The Life of Christ – Without, Within

WE have all read of princes walking among their subjects in disguise; and there is a certain suggestion of contrast between the seeming and the real, under such circumstances, that touches the imagination of all people. The ignorant and uncultured are just as much delighted and excited by such a scene as the most wise and cultured.

A disguise does not necessarily depend upon external raiment, or any material or physical change. A man may be incognito simply from his superior quality, if he differs wholly in his moral character from those among whom he walks. For, although they that are superior can understand the inferior, the inferior cannot understand the superior, except so far as they have in themselves some seeds and beginnings of that which the superior nature possesses. A fine artist, among rude lumbermen, may work with them, eat with them, sleep with them, and not seem to any of them to be anything else than just one of them; whereas he is utterly disguised to them, and has a life within which they suspect not; he is as effectually disguised as a prince would be who should exchange his robes for beggar's garments. Many a woman of fine organization and delicate nature has been reared to the coarsest offices of labor, and has carried a hidden life which no one besides her understood, and which she herself scarcely understood; and, though she was superior, her superiority was hidden, and she walked unknown to those who knew her best. Moral disguise is the most impenetrable of all disguises.

Christ was a king in disguise; and no being ever walked less known than he. And now, although some eighteen hundred years have been turned in scrutiny upon him, he is still but little known.

It is a matter of profound interest and of profit to look at Christ from the stand-point of the intelligent Jew, and from his own stand-point, and to ask the question, Why was he not known among his own kindred, in his own age, and among his own country men? There are lessons to be derived from such a question. It is also a matter of profound interest and of profit to inquire what, judged from his own stand-point, was the history of Christ's life. Was it a success? Or was it a failure?