, and states that the " blind and lame people came to Him
in the temple, and He healed them " ; but this seems a misplacing
of events that occurred at different times — some earlier, some
later. St. Mark's account probably preserves the true sequence
in asserting that the temple-cleansing took place on the following
day. The Royal Progress seemed to terminate in a fiasco ; all that
Jesus did was to enter the sacred precincts and look around with
sad, wistful eyes upon the busy scenes of preparation for the
Passover. 8. The splendour of the Messianic hope in connection with
the work of Jesus died away as swiftly as the glory of a sunset
fades on a threatening sky. That last fitful upspringing of
national ambition in a belief that Jesus was the Messiah was the
natural result of His work in Peraea. The people could not but
praise Him for His good works; the miracles of healing which
they witnessed kindled their imaginations, and they were ready
to attribute to Him all sorts of power and gifts. While the
Master never mistook this kind of popularity for spiritual in
sight, He was touched by such unsophisticated admiration and in
cipient affection ; it was, at least, better than the prejudices, moral
apathy and political hostility of the ecclesiastics of His day.
It has been conjectured that this final demonstration was the evi
dence of unrestrained fanaticism in Jesus Himself ; but we have
seen that really He suffered no illusion to possess His soul for a
single hour. He knew that He was stepping on toward His
doom. And yet His love for the city of His ancestors clothed
itself in this prophetic symbolism, and caused Him to make His
374 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
last appeal to Jerusalem for recognition of Himself as God's
Anointed Son. Like the prophet Jeremiah, He was commissioned
to make an appeal which He foreknew would be rejected, to
create an opportunity which no one apprehended. But those fol
lowers who had acclaimed Him as the Messiah in the morning
were chagrined at this disappointing of their hopes; when they
saw no stupendous miracle, and looked on Him as He allowed
His own movement to flicker out without accomplishing any
thing great, they were angry with Him, feeling that He had
deluded them with the words of an empty dream. At the close
of the day, as Jesus Himself returned to Bethany with a little
company of thwarted and silent disciples, He must have tasted all
the bitterness of failure, even while He believed it was the only
way to triumph. The morning and the evening of that day were
in painful contrast; He who had gone forth as the Prince of
Peace now leaves the city lest the assassin's dagger should inter
cept His destiny. Jesus was still dominated by the belief that
He was appointed to die as a public sacrifice after a trial and
rejection of Himself by the established authorities of the nation.
" Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of
tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the
daughters of my people." In many ways the prophet Jeremiah
is a type of Jesus, and the insight we gain into the experience
of the former aids us to understand the tragedy transpiring in
the heart of Jesus at this stage of His Ministry. He appealed
to Zion without the expectation of response; He made a claim
which He foreknew would be refused ; He offered a day of grace
which He perceived would deepen the terrors of the city's con
demnation, — this, we believe, is the inner meaning of the history
of that Palm Sunday ; it is another step toward the Cross.
CHAPTER III
THE PASSING DAY OF GRACE
I. If ever there be discovered one of the original sources of
our Gospels, the Christian Church may acquire such new data as
will authoritatively determine the exact sequence of events dur
ing the Passion week ; but without more chronological data than
we now possess, we must be content with probability in place of
of the longed-for certitude. Should the research of our scholars
bear no such fruit of discovery, the mere uncertainty of the order
of events cannot be allowed to blur the indubitable impressions
made by our present records. In the previous chapter, we spoke
of Jesus returning to Bethany; but it may have been that He
spent the night on the Mount of Olives. Whether He sat in the
home of Lazarus, or under the open sky, He could not but reflect
upon the momentous occurrences of the past day. Recalling once
more how the glad " Hosannas " of His followers had left un-
softened the harsh hostility of the Jewish hierarchy, Jesus per
ceived that Israel had let slip a great and notable opportunity
of grace. The citizens of Jerusalem were so stultified in their
moral consciousness that they were unaware that the Day of the
Lord had come; and through their spiritual unsusceptibility it
had changed into a day of judgement. They had not known the
time of their visitation. That they should have given no adequate
recognition of Jesus as the Prince of Peace may be pardonable;
but that they rejected Him even as a prophet can only be
accounted for by a prior repudiation of the Divine Presence from
their lives. In the classic fable, Apollo was unrecognized but
not rejected by Admetus; by his gracious reception of the un
known visitor the hospitable man ensured for his own house a
divine and beneficent Providence. Even in its myths and legends,
a nation reveals its range and capacity of moral discernment. The
spiritual blindness of Jerusalem was demonstrated in its failure
to recognize the true Messiah, but the turpitude of its guilt can
be gauged from the fact that Jesus was so menaced within its
walls that He sought shelter outside the city night after night.
375
376 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
The " authorities " were not only obdurate in their resistance to
His teaching, but they secretly fomented murderous intrigues
around Him. " I do not wonder at what men suffer," said
Ruskin, " but I wonder often at what they lose." The disap
pointment of the disciples that the day had passed without any
of the momentous results anticipated, was but a childish chagrin
compared with the prophetic presentiments of doom that filled
the Mind of Jesus. He had foreseen this refusal of the Day of
Grace; yet now that it had taken place, He felt a mightier grief
for the doomed city of Jerusalem than that expressed in the
dirges of Jeremiah. Henceforth a sleepless sorrow possessed
His soul, and the night-silence would add keener poignancy to
His reflections, bringing no relief of forgetfulness.
2. As the second day of the week dawned, Jesus rose and,
calling His disciples, retraced His steps to the city. On the way
He either gave utterance to a parable which tradition sub
sequently transformed into a miracle, or He enacted the solemn
parabolic miracle of cursing the fruitless fig-tree. The evangelists
represent it as an acted parable, and for the present it seems
better to presume that they gave a correct account of Christ's
prophetic action. They saw shimmering in the beautiful sunrise
the pleasant green leaves of a fig-tree : since St. Mark tells us
that " this was not the season of figs," we infer that neither
Jesus nor His disciples expected to find fruit thereon. In this
combination of rich foliage and fruitlessness, Jesus characteristi
cally perceived the symbol of Israel's history ; perhaps He recalled
His own earlier parable 1 of the husbandman who spared the bar
ren tree at the vine-dresser's pleading; but now He fain would
impress upon His disciples that the opportunity for reform had
gone, and after the manner of the prophets He cursed the actual
tree on the roadside : " Never more let anyone eat fruit of thee ! "
Surely no sane critic could so misunderstand the Spirit of Jesus
as to attribute this act to angry caprice ; He spoke not in childish
pettishness, but in the spirit of solemn prophecy. St. Matthew
affirms that the tree withered immediately; St. Mark, however,
states that it was on the following day that Peter observed that
the tree was blasted. The supposed answer about the miraculous
power of faith reads like an interpolation of something spoken.
at another time. Placed in its proper connection with the
'Luke xiii. 6-9.
The Passing Day of Grace 377
thoughts and feelings of Jesus at this stage of His Ministry, the
incident, whether looked upon as a spoken or as an acted parable,
is prophetic of the doom which would fall alike upon a fruitless
nation and upon a self-deceiving disciple.
3. The episode of Christ's lament over the beautiful city
which St. Luke makes to interrupt the triumphal procession of
Palm Sunday, may have fitly taken place on this following day,
when He Himself was overwhelmed with His presentiment of the
city's unescapable catastrophe. Had Jerusalem received Him as
its Spiritual Messiah in the time of Divine visitation, it might
have been saved; but now He saw it threatened with evils that
no one could ward off. As He came over the ridge of hills and
caught another glimpse of its towers and palaces resplendent in
the morning light, the terrible contrast between that outward
spectacle and the inner vision upon which He had brooded
through the night hours, smote a poignant regret into His pa
triotic spirit and He sobbed aloud.1
" Would that thou hadst known the things that tend to thy peace ! Even
thou, even at this day!
But now it is hidden from thine eyes —
Because days will come upon thee,
When thine enemies will throw up a palisaded mound round thee, and
surround thee,
And besiege thee on every side,
When they will dash thee and thy children within thee to the ground,
When they shall not leave one stone upon another within thee,
Because thou didst not recognize the time of thy visitation."
As Amos had foreseen the Assyrian terror in his day, so Jesus
foresaw the avalanche of Roman power which was to destroy
the city. This is not surprising; for even Caiaphas had dis
cerned, in a confused way, the true drift and direction of the
current of history when he precipitated the policy of the San
hedrim in relation to Jesus. The day of Israel's opportunity
had almost ended, yet even at that eleventh hour a genuine re
pentance and faith in Jesus might have saved the city of Jeru
salem from destruction and prevented the dispersion of the Jews.
Like the prophets of the eighth century B.C., Jesus believed in the
victorious energy of moral life as more potent than material
forces; — by receiving Himself and adopting His teaching, Jeru
salem might have been maintained inviolate even against the
* Luke xix. 41-44, liiKavaev.
378 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
invincible legions of Rome. How such a triumph of spiritual
power could have been secured, we do not know; but we may
assume that the Word of God would have been as signally vin
dicated and victorious in the days of Caesar as it had been in
those of Sennacherib.
4. The problem whether there were one or two instances of
Christ's expulsion of the traders from the temple, and if one,
whether it occurred at the beginning or at the end of the ministry,
may be the subject of endless debate; but until fresh light is
thrown upon the life of Jesus, no certainty can be arrived at.
Dr. A. Plummer regards it as reasonably certain that there were
two temple-cleansings ; but other scholars of high repute have
their doubts. Our reiterated belief that St. John designed to
correct some of the mistaken inferences occasioned by the
Synoptic traditions allows us to admit the possible repetition of
this incident. If in this particular case, however, we must re
gard the Johannine and Marcan " placing " of Christ's bold protest
against the profanation of the temple as alternatives, then we
acknowledge that it " fits in " most naturally at the conclusion
of the ministry. With his accustomed observation of personal
traits St. Mark states that on the day of His Triumphal Entry
Jesus came to the temple and looked round on everything. What
He saw was repugnant to His own ideas of a pure, spiritual
religion ; and when on the following day He may have witnessed
some attempt to defraud one of the worshippers, His indignation
burst forth in vehement protest. Dr. Edersheim narrates how
Simeon, the grandson of Hillel, once saw a glaring fraud in the
temple which provoked him to interfere between a seller and
buyer; and by his interference he brought down the price of a
pair of doves from a gold denar to half a silver one. To the
mind of Jesus, the whole scene — the bartering, with its dis
putes about exorbitant and oppressive charges, and the con
fusion and noise as of a cattle market — was offensively dis
cordant with all His conceptions of worship; and, incensed be
yond all self-repression by this degradation of the national
faith, He sought to purify His Father's House. He could not
allow it to seem that He was indifferent to the robbery practised
under the aegis of temple privileges in the interests of the priests ;
He was stirred to the depths with righteous anger. Perceiving
that His voice would be drowned in that tumult, Jesus adopted a
The Passing Day of Grace 379
new and strange method of cleansing the sanctuary; snatching
up some pieces of cord, He plaited them into a whip, and with
flaming indignation intrepidly opposed the whole priesthood,
driving out the cattle and sellers and upsetting the tables of
the money-changers. " Is it not written," He said, taking up the
language of Jeremiah, " that My house shall be called a house of
prayer for all nations? And ye have made it a den of thieves? "
In this manner He displayed the zeal for Jehovah's House which
first began to be felt by Him when He was only twelve years of
age. It is impossible to say that Jesus hoped for an immediate
and permanent religious reform; but His act was, at least, a
rebuke which appealed to the national conscience to throw off
the incubus of priestly avarice. Many a patriot who looked at
the presence of the Roman soldiers as an intolerable indignity,
had endured, without protest, the more awful degradation of
priestly tyranny; now to them the daring courage of Jesus' act
appealed, and they sympathized with this revival of the Spirit
of the Maccabees, although they could not appreciate His estima
tion of the Romans as instruments of Divine retribution. Jesus
smote upon the national conscience; He revolted against the
desecration of the House of Prayer, and sought to save the poor
from the impositions of an avaricious priesthood. Let those who
have confused His habitual meekness with weakness, remember
this fiery, passionate protest against a great wrong.
5. " The Jews," i.e. the clergy of that age, were wrathful at
this attack upon their privileges, but conscience made them
cowards: so that, instead of seeking a swift retaliation, they
could but weakly ask for a sign to justify His claim to wield a
spiritual authority. " Destroy this temple," answered Jesus,
" and in three days I will raise it up." Writing long afterwards,
St. John applied this enigmatic saying to the temple of His
body; but we find in it a triumphant faith which foresaw the
overthrow of the central fane of corrupt Judaism, and yet antici
pated the rise of a spiritual temple or Church from the ruins of
the old. Renan has treated this ambiguous utterance as a token
of " His bad humour against the temple." But whatever the
exegesis of this ambiguous logion, there can be no mistake in
attributing the paradox to Jesus, since it was cited against Him
at His trial. The action of Jesus provoked new hopes in the
minds of the devout, and, encouraged by these, the youths caught
380 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
up again the refrain which had reverberated through the city
on the previous day : " Hosanna to the Son of David ! " It was
a time of spiritual ferment, and seeing Him strike a blow at the
wrongs which had the sanction of an aristocratic priesthood, the
people once more expected Him to assume the role of the Mes
sianic Reformer. When the offended dignitaries complained that
Jesus allowed the juveniles to shout " Hosanna," He asked them,
" Have you never read, From the mouths of babes and sucklings
Thou hast fashioned praise ? " We scruple to accept, at this
juncture, St. Matthew's statement that the lame and blind came to
Him in the temple — deeming it a transposition from some other
context; and we prefer St. Mark's vaguer affirmation, that He
taught the people, as probably more correct. Jesus was deliber
ately enacting the last part of His Messianic demonstration in
Jerusalem, and it appears that the very boldness of what He did
and said smote His opponents with a temporary paralysis of
will. How utterly changed were the tactics of Jesus from those
He formerly pursued! All reticence had passed away; He was
explicit and authoritative in Messianic claims, swift and over
whelming in His actions. He threw down the gauntlet before
the whole hierarchy, resolved that they should openly acknowl
edge or reject Him. The Day of Grace is swiftly passing, and
Jesus forces His opponents to declare either for, or against Him.
6. The Messiah had already designated the chief priests,
scribes and elders as the guilty agents who were destined to
deliver Him to be crucified. His present challenge of their official
prerogatives could not be passed unheeded; therefore, they once
again inquired by what authority He did these things, and fur
ther, who gave Him such authority. They could not fail to
observe that Jesus became ever more pronounced in His self-
assertion; and these men, being the legalized leaders of Judaism,
were bound to observe His tremendous pretensions and personal
claims. It was the culminating point of the quarrel between
prophet and priest — between intuition and pedantry, between
rabbinic book-lore and spiritual insight, between the privileges
of a caste and the inherent worth of a Great Soul. Those ques
tioners would fain have demonstrated to the people that Jesus
was a mere charlatan and pretender. Instead of reiterating
His Divine commission, Jesus resolved to show these interro
gators that they were blind to reason and dead to conscience.
The Passing Day of Grace 381
At the beginning of His Ministry John the Baptist had borne
testimony that He was the " Coming One " : hence, if they ac
knowledged John to be a prophet, they ought logically to admit
the Messianic claim of Jesus. This link between the first opening
scene of Christ's Ministry and His last appeal in the temple,
confirms our belief that the final claims of Divine authority
made by Jesus in those last days were implicit in His first assump
tion of public duty. Having incidentally remarked this note of
continuous development in His Ministry we must seek to under
stand why Jesus did not explicitly and directly answer the ques
tion about His Divine commission. We must not look upon this
scene as a mere encounter of wits, in which Jesus gained a
notable victory; it was, surely, more than that. He referred to
the Baptism of John as a matter of historic fact with which they
were familiar, and as something which turned the moral order
of life into a sacrament, for it was the Baptism of Repentance.
Jesus knew that it would be sheerest folly to speak of things
of highest spirituality to men who were sunk in the delusions of
sense ; to point to the witness of the Spirit when His questioners
were blinded by pride. Whatever may have been the limitations
of John's ministry, it had made its primary appeal to conscience
and it aimed at righteousness. Now, unless these haughty
priests and their allies were ready to admit the facts of the
moral world; unless they acknowledged the reality of guilt and
man's need of repentance, they could not possibly understand an
authority which was essentially built upon these foundations of
the moral order of life. Those who cherish a lie in the soul will
ever be blind to the reality of spiritual truth. Those members of
the Jewish hierarchy were thrown on the horns of a dilemma;
they were afraid to deny the prophetic vocation of John, and
yet they were resolved not to admit the authority of his Suc
cessor. St. Luke affirms that they feared the people would stone
them if they maligned John.1 While in their outward profes
sions the priests and Pharisees paraded their religion before
men, in conduct they resembled the son in the parable who prom
ised to work and then wilfully disobeyed. It was the irony of
history that the official representatives of religion were apostates
by reason of their spiritual hardness, while the excommunicated
prodigals became penitent, and the outcasts are brought into
' " Timentes lapidationem, sed timentes veritatis confessionem." — The
Ven. Bede. Inter. Com. Luke xx. 1-8. Plummer.
382 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
God's Reign by moral awakenment. The stereotyped ceremonial
ism of the priests had killed the spirit which first created it.
Jesus said to them,1
"I tell you truly,
The tax-gatherers and the harlots go before you into the kingdom of God.
For lohn came in the way of uprightness, yet you did not believe him,
But the tax-gatherers and the harlots believed him ;
And though you saw it, you did not even repent afterwards and believe
him."
7. The cycle of parables belonging to this stage of the Ministry
of Jesus all bespeak the sorrow He felt at the passing away of the
Day of Grace and the approach of Divine Judgement. " The
harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved."
Two of these parables, referring to the rejection of God's Son,
were spoken on the Monday or Tuesday. ¦ The vision of Jesus
comprehends the past, present and future, and Israel's history
and destiny are set forth with incomparable moral insight and
accuracy. The sorrow of Jesus was no narrow vexation of
thwarted self-love; it was the agony of the patriot who foresees
the ruin of his fatherland ; it was the grief a prophet feels at see
ing the theocratic race stultify its Divine election. Jesus affirms
His own organic, vital relationship with the historic revelation of
all the past; He does not stir up some side issue; He Himself is
the Son who comes after God's Servants, the prophets. He claims
to be the spiritual fruit of that tree which Jehovah planted; in
Him, He affirms, the Old Covenant is consummated, and through
Him a new race is begun. His prevision of the rejection of
Himself by the official representatives of the nation never wav
ers; this, indeed, will be the climax of Israel's repudiations of
the whole series of Divine visitations, and as a consequence a
dreadful retribution will swiftly follow. In the parable a Jesus
uttered, the vineyard is let out to wicked tenants, who, when the
over-lord sent for his rent, revolted and put his messengers to
shame. At last the owner sends his son to them, thinking that
to him, at least, the tenants will show respect. But as soon as the
heir arrives those evil-minded men arise and murder him. Al
though the movement of the parable is compressed into a single
season, the drama of history it describes has been going on for
centuries. Before His hearers understood the application to
1 Godet thinks that the parable of the Two Sons is misplaced.
3 Luke xx. 9-19; Matt. xxi. 33-46; Mark xii, 1-12.
The Passing Day of Grace 383
themselves, Jesus asked of them what the owner of the vine
yard will do. " He will miserably destroy those bad men," said
they; and then, as some perceived His meaning, they quickly ex
claimed, " Away with the thought ! " 1 They saw that the vineyard
was the Church or Israel of God, that the wicked tenants repre
sent successive generations of a priestly caste and of official
teachers, and that their living representatives were even now
intriguing to slay Jesus, " the beloved Son." 2 St. Mark makes it
plain that the angry priests perceived the meaning of this great,
sad parable of their nation's history — rejected opportunities and
coming doom; and so inflamed was their hatred of the Speaker,
they would fain have arrested Him at once, but were afraid of
the partisans of Jesus, who had evinced sympathy with His at
tempt to purge the temple.
8. Jesus also taught that there are checks and limits to the
power of God's enemies; and the intended frustration of the
Divine Purpose becomes a means for its final accomplishment.
His great revealing words cannot be adequately explained in the
ordinary perspective of earth ; He spoke as one whose vision
comprehended two worlds. According to His own view, He was
not merely caught in the conflict of human wills; but He be
lieved that He was combating the malignant designs of the devil
and of evil spirits. Whether this aspect of His teaching will
ultimately be treated as an accidental inheritance of Jewish super
stition or as an authoritative and revelatory part of the doctrine
of Jesus, cannot be lightly pronounced upon. While there are
many thoughtful men who reject the idea of a mighty personal
will of evil as an unnecessary hypothesis, there are others who
think that the phenomena of human life justify the old Jewish
belief in " possession." But, avoiding all academic discussion, we
dare not overlook the fact that the belief in demoniacal possession
formed one of the factors in the mind of Jesus; He Himself
explicitly affirmed that He came to destroy the works of the
devil. It is very significant that the highest literary products
of genius and imagination are based upon the idea that man's
life has cosmic and extra-temporal relationships. The insights
of genius approximate closely to the intuitions of prophecy.
The Passion of Jesus was no merely passing scene of a marionette
play in the squalid politics of Rome's subject province of Judaea;
1 fiij yfaoiro, s rbv uiov pern rbv dyantfr&v.
384 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
rather must it be thought of as a mighty drama of the universal
conflict between God's righteousness and the world's wrong.
Jesus Himself gave a graduated disclosure of the mighty spiritual
conflict in which He was engaged, showing first the inevitability
of His rejection, the agents who would be involved in His mar
tyrdom, the fitness of such a consummation of the line of sacrifice
running all through Jewish history; then accentuating successive
aspects of His death as an event involving some mysterious ne
cessity, predestined to issue in spiritual triumph, as of the nature
of a ransom for man's emancipation — as His own last mighty
act of will for the saving of the lost. And now once more Jesus
attempted to impress upon His hearers in the temple the fact
of an overruling Power of God which would make even the wills
of His enemies subserve the accomplishment of a Divine Work.
The high-priests, scribes and Pharisees believed that if they
could put Jesus to death, the movement initiated by Him would
come to an end. Jesus repels this delusion in His parable of
the Rejected Stone.1 The stone rejected by the builders as unfit
for " the extreme sharp edge of the building " is finally chosen
to become the " crown of the right angle of the four sides of the
square building, protecting and supporting the stately fabric."
Thus did Jesus, in view of His own imminent trial, while re
newing His solemn anticipations of death, predict for Himself,
under the figure of the Rejected Stone, a certain attainment of
exaltation and dignity in the great Spiritual Temple of Human
ity. Then, with an abrupt turn of speech He represented the
corner-stone as falling upon the rejecters in dreadful retribution.
9. A further judgement-parable was drawn from Him as He
perceived the murderous wishes of His enemies. Once again
Jesus gave renewed emphasis both to His own indestructible
consciousness of Royal dignity and to His assurance of Spiritual
inheritance after death. Whatever the exact place for His de
liverance of this parable of the Marriage Feast, it unmistakably
belongs to a time when the hatred of Jesus by the Jewish rulers
could neither be concealed nor disguised. The thought of the
parable is pregnant with Jesus' Messianic conception of the
Kingdom; and one writer suggests that the feast is connected
not only with the wedding, but also with the accession of the
Son and Heir to the Throne : therefore the refusal of the invited
' Luke xx. 17-19, LXX. Ps. cxviii. 22-23, Delitzsch.
The Passing Day of Grace 385
guests is not merely discourteous but also disloyal and re
bellious. The repeated invitations alluded to in the parable de
scribe the several missions — i.e. of the Baptist, of the Twelve
and of the Seventy ; but, since the rebels treated the King's mes
sengers with such malignant cruelty, the Sovereign will destroy
them and burn their city. Then, in striking words, Jesus adds to
the thought of the Divine rejection of the Jews that of the elec
tion of other peoples. " The Marriage is ready, but those who
were invited were not worthy. Go to the cross-roads, then, and
invite as many people as you find to the marriage-feast." The
further addition to this parable concerning the guest without the
wedding garment may have been spoken by Jesus at another
time, for it belongs to an entirely different set of ideas. Strauss
identifies it with the parable of the Great Supper, and prefers
the Lucan version as more correct.1 It is possible, however, that,
just as Jesus repeated, in word or act, His earlier parable of the
fig-tree in these days, so He may likewise have deliberately
taken up one of His well-known parables of grace, and by a new
turn of speech made it a message of doom to those men who
scorn the overtures of God's mercy. If so, He also extended
its application to declare that there will be no lack of guests
at the Marriage Feast, signifying that the Kingdom of God
will not be abandoned though the Jews, the first invited, cut
themselves off by rebellion.
io. Thus, in the Mind of Jesus, the passing of Israel's Day
of Grace heralded the ingathering of the Gentiles. As we read
this cycle of Judgement-parables, we are amazed at the world
wide compass of Christ's vision,- and affected by the deep pathos
of the swift alternations of His sorrow and hope. Again, it
may be reiterated that these marvellous utterances are a message
not only to Israel, but to the whole world. " In Him do the
Gentiles hope ; " or, as the prediction runs in Hebrew, " the isles
shall wait for His law." Jesus makes us think of Himself as the
centre of all human history; all the movements of past millen
niums converge upon His sacrifice ; and, according to His antici
pation, from His Cross will radiate new moral energies that
shall achieve the triumph of God's Reign on the earth. At that
moment of His Ministry the heart of Jesus was full of a patriotic
sorrow, and yet He foresaw that the temporary defeat of the
'Luke xiv. 15-24.
386 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
Divine Counsel in the world will issue in assured triumph.
Jesus was caught in the swellings of the Jordan ; and yet though
death confronted Him, He made no effort to escape, believing
that His death itself would secure the conquest of the world for
His Father. We do not wonder that those critics who start
with the presupposition that Jesus could not be different from
ordinary men, should be driven to hint that at this stage He lost
His mental balance. There is a colossal egoism in these parables ;
He set Himself forth as the end of the law and the prophets;
the previous messengers from God are presented under the figure
of slaves, while Jesus is the beloved Son. Yet what marvellous
intellectual power He exhibited at this juncture, summing up, in
a series of pictorial parables, the whole sweep of Israel's past —
throwing out deep suggestions of a new world-wide evangel for
the future ! If in the Fourth Gospel men may find " the supreme
and classical product " of religious philosophy, yet this philosophy
of History and Revelation is first found in the Consciousness of
Jesus which the Synoptic Gospels reflect for us in these parables
of the Passion-week. Instead of first foisting upon the Gospels
a naturalistic presumption of what Jesus ought to have been,
it is far wiser to allow Him to make His own noble great im
pression upon our minds by taking cognizance of all the data of
His Ministry. Those who assume that the epistolary New Testa
ment conception of Christ must be the baseless fabric of a dream,
and set out to restrict the Ministry of Jesus to the brief span of
three years, can retain this view only by doing violence to the
data of the Gospels, and refusing to accept these parables of
Judgement anl evangelic hopes.
CHAPTER IV
ATTACK AND COUNTER-ATTACK
I. One of the difficulties encountered in any attempt to por
tray the Ministry of Jesus is to preserve the balance between
His autonomy and His subordination to the operation of ordinary
forces. Although an unbiassed study of the Gospels convinces
us that there was in Him some transcendent quality or nature
that men have called Divine, we are also bound to acknowledge
His submission to the natural conditions and limitations of human
experience. From the point of view of His autonomy, we look
upon Christ's death as a Sacrifice replete with ethical and spiritual
values, but regarding Him as the subject of natural laws, en
vironed by an historical order, we are led to view His Suffering
and Crucifixion as the inevitable result of His conflict with the
Jewish hierarchy. These two aspects of human experience are
so far from being incompatible, that they meet us at every turn
in the study of the phenomena of man's life. It is an instance
of what Kant termed the third antinomy of Pure Reason, and
which he stated thus : " Thesis — Causality, according to the laws
of Nature, is not the only causality from which all the phenom
ena of the world can be derived. A causality of freedom is
also necessary to account fully for these phenomena." "An
tithesis, — There is no freedom, but all that comes to be. in the
world happens solely in accordance with laws of Nature." 1 The
true solution of this antinomy will not be found in an exclusion
of thesis or of antithesis; it must be sought in reconciliation of
both through some conception of man which comprehends his
sensuous state and his inward intelligence or spiritual nature.
Applying this rule to the Ministry of Jesus, we must give full
heed to His self-determining intelligence, and at the same time ob
serve Him as the Object of a natural historical order. In follow
ing this latter method first, we shall by no means exclude from
our reflection that other view of Jesus without which there would
have been neither a Church nor a Christology. We shall show,
* The Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Dial., bk. ii.
387
388 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
therefore, first that the development of the final stage of Christ's
Ministry was outwardly determined by the attacks made upon
Jesus by the legitimate leaders of the nation. These authorities
saw that the time had come when they must either extinguish
the movement of Jesus or be themselves extinguished. He was
undermining their authority. Either they must acknowledge Him
to be the Divinely Anointed One whom the prophets had antici
pated, or they must begin to overthrow Him by discrediting His
Ministry in the eyes of the people. Although two or three of the
Sanhedrists secretly favoured the claims of Jesus, the over
whelming majority of the Council proudly and scornfully re
jected them. Their conduct reveals the triumph of caste preju
dices, and is the most flagrant instance of the blindness of ortho
dox Israel to the self-attesting splendour of the realized moral
ideal. The very privileges of their positions, wealth and learning,
created a disturbing bias against Jesus, or surely they must
have been constrained to have confessed, " Thou art the Messiah,
the Son of the Living God."
2. St. Luke relates that during those last few days, Jesus
evening by evening went away from the temple to spend the
night on the hill called " the Olive Orchard." Such daily with
drawals of His presence may have been dictated by prudence ; for
not only was assassination possible on the part of His enemies,
but there was also the danger lest His own friends might, under
cover of darkness, encourage some conspiracy against the estab
lished government. A merely political demagogue would have
acted very differently, but Jesus kept steadily before Himself
the exclusively spiritual nature of His mission. We cannot but
think that the sad, silent hours of those last nights were spent
by Him in prayer and meditation. The strain of the struggle
going on was intense and exhausting, and it was needful that His
wasted energies should be repaired by spiritual communion. How
much or how little of the time was spent in sleep, we have no
means of determining ; we only know that the days were crowded
with incidents which drew forth the final, solemn teachings
recorded of this ministry. It might have been supposed that the
last remembered transpirings of Christ's fleshly life would have
been clearly assigned to the several days; yet, as it is, we are
uncertain of the chronological sequence of the events that hap
pened between Monday morning and Thursday night — so uncer-
Attack and Counter- Attack 389
tain, indeed, that we cannot determine whether Tuesday or
Wednesday was the final day of His public activity in Jerusalem.
St. Luke says that He taught in the temple day by day, and that the
high-priests, scribes and leading men of the people would fain
have destroyed Him, but knew not how to accomplish their de
sire. Early in the mornings, all the people used to resort to Him
in the temple to listen to His words, and they would hang upon
His lips as men entranced.1 St. John, however, is the only one
of the four evangelists who has preserved the gist of our Lord's
last public utterances in the temple; and, from his brief digest
of the teachings of those concluding days, we learn that Jesus
summed up and asserted His Messianic claims and His warnings
against the sin of rejecting them. Again, Jesus reiterated His
Divine commission and His moral oneness with the Father, whom
He revealed; He claims that His Ministry is a Light come into
the world; they, therefore, who reject His word will be judged
by it in the last day; but they who believe on Him will not abide
in a state of moral darkness, but will receive eternal life.2
3. The leading members of the Sanhedrim were genuinely
alarmed, for at first it seemed as though the people were in sym
pathy with Jesus ; and under the excitement of His Presence
they might use the feast as an opportunity of insurrection; and,
if such were the case, the Romans would once more make a riot
an occasion for another indiscriminate slaughter of the Jews. It
may have been on Tuesday that the enemies of Jesus, having con
sulted together, agreed to waive all their mutual antagonisms,
that they might unitedly attack Him and subvert His influence.
Hence we find a formidable alliance 3 between the Herodians and
the Pharisees, which had been already foreshadowed during
the later Galilean ministry; — an alliance, that is, between the
aristocratic families who favoured the Roman supremacy and
the strict sect of Pharisees who were rigorous separatists from all
Gentiles, as also from all who were lax in their adherence to
Judaism. Such a truce between these rival orders serves to
disclose the intensity of their hatred of Jesus. Fearing, however,
to arrest their common enemy because of His influence upon the
assembled pilgrims, these Jews formed schemes to entrap Him
either into making some treasonable statement in regard to
'Luke xix. 48; xxi. 37. 'John xii. 44-50.
'Mark xii. 13-17; Matt. xxii. 15-22; Luke xx. 19-26.
390 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
Caesar's suzerainty, or, if He avoided this danger, to make His
fear of treason appear before the people as an unpatriotic repudi
ation of all hope of national restitution. In this collusion and
subtle intrigue, we almost fancy that there can once again be
detected the guiding craft of Caiaphas, who thought that at last
Jesus might be sacrificed to the jealous vigilance of Rome. What
ever hypocrisy or diplomacy may have lurked in their flattering
address, this deputation of Pharisees and Herodians gave explicit
acknowledgement of the fact that Jesus was known by all to be
absolutely upright — a dangerous admission to make, even insin
cerely, — of One whose overthrow they designed. " Teacher, we
know that Thou art truthful, caring not for anyone (for Thou
regardest not the person of men), but teachest the way of God
with truth." Men could utter such words as these only of one
whose character was known to be above reproach; that they ad
dressed Him thus only to cloak their malignancy, in nowise de
tracts from the cogency of such inadvertent testimony, although
it condemned themselves as the guileful opponents of righteous
ness. " Is it right," they asked, " to pay tribute to Caesar or not ?
Ought we to pay, or ought we not ? " With marvellous direct
ness of insight Jesus at once penetrated their malevolent purpose,
and saw the respective difficulties involved in either a negative
or an affirmative answer. " Why make trial of Me ? " He said.
" Bring me a denarius, that I may see it." Taking a coin that was
proffered, He said, " Whose likeness and inscription is this ? "
They answered, " Caesar's." " Then," said Jesus, " render to
Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are
God's." The retort given by Jesus gave no settlement of a most
vexatious and pressing political problem; but although skilfully
evasive of particulars in a matter wherein one whisper of treason
would have ruined forever the prospects of His Church, it
enunciated a far-reaching principle that every man ought to dis.-
charge all known duties of citizenship and of religion. Jesus
simply exercised the caution that the most patriotic Pharisee
would have shown in refusing to pronounce any judgement upon
the grievance of Caesar's usurping dominance in Palestine. He
pointed out simply that the image and superscription of Tiberius
upon the denarius was itself proof that Caesar was de facto the
ruler to whom tribute must be paid; but He refrained from all
expression of opinion about Caesar's right to rule. The second
part of Jesus' reply was not so irrelevant as it may have sounded
Attack and Counter-Attack 391
to unprepared ears; it expressed His view that religion is con
centric with all earthly obligations of man's relationships, com
prehending all lower duties under the supreme rule of fidelity to
God. Thus once again, as before — Jesus had refused to arbitrate
between two brothers in their dispute about an inheritance — He
rejects all political interpretations of His claim to be the Messiah.
It is often made a complaint against Him today that His teach
ing offers no aid in solving the political, economic and social
problems which press upon us; yet we see clearly that, had He
dealt with the actual tyrannies and wrongs of a particular age and
people instead of simply laying down the broad principles which
relate to the inward spirit of man's life, He could not have been
the Teacher and Consoler of all ages. In this attempt to entrap
Him in His speech, He calmly and skilfully extricated Himself
from a dangerous dilemma, and while He baffled the hatred of His
allied foes, He forced upon them the thought that they were not
fufilling their duties to God.
4. Out of slight hints and probabilities offered incidentally
by the evangelists, we have to reconstruct a mental picture of
Christ's Ministry in the temple during the Passion-week. Not
only did all the people resort to Him in the early mornings, but
the Sanhedrists, as representing the essential ideas and authority
of contemporary Judaism, visited him — " watching their chance
(they) despatched spies, who posed as upright men, to lay hold
of what He said." The temple courts were crowded with pilgrims
who represented the best religious life of the cities and families
throughout the Jewish world, and Jesus may have sat or stood " in
the gate of the Lord's house " at the entrance of the inner court.
It was no ordinary scene; the audience was composed of wor
shippers, among whom were little groups of Jesus' enemies ; and
the Speaker Himself was a striking and impressive personality,
who was looked upon by the people as a great prophet; by the
disciples as the true Messiah, by His foes as a mere pretender.
When men are incubating some wicked plot it would seem as
though malignant influences are ever ready to pour in from
some sphere outside human control. Macbeth meets the witches
on the heath; these weird sisters would have remained unper
ceived, had not his own brain been made ready to receive their evil
suggestions by his own over-vaulting ambition. The enemies of
Christ were plotting against Him when the material of an ironical
392 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
temptation was put into their hands, as it were, by a case which
came before a committee of the Sanhedrim probably at that time.
A woman taken in the sin of adultery had been brought before the
council for judgement; and one of the members satirically ad
vised that, since the Nazarene Teacher had dared to say that even
harlots should go into the Kingdom of Heaven before the Scribes
and Pharisees, He should be asked to pronounce judgement upon
the woman. While the exact time of this occurrence cannot be
fixed, there is little doubt that it was among the closing scenes
of Christ's Ministry. Godet, who regarded the story J as due to
an editorial introduction of one of the extra-scriptural facts pre
served by the oral tradition of primitive times, remarks that " its
internal characteristics place it chronologically at the same epoch
as other similar facts related by the Synopists — viz. immediately
after the Triumphal Entry. Before that day, we can hardly
understand so explicit a recognition of the authority of Jesus on
the part of the Sanhedrim." 2 Those who feel so inclined may re
ject this narrative as lacking in documentary support, and may
have the critic's justification of balanced caution; but, for our
selves, judging this interpolation found in St. John by our test of
impressionism, we perceive in it a correspondence with the occa
sion — a possible satire intended by referring such a case to Jesus —
and a certain self-evidencing quality in the action and words of
the Master and their effect upon others.
5. We pass from the questions of authenticity and inherent
probability to the scene described but misplaced in St. John's
gospel. While Jesus stood in the midst of the throng teaching
them, a sudden thrill of excitement touched the people as a few
grave counsellors led a shrinking, shame-stricken woman up to
Him and said, " Teacher, this woman has been caught in the very
act of committing adultery. Now in the Law, Moses commanded
us to stone such women. What sayest Thou, then ? " They re
ferred this case to Jesus with mock recognition of His authority,
and yet even in doing so they once again gave acknowledgement
of the profound impression He had made upon them. The posi
tion in which Jesus was placed before the people was one of diffi
culty; He had been known to make the public claim to be the
" Friend of sinners " : but for Him to waive the Mosaic law as
inapplicable would be seeming to do despite to Moses ; 8 while,
'John vii. 53-viii. 11. 'Godet, St. John's Gospel, p. 312.
" Deut. xxii. 23 f.
Attack and Counter- Attack 393
on the other hand, to enforce the old Hebrew law, would place
Him in antagonism to the Roman authority. Jesus " bent down
and began to write with His finger on the ground." " The scrap
ing or drawing on the ground with a stick or the finger has been
in many countries a common expression of deliberate silence or
embarrassment." 1 No one can penetrate into the feelings of
Jesus at that moment ; He may, indeed, have stooped to hide His
embarrassment, feeling an utter detestation of the indelicacy of
those coarse-grained men. Although His own snow-white soul
had never been shadowed by a passing thought of lust, He knew
what was in man's heart, and therefore felt an infinite pity for
this poor victim of unclean desire. Perhaps He paused awhile to
steady His own Soul after the first shock of sympathy, lest His
voice should break in sobs. The scribes, however, afraid lest His
silence signified that He would refuse to answer, went on asking
for His judgement. At length Jesus raised Himself up and
answered in calm, stern tones, as He looked around upon the
heartless accusers : " Let him who is without sin among you be
the first to cast a stone at her." The hubbub around Him ceased ;
His words were as a flash of lightning ripping up the dark
secrets of their inmost thoughts, and as He stooped once more
to scribble on the ground, those self-convicted men slunk away
" beginning with the eldest, and He was left alone with the
woman." It ought not to be inferred that those scribes were men
of licentious habits; but, in the presence of absolute innocence,
their poor respectability seemed little better than the woman's
guilt. Jesus voiced the judgement of an immaculate conscience,
and His words seemed to strip them naked, leaving their secret
thoughts and desires exposed in the fire of Divine holiness. One
of the most impressive attributes of Jesus was His purity 2 ; be
cause of this His words pierce men through the heart with a
sense of guilt, and they voluntarily echo Simon's cry, " Depart
from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord ! " When He lifted up
His head again Jesus saw the wretched woman standing there,
unable to withdraw till He had set her free, and said, " Woman,
where are they ? Did no man condemn thee ? " " No one, Sir."
"Neither do I condemn thee. Go thy way: henceforth sin no
more." This clemency must not be confused with laxity; Jesus
refused to condemn because He saw that shame had burnt into
' Dr. Dods in Expos. N. T. John viii. i-ii.
2 St. John iii. 3, ayveia, a virgin purity, chastity of soul.
394 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
the adultress's soul, and because, it may well be, He perceived
that words of censure would harden and freeze up the little vein
of penitence that had begun to trickle in her heart. There is an
opening here for the criticism that Jesus gives no aid to the social
reformer in battling against the sexual impurities which scourge
our cities : hence, although we share in some measure in the pity
He expressed for the victims of lust, we glean from His treat
ment of this case no guidance for dealing with this gigantic
wrong. But then, what rules would avail to withstand the mo
mentum of this great elemental passion in the lives of men ? At
least, Jesus shows respectable moralists that it is futile to con
demn the woman while her paramour escapes ; that the source of
this social impurity lies in the unclean thoughts in the hearts
of men.
6. Surprised, chagrined, and resentful at Christ's facile eva
sion of the net they had spread for Him, the Herodians fell
back, so that the representatives of an " older orthodoxy " might
seek to confound the Nazarene. St. Luke affirms that " the Sad
ducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor
Spirit " : x Josephus says of the same sect, " They take away also
the belief of the immortal duration of the soul, and the punish
ments and rewards in Hades." 2 Some of the members of this
Sadducean sect came to Jesus, haughtily scornful of the rab
binical pretensions of this Galilean peasant, and resolved that they
would humiliate Him, even in the eyes of those who were deluded
by Him. Although Jesus had made it no special object to teach
the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body, He
had throughout His Ministry assumed the truth of these doctrines,
and had necessarily alluded to them as certainties of the Spiritual
life. He was no systematic theologian or philosopher ; His great
est contribution both to ethics and to Revelation was His own
personality and life; perhaps, apart from the authority imparted
by His character, the teaching of Jesus would not excel, so greatly
as we sometimes imagine, the noble, spiritual philosophy of Plato,
although the latter is more mixed up with the corrupted opinions
belonging to contemporary thought. Treatises may be written on
the Sayings of Jesus; yet profound and beautiful as these are,
and rightly prized as the sacred deposit of the Church, still they
are fragmentary and based at times on uncertified reminiscences ;
' Acts xxiii. 8. * Jewish War, ii., 8, 14.
Attack and Counter-Attack 395
and, in order to extract their full flavour and significance, we
must connect them in reflection with our impression of Jesus
Himself. " It is the Lord Jesus and not His sayings, that was
the subject of the earliest preachers of Christianity. Doubtless
part of the personal impression included a vivid sense of our
Lord's guiding principles of life, His daily and hourly inter
course with His Father in Heaven, and the sureness and authority
which this Heavenly intercourse gave Him in discerning right
and wrong." 1 Such is our impression of our Lord, that we find
it impossible to separate His words altogether from His acts;
both together serve to reflect His mind and to disclose His
unique Person.
7. The Sadducees 2 laid before Jesus a hypothetic instance of
Levirate practice — a woman marries in succession seven brothers,
who all die without issue — and based upon this almost impossible
and ridiculous imagination the question, " Whose wife shall she
be in the resurrection life ? " Their Pharisaic allies must have
felt somewhat uncomfortable at this treatment of their cherished
belief, as though it were an absurd jest; yet they raised no
protest, since it was designed to nonplus Jesus, whom they hated.
Many teachers might have refused to enter upon an idle con
troversy with no real relevance to the facts of life; but Jesus
took up the question and lifted the whole discussion to the high
level of His own habitual thought. " Surely you err," He said,
" because you do not understand the Scriptures or the power of
God: when the dead rise, they neither marry nor are given in
marriage, but are as the angels in heaven. And concerning the
raising of the dead, have you not read in the Book of Moses, in
the section of the Bush, how God said to him, ' I am the God
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? He is not the God of the dead,
but of the living.' " This argument does not derive its cogency
from the use of the present tense,3 for its intrinsic value lay in
the conception of God's relation with men cherished and taught by
Jesus. Neither in the Hebrew text nor in the Septuagint version,
nor in our Lord's quotation, was a verb employed, although it is
demanded to complete the English idiom. Professor H. B. Swete
remarks that " In this place God reveals Himself as standing in a
' The Gospel History and its Transmission, p. 144.
2 Matt. xxii. 23-33.
3 cm yap elirev, "TH/a/v, ak7i elfii.
896 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
real relation to men who were long dead. But the living God can
not be in relation with any who have ceased to exist; therefore,
the patriarchs were still living in His sight at the time of the Exo
dus." The mind of Jesus passed far beyond the earth-born
doubts of the Sadducees and the pedantry of the scribes, and this
thought He has given the world becomes ever more replete with
force and meaning as we learn to know the reality of our Divine
relationship. Such an argument as this flashes upon us a light of
revelation as transcendent and self-evident as that flung first from
Horeb's Bush. It unveils the personal intimacy of Jesus with the
Father in Heaven. Immortality is assured by our knowledge of
the spiritual and personal relations existing between God and the
Soul. When Christ's exegesis brings such an intuition as this,
it compels us to think that we too are ignorant of the Scriptures.
Our Lord authoritatively declares that when the dead arise they
do not resume the forms and habits of earthly life, but enter
upon an angelic state in Heaven. He does not argue that there
will be a resurrection ; He simply affirms the continuity of man's
personal life in God: physical death is but an incident in the
soul's experience as it passes to fuller intimacy with God. At
His words, the shadowy existence of Sheol is transformed into
the warm, full life of abiding personal relationship with God.
8. Although the Pharisees must have approved this remark
able vindication of their belief in life hereafter, yet they grudged
that Jesus should have the victory. They wished to undermine
His authority, and would not allow their momentary agreement
with Him to thwart the plan of attack that had been arranged
by their enemies. Still, we cannot but imagine that far less
malignancy was betrayed by the scribe who put the next question
to Jesus, " Which is the first commandment ? " x Although they
failed to appreciate the fact, yet the double quotation from the
Law made by Jesus virtually expressed in felicitous and accurate
speech the whole character of His Ministry among them. " The
first is, Hear, O Israel ! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one ;
and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all
thy soul, with all thy mind, with all thy strength. The second is
this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is no other
commandment greater than these." "The first of these two
laws was written on phylacteries, and the Jews recited it morn-
1 Matt. xxii. 34-40 ; Mark xii. 28-33.
Attack and Counter- Attack 397
ing and evening (Deut. vi. 4; xi. 13) ; hence, it was the natural
answer." The second is quoted from Lev. xix. 18. Jesus quoted
the Levitical rule of love to one's neighbour in conjunction with
the law that man should love God absolutely, in order to show
that true humanity is practical religion ; that the love of God can
-never be accompanied by any fanatical neglect of men's social
obligations. In the balanced ethic of Christ's teaching there is no
divorce between religion and daily life; this great Rabbi of the
Kingdom of God was free of all taint of " other-worldliness."
It is true He laid supreme emphasis upon the fulfilment of all
duties springing from man's relations to God, but He made it
clear forever that the truest Divinity is humanitarian. The love
He inculcates cannot ignore a man's neighbours ; the Divine
Fatherhood He revealed implied an ethical brotherhood ; religion
must involve some form of socialism. Even His inquisitor was
swept out of his pedantry into a warm, ingenuous outburst of
admiration; hearing which, Jesus pronounced him to be not far
from the Kingdom.
9. Even the enemies of Jesus must have manifested surprise as
well as vexation at the penetrating sagacity of this Teacher who
had never studied letters. He was irresistible in dialectic; His
common speech betrayed a habit of profound reflection and a
gift of insight that would not be satisfied with less than the inner
heart of any subject He discussed. It was undeniable even by
His interrogators, that Jesus surpassed them in the knowledge
of subjects which they claimed as their own; hence, they retired
from the struggle in conscious defeat. We also are constrained
to confess that a mind which could so swiftly and naturally elude
all traps, baffle all sophistry, and convince even some of His foes
that He spoke God's truth without fear, must have possessed a
quality of superb intellectuality. We make such comments as
these, not in the way of passing anything like encomium upon
One who transcends all need of such eulogy, but in order
that we may appreciate all the various aspects of His total
Humanity. And, to complete our review of this part of our
Lord's Ministry, we must observe His counter-attack, which He
made in no mood of petty spite or desire for retaliation, but
simply that they might be incited to revise and enlarge their
defective and limited conception of Messiahship. Present-day
critical discussions concerning the authorship of Psalm ex. are
398 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
quite irrelevant to the real point of our Lord's question. We
have studied His life in vain if we have not yet learned that He
had a truly human consciousness, and that He was limited by
contemporary conditions of scholarship. When the matter to be
dealt with was one of spiritual life and of God's relationship to
man, Jesus, as we have seen in previous discussions, spoke with
a simplicity, directness and certitude that have never been sur
passed. On such themes He remains the unrivalled Master. But,
in ordinary matters of erudition, His knowledge appears to have
been derived from ordinary sources; for example, in regard to
this particular psalm Jesus accepted the tradition of authorship
and date that prevailed among His contemporaries. Let no one
here suppose that we impugn His Divinity; we have already
found convincing evidences of this in His perfect love, and not in
any escape from the laws which govern the operations of the
human mind.
io. One of the principal reasons of the Pharisaic criticism
of the authority of Jesus was the over-emphasis given to the
Davidic descent of the Messiah, and to the political work of
restoring David's Kingdom. Now, many will confess that
questions of genealogy, even those of the Gospels, have but
little attraction; to such it is but an interesting trifle whether
Jesus was truly the Son of David according to the flesh;
their glory is that He is the Son of Man and the Son of God.
To the ancient scribes, however, the Davidic Sonship was one
of the necessary notes of Messiahship. This title, even to Jesus
Himself, seemed inadequate to describe Jehovah's Suffering
Servant. He would fain have had them transfer the emphasis
from the mere individuality begotten of the flesh, to the inward
spiritual character. Hence He said to the men around, " David
himself said, by the Holy Ghost, The Lord said to my Lord,
Sit thou on my right hand until I put thine enemies under thy
footstool. David therefore himself calleth him ' Lord ' ; whence
then is he his son ? " If, during the time of His youth, Jesus
ever felt the fascination of the trend of prophecy concerning the
earthly and regal splendour of the Messiah, He had since learned
to value also the conception of the vicarious Sufferer, — of the
Prince who was to be cut off, of the Smitten Shepherd. Popular
imagination, however, fastened naturally upon the national hope
of a hero-king like David. Even if the haughty scribes were un^
Attack and Counter-Attack 399
willing to revise their interpretations of Scripture, Jesus would
gladly have emancipated the populace from submission to doc
trines which lacked spiritual insight. He aimed at suggesting
to their minds a nobler, truer, and more practicable notion of
God's Anointed. The scribes dared not even attempt to answer
Jesus; and, as in speech so now in silence, they stand self-
exposed as incompetent guides. Thus did the planned attacks of
His allied foes come to naught ; their subtle schemes of entangling
Jesus in debate, of betraying Him into some word that might be
used against Him in a charge of treason, or of discrediting Him
before His followers, resulted only in their own confusion. He
reduced His assailants to impotent silence, sweeping away their
cobwebs of sophistry, and lifting all minds that were willing on
to a spiritual plane of thought where selfishness and pedantry are
asphyxiated. ii. The Master did not permit His malignant enemies to slip
away without a final rebuke; for the sake of the unlearned, He
administered public castigation. They were dangerous to others,
since they sat " in Moses' seat " ; although they made an ostenta
tious show of zeal for religion, they took away the " key of
knowledge," and obstructed the entrance into the Reign of God.
Jesus stripped them of their pretences, and pilloried them for
all time as types of insincerity — as mere actors of religion; as
blind pedants, who placed unnecessary burdens upon the peo
ple. There was no taint of weakness in the Humanity of Jesus ;
His love was a passion for righteousness. While He was, as we
have shown in this chapter once again, preeminently pitiful to
wards error and sin, He was intolerant of all hypocrisy, hurling
against it the lightning-like invectives of His terrible indignation.
He pitied most tenderly the penitent harlot, but He did not spare
her hard-hearted accusers. We cannot comprehend such com
plexity of character as this; in our portrait of Him we must
link together His stern rebukes of Pharisaism and His lamenta
tion and tears over the doomed city; the seven woes uttered in
the temple must be placed side by side with the Beatitudes He
uttered on the Mount. Although St. Luke has given a different
setting to the " woes," we cannot but realize that they belong most
probably to the Passion-week. There is no other time when this
philippic against the clerical party of Judaism could have been
so fitly delivered. It is the climax of a struggle which we have
400 The Royal Progress and Messianic Struggle
traced from the first breach of Jesus with the authorized repre
sentatives of Israel over the healing of the man with the withered
hand. Whether the unity and eloquence of this final public ad
dress attributed to Jesus be regarded as proof of its integrity
and authenticity, or whether these shall be looked upon as marks
of the editor's own literary skill, may be left to the personal
judgement of each reader; it is enough for our use that it gives
a true impression of the culminating stage of a long-continued
struggle between Jesus and the acknowledged theologians of that
age. The people had cherished a hope that Jesus would sound the
tocsin of revolt, whereas He rang out the knell of Jerusalem's
doom. He saw, as in a dreadful vision, the red stream of blood
running through the streets — the blood of the slain prophets from
Abel to Zechariah. He saw also, in the leaders of Judaism, the
same murderous spirit as that which had led their fathers to
persecute the prophets. The scribes and Pharisees had filled
the cup of Israel's iniquity; therefore Jehovah's wrath would
soon destroy the city. Once again Israel had rejected the Divine
visitation, in consequence of which Jesus predicts the resistless
approach of the Days of Retribution. Because Jerusalem had
made the last great refusal of Christ's offer of a Spiritual King
dom, Jesus feels His heart pierced by great sorrow, and pours
out a noble threnody over the city, so gloriously described in
ancient prophecy and psalm. " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which
killeth the prophets and stoneth them that are sent unto her!
How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a
hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto
you, Ye shall not see Me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is
He that cometh in the name of the Lord."
BOOK VIII
THE LAST DAYS OF THE PASSION
CHAPTER I
THE GREEKS DESIRE TO SEE JESUS
i. Certain clearly defined groups of events, such as the
attacks upon Christ's authority, the deliverance of the Judgement
parables, and incidents such as the eulogy upon the widow and
the visit of the Greeks, belong unmistakably to the terminating
period of His public ministry. Of the exact sequence of these
events and the days on which they happened we have no assur
ance ; and yet such uncertainty as exists cannot materially affect
the incidents of which we shall treat in this chapter. The evan
gelists themselves have shown great freedom in the placing of
some of the incidents of the Gospel. Comparing their several
accounts, we perceive that while they adhered in a general way
to the main tradition of the ministry, they did not scruple to
transpose their materials and to regroup whole collections of
the sayings of Jesus under the directive influence of their several
aims. This characteristic of the Gospels has made it very diffi
cult in carrying out any attempt to trace the natural development
of the several parts of Christ's Ministry. And yet such an
attempt, however much accompanied by hesitating uncertainty
at various points, is easily justifiable, since it cannot be denied
that His teachings were modified by the occasions which elicited
them, and that the sequence of events, in spite of all uncertainties,
does manifest the presence of some definite plan of activity
working in the mind of Jesus from the beginning. Although it
may be a misnomer to speak of the development of Christ's pur
pose, since His dominant purpose remained unchanged through
out, yet it is necessary that full recognition be given to the grad
uated manifestation of that purpose. On the other hand we make
no a priori denial of the possibility that Jesus Himself was only
slowly introduced to all the obligations and incidental applica
tions of that generic purpose which He summed up in the phrase
that He came to do the Will of the Father. The surprises and
disappointments that He passed through can be sympathetically
understood by any man who has striven, through long years, to
403
404 The Last Days of the Passion
evince in daily conduct the fidelity he promised in early vows.
If we speak of development, therefore, in the Ministry of Jesus,
we must keep clearly in mind that it was the fulfilling manifesta
tion of His purpose, and not a change in that purpose itself. No
one can miss the deepening note of intensity and of self-assertion
as Jesus drew near to the Cross. Further, no one would for one
moment think of transposing the Sermon on the Mount and
the Apocalypse of Jesus, or of reversing the position of the
parables of the Kingdom and the Judgement parables. What
ever diffidence we have felt in placing the Johannine accounts of
Christ's conversations with Nicodemus and the woman of
Samaria, we cannot obscure the fact that for the most part the
Gospels themselves reflect with some clearness the distinct periods
of the Ministry of Jesus — the beginning, middle and end. And
yet that ministry was not a long one. Some have calculated that
it lasted about eighteen months; and for ourselves we judge that
it was framed within three Jewish Passovers. Hence, although
we have tentatively placed the Raising of Lazarus back in the
middle period of the ministry, we can still accept John's testimony
that it exercised a determining influence over the development
of the tragedy of the last days.
2. From this general notion of a traceable development in our
Lord's public life, we pass to one of the small but not insignificant
incidents of the Last Week, the Master's observation of the
widow's offering and His ensuing eulogy. The place given to
it in St. Mark's gospel % — immediately after our Lord's scathing
denunciation of the hard, greedy hypocrisy of those scribes
who robbed widows — explains itself. We imagine that it oc
curred after the disputation with the Herodians and Pharisees
had ended, when, pervaded perhaps by a feeling of nausea, Jesus
sat down at " the treasury " — i.e. in the " court of the women,"
where there were thirteen trumpet-shaped boxes placed for the
offerings of the worshippers. A word in St. Luke's narrative,
that He " looked up," (ava/SXiipa?) suggests to us that Jesus
may have sat awhile with closed eyes, as one absorbed in medita
tion, when He was prompted to look up and observe the various
offerings made by the worshippers. This was no act of rude
inquisitiveness, but of the reverence He cherished for all that
belonged to His Father's House. There are two errors which
' Mark xii. 41-44.
The Greeks Desire to See Jesus 405
betray some who criticize the Gospels : they ignore the difference
between the East and the West; for it ought constantly to be
borne in mind that, compared with the etiquette of the West, the
manners of the eastern races are characterized by greater suavity
and completer frankness; and the subtlest diplomacy is often
accompanied by surprising boldness of speech. The second error
is the singular assumption that the conduct of Jesus can be judged
as though He were an ordinary eastern gentleman. At every
step we are reminded of this uniqueness. What the mere man of
letters misinterprets as the evidences of the growing fanaticism of
a poetic dreamer, was the boldness of a mind dominated by the
consciousness of a mission. Those who admit that Jesus was a
prophet must allow Him also the exercise of a prophet's preroga
tives. Those who acknowledge His Messiahship admit that He
sustained relationships and discharged obligations which could be
long to no other. The assumption that Jesus must be reduced
to the standards which apply to ordinary human lives stultifies
and distorts the conception of His life. Jesus was not a mere
conventional Passover pilgrim; He was One acting under the
compelling sense of Messianic responsibility. In His attempt
to cleanse the temple He had announced in action a certain right
to direct the affairs of the temple; and now, in setting Himself
so deliberately to observe what the worshippers cast into the
treasury, He was acting in His character as Messiah. No ordi-
nary citizen could, without violating all the instincts and con
ventions of propriety and good feeling, scrutinize the gifts and
criticize the motives of those who cast their offerings into the
public treasury. Certainly it cannot be contended that Jesus
behaved as an ordinary eastern gentleman; in word and action
He assumed a tremendous authority over men. He was silent
about the munificent contributions made by the rich; but when
He observed the approach of a poor woman, whom He appears
to have known, and saw her cast in two mites — even all she had —
Jesus was constrained to express His approval. Bengel makes
the inaccurate comment that the woman might have kept half
for her own use; she might have retained both, but two lepta
really formed the smallest permissible offering. Jesus was deeply
moved by the widow's piety. On her wan face He read the vow
of perfect self-abnegation, and, calling His disciples' attention,
He said : " Verily, I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast
in more than all they are casting into the treasury ; for they cast
406 The Last Days of the Passion
in of their superfluity, but she of her need cast in all that she
had, even all her living." x She had learnt the Spirit of self-
sacrifice, and all unconsciously to herself, she was sharing the
passion of her Lord. This incident, trifling in itself and without
apparent influence upon the current of our Lord's life, is of
value to us — first, because it is too casual and unimportant to
be attributed to fictitious invention (it bears its own witness
that it is a genuine reminiscence) ; and, secondly, it discloses our
Lord's habit of thought and His natural skill in disentangling
the real inner acts of the will with their motives from all the
accidents of circumstance. He was undaunted by the appear
ance of wealth and power, and preserved His singleness and
purity of judgement so that He was ever able to penetrate into
the arcana of thoughts and purposes whence human conduct
springs. 3. It is possible that, while Jesus was resting at the treasury,
there occurred the memorable interview with the Greeks which
is recorded and preserved only in the Fourth Gospel. Some have
judged this incident to be a kind of symbolic legend, which
sprang from a natural desire to set Christ forth in His relations
to the Gentile world. That there may be legendary elements in
the Gospels and that this may be one, we shall not contend
is a thing incredible; but when we seek to gain for ourselves
an unbiassed impression of the narrative, we perceive in its
central simile an affinity with the teaching of Jesus preserved
in the Synoptics ; and so strikingly in harmony with our general
conception of the Personality of Jesus are the words here attrib
uted to Him, we are led to believe that we trace the autograph
of His mind upon the logion concerning the grain of wheat.
This Johannine story does not stand quite alone; a parallel
tradition of a Gentile embassy to Jesus is related by Eusebius.2
This ecclesiastical historian tells how Abgarus, the King of
Edessa in Mesopotamia, sent messengers to Jesus with a letter
entreating Him to come to his country and heal the royal sup
pliant who was sick, suggesting also that, since the Jews were
murmuring against Jesus, it might be worth His while to take
1 Dr. Bruce in Expos. Greek N. T. quotes Euthemius Zigabenus: "May
my soul become a widow casting out the devil to which it is joined and
subject, and casting into the treasury of God two lepta, the body and the
mind ; the one made light by temperance, the other by humility."
2 Ecclesiastical History, i. 13.
The Greeks Desire to See Jesus 407
up His permanent residence in Edessa. Whether such a letter
was really sent to Jesus, we do not know; for Eusebius, the
Father of Church History, writing at the beginning of the fourth
century, could only record a tradition which he had heard from
others, and while intending to be truthful, he is not reputed to
have been rigorously critical. While, therefore, we dare not
identify the story Eusebius has told with that found in the
Fourth Gospel, the mere existence of such a parallel does certainly
tend to excite popular credence. We infer from St. John's
account that the visitors from afar who sought an interview with
Jesus were not Hellenists, but Greek " proselytes of the Gate." J
Unless we identify them in imagination with the embassy from
Abgarus, we may suppose that they had come to Jerusalem
for the Passover Feast, and, hearing so much of the name of
Jesus and of the controversy which raged about His authority,
they became desirous of seeing and hearing Him for themselves.
From their presence in Jerusalem during Passover-week, and
from the serious manner in which Jesus responded to their
inquiry, we cannot but infer that these men were genuine seekers
after truth ; — already they appear to have passed from the lofty
philosophies of Greece to the pure monotheistic religion of
Israel; and, still urged on by their desire to find the pearl of
great price, they were seeking an interview with Jesus. Such
inquirers articulate the insatiable thirst for religious knowledge
that springs up in the hearts of men in every land — a divine
unrest drawing men to Christ. " Possibly," as Dr. Greville
Macdonald says, " the most eager of questioners, the most clear
sighted of seers, will find that, to our limited means of under
standing, the only possible answer to some questions lies in a
grant of increased capacity for asking yet profounder ques
tions."2 4. No student of the Gospels can fail to feel the charm of
suggestiveness inherent in the record that once, at least, Jesus
came into direct contact with the Greek spirit of rational and
religious inquiry. St. Paul's dictum, that the wisdom of the
world is foolishness with God, is not to be applied to the spirit
of genuine philosophy. Surely the Apostle did not thus stigma
tize that noble method of reasoning which is inspired by a
lrSXkfvtt, not 'TSXfapioTai.
' The Tree in the Midst, p. 14.
408 The Last Days of the Passion
quenchless thirst for the true, the good and the beautiful. Be
cause, at the beginning of the Christian era, there was a de
generate race of sophists given over to vain logomachy and
fantastic ecclecticism, we ought not, therefore, to place under
a ban the instinctive quests of all noble minds for truth and
goodness; for, however wavering and uncertain the light of
reason has proved, it is yet a beam from that Light which lighteth
every man. Just as the human race brings into all its activities
of observation and classification an implicit and a priori plan of
the universe which has been the guide of all science, so the spirit
in man proves itself to be the source of ideals and of all noble
promptings in the philosophical and ethical interpretations of
the world; and in some measure these have all been adumbra
tions of the truth revealed in Jesus. Among all the various races
the Greeks were most fully imbued with this noble spirit of
rational inquiry, which was, we think, predestined to find in
Christ the actuality of truth which corresponds with its deepest
questioning. As Moses and the Prophets proved themselves to
be pedagogues, whose highest function was to bring men to the
School of Christ, so ^.schylus, Plato and Phidias, with their
allies — all of whom sought to express in their several ways
the realities of the Spirit and imagination — were all prophets
of the ultimate Ideal which we believe has been embodied in
Jesus. And both Jews and Greeks set forth with intenser reali
zation than other races those emotional and moral states of our
common human experience, wherein " every man, woman and
child has glimpses of revelations, tacit, inexpressible, into a world
lying beyond and around the world of material limitations."
5. The Greeks cast their crowns before Jesus because they
find in Him the universality of the Perfect Son of Man. The
Glory of Jesus consists, in part at least, in His marvellous com
prehension and synthesis of the partial insights and glimpses
of the Ideal which have visited all races. We cannot, with
accuracy, speak of many religions, for there can be but one
true religion; and all existing systems are based on fragmentary
apprehensions of the catholic truth. Drawn by the thought of
all that this visit of the Greeks to Jesus signified, we are naturally
led to think of the ancient philosophy of their race which, how
ever wonderful in itself, was too exclusively intellectual in its
appeal and deficient in ethical inspiration; — its light is cold as
The Greeks Desire to See Jesus 409
the lunar rays, and ineffectual in vivifying human hearts. " The
highest result of ancient philosophy had been the conception of
the world as a system of thought, related to God as His word
or expression — i.e. as the spoken thought is related to the man.
This conception, however, great as it was, did not present God
under moral attributes; nor did it bring Him near to the con
science of the individual. But in Christ, the writer whom the
Church calls St. John saw this divine thought manifesting itself
in human life as truth and love; and that not merely or fully
through a past visible existence, though such existence had been
vouchsafed as ' a sign,' but through a spirit which should dwell
in men, drawn out of the world, won from sense and the flesh
forever." x While it was probably a characteristically intellectual
impulse which prompted the Greek proselytes to inquire after
Jesus, subsequent reflection would show them that He who had
spoken to them such profound mysticism was not a philosophic
teacher so much as a Lord over the spirit and conscience. Even
today Christianity loses its moral urgency if it be treated as
simply another system of ideas; for, while Jesus indirectly re
sponded to the intellectual questionings of men, He claimed, as
His chief function in our world, to reveal the perfect moral
ideal to the conscience and to redeem the sinful will from its
bondage in the iron furnace of evil. Even Baur, who gave so
much of his strength to the discovery of the historical founda
tions of the Christian religion, admits that, " had Christianity
been nothing more than such a doctrine of religion and morality,
. . . what would it have amounted to, and what would come
of it? True though it be that when we regard Christianity in
this aspect, it comprised and summed up those pure and simple
truths which utter themselves in man's moral and religious
consciousness, and that it opened up these truths to the common
mind in the plainest and most popular style; yet more than this
was needed. . . . When we consider the way in which Chris
tianity grew up, it is plain that it could have had no place nor
significance in history but for the Person of its Founder " ! "
However, the greater contains the less, and any real satisfaction
of the moral need of mankind must possess an inherent ration
ality. Jesus would not have acquired preeminence among men
had His teaching been inadequate to meet the intellectual inquiry
' Professor T. H. Green, Works, iii., pp. 242-3.
2 The First Three Christian Centuries, vol. i., p. 37 (Eng. ed.).
410 The Last Days of the Passion
of the Greeks. While both St. Paul and St. John magnified
the Redeeming Love which was revealed in Jesus, they also set
forth that Love as the Wisdom and the Logos of God. The
coming of the Greeks was a prophetic type of Christ's reign
over the human intellect and heart — a reign which modern ques
tionings have but helped to confirm.
6. " Sir," x said the strangers to Philip, " we would see Jesus."
The Greek name of the disciple whom they approached has
prompted the thought that he may have been of Greek lineage.
If this were not so he probably belonged to Decapolis, where
he may have had some connection with heathen families. The
fact that Gentiles should desire to see Jesus at this stage of His
Ministry clearly impressed the imagination of Philip as a thing
of some moment, and he communicated the matter to Andrew,
his fellow-disciple, who accompanied him to Jesus' presence
and acted as spokesman. The apparent hesitation of Philip
may have arisen from his Master's remembered assertion that
He had come to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. We do
not know whether the Greeks waited a little way off until
permission was granted them to approach; but this seems most
probable, and would betray the innate courtesy of the visitors,
and it also gave a space for an expression of the emotion felt
by Jesus before He addressed them directly. The event itself
fits in with the sequences of His experience on the Wednesday
previous to the Crucifixion, and it brought a momentary solace
to the lacerated heart of Jesus; for He deemed it a beautiful
prophecy of His triumph that, in the hour of Jewish official
rejection of His claims, there should come to Him ambassadors
of a race which such an One as Jesus could not but admire
and love. The restriction of His Ministry to the Jews was but a
temporary economy practised by the Master because of the
" little while " which He would stay as a man among men.
Upon hearing Andrew's message that the Greeks sought after
Him, Jesus exclaimed, " The hour is come that the Son of
Man should be glorified ! " Such an ejaculation can be under
stood in its connection with antecedent and subsequent events;
He had felt Himself straitened until He should receive the
Baptism of Blood; and when the Cross had loomed in sight,
He had set His face toward it as the only goal of His life;
1 John xii. 20ff.
The Greeks Desire to See Jesus 411
now the coming of these strangers drew His vision toward the
future ; He looked beyond the Cross and beheld a throne whence
He would wield a Messianic sway over the Gentiles. It is sig
nificant that, at such a moment, Jesus should use a title for
Himself which is at once so distinctively Hebrew and yet un
deniably universal in its implications — " the Son of Man." For
centuries the Greek and Roman mind had, all unconsciously,
moved toward the Ideal revealed in the Son of Man. First the
philosophers had undermined the polytheism of popular mythol
ogy in their quest for the true unity, although in their imperfect
vision the Soul of the World was rather an immanent natural
power than a transcendent, moral Spirit. This longing for one
God had impelled these sages of Greece to become proselytes
of the Hebrew religion ; but the inherent direction of monotheism
is ever Christward. Plato had spoken of Christ, even as Moses
and the Prophets. The dramatists, philosophers and sculptors
of ancient Greece, by their majestic conceptions, lofty reasonings
and creations of perfect symmetry and grace, had given an im
pulse toward some universal, human ideal that would not be
thwarted by dalliance with veiled corruptions. Jesus responded
to the Greek craving for a Perfect Ideal, not only by realizing
it in Himself, but also by establishing His Messianic Kingdom
as the Divine Antitype of that political wisdom which sought
after free institutions wherein man finds the true Koinonia with
his fellowmen. " The hour is come that the Son of Man should
be glorified ! "
7. The Evangelist says nothing of the salutations and recipro
cated courtesies in the meeting of these Greek inquirers with
Jesus; whatever our natural interest in a beautiful story may
be, St. John himself passes by such details without a word, writ
ing as one who is overwhelmed by the amazing disclosure of the
Mind of Jesus concerning His self-sacrifice. In following his
guidance, we do not make ourselves oblivious of the historical
incidents, but we look upon these simply as the framework from
which looks out the Mind of Christ. Fondly as we would gaze
upon the form and hues of His flesh, our supreme quest is
that we may learn His thought and action, and so understand
the Divine Secret of His life. Having followed step by step
the successive unfoldments of the meanings and motives of His
necessary and self-determined sacrifice, we shall be prepared to
412 The Last Days of the Passion
find profound and precious ideas in the simile of the grain of
wheat which fructifies only in death. " Unless," said Jesus,
" the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains
by itself alone : but if it die, it bears plentiful fruit." Once again
Jesus sets forth His death as the supreme instance of the opera
tion of a general law. Life from death is a rule in nature and
in morals. It applies to the grain of wheat and to the life of
man, although in the spiritual realm its action is informed by
thoughts, feelings and purposes. Reflection stimulates remem
brance of the manifold applicability and governance of this idea
of life from death. Self-culture was the Greek ideal; but the
law of Jesus was self-sacrifice. He announces a power of spirit
ual emancipation resulting from all self-immolation of the will.
If the instinct of self-preservation dominates the life, it is doomed
first to sterility, and then to dissolution. The ethic of Jesus
flung forth in this aphorism, and exemplified on the Cross, will
never be displaced by the cold, hard brilliance of Goethe's ideal
of universal culture. " He who loves his life, loses it : and he
who hates his life in this world shall preserve it to life eternal."
There must have been something in the attitude of these Greeks
that indicated a preparedness to receive this doctrine of dying to
live, or surely Jesus could not have so laid bare the workings
of His inmost thoughts to them. He tells them that His ap
proaching doom is no accident, His fate is governed by universal
laws ; His life could not be snatched out of the hand of a Fatherly
Providence. He was not as a straw in the wind, nor a cork
on the waves; He was a bold swimmer in the flood. He laid
down His life ; He put it in the ground, assured that a new life,
multiplied and glorious, would spring up. He waived the last
possibilities of choosing to save His own life, and, in rejecting
self-love as His motive, learned the fulness of Divine Wis
dom and Power. By laying down His life Jesus realized God's
Eternal life. Professor T. H. Green wrote, " God was in Him,
so that what He did, God did. A death unto life, a life out of
death, must then be, in some way, the essence of the Divine
nature; must be an act which, though exhibited once for all in
the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ, was yet eternal — the
act of God Himself. For that very reason, however, it was one
perpetually reenacted, and to be reenacted by man." 1 The dying
and rising of Jesus are appropriated and repeated in all the
' Professor T. H. Green, Works, Miscellanies, vol. iii., p. 233.
The Greeks Desire to See Jesus 413
actual processes of our spiritual life; even in our acceptance of
punishment for sin and in the consciousness of penitence, we
die to the flesh that we may live unto God. Death is the setting
free of germinal possibilities — true alike of a grain of wheat,
of an acorn, of a man. By going into the ground, Jesus made
it beautiful with resurrection life. The laws of life are uni
versal ; yet the rule of dying to live is, in mere animals and lower
organisms, an impulse toward a utilitarian satisfaction; but in
man it is the struggle to realize an ideal. In this simile of the
grain of wheat dying to live again, Jesus enunciated the law of
perfection — love for others. Every self-denial is a part of the
process of daily dying; every step in such death is a condition
for unfolding higher potentialities ; and, in the end, even physical
death may be accepted as the entrance into fuller activity of
living. 8. While the Son of Man cherished no morbid sentiment of
self-pity, still He was wounded by the rejection of His claims by
the Jews; and as He saw the Greeks seeking Him, He felt the
contrast they made with the hostile rulers and there was wrung
from His heart a cry of poignant distress : " Now is My soul
troubled; and what am I to say? Father, save Me from this
hour? Nay, it was for this that I came to this hour. Father,
glorify Thy name ! " It seemed as though the serene depth of
even His faith was disturbed by a paroxysm of mental agony.
He was still a young man, and the self-preserving instincts of
His nature revolted from the prevision of His tragic destiny.
It was, however, only a momentary disturbance: the life-long
habit of filial obedience swiftly resumed its sway, and He breathed
His longing to complete the manifestation of His Father's Name,
i.e. His Father's character and purpose. This experience came
to Him as a passing anticipation of a struggle to be gone through
in Gethsemane. That it was historic is most probable, since the
dominating conception of the Fourth Gospel — of the Logos taber
nacling among men- — would naturally preclude the invention of
a painful struggle which seems to contradict all our presupposi
tions of what an Incarnation must involve. We do not interpret
this as intended by St. John to take the place of the soul-wrestle
transacted in the Garden which is recorded by the Synoptics;
but we take it to be an historic foreshadowing of that agony,
and the Evangelist enables us to discern the motives and aims
414 The Last Days of the Passion
of Jesus which sustained Him in His resolution to lay down His
life. His determination to die was no fanatical quixotism; it
was, rather, the uttermost expression of moral wisdom and love.
Only by His dying would He be able to satisfy the universal
quest that the coming of the Greeks represented. When lifted
up from the earth He would draw all men unto Him. The centre
of gravity in His Messianic ministry was transferred from Jeru
salem to the realm of Eternal Verities. The Cross did not ob
struct His pathway to the throne ; it was itself the way — through
death to life. The Spirit of His life was gathered up and
focused on the Cross, and from His death have issued the fruits
of resurrection life. Thus did Jesus translate the physical meta
phor of dying into a Spiritual act which expressed ethically all
His life-thoughts and purposes. He was completing the mani
festation of His Father's Name. The least meaning that we
can attribute to this soliloquy which the Greeks overheard is
that in His self-sacrifice Jesus gave the world a symbol of the
Father; He manifested His Name. God cannot be morally less
than the highest man. Jesus gives the Ariadne clue which shall
guide us in the labyrinth of this world: God is love; and love is
ever bestowing itself.
9. According to the Evangelist, there came from the sky an
answering voice to the cry of Jesus. Some of the bystanders
said it thundered ; others interpreted the sound to signify words
of Divine approval. Acquaintance with the recorded experiences
of the mystics forbids the rash assumption that this Heavenly
Voice was a delusion; and, however psychologists may explain
such phenomena, we are face to face with the fact that such voices
played important parts in the lives of Francis Xavier, Jeanne
d'Arc, and George Fox. All the Gospels represent Jesus as
being the receiver of such audible messages at the great crises
of His mission — at His baptism, on the Mount of Transfigura
tion; and now, in the temple-courts, the revelation was given
of His Father's approval. The assurance was given to Jesus
once more that death should be no defeat, but the fulfilment and
triumph of all His work. The Son of Man would be enthroned
in the Heavens; from that seat of Divine Power He would
exercise a universal attraction. This was, indeed, a startling
transformation of the popular Messianic ideal ; and few were
found ready to receive it then, since it contradicted the primary
The Greeks Desire to See Jesus 415
postulates of a narrow patriotism. Perplexed by this strange
doctrine of the exaltation of the Son of Man, some of the listeners
inquired wham He thus designated, since the Scriptures taught
that the Messiah abides for ever. The Evangelist declares that
the true cause of the blindness and hostility of the Jews was
that " they loved the honour of men more than the honour of
God." And yet, in spite of their enmity, John says " many
even of the rulers believed on Him." Among the final utter
ances of Jesus in the temple are His charges against the Jews
that they remain in darkness, though He had brought them light ;
and, since they reject Himself, whom God had sent, they resolve
themselves into practical atheists. He came not with the in
tention of judging the world, but rather of saving it; yet it
was inevitable that they should be judged by the Revelation
they refused. How remote were the leading Jews of that day
from the ethic of self-sacrifice of which Jesus had spoken to
the Greeks! That word has thrown a luminous track over the
devious paths of human history. With this twofold revelation
of self-sacrifice and of the world's condemnation, Jesus con
cluded His public ministry of teaching. During the ensuing
hours He secreted Himself from public attention, using the
opportunity for giving final instructions to His disciples.
CHAPTER II
THE APOCALYPSE OF JESUS1
I. An unprejudiced examination of the extant records of the
teaching of Jesus shows that, with His perfect ethic of man's
present life, He combined apocalyptic and eschatological ideas
which are utterly discordant with the trend of modern thought.
The kerygma of the Kingdom has been placed in the forefront
of modern presentations of Christ's teaching as at least equally
important with the idea of the Divine Fatherhood; but although
the present-day emphasis falls upon the social ethic of the King
dom, in the Gospels we find apocalyptic and eschatological ideas
inextricably woven into the warp and woof of Christ's doctrine
of the Messianic Reign. Whatever may be our personal predi
lections in this matter, and however much we should prefer a
Messianic Ideal shorn of such Jewish associations, still we must
be faithful to the historical method, giving due recognition to
all the integral parts of our Lord's teaching, and seeking without
bias to discover their true interpretation. We note that the age
in which Jesus lived was characterized by a proneness to indulge
in apocalyptic visions of crisis and catastrophe. This section
of Jewish literature was pseudonymous ; the producers of it con
cealed themselves behind the great names of patriarchs and
prophets. While the germs of apocalypse were present from
early times in the Jewish mind, we may describe this class of
literature as differing from ordinary prophecy, and from the
theophanic visions of the older prophets, in that these were to be
fulfilled in the present aeon, while the apocalypse relates specific
ally to the dispensation of the end ; unfolding, in hieroglyph and
fantasy, the consummation of the great drama of the Divine
Revelation and of Human History. The apocalypse has been
called " the stormy petrel of religious literature " ; its motif is the
conviction that life has become so terrible that it cannot be long
held back from some climactic judgement. In the similitudes
'Matt, xxiv.; Mark xiii.; Luke xxi. The trend of recent New Testa
ment criticism is to lay increasing emphasis upon the validity of the
apocalyptic elements in the teaching of Jesus.
416
The Apocalypse of Jesus 417
of the Book of Enoch, for example, one of the chief functions
of the Messiah is that of judgement. While popular Messianism
conceived of David's Son making Zion the centre of a reestab
lished reign, into which the chosen people should enter by right
of their descent from Abraham, it also anticipated that the
extension of this rule over all nations should be preceded by
judgement and catastrophic condemnations. Not only do these
apocalypses of Judaism help us to understand the oscillation of
opinion about Jesus and the frequent disappointment of great
spiritually minded Jews such as John the Baptist as they watched
His career, but they also disclose the original sources of the
eschatological ideas and language adopted by Jesus Himself.
We believe that He assimilated and used these just as He
employed also the categories of natural science current in that
age, and also as He treated the phenomena of hysteria and
madness according to the Jewish beliefs concerning demon-
possession. These things constituted parts of the Messiah's
environment and mental inheritance, and the timeless message
He brought had necessarily to be uttered in the popular and
understandable language of that age. In thus acknowledging
the influence of the Zeit-geist upon Jesus Himself, it is by no
means implied that both the psychology and eschatology of that
age must be discarded as untrue; the truth and validity of such
ideas must still be measured by the reason and conscience of
the race in the light of all added knowledge : the utmost we assert
is, that however much may have been due to the Jewish ancestry
and contemporary culture, still there is in the Personality and
Preaching of Jesus a timeless Word, possessing an abiding
authority for the spiritual mind.
2. Fidelity to the records preserved in the Gospels compels
us to acknowledge that Jesus Himself adopted the apocalyptic
forms of utterance, and clothed His thoughts of the future in
figures and pictorial representations that had their origin in the
school of the Apocalyptists. Many thoughtful Christians would
experience immense relief if the discourse on the last things
attributed to Jesus could be lightly dismissed as the interpolation
of one of the current Jewish pseudepigraphical apocalypses of
that age. Today we delight in views of evolution, of graduated
and slow progressive movements from protoplasmic beginnings
up to a perfect state, the whole process being carried through
418 The Last Days of the Passion
from end to end without break or interruption; but in the
apocalyptic literature of the Jews there were no soft nuances
of development, all the transitions were conceived as swift,
sudden and dreadful. On the other hand, we do find in the
teaching of Jesus many thoughts of a slow, gradual development
of the Reign of God, to illustrate which He spoke many parables
— several of the most striking being taken from the familiar
instances of sowing, germination, growth, fructification and har
vest. The method often adopted in dealing with the dualism of
the parables and the apocalyptic sayings of Jesus is one of
mental suppression of the less agreeable factor, which, however
unintentional, results in the exclusion of part of the teaching of
our Lord. Some Of the apocalyptic sayings have that " real
double attestation " which is " the nearest approach that we can
hope to get to the common tradition of the earliest Christian
Society about our Lord's words." Those who put any belief in
the historical nucleus of the Gospels can have no doubt that
Jesus was not only familiar with apocalyptic literature, but that
He Himself appropriated some of its terminology for the ex
pression of certain of His own cherished ideals. How utterly
inadequate is that treatment of the New Testament doctrine of
" the Kingdom of God " which tacitly excludes all reference to
its eschatological implications ! Further, it is unjustifiable to
reduce our Lord's self-chosen title — " the Son of Man " — to sig
nify nothing more than the Aramaic for " Man," and brusquely
set aside all the apocalyptic associations of this Messianic title.
Just as fragments of rock carry their own testimony of the
geological strata to which they belong, so such phrases as these,
however much transformed by the Mind of Jesus, bear witness
of themselves that they belong to the apocalyptic tradition of
that age. And besides such distinctive phrases as these, we find
imbedded in the teaching of Jesus sayings that are undoubtedly
authentic, and yet which share in the apocalyptic ideals current
in the contemporary Judaism. The recognition of these scattered
fragments of that peculiar section of Jewish tradition in the
general preaching of Jesus prepares us to admit the genuineness
of the apocalypse which is attributed to Him. Such apocalyptic
utterances subsequently exercised a great formative influence
upon apostolic teaching: hence, it has been suggested that this
particular fragment of Christ's doctrine may have been trans
mitted orally or circulated as a popular fly-leaf of His sayings
The Apocalypse of Jesus 419
from the earliest times. Some such " Word of the Lord " appears
to have been known to St. Paul and to the Primitive Church
generally, and the circulation of the apocalyptic sayings of Jesus
would account for the general expectation of His parousia,
which is witnessed by the Johannine writings and Pauline epistles.
This acceptance of the Gospel apocalypse lays upon the reader
the difficult and delicate task of disentangling the diverse frag
ments of Jewish eschatology from the essential ideas of Jesus.
We may adopt without reserve " the findings " of one of the most
cautious of living scholars : " I believe that our Lord used a great
deal of eschatological language; that His language was, gen
erally speaking, more eschatological in its origin than at one
time supposed. But does it follow that eschatology exhausted
the meaning of this language; that its fulfilment was bound to
be exclusively eschatological? I do not think it does follow."
" Our Lord rarely took up a Jewish idea without recasting it
in a form of His own." 1
3. In dealing with the apocalyptic element of Christ's teach
ing we ought to keep in mind the fact that Jesus predicted not
only His own death, but also His reappearance; and, with that
note of authority and transcendence which characterized Him,
inculcated upon His disciples the duty of watchfulness for His
return. In His own personal outlook it appears that Jesus
anticipated the Cross as the beginning of His Messianic reign,
and that from that point the Kingdom should increase anal
ogously with the seed sown into the soil; but, besides this
graduated progress, He also foretold certain crises and epochs,
although He disclaimed knowledge of times and seasons. One
of the outstanding moments of this future history of the King
dom was designated by Jesus as " the beginning of birth-pangs." 2
In this memorable phrase we possess not merely a vague predic
tion but a metaphor which reflects the travail and struggle of the
initial processes of the Coming of the Kingdom. The forecast
of the persecution of the apostles may have been uttered by
Jesus Himself, but it is not beyond credence that this vision of
pain and trial may have been reflected back upon His Ministry
from the painful experience of the Church, caught in the throes
1 " The Bearing of Criticism upon Gospel History," by Professor San-
day, Expos. Times, vol. xx., No. 4, January, 1909.
2apx% uS'lvov.
420 The Last Days of the Passion
of a life and death struggle thirty or forty years later. Our
difficulty is increased by characteristic differences in the respec
tive Gospels; the apocalyptic utterances are grouped into an or
derly discourse by St. Matthew, although these same sayings are
distributed in utterly different connections by the third evangelist.1
Again, while St. Mark places the prediction of apostolic persecu
tion at the end of the ministry, St. Matthew gives it in connection
with the commission of the Twelve to take up their first Galilean
mission.2 When we observe that the haunting allusion to " the
abomination of desolation " is accentuated by an exhortation,
" let him that readeth understand," we at once remember that
Jesus did not write His discourses. Still another evidence of
the mingling of subsequent reflections with the teaching of our
Lord is found in the statement, — " unless the Lord had shortened
the days, no flesh would have been saved: but for the elect's
sake, whom He chose, he shortened the days " — a statement
manifestly dating from a time later than the destruction of
Jerusalem. We have already pointed out that an alloy of Juda-
istic symbolism is blended with the pure gold of Christ's thought ;
but now we find that additions from a later stage of history
have been made to the record of the sayings of the Master.
Such a mingling of various elements does not invalidate the
authority of the Words of Jesus; but it does, without doubt,
render somewhat doubtful whether certain words were really
spoken by Him. Unfortunately we lack the artificer's cunning
which enables him to burn up, with a spirit of fiery acid, the
alloy which he has used to harden the precious metal; in our
attempt to extricate Christ's original authoritative revelation
from its contemporary associations we have to proceed slowly,
tentatively and painfully, menaced ever with the fear lest we
should be guilty of destroying some of the fine gold of Truth.
But such perils make the duty of investigation more urgent, and
the task is laid upon us to rediscover what is the essential Revela
tion of Jesus for us.
4. The use of the title " the Son of Man " in the Books of
Daniel and of Enoch, conveys an apocalyptic connotation, and
has made it impossible for any ordinary man to appropriate
this Messianic designation. The functions attributed to " the
'Cf. Matt. xxiv. 26-28; Luke xii. 39-46; xvii. 24; and Matt. xxiv. 42-51.
' Matt. x. 17-22.
The Apocalypse of Jesus 421
Son of Man" are supernatural; He is to rule and judge the
nations when He cometh in the clouds of heaven. In choosing
this title for Himself, Jesus could not have been oblivious of its
apocalyptic associations; it necessarily carries the implication of
a colossal claim to the Messiahship, and could scarcely be justi
fied unless Jesus were the Superior of all other historic men.
In adopting this Name Jesus transformed it by its predicates
just as He gradually spiritualized the conception of the Kingdom
which was announced by John the Baptist. The supreme instance
of this marvellous transfusion of an accepted Messianic ideal
with a new and exalted meaning is found in the declaration
that " the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to
minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." But, blended
with this conception of a redemptive work, we find apocalyptic
declarations which sprang from the common stock of Judaistic
ideas. One of the vital, determinative apocalyptic affirmations
concerning the Son of Man made by Jesus Himself was that
the Son of Man will return to the world with Messianic glory
and majesty. Although quite alien from modern modes of
thought, no student of the New Testament can avoid the con
clusion that the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus played an
important part in the formation of the Apostolic Church. But
while this parousia-idea. is homogeneous with the apocalyptic
tradition of the Primitive Church, the " congenial Messianic be
liefs of contemporary Judaism would hardly have been sufficient
to start the opinion, unless it had some basis in the authority of
Christ." 1 Since that hope has nearly faded like some delusive
mirage from the horizon, many would fain believe that Jesus
was not the originator of this false expectation! There can, how
ever, be little or no doubt that, in His examination before the
chief-priests, Jesus affirmed that the Son of Man would come
again : " The high-priest asked Him . . . Art thou the Christ,
the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall
see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and
coming in the clouds of heaven." 2 It would afford a facile
escape from our dilemma could we acquiesce in Professor J. E.
Carpenter's conjecture, that in using the title " the Son of Man,"
Jesus intended it as a personification of the Kingdom rather than
as a personal appellation: "The invariable employment of the
1 Moffatt's Historical New Testament, pp. 268, 6371.
2 Mark xiv. 61, 62. Cf. Dan. vii. 13, 14.
422 The Last Days of the Passion
third person suggests that He intended to draw a clear distinc
tion between Himself and His own function, and the event
which He designates by this emblematic name." 1 Now, although
we admit that there may have been occasions when Jesus identi
fied Himself with the Kingdom of God in some such way as this,
still there is no warrant for the assertion that He usually em
ployed the name, " Son of Man," in this impersonal way. Once
again, we recollect the fact that Jesus was animated by two
abiding convictions — first, that He would personally survive the
catastrophe of death ; and, secondly, that the Divine Reign would
be brought about by His Resurrection from the dead. Having
made all allowances for the inevitable modifications which mem
ory might make in Christ's words; for the changes which
might be occasioned by translation from Aramaic into a
literary language ; for the possibility that the knowledge of subse
quent events might be thrown back upon His earthly teaching;
for the probability that current apocalyptic ideas would mingle
with His eschatological doctrines, — having made full allow
ances for all these natural tendencies, we still adhere to the
belief that Jesus Himself did actually forecast the future —
both immediate and remote — of the Reign of God, which He
affirmed was come already, and yet was still to come. Whether
it be judged afterwards that it was a part of Christ's kenosis
and humiliation to participate in erroneous views of the age, or
whether these apocalyptic utterances be regarded as authoritative
for the belief of the Church, it is at least incumbent upon us
to view them as exhibiting, in some measure, the faith which
actually sustained Jesus during those final days of His Passion.
5. So far, our quest after the veritable words of Jesus has
led us to acknowledge the influence upon His mind of contem
porary Jewish eschatology; but, in order to perceive the full
perspective of these apocalyptic ideas, our glance must flit rapidly
over kindred thoughts embodied in pagan mythology and folk
lore. The parousia-idea has coloured the thoughts of many
nations. The followers of Gautama believe that Buddha will
come again to consummate the redemption of mankind. Ac
cording to the Hindus, Kalki, who is one of Vishnu's impersona
tions, will come at the termination of the fourth age to destroy
the depraved world and restore a new age of purity. The Roman
1 Professor J. E. Carpenter, The First Three Gospels, p. 255.
The Apocalypse of Jesus 423
people, in the second half of the first century, expected some
great Saviour to come from the East, and many identified Ves
pasian with the Divine Hero. Similar apocalyptic notions were
spread through Persia and Babylon. Hammurabi, whose " Code
of Laws " has been rediscovered in recent times, was expected
to come again; while the Zoroastrians believed that the strife
between Ormuzd and Ahriman would be terminated by the
intervention of some coming Saviour.1 For many modern minds
these and kindred phenomena of comparative hierology give new
force and completeness to the critical work of Strauss, and
seem to justify the conclusion that, " in fundamentals, Christism
is but Paganism reshaped." 2 But the spear of Achilles can
heal the wounds which it has made ; instead of crudely acquiesc
ing in the hypothesis that the New Testament writers borrowed
from pagan mythology, we venture rather to conceive of the
Christian religion as the fulfilment of universal human thoughts
which spring out of definite instincts and needs of mankind.
These widespread apocalyptic dreams betray an almost universal
instinct; myths of the coming of some world-saviour to bring
in the golden age of peace after judging mankind in righteous
ness, ought not to be treated as idle dreams and poetic illusions ;
they are, rather, the struggling embodiments of Divine Wisdom
and the stammering utterance of ultimate truths. The existence
of a Platonic " apocalypse " does not invalidate the Johannine
Revelation; the Hindu expectancy that Kalki will be revealed
in the sky, seated on a white horse, with a drawn sword in
his hand, in nowise deprives of its cogency the Pauline symbol
ism, " For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven, with a
shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of
God." That mode of criticism which begins by stripping the
sayings of Jesus of all their Jewish accretions, and then goes on
further to subtract everything in His teaching which has an
appearance of affinity with pagan mythology, is inherently wrong ;
and the more ruthlessly it is carried out, the farther is the mind
borne away from the truth. The Lord Jesus fulfilled the uni
versal instincts of human nature as certainly as He brought to
their perfection the Law and the Prophets of the Hebrew race;
He not only gave the world a perfect moral ideal in teaching
and example, but He also vindicated and consummated the
1 E. Clodd, Myths and Dreams; Monier-Williams, Hinduism, etc.
2 J. M. Robertson, Pagan Christs.
424 The Last Days of the Passion
universal hopes of mankind for some reasonable denouement to
the drama of history in the Symbolism of the Apocalypse He
delivered to His Apostles. Though it may be more congenial
to European minds to dwell on the ethical message of Jesus
which He expressed so perfectly in the assertion that " the
Kingdom of God is within you," still it is our duty to study also
His apocalyptic utterances, and seek to penetrate to the heart
of these pictorial and symbolic representations of His abiding
faith when He confronted the Cross.
6. When our Lord was leaving the temple for the last time 1 —
perhaps on the evening of Wednesday of the Passion-week —
one of His patriotic followers offered to escort Him over all the
buildings of that national sanctuary, pointing out with patriotic
pride the glory of the architecture and the accumulated wealth
within. Whether Jesus accepted the proffered guidance, is not
stated; but the Evangelist records that He warned the admiring
disciples that however magnificent the temple was, speedily a
time would come when " there shall not be left here one stone
upon another that shall not be thrown down." With this word
of doom on His lips, Jesus left His Father's House to return
no more. He spent the night either at Bethany or on the
Mount of Olives. As he was sitting on the Mount the next
morning, His disciples — four of them privately, says St. Mark —
recalled the word of doom, and inquired both when these
things shall be, and what shall be the signs of their approach.
St. Matthew distinguishes between His coming again and the
end of the age.2 Students of Old Testament prophecy who
admit that Amos, Isaiah and their compeers were gifted with
power to gauge the moral meaning and direction of the move
ments of national life, will not grudge the admission that Jesus
possessed, in fuller measure, this moral insight and predictive
power. The inspiration we attribute to the ancient prophets
resolves itself into a temporary form of Divine incarnation,
and the permanent incarnation we attribute to Jesus resulted at
least in an abiding inspiration. For weeks and months prior to
the closing in of His foes upon Him, Jesus uttered vaticinations
both of His own death and of Jerusalem's awful fate, while out
of the midst of this dark forecast He projected a splendour of
1 Mark xiii. 1-4 ; Matt. xxiv. 1-3 ; Luke xxi. 5.
2 wapovaia and awreXcta tov aluvoc.
The Apocalypse of Jesus 425
hope that even His most intimate disciples failed to understand.
It seems impossible to deny Christ's recurrent prediction that
Jerusalem, after wars and rumours of wars, should be besieged
and so utterly destroyed that the beautiful temple should be
razed to the ground. Such anticipations may be attributed to
superior political sagacity. But our present concern is with the
fact that Jesus did actually make such predictions ; we are con
tent to leave the question whether such knowledge was natural
or supernatural. The image of " the abomination of desolation " 1
may have once denoted the Statue of the Olympian Zeus which
Antiochus Epiphanes placed on the altar of burnt-offerings in
the temple. The Lord Jesus may have used this phrase of
vague terror once again, although St. Luke omits to mention
it.2 The period of catastrophe is personified as a travailing
woman; war, earthquakes and cataclysms are some of the hor
rors accompanying her agony, which continues until the Com
pletion of the Age is brought to birth. But it is in harmony
with our general impression of Christ to point out that such
predictions of the future did not spring from any motive of
curiosity, but rather from a desire to prepare His followers for
new forms of trial. The chief purport of His Apocalypse was
to teach a rigorous ethic of loyalty and watchfulness ; for, if
that troubled and restless age found His disciples unprepared,
the false prophets and Messianic pretenders who would arise
might successfully lead them astray. Although His warnings
might sleep in the ear for a time, the direful events would awaken
and enlighten His predictions.
7. As we attempt to grope our way in the twilight of apocalyp
tic speech the thought is borne upon the mind that Jesus looked
upon the Roman War as the beginning of the Completion of the
Age, and that this is the epoch when the parousia is expected
to begin ; — but the " end " is not yet, " not immediately." The
gospel of St. Matthew gives embarrassment at this point by
assigning the " sign of the Son of Man in heaven to a period
immediately ( ivBscoi ) after the tribulation," although in an
earlier verse s it is said, " this gospel of the kingdom shall be
preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations : and
then shall the end come." Unless, therefore, we proceed to
'Dan. xi. 31. 'Luke xxi. 20-21. "xxiv. 14.
426 The Last Days of the Passion
identify the parousia with Christ's Spiritual Presence in the
world while the Gospel is being preached, we shall hold to St.
Luke's version that Jesus, having spoken of wars and commo
tions and false Messiahs, added the important declaration, " but
the end is not yet " ; and further, having described the struggle
between His disciples and the world, He affirmed, " and Jerusa
lem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of
the Gentiles be fulfilled." If this be the right exegesis,1 then
three things are clearly foretold — first, the destruction of Jerusa
lem and the accompanying disasters, when amid the religious
and political unrest false Messiahs would arise; secondly, the
final age, or times of the Gentiles, during which time the Gospel
should be preached throughout the world; and, thirdly, the
second coming of the Son of Man in power and glory — an end
which should prove a new beginning. But we proceed with
great caution and hesitation, even in distinguishing these three
epochs of this Apocalypse. The late Professor Davidson stated,
" Christ predicted His own death, from all we can gather
plainly. But the prophecy of the end in Matt. xxiv. exactly
resembles Old Testament prophecy. There is in it the same
involution as we find in Joel, for instance, or in Isa. xl. i-ii.
The near and the far are not separated; the destruction of
Jerusalem and the end of the world are both brought close
together; just as, in Isaiah, the release from Babylon by Cyrus
and the redemption from sin by the Messiah — the restoration
to rest in Palestine and the final glorification of the Church — are
combined in one. Hence much doubt has been thrown on
Christ's prophecy by New Testament critics, who allege that we
do not possess it as it came from Him, but as it was taken up
by the disciples, and as it has passed through the mould of
apostolic thought. There is no ground for supposing that New
Testament prophecy should differ from Old. The similarity
to Old Testament prophecy, however, is very remarkable; and
as there is no reason to suppose it given to our Lord in vision,
or the product of any mental excitation, we are led to infer that
what is called " the timelessness of prophecy," or what is called
otherwise " the perspective in prophecy," the close juxtaposition
of things distant from one another, when both were also distant
* Vide C. A. Briggs, The Messiah of the Gospels, for an admirable dis
cussion of this problem.
The Apocalypse of Jesus 427
from the time or place of the seer, is not due to the fact that
prophecies were given in vision." *
8. Before seeking our interpretation of this apocalypse, how
ever, it is wise to ask how the idea of the parousia presented
itself to the mind of Jesus Himself. What an easy escape from
perplexing questions would be afforded if we could treat the
external " signs " as merely the drapery of great, grand, spiritual
ideas, and so dismiss the apocalyptic expressions as " the court-
language of inauguration," describing simply the Spiritual return
of the Christ after the Crucifixion! A favourite expedient
adopted by many is to assume that the apocalypse of Jesus is
purely pictorial, and then proceed to " spiritualize " this teaching
by excluding every statement which does not accord with the
saying, " The kingdom of God is within you." This prevalent
mode of exegesis springs in part from a false delicacy or so-called
spirituality, which resents every embodiment of ideas, and decries
the material side of life in order to exalt the ideal. A world
less gross than the one God has created would be needed to
satisfy this superior order of minds. The- disciples, indeed, may
have misunderstood the prophetic words of Jesus, and mixed
the remembrance of them with fragments of traditional apoca
lypses which belonged to contemporary Jewish thought. But,
on the other hand, the main ideas of this apocalypse are not
inherently improbable on the lips of Jesus. The chief conception
is that of a great epoch-making advent ; and, while it is expressed
in magnificent imagery derived from current apocalyptic litera
ture, it is still essentially spiritual in its character. The idea
of a future parousia is not irrational, or something discordant
with the progressive movement of the Divine Kingdom, which
in the earlier Nature-parables of Jesus proceeded from forces
inherent in the seed and soil. Since the history of God's Self-
revelation has ever been marked by momentous crises and meas
ured by great epochs! — beginnings and culminations — there is
nothing incredible in the belief that Jesus Himself stretched a
hand through future years, and grasped the idea of His own
Second Advent. The ancient prophets had familiarized the
minds of men with ideas of a Day of the Lord — which theophany
would be heralded by terrible phenomena of nature; when sun
and moon would be darkened; when the stars would fall, and
1 Professor A. B. Davidson, Old Testament Prophecy, p. 118.
428 The Last Days of the Passion
the powers that are in heaven would be shaken : and mourning,
the tribes of the earth would " see the Son of Man coming
in the clouds with great power and glory." x The force of such
prophetic teaching lay in the fact that it objectified the realities
attested by the universal conscience of humanity. Such pictures
of external judgement ratified the inward testimony of man's
moral nature. Because this is so, it does not surprise us that
the Gospels, which offer gracious pictures of the Divine Kingdom
steadily growing as a field of corn, or developing as a tiny
mustard-seed into a tree, also contain apocalyptic images of a
grand yet terrible harvest, when the angels, who will be sent
forth as reapers, will bind the wicked together and cast them
into a destroying fire. Both phases of teaching were needed to
express the Mind of Jesus — to articulate the moral truths of
His unsullied conscience as adequately as He affirmed the evangel
of Divine Grace from the testimony of His compassionate heart.
Taking both the parables and the apocalypse of Jesus together,
we infer that He anticipated a long period of development for
the Kingdom of God, and ultimately a definite consummation.
While His disciples were disqualified by a narrow nationalism
from understanding a world-wide extension of the Messianic
Ideal, Jesus looked forward to a universal reign, as the several
evangelists testify. St. Matthew records that Jesus foretold
that the tribes of the earth shall mourn and see the coming
of the Son of Man; St. Mark states that He spoke of the Son
of Man gathering His elect " from the four winds, from the
uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven " ;
while St. Luke affirms that Jesus declared that the Gospel shall
be preached to the Gentiles throughout the world. Now it is
just this interval of development and Gospel-preaching which
is minimized in the apocalyptic perspective; the very greatness
of the idea that Jesus should come again dwarfed the importance
of the intervening years.
9. But neither the Son nor the angels know the time of the
Coming of the Son of Man; this is the Father's secret.2 It is
so alien to the imagination of the Church which worshipped
Jesus as Divine to suppose that its Lord could be ignorant of
aught that concerns the welfare of the Kingdom, that we cannot
"Joel ii. 1-10; iii. 15, 16; Isa. xiii. 6f. ; xxiv. i8f. ; Zech. xii. 10-14, etc.
2 Mark xiii. 32 ; Matt. xxiv. 36.
The Apocalypse of Jesus 429
do other than treat this as His own authentic confession. As
this august event draws near, however, it will be announced
by intelligible tokens, even as the coming of the summer is
heralded by the opening leaves of the fig-tree. One most dis
concerting difficulty in this Apocalypse, already alluded to, is
Christ's announcement that " this generation shall not pass away
until all these things be accomplished." It appears to us an
instance of that " timelessness of prophecy " described by Profes
sor Davidson, that the Second Coming is predicted to happen
"immediately" after the tribulation (the siege of Jerusalem),
and that the fulfilment of all the signs is anticipated in this
generation.1 This perplexing assertion ought not to obscure the
plain fact that Jesus clearly foretold that He would return in
triumph after the doom had fallen upon Jerusalem. And since
our Lord's predictions of the beginning of the birth-throes
in the seventh decade were literally fulfilled by the capture of
the Holy City and overthrow of the temple, we might at least
admit that the hope of the parousia may also prove to be some
thing more than an " unsubstantial dream." However difficult it
may prove to make the apocalypse of the coming of the Son
of Man in the clouds with all His holy angels, harmonize with
our preconceived notions of graduated progress and with the
spiritual intuitions of the moral nature of God's Reign, we
must not, therefore, be deterred from admitting the strong
probability that Jesus Himself was the originator of the hope
of the Primitive Church that He would come again in that
generation. It lies beyond our present sphere of duty to show
the influence of that strange hope; but it may, at least, be
defined as one of marked conserving effect in holding together
the infant Society of Jesus amid the disintegrating forces of an
antagonistic world. Our present attitude to the apocalyptic
teaching of our Lord is to fasten simply upon the certainty
that the great supernatural movement He began, which has had
such a remarkable history in the past, will assuredly come to a
glorious completion, when He shall sum up all the processes
and present the Kingdom perfect unto His Father. But apart
from abstract discussions about the authenticity of this apoca
lypse, it may be taken for granted that some of the forms of
thought adapted to the age of Jesus' earthly ministry can hardly
be an appropriate ethic for a world since then so changed.
1 eifl^uf ij yevea abrt].
430 The Last Days of the Passion
Some go even farther, and exaggerate this inference into a
dogmatic rejection of all Christ's teaching; He was, they say,
a dreamer of dreams, and His idyllic simplicity forms no example
for us, while His doctrines prove inapplicable to the complexities
of our new science and our economic and social problems. But
to this extreme position we answer that Jesus got down to the
real foundations of life, and treated only of what was essential
and permanent in humanity. Had He taught science or eco
nomics, His words might, indeed, have proved perishable; but
He enunciated the truths of man's spiritual relationship which
abide for aye. Even the ethics of His Apocalypse have an
applicability to all lives that are bounded by the uncertainties
of experience. Through all apocalyptic obscurities, we discern
clearly the beginning of a Kingdom of Righteousness, of peace
and joy in the Holy Ghost; we also see certain fixed points in
this great process, such as the fall of Jerusalem, the preaching
to the Gentiles, and the final consummation when the Son of
Man shall come again. Let us learn of St. Paul. He began
by laying stress upon the apocalyptic eschatology of the King
dom; but, as the years passed by and time corrected His mis
taken anticipations, He dwelt ever more fully on the ethical
realities and spiritual certainties of that mighty movement which
began with Jesus of Nazareth. For ourselves, since Jesus said
He will come again at the end of the present " world," we are
constrained to believe that He will realize His own prophecy,
although we know not how He will come. But whether we
accept or reject the apocalypse, we may learn the lesson of
vigilance and prayer : " Take ye heed, watch and pray : for ye
know not when the time is. It is as when a man going abroad
has left his house, after giving authority to his slaves, to each
his work, and has commanded the doorkeeper to watch. Watch,
then; for you know not when the owner of the house is coming:
at evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning,
lest he come suddenly and find you sleeping. And what I say
to you, I say to all, watch."
CHAPTER III
THE LAST SUPPER
i. While in the foregoing discussions we have found many
difficulties which no honest student dares to overlook, we shall
now be led to acknowledge that nowhere do the discrepancies
appear so insurmountably difficult as in the narratives of the
Passion. Here we feel as men standing on some beach when
the sea is caught in a stormy tumult, striving to peer through a
dark, driving mist, and finding their vision dimmed, blurred
and broken. Yet it may be said in anticipation, when we turn
our scrutiny upon the main and ultimate fact of the Crucifixion
we enter the realm of clearest, historic certitude. There is,
indeed, a school of writers who trace this part of the Gospels
to an origination of the sun-myth; and since it is not wise to
seem altogether scornful of this phase of modern scepticism, we
may quote from Dupuis, who will serve as a type of those
who criticize Christianity from the standpoint of solar mythology.
" Who is to redeem us from winter ? The god of Spring, or
the Sun, when it enters the constellation Aries, the Ram, that is
the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world. . . .
The god of Day is the offspring of the winter solstice, born
at the moment, on 25 December, when the day begins sensibly
to wax. Mithras and Christ are born on the same day, the
Sun's birthday: Mithras in a grotto, Bacchus and Jupiter in a
cave, and Christ in a stable, or, according to some apocryphal
Gospels, in a cave. The magi, priests of the Sun, worship the
Saviour; a star, Astronomy being their science, acquaints them
of the birth of the god; and this God, the Lord Jesus Christ,
rests in the arms of the Heavenly Virgin (Virgo Ccelestis of
pagan cults), whose constellation rises on 25 December. Here
the young God is combined with her: thus she bears him,
remaining a virgin. The vernal equinox is the time when
Christ triumphs and repairs what men have suffered by winter.
The Easter feast is therefore called, among Jews and Christians,
the feast of the Passover; for in the sign of the Ra,m, the rule
431
432 The Last Days of the Passion
passes from the god of Darkness to the god of Light, and the
star of Light, restoring life to Nature, reappears in our hemi
sphere. The spring feast, Easter, fell originally on 25 March.
On the 23d Christ died, and on the 25th rose again. This
death and this resurrection recur in all solar myths." 1 The
best answer to this interesting hypothesis is, perhaps, to quote
Tacitus, who, incidentally confusing Jews and Christians, tells
us definitely that Christ " was put to death in the reign of
Tiberius by Pontius Pilate the procurator, and that his religion,
a deadly superstition (the Christians being characterized by their
hatred of the human race), though crushed for a time, burst
forth again, not only throughout Judaea, in which it arose, but
even in Rome itself, the common sink of all infamy and wicked
ness." 2 The fact of the death of Jesus Christ has such corrobo
ration that doubt of its historicity evinces only the eccentricity
of the sceptic's judgement. And notwithstanding the many diffi
culties belonging to the New Testament narratives of the Pas
sion, this fact stands out like some rocky promontory which
refuses to be hidden or destroyed by the waves that dash against
its base.
2. Having reassured the mind by directing its attention upon
what may be regarded as one of the historic certitudes of Chris
tianity, we shall now turn to the J_ask of weaving into one
whole the various testimonies of the several evangelists, holding
the result to be simply tentative and corrigible by any subsequent
gain of new light. Hitherto we have treated the Marcan tradi
tion as the backbone of Evangelic History, distributing the
logia and incidents contributed by the later writers as harmoni
ously as possible into that early framework of the narrative of
Christ's Ministry. But when we come to the Passion, we are
forced to admit the authority of St. Luke, who at this point
treats the earlier gospel with considerable freedom. This Evan
gelist must have profited, both intellectually and spiritually, by
his companionship with St. Paul, and from that Apostle's teach
ing his mind was first directed upon the Death of Jesus as the
main act of a redeeming sacrifice: hence, he would spare no
pains in investigating the unique and momentous occurrences
' Dupuis, " Origine de tous les Cultes," quoted by Ernest Crawley in
The Tree of Life. Vide The Four Gospels as Historical Records, p. 492ff.
'Annals, xv. 44.
The Last Supper 433
that culminated in the Cross. The Fourth Gospel also, in spite
of many surprising omissions, renders most important aid to
all who aim at reconstructing some mental images of the con
cluding scenes of the Ministry of Jesus. The author's aim was
not primarily to give a chronicle of the incidents; and yet so
familiar was he with the minutest details of time and place,
that he never hesitated to modify various mistaken suppositions
found in earlier traditions. Our method is not that of first
setting forth all the inconsistent details of the four narratives, and
then rashly inferring that it is now impossible to gain any
approximation to certitude; but it is to use once again our im
pressionist plan of reading all the Passion-narratives — taking St.
Luke's as our starting-point, observing all the discrepancies
between this and others — and then, having allowed our minds
to receive the composite impression, seek to reproduce the picture
which has focused itself upon the retina of our minds.
3. As a result of this method of investigation, we conclude
that at last the Sanhedrim had resolved to execute its long-
cherished purpose of putting Jesus to death; although they had
consented among themselves to endure Him yet a few more days,
since any commotion at the Passover might give the Romans
another opportunity for armed interference, such as would further
menace national existence. It was in this brief interval of
suspense, in the long duel between Jesus and the Jewish clergy,
that Judas stepped out of the obscurity of discipleship into a
dreadful prominence as the self-elected traitor. According to
St. John's view, there was no alleviation of Judas's guilt by
attributing it to sudden temptation ; rather was it due to a gradual
degeneration of character, his fidelity to Jesus having been
shaken from the time of the apostasy of the political Messian-
ists in Galilee. An exposure of this man's sordid meanness had
been made at the anointing of the Master at Bethany, when our
Lord's vindication of Mary's act had made it plain to him that
such a Leader could never be the political Messiah he had hoped
for. Then it was that for this man's mind the die was cast,
and he resolved to secure himself from sharing in the miserable
failure of Jesus, and even to make some profit out of it by
treachery. St. John affirms that Judas had acted as treasurer
of the disciple-band, and had been guilty of petty peculations,
which fostered an ignoble greed that issued in an infamous act
434 The Last Days of the Passion
of betrayal. When they were in doubt as to the best time and
method of arresting Jesus, this disciple sought an interview with
some of the members of the hierarchy, and broached to them his
own dark scheme and its conditions. While the accounts we
have of Judas's transaction and subsequent fate are very in
harmonious, they cannot but leave the impression of the his
toricity of the betrayal. The suggestion has been thrown out
that the mere remembrance of Zechariah's obscure prophecy may
have been the real germ of the story; but it is hardly credible
that a wholly fictitious narrative should have been invented, or
that a legend so definite as this Judas narrative could have
sprung from such an oracle; rather must it have been the fact
itself that evoked the memory of the prophecy. It is not within
the scope of our purpose to dwell further on the character of
the traitor; Dante's estimate of the turpitude of his crime —
placing the guilty man in the lowest depths of the Inferno — is
probably a truer expression of the horror of his deed felt by
the unsophisticated conscience than the modern attempts to
explain away his guilt.
4. As we consider the steps leading to the Last Supper, we
marvel at the disciples' lack of suspicion concerning Judas; the
very suggestion of treachery came to them only a few hours
before the betrayal with a shock of surprise. But Jesus had
divined his falsity, and it may have been a wish to avoid any
premature arrest which prompted Him to keep Judas and the
other disciples in ignorance of the place where He intended to
sup with them : hence, He gave the obscure commission to two
of them to go and make provision. Such caution shows the
insecurity of His feeling; and, although He had come back to
lay down His life, He took every precaution against an abortive
ending of His ministry. He felt an urgent desire to complete,
as far as He could, His instruction of the Twelve before the end
came. Supposing the great controversy with the leaders of the
national religion to have taken place on a Wednesday — at the
close of which day " He departed and hid Himself from them " —
then the Thursday was probably spent in some retreat not far
from the city. Considerable talent and erudite research have
been exercised to explain the discrepancy between the Synoptists
and St. John concerning this Supper. St. Mark states that the
disciples were sent to prepare, " on the first day of unleavened
The Last Supper 435
bread, when they sacrificed the Passover " ; but in narrating the
incidents of the subsequent trial, the fourth evangelist tells us
that the Jews refrained from entering the Judgement hall when
Jesus was tried by Pilate, desiring to avoid a defilement which
would hinder them from participating in the Passover meal.
The ancient law fixed the date of the Passover for the fourteenth
of the first month between the evenings.1 The Hebrew mode of
reckoning the day was from sunset to sunset, so that their
Friday would begin on the evening of our Thursday. Now, on
the holy day of the Passover, no business would be transacted
and manual labour would cease. St. Mark, however, relates that
when Judas was expelled from the Last Supper, the other dis
ciples imagined that he was sent out to make further purchases.
Yet again, on the morning of the Crucifixion, when Jesus fell
under the weight of the Cross, Simon the Cyrenian was en
countered returning from work in the fields. We infer from
these circumstances that Jesus may have availed Himself of a
customary permission — granted probably to relieve the over
crowded city at such feasts — to anticipate the festal memorial
of God's deliverance of Israel from bondage. If then we adopt
the Johannine date (Nisan 14) rather than the Synoptic (Nisan
15), we must suppose that the Last Supper took place before
the Paschal lambs were slain — a detail that would surely play a
significant part in subsequent apostolic reflection which made
Jesus the true Paschal Lamb. But while accepting St. John's
statement as to the time, we may adhere to the Lucan account
of the two " cups," inferring that the usual order of the Pascha
was followed, and identifying the " thanks " of Jesus with the
Jewish formula, " Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, who
hast created this fruit of the vine." The adequate treatment
of this perplexing discrepancy might well be dealt with in a
volume devoted exclusively to the elucidation of so great a
difficulty; we only refer, in passing, to a puzzle which taxes
the learning of our greatest scholars, in order that we may give
some perspective to the central Figure which has so absorbingly
engaged our attention. Our own meagre allusions to these
intricate discussions do but suggest that one may look upon
" the Lord's Supper " as an addendum to the Paschal meal made
by Jesus before the disciples sang a part of the great Hallel.
1 Ex. xii. 2 ; Lev. xxiii. 5 ; Num. xxviii. i6f.
436 The Last Days of the Passion
5. A further word needs to be spoken about certain anomalies
and discrepancies in the several accounts of that evening. St.
Luke, for example, records the renewed rivalry and dispute
among the disciples, but omits the exquisite story of our Lord's
symbolic rebuke in washing their feet. As we study and com
pare St. John's gospel with the Synoptics, we are struck by
a kind of duality or reduplication of similar incidents with
marked differences : so that the question is forced upon our atten
tion, whether these are not alternative and mutually exclusive
accounts. Instead of an account of the Caesarean crisis and
Petrine confession, St. John relates the Galilean apostasy and
the proved loyalty of the disciples; the Synoptics give us the
institution of the Lord's Supper at the Pascha; but St. John
relates earlier Christ's discourse on the bread which came down
from Heaven. Instead of the agony of Gethsemane, the fourth
evangelist relates how, when the Greeks sought Him, Jesus
passed through a mental conflict and was comforted not by
angels, but by a Heavenly voice. We believe that this striking
reduplication of similar yet differing incidents arose from the
wealth of tradition and reminiscence from which the several
writers chose their materials to illustrate their respective aims.
No little part of modern criticism seems based on the assumption
that, if such reduplication does not show the unreliability of
the several sources, at least it makes it necessary to treat the
two series of resembling incidents as alternatives, so that if
one be chosen as probable the other must be excluded. But this
is not the sole solution; it is surely feasible that St. John's
account is supplementary. In treating of the Passion-week,
therefore, we shall assume the honest intent of the narrators,
and, having made a conflation of the various lines of tradition,
we shall let them make their composite reflection in our minds,
exercising judgement in constructing a probable comprehensive
imagination of the order of events and their significance.
6. It is possible that the earlier part of Thursday may have
been spent by Jesus on the slopes of Olivet. Some time during
the morning He sent two of His disciples into the city, directing
them simply to follow a man whom they would see bearing
a pitcher. It almost appears as though Jesus had previously
arranged with some friend who remains unnamed that at a
given message he should get ready the guest-hall for Him and
The Last Supper 437
His disciples. Although offering this natural suggestion, we
do not shut out all supposition that, in this -instance and in many
others, the Master may have foreseen what would occur by
clairvoyance. Our method is rather to find an explanation along
normal lines wherever possible, holding in view the possibility
that many of these incidents may have been due to the use of
supernormal powers in Jesus. The two disciples carried out
their commission, followed the water-carrier to a certain house,
and announced to the tenant that their Master's time was near.
Thus, it fell out that none of the disciples, not even Judas, had
discovered where Jesus intended to celebrate the feast until they
arrived at the house. At eventide they reached the place as
signed for their use, finding a large upper room furnished with
couches and prepared for the meal. As we have intimated in
the previous paragraph, St. Luke somewhat disconcerts his
readers by placing an account of a contention that sprang up
among the disciples immediately after the institution of the
Sacrament. Harmony is brought into the narrative by a slight
transposition, and by treating the incident as a genuine reminis
cence of a dispute about precedence which occurred at the
beginning of the evening. A quarrel as to which of them was
looked up to as the greatest would account also for the foot-
washing incident; the rankling of distrust and jealousy made
each disciple unwilling to take the posture of a servant after
their dusty walk. Seeing their mutual irritation, Jesus girded
Himself with a towel, and taking a ewer of water, began to
wash the disciples' feet. Whether He began with Judas or with
John is not told; indeed, astonishment might well confuse the
Evangelist's treasured memory of the incident: some of those
who shared in that scene would never cease to wonder, and
perhaps to weep, at every renewed recollection of it in after
years. St. John relates how Simon impetuously refused at first
to allow His Lord to wash his feet, feeling ashamed, no doubt,
that their foolish rivalries had occasioned such humiliation for
Him. In reply, Jesus carried all their thoughts beyond the
mere outward act to the discipline of the spirit which they
needed. With the baptism of repentance they had been washed
once; now He would fain cleanse, not only the stains of travel
from their feet, but also from their minds the soiled marks of
anger, rivalry and pride. The Evangelist, who recorded the in
cident so many years after, prefaces it by the mysterious saying
438 The Last Days of the Passion
that a motive for this acted parable was that Jesus knew
" that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that
He came forth from God, and goeth unto God." The lowly
act of Jesus was framed in profoundest mysticism; the washing
of the disciples' feet was another step in that marvellous humilia
tion which, when viewed in the light of Eternity, appeared as a
stately movement in the solemn drama of the Revelation of
God's Son. It was the rebuke of all worldliness, expressed in
an action of humility and love.
" You call Me Teacher and Lord,
And you say rightly; for so I am.
If I, the Lord and Teacher, then, have washed your feet,
You also are bound to wash the feet of one another.
For I have given you an example,
That you also should do even as I have done to you.
Truly, I tell you, truly,
A slave is not greater than his owner,
Nor is a Messenger greater than he who sent him.''
7. Some general conception of the nature and course of the
Jewish Passover-meal has been made familiar by the repeated
accounts of distinguished scholars; and it is neither in our
power nor purpose to add to, or modify, such knowledge. Our
more modest aim is to gain a mental synthesis of the scene as
a background for the action and converse of our Lord with
His disciples ; to catch, if possible, reflections of His changing
moods with the trend and significance of His thoughts. With
a single exception those followers reciprocated their Master's
affection, and persisted in faithful attachment to Him throughout
His temptations. While all of them had felt the powerful
attractions of the political Messianism of the age, Judas alone
had been seduced into detachment and treachery. After Jesus
had washed their feet, He took His place at the head of the
table, seating Himself between John and Judas. His Mind
was full of the presentiment that the hour had come for Him
to return to His Father, and He talked with those around Him
of His own departure and their mission. Through all His pre
occupation, there shone the clear light of love for His disciples.
" Love . . . bears it out even to the edge of doom." x Although
under no illusion concerning the immediate future, Jesus claims
to exercise a kingly prerogative, distributing among the Twelve
the mediatorial offices of the Kingdom which His Father had
1 Shakspere, Sonnet cxvi., quoted by Dr. Dods, Expos. Gk. N. T., in loco.
The Last Supper 439
appointed for Him. Thus He used His Jewish culture to take
up the theocratic ideal as something realized in and through
the spiritual Ministry of Grace and Truth which He delegates
to His disciples on the eve of His foreseen Passion. St. John
corroborates, in His own characteristic manner, the evidence
of the Synoptists concerning the vice-regal duties of the apos
tolate. " Truly, truly, I say unto you, he that receiveth whom
soever I send receiveth Me; and he that receiveth Me receiveth
Him that sent Me."
8. But a sad dissonance entered into the Master's discourse,
for He was sensitive to the alien and treacherous intents of
Judas. Jesus read that disciple's mind, and perceived that the
man had fallen a prey to a Spirit of Satanic malignancy. He
had already entered into collusion with the enemies of Jesus,
and was even at that very moment revolving the possibilities
of betraying his Lord. The clear divination of these hostile
intrigues burdened His speech with the presage and presentiment
of coming doom, and at length His perturbation of mind culmi
nated in the announcement, before all, that one of them was
about to betray Him. Such a prediction must have been per
vaded by a spirit of appeal, even though Jesus foresaw the re-
lentlessness of the man by His side. Perceiving the immovability
of Judas's dark design, the only alternative that remained was
to expel him from the group, although this had to be done with
out exposing him to the anger and alarm of the others. All
present were filled with consternation at our Lord's obscure but
unmistakable announcement of betrayal, and severally asked, " Is
it I ? " Then when, at Simon's suggestion, John asked who
the traitor should be, Jesus gave a token, which, whether com
prehended by the inquirer or not, was plain to Judas himself.
What dark thoughts were passing in the traitor's mind are un
revealed — fear, perhaps mingled with scorn; but there was no
will to repent ; and Jesus leant toward him and said, " What thou
doest, do quickly." The others appear to have imagined that
their Master was commissioning the treasurer of their band to
go out and complete the requisite purchases for the morrow.
But the command reads to us as the cry of outraged Love.
The wretched man stood unmasked, and before John or Simon
could interrupt, even had they wished, he passed out into the
night.
440 The Last Days of the Passion
9. Judas's withdrawal gave relief to the sense of gloom
which had oppressed them all, and a feeling of harmony was
renewed. In the moment of relaxation from a tension which
the Master Himself had shared in, He explained to His disciples
why He had availed Himself of the permissive custom of
anticipating the Pascha: it was because He foresaw that He
will not have another opportunity of eating it with them, or of
supping with them again until He sits down with them in a
spiritual manner in a kingdom established by His own Cruci
fixion. On previous occasions it appears that Jesus had used
the time of the " breaking of bread " for speaking freely of His
Mission ; but at this juncture the familiar meal becomes a sacra
ment of spiritual fellowship, and by an acted parable and solemn
words He showed them the meanings of His death. It is difficult
for us to understand the naturalness of the succeeding steps in
that Memorable Supper, since we are inevitably influenced by
the medium of ecclesiastical developments both of doctrine and
ceremony. The institution of the sacrament is often thought
of as taking place when Supper was ended; but if we accept
the Lucan narrative of the blessing of two cups, then we shall
be inclined to think of the whole of that Paschal meal as assum
ing a sacramental character. It will, perhaps, clarify our
thoughts of the order of that meal if we quote Dr. Alex. R.
Eager's summary of his convincing note on St. Luke's account.
" (1) The disputed passage in St. Luke shows every mark,
external and internal, of authenticity. (2) Its admission makes
it necessary to believe that St. Luke speaks of the Consecration
of two cups at the Last Supper. (3) St. Luke joins the declara
tion, and the words of blessing of the -first cup with a similar
declaration of our Lord's as to the whole feast. (4) There is
no doubt whatever as to the order in which our Lord consecrated
the loaf and the eucharistic cup. (5) The first cup preceded
the feast, and was not eucharistic. (6) St. Paul's account
implies the use of a cup before the eucharistic chalice; his
omission of any reference to that cup is absolutely intelligible.
(7) So, too, the omission of any similar direct reference, in St.
Matthew and St. Mark, is intelligible; but both have an indirect
reference, though misplaced. (8) By replacing their reference
in its proper order, the whole account, derived from its four
sources, is intelligible and self-consistent, and reveals the Scrip
tural truth of the tradition that is embodied in the order of
The Last Supper 441
consecration and administration now used through all Christen
dom." *
io. Our earliest account of the Lord's Supper is that which
St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians some time between 50 and
55 a.d. Although the writing down of this account was delayed
for more than twenty years, the Apostle may have received the
tradition within a few months of the Crucifixion. The term
" revelation," by which he describes it, applies less to the manner
of its communication than to the nature of his insight into its
meaning. Hence, it may be that our Pauline account is only
another version of the Petrine tradition which St. Mark has
embodied in his gospel. While we accept the fidelity of the
Lucan narrative as to the actual fact of the two cups, we may
omit further allusion to the first cup, as it was not eucharistic,
and proceed to make our inferences from the four sources at
our disposal. Before the Supper ended Jesus took bread, and
having given thanks broke it, and gave it to His disciples with
the words, " This is My body for you " ; likewise the cup after
they had supped, saying: "This cup is the new covenant in
My blood." St. Paul states that after giving the bread, our
Lord enjoined upon His disciples, " Do this in memory of Me " ;
and after the cup, " Do this as often as you drink it, in memory
of Me." The Marcan version is simpler : " Take it, this is My
body " : " This is My blood of the covenant which is poured out
for many " ; and in this account we find no command to repeat
the act. In St. Matthew, Jesus is represented as declaring the
cup " is My blood of the covenant shed in reference to many in
order to remission of sins." The Lucan account formally records
the command to repeat the sacrament, " Do this for a recollec
tion of Me." Some have conjectured that this imperative pre
serves the Church's subsequent interpretation of the sacrament
as a permanent institution, since Jesus probably designed no
literal repetition of this rite any more than He desired a literal
imitation of the washing of the feet. Dr. Briggs, however, sug
gests that this command was a post-Resurrection word of Jesus ;
but there is too little evidence wherewith to verify this hypothesis.
The question springs to our minds, however, Does not the ex
alted self-consciousness we find in Jesus in these last days make
1St. Luke's Account of the Last Supper: a Critical Note (Expositor,
March and April, 1908.)
442 The Last Days of the Passion
it inherently probable that He actually intended to establish a
permanent institution? Should the command to repeat the new
Pascha be accepted as authentic, still we must not transform the
simple " do this " — " perform this " — into a sacrificial injunction
to " offer this " : it is to be a repetition of communion, of com
memoration, but not of priestly sacrifice. Amid all the fluctuat
ing elements of the fourfold record, two incidents are common
alike in all : first, the giving of the broken bread after thanks
had been uttered and the declaration had been made, " this is
My body " ; secondly, the passing of the cup with the assertion
that it was the blood of the (new) Covenant shed on behalf of
many — or, for His disciples.
n. Even in the most cursory review of the great subject of
our Lord's institution of this sacrament, it is a matter of felicita
tion to the whole Church that the Didache can be relied upon
to reflect the primitive mind of the Christian Societies. This
book was one of the first manuals of Christian praxis treating
of morality, worship, organization and the Second Coming. If
it be admitted that the Teaching " represents the low-water mark
of Christian feeling and speculation," then we argue from this
that the very poverty of its thought but makes it a more trust
worthy mirror of the conduct of the Church. Now, under the
head of " Christian Worship," it is taught that the Eucharist was
a part of a social-religious meal, and we learn that communicants
were accustomed to eat till they were satisfied. " As regards
the Eucharist, celebrate it thus: First, for the cup: We thank
Thee, O Father, for the Holy Vine of David, Thy servant, which
Thou madest known to us by Jesus, Thy Servant. To Thee be
glory for ever! And for this broken bread: We thank Thee,
our Father, for the light of knowledge, which Thou madest
known to us by Jesus, Thy Servant, To Thee be glory for ever.
As this broken bread was scattered (in corn-grains) on the
mountains, and being brought together became one, so let Thy
Church be gathered together from the end of the Earth into
Thy Kingdom." 1 The simplicity of the ritual prescribed in
this Jerusalem manuscript contrasts with the subtle ingenuity
which has transformed this spiritual and social communion into
an elaborate sacrifice offered again to God by the hands of the
priests. Yet far-removed as the ecclesiastical dogma is from
' Didache, ix. and x.
The Last Supper 443
the naivete of the primitive love-feast, we should not fall into
the reactionary extreme of those who allow no room for either
growth or change in thought and worship. The fact confronts
us that the mind of the Church wrought upon this commemora
tive covenant meal, and built upon its sacramental basis a
veritable philosophy of life. The doctrines of Jesus have stimu
lated the Church's illative faculty, and throughout this high
work there has been given the guidance of the Spirit of Truth.
Since we dare not say that the philosophic impulse should have
been excluded from the Church, neither ought we therefore
to check its exercise at any particular stage, and say the de
velopment of Christian thought can go no farther. Stagnation
is our gravest peril; dogmatic petrifactions are our worst idols.
But our thinking should be reverent, sympathetic, imaginative,
and yet faithful to the sources. Reviewing the past develop
ments from the primitive simplicity of the Didache down to
the construction of the elaborate dogma of transubstantiation,
we see the incessant need of sympathetic imagination. Those
reformers who throw such emphasis upon the verbal copulative
" is," and those critics who dispute whether any copula was used
in the Aramaic original, all seem alike remote from the mood
and thought of Jesus when He employed types and symbols
that sanctified the whole of human life. Even such as repudiate
sacerdotalism as a spurious excrescence upon pure Christianity,
ought to acknowledge that the conception of nature and life
taught by Jesus, in word and act, was essentially sacramental.
12. It is generally acknowledged, by all who take time to think
about it, that the Master summed up the chief message of His
whole ministry in the poetic symbolism of this sacrament. From
the hour of His self -identification with the penitents who received
baptism in the Jordan until the evening when He washed His
disciples' feet — or, from the moment of His taking up of John's
watchword of the Kingdom to the instant of His declaration,
" This is My body," He had uninterruptedly manifested the per
fection of love as a principle and dynamic of all true life; He
was absolutely dominated by love for the Heavenly Father and
for man, so that every decision of His Will was a death unto
all selfishness and a rising again of His nature in fuller amplitude
of power for service. His serene acceptance of tragic death
made that event the sublimest expression of His spiritual love.
444 The Last Days of the Passion
He gave Himself as bread to be broken for the nourishing of
the higher life of the world, knowing that by His voluntary
death the very spirit of His life would be appropriated by all
His disciples. But this metaphor of assimilation must be in
terpreted through the great keyword found in Christ's assertion
that the cup was the (new) Covenant in His blood.1 This was
the word with which Jeremiah anticipated an evangelical religion
six centuries before, so that its use in this place transports the
mind into the midst of Hebrew conceptions. " The fundamental
redemptive idea in Israel, then, the most general conception in
what might be termed Israel's consciousness of salvation, was the
idea of its being in covenant with Jehovah." 2 Taking up this
symbolism, Jesus used the bread and wine to represent His
own spirit and life, claiming that the new covenant was real
ized and established in Himself. And this assumption was
verified, for He did actually introduce His disciples into a Divine
fellowship, a holy communion, wherein they were made partakers
of the Divine Nature. " In that He saith a new covenant, He
hath made the first old; but that which is becoming old is nigh
unto vanishing away." The ancient covenant dating back to
Moses and Sinai has become obsolete through Christ, and by
the act of dying, which He symbolically anticipates, a new, spirit
ual covenant supersedes all fScshly or external ordinances forever.
He would not have His disciples look upon His death as some
tragic, unforeseen failure : nay, He made it the crowning act
of His obedience to the Father's Will ; and for all time the Cross
abides as the seal of the Kingdom and the chief instrument for
its extension. St. Matthew's particular inference, that the shed
ding of His blood was an efficient cause of the remission of sin
was an inevitable deduction from the gracious, extensive effects
accruing from the self-sacrifice of Jesus.
13. Were we seeking to draw out the profound implications
of this institution of the Lord's Supper, we should at once con
nect it with the mystical discourse on the Bread which cometh
down from Heaven; but our aim here is to set the incident in
the true perspective of Christ's Ministry, so that it will yield
up its inner meanings to subsequent reflection. Whether we
imagine that Jesus designed the continual repetition of this
' Diatheke-Berith.
2 Professor A. B. Davidson, The Theology of the Old Testament, p. 239.
The Last Supper 445
Pascha, or attribute its place in the Church to the instinctive
love and reverence of the disciples; whether we suppose the
Master gave the command to keep it as a memorial after He
had risen, or regard its persistence as due to the evolution of
ritual and dogma, — we ought never to lose the historical view
of the simple pathos and sublime poetry of this the penultimate
act of Jesus in the days of His flesh. Those symbols of the
Bread and Wine expressed His triumphal assurance that His
death would sanctify and not destroy His relationship to men.
We are therefore bidden, at each celebration, to recollect Him
whose Death affects all men's covenant with God; to renew our
fellowship with the Risen Lord, and to look forward to His
glorious return. While we rejoice in this new Pascha, we are to
look for its more joyous consummation in the Father's King
dom, when, in some fuller and more perfect manner, our Lord
will join with us in a festal communion of completed triumph.
Seen in its own light apart from all cloudy speculations, or re
called in reverent communion, this Sacrament with which Jesus
Himself anticipated and interpreted His death, wins upon our
hearts, whelms the mind with humility and grace, and imparts
the realization of a mystic consciousness of Christ's pure and
perennial Presence. And, as we retrace the steps in this im
pressionist study, we are led to IVieve without reservation in
the historicity of this tradition; for in the refinement of its
pathos, its simple yet sublime poetic conception, and its potency
as a Sacramental communion, we contemplate an act of religious
inspiration. In other connections we should say genius, for the
creation of which no apostle — not even Paul — was equal. Like
so much else in the Gospels, it rises clean above the level of
apostolic invention, so that we are driven to say, the Mind of
Jesus alone can explain this institution.
CHAPTER IV
THE VALEDICTION
i. A grave difficulty felt by all critical readers who accept
the substantial historicity of St. John, is to find room in the
Synoptic scheme of the Passion History for an interpolation of
a farewell discourse such as appears in the Fourth Gospel. Yet
notwithstanding this perplexity it seems not incredible that
Jesus, foreseeing His speedy Crucifixion, should use the Paschal
meal-time for intimate discourse with His disciples, in which He
might lead their minds onward from the simpler phases of
religion toward the profounder implications of their relationship
to Himself. If, as Professor Burkitt states, " the doctrine of
the Person of Christ set forth in this Gospel expressed the
general conviction of the Church adequately," then we must infer
that, since every effect requires a cause, something must have
been present in Christ's remembered instructions which promoted
the growth of these transcendental views of His Person. That
our Lord's valediction was composed of sayings relating to the
actual circumstances and needs of the hour alternated with
winged flights into heavenly altitudes of mysticism, is inherently
probable; while the pathos, beauty and range of vision displayed
in the recorded discourse fit naturally with the majestic impression
Jesus had continually and increasingly made upon His followers.
Subsequent reminiscences of this final discourse would depend
upon the disciples' understanding ; for, although those men would
be lifted far above themselves, there must have been much they
could not grasp, and memory naturally loses hold upon sayings
which outspan the intelligence. And it is easily perceived that
such a discourse, full of delicate insights and lofty spirituality,
would not be likely to find a place in the ordinary streams of
tradition from which the earlier Gospels were largely formed.
Yet, if there were one of that disciple-band more attuned than<
his companions to the music of the Master's mind, he would
be likely to recall, in brooding meditations, all the last great
thoughts of Jesus; and, as the years passed, he might naturally
446
The Valediction 447
seek to perpetuate his glowing memories. And if in such
a work of his old age the author breathed the tones of his
own cherished and dominant ideas, still the historicity of his
work would not necessarily be weakened. Ecclesiastical tra
dition, which is far from worthless, points to John as such a
disciple, whether he were the son of Zebedee or some pupil of
the Sadducees. His intellect and heart were saturated and
dyed with the influence of Jesus, but inevitably his later memories
of his beloved Lord were all coloured by characteristics of the
thoughts that had mastered him. This man's delineation of the
Christ who lived in his memory was bound to differ from the
Jesus depicted by earlier evangelists ; and yet, as the Socrates
of Xenophon and of Plato is one and the same through all
differences, there is an identity even more real behind the presen
tations of Jesus made by the Synoptics and St. John.
2. The actual facts that succeeded the Crucifixion reflect
an air of utmost credibility upon the Johannine conception of
Christ as one possessing unique autonomy and masterful purpose.
Had Jesus been able neither to foresee the course events would
follow nor take steps to perpetuate the fellowship of His disciples,
then He could not have created such an impression as the Gospels
preserve ; nor could He have inaugurated the movement from
which Christendom has sprung. St. John himself records the
self-evident motive for the farewell discourse in the words of
Jesus : " I have spoken of these things to you that you may
not be made to stumble . . . that when the hour for them
comes, you may remember that I told you of them. I did not
tell you these things at the beginning, because I was with you."
It is surely no valid objection to the authenticity of this Valedic
tion that it differs from previous discourses : the occasion accounts
for such difference; besides, the Master's teaching was bound
to be graduated, and His deepest instructions were necessarily
delayed to the end of His Ministry. The sense that His Paschal
address was a " farewell," gave the turn to all His speech and
wrought distress among His disciples. They felt that the old
habits of the Galilean intercourse were about to be abandoned
forever; they saw the foundations of their cherished Messianic
hopes crumbling away, and trembled at vague presentiments of
gloom. Jesus speaks now of the nature and functions of genu
ine discipleship, passing beyond the tragedy of the Cross to
448 The Last Days of the Passion
the days of high duty and witness-bearing in the world. Al
though He sorrowed at Judas's treachery, still He showed a
serene assurance that the Divine Purpose would be fulfilled
thereby, and set before His followers their new charge, with
mysterious promises of spiritual equipment.
3. When, however, the general historicity of Christ's Valedic
tion has been acknowledged, another problem presents itself in
the apparent dislocation of the verses. Some readers will doubt
less insist that the present sequence is due to St. John, and
therefore must be correct ; they look upon the abrupt termination
of the first part L and the unexpected prolongation of the dis
course as due to some actual interrupting occurrence, which was
followed by a new direction of thought and conversation. On
the other hand, it will seem to some that any transposition of
chapters or verses which results in renewed harmony and in
creased light ought to be accepted. Should not the fifteenth
and sixteenth chapters be placed immediately after the words
that relate Judas's departure? Wendt suggests that they be
placed after ch. xiii. 35, and Moffatt thinks still better after
ch. xiii. 31a. Plain it is, at least, that the remark which Jesus
made,2 that no one of the disciples asked where He was going,
could not have been made after Simon's question,3 " Lord, where
art Thou going?" And the concluding words of ch. xiv.,
" Arise, let us be going hence," appear to belong to the termina
tion rather than to the middle of the discourse. It is not, how
ever, an utter impossibility that our Lord should have spoken
the allegory of the Vine after rising from the Supper, either
before, or after leaving the room. Further surprise is occasioned
by the sense of retrospection which pervades the Consecration
Prayer of the seventeenth chapter : it reads as though the Cruci
fixion and Resurrection lay behind it, so that one naturally
wonders if it may not have been spoken at some interval between
the Resurrection and Ascension.4 Whether such rearrangements
of the materials of this section of St. John's gospel be made, or the
present order of the text be retained, there is apparent to all a
marked agreement of its teaching with the apostolic doctrine at the
beginning of the Church's history. At this crisis of His Ministry,
then, Jesus Himself created the moulds of a new religious con-
1 John xiv. 31. 'Ibid. xvi. 5. "xiii. 36.
'This suggestion is made by Briggs.
The Valediction 449
sciousness, or the material of His history has been modified by the
subsequent beliefs of the apostles. Now, while we admit the
native tendency of the mind to read its own inferences back into
the remembrance of the Teacher's thought, and are willing to
allow for its influence in helping to shape the ultimate forms of
evangelic tradition; we surely cannot accept any hypothesis as
satisfactory that leaves the sudden emergence of the apostolic
doctrine of the Person and Work of Jesus as a fact and effect
without any intelligible cause. The Gospel which was centred
in the Person of Jesus did not come as a bolt from the blue:
even the Pauline Christology was not revealed from heaven
at a stroke; but it issued from the concrete history of Jesus,
and because it was believed there was a motive for the rise and
transmission of the traditions concerning Him. How intelligible
the whole subsequent history becomes, therefore, if we believe
that, at the supreme crisis of His mission, just immediately before
He was crucified, Jesus gathered His disciples together and
imparted to them such final and consummating doctrines as St.
John records in this Farewell Discourse, thus crowning all His
previous self -revelations with a full explication of his life,
thought and purpose ! The transcendentalism of this valedic
tion, which is a cause of offence to many a critic, is really the
best explanation of the mysterious influence of Jesus upon the
world after He was crucified.
4. The illusive hopes, that Jesus would prove Himself to be a
political Messiah, had all been banished from the mind of Judas ;
but unhappily, in his case no spiritual ideal had taken their
place, and when he saw that Jesus perceived his incorrigible
baseness and desired him to leave the disciple-group, he went
out determined if possible to make his own place secure in the
coming debacle of the movement Jesus had initiated. Deeply
wounded though the Master was by the infidelity of Judas, He
at once sought to heal the breach in the disciple-group by laying
emphasis upon their abiding unity with Himself. Prophets and
psalmists had conceived of Israel as the Kingdom of God under
the figure of the vine which Jehovah had planted, and they had
strained the capacity of language to set forth the future of this
vineyard. Jesus now lays His consecrating touch upon this
figure of the vine, and appropriates it for ever as the symbolism
Of the unity and fruitfulness of the fellowship which the disciples
450 The Last Days of the Passion
have realized under the spell of His Personality. Jesus is the
genuine Vine; His disciples are the branches: the roots, stem
and branches are all joined in organic unity; severance at any
point would put an end to all fruitfulness. The disciples are
in Christ as branches in the vine; Christ is in them as the living
sap flowing through the branches. The Heavenly Father is the
Vine-dresser; fruitless branches like Judas He lops off; fruitful
branches — loyal disciples — He prunes and disciplines, that they
may become more fruitful. In the Galilean discourses, Jesus
had uttered the parables of the Sower and the Seed, of the
Tares and the Mustard-seed, of the Leaven and the Drag-net:
but now all other figures give place to the old yet ever new symbol
of the Vine. The Israel after the flesh is lost sight of ; for here,
in this disciple-group around Jesus, is the true seed of the nation
— a Spiritual Israel, the true Vine which God has planted. In
speaking this parable, Jesus pierces through the rind of phe
nomena — that external sphere wherein separateness and aloof
ness of one from another seem to be the conditions of life; He
points to the mysterious network and ground of spiritual exist
ence in which all personal life must be rooted. At the centre
of such personal unions is Jesus Himself as the very root and
stock out of which they grow. Though He will soon be with
drawn from the disciples as a physical presence, He will still
be bound up with them in the New Kingdom. In the symbolism
of the Vine every mind will find meanings according to its own
depth and capacity; but to one and all the figure is an emblem
of Christ's unbroken communion with His disciples on earth.
Thus, on the eve of His anticipated crucifixion Jesus looks calmly
forward to an abiding relationship with His disciples, which
implies the continuous impartation and projection of His own
life in and through them. In this mystic radiance the Heavenly
Christ is seen to live on forever in His followers; and at every
new exigency and demand of experience He will feed their life
with the Divine energies of His own soul.
5. This connection of the disciples with Christ is conditional
upon the indwelling of His words — teachings, commands and
truths — in them. As the thoughts of Jesus are unfolded in this
farewell address, it is shown that the abiding of Christ's words
in the disciple is equivalent to the disciple's remaining in His
love; and this, again, is equated with the keeping of His com-
The Valediction 451
mandments. Only through this mutual indwelling — reciprocal
affection and moral obedience of the disciples to the Lord — can
His joy become theirs. That joy was born of self-sacrifice;
it could exist even in the midst of the agony of Gethesmane.
All through His ministry, Jesus was animated by love for His
disciples; and now He tells them that, if they have received His
love, so that in them it is become an active principle of inter
course, then they have a bond of union and a guarantee of
continuance which will more than supply the lack of His physical
presence. They dimly perceived that Jesus was offering con
solation for the deprivation of His bodily presence, and yet all
the time they were hoping that He would not leave them.
His next thought, however, jarred upon all their illusions; for
He tells them that the trial of discipleship would grow in in
tensity through persecution, but that in this also He would be
their pattern, for as the world hated Him so it would hate them.
Men will misunderstand them, excommunicate them from the
synagogue — yea, even kill them, and think that by doing so they
are performing religious service to God. Jesus gives, as the
motive of His predictions, the desire that they may remember
when these things happen that He had told them. If He did
not foretell these things to His disciples, then the writer of these
words must have deliberately and consciously invented them.
Hitherto, Jesus says, He had been with them and it had been
unnecessary to tell them these things, but now He is going away.
He remarks upon their strange silence; it surprises Him that
they do not ask whither He is going ! Henceforth His discourse
is filled with the thought of His impending departure, and as they
listen to His words they begin to evince their great sadness.
Jesus had weaned them from their old ways; He had awakened
their distrust in the guidance of conventional Jewish teaching;
He had wooed and won their trust in Himself; and now, when
His work has scarcely got beyond its beginning, He talks of
going away. Seeing that He has grieved and perplexed them,
Jesus seeks to comfort them with the promise of another Para
clete — the Spirit of Truth, who will come to them as the inward
guide. There is an advantage in this withdrawal of the Master's
visible presence; for, had He remained with them forever, they
would not have grown out of childhood into the religion of
manhood. The work He had begun would not cease: it would
indeed be changed in character, but it would pass on to maturer
452 The Last Days of the Passion
developments under the Spirit who " will convince the world of
sin, and of uprightness, and of condemnation." The Loving
Master fain would have told them new and higher truths, but He
sees that further experience is needed to prepare them : hence, He
promises that the Spirit of Truth will instruct them. The matter
and theme of the Spirit's pedagogy will be the historic life
and teachings of Jesus Himself; the Paraclete will draw out in
their minds the inevitable inferences of Christ's doctrines : " He
shall glorify Me, for He shall take what is Mine and disclose it
to you." " All that the Father has is Mine : hence, I said, He
takes of what is Mine and shall disclose it to you." Jesus felt
that He had not exhausted the well of truth; He had simply
opened it, cleared away obstructions, that men might drink there
from. The few brief years of His incarnate ministry would
wield an abiding influence upon His disciples, and would afford
a body of historic truth which the other Paraclete would use
for human enlightenment. Those disciples were shaken as by
an earthquake ; the thin crust of the earth's surface was broken ;
but, peering into the deep crevasse of mystery, they caught gleams
of eternal reality. The vagueness of the promise of guidance
and teaching through the Spirit within the disciples appears
to open up dangerous realms, where mirage and illusion may
shed false gleams; but while we discern the dangers made so
manifest in Church History, we must still hold to the validity
of this great promise. Especially ought it to be remembered
that the Spirit of Truth guides the disciples not merely to
fuller knowledge of doctrine, but also to greater energy of
virtuous action; and the strenuous activity of the good-will of
Christ's disciples will shield them from the peculiar dangers of
illusive intellectuality.1
6. The very sadness of the occasion tended to rob life of its
zest, and to depress the normal alertness of their minds; and,
seeing this, Jesus sought to excite their curiosity by an unfor
gettable paradox : " A little while, and ye shall not see Me : and
again, a little while, and ye shall see Me; because I go to the
Father. They said therefore, what is this that He saith, a little
' Sanday, The Life of Christ in Recent Research, " The Holy Spirit is
the bond which binds all humanity together in one. In each one of us
He is present after our measure, but in Christ He dwelt as the fulness of
the Godhead bodily" (p. 310).
The Valediction 453
while? We cannot tell what He saith." Jesus meets their alarm
and distrust with a prediction that their sorrow at His with
drawal will only seem like the travail-pangs of a woman, which
at the birth of the child pass into joy. Separation will be fol
lowed by reunion! The withdrawal of the physical presence
shall be followed by a new perception of His spiritual indwelling ;
they shall lose Him from sense and find Him in their souls.
Unto His disciples would be given the manifestations of the
Spirit; they shall see Him who is invisible; the old relations
between the Lord and His disciples will give place to new
and deeper realizations; He will be more to them than ever.
"Up till now you have asked nothing in My name; ask and
you shall receive that your joy may be complete." He gives
His name, His personal character, His abiding life, as the
dynamic and inspiration of prayer. The use of His name is no
exercise of a magical formula; it signifies identity in aim and
desires between disciple and Lord. His earthly life was as a
journey ; God was its starting-point and its goal : " I came out
from the Father, and I have come into the world: again, I am
leaving the world and going to the Father." His awed listeners
catch at this saying, as affording them illumination:
" Behold, now Thou art talking openly and speaking no proverb : '
Now we know that Thou knowest all and requirest no one to question
thee ;
Hereby we believe Thou earnest out from God."
Their enthusiasm, though baffled and depressed, was ready to
spring forth again at the slightest solicitation; but the Master
steadies them by allusion to the coming crisis, which will scatter
all His followers.
7. The remainder of this Valediction falls into four sections,
divided naturally by questions asked respectively by Peter, Philip,
Thomas and Judas; and the appositeness of the several queries
to the known characters of at least three of them gives a ring
of historicity to the dialogue. When Simon asks, " Lord, where
art Thou going?" Jesus replies that His disciple is not prepared
to follow now, though the time will assuredly come when he will
be so. With characteristic vehemence Simon protests that he
is ready to lay down his life for his Lord even now; but Jesus
1 irapoi/iia.
454 The Last Days of the Passion
deprecates this headlong zeal, and warns him that in a short
time he will deny Him thrice. The Master has no wish to dash
their hopes to the ground, nor to overwhelm them with self-
suspicion; He cherishes an almost paternal affection, and seeks
to comfort them with words of immortal expectancy. He is
about to pass to another abode in His Father's house; He has
not deluded them; the movement of life has its definite goal;
He will withdraw in order to still pursue His mediatorial minis
try under other conditions, and at the proper hour He will return
to guide them home. He is saying that they know the way,
when Thomas interrupts with a profession of ignorance even
of their destination, and a half-remonstrant question, " How
then are we to know the way ? " The images of locality fit
in with the movement of life, and Jesus affirms : " I am the
way, the truth and the life; no man comes to the Father except
through Me." His Ministry had not the characteristic of aim-
lessness. Jesus moved across our history with the unwavering
tread of one who knew His destination; He came from God,
He went to God.1 Hitherto He had been an external Teacher:
henceforth they will treat Him as the personal way of God in
the world. In the sphere of His influence, His disciples will
live; along His way of self-sacrifice they will walk Godward.
The very truth for which men hunger was embodied in Him;
He was a springing fountain of spiritual life for the world.
Hearing the repeated name of Father, Philip asks for some
theophany, such as Moses received — some definite, tangible man
ifestation of God. Through the obscurity and confusion of such
a request, there glows the fervid spiritual aspiration of a noble
soul; but Philip has to learn that all material disclosure such
as his fancy depicted would leave the deepest longing unsated.
Jesus was grieved that Philip should show so little understand
ing of His Ministry, and makes the memorable answer that
through His own life God is unveiled to man : " He that hath
seen Me hath seen the Father."
8. Once more the Master seeks to make them feel that they
share His mission, that they must perpetuate His works. He
promises also that He will do in the future whatsoever' they
ask in His Name, so that even " greater works " shall be done ;
it will be the Lord Himself acting in them, and through them
1 Hort, The Way, The Truth, The Life, lect. i., p. ia
The Valediction 455
by His Spirit. Let them not be as a vessel rocked by a storm ;
though He is going away His alter ego, the Paraclete, will
come; for this Spirit is truly the Spirit of Christ Himself. In
stead of mourning, they ought to rejoice that He is going to His
Father, and that He will receive again the glory of His pre-
incarnate state. These words will seem to many too profound
and technically theological to have come from the lips of Him
who uttered the gracious parables in Galilee; and yet there is
neither contradiction nor incompatibility, only a fitting develop
ment of ideas and of Christ's self-revelation. It would have
been futile to have spoken in this manner at any earlier time;
but if the Church had to be established and given a permanent
consciousness, there was a propriety in such utterances at this
crisis; and further, such sayings alone explain all the events
that followed; for there is fullest harmony between cause and
effect. The coming of the Spirit will be Christ's own return, so
that though they miss His bodily presence, they shall contemplate
Him in a way that the world will not understand. Judas
Lebbaeus feels the bewilderment which springs from the in
vincible materialism of the popular Messianism, and asks how
Jesus will appear to the disciples while He remains unseen by
the world. The Master answers the thought rather than the
words of the question, and defines the conditions of love and
obedience by which the disciples shall experience this vision of
the Invisible. Even though the customs and habits of the old
association be dissolved, Jesus promises to sustain them in a
higher relationship with Himself and the Father through the
Spirit. When His little bark — the Church — is heaving in the
dreadful tempest, Jesus makes the great bequest of peace; He
expresses the confidence of victory on the eve of seeming defeat ;
then brings His discourse to a close with the command, " Rise,
let us be going hence ! "
9. Our minds are imbued with wonder and awe at these
revelations; and, if one be convinced that these sayings are
genuine, he spontaneously and instinctively bows the knee to
this Victorious Christ. And if they be not considered genuine,
how shall we account for them? The death of Jesus did not
dissolve His society; — it remained and grew in spite of all
opposition; and its development was not due alone to the propa
ganda of ideas, but also to the contagion of a new force of
456 The Last Days of the Passion
social love generated by the abiding Person of Christ. The
apostles acted under the conviction that they were guided and
energized by the indwelling Paraclete; the members rejoiced
in the faith that Jesus had risen from the dead, and after " a
little while " — an interregnum of forty days — had come again
as the Spirit of Truth. The historic consequences throw an
air of probability over the antecedents as they are recorded by
St. John in the tender, last Farewell of Jesus before His Cruci
fixion. That only one disciple should have transmitted the con
tinuous narrative of these holy truths spoken by Jesus before the
final crisis, is not too difficult to understand; for even that
disciple could only slowly master the meaning of the things
which belong to this consummation of Christ's self-disclosure.
As he brooded over his holy memories and the experiences of
life deepened and refined his soul, the dark and almost forgotten
sayings leapt out in His Mind like words of flame. And if
Christ be what this Fourth Gospel affirms Him to be, there is
no difficulty in believing that He gave utterance to such truths
as these ; but if He be not such an one as the Evangelist depicts,
then we have no key either for this final discourse or for the
Jesus of the Synoptics. It is easier for us to believe that the
last words of the Master recurred to the mind in proportion
as the disciple's understanding of Him grew through years of
experience, than to attribute to some anonymous scribe the
capacious intellect to create such thoughts, and the doubtful
morality of assigning them to the utterance of Jesus.
BOOK IX
THE FINISHED WORK
CHAPTER I
THE HOUR AND THE CUP
I. The final scenes of our Lord's Ministry are so tragic and
replete with importance for our World, that innate reverence
prompts us to touch with much restraint upon the sacred mys
tery of a great sorrow. Yet, on the other hand, the habit of
unflinching interrogation, which is one of the characteristics of
the mind's insatiable hunger for truth, compels us to treat the
records of the Lord's Passion critically before we strive to make
a synthesis of the discrepant traditions. It should not surprise
us to discover that our several sources contain data that are
difficult to harmonize. The apostles who must have played so
large a part in originating the several lines of testimony and
tradition were not calm, scientific observers of the Passion;
they were men caught in the eddies of a great movement, whose
meaning and issues they were unable to discern; and the in
evitable note of personal interest enters into their witness. But
numerous and difficult as their discrepancies seem to us, the
several gospels irresistibly assure the reader that he is in touch
with a solid, reliable basis of fact, and the resultant impression
of the figure of the Man of Sorrows conveys its own convincing
historicity. One of our difficulties arises so soon as we make
the transition from the serene Speaker of the Valediction to the
agonized Sufferer of the Garden. But this very difficulty, which
meets a merely literary criticism, attests itself to dramatic in
sight as inherently probable. We have already observed the
remarkable parallelism of the Johannine and Synoptic records,
and have suggested that the resembling yet different series of
events in the Fourth Gospel ought not to be excluded as in
compatible with the earlier narratives, nor identified as the same
incidents which have been changed in transmission, but may
be looked upon as a reliable supplement drawn out of the wealth
of veritable apostolic reminiscence. And now we may preface
our impressionist study of the arrest of Jesus by an enumeration
469
460 The Finished Work
of some of the remaining difficulties that cling to the Passion
narratives. The Lucan agrees with the Johannine account of
the Master's warning of Simon's fall, placing it in the midst
of His discourse before they left the supper-chamber; but in
this both differ from St. Matthew and St. Mark. Again,
the Synoptists disagree among themselves in the grouping of
the disciples in the Garden and in regard to Christ's reiterated
prayer. St. Luke, for instance, makes no mention of the three
fold repetition of the prayer, while, although the earlier evan
gelists have represented the disciples in two companies, the
chosen three of the inner group being nearer to our Lord in
His agony, St. Luke records the remonstrance about their sleep
ing when He desired them to watch, as though it were addressed
alike to all the eleven. Some differences, however, are not so
discrepant, but add fresh shades of meaning to a more meagre
report: thus, in the slackened intensity of the second stage of
struggle and prayer peculiar to St. Matthew, we seem to trace
the passing of the soul's first instinctive revolt into a gradual
acceptance of the sorrow as a part of the Divine plan. There are
also some characteristic touches in St. Luke's account, such
as the movement of Jesus in advance of His disciples, the
explanation that they slept " for sorrow," and the statement that
Jesus restored the wounded ear of Malchus. The same Evan
gelist, although in other parts of His gospel he has softened
some of St. Mark's realism, here accentuates Christ's human
ity with the description of His agony in prayer, that " His
sweat became, as it were, great drops of blood falling down
upon the ground." Yet a further addition made by St. Luke
is the statement that there were chief-priests, commanders of
the temple, and elders in the crowd that came out to arrest
Jesus. St. John ventures to give the name of the " bystander "
who resorted to the sword in defence of the Master, and we
learn that it was no other than Simon Peter; while the same
author affirms that a cohort, or detachment of Roman soldiers,
came to ensure the arrest and prevent disorder. St. John alludes
to the presence of Judas, but remains silent concerning the
traitor's kiss. He attributes to Jesus an initiative in the mode
of His arrest, noting that He stepped forward with the question,
" Whom do you seek ? " This Evangelist alludes to the agony
only in a veiled way, recording that when Jesus commanded Peter
to put back his sword He inquired, " Shall I not drink the cup
The Hour and the Cup 461
which the Father has given Me?" Now, were all these char
acteristic touches and differences of narration submitted to an
unprejudiced judge, he would deem them corroborative of the
main facts, convergent upon one resultant figure of the Great
Sufferer, who voluntarily bore His agony ; who shrank from His
destiny in momentary uncertainty, and yet exhibited a triumphant
fortitude in the sacrifice.
2. When the Valedictory Discourse was ended, they sang a
hymn — " the Hallel " ; * and Jesus then led His eleven disciples
away to the Garden of Gethsemane, where He was wont to seek
retirement. As they went He recalled Zechariah's oracle con
cerning the rejection of the Shepherd Messiah, and pointed out
that the blow struck at Him would cause them to stumble and
temporarily disperse. Yet once again, with the warning, He
anticipates a subsequent recovery, when He would rejoin them
in Galilee. At the entrance of the grove Jesus told the little
company to await there, and, taking His three most intimate
disciples, went a little farther. Hitherto He had appeared
serenely certain of ultimate victory, and had poured out words
of solace and encouragement; but now He manifested signs
of great mental distress, and said to His three companions,
" My soul is very sorrowful unto death ! Stay here and watch ! "
This swift alternation of mood is far from inexplicable. Many
a man, foreseeing grave dangers, in the presence of wife and
children will give utterance to expressions of hope, calmness
and patient trust; and then, a few moments later, when with
drawn with a strong and faithful friend, he will begin to speak
of apprehensions and perplexity. There are different planes of
consciousness in the abysmal depths of personality, and a man
often passes swiftly from one to another. It is often as though
within each self, as within the intricate coils of some mysterious
shell, there were many selves: some live out their little lives
without ever reaching an intimate acquaintance with the inner
most uniting principle of personality, while others come to that
knowledge only through tragic developments of sorrow. If but
the crust of habit be broken, what strange, tumultuous fires are
disclosed ! In the closing scenes of our Lord's Ministry recorded
in the Gospels, we see reflected the swift transitions from the
calm surface consciousness to the inward agony of His inner
'Ps. cxv-cxviii.
462 The Finished Work
life — from the habitual trust in His Heavenly Father to the
torture of dreadful uncertainty.
3. Jesus requested His three disciples to watch; then, going
about a stone's throw away, He fell upon His face and prayed :
" Abba — Father, — all things are possible with Thee : remove this
cup from Me: but not what I will, but what Thou [wilt]."
All docetic theories of Christ break upon this history of His
Passion. The agonized confession in St. Mark has parallels
in the other Synoptic Gospels. St. Matthew says, "He began
to be sorrowful and dismayed " ;x while St. Luke writes signifi
cantly that " He tore himself away from them," i.e. the disciples,2
and in the restrained allusion to our Lord's repeated prayer
and sweat of blood, there is suggested the experience of intensest
suffering. How vivid the remembrance of this struggle was
may be seen from the citing of it to prove the reality of
Christ's humanity in the Epistle to the Hebrews : " Who in the
days of His flesh, having offered up prayers and supplications
with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save
Him from death . . . learned obedience by the things which
He suffered." s The duration of this final struggle is only sug
gested by the statement that in His agony He prayed " more
extendedly." * It is most surprising that, believing that Jesus
was Son of God and Lord of men, these Evangelists never for
a moment seem to wish any concealment of the painful and
extended struggle through which He passed into reconcilement
with so dark a dispensation of Divine Providence. As we re
call the calm Stoic fortitude of other martyrs it will seem passing
strange that Jesus, for whom the claim of transcendence is
made, should experience a shrinking so akin to a break-down
of nerves. Perhaps insight into this mystery of sorrow depends
upon moral stature; but all must feel that here there is a
margin for incertitude, and only ignorance dares to be dog
matic. An absence of sympathy, however, will ever cause men
to misconstrue this retirement to the Garden : thus, for instance,
the Jew of Celsus says, " How should we deem Him to be a
God, who not only in other respects, as was currently reported,
performed none of His promises, but who also, after we had
convicted Him, and condemned Him as deserving of punishment,
was found attempting to conceal Himself, and endeavouring to
1 aSq/icveiv. ' aowdoQri air' avruv. * Heb. v. 7-9. ' eKTeviarepov.
The Hour and the Cup 463
escape in a most disgraceful manner, and who was betrayed
by those whom He called disciples." x But Jesus sought no
concealment, nor made attempts to escape the treachery He had
foreseen. The Passion in the Garden cannot be misread as
the struggle of unsuccessful flight.
4. Of what nature was the agony Jesus suffered on the eve
of His Crucifixion ? Some have queried whether it was the fear
of physical death, since the very fineness of His bodily organiza
tion may have made the anticipation of a violent death a revolt
ing thing. But we think there was some profounder mental
and moral cause for His distress. The Gospels reveal a tem
porary disturbance in His vision of His Father's Will. He who
had until now maintained an attitude of calm certitude becomes,
for a brief while, the subject of a dread uncertainty. We are
indeed but ill-prepared to understand the passing incertitude of
One who had on all other occasions possessed a perfect realiza
tion of Divine Sonship, for we are the victims of doubt and of
an obscured and intermittent consciousness of our filial relation
to God. But Jesus, even in Gethsemane, never doubted His
Father's love: He was amazed at being enveloped in a cloud of
mental uncertainty; and so agonizing was this travail of His
Spirit, that He was constrained to supplicate the sympathy of His
chosen companions. It is well to observe, however, that the three
disciples were asked to watch with Him, not for Him — not to
warn Him if enemies came, but to communicate warmth of kindly
feeling and encouragement in His lonely trial. The Heart of
Jesus was tremulous with yearning for human fellowship; His
love for men was thirsting for response. Such craving for
sympathy was human ; but our difficulty is that such uncertainty
of His Father's Will does not seem Divine. Even here, how
ever, there must be caution and discrimination; it must not be
thought that Jesus doubted His Father's goodness ; neither must
we suppose that He desired to alter His Father's plan; His
trial arose from the uncertainty whether His dark depression
was demanded by the Father's Will. He did not waver in His
trust in His Heavenly Father; but He was driven, by His
mental distress, to pray for deliverance from all unnecessary
suffering. This fact makes it plain how clear and intense was
the sorrow He was bearing.
" Origen against Celsus, bk.. ii., ch. ix.
464 The Finished Work
5. The agony of Jesus, however, involved other emotions
besides uncertainty; and we shall not err if we ascribe it in part
to vicarious penitence. The sinlessness which we might suppose
would have saved Him from this trial became His supreme
qualification for suffering and His compulsion to offer Himself
as a sacrifice to the Father. As Son of Man He shared the
emotions, sufferings and even sins of humanity. Although in
dividually pure, He had so completely identified Himself with
the race that all its experiences of sin, shame and separation
from God passed into His consciousness. Sharing so passion
ately our common nature, He felt at His heart's centre all the
thrills, vibrations and shocks of human experience. The ties
of blood and affinities of nature are too subtle for our coarse
analysis; we feel them and can never escape them, but they
are too mystically elusive for intellectual definition. While our
differences and separations lie on the surface, we are all really
bound into one community, and as a race we form one organic
whole. As true humanity is developed in us the consciousness
of this oneness becomes ever more accentuated. A merely clever
man will glory in his individuality and distinction, but the great
soul feels its oneness with all men, and is ever conscious of
the ebb and flow of those tides that form part of the great ocean
of universal life. The true note of personality is not isolation,
but inclusion and comprehension. The recollection of this truth
of solidarity, which is felt in the measure of the development and
perfection of consciousness, helps us to understand something
of what was passing in the Soul of Jesus; He was so one with
men that the reflex of all their sin and suffering formed an
integral part of His experience; and this was not merely of
the nature of a sympathetic echo: it was part of a process of
self-identification. As at His baptism He reckoned Himself
one with His sinful brethren, and joined in their confession-
and repentance: so, in Gethsemane, He felt the quivering ache
and agonized conscience of the world's sin. As He struggled
there the limits of individuality dissolved; He felt Himself to
be the Soul of the race; He was our humanity, and on His
heart He bore the burden of man's separation from God. This
doubt, this shame, this separation, He struggled to overcome;
and His conquest was won by absolute surrender to the Father's
will, so that He offered to God the sacrifice of a human nature
reconciled to God's holy purpose. The possibilities of such a
The Hour and the Cup 465
solidarity of conscious life can be but imperfectly realized by
us; and, for any measure of understanding concerning Christ's
self-identification with us, imagination must be allowed to carry
us beyond our personal experiences. We must conjure up the
conception of perfect sympathy; — that is, of a soul without
one touch of selfishness in it — a sinless being. But, it may be
asked, how can a sinless being understand sin? Yet the moral
paradox of the world lies just here; the purer we become the
intenser grows our penitence. It is not the reprobate who feels
his sin most, but the reprobate's saintly mother. Since, there
fore, sin hardens the heart and blinds the conscience, the intensest
suffering for sin will be felt by One who knew no sin. Thus,
in the agony of the Garden Jesus realized all the unalleviated
horror of man's guilt; He perceived the essence of sin to be
rebellion against God — a potent cause of evil, disease, misery
and death. This was the horror of great darkness which fell
upon His soul; and we cannot wonder if, as He drank the
bitter cup of woe, He cried out to His Father for relief from
aught of sorrow which was unnecessary.
6. Proceeding reverently and cautiously to make a tentative
examination of our Lord's Passion, we soon become aware of
the peril which awaits all analysis of the soul. The subjects
of hysteria may suffer a mysterious disintegration of person
ality, but we instinctively feel that the experience of Jesus
was charged with the integrity of His perfect Person. The
apostolic writers instinctively felt this, and treated all the scenes
of His Passion as one whole; the Garden agony could not be
severed from His acceptance of crucifixion, and these were
joined to His resurrection ; and this suffering and active ministry
was, in their eyes, a sacrifice for the sin of the world. The
New Testament terminology was derived from Jewish ritual;
but even the analogies of sacrificial ceremonies seem hardly
adequate to fathom the depths of Christ's Passion. And yet
the terminology of sacrifice has entered deeply into human
speech, and has so much inherent reality that no other language
seems to touch the central ministry of the suffering of Jesus.
We shall not err, however, if we seize upon the idea of love as
lying behind the sacrificial obedience of the Lord. A part, at
least, of His agony in the Garden was due to the rejection of
His love. " He came unto His own, and His own received Him
466 The Finished Work
not." And even now, in spite of centuries of reflection and
adoring wonder, neither the world nor the Church has ade
quately owned the stupendous marvel of love's sacrifice. We
may learn to appreciate the greater from the less; the glowing,
enthusiastic fervour of Francis Xavier aids the imagination in
conceiving the tender and passionate yearnings that must have
filled the heart of Jesus. This missionary, who himself would
have confessed that he followed his Lord's example at a dis
tance, said : " But this I dare say, that whatever form of torture
or of death awaits me, I am ready to suffer it ten thousand times
for the salvation of a single soul." x We may use this con
fession as a stepping-stone to the understanding of the Master's
more perfect love — its intense power of individualizing every
soul and its magnitude in comprehending all. The aroma of
His love fills the New Testament; His philanthropy had no
taint of defect, and to it was conjoined a reason that had no
fault. Probably there is, in all the world, no sorrow like that
of outraged love. During His earthly ministry Jesus had suc
ceeded in permanently attaching to Himself a little band of
disciples who inadequately responded to His love and failed to
apprehend His aims; but, on the other hand, the nation which
had been chosen and disciplined by Divine Providence, through
its chief representatives and authorized officials deliberately re
jected Jesus with callous indifference and hostile disdain of
His Messianic claim. It could not but be, then, that the exquisite
agony of this rejection should seem a bitter cup to drink, and
that the hour should seem too oppressive to be borne.
7. Love implies also a great capacity for suffering; probably
no one ever lived who was more susceptible than Jesus to the
woes of others. In His Spirit Jesus was conscious of all the
undertones of the world's sorrow ; in His experience the agonies
of a sinful world were summed up, and temporarily it dismayed
even Him. No film of selfishness dimmed His vision; no
callosity of emotion deadened the smart of pain in His heart.
Were we to apprehend all the anguish of the poor, all the
agony of those who slowly starve, all the torments endured
by wronged women, all the hurt of body and mind endured by
innocent children, all the fury of remorse inflicted upon the souls
of men who awake too late to a consciousness of their guilt,
1 Francis Xavier.
The Hour and the Cup 467
and could there pass before our minds all the sin and misery
crowded into the world's experience at any hour, such acute
and all-embracing perception would assuredly disturb the balance
of judgement and rob us of our sanity. Now it really seems as
if Jesus apprehended, with intellectual grasp and emotional sensi
bility, all the meaning of the world's severance from God. There
was no cloud upon His conscience, no impenetrable scale cover
ing His heart: hence, in the hour of His desolation, He was
shaken and dismayed. But when the first paroxysm of grief
had broken, and He had steadied His soul with prayer, Jesus
of His own free-will took up the burden of the world's sin and
shame, and offered His own perfect obedience to the Heavenly
Father as a sacrifice for the reconciliation of humanity. As
we have seen, by His oneness with every man; by His self-
identification with the race in mighty sympathy, and by a mystic
community in the realm of personal spirits, Jesus felt as though
all souls, all wills, all consciences, were concentrated in His own
Spirit, so that He suffered and acted for all. And the task
which was thus laid upon Him was to draw the humanity He
represented into moral harmony with the Divine Will of un
changing Righteousness. Such a sacrifice as this was not merely
a negative act of renunciation; it was a great positive projection
of His personal force against evil. The hour in which this
sacrifice culminated was dark, and the cup which held this
draught of sorrow was bitter; but He drained it to the dregs,
saying : " Father, Thy will be done."
8. When the first tumultuous uprising of His sorrow had
subsided, Jesus came back to the three disciples, and finding
them heavy with sleep, He said to Simon : " Sleepest thou ?
Hadst thou not strength to watch one hour? Watch and pray,
that ye may not come into temptation. The Spirit is willing,
but the flesh is weak." This exquisite blending of reproach and
apology breathes the fine sensibility and magnanimity of our
Lord, and carries in its tone the testimony of its historicity.
One wonders that those men could sleep in that hour, and
suspects that they did not even realize the imminence of
death. Puzzling though it is to us, the very incoherence between
Christ's reiterated warnings of the coming doom, and the un-
expectant mood of those who heard, can belong only to the realm
of historic fact. Fancy would either have omitted the frequent
468 The Finished Work
forecasts of the Cross, or it would surely have invented some
correspondence in the attitude of the disciples. Their dulness
of comprehension, though at times it has seemed incredible, can
be explained by the obsession of their minds by the material
Messianism of their age. Ideas of condemnation and death,
however often repeated, were too utterly discordant with popular
hopes and beliefs to gain any intelligible place in their thought;
therefore, these disciples moved forward to the end, hoping
against hope that their Lord would soon restore the Kingdom
to Israel. A second and a third time Jesus returned to His
disciples, and seemed surprised at their persistent drowsiness,
exclaiming, " Ye still sleep and rest ! " Then came an interrup
tion which can be understood only on the supposition that Jesus
had received some intimation of Judas's agreement with the
chief priests to betray Him for so much silver. It is possible
that Jesus had learned of this thing by some kind of prophetic
intuition; and yet He could scarce credit such baseness in the
man He had called His friend. But at the instant when He
was commenting upon the continued sleep, He caught the murmur
of voices and tramp of many feet; then looking up, He saw the
flash of torches through the trees ; at once His premonition about
Judas and the bribe was confirmed, and in amazed and indignant
sorrow He made the ejaculation, " he did receive it! " x Turning
at once to the disciples, Jesus said : " The hour has come ! Be
hold the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.
Rise : let us go. Behold, My betrayer is near ! "
" Into the woods my Master went
Clean forspent, forspent;
Into the woods my Master came
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him;
The little grey leaves were kind to Him;
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him
When into the woods He came.
" Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was well-content;
'In The Expositor, Dec. 1905, J. De Zwaan examines the uses of the
word airixu and concludes — (a) it is never used impersonally: (/3) it
has nowhere the meaning : sufUcit, it is enough : ( y ) b.'Kixuv nearly al
ways means to have received, usually in a commercial sense ; ( <5 ) bmkxu
has no other sense than that which is proper to the third pers. sing, of
the pres. ind. of the aforesaid verb. The use of this word here is another
instance of St. Mark's peculiar originality and keen historical sense."
The Hour and the Cup 469
Out of the woods my Master came,
Content with death and shame.
When death and shame would woo Him last;
From under the trees they drew Him last,
'Twas on a tree they slew Him last,
When out of the woods He came." '
9. The details of the arrest of Jesus are somewhat confused,
and in consequence only the main facts of this hurried tragedy
can be known with certainty. With a shepherd's true instinct,
Jesus stepped ahead of His little band and advanced to meet His
enemies, while Judas, guiding a mingled throng, stepped forth
and saluted our Lord with a kiss. The sacrament of love was
made a token for treachery. The reply of Jesus is differently
reported. One evangelist makes Him exclaim, " Comrade, for
what work you are come ! " 2 While St. Luke records the words,
"Judas, betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?" This
third evangelist also states that the chief priests, elders and com
manders (police) of the temple were there; and St. John gives
us to understand that a cohort of Roman soldiers accompanied
them. So manifest, however, was the moral supremacy of Jesus
at this crisis, that those who had pressed forward to arrest Him
now fell back in confusion. When some of them recovered from
their momentary panic and laid hands on Jesus, Simon drew
forth a sword and smote Malchus, the servant of the high-priest :
the ill-aimed blow only cut off the man's ear. St. Matthew
accords with St. John in representing Jesus as full of self-
possession and ready to make a voluntary surrender. " Put back
thy sword into its place," He said. " For all those who take
the sword shall perish with the sword. Or, thinkest thou that
I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will provide Me now
with more than twelve legions of angels? How then shall the
scriptures be fulfilled, that so it must come to pass ? " St. Luke
alone makes the characteristic addition that Jesus immediately
healed the man's wounded ear; and if this were so it would
explain how it was that no mention of Simon's act of violence
was charged against Him at His trial. It should be noted, how
ever, that Dr. E. A. Abbot regards this Lucan detail as an
instance of substitution through misunderstanding of the rebuke
to Peter and the command to restore the sword to its place; he
surmises that St. Luke wrongly applied some ambiguous word in
' Sidney Lanier.
'Fritzsche takes 6 = olov. (Exp. Gk. Test, Matt. xxvi. 49.)
470 The Finished Work
the original tradition to the ear instead of applying it to the
sword.1 Then all the hopes and courage of the disciples oozed
away, and they all forsook Him and fled. In St. Mark's gospel
is found one other little incident in this arrest which may indeed
be " the monogram of the painter in the dark corner of the
picture." Some young man had been disturbed by a warning
that Jesus was in danger; rising hurriedly from his couch he
had thrown a linen cloth around his person and gone out. If he
proposed communicating with Jesus he was too late and reached
the Garden only in time to see the arrest completed. Seeing
the youth some of the mob tried to lay hold upon him, but he,
slipping off his only covering, escaped into the darkness. One
wonders whether we may identify this unnamed youth with
Mark the evangelist, — at whose house in the city, it may be,
Jesus had supped a few hours previously, — if so we are brought
into closest possible contact with actual scenes and their first
hand witnesses. If this identification must be left undecided,
still there is no doubt that the course of events described in
this chapter can be regarded as historically reliable. After His
Agony Jesus voluntarily accepted all the consequences of His
mental surrender to the Father's holy will: He drank the cup
and endured the hour.
1 Class. Rev., December, 1893, p. 443. Plummer's Luke, p. 545.
CHAPTER II
THE WAY OF THE CROSS
I. The poet-philosopher of ancient Greece said, " Philosophy
begins in wonder. He was not a bad genealogist who said that
Iris is the child of Thaumas." x Truth, the messenger of the
gods, " that passes to and fro between heaven and earth and
brings them into communion," is the child of Wonder. We have
given no meagre part to the play of wholesome criticism in the
foregoing study of the Ministry of Jesus ; but, as we have entered
into the mysterious sanctuary of sorrow, a sense of awe, of
reverence, has surged up in our minds; and, while prepared to
acknowledge all the difficulties of the text, we are forced to
contemplate the Cross with a great wonder. Nothing stirs so
much in us as the Cross does — " the burden of the mystery
"Of all this unintelligible world."
One of the new " Oxyrhynchus " sayings run thus : " Jesus saith,
Let not him who seeks the Father cease until he find Him ; and
having found Him, let him be amazed ; and being amazed he shall
reign, and reigning shall rest." 2 Akin to this is the logion pre
served by Clement of Alexandria, also omitted from the Gospels,
" He that wonders shall reign." 3 This must, therefore, be the
dominant mood or key-thought, as we seek to gain a true im
pression of the last grand event of our Lord's earthly ministry.
We dare not let the exacting spirit of criticism slay the soul's
wonder, which is the Mother of true thought.
2. To His enemies, who had come out in such force, Jesus
said: "This is your hour and the power of darkness." Unre
strained by aught of gentleness or of gratitude, men bound Him
as though He were a dangerous prisoner, little recking that they
would have had no power over Him had not His Heavenly
Father given Him into their hands. St. John states that Jesus
was led away first to the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high-
1 Plato, Theatt., 155, Jowett. * Oxyrhynchus Logia.
* Stromateis, v. 4. § 97-
471
472 The Finished Work
priest, whose name was Annas. This man had been the high
priest from a.d. 7 till a.d. 14, and was followed by five sons,
who wore the mitre in succession. It may have been that this
able yet unscrupulous man was living under his son-in-law's roof ;
and, if this were so, some of the obscurities of the Gospels would
vanish. Annas took the occasion to ask the prisoner some pre
liminary questions before he led the way to Caiaphas, who was
to preside over the subsequent inquiry. As though he would
fain gauge the actual strength of the movement Jesus had begun,
the high-priest then asked his prisoner about His teaching and
His disciples, marvelling the while that this Galilean prophet had
impressed Himself so deeply upon the popular imagination.
Jesus appealed to the memories of those who had heard His public
teaching, and refused to be inveigled into futile controversies ; He
might have had Socrates' defence in His mind : " If anyone says
that he has learned or heard anything from me in private which
all the world has not heard, let me tell you that he is lying." x
Irritated by His dauntless bearing one of the sycophantic crew
smote Jesus, and exclaimed, " Answerest Thou the high-priest
so ? " Exquisitely sensitive to every touch of inhumanity,
whether shown toward others or toward Himself, Jesus remon
strated, " If I have spoken wrongly, give evidence of wrong; but
if rightly, why beat me ? "
3. The priests, elders and scribes of the Sanhedrim were
summoned at once, that Jesus might be subjected to a form of
trial; although really, the majority of them had prejudged the
case, and were now desirous only of getting such evidence as
would justify a sentence of death. His enemies, however, found
but little wherewith they might accuse Him. It might have been
expected that His frequent violations of the Sabbath, which had
brought about the first breach between the hierarchy and Jesus,
would have been charged against Him; that no such accusa
tion appears in the record can be explained by the supposition
that those who directed the trial feared lest any recollection of
His Sabbath miracles should evoke too much sympathy. How
pure, then, must have been that life, since the most damaging
testimony against Him was that He had spoken ambiguous words
against the temple : " I will break down this sanctuary made with
hands, and after three days I will build another not made with
1 Apology, 33-
The Way of the Cross 473
hands." 1 Edged with malevolence though it was, such evidence
lacked cogency, and proved unequal to the sentence demanded.2
Baffled by this surprising lack of testimony, the high-priest for
got the reserve due to the dignity of his office, and, advancing into
the semicircle of counsellors, tried to entangle Jesus into some
self-committing statement about His Messiahship. The uncon
cealed animus of His judges made Jesus indignantly silent.
Vexed at this muteness, and fearing that the prisoner might be
exonerated, Caiaphas, who looked upon Jesus as an enemy of the
state, enjoined Him upon oath to answer if He were the Messiah.
The whole Ministry of Jesus had made this question inevitable,
and although it had been suppressed until now, it underlay the
thought of every one of those judges. Silence now might be
taken as a renunciation of His claim, and even though He was
aware that His listeners would interpret the title of Messiah very
differently from Himself, He could not allow them to imagine
that He renounced it ; therefore, He answered, " I am ; and you
shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power
and coming in the clouds of the sky." In these apocalyptic terms,
Jesus in the hour of His trial breathed the assurance of His
ultimate triumph, and showed that He was looking beyond death
to some glorious parousia, such as the ancient prophets had fore
told. There are critics who will treat these words as the evidence
of illusions cherished by the Man of Nazareth ; while some there
are, on the other hand, who believe that the balanced and lucid
mind of Jesus was fed by a spirit of prophecy. Caiaphas, al
though it was the very utterance he had wished for, treated such
self-attesting words as direst blasphemy or madness, and with
simulated or real horror, rent his priestly vestments, exclaiming,
" What further witnesses .do we need ? " " And they all con
demned Him to the doom of death." Then they began to heap
contumely upon Him, as though He were some wretched pretender ;
"even the officers received Him with slaps of the open hand."
That even menials should have been permitted to treat Jesus with
such brutal indignities, shows that the hierarchy desired to strip
Him of every vestige of honour by the rude instrument of public
ridicule. The Sanhedrim condemned Jesus as deserving of
death, because He claimed to be the Messiah ; ignoring that this
title on His lips was Spiritual rather than Temporal, Human and
1Matt. omits rbv xeiponoif/vrov and tM-ov dxetpoiroi^rov, xxvi. 6l.
2 mi laai al /larvpiai ovk f/aav, Mark xiv. 56.
474 The Finished Work
not merely National, and that it was a claim to the over-lordship
of all the world.
4. While our Lord was being subjected to this ordeal, His
disciple, Simon, was also undergoing the testing that the Master
had forewarned. St. John's account of this incident might lead
us to imagine that the denial took place during the examination
of Jesus by Annas, while the Synoptists place it in the palace
of Caiaphas. This discrepancy would be explained by adopting
the suggestion we have made that Annas may have been stay
ing with his son-in-law. Concerning the fact of Simon's denial,
there is no uncertainty; for it is not the kind of thing that the
Primitive Church would invent. Whether Simon denied his Lord
once or thrice; whether the same serving-maid repeated her
accusing inquiry, or two distinct persons detected the marks of
his Galilean accent; whether the cock crew once or twice, —
the fact remains sure that this impetuous fisherman, who a few
hours earlier had avowed His readiness to die for His Master,
now under the stress of fear even denied acquaintance with
Him. But then, how came Simon within the precincts of the
high-priest's house? St. Mark plainly asserts that at the arrest
the disciples "forsook Him (Jesus) and fled"; but the fourth
evangelist states that Simon " was following Jesus " with another
disciple, and this unnamed companion was " known unto the
high-priest." Professor Burkitt makes a curious suggestion that
this second disciple may be identified with the author of the
Fourth Gospel, but not with Zebedee's son ; that he was the John
" who had been a priest and worn the high-priest's mitre," but
had been converted from Sadduceism to follow Jesus.1 What
ever acceptance this novel theory may find, we must go the length
of recognizing that the unnamed disciple was a person of suffi
cient influence to obtain entrance for himself and Simon into the
palace of the high-priest. There was considerable daring in
venturing among these enemies of Jesus after his assault upon
Malchus — more, in fact, than Simon could maintain. The night
was cold, and as he stood by the fire a serving-maid accosted him
as a disciple of Jesus. A sudden terror smote on Simon's heart,
and instantly words of denial escaped him. St. John adds that
another, a kinsman of Malchus, came a little later and repeated
the interrogation. St. Luke suppresses all mention of Simon's
' The Gospel History and its Transmission, p. 248.
The Way of the Cross 475
oaths; but it is too plain that the denial became more vehement
when repeated. Then a cock crew, or the hour of the cock
crow was signalled, and at that moment Jesus turned as He
stood in the higher part of the court and looked at Simon. In
stantly the disloyal disciple repented of his sin, and going out
wept bitterly. Such a sudden, undesigned fall as this cannot be
compared with the treachery of Judas ; at the same time it deep
ened the wounds of Jesus, made by the friends of His own
household. The cruelest blow is love's denial by someone
beloved. 5. The Sanhedrim, it is said,1 was deprived of the prerogative
of deciding cases of great importance ; but this in nowise contra
dicts the representation of the Gospels that the counsellors made
a preliminary investigation to prepare to lay the matter before the
Roman procurator. Irregular and legally ineffectual as this mid
night trial was, it served to give the Sanhedrists their cue in
appealing to Pilate. How long the interval proved before the
praetorium (i.e. the governor's tent) was open, we do not know;
nor are we sure whether it was in Herod's palace or in the
fortress of Antonia. Obscure as are the allusions to time, we
ought not to pass unnoticed the statement that the chief
priests refrained from going into the praetorium, lest they should
be ceremonially defiled and debarred from eating the Paschal
Lamb. It confirms our belief that the Supper of the previous
evening was an anticipatory Pascha. The Sanhedrists had hoped
that Pilate might content himself with confirming the death sen
tence upon Jesus on the strength of their examination of Him;
but the feeling for justice, so natural to a Roman judge, may
have been reinforced in this case by latent resentment at the
arrogance of those Jewish priests. Despite all the ridicule that
has been poured upon the notion that Pilate played the part of
a peripatetic judge, we find nothing improbable in the procurator's
decision to examine Jesus in private. St. Luke specifies three
' Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah: Diet, of the Bible,
iv., p. 401.
Edersheim, vol. i., p. 128, "The Sanhedrin did exist during his
(Herod's) reign, though it must have been shorn of all real power, and
its activity confined to ecclesiastical, or semi-ecclesiastical, causes." P. 238,
"After the accession of Herod the Sanhedrin became a shadow of it
self." Vol. ii., p. S56, "The Sanhedrin would be accorded full jurisdic
tion in inferior and in religious matters, with the greatest show, but
with the least amount of real rule, or of superior authority."
476 The Finished Work
definite accusations made before Pilate against Jesus; He was
" charged with seditious agitation, with forbidding tribute to
Caesar, and with claiming to be King of the Jews. The self-
evident discrepancy between the serious accusations of treason
and the modesty of the prisoner's bearing prompted Pilate to ask
ironically, " Art thou the King of the Jews ? " It must have occa
sioned some astonishment in the governor's mind when, instead of
giving a direct reply, Jesus inquired if he asked with any per
sonal interest in His doctrine, or whether he only repeated what
others had told him. Even at that trying moment there appears
a sublime enthusiasm in Jesus, so that the appearance of honesty
in His Roman judge at once detached His attention from His own
desperate case to His dominant ambition to advance the Kingdom
of Truth. Pilate scornfully answered that he was no Jew, but
that he desired to know of what matter Jesus had been guilty.
Then, lifted above all thought of self-preservation, the prisoner
affirmed His Kingship and explained it : " My reign is not of this
world; were My reign of this world, My officers would have
fought to prevent Me from being delivered to the Jews ; but My
realm is not from hence." 1 Pilate was amazed at the prisoner's
claim and said, " So Thou art a king ! " " Certainly," said Jesus,
" I am a king. For this end have I been born, and for this end
have I come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every
one who is of the truth hears My voice." Whatever be the ulti
mate judgement upon these words, it can hardly be gainsaid that
the chief offence of Jesus which brought Him to His end was the
jinretracted claim to be the Messianic King. The words, whether
spoken by Jesus, or whether they simply grew out of the con
sciousness of the Primitive Church, fit in with the calm dignity
and courage of the Master. Never before or since have egoism
so immense and lowliness so true blended thus strangely. Think
ing that He was some deluded dreamer or enthusiastic Stoic,
Pilate asked sceptically and impatiently, " Truth ! What is
truth ? " Without waiting for an answer, he went forth to the
accusers with the memorable verdict : " I find nothing criminal in
this man ! " The priests angrily retorted that Jesus had stirred
up the people throughout the land from Galilee unto Jerusalem.
This suggested to Pilate a way out of the embroglio; he would
send the Prisoner to Herod to be tried. Although the trial
' Dr. Dods, IvreiMzv, as though He " has other worlds in view."
The Way of the Cross 477
before Herod has been much doubted, still, as Schleiermacher '
has said, " the transaction is too circumstantially detailed to admit
a doubt; and our reporter seems to have an acquaintance in the
house of Herod who supplied Him with this fact, as John seems
to have had in the house of Annas." This informant may have
been Joanna, the wife of Chuza. The tetrarch, it appears, had
lost his earlier fear that Jesus was John^eturnetTToTifeTlirid-
was flattered by Pilate's courtesy, while he thought that perhaps
the Prisoner might perform some miracle before him. Jesus
knew the character of Herod, and refused to say anything. Such
taciturnity seemed to Herod a proof that Jesus had no excep
tional power, but was merely some poor ignorant fanatic, who
had deceived Himself and the people; therefore he ordered that
He should be arrayed in bright raiment like some stage-king, and
taken back to Pilate with an ingratiating compliment.
6. Paradoxical as it may seem, Jesus was really the Judge
of all who were at that trial; His character was a moral touch
stone ; in His white light the malignity and murderous fury of the
priests and Pharisees could not be hidden; and while the pusil
lanimity of Pilate could not withstand their resoluteness, the
very proximity of Jesus awakened something like conscience and
solicitude in the Roman Judge. Someone reminded him of the
Paschal custom of setting a prisoner at liberty ; and Pilate, reiter
ating that Jesus had done naught to deserve death, proposed to
chastise Him and let Him go. The Jews, however, preferred
that a murderer should be emancipated, and shouted of Jesus,
" Away with Him ! Release Bar- Abbas for us ! " And, to
Pilate's remonstrance, gave back the deafening shout, " Crucify !
Crucify Him ! " " We have a law," they said, " and by the law
He ought to die, because He made Himself out to be God's Son."
There was not only a vein of superstition in Pilate, but also more
than a touch of cowardice; and, seeing this, Jesus remained
silent when he came again to renew his inquiries. When Pilate
vaunted his power either to release Him or to condemn, Jesus
simply reminded him that this was a trust from above, and added,
as though He would exculpate His judge, that Caiaphas, who was
the leader of the Sanhedrim and had delivered Him to the
Roman tribunal, was guilty of the greater sin. Interpreting the
words of Jesus in this way, it appears that He pitied Pilate and
1St. Luke (Eng. trans.), p. 304.
478 The Finished Work
credited the high-priest with the crime of using even the power
of Rome as an instrument of religious apostasy. Pilate's per
plexity was increased by a superstitious message from his wife:
" Have nothing to do with that just Man, for I have suffered to
day many things through Him in a dream." But the judge's
vacillations ended in surrender; for those obstinate Jews threat
ened him with the taunt that, if he released Jesus he would not
be Caesar's friend; and Pilate felt afraid to incur the displeasure
of his gloomy, tyrannical master. Having weakly yielded against
his better judgement, St. Matthew says that He disclaimed all
responsibility by symbolically washing his hands and exclaiming,
" I am innocent of the blood of this just man: see you to it."
7. The next step in that sorrowful drama was the handing
over of Jesus to the Roman soldiers; and those rough men are
represented as indulging in brutal merriment over this Jewish
King, throwing over Him the robes of mock royalty — the same
garment, perhaps, in which Herod had sent Him back to Pilate.1
Then, having scourged their Prisoner, they crowned Him with
plaited thorns and gave Him a reed for a sceptre ; they also spat
upon Him and kept smiting Him on the head. As He was brought
forth again, St. John represents Pilate as making a final appeal
in words which mean so much more than the speaker intended,
" Behold the Man ! " To the Roman judge it seemed the acme of
absurdity to cherish fears of such a helpless victim ; surely, such
an one could do naught to injure the state. The flagellation
may have taken place before the second examination by Pilate,
as St. John states; but the order of events is confused in the
Gospels. The governor's hope to get Jesus off was given up;
from the judgement-seat at the place of the tesselated pavement,
he finally pronounced the sentence of Crucifixion. The fourth
evangelist looked upon this victory of Christ's foes as the sur
render of all national hopes, — the final abandonment of the very
vestiges of political liberty. And we, who belong not to the
Israel after the flesh, see in this defeat of justice, — the doom of the
Son of Man, — the culminating instance of an oft-repeated tragedy
of the overthrow of the cause of humanity by injustice, envy,
greed and armed selfishness. And yet they could not have
bound Him with cords, had He Himself not first bound His heart
and hands with love. Through all we discern the autonomy of a
' Mark, voptfipav, purple garment ; Matt., #Aa/i{icfa kokkLvt/v, scarlet robe.
The Way of the Cross 479
true Priest, as well as the fitness of the victim of sacrifice:
Passus quia Ipse voluit.
8. The gospel of St. John states that Jesus was led out to
Golgotha bearing His own Cross ; but the earlier Gospels inform
us that Jesus was exhausted and fell under the weight of the
heavy beam, and that the Cyrenian Simon x was impressed into
the service of carrying the burden for Jesus. St. Luke adds,
further, that in the procession were also two criminals who were
being led out for execution. The several evangelists record,
with verbal variations, how that on the tablet or beam was in
scribed the title which summed up the accusation against Jesus,
" The King of the Jews." Angry at what they took to be a
satire upon their nation, the Jewish leaders asked the governor
to modify it by the statement that this was what Jesus called
Himself; but Pilate repulsed them with the laconic utterance,
" What I have written, I have written." It may be added that
in this matter we trace the Roman custom of covering the tablet
with gypsum and inscribing upon it the crime with which the
bearer was charged. As Jesus passed along in sorrowful silence,
He must have contrasted the procession of the Palm Sunday when,
instead of harsh cries for His Crucifixion, the air was rent with
glad hosannas. Yet St. Luke has preserved for us a tradition
that confirms the fourth evangelist's impression of Christ's regal
self-possession and autonomy, even at this stage of His physical
humiliation, showing us that, although worn out with the long
strain of agony, Jesus was still thinking of others rather than of
Himself. This Lucan detail also relieves the common people of
a perfidious apostasy ; for along the road Jesus, seeing " a large
multitude of the people and of women " beating their breasts and
lamenting for Him, He turned and said, with prophetic tender
ness: "Daughters of Jerusalem! weep not for Me,
But weep for yourselves and for your children :
For behold ! days are coming when it shall be said,
Happy the barren— the wombs that have not borne, the breasts that have
not given suck!
'The father of Alexander and Rufus (cf. Rom. xvi. 13 and Acts xix.
«) Some of the Gnostics reported that Simon was crucified instead of
Jesus. The Moslems also believe that Jesus was caught away, and that
some other was slain in His stead.
480 The Finished Work
Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, 'Fall on us,'
And to the mounds, ' cover us ' ;
For if they do this in the green tree,
What shall be done in the dry?"
9. Were the Crucifixion of Jesus an ordinary history of a
criminal execution, we should shrink from dwelling upon the
physical horrors; but the subsequent events issuing from it have
shown it to be the most arrestive tragedy in the annals of our
race ; and however it may be interpreted, the fire of the Passion
behind it purges us of ignoble egotisms. The discrepancy be
tween the earliest and latest gospels L in relation to the hour of
the Crucifixion need not vex us if we remember oriental loose
ness in all speech about time. Another uncertainty is whether
the wine drugged with myrrh was offered indiscriminately to the
victims to stupefy them, or whether St. Matthew's account is
truer, that the gall was offered in cruel sportiveness. The Cross
was probably little higher than the stature of a man; but we do
not know if the soldiers nailed Christ's feet to it as well as His
hands. Besides telling us of the two thieves who were crucified
with Jesus, St. Luke records a very remarkable dialogue among
those sufferers. One of them began to mock Jesus with spiteful
jibes ; he was checked, however, by his companion, who petitioned
Jesus as his Lord to remember him when He should come in
His Kingdom. Surely there could not be a greater miracle of
faith than that this dying criminal should look upon Jesus in His
shameful death-agony as a King whom death could not destroy,
and address to Him such a prayer. Amazing, too, was the calm
certitude of the Crucified Lord, as He answered, " This day shalt
thou be In paradise with Me." Meanwhile the Jewish officials
hurled their satire at Him that He saved others, but could not save
Himself. That taunt is now Christ's highest eulogy; for, as one
has said,2 " Jesus fastened Himself to the Cross with three nails "
— " the one of the love of man," " the other of obedience to the
Eternal Father," and the third, " the zeal of His Glory and of our
Good " — which " three nails " held Him to the Cross more surely
than any iron bonds. In spite of Nature's occasional indiffer
ence to the fate of man, there often seems to be some occult
sympathy between them. In this instance, although it was about
the hour of noon, so strange a darkness fell upon the land that the
' Mark xv. 33 ; John xix. 14.
* Louis De Ponte, Meditations, iv., p. 397.
The Way of the Cross 481
Roman centurion in charge of the execution made the super
stitious ejaculation about that central victim whose demeanour
throughout had impressed him as that of one both Great and
Good, " Truly this was a son of God ! " Quoting a traveller's
experiences, the late Dr. Bruce suggested that it might have been
one of those hot-wind storms which rage from the southeast,
when " the heavens are overcast with a deep grey, and the sun
loses his brightness and disappears. Over the darkened land
rages the storm, so that the country in the morning is like a
flower-carpet, in the evening appears a waste. . . . On the
saddest day in human history swept such a storm at noon over
Jerusalem, adding to the terrors of the Crucifixion ! " *
io. The dying words of those we love are treasured long in
living memories and tend to get repeated. Outside the Gospels
are no records of the " seven words " from the Cross ; it is not
impossible that Jesus spoke articulately but thrice, and that His
words may have been transmitted with oral variations; but
neither is it wholly incredible that Jesus actually spoke these
seven words which preserve the spirit and aroma of His Sacri
fice. The fourth evangelist relates the fulfilment of Simeon's
prediction that Mary's heart should be pierced through as with a
sword. As she stood by the Cross with John, Jesus said,
"Woman, behold thy Son! Behold thy Mother!" St. Luke
preserves the beautiful prayer, " Father, forgive them ; they know
not what they are doing." 2 Next followed that agonizing cry of
defeat — " that mysterious, that two-sided, that incompatible cry —
so spiritually desolate, yet so tranquil in Spirit — " My God, My
God, Why hast Thou forsaken Me?'"3 Of this we can only
say, that, if the words of the twenty-second Psalm were really on
His dying lips, we are sure also that the psalmist's certainty of
deliverance was in His heart. St. John records the cry of thirst.
Some there were who made a jest of the Aramaic " Eloi, Eloi,
lama Sabacthani," saying: "Hold, let us see if Elias comes!"
Ended at last was His curriculum of sorrow ; His obedience was
perfected, the sacrifice was consummated, and Jesus cried, " It is
finished ! " The first two evangelists note that He expired with a
' Furrer, Wanderingen, p. 17s, quoted by Bruce in Expos. Gk. T., Mark,
in loco.
' Omitted Ir. some valuable MSS.
* Moberly, The Atonement and Personality, p. 131.
482 The Finished Work
loud cry ; St. John states that " He bent His head and gave up
the Spirit," while St. Luke says that He commended Himself to
the Heavenly Father with a great voice : " Father, into Thy hands
I entrust My Spirit." The Passion was at an end at last; for
with unseemly haste the enemies of Jesus had hurried events
from the hour of the arrest, and the swift movement of the whole
tragedy seems to have paralyzed the friends of the Master. In
death, however, He found new friends. Joseph of Arimathea
went to Pilate and requested him to give the mangled body to
himself for burial. Seeing that the Crucifixion had lasted a com
paratively short time, one of the soldiers made certain that Jesus
had not simply swooned by piercing His side with a spear; and,
says the Evangelist, recording the tradition of an eye-witness,
" immediately there came out blood and water." It would thus
seem that the sufferings of Jesus had been terminated by the
literal breaking of His heart. Joseph had purchased linen for
the body, and Nicodemus brought myrrh and aloes, and together
these two counsellors laid the body in a new sepulchre, " where
as yet no man had ever been laid." They were followed by the
women who, " after noting the tomb and how His body was laid,
returned and got ready spices and ointments."
ii. A few brief allusions only are necessary to recall some
of the incidents concurrent with and dependent upon the Cruci
fixion of Jesus. Discrepant accounts are given of the fate of
Judas in St. Matthew and the Acts of the Apostles. The Jewish
evangelist takes the Marcan tradition that the chief priests
"promised to give him (Judas) money" and expands it by an
inexact quotation of ancient prophecy. He also states that when
Judas saw that Jesus was condemned, he was stricken with re
morse, and, returning the silver to the priests, went and hanged
himself; that then the priests took up the rejected money and
purchased with it the " Potter's Field," which henceforth came to
be known as the Field of Blood, and was used as a cemetery for
strangers. On the other hand, St. Luke says nothing of the
traitor's remorse, but represents him as buying a field with the
blood-money, and afterwards meeting his death by a fall. The
name Akeldama may be simply the Aramaic equivalent for
" cemetery." Out of these discrepancies emerge the generally
accepted belief that, after the betrayal of Jesus, Judas, either by
accident or suicide, came to a ghastly and untimely end. Sceptical
The Way of the Cross 483
writers have been prone to suggest that the Old Testament oracles
gave incentive to the invention of many details; but reflection
upon such correspondences induces us to believe that the actual
occurrences recalled to men's minds literary and prophetic allu
sions. Thus the callous appeal to chance by the Roman soldiers
in gambling for our Lord's tunic at the foot of the Cross, would
remind subsequent writers of the words of the psalm, " They
part my garments among them, and upon my vesture do they cast
lots." Some of the supposed incidents may have arisen from
symbolism afterwards used to set forth the consequences of
Christ's sacrifice ; but, while admitting such a possibility, we are
far from feeling sure that they were not real occurrences. St.
Mark affirms that at our Lord's death the thick, gorgeous veil
of the temple, through which only the high-priest might pass once
a year on the Day of Atonement, was rent from top to bottom.
For the imagination of the Primitive Church, such a figure might
naturally be used to illustrate the new access that Christ's death
gave to man by removing all hindrances. St. Matthew describes
the Death as accompanied by an earthquake, and asserts that
the tombs were opened and that the dead returned as phantoms.
Few today would boldly venture to say that such things could
not happen, and many will admit a certain propriety in setting
forth the mighty issues of our Lord's sacrifice in such legendary
symbolism. If such fringes of the Passion narratives be treated
as Aberglaube, still they serve to accentuate the feeling of won
der felt by the early Christians as they brooded over the mystery
of the Cross.
12. In this study of the Crucifixion, our purpose has been
severely historical and not doctrinal ; but it seems natural that a
few impressional reflections should follow. Jesus died. But we
do not know all that death means; the outward visible signs
mark a change in relationship, but they do not necessarily imply
any destruction of the spiritual part. Our impressions of the
Crucifixion will be determined largely by our conception of
Christ's Personality. Jesus was a true Priest; He stood near
to God and near to man ; and all admit that He sustained unique
relations with the Heavenly Father. His death, therefore, was
not merely a memorable and isolated martyrdom, from which we
deduce lessons of patience, obedience and piety; it was a great
sacrifice made in the service of humanity. Jesus on the Cross fui-
484 The Finished Work
filled the Greek ideal of some great compassionate Titan strug
gling against the inexorable tyranny of evil and wresting from
the future some uplift for the race. As He approached His
doom, Jesus said : " The prince of this world cometh and in Me
he hath not anything." " His Death was the natural climax and
crowning instance of the contradiction provoked by His inex
tinguishable zeal for righteousness." x It is recorded by St.
Luke that, six weeks later, Simon Peter described Jesus as " being
delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of
God," and crucified and slain " by the hand of lawless men."
With this view, however, must be joined St. John's persistent
thought of Christ's voluntariness in death. He offered up Him
self in obedience to the Divine appointment ; He handed Himself
over to His enemies. His Death was therefore " a perfect Amen
in humanity to the judgement of God on the sin of man." 2 In
stead of invoking legions of angels for His rescue, as He said
He might have done, He subordinated the tragedy to His life-
purpose and made Death a sacrifice for the race of which He re
mains the Spiritual head. By such autonomy in suffering He
changed ignominy into exaltation, humiliation into glory. " The
Lord reigned from the Tree." The self-immolation of our Lord
removed the thick veils that had hidden God the Father, and
raised men into a reconstituted Spiritual relationship. The touch
of Death made sacred all that belonged to Him.
1 Bruce, The Humiliation, p. 295.
'M'Leod Campbell, On the Nature of the Atonement, p. 138.
CHAPTER III
JESUS RISES AND APPEARS
I. Books of ordinary biography conclude with the death
scenes, and statements of posthumous influence; but St. Luke,
having traced the account of Jesus from the miraculous birth to
the Crucifixion and Resurrection, writes a sequel in which he
describes his earlier treatise as simply relating " the things which
Jesus began both to do and to teach until the day of His Assump
tion." In these words is implied the whole faith of the Apostolic
Church. Death was not the end of Jesus; it constituted a new
beginning of His wider Ministry. The presuppositions of Natu
ralism prevent belief in any work after death. From this point
of view, the measure of emphasis upon the moral beauty of the
life of Jesus is also the measure of His dismal and squalid
failure. Such an estimate makes life, alike at its highest and
its lowest, the play of grim necessity; it leaves no room tor
moral differences, there is neither good nor ill. But it is a mat
ter of historic fact that death did not cause the cessation of
Christ's activity; all the various and rich phenomena of the
Christian religion sprang from the Cross and the Grave. " What
ever may have happened at the grave and in the matter of the
appearances, one thing is certain: this grave was the birthplace
of the indestructible belief that death is vanquished, that there
is life eternal." x So real are these post-Crucifixion activities of
Christ that some who have found themselves unable to accept the
Resurrection fact have joined with certain of the Gnostics and
Mohammedans in denying that Jesus actually suffered death by
crucifixion. The Moslem doctors assert that at the end some
substitute took the place of Jesus and was crucified; while cer
tain critics within Christendom have clutched at the imagined
possibility that Jesus succumbed tin the Cross to a profound
swoon. But the true student of history is forced, sooner or later,
to abandon such fanciful expedients and to admit the fact that
* A. Harnack, What is Christianity!' p. 162.
485
486 The Finished Work
Jesus suffered the bitter pangs of death — even the death of the
Cross. St. Matthew relates that the Jewish authorities, having
secured the Crucifixion, next obtained a guard for the grave.
" Sir," they said to Pilate, " we have remembered that when
this deceiver was alive, He said, ' After three days I rise again.'
Give orders, then, to have the sepulchre secured until the third
day, lest the disciples come and steal Him away and say to the
people, ' He rose from the dead,' and so the last fraud will be
worse than the first." Impatient at such relentless and pertina
cious hate on the part of the high-priests and Pharisees, Pilate
brusquely exclaimed, " Take a guard and begone ! Secure it
yourselves, as you know how." " So," says the Evangelist, " they
went and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, the guard
being with them." The failure of the disciples to understand
their Lord's repeated predictions that He would rise again had
not prevented vague rumours of these remarkable sayings from
becoming known. But some critics have implied that, had there
been a " watch " placed about the sealed grave, the pious women
of the Gospels would hardly have expected to be allowed to open
the tomb and embalm the body. Since, however, St. Matthew
states that the precaution of a military guard was not petitioned
until the day following the Crucifixion, the women may well have
been ignorant of the fact that the authorities had made the grave
inaccessible to them.
2. The historical certainty that Jesus died on the Cross and
was buried cannot be shaken; yet this fact alone could never
have proved the foundation of the Christian Religion; with it
must be joined, in coequal assurance, the fact that there grew up,
within a few short weeks at most, a belief that Jesus rose again
from the tomb. Even scholars who were predisposed, to reject
the possibility of miracles, and are compelled by their philosophic
premisses to disbelieve the Resurrection-fact, have been forced
to admit the rise and spread of the Resurrection-faith, and also
to acknowledge that this primitive faith alone accounts for the
origin and power of the Christian Church. The problem con
fronting the critics is to account for the faith while they reject
the fact. This Resurrection-faith created the Church ; it gave to
the apostles a victorious certainty in their work of propagating
the Gospel : nay, it even gave the essential idea and kernel of their
Gospel, and now forms the underlying assumption of the entire
Jesus Rises and Appears 487
New Testament. In the very earliest writing of the New Testa
ment the Resurrection-faith is assumed to be coextensive with
the Church : " If we believe that Jesus died and rose, so also will
God bring with Him, through Jesus, those who have fallen
asleep." x We do not exceed the range of literal veracity by
affirming that the New Testament writers simply take it for
granted that the bodily resurrection of Jesus constituted the
foundation of all Christian doctrine ; and yet it may be remarked
upon as surprising that, while the apostles take the Resurrection-
faith as the ground idea of the Gospel, they nowhere express any
consciousness that it is necessary to prove that this miracle actu
ally occurred. For them the Resurrection was already proved,
and, instead of striving after further demonstration, they take
the fact as itself the verifying evidence of their doctrine and
purpose summed up in the Fourth Gospel, " that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in
His name." * The certainty of the Resurrection produced the
Church, and the Church is the undying witness of the reality of
the Faith. The belief that Jesus lives, acts continually as a re
newing power upon Christian society. Bishop Westcott rightly
affirmed, " It is not an accessory of the Apostolic message, but
the message itself." The conception as expressed by the Evan
gelists and Apostles has itself the characteristics of a revelation."
Further, " The Resurrection offers a new foundation for social
union." 3
Even Schmiedel admits, after enumerating some of the vital
articles of Christianity, such as the doctrine that the death
of Jesus has saving power; that Christ's supremacy over the
Church is secure, and that all believers may look forward to
the resurrection to a life of everlasting blessedness, that " if at
any time it should come to be recognized that the Resurrection
of Jesus never happened, the Christian faith with respect to all
these points would come to an end."
3. As we have observed, the omission of all attempts at
demonstrating historically the grounds for the belief in the
Resurrection-fact only accentuates the naive certainty of the
Easter- faith ; and we must now strive to appraise the true
value of this apostolic conviction from the standpoint of history.
' Thess. iv. 14. T 2Johnxxi.3l.
8 Westcott, The Gospel of the Resurrection, Intro. 52 and chap 111., p. I.
488 The Finished Work
St. Paul is our earliest literary witness ; his first authentic epistle
carries the mind back within twenty years of the Crucifixion, and
at that time he was able to assume the Resurrection of Jesus as
a fact established beyond doubt in all Christian circles. Behind
this apostolic literary testimony was the transmitted oral wit
ness of those who knew Jesus intimately. All the recorded and
implied circumstances show that there could have been no time
for the gestation of a new myth; the faith arose immediately
after Jesus had publicly died, and was avowed by the disciples,
who had evinced no previous expectancy of His reappearance.
St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Galatians, gives a few slight auto
biographical details of two visits to Jerusalem which he made,
the second occurring fourteen years after the first. Since from
Acts xv. we calculate that the second visit was made not later
than a.d. 51, it may be inferred that about a.d. 37, or three
years after his conversion, St. Paul spent fifteen days with
Cephas at Jerusalem. " But," he writes, " no other of the apostles
saw I except James the brother of the Lord." Then it was that
this keen dialectician, who still astonishes men by the philosophic
breadth and insight of his letters, inquired of the men who knew
at first-hand concerning the historical appearances of the Risen
Jesus, who had been revealed in himself within twelve or eighteen
months of the Crucifixion. It has been remarked that St. Paul
made no mention of the empty grave, and that his faith rested
upon his own subjective vision of Jesus, and not upon the ground
of a physical resurrection. But it is scarcely possible to give a
fair interpretation to St. Paul's testimony, and not recognize that
the emphasis falls upon the Resurrection-fact, and carries the
implication that the Body of Jesus had actually been taken up and
restored to the Spirit of a Victorious Christ. Further, we con
jecture, without using the supposition as evidence, that so- keen
a man as this apostle would be eager to see the place where our
Lord had lain. That apostle had not built his faith upon the sight
of an empty tomb, but upon the spiritual experience he had re
ceived, that Christ was a living Person ; and yet in his subsequent
writings St. Paul implies his belief that the Body of Christ did not
see corruption. Impartiality in this matter will perhaps be as
sured by the fact that today our faith in the Living Christ is not
dependent upon the historical evidence of the physical resurrec
tion. At the same time it does not seem that the faith can be
reasonably accounted for apart from the fact; and the fact will
Jesus Rises and Appears 489
ever possess both an historical and a spiritual value for all who
are able to admit it.
4. Although, as literary products, the Gospels and the Acts of
the Apostles belong to a later date than St. Paul's Epistles, yet
the testimonies and beliefs embodied in them take us back to the
actual occurrences of the Evangelic Ministry of Jesus: Whatever
modifications had taken place in the processes of oral transmis
sion, we do not believe that the remembrances of the first eye
witnesses were substantially altered. The defects and discrepan
cies of the Gospels lie on the surface; the authors were mani
festly too ingenuous and honest to strive after any artificial har
mony. And for this very reason their narratives yield fewer
points of contact than we should wish. Strauss has ventured the
serious indictment that " the various evangelical writers only
agree as to a few of the appearances of Jesus after His Resurrec
tion; the designation of the locality in one excludes the appear
ances narrated by the rest; the determination of time in another
leaves no space for the narratives of his fellow-Evangelists; the
enumeration of a third is given without any regard to the events
reported by his predecessors; lastly, among several appearances
recounted by various narrators, each claims to be the last, and yet
has nothing in common with the others." 1 But this verdict, how
ever honestly given, is as much due to the influence of the critic's
presuppositions as it is grounded upon the data of the Gospels.
The late Bishop Westcott affirmed that " the circumstances under
which God is said to have given a revelation to men in the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus were such as to make the special
manifestation of power likely, or even natural ; and the evidence
by which the special Revelation is supported is such as would in
any ordinary matter of life be amply sufficient to determine
our action and belief." " It is not too much to say that there is
no single historic incident better or more variously supported
than the Resurrection of Christ." 2 Although few students
would now echo such absolute dogmatic assurance, — so changed is
the temper of the times, — yet neither would a balanced judgement
swing to the other extreme position held by Strauss. Once again
we may seek guidance between these irreconcilable dicta by
recalling our impressions received from the totality of facts about
' Strauss, Life of Jesus, pt. iii., chap, iv., p. 138.
2 Westcott, The Gospel of the Resurrection, chap. 1., par. 63.
490 The Finished Work
Jesus. If the evangelic testimonies about the Resurrection fall in
harmoniously with the general plan of Christ's life which we
have found in the course of this study, then we shall return to
the New Testament witness of this supernatural event with a
presumption in its favour. As we have followed the records of
the evangelists, it has been borne in upon our minds that there
was, in the life of Jesus, a very large element which must be
characterized as supernatural. For ourselves, then, be it said,
we start with no bias against the credibility of the Resurrection;
and we do not demand impossibilities in the way of documen
tary evidence, but we are prepared to seek the underlying har
monies which no superficial disagreements can destroy. History
knows no mathematical exactitude ; it is the realm of probabilities :
certitude arises, not simply from the absence of discrepancies, but
from the cumulative weight of convergent testimony. But this
attitude of judgement does not lead us to ascribe to the evangel
ists the critical acumen of scientific historians, for they shared the
weaknesses and credulities of their age; yet their honesty of in
tention is too patent to be denied. We admit the embarrassment
St. Matthew makes us feel by his exclusive record of Galilean
appearances over against St. Luke's recital of Judaean manifesta
tions. St. John, however, mediates between them by his story
of the meeting between Jesus and the Seven Disciples by the
Sea of Tiberius. In the authentic part of St. Mark, no post-
Resurrection appearances are given ; but the appendix enumerates
Christophanies which are recorded by the other evangelists.
5. Ritschlian theologians strive to show that, even though the
bodily resurrection be abandoned as a figment, still the spiritual
value of this idea may be conserved in the experimental doctrine
of Christ's continuing activity. However much of truth may
inhere in this view, there still remains to be explained the dis
ciples' unanimous belief that their Lord had risen. As Baur ac
knowledged, " In the faith of the disciples, the Resurrection of
Jesus Christ came to be regarded as a solid and unquestionable
fact. It was in this fact that Christianity acquired a firm basis
for its historical development." 1 The uprising of this faith is a
psychological phenomenon which is most naturally and rationally
explained by the occurrence of the physical fact. We must guard
against the subtle vice of scholars who impose modern refine-
' The First Three Centuries (Eng. trans.), p. 42.
Jesus Rises and Appears 491
ments of thought upon the primitive and naive intelligence of the
New Testament witnesses. In the minds of the disciples their
strong, passionate belief in the Heavenly existence of Jesus was
no deduction of reason drawn from a dogma of immortality;
but it was a conviction forced upon them by mysterious reappear
ances of their Crucified Lord. There can be no doubt that they
believed that Jesus had risen and revisited them; that He ap
peared to them individually and also when together, and even
partook of material food with them. According to the earliest
traditions, these appearances began on the third day after the
Crucifixion and were repeated at intervals through the course
of forty days, when they definitely ceased. The later vision
granted to St. Paul may stand by itself in a separate category.
A facile explanation assigns all these phenomena to hallucination
and hysteria. Now while it would be easily credible that one or
two persons might have been victims of hysterical imaginations,
it is hard to believe that the various groups of disciples and
friends should all have been dupes of their illusory fancies, and
that these hallucinations should last just six weeks, and then
cease altogether. There are no historical data for assuming that
the disciples were predisposed to expect such reappearances; for
they were disappointed, grieved and distracted by the tragedy of
the Crucifixion. Strangely enough, while the high-priests and
Pharisees are said to have recollected Christ's sayings about rising
again, the disciples had so completely forgotten them that some
critics have argued that Jesus never uttered such predictions. The
disciples were not merely unexpectant ; they seemed at first totally
unready to believe that Jesus had risen ; they actually doubted the
first testimonies of their own companions : " for as yet, they knew
not the Scripture that He must rise again from the dead." x No
ancient oracles gave rise to the belief ; the belief, however, became
the occasion of subsequent recollections of Scripture prophecies.
There is not an atom of evidence to show that any one of them
was previously inclined to subjective visions; they were simply
ashamed, terrified and crushed by the inexplicable tragedy of the
Cross. Suddenly, a change came; from the depth of despair
they were, one and all, transported into a mood of victorious cer
tainty that Jesus had risen and was alive again. Then in the light
of this faith, the Cross became transfigured and stood forth as
the Divine Symbol of Love's Conquest. The uprising of this
'John xx. 8.
492 The Finished Work
Resurrection-faith can be accounted for only by the acceptance of
the sensuous perceptions of the appearances of the Risen Jesus.
The inevitable conclusion of our review of the testimonies of the
Gospels and of the antecedents of this new faith, is that the ap
pearances were genuine manifestations made by Jesus to demon
strate to His disciples the reality of His Resurrection. The
theory of subjective visions might have been accepted of St. Paul
alone ; yet even he, by his definite mention of " the third day,"
throws out a concrete detail which harmonizes more easily with
an actual Resurrection-faith than with a visionary ideal. We
accept Dr. Orr's verdict as characteristically sober and grounded
upon the facts of the Gospels : " It will be fully recognized
that . . . the narratives are fragmentary, condensed, often gen
eralized, are different in points of view, difficult in some respects
to fit into each other, yet generally, with patient inspection,
furnishing a key to the solution of their own difficulties — receiv
ing, also, no small elucidation from the better-ordered story of
St. John." 1
6. The Resurrection-faith upon which the Christian Church
was founded, rested then upon the genuine appearances of the
Living Lord; and, unless we rewrite the history of the Gospels,
we must accept the connection of these appearances with the
definite assertion that Jesus rose on " the third day," and that the
tomb that morning was found to be empty. The swoon theory
was shattered by Keim, so that it scarcely demands a passing
allusion; but now suggestions come to us from psychical re
search that the phenomena of the appearances of the Risen Christ
may have been given spiritually, even though His body remained
in the grave. And this seems to many a veritable escape from
all the questions of criticism and from all the inextricable con
fusions inherent in our Gospel narratives. The almost irrecon
cilable nature of the narratives of the Resurrection is a cause of
stumbling for many. Up to the Crucifixion the Synoptists use
a common tradition which can be traced like a thread of gold
through all the minor differences. But in the accounts of the
Resurrection the Evangelists agree in little else than the supreme
and dominating belief that it really occurred. The Apostles
seem never to have attempted to frame a harmonious narrative of
this awe-inspiring event. Such an omission can only be ex-
1 Dr. Orr, in the Expositor, April, 1908, p. 352.
Jesus Rises and Appears 493
plained by the circumstance that they so lived under the imme
diate realization of the Resurrection-faith that the reality of
the Fact appeared to them beyond disproof. Our point of view
is different from theirs. " The failure of the oral tradition
just where its testimony is most needful, is matter for profound
regret; but it should be distinctly understood that, whatever it
may mean, it does not mean that the Apostles knew nothing of
the Resurrection, or had any doubt regarding it. On the con
trary, they believed in it with exultant faith, and it was the
burden of their preaching." Further, " when the Synoptists
undertook the task of composing their Gospels, they laboured
under this disadvantage, that the Apostles had dispersed in pros
ecution of their missions, and were inaccessible for enquiry and
consultation. In the oral tradition they had, so far as it went,
an amplitude of trustworthy material; but it stopped short at
the Crucifixion, and for the episode of the Resurrection they had
to be content with such information as they could glean among
believers."1 Such an admission as this from such a source may
be used by some to depreciate the general evidence of the
Resurrection, while increased emphasis may be placed on the
reality of the appearances. The real understanding of history,
however, depends less upon literal exactitude and verifiable
chronology than upon a sympathetic response to the atmos
phere and the persons of the period under investigation. Ac
cording to the Synoptists, some devout and sorrowful women
who loved Jesus went to the tomb, taking aromatics with them
to embalm the body. When they reached the place, however, they
found the body had disappeared; but angels (one or two) met
them saying, " Why seek the living among the dead ? " or, stating
more affirmatively, " He is risen, He is not here." This message
was carried by those women to Peter, and that disciple in com
pany with John ran to the grave and saw that' it was empty, and
that the linen clothes were neatly folded. No evangelist describes
the actual rising, but St. Matthew speaks of certain accompani
ments. "And, behold! a great earthquake took place; for an
angel of the Lord came down from heaven and went and rolled
away the stone and sat on it. His countenance was like lightning,
and his raiment white like snow ; and for fear of him the watch
ers shook and became like dead men." This same evangelist
also affirms that the guards were afterwards bribed by the Jews
' Rev. David Smith, In the Days of His Flesh, Intro, p. xxxiv.
494 The Finished Work
to say that while they slept the disciples came and stole the
body — a story, says St. Matthew, repeated " until this day."
Justin Martyr shows us that this rumour of the theft of the body
by the disciples was circulated in his day.1 Now although the
Resurrection-faith rests upon the appearances rather than upon
the scene of an empty tomb, yet we are persuaded that the tomb
was empty; for, had the Body been in the grave, it would assur
edly have been exhibited by the enemies of the new religion to
disprove the apostolic message of the Resurrection. Unable to
escape the conclusion that the grave must have been empty, some
critics have suggested that though the disciples were incapable
of fraud and long sustained deception, yet the Roman soldiers
may have received orders to remove or destroy the corpse, and so
prevent it from becoming an object of adoration. For such a
supposition there is no tittle of evidence save the fact that the
grave was empty.
7. It is hardly necessary in this prosaic attempt to state the
natural impressions made by the Resurrection narratives of the
Gospel, to make more than reference to the rise of a school of
mythical criticism, the scholars of which treat the New Testament
stories as though they were simply derived from Babylonian
mythology. In the hands of these mythologists the firm ground
of history sinks away, and the records are evaporated into airy
dreams and legends of the protean sun-god Marduk. Whatever
influence upon the Gospels may have been exerted by an oriental
syncretism in general, and by the Gilgamish epic in particular —
and we are not prepared to deny traces of such influence — still, we
contend that the concrete evidence of the Apostle Paul and the
sober testimonies found in the Gospels cannot be so easily sub
limated into vaporous forms of the sun-myth. The remarkable
thing is that, although fully conscious of the labyrinthine con
fusions in the Gospel narratives, they yet make upon our minds
the impression that they rest upon a real ground of history.
The New Testament represents, with substantial correctness,
what was believed by the Apostles themselves to have been the
circumstances and facts of the origination of the Church ; and it
is not easy for us to suppose that the men who proved them
selves to be genuine leaders of the New Religion were utterly
ignorant of the facts that supplied them with motives and dy-
1 Dial. w. Trypho, 108.
Jesus Rises and Appears 495
namic. Fascinating though these mythological explanations prove
for the minds of many learned men who seem to us to be pixie-
led, we return to the soberer judgement stated lucidly by Dr.
Swete, " The evidence is perplexing, not overwhelming, and it is
certainly far from being complete; in some of the details it may
be inexact. But the main fact that the Lord rose again on the
third day has not been shaken by any argument hitherto ad
duced. The intellectual difficulty of believing the Resurrection of
our Lord's body to be a baseless story will always be greater than
the intellectual difficulty of believing it to be a substantial fact." x
8. It is not necessary to construct any scheme for the har
monization of the familiar stories of Christ's post-Resurrection
appearances ; the barest enumeration of them, in the order which
appears to us most probable but by no means certain, will suffice
to recall the impressions which they have made upon our minds.
The first was to Mary Magdalene, the second to the other women
an hour or two later. The relation of these to one another is far
from clear; some readers incline to treat the second as a general
ized account of the first, while others place it before the pathetic
story of the Lord's self-disclosure to Mary. Next came the ap
pearance to Peter in a private and unrecorded interview men
tioned by St. Paul and St. Luke. The third evangelist gives the
beautiful and instructive account of our Lord's meeting and con
verse with the two disciples, Cleopas and another, on the road to
Emmaus; and a confirmation of this is found in the appendix
to St. Mark. The fifth and last appearance on the Resurrection
Day was given to the assembled disciples at Jerusalem when
Thomas was absent. St. John relates the next disclosure eight
days after, which led to the wonderful confession of faith by the
disciple who had doubted, and, further, the exquisite narrative of
the meeting of Jesus with the Seven Fishermen at the Lake side,
and the subsequent restoration of Simon in the threefold confes
sion of love. St. Paul writes of the Risen Christ having been
seen by over five hundred brethren at once, the greater number
of whom remained alive when he wrote to the Corinthians — an
occasion probably identical with that related by St. Matthew
as having been appointed to take place in Galilee. The great
commission which St. Matthew states was given on that occa
sion may have really been spoken later on the Mount of Olives.
'H. B. Swete, Expos. Times, Feb. 1903, p. 214.
496 The Finished Work
" Then," says St. Paul, " He appeared to James ; then to all
the apostles; and, last of all, as unto one born out of due time,
He appeared unto me also." The final appearance to the Eleven,
mentioned as we have stated by St. Paul, as also by St. Luke, and
in the appendix to St. Mark, was on the Mount of Olives, where
the Risen Lord is recorded to have pronounced His august claim,
and to have given the disciples their world-wide commission:
" All authority has been given to Me in heaven and upon earth :
Go then and make disciples of all nations,
Baptize them into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit ;
Teach them to observe all that ever I commanded you :
And lo, I Myself am with you all the days until the close of the age ! "
With that commission may have been joined the promise of
spiritual equipment : " But ye shall receive power after that the
Holy Spirit is come upon you ; and ye shall be witnesses unto Me
both in Jerusalem and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the
uttermost part of the earth." St. Luke sums up these Chris-
tophanies with characteristic simplicity : Jesus " shewed Himself
alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing unto them by
the space of forty days, and speaking the things concerning the
kingdom of God."
9. The Gospel records of the post-Resurrection appearances
of Jesus suggest that the Body had not simply been reanimated,
but that it had been subjected to some marvellous transformation,
and henceforth possessed attributes which made it altogether
responsive to His Spiritual Will. It may be that during those
forty days our Lord Himself was passing through some process
of glorification, the consummation of which was marked by the
Ascension. Another motive for this delay of the final act of the
Analepsis was the purpose of Jesus to present Himself to His
disciples at stated intervals, so that they might be fully con
vinced of His Resurrection, and yet at the same time disciplined
into an abiding consciousness of His Presence when unseen.
The handful of dust which constituted the material of His Body
had. taken on new attributes and potencies, and was made per
fectly subservient to the Spirit, appearing and disappearing,
materializing and dissolving at the behests of His loving Will.
When He chose that body became visible and tangible, and was
seen to bear the marks of the nails, and with it He ate and drank
Jesus Rises and Appears 497
with His disciples; on the other hand, at any moment He could
vanish without the opening of doors, or the eyes of His com
panions might be " holden " that they did not recognize Him.
In these appearances we discern the prophetic reconciliation be
tween Spirit and Matter which must surely constitute the goal
of human redemption. Men have learned too well the limitations
of their knowledge to venture any dogmas concerning the nature
of matter; we can only surmise that it is the product of Spirit,
and has been constituted the medium of spiritual operations and
of earthly fellowship. Some of its marvellous potencies are re
vealed as it yields to the moulding and mastery of life. In
taking up the body once again, Jesus assumed no more a cor
ruptible organism; He transfigured it with Spiritual force, and
made it the instrument of His deathless passion to execute the
Will of the Father. It had been sown in weakness and was
raised in power ; sown a natural body, it had been raised a spirit
ual body. Some such miracle as this was needed to demon
strate the absolute conquest of Spiritual Life over death. Those
brief interviews between the Risen Jesus and the disciples im
pressed upon the minds of the latter the reality of their Lord's
continuing life, and communicated to them also a sense of His
transcendent dignity; the old familiarity passes away, but with
the growth of deeper reverence there remained and grew a
reciprocal love.
io. Although it does not come within the scope of our purpose
to deduce the doctrinal implications of the Resurrection of Jesus,
at least we may legitimately indicate some of its effects upon
men's conception of the meaning of all the steps which led up
to it in the preparatory ministry. The Resurrection is the crown
of the Incarnation; and, viewed from this elevation, the whole
life is seen afresh to be charged with Divine Revelation. It
affects the retrospect of the earthly ministry quite as much as the
subsequent history of His Church. From this standpoint, the
whole life of Jesus is perceived to be governed by God's gracious
world-purpose. Just as, in the development of an organism, a
stage is reached at last when a higher principle of life reacts
upon the accumulated results of the previous processes, thereby
lifting the creature to a higher plane whence may be unfolded
new potentialities, so in the Resurrection we meet with a new
transforming energy which imposes an enlarged and glorious
498 The Finished Work
interpretation upon all the steps and incidents which led up to
such a consummation. The Resurrection set the disciples in a
new relation to the facts of the Ministry of Jesus, so that they
became growingly intelligent of the implications and issues of His
life, and they became empowered to appropriate and apply the
whole body of Truth communicated by Him and in Him. Their
entrance into light came through the Resurrection-faith and
Spiritual baptism ; they became possessors of the Living Spirit of
Christ and so were guided into an ever enlarging heritage of truth.
From that memorable third day, there dawned upon them the
faith in the Heavenly Messiahship of the Christ, and they came
to acknowledge Him as the universal Lord. The very Cross was
bathed in the splendour of this light, so that the apostles declared
that Jesus died for our sins and was raised for our justification.
If Jesus were not risen, the Ministry of Jesus would have been
simply another enigma added to the mystery of man's struggle
against destiny. Apart from the Resurrection, Jesus is the
riddle of the world : contemplating Him, some will judge Him
to be our noblest Teacher ; others will deem Him, if not the arch-
blasphemer, then the most pitiable of self-deluded egoists. The
Resurrection changes everything : it is a Pisgah-height, where the
atmosphere is translucent, and whence the vision is clarified ; and,
looking from this coign of vantage, we trace even through the
Humiliation the Revelation of God and Eternal Life. The
Divine has been translated for us into the terms of our humanity.
The Resurrection is the historic declaration of God's reconcilia
tion with man ; it is an event which lifts man above the realm of
evanescent phenomena into the sphere of Spiritual and eternal
relationships. The Resurrection symbolizes, as nothing else can,
the conquest of the Soul over Sin and death; and, without this
grand denouement, God's revelations would all seem imperfect.
The history of the strong Son of God, from the Cradle to the
Cross, from the Crucifixion to the Ascension, constitutes a
ground of spiritual hope for all mankind; it demonstrates the
action of God on man's behalf, and reveals, in gracious light, the
motive and goal of our creation.
CHAPTER IV
THE REGNANT BUT VEILED CHRIST
I. We have now reached a point in our study of the Ministry
of Jesus similar to that arrived at by the Apostles after the
Ascension. Those ten days must have been filled with recollec
tions, reflections and inferences. Their certainty concerning the
Resurrection materially affected all their remembrances of Jesus.
Hitherto they have looked upon the Ministry of Jesus in a
broken and sectional manner, finding in the current events much
that was strange and inexplicable. They had seen successive inci
dents, various phases, and it had seemed to them that the Mas
ter's life was full of darkness as well as light, of gracious har
monies and partial dissonances, of self-conscious power and singu
lar weaknesses ; but now they reached the summit of Olivet and
saw that ministry steadily and saw it whole. They recalled
the large, pure utterances of the Teacher, and all the parts grew
into an impressive unity, charged with the conviction and author
ity of the Personal force of Jesus. They remembered His acts,
and now all appeared so beautifully simple and so grandly har
monious with the impression He had made upon them. Scenes
of suffering undeserved, of apparent failures, of agony pathet
ically confessed, of triumphant hopes and predictions of vic
torious issues, all came back to memory, and were now reflected
upon sub specie ceternitatis; and thus they began to discern that
God had been working in and through their Master's life as
well as man. Perhaps some great luminous words of Jesus
spoken during the forty days had aided them in seeing that His
life-work not only constituted a unity in itself, but also formed
an integral part of the single, all-embracing purpose of God in
our world. "This sequence of the soul's achievements here,
Being, as I find much reason to conceive,
Intended to be viewed eventually
As a great whole, not analyzed to parts.
But each part having reference to all."
' R. Browning, Cleon.
499
500 The Finished Work
That this unity had not been destroyed by death had been
demonstrated by post-Resurrection appearances which had pro
duced in the apostles' minds an absolute certitude which made
them ready and glad to die rather than cease to bear witness for
Christ Jesus. Throughout their experiences during the past forty
days, it seemed to them that the Risen Lord had designed to
impress upon their minds the fact of His continuing Messianic
ministry and abiding Spiritual Presence. " When we consider
this we shall, in regard to the utterances in which He promises
to return to His disciples and be seen by them after a short
period of separation, be forced to the explanation that He
thought of such a permanent Spiritual reunion with His dis
ciples as would make Him in their consciousness living in spite
of His death, and near in spite of earthly separation. . . . Yet,
on the other hand, Jesus did not think of a merely subjective
inward idea of the disciples as had no corresponding reality;
but He was certain that as exalted to the Heavenly life with
God, He would stand in real fellowship with His disciples, who
would be inwardly joyful; therefore His saying that they would
see Him corresponds to the other saying that He would Himself
come to them and would see them." 1 The Resurrection and the
Ascension recalled such predictions to their minds and verified
them in experience. Such supernatural culmination of His min
istry placed it beyond doubt that death could hot dissolve the
unity of His Person, nor terminate His spiritual ministry in
the community of God and mankind. In saying that we had
reached a like stage of thought — of recollection, reflection and
inference — as the disciples, waiting in Jerusalem between the
Ascension and the day of complete Spiritual Baptism, we mean
that the study of the Ministry of Jesus has produced in our
minds the conviction that He is the abiding Factor in our
world's history.
2. The disciples became possessed and were dominated by
the Spirit of the living Christ. One of the objects of the post-
Resurrection Christophanies was to open their understandings;
the Risen Jesus communicated to them anticipations of the Pen
tecost : " He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye
the Holy Ghost." As we have seen, the appearances are im
bedded too centrally in the Gospels to be eliminated, and the
1 Wendt, The Teaching of Jesus, pp. 296-298.
The Regnant but Veiled Christ 501
records suggest that our Lord presented Himself to the assembled
disciples on the successive Sundays between the Crucifixion and
the Ascension, and so caused the substitution of the first day
of the week for the Jewish Sabbath throughout the Christian
Church. We also find presumptive evidence for a belief that
our Lord's instructions during those days really constituted the
foundation of the subsequent teachings of the Apostles.1 The
doctrines attributed to Peter and Paul in the Acts of the Apostles
become explicable when we recall St. Luke's affirmation that
before He ascended, the Risen Jesus explained to His disciples
that the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms had shadowed forth
the eternal counsel of God and had adumbrated His own Life,
Death and Resurrection. Such a belief should not be used to
.fix upon the Old Testament interpretations which literary and
historical criticism must reject ; for, since the Hebrew Scriptures
are as full of the Humanities as the literature of Greece, it is but
natural to find in them prefigurings and types of the one perfect
Ideal realized in history by our Lord. " The burden of the
Old Testament is just that relationship of the personal Spirit of
man to the personal Spirit of God which first finds its complete
expression in Jesus Christ, and finds it in Him through the act
and experience of what we call the Cross." 2 They became
possessed of the mind of Christ, and under the guidance of His
Spirit, the Paraclete and Truth-witnesser, the disciples not only
regained a vivid remembrance of all the Master's teachings prior
to His death, but they were led to treat His ministry, His Pas
sion, Death and Resurrection as their simple creed of fact, in
which was expressed the very heart of God's purpose in our
world. "The Teaching of the Apostles was founded on what
was to their minds the concrete presentation of essential truth,
the life, death and Resurrection of our Lord, and the light thence
cast on God's eternal counsel and His plans of dealing with men.
As occasion required, they were led to draw forth various in
ferences: but the truth itself they recognized as subsisting in
that primitive condensation of the historical Gospel." 3 While
giving full acknowledgement of the momentous and epoch-making
event of the Pentecost, we attribute to the preceding fifty days
the significance of a birth-time; for during that brief interval
' Acts ii. 22-36. ,
2 Professor Du Bose, The Gospel ace. to St. Paul, p. 22f.
3 Hort, The Way, The Truth, The Life, p. 63.
502 The Finished Work
were originated and germinally flung forth all the essential
doctrines of the Apostolic Church. Then it was that the society
of Jesus, which had been temporarily shattered by the tragedy
of the Crucifixion, was reconstructed and quickened into organic
self-consciousness and purpose. The appearances and instruc
tions of those days were not vague and ineffectual — during that
brief period the Risen Lord fused His disciples into a com
munity — not, indeed, into a hard and fast organization, but still
into a conscious fellowship; He also gave them a fresh under
standing of the Divine Revelation which had received a culminat
ing expression in His own history; and He infused into their
souls something of the spiritual force of His own personal
experience. 3. No little prejudice has been shown against the belief that
Jesus designed the organization of His disciples into a church.
Such a community, " externally bounded and inwardly articu
lated," says Wendt, " was not contemplated and predetermined
by Jesus." But if the Resurrection-faith were grounded in the
genuine appearances of Jesus, it may be easily conceived that
the Risen Lord should have given some explicit utterance to
His world-wide purpose. The various reports of the great
missionary commission may be accounted for by the modifying
influence of oral transmission, although our Lord Himself may
have reiterated His great command upon several occasions with
natural variations. Harmonious with this supposition is the
Johannine record of the interview with the disciples by the
Sea of Tiberias, when, seeing them drawn back into their old
familiar occupation and habits, the Risen Jesus definitely com
missioned Simon with the Shepherd's task ; for He did not intend
them to fall back into the conventional ways of ordinary men —
they were to be His ambassadors. Strauss expressed the natural
objection against the apostolic missionary commission when he
said the formula " sounds so exactly as if it had been borrowed
from the ecclesiastical ritual that there is no slight probability
in the supposition that it was transferred from thence to the
mouth of Jesus." The very differences and difficulties inherent
in the records of such a commission make it appear most plausible
that it originated in the Church's subsequent consciousness of
Christ's world-embracing work; and a further temptation to
adopt this facile means of escape from difficulty arises from an
THe Regnant but Veiled Christ 503
apparent contradiction between such universalism and the Juda-
istic limitations of the first apostolic propaganda. A little re
flection, however, assures us that behind the nationalism of the
first Petrine conception of the Gospel lay the universal ideal
of Jesus. The implications of a world-wide faith lay in all the
great characteristic utterances of Jesus. And even were it gen
erally admitted that this grand missionary commission articu
lated the logic of events in the consciousness of the Church, still
the problem remains to account for the rise of this sublime faith
in Christ's abiding relation to the Church and the world. Unless
we resort to subterfuge and evasion, we are compelled to postu
late the existence of some great creative genius at the beginning
of the Christian Church, that was at once able to produce a uni
versal faith, and to inspire commonplace men with a moral dyna
mic which should draw their lives into some correspondence with
the lofty ideals they proclaimed. Once admit the fact of the
Resurrection and subsequent appearances, and it is easily credible
that our Lord Himself organized His disciples into a community,
and breathed into them this consciousness of His world-purpose.
It is easy to imagine that after their first glimpse of this tremen
dous destiny the disciples may have been sucked back into a
lower Judaistic phase and movement of Christian thought, and
that this temporary recession may have been ultimately counter
acted by the inherent power of the Christ-ideal and Spirit which
had taken possession of their souls. Much of the criticism of
the Missionary Commission and other parts of the Gospels really
springs from an invincible repugnance to miracles. The very
existence of a supernatural power at work in the world is pro
hibited by presuppositions which find no avowal by most scholars,
but which were boldly articulated by Strauss. " The totality of
finite things forms a vast circle, which except that it owes its ex
istence and laws to a superior power, suffers no intrusion from
without. This conviction is so much a habit of thought with the
modern world, that in actual life the belief in a supernatural mani
festation, an immediate agency, is at once attributed to ignorance
and imposture." 1
4. We have the great apostolic charter and the general state
ment that the Lord opened the Scriptures to their understand
ings; but besides this one wonders if any rays of the post-
' Strauss, Life of Jesus, p. 78.
504 The Finished Work
Resurrection teaching may not be found reflected back upon the
records of Christ's earlier ministry. For instance, Professor
Briggs has boldly conjectured that the mystical discourse on
eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus may belong to
this period of the appearances.1 And the same scholar makes
a suggestion which is not discordant with the tenor of the in
tercessory prayer that parts of it may have been uttered during
this epoch-making interval. Certainly our Lord speaks as though
the work given Him to do by the Father has already been accom
plished ; the " humiliation " is thought of as ended ; the curriculum
of suffering and temptation lies behind; and even the ministry
of training the disciples appears in a retrospective light, and the
Master says, " While I was with them, I kept them in Thy name
which Thou hast given Me : yea, I guarded them, nor did one of
them perish except the son of perdition, that the scripture might
be fulfilled." The hypothesis that this prayer is a sublime crea
tion of the evangelist in his romance of the Incarnate Logos, does
away at a stroke with all difficulties of chronology ; but, if retained
as historical, there are utterances in it which might have been fitly
spoken after the Crucifixion. The whole prayer hinges on the
apostolic commission, " as Thou didst send Me into the world,
I also sent them into the world." His own apostolate has become
the pattern of theirs; His equipment is to be shared also, and
as He had been sanctified by His intuitions into God's truth,
will and glory, so henceforth must they be hallowed in a like
manner. Such a prayer might have been uttered by the lake
side when, seeing how the disciples shrank from the vaster
obligations of their new apostolate, the Risen Lord reclaimed
them to larger duties and gave them reassurance of adequate
equipment. He was filled with infinite longings for the realiza
tion of His Father's glory in the world, and it is far from im
probable that He gave utterance to His passionate desires for
the sanctification and union of His disciples, and for the saving
c the world through them.
5. The third evangelist supplements the final commission by
a definition of the evangelic message as one of repentance and
of remission of sins, and also by a promise of power. " Behold,
I send forth the promise of My Father upon you ; but tarry ye
in the city, until ye be clothed with power from on high."
1 New Light, etc., p. i22f.
The Regnant but Veiled Christ 505
Whether we accept this Lucan alternative to Matthaean assurance
of His abiding presence, or not, the subsequent work of the
Apostles can be explained only as the realization of both the
presence and dynamic of the Risen Christ. Behind those lowly
men of Galilee stands the Christ clothed in the transcendent
glory of the Resurrection and equipped with all power. Im
perfectly educated as they were, and wholly lacking in social
status and wealth, some personal force was impelling these men
into unknown ways of toil and experience of ultimate victory.
Even if we accepted the supposition that the Primitive Church
originated its own consciousness of this world-wide mission which
the evangelists have rendered with such regal eloquence, the
problem would still remain to be faced, how men lacking all the
elements of intellectual and social prestige could have been
lifted to this exalted plane of thought and action. The most
credible solution of the problem is assuredly the acceptance of
the tradition of the Gospels that Jesus rose from the dead and
presented Himself to His disciples at several different times,
and having instructed them in the mysteries of His life, Passion
and Resurrection, finally expressed His exultant consciousness
of sovereignty and power in the charge that they should go
forth and win the whole world into allegiance unto Himself.
6. The first step in the transcendent process of the Divine
Incarnation involved a self-emptying, or Kenosis; and the last
historic scene may be translated as the Anaplerosis — the assump
tion into glory. In the language of many scholars one is con
scious of a vague feeling of uncertainty about the Ascension
scene. There is a tendency to merge the Resurrection and
Ascension together. St. Paul shows no consciousness of any
historic event dividing the appearances to the disciples from the
vision he received of the glorified Lord. A hint seems to be
given in the words spoken to Mary at the sepulchre in His pro
hibition against touching His Person because He was " not yet
ascended " — a prohibition that was removed eight days later,
when He invited the doubting Thomas to touch the uneradicated
stigmata in His hands and side. Some readers infer from the
Third Gospel that its author believed that the appearances and
the Ascension all took place on the Resurrection-day, and that
the reference in the Acts of the Apostles to the " forty days "
signifies, in round numbers, the duration of the time of subsequent
506 The Finished Work
Christophanies which were brought to a termination by the
Pentecost. Dr. Bernhard Weiss says : " By His Resurrection,
Jesus, it is true, does not understand a resuscitation to earthly life ;
but an exaltation to a state of existence which is raised above the
conditions of earthly life ; but this exaltation is always conceived
of as a resurrection, i.e. as a restoration of His corporeity, al
though in a form which is in keeping with the Heavenly life. . . .
Neither in the prophecy of Jesus nor in the earliest tradition is the
Ascension to Heaven conceived of as an epoch-making event, so
far was the latter from representing it as an occurrence which was
perceptible to the senses. The Resurrection (rightly understood)
qualifies Him of itself, for the heavenly life." x Westcott and
Hort gave the judgement that " the Ascension apparently did
not lie within the proper scope of the Gospels, as seen in their
genuine texts ; its true place was at the head of the Acts of the
Apostles, as the preparation for the day of Pentecost, and thus
the beginning of the history of the Church." 2 It is admittedly
possible that, in the account of a visible Ascension, there may
have been precipitated the apostolic assurance of the exaltation
of their Lord. Such a tradition clothes the revelation of the
Glorified Lord in the forms of time and space, and its value may
lie in its Spiritual interpretation. On the other hand, attempts
to throw ridicule upon the story as contrary to modern astronomic
conceptions seem to us unworthy of sober criticism. In favour
of the historicity of the tradition, it may be noted that there is
an inherent fitness in the solemn passing of the Lord within
the veil, which signalized not only the withdrawal of all tokens
of His corporeal Presence, but the more positive faith that
henceforth He would act as the invisible King-Priest of humanity
within the realm of spiritual relationships. The disciples' ques
tion, " Lord, is this the time when Thou art to restore the royal
power to Israel ? " which to us seems so unseasonable, with its
savour of the old Jewish Messianism, lends a touch of historical
reality to the strange scene. The narrative is characterized by
a gracious dignity and restraint, and stands free of the usual
accretions of legendary growths. The appearances of the Risen
1 Bernhard Weiss, Biblical Theology of the New Testament, vol. i., p.
90, note.
* Westcott and Hort, Notes on Select Readings, Luke xxiv. 51. (ml avc-
6ho eif tov ovpavdv) " Text was evidently inserted from an assumption that
a separation from the disciples at the close of the Gospel must be the
Ascension."
The Regnant but Veiled Christ 507
Lord suddenly ceased, leaving no expectancy of any further
Christophanies until He should appear as the angels announced
in the final parousia. At least there is, in the evangelic narra
tive, no incongruity with our highest impression of the com
pletely spiritualized nature of the Risen Lord ; and when we face
the difficulty of finding any mind in the Primitive Church capable
of such marvellous invention, a strong presumption arises that
St. Luke has correctly delineated the final interview between
Jesus and His disciples.
7. As previously pointed out, the Passion, Death, Resurrec
tion and Ascension are all steps in one process covered by St.
Luke's phrase, " In the days of His Analepsis." " The death,"
says Dr. Hort, " belongs to both periods. It is the lowest point
of the descent; the testimony sealed in blood, the obedience
perfected in sacrifice. But it is also the beginning of the Ascent.
The Cross is already a lifting up out of the earth, a prophecy
of the lifting up into the heavens. God accepts the sacrifice,
raises His Son from the dead as by a second birth, and exalts
Him to sit at His own Right Hand till He has put His enemies
under His feet." 1 The Ascension completed the Resurrection ;
it was the symbolic demonstration of the Father's approval of
His Son's work in the world, and it became a gracious prophecy
of the ultimate destiny of the race into which Christ had entered.
The records of His earthly Ministry, although of higher spiritual
value for mankind than all the discoveries of science and philoso
phy, are sealed by the Ascension as only the prelude to the
Messianic, high-priestly work of our Lord which will continue
until the end of the age. The tragedy of Calvary could not be
obliterated from memory; but henceforth it was transfused with
Divine and glorious meanings. The idea was stamped upon the
Church that; while our Lord would no more dwell among them
in the flesh, He would come again in Spirit, and, although hidden
from the world, He would be verifiably present in the minds
of His followers. The Holy Spirit which came upon them in
power was the Spirit of Christ, by whose operation the facts
of the previous ministry were recalled and reproduced in the
experiences of those who acknowledged Him to be the Lord.
"After going up on high, He led captives captive; He gave
gifts to men. Now what does the word He went up mean,
1 Dr. Hort, The Way, The Truth, The Life, p. 151.
508 The Finished Work
except this: that He also descended into the lower regions of
the earth? He who descended is the same as He who went up
high above all heavens, that He might fill all things." The
Christian religion is not constituted by a set of abstract beliefs,
nor even by memories of the historic life of Jesus, valuable
as these will ever be for our instruction, but by the continued
activity of the Spirit of Christ in every age. Imperfect though
our outward and visible organizations may be, they are still the
instruments through which the Immanent Christ continues His
Ministry in the world. The internecine conflicts, jealousies and
schisms of the Christian Church are the results of inadequate
apprehensions of Christ's Spirit, and they have obstructed the
outflow of the power of the exalted Lord; and yet so mighty
are the workings of this indwelling Spirit-Presence, these very
barriers have been made to contribute toward the fuller explica
tion of His manifoldness.
8. In treating of the continuing ministry of our Lord, imma
nence ought never to be torn apart from the antithetic term of
His transcendence. The eloquent writer to the Hebrews con
ceived the earthly experiences of Jesus to be a discipline, educa
tion and purification of the perfected Priest of Humanity ; having
prepared for His unique Ministry, He offered up Himself as a
sacrifice; then He was raised from the dead and exalted to a
state of Divine honour, and sat down at the Right Hand of the
Sovereignty on High. The work of Jesus was not evanescent,
nor could it be comprised within the little span of His earthly
course: it is still going on, perpetuated by His transcendent
glory in the Heavens, and made effectual on earth by His
immanence in the Church ; and, according to the New Testament,
it will be finally consummated in a glorious parousia when He
shall be acknowledged by all to be the King. The Resurrection
and Ascension are God's acknowledgement of the Son, and his
torically signalize His assumption of the prerogatives and powers
of His Messianic reign. So remarkable was the impression made
by the workings of the Christ, that rigorous monotheist though
he was, St. Paul within twenty years of the Crucifixion naively
coordinated His Name with the Father's; and moreover, in so
doing the Apostle but represented "the common teaching of
all Christians." The centre of gravity for His Kingdom is not
in the past or present, but in the future: we are drawn into
The Regnant but Veiled Christ 509
movements which have their goal in a promised parousia, and all
of us are controlled, consciously or unconsciously, by an ideal
which is as yet only partially realized. The facts of Christian
history are self-attesting, substantiating to our reason the reality
of the Easter-faith. The teachings of the Apostles and Evan
gelists, by prevailing over the common instincts of the flesh,
show the power of Christ's veiled regnancy; while the recorded
words attributed to the Risen Lord and the common hopes of
the Apostles lead the mind to cherish an expectation of some
consummation, some epochal demonstration of completed triumph.
The study of the Historic Christ passes naturally into spiritual
philosophy ; our intellectual quest becomes experimental religion.
The Jesus of the Gospels attests His reality to modern faith.
Historical enquiry deepens the conviction of genuineness in the
recorded facts out of which Christianity has evolved. Natural
istic bias gives way before the clarified vision of the Man of
Nazareth. The Person of Jesus is the best guarantee of the
good faith of the Evangelists. Behind the literature of the New
Testament stands the indestructible Figure of the Man. The
Gospels can only be explained through the facts, and the facts
are credible in their relation to Jesus Christ. With equal in
tensity Modern Faith holds to the reality of His Humanity and
to the authority of the Divine Revelation in Him. The naive
Faith of the Apostles contained the germ of our most enlightened
philosophy. The Risen Jesus has dominated nineteen centuries
of history among the most intellectual and progressive races of
the West. Today He is challenging the East by His undimin
ished claims. Influences of spiritual power proceed from Him
perennially, and His continuing, mediatorial ministry results in the
gradual uplifting of mankind. Jesus has become the Objective
Conscience of our race: His Gospel is the inexhaustible fount
of spiritual inspiration: His Divine Kingdom is the norm of a
universal community: love of Him is constituting a bond of
human brotherhood and is the directive force of all that is noblest
and best in the world ; while faith in His Divine-Human Person
is the secret of a virile and exalted theism. This faith may be
summed up in the threefold formula: Christ has come: He is
daily coming in spiritual power; and He will come to bring
humanity to its goal. THE END
INDEX
Abbott, Dr. E. A., quoted, 362;
cited, 469
Adultery, woman taken in, 392
Analects (Confucian), quoted, 156
Analepsis of Jesus ( Passion, Death,
Resurrection, and Ascension),
foregleams of, 325; perfected,
507
Annas, high priest, 471
Annunciation of the Kingdom
(Book II), 71
Anti-Christ of Judaism, in Jesus,
88, 137
Apocalypse, and prophecy, 98; of
Jesus, 416
Apocalyptic utterances, differently
recorded, 420; in pagan mythol
ogy, 422
Apostles, naming of, 143
Apostolate, the new, 135
Archelaus, 42
Aristotle and Jesus, 155
Arrest of Jesus, 469
Ascension of Jesus, 505
Ascetic school of John the Baptist,
76
Attack upon Jesus, and counter
attack, 387
Augustine, quoted, 51, 316
Bacon, Lord, quoted, 116
Bacon, Prof., quoted, 218
Balfour, A. J., quoted, in
Baptism, John's, 47; of Jesus by
John, 50; symbolism of, 54
Bar-Timaeus healed, 353
Baur, F. C, quoted, 273, 409, 490
Beatitudes, the, 151
Beginning of Conflict (Book IV),
179
Bengel, cited, 405
Bethesda, 182
Betrayal, the, 468
Breach between Jesus and Juda
ism, 122
Bread, the mystic, 243, 442
Briggs, Dr. C. A., quoted, 172, 181,
194, 222; cited, 426, 441, 448, S04
Brooke, Stopford, cited, 363
Brothers of Jesus, 37, 196
Browning, Robert, quoted, 81, 149,
499
Bruce, Dr., cited, 92, 406; quoted,
484
Buddha, ethic of, atheistic, 156;
and Jesus, 174, 274, 287, 422,
504
Burkitt, F. C, quoted, 130, 217, 220,
351, 446; cited, 474
Caesarea Philippi, 265
Caesar's tribute, 390
Caiaphas, 227, 231, 390, 471
Caird, Prof. A., quoted, 316, 322
Cairns, Rev. D. S., quoted, 112
Campbell, McLeod, quoted, 484
Cana, 91
Capernaum, 245, 256, 260, 305
Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, 66
Carpenter, Prof. J. E., quoted, 421
Caspari, cited, 365
Celsus, quoted, 261, 323, 462
Chesterton, G. K., quoted, 358
Childlikeness is greatness in New
Kingdom, 307
Chinese Confucian, quoted, 109
Christ, from ideal to historic, 32;
risen Jesus regnant but veiled as
the, 499
Christ-ideal, of the Gospels proto
plasm of a new theology, 19;
sublimation of Jewish Messianic
hope, 22; realized in Jesus, 32;
as held by Jesus, spiritual, not
political, 89
Christianity and Socialism, 313
Church, Dean R. W., quoted, 23,
176
Church, the Christian, 301, 502; of
the Messiah contemplated by Je
sus, 311, 319; commissioned by
risen Christ, 502 et seq.
Citizenship in God's kingdom means
sonship, 105
Clement of Alexandria, quoted, 471
Clodd, E., quoted, 423
511
512
Index
Coleridge, E. P., trans, from
Sophocles, 270
Collingwood, quoted, 150
Commandments, the two great, 396
Conflict between Jesus and the
Hierarchy, 180
Confucius, cited, 23; quoted, 156,
317
Contemporary witnesses of Jesus,
198
Continuity of Jesus' self-descrip
tion, 124
Controversial element in Jesus'
teaching, 127
Correspondences between O. T.
prophecies and Gospel events,
367
Costelli, D., quoted, 100
Crawley, E., quoted, 432
Criticism, to consider Gospels in
whole before detail, 20; not to
exclude constructive imagination,
30
Cross, the way of the, 471
Crucifixion, the, 479
Cup, the, at the Paschal meal, 441
Divine Sonship of Jesus, 27
Divinity of Jesus, 59
Divorce, 333
Dods, Marcus W., quoted, 185,
190, 198, 393, 438
Du Bose, Prof., quoted, 501
Dupuis, quoted, 431
Eager, Dr. A. R., quoted, 440
Edersheim, quoted, 378, 475
Education of Jesus, 38
Egoism of Jesus, 100, 193, 200,
248
Elmslie, Prof., 61
Emerson, R. W, quoted, 124
Entombment of Jesus, 482
Epoch-makers, 87
Ethic of Buddha atheistic, 156; of
discipleship, 156
Eucharist, the original, 442
Eusebius, cited, 406
Evangelism, original and modern,
175
Evangelists, training of, 167
Evolution, mistake about, 357
Dalman, quoted, 97
Dante, quoted, 56, 57; cited, 357,
434
Daughters of Jerusalem, 479
Davidic descent of Messiah, 398
Davids, Rhys, quoted, 34
Davidson, Prof. A. B., quoted, 318,
426, 427, 429, 444
Days of the Preparation (Book
D, 17
Dead raised, the, 114, 119, 215
Death, release of germinal potency,
413
Demonology of New Testament, 62,
118, 302
De Ponte, Louis, quoted, 191, 480
Despised and rejected, 255
De Zwaan, J., quoted, 468
Diatheke-Berith, quoted, 444
Didache, The, quoted, as to the
Eucharistic meal, 442
Difference between Jesus and John,
80; and all predecessors, 100
Discipleship, candidates for, 315,
317
Disciples, of Jesus, the calling of,
138, 140; of the Messiah, 299
Disillusionment of the people, 252
Faith, the, behind the Gospels (In
tro.), 9; a temptation, 67; a sine
qua non of Christ's miracles, 117
Fall, the, 358
Family of Jesus, 37
Father, seeing the, 454
Fatherhood and Sonship root-con
ception of ethic of Jesus, 158-9
Feeding of the multitude, 231 ;
analysis of the accounts, 237;
were there two? 260
Fellowship of Jesus with God, 59
Fig tree cursed, 376
Filial spirit of Jesus, 50
Finished Work, The (Book IX),
457
First Three Christian Centuries,
quoted, 273
Forgiveness of sins, 126
Forsyth, Dr., quoted, 127
Fourth Gospel, discussion of, 217;
plan of, 221; spiritual insight
rather than historicity, 244; may
correct errors of Synoptics, 353;
sums up Jesus' last utterances in
the temple, 389
Fritzsche, cited, 469
Furrer, quoted by Bruce, 481
Index
513
Gautama, and Jesus, ^74, 274, 504;
transfiguration of, 287; to re
appear, 422
Gentile embassy to Jesus, tradition
of, 406
Gethsemane, 461
God, Kingdom of, 97, 100 ; oneness
of Jesus with, 115, 389; Son of,
57, 58; sovereignty of, message
of Jesus, 96
Godet, cited, 382; quoted, 392
Golden-age dreams of Israel in
future, not past, 86
Gore, cited, 146
Gospels, the, the Faith behind, 9;
subjectivity of, 10-12; formative
influences, 12-15; presupposed
ideal of, 19; blending of con
trasted elements in, 332
Greek poets, philosophers and
artists prophets of ideal em
bodied in Jesus, 408, 411
Greeks desire to see Jesus, 403
Green, Prof. T. H., quoted, 409,
412
Greenwell, Dora, quoted, 343
Gwatkin, Prof., quoted, 209, 250,
300, 331
Harnack, Adolf, quoted, n, 485
Hart, J. H. A., quoted, 217
Healing power of Jesus, 117
Hegel, G. W. F., quoted, 277, 322
Heine, Heinrich, cited, 158
Herod Antipas, 42, 82, 213; ques
tions Jesus in vain, 477
Herod the Great, 42
Herodians allied with Pharisees,
389
Hesiod, quoted, 317
Hibbert Journal, quoted, 218
Hierarchy and Jesus, the, 181
Holy Ghost, see Spirit; descent
upon Jesus, 60
Hort, Dr., quoted, 118, 121, 225,
454, 5oi, 507
Hour and the Cup, 459
Incarnation or apotheosis? 28
Influence of Jesus on contempo
raries, 122
Intellectual influences of the time
do not account for Christianity,
26
Interpolation, the Great, in St.
Luke, 192, 207, 326
Isolation of Jesus, 268
Israel, first to be evangelized, 171 ;
day of grace for, lost, 375, 385
Jericho to Bethany, 351
Jerusalem, triumphal entry into,
364; lament over, 377; cleansing
of temple in, 378
Jesus, birth, 34 ; early years, 37 ;
baptized, 50; tempted, 58; and
John Baptist, 73; early ministry,
86; message of, 96; miracles of,
109 ; breach with Judaism, 122 ;
new apostolate of, 135 ; his or
dination discourse of the new
kingdom, 146; the ethic of, 156;
training of his evangelists, 167;
hierarchical examination and de
fence of, 181 ; egoism of, 193 ;
Perasan vision, the, 207; Lazarus
raised by, 215; feeds the multi
tude, 231; mysticism of, 242;
despised and rejected, 255; con
fessed by Peter, 265 ; announces
the Passion, 277; transfigured,
287 ; disciples of, 299 ; church of,
311 ; the days of his analepsis,
325; his ministry of ransom, 338;
progress of, through Jericho to
Bethany, 351 ; triumphal entry of,
364; announces passing of Is
rael's day of grace, 375 ; attack
upon, and counter-attack, 387;
Greeks desire to see, 403; apoc
alypse of, 416; Last Supper of,
431 ; valediction of, 446; his hour
and his cup, 459; the way of his
cross, 471 ; rises and appears, 485 ;
risen, regnant, but veiled as the
Christ, 499-509.
John the Baptist, 43 ; preaching and
baptism, 48; baptizes Jesus, 52;
relation to Jesus, 73 ; and Herod,
81 ; doubt of, concerning Jesus,
82
Josephus, quoted, 44, 81, 231, 359,
394; cited, 73
Jowett, B., quoted, 195, 278
Joyousness of Jesus, 75, 80, 91
Judaism, breach of Jesus with,
122
Judas, 362, 433, 439, 482
Justin Martyr, cited, 494
514
Index
Kahler, quoted, 113
Kant, Immanuel, quoted, 162, 387
Keim, cited, 27
Kenosis (self-emptying) of Christ,
29, 60
Kidd, B., quoted, 153; cited, 492
Kingdom of God means, rather,
Reign or Sovereignty of God, 97 ;
a new epoch, 100
Kingdom, the new, announced, 73 ;
discussed, 73-107
Kingship evaded and claimed by Je
sus, 102
Knowledge and dialectic skill of
Jesus, 397
Knowling, Dr., quoted, 88
Lamb of God, the, 78, 329
Lament over Jerusalem, 377
Lanier, Sidney, quoted, 468
Lao-Tsze, 145
Last days of the Passion (Book
VIII), 401
Last Supper, the, 431
Last things, in Jesus' teaching,
417
Last words of Jesus, 481
Law and miracle, 112
Lazarus, the raising of, 215 ; omis
sions and discrepancies in ac
count of, 216 ; table-guest with Je
sus, 361
Lecky, E. G., quoted, 160, 308
Lepers healed, 332
Life, continuity of, 396
Light of the World, 200
Limitations of Jesus external, not
intellectual or spiritual, 106
Logos, the, 32
Loisy, Abbe, quoted, 289
Macdonald, Dr. Greville, quoted,
407
Machaerus, 82
Mackinlay, Colonel, quoted, 74
McNabb, Rev. V., cited, 289
Maeterlinck, quoted, 103
Mahaffy, quoted, 38
Man is capax dei, 59
Man with dropsy healed, 212
Mark, the Evangelist, 470
Marriage, 395
Martha of Bethany, 203, 219, 224
Martineau, James, quoted, 124
Mary Magdalene, 202
Mary, mother of Jesus, 51
Mary of Bethany, and Jesus, 223,
225; the anointing by, 361
Mazzini, quoted, 106
Mencius, quoted, 60
Meredith, G, quoted, 318, 326
Messiah, his announcement of the
Passion, 277; disciples of the,
299; Church of the, 311
Messiahship of Jesus, 87-90, 137
Messianic, temptation, 67; hopes in
the time of Jesus, 82; struggle
(Book VII), 349
Method of Jesus, 80, 90; reverent
but revolutionary, 101
Mill, J. S., quoted, 157
Miracles of Jesus, Cana, 91 ; dis
cussed, lop; — See under individual
headings — Bethesda, Siloam, etc.
Miraculous power of Jesus accepted
by friends and enemies, 115
Mishna, The, 38
Missions, the two, as planned by
Jesus, 172
Moberly, quoted, 481
Moffatt (Historical New Test.),
quoted, 421
Monica, 51
Monier-Williams, quoted, 423
Morris, G. S., cited, 274
Moses, 333
Mother of Zebedee's sons, 342
Motives not acts, determine, 161
Moulton, Dr. T. H., quoted, 33
Miiller, Max, quoted, 274, 287
Multitude fed, 231
Mystic bread, the, 243, 442; wine,
443
Mysticism of Jesus, 242
Name of Jesus to be used in prayer,
453
Napoleon, quoted, 69
National sleeps and awakenings,
87
Nativity stories, 34
Natural and supernatural, the, 113
Nature-wonders in the Gospels,
120
Nazareth, Jesus' early life at, 37;
in the synagogue at, 256
Nicodemus and Jesus, 199, 201
Nicoll, Sir W. R., quoted, 61
Northern journeys, of Jesus, 260
Index
515
Olivet, 388, 424
Oneness with God, of Jesus, 115,
389
Ordination discourse for the
Twelve, 146
Origen against Celsus, quoted, 261,
323, 462
Orr, Dr., quoted, 492
Oxyrhynchus Logia, quoted, 471
Parables of the mustard seed, the
leaven, the tares, 32J the cruel
creditor, 322; labourers in the
vineyard, 335; the pounds, 359;
the tenants and the son, 382; the
rejected stone, 384; the marriage
feast, 384
Parabolic nature of the Tempta
tion story, 63
Paraclete, the, 455
Paradoxes of Christianity, 308
Parousia (the coming) of Christ
99, 107, 360, 421, 426, 473, 508 ; of
Buddha, 422
Pascal, B., quoted, 358
Paschal meal, the, 440
Passion, the, Messiah's announce
ment of, 277; repeated, 280;
Last Days of the (Book VIII),
401 ; chronology discussed, 432
Passion-week ministry in temple,
391
Patriotism included in Jesus teach
ing, 323
Peabody, Prof. F. P., cited, 312
Peile, Rev. J. H. F., quoted, 301,
307, 319.
Peraean mission and vision, 207
Peter on the water, 243; confesses
the Christ, 265; refuses belief
in his death, 280; denies Jesus,
474
Personality, theories of, 112; of Je
sus realizes ideal of his teach
ings, 164
Pfleiderer, cited, 263
Pharisees, the, and Jesus, 127, 210
Pilate judges Jesus, 475
Plato, quoted, 195, 278, 288, 471;
cited, 23, 24
Plotinus, quoted, 154
Plummer, quoted, 63, 192, 315, 326,
378, 381
Popular kingship refused by Jesus,
240
Post-Resurrection appearances of
Jesus, 495, 499 et seq.
Power of Jesus derivative, 226
Prayer, power of, 116
Preaching, the, of Jesus, 94
Predictions of Jesus, 424
Pre-existence of Jesus, 29
Preparation, Days of the (Book I),
17
Prince of Peace, 370
Property arbitration refused, 214
Raising the dead, 114, 119, 215
Ramsay, Prof. W. M., quoted, 63,
74. 289
Ransom, the ministry of, 338
Rebukes by Jesus, 399, 404
Regnancy of Jesus as Christ, 499
Rejected King, The (Book V), 229
Renan's Life of Jesus, 135, 196
Renunciation a special, not general,
call, 143
Resurrection - faith creates the
Church, 486 et seq.
Resurrection, the, foreseen, 283;
the, and later appearances, 485
Reuss, cited, 249
Rich young man, the, 143, 334
Rising and reappearance of Jesus,
485
Robertson, J. M., quoted, 423
Robinson, cited, 231
Rousseau, cited, 209
Royal Progress (Book VII), 349
Rutherford, Mark, quoted, 33
Sabbath, the, 128, 182, 210, 211
Sadducees and Jesus, 394, 395
St. Paul, and the Gospels, 12; con
version of, 14; knowledge of Je
sus, 326; change of emphasis as
to coming of Christ, 430; the
earliest literary witness, 488
Samaritan, the Good, 202
Samaritan woman, the, 232
Sanday, Dr. W., quoted, 174, 215,
260, 419, 452
Sanhedrim, fears to arrest Jesus,
199; tries Jesus, 472; appeals to
Pilate, 475
Sanhedrists investigate Jesus, 186
Satan and demonology, 62; in the
Perasan vision, 208
Saviours of mankind expected, 422
Schmiedel, quoted, 487
516
Index
School of Jesus, The (Book III),
133
Scribe who would follow Jesus, 315
Sects, 324
Seeley, Sir J. R., quoted, 196
Self-dedication to Death (Book
VI), 285
Sermon on the Mount, the reports
of, 146; chiefly designed for the
Twelve, 148; analysis of, 149;
Beatitudes, 152; antithetic woes,
155; theme of the, 158; an ideal
of principles, not a code of rules,
160
Service, the standard of greatness,
343
Seventy, the, 170, 208, 314
Shakspere, quoted, 438
Shakyamuni, 287
Shepherd, the Fair, 204
Silent years of Jesus, 40
Siloam, 203
Simon Peter, see Peter
Simon the Cyrenian, 479
Simon the leper, 360
Simon the Pharisee, 202
Simpson, P. Carnegie, quoted, 212
Sin, doctrines of, 358
Sinlessness of Jesus, 54, 64
Sisters of Jesus, 37
Smith, Rev. David, quoted, 353, 493
Smith, Prof. G. A., translation
quoted, 367
Smith, Dr. Walter, quoted, 84
Socialism, the ideal, must be based
on teachings of Jesus, 163 ; and
individualism combined in Jesus'
teaching, 313
Society of the New Church pre
pared, 301
Socrates, 184; and Jesus, 196;
quoted, 472
Somerville, quoted, 113
Son of God, the, Jesus realizing
himself as, 57; temptation of, 58
Son of Man, the, 357, 410, 420
Sonship and Fatherhood, root-con
ception of Jesus' ethic, 159
Sophocles, quoted, 270
Sovereignty of God, message of Je
sus, 96
Spenser, cited, 23
Spinoza, quoted, 215
Spirit, the, at the baptism, 55; re
lationship with man, 59; driving
Jesus, 63; as Paraclete, 455
Stalker, Dr., quoted, 127
Statesmanship of Jesus, 136
Strauss, quoted, 147; cited, 368,
489, 502, 503
Sunday instituted, 501
Sun-myth influences on Gospels, 494
Sun of Righteousness, the, 73
Supper, the Last, 431
Swedenborg, cited, 56
Swete, H. B., quoted, 495
Symbolism of Jesus, 370
Synoptic Gospels written because
men believed in Pauline Christ,
198
Synagogues, early visitation of, 79,
93
Syrophoemcian tour, 260
Tacitus, quoted, 432
Tatian, cited, 92, 181
Teleology, 112
Temple, the cleansing of, 92, 373,
378; tax, the, 305; teachings in
Passion-week, 391
Temptations of Jesus, as man, 54;
as Son of God, 58; elements of
the story, 63
Tertullian, cited, 273
Thaumaturgy, 175
Tolstoy, cited, 106, 144
Training of evangelists, 169
Transfiguration, the, of Jesus, 287;
of Buddha, 287; the vision of,
291 ; reason for and effect of,
294-298
Trial of Jesus, 472
Tribute money, the, 390
Triumphal entry, 364
Trypho, Dialogue with, quoted, 52
Twelve, the, 138, 140, 146, 167, 170,
3H
Unchurched, the, mission of Jesus
to, 131
Universality of Christianity, 428
Valediction of Jesus, 446
Venerable Bede, the, quoted, 381
Vine, the, and the branches, 449
Virgil, quoted, 42, 302
Virgin birth, the, 34, 36
Vision, the Peraean, 207; nature of,
291.
Voice in the wilderness, the, 42-
Voices from the sky, 414
Index
517
Walking on the water, 243
Washing of feet, the, 437
Washing of hands, 259
Water of Life, the, 200
Weiss, Dr. Bernhard, quoted, 52,
107, 506
Wellhausen, cited, 107
Wendt, T. J., quoted, 94, 273 ; cited,
249, 448, 500, 502
Wernle, Prof. Paul, quoted, 290,
322, 326
Westcott, Dr., quoted, 92, 181, 187,
216, 360, 487, 489
Westcott and Hort, quoted, 506
Widow's mite, the, 404
Wieseler, quoted, 192, 330
Withered hand, man with, 130
Woman healed of long infirmity,
211
Words of Jesus, The, quoted, 101
Wordsworth, quoted, in
World-conditions in Jesus' time,
33. 42
World, Light of the, 200
Xavier, Francis, quoted, 466
Young man, the rich, 324; ruler,
the, 315
Zacchaeus, 355
Zebedee, ambitious sons of, 342
Zeit-geist, influence upon Jesus,
417
Zigabenus, Euthemius, quoted, 400
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