The Penniman Memorial Library of Education of Yale University Established by James Hosmer Penniman, Yale 1884 In Memory of his Parents James Lanman Penniman, Yale 1853 Maria Davis Hosmer THE HOLY FAMILY. By B. Plockhorst (FROM THE COLLECTION OF MR. AND MRS. t . u. LOGAN.) THE MAN OF GALILEE A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY OF THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST by Frank W. Gunsaulus, D. D. hi President of the Akmour Institute of Technology AUTHOR OF " GLADSTONE, THE MAN AND HIS WORK," " PHIDIAS," "MONK AND KNIGHT," "THE TRANSFIGURATION OF CHRIST," ETC. Nearly Three Hundred Reproductions from Famous Paintings and Original Drawings, UNDER DIRECTION OF GEORGE SPIEL COPYRIGHT, IC FRANK W. GUNSAULUS. All rights reserved. Mpq53 &^5 PREFACE FOR twenty years I have been writing down the results of my studies of the career and character, the mission and influence of Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph and Mary. Within the last two years I have been permitted the opportunity to gather these results together and give them a chronological and unifying relationship. The view of Jesus the Christ here set forth appears to me not less than a matter of supreme and vital moment. In a somewhat large and active ministry, I have found the experience of men making such a picture of the Messiah of Humanity as I have tried faithfully to reproduce in these pages. Every line of this biographical study has been made true to me, either in the Christian experience of myself or in the religious growth and sanctification of others whom I have tried to help, by acquainting them with the Master of Men. If, therefore, more of the preacher and pastor appears in these chapters, than of the theologian and scholar, this fact — that for many years I have found Jesus Christ repeating His acts and re-living His life in the lives of the people whom God has given me to guide — must fur nish sole, and, I hope, sufficient explanation. A long list, indeed, would they furnish, if I were to supply the names of the authors and the books which I have freely drawn upon, and all other means employed by me, in writing this book. To make such acknowledgment in the form of a catalogue, would expose me justly to the charge of pedantry. For more than a score of years we have witnessed a genuine and widespread renaissance of interest in the life and sayings of the Messiah, and he who was PREFACE. seriously determined to make any account of Jesus the Christ must have previously acquainted himself with the results of the explo ration, exegetical inquiry, thinking and faith of many of the ablest men who ever toiled with the greatest of subjects. For myself, I say gratefully that I am indebted to all of them. In this sense, there fore, the result I present to the public does not claim a single element of originality. I do not know of any study which has con cerned itself with the life or words of Jesus of Galilee which I have not carefully considered, and I confess that I am not aware of any ray of light from any quarter, of which I have not unreservedly availed myself, so far as it was honorable, in seeking to illuminate the picture of the Christ and to determine His teachings and their significance. I have not asked my readers to go with me through the process of finding what I believe to be the truth. My studies have been most inspiring and delightful, but necessarily arduous, and a score of years in length. I offer what I at length conceive to be the truth itself. Irksome and annoying would it be for anyone to go into a sculptor's studio and enter painstakingly with him into the work of cutting the marble and working out each line of the portrait sculpture. Chips would fly, and dust would distract the vision. I present the statue as carefully studied and as sincerely wrought, as true and complete as I could make it with a vision all too limited, and a chisel all too blunt. I ask my readers to trust that I have weighed and balanced the testimony and reasonings provided by scholarly men as to the authenticity of the received records, the proper location of places mentioned, the true chronology of events, and the significance of thousands of particulars in dates, language, environment, point of view, and the bearing of these upon the past, present and future. Those phases of the life of Jesus least com prehensively dwelt upon in well-known books, I have chosen to study with my readers, even at the risk of being charged with neglecting PREFA CE. important features of Christ's teaching, or incidents in His career. I have preferred this course in order that the volume might add something to the growing portrait of that spiritual Christ who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. I believe that the race is on the verge of an era in which the personality, career, influence and teaching of Jesus of Galilee must be the central and dominant inspiration of thinking and conduct. To present Him to that era, as Faith and Experience know Him, accordant with the sacred records, has been the aim and hope of this work. F. W. GUNSAULUS. Central Church, Chicago, May i, 1899. THE PERPETUAL CHRISTMAS. The bleak winds hush their wintry cry And murmur softly with the sigh Of Mary in the lowly place Where shines the Baby's holy face. Yet everywhere men ask this morn: "Oh, where is our Redeemer born?" The winds of time are still this night; One Star is guiding calm and bright. My soul, hush thou and follow on Through day to night, through night to dawn! Where childhood needs thy love, this morn, Lo, there is thy Redeemer born! So, Jesus, with their carrolled praise, Thou comest in our day of days. These bring Thee to our earth again; We hear once more the angels' strain. Blest be the children on this morn; Behold our dear Redeemer born ! CONTENTS. CHAPTER. PAGE. I The Expectant World 17 II The Vision of Zacharias 2g III The Angel and the Virgin 37 IV The Birth of Jesus 47 V The Divine Infancy 57 VI The Wise Men and the Flight to Egypt , 65 VII Back to Palestine 73 VIII The Home at Nazareth 81 IX "In Galilee of the Gentiles" 87 X On the Way to the Passover Feast 93 XI In the Temple at Jerusalem 101 XII The Growing Youth at Home 109 XIII The Reading and Culture of Jesus 115 XIV Educative Influences in Galilee 119 XV Political and Intellectual Influences 127 XVI The Baptism by John 137 XVII Jesus Tempted in the Wilderness 151 XVIII The Temptation of Jesus — Continued 161 XIX The Return from the Wilderness 169 XX Calling the First Disciples 179 XXI Philip and Nathanael 187 XXII The Wedding at Cana in Galilee 195 XXIII The Cleansing of the Temple 205 XXIV The Visit of Nico4emus 219 XXV The Woman of Samaria 233 XXVI The Woman of Samaria — Continued 243 XXVII From Samaria to Cana and Nazareth ; 253 XXVIII The Calling of the Four Disciples 263 XXIX Jesus in the Synagogue and Home 273 XXX Calling of Matthew, the Publican 289 XXXI Jesus Again in Jerusalem 301 XXXII In Galilee 313 XXXIII The Sermon on the Mount — The Beatitudes 331 xi XXXIV The Sermon on the Mount— Continued 347 XXXV The Sermon on the Mount — Continued 357 XXXVI The Sermon on the Mount — Continued 369 XXXVII Many Mighty Works and the Imprisoned Baptizer 377 XXXVIII Phariseeism and Its Defeat 393 XXXIX The Messiah— King of Humanity 409 XL Jairus' Daughter 425 XLI The Multiplied Loaves and Fishes 437 XLII The Demand Upon Faith and the Great Confession 451 XLIII The Transfiguration 461 XLIV Preaching in Galilee 481 XLV The Man Born Blind 493 XLVI Martha and Mary '. 503 XLVII At the Dinner of the Pharisee — Parables 513 XLVIII On the Way to Jerusalem— -Palm Sunday 521 XLIX Preparation for the True Passover 533 L The Upper Room 545 LI The Last Words to the Disciples 561 LII Last Words to the Disciples — Continued 573 LIII In the Garden of Gethsemane 585 LIV To the Trial 597 LV Before Pilate 607 LVI The Uplifted Christ 621 LVII The Death of Jesus 639 LVIII The Sabbath ' 649 LIX The Easter Glory 655 LX The Risen and Ascended Lord 667 ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE. Frontispiece, The Holy Family — by B. Plockhorst. (Full page.) The Annunciation — A Fragment.. 17 Spring in Palestine 22 A Land of Fruitfulness 26 Snow in Palestine 27 Fallen Jerusalem — From Painting by Thomas Sedden. (Full page. ) 28 Hebron 29 Drawing the Name of the Priest. . . 31 Temple Offering 33 The Golden Gate, Jerusalem 35 Nazareth — From Painting by W. Holman Hunt. (Full page.) .. . 36 The Angel and the Virgin 37 A Street in Nazareth 40 Church of the Annunciation at Naz areth 42 The Marriage of Joseph and Mary . 45 Bethlehem 47 Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem. 51 The Annunciation — Fragment from Painting of B. Plockhorst 53 Grotto of the Shepherds 57 P'ield of the Shepherds 60 The Mother's Offering 62 Nave of the Church of the Nativity 64 The Astrologer. . . 65 The Wise Men from the East 69 The Flight into Egypt 71 Light in Egypt 72 Native House at Bethlehem 73 The Village and Plain of Esdraglon 76 The Carpenter's Son 81 The Divine Child 85 An Early Student .... 87 "The Law Written on the Door Posts." 91 The Childhood of Christ 95 xiii PAGE. Jesus on the Way to Jerusalem — From Painting by O. Mengelberg. (Full page. ) 96 Finding of Christ in the Temple — From Painting by W. Holman Hunt. (Full page.) 104 The Return from Jerusalem — From Painting by Count Ferdinand Harrach. (Full page.) 108 Head of Christ — Fragment from Painting of Christ in the Temple, by Hoffman 109 Tower of David, Jerusalem 113 A Rabbi Teacher 115 Panorama of Jerusalem from Jericho Road 119 View of the Country of Judea 123 Cedars of Lebanon 125 "Over Whose Acres Walked Those Blessed Feet." 127 A Typical Village 130 Wilderness of Judea 134 Pilgrims' Booths Near the Jordan. . 137 John the Baptist in the Wilderness — From Painting by Sir John Gil bert, R. A. (Full page.) 140 The Jordan Where Christ Was Bap tized ' 145 A Quiet Pool in the River Jordan. 148 Mount of Temptation 151 Scape-goat 154 The Wilderness To-day 161 Head of Christ — Fragment — W. Hoffmann 169 Legend of St. Veronica — From Painting by Gabriel Max 172 The Christ — From Painting by Leo nardo da Vinci 175 ILL US TEA TIONS. PAGE. Pilgrims Entering Bethlehem. (Full page.) 178 "Follow Me." 179 Ruins of Bethsaida 182 Sea of Galilee — Tiberias 184 Jacob's Ladder • . . T 189 Cana of Galilee 195 The Jar in Which the Water Was Turned to Wine 197 Native House in Cana of Galilee ... 199 An Old Fountain ¦ — Environs of Cana 201 Characteristic Street in Nazareth.. 203 Pilgrims on the Way to the Pass over 205 Damascus, from East Gate 208 The Sea of Galilee, from Tiberias. 210 Christ Cleansing the Temple. (Full page.) 214 Passover Offering 216 Jerusalem and Surroundings 217 Nicodemus' Visit at Night 219 Moses and the Brazen Serpent. . . . 226 Christ and the Woman of Samaria at the Well 233 Ruins of Samaria 235 Old Arch Near Samaria 237 The Carrying Away of Israel 239 Jacob's Well 241 A Woman of Samaria 243 Sychar 244 Fountain in Shechem Yalle)- 246 Mount Gerizim 248 Tomb of Joseph Near Ebal and Gerizim 250 The Woman's Return from the Well 251 Wheatfields 253 Ruins of the Synagogue at Caper naum 255 Ruins of Joseph's House, Nazareth 258 Reading the Law 260 Christ Preaching to the People. . . . 263 Christ and the Fishermen 266 " Fear Not," Said Jesus 269 Overturned Lintel of a Synagogue. 273 Jesus at the House of Simon 277 No Room for the Leper 282 The Paralytic Let Down Through the Roof 285 PAGE. At the House of Matthew — From Painting by Alexander Bida. (Full page. ) 288 The Calling of St. Matthew 289 The Old Institution 297 Outer Court of the Temple 301 Pool of Bethesda 304 " Rise, Take Up Thy Bed and ' Walk." 306 Ramah of Benjamin 309 Abraham 311 Sea of Galilee Near Capernaum. . . . 313 Christ's Reproof of the Pharisees. . 316 "Hallow My Sabbaths." 318 Tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre. . . . 322 Christ Calling the Apostles James and John. (Full page. ) 326 Ruins of Bethsaida 327 The Sermon on the Mount — From Painting by A. Noack. (Full Page.) 330 Tomb of David 333 Moses Witnessing God's Presence on Mount Sinai 337 A Public Scribe 344 Mount Sinai 347 Judean Hills and Valley of Hin- nom 350 At the Altar of Sacrifice 352 Blowing His Own Horn 355 Ruins of Christian Church at Bee- roth ^ 357 Existing Walls of Jerusalem, North west Side 360 A Rabbi 365 Bethany 366 "Consider the Lilies of the Valley." 369 Solomon in All His Glory. ......... 372 House on a Rock 374 Capernaum and the Sea of Galilee. 377 Ruins of Naini 379 The Mensa Christa, Nazareth 382 The Dead Sea 386 Isaiah , 387 On the Shore — Chorazin 389 The Woman at the House of Simon the Pharisee — From Painting by D. G. Rossetti. (Full page.).. 392 Healing the Sick 393 ILLUSTRATIONS. PAG I'.. The Money Lender 397 Near Magdala 399 Christ and the Holy Women 401 Jesus the Consoler 403 The Healing One 409 Christ the Remunerator 411 Parable of the Sower (4 Panels) 4 12, 413 The Evil One Sowing Tares 416 The Herd of Swine — From Painting by Briton Rivire, R. A. (Full page.) 420 Weeping Over Janus' Daughter — From Painting by J. de Vriendt. 424 Olive Vineyard Near Samaria 425 Christ Resuscitating Jairus' Daugh ter 426 The Woman Touching the Hem of Christ's Garment 428 "Peace Be Unto Thy House. "... . 430 Samaria 431 Caesarea-Philippi, Site of Herod's Castle 434 Ruins of Crusaders' Castle, Tiberias 435 Bread and Fishes 437 Christ and Peter 444 "ComeUnto Me All Ye That Labor and Are Heavy Laden." 447 Manna in the Wilderness 448 By the Sea of Galilee — From Paint ing by T. Goodall, R. A. (Full Page.) 450 The Walls of Jerusalem, Looking Toward Mount of Olives 451 Tvre ••••. 453 Caesarea-Philippi Gateway 456 Jesus Teaching the People 459 Mount of Olives — Chapel of Ascen sion 460 The Summit of Mount Carmel 461 The Glory of the Olden Time 469 The Transfiguration — From Paint ing by Raphael. (Full page.).. 476 Mount Tabor 479 Christ Blessing Little Children — From Painting by B. Plockhorst. (Full page. ) 482 " He That Is Without Sin Among You, Let Him Cast the First Stone at Her." 488 PAGE. Place of the Good Samaritan 491 The Light of the World 493 The Pool of Siloam 495 "We Know That This Is Our Son, and That lie Was Born Blind. " . . 497 The Good Shepherd 501 Sycamore Branch and Fruit 502 Jesus and Mary 503 Natives Grinding Corn, Jerusalem . 505 Resurrection of Lazarus 508 "According to Your Faith Be It Unto You". — From Painting by Enrique Serra. (Full page. ). . . 512 The Lost Piece of Silver 513 The Prodigal Son 516 The Tribute Money 521 House of Zacchasus 522 Christ Entering Jerusalem 524 Christ Weeping Over Jerusalem. . . 526 The Widow's Mite 530 Panorama of Jerusalem 531 Meditation . . 533 The Rich Young Man — From Paint ing by E. Gebhardt 536 Bethany, House of Mary and Martha 539 Where Christ's Betrayal Was Fore told The Outer Court of the Temple. . . . The Battlements Upon the Roofs. . Christ Washing the Feet of Peter. Judas Going Out Into the Night. . . The Last Supper — Drawing by George Spiel. (Full page.) ... . Fragments from "The Last Sup per," by Leonardo da Vinci, 562- 564> 566, Paul and John — From Painting by Raphael 570 Valley of Jehoshaphat, Showing the Tombs of James aud Zachariah . . 571 A Love Feast 573 Hill of the Evil Counsel 575 Christ and the Vine 576 The Hymn of the Last Supper. . . . 582 Christ Leaving the Pratorium — From Painting by Gustav Dore\ . 584 Christ Entering the Garden of Geth- semane 585 54254354555o554560 568 ILL USTRA TIONS. PAGE. The Tower in Which Herod Is Said to Have Stayed 586 Bridge Over Brook Kidron 588 Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane 590 Place Where Disciples Were Found Sleeping 592 "Behold, He Is At Hand That Be- trayeth Me. " 594 Judas' Kiss 595 Roman Soldiers Conducting the Bound Man 597 The Garden of Gethsemane 598 House of Caiaphas 600 "Peter Went Out and Wept Bit ted}'." 602 Entrance to Judgment Hall of Pilate 605 The Judgment Hall of Pilate 607 Christ Before Pilate — Fragments from Painting by Montkaski. . 608, 609 The Remorse of Judas — ¦ From Painting by Edward Armitage, R. A. (Full page.) 612 Lane Leading to Herod's Palace.. 614 Place Where Crown of Thorns Was Put On 618 " I Find No Fault with Him." 619 Christ Taking Leave of His Mother 621 PAGE. Via Dolorosa — The Way of the Cross 624, 625 "Weep Not for Me." 627 Casting Lots for Christ' s Garments . 634 The Titulus 637 Mary, the Mother of Christ, and the Apostle John 639 Home of Simas, the Penitent Thief 641 The Gibes of the Soldiers of Rome. 644 The Soldiers Leaving Calvary 647 Asking Pilate for Christ's Body. . . . 649 The Three Marys Going from Cal vary 652 The Burial of Christ — From Paint ing by Bruno Piglheim. (Full Page.) 654 After the Crucifixion 655 Inside of the Holy Sepulchre 659 "He is Risen" — From Painting by Axel Enderk. (Full page.) 660 Mary Weeping at the Sepulchre. . . 664 "Touch Me Not." 665 "Did Not Our Hearts Burn Within Us?" 667 Suburbs of Emmaus 671 The Ascension — From Painting by Hoffmann 681 HE story of Jesus of Galilee is the biog raphy of love, the memoirs of goodness, the history of God in the soul of man. Any account made of the Man of Nazareth, the son of Joseph and Mary, with a chronicle of the dates, a rehearsal of the circumstances and a representation of the persons touched and made interesting by His career, derives its whole interest from the fact that Jesus not only was God manifest in humanity at a certain time, and in a certain place, but forevermore He lives and comes into the human spirit, to be man's Messiah. His visible life in our world was the appeal of God addressed to men where He found them. It had less of cir cumstance than any similar force in history. It was always tending to be invisible and spiritual, for He had come to found a spiritual kingdom. It ever lifted human experience with Him, as much as it might, without losing hold of man, fixed as man was to terrestrial places and bound as he was to time. This re-telling of the history proceeds upon the truth that every earnest follower of the Man of 17 1 8 THE MAN OF GALILEE. Galilee finds that the external facts of the career of Jesus which transpired eighteen hundred years ago are facts internal with him, and that Jesus is evermore re-living His life in the Christian's ex perience. If the Christian's spiritual biography were written, it would have its Nazareth and its Capernaum, its Lake of Gennesaret and its Jordan River, its Jerusalem and its Golgotha, its Joseph's new tomb and its Olivet, with Peters and Johns, Marys and Judases, thronging the page. The life of Jesus in a man makes the Gospel account credible to that man. The biography often narrates itself more vividly in experience, than it appeared in ancient Palestine. Jesus is always becoming the Christ of God to the spirit and hope of His believing friends; and this experience is an event of the mind and the conscience, not wholly attached to any portion of the earth. This event clearly and powerfully opens itself only in that "light that never was on sea or land." That the oft-told story repeats itself as a series of modern and contemporaneous facts, in the spiritual life of men, is not of small value as tending to inspire the faith that they occurred on the plane of the things that go to make up our world and its history, — a world and a history which are items of time only because God and the spirit of man are realities of eternity. So long as these abide, the story of Jesus, who was and is God's Christ and man's Christ, will be true to the true, truer still to those who are more true, and truest to the truest in earth and in heaven. He will be ' ' Our Divinest Symbol, " as the reverent phrase of Carlyle goes, when man is most like the divine; His story will be most believable to those whose capacity to receive God has yielded to God as did His; and it will be most certainly accepted at the very points where, in our lives, we have felt through His effective brother- liness our own sonship unto His and our Father. Supernatural and natural are words of no significance, when Jesus repeats His life as "Wonder-Counsellor" in the life of a man. He is anti-natural, only when we make Him an affair of a distant time or a personage in a changed geography. Let us not attempt to give welcome to the Divine Infant of Bethlehem, unless there is a Bethlehem within us and the skies above us are already resonant with the heavenly over ture. And now our Father, — His Father, give unto us the Spirit of Truth whom He promised, when He said: "He shall glorify me: THE MAN OF GALILEE. 19 for He shall receive of Mine and show it unto you." — John xvi, 14. For we know that thus only may the King of a spiritual kingdom be real unto us. / The faith of Christendom at its best appreciates with fine grate fulness the fact that Jesus, Son of the Most High, began His career on the earth which He was to redeem at apparently the most lowly point of entrance for anything save the divine. It was truly common place, not high enough to distinguish by good fortune, not vulgarly low enough to be a stage for cheap heroism — but an ordinary en trance-place. Morally it was the loftiest. "Palestine," as Gladstone says, "was weak and despised, always obscure, oftentimes and long trodden down beneath the feet of imperious masters. On the other hand, Greece, for a thousand years, 'Confident from foreign purposes,' repelled every invader from her shores. Fostering her strength in the keen air of" freedom, she defied, and at length overthrew, the mightiest of existing empires; and when finally she felt the resistless grasp of the masters of all the world; them, too, at the very moment of her subjugation, she herself subdued to her literature, language, arts, and manners. Palestine, in a word, had no share of the glories of our race; while they blaze on every page of the history of Greece with an overpowering splendor. Greece had valor, policy, renown, genius, wisdom, wit; she had all, in a word, that this world could give her; but," he adds, "the flowers of Paradise, which blossom at the best but thinly, blossomed in Palestine alone. " At the time when the prelude from the Heavenly Host was forming its anthem-like melody upon celestial lips, the narrow strip of country called Palestine had no obvious title to attract anything of man's interest save his pity or his scorn. Its • day for breeding earthly kings was done. Its very isolation left it standing all the more evidently weak, poverty-stricken and hopeless of the future. The vast stretch of sand which made a forbidding wall of aridness against which the business of Asia ventured not, was indeed matched by the fact that its situation had made it the gateway from Egypt to the West. But a desert still had to be crossed before the culture 2o THE MAN OF GALILEE. of the African capital could use it as a roadway to Europe. God had walled it thus, and He had taken it for a training-ground to rear and educate upon its narrow and separated leagues, a nation peculiar in its mental and moral fiber and worthy to be called His Own. Only where it is hard, if not impossible, for soft and corrupt ideals to travel with their caravans of power and gross methods of life, does the Almighty illustrate His Almightiness to the confusion of man's boastful weakness. But surely human statistics, whose calculations always leave out the divine facts and factors which make a true King of Kings, could find little in the soil or location of what we call the Holy Land to forecast the expectation of even the pettiest of desirable sovereigns. Palestine's weakness was more galling to herself and apparent to the world, because of the overwhelming impression made by the grandeur of Rome. Against that glare of vulgar splendor this little land and its fate seemed a trifling spot on the shield of noon day. It meant nothing to the purveyors of moral ideals in that day, that the fetid immoralities, whose contagion had communicated rot tenness to the East and West, had been excluded from Palestine, partly by her seemingly unfortunate situation, and partly by the impecu- niousness of her inhabitants. She could not buy the luxuries that enervate; she could not purchase a way to the iniquity that stings and kills. On the other hand, this meant everything to Him whose Son was to create a new morality subversive of Roman and Oriental systems and iniquities. God was depending upon the forces and processes which should manifest their sovereignty in Him who was to say, with divine royalty: "The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head." — Matt, viii, 20. Rome's eagles flew over this land, rich in separate valleys, but barren and dry in comparison with the countries chosen by fortune or by shrewdness; and their cry told its citizens that Rome ruled the world. Any other ideal of civilization would have been less offensive and less antagonistic to the ideal which soon was to find its embod iment in the only Sovereign who can realize in Himself a better dream of world-wide unity than was Rome's. Yet Rome was the servant of the Palestinian carpenter's son. Let the outraged Tew still pav his taxes to her! Her armies were thundering against the THE MAN OF GA/.I/.EE. 21 outposts of civilization, the Pillars of Hercules, fretting to do what a Charles V. was to do, because of the act of Columbus fifteen centuries later, — to erase the ATc Plus Ultra and write thereon instead Plus Ultra, — feverish for more lands to subdue. These armies rolled back again like huge waves, until they shook the sleepy Sphinx in the ancient Egyptian sand-waste. On they marched, until they saw the waters lave the shores of Hispania with a peace and splendor such as they had established. Thence they bore the imperial policy tri umphant to the regions of snow. But Caesar was toiling for Jesus, — and this stupendous labor was eventuating in the organizing and centralizing of all human forces, so that, in a half-century, they might fly forth winged with a new ardor, bearing the story of the Christ, a citizen of that least honored dependency, -. — Palestine. All truly written history is the account of God, in bringing His Christ to man and bringing man to His Christ. The five millions of Rome could despise the quarter of a million human beings of Jerusalem; but the hillock, Calvary, would some day gather to itself the affections of mankind. The citizen of Palestine was abhorred by the Roman; the Jew, on the other hand, looked upon paying his tax to Rome as an act in treason to his past and future. So the Jew's country burned and seemed to shrivel in an intense heat, producing a flame that lit up the throne of Augustus Caesar, illumined the golden milestone in the Forum, until it was seen to the extreme limit of civilization, and at length irradiated a federation of the planet under a banner which the Jew feared and hated. It was, — it ever is, of divine fitness that He who must rule man by saving man, is born into a world, or into a heart, just where these elements for which the Jew stood are pros trate, but yet alive, beneath the haughty elements then embodied in Rome. Christ must be a Jewish baby, born of a father and mother who have journeyed far, to furnish statistics for a Roman monarch. Those in whom Christ has been born, have their Bethlehems where haughty Power requires shy and pitiful Hope to find shelter in a common caravanserai, that a Messiah may be born divinely. But the spiritual lowliness and dearth into which He came were yet more pronounced. The nation and the age needed supreme souls to save them from servility, if only by saving them unto hero- worship. All the Jewish men of genius were of the past. Hebrewdom THE MAN OF GALILEE. groveled as she remembered how long it had been, since a great servant of God had broken past her provincialism and taught other peoples or even taken hold of a lofty ideal and rescued the nation from the fear that only low levels were hers. The past made the present appear as a pigmy to a giant. Aforetime the religious ideas and ideals given to Israel had crossed separating deserts, and the vision of the Jew had affected many peoples. No nation had come up to the questioning Sphinx with a fresh despotism for Egypt which had not been influenced by the moral system of this devout people, for Jews played a large part in the life of Alexandria. It was thus with other so-called heathen cities. So great had been the Jew that, even now, He who should come "a root out of dry ground" — Isaiah li'ii, 2 — could not be crucified at Jerusalem, save under an inscription written in the languages read by the descendants of Pericles and those of Csesar, as well as those of His ancestor, David. But the heroic, melodic, prophetic and wide-minded Judaism which had lit up the corners of the world, was now an afterglow. Palestine had the same soil and sky. Even yet that land furnished every symbol, metaphor and color for the page of a poet. Its prod Eg * ucts and cli matic con --- ditions make it seem the ^ I spot central to SPRING IN PALESTINE. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 23 the whole world, where all the planet's various phenomena are happen ing. In its frigid cold and tropical heat, its storm and shine, its mountains and valleys, its lakes and rivers, its fauna and flora, its earthquakes and calms, there was gathered the entire earth's varied experiences, and a Homer or an Omar Khayyam, a Shakespeare or a Norse bard, could have obtained his imagery there, — even the multiform imagery which is the marvel of the sacred Scriptures, — a treasure-house of figures of speech sufficiently comprehensive and apposite, if employed by genius, to render them any and all of these singers immortal. But there was no ear to listen to "the oaks that mused and the pines that dreamed." In vain the ivy climbed upon white walls of the peasant's home; in vain the beeches flamed in the autumnal haze — no poet pressed their leaves between the lines of a deathless lyric. Could it be that One was near who would attach to Himself the line "The rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley," — Cant. ii, 1 — One in whose hand the mustard-seed as well as the anemone of the field would become poems? Some mystics believed even this. "After all, "thought they, "these silent alluvial gardens and sun-smitten cliffs, these speechless palms and mute poplars may become voiceful, for a great soul transfigured will transfigure the planet." So did the extremity of their intellectual and political despair often beget a gleam of hope. A nation with a matchless literature saw itself writing nothing memorable; and the wisest knew that such a state could come only of a people with a transcendent religious inheritance which had fallen into the hands of leaders without vision and a priesthood without inspiration. The difficulty, as these few open-eyed souls saw, was not that the Holy Land had grown less sublime at Hebron, less fertile in the plain of Jezreel; it had not lost a valley like that of the Jordan or a mountain like Tabor; no tere binth or cyclamen, no juniper or lily, felt other than the ancient breath from the snow of Lebanon or the acacia hedges of the foot-hills. Even yet, the Talmud might say in truth, that "in Galilee it is easier to raise a legion of olives, than to rear a child in Palestine." The fact is that the Holy Land lacked in holy humanity to translate all this into psalms and make it again the theater for divine events. The earth is poor when man is pusillanimous; man is petty when 24 THE MAN OF GALILEE. underneath his possibilities in statecraft, art, literature and conduct, there works not a passion for holiness. Even the exceptional souls who yet drank from the sacred brooks of pious inspiration, as did lawgivers, prophets and psalmists of a more grandly expectant day, felt all this general letting-down of Hebraic life, when they saw proud Pharisees and self-assured Sadducees sinking the spirit in the letter, or protesting with cold negativism over the collapse of Israel's theo cratic dream. In this sad plight, and in the atmosphere created by unspiritual leaders, there had grown up an expectation of the Messiah which was certain to be unsatisfied with and even to pursue with antag onism a Messiah of Humanity, such as God, the All-Loving and the All -Wise, would give to men, even through the agency of Israel. When disappointed, that grosser expectation would even slay such a Messiah, foregleams of whose moral glory had now and then filled the eyes of other and truer Hebrew thinkers with the fairest and largest hope ever entertained by mortal men. Among the Pharisees, the Rabbis had been word-mongers so long; they had handled the profound things of God so often with superficial aims; they had drugged the hitherto simple people with so many fantastic subtleties; they had so constantly loaded the spiritual imagination of Hebrewdom till it was bent down to the earth; they had so bewildered hungry souls with endless classifications and distinctions as to the moral and ceremonial law; fringes and blue threads, ablutions and phylacteries; trivial gesticulation and irritating observance had so nearly darkened the insight and outlook of the Jew, that he wandered in his hope and returned again to a narrow superficialism like that of his teachers. The awful sense of the Holiness of God, known and felt of old, had faded. Jews could see nothing in sin as hateful as was the brilliant despotism of Rome; they could hope for nothing in the Messiah so desirable as an increase of almost vulgar national strength, national prominence, and a carnival, if nothing better, of national triumphs. Caesar's world-subduing presence influenced their ideal of what God's Christ must be and do. He must somehow out-Caesar Caesar. This condition of spirit had come inevitably. The multitudinous comments of the Rabbis upon the law made the law to be dreaded as a tortuous problem too difficult for the simple and sincere; and THE M IN OF GALILEE. 25 they deprived it of its ancient power to educate the people toward a mental and spiritual greatness which alone might welcome a really great Messiah. The majority of Jews, to begin with, could not learn all these fancied applications which were urged upon them by the Rabbis. This shut them off from the constituted fountains, and the}' were taught to endure their hopeless exile from the society of the cultured. Truth thus became either untrue or irremediably distant. It was a possession denied to the truest, and therefore it was false. With each age, self-conceited proprietors of moral ideals developed their passion for the refinements and fantasies which hid and stifled the single-eyed, ethical spirit, until religion and goodness were dead or under their ban. Doubtless the rise of the party called the Sadducees did some thing to make things less burdensome and more reasonable. But they were ineffective as constructive reformers, because they had only the worst element of all protestantism. They left politics and supercili- iousness, only to protest, and of the " dissidence of dissent" only were they masters. They dealt in what Emerson called ' ' pale ne gations. " Theirs was the weakness of all self-seeking rationalism. To adopt a well-known phrase, they were surer that they did not believe what they believed not, than they were that they believed what they believed. It was clear to the few men of profound piety that the Messiah would certainly warn His followers against them also, when He came. Their dogmatism of unbelief limited human hope. They could have no place in their mind for One whose person and faith must prove itself shattering to all agnosticism ; especially had they no welcome for One, Who, to be the Messiah of man, must be Lord of Life and Death, for they believed not in immortality and they denied the possibility of a resurrection. They were a coterie of superior persons of priestly caste, whose boastful scholarship and intellectual mannerisms patronized and pitied good people who be lieved too much, and especially those outside their fancied aristocracy. Together with the opposing Rabbis, who were the regular teachers and guides among the Pharisees, the}' kept up a meaningless dispu tation which rendered both even more incapable than otherwise of succoring and ministering to Israel's decadent vision. The advent of a national hero who would deliver the bodies, rather than the 26 THE MAN OF GALILEE. souls, of Israel; the coming of an earthly paradise for every Hebrew; the dawn of a revolutionary day which should bring independence; the approach of one who would smite alien and abominated races, a prince having thrones to dis tribute, a king possessing the A LAND OF FRUITFULNESS. spoils of victory to give to his cohorts, a builder of a more glorious Jerusalem, an imperialist whose political sovereignty would furnish office and pelf for all Jews,— for this only were they clamorous; and the noise of their cry drowned, for the most part, the sweet whispers of a broadly human hope nestling here and there in the bosom of piety. Two hearts, however, at least, had not been cheated of the THE MAN OF GALILEE. 27 privilege of entertaining the first rays of the Advent glory. One priest had not failed to preserve the tradition made eloquent by Isaiah and Malachi. It was what we call a transition-time. Out of that priest's home, where the greater hope died not, was soon to come one who, with one hand .on the old and fading, would grasp the new and perennial with the other. In this forerunner, the forces of history were to act and interact, and the one increasing purpose of God should remain unbroken. We may well stop for a while with this man of God. His son shall help our feet Messiah-ward, — the child of Zacharias, the priest, and his wife Elizabeth, — John, than which man a sadder or a greater Not till this day, has been of woman born, John, like some iron peak by the Creator Fired with the red glow of the rushing morn — "This when the sun shall rise and overcome it Stands in his shining desolate and bare, Yet not the less the inexorable summit Flamed him his signal to the happier air." SNOW IN PALESTINE. FALLEN JERUSALEM. CHAPTER II THE VISION OF ZACHARIAS On an October morning, in the year 6 B. C, a man of three score years and more paced the Temple-cloister with a mingled dig nity and humility of bearing unusual even to one so distinguished for piety and faith as himself. He then wended his way from a place of sacred sym bolism to a place still more sacred, toward the altar of the Tem ple. On that day, he was the central figure in the holy city of Jerusalem, and soon he was listen ing for the signal to proclaim that the mo ment had come for the incense to trans form itself into an odorous cloud bear ing up to God the devotion and hope of Israel. This man was Zacharias, the patriot-priest. It was his turn to officiate. He paused for an instant on the verge of performing the HEBRON. 29 30 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. particular duties of his holy office. It was a moment unique in his experience. Never before had these special duties been given into the hands of this venerable and reverent man. This day he was not only the superintending priest, but now, for the first time and the last, he was to see the incense glow and rise from the shining altar at his own touch. No spot stained the shield of his purity; no question had hitherto disturbed the public confidence in his worthi ness to bear the golden censer and to stand in the light quivering forth from the seven-branched candlestick. The office of incensing had come to him that morning in the usual way. It had been deter mined when, for the third time, the whole body of priests met to draw the name of the incensing priest and to draw also for the fourth time the names of those who were to ' ' lay on the altar the sacrifice and the meat offerings and to pour out the drink offering." This was understood by all to distinguish him as a servant and a repre sentative of the Highest whom God Himself, then and there, notably honored. Zacharias was not a citizen of Jerusalem; he had probably come up from Hebron, to assist in the services at the Temple. He had left at home his aged and childless wife, Elizabeth. Their priestly pedigree ran back in an unbroken line to the great name of Aaron. They belonged to an aristocracy which was of the sublimest sort, but it was not grand enough to enable their Jewish hearts to forget that God had given to Elizabeth no child. Hebrew ideas as to the standing of a childless woman added to their own personal grief. Why had God punished them? Why must their name perish and the memory of a home without a future vanish away? When Zacharias found himself at the eighth of the twenty-four courses, in the ancient scheme of weekly service, — the second ministra tion, of the course, Abia, — and took his place on that day of days, the prayer which had left his lips as he went out from his chamber in one of the Temple-court cloisters was yet trembling in his heart. It was a petition that the special blessing of a child might be granted to his sorrowful home. White-robed and lofty-minded, he had pro ceeded upward to the interior space, close to the sanctuary, and, passing the gleaming balustrades, he had found himself standing erect and bare-footed above the other courts, on the last marble course, look- THE MAN OF GALILEE. 3i ing upon the sacred walls of the glowing sanctuary, and praying even vet that the reproach of childlessness might be taken away from Elizabeth. We do not know who were selected as his two special com panions for the hoh' office which he had been chosen to perform. We mav be certain that on this morning, as, in the usual way, their devotion and care took v, away the remnants of that which had been used the night before at the service, or as they placed the live coals reverently upon the altar, these two friends, who may have been relatives, sympa thized with the holy man in his affliction. When the music filled the Temple and the Levites ap peared, this priest, who was not a father, and who was at that hour distin guished by -i the fact that his was the act of incens- i n g, must have felt, as never before, E NAME OF PRIEST. 32 THE MAN OF GALILEE. that something must occur which would remove this sorrow, or that he must conclude that there lingered a blot upon the righteousness for which the people had always honored him. The lofty height upon which he stood before the glowing coals which had been just taken from the Altar of the Burnt-Offering, made vivid to him the fact that he bore this peculiarly heavy burden, and the light from the golden candlestick seemed to illuminate the lonely chambers of his heart, when he stood solitary in the Holy Place. The table of shewbread was before him. Was he not again uttering a prayer for a child, or was his mind fixed on the larger and desired gift of the Messiah, as his solitude made more pathetic and sacred the ven erable presence, while hope was kindling in his heart and the incense burned? In either case, the prayer was to be answered. God often so answers a greater prayer as to include an answer to the less. Another form suddenly appeared near the Holy of Holies. It was that of an angel. That same fear which has come upon men at the swift dawn of a truth grander than they have ever known or trusted, troubled his soul. All souls in the ever-opening way out into the future, experience it. It is the fear which Jacob felt at Bethel when he said: "How dreadful is this place!" — Gen. xxviii, 17. It is the fear which the disciples of Jesus were to know, when they should enter the cloud on the Mount of Trans figuration. That angel, who was known as ' ' The might of God, " had appeared to the amazed priest. Gabriel stood before Zacharias, more radiant than the burning lamps, more sublime than the fragrant cloud of incense. From the right side of the altar, next to the Golden Candlestick, there came such a voice as had vibrated in the souls of prophets and psalmists and captains in the mightier days of Israel, — a voice which that day's Sadducees and Pharisees could not hear. Zacharias was told that a child would be his, and that his name should be John. The fact that this name John, or Johanan, signifies " The Lord is gracious," seemed to enlarge the soul of the old priest to such an apprehension of the divine gracious- ness that his mind hung upon the announcement that the child's influence and power for God would overflow the narrow limitations of family. And the angel added: "Thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at his birth. For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink THE MAN OF GALILEE. 33 neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb. And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the chil dren, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." And Zacharias said unto the angel, " Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years. " And the angel answering said unto him, "I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to show thee these glad tidings. And be hold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be fulfilled intheirseason. " — St. Luke i, 14-21. Surely the Mes sianic daytime was throbbing with morn- ingtide against the old and long-strained eyes of the priest. It had over borne him. He, however, roused from the bewilderment into which he fell at the utterance ^g.ff ; of the angel, and, unforgetful of his duties amidst the grateful emotions of the moment, he came forth from the Holy Place, still the patriot-priest. He now stood on the ' ' top of the steps which led from the porch to the court of the Gentiles." The people had waited long, since the little bell had sounded as the signal for incensing. Prayers had died from their lips, and they had been wondering, as priests and common folk looked anxiously for the re-appearance of Zacharias. Surely the light of the Messiah 34 THE MAN OF GALL LEE. must have been reflected from the happy face of the priest, as he came in sight, and as the lamb was now laid upon the altar. But the priest had done his last priestly act. He was dumb. Zacharias was therefore unable to give the usual benediction. But the hour of the unusual had struck. The human was overladen with the divine. Never had that daily meat-offering meant so much of immediate hope to the hearts of men who were demanding a sacrifice for their sin, as it did at that moment. The deeper spiritual preparation which God had just given to the priest left him unprepared for the performance of customary duties. He had paid the cost of vision. The other priests and the people who had gazed excitedly at the Holy Place, marveling lest God had smitten the celebrant because of some secret sin, or ceremonial pollution, lingered on the porch steps, and if any of them were jealous of Zacharias, they were now rewarded, for the ministrant who had been marked for incensing and was now trying . to utter the benediction, was still speechless. It was not the silence following the startling discovery of iniquity; it was the awful and sacred silence which follows the eloquence of an angel. The echoes of the voice of the celestial messenger moved in the heart of Zacharias, and they had drowned his speech. Help lessly he yet stood making signs. God alone could give the bene diction at the conclusion of the service, on that day. The voice of the Priest of the Law was vanishing; the voice of the Gospel had spoken. No account remains to us of the hour at the home of Zacharias and Elizabeth in Hebron, when there was a new glory on the clusters hanging in the vineyards and a new song in the bosom of the stream, as these two reverent, devoted and affectionate souls remembered the. years of prayer behind them and thought of the spiritual splendor before them. Silent even yet was Zacharias, and yet Elizabeth knew it all. She might have read it from his face, if he had not written it all out for her, as he probably did. In this deepening glory, she also must be silent and alone. God began anew to prepare this woman to offer that which only a woman, tender and true, made intelligent of the dearest experience in a woman's life, could give to another woman whose youth and maidenhood would soon come appeal- ingly to one older than herself, at the moment in her own life when THE MAN OF GALL LEE 35 the mother-secret was hers also. Mary, the Virgin, has her sympa thetic friend already. Let us also be silent and reverent here. The five months of speechless solitude may lead the autumn and winter suns over the wheat-fields now replanted; and the gatherers of the grape-harvest may dance with joy in the wine-press; these months are bringing us near to the hours when this woman's child shall make straight the path of Him who shall plant and re-plant the fields of Time and tread the wine-press alone. THE GOLDEN GATE, JERUSALEM. j SSWggL NAZARETH CHAPTER III THE ANGEL AND THE VIRGIN NO maiden ever set out on a journey with a heart heavier with the reason for her going, than did once a girl of Nazareth, whose shy glances met the shadows in the deep valley out of which she was walking from Galilee toward the hill-country of Judea. Mary, a home-keeping vir gin, was coming upon an experience which she was right in supposing would give her an unen viable reputation. She was soon to be come a mother. It would make her seem an impure girl in the eyes of men, and it might result in her being an out cast and a despised one among her peo ple. True, she had just been visited by an angel, who had apparently dissolved I - ^1 ¦> : . 1 'J*ri^ ¦' '\T« ; -. ' • v $if&*&fti '¦ ^^8 " I \Wjf« ::-¦ El V& ' '11 rJ!p My mm ' [ p 1 ^lj j^RVII ; J£y § 1 sst' »W§Sw»£ y& kmilip |3«| 3h||L -aZCE^P.^ ' M j jffivy/ mm IBB •i ¦•'" .'•"¦..¦ ' J? ¦Wm Mi' - J UmTf/ BBbsk" -' -—•-•¦ ¦>*>-' -** Mm- '- ^^55! .."¦ THE ANGEL AND VIRGIN. 37 38 THE MAN OF GALILEE. her cloud of fears. But they who may hold converse with the heavenly visitants may hear also the chatter of fiends. The soul of Mary could not have escaped, even in the warm radiance of that unforgotten memory recently made by the Angel of the Annun ciation, the invasion of those cruel doubts and fears which stole in upon the meditations of this intensely Jewish girl trembling with her high destiny. She traveled on, the whole landscape about her a memorial of the- hours of light and leading in the story of her people. Circum stance and the light drifting afar from greater days alone, however, could not hold her up. Yonder towered a well-known height. It was Carmel. If she faltered, she was beyond the reach of the voice of the Puritan-prophet, Elijah, who had endured his anguish of soul in those thick mountain-forests. Like a monument of God's power to succor the despairing, rose the summit which burned with the sunset. But it was not as tall as her fear. Beside this, the rugged nature of Elijah had never felt the melody and stress of such an inbreathed hope as now dilated her life and then appeared too vast for her to entertain. She knew that no angel had known the awful cost to human faith which was made evident in those moments when a re action followed such courageous belief as was hers. Then it was that she saw only the possible abyss of shame into which a girl of her lineage might fall. One hundred miles lay before her timorous feet ere she would reach Hebron amidst the hills, — the home of Zacharias and Elizabeth. Her heart was even yet vibrating with the chord struck by the angel in her imagination. But an imagination touched so divinely could not always make music dominant over the discords encountered in the new and wondrous path leading to the house of her kinswoman. She would doubtless arrive, but even then the doorway might have such shadows upon it as would be like the trouble of her spirit, when the angel told her that the Lord was with her in a marvellous and as yet unfulfilled experience. Any soul that can hear God's Gabriel say, "Thou art highly favored," — L,7tke i, 28, — is a soul which must have moments in which it can hear only the cry of birds of prey like those which were then flying below the crest of snow- covered Hermon, to which her eye often turned. More bold and clear THE MAN OP GALL LEE. 39 than the height of Tabor, standing close to Hermon, was the fact which had impelled her to hasten to her kinswoman, Elizabeth. It must have become gloomy at times, as was the mountain at eventide. To whom else could she tell all her heart? Mary was strong in the citadel of her moral consciousness. She reigned over herself by right of whitest purity. But the shadows were deep, for they were those made by this lofty and intense light. God had so spoken to her that, in times of darkness, she often found the certainties eternal. Nazareth, how ever, was a town with human beings in it, and Mary was human. These human beings were Jews who shrank with a divinely educated sen sitiveness from the cold depths of public shame in which a Jewish maiden might be led to execration, and Mary was a Jew not exempt from the effect of the opinions of her neighbors. She was now certain that it was only a matter of time when her innocence would be doubted. She could tell people then of the visit of the angel and of his great words, and that he had told her not to fear. But these recollections of hers would not assure them. She knew they would not believe those things in Nazareth. It was a lowly and narrow place, — a spiritual Nazareth. Many there had forgotten the prophecy that the Messiah should be a virgin's babe. More than this quickened her anxiety. At Nazareth was a Jew named Joseph, and if all the world went against her, it was just a woman's prayer that he might not flinch. She believed she could endure it all, if he faltered not. She had promised to be his wife, by and by. Everyone in Nazareth knew the village carpenter, and that she was betrothed to him. This was so nearly equal to marriage with Joseph, that a legal process would have to be gone through with, before the betrothal could be broken off. In him was her property vested and he had vested his faith in her. His trustful ignorance and good reputation made her conscious of what he might suffer. Of him she was thinking as her feet pressed the soil of the plain upon which the hosts of Israel had been valorous in victory and defeat. In his veins ran the finest blood in Israel. He was an heir to the kingdom, and his royal lineage had not vanished from his or her thought, though he was a workingman. God's effort to dignify labor, however, might now break Joseph's heart. The mountain-walls stood up near the sky, but the horizon of 4° THE MAN OF GALILEE. her trouble reached beyond them and to the ends of the world. It was a world-pain she felt, — indeed, her unborn child was being edu cated in sorrow big with divine blessing. Darker than the shadows on Carmel, which had deepened from purple into common midnight, were the doubts that beset her as she tried to sleep, and dreamed of Nazareth, finding then that she had not left her questionings and problems behind. Possibly, the next morning, as she hurried on, a little home peeped from out the vaguely descried landscape dotted with hedges and palms and gardens, and the girl's heart was near to breaking when she mused upon the possibility that Joseph, whose espoused one was taking such a journey as this, might refuse, for what would appear to men the best of reasons, to keep his troth. For a moment her own dreamed-of home with Joseph vanished away. Then came to her the ever-supporting recollection of that unique hour of Annunciation. Again the angel came and repeated the message of The Highest. While months had intervened between the betrothal of Joseph and Mary and the marriage to which she, as one chosen for a bride, looked forward, these same months had brought their culture and development to the twain in the hill-country. They had given their bliss and hope especially to Elizabeth, wife of Zach arias. When Mary started out, Elizabeth was only a hundred miles away from Mary; but she seemed an infinite distance away, when Mary thought of the con trast in their yjp a s e s . Of much con cerning Eliz abeth the fjfe.ngel had told |M a r y, and Ijshe reflected fehat her good cousin was a a street in nazareth. married wo- THE MAN OF GALILEE. 41 man, — a priest's wife, and that her husband had been praying with her for years for the child who was soon to be born in that home, joyous already with perfectly proper welcome. In these hours Mary drew for strength and comfort upon the experience which she had known with the same angel, Gabriel, who had spoken to Elizabeth, and the vast and rich hope it inspired that now could not fade. It all came back to her assuringlv. On that previous day, she had been startled in her own chamber by the presence of the messenger of God. Her girlish innocence had been laid low at first; it was now to be exalted. She had known herself, perhaps, as a descendant of David, but it is doubtful if even the dream of her devotion had ever possessed the fancy that the son of David, the Messiah, would come to His kingdom through her as His mother. It is more likely that when she dwelt with the inspir ing fancy of being the mother of the Messiah, it wandered radiantly over her soul, after she was betrothed to her beloved Joseph, who had a legal title by descent to the throne of King David. She brooded now over the one event. The angel had saluted her and said to her tremulous spirit: "Hail, highly favored one, the Lord is with thee; blessed among women art thou." — Luke i, 28. The simple-hearted Jewish girl was not less alarmed, and she was yet too fair-souled and too true to all the proprieties of her home, not to be troubled. But soon the noble power of her nature to entertain divine purposes and the plans of the Infinite, asserted itself. Yet she con sidered. No fantastic conception of this lovely Hebrew maiden will ever be able to take away the beauty of the human portrait we have in her, when she "cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be." — Luke i. 29. The angel had exceedingly honored her; he had said: "Hail," as if in obeisance. It is refreshing and soothing to those less favored who still must question God's angels, to think of this virgin of our humanity pausing here and seeking light. "And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call His name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David; and He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever and of His kingdom there shall be 42 THE MAN OP GALILEE. no end." — Luke i, 30-34. The amazing news, of Omnipotence had come to her. She was bewildered. "Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee; therefore, also, that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. " — Luke i, 34-36. She had been lifted into so lofty a situation that the isolation thrilled and worried her with its awful solitude. Were all the ties of human sympathy and relationship forever cut? The angel answered this, when he added : ' ' Behold thy cousin Eliz abeth. She hath also con ceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impos sible. " — Luke i, 36, 37. Mary accepted the prob lem with the divine re sources offered for its solution, and she said: "Behold the handmaiden of the Lord! Be it unto me according to thy word. " — Luke 8. And the angel was gone. It has been an interesting fancy of the Greek Church that the angel discovered and accosted Mary at the village fountain, where the young people thronged. The Church of the Annunciation has therefore been built over this fountain with as much pious devotion as inspired those who, on the other hand, believed that she was found by the angel in a grotto in which now two pillars rise to mark the spots on which the maiden and the messenger are said to have stood. Faith does not indulge a passionate exactitude as to time or place. God has hidden these spots and blurred these days oftentimes, for a spiritual kingdom might be hindered from convincing men by CHURCH OF THE ANNUNCIATION AT NAZARETH. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 43 spiritual powers, if the minds of devotees had visible or accurately defined memorials to fondle. Deeper than the foundation-stones of those pillars, and greater than the beautiful church, are the per manent emotions and thoughts in our human nature which compel us to follow Mary beyond the valley in which nestled the little city of Nazareth. We go with her, evermore, as she walks on toward the hill-country. She was now traveling with her secret, as a poor girl might travel, on foot. She was going to see one who would be open- minded — Elizabeth. Perhaps the situation of Elizabeth might make her more deeply sympathetic than other friends and relatives. Mary longed to be hidden in the embrace of her cousin. There are no recorded words to indicate that Mary the Virgin was less than a self-poised and high-minded daughter of Israel, who thought little of the cares and limitations made by her poverty. She evidently thought much of her God and His grace. The devotional atmosphere of her home had been shot through and through with the glowing expectation of Israel. The time was ripe for the event toward which every Israelite of the house of David had looked with a peculiar interest and abounding hope. She was full enough of eternity to measure up to her time. The intellectual and spiritual greatness of Mary the virgin-mother is seen in the manner in which, despite all possible doubts and fears, she followed the path pointed out by the angel. At length she reached the house of her kinswoman, Elizabeth. God had prepared for Mary an audience-chamber in the heart of the wife of the priest Zacharias, and never in the history of mankind was there sweeter utterance given, or tenderer response furnished, to the mother-tones which are the deepest and richest tones in the music of life. There were unheard melodies as well as those which traveled audibly from woman-heart to woman-heart, and they chorded true in the unmatched harmony of motherhood. It is not strange that these daughters of the Orient, one in her virginal youth, the other radiant with a renascent youth and spring-time undismayed by the snows of age, found their psalm-like utterances allying themselves with the deepest and sweetest melodies of Hebrew song and unifying at last into the first great hymn of Christendom, — The Magnificat. Of course, the theme of this lyric of exultant meditation rose from the 44 THE MAN OF GALL LEE. lips of Mary, and its diapason deepened as her heart poured forth its rapture and its faith. "My soul doth magnify the Lord, And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he hath looked upon the low estate of his handmaiden: For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; And hoi)' is his name. And his mere)' is unto generations and generations On them that fear him. He hath shewed strength with his arm; He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their heart. He hath put down princes from their thrones, And hath exalted them of low degree. The hungry he hath filled with good things; And the rich he hath sent empty away. He hath holpen Israel his servant, That he might remember mercy (As he spake unto our fathers) Toward Abraham and his seed for ever." — Luke i, 46-56. The long journey of the Jewish maiden had certainly served to quicken and strengthen those great lines of advent-light with which her patriotism and piety had been familiar. They were focalized into a spiritual morning which was bathing her soul. She was no longer afraid. The song of joy which she had just uttered proves hers to have been a mind into the currents of whose thought and imagina tion had gone the impulse of all Hebrew history. It was uncon sciously modeled according to one of the nation's paeans. It was a noble hymn, yet the four majestic strophes of her song were thor oughly Jewish. One of the sorrows of her Son was to be this, — that the virgin mother did not always comprehend Him, or grasp the significance of His act, or even discover the real nature of His king dom. This melody of hers had little of broadly human outlook. Mary was never to arrive at her Son's point of view. To her it was afterwards necessary for Him to say, even at the time of their visit to Jerusalem: "Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?" — Luke ii, 49. To her it would be necessary for Him to say, also: "Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not THE MAN OE GALILEE. 45 yet come."— John ii, 4. But the greatness of Mar> 's faith, the depth of her patriotism, the humility of her heart, and the sublime and serene manner in which she then accepted a unique position in the history of the human race, undazzled by the splendors of the future, unmoved by vanity and untouched by the corrosion of self-interest, are facts amazing, proven and made secure by this latest utterance of her who then seemed to be following the leadership of the angel, and saying: ' ' Behold the handmaiden of the Lord! " — Luke ii, 38. She tells the whole secret of her mental steadiness and her spiritual valor in her words: ' ' He that is mighty hath done to me great things." — Ltike i, 49. The great God had made her mentally and spiritually great. This hymn identifies her and her family with a home which must have been a spot where the noblest souls of the Hebrew race met in conversation and in worship. The Magnificat could not have been extempore; there was other music in the soul out of which it came. Yet heaven had not exiled her from earth. The human and the divine element mingled in her experience, when, on entering the house of Eliz abeth, Mary heard a human voice speaking to her the same tidings which had come from the angel of God. Her whole idea of fame is one in which the divine purpose is carried out by a divine service, while the service is ex alted into blessedness by the divine purpose to which it gives itself. In this home of her kinswoman the three months at length came and went, when she journeyed back to Nazareth, THE MARRIAGE OF JOSEPH AND MARY. aS she Had t0 d°' Wt* ^^^ Wlth 46 THE MAN OF GALL LEE. her, as we went with her to the hill country. She is stronger now She will be able in the power of the Spirit of God, to meet those wb love her, to meet even the sharp, piercing sneer of the neighbors,— yea, she can now meet even Joseph, her lover and her betrothed. God Himself had to tell Joseph the news. And as God tell news to men of sincere life, the news brings assurances evermore o unalloyed benefit. It was an era of dreams and dreamers. But n< dreamer could have been more overwhelmed than was this carpenter who was addressed in the words: " Thou son of David." — Matt, i, 20 It was a sudden and sublime uplifting of his hitherto commonplac< existence. Devout and humble, a close student and a faithful servan of the Law, the town-carpenter was nevertheless in no state of mine to be reminded of his royal pedigree. He was just then a lover whe had trusted in the innocence of his betrothed one. She had gone away, and three months had elapsed. He had felt the strain on his heart-strings. Reasons for many unwelcome suspicions had multi plied. Perhaps gossip had reached him. He had at length concludec to put Mary away, by a writing of divorcement. But now the ange of God stood before him, and, emphasizing the idea that the Messiar would save His people, thus touching the patriotic chord in the hearl of Joseph, the Jew, the Divine Messenger commanded his very soul. Joseph was no ordinary man. No one can read the account of al this tragic love and faith, written in the Gospel of Matthew, without feeling that the man was possessed of spiritual insight and rare nobility of character. Chivalry and faith were alive in him. The angel scattered the haunting doubts in the breast of the carpenter, and they were those doubts which would have clung tenaciously and successfully to the very life of a less divinely inspired and heroic human being. Mary was not to be forsaken. Soon she was in hei own home, with Joseph her husband. CHAPTER IV THE BIRTH OF JESUS Mary must now make another and more important journey than that which took her to the home of Elizabeth, ere the prophecies of the past and the hope of her own heart may be fulfilled. Hu man love and human thought will always be seeking out the road ways used by the two travelers who went up from Nazareth to Bethlehem in Judea, in order that in the little mountain-city, once the home of David, the Son of David might be born. Recent ex periences in Mary's spiritual education had so illuminated the great past of Hebrewdom for her, that, in spite of her condition, she must BETHLEHEM. 47 48 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. have found a deeper interest than ever before in the route chosen and the hallowed landscape through which they passed on their way from the Galilean town to the Judean city. Another thing- must have deepened the patriotic feelings, in whose glow Mary and her husband looked upon the spots sacred especially to those who carried in their blood the lineage of their prophetic, poetic and royal ancestor, David. This fact was the imperiousness of Rome, which had then demanded the presence of Joseph in Bethlehem. His en rollment might contribute one more fact to the information which Rome relied upon, in order that the subjugated Hebrews could be levied upon in a thorough manner, for the support of an empire which they abhorred. Herod was dying slowly, and doubtless Em peror Augustus desired this information before a new government should be established. If ever there was a moment when Mary's historic sense, which we have just seen radiant in her song of joy, lighted up with un wonted interest the spots sacred to the Jew in this ancestral land, it must have been this moment, when Rome was riot to be reasoned with or made sympathetic with a woman in need, as never before, of the tender care and loving presence of her husband in her own home. The census insisted upon by the heathen ruler was made none the less offensive to deeply spiritual Jews, because the plans of the Roman Emperor were being carried out by a man as despicable as Herod, King of the Jews. To be registered as a part and parcel of the Roman Empire, to be reminded at such a critical and painful moment that Palestine was tributary to arro gant heathendom, was enough to lure the sorrowful hearts of Joseph and Mary toward a deeper contemplation of the thrilling history of their people, as they trudged along on that winter day. Truly they were going up to be taxed, — and the whole future of mankind was taxing them in a way which would make their sad experience glori ous. Yet the inspiring outlook from this latter consideration was hardly theirs in all its width and beauty. Bethlehem was the birthplace of Joseph's family, the home of his great ancestor, the shepherd-king. There his name and the facts relating to him must be inscribed. Probably neither Roman nor Jewish usage demanded the presence of Mary with him, but THE MAN OF GALILEE. 49 Joseph's love did, and so did Mary's heart. Love is of God. Mary could not be left alone in Nazareth at an hour like this. Possibly no one at home would have furnished even a silent welcome for that which she was to bring into the world; and it may have been Mary's desire to be anywhere else, except in Nazareth, in such a crisis. About six miles south from the holy city lay the little town which was to out-rival Jerusalem by one event of superior spiritual importance. And they were nearing it. We do not know what roadways they took, or whether the journey was made along the less or more frequented ways, to their destination. In this crisis, even the patriotic Jewish wayfarers would scarcely have attempted to avoid the straight road, though it led through detested Samaria. The journey was doubtless made as easy as possible for a dearly- loved woman about to become a mother, and it must have been that more than one of the little towns in the valley which were looked down upon by Mount Tabor and the heights of Gilboa, furnished hospitality unto them. Refreshing themselves at one of the springs which gleamed at the base of one of the hills guarding the plain of Esdraelon, or rehearsing to themselves the story of Elisha, the Savior-Prophet, in yonder Dothan, they pondered on, as they traveled through the brief December clay, increasing faith within the culture given by their perplexing cares, and deepening hope as night came down upon them. There at Shechem, where Joshua once gathered the tribes and uttered his eloquent charge, they must have paused and reflected that the journey, which usually required but three days, was half done, and as they left the new and sordid prosperity of Samaria, they were uncomforted by the fact yet to be made clear, that the Child whose life they were guarding would break down all tribal walls and distinctions and speak one of His most royal words in that least-loved 'portion of Palestine. Na ture seemed not unkindly. Olives and almonds were untouched as yet by frost; grapes may have been still clinging to the vines on the terraces, and in the nooks of the valleys many flowers were still being refreshed by the abundant rains. Did some one in Sa maria offer the defiled food to the weary woman? If so, humanity was even then better than the faith of the Rabbis. If any were minded to speak to the young woman, they saw, 50 THE MAN OF GALILEE. if tradition is to be believed, a comely form, not as tall as many another Jewish girl, though above middle height. Over her head flowed hair of gold, beneath whose wavelets shone a forehead made more beautiful by light brown eyes, looking out wistfully and ear nestly in the many moments of Mary's silence, or in the rarer mo ments when she spoke reverently and gently of her hitherto unknown experiences unto her husband. Then the lips, ruddy as wine from the grapes gathered from the foot-hills of yonder Ebal or Gerizim, uttered some echo of the angel's message; the darkly arched eye brows lifted with hope; the fair oval face was half transfigured, and the maiden -wife was content. As they came into Judea, • they found every town and mountain and stream vocal with holy memories, which in themselves were also prophecies of that which was soon to be accomplished in the Virgin. The fields were still furnishing pasture for the flocks by day, and on the hill-sides the shepherds lay and watched their flocks under the starry night. They must have passed near the Mount of Olives, whence Mary's child was to bid earth a temporary and visible fare well; and, as they left Jerusalem at a distance on the right, approach ing the ridge upon which flashed the white walls of David's royal city, their thoughts disentangled themselves from any impression made by the splendor and political importance of the great capital, and hurried them on through the fields where Jesse had observed his boy, David, growing up before him in beautiful manhood, and where Ruth, their common ancestress, "fell on her face, and bowed herself to the ground, " finding favor in the sight of Boaz, and then arose, "to glean even among the sheaves," after the young man had "let fall some of the handfuls of purpose for her." — Rutli ii, 16. They were now in sight of Bethlehem. Joseph was anxious. Was there not a khan which would speedily offer its protection and hospitality to the wayfarers? For hours, in the sunset glow, as they came nearer to Bethlehem, they had doubtless beheld the palace of Herod towering above the heights, but these, who were of royal lineage, members of the aristocracy which continues the line of mag nanimity and holy character in the world, — these have no chamber or bed waiting for them there. Within that frowning fortress lived the wretched man who, because of this which Mary had brought to THE MAN OF GALILEE. 5i Bethlehem, was to scour the country with murderous hands, that he might put out of the way the one force which would render Herods impossible in the world. They were still in the suburbs. The situation with Mary was now so grave that Joseph thought not of being made a guest in any of the great private houses yonder bevond the town gate. Bethlehem itself was crowded; many were being enrolled; and the gathered crowds noisily moved through the moonlight which bathed the terraces and made clear the roadway to the caravanserai of the town. But this khan was filled with people, and the guests who had come earlier were perhaps not even asked CHURCH OF THE NATIVITY, BETHLEHEM 'There was no room for them in the inn. to give up their ac commodations to the travelers from Galilee. — Luke ii, 7. There is no room for Jesus in the inn of life, largely because we expect the Messiah of man to come into our life by the ecclesias tical or political roadway, and we have not learned that every divine thing comes humbly and has to make its way usually in spite of brutal emissaries of power, haughty priests and stupid idlers who fill up the inns of life. It was the great opportunity for humanity to welcome divinity. This is the only true welcome for divinity, for Mary comes with her mother-pain, and the appeal of that which is to save us is made through human need. God gives us a human being to be kind to, in order that we may love Him. In their extremity, Joseph and Mary must find a corner in the stable, with the camels and mules and cattle. Here was the only 52 THE MAN OF GALILEE. privacy obtainable, and here the virgin-mother found rest and shelter. To-day the walls of the Church of the Nativity rise over the spot which the fathers of the church and revered traditions have led the imagination and faith of humanity, marking it as the place where the most important fact in human history occurred. Under its roof is a cave, or grotto, one of the many hollows which then were prob ably transformed into stables where cattle could be securely left, and where, in a recess, out of which, perhaps, the cattle pulled the straw, the weariest traveler might lie down. The church is shaped as a cross. The unborn Child was even then making that form glorious. Soon the December night which hung over the city and the hills out beyond the village gates quivered with the splendor of an angel. Brighter than the stars in that palpitant Syrian sky was the glory of the Lord which shone round the shepherds who had watched their flocks that night, and who now roused from their sleep to behold a messenger from heaven and to hear the good tidings about Eternal Love. The sheep which lay there under the dazzling light had probably been intended for sacrifice in the usual Temple-services; but now the "Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world," — John i, 28 — had appeared, and a streaming radiance was the announce ment of His presence. Here we are to learn of the conjunction of the lowliest and of the loftiest, in God's manifestation of Himself. At the stable, not far away, the lowliest place of entrance in the earthly life of man, is the divine appearance, — a babe born in a manger. Yonder also, from the loftiest balcony of the Infinite, comes the glory of God. Henceforth, despite man's rebel-heart, let there be truce between earth and heaven, for this will touch and melt that heart! There is no here or there any more; the chief concern of earth is a supreme event in the sky. The universe is one; the celestial and the terrestrial are lost in each other, as they meet in the rapture of the virgin-mother, or in the hearts of that group of shepherds on the hillside. The ideal is the real; the divine has become human. This new-born Child will unite the spheres which sin has severed. Of course, these shepherds were "sore afraid." The sidereal stillness was broken in upon with a vast and thrilling announcement. The man of galilee. 53 Each of them was experiencing the operation of the law of all development and progress, whose prophecy is, and ever must be, this: — "Thy heart shall fear and be enlarged." — Isaiah Ix, 5. It is the same holy fear, prophetic of a for ward step for man, to which we paid attention when we saw the virgin in Nazareth trembling on the edge of the mightiest revolution in the history of the world, and making that revolution Im possible in herself. The angel spoke. Behind him, in the invisible which surrounds the visible even yet, was a cohort of attendant peers. He was only their herald, and he said: "Fear not, for, behold, I bring to you good tidings of great joy, which shall be unto all the people. For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord. And this shall be the sign unto you; ye shall find a babe, wrapped in swaddling-clothes, lying in a manger." — Luke ii, 10-13. Suddenly, over the limestone hills, there broke forth a song which was destined to be the chief anthem of Christendom. These Jewish shep herds must have now connected the glory which shone round about them with the splen dor of the Shekinah, for they were Tem ple-servants and were acquainted with the Hebrew symbolism. They were right, — "the true Shekinah, "as Augustinesaid,"isman." God had be come mani fest in man. THE ANNUNCIATION. -*- ne lHUltl- JF 54 THE MAN of galllee. tude of angels now related together the light of earth and the light of heaven. They were of one glory. The destiny of man and the purpose of God were revealed as an everlasting unit, as they praised God and said: "Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men."- — Luke ii, 14. This majestic rhythm has rolled on simply and sublimely, in spite of the traditional inter pretation which makes it prove or suggest a doctrine of theology. One of these interpretations took delight in identifying the trinal music with the three trumpet-blasts announcing God's kingdom, God's providence, and God's judgment. We must not be math ematical about music, or even too theological about revelation. This alone is certain, those simple-minded shepherds were listening to the melodic fulfillment of a prophecy which had for long been repeated in the musing heart of Israel. As the supernal brightness faded with the vanishing echoes of an ever-rhythmic strain, there was disclosed the path invisible, stretching back to heaven for the angels; and for the shepherds, there was the path visible on earth, running up over the rocky hill toward the caravanserai and the stable and the manger, and the mother and the Divine Child. "Come, now," they said, "let us go unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which has come to pass, which the Lord made known to us." — Luke ii, 15. They needed not the light from the lamp shining at the en trance of the inn, to guide them. By other illumination they easily found the path leading to the stable-yard. They were soon stand ing alongside, with Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, looking upon the Virgin-mother and her Babe, who had been wrapped by Mary's own hands in swaddling-clothes. Art has here paused for ages to create the gorgeous canvases which have made that Child and His mother so nearly unreal as to have bewildered the simple and pro found faith of men. All visible aureoles fade in the profounder spir itual glory which, then and there, made Childhood a Divine Fact in the development of God's eternal purpose and took Womanhood and Poverty to enthrone them as factors in the Kingdom of Rightousness. Silently the mother was "pondering in her heart;" — Luke ii, 19— she could not talk. The shepherds, however, in their simplicity, had begun to preach with sublimity the gospel of Christ. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 55 What was human nature then is human nature now. Doubtless the little cave in the limestone hill has been greatly transformed. Ardent devotees have deepened it, and the less fundamental faith which always clings to circumstance and the locality of a thing, and not to the thing itself, has created and enlarged more grottoes than that in which the Babe was laid. It was not strange that such an emperor as was Justinian and such an empress as was Helena should erect an ecclesiastical memorial over the spot, and that matins and vespers should be sung by monks who worshiped and prayed and fasted and preached, in the immediate vicinity of what was the first Christian edifice in human history. The silver star which now marks the birthplace may vanish; the burning lamps which illuminate the altar may go out; and it may be proven that the marble manger given by Pope Sixtus V. does not occupy the exact place of the rude one in which Jesus was actually born. Still, however, must the heart of every Christian man experience the spiritual realities of which all these things are but symbols. The Christ is always born in the life of a man at the lowliest point, in order that He may be divinest in His power to save. The goodness or the truth which redeems by coming into us, comes in its babyhood. There is usually much question about its real genesis, the crowded inn cannot prevent the birth of it; it is a little child at the first, and it can easily be killed; Herod cannot find it, nor harm it; in- hospitality cannot deter, jealous anger cannot strangle divinity. Its apparently true parentage is always made up of the Joseph-elements and the Mary-elements in the sincere and obedient soul. Yet it is conceived of the Holy Spirit. In the khan of worldly life there is no room for Jesus to be born. He must come, if He comes at all, where the simplicities of earth are founr1. Yet out on the fringe of this Bethlehem of the soul are groups Ji sincere and goodly thoughts and expectancies; the heavens grow divinely lustrous over them, and out from the mysterious light of the mind, some mes sage-bearer of the Infinite comes, illuminating the dark earth and making fear impossible. The herald-angel yet sings. He is followed by other angels in multitudes. What are the names of these mes sengers from above us, we know not. We only know that they make us believe that the best yearnings of earth are felt in heaven 56 THE MAN OF GALILEE. and that the purposes of heaven touch the earth,- if we are simple and true. They always sing a prelude to what our expectancies are to behold in our Bethlehem. When these expectancies arrive in the Bethlehem of the soul, they find a Saviour, who has been wrapped in swaddling-clothes by His mother, because there was no one else to do it. Then Bethlehem and the shepherds have a gospel. Then these shepherds become the first evangelists. Is all this mystical? If it were not true in the soul of every true man to-day, it would not matter whether it were true or un true outside the soul of man, in that far-off yesterday. Any man that lives in the Spirit knows that it is true. CHAPTER V THE DIVINE INFANCY. THE wondering shepherds returned to the hillside, "glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen." — Luke ii, 20. But first they communicated their wonder to all who would listen to their story. Neither Christianity nor science has abolished wonder in the history and culture of the human soul. The verse of to-day, after a sur mising flood of light has fallen upon it through the triumphs of the students , of nature in our time, is not less, but more won derful than was the uni verse of yesterdav. There is the wonder stim ulated by darkness and gnorance; there is also the mr- wonder deepened and quick- r ened by light and intelligence. In the realm of one, move phan toms and ghosts, uncanny and lawless; in the realm of the other, live and operate forces and influences obedient to law and -wholesome in their educating power upon the human mind. In the language of Isaiah the prophet, Jesus of Galilee was "Wonder- Counsellor. " — Isaiah ix, 6. His presence in the world made it a less bewildering and fearful planet, but, being the Sun of Righteousness, He became the Chief Wonder, as well as the Revealer, and the revelation. He made of the world itself and of the paths which lead out of it into 57 GROTTO OF THE SHEPHERDS. 58 THE MAN OF GALL LEE. the great universe, a world more divinely hopeful and wonderful than it ever was before. Yet this wonder in Him and of Him was sober counsel. Along the lines which He should use to invite out the sur prised and newly opened affection, conscience and thought of the race, man would move safely and intelligently, finding the thing that he wondered at a perpetual advice from the Infinite. We have adopted the view of Edersheim that these were not ordinary shepherds, and that a passage in the Mishna is sufficient to indicate that the flocks pasturing there were "destined for temple sacrifices." Edersheim further avers that it was the firm belief of the Jews that the Messiah should be "revealed from Migdal Eder, " and that this was not "the watch-tower of the ordinary flocks," but the "tower of the flock" mentioned in Genesis xxxv, 21. This "watch-tower" lay close to the town, on the road to Jerusalem. Whether these were ordinary shepherds or not, and even if they were not like ordinary shepherds which were under the ban of the Rabbis, here was at least a very perilous occurrence to Rabbinical assumption. Watching the very animals which were to be used as sacrifices in the Temple, these men of the fields near by, who had not been deprived of such religious observances as were necessary to make them satis factory to the painstaking legalism of the Rabbis, were swept into the current of a spiritual movement whose chief event was a Sac rifice provided even then by God Himself, — a movement which would annul the right and power of the Law to rule men by fanciful strictness, a movement which would gather into its breadth not only these, but all shepherds and all wildernesses, under the wonderful shepherding of the Pastor and Bishop of souls, Jesus Christ. Unto all this deeper wonder of grace was the wonder of the shepherds to lead human thought and life. As if to distinguish her mental and spiritual attitude toward the events, and the future which they presaged, Luke says: "Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart." — Luke ii, 19. Once again, years after, when Jesus had indicated His relationship to His Father and His Father's business, and they had gone down to Naz areth, Mary's old home, Luke says: "His mother kept all these sayings in her heart." — Luke ii, 51. It is evident, therefore, that Mary, the mother, only began to exercise the tender and profound THE MAN OP GALILEE. 59 prerogatives of motherhood at the moment when the shepherds were most voluble concerning these marvelous occurrences. Motherhood has its hol\' of holies, not in the brain, rationalistic and disputatious, but in the heart, simple and receptive of revelations which the head may not entertain. Only a mother's heart ma}' keep such things as these; only a mother's heart's experience may disentangle these things from all other things; only a mother's heart may ponder upon them ceaselessly and find their meaning finally. Luke uses this fine old phrase which indicates how the history of the Jewish nation is truly the history of the heart-throb of the Infinite in and through the finite. We are told that all those in the hill-country of Judea, who heard the sayings concerning the coming of a son to Zacharias and Elizabeth, "laid them up in their hearts." — Luke i, 66. The heart is the only secure repository for divine things. Jesus Himself was to ask a place for His throne in the affections of man. ' ' Blessed are the pure in heart," He said, "for they shall see God." — Matt, v, 8. "With the heart, " we are told, ' ' man believeth. " And if Mary had sought to keep these things and to ponder them elsewhere than in her heart, she would have forfeited the insight and revealing power which is given, not only to the heart, but to motherhood. Let the somewhat amazed and garrulous shepherds talk to everybody, if they must; Mary will be silent; she must "ponder these things in her heart." Mary had enough to ponder about. Any mother with a baby at her breast feels the truth that he belongs to her, and, if she is gifted with a large mental outlook as was Mary, she knows he belongs also to humanity. Here was a mother with a child whom she had been nurturing through many months for enterprises of such pith and moment as took Him at once out of the range of her heart-beat. The glory which fell upon Him and which had wakened the shep herds from their sleep marked Him as One who was her own babe, and yet the divinely-bestowed Messiah of Israel beyond whose tiny feet paths were stretching out far away, she knew not whither. How these shepherds must have been borne in upon by a glory which, to her faith, was as unforeseen as it was awe-inspiring! The brain of the mother was dizzy. She could ponder these things only "in her heart." Doubtless her pondering included, at that time, a more searching and yearning wonder than that of the shepherds, — a wonder 6o THE MAN OF GALL LEE. which must afterward be enlarged as her boy reached manhood and began to be about His Father's business in redeeming a world to righteousness. WTe have already spoken of the fact that Jesus, the loftiest, enters, as Jesus ever must, at the lowliest point. This fact is evidenced in the truth that even His mother did not know Him in all the grandeur and beauty of His divinity when He came. He had not p — even that height to stand upon — such was His humiliation.Extraordinary as were her patriot ism and spir ituality, she, had the lim of the Jew of hers, who, in God's providence, was to be not only the Son of David, through Joseph and Mary, but also the Son of Man. Prob ably in the days, when the acquaintance of the child with her was leading her into an acquaintance with the child as profound as was possible upon the part of a finite mother who had borne a Son of the Infinite, she was reviewing the history of the expectancy which reached from the day of Abraham to that hour in the grotto when she became mother to the Messiah. Her heart pondered not only on the events and circumstances crowding close upon the birth of her babe, but it took each well-remembered expression of prophet or psalmist, and attached it to some incident in those hours when, with' Joseph, she had found shelter and comparative quiet in the stable-yard of the caravanserai and at length looked upon the face of the Son of the Living God. Sixty days had gone, and Mary was still pondering in her heart, when the intensity and fulness of her spiritual life was again relieved by an external circumstance. She must go to the Temple. She nevertheless, ited and peculiar expectancy with reference to this Child THE MAN OF GALILEE. 61 already saw the morning incense rising in a cloud and listened to the signal for the first matins in the history of Christendom sounded by the trumpet-blasts which she heard in the Court of the Women in which she was to present herself with her child. More than half a hundred days had elapsed since this mother, still pondering in her heart of human things bearing a divine intent, had celebrated, according to the law of Israel, the eighth day after her son's birthday, and given her boy to Israel's God by a token appointed from ancient time. This act was calculated to emphasize the spirituality of the child's probable influence in the world and the absolute obedience of the parents to the accepted law. Jesus had been circumcised. We do not know whether Joseph and Mary were able to go to the holy city of Jerusalem and there have this rite performed, or whether they were compelled to thus honor the law and adhere loyally to its obligations in the synagogue or in their own lodgings in Bethlehem. One thing was true, — the spiritual reality which the act of circumcision symbolized had been performed. The lower life had been excised for the higher life. The law had been fulfilled. Even the Rabbis would not be able to discount any of the future utterances of this child on this score. The first drop of blood He had given to the world had been shed in the repealing of the law, by His obeying it, and in the inauguration of a kingdom in which Love was to be the fulfilling of all law. One problem which usually met a father and mother on the occasion of the circumcision of their child had already been solved for Joseph and Mary by the Angel of the Annunciation. Gabriel had said that His name should be Jesus ( ' 'Jehovah is help "), for He would "save His people from their sins." — Matt, i, 21. After the act of circumcision and the announcement of the name Jesus, which did not distinguish Him from many others who bore it as men bear the name Joshua to-day, He was, according to the law, a member of the congregation, a child recognized as one of Israel. Mary was soon to be permitted to leave the house, according to the strict ceremonialism of the legalists, and her first interest must have been in a ceremony which was called the redemption of this first-born son by the priest. One and thirty days after the nativity must pass before even the mother of any first-born child, who had no Levitic blood in his veins 62 THE MAN OF GALILEE. and who was perfect physically, could be presented. The money of the redemption, to be placed in the hands of the Rabbi, amount ed to no large sum, but it was part of the tax which the careful Rabbis placed upon those who would have a son consecrated to the service of God. Poor as were this couple whose infant was now to be presented, there seems to have been no break in the service for want of the sum, equal to three of our dollars, required as a monetary consideration; and doubtless Mary presented her un blemished child before the Lord at the time when many other mothers were offering their first born sons for redemption. Mary's appearance at the Temple was, however, at a date late enough to admit of her purification also. This demanded the bringing of an offering, and Mary's poverty could furnish only what was given usually by the poor for such a purpose. She therefore entered the Court of the Women prepared with the inexpensive offering of a pair of turtle-doves for the rite. The Savior of the World was now in the holy city of Jerusalem for the first time. As Joseph and Mary entered the Temple to con secrate their little one to the Lord, there stood an old man within the precincts of the sacred place. His voice soon gave to Christen dom another of its great anthems. Simeon, devout and venerable, had long been offering a waiting heart to the new day. His figure was often seen in and about the Temple; and on this day he had THE MOTHER'S OFFERING. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 63 come thither, at so late an hour, perhaps, on account of his age. He carried in his childlike heart a patient expectancy for "the con solation of Israel." — Luke ii, 25. While this phrase was well known and was often used by the Jews "just and devout," — Luke ii, 25, — as was Simeon, it is clear that its presence in the gospel narrative indicates that Simeon was possessed of a spiritual vision superior to the ordinary inlook or outlook of the religionists of his day. Of this man we are told that "the Holy Spirit was upon him," and that, to use the suggestive words ol Luke's Gospel, "it was revealed unto him by the Holy Spirit that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ." — Luke ii, 26. This spirit had led him to the Temple. A deeply suggestive phrase is this, — "the Lord's Christ." It witnesses unto a breadth of mental horizon and an insight with respect to the essential nature and work of the Messiah far tran scending the ideas of the Rabbis. It was vouchsafed only by the Holy Spirit. When the Infinite fills an old man's brain, the universe is young with the vitality of the infinite hope in his vision. So clearly did Simeon see the bright lines of divine purpose converge about this infant, that then and there "he took Him up in his arms and blessed God." — Luke ii, 28. The finely trained and deeply religious Jew, with mind and heart enlarged toward past and future by the Holy Spirit within him, broke into a song of thanksgiving which wrought into its rich melody echoes from the minstrelsy of other days and tones that were prophecies of the greater harmonies of the future. He said: "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word; for mine eyes have seen Thy salva tion, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of Thy people Israel." — Luke ii, 29-32. Again were the hearts of Joseph and Mary swept with a sublime wonder. Mary's babe was being lifted out of her arms, as it seemed, by influences which her devoutness must gratefully honor, and which, nevertheless, left her simple mother-heart not wholly acquiescent. For the human mother can never quite let her child be anything else except her own babe. It was in the midst of tangled emotions, when the world of men was claiming Him and Mary was clinging to Him with more of mother-love, that Simeon, after blessing both of 6+ THE MAN OP GALILEE. the parents, said to the mother, in whose heart alone these utterances could be left wisely and tenderly, "Behold this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against — (yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul, also) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. " — Luke ii, 34, 35. There must have been a sudden and loving pressure of the mother's arms about her little one, when this strain of mingled major and minor tones opened to her mind a future which mer cifully vanished before the inevitable Calvary came in sight. At this moment, they were met by an aged Gal ilean widow, whose mem ory went back to the agoniz ing days of her race's hu miliation and whose Jewish expectationhad grown up from an intensely patriotic ancestry in the tribe of Asher. She had been educated through her own fourscore years, and, having come to the gateway, she addressed the little family. It was the prophetess Anna, who had devoted the years of her long widow hood to the service of God. Doubtless a familiar form in and about the Temple, she had now reached a unique moment in her life, for she recognized the babe in Mary's arms as the true Messiah of her people. The heart of her exiled tribe throbbed in hers, as her song echoed the sentiments of Simeon, and again the city in which the Rabbis had overburdened the spirit of true worship, and which Herod was ruling with increasing disgrace, heard an anthem of praise. With these new things to ponder in their hearts, Joseph and Mary returned to Bethlehem. CHAPTER VI THE WISE MEN AND THE FLIGHT TO EGYPT JOSEPH and Mary were now to be set pondering again over new and marvelous occurrences, for, "behold there came wise men from the East unto Jerusalem." — Matt, ii, i. But Jerusalem was only a stopping-place for them. They were following a heavenly i jjk light to Bethlehem, six miles away. Jfj In the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, five silver lamps illu- £i mine the painting of the Adoration |jy| of the Shepherds. The light streams across the little space, to what is called the Altar of the ;|j Magi. It is deeply suggestive to the Christian. In the same ra diance of the spiritual life, there are memorials in every Christian experience whose outer symbols ',¦. are found only in the visit of the ;!g simple and penniless shepherds and the visit of the learned and gift-bearing wise men of the East. The world which Jesus came to save must always contain worshipers as diverse in taste, environment and manners, as were these. The human soul has its simple, houseless sentiments and its honored and sage ideas. Their true Christ is the same, and Him they worship. 65 JSS& THE ASTROLOGER. 66 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. Art has been most busy and productive with this episode in the life of Jesus. The short story of the coming of the wise men, or Magi, as it is told in Matthew's Gospel, has tempted genius of all ranks, in every age; and poetry and painting have entered into rivalry to rehearse its details. Probably nothing is more fascinating to a student of the past and of the future, than to dwell in that light, in which the Orient looked into the eyes of One whose nature and vision have included Orient and Occident, comprehending both in the serenity of the genius of God. It was the hour in which the outside world — the vast realm of human beings which the Jew called Gentile— first saw in the face of the Hebrew Messiah the world's Redeemer. It was a moment when science, still held in a cocoon of superstition, moved its wings in an air pledged to furnish it ultimately with in spiration and freedom. All that the hoary past had reaped in its rich harvest-field was presented, in that little home in Bethlehem, to One whose kingdom is of eternity. Earth's wisdom looked to truth in divine babyhood. Leaving out of these pages all but a few references to the astro nomical discussions which have interested thoughtful biographers of the Man of Galilee, it is interesting to repeat the simple questioning of the Magi, who, coming from the East to Jerusalem, said: "Where is He that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen His star in the East and are come to worship Him." — Matt, ii, 2. The thought and expectation of their age looked star-ward for advice and guidance. Two at least of the biographers of Jesus call attention to the fact, that more than a century later, a false Messiah was called "Son of the Star," and he caused a star to be stamped upon the coinage which he issued. The true Messiah could issue no coins; His mintage was to be of Love's broken heart; but He came in an age when Jewish astrology and Eastern superstition and science stood at the gateway of a new world. It is impossible to believe that the Hebrew people could have forgotten the traditions concerning Balaam's prophetic utterance: "I shall see Him, but not now. I shall behold Him, but not nigh. There shall come a star out of Jacob and a scepter shall rise out of Judah. " — Numbers xxiv, 17. Balaam's thought was that the very heathenism now represented in these Eastern star-gazers would give its allegiance to the Messiah when He should come. Much of THE MAN OF GALILEI-. 67 their astrology the Jews may have obtained from the land of their captivity; doubtless the}' gave much in return. The prophecies of Daniel were influential in Babylon, when he was an eminent officer there. Commerce with the East had borne Jewish national expec tations wherever the Jews were engaged in business, and each country furnished constant testimony to the fact that the hope of their religion and patriotism was intensified and made vocal by their absence from Jerusalem. The visitors were not common sorcerers, necromancers and cheap magicians; on the contrary, and in the East especially, the Magi were astrologers and kept their name honorable. They were more thinkers than conjurors, philosophers rather than masters of the black arts. These Magi were probably Persians. To the believing heart it is not remarkable that the presage of the arrival of the Redeemer of Humanity in His world should have attracted the attention of men outside the narrow limits of Judaism. The true star in the East — the intimation in the human soul that something which brings a better day is already here — is noticed first by those intellectual and spiritual forces in our life which are usually outside the usual and conservative pale of our belief and thinking. The illustrious astronomer, Kepler, loaned his great name to the hypothesis which was based upon a computation which ascertained that, in the year 747, Jupiter and Saturn came into conjunction three times. In 1603 of our era, they were in conjunction again, and for more than eighteen months strange sidereal phenomena conspired to fix Kepler's attention upon that Star in the East seen of the Persian Magi. His interesting discussions were followed by volumes and treatises in multitude. However, they have not proven enough to keep faith from her ministry, or to substitute a literal exactitude for spiritual vision. Whether it was a new star or an old one, a meteor or a constellation; whether it was seen only at night or even in the day-time, we know not; but we know that the heavens above Occi dent and Orient have been different for nineteen centuries. A new star crystallized in the space of the ideal to which men still look up. Out of the heart of hopelessness the vague and glowing expectation hardened and throbbed planet-like ; and typically Eastern wisdom has ever brought its gifts as it followed that conviction to the very place 63 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. in human thought and culture where the infantine Truth has been discerned. The records of nature prove that a brilliant sidereal phe nomenon occurred in the year 748 of the Roman chronology, when fiery Mars united with Jupiter and Saturn in conjunction. That a comet appeared in the year, and at the time in the year when the Wise Men went to Bethlehem, is a statement which seems safe on astronomical grounds. This was the year 750 of Rome, — the year of Herod's death, and of the birth of Jesus. Edersheim goes so far as to say that it ' ' would point — almost seemed to go before — in the direction of, and stand over Bethlehem." There is no question that the whole East then felt that the time was ripe for the appearance in Judea of that Monarch who should rule the world. This was a conviction prevalent as far East as the limits of Zoroaster's religion and as far West as the land in which Virgil had left in the fourth Eclogue his wonderful prophecy. So marvelous is this prophecy that scholarship has always felt a remarkable interest in the story that Paul, the Apostle of Jesus, visiting the birthj)lace of the Roman poet, said: "O Mantuan, what a poet I would have made of thee, if I had known thee!" It was the Jerusalem of Herod, miscalled the Great, — great only in rapacity, crime and wretchedness, — into which the Wise Men came. The savagery of his cruel nature furnished a background dark enough to throw out luminously the figures of this moving picture. He was now tottering toward the grave, blasted with the disease which had served to sharpen the asperities of his temper, and to inflame the jealousy with which he looked upon any most apparently trifling movement that might ultimately threaten his house. He himself was a usurper, and the condition of mind increased by the recollection of the means which he had employed to hold fast his throne, made him fearful and furious whenever he heard of pretensions to his crown, or of doubts indulged by the people with respect to the fate of his scepter. When therefore these Eastern astrologers entered Jerusalem, to tell the story that they had seen in their country the shining of a star indicating the birth of a King for the Jews, the royal criminal turned in his misery, and when they added that they had come to worship the new-born King, the alarming intelligence roused all Jeru salem, and would have made him frantic, had not his brutal nature THE MAN OF GALILEE. 69 been permeated with a craftiness as subtle as it was desperate. The suspicious and shrewd ruler of the Jews called the wise heads of Court and Temple together, scribes and priests, and insisted that this Sanhedrin tell him where this child should be born. Their answer was, of course, "In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet." — Mitt, ii, 5. Herod could not have been ignorant THE WISE MEN FROM THE EAST. of Jacob's words: "The scepter shall not depart out of Judah, until Shiloh come," — Genesis xlix, 10, — yet his wiliness confessed it not. True it is that Herod was an Idumean, and doubtless an apos tate, yet he was politician enough to know these features of the national hope which had troubled him, and he detested them all. He must have remembered that Bethlehem was "The City of David," — Luke ii, 11, — and that the expectancy of the nation was always calling the Messiah "The Son of David." He could not therefore o 70 THE MAN OF GALILEE. have been greatly amazed at what his courtiers, lay and clerical, had told him. Certain it is that he was enough of the master of him self to say that he desired to go and render homage to the new Prince. Beneath his urgent request that the Magi should inform him directly they knew where the young child was, that he also might go and do him honor, 'he concealed a murderous plan. His throne was threatened. We do not know that he saw the gifts which the Persian Wise Men had brought for the new-born child. His jealousy was sufficiently intense without this, and they went away toward Bethlehem, perhaps unsuspicious of the fire that burned in his bosom. He sat nursing its flames, and waiting for the Wise Men to return. But mere hate had not even apprehended, least of all has mere hate ever killed innocent and new-born Love. God is Love. God had not so embarked His Infinite design, that, before it fairly left port, it should be crushed on rocks like these. We are told that these Wise Men dreamed, and that they were warned not to return by way of Jerusalem. Dream or no dream, wisdom always knows that it has had enough of Herod's bigotry and despotism, once it has seen him and even the infant Christ. Let cruelty wait in its palace; the Wise men will return not. But cruelty can do more than this. It had lied. It would murder. It will massacre, thinking to catch in its bloody net one little baby. Herod was the master of all processes of murder; it was both a fine and coarse art with him. He had hitherto been reckless in his slaughter; he will be so accurate now, that it shall require him to be mercilessly exhaustive. He had practiced murder upon foes of all rank and character. After living with Mariamne, whose brother he had slain, and leading a carnival of crime to keep his wife from unsuccessful rivalry with Cleopatra, he had found himself in the hands of Antony, after which he chained his wife's mother, murdered the husband of his sister Salome, and still later, having murdered Mariamne herself, he fought death in a. palace of magnificence, putting to death Rabbis who offended him with their genius or piety, and aspiring to the joriesthood, or undertaking large enterprises of enforced benevolence, that he might still more tyrannically rule the Jews. When his sons by Mariamne came back from Rome, they were inducted, as far as possible, into courses of iniquity which developed plots against Herod, chained, his deem ed L Samaria. WlMk. y'- SCa&Sp THE MAN OF GALILEE. 71 and at last made him recall his eldest son, Antipater, who had been in exile for the sake of the now murdered Mariamne, and who was thought to be unchangeably hostile toward the other sons. Antipater succeeded in so setting Herod against these youths, that Herod brought them to trial before Caesar. Reconciled and outwardly united, the family was quiet until jealousies again broke them apart. They were even then united in one thing, — a desire for Herod's death. Moistened by all this blood, the soil of Judea yielded him harvests of suspicions. His sons were sister proved false, and at length it was necessary to murder the princes in He was now trving to control the suspicions aroused by the fact that his brother had died of poison which Antipater had pre pared for Herod. All these events sharp ened the sword which now had behind it the re sources of a kingdom, and which began to feel its cruel way THE FLIGHT INT0 EGYPT- through the bodies of little children, in order that it might reach the heart of one, — the Babe of Bethlehem. But Herod can never find Jesus until Bethany and Gethsemane and Olivet have been pressed by Christ's royal feet, though he encircle Him with woe. He is safe in another land. Joseph has been dreaming again, and Mary and he have been obedient to the Angel who said: "Arise and take the young child and his mother and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word; for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him." — Matt, ii, 13. Into some Egypt, always, the hunted goodness which is to save and rule us must flee and stay for a little time. When Jesus comes to any soul, there is a dying and desperate Herodism which rouses on its last point of vantage and orders a massacre of the innocents — anything to get rid of the perilous rivalry of the Truth. Egypt had looked on the problem of life and destiny with unsur- r- THE MAN OF GALLLEE. passed faculty and steady ardor, until she abandoned it despairing of its solution. Her gloomy agnosticism was embodied in the sphinx. But here was the sleuth-hunted child whose triumph in solving life's mystery would be as great as was the defeat of her philosophy. How were these persons, so limited in purse, enabled to take such a journey and to remain in Egypt for even a brief time? Let the beneficent and costly worship of the Wise Persian visitors answer. These latter were now homeward bound on their four months' journey, but they had not only refused to help Herod to discover and destroy the kingly child; they had perhaps unwittingly provided for His days and nights of safety in Egypt, through the gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh left behind. Meantime, in "Bethlehem and in all the coasts thereof," was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet saying: "In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they were not." — Jeremiah xxxi, 15. Soon was to be fulfilled the prophecy from Hosea, ' 'Out of Egypt have I called my son." d^m\ — Hosea xi, 1. 1 LIGHT IN EGYPT." CHAPTER VII BACK TO PALESTINE JOSEPH, as the head of this interesting little family, was con tinually finding that his power to guide its destinies, so far as locality and change were concerned, was taken up, and at times, greatly modified by the hands of Him whom he served. Herod was dead, and Joseph's thought was to return with Mary and the Babe, not to Nazareth, but rather to Bethlehem, and make his home there. Beth lehem was apparently an ideal place for rearing this Prince of the House of David. Here the inspiring traditions of the nation which He was to emancipate would flow into his life; here that fine aris tocracy of Hebrewdom, which often declines to live in its London, preferring its Oxford or Canterbury, might touch him with streams of culture from fountains unpolluted in the City of David. But we now see the significance of God's Providence guiding otherwhere. Jesus was to be Son of Man, rather than Son of David. The world's Emancipator,the one soul of history who was to illus- . trate divinity J at its loftiest \ by dwelling in humanity native house at bethlehem. 73 74 THE MAN OF GALILEE. at its lowliest must not avoid Nazareth. He must spend the days and months of open-eyed boyhood and the responsive and resilient years of youth there, and nowhere else. God managed this as He always manages these things by the ultimate guidance of events. While Herod was dead, Herodism lived. It flaunted itself in his son, who was to be Ethnarch of Judea, Herod Archelaus. Very near to Bethlehem the rotten corse of the old man Herod had just been buried with vulgar magnificence. Upon his bier the sycophants and cowards piled such tributes as to prove that despotism was yet unbur- ied. A few days before his death, Herod had compassed the death of his son, Antipater, and five days afterward, this other son, Archelaus, was well over the debauch in which he had gloried with his friends while his father was dying in the palace. This latter was now on the throne of his cruel father. The new ruler had thrown a sop to the mob, in offering amnesty, and was quite ready to stain the Temple Courts with the blood' of three thousand men who were guilty of no crime except rebellion against his infernal plans. Two honored Rabbis had hauled down the golden eagle of Rome which had disgraced the Temple gate in the Holy City; and the father of Archelaus had seen to it that they were burned alive. Then the Puritanism of half a hundred Palestinian Hebrews had led many thousand Roman Jews in a grand remonstrance and petition of right unto the Roman Em peror, asking relief from the tyranny of this detested family. They had failed, and most of them had perished at the hands of this son of Herod, who soon surpassed his father in arrogance, brutality and licentiousness. When Joseph reached Palestine on the return from Egypt, his plans for residence at Bethlehem were changed on account of these things, and he proceeded to Nazareth, where he had loved Mary, and where his home was now to be. True, Herod Antipas ruled over Galilee, but he had no interest leading him to an excitement of wrath against a mere child whose friends had set up a claim in His favor to the throne of Judea. Whatever Nazareth was in the geography of man's physical life, it is the name of that realm in his spiritual life which associates itself with that which saves men. Jesus — "His name shall be called Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins." — Matt, i, 21. Jesus, THE ALAN OF GALILEE. 75 the Christ, must ever be Jesus of Nazareth. There are limits even upon Almighty Love, when Love seeks truly to reveal Himself. God, who is the Highest, cannot rear the Son of the Highest ethically, save in the atmosphere and by the aid of the problems of the lowliest. Bethlehem curls its superior lip at the mention of Nazareth, not perhaps because Nazareth is as low as Bethlehem thinks, but because Bethlehem thinks so. When, if ever, did Mary the mother exhaust the power and resource of motherhood in telling her Child and explaining to Him the fact that He was the Messiah ? When did she timorously and yet prayerfully venture to let Him into the secret of that day when Gabriel entered her chamber, and to the divine demand which he communicated she answered: "Behold the handmaiden of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word"? — Luke i, 38. When did she relate to her little son the story of that night in the grotto, in the Bethlehem stable-yard, when the shepherds came and found Him lying in a manger? When did she take up any of the fine presents which the Persian astrologers had brought to Him, if any of them were left after the journey to Egypt and back again, and seek to impress upon His young mind the significance of the more than one hundred days' pilgrimage by the Magi, in bringing honor unto Him? It is well that we leave these questions and fancied answers with the sacred silence in the gosj^el stories. If ever these questions had been answered — and they would have been answered, if we possessed a humanly comjjosed tale rather than a divinely inspired history, — the answers must have invaded the holy privacy of those hours when, at eventide, the Child of Mary, tired of His play, and yet unsatisfied with the message of His playmates to His musing life, looked out into the West beyond Esdraelon and the range of Carmel, as the sun was sinking like a vast ruby in the sapphire of the Mediter ranean, when the Infinite wooed the finite into its mystery. In the absence of any testimony to the contrary, it must be reverently and gratefully concluded that Mary was so true a mother to this son of humanity that He was permitted, by her silence as well as by her speech, to find out for Himself and in the most natural manner that He was the Son of Deity. In a sense which robs Jesus of Nazareth of no ray of His divinity, it must be said that His divinity was a 76 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. THE VILLAGE AND PLAIN OF ESDRAELON. discovery to Him through His humanity. Let us seek some acquaint ance with the physical, mental and moral environment, in and by the ministry of which the Nazarene peasant-boy found Himself believing Himself to be the Messiah of the Jews, — found that chrysalis of belief out of which there should come winged with larger faith that He was the Messiah of Mankind. At Nazareth, in Galilee, this earth of ours had its triumph of the commonplace. Doubtless Nazareth was no more the frightfully des picable little town we often hear described so realistically as to con trast violently with its chief citizen, than were Joseph and Mary so beggarly in their intelligence as to forcefully set them in contrast with many other people who, as they, have experienced the poverty which is quite unconscious of itself. Joseph and Mary were poor, as most of the human race are poor; but theirs was not the sort of poverty to furnish forth a hero because he lived in it. So, also, the dullness of Nazareth was the dullness of most of our planet where men huddle together, and it could not supply even their son with a superficial gloriousness because He resided there. Christ entered the world, and lived in it at its lowliest, only because His environment furnished nothing either way for genius to endure or to feed upon. As he came upon manhood and the carpenter of Nazareth went forth to patch up the old house of a neighbor, carrying His tools with Him in the usual way, He sometimes found that His work led Him out THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 77 of the town upon the loftier rise of ground behind and above the city, if one is looking toward the North, and therefrom He mused upon the clustered and flat-roofed houses, without remarking at all upon the sordidncss of the village or the penury or ignorance of its inhabitants. At this time, however, His father was still living, and all the years of His boyhood were still to elapse with some of the years of His youth, before Jesus would take His place as the town carpenter. Or, to take another view of Him, if, at some such hour, looking from that height, He saw into the Infinity which at last pushed open the gates of His nature, His eye swept along the plain of Esdraelon yonder toward white-crowned Hermon, and He was unconscious of any vigorous incongruity between the town on the hill, and the mingled lights and shadows playing in His mind. God manifest in the flesh was Jesus, and yet He was a human boy for this very reason. Before the time of such a possible occurrence as has just been indicated, even now as a child, He must fulfill all the laws of earth, and the most heavenly manner in which He is to do this will make Him not an infant prodigy, uttering an idealism not understood by His playmates, but a tiny citizen in that little nook of our common world. God had given Him, not a faculty of illustrious archangels for His university, but a human father and a human mother ; the uneven roads and lanes of Nazareth to press with baby feet ; a home not unlike those of the children of the other two thousand inhabitants, the green fields of the valley, the mountain walls about it, the public school in or near the synagogue, in which latter He was religious with the rest, and all that mingling of vision and prejudice, patriotism and conceit, ignorance and knowledge, lowliness and loftiness of aim, fear and hope which characterized an atmosphere common to all. His parents must have been more than ordinarily devout, and their peculiar experience may have widened, while also, in other ways, it intensified and narrowed their sympathies. They escaped no beset- ment of false views because their child was called to great things. Nay, they were more sure to be close to the human because He was divine. Deity runs through narrow defiles oftentimes to compass next moment universal ends. The old feud with Samaria came into mind, even when they looked southward upon the mountain-chain. The 78 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. blunders of the over-discriminating Rabbis had not disastrously affected the religious enthusiasm of His parents, yet they were not, for that reason, exempt from the usually accepted opinions as to many things concerning which He was taught with ordinary error, and with the customary limitations of parental knowledge. His earth was the center of the planetary system, and Jerusalem was the center of His earth. When He first heard others talk in the synagogue, or at the home of His father, where friends gathered, sitting, after the Eastern manner, upon the few mats they had, or on the mats which the visitors brought, and the conversation turned upon the "Consolation of Israel," — Ltike ii, 25 — His expectant and boyish eyes looked to see if any of them would prove parents of a Messiah wholly Jewish, and there was only one strip of sacred territory to Him. It was what is called the Holy Land. That which guaranteed the development of any' intimation of His own special and peculiar relationships unto the God of the Hebrews, who, afterwards came to be the God of Humanity in His thought, was the deep and strong current of religion which ever bore Him along from His babyhood to human and at last to divine dis coveries. He was a member of the congregation, and an Israelite, after the day of His circumcision, and this home, with its mother hood in Mary exalted and intensified by her experience and hope, permitted no chance, which it could prevent, for any incursions of worldliness and evil that might keep their child from a holy life. Mary had already partially educated her child as He had lived under her heart, and now, as He went to sleep upon it, she must have sung to Him such songs as only she could learn in their inmost music. She was more than an Oriental mother singing to her babe the wild lyrics of her clan. She was a Jewish mother, and the picture of motherhood in the world was then, and is still, limned by the Jew. She was also the Virgin, the Daughter of Zion, who sang out of a heart trained by hearing angelic choruses. Beneath that flat roof of earth, and behind the low white walls of the house of Joseph, the mother taught her child from the grand legislation of Sinai. Brighter than the Syrian day-time which played upon this dwelling of sun-dried clay, was the splendor out-beaming from the. golden candlestick in the Temple of which she told Him. All these THE MAN OF GALILEE. 79 radiances entering His soul made Him no less a child among the common utensils and rugs and bright quilts or hanging stuffs, which no poorest home quite forgot to arrange with beauty. As Tie grew up, He met a boy's problems with four other boys who were His brothers and with two girls whom Mark calls His sisters, and it would be entirely false to the spirit of that revelation which God made of Himself in Jesus, to suppose that these boys, whose names were James, Joseph, Simon and Jude, and their sisters, were at all amazed or overborne by the wonderfulness of their brother Jesus. They nursed at the same breasts, and drank in the same spirit of obedience unto the law. They pulled at the same dress, and looked up into the same eyes for answers to their questions; they found food in the same wooden bowls and water in the same earthen pitchers; they slept in winter on the same little pallets beneath the common roof, and on summer nights they dreamed beneath the journeying moon, as they rested with father and mother upon the roofs themselves. One of them, however, was to perceive spiritual meanings. The lamp whose little flame shone out upon them all, was teaching Him its story of illumination. By and by He would have it in mind, in speaking a parable to the multitude, yet the wick and the oil were then giving one ministry to the whole family in Nazareth. The bushel was one which Jesus would not forget and He should say, "Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel." — Matt, v, 15. The broom will appear by and by in His thought, when He is speaking the parable concerning the lost coin, and the remem bered coin in His mother's hair will not be less bright when He shall point its moral. Indeed, all these items of household furniture, while they were to be wrought over into the eloquence of the Gospel of the Son of God, had their places of importance to other members of the family. The Divine Child divinely felt the symbolism of things. After a time He would speak it. It was thus, also, when with His father or mother, He went out of the windowless room called home, and saw the world. If Mary's cooking made this a kitchen and He learned of her how the leaven worked in "three measures of meal," — Matt, xiii, 33 — He also learned one day from Joseph the builder the value of true foundations beneath the house, so that when the storm came and "beat upon that house," 80 THE MAN OF GALILEE. it "could not shake it; for it was founded upon a rock." — Luke vii, 48. If, in the home, He saw His mother refusing to sew a new piece of cloth to an old garment in order to repair it, and found there an illustration of the wisdom which refuses to patch the antiquated with the vital and the new, He also gathered from the fields pre pared for seed in the springtime a symbol of life through persistent and guaranteed death, and that symbol which remained with Him until He said, "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit;"- — John xii, 24— and in the fall He found another metaphor which He would not forget until He said, "First the blade, then the ear, after that the full, corn in the ear." — Mark iv, 28. He was so trained by these things that the mustard-seed as well as the red anemone, which was probably the only lily He ever saw; the sycamine tree as well as the tares amidst the wheat; the fig-tree as well as the vine yielded their imagery to illustrate certain other aspects of the gospel of His kingdom, for which the salt in His mother's kitchen, and the hens whose broods were rebellious within the little enclosure around His father's house, furnished other similes. CHAPTER VIII THE HOME AT NAZARETH THAT piet}- which is likeliest to get most from Jesus as King of Kings is surest to linger lovingly at Nazareth. Here began the revelation of the Divine from the humanest point of view God ever gave to thought and worship; here began also the revelation of humanity from a divine point of view. Good and noble Phillips Brooks wrote to his home under date of December 13th, 1865: "We are encamped on this, my thir tieth birthday, in a group of olive trees just by the fountain of Nazareth." Such a man at thirty, brings to the Naz areth which appears on the map of earth experiences which go far to interpret the life of Jesus which was there continued up to the thirtieth year. Bishop Brooks wrote: — ' ' We left Haifa early this morning and rode along the base of Carmel for several hours, then struck across the plain, cross ing the Kishon by a deep and rapid ford. Soon after we came to the first of the 82 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. Galilee hills, and climbing it saw Mount Tabor, the great mountain of Galilee, before us, and the great plain of Esdraelon stretched out between it and Carmel. It was just the landscape which I have always expected in Palestine, — low, round, wooded hills, and rich plains between. Tabor is the finest, most beautifully shaped of the sacred hills, a soft smooth cone with wooded sides and top. We rode on all the afternoon through hills and glens, till about four o'clock, when we suddenly came to the top of a steep hill, and there lay Nazareth below us. It was a strange feeling to ride down through it and look in the people's faces and think how Christ must have been about these streets just like these children, and the Virgin like these women, and to look into the carpenters' shops and see the Nazarenes at their work. The town lies in a sort of gorge, halfway up the side of a pretty steep hill. As soon as our horses were left at the camp, we climbed 'the hill on which the city was built,' — Matt, v, 14, — and saw what is perhaps the finest view in Palestine. I thought all the time that I was looking at it how often Jesus must have climbed up here and enjoyed it. There were the Lebanon hills and Hermon to the north, Tabor to the East, and a line of low mountains, behind which lie unseen the Sea of Tiberias and the Jor dan; beyond them, the hills of Moab stretching towards the south. On the southern side of the noble plain of Esdraelon, the battlefield of Jewish history, with Mount Gilboa stretching into it, where Saul and Jonathan were killed. Jezreel lies like a little white speck on the side of Gilboa, and Little Hermon rises up between. On the west, the plain is closed by the long, 'dark line of Carmel, stretching into the sea, and the sight His eyes saw farthest off was that line of the Mediterranean over which His power was to spread to the ends of the earth. It was a most noble view. The hill is crowned with the ruins of some old Moslem saint. It is the same hill up which they took Jesus, to cast Him down from the cliff. The scene was very impressive in the evening light." Much happened to Jesus and in His interior life when He sat in that same evening light. He often found the opinions He first received from His elders transforming, as He brooded there. In that fading glow He discovered the fadeless fact that much which He had obtained from His father and mother as well as much that He THE MAN OF GALILEE. 83 had learned in school and synagogue was antagonized and at length subverted by the development within Him of certain intimations of a Divine destiny. The horizons which their teachings furnished Him melted in that air, before the outlookings which were His and which engaged His sight with the larger inheritance belonging to all the sons of God. Here He had the deepest of those experiences which are included in the statement: "//eyed boy, and such a mass of loyal Jews He had never seen before. Their talk was full of patriotic hope; their camels and mules were burdened with strange things, beside the aged and weak ones from every quarter of the world He had heard of. Many times His mother and father told Him of the journey they had always made at this season; but now for the first time He was one of the army of pilgrims. Did He remember also that Mary, His mother, had told Him of the places she had passed nearly thirteen years ago, when with Joseph, His father, she went from Bethlehem to the Holy City, and was called pure, and consecrated Him with two turtle-doves as an offering? If so, He looked with deep thoughtfulness upon every foot of the way as he neared Jerusalem. The flowers were in bloom; swift and brilliant-winged songsters weie making the air melodious; ardent sons 98 THE MAN OF GALILEE. of the Covenant were uttering their expectations; but He was looking in upon His own heart and listening to the whispers of Jehovah there. Soncs of mirth and gladness, the tuneful instruments which gave joy to the weary procession, even the outburst of psalmody that now ran like a river of music down the long line of travelers kept Him not from the calm of soul in which He met Jehovah. The Temple of His spirit was now filled with the communing God and all its Holy Place glorious with His presence, when just beyond Bethel, the air was rent with a shout. Some one ahead had caught a gliriipse of the shining towers. It was Jerusalem. The whole long series of caravans took up the cry. The Egyptian and the Arabian, the Gali lean and the Grecian Jew joined with Hebrewdom from all the world in the exultation. The city was just beyond. Yonder were the gleam ing colonnades of the Temple. A hush came over all. They would soon enter by the Damascus gate. More majestic than ever seemed the melody these pilgrims had been singing: " I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord. Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together: Whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord. For there are set thrones of judgment, the thrones of the house of David. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. For my brethren and companions' sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee. Because of the house of the Lord our God I will seek thy good." — Psalm 122. This ' ' testimony unto Israel " which they were about to offer was most closely connected with an event of the past, which, by and by, the boy Jesus would find a type or shadow of deeper history in the human soul. His mind was already repeating the old story of that night of nights in Israel. He would soon realize so profoundly His sonship. unto the All-Father that its prophecy would illumine the path of Humanity. He had read it over again with truer vision than any sage of Hebrewdom: "Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel, and said unto them, Draw out and take you a lamb according to your families, and kill the passover. And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the THE MAN OF GALILEE. 99 lintel and the two side posts with the blood that is in the basin; and none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning. For the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when he seeth the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts, the Lord will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come into your houses to smite you. And ye shall observe this thing for an ordinance to thee and to thy soils forever. And it shall come to pass, when ye be come to the land which the Lord will give you, according as he hath promised, ye shall keep this service. And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you. What mean ye by this service? That ye shall say, it is the sacrifice of the Lord's passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses. And the people bowed the head and worshiped. And the children of Israel went away, and did as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so did they." — Exodus xii, 22-28. In the radiance of the spring sunlight, the white and fiery glory which crowned the most sacred hills in Palestine broke upon their view. The circle of green made by the rich gardens seemed a ring of emerald in which all this towering whiteness and gold were set. They approached the city from the north and gazed upon its majesty, which was made none the less impressive by the fact that it seemed to rise out of a great basin-like valley, upon whose edges, made of hills and plateaus, were countless palaces of wealthy citizens, orchards of olives, and lovely bowers, verdant slopes crowded with fig-trees and vineyards, white with bloom. The eye of the young man rested at once upon Mount. Zion, for there was the Cit} of David. His He brew patriotism followed the Wall of David and was no less intense when it spurned the spirit and policy of Herod, whose three gorgeous castles shone forth above it in their unstained beauty. More than^. hundred feet above the wall, one of them indicated the history of the others, and it furnished a tale of the cunning and cruelty of the king who had once sought the young child's life. Joseph and Mary at least understood; probably it had all been told to Jesus. If these castles had not sufficiently impressed Him with the luxuriousness with which that despicable monarch had sought to over-awe the Jews in the name of paganism, close to them rose the newly constructed palace of Plerod, and gleams of reflected light shone out from it and quivered down through the valley to the terraces on the mountain side. Here, in elaborate licentiousness, Herod had gathered the em blems of heathendom and planned to crush Jewish national hope ioo THE MAN OF GALLLEE. behind these expensive and richly carven pillars. He had dreamed of his bloody schemes, more numerous than the blazing jewels which sparkled upon the ceilings and the walls. Within those shady gardens, and above their glassy pools, he had added such marble statues, carved by the art of paganism, as made his residence appear to the Jew the home of the vilest heathenism. Every Jew knew that the theater which he had built, and the amphitheater yonder, were dwelling-places of the idolatrous foreigners whom he had imported, that they might desecrate Jerusalem with the cruelty of the gladiator, the low festivity of the circus, and the perpetual message of inscrip tions in honor of Cassar, and images of pagan gods. The young Galilean peasant boy had come from Galilee, where the revolutionists against Rome had made certain other buildings in which other and patriotic kings had dwelt, almost as sacred as this building was unclean. But more strong and vital than His feeling of indignation at the memory of Herod was the glowing devotion of Jesus, when, on Mount Moriah, there stood shining before Him the one gigantic pile which worship and hope had reared to the glory of Jehovah, — the Temple itself. The mount seemed to have been created for its white and golden crown. The Temple itself, looking down on walls and man sions, appeared the only creation of man which represented the providence of God. Within that square of nearly- one thousand feet, more than two hundred thousand persons might assemble to worship the God of Abraham. Fortress Antonia stood at the northwest angle, and within it Rome kept her soldiers. It was a time when Jewish patriotism was likeliest to be unmanageable, and now the tower was crowned with Rome's garrison. Looking toward the Temple, He could not see the flash on the double colonnade on the south, or the play of sunbeams upon Solomon's Porch on the east; but the fountains which were filling the air with iris-hues, and the palaces which crowded near the battlements only paid homage to the grandeur of the sacred building. All these things were entering the soul of the imaginative and sinless youth when the caravan started on toward the Damascus gate by which they were to enter the city. The interior life of Jesus had measured itself against the exterior. It had met the one fact most likely to be dominant over Him. He had not lost His feet. CHAPTER XI IN THE TEMPLE AT JERUSALEM IT was impossible for the city of Jerusalem itself to entertain the vast multitude which had come to the feast. Josephus has given currency to the statement that nearer to three million than to two million ought to be the estimated number. When Rome took the census at a later time, and made an estimate from the number of lambs killed for the Passover Feast, it was found that her officers must calculate upon the fact that more than two hundred and fifty thousand were offered. The large multitude partially accommodated itself with the hospitality of the city, but doubtless most of them camped at the foot of Mount Olivet, where everything necessary for offerings and purifications were sold, or in the valley of the Kidron, where, as Lightfoot tells us, pilgrims cut the willow-boughs for the Feast of Tabernacles. If Joseph and Man- and the family had reached the city in time for the Sabbath observance, they found the synagogues and the Temple crowded, and the Rabbis rehearsing the noble history of the great feast. Shepherds with their flocks of selected lambs or he-goats were bringing their merchandise close to the city, and the demand for horses and asses, mules and camels, made it necessary for many dealers in provisions to ply their business. At length, Jesus saw a crowd of people following the priests at sunset. They were about to cut the first sheaf, and soon the grain, duly handled and blest, was presented as the "meat offering" of the new harvest. The Feast of Unleavened Bread came, and He remem bered the words of old: " Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days; and there shall be no leavened bread seen with thee, neither shall there be leaven seen with thee in all thy quar ters. And thou shalt show thy son in that da)-, saying, This is done because of that which the Lord did unto me when I came forth out of Egypt." IOI 102 THE MAN OF GALILEE. Within a few hours the trumpets were blown, and Joseph took the lamb which he had purchased, to the Temple. The Feast had begun. In the Four Courts of the Temple, the lambs were examined and killed. When the three blasts were sounded, the great altar was covered with blood which ran off in large currents through the pipes below. Joseph, with the other fathers or heads of families, carried his lamb away, and gathered his friends about him, where, upon some hearth, the lamb was roasted, and probably within a hospitable house it was afterwards eaten. Every fragment was to be consumed or burned. Not a bone of the offered lamb was to be broken. Wine was drunk; the. benediction was pronounced, each washed his hands, another blessing came, and then the bitter herbs, which were a me morial of the sorrows of the Hebrews in Egypt, were eaten with the Paschal Lamb. Then followed the chanting of a psalm. And so on through to midnight the Feast was prolonged. The whole week saw an increase of enthusiasm and devotion. No servile work was done on the next day. Offerings continued to be made, and everyone who could do so attended the long and impressive Temple service. Passing through the throng of merchants, listening to the many- tongued multitude, His heart full of prayer as He passed bazaar or stall, the young Jew from Nazareth was led to the sanctuary of God. With what mighty emotions He must have surveyed the out-buildings necessary for the observance of the Law and the Testimony! It had not been necessary for His mother to come to Jerusalem except that her devotion led her there. But it was a great hour in the history of her son, for He had reached the age when His spiritual life was marked by an epoch-making act. He was hereafter to be known as "Son of the Law." It is perfectly proper to call this the occasion of His confirmation, as many have done. At what time in the period of the feasting He first entered the Temple, we do not know. Eder sheim is strongly entrenched in the opinion that "Jesus could not have been found among the Doctors after the close of the Feast." Adopting this view, we follow the boy into the presence of the Doctors of the Temple, and behold Him in the audience-chamber of Hebrew learning and piety. So much for one side of this episode. Meantime Mary and Joseph are on their way back home to THE Man oi<' gi'lilee. 103 Nazareth. On the first night they had probably camped at Beeroth, almost within sight of the city. Soon their hearts were sorrowing. A lost boy — even their son, Jesus — tugged at their heart-strings. We cannot be certain as to the hour when trouble agitated them. Nearly three days had elapsed when their trouble ended, or rather, shall we not say, when the anxiety and worry which had been theirs, vanished by deepening into a perplexity and a distress such as come only to those who have infinite problems and nothing but finite solutions for them? The scriptural account suggests the presence of this anomaly: " And when they had fulfilled the days, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jeru salem; and Joseph and his mother knew not of it. But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day's journey; and they sought for him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. And when they found him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking him. And it came to pass that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were amazed at his understanding and answers. And when they saw him, they were astonished: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business? (or, better, ' in my Father's House:'' the Greek is: ' in the things of My Father.') And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them." — Luke ii, 43-49. A lost boy, on such a jubilant occasion, having escaped parental watch-care amidst the confusion created by the hundreds of thousands of vociferant Jews who were leaving the city of Jerusalem, could not have been an extraordinary fact. Mary had not been careless. It is only ignorance of the time and its conditions, though it is a quite benevolent ignorance of the event and Eastern manners which re proaches Mary upon her apparent neglect of the youth Jesus in this instance. The explanation in the words of the gospel is sufficient. Mary had trusted her child and her friends in the caravan; she had doubtless made the long pilgrimage on purpose to see this wonderful child of hers safely inducted into His new duties and made conscious of His privileges as a " Son of the Law. " But a diviner care than hers now interposed. It had so taken her carefulness up into its purpose that she seemed to be careless. Many of the apparent failures of human nature to reap the results of truest care-taking are testimonies to the inflow of the Divine Nature upon lives which have THE MAN OF GALILEE. 105 been consistent and practical enough until they are touched by wider issues. It was a lost Nazarene boy, as the fact appeared to the eye of earth; it was the self-discovered Son of God enjoying the rapture and vision of His Sonship unto the Divine Father, as the same fact was looked upon by the eve of heaven. While it is evident that it was quite fitting that a Jewish youth so young as was Jesus, should go up the way on Mount Moriah and enter into the Temple, and receive the instruction then offered to all, and even propose questions with the utmost freedom, yet the fact that Jesus, when He was found there by His distressed parents, in stantly answered His mother's sorrowful question by the words: "Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?" reveals the truth that He had already measured Himself as the Son of God His Father, along with, if not against, the huge and splendid thing which embodied the religionism of past and present. In Nazareth, He had already so measured the importance of His Sonship unto God with that of His sonship unto Joseph and Mary, that when she said, " Thy Father and I have sought Thee," it only made larger and more sublime the ' ' My Father " in the heart of Jesus. He seems to suggest: "My Father in Heaven also has been seeking Me, and He has found Me, and I am sure of My Sonship unto Him here. " But more than this had occurred in the mind of Jesus. The test of all thinking is found in its power to resist and even to use some august tiling — a thing which is the embodiment of mighty and past thinking. Would His thinking be self-respectful and sure-footed in the presence of such an overwhelmingly grand tiling as the Temple in Jerusalem? The answer is that episode within its very shadow, perhaps on the terrace, possibly within the sacred walls. The Son of The Highest was not on trial: the Temple and all concerned in it were to be judged. It was the judgment of Light — the Light of the World had swept upon it all. At that moment the process was going on by which, at length, when this youth should have given Plis life on Calvary to constitute the temple of Humanity, "the veil of the Temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom." — Malt. xxvii, 51. He had found the Temple of Hebrewdom liteless and perishing and Himself immortal and fresh; His heart of Humanity, quick with Divinity, had already throbbed against revered walls, and 106 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. they were falling, — the religion of the future was born. All future movements which promise to get out and enlist, to organize and lead on to human triumph, the dispirited and enslaved souls of men, have their motive in the fact that man is not God's manufacture, but God's child, and that, through what was discovered of man's possibility and God's loving purjxise by the mediating Jesus, humanity will at length realize its sonship unto the Eternal One. This mediatorship by Him then announced Him as the Christ of God and Man; but "the darkness comprehendeth it not." — John i, 5. It must not be thought that any inflow of divine strength or intelligence makes it impossible for the recipient to do those duties which are of our humanity and must be performed, that the world may be rightly ordered. Jesus was to fulfill, or to fill full, as never before, all the laws and ordinances of earth. He was to fill them so full that they would yield and break, and, at length, be included in the ultimate Law and Ordinance of heaven, — the Law of Love. Who else might discover Love's realm and method — the range and certainty of Love's governing power — except the sinless lover of God, Who, as Jesus' religion was to maintain, "is Love"? When the - Sinless One fell into love with the Holy God — as He must do — the new legislation for human conscience had come. His Father's Father hood had so filled Him full, that His own earthly Sonship opened out into Sonship unto the Infinite God. They might not understand -Him; He was sure to distress them, but He would now be a better son unto Mary and Joseph, because He was the true Son of God. Could the}' follow Him into the experiences of this profounder Son- ship? No doubt the vision He entertained was limited and colored by the Jewish ideas which were strengthened while He was in Jeru salem; but it was destined to become large as the destinies of all humanity and the Infinite love of His Father, by and by. "Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?" — Luke ii, 49.— that is, ' ' Did ye not expect to find Me where I could get closest to My Father's plans and purposes? Was it not to be presumed that I would be searching more and more deeply as to how I am to do His will, as His son? Where else, then, since I have seen a little into the divine meaning of this Passover Feast? — where else, then, since I have been driven to stud}- the significance of the lamb offered THE MAN OF GALILEE. 107 by My earthly father to My Heavenly Father, and have felt that other blood than this must flow, before Israel is delivered? — where else, then, would you expect to find Me, except where I could get all the light obtainable on the questions which have driven Me to and fro at Nazareth, and these mysterious intimations which pervade My heart!' Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?" Still more strongly does He seem to speak, when we remember that His own phrases were: "Wist ye not that I must be in the things of My Father?" In spite of Man's recollection of the visit of the Angel of the Annunciation and his message, in spite of the saying, "A sword shall pierce thy soul," — Luke ii, 35 — in spite of all the bewil dering]}' luminous experiences which had been hers as mother and guide unto Jesus, — shall we not sav, because hers was only the parentage of earth, and she had brought into the world an Infinite Factor, the old equation for working out problems was destroyed, and she looked in vain for satisfactory light in the face of Joseph. "And they un derstood not the saying which He spake unto them." — Luke ii, 50. To prove forever that the highest resources for life are most opulent with beneficent divinity and most truly known when they enter and work through human life amidst its ordinary circumstances, Jesus, vocal with this vaster harmony, "went down with them to Nazareth, and was subject unto them." — Luke ii, 51. Poor, loving, limited, amazed and ever-faithful Mary, the mother! She has "sub ject unto her and Joseph" One whose ever-growing destiny is to lead her,- also, to that spot where divine visions and infinite ideals will be paid for, and paid for by Plim Who, to the last, "must be about His Father's business." She will follow her boy as far as she may. She also has set foot toward Calvary. Amidst common cares, in Nazareth, ' ' Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man." — Luke ii, 52. THE RETURN FROM JERUSALEM. I-KOM PAINTING BY 1LUDINASU, COUNT OF HARRACH CHAPTER XII THE GROWING YOUTH AT HOME "JESUS grew" — this is the profound and comprehensive state ment of the gospel. Engirding His childhood unto Joseph and Mary He had discovered His childhood unto Jehovah. Pie had made this discovery of His Divine Childhood in the midst of circumstances and influences which gave Him intimations of the infinite reach and ity of the Divine Life. Just as a sight the sea, caught by the eye when it dis cerns a blue splendor lying low on the horizon and visible only between two mountains, lets the mind out into in finity, and as the mountains between which it is discovered, at the same time guard the mind from sudden assumption of complete revelation, so did this recent experience of Jesus with the Fatherhood of God furnish Him with a sense of the infinite com munion which was to be His; so did the vast things — Jerusalem and Roman power — between which He made the dis covery, intimate the limiting earthly environ ment in which He was to realize it. "And the child grew." — Luke i, 80. He was never anything else than the growing Child of His Heavenly Father. A series of fresh and energetic impulses, urging Him to His intellectual and spiritual fullness of stature, had just entered the soul of the Galilean youth, lately a visitor at Jerusalem, and now at home again in Nazareth. ' 'A child of twelve, " says Stapfer, "was at that time, in the east, as well developed physically and 109 no THE MAN OF GALLLEE. intellectually as a child of fifteen is to-day in our modern western world." But Jesus' whole personality was responsive because He was sinless, and His spiritual glance had rested upon the Infinite. While His eye swept often through the opening vale between the moun tains, and freely glanced upon the tract of sea suggestive of the whole, — that is, while His childhood unto the Father was often thriUingly evident to Him, — these facts of earth, Jerusalem and its Temple, Roman and Greek influences in Galilee, the old and the new ideals created by the thought of the Messiah, were educating Him and furnishing conditions, — shall we not say they were giving quality ? — to His oft obtained visions of the Fatherhood of God which was the all-encompassing conception with which His life ultimately had to do. He had seen, He had felt, and, as an open-eyed and finely trained child of extraordinary religious culture and spiritual respon siveness, He had experienced Jerusalem. Never had a soul been more thoroughly prepared to receive a picture; never had patriotism more carefully arranged the forces of a receptive mind to catch and to hold the vision of a cit}- where patriotism was religion; never was the deepest meaning of piled-up marble and sacred symbolism so certain to write itself in the living tab'et of brain and heart; never had a young hero-worshiper gone with such divine eye-sight into the memorial where venerable and inspiring personages thronged from out of the past into the j^recincts of the present. Jesus had taken in Jerusalem as no youth ever before took in the city of his devotion and his dreams, and the sensitive-plate of Plis culture and His thinking was so filled with what no other had seen and no other had known in Jerusalem, that it would require eighteen years to develop it, in the brooding and silence of His life at Nazareth. His picture of stately and devout Jerusalem demanded noisy and undistinguished Nazareth to accentuate all its meanings. The liberalism of Galilee must bring out the lines of the conservatism which He had met in Judea. He could now think it all over, and if things were too business-like in the quiet town itself, yonder was the hill where He might muse alone with His impressions, while the Damascus caravans moved slowly at its foot. He must separate those complex emotions which swept through Him when He entered THE MAN OF GALILEE. m Jerusalem, and seriously question the right to rule over Him which was exercised by that tangle of ideas and sentiments of which He was conscious when He stepped into the Temple itself. In a leisurely manner Pie must try the truth of the impression which He had obtained in the Holy Cit}', that the power of Rome gloried in the Herod who had sought popularity with the Jews by building for them so superb an edifice. He must rightly value the prominence of the Sadducees whom He had noticed as greatly in evidence in the religious observances at the capital. Beside these, and a thousand other things, He had to meditate on the conversations and probably the controversies He had entered into with the doctors in the supreme sanctuary of Israel; and now that Pie was back again in Nazareth with His dear mother, who had been so pained, He must test the light which distressed her. Perhaps He must experience the yielding of Himself more truly unto the illuminating energy which flooded Him and all His world in that incandescent moment when He flashed upon her wondering heart the question : ' ' Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?" — Luke ii, 42. "And the child grew." Already He had borne witness of His Sonship unto God in Jerusalem. Would He do this in Nazareth ? He must now review the prevailing and personal ideas of the Mes siah which beset Him, and He must do it in the presence of those ever-deepening hints which came, that He Himself was the Messiah, and not the Messiah of the Jews only, but the Messiah of mankind. Again He began to read the sacred books of His people. He could easily obtain them at the school or synagogue. Four hundred years lie between the date of the last word in the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament and this child's first prattle in His mother's home. They were by no means "four centuries of silence" They were four centuries of intense though often misguided patriotism and severe trials for Jewish national hope. They had produced much literature in which faith felt its way, both dimly and brilliantly. In their slow course, noisy zeal often broke forth in revolution in behalf of that patriotic idea which never vanished from their sight. Jesus, as a youth, was acquainted with the Scriptures as they had been left by trusted men such as were Ezra and Nehemiah. After these oracles had been apparently closed, there still abided an earnest 112 THE MAN OF GALILEE. devotion to the Law and to the Prophets. A good Israelite could not enter the synagogue without remembering that it had come out of the strenuous times of the captivity; and such a youth as was Jesus would be sympathetic with those who, while they were in Baby lon, hung their harps upon the willows and wept for Jerusalem, and, when they came back, brought with them a repentant spirit which communicated itself to all Hebrewdom. His own sinlessness attached particular importance to these times when the people had desired to be holy before the Lord. The tramp of Persian armies through Judea, nearly four hundred years before, had its echo in His soul. But He went back of all this, in His study of the sacred parch ments. He sought deeply for the primal hope in the heart of Israel. He went back even to the gates of Eden, with His sinless insight into the earliest events of the human tragedy, and He heard the promise: "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and be tween thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel." That was a gleam of fore-looking dearer to Him than it could have been to any sinful Noah, or even to pious Enoch. Jesus reflected upon the curse of the earth and repeated the words of Lamech: "This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands because of the land which the Lord hath cursed. " — Gen. v, 29. No failure of man had frustrated that hope, as Jesus thought of it. The great personality of Abraham had only enlarged it, and made the divine covenant more certain of fulfillment in the providence of Gocl. Jesus was a Jew so thorough-going in His nation alism that He clung to the suggestion, in the rite of circumcision, that the Messiah must come through the seed of Abraham. What ever might be the fate of circumcision as a rite after Jesus lived His life, He then knew only this, that He had been circumcised according to the Law. He had meditated upon the blessing given to Jacob, and these words were upon His lips: "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be." — Gen. xlix, 10. The words in the vision of Balaam: "There shall come a star out of Jacob and a scepter shall rise out of Israel," — Num. xxvii, 17, — had doubtless already been brooded upon by Jesus, as His mother had told Him the story of the Magi, at whose head Balaam, the THE MAN OF GALILEE. H3 astrologer, is said to have stood, and He had tried to locate, in the skies of His soul, their star in the East. Thorough as was the loyalty of Jesus to the Law, His interest was as that of no other young man in the great words of Moses which looked beyond the Law: "The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall heark en; according to all thou desiredest of the Lord thy God in Horeb, in the day of the as sembly. " — Deut. xv Hi, 15-19. So His mind '. perceived that the persistent hope of Israel had furnished a central flame for the moral life of the Jews in all these centuries. It had kept them, for the most part, from the sensualism and idol atry of the pagan nations which surrounded them. It had exalted them to such an extent that they clung to their altars and to the services and symbols which embodied this hope as the guarantee of their national purity and supremacy. It made the Jew, wherever he was in the world, a religious and patriotic man. When there was no "open vision" in Israel, it had kept Hebrewdom stalwart and heroic. Whenever any Saul had disobeyed its behests, Jesus reflected that he had met disaster, and when any young shepherd like David had obeyed them, He saw that it had made him transcendently valorous and true. Jesus knew Himself to be a descendant of David, through both Joseph and Mary. He became more conscious that such also was His intellectual and spiritual ancestry. He had just now been in Jerusalem, where the splendor of Herod's Temple did not make Him forget the words of the message to His royal ancestor: TOWER OF DAVID, JERUSALEM. n4 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. "Furthermore I tell thee that the Lord will build thee an house. And it shall come to pass, when thy days be expired, that thou must go to be with thy father, that I will raise up thy seed after thee, which shall be of thy sons, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build me an house, and I will establish his throne forever. I will be his father and he shall be my son, and I will not take my mercy away from him as I took it from him that was before thee; but I will settle him in mine house and in my kingdom forever, and his throne shall be established forevermore " — i Citron, xvii, 10-14. His sonship unto David was a fact that now stirred Him with unwonted intimations. When the book of national minstrelsy called the Psalms, which was associated with the name of David, came before Him as the unique and melodious fountain of the liturgy and religious thinking of the nation, He caught more and more of the lineaments of the Messiah, and more and more He found these lines in His own consciousness. Mary had repeated to Him her own Magnificat, and it was full of echoes from the Psalter and modeled upon one of its great hymns. CHAPTER XIII THE READING AND CULTURE OF JESUS THE Book of Isaiah, the prophet, was one of PIis favorite studies. He was now acquainting His heart and mind with those wonderful words which later echoed through PIis soul when Pie sought to relate history and Himself to human hope. "The Day of God" was a phrase in ~ "d Testament scriptures which was beginning to attract the closest attention of all stu dious Jews as they looked into a psalm such as the fiftieth in the Psalter, and as they read the vivid sentences of Zephaniah or Ezekiel. Whatever else had occurred to ful fill these predictions, they still abided upon the pages which Jesus as forelookings toward a of great judgment. Isa iah taught Him to believe that the coming of God in judgment would also be the coming of God in redemp tion. Joel's vision of the out-pouring of the Spirit among the nations, like a similar vision in the book of Ezekiel, received something of interpretation from Amos, who saw the salvation of Israel; and from 115 Ii6 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. Hosea, who saw the discipline and then the redemption of God's people; and from Daniel especially, who saw the wicked Israelites separated from the righteous and duly rewarded. Jesus re-read the prediction of Moses, which has already been quoted, and remembered in that connection the covenant at Horeb, where Israel was made a kingdom of priests, and the covenant with David, in which the City of David was promised an everlasting sovereignty. After so much of war, He had a deep interest in the promise that the Messiah would reign on the throne of David amidst universal peace. Jeremiah's page described Him as "the righteous branch," — Jeremiah xxiii, 5, — and predicted the return of the exiles and their service unto God. The conceptions of the prophets were entering His mind to be worked out in His ministry and life. He knew that wherever the Messiah might be, when He came to His work He must fulfill such a prophecy as lay in the words of Isaiah, which are quoted in the gospel of Matthew in the following connection: "Now all this is come to pass, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel; which is, being interpreted, God with us." — Matt, i, 22, 23. There was another parchment in which the prophet Micah had left the words: " And thou, Bethlehem, Ephrathah, Little to be among the thousands of Judah, Out of thee will come forth for me One who is to become ruler in Israel." — Micah v, 2. Already His mother had told Him, doubtless, so much concerning His birth as to have given Him a keen interest with regard to those who saw these words fulfilled. Jesus had certainly not made any such a definite claim to His Messiahship at twelve years of age in the Temple, as He did publicly in the last week of His ministry, when He entered the City of Jerusalem before all the people. But all these years between, filled as they were at the beginning with His affectionate loyalty unto God as His Father, unfolded the idea of God's Fatherhood and Jesus' sentiment and thought of brotherhood unto all men, into a conception of the person and work of the Mes siah which, as it grew, flooded the Old Testament scriptures with glory. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 117 Other books than these must have exercised great influence upon the mind of the young Jew who was forming His own conceptions of the Messiah and making acquaintance with Himself. Among them were the Jewish Sibyllines, which for nearly a century and a half had been studied by all thoughtful men, and especially in liberal Galilee. It was a work full of the Greek spirit, written in Greek, and it fur nished at least one unforgetable allusion to the Messiah. It was this: "God shall send from the sun" (that is, from the East) "a king who shall give the whole earth rest from civil war." Two Roman authors, Tacitus and Suetonius, report a widespread conviction then prevalent that the Jews were soon to be given dominion over the world. In the atmosphere of this rumor, Jesus must have read at least the third book of these Sibylline oracles, and found Himself interested in the predictions concerning the Messiah. So also must He have read with yet greater interest the more important work called the Book of Enoch. It filled the fancy of His over-zealous neighbors with a strange excitement. Under the figures of various animals, men and nations are there represented as foes surrounding and harassing the white sheep of Israel. The Lord of the sheep is victorious over them all. He is enthroned and becomes their avenger and the judge of the earth. He is the Anointed One and it is foretold that He shall open the very heavens. The book comes very close indeed to the very thoughts which must have filled the mind of Jesus. "Messiah appears by the side of the Ancient of Days, His face like the appearance of a man, and yet so lovely, like that of one of the holy angels. This Son of Man has, and with Him dwells, all righteousness; He reveals the treasures of all that is hidden, being chosen by the Lord, is superior to all and destined to subdue and destroy all the powers and king doms of wickedness. Although only revealed at the last, His name had been named before God, before sun or stars were created. He is the staff on which the righteous lean, the light of nations, and the hope of all who mourn in spirit. All are to bow down before Him, and adore Him, and for this He was chosen, and hidden with God before the world was created, and will continue before Him for ever. This Elect One is to sit on the throne of glory and dwell among His saints; heaven and earth would be removed, and only the saints 1 1 8 THE MAN OF GALILEE. would abide on the renewed earth. He is mighty in all the secrets of righteousness, and unrighteousness would flee as a shadow, because His glory looked from eternity to eternity, and His power from gen eration to generation. Then would the Earth, Hades, and Hell give up their dead, and the Messiah, sitting on His throne, would select and own the just, and open up all the secrets of wisdom, amidst the universal joy of ransomed earth." One more book is perhaps equally representative of much of the literature which was open to the young Galilean thinker. It is the Psalter of Solomon. While the Book of Enoch is actually quoted in the Epistle of Jude: "And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophecied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of His saints," — Jude i, 14, — we must not conclude that the Psalter of Solomon or the Book of Similitudes was less imjoor- tant, because either was less old, in the thought of the expectant nation. As clear as the allusion to the killing of Pompey after the battle of Pharsalia, is the suggestion that the nation cannot expect deliverance through any save a descendant from David. These were; perhaps, only a few of the parchments which rep resent a literature which was the outgrowth of the spiritual hope of those troublous times. We know that the Fourth Book of Esdras was read by the people when Jesus was a boy in Nazareth. As He moved, in His simple dress, with His brothers and sisters through the streets of the town, now becoming one of the marriage proces sion, and now one of the throng indignant at a harsh proceeding of Rome; now offering His pity and help to the victim of greed, now growing weary of the niceties urged by the Rabbis; or, as He went alone with a shepherd into the fields, or sat close to a great vine and mused beneath the grape-clusters, He found His own strong spirit warm with the flame excited by the anticipations contained in books like this, which was read and re-read by those whose souls were vibrant with the Psalm: " Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two edged sword in their hand; to execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the people; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; to execute upon them the judgment written: this honor have all His saints. Praise ye the Lord." — Psalm cxlix, 6. CHAPTER XIV EDUCATIVE INFLUENCES IN GALILEE BOOKS did not furnish all the fuel for that fire which burned with increasing brightness after Pie had seen Jerusalem, and responded to some, at least, of the thousand voices He heard within its walls. Galilee had been liberalized so thoroughly by foreign influences, that His earlier conception of the Messiah could not have been entirely in harmony with that of Judea. More than one hundred years before the last-written word of the Hebrew prophet was set down, Cyrus had accomplished a mighty revolution upon the wreck of that PANORAMA OF JERUSALEM, FROM JERICHO ROAD. 119 120 THE MAN OF GALILEE. Empire in which Belshazzar had profaned the sacred vessels of the Holy Temple. It had greatly affected all Palestine. Through Cyrus, Europe had entered into Asia; and from that day to the day of Jesus, Greece and Rome had increasingly influenced all the life of the Holy Land. That a man of Japheth could do as much as Cyrus had actually done to help Israel, God's chosen people, was a fact which served to enlarge the Jewish mind with the idea that there might be valuable instrumentalities elsewhere than in the tents of Shem. Galilee, — that "ring" (" Galil") in which so much liber alism was nursed, —was always being persuaded, sometimes involun tarily, that there was some good in heathendom. But Judea preserved her conservatism, even in her gratitude toward Cyrus. God had marvelously developed the religious enthusiasm of the exiles through those seventy years of absence, and now their descendants were fanatics. In Galilee, however, the fierceness of their patriotism was chastened by the effects of the intercommunication of Jews and Gentiles, and the Jewish spirit in the region about Nazareth was fairly cosmopolitan. In the five centuries preceding the birth of Jesus, both Judea and especially Galilee received much from the larger mental revolution accomplished after the time of Cyrus. Into this Galilee, containing only about sixteen thousand square miles, the Greek had come, without such an eager interest in the possibili ties of the rich and fruitful soil as would entirely destroy his Greek spirit. This spirit won a partial victory, at once. The result was that Galilee was not only to furnish the most fiery of zealots, but also the coolest of thinkers, when men would be meditating petty revo lutions, for the Greek sanity and method of thought had pervaded their fanatical spirits. From the coast, the Greeks passed through the plain of Esdraelon to the Jordan; and Greek was soon not only the language of the colonies, but the language often used in Nazareth by such young men as Jesus himself. There is no doubt that Jesus knew and spoke Greek. Near by were towns which bore Greek names, and many were the Grecian communities in league with the Decapolis. Large numbers of Greeks, who were Jews living in Greek countries, went to Jerusalem on the occasion of the great festivals. Schiirer has shown that the Mishnah of the Jews furnishes much evidence of Greek influence upon their vocabulary. In Galilee the THE MAN OF GALILEE. 12 1 Greek was welcome as an industrious citizen, rearing his crops of corn and wheat, tending his vineyards and olive-orchards. But he was most influential as an intellectual force. Into Greek the scrip tures of the Old Testament had been translated. It is impossible that so many Greeks should have entered into the vast work of Hellen- izing the nations, and that they should have attained a success in the Holy Land so conspicuous as to have actually furnished a lan guage for a new and universal religion, without having, at that time, brought some manuscripts or traditions into Galilee which reached the young man Jesus and helped Him to reach a fundamental con ception of the Messiah. It is true, as Edersheim says, that when a young Rabbi asked his uncle whether he might study Greek philosophy, the latter answered: "Go and search what is the hour which is neither of the day nor of the night, and in it thou mayest study Greek phil osophy." Gamaliel, Paul's teacher, must have borne an unenviable name amongst the exclusive Rabbis, for his liberalism and learning as to Grecianism conspired to make Paul able to quote often from the Hellenic poets. The very ardor with which Rabbi Akiba, according to Farrar, taught that ' 'no Israelite would be a partaker of eternal life who read the books of the Gentiles, " tends to prove that Greek thought was succeeding in attracting profound attention and that Israelitish religionism was so penetrated by its force and large ness that the constituted authorities had reason to dread the result. If these reasons for fierce opposition upon the part of the Rabbis obtained in conservative Jerusalem, what must we presume to have been the subtle, if not supremely evident influence of Greek thinking in radical and enterprising Galilee? Copies in Greek of Grecian manuscripts were cheap. Grecianism had long ago forced a fresh method of interpretation upon the Hebrew scriptures. The Apocryphal writings which were charged with the Greek spirit, and especially those books in which pious men had sought to harmonize Hebrew religion with Greek philosophy, only gave young students a taste of a supremely desirable feast, and the Jew could not fence off the light in which he grew and thought from the glow or twilight from Greece. Did Jesus not feel a breath from Socrates, through perhaps a long line of friendly truth bearers, as some proud Greek told Ptim how the 122 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. Greek philosopher revered the human soul, and how he looked wistfully toward another state of being? If so, Jesus was to work it over so deeply into a divine philosophy, that, while Socrates, cold with death up to his waist, said: "Crito, we owe a cock to /Esculapius. Pay, the debt and don't neglect it," Jesus would say: "Into Thy hands I commend my spirit." — Luke xxiii, 42. The effort of Socrates to create faith in the unity of God must have seemed to be in profound sympathy with the conception of God lying in all high forms of the Jewish ideal of the Messiah; for they all insisted upon God's unity; and the efforts of Socrates to find proof of the immortal life must have communicated his ardor to souls who touched Him who was to bring life and immortality to light. Greek influences are found in such books as the Prophecy and Assumption of Moses and the Apoc alypse of Baruch. These books were current then, and, though it was a bitter hate which the Jew felt for the Gentile, yet it must be confessed that the air breathed by a young thinker in Galilee could hardly have escaped the influence even of Plato, the idealist of Greece, whose name and philosophy were well published by Greeks in general and especially by colonists proud of their intellectual heritage. That Greek ideas, especially if they related to a human expectation wh.ch was Messianic in any of its qualities, were met with the . contempt of the Rabbis, was a fact not seriously oper ating to prevent Jesus of Galilee — "Galilee of the Gentiles" — from thinking of them, for He had already broken over the lines of their conservatism. Doubtless Jesus often went up to Jerusalem in the course of those "eighteen silent years, " and He then must have seen something, at least, of that mass of Greek art which the pompous Herod had brought to the city, and heard more of the Greek liter ature whose teachers Herod had hired to do duty in Jerusalem. A thoughtful Greek, even in Galilee, was not likely to forget that Plato had said: "This must be our notion of the just man, that even when he is in poverty or sickness or any other seeming misfortune, all things will in the end work together for good to him in life and death, for the gods have a care of anyone whose desire is to become just and to be god-like, as far as man can attain his likeness by the pursuit of virtue." And, if orthodox Jews and wide-minded Greeks fell to arguing as to the outlook for mankind, it was but natural THE MAN OF GALILEE. 123 that the Greek would seek to overmatch the Jew's well-learned an ticipation by quoting Plato's words. That Jesus Himself, who learned most from His Father at first hand, quoted no Greek author, and that we find no trace of Greek philosophy in the gospels, except perhaps in the gospel of John, is not solid proof that Greeks did not aid toward a conception of the Messiah which made Him a blessing to the whole race. Paul cer tainly showed, at a little later date, that a cultured Phariseeism was not unaware of the tide of Greek thought; and we know that Antioch, where the disciples of Jesus were first called Christians, was, even in Julius Caesar's time, about 46 B. C, a capital of Greek culture. Even though the Roman was now master of the world, and men like Cato had favored expelling Greek philosophers from the city of Rome, nevertheless Greek learning went triumphantly with Roman arms; and where the successors of Alexander, their general, failed to hold the ground, the philosophers and poets of Greece influenced and oftentimes guided the higher thought of the peoples. At this moment Jesus was standing on the verge of a new world which He was to create, and the larger number of the followers of this Son of Man in the first century j^robably were Greek-speaking Jews. In Csesarea andjoppa,Jews were reading Greek au thors to their chil dren, and the Jews who came back from Alexandria of Egypt brought an influence as distinct as that which they VIEW OF THE COUNTRY OF JUDEA. 124 THE MAN °F GALLLEE. took away with them. They had taken their Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, they brought back Hellenic ideas and points of view, and Gentiles had come into Galilee and Judea at an earlier time, having been uplifted by the great hope, bearing with them interest ing ideals from Greek thought. Twenty years before the birth of Jesus arose the most efficient force for disseminating the Greek spirit over Judaism. The name of that force was Philo of Alexandria. Before Jesus entered upon His ministry, and at the time when He was deeply interested in finding the true significance of the Messiah and His appearance, this eloquent and learned philosopher had found a large public for his writings on Jewish religion, and his interpretation of the Five Books of Moses must have been well known. He was a member of a priestly family, and he strove to find a harmony between the Hebrew faith and Greek philosophy. Whether Jesus knew Philo's reasonings, we can not tell, but the wide acceptance of his ideas, even in the circle of the Rabbis, would prove that the air which Jesus breathed was full of such conceptions of the Messiah as one man of genius would be led to harmonize with Gentile thoughts. Traces of Philo's method of allegorizing in interpretation are found in the letters of Paul; and that he was the mouthpiece of opinions largely prevalent in the time of Jesus, no one can doubt. That Philo did not think of the Messiah as personal, and that he thought of a warring force as the creator of the new day, does not invalidate the assertion that he and his contemporary thinkers helped amazingly to broaden and deepen the conception of what the Messiah might be. Without doubt, these ideas, in some form or other, reached the thought of Jesus, and He sympathized with the conception that any true Messiahship must encircle mankind with its blessing. Dr. Watkins quotes the common proverb: "Either Plato phi- Ionizes or Philo platonizes, " and he adds: "Philo represents a great current of thought which influenced himself and his generation, and which he deepened and widened. Of that current, Alexandria and Ephesus were the two great centers, the former specially representing Judaism in contact with the freer thought of Greece, and the latter specially representing Judaism in contact with the theosophies of THE MAN OF GALILEE. i25 CEDARS OF LEBANON. Asia, but both meeting and permeating each other in these great cities." Scarcely more Greek in its character was the writing of Philo than that of the author of the Wisdom of Solomon. Here the phi losophy of Plato is everywhere present and it is the effort of the writer to show that while Israel is the Lord's first-born, wisdom has been communicated to all who have sought it, and God has revealed PIis truth to many who did not seek it. It is instructive to turn from the reading of this book to the account of Jesus talking with the Centurion, whom He must have addressed in Greek, and to whom He said: "I have not found such faith, no, not in Israel," — Luke vii, 9, — which words indicate that Jesus was open-minded to the im pression made by the faith of a Gentile. In this book (The Wisdom of Solomon) the immortality of the soul and the blessedness and glory of the future state of the righteous are advocated with great eloquence, while the conception of wisdom and justice is maintained in language similar to the very phraseology of Plato. Another book to which Jesus must have been attracted, for His accuracy and ex- haustiveness of quotation from the accepted books makes it most probable that Pie searched all scriptures with painstaking study, was the Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach. For nearly two hundred years it had been current in a Greek translation from the original Hebrew. It was an earnest plea for morality deeper than that of the Rabbis 126 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. or the philosophers. The ethical passion of Jesus of Nazareth must have read with kindling, such words as these: "It is not meet to despise a poor man that hath understanding, neither is it convenient to magnify a sinful man." "Strive for the truth unto death, and the Lord shall fight for thee." "Let it not grieve thee to bow down thine ear to the poor and give him a friendly answer with gentle ness." The book maintains the duty of giving freely of one's religious knowledge and all other treasures imparted by God, and its con cluding song, the Hymn of the Forefathers, is so full of the spirit which was in Christ, and is so noble withal, that the most eloquent chapter in the Epistle to the Hebrews is modeled ujoon it. The Prayer of Manasses was also in circulation, especially amongst the young Rabbis such as Jesus soon became, and it taught a doctrine concerning the value of repentance and prayer looking toward that larger faith in the mercy of God, which Jesus preached when the dying robber made his plea on Calvary. The Books of Maccabees, of course, quickened the patriotic sentiment of all Jews who hated the dominion of Rome, and urged the positions of the strenuous Pharisaic party; as to the importance of the observance of festivals by the. Jews wherever they were, especially if they were tempted by distance to neglect the Temple services at Jerusalem. The Book of Tobit distinctly spoke of the Fatherhood of God, and other parch ments which gave greater testimony to the influence of the Greek spirit, furnish evidence of the higher truth of the assertion that "the chariot-wheels of Alexander smoothed the highways over which the apostles of the cross were to travel." "OVER WHOSE ACRES WALKED THOSE BLESSED FEE1." CHAPTER XV POLITICAL AND INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCES ROME and her authority must have appeared to Jesus as a yet greater force to be heeded and to be dealt with, now that He had been to Jerusalem and seen the extent of Rome's power, especially through the results accomplished by such a man as was Herod, the builder of the new Temple and the perpetual aspirant for both Roman honors and Hebrew loyalty. Detesting Rome as every Jew did, the relations between the Romans and the Jews, nevertheless, were such that, either by opposition or by the sympathy which often could not be prevented amongst thoughtful persons, Roman ideas were part of the atmosphere and they entered into the minds of the Galileans. As Jesus grew, and as He thought of the Messiah, His first home instruction was uppermost, and it was that the hated power of Rome should be overthrown. Rome was aiming at univer sal empire, and Jesus was growing toward a conception of Himself which made Him the founder of a universal empire. These empires were absolutely opposed in spirit and in method. The absolutism of Caesar rested on his making all men servants unto him; the abso lutism of Jesus rested upon His making Himself servant unto all men. There was only one thing concerning which He could serve all men, and that was, SIN. He would save the people from their sin. 127 128 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. It was not then commonplace to say that Caesar's empire depended on force; Jesus' empire would depend on love. One had succeeded through coercion and subjugation; the other would succeed through persuasion and affection. As Jesus studied Rome after His return from Jerusalem, He saw what kind of deliverer the true Messiah must be. Much has been said concerning the ignorance of Jesus with regard to rulers and Caesars and their manners and customs, as this ignorance is shown by His references to them. But Jesus knew Caesarism and its method to the very heart. To Him it was becom ing evident that the final contest would not be between two cities, Jerusalem and Rome, but between two spirits, the spirit which then possessed this world, and the spirit which possessed Him. In the very palace of Jewish religionism, He had broken the dear and little circle of earthly parentage and found His soul and life girded only with the larger and infinite circle of universal parentage. " My Father's busi ness," — Luke ii, 49, — was a phrase which universalized His interests, at least for a moment. At that instant, Jerusalem and Rome were cities of yesterday. The energies they represented were not the supreme forces. In the crisis which His j^ersonality and life would precipitate, they would be jostled about as incidents. His sinlessness had shone out against the dark thing called Sin, and that was a universal fact. To deal with that fact victoriously would be to settle all other dif ficulties incidentally. He would conquer Rome, — not by attacking Rome, but by overwhelming evil with goodness, and His triumph would give to Jerusalem also her catastrophe. Dimly seen, perhaps, at the first, these things burdened and pained Him with their pervading inti mations. As He went at night-fall and alone to His trysting-place with God, His heart was beginning to say: " I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened until it be accomplished." — Luke xii, 50. If a thoughtful Roman came to Nazareth and talked to any who repeated the conversation to Jesus, He felt not less strongly that the Messiah had something more fundamental to achieve than to break the Roman yoke which weighed upon the neck of the Jew. Matthew Arnold has described the situation truly: " On that hard pagan world disgust And secret loathing fell. Deep weariness and sated lust Made human life a hell. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 129 " In his cool hall, with haggard eyes, The Roman noble lay ; He drove abroad, in furious guise, Along the Appian way. " He made a feast, drank fierce and fast, And crown'd his hair with flowers — No easier nor no quicker passed The impracticable hours. " The brooding East with awe beheld Her impious younger world. The Roman tempest swell'd and sweli'd, And on her head was hurl'd. " The East bow'd low before the blast In patient, deep disdain ; She let the legions thunder past, And plunged in thought again." One man alone did not content Himself with plunging into thought again. He, at length, saw what to do. For eighteen years the bow-string was being made more and more tense by the strain put upon it by divine hands; the arrow was about to fly. If a Roman centurion, such as he who had commended himself to certain Jews by building them their synagogue, and who was to be commended for his faith by Jesus Himself, had quoted Cicero, in Nazareth, this quotation may have reached the ears of the young Rabbi: "We talk as if all the miseries of man were comprehended in death, pain of body, sorrow of mind or judicial punishment, which I grant are calamitous accidents that have befallen many good men ; but the sting of conscience, the remorse of guilt, is in itself the greatest evil, even exclusive of the external punishments that attend it. " With such a moral problem, Jesus felt that the Messiah must measure Himself, and when Jesus yielded to this conviction, He had already made it sure that the Messiah would not be received' except with disappointment and opposition by His fellow-citizens. At last He was ready for the next step. It was unconsciously in the direc tion of Gethsemane. Calvary itself was only a few years away from Him. That night may have been one of the many which He passed entirely and alone in prayer. Before He left Nazareth for the moun- ;3o THE MAN OF GALLLEE. tain, He must have found deeper significance than ever Pie had dis covered before in the hymn which the household recited at sunset, beginning: 1 I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, From whence cometh my help." — Psalm cxxi. When He came back to His carpenter's task again, He found an hour or two for reading and brooding. Pliny was a writer well known, and he had said despairingly : ' ' What folly it is to renew life after death! Where shall created beings find rest if you suppose that shades in hell and souls in heaven continue to have any feeling? You rob us of man's greatest good — death. Let us rather find in the tranquillity which preceded our existence the pledge of the repose which is to follow it." If He heard any words like these, Jesus met A TYPICAL VILLAGE, THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 131 the note with a sweeter tone. He had already confessed an ab sorbing interest in life, and against all hopelessness He felt the Messiah must set Himself. He Himself, by and by, would say hero ically: "I came, that ye might have life, and that ye might have life more abundantly." — John x, 10. At that time, also, many Pilates were sneering their question: "What is truth? — fohu xviii, 38. God was now so filling this peasant of Galilee with Himself that His heart and mind were full of the answer soon to be spoken: "I am the truth. " — John xiv, 6. These are only some of the elements which were in the air, and no nation was more talkative with refer ence to the impending future than was the Rome whose greatest poet, Virgil, had sung these lines: " The son shall lead the life of gods, and be By gods and heroes seen, and heroes see. The jarring nations he in peace shall bind, And with paternal virtues rule mankind. The goats with strutting dugs shall homeward speed, And lowing herds, secure from lions, feed. His cradle shall with rising flowers be crowned ; The serpent's brood shall die ; the sacred ground Shall weeds and poisonous plants refuse to bear ; Each common bush shall Syrian roses wear. But when heroic verse his youth shall raise, And form it to hereditary praise, Unlabored harvests shall the fields adorn, And clustered grapes shall blush on every thorn ; The knotted oaks shall showers of honey weep, And through the matted grass the liquid gold shall creep." A race had been looking heavenward for long. The distance be tween finite and infinite, earth and sky, had always perplexed and saddened man's heart, but then more than ever before. Everywhere, in one form or another, men were saying: "Cannot this distance be bridged? Cannot man become so divine or God become so human, that there shall be a real Christos, a valid mediatorship?" When Rome's mightiest monarch died, this urgent spirit immediately seized its opportunity. It created Caesar a God. The apotheosis of the Emperor of the Romans was earth's manifested desire to reach through humanity, raised into divinity, and to touch heaven. If the news of 132 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. some new sedition led by a bold revolutionist against Rome reached Jesus from Jerusalem, by the rumor from a returning fellow-citizen of Nazareth who had just left the Holy City and was full of its politi cal gossip, so also had come into Galilee the rej^ort that the Romans had made their Caesar divine. Jesus must have known this. It had found ics way into the mind of One who, as He pondered on the nature and character of the Messiah, was arriving at the conviction that the Messiah must be the living Mediator between God and man. These considerations, whether they influenced Jesus more or less in the development of His thought, did not detract from the inten sity of His patriotism. And He was now reviewing Hebrew history in the warm light in which He had lived at Jerusalem, during that festival. Yes! He was thinking it all over in the light which broke over His own soul when He said: " My Father s business." Every Jew repeated the long story of Hebrew revolt against Rome, and especially now, with so much expectancy in the Jewish heart, and with Herod playing fast and loose with Rome at Jerusalem, were the chapters in the history of their subjugation unto Rome constantly talked over by the Jews. Jesus was now called "the carpenter" (vi, 3), not "the carpenter's son" (Matt, xiii, 55), for His father had died, and He felt the responsibilities of a Rabbi with reference to political affairs. But His policy went deeper than that of current patriotism. He saw the whole past through the only eyes able to understand it. The Roman despotism had supplanted the Persian with a strength and audacity unparalleled. But long before this, the Messianic hope had become mainly political. After the death of Alexander the Great, Palestine became the desired prey for which Egypt and Syria struggled for more than a hundred years. Antiochus the Great, on capturing Palestine in 203 B. C, from Ptolemy of Egypt, permitted self-gov ernment to the Hebrews. All went well until the Syrians opposed Jewish monotheism with the polytheism of the Greeks, and at length, in 175 B. C, the Hebrews who had not been demoralized by Greek manners were in revolt. "It is startling to think, " remarks Dean Stanley, "of the sudden influx of Grecian manners into the very center of Palestine. The modesty of the sons and daughters of Abraham was shocked by the establishment of the Greek Palestra under the very citadel of David, where, in defiance of some of the /'///: MAN OF GALILEE. i.M most sensitive feelings of their countrymen, the most active of the Jewish youths completely stripped themselves, and ran, wrestled, leaped in the public sports like the Grecian athletes, wearing the broad-brimmed hat, in imitation of the headgear of the god Hermes, guardian of the gymnastic festivals. Even the priests in the Temple caught the infection, left their sacrificial duties unfinished and ran down from the Temple court to take part in the spectacle, as soon as they heard the signal for throwing the discus, which was to lead off the games." At length, corruption reached such a pass that Jason, a Jew, bought of the Syrian king the office of High Priest for 300 talents annually, only to lose it to his brother Menelaus, who, on going to take Jason's payments to Antiochus Ephiphanes, outbid Jason and took the office. Jason waited until he heard the false report that the king had perished in battle against Ptolemy, and then he swept into Jerusalem with 3,000 men, slaughtering as he marched, but failing to unseat his crafty brother. Antiochus returned to attack and enter Jerusalem, profaning and pillaging sacred jilaces wherever he went, and, at length, 40,000 people perished before him, a large number were enslaved, while the king filched more than a million and a half dollars' worth of precious metals. Judaism was crushed and outraged. The profanity of the unclean sovereign in the Temple was more humiliating than his cruelty outside. Two years later, being in need of money, he sent his collector of tribute to gather, by force of 22,000 armed men, all the money obtainable, to kill all the men and dispose of the women and children as slaves. Peaceably received into the city, the inhuman army began on one Sabbath day their bloody task. It was the hour for worship, and the desolation was unspeakable. The city was fired in various places, its walls pulled down, the riches of Jerusalem captured, and the hill Acra, above the Temple, was set apart to be crowned with a power ful fortress. What was more sad to the Jew was this, — he was forbidden to enter the Holy Place, and the sacrifices ceased. This much for Jerusalem only. Antiochus made a wholesale attack upon Jewish religion and joatriotism by decreeing the abolition of their religious practices. No Jew was permitted to sacrifice, to keep the Sabbath, or to circumcise a child. Jupiter Olympus was enthroned 134 THE MAN OP GALLLEE. WILDERNESS OF JUDEA. in the Holy Temple; paganism reared its altar, on the site of the Hebrew Altar of Burnt Offering, and a huge hog was killed in the sacred precincts, its blood poured on the Altar before the Temple and sprinkled in the Holy of Holies. Greek idolators, who had been sent to Jerusalem to induct the Jews into the rites of a religion they abhorred, were in attendance. Hebrews were required to eat the flesh of swine, and any of these orders was supported by an armed force which met disobedience with the most cruel death which could be invented. Mothers who had circumcised their children were led through the streets, the torn bodies of their little ones swinging from their necks, and old men like Eleazer were stretched upon the rack, yet they cried out in death: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one." Out of this agony came the seventy-fourth and the seventy-ninth Psalms; and now Hebrewdom was reading them again. From month to month the towns were visited, and the horrible despotism urged its joersecution; but at last the persecuted had a champion, and a mighty revolution girded on its sword. Mattathias, one of the older priests, having been driven to Modin, had poured out his soul unto God. He seemed safe twenty miles from Jeru salem in his ancestral home. But the demand that he, the most eminent citizen of the town, should sacrifice to the Grecian gods, confronted him in his dwelling. Pie replied to the officers: "God forbid that we should forsake the Law and the ordinances. We will not hearken to the king's words, to go from our religion, either on the right hand or on the left." — Joshua xxiv, 16. Beholding a Jew offering a pagan sacrifice upon his own altar, Mattathias slew him, as he also killed the king's commissioner and wrecked his altar. The THE MAN OF GALILEE. 135 revolution was born. Fleeing to the mountains with his band, he was joined by others of like enthusiasm, and he led the way through the country, destroying the altars of paganism, circumcising the children, and increasing his force of patriots, like a Garibaldi, — the elder Puri tan crying out: "Whoever is zealous of the Law, and maintaineth the covenant, let him follow me." The old man did not live to see the triumph of the Jews. His heroic band perished, but Simon, his son, "the man of counsel," and Judas, another son, "the mighty and strong," had received the consecrating blessing, and thus the five sons began a course of war for home and country in which, one by one, they were leaders, and one by one they were martyrs. Judas Maccabaeus was indeed the Hammerer. Pie magnetized his army as did Napoleon, and he led them with a Puritanism equaled only by Cromwell. Longfellow brings out this spirit in Judas Mac cabaeus when he makes him say: " Antiochus, At every step thou takest there is left A bloody footprint in the street, by which The avenging wrath of God will track thee out! It is enough. Go to the sutler's tents: Those of you who are men, put on such armor As ye may find; those of you who are women, Buckle that armor on; and for a watchword Whisper, or cry aloud, 'The Help of God.' " At last the victory was complete, and Judas saw the worship of the fathers again restored to the Holy City. The sacred garments and altar were renewed, and for eight days there was observed the Feast of the Dedication, which Jesus Himself was to attend, at a later time when His countrymen would be saying to Him, "If thou be the Christ, tell us so plainly." — John x, 24. Although Judas fell before the sudden return of the Syrians and seven years passed by, Demetrius gave Jonathan an opportunity which the latter improved, to accomplish Jewish independence. In May, 142 B. C, Simon entered Jerusalem and compelled the last Syrian garrison to capitulate. The happy nation went on a career of rejoicing until the last of the sons of Mattathias was murdered with his two sons, by his son-in-law, Ptolemy. 136 THE MAN OF GALLLEM. All these events filled the ordinary Jew with the idea that any true Messiah would deal with Rome as Judas Maccabaeus had dealt with the Syrian king. They had a quite different interpretation in the thought of Jesus. The taste of independence which the He brew nation had been granted between 135 B. C. and 63 B. C. had not deepened the spirituality of Jewish hope. The rival sects of Pharisees and Sadducees warred with one another until the Pharisees requested Rome, in the year 64 B. C, to take away all political power from the Jewish priesthood, because innovations foreign to the service of God had been introduced, and the priests were the polit ical Sadducees. The Pharisees, in 78 B. C, had supported the claims of Hyrcanus, but now they saw, as governor of Judea, an Idumean named Antipater, who was of the retinue of Hyrcanus, and who had mounted the throne by means of shrewd intrigue. In 63 B. C, the divided nation found itself confronted by the Roman gen eral Pompey, and soon the Roman eagles were stretching their wings on Mount Zion. Hyrcanus was deprived of nearly all his dominions, and Antipater was truly his master. The royal policy of entire de votion to Rome made the Roman government more detestable to the Jews. The ruler was a son of Esau, and although Jewish priv ileges had been given generously in the year 47 B. C, by Cassar, and a large portion of territory lost under Pompey was restored to the Jews, the Temple Tax forbidden to be farmed, the military forces prevented from camping in Judea, yet everything pointed to the event which speedily came when Herod, son of Antipater, swept over the Sanhedrin with an armed force and became ruler of the Jews. Under his scepter Jesus had been born, and it was within the precincts of the Temp!e he built that Jesus gave utterance to that conception of His own life and work in the world to which all sentiments of patri otism and culture of mind had begun to do homage. CHAPTER XVI THE BAPTISM BV JOHN JESUS was now thirtv years of age. Only incidentally was He looking upon everything as it appeared against that immense and vivid background which Jerusalem and Rome conspired to make. Things had grown worse rather than better, in recent davs. He saw such infamies as were matched only by the political tumult and the religious fanaticism which reached their height in Galilee, and even now these were vocal throughout Judea. As Jesus learned of the condi tion of things at Rome in the later days of His quiet life at Nazareth, He saw the world lying in wicked ness; and His moral enthusiasm which was the breath of His sinless life, was read to welcome any and all forces of reform which looked toward breaking the power of evil in the hearts of men. Under Herod Archelaus and under the rule of his successor, Jerusalem itself ^^ had yielded not a little to the corruptions from which ' Rome was decaying. Prac tical Epicurianism and Stoicism stalked through the streets of the Holy City, and throughout Palestine the des pair of the heathen met the expectancy of i37 _GP VIS' B00~>-S NEAR THE .ORCa;j, ? I38 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. the Jew, the latter maintaining its spirituality only in the loftiest souls. If the conceptions born of the better thoughts of Greece and Rome, which we • have already sketched, had been filtered through the Hebrew's contempt for the pagan, and, at length, had touched the mind of Jesus, leading Him along with His personal experiences with God as His Father, into a true vision of the Messiah of hu manity, — that is, if, at last, He saw Messiah as One who would save men from sin, — He came to that vision amidst a carnival of iniquity. It had increased since the reign of Augustus in Rome and the government of the Herods in the Holy Land. Any voice of Puritanism sending its volley of fire against the unspeakable wicked ness of the age, must have found a cordial welcome for its messages in His soul. It was the sinless One who was thus listening — listen ing for "Elias who was to come." — Matt, xi, 14. A rumor was then spreading even through Galilee that, in the desert-wilderness of Judea, a man of extraordinary intensity of con viction and power of eloquence was preaching in that desolate and craggy region near the outflowing of the Jordan. This man's influ ence had gone forth and the troublous politicians and chattering Rabbis were forgotten, for a new hermit, who reminded men of the asceticism of the Essene, and who breathed the spirit of the grandest of Hebrew prophets. Most austere in his life, he was not an Essene in garb or in food. He wore a dress reminding those who had not forgot the scriptures, of the lofty-souled Elijah. A girdle of camel's-hair was about his loins, and his poverty was wit nessed by his roughly woven garment and. its leather thong, as well as by his food, which consisted of locusts and wild honey. It was John, the son of Zacharias and Elizabeth. When he came to Batha- bara, the forerunner of the Messiah was intellectually and spiritually prepared for his privilege and his task. In the majestic solitudes of the mountains, he had nursed the ideas of his life and his mission upon his faith in God. This had been his spiritual life and breath, in the home of Zacharias near Hebron; and under the open Syrian sky John had brooded upon the duties which lay before him, running back, as they did, with their impulse, to that scene in the Temple when his priestly father first heard from Angelic lips divine intima tions as to the future of his son. He was slightly more than thirty THE MAN OF GALILEE. 139 years old. Out of the experience of home, from synagogue and desert, he came forth an orator, masterful of the symbolism of the desolate district in which he had so tried the illuminating power of his vision, that, in it, he had seen Sadducees and Pharisees crawl forth as an "offspring of vipers." — Matt. Hi, 7. The threshing-floors of the hill-country again felt the winnowing wind ; the trees of the forest trembled at the stroke of the ax ; and the fire consumed as he spoke of the deceit and fraud of priestcraft, the intolerable exactions of officers, the iniquities of privileged classes, and the pompous self- righteousness of religious guides. His speech was dark as the shadow from one of the hills beneath whose eminence he had mused on Israel's shame, bold as the cliff that was smitten with sunlight when his soul flamed with the deeper thought of the Messiah, deep as the loneliness in which he found God, and musical as Jordan which ran at his feet. All the force of that destructive ardor which belongs to the fieriest Puritanism was John's. He marshaled his denunciations against iniquity, high and low, elegant or vulgar. His audiences were gathered from all Israel. The poor huddled in their hastily prepared booths. The aristocrats were there, proud of their Abrahamic ancestry, and he told them as their conceit stumbled near to him over the scattered rocks which lay on the edge of the river, that God was able to raise up children unto Abraham out of those very stones. His spirit made him stern and heroic, simple and direct. His character furnished a peerless sounding-board for the trumpet-like tones, whose carrying power reached to the edge of the multitude, where the common people crowded together, and where they heard that their Deliverer was approaching, and that the hour for the rule of the lofty and proud had passed away. His aggressive and serious speech was the breath of Eternal Holiness through him, and it swayed the citizens of Jerusalem, who had come out to hear him preach repentance and announce that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, even as the wind had bended the willows along the Jordan. Truly this was a " Voice in the Wilderness, — not an echo," as Frederick W. Robertson has finely said. The son of a priest, the temple he chose was the wilderness and the Jordan valley. Its dome was the steady ^sky; and he sought to create his altar-service in human hearts. In the wide air, under a JOHN THE BAPTIST IN THE WILDERNESS. FROM THE PAINTING BY SIR JOHN GILBERT, R. a. THE MAN OP GALILEE. 141 mighty canopy, challenged by sincere and powerful eloquence, the scholarly Scribe, the privileged Sadducee, the hair-splitting Rabbi, even the political revolutionist of the party of the Nationalists, were overwhelmed; and this was so, for the reason that his genius insisted upon what his moral insight had discovered as to the real malady which made Israel weak and Rome corrupt The name of this disease is sin. He was fitted to be the prophet of the future because he was so profoundly true to the past. He was so true to the past that he had entered into the fundamental movement of all eras, and interpreted the urgent feeling and utterance which was totally missed by the shallow present. He so opened the Old Testament, that men began to see under his eye-glance the first pages of that which would be called the New Testament. The finest spirits whispered to one another : ' ' For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight." — Matt. Hi, 3. As John asked Pharisees: "Who hath- warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" — Matt. Hi, 7, — they had no chance to answer, until he cried out: "Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repent ance." — Matt. Hi, 8. At that moment, he was continuing the use of one rite, and one only. It was amazingly suggestive of the new kingdom which he was preaching, the one rite he dared to practice in a time burdened with forms and observances, — the rite of baptism. His popularity was unbounded. The airy globes of ecclesiasticism had been punctured by his keen sentences. The current of his elo quence rolled on like the swift Jordan whose ripples moved with the echoes from his voice. If he would, he could now create a move ment which would sweep, from those rocky hillsides, toward the cap ital of the world. Everything was ready to obey his spell. His audience dreamed of the long-haired, spare Elijah of the past leading a successful insurrection, and every voice was crying out, in the prophet's words: "Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain." — Isaiah xl, 4. His rite of baptism had won the startled multitude. It made visible his aim and their response; and the excited crowd daily in creased from the plateaus of Perea and the city of Jerusalem, until I42 THE MAN OF GALILEE. the unanimous desire for purification by water was allied with the most noble vision which had yet come to Palestine. The excitement bred its politics. The multitude was ready for action. Why not seize the moment and save Hebrewdom? The answer John made lies in the words with which he held back a lesser triumph, that God might have His own larger victory: "I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: Whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and gather His wheat into the garner; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." — Matt. Hi, n, 12. Instantly questions went from lip to lip, and they were all like this: "Who is this Mighty One of whom the orator is speaking, and where is He?" The answer was soon to be given without words. They had already asked him: "What shall we do then?" His answer was: "He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise." — Luke Hi, IO, II. But this answer was not sufficient for their larger curiosity. It was too practical and too exhaustive of their newly born moral en thusiasm. They were as yet speculative. Luke says: "And the people were in expectation, and all men mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ, or not." — Luke Hi, 15. "Art thou the Christ?" — this was the inquiry in which old and young, rich and poor, Roman soldiers and shrewd Sadducees, ortho dox priests and heretical Greeks, ragged outcasts and meek saints, united. It was impossible for John to delay longer. They were even pressing the question further. They were going so far, that they asked him, "What then? Art thou Elias? And he saith, I am not. Art thou that prophet? And he answered, No. Then, said they unto him, Who art thou? that we may give answer to them that sent us- What sayest thou of thyself? He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias. And they which were sent were of the Pharisees. And they asked him, and said unto him, Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not that Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet?" — John TILE MAN OF GALILEE. 143 /, 21-25. ^ was a trying moment for John, lie could not satisfy their curiousness. Let him be patient. To-morrow God will answer their query. "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." — Matt, xi, 15. The morrow came. It was early in the year. Tradition places the date as the sixth or tenth of January. It was a day when nature had little to suggest of vernal power; and the barren valleys united with somber mountains which stood round about the multitude to indicate that, if any spring-time were very near, it must be waiting to fill the world with blossoms and perfume by the opening-out of the divine purpose within some human heart. Around the eloquent enthusiast, who was already called the Baptizer, and whose austere habits had made him appear the incarnation of a grave and spiritual rebuke unto all cheap prosperity and self-satisfied religiousness, there thronged eager citizens from Bethlehem and Jericho; and some were there even from Samaria and priestly Hebron. The Levites were still urging him to answer the question: "Art thou the Christ?" One young man from Nazareth stood near the stream, His white tunic showing like a symbol of purity against a background of tam arisks. No one listened, as did Pie. He alone heard and understood. This was the first orator to whom He had listened, the strings of whose nature vibrated so strongly at the touch of conscience that his words mingled with the harmony in PIis own sinless nature. John was preaching a universal gospel, for he was striking not at Rome, but at SIN. The sinless Nazarene alone could sympathize with such a divine universalism as was John's. The intimations which the young man from Nazareth had known in His own soul, and which had driven Him to the Baptizer, were trembling into melody. The thought and feeling of the young Galilean were saying in His soul: "This is he who is Elias that was to come." Yet this was His cousin John and Pie was only Jesus, the carj^enter's son. They had not been together, but they had only known of one another. Even then John "knew Him not." — John i, 31, 33. Probably Mary had told her Son something of her visit to Elizabeth and something of her experiences with Elizabeth before John's birth. Probably Elizabeth had told her son John something of Mary's visit unto her in the hill-country of Judea, and something of the experiences of Marv before the birth of Jesus; and while these were matters of long ago, yet they were of 144 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. supreme interest. Whether this be true or not, an irresistible cordon of influences from without was then making its appeal to all those newly burnished intimations from within. The soul of the young Nazarene was on the verge of making its declaration. No one in the crowd was conscious that the mightiest process of all the ages was achieving its consummation. The crowd were pressing upon John for baptism. Suddenly John stood back and hesitated. Why should not the baptism of the multitude go on? The figure of the Nazarene peasant was seen to move nearer to the Baptist, His lips were almost moving with the old great words: "Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?" — Luke ii, 49. Yet now that young Jew, Jesus of Galilee, the Man who was to fill full all human Custom until it would break into the Divine Law, had resolved to ask baptism. Was it some gleam of Divine Light which then proclaimed Him the Son of God, or was it some ray of glory from His sinless spirit that betrayed His moral majesty? Certain it is that no fomenter of revolution against Rome, no one who could be content with an idea of the Messiah which made Him only a political emancipator of His people from the tyrrany of a state, could have recognized the all- glorious innocence and obedience, the divine graciousness and power to suffer and to be slain, which, at that moment, distinguished the man whose earthly name John knew not as the Messiah. John, the proclaimer of repentance for sin, the preacher of a universal revolution, the one orator who made use of the single rite which would empha size freedom from sin — he alone could recognize the Christ in Jesus; and he would soon say of Jesus: "Behold the Lamb of God who beareth the sin of the world." This, however, could not be said until much else had occurred both to Jesus and to John. ' 'Baptize me, " said the Nazarene. ' 'I have need to be baptized of Thee and cometh Thou to me?" — Matt. Hi, 14, — re plied John. The crowd moved back a little, for this was the most start ling word which John had uttered. The men stood looking into one another's eyes. It was the open-eyed finite confronting the all-inclu sive infinite. Both were troubled. Jesus was now about to open like a bud in the blossoming era of His divine career, and He had been recognized by another, just as He had recognized Himself as the THE MAN OF GALILEE. t45 Chosen One. Already the cross was on PIis shoulders. John was struggling with the startling suggestion which had just come from Him whom he must call "the Lamb of God." It was that he should baptize Him, then and there. To the incredulous and awed hesita tion of the baptizer Jesus repeated his desire. John had never com promised, but he must now obey. There was no appeal, no retreat from such a command. So, always, the fresh and inspiring present, lordly and prophetic, . comes to the --ym^t stern and sublime spirit of the past for lustration, — yea, for con secration. So, also, must the greater ever bow itself, in the presence of the less, and request the forbear ance which God's plan constantly imposes upon that which seeks to honor an eternal fitness in the order of things. So always is divinity THE JORDAN WHERE CHRIST WAS BAPTIZED. becoming more deeply and effectively divine, in its submission of the Eternal to the limitations of Time. So ever is the Christ of God saying : " Suffer it to be so now, for it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness." — Matt. Hi, 15. Jesus was sinless and needed not the purification symbolized by this rite adopted by John; but, for the manifestation and realization of His divinity, Jesus needed to be baptized by John. It was a necessity for them and His future that He should humble Himself here in the baptism by water, that He might humble Himself yonder to the severer baptism with which He must be baptized throughout life and death. He must fill full all righteousness, — that is, all human legalism, in order that it might be enlarged, or, if necessary, broken out into the righteousness that is of God, — the Law of Love. 146 THE MAN OF GALILEE. If divinity may be thought of as a quality, it is the quality that is the most sublime when its possessor is most abased. But divinity is always voluntary. Jesus was to recognize increasingly the perfect Fatherhood of His Father, in the growing affection of His own Son- ship. John hesitated no longer. They walked down together into the stream. Soon the glassy surface of the deep ford was broken, and John had baptized Jesus. This was the baptism of consecration. In the very anticipation of the event, John had been swept from his feet, and had forgotten his own office in the kingdom of God. When Jesus' feet touched the bank of the Jordan, and He reflected that He had been baptized, His mind dwelt upon the manifestation which God had made of Himself unto His Son through the form of the dove, symbolizing the Holy Spirit. Who had seen it — that symbol of peace wheeling down and alighting upon His head? We know not. He saw and understood. Jesus was the Christ. Later on, Jesus was to hear the question: "The baptism of John, whence was it? From heaven or from men?" — Matt, xxi, 25. Then He would remember the open heavens above Him at His baptism, the de scending of the Spirit of Holiness into His soul, and the utterance of words of peace and comfort which other ears also heard: "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." — Matt. Hi, 17. It was the divine assurance. John understood it, for it had been inti mated unto Him that upon Him that was to be baptized with the Holy Ghost, the Spirit was to descend in that manner. This had strengthened John, also, and he was now confirmed in his belief that Jesus was the Lamb of God — the Christ. No chapter in the life of Jesus is more essential to Christian faith; and no episode in His life is more sure to repeat itself in the history of that redeemed humanity into which Jesus is born. John was never to find his incomplete ideal satisfactorily fulfilled in Jesus. The past is never to see its dream quite literally realized in the future, because Jesus is ever greater than John, and, in His Christliness, there is the certainty that the infinite shall overflow the finite. We do not know but that, as the romanticists suggest, a common dove's wings quivered in the sky overhead, at the time when Jesus came up from the experience of His dedication unto a holy life by baptism, and that, fixing His THE MAN OF GALILEE. 147 gaze upon the beautiful bird, He saw it dip more closely to Him, and then light upon His head, its plumage so radiant with sunlight that all took it to be the symbol of the Holy Spirit. We do not know but that, to the inner ear which listens to unheard melodies, the voice came, saying : ' ' This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." We do know this: — whenever the purpose of God in the present, unheralded and unknown, so connects itself with the past as to receive its consecration for the future, the sky of human life quivers with a peace which is of the infinite, and, above the humanity which is thus dedicated to highest service, there sounds a voice, heard only by those who are near, proclaiming God's Father hood through man's sonship, and saying, in dimly heard or in clearly apprehended tones: "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." It is the moment of communion between man and God, the loftiest and most inspiring, until other and deeper experiences have come and gone. The broken current of Jordan had again become direct, and it flowed unimpeded along toward the Dead Sea, as if only a stone, or the trunk of a tree, had fallen into it. The last widening circle had rippled away and vanished. Yet a great hour had come in the story of love ; an era was marked in the education of humanity. The Church has long called the baptism of Jesus His "second na tivity. " It was this, and much more. Not alone was Jesus invested with divine power, but that power came through human ministry, and it so took others up into an inspiring vision, that the unique experience of Jesus blessed mankind. John heard the voice, as well as He whom John had designated as " The Lamb of God." — John i, 29. "Suffer it now," said Jesus," for thus it becometh us" (not me alone) " to fulfill all righteousness." — Matt. Hi, 15. It was an event in which the place and partnership of such a man as John, in the career and achievements of the Messiah, were illumined. Jesus had reached the age of thirty, at which the priest of Israel was conse crated to office. He had not thrown aside this ancient observance; He had begun to complete it into something higher and larger. In going to John and being baptized of him, He was carrying in His sinless heart the sins of the people already. Innocent Himself, He was the Penitent Race of Man, voicing its experience, seeking for its I+S THE MAN OF GALLLEE. i ~ > ' ¦ *i Mr' ' 'iH* t ¦Hfcrt*** ' '.-^ Mm/Ww&l&ft&B- Aifti Mrfl Lp-jMl': <* M ^^^^^BB^Hmu^nBn ¥ j Ljfo ¦ as . "V^ ¦ " M purification from sin, bearing it unto repentance. He knew, by this time, that this act must be the beginning of a public ministry that would end at some Calvary, since He had felt the experience of brotherhood unto all men, by realizing in His own Sonship the Father hood of the Universal Love. He had re-read the prophecies con cerning the Messiah, and whether He had fully accepted Himself as the Messiah or not, He saw that His baptism was an act like other acts in His short life, running straight in opposition to the conceptions of Messiah held by the Rabbis. He had just been called ' 'The Lamb of God" and accepted the designation which foretold suffering. The Lamb must be sacrificed some day. There is no phrase in the lit erature of religion more truly descriptive of what moral genius does for humanity at large, when some hour of conse cration opens the harvest-seed of the past into the growing sprout of the future, than this, "And the heavens -were opened." — Matt. Hi, 1 6. These heavens were opened here, not only above Jesus, but above the ordinary humanity that now thronged about Him. Jesus so became the Christ of Man, as well as the Christ of God, at this moment, that He stands here as the typical humanity, realizing that He has a divine destiny to fulfill, a Father's business to "do, and that it is ready to bow to any rite which will help to make its career sacred. Let the old and the vanishing say ever so truth fully: "I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?" — Matt. Hi, 14, — still the divinest power which never breaks with the spirit of the past, or disconnects itself with the eternity circulating through past, present, and future, must say: "Suffer it now, for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness. "—Matt. iii> l5- "Now" is the name of the crest on the wave of time by A QUIET POOL IN THE RIVER JORDAN THE MAN OF GALILEE. I.iy which we see how high the transparent age has risen, and what is the strength of the eternal tide beneath. It will be lost next moment in Forever. These opened heavens are not different from the "opened heavens" which were seen after the revelation" of the possibilities of manhood in Jesus had furnished a vision unto the soul of Stephen, the Martyr, when he "looked up steadfastly into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God. " — Acts vii, 55, 56. These ' ' opened heavens " are indeed the realm usually called the ideal, but they comprise the kingdom of the only real and the only universal. Man's life is from above downward; his help is from God. Sinless humanity had con secrated itself, and was consecrated by John, in the baptism of Jesus. It would have been strange, if, over the head of man, hitched fast to earth's realism, there had not opened the vast territory of the invis ible and the ideal. Men must see into the great unseen, at such times. In that realm, every Stephen sees that Jesus is standing, at the right hand of God, — that is, His power is Divine power and God depends on Him. It is an inevitable vision to every Stephen. Out of that unseen dwelling-place of the realities, by whose down-coming power we live, there comes even yet, whenever Jesus is permitted in His church to be consecrated as "The Lamb of God," and to in augurate a new relation of man with God, the utterance of heaven: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," — Matt Hi, 17, — and men who have ears to hear, do hear and understand. Once more; baptism, in which rite He filled full a consecrating observance, could never be the same any more. He had filled it so full that it was a larger thing evermore. Jesus has hitherto been spoken of in this connection as the Sinless One. The Angel of the Annunciation, however, had spoken of Him to Mary as "That Holy Thing that shall be born of thee." — Luke i, 35. He was yet to be spoken of as "The Holy Child Jesus," and the aj^ostles, long years after, were to see wonderful things done "in the name of the Holy Child Jesus. " — Acts iv, 30. The sinlessness of Jesus was the result of His holiness. Sinlessness alone is negative; holiness is positive. Sinlessness means that all weeds have been kept from growing on the soil; holiness means that fair and wholesome grain has germinated and grown up, 150 THE MAN OF GALILEE. occupying and exhausting the soil itself so completely that no weeds can grow. Jesus had come to a baptism which was the symbol of a purification whose highest result was only sinlessness, but holiness. He had brought to that baptism a Holy personality Who obtained His holiness through communion with His Father. The whole secret with Jesus' divine genius and its power lay in the fact that He lived His life as the Son of the Holy God. Here again was the flash of His omnipresent idea — the Divine Fatherhood and His Divine Sonship. It had doubtless come to be so strong and lofty, because it had passed through many trials. He had been often tempted. Yet here, in the midst of these unique and glorious experiences, shared partly by the excited multitude about Him; with John, whom they would call Christ, insistently pointing him out as the Christ, Jesus saw be fore Him a greater crisis than He had ever experienced. Can what He has already realized from His actual Sonship unto the Divine Father, endure? There is no escape from the necessity of answering this question, ere another step is taken. He who is to lead men to a manhood God-like, — "the Captain of their salvation, must be made perfect through suffering." He must know the bap tism of fire before He can baptize His brethren. Where shall He find out about this? Let Him go to the wilderness and inquire in its desolate solitudes! He can not escape trial even there. The Son of God, just because He is God's Son, must be tempted of the devil. "Immediately," says Mark, "the Spirit driveth Him into the wil derness." — Mark i, 12. Let every man remember that masterful men, like their master, are not devil-driven, but Spirit-driven, "to be tempted," not of the Spirit, but "of the devil." The higher the destiny the more certainly do the forces of goodness lift Jesus up to a height which flings correspondingly vast shadows into the vale below. Luke says that "Jesus, being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan." — Luke iv, 1. Nothing but the wilderness was before Him; nothing but the assault of Satan awaited Him, for Jesus had claimed Himself as the Holy One of God, and evil now denied the validity of the claim. CHAPTER XVII JESUS TEMPTED IN THE WILDERNESS NOT even the Christ of God, — certainly not the Christ of Man,— could fall, being already down. Jesus was now at a point of moral enthusiasm, the loftiest He had ever known. His faculties were all aglow and His powers eager for achievement. "Then," — Matt, iv, i, — as Matthew tells us, He was led to the trial of His rank and qual ity. Then and only then, He approached the empire of contest ing possi bilities.Satanic power has no interest in those whose ex treme mor al loftiness it is quick goodnessreveals im- The ethical consciousness of humanity will always read the account of the way Jesus trod, intellectually and spiritually, to the unique temptation. It is so imperial in its threefold magnitude of trial as to be called The Temptation of Jesus. No eye which has been trained by those experiences that make for holiness on earth, 151 does not offend it; to ensnare the whose presence mortal features. 1 52 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. will look upon Jesus with aught but fraternal sympathy, when we are told that He was "led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil." No man is ever tempted until he is led up. There must be a height to fall from, else the otherwise dramatic incident is closed, ere it begins. Jesus is described by Luke as "full of the Holy Ghost." — Luke iv, i. Only when He has begun to realize His moral position amidst the things of time, and to illustrate the possibility of man's receiving God, on the one side, and the pos sibility of God's entering into man, on the other hand, can Christ be so led up as to be tempted of the devil. The situation now is to be carefully considered. The obscure townsman of Nazareth has been living upon the fact that God is His Father. Those around Him do not know that, through this fact, and in no other way, He has come to be a sinless and obedi ent Son, and that this has made Him to feel the fact of human brotherhood so truly that He deems Himself the Messiah of Mankind. He has come upon the idea of Divine Messiahship fundamentally. Others have missed reaching His level and their idea of Messiahship has been that it is human only. Had He said a word in rebuke of John, the Baptist, when John pointed Him out as the Lamb of God, there might yet be some question about His own opinion of His rank, even though mysterious events have occurred, and when the dove lighted upon His forehead, He felt the footfalls of an immeas urable destiny. He could not resist, at the Jordan, the conviction that He was The Anointed One. He hurried to the wilderness to examine His credentials. The crowd was likely to confuse every thing. He alone kept in mind the title His heart was repeating: "Son of Man." They were not the credentials which the Rabbis expected to be furnished to the Messiah when He came. They are, first, a profound faith in the Fatherhood of God, so profound, indeed, that Jesus 'believes that the Father's true Son will be the ' ' Lamb of God bearing the sin of the world;" and second, the feeling, in which all His own previous presentiments have their ripening, that He Himself is the Lamb of God. He is about to take to Himself, not the name, "The Son of God," but the name, "The Son of Man," — so deeply has He realized His divine Sonship unto the Universal Father. To Him it means human brotherhood in Him. The faith of Jesus in THE MAN OF GALILEE. 153 God as Father had lifted the race up into Plim, and given to humanity a divine destiny. Goodness is not proof against the attack of evil. Goodness must be demonstrated as holiness, if it shall win. Into the wilderness, with the wild beasts, Jesus went, not doubt ful, as would have been some other man who, with the best of intentions and with a great experience with God, had, neverthe less, missed the greatest experience and was therefore content to be a Messiah who would lead only a political insurrection against Rome. The roots of His Messiahship had struck deeper than all this; but they were now to feel the stress of a tempest. There could be but one temptation serious enough for Jesus. Only one temptation could He deal with, so that, when it was met successfully, these roots of His Messiahship would be stronger in their grasp upon the core of things. This was the temptation to doubt His Father's Fatherhood. The idea that He might be the Messiah had set this or that other Galilean crazy, and a similar illusion had driven this or that Judean to madness. But it was not insanity that Jesus had to fear. Since John had spoken, He was the person now that the crowd might make its hero, and he might be led to adopt some such superficial and dazzling view as these other enthusiasts had adopted as to the true relation of the Messiah to His God. Let any believers adhere to the idea that the tempter of Jesus was an external bodily shape, if they must; but, in so far as they are possible unto us, let us not miss the understanding of and the acquaintance with those inner processes by which Jesus was led, through this temptation, into a victory, not only for Himself, but for the humanity whose Head He became, whose Messiah He was prov ing Himself to be. It is useless to argue over the question as to whether a sinless being can be tempted, for He was more than a sinless being; He was a holy being, in the human sense. This temp tation of the young Rabbi, Jesus, came from without, not from within. His holiness would not be holy enough for earth, if He could not fall, and if Pie could not rise, by the experience of temptation. The value of this event unto us lies in these things: "He was tempted like as we are, " and ' ' He was tempted, yet He was with out sin." — Heb. iv, 15. He met it as a man, sure only of His divine pedigree and relying upon its truth. "God is My Father," — this is 154 THE MAN OF GALILEE. His only support. ' ' I will draw upon the deepest meanings of My Father's Fatherhood" — this was His wisdom. He forbade Himself any extraordinary use of His divine resources. He met the foe of humanity, as a man must meet him. ' ' He emptied Himself. " He was most divine in becoming most human. He had left the inspiring companionship of John, and the quick admiration of the wondering throng at Jordan, and from that perilous excitement He was glad to have escaped. He was now with the prowling beasts in the wilderness. It was a safer place in which to test new experiences in the fire of thought. Another Moses, standing on the verge of the announcement of a new code of morality, He was fasting. There was a vast contrast be tween them. The first Moses received the Law, and it was a series of prohibitions. It was written on tables of stone and received amidst the manifested glories of Jehovah. This new Legislator and Recip ient of divine legislation was receiving His Law. It was the Law of Love's inspiration. It was written in His own loyal will and heart. It was received in the presence of Satan. As has been suggested by Edersheim, Moses came forth after his forty days' fast to meet the problem of Israel's sin, and to cast the Tables of the Law of Sinai from him, in indig nation ; Jesus was to come forth, joyous in the absolute confi dence that His Law of Love would rule the world. We may not as cend with Him into that uninhabited re gion stretching to the North, until it comes so near that He may SCAPE-GOAT. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 155 catch a sight of the towers of Jerusalem, and so far to the South that it approaches Beersheba — the desert into which the scape-goat was usually carried by the Jews on the Day of Expiation. There Jesus now found Himself, •With dark shades and rocks environ'd round." We cannot walk with Him on the arid and stony ground, and shiver near the dark waters, or stand silent before the naked precipices; but we can understand something of His condition when we are told that, through the fort}' days' afterglow of that splendor at the river's brink, ' ' He did eat nothing, " and that afterwards ' ' He hungered. " — Luke iv, 3. This comes close to our human life. Utter desolation could not feed Him. The solitude produced no bread. Over against the rich suggestions which His poetic insight must have discovered, even in the bleak miles around Him, was the urgent and concrete fact — hunger of the body. — Luke iv, 1. The Son of God was, also, the famished carpenter. His revelation had not dazzled Him into blindness as to His human need. A soul fully occupied by God, His body vacant and with doors open for an infernal visitation, — this was Jesus. The Messiah was to be assaulted through the Naz arene peasant. The devil could climb up into the radiant and radiating dome of the tower of His being, only by entering and passing slyly up through the dark and vacant stairways beneath it. So the first trial of the three trials which constitute The Temptation, appeals to the senses, although its aim was a spiritual overthrow. Emptied of physical power by hunger, Jesus was trying to feed Himself upon the fact that He was "the Son of God." Adam, "the Son of God" — and this is the designation of the evangelist Luke — had lost all in the act of eating, forgetting and even distrusting God's Fatherhood. Here was ' 'the second Adam" famishing in His Father's world, but regaining all. Satan saw the opening, and he said: "If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." — Luke iv, 3. Never was logic so brilliantly imitated ; never was an insulting hypothesis so craftily intimated. Was it a sneer or a winsome persuasion? Satan hints that his own doubt about Jesus being God's Son may be swept away, and still he would insert into the consciousness of Jesus the possibility, perhaps the probability, 156 THE MAN OF GALILEE. that He may be wrong in His estimate of Himself. Other Jews have been; why not He? "If Thou be the Son of God," — it is evil incarnate pretending to be capable of being convinced of the sovereignty of goodness. Yet the matter is so put, that Satan may be suggesting to the tempted One that, as others doubtless have, so He may be out of balance, from having adopted the same charm ing and disastrous illusion which has driven kindly enthusiasts into frenzy. Evil never shows its genius so strongly, as in the demon strations of its ability to take the garments of piety and to bedeck itself with them. There was precedent for miraculous feeding of God's chosen ones. Had not the whole Hebrew nation been fed when it hungered in the wilderness? Did not God see to it that the widow's cruse of oil failed not and that her barrel of meal wasted not, for Elijah? Was a faulty human being, such as Moses or Elijah, to re ceive honors and attentions from God, which were now to be denied to the hungry Son of God? Was divine power useless, and if so, was it not contemptible? Could there be a starving Messiah? Men are tempted, not on the side of their weakness, but on the side of their power. Weakness is but the shadow of power. The poet is tempted to reign only and always in his fancy; the orator, to be too eloquent; the captain, to fight too of ten ; the man who can, to do; the omnipotent hand, to create all its food alone. Satan is always saying to the highest sort of man: "Thou canst, if thou wilt" — and the primeval liar speaks the truth. Only Christ in the wilderness, only Christ in the Christian, may resist the temptation of power. The art of the masters has left some of the greatest of can vases as offerings laid at the feet of the tempted Jesus. None of them have surpassed the picture of Tintoretto at Venice, which Ruskin and Symonds saw only through dust and mildew, but which such minds remember as one of the most energetic representations ever made of this scene. Tintoretto's Satan is the Satan of The Temptation of Jesus, — a fallen angel, doubtless, but he gives evidence yet that he was celestially created. He is vital, intellectual, splendid, and almost supreme. It is a picture full of spiritual truthfulness. Jesus is broken and drooping, although the moral glory of .the Son of Man trembles forth in a soft radiance. Before this tired and fainting form, out of which everything humanly forceful and muscu- THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 157 larly resistful has ebbed away, stands the virile, passionate, sinister embodiment of voluptuous and Satanic energy, his earthly power of enchantment contrasting with the piteous loveliness of yonder fam ished face, his imperious derision flashing with mock heroics upon the lone and quivering Christ, his gold-circleted arm showing its fullness and force against a gorgeous wing, as he demands of the haggard Galilean: "If Thou be the Sou of God, command that these stones be made bread. " No other artist has made the face of nature so forbiddingly drear and the majestically luminous sky, behind the richly draped Satan and the unadorned Jesus, so palpitant with the infinite. The multitudinous stones around fairly wait to hear the word: "Be bread!" No one has so contrasted the aim of Satan glittering in his snake-like eyes, with the aim of Jesus still divinely visible upon that wan face. It is not the picture which a Milton might have made, for he wrote the lines: " Infernal hosts and hellish furies round Environed Thee. Some howled, some yelled, some shrieked, Some bent at Thee their fiery darts, while Thou Satt'st unappalled in calm and sinless peace." Milton is not so true or so profound as Tintoretto; for tempters never howl; they charm. Satan is not horrible, or disgusting, to any but Christ's eyes; he is fascinating and superb. He is well-fed, and his lithe and sinewy form, graceful with ripples of vitality that flow into one another, as do the rings of a sleek serpent, prove how good bread is and what good bread may do. He is the embodiment of the delicious gospel that says: "Use your power; enjoy life; avoid suf fering, if vou are divine!" The painting is faithful. Jesus was then making such a divine use of His divinit}- that He fostered it and kept it for the later day when He should triumph over this voice again. Then would Jesus say: "Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?" — Matt, xxvi, 53. And, later on, even on Calvary, He would be giving His life while He put aside the coarse Satanic plea: "Save thyself and us!" — Luke xxiii, 39. To any, who, at that moment, had depended upon other than the resources of Jesus, this appeal of the tempter would have come with such triumphant persuasiveness as to have extracted an answer, 158 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. in word or act, which would have satisfied present hunger and Sa tanic desire. There was only one answer that Jesus might make. If, as a thinker, He had vacated His right to leave His destinies in the hands of God, as His Father, He would have destroyed the one working conception of His Messiahship which made Him the Christ of God and the Christ of Man. How then did Jesus answer Satan? He reached up into the idea that He was God's Son. He lived in the consciousness that divine faculties and divine wants were His, that these hungers of His nature were fundamental, central, and in clusive, and that humanity, whose Head He was because of the fact that God had made Him Son nto Himself, and therefore the life of God was within Him, must not, because it could not, depend upon the food of earth. He remembered a word of the past which per haps only feebly expressed His own fresh and strong idea of the essential childhood of man unto God. He would use it now. He said: "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." — Matt, iv, 4. The air seemed to quiver with the Satanic question which is always re peating itself: "Why shall not man live by bread alone?" The answer was in Jesus Himself, who was the revelation of man as cer tainly as He was the revelation of God, and it was illumining the pathway of the tempted One. It was this: "Because man is not God's manufactured thing, but God's child; and he so inherits God's nature that God must feed him with God's own word." Jesus did not deny the usefulness of bread; He denied only its supremacy. The strife for bread has laid the mud-sill of civilization; the heroic willingness to do without bread has reared upon it the palace of the soul. If the devil had already hinted to Jesus that Moses and the children of Israel had been miraculously fed with manna in the wil derness and that God's Son ought to fare no worse than they, Jesus had now answered it by quoting from Moses these great words. This foregleam of truth concerning the Fatherhood of God, of which Moses was the prophet, was now traced back to its source; and just as its early and timorous light had made Moses commandingly strong, so now its full splendor in the heart of Jesus made Him victorious over the Prince of Evil; — so victorious, indeed, did it make Him, THE MAN OF GALILEE. '59 THE SOURCE OF THE JORDAN. that by and by, when He had the destiny of the world fully on His shoulders, He could hear without a tremor the voice of the same tempter jeering beneath His cross, in the same words: "If thou art the Son of God, come down from the cross. " — Matt, xxvii, 40. The entire life of Jesus was the growing develop ment, within Himself, of His early faith in the Fath erhood of His Father God. This faith of Jesus constituted Him the Messiah and led Plim to the cross, by way of the tomb of Joseph and Olivet; and it led Him to the mo ment of His ascension when He went home to His Father and His God. His life was beset, from the beginning to end, with one temp tation only. It came in various forms. It was this, — to take a superficial view of His Father's Fatherhood. The first Adam had lost all, by selfishness which Jesus soon saw was the core of sin; the second Adam had regained all by self-sacrifice which is the core of holiness. The first Adam passed out of the spirit into the senses; the second Adam passed out of the senses into the spirit. He had inaugurated, in Himself, first, the kingdom of the unseen. Thus only could He rule, unto the end. He conquered; and His faith in His Father's Fatherhood deepened and heightened to the very last, until on Calvary it broadened down into such a sense of human brother hood that He said of His human brethren who were there killing Him: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." It went still further and showed itself in the form of brotherhood, after the tomb of Joseph had witnessed that the Son of His Father, God, could not be holden of death, and He told Mary: "Go to My brethren and say unto them, I ascend unto My Father, and your Farther." — John xx, 17. Thus far this valorously defended idea of God's Fatherhood unto man and man's childhood unto God was to lead in the enterprises and achievements of Jesus. How far the 160 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. victory in this first trial of the Temptation went toward energizing His true Messiahship, and preparing it for the greatest of its future triumphs, may be seen in this, — He was tottering with hunger; a set of necessities which came out of His bodily constitution clamored for food; He actually confronted death. He said, practically: "Man can live without bread; man is not a physical being living on physi cal materials, but a spirit-child of the Eternal Spirit; it is not nec essary for Me that My body should even live, and I can live only on the word of My Father." At that moment, Jesus had conquered death, intellectually and spiritually. Calvary would come, by and by, and break His heart, but the unpierced hands even then had ' ' the keys of death." Jesus had done the supremely needful thing for human progress. No nation has ever reached greatness which has not refused to agree that the power and willingness to make, bread are the chief glory of government. Physical comfort has to go down before moral enthusiasm, ere the bodies of men are truly cared for. The idea that if men are well fed they are to be contented is Satanic still; and two blades of wheat where one has hitherto grown is not so much a proof that the golden day is here, as is one blade of wheat unfolding its spiritual treasure to a man delivered from the tyranny of the senses. Holiness is the only true basis for prosperity. CHAPTER XVIII THE TEMPTATION OF JESUS— CONTINUED. THE first trial of the temptation had come and gone, and Jesus was more than ever, now, the Head of a new kingdom. He had met the proposition: "Bread is indispensable," with the proposition: "God alone is indispensable to His child, man." He had led the race back, from bread, into the heart of the Creator of bread. He had furnished a solution, — the only solution for the bread question. It is no wonder that again He would be insisting on being known as THE WILDERNESS TO-DAY. the "Son of Man,"- — that is, I''.--.. Son of Humanity. What if the \ King of the kingdom which had just been proposed had begun at that critical moment, to turn stones into bread? No new heavens and no new earth would have ever come unto man through Jesus; life would have been uninspired from the higher consciousness of God's Fatherhood, and, instead of making man heroic and blessed, Jesus ii 161 1 62 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. would have made man a magician and an indolent eater of bread. Man would have gone on testing divinity according to its power and willingness to make stupidity happy by supplying merely physical needs. Jesus did not come to lead man down into his lower life, and to inflame the petulant necessity for happiness, — that would be to emphasize the idea that man is only God's manufacture and physi cal; He came, on the other hand, to lead man up into his higher nature and to show him that Calvary furnishes the symbol of divine manliness, — this is to emphasize the idea that man is God's child and spiritual. Not what a man gets makes him rich, but how he gets it — the ability to do without it being a greater treasure still. In the first trial, Jesus won the day by depending utterly upon the Fatherhood of His Father, by refusing to degrade divinity into satisfying His own immediate desires. It was a sacrifice of Himself. He was even then declining to found "a religion of signs;" He was refusing a "sign" even for Himself. It must ever be remem bered that the value of the Person of Jesus Christ, in His influence in the world, lies in the fact that He Himself experienced His own religion and was equal to all its high demands. But the second trial is so managed by the tempter that Jesus, who has refused to take His life and its sustenance out of the hands of God, is urged to carry His own faith a little further, and, in an extraordinary act, to depend upon His Father's Fatherhood. ' ' If dependence is a good thing make the most of it " — this is the plea He hears. Yonder glows the Temple, rising above terrace and garden and castle in the Holy City. It is the center of the world, in the thought of that nation to whom any Messiah must be most dear. It is the very place which shrewd and brilliant diplomacy, or the manipulator of a great move ment which must carry the enthusiasm of the people, would select for some unique act that would bind the hero to the affections of a populace and enthrone a victor in the inauguration and adoration of the nation. In what literal or symbolic sense these words are used, we need not stop to discuss, but it is a fact repeatable ever more in Christian experience, that then, — yea, only then, — "the devil taketh Him into the Holy City, and set Him on the pinnacle of the Tem ple, and saith unto Hm, If Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down, for it is written, 'He shall give the angels charge concerning THE MAN OF GALILEE. 163 Thee, and in their hands they shall bear Thee up, lest at any time Thou dash Thy foot against a stone.'" — Matt, iv, 5, 6. There is no reason to suppose that these words need to be accepted more liter ally than Paul's words as to his having been "caught up to the third heaven, " and other similar words. A more important fact it is, that the temptation which offered itself to Jesus at this moment in the development of His thought of Himself as Messiah, and in the presence of all that the Temple in Jerusalem meant to Him and His nation, was so subtly conceived, and so persuasively insinuated by Satanic artifice, that only the truest and most deeply inspired spirituality and faith could have resisted it. Jesus was divinely ambitious. Ambition to lead and to deliver Israel must have considered the fact that Israel must be impressed. How Israel was to be impressed, and whither Israel's leader was to lead, were questions answered variously, and according to each thinker's conception of the true Messiah and His mission. The an swer of Jesus must be in accord with His unique idea of the Messiah as the representative of His Father— God. He was still drinking at the fountain of His inspiration: " God is My Father; I am His well- beloved Son, aud God is pleased in Me." But things had taken a new aspect. Would He still be God's Child? He had proven Him self to be God's Child by His trust in God and His dependence upon Him in the first trial. "Trust Him still further," said Satan. "Depend upon Him with dramatic entirety, " whispered the tempter. "Satan had indeed possessed himself now of the same sword with which Jesus had just defeated him." Against the great gates of the Temple the sunlight poured its splendor. Pinnacle after pinnacle caught the glory and burned in the far-flung morning tide. The sublime height of the Royal Porch invited Him. Thousands of Jews who had come up from all parts of the world were talking over the national expectancy. Had the Mes siah been born? Many of these pilgrims had recently been baptized by John and were of those who had just left the banks of Jordan where John had gathered the nation and baptized Jesus, where the heavens were opened and they had heard the voice of approbation above the Galilean carpenter. Some of them were ready to believe. Was it not the hour for vindication and the one valuable opportunity j64 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. for Him to trust God, even daringly? If He were to cast Him self off from yonder golden spire of the Temple, surely divine wings holding Him up would create a new breath of faith for men. Was not this to be desired, — to reach the goal in one scenic event, to save Israel's faith, and to reinspire His own faith in Himself? The King was surveying two kingdoms. One was the kingdom of this world; the other was the kingdom of God's universe, inclusive of earth and heaven. Which kingdom would be His? Was He think ing that the one could be entered only by presumption, and that He was already enthroned in the other, by the fact that, even with extraordinary powers, He had been obedient thus far to all accepted law, the law of nature as well as the law of Sinai? By and by natural laws were to be apparently abrogated by Him. Why not now? Or did He have a vision of the fact that even the laws of nature were to be broken divinely, only because He would fulfill them, — that is, "fill full" them with Himself and thus enlarge them until they were lost in greater and all-inclusive laws? Or was He afraid to throw Himself upon the air, lest it might yield, and all His divine and humane designs perish with Him? Then it was that Satan clothed himself so sacredly with a scriptural text, that only divine eyes could have seen his sinuous craft making it all a lie; and the devil repeated the old promise of Israel: "He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee, and in their hands they shall bear Thee up, lest at any time Thou dash Thy foot against a stone." "Thou art soon to break up man's sense-bound universe, by reveal ing the unseen!" Satan seems to say, "Do it now and so publicly as to save time, struggle and long agonies! " Jesus was the invisible King of an invisible kingdom. He could not begin the conquest of that kingdom over the hearts of men, by further vulgarizing the already too theatrical passion of mankind. He would trust God so deeply as to rely upon the appeal of the invisible and spiritual, entirely. He would not make the unseen seen. He knew He could not save men to communion with His in visible Father, except by wooing them through the triumph of His invisible and perfect Sonship unto God. He saw further than this. He perceived that this would be to furnish a false idea to the race of men. They would become imitators of an external magic. Most THE MAN OF GALILEE. 165 of all, He saw how irreverent and presumptuous it all would be as related to His heavenly Father. He would therefore answer that which was neither the first nor the last of misquoted texts, by the quo tation of another text in its proper sense. And He turned upon Satan and said: "It is written again. Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." — Matt, iv, 7. "Again." Jesus here teaches us, among other things, this — how to use our Bible. No one text and no one set of texts may be con sidered representative, still less are they to be thought to be exhaus tive of the scriptures. Satan can quote scripture; only Christ can compare scripture with scripture, and quote it with justness. And it is Christ in the Christian that enables the Christian to find the true meaning of the Bible. Only an inspired man can intelligently read and use the inspired words. The quotation of Jesus, ' ' Thou shalt not tempt the Lord, thy God," with which He met the cunning of Satan, is a command which came to Israel, long before, when, in the journey through the wilderness, the}- came to Rephidim, where "there was no water for the people to drink." — Num. xxxiii, 14. The angry people crowded to Moses and demanded water. His answer to them was: "Why chide ye with me ? Wherefore do ye tempt the Lord?" — Exodus xvii',2. The command came to them later: "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord, thy God, as ye tempted Him in Massah." — Deut. vi, 16. The difference in the two cases was super ficial: their likeness was radical. Unbelief was at the bottom of the action of the Israelites, and unbelief would lie at the bottom of the action of Jesus, if He were to follow the suggestion of Satan. Yet it was Satan's effort to have Jesus think that such action involved an earnest belief. Jesus saw that trust in any of the laws of God is trust in God Himself, and that to enter upon a course of conduct which selfishly denies the sacredness of these laws, is to distrust God. To dare upon the persuasion of the infiniteness of Love's power, is to profane it. "God," says Saint Augustine, "has promised forgiveness to those who repent, but He has not promised repentance to those who sin. " To have thrown Himself down, without the command of God coming through necessity, and to have counted on God's power to save Him from bodily harm, would have been sinful. It would have been to have thrown Himself away from His idea of Messiahship, whose 1 66 THE MAN OF GALILEE. central current was love and loyalty unto God, the Father. It would have been to have listened to vanity and to have countenanced presump tion, to have courted a peril where there'was no duty, to have created a danger in order to have obtained a spectacular deliverance from it, to have distrusted God's ability to take care of the divine destinies of His Child as God Himself had provided. This it was that Jesus meant to teach when he said: "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God," — Matt, iv, 7, — thou shalt not make an experiment of the divine Fatherhood. The true proving of God is to obey His laws; the true dependence upon God is confidence that God will lead from duty to duty, and thus from destiny to destiny. Satan had failed again. Still the forces of evil cannot give Him up. It is too evident to Satan that his realm is threatened, and will be lost, if this Man, to whom God now seems constantly saying: "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," — Matt. Hi, 17, — is not persuaded somehow to abandon the moral divineness which is His. Tempta tion after baptism, — trial after vision, — this succession of facts casts no reflection on anyone's recent Christian experience when that order of events is repeated in one's life. It is rather a tribute to- one's virtue; it is a testimony given by the undivine that the divine is with us and is in opposition perilous to the Satanic; that the ground is worth contending for. "Count it all joy, " says James, "when ye fall into divers temptations." — James i, 2. It is proof that we have first risen to some height from which it is worth while for evil to dislodge us. The third trial was the last charge in this Temptation of the Master; and it was even more subtly and carefully planned and executed than either of those preceding it. It was born of Satanic despair, and developed in the presence of the divineness of Christ. The ap peals of Satan had risen, step by step, until this last one was urged upon Christ's noblest faculties and upon His loftiest aims. Jesus had entertained the dream of universal sovereignty. His idea of Messiahship had compelled this. He was brother to all men by vir tue of His faith in universal Fatherhood, and He would deliver the world. But it was a world of men, — low-browed, proud, mistaken, ig norant, and yet divinely created men. How shall He get hold of them in such a way as to win their hearts unto Him and then lift them to the point where He can organize and equip them under His kingly authority? THE MAN OF GALILEE. 167 There is a height, physical, mental, or moral, from which the man Jesus looks out over the kingdoms of the world and sees the glory of them. Other men have climbed up a little way toward the summit and seen much; He climbed to the top of it and saw all. Somehow, without parting from His vision of the truer glory of the kingdom of God, Jesus has been led thither. Satan has his new opportunity. Just as the second trial in the Temptation was put be fore Jesus on the very ground upon which Jesus had become victorious in the first, — namely, His trust in God; so the third trial in the Temptation is put upon the ground upon which Jesus was victorious in the second; and this ground was His determination to trust the laws closest to Him and to honor them in obeying His Father. Satan always grasped the sword instantly which Jesus had used in vanquishing him. What law could be closer to a man looking toward universal dominion, than the law which everybody then accepted as the one rule of action governing crowned heads and rulers of states? "The end justifies the means," — this was one of its precepts. "Ac cept the best you can get, and what you want will come, " — this was one of its maxims: "Be of the world, in order to help the world, " — this was one of its wise conceits. It was Satan's hour to confess Jesus as Messiah, but he did that only in order to make Him Satan's kind of Messiah. He pointed out the immense realm of earthly sovereignties. He knew what set of forces held them clustered under one sky. He rose to the occasion, and he said: "Fall down and worship me, and all these things will I give Thee." — Matt, iv, 9. Satan was sure of his ground, and he promised nothing which he might not have fulfilled, when he said: "To Thee will I give all the authority and the glory of them." — Luke iv, 6. He did not overestimate his power in the world, when he added: ' ' For it hath been delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will, I give it." Jesus knew that the world was waiting for its true king. It was the hour when, only a little compromise with evil to make Him popular, only a slight homage to wrong in elegant circumstances, only a trifling obeisance to current theories, — and it would all have been accomplished and the goal reached. The dream glittered and shone. Jesus could have com manded the fanaticism of Palestine, organized about Him the dis contented dependencies of Rome, marched against the decaying 1 68 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. empire, overwhelmed the world's capital, and reigned over all. Satan had presented this, without making a misrepresentation either of the power of Jesus at that moment or of his own ability to fulfill his part of the contract. He was actually "The Prince of this world." He had compromised in the hope of meeting a compromise. Would not Jesus bend a little — as men do, worshipfully adopting baser means to gain their ends? Satan did not even ask Jesus to forsake the goal which He had before Him. He did not, in this third trial, suggest a doubt as to the divine Sonship of Jesus unto God. The only aim of Satan was to get Jesus to abandon His method. Method is more than goal. The way in which a thing is done is of more importance than the thing done. Sovereignty which may be kept permanently is always won divinely. Satanic indeed is the idea that "nothing succeeds like success." A noble failure, by way of God-like methods, is grander than a gorgeous success by methods base and low. Jesus would have disinherited Himself from God's Fatherhood and His communion, if He had bent the knee in ever so small a reverence to anything but that idea of His life which made all His work a continuing of God's work in the world. At His baptism the fact of His Sonship was announced clearly in the words from heaven: "Thou art My Beloved Son." — Mark i, 2. Jesus had just demonstrated its reality. "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," — -this was to be the word eternally descriptive of His relations to God in the work of redeeming the world. Filled again with His ideal of the true Messiah as One whose supreme loyalty was unto God His Father, He said: "Get thee hence, Satan! For it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve." — Matt, iv, 10. The long siege of evil directed against good had failed. Not an inch had been won from Jesus; He had won Himself. Satan was soon gone, and angels came and ministered unto Messiah. Satan was gone? — Yes; but only "for a season," as we are told, for the whole life of Jesus was to be a battle, and not a dream, — it was a battle for a dream. Jesus had won new victories for the Christ. But He was nearer unto Calvary. Three times now had Jesus put self out of His way, in loyalty unto His F'ather. Verily, the cross is not far off, and, on that symbol of shame, He will give Himself up entirely! CHAPTER XIX THE RETURN FROM THE WILDERNESS THE Temptation had made more clear unto Jesus the meaning of the Baptism. Power realizes itself only in strain. He returned from the desert unto Bathabara, probably thinking to stop but a little time in Judea and then to go on homeward to Galilee. It is an hour in His life when His face must bear marks of His soul's history; and the biographers of the Galilean are right in supposing that every ;ader is interested in knowing all that is dis- iverable or probably true concerning the personal appearance of Jesus at any time, especially at this time. It is best to admit that we have nothing at all to indicate how Jesus looked. Faith, fortunately, has not been robbed of her fairest realm, for what we have to help us toward a most worthy portrait of Jesus at any age is not much. The Jews them selves regarded the whole business of image-making as idolatrous. Greek art, dth its splendid achievement in statuary, 1 regarded as only an indubitable symp- i>f the disease of heathenism. To the more orthodox of the Hebrews, the accomplished marvel of Hellenic genius was but the rose of the cancer. Israel would not follow the pagan even so far as might lead to the creation of a personal mem ory in portraiture. But a picture of Jesus wrought itself in the mind of Christendom, nevertheless. So far as creating for its own con sciousness a representation of the Lord as a man of grace, dignity and 169 170 THE MAN OF GALILEE. beauty, such as Apollo, early Hebrew Christianity remembered the words of Isaiah and so wrought into its image the recollection of the sorrows of the Messiah. Then came the trials of His church and these added their gloom until His face was indeed "so marred more than any man and His form more than,the sons of men." — Isaiah Hi, 14. He appeared to the imagination of the first century of our era as the In carnate suffering God, and men yet were saying of the holy memory: "Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel and thy garment like his that treadeth in the winevat?" — Isaiah /xiii, 2. But as Christianity triumphed, Jesus rose to His throne of beauty. Gradually out of all this abasement of Christian ideality there came up a figure and face of grandeur and loveliness. The moral beauty of Jesus soon redeemed the physical image which a falsely based pietism made almost repulsive. Against the words of Justin Martyr which made the appearance of Jesus unattractive and even mean, was the utterance of Jerome: "Certainly a flame of fire and starry brightness flashed from His eye and the majesty of the Godhead shone in His face." Tertulian and Clement of Alexandria had almost equaled Origen, who described Him as "small and deformed;" but soon there came into existence a series of representations of Jesus, which were carved upon gems or limned upon fine wood, or wrought into statues; and these made His features noble and His look divine. A portrait which,- it was said, Pilate himself had required, gave a distinct tendency to the effort to reproduce the features of the Son of Man, and Eusebius, the historian, arguing from a statue seen at Ca2sarea Phillipi, helped to create in the mind of Christendom a picture to which Gregory of Nyssa and Chrysostom added graceful lines and rich colors, by their eloquent descriptions. Augustine went so far as to say: "He was beautiful in His mother's bosom, beau tiful in the arms of His parents, beautiful on the cross, and beautiful in the sepulchre." The legend that Saint Veronica, standing near the path on which Jesus made His way to Calvary, gave to Him her unwound turban-cloth, that He might wipe His face, which was covered with blood by reason of the crown of thorns on His. fore head, soon took its place in art, in the form of a likeness said to have been left upon the cloth itself. This was only one of the legends which has preserved something of the form and face of Jesus as He THE MAN OF GALILEE. 171 was conceived in the early centuries and the mediaeval time. A kind of art and an exhaustive literature has sprung up upon this topic, and out of it all there has come a figure and a countenance which have been described most interestingly in the two sketches which are likely to continue to guide the devout imagination of mankind. The first of these is by the historian Nicephorus, a Constantinopolitan monk of the fourteenth century. He says: "I shall describe the appearance of our Lord, as handed down to us from antiquity. He was very beautiful. PIis height was not less than seven spans. His hair was bright auburn, and not too thick, and was inclined to wave in soft curls. His eyebrows were black and arched, and His eyes seemed to shed from them a gentle golden light. They were very beautiful. His nose was prominent; His beard lovely but not very long. He wore His hair, on the contrary, very long, where no scis- rors had ever touched it, nor any human hand, except that of His mother when she played with it in PIis childhood. He stooped a little, but His body was well formed. His complexion was that of the ripe wheat, and His face like His mother's, rather oval than round, with only a little red in it, but through it there shone dignity, intelligence of soul, gentleness, and a calmness of spirit never dis turbed. Altogether He was very like His divine and immaculate mother. " Admitting that these pictures of Jesus are only ideal, it is to be said that their lines and colors must have come from some traditions not altogether to be neglected, and it is still significant that the por trait of Christ which has been carried in the imagination of mankind from the first and through all the middle ages, makes His body as well as His soul glorious and beautiful. The translation of the well known but probably spurious letter of Lentulus to the Roman Senate, usually given, is as follows: "There has appeared and still lives, a man of great virtue, called Jesus Christ, and, by His disciples, the Son of God. He raises the dead and heals the sick. He is a man tall in stature, noble in appearance, with a reverend countenance which at once attracts and keeps at a distance those beholding it. His hair is waving and curly; a little darker and of richer brightness where it flows down from the shoulders. It is divided in the middle, after the custom of the Nazarenes (or Nazarites). His brow is 172 THE MAN OF GALLLEE.. smooth and wondrously serene, and His features have no wrinkles, nor any blemish, while a red glow makes His cheeks beautiful. His nose and mouth are perfect. He has a full ruddy beard, the color of His hair, not long, but divided in two. His eyes are bright, and seem of different colors at different times. He is terrible in His threatening; calm in His admonitions; loving and loved, and cheerful, but with an abiding gravity. No one ever saw Him smile, but He often weeps. His hands and limbs are perfect. He is gravely elo quent, retiring and modest, the fairest of the sons of men." If some of the profoundest teach ings of Jesus came to His disciples, and still come to His church, from the moments of His silence, when our less spiritual moods ask for speech to sat isfy curiosity and feed superficial faith, and if the exact location of many of the scenes most wonderful and thrilling in His life's story is lost, in order that the truer faith, "that highest form of spiritualized imagina tion," may have its realm in which to explore the fields and ascertain the points in spiritual geography, what must Christen dom have gained from the fact that we have no authentic portrait of Jesus ? The* repre sentation said to have been made by Pilate was mentioned by Irenasus and Hyppolytus. It was placed between the portraits of a Hebrew patriarch and a pagan god in the oratory of Severus; but it cannot be considered unquestionable or a true picture of Him who, ac cording to the prophecy, was "the fairest- of the sons of men." The face of Jesus must ever be re-painted by the human soul, as it proceeds towards its destiny under His leadership. No single age could have painted Him for any other time, least of all for all time. It will exhaust genius of every kind, yet the portrait will always be sublime. Not only faith, but doubt must essay the task. Like Leonardo's study, it will never be finished. An artist LEGEND OF ST. VERONICA. FROM PAINTING BY GABRIEL MAX. THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 173 having the opinions of John Stuart Mill will make his sketch very human indeed, and yet every line of it will seem to be repeat ing the words of that English philosopher — "About the life and sayings of Jesus there is a stamp of personal originality combined with profundity of insight which .... must place the Prophet of Nazareth, even in the estimation of those who have no belief in His inspiration, in the very first rank of the men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast. When this preeminent genius is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer and martyr to that mission who ever existed upon earth, religion can not be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this man as the ideal representative and guide to humanity. " An artist of finer fancy, if even of less faith, will go with Ernest Renan to some spot where he may still see the Nazarene's lips moving with divine language, and after doing all he may to represent the Master of men, every touch of color will glow with the feeling represented in the words of that brilliant Frenchman: "He for the first time gave utterance to the idea upon which shall rest the edifice of the everlasting religion. He founded the pure worship, of no age, of no clime, which shall be that of all lofty souls to the end of time. Not only was His religion, that day, the benign religion of humanity, but it was the absolute religion; and if other planets have inhabitants endowed with reason and morality, their religion cannot be different from that which Jesus proclaimed at Jacob's well. Man has not been able to abide by this worship; we attain the ideal only for a moment. The words of Jesus were a gleam in thick night; it has taken eighteen hundred years for the eyes of humanity (what do I say! of an infinitely small portion of humanity) to learn to abide it. But the gleam shall become the full day, and, after passing through all the circles of error, humanity will return to these words, as to the immortal expression of its faith and its hopes." Perhaps some day may come in the long flight of time, in which an artist-evangelist will rise up and so portray that face, that men, looking upon it, shall say: "This is the Son of Man: This is the Son of God." We know that it must have been a haggard and yet a triumph-bearing face, which the disciples of John the Baptist beheld at this juncture in the life of Jesus, 174 THE MAN 0F GALLLEE. The Fourth gospel has survived such a controversy as has served it well. It has shown it to be the most important document we have, furnishing us, as it does, at this point, with data referring to the life and person of Jesus of Galilee, immeasurably rich in that color and lovingly exact because of those lines by which is re-created a spiritual portrait of the Master of men. Full of the Greek spirit to which attention has so often been called in these pages, this most artis tic book in the literature of Christianity is vital with the purpose of its writer, which was to prove that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. To accomplish his purpose, the author collects and even interprets briefly the luminous and impressive scenes in the life of Jesus, in which faith, nurtured by love, grew in the minds of the disciples, as they beheld the Divine Manifestation. Not only out of what John and his companions saw, but also out of what these events meant to them, is woven for all time the fine tapestry of the Fourth gos pel. It is the biography of Jesus taken from the heart of one whose love of Jesus let him into the secret of Jesus' being. John, there fore, had to begin his story of the history of Love Manifested, at a moment in the history of Love previous to the moment of the creation of the world. .It might suffice a Moses that he should begin his story of created things, by saying: "In the beginning God created." This has been called the "Book of Genesis." It has also been wisely said that John's Gospel is ' ' the new and profounder Book of Genesis, " and he, going back into the purpose of creating Love, must say: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. " It is not remarkable, therefore, that the author of this gospel should have lingered with affectionate exactitude over the events which occurred between the Temptation of Jesus and the beginning of the ministry of Jesus in Galilee. Thev are dealt with according to the insight which belongs to Love alone. He perceives the sig nificance of the events of the short stay of Jesus in Judea, and he frankly tells us that he was witness unto them, and that they prove to him that Jesus is the Son of God. No doubt John the Evange list was a disciple of John the Baptist, when the latter was baptiz ing in Bathabara beyond Jordan. The mighty testimony borne unto THE MAN OF GALILEE. '75 Jesus by John the Baptist prepared John the Evangelist for the Naz arene Rabbi and Christendom. Fisherman and lover of men as he was, the simplicity of his life and the depth and fervor of his affectionateness made it possible for him to entertain meanings flow ing from his recollections of Jesus and John the Baptist which escaped even the serious attention of others. This John, the fisher man, must have been greatly impressed with the fact that his teacher and inspirer, John the Baptist, had been mistaken for the Messiah, and that, in order to hold his own true position, the Baptist had been com pelled to give forth most significant utterances as to the true character of the real Messiah. He had seen John the Baptist anoint Jesus to the Mes siahship at a time when the Baptist himself might have assumed a cer tain Messiahship in harmony with the ideas of the people. Never had a clear-headed reformer more truly kept his feet than did the fervent orator when the crowd was under his spell. The Baptist's vision of Messiah in Jesus the Nazarene alone saved him. At that moment Jesus had bowed Himself to a rite which identified Him with a sinning race and made Him their true Head. When Jesus, the Christ, was baptized the lustral waters touched humanity. After the baptism, John the fisherman had stayed with John the Baptist, while Jesus went to the wilderness, there to estimate his rightful au thority and to find the character of the Messiahship which it was impossible for Him longer to conceal. This is the significance of the Temptation of Jesus. When He came out of the desert of the Temp tation and was seen by John the Baptist, the glory of the Messiah was so evident to the Baptist's rare power of vision that he who was the one man of his time able to see that SIN is the colossal fact against which all true Messiahship must ever set itself, the one man who saw that a Messiah could set Himself against sin only at the cost of everything THE CHRIST. FAINTING BY LEONARDO DA 176 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. human and finite, looked upon the pale and wasted figure, and redis covered the Christ. The white tunic and striped mantle worn by Jesus could not hide His divinity. His sandaled feet wearily followed the staff which helped Him along. He was more human than ever. But here was the Messiah! The Baptizer said: "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world." — JoJin i, 29. The cousin, Jesus, no longer disguised the Christ of God. John did not welcome the greatest of philosophers, though this was He. He did not sal ute the mightiest inspirer of art, poetry, and heroism, though this was the Nazarene peasant whom he then saw. He did not give a hail and laudation to the loftiest example of manhood, though that haggard man would always be remembered as such. He saw some thing more fundamentally important than any or all these in the fig ure before him, and he said: "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world." He had seen the Messiah of a sinning race. Since He had gone away from John the Baptist, Jesus, who was probably known as Rabbi Jehoshua, had passed through an experi ence of soul; and coming up out of all the stress and peril of the Temptation, His heart heard God speaking again: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Fatherhood — Sonship, — these Jesus had realized divinely. He had not distrusted His Father in the Temptation. He had lived in and upon His Father's Fatherhood through His own perfect Sonship in the whole trial. He knew Him self to be the Christ of God, as never before. The glory of His self- discovery transfigured Him, even to John the Baptist; and for a moment, at least, the Baptist understood Jesus in His wider rela tions as the Savior of His race. John the Baptist's words were wondrously deep and inclusive. They made the whole past vocal. John the fisherman, with others standing by, doubtless remembered the great words of Isaiah: "He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He open- eth not His mouth." And John the Baptist proceeded to say: "This is He of whom I said, After me cometh a man who is pre ferred before me; for He was before me. And I knew Him not, but that He should be made manifest to Israel, therefore I am THE MAN OF GALILEE come baptizing with water. And John bare record, saying: I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon Him." — John i, 30-32. So mighty was this event as an argument to John the fisher man, that his gospel adds this: "And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God." — John 1, 34. Jesus had thrown His divine spell over a man who should be called "The Beloved." His affection alone could behold and relate the minute occurrences of divine friendship. What occurred that night as the disciples of John the Baptist gathered around their mas ter, with this new and immortal light falling in upon their twilight and mortality, we do not know. We cannot tell if anv of them dar ingly took up the phrase, ' ' The Lamb of God, " and bore it back beyond the Temple sacrifices to the memory of the Paschal Lamb, or of the Lamb of the morn ing or evening sacrifice, or that they saw the new significance of these memorials which had vivi fied faith for many centuries. That large phrase, "the sin of the ;o rid," must have jostled against their smaller conceptions of what Messiah was expected to do, as ONE OF THE DiSCIPLES WHOM JESUS LOVED. incoming of a great ocean 1, accustomed to touch at the ports of the planet, makes the water unsafe for the little craft which know aut one quiet harbor. This truly was a larger idea than those to which they were accustomed. But thev caught a vision of the world and its sins, in the light of Jesus. pilgrims entering bethlehem. CHAPTER XX CALLING THE FIRST DISCIPLES THE next day came, and the Baptizer and two of his disciples saw the same turbaned figure walking by. The Baptist had not changed his opinions. His conviction had carried him to a position from which he could not retreat. Though it concluded his career as the leader of those whom he loved the most, the reverence and faith of the Baptist spoke again. He said: "Behold the Lamb of Then commenced the glad movement : human feet which for nineteen hun dred years have pressed toward Jesus. Christendom had begun her long pro cession. Only two were in sight as yet, but they were leading the ages- They were the two disciples who had just heard John the Baptist speak. Yet they looked not toward the Bap tist. A turn in the roadway of time was made. The chieftaincy of moral power had departed from the eloquent son of Zacharias. ' 'They followed Jesus. " Along through the glad springtime i}- moved toward the One from whose lips they had not as yet heard a word. Out of the eloquence of John the Baptist they were now going into the more quiet and tender conversations, the sublimer and profounder discourse, — they were going even into the divine silences of the Christ. These two men were to be the first of that inner circle who should be familiarized with the doctrine and methods of the kingdom, by being led and taught by its King. If, at 179 'FOLLOW ME.' 180 THE MAN OF GALILEE. that moment, over His tunic, Jesus wore the talith, white, with brown stripes, with its tassels of white and blue hanging at its four corners, these two men looked upon it only to feel that He who wore it was indeed a Rabbi leading them on through the mysteries of the Law to the mysteries of Love. It was already a personal attachment, and this is the core of Christian experience. They were coming closer to Him. He turned Himself about and they heard His first words: "What do you seek?" It was so human and so gentle, it had such invita tions and spiritual hospitality within it, that they ventured to say: "Master, where do you live?" — John i, 38. At last human hearts had been so mastered by Love that they asked not: "Where are you going?" but ' ' Where are you staying?" The answer of Jesus to these disciples has within it the very spirit of Christianity as it abides or moves in our world, to answer to the homelessness and to the inquiring honesty of the human soul. Jesus said: "Come and see." — John i, 39. He had no palace but that of His soul, for them. It is probable that Jesus had only a booth whose sides had been made strong by the interweaving of small branches of terebinth; but the significance of the place was in the Man who dwelt there, whose sincerity and brotherliness had said to them: "Come and "see." Andrew was but a fisherman who earned his living with his net, going out day by day from Bethsaida, to fish in the Lake of Gali lee, yet he was "the first Christian," in a peculiar sense. John, whose gosj^el modestly makes infrequent mention of the name, was of the same occupation, and both had passed into the new day by having been faithful to the light of the old. They had very little theology; they knew almost nothing of the things which the church had been insisting upon; they did not know much about the causes of their wonder and the mysterious charm which led them on. They had enough dogma to make them good disciples. None have suc ceeded better in following Jesus. This requires only a desire to be good and a willingness to be made good by the Goodness which our best light points out unto us. Their best light had been John the Baptist; their best light now was Jesus. This method, which seems to be the easiest, is the most difficult. It demands a true heart. Jesus' question: "What seek ye?" brought these two men at once to make distinct and thorough their purpose. The chaff was blown THE MAN OP GALILEE. 181 from the wheat on the threshing-floor, as John the Baptist promised. The answer of Jesus: "Come and see," likewise winnowed out all that intellectual curiousness which usually declines to take a step in the direction of the real Christ. It also made distinct the fact that Christ relies upon friendship as the only revealer of soul to soul. It is about four in the afternoon of the Sabbath when we find ourselves with them in the booth. They are truly at home with Jesus, beneath the striped cloth which covered the booth's top, as it stood amongst many others by the side of the river Jordan. The hours went by on wings of deep spiritual joy, and it was soon grow ing late. They had forgotten themselves as their minds opened to the touch of His divine friendliness, and were warmly recejotive of the seeds of revelation which He dropped into their souls, — seeds that would reveal the qualities of the soil in the course of their self- revelation. The night-watches came, and they were still there, kindling and burning with the radiance of Jesus. Yet it seemed only human friendship, — so divine was Jesus. Problems were solving themselves in that new daytime of the soul. When the night hours were gone, this Son of God had so communicated unto them the senti ment of brotherhood by His faithfulness to the divine Fatherhood, that Andrew was aflame with it. In its light, he saw, away yonder, his brother Simon. There was only one thing to be done. He must go and tell Simon the story. Nothing but the one Love, with which Andrew had fallen in love, could have invented this plain account of what then occurred. It must occur in every soul truly responsive to the brotherliness of our Elder Brother, whose Sonship reveals the Divine Fatherhood. "He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ. And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, He said, Thou art Simon the Son of Jona; that shalt be called Cephas, which is, by interpretation, a stone. " — John i, 41, 42. It is a simple recital of facts. But the whole of the gospel- method is here. Jesus never failed to value the primitive affections at their highest. He was the Head of humanity, — the Son of Man. His relationship to humanity, as both Son and Brother, was intrin sic. To Him, however, human brotherhood was valuable because it 182 THE MAN OF GALILEE. J0% ^SSfe^Bj RUINS OF BETHSAIDA. was a channel which might be enlarged into divine brotherhood, and through it the tides of God's Fatherhood might flow. He treated His brother's brotherhood and His mother's motherhood, just as He treated the Law which He annulled, by fulfilling it into Love. Later on He was to say to John, when he would be standing at the foot of His cross: "Behold thy mother!" and He was to say to His mother, near by: "Behold thy son!" Those who do the will of His Father, and those only, ac cording to Jesus, are His broth ers. This power in Jesus to com plete earthly brotherhoods by filling them full of heavenly Love, until they are expanded into celestial brotherhoods, was and is as measureless as His infinity. He knew the Fatherhood of God so deeply that He saw it would rend many merely human brotherhoods apart. It would also constitute many essential and eternal brotherhoods. The only way by which human brotherhood can be saved is to make it divine, — let the brothers be brothers in God the Father, through Christ, the Elder Brother, and nothing can separate them! Andrew doubtless loved his brother as one who had partaken with him in the blessing of the same fatherhood and motherhood of earth, but all uncon sciously, as he now started out to bring Simon to Jesus and present him as his brother, he was feeling a kinship with Simon under God's Fatherhood which had sprung up in the presence of God's Perfect Son, which he did not try to name. This feeling is the motive power of all missionary Christianity. It communicates itself to souls and makes Christianity a universal patriotism under a universal Pater. The universe is all fatherland. The Bethsaida in which these men were born brothers was commonplace enough. The word means "a house of fish," and this THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 183 ancient and inelegant designation would pass through our modern English-speaking west, perhaps, as "Fishtown." It is the symbol of that environment in which most brotherhoods are born and maintain themselves. Andrew was the first man who, under Christian auspices, plied another man's heart and soul with the aims and influences to which human brotherhood is capable of responding. We may well pause here and obtain a correct view of what Jesus approved as the method of propagating His kingdom. It has not been abrogated, since the day of Andrew and John. These men were not afraid to dwell with truth, — "and they abode with Him that day." — John i, 39. They came away as all men do, with a masterful reverence and love for that kind of mys terious revelation which invites the human soul to its own home, which says to all honest and earnest souls: "Come and see." "Behold the Lamb of God," — with that impressive announce ment from the Baptist fresh in memory, these two men had been listening to Jesus at home. They did not understand it. Should they lose Jesus entirely because this idea of Him was too great for them to get hold of? No. They can get enough of truth concern ing Him to guarantee their coming at some time to the rest; they can get enough of Him to make them feel for Simon, that they may draw him up within the general radiance. We must be con tent to take hold of that side of divine reality which our minds may handle. Andrew told Simon, not ' ' We have found the Lamb of God," but "We have found the Messiah." Andrew was a soul- winner, not a great, penetrative theologian. He was narrow, and a man's narrowness often makes him intense. Andrew was a Jew; he must see the Jewish Messiah in his "Lamb of God." Jesus gave to Andrew, first of all, a sense that he himself was a brother of Simon, and, secondly, a consciousness of the fact that Simon was a brother of him. These constitute part of the nerve of missions. Here was a brother to look; and there was a brother to look for. Simon was just as real to Andrew, as Andrew was to himself. Christ gives the soul so good a gift, that it says: "My brother must have it." Christ intensifies the sense of a brother's value so much the soul says: "Christ must have my brother. " Priceless was Simon's worth. Clearly did Andrew see his untold value now. Andrew had eyes that must find him. i84 THE MAN OP GALLLEE. SEA OF GALILEE— TIBERIAS. There was one thing, and one thing only, which Andrew might say: "We have found the Messiah." — John i, 41. How much more grandly one brother man can talk to another man than that in heaven, we do not know; but one thing is sure, there never was loftier saying on earth than that: "We have found the Messiah." It requires only the genius of true faith to say it. The whole of Christianity is fact. Jesus Himself had made Andrew factual rather than speculative, when He said to him, just the day before, at the very moment when he began to ask questions: "Come and see." This style of Andrew is the soul- winner's style. There is truth in Buffon's fine saying: "The style is the man." Andrew was a plain, strong, fact-loving man, and that gave him plainness and strength in handling this fact in the presence of Simon. The very secret of speaking to men about Jesus is, first, like Andrew, to be a plain man; secondly, like Andrew also, deal in plain statement of facts. But this greatest Fact gave Andrew a great style. John, the Baptizer, had made Simon impatient of the refinements of theory, even if he had not already surrendered the whole realm of unreality to the Pharisees, doctors, and skeptical scribes. Andrew says: "We have found the Messiah." Here is a fact, and we can not find that Simon stopped to discuss the matter at all. He would THE MAN OP GALILEE. 185 probably have worsted Andrew in an argument. But Andrew had the advantage in that he alone had the fact. And he brought Simon to the Fact, — the Personal Jesus. Andrew, Simon, Jesus, — there were three persons and no abstractions. It is the Christ in our Chris tianity with which our own personal Christianity and personal help fulness to others must begin and end. After the same manner, accordant, however, with their characters, at this time, John the fisherman brought his brother James unto Jesus. Simon is now in the presence of the Messiah. It is our first sight of the great-hearted, impulsive, high-temjoered man. It was enough for the glory of any man to have brought to the Divine Artist so much of grand material as stood before the Masterful One, when He saw this man Simon. A Methodist exhorter would bring Spurgeon; as a simjile gospeller of the fifteenth century would bring Savonarola. The procession started with Andrew bringing Simon. Usefulness is genius. Jesus at once saw the place in history for the man whom He alone could make out of this fisherman, Simon. A name in the Orient of that day was of the greatest significance. No Hebrew would have thought of changing his name, unless his work or life or character were changed. Abram and Jacob had received new names; and the transformation of the name Jacob to Israel had marked a revolution in a soul and gave a designation to a race. The " Sup- planter" met God at such a point and in such a way that he him self was changed into a "Prince of God." Was there to be a transformation of this eager and fickle child of feeling and enthu siasm, this Simon, — the man so liable to a gust of emotion or to a fit of unyielding stubbornness? Jesus looked upon him then as He was to look upon him often thereafter, until He penetrated the secrets of his nature, and said: "Thou art Simon, son of Jonas: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is, by interpretation, "a stone." — John i, 42. The Aramaic word was Cephas; its Greek form was Peter. Jesus would have all understand Him now. "Son of Jonas," He said. Jesus was speaking as the Son of the Universal Father unto such a one as would by and by call Him "the Son of God." — John i, 34. But "Son of Jonas" was the clear and accurate description of Simon now. It took an inventory of what Jesus had to deal with. "Son of Jonas," — 1 86 THE MAN OP GALILEE. that was all that anyone else might have seen in him. But a proc ess of transformation had already begun. Simon must be made to realize that he is not only a son of Jonas, but also a son of God. The Sonship of Jesus must get that into him through brotherhood, and only by taking him as a chemist takes a cloudy solution, and lowering into Simon a manifested Divineness, firm and true, so that all this vague and undeterminate material for a man may crystallize around it and into it, can Jesus reorganize him. This He will do. He will precipitate the Peter out of the Simon, by revealing Himself in him and to him as the Son of God. Thus shall He awaken Simon's sonshiji. Simon will be the "rock-man," Peter. So Jesus commenced to write another spiritual autobiography in this human soul. CHAPTER XXI PHILIP AND NATHANAEL THE morrow came, and another Christian was added to the list which contained the names of Andrew, John, James, and Simon. This new name was Philip of Bethsaida. His home-town lay on the roadway which Jesus was traveling on His way to Galilee. Philip was doubtless a friend and companion of Andrew and Simon, and his readiness to respond to Jesus and to obey Him indicates that he was as prepared as his fellow-townsmen to enter into discipleship. His name indicates that he was a Greek, and this view of his na tionality is strengthened by the fact that, some time later, when the Greeks would see Jesus, they make the request of Philip. It does not seem that Jesus, from the first, mistook the particular experience through which any one of these men was to pass, as He was to develop into His true self. The silence of Jesus with reference to Philip will prove almost as instructive as His significant word to Simon: "Hereafter thou shalt win the name Peter." — Matt. xvi, 1 8. As Andrew and Simon had doubtless found Philip, so Philip went to his acquaintance Nathanael and began to tell the gospel story so far as he understood it. Nathanael was no ordinary con quest. At that moment in the history of newly-born Christendom, the new religion was proving its manifold power by mastering vari ously constituted and diversely disciplined men. Jesus had gone but a little distance toward Galilee, when Philip obeyed Him, responding to the command: "Follow me." — John i, 43. It takes such a man as Philip, who was calm, prone to value facts, intellectually straight forward, and yet filled with the true spirit of inquiry, a serious- minded student of the Scriptures and ever anxious to match his expectations with realities, to so handle his freshly inspired and 187 1 88 THE MAN OF GALILEE. solicitous powers of soul as to win a Nathanael. A little later we will see enough of Philip to find in him a certain mental reliableness which the Christianity of all ages employs in enlarging and enrich ing Christendom. Nathanael was devoted, pure-hearted, meditative, and spiritually expectant. He had gone out from the haunts and discussions of his fellow-Hebrews to find an hour of devotion under the foliage of one of the larger fig-trees which had often given retirement to worshipers of God. He had heard of the message of John the Baptist if he had not heard him; and he was praying for his country. In his solitude, this devout Jew had probably gone back, in his thought, to the bright hour in Hebrew history when Jacob who had failed to find God whom he had not seen because he had been loveless unto his brother whom he had seen, found himself under the open heavens at Luz, which he renamed Bethel, or when he wrestled in prayer and was transformed so thoroughly that, since Jacob's day, every Hebrew had borne the name of Israel, and it has been something to be an Israelite. Once more, as Nathanael mused beneath the concealing and green leaves, his forefather Jacob, the outcast and ' ' supplanter, " a fugitive and yet a Jew, was beholding the ladder set up on earth and reaching up to heaven. Once again angels ascended and descended upon it; and, at length, going forward with the development of Jacob's thought of the true God, who always was the Universal Father, Nathanael remembered the episode in Jacob's life at the ford Jabbok, where, wrestling with a "man," he saw God "face to face." — Genesis xxii, 30. There the crafty and lawless one was so changed in spirit and life that he became law-abiding and was re-named: ' 'Israel, a prince of God." Upon the destiny of the Israel — the nation named after Israel who was once Jacob — Nathanael was doubtless pondering with that patriotic seriousness which the preaching of the Baptist had increased. Jesus had discerned his thoughts. Just as Andrew had fulfilled and glorified the function of broth erhood by hastening to Simon with the good news, so, now, did Philip complete and irradiate the office of friendship by finding Nathanael. Everything — brotherhood and friendship — was being filled full, or, as we prefer to say, "fulfilled" with the divine. Surely, Jesus THE MAN OF GALILEE. i8y "came not to destroy, but to fulfill." — Mall, v, 17. Philip said to him: "We have found Him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." — John i, 45. Every true friendship brings its message, presenting that side JACOB'S LADDER. of it which is next to the intellectual and spiritual life of his friend. Only on that side has it vital points for him. This enables him to relate it to his own life. Nathanael, who afterwards, probably, was known by the desig nating Bartholomew, — Bar-tolmai, son of Tolmai, or Ptolemy, — was a dweller at Cana of Galilee; and while he was well acquainted with Philip, he evidently knew nothing of Jesus. Tradition has pointed out Nathanael as a master of the prophetic literature of the Jews, ujo THE MAN OF GALLLEE. and a man of intellectual capacity as well as of social and ecclesias tical prominence. He was apparently above the other disciples in cjuick and cultivated intellect. Philip had stated his case to the patriotic student and thinker, Nathanael, but, in his simplicity and earnestness, he had presented a contrast between the sublimity of the position of Jesus as the Messiah and the lowliness of His earthly environment. Upon that contrast the mind of Nathanael fastened itself at once. ' 'Of Whom Moses in the law did write, " and ' ' Naz areth," — the incongruity of these two expressions startled the medi tative and orthodox Nathanael, as he sat listening to Philip, who had broken in upon his thoughtful devotion under the fig-tree. The anti-climax was enough to have curled the lip of even the most quiet and open-minded Jew; and, remembering that the learned Judaism expected no prophet in Galilee, and thinking of the obscurity espe cially of Nazareth in Galilee and perhaps of some ill-repute it had gained, Nathanael inquired: "Can anything good come out of Naz areth? " — John i, 46. There was, and there is, but one answer to make to every such question. The genius cf history makes it, in asking our homage to many a great soul. Philip had learned how to make that answer from the other disciples who had told him the story of their expe rience with Jesus. So Philip said to his friend the old and great words: "Come and see." Never was friendship more true and large-minded. It is again a person coming to a person and telling him of a Person. Fact meets facts. The sentence is short, but it is filled with every ministry of friendship, — "Come and see." Philip has no fear that his Fact will not be sufficient for his friend. He had no question that his friend's spiritual earnestness will not meet the Fact to his soul's joy. Truth and thought are meant to satisfy each other. If the world is ever won to Christianity, it will be won by the power of Philip's Fact; if it is lost, it will be because men have mystified one another in arguing about that Fact, instead of bringing men to Him. As Nathanael came near unto Jesus, the Christ saw into his very soul, and He said: "Behold an Israelite in truth in whom there is no guile." — John i, 47. This use of the term "Israelite" showed Nathanael that Jesus had somehow looked into his thoughts. "An Israelite!" The condition of Nathanael's spirit THE MAN OF GALILEE. 101 warranted Jesus in giving him this large vision of His divineness. Nathanael, the student of the Rabbis, had just come to a point in thinking under the fig-tree when revelation was not a blinding appear ance to his mind. "Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch, A fancy from a flower-bell, someone's death, A chorus-ending from Euripides, — And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears As old and new at once as nature's self, To rap and knock and enter in our soul, Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring, Round the ancient idol, on his base again, — The grand Perhaps." — Such a moment was this; but he heard no Greek song; there was no sunset or death that might touch him adequately; he was not under the spell of "the grand Perhaps." He was under the spell of the Living Christ who stood before him, a commanding reality; the new life had come to him and to the world, and it was sun-rise. All his intellectual and spiritual greatness was summoned. Remembering again how Jacob, "the Supplanter," was changed so he could be called "Israel," "prince of God," he asked: "How knowest thou me?" Jesus answered: "Before Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee." — John i, 48. Jesus was recalling a little history in an earlier incident of which He had recognized a true disciple of Israel, and, therefore, the possibility of a true disciple of Himself, in this meditative man under the tree. Then Nathanael, student of the Old Testament and lover of his nation, probably remem bering the second Psalm in which the two great ideas are related, answered Him: "Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel." — John i, 49. It was a great confession. "Just when we are safest," because we have been true to the best we have known, do we feel the divinity of that which has known us, before any Philip called us. The soul of Nathanael was familiar ground to God. It was a great faith, and yet Jesus, who had already begun to get Peter out of Simon, must now get at the hidden spiritual man in Nathanael. Like two musical instruments which respond, string to string, Jesus and Nathanael have been in unison • with the idea of 1 92 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. "Israel," and with the felt nearness of God Nathanael had told it all, emphasizing both thoughts in his swift reply to Jesus. "Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel." — John i, 49. But this is not enough. Nathanael is too valuable a nature to fail of his highest possibility, by failing of the deeper training of a more funda mental faith. Jesus at least must save him from any shallow belief and deliver him from merely good reasons for believing in Him by indicating the best reasons for his believing; and Jesus said unto him: "Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig-tree, believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things than these." Jesus would not permit Nathanael's life to turn on the pivot of a faith less deeply grounded than that which would grow up out of more significant facts. He was now standing in the presence of a human soul, and no one ever reverenced the human soul as did Jesus. He saw Nathanael's nature instinct with the possibilities of a Son of God. The realiza tion of the divine Fatherhood upon the part of Jesus, which had made Him a perfect Son and created the brotherhood of men, served to reveal Nathanael as His brother-man endowed divinely. Jesus saw all men in this light; and this made Him the Messiah of humanity. Nathanael had possibilities of belief — which statement means that he had possibilities of sj^iritual manhood within him — that Nathanael had never discovered as he prayed and thought in the seclusion furnished by the thick foliage of the fig-tree. To get at these, his Master would still use that thought of facob and Israel, and the old story of Jacob's transformation unto Israel. Nathanael had just said: '' Thou art the King of Israel." Jesus fixed the attention of all of them and said: "Verily, verily," — and these words always command the attention to something of first importance, when Jesus uses them, — "I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see heaven standing open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." — Joint i, 51. The opening of heaven, so that it ever shall be opened always, the discovery to men of the nearness and apj^roachableness of the ideal and the true and the divine, — this was the work which the Messiah of man would do. He would prove, in Himself and in His life, that familiar relationships between what men call the highest and the lowest are possible to the humanity whose Head He was. Not only the episode in the life of Jacob, when he was first called Israel, came THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 193 to mind, but all the spiritual training of Jacob leading to that change was remembered. At Peniel Jacob had met God as man in wrestling prayer. At Bethel the heaven had been opened otherwise. Both of these were prophecies of the Israel which was to be. The seen and unseen were to be united. A man in whom even- Jacob could find God would tell every Jacob his true name. The ladder would not be a Jacob's ladder of light-beams, but a human reality, full of the Divine. For this He had come to live, and, if need be, to die. He knew that no Nathanael's faith is all that it ought to be, or may be, until it is born out of Nathanael's vision of the possibilities of man as the reconciler of the finite and the infinite by man's being filled with God Himself. Nathanael's earlier faith was good, but Jesus would never j^rmit men to lose the best faith by being satisfied with a merely good faith. After this same manner, Jesus would estimate the value of all His own wonderful works. He disliked a religion too largely dependent upon signs. In a superstitious age, under some dexterous dealer in prodigies, magic might some day be mistaken for miracle, even by Nathanael. Jesus would Himself perform many miracles, but only so many as the weakness and ignorance of men made it necessary for Him to perform, and these wonders He would do, in order that He might get them beyond requiring miracles to prove Him the Messiah. He had come, the Invisible King, to found a Kingdom of the Invisible. He would always be appealing to them to see the spiritual behind the physical, and at length to live by the faith which accepted Him, not "for the work's sake" alone. So true was Jesus to the finest possibilities of His brother- man, as they were revealed to Himself and in Himself Who never failed to draw upon the Fatherhood of God for His own Sonship. He was to reveal God, through man, showing how divine is Divinity by demonstrating how far up it may lift humanity. He did not adopt Nathanael's phrase: "Thou art the Son of God." — John i, 49. He called Himself on this remarkably decisive occasion "The Son of Man." This was the phrase concerning Himself He was to use most often and most significantly throughout all His life. It occurs more than seventy times in the accounts of His career. XTathanael had said: "Thou art the Son of God. Thou art the King of Israel." Jesus' answer was a reply to both ideas in Nathanael's utterance. Remem- 194 THE JT4N OF GALLLEE. bering Jacob's dream at Bethel and his experience as he saw angels ascending and descending on a ladder of light, and remembering that at Peniel a "man" wrestled with Jacob until he saw God, He said: "Thou shalt see heaven standing open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Alan. He knew that human eyes can see Divinity only in humanity. He had endured the Temptation as a human being. The great prophecy of Israel, uttered by poet, reformer and saint, was in His thought; and the word of Daniel, which every Israelite knew, glowed upon His lips with a new radiance: "I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him." "A man" was even now wrestling with Jacob, and the Israel who should come forth out of Jacob would see God "face to face" in the man. Is it not the next thing, in tne course of the training of these disciples, that there shall occur a manifestation of the glory of Jesus as the Son of Maul May they not soon behold Him partaking in humanity's common life, and meeting humanity's common problems, with His brethren? So, will He not lift these simple-minded and easily bewildered men, with the earth still beneath their feet, a little nearer to the permanently opened heavens? There is to be a marriage at Cana in Galilee. The mother of Jesus is going, and He and His disciples will go also. Let us go with them, for we may see Him there as the Son of humanity. CANA OF GALILEE CHAPTER XXII THE WEDDING AT CANA IN GALILEE IN the early evening, when the fading mystery of Tuesday was passing into the fresher wonder of Wednesday, — for the day of the Hebrew began on what we would call the evening of the previous day, — there was a happy wedding company gathered in one of the more comfortable and well-furnished houses of Cana in Galilee. There was need for the evangelist to distinguish this place from the Cana of Judea, and so we have the johrase, "Cana in Galilee." It was the gladsome time of spring. Everywhere the earth was wearing bridal garments. The blithe, clear air was full of the songs of birds which were making love to each other in the hedges. Count less forces of production were stirring beneath the all-pervading sun light. Blossoming and radiant nature was repeating the old love story of throbbing seed and opening flower, of urgent sap and com ing fruit. The betrothal and marriage in the world outside the gar landed wall which hid the decorated chamber of the bride of Cana, were only symbolic of what was meant by the crown of flowers upon the head of the bridegroom and the sweet fragrance which rose like incense from the bride's flowing hair. In the joy of his espousal, the timid and intense happiness of the bride, were love's mystery and 1QS 196 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. charm, fadeless, yet as new as that spring. Like the morning mist which concealed the beauty of the earth and hid the girdle about her glory, until the resistless sun unclasped it, was the long white veil, significant of betrothal, which covered the lovely innocence of the bride. Meantime, Cana, which is still "the reedy place," was conscious that something more beautiful and significant than any epi sode in nature was going on. To-day the hunter searches through its desolation, hoping to be rewarded with the hide of a leoj^ard, or the tusks of a wild boar. Perhaps on the very spot where this some what prominent family had its home the jackal starts at his shadow in the moonlight, or a fox digs his hole. But then the town echoed with wedding music. Travelers who are able to persuade themselves that they have found the exact locality, easily reproduce the idyll of Cana's wed ding-feast. Again such a joy as filled the heart of the Orient on its gladdest occasion follows the bridegroom and his groomsmen to the home of the bride. The betrothed couple have fasted for a day, and marriage is indeed a sacrament with them. Their sins have been forgiven, and they are ready to offer and accept each other in all purity of heart and life. The veiled bride has been waiting for the bridegroom. She is girdled, veiled, and wreathed with myrtle, and she wears the family jewels, or those generously loaned for the occa sion. Standing near the presents which her betrothed has just sent unto her, she welcomes the bridegroom. He has already received from her the long white garment which he is to wear on two of the great days of Israel; and on these occasions he shall appear with her similarly clad, for they are to be man and wife, and these are to be feast-days. He has been anointed and decked with gems such as it is possible for him to obtain; and now the parable in nature, where ten thousand thrilling forces are stirring the planet into life, is to be realized in their love. Flutes are pouring forth their melody on the soft air; deep-voiced drums are shaking the house with their hoarse intonations; the streets are full of happy and talkative neighbors, and the bridesmaids are ready to dance and sing, as the torches now guide the bride and bridegroom from her father's house to the house of his father, where they are to be married. The twilight has deep ened into night, and under the lamps the merry company behold a THE MAN OF GALILEE. 197 feast provided, which is the bridegroom's gift to the occasion, and which, now that they are married, is only the appropriate beginning of a delightsome week of rejoicing. It was in the atmosphere of this entirely human and festive event that Jesus, who had been baptized and heralded by John the Baptist, showed that He was something other than the follower of John the Baptizer. He would indeed take up the cry of Israel's heart and conscience, and, like the Baptist, He would soon be preaching repentance. But here, in the midst of this social and turbulently joy ful scene, He would prove himself no ascetic, austere of mien and secluded from men, but rather a man of men, The Man of Men, even the "Son of Plumanity, " as He had called Himself. One reformer may say: "I will get myself out of the world, to save my self and to save the world by attract ing itself unto me." This reformer would say: " I will save the world and be a Son of God by being a Son of an, finding My way into the very heart of the world, whatever becomes of Myself." Thus only is Divinity safe. And this was His method of training the eager disciples who had followed Him even to this wedding. This was His view of the joroblem of life and its solution as He stood there in the court among the wedding guests, or moved about from rug to rug in the dining- I room, or reclined upon a couch and partook of the wine and pome granates. His own life was being lived so as to manifest God in the world. It was Divinity entering still THE JAR IN WHICH.THE WATER WAS TURNED mQre deeply mto hUmanity. The 198 THE MAN OF GALILEE. gospel was not retreating from the problem of the world ; it was entering into it, illumining it, solving it. His great phrases, "The Kingdom of God," and "The Kingdom of heaven," were being domesticated and illustrated. "The Kingdom of heaven" was to be the kingdom of earth; "The Kingdom of God" was to be the kingdom of man. In a human habitation on that hillside, beneath which lay the orchards and vineyards which men had toiled in, Jesus was more conscious than ever of the Fatherhood of His Father in heaven, of His own eternal Sonship, and of the universal Brotherhood of men. He was now about to show how essential were these relationships, and how the ordinary ties of life will be broken with apparent rude ness, if human beings do not enter into them divinely. The wine had run out, and it seemed that the marriage-party was to experience a painful failure of Eastern hospitality. The mother of Jesus had a way out of the difficulty and perhajos saw an oppor tunity for her Child. She had doubtless learned by this time that her Son possessed power of an extraordinary nature. She knew of the approval John the Baj^tist had given unto Him, and her mother- heart j^ondered yet over the fact that the spirit had descended upon Him and Heaven had commended Him; but she had not yet under stood that the words: "Thou art My beloved Son," emphasized the fact that Jesus' intrinsic relationship was with God, rather than with Joseph and Mary. Her love also urged her to Him, at the instant when she realized that He and His disciples might have proved to be six persons too many to be entertained at the long festivity. She crept up to Him and told Him of the state of things. He did not need a hint of the scandal which was sure to come to the bridegroom and his family, because the very thing which symbolized their rejoicing had failed. To avoid this disgrace, Mary had now called upon Him whose entrance into the world had been heralded by an angelic presence and celebrated by an angelic anthem. A great statement is that of Luke, when he says of Jesus after the Temptation: "He returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee." Would "the power of the Spirit" now be sufficient for the Son of Man? This "power of the Spirit" Jesus had obtained, not only "in those stressful hours of trial and triumph in the desert, but also in these later hours when Pie discovered, first of all, Himself, then An- THE MAN OF GALILEE. 199 drew and John and James and Simon and Philip and Nathanael, in His brief visit to the region of PIis baptism. Jesus had then known Himself to be the Son of PIis Father, God, and He had realized that the only essential relationship which may exist between human beings is that which is in God as the Father of all. Pie was not to lose this truth, even now, in the presence of His mother. No one can so intensify the meaning of human belong- ings as can a mother. Recent experiences, however, had made the truth of His divine relationship more clear and vital unto Him than it was, even when He spoke to His father and mother in the Temple as a twelve-year- old boy, and said: "Wist ye not that I must be about My ' Father's business?" He now ;, turned from the special temp tation He had resisted in the desert, which was to employ His miraculous energies without compelling them to work in sympathy with the idea of the Fatherhood of God and of His own Sonship unto God. He said: "Woman, what is there between you and me? My realm of life is not yours. Mine hour is not yet come." This is not the sharp and unsympathetic speech of a son careless of a mother's feelings. He was only saying that her thoughts were not His; at that moment He was respectful and kind. He was also true to God, His Father, and there is not the unkindliness in His words which our translation would suggest: "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" He knew He possessed the power but He would not permit it to betray or deprave Him. He had trusted God's Fatherhood for a Father's power to save Him, without His calling upon what we call the supernatural, in the Tempta tion in the desert; and God might trust His Sonship now to honor Him. If this were the time to use extraordinary powers, His Father- God must somehow tell Him. Jesus would be true to His heavenly parentage, before He can meet the request of His earthly parentage. If His earthly parentage break meanwhile, under the strain, it is be- NATIVE HOUSE IN CANA OF GALILEE. 200 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. cause He has fulfilled the less with the larger, the human with the divine. Mary had already known that there had occurred a change in her Son. The famished face which had come back from the desert shone with a divine seriousness. Now she had intruded upon the fact that He must do what He had to do humanly, only because of divine reasons, and by the use of divine powers. In everything, He must simply obey His Father in heaven. If this was satisfactory to Mary, well and good; if not, He could not forbear or urge. It was another awful moment, of strain in the education of Mary. Jesus was nearer to the cross, and Mary was nearer to the moment when she would stand, unhelpful and helpless, at the foot of the cross. The second remark of Jesus: "Mine hour has not yet come," had the same tenderness and majesty which He put into the word "Woman." He saw that His mother was trying to get Him to give a sign of the power which she had increasingly seen and felt for thirty years. She thought that it was her Son's opportunity. Mary had doubtless suffered from the misapprehension of her neighbors, and had no doubt been pitied because she was the mother of this gentle enthusiast. Now was the moment, she thought, for the signal of His Christly presence and dominion. But she had anticipated God; and Jesus could obey His Father only. Soon, however, God also spoke to His heart. Jesus heard within Himself the Fatherhood of God commanding His own Sonship, and it made His humanity divine. He would now obey God. Men must now obey Him; and His mother said unto the mystified servants: "What soever He saith unto you, do it." The mother's over-running affection could now flow into divine channels. He who obeys God, the Uni versal Father, will never disobey the universal humanity, though some dear Mary may be bewildered for a time. She was clear only on one thing and that was this — "Whatever He tells you to do, do it." Mary had experienced the truth which all Christendom comes to know, that the way to understand Jesus Christ is to simply obey Him. Many unrecorded and mysterious days with Jesus had brought her to this conviction. This method of clearing up mysteries of Jesus which proceeds by always obeying Him, is safe, because of the infi- niteness of Christ's resources and wisdom. None but the eternal THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 201 Christ demands, or has the right to demand, such a trust upon the part of men. 1 hrougli this obedience we pass into the obedience of God, and thus only do we understand God. This is the meaning of the phrase in our prayer, — "Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. " The six great stone ves sels which stood in the ban- i queting chamber had little in them now but the green leaves which it P customary to put in water- jars, that the water may be kept cool notwithstand ing the intense Oriental heat. They had served their purpose of purifi cation. Out of them the guests had taken AN 0LD F0UN™N. environs of cana. enough to wash their feet, on entering, and their faces, before partaking of the feast prepared, and vessels had been washed in water drawn from them. ' ' Fill the water-pots with water, " said Jesus, ' 'and they were filled to the brim." It was all symbolic of a gospel which, re vealing the fitness of God, generously fills the whole of life, and occupies every portion of human nature with its inspirations. "And He saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the chief man of the feast." His divinity had not robbed Plim of the entire humanity which expresses itself in perfect courtesy. Meantime the whole story of the influence of Jesus in this world of need and commonplaces was told. As the wine glowed to the brim of the great jars the glory of the Christ was manifested. The governor of the feast was surprised, not knowing whence the wine came; and calling the bride groom to him, he laughingly said: "Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse; but thou hast kept the good wine until now." He unwittingly contrasted the world's way when Jesus is absent, with the world's way when Jesus is present, but it does not appear that he even became interested in the wonder-worker. The governor of 202 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. the past is typical. Men rejoice in the results of Christ's presence in the woild, but know not the loving and majestic Person from whom law and civilization, good-weal and progress obtain their ini tiative and guidance. Christ had manifested His glory through a perfectly human service. A neighborly act had been done divinely. John the Baptist and his program of asceticism, the method of monks and austere religionists who retire from the world's problem, — these were left behind by the Nazarene Rabbi. At the very beginning of His public career, this Son of Man had inaugurated a kingdom by one miracle, which showed the nature and method of the kingdom. The invisible King was less concealed in His Kingdom of the Invisible. In His king dom, life's water was to be perpetually changed into wine. This was the "beginning of miracles" with Jesus. All the miracles that followed were to be accomplished after the same method. Jesus the Christ filled law full with inflowing divinity. He had expanded the action of lower laws into higher, and illustrated the fact that the universe is a series of circling realities, one round break ing into another, the law that governs the one breaking into the law that governs the round above it, until Christ, the Reason (logos), of it all, "the Word made flesh," — is Lord of all. Wine is sap plus divinity. Jesus now found Himself known as one possessing powers which, to His own time, were sure to offer constant temptation for their exercise. Especially was He sure of the beseeching of persons to whom a sign of religion is everything, and its spirit almost noth ing. Later on the Jews were often to acknowledge His claim as Messiah, because of the demonstration made by these powers; and, later still, a certain ill-conceived rationalism was to ask that these works might be denied unto Jesus in order that men might believe in His religion. He foresaw how long it would take a gross world, — a world of men which had lost its normal command over nature by the lawlessness of sin, — to get so far into true relations with nature that His miracles would appear to be as natural to Him, as little the interference with the course of nature, or the violation or sus pension of natural laws, as is the song to the genius of the psalmist, or the melody of a linnet to the heart and throat of the bird. In THE MAN OF GALILEE. 203 the sense in which the word miracle is often used, Jesus worked no miracle. He simply lived at the source of all power. Love is power, and He was in right relation unto nature. Nature had in Him its reasons for being. "At first hand with God," He could not help but heal, because Pie was good and kind; and He did it, whether, to those about Him, it was a satisfactory sign from heaven or not. He turned this water into wine just as naturally as He always turned the meaningless into the meaningful, and the useless into the useful, and the disap pointment of life into a sat isfying joy. He was so divinely compassionate that He poured out His benev olence divinely. When the ac tion of the lower Law broke into the action of the higher law, human language had no other name for it than the word miracle, which at first only meant nothing theological. He had simply filled full, or fulfilled, the laws below and honored them, until they yielded to greater laws. He was the Son of humanity at home in His Father's universe, and He was "about His Father's business." He was soon to say: " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." The abstemious John was not like the Father of Jesus. Jesus was; and Jesus entered into human life to enrich it. It was not His work to give men more coins, but to give men more inspirations, — to turn water into wine, and, by increasingly demonstrating the capacity of man to receive God and to work according to God's plans, to forecast a civilization which shall be the true church, "the Lamb's wife," and a consummation of which shall be "the marriage-supper of the Lamb." Dimly, perhaps, did the disciples feel all this. God was in the humanity of Jesus, as CHARACTERISTIC STREET IN NAZARETH. 204 THE MAN 0E GALLLEE. they saw and knew it. ' 'And His disciples believed on Him. " From the first, Jesus was revealing God the Father as He came down through His Sonship and wakened the sense of sonship in all men. He also revealed man in lifting man up to God through His Son- ship, and quickening in man the realization of every man's power to live divinely. "He that believeth in Mc, " said this same Jesus, "the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do, because I go to the Father." Thus it is that John truly says that this miracle showed forth His glory. But mightier manifestations were yet to come. CHAPTER XXIII THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE in JESUS was now famous throughout the region. In many respects Galilee, and Galilee only, was able to nurture and develop what we may well call the Christianity of Jesus. It was as fitting that its internal spirit should be developed and disciplined in Galilee, as it was that the leader and embodiment, — the Person Who was its origin as well as its destiny — should have been born Judea. A single well-known saying: "No prophet low much ariseth from Galilee," is enough to indicate more favorable was Galilee than Judea for the culture and training of the new faith. It was there com pelled to unfold its truest powers. In Judea expectation would have worked from -without, in, and interfered with that proof of its claims which only a religion, accomplish ing its transformations from within, may offer. Galilee without certain forms of culture, Galilee without self- conceited leaders of thought, Galilee despised and overrun with ambitious foreigners, gave Jesus opportunity to marshal , and guide the quick and prophetic forces of the new kingdom, con servative of the realities and care less of the artificia lities of man's life. PILGRIMS ON THE WAY TO THE PASSOVER. 205 206 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. As yet the fame of Jesus had not eclipsed the commanding rep utation of John the Baptist, though the name of Jesus was spoken more often in the synagogues and at the firesides. Everywhere the disciples of the Baptist were repeating his stern and animating mes sage and looking with exultation of hoj?e for a new world. John him self had not yet reaped the results of fearless eloquence uttered in a world of enthroned iniquity, and while his star was waning in the new dawn he was still preaching and baptizing. It was impossible for the leaders of Judaism to make this fiery orator a leader of any party within its ranks, without so reconstruct ing their ecclesiastical plans as to destroy them. Yet his influence was felt even in Jerusalem. Destiny seemed to have but one pro gram. Let those whose spiritual thirst he had awakened, but could not entirely satisfy, wander about in Galilee, or associate themselves with this new Rabbi, Jesus, whom John had bajotized, and who just now had done a miraculous thing at Cana without consulting the older Rabbis, and without jiaying any attention to the synagogue. In a little time, it was evident, that, with something of delib eration, Jesus had chosen the little city of Capernaum as ' ' His own city." He was not to remain long in this town now, but soon He was to make it the center of His ministerial activity. Capernaum is one more of the interesting jilaces mentioned in the life of Jesus of whose locality we are somewhat uncertain. We cannot enter into the controversy, but the result of much recent explor ation and thought upon the part of scholars seems to be the opinion that Capernaum occupied the site of the present Khan Mingyeh. Indeed, the best geographers have gone so far as to fix the place of the "house of Jesus," as Mark calls it, "the birthplace of the gos pel, as that northeast corner of fair Gennesaret, where the waves beat now on an abandoned shore, but where once there was a quay and a busy town, and the great road from East to West poured its daily stream of life." (Smith.) It is fairly certain that this city, to which the mother and brothers of Jesus moved with Him, after wards became known as an heretical neighborhood, which is probably enough to connect it with the leader of the new religion and His wonderful words and works. It was doubtlesss a community in which the gospel of Jesus Christ had opportunity, for the space of THE MAN OF GALILEE. 207 those three years, to reach all sorts and conditions of men, and to unfold, in variously constituted and educated humanity, its diverse elements of power. Along the roadway between the large and productive wheat- fields came the caravans of Egypt, and they rested here on their way to Damascus. Rome bore testimony to her world-wide power and influence by stationing a garrison, and she collected revenues at Capernaum from the vast number of merchants who came up from the sea-coast and were compelled to stop here at the doors of one of Rome's most important custom-houses. Teachers of repute met tax-gatherers in the same streets, and the splendor of the public buildings vied with the costly beauty of the synagogue. Capernaum was the Jewish metropolis of Galilee, — the Galilee which the new gospel sought to influence, It was not so gorgeous as Tiberias, the Roman capital of Galilee, which was named for the Roman Emperor, and was grandly built by the luxury-loving Herod; but its commer cial activity furnished Jesus with more of the opportunity He desired than could be granted to Him by the magnificent statuary, the white colonnades, the huge bronze gates, the Roman officers, which heathenism was placing in Tiberias, to the great sorrow of every Jew. Up to the time of the building of Tiberias by Herod Anti- pas, Sepphoris, a city which Jesus could see in His boyhood when He climbed ujxm the hill-top near Nazareth, was the most influen tial city of the region. Now, however, it could give Jesus no such chance to reach the nation as did Capernaum. The fertile region round about the former, which was said to have flowed with milk and honey, scarcely surpassed that which encircled fair Capernaum; and Capernaum was a point from which news went out to all the pleasant towns which Pliny says "skirted the lake." Here splendor and luxury confronted a Kingdom rapidly receiving its form in the mind of a man whose outward characteristic was poverty. Here Christianity also had the privilege of meeting scholarship; and this was not only the scholarship of the Jews, who constantly felt that the Galileans were too careless of Hebrew traditions; it was also the scholarship which gathered its votaries from other nations and treated them with respect in the synagogue. Not the least of important facts was this, that, in this stirring Galilean city, Jesus met that profound 208 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. respect for the law which was the characteristic of the religious thought of Galilee, and was significant to one who proposed to fulfill the Law, rather than to gather the Scribes and Rabbis about Him, by His slavish attention to traditions. The history which He saw repeated from the summit of Hermon yonder at the North, was all prophecy uttering its animating eloquence in His soul; and just there was the Lake of Gennesaret, lying like a great heart-shaped gem DAMASCUS, FROM EAST GATE. beyond the palms, edged with dark green oaks and flowering olean ders. The upper plateaus which encircled it guarded rich and pro ductive gardens, and the white sails were waiting to take Him across to one of those groves of olives and sycamores where He could muse upon the plans of His Father and His God. Surely this was the place where ' ' the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles," might be used as a seed bed for all the nations. Behind Him was quiet Nazareth; before Him was the ever-growing tragedy of the divine life of the Son of Man. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 209 Pie was hardly settled in Capernaum before April came and, after the usual thirty days of preparation which had fanned patriotic devo tion into a flame, Jesus found Himself with the multitude of eager pilgrims setting out for Jerusalem, to observe the Passover. Doubt less Simon and Andrew, who had walked along the edge of the lake with Him until they were joined by James and John, had helped to complete the preparations which the preceding month had seen going on in that low-roofed white cube which was called " PIis house, " and they were now traveling with Him toward the Holy City. There must have been more than ordinary interest in Rabbi Jesus at this time, for He had already, doubtless, read and taught in the syna gogue on Saturdays. Still Pie defied classification. While He and His brothers had adopted many of the ways of the Essenes, Pie had become a puzzle to them, because of the liberality of His conduct toward the sinful and the despised. The houses which had opened themselves to Him, and the masters who had placed their hospitality and services at His disposal, were numerous; and some of the more open-minded Galileans were repeating the allegories which they had heard while sitting at His feet by the fireside after the Oriental fashion. Yet there was a wide margin of mystery about His sayings and a freedom and beautifulness in His conduct which charmed the true and confounded the double-minded. Even now the people who looked for every Rabbi to exercise the functions of a physician, — for the Rabbis were the only doctors, — were asking if He could heal the sick, as well as teach and comfort those who were strong. As the long caravan moved toward Jerusalem, people from every quarter joined them on the great roadway which had just been repaired, as was customary before the feast, so that every bridge was safe and every boulder removed; and it may have been that even then dis cussion had sprung up between the shrewd and greedy dealers who had already been selling doves from their cages and animals from their stalls in the country towns, and who objected to the fact that some of the priests were urging their exemption from the annual Temple-tax with an emphasis displeasing to the merchants. It all grated upon the fine sensibilities of Jesus, and the whole controversy quickened His conviction that He ought to hasten to the proclama tion of His kingdom. He already saw what a different sort of king- 2IO THE MAN OF GALLLEE. dom it was from that which they lived in. He saw that the only place in which He could fully and powerfully declare its nature and intimate its method, was in the Temple at Jerusalem. Now His hour was nearly come, and it was very little like the hour with the wedding party at Cana. As He came nearer to the great city, and passed a sepulchre which had been whitened the day before, so that no Jew might be polluted as he journeyed near it, He thought of the dreadful pollution which worship had suffered under the very eyes of those who had assumed sacerdotal leadership. At other visits, He Himself had beheld scenes in the Temple which made that building not the embodiment of the history and hope of Hebrewdom, but an offensive expression of the degradation of Israel, and the sensuous immorality of its devotees. For what was His baptism, and His Temptation, and His visions of the Fatherhood of God, if the Father's House could not be cleansed for the service and inspi ration of the human brotherhood? Again would His conception of God's Fatherhood and His own place as the Son of Man compel Him, in the very Temple, where, as a little boy, He had learned that He "must be about His Father's business," to break in upon the habits and practices of the sons of men. He heard in His heart the prophecy of four hundred years before : ' ' Behold, I shall send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, even the m messenger of the covenant, whom ye de light in: be hold, he shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts. And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of sil ver; and he shall purify THE SEA OF GALILEE FROM TIBERIAS. the SOnS of THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 211 Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness." This feast would gather together Jews of all sorts, from all por tions of the world over which Israel's sons had been scattered. Here they would see the triumph of the later Judaism which had con cealed its unspirituality only partially beneath the robes of ceremon ialism. Here also would they not see the inauguration of a reign of righteousness which would fulfill the Holy Law? This was perhaps as far as His thought had gone, when He arrived at the Temple. There were the money-changers doing a thriving business. Crowds were flocking close to the tables, asking that the various kinds of coin from Egypt and Greece, from Persia and distant Roman colonies, might be so exchanged that every devotee would be possessed of the sanctuary half-shekels in which alone the Temple-tax, which maintained the Tabernacle service, could be paid exactly, and by the use of which Jews could again show their dislike of the coins which bore the symbolism and inscriptions of the heathen. The little banks were wedged in between the shops where doves and animals were sold, and all these things so took up the space in the precincts of the Temple that it was almost impossible to jrush through the throng collected near the gate Shusan, on that April morning. The rich and the poor were pouring into the treasury a sum for Temple tribute from which these greedy bankers were realizing hand some profits, the charge for exchange and the deductions made on worn coins being very heavy. These monarchs of discount were not more noisy in their bargaining and protesting than were the dealers in sacrificial offerings, who often assisted in obtaining the approval of the Levites for animals concerning which there were disputes as to quality and price. This, however, had occurred, for the most part, outside the Temple enclosure. But now inside, very exorbitant prices were charged to the poor, and in addition to the desecration of the sacred precincts, the scandalous fact loomed up that the profits of these licensed thieves, who really controlled the market at the Temple, were turned into the pockets of the sons of the High Priest. It is almost certain that Jesus at once entered into one of these Temple bazaars, which were "the property, and one of the principal 212 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. sources of income of the family of Annas," and there, "where the Sanhedrin held its meetings at the time," as Edersheim points out, He uttered His indignation and executed His act of holiness. The face of Caesar on coins which had been exchanged for the half-shekels demanded by the rites, were not so abhorrent to Him as the out rageous irreverence and the hateful pollutions which He beheld. He did not stop for a moment to consider whether He possessed any other right than that of the Son of the Father and the Son of Hu manity. This prerogative was sufficient. If He had meditated for a moment, He could have seen His crucifix standing yonder on Gol gotha, "outside 'the city wall." It was His only to obey. He grasped a few of the cords with which the animals had been bound or some of the rushes which were scattered about, and "when He had made a scourge, He drove them all out of the Temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and over threw the tables." Godet finely says that ' ' this scourge was not an instrument, but an emblem. It was a sign of authority and judgment. If it had been a matter of physical action, the means would have been dis- proportional to the end, and the effect would be still more so to the cause." Truly Jesus was illustrating the powers of the unseen King of the Kingdom of the unseen. Stronger than the blue-mantled shoulder of Moab yonder, was His imperial will. Brighter than the roofs of gold above the Temple was His purpose at once divine and human. More penetrating than the bleating of the sheep or the cries of those who were trading in oxen and goats, was the swish of those cords or reeds, accompanied by the words of Jesus, when He said: "Take these things hence; make not My Father's house a house of exchange." Mount Olivet, where the dovecotes of the High Priest yielded their revenue, felt the report from that scourge. The vocif- erent sellers and their noisy customers were silenced. The young Galilean saw the glittering coins roll to the steps of Solomon's Porch and against the marble walls. Those overturned tables marked a turn in the current of human worship, and Jesus, the Son of His Father, had made His Father's house once more a sacred place. The Son of Humanity had more profoundly than ever emphasized the Brotherhood of Man. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 213 Every trafficker fled. It was a demonstration of power in the presence of weakness, — power of conscience in the presence of the weakness of mercenary formalism and faithless greed. It was a scene not at all different in its essential significance, from that in which He had stood years before as a Galilean boy, animated with the filial spirit which then undertook PIis Father's business and began its crusade against sensuousness and ceremonialism. The indignation of Jesus at this point reveals only the other side of a character whose one aspect we saw in the tender and loving act of supplying wine for the wedding-feast at Cana. This is the love which is always righteous; that was the righteousness which is always loving. The whole life of Jesus is a tapestry woven of the same threads, by the same filial spirit. Already the Temple was crumbling to pieces before Him, and the Temple of Humanity was being revealed in the midst of the ruins thereof. Instantly, the authorities, who fancied that they alone were guarding the sacredness of the Temple, showed the externalism of their religiousness by crying out: "What sign showcst thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?" While His disciples were remembering the ancient words of the Psalmist: "The zeal of thine house shall eat me up," Jesus, having reflected ujwn the fact that these Temple-guardians had entirely missed the truth as to what constituted irreverence in the Temple, or the real sacredness of the Temple itself, flashed forth a reply which declared the whole mission and character of the Son of Man, and required long years for its complete understanding. Placing His hands, as He doubtless did, upon His own 'body, He bore witness to the fact that there was something in the world far more sacred than all the gleaming marble and revered altars of that proud structure amidst whose costly splen dors He was standing. This was the Temple of Humanity. In the furious flame of their opposition to what He had just done, He fore saw that thev would probably destroy Him ultimately. He said: "Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up." To them this was a mysterious utterance, audacious as it was absurd; to us it must ever seem incomprehensible, if we do not un derstand that Jesus was here revealing Himself as the Son of Human ity, manifesting forth the sacredness of man above that of the Temple CHRIST CLEANSING THE TEMPLE. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 215 itself. The eyes of the Jews could discern only the grandeur of their ancient system and the glory of those crowned terraces which forty- six years had labored in vain to establish and to complete. They could not see the grandeur of man as He saw it. Jesus was still to reveal human nature and its possibilities under God's grace, so that the Temple, with its courts and porches, its huge gates and superb terraces, its shining pinnacles and snowy walls without; its retinue of priests and golden altar, its glowing censers and sacred veils within, would vanish away before the very power which had created it and which had risen to nobler hours by the use of it as an aggregation of symbols. Man would prove to be the ultimate shrine of God. He was making real the words which John would hear on Patmos: "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God." The instant He used the word Temple, He had attacked the formalism which was at length to kill him. It would be the development of the wrath which He saw at that moment in their faces, that would finally demand His blood and then the authorities should attempt the destruction of His body on yonder Calvary. He foresaw not only His fate, but also His power in such a fate. "Destroy this Temple," He said, referring to PIis body, "and I will raise it up in three days." They had asked for a sign; that is, for some external fact which would demonstrate to them His right to do what He had done. Jesus' thought went beyond them, to the whole of humanity; and He intimated that there would be a sign which would satisfy the whole human brotherhood. It would be a sign which would attest the value and truth of His faith in the Divine Fatherhood. It would be a sign which would intimate much as to the possibilities of Humanity under God's grace. It was the sign of His resurrection. The gospel of Jesus the Christ had then been truly preached by the King of the Kingdom. In this preaching, Jesus had gone so deeply into its nature that by and by, when He was on trial for His life, they could not forget that, on this day, He said something which they might dis tort into words like these: "I will destroy the visible Temple of Jehovah; and in three days I will re-build it." Stephen, at a later date, would hear his accusers cry out: "We have heard him say, 2l6 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place, and shall change the customs which Moses delivered to us. " The contest was now on between a lofty humanism and a vengeful sacerdotalism. So all His life through He forbade Himself, so far as possible, the working of wonders; and when they came as signs they were such as pre pared man for His one all-convincing act of rising from the dead. So was He true to the spir itual Fatherhood Universal and to the spiritual Son- ship Universal. He knew He could reach the Sonship of His brothers if He could get them to believe in an swer to His de mand: " Accept me for what I am, rather than for what I do. ". Jesus was the divine foe of sensationalism, be cause of His own spirituality. That this inci dent of cleansing the sanctuary pro duced no greater tumult amongst the multitudes in and about the Temple, even the money-changers and dealers in animals and doves required for offerings in the service, and the idle popula tion of a city attached to the sanctuary with so much fanaticism, seems remarkable, until we remember that thousands of good men who had come up to the feast were aware of the offense unto God PASSOVER OFFERINGS ^ THE MAN OF GALILEE. 217 JERUSALEM AND SURROUNDINGS. and man which Jesus had just sought to abolish. The conduct of Jesus at this point would not have surprised even the leaders of Israel, if He had not been a Galilean, who, to their eyes, was the protege of John the Baptist, and if, on the other hand, He had ever publicly assumed the place of a reformer such as they antic ipated. John the Baptist had been heard with eagerness, and he had spoken to vast and sympathetic audiences, made responsive unto him partly because he proposed a general reformation as a preparation to the reception of the Messiah. The atmosphere was therefore such that Jesus could not have wholly failed to attract the attention of many of His hearers to the justice of His act of reform. He had sown a seed of thought in the mind of Hebrew dom which instantly took root, in spite of the irony of the authorities who said: "Forty and six years was this Temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?" 218 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. It was not to be expected that these Jews could suddenly de liver themselves from sensuous thoughts concerning the Temple, and so clearly apprehend what Jesus meant as to the Temple of Humanity and its future in Himself, as to care much about the profounder sig nificance of His remark. What He said certainly did unfold in their thought as a very dangerous utterance, but then it was doubtless taken to be the remark of a harmless enthusiast who had wit enough to know that a protest ought to be made against the corruption of the priest hood. The act of Jesus, indeed, may have recommended Him to many a noble man as an act of righteousness against an abominable traffic in the sacred place. The Roman garrison was there in the fortress at the corner of the Temple, only too ready to march forth and quell a tumult; but the Jewish authorities did not ask for soldiers. They only asked for "a sign;" and Jesus gave them one which they could not understand. He could wait. In a short time, and by their own guilt, they would fulfill His sign. Both the Temple of marble and the Temple of His human flesh would be destroyed. But the veil of the Temple would be rent in twain, from the top to the bottom, when Jesus1 body endured the anguish of crucifixion. This Temple of Humanity would be raised up in three days. This would be the re-building of Man. Judaism would be wrecked ; the Christian church, which is "His body," would survive and reign. The true shrine of God's presence in the world would be human. Within its noble architecture, spiritual forces would be supreme, and its glory should never pass away. CHAPTER XXIV THE VISIT OF NICODEMUS. IT is not surprising that after such an exercise of authority which proceeded from His loyal obedience to His Father, many "believed in His name when they saw the miracles which He did." True authority is the affluence of power and power grows by use only. That mir acles should follow the increase of power which was His, because He had nobly used the power He already had, was natural; and it must be considered an event strictly in the divine order which we know in the his tory of all moral energy and spiritual achievement. The new power must gird itself with new wonders; the newly learned lyric must bring with it a new ac companiment. But the evangelist is careful to say that these good peo ple only ' ' believed in His „ name." That is, they accepted a phrase con cerning Him, which, to them, appeared applic able unto Him. They approved a designation which pointed Him out with distinctness, as He moved"^^ with other men ; and they did this only because they "saw 219 NICODEMUS' VISIT AT NIGHT. 220 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. the miracles which He did." At this critical juncture in the devel opment of His ideal and in the establishment of His method, Jesus was not to be overjoyed by the impression which He had thus made upon curious and unspiritual men. He saw that their faith was super ficial; it was sensuous. It did not rely upon the truths, but rather upon the events which came to them. He would not rely upon it; least of all would He invite any of these new believers to join His little band of disciples. When He chose disciples, it was because they "believed on Him." The evangelist tells us that "Jesus did not commit Himself unto them, because He knew all men. And needed not that any should testify of man; for He knew what was in man." The Temptation, His experience with those who now constituted His chosen inner circle, and especially this recent conflict in which He had been victorious over the externalism which trafficked so basely in the Temple, had given Him a deeper understanding of humanity, its perils and its possibilities. "He knew what was in man." He saw that the faith that saves must be a saving faith, in this, that it enlists and develops the elements of human character which survive and animate, because they are divine. He would not under-estimate and degrade man and man's power to be Godlike, by inviting him into a visible kingdom to do homage to a visible king, — this would be only to continue the less spiritual ministry of the Temple which was artificial and temporal. He would not over-esti mate man and man's power to be Godlike, by forgetting that the human soul must rise into its nobility, by being lovingly attached to a King Whose royalty is invisible to the senses, and to a kingdom whose greatest forces must be unknown to sight and hearing. He would attach men to the unseen God. This would be to create a worship essential and eternal. "He knew what was in man," and, just as a little time ago, He could not be satisfied with the faith of Nathanael, until He laid its foundations rightly, so now He would not assume, to use the phrase of Luthardt, that these people of Jeru salem had given themselves morally unto Him, for He knew He had not succeeded in giving Himself morally unto them. So much for the message and method of Jesus as He deals with a crowd which had thronged on the Eastern Gate of the Temple THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 221 and followed Him down from Solomon's Porch. Plow will He handle a separate and more inquiring soul? Nicodemus was a Jewish gentleman, as well as a ruler in Israel. The fanaticism of his people and his city had indeed touched him, but it had left him teachable and thoughtful. The bigotry of his time had entered into his mental processes and given them direction, but he was still candid and intelligent. When Jesus met him as he advanced toward Him in the darkness of the night, there was revealed a timid conservative whose mind was experiencing the fer ment occasioned by the advent of new ideas. The eloquence of John the Baptist was echoing yet with its stern messages, even in the haunts of the learned and wealthy. Nicodemus was a member of the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem, and was doubtless one of the Pharisees in high station who had beheld the somewhat disorderly proceeding of Jesus, whom Nicodemus thought of as the young prophet from Galilee who had done a wise thing in an unwise manner, in the Temple. It was not to be expected that a man so highly cultured and loftily stationed as was he, should entirely escape the over-cau tiousness which came from his peculiar education and high position. He had indeed shown that a generous radicalism was possible to his nature; for he had overcome difficulties, which must have been very embarrassing, before he, a rich and aged member of the San hedrin, obtained the consent of his mind even to inquire, at such a time, of the opinions and thoughts of a Galilean peasant. He must have been strongly impressed with the personality and power of Jesus, and seriously shaken in his confidence that current Judaism was sufficient for the hour. Otherwise he would not have approached this untrained man, to acknowledge Him as "a teacher come from God, " and to ask questions of Him concerning the deepest and most critical matters in the religious thought of the Hebrews. It is a story typical of all conservative intellectualism in religion. Nicodemus always comes to Jesus "by night." The mental habit which clings to its traditional self-importance and which often trembles for its safety when it is unattended by hoary precedents, is willing to journey toward the Light of the world only through darkness. There must be a cover for retreat, if things prove undesirable. It would have exposed Nicodemus to the contempt of his fellow-San- 222 THE MAN OF GALILEE. hedrists, had it not rendered his position unsafe, in spite of his wealth, if, at the moment when Jerusalem was most prejudiced against anything Galilean, he had been seen in the company of the young Rabbi from Nazareth, who had behaved so audaciously at the Temple. Nicodemus knew that Jesus was already under suspicion, and that, if things went on as they had been going on, He and His followers would suffer violence. Probably Nicodemus, who was charmed and uplifted by the moral enthusiasm of Jesus, was desir ous of wooing Him back into the company of men who were con servative and yet anxious for a better day. He had set out in all honesty, as an aged Rabbi anxious to do a good service to his younger contemporary as well as to Israel. There is just a little unconscious patronage in his first utterance: "Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God, " and there is a current of the higher rationalism apparent, when Nicodemus adds: "For no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him." The intellectualism represented by Nicodemus, traveling through much darkness unto Jesus, always patronizes a little and exhibits its power of reasoning with evident satisfaction. Like Nico demus here, it is often fated by its own timidity to miss the regenerating love of Jesus. It is an affair of the head, of course, not of the heart. All that Nicodemus ever did, despite his great powers and his honest intentions, was to stand with Jesus, later on, at His trial and make a plea for a fairness such as he did not give to Jesus on this night in question, and, later still, to put his wealth and high standing at the service of the dead body of the One who might have given him a place among the saints and the riches of the eternal life. He never got beyond giving Jesus a poor justice and an excellent funeral. Neither does any sort of rationalism come nearer to the real Christ. The name Nicodemus is Greek, and he was Greek in his mental character and method. He was generously thoughtful and speculative. Jesus at once knew him to be sincere and discerning. He may have read in the mind of Nicodemus that the Pharisee really thought that He might be the Messiah. But Nicodemus felt that he might be mistaken, and so, lest he would be giving the interesting young Gali lean an unwarranted publicity, he came to Him "by night." Nico- THE MAN OF GALILEE. 223 demus was a master of Jewish lore, and a profound expositor of the Law. While it was an age of miracles, and Rabbis were expected to perform miracles, there was something so remarkable either about the number or about the character of the miracles of Jesus, that he was attracted to His personality. They were such miracles as Nico demus anticipated from the hands of the Messiah, when He should come. Besides this, Jesus had begun, as the Messiah was expected to begin, by such a reform in the Temple as honored the Holy Law. Nicodemus would at least like to ask Him a few questions as to His future. Not ready to make open avowal of his half-formed conviction that Jesus was the Messiah, he approached the point of the inquiry which was lying uneasily in his own mind, by giving an intimation to Jesus of his interest in what Jesus was about to do. Jesus saw at once that it was no time for compromises or mere politeness, and He said unto the elder and revered Rabbi: "Verily, verily," — thus indicating the emphasis which His own soul placed upon the truth that He was about to utter, — "I say unto thee, ex cept a man be born again he can not see the kingdom of God." Never did a ' ' verily, verily, " of Jesus more solemnly emphasize the mental and spiritual difficulty which His statement was to con front, or more truly indicate thact the next words He was to speak were to constitute a great step forward in the development of the inherent and essential idea of His Kingdom. Nicodemus had been feeling about for some further information as to the new movement; to Jesus this new movement was described as " the Kingdom of God." He Himself had discovered Himself as "the Son of God." Divinity was being revealed in His humanity. The universal Fatherhood of God which Jesus realized in His own sinless Sonship, had made Him conscious of the universal brotherhood of the human family under God, and He, the Son of God, had called Himself "the Son of Humanity." Jesus saw that, to get into this realm of the Divine Fatherhood which He had discovered by His own Sonship, a man must be born into it, "born from above!' He must be vitally con nected with a Fatherhood such as He Himself felt, before He could even "see" the universal Brotherhood of men around about Him. That Brotherhood is essentially spiritual. The inability to "see the King dom of God," the father-land of the Father, and to realize the uni- 224 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. verse as the home of God's countless sons, in which His Kingdom is a Kingdom of Love, is a moral inability. If a man is looking at things from the point of view and with the eyes of men "born from beneath," and having only temporary and earthly relationships, the invisible and eternal Kingdom of God cannot be discerned, But if a man is ' ' born from above" and is looking at things from the point of view, and with the sight of humanity ' ' born from above, " then the Kingdom of God will be realized as all-inclusive and supreme. All the way through this story of Nicodemus there is a sugges tive emphasis upon the word man. Because the Kingdom of God, which Jesus was revealing as the Father of all men, is the true Kingdom of Humanity, Jesus keeps the emphasis on the word man, while He answers the unexpressed thoughts in the mind of Nicode mus. It was a tremendous utterance even for the scholarly and hos pitable mind of Nicodemus to receive. It was impossible for him now to think of Jesus as only a great social reformer who had come to revolutionize politics, or change the manners of men. Jesus was indeed to inaugurate a process which should renovate society, but He was to accomplish His transformation by getting His brother- men to live "from above" downward, instead of "from beneath" upward; He was to get them to look upon earth from a heavenly point of view, instead of looking upon heaven from an earthly point of view. It was His to quicken and develop the sense of each man's essential and dear relationship unto the Fatherhood above all other fatherhoods, so that each man might find himself in a brotherhood dearer and more nearly universal than all other brotherhoods. It was a moment when a man was invited to look at his birthright and to regard the experiences when his soul sang: " I knew not yet the gauge of time, Nor wore the manacles of space; I felt it in some other clime, I saw it in some other place, 'Twas when the heavenly house I trod, And lay upon the breast of God." If Nicodemus, the Rabbi trained in the approved schools, did not now behold the majesty of this Rabbi who had thus again drawn through His sinless Sonship from the resources of His Father's Father- THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 225 hood, until He stood there clad in the moral authority of the Son of God, Jesus would yet be patient. Nicodemus must still be per mitted to ask such questions as move in a mind dazed and bewil dered by sudden and infinite light. Men like Nicodemus had looked upon the kingdom of God which was to come as an affair of earth; they thought it would be the consummation of this present life for the Jew. If another birth were a necessity to get into it, or even to discern it, Nicodemus had not been in the habit of entertaining thoughts which would lead him to suppose that this second birth must be different in its nature from the first. He therefore said: "Can a man enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?" The answer of Jesus came swiftly, and though it was long, it left Nicodemus scarcely less astonished than before; but, as we shall notice, Nicodemus had taken a step toward the right apprehen sion of Jesus and the Kingdom. This was the answer of Jesus: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is everyone that is born of the Spirit." Jesus spoke these words to a man learned in the Old Testa ment. In the mind of Jesus there were still recollections of what He had said to Nathanael, the "Israelite without guile, " and He remem bered how impressive to Nathanael were His utterences with refer ence to the story of Jacob, who became Israel. Now Jesus was counting upon the Old Testament scholarship of Nicodemus, and the fact that Nicodemus had been influenced by the preaching and bap tism of John the Baptist. Admission by baptism to fellowship with the Jews was conceivable, if even then it had not been common. Thus they were made clean of heathenism. It was a symbol of their naturalization, as we would say. Besides, John the Baptist, 111 his reform, seeking a fellowship of holiness, had urged baptism upon Gentile and Jew alike. Nicodemus could understand the neces sity for repentance, for he did not forget the promise contained in the words of Ezekiel: "Then ye shall remember your own evil 226 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall loathe your selves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abomina tions." And John the Baptist had said of Jesus, that He would bap tize with the Holy Spirit. This new baptism symbolized by water purification surely was a baptism for Jew and Gentile alike, and it was to be the accompaniment of a new birth into the kingdom of holiness and spiritual things. All this would not have been so bewildering, if Jesus had not been eager to preach His gospel of Humanity. This rested on His conviction that birth was not the beginning of a soul; it was but an event marking a man's progress toward his real self. Man is intrinsically not an earth-being, but a universe-being. He must be born into the realm of the Universal Father, and hence born out of his petty existence as a thing of time and sense. He is a foreigr citizen, until that event occurs. Jesus was trying to h Nicodemus out of the dif Acuity he was having with the phrase "born from above." He now made His teaching more con crete; and He put it into the form of a duty nearer to Nicodemus. He went upon the presumption that Nicodemus would not forget the words of John the Bap tist and His baptism, as well as the testimony borne to Jesus Himself by the Baptizer, and Nico demus had probably heard of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon ff Him at the Jordan; and so, He now sub stituted for the phrase, •*¦*"• moses and the brazen serpent, THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 227 "born from above," which Pie used in His first answer, this phrase, "born of the water and of the Spirit," in His second. Pie went fur ther, and, instead of saying as before, "He cannot see," He said: "He cannot enter into the kingdom of God." To make things still more clear, if it were jpossible, He intimated that the generation of the spiritual life has its law, like that of the generation of the natural life. Jesus did not believe in any gospel of self-culture. He preached no scheme of self-development, by means of moral decencies or anx iously executed improvements. He had no hope in legalisms and the obedience of restraining rules. He had hope only in the regenera tion of men, "from above." He appealed to him, as a teacher of Israel, accustomed to understand how men become citizens of Israel — that is, how they "enter into" rather than merely see a kingdom, and He urged Nicodemus not to marvel that He, a younger Rabbi, whose loyalty to His Father's Fatherhood is here as intense as it was in the Temptation, or on the bank of the Jordan, or within the Temple in the Ploly City, should say: " Ye must be born again," — and thus urge upon all what had been the experience of Jacob-Israel. It is very certain that the doctrine of the new birth was so involved in the thought of other religions, and especially of the reli gion to which Nicodemus was devoted, that Jesus had the right to expect that so thoughtful and learned a Rabbi should not marvel at it. Dr. Geikie calls especial attention to the fact that Socrates says to his disciple Euthymius: "No one can see the wind, but its effects are apparent, and when it comes, we feel it. In the same way the soul of man, if in some respects human, has something in it of the divine. For it is clear that it reigns with kingly authority in us, yet we do not see it. We should reflect on this, and not set light by what may not be seen, but since our soul shows its majesty by its effects, we should honor the divine that is thus with us. " A mod ern poet was not the first to feel his soul singing: " And, O, for the man to arise in me That the man I am may cease to be." And Browning's Cleon is only a type of many who mused: " I dare at times imagine to my need Some future state unlimited in capability, 228 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. For joy as this is in the desire for joy, To seek which the joy hunger forces us: That, stung by straitness of our life, made strait On purpose, to make prized the life at large, Freed by the throbbing impulse we call death, We burst there as the worm into the fly." To Jesus, the life in eternity was possible to all men; for He had realized here and now. The throbbing impulse which Jesus brought in Himself was not "death," but life; the warmth of His brotherli- ness was to quicken the son in each creature-man and liberate him in time into the life Eternal. This was and is the new birth; the process is the only true conversion. Probably so soon as Nicodemus dimly felt this truth from afar and received a partial explanation of Jesus, in His own words con cerning the blowing wind and the mysterious influence of the Spirit whose power is known only in its result, he found himself in some true accord with the thought of the young Rabbi; for Nicodemus no longer treated the process as impossible. On the other hand, he said: "How can these things be?" — as if he would acknowledge that the event spoken of was possible, but was in the dark as to the manner of its coming. Then Jesus answered and said unto him: "Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?" The very word Israel must have brought back the story of the transfor mation of Jacob into Israel, and that was the new birth. Jacob was " born from above" at Peniel. He had been untrue to the universal Brotherhood; and he was a fugitive, because of his treatment of Esau. He was only "a Supplanter, " as the name Jacob indicates. He came, at Peniel, into fraternal relationships with essential humanity, through coming into filial relationships with God. The Fatherhood of God inspired in him the Brotherhood of Man. But how was this brought about? "A man wrestled with Jacob, until daybreak and Jacob broke through the earthly life when he touched ' ' the hollow of his thigh," and he found that it was "out of joint." God had re vealed Himself to Jacob through a man. "And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God THE MAN OF GALILEE. 229 face to face, and my life is preserved." No longer was he Jacob, but Israel. Jesus asked Nicodemus to remember this, when He used the words: "Art thou a teacher of Israel, and understandest not these things?" The Galilean Rabbi saw men, like Jacob, in false and bitterly sad relations with the Father of All. In the light of His sinlessness, He saw that sin had made the feud. This came from the fact that men had gone back on their sonship to God, in rebel lion. They had become mere creatures. Pie, by His brotherhood to them, would establish their sonship. Pie would have them live unto God, not unto themselves. Then Jesus took another step forward in the development of His teaching. He said: "We speak that we do know and testify that we have seen;" and He prefaced this by His emphatic words: ' ' Truly; truly. " He appealed to the experience of those who dwell in the Kingdom and realize their Sonship unto God, the Universal Father. The truths of His Kingdom were not entirely new; some things Jesus had said to Nicodemus about the higher life on its earthly side. Other men — His disciples — had felt their Sonship unto God through being quickened by the self-revealing Sonship of Jesus. Of course, they had no language yet in which to tell it, but from the earthly side, yet others perceived the change, by many things. These he ought not to gainsay. He now told him : ' 'If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?" In quick transition, but proceeding yet more fundamentally with His exposition of the subject, Jesus said: "And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven." Here again He used the phrase, "the Son of Man," but He spoke of Himself as "the Son of Man which is in- heaven." This last phrase may be an early gloss, but it perfectly sets forth the thought of Jesus, which, later on, He wrought out many times, saying, for example, to the woman of Samaria, that God and heaven are where those souls are whose childhood lives upon His Fatherhood. Jesus lived perpetually in heaven, and He would have all others live in heaven, also. And now Jesus must go further with His thought of the fate and destiny of Himself as the " Son of Humanity." He has already told Nicodemus that He Himself came down from heaven, that He lived 230 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. from above downward, and that He was the ' ' Son of Humanity. " Now, He says, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life." This was another appeal to the learned Jew, the expositor of Moses, to whom He was speaking. Here Jesus began to use that phrase, "must be." A divine necessity ran through all His freedom. Jesus saw His exal tation morally, into some kind of true coronation-hour as the King of this kingdom of which He was speaking. It may have involved the idea of death, in the mind of Jesus, Who already saw the forces arrayed against Him ; if so, Nicodemus was looking for the elevation of the Messiah, in quite another way. Jesus recalled to him the serpent of brass, in the time of the Hebrew exodus from Egypt, and Nicodemus thought with Him of the perishing Israelites who looked upon it with faith and survived. The serpent had long ago become the symbol of health and medicine. Jesus Himself would furnish health and medicine, — even life, to those who believed on Him. As conspicuously as the brazen serpent was exalted in the camp of Israel, so would He be somehow lifted up in the camp of Humanity. Serpents were then poisoning and killing men, and, using this Egyptian symbol which the Israelites understood perfectly, Moses knew that the looking upon the serpent with faith would save them. The Serpent thus saved them from the serpents. The "Son of Humanity" was here to save men from the ills brought by humanity. Long after this, Paul would so discern the truth of Christ's perfect humanness, that the apostle would say that God, who had made Christ "in the likeness of sinful flesh," went so far that He made "Christ to be sin for us." The serpent as the symbol of sin had won a victory in old Eden, for there Humanity had been dis loyal to the Fatherhood of God, in the disobedience of eating of the forbidden fruit. "The Son of man," in profoundest loyalty to the Fatherhood of God, would use this serpent-symbol, by which the sufferers of Israel recovered, and, bearing the sins of men, He would once more win man to such Sonship unto His Father God, that men would say: "Abba, Father." The cross was uncut as yet from yonder forest tree; but it was growing for Jesus. Dr. John Watson says truly : ' ' The action of the cross on sin is as simple in its higher THE MAN OF GALILEE. 231 sphere as the reduction of fever by antipyrine or of inflammation of a counter-irritant in physical disease. This was, and is, eternal life. There is nothing unnatural about the process. A man cannot thoroughly believe in Jesus as the Christ, in this sense, and be perishing. Eternal life is not something that will be given him arbitrarily or mechanically. There is such vitaliz ing })ower for the soul of a man, in believing in Jesus as the Son of His Father — a Brother who reveals His human brothers' Sonship unto the same Father, that the man who hath that belief hath eternal life. Having realized his divine lineage by faith in Jesus as God's Son, a man has broken out of the limitations of this earthly life, where death is possible and potent, and he lives in the eternity of God, and subsists upon the permanencies of the Almighty. This, it is, to be "created anew in Christ Jesus." The man, then, acts from motives that run unto and through time, from eternity; and he shall not see death, for, as Jesus proceeded to say: "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever be- lieveth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved: He that believeth on Him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already, be cause he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made mani fest, that they are wrought in God." So Jesus told the secret of the life eternal to the upright Jew. The Son of Man had committed Himself, at last, and to a member of the Sanhedrin. He saw His way to His throne; and it was by way of an exaltation in which He should bear the sins of the world. Perhaps He did not contemplate a violent death, as yet; but faith in Jesus Christ, ' ' believing upon Him, ' (as the preferable reading is), means the acceptance of Him, as one who illustrates His Mes- siaship, not by conquering Rome, but by conquering sin, at all hazards. ' ' God so loved the world, " — -these words were the an- 232 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. nouncement of a world-wide Fatherhood manifested through the Son, Who, because He was sinless, saw farthest into His Father's nature and plan. Nicodemus was not born into the realm of that Universal Fatherhood; and he could not "see" the Kingdom of Jesus and God His Father. The Judaism to which Nicodemus still clung had con demned the world, as a whole; and it proposed to save itself through its national Messiah. The true Messiah stood now before one of its teachers to save the world, and to be condemned by the world. Lo, He was the Messiah of Man. He was more sure than ever that His distinctive work, His Messiaship, was to be accomplished by manifesting in Himself what He would reveal in every man — the in trinsic sonship of the soul unto the All-Father. Jesus was not in stituting new mental and spiritual processes; He was not overthrow ing the laws of the human soul; He was simply stating the inevit able fact when He said: "He that believeth upon Him is not con demned, but he that believeth not, is condemned already." Jesus felt that His business was to rescue His brother-men to their Father. Sin had taken out of them the feeling that each was God's son. He was to so brother them that this truth would reappear. By belief on Him, only, would a fellow-child of God come to believe in him self and God — so far had every one become prodigal of his divine relationship. When the prodigal was saved, he had come to "him self." No final judgment can ever interfere with, or change, the judgment made in the necessity of things. The soul of a man lives by his relation to his Father; he finds that relation through the revelation in the Son. The soul of a man dies when it has never been born out of earthly and human relations, into its essential relations unto God. The judgment of Jesus is not arbitrary. It is the judg ment of light upon darkness; of truth upon error; or right upon wrong. Jesus had told the irreproachable Rabbi all He could. He must have seen with sadness that the Ruler of the Pharisees had not unfurled the sails of His life-craft to the "trade winds from eternity." Per haps the gray dawn was then touching the hill-tops, and a shaft of gold lay quivering on one of the pinnacles of the Temple. It was nearly morning, and Nicodemus must hasten away. It would be unwise to stay longer. CPIAPTER XXV THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA THE Feast of the Passover was now concluded with the usual ceremonies, but an unusual thing had happened in the history of religion A had really hu products of the « personality of transcendent importance ~C.jl*^lfe, manized the most sublime of the ^-4 jSKsf^ spirit of institutionalism. Jesus of .. ^,4 Nazareth had now so far opened : "^E^the door into a new future that the entire symbolism of the past was becoming grandly suggestive of present and glorious realities. Everything His mind touched was transformed into a prophecy which related itself to what men have called the Incar nation. "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto CHRIST AND THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA AT THE WELL. ^ \ Himself. " Twice, in recent ¦Nj days, had Jesus called, up |jj| the history of Jacob- f^ZT\ Israel. Twice had He taken the most thoughtful men who heard Him, back to the mo ment when "a man wrestled" with Ja cob, until Jacob became Israel and 233 234 THE MAN 0F GALILEE. re-named the spot Peniel, for, as he said, " I have seen the face of God, and my life is preserved." God had already been in man, reconciling this world unto Himself, and this process had gone on from the day of man's recognition of his need; but here "God was in Christ," indu bitably. The atonement is eternal. It became evident, as Jesus talked, that every Jacob's ladder, reaching from earth to heaven, and the "man" who so revealed God to Jacob, by wrestling with him, that he became Israel, were, at least, prophecies of this "Son of Man" who was so revealing God even now that Simon was be coming Peter. God's old method of changing men, so that they might be re-named, was being continued by God's Son. More than this, Jesus had seen that the Temple, whose magnificence was the result of the growing significance of Man's uplook Godward, was only the embodiment of man's effort to enshrine God, or to rise by symbols unto Him, and He had uttered the truth that even the Temple must perish with all other symbols, while Humanity, which was God's only permanent Tabernacle, would survive. But Jerusa lem and Judea had failed to understand Him, and there men had crowded about Him who could only interfere with the progress of a spiritual kingdom. Yet it had seemed best for Him not to forsake the Temple and its neighborhood, and to return immediately to Galilee. He remained; but He remained only a little time in the region adjacent to the Holy City which He loved. He was always speaking His message, and leading His disciples, while they bap tized, as did John the Baptist, their master preaching, meanwhile, as did John the Baptist: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." With success, trouble came from an unexpected quarter. The mighty works of Jesus at Jerusalem and in its neighborhood, and especially the larger multitudes, to which He spoke, furnished the excuse for a sinister report, which was ardently accepted and taken, with no good-will unto Jesus, to the Jewish authorities, and at length to the Baptist. It was this: Jesus was making and baptizing more followers than the Baptist himself, whom the Pharisees surely respected and perhaps feared, and whom they were very willing to use as a great and widely-reverenced name against which the new movement might dash itself to pieces. Soon a discussion was on THE MAN OF GALILEE. 235 foot, which had started between a Jew and the followers of the Bap tist. It had to do with the topic of purification. Nothing could have been more likely to end in a theological feud. As an incident more important than all their questioning, the Baptist's following, who were eager to guard his reputation, told him that the work of Jesus was presumj^tuously intruding upon his own, and that the bap tism by the disciples of Jesus was interfering with the wide acceptance of his plan and process of reform. It was in the atmosphere of such ill-considered loyalty ... unto himself, that the heroic soul of the '"FHH §p ' if RUINS OF SAMARIA Forerunner, John the Bap- ^^pWWfV V^JI l^fff^ tist, showed unquestionable greatness. He had been baptizing "in iEnon, near to Salim, because there was much water there, " and this somewhat bitter report which his jealous disciples brought to the Baptist, came at a moment when John knew that his star was pass ing into eclipse. Other men might have been the prey of envy. Gloriously, indeed, however, did his noble mind deal with the undoubted obscuration of his own light in the splendor of Jesus. His over-zealous friends were disappointed. The Baptist answered and said: "A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven. Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before Him. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the brideroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bride- 236 THE MAN OF GALILEE. groom's voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease. He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly, and sj^eaketh of the earth: he that cometh from heaven is above all. And what he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth; and no man receiveth his testimony. He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true. For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him. The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." The world will never forget the magnanimity and grandeur of the stern ascetic whose prophetic light was not lost, save as it was taken up into the advancing daytime of Jesus. It was a great- mindedness which came from entertaining great ideas. ' ' He must increase, I must decrease, " is the utterance of that docility, nobility of character and passion for usefulness which requires the largest mental power and demands the surest moral genius. The Baptist had tasted of popularity as had no other man of his time, to whom its jeweled cup was offered. He had enjoyed the joeculiar satisfactions of a great orator's triumph, and he had known moments when the fanning of one small spark escaping from the flame which burned in him might have lit the world. He knew, however, that such an illumination could not be permanent. He knew that his was a borrowed taper and that Jesus was the Sun of Righteousness. Trained in solitude, and having met God there, he could endure loneliness, and he might look out from the watch-tower of solitude, uncomplainingly and even joyously, upon a movement which his fervid eloquence and ethical earnestness had introduced to the thoughts of men. With unsur passed powers of speech, he could be silent, if need be, if men only might hear the voice of Jesus. The grandeur of yesterday and the glittering possibilities of to-day he would forego, while his feet shone as they moved back from the full splendor of that vast to-morrow which was the heritage of Jesus. He had made his last public ad dress; but Jesus, his cousin, his protege, his Master, even his Lord, would say that "among those born of women, there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist." His was the optimism which comes THE MAN OF GALILEE. 237 from faith in God; he could not grow cynical. He was delivered from what often becomes the disease of one's self, by having a loving attachment to something greater and dearer than himself. The self ishness which often weeps and grows sour was lost in the self-sacrifice which never knows the grandeur of its crucifixions. The brook from the mountain-heights shivered not as it felt itself joyously swept into the stream below; its waters could not stagnate; its rhythm, learned amidst the rocks and pines, was saved by being lost in the harmony of the river. John the Baptist had secured his future in Jesus. The candle had been lit by a flame to which it yielded gloriously while being consumed. Jesus so led His disciples that '^ they kept on baptizing after the manner of the Baptist, and He kept on reaching the message of His forerunner. This was nore powerful acknowledg ed the appreciation which Jesus felt tor the Baptizer than any which could be conveyed by any words which He had spoken. The divine life went on weaving in the human threads from the Baptist's career, until none were left. Why did not Jesus now openly declare Himself to be the Mes siah? The answer is, that He was laying the foundations of a King dom of the invisible, of which He was the invisible King. He was gathering together "an inner circle," a loyal band; and if tney were to help Him at all in the establishment and propagation of such a kingdom, He must refuse all externalism and decline all formalism of announcement. He would attract men to His moral divineness in such a way as not to interfere with their free spirituality. He would make them divinely moral, in the manner in which they must accept Him. His must be the authority and assertiveness of purely moral glory. Anything else would be undivine and would demoralize. Just OLD ARCH NEAR SAMARiA. 238 THE ALAN OF GALLLEE. a little while ago, when two men had "believed on Him," He had made them disciples; a little later, when men "believed in His name," only, He refused to " commit Himself unto them." He knew that the faith of these latter was not spontaneous, nor was it nur tured by that sympathy for the manifested goodness, or God, in Him, which alone could keep it alive. Besides, there could be no wisdom or heroism in unnecessarily provoking the Jewish authorities to violence. Had not His father and mother, Joseph and Mary, fled into Egypt with the infant gospel? Could not He protect its early growth, at least until it was sufficiently self-discovered and strong to accomplish its chief purpose? Pharisees were intriguing to imprison John, and the Baptist had already incurred the hostility of Herod Antipas by some stinging rebukes. The Jewish towns immediately clustering about Jerusalem were alive with jealous Pharisees, and the new movement, which was led by Jesus, might easily meet with catastrophe. The only thing for Him to do was to return into Gali lee. He must abandon Judea as He had left Jerusalem, and as He had previously left the Temple. In the first journey of Joseph and Mary from Nazareth of Gali lee, to Jerusalem of Judea, it is hardly possible that, in accord with the narrow fanaticism of the Jews, they avoided passing through unclean Samaria, Mary's extremity was greater than their bigotry. Yet it is certain that no Jew would ordinarily defile himself by going through this abominated region, if he could shun it. Jesus, whose Sonship fed upon the Universal Fatherhood of God, and who was to establish the Universal Brotherhood of men, entertained no such prejudice, and He yielded to no such refinements, on His way to Galilee; and in testimony of this, He proceeded directly North, be cause ' ' He must needs go through Samaria. " The principles of His religion had triumphed first in Him, before He offered them to be come victorious in the world. They must win their realm, over all artificial barriers and petty animosities. There was only one distinc tion which His religion would make, and that was and is the dis tinction between right and wrong. There was only one feud- which it would recognize, and that was the feud between sin and holiness. Jesus had just left the Temple where God and His presence had been limited to a locality by the Jews; He had honored the THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 2 VI Temple of Humanity; He had just abandoned the Jerusalem where ideas of God had been held fast in the entanglement of exclusive ceremonies bv the Hebrews; He had already hinted at a City of God, a Jerusalem which should embrace mankind. He had just for saken Judea, where God had been concealed within a hoary formal ism and misinterpreted bv hair-splitting Rabbinism; He was going forth to make the whole earth a Fatherland for the human brother hood. "He must needs go through Samaria," and He must preach His gospel there, if onlv lor the gospel's sake. It would bring out its character and intensify its vitality. Perhaps there, too, He mav find a soul to whom He mav commit His whole message, a simple and open soul — a spirit of different attitude and fiber from that of those sensuous or pedantic persons at Jerusalem who, almost perforce, had misconceived His 240 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. Kingdom. In the country, through which He journeyed, He lived with His limitless ideas. He traveled on in the freedom and vast- ness of the conception which had grown in Him out of His perfect Sonship unto the Universal Father, — the conception that God could be worshiped anywhere, and that no soul in all the world was a castaway. After some hours of walking through the cool morning, He found Himself resting by the "Well of Jacob," near the city of Sychar. He was in Samaria, the hated, and close to "the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph," and He was a Jew. He knew that the moment a Samaritan saw Him, the old controversy, bred in all uncharitableness, and fatal to true religion, would come up. It would involve the ancient question as to the proper place for wor ship, Ebal or Gerizim. In that theological discussion sincere wor ship had died. Jesus was not unaware of the history of the Samari tans and of the reason for the contempt of the Jews. Yet He was superior to it. These Samaritans were the children of the heathen, in spite of other currents in their blood. His mind went back to the Book of Kings, and He remembered the reign of Hoshea over Israel in Samaria, when Israel was outraged. His thought reverted also to the old Scriptural story which every Jewish boy knew by heart, if his home was near Samaria: "Against him came up Shal- maneser, king of Assyria; and Hoshea became his servant, and gave him presents. And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea: for he had sent messengers to So, king of Egypt, and brought no present to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year; there fore the king of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison." The carrying away of Israel by Sargon, the cruelties of the trans portation, the substitution of the heathen ancestors of these Samari tans for the deported Israelites, the ancient reproaches piously visited upon the foreigners, the idolatries of the colonists which were brought in, the stringent laws of separation which made Jew and Samaritan increasingly hostile and hateful each to the other, the building of a temple on Mount Gerizim by the spirit of rivalry in the Samaritans, the perpetual insistence upon this location as the true center of de votion, — all these had entered His Jewish heart. He was familiar with the long story of that corrupt Judaism which was adopted by THE MAN OF GALLLEE. the Samaritans and the political currents which flowed from the beloved Shechem, which was most sacredly associated with the finer moments of Hebrew valor and religious dedication. His mind was conversant with the significant words in the Pentateuch: "There fore it shall be when ye be gone over Jordan, that ye shall set up these stones, which I command you this day, in Mount Ebal, and thou shalt plaister them with plaister. And there shalt thou build an altar unto the Lord thy God, an altar of stones: thou shalt not lift up any iron tool upon them. Thou shalt build the altar of the Lord thy God of whole stones: and thou shalt offer burnt offer ings thereon unto the Lord thy God. And thou shalt offer peace offerings, and shalt eat there, and re joice before the Lord thy God." For the Samaritan had replaced the precious word Ebal by the offensive word Gerizim. It was true that more than a hundred years before, the rival temple on Mount Gerizim had been razed to the ground, and yonder lay the ruins. But Herod had re-built the old city of Samaria and called it Sebaste, and he made it magnifi cent with marbles. There also Rome had flattered the Samaritans, and Shechem, of beloved associations with Abraham and Jacob, the place where Joshua had .made the people of Israel renew their sworn vows unto Jehovah, had become the chosen spot for the dis tribution of Roman honors. From these centers and for many years Samaritans had gone forth to maim and offend the Jews. Rising at last into a bold attempt to injure and defile the Temple at Jerusa lem, at the beginning of the Passover Feast, the studied insult offered by the Samaritans unto the Jews had kindled the fanaticism of Hebrewdom into an intense and desolating heat. The Jew took his refuge in the fortress of his religion and poured upon the Samaritans JACOB'S WELL. 242 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. his accusations and contempt, excommunicating them from every blessing and making them the object of self-righteous abhorrence. At the time of Jesus' visit to Samaria, however, a slight toler ation held the ground, and Jesus was the first to remember that the rites and doctrines of the Samaritans had been first inspired by Jewish religion. But Pie was to go into the problem more deeply than He might even by what we call "the historical method in treating religious phenomena. '' CHAPTER XXVI THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA— CONTINUED IT was noon. The weary Galilean sat on the well-curb, needing to be refreshed, after having endured the fierce heat and travel of the hours immediately preceding. Hungry and so exhausted with His journey, that He could not accompany them, He had sent His disciples into the city to buy food. A woman with a water-jar was approach j0r\ ing. She m: thirst. He was never more truly "the Son of Humanity." Soon Israel and Samaria rfiet. It was to be a conflict, not between the old ideas; it was to be a conflict in which Jesus was to win a victory after the method of His own kingdom. The woman was ready to draw water. Jesus at once had recognized her as a Sama'r- 7 itan woman; she at once had recog- nixed Him as a Jew. When He said: Give Me to drink," the woman was con scious only of the fact that she was a Samaritan about to answer the request of a Jew. His was an entirely human request, — such a request as "the Son of Humanity" might make; but long centuries of feud had done their work in the mind of the woman. She said: "How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans." The well, which was a fountain or spring, struck out at a con siderable depth in the limestone, still held its cool and untroubled waters, and "Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the 243 244 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. gift of God, and Who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water." The manner and tone of Jesus had been such as to encour age conversation with one who had probably come to the fountain at that time of day, that she might further separate herself from the more respectable women of the city who had doubtless already sep arated themselves from her, and who would come, to the fountain to draw water at a time of day when the heat was less intense. Here near the stone of Shechem where the captain of Israel had made the people renew their vow lest they should "deny God," Jesus was not to deny Him but to make a revelation of His Fatherhood, even to this frivolous peasant-woman who would talk to anybody, and soon jest, if possible, with a strange Jew. Jesus had read the secret of another soul. But He was to prove Himself the Son of Humanity here, because He was the Son of God. The Father of All whom He was revealing in His Sonshfp, had a gift unto all, although Jesus found not this large realm for God's goodness, in prophecy. Jesus remembered these words of the prophet of Isaiah : ' ' For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my THE MAN OF GALILEE. 245 blessing upon thine offspring: And they shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the water courses." There was a promise also in the book of Joel to which His mind probably turned: "Be glad, then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God: for he hath given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month. . . . And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit." But Jesus would go deeper than this. He believed so much in His Father's Fatherhood that He could not limit His gifts to the Jews. He would dig so divinely into the mind of this Samaritaness, as to strike the foundations of the inner life in her. Jesus would find the divine possibilities in the human heart. His own experience with God, the Father, He would not presume to be denied to hu manity, at least in some of its aspects. His own powers would re veal the powers, which, under God, might be found in her. The woman's ignorance went on, saying: "Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?" The answer of Jesus did not reply directly to her. He knew that He had divinity ' ' to draw with, " and, though the well is ' 'very deep, " divinity will exhaust humanity, if need be. There was no other method for Him to employ, to break up the mechanical literalness of her con ceptions, except His saying: "Whosoever shall drink of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." Jesus was revealing not only divinity, but humanity. In hu manity, this "living water" would rise as high as its divine source and bring humanity back to its nativity in God. He was making His revelation to a Samaritaness of the lower class, unintelligent and without mental self-respect, or social standing even in Sychar, for His was a revelation which carried its divine light to the very basis of 246 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. FOUNTAIN IN THE SHECHEM VALLEY. human nature. If, by any means, these words of His might discover and liberate the possibilities within this woman, if His grace and graciousness could at all impart to her that which would strike out a fountain in her spirit, then, truly, the Master of the human soul had manifested forth something essentially sublime in the relations of God and man. She had heard but had not understood Him. Be tween His aj)j:>earance and His promises, what a contrast! "Ay! and that tongue of His that bade the Romans mark Him, and write His speeches in their books, Alas! it cried: 'Give me some drink,' . . Like a sick girl!' " Her sincerity was matched by her dull ness, and she said: "Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw." It was the witness of a most adamantine literalism. Jesus had failed to give her an intellectual apprehension of what was in His own mind. With utmost delicacy He had, however, made her an earnest woman, seeking she knew not what. She was so much in earnest, that, for the moment, the wall between Jew and Samaritan was broken down. But earnestness did not supply intelligence; she was not yet looking Godward out of her physical necessities, and therefore she could not apprehend "the gift of God." She was not expecting to encounter the Messiah sitting by Jacob's Well, and therefore she did not know who it was that said unto her, ' ' Give Me to drink. " She had seen so little into the meaning of Jesus that she was glad only for the prospect of something which would save her from the labor of going so far daily to draw water. Jesus was defeated in His effort to get her to apprehend Him by approaching her through merely mental processes. He would now approach her morally. He knew that hers was an arid heart, and unregulated heats had dried up its affections; therefore, He said unto her: "Go, call thy husband, and come hither." With great difficulty had their common father of earth, Jacob, THE ALAN OF GALL LEI]. 247 gone down more than a hundred feet through the hard limestone to find the well at whose curb-stone they were conversing. Jesus would now reveal the Father in heaven, common also to both of them, by means of a Sonship which at once made Him this woman's true Brother. Jesus was the Son Who had never broken His original rela tion with Gocl and He knew that God is Father and Love intrinsic ally. He felt God in Him searching for PIis child in this woman, and God must find her through Him. Other religions have used the word Father with respect to Deity; Jesus was here letting the real ity of God's Fatherhood do its work. He would now dig down through the hardness of this woman's heart so divinely, as to reveal, if possible, something true, something which by His grace may always be called divine, her true self. "He knew man." He was aware that the one fact of adamant beneath which fountains of possibility lie, is Sin. He had just now penetrated into this fact in- the soul and life of the woman, and this was their conversation: "The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband. For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou hast now is not thy husband: in that thou saidst truly. " He saw that what separated her from His and her Father was not the ethnological fact that she was a Samar itan, but the essential fact that she was a sinner. Divinity is mis sionary, and it does not blink the facts of humanity. The Son of His Father, whose sinlessness at once threw sin into ugly outline and enabled Him to see farthest into the Fatherhood of God even unto this poor creature, was as tender and patient with her, the sinner, as He was unsparing in tearing the disguises from the sin itself. He had penetrated through the hard fact of Sin. Hers was a confession as large and as important as the poor and ignorant sinner could have been expected to make. Pie had read her thoughts, as He had read those of the profounder Nathanael; but he could not reach her through thoughts alone. Only love can find a well in the rock of a loveless heart. Nathanael's confession was the confession of an able and learned man, irreproachable and alert; hers was the confession of a dull-minded and untaught sinner. Nathanael had acknowledged the "Son of God;" she had acknowledged first her abasement and guilt; but she had acknowledged it unto a brother- MOUNT GERIZIM. 248 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. man who had treated her divinely. Jesus had dug through the rock and debris of years; and He had found the fountain of her heart. She had no words in which to acknowledge that she had not under stood Him, in His talk about the well within the soul. She now felt more than she saw. The "living water'" was now beginning to spring up in the experience of her hitherto sinful human nature. We must not underestimate the significance of this woman's answer: "Lord, I perceive that thou art a prophet." Morally, she had accepted Jesus as the Revealer of the well of water in her, "springing up into eternal life, " even though intel lectually -she had not comprehended Plim. Her heart would lead her brain wisely. Jesus always appeals to the heart and thus captures the intellect. It was only the beginning of a cleansed and inspired life, but it was a beginning. She was under the rule of a new morality; it was religion, — "morality suffused by emotion." "The living water" within her was very different from any gathered drops of comfort or information held within the cisterns of morality, which were like those near-by cisterns dug out at a little depth only, in the limestone, and filled, at best, with water, not living, and often impure. "Lord, I j^erceive that thou art a j^rophet." The Samaritans did not believe that there was, or could be, a prophet after Moses, excejit the Messiah ; and this woman had thus actually acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah. He could here acknowledge the title; for He was outside of the Judaic country where they would probably load His Messiahship with their political plans, if they accepted it; and this woman had no such projects to embarrass Him. To her His Messiahship had come as He wished it to come to men. She took hold of the subject by the small end, for her mentality was small; but she held fast to that end. Because she had felt this conviction in her moral nature, she had passed from death unto life. She had THE MAN OF GALILEE. 249 not gone far, but she had entered a new realm. She believed upon Jesus, not with the intellectual acumen and larger vision of a Na thanael, but none the less she believed inspireclly, fully, and irreversi bly. Of course, the upspringing stream of living water within her met difficulties, because some of the pieces of rocky hardness through which the well had been sunk to the very center of her life, kept falling in. She was a Samaritan, and He was still a Jew. The new light in her soul compelled her to reconstruct the field of her moral vision. She had never heard anything else but that Mount Gerizim was the center of all true worship. Yonder it stood, nearly eight hundred feet high, opposed to the Mount Ebal of the Jews. As He had proved Himself greater than their father Jacob who gave the well, and drank thereof, would He now prove that some other place was more sacred than Mount Gerizim? No: for this was not a purpose in accord with the Universal Fatherhood of God. Therefore, it was not the purpose of Jesus. As Frederick W. Robertson says: "For mally the Jew was right, the Samaritan wrong; 'Jerusalem was the place where men ought to worship. ' But wrong as the Samaritan was, he was not half so wrong for praying on Mount Gerizim, as the Jew was for excommunicating him and having no dealings with him; or half so wrong as he was himself for hating the Jew. ' And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem. ' Right as was the Jew in his theology, it was nega tived by his hatred of the Samaritan. The duty of being liberal to the illiberal was forgotten. And thus worship had disappeared in dis putes about the place 'where men ought to worship.'' Jesus was the true liberal. He could be broad, because he was deep and high. He would show that all places are sacred centers, if worship be spiritual and true. Geography does not determine re ligious devotion. He was developing, according to the necessities of human nature, His method of propagating His kingdom; and lo, that method was according to the nature of the kingdom itself. The woman said: "Our fathers worshiped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." Jesus did not rail against her father's temple whose ruins covered the top of the mountain; neither did He point her to Jerusalem, which He had just abandoned because of His loyalty to His Father; but, on 250 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. TOMB OF JOSEPH, NEAR EBAL AND GERIZIM. the other hand, full of the thought of the Universal Fatherhood of God, He said to her: "Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father." "Our fathers" was her poor phrase, and they worshiped here; " The Father" was the rich phrase of Jesus, and He was telling her that the true Father of all souls can be wor shiped anywhere. It was the wonder ful utterance which evermore states the nature and future of a spiritual relig ion. Even yet, however, Jesus felt that He must honor the special con- jH trfbution 'which- the Jews made to worship, and He added: ' ' Ye worship ye know not what; we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews." Then, He felt the larger patriotism, and His higher and larger view of the whole future of human worship was outlined. Through it all, He did not lose, rather did the vision itself proceed from, His faith in the Father of all spirits whom He acknowledged as His God. He said: "But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." Mystified as she was by this talk concerning God as Father, she vet clung to the fact that this Brother of hers had told her the deepest things in her nature. Jerusalem and Gerizim had faded from her thought. Was He not the Messiah? She then ventured to say to Him: "I know that Messiah cometh, which is called Christ: when He is come, He will tell us all things." The answer of Jesus was waiting to be spoken to her advancing faith, and He said unto her, "I that speak unto thee, am He." Strengthened were the first germs of her faith which Jesus had developed by His kindly minis try. There may have been greater audiences than the audience of one poor, unlettered, and sinful woman. Jesus had deposited all true theology and the entire plan and doctrine of Christianity, not THE ALAN OF GALLLEE. 251 with a theologian, but with a single woman who had a questionable past, and who was a Samaritan. Just then the disciples came back from the village. They hardly knew whether to be most indignant at what seemed to be the woman's presumption and shamelessness, or surprised that Rabbi Jesus should be conversing publicly with a woman, which in itself was distinctly forbidden, and which conduct the more amazed them, because she was a Samaritan. They were simply silent with aston ishment. Jesus alone was self-contained- and supreme. "No man said, what seekest thou? or why speakest thou with her?" But His conversation with the woman had been interacted. ' ' The woman therefore left her water-pot," for she had within her the "living water;" and, for the first time in her life, she so remembered more glorious things that she forgot others, less glorious. Very soon she was in the city of Sychar, the first woman-evangelist, and in her own way, she, too, was bringing men unto Jesus. Her message to men had all the characteristics we saw in the message of Andrew to Simon. She used only her own experience, believing that what had convinced her would convince them. Even yet, knowing herself and being known as an ignorant woman, she wistfully sought for more light. She said, "Come, see a man who told me all things that I ever THE WOMAN'S RETURN FROM THE WELL. 252 THE MAN OF GALILEE. did; can this be the Christ?" There was such moral intensity in what she said that soon those who heard her "went out of the city, and were coming to Him." The disciples remembered that their Master was hungry and tired, and they asked Him to eat. But Jesus was satisfied. PIis soul had been feasting, while He was opening a fountain in the heart of a Samaritan woman. It had been a great hour for Jesus. He had foreseen the triumph of His Kingdom, and He said: "I have meat to eat that ye know not of." The disciples did not understand it; they were sure that no man had brought Him anything to eat, and they were troubled. Jesus, exalted with the idea that His experience with this woman had proven the resistless vitality of the appeal which He would make to all men, told them: "My meat is that I may do the will of Him that sent me and complete His work. " He had found the satisfying power of His Father's Fatherhood again, and just as He found it in the hour of the Temptation. He knew that God's Fatherhood had been ever working in His world. That work was to be completed only through His Sonship. By and by, He would say: "It is finished." Looking out upon the wheat-fields round about Him, He found the simile which He immediately used in explanation of the harvest-fields of the future. Jesus said unto them: "Say not ye, there are yet four months and then cometh harvest? Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. And He that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal; that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labor: other men labored, and ye are entered into their labors." CHAPTER XXVII FROM SAMARIA TO CANA AND NAZARETH. LIFE is a field ever ready for the sickle. From the white acres of that Samaritan harvest-field Jesus had reaped a sheaf of precious grain. He had also sown seed in its Gentile soil which by and by was to produce a still larger harvest. The woman of Sychar already had her part in the joy of the harvester, for crowds flocked to Jesus under her leadership, and a new era was begun in the religious life of the race. At their urgent entreaty, Jesus abode with the Samari tans two days, and these days witnessed not only her power to de clare the gospel, but His power to make it a living reality in the hearts of others beside the woman whom He recognized as the children of God, His Father, even though His fellow-Jews regarded them as alien and des picable. Cheered with the large hope grow ing out of this re cent experience with the human soul, be lieving now that His own Israel would offer a still more generous welcome unto His message, He went on north ward toward Gali- 253 WHEATFIELDS. 254 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. lee. The wealthy city Sebaste, which Herod had" created, did not attract Him with its new structures of magnificence, neither did His success in the land of the alien diminish the patriotic fervor with which His heart led Him on to His own people. His thoughts were upon Nazareth. He knew enough of the history of genius to reflect that ' ' a prophet is not without honor save in his own country," — Matt, xiii, 57, — and so at this early moment in His career as a public teacher of what would seem a new religion, He declined to go to Nazareth. Yonder, just beyond the fields of ripe grain and the grassy hillocks, was Cana, where He had revealed to Himself and to others something of the significance of His life and the method of His power. There the water had be come wine, at His command. All the way along His course through Galilee, He had received with satisfaction and joy a cordial welcome from the Galileans, many of whom had been present at the Passover Feast in Jerusalem and beheld His dauntless zeal in purifying the Temple. They had also been impressed with the miracles which He wrought in the neighborhood of the Holy City, and the rumors of His greatness had been made so current by the pilgrims returned from Jerusalem that His popularity which they saw in Jerusalem was matched by His popularity in Galilee. Nathanael was a resident of Cana, and most probably his home became the home of Jesus during His short stay. The hour had come when Jesus could redeem His promise to Nathanael: "Thou shalt see greater things than these." — John 1, 50. In the truest and most spiritual sense, Nathanael was to ' ' see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." — John i, 51. So widespread was the report of the power and kindness of the new Rabbi prophet, that it had reached the seats of the mighty. One of the officers of Herod himself, occupying an important position which brought him close to the sovereign, had a sick son whose disease brought him near to death. With all the interest centering in an only boy, he broke over the restraints of prejudice and carried the case of his child to the Rabbi of Galilee. Human need and divine goodness were breaking down immemorial walls everywhere, and now not only was there to be an obliteration of the wall which had always stood between a court officer and a THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 255 RUINS OF THE SYNAGOGUE AT CAPERNAUM. man in the station of Je ¦ sus, but there was to be such an enlarge ment in the soul of the nobleman of the court of Plerod Anti- s that his con- ion, which limited ers of Jesus as a bod}-, was to break away and disappear into a larger faith and a spiritually adequate idea. Jesus never lost sight of His disciples, and the culture which they needed, while He was helping them. It is almost impossible not to think that Jesus was trying to lead Nathanael into a deeper understanding of Him while He rendered a great service to the of ficer who had come from Capernaum to Cana on a pathetic errand. The first effort of Jesus was toward such spiritual preparation of them all as would enable everyone concerned in what He was to do, to receive the greatest possible blessing. He understood the situation and He said somewhat sternly. "Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe." — John iv, 48. The officer was intent upon one thing only, and he said, — half confessing a mastery he could not name, — "Sir, come down ere my child die." — John iv, 49. It was the haste of love. Jesus met it with a diviner rapidity. Electric were the words of the Master: "Go thy way; thy son liveth." — fohu iv, 51. Jesus had lifted the whole event beyond the region of the limitations of the nobleman's expectancy. His power began to show that it was in the present tense, because it was eternal. ' ' Greater things than these, " was Nathanael seeing. The response of the officer was faith, — "The man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way." — John iv, 50. He had expected Jesus to go down with him to his sorrowful and anxious 256 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. home. It was necessary for Nathanael and the officer to know that the five and twenty miles which lay between Cana and Capernaum offered no difficulty to the highest spiritual power. It is probable that so strong was the belief of the courtier that the phrase, "he went on his way," does not signify that he hastened to his home, but it means that he went about as a Jew usually would, in the evening at Cana, and lodged there until the next day, when he started home. On the way homeward, his glad servants met him with what could not have been news to his faith, though they said: "Thy son liveth, " and he found out from them that at the very hour, — "yesterday at the seventh hour," — John iv, 52, — when Jesus spoke the startling and gracious word, the disease re coiled, and the boy "began to amend." — John iv, 52. The belief of the officer was contagious, for the whole house rose with him first to a belief in the words of Jesus, and then from a belief in what Jesus said and in what Jesus did, to a serene and hajipy faith in the Christ Himself. It was not a theological creed; it was a loving confidence. Many have gone so far as to claim that this high officer was none other than Chuza, the chamberlain of Herod Antipas. Surely, if such is the truth, we must not marvel that afterward Joanna, his wife, gratefully ministered unto Jesus of her substance. Now Jesus must go to Nazareth. He had been preaching in Galilee, and many of the disciples of John the Baptist heard the quieter and more resourceful Preacher uttering the same great words which their teacher spake still echoing through their souls: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. " — Matt. Hi, 2. Into the syna gogues of Galilee Jesus had often gone, and not only had He par ticipated in their worship, but He had become a conspicuous teacher, and was "glorified of all." Here at Nazareth, however, He was to meet another and quite different experience. His home-town was not to be taken by the storm of approval from other districts. It was the Sabbath day, and from all quarters the men and women who had known Him as a little child with a perplexing history, His play mates who had grown to manhood and womanhood, and who yet thought of Him as a boy with unexplainable characteristics, young men and maidens whose fathers and mothers had vainly tried to fit Him and His puzzling words and acts into their thoughts and desires, THE MAN OF GALILEE. 257 streamed to the synagogue where Pie was accustomed to go. They were more than ordinarily interested in Him because He had become famous. There was doubtless much talk on that Sabbath da}', as the congregation assembled, that reflected the narrow and some what over-strained faith which even the best of them desired to have in the son of Joseph. This one, by a shrug of the shoulders, and that one bv a suggestive eye-glance, the other by an uplifted hand and tightly closed lips, still another by a sneer, intimated the gen eral lack of confidence which met the wave of popularity bearing Plim to His home-town, as a sharp and immovable rock meets the first approaches of an incoming tide. Yonder were the women in the gal lery, and they had often pitied Mary, because she, too, had been foolish enough to accept this unaccountable public approval of her Son. There were the elders at the other end of the room, and they had often talked over the sorrows of Joseph, which began even be fore his marriage with Mary. Leaning for a moment against one of the colonnades, one of the more honored of the citizens yielded to Jesus only a wise and reproachful look as He entered, and then he silently took his place among the rulers of the synagogue. One thing they could not question — the constancy of His attendance on religious duties. Even the Son of God had not disdained to use the customary with an uncustomary faithfulness and power. The syna gogue itself and the path unto it were full of memories. A less divinely poised soul would have been the victim either of some mis giving as to His place and mission, or some desire to rise above the influence of familiar and once loved persons and scenes. These children of men were children of God and He must be so true to them and to Himself as to diminish nothing valuable. Everyone waited, for all knew He was expected to read and perhaps to speak. On the reading-desk which stood in the middle of the room, upon the Bima, the holy book of commandments would soon be placed, and the reader of the Law would stand up with the interpreter by his side. Jesus would probably recognize them as those who had taught Him aforetime. Jesus was a Rabbi, and no one could contest the special privileges He therefore might use. Faith ful, as has been said, in every attitude of devotion in the long series of rules prescribed, He had been a Son of Humanity and had not 258 THE MAN OF GALILEE. felt that there was oj^position in Him, between His lowliest duty and His loftiest prerogative as a Son of God. He had not yet so put Himself in antagonism to the authorities of the synagogue that He was prevented from apjDearing on that day, by the request of the constituted authority, to read a j:>ortion from the prophetical writings. He alone knew what fire these rolls held slumbering in their lines and that He alone might liberate the deathless flame. We do not know what else He did, what prayer of Israel He used, or what petitions of His own heart He offered unto God, or who acted as interpreter. We only know that when the roll of the prophet Isaiah was brought from the Ark which stood at the south end, and was handed to Jesus by the minister, He unrolled it until He found the place where it was written: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. " — Luke iv, 17-20. Rolling up the book and giving it to the minister, who proceeded to deposit it in the fragrant and decorated chest from which it had been taken, Jesus sat down, and the worshipers in the synagogue fastened their eyes upon Him. Something of the nobility and pro phetic power of His own personality had gone into the reading of the had He made them to mean? moment the elders who labitually spoken questionably of His parent age and the honored men who had re marked unpleas antly concerning His conduct, were silent, as they felt RUINS OF JOSEPH'S HOUSE, NAZARETH. the Solemn words. What For the had THE MAN OF GALILEE. 259 harmonies of the great words enter their souls. Never had ancient prophecy seemed so resistlessly eloquent, and they gazed fixedly upon the young Rabbi, who sat there in His white tunic, with the blue fringes of the outer garment hanging over PIis arm; He was begin ning to speak. At the first utterance, their earnestness increased, and the effect was thrilling, for He said: "This day is this Scrip ture fulfilled in your ears." — Luke iv, 21. The gracious words which proceeded from Him awed and persuaded them till they were amazed. They were listening to the music of redemption, — but had they heard aright? An audacious sentence seemed blasjohemy. Did He really mean to say that all these hoj)es of the coming Messiah, which pointed toward a day of political triumph, truly centered and were now fulfilled in Himself? "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears," — what could He be signifying? Israel's return from Babylon ian captivity and the jubilee to which their expectation looked, were in their thoughts; and did this young Rabbi dare for an instant to focalize its splendor in Himself? Then someone, once attracted to the power and beauty of His utterances, but now all but stolid with astonishment, ventured the question: "Is not this Joseph's son?" — Luke iv, 22. But it was no moment for such a question to be received kindly. Joseph had been only the town-carpenter. The family and the memory of Joseph had suffered enough from this erratic son. Even His general fame left the good name of Joseph in a cloud. It was even then a question if His brothers and sisters, who were quiet and orderly people in Nazareth, believed in Him. Jesus saw the condition of their minds toward Plim. His great idea did not fail Him. He was indeed Joseph's son, but primarily He was the Son of God. They had impugned His right to teach, and now He saw the ugly sneer upon the faces of the congregation. Everyone seemed to be saying: "We know you perfectly well. Others who do not know you as your fellow-townsmen do, may be fooled; we cannot be. If there is any basis for your sudden fame, and if there is anything in these stories which come from Capernaum and Jerusalem, we would see some other kind of proof of your claims besides the absurd suggestion that the Scripture is fulfilled in you. " Jesus instantly translated the contempt which He saw quivering on their lips; and He said unto them: "Ye will surely say unto me this 260 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country. And he said, Verily, I say unto you, no prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, when great famine was through all the land; but unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the ,n , time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian." — Luke iv, 23-28. % Before He had finished, the congregation had risen in wrath ful tumult. When His last word was spoken, the silk curtain of the movable chest which con tained the sacred rolls and of the Law and the Prophets, was f trembling with the storm which had broken forth in the synagogue. He had rightly measured their big otry and hate, and the jealous anger of their hearts was poured forth in a malignant stream which carried Him out of the synagogue, swept Him through the narrow and noisy street, lifted Him to the top of the hill, from which height, in childhood, He had often looked far toward the Sarmaria which they abhorred and in which He had just peacefully planted His gospel; and the current of their rage paused only to hurl Him down, headlong, from the rocky steep. There, some unseen power held them back: Jesus had not yet revealed the Divine Father fully. He must go to a Calvary to die. The majesty and beauty of Scripture were never more truly exemplified than in the words which state the outcome of this tumult: "But he, passing through the midst of them, went his way, and came down to Caper naum, a city of Galilee, and taught them on the Sabbath days." — READING THE LAW. Luke iv, 50, 3i- THE MAN OF GALILEE. 261 Jesus was advancing in His discovery of Himself. Not more certainly in PIis triumph, than in PIis defeat, was He finding Himself to be "the Lamb of God that beareth the sin of the world." — John i, 29. The malignity of the human heart, orphaned by sin, an alien from God its Father, rose up against this true and perfect Son, who was revealing the Universal Fatherhood of God to men. Nothing but a Nazareth could have helped at that moment to put ujoon the shoulders of Love the weight of intolerant and blind love- lessness. To be the Son of Humanity, rather than the son of the Jew, "the Son of David," was to encounter the intense provincialism of the little town in which the geography of earth was everything, and the geography of the soul, nothing. Unquestionably Jesus had seen evidences of opposition in Nazareth, before this time. It was indeed hardly to be expected that the small town would endure to have other peojole make a young man of doubtful parentage famous; still less could Jesus visit their sensitive bigotry with the splendor of His message. It seemed now to be all over, so far as His ability to help Naz areth, or even to live in Nazareth, was concerned. Perhaps, just at the moment when some furious man grasped Him on the verge of the precipice and pushed Him forward, to throw Him headlong below, some memory of PIis sinless youth, or some recollection of His unfailing kindness, captivated him and pervaded the angry crowd, so that the turbulent mob became as silent as He had been years before in the little synagogue. Possibly pity for Jesus as a madman of unquestionable virtue and beautiful character crept into their hearts, as the whole crowd stopped and looked down upon the white houses of Nazareth, or far away over the smiling plains of Esdraelon, unable to find out what to do with the problem. Jesus was to make this world a different world for such as they thought Him to be. Something still whispered in His heart, whether it was the human love which bound Him to some of the friends of His boyhood, or the tender associations which grew and twined with the vines about his mother's door-way, and that something would follow Him, until, at a later period in His career, He would go back, full of pity, love, and blessing, to Nazareth. Certain it is that Jesus had now uttered the characteristic mes- 262 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. sage of His ministry in Galilee. In fulfilling the whole Scripture, He was to re-state and enlarge this which was its heart-throb. The impulse of the Eternal Love was to be known, first of all, in His preaching the good tidings to the poor. Jesus saw His time in the light of eternity, man in the light of God. It was fast becoming a world fit only for the rich and the learned to live in comfortably. Such a world could not be His Father's world. His true Son must make it a world of gladness and beauty for the unfavored and the des ponding; He would reveal the Universal Fatherhood only through a Sonship which took the form of Brotherhood unto all men. Jewish exclusiveness had bred despair, and human nature was at a discount; His inclusiveness had already bred hope, and human nature was at a premium. The revelation of the truth of the Divine Fatherhood, would take out of the sky the Figure of an Absolute Despot, and rejilace it with the vision of the Universal Father. This would put a heart into the universe; and that would create the true democracy of earth. He had actually opened the heavens, and they were to be left open. The awful darkness about God was riven; the poor looked up through His brotherhood unto them, and saw God as pitying, sympathizing, helpful Father. This vision was sure to revolutionize human governments, and re-create the earth according to the Law of Love which is the Law of God. So Jesus was discovering His true Messiahshfp, in His experiences with both man and God. And His revolution was to be more than this. The blind were to see, and the captives were to be released. So long had human nature been imprisoned in gloom that the eye-sight of the soul was lost, and He_ was to make it possible for man to realize the promise contained in the phrase, "the opening of the eyes to them that are bound." Love is Light, and Light is Liberty. He was to be the Light of the World because He was the revelation of Universal Love, and His Law of Love would be the world's charter of freedom. CHAPTER XXVIII THE CALLING OF THE FOUR DISCIPLES NAZARETH had rejected Jesus. Again we are with Him in Capernaum. Pie came to the Galilean city, after the experiences of that one Sabbath in Nazareth, more sure than ever of PIis message as the Christ of God, more certain than ever of the true method of His Messiahship. The pitiless treatment which He had received at Nazareth had not despoiled Him of His sublime faith in the capacity of human nature to be fathered by God. Pie felt this faith growing in Him through the experiences at Nazareth, not because of any harsh behavior toward Him, but because of the power of His own Sonship to endure it. Not what God had missed doing in them, CHRIST PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE, 2&3 264 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. orphaned by sin, but what God was doing in Him, sinless and loyal, made Him. realize how strong and ultimately resistless was the stream of Universal Fatherhood. Capernaum was the capital from which He was to go out to the towns which dotted the shore of the Galilean lake, and through them all He began to preach the gospel of the Divine Fatherhood. One household at least would furnish Him with a home in Caper naum. This was the house of the nobleman and courtier of Herod Anthpas. One youth would hasten to take off His sandals and wash His feet, when He came in from a village on the lake-side, dust- covered and tired. This would be the officer's son, whom He had given back to his family and his home when He said to the father at Cana: "Go thy way; thy son liveth. " — John iv, 50. Very soon John and James, Andrew and Peter, Philip of Bethsaida also, would come and go under their white sails over the blue waters of Gen nesaret, to see Him and to take Him to and fro, for they lived not far away, and news spread rapidly concerning Him in the little fishing villages. Thus far they had continued at their usual tasks and had probably been at their own homes while He was in Nazareth. It was His to bear the reproach of rejection at His home-town alone. They fished all along the lake shore, and must have heard with joy the growing fame of Jesus repeating itself from heart to heart. Men who had been at Jerusalem lately, and persons of all ages and classes, kept adding to His reputation, for they either heard little or cared little about what Nazareth said. One morning Simon and Andrew had anchored their boat near the boat of James and John, and all these, with an old man named Zebedee, who was the father of James and John, were washing and mending their nets. Their servants were busy with them. It was about the middle of August, and the blue sky reflected itself in the waters whose ripples vanished quietly upon the shingles of the shore. White clouds from above journeyed noiselessly with the white sails on the lake's mirror-like surface. These men were preparing to go out in the evening to pursue their usual avocation. Soon their talk with each other and with the hired servants, who were helping to clean the boats and repair the nets, was broken in upon by the arrival of their beloved friend and Rabbi, Jesus. He was followed THE MAN OF GALILEE. 265 by many people, who were eager to hear His message of love and hope. It was a strange meeting of the commonplace and the sublime, — the tired and ill-smelling fishermen and the Son of the Highest. But these fishermen were doing their duty, and Jesus was and is best understood by souls faithful to the ordinary duties of life. There was hardly time for expressing their joy at seeing their friend and teacher, or for tittering their glad amazement at the crowd which followed Him, before Jesus stepj^ed into Simon's boat, and asked him to push out a little from the shore, so that He might speak to the people. Very soon the greatest of preachers had made this the greatest of pulpits. He delivered no oration, but He sat and taught them with His own divine gentleness and power. No morning's sun ever looked upon a more beautiful sight than that lake of blue, which stretched behind Him, and changed its color, as its ripples touched the shore, into pale green; the little boat easy upon the calm waters; the fair young figure clothed in white, save for the brown stripes and the blue fringe upon one of His garments; the eager and motley crowd, clad in as many colors as there were thoughts in their minds; behind them the dim green trees, through which the sunlight drifted and the soft morning air made melody; and the Spirit of God over all. It was not a long sermon, and Jesus was soon to prove that He meant that His friends should lose nothing, as fishermen, from the fact that they had served Him kindly. As the crowd broke up, some going to their homes separately, and many others clustering in little knots upon the shore to converse about the Rabbi Jesus and His sayings, He asked Simon to push away out where the water was deeper, and then to let down his nets for a draught. Simon was a discouraged fisherman. All the night before they had been out, and had come in with empty nets. As extraordinary as was the fact that they had taken nothing the night before, in the Lake of Galilee, where fish had always been exceedingly abundant, was the fact that now, so early in the morning, Jesus proposed this venture. The people on shore would smile at the unwisdom of the undertaking. Jesus was not a fisherman, and only an amiable in lander would suggest lowering the nets for a draught. Simon, how ever, had used his long opportunity to think much of what Jesus had 266 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. CHRIST AMD THE FISHERMEN. spoken to his impulsive soul when He led him toward a new destiny, a few days before; and he had heard much more of what had come to those who had acted upon His suggestions. He had already gone with his fellows and Jesus out into the deep. He was a man of action, so down went the net, its great circle disappearing in the blue waters. Simon had taken a mighty stejo toward becoming Peter. The Simon solution was to crystallize, to become Rock; for he had obeyed Jesus. Calm and, true, Andrew had helped him, but Simon Peter needed more help now. James and John, who were still on shore, saw Simon beckoning, and, hastening to him and Andrew, they labored with them to secure the fish that more than filled the nets, and were escaping where the nets had broken. Both ships were filled so that they began to sink, and Simon, who, at that moment, had enough of Peter THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 267 in him to be called ••Simon-Peter" bv the evangelist, was so im pressed by the turn of things that he "fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord." — Luke v, 8. Great was the wonder of all; but greater far in every quality was that word which Simon had just spoken to his Master. Pie had seen a marvelous event, and he had seen through it. He had caught a vision of the moral supremacy ot Jesus Christ. He had experienced a glimpse of the "Lamb of God that taketh awav the sins of the world." fohn 1, 20. "I am a sinful man" — rather than "a sur prised fisherman" — he said. It may have been that Jesus had de tected a shoal of fish off in this direction, and that there was no miracle, as we use the word, in the taking of such a multitude. The real miracle was in the heart of Simon, who, however, believed that Christ had wrought a wonder in the world of physical phenomena. That wonder did not blind him. It was surpassed bv the diviner thing Jesus had done, in bringing up from the depths of Simon's soul such a large and important spiritual result. Luke's account of this event sets forth in vivid outline the sig nificant "thou" through which Jesus was then working, in His trans formation of Simon into Peter. Matthew and Mark tell us that He addressed them, saving to all the disciples: "Follow me, and I will make you- to become fishers of men." — Mark i, 17. Luke's words are: "And Jesus said unto Simon, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt take men." — Luke v, 10. It is Luke alone who relates the important circumstance of Simon's confession of Christ's power and his own unworthiness. It is therefore in Luke's story that we find an answer to the question why Simon should be, not only a fisher, but a taker of men. This disciple was doubtless speaking the feel ing of the rest. Jesus' conversation with him in the boat had led Simon to a decision which helped to constitute him a taker of men. It doubtless did as much, in another way, for Andrew, his brother. When Simon obeved and let down the net, he had entered into the school of Christ and made vast theological progress. He had done exactly what Mary, the mother, advised others to do, if they would understand Jesus: " JTVialever He tells you to do, do it." He was the Life, and, therefore, the Light of men, as John said. Simon was to obtain theological light by religious life. The culture had 268 THE MAN OF GALILEE. begun, else such a manifestation of vital faith had been impossible. The mind of Simon would have oscillated for a longer time between what was the teaching of an experience at the favorable hour of night without Christ, and the teaching of a trembling faith at the unfavor able hour of morning with Christ, if there had not already come into Simon a vague but sweet persuasion of the kingship of Jesus. "Master," he said. That word witnesses that the citadel of Simon's self-imj^ortance had trembled before the dear authority of Jesus. "Master!" — he had never said that disciple's word before; and as he uttered it, he proved himself less the Simon and more the Peter. "Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing; nevertheless at Thy word I will let down the net." — Luke, v, 5. When a soul is in that attitude toward Jesus, however He may pre sent Himself, there is within it the possibility of almost infinite ex pansion and of immeasureable enrichment. But it is a critical mo ment for any Simon; it involves the whole future, when, by any means, he is called ujoon to decide whether. he shall believe his past or his future, his certainty of recent defeat or his possibility of com ing triumph. Every man realizes the transforming Lordship of Jesus at the point where he has decided that, in some sublime or ignoble action, he shall trust not his fears but his hopes; that he will not dwell on the beaches of life, mending an empty net which he alone directed into the sea, but rather, at the suggestion of the highest goodness he knows, push out into the mystery and let down his net into the depth thereof. To him who decides for the former course there are voices of conscience, voices of history, voices of God, which say: "Henceforth thou shale take fish." To him who decides for the latter course, heroic, spiritual, divinely grand, as it is, these same voices say: "Henceforth thou shalt take men." — Luke v, 10. When the net broke with fish, and the partners came and helped to fill both boats with glittering spoil, in the moment of a triumph which might have dazzled others, Simon cried out: "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord." — Luke v, 8. James and John had probably sailed shoreward. He and Andrew were alone with Jesus. But Simon alone was receiving the full revelation. It is a sign of greatness when a man knows whose his success is. Simon's eye showed its fineness and the possible penetrativeness to which it THE MAN OF GALILEE. 269 might attain, when he discerned that this masterful triumph was Christ's, not his own. On the other hand, nothing so testifies to our ever-blundering dullness of spiritual eyesight as the constancy with which we assume our best successes to be personal and private victories. All consciousness of powerlessness in the presence of poyver, such as this, is therefore healthful and promising. Daniel had it when he lay by the river Hiddekel, and beheld the vision from which all fled away; and he was most immovably established as a fiery torch whose blaze should send its powerful light through the darkness of the court, the deep gloom of disgrace ful idolatry and the vague cloudy future, when he stood trembling before God. Job had it, when, after the long contest with a bad theology and the spirit of evil, he heard "a deeper voice across the storm ; " and he was never so able to beckon on the sorrowing and doubting sons of man as after he cried out: "Now mine eye seeth Thee: wherefore, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes." This consciousness belongs to all the monarchs among men. Their associates in history are the Simons who have never realized their weakness, until they stood in the presence of genuine power. All pretense of merely ^* personal strength is ignorance. "Depart from iC*/ me." — Luke v, 8. But there was never a moment when mA «&*. Simon so much needed Jesus. What FEAR NOT," SAID JESUS. 270 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. did he mean? He was in the very atmosphere of new forces which he vaguely felt were silently stealing in upon him and becoming his own. As he sat with the Master of men and things and saw the boat loads of fish, he felt what a dreadfully sublime world he had come into, as if awakening from a dream. He realized something of the native sovereignty of these hitherto unheard-of powers, and he foresaw some thing of their amazing dominion. He had genuine reverence for them. His honest soul was impressed with their sacredness. He thought: "O, I am not the sort of man to touch these celestial potencies; mine are not the hands to manipulate these heavenly energies." Al ready he heard Christ calling him. Deep was answering deep. Simon needed not to wait for His words. He was sure that he was unworthy, that these possibilities which had just been disclosed were too precious for his contact with them; they meant too much for such as he to deal with them. "Do not let me extract their glory! Do not let such a man as I am get in front of their advance! Keep them from my powerlessness, O Master!" he thought; and so he said: "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man!" — Luke v, 8. It was the utterance of a generous, noble, but inconsiderate man. The great Worker with souls never departs, when such an honest though blundering soul trembles in His presence. ' ' Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, 0 Lord!" — Luke v, 8. That was a mighty step. He had now gotten hold of the Lordship of Jesus. It was the first time any disciple had spoken the word Lord, in this man ner, and it marked an era. True, Nathanael, as we have seen, said what Simon was a long while saying: " Thou art the Son of God." — John i, 49. But the difference between the characters and the careers of Simon and Nathanael was set forth in the way each took hold of the truth of Jesus as the Son of God. Some men, Nathan- ael-like, get an intellectual apprehension of the imperial truth at once, but it does not make them Peters. They can handle it without a glow of apostolic fervor being excited in their souls. One obtains from them just what one obtains from Nathanael, — a wonder that, with such a truth, he was not more of a man. One has to believe that he and Bartholomew are the same, even to write up a biograj^hy of him. It was a far more promising thing in Simon, that, with a heart full of feeling and a soul whose self-conceit was shattered, he should THE MAN OF GAL/LEE. 271 call Jesus "Lord." This was the route by which Simon was, some day, to find out that lie was the Son of God. Many a soul ma}' have an intellectual vision of the Godhead of Jesus, but decline to call Plim lord in a decisive act. It is too personal; it means actual and present rulership. None may justly sujppose that Simon's expe rience was less thorough than this. Pie was going to get hold of the less personal fact that Jesus was "the Son of God," in due time, through seizing, with all his soul's power, the undeniable, present, personal Lordship of which he was so conscious. In that moment, he passed into the command of the Captain of his salvation. It is alwavs when Jesus is both Messiah to us and Lord over us, that we are ready to do great things. "Fear not," said Jesus unto Simon, as Simon's frame shook with a sense of his unworthiness. One of the most evident efforts which God makes for man is to deliver him from this not ignoble fear. Even the most healthful fear must be swallowed up in love. There is no fear so difficult to blame with harsh words as the fear of a man who dreads the addition of moral power. It comes, like God, as a consuming fire. We are afraid to be strong. No doubt Simon had inherited much of the old Jewish idea as to the peril of beholding God. Pie had seen the flash of the divine in Jesus, and he quivered as he remembered that none might see the face of God and live. He perhaps heard the children of Israel again saying: "Let not God speak with us, lest we die, " and an ancient inherited fear held him. But Simon was in the very presence of Love, and Love is God. Again had the Divine Fatherhood spoken to a son through the broth erhood of Jesus. "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men," — Matt, iv, 19, — said Jesus to the disciples. In the completeness of what He purposed doing in and for Simon, we get a glimpse in the words: "Thou shalt catch (take alive) men." The process of separating the dross from the gold may be searching, but the soul of it is the separator's val uation of the gold. "Fear not anything," Pie seems to say, "for My plan for you will keep you. " We are always safest when we are in the hands of God, and are being transformed; and only as Pie transforms a man is this new revelation or power a thing not to be afraid of. Simon's boat was pushed ashore. He looked back at it 272 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. and his fishing-tackle, as he thought, for the last time. Every voice of history, growing more eloquent as the years multiply, says to us in. solemn cadence: "And when they brought their ships to land, they forsook all and followed Him." — Luke v, n. Does the reader say: "They had not much to forsake, for the two boats, the worn nets, the fishermen's hard lot, the uninteresting relatives and friends, did not make up much of an all for anybody to forsake?" We must not make our estimate by what we forsake, but that for which we forsake it. It was not much, but it was their all. Until we have forsaken our all, let us not say it was easy for them. The cross had not yet come to be an ornament of jewelry. It is respectable to be associated with what we call Christ to-day, — so much so that the church is likely to have no room for growing a man like Simon Peter. It then meant obloquy, hate, contempt, — finally, with Simon, it meant death, to follow Jesus. Yet they forsook all and followed Him. They had left all, — left it for a vague, struggling hope led by a Jewish peasant who had no charm but His truth, no philosophy but His love, and no lesson which did not involve sacrifice. No man of them, however, left himself and his experience as a fisherman and the training which they gave him for catching men with the great net of gospel truth. Christ has use for every man's past. The fish ing business of the two was never such a paying business, as when each one of them took up all his scraps of knowledge about the habits and haunts of fish, and applied them to finding the habits and haunts of men; or when he remembered his method of net-making and net- mending, and so arranged those truths he had learned of Jesus as to captivate men's souls, or when the recollection of the blue lake came back and he applied his knowledge of it to the better understanding of the sea of human life, as he fished for men. We are never so sure of all that is valuable behind us and of all that is glorious in front of us, as when we forsake all and follow Jesus. The fact that He specially called James and John, the sons of Zebedee, in no wise contravenes this account. Matthew says: "And going on from thence, He saw other two brethren, James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, in a ship with Zebedee, their father, mending their nets, and He called them. And they immediately left the ship and their father, and followed Him." — Matt, iv, 21-22. CPIAPTER XXIX JESUS IN THE SYNAGOGUE AND HOME THE true biography of Jesus was written in the lives of men. WTe find His light as it shines in their faces. The events in His career most likely to show Plim forth occurred in the heart of the man Simon, rather than in the external world. Others may dwell upon the topography; let us study spiritual biography. Sabbath morning was always lit up with the very glory of God, to the Jewish soul. It bore the Israelite backward and forward, and made him conscious that he was standing between a resplendent past and a brighter future. To Simon and his companions there never had been such a Sabbath morning as the one which swept swiftly on, after the}' had been called to be disciples. Jesus had entered into their life as its sun; and lo, the world was transformed. Christianity is a new truth, and we know how ideas transfigure and / ' transform the uni- . . " <*!*£ verse for men. Countless, there fore, were the meanings which started forth from the world around them on that Sabbath morning, as along upon its rays there came overturned lintel of a synagogue. 18 27.5 274 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. the new Christ-conception which had begun to seize their souls. Christianity is a new love; and we know how love renews the planet which. we live upon. Always the lover sings: "It seems that I am happy, that to me A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass, A purer sapphire melts into the sea." Sweet and rich must have been the visions of their souls, when, with this fresh love of Jesus, who was the more mysterious because the more near, the disciples saw through that Sabbath morning the old world made new. They must have wondered, as they stepped out of the home of Simon and walked toward the synagogue where Jesus was to teach, what other and strange event was to associate itself with this holy day and their Master. It was a new, beautiful, though not a more understandable world into which they were now going with Jesus. This was to be an epoch-making Sabbath in their life and thought. At the hour of worshhp in the synagogue, Jesus spoke with such moral grandeur and spiritual force, that it was remarked that His authority was not like that of the Scribes, and "they were aston ished at His doctrine." — Matt, vii, 28. Doctrine, however, was not to be all. The synagogue that morning had its worshnp concluded in a most unforeseen and dramatic manner. Men seized with fearful par oxysms, — "possessed with a devil," to use the ordinary phrase of an age of superstition, — were not uncommon sights, even in times of pub lic worship; and so, the fact that, after Jesus had concluded speak ing, a poor creature shrieked in frenzy and suffered with terrible con vulsions, was not marvelous. This, however, appeared to be some thing more than a case of ordinary demoniacal possession. The agony was not all. Evil seemed to have possessed the unfortunate, and the power which dwelt in Him recognized the presence of Christ. There was a cry from the breast of the unfortunate: "Let us alone. What have we to do with Thee, Thou Jesus of Nazareth? Art Thou come to destroy us? I know Thee who Thou art, the Holy One of God." Taking up the idea we have hitherto entertained as to the method of Jesus in developing the Peter within Simon, by first developing Simon's sense of Jesus' perfect Sonship unto God, this THE MAN OF GALILEE. 275 must be recognized as a great step in the process. Simon saw that the hosts ot evil knew Jesus; the devils of hell saw in Him their foe. "Let us alone," one had cried. "Art Thou come to destroy us?1' asked the demon. Much more, Simon saw that the comj^lete triumph of Jesus was acknowledged, before He lifted to strike. " I know Thee, who Thou art," cried the evil one, "the Holy One of God." Simon Peter was just then beholding what students of history in each succeeding age have seen, that the infinite goodness of Christ compels evil to acknowledge its imperial presence. His presence in the world makes woe and wrong appear anomalous and contrary to the universal pur pose of good. Wherever a genuine goodness appears, the powers of evil grow restless. The real Christ even yet makes the demons in a community object and rave. Evil knows its foe and destroyer. The disciples felt strangely the majesty of Jesus which irradiated that hour. There was the poor human being, tossed about with agonies, — his teeth chattering with the confessions of hell. It was the moment for the manifestation of the supremacy of Jesus over a realm other than He had touched before, at least in their presence. "Hold thy peace," said Jesus, "and come out of him." The Christ did not stop to receive the testimony of the infernal one. He did not wait to accept the witness of evil. A surer, nobler evidence that He was the Son of God would more certainly enter the soul of Simon and his companions than all the devils could give. It was the mere}' that crowned the event. Torn and bleeding, the delivered sufferer lay at Christ's feet, with the hellish occupant turned out of him, and with every voice uttering its wonder at the authority of Jesus. By its side, the authority of the Scribes vanished. It was after this experience at the house of God that Jesus went back to the house of Simon Peter. There was not a great differ ence between the religious atmosphere of Simon's home and that of the synagogue. The Christ ought to be able to come home with men and find things to His liking. There ought not to be a difference of atmosphere, because the problems of home and church are at root one. The Christ was and is needed in both places. At the synagogue yon der, it was the demon-possessed man who needed a Christ; when Simon's door opened, it was our poor humanity again, — a stricken 276 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. woman. It is Luke, the physician-painter, who tells us precisely that she was ailing with fever, just as he tells us that the leper was full of "leprosy." To him we owe many an otherwise lost tint or line from the picture. It was "Simons zvife's mother" who was sick. Had Simon ventured to ask anybody home with him when there was sickness in the house? Yes; for he knew that Jesus would not be in the way; He would not unduly excite the sensitive patient; Jesus would make Him self fit easily into that closest corner of life. The sick-room is one of Christ's royal residences; and when the King moves His Kingdom into the home of disease, sickness and death must forsake it. If all the music of the human heart, which has come forth, adoringly to the Christ, were deprived of the sweet tones and pathetic chords, the tender melodies and triumphant hallelujahs which have swept upward to heaven from rooms of sickness and beds of pain, it would be too shrill and harsh, too tearless and heartless, for the skies. The history of redemption cannot be written without those pages which describe the kingly glory of this sympathetic Friend whom Simon brought home with him that day. It was bringing the gospel of the Son of God very close to Simon's generous heart, when Jesus rebuked the fever, and the house hold was entirely well. A gospel which does not suffer in its passing from the place of public worship, with its demoniac, to the home, with its sick mother, is something a little less ecclesiastical than customary orthodoxy or shallow liberalism. The low, marshy country around about Capernaum was not more certain to induce malaria, than are the low ideals of life, near whose bogs and sluggish streams we live. But Jesus comes, manifesting in Himself a true conception of gener osity, of justice, of truth. He brings into the very citadel of our malarious, feverish life, the strong healthfulness of His own perfect manhood. More than this, He put God's power into the solution of the problem. By the grace of God in Christ Jesus, men do feel the refreshing power of the Holy Spirit entering in, and driving out the poison and fire of sin. It was growing to be a great Sabbath with Simon and his friends. They had seen that sickness and sin were leagued together and that they retreated before Jesus. Let us not wonder that Simon's house became a hospital, after Jesus, who had healed the demoniac, came THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 277 into it and healed his wife's mother. The Rabbis could not so attract the sick and unfortunate. Their stately ceremonial had no such charm in it for the needy masses, for it did not heal with brother hood. Whenever a living Christ does come home with a man, his house will be a center of power for stricken souls. It is often an unpleasant thing for people who would visit Simon Peter and his wife, and help to maintain their social position, that they have to come into contact with the crowd of sick people which gather there, groaning, sighing, and crying. Let us not pity a true Simon, for he did not have our reasons for being miserable about it all. They bore it easily, because theirs had doubtless become a Christian home. JESUS AT THE HOUSE OF SIMON. 278 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. It had been an epoch-making Sabbath, a day of God and hu manity, in which the ceremony of the Sabbath had faded in the glory of its Lord. The Son of Man was beginning to show humanity as Lord also of the Sabbath. Night came. But when the morning dawned, Jesus was not to be found in Simon's house. Where was He? He was away yonder in the seclusion of the mountains, and He was praying. A deeper, diviner Messiahship was unfolding in this Son of Man, in prayer, than in the popular miracle-worker, at His hour of triumph. His miracles had made Him deeply conscious of the divine sources whence His power had come. The Son must be alone with His Father, and He was resting on the bosom of God. He was feeling some thing far more impressively than ever before, — this, namely, that He might save others, but not Himself. The fierce Scribes were already aroused against Him. But Pie did not fear them. They could not ruin His plan by causing it to fail grandly; only He could wreck the enterprise by permitting it to have less than a divine success. All this wondrous power to heal and bless must be held in the~ grasp of His spiritual aims which did not contemplate merely a Jewish and an earthly Messiahship, but a deliverance for mankind. They were doubtless ready, at Simon's house, to adopt Him as the greatest of Jewish wonder-workers. This secluded jirayer was a far more effective announcement of that higher and broader Messiah- ship which Simon Peter at last learned to appreciate, than any re sounding proclamation or royal procession might have been. One thing He had made clear in His treatment of sickness, and that was the fact that sin lay at the root of it. Hence Pie must strike at sin. He would be doing something else for men beside curing their bodies. He saw sin everywhere. He must usher in the Kingdom of God; and so Pie said to Simon Peter and Andrew, when they found Him and begged Him to come back and heal the crowds which had come to Simon's house: "I must preach the good tidings of the Kingdom of God to the other cities also; for therefore was I sent." Little did Simon know that Jesus had confronted in, him the old temptation which He had met in the wilderness, — to sell out His invisible and spiritual Messiahship for a visible Messiahship. Again had Satan said unto Him:. "Thou canst, if Thou wilt." THE MAN OF GALILEE. 279 Jesus had to wait, until a wretched leper would say these words to Plim. How different their meaning on the leper's lips! Simon's eager pride and sorrowful criticism of conduct of Jesus, are evident when he said to Him, as he found Him in that lonely place: "All men seek Thee. " He was fascinated by a pojmlar Christ, and he could not understand why He would not husband and add to His popularity. "Thou canst, if Thou wilt," — Satan was saying it again. "Thou canst, if Thou wilt, make Thyself their Wonderful Magician or their visible King." But He was to be " Wonder- Counselor" — as Isaiah had foretold. Jesus did not say to Simon then, as He had afterwards to do, "Get thee behind me, Satan. "—Mark viii, 33. But that hour would strike, for it was that Satanic devotion to the mass, that unspiritual regard for the crowd, which just then rose up against the finer spirituality and celestial aims of Christ. Simon must have learned a deeper lesson of the divinity of Jesus, when he beheld Him as something greater than even a worker of miracles. It was moral divinity that streamed through His humanity. Jesus was ever leading His disciples from the physical world into the spiritual, from the visible into the invisible which underlies it and is its very soul. His miracles with man's inner life and with the powers which make human history are His greatest. He would now get Simon to perceive PIis real divinity, through the miracle which He would work in spiritual realms. The Peter, — the rock-man, — would crystallize more rapidly. Down into Galilee, Jesus led the disciples, with this intention as to Simon and his fellows, and with the broader intention of pro claiming the Kingdom of God to other multitudes. When a spiritual force, unique as was Jesus the Christ, moves through the physical world, miracles are incidents of its march ; they are events which nat urally occur along its way. God moves in nature; and the miracles of life and growth appear in His wake. God's Christ moves amongst men, and the miracles of another sort of life and growth appear also. They are higher, because man is higher than what we call nature. There came a leper, poor, forsaken and scorned, — a leper for whom the Rabbis could do nothing. He could not enter the syna gogue; but the Christ could enter into him. He was too unclean for the orthodoxy of his day; but he was not too unclean for the orthodoxy 280 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. of the Son of Man. Just as the disciples had heard a confession from the demon, of the power and holiness of Jesus, so here they heard the words of those diseased lips: "If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." It was a most mighty, a most pathetic witness, borne by the human helplessness, which turned sadly away from every other gospel. The consciousness of the disciples which shrank from the leper rose toward a Christ-consciousness; and they felt how much more clean was Jesus than their ideas of cleanliness. For, in con travention of all Jewish rules, He actually touched the leper. They might have looked ou Him, to see Him die: for to touch a leper was death. Jesus never so deeply, truly lived. And the leper? He was cleansed. There was a greater miracle worked in the souls of the disciples than in the leper's body. And then, to add to the vividness of Simon's perception of the fact that the Christ was aiming to be more than a popular Messiah, even in that broad way, he heard his Master command the leper to be silent about his cure, and to conform to the Jewish law. Jesus was simply taking the law of Moses from the heights of Sinai, to the loftier spiritual summit of Calvary, and trans forming it, by filling it with Love. Moses had received the Law amidst thunders and lightening: Jesus had manifested Love and asked only for silence. Jesus measured accurately and well the importance of His say ing to the cleansed leper: "Show thyself to the priest for a testi mony." — Matt, viii, a. The law of Moses must be honored in the new prophet whose coming Moses had foretold. Through manifest ing the Universal Fatherhood of God unto a leper, Jesus was super seding the Law of Moses by the Law of Love. Nothing but a brotherhood as inclusive as God's Fatherhood, could have found heart-room for a leper. An outcast and a fault in nature and in human history, as he was, no private house could receive him; no phil osophy could explain his joresence on the earth; no philanthropy could devise for his destiny in the future. If once the condemned wretch failed to cry out: "Room for the leper! Unclean!" when he met a human being unexpectedly in the road-way, his life was ended, and one more nuisance abated. We cannot overestimate the astonish ment with which society at that time confronted the fact that this THE MAN OF GALILEE. 281 man, whose unpitied uncleanness made a broad path for itself where soever he went, had actually followed the new Rabbi, who never seemed more fair or beautiful than in that fresh morning of PIis fame, and ventured to say to Him: "I feel that you can make me clean, if you will." It was the report of a profound conviction working in the mind of a decaying human wreck. It was another testimony to the fact that the purity and glory of Jesus were so brotherly in quality, that, in this condemned brother of His, there was awakened a re sponsive feeling of sonship unto God. He was being perfectly human ; and in that His divinity would be safe. The leper's faith did not go so far as to think out what he felt dimly but certainly. Such faith never does; it only grasps fatherhood through brotherhood, with the undismayed faith that something better exists for it. Jesus had been perilously careless of the long code of rules which Rabbinism had devised for the execration of the leper. No one was joermitted to offer a leper salutation; but He had allowed this leper to salute Him. Jesus was doing everything He could to avoid the popularity which would come to Him if He forgot for a moment the Universal Fatherhood which was seeking the spiritual rather than the physical glory of His children. But it was PIis humanity here that urged Him on. He was not afraid of losing anything by getting close enough to this lej^er to let the stream of Universal Fatherhood flow into him at the point where he could receive it. The leper could not pollute that stream. So soon as the leper was clean, He tells him not to speak about Him, even in connection with the happy event, lest His sj)iritual kingdom may suffer from the embarrass ment of the public adulation which alone may destroy it. Another moment had come when Jesus must betake Himself to the wilderness and re-engage Himself to sjiiritual destinies in j^rayer. Human need followed His path and soon He was again healing the sick and comforting the distressed. Meantime tl^e cleansed leper has proclaimed the name of Jesus, and no longer can He enter into the synagogues of Galilee without controversy and opposition. Even the city of Capernaum regarded Him as a dangerous person, and closed its gates against Him with anger, and locked them with hate. Yet now and then love and sorrow melted the fastenings, and though the larger number of the infirm and tormented dragged themselves or 282 THE MAN OF GALILEE. were carried to the desert places to which Jesus was exiled and in which He was praying, He stole into Capernaum on His errand of love and touched men with hands of blessing. It was on one of these occasions, when Jesus returned from the solitude and quiet of the wilderness, into the city of Capernaum, that a quiet rumor gained currency, as only such rumors may, among those who are needy and yet not quite despairing, that He was once more at Simon's house. Not otherwise is a home so honored. When Jesus Christ really comes into one's home, human anguish easily hears of it. It was impossible for this brother-man to keep Himself away from the most abandoned and hopeless, so rich and inspiring was His faith in the Divine Fatherhood, yet it was increasingly necessary for the destiny of His kingdom of the invisible that He should avoid an unreasoning and selfish popularity. Capernaum was a center where farmers and fishermen and merchants thronged, and its pecu liar life developed not only the business of stone-workers and boat-builders, but also such maladies as the Rabbis had not been able to cure. Down deep under all sorrow and sickness, whether it was carried in the narrow streets of pov erty or flaunted itself before the mansions and playhouses of the rich, He saw sin. It lay breathing its despair under the palm or by the citron and almond tree, or waited for death in some garret of pain, in the densely crowded town, and men called it this and that: but it was sin. His business was His Father's business, and He knew His Father's heart well enough to believe that He could relieve His children from their maladies, by abolishing the cause and source of their complaints. He was to be N0 R0°M F°R THE leper. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 283 "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world," — John i, 29, — the true Messiah of the soul. The only way for love to abolish sin, He saw, is to forgive sin. His Messiahship must, therefore, even now enter upon that work. He was speaking to a listening and intent throng gathered at the house of Simon, and preaching the message of PIis kingdom. It was a somewhat roomy dwelling-place, and Jesus stood where His voice could be heard in all the rooms. The sage and querulous Scribes were near enough to Him to catch every word, and the joeople in the street, who flocked close to the court-yard, were keenly inter ested. Less ritualistic hearers were enthralled. Nobody was aston ished when a man, helpless with paralysis, was carried toward Jesus. The crowd had only a crowd's kindliness, and it would not give up its opportunity to hear the prophet. A strong and active faith had borne the diseased man hither on his pallet, and that faith could not wait, and it would not be disappointed. Someone suggested a plan which worked admirably. Up the well-used stairway leading to the roof, which in all domestic structures was employed by day and night, at that season, by the family, as a sitting-place or outdoor bed-room, the friends of the paralytic took their burden. The tile covering above the head of the Master was easily penetrated, the slight wooden supports removed sufficiently; and, in a short time, the crowd beheld the pallet slowly descending with its piteous load, while it was at tached to the strong cords which were held by the good and eager friends, who were steady and true on the roof above. Soon Jesus was looking into the wan face and finding another realm for the manifestation of His brotherhood and His Father's Fatherhood, in the beseeching eyes. It was not necessary for the long-silent lips to speak their faith. It was brighter than the fever- flush upon the face of the poor creature. It glowed and shone forth so luminously, that the dark scowl on the face of the Scribes ap peared as midnight. Probably they knew that early and constant dissipation had wrought its disaster upon this man's body. He was a debauchee, and they thought he ought to acknowledge his iniquity somehow. It was right that he was suffering for it. Jesus asked for no proof that the unfortunate appreciated his iniquity. The Scribes were outraged when the young Rabbi broke the silence with words 284 THE MAN OF GALILEE. which no other Rabbi would have thought of speaking: " Be of good cheer." — Matt, ix, 2. What business had this Galilean heretic to give cheer to a wretch who must expiate the guilt of his debauchery by just such suffering as this? This was the meaning of the scornful look which passed from Scribe to Scribe. The Rabbinical devotees could scarcely endure such a scandal as Jesus had made. But they were to be still more horrified. Jesus sounded, in rich diapason, the music of redemption; and, going below all this man's woe, in which he had gathered the consequences of his guilty practices, Jesus said: "Child, thy sins have been forgiven thee." There was no measure for the astonishment of those Scribes. Good ecclesiasts are even yet puzzled with Jesus. They can not understand a syllable of His speech. In one word He had proclaimed the truth of this man's divine pedi gree: "Child." The word meant to them, perhaps, that this para lytic was yet quite young. He, however, filled the word "child" with the infinite Fatherhood of God. A sinner and yet a child! Never had His brotherhood unto men so rallied the inherent child hood of a man unto his Father. Never had Jesus more eloquently spoken as the Son of Humanity, because He was the Son of God. He went still more profoundly into the secret and power of the Divine Fatherhood. He did not tell him: "Thy sins shall be for given thee." But He said: "Thy sins have been forgiven thee." — Matt, ix, 5. Jesus was announcing the fact that God's fatherly and pardoning love is not an extemporaneous affair, springing into exist ence only when a man asks for it. It stretches back into the very nature of Eternal Fatherhood. The Lamb was "slain from the foundation of the world," — Rev. xiii, 8, — in God's j^urpose, and here was ' ' the Lamb of God " already bearing the sin of the world. In the wrathful countenances of those Scribes, angry now at this prac tical declaration of the universal Fatherhood of God and the Brother hood of man, He could see Calvary and His cross. There, at length, He would proclaim that Fatherhood and that Brotherhood in a divine act of love, which would restore the paralytic child, Humanity. Another miracle had now been wrought, and they saw that it was of another kind. In it, Jesus had risen from the authority which had hitherto amazed them and blessed men, to an authority which actually forgave sins. Not yet did the paralytic move. Had Jesus THE MAN OF GALILEE i*5 ceased to cure the sick? No. The physical wonder and transfor mation which they were yet to see must be preceded by and lost in the moral wonder and transformation which He had just accomplished. So all His miracles were to increasingly reveal an ethical character. He had just re-written the history of humanity, and left humanity raised up from its paralysis of sin, standing upon the fact that God the Father has already forgiven the sins of His child, humanity, and that it is ours to take this proc lamation of pardon at once, and without conditions, by simply believing it. The September day was looking down upon the big heart- shaped sapphire called the Lake of Galilee, and through the open roof of Simon's house. The brightest spot of earth was occu pied by the Galilean Rabbi and the paralytic, who was yet lying on his couch. The darkest was that occupied by the surprised Scribes. All along the shore nestled the huts of the fisher men ; and the city of Capernaum, in which all varieties of human ity went to and fro, had now within it a redeemed child of humanity, who, coming up out of vice and horror, was to leave his disreputable past. The furious Scribes were aware that, if nothing else came to the sufferer, there would follow a tumult of happiness and praise. Everywhere, at the weaver's loom, and the fisher's boat, in the Egyptian caravan, and in companies of thoughtful men, mus ing beneath the cedars or the myrtles, the name of Jesus, as the only Rabbi who had dared to forgive the sins of a debauchee, would be joyfully proclaimed. They were determined that decent people should not be caught with such jirofanity. THE PARALYTIC LET DOWN THROUGH THE ROOF. 286 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. Still Jesus had not visibly conquered the paralysis, for the help less man moved not. If He failed, the Scribes could explain and belittle the event. But physical facts have moral foundations. The paralytic had waited long, and could now wait forever, if need be. Jesus was still laying eternal foundations for His kingdom, and the disciples and the world were being taught. The Scribes began mut tering something about His having assumed to forgive the creature's sins, instead of doing a miracle upon him. "Why doth one speak thus? He blasphemeth." — Matt, ix, 3. This was the unspoken reasoning of the Scribes. Jesus saw it, in the changing cloud and lightning-flash on each face. "And immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, he said unto them, Why reason ye these things in your hearts? Whether it is easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, take up thy bed, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins (he saith to the sick of the palsy), I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house. And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all; insomuch that they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, We never saw it on this fash ion." — Mark ii, 8-13. At length, the Scribes were defeated, and Jesus had put His kingdom right end to, in the thought and experience of men. The reasoning of the Scribes was correct, when the question presented itself to them: "Who can forgive sins, but God only?" But the reasoning did not go far enough. Jesus was, at that mo ment, manifesting God in the flesh. It was an hour in which He could have easily risen as a superior being and said ' ' T am God. " He could have declined the realm of our thoughts and our sym pathies, and gone into such isolated and sublime relationships unto God, as to have been less human, — but shall we not also say, He would have been less divine? He had fought Satan with His hu manity, alone, in the Temptation. He had come forth pale and worn, but the Christ of God and Man. He had exposed only a hu man heart to the ribaldry and brutality of Nazareth ; but it beat with a divine life. He did not now decline His humanity here, and therefore He conserved and made radiant His moral divineness. He still clung THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 2H7 to that name by which He recognized Himself, "the Son 0/ Man," when Pie said: "But that ye may know that the Sou of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins (he saith to the sick of the palsy), I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house." He was illustrating the height of power to which humanity may be raised. Long afterward, He was to say to his brother men: "Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them." "The Son of David" was lost in One who inherited the j^roblem and pre rogatives of all humanity. No one ever so truly estimated the vir ulence of sin, as did Jesus. His holiness illumined it. He knew that every honest sinner cries to God: "Against thee and thee only have I sinned. " Divine relationships are disturbed. None but Jesus knew also how Love desires that these relationships shall be restored. Love urged its point in the heart of Jesus and carried it through His forgiveness as the Son of Man. The riven rock of the desert was Christ. "For they drank," says Paul, "of the Rock that followed them and that Rock was Christ." Jesus knew that forgiveness is the inevitable and noblest manifestation of Fatherhood through Broth erhood. No law was broken by Love. The universe was safe eth ically. He had conqueringly manifested Love and all else needful in the man would follow. The whole Cross appeared in His sacri ficing, upbearing affection. The man had been "saved by the Cross," before the tree was cut from the woods, near Jerusalem. He had indeed proven that His authority was different from that of the Scribes. They were the painstaking, literalistic "scriptural- ists, " as the word signifies. Copying the Law, they became expert in all its refinements and subtleties and stood for its protection, never dreaming that their j^erpetual emphasizing of the letter crushed out the spirit. Jesus had indeed broken the letter of the Law. but He had saved ris spirit. He had filled it full with love toward men. Yea, Love had overfilled Law; and from this overflowing cup, sym pathy and kindness, salvation and health, had fallen in plenteous drops upon the unfortunate and the outcast. AT THE HOUSE OF MATTHEW. l-KOM 1'AINTINU BY ALF.XANpKK J1IPA. CHAPTER XXX CALLING OF MATTHEW, THE PUBLICAN PROBABLY no city in Hebrew more sive presenc THE CALLING OF ST, MATTHEW lived under the who, on any ac be a representative depraved and as vicious \ was indeed a rebel against all Galilee furnished to the patriotic evidences of the offen- of heathenism, in Pal estine, than did Capernaum. Not so proudly eminent for beauty as the magnificently built Tibe rias, in which 1 the name of the Roman | Emperor was ¦ enshrined in palace and theater, Ca pernaum nev ertheless sup- plied those ! events, in its thriving busi ness life, which irritated the orthodox Jew and reminded lim constantly of the fact that he sway of Rome. A Jew, count, permitted himself to of Rome, was considered as as a common thief. Pie Israel, and was treated as 289 290 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. one who had sold himself to Israel's most hated foe. Among all classes of men who had yielded to the seductions of Rome, none were so generally contemned and despised as the so-called "publicans." Levi-Matthew was not only a publican, but he was an officer of such inferior rank as made him known as even less respectable than a general tax-gatherer. He was what was known as a " petty " custom house servant of Rome, because he could not employ help, and did the office-work himself. Socially and ecclesiastically he was a non descript. There could be little wonder on the part of Rome that all her tax-gatherers in Palestine were objects of execration. Rome cared little for this, and the Jew had to make his retaliation on the local servant of the Empire. Every modern invention for extracting reve nues from an unwilling and over-burdened public was then in use upon the subject Jews. So powerful was Rome that, while the taxes were no longer farmed out, as formerly, and the fiscal machinery left to a well-organized gang of decorated thieves who created a gentlemanly order and in turn made the publicans their agents, yet the subordinate tax-gatherers, and especially the custom-house officials, added insult to injury by ruthlessly entering into the wallet and package of everyone who was unfortunate enough to take a journey, and by cruelly oppressing all laborers and householders with vexatious demands, at every turn in their business, and in almost every hour of their care. As usual, the burden of this systematic outrage fell most heavily upon the poor. For long years, the publi cans, as a class, were not expected to be honest with either rich or poor; for they took bribes from the former who would seek a lower tax-rate and they literally robbed the latter who could make no de fense. Thus they formed a section of society composed of social pariahs who, because they touched the Jew at the sensitive point of his pocket-book, and in the name of Rome, were so detested that it seemed incredible that a true-hearted man could be one of them. It is not necessary to suppose that, on the one hand, Levi-Matthew was as base as the majority of his kind, or that, on the other hand, he was an extraordinary citizen who was picked out of the class because of his honor and piety. It is jorobable, however, that he had become interested in the movement, under John the Baptist and THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 291 its new offshoot under Jesus, had heard the new Rabbi, and was charmed by His gentleness of soul and love for men. He certainly belonged to an old priestly family, as his name Levi indicates, and the sincerity of the man had attracted the eye of Jesus. It is inter esting to note that he only and quite frankly refers to himself as a "publican," in his gospel which was written to prove that Jesus is the Christ of God. One day, he was sitting in his booth, engaged in the perform ance of his duties, receiving the money paid to him as an officer of the custom-house by those who came and went on their way through the sea-port of Capernaum. As he looked out of the opening through which the traveler paid his tax, he saw the Rabbi Jesus, whom he had heard in the synagogue, and whose noble words and kindly acts had blessed even a leper and a paralytic. Might it not be that He had some gracious word, or could do some unnamed deed that would lift Matthew into a better world than that to which he was condemned by the Jews? But no; it was hardly to be expected that he should be permitted to live and die as anything else but an excluded and abject publican. Out yonder the Lake of Galilee lay a waveless dream before Him, and the white sails were motionless also. It was all like His own soul, with its becalmed ideals. No kindly wind from the sea or gracious land-breeze impelled them. The multitude was flock ing about Jesus, as He approached, and favored ones were obtaining a word of love or wisdom, as He came nearer. But now Jesus stepped away from the rest and made as though He was coming to the tax-gatherer's window. He had a tax to pay to the Eternal which Matthew knew not how to deal with arithmetically. Soon the eyes which had looked into the fevered face of the paralytic sent a message of unexpected and boundless love into the heart of Matthew. Jesus had looked him through and He had already taken him into spiritual discipleship. He now spoke one word to this petty officer in the custom-house, who had been used to make his own demands. It was: "Follow me." And Matthew "left all, rose up, and fol lowed Him." — Matt, ix, 9. It was a great moment for Matthew, whose surprised soul quiv ered with joy in the glory of Him Who had called him; it was a 292 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. great moment in the history of Jesus as the undespairing Founder of a kingdom in which human hopelessness is even yet transformed into hope, in which all prejudices are melted down before the warm tide of Universal Brotherhood, in which there goes forward forever the changing of the sinner into the saint. Nothing but His faith in the Universal Fatherhood, which it was His duty and His joy to declare even to a repentant and trustful "petty tax-gatherer," could have moved Him to this dauntless enterprise with such a soul as Matthew. PIis enemies were now certain to be still more furious because of His disregard of their exclusiveness and narrow pietism. The Rabbis were sure, also, to offer their contempt to Matthew, as they exhib ited their scorn to Jesus. A fatal stroke had been delivered against caste, and the whole system has been shattering to final ruin, from that day to this. Nothing that Rome had been or done to Hebrewdom was so distasteful to the rulers of the synagogue of Capernaum as this action of Jesus. In His treatment of the paralytic He had utterly over thrown the theory upon which the Rabbis elaborately dwelt, that only an endless succession of petty obediences would bring about for giveness. Jesus had seen into the soul of the paralytic and found in him the new heart of faith and love which makes all obedience a delight. He had not called the paralytic to repentance, in order to get him to love; but He had called him to love, in order to get him to repent. In calling this publican to be His disciple, He had gone further than ever in revealing the truths, that the lowliest of men is yet a son of God, and that love is the gateway into His Kingdom. He had again risked all for righteousness, on the power of a "personal attachment." Heaven was indeed opened, and men who had forfeited their sonship unto God were invited by this Brother of men, — who had not forfeited His, and who therefore could not be mistaken about the feelings of the Father, — to return unto Him. To make more clear the nature of His kingdom and the warmth and inclusiveness of His brotherhood, Jesus soon did something else, which so irritated the supercilious and pretentious Scribes that there could no longer be left any question as to the character and viru lence of their antagonism. He actually attended a banquet which Matthew himself made for the honor of Jesus; and Jesus Himself THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 293 helped to make suitable rejoicing over this, the most important event of Matthew's life. He whom the Scribes scorned — this man Matthew — was something else than one destined to levy toll at the seat of custom, as Jesus viewed him. Henceforth no slave was he unto Rome, no outcast was he from the world-wide Israel, obtaining unclean bread by the gathering of dues in the name of an all-con quering empire. Jesus had made Matthew captive unto a spiritual kingdom — a civilization — which would make both Rome and Jerusa lem impossible. His fellow-citizens had looked only at circumstances, — the shell of things round about this Matthew. Jesus had seen Matthew, the man himself. So was Jesus jiroving Himself to be the Son of Humanity. If there was any patronizing friend of Jesus and would-be connoisseur of good, admiring His new movement at a dis tance, who then regretted that the Rabbi was apparently spoiling His brilliant prospects, by taking a meal with an agent of the heathen, Jesus Himself was already able to ask of such an unnecessarily demonstrative one what he asked later of Judas : ' ' Bet ray est thou the Son of Humanity with a kiss? " — Luke xxii, 48. Jesus never lost this view of Himself. He knew that a certain low and noisy prosperity alone might prove disastrous to His plans. At the feast were what the Scribes called "publicans and sin ners." Possibly some of the favored outcasts took advantage of the familiar goodness of Jesus, as crude and fortune-hunting publi cans and sinners are wont to do; but He saw that it was in the line of His divine task to inspire and uplift them, rather than to obey the exactions of carping Scribes and sneering Pharisees. It was no doubt something of a trial to Him that some publicans came desir ing to obtain through Him a better social standing and some kind of release from the unhappy ban under which they were considered castaways. But this was not so offensive to Him as was the cyni cal hardness with which the jpharisaic Scribes refused to admit the spiritual value and possibility of a man who unhappily was exposed to their arbitrary cavils. These cavils, Jesus saw, took their root in the fact that Matthew was an employe of Rome. Jesus illustrated His moral insight as well as His utter independence of their meth ods of proscription by doing honor to the man inside the publican, and, by this act, he tossed aside as the merest rubbish which con- 294 THE MAN 0F GALLLEE. cealed God's children, the whole mass of discriminations which their fancied religiousness had invented. He condemned their theories of men because they proved divisive of the human family and they operated along purely arbitrary lines. Jesus saw sin as the one act of rebellion against the Father-God, and that only. He could not get up a divine enthusiasm as to their subtleties — He renounced them. He could not show His contempt for their theory of what constituted a "sinner," more signally, than by admitting what they called a sinner to discipleship, and dining with what "the very best peojole" of Capernaum called "sinners." Jesus had not yet spoken against the crafty and over-expedient Rabbis, as did John the Bap tist, when the latter called them "a brood of vipers." — Matt. Hi, 7. John was destructive; Jesus was constructive. But in this act He had rebuked that sort of religion which is satisfied in conceit of itself and devoid of a spark of interest in making this a better world, as the stern Baptist had never rebuked it. There was nothing for the Scribes and the Pharisees to do but to lift up their hands and assume such attitudes of sorrow over Him and his unfortunate mistake as only hypocrisy may ever invent or exj^ress. They therefore began to say to the disciples: "Your Rabbi has ruined all His prospects and outraged the kindly sentiments which influential persons might have toward Him if He did differently. He has done this, by eating with publicans and sinners." It was an irregularity which the Pharisees could not forgive, although they were the most hopeful and intelligent, as well as the most honora ble and progressive class amongst the Jews. Their protest witnessed the intolerance which had grown up within Israel's unpractical and ritualistic irreligion. Dependence on formulary and attention to fan cied distinctions in morals had exhausted religious fervor in them. Dependence on His Father in heaven had gloriously deepened and widened the consciousness in Jesus that He was a human Brother. Their cry was: "Let my body be clean, according to the Law!" His cry was: "Let my heart be clean, by the tides of Eternal Love." The leadership of the nation was truly theirs, for the moment; the leadership of humanity was truly His, for all time. Living according to a ritual which separated them from the needy and unfor tunate, they dared not touch the woe that needed to be healed. THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 295 Living according to the impulse of complete Sonship, fed by divine Fatherhood, He dared not do otherwise than come into such close contact with sin as to save the sinner. They could not touch the food of a stranger in Israel; He would give food to the stranger and make Him one of the commonwealth of God. The infinite resources of love within Jesus made it possible for Him to fulfill the spirit of the Law, while He broke its letter. No man save Jesus could afford to recline at the table of Matthew and eat and drink with publicans and sinners, for no man save Jesus so certainly trusted the Universal Fatherhood of God as to reach out beyond the strong, and take hold of the weak, and say: "They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." — Mark ii, 17. Theol ogy only, anxious to be wise above that which is written and tend ing to be Judaistic rather than Christian, has made its addition to this utterance; and we are asked to believe the glosses and hear Him say: "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance." — Markii, 17. This was not His thought, by any means. He came to call sinners to Love, to Him who was and is Love's Manifestation. John the Baptist had been content to call men unto repentance. Jesus had begun by repeating his summons; but a deeper conscious ness of the Father-God in Him had revealed God as Love. He would bring men "at first hand" with God's Fatherly Love — then, as He knew, repentance for sin against Him would follow. Jesus was thus a constructive radical. Love alone can save, because Love is God. When Jesus said these words, it must have been evident that some of them recognized, at least for an instant, how profound and true was Jesus as a Jew. When He quoted the revolutionary words of the prophet Hosea: "/ desired mercy, and not sacrifice," — Hosea vi, 6, — He was again pointing out the fact that He, as the Son of God, must prove His divineness through being the Son of Humanity. He made the word mercy meaningful. A Universal Fatherhood must reveal itself through a brotherhood so universal as to reach those whom the religionists of His time had excluded. So was He true to the essential spirit of Hebrew revelation and to its God. Jesus was alone; every other Rabbi had forgotten the profounder and spiritual 296 THE MAN OF GALILEE. message of the prophets of Israel. Once in the history of Israel, God had "made for them a statute and an ordinance." He had said: ' ' If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His sight, and wilt give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord that healeth thee, — / am Jehovah — ' Rophrek' — fehovah, the Physician." — Exodus xv, 26. Now the true Son of Jehovah so felt and manifested the character of His Father, that He Himself was "the Great Physician." But the disease, to the relief of which the " Lamb of God that beareth the sin of the world," was to employ His energies, was not fever or paralysis, but sin. Large as were the ravages made by these maladies amongst the classes of human beings to whom Jesus had now gone as a friend, far larger was the desolation made among them by sin. The sinlessness of Jesus proceeded from His loyal Sonship unto His Father. But the same Fatherhood revealed the infinite value and divine pedigree of every sinner, even though it was half-concealed by some hateful sin. Jesus knew that the throb of His heart of brotherhood would break through that hiding wall, and wake the responsive music of sonship in the sinner himself. The Pharisee and Scribe simply had no heart to understand this. Many who had heard Jesus talk just now had heard John the Baptist also, and they were continually comparing the methods of the two men. Some of them had gone over to Jesus, others had not. Many had not believed very much in either John or Jesus. All of them were sure that John the Baptizer would never have gone to these defiled persons, with whom Jesus was now being social. If they had repented, on coming to him, John doubtless would have baptized them, but he would have exacted from himself and he would have urged upon them such an austere moralism as would have kept him and them away from anybody's banquet, and led him and them from out the turbulent problems of civilization. The Baptist did not look upon sinners, as sick people. He had no such relationship to the All-Father as enabled him to recognize their diseased and halting childhood. It was just at this time that John's disciples and the Pharisees THE MAN OF GALILEE. 297 and Scribes were fasting. The contrast between the behavior of Jesus and PIis disciples and that of John and his disciples was therefore boldly brought out. The Pharisees and John's disciples were a unit now, for they were each and all naturally offended at the conduct of Jesus. The Pharisees were urging the followers of the Baptist to force Jesus to a decisive utterance. Therefore they came and said unto Him: "Why do the disciples of John fast often, and make prayers, and likewise the discijoles of the Pharisees; but thine eat and drink?" — Luke v, 33. The answer of Jesus was very clear and suffi ciently decisive, even unto their sober-faced ceremonialism. He said unto them: "Can ye make the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days." And He spake also a parable unto them: "No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old. And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved. No man also having drunk old wine straight way desireth new; for he saith: 'The old is better.'" — Luke v, 34-39. There were those who heard Jesus then, whether of the Baptist's disciples or of His own, who remembered that John had said: "This was He of whom I spoke: He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for He was before me." — John i, 15. And now Jesus, having gone to a supper on one of the Mon days or Thursdays, which were usually observed by the Essenes THE OLD INSTITUTION 298 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. and the more orthodox Pharisees, and having banqueted with men whom they abhorred, took this opportunity to give a new intimation of the character and breadth of His kingdom. He seized upon the very phrase of John the Baptist; for it was their own teacher who had said: "He that hath the bride is the bridegroom." The ascetic puritan, even the Bajitist himself, had foretold the joy of men when the bridegroom, Jesus, should reveal Himself. Jesus took up this utter ance of the Baptist: "He that hath the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice: this my joy, therefore, is fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease." — John Hi, 29. He now proceeded to show that a positive joyousness and not a negative austerity is the characteristic of all true religion. This gladness Jesus would put into the hearts of men, by vivifying and re-establishing their childhood unto God, His Father. He had done this in Matthew's case. Not a new environment outside of men, which the Jews anticipated at the arrival of their Messiah, but a new love inside of them, which He would quicken and develop, would make this a changed and redeemed world. Jesus could be mistaken no longer as John's echo, preaching repentance : He was His Father's Son preaching Love. He was re-organizing the whole family of men on that basis and with that spirit. He did not rail against the fasting or the ritualism of any human being, but He did inti mate that if any of His disciples fasted in opposition to the happy consciousness that the bridegroom was with them, they would be hypocritical. He was aware that it was a day when humanity was in bond age to a thousand petty observances, and that true religion was smothered beneath them. Men had no sense of sin simply because they had no sense of the Universal Fatherhood which their acts de nied. They were pricked into dull religiousness only by hundreds of needle-points of ritual, which extracted the blood of ardent piety. Ceremonies, therefore, were rife. He would restore the human family-relations unto God, and, as the bridegroom, he would vitalize the essential tie that ought to bind men to God. He would wed Humanity to Divinity. He saw the dominance of mechanics in piety. Love must rule. Instead of almsgiving by rule, there would THE MAN OF GALILEE. 299 be a boundless generosity. Instead of feet-washings by law, there would be unquenchable kindness. Instead of altars that smoked in the presence of hard-hearted and conceited men, there would be the broken and contrite heart of humanity. Above all, instead of hard and fast legalism, enforcing proprieties from without, there would be the freedom within which came from the love of goodness which He revealed as the glory of God. This was the Christ's pre scription for a hajijiy world. It was a complete indictment and swift condemnation of Phari- seeism, j)ast, present and future. It was vigorous enough to have saved the world from all churchly recluses and j^ious hermits who have done dishonor to the joyful impulse and plans of Eternal Love. But Jesus was to offer an eternity of persuasion, rather than a wholesale condemnation, for the world's transformation. He had per formed what timorous compromisers still call ' ' a dangerous duty. " It was not dangerous for Him, because it was a duty in which He paid only what is due to the Eternal Love. He was the friend of sinners because He was the Son of God, Who is their Almighty friend. He measured His love to humanity, not by the distance between Him and His Father, which was nothing, but by the dis tance to which He could carry that love, with increasing intensity, to the most apparently Godless man. His purity was fearless. He could be frightened only when He thought Pie loved less largely and less sacrificingly than God, the Father. Love is its own safeguard. He would make this a glad world, just as He vanquished Satan in the wilderness, not so much by ab stinence from the low as by feeding upon the high. But how was all this to affect the accepted authorities? He saw so clearly into the divine originality of this ethical method that He knew it could not be contained in, or attached to the old. In ancient times "the fast of the fourth month and of the filth, and of the seventh and of the tenth, " were to be " to the house of Israel, joy and gladness." — Zechariah viii, 19. The prophet Isaiah had heralded a day when the cheerful fast which he preached would be forgotten, in the wider jubilee of God and man. That day had now come. Here was Hebrew ritual, and Jesus saw that it was only an old garment, very much to be revered, but broken and worn, 300 THE MAN OF GALILEE. especially in spots where it touched humanity. To patch it with new cloth was unwise. It was only an old wine-skin, and it could not hold the new and fermenting wine which He, as the bride groom, furnished to the feast of humanity. He did not criticise the old wine-skin, but He insisted that His teaching should be put into new wine-skins, lest the wine should be spilt and lost for man. It would be ruin to the wine and ruin to the skins, if the attempt were made to force the old to retain the new. As He had already suggested, it would be just like patching an old garment by putting upon it or within it a piece of unbilled cloth. The new cloth would be wasted, bit by bit, and might be better used in making a new garment. The patchwork would be unsatisfactory, and the whole garment would be untrue. The eye of Phariseeism could not see this. The old wine and the old skins were good enough for its dulled taste. They did not even desire a patch upon the old gar ment, such as John the Baptist and his disciples practically proposed. Jesus was not at all amazed at this. He said to the Pharisees es pecially: "No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, the old is better." — Luke v, 39. But for human ity, at that moment, there was presented the new and yet eternal moral impulse, and it would ferment and be retained in a new series of institutions. He was to go straight on, "the Light of the world," illustrating the fact that there is nothing distinguishable in any highest nature. All its elements are absolutely interfused. It is, therefore, impos sible to distinguish the inspiring from the saving influence in Jesus' character, the redeeming from the exemplary forces in His person ality. No one power penetrates: He Himself pervades. CHAPTER XXXI JESUS AGAIN IN JERUSALEM THE human soul and its experiences are more than geography and chronology, else we would have certain knowledge as to the exact date of a visit which Jesus made to Jerusalem, and we would have information as to which of the many Jewish feasts He went up to that city to observe. We are certain only of this, that the journey occurred some time between January and the latter part of March, and that the feast , was of sufficient importance to account tor 1 1 is presence in Jeru salem, at a period of His busy ministry when He was making His message and method clear ^ to those who were to be His apostles. The best critical ... opinion insists that it i was the Feast of i-. •^r Purim, which oc- v curred thirty y-' OUTER COURT OF THE TEMPLE. days before the Feast of the Passover; and we can readily under stand how, naturally, He would desire again to utter His gospel in the Holy City at this time. Probably on the fourteenth of March, He joined many other pilgrims in the festivity which commemorated the rescue of Hebrewdom from the cruel schemes of Haman. While 301 302 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. they rejoiced, He could not forget that the name of the feast took its origin from the lots which were cast by Haman. He now realized that His gospel was a richer gift to the poor than any and all the gifts which it was customary to pour forth on that day of rejoicing. Yonder at the sheep-gate, through which He had seen the animals driven to the market within the Temple enclosure, on the day when He drove the hucksters and money-changers from the sacred place, there was a well-known pool in which a spring bubbled up from beneath. It was called Bethesda, which means " House of Mercy." There appears to be no reason for doubting that modern explorers have found the ruins of this pool, and that its chief source of supply was an active mineral spring. At the northeast corner of the wall enclosing the Temple are the wrecks of the five porticos, and evidences that under neath the canopy of splendid masonry there gushed forth a spring whose waters were medicinal, and that it was a resort for the sick and lame. An interesting explanation of its movements was offered in the oft-repeated story that, at certain times, it was touched by an angel; and that when the water was troubled thus, it was pos sessed of greatest healing properties. The porches which led to it, sheltering the throng of distressed and helj^less peojole, were doubtless crowded, but the interest of Jesus was especially attracted to a jooor man who had suffered for eight-and-thirty years, and was lying there, still hoping for relief. He was friendless and alone. But to this Brother of men, holding fast to His idea of the Universal Father, and knowing that He re vealed Him in His own goodness, the gleaming columns and the careless crowd who were present for the festivity at the Temple were as nothing; the man and his need were everything. He had already cleansed the Temple, and hallowed it. He must now make this "House of Mercy" worthy of its name, and He must touch the ancient institution of the Sabbath with a divine glory. Here was a human life half spent in disease. What was more to the point just now with Jesus was the fact that this was another man whose in firmity was the result of his earlier sin. Jesus seems to have selected him from the great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, with ered, waiting for the moving of the water, in order that, in helping him, they who were around Him might see that His first and fore- THE MAN OF GALIIEE. 3°3 most work in the world was to deliver men from Sin. Here He parted with the Rabbis again, for they did not so feel the Father hood of God as to care seriously for the fact of sin, which alone ruins the child. Besides their urgency of interest in petty rules, they had shown this, or their lack of faith in the power of the waters to cleanse from sin, by leaving this poor wretch there, despairing and despaired of, while he pleaded for somebody to help him into the pool when the waters were troubled. Bigotry had killed pity, and fanaticism as to small things had made a true and large faith impos sible. Good and kind and honest as they may have been at their homes, they had not the confident goodness and missionary kind ness which comes from faith in the down-reaching and up-bearing Fatherhood of God. These ecclesiastics had gone so far from the wide and warm spirituality of the prophets, and they had arrogated to themselves so completely the functions of religion, that now, in order to preserve their order, they were ready to strike down the new prophet. Jesus knew this, _and in order to avoid the animosity which might suddenly end PIis career as a revealer of God, by helping men, He had not yet made a public address in Jerusalem. The sight of the helpless cripj^le on his rug, wriggling in vain toward what could only disappoint his soul, if even it relieved his body, touched Him. The utter farce of a feast at which gifts were pre sented to the poor, while this man was left in hopelessness, loosed His tongue, and He said to the cripjole: " Wilt thou be made whole?" — John v, 6. Jesus did not even stop to correct the man's notions of the powers of the pool, or of what he really needed to have done for him. Everybody else was sure of the man's inability. The man himself believed and told Jesus that his difficulty was easily seen. He said: "Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me." — John v, 7. This difficulty was more clear to the suf ferer than ever, when Jesus surprised him by His question, which really was, " Wiliest thou to be made whole?" The man evidently thought that Jesus was only a kindly-disposed stranger who meant to look for the water to be troubled and then to put him in, before someone slipped down before him. 3°4 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. It was a feast-day, and hundreds of cripples whom this man had not seen before had been brought by their friends, and they were crowding the porticos. The lame man was sure that it was the least favorable of all days unto him. It was the day most favorable, according to the thought and method of Jesus. While the man and others were surest of his inability, Jesus was most sure of the man's ability. But his was not the ability to be cured, by any means, in the bubbling spring of Bethesda. Jesus saw through the fact of the man's infirmity, into the fact of the man's sin; and He saw through the fact of the man's sin into the center of his personality, — his will. The will of the Highest put itself so close to the will of the lowest, strength so dealt with weakness, that the element of his nature which had gone into the act of sin and had not yet been destroyed utterly, was appealed to, and roused. " Wiliest thou?" came into the man with the emphasis of a love for him which rallied around the vital center, his will, all the disorganized and stray forces of his soul. Jesus saw and honored his ability to will. It was a brother who had not lost His brotherhood by sin, who had kept it through His per fect sonship unto God, so brothering a brother of His who had forfeited his sonship, that the essential and deathless point of life, — his will, was rescued. So did the firmness of Jesus deal with the infirmity of the cripple; so did the Will of God toward this wandering son, whom Jesus now brothered in to a practical assertion of his sonship unto the com mon Father, stir the crip- POOL OF BETHESDA. pie's will illtO THE MAN OF GALILEE. 305 the exercise of its divine functions. Jesus knew that with his will saved, the man would be saved. Pie could save it only by love. Up from the center of the pool gushed the cool water from the hidden spring. Up from out of all his infirmity, Jesus saw the will of the man rise. Another than this cripple was lifted by a friend and put into the pool of Bethesda. Jesus, the unknown friend, had lifted this brother of His, by the arms of His love; and while the waters of the pool sank quietly back again to their accustomed level, the straightened cripple put his sleeping-mat upon his back. He was cured. Everybody looked around for the stranger who had done this wonderful thing. Jesus had gone. Again the Jews were scandalized. There is nothing so likely to irritate to pitiless intolerance, as a -beautiful fact. There stood a fact before them which they could not deny. Charity and humanity were rejoicing, but ritualism and jealousy piously found fault. The hith erto helpless man was left alone to argue with a lot of bigots who clung to fancies and formularies. But he could not be worsted, for he had a fact to argue with. It must have seemed strange to him that he had suddenly become so active a force in the life of man kind. His ears had been trained to listen for the bubbling of the spring, his eye to plead for someone to help him, the agonized forces of his body to gather up, with ever-diminishing strength, in the hope of somehow twisting himself into the pool. His ears had been ravished with the sweet tones of the stranger: " Wiliest thou to be made whole?" They were now pained by the outcry of dog matists who asked him: "What are you doing with your couch upon your back? Do you not know that this is the Sabbath, and that by carrying your bed you are breaking the Sabbath?" — John v, 10. The great Sabbath-breaker had gone away, and left him with the problem. The only reply he could make to these, who had no share in his gratitude, or in his wonder, because he wras now walking, was this: "He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk." — John v, 11. Formalism, however, had done its work, and the cavilers had no heart, either to rejoice with him or to understand his speech. Nothing is as heartless as religious ceremonialism. In their anger against the officious and lawless stran ger, they could only taunt the cured man with questions. "Then 306 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. asked they him, What man is that which said unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk?" — John v, 12. The happy creature was densely ignorant of this most interesting point to him. He had not enough of theological information to answer them; and it is doubtful if his theological learning, at this point, would now satisfy any kind of ecclesiasticism. ; It was enough that it satisfied Jesus. Healed cripples of to-day do not always know His name. -1 A strange goodness often re veals Divine Fatherhood, through human brother hood, at some pool of Bethesda. The thing most to be kept in mind here, is this: Jesus, the Son of Man, had revealed the di vine valuation J of a man, and in doing it He had made a sa cred day more sacred to God, and more sacred to humanity, than it ever was before. But He had broken it. To their eyes He was a Sabbath-breaker. Jesus had made this man a Sabbath-breaker also. He had shown that insti tutions exist for man, and not man for institutions. He had simply put things right and provided the only defense for an institution, — this, that it serves man. The whole episode was a triumph of humanity. It was the Son of Man living and acting as the Son of God. Jesus was enlarging humanity in Himself and in the cripple by yielding to the inflow of the Divine. Forbidding Jewish technicalities had fallen down before RISE, TAKE UP THY BED AND WALK."— John v, 12. THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 307 a pulsation of a divinely human heart. Their Pool of Bethesda, the idea that men must repent before love can touch them, the dead tradition of the Jewish Sabbath, — all these vanished in the warm glow which had already fallen upon a loathsome leper, and which had said, after healing a sinful debauchee: "I came to call not righteous, but sinners." The industrious theologians who would add to these latter words, and make them read: "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance — Matt, ix, 13, — have worried much over the fact that this cripple also was healed without a statement of faith. Christianity separated itself from all other religions by call ing men to love. This is the entrance-word to the kingdom. He who loves is of God, for God is Love. Just as in the case of the para lytic, repentance was sure to follow Christ's love of the man, and, as Dr. Bushnell has said: "Loving God is letting God love us," — - so this cripple's unspoken faith had in it the germs of a sufficient theology. It was very beautiful that a little later in the day Jesus saw this man whom He had healed. He met him in the Temple. It was very fitting that, as a Jew, the happy and grateful soul should pay a thank-offering to God in the holy place. But the poor fellow had so outraged the Sabbatarians, by carrying his bed with Jiim through the streets unto his home, that now he had no other friend to talk with except Jesus, who was still a stranger. Probably, as the recov ered cripple saw Jesus coming toward him, he thought of the trou ble which his glad experience had brought upon so kind and good a man, and especially of the peril for this stranger which he had dis cerned in the eyes of the Jews, when he frankly defended himself for taking up his pallet and carrying it home, in disobedience of the Sabbath law, by saying to them: "He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed and walk." — John v, 11. Jesus revealed not only His name, but the very soul of His Mes siahship, in His brief interview with the man in the Temple. He saw the working of one of the most powerful and pure motives, — gratitude. The Christianity of the cured cripple had taken another jewel to itself. He was not only grateful, but obedient. He had not only arisen from his mat, which was his only true companion for years, but he had carried the relic of the past with him, and there 308 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. was no return. When the man rolled up his rug, as a thing of no further use, the past was cut off, and he trusted the future abso lutely. Jesus had succeeded in getting a reply to His words: " Wilt thou?" The man had truly willed. The willing that makes whole issues in the will of God, and, to issue in the will of God, it is obedi ence. It never dreams of returning to the past. Back, then, to the fact beneath the visible facts, Jesus went with this man, and He said: "Behold, thou art made whole; sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee." — John v, 14. It was the clear announcement of the fact, not only that sin causes suffering, and God's gift on any greatest feast-day is freedom from sin, but also that utter infirmity of body and the sin which caused it are not so terrible as the infirmity of soul into which a man may fall, if, having once been rescued from sin, he will sin again, and thus fall unutterably. Jesus had again illustrated the essential relationship of man unto His Father and God. Just as before, in the Temple itself, and on a festal day, He had asserted the sonship of man unto God, by insist ing that He must be about His Father's business, so now He gave expression there, in a wondrous and kindly act, to the truth of the Fatherhood of God, as it touched a helpless man, in the fact of His own Brotherhood. He had come close to the temple of stone and its God and Sabbath; He had come closer to the more sacred tem ple of humanity itself, and He had manifested its God and conse crated its Sabbath. The authorities were again angry. His own reply to the Jewish hierarchy lay in His words : ' ' My Father work- eth hitherto, and I work." — John v, 17. God Almighty, because He is universal love, had forever been breaking the Pharisaic Sabbath. Through all the evolutions of nature, in the shining of the sun, the swell of the tide, the leap of the cataract, the urgent pain of growth, the ripening of the corn, God had been and was yet working on the Sabbath day. In the development of man from savagery to civilization, the quickening of his faculties, the call to duty, the inflow of spiritual tides, the train ing of his mind to beneficence, God had ever been actively careless of the Sabbatic law of Scribes and Rabbis. The child, Man, was the object of the holy care-taker. Jesus had just been working, only as His Father had been working in all the ages, for He was Good- THE MAN OF GALILEE. 3°9 ness and Mercy and Love. Divine works were the utterance of the Divine nature. Jesus had not even stopped to offer the defense that these miracles of His were works of mercy and therefore legal, even according to their own theories. This would have been to abandon the citadel of His faith. In His eve was man, the new temple, and man's new Sabbath, which He made by consecrating the old to beneficent purposes. This so identified Him with God, in plan and in result, that He said: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do: for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise" — John v, 19. The answer which Je sus made went even deeper and higher, for it more elaborately set forth the sonship of man and the Fatherhood of God, as revealed in Him, the Mes siah of both. Its lines of light ran forward, until they said, with the em- Father raiseth RAMAH OF BENJAMIN. were phasis lost in the of His ' He the up hoh' day of Christendom. Verity, verily," — "For as the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom He will. For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: That all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father which hath sent Him. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in Himself; so hath He given to the Son to have 3io THE MAN OF GALILEE. life in Himself; and hath given Him authority to execute judg ment also, becattse He is the Son of Man. Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth: they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation. I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and My judgment is just; because I seek not Mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent Me. If I bear witness of Myself, My witness is not true. There is another that beareth witness of Me; and I know that the witness which he wit- nesseth of Me is true. Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness unto the truth. But I received not testimony from man: but these things I say, that ye might be saved. He was a burning and a shining light: and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light. But / have greater wihiess than that of John; for the works which My Father hath given Me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of Me, that the Father hath sent Me. And the Father Him self, which hath sent Me, hath borne witness, of Me. Ye have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His shape. And ye have not His word abiding in you: for whom He hath sent, Him ye believe not. Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of Me. And ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life. I receive not honor from men. But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you. I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive Me not: if another shall come in His own name, him ye will receive. How can ye be lieve, which receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor which cometh from God only? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me: for he wrote of Me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words?" — John v, 21-47. The old world, in which man was unsacred, and the scaffolding by which man himself rose and was still rising, to create civilization under God, began to vanish out of sight at these words of Jesus. Never was there such a proclamation of the capabilities of man, as THE MAN OF GALILEE. 3" God's child. It was a universalism that shattered all Hebrew exclu- siveness. That He should quote Moses in this connection was a grievous offense unto their shallow respect for a great intellectual ancestor; but Jesus alone was true to Moses, who had been the prophet of Himself. The whole offense of Jesus lay in this, that He had come in at the lowest point of Hebrew patriotism, when the true spirit of the law and the proph ets had been abrogated by for malists and bigots. When men believed least in God and there- \^jg fore least in man, He had sought to rescue and to develop the immortal germs of religious prog ress which had stirred in the souls of Abra ham and Moses and Isaiah. Rabbinism had no interest in this. Jesus was also more true than they to the God of their fathers. It was a devotion unto God which they could not share, when He said: "I can of Mine own self do nothing, " — John v, 30, — and when He joyfully exploited the quickening power of God's love for man. But Jesus could not reason with them. He had flung Himself upon the Fatherhood of God by embody ing the brotherhood of man in the healing of this helpless creature inside of the Temple enclosure. He would not T>ffer them any other recommendations for Himself. Receiving glory from God, He could say: "Glory from man I do 312 THE MAN OF GALILEE. not receive." — John v, 41. Here also, as in the case of the man blind from his birth, which we must study further on, He spoke of Himself as "the Son of God," simply because the contention of the Pharisees was roused with reference to what they called His blas phemy of Jehovah Himself. Still more loyally and evidently than ever was He "the Son of Humanity." CHAPTER XXXII IN GALILEE kingdom ONCE more in Judea, Jesus had both succeeded and failed. He had succeeded in giving expression to His self-revealing loyalty to God, and He had failed to obtain the sympathy of the priestly party, either with His words or His acts. He was soon in Galilee again, intent upon preaching with persuasiveness the gospel of His The Galile ans either had notheard of His experiences with the authori ties at the Holy City, or were so influenced by His words and acts that they had not yet arisen in serious op position to the pro scribed Rabbi. PIP! Indeed, quite a party was ready to follow Him, "in scorn of consequence." The Pharisees at Jerusalem had set a watch upon Him; and what ever the free-thinking Galileans heard or thought of Jesus, their perturbed Rabbis were on the ground, and everything of importance was sure to be reported at Jerusalem. Meantime John the Baptist had been imprisoned. Thus the 3J3 SEA OF GALILEE, NEAR CAPERNAUM 314 THE MAN OF GALILEE. human chief witness to the authority of Jesus, the man who was regarded as the one person able to make Him tolerable, even to those Jews who wished for some kind of political and religious reform, was under the ban of the law. It was a moment when Jesus could not put less, but must rather put more emphasis upon those motives and ideals which are forever to distinguish His kingdom. That the Baptist suffered ignominy did not daunt the Son of Man, who already had announced the fact that He did not depend upon the Baptist for testimony as to His Messiahship, but rather upon His Father in heaven, in whose name and spirit He had done such works as brought upon Him the charge of Sabbath-breaking. Ties of blood, gratitude and admiring sympathy must have often pulled Jesus toward that jail; but, even over His own heart-strings, He must be about His Father's business. He had already shown that the Baptizer's vision and method were not His own. Now a new occasion for Pharisaic opposition arose. It was full summer-time when He and His disciples journeyed back from Judea. The corn was in the process of earing, and the valley through which Jesus and His disciples were traveling lay like a vast field waiting for the harvesters. As He walked, He was reaping grain from the immeasurable fields of God's providence and love, for He was divinely careless of legalism, divinely careful of the rights of humanity. His disciples had caught His spirit. On such a journey, it was the right of anybody, under the law, to gather enough grains for subsistence; and, as the little company moved on, in the light and inspiration of Him who was the Light of the World, they freely plucked some of the ears, and, threshing out the grain in their hands, they thus sup plied their hunger. Nothing more clearly shows the desperation with which the sleuth-like Pharisees were ready to prosecute their case against Jesus, than the fact that they instantly determined upon this act as a violation of their Sabbath. The synagogue at Capernaum was all astir, for the event had occurred not far from the city. Was it possible that this Sabbath- breaker was deliberately continuing His unlawful conduct? In the state of excitement against Jesus, the two offenses, plucking the ears and rubbing out the corn in the palm of the hand, were very serious. The punishment which could be visited upon them was nothing less THE MAN OF GALILEE. 315 than capital, for they might be stoned to death. It was a great moment for the spies who had followed Jesus and His disciples. They had started out, perhaps, only to see if He took a step beyond the distance permitted for a Sabbath day's journey. When these pious detectives came back into Capernaum, and met the scribes and elders, they had a new case against Him. But the dignitaries made their charge against the disciples, probably because they alone had been seen in violating the law of the Sabbath. It was the Pharisaic manner employed to indict Him. This misconduct on the part of ordinary followers only showed what a dangerous public leader was their magnetic teacher. Jesus answered the charge with far more elaborateness of reason ing and kindly consideration, because He Himself was less involved. He said unto them: "Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungered, and they that were with him; how he entered into the house of God, and did eat the shewbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests? Or have ye not read in the law, how that on the Sab bath days the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless ? But I say unto you, that in this place is one greater than the temple. But if ye had known what this meaneth, / will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath day." — Matt, xii, 3-8. Never before had He indicated that His reverence for His Father and God involved a reverence for the laws of nature and necessities of man, in which God has declared His will quite as certainly as He has on any Sinai. Here again was Jesus the Son of Humanity, be cause He was the Son of God. The earnestness with which He preached mercy reveals the intensity of His purpose to reveal divine ness by humaneness. It is most luminous in these words of His which follow His quotation concerning mercy, from the prophet Hosea: "I will have mercy and not sacrifice." — Matt, xii, 7. Again Jesus stood as Humanity, — its heir and champion, its revelation and hope, — and He said: "The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath day." — Mark ii, 28. That same Son of Man had made the temple of Humanity sacred, while priests had profaned the temple of stone at Jerusalem. Jesus looked upon all religious institutions and forms 3i6 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. as instrumentalities by which the child Man had gradually found his way into the secret of the Infinite. To Him the whole universe was God's kindergarten. Man had used things which had been provided unto him according to the revelation of the will of God, in order that he might get into the depths of himself and into the depths of his Father. Jesus believed that to have a first-hand and filial rela- CHRIST'S REPROOF OF THE PHARISEES. tionship unto the Almighty Goodness is the most desirable boon for man. Shewbread, altars, fires, priestly garments, brazen serpents, tabernacles, even Sabbaths, were a part of the scaffolding, as has often been suggested, by which humanity is to be made a temple, so eminent and divine that the Revelator, peering into the future, would say: "I saw no temple there." "Behold the tabernacle of God is with men." — Rev. xxi, 22. Institutions exist for humanity, and not humanity for institutions. Here Jesus went farther than ever before, for He released man from every condition with respect to the Sabbath. He was to be its Lord unreservedly. He refused to respect even the few conces sions which the legalists had made to humanity. He asked for no compromise, whatsoever, when He said: "The Son of Man is THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 317 Lord of the Sabbath day." — Matt, xii, 8. Since that hour it has been possible to amend or abolish constitutions — which are only in stitutions on paper — in the name of man; it has been possible to re create or to destroy revered institutions, in order that something more sacred, because more merciful and humane, might come in their stead. God and man, — these are the only two supremely sacred re alities, in a universe of physical things. All other things are sacred in so far as they serve the ends — the glory of God and the good of man. This universe will have done its work some day, leaving man and God alone in the free air of the Spirit. So was Jesus the herald of universal progress. His course was now straight, sublime, and resistless, — even though the incident of Calvary lay before it. That event could only crown it for universal sovereignty and benefit. He was soon in the synagogue. Another helpless creature, with an atrophied hand, stood near the unhelpful Scribes and was pushed along by the dignified Pharisees. This creature was exactly what the hierarchical party might have desired at that moment, and they left him where he would attract the eye of the troublesome Rabbi. Jesus had scarcely looked upon him before the dignitaries had said: "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day ? " They were crowding things to a crisis. The pit was dug in front of Jesus; and the casuists were eager to see Him fall into it. That Sabbath day and the man with the withered hand offered them a more excellent opportunity to entrap Jesus, for the man was in no peril of his life, and, therefore, to heal him would be considered a flagrant violation of their strict legalism. They were clinging to a shadow; Jesus was glad of the opportunity to make sacred the substance. Again He appealed to their humanity, as the Son of Humanity. There must have been shepherds near Him, whose hearts trembled in pity, as He said to them: "What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the Sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days. " — Matt, xii, 11, 12. The relationship of a shepherd to his sheep, in the Orient, was tender and familiar. They had made God's relationship unto humanity formal and faith- 3i8 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. less. Jesus would be true unto His Father and reveal the divine valuation of man and God's infinite sympathy. It was His oppor tunity to show the place of man in the universe, and He improved it. If a materialistic philosophy were true, materialists would stand with these Pharisees, in unreverential attitude toward humanity, its rights and hopes. Theirs was a practically godless world, as is the world of materialism everywhere, man's higher claims are con cerned. Neither materialism nor Phariseeism has been able to answer the ques tion of Jesus: "How much, then, is a man better than a sheep?" If man is the son of God, as Jesus con tended, his holier in stincts, his immortal affections, the infinities of his confidence, the transcendent spiritualities of his being, are to be held, neither within the boundaries provided by a sensual philos ophy, or the limitations insisted upon by Pharisaic Sabbatarianism. God's sacredness is infinite; man's sacredness is finite. Never theless men are His children; their up-lookings belong to the realm of His light; their prayers are realized in His presence. Man is not a manufacture, but a child of God. God's very nature reiterates its processes and achievements in man. This it is that makes man bet ter than a sheep. Sentient as he is, he is sensitive to infinite per suasions. Jesus would not only lift man from the dominion of pas sions that make him a sinner, but also from the limitations of ritual which make him a moral drudge. He was to bring, in Himself, the Sabbatic era. He is to make every day of every week, in human life, a true Sabbath. It is to be an era of pity and sympathy, of 'HALLOW MY SABBATHS." THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 319 unselfishness and inspiration. It is to be an era of joy. Love is its dominant chord. To usher it in meant self-sacrifice for Jesus. But that is only Love loving divinely. He was ready for it. He saw the cross before Him. He said to the man with the withered hand: "Stretch forth thy hand." — Matt, xii, 13. The man obeyed, and the hand was whole. " Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might, Smote the chord of self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight." All that Phariseeism could do, after this, was to hold an eccle siastical council. Enemies began to join friendly hands against Jesus. The Herodians, who hitherto had been antagonized by the Pharisees, because the latter were the most patriotic people in Israel, were now welcomed into the fellowship which united the interests of Jerusalem and Rome. The allies set out upon nothing less than a persecution. His crime was that He had been humanizing the world and its institutions. This, as He saw, was the only way to get divinity into it. It was a perilous enterprise for Jesus; but it was sure to ultimate in the triumph of both God and man. This was all that Jesus sought, and He was therefore content. The population of Capernaum were not antagonistic to Jesus, even though the fanatics were arrayed against Him. These latter, therefore, proceeded very cautiously, for it was almost necessary for the priestly party to carry the people at large into their movement of opposition. The Pharisees depended quite as much upon the changeful feeling of the populace, as they did upon the imprudence or iconoclasm of Jesus. Deputations were going to and fro; and the authorities at Jerusalem had constant information from the spies in Galilee. It was a battle, at least for the moment, between a well- organized and dignified clique of ecclesiastics, and the people, whom every true leader of humanity has been willing to trust. But Jesus must not mislead the people, even to win a victory over the priests. The problem with Jesus was not how He should overthrow the Pharisees, but how He could keep His miracles from stimulating a conception of Him which would dethrone Him from the kingship of an invisible kingdom. The miracles of Jesus were at once credentials and events in the development of His purpose. 320 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. He was proving Himself to be the Son of God by a humanity which the world sorely needed. It was a missionary humanity. Even in the souls of His followers, it was ardently flowering from out of dis- cipleship unto apostleship. Sometimes, — and this was the case at the Holy City, — His wonderful works had not produced belief, but men were healed, and this was a better world. He could wait for the faith of mankind. Jesus had been vitalizing and enlarging the capacity of man for God, by animating and strengthening the power of faith. It was becoming more evident, at least to a few, that this is God's world, and not Satan's world, and that man may, if he will, be on good terms with the soul of the universe. Priestly intervention was at a discount. During this time, and by this process, Jesus was wooing the world, even through the sacrifice of Himself, back into family relations with its Father and God. This was indeed His kingdom. It was not an affair of the future, but of the present. He did not try to dispossess men of their ideas about demons and the origin of sickness; He doubtless shared many of them, and He used their speech, which was often His own. He simply let them use their own phraseology in describing what occurred, and was intent only upon showing that He, as the Son of Man and the Son of God, was supreme over evil. While other Rabbis had been content to do marvelous things with men's bodies, Jesus proved Himself to be a physician of the soul, as well as a helper of man's physical structure. If sickness and disease, insanity and death, were works of the devil, — and He did not argue about this; probably He had no doubt about it, — He had come to abolish the whole empire and operation of sin. It was a diseased world into which He had come, — physically and morally diseased. A man of brilliant gifts, desiring a sudden and temporary sovereignty, might have been content to or ganize the multitudes which naturally flocked unto Him, and lead .them on to some dramatic result, which would have transformed the politics of the world. But Jesus had not so much the world of yes terday or to-day in His mind; He was a citizen of the universe of Forever. He lived in its air, planned in it and talked out of its mystery and revelation. He was the loyal child of Eternity and Infinity. THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 321 Organization is the best form of life. The vital force and proc ess of this movement were tending to form an instrumentality. But love must be its center- and soul. He was now about to gather His disciples into a band which would form a sort of cabinet about Him. He would not take a single man to whom He had not declared the fact that the chief burden under which humanity was groaning was not Rome, or even Phariseeism, but Sin. Love would select the powers of the new reign of God, — the love that called them and made them love; the love that loses all else in its enter prise against lovelessness which is Sin. He was to be the deliverer, not of a specially related humanity suffering under somewhat local and temporary disadvantages, but the Savior of a race, hopeless and helpless under the operation and power of a universal malady,— the disease that rendered God's children unloving unto Him. The ex citement of His foes could not bewilder Him, and the enthusiasm of His friends could not disengage Him from this larger task. He sincerely believed that man is the son of God, in spite of sin; and, relying upon the Fatherhood of God, as revealed in His own Son- ship unto God and in His brotherhood unto men, He would proceed to re-organize and re-inspire humanity itself. If once they could see their Father's face, in Him as their brother and friend, the rule of sin would be broken, for then they would see that God loves men, in spite of their lovelessness. The disciples were to become apostles. It is quite impossible to account for these men, on lines of earthly heredity. Nothing else but the divine insight could have discovered their capabilities and destinies. Love only perfectly found them out. Before He chose them, He would withdraw Himself from the tumult of the multitude and spend a brief time in communion with His Father. It was de manded that His conceptions of men should be divine conceptions. But He can scarcely get away, for this. Only as the Father would send the rays of a divine sympathy through the souls of weak but divinely created human beings, could this perfect Son see His way into the treasure of hope with which He would have to work; and He must see this, again and again, in order to organize and train a band of men whose work and words should lift the world into the sunlight of heaven. In order, therefore, that He might se*e this 322 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. planet and its inhabitants again, with such complete and helpful vision as would not permit Him to underestimate the struggle and the process of redeeming such a mass, obtaining at length the gold out of all the clay, He must meet palsy, blindness, madness, leprosy — man. The multitude from Galilee followed Him. Jesus was never far from the human side of things. His Father now gave Him a fresh experience with the warped and twisted humanity which He was to straighten out. It seemed that the multitude which followed Him to the Sea of Tiberias represented mankind. They came "from Jerusalem, and from Idumaea, and from beyond Jordan; and they about Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, when they heard what great things he did, came unto him. And he spake to his disciples, that a small ship should wait on him because of the multitude, lest they should throng him; for he had healed many; insomuch that they pressed upon him for to touch him, as many had plagues; and un clean spirits, when they saw him, fell down before him, saying, Thou art the Son of God. And he straitly charged them that they should not make him known. " — Mark iu, 8-12. All of this was for the cul ture of Jesus at a supreme mo ment. He was equal to the sit uation, and mastered it by spiritual insight. He proved His divineness, by illustrating humanity at its highest in Himself. Prophecy, flowing out of faith like His, was made fact. "And he charged them that they should not make him known:" "that it might be ful filled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not tomb of hiram, king of tyre. THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 323 strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory. And in his name shall the Gentiles trust." — Matt, xii, 17-21. From the seaside he climbed up into a mountain, and spent the night in prayer. Morning came. As the city of Capernaum lay peacefully below Him in the summer sunshine, and as the spiritual power heightened on that yesterday with its healed multitude quick ened His vision, He chose and ordained the twelve disciples whom He named apostles. There was nothing to break the quietude of the scene or extract the sweetness of His utterance, as He spoke the names of His be loved companions. No long ceremony or elaborate declaration as to their place in ecclesiastical history confused the eye-glance of love. The stupendous mass of ritual and superstitious attention to formu lary which now attends less important events of similar nature, is testimony to the fact that Phariseeism did not die with His perse cutors, and that it never can be content with the perennial simplicity of Jesus. Churchliness, rather than Christliness, has vainly tried to exalt these plain men, by treating them as the precursors of our modern bishops, archbishops, cardinals and popes. It was theirs to usher in, not the reign of form, but of" spirit. The temple in which they were consecrated was not a humanly builded fane, gay with trappings fit only for warriors and perishable as the conceit of men. It was, instead, the temple of nature and man. Christianity had no jeweled tiaras or golden crucifixes to give them; it had life and love; it had Jesus. Instead of the thunder-roll of a great organ, the birds were singing their summer lyrics. Gems of dew hung on the grass. Instead of a canopy of painted saints overhead, the sky bended over all, symbolic of the Infinite in God and man. Through the windows of East and West and North and South, unstained save by the Eter nal Painter, firmer than the multi-colored glass in cathedral arches, God looked in on time and man looked out upon eternity. Instead of gleaming pavements made of polished stones, their feet pressed the soft, cool sward. The wild flowers gave forth incense. Such was the environment of this far-reaching event, because the processes of Jesus' kingdom are natural and human, A disciple became an 324 THE MAN OF GALILEE. apostle, just because life ever rushes on to expression. The bud of teachableness and learning blows with a sweet inevitableness, into the rose of fragrant and beautiful missionary glory. Truth must be told, if it is to be kept true. Each of these men had felt the urgent vitality, and it only needed that the Sun of Righteousness should touch any of them, for his soul to bloom into fervent apostleship. If it had been the dream of Jesus to replace the Temple of Jerusalem by a series of cathedrals, abbeys and churches of superior beauty and grandeur, He would never have permitted an ordination- service without first building a colossal and lovely structure, and calling for mitres, chasubles, and other items in the list of ecclesias tical vestments. His vision looked to man as the only worthy temple of God. He did not speak against ceremony or fane, so much as for the soul and its Father. He knew that man must climb to His spiritual ideal slowly, by using and yet spiritualizing things, ever leaving behind him the altars and rites by which he mounts into a true worship of God. Jesus claimed all the world and all men. He therefore consecrated twelve very human men, on the wallless, spireless, altarless earth of humanity, with nothing between them and heaven. The morning had left its fresh splendors on Kum Hattin, or "Horns of Hattin." One of the little peaks glowed only with the full dawn of earth; the other was radiant with the glory of both earth and heaven, for Jesus was there with His disciples. The lake glimmered at the East, and doves and eagles flew above the smaller hillocks at the South. Probably the larger number of the multitude had not yet gathered near unto Him, when His voice spoke the first syllables of that love which was to send these disciples forth to re create the world. But soon they came, from out of the villages near ,by, where they had passed the night. With the crowd of followers came also the needy and the sick, the curious, and, doubtless, a few spies. When all' talk died away in His presence, they saw that He "called unto Him whom He Himself would;" — Mark Hi, 13, — the twelve were appointed. He was yet a Jew: for the number was chosen in ac cordance with that of the tribes of His beloved Israel. It was a scene and action so human as to more truly reveal Him as the Son of God, It was the unchurchly beginning of the THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 325 true Church of God which is ever the Church of Humanity. Only a handful of imperfect men, — and this was Christendom. What are they to do? One phrase of the Evangelist expands the mind with an idea of what is before them. They are to "be with Him." — Mark Hi, 14. This tells the rest of the story of the genesis and organization of the new world. They are to "preach, and to have power to heal sickness, and to cast out devils." — Mark Hi, 15. But all these are the outflowings of that spring of Sonship unto God, which His Brotherhood of power and love had discovered in each of them. They are to "be with Him." No apostolic order, in the ecclesiastical sense, did He create. No series of duties, but those of humanity, did He impose; and these duties were to be most humane because they themselves were to "be with Him," and feel the divine in His humanity. Jesus knew that He had broken with Judaism. The Son of David was lost to sight in the Son of Man. He had linked the truth with life. The work of teaching was to develop with the acts of kindness. The majestic forces of both were now in the hands of these fishermen; and upon the foundation-stones of the new Jerusalem which would rise upon the ruins of the old, their names would be engraven. Who were these men? It is evident, first, that they were men of sincerity, and of such fiber and spirit that they would not be less teachable because they were chosen -to teach. Only as they would be led could they lead. It was not a coterie of pedants in morals, surely not an association of saints, but a band of men whose power to evangelize lay in their capacity to receive and their ability to as similate the training of Jesus, their Master. There was Simon, — impetuous, vigorous, formidable because of genius, easily influenced for good or evil; daring and often officious; venturesome and yet quickly stampeded by men; full of tears for sympathy or for repent ance, — so full of those elements which make us hopeful of a man, that Jesus had inaugurated the greatest of the enterprises of love, by calling him, and giving him to the future, as Peter, — the rock-man. It was Jesus' faith in God's Fatherhood, as a missionary force, that emboldened Him to make a missionary of Simon. John and James, the sons of Zebedee, who were also chosen, would have no less need than others in that band, of the constantly CHRIST CALLING THE APOSTLES JAMES AND JOHN. FROM PAINTING By E. ARMITAGE, R. A. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 3*1 faithful and laborious culture to be offered to them, and even urged upon them by their Master. James appears, at the first, to have been the more prominent of the two, for John is called "the brother of James," — Mark Hi, 17, — a designation which would scarcely repre sent their relative importance at a later date. Yet James had the stuff in him for the first hero and saint who should find his aureole in martyrdom. He is to be with Peter and John at the raising of the daughter of Jairus, the Transfiguration, and in the tragic night of Gethsem ane. Neither of these brothers is so calm of temper, as most pic tures of John suggest, ._, for both were called "Boanerges" — "Sons of Thun der." John and James were both unwisely and irreverently ambitious, as we afterwards find out. The first had the temper and eye of the mystic, and yet he appears to have been equally content with James, as to his mother's conduct, when she requested that her sons might be given extraordinarily good places in the new regime which they anticipated under the Messiah. Doubtless John and James were better off in this world's goods than any of the others, for it appears that Zebedee, their father, had hired servants and his own boat. He appears at a later date as a man on familiar terms with the chief authority. Surely the problem which Jesus found in each of these -brothers was such a problem as only His own moral enthusiasm would dare to confront. He was to give them to the world as the leaders of a divine evangel. With Matthew, the publican, an honest-hearted man who was tired of dishonesties as well as public scorn, when he met Jesus, we have become a little acquainted already, but the world was to know him as the one who was to give to mankind the first writing which contained an account of his Master's thoughts and utterances. More important at the first than Matthew, the publican, was Andrew, plain RUINS AT BETHSAIDA 328 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. and true, whose genius for doing a great thing is exhibited in the fact that he brought Simon Peter unto Jesus, and who seems to have been a man that never underestimated the sublimity of simple truth, or contented himself with less than first-hand information with refer ence to the King of Men, and His purpose within him. We assume that Nathanael and Bartholomew were one and the same, and we have already seen how closely Nathanael was associated with that other Greek, Philip of Bethsaida. Nathanael's home and influ ence at Cana of Galilee made him able to be of service to the new kingdom, not only because of his place of residence, but also because of the illustration he was giving of a growing faith. Another of these disciples, whose figure has been of great importance in our nine teenth century, and whose problem and its solution have helped men to a clearer faith in our own time, was Thomas, called Didymus, or "the twin." He had a quick and cordial sympathy with goodness, but his vision of the power of love in the world was colored by a cer tain gloominess of disposition which made it impossible for him to believe with the rapidity of a loving John or an ardent Peter. There was a second James, sometimes called ' ' the less, " who was probably the cousin, and certainly the kinsman, of Jesus. We know that he never escaped the limitations and bondages of Judaism. He was always careful for ritual and serious with respect to many of the trifles of an outworn morality. It was ' necessary that along with the brooding and imaginative John, tender in his love and yet thunder ous in its proclamation, by the side of the vehement and strong- souled Peter, or the quiet and sage Nathanael, close to the sincere and fact- loving Matthew, there should walk this fastidious and faith ful Jew, who still would be a Christian, — James. They could uncon sciously reveal more of that true kinship of soul which Jesus saw and felt wasthe terrestrial proof of the Fatherhood of God. It is unnec essary to say that the full light which came trembling across sorrow at the raising of the daughter of Jairus, the glad radiance which gave us a transfigured Christ, and the holy splendor which broke through the gloom of Gethsemene, would never have reached our world in its entirety, if, along with Peter and John, and the James who was the son of Zebedee, there had not walked, at other times, fulfilling other purposes, beholding other events, receiving other revelations, THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 329 this man of the past, whose heart trembled upon the edge of the future, — James, the kinsman of Jesus. Another on the list was Thaddaeus, who was unfortunate enough to bear another name, even the name Judas, as well as the name Lebbsus, and has therefore been called the three-named dis ciple. Of him, as well as of Thomas and James, son of Alpheus, we know next to nothing. Of Simon the Canaanite, who was one of the twelve, we gain this, from the phrase "the Canaanite," that he belonged to the restless section of the dominant political party, and was one of "the zealots," of whose place in Hebrew thought and agitation we have already spoken. It is a most interesting illus tration of the width of the commandment of the new Law-giver and the largeness of His sympathy that both these touched a variety of human beings so transformingly, that Simon the revolutionist walked and worked side by side with Matthew the tax-gatherer. Certainly nothing but personal devotion to their Master could have kept these men from remembering the past, in which their inter ests were ever at war. Because we know of his moral disaster and the wreck of hope in his downfall, the other Judas, Judas Iscariot, the only man from Judea whom Jesus chose, strays across the page like a taciturn presence walking toward darkness. He was worthy of trust, else Jesus would not have trusted him. That he failed and broke in upon the plan of Jesus, is testimony to the fact that Jesus was divine enough to be the Son of Humanity. That this group of men, as varied as twelve plants growing out of twelve distinct and different seeds in the same soil, received light and warmth from the same Sun of Righteousness, and gave to the universe, in another form, not only what they received, but what they themselves became, either by obedience or by disobedience, is, at the very opening of the Gospel in the world, an illustration of the faith of Jesus in humanity, and the capacity of humanity to receive and express the life of the divine. He now began to instruct them as they were to instruct mankind. %l €^x THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. From painting by A. Noack. CPIAPTER XXXIII THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT— THE BEATITUDES THE Sermon on the Mount has often been called the charter of Christianity. It was and ever must remain the supreme and com prehensive assertion of the principles and methods of the kingdom of Jesus. As Jesus looked upon His kingdom, He saw that, for any man to enter in, he must assume the obligations flowing from the privileges granted to the citizens of that kingdom. The secret of the kingdom lay in the fact that man is a child of the Father-God; man's inner life and his behavior in the world must have as their motive and spirit a filial relationship unto the heavenly Father, if they are to be Christian. Dr. Farrar speaks of the beatitudes as "an octave." They form the octave of Christian truths. As a musician discloses the possibilities of music, in the eight tones to which all melodies owe their richness and power, so Jesus, in the eight beati tudes, which He pronounced from the plateau of that mountain, dis covered the foundations and material for the greatest commonwealth of humanity under God which spiritual vision has ever beheld. It was not the thought of Jesus that the commonwealth could be manu factured and made to work, without God. Instead of this, He knew and conceived God as its inspiration and soul. The brotherhood of man was a consequence flowing from the Fatherhood of God. One is the terrestrial, the other the celestial, side of the same fact. If one of these truths lies close upon the earth of the human, and the other lies far up in the spaces of the divine, the eight columns of infinite loveliness and truth, which relate the brotherhood of man to the Fatherhood of God, are these beatitudes which Jesus spoke: "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are 33i 332 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. they that hunger and thirst after righteousness : for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peace makers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." — Matt, v, 3-10. They are a declaration of the heart-experience, of Jesus Himself with His Father God. He began to speak them, when He looked about Him and saw the multitudes. The sight of the human throng quickened the sympathy of His soul toward man, and there flowed out of Him the truth which He had learned in His own humanity, — the truth of divinity. He had no thought that human beings ought to be anything else but blessed; and so His moral code began with the word "Blessed." As Carlyle suggests, it was not a happy race, necessarily, that Jesus set Himself to create, organize and rule, but it was a blessed race. This great blessing, which is the spring and glory of all blessedness, and which pervades and inspires these beatitudes, is the discovery which Jesus realized in Himself, and which He would communicate to all His brethren, the fact that God was His Father. The beatitudes are the proclamation, therefore, of the Fatherhood of God as that truth and reality come to make the race blessed. Jesus was conscious of the fact that, through increasing ages, Israel had made the discovery, in life and conduct, through obedience and devotion, that "the Eternal One working for righteousness" was infinitely merciful and kind. Amidst the solemn thunder-crash of Sinai, when nothing but mysterious lightnings could illumine its sum mit, Moses, the ancient law-giver, had copied out of the nature of God, as Israel conceived Him, the law under which the citizen of Israel was to live. Jesus, sitting on the grassy slope of a mountain, near Capernaum, with His human brethren within handshake, at one with the quiet and beauty in nature about Him, and with infinity distilling in every word He spoke, was now giving what He had dis covered in the heart of God, by asserting and living up to and through the privileges and familiarities of His own Sonship unto God. Moses was indeed the servant of the Almighty; Jesus was the Son of Infinite Love. Love is Almighty; but Israel had not found this, because humanity in Israel had not lived deeply enough, by loyalty and sym- THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 333 pathy, and thus Israel had not reached the very heart of the Eternal. It is doubtful if even once Hebrewdom arrived at the concep tion that God is the Father of each separate human being. The nation, rather, was God's child, as we use the word. Sinai, with its law, was the gathering-point for a people; and there the nation was re-inspired; the Mount of Beatitudes was the gathering-point for humanity, and there Jesus was legislating, according to the constitu tion which began and ended with God's Fatherhood and man's broth erhood. At Sinai there were Jews, and the commandments of Moses were exclusive; at the Mount of Beatitudes, the brotherliness of Jesus had gathered all types and conditions of humanity; and His com mandments, uttered out of the Love that alone rules the human heart, were inclusive. This Mount of Beatitudes, with, its command ments of Love, was a prophecy of that mountain called Calvary, where, having lived according to these commandments, Jesus was to trust Himself and His Kingdom to Love, absolutely, and so victori ously that death and all lovelessness would be destroyed. Never had Jesus' kingliness disclosed its quality and power so truly, as when He began to speak to an unblessed world, of blessed ness, and when that throng of ignorant and crippled humanity, whose faces were lost to view as the multitude stretched downward to the foot of the mountain, looked up on Him, a poor, sus- p ec t e d, already- scornedRabbi of Galilee. In uttering the law of the new kingdom, Tqmb of davib, 334 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. He showed Himself at once the Messiah of humanity, and placed His authority firmly upon great ethical principles as old as the soul of man and the goodness of God. Individual consciences trembled with the strange and sweet music, until the melody of one soul found itself accordant with the melody of another separate nature, and thus the law, uttered to individuals, began to create a new society, and to establish a new social compact. Not a single utterance which Jesus made on that occasion has come to us, that does not make every man a brother of every other man. In these charming and tender commandments, Love so overflows law and law becomes so lovable, that, from that mountain, one can see that, sometime, the whole race will be under the rule of the Divine affec tion. His originality was not literary, but personal; not philosophical, but divine. Not for a moment did Jesus seek to avoid uttering the precepts which have similarity of sound unto those which wisdom and kindness in all ages have spoken. He was not fearful of the result which is sometimes attained by the very industry and ardor which theologians expend in trying to show that His words cannot be matched in the pages of Confucius or Plato. They spoke abstrac tions, and offered them to the race tentatively; He spoke out of the Fatherhood of God, as that Fatherhood swept through the heart of His own Sonship, and, as John Stuart Mill has suggested: "Not even now would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rules of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavor so to live that Jesus Christ would approve our life." With that multitude of untrained or helpless human beings before Him, He frittered away not a moment in dealing with the abstract, but He brought the transcendental realities of God's throne into the human soul, until every string of human nature was harmonious with the Infinite Love which had created man and loved man from the beginning, The beatitudes are lines and colors so wrought with the art which is born of affection, that they describe a character; and as Jesus painted this character, lo, His own features appeared, and He was the embodiment of what He spoke, the revelation of the hu manity which these precepts indicated as possible, the incarnation of the Deity which calls to the childhood of every man to trust and to THE MAN OF GALILEE. 335 incarnate Love's Fatherliness. Gautama and Aristotle can never enforce a precept, because they cannot kindle moral enthusiasm. Ethical passion is aglow when man sees the face of God in Jesus Christ. Jesus put a new valuation upon human life when He showed, by exemplifying these beatitudes and uttering them as the law of His kingdom, that any life may be blessed, and is therefore worth living. The hosts of Buddha must ever be in retreat from the human problem; the hosts of Jesus must ever be on the advance. Jesus knew that Love is life, and that Love, by once making such a life as His livable, would have a divine triumph in man. He did not expect to exercise any other authority than the authority of Love, and He proposed that the members of His kingdom should enter into a government in which all authority and power would be the utterance of Love. As the beatitudes come to us, they begin with Jesus confronting the problem which lies beneath all other problems. He bases his new commonwealth, not upon the fact of possession; He dethrones the passion of selfishness. He rests the palace of the future on the fact of poverty; and He enthrones the passion of self-sacrifice. The "King of Kings" Jesus was to become, — not the King of slaves, — by His poverty of spirit and self-abandonment; and therefore His law was uttered in the words: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." — Matt, v, 3. Thus the true kingdom of earth comes, and is the possession, not of the practicalists, but the idealists. Already they have great allies in God's destinies. Jesus was approaching the noon-day of His popularity; one com promising word would have flung the heart of the nation at His feet; even now the crowd around was beholding a pursuasive teacher who had more than convinced them. But He would not mislead, and therefore He had seized the opportunity to discrown a self-satis fied interest, and in the presence of, and for the sake of, the disciples whom He had chosen to be the leaders of the race manward and Godward, He uttered the beatitude concerning the poor in spirit. As the multitude came closer to hear His words, He saw mourners about Him. This one had lost a mother, and that one had lost the dream of life; this one was drawn with pain, and that one was lashed with unutterable anguish within, Most of all, He saw 336 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. and understood those whose tears were tears of repentance and sorrow, on account of the sin that now appeared most dark and dire in the pure light of His presence. He did not tell the throng not to mourn, for it was not His purpose to create a tearless world. In the highest moment of civilization God would wipe all tears away, but tears there must be. He only said: "They that mourn shall be comforted." — Matt, v, 4. God's elect must yet be baptized with fire; the choice souls of earth must still be bent, not killed, by burden-bearing; the divine discontent that throbs with pathetic pain must swell until true hearts nearly break, — but the mourners will all be comforted. Sorrow must continue walking through the fields of time and watering the seeds of destiny with divine tears. He Him self, the most blessed of all men, must be the most sorrowful, — but even He "shall be comforted." He knew that some of these disciples, who had just been made apostles, were already full of plans indicating large ambitions. For ages, the thought of the coming Messiah had made the Jew proud. That pride had been crystallized by oppression. An untamed and un tamable grandeur associated itself with all Hebrew anticipation; and as Jesus perceived that they who now heard and saw Him were pictur ing to themselves the glories of Messiah's reign, and probably think ing with what triumph each individual Jew and the whole nation would step soon to a world-wide victory, He pronounced the beati tude upon the meek. When He said: "Blessed are the meek," — Matt, v, 5, — He did not for a moment have reference to the useless and unaspiring folk whose pulpy weakness is ever a burden to the strong and the true. None knew so well as Jesus that meekness is a rare blossom which crowns a plant growing up out of the vigorous seed of moral and mental power. A weak man can never be meek. He had said: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the king- don of heaven." He now said: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." His kingdom included both heaven and the earth. But having the celestial, one can obtain the terrestrial. It ran from the heart of man to the heart of God. Poverty of spirit, the soul emptied of all trifling satisfactions, spirituality that is so far from ignoble poverty of nature that it becomes the treasure-house of THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 337 God's richest purposes,— these make the man of earth already a a man of heaven. He, therefore, had said of the poor in spirit: "Theirs is the kingdom of heaven." He had, long before, spoken of Himself as the Son of Man "which is in heaven." The true universe is in the present tense. When He now speaks of the meek, and the fact that, accord ing to the very nature of things, and therefore inevitably, ' ' they shall inherit the earth, " — Matt, v, 5, — Pie knew that the earth is for God's child, man, and that because man is God's son, it must come to him when man shall realize his sonship unto God. To inherit the earth is an achievement possible only to one in whom God's Fatherhood is prac tically revealed in trustful childhood. Here, in Himself, was the example of meekness, — the meekness which comes of power, and comes of the power lying in the calm and rich experi ence of sonship. Jesus had been ill-treated, -* yet He answered **£ not in anger. His /"Si silence concerning His enemies had already taught His disciple-band a lesson as to the divine willingness to wait MOSES WITNESSING GOD'S PRESENCE ON MOUNT SINAI. -%\ 338 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. until truth publicly puts on her coronation robes. More sure than ever of His personal greatness, He was gently brothering the little ness and weakness of men. With prerogatives immeasureably greater than those of Moses, who had been held to be the type of meek ness, the new law-giver sat upon this lowly untroubled plateau, con trasting strongly with the externally grander Sinai, and calmly put aside all personalness, as He went on lifting His brother-man into His own conception of and relationship to God. The rulers of the world at that moment were seeking to "inherit the earth;" and His own nation was looking most eagerly upon the whole planet as its own by right. His was a diviner plan. This beatitude hushed a thousand war-cries, and sheathed a thousand swords, by its assertion of the fact that the earth does not belong to battalions but to ideas, and that this planet is not the inheritance provided unto the organ izers of force, but an inheritance to those who, being controlled by their Father, God, in perfect sonship, are able and willing to con trol themselves. In the glow . of ..that morning there had come unto His feet many whose hunger and thirst must have touched the heart of Jesus. He saw them there, crouching near the rich and prosperous, who also were hungering and thirsting, but not as they, for bread and water; these latter were anxious after power and fame, pleasure, and the treasures of earth. He looked deeper than their immediate or fancied wants, and saw each soul as a son of God, with infinite capacities for greater things than these and He said: "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." — Matt v, 6. To be filled with righteousness was and is to be in heaven, and to inherit the earth. But righteousness must be its own satisfaction, and bring with it so much of joy that both earth and heaven disappear in the infinite blessedness of the soul. There fore, the promise is: "They shall be filled." Not a foot of earth, not a rood of heaven, is promised. It must have been painful to those who were waiting there with these newly dowered disciples, to hear no word about the prospects of the new regime which could over turn Rome and establish the supremacy of the Jew, and to reflect that He now turned their attention to what was apparently the dry abstrac tion, — righteousness. Still more strange did it seem, at the first, that THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 339 His only recommendation for righteousness was that it would fill, or satisfy them. But Jesus was not misleading the new leaders He had chosen. Enthusiasm for justice, longing for goodness, thirst for the truth which weaves the tissues of a man into righteousness, — this He knew was the fundamental and all-comprehensive spirit He must impart to men, if God's Fatherhood should ever re-create the world through human brotherhood. He was truly the new law-giver; righteousness was being urged without a thunderbolt of fear behind it. Moses did exceedingly fear and quake; the rocks of Sinai felt the terror which was to seize upon the human soul; but Jesus was revealing Love as the power that fulfills all law, God in man. Men were to crave intensely and yearn for righteousness. It was to bring its own reward; the punishment. of unrighteous was to consist in the loss of righteousness. As they looked up to Him, He was so much the embodiment of righteous ness, that, doubtless, many felt how lovable righteousness is, and, without a fear, they hungered and thirsted after it. It was the pur pose of Jesus to make justice admirable, truth lovable, goodness imitable, and righteousness a passion of the soul. He had no hoj^e of delivering men from ^^righteousness, save as they fell in love with the righteousness which is of Love, that is, of God. Jesus' law is positive. All the good aimed at by a thousand negations, insist ing that men shall not do this or that, urging men to despise wrong and flee from evil, must be accomplished, not by the most heroic enterprises of the soul against sin, but by ' ' hunger and thirst after righteousness." His ideal, by its lovableness, would help men to escape the unlovely ideals, whose ugliness appeared when the light of PIis righteousness shone upon them. It would have been cruelty to human nature and an infinite irony, if Jesus Himself, the Incarnate Righteousness, had not been within reach, when He uttered this beatitude. Without Him in sight, it would have created a vacuity or a dream, — one as deep as hell, the other as dissolving as a mirage. But "He was there, — "He Himself with His human air." As the souls of men kindled with the longing for righteousness and a doubt dared to warm its chilliness by that flame, He appeared, 340 THE MAN OF GALILEE. to prove that sonship unto God is realizable, and that the hungry and thirsty of earth may be filled. This beatitude was so visualized in Him, that goodness appeared to have a new, and immortal victory provided for it, in the willingness of God to enter into His child and in the capacity of His child to receive Him. An immortal dawn came before the minds of His hearers, as this new enthusiasm rose up from the ashes of 'the perished enthusiasms which had been aim less and ineffective in them; and the new ideal stood pure and beautiful on the graves of old ideals which had lived for a moment and then languished away. The word righteousness on His lips was as warm as the pulse-beat of humanity. He had shown them many times that His righteousness was not the righteousness of the Scribes; it was human, because divine. He had made it beautiful, as it had taken up the loathesomeness of the lejoer and lifted the paralytic and opened the eyes of the blind. Jesus Himself was the pledge that God would have His way with His child, man, through the righteous ness which comes, not by fear, but by love. Jesus was writing on the human heart, as Moses had written upon stone. The new law-giver was so much the exemplar of all that He said, that the larger eloquence came not from His words, but from Himself, as the crowd listened and looked upon Him. He was now about to utter another benediction whose promise offered a blessing to the soul and proposed a distinct addition to character. In this respect it was like the benediction concerning those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. It is scarcely possible to think that Jesus did not have in mind the fact that the Jews of His day, like their forefathers, and like unthinking Christians of to-day, believed that there is something in righteousness exclusive of mercy, and some thing in mercy antagonistic to righteousness. "Righteousness and peace," "mercy and truth," had been associated in their song and prophecy; but the world had still to see love and justice in unity, in Him, whose vast circumference of thought and purpose related ap parently opposed facts to a divine center. Therefore, immediately after speaking concerning righteousness, Jesus said: "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." For the most part, the conduct of the religious leaders of His time was not more unrighteous than it was unmerciful. We have seen an illustration of the lack of THE MAN OF GALILEE. 341 sympathy with the pained and sorrowful of earth, and the want of true sensibility to trouble and misfortune, in the fact that the Sab bath was held to be too sacred for many of the most lofty and generous manifestations of divine humanity. Stretching down the hillside was the throng, and many were lame and sick. The morning shone upon the face of the blind, and revealed him all-attentive, but he turned sightless eyes upon Jesus. Jesus saw the anguish of the world in every such countenance, and He knew every such sufferer as a son of God. Out of PIis own Sonship He spoke, when He forecast the divine experience which would come to all men, if only they were humanly merciful. Because He was the brother of all these sorrowful ones, He Himself had been merciful. The very fact of being merciful had so brought Plim into dear relations with His Father, that He knew what it was to have the sensibilities of Almighty Love turned tenderly toward Him. The power to pity men is power to receive the divine pity. The world with which He was now dealing had its most serious problem lodged and unsolved in a cold heart. How could this heart be warmed? He knew of nothing save the sympathy of God which would make man sympathetic. Above all other views of the Deity, beyond all other compliments for human nature, He placed mercifulness. He Himself had personalized mercy. It was not that He would have men adopt a view which would make them tolerant enough to de cline to destroy one another because of diversity of opinions, but it was that He would make mercifulness so much a principle and spring of action in them, that, as they touched woe and sweetened bitter ness, they themselves would obtain mercy from above. No room for hate of man, or men, in the human soul, no coarse brutality tramp ling upon the weak, no unforgiving and uncompassionate holding-back of generous impulses, would Jesus permit, if men were to be true children of God. The door out of which mercy goes like an angel on earth, is the door through which mercy shall come an angel from heaven. This benediction of Jesus was to set the human heart atlirob with brotherhood. He was not alone concerned in uttering a precept. It was impossible that so much of the sweet power of pity which He gave to men by His teaching and example should not be come divinely passionate. He was Himself illustrating an enthusiasm. 342 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. The very mercifulness which they learned from Him was a warm impulse connecting itself with the mercifulness of God, and thus God became lovable. The Eternal Consoler consoled those and ever con soles those who have given consolation to others. He had now lifted them quite in the region where His own heart realized the divine Fatherhood. Righteousness was to enter into them and fill them, mercifulness was to obtain mercy, and these were both matters of heart-experience, because the righteousness He spoke of was not to be an intellectual formulary, but something to be desired with profound emotion, and mercifulness is of the heart's sovereignty. He would now go deeper into the history and prophecy of the human heart and He said: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." — Matt, v, 8. The reward attached to this beatitude is more spiritual and more lofty than any of the rest, — the beholding of the Father in heaven, — "they shall see God." This beatitude also gets deeper than man can see, for we can know of mercifulness by its manifestations and acts, and we may test righteousness in exam ining conduct; but purity of heart is too personal and private for our probing or weighing, and the vision of God is also a possession of the soul, into whose glory no one else may be invited. The whole hope of Jesus for a true theology rooted itself, not in the convolu tions of the brain of genius, but in purity of heart. He had not come to reform the intellectual life of man by proposing revolutions which should begin and end in the human head, but He Himself was His own proposal to the human heart; and He insisted that a pure heart is the only prerequisite to a true view of the Mystery of Mysteries. Shadows projected from man's impurity will fall upon the holi ness and infinite love and so cloud it as to make a true conception of God imj^ossible. No brilliancy of intellect can penetrate the gloom with which an impure heart surrounds the white throne of infinite love. God is Love, and we must feel God through loving Him. Impurity is lovelessness, and makes sympathy between the soul of man and its Father impossible. Jesus' stainlessness, as we often remark, gave Him the moral insight which is of affection and vouchsafed unto Him the revelation of goodness and love. He Himself knew and preached the theology, — His vision of God, — which is the possession THE MAN OF GALILEE. 343 of the pure heart alone. Purity of heart is not negative. The inflow of the divine alone will produce it and continue it; the fire of love alone will consume what otherwise will taint and adulterate. It is passionate and pure — the flame of love. Jesus knew that the vision of God is necessary in every man for that man's development and coronation, that he never may be a member of His kingdom with out it. He had now led this throng of His followers far away from the morality of the Rabbis; and they were infinitely removed from the region in which they had been fondling their own expectations, as to an earthly triumph of the Messiah. Inward purity and the vision of God as Father would bring the prodigal home, make human brother hood a missionary force in the world, and cleanse society from all defilement. Philosophers had sought, and would ever be seeking, to give to humanity some vision of the infinite through long processes of reasoning, These necessitated great knowledge and unwonted keenness of intellect. Jesus put Himself before and within and behind all His words on the purity of man's heart and the revela tion of God, as the example of purity and the one soul most full of the vision of God; and He did this in such wise as to give the humblest a participation in His glory and His blessing. Jesus proved the privilege and prerogative of every man. He was love's manifesto, and He would trust nothing else. Jesus was attaching man to man, and man to God, by heart- cords. The sympathies of society were recreated divinely in Him, and He saw humanity being ruled and ruling itself only by affection. Above all the problem of civilization and within it, ever working with means "confederate to one golden end," was Eternal Love, His Father. But He saw that something more than the vision of God must come to men before they could realize their childhood unto God. That vision must get into the form of flesh and blood. Only as that vision of God is actualized in the sonship which kindles into brother hood can a man feel that he is not the fabric of Almighty Power, but of the very substance of Infinite Love. Jesus knew that this was a world in arms against itself, and that true peace existed nowhere. He therefore said: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." — Matt, v, 9. Here the man of vision be- 344 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. comes the man of action. Now, peace-making is not accomplished by force, nor by genius, nor by fate. It is the highest achievement of the spirit of brotherhood. Brother hood means sonship; sonship means father hood. Jesus was the first of the kings of men to recognize the mightier triumphs of peace, and to push I aside the bloody achievements of war. ' There never was a moment in history when a man, possess ing His fascination and ability, could have more easily plunged the whole world into tumult and strife. The Jew was ready " with a drawn sword, to follow another Judas Maccabaeus. Simon Peter, who sat before him, was to draw his sword in officious defense of his Master, but the Christ would rebuke him. It seemed impossible that the tyranny of Rome could ever be broken without war. Furthermore, Jesus saw men and parties, classes and sections, arrayed against one another. He might have foreseen that His own gospel of peace was to create a Constantine and a Charlemagne. But He knew that by and by, His vision of God the Father, and His exemplification of human brotherhood, would lead to peace, the only permanent peace, and that then human beings would realize the fact that men are children of God. His was a peace which could make no compromise with sin, but would destroy it with love. It was a peace, not of weak- A PUBLIC SCRIBE. THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 345 ness and death, but of power and life. Its jubilee would be j:>er- petual in the reign of Love. As He came to strike the last note in the octave, His mind re flected uj:>on the fact that such righteousness as Pie imposed, the righteousness of love, must suffer serious persecution. Pie would pre pare these disciples for this. One of the phrases in the air was this: "the kingdom of heaven," therefore Pie said: "Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heav en." — Matt, v, 10. He knew that men had been persecuted for the sake of unrighteousness which had been dignified by kings and complimented by priests as righteousness; but He had just offered in Himself and His words a definition of righteousness which is unforgetable. It is something to be yearned for by them, and it will satisfy all their divine yearning. To be persecuted for the sake of this righteousness, is indeed to possess the kingdom of heaven. To possess the kingdom of heaven is for a man to stand valiantly for the things eternal, in the midst of turbulent times; it is for a soul to bring in upon the self-satisfaction of the finite the limitless possibilities of the infinite; it is for a human being to so utter forth the Fatherhood of God in his own brotherhood, that the world of men shall realize the near ness of that which is universal. In order that He might inspire with this truth those who were to be sent forth to evangelize the world, He added: "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be ex ceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. " — Matt, vii, 12. The mists which hung around the grand fact of righteousness cleared away. "For my sake" was as personal as "ye" and "you." "For my sake," — these were the words that indicate more clearly than any other state ment in His discourse the personalness of all Christian righteousness and mercy and meekness and peace-making and purity. He had taken a sapless abstraction, and lo, it was filled with juices from the soul of the universe, and its bloom was love for Jesus. "For my sake, " — this was to be written by Love's own hand in crimson letters of quenchless devotion upon flags which should lead the armies of truth and goodness to the conquest of the world. 346 THE MAN OF GALILEE. So Jesus had again been about His "Father's business." What a procession He had organized, and how it stretches through all ages! He had marshalled the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, those that' hunger and thirst after righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those persecuted for righteousness' sake, into the grand army of the kingdom. These were to be the Invin- cibles. No Tenth Legion of Caesar, no Old Guard of Napoleon, were never so deeply and inevitably attached to their leader as these choice and unconquerable souls should be unto Jesus, their King. Love would exemplify its method. The program for making this a blessed world had been announced. Sinai was already vanishing out of sight, in the glory of the Mount of Beatitudes. CHAPTER XXXIV THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT -CONTINUED MANY efforts have been made to account for the Sermon on the Mount as a new system of morality characterized by almost daring originality. These have proven as valueless and inconsequential as the effort to show that it is the evolution and final outcome of long ages of human experience with the highest and deepest things of dt The truth is, it is n of morality at all, b utterance of a relig ion. The word relig ion means rebind- ing. As Jesus found religion, it separated men from one another and warmed not the heart of man j toward God. It was Jesus' aim to make religion a gen uine rebinding; it w His to reconstitute tl ties relating man to God. He Himself was His religion. His discovery of God's ' ^„.,.:;.. /¦¦f Fatherhood and of mount sinai. 347 348 THE MAN OF GALILEE. man's sonship was the promise of a renaissance in true religion. He Himself so won these disciples to Him that the highest morality had its roots within the love which He inspired. After having uttered the eight Beatitudes, Jesus looked into the faces of the men who were to go out and attract men like unto them selves to the gateways of the divine commonwealth, and He said: "Ye are the salt of the earth." — Matt, v, 13. The true antiseptic for all time and humanity is piety of the type He inspired. The sacrificial salt which makes complete the devotion and offerings of the soul unto God is the sort of holiness which they saw embodied in Jesus Himself, and which He saw winning their souls with its spirit uality, and making possible in them an ever-wholesome influence which should deliver the world from its putrescence. "But," He added: "if the salt hath lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and be trodden under the foot of men." — Matt, v, 13. Valuable as this kind of sanc tity is to preserve from moral decay, Jesus knew that its savor is love, and that when love has gone out of religion, it is like the salt which even then often became useless for the sacrifices of the Temple and was sprinkled on the Temple steps in slippery weather, in order that the priests might not fall. Never was there a more sympathetic appreciation uttered of the use of true religion and the uselessness of mere religionism. Jesus proceeded further to characterize His dis ciples so as to bring out their responsibilities. He said: "Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." — Matt. 5, 14-16. The place of these disciples in the world as light-bringers, came from their relationship to Jesus Himself as the fountain of light. No element of personality was lost; each man possessed his indi vidual value in the world. As Jesus sat teaching His disciples, who also were sitting, as the custom was, His eye may have beheld the loftier hill not far away, from which their imagination saw streaming forth the lights of an ideal city. Those who were not equal to such a flight of prophetic imagination could understand the familiar images ¦THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 349 as to the bushel and the candlestick. All of them were sure to feel the incoming tide of His one great thought and experience of Fath erhood, when He distinctly connected the duty and privilege of let ting their light shine before men, who by their light may see their good works, with the glory and honor of the Father which is in heaven. It was only one of many examples in this sermon of His faith in the unity of God's government. Light is light in earth and heaven and to glorify is to illumine. The good of man, His child, is the glory of God, the Father. All the way through this sermon, Jesus is vivifying and making dear the concej^tion of God, and centralizing everything of duty and hope in that most important idea, by His emphasis upon the universal Fatherhood. It will be noticed that a rising interest expresses itself from His own soul, as step after step He advances to state what moralists have called the science of duty, and what men of faith and love must know as that experience of religion which holds up every ethical standard and burnishes every moral motive in the light of God as the Eternal Father. No better means for studying the Ser mon on the Mount can be employed than by taking the fifteen refer ences Jesus makes to the Fatherhood of God, and noticing how increasingly rich is the promise of that righteousness which He says exceeds the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, and gives entrance into the kingdom of heaven. With the piety which comes from a loyal faith in divine Fatherhood, there grows up and shines forth the philanthropy which rests upon human brotherhood. In the presence of such a vision of life and its conquests, He could well say: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I come not to destroy, but to fulfill." — Matt, v, 17. He now began to show the contrast between the morality which was prescribed by that of old time, and the sanctity which would come as the very breath and impulse of a human life, if love of God and love of man were master-impulse and idea. He said: "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother without cause shall be in danger of the judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall 350 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of the Gehenna of fire." — Matt, v, 21, 22. Jesus was doubtless speaking of one of the Rabbinical comments on the old Law with which they were familiar, — "Whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment." — Matt, v, 21. He now went beneath and behind what the Rabbinical school and synagogue had JUDEAN HLLS AND VALLEY OF HINNOM. said, and by His interpretation of Love, and the duties which flow from Love, He made a statement of the true meaning of the old Law and its fulfillment, and, by leaving traditions behind, He in augurated the reign of the new Law. He was placing His reliance in that moral authority enthroned in the affections and thoughts of men. Sins of outward action were but outward mani festations of a man's inward spirit and thought. Behind and beneath offenses of conduct was the causative offense, namely, a bad heart. Men were not even to entertain, still less to cherish, malicious emo tions. Contempt for any human being, anger toward a brother, are seeds of murder; and against these He uttered the commandment of Love. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 351 Of course, this at once brought the human soul before a court superior to the Sanhedrin. No council of men can determine the quality of human feeling; no constituted tribunal of earth may look into the heart; and yet, in the heart alone, Jesus saw that the effect ive legislation must have its sway, il man is to be a son of God, and world-wide brotherhood is to be constituted under the Divine Fatherhood. This way was life; the other was death and waste. Everybody knew that Gehenna, — and the last phrase of Jesus was "the Gehenna of fire," — was the Valley of Hinnom, a narrow gulch south of Jerusalem in which bloody offerings of little children had been made ages before, and in which the refuse of the city, even the bodies of criminals, were thrown at a later time. Despising the cruel idolatry of the earlier period, the Jews testified to their progress from ancient and bloody superstition, by making this gorge, in which Sol omon had once built an altar to Moloch, a place into which was cast the filth of the city. That hated valley was the symbol of the ulti matum to which everything vile and foul must come. Fires probably burned continually to consume the refuse. Jesus, therefore, used the phrase as descriptive of the end of those who, whether guilty ol the outward act of taking a human life or not, entertained the feelings which inevitably both defile the soul and consume it. His words furnished another instance of the continuous effort He was making to found civilization upon brotherhood; and He proceeded at once to urge upon the Jews, by a reference to a cus tomary act of worship in the Temple which they would understand, the duty of refusing to proceed with a ritualistic observance until these finer instincts of brotherhood which He had quickened into life were loyally honored. He said; "Therefore, if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. Agree with thine adversary quickly, whilst thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost f arthing. "— Matt, v, 23-27. By thus placing the true altar in the human heart, by thus keeping the heart's 352 THE MAN OF GALILEE. true honor and purity of emotion, by thus inspiring motives and con secrating them for service at love's center, He was actually creating the temple of humanity in which true morality springs out of true religion and in which the pure in heart shall ever see God. He was not taking away the duty of going to the old altar; He was only ma kin< sa light and by hood, which cred and true all ancient duties in the the strength of the duty of brother- ought first to be met. He was pro claiming that law which is the law of liberty in the good heart. By it men shall be judged. He was so informing duty with love that duty would do itself. He went even further than this, in dealing with the problem of sex ual purity. The new moralist, who rooted His ethics in religion, would not allow men to for get that it is the intention or desire to do wrong which desolates the soul, A petted and even a permitted impulse toward impurity comes out of the soft cradle of desire and shows itself to be the monster, foul and terrible, which is destructive of all honor and nobility. He said: "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." — Matt, v, 27. And He added, in order that, by self-discipline, men might be kept from iniquity: — "And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell." — Matt, v, 29. Out of the high and clear mountain-spring of the new morality AT THE ALTAR OF SACRIFICE. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 353 came also the legislation of the Brother of humanity, on the subject of divorce. He divinized conduct by humanizing it. It was not de cisive of the questions involved, that in the Book of Deuteronomy these words occurred: "When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man's wife." — Deut. xxiv, 1. It was nothing to Jesus that the disciples of Hillel had taught, so that many a Jew judged it legal for him to rid himself of her to whom he had given his vows, if she became unpleasant or distasteful to him. "Some uncleanness in her" was a phrase capable of very wide interpretation in the hands of a libertine, as the Son of Man knew. Jesus went beyond even the stricter school of Shammai and placed the destiny of the family on the foundations of that brotherhood which must be at once the inspiration and protection of all human society. He said: "It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry- her that is divorced committeth adultery." — Matt, v, 32. He had come into a time when religion was absent and men were inventing all sorts of instrumentalities and methods for producing at least the appearance of moral seriousness. To make solemnity hearty, He must deliver men from the habit of familiarly drawing the Infinite into their conversation, or from relying upon a pious phrase for veracity. Lying, which was perhaps more easily done be cause of a false notion that the word Jehovah and the thought of the presence of Jehovah were useful only on special occasions, was not considered particularly sinful. He immediately called attention to the fact that God is everywhere present. His presence makes the telling of the truth a perpetual duty. The whole conversation of man was thus exalted beyond the necessity for oaths. Every man's word must be as good as his oath. He said: "Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths: But I say unto you, 354 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. Swear not at all; neither by heaven ; for it is God's throne : nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your commu nication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh from evil." — 'Matt, v, 33-38. Thus Jesus had truly reported the spirit of three of the Ten Commandments of olden time, and delivered these three laws from the overgrowth of Rabbinism. He saw also that the Scribes had taken an ancient proscription, and fastening their thought upon its letter, they had abused the old Law which once repressed the bar barous instinct for revenge, and checked the savage habit of obtaining satisfaction. The doctors of the Law had left their well-known injunction concerning retaliation in the hands of men, to the destruc tion of all brotherhood and love. Here He made a large demand upon the nobler instincts of the soul by inculcating one of the widest duties of brotherhood. He said: "Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not away." — Matt, v, 38-42. In another way, the Scribes had antagonized the spirit of fra ternity which He was exemplifying in Himself and illuminating by His words, for their industrious Rabbis had added to the precept, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor, " the words, " and hate thine enemy." — Matt, v, 43. In the evolution of morals through the history of the Hebrews, we can see clearly that this addition by the Scribes was only putting into form a transitory sentiment which Israel once felt in the form of a duty commanded by God, when they went forth to utterly destroy Canaanites and Amalekites. The Rabbis had left this precept in the hands of the individual, and a private foe had no right to anything but hate. Jesus, legislating from His own heart of love, on the basis of the divine Fatherhood, would have men imitate their Father in heaven, who, as He Himself knew, is THE MAN OF GALILEE. 355 Love, and who would conquer His enemies by the Law of Love. He said: "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth down rain on the just and the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publi cans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. " — Matt. v, 43-48. This last command is far more strong, if we follow its literal form : "Ye therefore shall be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect. " The whole spirit of the Sermon of Jesus on the Mount lies in this thought. He was re-creating human society by getting men to adopt the motives and methods of God their Father. Divine perfection and human perfection were allied in Jesus Himself, because the soul of all true government, human and divine, is Love. Love had worked in nature to beneficent ends; and Love was reclaiming and would forever be reclaiming the unloved and the unlovely to its own fair order. Love in man is God in man, and Jesus exemplified this when He began to conquer the loveless with His one weapon of brotherhood. The capacity of man, the child, to receive his Father's nature and plan through sonship was perfectly illustrated in Him, and the rigorous task-work of mor ality was rendered unnecessary and impossible to Him, because Love ;%>. BLOWING HIS OWN HORN. 356 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. swept Him ever love-ward. With these truths in mind, who shall say what is the limit of man's moral destiny? Jesus now proceeded to deal with some of the faults of character which detract from even praiseworthy conduct and make it less ex cellent than it may be, when behind and within it is the love that denies itself. He said: "Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth : that thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father- which seeth in secret Himself shall reward thee openly. And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him." — Matt, vi, 1-8. Jesus' theories of life are always drawn from His conception of the Fatherhood of God. The constantly recurring phrase which He would leave echoing in our life is: " thy Father" or "your Father which is in heaven." CHAPTER XXXV THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT— CONTINUED ''i'T-W WHAT is known as the Lord's Prayer is the logical and sym pathetic presentation of the heart-idea of Jesus, as man opens his nature in the presence of the problems and possibilities of life on the one side, and the immeasurable glory and purpose of Love on the other. The prayer itself is the adoration, aspiration and beseeching, inspired and guided by the Christian reason and sentiment. The first words Jesus would find our hearts speaking: — "Our Father," con tain the whole of His gospel. In the Fatherhood of God are lodged the righteousness which destroys iniquity and the mercy which delivers the soul from evil, the scourge which drove the money-changers from the temple of His Father, and the last sweet words which trembled toward God through the darkness of Calvary The Lord's Prayer is the attestation of that moral miracle which left the heavens opened, as Jesus promised. It renews the sky above life. The word Our means universal brotherhood; the phrase "Our Father" places the destinies of universal brotherhood upon universal Fatherhood. The originality of Jesus made aged words fresh and new. It is of no consequence that the thought of the Fatherhood of God is as ancient as the human soul, except that this proves how 357 RUINS OF CHRISTIAN CHURCH AT BEEROTH 358 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. deep Jesus goes to find the sources of religion. No liturgy had made it a truth so authoritative as to compel men to practice universal brotherhood. In Jesus Himself, the idea became the possession of the human heart, and in Him the affections of humanity were organized around it, so that a civilization inclusive of the common weal of God and man was assured. The familiarity and the nearness of the conception of the divine Fatherhood were made more dear and yet more expansive by the phrase: " Which art in the heavens" — Matt, vi, 9. Fatherhood had come down infinitely; it had come near to man because it is Father hood, so that all men might claim sonship unto God; but it had not vacated the space above. Still the old prayer of Solomon might rise: ' ' Hear Thou in heaven, Thy dwelling-place. " God's Fatherhood was simply and humanly lived upon by Jesus. And as these disciples saw Him, they were being convinced that Love is the heart and soul of the entire universe. In this opening utterance of truest prayer, we feel God's near ness as the Father, both here and yonder. Heaven is not disasso ciated from earth, for it is the same Love occupying the upper realms, tenderly and infinitely. We may . still look up. Reverence and aspiration are not lost, yet we do realize that moral aims and truths are the same in earth and in heaven. By virtue of the soul's ascending with the thought of the divine Fatherhood into the infinite heights where He is, while He is also on our earth,, and in us, the soul breathes fully the air of its eternal privilege, and finds itself at home with its Father's throne and glory. Righteousness here is right eousness there. This alone gives range to the moral faculties. Jesus counted upon prayer, the looking loveward, as one of the chief creative forces of the new politics which would be ethics and the new society which would be fraternity. The. prayer He taught, in these first words of petition, had in it the secret of His total ex perience on earth; for He was, from the first, about His Father's business, and at the last He simply redeemed His promise: " I go to my Father and your Father." — John xx, 17. The entire experi ence of man in attaining to his full power and glory lies in these words: "Our Father which art in heaven." Jesus knew that they could be learned only by heart. Into that little word "Our" came THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 359 the force which, working in the hearts that should speak it, would drive out all selfishness, and make men brothers. It will render ex- clusiveness impossible, and create a political economy which, with Jesus as the leader of men, will ultimately inflame the world with the passion of self-sacrifice. It is everything, that, before we begin to ask for things in our prayer, we shall know of Whom we ask, this one thing, namely — He is our Father, and it is ours to remember that our wants, what ever our wishes are, are the needs of His children. This discovery makes our prayer a transformation of our thoughts, if not a reforma tion of ourselves. As we say ' ' Hallowed be Thy name, " — Matt, vi, 9, — still holding with increasing reverence and affection to the thought that Jehovah's essential name is "Our Father," we escape not only the vulgar profanity which makes life and the soul unsacred, but also we avoid falling into that somewhat pious profanity which would bargain with the Infinite Love, making promises of performing duties, which promises are to be redeemed only when God shrinks into our unfilial conceptions of Him. By the words : ¦ " Hallowed be Thy name, " we are so lifted up into His society that we would not turn the Al mighty Love into the earthly servant of our degrading desires. "Hal lowed be Thy name." It is as if the soul were saying: "Let my beseechings be such only as are in harmony with the fact that I have been celestially fathered, and I am to be always and everywhere fathered, by that Eternal Love which takes up all other human souls along with mine in the sweep of its purpose and the generosity of its benefit." Just as in everything else He spoke, in the Sermon on the Mount, or elsewhere, so here was Jesus the embodiment of what He taught. What He said of God He incarnated. His whole life and death and reign were in answer to His own reverent hallowing of God's name as Father. It had its consummate flower in the other prayer He was to make at the last: "Father, glorify Thy name." It is not strange, then, that the next petition is stated in the words: "Thy kingdom come." — Matt, vi, 10. Jesus always saw that, whatever the ecclesiastical spirit may do, in placing His enterprise of love in the form of an institution, such as the Church, for example, it is a Kingdom, and it is the Kingdom of God, the Eternal Father. Love would have its throne and its servants. Although love's law 3°o THE MAN OF GALILEE. would be the law of liberty, and the King would call His servants friends, yet it was to be a monarchy of love, in which alone the true democracy is possible. He had called it "the Kingdom of heaven, " because its spirit and law were not of place or of time, but of the infinite and everlasting. It was not only in the earth, but above it. It was something more than the Kingdom of the Messiah, EXISTING WALLS OF JERUSALEM (NORTHWEST SIDE). which the Rabbis had made petty and' arduous by their traditions. Their expectancy had shrunk and deteriorated with decreasing relig iousness. It was even more than the Kingdom which the unclouded seers, Daniel and Isaiah, had pictured, with the finer idealism of a better day. Jesus had just taught the mind of every praying man to be first dominated and filled with the conception of the Divine Fatherhood, and to absorb it into the tissue of every thought and desire by reverence, — "Hallowed be thy name." When, therefore, He taught men to say in the next breath: "Thy kingdom come" He proclaimed the fact that it was not to be a kingdom of despotic power, or military might, but of Fatherhood and brotherhood. Not selfishness, but self-denial, — not exclusiveness, but divine charity, not arrogant force, but loving meekness, — not material gain, but The Man of Gall lee. 361 spiritual quality, — was to be its law and achievement. A Fathers kingdom could come, only by replacing the spirit of condemnation by the spirit of salvation. It must make childhood exultant and royal. It would substitute the acknowledgment of justice and mercy and their divine right to rule, for Rabbinical fancies in which injustice and wrong had concealed themselves. Its citizens were not to be the haughty and the successful, but the docile and perhaps the persecuted, the peaceful toilers and the childlike sufferers. This was a joetition in which were contained the germs of every beneficent revolution which would overthrow governments founded and maintained in behalf of classes. It would re-found and re-constitute society, in obedience to the divine hopes and possibilities of the masses. Out of the wreck of false aristocracies, it would create an empire resting on the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. In order that this issue may be accomplished and the Kingdom of the divine Fatherhood brought nigh, God's will must be done. He therefore taught men next to say: "Thy will be done." His King dom has its law and method in the intentions and affections, in motive and desires. He therefore taught men to pray that God's will may be done zvillingly. Jesus was the first of great religionists who declined to fall prostrate before Fate, and to repeat in some form or other a Stoicism which leaves man bowed before the decrees of destiny. "The Universe is a will rushing into expression." He knew that God's will must be done; that the Divine achievement can be the only issue of earth's long trial. He would have that Will so accomplished, that its victory would be the triumph of the will of the child, man, as well as the will of the Father, God. He saw that the greatest fact in the universe, save God, is the human will; and unless God captures the human will by leading it through love to will His will, the crown of things is lost. Jesus had already sounded the deeps of the human will, and flooded its mysteries and treasures with a divine light, when He said to a man who seemed only a poor creature, but who was in reality a son of God: "Wiliest thou to be made whole?" Jesus Himself was the mani festation of God's love and God's will. He knew that His own greatness and glory lay in the fact that God's will was His will. He believed that every man would attain to his true self, that every 362 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. man's will would be completed to its full strength and beauty, only by every man's willing the will of God. "Thy will be done on earth." — Matt, vi, 10. This is a prayer for the inhabitants of this planet to repeat, as they feel the jar and antagonism of earth's forces and realize the cruel entanglements of earth's desires. In a sense, God's will is done on earth; it is done often in spite of man; it is done over all of man's rebellion, blind intolerance and unintelligent wrath. On earth, it is done with ques tion and discontent, with discordant mingling of loyalty and disloyalty, with mixture of human ambition and crouching fear. He asked men to pledge themselves to the reception of God's Kingdom, by praying that the will of God might be done on earth, "as it is done in heaven." — Matt, vi, 10. Method is everything. With the harmoniousness of the singing angels, with the disinterested affection of cherub and seraph, with the cheer and faith of Gabriel and his fellows, Jesus would have men do the will of God. As men prayed this prayer, He knew its petition would be fulfilled. What is called the mud-sill of civilization still lies in the item of bread. No builder of a palace in Utopia can neglect the fact. The Temptation of Jesus was an illustration of the truth that human character is like a three-storied house. The first temptation of Jesus was the entering of Satan into the edifice of human character; and the evil one came into the lowest story over the mud-sill lying close to the earth, when he suggested that Jesus should transform the stones into bread. PYom this point, Satan climbed up into the other stories, but not victoriously. Jesus did not disdain the important affair of bread in his Temptation, yet He refused to make it from the stones; and now, teaching His disciples how to pray, He not only does not separate Himself from the every-day problem of food, and how it shall be obtained, but He deals with it divinely. It is wrong to speak of Jesus "descending from the sunlit heights of the three earlier petitions, " when He teaches men to say: "Give us this day our daily bread." — Matt, vi, 11. The divineness of Jesus was not less, but more, because He entered into sympathy with the daily struggle of man. To have escaped the demand of physical neces sities, by leaving man's bodily life untouched by any hope through prayer, would have been for Jesus to lose His moral divinity. The THE MAN OP GALLLEE. 363 Temple of Humanity, in the thought of Jesus, was an affair of flesh and blood. -John the Baptist might be ascetic; Jesus could not be. This short petition is full of great words. It comes immediately after the petition: " Thy will be done," and it is bound to it with the tender logic of that love which comes from heaven to man living in a house of clay. Out of all the fantastic dreams which arrogant pietism could ever invent, by praying only this: " Thy to ill be done, as the angels in heaven do it; even so on earth let it be done!" this petition for the gift of daily bread delivers us. With it, we come to an earth of solid fact: and lo, it is not far from heaven. It discovers unto us our mortal relationships, laid bare in the light of an immortal destiny. It bids us see that the Kingdom of God is to be realized on an earth where men ought not to be merely bread-hunters, and yet cannot be merely dreamers. The prayer has been called a temporal want disclosing itself in the midst of things spiritual. To Jesus the temporal was full of the eternal. Jesus would have men see that, after all their labors to obtain bread, bread is a divine gift. It was another line and a rich bit of color which Jesus added to His portrait of God, as Father, when He taught men to say: "Give us this day our daily bread." This petition was to open deeps of receptiveness and stir fountains of gratitude. It was the acknowledgment which the soul needs to make constantly, that it depends like a child on the Father, even for daily bread. The culture which this petition contains for the race which utter it lies largely, as has been said, in the fact that the soul has already prayed: " Thy kingdom come." — Matt, vi, 10. The un- imagined destinies of this spiritual kingdom are still within the range of faith, when the homely matter of bread for daily needs is made a topic of prayer unto God. Therefore, this can never be the prayer of indolence or greed. The man who asks for bread here, has first asked that the name of God may be hallowed, that the reign of justice may come, and that the divine will which makes man a toiler among men and the brother of all men, may be done on earth as gladly and loyally as it is done in heaven. Bread is a gift from God. It is as divine in its way, as the gift of His grace and mercy. It comes to necessities as true and sacred, as is the yearning for holiness or the desire for purity. But the prayer never suggests that 364 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. any man is to obtain his bread as a gift from any but the Father of his soul, the One most intent on every man's discipline and edu cation, the One who shall conserve his sonship. It does not excuse the complaining man from such toil and thoughtfulness and struggle as God has ordained for His children. Furthermore, no soul can ask God for the gift of bread to him self alone. God is the Father, not only of the man who sends this petition up unto Him, but He is the Father of all other men. Therefore each man is to pray: "Give us." The very fact that bread comes from God as a gift, not in spite of genius to win bread, but through genius to win bread, makes the food question in social economics deeply ethical. "Give us our bread" means that others may have bread too, and that we have right to our bread only, not to the bread of someone else. This prayer must transform the brutality of commercial power, by kindling in the heart of ability a reverent loyalty unto God which would make many of our present operations with reference to the food sujmly impossible. Such is the influence of Jesus' working idea of the brotherhood of man under the Fatherhood of God. It is all con tained in the phrase, "Give us our daily bread." — Matt, vi, 11. No man has the right to isolate himself by obtaining any personal blessing. Egoism does despite to the PStherhood of God, and is treason to the brotherhood of men. Selfish provision for one's self is un-Christian and wicked. Jesus knew the far-reaching effect of this prayer when the human heart should learn it. The fiercest hate which divides man from man occurs not with reference to facts in what we call the upper realm of ideas and sentiments, but with ref erence to the fact of bread. If ever He is to make men brothers, and found an enduring fraternity, He must do it where the hungry stare at the well-fed, and where the food question is solved in love. He saw also that human selfishness must be rebuked by man's own prayer, in which the fact is recognized that every man is but the creature of a day. A man may not be true to eternity, because he seeks for bread for a long time, but, rather, because he asks simply for bread for a subsistence, — "daily bread," to be given "this day," according to the laws of Eternal Love. God is good for to-morrow, when to-morrow shall be to-day. Eternal Love giving bread daily THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 365 — is a better reliance against mnger than an everlasting amount of bread. The con- tinuousness of man's re lationship unto God through prayer, is maintained, not by hoarding up benefits, and meeting the '4 Giver of them by one large act of grat itude, and then fasten ing our enduring at tention upon His gifts instead of upon Him, but rather by coming often unto Him, in ac cordance with ever-recur ring necessity, and learn ing to love the Giver of the gifts. It is fortunate for us who speak English, that while yet the word "give" lingers upon our lips in our use of the Lord's Prayer, the word "forgive" follows almost immediately. It emphasizes the fact that, needy and poor as we are, and therefore demanding food as human creatures, we are needy in our spiritual life because we have sinned. Therefore we must seek forgiveness. Jesus leads us to ap proach the dark fact of our sin, in our prayer unto God, after we have confessed God's goodness in our petition for daily bread. The prayer: "Forgive us our debts as zve forgive our debtors ," — Matt, vi, 12, — is the cry for spiritual food for our heart-hunger for God's love and holiness. This petition reveals the fact of our humiliation on account of our sins, and it is a mighty call upon the Fatherhood of God. It is a child's cry. It is the demonstration that man has the cravings of a son of God. It is this fact which makes sin so horrible, and 366 THE MAN OF GALILEE. makes a man shudder with the consciousness of unforgiven iniquities. The word debt is only another form of the word duty; our moral debts are our duties undone or broken. The fact that a man has duties and debts to God, is the proof of his divine pedigree. The fact that Jesus encouraged sinful men to ask of the Father to forgive them, is testimony from the One whose perfect Sonship most revealed the character of God, that He is the Divine Father indeed. Phariseeism was offended at the idea that forgiveness could be obtained from God, except by a set-off of good works. Jesus, on the other hand, instructed men to pray with the idea that, if only they have forgiven, they may receive forgiveness. It is certain that the love which forgives men cannot be received and understood by a loveless and unforgiving heart. The Master had just said: "Ye shall be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect." Here was a practical application, for the attribute of clemency is the same in BETHANY. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 367 God and man. No one so felt the hatefulness of sin as did Jesus. No teacher so taught how approachable is the love which forgives the sinner. He even went so far that He, the sinless One, identified Himself with the very guilt which men were carrying, as He taught them how to pray. He Himself was the Atonement, and this prayer was so vitally connected with Him, that He was the gospel of divine forgiveness. The brotherhood which he would constitute was the brotherhood of the forgiving and the forgiven. It is still Godlike to forgive what Matthew has reported Jesus to have called ' ' tres passes against us." It opens the door for God's forgiveness of our debts, which are trespasses against Him. Forgiveness makes men Godlike. And now, as though He would make the forgiven soul realize that from which it is delivered, and have it divinely protected, He taught them to pray: "And bring us not into temptation, but de liver us from evil." — Matt, vi, 13. The thought in the word tempta tion is better represented by our word trial. God does not tempt any man. When we do not learn and grow otherwise, He tries us, Jesus was ' ' led up of the spirit, to be tempted of the devil. " The whole purpose of God in temptation, or trial, is to " deliver us from evil." It is right for us to pray that even the trial may not come to us, that in some other way we may be taught to give up evil, and to love righteousness, but if the trial must come, Jesus would have us meet it with loyalty to the plan of our Father, and to say: "O Father, at any cost, rescue us from the evil!" Never had Jesus more profoundly stirred the sentiment of son- ship in the men who heard Him, never had Jesus more clearly revealed the urgent and intense Fatherliness of God, than in His teaching men to pray this petition. Love divine must redeem the sons of God, by delivering them from evil. If trials must come, in order that virtue may have even the possibility of development, the soul can have no more loyal or heroic cry than this, "but, in any case, by any and all means, because we are sons of the Infinite Holiness, and Thou art our Father, — deliver us from evil." As Jesus uttered this new petition, they beheld Him sitting there, the incarnation of Holiness and Love. They must have known the story of His trial in the days of His Temptation, and that He 368 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. had overcome evil, and He could promise to all the loyal sons of God deliverance from the evil which He had vanquished. It is not remarkable, therefore, that this prayer should create and ultimately that it should be followed, in devout liturgy and solemn .chant by the doxology, which, while it is omitted by all the best manuscripts and is found only in the margin of Matthew's gospel, can never be less than the proof that God yet inspires and man is still inspirable. "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory. Amen." — Matt, vi, 13. CONSIDER THE LILIES OF THE FIELD. CHAPTER XXXVI THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT— CONCLUDED JESUS followed the prayer, whose petitions He taught His dis ciples, with a distincter assertion of the condition of forgiveness. There is no better illustration supplied in the life and words of Jesus of the fact that His gospel did not impose the arbitrary and mechan ical conditions of the ecclesiastics, but rather the conditions which are accordant with everlasting laws of the divine government, than this. When He dealt with the subject of fasting, He touched a very prominent item of interest to the Pharisees. They had worked up the practice of fasting into a zealous ostentation. So systematic, painstaking and flattering to their spiritual conceit was their method 24 369 370 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. of fasting, that Jesus, in His simplicity and directness, could say nothing less to His disciples than this: "Moreover, when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly." — Matt, vi, 16-19. It was a selfish world into which He was sending His apostles, and it never could be made unselfish, if they were to use and care for any of their treasures in the world's manner. To deal thoroughly with this matter, Jesus knew that His law must reach the heart, and so He said: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." — Matt, vi, 19-22. He would have singleness of heart and singleness of eye; and Jesus added: "The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be of darkness, how great is that darkness!" — Matt, vi, 22, 23. But the matter goes more profoundly into char acter than power and clearness of vision may indicate. A divided heart and a double eye reveal their infirmity in the fact that a man becomes the slave of two masters. Jesus knew that this condition divides the man himself and this means ruin to the personality. He said: "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." — Matt, vi, 24. How then is a man to be single-hearted, a perfect unity of intellectual and spiritual force? It must be the result of the working of those powers in character which reveal themselves in a noble unconscious ness. The old law-giver, Moses, ' ' wist not that the skin of his face did shine." Jesus, the new law-giver, would redeem men from the corrosion of anxiety, and this was His law: "Therefore I say unto THE MAN OF GALILEE. 371 you, be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of vou by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things." — Matt, vi, 25-32. Jesus had often spoken of His kingdom as the kingdom of heaven. He now spoke of it, in connection with this spirit of prayer and yearning, as the kingdom of God. In the thought of Jesus, this king dom is the primary thing of the universe. He had just now been speaking, so that their minds were turned upon the thousand and one things which were either necessary or desirable to the fullness of their life. He at once simplified the whole problem by leading them to hold fast in their thought to the essential, and to be confident that the incidental would be theirs. He said: "Seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." Just as the fowls of the air were fed, so would God feed His children. Jesus had not come to tell men that there was no supply in God's treasure-house for their natural instincts, and that therefore these instincts must be suppressed. The civilization which Jesus was to develop was to meet all the nature-wants and to create many new and perfectly worthy wants in human nature and life. He thought only of inspiring within His followers such a lofty solic itude, that their pursuits after physical supplies would be under the dominion of their pursuit after the kingdom of God and His right eousness. The only manner in which it may be rendered certain that physical good can be accomplished, according to the laws of 372 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. universal Fatherhood and brotherhood, is for each man to seek, not so much the maintenance of his position or the satisfaction of his bodily demands, as the triumph of the divine order from star to soul, and the harmony of all the interests of earth under the law of the heavenly kingdom. So far from "¦ making this a world of slug gards, and inviting men to indolence, the seeking of the kingdom of God and His righteousness stirs every impulse of life with the music of a divine hope, '"-<* and commands all appetites and passions, as • " well as all ideals I and sentiments, to form themselves under an ever- advancing and achieving vision which is nothing else than the fore- day when the king- entirely harmonious the kingdom of the over all. We obey "Therefore be not the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil there of, " — Matt, vi, 34, — only when our mind has escaped" the tyranny of a little day, by entering upon the large meanings of the boundless time. Now, with this atmosphere about the soul, and with these lights revealing not only its possibilities, but its new world, it is not strange that Jesus proceeded to say: "Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with looking of the soul to that doms of sense shall be with and obedient unto spirit, and God shall reign Jesus thought, when He says : anxious for the morrow: for /"--*•*** THE MAN OF GALILEE. 373 what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but con- siderest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote- out of thy brother's eye." — Matt, vii, 1-5. Jesus was showing righteousness to be a personal affair. It was not the scrutinizing conceit of Phariseeism. Still less was it that hypocritical passion for reforming the attitudes of others which busied many of the Scribes. It was a righteousness more excellent than the right eousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, because it was the working of a motive which achieves a self-reformation, the presence of a light within the soul which makes darkness impossible. He saw the religionists about Him perplexing themselves with fretful efforts to avoid uncleanness. It was the law that no unclean person might eat of flesh which had been offered for sacrifice. Such flesh was called "a holy thing." If an Israelite had so profaned it, as to give it to the dogs, he was regarded as the greatest of crim inals. Jesus knew that there is something still more valuable than consecrated flesh to be guarded and to be revered; and that is Truth. He would not have Truth profaned. Precious as pearls, and as beautiful, He knew that Truth will no more satisfy the un true than gleaming pearls will satisfy the swine who take them for grains of corn. He taught them not to hand over the destinies of Truth, either to the dogs of passion or to the swine of impurity. Yet He would not have them think that they had all truth, or that the truth which they possessed would lead God their Father to deny them the possession of other truth. He said: "Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every man that asketh receiveth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him." — Matt, vii, 7-1 1. 374 THE MAN OF GALLL&E. way, which be which was only same truth, that direfu permitsbetween true guides. them the of deter false and true: prophets, . you in but in know them by gather grapes of ¦mfn HOUSE ON A ROCK. It is possible that He looked I not far away to the castle in Si sight, and, seeing a narrow road leading to a narrow gate, He % said: "Enter ye in at the straight gate: for wide is the j|J gate, and broad is the way, m that leadeth to destruction, and j many there be which go in thereat. Because straight is the gate, and narrow is the leadeth unto life, and few there find it." — Matt, vii, 13-14. It another way of speaking the when He warned them against confusion of mind which no distinction false guides and He now gave 'f. rule and method mining which was which was the " Beware of false which come to sheep's clothing, wardly they are wolves. Ye shall their fruits. Do men thorns, or figs of this tles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them." — Matt, vii, 15-20. He saw that even among His disciples there might be a certain untrueness which could be very pietistic and extremely orthodox. Just as His divinity did not protect itself THE MAN OF GALILEE. 375 by isolation and did not manifest itself by remaining on some mountain-peak of unapproachable grandeur, but rather demonstrated itself in the life of needy humanity, so He would have the true evangelicalism and a safe orthodoxy declare itself, not in highly wrought conservatism of theological phrase, but rather in the doing of the will of Him whom He called so often in this sermon, "the Father which is in heaven." He said: "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast oui. devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity." — Matt. vii, 21-23. There is no "therefore" in all the divinely-knit logic of the Scriptures more richly eloquent and suggestive than this which Jesus speaks at the conclusion of His discourse: " Therefore, who soever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock; and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it." — Matt, vii, 24-27. The picture He had drawn was an unforgetable one. Yonder, as He spoke, those who were about Him saw a torrent-bed down which the overflowing waters had rushed in the early spring. For many years these waters had come there, and all about in the low places were deposits of sand. These level spaces of sand would naturally attract an indolent and thoughtless builder, for it was with trifling labor that he could lay the foundations of his house in the soft material. Pip above, beyond the reach of the torrents, was the rugged and difficult rock. It was just such a challenge to enterprise and wisdom as Jesus' vision of life made to the heroic instincts of the human souls whom He addressed. The men who heard Jesus 376 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. saw the whole network of Rabbinical falsities and the cobwebs of ecclesiastical error brushed away forever, as He spoke to their good sense and inspired thoughtfulness, the utterance of their own faith and courage. The authority of Jesus to speak they could not en tirely fathom or comprehend; but they did feel it, and all ages have realized that the teaching in the Sermon on the Mount has the authority not of the scribes, but of the God and Father Who is in heaven and Who is also in the soul of man. CHAPTER XXXVII MANY MIGHTY WORKS AND THE IMPRISONED BAPTIZER EAGER for other gracious words, the crowd, whose hearts had been musical with His rhythmic summons unto the life accordant with the Law of Love, followed Jesus down from the plateau, through the little valley, and soon they were with Him in the town which He had chosen for what home He had, — Ca pernaum. Al ready its cit izens knew Him as the one who had given back the fading gem to the home-crown of Herod's officer. This event in the life of the courtier had wakened the hopes of others. Might not the representative of Almighty Love, and the authority thereof, be divinely disposed toward another officer in an equally critical hour? This was the question which an embassy of Jewish elders immediately brought to Jesus, The commander of Herod's garrison, a Centurion who was in authority over those soldiers who kept order at Capernaum, in the name and by the power of the Roman law, had thus influenced the town magistrates to make request of Jesus, that He should come and heal his servant, who, as the soldiers said, was lying ' ¦ at home, sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. " 377 CAPERNAUM AND THE SEA OF GALILEE 378 THE MAN OF GALILEE. Luke, "the physician," tells us that the sick servant was "ready to die." — Ljike vii, 2. Doubtless, the Centurion was a heathen, but Christianity was in the air, as a new heart-throb of Infinite Love. It had already broken down walls once high and strong between Jewish ecclesiasts and this heathen captain of a hundred soldiers. It had also made the Centurion more tender and humane toward a slave. Such a being, according to Roman theories, was only his property; but according to Christian discovery through Jesus, the slave was his brother-man. That this Centurion was a man of fine impulse and large religious spirit is attested in the fact that, being wealthy, and favorable to the Jews, he had built them their syna gogue, and thus he had so merited their gratitude that the deputation of Jewish elders told Jesus: "He loveth our nation and He hath built us a synagogue;" — Luke vii, 5, — and they were "beseeching Jesus that He would come and heal his servant." — Luke vii, 3. This was the ground upon which they urged their plea, ' ' that he was worthy, for whom Jesus should do this." — Luke vii, 4. The divine theory of worthiness, however, was deeper and broader than theirs. Jesus said: "I will come and heal him," and He "went with them." — Luke vii, 6. Something profoundly significant had opened in the heart of the Centurion, and he exemplified the finer worthiness of which we have spoken when he sent his friends, as another deputation, interrupting the journey of Jesus when He had almost reached the Centurion's house, and these friends said what the officer had told them to say: "Lord, trouble not thyself; for I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter under my roof : wherefore, neither thought I myself worthy to come unto thee; but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. For I also am a man under author ity, having under me soldiers, and I say unto one: Go, and he goeth; and unto another: Come, and he cometh; and to my servant: Do this, and he doeth it." — Luke vii, 6, 7. Here was a lower kind of authority obedient to its glimpse of a higher kind of author ity. The obedience passed over into a receptiveness which issued in blessing. Such always is the triumph which comes of being tri umphed over by Jesus. It was a happy moment for Jesus. His true authority had demonstrated itself by kindling a sublime faith in the soul of a man. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 379 It had broken down ancient barriers and won the heart of what they called a heathen, so that a religious outcast from Israel had out stripped self-opinionated Hebrewdom, in furnishing an example of courageous faith. Jesus knew that the world is to be saved by its faith, and that the faith that saves must ever be this kind of con fidence in the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man which was revealed in Him. It was a joyous mo ment for the Master of men, yet Jesus a "marveled at him." — Luke vii, g. The King of the new Kingdom saw again the amazing breadth of His glorious domain, and, careless of the narrow conceit and testy intol erance of Judaism,He said: "I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. many shall come from the East and West, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into utter darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." And Jesus said unto the Centurion: "Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee." "And his servant was healed in the self-same hour." — Matt, viii, n-14. Five and twenty miles away, amidst undulating hills on the slope of Little Hermon, clustered the white houses which constituted the village of Nain. Above it were the summits of Little Hermon, and below it stretched the Plain of Esdraelon. Jesus was now approach ing it with an interested throng attending Him, hoping, as they crowded close to the new Rabbi, to see another demonstration of that authority which not only spoke words, different in power of com mandment from those of the Scribes, but also did mighty works in RUINS OF NAIN. And I say unto you, that 380 THE MAN OF GALILEE. exquisite moral harmony with His divine eloquence. As they neared the little village, his sweet utterance was drowned by the wailing of mourners. The two processions were soon confronting one another. Death led one; Jesus led the other. It was no time for Jesus to be preaching, even the words of the divine life. Here was Death, the old king of terrors, a sovereign which had met and conquered all other sovereigns. Death was stalking at the head of a proces sion whose dismal cries filled the air. The feared king who had con quered all other kings of earth was meeting with the King of Kings, the only true monarch of earth and heaven. Here Death had won his triumph, not in a royal palace, but in the home of a widow. He had smitten down her only son. The grief which proclaimed itself in the blast of the horn and the rended garments of the mother, had confessed its extremity and hopelessness in the first moaning and fasting, the fluting and chanting, the overturned couches of the home, the folded hands of the dead, the neighbors bearing the body along on the bed, and especially the concluding and melancholy lamentation mingling its sounds with the cymbals, — all uttering the feeling of despair. It was springtime, and the birds were singing among the green branches, as if Death had never invaded the world, but the ecstasy of May was suddenly made discordant; and the vanishing of youth's dream in the blitheness of Spring rendered the presence of death more painful and evident. Yet Jesus was there; and soon the eternal springtime, with its power of resurrection, quickened the heart of the mother and revivified the dead. The whole enterprise had its impulse in the heart of the Son of Man. When Jesus saw the mother, He had compassion, and said unto her: "Weep not." The heart of Jesus was never appealed to in vain, even when intel lectual problems were to be solved. "And He came and touched the bier; and they that bare him stood still." — Luke vii, 13, 14. By touching the bier Jesus had demonstrated his independence of pious conventionalism. The startled crowd, made up of the two confronting processions which had met in the gateway, or near the city, obeyed Him. Here again was the new Law-giver. He was not preaching His law; He was doing it. He was not legislating; He was executing His legislation. The disciples of Jesus could not TLLE MAN OF GALILEE. 381 forget the contrast He had instituted when Pie uttered the new law, as He spoke the Sermon on the Mount. Several times, as they re membered it, He prefaced what He had to say by the words: "Ye have heard that it teas said by them of old time," — or "It hath been said," — and, in contrast with all this, Jesus had set forth His own authority as the faithful representative-son of His Father, by saying, with supreme moral grandeur: "But / say unto you," — and then the legislation of eternal Love entered their hearts. Would His kingly supremacy as contrastingly assert itself here, not in words, but in deeds? Would PIis deeds be as demonstrative as PIis author ity? Death had had his say. Jesus stood in the silence which Death had commanded, and He said: "Young man, / say unto thee, Arise." — Luke vii, 14. The springtime of the soul out-rivaled the springtime which reigned fresh and lovely in the glad valleys. "And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And Jesus delivered him to his mother. And there came a fear on all, and they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is risen up among us; and that God hath visited His people. And this rumor of Him went forth throughout all Judea, and throughout all the region round about." — Luke vii, 15-17. It must have been about this time that Jesus made another visit to Nazareth. As He entered the town of His boyhood, a large number of those whom He had blessed and restored followed with the miscellaneous throng. He was looked upon by former friends and foes as at least a famous man. Rumors of his surprising powers had been coming to them from time to time, and provincial Naza reth had met these accounts of her distinguished son with the same scrutinizing intolerance which His home-town betrayed when He enraged the people in the synagogue months before. He had not attracted the kind of attention which their sort of Messiah was expected to attract; He had won only the gratitude of leprous beg gars and noisome mad folk and inconspicuous paralytics. But He had also organized the empire of universal love. This latter fact did not impress them, but something else did, — His divine enthusiasm and all-consuming passion for making this a better world, — in short, His transcendentalism, — supplied their descendentalism with proof that His reason was tottering on its throne. Some of His relatives 3§2 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. and friends, exaggerating what they took- as vague symptoms of in sanity into a demonstration of His madness, began to execute their plan for His arrest and detention. The authorities favored it. It would solve many perplexities, if He could be held on the charge of having lost His reason. At last, they had in sight an explanation, The devil must have possessed O P a • such as it was, of His conduct Him, and it was more to. their pur pose to show that the devil was the author of these mighty works than that Jesus of Nazareth had done them; for in that time and with their theology, the devil was nearly as powerful as Almighty God Himself. For nearly a year John the Baptist had been lying in one of the prisons near the Dead Sea. He was a prisoner of hope, but not of the Christian hope. Not in this world, probably, was Jesus to manifest His di- vinest j^owers even to the greatest of His prophets. As night succeeded day, John lived in expectation of the coming of death or the triumph of the Messiah. Pie believed in Jesus, but not as Jesus believed in Himself. It was impossible for him to understand why the armed hosts of the Messiah did not take the banner of revolution, and sweep Roman fortresses and garrisons out of the country, and establish the empire of the Jew. Brooding in the dungeon of Machaerus, this intrepid warrior for righteousness, with fadeless youth yet upon his brow, had often looked through the darkness of his imprisonment, upon the picture of a redeemed Israel, amidst whose glories he would be liberated. But no trumpet-blast had pierced the shadow of his solitude. The Baptist had begun to suspect the value of that inspiration which once made him refer to Jesus as mightier than himself. The pain of despair stole through THE MENSA CHRISTI, NAZARETH. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 383 the soul of the once fervid orator. Half out of heart, his spirit racked with doubts, John felt himself as much a prisoner of false hope, as he was the victim of Herod Antipas. He had been con fined in that prison, in order that he might be protected from the fierce wrath of Herodias, whose sin with Herod he had fearlessly exploited. If Jesus were really to see righteousness established, especially if He were anxious to establish a righteousness more strongly foundationed than that which John himself had preached, why should he, the champion of righteousness, be languishing in prison, under the order of an adulteress? Never did a grand character shake with more disheartening questions. In a sense, he had discovered Jesus. Now had Jesus become careless of him ? John's unselfishness in turning the tide of human attention and approval away from himself and unto Jesus, was voluntary and sublime. He was equal to this; but no man could be equal to the involuntary wrestling with a process of stolid events which disheartened him. He possibly confronted the cruel thought that Jesus might not have proved Himself the Messiah. Then he left it for the more trying one, that Jesus had not only failed, but also that He had forgotten him. If Jesus were so kind and so pow erful as was indicated by multitudes of rumors of Him which pen etrated the gloom of the prison, why could He not deliver John the Baptist from agony of soul, at least, by sending him some friendly word, if even He could not, or would not, break down the fortress- walls and set him free? It was with this strain upon him, that John sent two of his dis ciples to visit Jesus, and to ask Him the question which had been asked of half a hundred other claimants to the Messianic office, first and last: "Art thou he that should come, or look we for another?" — Luke vii, 19. When these deputed friends of the Baptist, who had traveled far from the southern border of Peraea, haunted ever by the recollection of the dark fortress near the Dead Sea in which their heroic teacher was confined as a criminal, came to Jesus, they poured all the pathos of love and tender recollection into the words they spoke to Him, when they said: "John the Baptist hath sent us unto thee," — Luke vii 20, — and they told Jesus that it was His own heroic forerunner, who had taught them from his heart of disappoint- 384 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. ment to say these very words: "Art thou he that should come, or look we for another?" The answer which was made to John's disciples addressed itself to their own eyes, and to their spiritual reason; for we are told: "And that same hour he cured many of infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits; and unto many that were blind he gave sight." — Luke vii, 21. Jesus, however, did not exact such lofty insight and faith from John's disciples as would make what they saw and heard a sufficient answer to their doubt and a complete relief to the strain of soul which John was experiencing. They had been taught by John to look for divinity, not so much in the manifestations of mercy as in manifestations of theocratic righteousness. They could not therefore regard these works of humanity as proof of the divine Messiahship, overwhelmed as they were by the fact that their teacher and Jesus' self-sacrificing friend, John, was helplessly waiting, in what was called "The Black Castle," either for a triumphant King, or for the swordsman of Herod. The penniless Jesus had come to enrich man's soul, and, with no crown near His forehead, other than that of His moral majesty, He might have encouraged a whole race toward flabbiness and un- heroic selfishness, by losing His ground here. Surely John's disciples had touched His heart. He might have gone back with them to that jail and liberated John. But Jesus would not do .that, for He was founding a Kingdom to be made up largely of the suffering and the persecuted and the imprisoned. He was not indifferent to the cruelty with which John agonized; neither was He indifferent to the fact that the sublimest faith of which man is capable is not the faith which asks to be comforted, or to be physically unbound, but to be inspired. Of course, John's sorrow was not merited; but the finest manhood grows amidst unmerited woe. Jesus was standing for the future faith of man. Man must believe in Love which is so loving and so fatherly, that it often refuses to deliver those who have high claims upon its power to help, at the very moment when it is exer cising abundant kindness upon the unworthy and sinful. "Then Jesus answering,"- — by the use of Isaiah's forelooking words, — "said unto them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, THE MAN OF GALILEE. 385 the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached. And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in Me." — Luke vii, 22, 23. Jesus not only had not slighted the work of John; He had, on the other hand, made the most of John's prophetic mission and career, by asking him to enter a martyrdom of soul like unto His own. Christ is always saying to those who, for righteousness' sake, are under the stress of mysteriously painful facts: "Blessed is he who is not offended in Me." — Luke vii, 23. Sometimes we know as little of Jesus, as the Christ of our life and of all lives, as John could have found out through those one or two interviews which he had with Him, and through the incompetent and prejudiced channels through which alone John had recently learned of the moral authority of Jesus. John had once almost daringly said concerning Jesus: "He must increase, but I must decrease. " — John Hi, 30. Since that time, Jesus had offered none of the proof expected to make evident His Messiahship. Jesus would not let the destiny of religion go to John's level, high as it was; He would strain John, if need be, and exalt the fortune of religion to His own level of faith. Faith of the highest sort does not seek for quantity of proof, but for quality of inspira tion, which alone is proof of spiritual sovereignty. John the Baptist to-day gets no better proof of the Messiahship of Jesus, than Christ gave of old. The true followers of Jesus are often not more respectable or more interesting than these aforetime blind beggars and self-seeking fishermen. Controversy still wrangles about Him, so that we may not hear or understand the golden speech of His silences. Partisan ship even yet noisily parcels out His dignities and claims proprietor ships in His mysteries. There is no such task for religion, as to have and to keep its confidence that He who is most vociferously championed by ungenerous and faulty dogmatists, and followed after by scheming and blemished bigots, is indeed the true Messiah, the Christ of God, the All Loving and the All Holy. Jesus is still say ing: "Blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in Ale." His moral value is even yet to be discovered only as the disturbing leaven which works sometimes quite unpleasantly in the dough of sinful humanity. The John who is expecting the sword of an executioner 386 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. *%»- .:•': THE DEAD SEA to cut short his life, or a mailed Messiah-King to crush oppres sion and free the oppressed, must make tremendous draughts upon his heart-con viction, as to Jesus, the undemonstrative Redeemer of society, if he will not grow sick of heart and fail of the highest achievement of the soul. Jesus' answer to John the Baptist was a tender and encouraging admonition as well as a prophecy of triumph. The gentle rebuke and sunny promise were addressed to John's power of trust. Christ must always be a stone of stumbling to the man who is more certain of the dumbness of dungeon-walled circumstance, than he is of the responsive music in his own soul when a great melody utters itself from without. "Trust," says Dr. Martineau, "is the belief of another's goodness on the inspiration of your own." If we walk up ward, "we walk by faith, not by sight." Jesus knew that some where and sometime, if not in the cell of ' ' The Black Castle, " by the Dead Sea, John the Baptist, who longed for activity, and who was the soul of unselfishness, would not be offended in Him. On the other hand, John the Baptist, if he were liberated from his dungeon, would miss the sovereignty, deathless and divine. He must be liberated from the necessity of being made physically free, if he would be a free man indeed. Jesus, Son of humanity, would be true to PIis conviction of the Fatherhood of God and the brother hood of man. He would not cheat so dear a child of God as was John the Baptist, of the crown of manhood which could be fitted to his forehood only in that dismal jail. John was safe in the hands of THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 3»7 God. The Kingdom of Jesus was safe, for it had not been dis solved by pathos. The silence in which John was to meet, with bowed head, the gleaming sword of the executioner, has an elo quence that shall grow finer with every triumph of the Kingdom of Jesus. It was the silence in which moral greatness attests itself, by trusting. And now the disciples of the Baptist had departed for the dungeon bv the Dead Sea. The}' went awa}', musing over the fact that Jesus had quoted the words of Isaiah, John's favorite prophet and poet, and that He had showed the characteristics which the Hebrew seer had pointed out as the marks of the Messiah. That Jesus did not underestimate John is proven by the out burst of lofty jiraise which at once came from the heart of the Son of Man: "And as they departed, Jesus began to say unto the multitudes concerning John, what went ye out into the wilderness to behold ? a reed shaken with the wind? But what went ye out for to see? a man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they that soft raiment are in king's h But wherefore went ye out? to a prophet? Yea, I say unto y and much more than a prophet This is he, of whom it is writ ten, Behold, I send my mes senger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee. Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not arisen a greater than John the Bap tist: yet he that is but little {j in the kingdom of heaven is -« greater than he. And from J*}. the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and i 388 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. men of violence take it by force. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if ye are willing to receive it, this is Elijah, which is to come. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. But whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is like unto chil dren sitting in the market-places, which call unto their fellows, and say, We piped unto you, and ye did not dance; we wailed, and ye did not mourn. For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil. The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold, a gluttonous man, and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners! And wisdom is justified by her works." — Luke vii, 24-35. Something had come into His recent experiences to make Jesus feel that His works of kindness had failed to lodge within His dis ciples the truth, in sympathy with which, and for the more power ful preaching of which, His mighty deeds had been done. Strongly did He feel the nature of the hard and cold unbelief against which His throbbing heart had been directing the streams of that bound less Love which is God. Crowds had gathered about Him and fol lowed Him; but now they were asking Him constantly, not so much for truth and love, as for signs and wonders. Disciples of intelli gence and sympathy were few. He longed for sincere attachment, to Himself as man's brother, and to God as man's Father. He was isolated from men by the very love which would save them. Close to His Father, as He lived, He knew His Father's purposes toward men, and these made Him yearn to be the true heart-discovery from God unto His brethren. Love, as it lived in Jesus, did not wait for men's repentance, in order to be loving unto men. It opened its secret, without a pledge that a man would prove himself worthy of it. As Jesus saw men curiously looking on the treasures of Divine affection which were manifested in Himself, He marveled and was pained that Love could not have its way in melting men's hearts. He was sternly sad "because they repented not," — Matt, xi, 20, — not because they had to repent before He could love them, but because repentance ought to be a consequence from His having loved them divinely. ' ' Then began He to upbraid the cities wherein most of His mighty works were done, because they repented not. Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works THE MAN OF GALILEE. 389 had been done in Tyre and Sidon which have been done in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. How beit I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, shalt thou be exalted unto heaven? thou shalt go down unto Hades: foi if the mighty works had been done in Sodom which were done in thee, it would have remained until this day. Howbeit I say unto you, that it shall be more tol erable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee." — Malt, xi, 20-23. None of the disciples report this out-pouring of His soul, save Matthew. Attention had been called to the fact that, having been a publican, Matthew was therefore a penman, and became the first secretary, to give us the most important and graphic book of biography in the world. Dr. Bruce says suggestively: ' ' Would it surprise you if the one disciple who had access to the Master at such a solemn hour was just the publican; the last first, the despised one privileged to be the confidant of the still more despised one, very specially on account of the relations He had chosen to enter into with the class to which that disciple belonged?" We may well go further and see a reason for Jesus' pained surprise that others did not receive His word as Matthew had received it, without the testimony of these mighty works. True; we do not know of any miracles which were wrought either at Chorazin or Bethsaida. But doubtless Jesus had manifested His power and glory in the little shore-towns which were but a few miles away from Capernaum. Some of His disciples, at whose homes He had probably shown forth the divine love, lived at Bethsaida. He must have had these attes tations in mind. Tyre and Sidon were well-known examples of how evil had overthrown the amazing grandeur of the heathen world. The story told bv the prophet Ezekiel of their utter desolation by ON THE SHORE-CHORAZIN. 390 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. the forces of wrong which Jesus had come to subdue or to extirpate was well known to all the hearers of Jesus. Opportunity is the only fact by which men and cities may be judged. Jesus threw a terrible light upon the ruins of Sidon and Tyre, and Chorazin and Bethsaida. It is the only terrible light, for it is the light of love. The first two perished without the opportunities. But Chorazin and Bethsaida were unmindful of God's Law, even in the splendor of the manifestation. That law is ever the same, and by it the unfit are more sure not to survive, if they have opportuni ties and use them not. The thrilling pathos of Jesus' monologue was evident when He said: "And thou Capernaum, which art exalted, shalt be brought down to Hades" ("the grave"). — Matt, xi, 23. Jesus had so lifted this little town toward God and so brought her citizens in touch with the Divine plans, that heaven must have often seemed close. He had so distinguished Capernaum, by His presence and works there, that nineteen hundred years have sent their scholars up and down the shore of the Lake of Galilee to find such relics as may identify the perished glory with the unfading luster of Jesus' name. More of His tender humanity; more of His might that shook the world of the past into ruin and built the world of the future; more of His desire that those for whom He had lived and would die should enter into His own enterprise, drink His own cup, if need be, and share His own glory at the last, had manifested itself in Capernaum, than upon any other spot of earth. Therefore, if Capernaum fell from the height of all the companionships He offered, and slipped away from the summit of that spiritual grandeur to which He invited her, the abasement would be complete. She should be "brought down to the grave" in disgrace, for, as He said: ' ' If the mighty works which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. Howbeit I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee." — Matt, xi, 23, 24. As every bruised heart must, if it shall keep its courage amidst some apparent disaster which confuses its generous plans, so did Jesus turn His eyes toward His Father. He realized from the Fatherhood of God, in the truth of His own Sonship, that far be neath all human blundering, ingratitude, ignorance, and devotion to THE MAN OF GALILEE. 39* external rewards for confidence, there is still the human soul. It is worth working upon. The best is, God is always interested in it. In its simplicity, in the indestructible childhood of its unspoiled trustfulness, Jesus knew that He could trust, as PIis Father trusted. He was entirely reinforced with this truth. He therefore poured PIis glad heart out, and the joy that was revealed in PIis Father's method with humanity was medicine enough for His grievous wounds, as Jesus said: "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and un derstanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight. All things have been delivered unto me of my Father: and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him." — Matt, xi, 25-27. Jesus had not lost His faith in His enterprise of love. He had re-set His confidence, as every disheartened and loving man must re-set it, on the foundation of God's perpetual Fatherhood. There alone can it be founded when brave ones are most discouraged by the actions of those whom they would help. Let them ever go into the light which Divine Love sheds upon human weakness and possibility, and, obtaining God's faith and God's courage in working with the human soul, they will up and on with gratitude. Never was Jesus more confident of the future of men. Pie seemed to open His arms with wider and warmer welcome for the human problem, as He said: "Come unto me, all ye that labor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. "—Matt, xi, 28-30 THE WOMAN AT THE HOUSE OF SIMON THE PHARISEE. FROM PAINTING BY D. U. ROSSETTI, 'And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment." — 5V. Luke vii, 37. CHAPTER XXXVIII PHARISEEISM AND ITS DEFEAT HAVING again seen the truth of the Fatherhood of God, as He prayed unto the Eternal One, Jesus flung Himself on PIis faith in the possibility of realizing the dream of the brotherhood of man. Re-inspired with confidence as to the destiny of humanity under God, He now met a dramatic response unto PIis invitation which went out from Him unto all men. It would have been fatal to any less divine enterprise. His invitation had gone forth as fragrance goes out from a flower. Might not some stinging creature be at tracted thereby? Jesus was ready to take the risks which love makes, when — love's heart is worn on the sleeve. One of the :, and asked Him to dine i him. It is evident from that as yet there was public antagonism sepa- lg Jesus and the Phari- , such as would make the risaic party exclude one >f their number whose apparent magnanimity offered hospitality to the heretic from Naza reth. We may easily underestimate what must have been the charm of Jesus in the eyes of this Pharisee, enabling him to break over all revered ordinances and consort with one for whom 393 HEALING THE SICK. 394 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. Phariseeism, as such, could have no place. The Pharisee, Simon by name, was not a convert to His doctrine. But he was a gen tleman in high standing, whose social position was so secure that he could, if he were so minded, invite this much talked-of Rabbi to his table, with the usual motives at' play which often impel superior folk, who desire to be considered both liberal and wise, to offer a place at dinner unto a much talked-of man, especially if he be a philosopher who has suddenly acquired fame. The Pharisee's interest was ecclesiastical and intellectual. He might have defended himself before his fellow-Pharisees by assert ing that, in the interests of their own religion, he desired to find out whether Jesus were only a Rabbi, or a Rabbi and a prophet also. His powerful Jewish predilections cannot be questioned, for they appear later. He knew that the man he had invited had no eccle siastical claim whatever to his hospitality; and there is much to warrant the inference that the Pharisee was conscious that defile ment was possible through the presence of Jesus at his table. How ever, this had been overcome, and the Pharisee unbent patroniz ingly toward Jesus. They had been reclining on the cushions arranged upon the divans, and the meal was before them. Every Jew's house was an open house, in the • sense that persons might walk in from the street, inasmuch as the doors were not shut, and the steps running down to the courtyard were easily approached and ascended by those who, looking in upon a feast, beheld persons with whom they were acquainted, and to whom they desired to speak. As Jesus and the Pharisee, with others, rested upon their left elbows, and partook of the meat and wine, a woman, who probably had excuse in the fact that she knew Simon, the Pharisee, came through an antechamber, and entered the dining-room. The fastidious Simon, more anxious to preserve the reputation of his house and his legal purity, than to respond to any concern of humanity, was amazed to recognize in her a sinner. No woman of highest reputation could properly appear at such a time, at such a place, save with the concealing veil. This unveiled woman had glided in, loveless, dishonored, fallen. The words of Jesus: "Come unto me, all ye that are weary and are heavy laden," — Matt, xi, 28, — were still graciously moving in her scorched and abandoned 'THE MAN OF GALILEE. 395 soul. She was only answering Jesus' invitation, and she was coming into His very heart, just as He had answered Simon's invitation and had come to dinner. The host was much excited. Jesus Himself might have strained Simon's sense - of propriety, but this woman had soiled his respectability. To have been seen near her anywhere would have compromised him; to permit her to take an other step in his house might ruin him. But what else could she do save to press near unto Jesus? What else might Jesus do but to permit her to express her heart? What else could Simon the Pharisee do but be outraged? Weary of her sin and of her past, the woman saw a clean and happy future, only in Him. If an abstract theory of better things could have satisfied her, she would have remained outside with it, but the religion of Jesus is altogether personal. As she remembered what He said, it was not, "Do the works of the law," but, "Come unto Me." The new Law of Love had already won her. She was careless of proprieties, even in the joresence of the astounded and offended Pharisee. Toiling yet with the heavy burden of her guilt, which she longed to exchange for the light burden of which Jesus had spoken, — in subjugation yet to the enslaving yoke which she yearned to have broken and to have replaced with the easy yoke to which Jesus had referred, — she pushed her way to His feet, which were turned away from the table, and, obedient only to the exac tions of the Law of Love, she opened a flask of perfume, which was the dearly bought symbol of her affection, — a phial which doubtless had often hung from her neck upon her breast, — and, mingling its precious oils with her tears, she "bedewed" the feet of Jesus. Pier long and abundant hair had fallen down over His feet, and with it she wiped away the tears of pure repentance which she probably thought might render Him impure. Love incarnate in Jesus made no motion to rebuke the weeping woman; and she covered with her kisses the feet which were to toil up Calvary. Human love had told its most pathetic tale to Divine Love. Only bigotry and ecclesiasticism were out of harmony with the scene. In angry contrast to the woman and Jesus, Simon, the Pharisee, sat, aware that he had been seriously compromised. He fixed his eyes upon Jesus, whose calm demeanor furnished another 396 THE MAN OF GALILEE. contrast in the presence of the horror of the host. All that the offended Pharisee muttered to his heart of flame, was this: "This man, if He were a prophet, would have known who and what man ner of woman this is that toucheth Him, for she is a sinner." — Luke vii, 39. There was one answer to this. It was revealed in the face of Jesus, and in the face of the woman. More truly than any other artist, Rosetti, in both painting and poetry, has caught the spirit and significance of the occasion. Both the picture and the sonnet are reproduced: "Why wilt thou cast the roses from thine hair? Nay, be thou all a rose, — wreath, lips, and cheek. Nay, not this house, — that banquet-house we seek; See how they kiss and enter; come thou there. This delicate da)' of love we two will share Till at our ear love's whispering night shall speak. What, sweet one, — hold'st thou still the foolish freak? Nay, when I kiss thy feet they'll leave the stair." " Oh, loose me! Seest thou not my Bridegroom's face That draws me to Him? For His feet my kiss, My hair, my tears He craves to-day: — and oh! What words can tell what other day and place Shall see me clasp those blood-stained feet of His? He needs me, calls me, loves me: let me go!" The contempt of the Pharisee is illy contained in the phrase: "this man." He did not refer to Jesus as a Rabbi. Simon knew that the most ordinary Rabbi would have forbidden her coming near to him. Besides, had not the woman literally worshiped Jesus? And was Jesus anything else but "this man?" Jesus was not the sort of prophet for whom Simon was looking. He was the prophet of rescued and redeemed humanity, — the prophet of that quenchless and eternal love which, like fire, is as pure as it is warm. Jesus believed in a universal brotherhood, because He trusted a Universal Father. He needed but to look into the face of the proud and wrathful Pharisee to tell him of his thoughts. With a divine courtesy which neither offended against His having accepted of Simon's hospitality THE MAN OF GALILEE. 397 nor His own reverence for truth, Jesus gave Simon an illustration, conceived and uttered in accord with the mental attitude and the method of the orthodox Jew. He said: "Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee." — Luke vii, 40. So courteous and authoritative was Jesus that Simon's tone was changed and he said: "Rabbi, say on." Jesus proceeded: "A certain lender had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. When they had not where with to pay, he forgave them both. Which of them therefore will love him most?" — Luke vii, 41-45. The only answer Simon could make, — and this he made hesi tatingly, — was this: "He, I suppose, to whom he forgave the most."— Luke vii, 43. And now Jesus, whose heart had already conceived the words He was to l$fr% 1 JH ' J address to the woman: — namely — Thy sins have jeen forgiven thee," -Luke vii, 48, — sought to impress Simon with His own recog nition of the fact that, in doing what she had done, the woman had expressed her love, which He accepted. Jesus saw that her tears were not only tears of penitence, but also tears of thankfulness and of affection. Their outflow had cleansed her, and she was beginning a life of purity. Again Jesus showed that Divine Love loves, even before a change of character has come. The forgiveness on the part of Jesus produced the love on the part of the woman. Human love which had degenerated into lust was redeemed by Divine Love, flower ing with whitest purity. THE MONEY LENDER. 398 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. Jesus proceeded with the still displeased Simon, in the hope of getting him to adopt the divine point of view. Simon had not turned the woman out into the street. What we call his system of divinity would have done this; but humanity expressing itself in Eastern hospitality was better than Simon's theology. Jesus became more of a problem to him, than even the woman who had defiled his house, if only with her presence. Moses, whom the Pharisee honored, had nothing but death for such a creature. Jesus had nothing but mercy and pardon and deliverance. He now reminded Simon that he had taken Him into his house only patron izingly; while this woman had taken Him into her heart, with every attestation of devotion. Jesus reminded Simon that the most ordi nary act of courtesy, the offering of water and cleansing for His dust-covered feet, had been omitted as He entered the house. "She," said Jesus, with all the power of strong antithesis, "hath washed my feet with her tears, and wiped them with hairs of her head." — Luke vii, 44. He reminded Simon that he had denied Him the customary kiss, which was a mark of respect for a Rabbi. "This woman," Jesus said, "since the time I came in, hath not ceased to kiss my feet." — Luke vii, 45. Jesus went further, and reminded him that honored guests who had come through the hot sunshine to a dinner, were usually refreshed by the anointing of the head with olive-oil; "This woman," Jesus said, using the phrase the second time, to accentuate the significance of Simon's curled lip when his heart was saying, "this man," — "This woman hath anointed my feet, " — not with olive-oil, but "with ointment." Jesus added, as expressive of that logic which is of love alone: "Wherefore I say unto thee, her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved me much; but to whom little is forgiven the same loveth little." — Luke vii, 47. He turned to the woman and said: "Thy sins have been forgiven.'' All churchly theories of absolution were destroyed in this utterance. He announced something which had been done. Unpurchasable Love needs no priesthood save Love's own. Instantly the other guests began to ask the question which at last leads us all to the confession of the divine authority of Jesus: "Who is this that even forgiveth sins?" — Luke vii, 49. The Son of Man was the Son of God. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 399 There is one thing more that love could have said, and Divine Love said it: "Thy faith hath saved the: go in peace." — Luke vii, 50. It was the answer of divinity to the question they asked, and the opening of a future of Divine Love for the forgiven woman. There is not the slightest reason for connecting Mary of Magdala with the woman who thus turned from her shameful past by giving her heart to Jesus, in the home of Simon the Pharisee. Nothing is more sad and therefore to be regretted than that a woman who, so far as we know, was entirely blameless of the sin from whose pollu tion this woman was fleeing, should be compelled by a too daring curiousness to furnish the perpetual and world-wide designation for a fallen sisterhood. Yet it may be ^ — — -- part of the ultimate glory of the redemption of Mary Magdalene, out of whom Jesus cast seven spirits of evil, that through M all time she shall share the cup which her Savior drank, by bearing the odium of this injustice. Pictorial art has done every thing to perpetuate this wrong, and therefore it is wel for us, when we are looking at a representation of Mary of Mag dala which portrays her grief, to reflect that the only reason which we know for such tears and devotion as are NEAR MAGDALA' thus delineated, is not that she was rescued from impurity, but that she was mercifully emancipated from a malady which in no way furnishes a particle of evidence against her personal character. Mary of Migdol, which signifies " the tower, " and is often called Magdala, lived on the shore of the Lake of Galilee, and was doubt less devotedly attached to Jesus. By Him she was delivered from what was well known at that time as demoniacal possession. She was only one of the thankful women who, to use the phrase of Luke, "ministered unto Him of their substance." — Luke viii, 3. Another 400 THE ALAN OF GALILEE. was Joanna, the wife of Chuza, who was probably the officer of Herod's court who had received at Cana assurance from Jesus that his son was restored to him. That these two women were already associated with Jesus indicates something of the area of His influ ence, and that these two were present at the sepulchre immediately after the resurrection of Jesus, with Mary, the mother of James, is a fact which attests the unfailing sincerity of their devotion. Of Susanna, who also was with Jesus as He journeyed from village to village, while He was on this circuit with the twelve, "preaching and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God, " — Luke viii, i, — we know only this, that her name signifies "the lily." Of the names of the •" many others" mentioned in this general way, we possess no information. Jesus was now so well known that wherever He went, the sor rowful and sinful, the insane and helpless, were placed in His path way that He might heal them. His friends had often little cause for wondering at what had so recently occurred at Nazareth when the multitude thronged Him so closely "that they could not so much as eat bread," — Mark Hi, 20, — and His relatives, looking into the face sadly expressive of the severe tension of His spirit, had gone out "to lay hold on Him," for they said, " He is beside Himself." — Mark Hi, 2 1 . Now a man possessed with a devil, blind and dumb, was brought unto Him, and was healed. When the people saw it, they were so affected by the miracle that the 'old enchanting dream of the Messiah, which they had vainly tried to keep from gathering its radiances about Jesus and His career, swept into their minds with a power of per suasion which almost carried the day for Jesus, so far as popular sentiment was concerned. They were soon saying to one another: "Is not this the Son of David?" The Jewish authorities at once appreciated the fact that such talk was dangerous to their conserv atism. An uprising of the common people was feared, because the people were questioning the soundness of their previous position of antagonism with respect to Jesus, and were ready to revise their opinions so far at least as to entertain the idea that He really was the Messiah. These facts summoned the Pharisaic party to a more furious denunciation. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 401 CHRIST AND THE HOLY WOMEN. Beelzebub was the Prince of Devils, as they believed.. This was a demon supreme above the rest for their uses in accusation against Jesus, because of the character of his wickedness and power. Super stition gave him a large place and a designation as the "God of Filth." This phrase expressed the Hebrew hate of a certain imported Phenician idol. All abominated diseases and pests were under his administra tion. The Pharisees did not question the fact that Jesus worked miracles; but the Rabbis saw that if these mighty works continued, their chief title to influence and power among the people would be lost. There was nothing else to do, on their part, but to terrify the people with an authorized statement from the educated ecclesiastics, that Jesus was the chosen instrumentality of Satan. They said, pour ing contempt into their words: "This fellow doth not cast out devils but by Beelzebub, the Prince of Devils." — Matt, xii, 24. The Jewish memory must have gone back to the old words in their history: "And Ahaziah fell down through the lattice in his upper chamber that was in Samaria, and was sick; and he sent messengers, and said unto them, Go, inquire of Baal-zebub, the god 26 402 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. of Ekron, whether I shall recover of this sickness." — 2 Kings i, 2. It brought back hideous rites. This oracle connecting itself with the works of Jesus, gave point to the Pharisaic slander. It needed not that they should speak to Him more. Jesus saw into their hearts and gave one of His most indignant replies to the horrible charge. There can be no question that, to the man whose loving kindness had poured out its abundant administrations, this cruel accusation came with heart-sickening effect. His reply was from the heart, but it came with unclouded intelligence. Jesus at no time sought to change their opinions as to the kingdom of evil, for He doubtless shared them. He answered by saying: "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand. And if Satan casteth out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then shall his kingdom stand? And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out? therefore shall they be your judges. But if I, by the Spirit of God, cast out devils, then is the kingdom of God come upon you. Or how can one enter into the house of the strong man, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil his house." — Matt, xii, 25-29. Jesus had made a new statement of what constitutes the true kingdom of God, when He said: "But if I, by the Spirit of God, cast out devils, then is the kingdom of God upon you." — Matt, vii, 28. He had characterized Satan as a "strong man." The palace which he keeps is the world of men. Subordinate forces of evil help him to maintain his rule over it. ' Christ was freeing men, and break ing up this thraldom. As Jesus looked about Him, He saw that the line had been drawn between light and darkness. It might be a wavering line, or a line running through twilight, in the minds of His disciples. He would deliver them from all vagueness and emanci pate them from every shadowy abstraction. He would make that line as definite to them as it was to His sinless soul. He therefore said: "He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." — Matt, xii, 30. He proceeded to tell them that it is not enough that, negatively, the devils shall be cast out of a man, and thus leave the soul a vacancy, roomy and attractive to the powers of evil. Negative cleanliness is not right- THE AIAN OF GALILEE. 4°3 eousness of the true sort. Holiness is positive. The soul is safely emptied of evil, only when it is filled with good. He said: "The unclean spirit, when he is gone out of the man, passeth through water less places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will turn back unto my house whence I came out. And when he is come, he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more evil than himself; and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man becometh worse than the first." — Matt, xii, 43-45. God Himself fully occupying human nature, doing more than sweeping it out and making it beautifully rid of evil, will inspire the soul with such positive and aggressive love that not sinlessness, but holiness, shall be its life and crown. But Jesus went further than this. He told them that the Pharisaic refusal to identify any kind of goodness with God, is blas phemy against the Holy Spirit. That is the one unforgivable sin. Men might not know Him as Messiah; they might call Him mad or foolish; but to behold a human being emancipated from the thrall of evil, and then to ascribe that achievement of goodness to the forces or influences of evil, to thus discrown God and crown Satanic power, is to put out one's eye for goodness. This is to destroy the capacity for receiving truth and for being true. He warned the Pharisees of the nearness of their approach to this fatal iniquity and its inevitable re sult. Clemency, infinite and di vine, cannot undo human nature here or elsewhere; forgiveness, if it were possible, would be futile against the result, in the SOul, of jesus the consoler 4°4 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. confounding good and evil. Mercy cannot abrogate the action of essential forces working according to the laws of character. It is probable that His phrase, "neither in this world nor in the world to come," meant to His hearers, "neither in this age," — that is, the age before Messiah was acknowledged, — -"nor in the age to come," — that is, the age succeeding the establishment of the new law and the new kingdom. This does not alter the truth, which is not an arbitrary, but an essential truth. Jesus did not create the human soul, or add anything to the character of God or the sum of truth. He discovered these realities, penetrated into their rela tions, stated the necessary issues of their action, and interaction. Here He rebukes the dogmatism which insists that no sins may be cancelled after this age, and in the age to come, by suggesting, as Dr. Plumptree says: that "some sins wait for their full forgive ness, the entire cancelling of the past till that 'age to come' which shall witness that great and final advent." But Jesus here also clearly excludes from forgiveness anywhere, the sin which alone utterly wrecks moral character. He bade them regard tree and fruit, that is, the good power and the good work coming out of it, either as good or bad. He said: "A tree is known by its fruit;" — Matt, xii, 33 — then, having risen to such a height in expounding the law of goodness that He saw the Pharisees in their true relation to the righteousness which is of love, He spoke the terrible words that only Love may speak: "Ye offspring of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. The good man out of his good treasure bringeth forth good things: and the evil man out of his evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. And I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be con demned."— Matt, xii, 34-37. His was indeed what John the Revel- ator saw in his Patmos vision,- — "the wrath of the Lamb." Soon certain of the Scribes and Pharisees approached Him with evident desire for some sort of compromise, and they said, with a phraseology which might have allured a soul easily exhausted by fiery moral enthusiasm: "Master, we would see a sign from thee." THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 405 Matt, xii, 38. Jesus had no compromise to offer. The Fate which is Father was moving with Him. Henceforward Pie was hastening to Calvary. He said in reply : ' ' This is an evil generation ; they seek a sign, and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet. For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. For even as. Jonah became a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall the Son of Man be to this gen eration. The queen of the south shall rise up in judgment with the men of this generation, and shall condemn them: for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, a greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh shall stand up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, a greater than Jonah is here." — Matt, xii, 39-42. As He said these things, the heart of a woman who listened, was touched, and she expressed her appreciation with the direct ness of a mother-heart, when she said: "Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the breasts which thou hast sucked." — Luke xii, 27. Jesus replied with characteristic fusing of truthfulness and tender ness. He drew His answer from that idea of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man which inspired Him at an earlier time, when He sought to quicken spiritual relationships. He said: "Yea, rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it." — Luke xi, 27. Another occasion soon followed, enabling Him to indicate to His disciples and to the world, that the supreme relations binding human beings are spiritual. To honor only the bonds which manifest kinship of soul was to continue the building of that commonwealth in which brotherhood and motherhood, sister hood and fatherhood, are spiritual. The great crowd thronged about Him, for He was revealing His Sonship and their sonship unto God. It was no time for merely earthly relationships to in trude. Heavenly ties were being constituted by His love; earthly ties, though most tender and dear, had lost their right to the high est place. His mother and brethren were standing without, desiring to speak with Him. He said: "Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?" "And He stretched forth His hand toward His dis- 406 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. ciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whoso ever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, he is my brother, sister, and mother. "—Mark Hi, 33-35- Again He had saved His kingdom of the invisible by relying on its laws; again He had emphasized the relationship of souls. It was impossible for Phariseeism to ruin the influence of Jesus in the eyes of the people, by their bitter charge that He was the vehicle of the Prince of Darkness. Light, intellectual and spiritual, broke forth from Him and illuminated the tortuous pathways of men. Now a certain one of the Pharisees hit upon a plan, in the execu tion of which His antagonists fancied they might bring Jesus into the hands of the council. This Pharisee besought Him to dine with him. Jesus "went in and sat down to meat." He was not igno rant of the scheme of Phariseeism. Rabbis were ready to recline with the suspect about the table, for they were watching him closely. They had not long to wait. Jesus purposely refrained from going through the usual ceremony of purification, before dinner. He washed not Himself. Now, the Pharisees were not peculiarly care ful to avoid being dirty. Nevertheless, defilement by neglecting a ceremony was avoided as a sin. That a man of Jesus' social stand ing, who yet claimed to be a Rabbi and even a prophet, should be indifferent to a ceremony, the neglect of which was equal to adultery, according to their theories, exposed Him at once to ex communication by the Sanhedrin. Jesus knew that the Rabbis at the table with Him had bathed themselves on coming in from the crowded street, where they had possibly jostled up against a heathen. They had bathed, not be cause they wanted to be clean, but because they were bigoted and exclusive, and wished to be uncompromising with humanity in gen eral. Again His conception of universal Fatherhood and universal brotherhood urged Him on. Their idea assaulted the dream of His soul that all men are brethren. He saw humanity outraged by their superciliousness, and formalism enthroned by their heartless pedantry. He had made His opportunity for speaking. And when the Pharisees gazed upon Him rebukingly, Jesus, whom Luke, at this crisis, calls "the Lord," manifested His Lordship, and said: "Now do ye Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 407 platter; but your inward part is full of extortion and wickedness. Ye foolish ones, did not he that made the outside make the inside also? Howbeit, give for alms those things which are within; and behold, all things are clean unto you. But woe unto you Pharisees! for ye tithe mint and rue and every herb, and pass over judgment and the law of God: but these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Woe unto you Pharisees! for ye love the chief seats in the synagogues, and the salutations in the market-places. Woe unto you! for ye are as the tombs which appear not, and the men that walk over them know it not." — Luke xi, 41-44. One of the Rabbis who struggled under the indictment vainly tried to stem the current by asserting the higher respectability of the Teachers as distinguished from the common Pharisees. Jesus would not be detained by the technicalities behind which men of the class then called "lawyers" concealed themselves. He who called the heavy-laden unto Him said: "Woe unto you lawyers also! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers." — Luke xi, 46. He who was the Child of Eternity and felt the breath of to-morrow in to-day, so that His work in the world was that of a living and divine prophet, said also: "Woe unto you! for ye build the tombs of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. So ye are witnesses and consent unto the works of your fathers: for they killed them, and ye build their tombs. Therefore also said the wis dom of God, I will send unto them prophets and apostles; and some of them they shall kill and persecute; that the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world may be required of this generation; from the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zachariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary: yea, I say unto you, it shall be required of this generation. Woe unto you lawyers! for ye took away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered." — Luke xi, 47-52. The wrathful disputants at once sought to so en rage the calm Master of men, so that He would speak some ill- considered thing which, in the hot air of angry controversy, might burn up His last hope of success in winning the heart of the peo ple. Eager-eyed watchers fanned the excitement, desirous of just 408 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. one foolish or unpatriotic statement. They waited in vain. So large and true was the accusation which Jesus made against the national leaders, that they did not think of adopting the overwhelming charge which Jesus uttered against them as a basis for any action against Him, before the Council. Phariseeism always hunts for some noisome little word, by which it shall prove itself incapable of understanding the. divine course in which human history runs. It has no wit to deter mine just when a breath of the eternal has swept its world away. A large crowd had gathered together outside, awaiting Jesus. So excited was the motley throng that they were treading one an other down. As He and His disciples came forth, Jesus, full of the conviction that stormful days were before Him and His friends, and that every man of them needed reinforcement, lest he fall into sel fishness and lose his soul through compromise, said ' 'unto His dis ciples, first of all." "Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. But there is nothing covered up, that shall not be revealed: and hid, that shall not be known. Wherefore whatsoever ye have said in the darkness shall be heard in the light; and what ye have spoken in the ear of the inner chambers shall be pro claimed upon the housetops. And I say unto you, my friends, Be not afraid of them which kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into Le- henna; yea, I say unto you, Fear him. Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings? and not one of them is forgotten in the sight of God. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not: ye are of more value than many sparrows. And I say unto you, Every one who shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God: but he that de- nieth me in the presence of men shall be denied in the presence of the angels of God. And every one who shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but unto him that blas- phemeth against the Holy Spirit it shall not be forgiven. And when they bring you before the synagogues, and the rulers, and the authorities, be not anxious how or what ye shall answer, or what ye shall say: for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what ye ought to say." — Luke xii, 1-12. CHAPTER XXXIX THE MESSIAH— KING OF HUMANITY HAVING spoken with so much of the moral authority which at once commands and guides men, Jesus was now besought by one of the company to interfere in a dispute between two brothers as to an inheritance. He had been seeking to unify men under the Father hood of God, and therefore He refused to touch the question. He had dealt fundamentally and comprehensively with all the problems raised by greed, in offering the solution of self-sacrifice. It was the great opportunity for the greatest of communists, and He declined it. "He said unto him, Man, who made Me a judge or divider over you?" He knew the disease which had abol ished lawful methods. ' And He said unto them, Take heed, and beware THE HEALING ONE 409 410 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the things which he possesseth." No one so well as Jesus the Christ could show men that life is not in things, especially not in their number, but in ideas, sym pathies and hopes by which things are vitalized and made to minister to being. To be and to do is greater than to have. And to be, in the highest natures, means to be willing and able to do without things. The richest man is the one who has the least necessity for having things and is under the most necessity of self-completion. Self- completion is self-sacrifice. Only a Jesus who was realizing Himself as Christ, by going toward Calvary, could preach this gospel. "And He spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully: and he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast pro vided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God." — Luke xii, 15-21. The appeal of the disputant, also, gave Him an occasion for more direct and searching appeal to His disciples, and He spoke to them the words of that new faith which even now makes the triumph of Jesus the victory of both God and man in the world. He concluded His address to them by saying: ' And ye yourselves are like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh they may open unto him immediately. Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily, I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them. And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants. And this know, that if the goodman of the house had known at what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be broken through. Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of Man cometh at an hour when ye think not." — Luke xii, 36-40. THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 4" Simon Peter desired to know if this parable was spoken to the disciples only, or to all. Jesus answered at length: "Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due sea son? Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. Of a truth I say unto you, that he will make him ruler over all that he hath. But and if that servant say in his heart, my lord delayeth his coming, and shall begin to beat the men-serv ants and maid-servants, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken; the lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his por- ¦4 tion with the unbelievers. And that ser vant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither d i d according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes; but he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more. I am come to send fire to the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straightened till it be accomplished? Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division, for from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three CHRIST THE REMUNERATOR. 412 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against \ the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And He' said also to the people, when ye see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower; and so it is. And when ye see the south wind blow, v ye say, There will be heat; and it cometh to pass. Ye hypo crites, ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth: . but how is it that ye do not discern this time ? Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right? When thou goestwith thine adversary to the magistrate, as thou art in the way, give diligence that thou mayest be delivered from him: lest he hale thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and the officer cast thee into prison. I tell thee, that thou shalt not depart thence, till thou hast a sower went out to sow bis paid the very last mite." seed : and as he sowed, some _ fell by the wayside; and it was jLuke Xlt, 4.2-^0. trodded down, and the fowls of ' ~ ^ y the air devoured it. Meantime an event had occurred which terribly stirred up the ardent patriotism of the oppressed. Certain Galileans had been cruelly slain by Pilate in Jerusalem. ™ktt™n\^^%™l% TM , -, -, . , . it withered away, because it he massacre had occurred at a time when it lacked moisture. roused the utmost excitement. It is very possible, not only that it occurred at the Feast of Tabernacles, but also that the ' revolt THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 413 which was thus murderously suppressed by Pilate had been led by the very Bar-Abbas, who, at a later time, was to come before Pilate and to be delivered by him, at the trial of Jesus. Jesus as a Galilean was expected to utter indignant words and remonstrate, even if He would refuse to head a movement of rebellion against Rome on behalf of those ' 'whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices." — Luke xiii, 1. But He did nothing of the kind. Yet His silence upon the point which they dwelt upon did not mean that He was indiffer ent. His task was to state and embody the Fatherhood of God and the brother hood of man in such a manner as to create a wider patriotism, and to make Pilate impossible. He was not curing symptoms, but disease. "And Jesus ans wering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Gali leans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things ? I tell you, Nay; but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. He spake also this parable: A certain man had a fig-tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of his And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundred fold. And when he had said these things, he cried, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. And some fell among thorns and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it. 414 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig-tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? And he answered, saying unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: and if it bear fruit, well; and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down." — Luke xiii, 2-9. Nothing delayed Jesus from dealing with the main issue. The sinless One was thoroughly intent on the overthrow of sin. He would strike sin, not Rome; and sin was hiding in the sapless trunk of Judaic religiousness. Jesus had adopted the ancient form of instruction known as the parable. It was a popular and forceful mode of teaching, much used in the East, by employing striking analogies, and treating well-known facts as symbols in the illustration of truths otherwise difficult of com prehension. Nothing so proves the accurate and sympathetic obser vation which characterized the mind of Jesus even with respect to common things, and the clearness and inclusiveness of His vision with respect to the transcendental realities of God's kingdom, as His unforgetable comparisons and luminous pictures. He was now by the seaside, at or near Capernaum. Crowds from everywhither came to hear Him. One day the multitude was sp great that He was compelled to go into a ship and speak from its prow, in order to reach His audience on shore. There and then He spoke to them the Parable of the Sower, saying: "Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow; and it came to pass, as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside, and the birds came and de voured it. And other fell on the rocky ground, where it had not much earth; and straightway it sprang up, because it had no deep ness of earth; and when the sun was risen, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. And other fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. And others fell into good ground, and yielded fruit, growing up and increasing; and brought forth, thirtyfold, and sixty fold, and a hundredfold. And He said, who hath ears to hear, let him hear. And when He was alone, they that were about Him with the twelve asked of Him the parables." — Matt, xiii, 3-10. Matthew adds His sayings: "For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken THE MAN OF GALILEE. 415 away even that which he hath. Therefore speak I to them in par ables; because seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And unto them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall in no wise understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall in no wise perceive: for this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hear ing, and their eyes they have closed; lest haply they should perceive with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should turn again, and I should heal them. But blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear. For verily I say unto you, that many prophets and righteous men desired to see the things which ye see, and saw them not; and to hear the things which ye hear, and heard them not." — Matt, xiii, 12-17. But Jesus would now give to them the secret of hearing a par able. No other exposition of this parable is equal to its author's, "And He saith unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how shall ye know all the parables? The sower soweth the word. And these are they by the wayside, where the word is sown; and when they have heard, straightway cometh Satan, and taketh away the word which hath been sown in them. And these in like manner are they that are sown upon the rocky places, who, when they have heard the word, straightway receive it with joy; and they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecu tion ariseth because of the word, straightway they stumble. And others are they that are sown among thorns; these are they that have heard the word, and the cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful. And those are they that were sown upon good ground; such as hear the word, and accept, and bear fruit, thirtyfold, and sixtyfold, and a hundredfold." — Mark iv, 13-20. But there are other sides of the truth which He was then teaching concerning the kingdom of heaven. These the King would utter while yet they had the picture of the field in mind; and therefore He spoke to them the Parable of the Tares, saying: "The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares also among the wheat, and went away. But when the blade -sprang up, and brought forth fruit, 416 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. there appeared the tares also. And the servants of the house holder came and said unto him, Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? whence then hath it tares? And he said unto them, An enemy hath done this. And the servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he saith, Nay; lest haply while ye gather up the tares, ye root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the har vest: and in the time of the har vest I will say to the reapers, Gather up first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn." — Matt, xiii, 24-31. There was still another phase of the truth to be taught. He must show them concerning the successive forms into which the growing Kingdom would develop, and the method by which the in visible power of His message must utter itself. "And He said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed upon the earth; and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should spring up and grow, he knoweth not how. The earth beareth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is ripe, straightway he putteth forth the sickle, because the harvest is come. And He said, How shall we liken the kingdom of God? or in what parable shall we set it forth? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown upon the earth, though it be less than all the seeds that are upon the earth, yet when it is sown, groweth up, and be cometh greater than all the herbs, and putteth out great branches; THE EVIL ONE SOWING TARES. THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 417 so that the birds of heaven can lodge under the shadow thereof." — Mark iv, 27-34. So much for the small beginnings and the glorious consummation of the kingdom of the invisible, in its outward as pects. Did they need to know of the way in which these powers accomplished the purpose of God? "Another parable spake He unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till it was all leavened. All these things spake Jesus in parables unto the multi tudes; and without a parable spake He nothing unto them: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world." — Matt, xiii, 33-35. So much for the method of the working of the forces He had put into the life of humanity. After the multitudes were sent away, His disciples came to Him in the house where He was staying, and besought Him to explain the Parable of the Tares. His exposition makes another's useless, if not presumptive. "And He answered and said, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of Man; and the field is the world; and the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy that sowed them is the devil; and the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are angels. As therefore the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be in the end pf the world. The Son of Man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that cause stumbling, and them that do iniquity, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be weeping and gnash ing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He- that hath ears, let him hear." — Matt, xiii, 37-43. He seems to have felt that they did not quite get His mean ing, and therefore He continued to speak by analogies and compari sons. He said: "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found, and hid; and in his joy he goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a merchant seek ing goodly pearls, and having found one pearl of great price, he 418 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. went and sold all that he had, and bought it. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind; which, when it was filled, they drew up on the beach; and they sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but the bad they cast away. So shall it be in the end of the world; the angels shalt come forth, and sever the wicked from among the righteous, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." — Matt, xiii, 44-50. The Parable of the Drag-net was illustrative of a truth very like to that exploited in the Parable of the Tares. Good and evil are mixed in the world. The final separation is to occur only at the end of the world's history. The Parables of the Hid Treasure and the Goodly Pearls set forth the supreme worth of the kingdom of heaven. It is valuable enough to call for any and all expenditure and care. The crowd swarmed about Him, after He came out of the house. Even was come, and He was nearly exhausted. The tired and homeless man, standing on the sea-shore, said to His disciples: "Let us go on the other side of the lake." — Matt, viii, 18. Before they got into the boat, a certain scribe came to Him, and said to the weary and houseless Rabbi: "Master, I will follow thee where- ever thou goest. " — Matt, viii, 19. Jesus was now sifting men by the severe process of life's greatest facts to which He was true. "And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head." — Matt, viii, 20. Another of His disciples who would do rev erence to the body of his father, and yet wished to go with Jesus, was plainly unconscious of the spiritual death in which he balanced pious filialness with decisive and self-abnegating devotion to his Lord, and he said: "Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father." — Matt, viii, 21. With other circumstances about Him, the month of mourning usually given to the dead would have furnished no snare to this disciple. But here and now for this man to pause was to adopt death, as his arbiter, rather than life. "Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead." — Matt, viii, 22. At length the boat was pushed out from the white sand. The sail across the lake, which Jesus evidently hoped would be restful, THE AIAN OF GALILEE. 4*9 was stormy, and threatened to be tragic in its consequences. Sud denly a squall of wind came down the deep ravines, and the shallow waters were tossed into a fury. The hot day had furnished torrid air which helped to create a vacuum into which the cooler mountain currents of the atmosphere ran, and the waves were soon dashing the boat to and fro irresistibly. Even the disciple-crew, who were well acquainted with the management of the boat in a crisis such as this on the Sea of Galilee, were daunted by the fierce wind, and alarmed as the waves filled the ship. Asleep on a pillow in the hinder part of the ship, the tired Jesus was resting. The seas be came overwhelming. They could hesitate no longer, and, remember ing what He had done when stormful forces appeared supreme in other domains of life, the terrified disciples came to Him as reverently as they had waited for long, that He might sleep, and they cried out: "Lord, save us, we perish!" — Matt, viii, 25. Perhaps if they had said only this, there had been no rebuke. As it was, the rebuke was kindly and gentle. According to Mark, they said: "Master, carest thou not that we perish?" — Mark iv, 38. His stern rebuke came only when He spoke to the wind. He said: "Peace! Be still." — Mark iv, 39. A great calm settled over the sea. Then tenderly He turned to His disciples, and said unto them, "Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith?" — Malt. viii, 26. Not yet were His disciples delivered from the fear which comes into our ignorance and faithlessness with all true revelation. While they feared and wondered, they gave evidence that they were unwittingly exploring the potencies and possibilities of divine man hood, when they said: " What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?" — Matt, viii, 27. Asleep in the stern of our boat, driven by doubt, tossed with sorrows, filling up with overwhelming care, our Lord sleeps. He careth not that we toil alone: He careth that we must wake Him. He careth that we perish not of unbelief and that we know Him as Lord of all storms. "And all is well, though faith and form Be sundered in the night of fear ; Well roars the storm to those who hear A deeper voice across the storm." THE HERD OF SWINE. FROM PAINTING BY BRITON RIVIRA, R. THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 421 Not more sublime was Jesus, standing erect in the high stern of the fiercely tossed boat, than was He soon to be, when, still weary but yet majestic, He confronted a storm of another sort. It was more mad and horrible than the hurricane on the Sea of Galilee. For the Son of Humanity, dealing divinely with human problems, there could be no peace or rest in a world as yet unredeemed, save as, in the center of the commotion, He reposed on the bosom of His Father, and in the heart of the flame which burned out evil, He found the coolness of divine inspiration. Onshore, in Peraea, "the country of the Gerasenes, " — Matt, viii, 28, — He found His disciples startled and confounded by a sight only as terrible and disgusting as the marble avenues of the city of Gadara were brilliant and stately. Close to what we often call a prosperous and splendid civilization, such as displayed itself in the white baths and glittering play-houses of Gadara, came crouching and shrinking humanity, murderous, naked and mad, exhibiting in its paroxysms what were doubtless only the consequences of an undivine social state. Out of one of the caves in the soft limestone hill, in which the dead bodies of men had rotted, sprang the ghastly form of the uncon trollable maniac. He had broken off the staples attaching his chains, and twisted his manacles, and now defied the heartless civilization of half-pagan Gadara by his yells, which were echoed in the streets of the city. Christianity had not yet built its asylums; but Jesus, the Christ, was there. With maniacal carelessness, the wretch slit his body with sharp stones; with generous and God-like carefulness, Jesus moved within the range of his vision. If, as according to Matthew, there were two of them, Jesus would go so near unto both of them that His spiritual calm might command all their fury. Soon their shrieks were changed into the piteous, but wild, cry: ' ' What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God ? Art Thou come hither to torment us before the time? "—Matt, viii, 29. Again this form of evil had looked into the face of good, and con fessed its overawing beautifulness. Through expressions of terror, evil, tired of itself, always behaves in this manner. But good com mands it. "Come out, thou unclean spirit," — Mark v, 8, — said Jesus; and then He tenderly asked: "What is thy name?" — Mark v, 9. It was the Good Physician's way of piloting the storm -tossed 422 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. men back to themselves. And he answered, saying: " My name is Legion; for we are many." — Mark v, g. Human life was broken up by the many who possessed them both; and the dominant powers replied, ' ' beseeching Him that He would not send them away out of the country." — Mark v, 10. The phrase "away out of the country," is only another putting of Luke's phrase, ' 'out into the deep, " for this phrase doubtless gives indication of the kind of insanity, or demoniac possession, with which the man was suffering. Water was most dreaded by them. Some where the evil spirits must go. They hated the exile from land into the sea. In spite of all efforts to discredit the incident, we still have the three evangelists telling the story of the entering of the unclean spirits into the swine. Following is Matthew's account: "Now there was afar off from them a herd of many swine feeding. And the devils besought Him, saying, If thou cast us out, send us away into the herd of swine. And He said unto them, Go. And they came out, and went into the swine: and behold, the whole herd rushed down. the steep into the sea, and perished in the waters. And they that fed them fled, and went away into the city, and told every thing, and what was fallen to them that were possessed with devils. And behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus: and when they saw Him, they besought Him that He would depart from their borders." — Matt, viii, 30-34. The cost of getting rid of devils of every sort, in trade, litera ture, art, and ecclesiasticism, is only our hogs. If a professed hater of swine, — for this owner might have been a Jew, — will get his for tune by greed, this issue must be his fate as well as his fortune. Let us not mourn over them, if man is saved. As soon as the real Christ appears in society, and in His own way makes this a better world, the insatiate animalism must go; but men repeat the greedy complaint and the beseeching of the Gadara swine-herders. Reform often hurts what is called prosperity and makes men dream that everything will be lost. "And all the people of the country of Gerasenes round about asked Him to depart from them, for they were holden with great fear; and He entered into a boat, and returned. But the man from whom the devils were gone out prayed Him that he might be with Him; but He sent him away, saying, Return to THE AIAN OF GALLLEE. 423 thy house, and declare how great things God hath done for thee. And he went his way, publishing throughout the whole city how great things Jesus had done for him." — Mark v, 20. Jesus recrossed the Sea of Galilee to the other side, and the waiting multitude gladly received Him when He landed. Some storms were over, because of His might, and there was indeed "a great calm. " Even yet, however, He must do much for the faith of His disciples. He would reach all these disciples best through the special culture He was about to give to Peter, James, and John. Three great lessons concerning one great fact were to be taught unto them; first, at the Raising of the Daughter of Jairus; second, at His Trans figuration; and third, in the Garden of Gethsemane. The one fact to be illustrated in these three incidents was the supremacy of the spiritual over the physical. CHAPTER XL S;V .:¦'¦ ,i.. '."^fflBti;- ';¦:/>¦ *¦ -Z' 'M./ JAIRUS' DAUGHTER JESUS was speaking, in Capernaum, the words illustrative of the nature of His kingdom. "And behold, there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name; and when he saw Him, he fell at His feet, and besought Him greatly, saying, My little daughter lieth at the point of death: I pray thee, come and lay Thy hands on her; that she may be healed; and she -'-^M^^'-M&f'"' shall live. " — Mark v, 22, 23. The personality , : iMKHJ^iil y of jairus is clearly defined. He was one of the principal men of the city, high in the councils of the synagogue, possibly one of the elders among those who formed the deputation which went to Jesus, in behalf of the Centurion, and certainly a ruling spirit in all local councils. It is likely that he had learned from the case of the Centurion's servant that Jesus was the Great Physician, before whom any man's pride might well fall, especially when love and necessity demanded such treatment for the loved one as other Jewish Rabbi- doctors could not furnish. His plea to Jesus is loaded with the eloquence of facts, and strenuous with the mental heroism of faith. Jesus was still speaking to others, and Jairus was before Him, not as a speculator concerning occult powers, nor merely as one begging for the greatest of favors. Matthew tells us that "he worshipped Him" — Matt, ix, 18, — while he made his appeal. 425 s^ OLIVE VINEYARD, NEAR SAMARIA 426 THE MAN OF GALILEE. Jesus immediately went with him, followed by the eager multi tude. On the way to the house of the ruler, two meaningful events occurred. The less significant, but nevertheless important, event was this, that one of the ruler's household hurried from the distracted home, and came upon them, interrupting Jesus and the crowd on their way, as he said to Jairus: "Thy daughter is already dead; CHRIST RESUSCITATING JAIRUS' DAUGHTER. trouble not the Master." — Luke viii, 49. " But Jesus hearing it, an swered, saying, Fear not; only make an act of belief, and she shall be made whole." — Luke viii, 50. On arriving at the house, Jesus allowed no man to follow Him to the room, except Peter, James, and John. The throng had been joining in the usual wailing and weeping. Immediately Jesus said to them: "Why make ye this ado and weep? The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth." — Mark v, 39. They answered Him with a scornful laugh. Clearing the house of all except the father and mother of the girl, and His three disciples, He went into the room where the maiden was lying. "And He took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, THE MAN OF GALILEE 427 being interpreted, 'Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise.' And straightway the damsel arose, and walked; for she was of the age of twelve years; and they were astonished with a great astonishment. And Pie charged them straitly that no man should know it; and commanded that something should be given her to eat." — Mark v, 40-43. The Master of Men feared not ceremonial pollution by touching her body, which was dead. Life itself had almost become a ceremony; He was to make it a reality and a victory. The human body was more sacred than ritualistic law, to the Lord of Life. In no act or word did Jesus more clearly show that the interruption in time by the forces of eternity may be annulled by His joining the processes of earth with the processes of heaven, than in His command that "something should be given her to eat." — Mark v, 45. Luke, the phy sician, naturally preserves this fact for us. Jesus did not forget that her life must be lived as of old, though the parents' joy was too full for them to think of it. The Son of God was the Son of Humanity. The other and more significant event which interrupted His progress toward the house of Jairus was the exhibition of the faith of a poor woman, who pushed her way through the moving crowd, and touched the edge of His outer garment, and was healed. Jesus' treatment of this case is most illustrative of His message and method. He was on His way to prove the sovereignty of the spiritual, even in spite of death, when this other pleading, yet silent, need pressed itself upon His abundant grace. In the crowd which thronged around Him, following on with ardent curiosity, from the spot where Jesus had listened to the father's sorrow, toward the house of death, there was this woman, suffering with a malady which exiled her from society and marked her, to some of them, as a child of infamy. Twelve years of secret agony and public shame had made her prize the possibilities of a moment. Many physicians had added to her poverty a certain desperate power, which pushed her through the crowd and nerved her hand to touch the border of His flowing robe. Perhaps it was the blue ribband, that was the symbol of His holi ness, which she touched with her defilement. She was healed. Then the sufferer, with secret trembling, hid herself away in the crowd. With a crowd's dullness of apprehension, it pressed on, as though no event of profoundest significance to her and to Jesus Christ had 428 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. occurred. But He, Whose religion then and there disclosed one of its noblest characteristics, stopped the flood of miscellaneous human life, to deal with its most unnoticed current, and He said: " Who touched me?" — Luke viii, 45. Simon Peter, himself for the moment the victim of the crowd's gregariousness, having lost sight of his own personality and being unable to perceive the personalities of others THE WOMAN TOUCHING THE HEM OF CHRIST'S GARMENT. in that throng, said: "Master, the multitude throng Thee and press Thee, and sayest Thou, Who touched Me?" — Luke viii, 45. Then said Jesus, "Somebody hath touched Me, for I perceive that virtue hath gone out of Me." — Luke viii, 46. No power in the world has so rescued and authenticated personality as has Jesus Christ. At once, in the thought of Jesus, a human being is a personal child of a personal God. With Him, every man ceases to be thought of as merely a creature, and under His revealing influence, Himself more personal than any other in the history of life, "the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God." Man is brought to himself — the self he was meant to be, the self which his deepest nature says, in all the literature of human longing, he ought to be,— THE ALAN OF GALILEE. 429 only in Christ. To the souls once awakened by Plim, Jesus is thus "the first-born of the sons of God." All limitations are broken down in Christ; all the tyrannous and belittling influence of sin is lost in the liberty wherewith a man has been set free in the law of love; and all the distortions of evil are put aside in the straightforward and natural working of a personal goodness in Christ, which, by faith and through grace, becomes a man's own. Christ has made man a personal being, and gave him a personal God to love and adore. Here we have the fact of the restoration of personality through Jesus Christ. For twelve years that woman had been in abnormal relations to herself, to society, to nature, and to God. It was unnatural that her life should thus aimlessly wear its long years away. She was not what she was meant to be, and her whole existence was missing its end. At best, her personality was incomplete, and because of her life's incompleteness, she had the constitution of the world against her. The laws which traversed her being hung like burdens upon her; the humanity which was left was meaningless and even grievous, without that which would make her the person she was created to be. That incompleteness Christ did complete; that sorrowful fragment of a human personality Christ made whole, by making her entire. So organic is this element in the work of Christ in the world, that every incident or method of its operation makes it plain. The method of her approach, and, at last, of her contact with Christ, and notably His discovery of her from the depths of His personal ity, make it still more evident. Possibly she had been pushed against Him before as the crowd rushed along, but she had not been cured, nor- had He spoken. Certainly, as Peter suggested, that jostling multitude had so behaved itself that it seemed strange enough that Jesus should ask, "Who touched me?" Others, — sin ners, doubtless, and perhaps as needy as she, — had pressed against that same spot in His garment, and yet we read of no other cure, nor concerning any other did He speak as He journeyed along. Men have always been beset with two dangers — the danger on one side of over-valuing the individual and on the other of over-valuing the multitude. The conception of man which He had Who came to save him is free from either danger Jesus Christ valued man be cause he was by nature a child of God created for sonship. Men 43o THE MAN OF GALLLEE. at times have looked at a man as a citizen and unconsciously in ferred his personality from his capacity for government. Jesus al ways saw that man's value as a citizen, or whatever else, lay in the fact of his essential sonship unto God. He is ever appealing to the person within the citizen. Deeper than -his belongings unto him self, or to other man, are his belongings unto God. The whole philosophy of progress under Christianity is built on the conception which lies in this incident. Not that impersonal crowd, but that personal woman — needy and self-respecting in the assertion of her possible personality in Him — she was the force with which He worked. She had not forgotten herself in the forgetfulness of the throng, and the desire of that one self-respecting personality, though as yet unassured, rose up out of their din like a strain of music. Sin is the triumph of individualism, a^ To come to Christ is to regain one's personality — simply to ' 'be 7nade whole." — Mark v, 34. To be made whole is to be made healthy. Healthy and holy — for holiness is wholeness, and whole ness is holiness or health. Real virtue of mind, or heart, is so personal that even no most gen erous nature fails to know the expenditure necessary for doing helpful or inspiring work in the world. Even Jesus, the Divine, knew the cost of service, es pecially to those who come to Him, as did this woman, "in 1 the press behind." "Power," He said "has gone out of Me."— - and such power as makes Me know that "Some One has touched Me." Jesus was now moving on to the completer statement of the secret of His kingdom, in the accomplishment of His PEACE BE UNTO THY HOUSE. THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 43i work. Ever increasing difficulties sprang up in His path. What was left of popular appreciation vied with priestly suspicion and fear, and the atmosphere around Him was charged with unfavorable currents. Even the most loyal of His followers favored the demand on the part of the least spiritual for more miracles. The Master was never for getful of His mission; He saw that one miracle too many would make Him only a notorious won der-worker and a spiritual charlatan.Two blind ¦ men followed Him, feeling j theiruncertain way, as souls still feel after God, if haply they may find Him. These men cried : "Thou Son of .~ -ii SAMARIA. David, have mer cy on us!" — Matt, ix, 27. Their phrase, "Son of David," was the expression of their belief that He was the expected Christ. It was as far as their Christology went, in words. But Jesus will always complete what is incomplete, in our theory, by something in our ex perience. Into Peter's house He led them, and there He taught them the place and value of faith. "Then touched He their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it done unto you. And their eyes were opened. And Jesus strictly charged them, saying, See that no man know it." — Matt, ix, 29, 30. It was all in vain, for the garrulous and excited men added only to His notoriety. Once more He cast out an evil spirit from a dumb man, and the marveling multitudes con fessed His power. "But the Pharisees said, By the prince of devils casteth He out deSls. " — Matt, ix, 34. It was an old charge, and it fell harmless from His shield. 432 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. Out into the cities and villages He went, thus beginning another. mission in Galilee. Healing sickness, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and relieving sorrow, His own heart felt the pathetic drama of life in its most trying crises, for He saw the multitude fainting with the burdens which no human philosophy could lift, harassed by pretentious charlatans in religion, — a scattered flock, and shepherdless. "Then saith He unto His disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few." — Matt, ix, 37. The twelve disciples were now sent out on their apostolic mission. With the utmost care that He might not prejudice His enterprise in the minds of those whom He would save, He adopted a method which was only apparently opposed to His world-wide plan. The gospel account is this: "These twelve Jesus sent forth, and charged them, saying, Go not into any way of the Gentiles, and enter not into any city of the Samaritans: but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils; freely ye received, freely give."— Matt, x, 5-8. He urged them to that unworldliness which is not other-world- liness, but which always brings the greatest of practical blessings to a needy world like ours. He would have them respect the divine ness of their message. He said: "And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, as ye go forth out of that house or that city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city." — Matt, x, 14, 15. Again He warned them of the severity of the battle, and the pain through which spiritual victory must always come. He put Himself so close to them in all their trials, that Master and servant shared one suf fering and one glory. The one inspiriting fact upon which they might rely was the care-taking Fatherhood of God. He said: "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father: but the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore; ye are of more value than many sparrows. Everyone therefore who shall confess Me be fore men, him will I also confess before My Father which is in THE AIAN OF GALLLEE. 433 heaven. But whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father which is in heaven. "- -Matt, x, 29-33. He would not have them forget that the world of the future was to be organized, not by emphasizing natural ties, but by self- revealing and vitalizing spiritual ties. Never had He put Plimself before them as the Incarnation of the Good News of God with more of clearness or authority. Pie made the whole destiny and order of the redeemed world, even to the giving up a cup of cold water, dependent upon the personal revelation of God in Himself and through His disciples. He said: "He that receiveth you re ceiveth Me, and he that receiveth Me receiveth Him that sent Me. He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward. And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only, in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you" he shall in no wise lose his reward." — Matt, x, 40-42. About this time, the death of John the Baptist occurred, and Jesus must have been cognizant of the event when His apostles came back from their mission-circuit. The Baptizer, John, had long been languishing in the fortress of Machaerus, while the kingdom of the Messiah, which he had foretold, was unfolding a glory too spiritual to satisfy any who possessed not the secret of Jesus. The crime of John the Baptist, which had exposed him to the wrath of the rulino- Herod, had demonstrated to Testis the moral grandeur of the forerunner. Believing in the spiritual responsiveness of John, Jesus had sent a reply to John's queries which must have stimulated his soul and developed a richer courage. Against the darkness of the court of Herod, cruel, superstitious and licentious as it was, must always stand the sublime figure of the Baptizer. Against the public iniquity which Herod's lasciviousness had flaunted with Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip, the white soul of the prophet had sent the terrible light of righteousness. Herod might be careless of the existence of the imprisoned reformer, but Herodias would neither forgive nor forget. We know that Herod was compelled to respect the noble orator, even when that violent despot called John into his ¦ presence. Stern and pale, the invincible herald of God 88 434 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. had made the tyrant to "fear" him. But Herod listened gladly, and as gladly Herod did everything but the one thing. He would not give up the fascinating Herodias. The anniversary of Herod's birthday brought with it a gay and luxurious banquet. Probably in the palace of Julias, near by, the incestuous tetrarch held his carnival. The crafty woman had ar ranged for an extraordinary pleasure that might add, as she hoped, to the revelry, at least to such an extent and in such a manner that her long-cherished and dark desire could be accomplished. When the vulgar and glittering celebration had reached its height of ex citement, the sinuous form of a beautiful girl glided in. She was so scantily clothed ,/ ' as to fire the pas- &m^""' . '.v*-S. sions ot dissolute 3- '; ••- £ men, and the «fV: " . ••¦..*> i-m i£ and lithe „; * \), ¦ :| ^'*Sr^-s. ^ .-' youngmaiden caught the wandering eyes of the court iers in the maze of her bewildering dance. Nothing could have added __„ „ ; S'V more of vulgar delight to their intox- c/esarea-philippi. site of herod's castle. ication than the delirium of her movements. It was soon discov ered that the dancer was not only a princess, but the daughter of Herodias, Salome. Her indecency was forgotten for the moment in the luster of her beauty. So enraptured was Herod himself, that he told her that anything she might ask, even to the half of his king dom, was hers. The mother was ready with a suggestion, when the panting girl came to her and said: "What shall I ask?" She was soon back in the banquet-hall, ready to eclipse the scandalous history of all Oriental dancers, for she had the terrible words upon her lips: "Give me here John the Baptist's head upon a charger." — Matt. THE AIAN OF GALILEE. 435 xiv, 8. Herodias must have her triumph complete. In vain Herod struggled against his conscience. Weakness writhed under the hasty oath he had given, and the fear of his taunting guests. He fought a losing fight, and soon the most eloquent orator of Israel was silent. The body-guard of Herod returned from the dungeon. In the torch-light the bleeding head was given to the maiden, and the charger, with its horrible present, was handed by the young woman to her mother. It was speedily all over. While Herod's banquet-hall was being cleansed of the miserable evidence of the night's shame, the Baptist's disciples were burying the headless form of the mighty revivalist. Then they went and "told Jesus." But they could not tell all. Only as Christendom develops the resources of the kingdom of God, and as Herod after Plerod follows that Antipas into darkness, while dauntless spirituality and burning devotion ally themselves with the increasing ministries of heaven, can the story of John the Baptist be told. It was the silence of sleep after the debauch; but Herod was not done with John the Baptist; neither was John done with Herod. Herod might forget the hideous gift on the dish, which his guardsmen handed in his name to the young and depraved Salome. He could never forget the appeal of goodness, the thrill ing eloquence of righteousness, the unwasting commandment of truth which had startled and ruled came back in the wasted tist. Goodness is ever like goodness, not only in itself and its meth ods, but in the results produced on the soul. Soon Herod was hear ing at Tiberias the echoes from the preaching of Jesus. In spite of extrav agant vices and richly decorated ' J&* walls, the stern har- him at times as they form of the Bap- RUINS OF CRUSADERS' CASTLE. TIBE.R1AS. 436 THE MAN OF GALILEE. mony of the voice of the Master of men, Jesus, the Christ, strayed into the golden house of the capital, and Herod was again fearing One very like John the Baptist. It was impossible for him to bury out of sight the relentless prophet of Almighty God. Righteousness always reminds us of righteousness. Again Herod quaked with the suspicion that the herald of the Highest might be living and organ izing a revolt to execute a purpose of justice which would slay him. As the interest of others increased in Jesus and His words, Herod's excitement grew tempestuous. " Who is this man, Jesus?" was the question on the lips of the curious and the wise. Herod had known but one vision of goodness. It was ever memorable and command ing. He could make but one answer, and he shook with terror when he said: " This is John the Baptist whom I beheaded; he is risen from the dead, and therefore these mighty works are wrought by him." — Matt, xiv, 2. It is a suggestive episode in the history of conscience. Herod was a Sadducee, and the Sadducees were infidels on the subject of resurrection. Infidelity, however, went down before conscience, as it always must. "He is risen from the dead" was the cry of the vanquished Sadducee, Again, if there ever was a man whose pre vious actions had apparently been determined by what we call environment, that man was Herod. He could say, if any man ever could say: "I did not want to do that horrible thing. I was caught in the mesh of facts and the despotism of events. These were resistless. I was overborne by circumstances." Conscience, however, strips off the disguise and clears the air. Conscience deals with personalities, and Herod shows his obedience to conscience and its unpitying power of its illumination, when he says: "This is John the Baptist, whom / beheaded; lie is risen from the dead, and there fore these mightly works are wrought by him." — Matt, xiv, 2. BREAD AND FISHES. CHAPTER XLI THE MULTIPLIED LOAVES AND FISHES IT was very natural that the emotions of Jesus, kindled by His hearing of the death of one whom He so loved, should compel Him to take a boat and cross the lake, and seek a desert place. His career in the world was costly; it had cost the life of His prophet, and the end was not yet. We have only to read Josephus to dis cover how strongly the Jews felt that the disasters of the house of Herod were but a consequence entailed by the murder of the Baptist. It is certain that, even at this time, there must have been such ex citement upon the direful event as Jesus would seek to escape. John's disciples had come to Him, and an insurrection might easily organize itself and demand that Jesus should lead it. But He must avoid it. Yet the Master could not escape a certain large following from the crowd. The twelve apostles, who had just returned from their mission, needed to be taught by their Master in some quiet place. He Himself would first commune alone with God. But there was no such place now for Jesus. His plan for resting and prayer and teaching was rendered the more impossible, because it was nearly time for the Passover-Feast, and the throngs of pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem filled the roadways, so that it was out of the question for 437 438 THE AfAN OF GALLLEE. Him to land even on the northeast shore of the lake, at Bethsaida- Julias, without an ever-growing multitude following Him. Nothing now moved Jesus with such compassion as an aimless, leaderless multitude. The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man had been so preached and embodied before them, that they had broken from the past; and He, the secret-holder of the future, must have compassion toward them. While He healed their sick, He saw and felt the pathos of the crowd, for it was humanity unin spired, unorganized, shepherdless. It was evening. His soul had never been so heavy with the fate of mankind, who looked with sightless eyes upon the invisible to which He would bind them in love's way. What more could He do? Into this hour came all the processes and forces by which He had hitherto been propagating the Kingdom of the Invisible with Himself as the Invisible King. The poor dis ciples themselves saw a crisis, but it was not the crisis which Jesus discerned. Philip and Andrew expressed their thoughts, — and they were thoughts of retreat from a supreme duty and privilege which Jesus Himself had created. They said, as they looked down upon the multitude gathered on the mountain-side: "This is a desert place, and the time is now passed; send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages, and buy themselves victuals." — Matt. xiv, 15. Jesus had already sought to test Philip, who is ever the man under the tyranny of facts, by saying: "Whence are we to buy loaves that these may eat?" — John vi, 5. Philip, the cautious man of arithmetic, begins to make a calculation, and the rest of them join in his process of reckoning, — a process which is ever blind to the possibilities of the invisible. ' ' Philip answered Him, Two penny worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little. One of His disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, saith unto Him, There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are these among so many?" — John vi, 7, 8, 9. Nothing will be permitted to break in upon the deliberation and calm of the self-poised Christ. Looking around upon the green-clad mountain-side, where the spring flowers were nodding under the breeze of an April eventide, "Jesus said, Make the people sit down. Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, in THE MAN OF GALILEE. 439 number about five thousand. Jesus therefore took the loaves; and having given thanks, Pie distributed to them that were set down; likewise also of the fishes as much as they would. And when they were filled, Pie saith to PIis disciples, Gather up the broken pieces which remain over, that nothing be lost. So they gathered them up, and filled twelve baskets with broken pieces from the five barley loaves, which remained over unto them that had eaten. When there fore the people saw the sign which He did, they said, This is of a truth the prophet that cometh into the world." — Luke vi, 10-14. It was a mighty step toward the complete statement of His Kingdom and we may pause with the event, for it furnished the crisis of His influence with the people. Jesus must be conceived as the Chief Prophet of the Unseen and the Apostle of the Invisible. He Plimself is the reason for such a miracle as this much more certainly than the miracle is the reason for Him. Being in a diviner way than we can know, the Invisible One, it was natural that, when the crying necessities of this visible life of "ours rushed against Him, Pie should simply unfold to man's undiscovering eyes the invisible content of some of His least visible powers. The small store of bread and fishes, in the presence of those five thousand hungry people, is the picture always presented of the seeming disproportion of demand and supply in the world. The bread and fishes were so nearly invisible in the sight of those unde niably visible wants, that, when He hung the whole weight of those demands upon so slender a cord, He made them feel what He saw — that the value of the cord which held them from deeps of hunger lay not in the seen but the unseen threads which helped to compose it. It is by some little thing, like a mustard seed, which so has in itself the fact of being visible and the suggestion of the nearness of the invisible, that the mind is enabled to travel by it along that line which seems to mark the empires of the soul. "Verily," said Isaiah, "Thou art a God which hidest Thyself." The most huge noise in nature — the deep-toned thunder — "This," said the Psalmist, "is the hiding of His power." It is not its revelation. But when Elijah heard the least strong whisper of the hurricane — "the still small voice" — he knew it was the accent of God. All this belongs to the 44° THE MAN OF GALILEE. same universal philosophy of God which in nature makes an atom obedient to the laws which control a world, and which is so suited to man's infirmity of step, when he travels along the edge of the invis ible, that it is not a revolving star but a falling apple which shows a Newton how through the visible runs the sovereignty of the Invis ible. Wide, indeed, is that lesson when Jesus taught it, here, in the realm of the spirit. The proposition of those disciples — hinted at in their question ing — to leave it all, in valuless disuse, because there was not more of the provision, is the proposition which shows at once the quality of a weak invisible life in them and its danger, at all times. In the eventide, on the shore of Genesereth, with that hungry crowd of people who surged against Him at this highest moment in His popular activity, the disciples saw nothing else to do but to dismiss them. But there and then was manifested the quality and method of the Christian religion. He knew that He was the cause of their hav ing stayed so long, and that it was now too late for them to go home for the evening meal. And, as though He would give them an intimation of the real supremacy of the truth and put this phase of His influence in the world before them, He said: "Give them to cat. " Jesus Himself has created new demands in human life. Just as He then delayed them so long that He must have compassion on the multitude, He has attracted human nature to His words and life, in such a way that new hungerings of soul after the good and beautiful and true look Him in the face with pathetic appeal. He and His Church must have compassion on the multitudes of men whose hearts have been made to feel their unsatisfactory condition, whose souls have been made conscious of demands that cry for some supply. Christianity has thus been a discoverer of wants unknown, and it has developed into a very tumult of yearning, in the eventide of the times, — a life hungry for truth and goodness; and upon it the Christ must have compassion. To all this want which it discloses and whose self-assertion it helps to make more eloquent, it comes, as did Christ, finding in human hands but five barley loaves and two ' small fishes. Always is our faithless thought saying: "What can be done with so small a supply for so many wants?" Always is a THE ALAN OF GALILEE. 441 half-hearted spirituality proposing to dismiss the crowd of poor and helpless ones to take care of themselves. But wherever a real Chris tianity obtains, it pushes its firm hand into the unseen, and, seeing so little of the visible, yet says, in the face of five thousand neces sities: " Give them to cat." Christianity did create a noble restless ness in the soul of man; it has charmed man and kept him, until, like those hungry people by Genesereth, he is out of the reach of the old helps and ordinary resources of human life. Christianity does not leave man dismissed to some strange set of forces, or to an unknown phase of life, but rather does it answer by its divine power, by the weak human means which comes to its hand, every yearning it has wakened, every incidental demand it has stimulated. What He had said about the unseen and the circumstances gave this peculiar character to what Jesus did. It was a miracle in which the power of the unseen was made a little more clear; and the native justice of Christ made Him so compassionate that the miracle served a practical purpose. It is a miracle which He, as the most positive force in the history, is constantly repeating. He had made a new world, if by nothing else than by discoursing to mankind, as He had spoken to them the new demands of a spiritual nature. This new world must have its policy and its method. This policy and method, so far as they have to do with the economy of material and power, are all manifested in the two sayings, "Give them to cat." — Matt. xiv, 16, — and "Gather up the fragments." — John vi, 12. Nothing more closely exhibits the method of Christ in history and the char acter of His influence. When He said to those disciples to give five barley loaves and two small fishes to five thousand, Pie disclosed to the world the fact that the mightiest factor of spiritual economics is the invisible. When, after they were filled, He told them, "Gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost, " He indicated to mankind that, after a small power had been touched by Him, its littleness becomes greatness. This greatness was attested in its very frag ments, which must not be lost. God in nature and God in Christ is one. The whole philosophy of the Invisible Kingdom lies in this. Creation and incarnation man ifest God in two ways. When the creation speaks to the scientist, every square foot of turf and every planet of the sky proclaim a 442 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. severe economy, which, at first, like Christ, seems to promise more than it can fulfill, and at last says to the serving laws and forces'of nature: "Gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost." When the incarnation speaks, Jesus has the same firm footing on the unseen and the same care for the fragments. God in nature is ever gathering up the waste. Like the Christ of God among men, there is to be nothing left in all the world that is not taken up in obedi ent hands. The grass that is left, when the feast of summer closes with the ices of the year, is to become help to other grass to live. The crumbling mountains become rich alluvial deposits, and the broken river bank is carried on to make a wide meadow. The winds gather pollen from the flowers, and the earth gathers the rain-drops, as before the clouds had gathered the floating mists of the sea. The groaning cre ation — the worlds He created — wait and go on gathering fragments and making unity out of- them again. Creation and re-creation act alike. So, after all, the universe is not a broken-up universe, but one, with out an unadopted waif of matter, without an unfound stray of force. "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. " — John v, 17. Jesus was only about His Father's business, and according to His Father's method. It is just this operative economy which Jesus Christ car ries up into the realm of the soul. First, there are the five barley loaves and the two fishes. Now, what is the dictate of economy? "Throw them away! They can be of no service!" So said the dis ciples in their questions; so says an unholy wisdom. It must not be done, for the power which a man wants must come up out of the power which he already has. It was economy to put into the hands of the Power Supreme this little force, to ally it with Him, that the five thousand might be fed. He alone knew the sovereignty of the invisible. He Himself was laying down laws for His Invisible Kingdom. And then, when the crowd was fed, what was economy? To leave the fragments? Had they not been touched by a power Divine? Were they not, each of them, more potential than the whole mass was before? "Gather them up, " said He. The Infinite was in them, for He had touched them with His power. It must always be, even with the best lives, that " On our heels a fresh perfection treads, A power more strong in beauty, born of us, And fated to excel us." TILE ALAN OF GALILEE. 443 So Jesus the Christ would make man God-like, — a gatherer of fragments, which proves how the unseen interpenetrates, guides and overflows the seen. The new world is made up of fragments, there fore, greater than the old mass from which they are broken. All the material and power of life which we need to have must, and will, through Christ, come out of the material and small power which we do have. Five barley loaves and two small fishes, with twelve baskets full of fragments left — this occurs at every real feast. The artist gives his individual feeling and imagination and effort to the canvas. If he were to know how many hungry eyes there were to look for beauty, and how many weary souls there were to seek for truth in his painting, he might well say: "What are these among so many?" But genius either does not let him count up the visible demands, or so quickens his appreciation of the invisible to supply them, that he paints away and finishes the picture. The crowd stand and admire, a'nd for years the race goes and beholds that alliance of truth and beauty. The feast may last for centuries. At its close, who shall doubt the economy of the use of ' ' the five barley loaves and two fishes" as they behold the "ten basketsful of fragments." The artist himself did not lose it. He gained artistic power at every stroke. The little that he seemed to give gave him much more. Every man that looked upon it took away a feast for himself. Each hundred beholders multiplied it a hundredfold. No one took it from the can vas and yet everyone brought it home with him. The fragments were greater than the original supply. Jesus had assumed a prophetic function. He had foreshown and foretold the victory of the little and invisible forces of the world. He had heralded the day of dominion in which life's wasted elements should be crowned; and He had so made prophecy history, that there in the broken pieces the reign of the neglected and the small had been ushered in. His command: "Gather up the broken pieces that nothing be lost," — John vi, 12, — is an indication of the method of history, as Christ's incarnation in society goes on, bringing inexpressible comfort when it is needed, and teaching us duties and privileges which will make our lives like unto His. Of that, it is truly said, He is the prophet. 444 THE AIAN OF GALILEE. Looking from our point of view there was never so broken a life as the life of Jesus. Yet the fragments gathered up by the forces of history shall feed the everlasting ages as they have fed the nations of the earth. Nothing, absolutely nothing, of our life is to be lost. Through Him, "The whole round world is every way Bound with gold chains about the feet of God." Whatever they failed to see of the eternal meaning of the miracle, the impression made by this event was electric and almost irresistible. To them, Jesus was certainly Master of forces which none other had controlled. The expectation of ages seemed to be standing on tip toe awaiting instant realization. All the way along the roads running toward Jerusalem, the caravans of pilgrims making up the multitude which had beheld the miracle Jesus had performed,- had been singing the songs of Israel's Independence Day, which they were about to celebrate in the Holy City. The psalm which most often rose from the throng, as it was encamped by night, was their ' ' My Country: 'Tis of Thee, " or their "Hail, Columbia." Thus patriotism re-lit its altar fires in every heart. They journeyed in the atmosphere of an indefinable feeling, world-wide and intense, that the Messiah might present Himself at any time. Here they were on the way to the Pass over-Feast. Had they not just now actually seen the mighty works fo of the Prophet whom Moses fore- ' told? Had not the manna once been multiplied in the desert-path of Israel? Was it not sure that Messiah was to reign in the city of David? Must it not be that they CHRIST AND PETER. THE AIAN OF GALILEE. 445 shall take Jesus up, and, in spite of all difficulties, forgetful of the prejudices of the priesthood, defiant of both Rome and the Jewish conservatives, carry Him to Jerusalem and make Him King? Even the disciples were swept from their feet by a great popular im pulse; and it is easy to see that the supreme crisis in the life of Jesus as the King of the Kingdom of the Invisible had come. It was no sooner come than gone. Jesus again met the ordeal of the great Temptation in the wilderness. He spoke authoritatively to His disciples, and they were soon in their boat, crossing the lake, on their way to the Bethsaida, on the western side. The crpwd was sent away; and as the evening deepened, Jesus, the Prophet of the In visible and its King, went into the Solitude of the mountain alone. He had saved His true crown; but it was to be of thorns. As the disciples were crossing the lake, a wind-storm swept down upon them. Its violence added to the peril of darkness through which they sailed, and made it impossible for them to control the boat. Soon they were helpless in the midst of the agitated sea. In the fourth watch of the night, after nearly nine hours of vain endeavor at the oars, they saw a Form walking on the water. The terrified fishermen cried out in fear. But over the tossing seas, stilling the wind to a monochord of calm, came the assuring words: "Be of good cheer." — Markvi, 50. It was a strange pulpit for a sermon of cheerfulness, however short and divinely spoken: and the four words, "Be of good cheer," would have meant little, if Jesus, the speaker, had not added: "It is /¦ be not afraid." — Markvi, 50. The basis of optimism is a personal fact, — the fact of Divine Humanity, superior to all stormful events and superstitious fears. The voice was recog nized, and they were "willing to receive Him into the boat." But Simon Peter, the man of impulse and emotion, to whom the contrary wind and his fear were no longer interesting, said at once: " Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come unto Thee on the water. And Jesus said, Come. And Peter went down from the boat, and walked upon the waters, to come to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid; and begin ning to sink, he cried out, saying, Lord, save me. And immedi ately Jesus stretched forth His hand, and took hold of him, and saith unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?" — Matt. xiv, 28-31. 446 THE ALAN OF GALILEE. Simon Peter had won and lost a unique opportunity for faith and achievement. He had also proved, in the losing of the privilege of faith, how safe the Divine Hand may make the weakest of men on the insecure waves of time. After this they were all in the boat together, with their Master. They no longer mar veled at the miraculous power of Jesus. It was not enough to believe and wonder. This latest manifestation had created worship in them. They adored Him, saying: "Of a truth Thou art the son of God." — Matt, xiv, 33. On the next day, those who woke with the dawn, as it crept over the hillside where Jesus had fed the multitude, were startled to find that Jesus was gone, and 'that several little boats from Tiberias had been swept across the lake by the same north-wind which had been met in the night by the disciples. Throngs went over to Capernaum, in search for Jesus. When the Master saw them flocking to Him, He knew at once how far they were from discerning the true import of His kingdom, and how little they sought for the spiritual gift which He was ready to impart. The rumor that He was in Caper naum went all about the country, and crowds came from every dis trict, bringing the needy and helpless to the Divine Consoler. Without doubt it was a day when the synagogue called its worshipers together, and the little town was full of excited men and women. Those who had come over from the scene of the miraculous feeding of the multitude were most intent upon seeing Him. "And when they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said unto Him: Rabbi, when earnest thou hither? Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw signs, but because ye ate of the loaves, and were filled. Work not for the meat which perisheth, but for the meat which abideth unto eternal life, which the Son of Man shall give unto you: for Him, the Father, even God, hath sealed. They said therefore unto Him, What must we do, that we may work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent. They said therefore unto Him, What then dost Thou for a sign, that we may see, and believe Thee? What workest Thou? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, He gave them bread out of heaven to THE MAN OF GALILEE. 447 eat. Jesus therefore said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, It was not Moses that gave you the bread out of heaven; but My Father giveth you the true bread out of heaven. For the bread of God is that which cometh down out of heaven, and giveth life unto the world. They said therefore unto Him, Lord, evermore give us this bread. Jesus said unto them, I am the Bread of Life: he that cometh after me shall not dp%. hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. But %^ *J| I said unto you, that ye have 'COME UNTO ME, ALL YE THAT LABOR AND ARE HEAVY LADEN." 448 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. seen me, and yet believe not. All that which the Father giveth me shall come unto me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. For I am come down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me. And this is the will of Him that sent me, that of all that which He hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that every one that beholdeth the Son, and believeth on Him, should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day." — John vi, 25-37. Belief lies at the basis of civilization — but it must be the right belief. Of course, the anxious au thorities of the J e w s at once complained of these state ments which He hitherto said so revealed His consciousness of true Messiah- ship. The man na of Moses'mir- acle was very sacred, and the fact that Jesus identified Him self with this, or with something vastly more di vine and lasting, Nothing had MANNA IN THE WILDERNESS angered them to THE AIAN OF GALILEE. 449 the last degree. Beside these, what could He mean by saying: "/ will raise him up at the last day?" "And they said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? Plow now doth He say, I am come down out of heaven?" — Johnvi, 42. For these complaints Jesus had not only a rebuke, but a profound teaching to offer. He said: "Murmur not among yourselves. No man can come; to me except the Father which sent me to draw him; and I will raise him up in the last day." — John vi, 43,44. Again the thought of the Fatherhood of God was supreme over all else. And once more, in its abundant light, He attempted to make things clear to them. Pie said: "It is written in the prophets, And they shall all be taught of God. Every one that hath heard from the Father, and hath learned, cometh unto Me. Not that any man hath seen the Father, save He which is from God. He hath seen the Father. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth hath eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers did eat the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which cometh down out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. / am the living bread which came down out of heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever: yea, and the bread which I give is My flesh, for the life of the world." If they had been at all spiritual, they could not have missed His meaning. As it was, His assumption appeared blasphemous. Only a material sense could they find in His words. "The Jews therefore strove one with another, saying, How can this man give us His flesh to eat? Jesus therefore said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son* of Man and drink His blood, ye have not life in yourselves. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father; so he that eateth me, he also shall live because of me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven: not as the fathers did eat, and died: he that eateth this bread shall live forever. These things said He in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum." — John vi, 45-59. CHAPTER XLII THE DEMAND UPON FAITH AND THE GREAT CONFESSION HE knew that they were going up to the Passover Feast. There, once more, the Paschal Lamb would die, and the Paschal meal would be eaten. But He had strained their spiritual appre hension, until, in the case of many, it had failed. "Many, therefore, THE WALLS OF JERUSALEM, LOOKING TOWARD MOUNT OF OLIVES. of PIis disciples, when they heard iM this, said, This is a hard saying; K§ who can hear it? But Jesus, know- 3e ing in Himself that His disciples murmured at this, said unto them, Doth this cause you to stumble? What then if you should behold the Son of Man ascending where He was before? It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life. But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew 45i 452 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who it was that should betray Him. And He said, For this cause have I said unto you, that no man can come into me, except it be given unto him of the Father. Upon this many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him. Jesus said therefore unto the twelve, Would ye also go away? Simon Peter answered Him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we have believed and know that Thou art the Holy One of God. Jesus an swered them, Did I not choose you the twelve, and one of you is a devil? Now He spake of Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, for he it was that should betray Him, being one of the twelve." — John vi, 60-71. So pure and powerful was the light with which He flooded the faces of His disciples, that Simon Peter's noble confession emerges from the gloom, as also the dark form of Him in whose sensuousness and commercialism Jesus already discerned the germ of that wickedness which would sell Him for thirty pieces of silver. There could now be no question that Jesus was becoming un popular. The multitude was deeply disappointed in him. His work was not yet accomplished, so far as His preaching could go. The perfecting of Himself as the Captain of our salvation WdS not com plete. Therefore He did not go to the Passover, in the festal band, but walked in Galilee, because Judea was intent upon His death. On the other hand, the disciples had gone to Jerusalem in the usual manner. Meantime Jesus found Himself in a discussion with the Scribes as to the washing of hands. These officers from Jerusalem, who were pursuing Him, asked: "Why do Thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread. And He answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition ? For God said, Honor thy father and thy mother: and he that speaketh evil of father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, Who soever shall say to his father or his mother, That wherewith thou mightest have been profited by me is given to God; he shall not honor his father. And ye have made void the word of God because of your tradition. Ye hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, This people honoreth me with their lips; but their heart is THE ALAN OF GALLLEE. 453 far from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men. And He called to Him the multi tude, and said unto them, Hear and understand: Not that which entereth into the mouth defileth the man; but that which proceedeth out of the mouth, this defileth the man." — Mark vii, 5-15. Thus the Master had destroyed the very basis of Phariseeism and made it clear that arbitrary and conventional commandments had no authority in the presence of the divine com mandment, the Law of Sonship, which is the Law of Love. Even His disciples wondered if He knew the conse quences of thus subverting the whole edifice of Phar iseeism. They did not overestimate the horror TYRE- with which the authorities received this stroke against their traditions. "But He answered and said, Every plant which my heavenly Father planted not, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they are blind guides. And if the blind guide the blind, both shall fall in a pit." — Matt, xv, 13, 14. Simon Peter could not rid his mind of the enigma he saw in Christ's saying, and he asked for an explanation. Jesus immediately told him that the heart is the seat of all moral life. Not external observance, but affection, deter mines character. "For out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, railings: these are the things which defile the man: but to eat with unwasheh hands defileth not the man." — Matt, xv, 19, 20. Soon Jesus was in the country known as "the borders of Tyre and Sidon." — Mark vii, 24. To these He had withdrawn, in order that He might further instruct His disciples, and escape a tumult in Galilee. He probably left Capernaum on the Sabbath evening of the 454 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. Passover week, and the usual rest-days of the Paschal Feast must have been most grateful to Him. Though the place of His shelter was private, the Divine Man could not be hid. His true glory was an invitation to sorrow, and a welcome to necessity. Out from the coasts there came a woman of Canaan, who told her piteous story. She said: "Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil." — Matt, xv, 22. Jesus met her request with the silence which demands a profounder faith. The annoyed disciples asked to be rid of her. She was aware that they thought her only a heathen. "But He answered and said, I was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But she came and worshipped Him, saying, Lord, help me." — Matt, xv, 24, 25. "House of Israel" — could it be that Jesus asked them and her to be lieve that God's Israel was wider than Hebrewdom? Still more deeply would Jesus send the roots of her faith. He meant to bless her. "But He answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and cast it to the dogs." — Matt, x:; 26. Now the woman's humility and faith were fully manifest. "She said, Yea, Lord: for even the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it done unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was healed from that hour." — Matt, xv, 28. Here Jesus had revealed Himself to this woman at such a point in her own spiritual personality that He was more than the Messiah of the Jews, and the Syro-Phenician woman became a daughter of that spiritual Israel which includes a redeemed world. The two Paschal days were gone, and Jesus, following a path way between the hills of Hermon, carried His gospel through the midst of the borders of that confederacy of the Ten Cities, favored by Rome with municipal privilege and known as Decapolis. This was the dwelling-place .of what the Jews regarded as the heathen. The atmosphere was Greek, and the worship and life of the people were thoroughly pagan. Mighty must have been the deeds which He did, for they led the populace to glorify Israel's God. A poor being deprived of speech, probably by the inroads of disease, was presented to Him, and cured. Jesus "took him aside from the mul titude privately, and put His fingers into his -ears, and He spat, and 'TILE ALAN OF GALILEE. 455 touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven, Pie sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And his ears were opened, and the bond of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain." — Mark vii, 33-35. Once more, and in vain, He enjoined them to say nothing concerning the miracle. But its publicity was equaled only by the astonishment with which the vast crowd kept saying: "He hath done all things well; He maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak." — Mark vii, 37. Again He was confronted by a hungry multitude, am! again His human sympathies were eloquent, as He said: "I have com passion on the multitude, because they continue with me now three days, and have nothing to eat: and if I send them away fasting to their home, they will faint in the way; and some of them are come from far." — Matt, xv, 32. The disciples had learned little, even yet, for they questioned how this crowd, who had followed Him, could be fed in the wilderness. The answer of Jesus was another miracle, in which four thousand men, "beside women and children,'' were satisfied. After healing a blind man who was brought to Him, and, again, two blind men who followed Him with their cries, Jesus left the region, crossed the lake, and came near to Magdala, or Dal- manutha. Again Pharisees and Sadducees contested with one an other in the effort to encompass Him, and, at last, these bitter op ponents were united in the demand for a sign, which He would not give to them. It was now autumn, and the sorrowful heart of Jesus was full of anticipation. One evening, after crossing the lake to Caesarea Phil- ippi, He again bade His disciples "beware of the leaven of the Pharisees." — Matt, xvi, 6. Beautiful for situation and splendid with newly-built edifices, the town which had been named in honor of Augustus might have attracted the interest of a soul less strenuous and burdened than His own. He was moving toward Golgotha, though now the silver streams sang down the hill-sides, and the thick forests round about grew golden with the mellowing year. In vain the glories of Lebanon and the long lines of Hermon disclosed themselves to Jesus, who was already the Man of Sorrows, and ac quainted with grief. He was not there to be delighted; He was there to save. No longer the popular teacher, He was an exile from 45^ THE MAN OP GALLLEE. Israel, and safe only in the land of pagans. Still would He illus trate the truth of the universal Fatherhood of God and the brother hood of man, while He educated the disciples, through drawing out from them a confession of their faith. It was now the time for Him to fully manifest Himself to them. After prayer and communion with His Father, in which the di vine consciousness came back to "Whom _ | S o 11 j&S&t b ecame more clear and strong than ever, He the twelve, and quietly said: do men say that I, the of Man, am ?" — Matt. xvi, 13. With the utmost care for the true meth od of revelation, He had again called Himself ' ' the Son of Man. " Every- ipr thing consists in finding divinity in and through human- ' 'And they said, Some say John the Baptist; some, Elijah; and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets." — Matt, xvi, 14. All the conjectures concern ing His personality and character which had arisen within and sur vived these months of ministry, and which were borne about by faith or by rumor, were thus presented to him. With an emphasis made doubly impressive, He said unto them: "But ye, — whom say ye that I am?" He would not permit them to fall back from their personal faith into popular conjectures. It was Simon Peter who was impelled to reply, but it was the Peter, not the Simon, in him who spoke the words: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." — Matt, xvi, 16. It was the most sublime and triumphant moment thus far reached in the progress of the gospel. The Master had specially chosen Simon, not because he was the best man, but because he C/ESAREA PHILIPPI GATEWAY. THE MAN OP GALLLEE. 457 was the best material through which the gospel of the Kingdom might show its energies and develop its method, in man. Jesus' whole idea was so to reveal PIis Father's Fatherhood, through and in His own perfect Sonship unto God, that the latent sonship of God's other children might be re-discovered and re-asserted, and thus universal brotherhood' should be established under the universal Fatherhood of God. He had determined upon this with Simon, son of Jonas, when He told him He would make him Peter, the rock-man. He was to do this, by making him a son of God. But the Peter coming up out of the Simon could obtain a sense of his own sonship, only through realizing lovingly the Sonship of his Master, and only as that Master was brothering him into right re lations with his heavenly Father. Jesus now saw that this achieve ment was to be certainly accomplished in His disciple, and He gave the whole secret of His gospel, and illustrated the nature and sig nificance of His church, at the instant when Peter made this con fession. "And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Son of Jonas: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter (Petros), and upon this rock (Petra) I will build my church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. And whatso ever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." — Matt. xvi, 17-19. This is indeed The Great Confession upon the part of Simon Peter, and the reply of Jesus shows the foundation of Christian civilization. The handling of the word "Petros," and the word "Petra," is an irrefutable witnessing to the nature and method of the Christian enterprise. Jesus did not establish the supremacy of Peter, but He disclosed the fact that, fundamental to all the prog ress of His kingdom, is the confession that what makes a man a child of God is the recognition of God's Fatherhood unto all men, in and through the perfect Sonship of Jesus. "Thou art Petros — ¦ rock, — and on this Petra — this rock-faith, the conviction that human nature is bound by filial ties to the Divine Nature, and that God speaks to his child, man, — I will build my church." On what is 458 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. rock-like in Simon, who has become Peter, and will become more certainly Peter, by emerging still further out of his earthly relation ship to Jonas and into his divine relationship to God, does Jesus Christ ever more rear the structure of the new civilization. Thus only can He create the universal brotherhood under the universal Fatherhood. Thus only does Jesus create the Church of God and man. On this basis, what man does, God does. Binding and loos ing are human prerogatives, under divine guidance and grace. There are not two systems of ethics or true politics. What is bound or loosed here is so there. The real and the ideal are one. Against a society constructed on this faith, and obedient to these inspirations, evil is powerless. It alone can restore the unity of the universe. The statement of Jesus is repeated to every true dis ciple: "I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." — Malt, vxi, 19. After this Jesus could speak but one word, with divine fitness. It was, that they should tell no man that He was Jesus, the Christ. Men can find out that Jesus is the Christ, only through the experience of a Simon Peter. You can tell divine things to those only who live divinely. And now Jesus was more ready for what Gethsemanes and Calvaries might lie before Him. He knew that Simon Peter was only human nature, even though he was human nature certain to be finally crystallized by a divine process. Often, again, would the old Simon reappear. The Master was the last to be surprised, therefore, though He might be pained and indignant, at Peter's reversion to a less lofty moral plane, at times. Jesus had now set His face toward Jerusalem. Matthew tells us how plainly they saw that "from that time began Jesus to show unto His disciples, how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up." — Matt, xvi, 21. At once, Peter, who must have been so shaken by the first words of this statement concerning Jesus' violent death, that he was unable to receive the announce ment of the resurrection, began to remonstrate with Jesus. It was THE At AN OF GALILEE 459 love in Peter which impulsively refused to go so suddenly from an expectation of Jesus' triumph, to an apprehension of his Master's shame. It was the kind of love that Jesus would have to deal with later on, and transform, after PIis resurrection, as we shall see, from the affection of the heart to whole-souled and high-principled devo- tirn. Simon Peter must fall; but he would get on his feet again. "And Peter took Him, and began to rebuke Him, saying: Be it far from Thee, Lord; this shall never be unto Thee." — Matt, xvi, 22. JESUS TEACHING THE PEOPLE, At this Jesus turned around and looked upon all the disciples and the crowd. He read their thoughts, and then, with the com mandment of intense moral sublimity, He said unto Peter: "Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art a stumbling-block unto me: for thou mindest not the things of God, but of men." — Matt, xvi, 23. It was an awful reproof to all, for Peter was the spokesman of all. Again, the trial of the wilderness temptation had come and gone. "Then said Jesus unto His disciples, if any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever would save his life shall lose it: and whosoever 460 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. shall lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and forfeit his life? or what shall a man give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and then shall He render unto every man according to his deeds. Verily I say unto you, there be some of them that stand here, which shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom." — Matt, xvi, 24-28. Jesus had now showed that the path to glory is the path of self-sacrifice. In the cross alone is divine humanity exalted to its throne. MOUNT OF OLIVES— CHAPEL OF ASCENSION. CPIAPTER XLIH THE TRANSFIGURATION NOTHING could more plainly prove the divine order in the revelation of Christ than the fact that in about eight days after these sayings, Jesus took this same Simon Peter, with James and John, and went up into a mountain apart to pray, and was there transfigured before them. God is the absolute inte ger. In the light of this fact, the reve lation of God in Holy Scrip ture, in human history, and in His self-man ifestation in Jesus Christ, becomes a unit; and His revelation in the life of man accounts for the solidarity of the race, so the presence of Himself in Jesus of Nazareth gives Christ a unity all divine, — a unity which Pie declared as such when He said: "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." — John v, 17. When Jesus is studied in relation to His own life, we feel that the conscious unity that binds one fact to another within that life has no parallel in the universe, save in God, whose manifestation He is. The time of the Transfiguration is the moment when both the earth and skies — human disciples and God's self-revelation —demand it; and 461 THE SUMMITOF MOUNT CARMEL 462 THE ALAN OF GALLLEE. with an imperial consciousness of what His life is — a consciousness that never seems less spontaneous when it is most august — He unites the threads of His past teaching with those unseen as yet in the future, in the glory of His Transfiguration. The choice of that night is as truly illustrative of the Divinity of Christ as is anything that He said. The Transfiguration itself was the next fact which was to continue and amiSify the revelation of God in man. His Galilean ministry had summed up its characteristic features in the miracle of the loaves and fishes. Behind any lesson of the personal kindness there exhibited, in the unostentatious manifestation of His power, lay a vision, for which His previous dealing with these disciples had sought to j^repare them; and it was the vision of the identity of the infinite and invisible in Jesus Christ. It was the moment when He would have them feel the sense of the supernat ural in them giving them an apprehension of the infinite, and how near to them, and even in Him, was the kingdom of the invisible. For that hour, the King was enthroned in their very j^resence; and in His hands nature and the supernatural, the finite and infinite, were blended. He saw then that whatever worth the invisible had for Him must soon be known unto them. The visible world was beginning to shiver under his feet. John the Baptist had just been slain by order of Herod, and His own death by violence became more clearly inevitable. In the news from Herod's banquet, He saw Calvary. As the Invisible King had manifested His sovereignty over material nature at the lake-side, so He had shown His regnancy over the life of man in the restoration of sight to the blind man. So, also, had He rebuked the Satanic love of the visible, as it became loquacious in Peter. The next step in its manifestation must be taken, when the invisible glows and illumines from its own visible shrine, Himself. The Invisible King is in the day of humiliation now. Beneath these plain garments, however, is a Sovereign, and under them is the hiding-place of a divine glory. " Verily, " said the old prophet of the invisible One, "Thou art a God which hidest Thyself." — Isaiah xiv, 15. These disciples have not been utterly mistaken in the truth THE AI-1N OF GALLLEE. 463 they have apprehended. They do follow the King, but He is "the King Immortal and Invisible," and this fact Jesus has tried to teach unto them. Now the unseen majesty will burst forth. There is but one danger, as He sees it, while talking to them — they will put the hour of glorification of which He has just spoken, on the other side of their life on earth. But, in order that they may be assured that the kingdom of the invisible is to have its mo ments of glorious victory here, He adds: "There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, until they see the kingdom of God."— Matt, xvi, 28. If these men had ever seen God truly, they would have been so familiar with the invisible that they would not have expected or desired a visible kingdom, however gorgeous and sublime. Thev had not apprehended God, their Father; and Jesus must reveal Him. In person and influence, He must so make the Invisible One visible, that He and His kingdom should ever after be known as invisible. The very success of the Incarnation, if indulged for a moment, would have ruined the result it aimed at. The seen Christ must incarnate the unseen God, — a task for Deity alone. Up to this time, the Incarnation had been so complete, that, where the "Word" was most undoubtedly "made flesh," there the proclama tion was most clearly made of the invisible God. He was to show, in Himself, that "Forever through the world's material forms, Heaven shoots the immaterial; night and day Apocalvptic intimations stray Across the rifts of matter." It is not that the earthly spot of this significant event may be determined that the student of Christ's life stops at the mountain's base and looks upward toward its summit; but it is that, from His choice of the mountain, the character of His companionship, and the acknowledged purpose of His prayer, there may be found the place in the geography of the soul's life where naturally such an incident might occur. The traditional view points to Mount Tabor. But j^erhaps St. Jerome neglected to note how, from ancient times,- it has been crowned with fortifications and known the publicity of a city upon its summit. Nevertheless, the churches which have 464 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. crowded to the supposed spot, and a monastery, now thirteen cen turies old, stand to note the vitality of the tradition. It is only a tradition. Nothing has pointed away from Tabor, to a mountain near Csesarea Philippi, so much as the improbability of an unmen- tioned journey which must have been made within the few days intervening, and the fact that Mark, after recording events subse quent to the Transfiguration, says: "They departed thence and passed through Galilee." It was, as we view it, most probably, one of the spurs of Hermon, where the vapors of summer, floating in that loftier atmosphere, are condensed at the touch of the snow- crowned summit, and those clouds are formed, one of which may have swept before the gaze of the disciples while they looked upon the Transfigured One. Uncertain as this must ever be, the place of the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ in the unnamed holy land of the spiritual life is more sure. The mountain-height of experience, on which naturally such an issuing forth of the Infinite through the finite ever occurs, is a result from the operation of forces, of which the strata of the spir itual world preserve the record. As a physical relationship appears to the geologist between Sinai, Hermon, and Calvary, so a spiritual relationshijo appears to the psychologist between seemingly isolated points in the experience of the human soul. They may be described as uplifts from the level plain of consciousness, made by the action of resistless spiritual energies. As actual, to the true soul, are the facts of the ideal as are those of what we call the real world. No exhaustive catalogue of distances which separate them or of relation ships which bind them has been made; yet they act and re-act throughout the universe. Christ's whole life showed with what innate sovereignty they move on. And here we find that same unity of life with which His nature dominated His career, uniting such of these facts into one, so that, whatever doubt there may be in our geography of the seen world, there can be none in that of the unseen as to where the Transfiguration — the flash of the unseen glory through the seen humiliation — did and ever must occur. As a dreamer only, He might have climbed up the mountain side,- so that He could have moments such as were Wordsworth's, of which the poet of Rydal Mount has said: THE AIAN OF GALLLEE. 465 " Oft, in these moments, such a holy calm Would overspread my soul that bodily eyes Were entirely forgotten, and what I saw Appeared like something in myself, a dream, A prospect of the mind." But the attitude of the Christ toward nature was not that of a listener for its secret. He Himself was and is its secret. In that "presence which disturbs" the beholder, "With the joy Of elevated thoughts: a 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 thoughts, And rolls through all things," it was His to feel the thrill of a preexistent life, — a life which was His, before the worlds were created; to be conscious, on earth, of the hour in eternity, when, by Him, the worlds were framed, and when the Word which was in the beginning was with God, as it was God. As ' ' the Word made flesh, " it was His to see and illuminate nature in the light of Himself. That mountain marked a world-pain, and recorded a moment in nature when, and a place where, the two lines of God's manifestation, in Creation and Incarnation, were approaching each other, though with agony which tore the planet in its travail. "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain until now," — Rom. viii, 22, — this was the fact beneath Hermon's white-crowned magnificence. This was the history, also, of Jesus, the Christ. And Jesus Christ, with these unspoken meanings which nature had to Him alone, went forward to the scene of His Transfiguration, where the ever-fresh agony of that world-pain, growing yet more intense and keen, while in man's history the creature should wait "for the manifestation of the sons of God," — Rom. viii, 19, — should be, for a moment, ap prehended in the issues it bore and understood in the glory of its hero, saint, martyr, and God. 466 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. In all these moments, the Son of God was also the Son of Man. In the development of His self-consciousness, from a child, these conceptions had ever gone together. A heavenly and earthly com panionship was His. On the one side, there was the Infinite Love; on the other, the loveless race of men. These He was to reconcile. As His soul grew receptive and intelligent of the Divine Love, He felt more keenly the woe of human sin. It was the gathering mean ing of these two apparently opposed facts to Him, that led Him to take Peter, James, and John with Him. As the one heavenly fact broke with its inherent glory, He would have the other earthly fact blessed by its radiance. "And as He prayed, the fashion of His countenance was altered, and His face did shine as the sun, and His raiment was white and glistering." — Luke ix, 29. Wondrous prayer to produce such wonder ful results! The only one of the three evangelists present on the mount of Transfiguration was John. It is a significant fact that, preceding and along with what seems John's reference to the Transfigured One, there is given that conception of Jesus of Nazareth, which, while it has most to suggest to the phases of thought to which attention has been drawn, most thoroughly illumines the event and makes it live with profoundest meanings. "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us," he says, "and," he adds, "we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." — John i, 14. Peter, James and John had been the recipients of a special culture. Once before they had been with Him, — with this Living Center of universal law and force whose name was Love, who thus made all motions and energies obedient to Love's dominion and tri umphs, — where the darkest phase of the problem of the universe confronted them and Him. It wore only a less terrible visage, which the universe wore in the dead body of the daughter of Jairus, than was worn here, when He had persisted, all the way to Hermon, in announcing to them His own death. It must be again noted that these three times in which Jesus vouchsafed to these three disciples His special culture, — namely, the Raising of the Daughter of Jairus, the Transfiguration, and the scene in dark Gethsemane, — were but THE AIAN OF GALILEE. 467 three steps in discovery, three lessons on the same theme. This topic was the invisible Kingship of Himself over the invisible kingdom, which was also the kingdom of the Invisible. At the bedside where the little girl lay dead, the physical was supreme, the physical had its acknowledged victory over the spiritual. But at the approach of the Living Center of all laws— this force from Whom and to Whom are all forces — a new factor came into the equation; and, because that factor was Incarnate Love, the all-inclusive Law, the Authority and Power supreme, the result was changed. The law of death opened into the larger law of life: there was no infraction; but the dead lived. "She is not dead, but sleepeth, " He said. In the all-encircling presence of life, there is no death. The Logos which was the Reason of all Law was there, and was supreme. As we have pointed out, so harmonious was this new "'Order" with the old order of nature that, into the wonder and mystery which followed the raising of the maid from the dead, He inserted the plain and realistic words: "Give the child some food." The touch'of the higher — yea, of the Highest — Law, which is Love, had opened the way for the ministry of the lower; and what we call the supernaturalism of raising the child was so nat ural that the next thing after the miracle was the demand for physi- ical nutriment. The Logos is the Law of all laws; in Christ Jesus, the lowest is ever harmonious with the highest. Christ Jesus began on Hermon, in Himself, what has been rightly called "the rehabilitation of man." There full redemption began to appear. Humanity saw Him as its "Living Head." Life is trans figured, if the Transfigured One is Savior and Lord of the whole being. Not alone in the Resurrection, but in this earlier event pre ceding the complete transformation, which is the glorification of man's earthly life in Christ, are our "bodies members of Christ." "From glory unto glory, " — this is the line of advance and its method. ' ' This corruptible must put on incorruption, this mortal must put on immor tality. " — / Cor. xv, 53. First, in the transfiguration of our whole life, there must begin the process. It completes itself, when the graves open. Our physical life lays hold of its redemption through the life of Christ in us. We are not to be "unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality may be swallowed up of life. " Thus begins the redemp tion of the body. 468 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. The transfiguration of the human body of Jesus Christ was, therefore, an event in which all creation had a definite and unique illumination. The whole past of creation was lit up and at least par tially explained. With possibilities in Christ, as the Logos of crea tion, such as these, every fartherest atom had quivered and advanced from the beginning. All natural forces from the first were striving with high energy to this and the greater events beyond it. He, in that hour of glory, was sending back upon the dark abysses of the groaning creation a gleam of the radiance which interpreted, as it penetrated, the long agony. "All creation," says Dean Alford, in his exposition of Paul to the Ephesians, — "all creation is summed up in Christ." All laws of nature, with its pain and sin and death; all laws of grace, with its peace and holiness" and life, rise into the law of Love, in Him. Here, He carries into the loftier jurisdiction of His personal life only the laws and processes which lie in the bursting seed and the falling star. " The earth is crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God." In the Christ was the point where that flame quivered for a moment; and nature confessed in His Transfiguration her kinship with the supernatural. "And behold, there talked with Him two men, which were Moses and Elias, who appeared in glory, and spake of His decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem. But Peter and they that were with Him were heavy with sleep; and when they were awake they saw His glory, and the two men that stood with Him. And it came to pass, as they departed from Him, Peter said unto Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here: let us build three tabernacles; one for Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias: not knowing what he said. While he thus spake, there came a cloud and over shadowed them, and they feared as they entered into the cloud, and there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is My beloved Son, hear Him. And when the voice was past, Jesus was found alone." — Luke ix, 30-36, The appearance of Moses and Elijah are logical enough. Moses stands, in the annals of men, for the code of Sinai. He stands for THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 469 more. In his career and in his attitude toward the destinies of man kind, there are gathered up the scattered meanings of ' ' Invisible Will " as it moves in the universe, and there came from out the fire of his soul a conception of the nature and majesty of Law which has shone through dolorous and lawless centuries into the age in which we live. He made the idea of Law the possession of religion, and religion has invested this idea with her eternal sanctities. He has associated Law with the supreme Power of the universe, so vitally, that the awful grandeur of Sinai, and the no less impressive sublimity of his silent guardianship, seem but natural in the career of a soul whose privilege it was to entertain so important a mes sage. "He endured," says Paul, "as seeing Him who is invisible. " Law was the avenue along which traveled the swift feet of the Infinite Will; and although he possessed but an incom plete vision of a single route along which the Infinite swept, — the law of conduct, — he had such an insight into that, that congenial minds have been led into a more easy discovery of those highways, parting here and meeting there, by which Omnipotence reaches every point in the universe. Moses stands for all these laws, since they all meet and cross in the realm of conduct, whose Law-giver he was. All roads ran to Rome, and all laws run into the life of man, — THE GLORY OF THE OLDEN TIME Since God collected and resumed in man The firmaments, the strata, and the lights, Fish, fowl, and beast, and insect — all their trains Of various life caught back upon His arm Reorganized and constituted Man The Microcosm, the adding up of works." 470 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. The appearance of the great law-giver in the glory of Christ's transfiguration has this significance, — the law had brought the world to Christ. In the glory of Christ, Moses had a right to stand. The event had also the significance that Moses, as the giver of the law, has yielded now to this new Law-giver, Jesus, the Christ of God. It was not Christ standing in the neighborhood of the glory of Moses, but Moses standing in the presence of the Transfigured Christ. Jesus left the words: "I am come not to destroy, but to fulfill," as the estimate, by the Christ, of the laws of Moses, and in His treatment of Mosaic legislation, He gave to Moses an inde feasible right to be the heavenly companion of His hour of trans figuration. But, more; Jesus made plain the fact that the era of law, as the supreme element in man's progress, was done; and henceforth the law of liberty and the law of love should rule the souls of men. Men were to do what they desired to do, because they would desire to do right. In Moses, man has a revelation of the method of God; in Jesus Christ a revelation of the nature — a manifestation of the very self- — of God. The nature of Moses could come only so near to God as to find His method; the nature of Jesus Christ was so divine as to reveal God — the Nazarene was "the express image of His person." Thus the proclamation of the lips and life of Moses is: "God is Law;" the revelation of Jesus Christ is: "God is Love." Law is the method of Love. The laws of nature and of the soul are the methods of operation which Love, by its inherent orderliness, uses to unify existence and to move the universe from ill-fated and de structive chaos, unto a constructive and beneficent cosmos, and to realize, at last, in conscious completeness, its self in the destiny of man. Love is the essential element of which Law is the method. The duty of the human soul is to be unsatisfied with enforced or unintel ligent obedience of Law, and to rest not, until it enters into the very life of the personal Force behind, and in, all law. Thus shall it find in God rootage for its own true and real life, so that afterward its own being shall feed upon a deeper life, paternal and everlasting. Then, from within every chamber of its inmost being, the energy of that soul shall go out sympathetically and harmoniously with these THE ALAN OF GALLLEE. 471 laws. No longer are thev restraining powers, but a part of its own natural method of existence, because of its affectionate alliance with the Love of which they are the order, To do this is not only a duty, but man's privilege through the Incarnation of God in Christ. Christ is a law unto Himself, because He, with the Father, is Love; and Love is its own law. In Him the soul falls in love with Love, and thus finds its true self; and it finds also that it is a law unto itself, since Love has assumed the throne. God-like it is for the first time, for it is self-centered; manly for the first time, since it feels that it was made for this. The schoolmaster's work is done. Law is lost in Love. And yet, as always in Christ's transfigured hours, Moses is present. In the light of this experience, it can understand him. Moses is fulfilled in Christ, because, not only does the soul feel the law of love, but, for the first time, it feels the love of law. " Life, with all it yields of joy and woe And hope and fear, — believe the aged friend, — Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love, How love might be, hath been indeed, and is; And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermost Such prize, despite the envy of the world, And having gained truth keep truth; that is all.' Christianity is as eternal as the soul. It is the love of Love. Every element of life that lifts the soul to that self-centered life, it takes up and fulfills. All morality is thus more than "touched with emotion;" it is transformed; and, in hours when Jesus is transfigured in some human soul, it comes from its home, and, like Moses, is seen in the light of something far more divine, which is its fulfill ment. •¦ The}' talk of morals. O thou bleeding Lamb! The true morality is love of Thee." As Love, in the Incarnation, did complete Law, and, in the nature of God, must ever give it its fullness, so in the real life of a man, the life in which He partakes of God in Christ, love, and love alone, "is the fulfilling of the law.' The heavenly visitant was not silent. With Elias, he conversed with the transfigured Christ. The theme of their conversation was 472 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. "the decease" (exodus) which He should accomplish at Jerusalem." — ¦' Ltike ix, 51. Fifteen centuries of celestial life had revealed to the old law-giver a significant event lying in the path of this new law giver, the Christ, of whom Moses was a prophet, which he had not seen on earth. Standing for the majesty of law, and insisting upon obedience, Moses had seen the law broken, and was not unconscious of the ruin it wrought in the disobedient nature. There came into existence a temple service in the tabernacle and a series of sacrifices, which, as many another unspoken movement of the deeper con sciousness of man, pointed to "the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world." — John i, 29. The serpent was lifted up in the wilderness. The interest with which the leader of the Hebrew exodus had watched the beneficent influence of these and felt their insufficiency in a soul which confessed it in prophecy, had grown, as, near the throne of God, he had, for these fifteen hundred years, a point of view from which he saw the concerns of the race. This heavenly life could not have lessened his sense of majesty of law. He must have held to the great idea which he gave to mankind, with a firmer hand, as he learned that its source was Love. It must have seemed a more terrible thing that any man should ever have broken it. His system of sacrifices — how little could it do ! Nothing but Love's own sacrifice could answer; and when, in glory ineffable, Moses stood with the Christ, the truth of Sinai grasped the fact of Calvary, and the voice that gave the law spoke of "the exodus which he should accomplish at Jerusalem." To the broken-hearted Christ, what a ministration of power! Earth with its noise and empire of evil might forget the lonely Gali lean peasant who had "not where to lay His head," but heaven's most illustrious citizen would speak to Him of the quenchless interest of the skies. Jews whom He came to save, the nation whose only real patriot He was, might scorn to mention a scene which should bring into itself the odium of centuries, and a mode of death which would exile His name from the lips of men; even His disciples might push away from their vision the horrible fancy of an outlaw's death for Him, but Moses, the most colossal figure of their history, their statesman, and God's friend, had come in that hour, with the flash of the Throne yet in his eye and the life of eternity in his voice, to THE ALAN OF GALILEE. 473 speak with Him, not concerning the brilliancy of PIis transfigured face, or even of the raptures of the blest, but only of that topic so carefully avoided, — "the decease He should accomplish at Jerusalem." What men call the death of Jesus was "the decease (or the departure) which He should accomplish at Jerusalem." Afterwards, when Jesus stood alone with the world, He saw the same glory of Calvary. "The hour is come," said He, "when the Son of Man should be glorified. " Still, the greatest assertion is that of His whole career as to the authority of this law of self-sacrifice. In the con sciousness of power, which Satan confessed, He chose weakness in life, and confronted death, saying: "No man taketh my life from me, but I lav it clown of myself." Elias stood for all prophecy. It is not strange that, at such evi dent points of contact, these souls, Moses and Elias, should be united. A pure theism and its harvest of truth and hope for mankind — for these, stood these two monarchs of the past. From this theism, "the law and the prophets" inevitably came. If God was, He ruled; this was at the basis of the "law." If God was, man's truest vision of himself, and of that which should enable him to realize them, had their foundation in His very character; and this made " projihecy. " It is impossible to take into the mind the one, without receiving with like hospitality the other. Once let a man adopt as a code of life the deliverances of Sinai, and the soul becomes its own prophet. It invests itself with a pro phetic enthusiasm, and is borne along into new conflicts with sur rounding evil, as a veritable Elijah. That natural Messianic hope, which every child of Adam has, which he recognizes, even if he says nothing but ' ' it will be better some day, " grows more into the cer tainty that somewhere and somehow he will be the man he was des tined to be, and unites to itself every truth and fact that may be assimilated into its life; and thus Sinai is followed by Carmel. So profound is the relationship which binds law and prophecy, that their representatives, Moses and Elias, not only appear together in the hour of Christ's visible glorv, but just as, the law being taken up into love in Christ, and having brought the world to a new law giver, Moses disappeared, so also did Elias disappear, the prophecies of the past being realized in a fact which was the Christ, who was 474 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. Himself the new prophet. As together they came, drawn by the powers which make history, to the scene of Hermon, so together they quit the spot, where, as they departed, it was proposed that the peerlessness of the Christ, which they came to confess, should be lost sight of. Elijah had seen the triumph of the soul which was his companion on that earthly visit, and even then stood by him, — Moses. With him, he now saw the meaning of the exodus, the passover lamb, and read in the shining face of Christ the unwritten harmony of "the song of Moses and the Lamb." Of course with such a complete fulfillment, Elias cannot yield even. to. the proposition of Peter; and after the cloud and the voice Jesus is found alone. Just as Moses disappeared before the new Law-giver, who "came not to destroy but to fulfill," — Matt, v, 17, — so did Elias quit the height of Hermon before the new Prophet, who, while fulfilling the past, held the empire of the future. The Trans figured One was the new Prophet, whose forecast was inclusive of eternity, and whose transcendent point of view was the heart of God. The day of Elias was done, when at last to the soul of man, looking so long from all points on the circumference of being, there appeared a luminous center, the Fact — Jesus Christ. Jesus of Nazareth is the prophet of human nature. Simon Peter did not see all that this meant, at the moment of Christ's Transfiguration. But afterwards it came to him through the swift-flying years. In his second letter, when he would leave the church some scene from his memory which gathered into its signifi cance the meanings of this holy religion, his feet are again on Hermon; his eye is once more fixed upon the glowing face of the Christ. "Moreover," he says, "I will endeavor that ye may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance. For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eye-witnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the Father honor 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 which came from heaven we heard, when we were with Him in the holy mount." — II Peter i, 15-18. And THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 475 what is the truth which came with all this glory? This it is, which Peter rushes on to speak: " We have a more sure word of prophecy" — II Peter i, 19. That more sure word is the historic Christ. This fulfilling Fact, whose face shone, and who then began anew the career of an eternal prophet, was all these, because He was the Savior of the human soul from its sins. The presence of Elias, departing only after he had conversed with Him concerning "the decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem," was in harmony with the relations of the death of Christ to the feelings of the soul, as expressed in all prophecy; to the need, and therefore to the sacrificial gift out of God's love; to the salvation which should save men; to the obedience and love of a law whose righteousness was emphasized in the work of redemption. To complete this work of redemption, this new prophet of humanity, to whom the past sur rendered, as its great figures disappeared, was to found a race of prophets whose lives should be lived by the law of His life, — self- sacrifice,^ — and the secret of whose whole power and hope lay in the cross. The prophets of humanity still see furthest, when, from Hermon, they look by way of Calvary. " All through life I see a cross, Where sons of God yield up their breath; There is no gain except by loss; There is no life except in death, Nor glory but in bearing shame, Nor justice but in taking blame, And that eternal Passion saith, • ' Be emptied of glory, and right, and name! ' " "And Peter said, Master, it is good for us to be here; let us build three tabernacles; one for Thee, one for Moses, and one for Elias; not knowing what he said. While he thus spake, there came a cloud, and overshadowed them, and they feared as they entered into the cloud. And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son, hear Him. And when the voice was past, they saw no man save Jesus only." Peter saw such a triumph in that hour, for his Christ, that he would have been glad to have those who made it stay and continue it. But that would have been to found a commonwealth of three THE TRANSFIGURATION. BY RAPHAEL. THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 477 citizens, Christ, Moses, and Elias, to the impossibility of whose ex istence that cloud, be it " shekkinah of radiance " or barrier of darker folds, with its voice gave its testimony. Such a cloud rolls yet before the eyes of any mind which has done such wrong to its powers of discovery and their Lord, as to find no infinite difference between the law-giver and prophet of Israel and the Savior of men. It comes yet from any Hermon-height of our culture, drifting from the snow which makes it, and lingering like a phantom, until it speaks with a revelation to that soul whose spiritual life knows no difference between the touch of an infinite Christ and the influence of the mighty spirits who cleared the way for Plim. Christ is not visible in the light of their transfiguration, but Moses and Elias are visible in the glory of the Christ. Our modern Christianity flaunts its weakness in its ready acceptance of patronage. We are so superficial in our Christian life that we bless literature and science for coming where they certainly must come, or be unseen of mankind. But Christ, the Transfigured, is the Transfigurer of these. Take Him from history, and on what mountain-top could our modern law-givers and prophets gather? This is lost sight of, as Peter's proposition comes again to the lips of our anticipatory and apologetic religiousness. And there is no escaping the saddest phase of the fact, namely, that from a band of disciples, as aforetime, from whom the cause of the Christ has special reason to expect the truest faith, there do come, in these moments of confessed transfiguration, overtures of defense, through ardent apology and schemes of personal service, through fancied piety which would identify with forces out worn the pervasive, conquering Savior. We seem delighted to find some great soul that will make Christ a little less incredible to us, through a complimentary line, or Christianity a little more easy to our native paganism, by a pleasing paragraph of praise. Instead of going through history with a Fact, the surest we have, to explain the otherwise meaningless lives of men, to relate the fragments of a divided humanity into unity, to lift up the half-hearted philosophies of a passing day and join them to such truth as shall fulfill them, we seek to defend our holy Christianity by patronizingly showing its likeness to some far-off humanism, and essay to relieve our faith from embarrassment by quoting, alongside the sayings of Christ, 478 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. some merely verbal similarity from lips which confess the panic of the soul and are soiled with sin. Peter carried the passion for comparativism into realms where there is but One. They finally saw ' 'Jesus only, " and this phrase is the watchword of evangelical reform. We shall be judged by a law, but, as James suggests, it shall be "the perfect law of liberty." Under these words there will be a growing appreciation of the power of real Christianity. We behold its influence now, as it is fenced in by formalism and shut up by constraint. At the fastened gate, Jesus is standing, and the words which He speaks are solemn enough to us who are living in the careful mechanism of law: "Except your righteousness exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven." Such an announcement falls with great force upon us. For we have been so careful and painstaking and proper in all our mechanical piety. "Is all that to go for nothing?" Like the young man, we are telling our Master how very faithful we have been to the commandments; but when He asks for personal and total surrender to Him, our piety goes away "sorrowful." Nothing seems so strange to a modern Old Testament saint as the treatment which the New Testament gives to all his laborious concerns about the pro prieties of piety. He never considers what a thorough drudge he has made of himself, and how slavish has become his religious life. He has nothing but "law;" and lo! he is hanging to that, not because he loves it, but because he fears to let go. With that faith, a Christian is impotent. Under what a "cloud" he stands, even at the Transfiguration of Christ! But it is a "bright" cloud. Heaven is glorious on the other side, and when the Voice speaks to that soul and tells him, "This is my beloved Son, " — Matt, xvii, 5, — using the very words of the baptism-scene, and adds, "hear Him," the cloud lifts away, and he sees ' ' no man save Jesus only. " — Matt, xvii, 8. So full was He of this prophecy in Himself and for them, that the disciples kept the memory of .Moses and Elias, speaking to Him about the "exodus which He should accomplish at Jerusalem." — Luke ix, 31. As they went back to heaven, He found the glory of His transfiguration running through the tomb. They could speak to Him about death only as the ' ' exodus, " and to be an achievement, though the words of these heavenly visitants seem to involve the THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 479 glory which was to follow. They, however, must be silent about the secrets whose key He carried. But He could prepare His disciples to utter the magic word, by and by : " He is risen from the dead. " — Matt, xvii, g. Christ clearly recognized the fact that the disciples needed to have this scene connected in their minds with something which ultimately would make it plain. They had heard the conversation about the "exodus" which He was to "accomplish at Jerusalem." ^W^ -«o4NKa -'¦ •- - --' t_*. "7 ¦-.-"- v./vS-S. 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But that exodus meant only the death of their Lord to them, as yet. Christ saw their confusion in the words of Peter. Ever con scious as He was, of how an unrelated truth, or an isolated fact, however luminous, deranges rather than continues the mind's steady advance, He bids silence until the greater truth and fact, to which this is related, shall come to their growing culture. In doing this, He showed that that glory beyond, of which this was such a strong intimation that Moses and Elias, in its light, talked about His exodus rather than His death alone, was the same glory of a coming Easter morning. "He charged them that they should tell no man what 480 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. they had seen, save when the Son of Man should be risen from the dead." — Mark xi, 10-13. We must not linger longer in the splendor of this scene. The world's need calls from the mountain's base. The vision must be left in the memory; the next duty must be taken up. Not to teach us that the world of the ideal and the world of the real are two worlds, but that they are one, and. that the glory of God and the good of man are one, is this chapter in the life of Christ given unto us. Raphael is its most successful expositor. In that study, which he could not complete, — the most admired painting in the world, — not only the mountain height appears, radiant with celestial splendor and visited by heavenly spirits, but the base also, where human failure and triumphant evil cry out in a piteous prayer and a maniac's shriek. It is the true picture of the Christian life. Not for an instant does Jesus stand bewildered between the vision of God and the need of man. He, to whose immortal sight came Moses and Elias, con fronts the victorious Satan, and with the same voice which had just spoken with the heavenly visitants of His coming glory does He ban ish the Evil One from a suffering child. In the joy of that moment, the human soul will ever see how the ideal and the real are one; and how in that miracle the transfiguration of Jesus went out into the life of mankind. " ' Hadst thou stayed I must have fled.' This is what the Vision said." CHAPTER XLIV PREACHING IN GALILEE BEFORE going to the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus journeyed as Teacher from place to place in Galilee. Clearly did He foretell'5' His death and resurrection. The disciples were deeply saddened, as they came to Caper naum. Here they met the officials who were gathering from every Jew the usual one-half shekel for the Temple treasury. One of them asked Simon Peter if he thought Jesus would pay the tribute. He was about to answer the query: "Yes." But Jesus forestalled him. Matthew says: "And when he came into the house, Jesus spake first to him, saying, What thinkest thou, Simon? the kings of the'' earth, from whom do they receive toll or tribute? from their sons, or from strangers? And when he said, From strangers, Jesus said unto him, Therefore the sons are free. But, lest we cause them to stum- - ble, go thou to the sea, and cast a hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a shekel: that take, and give unto them for me and thee." — Matt. xvii, 25-27. He was still dealing with a Simon-world. He would make no unnecessary controversy, but He would vindicate His Kingship. '* On their way, a debate had arisem among them. They were arguing "who is the greatest. And "He jsat down, and called the twelve; and He saith unto them, If any man would be first, he shall be last of all, and minister of all. And. He took a little child, and set him in the midst of them: and taking him in His arms, He said* unto them, Whosoever shall receive one of such little children in My name, receiveth Me: and whosoever receiveth ,Me, receiveth Me not, but Him that sent Me." — Mark ix, 34-37. ySc .,-.;* & -¦;¦ They were scarcely hushed to docility by tpS beautifuLjmiaisfry, when their narrowness" of vision again manifested itself. "John saicp 3I ' 48-1 CHRIST BLESSING LITTLE CHILDREN. FROM PAINTING BY B. PLOCKHURST. THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 483 unto Him, Master, we saw one casting out devils in Thy name: and we forbade him, because he followed not us. But Jesus said, Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a mighty work in My name, and be able quickly to speak evil of Me. For he that is not against us is for us. For whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink, because ye are Christ's, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward." Back to the child He carried them, and urged them, at all costs, to be simple-eyed. He said in further ex position of His doctrine: "And whosoever shall cause one of these little ones that believe on Me to stumble, it were better for him if a great millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea. And if thy hand cause thee to stumble, cut it off: it is good for thee to enter life maimed, rather than having thy two hands to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire. And if thy foot cause thee to stumble, cut it off: it is good for thee to enter life halt, rather than having thy two feet to be cast into hell. And if thine eye cause thee to stumble, cast it out: it is good for thee to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell; where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. For every one shall be salted with fire. Salt is good: but if the salt have lost its saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace one with another." — Mark ix, 38-50. The ever-eager disciple now gave Him the opportunity to show them the inexhaustible resources of love. For, "then came Peter unto Him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? until seven times? Jesus said unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times; but, Until seventy times seven. There fore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would make a reckoning with his servants. And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him which owed him ten thousand talents. But forasmuch as he had not wherewith to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made. The servant therefore fell down and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. And the lord of that servant, being moved with com passion, released him, and forgave him the debt. But that servant 484 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. went out, and found one of his fellow-servants, which owed him a hundred pence : and he laid hold on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay what thou owest. So his fellow-servant fell down and besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee. And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he should pay that which was due. So when his fellow-servants saw what was done, they were exceeding sorry, and came and told unto their lord all that was done. Then his lord called unto him, and saith unto him, Thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou besoughtest me: shouldst not thou also have had mercy on thy fellow-servant, even as I had mercy on thee? And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due. So shall also My heavenly Father do unto you, if ye forgive not every one his brother from your hearts. " — Matt, xviii, 21-35. The Feast of Tabernacles was now come, and Jesus would go up to Jerusalem. But even though His brethren, who did not fail to exhibit their lack of faith in Him, taunted Him with being willing to do things secretly, Jesus was calm, and started on His journey alone, after they had gone with the festive crowd. No base challenge could move Him to a precipitant course: only His Father could guide Him. His hour had not yet come: but when it did come, and soon, Jesus was on His way, serene and undisturbed by crowds or fears. Steadily He carried the world's burden. Luke says, "And He sent messengers before His face: and they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for Him. And they did not re ceive Him, because His face was as though He were going to Jeru salem. And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt Thou that we bid fire to come down from heaven, and consume them? But He turned, and rebuked them. And they went to another village." — Luke ix, 52-56. The King of the Invisible dis dained the use of fire; He preferred the persuasiveness of truth and righteousness. Seventy of His followers were chosen to proclaim Him in the towns. His instruction to them was almost a repetition of the charge previously given to the twelve apostles. Almost, but not altogether; for He was not now forming a permanent apostolate, but only a tem porary mission. Two by two, they were to go, and always were THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 485 m they to heal and bless. Pie soon found human vice and He met it with Divine remedy. Luke, the physician, says: "And it came to pass, as they were on the way to Jerusalem, that Pie was passing through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. As He entered into a certain village, there He met ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: and they lifted up their voices, saying, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. And when He saw them, Pie said unto them, Go and show yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, as they went, they were cleansed. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, with a loud voice glorifying God; and he fell upon his face at His feet, giving Him thanks: And he was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering, said, Were not the ten cleansed? But where are the nine? Were there none found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger? And He said unto him, Arise and go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole." — Luke xvii, 11- 19. Fdith and gratitude are not of earthly pedigree. His brotherhood of man was as desolating to fancied walls, as was His idea of the Fatherhood of God. The Samaritan was the son of the true Israel. We know not how long the Seventy labored as heralds of their Master, or where they met Him when they came back. But Luke's account shows that they came back glad with Christian triumph. This evangelist says: "And the seventy returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us in Thy name. And He said unto them, I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall in any wise hurt you. Howbeit in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. In that same hour He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father; for so it was well-pleasing in Thy sight. All things have been delivered unto Me of My Father; and no one knoweth who the Son is, save the Father; and who the Father is, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him. And turning to the disciples, He said privately, Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see: for I say unto you, 486 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. that many prophets and kings desired to see the things which ye see, and saw them not; and to hear the things which ye hear, and heard them not." — Luke x, 17-24. The Jews were anxious to find Him at the Feast. He was the one absorbing topic. Differences of opinion were heard wherever He was spoken of, and fear of the Jews alone prevented much eager controversy. When the Feast was at its midst, Jesus went up into the Temple and began to teach. John tells us that ' ' the Jews therefore marveled, saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned ?"¦ — John vii, 15. They were amazed that the Galilean car penter should be a theologian more penetrating than any of them, and yet innocent of the Rabbinical instruction. He had learned of God, His Father. "Jesus therefore answered them, saying, My teaching is not Mine, but His that sent Me. If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak from Myself. He that speaketh from himself seeketh his own glory; but he that seeketh the glory of Him that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him." — John vii, 16-18. This divine self-assertion confounded and angered them. He said: "Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you doeth the law? Why seek ye to kill Me? The multitude answered, Thou hast a devil: who seekest to kill Thee? Jesus answered and said unto them, I did one work, and ye did all marvel. For this cause hath Moses given you circumcision (not that it is of Moses, but of the fathers); and on the Sabbath ye circumcise a man. If a man receiveth circumcision on the Sabbath, that the law of Moses may not be broken; are ye wroth with Me, because I made a man every whit whole on the Sabbath? Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment." — John vii, 19-24. Nothing could exceed their bewilderment. "Some therefore of them of Jerusalem said, Is not this He whom they seek to kill? And lo, He speaketh openly, and they say nothing unto Him. Can it be that the rulers indeed know that this is the Christ? Plowbeit we know this man whence He is: but when the Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence He is. Jesus therefore cried in the Temple, teaching and saying, Ye both know Me, and know whence I am; THE AIAN OF GALILEE. 487 and I am not come of Myself, but He that sent Me, is true whom ye know not. I know Him, because I am from Him, and He sent Me. They sought therefore to take Him; and no man laid his hand on Him, because His hour was not yet come. But of the multitude many believed on Him; and they said, When the Christ shall come, will He do more signs than this man hath done? The Pharisees heard the multitude murmuring these things concerning Him, and the chief priests and the Pharisees sent officers to take Him. Jesus therefore said, Yet a little while I am with you, and I go unto Him that sent Me. Ye shall seek Me, and shall not find Me: and where I am, ye cannot come. The. Jews" therefore said among themselves, Whither shall this man go, that we shall not find Him? Will He go into the Dispersion among the Greeks, and teach the Greeks? What is this word that He said, Ye shall seek Me, and shall not find Me: and where I am ye cannot come?" — Jolin vii, 25-36. The Master alone was clear. The last and most important day of the Feast came. Believers and unbelievers flocked around Him, when He cried out: "If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink." — John vii, 37. The festive procession had beheld the priest filling the pitcher of gold from the waters of the Pool of Siloam. They had followed to the altar and had seen the water and wine flow from out the silver spouts. The Mosaic ordinance was completely fulfilled. But as the Psalm was sung, Jesus stood there to make a whole world more thankful. He said: "He that believeth on Me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believed on Him were to receive: for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. Some of the multitude, therefore, when they heard these words, said, This is of a truth the prophet. Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, What, does the Christ come out of Galilee? Hath not the scripture said that the Christ cometh of the seed of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was? So there arose a division in the multitude because of Him. And some of them would have taken Him; but no man laid hands on Him. The officers therefore came to the chief priests and Phari sees; and they said unto them, Why did ye not bring Him? The officers answered, Never man so spake. The Pharisees therefore 488 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. answered them, Are ye also led astray? Hath any of the rulers believed on Him, or of the Pharisees? But the multitude which knoweth not the law are accursed. Nicodemus saith unto them (he that came to Him before, being one of them), Doth our law judge a man, except it first hear from himself and know what he doeth? They answered and said unto him, Art thou also of Galilee? Search, and see that out of Galilee ariseth no prophet." — Join It was a moment threatening indeed to big otry, for even the cautious Nicodemus had asked for that alone which Christianity now de mands, — a fair trial. While everybody else sought His home or booth, Jesus went to His place of prayer on the Mount of Olives. Coming again to the Temple in the morning, Jesus had oc casion to set forth the Christian point of view with respect to the sin of the world which He came to destroy with love. He was sitting and teaching the multitude. "And the scribes and Pharisees bring a woman taken in adul tery; and having set her in the midst, they say unto Him, Master, this woman hath been taken in adultery, in the very act. Now the law of Moses commanded us to stone such: What then sayest Thou of her? And this they said, tempting Him, that they might have whereof to accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down, and with His finger wrote on the ground. But when they continued asking Him, He lifted up Himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin ' He that is without sin among you. let him cast the first stone at her.' It was a crisis again. TILE ALAN OF GALLLEE. 489 among you, let him cast the first stone at her. And again He stooped down, and with PIis finger wrote on the ground. And they, when they heard it, went out one by one, beginning with the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman, where she was, in the midst. And Jesus lifted up Himself, and said unto her, Woman, where are they? Did no man condemn thee? And she said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said, Neither do I condemn thee: go thy way; from henceforth sin no more." — John viii, 3-11. It was probably the next day, when the people still thronged the Temple, that He taught and talked with friends and enemies, as John has related. No pedantic additions can be permitted, in deal ing with this high converse. The evangelist himself must be its most eloquent narrator. He says: "Again therefore Jesus spake unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life. The Phar isees therefore said unto Him, Thou bearest witness of Thyself; Thy witness is not true. Jesus answered and said unto them, Even if I bear witness of Myself, My witness is true: for I know whence I come, and whither I go; but ye know not whence I come, or whither I go. Ye judge after the flesh. I judge no man. Yea, and if I judge, My judgment is true; for I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent Me. Yea, and in your law it is written, that the witness of two men is true. I am He that beareth witness of Myself, and the Father that sent Me beareth witness of Me. They said therefore unto Him, Where is thy Father? Jesus answered, Ye know neither Me, nor My Father: if ye knew Me, ye would know My Father also. These words spake He in the treasury, as He taught in the Tem ple: and no man took Him, because His hour was not yet come. He said therefore again unto them, I go away, and ye shall seek Me, and shall die in your sin. Whither I go, ye cannot come. The Jews therefore said, Will He kill Himself, that He saith, whither I go, ye cannot come? And He said unto them, Ye are from beneath, I am from above. Ye are of this world, I am not of this world. I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for except ye believe that I am He, ye shall die in your sins. They said there fore unto Him, Who art Thou? Jesus said unto them, Even that which I have also spoken unto you from the beginning. I have many 4go THE ALAN OF GALLLEE. things to speak of and to judge concerning you: howbeit He that sent Me is true; and the things which I heard from Him these speak I unto the world. They perceived not that He spake to them of the Father. Jesus therefore said, When ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall ye know that I am He, and that I do nothing of Myself, but as the Father taught Me I speak these things. And He that sent Me is with Me; He hath not left Me alone; for I do always the things that are pleasing to Him. And as He spake these things, many believed on Him. Jesus therefore said to those Jews which had believed Him, If ye abide in My word, then are ye truly My disciples; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered unto Him, We be Abraham's seed, and have never yet been in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin. And the bondservant abideth not in the house forever. If, therefore, the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. I know that ye are Abraham's seed; yet ye seek to kill Me, because My word hath not free course in you. I speak the things which I have seen with My Father: and ye also do the things which ye heard from your father. They answered and said unto Him, Our Father is Abra ham. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill Me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I heard from God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the works of your father. They said unto Him, We were not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love Me: for I came forth and am come from God; for neither have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. Why do ye not understand My speech? Even because ye cannot hear My word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and stood not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof. But because I say the truth, ye believe Me not. Which of you con- victeth Me of sin? If I say truth, why do ye not believe Me? He that is of God heareth the words of God: for this cause ye hear TILE ALAN OF GALILEE. 4resence of unreasoning prejudice, its simplicity, earnest as it was sublime, and its absolute faithfulness. The healed man said: "Whether He be a sinner or no, I know not; one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see."- — John ix, 25. Ecclesiastical councils such as the one there assembled are not likely to be over-rich in ideas; and, therefore, it is not remarkable that they reverted to their first sapless questions and asked them over again, with desperate emphasis. They were so emphatic as to 32 4gS THE ALAN OF GALLLEE. kindle the soul of the man who had been born blind, so that, after he had referred to the fact that he had answered these questions already, and had intimated that he thought it was strange that they should want to hear his answers again, his mind flamed up with the question which showed his intense interest as he flung it at them: "Are ye likely to become disciples of Jesus, even as /am?" This greatly annoyed and much offended them. Soon the altogether un matched man had the council too angry to listen to what would have been availing argument with others. They could only storm at the restored man and insult him, and say, with a pious sneer: ' Thou art His disciple, but we are Moses' disciples. We know that God spake unto Moses: as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is." — John ix, 28, 29. Never was the man who had been blind more skillful or strong in argument. The only argument the Phari sees had — expulsion — was used. "They cast him out." Soon Jesus found the man He had cured, in the Temple. At once He acknowledged him, and proposed a question to him. It is re markable and instructive that Jesus should have asked him: — "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" — John ix, 35, — because Jesus had usually called Himself the " Sm of Man." It is quite clear zvhy He did this, if we remember that, at the very first, in dealing with this case, Jesus traversed across the theories of the Pharisees and offended them by His saying: "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God shall be made manifest in him. " — John ix, 3. In the Temple of God, He j^roceeded to say: "I must work the works of Him that sent Me." — John ix, 4. Very seldom, if, indeed, at any other time, had Jesus so strongly asserted His famil iarity with the secrets and processes of God, His Father, and cer tainly never had He put such emphasis upon the fact that the things He was doing were really the works of God. The Pharisees had fastened, with spiteful interest, upon this startling identification of Himself with the God of the Sabbath, which the orthodox Jews maintained as a divine institution altogether more sacred than the humanity which Jesus had just blessed. The Pharisees therefore said: "This man is not of God, because He does not keep the Sabbath day." — John ix, 16. Sabbatarianism was their test of the divineness of anything and anybody. They had no interest what- THE ALAN OF GALILEE. 49art, which shall not be taken away from her. " — Luke x, 40-42. There is nothing extraordinary, or remote from our own experi ence in the mistake of the older sister. It was Martha's home, and she was doubtless wealthy. It had some reputation to preserve, and her desire was sincere to honor Jesus. But she had somehow fallen into the habit of one who deals with many things rather than with thoughts and sentiments; and so she busied herself as the victim of her posses sions. We are never so poor as when we have much to arrange and offer to Him Who desires only our hearts. The soul-wealth which leads us to forget all else save Jesus our Guest, is a treasure of eter nity. Mary was a good listener and thereby proved her moral genius. Martha had the impatience which comes of lack of absorption in the one thing needful. What Jesus could do for her He must do by love alone: and we know that the needed transformation was begun, for "Jesus loved Martha and her sister." — John xi, 5. Near again to the city, probably at the north-east, where John the Baptizer once led his followers, one of the disciples of Jesus, who had reverently waited until his Lord ceased praying, said unto the Master: " Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples." — THE MAN OF GALILEE. 5"5 Luke xi, 1. Jesus answered by giving them again what we have studied as the Lord's Prayer; arid Pie followed it by an exposition, in the form of a parable. "He said unto them, which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine is come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him; and he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee. I say unto vou, . - though he will not rise and give him, because A^ &% ^^ he is his friend, yet because of his 4^§ff ' i$!» importunity he will arise and give him as many as he n e e d e t h. And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. And which of you that is a father shall his son ask a loaf, and he give him a stone? or a fish, and he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he give him a scorpion? If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?" — Luke xi, 2-13. It was now early December, and Jesus was in Jerusalem at the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple. The air was electric with patriotism, and the Jewish nation was ready to join the standard of another Judas Maccabaeus. "And Jesus was walking in the Temple in Solomon's porch. The Jews therefore came round about Him, and said -unto Him, How long dost Thou hold us in suspense? If Thou art the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye believe not: the works that I do in My Father's name, these bear witness of Me. But ye believe not, because ye are not of My sheep. NATIVES GRINDING CORN, JERUSALEM. 506 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me: I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who hath given them unto Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one. The Jews took up stones again to stone Him. Jesus answered them, Many good works have I showed you from the Father; for which of these works do ye stone Me? The Jews answered, For a good work we stone Thee not, but for blasphemy; and because that Thou, being a man, makest Thyself God. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken) say ye of Him, Whom the Father sanctified and sent in to the world, Thou blasphemest; be cause I said, I am the Son of God? If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not. But if I do them, though ye believe not Me, believe the works: that ye may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and J in the Father. They sought again to take Him: and Pie went forth out of their hand. " — Johnix, 23-39. Once more the crowd was disappointed and wrathful. They even tried to arrest Him, but again He escaped. Soon He was beyond Jordan, in the place where John had baptized. "And many came unto Him; and they said, John indeed did no sign: but all things whatsoever John spake of this man were true. And many believed on Him there." — John x, 41-42. Into this lonely place, now made populous by the crowd following the Master, the pathetic cry of the sisters, Martha and Mary, j^enetrated. They are now spoken of as "Mary and her sister Martha." — John xi, 1. Spirituality is ever foremost. Their message to Jesus was probably accurately repeated: "Lord, behold him who Thou lovcst is sick." — John ix, 2. Their brother, Lazarus,, was thus spoken of as a beloved friend of Jesus. Of the origin and length of this attachment we know nothing, but the phrase of the messenger is witness that much had occurred between the hour at Martha's house and this hour when He listened to the appeal of the sisters. "When Jesus heard it, He said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby. Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. "— John xi, 45. It would seem that Love Divine is most THE ALAN OF GALILEE. 507 loving when it waits. No more wonderful statement of its faith in its own limitless resources remains to us, than- this: "When there fore He heard that he was sick, He abode at that time two days in the place where Pie was. Then after this, He saith to the disciples, Let us go into Judea again. The disciples say unto Him, Rabbi, the Jews were but now seeking to stone Thee; and goest Thou thither again? Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If a man walk in the da}', he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because the light is not in him. These things spake He: and after this He saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus is fallen asleep; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep. The disciples therefore said unto Him, Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover. Now Jesus had spoken of his death: but they thought that He spake of takiuo rest in sleep. Then Jesus therefore said unto them plain!}*, Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him. Thomas, therefore, who is called Diclymus, said unto his fellow-disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him." — John xi, 6-16. When Jesus arrived at the home in Bethany, human love cried out: "Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died." — JoJm xi, 21. Four days had gone since the grave re ceived the ' body. Many Jews from the city had manifested their affection in bringing comfort and paying the homage of friend ship. Jesus only had not hastened. "He that believeth shall not make haste." Mary, the meditative and spiritual, was alone with her silent sorrow. Yet Martha's spiritual life was opening, and she added to her regretful words: "And even now I know that, whatsoever Thou shalt ask of God, God will give Thee." "Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto Him, I know that he shall rise again at the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, / am the resurrection, and the life; he that believeth on Me, though he die, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth on Me shall never die. Believcst thou this? She saith unto Him, Yea, Lord: I have believed that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, even He that cometh into the world." — John xi, 23-27. 508 THE AIAN OF GALILEE. Now Martha's faith was able to go on an embassy. She hurried to Mary, and said to her alone: "The Master is come and calleth for thee." — John xi, 28. Mary, who had waited for the call divine, could be swift when the call came. "The Jews then which were with her in the house, and were comforting her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up quickly and went out, followed her, sup posing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. " — John x /, 3 1. They were mistaken. Not to the grave, but to the grave's Lord, had she gone. " Mary there fore, when she came where Jesus was, fell down at His feet, saying unto Him, Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died." — John ix, 32. "When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled and said, Where have ye laid him? They say unto Him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. The Jews therefore said, Behold how He loved him ! But some of them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of him that was blind, have caused that this man also should not die? Jesus therefore, again groaning in Himself, cometh to the tomb. Now it was a cave, and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto Him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days. Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that if thou believedst, thou shouldest see the glory of God? So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up His eyes, and said, Father, I thank Thee that Thou hearest Me. And I knew that THE ALAN OF GALLLEE. 509 Thou hearest Me always; but because of the multitude which standeth around I said it, that they may believe that Thou didst send Me. And when He had thus spoken, Pie cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. He that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go. Many therefore of the Jews, which came to Mary and beheld that which He did, believed on Him. But some of them went away to the Pharisees, and told them the things which Jesus had done." — John xi, 33-46. It was a supreme manifestation of the power of God. But the Pharisees were not to be shaken in their purpose. Speedily a meeting of the Sanhedrin was held, and a discussion began. They attested their perplexity in their uttered thoughts: "What do we? for this man doeth many signs. If we let Him thus alorie, all men will believe on Him: and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation." Caiaphas had a solution for the problem. As the high priest for that year, he spake with pompous authority, and said: "Ye know nothing at all, nor do ye take account that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not. Now this he said not of himself: but being high joriest this year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation; and not only for the nation only, but that He might also gather together into one the children of God that are scattered abroad. So from that day forth they took council that they might put Him to death." — John xi, 49-53. The world's doctrine of expediency had been uttered, and Jesus knew His doctrine of expediency would soon be illustrated, for His heart was already saying to His disciples: "It is expedient for you that I go away." — fohn xvi, 7. "Jesus therefore walked no more openly among the Jews, but departed thence into the country near to the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim; and there He tarried with the disciples." — John xi, 54. Pie was soon in Peraea, "in the coasts of Judea, by the farther side of Jordan." Once more He offended against Sab batarianism. The Son of Humanity was Lord of the Sabbath. "He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath day. And behold, a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years; and she was bowed together, and could in no wise lift herself up. And 510 THE ALAN OF GALLLEE. when Jesus saw her, He called her, and said to her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. And He laid hands upon her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God. And the ruler of the synagogue, being moved with indignation because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, answered and said to the multitude, There are six days in the week in which men ought to work: in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the day of the Sab bath. But the Lord answered him, and said, Ye hyjx>crites, doth not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox, or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, to have been loosed from this bond on the day of the Sabbath? And as He said these things, all His adversaries were put to shame: and the multitude rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by Him." — Luke xiii, 10-17. Again He turned toward Jerusalem, while He journeyed from village to village. On one of those days, a disciple said to Him: "Lord, are there few to be saved?" And He replied: "Strive to enter in by the narrow door: for many, I say unto you, shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able. When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, open to us; and he shall answer and say to you, I know you not whence ye are; then shall ye begin to say, We did eat and drink in thy presence, and thou didst teach in our streets; and he shall say, I tell you I know not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abra ham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and yourselves cast forth without. And they shall come from the east and west, and from the north and south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God. And behold there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last." — Luke xiii, 23-30. The spiritual brotherhood alone is safe, under the spiritual Fatherhood of God. It was now rumored that Herod was excited to antagonism by the reports of Jesus which had reached his palace; and certain Pharisees pretentiously warned the Master to leave Peraea, which was under THE ALAN OF GALLLEE. 511 the tetrarch's jurisdiction. They were not so anxious that Jesus might escape his murderous hate, as that they might get Him away, for He was winning all men to His gospel. Neither Herod nor Jesus forgot the fate of John the Baptist or the Pharisaic intrigue which at last had compassed his death. Jesus was healing and teaching, and He refused to hasten away. He said: "Go and say to that fox behold, I cast out devils and perform cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I am perfected. Howbeit I must go on My way to-day and to-morrow and the day following: for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem." The word Jerusalem caught up all the sentiments of the greatest of the Jews. He was heart-broken, but patriotic, and He cried out: "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 own brood under her wings, and ye would not! Be hold, your house is left unto you desolate: and I say unto you, Ye shall not see Me until ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name' of the Lord." — Luke xiii, 30-35. "ACCORDING TO YOUR FAITH.1 CHAPTER XLVII AT THE DINNER OF THE PHARISEE— PARABLES ON the Sabbath Hebrew people were not less likely than on | other days to give dinners, and otherwise indulge in social I festivities. Indeed, the most orthodox among the Rabbis were the most hospitable in entertainment on holy days. On one of them, a ruler of the Pharisees, doubtless a member of the Sanhedrin, invited Jesus to din ner. Whatever of prying curious ness or evil intent was in the mind of the Pharisees, was surpassed by their malicious observation of every thing which Jesus said and did at the meal. Soon a guest unasked to the dinner appeared, and proved to be a man ill with the dropsy. Perhaps he had been brought thither by an enemy of the Master, either to give occasion for proof of Jesus' inability to help him, or His willingness to break the Sabbath. But Jesus was still possessed of the resources of Omnipotence, and He turned the tables upon PIis foes by saying: "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?" — Matt, xii, 10. While they were silent, Jesus healed the swollen creature. ' And He said unto them, which of you shall have an ass or an 5i3 THE LOST PIECE OF SILVER. 514 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. ox fallen into a well, and will not straightway draw him up on a Sabbath day? And they could not answer again unto these things. And He spake a parable unto those which were bidden, when He marked how they chose out the chief seats; saying unto them, When thou art bidden of any man to a marriage feast, sit not down in the chief seat; lest haply a more honorable man than thou be bidden of him, and he that bade thee shall come and say to thee, Give this man place; and then thou shall begin with shame to take the lowest. But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest place; that when he that hath bidden thee cometh, he may say to thee, Friend, go up higher; then shalt thou have glory in the pres ence of all that sit at meat with thee. For every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." And He said also to him that had bidden Him, When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, nor thy kinsmen, nor rich neighbors; lest haply they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, bid the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind; and thou shalt be blessed; because they have not wherewith to recom pense thee; for thou shalt be recompensed in the resurrection of the just. And when one of them that sat at meat with Him heard these things, he said unto Him, Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God. But He said unto him, A certain man made a great supper; and he bade many: and he sent forth his servant at supper- time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready. And they all with one consent began to make ex cuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a field, and I must needs go out and see it: I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. And the servant came, and told his lord these things. Then the master of the house bein°- angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor and lame and blind and maimed. And the servant said, Lord, what thou didst command is done and yet there is room. And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and constrain them to come in, that my THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 515 house may be filled. For I say unto you, that none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper." — Luke xiv, 5-24. In these parables, Jesus furnished, first of all, an argument for humanity as against Sabbatarianism; next, a picture of the abomin- ableness of self-exalting Phariseeism; and, then, an unmistakable delineation of that self-interest and worldliness which keep men from the kingdom of heaven. The authorities were helpless before His serene radiance. Again crowds followed Him, and He continued to preach the duty of cross- bearing, in anticipation of His own burden soon to be carried to Calvary. He told them of the cost of disciple- ship, and appealed to their spiritual hearing, lest his words might fail. In order that He might not leave them with nothing but the idea that the lost condition of humanity was more unhopeful than the finding power of God the Father was earnest and inexhaustible, He gave to them the three parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Son, and the Lost Coin. Each of them was an explanation of the doc trine of the Fatherhood of God and the sonship of humanity; they showed forth the Eternal Fatherliness searching for the child, man, through the Sonship of Jesus. Neither the lost sheep, nor the lost son, nor the lost coin, had passed out of mind or possession, because either was lost. He was appealing to cold and proud Phariseeism, and His effort was to show to a calculating, ecclesiastical age, the value of the human soul, the method by which the human soul is to be found, and the joy of those who have accomplished the home- bringing of the soul of a man. So the parable of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Child, each in its way, rebuked the indifference or self-conceit or hopelessness of the Rabbis, and simply re-stated what He had already been preaching as to the warmth and comprehensiveness of Divine Love, and the method in which it works, as well as the sublimity of its accomplishment. Phariseeism never received a more awful blow than the stroke from the heart of humanity when Jesus sketched the portrait of the elder son, sur rounded by the Father's joy over the return of the younger. These parables were followed by the parable of the Unjust Steward. In addition to a picture of the steward's wicked use of his power, it was the effort of Jesus to teach a lesson to His disciples concerning the valuable results which they ought to obtain, even from 5i6 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. their earlier worldliness. So soon as He had spoken this parable, the Phariseeism which stood by was willing at once to flaunt its view of what Jesus had seemed to inculcate concerning prudence with regard to worldly things. Thus taking apparent advantage, they would recommend their own selfishness. But the Master of men was not to stop here. rided Him, to tell them iniquity and its end. Rich Man and Laz He proceeded, while they de- the story of all self-satisfied The sketch He made of the arus can never be forgot ten. What any poorest human life is in the eyes of humanity, and what that same human ife is in the eyes of God, were pic tured in such contrast that \ P h ari see- ism felt the ground from which it surveyed earthly riches and their use, THE PRODIGAL SON. swept from under its feet. When Jesus concluded His story, "He said unto them, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, if one rise from the dead." — Luke xvi, 31. No one more strongly than Jesus ever appreciated the fact that this is a world in process of creation and re-creation, according the laws of goodness and love. He had tried to bring the world of men back into a conception of the childhood of man unto God, through His placing little children before them. "And He said unto His disciples, it is impossible but that oc casions of stumbling should come; but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were better for him if a millstone were hanged about THE MAN OF GAL/ LEE. 517 his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, rather than he should cause one of these little ones to stumble." — Luke xvii, 1, 2. Pie urged forgiveness to the very limit of inexhaustible brother hood. It struck a response in the heart of the apostles, and they said unto Him: "Lord, increase our faith." — Luke xvii, 5. The use of the word Lord indicates how flashes of His true divineness came upon them. "And the Lord said, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye would say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou rooted up, and be thou planted in the sea; and it would have obeyed you. But who is there of you, having a servant plowing or keeping sheep, that will say unto him, when he is come in from the field, Come straightway and sit down to meat; and will not rather say unto. him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink? Doth he thank the senrvat because he did the things that were commanded? Even so ye also, when ye shall have done all the things that are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable serv ants; we have done that which it was our duty to do." — Luke xvii, 6-10. The disciples had begun to feel that the end of things was approaching, and they doubtless shared the feeling of the Pharisees, who wanted to know when the kingdom of God should come. Jesus' answer was: "Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for behold, the kingdom of God is within you." He then repeated, in another form, His warnings and exhortations with regard to the com ing of His reign, and told the parable of the soul when truth or beauty or goodness enters into its world with resistless sovereignty. His teaching was rapidly culminating, and the cross was nearer. "And he spake a parable unto them to the end that they ought always to joray, and not to faint, saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, and regarded not man: and there was a widow in that city; and she came oft unto him, saving, Avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man; yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest she wear me out by her continual coming. And the Lord said, Hear what the unrighteous judge saith. And shall not God avenge his elect, 5i8 THE MAN OF GALILEE. which cry to Him day and night, and He is long suffering over them? I say unto you, that He will avenge them speedily. Howbeit when the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" — Luke xviii, 1-8. So soon as such a parable as this was spoken, those who stood around Him gave evidence that they had obtained only a half truth, and so it was that Jesus emphasized the other half of the whole truth. "And He spoke also this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and set all others at nought: Two men went up into the Temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as the rest of men, ex tortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I get. But the publican, stand ing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote his breast, saying, God, .be merciful to me a sinner. I say unto you, This man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled; but he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." — Luke xviii, 9-14. Phariseeism pursued Him everywhere. On the subject of di vorce, for example, all its self-righteous smallness of vision was illus trated. Jesus went far below the foundations which Moses had laid for a temporary solution of its joroblems. They plied Him with questions. "But Jesus said unto them, For your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of the creation, male and female made He them. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the twain shall become one flesh: so that they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. And in the house the disciples asked Him again of this matter. And He saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her: and if she herself shall put away her husband, and marry another, she com mitteth adultery." — Mark x, 5-12. It was always a joy to the Master to carry His teaching into concrete forms, and to make His preaching vivid by events. He had THE MAN OF GALILEE. 519 struck a chord which had vibrated through the region of heart and mind, where the family life of earth might be helpful in pointing out the larger family life of humanity under universal Fatherhood. An illustration speedily supplied itself, so that by contrast Jesus was able to teach still more vividly the truth as to His kingdom and the necessity of a soul's being willing to put aside not only evil, but its very self, in order to enter into that kingdom. A young ruler came running to Plim, and, kneeling before Him, he said: "Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" — Mark x, 17. The Master knew that Pie could not master this favored youth unless he had a true sense of goodness. Jesus' way of proving His divinity was to be exemplified. "And He said unto him, Why asketh thou Me concerning that which is good? One there is who is good; but if thou wouldst enter into life, keep the commandments." The young man averred that he had kept all the commandments, and wished to know what he lacked. "Jesus said unto him, If thou wouldst be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me." — Mark x, 18-21. It was an appeal in behalf of an experience which this young man had never had, for he had never felt poor. He knew not that earth can not satisfy; nor had he been rich, because heaven had satisfied him. Sorrowfully he moved away, and Jesus told them how difficult it is for a man without yearnings of soul to enter the kingdom where aspiration is eternal. The voluble Peter, having heard how possible it is for God to do things within us, toward our salvation, which are impossible for men, said: "Lo, we have left all, and followed Thee." — Mark x, 28. "And Jesus said unto them, verily I say unto you, there is no man that hath left house, or wife, or brethren, or parents, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this time, and in the world to come eternal life." — Mark x, 29, 30. Very soon, if not immediately, Jesus took the opportunity to speak to them the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard: "For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a house holder, which went out early in the morning to hire laborers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the laborers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the 520 THE MAN, OF GALLLEE. third hour, and saw others standing in the marketplace idle; and to them he said, Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing; and he saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? They say unto him, Because no man has hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard. And when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the laborers, and pay them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first. And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny. And when the first came they supposed that they would receive more; and they likewise received every man a penny. And when they received it, they murmured against the householder, saying, These last have spent but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat. But he answered and said to one of them, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst thcu not agree with me for a penny? Take up that which is thine, and go thy way; it is my will to give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? or is thine eye evil, because I am good? So the last shall be first, and the first last." — Matt, xx, 1-15. CHAPTER XLVIII ON THE WAY TO JERUSALEM— PALM SUNDAY NOW they were going to Jerusalem, and as they neared the city, Jesus spoke with an all-illumining comprehensiveness, exploring the foundations of that realm of goodness and character which He was setting up. He took His disciples aside and told them frankly and fully of His death and resurrection, but they understood Him not. While the words of the Son of Man, Whose ^aww crown was to come by self-sacrifice, were still repeating themselves in their minds, ambitious motherhood, in the person of the mother of James and John, Zebedee's children, preferred a re quest. "And He said unto her, What wouldst thou? She said unto Him, Command that my two sons may sit, one on Thy right hand, and one on Thy left hand, in Thy kingdom." — Matt, xx, 21. Jesus had now another opportunity to offer to His disciples a partici pation in His own atonement, and He offered them the privilege of achievement, which, however, He did not give until He had asked them if they could receive it. "And Jesus said unto her, The cup that j I drink ye shall drink, and with the baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized; but to sit on My right 521 THE TRIBUTE MONEY. $22 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. hand or on My left hand is not Mine to give: but it is for them for whom it hath been prepared." — Matt, xx, 22. James and John had forfeited, at least for a moment, the regard of their fellow-disciples; but they had not forfeited the patient love of their Master. As they came into Jericho, whose remembered splendor contrasts strongly with the wretchedness of its squalid huts of to-day, He met two blind men, one the son of Timeus, who was a beggar at the wayside. These he healed. As He was passing out beyond Jericho, another man, whose spiritual blindness had already been a little relieved, and whose soul-vision was to be enlarged and quickened, sought for a blessing in a peculiar fashion. His name was Zacchseus; "and he was a chief publican, and he was rich. And he sought to see Jesus who He was; and could not for the crowd, because he was little of stature. And he ran on before, and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see Him: for He was to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, He looked up, and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for to-day I must abide at thy house. And he made haste, and came down, and received Him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all murmured, saying, He is gone in to lodge with a man that is a sinner. And Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord, Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have wrongfully exacted aught of any man, I restore fourfold. And Jesus said unto him, To-day is salvation come to this house, foras much as he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost." — Luke xix, 1-10. He was now so near to Jerusalem, and the excitement was so great, that the disciples became confident of the imme diate appear ance of the king dom of God. Jesus would , not mislead them. "He ' said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country, to receive for >$&&&!& HOUSE OF ZACCHAEUS. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 523 himself a kingdom, and to return. And he called ten servants of his, and gave them ten jiounds, and said unto them, Trade ye herewith till I come. But his citizens hated him, and sent an embassage after him, saying, We will not that this man reign over us. And it came to pass, when he was come back again, having received the kingdom, that he commanded these servants, unto whom he had given the money, to be called to him, that he might know what they had gained by trading. And the first came before him, saving, Lord, thy pound hath made ten pounds more. And he said unto him, Well done, thou good servant: because thou wast found faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities. And the second came, saying, Thy pound, Lord, hath made five pounds. And he said unto him also, Be thou also over five cities. And another came saying, Lord, behold, here is thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin: for I feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up that thou layest not down, and reapest that thou didst not sow. He saith unto him, Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant. Thou knewest that I am an austere man, taking up that I laid not down, and reaping that I did not sow; .then wherefore gavest thou not my money into the bank, and I at my coming should required it with interest? And he said unto them that stood by, Take away from him the pound, and give it unto him that hath the ten pounds. And they said unto him, Lord, he hath ten pounds. I say unto you, that unto every one that hath shall be given; but from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken from him. Howbeit these mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me." — Luke xix, 12-27. It was very natural that Jesus should find His way to Bethany, nearly a week before the Passover. There the people came, many of whom doubtless were intelligent of the fact that the Pharisees were ready to reward anybody who might apprehend the disturb ing Rabbi, and there they divided their interest between Jesus the Christ, and Lazarus, whom He had raised from the dead. The chief priests felt it necessary to put Lazarus out of the way; but Lazarus was safe, and the crowd believed on Jesus. 524 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. At length, what is known as Palm Sunday arrived. It was a crisis in the history of the Christian religion. Was it possible that Phariseeism and Sadduceeism should be overthrown by the fact that Jesus at length would yield to the visible opportunity and be proclaimed King of the Jews? Not in this way could a world be saved. Yet, as we follow Him, we are j;erplexed. For, "it came to pass, when He drew nigh unto Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount that is called the Mount of Olives, He sent two of the dis- CHRIST ENTERING JERUSALEM. ciples, saying, Go your way into the village over against you; in the which as ye enter ye shall find a colt tied, whereon no man ever yet sat: loose him, and bring him. And if any one ask you, Why do ye loose him? thus shall ye say, The Lord hath need of him. And they that were sent went away, and found even as He had said unto them. And as they were loosing the colt the owners thereof said unto them, Why loose ye the colt? And they said, The Lord hath need of him." * * * * "And Jesus sat thereon; THE ALAN OF GALILEE. 525 as it is written, Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, thy King cometh, sitting on an ass's colt." * * * * "And as Pie went, they spread their garments in the way. And as He was now drawing nigh, even at the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multi tude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they had seen; saying, Blessed is the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven and glory in the highest." — Luke xix, 29-38. The whole atmosphere was transformed. Jesus was visibly supreme, and the Pharisees were dismayed. Might it be that Jesus, here and now, would change His attitude entirely and overthrow the invisible kingdom He had been establishing? "And some of the Pharisees from the multitude said unto Him, Master, rebuke Thy dis ciples. And He answered and said, I tell you that, if these shall hold their joeace, the stones will cry out. And when He drew nigh, He saw the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known in this day, even thou, the things which belong unto peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, when thine enemies shall cast up a bank about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall dash thee to the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another: because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation." — Luke xix, 39-44. The city was in commotion. One name was voiced everywhere. It was the name of the prophet of Nazareth. Blind and lame came with little children, and the shout went up: "Hosanna to the Son of David!" — Matt, xxi, 9. The scribes were as furious as they were dis concerted, "and they said unto Him, Hearest thou what these are say ing? Jesus saith unto them, Yea: did ye never read, Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?" — Matt, xxi, 16. Night came, and He was lodging in Bethany with PIis twelve disciples. Morning dawned. Returning hungry to the city, He saw a fruitless fig-tree. It was Phariseeism, full of leaves, but barren. "And He said unto it, no man shall eat fruit from thee henceforward for ever. And His disciples heard it." — Matt, xxi, 18-20. Entering the Temple, He cleansed it of money-changers and sellers of doves, as aforetime. Back to Bethany again in the even- 526 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. CHRIST WEEPING OVER JERUSALEM. ing, He spent the night there, and taught next day in the Temple. Evening came again, and He spent the night on the Mount of Olives. Phariseeism, like the fig-tree, withered away, while, next day, the people listened to Him in the Temple. Here the chief priests and elders asked by what authority He did these things. Jesus reminded them of John the Baptizer, and proved to them that moral authority could not make its demonstration to spiritual sightlessness. He put it all into one of His inimitable stories, when he said: "But what think ye? A man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to-day in the vineyard. And he answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented himself, and went. And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir; and went not. Whether of the twain did the will of his father? They say. The first. Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, that the publicans and the harlots go into the king- THE ALAN OF GALILEE. 527 dom of God before you. For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye saw it, did not even repent yourselves afterward, that ye might believe him." — Matt, xvi, 28-32. Awful as was this portraiture of Phariseeism, Pie would now make Phariseeism understand, if it were possible, that it had attacked God's dearest and highest revelation of Himself. Jerusalem never saw a sublimer sight, even in the life of Jesus, than when He stood in the presence of the failure of ecclesiasticism, and said: "Hear another parable: There was a man that was a householder, which planted a vineyard, and set a hedge about it, and digged a wine press in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into another country. And when the season of the fruits drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, to receive his fruits. And the husbandmen' took his servants, and beat one, and killed an other, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them in like manner. But afterward he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. But the husbandmen, when they saw the son, said among them selves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and take his inherit ance. And they took him, and cast him forth out of the vineyard, and killed him. When therefore the lord of the vineyard shall come, what will he do unto those husbandmen? They say unto him, He will miserably destroy those miserable men, and will let out the vine yard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons. Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same was made the head of the corner: this was from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes? Therefore I say unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. And he that falleth on this stone shall be broken to pieces; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will scatter him as dust. And when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard PIis parables, they perceived that He spake of them. And when they sought to lay hold on Him, they feared the multitudes, because they took Him for a prophet." — Matt, xxi, 33-46. 528 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. This was followed almost immediately, as it seems, by the story of the Marriage of the King's Son. It sketched the world which they had neglected and which He would save. "Jesus answered and spake again in parables unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a certain king, which made a mar riage feast for his son, and sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the marriage feast: and they would not come. Again he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them that are bid den, Behold, I have made ready my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come to the marriage feast. But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his own farm, another to his merchandise: and the rest laid hold on his servants, and treated them shamefully, and killed them. But the king was wroth; and he sent his armies, and destroyed those mur derers, and burned their city Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they that were bidden were not worthy. Go ye therefore unto the partings of the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage feast. And those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was filled with guests. But when the king came in to behold the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding-garment: and he saith unto him, P'riend, how earnest thou in hither not having a wedding-garment? And he was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and cast him out into the outer darkness; there shall be the weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few chosen." — Matt, xxii, 1-14. Now the Pharisees joined with the partisans of Herod and assailed Him with questions. Beginning with words of dissimulating flattery, their spies sought to make a case against Him before Rome. Even so early did the authorities feel it necessary to make Caasar the judge of Jesus, the Christ. They said: "Tell us therefore, What thinkest Thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Cassar, or not? But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye Me, ye hypocrites? Show me the tribute money. And they brought unto Him a penny. And He saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? They said unto Him, Caesar's. Then saith He unto THE M AN OF GALLLEE. 529 them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Casar's, and unto God the things that are God's. And when they heard it, they marveled, and left Plim, and went their way." — Matt, xxii, 17-22. It was the turn of the Sadducees to pursue the great heretic. Refusing to accept the doctrine of any resurrection, they exempli fied their falsity of mind and their hate of Jesus by saying, "Master, Moses said, if a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. Now there were with us seven brethren: and the first married and deceased, and having no seed left his wife unto his brother; in like manner the second also, and the third, unto the seventh. And after them all, the woman died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her. But Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as angels of God in heaven." — Matt, xxii, 24-30. His oft-repeated idea that essential and enduring relation ships are altogether spiritual found a new setting. Jesus, however, knew how vital and essential was the truth of the resurrection. He therefore would not drop the matter at this, and He said: "But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And when the multitudes heard it, they were astonished at His teaching." — Matt. xxii, 3I_33- The third day of the week was passing. Pharisees and Sad ducees were gathered together, and one of their leaders proposed the query: "Master, which is the great commandment in the law? And He said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two com ments hangeth the whole law, and the prophets." — Matt, xxii, 36-40. At length the prophecy of Moses had been realized. The new Lawgiver had come, and He had spoken. It was now Jesus' turn to ask a question. "He said, as He taught in the Temple, How 53° THE MAN OF GALLLEE. say the scribes that the Christ is the son of David? David himself said in the Holy Spirit, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on My right hand, till I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet. David himself calleth Him Lord; and whence is He his son? And the common people heard Him gladly." — Matt, xii, 42-46. He proceeded to use *£, the weapon of influence which gave Him increas ing power with the popu lace. With merciless and yet careful truth He ex- ' posed the falsities of scribes and the offensiveness of Phar- ' isees. He claimed mastery above all Rabbis because He was the servant of humanity. Conclud ing His utterance of woes against scribes and Pharisees, — an indict ment and condemnation in which the fateful history of Israel's decline was rehearsed, — His eye swept over the city itself, and He again pro nounced the lament of His heart. As He sat near the treasury, while the people were casting money into the box, a poor widow came and brought a gift to the value of a farthing, while the rich jostled against her and made a show of their wealth in giving. "And He called unto Him His disciples, and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, This poor widow cast in more than all they which are casting into the treasury: for they all did cast in of their superfluity; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even THE WIDOW'S MITE. THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 531 all her living." — Mark xii, 43, 44. In a kingdom of the invisible, the Invisible King counts on quality alone. We have seen in Philip, the Greek, the man who most com pletely embodied the spirit which once said: "Come and see," and we cannot be surprised that curious Greeks, who were worshiping PANORAMA OF JERUSALEM. at the feast, came to the man of Bethsaida, and that he and Andrew brought them to see Jesus. The Master understood their point of view and mental habit. "And Jesus answereth them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of Man should be' glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone: but if it die, it beareth much fruit. He that loveth his life loseth it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall also My servant be: if any man serve Me, him will the Father honor. Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name. There came therefore a voice out of heaven, saying, I have both 532 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. glorified it, and will glorify it again. The multitude therefore, that stood by, and heard it, said that it had thundered: others said, An angel hath spoken to Him. Jesus answered and said, This voice hath not come for My sake, but for your sakes. Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself." — John xii, 23-32. Three separate streams of light had come from the fact of Divine Fatherhood, as He spoke. They all converged in His self-sacrificing Sonship. This is the only reality, after all, which will satisfy the Greek spirit. The death of Jesus on the cross alone meets the man of reason with an argument higher than reason and yet overwhelmingly reasonable. One word more of warning and comfort, which indicated the nearness of the final crisis, and Jesus was gone. He had hid Him self away from them. Hard of heart and visionless, many could not believe, and those among the chief rulers that did believe did not confess Him, because moral courage was lacking. He was soon with them again, however, but He was speaking His last words in the Temple. Relying on His relationship with the Father, and exempli fying the fact that His own Sonship was the manifestation of His Father's Fatherhood, "He said, He that believeth on Me, believeth not on Me, but on Him that sent Me. And he that beholdeth Me beholdeth Him that sent Me. I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on Me may not abide in the darkness. And if any man hear My sayings, and keep them not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejecteth Me, and receiveth not My sayings, hath One that judgeth him; the word that I spake, the same shall judge him in the last day. For I spake not for Myself; but the Father which sent Me, He hath given Me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that His commandment is life eternal: the things therefore which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto Me, so I speak." — John xii, 44-50. CHAPTER XLIX PREPARATION FOR THE TRUE PASSOVER JERUSALEM was preparing for the great national holiday. It was only two days before the Passover-Feast. No one in all the mighty train of human beings which filled the streets of the city caught the significance of the new Paschal moon which was now in its twelfth day, and was completing its orb above the mass of white which was the Temple, and the mass of green, which was the Garden over beyond Ke- dron. Jesus had left the Temj^le for- k ever, as a place for the proc lamation of His Gospel. In the Gar den, His Gos pel was soon to utter itself in the eloquence of blood. The huge city-gates had scarcely closed at the sunset hour, when the evening sacrifice, to which Jewish author ities gave their care, was receiving the promise of a new symbolism, in the sacrifice which they were plotting. The shadows of the evening, which made hopeless night for the old world, were thick ening. Back in the heart of the Eternal Mystery of Love, a fade- 533 534 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. less morning was waiting to spring over the planet and make a new world. His disciples had closely accompanied Jesus since a little after noon on that April day, and soon they were sitting with Him on the brow of Mount Olivet. They were feeding their souls upon His words, while, with loving patriotism, they gazed upon the resplendent and stately buildings whose mosaics were laid in the hearts of the Hebrew people, and whose pillars rose firmly in the devotion of the most truly religious race the world has ever seen. All the way along, as He led them, to Olivet, they had found themselves stretching their heart-strings, almost unendurably; for their inherited affections were clinging fast to the porches and clois ters, the sculptured marbles and the golden adornments of the Tem ple, and they were going away from them all with the One in whom they had hoped these very things should be made secure. Kedron was not dark enough, even yet, to divide them from the finely set pieces of cedar-wood and the radiant gems, the well-known columns and the huge brass gates, which had constituted both memorial and prophecy in Israel's religion. When they looked up into His face, as "they sat learning of Jesus beneath one of the fig-trees on the mountain-slope, they still connected the candlestick and its light in the Temple with that longed-for day when Jesus should be pro claimed there as the Messiah, amidst the exultation of the Hebrew people. That prospect was now sadly clouded o'er, yet it faded not entirely from the realm of their imagination and hope. Priests, eld ers and scribes were consulting as to how their Temple could be preserved against the breath of the gentlest man who ever lived. His disciples were continually trying to impress Him with the greatness and honor of the building. He was telling them: "As for these things which ye behold, the days will come in which there shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." — Matt, xxiv, 2. Cosmopolitanism would destroy provincialism. Peter, James, and John were joined by Andrew, and they asked for some sign of these things. "And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man lead you astray. For many shall come in My name, saying, I am the Christ; and shall lead many astray. And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for these things must needs come to pass; but the end is THE ALAN OF GALILEE. 535 not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines and earthquakes in divers places. But all these things are the beginning of travail. But when they shall lead you to judgment, and deliver you up, be not anx ious beforehand what ye shall speak: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost. And brother shall deliver up brother to death, and the father his child; and children shall rise up against parents, and cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for My name's sake: but he that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved. And the gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the nations; and then the end shall come.' '-— Matt, xxiv, 4-14. Jesus went further than this, in His descriptions ot the beneficent revolutions which His quiet and pro found word had already set on foot. To them, there was nothing but destruction promised in His words. Knowing that their minds were acquainted with the prophecies of Daniel, He proceeded to show them how violent and sudden would be what that prophecy had called "the abomination of desolation." — Matt, xxiv, 15. Not a solitary phase of the awful siege that at last constituted the main event in the stream of fire and disaster which, less than forty years after, left Jerusalem an ash-heap, was omitted in the stern yet pathetic word of Jesus. Standing upon a slight plateau of Olivet, He flung over the dazzling splendor of the Jerusalem which he loved only less than He loved humanity, His prophetic announcement of inevitable doom. Surely never had the fig-trees of Olivet shaken with the echoes of such direful yet tender words as were spoken by this already hunted man, when He compared the days of Noah, imme diately before the event of the flood, with the days of the coming of the Son of Man. The secret of human progress was His. He showed that its method must be then what it has been ever since. The souls who were ready to receive His kingdom would find the forces of construc tion at work within the process of destruction, and a divine benefit entering into them, alongside of the progress of general disaster. Noth ing more truly states His hope, for those who would be open-eyed and prepared to receive the triumph of His kingdom, than such words as, THE RICH YOUNG MAN. FROM PAINTING BY E. GEBHARDT. THE ALAN OF GALILEE. 537 "Watch therefore: for ye know not on what day your Lord com eth." — Matt, xxiv, 42. "Two women shall be grinding at the mill: one is taken and one is left. " — Matt, xxiv, 41. He constituted each one of them a porter who should watch while his Lord took a jour ney afar, leaving authority to his servants, and ' ' to every man his work." Christianity has always reverenced the personality of each man in his life-task, and its Lord has ever commanded the same watchfulness upon the part of all. The end sought for by the reli gion of Jesus is nobly described in His expression: "That ye maybe accounted worthy to escape all these things, and to stand before the Son of Man." — Luke xxi, 36. But Jesus knew how easily these painful and meaningful state ments might escape men who had been educated in symbolism, and to whom He had spoken in parables with the certainty of producing the most lasting impressions. So He spoke the truth to them again in the lovely parable, known as that of The Ten Virgins and in that of The Talents. They are the two flowers of His picturesque and profound teaching which Pie invited out of this soil: and in their fragrance He was able to lead them to realize more definitely the nature of His Kingdom, and the attendant circumstances of that sure judgment which was to sweep out of the eternity in which He lived, and strike the thorny tract of time in which He had been con demned. Over it all, — the wreck and disaster of spiteful evil, the destruc tion and punishment of the enthroned iniquity which vaunted itself as it drove Him to His cross, — He left, in the air which was to be breathed by every one of His brethren, the words which the King of Kings is ever saying: "Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand, Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the king dom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was an hungered, and ye gave Me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took Me in: naked, and ye clothed Me: I was in prison, and ye came unto Me. Then shall the right eous answer Him, saying, Lord, when saw we Thee an hungered, and fed Thee? or athirst, and gave Thee drink? And when saw we Thee a stranger, and took Thee in? or naked, and clothed Thee? And when saw we Thee sick, or in prison, and came unto Thee? 538 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these My brethren, even these least, ye did it unto Me. Then shall He say also unto them on His left hand, Depart from Me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was an hungered, and ye gave Me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave Me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took Me not in; naked, and ye clothed Me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited Me not. Then shall they also answer, saying, Lord, when saw we Thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto Thee? Then shall He answer them saying, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these least, ye did it not unto Me. And these shall go away into eternal punish ment: but the righteous into eternal life." — Matt, xxv, 35-46. The great sermon, in which He had showed more clearly than ever that the Fatherhood of God is revealed in the brotherhood of man, was ended. He started over the hill toward Bethany, saying to them: "Ye know that after two days is the feast of the Passover, and the Son of Man is betrayed to be crucified." — Matt, xxvi, 2. Caiaphas must never be separated from his wretched doctrine of expediency. Ripen ing the plot with the heat of his Sadducean hatred, he was now con sulting with the chief priests and the scribes and the elders gathered in the upper court of his palace. Caiaphas was fully known to the people as worthy of his name, ' ' the Oppressor. " He could not go too far with the Judeans who were restless, and the Galileans who were ready for a turbulent uprising. Caiaphas must be wary, even in his dealing with Jesus, the Galilean. He was now urging upon the doubtful Sanhedrists, that it was expedient that this one man should die "rather than the nation perish. " — John xi, 50. Jesus was soon to oppose this theory of expediency with the faith disclosed in His say ing to His loved disciples: "It is expedient for you that I go away." — John xvi, 7. Dying and going away are the phrases indicating dif ferences of outlook. Caiaphas was saving, if possible, a sordid and priest-ridden nation. Jesus was opening out through the break to be made in the horizon-line of human life, immeasurable possibilities of the spiritual universe. This was radicalism of the THE AlAN OE GALILEE. 539 positive sort. Caiaphas and his consulting officials were becoming entangled with Jewish customs, Roman laws, and the most bewil dering and vigorous political and religious Force which the world has known, while Jesus was masterful of all forces, Himself as calm and sweet and yet as thrilled with springtides of immortal love as was that April day. At last they were in Bethany, at the house of one Simon, whose three children, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, again offered Jesus their loving hospitality. These well-to-do, if not wealthy, people, had so often given Plim the homage of their tender com panionship, that Jesus had conse crated their pos sessions by noble friendship. When supper-time ar rived, friendly guests came in. These talked with Lazarus, whom Jesus had brought back from the tomb, and Simon himself, whom Jesus had delivered from leprosy. It was a fearless, as well as a most respectable, and probably a well-known home. The hospitable people there were not apprehensive of evil from Jew ish officials who might track Jesus to their domicile; nor were they in terror because Death was haunting His steps. Death? Had they not known something of His power with the monster? They could never forget that Jesus had already demonstrated His authority at the grave, in the case of their brother Lazarus. Martha, the prac tical and laborious, having arranged so that each of the guests might recline at the table, was doubtless busied with the household affairs, while the twelve disciples found their places upon the couches. Mary was never so anxious as then to do honor to her friend, the Rabbi, BETHANY HOUSE OF MARY AND MARTHA. 540 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. and in accordance with the custom which almost required that the head of a Rabbi, on a festive occasion, should be anointed with oil of rare perfume, she came suddenly to her Master and broke an ala baster vase of very expensive and fragrant unguent upon His head. Wealth had poured its tribute upon poverty; love had found ade quate language for its utterance. The room was filled with the sweet odor. It was tne act of an idealist, — a poetic, perhaps romantic, thing. Instantly our own ungenerous and unworshipful spirit asks questions. Why did she not start a subscription among her wealthy friends, with the gift of this costly ointment, so that Jesus could have had a home of His own? The answer is not that He needed no home; He was on His way to prepare the many mansions for others pf the universal brotherhood. The answer is that adoration is often better than what is called philanthropy. Why was the precious nard not used to purchase for Him some new clothing? The answer is not that He needed it not; He was soon to stand thorn-crowned with some vulgar colored rags upon Him. The answer is that He needed affection which, while it feared that earth could not make Him com fortable now and nothing but Love's ministry was left to be done, went to its duty with a resistless impulse. There was one in the company, who for iong days had not ap prehended the spiritual values with which Jesus dealt. The beautiful devotion of Mary appealed to his reverence or his love in vain, for they were nearly dead. The fragrant spikenard appealed only to his indelicate senses. These senses roused, only to sway spiritual con cerns from their true center. This man was Judas. To him, the act of Mary was not a rich expression of unhesitating loyalty; it was only a useless and indeed wasteful expenditure. Judas had put a money value on things which cash cannot measure. He was already selling his Christ. Had his handling of the small funds of the dis ciples in coin, and his guardianship of the money-bag misled him into sordid commercialism? It could not have been thus, if he had permitted himself to be swept with the divine passion for self-sacri fice, and to be illuminated by Jesus' view of the treasures of earth and heaven. Nothing but looking up can save us from looking down. A Judas fails, not because the money-bag is so heavy, or the THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 541 spikenard so costly, or the poor so needy ; but because Judas is so weak, and has so little spiritual insight. All that Judas could say when Mary broke the seal of the flask, and the rich unguent was emptied on the head and feet of Jesus, and Mary wiped the loved feet with her hair, was this: "Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?" — John xii, 5. There was a whole pound of the ointment; and the air of the house became perfumed. The more there was of it, the less of beauty Judas saw in the act of Mary, and the more he saw to add to his disapproval. It was nothing to him that the worn and persecuted Jesus, at least for a moment, was surrounded by something more sweet than the hatred of priests and the chill treachery of a disciple. Jesus alone could estimate values. Not the ointment, but the deed, was most rare. The lavishness of her love was a fact infi nitely dearer than three hundred pence worth of ointment, which might have been turned into coin and given to the poor, as Judas suggested. Judas never is solitary. Others joined Judas in this coarse conception which even now turns love into money, and with vulgar indelicacy makes this a colder, more hesitating and suspicious world. The scheme of Judas is the swiftest way to make this a poor world. On the other hand, nothing has ever done so much to enrich the poor, to save men from that poverty which is worse than pennilessness, as the spontaneous and glad acts of sympathy which have been heedless of everything except devotion to Him, who, being poor, enriched all humanity. The utilitarian may make two spears of grass grow where but one had grown before. Let him do his work, but let him not feel resentment that the idealist inspires such manhood that one spear of grass, in the atmosphere which love creates, becomes more sustaining than two, where love is not. Jesus saw the personalness of the woman's act, and He said: ' ' Why trouble ye the woman ? For she hath wrought a good work upon Me. For ye have the poor always with you; but Me ye have not always. For in that she poured this ointment upon My body, she did it to prepare Me for burial. Verily I say unto you, Where soever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, that also which this woman hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her." — Matt, xxvi, 10-13. 542 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. No one so certainly as Jesus comprehended the influence and ministry of wealth unto poverty. He spent many hours with the rich, because He was the friend of the poor. He received the sym pathy and adoration of those who possessed a superabundance, because He was making this world a kindlier and easier place for sickly and hungry outcasts. He Himself was poor, in order that He might develop in rich and poor alike the sentiments which will make poverty impossible and wealth its servant. Not Judases, but the Marys have blessed the poor. They have enthroned the poor man's Christ, and led unto Him the homage of civ- lization. But there was something more than this, in it all. The plants of earth had yielded this un guent to furnish forth a symbol of unhesitating love, at the hour when the cold damp of death was upon the forehead of the beloved Jesus, who was to rule in the hearts of men and women. These wom en, in the presence of death, would fling earth's perfumes into His very grave, and, by making Him immortal in human love, would make a better humanity immortal in Him. An act of kindness to the poor is always an act of kindness unto Him, but at this crisis, when the odors of the grave, — which is at last the poor man's home, perhaps his only home on earth, — were to be met by the poor Nazarene, this act of kindness unto Him was the supreme act of kindness unto the poor of all ages. "Me ye have not always," — Matt, xxvi, n, — is the one side of the truth which leads us most clearly to see that the poor we have always; they were left, in order that, doing Love's deeds unto them, we may be forever helping them and enriching them with treasures which, like Him, last beyond death and the grave. Jesus' act made bitter the soul of Judas. If these were the eco nomics of Jesus, this disciple could see the loss of that one of the WHERE CHRIST'S BETRAYAL WAS FORETOLD. THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 543 twelve thrones he had expected to obtain. Judas was soon at the house of Caiaphas with the most awful saying upon his lips ever conceived or spoken by the commercial spirit. The hideous night was shivering with his speech as he said: "I am here to betray Jesus." "What will ye give me, and I will deliver Him unto you?" — Matt, xxvi, 15. The leaders of the council were at once exultant, and absentees were hastily called together, with the present meniDers of the San hedrin. There stood Judas, the only one among the twelve who had brought from Judea the externahsm and intensely political fervor of the Judeans. His day-dream of a monarchy satisfactory to a gross adventurer, such as he had become by shutting his soul to the finer sentiments of Jesus, had faded away; and now, having been stamped as an embezzler of the small treasure which had been entrusted to him, in the very presence of Jesus; having beheld Jesus on Palm Sunday refusing the dazzling chance of being made the leader of a Jewish revolt and the crowned one of Jewish hopes, he felt disgust at his Master's talk about the cross for Himself and martyrdom for them, and flung away the memory of it as an abominable thing. The whole enterprise, as he looked at it, was collapsing. He would escape, if he could. If he could escape with some thing, so much the bet ter. Jesus had utterly disappointed him. No king dom, in which he should be judging one of the twelve tribes, was in sight. The Jews were THE OUTER COURT OF THE TEMPLE. 544 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. ready to bury the sword in the breast of every follower of Jesus. He could now be of such service to the enemies of Jesus, as would make him safe, and perhaps he could make something. "And from that time he sought opportunity to betray Him." — Matt, xxvi, 16. It was now the fourteenth of Nisan, the day beginning on our Wednesday, April fourth, at the setting of the sun, and ending on Thursday, April fifth, at the same time. The great holiday-time of Israel unfolded its symbolism and uttered its patriotism throughout all Jerusalem. It was the celebration of Independence Day to all Hebrewdom. Labor was suspended at noon, and the law of Moses was strictly obeyed: "Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses: for whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel. And in the first day there shall be to you an holy convocation, and in the seventh day an holy convocation; no manner of work shall be done in them, save that which every man must eat, that only may be done of you. And ye shall observe the feast of unleavened bread; for in this selfsame day I have brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt: therefore shall ye observe this day throughout your generations by an ordinance forever." — Exodus xv, 15-17. While the sunset waned, and the Passover lamb waited to be killed within the fore-courts of the Temple, while priests were arrang ing that all the blood and fat should be carefully sacrificed on the altar, Caiaphas and his miserable assistants in crime were arranging for the sacrifice of that Passover Lamb "which taketh away the sins of the world." Other priests were making preparation for the feasting which was usually made from what was left of the Passover lamb, after the burnt offering unto God. This feasting was to occur at sunset, after the fifteenth day had begun. CHAPTER L THE UPPER ROOM MEANTIME Jesus had left Bethany and entered Jerusalem. With thousands of villagers and countrymen who had come to the anniversary celebration, the disciples had questioned among them selves where they might celebrate the Paschal Feast. At length, they said unto Jesus: "Where wilt Thou that we prepare for Thee to eat the Passover?" — Luke xxii, g. Others were speaking of the Feast as the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because, united with the Feast of First Fruits, this feast which made memor- / ial of the escape of Israel from Egypt, was now gathering into its rejoicing the exultations of the people at the opening of the harvest. The hurrying throngs made such a tumult as contrasted strongly with the quiet of the home in Bethany, where Jesus passed the previous night. There was another contrast deepening between that hour in which Jesus once before had kept the Feast in the Holy City, 35 545 THE BATTLEMENTS UPON THE ROOFS, JERUSALEM. 546 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. and this hour, when he was keeping it again, this time with His twelve chosen disciples. The disciples felt, rather than saw, the difference of tone and action, in their Lord. Yet they were not with Him, in spirit, as they fancied. It is possible that even then they were anxious as to the place where they were to eat the Paschal lamb with Him, in the hope that He might assume appropriately the prerogatives of His Messiahship. This fancy, how ever, was shaken in their sensuous minds when Jesus spoke: "Be hold, when ye are entered into the city, there shall meet you a man bearing a pitcher of water; follow him into the house whereinto he goeth. And ye shall say unto the goodman of the house, The Master saith unto thee, where is the guest-chamber, where I shall eat the Passover with my disciples? And he will shew you a large upper room, furnished: there make ready. "—Luke xxii, 10-12. No glittering enthronement was visible in these solemn words. This unknown friend of Jesus, the owner of the Upper Room, has gathered about him a halo of affectionate mystery. Every heart which has loved the Nazarene Rabbi has called him its friend. He was probably a secret disciple, and his name may have been sup pressed for fear of the Jews. The bearing of the pitcher was probably a preconcerted signal. It is also possible that he was none other than John Mark, though it is better to be silent as to his name, even as Scripture is silent. His personality, however, walks with infinite charm through the streets of time, peopled as they are by Christian imagina tion. Dr. Geikie says that "the only recompense that could be given " to him for his kindness to Jesus, ' ' was the skin of the Paschal lamb and the earthen dishes used at the meal." He has received, in addition, the gratitude of mankind and an immortal place in the annals of heroic love. Simon Peter and John had gone about making the preparations. The unknown friend doubtless gave his help. The lamb was pur chased, possibly by Judas, who was yet treasurer. It was a yearling and a male, without spot or blemish. It was taken within the courts of the Temple, where many others had been taken, after the trumpets had been twice blown, proclaiming that the proper officers were ready within the inner courts to examine the lambs about to be sacrificed. Meantime the two disciples were seeing to it that the room was fur- THE ALAN OF GALILEE. 547 nished properly. In the form of the Roman Triclinium, the tables were arranged, and cushions were placed upon the benches which were gathered near. No Jew at such an hour would appear as hasten ing to accomplish anything, as his fathers hastened to escape from Egypt. Everyone therefore must recline. Yonder at the Temple, three blasts of the trumpets announced that the time had come for the slaughter of the victims. The disciples saw that the lamb was properly slain; those parts of it usually devoted to the altar service were left behind, and they carried the remainder to the large upper room, in the closing twilight. Jesus was waiting there, with the -est of His disciples. It was a moment in which the powerful emotions of Jesus could not be denied utterance, and as they were reclining, Jesus, looking into the eyes which for so long had burned with anticipations of the establishing of an earthly kingdom, said unto them: "With desire have I desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer: for I say unto you, I will not any more eat it, until it be fulfilled in the king dom of God." — Luke xxii, 15, 16. It was the moment of His supreme moral grandeur. He could not lift their humanity up to His height, even now. It was, therefore, a moment when the almost childish ambi- tiousness, which had not been utterly cast out of the minds of the disciples who still entertained the hope of political preferment, demon strated its desperate vitality. It seemed a matter of the greatest importance to some, at least, of His perverse followers, that they should not occupy lower places than their brethren at the evening celebration of the Passover, for that might mean loss of precedence at the consummation. What could have been more painful to Jesus than the contention that arose among them? It was like their dis putes which had previously pierced His soul. Their debate nearly broke His patient heart. "Who is greatest?" — this was the question which again revealed their selfish aspirations, even if each was trying to prove himself so much greater than the rest as to be incapable of being a traitor. The whole dispute was a rebellious proceeding against the spirit and method of Jesus. They were losing the vision of Christ just as men do who debate as to their claims to an orthodoxy or loyalty more valuable than that of somebody else. He was even then being cruci- 548 THE ALAN OF GALLLEE. fied at the heart, by those whom He loved; yet He said unto them: "The kings of the Gentiles have lordship over them; and they that have authority over them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is the greater among you, let him become as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth ? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am in the midst of you as he that serveth. But ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations; and I appoint unto you a kingdom, even as my Father apjoointed unto me, that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom; and ye shall sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." — Luke xxii, 25-30. Greatness is power to serve and to rule men by serving them. It tends to kingship only through brotherhood. It is less like the isolated Napoleon and more like Washington who was the father of his country. It is not the power to do great things in a little manner, but little things in a great manner. It can reach low, because it has grasped something high. It is divinest when it is humanest. Jesus felt that even the strongest words were not enough to in dicate to His disciples the importance of the truth He had uttered hitherto: "He who would be chief among you, let him be the servant of all." — Luke xxii, 26. Nothing but an act more eloquent than any words could rebuke their vain-glorious strife. They had doubtless been so intent in foolish debate of the question as to who should be greatest, that they had forgotten the usual act of courtesy when a servant was not present, and no one was in the humor to wash his brother's feet. Jesus would again illustrate the truth of the Father hood of God by an act of Sonship unto God, appealing unto them through its brotherliness. He rose from the couch, while they kept up the dispute, and began to gird Himself with a towel, like a servant, for His task. It was a small duty, but it required an infinity of motive. It was a great but not a big thing that He did. Only a man who is sure of his divine pedigree can afford to do the lowliest, which is the divinest thing. It was the hour of Jesus' moral sublimity. To use John's phrase, Jesus "Knew that He should depart out of this world unto the Father," — John xiii, 1. The light in which He saw His fate THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 549 was too glorious for Jesus to regard the event to come, as merely death. It was rather "departing out of this world unto the Fa f her.' The resources of almightiness were His. A grandeur as of the Infi nite was in His manner. Not because He was resourceful in divinity and therefore too loft}', did He decline, and not in spile of the fact that Pie was ' ' knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God, and that He went to God," — John xiii, 3, — did He do an act of brotherliness that made humanity radiant with divinity. Motives like these and restraints like these could not touch Him. Nay, rather, as we see Him there, it is strictly because Jesus was "knowing that the Father had given all these things into His hands, and that He is come from God, and went to God;" — because He was certain of His position in the uni verse and exultantly responsive to the inflow of God upon Him, — "He riseth from supper, and layeth aside PIis garments; and He took a towel, and girded Himself. Then He poureth water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded." — John xiii, 4, 5. Little men say, ' ' I have position and power and dignity — beeattse of these, I cannot do this lowly duty." Greater men say, "I have position, power and dignity, and, in spite of them, I will perform this small task." The greatest of men said: "I am come from God: 1 have the secret of the universe; I am going to God" — and because all this is true, I will go to the depths, lighting up the way as I go, and do all in the glory of a divine radiance." Jesus was feeding on the highest and deepest of impulses, and was manifesting the God-like motive and method. Let no' man dare to essay the performance of human duties without a divine motive. A man must have divine reasons for living the human life divinely. He will then demonstrate his divine sonship, at every task. Simon Peter was probably the first to whom He came with the ewer of water and whose feet Jesus began to wash. The warm hearted disciple could not see how morally sublime it all was, or he saw only too clearly the amazing distance between his Master's brotherliness and his own unbrotherliness, and was humbled at the contrast. The symbolism of the act was entirely beyond him. He said: "Lord, dost thou wash my feet?" Jesus answered and said 55° THE MAN OF GALLLEE. CHRIST WASHING THE FEET OF PETER. unto him: "What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt un derstand hereafter. " Peter said unto Him : ' ' Thou shalt never wash my feet." Jesus answered him: "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me." — John xiii, 6-8. The last words of Jesus struck a response in Peters' soul. Nobody knows so well as did the impulsive disciple, that it is not what we do for Christ, but that it is what Christ does for us, that saves; and therefore Simon Peter said unto Him: "Lord, not my feet only, but my hands and head." Jesus said unto Him: "He that is bathed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all." — John xiii, 9, io. Judas, as we believe, was reclining with them, and we THE ALAN OF GALILEE. 55i have no reason to suppose that Jesus did not manifest the heroism of brotherliness, which is Love's passion, by washing the feet of Judas also. No such manifestation of divinity in humanity had ever before been given as when the drops tinkled into the basin, from the hands of Jesus, which had cleansed the feet of Judas, His betrayer. But He did it in the full light of perfect intelligence; "For He knczo him who should betray Him; therefore said He, Ye are not all clean." — John xiii, 1 1 . The great doctrine of universal brotherhood had again been taught, so that the world could not forget it. Jesus' brotherhood went only as far as His Father's Fatherhood — even to Judas. And yet Jesus bade them pause, that He might im press it upon them. The evangelist tells us: "So when He had washed their feet, and taken His garments, and sat down again, He said unto them, Know ye what I have done unto you? Ye call me Master, and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am." He had never so clearly revealed the fact that His Lordship was of a divine quality. He had now shown in what kind of act true Lordship — even His Divinity — is manifested. Itis not in the power to escape ordinary duties, but in the power to do them divinely; it is not in saying oracular words of infinite spaciousness, but in saying simple truth kindly and lovingly ; it is not in doing high things with lowly motives, but in doing lowly things with high motives — that Divinity makes sweet proof of itself. And this quality must be theirs; this method Jesus would have them adopt; and they would adopt it by loving Him. "If I then, the Lord and the Master," He said, emphasizing the new evidence He gave them of His moral mastery, "have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet.. For I have given you an example, that ye also should do as I have done unto you. Verily, verily, I say unto you, A servant is not greater than his Lord; neither one that is sent greater than he that sent him. If ye know these things, blessed are ye if ye do them. I speak not of you all; I know whom I have chosen: but that the Scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth my bread lifted up his heel against me. From henceforth I tell you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am He. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth Me; and he that receiveth Me receiveth 552 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. Him that sent Me." — John xiii, 12-20. He had shown that His is a moral Lordship. It was a terrible trial to which the disciples had forced their Master; but "having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end." In the midst of the humiliation whose pit they had digged for Him, with their ambitious but loving hands, He looked upon the table where the prepared Passover Feast was waiting. There were the roasted lamb, and the bitter herbs, with the red wine, the cakes of unleavened bread, and the sweet fruit, each a perpetual symbol of the unfailing love of God to Israel. Had not His Father been patient with headstrong and ignorant Israel? Could not He be patient with His disciples who were God's children? Their minds were undergoing a strain such as Moses never knew in the night of flight from Pharaoh or in the long pathway across the desert. Here humanity was being emancipated and reorganized. He took the first of the three cups of wine, which later custom had added to the celebration of the Passover, and, having poured out His soul in gratitude to God, He handed it to His disciples, saying: "Take this, and divide it among yourselves: for I say unto you, I will not drink from henceforth of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come." — Luke xxii, 17, 18. By one act He had shown their equality one with another. But He proceeded to give to them, and to all mankind, the institution of Holy Com munion, in such a way as that it should be the one ever-recurring ceremony of remembrance, breaking down all barriers between men, abolishing all aristocracies with the democracy of goodness and love, and laying the foundations of universal brotherhood in the self-sac rificing love of God. _ There was no hurry in the course of the feast. Soon Jesus took one of the cakes of unleavened bread, and, having given thanks again, He broke it in accordance with the fact that His body was being broken, and gave it unto them, saying: "This is my body, which is now in the act of being given for you. This do as your memo rial of me." — Luke xxii, 19. His calm contrasted nobly with the haste of that far-away night when the unleavened bread left by the Hebrew people was made the testimony to their sudden departure, in fear and hope. Jesus was ' ' laying down " His life— so deliberately THE A/AN OF GALLLEE. 553 and divinely, that He could "take it up again." The bitter herbs which were doubtless wrapped around the bits of broken bread were dipped with the bread itself in the common dish. Some of them began to feel how much more severe would be the cost of freedom of soul, than was that of Hebrew emancipation from Egyptian tyranny. It was indeed Passover Night. Other than Pharaoh's host, even their own fears and misgivings, sins and earthly cares, would follow them to some Red Sea. God grant that their Egyptian pursuers may be overwhelmed — only the blood of Jesus, representative of the cost of evil and the self-sacrifice of good, can drown what pursues a soul who will go with Him, as the new Law-giver on Love's enterprise. The supper went on, altogether in harmony with the customs which had prevailed through centuries, and yet in harmony with the destinv of the human soul under the grace of God. At last the festal meal in memory of the flight of the Hebrews from Egypt, in the olden time, was ended. But this occasion was more than a looking back into Jewish history. Jesus, as the Christ, knowing Himself to be "the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world." — John i, 29, — and feeling that the moment of His sacri fice was near, added a few words which took up the symbol of the past and transformed it into a rite which has gathered together and trained those who possess the secret of the future. They had eaten "the bread of affliction" as "the body of the Passover." He now handed them one of the cakes, and, after giving thanks, He said: "Take, eat; this is my body, which is given for you. This do as memorial of Me." And the cup in like manner, after supper, saying: "This cup is the new covenant in My blood, even that which is poured out for you. " — Luke xxii, 20. Israel's history was to be lost in a memory of Him as the One Sacrifice. He went so far, in ex planation of the event, as to compare the old covenant under Moses, with the new covenant which He Himself had made. He spoke of the symbol as "My blood of the covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins." — Matt, xxvi, 28. Matthew, among the evangelists, preserves this last phrase. Ratified in blood, as of old, the new covenant was complete. In it, Jesus, by the eminence of a fact, rose out of the company of sages, and prophets, and became "the Savior, which is Christ, the Lord." 554 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. The Last Supper was nearly over. Jesus Himself, looking upon them from the highest couch, declined to partake of the wine, say ing: "Verily I say unto you, I will no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God." — Luke xxii, 18. The assuredness of His words was sublime. Across the table lay a dark and ominous shadow. Judas was there, and Jesus would not be the unintelligent guide of His disci ples, or the hoodwinked King of a new Kingdom, ignorant or pur posely silent in the presence of the betrayer. Glorious were the prospects of the Gospel of the world's redemption. But it was a gospel yet to win its crown of light out of profoundest gloom. He said: "But behold, the hand of him that betrayeth Me is with Me on the table. For the Son of Man indeed goeth, as it hath been determined: but woe unto that man through whom He is betrayed!" — Luke xxii, 21, 22. It is not astonishing that Matthew and Mark remembered these solemn phrases with unwonted accuracy. The hypocrisy of Judas had been so masterful, the consciousness of weak ness upon each man's own part was so overpowering, that they were startled, and each distrusted himself. ' ' And they began to question among themselves, which of them it was that should do this thing." — Luke xxii, 23. There is nothing more awfully descriptive of the depths of sin, into which the best of men feels it is possible for him to de scend, than their question, asked of Jesus again and again: "Lord, is it I? Is it I?" It is proof of the uncon sciousness with which a man grows worse, that even Judas asked that ques tion — or was it brazen or perverse hypoc risy? The ardent Peter motioned to John to ask of Jesus who it should be, judas going out into the night. and John asked him: "Lord, who is it?'' THE ALAN OF GALLLEE. 555 Jesus therefore answered: "He it is, for whom I shall dip the sop, and give it him." "So when Pie had dipped the sop, He taketh and giveth it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. And after the sop, there entered Satan into him." The last good had been driven out, apparently, and Satan had abundant room. ' ' Jesus therefore saith unto him, That thou doest, do quickly. Now no man at the table knew for what intent He spake this unto him," — and we need not guess. — fohu xiii, 25-28. John and Judas, — leagues apart in moral quality, — were each near enough to Jesus so that John, who reclined on PIis right, and had leaned his head on the Master's breast, could hear the whisper of Jesus as to the sign by which the traitor was to be known, and Judas, who reclined on PIis left, first received the sop from Christ's hands. So near, indeed, was Judas to Jesus, in the flesh, that he alone received the fateful information, when he lyingly asked where was the traitor. Judas continued his hypocrisy so well that some of them thought, "because Judas had the bag, that Jesus said unto him, Buy what things we have need of for the feast; or, that he should give something to the poor." — John xiii, 29. But the traitor could no longer remain in the presence of Jesus. And as for the poor? Judas had lost his intense interest in them. Out into the night he went; and the Paschal moon shining upon him threw his dark and horrible shadow upon the earth. It was indeed night — night of soul, deep and terrible. A sense of freedom came to Jesus, when Judas was gone, and He spoke of Himself as the Manifestation of Man and God, when He said: "Now is the Son of Man glorified in Him." — John xiii, 31. Still did He cling to that phrase, " The Son of Man," and thus He suggested that the glory of God and the good of humanity are eter nally one. He added: "And God shall glorify Him in Himself, and straightway shall He glorify Him. Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek Me: and as I have said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come; so now I say unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another." — John xiii, 32-34. Still was the 556 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. Fatherhood of God unto His perfect Son to be illustrated, not so much by their system of divinity, as by their practical humanity — by loving brotherhood. Simon Peter could no longer endure the dense cloud which seemed ready to envelop in hopeless darkness the future of his Master and himself. He said to Jesus: " Lord, whither goest Thou?" And Jesus' answer to the eager disciple was this: "Whither I go thou canst not follow Me now, but thou shalt follow Me afterwards." — John xiii, 36. Between Now and Afterwards, the heart-strings of a disciple were to be stretched, for the purpose of the higher culture of the rock-man. Loyal, according to the law of impulse, and thinking that Jesus might be about to carry His gospel into other parts of the world, the enthusiastic man felt himself ready for any service or sacrifice, and Peter said unto Him : ' ' Lord, why cannot I follow Thee even now ? I will lay down my life for thee. " — J ohm xiii, 37. This is a critical hour, for the success of that enterprise, by which Jesus is bringing Peter, the "rock-man," out from Simon, the unreliable Peter, the son of God, out of Simon, the son of Jonas. Jesus' tenderness must still be true, if it breaks Simon Peter's heart. ' ' Then said Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended in me this night: for it is writ ten, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad. But after I am raised up, I will go before you into Galilee." The rest of them wondered: but " Peter answered and said unto Him, If all shall be offended in thee, I will never be offended." Poor child of conceit, born of power and love! — com parisons are the last refuge of weakness, odious and perilous. "Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, that this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny Me thrice. Peter saith unto Him, Even if I must die with thee, yet will I not deny Thee. Likewise said all the disciples." — Matt, xxvi, 31-35. It is often harder and braver to live for Christ than to die for Him. Still more personally did Jesus address Himself to this disciple upon whose confession He had founded the church. He addressed, him in the word descriptive of the ore out of which the gold — Peter — must come: "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you all, that he might sift you all as wheat: but I made supplication for THE A/AN OF GALLLEE. 557 thee, that thy faith fail not: and do thou when once thou hast turned again, stablish thy brethren." Even hope rides upon the fierce process; and "ALL things" — even Simon's coming disaster of soul — are to work for good to them that love God. But Simon would still boast. "And he said unto Him, Lord, with Thee I am read}' to go both to prison and to death." Jesus said, " I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, until thou shalt thrice deny even that thou knowest Me." — Ltike xxii, 31-34. Simon Peter's Master will be so true to him, knowing the experience through which His distressed disciple must go, that He will point out even more circumstantially than before the way- marks on the path along whose declivity Simon Peter will stagger. "And Jesus said unto him, Verily, I say unto thee, that thou to-day, even this night, before the cock crow twice, shalt deny Me thrice. But he spake exceedingly vehemently, If I must die with Thee, I will not deny Thee. And in like manner also said they all. " — Matt, xxvi, 34, 35. Three times he had boasted: three times he would deny. There was little more that Jesus could say, for the night was nearly gone. Before another night should come, He knew there would be a vast difference in their feeling and environment. "And He said unto them, when I sent you forth without purse, and wallet, and shoes, lacked ye anything? And they said, Nothing. And He said unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise a wallet and he that hath none, let him sell his cloak, and buy a sword. For I say unto you, that this which is written must be fulfilled in Me, and He was reckoned with transgressors: for that which concerneth Me hath fulfillment. And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And He said unto them, it is sufficient." — Luke xxii, 35-38. He was not going to appeal to an army to rely upon their swords. He told them that the two swords were enough. His was to be a moral battle whose victory would be obtained by force of righteousness alone; yet by the use of that phraseology, He had warned them against the bitter hostility of the world. The ' 'sifting" must now proceed. In the book of Job, the spirit of evil is spoken of as "adversary" or "accuser," — his is the slimy finger touching all purity to leave it smeared; he is the skep tical detective and inquisitor asserting by his shadowing of souls their 558 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. hidden guilt. Between the time of ancient Job and the self-confi dent Peter, Satan had not changed. Now, he has asked to sift Peter, sure that all his professions are chaff. Evil never can believe in good. Still he is hurrying to and fro throughout the earth, peering into every keyhole of character to find baseness there, sneaking into every cor ner of the soul to catch it in its depravity. Years after this sifting of Peter, in which the spirit of evil repeated his work upon Job, to whom he came, as he said, from hurrying to and fro in the earth, Peter speaks of Satan in his first letter (v. 8) as the "parapatetic, " —a wandering, roaring lion, intent on finding prey. As in the drama, called the Book of Job, we perceive that Satan — the spirit of evil — has only that power which God permits. So also here, in the sift ing of Peter, Satan's dominion is controlled by the larger and unin- fracted dominion of God. "Simon, Simon, behold Satan asked to have" you, that he might sift you as wheat; but I have made supplica tion for thee that thy faith fail not; and do thou, when once thou hast turned again, stablish thy brethren." — Luke xxii, 31, 32. So said His Master when the incarnate God permitted Peter's trial, and intimated how He stood "within the shadow, keeping watch above His own." There is Christ's personalness in all this talk. It is a jewel- worker, in the midst of many gems, upon which He is working, deal ing specially with one of them. He uses the figure of grains of wheat with thechaff which has clung about them and entirely covers them, so that the chaff about them is really the only thing the eye sees at first. He has in His eye the Peter whom He saw as Simon, whom the world knew as simply Simon — the chaff Simon having so completely cov ered the enclosed Peter. But He looks at all the souls of His dis ciples as He speaks to this one, for He is doing the same with them, bringing Peter out of Simon. In the text He says to this one, not addressing him as Peter, not telling him that the process which was long ago begun has been completed, but rather emphasizing the fact that his old characteristics were still unfortunately the most evident feature of his personality: "Simon, Simon," He says, right after the Simon-character has shown itself most certainly. ' ' Simon, Satan desires to sift you" — not "thee," but "you," — all of you. "But I have prayed for thee," — using the singular, emphasizing the special need of Simon above that of the others. "I have prayed for thee, THE ALAN OF GALLLEE. 559 that thy faith fail not." Christ deals with classes: yet, while he deals with classes, His culture comes to the individual, and accentuates every feature of His personality in its all-inclusive ministry. The more certainly there is a large, rich gem in the earthly humanity with which Christ begins to work, the more surely must there be great losses of the gross naturalism in which it was. found. If there is a grain of wheat, and it worth keeping for itself and for the harvests which are inside of it, it will be sifted until its richness and promise are lying waiting for the sower's hand. The spirit of evil by its very effort tells souls the valuableness of fortresses which it is perpetually and desperately seeking to capture. God's best possibilities are the most beset warriors, and the grain of wheat most loaded with yellow sheaves, is the grain which the cynical, skeptical, hateful spirit of evil is most anxious to sift away like chaff: it is also the one most certain in God's providence, of being freed from husk and prepared for magnificent service. Of course, the chaff has its value. In it alone, the particular grain of wheat may grow and become firm. Of what had Peter to be sifted? The very qualities certainly which had kept and protected the noble character which must ultimately free itself from them. He was over-confident in himself. He was rash and daringly assertive in his self-trust. He was imperious in temper, conceited in honesty, prayer- less in generous loyalty, independent in enthusiasm, incautious in fearless faith. Now these qualities, which partook of the very life of that Peter within, were the Simon external to them in which Peter had his life. Behold Peter in after years, after the Simon had been dropped away, and we see that the very straightforwardness of his best hours was away back here growing inside of that obstinate hon esty; the high courage of his noblest act was being developed inside his rashness; the ardor of his warm heart was being fed by the reck less enthusiasm of youth; the confidence of his most glowing hour was protected as it slowly grew in his presumptuousness. Only within a Simon may a Peter be nurtured, and at last disclosed. THE LAST SUPPER. FROM A DRAWING BV GEO. SPIEL. CHAPTER LI THE LAST WORDS TO THE DISCIPLES JESUS had instituted the Holy Communion. The festivity with out contrasted painfully, if the disciples thought of comparison, with the sorrow of heart which weighed them down, as they silently reclined with Jesus in the Upper Room. Jesus had failed with Judas, but they thought not of this, so much as the failure of Judas himself in the presence of what still 'charmed and ruled them, and the dark path which led them forth from this too brief interview with their Master, none knew whither. Jesus appeared more divinely tender and royal, as they thought of the night into which Judas had gone, which no brightness of the Passover feast and no glory of the Paschal moon could lighten. Their plans, too, so far as they related to a dreamed of consummation which should immediately rally the sons of Israel about the banners of the Nazarene Rabbi, had utterly failed. This new symbol which Jesus had created in the Last Supper, evidently was intended to separate them from the rest of their nation. If it was ever to take the place of the old and loved festivities of Israel, they could not see how, if He were to go away from them, it could obtain any initiative of recognition by a world which was now ready to point its finger at their defeats. Their Master read their thoughts, and in the serenity of that confidence which made the thought of death an exile from His mind, He began to give them words of cheer. He said: "Let not your hearts be troubled." — John xiv, r. But He did not at all avoid the difficulties within their minds. The cloud was there, and it must be illuminated or driven away, after having been pene trated by the divine light. "I go to prepare a place for you," He said. There is the same note of divine personality dominant in this saying of Jesus which makes His other utterances strong and concordant. Jesus Himself is the 36 56i 562 THE ALAN OF GALILEE. divine gospel. He said: " I go to prepare a place for you." — John xiv, 2. Philosophers and poets had dreamed of the life of rest and righteousness beyond. Men of religion had recognized a better life to come as a moral certainty. It had proved both consolation and inspiration. Jesus approached the matter otherwise, for He reveals the founda tion of this celestial reality in Himself as the Son of humanity. He came into the world of time as the representative of God to illuminate humanity; He goes out of this realm of time, to all external appearance, into the realm of Eternity in which He had been always living as His Father's Son; and, as He goes out of this world, and into what we call the next, He goes as the representative of man, to reveal the glory of God. He is the avaunt courier of humanity, and because He is man's Christ, by being God's Christ, He brings "life and immortality to light." The whole realm in which ghosts walked unquietly and death reigned in their despite, was transformed, to the faith of humanity, when Jesus thus told of His business in the future: "I go to prepare a place for you." He was still about His "Father's business. " What He was about to do was -not less neces sary to be done than was the cleansing of the Temple — His "Father's House " — long ago. He simply re-created the whole empire of what is to be, by going into it, as He said, to " j^repare a place " for us. He had just showed that He was the Master of His own life, when He said: "No man taketh My life from Me, but I lay it down of Myself; I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." — John x, 18. He now projected the enterprise of humanity, and, without pro claiming any powers that do not result from humanity made com plete by being raised to its highest, because of the inflow of divinity THE MAN OF GALILEE. 563 within it, He went ahead working and outlining the future, with the brotherliness of His clear perception and triumphant conviction. This perception and conviction concerning man came of His having rested filially in the life of His Father. It had succeeded in making this world a place for the divine life in Himself. Pie knew it would succeed in making the unknown territory beyond the grave "a place" for those whom He loved. The Divine logic is seen in the words: "Because I live, ye shall live also.!' Into the darkness Christ went, and as He entered it, the light from within, which is the light that " lighteth every man coming into the world," so consumed the darkness, that His purpose was accomplished. PIis disciples ever since have beheld the doom of death. Visible departure from this planet is only an attendant circumstance in the j^rogress of the soul toward the fulfillment of its inherent law, and especially toward the completion of its stature as suggested in Christ Himself. Endlessness of life comes from eternity of soul. Jesus was always seeking to get PIis brothers to live as He lived, not as though time were anything but a thought, but as though eternity were the reality of God's own life and the life of His children. Perhaps it was a strain, even yet, ujxm these disciples, who aforetime were looking for places in the new kingdom, when Christ offered them this little word: "I go to prepare a place for you." — John xiv, 2. Some less spiritual one may have said: "At last, it is sure we are to have a place. " But all low conceptions of high things faded away, when He said: "I go to prepare a place for you," in order that "where I am, there ye may be also." — John xiv, 3. Where the Christ is, there is universal brotherhood. The Di vine society is a celestial commune, and yet it is a monarchy; — but the King is the Eternal Love. The logical interdependence of these statements of Jesus is very evident if once we feel the throb of the divine Fatherhood in His Son- ship, and the throb of His Sonship through the everlasting brotherhood which He was creating. That He should ' 'go away" was one of the events consequent upon His being man's Eternal Brother; that He should "come again" is another similar but necessarily later event. That He should ' 'go away" and ' 'prepare a place" for His disciples and that He should "come again" and "receive them" to Himself, — 564 THE MAN OF GALILEE. both of these are the outcome of that brotherly enterprise, under the PStherhood of God, which makes Him add: "That where I am, there ye may be also." The union between man s Savior and man is as indissoluble as Jesus' brotherliness and man's response to it are indestructible. Doubtless He here referred to the fact that the Holy Spirit should be given to make this union a reality of the sanctified life. The "place" was a moral place, and it is the name of spiritual condi tions that gather and remain, to make secure the destiny of the souls of Christ's brethren, when visible empires and such imagined places as these disciples had aforetime pictured to themselves, vanish from thought or recollec tion. They had seen the gospel attract unto itself strange mul titudes, and they were almost perplexed with the glorious future which they beheld, at times, in which all nations should accept the Law of Love, and Jesus would be King of Kings. If they had it in mind, even yet, that He would furnish "places" for all His disciples, they could not have been surprised, — indeed, they were rather relieved that their anticipation was correct, — that His Father's house, to which He was now going back, was really so many- mansioned in its vastness, that, like one of the palaces of the East, there should be one dwelling in it, beautiful above all the rest, for the new King; and for all the sons and brothers of the King there would be other abodes clustered about it under the same great roof. Jesus knew that they needed to be saved, in this hour of gloomy foreboding, from trouble of heart. He did not try to save them by in tellectual methods, but He identified Himself with them at the same instant in which He identified Himself with the love and plan of God. He said: "Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, THADD/EUS. 77/ A' MAN OF GALILEE. 565 believe also iu Me."— John xiv, 1. So often He knew that their lost belief in God had been restored unto them, or quickened into power, by believing first in Him as God's true Son, and by thus getting back their own sense of sonship unto the heavenly Father, through the wakening which His Sonship gave unto them. Whatever their experience had been in the world, Jesus saw that they were con stantly looking at Him, relying upon Him, and loving Him, while they were saying to themselves: "If this brother of mine is God's Son, and if He comes sinless and true, with such an account as this of God's love; — if indeed He is the bearer of tidings so fresh and sweet, from the Father whose Fatherhood tells its own story in His Brotherhood; — then with all our hearts, we believe in God." But Jesus had now strained to the breaking-point His disciples' belief in Him, as He tried to persuade them to walk with Him into the mys tery of death. Beside this, His death was to be ignominious. It was impossible for them to feel that the Messiah of their hopes could suffer the humiliation which was evidently before Him. They fell back, desperately grasping the fact of God with the old Jewish faith. Jesus had to turn the argument the other way, and so He said: "If you do believe in God, you must believe in Me. " Never had He so identified love with God, and God with love. Attention has been called first to His saying: "I go to prepare a place for you," — Luke xiv, 2, — because it was this beautiful state ment of the hitherto bald and saddening fact that He was to die in disgrace, in the eyes of the Hebrew people, which was as mournful to them as it was true. Jesus knew that He was commanding all the strength and spiritual heroism of humanity. He was so loading human nature with divine possibilities, that He was rediscovering its essential divineness and power. He was calculating, with ever- increasing faith, upon the fact that man is full of divine yearnings and anticipations, hints and foretellings of measureless destiny Impulses from the human breast had traveled out beyond the boundaries of this life, and, even in his littleness, man's instinct had known " The desire of the moth for the star; Of the day for the morrow; The worship of something afar \ From the sphere of our sorrow." 566 THE MAN OF GALILEE. His presence with these disciples had wonderfully stimulated all human forereaching and self-assuring tendencies. Pie honored them, when He said: "If it were not so, I would Jiave told you." — John xiv, 2. He thus gave them to understand that their noblest antici pations, springing out of the rich soil of human nature and developed by the warm light of His revelation, were all true. He added: "And zv hit her I go ye know, and the way ye know." — John xiv, 4. Thomas, of somewhat gloom}' mind, easily overestimat ing the cloud, rather than the sunlight which penetrates it and makes its edges of gold, imme diately said: "Lord, we knozv not whither Thou goest; and how can we know the way?" — John xiv, 5. It was, after all, only Peter's earlier question with ref erence to Jesus' words, spoken when Judas left them all at the Last Supper. Peter had said: "Lord, zolicre goest Thou?" Thomas was naturally puzzled, for Jesus had said, a little time before: "Whither F go, ye 'cannot come," — John xiii, 36, — and now He was telling them that they would be with Him. Thomas had no vision of what Jesus was about to accomplish by His death, resurrection, and ascension. Christ's answer to Thomas is a deeper manifestation of PIis own personality as the one answer to all ques tions. Christ had been more tenderly and grandly personal than ever in the conversation immediately preceding. He now said: "/ am the way." — John xiv, 6. But in order that He might show them that the Way led to the Father, and that the Way was that of brotherhood, which crowns itself by getting all the other brothers into the presence and heart of the Almighty Mystery, and that this Mys tery is to be revealed by Truth, Jesus added: "I am the Truth!' In order also that such a revelation of this Truth might be made in BARTHOLOMEW. JAMES 7 HE YOUNGER. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 567 them as He had shown can be made only by living the Truth, He added even to this, the words: "/ am the Life." The whole attitude of the human mind toward its destiny is now changed. He had said: "Believe in God; believe also in Me." He now said: " No man cometh unto the Father but by Me." — John xiv, 6. This statement is true, and its truth is attested in all the acts of trust and devotion. His Kingdom, — the Kingdom of God, — is within us always. Heaven is never far from earth. He that comes to the Father is in heaven. Jesus spoke of Himself as the "Son of Man which is in heaven." Every experience of approach unto the Father is essentially like every other experience which gets a man to God. Everv- man has brother men; and he can approach the Eternal Fatherhood only through brotherhood. Fellowship with Christ is brotherhood, loyal, heroic, self-sacrificing, and every experience of brotherhood is likewise fellowship with Christ. His -mediatorship, which carried Him to the self-sacrifice of Calvary, is manifested brotherhood which reveals universal Fatherhood. Jesus did not ask them to wait for death in order to come to the Father. He said: "No man cometh to the Father but by Me." Jesus would have them know that death was not something which was forced upon Him. He laid down His life with the delib- erateness of all true worship. He would have His disciples live their lives and die when their time would come, according to one law, and that the law of brotherhood, the law of Christ, by which they should "come," in life or death, "unto the Father." Jesus intimated to them the truth which He had won for them, and upon which He expected them to live: "If ye had known Me, ye would have known My Father also: from henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him." And now Philip, who had once joyfully announced to Nathaniel: " IV e have found the Messiah;" who also had shown the Greek spirit at the feeding of the multitude, where it was evident that he had not learned all he needed to know of the true divineness of Jesus; who was chosen of Providence, probably because of his somewhat over- philosophic tendency, to bring certain Greeks to Jesus, at the very moment when Jesus was to announce the fatal, but glorious issue of that brotherhood which looked out beyond the limits of Judaism; — " Philip of Bethsaida of Galilee," said to Him: "Lord, show us the 568 THE A1AN OF GALLLEE. Father, and it will satisfy us." — -John xiv, 8. Still is the Jew eager to see such a revelation as the great Jew Moses saw. He is honest in the belief that one vision of the Father would scatter all their doubts. Jesus was revealing Fatherhood by Brotherhood and Son- ship, — the only way in which Fatherhood can be revealed through humanity and to humanity. Jesus put the emphasis upon Himself, and He said: ."Have / been with you so long, and yet hast thou not yet recognized Me?" — John JAMES THE ELDER. xiv, 9. Philip's mind was not too apt to say, as he said at the first: " Come and see." But he knew not that this was the only way in which any might come and see Fatherhood. Jesus added : ' ' He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father ; and how say est thou, Show us the Father? Believcst thou not that I am the Father, and the Fat/ier in Me ? The words that I say unto you / speak not from Myself: but the Father abiding in Me doeth His works."1 — John xiv, 9, 10. Then, passing from Philip, and speaking to all His disciples, Jesus asked for trust in Himself; but if they were still weak, and could not rise to the height of this personal reliance upon Him, the patient Christ said: "Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me: or else believe Me for the very works'1 sake." — John xiv, 11. In none of this lofty converse with souls does Jesus isolate Him self. His revelation of Fatherhood makes brotherhood so quickening and up-lifting in its brotherliness, that here He forecasts the destiny of redeemed humanity. It is an amazing light which Jesus throws out across the storm of time. His power in the world, as He now shows, is not the result of any attributes of His own person, which are exclusive, and which none may share. Just as He said: "My peace I give unto you, " and as He said to His Father that the glory "which Thou gavest unto Me I have given unto them, that they THE AIAN OF GALILEE. 569 may be one, even as We are one," and thus constituted the everlasting brotherhood under universal Fatherhood, so now He will not make His departure a fact that leaves them with a low destiny. It is a departure which lifts them into His destiny. He knows Pie is going away, but He says: "Because i live, ye shall live also."— John xiv, 19. The very forces which make Him sovereign over death are in them, — such is the brotherhood in its fundamental quality. When they rise into this full privilege, they shall understand that His relation to the Father lies in Sonship, and that their sonship is like His Sonship. "In that day ye shall knozv that I am in My Father, and ye iu Me, and I in you. He that hath My commandments, and kecpeth them, he it is that lovcth Me: and lie that lovcth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I zoill love him, and I zoill manifest Myself unto him." — fohn xiv, 20, 21. This is redemption. The whole gospel is the love- proclamation of the Father in the Son, which rouses latent sonship and brotherhood, and takes a race of orphans and makes them sons, The apostle could well say: "Beloved, now are we the sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but when He appeareth, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." The enterprise of Jesus was culminating in the announcement: "/ will not leave you orphaned ; I zviil come unto you. He had not yet finished His work. It was His Father's work, which His Father had been engaged in from the beginning; and He Himself said: ' ' The Father that dwelleth in Me doeth His zvorks. " The succeeding achievements in the work of Jesus, as He knew, were to render it possible that, as He said: "He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater zvorks than these shall he do." Jesus was going to carry brotherhood so high that these greater works should be done, not because He remained with them and let their brotherhood stunt itself with gazing upon Him in visible form, as He continued His wonders, but because He exalted up His Son- ship and their sonship to its loftiest possibility, and discovered to them the infinite reach and destiny of human power under God. "Greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto My Father." The theology which does not see humanity accompanying its Christ, in the highest illustration of His moral divinity, but rather leaves human 570 THE MAN OF GALILEE. sonship on earth, while His Sonship alone touches the zenith of a divine hope, is not the theology of Jesus Christ. Men were bidden to ask in His name. Why? " That t lie Father ¦may be glorified" (that is, "illuminated!' "made clear," "revealed as by light") "in the Son." To ask in His name is to make use, not of a magical charm, not of mechanical mediatorship, but of that broth erliness which takes all selfishness from our petitions and puts men in har »^»cr. mony with the brotherhood and Fatherhood Eternal. These "greater works" which He promised have come. By the converting power in Christ, ten thousand evils, the like of which He touched and con trolled in the vales of Galilee, have been con quered by man. Je sus promised also the large gift of theSpirit of Holiness. "And I will pray the Fa- ™MFA„,™GBY RAPHAEL. ^^ fl„rf fa ^tf give you another Comforter, that He may be with you forever; even the Spirit of Truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye know Him; for He abideth zvith you, and shall be in you!' — John xiv, 16, 17. "Greater works than these," which came from the hand of Jesus in that little ter ritory and through those brief years, have actually followed. Pente cost has succeeded Pentecost in the history of Christian civilization; miracles are no longer necessary to attest the omnipotence of love on this planet; spiritual persuasion is greater than signs and won ders; the perpetualness of the miracle of self-sacrifice and the tri umph of its appeal unto men of all sorts and conditions, are greater than healed bodies or unmatched physical victories. "Because. I go to the Father," — John xiv, 16, — this has enabled men to meet death and lay it low, not for a few years, as in the case of Lazarus, but forever. The limits of Roman provinces and the narrowing walls PAUL AND JOHN. THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 57i builded by chosen peoples have disappeared before the demonstration which Jesus made that man is fit to do God's work on the earth, and that His own miracles, whatever else they were, were also pat terns of man's spiritual achievements. The fact that the Church has not claimed these powers, because of a faithless effort to conserve a belief in the Divinity of Jesus by isolating Him from His brethren, ~S:^M^S^'? THE VALLEY OF JEHOSHAPHAT, SHOWING THE TOMBS OF JAMES AND ZACHARIAH. has done infinite harm to that confidence in His true relation unto His Father which He sought to inspire. "The Comforter" whom Jesus promised was "the Spirit of Truth." He it was who was to guide the disciples into all truth. This truth is the truth of God and the truth of man. It was not to be an affair of the intellect, scorning the comfortless hopes and yearnings of men; it was not to be a system of laws without conso lation in the presence of sorrowful weakness; but rather truth was to be personal and friendly, practical and concrete, the wooing and 572 THE ALAN OF GALILEE. inspiring power in the world which neither vaunts its superiority nor sentimentalizes with inferiority, but makes man reign in the world which once was lost and go forth into the sovereignty which was won and demonstrated in Jesus Christ. Jesus knew He had turned the world into a harvest-field, and that, if the grain gathered from it were not greater than He could have obtained from the rockiness and rebelliousness with which He had to contend, His work was a failure. He had taken the outer works and inspired His army, and now, because He went to His Father, the greater work of seizing the citadel was to be done by His disciples. It was not to be done because He had left the world fearful as to His own fate, but it was to be done because, in leaving the world, He had gone to PIis Father, and was to re-enter it through the triumphs of His body, which is the Church. CHAPTER LII THE LAST WORDS TO THE DISCIPLES— CONTINUED. TPIADDEUS, who had the misfortune to bear the name of also, and who is distinguished from the other Judas by being "Judas, not Iscariot, " reverently asked how it was that Christ manifest Himself unto His disciples, and not unto the world. the question of one who was expecting a visible dis closure of the Messiah's kingdom, in the coming manifestation of Him self. Once more the large personality of Moses, who beheld a revelation of God, came before them, and Thaddeus could not separate himself from those who thought of the coming of the Mes siah in such wise as would impress the whole world with its visible glory. The ques tion was: "What has happened that Thou wilt mani fest Thyself unto us and not ztnto the world? — John xiv, 22. Hast there 573 Judas called would It was 574 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. been a change of program with respct to the realizing of the old con ception of the manifesting of the Messiah?" Jesus simply said: "If a man love Me he will keep My words; and My Father will love him." — John xiv, 23. Then using the plural suggestively, He added: " We will come ttnto him and make our abode with him." — Jo /in xiv, 23. Again He appealed to the Father and said the word which they heard was not His, but the Father's. He did not deny that He was about to leave them. He knew that they had difficulty in under standing His words. He had indeed spoken all that they could bear, but He knew the Father and His plans, and He said: "But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father zvill send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you." — John xiv, 26. In that faith He could leave His peace with them, giving it to them in no worldly manner. Again He urged them not to let their heart be troubled, neither to fear. If they had received the revelation of love and brotherhood, it would be a time of gladness with them, because of the revelation He made of humanity. He said: "Ye heard how I said unto you, I go away, and T come unto you. If ye loved Me, ye would have re joiced, because I go unto t/ie FatJier ;¦ for the Father is greater than I." — Joliu xiv, 28. He had provided that the event should not weaken their faith, but rather strengthen it. He said: "And now I have told you be fore it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe." — Jo Jin xiv, 29. Judas Iscariot had failed, and the prince of this world was com ing. Little more could Jesus say. Yonder was the garden of an unknown friend. The distance between this place and its gate was all too short. He had ended His discourse, which had been spoken to no other purpose, as He said, than that "the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave Me commandment, even so I do." He had trusted the Divine Fatherhood even to this crisis. He said: "Arise, let us go hence."— foJin xiv, 31. After they left the room, and probably as they were all stand ing about Him, His eye-glance rested upon the grape-blossoms, and He could not let His disciples go without telling them of the profound and irradiating conception He entertained as to their relationships unto THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 575 Him. Here in the moonlight of Passover night, a vine was growing, and its branches were visible as the disciples went forth into the unmapped future. Again the grave, sweet tone of His personality sounded forth, as He said: "/ am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman. Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit, He taketh it away; and every branch that beareth fruit, He cleanseth it, that it may bear more fruit. Already ye are clean because of the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in Me, and I in you. HILL OF THE EVIL COUNSEL. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except as it abide in the vine; so neither can ye, except ye abide in Me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for apart from Me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; and so shall ye be My disciples. Even as the Father hath loved Me, I also have loved you: abide ye in My love. If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love; even as I have kept My Father's commandments, and abide in His love. These things I have spoken unto you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be fulfilled. This is My commandment, That ye love one another, even as I have loved you."— John xv, 1-12. 576 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. Out of this new light drifting in upon their relationship unto Him and unto the Father, there came a new vision of themeslves. He said: "Greater love . hath no man than this, that a man lay down his • life for his friends. Ye are My friends, if ye do the things I command you, I call you no longer bond-servants, but I have called you friends. " — JoJin xv, 13. He had fully revealed Himself, and He was re vealing them to themselves. Under the Law taught, until now nal Brotherhood was forces of an infinite friend ship. The characteristic of this friendship was intimated in His saying: "No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knozv- ctJi not zvJiat Jiis lord doetJi: but I Jiave called you friends; for all tilings that J have heard from My FatJier I have made known unto you." — Jo Jin xv, 15. He had felt the ties of friendship woven in their lives and His, and in the life of God, and it was not a new fact to which He called attention, for He said: "/ have called you friends." If any asked how He called them friends, in His own heart of hearts, His answer must be enough: "For all things that I have Jieard of My FatJier, T Jiave made known unto you. " Christ is not a discovery by man, but man is Christ's discovery, — man as the child of God. He told them that they had not chosen Him, but CHRIST AND THE VINE of Moses He had worked and Love was Law, and the Eter pervaded by the vitalizing THE MAN OF GALILEE. 577 that He had chosen them and sent them forth to bear the fruit of love and brotherhood. So deeply had He put into them the true conditions of prayer that whatsoever they were to ask of the Father in His name, — that is, whatever might come from the Fatherhood made real in the manifestation of Sonship, — this God would give unto them. His command was, "Love one auot/ier." The char acter of that love and its outcome would be the same in their case as in His. The world would hate them, but He said, ' 'If tJie world Jiateth you, ye know that it JiatJi Jiated Me before it hated you. If ye zvcre of the zaorld, Uie world would Ijvc its own: but because ye are not of the world, but T cJiose you out of tJie zaorld, tJierefore tJie world hateth you." — Jo Jin xv, 18, 19. The servant would not be greater than his lord, in his escaping persecution. Neither would the world be less responsive to what they might speak out of the depths of love than it had been to what He had spoken. The tie that bound them to the ideal and the heroic was an attachment as personal as His love for them. "All these things," He said, "will they do unto you for my name's sake, because they know not Him that sent Me. If / had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. ' So true had been His Sonship that hate of Him was hate of God. The very works which He did among them had rendered their sin illustrative of the ultimate sinfulness of sin. They had hated Love. They had direfully realized the prophecy: "They hated Me without cause." — Jo Jin xv, 21-25. The agony of His mind was grow ing more quick as He thought of all this, and then He rested His soul upon the fact that when the Comforter would come whom He would send unto them from the Father — "even the Spirit of Truth which proceedeth from the Father" — then the testimony of heaven to Him would be complete; then also would they become witnesses because they had been with Him from the beginning. He had thus founded the great fraternity of men and was leaving its destinies in their hands. Silent and mournful, the eleven disciples stood near to Him as He spoke. He must have seen some question with reference to the severity of the future which clouded their thoughts, for He told them frankly that He had said these things unto them that they should not have occasion to stumble 578 THE ALAN OF GALLLEE. when the opposition of the world became intense. He outlined a program of suffering which was to be theirs, not because they were wrong, but because the world was wrong and did not know either the Father or Himself. When these persecutions should come, He would have His disciples strengthened by the fact that He had not been ignorant of them. This would make them patient. He was sorrowful because they did not see that His going away from them, and thus revealing the powers and possibilities of Sonshiji, was an occasion for rejoicing. They did not see that it was everything to them that He who had come from the Father was returning to the Father, with the certainty of triumph. He saw a reason for gladness in the fact that the Son of Almighty Love had come out from Love, into a world of problems, and- had so pro vided for their solution, that, not only had He not been lost in the maze He threaded according to the light of Love, but His way home again was plain and beautiful, even through death and the grave, and He was certain of the Father's welcome. He said unto them: "Nevertheless I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away." This is a different kind of expediency from that which Caiaphas spoke of when he said: "It is expedient that one man die for the people." Jesus made His view of expediency clear when He added: "For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send Him unto you. And He, when He is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment; of sin, because they believe not on Me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye behold Me no more; of judg ment, because the Prince of this world hath been judged." — JoJin vi, 7-1 1. It was enough for Jesus to have the confidence that evil had found its condemnation in Him and His career, and that He would mean more to His disciples and to the world than He had ever meant on earth, because the Holy Spirit would take His words and His career and show forth all their meanings and their redemptive powers, to the everlasting comfort and illumination of mankind. He said He had many things to say to them, but He knew they could not bear them. He was thankful that the Spirit of Truth was the Comforter, and that therefore the truth would be comforting, and THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 579 their comfort would be true. As this Comforter should guide them into all truth, He would be showing them not only things that are, but things that are to come. His message and His life had been true; the Spirit of Truth, therefore, could not but glorify Him, for He would talk of the things Jesus had been and done and said, and show them forth. His Sonship had been so true and capacious that all His Father's things were PIis things. Because He was going to His Father, they would not see Him for a little time, and because He was going to His Father, and not elsewhere, — that is, because death would prove incapable of detaining permanently this perfect Son of God, — He said: "Ye shall see Me." This was more than the disciples could understand. It seemed a contradiction to what He had previously said. They had not dis cerned the fact that lay in the words: "Because I go to the Father." — John xvi, 16. Jesus alone knew the range of the Fatherhood of God and the range of His own Sonship. He knew that they would be the same here and elsewhere. Because God was His Father, He would go, and because God was His Father, He would come again. "Your sorrow," He said, "shall be turned into joy." He knew the pain with which such truth is born into the world. But just as the joy of motherhood forgets the pangs cf childbirth, so their joy would forget their sorrow out of which would come the glorious revelation. No man could take that joy from them. It would bring them into first-hand relationship with God. He said: "And in that day ye shall ask Me twthing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, If ye sha 'I ask any- tJiing of the FatJier, He will give it to you in My name. " — JoJin xvi, 23. He saw that much of what He said was like a parable unto them. By and by, in the presence of the Spirit, He. would speak with more plainness and fullness. He saw the deeper spiritual glory of the day to come. There would be absolutely nothing between them and the Father. Prayer in His name unto the Father would come out of their happy sonship which would recognize the fact that He came from the Father into the world; and not only that, but that He had left the world and gone back unto His Father. At this, a gleam of brighter light strayed into their darkened souls. They grasped the truth with eager confidence and joy. Away 580 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. beyond, in the promise which He had made, the revelation ran like a wave of light, disclosing a ground for the patience they would need. Their joy spoke in their words: " Lo, now speakest Thou plainly, and spea/zest no proverb. Now we know that TJiou knowest all tilings, and needest not tJiat any man should ask TJiee: by this we be lieve tliat TJiou earnest fortJi from God." — John xvi, 29, 30. Jesus had now revealed Himself to these disciples as their High Priest. The farewell sermon had concluded with a paean of victory. Soon they were chanting a hymn. But being the priest, He would pause at the altar of sacrifice and make His mediatorship illustrate the largeness and tenderness of His love. Perhaps they had left the upper chamber and were in the Temple courts. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that Jesus derived the figure illustrating His relationship to the disciples from the Golden Vine. Certainly the Temple which He was to replace with the Temple of humanity was most likely to furnish to the High Priest, the Christ of God and man, the symbols which He used in His prayer of intercession. After midnight the gates of the Temple were opened by the priests, and the Paschal pilgrims were visiting the sacred place even in the Passover night. Never did moon look upon such a sight as was revealed that night under the bare and beautiful heavens, when, with the apostles standing near unto Him, He lifted up His eyes to heaven and prayed. He was certain of the hour and its important place in the history of life's embassy. It marked the point in time when He turned to go homeward. He had come to found a brother hood by manifesting Fatherhood through His Sonship. His first word, therefore, was "FatJier," and His prayer, which was probably spoken in the Aramaean, gathered all processes of redemption into the hour and united all hopes of humanity into a petition, when He said: " Father, the hour is come: glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son may glorify Thee." — John xvii, 1. He was praying for the larger revela tion of God in human nature. This it was for Christ to be glorified. His Sonship and God's Fatherhood, so far as they concerned other human beings and so far as they waited for manifestation in Him self, could not be content with anything but a victory over death. Thus the glorification of the Son would glorify the Father. What seems an, impersonal note in this prayer, for there is no / nor me in TILE ALAN OF GAL/LEE. 5S1 its first petitions, is really the illustration of the confidence of Jesus in the fact that He was the representative of humanity as well as the representative of God. He knew His authority was legitimate. Not Adam, in the past, but Jesus, the ever-living Christ, is the true head of the race. He knew the processes by which He should be glorified, and He said, speaking of Himself: "Even as Thou gavest Him authority over all flesh, that whatsoever Thou hast given Him, to them He should give eternal life." — John xvii, 2, 3. In the phrase "all flesh," We had again touched the truth of Universal Fatherhood and Universal Brotherhood, and it was yet musical. In the phrase "eternal life," He had touched another string which vibrated again, for eternal life, not the destruction of Rome, was the thing desirable for humanity, and the life eternal is always in the present tense. He now, with His eye of faith resting upon that Fatherliness which meant most for the child man, revealed the essence of the life that cannot end: "And this is life eternal, that they should know Thee, the only true God, and Him whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ." — John xvii, 3. This gospel is as natural as is the gospel unto the plant. The lily is a sun-plant, as man is a God-plant. The lily grows, by knowing the sun, the only true source of light and heat. It must know it by experiencing it. Man grows only by knowing the only true God. He must experience Him, as sonship experiences Fatherhood. But the plant, taken up to the bosom of the sun, would wither in its awful heat; and man cannot comprehend the infinite holiness or endure the Eternal Love. The sun comes to the plant through the sunshine; God comes to man through Jesus the Christ. The gospel to the plant is: "This is life temporal," — and that is as far as the plant can go, — "that it might know the only true sun and sunshine which the sun sends." This is the gospel unto man: "This is life eternal, that He might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." — -John xvii, 3. Jesus rejoiced that He had been true to His divine nature and its behests. "I glorified Thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which Thou hast given Me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was." — JoJin xvii, 4, 5. His thoughts turned to His disciples. Their discipleship was founded upon the 58= THE MAN OF GALILEE. fact that, as He said, first He had manifested His name unto them; secondly, they were His Father's; thirdly, He had seen their response in sonship because they had kept the Father's word. Jesus had demonstrated the truth with which He began to work as a boy in the Temple, — the Fatherhood of God and the sonship of man. In these last words He had used the personal pronoun, for His work was a personal work, and they personally were now to go forth. He knew that the secret of the world's future was to be opened in their hearts and lives. He jjrayed for them that they might be conse crated and enlightened, as He had been consecrated and enlightened, so that they might glorify Him as He had glorified His Father. This alone would issue in the salvation of the world. The union would be complete. He said: "All things that are Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine: and I am glorified in them. And I am no more in the world, and these are in the world, and I come to Thee. Holy Father, keep them in Thy name which Thou has given Me, that they may be one, even as We arc. While I was with them, I kept them in Thy name which Thou hast given Me: and I guarded them, and not one of them perished, but the son of j^erdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I come to Thee: and these things I speak in the world, that thev mav have My joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them Thy word." — fohn xvii, 10-14. THE AIAN OF GALILEE. 583 Their missionary character would be like PIis own. It would be attended by the world's hate, but, sanctified through truth, they would go out into the world with certainty of victory. So now Jesus made a consecrated offering of Himself as He said: "And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth." — John xvii, 19. The larger prayer came, and the Church and the world were gathered into His confidence and petition. The solidarity of humanity was made sure in His prayer, and the glory of humanity was made certain, for His glory should be the glory of the race, by virtue of love's power to enter into man and to exalt man into communion with His Father. So His prayer concluded: "Neither for these do I pray, but for them also that believe on Me through their word; that they all may be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us; that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me. And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even as We are one; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and lovedst them, even as Thou lovedst Me. Father, that which Thou hast given Me, I will that, where I am, they also may be with Me; that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me: for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world knew Thee not, but I knew Thee; and these knew that Thou didst send Me; and I made known unto them Thy name, and will make it known: that the love wherewith Thou lovedst Me may be in them, and I in them." — John xvii, 20-26. CHRIST LEAVING THE PR/ETORIUM. FROM PAINTING BY GUSTAV DORE. CHAPTER LIII IN THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE 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 gray leaves were kind to Him: The little thorn-tree had a mind to Him When in o the woods He came Out of the woods my Master went, And He was well content. 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. ' ' — Sidney Lanier. THE Paschal Supper had concluded with a strain of that music in which patriotism is lost in religion. We do not know what well- known hymn Jesus and His disciples sang, but it was probably a por tion of the national song called "Hallel," in which thought and feeling are so wedded as to suggest their own tones, — a melody among whose best known words are these: "I will take the cup of salva- 585 586 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. tion, and call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord, now, in the presence of all His people. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. O Lord truly I am Thy servant: I am Thy servant, and the son of Thine handmaid; Thou hast loosed my bonds. I will offer to Thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the I name of the Lord. I will pay ™j&> my vows unto the Lord, now, in the presence of all His peo ple; in the courts of the Lord's house, in the midst of thee, O Jerusalem. Praise ye the Lord." — Psalm cxvi, 13-19. Jesus had just made the "cup of salvation" a new symbol, and He had offered unto God His whole life as a "sacri fice of thanks giving." Though it was about one o'clock in the morning, the usual festiv ities of this oc casion were continued here and there. Clusters of pilgrims were even yet arrang ing for the rejoicings of the next day, when Jesus was goino- out of the city toward the'Mount of Olives. The Temple courts were behind Him; so also was Herod Antipas, who had been exhibiting a preten tious loyalty to Jewish custom, by being present at the Feast, and TOWER IN WHICH HEROD IS SAID TO HAVE STAYED. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 587 who now was sleeping in the Asmonean fortress; or, elsewhere pos sibly, he was turning the religious celebration into an event more har monious with his licentious nature. In the new castle, which was a memorial of the opulence and ambition of Plerod the Great, Pilate, Rome's representative, was resting, while Roman soldiers awaited his orders and were ready to maintain order at this critical time when Jewish patriotism was too likely to organize itself into a revolt. Church and State were thus embodied in men and institutions with armies of soldiers and retinues of priests to defend them. They furnished the background for a picture worthy of Rembrandt-like powers, as the Son of Man journeyed down the dark valley of Kidron, and was lost for a moment among its shadows. He crossed the stream and moved toward Olivet. He was coming at last to what was known only as "a garden," or "The Oil Press." Attention will always be attracted to the unknown friends of Jesus. Two of them came close to Jesus on that night of nights. It is not less interesting to speculate as to what sort of friend owned and allowed Jesus the privilege of this garden beyond the brook Kidron, than it is to wonder what was the name of the fortu nate friend who owned and permitted Him to use The Upper Room. When Jesus left the Temple and went in the direction of what is now known as St. Stephen's Gate at Jerusalem, He was passing from the kindness of one friend whose name is unknown, to the kind ness of another similar friend. Gethsemane was the name attached to but one of the numerous small farms which were doubtless owned by gentlemen in good circumstances, in the suburbs of Jerusalem. Its retirement, perfumed by blooming bushes and dark with ancient olive-trees, was guarded by the usual fence, and Jesus, with the eleven who were left to Him after the dismissal of Judas, entered through the gateway. It was the custom of Jesus to go out of the Holy City every night to Bethany. But this night was to see Him stop near "The Oil Press" in Gethsemane, where so often the laborers had extracted the oil, and near which He could find that stillness in which He brooded with God over the affairs of humanity. The old olive-trees have doubtless been cut away, for it is impos sible that the armed hosts which, from time to time, required every tree in the region of Jerusalem, in various exigencies of siege, should 588 THE ALAN OF GALILEE. have spared this spot. Trees of later growth have grown up to help devout imagination to realize the lights and shadows, the peace and beauty of that night, when the moonlit paths of Gethsemane were overcast by the shade of those olive-trees whose leaves were tremulous in the breath of His woe. So sacred and important was the hour, that Jesus, who was not at all seeking to escape from His enemies, led with Him into the solitude of the garden not even His friend, the owner of it, who must have had an open or secret attachment to the Master, but James and John and Peter only, the inner circle of three, to whom He had already given the largest revelations of His kingdom. These had been with Him when He raised the little daughter of Jairus, and when He was transfigured on the mountain. In this secluded place, where His discijjles had probably often been in structed by Him, and where night had oftener found Him alone in prayer, He would manifest to them the very crown of His Kingship. The three events are logically connected, and each foretold that the next would occur. It was now the hour when the disciples were most perplexed, because the Shepherd of the sheep had been smitten, g There was meaning to them in the fact that they were only eleven come out of the city with Him. The twelfth, Judas knew the place, and he could come if be would. His absence was as startling to their thought as his presence would have been incongruous. He might come, even yet; Je sus would , not build a single ramj">art ""'bridge over brook kidron, who had Iscariot, THE MAN OF GALILEE. 589 of defense against him. Not, therefore, to guard the entrance, but only in order that they might rest, Jesus had left eight of them at the gateway, while with Peter, James and John, He went in to pray. According to Luke, He said unto them: Pray that ye enter not into temptation." — LuJce xxii, 40. Deeper and heavier than the shadow of the olive trees which fell upon His path, was the sorrow of Jesus. He knew that it was the supreme test, not only for His disciples, but for Himself. Even before the music of the chant in which they joined in The Upper Room had died away, and the recitative of the new religion which was there taken from the old had mingled its tones with the festal cheer of the revered religion of the past, Jesus said unto them: "All ye shall be offended in Me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad. But after I am raised up, I will go before you into Galilee." — Matt, xxvi, 31. One thing we know had occurred, perhaps, both in The Upper Room, and immediately after they had left it, which gave Jesus a special interest in the movements of Simon Peter, and filled that disciple's heart with premonitory gloom. Upon Jesus' intimation that His disciples would be sorely tried with Plim in the next few hours, Peter, dwelling upon the quotation concerning the smitten Shepherd, which Jesus had made from the. prophet Zechariah, had unnecessarily boasted of loyalty unto his Master. All the tangled emotions and sad thoughts which the memory of this conversation could stir in a noble but unstable soul, now thronged Peter's breast. When Peter remem bered, also, that, at the evening meal when Judas withdrew, Jesus had called up his past, by using the old name Simon, saying: "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have all of you, that he might sift you as wheat: but I have made supplication for thee, that tJiy faith fail not: and do tliou, when tJiou hast turned again, stab- lish thy brethren," — Luke xxii, 31, 32, — he was uneasy with surmises, but surely not warned against the perils of the sifting process. It had now begun to disturb him seriously. The night was hastening toward morning; but neither the Paschal moon nor the approaching dawn, could drive the awful shadows from the souls of the disciples. Simon Peter had reason to dread the 59° THE MAN OF GALLLEE. coming of that watch of the night in which the cocks were sure to crow, at the first intimation of the day. The most sublimely gifted of all the apostles, the most sure to revolt at the horror which Judas was accomplishing, Simon Peter was, nevertheless, on other sides of his character, too much like Judas to be entirely safe. The process of redemption by Jesus Christ was working mightily in him, and Jesus so relied upon his faith and character that He was sure that the outcome of this sifting would be glorious, though the sifting would be spiritually tragic. Jesus must really commission Simon Peter again; and as if He knew how it would come out, He said: ' ' And thou, zulien tJiou Jiast turned again, strengtJien thy brethren." Farther on into the moon light and then into the darkness, Jesus went, leaving His com rades who were also His ' ' little children" behind. The Son of God confessed the desolation and amazement of His agony. He said, as He left His three dear est companions: "My soul is ex ceeding sorrowful even unto death; tarry ye here and watch." Jesus went forward a little further, but not from man. He carried man christ in the garden of gethsemane. with Him and in THE ALAN OF GALLLEE. 591 Him, toward God. The Son of Man, nevertheless, was to meet death alone. He had met death in triumph over others; and He had always defeated death at the outposts of his realm. He had spurned death in the Temptation. Soon the final battle was to be waged. He did not leave humanity, at the moment in which humanity was most interested in Him, as King of Kings. It was out of His humanity that He prayed, when the soul of the Son of Man laid hold of the Father — Love. "And Pie kneeled down and prayed, saying, FatJier, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless, not My will, but Thine, be done." — Luke xxii, 41, 42. The crisis was met with assurance of triumph. Pie had vanquished death by baring His breast and bidding him strike a man. Luke alone tells us how Jesus then realized His promise which He had made long ago to Nathanael. Angels were descending on the Son of Man. Now there was no Nathanael present to behold the glory of it. But humanity would not forget it. "And there appeared unto Him an angel from heaven, strengthening Him." — Luke xii, 43. Luke, the physician, is the only evangelist, also, who tells us of the witness, made in the very body of Jesus, that His agony was in tense. He says: "And, being in an agony, He prayed more earnestly: and His sweat became as it were great drops of blood falling down upon the ground." — Luke xxii, 44. Meantime poor human nature had failed. Peter, James, and John had fallen asleeji. While Jesus was bearing testimony to His unbroken faith in the Fatherhood of God, by beginning His prayer, in the moment of His keenest suffering, with the word: "Father! " — His three brother-men, the intimate guard most honored and edu cated by PIis love, were proving the frailty of that humanity whose Head was then exalting it into companionship with God. While He wrestled, they dozed. Going back to them, His love and thought roused Simon Peter, and the olive leaves trembled with His pathetic words: "Simon" (again speaking the old name, Simon, who now had gotten the upper hand of the new Peter), "steepest thou? Couldst tJiou not watch one hour?" Then He seems to have turned to them all, as they were partially awakened, and He said: "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." — Matt, xxvi, 40, 41. This latest recognition 592 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. .,.-'*;.. PLACE WHERE DISCIPLES WERE FOUND SLEEPING. of both their capacity and inability was the flower of His broth erhood. Again He left them, to pray, — to get a fresh hold upon the Divine Love which alone may save sleeping disciples in any age. Once more clinging to His faith in the Fatherhood of God, He said: "O, my FatJier! if this cup may not pass away from Me, except I drink it, Thy will be done. " — Matt, xxvi, 42. He came back to the disciples to find them weighted with sleep again. He could not give human nature up; He knew its hope was not in itself or what it may do alone, but in God its Father only. Again, therefore, He went away to obtain the Divine assurance. "They wist not what to answer him." — Mar -k xiv, 40. This was true, but had God, the Father, no answer? Pie prayed the same prayer as before. The victory came. Death was adopted as a good slave who, in the hours immediately succeeding, would help Him so to redeem men that, in spite of their sleep and weakness, the Fatherhood of God would vindicate itself in the brotherhood of humanity. He came back to the disciples only to say: "Sleep on, now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is ac hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed unto the hands of sinners. Arise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that betrayeth Me." — Matt, xxvi, 45, 46. Jesus had made a greater proof of His Messiah- ship unto mankind. The hour for Judas had arrived. It was an hour in which the baseness of sinful humanity illustrated its failure to do aught but strengthen the grasp of Divine Love upon the soul of man, and to furnish a dismal background against which the undismayed Father hood, as revealed in the Divine Sonship of Jesus, stands forever beautiful. Smarting from the humiliation of exposure, and the fact that his treason to Jesus had excluded him from the companionship of the twelve, Judas had been working incessantly to accomplish his dreadful purpose. The Jewish authorities, perhaps after sending to THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 593 The Upper Room, had been apprised that Jesus was in the garden, and that it was a propitious moment for His arrest. The betrayer and his band had haunted the entrance-gate. They were excited and quite unconscious of the sublime peace dwelling in the heart of Him whom they had feared while they pursued Him. The Roman garrison which increased the size and dignified the movement of the mob led by Judas, had been for many hours at the disposal of the Jewish fanatics. From the palace of Annas, the ex-high-priest, who was really the power behind his successor and son-in-law, Caiaphas, the high-priest, or from the palace of Caiaphas himself, unto the palace on Mount Zion where Pilate was staying during the Passover- Feast, emissaries from the authorities who were in session in their accustomed place, had been going and returning. Each journey made their faces more intensely illustrative of the miserable ripening of the conspiracy against Jesus. The detachment of the Temple police which had been taken from the cohorts sent to keep order at the Feast, con stituted and armed as a guard, directed to assist in the arrest of Jesus, were intent on only one thing, — that there should be no popular up rising against either the Sanhedrin, or Rome. The multitude of the canaile, which started out from every corner of the city, at the least excitement, were crowding close to Judas, who, under the April moon, was holding a horde of soldiers, priests, servants and officers at the garden entrance. Many lanterns were flashing out their light. Every dark recess was searched, in order that the Man who stood calmly waiting for His betrayer in the garden, might not escape. Judas had no eye for the moral splendor of Jesus, which out shone the light of the Paschal moon, and distinguished Him from all the race of cowards, else he would not have thought it necessary to point Jesus out to the searching band. " Whom seek ye?" quietly inquired Jesus, as they came near. "Jesus of Nazareth," — John xviii, 7, — was the spiteful answer of the one whose wits did' not desert him, in the presence of such calmness and power. The weapons were useless; the torches flared to no purpose, for Jesus answered: "lam He." — John xviii, 8. Priests, scribes and elders were confused by this self-masterful Man whose power awed them. The swords which were to have been used to coerce, melted before His eye-glance; and the representative soldiery of heathendom fell back before the self- 38 594 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. possession and moral dignity of One whom they had just heard addressed with an effort at contempt, in the phrase: "Jesus of Nazareth." Once more Jesus said unto them: "Whom seek ye?" Once more someone snarled: " Jesus of Nazareth." "I have told you that I am He," was the answer of Jesus. "If therefore ye seek Me, let these go their way. " — John xviii, 8. John alone tells us of this conversation; and he sees in these words the watch-care of Jesus over His disciples. This evangelist adds that Jesus, — speaking of Himself, said these words: "That the saying might be fulfilled which He spake, Of those whom Thou hast given Me I lost not one." — John xviii, 9. Jesus « knew that His disciples needed to be protected in the further evolution of this crisis, from yielding to the temptation which was al ready strain ing them, — to resort to physicalforce in the saving of their Master. Jesus saw that the "BEH0LD. HE ls AT HAND ™at betrayeth me." indignities He then endured were but the beginning of a series of bufferings and shameless assaults. Judas stood for the baseness which can never change its program, until it has emptied all its poison. He had told the ecclesiastical enemies of Jesus that the signal by which he would let them know which was Jesus would be a kiss. Never was love's manner so foully adopted by loveless ness. It was customary for a disciple to kiss his teacher. Judas could play the part again; and then and there, he not only kissed Jesus with demonstrative tenderness, but he said unto Him, so that all heard: "Hail, Rabbi!" — Matt, xxvi, 49. The guard could now seize Him, but not until Jesus had said to Judas: " Companion, for what have you come ? Would you betray Me THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 595 with a kiss?" Jesus had reached out to the far-country for His wander ing, sightless old comrade. But Judas could not see the Hand of Love, and he made no answer. As his kiss coiled and hissed, the disciples of Jesus yielded to the very temptation which Jesus had feared for them. They said: "Lord shall we smite with the sword?" — Luke xxii, 49. The captain and the officers of the Jews were binding the kingly Man, whose composure and silence made their arms and fear illustrate the weakness of steel-clad evil in the presence of gentle goodness. It was an hour for the sublimest faith only. The loving and impulsive Simon Peter, could not longer endure the outrage upon his Master. Always a man of action, he felt his sword leaping into the moonlight. It flashed so close to the skull of one of the servants of the high- priest that the hapless slave's ear was cut off. Just as Simon Peter here showed his nature and its weakness, as evidently as when aforetime he girt his fisher's coat about him, and, leaving the meditative John, cast himself into the sea, at the sight of Jesus; so now and here Jesus showed forth His nature and power, just as He had done when the wine failed at the wedding-feast at Cana, or when disease made humanity helpless near the pool of Bethesda. In that one moment, Jesus rebuked the Simon in Peter, healed the poor servant, and uttered words which indicated that His Sonship unto God was not to be forfeited by His JUDAS' KISS. 596 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. escaping the problem of a man. The sword was motionless in Peter's sheath, when Jesus said: "Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He shall presently give Me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scripture be fulfilled, that thus it must be?" — Matt, xxvi, 53, 54. Nothing but the fear of a Jewish mob could have lifted the Roman soldiers and the officers to their feet again. This motive, however, was sufficient, and it rallied them to their miserable busi ness, as a refluent wave tosses the trunk of an old tree away from the beach upon which it has been left. Even then their brutality and intolerance were to beat in vain against the fair throne of a resistless moral loveliness. "And Jesus said unto the chief priests, and captains of the Temple, and elders, which were come against Him, Are ye come out, as against a robber, with swords and staves? When I was daily with you in the Temple, ye stretched not forth your hands against Me: but this is your hour, and the power of dark ness." — Luke xxii, 52, 53. Yes; their Jiour; but eternity was His. CHAPTER LIV TO THE TRIAL THE disheartened disciples could not discover the infinite line in this finite tangle. They saw their dream of the Messiah vanish in the coming glow of that Friday morning which filled their souls with midnight. They were panic-stricken, and, confident that Jesus would do nothing, or perhaps could do nothing, ' ' they forsook Him and fled. " It was a terrible last vision which they had of One whom they had loved and trusted. It was a moment when human pathos seems divine. Jesus saw them run away. Indignities had been so heaped upon Him that the bound and weary figure could not be recognized by Vv *^^^U^&Bez ¦ them as the King of ROMAN SOLDIERS ARE CONDUCTING THE BOUND MAN. 598 THE MAN OP GALLLEE. Kings and Lord of Lords. They knew Him no more as the Christ, or even as Master. Jesus was saving the world of men, not only by manifesting the nature of God and illustrating in Himself the unsus pected powers of humanity, but, also, by descending into the deepest valley of humiliation ever trod by divinely human feet, and, taking man and God there in Himself, Had He not just said to Judas: "Judas, betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?" — Luke xxii, 48. Had not His captors treated Him as the basest of criminals, and had not more than twelve legions of angels re mained in ap parently indif ferent silence in the far-away heavens? Mark alone tells us of a solitary young man, probably Mark himself, who was found, even at the last scene in the garden, clad in his white night dress. The noise made by the searching band of those who doubtless first went to The Upper Room to arrest Jesus, had awakened the young man. Covered only by his loose sleeping robe, he followed the officers and the rabble as they followed the Roman soldiers. He was entirely assured of his own safety, because he had not been in the garden with Jesus. The officers, however, seized him, but he released himself from them; and, hastily leaving his loose garment with them, he also fled away. Slowly we move with the motley throng, that same bright and tender Paschal moon shining over them now, as a little while ago it shone over the valley of dark Kedron, where the road crossed the Those who are conducting the THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. brook and led upward toward Olivet. THE At AN OF GALILEE. 599 bound man are stately Roman soldiers, whose tramp wakes sleepers to look out into the night, which is radiant with blazing torches. It is a scene to stimulate their curiosity. They rouse with the reflec tion that no ordinary prisoner would be walking with Roman soldiers, bound, while the underlings of Caiaphas, the high priest, are thronging near, haunting the criminal's steps. The strangely constituted procession have reached the palace of old Annas; but Caiaphas, his son-in-law, is the high priest now, and upon his boldness and urgent decisiveness these men have relied more than on the sharpest sword that gleams upon the guard. Behind Caiaphas is the fierce and successful bigot, the partisan and friend of Rome, his father-in-law, Annas. We cannot mistake the situation of Caiaphas. On one side of him is the man who has crowded his pockets with revenues extracted from the Temple booths; on the other side of him is Jesus, who had flashed into that nefari ous business the pitiless light of God. He has a complex occasion to deal with. These Roman soldiers must be gotten out of the way very soon, or the Jewish conspiracy against Jesus may be trampled to death, or transformed into an uprising against Rome, with Jesus at its head. Why may not this Jesus be taken, even yet, as a fine rebel, a transcendental Judas Maccabaeus, expressing their hate of Rome? The cunning Annas and fiery Caiaphas may be trusted to manage things successfully for Hebrewdom, as against both Rome and the prophet-peasant. It is a bewildering situation, nevertheless. It is nearly Friday morning. The larger body of the disciples, who have been sleeping yonder, are concealing themselves under the olive boughs, or in their little homes; or, it may be, each one of them is alone with God in prayer. Simon Peter and John, however, who rallied soon after the terrible blow fell upon their hearts, are now ready to go with Jesus into the palace of Caiaphas. They can do little. John may crowd close enough to have his Master get the comfort of knowing that he has recovered his manhood; but Peter has come only to deny Him. The enemies of Jesus are counting upon Caiaphas, for even though they are Pharisees, they are glad to use Caiaphas; and they remember that his hostility once demon strated itself, so far, that this crafty and potent Sadducee prophe sied that Jesus should die on the ground of expediency; and they 6oo THE MAN OF GALLLEE. reflect that doubtless he, no less than others, has influenced Annas to be bitterly opposed to Jesus. Simon Peter is following, but he is following " afar off ." — Luke xxii, 54. He needs to be closest to His Master. He has begun to deny his Lord. He has denied Him to himself; he will soon be denying Him to others. But he is already so heavily weighted with disappointment and doubt, that he cannot keep up to events. Fear of the opposition of men's opinions ever besets him; for Peter is a lover, and he likes companionship. He who loves delightful association better than unpleasant truth cannot keep close to his Re deemer. The other dis ciple, probably John, is favorably known by Caiaphas, and he enters into the pal ace court. But Si mon Peter, who is already beginning to totter under the storm, remains at the door without. By and by, a female slave, who keeps the door, bids him enter the courtyard, for John has told her that Peter is his companion. But John goes nearer to Jesus. The cold spring night is still hanging heavily over the world, and yonder is the glow of a charcoal fire, in whose light we can see the faces of those who are talking about what has occurred. Especially, in and out of the circle of that radiance, do we follow Peter. In his denial of the Lord to others we see an evolution of an earlier denial of his Lord to his own soul. It also furnishes a new element to the atmos phere in which the trial of Jesus goes on, in which the trial which they make of Him comes to be a trial for them; and it proceeds to their condemnation. There are sounds of footsteps on the white pavement, and the curious slave-maid comes near to Simon Peter. Her words will make HOUSE OF CAIAPHAS. THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 601 the skies black as thunder-clouds over the head of the ' ' Rock-man. " The holy Passover night is nearly gone. Simon Peter is in a mood for acquiescence or compromise with men, for he is standing with the servants and officers who have made the fire of coals. And he cannot get on with his own convictions, as yet. The opinions of others will overawe him. In this awful crisis Peter is sensitive to cold, and he is losing the imperial opportunity by which alone he may be saved from falling. He could be entering into alliance with the Martyr- Savior of men; but he is only warming himself. At this moment the words of the damsel shatter the very citadel of his soul. He would escape her glance, by looking up at one of the windows of the palace which is lit up and glares with lights under which are gathered the prisoner and the officers as well as the high priest. The fact that a damsel, rather than a male slave, opens the inner door in the court for Peter, shows that probably the menservants have been attracted also and they push as closely as possible to the center of the critical scene. What has the girl said? She has already de feated Peter, in the presence of the cluster of men around the fire. Because he must warm himself, — he must expose himself to that flaring flame which now reveals his features. She sees and says: " Thou wast also with Jesus of Nazareth." — Mark xiv, 67. Could a damsel dare be so contemptuously intrusive? Instantly Peter makes strong denial that he has any knowledge of Jesus; and he avers that he understands not the meaning of anything she says. He has gone too far. He has been too vehement. He has kindled her curiosity and zeal, and she will vindicate herself before the rough soldiery. Worried as he is, fearful of the taunts of men who will remind him of the failure of Jesus, Simon Peter goes out into the porch, to avoid further questioning and ridicule. This porch is the gateway that leads out of the courtyard. The dawn is coming and a cock is crowing. And to add to his confusion, here is another maid, and she also invades the soul of Simon Peter. Standing on the marble pavement, she gazes long into his face, and says: " This man was also with Jesus of Nazareth." — Luke xxii, 56. Now Simon Peter's despair is mingled with wrath; and he hesitates not to be profane. "He denied with an oath, I do not know the man." — Luke xxii, 57. It is a terrible hour which passes. It ends with the ap- 6o2 THE MAN OP GALLLEE. proach of the kinsman and fellow-servant who had not forgotten Simon Peter's behavior toward the servant of the high priest, Caia phas. He asks Simon Peter: "Did I not see thee in the garden with Him?" — John xviii, 26. " Of course not," was his reply. But it is meaningless. One and all address him, and they say: "You are one of them. You are a Galilean; your speech betrays it." — Mark xiv, 70. Simon Peter now walks boldly into the very pit of disgrace, cursing and swearing as he seeks to escape detection, his Galilean provincialism exhibiting itself in the thickness of his utter ance, and at last his self-confidence breaking down, as the cock crows for the second time. Simon, Peter fell into darkness — not hopeless, but nevertheless cold and deep, just as the gray of the east was flushed with colors like blood. Jesus was near by, when this most loving, brave and true-hearted man utterly failed. Jesus, the Savior, is on His way from Annas Peter in this Peter, by men tory com mands of generous im pulse s or perilous self- confidence, Jesus attest- edHisopin- \ ion of him \1 at the hour V when He "looked up on" His de nying dis ciple and broke his heart with \ the sad ness and where He succors His Simon ever may be said of Sim on \T\knew the peremp- "PETER WENT OUT AND WEPT BITTERLY Sitb. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 603 pity which that look conveyed. The length, breadth, height and depth of God's courage with the human soul, in its embassy of love in Jesus Christ, were then and there made clear. Jesus was prob ably on His way to the trial before the Sanhedrin. Pie had been insulted and bound, but nothing had hurt His heart so much as the sorrow of being forsaken. When His glance fell upon Simon Peter, at the instant which the disciple had polluted with his curses, there entered the soul of the disciple, not only the memory of what Jesus had said unto him: "Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice" but the grace and love which buried his curses in silence, and filled his eyes with tears of penitence. He was still to be estab lished as "Peter," the "man of rock," and though he had denied his Master thrice; Jesus knew him. The fact that his nature and spirit ual attainment were even yet worthy to be allied with the plans of the kingdom of Christ, was demonstrated when ' ' lie went out and wept bitterly." — Luke xxii, 62. That kind of humanity is the only material which the gospel counts on for its finest productions; that gospel is the only scheme of morals which would not discard this kind of humanity. This is somewhat of Jesus' mediatorial work. He lived a life and died — a perpetual prayer for our humanity. In it He made unto God an offering of our humanity. In that long, pathetic, sacrificial prayer, whose deepest petition came with the offer ing at the cross, Christ put under human life a mediatorial influence; something divine beneath our trials; something promising in all our temptations; some promise of Peter in every sifting of Simon. This is God's will, made known in a life and death whose every moment seems to be saying: "Simon, I have prayed for thee." By and by we shall know, if we trust while we are sifted, the fact that Christ's prayer means hope, that His prayer and His look upon Peter were both divine — the sifting was then doing its work, silently. At last the look came from Christ, as He saw His disciple being sifted of the chaff of self-confidence; but Simon would go: Christ looked upon Peter being sifted. The grain of wheat for which He prayed had not been lost. When Jesus was brought before the assembly of elders and priests, at whose head was Caiaphas, it was forced to reflect that years before it had ceased to pronounce judgment in cases like this 604 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. one of Jesus. This was one of the great days on which a capital sentence would outrage Jewish modes of procedure. The Sanhedrin was not, however, totally perplexed, for while it might not sentence Jesus, with the shrewd Caiaphas in the lead, it would hunt Him to the death. There were no precedents for such a case, for this man, whose influence was proving itself already able to put all opposition on trial, had never had a predecessor. Nothing could be done by Caiaphas and his ecclesiastical commission which would be legal, and at the same time would probably accomplish the death of Jesus, save to send Him to Pilate, and thus make Rome aid in the execution of One who was the 'foe of a corrupt ecclesiasticism and a tyrannical state policy. Caiaphas had first asked Jesus as to His doctrine, and Jesus answered him with a frankness which made His account of the method a most effective illustration thereof: "I have spoken openly to the world; I ever taught in synagogues, and in the Temple, where all the Jews come together; and in secret spake I nothing. Why askest thou Me? Ask them that have heard Me, what I spake unto them: behold, these know the things which I said." — Jo Jin xviii, 20, 21. Caiaphas was silent in the presence of facts. Jesus had ever been frank. The only reply which an underling of Caiaphas could make to Jesus was a stroke with the palm of his hand, as the officer said: "Answerest thou the High Priest so?" Jesus answered him: "If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou Me?" — Jo Jm xviii, 23. The day had come, and the council had sought in vain for some scrap of evidence by which Jesus might be sent to Pilate, in the assurance that He would be put to death. Two witnesses, the falsity of whose testimony was manifest in the fact that they had distorted what Jesus really did say, and that even then they did not agree, came forward, and said: "This fellow said, I am able to destroy the Temple of God, and to build it in three days." — Matt, xxvi, 61. The high priest, glad even of this doubtful aid, and, displeased with the silence of Jesus, said: "Answerest Thou nothing to what these witness against Thee?" — Mark xiv, 4. The question was asked in such a way as to invite an explanation on the part of Jesus, and that might provide Caiaphas with something which would rouse the ire of Pilate. Jesus said nothing. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 605 This scheme of Caiaphas having failed, some more impressive method must be employed to get out of Jesus a word which would make His condemnation sure. Caiaphas might mount to his fancied height by adjuring Him by the living God. He might thus quicken the atmosphere, until the answer of Jesus should run upon its waves to the ends of the earth. But at last the moment for a word from Jesus would come, and it did come. Caiaphas had said: "Tell us whether Thou be the Christ, the Son of God. "— Matt, xxvi, 63. The emphasis of past, present and future was in the reply of Jesus. Jesus saith unto him: "lam and Jiereafter ye shall see the Son of Man"— Matt. xxvi, 64. He does not use the theological phrase, "Son of God;" still He clings to this oft- repeated phrase "Son of Man," which is so defin itive of His method of revealing divinity. "Ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven. " — Matt, xxvi, 64. The High Priest, who was himself a candidate for Messianic honors and ready to be jealous of Messianic powers, flies into a rage. Caiaphas is rending his garments now. The petty law demands it; but his soul is rent also, because the highest law of the universe demands that also. Nothing further is needed, as Caiaphas says, ' ' He hath spoken blasphemy, and we have heard it ourselves from His own mouth." Jesus' frank method, of which He told them, is appreciated, and Jesus is condemned. Condemnation of Jesus can never beat back the tides of music which He has organized and set moving in the common air by His word, and which the human heart keeps on repeat ing. Their melody judges the discord and makes it appear hideous. ENTRANCE TO JUDGMENT HALL OF PILATE. 606 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. The only answer that can be made to Jesus at such moments is the answer they made. ' And some began to spit on Him, and to blind fold Him, and to buffet Him, and to say unto Him, prophesy: Who it was tJiat struck TJiee, " and the officers received Him with the blows of their hands." This was their sole way of judging of divinity. The day grows more luminous against an eternal night which deep ens. Caiaphas and his fellow-conspirators have left the Temple. Jesus must be brought before Pilate. These who had tried Jesus and these whom He had been trying are of one fiber and have one point of view. The man into whose presence He is now coming has a different attitude toward Him and his soul is of a different texture. Pilate was the officer of Rome over a province. He was skillful, callous, luxurious, corrupt, imperious, and politic. He had nothing but the severity of iron for popular opposition, which he always feared; he had nothing in his heart but superb contempt for the religious peculiarities of the people he ruled. He had been cold and brutal, but now he found it desirable to be judicious and shrewd. As Jesus comes near to him we feel that Pilate is squaring himself to deal with influences of a more sovereign sort than any which have appealed to him heretofore. It is full daytime everywhere, except in the hearts o'ercome of the moral night-time. The Jewish conspirators which were just now assembled in the palace of Caiaphas, have reached the only result possible, namely, this, to bind the prisoner over and get Him to Pilate on the general charge of being a malefactor. Of course, they must avoid definiteness in their accusation. The Jewish trial has failed to do anything save to compel the High Priest to rend his garment. It was a confessed failure. The chief priests have held a hurried consultation with the elders and scribes, to procure justice? No — "to put Him to death." Everything must now be made to demonstrate that Jesus is a political, rather than a religious, offender, else Pilate will have no interest in Him. If even they have a good case, there is another embarrassment. These piously scented relig ionists have scruples that prevent them from entering the Pra?torium, where Rome flaunts herself. A Caiaphas, wherever he is, must hold to the petty formalities with the same iron grip with which he seizes the throat of inspired holiness. It is always difficult for evil or bigotry to succeed with itself. CHAPTER LV BEFORE PILATE DAYLIGHT had now flung its full radiance over the quarters occupied by the representatives of Rome. We do not know their exact location. It may be that Pilate and his wife were staying in the royal apartments of Plerod, and that these are not the, walls of the fortress Antonia. It matters not to any soul where it judges of Jesus Christ, if, like Pilate, it does not know what to do with Jesus who is called Christ. The result will be the same in moral disaster, unless He be taken as King and Lord and loved by the heart. Caiaphas and his henchmen must not be defiled. They must eat the Passover. Others would stay with the Passover Lamb whose name is Jesus, and whom they lead to Pil ate. It is now seven o'clock, and Pilate has gone out to an appar ently good and gentle man who, by private procedure, has been pushed for ward as a friendless -5 cross borne by different men, but men spirit. differ only in attitude and ¥ Done at first because of coercion, Simon's act was a love O.orified by ve: and there is excellent reason for supposing that Simon's moment of sympathy with Jesus opened out into an eternity of blessedness. Well-founded appears the tradition that he was converted, then and there, by the majestic Sufferer whose lacerated back had borne the cross as far as Pie could, on the way from the Prse- torium to Calvary. This same Simon is known as "the father of Rufus," of whom and of ViA DOLOROSA, WHERE JESUS LEANED FOR SUPPORT. whose mother, Paul writes with loving gratitude at a WHERE CHRIST MET HIS MOTHER. ADDRESSED !>-_- THE LAMENTING WOMEN. later time. Mark is very clear in calling him "the father of both Alexander and Rufus. " — Mark xv, 21. The work of grace was therefore accom plishing itself, while the saving power of the " O ' ^ L WHERE CHRIST Nazarene was being made perfect by the cruelty and odium of the Via Dolorosa. It is not possible to make accurate statements with regard to the ease, and even the enthusiasm, with which the influential Jews would have adopted Jesus as their champion, if, at any critical hour, such as was the hour of His Temptation, He had been willing to be a politician and to abandon His moral divinity for a human triumph. It was true that all those kingdoms would- have been His, if He had given an instant's allegiance to the un-Christlike method of gaining 626 THE MAN OF GALILEE. power. Such hours came often; but the hour of all hours in which it was possible for Him to be the Messiah of the Jews with speediest acclaim, lay just behind Him. Evil forces were so nearly driven to desjjair with regard to what could be done with Him that nothing remained save to get Him out of the way quickly, lest the people should compel the powers to take Him as leader and champion. Every step of His career from that moment on, however, made Him less the Messiah of the Jews and more the Messiah of humanity. He had seen the last of those moments in which puzzled and irri tated Judaism would have adopted Him as the head of the revolu tion it fretted to undertake against Rome, if He had made a single concession to its bigotry and narrowness. His plan for the redemp tion of Israel included His plan for the redemption of the world, and He was now on His way to the great moment in which Judaism was to make Him more revolting to itself and more dear to man, by stretching Him on the most shameful symbol. which punishment had devised. He must now speak. He concludes the deeply eloquent silence which has held His lips shut since the early morning, when He declared Himself Messiah in a way which indicated that the des tiny of mankind nestled in His anguished heart. He utters a brief word to the women who stand in line with the multitude of spectators on the roadway, Breaking in on the mournful sound of their wail- ings, which strangely contrasted with the hoarse clamor which He had heard for many hours, He said: "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves. — Luke xxiii, 28. Jesus Christ had already restored the balance of humanity, by illustrating in Plimself the divine beauty of the qualities characteristic of woman. He found this a masculine world, in which the feminine was only an incident; He left it a human world in which the feminine was essential. These who lamented Him were the advance guard of that great army and sister hood who perceive in Jesus the true Son of humanity in whom truly there is neither man nor woman. A brutal and entirely masculine world had already hewn out His crucifix; a new world which should hail Him as the King of humanity was discoverable through the tears of the women who lamented Him. The moment of this profound pathos revealed another ray of His moral sublimity. He was touched by their tears, and yet His kingli- THE ALAN OF GALILEE. 627 ness must decline to be considered an object of pity. He knew by the forelook of a wounded heart the calamitous fate which was even then gathering over His beloved Jerusalem, lie could not help feel ing the certainty of those tears of repentance, to be mingled with countless tears of r 4* gratitude, which should flow, age after age, when men and women were to remem ber this day of shame. He was enough of a statesman to feel that these things were done in what the common jihrase called "the green tree." His statesmanship looked forward with foreboding and warning to that hour in the history of Jerusalem when the saj^less trunk of national life would be ready for the conflagration, — "the dry tree." Withered and fruitless, leafless and dead at the heart, Judaism would then kindle with the heat of passion and the blast of wickedness and consume away. He there fore poured His soul into the words: "Behold, the days are coming. in which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs tha<; never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us ; and to the hills, Cover us. For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry ? " — Luke xxiii, 29-3 1 . 628 THE ALAN OF GALILEE. It must needs be that only the greatest son of Israel shall be Israel's condemnation; and as Jesus is come in sight of Golgotha, we j)erceive that, at every step, He is becoming more indisputably the Messiah of mankind. Nothing more profoundly illustrates the spiritual grandeur of Christianity, its entire independence of earthly locations, its deepest dependence upon facts known only and known surely in the geography of the human soul, than the truth that even to-day no man can point out the spot on which the King of Kings rose to undeniable sovereignty over the race of men. It is a vast gain for the spiritual culture of mankind that we do not know even the pile of debris which probably conceals the spot where bled "Those blessed feet Which eighteen hundred years ago were nailed, For our advantage, on the bitter cross." "To a jSace called Golgotha" is the only johrase by which we may locate Calvary, save as a reality in the experience of men. It is a phrase which satisfies the spiritual thinker, because it leaves his Lord to the spiritual and the infinite. It does not abandon Him at an instant when we are the most interested to know just wlicre on this planet He was lifted into changeless royalty, exeeot to locate the event and its circumstances more deeply in the soul of man. The Latin form Calvary seems to have won the permanent place in the vocabulary of men, rather than the Aramaic word Golgo'ha; and Calvary signifies "a skull." It may have suggested the peculiar configuration of the little elevation in one of the suburban gardens, or the fact that it was a well-known place of horrible associations, because there many offend ers had suffered sentence of death. We have lost nothing by igno rance on this point. Christ's kingdom is an affair internal and spir itual; and the Calvary upon which we put Him to death is to be found within us. From many a Pilate-like passion of prejudice within there stretches through the human heart many a Via Dolorosa. The point where that road sadly terminates in our experience may have been lost sight of, as the location of Calvary has been obliter ated by contending armies; yet we know that the tragedy of Jesus is authentic, and no carelessly-piled rubbish can hide it from the supreme light of conscience. THE MAN OF G ALII. PP. 629 And now we are standing with llim on the spot where His cross will soon be erected. It is not quite noon, yet the tremulous blaze from out of that Syrian sky falls like a revealing radiance upon the white grandeur of Jerusalem. There are glances from Calvary toward the city, from eyes that have the spiritual depth and force which enter tain memories and prophecies. Yonder the sacred hills which have been trodden by the psalmists and prophets, who accepted the vision of Him as the inspiration of their song and the theme of their elo quence, stand green with olives and holy with pious associations. The deep blue sky which arches up and on, until it deepens infinitely at the zenith, bends downward again, and falls like a curtain of sapphire just beyond Bethany, which has given to this homeless man that which was the nearest home He had ever known on earth. Perhaps PIis own eye is detained for an instant, as Pie looks upon the city for the last time, by the little road entering the town by the Damascus gate, for that is the road from Nazareth, and now, as never before, He seems to be Jesus of Nazareth. There is perfect quiet in the luxurious mansions, half-con cealed in the umbrageous growth out of which they rise to crown the hills; the peril of the rich citizens who inhabit them is nearly gone. Property, however wickedly obtained, is safer now, they think, for the pale and too interesting idealist is going to be put to death very soon. He will trouble them no longer with telling them how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Perhaps they are half-reconciled to the thought that He might have been dis posed of by the scourging, being only a harmless enthusiast. Rough usage was not necessary for even a reforming democrat who had addressed His impecunious followers, telling them: " In My Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you. '' — JoJin xiv, 2. Ill-gotten wealth was willing even then to contribute to the support of a religion which would make the poor content to look for a home in some other world. Yet it is likely that these homes of the rich have made a contribution a little earlier; for the daughters of Jerusalem who wept for Him as He came from the Praetorium were probably members of a society in which the eternal womanly devised schemes for the utterance of that tenderness which is in woman's heart: and these wealthy ladies have made the usual 630 THE ALAN OP GALILEE. provision so that He and the other malefactors will be offered, at the right time, the stupefying drink of myrrh and sour wine, that their agonies may be a little mitigated. Still the eyes wander away from the dolorous spot and toward the city; but the city has already gained an infamy. It is now mem orable for its outrage upon Him. One cannot keep from beholding the Court of the Priests, nearly four hundred feet higher than the Pool of Siloam, wherein blind Judaism refused to wash its eyes with the beggars. That place below Mount Zion, dark with the foliage which Jesus declined to use to conceal Himself from Judas, is the garden of Gethsemane. He alone knows the significance of these things. They nail together the cross-pieces; the sharp report from the mallet breaks in upon the silence with intrusive violence, but it is part of the music of salvation. No final chorus in Gounod's Redemp tion, no Hallelujah strain in which the music of any Handel's Mes siah culminates, is completely true without the sounds which quiver upon that air as the cross-bars are fastened to the upright beam. Still stands the lonely Figure, penetrated with a sorrow so awful and so divine as to isolate Him from the very humanity which He saves. Yonder is Olivet waiting. It shall be the place whence His feet shall leave the rock, when He shall ascend to His father and His God. But Calvary must be first. Enough, then, from mem ory, and enough from prophecy! Let the pinnacle and the roof of the Temple burn under the fiery noon that fills the dome of blue above the snowy walls and towers; here is One about to make the temple of humanity so much more white and grand and sacred that the brilliant pile upon Mount Zion shall vanish away. They are now stripping Plim, and He who was scourged more deeply and cruelly by those to whom He offered His heart of love than He could have been by Roman bullies, is waiting for crucifixion, — for enthronement. Never has there been such a divine challenge in the history of this planet as that which He offered to evil when He said: "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto Me." — John xii, 32. The chal lenge has now been fully accepted; they are about to lift Him up. They have gotten rid of the King of the Jews; they are making Him King of humanity. It is the superlative blunder made by bigotry, intolerance and despotism. The more ferocious the hate they visit THE A/AN OF GALILEE. 631 upon Him, the heavier the indignity they offer Plim, the wilder the fanaticism with which they blast Him, — the mightier and tenderer, the more meek and royal He comes to be, until sovereignty of earth and man passes into His hands. They have adopted the most shameful method of dealing with the most dreadful or the most debased of criminals, — crucifixion. Against that dark villainy which they furnish shines the Light of the World. Only the fierce passion of the Orient could 'have invented and inaugurated so horrible a method of executing a capital sentence. It is almost alien to the Jew, but the instrumentalities of crtielest paganism must now be taxed to furnish a scene revolting enough to express their bitterness and hate. The strong wooden pin has been placed midway from the bot tom to the top of the beam, in order that the bod}- mav partially rest upon it, so that it shall not tear itself away from the cross. The women whose pity still expressed itself in tears, have their special task of mercy to perform, and the potion, whose opiate is expected to render PIis pain less acute, is now offered to Plim. Death has never been met by one intellectually and spiritually able to make complete discovery of all the treasures and resources of his realm. Jesus refuses the draught! He cannot save man by stupe fying PIis own faculties. He must see and feel and know the last cruelty of man, the last malice of evil, the last spear-point of death. He will "taste the whole of it;" then He cannot taste this medicated wine. Let the other two offenders, whose crosses still lie on the ground with His, do as they will, — they Jiave no world to save. If the King of Terrors is to be despoiled or to be vanquished by a divine man, it must be done with divine fairness. Thus open-eyed and calm, Jesus was ready to die on the center cross, which probably was not yet upreared and fixed firmly in the earth. He was now laid upon it. The arms which had taken into their embrace His mother and John the Beloved, were stretched along the cross-beams, and a large iron nail was driven through each of the palms of those hands which had blessed the little children. Cruelty of the most calculating sort could add nothing else save to bend the legs upward until the soles of the feet lay against the post, when either one very large iron spike was driven through both, or 632 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. two smaller nails penetrated the feet in response to the pitiless blows of the mallet. Thus were they fastened to the upright beam. The crowd which had come from Jerusalem had never beheld a more frightful condemnation of that Judaistic hate which had now called in Roman brutality and Carthagenian cruelty to produce in this for saken man the extremity of physical agony. The torture which penetrated His soul, however, was more than this; and in a less sweet and gentle heart it would have turned all to bitterness. No human device could intensify the inconceivable pain which quivered and throbbed along the torn and trembling nerves, yet He might have forgotten it in part, if the disciples had not fled after He had been denied and forsaken. The intense misery of His thirsting frame which hung there surcharged with anguish of soul, would ordi narily have robbed reason of every right and thought of every pre rogative, in that ghastly hour. But just then He rose to a height known only to God, and surveying the whole mental and spiritual situation, knowing the dull-eyed fanaticism which had hounded Him to that place, comprehending the terrible result of that ignorance which allies itself with religious bigotry, and, above all, conscious of the divine power of compassion and forgiving love, He looked to the only spot in the universe where He was understood, — to heaven, and He said: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. " — Luke xxiii, 34. As has already been intimated, this prayer had been forming itself on PIis lips for hours. His was a spontaneous, but not an extemporaneous nature. Jesus' actions can never be understood by us, unless we see how clearly He here comprehended the gigantic blundering, as well as the unspeakable sinfulness, of those who had brought Him toward the cross and now had fastened Him upon it. He appreciated the intellectual darkness out of which this bolt of moral wrong flew into His bosom. There is the patience of igno rance which looks upon ignorance without seriously condemning it. It is better called stupidity or dullness. But here was the patience of infinite intelligence sending its ray of light into the heart of mid night, with the force of a prayer conceived in gentleness, benevo lence, and an all-embracing love for humanity. He has been lifted up. As the rough tree upon which He hung helpless and tortured THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 633 held Him high enough to meet the coarse gaze of men who were intoxicated with the horror, Pie proved His profound faith in the one great fact in the nature of God which His perfect Sonship had re vealed, — God's Fatherhood. For the first word that came from the heart of the tragedy was His word: "Father." Nothing that Jesus ever did or said, to publish or illustrate the Fatherhood of God, so outlined the amazing sweep of His faith, as the fact that He drew upon it just then, and so mightily. Because His suffering spirit went far enough into the depth of the Fatherhood of God to obtain His own solace, He could predicate forgiveness. And what far- reaching forgiveness! Jesus would have it reach these ignorant chil dren of the All-Father who were even then murdering Him, the Father's true Son, their Messiah, with unsurpassed cruelty and deepest shame. So was He the Christ of God. The anguish of this cry was thus softened by Jesus' charity. His charity and forgiveness sprang out of His love. Pie knew the ignorance with which the soldiers nailed Him to the cross, as they had nailed others to similar crosses, according to their duty; He knew also that the chief priests and Pilate, who would have been the last to admit that they knew not what they were doing, were actually in deeper darkness than the soldiers, because they were disobedient unto a higher law. But Jesus included them all in His prayer.Scorn and ribaldry disported themselves beneath the crucified Man, while the Syrian heat poured out its fierceness upon Jesus, and the helpless One who alone could help the world was enduring extreme internal agony. If ever a bitter thought had right to utter itself forth, this was the moment; but the most maligned and cruelly treated Son of God had nothing to speak out of harmony with His sweet and comforting word of forgiveness. The powers of mind and body were besieged. Still the secret of God was His, and even when memory was assaulted by the tortures of the hour, He did not forget to draw a stream of forgiveness for all His sinning brothers, from the fountain of God's Fatherhood. Now the Jewish leaders began to get some clear idea of what had happened to their Hebrew dignity, by calling in Rome to com plete the death of Rabbi Jesus, under disgracing circumstances. Not 634 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. only had Pilate sneered at them by his saying at the Judgment Hall: "Behold your King!" and silently warded off their reply: " We have no king but Caesar," — John xix, 15,- — in a manner unfavorable to their pride; but the chief priests now saw the soldiers of Rome, having filled themselves with the common wine which on such occasions was CASTING LOTS FOR CHRIST'S GARMENT. furnished in aoundance, staggering gleefully beneath the dying Jew and deriding Him as the Jewish King. Their derision, however, was a scornful laugh in the face of the Jew. They shouted to the King of the Jews to save Himself, while they lifted up their cups of wine and proposed a health to Him, or asked His response to their rev elry. Blind to the fact that He incarnated every fair dream of Israel, and that He had manifested forth every precious anticipation of poet and prophet, the chief men of Israel were now beholding themselves ridiculed by their servants. They were no longer guiding the events THT. ALAN OF GALILEE. 03s of that shameless murder! The Rome the}' detested was in control. A frenzied mob of Romans and street-loafers led them into fathom less degradation, at the hour when all that Israel had stood for was heing lost. For the time being, the}- were compelled to mingle their derision with that of contemptuous foes. The doomed man had been taken to Calvary with His sandals, girdle, outer cloak and head-dress, as the only visible property which cruelty and cupidity could parcel out. Perhaps they were not worth much and did not detain their curiosity long, as the four soldiers, who had been especially concerned in the labor of crucifying Him, looked about near the foot of the cross which bore Testis, and thought of their perquisites. They gambled for the inner garment only It was a priestly vesture, finely woven and seamless. The dice were thrown in the hot Syrian light. Little cared they for the whispers of the past: and less for a symbol which would fascinate the piety of the future. To divide this seamless robe, as they had doubtless rended the larger cloak into four parts, would be to ruin something valuable. Neither can the unit of Christ's influence be divided. The integer of Jesus' life and words is beyond human power of destruc tion. The prophecy is ever fulfilled: "They parted my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. " — Matt, xxvii, 35. But the fact is also made forever secure that the priesthood of Jesus is never to be divided. Men may gamble for His priestly tunic; they cannot rend it. Still the miserable fanatics were joining with the half drunk sol diers in offering their contempt to the sufferer. Coarse mockers went by with scornful Sanhedrists, challenging Plim, flinging taunts at Him, entertaining the blatant populace with grimaces, while the veins of the Son of Man were swollen with agony, and PIis heart was break ing. Rulers cried out, as they jeeringly walked close to His cross: "He saved others: let Him save Himself, if He be Christ, the chosen of God." — Matt, xxvii, 42. What "rulers!" No man ever ruled in God's world, for long, who ruled on their theory. There was the true Ruler, — the Ruler of time and eternity, and, because He was the Christ, He could not save Himself. To have saved Himself for an hour or for a life-span would have been to lose Himself and all the race forever. 636 THE ALAN OF GALLLEE. The mocking soldiers took up the refrain of contumely, and, coming close to the cross, with hearts untouched by His jorayer for their forgiveness, they yielded a little to the impulse of kindliness, and offered Him some of the sour wine which was left after their drinking. Servants of Rome as they were, careless of the feelings of the Jews whom they now scorned in their derision of Jesus, they said: "If Thou be the King of the Jews, save Thyself." They had read the words written on the Titulus. Indeed, the attention of all was attracted by the superscription inscribed upon the placard which either hung from the neck of Jesus, or was firmly and conspicuously fixed on the topmost portion of the cross above His head. This bill or titulus, whose use in particular lay in the fact that it published the name of the condemned person, had been affixed to the victim or to the cross at an earlier time, and, on sight of it, the leaders of the Jews had strenuously objected to its statement, which soldier, priest, and alien could read. The inscription was to the effect that this man, who was crucified with so much of circum stance and disgrace, was "the King of the Jezas." — Matt, xxvii, 37. The title was written by Pilate, and the Roman Governor was partly avenged upon the chief j^riests of the Jews, who had almost forced him to give up Jesus to their fanaticism and brutality. Nothing could have been more to his liking than the opportunity of calling Jesus ' ' TJie King of the Jezas, " in this public way. Coming from the Temple, as these priestly devotees did, they at once had hurried to the Praetorium, and sought to influence Pilate not to permit this abominated title to be set up. The chief council knew that they must be careful of public opinion, for a revolt could easily break forth and become uncontrollable, and Pilate was evidently not inclined to give up this opportunity for discounting the influence of the Sanhe- drists. There the title, as John describes it, plainly showed Pilate's skill at uttering contempt. It ran as follows: "JESUS OF NAZ ARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS."— John xix, 19. Nothing could have been more offensive to the rulers of Israel than the scorn contained in the word Nazareth. "Write not, The King of the Jews; but that He said, I am the King of the Jews, " begged the chief priests." Pilate's stern reply was: "What I have written I have written." — John xix, 22. THE ALAN OP GALLLEE. and (>37 The age-long conflict between evil and good had reached its Waterloo. The hour had struck for the decisive struggle. Every contest which the soul of man had felt from the beginning, every silent advance of right upon retreating wrong, every sharp defense of truth against error, every dreadful fight against sin, every bloody march upon selfishness, every terrific charge upon the beast, every A I MMKlh The tablet or titulus bearing this inscription is said to have been found by Helen (called St. Helen), mother of Constantine the Great, and by her conveyed to Rome, where it was preser\ed in the Church of the Holy Cross, and at length, in 1492, to have been anew brought to light, being found in the vaulted roof of the same church while it was undergoing repairs. From the annexed cut, which is a facsimile of a part of this title, it will be observed that the words, conformably to ancient custom in Judea, are read from right to left. The inscription corresponds with the statement of St. John, pre senting traces of the Hebrew first, then the Greek and then the Latin. The Hebrew is the least, the Latin the most distinct. The last presents in full the word Nazarenus — "The Nazarene " — with two letters, apparently R and E, which, with X, would make REX, or king; so that, as St. John states, the title thus appears to have run, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,'' and consequently contained the scoffing implication that Jesus had suffered death for high treason against the Roman sovereignty. defeat, every triumph, was but a prelude to this awfully tragic mo ment when the Son of God, nailed to the cross, was first to hurl the arrogant power of sin from that solemn height and, next, to make the cross His undisputed throne. Is it wonderful that such an hour 638 THE AIAN OF GALLLEE. should bring out the human soul into such a definiteness of feature that its deepest nature and loftiest possibility might be seen? Jesus came to be the Savior of the human spirit — the whole man. He could never be content to merely redeem the intellectual life, or the life of the sensibilities, or that of the purposes and choices of man kind. At His cross, as a trinity in unity, stood the God-like human soul. Thought came in the language of Greece, the land of the intel lect; sentiment and feeling came in the language of Hebrewdom, the land of the sensibilities, the home of the human heart. J J 711 came in the Latin tongue, the language of imperial Rome, where human pur pose had made its arches of triumph. In all these, came human nature, once dissevered but now united before the cross of Jesus of Nazareth. We must not forget that this inscription was presented to the eye of the foreigner, in Greek, that the alien might understand it; it was given to the Jew in Hebrew, because Jerusalem and Calvary were located in the province of Judea, a Jewish country; it was put into the Latin language because this same Judea was a Roman province, and this was the official tongue. The assertion it contained was probablv made in bitterest irony. But behind these facts lies a greater fact. There these three particular languages were. The powers which make history had so moved in the j^ast and were so moving in the present, that these three great streams of human life and experience met at the foot of that crucifix, as they had taken their. rise long ago in the deep springs cf the human soul. There was a wondrous drawing power in that cross. Human nature had been dissevered by evil. Human life everywhere was fragmentary. The soul of man was to be re-constituted. CHAPTER LVII THE DEATH OF JESUS FLTRTHER than the gibes of the soldiers of Rome or the sneers of the Jewish authorities, did one of the contemptuous scorners drive the dagger of human hate toward the heart of Jesus, when he cried out: "Thou that destrovest the Temple, and buildest it in three days, prove that Thou mightest have done so, by saving Thyself." — Matt, xxvii, 40. And a cry rang through the soul of the Son of hu manity, who was then proving PIis Divinity, when some one screamed: "If Thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross!" — Malt, xxvii, 40. The hideous jargon of baffled iniquity went on, from moment to moment, while the calm and silence of Jesus fell upon the mockery and blasphemy, as the stead}' rays from a lighthouse lantern fall upon dark and rushing waters, only lo reveal the horror of death. And now one of the wretches who were being cru cified with Him, doubtless wrathful with the thought that Jesus might possibly have saved Himself and them from punishment, cast in His teeth the reproach which had already been repeated by San- hedrist and Roman soldier. Little 639 MARY, THE MOTHER OF CHRIST, AND THE APOSTLE JOHN. 640 THE AIAN OF GALLLEE. better was the trained Jew in that hour, seeking for a sign which would appeal to his sense, and demonstrate the spiritual Messiah- ship of Jesus to the organs of hearing and feeling and tasting and smelling and seeing, than this ignorant robber. The reviling thief had some reason, perhaps, in his torn sinews and in the awful thirst which he knew in that torturing hour, for asking a sensuous proof of God's delivering power. If there were any whom Jesus pitied in the group of blasphemers near the cross, it was this hapless wretch; yet even Jesus' pity could not go so far as to make visible proof of His Messiahship. That would be to undo it; that would be to lose all the ground which was triumphantly held in the Temptation in the desert. From the hour of that struggle, even unto this, Jesus had been true to the Kingdom of the Invisible, of which He was the Invisible King. That was a moment of indescribable horror when the Jewish authorities sought to arrest the attention of the people who passed on the roadway toward Jerusalem, pointing out to them the central cross, with its title of irony and shame. The ears of the astonished pilgrims were filled, at the same time, with the derisive shouts and taunting words of scorn which were still being repeated, not only to annoy the sufferer, but to keep the populace from gathering around that cross and adopting its victim for the King of the op pressed of every race and region. The one thief was uttering his terrible challenge to Jesus: "If Thou art the Christ, save Thyself and us!" — Luke xxiii, 39. His companion in iniquity, awed and more deeply touched than ever with the beauty and heroism of Jesus, turned as far as he could and spoke his word of rebuke and exhortation. This was the penitent robber, and he sought to dissuade his impenitent comrade from uttering words of mockery. By an implied argument born out of a crisis, he attempted to fasten the thoughts of his wicked companion upon the significance of death in their case and in the case of Jesus. Probably this penitent man began to turn toward Jesus when, on the way from the city to the hill Golgotha which was outside the city wall, he looked with sorrowful eyes upon Jesus staggering and falling under His cross. Perhaps he was only half won at that moment; certainly he was entirely won to Jesus in this moment, when the THE AT AN OF GALLLEE. 641 enduring gentleness of the King of Men revealed to him that majesty of love which is God's. The penitent robber said to his comrade: "Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss." — Luke xxiii, 40, 41. Surely something, either before this hour or on the way to Calvary, had convinced the nobler- heart ed one, of the injustice which was being visited upon Jesus. But his last word was not to Jesus, he ber me when Never was a HOME OF SlMAS THE PENITENT THIEF, yet spoken. Turning said: "Lord, remem- Thou comest into Thy kingdom." — Luke xxiii, 43 prayer more profoundly conceived in true theology and warm religion. The Lordship of Christ was acknowledged, and here the human being was throwing himself upon that fact, in an hour which offered the most sublime strain for faith. It was an anticipation of certain tri umph for the kingdom of Jesus. All that the poor wretch asked was to be remembered. He would rather be left in the memory of Jesus, than to be delivered from the cross on which he was dying. The answer of Jesus was as far-reaching, from the divine point of view, as was the prayer of the penitent thief from the human point of view. Jesus said: "Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise." — Luke xxiii, 43. With disciples who had hurried away to be safe from harm, or who had denied Him; with hopeless friends lamenting the disaster; with the world beholding what appeared to be His helplessness, and the authorities of earth conspiring to leave the memory of Jesus only as that of a dangerous blunderer in human and divine affairs; — with these in mind, the vision of this coarse 41 642 THE AIAN OF GALILEE. thief becomes proof of how far the light of Christ's brotherliness penetrates into the deeps of humanity and how salvable is the most unpromising soul when it stands in the presence of Christ's self- sacrifice. In the answer of Love, Jesus abolished time. The eternal is the everlasting now. The thief had said something about being remembered in the future. Jesus' answer was " To-day thou shalt be with Me in paradise." It was now nearly two hours since they had fastened the Re deemer of Men to His cross, having handed Him over to the crueltv of the Roman quaternion and the malice of sneering priests. When Jesus was arrested, the disciples ran everywhither, and only at the trial before Caiaphas and Pilate do we see any except John. Simon Peter, who followed after John, was always afar off, even from John, for J-ohn was as close as possible to his Master. The loving disciple had pressed ever on after the stricken Shepherd of the sheep. He had probably gone to the city and now had returned with the women, whose faces we see in every true portrayal of the death of Jesus. Art has placed them nearer than the account would indicate as their station. Luke says that they "stood afar off, beholding these things." Least far away doubtless, was the mother of Jesus, and close to her was her sister, Salome. Mary, the wife of Cleophas, mother of James and Joses, was near unto them, with Mary Magdalene. It was deeply tragic for her. Only a woman's heart in which Love had done its wonders, could there remain so undismayed and be seed-ground for hope. John's courage was the courage of love, and upon that courage Jesus relied, when, looking through the awful darkness which hung about the earth in the hour of its own extreme tragedy, He saw His mother, and John standing by her side. He could trust John with the dearest possession of His life, — His mother. Only one who would be near unto Him when the crowd on the roadway was turning away from Plim in horror, because His mutilated form was receiving reproaches and contempt, — only such a one as John, faithful to the last, would re ceive the great honor which Jesus conferred upon him when He said: — "Woman, behold thy son!" — JoJin xix, 26. Only a mother whose heart-strings had been so often strained by the majestic un folding of her son's destiny could be worthy of such a gift as Jesus THE AIAN OF GALILEE. 643 gave to Mary, when, looking at His disciple, lie added: "Son, be hold thy mother." Once more he had exemplified the strength and beauty of spir itual relationships. He had carried the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man farther than ever before. He honored only the relations that are eternal. And here, with blood streaming down His face, and with unparalleled sorrows choking His voice, He proclaimed this truth in which He had lived, even to the mother to whom He first spoke it when He said: "Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?" — Luke ii, 49. He had nearly completed His Father's business on earth, but it was not to be finished, save as these spiritual relationships were revealed in their divine superiority. Mary had found a home, and John had found a mother, in deed and in truth. Around the cold earth, on which were falling drops of blood, which were at once the witness of how deeply man had sinned and how great is the love of God that would save from that sin, the darkness was still hanging. Within the brain and heart of the sufferer, the interests of earth and heaven were being allied; and the contending forces, whose battle has scarred all history, were being reconciled in the love which made Him at once priest and sacrifice. The representative of man, He was also the representative of God. The spot where everything heavenly seemed to be most humbled was also the spot where every thing earthly was most exalted. Without any superstition, we are convinced that the blood-drops falling upon the hill-top, while He was forgiving His enemies, were indeed "the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel." Judaism ought to have forsaken all other altars for this. The blood of Abel, the innocent sacrifice to selfishness, cries unto God, until, in the great act of self- sacrifice, — that is, in the blood which means forgiveness, — the soul finds peace. We must not enter irreverently into an account of the un- namable pains which the body of Jesus endured, and the unequaled sorrows which visited and threatened to reign in His soul. Jesus wished to live. He longed to accomplish the purpose of His life, by making proof in Himself, while He lived, of the goodness of God and the destiny of humanity. That man should forsake Him at the 644 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. hour when man was being saved, and that God, His Father, should be silent, and seemingly withdrawn, to make the hour most lonely, when Jesus, His Son, was revealing most of His Father's nature and aims, — this caused the bewilderment of brain which com agony of the Son of God. The Priest Himself as IPs own sacrifice. not some ray of anguish of heart and pleted the soul- Bk was offering Would there light ventur ing through the darl ness and falling on the Sacrifice, if He were a willing THE GIBES OF THE SOLDIERS OF ROME. Sacrifice, and without There was no answer. The dered with the cry, the most pa- the universe ever heard: "Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani! "- -Matt, xxvii, 16. "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" Jesus was a little child again. Nothing is spot or blemish ? darkness shud thetic and piercing THE MAN OF GALILEE. 645 tenderer than this boyhood feeling which overmasters Plim. He had probably spoken Greek during most of His public life; Pie had returned to the Galilean phraseology of His childhood. The soldiers of Rome, standing by the cross, at once mistook His meaning. They thought His cry: "Eloi, Eloi," was a call for Elias. This body of warriors could never have known the whole story; they obtained only a few bits of the history of Jesus from the mob and the chattering priests. It was not strange, therefore, that this blunder was theirs. The very blunder, however, shows with what intensity the atmosphere responded to every thought and impulse pointing toward the com ing of the Messiah. Everybody knew that Elijah was regarded as the one who should precede the Messiah. John the Baptist had been mistaken for Him, and these soldiers, who may have come from the province where the idea was most prevalent, had only showed what dangerous forces were loose in the politics of Hebrew dom, while Jesus was dying. It was from one of the grand songs of Israel that Jesus had taken this melody charged with minors: "My God, my God, for what reason hast Thou forsaken me?" — Psalms xxii, 1. His divinity had again demonstrated itself in PIis humanity. Even to the depths of this humiliation would the Son of Man carry His divineness in His humanness; — and even further than this. For, from the intense darkness about His soul, He emerged, only to say: "I thirst." — Jo Jin xix, 28. He could be divinely human at this juncture, because, as John tells us, He knew that "all things were now finished, that the scripture might be fulfilled. " At length, one of the soldiers felt a touch of humanity within him; and he immediately obeyed it by taking the sponge, which had probably been used as a stopper to the large bottle in which the sour wine had been brought for the soldiers to drink, and filling it with some of the very drink which had inflamed the brutal soldiers to severer cruelty, offered it to Christ. As the cane or stalk of hyssop, surmounted by the sponge, was lifted near to the mouth of the dying man, there was a protest. The coarse gazers upon the frightful scene cried out: "Let be! Let us see whether Elias will come to save Him!" — Matt, xvii, 49. But Elias did not come, and Jesus refused not the wine which moistened His parched lips. He could now accept this; the end was near; and 646 THE MAN OP GALILEE. it was not similar to the narcotic which He had previously declined to drink, because He would meet death face to face. The last moment had come. Beginning in the Temple as a boy to preach the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, He had carried the possibilities of humanity so high; He had brought the enterprise of love so close to the earth, that in Himself, life had encountered death victoriously, and He now knew that all was safe. The sunlight burned upon the roofs of the Temple which would give place to the more rich and beautiful temple of redeemed human nature. He felt in His heart, which could experience only a throb or two more, that God and man were at one, and in the rapture of universal triumph He cried out: "It is finished!" — John xix, 30 Then, as though some refrain were borne into His spirit from the great music to which Pie had given increasing utterance in life and death, He nestled, as a storm-pursued bird nestles in a sheltering crevasse of the rock, in the one reality from which He had gone forth, to which He now came back, — the Fatherhood of God, — and He said, with utmost calm and tenderness: "Father, into Thy liands 1 commend My Spirit." — Luke xxiii, 46. Jesus was dead. And yet something was alive, for nature declined to adopt the event as the conclusion of the long process. The rocks near Calvary were torn; the earth reeled and quaked as the last drops of blood fell upon it, and the sleeping saints rose from their graves and appeared unto many in the streets of that Jerusalem whose chief men vainly supposed that now their problems were solved and their troubles ended. Even the mighty symbol of their religion, the Veil of the Temple, was rent in twain from top to bottom. The day had come when institutions must exist for humanity, and not humanity for institutions. Yea; something was living yet. While the priest was entering the Holy Place to burn the incense, and was anested in amazement at the frightful rent which left the veil of gold and purple ruined before the eyes of ecclesiasticism, human nature was making itself a temple of the Highest, by its obedience of the Law of Love in Christ Jesus. The centurion, who was in charge of the soldiers, had exercised the most anxious care that everything which occurred on Calvary on that day should be orderly and done according to the laws which THE ALAN OF GAL/LEE, 647 THE SOLDIERS LEAVING CALVARY. apparently had blended at one time, and then clashed against one another, from the beginning of the trial of Jesus, up to the moment of His death. His stolid Roman nature had never been melted or even argued with by so pathetic and powerful a plea as was made by the Victim whom he had just helped to crucify. Against all the fury of Judaism and the hard injustice which called itself justice in Pilate's Rome, that darkness of soul stretching over him at the mo ment when the light sprang into noontide in the soul of Jesus, the Crucified One; with the earth shaking beneath his feet, and the calm majesty of Jesus luminous above it all, the centurion saw again the form of Him who alone had been true and pure and kind amidst it all, and he said: "Surely this man was righteous; this must have been Gods Son." — Luke xxiii, 47. Heathendom had confessed the power of the cross of Christ. While the children of the Orient were going homeward, striking their breasts in token of the awe which they felt after the tragedy was over, the Occident was receiving from the Orient that which was world-wide and universal. Something yet lived. But it was not the body of Jesus. Neither was it the religion which was now about to perplex itself with the 648 IHE ALAN OF GALLLEE. forms and ceremonies of the Sabbath just beginning. It was not the body of Jesus, because, when the soldiers came to Him, execut ing the purpose of the Jews, who only pretended that they wished to shorten the sufferings of the Crucified One, when in reality they wished to make their Sabbath and second feast-day clean enough for the offering of the wave-sheaf, these same scrutinizing soldiers saw that Jesus was already dead, and that the breaking of the bones, which often preceded the lance-thrust, and therefore brought certain and immediate death, could be dispensed with entirely. Nay; it could not be the religion of the Pharisee and the Sadducee and the Scribe that lived; for the Sabbath which they were hastening to make clean had already been disgraced by being made dependent upon the will of Pilate who determined as to the disjoosition of Jesus' body in the late afternoon. It was Jesus the Christ alone who was alive forevermore. The true Paschal Lamb had been sacrificed. Not a bone of the Offering had been broken; but other predictions beside this had been fulfilled. A greater Prophet and Law-Giver than Moses had come. His was the Law of Love. As a Roman soldier thrust his lance into the side of the body of Jesus, the whole story was told. The blood and water which came out forthwith proved that He had died, literally, of a broken heart. Love had suffered so willingly and lovingly that it had closed its own tragedy; and Love lived, and would live, forever, — if for nothing else than for this, — that man -might know how Divine Humanity makes Calvary possible. CHAPTER LVIII THE SABBATH TPIE second Paschal day, the Sabbath, was within an hour of its advent. Jesus had fulfilled Love's Law. Let others look out after the letters of the law of tradition. The Passover-sheaf had been cut; but the Omer, or wave-sheaf, could not be offered with proper festivity, if still three mangled and dead bodies hung uj)on their crosses, within sight of pilgrims who looked toward Golgotha, from the Holy City. Not ly must the body of Jesus be taken from the cross, therefore, and at once, but, in order that the Passover Sab bath may be undefiled and Jerusalem be ceremonially clean, the body must be buried. What could be done by love or friendship ' in this moment of sadness? The apostles were j^oor and scattered and the women-friends of Jesus were without any means ^ whatever with which to purchase a burial place for His body such as their love desired. Could not something be done, in harmony with their reverence and affection ? The j^lace for the burial of criminals was yonder in the valley of Hinnom, where the unclean and outcast things of Jerusalem were always thrown, to decay with the rubbish of the streets and the ashes from the burnt offerings of the Temple. While love may have been shuddering with the 649 ASKING PILATE FOR CHRIST'S BODY. 650 THE MAN OF GALILEE. thought that His body might find its resting-place there, the Roman Procurator, Pilate, was listening to Joseph of Arimathea, who preferred a remarkable request in such a way as to touch the heart of the Governor. Joseph was a rich man, and, doubtless, a secret disciple. He had probably beheld the glory and shame of the Crucifixion, though his courage failed and he had not cried out in his horror at the exhibition of human wickedness. Now he needed not to be cautious, for both Rome and Jerusalem believed that Jesus and His cause were dead; and so Joseph, who was a Sanhedrist, that "waited for the kingdom of God, " disregarding all things, save his loyal love, craved of Pilate the body of Jesus. Mark says he was "a noble counsellor." — Mark xv, 43. Luke says he "was a good man and a just, — Luke xxiii, 50, — and the latter evangelist gives us the infor mation that he "had not consented to the counsel and the deed" of the Sanhedrin. It is from John that we learn that Joseph was "a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews." — JoJin xix, 38. In Pilate's eyes it was very little that Joseph asked for; it was very much in the eyes of Joseph, who might well provide his new rock-hewn tomb for One who in life, and especially at the hour of His death, would have rewarded him infinitely for one look of loyalty or one phrase of affection. Perhaps it is ever true that Christ must die upon some Calvary, within our own souls, before we shall be delivered from the fear to which we bow, and beg our Pilate that we may do honor to the Christ's body! Pilate doubtless was not less pleased at the magnanimity of Joseph than he was astonished to find that a rich Jew, and a San hedrist, such as Joseph, would ask for a gift such as the dead body of the Nazarene Rabbi, just crucified in disgrace. He was also sur prised to know that Jesus was already dead. Calling unto him the centurion, he asked if Joseph might not be mistaken, and if Jesus had been dead for any time. Convinced of the truth of His death by the centurion, Pilate gave the body to Joseph. Joseph himself, probably with the aid of his servants and the two or three friends of Jesus, attended to the taking of the body from the cross. What whole hearted devotion might have done when Jesus was living, pity, tenderness, and loyalty tried to accomplish with His corpse. I'll E ALAN OF G A LI UAL 651 The Friday afternoon was waning, and the Jewish Sabbath was hastening upon them, when the rich man thus saw that the body of the penniless Master was tenderly borne away from the cross. And now another of those who had lacked whole-heartedness, and who at a former time had furnished one of the most pathetic pictures ever made of the failure of a timid soul in the presence of divine opportunities, Nicodemus, who came at last to do tardy honor aforetime by night, ventured out into the fading light, which would soon be lost in another night, and he brought a mixture of aloes and myrrh, "an hundred pound weight, "—JoJin xix, 39, — which provided for the embalming of the body of the dead Teacher. No figure more sadly or strongly moves across the scene of the life of Jesus, to teach us how near to moral grandeur a man may approach, and yet how far away from spiritual greatness he may remain, than the figure of the learned and wealthy Nicodemus. Not all of the spices or fragrant oils which he might then bring, could have weighed as much, either for Jesus or for Nicodemus, as a single clear and true word of affection, spoken at the time when conscience and sympathy ought to have uttered it. Society must never dream that it has a Lord and Savior, because it is willing to put the loved corpse of Jesus in a splendid sepulchre of praise as did Joseph, or because it gratifies its taste and escapes embarrassing consequences, by going to Jesus by night, by pleading, for fair trial for the Nazarene, or by offering its unguents and aromatic spices for His burial, as did Nic odemus. These acts of Joseph and Nicodemus were indeed beautiful and lovely, but they must not be mistaken for acts as hopeful as the blunders of a son of God like Peter, who always has to be sifted out of a Simon, son of Jonas. They were soon in the court of Joseph's new tomb. While John was comforting Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the other disciples were standing a good way off, beholding what they could, the body was washed, and wrapped in the linen which Joseph had bought for the purpose, and which was made fragrant and sweet with the gift of Nicodemus. A napkin was placed over the face, which had re ceived the last token of affection, and the earthly form of the Christ was placed in the niche of the rock. 652 THE ALAN OF GALLLEE. The sun was westering down; only a few moments were left for solemn duties. Joseph's tomb, in which a body had never been laid, resounded with echoes, as the great stone was rolled to close the entrance. Probably a smaller stone was carefully laid against it, as was the custom. There were other sounds also. For while the last glories of that memorable da} were departing from the gar den in which the sep ulchre stood, Mary Magdalene and the JB& other Mary had come close enough to see the manner of His burial, and to leave their sobs and tears. It seemed all over. The disheartened ones turned their faces toward the city. Sweet thoughts, how- THE THREE MARYS G0ING FR0M calvary. ever, were in their sorrowful minds. They were going to prepare spices and ointments, and return. The sun had gone down, and the Passover Sabbath began. Everything had been done by the devotees of externalities to make sure that the traditional Jewish Sabbath should open upon a city ceremonially clean. The internal forces which come out of eternity and enter into time, were soon to tri umph against the external methods which had apparently succeeded all day long. A true Sabbath for humanity, which, for years, Jesus had been creating, was coming, and as the old would furnish for chronology the most terrible date in history, so the new would shine forth as most beneficent and glorious. The "wave-sheaf" was offered up, but the true Passover Sheaf had been offered on Calvary. It was not a peaceful Sabbath for any, save the sleeping Lord. So fearful were the authorities of the city and of the Temple lest something disruptive of their plans might even yet occur, that the chief priests and the Pharisees united in a state ment to Pilate in which they were saying: "Sir, we remember that THE MAN OF GALILEE. 653 that deceiver said, while He was yet alive, After three days I will rise again. Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest haply PIis disciples come and steal Him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: and the last error will be worse than the first." The wearied and stern Pilate replied: "Ye have a guard: go your way, make it as sure as you can. So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, the guard being with them." — Matt, xxvii, 63-65. "Make it as sure as ye can," is the weak statement, both of permission and of command, destined to utter itself at the defeat of every force in the universe that would entomb perma nently the Love which re-makes the world. There is no seal against the power of goodness to manifest itself from the very grave in which it has been imprisoned, and to go forth to rule the ages. Neither can Pilate supply the enemies of Divine Love with any watch which will be able to keep that sepulchre closed. THE BURIAL OF CHRIST. FROM FAINTING BY BRUNO I'IGLHEIM. CHAPTER LIX THE EASTER GLORY THE crucifixion of Jesus in evil rose against the sublimest man ifestation of goodness the world ever saw and demonstrated most tragically its dark and hellish nature. But because good is good, and evil is evil, these two forces met at the cross of Calvary, for the deter mination of the question as to which must have the ever-increasing and, finally, the universal mastery. Sin failed, even in the midst of its apparent triumph. As the evening came on, it seemed that the Eternal Love manifested in Jesus Christ had been overthrown by the temporary hate of men. But it was not so. In its effort to kill Jesus in ignominy, sin had suicided and made Him glorious. Cal vary is the name of the place zaherc, and Good Friday the name of the time when, sin becomes so abhorrent, in the presence of the breaking heart of goodness, that it reeled from the crucifix, wounded AFTER THE CRUCIFIXION. 655 656 THE MAN OF GALILEE. fatally. It may live on, as it has lived on for centuries, but the wound received on that Good Friday will prove its death. As the anniver sary approaches, year by year, sin rises from the place under the cross where it fell; but its languor and weariness are more notice able. Its ancient defiance is departing. Sin has never since essayed to take so lofty a fortress as it lost at the cross of Jesus of Naza reth. There is no such other height and bastion in human history or hope. Having dashed against that, in vain, all history will ulti mately rjrove itself the story of the long retreat of evil from the ' ' Lamb as it had been slain. " — Rev. v, 6. Before the crucifixion was over, humanity in the Roman centurion had confessed that the cross of Christ is His true throne; and as they were taking the lifeless body from the tree, earth had already begun to revolve in the morning-tide of that day to which Jesus looked when He said: "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me." — John xii, 32. The world is an increasingly better world; and it is clearly so, along the lines of Jesus' dying prayer to His Father. Night had come over the city and the garden and the sepulchre in which the body of Jesus lay. Brighter than the torches flickering in the streets of the city on Passover night, was the Paschal moon, which had not paused in its journey through infinite space since the night before, when it lit up the paths of Gethsemane. That moon now looked on a new but strange world. The true burial-place of Jesus was not illumined by that moonlight. It was, it is even now, in the hearts of the friends of the dead Master. The holy women had probably not left the sepulchre until night drove them away, and then they looked back lovingly, but in vain, to see the grave again before they mounted a hillock or turned a cor ner hiding it from them. They had enshrined in their hearts the most precious memory of all time. Skepticism can never go further than faith is willing to go, in recognizing the fact that there is vast power of resuscitation in the loving heart of a woman. Durin°- the long Sabbath immediately succeeding the calamity which paralyzed everything but affection, their hands could do nothing for the honor of their Master and Friend. But their hearts did every thing. However far away they were from the grave, their affections penetrated the cold rock which had been placed against the entrance THE MAN OF GALILEE. 657 of His tomb, to seal it duly; and their thoughts gathered sweet min istries of fancy and love around the body of Jesus. At the earliest moment, when the Sabbath was over, the little band of women was reconstituted by a common impulse. The Marys were its leading spirits, yet it included Salome and Joanna and others; and, with one heart, they started for the sepulchre, taking the spices which they had prepared for the completing of the em balming. The words of Pilate to the Jews, concerning the safety of the seal and watch: "Make it as sure as ye can," had been carefully executed by the help of the Roman sentries whom the Jews had gladly called to their aid in constituting the guard at the grave. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had furnished proof that the expectation of what we term the Resurrection of Jesus had no place in their minds. The myrrh and aloes generously contributed for the embalming, the new tomb as kindly offered and gratefully accepted for the burial, were so much testimony offered on the part of these two rich friends of the dead Nazarene, that they believed His career ended, as was the abyssmal sorrow of the women, or the utter despair of the men who had been called to be the apostles of the Christ. Only the Sanhedrists were seriously concerned about the future of the body of Jesus. While the disciples were probably still holding to a vague hope that somehow and sometime there should be a sec ond coming of their Master in the glory of His kingdom, the chief counsellors of the Temple were repeating to themselves the words they had spoken to Pilate. They were saying: "We remember that the deceiver said, while He was yet alive: After three days I shall rise again.'" — Matt, xxvii, 63. This is proof that the Sanhe drists had seen to it that Jesus was really dead. If their position as Sadducees, denying the Resurrection from the dead on general grounds, was to be held, everything that might be turned into an argument against them had to be guarded against. Doubtless the apostles who saw one another on that desolate Sabbath, when everybody else was rejoicing in the Passover festivi ties, mused upon some of the sayings which Jesus had spoken so frequently and more emphatically since the hour of the Transfigura tion ; and probably they were turning over the words spoken by their 43 658 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. Master concerning His death, as an event which must come in the orderly process of God's will concerning Him. But the shame and be trayal, the buffeting and disgrace had so darkened their souls; the col lision of uncontrollable forces which apparently tossed the Messiah of Israel about, as a chip is tossed on angry waves, rendered any happy anticipation impossible. John distinctly says: "For as yet they knew not the scripture, that He must rise again from the dead." — John xx, 9. No set of persons in the world ever testified more truly to the necessity of having their suppositions, fears, expectations, and beliefs thoroughly revolutionized by a fact, than did these disciples, when the Sabbath day was closing. Their Jewish beliefs and their sad experiences united to make them the least prepared of all per sons concerned, to anticipate what was immediately before them. The only resurrection which was possible, as they imagined, for their Master, was such a resurrection as that of Elijah or the resurrection at the last day; and this sort of resurrection did not offer itself to their belief. Disconcerted, their hope extinguished, this handful of men and women had only a memory as rich in spiritual power as it was horrible in its physical characteristics. They had not obeyed His direction to go to Galilee; instead, they stayed at Jerusalem. Out of their last recollection of Jesus, who had been blasphemed, denied, betrayed, forsaken, and ignominiously bruised and wounded, and at last judicially punished with death in the most shameful manner, it is impossible that they ever organized the Glorious Pres ence which soon walked forth in a dawn immortal. It was about four o'clock in the morning when the pious women came near unto the sepulchre. The whole story of that Easter morning is repeated in the life of every devout Christian. Mary Magdalene, — like that faculty, or set of faculties in the soul which has most of the possibilities of affection and which needs and receives most of the transforming power of the Eternal Love, — that is, the one out of whom most devils have been expelled by something divine, — is always latest at the cross, where that divine thing appar ently gives up its life; she is also earliest at the sepulchre in the garden, where that same unimprisonable goodness takes up its life again. There is a supreme deliberation about all goodness and truth and love, as Jesus Christ gives them illustration. The Divine in THE MAN OF GALILEE. 659 man is. always saying: "I lay clown My life, that I may take it up again. "—John x, 17. There is no laying down of life by Love, except in self-sacrifice. It must be done in the presence of the bigotry which persecutes and the brutal force which crucifies. Haughty intolerance and ignorant power must work together, to rid mental and spiritual provincialism of its troublesome Jesus; and they give Him a sepulchre guarded and feared, from which He passes into sovereignty over the world. As the women approached, the morning dew upon the April flowers in the garden was as radiant as the tears through which they gazed. Their only idea was that they might, even yet, anoint Him. The silent sunlight crept over the hills to unite with the si lence of their quenchless love, when an earthquake rolled its thunder-shock against the sealed stone of the sepulchre, and the vision of an angel descending from heaven INSIDE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE, flashed upon the tomb. The great stone was rolled back from the door, by the celestial hands. The angel waited, sitting upon the stone. ' ' His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow; and for fear of him the watchers did quake, and became as dead men." — Matt xxviii 3, 4. What the women saw and heard of all this we know not; we only know that they were yet to be convinced, and therefore must have seen and heard nothing which proved the fact of the resurrection of their Lord. Coming closer still, while morning was triumphing over retreating night, they were saying among themselves: "Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?" — Mark xvi, 3. Jesus had done much, if He had done only this, — to have HE HAS RISEN. FROM PAINTING BY AXEL ENDER. THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 661 given woman a voice in the process and progress of civilization. From that hour onward, woman has come with her spices, in the twilight hours which are before the day, to every strong and guarded sepulchre where the true Christ has apparently been buried forever, and she has ever been asking this question: "Who shall roll us away the difficulty in the path of progress?" She has asked it, until she has been able to tell man of the demonstration that Love cannot be permanently entombed. The transformation wrought in these women was accomplished by an external fact harmonious with an internal experience. Christ had already risen to Lordship, in the love and devotion of Christian womanhood. Through the gray dawn they now looked and saw that the stone was rolled away already. Love's feet carried them, at once, into death's castle, where the Lord of Life had defeated the king thereof. Not yet did even Mary Magdalene believe that Jesus had risen from the dead. When she found not the body of Jesus, she became a more desolate mourner with her companions, and Love's feet were once more swift, as she ran to Simon Peter and John with the sorrowful tale upon her lips: "They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid Him." — John xx, 2. It is probable that most of Mary's companions remained at the tomb. Soon they beheld the vision. An angel, in the form of a young man, sat on the right side, clothed in a long white garment, and they were affrighted. "And he saith unto them, Be not af frighted: ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: He is risen; He is not here: behold the place where they laid Him. But go your way, tell His disciples and Peter that He goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see Him, as He said unto you." — Mark xvi, 6, 7. And now two angels, clothed in shining garments, one at the head and one at the feet where the body of Jesus had lain, bowed their faces to the earth and asked the astonished and fearful ones: "Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen. Remember how He spake unto you when He was yet in Galilee, saying, The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again." — Luke 662 THE MAN OF GALILEE. xxiv, 5-7. The words of their Master came back to their perturbed minds, as sunlight long detained by heavy clouds, falls on chilled plants to reinvigorate them. It was a mixture of gladness and fright which filled their minds as they left the sepulchre. Matthew tells us: "And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring His disciples word." — Matt, xxviii, 8. By this time Mary Magdalene had probably returned, and was made ready and eager to go again to the disciples, for soon she and her companions had more to tell them. "And as they went to tell His disciples, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held Him by the feet, and worshipped Him. Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell My brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see Me." — Matt, xxviii, 9, 10. At first, according to Mark's gospel, they had been so affrighted that they said nothing to anybody. But soon all the disciples had the rapturous story. As yet, however, they were unenraptured. Again they bore testimony to the truth that they had entertained no anticipation of the Resurrection, by the fact that they received the words of the women unbelievingly. The subsequent history of woman and her ministry to man was foreshadowed there and then. Peter and John began to feel something besides wonder. The statement of Mary roused their curiosity. They, at length, yielded to the query of their souls, "What if it all be true?" And the im pulsive man who had been most evidently honored by Love's min istry at the evening meal in the Upper Room, ran speedily toward the sepulchre. Love ever outruns impulse and brain; and John arrived first. Stooping down, he searched with affectionate eye- glance, for his Master's body, and saw nothing but the linen strips lying there. He was too amazed to enter; or, possibly, was thoughtful of the ceremonial pollution which he might suffer, if he went in. More probably, however, a noble reverence and solemn awe detained John at the doorway. Simon Peter, however, ardent and impetuous as ever, rushed into the tomb. Nothing but the cerements of death and the napkin which love had tenderly laid ujoon the Christ's head at the last, were visible. The napkin was wrapped with the linen. THE MAN OF GALILEE. 663 Christ, in the progress of humanity, leaves behind only the grave- clothes, which are the creeds and institutions of time, as He emerges, fresh with eternity, from the rock-hewn tombs in which, at the ex pense of Joseph the rich, and Nicodemus the politic, we bury Him. The invisible Lord of Life had gone forth to rule the world. John now entered, saw, and believed. Soon the transformed men, so lately panic-stricken and despairful, now so quick to realize the true King ship of Jesus, went away to their home. They were not quite delivered from painful alarm, however, and home was a good place in which they could muse and pray. Even yet, no one had so seen Jesus and so recognized Him, as to make a faith in His resurrection clear and strong. The glory of this vision and the rapture of this faith were first accorded to Mary Magdalene. It is always so. "All things," even our sin, if it is forgiven; our lovelessness, if it is transformed into love — "work together for good to them that love the Lord." Only to such as was Mary Magdalene is possible the vision-power, surpassing that of apostle and saint who has not had a similar experience with Jesus the Christ. Mary was again looking into the tomb. The two angels said unto her: "Woman, why weepest thou?" And she said unto them: "Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him." — JoJin xx, 13. Having said this, her attention was attracted to someone near her. It must never be forgotten that the heavenly personages un known to the disciples and the women at the resurrection, appeared to be very human. Even thus they carried out the purpose of Jesus, to make human life divine. The angelic presences are spoken of as "young men!' Jesus Himself, who now speaks to her, saying: "Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?" — Jo Jin xx, 15,- — places nothing before her anxious gaze, which, by any outward glory, forbids the supposition that the gardener had come near. Divinity in Jesus was so divine that He could afford that He should be mis taken for the owner of the garden. An illustration of the true method of the development of faith in Jesus, as the Divine Incarnation, is furnished in the steps of Mary's spiritual journey by which she discerns Christ. "Supposing Him to be the gardener, " — this is the plane upon which Jesus is will- 664 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. ing that faith shall start. It is not a large or long creed, but it was satisfactory to Him, at least to begin with. "Supposing Him to be the gardener," — Jo Jin xx, 15, — it only touches the garment of His humanity, and that feebly and partially. When we see Christ in the process of history, — the goodness once entombed, and now hav ing proved its unimprisonableness, — we are apt to treat Him only as the most ordinary fact in the realm of ife. We think too superficially o ask for His commandment. Nevertheless, Christ has thus come to us, to be our Lord. What was more in line with the customary, than that the gardener should draw near, and what is more usual to our hopelessness, when, like Mary, we have seen all that "we adored sepulchred, than that we, also, should mistake the Infinite for the commonplace, and ask the ordinary where it has borne away the extraordinary ? ! We say, somehow, what Mary said to her Lord: "Sir, if thou hast borne Him hence, tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him away." — John xx, 15. Mary even yet has to be convinced that Jesus is risen from the dead. She is ready to provide for His body another tomb, if need be. So, also, is our unbelief ever anxious to do honor to the goodness in which it once believed. Jesus was training Mary's personality. He rescued her to her self, in one familiar word of love, and that word was: "Mary." He must have pronounced it with an accuracy of divine accent which fitted every movement of His soul to every old emotion of her heart or struggling thought of her mind. All her past, and all His past, as it was related to her, were vivified and made abundantly sym- MARY WEEPING AT THE SEPULCHRE. THE ALAN OF GALLLEE. 665 pathetic, in His utterance of the word "Mary." It taught her, and she felt the presence of her Teacher again. Instantly she rose in her faith, which had essayed its highest when just now she had said: "Sir: — supposing Him to be the gardener, "—John xx, 15,— and she now turned, and, going so far back into her own history that she took the provincial form of the word which a Galilean would appre ciate, she said: "Rabboni!" — "my Master." — JoJin xx, 16. It was a distinct advance in the growth of a great creed. It was to be the best kind of creed, for its growth registered the ap prehension of love. Now the teachable one confessed her Teacher. She had moved a long way up, in her Christology, from the mo ment when she could only stammer forth the salutation, "Sir," to this moment, when she confessed Jesus' intellectual and spiritual rulership, in the word ' ' Master. " And now love and friendship would grasp the beloved Master. Could there have been anything more natural than that her affection should manifest itself in an embrace? But Jesus was even then laying the foundations of the Kingdom of the Invisible, of which He was the Invisible King. Other than a bodily touching of the Christ would be needed and must be vouchsafed to Mary and to all humanity. To save mankind to the highest to which men are capable, their Lord must be tang ible only through His perpetual pres ence in the soul. He must summon the highest in her. He said: "Touch Me not: for I am not yet ascended unto My Father." — John xx, 17. These were, at first, words of dis couragement. Was it possible that the Master was now sep arating Himself from those hu man beings whom He had so brothered? Had His recent experience taken Him into some far-away domain, in -touch me not; 666 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. which no kinship of souls, such as He had fostered, could be realized? Was this man, who had been the most brotherly of all men, no longer a brother? Was the dream of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man an abandoned vision? If Mary's heart was perturbed by these thoughts, the concluding words of Jesus would make her rejoice, as they have given all Christian thinkers assurance that the logic of the universe is of Love. While His words: "Touch Me not: for I have not yet as cended unto My Father," were yet echoing with their apparently isolating command, He immediately said, in addition : ' 'But go unto My bretJiren." At length, the fact of human brotherhood had emerged from the overwhelming glory that seemed to separate Him from them. ' ' And say unto them, " He said, ' ' I ascend unto My Father. " — John xx, 1 7. Again the phrase, ' ' My Father, " empha sized what might be a privilege and power belonging to Jesus alone. Would He now again reveal a majesty which His Father's other sons might not share ? This was all answered when He said all that was in His mind: "I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and My God, and your God." — John xx, 17. The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, — the truth to whose proclamation He had given Himself in life and in death, was now uttered at the instant, when, by His Resurrection, He had revealed the power of God and the possibilities of humanity. But He had done more than this. He had foretold His Ascension, to which His Resurrection was a step, just as His Transfiguration was a step to His Resurrec tion. "1 ascend," He said, — for the process of His glorification was even now consummating, — "I ascend unto My Father and your Father." At the Ascension, the truth of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, would still be supreme. Now Mary Magdalene had a complete and evangelic creed. It was not a belief of the head, but a faith of the heart. ' ' I have seen the Lord," she said. This was the factual report she gave to the disciples. She had seen Jesus, first as "Sir, "then as "Master," and, at last, as "Lord." These are the three steps by which, even to-day, we who have seen Him buried, come to know the death less Christ, who is King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. CHAPTER LX THE RISEN AND ASCENDED LORD MEANTIME, to the anxious authorities in Jerusalem came the report from the Roman sentries who had been left to keep watch at the tomb. The chief priests heard it with consternation. The dull-eyed and weary sol diers awoke to tell the whole truth with elaborate exact itude, for they knew that ty had incurred a severe nalty if it could be proved that they had been neg- "gent. The Temple au thorities were as ter rified at learning that, somehow, their scheme preventing the disappear- i of the body of Jesus had :d, as the soldiers them es had been at the earth- ke, the opening of the b, and the appearance of ling forms, of which they now told them at length. A meeting of the San hedrin was immediately ailed. The dismayed council decided at once to bribe the soldiers, and thus induce 'DID NOT OUR HEARTS BURN WITHIN US?' 667 668 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. them to say that Jesus' disciples came by night and stole Him away while they slept. They assured the sentries that they would make it all right with Pilate, if any disquieting rumor came to the ears of the Roman governor. Soon the well-paid soldiers had taken their money and gone about proclaiming the lie which the chief priests hoped would be believed. Being Sadducees, and therefore opposed to the belief in a resurrec tion, the chief priests could not afford to have their tale about the body of Jesus discredited, even by a fact. The lie failed, — not because men reasoned, that, if the soldiers had been asleep, they could not truly testify that the disciples had stolen the body, — but simply be cause it was a lie, and the universe, in which Life is lord of death, would be contradictory if such a lie might endure. There is nothing to lead us to suppose that we have an account of even the majority of the appearances of the risen Christ to His disciples. John indicates that those of which record is made are only examples of many appearances, by which the disciples were finally convinced that their once dead Master had become the Living Lord, by conquering death. Paul, writing many years after the first Easter Day, tells us of an appearance of Jesus to Peter, which must have occurred very soon after the appearance to Mary Magdalene. There is a pathos glad with victory, and a touch of personal tenderness also, in the saying of the Presence whom the women saw in the tomb: "Go your way: tell His disciples — and Peter." Heaven had a quenchless interest in the great-hearted apostle who had suffered so much from himself, whose denial of his Master and Lord was so painful a fact in his memory, and whose fight for faith and holiness had attached his Master to him with the love which, once inaugurated, would at length consummate the enterprise of bringing the Peter out of Simon. The infinite patience of love, and the method by which God honors and redeems separate personalities for special serv ice, are shown in the desire of Christ that Peter, especially, might at once hear the new evidence of his Master's Lordship furnished by the Resurrection. It was afternoon, and yet the whole band of the disciples had not been reassured by the interesting rumors which began to come to them when they were about to break up in despair. Toward evening, THE At AN OF GALLLEE. 669 two of the disciples thought of Emmaus. Perplexed and bewildered, these two, who must have talked to Peter and John about matters, started out on their eight-mile journey. One, as we know, was Cleopas; and so personal and circumstantial is the record of the event in Luke's gospel, that it is commonly believed that Luke him self was the other. The spring-time was walking through the gardens, opening buds into bloom, and liberating the song in the bird's throat, as these men passed on; but they were thinking of little save the news which stirred uncertainly in heart and brain. Every new turn of events served only to start questions and stimulate vague hopes, like unto those which had been destroyed on Golgotha. Meantime a Stranger mysteriously joined them, and made Him self their companion. He felt their mood, and said to them : ' ' What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?" Cleopas was so full of his own thoughts, and of the event which had engrossed their attention, that he said, in reply: "Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?" — Luke xxiv, 18. "And He said unto them, What things? And they said unto Him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people. And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to be condemned to death, and have crucified Him. But we trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, -to-day is the third day since these things were done. Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre; and when they found not His body, they came, saying that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that He was alive. And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre and found it even so as the women had said: but Him they saw not." — Luke xxiv, 19-24. Here again is evidence of the number and nature of the difficulties which the idea of the Resurrection of Jesus had to surmount before the fact was believed in by the disciples. Soon the Stranger was opening up to the two sad companions the treasure-house of the Scriptures, with which they were familiar. ' ' Then He said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. 670 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. Ought not Christ to Jiave suffered Uiese things, and to enter into His glory?" — Luke xxiv, 25, 26. And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. They were now near the village. It appeared that their new comrade was going straight on and away from them. He had bidden them a good evening. Something in them made it impossible for them to let Him go. ' Something in Him was life and light, and it must not be lost. The night was near; would He not abide with them ? Besides the dictate of hospitality thus expressed, their hearts were speaking. He had warmed into life the dearest hope they ever had, and they thought it had perished. A resurrection had already occurred in them. If they failed to hear all that He had to say, they might lose everything. The Stranger seemed to have the secret of that which would indeed fulfill the prophecies of the soul. " Full many a sweet forewarning hath the mind, Full many a whispering of vague desire, Ere comes the nature destined to unbind Its virgin zone, and all its deeps inspire, — Low stirrings in the leaves, before the wind Wakes ail the green strings of the forest lyre, Faint heatings in the calyx, ere the rose Its warm, voluptuous breast doth all unclose." The whole destiny of true idealism hung on the fact which this Stranger alone could communicate. The human mind was in the sweet pain of spring, and there could be birth and harvest only because these yearnings which Jesus had once awakened would be proven true. As we read the gospel story, we have a sense of glad relief when we come upon Luke's words: "But they constrained Him, saying, Abide with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And He went in to tarry with them." Who has not expressed the desire that he had been there with the three, as they sat at the evening meal together? As was customary, the guest had the chief seat at the table, and He took the bread, uttered the blessing, and gave it to them. What was the tone in His speech as He uttered THE ALAN OF GALLLEE. 671 the blessing, which reminded them of an evening in Capernaum when their Master once sat at the place of honor at the board and blessed the bread? What movement of the hand, or look of thanks giving, was that, which brought back recollections of Jesus as afore time He took bread from the hands of the disciples, and, blessing it, brake the loaves, and gave them to His disciples again? In stantly they saw that the mysterious guest was Je sus, their Master. If it SUBURBS OF EMMAUS. was at the first, Luke's discovery, it may have been vouchsafed to him through the memory he preserved of the evening in the Upper Room when he saw Jesus breaking bread for the last time, without the surroundings of humiliation and hostility. We recognize the Love which comes back to us out of some grave, because it has the dear old ways of the Love which bade us good-bye in some Upper Room before Love went to Gethsemane to agonize and to Calvary to die. They were getting ready for a renewal of the precious friend ships. When the disciples looked again, their Lord had vanished. Then their hearts broke forth most naturally. "And they said one to another, Did not our heart, burn within us, while He talked 672 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. with us by the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures?" — Luke xxiii, 32. Back to Jerusalem they hastened, with hearts still aglow. The gift of Jesus Christ to a world without heart, or cold in heart, is the burning heart. The fresh and invincible confi dence that powers and processes which are true and good, will triumph, heartens what Arnold calls "the dispirited race," and the demonstration that Calvaries and graves cannot kill or detain good ness in its march, is furnished finally and forever in the Resurrec tion of Jesus. When they arrived in Jerusalem, they met the other apostles and others of the disciples, and these received the intelligence in the words: "The Lord is risen indeed." But they added: "and hath appeared unto Simon." — Luke xxiv, 34. Again we see that the pre eminence of Simon Peter consists in his being a true representative of the humanity which Jesus came to inspire and "sift" and save. All the disciples appear to have been more truly convinced than ever, for there is a logic implied in these words: "He hath appeared unto Simon." They indicate the feeling on the part of the disciples that there could be little or no question about the Resurrection of Jesus, if Simon's eyes, from which bitter tears of repentance had flowed, had seen in Him a risen Lord. At length the Easter Sunday saw them gathered together for the evening meal. The doors were shut, because they feared the Jewish authorities. Unexpectedly Jesus Himself stood before them, and uttered the greeting which they had often heard Him speak: "Peace be unto you. " — Luke xxiv, 36. Assuring, as the experiences in the earlier part of the day had been, the disciples who now sat at the table were not prepared for the presence of their Lord, and it -is proof again of the difficulty with which the idea of the Resurrection had to win its way into their minds, that, even yet, at such an appearance, they were terrified and affrighted. Their thought was that they had seen a disembodied spirit. But Jesus was there to substitute fact for illusion. "And He said unto them, Why are Ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself: handle Me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have." — Luke xxiv, 38,39. He thus offered them the witness of facts. John says: "He THE AIAN OF GALILEE. 673 showed unto them His hands and His side."— -John xx, 20. They were struggling still with their joy and wonder, when, in the most human manner that ever revealed moral divineness, He said: "Plave ye here any meat?"— John xxi, 5. Their broiled fish and honey comb He was soon sharing with them. "And He said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the Law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning Me. Then opened He their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures. And He said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things." — Luke xxiv, 44-48. The Bible is not the interpretation and guarantee of the truth of Jesus; He is the interpretation and guarantee of the truth of the Bible. Here then is the secret of understanding scripture. The ultimate and all-revealing fact is Jesus the Christ, the Risen Lord. In the glory of Him alone may we appreciate duly and sympathetically the words and acts of seer, king and minstrel. As He- saw that the idea and fact of the Resurrection of Himself from the dead were lifting them up into the stature of true apostles, Jesus reconstituted the apostolic band by His presence and His words. He said; "Peace be unto you: as My Father hath sent Me, even so I send you." Here was another evidence of the essen tial brotherhood under God's Fatherhood. Jesus had lived and died and conquered death, not that He might differentiate Himself from men; that would have been egotism; but to reveal the Father's method with all His true children and the child's resources and potency under His Father's guidance, and that was Divinity. But Jesus would have them encouraged by rich discoveries through rich experience. He therefore added: "And behold, I send the promise of My Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high." — Luke xiv, 49. "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe: 43 674 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. In My name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." — Mark xvi, 16-18. "And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." — JoJin xx, 23. Thomas, the twin, was not present with the disciples at the meal on Easter Sunday evening. It was not enough for Thomas, whose nature possessed little of what makes for optimism and faith, to be told by the other disciples that they had seen the Lord. To them there was abundant reason why this day should afterwards be known as the Lord's Day. The new Temple of Humanity had come. Its Lord had built this Temple of the body, according to God's plan, on the ruins of death and the grave. But every Thomas wishes for truth as it comes through his own experience, and every Thomas may have it. Thomas would believe; but he will always say: "Ex cept I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my fingers into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe." — -John xx, 25. Eight rdays passed, and Thomas was with the other disciples. Again the doors had been closed, and again Jesus suddenly stood in their midst, and said: "Peace be unto you." Then He said unto Thomas: "Reach hither thy finger, and behold My hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into My side: and be not faith less, but believing." — -John xx, 27. And Thomas answered and said unto Him: " My Lord and my God. " Jesus said unto him: "Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. "—John xx,. 28, 29. Jesus here intimated that other than a faith demanding His vis ible presence must be theirs. Slowly but surely the Risen Lord was trying to accustom His disciples to the absence of which He spoke, when He said to Mary Magdalene: "I ascend unto My Father and your Father." — John xxi, 17. There were doubtless much disappoint ment and many misgivings, because no longer, as of old, did He mingle with His disciples, so that they thought of nothing save the delightful companionship. The eleven disciples, who were apostles, THE AIAN OF GALILEE. 675 had gone into Galilee. The fishermen were back again in their old haunts, and seven of them were gathered together by the water's side. They were Simon Peter, James and John, Thomas, Nathanael and two others. Simon Peter was in that uncertain state of mind in which a man turns very naturally and gratefully from strange and new paths, which run into mysterious regions, to an old occuj^ation which he understands, and in which he has been successful. He said: "I am going fishing." — John xxi, 3. The process of sifting Peter out of Simon was not comjilete. The others felt as he did, for they said: "We also go with thee." All night long they fished without any success. In the morning, the tired men saw a mysterious Figure walking on the shore. Even when He spoke they did not recognize the Stranger. He asked a most practical and searching question, — a question which the Lord of souls must often ask us: "Children, have ye any meat?" — JoJin xxi, 5. It is always Christ who asks us if our life is paying. He will not let us fail without our knowing it. We may fail, as we have failed, but He will get our eyes ready to discern His presence in our failures, and thus make them minister to a higher success. He stands on the shore of Time to remind us of the fact that He was counted a failure when He died on Calvary, and that His Resurrection is a triumph. When the disciples answered Him: "No," He did what only Christ has done for the failed life of mankind. He said unto them: "Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. " — JoJin xxi, 6. One throw of the net, and they were not able to draw it in because of the multitude of fishes in it. The difference between real failure and true success is the Risen Christ commanding from the shore. But the greatest success of the disciples was not in catching the fish, but in recognizing Jesus. John said to Simon Peter: "It is the Lord." — JoJin xxi, 7. Simon Peter, the big-hearted and im pulsive, left fishes, ship, and companions, and, gathering his upper garment about him, cast Himself into the sea, in order to reach his Lord. More slowly the other disciples moved, reaching the shore at last with quite as much loyalty and love as Simon Peter had shown. They came, bringing with them the net full of fishes. Again John, the loving and meditative, had outrun John spiritually, for he helped to brino- the fishes, that they might dine with Jesus. Simon Peter, 676 THE MAN OF GALILEE. however, had not lost all his power to do obvious duties, for he stood on shore and drew the net to land, and it was not broken. A fire of coals was blazing there, and a fish and a loaf of bread were already placed thereon. There was a great contrast between the one hundred and fifty and three great and good fish which the dis ciples brought to shore, and the one fish and the loaf which Jesus had contributed. He now said to them: "Come and break your fast." — Jo Jm xxi, 12. They all knew Him and no one asked the Lord His name. Out of all the human surroundings, blessing them all, and consecrating the ordinary experiences of life, Jesus was lift ing them while He was teaching them that He had not changed His original plan when He said to them what He spoke long before when He called them first to discipleship : "Follow me." He was still making them "fishers of men." — Matt iv, 19. Once before, after a miraculous catch of fish, Jesus had revealed what He would do and be to man, and now again He would manifest His moral sovereignty. He now turned the forces of His teaching toward Simon Peter. Not yet had Peter been restored. The awful hour of the thrice- repeated denial was unforgotten by either Master or disciple. Jesus now proposed the only three steps by which restoration from the dis tance covered by the three-fold denial, was possible. Again it was a fire of coals that flickered before the two unsteady disciples, as once before, in the court-yard, at the Trial. The dinner was over, and Jesus, re-illuminating the dark paths which Simon Peter had trodden, on account of over-confidence in self, said to him: "Simon, son of Jonas" — His Master would not let His disciple forget the earthly environment out of which He had sought to bring the rock-man, — "Lovest thou Me more than these?" — John xxi, 15. Peter's. heart was touched. He comprehended his Lord's meaning at once. Jesus had used a word which we translate ' 'lovest, " but which really means "honor est," or "esteemest." These differing words reveal the problem with which Jesus, the Master, had to deal, and His method of solv ing it. Simon Peter never lacked the love that feels, but he did lack the love that honors. The question of Jesus did not ask for the tender and ardent emotion of affection. It asked for the love which "loves with all the mind" as well as the heart. Jesus' phrase: "more than these," brought back the memory of the apostle's self- THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 677 assertion and his willingness to compare his fidelity with that of others, before the denial of His Master. If he had possessed the kind of love which Jesus must rely upon, Simon would not have indulged in comparisons. Jesus does not ask for relative, but for absolute love. Simon's old self-sufficiency and its root were now clearly exposed by the true and tender Lord. He bravely and honestly said, appealing now to his Lord's knowledge, rather than his own, "Yea, Lord, Thou Jtnowest that I love Thee." All comparisons he had learned to forego. But the word which Peter used, which is translated "love," in our version, was not the word which Jesus used. "Simon Peter uses one that speaks of a more familiar and friendly affection, implying less depth of serious thought." (Milligan and Moulton.) Jesus heard the warm hearted, sincere answer, and said to the disciple: "Provide My lambkins with food.'' His Lord had set Simon Peter to a task which He knew would turn his foolish pride into noble humility. He who had been weak ought to know how to succor and guide the weakest of the flock. Jesus now repeated His question, putting emphasis again upon the fact that the heavenly sonship of Peter was still unsifted from the earthly sonship of Simon. The chaff, "son of Jonas," still clung to the fine grain, "Son of God," — and Jesus used the words as at the first: "Simon, son of Jonas, honorest thou Me with thy love?" Jesus did not repeat the phrase of His first question, "more than these, " for Simon Peter had not made any self-confident comparison between his own affection toward Jesus and that of others, in his reply to his Master. Humility had at length been victorious in the once self-sufficient apostle. The kindly omission of the words "more than these" was Jesus' acknowledgment of this fact. Simon Peter's reply to the second question of his Master was this: "Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee." Simon Peter had used the old word to which he had accustomed his lips in obedience to a great heart, when he said "I love Thee." The answer of Jesus was: "Shepherd My sheep." — John xxi, 17. And now for a third time, Jesus asked the question, but here the Lord uses the identical word with which Simon had just ex pressed his affection. The first question was: "Honorest thou Me 678 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. with thy love, more than these honor Me?" The second question was only: "Honorest thou Me with thy love?" The third question was: "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me?" Jesus saw that into his old love, with its hearty, impulsive, and clinging quality, another quality — even thoughtfulness, seriousness, and principle — had gone. All of Simon was devoted, now, to Him. But Simon Peter was hurt and sad, and his heart was near to breaking, when he said out of the very depths of his affection: "Lord, Thou knowest everything; Thou seest that I love Thee." — John xxi, 17. Just as he had denied Jesus Christ three times, so now he confessed Him three times. But more than the number of times was the process of confessing by which Simon Peter had risen from a Simon-like affection into a Peter-like affection. If we are to be restored, we must return over all the distance which we traveled in denying our Master. "SJiep- herd My sheep," said Jesus to the apostle whose lofty love was now fixed forever. It was not only emotion; it was honor. It was not only honor or esteem; it was affection. It had principle in it; it had warmth and glow also. Other problems would come to Peter, growing out of ignorance or narrowness, but there could never be a question henceforward of his thorough-going love. With the private appearance which the risen Lord had made unto Simon Peter, this experience conspired to restore him and to burn into his soul the significance of his apos tolic commission". He had been sifted. The chaff was gone. Jesus, however, would assure him of the severe trial which lay before him in the future, even his tragic death. He said: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdest thyself, and walkest whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands," — a cross also waited for him — "and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not." — John xxi, 18. John distinctly tells us that "this He spake, signifying by what manner of death Peter should glorify God. And when He had spoken this, Jesus said unto him, Follow Me." — John xxi, 19. Jesus had re-constituted the apostle, in the old words spoken by the sea long ago: "Follow Me." The man, the son of Jonas, Simon, was now a son of God, Peter. The perfect Son of God, Jesus, had consummated His spiritual enterprise by brothering this great-hearted THE AIAN OF GALLLEE. 679 and many-sided man into the privileges and duties granted unto him by the Fatherhood of God. But Peter was even yet the man whose difficulty it was to go alone. When Jesus said to him: "Follow Me," Peter looked for John, who was following. But who could tell how far they would be companions? "Peter therefore seeing him, said to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith unto him, if I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee ? Follow thou Me." — JoJin xxi, 21, 22. Peter was sifted from Simon. We must anticipate, to see how completely it was done. After Jesus is ascended, and at Pentecost, Peter's is the eloquence of a courage sifted of arro gance, the eloquence of an enthusiasm filled with the Holy Ghost. Hear his unquivering voice as he speaks out of the consciousness of power to the lame man at Solomon's porch: "Such as I have give I unto thee." Power is going forth out of him, and turning to the multitude, he pours out that matchless stream of truth, gleaming with a heavenly glory. There is the sifted Simon before the council. Calm with strength, he is sufficiently controlled for irony. He is strong with a determination to admit no other mastery than that of God. Before the deceit of Ananias and Sapphira, before councils, before the purchasing ambition of Simon Magus, in prison and out of it, stands Peter preeminent, looking back upon his past self, often, in an act, suggesting plainly the chaff of which Christ had freed him, but still teaching us the lessons of this event. "Nor deem the irrevocable past, As wholly wasted, wholly vain, If rising on its wrecks at last To something nobler we attain." Peter went forth to "establish" his "brethren." A quarter of a century after this spring day had faded into nio-ht, Paul, the apostle, writing to the Corinthian Christians, and arguing for the grandeur and reasonableness of the new faith, on the ground of the Resurrection, spoke of appearance after appearance of the risen Lord, and then said: "After that, He was seen of about five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present; but some are fallen asleep." This is doubtless the same appearance of which Matthew speaks. Jesus had appointed 680 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. a mountain-spot where He might meet the large number of His disciples. "Then the eleven disciples went into Galilee, unto the mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw Him, they worshipped Him: but some doubted. And Jesus came to them and spake unto them, saying, All authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make dis ciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." — Matt, xxviii, 16-20. They were soon back in Jerusalem. Again, Paul tells the Cor inthians of two other appearances: "After that, He was seen of James; then of all the apostles." Luke, who was doubtless the author of the "Acts of the Apostles," sums up the argument from the facts, by stating the latter in the following words: "To the apostles whom He had chosen He also showed 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: and, being assembled together with them, He charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promises of the Father, which, said He, ye heard from Me: for John indeed baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. They therefore, when they were come together, asked Him, Lord, dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? And He said unto them, It is not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father hath set within His own authority. But ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be My wit nesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth." — Acts i, 2-8. The words of the disciples to Jesus: "Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" were proof to Jesus that "it was expedient" for them that He "should go away" again. Otherwise they would re main unspiritual, and the Spirit of Comfort and Truth could not come to emancipate them from sensuous and provincial views, and lead them with the universal forces which were to make this a re deemed world. THE MAN OF GALLLEE. 68 1 Yonder was Bethany. Here last days, the dear homes. Toward started, leaving Day of Pentecost lowing after Him, known path, the with trembling stasyoflove. They on Olivet. He hands of blessing seemed to make beautiful. Never Olives, from which Jerusalem, glow splendor. But, as feet missed the he had been stand was departing. A glory about Him, Him out of their \ They were ing upward. The THE ASCENSION. lovely and beloved He had found, in His est of His earthly the little town He Jerusalem just as the was nearing. Fol- along the well- disciples went hearts and ec- paused with Him stretched His above them, and earth radiant and did the Mount of they could see with such quiet they waited, His rock on which ing. Their Lord cloud gathered its and received sight.alone, and look- whole world of men waited below to be lifted God-ward by the Power which lifted their vision into the skies. Their Lord was certainly leaving them. Every heart yearned to go with the ascending Christ, as the silence deepened and the cloud rose higher. But their duties and oppor tunities their heroisms and achievements, were to be found here, and none went with Him. The silence was broken. Behold, two men stood by them in white apparel. They spoke the message of God, and said: "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into Heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him going into heaven." — Acts i, n, 12. The fact that their Lord was to come again, as gloriously as He had departed from them, proved at once the consummating pledge 682 THE MAN OF GALLLEE. of His Kiagship and divinity. It made them worshipers. But they must not stay, even to adore. The Temple at Jerusalem was soon resonant with the melody of their joy and praise. Their entrance into it, after the vision of Olivet, was more prophetic of world-wide transformations than the tread of armies. The evangel was created. The Christian preacher had come. His message had just been completed. With the same faith in which they gazed up. into heaven, this hopeful band set themselves to the task of making earth heavenly. And the story of that civilization, in which God is continually reveal ing Himself in man, will never be told in more noble or true words than these: "And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the words by the signs that followed." Amen. YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 9002 08540 0233